Ya, ya sisterhood
Last week I gave my two younger sisters the address to the my blog, and immediately after I hit “send” to the email, my reaction was – shit, shit I will never post anything again, ever, and if I do I will have to ban the words dumbass, fuck, sex and bitches from my vocabulary and talk about how I have spent my day volunteering, working to find the cure towards cancer and being an upstanding citizen in general. [Keep in mind that my sisters are old enough to drink, they have definitely fucking cursed at some point, and that whenever we are getting ready to go out, they always ask me to do a slutty outfit check, because they know I’m a freaking prude].
It is nice to have this journal as an outlet to my feelings, and to do so always felt safe because no one knows who the hell I am. I might be a forty year old man writing this in my boxers, or a college student with too much imagination and too little restraint. But now that my sisters know about it, it has become real to me. It is easy to go ahead and talk about my depression when I feel that the only people that are hearing me are sympathetic strangers.
But if there’s anyone in my small world that I would even allow myself to show this blog to, it is my sisters. It’s a step towards being more open with them, and to getting out of the hole of isolation that I dug myself into. I do not ever want to feel that lonely and that sad again, and I know that they have my back, same as I do theirs.
They have both very sweet so far, telling me that they’re not going to read it if it means I’ll self censor. And they promised that we will all pretend that they don’t read this at all, at least for a while. So with that in mind, do you biatches remember when I said that you didn’t look slutty at all? Because you totally did, and I was totally lying. Hee.
And… exhale
We’re in mid-summer and I can finally see the end of a very long, completely exhilarating roller coaster ride. Following that saying “better the devil you know” (I have a love-hate relationship with cliches. They’re so… cheesy, and for the lack of a better word, cliched. But so true – damn their truthiness!), I was afraid of change, but thankfully so far things are looking up. Turns out, riding metaphorical roller coasters is a hell of a lot more fun than going on real ones.
While change can be good, it can also be exhausting. I’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks, after I have settled in the new condo and right before school starts where there will be a small lull. I will lie around in bed, and read five books in a row. I will subsist solely on potato chips, cold pizza and luke warm wine coolers. I will turn off my phone and not talk to anyone. I will sing and dance in the living room in my pj’s. I will watch soap operas and marathons of crappy reality shows on TV. I will sit on my patio and have a staring competition with the ducks.
I hereby promise that for a whole week (or 1 or 2 days which is about as long I can stand it) I will see absolutely no one and I will do absolutely NOTHING. And you can’t make me.
My OMG moment
I GOT IN!!!!! Yes, yes, yes, YEAH <Insert ecstatic fist pump and happy dance here>.
(sorry for the use of multiple exclamation points, but I am. THAT. EXCITED).
My dog, my depression
Having a pet was one of the things that I always imagined myself doing when I was mature, and more established and stable, and less… crazy. Late last year, I decided that heck, I’m getting older and it’s time to stop waiting for my future to get here, because duh, in the future, my past would be right now and I want to do things NOW in order to get to where I envision myself THEN; if not nothing is ever going to happen [or as Bob Dylan put it (a little less eloquently I might say - hee) 'Life is what happens while you're making other plans'. I could have saved you a paragraph full of nonsense if I had just gone with that first].
The selection and adoption process took a long time because I live in an apartment with no yard, and apparently that makes you something akin to a leper to a lot of animal organizations. [Now, I understand that they want the dogs that they look after to be happy, but for goodness sakes, between the choice of say, having to hold your pee until your loving owner gets to walk you, or being euthanised because there are not enough resources for you, I would take the former]. I had some restrictions in terms of the type of dog I could get because of my apartment rules – basically under 25 lbs and they had to be housebroken. I was also looking for a very laid back dog, who shared my sang-froid demeanor and who could laze around in the apartment contentedly while I worked.
Enter Tai. When I saw her pictures, I was a little skeptical because she looked like she could get into trouble. But she was such adorable trouble that I couldn’t help and make the 2 hour trip to go meet her, and then adopt her right on the spot. I remember that while at the humane society, she had grown ulcers on her skin because she was so stressed, and on that first trip home she was shaking so much her mouth rattled. I thought: poor doggie, I can totally relate; I said to myself that even if she chewed up my favorite boots, ate all the pieces and pooped them out one by one, I would always try to be good to her.
It’s great to have her to come home to. If I had an awesome day, or one of those gut-wrenching, terrible days, she’s always there shaking her tail and wanting to play and go for a walk. She can sense when I’m sad and will lay her little head on my arm and stare at me with the cutest eyes. Tai also gets me out and about even when I don’t feel like it, and I’m always the better for it afterward (except that one time when it was zero freaking Fahrenheit and we both wanted to go back into the house, so she PRETENDED to pee to go back in and I had to call her bluff, because damn it! she had to know who’s the boss). When I’m tired of life, she takes me outside of myself and reminds me that when I adopted her I chose to take responsibility of her, above and beyond anything that is happening with me. It is a nice to feel needed, even in that small way.
I understand now when people say that there is nothing like a pet’s unconditional love – they love you completely, accepting you for who you are, mistakes and all. They can’t tell that you are a loser or that you hate yourself or that they got stuck with a broken owner, because you are the center of their universe. They give and take love with no expectations and no judgments. When I got Tai, I never expected to love her so much, or that I was to be in some ways dependent on her, the same way she is on me.
Hi ho, Silver
Yesterday I was doing one of those oh-so-scientific magazine tests (from the oh-so-reputable Cosmo) which asked how independent you are. I didn’t even have to take the damn quiz (but I did anyway, because I love personality tests like a true INFJ) to know that I am a ‘lone ranger’. I have a hard time trusting people and I hate asking for favors, even the tiniest of things. I do not like to take anything from anyone and don’t ask anything of anyone because I inevitably get disappointed. It’s what I’ve learned to do since I was a kid, as a way of safeguarding from any pain; part of it is also due to my feeling so unimportant that I don’t want to bother people (In college, I was the girl who didn’t chew gum in class because I was afraid other students would be bothered by the noise. Seriously) . When you isolate yourself in that way, you feel safer because everything is within your control, but it can get you further into the vicious spiral of self criticizing, loneliness and depression.
Trusting people is hard, because we are all only human. We are bound to fall down or break or say something stupid once in a while. But it’s something that I have to do if I ever want to make it in this world, because after all, even if I depend only on myself, I am hugely flawed. So, I think that technically means I’m kind of screwed right now.
I feel that when people look at me, they see someone who is extremely independent and self sufficient, and maybe even admire that. But the secret is that I just don’t know any better… if they only knew how much I want someone I can rely on, and confide in, and feel completely and utterly safe with.
Plodding along
Right now I am taking 20 mg of Prozac every other day. I started tapering off from 40 mg each day, to half that each day, and soon it will be none. So far, apart from some flu like symptoms I haven’t noticed anything being different, but I have told my family that I’m getting off it so they can watch out in case I start getting really depressed and suicidal. I’m curious as to what will happen to me. Come to think of it, a more appropriate description rather than curious is insanely, batshit, deathly scared.
Yesterday I was talking to a friend who is a doctor, and he said that he usually sees patients going off anti depressants being moody and generally sad again after it gets out of your system. I’m going to try to counteract that by doing yoga 4 days a week (uh, or 2), and having longer walks with Tai every day. I want to do as much as I can to make sure that I keep getting better, or at least, not get worse.
In the bottom of my heart, I’m scared that without the pill I will not be the person that I have been in the past year, and that all of the awesome things that happened are just a byproduct of my being chock-full-o chemicals. I can feel the very edge of my brain starting to turn on me again, and starting to say that I’m not good enough, that I’m a dumbass and that I was only functional because I was on the Prozac, and using those thoughts as excuses in case I choke and fall into depression again. It’s just going to be me against the world with no body shield (in a handy capsule form) to help me. It’s scary as hell.
Off the meds
I recently made the decision to get off of Prozac. I am very scared that this will make a significant change in my life; getting on it really kicked my butt into gear and helped me through a very difficult time. What if everything was a result of the pill and I go back to that other life? But what pushed me past this doubt is that I feel like I’m in a good place, and that I am ready to try this out on my own. And if not, I can always start taking it again.
I worry about going back to that awful, sad and dark place. But here’s hoping for the best.
Unloading baggage
Don’t worry, this is about physical baggage, as opposed to the emotional kind.
In preparation for moving into my new condo (it feels strangely adult to say that), I’ve started sorting through my things to figure out what I want to donate, keep or throw away. I’ve lived in my apartment for about four years now and I’ve unearthed some stuff that make me question my character and capacity for functioning as a normal adult:
- A can of indian curry that expired exactly 10 years ago. Why did I not throw this away the last time I moved? I can’t think of any earthly, logical reason why I would want to keep it. I think if I could explain what in the hell I was thinking when I kept this can over THREE MOVES I would gain inroads into the mystery that is my psyche and save myself at least a year of therapy. And then, find a solution for world peace.
- Five pairs of shoes that I convinced myself to buy because they were on sale, even though they were just a “teensy” bit small for me. My master plan of breaking them in never worked because they were so freaking painful to wear they drew blood walking from my apartment to my mailbox, which is like, 10 meters away. Those I’m giving away to the salvation army, so technically, in a way, I’m a philanthropist. (Shh, humor me).
- A complete collection of Sweet Valley High books that I bought two years ago. That’s right; I’m loud and I’m proud. (p.s. 1BRUCE1 and Regina, forever!)
- One male thong. Oh, I long for the days when I was so young and sadly naive that I thought every man owned one in order to avoid panty lines. It kind of made sense at the time when it was explained to me, I mean, panty lines, booo! They are the bane of butt hugging jeans and are the deadliest and most silent of the fashion faux pas! How many times have you looked yourself over to make sure that you don’t have any of your privates hanging out without realizing (the horror! the horror!) that people can see your grandma panty lines. What is a boy to do? Anyway, it wasn’t until afterward that I realized that such things as say – boxer briefs existed, or perhaps going commando, henceforth rendering male thongs obsolete and male thong owners weirdos.
I just realized that the year that the can of curry expired, I was going through my emo college period. In fact, the can was probably made when people were wearing keds, puffy paint sweatshirts and rocking multi-layered neon socks. It would be such a shame to throw it away now, after it’s seen so much history (:
The (art and) science of depression
This link is time sensitive, but it is an interesting read. To summarize in case the article goes to the happy place up in the sky where posts go to die, it is titled “Head fake: How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction” from the Boston Globe. Its main argument is that depression is an actual neurobiological disorder, where brain cells atrophy and die out, and that people who use antidepressants see benefits because they stimulate the regrowth of these neurons, and not because they help increase seratonin levels. So instead of inducing a state of chemical happiness (seratonin is the hormone that also gets released when exercising) the medicine helps regenerate your depleted brain cells which then results in a physical and psychological improvement.
I’m pretty clueless about science, but I think this explanation helps to address various points that I have never felt satisfied with in terms of how depression is viewed and treated. The first is that I have observed that depression seems to have roots in some genetic factors, which to me would indicate that there is a partly biological cause to depression. I know that in my family there is a tendency towards mental illness. Not to say that outward influences aren’t important, but I think that the ability to cope with these varies from person to person, and that that ability is partly inherent in your genes, and partly shaped by your environment and experiences (shoutout to my family for not only passing depression genes to me, but also flat nose and boobs genes!)
The other, is that I think this would go a long way in helping people’s perception on depression. I swear, if a person tells me ‘why don’t you just change the way you think and DO something’ once more, I will kick their ass from here to Uranus (hee, shoutout to my family for passing on their perpetually twelve year old humor on to me!). When I was severely depressed, I knew all the things that I could do to get myself better: go out and exercise, meet new people, find something that you’re good at. Knowing didn’t matter one bit; I did not have the strength or the inclination to do any of these things. You feel helpless, and every single time that people tell you it’s your fault that you are depressed, you admit to yourself that they are right, that you are a worthless piece of shit if you can’t even get up and get some help. But, it literally is mentally and emotionally impossible for a depressed person to do anything about it - like trying to fly when you don’t have wings (Or a helicopter. Or an airplane. Or 150 giant helium balloons, a bb gun and a lawn chair. You get the freaking simile). I can see why it’s hard for people to understand such a situation if they haven’t experienced it; but if there is evidence that a cause of chronic depression is biological, I think it would help them at least be more compassionate about it.
Hmm, I can’t think of a conclusion paragraph. So, in a totally unrelated note, did you guys hear about the man who flew 250-something miles in a lawn chair and 150 helium filled balloons?
Readjusting expectations
I feel very bittersweet lately. There are things that I’m doing right now that I always thought that I would do at the next stage of my life, when I grew up and got married. I’ve mentioned that I’m buying a condo for the first time, and I feel a little daunted by the fact that I’m going to be responsible for everything. I always imagined doing it as an ‘us’ with someone; buying furniture, bickering about the colors, wall painting at nights while tipsy and naked. Not much to ask for, right? On the plus side, there will be no need for the compromising that goes on (I’ll give you the 80’s lava lamp if you take down that picture of the almost naked Burt Reynolds (seriously, an ex had this one)). Hell, who knows, there might be some drinking and nakedness going on anyway.
Also, while I love the little bean (even more than a whole tubful of cherry garcia), I see my sister and her family being so perfect and wonderfully enmeshed in their little cocoon of bliss, that I envy their happiness. I’ve always gotten along well with children, and part of me is jealous that my younger (by 4 years) sister is getting to experience motherhood before I do. I think it’s natural to feel this way, even though I do feel a little guilty about it. It’s certainly a dichotomy, loving my sister as much as breath, but also secretly wishing that her life wasn’t so completely equal to what my idea of security and happiness is, and feeling jealous that she gets to have it while I don’t.
One of the things that has changed in the past year is that instead of planning for the hypothetical two, I am planning for myself. Instead of thinking ‘I will save up to buy a house when I get married’, I have put that down on a condo. Instead of being sad about the possibility of having no children of my own, I have already decided to adopt if I’m still single when I’m 35. It’s a 180 from where I used to be before, but at least I’m down on earth and not playing in the clouds, like I usually am.
