Amanda and I spend part of our time in the mountains, and part in the city. We go back and forth regularly. This morning we head back to town.
I hate going back. It would be easy to live up here full-time. I’d like to. Ultimately, and not long from now, we’ll need to choose one or the other. I choose here.
Amanda worries about me, however, and my occasional need to be close to doctors. She had a dream last night that showed that: we were about to jump a car across a ravine. She did not think it could make it. I ‘floated’ ahead to show her it was OK. Halfway across I plummeted to the floor of the canyon, and all she could hear was faint whimpering. A pretty clear message?
It’s tough having an illness of any kind. Between my bipolar disorder and my neck issues, I used to need doctors a lot. Right now I don’t, and I’d love nothing more than to get away from them for good. I see no advantage in living near ‘advanced’ medical care. My body has been badly damaged by medications. My father probably died as a result of a medical error. My mother had severe depression in the early 1960′s, and they treated here with valium, barbiturates, and shock therapy. Maybe she had tricyclic antidepressants, too, but all she did was get worse and worse and die anyway. As a six-year-old, I was convinced that the treatments were bad for her. I still hold that view.
But what if my neck worsens, and I need intensive care just for daily life? Or if I get so depressed I need partial or full hospitalization (as much as I am skeptical such a thing would help, sometimes it is reassuring to loved ones)? We are an hour from the nearest hospital, and almost two from the HMO of our choice. For people who have lived our whole lives in urban areas, it is hard to imagine. Yet I see people living all around us up here in the mountains, and some of them are quite elderly. If they can do it, why can’t we?
You have to listen to your spouse’s dreams, however; both the dreams for the future she (in my case) or he has by day, and the terrors by night. I hate feeling like my fate is in the hands of illnesses I can’t control. I’m not giving up on the move, but there probably needs to be a compromise here. Right now, the answer is not clear. I have made some catastrophic decisions in the past, and I don’t want a repeat. On the other hand, my heart yearns to live in the forest.
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