pills

after crying ridiculously to a friend, i worked out and my pills kicked in and now i feel good. great even. the pill thing is weird. very weird. that my whole life - the goodness, the sweetness, the sunshine and pleasure in my life - all comes out of these little bottles. maybe i should stockpile them in case of apocalypse. but seriously: isn't it weird? i feel like i am truly myself with all these pills, that the "real me" is upbeat, positive, energetic, and capable. so if this is the "real me," who was that all those years of hopelessness and bungling failures?

it's so strange to think of the brain and how it works...

tide in, tide out

depression seems to be coming back - last 10+ days. i fought it, then panicked about it ... didn't get work done, started to feel like i'm going under at school.

now remembered to accept it and just put one foot in front of the other, not make a big deal out of it, not do the headless chicken routine (either internally or externally) nor the deer in the headlights... just do my job... ok so briefly i was enthusiastic, even ecstatic, about doing my job... it's ok not to be enthusiastic, it's ok not to love it every minute, just keep doing it.

i feel insecure toward my friends, my wife. i feel anxious and harried. Saturday i collapsed into a shaking, weeping mess over an insult from a relative stranger whose opinion i don't value.

but after some deep breaths and mindfulness in a warm tub, i found my feet again and reminded myself how to get through this. just do the next doable thing. every minute take stock of where i am and what i can reasonably do. reasonably being the key word. don't try to work miracles if i only have 15 minutes. don't try to make every lesson a superstar production. there are those in administration who decided i'm wonderful; they could just as capriciously decide that i'm terrible. i have no control over that. i have control over showing up every day with some degree of preparation and doing what i am supposed to do, trying to teach my students, loving them and being constant and stable in their lives. that's all i can do and that's all i need to do. just my job.

the headless chicken and the deer in headlights are both manifestations of the desire to be rescued - the hope that being helpless will result in help - from somewhere, somehow. renouncing these two animals means taking responsibility, not looking outside myself. being mindful. and that has its own hopefulness in it... or if not hope, a sense of trust. trust in myself... that i keep going, that i survive.

winter blahs

so another year older... last week or two i've been going downhill pretty steadily... so tired... think the winter's getting to me... have felt over my head at school - have three classes instead of two - and a lot of new students, few of whom are at all pleasant; meanwhile most of my old favorite students are gone to other teachers. or so it seems atm. and i just got a raft of additional responsibilities which, at the time i volunteered for them, seemed exciting and an honor, but now seem overwhelming and heavy.

i did promise myself on my birthday, to try to take care of myself this year and not look for other people to cheer me...

i probably just need some sleep. did i write before that i got diagnosed with sleep apnea? but i'm still waiting for the treatment, for various reasons. i'm sleepy all the time, and every time i sit down i fall asleep. it's embarrassing in meetings and really not good in the classroom - hafta stay on my feet all day. i even wrecked my car falling asleep while driving, so i don't really drive anymore.

on the plus side, my psychiatrist is also a doctor of sleep medicine and she said i'd probably lose a lot of weight once i get my treatment (a cpap machine - Loopy already has one) and need less medication. we'll see. it would be nice to have my waist back lol. most of all it would be nice to want to stay awake past 8:30.

so... you know... that's how it is sometimes...

on the plus side, Loopy bought me 4 dozen roses, a chocolate cake, and a wireless printer for my birthday. we went out to eat at a Japanese home cooking restaurant, one of my faves. yay!

tired of being crazy

The thing that exhausts me most is that I can't trust my own thoughts. They come in sometimes ridiculously quick succession... opposite ideas... e.g. first that I am utterly alone; 30 minutes later, that wifey loves me and I'm safe with her. Often enough, no provocation for either thought. No outer change. And both feel like revelations - "oh now I see the truth."

It's exhausting and leaves me bewildered. I feel like my thoughts are pointless, since they're obviously meaningless, and yet they keep coming. And, just because they seem pointless doesn't mean they don't make me cry.

Yesterday and today I couldn't stand to be alive so I went to sleep. It's like death but less permanent. I'm tired of feeling that way too.

I don't know what to do about the job situation. Put in for my special ed certificate, but totally unsure about that too.

Why am I awake? Orange street light... wifey, doggie snoring.

death is certain, and the timing of death is uncertain, so what is the most important?

Thursday was a very bad day. That "no" post (previous) came out of a slide back into a very difficult place, paranoia, despair, nothing good. But I took my evening meds a few hours early and after a half hour or so I was fine.

I am grateful for the meds and more resigned to my diagnosis.

Last night too was bad. Black despairing loneliness. Up most of the night crying. That turned out to be largely PMS.

Maybe the meds aren't catching everything but most of the time I feel so much better. Not to be depressed after years of being depressed is such a gift.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to two things... the second of the four reminders that I was going to be meditating upon these weeks, and the fact that my aunt's health is failing.

It may seem morbid, but the phrase puts a lot of things in perspective.

And as my aunt gets ready to enter Hospice, I feel that feeling coming over me, the hospice feeling... the end of life, the slowing down, the rasping breath that stops.
Familiar. Very familiar by this time. Makes life seem more awake, more piquant, to know that you will walk on and this person who has come with you this far, they will stop. You'll walk on without them.

When death comes near to someone, it fills me with an odd peace. Death is just so real. It's the real-est thing in the world. It's inescapable and absolute. Everything else is relative, depends on how you look at it, shifting and confused. Death - well you can think different things about it, say different things about it - but it ultimately is incontrovertible, un-interpretable, it's just the end. And it comes to everyone. It could come to me before my aunt.

And... that's the way it is.

no.

Awhile back I was angry on a photo shoot, n didn't want to do the assigned topic. I saw a particularly good "no," and started seeing more... the first batch were lost but I have these...



The "no" phase lasted about a month... as I worked through my fury at fate... It finally abated n I had no more urge to shoot "no"s. I could still do so but it would feel like cheating or forcing the issue... Too bad "yes" isn't posted nearly as often, nor "please," at least not in giant photographable letters."

I feel like that again today. Everything makes me feel cranky if not enraged. I resist the world! I refuse! I don't want to go one more step! I want to crawl under the covers and punch anyone who tries to come after me!

Think this has to do with my first day at crazy day camp?

Ya think?

not so great

I feel terrible just at the moment.

Probably because it's 2 a.m. But also cuz Loopy's mad at me and I keep giving her more reasons to be... I feel I can't do anything right... as though I'm toxic even. It's a lonely feeling... I'm the featherless screaming chick right now for sure.

The loving mother bird says, "Sweetie, it's 2 a.m... get some sleep, you'll feel better in the morning."

OK. I will.

awash

for some reason, i'm flooded with feelings.

clinginess, annoyance, uncertainty, anxiety, desire and aversion... slow tides and ebbs...

maybe it's just because the depression has receded, so all these things are bubbling up...maybe it's because my job is ending and i need a new one....

at the same time, underlying everything, there's a constant feeling of just being so grateful to not be depressed, almost a euphoria... i walked home slowly from my haircut this evening, savoring each garden and each interesting passer-by... just enjoying that i can look at things without crying or wanting to cry, without feeling that everything i see is cutting into me, breaking my heart.

earlier i was grabbing onto the different feelings and trying to make sense of them, thinking they were telling me something, that i should do something in response to them. i was working myself up into anxiety about what i was supposed to do...

fortunately i remembered the instruction... they are just feelings... they come and they go like ripples, like waves... let them pass. let them come and let them go.

i'm trying.

list

i came up with three things i want to do to make friends, get out of the house, and not go crazy or drive Loopy crazy this summer.

1. get involved in Obama's healthcare campaign.
2. yoga - i tried going to a qi gong class yesterday and it was perfect, but it's hard to find a good teacher and yoga's just everywhere by comparison. Loopy said she'll do it too!
3. monthly miksang photography meetups with Chicago-area miksang peeps. either join it or make it! yay!

So that's the plan.

If I'm bipolar, I'm defo going manic.

traveling shoes

a year ago today i started an indescribable journey... one of, as i wrote at the time, "pushing my limits and seeing how far they can go... finding that limits are not limits... it is fascinating... like exploring new parts of my own mind on some kind of expedition..." it was one of the best things i ever did... taught me so much about myself, opened whole new worlds to me, and healed old things too.

now i'm on a different kind of journey. trying to ... hm. in buddhism you're not supposed to be trying, it's too "grasping," too "clinging." but so, ok, fuck buddhism ;-) ... i'm trying to find some sanity. some peace.

i feel crazy and tired. very tired. so tired.

my shrink today said, "you've been through A LOT." the way she said "A LOT" made me feel heard, understood, listened to, and comforted. (how do they do that? i just wanted to curl up in a fetal position on her floor and never leave). anyway. then she said, "you need a break, you need to rest." i am inclined to agree. 16 work days left.

my favorite part was when she threatened to "go down there and beat [my students'] asses," which was pretty funny because she's a beautiful, young, VERY elegantly dressed Polish (i think) woman who speaks with a delicately charming accent, and does not seem likely to swear, never mind kick anyone's ass—and yet, when she says it, you kind of believe she could and would.

anyway, she said other comforting things that i can't completely remember and gave me a bag full of free samples of Abilify and told me to come back in two weeks.

two weeks and two weeks and two weeks. but at the moment that's my equivalent of "one foot in front of the other." one shrink appointment at a time. just hang in there. just hang in there. just hang in.

not doing a good job at this job or at finding a new job.

Took the day off yesterday to go to a job fair. Panicked, cried, changed clothes, wasted time, slept when I should have been working, and missed the thing completely. Drove up to the gates at 3pm - the event was 12-3.

Cried and cried in the car. Felt terrible. Called myself names. As I cried, everything awful from the past month came up to stab me as well.

Desperately sought something to hold onto, some story or drama to take and run with. But, each story that presented itself, I recognized as such, and dropped it.

So I again tried, and managed - for a few minutes - to follow the teaching discussed below, about staying present, leaning in, letting my heart be pierced. Again I found that when I did that, in my tears, I saw things that I wouldn't have seen if I'd been all in my head - brilliant tulips - decided to drive home through the city - felt present and alive - despite the pain and flowing tears the whole time.

And then the feeling passed. Like a storm in the desert that rushes past, heavy and powerful with thunder and lightning and torrential downpours, then gone. I still felt weak and ragged, but I didn't feel all that misery and self-hatred or hysteria.



(by calc-tufa, aka too-ticky, one of my fave flickr peeps esp when it comes to Arizona pix)

I guess I'll keep trying.

forward march (or may)

loopy told me a very corny joke on May 4. "It's Star Wars day," she said. Of course, I said, "What?" and she said, "May the fourth be with you." Uuuuugggghhhh.

Reminds me of how my grandmother and mother always used to call the fourth of March "moving day." You know. "March forth." Aaaaaaaarrrrrgh.

Anyway.

Here is the photo that's been my wallpaper on my phone for two weeks.


I took it on my way to meditation two weeks ago, crying near-hysterically cuz my meds hadn't kicked in and stoned on my meds cuz i hadn't eaten. Still, when I saw this (in some ways unremarkable) image, it somehow got through to me.

I took the pic and put it on my phone to remind me to look forward instead of backward... it would be easy to get mired in cherished memories and drown in them (as I have been for months, to the detriment of myself and others). The future is scary and hard to deal with at the moment.

But the past is not coming back, no matter what the future holds, and dwelling in it "robs [me] of the present moment," to quote one of the teachings I've heard. I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Here is one of the teachings that's been sustaining me:

Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can't handle whatever is happening. It's too much. It's gone too far....

Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good, are a sort of death.... Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion—the path of cultivating human bravery and kind-heartedness.

~Pema Chödrön

This is a hard teaching, but I've been working with it a lot. Facing the present instead of running away and hiding.... when I can do this, it does seem to deepen both my moment-to-moment connection to the world; it also helps me experience my feelings and then let them go.

And sometimes when I'm present I can accept unexpected gifts, like these beautiful clouds gathering over a car dealership as I hurried to a Chinese restaurant last night:



The world is full of richness and beauty, if I can only slow down and breathe and see and feel, and not be afraid of any of those things. Especially that whole feeling thing. Dangit.

One foot in front of the other.