Now it’s all the rage and there are books on how to be mindful in business, weight loss, parenting, and even extreme kiteboarding.

Basically it boils down to just paying goddamn attention to what’s going on inside.

As someone that has ADD and former addictions I know little about being present for what’s going on inside. I’ve written about this ad nauseum, but other than occasionally, I haven’t really put it into practice. One of the challenges with mindfulness is that it’s usually wrapped around meditation. I’m not flexible enough for the lotus position and I don’t have  any patchouli oil to burn. Plus, new age music gives me the creeps.

I read a story from a Harvard prof, Ellen Langer, who’s been studying mindfulness since the 1970s. Nobody paid much attention to her until recently even though she wrote the preeminent text  on it back in the 80s.

Anyway, she says meditation isn’t necessary for mindfulness. Her research  confirm this.

So, I’ve been carving out a few minutes every day while traveling to and from work on the train where I turn off Sirius or replays of my own podcast (yes, I sadly listen to my own stuff) or the best of The Lemonheads (which I must admit I stole online to check it out – didn’t like it, so I deleted the album. Is that wrong?).

I literally just sit and not think and see what happens internally.

The first few days, nothing came up. After a few minutes I got bored and went to my scorpion solitaire game, which is the most awesome solitaire game this side of mahjong.

Then on day three of my mindfulness practice sadness FLOODED me. I always stand up on the train, always, but I nearly needed to sit down.

And I couldn’t figure out what was happening.

I got curious about it and tried to source the pain, but it didn’t connect with any life events. I have a good job, wonderful relationship, fun parents, I pay my bills, and get to take my dog to work. Nothing particularly stressful or difficult is going on in my life.

Then it hit me – I’ve been avoiding sadness my whole life. Now it’s racing toward me like a tidal.

“Yes, I think you have a lot of sadness on the way,” agreed my therapist. Then she shrugged.

She’s right. And that’s the message I have received from paying attention. I’m so out of it I don’t even know what the sadness is all about. I just know I have a fartload of it.

This is surprisingly healthy and I intrinsically know it. That’s why the pain doesn’t concern me. It’s difficult to stay in sadness when it happens, that’s for sure. I want to escape in any way possible and with a smartphone I can get myself out with  one tap. I’m trying to force myself to remain present for the pain until it processes. Which is the best course of action.

And it does pass. I’m usually only bummed out for maybe an hour at a time.

It’s tough for people to understand. If you say you’re sad they’ll ask you, “What about?” When you answer, “I have no idea,” they flash back to that Zoloft commercial with the cartoon egg. They think you’re in big trouble.

Ironically, not knowing what I’m sad about actually makes it easier to deal with. Because I don’t have to analyze it or judge it. It just is. So, if I can muster up the courage and patience to dive into the pain, my body will figure out what to do with it and I’ll be fine.

Now, if I ever can’t get out of bed or something, then I’ll start experimenting with mind-blowing psychoactives purchased on seedy overseas online pharmacies. I’m not above that.

She had not done the best parking job. She works in a high rise building in the downtown area of Chicago. The garage where she parks is only ever around half full. She woke up late and was hustling to work. By the time she made it to the parking garage she was flustered. She parked the car in a half-assed manner and ran to the elevator. Because of all the empty space she didn’t think twice about it.

When she left work later that day she found a note attached to her windshield. It read:

Dear Shithead – Learn how to park your car better or the next time I’m going to hit your door even harder. I don’t give a shit because this is a company car.

I could write a 2000-word essay on what’s amazing about that letter. I’ll skip ahead and tell you what she did. She took a photo of the license plate and sent it to her brother, a police officer. He’ll run the plate and tell her to whom the car is registered. She’ll then call the company and ask which employee drives XYZ car. Then, she’ll call his boss (has to be a him), and send over the letter. He’ll be fired.

It got me to think about my own inability to hold it together at times. How I can go from sane to crazy in a matter of seconds should the right stimulus present itself.

My psychiatrist put me on a drug a few years ago. I can’t tell you what neurotransmitters it affects, but the way it was explained to me is this – the medicine allows me a few seconds of rational thought before I go into fight or flight. In other words, it provides sanity when I most need it.

I have one of those brains that flips out at the drop of a hat. If you drop and break a plate I’ll jump two feet in the air. I’ll also let out a scream. I’m high-strung and always have been. When I was younger it was named “sensitive” by adults. The kids at school would call it a “spaz.” Thankfully I learned how to internalize my freakouts and keep them hidden from the world. Nobody wants to be the class spaz.

I’m to a point now where I wonder how much of the behaviors I’d like to change are medical vs. psychological. I mean, if someone drops a plate, I don’t have much choice other than to freak out. It’s automatic. Wake me up in the middle of the night and I’ll begin yelling at you before I’m even conscious. With this med, however, I have more control.

I’m also in a therapist’s office once a week to work on my issues. The struggle for me is knowing what I have the ability to change and what just doesn’t work right with my physiology. Is the sadness I feel just a normal reaction to life or because my dopaminergic receptors don’t have the right uptake process? It’s confusing.

So, what do I work on and what do I surrender to meds? The science isn’t yet perfected on figuring out mental health.

What seems to be a true north for me are feelings. To fully feel a tough emotion when it comes up, and learning to trust that it will lead somewhere useful. As a guy, however, I was not taught to indulge in my sadness, fear, anger, or shame. Even after years of practice the process is new to me.

However, I’ve never left a nasty note on someone’s car and dented their door. I’m not far off the charts, thank God.

So for me the formula seems to be something like this:

acceptance of how I currently am  + meds for how I currently am + therapy for how I’d like to be + feeling tough stuff

Or maybe I should just keep freaking out and writing about it. It does make for great stories. Like how, to soothe myself today, I bought a huge amount of beef jerky and stunk up my office gnawing on the worst parts of a cow. Then I stunk up my office in a whole other way. It was awesome.

photo credit: Frau Shizzle via photopin cc

I spent about 6 or 7 weeks of my life, just recently, mired so deep in melancholia it was difficult to even get out of bed in the morning.  Such a cliché, but in this case it was the literal truth.   I shied away from consciousness and all it brought with it.   In the deepest parts of the trough, it was not possible to even think of troubling myself to write about it, the necessary cohesion, energy, clarity, coherency was just not available.   I was barely able to manage text messages to assuage the concerns of friends.  

When I am no longer depressed it is hard to remember exactly what went on in my inner landscape during that time, it’s like a really nasty dream, one of those that linger on waking, leaving you feeling a bit sour all day.   Snippets and sounds come back to me, but it is impossible to really reproduce the feelings. This particular session was brought on by years, literally, of stress and anxiety.  But the cause is irrelevant.   When the vase is already broken, it is never strong again, the glue is always in danger of dissolving.   Any series of events that I find stressful might set me off again.   And those are not, necessarily, events that other people would find stressful.

I have been very fortunate, it has been a very long time since I was  this  bad.   So long, in fact, that friends who have known me for several years were confused and unsure how to deal with me.

Right now, I am on the boundary line.   A couple of nights ago, I actually physically felt a switch flipping on in my head, it felt like the very centre of my brain made some connection (I can point to it for you if you like, next time we are chatting about my lunacy), and some lights, shaky and dull, started to power up in the damaged regions of my mind.  I immediately put shoes and clothes on and went for a walk in a desperate attempt to get whatever the hell passes for chemical uppers in my broken brain, swooshing around in there.

It was pleasant, out walking around the estate, but I was out there for one reason only, to cling on to this possible life preserver because things had been really, really bad.  So bad that I had actually been researching (in the moments where I could convince myself to do more than just stare at a DVD) electro-convulsive therapy, and had been giving it serious thought.

The thought of all that this would entail though was exhausting in itself.   Having to get a psychiatrist to evaluate me first, all the weeks of crap that would bring, not to mention convincing said psychiatrist (before they would even consider shock treatment) that I am NOT going down the road of medication again.   Plus, obviously, you have to be pretty irretrievable to agree to let someone zap your brain with electricity.

With regard to medication, just too many side effects.  Yes forgive me but I do require a sex drive thanks awfully, it’s one of the few pluses in my life!  Or there was the drug that woke me screaming each night, bashing myself off walls while I wandered the house in a confused state.  To a greater, or lesser extent every anti depressant of the MANY I have tried has just not been worth what comes with it.   I have tried at least ten different drugs from three different families, and the doctor’s insistence that I keep getting liver and kidney function tests whenever on anti-depressants frankly creeps me out – what, exactly are these pills doing to my insides?!   In addition, I am ok (usually) for 11 (ok, maybe 10) months out of 12 – not all at once, perhaps, but still it’s a hell of a thing to have to take drugs EVERY SINGLE DAY with horrible side effects that fuck up my internal organs to cover myself for the 1-2 months each year where I may, or may not, actually need them.

I am not anti-medication, I have given them a bloody good try – and that’s all she wrote for anti-depressants.

Already I can find my recall getting a little hazy, and my “normal” self reasserting herself and telling me that there is no way those days could have been  that  bad, surely….

So here, while I am still in the gloaming, in the borderlands, are my recollections of what it feels like to be in that terrible, grey place they call clinical depression.  This is how it felt, not how it feels now.   If this was how it felt, right now, I would not be typing, coherent or rational enough to care about sharing.

My first thought on waking each morning is dread.   My last thought before going to sleep at night is dread too, because although I am greatly relieved at the prospect of bed and sleep and not having to deal with anything for a few more hours, I am already trying hard not to think about wakening up in the morning to have to deal with the all the daily garbage.   Guilt, decisions, responsibilities of another day.   Sleep is my saviour.   I sleep as much as possible.   Sometimes I comfort eat, chocolate and sugary things, this time that was intermittent, I had lost the energy to even care much about comfort foods.   Xanax has been my friend this time around, on the days I just could NOT cope at least I was able to drug myself to sleep again with one or two Xanax.   Though I doubt my doctor would have prescribed it for me had he known my mental processes more intimately.

The worst times were when, conversely, I couldn’t sleep at all.   The constant inner monologue was turned up full volume at those times, so I would listen to loud music on earphones and try to keep my mind as occupied as possible with videos and other miscellaneous nonsense.   Sometimes this would happen because I had just been sleeping too bloody much.  Other times, it would just, simply, happen and I would be awake for two days regardless of futile attempts to drug myself to sleep.   Mental illness – it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

I was asked, at one point in the last futile and wasted month and a half, if I had considered self harming or suicide.   Considered it?   Some days, some hours, it was ALL I really thought about, a constant undercurrent to my surface thoughts.   There was even a beat I could use to go with the words, when my footsteps would sound out a sort of rhythm in my head and I could hear the words “I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead” going around and around like the lyrics to a song, or the metre of a train when you are safely inside the carriage.   Why?   Because it would stop this fucking nightmare train wreck from happening, of course, but also just because.   Because when you are depressed as I was you just don’t want to be alive any more, it is part and parcel of it.

The one constant thorn in my side over the last 6 or so weeks has been having to look after my children.   They are both my saviour and my curse at times like these.   Saviour because I am fairly certain I would have attempted – and perhaps succeeded – in actually killing myself if it weren’t for them, at various points over the last 15 years.   But who comes back from that? Well, obviously, not the dead person, I mean what child could ever recover from such a thing?

I reckon if your mother kills herself you are pretty much doomed to a shite life, whatever way you look at it. No matter how many letters the mater leaves, how much explaining she tries to do.  So, my heart keeps beating on behalf of my hostages to fortune.   Turns out there is one thing I love more than myself and it’s them.   There are days I have resented that, and days I have been glad for it.   Today is a glad day.

I have also lost two friends to suicide.   And you never (Never) get over the guilt, no matter how close, or otherwise, you were to them – even if they were living in another country at the time.   I admit though, that wouldn’t have stopped me, the sorrow of my friends, husband, brothers was not a genuine consideration for me, not in the deepest troughs.   Only Jacob and Ruth were enough to halt me at the brink on several occasions.

And they are a curse because having to worry, or even show the slightest concern about another human being is an exhausting ache in my head.   I don’t want to get out of bed at all, let alone make breakfast, lunch, iron, wash, do all the things normal mothers do.   “Don’t want to” – such easy words but in reality every single part of me rebels against these chores, if I had the energy I would scream.   I can always manage to hug them, smile, give them a word of love – for some reason those feats are not so difficult.   But the day to day drudgery that I don’t much like at the best of times is absolutely gruelling when I feel like this.   If you asked me to strap a weight to my back and climb a mountain, it would be easier than doing the school run when my head is in this place.

I feel such resentment, added to the general swirling guilt, misery, sadness and hate, that I am forced to care for two other human beings.   If I had known how hard motherhood was going to be, I would genuinely never have done it.   On the other hand, I have never, not once, been able to wish them out of existence.   Love is the rope that binds me to them.

When I am still in the dark place I do know, vaguely, that somewhere there are people out there who have real actual feelings and they aren’t like mine, that this grimy bubble around me will pop one day and I will feel things the way they do again, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.   I know this intellectually, even though I cannot remember it emotionally, and I hang on to that thought for grim life.   The fact that I feel almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the human race, that their beliefs and feelings seem irrelevant, irrational, unreal to me will pass, I know this from past experience.

But oh, this was a bad one, a real doozy.   After a few weeks, it started to feel like I was swimming through freezing cold soup, maybe a broth of some kind, filled with spinach.   Just enough light and space to see a few feet ahead maybe.   Or like snorkelling, if the snorkel was half clogged up and you couldn’t really get a breath, and the sea was muddy and full of seaweed.   Or like trudging through a heavy fog, a fog that has real weight, in a wet parka, wearing a faulty gas mask, in front of me a few patches of light that I make my weary way towards.

I could go on all day with analogies, it is impossible to describe how bleak everything looks and how heavy the weight of life is.   There is not one word, not one action that can make anything seem better.   Imagine the love of your life had just died in your arms and then someone trying to cheer you up, telling you to count your blessings and look on the bright side while the blood was still warm on your hands.   Impossible.   Ludicrous.

Another reason to avoid people, they think they can cheer you up.   Shudder.

Isolation is what I crave.   Just having to think about listening to well meaning conversation makes me want to rake the skin off my face with my stumpy little nails.   Isolation is the most dangerous thing for me, and it is the one thing I want.   To. Be. Left. Alone.   Stop ASKING me for things, don’t ask for my opinion, my help, my input in any way, don’t ask me one single question, you are tormenting me with your NEED.   This goes for absolutely everyone, everything – so if you are reading this and thinking oh no, that’s aimed at me, believe me, it’s not, it’s aimed at every living person in the world, and in particular the ones I live with, poor bastards.   Luckily for them I am too listless and fatigued to present as much more than groggy and miserable.

In that soup, that foggy mire, I look at people I know and I wonder what they would do if they could read my thoughts just at that point.  I look at them and the idea of trying to communicate my thoughts is unappealing, completely so.   Too hard, oh far too hard, too far away, you stretch out your arm and it takes forever to reach someone and even if you could reach them, it is probably impossible anyway.   How do you tell a person blind from birth what a colour looks like?   You don’t ask for help because you don’t want help, you have forgotten what wanting help feels like.   You forget how it feels to be happy.   You know that you were, once – but again it is an intellectual exercise.   You hang on to the knowledge that eventually, this too shall pass.

On the days people see me, or in some way interact with me, it is a given that I am not at rock bottom – because when I am at rock bottom I just refuse to see or interact with anybody, however many times the phone rings, or texts come in, unanswered.  So people do not see my rock bottom.  My children are only aware that I am absent.  Sleeping or hidden away, a ghost figure hardly seen.  Again, I am very grateful this is usually only a few weeks out of every year, for their sake as well as my own.

On the days I do manage to go out, people ask me questions and I feel unsure of what answers to give them.   It is hard to make a decision.   Should I tell the truth, part of the truth, a total lie, say nothing, smile awkwardly?   Social skills were a learned behaviour on my part anyway, so they drop away fast when I am living inside the bubble.   I feel like a marionette acting out a play, badly.   I am always amazed that I can fool anybody at all.

There is little sense of humour when you’re lost in the fog.   My sense of humour is normally really keen, I can find something funny about losing a toenail on most days (particularly if it is someone else’s).  If I can hang on to humour then I might be on the jagged edge but I am not in the dark place entirely, not yet, even if one foot is over the finish line.

I am physically often really tired in this place.   My energy drained out of me, and that makes it easier to sleep, which I am glad about in as much as I can be glad of anything at this point.   All I want to do is close my eyes and not be awake any more.   When I cannot sleep I watch videos, read books, almost constantly, it is a way of distracting my grieving mind from the guilt, panic, fear, misery.

One by one, things get whittled away.   Fresh clothes? Oh this T shirt will do it was only worn once.   Shower?   Only if going out, or when I started to feel actually sticky, and I avoided going out as much as I could.   Grocery shopping?   Shift that to the husband whenever possible. Housework?   Bare minimum, with help from the kids, and again only out of concern for them.   I could have slept in a pile of maggots and barely noticed at that point, but couldn’t let them live in grot and filth (memories of my own childhood).  Not because I didn’t prefer, even in that state, to be clean and have a pantry full of food, but because it was just too hard to do the chores that lead to that.   Can’t explain it any better than that.

Not every single day was this bad, obviously, or I would have done nothing at all for the last month and a half.   There were a few crests – well not crests exactly but a bit of a climb out of the trough at least.   In a way this was worse, because the half a dozen times I almost made it up out of the valley only to tumble back down again were very disheartening.   And it didn’t happen all at once, there are hills and contours in the valleys of melancholia, some days you go up a little, other days speeding downwards.   It took weeks to really get to the bottom.  I have been chiselling my way through the strata for years and I suspect I came quite close to the very deepest parts this time.

Disconnection, flattened emotions (all the positive ones anyway), raw misery, grief, sorrow, guilt, fear, panic, shame, and an attempt to shy away from all responsibility for the simple reason that I just cannot deal with it.   Any responsibility feels like a physical weight.   Worse, it feels like an attack, like being slapped, I cringe beneath the thought of it.   Mentally and sometimes even physically.   And by responsibility I mean making a phone call, ironing a shirt, answering a text.   These feel like the tasks of Hercules when I am living in the dark lands.   You know how stressed you are right before an important exam?   Amplify by at least ten and you might start to get the anxiety that even having to talk to someone on the phone can bring.   And a constant drumbeat in my head that if I could just go to sleep and not wake up things would be so much easier.

On one of my better days, a day I had managed to get out and drive, I sat in the car for 10 minutes convincing myself that I could walk into Australia Post and make some photocopies.   I did go in, but it was touch and go for a while.

What can I say, it was a trip, for sure 🙂

There is nothing whatsoever friends can do for me in this place.   I am aware of your attempts to reach me and of your concern, perhaps it helps somehow, perhaps not it is hard to say.   It is appreciated once I am capable once again of appreciation.   Sometimes I can fake normality briefly, or even surface briefly to a nearly normal state and usually when that happens I make an attempt to see at least one of you, or talk to you, to reconnect to reality because when I am sane friendship is something incredibly important to me.   All the worse then that it gets damaged too by the poison leaking from my brain.

There is nothing anybody can do differently if it ever happens again.   Just don’t take it personally is probably the only advice I could give you, if I am lost and far away.   I seem to have managed to have dragged myself out of this one, or at least be on the upward path.   Hopefully it will be many more years, if ever, before another black depression as vast as this last one settles on me.

Well, there you have it.   I thought you all deserved a few words of apology for my being so selfish – because there is no doubt about it, melancholia makes me absolutely selfish and almost impervious to all other concerns but my own grinding sadness (apart from, as I say, that tiny part of me that manages still to care about my children).   And a few words of explanation because I know depression must seem like a foreign country to people who inhabit the world of sane.

You have my permission to leave now and not return.  Coping with this sort of information is not for everyone.  No hard feelings.  Just remember, I am only ever a danger to myself, not to others.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, I have nothing up my sleeves.   Pay close attention.  Because this next trick is impossible.

—

Night is not a good time for me. The time when I’ve finished reading all my feeds, and all my online friends in other time zones were in bed hours ago, and finding something to occupy my mind becomes more difficult. Or even worse, when I’m settling down to try and sleep. It’s not always a good idea to leave me alone with my thoughts, with nothing to keep them at bay.

Last night, specifically, was a bad night. As sometimes happens, a song I’d put on gave me the urge to pick up the guitar and start singing. Now, I love to sing. I have my whole life. Alone in my room, there was certainly no reason not to. So I did. Only… it didn’t last long.

Because there is one thing that most assuredly does  not  love me picking up my guitar and singing.

Here, I’m going to tangent for a bit. Recently, in  this  post, the Bloggess linked to  21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You’re Depressed. The post was inspired by  21 Habits of Happy People, which Rosalind essentially called out as unhelpful bullshit. And it is – is it ever! Because much as people tried to backpedal once confronted and claim that the list was not targeted at those who actually have depression, we need to be realistic about this.

People who are down right now, for whatever reason, but do not actually have depression,do not need your lists. Life sucks sometimes, they’ll be down for a while, and then they’ll carry on. They don’t need to be told to “enjoy the little things”, “be optimistic” or “appreciate life”. Even if they’ve lost sight of those things right now, they’ll work them out again eventually and all well and good. Without your help.

Take this quote:

Happiness is one aspiration all people share. No one wants to be sad and depressed. […]  I’m not saying happy people don’t feel grief, sorrow or sadness; they just don’t let it overtake their life.

Quite clearly, this is not aimed at people who can manage happiness by themselves. Therefore, it  is  aimed at those who  can’t. And, what do you know, there’s a reason for that. They’re quite right when they say no-one wants to be sad and depressed, which is why, if the answer is as simple as “buck up and think happy thoughts”, that person does not tend to stay depressed. So automatically, anyone for whom the listed strategies are not horribly unhelpful and insulting, isn’t going to need them.

The bit that gets me most on these lists – which I’m sure Rosalind directly addressed at some point, but I can’t seem to find the relevant bit – is the “do what you love”/”make time for things you enjoy” piece of advice. Especially for those with chronic (as opposed to acute) depression, there’s one big flaw with that particular suggestion.

Depression takes away your ability to enjoy things. How can you do what you love when you can’t love what you love?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I can remember a time where I could regularly play the guitar for more than two and a half songs (on a good day) without being overcome by an overwhelming wave of apathy. If I’ve got a set performance, with specific songs I need to play and finish to show people, that’s one thing. But just sitting down and enjoying playing guitar? I  can’t  anymore. Sometimes I can make it through two and a half songs… sometimes one and a half… sometimes I’ll start five different songs and sort of trail off halfway through each one because I just can’t bring myself to finish them.

Last night I think I made it halfway through the second song and somehow managed to barely limp through a couple more before I finally gave up. Last night, it got to me.

I’m tired of not being able to enjoy the things I know I love, that I should enjoy. I tried to get medication, once, several years back. Basically walked into the doctor’s office and said “Please put me on antidepressants. Now.” Unfortunately, I was a somewhat suicidally-inclined, autistic teen, which the doctor took one look at and returned with “How about we get your parents in? And take a look at other options? And literally  anything we can manage that does not include putting you on these drugs?”

I can’t say I blame the man – it’s a fairly alarming collection of contraindicators. Due to the changes in brain chemistry that teens undergo, depression is very common and frequently temporary, tapering off along with the end of puberty. They don’t like to risk a life-long addiction medicating something that could very well just correct itself. They also hesitate to medicate anyone with suicidal tendencies because anti-depressants tend to make things worse before they make them better. Lastly, we have autism. Due to the quirks in brain wiring and chemistry, any drug that affects either of these things have been known to go a bit… awry in autists, from time to time. Even worse, frequently not even in the same ways from one autist to the next. Anti-depressants are already a very hit-and-miss, keep trying until you find one that works for you kind of drug. It makes that search all the more difficult and risky when any given one just might act as, say, a psychotic, for no really discernible  reason.

So while I still seriously consider anti-depressants, I’m not sure I much like my chances of getting any now, either.

Frustrations over not being able to enjoy much anymore, though, is not what caused the rest of my night to quickly devolve into clinging to my husband crying for at least a good couple of hours. What did that, was fear.

I am currently well into my second trimester. Sometime around the end of July, all going well, I will be bringing a new baby boy into the world. What had me in tears last night is the fact that I have  no idea  how I’m going to be able to be any good as a mother.

I’m not feeling as bad right now, but I can’t say I really know the answer now either.

See, my dad taught me to play guitar… at first, anyway. Thing is, he has clinical depression too. I have no idea how hard he had to work to manage that… I do know, however, that eventually it just became too hard. Over time, my requests to play together got turned down more and more, until eventually I had to resort entirely to self-teaching. I wasn’t a little kid when this happened; dad didn’t hide the reason for it and I was plenty able to understand by then. But still, it sucked. There wasn’t an awful lot I really got to share in with my dad, and it made me sad to lose something we did together.

I’ve never doubted that my dad loves me, and cares for me. I’ve certainly never felt unloved or neglected by him, or any such thing. But I do feel distant. I don’t remember a time I ever really felt all that close to my father, and a big part of that was depression putting a barrier between us. Not  just  his, either. My own became noticeable to me somewhere around eleven, and I’m sure it didn’t help matters any either.

I don’t want my son to feel distant from me. I don’t know how I’m even going to manage as much as dad did,  though. I can already barely play guitar at all; how am I ever going to hang in long enough to teach my child? Especially if, like me, it’s another decade-plus before he’s ever interested enough to actually learn? In another decade, am I even going to be able to pick up a guitar anymore?

Obviously this isn’t the only thing in the world to share with my son, and it’s full well possible that he’ll never be interested in guitar anyway. This might never become a relevant point… at least, not directly. But the problem isn’t the guitar. It’s what it represents. It’s one of the things I’ve managed to hold on to the best, for the longest, and even that’s slipping away from me now, and has been for some time. It was the one, clear thing that made it really hit me: this is going to affect my child. It’s going to affect my ability to be a good parent.

And god help me,  I don’t have any idea what to do about that.

What are you, The Band, The Face Of?

***

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

–  Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway

It starts with the nightmares.

Night after night, I’m stranded in airports I’ve never visited – some exotic, some rural – malls I’ve never seen, always looking for someone whom, in a dream-like way, I know is looking for me, too. A particular someone – someone I’ve never met, but someone whom I chase night after night. I have a feeling I’d know him if I saw him, but really, that could be a lie.

It feels silly to admit that I spend my dream time not eating marshmallow fluff, but  looking  for a particular person. I’d much rather be saving the world while I sleep than sorting through the faceless masses at fictional airports.

Once the dreams begin, sleeping becomes fitful, if not impossible.

I’ve not won any sleeping awards since I got my  thyroid  regulated (I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM), but during these patches, it becomes nearly  impossible to drift off. When I sleep, I run, I chase, and I wake myself weeping into my pillow or moaning in sadness. By 9AM all hope of rest gone; I slog my soggy ass out of bed and pretend that I remember what it’s like to sleep.

I’m functional for a few weeks like this –  groggy, with slowed reflexes  – but because of my usual rate of unintentional self-injury, no one notices anything is amiss.

It’s only after a few weeks, months, I don’t know how long, that I start to crack. The  anxietybecomes too much. Things I would’ve normally found hilarious – my neighbor’s tree, for example, which looks like it’s growing a full set of knockers – don’t even elicit the barest of smiles.

I want so desperately to reach out, to  connect with someone, anyone, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to admit that it’s okay to be weak – that I’m allowed to  not  understand my  feelings. It’s then that the voices of those whom I once loved echo through my head and I begin to doubt. Everything. Myself. My ability to function in everyday society.

The echoes of things once-said flit through my mind. “I can’t handle your problems right now,” my ghost-husband says. “You’re a liar,” my ghost-brother says. “Take down that story about therape  or I’ll take action,” my ghost-ex threatens.

My world becomes smaller, ever smaller, as the PTSD rears its head. It leaves me gasping for air, for straws, for any reason as to why there’s a 9,827 pound white elephant on my chest while the rest of the world seems to be breathing air like it’s no big deal.

I wonder what is so fundamentally fucked inside my head that I can’t manage to beat thisPTSD.  My daughter lived;  I have  countless  friends who’d gnaw off a couple of legs to say the same thing. So why am I so fucked? Why does rubbing my hand along the  plastic implant inside her skull  make me break out in a cold sweat? She squeals and laughs runs and plays and kicks her brothers with wild abandon, while I sit trapped on the couch, my windpipe unable to properly move air into my lungs.

And those words, those words like white elephants, are trapped in my lungs; they remain unspoken.

My ex-wife just got married. I was made aware of this because my veterinarian emailed my ex-wife who forwarded it to me. This is a little complicated. Explanation necessary, D.J.!

Christina and I divorced over two and half years ago. I still contact her every once in a while. We’re perfectly friendly and sometimes I need advice on pet stuff. She, too, is a vet. Well, my dog is due for a dental. This is a relatively routine procedure but when I called the animal hospital yesterday, the vet tech had expressed interest in giving her a catheter for anesthesia. My dog is very sensitive to shots and has become sick in the past for this kind of thing. My ex has instructed me to call her before any procedure to give the go-ahead. I’m glad she’s available as she’s a great doctor.

So, every now and then I call and talk about the dog or the cat. Our conversations are brief and amiable. We joke around for a minute and then get to business. I phoned her a few weeks ago because the government cut us a big check for seemingly no reason. We couldn’t figure it out, but were thrilled to get the cash. So, we have nice chats. Every so often one of us comes up with a joke about the pets and calls or texts it over. That’s the stuff we do.

In the year following the divorce, I worked through my anger and sadness. It was suggested to me at the time that I take the year off of dating. I should point out that it was my ex’s decision to leave the marriage. This was shocking and difficult for me to process, as it would be for anyone. So, I took my time. Learned how to be alone.

After a year I was over the divorce and became involved in a relationship. It ended last fall due to distance. Oh, and the fact that she sort of didn’t like me. Not a great quality for a long-term partner. Now, I’m back in the mix and dating up a storm. Just last week I hit seven dates in seven days. Was hilarious. And exhausting.

Anway, back to my ex-wife.

So I called her yesterday and after the business about the dog’s teeth she asked, “So, what’s going on?” She has never, in all our talks, expressed interest in my personal life. It’s always been business, a quick joke, and then off the phone. I just said, “Nothing much,” and hung up the phone as quick as possible. I’m not interested in telling her about my dating marathon.

Then this morning I get an email where she had messaged the vet who’s going to take care of Meepers during the dental. She told him the procedure she wanted him to do. He replied and agreed, but at the end also said, “Congrats on the nuptials!”

Did she accidentally forget to delete that line before sending to me or did she do it on purpose in a fucked-up, passive aggressive way? Or maybe she just didn’t give a shit. Who knows? Well, after Googling “nuptials” I learned it meant she got married.

Here’s the part that pissed me off. She still uses my last name. To this day. Now, I don’t quite understand this plan. She was a Johnson for thirty-two years. Decent last name. Marries me for two years, and then leaves. Keeps the name. Weird, but whatever. Then marries a new dude. Still keeps the name. Double weird.

And yes, I can understand that “Paris” is kind of a neat last name. But to keep it after a failed marriage and then a new one is really bizarre. I can only hope that her new husband’s name is “Feltersnatch.” Then it would make sense.

So, today I’ve been sad and angry. Sad that my ex-wife has moved on. It’s natural to be a little depressed. Mad because she didn’t have the courage to tell me the night before on the phone. I suspect it’s because she knew I would say, “Finally – you’re getting rid of my name!”

“Um… about that…”

photo credit: Anirudh Koul via photopin cc

It’s funny because a few years back I wasn’t even writing at all. I don’t consider myself a “good” writer. I’m skilled at coming up with daily ideas. The webinar was exactly this topic – how to come up with blog posts in daily life. I prepared quite a bit and over 215 people signed up for the event. I couldn’t believe more than ten would. I’m not that popular, for chrissakes.

It’s wasn’t all about me – the Ultimate Blog Challenge sent a massive email blast out to their group.

I’ll have the recorded version of the webinar up shortly if you’re so inclined. We went over ninety minutes.

But none of this is really what I wanted to talk about today.

After the presentation I did an interview with the great Noa Gavin. I adore her and she’s one of the truly funniest women online. That podcast will be up in a few weeks.

So, after being “on” for over two hours it was time to crash. I was exhausted and needed some downtime. And then a huge wave of  loneliness  and sadness started just crushing me. I just wanted to be around someone romantically. Someone to hold and also to be held myself. I normally am not slammed with feelings like this.

It reminded me of what it feels like after playing a gig. I get to the show early to load in my guitar and amp. They I sit around the bar drinking Sprite until it’s time for our show. We play hard for forty five minutes and then it’s over. People come over to say, “Great job!” but then I’m alone again. I pack up my amp and guitar and head home at 1am.

As I’m traveling home I’m overcome with sadness.

When this hit last night I realized that this is just what happens to me after I perform. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because you’re on a massive high of expounding energy and feeding of the crowd, whether it’s a webinar or a music performance. It’s probably a biological thing to balance out  the high with an equal low. It’s just weird because it feels so real that it’s painful.

I had to call up a friend just to talk, I was so lonely. I think it’s this “I need to be taken care of” since I just, in a way, took care of so many people by teaching. I’m in no way complaining, but I now know that the sadness will come after a performance. Hence, I need to make arrangements.

So, I might be calling on you! Get excited to be my crying blanket. Because my life is soooooooooooooooooo hard. You’re with me, right?

photo credit: wildpianist via photopin cc

I did a bunch of research on blue lights to see if they do, in fact, help to alleviate depression. Now, I don’t actually have depression. Well, not in the clinical sense. Sure I cry each morning when I awake, but that’s because the weight of the world is squarely resting on my shoulders! You know, normal thoughts. The blue light was appealing as it could help me to feel better and isn’t a destructive high.

During my research I found that therapy lights are the number one prescribed remedy for seasonal affect at the Mayo Clinic. Well, I’m certainly not smarter than those eggheads. So, now I wake up every morning and while I’m eating my cereal I am bathed in blue light like I’m playing a sax solo set at a jazz bar.

Then I pack up the sonofabitch and take it to work. It’s only a little bit bigger than my fist.  I get to work about fifteen minutes before the other employees and turn it on again.  At home I usually fire it up once more before bed when I’m writing.

Does this thing really work? Who the hell knows? But I do believe there’s something about sunlight that is energizing. The blue light is supposed to do the same thing direct sunlight does through the skin.

When I’m on the subway platform, even in single digit weather, if possible, I stare directly into the sun. With my eyes closed. I’m not a sociopath. There’s something that feels so nourishing to me to get even a few minutes of sunlight. I probably look like a weirdo staring into the sun with my eyes closed when it’s winter. Also I have a dog on my back in a pack. It’s a strange sight.

Tonight I started to think about why I don’t do other things that are good for me like some regular cardiovascular exercise. How I can get up every morning and bike ten miles to work, but when it’s too cold I can’t get to the gym. I know we’re imperfect people but the science is clear if I do a bit of cardio each day I’d have some great stuff pumping through my body – you know, neurotransmitters. The real drugs. I wouldn’t probably need the damned blue light.

I know eating ice cream is pleasurable and quick and easy. But getting an hour workout in is so much better. I believe the quality of my life can be summed up in the ability to make decisions that provide me the biggest benefit. I know some people like to say it’s about giving, but screw those martyrs. Nobody likes a show-off.

So, the question isn’t, “How do I become perfect?” The question also isn’t, “How do I get myself to the gym?” The question actually is, “Why am I choosing not to give this gift to myself?” That’s where the magic is.

When I ask this question I’m overcome with sadness about how mean I am to myself. The feeling passes second later, but I am aware that often I don’t think I’m deserving of good feelings. That stops me from the gym. It’s all behind my consciousness, but I think that’s what is happening.

Getting conscious about what’s going on with me is my work in 2013. That and less farting.

Now, if you will excuse me there’s a little bit of Breyer’s Moose Tracks left in the carton and it’s calling my name. I’ll use my blue light to even it out.

• I have no discipline – I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve started over the years that have not come to completion. In my mind the last time I really worked at something I consider disciplined was when I worked out six days a week for six months without missing. That was ten years ago. Ten years before that I sat in my basement and mastered a Joe Satriani piece entitled Day at the Beach on the guitar. That’s it. I have ADD which is great for creativity but not with staying on task. Somehow I was able to just make this a must every day. I missed most of my flossing, but I never missed writing. No idea how I did it. Am I a superhero? Sure. Why not?

• I never thought I could write every day (with decent content) – Before this I only wrote if I had something I pondered for a few days and I was absolutely certain was going to be well-received. As a result of this strategy, I almost never produced. I waited for home runs which rarely came. After day seven in January I had run out of home runs. Nothing had happened that particular day and I was screwed. Within a few months I realized I was developing improv chops. Since my average day is pretty boring and I don’t have great stories from my past I focused on finding the humor and emotion in everyday life. While not easy, after 365 straight reps, the muscle is now well-developed.

• Readers relate to honesty – Frankly, I always considered myself a humorist. I am funny. That’s my thing. But when I started this year I was into a new relationship, but still healing from my divorce. I had a lot of anger, sadness, fear and shame that was bubbling to the surface. While terrifying to me, I decided to take the plunge and write about these feelings without the need to pepper them with jokes. Comedy often did come up naturally, but it wasn’t something I manually added to make the posts more readable. What happened was that my comments increased significantly. Readers seemed to appreciate the raw honesty and I believe people felt more connected to me and the work.

•  Engagement is the key – I have always wanted to build a community with this blog. The only way I know how to do this (since I write about myself) was to engage the readers. Even though I’m still over 400 comments behind, my goal is to reply to every single comment. I don’t do this because it will “get” me more loyalty, although it does often do that. I remember seeing Ozzy Osbourne once talking about his fans and he almost started crying saying how grateful he is to have people that want to listen to his music. I’m not half as talented as him, but I feel the same. The fact that someone wants to read my stuff still blows me away. So, thank you!

• Put my head down and write – I have long since retired the idea of being famous from a blog. My posts won’t go viral. My readership increases by a handful every day. That’s it. No shortcuts. And I’ve learned so much of life is just hard-work. And that’s the good news. Hard work beats out talent almost every time. With hard work I can hit singles and doubles every day. I’ll leave the home runs to the book I’d like to pen. Other than that, it’s just a matter of getting up early and making the donuts.

Well, that’s it. I also learned you sickos love posts about genitals, farts, sadness, shame, anything where I end up embarrassing myself, and videos where I don’t realize I’m making a joke until after I’ve made it and then laugh hysterically at my own wit. Okay, maybe not the last one.

I know – I talk about sadness a LOT. It’s enough already. As such I’m not going to lament my currenttale of woe, although I will say that it may have involved running out of peach Fresca at my parent’s house yesterday which is total bullshit. I’m kidding. My problems are much worse than that. Like Africa bad.

Okay, not Africa bad.

Here’s what I know about sadness and I’ve written it a few dozen times already – I need to learn how to stay with it without running until it passes. Okay good. Now, let us move swiftly to talk about what’s going on when I feel sad.

Well, actually I am interested in figuring out what is within my control and what is outside. Here’s a little checklist of what may be bringing on my sadness.

• Genetics – Faulty wiring of DNA or other brain/body goofiness.
• Diet / Exercise – Activities to provide and release energy instead of clogging.
• Nurture – Past unhelpful beliefs installed at young age by family.
• Focus – Directing of my thoughts to either empowering or depressing directions.
• Life Events – Natural to be sad because something crappy happened.

This is the checklist of stuff I go through. For example, I’m having a “life event” issue that I’m not quite ready to share. No I didn’t dropkick my cat through the goalposts of life. I’ll bet 99% of you didn’t get that horrible 70s country song reference. But anyway something crappy is happening that is “sad”  justifiable. But, the question is, am I feeling too sad because of other factors?

What if I ran a few miles? Ate better? Directed my focus to what was not-crappy? Talked to my psychiatrist about a med adjustment?

In other words, what is within my control? And how much of it is just regular old sadness which must be tolerated?

If it sounds like I’m over-analyzing sadness, I’m not. I do want to know, however, what I should be doing to correct and what I should just let happen naturally. For example I’ve come to believe I’m kind of a solemn person in general. I have my moments of fun and joy, but my baseline is sort of neutral. I can learn to accept that. Also I had some bad programming as a child (we all did) by well-intentioned parents. That plays a role, too.

I’m not looking to blame my sadness on anyone or anything. I just want to know what I should be doing. The first thing is to feel it fully and embrace it. Okay – check. Now, at what point do I start a gratitude list or hitting the treadmill? Or do I just let it peter out on its own?

I’m not kidding when I say that I really don’t know how this all works. I feel like I’ve been sad for some time now and I’d really like to figure out a solution. I can get out of bed and perform well at work. You don’t need to hide my electric razor because, well, for one, it couldn’t break skin. Two, I’m do something way more exciting like shoot myself out of a cannon into the next town over.

It would be awesome to just know if this is normal depression and to just ride it out. But I’m not sure it is. I guess I could hit the gym and talk with the doctor. Also my therapist helps with the cognitive parts. I’m just so confused on what’s going on.

No reason to feel sorry for me. My life is actually pretty good. I do struggle, however, with finding happiness. I’m not alone. If anyone knows the absolute answers to this stuff, please let me know. We could bundle it on a 10 DVD video program and sell it on late-night television for $297. I have good hair and white teeth so I’ll be the face and voice. Oh, and the body. I’m kind of the full package.

photo credit: philippe leroyer via photopin cc