Cookies: From the Unpublished Archives

I wrote this blog on my second day of trying to vacation in Georgia in September, after I sold my car to the guy that towed me back to Chicago when I broke down in Indiana.

On the second day of my vacation, I took a cab, a Lyft if you will, to pick up my rental car at the train station. My driver was a delight. I don't know what it is about me, or maybe people just want to talk sometimes, but I keep getting life stories from people I just met, and I'm like, okay life, is this like, the epilogue to the long lesson you've been teaching me for the past few years? Because I still can't figure out how to voice record on my Samsung Galaxy S7, and what good is all this talkin, if I can't record it without people's consent?

Within a minute of closing the door of the car, she began to tell me the events of her morning until this point in time, 7:30 a.m. Her daughter was having trouble in her second marriage. She hated her daughter's first husband, but she actually liked this guy.

That story led us to the topic of dating. She was 70 (yes. seventy), married simply because it was a hassle to get divorced, but considering that perhaps her marriage was giving her an excuse to avoid getting back out there. She was kind of dating a guy that she liked, but he was being weird.

My lovely Lyft driver explained, "I don't understand why men always be acting like I want to tie them down. I'm tellin ya, I just want someone to hang out with, to have dinner with, wine, to go to movies with. I'll pay! I don't need your money. But men always be acting like I need to work for it. Why I gotta work for it? I'm the one with the cookie. You want the cookie don't ya? You work for it."

The same analogy Buffy used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7 episode 22 "Chosen" to explain to Angel that she couldn't handle romance or dating the morning of the apocalypse:

Something happened with the Lyft app, and I didn't get to rate or tip her, which crushed me, so I'm going to have to write a letter to their offices. I wonder if they need plants....

My drive was atrocious. I always always always forget that the road through Indiana to Atlanta, Georgia is always heavy traffic and non-stop construction for six hundred something miles. It is a sin. If sin is real...that is what it is.

The air changes in your car (sexy Nissan Sentra), the smell changes, when you come across the mountains in Kentucky. Ever since my father took me to the place I was born, I have felt the Appalachian mountains coursing through my veins, singing to me.

There's a weird thing that happens when all that work you've been doing in therapy starts to pay off, like when you notice the difference for the first time after starting to work out. Like, all the horrible ugly faces you made while you lay there, drenched in your own sweat and tears, headphones in and up, suffering the strain required of a broken heart or determined chest presses without a spotter, and the pain that comes afterwards as you shove Ben and Jerry's in your face crying, "I need this for energy!! Nothing else makes sense!!!!," were totally worth it for what's coming.

When the veil begins to lift, you start to see each step or misstep was just what happened along the way. I feel like I've been kind of whining about this for a while, but it's worth repeating: Nothing happens for a reason save that life exists to continue to exist, so the world keeps turning, and there's not a damn thing you or I can do about it.

But, the people in your life. They are everything. Second only to you. Because you are life, racing forward, surviving. You are brave because it is hard. Like we learned from Buffy in this post from Labor day. The hardest thing in life is to live it. And yeah, I've been living. A LOT. And it's been really hard. But it's also been really rewarding...unless I lose my mind....or maybe still rewarding.

When the fog starts to clear, you begin to see everyone else, lost in their own pain and fear, or inability to explain how they feel, even to themselves sometimes. I know what that's like. I'm not kidding when I say I suffer from depression, and my depression can be black as night. I'm learning not to discount where my scars have come from, the memory of suffering that makes it next to impossible for me to trust anyone but my dog.

We are all lying in wait for the next predator, men and women. We are screaming our stories at each other expecting to hear something different, but it's the same story, over and over again. That's what I mean by equality when I say, with extreme trepidation and equally fierce fearlessness, that I am a feminist. We are all living in the same world, and we're all terrified of each other, but we're all we have. We're the only reason we keep living. Right?

I suppose a nihilist could argue that nothing matters but pleasure and pain, and that's fine. It's lonely, but if it works for the nihilist. The reality is that relationship, sex, love, is a drug, and it's the strongest by nature. It's survival. So the nihilist also finds herself in a cycle of relationship, unable to stand to actually be lonely. That requires the acceptance that one actually experiences connection with others. If you never let yourself face life without that connection, you don't really know what it means to be completely empty, do you?

I do. I know what it's like to stare into the abyss and let it tear your soul apart, like in Doctor Who, when the Master looked into all of time and went insane and turned David Tennant, the tenth Doctor into a tiny Doctor and put him in a cage while he took over the world in order to destroy it because time is nonsense and everything is meaningless, but the Doctor couldn't let him. Everyone has to believe in the Doctor just as hard as he believes in them, which is the point of Doctor Who, that he believes in you.

I used to weep for people and their inability to take the leaps that I've taken in my life. Angry that so many would choose to be safe in a world that can never truly promise anything in regards to safety. Everything you know could fall apart in a matter of moments. I know what that feels like. Trust me. I can tell you about it, if you want.

I'm not angry any more at the people I love. I understand. If you can postpone the shock of reality in your life, I suggest you relish that time. I try to hold onto those moments in my life now with both arms. I've lain in bed at night with my arms wrapped around my shoulders, weeping at the vastness of being alone. Now my arms are full.

I did not know how to go about things because that book hasn't been written yet. I had to do the research first. Now I bask in the glow of the terrifying world we live in, where voices are rising out of the mob, voices that have never been heard before, telling stories of roads that have only recently been traversed.

Those roads are still open. They are waiting to teach us to be better helpers of one another because we are all we have. I want to help the voices. I want to encourage them, to encourage you to love yourself, not only so that you can love others, but also because loving yourself is the greatest challenge you will face, and the rewards are like a wellspring...I imagine. I'm new here myself.

I've been baking cookies in waves for over a year now, since I first hit the bottom of my well, coping in the best possible way. It's cool, though, because I've also been moving my body for the better part of every day in some form or fashion. Treat yourself. Learn to make something you love. Learn to make yourself, and be what you love. Then teach others to do the same. You are a wellspring. You are the answer. You are overflowing.

Return of the Timeline: 2009-2013, When I Lived in Georgia, The Beginning....part II.

If you were to ask my father which series he prefers of the first two Star Treks, between The Original Series and The Next Generation, having seen all of them, he would choose TNG. If you were to ask me, having seen MOST of TNG and a good portion of The Original (I have no idea why I'm capitalizing "Original"....respect?), I would choose TNG. Kirk's...great, but Jean Luc Picard is my prince.

There are pages dedicated to this boy. 

I feel like I grew up with the sweater master himself, Wesley Crusher, but it wasn't until a year ago that I actually realized he was leading his own depression and anxiety awareness campaign (well, the actor Wil Wheaton, not Crusher, although he is the son of a doctor). I'm not going to say it wasn't pleasingly nostalgic when he popped up back on the scene. I'm just not going to say it. It was even more enjoyable to hear him talk about his own struggles with GAD, but nothing struck me more than when I heard him speak about the difference between life with and without medication. It was uncanny (and you can hear it at around 2:56 on the video that is linked to GAD up there).

To paraphrase, he describes life with depression and anxiety as life in a room that was so loud, the only way to live was to "deal with how loud it was." I heard him say it (on The Nerdist Podcast, hosted by fellow Memphian, Chris Hardwick, of Billy Hardwick and bowling and stuff), and (duh) I cried.

Deal with how loud it is.

At 29, I was exhausted. Falling asleep crying and waking up to more misery. I was in love, or I wanted to be in love...to be loved, as I loved, and I was panicking in the shower about hitting my head and being found days later because no one stopped by my house in the woods where I had no one that I knew well but a man I didn't really understand and who couldn't really understand me. I had a Master's degree, enough experience traveling and living abroad to write a novel, and I wept for myself because I couldn't bear the weight of the noise, the relentless droning of, "It is not enough. It will never be enough."

It wasn't until I had a breakdown in front my boyfriend, an honest to God weeping, no words, terrified, breakdown, that I was prompted to do something.

I realized I had hit the "proverbial" bottom.
And I stopped crying.

I called my dad, told him I needed help. Then, I drove myself to Alabama and commenced some of the oddest days of my life, the days I floated there, on the bottom, on my back looking up at the expanse of the deep well above me, leading to nothing.

My doctor told me to stop taking my birth control as this might have been a side effect (a minor side-effect....panic attacks and suicidal thoughts). I wondered if I would have to be hospitalized. I stared off into the foothills of the Appalachians. I saw nothing. I felt heavy, on the verge, tipping.

Then, because I had taken it previously, a doctor prescribed Zoloft. He should have told me to start with half a pill, but he didn't, so I spent the first twenty-four hours smiling like a weird android and trembling. I halved it.

Then, the noise stopped. I didn't notice at first; it takes a moment for it to creep up on a person. I was with my mom in Chattanooga a few days later. We walked around the city, around the "Choo-Choo," and I thought of how romantic it had all seemed in the old song. Now, rusty and surrounded by concrete, the trains just sat, quietly. Like I was doing. For the first time.

My mother asked me once what I was thinking about, and I paused, listened and replied, "nothing." And I meant it. For the first time in almost thirty years. And it felt so good.

It doesn't last. One can't just take medication and expect everything to be okay. The depressed brain is pretty convincing. There's a lot of searching: searching for the right therapist with no insurance, searching for the right psychiatrist with no insurance, searching for the medication that works that you can also afford without insurance. Then, there's the search for the way to move forward, search for the people that can be trusted with the darkness, the people that can handle it.

The Internet is for Star Trek

Discovering what I can handle. Moving forward despite how easy it would be to stand still. These are the voyages of my life. My trek through the stars of my own universe. See...I'm bringin' it back. Like a circle. Like time.

This was a moment, along my timeline, like on any timeline, a milestone. One can look behind for clues as to why it happened, but what lies ahead requires focus, an expanse stretching as far as the universe and as deep as the deep well in which I had once floated calmly, gazing up into nothing, except nothing was freedom. Nothing was peace. For the first time.

Return of the Timeline: 2009-2013, When I Lived in Georgia, The Beginning

In the spring of 2009, after the exciting election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, my boyfriend decided he wanted to move to Georgia to manage a restaurant and winery for some of his family members. I have always been desperate for adventure, and he promised me a garden, told me he liked the way he thought when I was around, and that he would be able to add me to his health insurance plan. He also bought me an iPhone. I moved to Georgia for a garden, an iPhone, and health insurance.

I must have been quite a mess before I left everyone I knew and loved to live in a small town with a guy that had never really been the nicest person to me. Oh, he tried, but he wasn't ready for something like this, and neither was I. Looking back on things, I feel like I should have been able to see my inevitable major depressive breakdown coming from a mile away, but I didn't. And suddenly I was alone in a cabin in the woods with very little natural light, a new Netflix account, no friends that really knew me, and a workaholic boyfriend. I was teetering on the edge of a terrible realization.

I went to Dahlonega, GA on my own for the first time to scout a place for us to live. I stayed in a charming bed and breakfast with lovely hosts and enjoyed drinks and dinner at a local bar while I mulled over my housing choices. Dahlonega is possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Even today, when I drive through the hills, I am overflowing with words and thoughts and feelings....all of which require a full symphony to express.

However, the other side of that coin is crowded with all sorts of different discomforts, and my least favorite has got to be the tick. I became obsessively terrified of ticks. I had been terrified of them before, found a tick in my head on the last day of camp when I was about ten years old and will never forget the sound of someone repeating, "it's digging into your head" in terror as I sat, helpless to do anything about it. Years later, I remember finding a tick on my hiking boot the summer I lived and worked in Shenandoah National Park, plucking it off with my thumb and forefinger, laying it gently on the asphalt of Skyline Drive in beautiful Virginia, and violently crushing its horrific shell with a rock from the side of the road. Ticks and Black Widow spiders. That's when I let out the rage.

That summer, we could see ticks floating down from the trees and alighting on patio decks. I could feel them gently gripping the hairs on my legs before attempting to clamp down into my flesh. I huddled in my room in the bed, bingeing 30 Rock and imagining I was hearing my phone receive multiple text messages. No one was texting, though. And if they were, I couldn't trust them. They didn't know what I was going through.

I left for Pilsen, Czech Republic to teach English in late July, eager to get back to Europe, to some form of activism, but I found myself feeling overly nostalgic for my time living overseas. I knew this would be my last visit to a different continent for a while, and I was in the middle of a major depressive break. I sat up all night on the weekends, crying and writing letters as little girl Caroline to my parents. Seriously. I think because of a chapter in the book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, or maybe Getting the Love You Want. Also, Seriously.

During my stay in Pilsen as a teacher of English that summer, I had the rare opportunity to watch the Health Care debate in the U.S. from the outside, and let me tell you, it was not pretty. It didn't help that I was also watching the state decide my fate as a citizen from the outside, that people with whom I went to church and sat beside on Sunday mornings were addressing me personally to say things like:

"I'm sorry, Caroline, but a health care system that allows patients with pre-existing conditions just can't exist here."

Take a minute with that.

We sat together in church and heard the same sermons and stories about self sacrifice, piety, love that passes all understanding, and this is where they took it. But politics don't belong in church anyway....right?

I cried myself to sleep every night, and when I opened my eyes in the morning and realized I still had to get up and teach classes, I cried some more. The ONLY way I made it out of my door every day was with the help of the Wellbutrin a friend was sharing with me because of my debilitating depression and rejection from buying healthcare and, consequently, medication. It was not really the drug for me, but it got me to class, and it previously helped me finish my Master's thesis.

This is the life to which my fellow "Christians," my extended family, condemned me. I certainly made the best of it, didn't I?

Drinking and speaking English, pic credit Mayinka Maya

I taught an advanced all ages class and a beginner adult class. I was originally told I would be teaching intermediate adults, but when my first session "meet and greet" activities garnered horrified stone faces (I love the Czechs), I suspected that was not the case.

I cried a lot. Not because of the students...they were incredible, striving to communicate with me on the same level through shared language...that level at which adults begin to understand each other...usually over wine and beer...delicious, fresh, czech pilsner. We played guitars and sang music at pubs into the wee hours. We talked about poetry and politics, family and the future. They were so excited about Obama as was I, despite the very public battle for the fate of my well-being going on across the pond.

On the last night and at the farewell party for all teachers and students at the Summer Language Academy, after multiple shots of local clove liqueur, girlie shots of a minty beverage referred to simply as "green," and more beer than I can ever remember, a student lifted me off the ground in celebration, then, unaware of his own strength, dropped me hard on the dance floor. I landed on my feet, but one of them was twisted around backwards, and I heard a pop.

Needless to say I definitely hurt something, but the alcohol numbed the initial shock of everything, and I limped out of the hotel with a gooey smile on my face and attempted to walk back to my dorm alone. Luckily, someone was behind me that could see my struggle to walk, announced himself, and swooped in to pick me up as I apologized profusely for my own body weight.

He, another teacher, get me back to my room and offered me a few different methods of pain relief. I accepted a couple, but I had to draw the line when, after telling me how remarkably beautiful and mysterious he found me, he offered to make my night...with a loving nod to his wife. I respectfully declined.

Then, I sent an email to my boyfriend and called him on the phone to ask him to take the train into Atlanta to help me with my luggage the next day as I would be having a difficult time walking and carrying things. He said he would, but when I finally arrived after a miserably painful trip back overseas, he hadn't come to the airport to help me. When I called him to find out where he was, he got mad at me because now he was going to be late getting back to work. He had taken time off to come and pick me up and how could I not consider his job when thinking about my injury. He convinced me that I was ungrateful, and I went back to the corner of my bed, to 30 Rock, a silent phone, and no one.

That's when I had my break. My depressive breakdown. That's when I started on the long road to finding the best anti-depressant. And that was really the beginning, when I actually became a resident of Georgia.

The links throughout are blogs from my early days in Dahlonega and from the Summer Language School in Pilsen that year. Enjoy!

Follow Your Bliss

I sang Don't Stop Believin' at a Karaoke bar in Athens, Georgia one winter, about ten percent of my life ago. I'm fairly certain I was there at the behest of a lady friend because of this fabulous Karoake DJ that was all the rage in the hipsterest town in GA.

I sang it alone, no backup of drunk friends leaning on my shoulders while we laughed like we didn't give a damn about anyone else in the room. It was a solo, a joyous, drunken solo from a woman who had just turned thirty, barely escaped an emotionally abusive relationship, and found herself in the exact place doing the exact thing she wanted to do.

Which was to sing Don't Stop Believin' at a bar in Athens, GA at around the coldest time of the year, solo.

I was drunk. I mean, I said it, but also, obviously. I killed my voice, along with the song. There was a crowd of college girls, stumbling over themselves at my feet, mascara running down their perfect faces as they sang along. The boys stood back, secretly enjoying every minute, but also terrified of what it would mean to have to get to know a woman like this and how it would take too many beers to even have the nerve to say something, much less run wide-eyed into the abyss with her.

Afterwards, exhausted and sweating, but inspired by my own achievement (to sing Don't Stop Believin' at a bar in Athens, Georgia as the bitter winds of winter swept lands much further north than GA), I accepted everyone's accolades as one drunk to another.

"You have balls bigger than my dad's!"

One girl shouted over and over until I made hazy eye-contact. Then, she leaned forward and fingered my collar.

"But seriously. Your balls are bigger than my dad's."

"When and how did you manage to see your dad's balls?"

"HaHaHaHaHa!!!"

Later, I fell asleep on some guy's couch with his dogs while he and the lady friend played records and smoked pot until the sun came up. Like hipster bitches.

This is from a different karaoke event, but the sentiment is the same.