healing from depression

the most important threads to weave together are love and meaning. love and meaning can become the same cell but do not have to, do not always. emptiness, depression, anxiety, these are deep thrashing or motionless helplessness when love or meaning are absent. 

in depression the meaning and interest of the world drains away. the thoughts of depression are difficult to propose to average people who have no replies and often no interest in looking in that direction at all. they are afraid of what you are saying and their own lives hold no answer. brush your teeth, they are thinking. take a shower, drive your children to school, work hard, get some exercise! i like dark chocolate. sometimes wine at the end of the day. do something nice for someone. have you seen that show Arrested Development? hilarious! i like a good tv show at night. family, of course. i enjoy planning trips, yes a good trip, a vacation. good for you. 

when meaninglessness approaches it devastates these rituals as a tornado devastates a southern town, clipping gasoline tanks and yanking electrical lines from the ground like bad teeth gaping with mounds of dirt cavities, scraping the ground clean, leaving the soil, the core. so the depression asks what is the core? 

if you are depressed and asking regular people what is the core it is being buckshot in your gut and walking with hands holding your intestines in and asking the next door neighbor lady if she can please, tell you how to fix it. she can't, and if you wait for her, you will die.

if you are depressed and you rub up against your friends, they might get those flecks of molecules and become infected and buckshot and holding their guts in their hands. so your friends may not stick around. they may stick around but take two steps back, big steps like they tell you to take in the army. people still love you but they don't want to be swallowed by the void. what you need is people who have already tesseracted. you need people already got shot and still run round the streets with their huge ugly scars. people who aren't gingerly sitting at home rubbing their scars will coconut oil and never bending over to get toys from underneath the couch because the scars might rip. you need people who aren't afraid to rip open. this isn't most people. one way that you end up more depressed when you are depressed is by moving toward and being deflected person after person. you can start to hate everyone or be confirmed in hopelessness. this is false. you are not finding the right people. they are there. i am here. keep looking. if you don't have the energy, retain the knowledge that when you do, they will be out there.

after those people you have the works of people, and the works of nature. the work of people in books and art and film are the college that your best surgeons went to. they know how to sew you up. lesser and better people than you have been buckshot and lived. listen to them. they told their stories, they recorded the images that sat with them in the darkness and then in the light. watch. learn. move from the prison memoir to the saint and connect the two. 

in the wild if an animal is wounded it may roll in the mud and lay in the sun next to the water and pant. this is good practice.

if you always know the direction in which to move, no one can promise you that you will have the energy to move there. but there are some promises and truths that even a buckshot depressive can hold. we are all alive and we all die and we do it all in and out of two states: alone-connected, and connected-alone. 

alone-connected is when you are alone inside your experience no matter who loves you or who you love. this is trapped in the brain. we spend a sad amount of time here. part of moving away from depression is moving out of our brain and into the larger shared experience of life. this is abstract but not completely. there are ways. alone-connected can be peaceful. there are times where alone-connected is restful. when it is not, you can usually move out in time. when you are depressed, you can't, you don't.

connected-alone is when your primary state of being is an awareness that you are connected to other human beings and to life on this planet. in this state you feel pain or even suffering but you are not despairing. 

depression is alone-connected. depression is lack of meaning. depression is lack of emotion. depression is repression. knowing what depression is, we know what it is not; we know to force our bodies to do and hope our mind and soul catches up. hope our buckshot gut heals. this is the scene in a movie where the depressed character is so depressed she barely speaks or eats and most people give up on her. but someone doesn't. someone takes her to the garden everyday and they sit in the sunshine and the other person does what? reads poetry out loud? who would do that these days? i would. the other person watches movies with her. the other person takes her every day or every week to deliver food to AIDS patients. what happens next in the plot? the depressed character makes a connection with one of the AIDS patients and begins to heal. or the depressed person becomes obsessed with the butterflies in the garden and begins to paint them. she wakes up. it could be that the depressed character never wakes up and never heals her buckshot gut and never gets out of the prop wheelchair. but probably she will.

if we are patient and consistent the mind can heal. the spirit can heal. like parenting a small child, we offer love. we wait, we have faith in the process, we nurture, we model, we are gentle. we apologize for our mistakes.

finding meaning and connection. i had my oldest son at nineteen years old. i was depressed when i became pregnant with him, and by the time he was born, i was not depressed anymore. was it simple, or easy? no. but it's true, that statement i made. his life gave my life meaning and taught me a lifelong lesson: finding meaning is the antidote to depression and existential crisis. 

i still had to go to therapy. i still took medication. i still did yoga, worked out, and listened to tapes that helped anxiety as i feel asleep. i still kept a diary per my therapist's request. i still read self help books. but i had found what remains. i had found the ground to stand on: help someone else. ( my baby ) love someone who no one else is taking responsibility for. ( my baby ) give your physical energy ( wake up in the middle of the  night five times a night every night for the first year ) give your mental energy ( read a million books on parenting, join a website on attached parenting, write nightly therapy lists ) give your spiritual energy  ( pray every night even though God, who knows ) give more than you think you can ( face my demons in therapy, be honest about who i was, give up smoking cigarettes all day, start college, change my eating habits ) and you will begin to be connected-alone.

one of the times in my life i felt the most depressed was right before i stood in front of a mirror with my bra off and eyed my swollen purpling nipples and asked out loud why they might look like that, before my mom said ' could you be pregnant? ' and the answer was yes. the  year before this i was deeply depressed and it is because i was not engaged in meaning. my friends were nice but they were all running from hard truths, again, like most people. my job was fine but meaningless to me. my writing had no purpose and lay on the page, lost. i went to coffee shops with  my friends and sucked on cigarettes and listened to everyone bullshitting and thought if this was life, it had nothing for me. i can only be happy when engaged on the deepest levels of life. i can only enjoy bullshitting when it is accompanied by everything else, not the blanket i drag along with me as a comfort, gathering mold and shit and dirt and covering me even in sleep. 

i have a friend who lives in Portland. she has little money and many problems of many kinds like most of us. she was upset that bees were dying. she was scared about the effect of rapid bee death rates on our planet. she read about it. she talked about it. she watched movies, she thought, she wrote. and then she decided to start a fundraiser and raise bees in her backyard. and now she stands with huge gloves and goggles and looks at the miniature world of bees. she created meaning in forward motion, she created meaning by connecting and helping. 

if you don't eat well, and your body is out of balance and you don't exercise and you take in chemicals in your food and products all day, you might get depressed even if you are raising a million bees and saving children every weekend. if you have mental illness in your family history, you might get depressed even if you start your own charitable foundation. there are components. there are things to consider. there is the reality that you are a biological organism and you must address the health of your body and mind. 

but without connection and meaning, you will not heal.

right now i am depressed. 
but i am not hopeless.
i am not despairing.

i connect myself as hard as a bee ejecting its stinger into the flesh of a human being, and wait for the effect. it will come.

Work Anxiety, Grateful Anyhow

My body is not co-operating. The body: I am alternately overly identified with my physical self and alarmingly detached from the freckles and fat, breast and butt, hair and yellowed teeth, bones and beating heart that allow me to do what humans usually do- experience the world through touch, taste, sound, sight, my feet on the ground, my arms around hers, food in my mouth, the hot car door underneath my cold, hypothryoid stricken fingers. I am exhausted, getting through my normal five day a week workouts has become very hard, my muscles ache, my fingers are swollen, IBS has cropped up again and I am in general just not vibrant with health. 

Mr. Curry began gluten free about two weeks ago and I am SO DAMN PROUD OF HIM. After reading Grain Brain, I asked him if he would try it, mainly to see if we could affect the bipolar in a positive way, and he said yes. He's doing it 100% and can feel a positive difference, even though he is having horrible cravings. I am GF with him, although I am 95% and not 100%. I have something with gluten maybe twice a week, like a bagel once and a bowl of cereal another time. For the most part, I feed my family healthy fats and proteins alongside fruits, nuts and vegetables. I am obsessed with KIND bars- I eat one every morning with coffee. 

I think that the terror over losing my paying day job ( the little girl I watched moved away ) and being, so far, unable to replace it, is manifesting in my body. Although I do not feel panicked, I feel constant, thrumming anxiety find a job make money find a job make money. I apply to at least one writing job a day, which is all I have time for. The cover letter takes a half hour to an hour to write, crafted for that specific job, then attach resume and links, hit send, never hear a peep from them again. Repeat. I have a number of online resources for writing jobs that I am suited for, which is more than I can say for the last time I attempted this. Meanwhile, I continue writing for pay for two publications, submitting freelance articles and essays and various others- like the grant I applied for a few weeks ago. It's for writers ( or other types of artists, they  have four categories, I believe ) with children under age 18 who need financial help. I send the first 25 pages of my novel ( their specific request ) and spent two hours filling out their application, hit send, wait. The publications and acceptances do keep coming in a steady- although  not fast paced and exciting- stream, and that is extremely gratifying. 

I am insanely in love and enamored with Ever, as is Mr. Curry and really all our other kids, too. She's just a fireball of opinions and cuteness and funny sayings and has a cinnamon dashing of freckles along her nose and cheeks that slay me. I feel incredibly lucky and joyful that I am with her all day and all night, as I was with the other kids…the feeling of luckiness never goes away, even when I'm down, I look at her and am so grateful that I am her mother, and that I can teach her as I see fit in these formative years. She is KILLER polite, and I am proud of that. In public she says 'excuse me' if she's in someone's way, or 'sorry' if she bumps into someone, and before petting any dog does as she was instructed and approaches the adult, saying in her squeak voice: 'Excuse me? Can I pet your dog?' People always gush about her manners and she looks very smug. The smugness of toddlers is so funny.

The other day I said to her, after a mistake ' Oh that's OK honey, it's not your fault. '

And very seriously she replied ' I know mommy. It's your fault. Everything is your fault!'

Depressed In California

Sometimes I think the images are eating my words. The more photos crowd Photoshop and Picmonkey and spill into my email and camera memory the less my brain can express with language. The Sad Fish is eating my brains like the bad zombie it is, and that with the constant tide of this last year- over a year- of my husband coming back and just barely touching before being sucked back in the dark waters.  Medications, purple and blue and white, voodoo magic, I will prick each finger and bleed if it worked. I'd eat bananas for each meal. I'd make brussel sprouts my only vegetable for the rest of my life. I'd lose a hand. I really would, for a lifetime reprieve for him. For us.

You must think of anything else
You can't think of anything else
You must think of everything else
You can't think of anything else
You must think of them.
So you do.

There are bright flashes of other moments but overall there is just the enormous knowledge that what I'm doing isn't working to end this depression and that seeming good enough for everyone else isn't enough even though- even though- it's so much better than NOT being good enough for everyone else, and of course by everyone else I mean my four kids. I've been doing things that have helped- regular exercise for two months now- low sugar, little infusions of good, like TED talks or a funny movie- but at this point I need more. So I'm thinking maybe a support group. Looking into it. I don't want to have to up my medication, I'm on 25 zoloft now, but if I have to, I will. I guess. Blah.

I am constantly thinking of the good, beautiful and the love, but I can't feel it.
That is depression. And everyone who has lost someone knows, an absence hurts. A void has it's own kind of pain that is not like a direct blow, but just as disabling over time.

I am following the Buddhist way and accepting how I feel
Because apparently I have to learn over and over and over and over that fighting the good fight isn't always a sign of strength- sometimes it's a sign of fear, and the bravest thing I can do is admit, surrender, and take care.

Ahoy mates. I surrender.

Listening to THIS " The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again " Steve Martin and Edie Brickell

Breakdown Of The Nights of An Insomniac Neurotic

Food consumed this weekend:

Doubleshot 1/2 caf. with soy

Kind bar (raw nuts and fruits)

Cake 

Linguini with crab

Bread

1 stuffed small mushroom

Corona Light

Cake2

Bagel

Doubleshot, 1/2 caf. with soy

Egg and turkey bacon sandwich 

Cake3

2 black bean avocado and cheese burritos

1/2 a Pacifico

1 bag Oreo 'chips' (some Weight Watchers thing that is delicious)

Cup of Noodle

Rocky Road Ice Cream

Pacifico 

So. Yeah. Pretty sure I'm not making premium breastmilk for Kinny with these ingredients.

Stress. Eating. Stress. Eating.

Lying in bed at night trying to sleep. Keep feeling like I have head lice and scratching head. I have no head lice. Give up. Turn on T.V. It's 2am. Ever is sleeping next to me. Lola is asleep on the small bed pushed up next to my bed. Mr. Curry is sleeping on Lola's bed in Lola's room. Turn on T.V. Realize You've Got Mail is just starting, feel tremendously happy. Love  You've Got Mail. Perfect antidote to fearful, neurotic brain: Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, snappy dialogue, sweet, New York, Meg's apartment, Meg's bookstore, the computer messaging back and forth, Parker Posey and Greg Kinnear as the nevermeanttobes, love. Tell self I will fall asleep during movie. Stay up and watch entire movie, minus a break where I spend 20 or more minutes searching for fleas. Find and kill five fleas.

Borax and vacuuming is working, yes. Downstairs for food, back upstairs. Read A Stained White Radience. Fall asleep 4am, neurotic worrying brain finally overcome with fatigue. Wake early, give baby to Mr. Curry, back asleep until 11am.

Ashamed to admit I watched half of Waterworld.

Watched three episodes of Investigates...  and 48 Hrs. etc all which included brutal, in house murders.

Checked downstairs at 1am including closets and laundry room, holding a kitchen knife. Realized I was heading for crazytown and am not allowed to watch those shows anymore, indefinitely. 

List of Worries

Dakota

Mr. Curry

Lola

Ian

my sister Lura who I haven't seen in 9 years

my lack of job

cancer

heart attacks

babies crying in cribs and no one is picking them up

kids getting abused and no one knows

the boy who lives in my complex and is fat and everyone at his school is making fun of him and his dad said he tried to stop it/had meetings with school/nothing is working/son is miserable, keep thinking what can i say to him to help? 

the Supreme Court and health care

my lack of insurance 

Dakota's friend who I believe is very sad

the two women I've read about online in the last week who died of breast cancer and were only in 30's

my novel

babies throwing fits and people getting angry and yanking them

all the babies that cry so much at daycare and preschool because there are too many babies and not enough teachers and i can't believe this is normal/acceptable but it is

Then I start over again with my family. 

This is the last few nights. Melatonin, I"m looking at you. 

West Coast!

(Dakota made me say that)

xo

The Depersonalization of a New Mother

Mr. Curry is back for himself and then, for us. I wish I could say the same for myself. Since Ever's birth, a strange and unsettling dissociation has me in it's grips, and I am never- almost- never grounded. My mind, already inclined to flight, has detached itself like a whimsical balloon that floats above everything and everyone, largely unconcerned with the problems of the body below.

The distinguishing characteristic of depersonalization disorder is the feeling that one is going through the motions of life, or that one’s body or self is disconnected or unreal. Mind or body may be perceived as unattached, seen from a distance, existing in a dream, or mechanical. Such experiences are persistent and recurrent, and lead to distress and dysfunction. Chronic depersonalization is commonly accompanied by “derealization,” the feeling that features of the environment are illusory. It should be noted that characteristics attributed to depersonalization disorder must be independent of any kind of substance abuse. It should also be noted that depersonalization as an isolated symptom may appear within the context of a wide variety of major psychiatric disorders. For example, mild episodes of depersonalization in otherwise normally functioning individuals have been reported following alcohol use, sensory deprivation, mild social or emotional stress or sleep deprivation, and as a side effect to medications. However, severe depersonalization is considered to be present only if the sense of detachment associated with the disorder is recurrent and predominant. > Psych Central

I have anxiety disorder, most of you know, and have since I was a little girl. At times, the fever pitch of anxiety snowballed into panic attacks, clawing one after the other their way up my spine and into my soul and brain like crazed cats, spiraling so that every moment of life was filled for me with pure terror, dread. During my pregnancy with Ever, I had taken the smallest possible dose of zoloft until finally I took none, so that when she was born I had none in my blood, my brain. I felt wonderful. I felt wonderful lying down to receive the morphine for my C-Section- the first I have ever had- I was prepared, informed, and had Mr. Curry next to me, holding my hand, telling me a story to distract from the large needle delivering the juice to my spine.  As the numbness began to spread through me, as the morphine moved its way through the river of veins, a slow and terrible anxiety began to grip me. Oh no, I remember thinking so clearly, looking at the bright white lights, the bright white sheets, the bright white room, the gleaming silver equipment, the masks of the nurses, oh no. I sought out Mr. Curry's eyes, large and hazel, flecked with gold, eyelashes long and dark. He looked straight into me, as he always does, and I felt the safety of his love arriving alongside the free for all of anxiety. Flanked, motherfucker. I gripped his hand tighter. He leaned over, seeing my distress. It's OK honey, you are doing great. I love you, we are having our baby. 

Ever was lifted out of me and I heard her cry, that timeless clarion call, like a startled kitten, she meowed in a scratchy rhythm. And still, alongside now Mr. Curry's love, alongside this new love, was the red river of anxiety, burning it's way through my body, setting fires, freeing monsters.

I was in a very bad way for weeks afterward.  From the exact moment my conscious woke in the morning, before I had chance to open my eyes and take in something good, something light, something whole, anxiety was wielding it's bricks and pounding my brain, my heart. The overwhelming terror is impossible to explain, and yet in the midst of it, I try over and over to tell Mr. Curry. It feels like... someone is standing over me with a bloody knife and they have just stabbed you and now they are going to stab me. It feels like... all our children are dying of cancer.  It feels like... we were just told nuclear war is happening and we are all going to die. It feels like... I'm in a car going over a cliff but it's happening in slow motion and no one can save me... I use brutal words. He listens to me patiently, silently, with his body turned toward me. Absorbing what he can for me. 

My entire body vibrates with fear. My hands shake. My stomach is visibly quivering. The skin around my mouth twitches. Small electrical discharges move the long smooth muscles of my thighs and arms without my consent. The first time this happened to me, years ago, I thought I had MS, or Parkinsons, the disease my Grandmother Elizabeth died of.  My face goes numb in patches; a large stretch of skin across my calves burns hot, then freezing cold. My eyes burn, my vision blurs, the tips of my fingers sear with pain. My stomach is coiled into a tiny hard pit stinking with the fumes of fear: cortisol and adrenaline pump like oil rigs day and night. I cannot eat.  I make myself eat for the baby, the breastmilk.  I cannot sleep. I make myself sleep for the baby, the children. I have to use the bathroom a hundred times a day, shitting out the contractions of my gut. At times the terror overwhelms me so that I grip the closest table or counter or thing, just anything solid and stronger than I am, something to hold onto while the wave crashes across me. I breathe. I pray. I use every single piece of knowledge and wisdom I have ever been taught to make it through the day and the night and then again. I wake in the morning, freezing cold every inch, and do what Mr. Curry reminds me every day. Take care of the children. Don't think about yourself. Think about them. And it is the thing that keeps me from flying into a million shattered fragments.

Tell your mind, Mr. Curry coaches me, every day, every morning on the phone and every afternoon on the phone and every afternoon when he comes home and then again at bedtime. Tell your mind, There is no war. There is no dying. This is not happening. But it could be, I plead, it doesn't matter, it might happen, it could happen!  It DOES matter, he says firmly, our life matters, we love our children, we love each other, and every second we have alive and together matters to us Maggie. It matters. If tomorrow something happens we would look to today to see if we had been glad for what we had. Focus! And I cling to his words which I believe and he believes and they keep me moving. I cave quickly after three days of this, I take the zoloft, a high dose, for me, and I weep and fear for my breastfeeding. Mr. Curry and I talk it over and I discuss it with the pediatrician at Ever's checkup and I decide to keep nursing her. 

Time passes.

I get better. But I am nursing Ever, and co-sleeping, and so I am wakened many times a night, and although this lessons as she gets older, still, I never get more then four hours of sleep at one time. I am better, I eat wonderfully, I take the important fish oils, the b-vits, the multiple, I move my body, I get sunshine, and I get better. But I am consumed with  my infant daughter and her tiny, new body and soul, and the sleepless and four kids and working and laundry and husband and moving and money and constant notenoughmoneynotenoughmoney and work/homework/dinner/bath/write/sleep repeat and through the blur of this time I push my hands and part the curtain and realize that I cannot feel myself inside this story. I am telling the story, and I am watching the story, but I am detached. 

I have, at four children, one a nursing baby, met my match.  I am overwhelmed to a degree that I never predicted when pregnant with Ever, never having worked with a baby before.  I had no idea what the pull of a full time job and four children would feel like, and it is feeling like a balloon head, floating over the body and soul of a person who I recognize, somewhat as me- unshaven, hair a messy bun, bags under my eyes, notes scribbled in ink on the back of my hand as I hopelessly try to keep up with the VIP TO DO LIST, ten pounds overweight, out of shape, clothes ill fitting and sporting the occasional hole, a distracted and possibly pissy look on my freckled face.  I had sunglasses, but I lost them. Again.  I am doing. I am making. I am working. I am mothering. I am even having sex with my husband. But I am not all here. I am not all me.

are you a sad fish too?

In the news: a father, a mother at sixteen, a thirteen year old charged as an adult, a dog trapped in the sewer system, these five men, this famous singer, faulty wiring, a family torn apart by this devastating lie, a baby, a toddler, a car accident, a horrible accident no one could have predicted it it just happened, a man who did something good for a woman, a man who did something bad to three women, a horrible accident everyone predicted it still happened.

Remember to carry your sadness inside. Do not bury it. Carry it. Remember to let it go occasionally and watch it fall apart at your feet. Remember to dance on its grave. Allow time for slow motion, disco, modern and robot dance maneuvers. Remember to lift the corners of your mouth enough to prevent an entire day of What's wrong? Remember everyone has an answer to that question. Constantly address the present moment, like Hey what's up PM? What's happening? You chill? Check out the PM's dress, manner, body language and if the PM is a dirty rat bastard, address it with the steely, dignified acceptance and enduring faith of someone you wish you are,  someone you read about in a Robert Parker or Joyce Carol Oates novel, and are sure you will become more like if you just keep pretending.  Wear appropriate shoes. Find something small that is beautiful and carry it with you, like a rainbow keychain, a necklace of gold, your nails in chevron stripes. Glance at it all day. When The Sadness becomes a fish flapping nastily on the riverbank, reach back deeply into your throat, pull it out, flog it repeatedly while cursing in a loud and vigorous manner until breaking a sweat and becoming red of face and neck. When properly flogged, sternly yet quickly lecture The Sadness on it's proper place in your life, being a good example for the children, remembering how much you actually have, that you are not special, Sad Fish, just another Sad Fish- actually a lot LESS sad than many in the river, and shove the flat and emasculated fish back into your gut, where it will hopefully remain meek and subdued for quite some time, or at least long enough to get you through this thing you have to do or  that other thing that must be done, or the kids are in bed. Possible containment of The Sadness through medium glass of wine, which will either bring forth unencumbered weeping- therefore preventing public doing so- or giggling ridiculousness.  Let is be made clear that giggling and ridiculousness are both highly desirable and should be sought after as much as possible.***Do not make mistake of assuming the drink can kill The Sadness, and fall into the wishitwere's. The drink cannot kill The Sadness, but when misued, can feed the Sad Fish until it is bloated, enormous and agitated, unable to be properly sorted, flogged or carried. The Sad Fish may, in this case, with scales of liquor and beer, lay eggs. In this case, you are truly fucked, until you make your way to a vigorously practicing AA meeting, rehab, or a spiritual experience.***Consume as much material as possible re: survival. Include: children's stories, YA fiction, poetry, French films, 80's and 90's American dramatic films, any marvelous novel, classical, gospel, folk, alternative music, memoirs, certain TED lectures and face to face discussions.  Consume as much happiness as possible and is available. FATAL MISTAKE: to begrudge happiness because you are angry/disenchanted/hurt/exhausted/sickofit or the worst of all: feeling sorry for yourself. FSFY is a known killer, causing Sad Fish to lay eggs, causing normal living humans to become the walking dead.  Unable to appreciate or acknowledge the good things and people around them out of a stubborn sense of being singled out in life for pain or fear of losing focus on the shitty things and/or people's sympathy for them, FSFY causes severe uglification and decay of the soul, slowly poisoning a person until they vomit up their Sad, Dead Fish, and eat it while hissing brains, brainsssssss. FSFY must be avoided at all costs. Better to become a Sickeningly Positive Person than a FSFY. FSFY's do not get great sex, great friends, family that likes them or even dogs that adore them. FSFY's are toxic to normal human beings and are not allowed past the sitting room. Think ridiculous thoughts that make you chuckle to yourself, even if you must look around nervously afterward, feeling stupid and wondering if anyone heard you. Lay in grass in sunshine. Take hot baths and read. Watch hilarious movies and shows. Be around children often. Help someone else, every day. When you want to growl, bark or bite at your family or friends, slap yourself, begin again. It's exactly like your damn mother told you: practice, practice, practice. No one becomes great at being sad without a shitload of effort. Remember The Sadness is going to be a part of your life, forever. Why? Was that you, in the corner with the green headphones, ear piercing and energy drink who asked that? Because you were the lucky winner of life. You got chosen to be alive. Life is a package deal. It comes with The Sadness. It begins the first time we feel the sharp and salty tang of loss, yearning and frustration as an infant, and let out a wail. Have sex you wanted to but were afraid to. Do yoga. Stretch. Instead of walking to your car, skip. You will feel ridiculous. And better. You will find those two words often go together; if you want to feel better, you have to be willing to be ridiculous. Take out your Sad Fish, put glasses and a hat on him, and dance with his short rubbery little arms in yours. Carpe Sad Fish! Later he'll be so tired you will have an hour of peace. When you wake up every morning, slap water on  your face and say to your reflection ' Well, you ain't no prize. '  This keeps you in check, and lessens possibility of FSFY. Then smile at yourself and say ' Well, on the other hand, you ain't a piece of shit, either. ' 

where the car disconnects from the rails

a counter-intuitive photo for this post: goofy in the face of sadness

I'm in the downward loop of the roller coaster, the part where your guts gets gone, where the disconnect between you and the rest of the world is disconcerting. Depression is not how, it is why. Depression is not when but who cares when? I drive and the music plays and the muted sand colored suburban houses flash past me with the blinkered cars beeping and my baby in her carseat and my children/husband/body well, all is well. I had dreams last night of tidal waves and killer whales chasing after me as I held my children and ran. Each time I'd come to the point where I realized no matter how fast I ran or where I hid I could not save them and blink the dream would start over. When horrible things happen those most closely affected wonder what is the meaning of life, why do we do anything? For me, this is highlighted during January, February and March, followed closely by the rest of my life. I have always closely related to Anne Sexton here in My Friend My Friend:

And if I lie, I lie because I love you,
Because I am bothered by the things I do,
Because your hurt invades my calm white skin:
With no special legend or God to refer to,
I think it would be better to be a Jew.

For the comforts of religion and more so faith. Although many including I have decreed the subjugation and at times dehumanizing rules of certain religions, I cannot deny that there is a weak and wounded part of myself that would like to be bullied into behaving, that would like to be scorned into productivity, ritual, that would like to exchange freedom and self-creation for rules created thousands of years ago. Some ballast against the incredibly daunting and at times, terrifying enormity of the Universe and my appallingly minascule place in it. My mother told me once, in a brilliant stroke of observation, that many people get into marriage because they want, secretly, to have someone to provide rules and to provide a God like meaning to their lives, and they are, to their own confusion, increasingly angry and let down as the marriage reveals that they have in fact only harnessed themselves to another mortal being, capable of failing even themselves most profoundly. Even the most staunchly individualized person can find themselves desperate for a larger rulebook than their own moral compass when confronted with life's inevitable losses and random, swift blows to the heart.

Maybe it was the constant fear and lonliness of my childhood, but I have always had an extestential evaluation going on inside of me. When I turned 15 and became, overnight, immensely appealing to boys (and troublesomely, men) I scorned each and every glance, whistle, appreciative remark. They have no idea what matters in life, I thought. ( This clearly explains why I felt so many million of miles removed from my friends. Who thinks like that at 15 without a Pope telling them to?) I've always known what matters in life, and then underneath that, there has always been The Question:

Why does it matter?

I look to those who act when meaning is challenged. When I read Holly's latest update, I wonder intensely how she is going to survive this, most particularly how she is going to survive getting up, doing her makeup, her hair, making breakfast, vacuuming, framing pictures, running errands: the minutae of life. I cannot understand how people make themselves do these things after the loss of a child. I suspect there is some profound and irrevocable place inside of me that is missing what these people have. I have barely held up enacting the mundane in my life as is. The common refrain you do it for those you love falls inside of the deepest well of longing in my heart but for them, what either? If tragedy can and will cut them down, because life ends, for all of us, and because, most importantly to me, this part of the question- because we suffer so very much, then why?

I suspect the only way I could survive this kind of tragedy would be to alter my life in such a dramatic and enormous way that it reflected even in some small way the enormity of the loss.
Move to Africa and campaign for malaria protective tents. Move to Alabama and start an organization for abused children. Polly Klass' father started an entirely new life after her kidnapping and murder. I carefully watch Kate for clues at to how she is doing what is, to me, the greatest feat of strength a human heart can endure- continuing on after the death of her child. She has other children, some very young- Georgia just 6 months- and a husband, a house, a job- she couldn't just upend her entire life and start over without dragging all these people she loves with her. So how, in the face of constant reminders of her loss, underneath the weight of an emotional pain so intense and degrading I cannot imagine, how does she do it? What does she believe about life that keeps her going?

Small beliefs flicker inside of me, but I have always been a person driven deeply by emotional instinct and a primal desire to survive. I had only a few years of childhood that were innocent and happy before the day to day became painful, lonely and scary, and we had no religion or faith. I had only what I created out of novels and my imagination. Some part of me is simply satisfied enough to be the kind of person who perseveres to keep on going when things feel impossible. I wonder what if? What if there is more to it all than I can see? Possibility. And sometimes, that is enough. Our unity is a kind of religion. We are all in this together, the human family. We all live and we all die. And sometimes, that is enough. I have four children and I want more for them that what I have, more faith in a larger meaning than I have. I crave for them what I do not have. And sometimes, that is enough.

Post Partum Anxiety

Hello my friends. I am not able to post as I had expected. I have developed postpartum anxiety. I have had to increase my zoloft to 100 which I had so much hoped not to do. I talked to Ever's pediatrician at her follow up visit and she agrees zoloft is the safest drug for breastfeeding moms but still who wants to take a drug when they are nursing their beautiful baby. I am praying and hoping for it to work and am not sure how long to expect to wait. I think I feel maybe 20% better than I did a few days ago. This alternate world that my chemical makeup is forcing me to live in is horrible. I am afraid all day. Of everything and nothing. I tremble and do my breathing excercises. Mr. Curry is my rock. I am doing the best I can for my children. That is the focus of my world right now, to hold it together for my kids. I love my baby girl so much and hate having to spend my time wrapped in this horrible feeling. I can barely write these words. Thank you all for your loving comments on Ever in the last post. She is an angel and all the kids are wonderful with her.

Stuck: The Long Venting

I don't mean to be such a roller coaster. It's just that I'm trying very hard. So that is clear. The more I try, the more each moment of rage and grief and yes, self pity, becomes a tsunami. As if all the other 23 hours of the day I was holding back the water with sheer force of will. So that when I hit a weak moment I literally bust the seam. I picture a huge boil and the smallest of lances. The tiny hole made and the entire thing erupting all inflammatory and ugly. I work all day on how I'm 'framing' what is happening right now, like my therapist long ago taught me. I work all day on redirecting my thoughts as if they are unruly toddlers. I work at breathing. I work at not panicking or over inflating the problems. I work at accepting my part in everything. I smile and laugh at work and I feel a relative calm and peace. And then I can come home and the stomach ache starts. I can't eat at home. The entire last two weeks. I eat all day, then I come home, and despite my best efforts I feel a cramping sick in my low low gut, and my stomach feels hard and high and gross, and the thought of eating dinner makes me want to puke. The stomach ache is some kind of physical trigger for my thoughts, which immediately turn to resentful anger that I feel this way. I have two more goddamn months left of this pregnancy, I think, I just want to breathe. Then I tell myself I'm the only one responsible for breathing. For managing my emotions. GROW UP, I tell myself, and get to doing what needs to be done. And I do, and still, at some point every night the emotions are lanced and I literally cannot hold back the tears, and my chest feels so full of pain and sadness you would think I just experienced something much worse than broken hopes and hard times.

The whole pregnancy I managed to avoid feeling this way. Even when the anxiety was kicking my ass I still felt a nice, clean lack of self pity. I hate self pity. I lose respect for people who have too much of it in certain forms, myself included. I have no measure for what is normal grief over this situation and what is veering on self pity. At night the house is quiet and still and dark and my body is so deeply sad. I read the article in Time on how mental health of your baby can be partly determined in utero by the amount of stress the mother experiences and I felt FURIOUS. I am angry at my family for not protecting this baby better. I am angry at myself for not handling my anger better, for having to cry every night. I don't know how to let go of what I wanted this to be like in comparison to what it is. I never had a traditional family unit during pregnancy before. I might never be pregnant again...let's face it, I probably won't. Unless the financial fairy blesses us we are done having babies. I wanted this one to be different, I wanted to experience the kind of pregnancy I know is not a pipe dream, it's perfectly possible and I read stories here in blogland all the time about women who are having them. How do I work around this, how do I let go and stop feeling so angry? I cannot remember the lessons of my old therapist or the wise words of authors I have read. All I can seem to do is what I am doing. I'm stuck.

The baby shower is this weekend and all I can feel is exhausted to think about it. A day of slogging through everyone's happy faces and asking ' how are you? ' while I have to lie and say how great everything is at home, how happy everyone is, when no one outside of Lola can spare the emotional focus to ask how Ever is every day, to check on her movements, to ask what needs to be done every day or to take some of the planning and thinking off of me, to see if I've eaten my vegetables or taken my vitamins, to talk to Ever in there, to talk and plan for the stresses and the blocks we are encountering right now, to make lists or read or plan for the labor. Mr. Curry is not available for any of this right now, too overwhelmed from the last month of stress with D, burnt out.*** It is important for my own clarity to note that this is only true for the last couple of weeks. The entire pregnancy has certainly NOT been like this. The last couple of weeks have felt like an eternity, as you can tell by this post. *** The look on his face when I start talking about anything with Dakota or worry about the baby or ask for the 100th time if he's yet read the book I asked him to is so tight and closed off I feel worse than if I just say nothing, so I'm saying nothing now. Not fighting is better and more mature than repeating the same patterns that end with us raising our voices. The kids peace must come first and noisy battles between their parents will only make them stressed, when we are both doing a good job at least of being kind and available and sweet to our children. I am trying as hard as I can not to be enraged at him for this but often failing. My close girlfriends all live far away and my girlfriends here are all going through their own hell in different ways. I feel lonely and emotionally exhausted. My work is exhausting. My mom wants to go to dinner with our relatives flying in on Friday and I just want to stay home and lock myself in my room. How can I say no without being rude? Everyone is coming to see me when I don't want to be seen. And this is making me too sad to know what to do with. I just want so much that I can't have right now. I have no pithy line to end this with. The End.

ps
I'm OK though. Really. I know part of the reason the last two weeks have felt so very long and awful is because I am not on the zoloft, and partly because of the enormous hopes I had for this pregnancy, and partly because when your husband and you have as intimate, close and supportive relationship as Mr. Curry and I do, and then things fall apart for a time, it feels much more dramatic in the meanwhile. The worry about a major Bipolar episode is very hard too, for both of us. I am afraid of it and I know he is too. I need him tremendously right now and part of what this is is me trying to understand how to cope with this disease stealing my husband away when I need him most. Sorting out my emotions and my right to them and what to do with them...while very pregnant, while having a very troubled teen..is kind of really shitty. I mean, it is. But it's not the worst. It's not. We aren't easy people, either of us, with our mental floss all fudgy.

Proof

Relationships are like sharks / you have to keep moving or they die
Life is a great big shark. Depression is the emptiness. Absence. It is not the sharp high Mozart
note of great pain it is the white noise Don DeLillo wrote an entire novel on. The line across the screen. The blank screen after the line. The empty eyes of a brain injured human being. The French say orgasm is a small death. I say depression is the small death that duplicates until it is the great white. Until is is the master of it's ocean. Until there is no more thrashing blood amputated arms stories of survival and triumphant reentry into the point of attack until all that is left is the sea lapping it's wounds and the holes where you were which are now just holes.

I dare you to speak with a seriously depressed person and tell them to
take a boat ride.
it always cheers me up.
well.

I think the closest I've come to hating people is when a serious triumph of mental fuckedness is attended to with boat rides and focusing on the positive. No one understands the inanity of American cheeriness like a depressed American. For every movie we make with Jennifer Aniston and Colgate smiles and face lifted happy endings the French or German or Chinese are making a film where adults have sex with saggy aroused breasts and baggy eyes and weep as they fall asleep before awaking to the moment of comfort of arms that love. Nothing can make me suicidal faster than an American romantic comedy and nothing is more comforting than life reflected the way it is. Why do you think it is people often seem so much better right before they kill themselves. They have figured out what everyone wants and they can supply it for a short time. Boat rides bleached teeth and a complete denial of all the hard hard work and pain that life holds next to it's pretty little tits.

In conclusion I am depressed but please do not tell me to A take a boat ride or B bleach my teeth or C finally do something about the bags under my eyes.

I would like to instead be reminded of the heaviness of this world, it's soul beating slow and steady but covered in the marks of a long life lived. Covered in scars and wound. I would like to be reminded that life is not a pleasure cruise or a vacation or a series of endless highs and acquisition of sex, otherwise we would all be permanently stuck on the movie set of American Pie. I would like to be reminded that this is the best time of my life, man. Because it is. Because I grew up with a brilliant and abusive father and my mother did the best she could. Because my sister was so damaged I haven't talked to or seen her in 7 long years. Because my childhood was one long choppy sea punctuated with sunbursts and ships on far with happy people waving my way who never saw my signs for help. Because my relationship with Mr. Curry is the deepest intimacy I can imagine having with any one human being without bordering on the pathologically codependant, and it still does anyhow. Because I have three children and one on the way who are too much for black typed words to represent. Because I am not in constant physical pain. Because I can get help. Because I can ask for help. Because I have 6 years of therapy and some intensive life workouts behind me. Because I'm not dying, starving, hurting anyone or unable to stop the immense suffering of someone I love.

Charts Prove: my life is awesome and I'm just too fucked up to feel it.

Proof:

my lola: singing oh oh it's magic / never believe it's not sooooo

my employer: yes i can advance you money from your next paycheck to help cover your rent

my mom: i can pick up the kids today

my husband: if you don't like the honey on your breasts, would you like me to just hold you?

my son: well. sometimes we have something positive to say and sometimes we don't say anything at all. the child is 16. let's give him a pass.

my other son: straight up sweet carry the groceries because your rib is hurt doing pushups

my dogs: noses on my lap in concern

my blog: readers who give a shit and do so with soft toilet paper

myself, to myself: that's enough now honey. you've been sad. now pick it up and dance. all you fly motherfuckers just get on out there and dance. dance i said
image Laurie Rosenwal

less than zero

My heart races not in the gallop of gallows but the quick-pat smatters of a child's feet on linoleum. I am free of zoloft: free of repressions, subconscious and chemical changes that carve away at my personhood, free of minimalized orgasms and the creeping vine of subclinical fatigue- free of my combat fatigues. Free also of constancy, of the working control panel of my emotional mind, the tiny receptors and inceptors of neuron and chemical that create the patina of my days, free of the pause button before the avalanche of thought and emotion, free of nights without floating anxiety before my eyes like small motes of decay in the retina.

I am free to know I did the best I could for Ever. Free to worry that a snappish tongue and sandpapered voice is hurting Lola. Free to adore my husband for his quiet shepherding of my volatile moments. Free to examine again, each one an object in the curio, the collection of my fears.

Unnatural grieving- there is such a thing, labeled and written in the books. The kind of grief I know I will experience if X happens, or Mr. Curry dies younger than I expect. Grief like this has the hallmark of a person who loses someone essential to their sense of safety and sense in the world. Yes, my children are essential. Yes, my husband is essential. Perhaps an hard rock childhood throws your balance for a lifetime, making you vulnerable to these kinds of necessities. When I am on a walk and the leaves are skittering in their snaky voices and the wind is blowing and the sky opens and the light dims, I am filled not only with joy but with the deep knowledge and comfort that my husband exists in this and is my companion in our understanding of these leaves, this wind, this light. We look at the world apart but when our eyes meet we are understanding each other in a way that I have never known with any other person in my life. How is it that I would ' grieve normally ' if that were taken away from me? I fear it.

Sleepless in Seattle has the sheen of bull all over it, but the truth it contains resonates with me past the fighting and days or weeks of pain and distance that will take time from most married couples, the disagreements, the profound disappointments, the irritations that chip away at the important. What it got so right was the sense of homecoming. That is my place with Mr. Curry. I suppose that it is a similar feeling believers have with God, but in a very mortal and tangible expression.

What struck me so deeply with Inception was the loss of home that occurred simultaneously with the death of the wife. A fitting metaphor: extradition. Removal from your home. Flight into fantasy, dreamworlds, unsure of reality.

I have been more unsure of reality than most people I come across who seem snugly rooted in the absolute truths of time, birth, death, objects, body. My mind, which often had to leave in escape during childhood, has always felt tethered reluctantly to the egg of my skull. Loving and being loved by Mr. Curry gives me the comfort of earthly grounding because he sees me so clearly. I am seen. I am here.

This is why daily I am so aware of seeing those who are often left alone. The elderly treated in deference but often as strange half human half angelic creatures, not quite alive or dead, but waiting. To meet the eye of a person is a simple thing. A profound thing. Teenagers, too, often left as amusing and strange creatures from another species, especially those who are different- the emos, the true geeks, the socially bizarre, the heshens, sluts, the painfully shy or pierced.

Without zoloft I have to remind myself every hour, every half hour, to breathe, to watch the tide of emotion as it swells, breaks and recedes in the same pattern as birthing contractions. Go with it. Where else will I go? To escape is the human impulse. To go with it is the only way through to the other side. I breathe, I try to keep my mouth shut, to smile at my children, to temper every over reaction and childish fit of frustration with the adult mind that is still there but overshadowed. I remind myself how lucky I am, that in another time I would have gone my whole life without this drug, and who knows what I would have become, after therapy and yoga and nutrition and breathe were simply not enough to balance what was so horribly electrified in my youth, through circumstance and a long legacy of brilliant but imbalanced minds.

Less than zero- to go to the end point of the ray and bend over, fingers gripping the edge of the sidewalk, peer into the complete unknown and uncontrolled. To fall into. To let go. To emerge through the nothingness into something new. To tesseract.

xo
maggie may

fuck that because it's a true thing i hate

The lack-ness ( when lack just isn't enough to express ... _) of the entirety of my little blue pills is causing me to cry daily. My oldest son doesn't like this, understandably, and, because he is sixteen and a boy in our culture, cannot find a way to express how distressed and uncomfortable this makes him, so instead he gets pissy, irritable, rude. Being a teenager who neither drinks nor smokes dope just sucks. High school is a place where 90% of the population drinks every once in a while. We drug test, alcohol test, so he's in a no fuck up zone. He's dealing with other things to, other difficult and painful emotions. Tonight he blew up at me and left the house against my explicit advice to do no such thing. And ended up spending the night with his biological dad. It is the mother in me that instead of feeling angry or hurt at his bad behavior, I'm wracked with guilt and worry over him. I know he's struggling and I hate that I can't be 100% for him right now. It makes me feel horrible.
And I'm getting worse every day, face it folks. I cry more and harder. Please don't give me advice: My mother does that daily. I am exercising. I AM taking fish oil. I am doing every goddamn thing I can but nothing can change the fact that I have severe anxiety disorder and won't put a hole in my Ever's heart so that I can get through this pregnancy with a smile on my face. At this point I'd be happy not to depress my entire family by the time it's done. And my marriage has been awesome, my husband so incredibly sweet the last five months, working 6 days a week and 10 to 12 hour days because it's his busy season, and then coming home and cooking dinner and kissing my cheeks and telling me how beautiful I am and putting the kiddos to bed and trying to get in my pants. Nothing cheers up a girl like her husband trying to get in her bloomers, especially when they are size Large and she's not feeling so hot these days. But he's having a hard week and the last two days been distant, not a crime but a reality in long marriage, the need for space, but something I can barely handle when I'm so .... fragile barf Fuck that because it's a true thing I hate. And also it's possible he might be struggling with bipolar. Too soon to tell. It scares the living daylights out of me because for both of us to be bonkers at the same time.... I am making a therapy appointment for Mr Curry and I, hopefully for next week, and Dakota and I will be seeing his therapist next week too. Modern family, modern weapons, oldest problems in the hills.

The problem seems to be cellular. I was juiced young. Electrified, see. And so when the fever rises and the crazies begin, all my cells juice and release the electricity of past wounds horrors and fears. And the anxiety is like this great big pulley, this horrible machine with ropes and chains and great giant wheels that spin and drag the entire thing- me, see- down the hills of crazy and lonely and scared right until I'm about five years old and standing at my Daddy's brown loafers, sick with misery.

Ah.

I'd have a stiff drink, but.

Yes, all those buts.

So- onward Christian soldier. **I've always wondered where that expression came from.

sunlight in caves

I am very quiet. Full of spinning dials and arrows. Trying to find the peace of mind and heart it takes to carefully open hands, hold still for so long, have the bird fly to your palm. I am observing, and taking care of my children. No matter how sad I feel, the phone still rings, Lola has Girl Scouts, Dakota wants to talk, Ian is here so what should we do it's Saturday and life goes on. I know my place in this Universe. I am not in my childhood, where I was terrified and helpless. I am not in Haiti, an orphan without my left arm, which was cut off without drugs. I am not Nie, recovering from my umpteenth surgery after being burnt head to ankle. I am not mourning. It is January, and it rains. Today it is sunny. My body tells me to sleep all day. Hibernation, the way of depression. I refuse. I have children. I have to move. I have to shower. I have to let life soothe me, and it cannot if I am cowardly and hide. I read about Elizabeth Edwards. I open the pages of many life stories in Borders, my children chattering nearby. There are so many answers in these books, these stories. Lives lived, priceless lessons learned, that I can read and absorb and use. But I have to read. I cannot have eyes clenched shut, no one will wake me up when it's over. That is adulthood. This is it. There won't be a do-over of my thirties, or a revision where instead of what I did is remembered, what I wished I had done is remembered. Walking to get coffee, the sun is on my face. I can see the blue sky. I have so much more than has been subtracted. This is a balance not kept for life. One day I will fall short, surely. I am not in negative. I have to find the way to create the life I want. It is up to me. No one else. I cannot let fear make decisions. The only way to have the life I desire it to insist on it's evolution every day. If I want to be close to my children, to have them love me and trust me, I must insist on balance in myself. I cannot be lazy. Children know everything. They know I am sad. But they will never believe I am standing on a cliff. They will never fear my snapping teeth or wolfish eyes. They will never see me helpless. I will never see myself that way. There is something I can do. I will do it. This way, no matter how bent my back is, the steps are taken, and that is what matters. Step forward. Step forward. It is the only way out- through. Standing still until it is over will only ensure that when I look around, I am exactly where I was when my eyes closed and my feet stopped. So I move. I read. I take my vitamins. I force myself to share when I want to be silent. I force silence when I want to be crazy. I force my body to move when I crave stagnation. I force prayer when I want self-pity. I force exposure here, when I would like to hide. I am the mother now. I am the adult. I am the one in charge. I am making it real.

illustration: Option-G

six vials of blood

A quiet and terrible stillness has overcome me. Mr. Curry went to Arizona Friday to Saturday night and I felt slow, slow. I played dolls with Lola in the bathtub. We were marine biologists discovering new crabs that lived between giant sea rocks (my toes).

Lola made her list for Santa and decorated the list and the envelope. She asked what Santa's cell phone number is, and could we please call him? I replied he's very busy right now. Lola Moon will be 8 this February. Can you believe it? No. We can never believe the passage of time happens to us. Lola had her friend Jocelyn spend the night and they shrieked and we made gluten free brownies and they made a giant art project magazine. The television was on for a short while. I could not get my DVD player to work for my work-out so instead Lola and I put on the 80's cable music channel and I danced around like a maniac for a half hour, remembering to include squats and lunges and horrible things like that. Lola said ' If Daddy was here he'd jump on you and kiss you all over because he loves you so much. You and Daddy just have that special something, you just fit together, I don't know Mom, you just fit. ' I swear that's what she said and it made me so happy.

I don't know what is wrong with me but something is.

I can think of a million things to do that would be fun but I don't want to do them. The baby was due in December and I can't be sure how much this is weighing in here. I miss my sister. I miss my gone baby. I can feel the weight of mortality and suffering from around the globe pressing me down into the dirt like a horrible gravity. Mr. Curry is home and that is a sanctuary. I feel less afraid of life and death when I am in his arms.

My animals have gone Bat Shit Crazy ( tip my hat to Ms. Moon for her phrase ). They are shitting and peeing everywhere to a point where I am going to sit and cry hysterically the next time I have to figure out how to clean up poop that is not only in the carpet but wedged in the crack between the moulding and the wall. Our kittens are striking against the cat box and although I clean it they prefer to find a corner of our sunroom and piss there, frantically scratching the nothing around the pile of pee as if to cover it up. Our dogs are very upset that Dakota is a young man and not around at times, and when he spends the night out they sometimes crap all over.

You can imagine that our house smells like angel's breath.

It is the cuteness of kittens and babies that keeps us from rejecting them when they are making us insane. I think this is also a weapon I have with Mr. Curry.

I sit paralyzed in front of this computer today. I am tired all the time and the doctor ran a bunch of tests and found nothing wrong so he thinks it's my medication and we should add another pill and I say NO. Not going that route. My right hip and butt-cheek hurt like small devils all the time now. It's been on and off since the baby and the last week it's been constant. The doctor says it's sciatica but I don't know. I worry I have another autoimmune disease because I have two already and that makes me much more likely to be the lucky winner of another. I have symptoms that flare and go away that remind me of lupus or some other fun game in my body but I can't prove it.

Neither can my blood. They took SIX VIALS of blood last time looking for problems with my personal factory but I came up at the top of my class so I am confounded.

I am writing my novel and I am terrified TERRIFIED it's trifling smuck and this terror makes the water freeze when it could be flowing and knocking down tree trunks and instead I get caught in the log jam with my arms broken and my neck in some crooked angle and I cannot write another word to save my life and this is why my novel is only a little more than half finished after three years.

Mr. Curry is the love of my life and lately I've been so ridiculously gaga over him that I'm pretty sure the Universe is going to make me pay for this kind of happiness and trust and devotion in spades. Plus the sex is smoking. SMOKING. Whoever said marriage kills sex wasn't trying hard enough.

I feel darkness over my shoulder and then when I look it leaps into my mouth and now it is inside of me and perhaps I am making myself ill. This time of year. This light through the trees. This cold wind. These rains. A wildness fills me and I need to be trudging through mud and rain and hungry and challenging my cells to cowboy up and deal with the elements. I am trying to volunteer at the old folks home where my grandparents stayed and died and apparently they are just CHOCK FULL of volunteers because they aren't responding to my application. Even though the last time I stealthily walked through the urine smelling halls there were rows and rows of old people with crooked faces and vacant eyes and trembling mouths who could use someone to hold their hand and talk to them GODDAMMIT. This kind of suffering is intolerable.

Mr. Curry and I visited his mom who had had back surgery and she happened to be placed in this same ' Assisted Living Facility ' and we visited her and as we left there was a elderly fellow in suspenders in his wheelchair and he looked up at our greetings to him with the sweetest, saddest smile you could ever imagine and both Mr. Curry and I smiled and him and touched him and walked away crying.

Some kind of force of Nature is moving through me and I feel like a boat sitting in a storm just rocking.

Mental Illness

image by Chris Koehler

What is obvious is the flaw. The awful, gaping void in the fabric of wholeness we want so badly to claim, to keep, to show. Then, the flaw made worse: denial. Frantic attempts at mirage, magician-ship, transformation, and then cluelessness turned into it's own void- pretending no knowledge of the truth, turning the pretender into a vapid phantom person, a Harry Potter shape shifter who becomes so lost in the change, they can never return to the original body.

I don't want to disappear. A typically female manuever historically, and most definitely in my family history, a long, long chain of women pretending they do not see and cannot name what is in front of them, vanishing from our family photos and collective memories because their denial made necessary an inhuman emotional repression that leads to deadness in all facets. The mind remembers to forget, but forgets what it is supposed to be blanking, and so in default: Delete All Slowly the spark skuttles to the clean kitchen floor, emotional intimacy restrained and gagged, sexuality feared, creativity stifled and guided toward safe hobby. Then standing in the clean, organized home, harried and angry faced, seen primarily as humorless, angry and strangely irritable, she realizes she has saved nothing, and all she has hidden has let a smell so strange and sour no guest can enter her home without wrinkling their face and wondering at the shy shirking they feel in their gut.

Mental illness runs rampant in my family. Is running. Rampant. All sides. Including in myself.

I had not thought of mental illness as a stigma because I had been thrust into the subculture of Alcoholics Anonymous at 17. Engulfed in the flames of my childhood, still burning strong, my mother forced me into AA as a last ditch effort to save me. She forced me to the meetings, both driving me and picking me up, waiting outside to ensure I actually went, I actually sat, I had to hear. I hated her for it, I said, and I lied. I loved her for it. I knew it meant she loved me and I was secretly ( not to anyone who could see adolescents clearly ) desperate for salvation of some kind. So I went, and I got sober, and remained so until the age of 30, when I quit smoking and started drinking. * This is 14 years of AA, 14 years of the stories of drunks and druggies twice my age, three times my age, stories so raw, so honest, so absolutely in the dregs of despair and soul mutilation that my family history and life became something as easy for me to talk about, to share about, as what kind of coffee we liked in the mornings.

Enter adulthood minus AA:

ME ' Hi Svetlana, it's cool to see you again, how are ya? '

S ' Okay, Okay, you know work is suck right now, but cool. My boyfriend and I went to Long Beach

over the weekend and we met the bassist from Journey! Isn't that cool? What's up with you? '

ME ' Well my Grandpa- I think I mentioned him, you know the paranoid schizophrenic, he totally

lost it at the ice cream shop and was like, freaking screaming at the ice cream lady because she couldn't understand what he was asking for when he was saying 'cokecola' and he was all, YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL COCOLA IS LADY YOU ARE JUST HIRED BY THE GOVERNMENT' and she's all ' No I was hired by the Friedman's' and I was like, Oh my God! And then my Dad who I don't talk to anymore because he was really abusive to me, he called and left me this message and I'm trying to figure out how he got my number.... '

S ' ...... '

ME ' Uh .... so how was Long Beach? '

This is actually how I talked to people. I . know.

So I slowly learned not to assault and terrify everyone I met by instantly being honest about every question or remark and relearning - OK learning- social mores. While learning how to Win Friends and Impress People, I also became electrically aware of my reality: I had a family packed with mental illness, and, people are terrified and ashamed of mental illness. They don't want you talk about it. At all. Ever. Not even when they love you. Not even when it's you who are sick. Not even- MORESO when- it's them who are sick. And not even when it's them who have mental illness in their family, oh especially not then. Isn't, you can feel them pleading in the subtext, anything else at all we can talk about right now? Underwater basket weaving? Chris Brown's bowtie? Lady Ga-Ga: Hot or Not? The religous right? How do they get those ships in those bottles anyway?

And so I am quiet. And it's killing me. I need someone to talk to. So raise your hand, bloggers, if you feel me. Talk to me so I can talk to you. Help me out here. Email me if you like:

beezus74@hotmail.com

You want a subject list? I'll give you a rundown of my close and personal contact with mental illness:

Bipolar 1, Bipolar 11, Major clinical depression, schizophrenia on both sides of my family, Anxiety disorder and OCD are just a few of the pretties that color out of the lines of my family history. These things have affected me since I was born and continue to affect me and my daily life. ( I personally have anxiety disorder now, and in my late teens and early twenties had clinical depression )Not only that, but as all of you know with family history and children comes the great worry.

And so it goes.

* AA does not believe you are EVER 'safe' from alcoholism rearing it's head. They don't endorse going to

meetings for any length of time and then stopping. They view it as a life long commitment. I viewed it, to be brief, like this: I got sober very, very young, and my short bout with heavy drinking was the result of an abusive childhood, which I dealt with over years and years of therapy, medication, AA and lifestyle changes, so I felt I could move on.