Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Her goal: purpose-filled days

Barbara Rutch helps herself, and her surroundings, one small step at a time.

By JACKIE RIPLEY
Published April 7, 2006

Today that world encompasses her apartment complex and beyond. Neighbors welcome her as she brings them packages of food. She has also become a neighborhood ambassador of sorts at the Royal Oaks apartment complex.

"She's awesome,'' said Jo Ramos, property manager at Royal Oaks. "She's in people's kitchens, bathrooms. She's our eyes and ears and definitely part of our team.''

Royal Oaks is fighting off a legacy of crime and code infractions under its former ownership and previous name, Cimarron. If the complex is on a comeback trail, so is Rutch.

Rutch has bipolar disorder and agoraphobia, a condition that makes her fearful of any place outside a small sphere deemed "safe.''

"I spent 13 years locked up in my bedroom,'' said Rutch, who also suffers from severe mood swings. "Going out was torturous. I would have panic attack on top of panic attack.''

Rutch thinks a series of misfortunes, starting with her mother's death when she was 10, led to her illness.

She said she escaped abuse at the hands of her father and stepmother by joining the Navy at 18. She had a series of jobs through her 20s, 30s and 40s, but suspects she was bipolar, or manic-depressive, even then.

She used alcohol to cope. When a work-related injury left her unable to work, her carefully constructed world began to unravel.

"Three years into the accident I wanted to go back to school to be a lab tech, but workman's comp squelched that because there was no way to stand on my legs to do the work,'' she said. "That's when I cracked. I went from being a purpose-driven person all my life to someone totally and completely without purpose.''

Rutch found herself taking more and more medications in her attempt to find relief.

Although grateful for the existence of those medications she takes 32 pills a day, she said her recovery involved far more.

"Without the help of God I could not have done this,'' Rutch said. "God came into my life and all of a sudden things started to happen and I became useful again.''

A savvy psychiatrist also recognized the therapeutic value of an animal to care for. When a black pug and spaniel mix named Ashley came to live with Rutch, she forced Rutch to make regular trips outdoors.

Today Rutch shares her apartment with Ashley and Kit Kat, a 16-year-old cat, which play like, well, cats and dogs. One of their favorite pastimes is tag around the living room sofa.

Although she still will not venture much farther than the grocery store or a doctor's office, she has been instrumental in the apartment complex's turnaround.

"She communicates with residents who might be afraid to walk in here and tell us they have a work-order problem that needs to be taken care of,'' Ramos said. Rutch also has begun writing a building newsletter.

"I believe everybody can do what they set their mind to,'' she said. "I can lay in bed and die or slowly set my mind to take each day and try to make the best of it if I can.''

Rutch has kept a diary of her struggle with her mental health, a booklet that begins with harshly scrawled pages reflecting her state of mind at the time. As her emotional health has improved, so has her handwriting.

"I'd like to publish it just this way to show people what my thinking was like then,'' said Rutch, who would also like to publish a book of inspirational poems. "I get up every day and put one foot in front of the other. I have good days and I have bad days. I just try to enjoy the good days.''

Jackie Ripley can be reached at ripley@sptimes.com or (813) 269-5308.

[Last modified April 7, 2006, 08:21:28]