People + me + being rude/insulting/etc = feeling like shit

WHY do I give people I don't even know power over my emotions?

Depression, the great deceiver

So, I woke up from a nap where I had a weird dream about walking down a busy street with my students to go to a restaurant and lo and behold, depression had paid me a visit.

Thanks, buddy.

I have known about my depression since I was diagnosed in 2002. That year, it became patently obvious that something was wrong with me. I thought it was my soul-eating job as a loan officer at a small credit union, but I was just being ignorant and blind. The maternal side of my family is shot through with clinical depression. Why it did not occur to me before my 38th year is a mystery to me, but there you go. Sometimes you really can't see the forest for the trees, I suppose. I was less than thrilled to discover that I was also harboring an anxiety disorder as well. I was prescribed Zoloft and went on my merry way, suddenly a poster child for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

It was still there. Usually situational. Something would happen that brought me down and I would roll around in it a while until I found my footing and got back on track.

Lately, my meds (Cymbalta among the myriad I have to take for my diabetes) seem to be revolting against me. I wake up in the mornings sick and exhausted and in a fog. I began having intrusive thoughts again, like I did ten years ago.

But I also began writing again after over ten years. WTF?

I don't know if the trade off is worth it.

I don't know if what I write is good enough for others to read. What I do know is being a writer is really all I ever wanted, and in this life of mine where I have been so many things, this is the only thing I have not truly 'been'. And thinking about this makes me more depressed.

I am three days without my Cymbalta and the withdrawal symptoms are getting worse. I can't decide between the two sides of myself. Drugged and numb, or letting the crazy loose, feeling everything, and maybe truly being alive.

Damn...

I'm certainly no fan of his politics, but John MCain was pretty hot back in Viet Nam...

my little family

My pretty (not so) little boy:

This is one of my characters that I have been writing...

My new story is first person, but interspersed within the story are letters and journal entries from her boyfriend's journal. This is one of them. I know you can hear my voice in this.


“I WILL REMEMBER YOUR SMALL ROOM, THE FEEL OF YOU, THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW, YOUR RECORDS, YOUR BOOKS, OUR MORNING COFFEE, OUR NOONS OUR NIGHTS, OUR BODIES SPILLED TOGETHER, SLEEPING, THE TINY FLOWING CURRENTS, IMMEDIATE AND FOREVER, YOUR LEG MY LEG, YOUR ARM MY ARM, YOUR SMILE AND THE WARMTH OF YOU WHO MADE ME LAUGH AGAIN.”

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

When I was a child, beauty and magic was everywhere. I found it in the big yard, in forests and rocks and waters. Sometime after I had become what is considered an adult, I lost the beauty and magic. At first I didn’t realize it was gone, just that everything about life irritated or prickled or drew blood. This was a slow time where the beauty and magic would occasionally flirt with me while I was under the influence of one thing or another, but it would escape, slipping from my fingers. I would be left with the still gripping hand, saying “What was that? For a second, I remembered something…”

Eventually, the darkness became so intense that I could never see those snatches of beauty and magic. I sought the catharsis of other things, various distractions that reminded my unconscious mind of the hidden, the forgotten, the treasure of my life. Time
passed, and as it did, it became apparent to me that the world and its outside forces were not the root of my problem, it came from within. The memory of the beauty and magic returned with full force, and instead of being a comfort, it became a tormentor.
It taunted me with its smells in a warm spring day or the solemn silence of watching snow fall on a holy winter night. It hung and wavered like crepe paper streamers left after a party; just shreds of the happy times gone past.

I rack my memory. How did I see the beauty and magic when I was a child? How did it leave me? Or worse still, is it so buried and hidden and remote that it is impossible to retrieve? I live in a shell of what I was, an empty room that echoes and stills and remembers what used to be but is no more.

So I follow the song’s advice and party ‘til I pass out, drink ‘til your dead but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m waiting; either for the death or the complete madness that brings the beauty and magic back to me.

So what? It's Christmas

1. What natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones, floods, landslides, etc) is your area prone to?

Hurricanes. Last summer we felt the DC earthquake. My sister. Yeah...

2. What natural disasters have you experienced firsthand?

Hurricanes. In particular, Hurricane Fran, 1996.



This is Oak Island, NC. where my family's beach house was, before we sold it in 2005. The worst thing I saw was this little crushed house that still bore it's name sign:
Our Dream. I don't know if I have ever cried so hard in my life as I did at that sight.

3. Have you ever been evacuated due to a natural disaster?

Back in the seventies, we were down during a hurricane. A Coast Guard officer came to our door. I remember his yellow slicker blowing in the furious winds. He told us to evacuate and Daddy said we'd be all right. The officer took out a clip board and asked him the name and number of our next of kin. When we left (and we did) the water was coming across the road and sea foam blew around like cotton.

4. Have you made/do you make any special preparations in case of natural disaster where you live?

No. Just know it is coming, and that wait for the endless howls of the wind.

5. What type of natural disaster scares you the most?

The hurricanes used to, but since the house is no longer my own I don't fear them as much. Of course, I know that if I discovered it had been destroyed (along with the pieces of my heart I left in there) I would be crushed.

Friday Five, two days late and a dollar short

1.Where have you been that could best be described as a winter wonderland?

Ha! No where, really. My back yard? This winter has seen more snow than I can remember in a long time, maybe ever.



2.In what way might you describe this as the winter of your discontent?

Oh, BUDDY. My husband has been in the hospital twice: once with gall bladder removal which turned out to have complications, then again two weeks later he spent four more days in with pancreatitis. I got a really bad cold. My Aunt Carol Bryant died. BCBS yanked us around some more about Bryant's hidradenitis treatments. Should I go on?

3.What was the last wintergreen-flavored thing you tasted?

Frost mints. But Andy ate most of them! :D

4.Is there anyone in your life who could be nicknamed Old Man Winter?

Heh heh heh...



5.Now that the holidays have passed, is there anything good about the winter that remains?

I hate the After Christmas blahs. I always feel as if I didn't do up the holidays "hard" enough...you know? People talk about being so busy with friends and parties and gift buying and making special treats. we never seem to be involved in any of that. I actually planned my wedding for February because I felt like it would give me something to look forward to after the holidays. Our 22nd anniversary was Friday. Oh well. :D