Words Again

I’m back to playing with words again, after binge watching 8 seasons of “Shameless” on Netflix.  Considering that I’m not one to lay around watching TV,  that pretty much says everything.

Yeah, I was a bit depressed, let a down day stretch into a few. I tried drawing, took watercolor pencils out to the porch. It didn’t help. Too many echos of other people’s words in my head, cutting me down, colossal waste of time. Do I hear voices? No, just audio memories.

Doc finally listened to me, changed my script to Lexapro, but I’ve been holding off on taking them. Best to let time pass, make sure that Wellbutrin is totally out of my system (has been, odds are was out before she wrote the script) but the real deal is I’m trying to ride it out. Depression is a riptide. Sometimes, you just have to float awhile.

The TV was off when the vet startled me with words at my open window. I was on this computer, revising a poem. He came to swipe the last few green tomatoes. I don’t know how long he was standing there. He could have been watching me for awhile. My writing is private. I toss words to the wind via this internet as public as can be; but, I don’t share anything that I write with him.

There’s still a hint of awkwardness between us, but not as awkward as it used to be.

Oh, he still has a burr about being “put out” even though I didn’t put him out… he left. There is a difference. Besides, one has to be IN before they can be put OUT and he was never fully committed, didn’t trust me enough to actually move in. He just stayed with me when and if he felt like it, came and went as he pleased, which dwindled from mostly here to an average of mostly gone over the last year. We broke up on 4th of July because I thought he was cheating on me. That freshly cut house key on his key chain was the last straw. He refused to tell me whose door it opened, couldn’t even tell me who cooked the chicken, so I figured he didn’t need a key to mine.

In all fairness, it’s not like I ever had a key to his place.

Was he cheating? He says no… all evidence points to the contraire. I ask myself questions: Does it really matter? What do I want out of this? He knows, just as well as I do, that most women won’t put up with his shit. Even if he finds someone else to play with, it’s only a matter of time before they say BYE and now he knows that I won’t put up with THAT shit, even if he never admits it.

I don’t know what the future holds.  I do know this awkwardness has to be completely gone BEFORE he brings his granddaughter over here to spend the night as kids pick up on everything… he doesn’t want her to visit with him at his apartment, says it is too crazy there. Well, yeah… if that’s where you party so you got crackerjacks knocking on your door at all hours, that’s no place for a child.

Bottom line, we still love each other. Maybe we will work it out, maybe we won’t… time will tell.

Sometimes I feel like his pot of soup bones, that he’s just trying to keep me on the back burner for awhile, boil me down slow, stir me with a hug and a kiss now and then while he figures out exactly what he wants.

Well, I have nothing else to do… as in, no desire to seek a new romance or anything. No desire to do much of nothing with this depression hanging over me.

To help pull myself out of this funk, I’m making PDF versions of those little chapbooks that I used to make when I lived downtown. Plan is to post them on YBWorks.com (my other WordPress blog) so anyone can print and fold their own copy. The first went up the other day, if you want to look.

I’m just going to have to make myself go places and do stuff… been floating long enough, about time to swim like hell but I don’t have the energy. Not yet… takes all I can do to hide this and pretend to be normal around other people.

I started knitting a thin scarf awhile back, something to wear with a brown sweater this winter.  It’s slow going as I’m not into it at all. What I really want is a shawl so I regret not casting on enough stitches. I had another ball of yarn so I started a shawl in Solomon’s Knot last night.  My last gift from my grandmother was in Solomon’s Knot so there is sentimentality in the pattern.

I feel like I need to finish something. I haven’t even finished the room that I started painting in July. All it needs is door and window trim, then get someone to help me hang the wallpaper border. I told the vet that I am going to move my kitchen table in there so I can use it as a work table and the man rolled his eyes.

Yes, literally. He actually rolled his eyes at me tonight. As if I’m not going to actually use that room for anything but storage. I’m supposed to be working on me, getting my “me” back… well, THAT ME makes art and all sorts of crap. All I need is a new kitchen table to replace this one and right now, I don’t care if it is a cheap folding card table, just something to put in the kitchen until I find something else as I’m going to get that room done this weekend.

Yeah, keep on rolling those eyes… I’m defiant enough to prove him wrong.

Thanks for reading!

 

Epiphany #5

This “I’ll work on me, you work on you babe” while taking a break instead of just breaking up seems beneficial to our relationship.  We are actually talking to each other now and, in some ways, we are in a better place then we had been there for awhile. It is nice to remember what we like about each other, what attracted us to each other in the first place, and how much we actually do love each other.

I’ve been sharing my little epiphanies… from “I am here, I’m still me” to the “I don’t really know you” with a list of stupid questions like, “Do you own a cast iron skillet?” Yeah, there are a LOT of little things that I do not know about this man.

He got the point:  I need him to be a little more open and honest with me and he needs me to stop hiding aspects of myself that, for reasons real or imagined, I felt like he might not be able to handle it.

Where do we go from here? Who knows? Right now, it is just one day at a time.

 

LATER:  I was thinking about how to tell the new student doc assigned to me at the family clinic that when I ask for an antidepressant, I want a low dose SSRI, preferably Lexapro, NOT 300mg of Wellbutrin (way too much, that’s enough to send me over the edge so I’m NOT taking it) and suddenly, I got hit with Epiphany #5.

How do I tell him? He thinks I lost my me… oh my gosh!

That “strong vibrant woman” he met and fell in love with ye 3 to 4 years ago (I didn’t jot notes on a calendar or keep a diary) was riding a prolonged cusp on the edge of mania, self-medicating with 100 proof peppermint schnapps straight up (hey, alcohol is a depressant) plus Jacks & Coke and a few other things when we first got together.

I ended up back in therapy, bailed out and eventually crashed, series of harsh things took me down into depression… that’s easier to hide. I have a lot more experience going down. I blogged about some of it, from Wired in August 2015 on up past the new year, mixed in with other stuff.

So, basically, he has seen me up and seen me down, both ends of my mental health spectrum, but might not have realized it… stable is the middle ground. So he thinks I lost part of my me… that my stable me is missing something?

Epiphany #5 just opened a frikkin can of mental worms.

Stable me is NOT so vibrant. Stable me doesn’t drink, mainly because I know alcohol is a depressant and I tend to cycle down a lot more than I cycle up. Stable me is a responsible human being. Stable me doesn’t make as much art, doesn’t read poetry on street corners, doesn’t do wacky things.

Humm… I’m going to have to think about this for awhile before I venture to bring it up in conversation.

Thanks for reading!

 

I AM HERE

Epiphany #3:  I AM HERE… as in, ALL OF ME is still frikkin here.

If I hid parts of me from you, it was an unconscious, automatic reaction to clues (real or imagined) as that is what I do when I pick up on vibes of disapproval. If I think you find an aspect of me unacceptable, then I will simply hide that part of me from you.

It is easy to do… childhood conditioning.

I was raised in an era when children were seen and not heard, when little girls were supposed to be passive, weak, adorable, meek, soft spoken little ladies, and oh so very nice… stand still and look pretty.

Double down if you live in a glass house called a parsonage.

I was one of five little “angels” with impeccable manners, pretending to be what I’m not… feeling more like a fraud with each passing year. And, of course, little girls are not supposed to even FEEL negative or “inappropriate” emotions, so there was no outlet if you do, not allowed to express them. Best not tell anyone if something bad happens… your own fault anyway, something fundamentally wrong with you.

It took years and some therapy to love and accept myself as I am… now I am trying to be consciously aware to override that auto-response to clues (real or imagined) so I can stop hiding aspects of myself from those who love me.

Please know that I don’t do it out of shame or guilt or even to make myself more acceptable to other people. I do it for self-preservation, to guard my precious me… I am my own treasure.

I guard my me because I have always felt like people want to change me, or make me change myself, just so I would be more acceptable to them and/or fit their own impression of who they thought I should be.

Fixing me is not your project.

I am not going to change who I am to please anyone. The only one I have to answer to, besides my own self, is God.  The approval or acceptance from other people is not necessary. I hide my true authentic self from people who may find me inappropriate just so I don’t have to deal with their bull. Who I am is none of their business. They don’t need to know all of me.

WHY would I hid parts of myself from the ONLY person who has ever noticed that I do that? The only man who has accepted, and encouraged me to be my true authentic self as I am?

Clues babe… that automatic response kicks in, it’s unconscious… wasn’t done on purpose.

What clues?  Well, here’s an example… when I briefly mentioned what I was writing a book about, he pretty much told me that my topic wasn’t very nice, that I shouldn’t write something like that. So, I just never mentioned it to him again… it became none of his business… he doesn’t need to know anything about it. Eventually, I took ALL my writing underground, essentially closing off an aspect of myself as writing is vital to my existence.

Oh yes babe, I still write. I write a LOT… even got phone apps for that, so I can write anywhere at any time and email it to myself. That’s what I did in the wee hours of the night, when pain pulled me from slumber, and I got up so my moans and thrashing would not disturb your sleep. You bitched too much about me being on the computer so I alternated with using phone apps at the kitchen table, writing to take my mind off pain while waiting for pills to kick in.

Another example? When I try to talk to someone about things that are important to me and they cut me off with “why bring that up again” or some other offhand remark, I just shut up and stash that topic off as something I cannot openly discuss with them.  After that happens a few times, I stop trying.

Suppose it doesn’t matter anyway… but we are supposedly just taking a break so I can work on myself while you are out doing what you do.  That’s Epiphany #4:  I don’t really know you.