All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker Page B

“happiness” is when the relationship settles down and becomes stable. When you sleep through the night next to your new love because you know she is here to stay.
    Imagine never getting to that settled place after a disruption, and instead feeling that new, powerful emotion all the time. It is not sustainable, and truly quite painful to endure.
    We in my profession usually diagnose this affliction as anxiety in one form or another. Sometimes it lends itself to OCD. Other times we just call it generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are on a continuum like all mental illness. We must have names for things so we can communicate about what we see, but it is not the same as diagnosing a physical ailment like the flu. There are no little bugs we can see through a microscope. All we have are our observations and, hopefully, intelligent deductions.
    I have treated many patients like Sean, though he was an exceptional case. It can be a difficult choice to prescribe these patients with the appropriate medication. I can make them come back down to earth, but there they will remain. While the rest of us flow through normal patterns of these elevated emotions and then the return to normalcy, these patients have to choose. I suppose it’s akin to addiction and the choice to be in recovery. Would you rather live a life of total sobriety or be in a constant state of inebriation? I would certainly choose sobriety.
    I did not know Sean before he joined the navy. He was just seventeen years old and, as he describes himself, jumping out of his own skin. He cycled through girlfriends, drank and got high every day, even through school. His mother was overwhelmed. Two of the older siblings had returned home to live, one after graduating from college and the other after dropping out. The younger three were always in need of something, a meal or a ride or a clean shirt. His oldest sister got pregnant at twenty-three, unmarried. She sometimes dropped the baby off with her mother so she could go to her job as an office assistant. What I am trying to convey is that Sean did not know how to help himself, and there was no one else up to the task. After his senior year, he enlisted.
    Military life was not a bad option for Sean. The physical demands of his training and the endless opportunities to strain his body afforded him a different kind of medication for his anxiety. Endorphins and adrenaline produced from anaerobic exercise are chemicals that cause the body to feel good. That’s the simplest way to explain it. For someone with anxiety, extreme physical exertion can provide significant relief. Sean excelled, making it through the process in just over eighteen months. He did one tour in Iraq at age eighteen and returned home just after his nineteenth birthday. His parents were proud, his siblings conflicted by pride and envy. But without his regimen, and the constant natural high from being in danger, he was again reeling with his anxiety.
    Have you ever done coke, Doc? He asked me this already knowing the answer. He was playful that way. Well, you get real jumpy.
    I can still see him sitting on the couch in my office, legs straddled, hands in two fists. He began to shake.
    It’s like that. Like you have to keep moving some part of your body to get rid of your nerves. You can’t sleep. You’re not hungry. Could talk for hours about stupid shit.
    â€œThat doesn’t sound enjoyable,” I said.
    Sean laughed. I know, Doc. Cup of tea and a good book. We can’t all be saints.
    â€œWhen did you use cocaine?” I asked.
    Aw, not since tenth grade. I’m just saying that’s what I felt like all the time. I’d forgotten what it was like before, you know, after being in the desert for so long. I slept like a baby there. Never thought about what was churning in my gut.
    â€œAnd when you did come home, the times before that last mission?”
    Fuck, man. It was like being in a cage. Like some