Month: February 2013

Fear and Unknowing

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It was just about eight o’clock on Saturday night (Feb 16) when the house – buried on three sides and constructed mostly of concrete – was rocked by a loud, dull bang.  Our first response to it made me realize how far removed from the dangers of the ‘real world’ our lifestyle has made us feel.  Less than twenty-four hours later, knowledge would make me realize how easily that illusion can be shattered.  The bang and the shattering are still putting all of my theories about fear and life to the test, as I suspect they will for days to come.

When the bang first interrupted our movie night, the Big Guy and I looked at each other, puzzled and wondering if we had heard the same thing or imagined something.  Thing1 quickly confirmed that we weren’t suffering from some form of group auditory senility when he poked his head out of his room and asked, “Did you hear that?!?  It sounded like a bomb!”

“it was not a bomb!”  We answered our twelve-year-old in unison.

“The old tree behind the house must have fallen,” I shouted, momentarily forgetting that there was no wind.

“There must have been a chimney fire,” suggested the Big Guy, and we both got up, got flashlights and went outside to investigate our theories.  Twenty minutes later, we were colder but no wiser and we headed back inside.  Fruitless phone calls were made to our nearest neighbors, and we soon settled back into movie night, assuming there was a reasonable explanation we just hadn’t considered.

I had almost forgotten the bang by the time my own little noise makers drove me to the relative peace of our local wifi hot spot, deli, and general store this afternoon.  I sat down with my computer and snack with the idea I would work.  I didn’t get my earbuds in fast enough, however, to avoid hearing a neighbor (anyone in a town of ~300 is considered a neighbor) mention the big bang from the night before.  

The owner of the establishment wisely chose not to join in any gossip or speculation, but our new companion was more than willing to share what he knew and thought he knew.  None of what he shared was comforting.  Still, the initial explanation – that a firearm had caused an explosion (how we didn’t know quite for sure) was half speculation and half fact, and I left a while later feeling concerned but not overly worried.

My concern turned to real worry very soon, however, when the Big Guy got a call and more information from a neighbor with reliable source.  To our horror we learned that someone across the way had managed to build a fertilizer bomb.  We learned that an investigation was and is underway, but little other information was available. 

The absence of information turned my worry to palpable fear. Even now as I write, thoughts of other bomb builders and their targets run through my mind.  My first thought was to keep my children home from school or any public activity until we hear more.  But, even as I struggle to find the line between common sense safety measures and parental paranoia, I am confronted by my own words and desire for progress.

Over the last few months and years I have struggled not to let my own encounter with a pair of armed robbers years ago control my or my family’s lives.  Countless times I have choked down my fear and forced myself to let my kids live their lives.  But tonight, wondering what the bomb builder was thinking or even planning, the line between lives half-lived in fear and those carefully guarded is pretty blurred.

Blogs I Love

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Many times in my life I have tried to be a writer.  I think in my heart I was always a writer.  I have always had stories in the back room of my brain, but this latest attempt to create a writing life has been the most successful, and I think it’s because I finally came out of the back room.

For years, the only people who saw my writing were my husband and my mother.  Sometimes I’d show other people.  I joined a writing group for a while until each of our lives put too many demands on our time.  But, for most of my life fear kept my journals in a box under my bed.

Then, last summer, came the Writer’s Workshop at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY.  Already familiar with the magic effect Hubbard Hall was having on my husband as he immersed himself in their community theatre group, I had high hopes when they announced this writing workshop.  But I was also terrified.

First I was terrified I wouldn’t get in.  Then I was terrified I would, only to find out I was a hack and dilettante.  I was sure that everyone else would be better.  They would be ‘real writers’.

And then the workshop began, and fear was summarily banished by the group’s leader as he asked us each to start a blog and a practice of sharing.  And, as we began to share with each other, I began to stop worrying about who was better and, instead, began to focus on getting better than before.

For me, sharing almost anything was initially about as easy as it would be to deliver the State of the Union address naked (at my current weight – 20 years and 100 pounds ago, not such a problem).  But once I got over my initial nervousness and realized everyone else was baring their souls and lives, it was fun.  And it’s been something else too.  It’s been inspiring.

Each of us has had the pleasure of watching our new friends grow.  We’ve each had our successes and setbacks – online and off.  Our blogs have evolved with our goals and our lives.

Between work and family, my days were already fairly filled before the group began, and after the group got going, I had to find more hours in the day.  As I found more hours in the day, I found I was spending more time reading my friends’ blogs.  I found my way into blogs they liked.  I found I was reading more each day than I had in years.  And as I read I wrote.

I’ve kept a blogroll on my site since its inception.  Yesterday while chatting with a friend from a workshop, however, I came to the conclusion that a blogroll doesn’t really do justice to the people who’ve been inspiring me these last months.  So, today, following the lead of my friend Kim Gifford and our group leader Jon Katz, I decided to add a ‘Blogs I Love’ page to mine.  It’s a little way to pay it back, but I really hope that by sharing the work of these and other artists I’ve loved and come to love, I’m actually paying it forward.


Blogs I Love (so far)


Pugs and Pics by Kim Gifford, Vermont writer, photographer, artist and pug lover.  Whether she’s writing about her beloved pugs or her distinctive photographs, Kim’s work is humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes heartrending.

http://www.pugsandpics.com/

 A real life milkman-turned-writer and poet, John Greenwood’s blog Raining Iguanas is a journey of discovery and nurturing of his own talents as a writer and artist and of his native Upstate New York.  It combines the best of pleasurable escape and motivating inspiration.

http://rainingiguanas.blogspot.com/

Bedlam Farm by the venerable and always affable Jon Katz, was the inspiration and benchmark for each of our blogs.  Honest and fearless, Jon’s blog is living, breathing proof that the most important thing in life is to never stop growing.

http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

Full Moon Fiber Arts by Maria Wulf is a record her life as a fiber-artist and free spirit.  Her quilts and potholders are prozac in fabric form, and she’s also a fantastic writer, weaving  stories and inspiration throughout the colorful images of her work.

http://www.fullmoonfiberart.com

Hiking Biking Adventures by my incredibly cool aunt and uncle Anne and Mike Poe is primarily about their Take a Hike guidebooks, but even if you’re not a hiker, you’ll visit for the photos and stay for the stories.

http://www.hikingbikingadventures.com

Merganser’s Crossing by Diane Fiore, follows her journeys with her father and his dementia at the end of his life.  Diane’s blog is intensely personal and incredibly relevant at the same time.  Hopefully she will give us a book out of this, but, for now, it’s worth not only visiting, but going to the very beginning and reading it straight through.

 http://merganserscrossing.wordpress.com

I stumbled onto A Teaching Life by Tara Smith when I followed a backtrack, and I’ve kept going back.  A middles school and writing workshop teacher, her blog holds interest for me, not only as the parent of a sometimes reluctant reader, but also as a fellow lover of books.  Each post is a discovery or rediscovery of a new literary adventure.

http://tmsteach.blogspot.com


Deflating Fantasy

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“You and your wife shall have good fortune in your journey together in life,” read the fortune from the cookie. I knew it was a sign, and, while the very small rational part of my brain kept insisting the fortune was merely confirming my wisdom in deciding to get take out on a week night, the party of my brain that runs the fantasy department had decided that this message was a directive. On the reverse side of the little paper slip were a set of lucky numbers, and the message so clearly meant that this particular set should be played. The big jackpot wasn’t a record breaker last night, but, deciding that the Big Guy and I would be happy to settle with only $40 million, I plunked down my $2 and bought an evening of fantasy. The problem is, the cost of the tickets has inflated, but the fantasy has not only not kept pace with inflation, over the last few years or so it’s deflated.

Once upon a time, I’d indulge in my $2 fantasy whenever the jackpot reached record-breaking status and come home for a few hours of ‘what would I do’. The obvious paying off of any bills and not worrying about how to pay future debts and college were up first on the list. Even, when we were too poor to be gambling, I’d still gamble, dreaming about the house we’d build and the clothes I would buy (and somehow magically look better in because the winning lottery ticket also bestows the winner with instant weight loss). I’d dream about the cars we’d buy for our family and the fleet we’d own – a different vehicle for every purpose – and the traveling we’d do.

The fantasies reached their height when I was still paying off a mountain of medical bills and trying to find a job with better health insurance. Then, a few years ago, I hit the job jackpot. I found a job at a place that not only offered the one benefit I really needed, but let me work at home and do something I was already doing for a lot of friends and family for free (tech support – get your minds out of the gutter).

I came for the regular paycheck and the insurance, but I had only been at the company a week before I realized there was a hidden benefit that had not been mentioned at the interviews. My coworkers and I all work remotely, but during the day, we congregate in a private chatroom. The chatroom is primarily for sharing advices, but, as anyone who’s worked with computer geeks can attest, the Monty Python and Tolkien references also fly thick. I’ve always marched to my own beat, and I quickly learned that most of my coworkers had each brought their own rhythm section to our band of tech rep. For one of the few times in my life, I felt like I really fit in, and my $2 fantasy suddenly got a little smaller – I might be able to work part time, but I could never leave this group for good (we all feel that way, btw).

One of the side effects of keeping your own beat in your head is that your not always in sync with what’s in style. For me that’s just about never, and the shrinking of my fortune fantasy accelerated as each session began another realization. The problem became that not only do we live in the perfect house – for us – but, as unmatched and unkempt as most of our furniture is, almost every piece has some memory attached to it. So, I had to scratch the multi-million dollar, un-earth-sheltered McMansion from my fantasy. Suddenly these tickets seemed more expensive.

I’ve been scribbling in little notebooks for most of my life. And, while the fortune fantasy requires a ticket infusion to get going each time, my once-secret and sustaining fantasy was to be a real, published author. The ridiculous end of this fantasy is somewhere in J.K. Rowling territory, but the more usual one is to be living in an off-beat, off-grid house in Vermont, making enough money and having enough legitimacy to keep scribbling away. For many years the ‘any money’ part was fantasy.

However, as I began writing more as part of a group and then found a writing workshop that made a writing life seem possible, the potential realization of my $2 fantasy – however remote a possibility – began to seem like even less of a blessing. After all, hitting a multimillion dollar jackpot might get you a spot on the Today show, but it does not make you a better writer.

So Saturday, as I went to play our lucky numbers, the little voice called to me from behind the mostly-locked iron door at the back of my brain was still, trying to lure me back to my world of fantasy. But as I stood in line ticking off the things I would do if we won, I realized the list had grown depressingly short. We’d still pay off the bills and future college graduates. We’d still buy a couple of veggie-vehicles, fulfilling our longtime fantasy of converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (the Big Guy also has his own rhythm section). But that’s it. I really couldn’t think of anything we’d do.

I still bought the ticket of course – no one will ever accuse me of being too rational. But instead of thinking about all the problems it would magically solve, I walked out thinking about the things that I really want from life and how even a winning number could never give me most of them. It occurred to me that the problem with the deflating $2 fantasy was that I’ve become the author and fulfiller of my own fantasy over the last few years. And it’s still the one that sustains me.

Secrets and Stories

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There are stories in any life that are too damaging to tell.  And, while the stories that come later will help to fill a mind with less painful memories, the ones that can’t be told remain.  They are the small hard lumps in a heart. 

Mine planted false flags, and, in an unwitting effort to exorcise that story from my soul, I followed them – even after I knew they were leading me astray.  Spiting only myself, I continued on the wrong path, creating more stories so filled with my own decay and debauchery that, for many years, I only told them to myself and then only as fiction.  

Like all little girls, I read fairy tales as a child.  As a girl I once dreamed of being rescued by a prince – he didn’t even have to be handsome.  Then I dreamed, not of being rescued, but of being worth rescuing.  I dreamed of being beautiful or wise or good like the often passive but always pure and morally perfect ‘heroines’ of these tales.  

I finally did choose a new path that led me to a new town and to a prince.  But even after I began creating new stories, I wondered if they were just another part of the fantasy where I was wise and good.  My rescue didn’t come until several years after I married my prince, and it didn’t come with a dramatic fight or breaking of a spell.   

Instead, my salvation was in those years.  It was in learning to trust someone.  It was in being a partner.  And when we became parents, responsible for another life, it was, for me, in realizing that I was in the process of rescuing myself – whether or not I was beautiful or good or wise.

I thought about this yesterday watching the BillionRising videos and posts from around the world as women (and many men) spoke out against sexual assault and violence against women.  I thought of the women who can’t tell the stories of their lumps because of shame and fear.  I thought of how many of them, trying to make sense of their stories, have wandered from the paths they started on when they were girls. I thought about how many still wonder if they can or should be rescued.  And I thought about the way we talk about the stumbling starlets, misguided girls in the midwest, and even the women who have had their stories brutally ended at the back of a bus or irrevocably altered in a dorm room.  As a warning to others not to slip or be pushed, we call them slut or tramp or trash, admitting to the world that those tales – and sometimes even their owners – should be discarded.

The small, hard lump in my heart never goes away.  I don’t think it can.  But for me, the key to living with it was to stop giving into the conventional wisdom that a fallen woman can never get back up.  The BillionRising reminded me how important as it is to safeguard the stories of the girls who are just starting their journeys.  But it also reminded me, yet again, how important it is that – whether they trip and fall or have a push of any sort – every one of them has the chance to rescue herself when she’s ready because we are all wise and good and beautiful enough to be saved.

Milestones

 

I love journals.  I can’t pass the spinning kiosk in the bookstore without stopping to fondle the ones that are swathed in brocade or are meant to look like  spell books.  In my weaker moments, I’ve bought a few, planning to fill them and follow in the footsteps of the Hemingway’s and the Walker’s of the world.  Usually my plan derails after a few weeks and twenty or thirty pages, but yesterday I hit an unprecedented milestone – I managed to exhaust the last pages not only of a pink-ribboned notebook but of a sketchbook that was a similar impulse purchase.

Neither tome will ever be on display at the Smithsonian, but for me, it’s significant.   Each of them is a symbol of my first steps on a new path and their covered pages are proof – if only to myself – that you can discover your drive in the middle of your life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPDactE72KQ?rel=0]

Music Credit:  Garage Band Demo Loop

Why I Wrote

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Sunday morning I was planning to write about the porcupine our dog seems to have adopted but instead found myself writing about my mental illness.  I had been slipping into my fantasy world alarmingly often recently, and the indulgence was not enhancing my performance in any part of my life.  So, I started writing about it, mostly for me.  

As I wrote, I realized this was something I was sill hiding.  Most of the time I try to keep my politics out of the blog – there’s enough of that in the real world, and readers can infer what they like – and, being a bit of a smart ass, it tends to be a bit acerbic once in a while.  But I always hesitated writing about my dark side when it appeared, trying to write as if blue phases were anomalies so as not to scare readers off.  

Sunday I took a chance and a stand.  

At Christmas, my sister gave me a book by another writer/artist called Marbles.  Written by cartoonist Ellen Forney, it details her discovery and management of her disorder as an adult.  Reading it was like looking into a funhouse mirror and realizing the reflection wasn’t a distortion.  And that reflection made me realize I was still being a coward in my life and what I want to be my life work to be, so I gambled, and the response has been overwhelming.

Afraid I would come off like an open wound, instead I learned from comments and emails how many people struggle with this.  They struggle not just with the effects of mental illness but the fear of what will happen if they expose themselves to the world.

Blog started out focusing on rural life (the main theme of the writing workshop I’ve been attending at Hubbard Hall, a local community center in Cambridge, NY).  An exercise in discipline and discovery, I’ve come to realize that, as important as our Vermont life and lifestyle is to us, the mountains and farms are the setting, not the scene.  Still a wayfarer under the skin, I’m realizing the rurality influences my life, but it’s not who I am.  

First and foremost, I am a wife-and-mother, and in learning to see the stories close to home (the first directive issued by our workshop leader), I’ve found that – good and bad – that status is one of the two things that has most defined my identity.  The only other thing I’ve carried with me to every place and through every phase of life and identity (and I’ve had a few) is my bipolar.  

It’s not easy to come clean – it’s the kind of thing that makes people slide a little further down the ‘Group W’ bench from you.  People who know you aren’t put off by it because it explains things.  People who write it off, however, write you off as undisciplined (certainly true in some parts of my life) or lazy.  And, while I certainly don’t want to make this the mental illness blog, I am glad I wrote about it because it’s a battle I do fight every day.  I have to fight it because I can’t not pick it.  It’s picked me.  

My Box of Chocolates

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For me, blogging for the last eight months has been an education and at times an exorcism, but it has always been a journey towards becoming a better and, hopefully, working writer.  At first an assignment for a writing workshop offered by author Jon Katz at Hubbard Hall, a community theatre and arts center in Cambridge, NY, the blog has helped each of the workshop members blaze their own trails as we began discovering our voices.  Now many of us are at the crossroads, trying to determine our next steps.

Mine are a play – the culmination of my workshop experience –  and a book (a collection of very short stories).  The second project was conceived as I began making my game plan to make the jump to working writer.  From the moment the idea began to form, however, it has become so much more than a stepping stone.  Each part of the project is yielding its own completely new and unexpected reward as I gain new perspectives on writing and story and as it becomes increasingly evident that a writing life is as much about exploring the world as it is about describing it.  

As a recovering vagabond, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Laugh, Cry, Diet

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It’s the eleventh of February which makes this almost the 41rst first day of my new diet.  

It’s not a fad diet.  I know those don’t work.  The only ‘diet’ that’s ever worked (for me) was keeping a journal on paper or on my iPod and keeping myself accountable.  But the part of dieting I really hate is not the calorie and fiber tracking.  It’s not the preparation – I’m a surprisingly decent cook for someone who’s built a blog around being a bad housekeeper.  It’s not the exercise which can be addicting once you get going (those endorphins are better than prozac).  It’s not even the food itself – a lot of healthy food is actually pretty tasty.  

The thing I hate about dieting is that it’s not a diet.  It is recognizing that the bag of sour cream and onion chips I’m having for breakfast really does have to be off the list – forever. (Maybe not for everyone, but for me the salty sweet stuff is like crack to a drug addict.)  It is accepting sensible portions for the long haul.   It really is about making a life change.

My early adult years were characterized by many things, but one of them was not restraint – in any part of my life.  I played. I partied.  I sinned.  And I ate.  I ate anything I wanted.  Food – especially good food – was my drug.  When the Big Guy and I first married, we moved to Boston’s Italian North End, and I denied my palate nothing.  When we travelled, indulging in local flavors was as much a part of the experience as the art and the sights.  In my early twenties, youthful metabolism and a lifestyle centered around dancing and walking helped my body combat the effects of my food lust.  I look at pictures of myself from back then and can’t believe I thought I was fat as a size 6 or 8 (does anyone ever NOT thing they’re too fat).

A few years after we were married, I took an office job that had me driving to and from work for an hour a day.  Not surprisingly, retribution had an easier time catching up with me in a car than when I was walking to work everyday in the city.  But when my jeans got tighter, I didn’t get wise.   I got new jeans.

Now, many years and sizes later, I’m still trying to get my fat butt on the diet wagon and find a way to keep it there.  I know that my issue food is not just about flavor.  It is about fullness, however.  I know that there’s been an empty part me for as long as I can remember, and I am sure I am not the only person who uses food to fill that void – even when my body is crying uncle.  The worst part is, the more you try to fill it, the bigger it gets because you’re also filling it with shame and loathing.

I used to tell myself the big jeans didn’t matter.  Being good at my job matters.  The Big Guy matters.  Thing1 and Thing2 matter.  

But as I watch twelve-year-old Thing1 pour out my Diet Coke when he thinks I’m not looking (don’t let your kids read about all the things that could cause their mother cancer or diabetes), I realize the big jeans do matter.  So far, I’ve dodged the diabetes bullet and a lot of the other ailments that go along with being fat.  What I don’t do, however, is get out on the ice with my kids at skating practice.  I don’t go one walks or take slides down the sledding hill because I’d have to climb back up it.  And worse, I let shame dictate how I interact with the people who interact with my kids, and that does affect them.

Most of my diets start in the morning and are over by dinner.  Today I’m trying something different and clearing out the crap before the family comes home.  Dinner will be on a salad plate, and the kitchen will be closed at 8PM.  And when I’m tempted by the cookie jar, I’m going to get out my journal and write a note to myself that it matters because they matter.  

It wouldn’t be bad to be able to zip up that little number that’s been hanging on the back of my closet door for the last three years either.

 

 

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World Apart

Over the last eight months, I’ve realized that the biggest hurdle to becoming a real writer is not finding an agent or a publisher but, rather, finding the courage to look at your own life honestly.

I’ve always thought there was a fine line between courage and crazy.  Mine is a secret door at the back of my brain.  This door leads from the part of my brain that lives in what you and I call the real world to an alternate universe.  If you were to step through the door to this world with me, you would find that it is also very real – bigger than life at times.  It is very much like the ‘real’ world. It has countries and languages, beauty and even danger.  It has problems.  But in this world, the problems are surmountable.  The humans are heroes, and, sometimes, I am one of them.  It is a world I have allowed not only to flourish but to take up a fair amount of real estate in my head.  I’ve been building and populating this universe since I could crawl.

I think this world has existed somewhere in my head since I was old enough to be aware of the physical world.  However, I began maintaining it in earnest soon after my parents moved from Baltimore to Ohio.  Already dealing with then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder (or what they then called manic depression, if it was discussed at all back then), I went from having giddy highs and intense lows that confused both me and my parents, to my first conscious flirtation with suicide when I was thirteen.

The move itself was a huge change.  My sister and I both lost our closest friends.  We went from a small school to a comparatively huge one.  The new city was not the cowtown we’d anticipated, and the kids were surprisingly fashion conscious – something years of uniforms had not prepared either of us for.  I tried, but I never acquired the art of dressing well enough to avoid merciless teasing.  Our old school had been incredibly diverse, but the new one was rigidly homogenous.

I was a typical eighth-grader and would have done (and, at first, tried) anything to fit in.  The first autumn leaves hadn’t hit the ground, however, before I realized it was not going to happen.  For the first time in my life, I heard people (kids) using racial slurs in ‘polite’ company.  The first time I heard it was in homeroom sitting next to a girl who would later become one of my closest friends.  A recent immigrant from Romania, unashamedly intelligent, and the only Jewish girl in a class of several hundred, she was a prime teasing target.  As the weeks wore on, the teasing took on a decidedly xenophobic tone.  I started to wonder if the teacher was deaf as she allowed the other students to make fun of this girl’s accent and clothes and her ‘Jewish’ nose.  Then, one horrible day after our entire class had been introduced to those black-and-white Holocaust movies, one of these boys turned to her and started softly singing, “Kill all the jewish people”.

I couldn’t believe that she didn’t cry.  I was already crying (a lot of us were), but, instead of finding the courage to stand up to these bullies on behalf of my friend, I began trying to find ways to avoid school altogether.  My parents had no way of knowing how bad the teasing was, and my sick-outs became more elaborate as Mom and Dad’s commitment to my education began to clash with my depression that was no longer a small, pulsating lump but a full-blown tumor.

At one point I even went so far as to swallow a half a bottle of Tylenol, in a half-assed attempt to ‘end it all’ – the first, but not last, conscious flirtation with suicide. My ignorance of toxicity didn’t kill me, but it made me vomit enough to keep me home from school for a few days.  My parents saw only the the vomit (it never occurred to me to tell them what had caused it), however, and, when my stomach recovered and my fake outs failed me, it was back to school and deeper into my own world in the cave at the back of my mind.

I made a few very close friends in the new school system, but I also lost a lot interest in being in a in-crowd that continually expressed its xenophobia so gleefully.  I (sometimes willingly) made myself a ripe target over the years, and my cave grew more elaborate and colorful.  At some point, I realized I needed a line of demarcation so no one would discover my fantasy world.

There is a big iron door there now.  Thanks to the intervention of an observant aunt, I ultimately came to terms with my bipolar brain, but I still go to the door more often than I should.  I have tried numerous pharmaceutical therapies for my bipolar, and they work for a time.  But they also have side effects, and I still have the nagging worry that the ‘balance’ they offer is as much an avoidance of my problems as is my door.  Now in my forties, perspective is my therapy, and, when I’m heading into and riding the highs that go with manic depression, it’s sufficient.  But when I’m sliding down the curve and the world begins to be tinged with shadows, I clear the cobwebs from the door and turn the key.

Lately, though, as I’ve been thinking about the writing life I want, I’ve had to take a hard look at the things I can control and the things in and around my life that I can’t.  Sometimes the things I can’t control terrify me, and, even as I write and want to write more, the place at the back of my brain calls out to me like a soothing siren.  For years, my world was an anesthetic when my dark side threatened to overwhelm me, but like any drug, it has side effects.  It is not a performance-enhancing drug, it is more like a mentally-induced coma.  When I’m under, I do manage to meet my day-to-day obligations, but I don’t create.  I don’t engage.  I don’t feel.  I let the ice start to close over my head, and the quiet and control are addicting.

My world is not my depression.  It is not the tumor, but it is just as dangerous.  Even during extended high periods, when cobwebs and briars have grown over the door, something has kept me from throwing away the key or paving over that real estate with something ‘normal’.  I’ve been retreating to it recently, and just yesterday began thinking about its origins.  I began thinking, again, about my friend who, apparently, never needed a door because she was brave.  And, when I sat down to write this morning, I wasn’t sure if confessing my crazy to the world was a brave thing or even a good idea.

It’s probably neither.  People who know me well know, and people who know me a little can probably guess something’s a little off.  But today it’s the first brick in the wall I’m trying to build to seal up that room.

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Lost Weekend

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Across the state, schools had closed on Friday.  Store shelves were being cleared as people prepared for a day of camping in on Saturday.  I stocked the pantry with chips and dip, the fridge with a massive casserole and whipped cream for hot cocoa.  Thing1 and Thing2 made sure their sleds were ready, and the wood bin was overflowing.

But, Saturday morning, the snow had not materialized.  We were expecting a blizzard and barely got a dusting in our little corner of Vermont (4-6 in Vermont is a dusting).  As we gazed out at the trees already stripped of snow by the howling wind, our entire family felt ripped off by the weather industry.

Everything had been canceled for Saturday already – basketball, breakfast out – and with a still-falling mercury, the Big Guy and I quickly decided to proceed with the camp-in as planned.  We fired up the DVD player and began our day-long homage to sloth.

I set out cereal and cinnamon buns at breakfast, and cheese and crackers and other snacks at lunch.  As soon as one of us got the notion to do something productive the rest of the family would intervene, re-issuing the proclamation that today was about doing nothing.  Computers were shuttered, homework was put away, and the phone was ignored.  The conversation never became more serious than debating whether there are more Monty Python or Tolkien references in Futurama.  Our bodies and our brains were only aware of the red hot stove and the person snuggling on the sofa next to us.

It was pointless.  It was unproductive, and it was glorious.