And on the 31st Day, She Rested

So if you’re a regular here, you may have noticed an increase in volume, lately.

For the second year in a row, I took up the challenge of Holidialies.

Posted every got-dang day from December 7 until today.

It wasn’t hard.

It wasn’t easy.

It was a beautiful motivational tool, one which “made” me write at a time of year when it would be easiest to put it off.  A time of year when I probably need to write the most.

I am grateful to Jette & Chip, the people who give their own time to make Holidailies happen.

I’m very thankful and slightly a-blush that 3 of my posts were deemed  “Best of Holidailies“-worthy.

I thank everyone who came over from the site to check me out.  I am thankful for the new (to me)  writers I found there.

And now, I’m going to take a nap.

(I’m probably lying.  I’m a terrible napper.  I am, however, an incredible pisser-away of time, so I’ll probably just go with my strengths.)

Absent

If anyone was taking roll call on the internet these days, that’s what they’d have to mark me down as.  “Absent”.  It wouldn’t tell the whole story, but it’s the closest they could come.

 

If you read this blog, you know I keep it fairly light.  Kind of amusing, but not really personal.  But at the same time, this blog is me.  And I feel like I’ve been lying.  Not that I’ve been bullshitting you, more like there’s stuff I’m not telling.  I don’t use my blog to air dirty laundry, but I feel like I’ve hit a wall, and I need to get around it, let you see behind it, if I’m going to keep letting you see my life.

 

I’m depressed.

 

Actually, make that Depressed, capital “D”.

 

This is nothing new.  I’ve always been that way.  As a kid, I didn’t have a name for it, I just gradually figured out that I didn’t react to stuff the way the other kids did.  And as a teenager, I wrote it off to teen angst bullshit.  But as I left the teens, started being a Grown Up, I realized it was more.  And once I finally had this big, stable presence in my life (i.e. Owen), I let myself admit it, that there was something wrong in my brain, that I needed help.

 

I was 23 the first time I saw a professional, 24 when I first went on medication.  And it helped.  Nearly immediately.  Depression is hereditary, and it runs in my family.  (It doesn’t just run, it actually kind of gallops, pushing down everything in its path.)  Some periods have been harder than others.  I’ve been hospitalized twice – once in my early 20’s, and once while I was pregnant with my son.  I’ve been on medications for the greater part of the last 10 years, going off when I felt stronger, getting back on when I had to.  For the record, I don’t love being on the medication.  I get dull.  There are side effects.  I don’t want to be on them.  But I may have to, soon.

 

It’s been getting harder, lately.  Harder to get anything done, with zero motivation.  Harder to interact with people – every time I see someone I know, I’m left wondering if they can tell, am I scaring them off?  Harder to function, because my body starts to react, with colds that won’t go away, sciatica, and the occasional chest-tightening anxiety attack.

 

So what does this mean, on a go-forward basis?  Well, if you know me in real life, don’t be alarmed.  I may cry at inappropriate times (like, say, in the middle of a school council meeting.  I don’t think anyone saw, but still, awkward).  I might not be able to make conversation on a consistent basis.  There’s a good chance that I may let you down, in some way.  But I probably won’t.  Realistically, from the outside, it’ll pretty much be business as usual. 

 

And if I know you cyber-ly?  There’s a good chance I may not post for a good while.  (Or I may post every day.)   (Probably the former, rather than the latter, but you never know.) 

 

I’m going to be OK.  That I know.

 

Because there are two small people, and one big one, who need me to be OK.  And so I will be.

 

Until then….

It’s a Damn Good Thing I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know

Contrary to popular belief, I did not go into motherhood blindly.

 

I’d had some experience with child-rearing.  I’d done way more than my fair share of looking after my younger siblings as a kid.  I’d watched friends of mine raise their own babies.  I knew I’d be tired.  (I had no way of knowing about the post-traumatic stress disorder-ish state that extreme lack of sleep can put you into, but I knew I’d be tired.)  I knew there’d be frustration.  I even knew there’d be sacrifice.

 

But what I really, really couldn’t imagine, the thing that would cause absolute horror to creep into my heart?

 

When I get sick, no one cares.

 

I am not stating it in a martyrish way.  I can’t fault anyone for it.  I’ve come to accept it as fact.

 

But when I get sick, I’m on my own.

 

No relatives to swoop in and take my kids away.  A self-employed husband, and if he’s not working, I’m not eating (Although as I sit here trying not to vomit into a wastebasket, I really don’t give a flying fence post whether I ever eat again.  But I have to believe that will change, soon).  Volunteer commitments that don’t run if I don’t show up.  And children who need me.

 

Man, do they need me.

 

They’re not inhuman little monsters, or anything.  They’re not completely without compassion.  But when I try to explain that Mommy is sick, they get an expression on their face, as if I’ve just told them that the GDP of Uruguay last year was $32 billion.

 

They’ve heard what I’ve said.  They’re not disputing that what I’ve told them is a fact.  They just don’t see how it’s germaine to their little lives, or how it accounts for the fact that the peanut butter sandwich they requested 2 WHOLE MINUTES AGO has not materialized.

 

So while I’m busy shifting paradigms to get me through this (I can leave the house a mess, I can screen my calls, and I can eat nothing but carbs because they’re the only thing that doesn’t make me want to hurl, because god dammit I am sick), maybe you should read someone else’s blog.

 

Because in the last little while, some people I know have written some stuff that will knock your mother lovin’ socks off (provided you’re in a part of the world experiencing sock-necessitating weather).

 

Kitty at The Show Must Go On wrote Patience SVP.

 

Mongoliangirl at The Cusp wrote The Seventeen Acres:  “Yes, but not forever.”

 

Rassles at Sometimes I Make Lists wrote Self-Diagnosis is Never a Good Idea.

 

Sulya at i am the octopus wrote this and this and this and this.  (She’s been dizzyingly proficient, lately.)

 

And Blues at Blues of a Waxwing rendered me speechless with The souls of everyday objects.

 

So while I’m having my pity party over here, go.  Go read and enjoy and comment.  I’ll be fine. 

 

Don’t worry about me. 

 

Really.

(Insert your name here) esque.

It started with a beetle.

(photo from here)

 

The kids yelled at me to come look in the bathroom sink. 

 

This beetle had come out of the drain.  My son repeatedly flushed him down with a swirl of tap water.  And the beetle repeatedly made his way back out.  His escapes from the sewer became progressively faster.  Clearly, this was not an ordinary bug we were dealing with.  He thrived on adversity.

 

Tough bugs always put me in a Kafka, a la “The Metamorphosis” frame of mind.  Any bug that can figure out what a human is doing, strip through the layers of absurdity, clearly that bug was human at some point.

(Suffice it to say, I dispatched with the bug, indulging in my inner 10 year old boy, dousing it with hand soap, shaving cream, and air freshener.  I don’t think it came back.  Of course, if it did, I’ll only find out late one night when it’s too late.)

 

I’m re-telling the story later, and I describe the bug, the whole situation, as “Kafkaesque”.  And then (as it usually does) my train of thought jumps the tracks.  Can you imagine writing a piece, or in a style, that is so unique, so influential, that an entirely new word is made up, in order to attribute it to you?

 

I let my mind go to the conceited place, and wondered what my mark on the worldof literature could possibly be.  Keeping in mind, of course, that since I’ll never be famous, it would have to be something pretty obscure.

 

What will be Ginnyesque? 

 

Descriptions of breakfast food in semi-pornographic shapes? 

 

 

Any thoughts?

 

And hey, while we’re at it, what’s your mark going to be?

This is not an apology.

So maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t been around much.

(Or maybe I’m incredibly narcissistic, and you haven’t noticed at all.  But I already started this post, so I’m gonna keep at it, if it’s all the same to you.)

 

I’m not here to apologize.

 

But in case you’re interested, I think I might know why.

 

Basically, I’m in the midst of the perfect storm of reasons for me not to write.

 

Those reasons are threefold:

 

1.  Emotionally, I’m a little vacant these days.  You’ve heard of seasonal affective disorder(and what has to be the most perfect acronym of all time, S.A.D.)?  well, I’ve diagnosed myself with reverse-S.A.D.  Every spring, I fall apart, a little.  My theory on this is that fall and winter are a time of “being”.  spring and summer, however, are a time of “doing”.  I’m a be-er, not a do-er.  And that’s where the annual schism begins.  While everyone around me waters lawns and plants perennials and makes vacation plans, I sit, and try to pretend it’s not happening.  (I have long and rambling theories as to why that is.  But they bore even me, so never mind.)  Suffice it to say, I feel a grand disconnect from the world around me every spring.  But don’t worry:  I start to normalize somewhere in the beginning of September.

 

2.  I am busier than a one-armed paper hanger. 

“Um, Ginny, everyone is busy.  What makes you so damned special?” 

Well, smartypants, if you’d read he previous paragraph, you’d know I’m not a do-er.  So having the commitments I have, overwhelm the fuck out of me.  End of the year this, wrap-up that.  School field trips and breakfasts and dances.  Soccer every couple of nights. 

Last year, it felt like I was saying “No” to everything that came my way.  Lack of time, lack of resources, I just refused everything.  So waaaay back in December, I decided that oh-nine would be different.  I’d say “yes”.  As much as I possibly could, and then some.  It got out of hand.  Maybe next year will be the “Year of Moderation.”  Maybe.

 

3.  To paraphrase John Goodman in “The Big Lebowski”,

“Ginny, you’re out of your element here.”

I’ve been doing stuff so far out of my comfort zone, it was draining the living hell out of me.

First, I was writing.  And getting paid for it.

 

Yeah I know, fuck me, I have no sympathy for me either.

But let me explain.

It was technical, report-type writing.  For people in an industry I am not part of.  And I wanted to do it well.

Every time I committed a few lines to paper, I KNEW, beyond a doubt, that the intended audience for this big ‘ol report:   a) knew I possessed no letters behind my name, b) thought I should just back away from the keyboard and go back to my dunce cap in the corner, and c) were furiously contacting accounting, to assure that I did not get paid for my unqualified drivel.

 

I was thrilled to have the opportunity.  The person who commissioned the report seems happy. 

 

And it was draining.

 

Also, I was coaching soccer.

 

If you know me in real life, you’re still asking yourself if you read that right.

 

I avoided organized sports as much as was humanly possible as a kid.  And what I couldn’t avoid, I sucked at.  I had no instinct.  No skill.  No drive. 

But the kids needed a coach.  And I was in a “saying yes” kind of place.

It’s actually turned out to be a beyond-rewarding experience.

Before every single game, though, I wanted to throw up.  Because I knew I’d screw something up.  And if the kids didn’t notice, the parents or the other coaches sure as hell would.  On the sidelines watching was over 20 years of collective coaching experience.

And 2 Olympic athletes.

(Seriously.)

 

 

So that’s my deal. 

 

I think I’m back to blogging.  I’ve slowly been making my rounds, catching up on all of the blogs I love, trying to comment when I don’t feel like my brain is composed of cotton swabs.  And just today, I compiled five (5) scraps of paper with half-assed ideas which I hope to turn into blog posts.

 

Thanks for sticking around.