Month: April 2013

Relapse

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There are so many things coursing through my mind that sometimes it’s hard to keep up and get it all out. It’s been going on longer, but the last four weeks have been a really bad place for me, throwing me, well, not throwing me, but sliding me back towards the beginnings of my depression and I do not like it. I noticed that something was off, but as per my custom chose to ignore it while at the same time being hyperaware of it. When my friend asked if I was alright and noticed that every time he called I sounded sad and asked about my mood, I realized that I wasn’t imagining what I had been seeing.

Lately doing anything is a chore. Not something like a responsibility that you know you have to do but are procrastinating doing, but an actual chore, pushing myself to, if not make dinner at least state what dinner would be and getting someone else in the family to make it. Cooking was one of the happy places that I lost when I sunk into depression and it hasn’t bounced back.

I did the cooking and baking for Christmas and my middle son is the only one who doesn’t get a store bought birthday cake because he always asks for my cheesecake (Philly 3-Step variety) and so I oblige him and did, but the daily cooking and experimenting that I was enjoying so much – baking bread, frying chicken in the newly discovered (for me) peanut oil, Pinterest recipes, caramel and ginger cookies. The love was there. The want was there. I just couldn’t get past the chore of getting up and actually doing it.

At least, we’re not eating out constantly or bringing prepared food in. That is something we definitely can’t afford to do as we struggle this year to pay the bills, some that are not always getting paid and our tax refunds going to repay friends who helped us in our time of need. There’s a lot of pasta and grilled cheese, but at least it’s getting made.

I try to have a list for each day, and those usually help, but it seems that my brain has picked up on all of last year’s coping tricks and is sabotaging them. In the Jewish faith, each year on the anniversary of a parent’s death, you’re supposed to light a memorial candle called a Yartzeit. You light it at sundown of the death day and it burns for twenty-four hours. You do not blow it out. This was something I learned when I was a child. I also learned that you never light the candle if your parents are living. I don’t know if this is religiously true or if my mother was just superstitious. I was supposed to do this on Saturday. It was written on at least two calendars. I said something to my husband on Saturday morning. And then I just forgot. It slipped my mind. Literally. I didn’t remember until I was looking at the calendar Monday morning to check the week’s schedule, and I didn’t actually remember it; I read it and had a V8 moment. I thought I would burst into tears. How could I forget my Dad?

For everything else, I’m not so much lazy or unmotivated as much as I just don’t feel it. I want to write, but if I don’t it’s alright. I want to make a phone call, but unless it is anxiety driven, I don’t until the anxiety builds to explosion levels and that is no good for either of us. I want to sit and do homework with my daughter, but if she decides to do something else, I just don’t want to be bothered, and don’t chase her down, and this is the scariest feeling of all; the not wanting to be bothered.

I’m not back in the place of completely mentally paralyzed or suicidal, and I credit that to recognizing the downward slide as well as my friend who knows me so well calling me out on some of my lethargic behavior and moods and knowing when to poke me and when to actually push.

My medication dose has been changed and I go back to the doctor in a week or so, but it doesn’t feel any different and I think it should feel a little better; just a little. The next few weeks are bringing things that are stressful and fun and I should be looking forward to them, but it’s making me feel anxious and as though I’m going to let everyone down including myself. I’m afraid to build anything up because it will be a disappointment; I’m afraid to get excited and I’m worrying over things that I really do have no control over, but they’re still there. I want to scream at some things, and I want to cry at others, and I’m trying to hold it all together so I don’t push away the people who are always there for me, who reach out and care for me, but the next few weeks….I just don’t know how to get through it and actually enjoy the parts that I’m supposed to enjoy.

This list includes Author’s Night at my daughter’s school, Free Comic Book Day, a doctor’s appointment, a therapy appointment, pay the mortgage and other bills, attend a birthday party, Mother’s Day, my oldest son’s prom, my daughter’s birthday party, visit my best friend at least four states away, Memorial Day weekend, which is also my deceased mother’s birthday and a visit from Grandma (the kids’ grandma, my mother in law). And that doesn’t include writing for my memoir workshop even though it won’t be in session and I’ll miss one session but I promised to keep up on my writing. And all of this is off the top of my head. I’m sure I forgot something. Or several somethings.

In trying to come up with some positive things to write about and ease out of the bad place, it is not easy. On a good day I’m at best a realist.

I’ve been very good since declaring my New Year’s Resolutions and my reaffirmation of much of them for Lent. I have been very good since Lent and have stuck to only two cans of soda a day with very few exceptions. I usually will drink those with meals, and I have primarily been drinking green tea with jasmine and water, the colder the better.

I have tried (and mostly succeeded) in eating oatmeal three times a week. I add a touch of brown sugar and a handful of cranberries and some milk. This really has decreased my cholesterol, and it is very filling and tastes good, and much healthier than a bagel.

I am skipping some desserts, and last night didn’t actually have dinner except for a bowl of strawberries and some sour cream, a childhood comfort food that can only be made better with sliced peaches and blueberries.

Except for three bad mornings, I have continued to attend morning Mass and have tried to add Sunday Mass into my week. If I don’t get to the church (and on the days that there are no Mass), I read the Mass in a Catholic periodical that publishes the daily Masses.

I’ve given away several sweaters that either no longer fit or that I know I will not wear again. I have a pile of baby clothes to do the same with as soon as I call the church’s office manager. We are very slowly clearing out the things that we haven’t used in years and that are taking up much needed space that can be used for other things.

I have been writing more even if I haven’t been sharing the really personal ones or the ones that need too much explaining to understand context, but sometimes (more often recently) I’ll start something and just leave it there and not go back to it.

I am not where I want to be, and I think that adds to the chemical issue of depression and brings on extra situational stress and in the place I’m in my level of tolerance and ignoring things is just non-existent so I find myself shutting down.

I also know that I can’t go back to last year; I barely lived through that. I also can’t go back decades and change decisions; I can’t return to college and choose different majors. It’s hard to move forward; though it’s not easy knowing that one changed decision could change everything now.

Or would it?

There is no way to know, but this is one of the questions that weighs heavily on my mind and in my relapse into depression and increase in anxiety, it plays over and over again as though a broken record or a film on a loop.

Quick Update

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Sorry for the spammy presence today.

I posted three things that I’ve had in my notebook for a few days: Train Derailed, Radio and Inhouses. I’m hoping to add one more random prompt/free write before tonight and get back on track.

I’ve gotten quite an influx of new followers (I have no idea where you’ve come from, but you are most welcome).

My absence is due in part to a reassertion of my depression. As I like to note, depression is a continuum, and the recovery can sometimes be rocky. These have been a few of those weeks. Forcing myself to update things today is step one, and seeing the doctor on Monday is step two.

🙂

 

Train Derailed

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(* This is something that spewed out suddenly during my workshop on Thursday while someone else was reading. My mind wouldn’t let me stop until it was written and I didn’t know what would come out of the pen until it was on the paper. It is not an assignment of blame. Just thoughts. I don’t know if this will be expanded on eventually or left as is. It’s not quite poetry, but it’s a bit more emotional and the cadence isn’t quite prose.)

 

My eyes hurt. I haven’t cried today, but my eyes want to. I’m not sure about my heart. I’m full of feels. Feeling melancholy. The lingering sad, inappropriate considering this week’s events of a heaviness, the lingering of something, loss of memories not to be. I was afraid to want, but I wanted so badly, needed so badly and I let myself grasp it and blow the embers keeping it warm, building the flame of expectation, of want and need I didn’t know I needed, but I did. This is strike two. You know me better than I know myself and you can’t heal me. You can’t fix me. And I want that so badly.

Radio

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Mexican radio. Wish I was in Tijuana; eating barbequed iguana. I grew up in the 80s, one of the best times for music. People may scoff, but it is the most imitated, most reunioned, most innovative music. Synth pop, new age, punk, alternative. The second British invasion. We were home to one of the best alternative stations, now defunct, WLIR 92.7. We used to stalk the DJs when stalking had a good natured connotation. We’d call and believe it or not, they remembered us.

Willobee, Larry the Duck, Malibu Sue, Donna Donna, Bob Waugh – just a few of the countless DJs who were themselves near iconic.

On the weekend, they used to have special themes like WLIR goes to the park or goes to college. This was before the prevalence of the internet and you could only listen if you were in the broadcast area. I was told when the weekend of ‘goes to college’ was when I was at college in Oneonta and I called them.

Collect.

And they accepted the charges.

Now, I listen to WEQX out of Manchester, Vermont. Some of you may have recognized the name I mentioned earlier: Willobee. The one and the same. He has since moved on to Scranton (with wife and baby), but I was able to call on his last day and thank him for a lifetime of good music and influence.

People might not believe me, but I like to say, and it is true that the music I listen to is either twenty years old or twenty minutes old.

I may have to change that to thirty and thirteen in another couple of years.

Inhouses

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I have had so much trouble with outhouses.

Not using them mind you, but writing about them until someone suggested I just write about unusual bathrooms or something like that, and that’s what I will try to do.

First, when we were kids, my parents used to say we should write a book about all the bathrooms we used on a car trip. It didn’t matter when the last time we used the toilet was, but if we saw a sign for a bathroom or stopped for gas, we absolutely, positively needed to use the bathroom.

My parents said we were taking inventory or reviewing all of them or something.

When I got older and had my first son, he, of course, used public bathrooms even though we also had a portable camping toilet in the car in case he needed to use it on a long trip without a rest area.

I remembered what my parents said about writing a book and so we took pictures of my son and the places where he used the bathroom – McDonald’s, thruway rest area, gas station, library, you name it. If he used the bathroom, we took a picture of it (the place, not the actual bathroom or the toileting) and we made a little picture book for my Dad.

He loved it!

The second thing that came to mind was my first trip to the UK in 1987. I knew enough not to call the bathrooms bathrooms, but other than that every time I used one, I was not only surprised, it was an exercise in how the fuck do I flush this thing?

Here’s a normal toilet with an American style lever. Okay, no problem. That was in the airport. They like to give you a false sense of security in the airport.

Next toilet. Pretty normal for me, but the tank had a large push button on the top of the tank.

There was a large push button on the wall above the tank.

There was a small push button on the top of the tank, on the side of the tank and on the wall above the tank (these were three separate toilets).

And then I used the men’s room in a pub. It was New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square, and there was much drinking and carousing and the toilets were needed. It’s New Year’s Eve as I mentioned, so the line for the ladies’ was ridiculously long, and my friend and I did not want to wait, so we went into the men’s room. Unfortunately for the men who came in not knowing that a woman was in the stall, the looks on their faces when we left were pretty priceless.

However, this toilet almost kept me. This was probably the most unusual and certainly the most unusual I had seen by far. The toilet itself was a regular public bathroom toilet, no tank, no lever.

I looked around for a floor button (yes, we’d seen those.)

Nope.

I checked the wall for a push button.

Nope.

I don’t know why I looked up, but I did. There’s the tank, way up practically attached to the ceiling, but not with a long chain hanging down. I pulled the chain, everything worked as it should and I left, calling out a warning before I left the stall and waving at four surprised (more than likely extraordinarily drunk) Londoners.

In Scotland, you had to pay 2p to pee, an irony (and a pun) that apparently took 26 years for me to get. You could also get a public shower in Scotland, but I think that was a pound, perhaps more.

Bathroom.

Toilet

Loo.

WC.

Johns.

Porta-pottys.

Los banos.

Ty bach.

The most important thing you need to be able to ask for in a foreign country, whether they are inside or outside.

Pass Me a Fry

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I feel nostalgia welling up inside, ready to burst out. There is sadness and melancholy and what’s next, and I just don’t know. I have my lists of things to do. It is only March, and that’s good. The kick in the butt is good because it is still early in the year and I can get it done. Well, get it started. I just need to be unafraid. Not an easy task. I don’t want things as they were, though; I want them better. Is that even possible?

I don’t know why, but right now I’m thinking of McDonald’s fries. When I was a kid, my Dad would drive way out to Queens to get McDonald’s for dinner. (Believe it or not, but McDonald’s wasn’t on every street corner.) So we’d drive out to Queens and whoever went with him got to sneak some fries. Mainly, he’d ask for one, and the person holding the bag would pass him a couple of fries and then take a couple.

All the way home.

They were so hot. I almost always burned my mouth. By the time we got home, one of the fries were completely or almost completely gone.

We started buying an extra order of fries for the ride home, so no one was mad at us when we got there.

Even today, eating a cheeseburger or a Quarter Pounder makes me remember those moments as a kid with my Dad eating fries. It is not lost on me that it isn’t when I eat the fries, and it is only those two burgers. They taste exactly the same as they did back then.