Do You Think Jabba The Hut Would Do Chenille?

Today is a day in which Bitch uncoils herself from my within my chest, swells up through my throat, and declares Feck off, all of yous!

I am doing my best to remain calm, but I am caught up in my annual early spring irritation, which begins right after the first sign of thaw and the disappointing re-freeze that follows it. I want out: out of the office, out of my apartment, out of the city, out of every last thing that places and schedules me into a pattern. I am fifteen (in spirit) and fed up with The Man. Let's go smoke a carton of cigarettes and steal your dad's gin.

People keep coming up and talking to me, because I am normally a very nice person, but I can tell that I am being a bit off-putting today. I can feel my aggression rising, and suddenly my voice is too forceful, too loud, and I am saying black every time they say white. Could I be any more the three-year old who has been denied candy? You are talking to me, and can't you see that my brain is twisted wire wool right now? If you don't leave RIGHT NOW, all this shit's gonna start on fire!

I have my ups and downs throughout the year, but I find that the biggest complicating factor is my seasonal anxiety and depression during the winter and spring. A subtle change in the weather and the sunlight, and I can be thrown into a deep depressive fog or be thrust up into happy busy-ness. I can never be sure which it will be. Today, I have been pushed out on a third precipice, for example: Bitch.

I have a plan, though, to take care of myself at the end of the day. I am going to wash all the bedding, take it straight from the dryer, pile it all on top of myself, and drink chocolate milk from a straw. I will be like Jabba the Hut dressed in orange chenille. And then I will breathe in and breathe out and remember that this is just today.

Sometimes it is a blessing to be a fairly rapid cycler.

(This entry is also posted at RealMental.org)

I am a participant in Blog 365.

Next Year, I’m Telling February To Take A Hike

I have written about this before, but I cannot emphasize it enough. February is a difficult month. It is already the 21st, but I am not feeling hopeful yet that I will dig myself out of my wallow for a little while yet, because January was not so hot, either, and March is not always so forthcoming with the relief.

You will have to excuse me if I sound like I am complaining. I am.

At this time of year, I do my best to move ahead with things. I go to work, I see friends, and I eat food, but my heart is not in it. My mind is usually wanders off to bed or a hot bath or anything else that accomplishes nothing but offers the possiblity of taking my mind away from its everything-is-futile default setting.

I worry that my medication is not working, even though I know that it is; it is just struggling against February's oppression. I worry that no one loves me, or even likes me, because I am obviously irritating and selfish and boring. I worry that I am far uglier than I think, and that any physical confidence I have is baseless. I worry that I have an as-yet-to-be-diagnosed terminal disease. I worry that my pets will turn on me. I worry that the toaster will electrocute me. I worry that all my written words are worthless.

Just yesterday, I was setting the dye in a Guatemalan bedspread with vinegar and salt in the washing machine. I stuck my finger in the little hole that the lid triggers to start the machine so that I could watch the agitation. I was there for twenty minutes before I noticed that I had not moved or thought in all that time. My brain wants to run far afield of reality right now, even if all it does is watch the back-and-forth swish of water in the drum.

This will subside. The sun will shine more often, the cold will give way to warmth, and I will break out my spring clothing and regain my faith in moving forward through life. I know this. It will happen.

But (a word that hangs covertly behind every good thought) I must first work my way through to that day when spring and summer lift me out of winter. Until then, I will continue to use my full spectrum lamp, take comforting baths, and let knitting carry me into the limbo of nothought.

Before I go, let me ask you: how do you deal with seasonal depression? I have been figuring that one out for thirty-five winters, but it could not hurt to try what you've got.

(This entry is also posted at RealMental.org)

I am a participant in Blog 365.

Pushing Punch Cards Into Slots

People often confuse boredom with depression.

We are overstimulated to excess; by that, I do not mean merely that we are too stimulated, but that we are too overstimulated. There are televisions and computers and radios in the morning, often accompanied by traffic and children and alarm clocks, microwaves that beep, drive-thru coffee shops and gas stations. We meet an onslaught of people and things in the world that demand our attention often before the sun has even risen.

This bores us. Our minds need to wander a little. They need to remember our pasts, imagine things, look ahead, concentrate on problems, but they are squeezed down the narrow funnel of schedules and maintenance. There is so much to do simply to maintain the pattern of our lives that most of our energy becomes devoted to that pattern. We are bored, because we spend so much of our time performing the equivalent of pushing punch cards into slots.

I am often guilty of mistaking the structure for my life. I can trip along in this blindness for days, weeks, and months until I stub my toe on something that moves me, like Utah Phillips telling stories or the right string of poetic phrases, and then it is as though I remember myself. The structure - meetings, my morning muffin, the city bus trips, grocery shopping, feeding the cats - becomes just that: a construct. Then, I feel flailing and hurt, because if I am not these things, what am I? I am a vulnerable thing. I am a small thing. I am a turtle without a shell.

In those soft moments between the hard particulars, I want to run like hell, light out of whatever place I am in as though my hair is on fire. I imagine that I will be a land-loving hippie with sticks in my hair. Or I will be an outsider artist on a llama farm. Or I will become an ascetic poet who still drinks whiskey. I will take up guitar. I will make art films. I will publish books. I will take thousands of photographs. I will build furniture. I will collect clockwork toys and open a museum.

But then it is time to catch the bus again, and I head home to make supper, watch television, bring the clothes up from the dryer, and ready the alarm clock for another day.

(Also posted at RealMental.org.)

I am a participant in Blog 365.