From the Untitled Archives

I found this post the other day and realized I'd never actually put it out there...or maybe I put parts of it out there, or a different version or something, but, reading over it, I liked it, and wanted to share. I'm currently working on another time-line piece, but it's taking a minute to process through MY SOUL. So, forgive me. I spend about 20% of my time trying to figure out what I want to write about, 77% agonizing over actually writing, and maybe 3% actually writing. It’s a shame the way this writing messes around with my heart. Ya know?

So....this is back in the fall of 2016....a different time indeed.

Summer is almost over, and as the cooler air floats in and settles on the concrete, grass and astroturf of Chicago’s myriad of front stoops, I feel an all too familiar looming sense of terror. Winter is coming. And winter is going to hurt. It has me questioning every choice I’ve ever made as I spin out of control down the tunnel of sugary marketing ploys painted orange and yellow. It’s beautiful, but it’s also unsettling (and way too sugary), to say the least.

I am unsettled, and I know exactly why, for the most part. My therapist keeps telling me I’m more together than I’ve ever been since she’s been working with me, but I can’t get behind it. Of course, that’s always been my biggest problem: getting behind myself. I play a good game, but I really don’t trust my own instincts in that fiercely confident way that I want to. I haven’t given enough merit to my own accomplishments.

Sure, I like repeating that I have a master’s degree, especially when people ask if I can do things like, “hold this.” I can toss in a good multi-cultural factoid when the conversation turns to travel and world view. Heck, I can give you relationship advice as I’ve spent a gooooooood looooooooooong time analyzing my past relationships and doing my damnedest to see the whole picture, but I certainly can’t take my own advice, and I wouldn’t bet on my answer with a quiz team, and I’ve rarely relished in my own innumerable memories.

I maybe give myself credit once every….3 or 4 years?

So, I’m due for a “me” party, time to reflect on all the choices I’ve made and where they’ve led me. It’s natural for me to want to reconsider my choice of settlement during this time, as I’m more open to the time it will take to make the right decision. I’m not desperate….but again, winter is coming.

As I compose my list of pros and cons for going back south, I keep getting sabotaged by those old demons I've been fighting off for a while now. That's natural, I bet. When I lived in The South, home, I was always a little frustrated. I felt stifled, held under water as I kicked and fought my way to the surface of whatever I needed to learn about myself. Everywhere I went, I was followed, at my heels, by these memories, this PTSD, the beasts.

Describing the beasts, using literal terms, makes them seem ridiculous, even to me. Par exemple, A friend in a rocky, at best, relationship found an article about gaslighting and shared it with me a few years ago. Gaslighting is basically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity. It's been popping up a lot lately, I think, in the media, part of the whole carnival ride paradigm shift. I had never heard the term before she shared the article, but it made sense to me.

I was awash in memories of old boyfriends turning on me suddenly, telling me I was yelling, I was out of control, crazy, when I didn't feel like that, like I was yelling. I didn't feel rage. I didn't feel out of control, but they said I was. They told me I was losing it. Instead, I saw myself as the little girl I used to be, with dirty knees and wide eyes feeling like she was being ignored, feeling like she was not being heard. It was confusion, desperation to understand. A little girl asking, "please help me understand. How can I help? What can I do? What am I supposed to do?" It was empowering to finally have a word for something that affected me so deeply, helped me recognize that little girl.

Not two days after my friend had shared the article with me and her boyfriend, I remember sitting in one of the classrooms of the old theater where I spent the first solid years of my thirties. It was after the usual Saturday night show, and we were drinking beers and trying to make each other laugh. I remember her boyfriend mentioning the article around the time all the mens' voices had raised at least a few volume levels. Everyone laughed.

"Gaslighting? Like I'm actually making her think she's crazy?! How crazy is that?!"

And everyone laughed. The whole room roared with laughter.

I waited for the noise to die down so that I could point out the irony, but it didn't. He kept going, harping on what an idiot notion it was to even think of complaining about being made to think you're crazy, and how crazy she was. She was so crazy. They're all crazy. Crazy. Crazy. CRAZY CRAZY CRAZYCRAZY.

And I just sat there, expressionless...the beasts nipping at my heals. But I didn't turn around.

If I had been strong enough to turn around and face them, I would have said to him, in as non-threatening a voice as humanly possible, "Well, why do you think she feels that way? What's going on in her life that is maybe causing her to feel like she's losing it...if it's not you?" It seems like it should be easy, but as I ask the questions, I begin to feel the tension. He bristles, worried that I'm about to get angry, "crazy."

Weak me gives into the accusations. She buckles and cries out, flies off the handle. "I'm not crazy! I'm not yelling! I'm just....please let me finish!" She tumbles into her own trap and ends up in the fetal position, weeping the tears of defeat whilst listening to country music, the music of pain.

Strong me. Stops. Listens. Takes a deep breath, and says calmly how she feels, how she sees the world regardless of who is listening. She explains that she understands his point of view, that it's hard for everyone, for all of us, but we have to be able to have a dialogue, to ask questions, to be questioned without getting defensive, to give answers. We all get defensive. We all put up a wall.

And then, she is done, regardless of what is said after. She has said what she wanted to say. The rage of the subject before her, behind her, is noted, but not adopted. She turns inward to the little girl with the sticky tears on her face born of the confusion that comes from miscommunication, from being ignored, from being told to shut up, to sit down, to be different, to be different, to be different, and she embraces her.

I will dry her tears and hold her in my arms. Then I'll make a lot of cookies, and regardless of what the CDC says about cookie dough, I'll eat the hell out of it.

I think of other girls and women that face the same dance as society urges them to be a partner instead of a person. Relationships are a choice, after all, not a requirement. I think of men that face the same quandaries, the same unimpeachable ideals of how they should look and think and act. We are all in this together. Let's admit our fears. Let's be honest. For once.

If I can do this. If I can really trust myself. I can begin to trust others. I can begin to trust other women and men, young and old. I can carry my own suffering, not as a wound, but as a badge, tell the stories of my journey, lean in, leave my house...I can help, and that's all I've ever wanted to do.

He likes Righteous Babes. What can I say. 

*If you have never seen Beasts of the Southern Wild, stop everything and change that.

Don't Sell Me a Gun or Some Facts About My Depression

Since I was a kid, I’ve had these wild fantasies wherein I get some horrible disease that makes/forces everyone to feel sorry for me, and worry about me, and...you know...give a shit. I’ve been depressed for most of my life, but no one feels sorry for you if you’re depressed. People feel sorry for you if you have cancer.

My depression comes from severe anxiety, so when I go through a period of high stress and it ends, I get really really depressed. It’s awesome. So, I’m crazy and angry for a few weeks, and then I’m so sad my whole body hurts, and I don't want to eat or drink or do anything....and then I feel better and start taking on more responsibilities. Then, I get stressed out again, and then I get depressed...it’s the circle of life. The wheeeeeel of misfortune.

I have trouble getting too close to people because of my depression. I try to be open about it, but end up sounding like an after school special, and then I actually get depressed and become mean and sad and convinced that I don’t have any friends. And I’m scared to call anyone because most people aren’t sitting around hoping their friend will call and say, “I don’t have any friends!!!” but in, like, the saddest cry voice you can think of.

I feel bad for my friends. I love my friends and I want them to know that I love them, but sometimes I can’t smile or be “happy” or stop crying or stop yelling about things or stop locking myself in my room and pretending to be dead.

I was diagnosed with “moderate major depressive disorder.” I’m moderately majorly depressed.

I’m kind of really depressed. I’m a little bit super depressed.

Why am I angry all the time? Because I’m sad and scared a lot FOR NO REASON. I’m just as confused as everyone else is. I would be fine if my life didn’t come to a halt every now and then because of my inability to separate myself from my emotions. I would be peachy.

In reality, I think I’m pretty nice….I think I am. I generally hope everyone is okay. I mostly want everyone to be happy. I’m more than grateful for what my friends do for me. But I run a lot of friends off….being sad. or angry. and then I feel bad...and I just bury myself in a hole of shame. And it’s not like I’m just saying to people “this is me! fuck you if you don’t like it!” I generally try to let people know “I’m depressed, and sometimes it’s really really hard.”

I lose friends, despite my best efforts. It is a lot to take on. My mood swings are enough to make me not want to hang out with me, but I’m always there, tagging along. I’ll go from “I’m an intelligent human being, and I make a contribution to society,” to “I’m an idiot and the worst at literally everything.” Naturally, feeling this way about myself leads to a great deal of anger. I think to myself “if I’m so great and intelligent and funny, why the hell do I suck so bad?”

I used to believe it when people pointed out my flaws as...flaws. I still believe it, but I’ve been carrying around a lot of things that were said to me out of fear and self-loathing that I took on and have continued to carry with me for over a decade. I believe, most of the time, that these people must know better than I, and that, although my primary intentions do not include bitterness or hatred, it must run rife in my blood if so many people respond to me as such. I am mostly just very confused.

I don’t like to hide from things. I don’t find that kind of behavior to be beneficial to me. I may be wrong about that. Instead of hiding from things, and ignoring them until they go away, I like to drown in them, sit on the floor and obsess over them until there is nothing left of me. I will withdraw and moan, but I don’t believe I try to crush people. I don’t believe I try to hurt people. I suppose I withdraw because I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want anyone to feel like I do.

I do not fully and completely see myself as a beautiful person. Maybe in any way. On the one hand. There’s a whole different hand on the positive end of that spectrum, it’s just a small gimp hand that doesn’t do much. Maybe I need a robot hand. A Darth Vader hand.

But sometimes I do look in the mirror and see myself and think, holy cow. I'm gorgeous. And sometimes I look back on my life, what I've done and where I've been, and I think, GOOD GRIEF you've had a life. And I have.

Sometimes I feel like there is nothing but sadness. That my future is only a constant cycle of pain and confusion. Sometimes I scare myself and the people I love. I'm scared of being alone. I'm scared of chasing everyone away. I'm scared that I'll never be able to stop this cycle. And my fear is deeper than I usually guess. It's so deep it takes over and fills my head with noise, and it makes me so angry.

And sometimes I feel like I can do anything. That I'm surrounded by love. That I'm a child of hope. I wish I could feel like THAT all the time.

But I'm sick. Ill. And that makes me forget the love. It makes me forget my life, my accomplishments, my own strength. It's real, and it's hard, and no one should have to do it alone. So I can't be silent. I can't ever be silent. Because I am not alone. No one is alone.

Jenny Sticks and Onion Starters

Jenny cut down a lot of saplings in the woods around the Garden at Montaluce to use for "projects." I called us outlaw gardeners, and these sticks were our ticket to whatever structures we imagined for our two acres of weeds in the North Georgia mountains. Jenny justified cutting down the saplings by explaining that they would never get the opportunity to grow beyond a certain size because the bigger trees would, essentially, choke them out.

Jenny Sticks and other foraged supplies.

We called her crazy Jenny, and her collection of saplings and branches, Jenny sticks.

Jenny was a brave woman with clear foresight, but she lacked confidence in her gardening abilities. I remember coming to work in the morning, a bag of onion starters in my back pocket, ready to get them in the ground so we could harvest in the fall, and then spending over an hour debating whether or not we would be able to properly protect the onions with the soil on the top of the hill where we intended to plant them.

Would it be loamy enough? Loamy soil will easily crumble in your hand, unlike clay, which makes up the majority of the earth in Georgia. You can find loam where trees have fallen in the woods and broken down. It's dark, moist, and it smells like soil should smell. Would our clay soil be able to remain well drained with the right additives? Would we be able to amend the clay enough so that it would allow the tiny onion starters room to expand and grow? Anything could upset the onions during their tenure in the garden, we read....admittedly on the internet.

Eventually, as was the case with most of these planning sessions, I would take a deep breath, stop trying to make sense of the diagrams, and start heading for the garden, ignoring Jenny's incessant desire to be "ready." There's no sense in waiting until I'm sure nothing can go wrong. I will never be absolutely certain that nothing will go wrong.

I can, however, be 100% certain that something will, most certainly, go terribly wrong, and I am.

That first patch of onions we planted didn't have a chance. We were way off on our additives, and the starters ended up growing decent green onions but nothing more. It was no matter. We didn't plant all of the starters there. A few weeks later we started a different crop mixed in with our garlic on a sloping area of the acreage that Jenny had used the sticks to terrace. The terracing allowed us to add enough to the soil to give the onions and garlic room to grow, and in the end we filled a room with onions and garlic after we harvested.

People talk a lot about their inability to start a project or make a life change because they aren't ready; I hear myself talking about being ready, about waiting until I'm fully prepared to take the next step, but I find the longer I wait, the more time I spend on the couch feeling sorry for myself, drowning in my depression because I'm not even really trying to swim.

The Garden a half a year later. The fruits of our risk.

So I try to keep moving. The world isn't going to stop turning for me to make sure I have all my ducks in a row. It's spinning pretty fast, actually, and we are all in a constant state of controlled falling. So, I put my seeds in the ground and take what I get.

Be faithful to your work, and be faithful to yourself, and with each misstep, you'll move closer to getting it.......right?

But don't expect to ever get it...you know...just completely and totally right. In fact, now might be a good time to try to let go of the idea that there is such a thing.