12.15.2011

the backslide

forgive me zoloft for i have sinned. it has been nearly 6 weeks since my last pill.

i have committed the following sins against depression self-care, in no particular order:


  • i have not avoided negativity. while a particularly nasty facebook exchange that i know much better than to have gotten involved in prompted a brief hiatus, it did not last long. upon returning to facebook i did a fairly good job of ignoring political and/or negative posts...for about two weeks. also i have engaged in an unhealthy helping of negative self-talk, copious amounts of comparing myself to greater (or skinnier) people, and three full-fledged pity parties.

  • i have not avoided alcohol. while i have artfully arranged for my intoxication to be "social" in nature (therefore ruling out alcoholism) i have nonetheless utilized said intoxication and after-effects to provide a narrative of my continuous failures (see above sin).

  • i have neglected exercise. well, i mean, i don't know if neglect is necessarily the right word. i was aware of Exercise's whereabouts at all times. but i refused to engage it nonetheless.

  • i have abused my sleep patterns. i have reveled in the decadence of 12 hour sleep marathons as well as cursed insomnia on numerous occasions.

  • i do not recall the last time i gave meditation more than a half-assed 2-minute try, and even that ended with me cussing at myself silently in my head.

  • i have eaten total crap.

  • i have relied solely on the power of coffee and (gasp!) 5-hour energies to get through my day in even the most minimally effective way.

  • i have perfected the art of changing of the subject.

  • i have perfected the art of silently resenting people for allowing me to change the subject.

  • i have embraced numbness as an alternative to...well, anything.

Ah, well.


Is this the part where I say "it was a good run" and call the pharmacy?


No. No, dear anonymous readers if you do indeed exist, it is not. Because when i call the pharmacy, that will be that. The fight will be over. The next time i rely on pharmaceuticals to buffer the effects of life on my psyche - it will be forever. i will cease to be a person who has occasional bouts of depression and instead become a depressed person. someone who "HAS DEPRESSION." like, all the time. I will be on meds for the rest of my life because 1)i have a good doctor who will only allow me to "give it a shot w/o the meds one last time"...one last time. 2)it can't be good for my body or my brain - the weaning off, the spiral, the weaning back on, the even keel, the weaning off...over and over and over again. 3)i know the ridiculousness of this, but i just naggingly believe (like, almost a faith type thing) that the only way to really get to the light at the end of this tunnel is to go the whole way through the damn tunnel and come out on the other side. 4)i made a deal with myself, and i intend to keep it. i am going to do EVERYTHING in my power to control (?) my symptoms through better self care. routine. exercise. daylight. fresh air. breathing. fucking ginseng or some shit, i don't know. But i do know:



  • i have not missed work, any work assignments/goals, paying a bill on time, getting my kids where they need to be, etc.

  • i have laughed, even when not intoxicated.

  • i have not had a crying jag lasting more than 40 minutes, and i have not had more than 3 of those in the past month.

  • i have enjoyed making & keeping plans with friends & family, and have only isolated myself emotionally just a teensy-weensy little bit.

  • i. like. feeling. things.

2 steps forward, 1 step back. its called the backslide. give it a catchy beat and it will be all the rage.


So. took the two steps forward, this just happens to be the one step back part, which means the next two steps forward should be juuuuuussssttttt around the bend...

10.27.2011

kindly disregard this completely incoherent rambling.

yesterday i was lamenting - and oh do i love me some lamenting - that my depression often rears its ugly head in the form of anger, and i fear that that particular symptom is especially damaging to my children.
and yesterday was bad. yesterday my son said he was "scared of me when i yell like that and make that scary face." i looked in the mirror to see my scary face, which was a very, very bad idea.
so when i woke up blue this morning, it was quite a relief. blue i can do. blue i can fake my way through. i indulge in the illusion that because i don't actively entertain the idea of offing myself, somehow how blue is under my command.
blue began this morning as a very pretty, self-indulgent shade of indigo.
it was cold. it was dark. it was raining. it was a perfect day for blue.
i put on a disingenuous smile and got the kids up & ready. anna had to put on her costume for her preschool halloween party, which nicely complimented my complete inability to enjoy something thoroughly enjoyable, as she was tickled pink and ridiculously cute and all that. i was less-than-usually annoyed with the "ouch your pulling!" whine that begins before i open the drawer with the brush in it, and was grateful for numbness.
blue settled in nicely on the cold, wet drive to drop anna off in spring grove. i was devising a plan. call off sick from work (i can proudly say this is the first time i've called off for depression with this particular employer. i coughed a lot during the call. kindly disregard, lone co-worker allowed this peek into my life) i was thinking of complimentary blue music to listen to on the way home. (ended up going with Ben Folds, which was an excellent choice) i was thinking of maybe watching Moulin Rouge, or What Dreams May Come, or Dead Poet Society, or some other movie guaranteed to turn on the water works. perhaps Sopie's Choice is available On Demand? i was, quite frankly, really looking forward to it.
on the way home, though, a detour - quite literally. an suv turned over on its roof on moulstown road. the following realizations unfolded, in this order:
1. i said a small prayer for the folks in the car. which is bizarre, as i'm not a Christian, and haven't "prayed" in the traditional sense since, maybe, early middle-school. is it weird that, in hind-sight, i fear this might be some sort of red flag?
2. wow i completely forgot to get freaked out about driving in the rain, particularly on moulstown, as i have every time since totalling my car (on that road, in the rain) last fall.
3. shit they're making me turn right and i don't know how to get home from there. this is such a pretty road. jigsaw-puzzle-picture road. all yellows & oranges. woods. red barns. stone houses. i want a stone house! i wonder if i'll ever have a stone house? would i be happy in a stone house? hogwash. attachment. ridiculous. i'll be happy when i develop the wherewithal to put into practice my steadfast belief that i am in control of my own happiness...
4. um...i should probably be feeling some sort of, i don't know, gratitude? that i'm alive and well and not in that suv? some inkling that that could have just as easily been me and how awful would that be?
the problem is...okay. the really very scary problem is that i couldn't muster that. i didn't necessarily wholly adopt the warm, welcoming idea that "well, shit, they won't have to worry about anything anymore". but i felt it there, sort of in a far corner of my brain, starting to gel, and put the kibosh on it before it had the chance to fully come to fruition. sort of a...pre-thought, that i stopped mid-melding. which i must say i enjoy a particular knack at doing. always have. if you stop yourself somewhere between sensing it and actually giving it an internal voice, then it doesn't really count. we all know that.
my pretty indigo was transmogrifying into a deep, midnight-y, ultra-marinish, harder-to-escape color. (this is where i went in search of the right term, which still escapes me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_blue)
the bulk of my blue day was fairly disappointing. did some work, because, well, i just can't not do some work. allowed myself to get lost on Huffington Post, completely avoiding my melancholy, when what i really wanted to do was revel in it. even rearranged my dresser which is oddly energetic for this mood, brought little solace, and which i still don't completely understand.
but then i got to pick to sam up from school, and because i didn't have the cd in my car that he wanted to listen to, and because, well, he's sam, i enjoyed a berating of "i hate you"s and "i wish you weren't my mommy"s that managed to get me back on track. my little guy. thank you. i was looking for a broken heart all day...
the drive back from sam's after-school-thursday gig was just an almost orgasmic outpouring of tears, complimented beautifully by 'Still Fighting It' and 'Fred Jones Pt. 2'. (please, if you need a good cry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnU3zuqncwo) but then, you know, i had to pick up anna, and she was all exited about her party, and i had to, you know, feed her & bathe her and stuff. and then the ex showed up with sam, who he apparently fed halloween candy to for dinner, which annoyingly pre-empted the gratifying spiral into self-hating internal dialogue that i can usually count on his presence to inspire.
and now they're asleep. i told them a story about goblins and squinkees and candy. sam cried because he felt bad about telling me (again, at bedtime) that he hates me.
random thoughts that flashed in my mind today:





  • its possible i do my kids more harm than good


  • work will eventually figure out that i'm totally half-assing it


  • no way the electric bill gets paid on time

  • you are getting ridiculously fat. like, freshman year, second semester fat


  • you really can't afford this $6.99 bottle of wine, which is funny & sad

  • you have no real reason to be sad, you selfish, selfish bitch


  • you're not good at much. you're not even good at being depressed


  • you shouldn't post another blog so soon, you are emotionally exhausting your friends. how can they not be sick of you? i'm sick of you.
guy will be home soon, and damn it if he won't make me smile. a girl just can't enjoy a proper downward spiral with all these fucking distractions.
i may need to try again tomorrow.

10.26.2011

a minimalistic approach

Maybe i just need to start small.
Today, for instance, i really wanted to go for a run. Okay, not go for a run so much as feel good, later, about having gone for a run. But i knew it wasn't in the cards; i simply did not have it in me to sweat today. Instead of my usual lunch break though - a nap or Huffington Post - i took the dog for a walk. A decent one, too - a good mile at least, moderate pace. Got warm enough to lose the jacket, but didn't get out of breath. And while i don't feel as good about myself as i would if i'd gone for a run, i feel a lot better about myself than i would if i'd napped. As a bonus, it was fairly easy and enjoyable so i feel there's a good chance i'll do it again tomorrow.
Perhaps i can bring this approach to the rest of my life? Lose the all-or-nothing modus operandi that inevitably leaves me reeking of failure?
I'm already pretty good at "scraping by" or doing the bare minimum at work. Luckily for me, my bare minimum in that particular arena is pretty damn good. So i'm covered there.
I've stayed on top of tackling housework this way as well lately - a load of laundry here, a sink of dishes there...beats the hell outta spending 2 days cleaning what i've essentially allowed to become a shithole. (though i really do need to address the closet/dresser situation - sick to death of living out of laundry baskets)
Where else can i apply this? My biggest challenge, and the one with the weightiest consequences by far, is parenting. How could i apply this there?
It seems anathema to say i'm shooting for being "a good enough mom", but waking up every morning and setting the bar at "i won't raise my voice today" is not serving me well. By noon (at the latest) i've blown it, and inevitably feel like my chances at being "a good mom" that day are shot. Its generally downhill from there...
The thing is, you know - our kids, they deserve perfect parents. Why would we strive to be anything less?
Why? Because its unattainable. And because beating your head against that particular brick wall will only serve to make you more frustrated and more prone to lose your temper, now that you've piled certain failure on to your parenting to-do list.
And, while i can't say with any certainty whether i truly believe this or its just a handy rationalization, i have a sneaking suspicion that the children of perfect parents, if such a thing existed, would grow up to be assholes. I mean, think of the lessons you've learned second-hand from the mistakes your parents have made.
This is all well & good in theory, but didn't bring me much comfort last night as i realized my neighbors actually heard me say to my son, through gritted teeth, after seven meltdowns about trick or treating, "would you please just pretend to be a kid who likes free candy long enough for me to take this stupid picture?!"
So i don't know. Maybe there's some forgiveness there that needs to take place. Maybe i - dare i say "we"? - need to forgive ourselves, from time to time, for not being perfect parents. And maybe smaller, more attainable goals would help me boost my confidence a bit, be a little more comfortable in my "mom suit".
Am i seriously considering lower my standards as a parent?

10.22.2011

hi i'll be your psycho-girlfriend this evening...

So i try to keep up with this Depression issue. Read the studies (and by studies i mean blogs referencing studies)...keep my finger on the pulse, so to speak. And i've heard talk of paranoia rearing its ugly head, conveniently allowing me to feel a little LESS fucked up than some folks out there...
Then tonight: paranoia, albeit totally understandable paranoia. (that makes sense in my head! cause i'm nuts!)
Without betraying the juicy details i'm saving for my memoir, today my guy went golfing with my soon-to-be-ex-husband (its SO much cheaper to just keep calling him that). Trust me, the nuance with which this particular Three's Company storyline materialized is not that interesting. Suffice it to say, it just...is.
Now we all get along amazingly well and spend probably an inordinate amount of time together. And I won't comment on that except to say that it has by and large eliminated the "loyalty complex" that often plagues sons when hanging with mom's new beau, so its a good thing.
This afternoon, I snapped. I learned that despite my best efforts to be the uber-cool laid-back girlfriend i like to think of myself as, there is, in fact, a tiny little psycho inside of me.
At 2:00 i hoped they were all getting along well. At 3:00 i wondered what they could possibly be talking about? By 4:00 i wondered how much beer was involved, and by 5:00 i was pretty well convinced than my guy had learned some here-to-fore unrealized truth about me that set him running to the hills.
Now, I could've been talked down at this point, so i texted no less than 7 of my best friends in hopes of a distraction conversation. life, and my timing, being what they are...i got a few wholly-appreciated responses that none the less only managed to distract my spiraling mind for a few moments.
The imaginary conversations gelling in my head were of mythic, if Seinfeldian, proportions.
All is well. Man is home and happy for it, having had a fun day but missed me. Truly the best one could hope for from such an afternoon.
I am doing my "look in from outside dance" and spending copious amounts of time on WebMD and AOL Health. Stumbled across this golden nugget: "Depression and Paranoia may appear together. When they do, they are often signs of serious psychotic illness such as Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (also called manic depression) or psychotic depression."
eh....fuck it. Pretty sure it'll be fine. In any case, i'll look further back to find some time-tested wisdom (a generation, anyway). From the Desiderata: "Don't trouble yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born from fatigue and loneliness."

10.06.2011

On my non-existent 10-year anniversary...

I would've preferred not to wake up to a text this morning, from my soon-to-be-ex-husband, wishing me a Happy Anniversary.

10 years ago today, I was preparing my wedding. The florist was setting up, the cake was being delivered, I was having my hair done. I gotta say...I was pretty psyched (and not just from the breakfast mimosas). Instead of preparing for my wedding, though, turns out I should've been preparing for my marriage.

What a bitter-sweet day today is. I feel border-line guilty about this, but you know what? I had a gorgeous wedding. It was a beautiful day. I looked amazing. I was surrounded by family and friends, some of whom I haven't seen since. Is it weird that I remember my wedding so fondly, given it was the start of an unsuccessful marriage? And just how tacky would it be to display a pic of me on that day? Cause let's face it, I'll likely never look that good again...

At the same time, the sentiment of that day falls flat in my memory. Words said, promises made... I've spent many the hour of alone-time wondering: did I mean the words when I said them, then allowed life and time to change my mind? Or were they hollow from the get-go? Did the path veer off course, or was it the wrong path to begin with? Today, predictably, brings those questions to mind again (though it feels like well-traveled ground).

I'm trying t determine the value of answering those questions now. I'm a true believer in learning from mistakes. It seems perfectly sensible that I might make better decisions in my relationships moving forward if I can cultivate some lessons from the ghosts of relationships past. But then, I've already moved forward (with an amazingly loving man) and dwelling feels like... holding back. I imagine if I were dating (okay, living with) me, I probably wouldn't be too happy about me spending much time dissecting my previous marriage.

In a perfect world, these are questions I would've asked and answered previous to moving on. Timing seldom being perfect, Love presented itself to me before I had the chance to work through all that. And Love, the kind of Love I have now...well, you really need to grab it when you have the chance, perfect timing or not.

I guess I'm seeking...finality. Completion. I want to close this chapter of my life, confident that won't have to open that book again.

Unfortunately for me, finality runs a minimum $1000.00 retainer these days...

10.02.2011

our mirrors

Do you ever give any thought to the quantity and quality of the mirrors you look into?
We can spend unlimited energy and time trying to know ourselves (if your narcissism approaches mine, really - unlimited energy & time) but do we ever approach any kind of objective assessment? No, we don't. So we rely on mirrors.
Our parents, our friends, our children, our lovers. These are our true mirrors. How do they see us? How do they experience us? How much import do we award these mirrors, and how accurate are they?
I've spent some time, as of late, putting myself in the shoes of my trusted mirrors, trying to see what they see. As...difficult, and let's say, well, painful as this exercise can be...surely there's a lesson of value there. But the results are so diverse, and so...filtered.
FIRST let me say - an honest mirror is worth its weight in gold. Flattering or not, there is no one in your life of as much value as your honest mirror.
My mirrors are varied any many.
My father, I think, while proud, probably views me as somewhat...impulsive. Lacking a plan. Certainly lacking a budget (as i am). There are things I could do better at.
My mother, I fear, thinks I am a bit superior. Big for my britches, in a way, much the way I think of my daughter, often.
My ex. He finds me lazy, a poor housekeeper, and probably a bit of a know-it-all.
My friends.
My friends are varied. I have one that thinks I sold out. I have one that thinks I should sell out and haven't yet. And, I recently learned, I have one that thinks Depression is a little bit of bullshit, and an excuse for my lazy approach to life. This was a...difficult realization. It was difficult because, like most people, I assumed the fact that this person was my friend meant they thought I was pretty, well, fucking cool. Why else would they waste their time on me?
I sat with this a bit. I went through the usual process, anger, denial, resentment, acceptance, what have you. I came out on the other side. Well, not really...I'm on way to coming out on the other side. But I learned something important already.
Those friends that support every choice you make; they're great. They're necessary. They build you up.
Those friends that risk your friendship to speak hard truths to you, knowing you may revolt and leave them (i have a few)...they're great too. They may tear you down, but that's just as important. They're brave. And they should be valued.
Its like...conservatives watching Fox and liberals watching MSNBC. You can't surround yourself solely with people who validate the opinions you already hold. If you do... you're not growing. And, you know, painful or not - growing is important. Its everything, really.
I was recently a less-than-flattering mirror for a friend. I looked for very supportive and loving ways to communicate it. It was...a struggle. I am spending a lot of time, today, hoping it didn't cost me a friend.
But...I've come to believe that there is no higher calling than honesty. That regardless of fall out, of the practical consequences, we're here, ultimately, to learn from one another. To grow. To move forward. When we can do that together - that is the ideal. When we can't, we should still be grateful for the growth. Growing pains and all.

9.26.2011

Handy-Dandy field guide to dating depressed women

You have met and fallen in love with someone who has Depression. Congratulations! I hope you're into three-ways, because your relationship moving forward will be a manage-a-trois: You, her and her depression.

This isn't always a bad thing. Besides being unwaveringly eager to please, self-loathing women tend to...oh nevermind. That's really not the direction I wanted to take this.

There are some terms you should familiarize yourself with:

Ambivilance: uncertainty or fluctuation, especially when caused by inability to make a choice or by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things. This is really Loony 101 stuff. It is, frankly, paralyzing in a way that you will probably never fully understand. I assure you it is more frustrating to your Lover than it is to you. It can present as laziness to the untrained eye, so be careful here. Suggesting it may actually be laziness not recommended.

Ambivilance can manifest itself in the following thrilling and fully enjoyable ways:


  • difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions (you will need to help your Lover find her keys/wallet/phone multiple times daily)

  • loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasureable, including sex (results may vary!)This is important, though. I call it the joy-suck. You literally lose the ability to feel joy. You feel that you should feel joy, and recognize an event as joyous, but...that's not really the same thing.

Irritability/Moodiness: easily annoyed; readily excited to impatience or anger; ill-humored. This is a bigee especially if there are kids around. I'm told kids who like to push emotional buttons can be particularly challanging for people suffering from this symptom.




  • tread lightly, on eggshells, much of the time, cause this baby pops up out of the blue, 0-120 in 5 seconds, for no rational reason whatsoever. If you have fallen in love with someone who's been depressed for years, they may have mastered the time-honored art of swallowing their anger until it becomes a mildly uncomfortable, festering sore of resentment in the pit of their stomach. Consider yourself lucky.

Appetite: An instinctive physical desire, especially one for food or drink. Um...yeah. Let's break this sucker up to tackle it.



  • Food - some depressed people have no appetite at all and find it difficult to get enough nutrition. I hate them. Okay, I don't really hate them, but...if you're going to suffer from appetite disturbances this would be the way to go. Personally, I eat like a Dickens character. Like I may never get food again....sometimes 4 or 5 times a day. The kicker? That whole ambivilance thing above really puts a kink in the ol' exercise routine...so, remember: Big girls need love too.

  • Drink - Ah, the drink. The world's most socially acceptable form of self-medication. Many women suffering from Depression, I'm told, find the the warm, numbing glow of a bottle of red irresistible...understand: we know that drinking doesn't solve any of our problems. We just like that it helps us forget about them for a few useless hours...(in all seriousness, for a momment - this is a real problem as alcohol renders anti-depressants less effective. If you're shelling out $100/month for Zoloft & Welbutrin, you're pissing it away when you chase it with a Yuengling. Not that that's likely to change your mind.)

Sleep Disturbances: a medical disorder of the sleep patterns of a person or animal, serious enough to interfere with normal physical, mental and emotional functioning. This can be getting too much sleep or not enough, or a mixture of both at different times, and it is fucking awful.



  • "Sleep - its such a bitter form of refuge" - The Killers. This is alot like the drink, really. When you feel pretty crappy much of the time, sleep is a great way to not feel anything. I could be happy as a clam sleeping 12-16 hours/day. In fact, now that I'm giving it some thought (yay for blog!) some of my happiest momments are lying in bed or on the sofa fully aware that I can sleep for the next 10 hours (or so). I love everything about it - the drifting, the groginess, the dreaming...the knowing that I am not responsible for doing anything when I'm asleep.

  • Insomnia - chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time. She's a bitch. She visits a couple times a year and renders you completely incapable of working, parenting, living...insomnia is often the symptom of Depression that will make people actually call off work, cancel appointments, and otherwise let their life turn to shit.

Self-Loathing: Strong feelings of worthlessness or guilt. Harshly criticizing oneself for perceived faults and mistakes. This is where the trajectory turns on itself and becomes an inescapable loop: the symptoms above all feed the self-loathing, and the self-loathing feeds all the symptoms above. And its something I can't explain.



  • There have been amazing men & women - heros, actors, writers, world leaders - who have suffered from this. If it were as easy as saying "but wait - you're awesome!" then Depression wouldn't even be an issue. Its not rational. You often recognize it as detrimental behavior. But you do it anyway. Which, niftily, provides another weakness to judge yourself for...

So what to do? My advice, in no particular order:



  1. Run. If you can still get out, do it. This is no fun. Just sayin'.

  2. Realize that you can't love someone out of Depression. Depression isn't caused by a lack of people loving you or that love lacking quality - thus, it can't be cured by love either.

  3. Encourage your partner. Suggest a hike rather than a trip to the bar. Sign the two of you up for a class. Encourage your partner in any way you can to participate, to be engaged in life. Frankly, they don't have the gumption to do it themselves.

  4. Just hold them when they cry for no reason and let them do it. Its cathartic. Unless it continues for more than a day or two...in that case call for back-up. The Mom, the best friend, the shrink who's home number is programmed in their phone, whatever...

  5. Cover their ass, because they will surely fuck shit up. Let work slide, skip laundry for a month, what have you...but at the same time -

  6. Hold them responsible. Its o-so-tempting to romanticize Depression, to come to depend on it. Its such a great crutch.

  7. Realize that Depression is an illness, not a characteristic or a character flaw or even a great, under utlizied way of life/philosophy. Its none of those things. Its neurons in your brain that fire when they shouldn't, and don't fire when they should.

  8. Avoid the 'pull yourself up by your boot straps' approach, as it generally just feeds that whole self-loathing thing we talked about.

That said, there are definite upsides. If you've ever wished you had a partner who was more sensitive, a depressed gal may just be for you! We feel things more deeply than most people do - sorry, but its true - and as such we (generally) have great reserves of empathy. Empathy and narcissism....we can appreciate the irony, even if we're not laughing.

5.11.2011

Throwing in the towel

I think I may be ready to throw in the towel.
Its an interesting expression...derived from managers of combatants in prize fights throwing their towel into the ring to indicate surrender...if the fight is over, they no longer need the towel.
And a fight is exactly what I have on my hands.
The battlefields are many, but the bloodiest assaults take place in two distinct combat zones: Motivation and Control.
Motivation is needed to overcome the debilitating ambivalence that rides shotgun with Depression. My default, when I'm depressed, is "I don't care." I don't care about my job, my rent or my laundry. I have the presence of mind to realize that I should care - I sometimes even take steps to make it appear to the outside world as if I do care (often in the form of brainstorming credible excuses)...but that's not quite the same thing as caring. Its more like...house-sitting Care. Keeping things kosher for some time at which I hope to care again. The Done List (http://notsobluemama.blogspot.com/2009/06/done-list.html) usually helps with this but this time - not even scratching the surface. Frankly I can't bring myself to bother.
I am losing it. Piles of laundry in the basement and nothing to wear. Rent paid 10 days late for no reason other than I just didn't get around to writing the check. Even the recent invasion of black ants barely inspired more than a half-hearted swabbing of the kitchen deck. I am amazed, frankly, that I manage to pull this shit off for as long as I do - always with that nagging compulsion in a dark corner of my mind to see it through to fruition. Get fired. Get evicted. Get a vacation at the nearest residential mental health facility. It sounds oddly...inviting. And easy. Which disgusts me, of course, and scares the living shit out of me as well. All I want to do, really, is sleep. "Pull up! Pull up!...no? Well then we'll need to stop at the state store."
Control is a bloodbath. Controlling the frequency & duration of my temper tantrums as well as my meltdowns is...exhausting. Its how I imagine it would be to live in a foreign country and have to speak a second language all the time. You can do it, but damn if it doesn't take a shit ton of effort.
I crave an effortless even keel.
So I am throwing in the towel and picking up the Zoloft once again (with a sidecar of Welbutrin, please, barkeep).
I hate that it tastes like defeat.

4.26.2011

This looks familiar...

Again. Its a word I loathe, "again". In my experience, very few momments lived well bear repeating. So if I'm living the same ones over and over again - it's because I haven't quite nailed them yet.
She's seeping in again, that bitch, Depression. We're playing our usual coy little games - the games in which I'm constantly second-guessing myself, afraid that if I give myself an inch I'll take a mile. Keeping a close eye, keeping score, keeping tabs on things like how often I lose my cool. How often I feel overwhelmed, or worse - ambivilant. How many times in a week I question whether or not pharmaceuticals made me a better parent, a better lover, or a better friend.
It starts with the negative self-talk. I'll notice my internal dialogue, as I inch closer to bedtime (when IS that, btw?) starts to become a list of things I didn't do. "I really should've done the dishes. Why didn't I just finish that proposal today? Fuck, I forgot to schedule Sam's appointment. How hard would it have been to just switch the laundry one more time?"
I don't know anymore - don't remember - where this comes from. Some of its BS from my ex (that internal dialogue is eerily similar to 10 years of dinner conversation/pillow talk) and some it is completely ligit (I am regrettably, genetically lazy) and frankly, trying to untangle the two has become a dizzingly mind-numbing exericise that I can't bring myself to believe is healthy AT ALL. I mean, I just don't get what I'm really gaining from trying to figure it out. Is it me? Is it him? At the end of the day...does it matter?
There are two ways to look at this past year.
1 - I was medicated - numbed really to the joy as much as the sorrow of life. I broke up my family. I look at my kids, I listen to them, and I realize that all the hopes I had for their experiences of growing up - all I envisioned for them as a childhood - is now beyond reach. They'll never be those kids I wanted to be - those kids whose parents were still together. Those kids who had a family I just didn't get dealt myself - and always, always covetted. I left a job I loved with colleagues I feel guilty about missing every day. I left my home. My grandfather, and hero, died. I totalled a car. Hell, I broke an ankle and couldn't drive for a month and still can't run - and as a consequence have put on 20 lbs that compliment these dire circumstances well. And, frankly, a good-sized heap of shit I'm just not willing to share here but - take my word for it - the pity-party, while pathetic, is well-earned.
Conversely...
2. - I am pharmaceutical free (yes, I'm quite fond of that rather ambiguous term). I found the courage to leave a life that left me unhappy, unfulfilled, and going through the motions. I left a relationship that, through fault of its own or not, made me feel pretty crappy about myself pretty much most of the time. My kids are both just peeking around corners they're about to turn, happier now in many ways I never saw coming. I got a job that, not to illicit envy or anything, most people would kill for. I work from home; I make good money. It's creative and engaging - I get to reasearch, and I get to write with the intent to persuade which is so challanging & fun - it's Rhetoric, really, my all-time favorite college class. I got a new car. I got a new place and some schnazzy shit to fill it up with, which was a lot of fun. I've got a guy that - God, I can't even think of a way to explain it without invoking cliche. He just...I get it now, these people that think Love is so imnportant. I see where they're coming from.
Its a no-brainer, right?
I could kill most of scenerio #1 with the right combo of Zoloft & Welbutrin...but at what cost to scenerio #2?

3.28.2011

Blogging

Blogging is cool. Won't someone please pay me to do this all day long?
So Blogger has this great 'Stats' page where you can check how many pageviews you're getting, what sites are sending people to your page, and where readers are located. There are no less than 55 Not-So-Blue-Mama readers in Russia. How fuckin cool is that? Other countries include Latvia, France, Canada...it blows my mind. What value can these people possibly be finding here?
Its completely selfish. Bloodletting, nothing more. Purge it. Get it out, so it can't fester inside. If, in the process, I can feed my Narcissism as well, well...all the better! Its cheaper than therapy. It allows my interpersonal relationships some breathing room - I mean, really, who wants to listen to me go on and on about this shit everyday? 55 Russians, that's who!
My family has some concerns. They run pretty far to the phobic side of the technology spectrum. How can I put this stuff out there? What if it costs me a job? custody? What if a reader burgles my home? Geesh. I thought I allowed too many dark imaginings to see the light of the day...
My blog runs on the very longest end of The Long Tail. There is SO much content available - its no longer about trying to appeal to a mass audience. Its about helping your niche audience find you. There's all sorts of tricks of the trade - SEO, posting across different social media platforms...I don't bother with any of it. Hell I don't even tag most of my posts. Google 'Depression and Motherhood' and not-so-blue-mama doesn't even make the first 10 pages of results - though the results are around 60% blogs. With bloggers who are much more attuned to SEO, tagging, etc. than I am...
So, I'm pondering putting some time into this. Tagging my posts. Signing up for other Social Media sites and posting there. Actually trying to improve my Google ranking. Perhaps even getting off Blogger and onto my own URL at some point. You know...work. Of course doing all that only makes sense if I'm going to post consistently which, let's face it, I tend to ebb & flow.
Any advice/success stories/cautionary tales from fellow almost-bloggers? (Cause feedback on not-so-blue-mama is not-so-great)
I imagine it would blogging for me. Can you take what you love to do, turn it into work, and still love it?

3.22.2011

Meds

Enough with all this romance, I have a blog about depression to maintain.
What are our thoughts on meds?
I've gone from the die-hard naturalist taking St. John's and refusing 'Profit-ceuticals' to that neighbor that can list every side effect of every SSRI out there - and recommend 2 or 3 good therapists. And I've had layovers at just about every stop in between. And I settled in and called home a place where I would utter things like "I don't understand these depressed people that just 'go off their meds' cause they think they're cured. You're happy? Yeah - its cause they're working..." I grabbed hold of the "if you had diabetes you'd take pills to help" argument and eventually found I'd come to believe that its downright irresponsible to stop medicating yourself.
I can still remember basking in the glow of a therapist's comment, "You really have to be an advocate for your own health, Jeanine - you're very good at that." (i am such a lisa simpson)
I recall a very different conversation in a trusted doctor's office. He eventually said to me, "Jeanine, we can try every anti-depressant out there, you're still going to be in a crappy marriage."
Bbubbubbuuut...I have a disease! I had it long before I was in a crappy marriage and...(Quick: how do you finish this sentence? Does your mind immediately go to:)...I'll have it long after! Cause that's some serious optimism for you. (optimism being in short supply among this crowd)

About a month ago, I travelled for work. Almost a week. Forgot my pills.
Now, out of the blue, my Welbutrin had recently started kicking up a good bit of Anxiety. Very physical - elevated heart rate, nervous stomach - I actually gave up caffeine for a few weeks because I thought that might be the culprit. Solution, of course, was to re-balance: increasing my Zoloft dosage should counter that (those are the only two, btw...don't need a "pill a day" box to hold 'em all yet).
But...I told myself I was in a pretty good place. I felt great even after my week with no meds - new job was amazing, things with my Ex were amiably pleasant, almost, and Guy was...well, pretty fucking perfect. I felt very much...in control, I guess, of my life. For the first time in a really really long time.
So I let it go. A week had already passed, I just...stopped.
And its been about a month.
And I'm feeling pretty good...but, well...pretty terrified, too.
Paranoid - every passing grumpy moment is a red flag. Every dark thought a flashing DANGER sign - SPIRAL COMING. And sometimes its bullshit. And sometimes its not. And figuring out the difference is difficult.

Addendum to Independence Post

This is too good to keep to myself.
Rereading my last post, as I do (due to painfully bloated sense of self), I questioned my contrast of 'needing help' vs. 'weakness'. In double-checking my word choice, as I do (due to painfully bloated sense of self) I thought perhaps 'needing help' might actually be in the definition of 'weakness' and checked the Favorites drop-down for my trusty Dictionary.com. Among the entries there, I found my new favorite definition for 'weakness':

4. An object of special desire; something very hard to resist.
Chocolates were her weakness.

3.21.2011

Independance Day has come and gone...

I have a little...problem, we'll say, with depending on others. And in leaving my husband late last year I was pretty sure I'd solved it...after all, if you don't have anyone to depend on, then its not really an issue, is it? Certainly I have friends I rely on for emotional support, and I'd be dead in the water without them. But I like to shovel my own walks, carry my own pack, and change my own oil (once the warranty's up, of course).
Life/The Universe/Cruel Fate have, as is their custom, stepped in to correct this misbehavior on my part. 2-story slide, impending collision with son, foot out to stop it, snap-crackle-pop, ER, crutches and no driving minimum 3 weeks.
Ouch.
Luckily for me I was traveling with Guy. Yes, we're just going to call him that. Protect the innocent.
Poor Guy.
Guy wanted to carry me the 70 yards to the car but do you think I could live with that sort of thing? Hogwash. Just give me your shoulder, Guy, and I'll hop along on my own...(I'm pretty sure it would've been much easier on Guy to just carry me, in hind sight.)
But see that's important right there - did you catch it? My persistent need for independence is completely selfish. It was never about making it easier on him, but entirely about my own stubborn discomfort with needing/accepting help. Hmmmm....
Enter the ER, where Guy, who has spent limited time with the kids - an afternoon or evening here and there - will, for the first time, be in charge of them. And, just for shits and giggles, they were expecting a fun day at the park followed by dinner at Texas Roadhouse (joy of joys). Instead they get the ER waiting room with one toy to fight over and lots of furniture to jump on.
Guy held his own. I, meanwhile, laid in a bed in the ER and cried, not because of the pain (ok maybe a little because of the pain) but mostly because of the complete & utter helplessness. Helplessness, I discovered, makes me angry. Very very angry. I threw a temper tantrum that would put Anna to shame. I can only thank the Hanover ER for the awful wait time which allowed me to have this little breakdown sans audience.
Where does this come from?
A good bit of it probably comes from my marriage, in which I constantly played the role of the one who needs help, the one who can't do it on her own, the one who will fuck it up if she tries. I played this role because I was married to someone who very much needed to be The One Who Is Needed. And he needed that role more than I did, so I acquiesced, mistakenly believing that that was what a good spouse does. So now, with my taste of freedom under my belt, the LAST role I want to play is The One Who Needs Help. Some people aspire to mediocrity, and some have mediocrity thrust upon them...
And there it is, still, this insistence that needing help equals weakness. A friend recently mentioned to me (okay..."posted") that accepting help gives others the opportunity to show kindness, which in turn enriches their lives...I like that. I just need to find someone gimpier than myself to help out...

1.02.2011

Questioning...pt. 2

So I spent the last blog post all but congratulating myself on the wisdom behind "Its better to have happy parents living apart than miserable parents living together." This is something I gleaned from my own experience - and as such should be viewed with much skepticism...
Common opinion holds that this is nonsense - feel-good psycho-babble that allows shallow, selfish women such as myself to tear their families limb from limb with a minimum of guilt. If that were true, I must say it doesn't work very well.
I suspect, like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
My father (happily married to his fourth wife - oy) puts it this way: "Fish or cut bait." I take this to mean that, as I proposed in my last post, we have some responsibility to live our lives to their fullest potential. Get busy living or get busy dying. In other words, work to make your marriage a happy one, or get out.
Then it becomes a question of degree. How long do you work? How hard? How do you measure the results? Days without tears or Days with smiles?
I'm stuck there.
Days without tears v. Days with smiles.
I ask myself this question all the time: was it that bad? Was it bad enough to leave? People want an easy explanation. He beat me. He gambled away our life savings. He screwed the babysitter. I don't have that easy answer. My answers are hard, and vague, and subjective.
In a nutshell, for reasons I won't enumerate here out of respect for his privacy, I realized that I could not live my life to its fullest potential and remain in the marriage. I couldn't be the best Mom, the best friend, the best employee or even the best wife while devoting myself to that very unhealthy relationship.
Whether or not is was bad enough to leave, it wasn't good enough to stay.
Days without tears aren't enough.
I need Days with smiles.
Barring that, I need the possibility of Days with smiles in my future. The line, I think, may be when the end game changed. When we both admitted we were biding our time until the kids were older to divorce. When 'growing old together' was no longer a realistic goal for either of us.
I knew that marriage would be challenging - alot of hard work, lots of bad days. I knew I wouldn't always feel appreciated or intellectually stimulated or even loved. But - I never expected to feel so utterly, completely alone. (This is no accusation, it may very well be entirely my fault that my marriage made me feel that way.)
I thought that marriage was about putting someone else before yourself. Wishing & working for their happiness - and all the while they're putting you first, wishing & working for yours. I was so unbelievably naive.
Maybe those partnerships exist, outside of chick-lit and rom-coms. I'm sure I don't know. In my limited experience...people just aren't wired that way. And by people I mean men.
No no - I'm kidding there. Really, as much as I'd like to throw in the towel and give up on the entire gender...I'm just not wired that way.
It may be, though, that I'm not wired for marriage. That I'm too selfish. That the idea that "happy parents" are better for kids than "married parents" really is just a piss-poor excuse for me to go out and seek more Days with smiles.
We put 5 years into marriage counselling, and what we got out of it was the ability to co-habitate and co-parent with a minimum of raised voices. Is it selfish to want more than that out of life? Or is it just selfish to act on that desire? Would it really be...kinder, i guess...to stay, wanting more but knowing you won't have it?
Just what I need. More questions...