Melodrama

Dear All,

Let me tell you about why I threw away my couch and my television.

My mother died in 1999. She was really young to be dying, but she had worn her body hard and the consequence was death at 57.

My mother had Grave's Disease. It damaged her thyroid gland, and she had to be hospitalized. An intern gave my mother the wrong medication and this sent her pulse up to 300. She was never right after that. She had earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy; there was a point in time when she thought for fun. After her hospitalization and the medication error, she quit philosophy. She had been a great thinker, who found herself unable to reason as philosophers must reason after this incident.

In addition to the Grave's Disease from which she suffered, she also had several incidents of gall stones and later became paralyzed along her right side due to a chipped disk. As a child she had Rheumatic Fever; after a life as a smoker- things just wore out.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her and wonder how things could have gotten so terribly out of control. And then I think about my own situation. I don't seem the same body chemistry that effectively castrated her, but I do have seem to have inherited the most pernicious of her illnesses: Depression. I can't remember a time when I was not Depressed. I always considered myself an unhappy person with happy times in my life. Plus, I have ADD and possibly also Dyslexia.

I don't know of anyone else who has the same constellation of difficulties, so I have no basis for comparison. However, I can tell you from my own experience that tasks that seem straightforward to other people seem lost in the traffic of my mind. People have likened it to punching fog after hearing my description of the profound confusion I feel from time to time. It's more and less tangible than that, however. Sometimes it's like living in a dream. Nothing is real, therefore nothing is tangible. Then there are times of awakening- of dealing with the consequences of my practical absence from my responsibilities- locked out of my own life, and it's hardly my life that drifts by during these times, filled with sweetness and nightmares, but mostly mundane everyday boredom. The key is the boredom is not mine so it is somehow safe; it places no demands on me and this is oddly soothing.

I never thought that I would sleepwalk though my life; I used to be such a passionate person. When my mom died I became numb. Even now, I have never taken a positive action toward anything, only away from things which scared or might damage me. I have survived by avoiding the potholes others have hit, but not thrived due to my failure to engage with the world. Most importantly, however, I saw the world as much smaller and less complex place than it really was; breaking it down in manageable pieces made me feel as if I were more in control.

Yet, the fact of the matter was that my life was as unmanageable to me as my mother's was to her. Television let me dream in an unhealthy way. For half an hour I could escape from my life, forget about my mother's death, or the constant undertow of my Depression. I could satisfy the urge to be more than I was by pretending that I was someone else. My unmanageable life could be pushed to the side. Disconnection notices would pile up, but as long as the cable was on everything was going to be O.K.

One day I realized that five years had passed, and were gone. I think that it was another two years before I was able to get rid of my couch and television. The exact trigger is still unclear, possibly I just naturally cycled out of a deep dark Depression into a slightly more shallow and somewhat less heavy Depression.

After the couch and the television were gone, it occurred to me that I could have lived the rest of my life there and never have realized it. Alcoholics say one drink comes in many glasses. For me, one program comes in many hours. This is why I had to get rid of my television. The couch reminded me of watching television, so it had to go, too.

I would advocate stopping watching television to anyone, except, not everyone has a problem with television. This was a slow discovery that gave rise to another: there is no one solution for everyone. So, I try to follow the adage "Live and Let Live". I don't watch television, and I don't bother anyone else about their television consumption. It's none of my business. I didn't like the effect it had on me, so I stopped doing it, period.

One unexpected result is the lengths to which I will go to avoid being "advertised-at". Along with television, I stopped listening to commercial radio. I was and am very susceptible to commercials because I am so distractable. I wanted control over my stream of consciousness, so I prefer NPR which is usually interesting to me, and stays on a single topic for an hour. I am not saying that no more couch and television is for everyone, but it is what was right for me.

Sincerely,
Betsy