Details

I've had a lot of time lately. To think. I spend hours in the sun, laughing at myself for the meager attempt at farming I've managed to scratch out of this wet hot American summer.

And I'm beginning to remember the tiniest of details in my story.

Like the bird's nest in the garden of our house in North London, Turnpike Lane, April. Saturday morning, the sun was out, and Liam and I were doing the Guardian crossword. We had already broken up, but we lived together, like we always did. I remember the baby birds, singing like they never sang before, and I was annoyed, suffocating.

I wanted to stand up and yell at him to make this work, to love me like I was willing to love him. But it was too hard. Always too hard.

Yet here we were. Like nothing had changed. Sipping coffee in the garden, listening to the screeching baby birds. Reading the fucking Guardian.

There are days I feel like I've been sitting on my hands for my entire life, listening to others map out a course that would be perfect for me, lists of things I should do, and biting my tongue.

The little girl me is kind of ticked off. Where did she go? Why did I tell her to get lost? When did depression find me? Huddled inside of myself.

When I did begin to take my walls apart, I found that the clarity, thanks to my own imagination, was superb.

I probably punished Liam for a lot of things for which he was not responsible. It's okay, though, because I punished myself pretty hard with my next boyfriend, and even harder after that for punishing myself so hard with him. I mean, I liked my last boyfriend. We had some magical times, but we hurt each other pretty badly, and I surprised myself at the amount of total bullshit with which I was willing to put up just to feel like I had some semblance of the beginnings of a nuclear family to prove that I was, indeed, capable.

Yes. There was a time I took cute pictures with boys. 

Liam was good to me. Liam courted me. He wrote to me. He listened to me. He came to visit me. He stayed with me, gave as much as I gave. It wasn't perfect, and his list of cons is just as long. But that's the way it will be with everyone.

Plus, I was on the precipice of depression, untreated, and even I wasn't prepared for what was coming.

Every day I have to forgive myself. To remember that I am worth courting, worth chasing. Because I didn't believe it when it first happened to me, and I wasn't able to fully accept it.

The more I open up, however, slow down, breathe, half smile, speak softy to myself, the more I am able to remember those details and mine them for what they mean to me. What they can teach me.

On my last night in London, at the pub with the whole gang, my friend Paul asked me what the real reason behind all of my wandering was, and I don't even think I hesitated when I replied, " For my daughter, so she will wander further, live more fully, and be proud of me."

I may not have a daughter, or a son, but the message is still very clear.

Life continues. People are born and people die. Love is found and lost, and baby birds yell like little boys when they're waiting for breakfast in the back of some house in North London.

None of my experiences stand alone, and even the tiniest details, regardless of the circumstances, combine to comfort me when I feel lost, when I forget who I am and where I'm going.

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.

Pep

Hi Folks. How ya doin? I know. It's been a tough week. I've had highs and lows, said things I'm proud to have said as well as things I'd like to crawl under a rock for having said. I have run the gamut, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. As soon as I saw the country going red, like Fiver's dreams of blood covering the fields around the warren in Watership Down (my favorite book/movie with a soundtrack by Art Garfunkel), I flashed back to 2000, and I lay on my back on my bed staring up at the ceiling in total silence, listening to the beating of my heart and the rhythm of my own breath. 

Then, like I imagine happens when one is falling, my brain flipped through my entire life from then, 2000, until now, 11/9. It was all pretty fresh, as I've been recapping it here in the blogosphere since my birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was like my brain cogs kicked into overdrive, and I blew through the memories like they were on a rolodex, a dense rolodex, my friends. Dense. Like the smoke over Georgia right now.

I'm going to finish the timeline (I know, thank GOD) after I say this.

I thought the world was going to end when W was elected president, and it mostly didn't, sort of. That was an exhausting eight years. I couldn't even get through all of em. Had to leave the country, and I racked up a sweet lil chunk of credit card debt that I later paid off with student loans trying to stay as far away from George W. as I could. And despite my plans, I did most of it on my own.

During that time, I graduated from college, got engaged and un-engaged, survived my parents' divorce, back-packed Europe alone, obtained a Master's Degree, sold my stuff and moved to another country and returned to the states to catch Barack Obama accepting the nomination for President in 2008, and it was hard as hell. All of it. Every single thing.

Don't ever get confused and think things are supposed to be easy. They aren't.

I made it through that, and I almost made it through the last eight years too. Speaking of "almost," it was almost a year ago that I found myself at the bottom of my depression, deeper than I'd ever been. My anxiety had driven me to cut back on my medication for fear of running out by screaming at me, "This isn't working," until I gave in and started taking two pills rather than the prescribed three. Within a week I could think of nothing else but death. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I also didn't know how I was not going to do it. I could not imagine myself alive in the future.

Yep. I even called some suicide hotlines, and you know what, they TOTALLY helped. One told me they were sending an ambulance because I needed to be hospitalized and the other said, "Do what?" after I explained to her my "reason for calling." Yeah. In the end I just laughed. Hysterically. Then I sent my therapist an email entitled "Suicide" about how I needed to see her as soon as I could to talk to her about how to get out of the hole and because I refuse to think about things before I do them.

Now here I am. The country just elected a con-man to its highest office. The church in which I was raised has revealed itself to be at the feet of a political party. My heart is broken for the marginalized of this country, for the women of this country, and I started my damn period! Dammit.

And who knows what's going to happen. I mean, holy crap. I've been coping by sharing New Yorker and Reductress Articles and memes on Facebook, binge watching The Crown on Netflix, and spending more time with my dog, running around, giving him long massages, spooning. He is oblivious.

Yesterday I practiced yoga while listening to both Chomsky talk about power structure and Franz Schubert Sonatas in unison. I'm training. I'm getting pumped up.

I've been honest to a fault my whole life, a terrible liar. I cannot play it cool. I have been, unabashedly, myself, and people tell me they admire it, but it's a curse, you guys. I mean...I'm a pariah. I'm like this guy mixed with a giraffe when it starts running, hilarious and majestic to watch, but usually completely misunderstood (yeah....that's the simile I'm going with) And I cannot stand injustice. I will not sit down for injustice. It's my dumb superpower.

Now the gloves are off. Everyone is out in the open, nowhere to hide, and I see all of you, just as you've been able to see me all this time. I've been training for this my whole life. I've been keeping my head down, putting up with a lot (despite what you might think, I have put up with A LOT), and now I don't have to. We're all telling it like it is. I get to be all me.

Scary? I used to be scared of it. All me. If you think I'm a lot, imagine what it's like for me to deal with myself. I spent a good deal of time last Christmas in my old room back home in Memphis with all my pictures, class notes, and diaries, and I discovered the part of me I have been ignoring for far too long, and she's hungry.

Both Bikram yoga and Bicycling through Chicago are great ways to relieve anxiety. The goal in Bikram is to stay in the room while in Chicago cycling it's to stay alive. So, I wear a bright yellow reflective vest, flashing lights, and sometimes a giant puffy bright white coat that makes me look like a big marshmallow wearing a reflective vest and riding a bike. I look good, is what I'm saying.

Yesterday, dressed as such, I pedaled quickly along five o'clock traffic downtown on Halstead as huge trucks pulled up beside me, and I leaned forward and pedaled faster. The sky was dark and pink and the smell of the chocolate factory clung to the humidity and made me hungry. Every moving car terrifies me, every step I take I consider and reconsider a million more times than anyone should think about anything. Last night, the only word running through my mind in the dusk on my bike was "live." Live.

So I am not afraid of the coming months. I want to live. I want to fight. I want to inspire, to encourage. I want to heal, and I want to play with as many puppies as I possibly can until the day I die.

Anything worth doing is going to be hard. Anything REALLY worth doing. You can't let that stop you.

Raw and Bloody: More Meat

My previous post, "Raw Meat," was actually supposed to be about making my own dog food, but for some reason, my mind wandered, and I let it. So here's more about meat, specifically raw meat.

The first time I heard about a diet of raw meats and vegetables for dogs, I was living in Atlanta. It was dusk, and Linus and I were out at one of the larger dog parks in the area. A gentleman at the park, probably looking for someone with whom to talk, started sharing newfound information with me as our dogs circled our feet, each other, and the park. 

"I did not know you could give raw chicken, including the bones, to a dog," he started abruptly. 

"I didn't know that either. I thought they couldn't eat chicken bones," I responded, coolly. 

"They can't eat cooked chicken bones because they will splinter, but raw chicken bones are softer, easier to digest."  

"....that makes....sense," I sort of half cared. The dog park is a funny place. One can go unnamed but for his or her dog. 

Two years later, in Chicago, scraping the bottom of my mental health barrel, I decided to start giving Linus raw food. I kept letting his regular food run out because I couldn't decide the healthiest and most cost efficient choice of kibble for him, and I was suffering from pretty severe anxiety about everything, money especially, but I didn't want to feed him cheap food. I didn't want his butthole to feel the way my butthole did after eating a whole box of Oreos as dessert to my Al Pastor tacos....at least not all the time. 

Plus, it made sense to me. I was feeling horrible and inadequate about my current job as a dog owner, and I figured that if I took the time to pay attention to his diet, to really watch him closely, especially his poop, I would have to give myself a little bit of credit. 

So I bought a whole chicken that was on sale at the hipster grocery store down the street. It was an Amish chicken too...so...like...during its life, it drove a horse and buggy and wore a cool hat.

When I got home, I unwrapped the chicken and dumped it in a bowl, blood and all. Linus stood in the doorway to the kitchen, head tilted, nose in the air. I stood back from the bowl of whole chicken, head tilted, nose crinkled, cogs turning. I gingerly took the hind leg in one hand and began to prod the skin with my knife. 

Cutting apart a raw chicken is a completely different ballgame than cutting apart a cooked chicken. A knife is no good for a raw chicken. It's skin, muscle, and sinew are all softer, but stronger, not broken down or dried out. I could tell it had been alive at one time, and I saw all the parts of the whole, preserved in the cold until this moment, lying in a bowl in my kitchen. I felt like a fraud.

I don't think I've grown out of the "validate me!" stage of being an only child. I think sometimes people expect more from me, that I'm supposed to satisfy everyone else's idea of my life. I'm supposed to do crazy things, and be that story you can't stop reading. Yet, here I was, standing in front of a whole raw chicken thinking, "I hope I don't have to touch this for too long" 

The knife was getting me nowhere, so I put it down, took a deep breath, and dug in with my fingers, ripping the flesh while I closed and opened my eyes like I was watching a horror movie that I wanted to see but at which I had trouble looking. It was exhilarating.

Linus stood in the door to the kitchen, eyes sparkling, glistening pearls of puppy drool pausing on the edge of his lips before dropping to the pool at his feet. 

I managed to rip off a leg and thigh combo for the first meal, and when I placed it in front of him, he looked at it, licked it, looked at me, and then proceeded to eat it with a similar level of trepidation to my own.  

It didn't take me long to discover the power of kitchen shears or the fact that chicken could also be bought pre-cut with the flesh still on the bones, and Linus kept not dying, so I pressed on, all the while, keeping a close eye on everyone's favorite part of dog-ownership: poop. 

To his meat regimen, I eventually added a rice and vegetable combination which he refused to eat without a little tuna mixed in with it, but for some reason, probably sodium, that made his poop slimy, so I kept searching for the answer to getting him to eat his veggies. Then, someone reminded me that I had a food processor (thanks, Mom).

Old Faithful

Now, he eats chicken legs and beef necks. I keep the leftover bone pieces from the necks and boil them with his brown rice. Then I throw them away and food process the rice with spinach, carrots, sweet potato, chicken, and the best part: chicken livers and hearts. He loves it. LOVES IT (pro tip: chicken hearts from the Rico Fresh across the street smell like farts). 

Now Linus is soft, slender, and spoiled, and I no longer allow myself to feel like a terrible mom. I usually eat about a box of Oreos a week and then yell at myself when the inevitable happens, but I'm still on a journey. 

On the worst day of my depression, I called my mom and cried that I didn't think I could take care of Linus any more. I couldn't even take care of myself. 

But I kept tearing into the flesh, breaking down the bones, and allowing them to be a part of another cycle, of something new. I stopped being afraid of the blood, the muscle and sinew, the violence.

My therapist told me it was self-care, that taking the time to be conscious of the attention I give to my dog would force me to see it, to believe it, and to find peace within it. 

If you have ever experienced the bottom, been torn down to the laces of your own shoes with no concept of an idea of how to begin to get back up again, or if you have ever had one of those free fitness evaluations at a gym you just joined in your neighborhood, you will understand the feeling. In order to build strength, you must break down your muscles. They must literally be torn, and this will hurt without exception.

Rip apart a thing that was once alive before you cook it. You are a version of that, but you are alive...despite. You are torn down and apart, and you can still feel the twisting and snapping. It will be hard to get up in the morning, same if you do these things called Frankenstein squats that include jumping, squatting, and hovering with your arms like a monster created by a mad scientist that just wanted to be loved. Getting up, sitting down, climbing and descending stairs, all of these things will hurt you more than you ever thought possible the day after, and the day after that, etc, but you will get stronger.

That pain is your body's torn apart tissue slowly healing itself, working to mend and prepare for the work again. The pain exists to remind you, although life seems to be a slow and savage night, you can trust that your insides are rebuilding to be even better equipped without having to be told to do so. The body serves the brain, the brain protects the body, and this happens without anyone willing it to happen, just as the earth turns and the universe expands. 

Your body exists to do the work, to heal, and to do the work again. What is the work? Slowly, methodically, and compassionately taking care of your body, your bones, and taking the same practice with you in the care of those you love, for they will, in turn, take care of you. 

And that is all that matters. 

P.S. Gluten makes Linus's butt itch. He's THAT dog at the restaurant.
P.P.S Now, all I have to do to be legit, is to start raising and killing my own chickens. All I have to do. 

Thank You SO Much For Reading This part II

Welcome back. Thanks for stopping by.

Ahem.

This is from a good article in the Times. 

Margaret Fuller was not the best writer in the brat-pack of transcendentalists that came out of New England in the mid nineteenth century, but she knew the truth that history and literature books have yet to admit: that transcendentalism was, at its core, a movement for women, and she chose to use it as the guiding light in her life, which, of course, was not easy.

Despite the fact that she spent a great deal of time with prominent male authors of the period (who all loved and hated her in equal measure), she remained a single woman. She was like them: brilliant, quick-witted, philosophical and probing. (I omitted my first oxford comma. I’m trying it out.) Emerson longed for her company. Nathaniel Hawthorne was obsessed with her and kept killing her in his stories. What else can one do who has found a woman with an intellect as strong, if not stronger, than his own? He couldn’t marry her. That would be ridiculous.

She had been raised by her father as if she had been a son. He taught her classical history, languages, sciences, art, law….friggin law. By the time she was old enough to go to school, she had already received quite an education. Thus, her parents decided to send her to finishing school instead….how to be a girl school, which she naturally hated. Imagine being a kid with so much knowledge and drive, passion and gumption, and being told that you would be better off never using it and trying to be some other person entirely. If I were to be physically ripped in half, I think that pain would probably come close to representing what it feels like.  By the time she was old enough, she started experiencing what she described in her writing as “headaches,” but what was more than likely depression.

I read on a poster at my psychiatrist’s office that women are more likely to suffer from depression than men. Some of it is attributed to hormonal changes, and that is certainly a harsh reality of being a woman. Hormones make a monster of me, when I let them. There was a time in history when women did not understand their bodies (menstrual cycle) because it was illegal to teach them. It wasn’t too long ago in the early TWENTIETH CENTURY. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is being able to understand and monitor the rise and fall of my own terrifying hormonal changes. Knowledge is power, after all, if not also a curse.

Yes, much of the depression suffered by women is definitely caused by nature, but there is another aspect of it that the poster did address very briefly: social stressors are much heavier amongst women. We are hard on each other. Like I said before, patriarchy is not about men subjugating women. It’s a state of mind, a world view, to which we all fall victim.

Somehow, we all continue to hold each other to the same standards that the media, which is to say, the most marketable mirror of society, sets out for us, the life path that “civilized” human beings have deemed acceptable for women. Margaret Fuller saw it well over a century ago, and she wrote about it in her astonishingly (but also understandingly) underrated answer to Emerson’s Nature: Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

I only suggest reading this if you like rereading because you aren’t going to follow it the first or even the second time. It’s a mish-mash of ideas that Fuller wrestled with her entire life. It’s a conglomeration of possibilities that women in America still haven’t fully realized. It’s hard. Is what I’m saying.

In 1843, She published a short version of her ideas in a literary journal that she edited with Emerson and other transcendentalists: The Dial. She called it “The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men: Woman versus Women.” It was just a few pages. Her second draft, filling about 100 pages in my Norton Critical Edition, she published in 1844. I could drown you in brilliant thoughts that I’ve gleaned from the (seemingly) bajillions of times I’ve read it, but I’ll try to focus on my point.

Fuller answered her dear friend Emerson’s call to all American men to return to nature with her uniquely feminine philosophy: the true nature of humanity is both masculine and feminine. She called it a radical dualism and believed that all human beings share equally in the same traits, and that these traits are constantly passing in and out of each other. The problem, she stated, was not that man was disunited with nature, but that man was disunited with his nature. (That’s basically straight from my own thesis, with a little bloggy talk spin on it, which I won’t cite unless you think you might be dropping by the library at the University of Memphis sometime soon to check it out. PM me.)

How do we solve the problem? Well, that’s the hardest part. Here’s the proposition, in sexy block quote form: 

It is for that which is the birthright of every being capable to receive it, --the freedom, the religious, the intelligent freedom of the universe, to use its means; to learn its secret as far as nature has enabled them, with God alone for their guide and their judge. Ye cannot believe it, men; but the only reason why women ever assume what is more appropriate to you (not farting out loud -me), is because you prevent them from finding out what is fit for themselves. Were they free, were they wise fully to develop the strength and beauty of woman; they would never wish to be men, or man-like...Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break. (36)

The quote sits on the only page I chose to dog-ear in my copy. Simply put, women behave the way they do because they are not allowed to discover any other way to behave. If women were given the freedom to explore their own passions and desires outside the confines of social structure and expectation, they might discover a spirit greater than could ever be imagined.

The same is true for men. We are, all of us, too often at the mercy of our own world-view, but there are steps we can take to stretch our minds further, to defend ourselves from stagnation and ruination. We can continue to explore, with open minds and hearts, the only thing that matters: truth. To discover what it means to be alive outside the lines, and to venture further.

I would like to hear Neil Degrasse Tyson say that out loud.

Margaret Fuller went on to become a front page columnist for The New York Tribune, to be renowned as a journalist, thinker, and critic. When she left the country at age 36 to cover the inevitable revolution in Italy, she became the first female foreign correspondent. She met her husband and had a child while in Italy all of whom tragically drowned in the wreck of the ship aboard which she was returning home, the Elizabeth.

In 2006, she cracked my brain open and left it up to me sew up my skin to protect my bigger brain by creating a skin like cover. That’s all still in the works.

Now I say, “Okay Fuller, I’m going to stop resisting living. I’m going to do the hard things. I’m going to find out what it means to be me...to be a woman.”

As I go, I want to share it with other people, partially because my narcissism demands it, but also because I want to help other people crack open their own brains. Then maybe, together, we can sew this weird skin-like cover to protect our new bigger brains.

Too far? Did I lose you with the skin-like protectant brain cover metaphor? Are you wondering why you’re still reading?

Consider the coming posts my exploration, my changing of the channels on the radio in search of something familiar. I’d like to explore the voices of women through my own voice. Margaret Fuller was the first woman’s voice that I recognized calling me to action. I may never hear it or meet her, but according to Edgar Allan Poe, “her personal character and her printed book are merely one and the same thing. We get access to her soul as directly from one as from the other,” (quoted in my thesis). Her editor at The New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, said of her process, “she never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do...but simply ‘Is it truth? Is it such as the public should know?’ and if her judgement answered, ‘yes,’ she uttered it” (also in my thesis).

I don’t 100% trust my judgement for whether things are such as the public should know, but I also don’t 100% trust my ability to trust myself. I’m working on that.

Until then, join me in my quest to find the voices of women so that I might, in turn, hopefully, find and trust my own voice.

My thesis is entitled: The Sovereign Self: Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century. I actually don't have a copy that I can find digitally saved or online. I'm in the process of typing it out, but it's been almost ten years, and I keep finding mistakes that need correcting....so I'm rewriting it, in essence.

If you need a list of my sources, I'm happy to send it over to you...meanie.

Oh....and this: 

Yer Doin' It Wrong

I played the flute for a good ten years of my life. I chose the flute in seventh grade, partly because I was having trouble deciding between it and the oboe, but there had been a kick ass flute solo (probably done on a synthesizer) in a Guns 'N Roses song that summer (maybe you've heard it, November Rain), and my friend Shanda had grabbed my hand and thrust it into the air when Mr. Lumpkin asked if anyone wanted to play the flute. I joined, that day, a small mix of petite girls with pale faces and quiet dispositions. SSSOOOOO me, right?

I took to it very quickly, fell madly in love with the time it gave me, alone in my room, away from my thoughts. I used to subconsciously "dance" while I played. My instructor told me she thought I would fly away flapping my elbows around. I never noticed it. I never noticed anything while I was playing the flute, for a short while.

I played a Yamaha with a silver head, silver plated body, open holes, and a "b flat foot" (mad street cred).

Oh, and I was good.

I won first chair in the second band at all region when I was in eighth grade, which was exciting, but not as good as my predecessors had done. I knew that because people told me, my teachers, my parents, other band members, the older boys in band that used to flirt with me, the mouthy flautist.

Look at my PANTS?!?!?!?!!?

The next year I made first chair first band, and I didn't think I had a chance. I had flubbed the hell out of my scales audition, had a huge tantrum with my instrument while rehearsing that very scale (A major, bastard) earlier in the week, and spent an hour in the corner of the bathroom crying, NAY, weeping about my sub par audition. I hugged my knees to my chest, hiccuped--it was that awful hiccuping cry--and tried to calm myself from the terror of facing the world as a failure.

I convinced myself that I probably just got first chair because the girl who was supposed to "beat" me had mono, and while she did audition, she hadn't been able to devote all of her love to her instrument. She was devoting most of it to her boyfriend...CLEARLY.

But I did score a 111.54 out of 115.

The next summer, my dad and I were perusing the used piccolos at this warehouse collective somewhere in midtown Memphis. It was right before I started driving, so I can't remember exactly where it was, nor do I remember if it's still there. I hated the piccolo. I got it, I understood the impact of that particular register of woodwind on the depth of the music, but I just...didn't GET it, ya know?

There was a lady standing by, listening to me switch back and forth between the piccolo and some of the more expensive flutes. She had leathery tanned skin and frizzy blonde curly hair. She asked me if I was taking lessons with anyone...from where she stood...at a distance. She was wearing one of those broom stick skirts (of course, I probably was too...at that time in my life). My dad stepped in as I answered her. She smiled and rolled her eyes at my answer.

"I know her. She's good...but she can't teach you everything."

She approached my dad with her hand outstretched, a card in it.

"If you want her to learn the whole instrument and its purpose, I can teach her jazz."

"She's happy where she is I think, but thank you," my dad replied to her.

We laughed about it later. JAZZ. HA! What good was THAT going to do me at all-state auditions? I watched her as she drove out of the parking lot in her beat up 86 Honda, struggled to roll the manual window down on the passenger side, and lit a cigarette.

The next few years led me further and further from the flute. I still held onto the idea, went to master classes, went to see the amazing artists that my private flute instructor was able to bring to Memphis. She organized a flute festival and sent me to North Texas to study alongside a dozen other mouthy floutists with one of the most intense and effective flute instructors I have ever met (she made me cry once, in front of everyone). And, yes, I went to "flute camp."

When I came back from camp, my instructor told me I had my sound back, but I knew that I hadn't gotten that thing back, that part of me that was able to completely let go while I played. I couldn't relax, and I couldn't win. I couldn't audition. I became impossibly mortified of being in a room full of judges behind a screen. I told an instructor at a master class once that I might be able to play the song better if the entire audience weren't looking at me, so she made them get up and turn around. I played, and she told me it was all in my head.

My instructor recommended anxiety medication, my parents: therapy. My church recommended prayer.

There was this movement of thought that happened a while ago (if you really wanna know, you can always look things up) called structuralism. It saw (sees) everything as a structure built by society through language to define reality...which means that what we think is reality isn't really because we created the language that defines our reality...so it's our perception of reality...and....also......There was this psychoanalyst that came out of this movement named Lacan who philosophized that the moment we, as humans, learn language, we become separated from reality, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to that place where nothing was defined and everything was me and my mom, and I was my mom and my mom was me and the bed and my food and everything. Nothing existed outside of me until I defined it as such.

Except I let other people define it for me...most of us do the same.

That other place, where nothing exists, that's the place I lost. That's the place to which I've spent the rest of my life trying to return.

When I think about it, I sometimes wonder if perhaps taking that woman up on her offer to teach me jazz would have made a difference. I wonder if escaping from all the exercises and metronomes and contests would have led me back to the quiet existence of just me...and the music.

I think about it when I hear jazz, and it sounds so free. I know that anything can be killed, that there are aspiring jazz musicians who struggle to live up to the standards the world has set for them. I know what happens when you forget why you came into the room in the first place, what happens when you let go of what matters for what you THINK matters.

There is nothing so difficult as life in a box. There is nothing so soul sucking as drowning in comparisons.

I was too scared to go to school for music because I didn't want anyone to tell me that I was doing it wrong.

I still have that trepidation with all of my art. My art is my soul, even the most ridiculous parts of my art...s. I take medication and go to therapy all to find and free that part of me I lost when I started to let the world define my terms. I'm trying to define my own terms now. Finally. Please don't tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Through the Mountain

I'm not looking back at 2015. I refuse. I lived 2015 in a dizzy, present, terrified state. I let the winter, incidents of perceived failure, and regret lure me into a tunnel of depression I hope never to see again. It's a tall order. I know. But that is my resolution for 2016. Let me explain.

We can probably all agree that caves are really cool. I remember properly learning of the existence of caves in Coach Dixon's Earth Science class in 8th grade; although, I was always aware of their existence. We watched a National Geographic video in class (a pretty typical occurrence) that presented not only the scientific information but also the historical information on caves in America.

Long after I passed Coach Dixon's class with flying colors, I went caving in Cumberland Caverns with some friends. We ate pot brownies and made shadow puppets on the stone walls after crawling through the cave's hidden tunnels and rooms. For one minute as I lay on my back looking up at the rocks above me, I was seized with the terror that the rocks might come crashing down upon us at any slight movement of the earth we rested upon (paranoia, a pesky side effect of brownies). My brain jumped in quickly and reminded me that, "no, these thoughts are useless," and I let the terror float off into the cavernous darkness. I slept on the floor of the cave that night, dreaming of pink clouds and snoring like a rhinoceros...or an adorable pug.

A few years later, I stumbled upon a cave in the woods in Dahlonega, Georgia (over by the old distillery, you know the one if you live there). I want to know how many terrifying stories one needs to hear about the dangers of going into a cave alone to remove the inherent desire to do just that when one finds a cave in real life. This cave wasn't exactly uncharted or anything, but I did not have the right shoes for the kind of wading an exploration would have required. I still thought about it for a moment.

Floyd Collins

The National Geographic video we watched in Coach Dixon's class featured a brief summary of the story of Floyd Collins through narration, old newspapers, photographs, and sketches of the drama of his imprisonment and death at the hands of our cavernous earth. I hate sketches of past events. Sketch artists are always given license to intensify the drama of situations...especially in National Geographic movies. I saw the terrified face of Floyd Collins intricately sketched every night when I closed my eyes. That's all I knew of Collins, that he explored the darkest corners of earth and that he died, terrified, at the hands of his own lust for a full and glorious life.

While living in Dahlonega and teaching at the university, I tried to convince my theatre students to do the musical version of Floyd Collins' story because it would be an easy set and gorgeous music. It wasn't exactly a known show, however, and putting together a straight play seemed a lot easier and less horrifying than trying to throw together a musically complicated show with myself as the only paid member of the ensemble. Plus, there's a lot of really weird yodeling pieces in that musical.

The tragic outcome

I suppose I wanted to do the show because I was obsessed with the idea that this blank faced historic figure who died so tragically inspired someone else to write such beautiful songs of redemption. With the commemoration of his life in musical form, the image I had of Floyd Collins' contorted and frightened face could relax into peace and beauty.

When I walked into the darkness of depression, I knew I shouldn't have, but I wanted to see where it would lead...at least a very small part of me did, like that flicker of intense curiosity that I always feel at the mouth of a cave. Floyd Collins worked alone. I worked alone, but for far too long. Floyd Collins was trying to find a new entrance to the cave, and I too have been searching for another path...through my life (ooooooooh sparkles of dreamy realization).

I walked through the mountain of my life, surrounded by the demons of my own darkness and searched the images of my past for clues as to which tunnel to climb through to find the way out all while the terror that the earth above me could come crashing down and bury me alive continued to grow to the point at which I could barely stand on my own.

Then, with a lantern, my mother and my father came after me, found me, and began the task of helping me find a way out. They always do that because that's what parents do. They showed me the light at the end.

The nation watched the story of Floyd Collins, as best they could at the time, and an army of locals dug furiously to try to get him out. So too did my chosen family, my friends, notice my drowning and reach out to remind me that I'm not alone, that I'm never alone.

Thus, for 2016, I'm going to focus on that light, and I'm not going to look back without a rope around my waste and someone to talk me and walk me through the darkness. It's not because I'm not afraid any more. I'm terrified. But I don't want to be afraid any more.

I'll never forget crawling through a tunnel in the cave back in Tennessee with my head lamp scraping the rocky floor, and coming to a small opening large enough for one person to stand up at a time. I cast my light along the shimmering walls around me. Rock formations, dripping from the ceiling of the opening shone like diamonds.

I want to see further. I want to see what's in the light, and I want to share it.

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.

Woman and Society: A One-Sided Dialogue.

Are you sad? You don't have to be sad! You can go shopping, drown yourself in home goods and fall fashions, and you'll be right as rain. 

http://bit.ly/1GJXyGq

Have you been sad for a long time? You probably need a boyfriend! Go to this bar, get this app, join this group, give money to this church! You will find a boyfriend!

How are you and your boyfriend? Good? If you don't get married, you might not be good for much longer! You should get married! Luckily, there is lots of stuff you can buy, and you can get your friends to buy you stuff too!

http://bit.ly/1PRrvXU

Are you sad? Why are you still sad? Do you have the best cable package? I mean, can you watch Game of Thrones when you want? Then there is no reason you should be sad. I mean...SPOTIFY exists. It may not be the 90s any more, but at least you have Spotify.

Why are you locking yourself in your room and crying like that? You shut the door and sit in the dark crying, sometimes moaning...like a creepy ghost. That's not good for you. You should stop doing that. Eat some ice cream...or some Lucky Charms! It's impossible to be unhappy when doing one or both of those things. In fact, go to the grocery store and get whatever you want to eat. It doesn't matter how unhealthy it is, it has to be better than weeping uncontrollably.

http://bit.ly/1kbfb7M

Why are you so angry? It's hard to tell who you are sometimes...like you're Bruce Banner one day and then you're the Hulk the next day. You should exercise more. Exercising is the best and purest thing you can do. Just go for a run...but make sure you wear these shoes. You don't want to get injured. I mean, a doctor's bill is going to be more than these shoes. Get these shoes...and these workout clothes. These pants really accent your legs, and that color on you is so sexy. WAIT! You should join this gym...maybe you'll meet someone...you know....in case you haven't "met someone" yet. Plus, if you're in shape, someone will definitely want you to have his kids, and if you don't have kids...well....I don't know what you're doing with your life.

http://bit.ly/1Wi5gi9

Why do you think you haven't met anyone? Do you think it's because you're really intense? I mean...you're really intense. Remember? Bruce Banner? The Hulk? You have to hide that stuff. You probably intimidate guys. Maybe don't let anyone know how smart you are...just...do your best not to scare them. That's the best way to find someone with which to spend the rest of your life. Just, don't be your full self. Duh.

You seriously need to work on your anger issues. I just don't get it. You're attractive, smart, and talented. You have everything. Why are you so angry? Why are you so sad? Why do you keep having panic attacks? Why can't you just get over it? Just don't be like that.

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.