Ropes and ladders

I am not sure if I mentioned that last week my landlord came out to "fix" my roof (again). I'm using quotes because while we call what he did fixing, nothing ended up fixed. His motions and machinations did not actually result in a repair of the biggest leak, the one that took down the chunk of my ceililng. The one that continues largely unabated and therefore makes repairing the hole in the ceiling inadvisable. Thus I am still displaced.

Last week, I was outwardly pessimistic that a repair would result from my landlord's actions with ropes and ladders. People asked "So did they fix the leak? Did they fix the hole?" and I would say "My landlord was up there this week. He had ropes and ladders. But I'm not sure this means anything is truly fixed." I added "I guess we'll see when it rains".

The relevance of "ropes and ladders" is grounded in discussions with the apartment manager, Herb. Herb's habit is to insist they've been out to fix the leaks repeatedly. Herb tells me that the landlord, Roger, "got up there with ropes and ladders!" Herb sounds irate when he is forced to say this. He sounds as if no reasonable person could argue with the struture restoring powers of ropes and ladders.

I guess sometime last week, Herb was feeling quite sure that this last round of ropes and ladders must have done the trick since I discovered he had ordered the repair guy (Dick) to come out and fix the hole in the ceiling today. But Sunday night it rained. I realized it was a thunderstorm and darted over to my place to check on the hole. I brought A. (my friend, colleague, neighbor, co-conspirator, etc.) with me. The bucket under the 5"x9" hole in my ceiling was silent. A. shined the flashlight up into the hole. We stood there watching, listening, waiting. I got out "It's..." and then I saw the tiny sparkle and heard the tap of one drip of water in the bucket. Then two drips, then back to the usual pattern of "tap...tap...tap...taptap....tap...tap...tap...taptap"

And so I called Herb. I was in the middle of leaving my message when my call waiting clicked in. I finished, switching over to - my little brother T. T. began with the drawn out rise-fall intoned "Heeyyyyy" he uses as a salutation usually when he intends to sling some bs my way. He started by asking me to send him a Buffy DVD. Then began the bs. The bs du soir was that his psychiatrist, our parents, and his asshole boyfriend all think he should be on Depakote because they think he has bipolar disorder (manic depression). I do think he is a bit manic at times. But I question a couple of those opinions, e.g., my parents'. They would be happy if everyone around them were sedated into complacency. And T's boyfriend - a well off psychologist with serious sex issues who's done nothing more than tax T's mental and phyiscal health since they've been together. T started out saying he's got some reservations about taking the Depakote because it is liver toxic but that his shrink said it was Depakote, Lithium, or Tegretol and the other two are worse. He only started there. He didn't stay there.

This news concerns me that T won't get the treatment he needs. Yes, he has behaviors that are clearly manic, on a low level at least. But commonly those occur around the crystal meth use, so it's hard to know which came first. I worry considerably that T might be using "manic" and "bipolar" as labels, organic and inevitable problems that will allow him to avoid acknowledging and addressing his past, factors in his life now, and all the many complicated patterns the two make. As far as I know, at no point has T sat down and committed himself to a serious round of cognitive behavior therapy. In light of this, I can't help feeling like the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, the treatment for which involves drugs which risk his health, shouldn't be made in the utter absence of non-drug therapy, prior or concurrent.

T sites "panic and anxiety" behaviors as evidence that he is bipolar. I say "What about post traumatic stress disorder? Can't the panic and anxiety be part of the manifestation of that?" I don't add "Dad used to lock you in confined spaces until you stopped screaming when you were little...if anyone has PTSD you do kiddo" because it seems like this might be a bad time to bring it up. T says "PTSD is in the running" (great) "But with that, the episodes are triggered by stress. With bipolar, you just cycle. There doesn't need to be a stressor".

I am shocked to hear him state that as if his life lately has been relatively stable. There are a long list of stressors which abound in my little brother's life, but his pill popping sex addict shrink-boyfriend and my parents would very much like T to buy the line that he's manic because they (as sources of a lot of that stress) get some indirect absolution from that diagnosis. With all this support plus T's psychiatrist who is really just doing what any psychiatrist does, pushing the pills, it's not much wonder that T has decided that the only thing which needs changing in his life is that he needs more and socially acceptable drugs in it.

Sunday night. I am sitting at the table in my cold apartment listening to the now steady drips of the leak. There is lightning and I think probably I shouldn't be on the phone. I'm tired and I really just want to get off the phone, then feel guilty as hell for not wanting to talk. "But I'm barely talking" I think to myself. I feel pretty futile, like a prop for T to use so he can validate his choice to take the Depakote and the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I make faces at A now and then, who is sitting and smoking on my couch. I hold the phone several inches away from my ear and can still hear my brother clear as a bell as he argues with increasing amplitude that he might be hypomanic, might be a fast cycling manic, might be fully manic, might be bipolar, definitely gets OCD when he's stressed, but he's not so stressed right now, and he still feels like he has to always land on the right foot when he comes down the stairs when he's stressed out and that's really manic, he has concerns about the depakote, he doesn't think the depakote is good for his liver, but boyfriend really thinks he should take it and so does the psychiatrist but the psychologist he just started seeing thinks he's not fully manic but the psychologist is new (3 weeks vs. the pill pusher, who my brother's been seeing for 4 weeks), really he's had this pointed out to him before by employers and mom and dad that he has this like 4 day cycle, so if he is manic he's cycling fast, and the Depakote might help stabilize his moods if he's manic, and he probably is manic (and at this point with him practically yelling this crazed circular and largely one sided conversation into the phone I am kind of believing it myself), so he probably will take the depakote.

Oy.

He starts to sound like he's wrapping the conversation up and then issues a much delayed "Sooooo, how are you doing?" He makes sympathetic noises and condolences about my continued leak. I don't mention I just found out it wasn't fixed; that I'm taking the cat to the vet because he's been acting weird and bit me; or that I got shit from a senior faculty member on my advisory committee on Friday about how I've been here too long. I promise to send my little brother the Buffy disk he called to ask about. I ask about making plans to come up to see him this month. He tells me he won't have any free weekends in November because he and asshole boyfriend are going away each and every single weekend. No thanksgiving, no birthday. "I might be around the first weekend in December..." he says hesitatingly.
"Ok, well, keep me posted" is what I think I said.
And then I get off the phone.

tap. tap. tap. taptap.

tap. tap. tap. taptap.

Last week, I was pessimistic that the ropes and ladders would help. I realize now that I must have been hopeful inside, in a way I probably wouldn't have been able to acknowledge if you'd asked. In fact, I only realized I had been harboring such high hopes after they were proven to be false Sunday night during the November thunderstorm.