So last night I went out with my friend who has psychiatric issues, mostly depression and supposedly PTSD. It's her birthday today, so I took her out for a drink and appetizers and then we went to a movie (The Shape of Water -- pretty good!). When I picked her up, I waited downstairs in the car -- she knew I was coming -- called both her cell phone and landline, no answer, finally left the car running and climbed the stairs to her apartment. Her son let me in and I barely caught a glimpse of him before he dashed back in his room (he's 18). She was in the bathroom, so I stood in her small living room and thought, OMG, this is becoming a garbage house. The room was crammed with boxes and bins and stacks of papers and other stuff four feet off the floor in places. It opens to the kitchen and the kitchen was the same way, except there was food involved. On the couch were a bunch of bed pillows, indicating someone spends a lot of time on it. My friend has no job or any other reason to leave the house except to go to her son's hockey games and occasionally out with me (I live about 15-20 miles away). She has no local relatives or other close friends.
Then when we went out she kept talking about her son: Whether he would play hockey in college, all the stuff she's been doing about the autism he just got diagnosed with because he'd started doing poorly in school, etc. etc. I told her I thought her son would be fine, but I am worried about her. She's 60 and hasn't worked at any job in almost 20 years. She gets various forms of public assistance, but is mainly living off money her son gets because his dad died: Social Security and money from the dad's family. When he leaves, she'll have almost nothing. So I keep telling her she needs to find a job. She said she knows, but she can't figure out what would "inspire" her.
I said she can't wait until she gets "inspired." She needs to go door to door at the retail shops near where she lives, or sign up with a temp agency or something. She needs to start getting a paycheck, even if it's a crappy job, and then wait to get inspired. She kind of reluctantly agreed, but I don't think she'll do anything. If someone who is home all day every day can't even keep their house even sort of organized ...
She keeps using her so-called PTSD as an excuse for why she can't do things -- because she has researched on the internet and found what PTSD studies say. So far I have resisted shaking her by the shoulders and saying, yes, but those studies include vets from Iraq who've seen their buddies blow up five feet away or killed children or who knows what, so they skew the statistics.
Now she's doing the same with her son's autism, diagnosed just a few months ago, at age 17 or 18. Her son is ki d of weird, but he does OK in school, apparently has some friends, and is goalie on the high school team that won a state championship. (She lives through his hockey achievements.) In this case, I did tell her I have a friend who struggled with her son's autism all his life. At one point my other friend's son threw her across a room and broke two ribs. She had to call the police and have him put in jail. And so on -- nightmarish trauma for more than 20 years. For the past few, he'd been doing OK but then he mysteriously died at 28.
Deb said, maybe he didn't get the right therapy. I said, oh, he definitely did, she worked with him and lots of professionals all his life. It was a huge and constant struggle. Again, kids like that skew the autism statistics compared to kids like her son, whose weirdness is so mild he didn't even get diagnosed until now.
I've gotten to the point that when Deb says something unrealistic, I cut her off with stark honesty. Josh will be fine. She needs a job. She has no money. She's 60, she can't really wait until she's "inspired." Etc. I know you can't just tell a depressed person to pull themselves together and take some action -- it's hard for them. But she really needs to pull herself together and take action, partly because the accomplishment (even cleaning the living room!) would help her depression. But to some extent she's using the depression as an excuse not to.
Meanwhile, she wants to rent her apartment out for the Super Bowl (her mom owns the building). I said, clearly you're not going to be able to do that. I'm thinking of doing the same but worried I'd have to do too much to prepare for it, and my house is relatively tidy and clean! Apparently there are 41,500 hotel rooms in Minneapolis and they're expecting one million visitors. Houses the same size and distance from the arena as mine are reportedly going for $5,000+ a night.
