The Beasts Beckon

The thing about depression and anxiety is that no matter what triggers them, you have to accept them and embrace them as living and breathing and almost as if they are a separate but intrinsically connected division of yourself.

It is the Hap Happiest Time of the Year...I know it is.  I just wrote about it last week.  But it seems that the beasts within me are very in tune with that and like to challenge it every time I acknowledge my contentment.  My happiness is therefore dependent on how responsive Depression and Anxiety are within me.

Sure enough, the nightmares are back this week.  Disrupting sleep, and well, just plain invading my life.  And with as much as I have going on (the trigger) the absolute last thing I have time for in this life are the anchors which are depression and anxiety.  Still here they are.  Screaming loud and clear for only me to hear.  Last night the dream was so vivid I cried out several times in my sleep and woke up the husband.

It's not fair.  And it's just that simple.  But it's my cross to bear and I have to figure out how to battle it back just a little while longer, then it can have me for a week or so in January...hear that depression - can you just hold out til then?  Actually, let me get through the rest of this fiscal quarter, til I can haul in a good performance review and (fingers crossed) a decent raise for next year.  Really need the reprieve buddy.  Just a year - please?  Pretty please?  I'd like to feel happy and enjoyment in my marriage, in my home, in my limited parenting skills...just for a while.  I'd like to get just a quick taste of liking my job for just the briefest of moments...you know, to remember what it was like to enjoy working.

Please - just back off a while.I need at least a short period of forgetting what it's like to live with you both.  Maybe I'll come to appreciate the grounding in reality that I get from carrying you both around all the time...Maybe then I'll come to want some of the whacky "unreality" of what you want me to believe.  But right now - I just want a bit of naivete back.  A little bit of "ignorance is bliss"...please.  Pretty please.

ebbs and flows

Life is full of ebbs and flows.  Jolts and lurches forward.  Screeching stops and gradual accelerations.  Depression, mental illness for that matter, is really not very different.

When I'm at my worst, it's usually because I'm dealing with a perfect storm, and I've forgotten in the midst of trying to balance a million fire balls in mid air, to take a breath, take meds, do yoga or invest in the silencing of my brain.  And when I'm sniping and snapping at the smallest things, and I can even feel my face showing complete and utter disgust in the world, what hurts the most is knowing that the recipients of my ire and the pain and despondency of no hope are all in my own head and are at that moment, uncontrolled.  I had a moment like that briefly yesterday.  We've all been sick, and stressed and running a mile a minute and when we went to my mom's for dinner yesterday I struggled to lug all our crap into the house, had to call my husband back to help me heave crap in, then couldn't get in the door without fighting a million hurdles and it just felt like I was trying to navigate a medieval gauntlet from hell.  "Jesus H Christ!" I snarked.  "One of you kids come and deal with this ball!  Get it out of the road!"  I looked up to see my mother and my step brother looking at me like I'd walked into the room breathing fire.  I wasn't, but that's how it came out.  I was mildly frustrated, but at the brink of my perfect storm, that's how I look to the world at large.  Mild frustrations are treacherous climbs the likes of Mount Everest.  And a smile looks like Satan has usurped my body for his own and my possessed spirit is seething it's disdain.

If I could change these moments, you best believe that in a New York City second I would change them.  I'd do a 180, slap a happy ass smile on my face and act like I'd just been through the sexcapades and taken home the bronze, (cuz you know if you win the gold you were trying too hard to have any fun).  And I'd give absolutely anything not to let my daughter or my husband see or feel them.  It breaks my heart when those moments overtake me - for that reason more than any other.  I'm living with the knowledge that my child will have to say one day "there was a time when I didn't know what would greet me when I got home.  My mom or the evil doctor inside her."

But the moments of happy are sheer, exquisite joy.  That's the trade off.  You can never be normal - well I can't.  And that's probably because there is no such thing as normal.  But you can be your best sometimes, and you can value that above everything else, because that's what separates us from the beasts inside us.  And while you live with the moments where your body feels like it's going to explode into a million little bits and with their own wings, fly away so you can never put them back in place...you can let one little teeny weenie tiny voice in the back of your mind, shout out as loud as it can that it will all be better in the morning.  A good sleep, and some peaceful quiet will help you to put the pieces of you back together, and you will have a better day tomorrow if you just persevere through this one.

Even Wil Wheaton knows what that's like.  It just gets better.

Dear Mental Illness - you moxy son of a bitch

Dear Depression:

You lie to me.
You belittle me.
You take away the pleasure in even the simplest things.
You fuel anxiety.

Dear Anxiety:

You scare me.
You terrorize me.
You paralyze me.
You trigger depression.

For fun?  What pleasure is there in ripping apart a person's brain, self worth, their heart?

Well, I hate you both.  Loathe and despise even.  You are cowardly assholes in a world that is already difficult enough to navigate without your nagging and pestering.

I'm asking you to please, just run off back to your own little corners.  Take the nightmares, sleepless nights, and constant second guessing with you. They have no place in my beautiful life.

You have no place here.  You are not welcome.  Please listen carefully, I hate you both.

Thank you for your efforts.
Now fuck off.

Happily.
Me.

A blatant disregard

There comes a point every so often, where I watch the world around me going to hell and I whisper to myself "WTF?"  How hard can it possibly be, to just be normal?

I just finished watching a bit of "breaking news", which turns out in this bias world of reporting, isn't so noteworthy.  And the "entertainment news" is that Lindsay Lohan is in trouble again, still, for all the same shit she's been in trouble for, FOR YEARS!  Seriously.  This is going on since at least 2007 folks.  She is no longer noteworthy for anything but getting into trouble.  She's a washed up has been that maintains her spotlight and her wealth by being dumb.  Yep.  And the world sops it up like it's the bread basket and olive oil at their favourite restaurant.  Sheesh.  Even Charlie Sheen had a very short breakdown and returned to normal.  In fact, he could have spiraled like 6 times in the time Lindsay has taken to deal with this crap.

Which leads me to this line of thinking.  I said "normal" which is a real faux pas in mental health circles because it implies that the fringe has no place in it.  But I meant it, and feel exactly the opposite.  Normal to me, is anyone who deals with the stuff of life without twisting it to self benefit.  "Normal" in my mind is a pretty wide umbrella, capturing both what makes us all alike, AND what makes us different.  For me, the "fringe" is all self serving, and intentional, therefore, abnormal.

as defined in Wikipedia

There's nothing in any sort of mental illness that supports that kind of stupidity.  The absolute difference between stupidity and ignorance is that one is intentional and the other is legitimate.  Ms. Lohan may very well be affected by depression and other rife illnesses that lead her to want attention, BUT, I can promise you that no one needs or wants that kind of attention if they are normal and ill.  So what makes her special?  She obviously loves the attention she's getting, or she wouldn't carry this on.  And apparently the world loves paying that kind of attention, or they simply wouldn't.  And instead of being plastered on the front of every newspaper in the world, taking time away from more serious and life altering events say, like the war in Syria, she'd be checked into jail or a rehab clinic and she'd either succeed or fail, and carry on with the next phase of her life without impacting the lives of so many others.

You may say, I'm not really impacted...I can just turn off the tv or flip the page in my newspaper, but I have to be honest with you, I'm so seriously sick and tired of having to do that.  If I don't like pepper on my pasta, cool, no pepper.  It's easy to disregard the pepper mill on my table top.  It's not on every single surface of my home preventing me from enjoying a meal anywhere without pepper residue making it onto my plate.  That's what Lindsay Lohan, or more accurately, biased news and a sick and twisted population of ignoramuses are leaving me to do with my every day life.

fotosearch.com

But what bothers me most is both the lack of awareness that this is signalling a real demise of our population, AND worse still, that the general iq of our population is being so violently downgraded.  I'm not a genius, but even at the worst of times, I didn't stoop to such levels of idiocy and numbness that made functioning like a human being impossible.  We really are devolving if we allow ourselves and the insanity of the noise around us, continue to keep us from the geniuses that live in the quiet space in our minds.

In quiet; in solitude and in serenity and balance, live geniuses among us all.  The excess of this noise, is only comparable to brain washing and a steady cleansing/dimming of people who can navigate our world, and their own in particular, to something of greatness.

I remember growing up, my parents told me I could do and be anything I ever wanted to be.  As long as I worked hard, focused and put the effort and attention into it, I could do it.  Knowing that they were absolutely right, it makes me more adamant than ever that it's easy to just exist.  People do it all the time without getting locked up, photographed, and smeared through rags and orange jailer jumpers.  They range from slobs on their parents' basement sofas, to very successful people with healthy families and busy schedules.  Nice cars, nice homes, and comfortable lives.  And I know that living a clean, honest and simple life also means that no manner of money in any amount, could make a person act that dumb.  More money certainly makes room for more mistakes and bad gaffes, but it couldn't take away every ounce of common sense ever given to a person.  The only thing that could do that, is a willingness to disregard one's own moral centre for a public that eats it up and pays more money for opportunity to watch it.  Effectively dumbing down society, and lowering our own bars of excellence to dire levels.

I guess this has turned into a long rant, because I'm simply waiting for the arguments to start flying that poor Lindsay is sick, and needs help with addictive behaviours and depression.  I'm waiting for others to defend her poor soul to the end, because not being able to watch Lindsay spiral out of control, may in fact mean that we have to look inward and heal ourselves.  And I'm ever so tired of watching mental health used inappropriately as a crutch, when so many people out there with legitimate need for assistance, struggle.  We need examples of people who succeed living with mental illness, coping successfully with what can sometimes be catastrophic and debilitating challenges.  Please let Lindsay go, and focus your biased entertainment reports, on people who represent the real issues of our society, and who demonstrate how intelligence, hard work, effort and focus can change someone's stars.

photo pulled from photobucket.com (credits kantmann)