Authors: Andrea Martin
I
am no expert on mental illness, and yet I could be, I’ve been called “crazy” so many times in my life. Not the Sinead O’Connor shaved-head scary kind of crazy, but the charming, spontaneous, unpredictable, cute kind of crazy. Think Diane Keaton or Goldie Hawn.
As a comedienne, I’ve been able to hide the varying degrees of anxiety I’ve suffered with all my life. Yup, I’m just a funny, wacky kind of gal. No need to run away. I won’t hurt you.
I have managed my disorders successfully over the years, with exercise, therapy, family, close friends, children, a career, and humour. They are no longer debilitating. My mental-health issues now seem to be more the garden-variety, everyday neuroses that just come with living with myself twenty-four hours a day. But for millions of people who suffer with mental illness, the prognosis is more uncertain and
less kind. There is still a stigma attached. We want to avoid anyone who looks and acts strange. We have little understanding and patience for people who are not like us. We are frightened to make eye contact with someone whose behaviour is different. We lack true compassion and insight. We turn away and go about our business, hoping we don’t come in contact with someone who looks crazy.
Recently, I took my boots into a shoe-repair shop. They needed new rubber heels. I had never been in the store before. The tiny shop was filthy and in disarray. There were Post-its scattered all over the floor, empty bags of potato chips and candy wrappers jammed into one corner, and in another corner, I noticed what appeared to be a pile of wood shavings and sawdust. In fact, there was no section of the floor that wasn’t littered with trash. There were heelless shoes piled high on a shelf in no particular order. The walls, which looked like they had been used to itemize the inventory, were marked with pencil and pen. There was no space on any counter to put my boots. The man who worked in the store was dressed fairly neatly in a black turtleneck and faded, saggy black jeans. He was in his fifties, bald, missing a few bottom teeth, and overweight. He averted his eyes as he spoke to me. His speech was halting, his manner distracted, and yet he seemed friendly enough. I couldn’t hold back my shock at the state of the store, but tried.
“Wow,” I said in a high-pitched voice, the customary tone I use when I’m nervous, or lying. I tried to find a place to stand.
“You don’t have a lot of space in here.” He made no apologies, like,
I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to clean up
or
I’ve been so busy, I need to pick these things up off the floor.
He just stared at me as he stood among the worn-out bags and tired shoes and zipperless leather boots. I wanted to turn around and walk out. How could anyone in her right mind leave anything to be repaired with this man? There was no indication that he had ever repaired anything. Every item looked like it must have when it was dropped off, only now dirtier and older. The store was a disaster area. And yet I handed him my boots.
“Can I pick them up tomorrow?” I asked.
“You’re the first person who has ever said they know when they want to pick up their shoes,” he replied suspiciously. “I always ask and everyone says, ‘I don’t know, whenever.’ So sure, you can have them tomorrow.”
He tore a corner off a newspaper that was lying behind the counter, wrote down
#10
and
$10.00
on it, and handed it to me as a makeshift receipt. Was I the tenth customer that day, or ever?
“Umm, do you think you could clean the suede at the same time as you repair the heels?” I asked tentatively.
“No, it wouldn’t work,” he replied without any explanation.
“Okay, well, new rubber heels would be great, then. What time should I come back?”
“Whenever you want,” he said impatiently.
He was agitated. Customers not specifying what day or
time of day they wanted to pick up their shoes was obviously a trigger for the shoe-repair guy, his Achilles heel.
“Well, how about three,” I suggested randomly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay,” I said, more cheerfully than was necessary, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at three.”
He was no longer looking at me. His attention was on a rubber band he was trying to put around my boots
—The boots I might never see again,
I thought. Tomorrow I’ll come by and the store will be shut down by the city as a health hazard. Or maybe it’s really not his store. It’s a deserted shop and he just dropped by, broke in, and was pretending he owned the place. Wow, I’ve seen way too many movies.
The Fisher King
comes to mind.
Why did I leave the man my boots and not take them to another shoe-repair shop? Because I was overcompensating for my discomfort at being in the presence of someone who was, and yes, I’m projecting, mentally ill. Not that he wasn’t functioning, showing up for work, and able to make a living. Of course, I know nothing about this man other than the brutally quick judgment I made based solely on his appearance. Just because this man’s store was filthy and he couldn’t look me in the eye didn’t mean he was insane and was going to beat me to death with a sandal. Maybe he was just quirky and was happy in clutter. For all my talk about tolerance toward the mentally ill, I am just as uncomfortable as the next guy when I’m in contact with someone
who doesn’t appear to be “normal.” I didn’t want to show any discrimination toward this man, so I left my boots with him. I was going to prove to myself that I am a compassionate soul who would go out of her way to help someone troubled and less fortunate. The point is, I’m a hypocrite.
I loved the therapist character Patricia Clarkson played in the movie
Lars and the Real Girl.
The therapist believed that unconditional love and acceptance could heal even the most tormented and fragile soul like Lars. And in the movie, they do. She and the whole town rally around Lars and accept his delusional behaviour, until finally he feels safe enough to be able to let it go. Of course, I want to believe, as David O. Russell’s film
Silver Linings Playbook
illustrates, that there is someone for everyone, and when that person finds the right person, love conquers all, even mental illness. Look, I’m not naive. I know that falling in love isn’t going to cure schizophrenia, nor can it stop a deranged person with a gun. But television and film are now making it “acceptable” to talk about mental health. They are removing the stigma. I admired Robert De Niro’s courage as he broke down and cried on Katie Couric’s show when he acknowledged his son was bipolar. Howie Mandel was a guest on CNN recently and shared openly his lifelong struggle with OCD. Just like Michael Moore did in his film
Sicko,
where he exposed the injustices in the US health care system, filmmakers are helping us look at mental illness in a kinder, educated, more compassionate way.
The next afternoon, punctually at three, I picked up my boots. They looked really good. As I was handing the gentleman my $10 I asked him if he was the shop owner. “Yes,” he said, “since 1978.”
As I was leaving, I noticed a sign in the window: John’s Shoe Repair Shop—The Longest-Running Shoe Repair Business in the City.
I
don’t trust fat therapists.
I pretend to like all wild creatures.
I could watch gorillas pick bugs off their heads for hours.
I can’t stop looking at JLo’s ass.
I obsessively buy books and don’t read them.
My headshots are airbrushed so much, even
I
think I’ve had work.
I can’t wait to get my bathrobe on.
I can’t read a script without falling asleep.
I talk to myself out loud. It’s reassuring and keeps me company.
I judge people by the colour of their teeth.
I’ve seen Tom Stoppard’s play
Arcadia
three times and still don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
Wait, why is King Lear upset? ‘Cause he’s old and can’t trust his daughters?
I would like to have sex with every boy who works at the Genius Bar.
Dogs wearing shoes make me happy.
I used to tie my poodle’s ears together. He liked it, really.
In the ’80s, I danced nude in my living room but it took a Quaalude to do it.
I love going to a really depressing foreign film at three o’clock in the afternoon. It feels good to cry with ten strangers over age sixty.
Tina Fey mentioned me in her book, and it boosted my self-esteem. For a minute.
H
ere’s what a contemptuous flight attendant with a patronizing attitude just announced over the intercom: “Look outside your windows now. What do you see? Clouds. That’s exactly what you’ll be seeing for the next four hours. So lower your shades so that everyone can see the TV screen.”
First of all, Ann Coulter, I like looking at clouds. And second, I paid as much as everyone else on this flight and I’m keeping my window shade open, thank you very much.
And another thing, why can’t I use the first-class washroom if I’m flying coach? I have a first-class vagina and I pee like everyone else. Do I really have to pay more to empty my bladder?
I take a deep breath. This trip is leading me to serenity.
Twice a year, I take a flight cross-country to Escondido, California, where I spend seven glorious days at the Golden
Door. Some might call it a spa. I call it a spiritual rehab, a physical reboot camp. However you slice it, by the time six months roll around again, I maniacally count the days till I can get back to my precious Golden Door.
I’m on a JetBlue flight from JFK right now. It’s been over nine months since I visited the Golden Door this time around, and I am in bad need of a fix. This is my first opportunity for a vacation since opening in
Pippin
on Broadway seven months ago. After performing eight shows a week on a trapeze, I’m worn out. My nerves are shot. My body aches. My back is in spasm. My feet have corns from dancing in boots. My hair has no lustre from wearing wigs. My skin is wrinkled and dry from applying makeup nightly. I look like an apple doll.
I can’t wait for the next seven days: hiking, meditation, sun, yoga, fresh vegetables from the Golden Door’s organic garden. I’m kinda even looking forward to the chocolate mousse cake, which is, incredibly, prepared with avocado. No cream or flour in that baby. Healthy and yummy. Everything tastes good at the Golden Door because someone other than me has made it. And this week is a special focus week, a bonus. It’s Inner Wisdom Week, and besides the exercise, massages, and facials, I will have the opportunity to sit with ten other women in a daily Wise Woman Circle and learn invaluable happiness skills as I look within. Who thought it took skill to be happy?
Two loud, whining, hyperactive kids sit in the seats next to mine. Their mother sits in the same row, on the other side of the aisle. She is playing Fruit Ninja on her iPhone and is ignoring her kids. They are hitting each other. The younger kid cries as the older one pushes him off his seat. They want attention.
Give me that iPhone,
I want to say to the mother,
I’ll show you how to slice a watermelon. Get back to your children. They need you.
Funny, having raised two kids of my own, how little to no patience I have for other children. I want to stuff my almond croissant, the one I purchased for $5 back in the terminal, down their squealing throats to shut them up. I remember the many trips I took with my kids when they were little. I guarded them as if I were an FBI agent.
My kids never spoke above a whisper. They never kicked the seat in front of them, or repeatedly unlocked the food tray, or constantly hit the seatbelt buckle against another person’s armrest, or played ball in the aisle, or poked a loud video screen of mindless games for hours on end. I kept them entertained for the duration of each and every flight. I brought Cheerios in little resealable bags that kept them occupied one Cheerio, one happy moment, at a time. I brought stacks of colouring books and crayons. I read to them. I helped them build little men and the little men’s horses out of Lego. I sang to them, held them, rocked them, escorted them to the bathroom, and cleaned up after every spill. They were quiet and well-mannered and felt excited,
not entitled, to travel. Yes, I was drained after a day of flying, but it felt good knowing my kids and I helped to ensure that the other paying passengers had a stress-free flight. And I came off heroic. Who doesn’t like that? The passengers were grateful. And that was worth it to me even though I looked like the living dead as I crawled off the plane.
The kid next to me is now complaining to his mother about his seat. He doesn’t like being in the middle. Who does, kid? You’re five. You don’t have a choice. He is yelling that he wants my window seat, the one I booked months ago so that I would have control over the window shade when the flight attendant asks, ten minutes into the trip, if I can lower it so the other passengers can better see their television screens. Unlike the other passengers, I will not be watching my television. I will be reading my book, goddamnit, the Dalai Lama’s
The Heart of Compassion.
I hope to achieve this state in the next seven days at my spiritual retreat. And to get a head start on compassion, I’ll need the fucking window shade open to do it.
The mother is not paying attention to her demanding son. She has now put her phone down to ask the flight attendant if her daughter, who is sitting in the last row of the plane with her husband, can sit up front with her.
“There’s nothing we can do, ma’am,” says the flight attendant. “The plane is full, and all seats have been assigned.”
The mother turns to me now and asks me if I would mind giving up my seat so her daughter can sit up front with her.
First of all,
NO, over my dead body
, I uncharitably think of her unreasonable request. No one’s switching, okay, Ms. Needy? So stop pleading.
Second of all, I paid an additional $60 for my “even more space” seat. That means I have two additional inches of precious real estate that I ain’t giving up. Besides, her daughter is in the middle seat in the last row of the plane. Does this woman think I’m crazy? Does she think I’m Mother Teresa? Who would give up a bulkhead seat with extra leg-room to sit in the middle of the last row, the pee-and-poo row closest to the toilet? Maybe the Dalai Lama. And maybe after I finish his first chapter on kindness I will revisit the seat-swapping quandary. But for now,
Selfish
is my mantra.
“No,” I say to the manipulating mother, “I’m sorry, but I’m claustrophobic and need to be by an open window at the front of the plane.”
The woman looks at me in disbelief and with disdain. I could strangle her and rip her phone out of her hands so she will never ever be able to split a kiwi apart again. The war is on.
The flight attendant is making an announcement now that someone on the flight has a peanut allergy. I remember I have packed a bag of homemade trail mix with me so that I won’t be tempted to eat the prepackaged processed sugary snacks the airline provides. I have yummy walnuts, raw cashews, organic almonds, and ginger pieces in my little bag. I came prepared. The mother indignantly blurts
out that her son, the seatbelt- and food-tray assaulter, is also allergic to peanuts.
Averting my eyes from the mother, I inform the flight attendant that I have other nuts in my purse but not peanuts.
“That’s okay,” she says, “it’s the dust from the peanuts that people are allergic to.”
“Wait a minute,” says the enemy, with whom I am gearing up for full-blown combat, “my son is
also
allergic to walnuts.”
“Oh,” says the flight attendant, looking apologetically at me, “but it’s just when he ingests them, right?”
“Listen,” says the mother, “I don’t want to have a fight over this. I said he’s allergic to walnuts.”
I am now holding back a viper’s store of venom. My voice is pinched. My mouth is brittle. I am perched in seat 8F, ready to kill.
“Well, then I won’t eat my walnuts,” I say belligerently. “I won’t eat any of the nuts I brought with me. I’ll keep them sealed in a bag, away from you. Don’t you worry. No one will see or taste or feel my nuts for the next five hours.”
I am appalled at my lack of courage. I surrendered so easily. I’m weak. I can’t even stand up for a few unsalted cashews.
The mother goes to the back of the plane to check on her husband and daughter. The kid closest to me is now jumping up and down on his seat and hitting my headrest.
He kicks his knapsack on the floor and it lands on my shoeless feet. I have a ritual when I fly. I take off my shoes. Put them neatly in my carry-on. Put on some cozy socks. Place a tennis ball behind my back, and I’m ready to fly in comfort. I whip around to face the kid. My eyes are fixed on his as I mouth the words, in slow motion, clearly and menacingly.
“Sit. Down. Now.”
He looks back at me stunned, but he obeys and sits. I keep staring at him. He is frozen. My eyes could burn a hole in his Spider-Man hat. I wish I’d brought my Valium with me, the two left from last year’s surgery. I’d have no trouble dropping them into his juice box.
Okay, now I’m verging on child abuse.
I could be arrested for this, though the brilliant comedian Paul Lynde was not apprehended on a Southwest flight when he said to the mother of a screaming child, “You shut that kid up, or I’ll fuck it.”
Who am I? Has my darker self, the evil Mrs. Hyde, taken over? The caring Dr. Jekyll in me loves kids. I, the one-time Canadian ambassador to UNICEF; I, the woman who fostered a Haitian child for ten years; I, the spokesperson for COAF, the Children of Armenia Fund; I, a kids’ mentor at performing arts organizations all around North America; I, a camp counsellor at the Luther Gulick camp in Maine for five summers in a row. I, the mom of two kids she loves madly and unconditionally and would put herself in front of a train to protect.
Have I turned into that kind of cranky old woman who overnight becomes irritable, irrational, short-tempered, and abrupt? Am I now the woman I thought I’d never be? The crotchety spinster sitting on her front steps in a rocking chair, yelling at the neighbourhood kids to get off the lawn?
Airline travel could drive anyone insane. I know it’s a dull and boring conversation—how flying isn’t what it used to be—but I’m going to risk being boring and reminisce. Let me take you back to a time when flight attendants were called stewardesses, passengers smoked in their seats, and sharp knives were not considered weapons. If you were fortunate enough to travel in first class, as the cast of
SCTV
were, you were given bottles of wine or champagne during the flight, roast beef was carved on linen-clothed tables in the aisles, and you ate with real silverware.
I loved travelling with the cast, and no one was more fun to travel with than John Candy. Even though we were all treated equally on the plane, he demanded the most respect and was given it. Everyone loved John and felt elevated in his presence. No one was more generous than John to anyone, anywhere. Or more grateful. He was boisterous and lively and indulgent. Booze flowed, food was abundant. John made everything into an event. Nothing and no one seemed to bother John. He loved people. He didn’t feel threatened. He was an open vessel, a free spirit, an innocent kid. I wonder what he would be like if he were sitting next to these children and their mom. First of all, he wouldn’t be judgmental.
He would engage in play with them, make them laugh. The mom would adore him. The father would have traded seats with some kind soul so he too could be in John’s presence. John would probably find the kids delightful, not annoying. And then he’d hold court. A crowd would gather. He’d be in the moment, not even thinking of what the next five hours would bring. John would make the flight into his own personal party, and everyone on the plane would be invited. He was a volcano of joy. It’s no wonder the whole world still misses him. John ate, drank, and danced happiness. He didn’t need a week at the Golden Door to develop
that
skill.
If I can just keep a lid on my judgmental, fearful, ego-driven Mrs. Hyde for the next three hours, I’ll be in the loving arms of the Golden Door, where my enlightened and compassionate Dr. Jekyll will feel safe to emerge. I know that, at my core, I’m kind. It’s my neurotic personality that gets in the way. For now, I’ll practise deep breathing. I’ll take my bag of nuts to the washroom, a nut-safe zone, and I’ll savour each and every one of them. For the next seven days, after all, I am going to be meditating and hiking and doing yoga and journaling and having hot stones placed on my aching back. I will have finished Mr. Lama’s book on compassion. I will have perfected the art of happiness. Nothing will bother me again.
I arrive at the Golden Door.
It’s beautiful. First thing up: yoga. Then, counting the minutes to lunch. I’m so hungry. And boy do I need a cup of coffee. And while we’re at it, a TV. So limber and yet so hostile. No chocolate within miles. I’m famished. I’m about to boil my belt. Get me out of this Zen hellhole. I’m not meant for this relaxation thing. Deepak Chopra, my ass.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, finally I start to unwind … seven days later. Surrender, serenity, gratitude, bliss.
Armed with my newfound happiness skills, I board the plane. Kinder, and more compassionate, to myself and to others.
With an open heart, I lower my window shade.
Ten minutes later, I open it again.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.