as you may have noticed, i've been absent a bit...
i know i allude to cyclical issues with anxiety and depression, but there is something that happens every mid to late spring wherein my issues become all consuming...it's a thing, a cycle...it sucks, but it's there and i do the best i can in dealing with it...
what i want to do is go and lie my head down somewhere for a week each year...a place where my needs are met but i hear no other voice and am not required to respond in any way...this isn't the love boat i'm talking about...not a vacation as much as a respite...i suspect the place i am talking about has a lot of people all dressed in white carrying little trays filled with delicious lithium thorazine cocktails...come to think of it, that sounds exactly like the love boat!
because this is not possible, what i do is press on and hope for the best...i realize as a plan, this is not a particularly well thought out one...less hannibal and b.a., more jack tripper and larry...but time marches on, symptoms ease, life returns to *normal*...the "plan" such as it is gets me through...
what i would like to make clear is that this is not the sort of thing that has me rocking back and forth in front of an open window in a daze a la demi moore in st. elmo's fire (you knew i'd work her in)...though if rob lowe would bust in and gather me up, i suppose i'd be game...
quite the opposite...i get up and out of bed every day...i do all the things i *normally* do...food, chores, school...
what i don't do is have a sunny outlook, answer the phone too often, call people back...i avoid going much of anywhere and when i do i try to make it quick...the state i get in doesn't have a lot of latitude for humanity at large...'course i don't have a lot when i'm not cracking up either...
i sit in the green chair...a lot...just sit...or perhaps on the porch when it isn't raining...
the anxiety is nerve endings in hyper overdrive and the depression is just a feeling of aloneness and malaise mixed with doubt and a smidge of despair...i get so tired, too...the kind of tired that takes root and refuses to be shooed away by sleep, exercise, coffee...
but i still *do*...because i can't go away and lie my head down for a week, i still get up and care for these kids...it may mean i weep a bit while sweeping and more easily snap at normal boybarian behavior, but mainly it means i am tired and melancholy and lonely...even with a night's rest, well-meaning friends, and the boybarians for company...
recently two people whom i love and hold dear have delicately suggested the consumption of a pharmaceutical...have i looked into it?, they ask, and if i haven't perhaps i should...that kinda thing...and i suspect they aren't the *only* ones who think so...
now i understand this comes from a place of love, and i myself have been in that position to suggest...but i must say no...yes i have *thought* about it but no i'm not going to...not now...
i have not reached a point wherein i feel the necessity to eradicate what brings it on...not because i'm better smarter faster, but because what this imbalance brings me is constant...i know what to expect, and when it's gone it's gone for a specific and determined amount of time...i can do anything for a few days, a month out of the year...i can *do* this...at least for now...and although it sucks, it is a known quantity...measurable...
if i didn't get up everyday and maintain the house and raise and educate the kids that would be one thing, but i do...all the rest of it, well it's mine to deal with...sure it spills over on the kids...how could it not?...you don't carry a huge vessel full to the top with everything imaginable and expect that it wouldn't slosh over the sides...
but that's me, one part in a million parts of me that i know inside and out back and forth...and there is a specific trial and error with pharmaceuticals that is not known...there are person-specific traits and characteristics that may be eradicated along with the standard chemical imbalance...and in this case that person is me...i don't want to mask the unpleasant parts of me if it means eradicating some other parts that aren't unpleasant (well i don't think of them as unpleasant, anyway...y'all may have your own opinions on this)
should i seek to take that part away, what other parts will follow?...and what will be brought in in the process?...these are answerable questions, but i have neither the time, the space, or the want to see what those answers are...
and i don't want to be *even*...i don't want my highs and lows to be altered into a delicate homogenized balance...
sure i don't want to be tired and lonely and sad...who does?...but again, those are known quantities for specific amounts of time...i know who i am and so do my kids...and they are not asked to tread lightly or to amend their selves in any way to accommodate me...they are my kids and i am their mom and our life ebbs and flows...no two rivers travel the same, there is not one ocean as destination for all...
the part of me that is tired and lonely and sad walks along with the part of me that is bold and proactive and snarky...and yes there are times the chemical soup of my soul walks farther and faster ahead than the rest, but that's just gonna have to do if i want all of me to remain intact...
please understand, this is not an attack against pharmaceuticals...lord knows they have immense benefits for some...nor is it an attack against those who choose to use them...different strokes and all that...and i am so not trying to romanticize or glamourize depression in any way...it is dark and yucky and not the least bit cool...i'm just saying find what works and stick with it...
and while this doesn't seem like it works to the outsider, i'm sticking with it for now...continuing to seek out activities that bring me health and peace when i'm able to do them, tools to use when the well begins to run dry...because i don't feel desperate enough to find it necessary to gamble with my personality if it means i have the possibility of losing badly...so i will continue trying to find the balance so i can handle what comes without having to dump the snark along the way...
i figure i have spent a lifetime dealing with *this*...i recognize now as an adult that i have had this chemical imbalance and all of its attendant symptoms since i was a child...
and hell, we all know i can't throw anything away, and that i can't stand change...so when you put it all into perspective i seem to be clicking right along like a finely tuned silly mortal machine...
i love it when a plan comes together...
x.
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