Month: May 2017

The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 5)

Posted on by Kai Raine

After 2 nights in the hostel, I started to notice itchy patches of bug bites on my skin. I ascribed it to mosquitos: I was spending a fair amount of time walking around outside, and a fair amount of that walking had been through the vegetation of Pere Lachaise.

It wasn’t until my 4th night, making the 4th bed I’d had in as many nights, that it suddenly occurred to me that bedbugs were a more likely culprit than mosquitos. My suspicions seemed confirmed when I woke at 3AM to fresh itching. It seemed to me that no matter how I lay, I opened myself up to being bitten.

I only intended to stay 5 nights, and I was already there for the 4th. Only one and a half more nights, I told myself.

I rolled over and a fresh patch of bites revealed themselves on the upper arm that had been below me.

Suddenly, the thought was inescapable. This place had bedbugs. I was sleeping in a nest of bedbugs. I thought back to the beds and the bedclothes. Nothing had seemed obviously infested. The rooms were tidy, the mattress covers perfectly white, the bedclothes freshly laundered.

At last I could no longer bear the thought of another night in the hostel, and decided that it was worth the money if I could just not get any fresh bites for my final night.

It was with that thought that I reserved a hotel room across Paris for my 5th night. I chose a place that had the earliest check-in time I could find among affordable-ish options, and paid as much for that 1 night as I had for the 5 nights in the hostel.

In the morning, I checked out without breakfast.

“But you have one more night,” the staff at reception said to me.

“I decided to leave early,” I said simply.

I did not mention bedbugs. I had seen no confirmation—although, admittedly, I didn’t look very hard, too worried of the distress confirmation would cause.

I simply left, and took my things across town.

There is Always a Solution

Posted on by Kai Raine

One of the traps of depression is the way it can at times obfuscate what should be obvious. This is why I sometimes need to remind myself that no matter how drained I’ve been for however long, no matter how difficult it is to get through life from day to day, there is always a solution.

Always.

It could be exercise, better eating habits, socialization, alone time, time spent in nature, or simply a change in pace. It could also be a psychiatrist, medication or even an invasive procedure like deep brain stimulation.

I don’t keep this blog series to promote the idea that attempting to combat depression without therapy or medication is somehow better. I want to address a sense of helplessness that I often feel, and that neither therapy nor medication can necessarily help. The helplessness can also take over when psychiatry and medicine are out of reach, whether the reasons are geographical, financial, social or of any other kind. I cannot provide therapy nor medication, but I can suggest alternatives.

There is joy still, and an easier daily life. There is still a corridor to access it. These are never gone. It is harder: the corridor is blocked, whether by fog or a rockfall. It will take effort, but it will also take strategy.

This blog series is meant to be a compilations of strategies that I have found to work, in the hope that I will enrich others’ arsenals when needed.

But the first and foremost thing to keep in mind is this: there is always an answer, always a solution, always a strategy. If hopelessness takes over completely, there will be no saving yourself thereafter. So if giving in to despair for awhile is necessary to you, then go ahead–but never completely relinquish that lifeline that is hope and the knowledge that there is a way to rescue yourself somewhere. It is only a matter of figuring out how.

Queen of Our World

Posted on by Kai Raine

I led a charmed life with my parents. My mother was a bell-ringer working in IT and my father was in academia. They traveled often. When I was an infant, my parents took this as their chance to take me around the world before I started school and my world became more narrow.

They took me to various cities in the US, as well as to visit friends in Europe and family in India. I learned to talk in France and made friends with a dog in Germany, who napped with me and watched over me, defining my early awareness as a fearless animal lover. My mother’s aunt had a large dog, and in my love for it I had no sense of self-preservation, even sticking my hand in its mouth, to my family’s horror. (Yet neither that dog nor any other animal I encountered harmed me.)

My first visit to India was in the winter of 1992, coincidentally coinciding with the riots that occurred that winter. Curfews were instated, and I only knew that suddenly all the busy adults had an abundance of time for me. While horrors and violence raged across the country, I was in my own little heaven. I made friends with aunts, uncles, cousins and other local children. Language was no meaningful barrier yet: I befriended the three sons of my great aunt’s maid, and played with them running around the living room and climbing over couches until we tipped one of the couches backwards and were met with my great uncle’s ire.

My parents also took me on a trip to Australia. We stayed at the Barrington Guesthouse in the middle of nowhere in the bush outside of Sydney. The place was known for its origins–built out of timber from the trees that had been felled to make the clearing–as well as the unusually friendly wildlife that surrounded the place. There were birds that would settle on guests’ heads and shoulders in anticipation of being fed, and kangaroos that would eat out of humans’ hands. They had stables full of horses, and one pony named Cuddles. I got my first experience riding Cuddles while my parents led him by the reins.

During one trip to Seattle, while my mother was busy, my father took me to climb a small mountain (he told me years later it was called the Children’s Mountain). I took to the hike with delight, and he began taking me on nature walks and hikes more frequently, much of it close to home. I became fascinated with all manner of wildlife from birds to beavers. When we saw signs that redirected our walk because a beaver dam had flooded some bridge, it was never a disappointment or a deterrent. It was an exciting part of nature.

In blueberry season, my father and I would hike in areas with wild blueberries with tupperwares, which we would fill to bring home. It disappointed me that we had to use plastic tupperwares rather than the wicker baskets I saw in my picture books, such as Blueberries for Sal. We would munch on blueberries as we hiked, play some pretend, and then go home. When my mother came home from work, she would bake some of the blueberries into muffins.

I was happy.

The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 4)

Posted on by Kai Raine

When, on the 4th evening, I returned to the hostel to find that not only was bed 13 still occupied, but bed 7 now had a new occupant as well, I was not remotely surprised. Fortunately, it was in the evening during regular hours before anyone was asleep. There were only 3 other girls already in the room, and all of them were awake and chatting when I came in. I saw at a glance that my beds were not available and immediately returned downstairs. The man from the reception desk came upstairs with me and, after checking that everyone was decent, came into the room.

Here I explained, once again, that I was supposed to be in bed 13, but there was a person (not present but with her belongings left on the bed) who had taken over that bed the previous night. So I had spent the previous night in bed 7, but there was now a person in that bed as well.

The person in bed 7 added that she was actually supposed to be in bed 8, but that appeared to be occupied so she had taken the bed above it. The person in bed 9 chimed in that she was supposed to be in bed 5, but that appeared to be occupied as well.

The frazzled man from reception tried to remember all of this at first, but finally had to return downstairs to return with a piece of paper, notating where we had been assigned and where we all now were sleeping. He also stripped bed 5, figuring that that was the best way to figure out who was in that bed, and asked us to send to reception anyone we saw occupying bed 3, which was also supposed to be empty but too covered in personal belongings for him to strip.

Throughout the remainder of the evening, girls entered the room only to immediately leave again, returning momentarily with the man from reception, informing him of which bed they were supposed to be in. Apart from one girl peacefully looking at her phone the whole while in bed 14, no one seemed to be in the bed that they were assigned.

Finding an Easy Fallback Exercise

Posted on by Kai Raine

For days when I don’t necessarily have all the energy to throw myself into some exercise, I need a fallback.

Ever since I began exercising regularly, my formerly erratic living habits have become more predictable. In a depressive episode, I find it harder to exercise, and I grow hungrier as though my body is trying to gain what it is lacking in energy through food. It doesn’t work, and I only grow more tired. Yet denying myself food is not the answer either: though food is far from an ideal solution, the alternative is a complete lack of energy.

I’ve found that I can help myself by exercising, even if it’s just a little bit a few days a week, in a way that is as easy as possible. It took me awhile to find such a thing, but it did exist.

I am no one’s idea of an exercise or sports addict. I’m an indoors person through and through. Though I enjoy a good hike or swim, and enjoy being outside, most of the time I would prefer to be curled up somewhere peaceful with my music and a book, a show, or something with which to write. Since in depressive episodes, writing becomes more difficult, music, books and shows are more my speed.

So I incorporate this into my exercise.  I find it hard to focus on exercising while watching a show, so I don’t do that often. But I have found that if I have a book with me, I am able to keep up some forms of cardio for up to an hour even when depressed and lacking in energy. It depends on the form of cardio, certainly, but I’ve managed this on elliptical machines and various types of cycling machines. This doesn’t mean I keep the exercise physically easy: I crank the resistance up to a point where it is a challenge, but still manageable for an extended period. Then I focus on my book, absently working my body to the beat of the music. When I first started trying this, it surprised me to realize that somehow, this enhances my concentration on the book. Depending on the book, I can read up to 400 pages in an hour (no skimming or speed reading involved).

I try to choose my books and music carefully: nothing gloomy, but also nothing too deliberately designed to give myself an adrenaline rush. I highly detest manipulation, even when the manipulator is myself. So I have to focus on my enjoyment first and foremost. This tends to mean that my workout music can be rock, pop, electronic or Celtic; and my books can be comedy, adventure or fantasy. I avoid books that I expect will be especially thought-provoking: I once tried to read 1984 while working out; this was my only unsuccessful attempt yet. After a mere 10 minutes, I had to give up trying to focus on the book and 10 minutes after that, I let myself stop trying to exercise.

I set myself goals: sometimes it’s the number of pages in the book, or the supposed “miles” I’ve “traveled” on a cycling machine, or the amount of time. Most commonly I use time. I set my absolute minimum to 20 minutes; my preferred minimum is 30 minutes; my basic goal is 45 minutes; and my self-congratulatory-but-unnecessary-to-achieve goal is an hour. Other details, such as resistance, are determined by how I feel at the time and what I feel is the most that I can handle.

The choices–in goals, in exercise type, in distractions–are all based on what is right for me personally. My legs are strong, and I grew up in a bicycle culture, making this the easiest exercise for me. (My arms are truly pathetically weak, so anything involving them requires extra effort and fortitude on my part. This is a worthy goal under normal circumstances, but not while I’m contending with the energy sieve of a depressive episode.) Though I far prefer swimming under ordinary circumstances, the lack of any possible distraction save my imagination puts a damper on using swimming in this case. The same goes for yoga (which is how I learned that trying to watch shows while exercising is perhaps not the best approach for me).

Queen of Our Kingdom

Posted on by Kai Raine

As much as I felt, as a child, that my life began with my sisters’ birth, that was not at all the case. The first five years of my life were eventful (though not as dramatically as the year of my sister’s birth), and shaped my life in ways I did not comprehend as a child. As my parents’ first and only offspring, during those years I was very rarely left alone. I enjoyed a sort of blind adoration that few infants get to boast: my mother recounted repeatedly to me how when anyone would suggest that my parents might want time away from me, or that they might be exhausted by me, they would react with shock and chagrin because they so enjoyed every moment of being with me.

Other people with their eyes unclouded by unconditional devotion pointed out that I was spoiled rotten.

As first-time parents, my mother and father read many a parenting book. One of their early disagreements came up when I would cry for attention. My mother had read a parenting book that suggested that it would be healthy if, when I cried at night despite being well fed and my diaper unsoiled, my parents not respond to my cries. It would teach discipline, the book suggested. My father couldn’t bear it. After an occasion or two of attempting to ignore my sobs, he threw discipline to the wind and brought me to bed with him and my mother.

I slept most often with my parents, and I far preferred it. By the time I entered elementary school, I would come to wish I had spent more time in my crib, experiencing the world on my own. As it was, I hated the crib with a passion, isolated as it was in my own room, away from my parents unless my cries called them to me. Before I figured out how to walk, I figured out how to push my stuffed animals and blankets against the side of the crib and climb the pile to tumble over the top of the railing and crash painfully to the ground: an event that concluded my parents’ reliance on the crib.

Our apartment was our kingdom and I reigned uncontested as queen. I wasn’t even 2 years old when my mother counted my teddy bears and was shocked to realize that I had over a hundred. (Not all stuffed animals: just teddy bears.) I was the first grandchild on both sides of the aisle, and as such had aunts, uncles, grandparents and godparents galore who doted on me and bought me all manner of gifts that even my parents thought indulgent and ridiculous.

My parents let me indulge. All three of our lives revolved around me, and my opinions were requested and respected long before I had any concept of an opinion. By the time I was 3 or 4, I expected to get my way most of the time, because if I cried, my parents would act. So I cried when I wanted something. Sometimes I cried when another child was playing with something of mine in a playdate in my room. Sometimes I cried when we had a guest who had to sleep either on the couch or in my bed, and I didn’t want to concede either spot.

Occasionally, but not often, my father would scold me. My mother scolded even more rarely: she would reason with me instead. Frequently, while visiting relatives or while relatives were visiting us, I would find myself being scolded for something—a mannerism, a custom, a way of acting—that was assumed to be common sense but was unknown to me. I adored my relatives, but at the same time became extremely wary. As I grew older, I also became aware that my mother was stricter in the presence of her family, suddenly cautioning me for things that she would otherwise ignore.

Even with all of the leniency and freedom I was allowed, still I looked for more. I didn’t want to have to put my toys away if I’d paused in the middle of an elaborate make-believe session with my dolls and toy cars. I wanted to avoid displeasing my parents. Once I discovered sweets (an indulgence that my parents were careful to keep from me for as long as possible by any means necessary), I wanted to have them by any means that I could find.

On my fourth Halloween, at my maternal grandparents’ house, I made a blanket fort for the purpose of hiding with my candy so that I could eat it all, away from my mother’s careful rations. To my grandparents’ amusement, I gave myself away by failing to clean up the wrappers, inviting a rare scolding from my mother.

 

The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 3)

Posted on by Kai Raine

On my third night, I once again returned to the hostel past 1AM—and once again, I found my bunk occupied. Without so much as setting down my bags, I returned downstairs to reception to inform them, expecting to find that my bed assignment had been unexpectedly changed once more.

However, to our mutual bewilderment, my bed assignment was still 13.

“We can’t go into the women’s room,” the men at the reception desk explained to me. “But if you could ask the girl her name, or which bed she’s supposed to be in, we can figure things out.”

I returned to the room and touched the girl’s shoulder.

“Excuse me. What’s your name?”

She gave me a sleepy smile and a confused hum. I repeated my question.

“Anne,” she mumbled.

“Do you know which bed you’re supposed to be in?” I asked.

Her response was not in a language I understood, but it sounded Slavic. I had the sense that she was telling me that she didn’t speak English. I left her to go back to sleep and returned downstairs to inform them that her name was Anne. Unfortunately, they did not seem to have an Anne listed. They decided that I would sleep in bed 12.

I returned upstairs with one of the men from the reception desk, who came with a new set of sheets. He stood in the doorway as I checked bed 12, but there was a person here, as well.

“Is there any empty bed?” he asked me.

I walked through the room, and though there were a few beds without occupants, only one of those was also without sheets. That bed was bed 7. I asked if I could take bed 7.

“But bed 7 is supposed to be occupied,” he said. “See, there’s a pile of sheets there.”

Indeed there was, and with a few personal clothing items beside.

We returned downstairs and after some deliberation, it was decided that I would take bed 7 for the night after all.

I placed the clothing onto the made-but-unoccupied lower bunk, made the bed in the dark and lay down. I couldn’t sleep. I was convinced that the moment I drifted off, the bed’s rightful occupant would come along and wake me.

The sun was beginning to dawn by the time I finally managed to sleep.

When All Else Fails…Hedgehogs!

Posted on by Kai Raine

From a PR perspective, having upload schedules is a great thing. Even from a self-management point of view, working toward a deadline ensures a constant flow of production, no matter how arbitrary the deadlines may be.

That said, this series is the hardest for me to keep to a schedule. Some days, I find myself in the middle of a depressive episode having to write about how I cope with it, at a moment when I feel like I’m failing entirely to cope. On some occasions, forcing myself to write about the subject anyway would be the answer. Today, that is not the answer.

Instead, I want to share my construct of the Happy Place.

Sometimes, in the middle of a depressive episode, I take refuge in something. The identity of this something is arbitrary. In the past, it’s been anything from my family to a TV show to random cat pictures.

One thing I have found is that it’s safest to keep my refuge something that is not alive, thereby giving it less power over me. It’s all well and good to take refuge in someone you can love and trust enough to know that they will not kick you deeper into the hole even as you’re trying desperately to hang on—and this has happened to me all too often, though the person always meant well. So cynical though it may seem, I prefer to take refuge in the inanimate. It doesn’t help me recover, but it does give me something to hang on to while I gather the strength to pull myself back out.

These days, that something for me is hedgehogs. When I feel overwhelmed by the world, I think of hedgehogs, or I find a cute picture or video or gif. And that image of a hedgehog makes me sublimely happy. It doesn’t last after I leave the hedgehog image behind, but it keeps me going.

Besides, hedgehogs are adorable. No Happy Place ever lasts for me, which I consider to be a positive, since it means I’m still in motion, even if I feel like I’m stuck. But I enjoyed watching hedgehogs long before they became my Happy Place, and I sense that I will continue to find them worth watching after I’ve moved on to a new one.

Such is the power of cute animals, sometimes.

You’re Going to Be a Sister!

Posted on by Kai Raine

I wrote a lot as a child. Once, on a trip to America over summer, a childhood friend of mine showed me an autobiography she was writing in the third person for an assignment. I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to write my own. So I tried, and tried again. It never felt quite right, so I never finished one. I had dozens of notebooks of stories, diaries and autobiographies. (Most of them I threw away in disgust as a teenager.)

There was one constant: my autobiographies always began with the birth of my sisters. Their birth was engrained in me as The Beginning. The beginning of change. The beginning of my family. The beginning of hardship. The beginning of complication. The beginning of my life.

The discovery of my mother’s pregnancy being twins was a subject that my mother and I began to contest in my late teens. I distinctly remember telling her that she was pregnant with twins. I remember her smiling and explaining to me that that was not the case. Later, I remember her praising me for being the first to know.

My mother, ten or fifteen years after my sisters’ birth, remembered it as her own realization due to the locations of kicks. She remembered going to the doctor and asking for an ultrasound (not standard procedure at the time) because she was sure it was twins. When the doctor told her that it was unlikely, she said to him flatly, “It’s either twins or a monster.”

(One of my sisters once told me that upon hearing this story, she asked, “Which would you have preferred?”

Our mother responded only, “Which do you think?”

I asked, “Which was that?”

“Twins, obviously,” said my sister. “Who’d prefer a monster?”

“Hm,” I responded, remembering our mother’s endless exhaustion during their infancy.)

After a few such discussions, I dismissed my own memories as false, painted by the dreams and wishes of my childhood. Years later, after my mother’s death, I reconnected with some of my friends from my early childhood—and, by extension, their parents. One of them started telling me, one day, how my mother had been so proud of me for being the first to realize that she was having twins.

I remember someone saying cynically, “It was probably just your wishful thinking.” But this is one childhood illusion that I have no desire to let go.

My mother’s pregnancy was a time that, for years afterwards, I remembered as the best time of my life. She was often at home, and frequently asked me to do small things to help her: go fetch this thing or that, make sandwiches for a picnic… I felt important, and had her attention. As a family, we were incredibly happy. We were all elated with anticipation of the birth. My parents bought a new van so that we could comfortably fit all five of us and more, factoring in car seats for the babies. My mother spent what felt to me like hours at the kitchen table deliberating over names. (The only thing set in stone was that a boy would be Julian. I would also have been Julian, had I been a boy. All the girl names picked were so non-traditional and so unusual that all of us routinely use fake names at places like Starbucks to avoid confusion. Yet any boy would have been plain old Julian. I always thought it funny that the only name that either of my parents had decided in advance was my mother’s desire to name a son Julian; and then she only had daughters. Go figure.)

The birth changed my life drastically. I went from having all of my parents’ attention to having none. I couldn’t even leave the apartment to play in the hall with my friends: my new baby sisters were bathed in the kitchen sink, which was near the door. I had a confusing interaction with my father in which he told me I could go out only if I could do so without opening the door. I said, “Ok,” and immediately went for the door. When I was scolded, I cried, “But I’m only going to open it once!” It was explained to me that opening the door would create a draft that would make the babies cold. I could go out after their baths. But bathing the babies took a small eternity. I could hear my friends in the hallway now. By the time the baths were over they’d be done playing. I sulked.

I initially felt mostly forgotten in the face of my new sisters. Then one day, my father had to leave my sisters strapped into little bouncy chairs to my care for a scant five or ten minutes while he took a shower. Of course, as is inevitable, the moment my father left the room they woke up and began to sob their tiny hearts out. I remember feeling utterly exhausted, nearly desensitized to all the screaming and sobbing. I was sitting on the couch. I positioned the bouncy chairs so I could rest one foot on the top of each chair, above their heads. I just bounced them with my feet.

The screaming quieted and then stopped.

My father came rushing out of the shower. (At the time, I was confused as to why he was so frantic after they’d stopped crying. In retrospect, I realize how frightening silence must be to a parent who just left newborns in the care of a five-year-old.) He was surprised, then delighted and showered me with praise. I remember it distinctly, because I’d been wilting, and his praise let me regain my footing. I knew that I still mattered.

After that, my parents let me babysit my sisters from time to time.

I was still reeling from the changes when we moved. The new van was sold barely used. The apartment I’d always known was stripped and sold. My sisters were only two or three months old when we moved to my mother’s parents’ place to await our visas. We finally moved when they were nearly nine months old.

Because my father’s visa had been issued months before ours, he had had to go ahead to start his work and set up our apartment. This meant that my mother moved with a lot of luggage, two infants and a five-year-old. (She carried my sisters by strapping one to her chest in a front pack, and the other to her back in a baby carrier backpack. Then she carried over her shoulder the giant baby bag full of necessities. If ever there was a person that needed priority boarding to get seated, it was my mother.)

In a way, because the changes were more or less constant over this year-long period, I probably adjusted not to any new state of affairs, but to the state of constant change. And by that, I mean that I became accustomed to being confused. The state of confusion was so normal to me that sometimes I’d entirely fail to realize that I was confused at all. I believe that this has largely become a strength in my life. But it would take a long journey to get there.

The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 2)

Posted on by Kai Raine

I barely slept on my first night in the hostel. I fell asleep past 4 and was woken by the clamor around the room just past 6:30. I went downstairs for breakfast only to find, to my disappointment, that they served only coffee without mugs, orange juice that tasted more like fanta than orange, cereal with milk (which I couldn’t have as I’m lactose intolerant), and plain, white pieces of square supermarket bread with packets of butter and marmalade. I had some toast, some orange juice and some coffee in a glass before I left for the day.

I returned early that evening exhausted and desperate for sleep. For once, my bed was unoccupied. I curled up in it and drifted off. Less than an hour later I was woken by a pair of girls chatting as they entered the room and found their beds. Soon enough they recognized my presence and their voices quietened to a whisper, but I still heard them giggling at the notion of someone already in bed. Nevertheless, half an hour later one of the girls was curled up in the bunk next to mine.

I slept in bursts, attaining a cumulative 8 or so hours of sleep over the 16 hours that I lay in bed (with occasional trips out of it for hydration or the bathroom). By morning, I was sufficiently well-rested and in a cheerful mood. When an alarm of piano music and birdsong woke me around 7 and continued to ring for half a minute before its owner put it on snooze, I was unbothered. I simply rolled over and opened my book. I remained unbothered when the same alarm continued to go off every five minutes for the next hour.

I breakfasted on toast, coffee (for which there were now mugs), juice, and cereal with soy milk that I had bought for myself. My mood was high as I left the hostel.

Unbeknownst to me, it was the last good night’s sleep I would have for nearly a week.