First of all:
Look, I know I'm late to the party, but Lizzo is so great. I just want to listen to "Juice" on repeat. I'M INTO IT.
Secondly:
This whole thing of emotional resilience is fucking amazing. I don't really know where it came from...maybe I was building the muscle while I was on Gabapentin*, and then when I dropped the med I bounced straight up into the sunshine? Like when you walk around with a heavy pack for a while and then when you put it down you feel like you might float up into the air. I can't think of another explanation but it's amazing, and I hope it stays.
Like, my godmother is extremely ill right now--she has a treatable but incurable cancer, so there's no knowing how much time she has. That is truly awful news, and I sat in my car and cried for an hour when I found out. But miraculously, I'm ok. It's a horrible thing that is happening but it's somehow not blackening my entire landscape.
I've gotten middling to bad sleep for the last week, and I had hoped this past weekend would be my chance to catch up--but (probably because of who I am as a person, or maybe because it's my Fate to never go to bed on time) it wasn't. I still averaged between six and seven hours, when I'm a person who needs eight. And then last night I'm not sure I even hit five. For most of my life, a night like last night would have had me in hysterics. But it didn't.
Guys, walking through this world every day without wearing the 1960s solid metal deep-sea diving suit that is chronic depression is like winning the goddamn lottery. It's incredible. 10/10, would recommend.
*In case I didn't cover this before (since I never write this decade), I was on gabapentin for several years to address the nerve pain I get due to an inherited degenerative neurological disease, but since Ian and I are considering starting a family, we were trying really hard to find a way for me to function without it. My nerve pain is triggered by stress, and for the last several years the prevailing theory has been that it got too bad for me to handle (without medication anyway) while my dad was in the hospital for two straight months with an infected pressure sore, and my friend went into the hospital at the same time with ovarian cancer. But then when we examined the situation further, we remembered that I had also started drinking coffee during that time period, and I decided to experimentally cut back on coffee. My pain was instantly a hundred times better, so I've (very sadly) dropped coffee and dropped gabapentin, and now I control the pain with CBD capsules and/or Lion's Mane Mushroom capsules, depending on my pain levels.
And gabapentin...I knew it was rough stuff, but man. The withdrawal made me sick for days, and once I was off of it I realized that it had been keeping me depressed and giving me pretty extreme brain fog and memory problems. Life is so much better without it, and I'm so grateful that I'm able to function without using it now.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Summer nights
Two nights ago I went walking in the woods down by the river*. There was a full moon, bright enough to throw deep shadows, but beneath the trees it was dark enough that I could only just see the faint shapes of the tree trunks ahead where they were outlined against the sky beyond, and I had to make my way along the path mainly by feel and memory. It was dark enough that the fireflies swirling around me looked like spotlights, and lit the foliage around them as they glowed.
I had the great pleasure once of witnessing a grown man's first encounter with lightning bugs, and I hope I never forget his wonder and excitement. I remembered that last night, and wondered what the first European settlers to this area must have thought of them. The whole place felt like a fairyland, with the rich warm air filled with swirling lights, and the river rushing just alongside, in the deep shadow of the woods. There was a lot of the kind of loud silence and peaceful busy stillness you get on summer nights in the South.
While I was there I noticed that a feeling of wellness, of mental health, maybe, had crept up on me when I wasn't looking. (It feels important not to look, or else it might not come at all. Like waiting for Santa, or the Tooth Fairy. I guess my perception of Mental Health is that it's a wild magical beastie that must be believed in softly, and not looked for too hard. You have to prepare for it, you have to put out the cookies and leave the tooth under the pillow, but then you have to just go to bed, and hope for the best.) I had this unexpected and gentle realization that I was ok, and life felt ok, and I wasn't afraid of it, for once. It was a perfect moment, apart from the fact that I had to leave the shelter of the trees and go home.
Last night after my shower I went out onto the deck in my towel to look out into the trees and listen. Most of the fireflies had turned in, but I could hear a few varieties of owl off away to the left, and the wind. One of my favorite things about a clearing in the woods (like the one where we live) is that you can hear and see the wind coming. In the city or in the type of suburb that's devoid of trees it usually just appears, and then stops. In the woods, especially on a high deck in the middle of a clearing, you can hear its approach from far away. The trees begin to rustle in the distance, and the rustling grows louder as the wind approaches. You can watch its exact path as these trees begin to sway, and those others remain still. You can see its height where the taller trees dance, and the lower branches remain at rest. You can watch it pass and make its way off into the night, and see what direction it takes. It always feels like I'm a witness to some great magic.
*I was there to play Pokemon Go, if you must know. But in my defense, I started playing again so I'd be more likely to take walks like this one. I had forgotten how much I love walking in the dark. The world and my well-meaning husband are always conspiring to make me afraid of the dark and the world outside and of other people. I don't want to be too reckless, but I'd like to take those things back. I am not interested in living in fear.
I had the great pleasure once of witnessing a grown man's first encounter with lightning bugs, and I hope I never forget his wonder and excitement. I remembered that last night, and wondered what the first European settlers to this area must have thought of them. The whole place felt like a fairyland, with the rich warm air filled with swirling lights, and the river rushing just alongside, in the deep shadow of the woods. There was a lot of the kind of loud silence and peaceful busy stillness you get on summer nights in the South.
While I was there I noticed that a feeling of wellness, of mental health, maybe, had crept up on me when I wasn't looking. (It feels important not to look, or else it might not come at all. Like waiting for Santa, or the Tooth Fairy. I guess my perception of Mental Health is that it's a wild magical beastie that must be believed in softly, and not looked for too hard. You have to prepare for it, you have to put out the cookies and leave the tooth under the pillow, but then you have to just go to bed, and hope for the best.) I had this unexpected and gentle realization that I was ok, and life felt ok, and I wasn't afraid of it, for once. It was a perfect moment, apart from the fact that I had to leave the shelter of the trees and go home.
Last night after my shower I went out onto the deck in my towel to look out into the trees and listen. Most of the fireflies had turned in, but I could hear a few varieties of owl off away to the left, and the wind. One of my favorite things about a clearing in the woods (like the one where we live) is that you can hear and see the wind coming. In the city or in the type of suburb that's devoid of trees it usually just appears, and then stops. In the woods, especially on a high deck in the middle of a clearing, you can hear its approach from far away. The trees begin to rustle in the distance, and the rustling grows louder as the wind approaches. You can watch its exact path as these trees begin to sway, and those others remain still. You can see its height where the taller trees dance, and the lower branches remain at rest. You can watch it pass and make its way off into the night, and see what direction it takes. It always feels like I'm a witness to some great magic.
*I was there to play Pokemon Go, if you must know. But in my defense, I started playing again so I'd be more likely to take walks like this one. I had forgotten how much I love walking in the dark. The world and my well-meaning husband are always conspiring to make me afraid of the dark and the world outside and of other people. I don't want to be too reckless, but I'd like to take those things back. I am not interested in living in fear.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
General Updates
In looking back, I just noticed that I never posted again about Ian's mother.
She died. Jyl died too, by suicide, and my darling friend Aby died as well, by accidental overdose, in a relapse.
It was a hard year.
I know I've tried to write about my almost-mother-in-law's death several times, but I guess it must have just been too hard. I don't remember what I wrote or why I didn't post it. I have probably attempted to address Jyl's and Aby's as well, but I guess those words never made it through.
By some miracle--by a whole bunch of miracles really, and with a lot of help--we did manage to get married. In large part the wedding was beautiful, but looking back I have a lot of negative feelings surrounding the planning and the day that I don't want to try to dissect right now.
I have an office job, which I both like and hate. Mostly I enjoy my coworkers, and obviously the stability of a regular paycheck. But I feel trapped. I never see the sun. The sameness of my environment and my work, day after day after day, is rotting me away inside. I am starting to feel old, and empty, and (at the very high risk of being nauseously over-melo-dramatic) lately this has been leading me to ponder my own mortality in a very dark way. I am sure the awareness of one's own mortality is normal, and maybe early thirties is when it usually hits--but I am really not liking it. I was hoping to get away from the total surety that the rest of my life was going to be nothing but a long unsteady irrefutable slide down into a dark tunnel. Lately, mostly, each day has felt either the same as or worse than the last and the horizon looks dark and dangerous. I feel like I've made all the wrong decisions and now I just have to learn to live with them until I die. But maybe it will get better, right? People say it sometimes gets better.
She died. Jyl died too, by suicide, and my darling friend Aby died as well, by accidental overdose, in a relapse.
It was a hard year.
I know I've tried to write about my almost-mother-in-law's death several times, but I guess it must have just been too hard. I don't remember what I wrote or why I didn't post it. I have probably attempted to address Jyl's and Aby's as well, but I guess those words never made it through.
By some miracle--by a whole bunch of miracles really, and with a lot of help--we did manage to get married. In large part the wedding was beautiful, but looking back I have a lot of negative feelings surrounding the planning and the day that I don't want to try to dissect right now.
I have an office job, which I both like and hate. Mostly I enjoy my coworkers, and obviously the stability of a regular paycheck. But I feel trapped. I never see the sun. The sameness of my environment and my work, day after day after day, is rotting me away inside. I am starting to feel old, and empty, and (at the very high risk of being nauseously over-melo-dramatic) lately this has been leading me to ponder my own mortality in a very dark way. I am sure the awareness of one's own mortality is normal, and maybe early thirties is when it usually hits--but I am really not liking it. I was hoping to get away from the total surety that the rest of my life was going to be nothing but a long unsteady irrefutable slide down into a dark tunnel. Lately, mostly, each day has felt either the same as or worse than the last and the horizon looks dark and dangerous. I feel like I've made all the wrong decisions and now I just have to learn to live with them until I die. But maybe it will get better, right? People say it sometimes gets better.
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