The Invisible Black Woman

I walked back into the waiting room where hubby was waiting. He mouthed if I was okay. I flashed him a smile as I walked toward him.

“All set?”

“Yep.”

“How’d it go?”

I nodded and smiled as I locked eyes with him, and he understood without words that I didn’t want to talk about it until we got to the car.

He nodded, grabbed my bag, and we headed out toward the elevators.

Once we reached the car and we got on the road, I gave him the rundown.

“Adjustment disorder, huh?” he repeated, equally surprised.

I didn’t bother researching the meaning of this condition until I decided to put pen to paper. The Cleveland Clinic defines this disorder as “a strong reaction to stress or trauma.” Go figure. The part that I found slightly amusing, especially in my case, is that symptoms generally resolve in people suffering from this condition once the person adjusts to the situation or the stressor is removed.

I’d been “adjusting” to my new supervisor and doing more with less for the better part of 2 years. The only time since that fateful overnight stay in the ER that I wasn’t experiencing symptoms is when I wasn’t thinking about work.

I gave it my best effort when trying to explain what I thought this meant to hubby. I boiled it down to having a hard time with my new boss, given the timing of my symptoms. They were the new variable that hadn’t been part of the equation. And based on how well I was adjusting—or better said, wasn’t—it was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

“So now what?”

“Well, she recommended partial hospitalization.”

“Hospitalization? When? For how long?”

“No, no, no. It’s not like that. Partial hospitalization means I go during the day, Monday through Friday, then come home in the afternoons, like around 3 or 4.”

“Oh, ok. But you’re there the entire day. That’s a pretty serious commitment.”

“Yeah, I know. So I’m actually going to do IOP instead.”

“I-O what now?”

“IOP: intensive outpatient program.”

“Okay…”

“Yeah, with that one, you go three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening.”

“What about school?”

And there went the thing I said to myself would be a tomorrow problem. In addition to working like a Hebrew slave, I was going to school full time. Because it was a graduate program, designed for working adults, it was in the evenings. One of my classes was on Wednesdays from 7 to 8:30 in the evening. So unless I figured a way to be in two places at once, that was gonna be a problem.

“I know,” I said. “I’m gonna talk to my professor. She’s cool. I think if I let her know what’s going on, she’ll be ok with it.”

“Okay with you missing the first 30 minutes of her class,” he said incredulously.

“I think so? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to ask. I have a week left before I have to drop classes, so I’m going to ask her now in case it’s a no-go.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said.

Then he added, “You know, sweetie, I think this will be really good for you. Therapy did wonders for me when I was in school.”

Yes, you read that right: my sexy, 6-foot-and-more-than-some-change, beautiful, bald-by-choice Black husband was in therapy in high school. And while therapy has become more and more de-stigmatized, it’s still got a ways to go in the Black community, especially among Black men.

“Yes, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m going to be open and just see where it goes. I can’t believe I’m actually excited to go to therapy.”

“I’m really glad, sweetie. I think it’s gonna be really good for you.”

“Me too. Oh, guess what else?”

My partner in crime looked at me quizzically.

“She put me on medication.”

I could hear the “OH BOY” in his head as loudly as if he’d said it aloud.

“I know, I know, but it’s not that kind of medicine.”

“Okay,” he said, waiting for me to finish.

“It’s for sleep.”

The look of relief on his face said it all. So I went on to explain to him what kind of medication this was and how it worked just like Benadryl—something I took quite regularly due to my allergies, among other things.

Now, to be fair, hubby doesn’t take issue with psychiatric medications. He’s just had a front-row seat to how side effects have wreaked havoc in both of our lives. Plus, like me, medication has always been what I considered a last resort. But having to take Zzzquil with a night cocktail in order to get to sleep wasn’t exactly healthy either.

I let him know she put me on a really low dose, lower than she started most of her patients, and that I’d ramp up after three days, like she said. One thing we could agree on was that getting two to three hours of sleep a day wasn’t exactly the healthiest amount of sleep.

Later that day, I got an alert that I had a new message in MyChart. Now for those of you who may not be familiar, MyChart is the best thing since sliced bread for people like me, who have a solid enough grasp of medical terms to be dangerous. It gives you access to all your electronic health records in one place. It’s so invaluable to me, I don’t go to providers who don’t use it. I just won’t. Imagine getting access to your test results in a mere few days, sometimes hours, right from your phone, instead of having to call in to your doc’s office or make an appointment to get your results?

So I logged in to read the notes of my appointment with Petra. Somehow, reading back what I’d shared hit totally different. It sounded almost foreign to read some of these passages and realize that they had and were happening to me.

Over the past 2 years, she has been working 120 or more hours every pay, doing “work of several people,” has not been able to take a leave in the past 2 years, however, her efforts are not appreciated.

She reports frequent thoughts of not being alive, feels tired and “just want to go to sleep.”

How did I ever think this was okay? To put up with this for 2 years? Jesus. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed it to go on as long as it did. More importantly, that I didn’t have a breakdown before then.

Well, actually, I almost did.

A few months back, I remember having to plan a work event. Mind you, this wasn’t even my day job. This was the mandatory side hustle at my day job where I wore one hat too many. So there I was, working my tail off to put this event together. I’d made all the arrangements, every “i” was dotted, every “t” was crossed. Then I met with my boss to go over the particulars. I needed the guest list of everyone who would be attending. They gave me the list and guess who wasn’t on it?

Even the last one in who had less to do with the work than I did was invited to attend. I wasn’t even a consideration. It didn’t even occur to them for one moment that the head of the group that supported those in attendance should be there. Not for a split second. I felt exploited, undervalued, taken for granted.

At one point, I had two different people state they’d see me there, and I replied I wasn’t invited. Both looked awkward, one was incredulous. But neither spoke up. It never occurred to either of them that maybe, just maybe it was odd that the person whose role equated to at minimum assistant if not head coach should be there.

The truth of the matter was that I got sucked into a role that many of the higher-ups were very, very comfortable with me playing. It was a role that made sense to them more so than the role I was actually in: that of the help. It meant they didn’t have to include me, apologize, or feel guilty for treating me as such. For not remembering me as they rubbed elbows and hobnobbed at an event I’d worked hard to make sure went off without a hitch.

Yes, it bothered me to no end, but not because I necessarily wanted to attend. I simply wanted to be invited. To not feel like all I was good for was to put everything together and fade into the background.

And to be honest, I didn’t even realize how much it bothered me until the day after. The day after, when everyone was chattering and buzzing from the event the night before. When it hit me just how low I felt was when at the meeting the next day, they threw up a photo of the group selfie they had taken and rattled on about how great everything was, including the food.

Now you may be asking yourself why I wasn’t there at the very least, to ensure everything went off without a hitch? Because this was at a restaurant and my “services were no longer needed.”

As I sat there looking at the photo of an event I pulled together but was not a part of, I felt my face get warm and my eyes water. Thankfully, I was close enough to the door, so I quickly but quietly walked out. I went outside and gulped as much air as I could as the tears began rolling down my face. I tried to look down at the ground for fear anyone would see me like that at work. I had to remind myself I was supposed to be presenting in 30 minutes. There was no time for tears. Not now. There was no time to feel any of the emotions I was feeling. This all the while my brain did its level best to tell me this was the time to walk out and never ever look back. But I had to be practical. More importantly, what would anyone think if they saw me like this? No, what I had to do was stop crying, steady myself, and get back in there.

And that’s exactly what I did. Not a single person being the wiser as to what had just taken place, at how close I came to telling them where they could shove it and where they could all go.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that a diagnosis of anxiety and major depression, with a generous helping of adjustment disorder had been brewing and in the works for about two years.

I guess the only person who didn’t see this coming was me.