Up in Smoke

Stress would seem to be a primary cause of breakdown (go to http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nervous-breakdown/AN00476 for more information).  As my counselor explained, each of us possesses an internal 'emotional pressure cooker'. Some of us have larger pressure cookers than others, which means that they can handle more stress before the cooker boils over. Some of us have smaller cookers, or our pressure cookers are already more than half full. In these cases, it can take very little additional stress to cause a breakdown. Ideally, and prior to approaching an emotional explosion, we can reduce the pressure by letting off steam through healthy and productive methods including sharing with friends and family, exercise, rest, eating right - even walking into an empty field and screaming to no one in particular about our frustration, anger, guilt, or humiliation.  

But if a person is already at the point of breakdown - or has gone past that point - they require immediate help: loving care, a bit of peace, perhaps medication or hospitalization depending on the extent of the breakdown. Whatever the treatment, a person suffering breakdown must be enclosed in a loving environment that feels safe, secure, and which protects them from further stress which may only make the breakdown more acute. 

In short, they must be given the opportunity to emotionally depressurize if they are to heal. In my case this did not happen.

During the week following the breakdown at my daughter's wedding, I was experiencing even more stress. My family, understandably appalled at my behavior and not realizing that I was suffering from an emotional illness, literally cut me off. My father would not talk to me. Nor, come to think of it, would most of my family. Believing that I was suffering from alcoholism or related conditions, they decided to practice 'tough love' by isolating me in a 'time out' that I found horrible. I was (almost) fully aware of what I had done. While I could not remember some of my behavior, I remembered enough. Already feeling bad about myself, I now felt horrendous. I could not accept myself as I was. Intense feelings of guilt and shame washed over me like an incoming storm. 

Physically, I was experiencing a number of symptoms that I now realize are part of breakdown. I continually broke out in sweats and hot flashes, so much so that I often placed a cold damp towel on my neck for relief. I continued to feel dizzy, as if the entire world was out of focus. I had momentary feelings of indestructibility, believing that I could accomplish anything and survive anything. On occasion, I believed that I was in the company of people who were protecting and directing me though I could never see them: angels, generals, my dead mother. I experienced deep depression, though never to the point of suicide. What I did know was that I had broken, and I had no idea what to do about it. I did not ask for help because a) I wasn't quite sure what the problem was and b) I fully believed that if I did ask for help, I would be at the best ignored and at the worst ridiculed for being selfish. 

Trying to help myself, I took long walks. I practiced Yoga. I prayed. Many times, overcome by feelings of absolute worthlessness and desolation, I burst into tears. Desperately, and wrongly I can now say in hindsight, I reached out to an acquaintance: a born-again Christian minister with whom I was acquainted. I asked him over to dinner. During our meal, I tried my best to share what I was experiencing: of the desperate feelings that were overwhelming me. Of the belief that I was being protected by angels. The conversation was one that I would later bitterly regret. Little did I know at that time that my honesty and search for confidential help would later be used against me, and contribute to even graver mental illness.

Fire

When our meal had ended, I locked up the apartment as usual. I went to bed around 10 PM. Emotionally overcome, I fell asleep instantly. I fell into a dream that quickly became a nightmare. In it, I was a child in a Fun Fair. Bright lights and the wail of horrifying rides filled my dreamy vision. Then I heard a banging. "Bang, bang, bang," and it scared me silly. I remember rolling over in bed, falling deeper into the dream. "Bang, bang, bang." It came again. This time with a voice. "Are you in there? Wake up. Wake up!" I woke.

I woke to acute darkness interspersed with bright blinking blue and red lights. The wailing of a siren cutting through it all. I coughed violently. Then the banging again. And a muffled voice coming from the front door. "Get out. Get out!" Then I noticed a sound like tearing paper. Red and yellow fingers of light visible through the bedroom door, reflecting off the walls.

My apartment was on fire. I now realized: I was coughing because I was slowly dying of smoke inhalation. The wail was that of the apartment building smoke alarm. The red and blue lights were from fire engines and police cruisers parked in the lot outside my 2nd floor window. The banging was from my downstairs neighbor who, by chance, knew that I was in the apartment. He beat frantically on the front door as if to break it down. 

Finally, I understood. I ran to the door, opening it. Pausing for an instance to look into the living room which was awash in flames. My neighbor (God bless him) told me that I must go with him. At first I refused. My vivid dream not wanting to let go, I fully believed that there was someone still in the apartment. I got down onto my hands and knees, crawling back in, down the small hallway and beneath the thick smoke, looking into the living room. Watching as the animal of flame consumed the room: the walls, the couch and chairs that I sat in, the wooden floor, the small coffee table. 

I got up and ran. 

Later, much much later, I would finally realize that I had been traumatized yet again by that night. And who wouldn't? I was told that if my kind neighbor had not had the persistence to keep banging on my front door I would have been dead in another two minutes. But he did, and I'm still here. If I want to remind myself of the peril that I was in, all that I have to do is examine a chest of drawers that survived the fire, one of the few personal belongings that I managed to save. It was in my bedroom, not 4 feet from where I slept. It is made of oak. The top of it has been etched permanently by smoke-borne acids. I was breathing that same deadly cocktail. 

Outside the building, I was given a thorough examination by a crew of EMTs. They checked my blood pressure and pulse. They asked if I was okay. In fact, I felt fine. Energized. Wanting to help. Worried that other neighbors were still in their apartments, trapped possibly by flames that had advanced, intent on consuming the entire small apartment block. The EMTs suggested a trip to hospital for a battery of tests. Not knowing how much I had been affected, and wanting to stay to help, I declined their kind offer.

I stayed on-site. It's a good thing I did. A police officer whom I knew asked me to do a head count of the apartment residents that stood in small groups around the darkened parking lot. Fully present, I did what he asked. I came up two short. We realized suddenly that two people were still in the blazing apartment. Members of the fire brigade leaped into action, going into the inferno, extracting my two neighbors before they could die. It is the only action that I took that night about which I could feel proud.

The news of the fire quickly circulated through the small town.  By morning, that news would reach my family living only eight miles away. I didn't know it then, but a rumor mill had started. By morning the fire was out. But despite the fact that no investigation had yet been started into the causes of the fire, I had already been blamed for it.

In a one week period I had suffered a breakdown at my daughter's wedding, a breakdown that had not yet received treatment. I had also survived a fire that had traumatized me even further. I didn't know that the worst was yet to come.