VOICES OF OUR REGION
Pam Kovac
Transcript
My name is Pam Kovak. I live in Pittsburgh. I’m a Native American. My Indian name is Two Hawks Woman. I’m from a Seneca tribe. I have mental illness. I suffered depression for many years. I’m 52. I’m an artist. I was born in Pittsburgh. I was left in a dumpster and some people found me and when I was a week old and put me in an orphanage in Pittsburgh. Then I was adopted at the age of two to a family that lived in Butler, Pennsylvania. I’ve done a lot of traveling. I love to travel. I spent my summers in Connecticut with my aunt and uncle.
Interviewer: Are you still close to your adoptive family?
They’re deceased now. And my blood parents, they both committed suicide on Mother’s Day two years apart, one year apart.
Interviewer: And so you’ve stayed in Pittsburgh the whole time?
I lived in Maine for a couple years. I got married first after I went to art school and then moved to Maine and then I moved to Florida. Stayed there for awhile. Came back. Stayed in Pittsburgh. Moved to Colorado. Stayed out there for a couple of years. Arizona. And always came back to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was home.
I first found out that I, realized that I had depression was when I was in seventh grade. After school I had took a back way home through the woods and I had hid a rope there under a rock and I tied it up to a tree and I climbed up onto the rock and I was going to push the rock out from underneath me. And a couple of my school friends came by and saw what I was doing and got me down and said, you know, don’t do that. It was never talked about; never said anything, you know. It was kind of quiet. That was when I first knew that I had troubles.
Interviewer: Is it in the family history then?
Well, there definitely is genetics involved you know. Because my parents killed themselves, my grandparents killed themselves, my three uncles committed suicide also. But also being adopted into a family where the mother was very abusive and had the grandfather living in the house and he turned very abusive towards me so. The family I was in had one son and they adopted me to kind of round out, you know the one son and one daughter. But my mother was very ill. She was very mentally ill yet held down a steady job for many years until she retired. But she was very, very sick and did very awful things to me.
She would do things and have no feelings and be laughing at it while she was either cutting me or burning me or throwing me down the stairs or just whatever she felt like doing you know or she would play opera music and sing at the top of her lungs and then go into hysterical laughter and take a hot iron and come after me and just burn me. And always threatened that she would kill me if I ever told my father about it. So I never told anyone in the family.
At the age of six they told me I was adopted and my brother that was their son was five years older than I and he would always say to me, “They got you out of a garbage dump, you know a dumpster.” I didn’t know what he was talking about you know. I was real naïve and I’m like, “What do you mean they got me out of a garbage dumpster?” And he’s there, “That’s where you came from.” And I was like “okay.” So I always just accepted that but really didn’t even understand those words until I got older. And then it was like, “Wait a minute, what?”
I went to Butler Area High School and graduated and went to Ivy School of Professional Art here in Pittsburgh which is no longer with us. Graduated there with high honors. Got interested in wood carving and painting and drawing and stone carving. Those were the best years, the art school. And I’m still in contact with my one professor he’s like my mentor. He’s been the one that’s been there; that’s been there through thick and thin with my depression and my hospitalizations and always there giving me hope to keep on going and keep on pursuing my art.
It’s been a struggle. I would say the best thing about this has been the support system of good friends and good organizations that we have here in Pittsburgh. Out of all the places that I’ve lived all over the country I find Pittsburgh has some of the best mental health support that there is anywhere. It’s just finding the resources. It’s locating things and word of mouth and posters or whatever it may be. I'm just jotting numbers down and making phone calls and hoping you reach someone that can connect you to someone else that will be a lead or a help that can assist you with whatever might need.
Interviewer: What do you think about Pittsburgh that makes it better than the other places you’ve been to?
I think that we are more like a neighborhood here in Pittsburgh. I think we’re like a family. And through my years of being hospitalized I have met so many wonderful people in the hospital that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what your problem is or whatever, it hits anyone, anywhere, at any age. It has no color; it has no age, no anything. And I think people around here are really beautiful people if you give them a chance. We kind of act like we’re really a tough city but underneath that exterior I think we’re all a little softer then we let on.
I’ve had over a 100 hospitalizations and they know me quite well at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. By name they know me and I’ve always gotten help and I’m still alive. I’m not dead. And for that I thank God and I thank all the nurses and doctors that work there.
Interviewer: What were the hospitalizations mostly for?
Because of the experiences that I had from like two to eighteen, I suffered so much trauma that I would have flashbacks and all sorts of memories, body memories, visual memories. And it wasn’t until last year that the doctor came up with a medication that they’re trying on the vets that are coming home. I was the first one to be put this to see if it takes away flashbacks and stuff. It’s a remarkable medication. They just upped me to twice a day with it. And to be able to sleep at night without night terrors or waking up, I have done that my whole life, and then to have like maybe six months in where I can go to sleep and not have that happen is just incredible. I mean what a difference it makes. It’s just incredible. And I’ve been on every kind of medicine you can name you know and it would wear off. I’d have to go back in and mostly it was medication changes that I went into the hospital for.
And recently I had an experience where, what happened was my medication was stolen from a drug store and I didn’t know it and I found out, I called the drug store and they said I’d picked it up and I hadn’t and they found out it was picked up by another person. So I was going on like six days without medication. Now I hadn’t done this ever and I was starting to get like suicidal and stuff. I tried to get insurance to override so that I could pick up some medicine. You know telling that I had the proof of the person’s handwriting they gave me and basically they told me to go home and wait a half an hour and they would call me and let me know if the medication was ready to be picked up at the drug store. So I came home, I waited the 20 minutes, This is on March 28th. And I came home and sat here for 20 minutes and no phone call, no nothing and so it went on and turned into like three hours and finally I was just at my wit’s end. My illness had really taken over and I used all the coping skills I had and I got up and I slit my wrists to the bone and realized that that was something very serious and had to call 911 and had surgery there at the hospital and then put in the hospital, and whatever they do. They had judges and stuff and that was the first time that ever happened. So it’s been a rough two months. I’ve had four surgeries on my hand. I just started physical therapy last Friday.
I’m able to do a little bit and my hand is totally numb. But I thank God every day that I didn’t die because it wasn’t my time. It wasn’t my time. I truly believe that the Great Spirit knows and that I’m here for a reason and whether it’s to help other people so I can understand better, you know, or whatever. I had a really good experience at the hospital as I always do and I was sitting on a bench and I was waiting to be discharged and there were about 15 patients. Each one, one individual at a time came up and sat beside me on the bench and told me what a difference I had made in their stay. That is something to really, not sure what the word is, but there was an affect there that had a domino affect that helped them help others. So that’s my story.
Interviewer: How did you get the courage to talk about it?
I think through, well I’ve had experiences of talking in front of doctors before. I don’t know why they pick me to go before these interns and do talks and motivational speaking and things and some art therapy things out in Colorado. But, I’ve been in drug tests like for Prozac or whatever new drugs they were coming out with because I want the people that come after me not to have to go through what I went through, let alone what my mother went through. Because when my mother was mentally ill and they put her in an institution it was just awful. She didn’t get a second chance to come out and say can I go home? Can I try to make it again? The answer was no, no matter.
Interviewer: Was it your real mother?
Yeah, my real mother. And I’m just trying to make it a little bit easier or better for the people who come after me. When I was younger my adoptive father, had a best friend and his daughter was mentally ill and we would get phone calls in the middle of the night. Now this probably started when I was about 8 years old and he would get a phone all in the middle of the night and then I would hear him leave and he would say, I’d ask the next day who called, where he went and stuff and he would say like “Well Bill’s daughter Suzie had to go back to Torrance and I had to take her to the hospital.” But that man always knew that he could rely on my father to be there to help his daughter stay calm enough to make a long trip to Torrance State Hospital and be admitted and not be scared. My father was a wonderful person. A wonderful, loving, giving person, my adoptive father and I have a lot of traits from him. He’s taught me how to be independent and to accept things as they are. Don’t hide, don’t run, and don’t play games about it.
Interviewer: What are you most proud of?
That’s a tough one. I would say the most proud thing that I’ve done, the thing that makes me the most proud is that I’m alive here to sit and talk about it and have the courage and the strength and the God-given talent that he gave me to be able to communicate through my art.
When I first got sick I was catatonic and that means that you can’t talk, can’t move, can’t do anything, but you’re very aware of hearing everything and you can see but you can’t move. This was an awful position to find myself in and it lasted like two weeks and then when I snapped out of that I got psychotic and I got put in like a quiet room with 5-point restraints. I was in the hospital for about a month like that. And my husband had left me because I had gotten sick. So I was coming out of that and coming out of like a psychosis of things and getting more to be like able to live in an apartment with a roommate and just basically having the symptoms of depression and stuff. And I was being seen at a clinic and my psychiatrist asked me, “How do you make it Pam?” He said, “You’re always well dressed but how are you living?” I said, “I live on welfare.” I said I just do my laundry a lot and eat table scraps basically. And he said, “This just isn’t right and I believe that you are going to be somebody someday and if there’s anything I can do. The one thing I want to do is get you on Disability. Disability Social Security.” Which I really didn’t know anything about it and I think he sent in the papers to Pittsburgh and then I got an interview to come down here and see a psychiatrist. And he asked me what I thought was wrong with me and I said I had a breakdown. And he said, “Well what’s a breakdown?” And I said, “I don’t know, you’re the doctor.” I was so out of it. I was highly medicated with old medicines that were really strong, blurred vision and all sorts of things and then it came back that. I think I waited a year and I got retroactive pay and I got onto Disability and that was in 1984. So I’ve been on it a long time.
I have this one relative that is like “There’s nothing wrong with you. You went to art school. You graduated at the top of your class. You look perfectly fine. What do you mean you’re on Disability? I have a son-in-law that can’t even walk. He needs a cane to walk now and he can’t even get Disability. You should be working. You should be doing this and doing that.” I’ve tried. I can’t. I go nuts. I had a doctor say to me when I was about 21 he said, “Pam, it must be really hard to be as pretty as you,” and believe me I’m not thinking I’m pretty or anything but this is what he said to me. He took me out for a walk down to Pitt Bookstore and he said, “To be as pretty as you and have this outward look like there’s nothing wrong with you,” just like what you were saying, “and be so severely ill, that must get in the way a lot.” Which it does because I look like I’m okay. You can’t tell anything is wrong with me. Yet I’m still in very intense therapy and I still am ill.
Truthfully I think we’re beyond the Prozac Nation. That might have been okay to say about eight or nine years ago but we’ve kind of passed that. But there is still very much stigma between a general hospital, maybe even one of the best top 10 in the country, and a hospital that is for the mentally ill. They could be side by side, but there is such a wide gap of misunderstanding that it just never ceases to amaze me how much it boggles my mind that they don’t work together or try to understand. They’re so separate it just blows my mind. It really blows my mind. And hopefully one day they’ll come to a better understanding. I think they need to be more educated, both of them on either side, because we can’t keep going like this. And the kids today, I mean I wonder about the Ritalin, whatever. That’s something that’s happening a lot now with this ADHD or whatever it is. I mean I was dyslexic all my life and nobody ever said, you know, and I was hyperactive like crazy, and nobody ever said well let’s get her on Ritalin because Ritalin wasn’t available. So back then, either you were an active child or you were just a regular, normal child. But I was hyperactive but I still don’t think I would have like to been on drugs at a young age. I don’t know.
Interviewer: How’s you life been differently than you imagined?
Wow. Oh I thought I probably would be married with a white picket fence and have two children and a dog and it was nothing like that at all. And I had the misconception of time. I thought I would be better, you know like years. I thought when I got sick, well okay. A friend of mine told me, “If you take five years out of your life,” this is like when I was 20, take five years out of your life now Pam, concentrate on maybe therapy and getting the right medication. The rest of your life you’ll be well and you can do what you want to do.” And I was just like flabbergasted that he was going to stretch this illness out to five years. And I was like, “Five years of my life! You must be crazy!” But it turns out to be, I don’t know what 45, yeah you know, years? I just thought I would be well, completely well. I thought it would just go away or something. And it doesn’t do that. It’s a myth that I must have created in my mind. (laughter)
Interviewer: So what made you be drawn to this project? To doing an oral history and being a part of that?
Because I’m not ashamed of being mentally ill. I have no shame you know. I’m a good person. I try to help people. I try to be a good friend, a loving friend and relative. And if there’s anybody out there that I can reach or touch who has similar problems, such as feeling suicidal, feeling like they want to hurt themselves, there’s somebody else out there that walked before them that knows and that’s been there. And I guess that’s what I want to say.
This poem is called Two Hawks Woman Speaks.
We as a people no matter what tribe or nation must reach deep within our souls
And find the strength we own, to help keep peace of mind.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on for the betterment of the future
To let the wind always be at our back, and the sunshine on our faces
Bringing forth optimism.
To think only the best of people and events
So we shall grow strong with confidence and perseverance.
To love one another no matter what our faults or shortcomings may be.
To not let worries, fear, nor presence of trouble overcome us,
Take over us nor beat us down.
But to remember we must first walk through the fire
to be able to dance through the stream.