Issue 21

Joelle Lambert

In the springtime, the ants in the house get out of control. I lose sleep over it. I have tried so many things to rid my house of ants. Traps, poisons, tea tree, vinegar, dish soap, even electric pulses that quake through the kitchen to rid the tiny-bodied bugs out of my house.

Some days I was more irritated than others. Were the demons doing anything wrong? They cleaned the crumbs. They forced me into being hyper-hygienic. Were their leg germs on my avocados detrimental? Some days I lazily wiped the cloth across my countertop before cooking. Some nights I found myself with ants crawling across my computer screen as I was researching how to commit a holocaust on an ant colony.

The ants weren’t the only thing in my life causing me anxiety. Between a slew of my friends getting married and having babies, I was trying wholeheartedly to begin a career and not be saddened by long hours of work and lonely nights. Despite my efforts of focus and celibacy, I occasionally took a swim in the online dating pool.

When Carl got home from deployment, he found that his wife had been cheating with a guy from the neighborhood. After a swift (yet costly) divorce, Carl was left living with an eighty-year-old roommate he had met on Craigslist and was falling deeper and deeper into what was easily diagnosed as severe PTSD.

When I met Carl, he was living in the boonies and the ambulance picked him up at five in the morning three times a week. He was receiving ECT, electroshock therapy, in what was a last-straw attempt to “cure” his stress and depression.

“They shock me into a small seizure,” he said. “It’s supposed to fix my brain. What’s your name again?” he asked me for maybe the tenth time.

“Delia,” I said. I was kind and understanding with him. He reminded me of my grandma with Alzheimer’s. I never pushed either of them to remember, just kindly reminded them who I was. Once he was better, he swore he was going to live with his best friend who was serving in Alaska.

Carl’s short-term memory loss was extreme. He couldn’t remember much of anything; why he had certain tattoos, the names of his friends or what he had for breakfast, if he had breakfast at all. After a few weeks, I wondered if the ECT was erasing most of his memories in an attempt to cure him from stress.

Carl wasn’t supposed to drive the days he received ECT. I tried to be his friend. I had met him through a dating website but trying to date him seemed wrong and detached. I felt that he truly couldn’t consent to anything at all, if he even remembered who I was that day.

I wondered what he thought about all the time. I didn’t pressure him to try to remember anything. I was his ghostly companion. I would give him rides to buy Burger King. Once, I baked him chocolate cupcakes because he said he liked chocolate cupcakes.

He had a childlike innocence to him, the way he could quickly derail the conversation to a fond memory or the way he could be completely distracted by any noise, like a car door shutting. There was a patchiness to Carl’s consciousness which made him just a little out of reach. The real him was so hidden away. The real him was being erased. As a young woman out to find a husband, a consenting husband, I just didn’t know how to handle it all.

My communications with Carl eventually faded. He had mentioned wanting to quit ECT and try other cognitive therapies. When he told his doctor he wanted to quit, they sped him through a higher voltage, more frequent therapy. Honestly, it was all too much for me and it just wasn’t aligned with what I needed.

A year later, as much as I tried, I couldn’t remember Carl’s name. Ants invaded the house again, and it got worse when it rained.

In a year, I had made a small amount of progress at work. No matter how much money I made, it seemed like I was always buying birthday presents, baby shower presents, writing cards, giving wedding gifts. When my friends were sick, I made them soup. I did my best to take care of the ones I loved. I hoped that someday, someone would do it for me, too.

When I decided to go to therapy for general anxiety, my counselor suggested EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. That sounded familiar to me, something that was commonly discussed in my women’s support groups.

“That’s like tapping?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, and reached into her bag. What she pulled out was a tiny machine with buttons and lights and two small pod-shaped handles. “I will program this with little pulses and through this therapy, we’ll reprogram the neurological pathways that are causing your anxieties.”

“Wonderful,” I said, excited for a healthier chapter of life with a cleaner state of mind. I drove home in the springtime rain and upon arrival quickly plugged in the electric-shock ant zappers.