Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Words and Conversations
Having started a confessional blog, quite by accident,
leaves me feeling a bit shy. I look at the expanse of blank, white box before
me with the insistent little cursor, blink-blink-blink, demanding I open a vein
and spill my thoughts out to rush over the page. Today feels more like blood on
the ice, a few bright drops, suspended on a moment, before vanishing into the
slush leaving barely a tint of where they were.
It has been a day of almost.
Something has been nibbling at the edges of my mind all day
and every time I try to focus on it I find that it has flittered away and I am
left pondering the emptiness that speaks of a new vacancy as it grows slowly
cold. Almost…
I want to speak of friends, love, family, rain, gaming, the
hollow places in me where things echo, how sometimes buying new things is
really exciting and how there are days when nothing actually went wrong but still you wonder why you got
out of bed at all. I have words and phrases teasing me with their intentions
but not a one is spooling out in any behaved manner. Almost…
I haven’t written in such a long time the mechanics seem a
bit stiff, some gears are rusty, there is an occasional puff of dust as things
get moving again. I think what feels so odd is that I have never really written
outward
before. My previous blogs have all been me, tracking my internal dialog,
keeping a record of where I have been in hopes that one day I could look back
at it and say, “Yep… That. Yeah, that
right there. See that moment when you bargained away something you needed for
something you thought you might want? That
is where you screwed up!” Trouble is that I knew that then as well as I
could see it now so while I may find a pretty phrase here and there and a
handful of poignant moments recorded for posterity there is really nothing for
me. There is naught wrong with glancing back now in then, it can reset your
perspective and true up the measure of your progress, but I’ve always been told
you oughtn’t stare.
Words. We will think about words today.
Words can heal hearts, poison minds, inspire people to great
deeds or start wars, and yet we allow anyone to toss them about with reckless
abandon. We painstakingly teach them to babies! We have hundreds of languages
so we can use new and interesting words that mean almost the same thing with a
slight shift in nuance, a je ne sais quoi, if you will. *wink*
There are words I have received that were gilded with love
and jeweled with respect that still make my spine straighten and eyes prickled
when I replay them, and others, that swing like a razored pendulum over my
heart, cutting the thinnest, shallowest line, making sure the wound never
heals. I will always believe that we have it all wrong; two of the dirtiest and
foulest words you should never utter are “only” and “just”. Think of any sentence that lifted your heart
and insert either of those two words into it to see what I mean. These are the
four letter words they warned you about!
Today I feel lonely and melancholy for no external reason. Tears
prickle for any and no reason and I have wanted to fold into myself all day. It
is not one of my better days but it is far from my worst. My mind keeps
wandering and leaving me behind staring blankly in space, detached and still like
a passenger on a subway, nonresponsive and almost vacant. I kept catching
myself in these moments and wondering what it is that has been washing my day
in a yearning.
I want to pull a good feeling around me and snuggle into it
like a warm blanket. I want to hear words full of thought and emotion; I want
to speak in symbols and pictures and see the air fill with meaningful
conversation; I want to feel the warmth of genuine interest and shared
knowledge. My cup is empty and I want to fill it. I want to fill it until I can
climb into it, sink down and feel connected and alive. I feel full of magpies
having only one side of hundreds of conversations until their chatter becomes a
gray hum drowning out the color in my life.
I think what I will do is finish this beer, take a nice
shower, get some sleep, and start over again tomorrow. The last of my hoarded Leinenkugel’s
Berry Weiss is reminding me of friendship, great music, War Pigs and one of the
best road trips, ever…
Labels: Confessions, Depression, TMI, Words
Saturday, April 18, 2015
3 AM
3AM
I heard somewhere that every man is alone at 3am. Or maybe the phrasing was backwards and that 3am will find every man alone. It's a distant echo in my head, like the memory of remembering something, the words a spidery script carried on crumbling paper or perhaps a faint tune. The impression comes to me frequently, like a riddle I'm too proud to look up, and flits through the corner of my mind usually at around 3am since this is an hour I see fairly regularly. The counter point is a Donald Justice poem that I studied nightly for three months when I was 18 because I really wasn't able to do anything else but that is a different story for another time.
3am is my hour. It's been lone and lonely, the end of a party, the start of a day. I have drifted away cold and alone while wrapped in warm arms and I have woke from nightmares to watch the clock brand the time into my eyes. I don't know why this hour has an affinity for me but things in my life tend to work like that; I'm all patterns and circles, tragically charmed with an awkward grace.
There is a feeling, a state I slip into or a cloak I wear...it has a name I won't use here because it will distract you with assumptions or prompt judgment. This feeling is closest at 3am like a paper spinning wheel that equates hours to colors; 3am is always a cloudy gray. You can peer into it and see anything from Bob Ross clouds to the witch trapped in the doorway of your childhood bed room who beckoned you to come stand in the in betweens.
Note: You never want to get trapped in the in betweens. I used to get trapped in between dream and awake until I shut down my dreams. I always got the impression that my dreams were fighting a battle where half of them wanted to tell me things and the other half were trying to swallow me up. I try to stay off their battle ground as I don't care for the concept of "collateral damage" and "acceptable loss" being applied to me.
The lessons I take away from my experiences are rarely logical to others without a flow chart and careful explanation so suffice it to say that when I was young I learned the value of digging my own oubliette and hiding all my anger, hurt, loneliness, hope, disappointment, fear, shame and doubt along with all the memories that call them forth in it. Building layer upon layer of locks and walls around that hole to hold all I fed it made it endlessly deep and impossibly high. While the sun never reaches it, 3am lines it up for the stars. 3am sees my whispered secrets and stinging tears as my demons reach for the stars while I shrink trembling and terrified into the nearest shadow counting the seconds desperate to escape their notice.
I believe that in the darkest heart of the night, for at least an hour, you stand alone in existence. You are like an acrobat on the highest wire with one tiny spotlight and no net. I believe that 3am holds a glimpse of eternity.
I don't have to believe that at 3am there is no water hot enough to wash the pain away. there is no hand to hold. there is no one to call because there are no words that make sense. at 3am the only voices you hear are the ones you buried and your own distant keening.
3am is when everything you fight... fights back.
I heard somewhere that every man is alone at 3am. Or maybe the phrasing was backwards and that 3am will find every man alone. It's a distant echo in my head, like the memory of remembering something, the words a spidery script carried on crumbling paper or perhaps a faint tune. The impression comes to me frequently, like a riddle I'm too proud to look up, and flits through the corner of my mind usually at around 3am since this is an hour I see fairly regularly. The counter point is a Donald Justice poem that I studied nightly for three months when I was 18 because I really wasn't able to do anything else but that is a different story for another time.
3am is my hour. It's been lone and lonely, the end of a party, the start of a day. I have drifted away cold and alone while wrapped in warm arms and I have woke from nightmares to watch the clock brand the time into my eyes. I don't know why this hour has an affinity for me but things in my life tend to work like that; I'm all patterns and circles, tragically charmed with an awkward grace.
There is a feeling, a state I slip into or a cloak I wear...it has a name I won't use here because it will distract you with assumptions or prompt judgment. This feeling is closest at 3am like a paper spinning wheel that equates hours to colors; 3am is always a cloudy gray. You can peer into it and see anything from Bob Ross clouds to the witch trapped in the doorway of your childhood bed room who beckoned you to come stand in the in betweens.
Note: You never want to get trapped in the in betweens. I used to get trapped in between dream and awake until I shut down my dreams. I always got the impression that my dreams were fighting a battle where half of them wanted to tell me things and the other half were trying to swallow me up. I try to stay off their battle ground as I don't care for the concept of "collateral damage" and "acceptable loss" being applied to me.
The lessons I take away from my experiences are rarely logical to others without a flow chart and careful explanation so suffice it to say that when I was young I learned the value of digging my own oubliette and hiding all my anger, hurt, loneliness, hope, disappointment, fear, shame and doubt along with all the memories that call them forth in it. Building layer upon layer of locks and walls around that hole to hold all I fed it made it endlessly deep and impossibly high. While the sun never reaches it, 3am lines it up for the stars. 3am sees my whispered secrets and stinging tears as my demons reach for the stars while I shrink trembling and terrified into the nearest shadow counting the seconds desperate to escape their notice.
I believe that in the darkest heart of the night, for at least an hour, you stand alone in existence. You are like an acrobat on the highest wire with one tiny spotlight and no net. I believe that 3am holds a glimpse of eternity.
I don't have to believe that at 3am there is no water hot enough to wash the pain away. there is no hand to hold. there is no one to call because there are no words that make sense. at 3am the only voices you hear are the ones you buried and your own distant keening.
3am is when everything you fight... fights back.
Labels: 3am, Confessions, Insomnia, TMI
Sunday, April 12, 2015
That Old 3am Restlessness Again
I am a depressive.
It feels weird to type this, like I'm both stating the obvious and making something real by speaking its name. The sly, malicious voice in my head is sneering something about how it always knew I was damaged, broken, less. The nervous one tells me to erase the words, to make them less true, to steal their power. Both are absurd and while I know this there is always a part of me that agrees with the voices.
I am a depressive and I am unmedicated by choice.
I have anxiety issues that manifest in various ways like being overwhelmed in chaotic-noisy places or panicking when I'm in a crowd. They also make me a fairly controlling and untrusting of anything I can't control. No one can guarantee that medication will always be available or effective so if I allowed myself to be dependent upon it a day could come when I would be defenseless, raw, in withdrawal, and unable to function because I took the easier road. To me, this is unacceptable. I live a smaller, more controlled life but it has ample goodness, beauty and joy so I feel fairly proud of being able to manage myself. It is not easy and I'd never suggest that; I do also recognize that it is not a valid choice for everyone.
I am persistent depressive and I hide it.
Why am I ashamed of something I can't control? I never liked my hair color or the fact that it is woefully thin and terribly straight, but I'm not ashamed of my hair. I have, however, spent a lot of money over the years to make it look different. I can say that I've never read our heard about anyone kicked out of school over their natural hair color like I was for being depressive. Society will band together to lift up someone with cancer, lupus, or autism but most people vanish swiftly and silently away at the mention of a mental illness. They distance themselves and treat you with extreme caution like they will catch depression of they accidentally come in contact with an infected tear. Having blue hair actually started conversations but being depressive ended friendships.
I was born a depressive.
I can't recall a single moment of my life that was not marked by a lurking depression. It is the elephant only I can see in every room. It is a war in my head over who is in control of my thoughts and emotions. It is me constantly consciously choosing to foster positive habits and not allowing myself to follow the bad thoughts into their descending spiral. It is episodes of major depression spiced with insomnia and topped with anxiety so severe I only leave my home to work or simply work from home. I remember recognizing it in kindergarten when i was unable to connect with anyone and tried so hard to be invisible. I recall feeling swamped in the blankness and choking on misery with tears sneaking down my face for no reason in third grade. I have hundreds of memories of looking around me confused as to why no one noticed the weight of sadness that consumed me and how no one else had immobilizing days when they cried for no reason. It never got easier and I still watch people live emotionally average lives with ups and downs, confounded by their normalcy. I occasionally feel a pang of envy though I don't allow myself to dwell on it because I honestly can't decide which of us is more emotionally colorblind; I remind myself that we are simply different and therein lies the beauty in life.
I am a depressive but I do not allow it to define me.
Despite this short piece of writing I do not define myself by my being persistent depressive any more than I'd define myself by my job title, my weight or the fact that I have a child. I am greater than the sum of my parts. I am a caring, creative, generous, productive, functional member of society. I may not always follow the rules but I'm consistent in the ones I support and those I disdain. I walk a fine line between great empathy and bleeding out for others. I'm a big believer in habits and processes though I always try to also leave room for happy chaos. I don't like charities so I frequently give to others directly in ways that I believe in. I dislike and distrust doctors and accountants. I believe in accepting people fully as who and what they are with no expectation of them ever changing or simply leaving them alone if I can’t. I have a deep fear of stairs due to a recurring dream of falling down a flight and dying that I have had since I was a child. I get giddy over food that turns my tongue blue.
Depression has many faces and stories. It has innumerable moments at 3am when someone wants very much to reach out but is so certain that no one is there. It is there at the party when someone wants to run away from the laughing and light conversation because the whole experience feels like a disjointed funhouse nightmare. It is in the dam of unspoken words between two people when one is so terrified of rejection they never allow the other person in. It is behind the quick jokes and insightful irreverence of those quiet but surprisingly funny people you feel a sudden connection to but rarely see again.
Depression is not a choice or something you can snap out of. Like hair, skin or eye color, it is part of who someone is. You can hide it, cover it up, pretend it doesn't exist, but there it is, still part of you. It is not something one can wish away or find a permanent cure for. What depressives need from you is acceptance, love, respect and an open mind. Ask questions, listen to them, be there without judgement, and gently voice your concerns when you think they’re in over their heads.
“I know there is strength in the differences between us and I know there is comfort where we overlap…”
Ani DiFranco ~ Overlap
Labels: 3am, Confessions, Depression, TMI
