Lying in Wait

Today was a pretty harrowing one, depression-wise, and I've noticed it has been getting worse.  My unwillingness to get out of bed has been steadily escalating.  And while I've really been enjoying the sleeping-in part of being unemployed, I am generally able to get up and moving by around 10:00.  But now, the multiple alarms I set the night before all get turned off when the first one sounds.  I don’t want to get out of bed now, later, or possibly ever.  That’s what it feels like, at least.  And when a full bladder, stomach pangs, & dehydration make it necessary to get up and tend to a few pesky bits of body-housekeeping, this is done with the knowledge that I will be returning to bed as soon as I’m finished.  And that knowledge brings great comfort.  Knowing I can blot out the world with blankets and the lulling white noise of my fan is a glorious feeling—or rather, it is for a time.  Because at some point my mind cannot maintain that lovely flat-lined state; it begins percolating and looking for stimulation.  And without fail my rogue brain charts a course directly for all the things I should have done that day instead of sleep.  The list of regrets my brain compiles is instantaneous and extensive.  And the subsequent guilt is annihilating. 

Today, for example, I could have gone to visit my parents and the dogs.  I could have gone to the gym.  I could have made dinner for Dion & I.  I could have started packing for the move.  I could have vacuumed.  I could have written something.  I could have called one of several friends I have not been in touch with as much as I’d like to be.  But each and every one of these things felt impossible and filled me with dread and something close to terror.

When Dion got home from work after 3:00 today, I was still in bed.  So he climbed into bed with me and was kind and sweet as always, so naturally I began to cry.  The look of concern on his face made the crying become full-on sobbing.  I couldn't articulate why his love made me cry just then, but I knew gist: When my depression gets so bad that I cannot function, I feel guilty & worthless, & during those times I cannot fathom why he or anyone would love me.  On top of that I feel like I’m failing to hold up my end of a pretty sweet bargain.  For Christ’s sake, Dion is paying 95% of the bills.  My primary responsibility is to be happy & somehow I can’t even muster that.

 

And just as I was about to spin out into that wasteland of self-loathing & despair, Dion asked me if the way I’m feeling could have something to do with the recent lowered dosage of my anti-depressant. I almost laughed with relief.  Of course that’s what’s going on!  I mean, I had felt this darkness descending before I went from 90 to 60 mg of Cymbalta, but yes, that clearly is affecting how I’m feeling.  (But, you see, the Tracy who noticed that she was running low on the 30 mg pills that she needs to use with the 60 mg pills to equal 90 mg, well, that Tracy felt pretty decent that day, that week.  She even began to think that maybe she could wean herself down a bit, and maybe get off the things entirely.  And of course she would do this without consulting a doctor.  What could possibly go wrong?!  Oh.  Right.  Everything.)

Depression is a wily little creature.  When it’s ravaging your mind and body & a doctor offers you a lifeline of medicine, you will take it out of desperation.  Or sometimes, when you are particularly apathetic toward your own life, health, & future, you will take it to appease the people in your life who are worried about you.  But when you get some distance from the beast & things seem just lovely, it’s like you contract amnesia about the whole experience.  You think: That was a really bad patch, but I’m through it and I think I can hack it on my own now.  But more than likely you are not thinking clearly because this brief oasis of mental health has you thinking that you have gotten better, that you have slayed the dragon.  Unfortunately that fucking dragon is just really good at playing opossum.

Nights Like These

I've always been a rather morbid girl, even as a very young child.  I've made many an adult acutely uncomfortable with my probing death-questions.  I try to imagine how I would respond to a 6 year old asking me, "But what if we just die and that's it?  What if there's no heaven and we just lie in the ground?"  What the hell is a grown-up supposed to say to that?  If most grown-ups are honest, they'd probably say something like: "Yes, that is a terrifying prospect, & one that keeps me up some nights.  But that's what the pills are for.  And honestly, I'm just too busy and have too many responsibilities to find the time to contemplate those things.  And someday, honey, you'll also be so over-extended and stressed out that you'll be entirely too exhausted to ponder ever-encroaching death."  Or something to that effect.

A death-obsessed child does not tend to grow up to be a well-adjusted non-death-obsessed adult.  The problem only builds, compounds.  One accumulates more and more terrifying information about the world from history books and news stories and personal experience.  And if one is cursed with a particularly vivid imagination, there is no end to the nightmarish scenarios one can envision.

And so on nights like tonight when I cannot direct my mind to a less distressing subject, I try to think of myself as some sort of sentinel or guardian, the keeper of death-thoughts.  I'm collecting all of the terrors in the dark so the rest of you might sleep soundly.  It's a silly thought, but it brings me some comfort.  Because I can abide all of this if I can pretend that I'm shouldering a burden and sparing others grief.  But I cannot endure the reality that I am torturing myself to absolutely no end. 

 

    

Walter: A Parakeet Eulogy

After Charlie the Parakeet passed away in 1996, my freshman year in high school, my family didn't think we'd ever own another parakeet.  Charlie could not be matched, was the consensus.  He was loving and affectionate, and loyal as a dog.  Even when we bought him a mate, Erna, who was aloof toward us & domineering toward Charlie, he worked hard to make both his human & bird families happy.  He would visit with us, generously dolling out kisses and sweet parakeet jabber, but when Erna squawked angrily from their cage, he'd head home to spend some quality time preening his love, emerging later in the evening to spend more time with my parents, my bother, and I.  So when it was suggested by my dad, some seven years later, that we get another parakeet, I was understandably hesitant.  How could any bird possibly live up to Charlie's legacy?

When we headed out to the pet store that brisk October afternoon -- mom, pops, brother, brother's girlfriend, & I-- I felt a heavy burden of responsibility.  My dad had explicitly stated that I was in charge of choosing the bird.  Without a doubt, I had been Charlie's favorite, & that special bond must have led my dad to believe that I possessed superior instincts in all things parakeet. 

At the store I spent a lot of time observing the 8 week old birds, peeping & hopping from perch to perch.  I wanted to find a bird that seemed outgoing, but sweet.  After nearly 45 minutes my exasperated dad finally said, "Just PICK one, Tracy!"  Instead of going with the biggest ham in the bunch who had been hanging upside down on rings and chirping loudly, I went with the little guy who seemed friendly, but wasn't an over-the-top show-off.  Little did I know that Walter would become a larger than life character who would put his acrobatic parakeet brother to shame.

Walter developed a regimen for his days, exhibiting more joy & more discipline than I myself have ever managed to exercise.  He alternated between socializing, study, exercise, & quiet introspection.  5:00 a.m. was when my dad got up for work, and likewise, when Walter began his day.  Walter was positively jubilant at this hour, flying back & forth across the living room & kitchen, chirping at the top of his lungs.  Walter pretty much had the run of the place--flying about & exploring his environment with frequent trips back to his cage to eat, drink, & nap.  Later in the day, Walter would practice his burgeoning vocabulary.  He would balance on one tiny bird-leg with his eyes shut tightly in concentration, reciting the words we cooed to him.  "Walter baby biiiiiirrrrrd.  You're so cute.  Come here! Come here! Where's Tracy?"  Walter also learned how to make a convincing Canada Goose honk from the clock in our living room.  While there were eleven other bird calls from birds much closer to his size and range, Walter fixated on the goose and practiced until he had it just right. 

Interspersed with Walter's socializing & vocabulary study was weight training.  His weights of choice were coins--preferably shiny quarters or nickels.  He would push them off various surfaces & onto the floor.  From there, he would lift one side with his beak and begin his arduous, but surprisingly quick journey to the kitchen, flipping the coin from carpeting to linoleum, where it made the metallic high-pitched dinging sounds that he found so pleasing.  Walter was positively single-minded when it came to pushing coins from table to floor.  One would have guessed it was his entire purpose in life on those days when a fistful of change was deposited atop the entertainment center.  Walter would not rest until every last coin was on the floor.  After a good $1.86 in motley change was tossed to the ground, Walter would look down at it, proud & deeply satisfied.

Walter never had a parakeet-mate, but he never expressed interest in one the way Charlie did, specifically by humping every last object in his cage.  Wally did, however, develop special bonds with various inanimate object throughout the house.  We called these objects his girlfriends.  At times, Walter had just one girlfriend who he would heap all his affection upon.  Other times, Walter was quite the Casanova, lavishing smooches--complete with a lip-smacking sound he learned from me--upon the jingly bell in his cage, then heading directly to a silver bolt on the bottom of a shelving unit to coo a few more sweet nothings, finally rounding out the night by tenderly nuzzling a quarter.
  
Walter had only been with us for about a year when I impulsively moved down to Florida to live with a boyfriend.  That year-long adventure didn't pan-out relationship-wise, but it did help illuminate how much I really wanted my family to be an immediate part of my life.  I spoke with my mom on the phone almost every day, & most conversations ended with me asking to talk to Walter.  My mom happily complied and put the phone next to his cage.  Initially, Walter was terrified of the giant thing, but when he heard the sound of my voice cooing gibberish, he shuffled over and listened intently, as my mom described it to me.  I swear I talked to that bird on the phone at least twice a week for an entire year.  But when I returned home, Walter was kind of frosty toward me.  It was much the same way Charlie acted when my family left him with my grandparents for a week to go on vacation--a little angry & a little hurt.  He warmed to me again soon enough & we were excellent buddies again.

Even as I noticed some signs of aging in Walter-- the grip of his feet on my finger weakening, his flight less strong & certain-- part of me believed he was invincible, even immortal.  That tiny guy lived through things that were taxing even for humans.  Case in point: my mom neglected to turn a giant pot of pinto beans down to simmer before she left the house & all the liquid quickly boiled away and the beans began to burn & smoke.  When my dad came home the house was hazy with throat-searing smoke.  He set Walter's cage on the porch and proceeded to open every window & turn on every fan in the house.  When I came home, hours later, the choke of burning was still in the air.  The toxic smell irritated my allergies & asthma so badly that I moved into my grandma's house for an entire week.  Meanwhile, Walter appeared no worse for it, merrily tweeting & hopping about in his cage.  Even days later you could still smell the char in his feathers, but aside from that you would have never known that Walter had been the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

Another near-death experience happened over Christmastime one year.  I decided to let Walter out to visit & perform for our relatives.  Being the genial fellow he was, he flew right to my great grandma and landed on her head.  Grandma was clearly not expecting this, & she reflexively swatted him off her head and to the ground.  I swept in and grabbed the dazed Walter, whisking him into the next room where I could assess his injuries & possibly cry without making my 90 year old great grandmother feel badly.  As always, Walter was just fine and, ever the mischief-maker, ready to land in a big bowl of mashed potatoes.

Walter was also an exceptionally good judge of character.  This was demonstrated most clearly when he was introduced to a guy I dated for a couple of months.  The normally friendly Walter who liked to greet all newcomers absolutely refused to go near my boyfriend.  When I finally forced the bird onto his shoulder, Walter began pecking and biting his cheek and ear with a ferocity I had never seen before.  A couple of weeks later it became evident that my boyfriend was a total asshole.  I never forgot that Walter had been the first to know. 

Walter's utter fearlessness was hilarious to behold.  My family decided to take home a puppy from my aunt's litter about six years ago.  I was quite nervous about inviting a dog into a home with a bird who was used to having the run of the place.  I fell in love with our new dog, Boomer, instantly, but I just didn't know what to expect from either bird or puppy.  It took just one scolding when Walter flew near Boomer for the little dog to understand that the bird was not to be bothered.  The following year brought another litter of puppies at my aunt's house, and this time we got a girl puppy named Daisy.  She followed Boomer's lead with the bird, staying out of his way as much as possible.  And whenever Walter--that crazy, curious, audacious little bird--landed on one of the dogs' heads or paws, Boomer and Daisy would sit stock-still until he grew bored and flew away.  Then the dogs would move to a safer place in the house, far from the menacing parakeet.

There are so many sweet & funny little things I am going to miss about Walter.  His passionate love of bananas, which had to be covered with a towel lest he gnaw through the peels of each & every one.  The little showers he took under a trickle of lukewarm water from the kitchen faucet in the summertime, & how he would try to bathe in glasses of drinking water whenever he got the chance, once somehow getting his chest & belly stuck in a mug so that my dad had to pull him free by his tail. 

I'll even miss clipping his little toenails, which was always a nerve-wracking job-- a millimeter too far up & he'd be a goner.  But after a short while of holding that impossibly tiny, soft, warm body in my hand, he would stop fighting and relax, letting my brother and I finish the task easily.  Then, I could never resist holding him there for a bit longer and petting & kissing the spongy white mound atop his head that I called his "marshmallow".  I would bring the little captive bird over by my dad and tell him to kiss Walter's head.  Pops always said he wouldn't kiss the bird, but he was clearly amused by this silly bi-monthly tradition.  More often than not, when I opened my hand to free Walter he would simply stand up and stay right there with me, not flying away in fear or to protest the indignity of it all.  Few things are more beautiful to me that truly gaining the trust and love of an animal.  And with Walter, I had clearly earned both.   I could coo & kiss his little face & belly for minutes at a time, the rest of my family looking on, shaking their heads and laughing.

I was the one who found little Walter on the floor of his cage yesterday, & I certainly did cry & grieve for my sweet little bird.  My dad said something, half-joking, to me while we were talking about where to bury him.  "You're certainly handling this better than when Charlie died."  And I had to admit that, yes, I was.  But then again, if that was the basis of comparison, the bar was set pretty low.  When Charlie died, I took off running for Rawson woods where I sobbed for over an hour.  And then later that night I went out to Charlie's grave and cried until my dad told me to "Get the hell in the house." 

I may be handling this loss less dramatically, but I cannot say that I'm feeling it any less deeply.  And I suspect there is no amount of maturity that can dull the edges of this kind of hurt.  But I'm more than a little surprised that I'm glad of it.  I'm glad that the pain of loss stings as much now as it did when I was a child.  Our hearts don't get harder as we grow older; if we're doing it right, they get bigger to accommodate more and more love, & consequently, more and more loss.  And I never want to build up a tolerance to this pain.  I want the pain to wreck and ravage me so that I know my love was as large & deep & limitless as my grief.           

    
   

 




  

Unreliable Narrator

I should feel so much calmer, so much steadier than I do most days.  As I look around me right now, I see a drowsy, gray cat one cushion over on the couch & a sweet black cat trying to find a suitable alternative to my lap, which is, of course, currently occupied by a laptop; candles are flickering on the sill of a beautiful picture window that looks out on a sleeping park.  I am warm, fed, relatively comfortable, & very loved.  How can I be ill at ease when everything around me suggests peace, security, & good fortune?

Be that as it may, my anxiety is near-constant these days.  And it is doubtless rooted in the soul-shredding self-talk that underscores and undermines my every thought.  At this very moment I am battling my vicious inner critic who is telling me that everything I'm writing right now is dogshit, that I shouldn't bother trying to communicate anything if the writing is going to be this poor.  And most of the time I submit to this asshole that lives inside my head.  I close the laptop & proceed to mercilessly browbeat myself over my innumerable faults and failures.  This exercise in self-torture begs the question--Why? Why do you do this to yourself?  And I don't have a good answer to that question.  I simply don't know another way.  Or, rather, I understand how a person is supposed to engage with their thoughts/feelings/'self', but I don't know how to make that happen inside my head in any real or sustainable way. 

I don't know exactly when or why this emotionally annihilating pattern of thought developed.  The severity & intensity of the my inner critic has waxed and waned over the years depending on health & circumstance, but it has always been present.  At best, it becomes muted.  If I could point to a single traumatic incident in my past, it might be easier to navigate my way out of this hellscape, but I cannot find anything that seems sufficient to explain it.  And this is really no surprise.  Epic tragedies & traumas certainly occur in this life, but I think most damage is subtle, insidious.  We die by degrees.  And when I think of it in these terms, I can understand much more clearly what has happened. 

I've never been a terribly healthy person.  I mean, I've led a fairly healthy lifestyle, but my body never cooperated & followed suit.  But the medical issues I dealt with from childhood on always appeared more nuisance than dangerous.   Severe allergies & asthma in elementary school that began 15+ years of allegy shots & pills & inhalers to manage symptoms.  Strange injuries from minimal trauma--dislocated shoulder from swimming, severe neck & back pain from god only knows--made me a frequent patient at the chiropractor throughout middle & high school.  The sudden development of a submucous cleft (aka: a hole in the roof of my mouth) meant I needed to undergo surgery in the 7th grade.  I was the first to catch a bug and the last to shake it.  And I was exhausted much of the time--far more tired than a young person ought to be.

But these issues were hardly compelling & certainly no emergency.  I pressed on--through college, various jobs, relationships, the gamut of life.  The painful, crackling joints and pulled muscles were par for the course.  The fatigue was a given.  I believed there was no reason I could not do everything a person my age could do.  I just needed to push myself.  The nights I collapsed into bed and slept for 14 consecutive hours? Well I guess I needed the rest! The feeling that baseline functioning wasn't supposed to be this difficult, this painful?  Well that was what the bi-weekly sobbing breakdowns were for!  After all, the doctors all told me I was fine-- very healthy in fact!  The doctors all agreed that I was just depressed.  And luckily there are pills for that!  Did the pills ever help?  I can honestly say: No, they did not. 

Fast forward a few years ahead to my desk job at big, respected company.  It was not what I dreamed of doing,  but I decided that it would suffice for a little while.  Plus, it came with much-needed health insurance!  But then, a few months in, I managed to throw out my back from, ummm...sitting.  I actually needed to be taken to my car in a wheelchair because it was too painful to walk.  And from that anticlimactic moment on,  I never experienced a pain-free day.  It would be over 5 years of bewildering pain that ranged from extreme to incapacitating before I would stumble upon my own diagnosis--Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome!--via desperate, sobbing Google-research.  My pain ultimately ended up costing me my job & the health insurance it provided.  My pain ultimately brought me to the brink of desperation & hopelessness and convinced me to attempt suicide two times.

When I think about the support system I have in place, it seems ludicrous for me to be so anxious about what the future holds.  When I think about all of the people who love me, it seems preposterous that the running commentary in my head is so self-critical, so denigrating.  But I also think that when you have felt unwell for so long, & have tried to ignore it or fight through it, & when that has only served to make you feel even worse, it is easy to turn all of your despair and frustration inward.  When the only cycle you know is striving to be healthy and happy and normal until you ultimately burn out & must retreat almost entirely & for great lengths of time into a place where there is only room for rest before achieving a modicum of wellness & ponderously making your way back to the vast, racing world.....well, let's just say that isn't a recipe for sparkling mental hygiene.

As I prepare for whatever decision is going to be made in the coming weeks regarding my disability claim, I have to keep a great many things in mind.  I must remember that a rejection does not mean that I will be destitute.  I have a loving and generous boyfriend who has said in no uncertain terms that he wants to take care of me for the rest of his life.  (This is nothing to sneeze at, Tracy).  I must also remember that the decision is not an indictment of me, personally.  It does not mean that I am undeserving of help.  It does not mean that my pain isn't real.

I know I need to work very hard to ditch the mean & patently untrue scripts that have been tatooed into my brain.  I need to write new, kind scripts.  I am NOT a burden, I am NOT a pain-in-the-ass, I am NOT helpless.  And I am most certainly NOT worthless.  I'm a goddam nice person who loves fiercely & feels deeply.  I would never on my worst day hurl the venomous insults I direct at myself at another person.  On the whole I think everyone I know & meet is doing their very best, & that their best happens to be pretty amazing, & often against some pretty tough odds.

Now might be a good time to begin recognizing that I'm doing a pretty amazing job, all things considered.



  

    

Unburdening

I am pretty notorious for letting relatively small things send me over the edge.  Not in an angry or violent way, but in an I-can't-seem-to-stop-sobbing way.  And invariably, some version of the cliche "Don't cry over spilt milk" is offered up by a well-meaning loved one. 

Two things are at work in that phrase that leave me disconcerted.  1) The unpleasant or tragic thing has already occurred, so there is no use being upset about it.  Just clean up the mess as best you can and move on. 2) It's just a glass of milk.  It really isn't worth being upset about at all.  It is a small & insignificant setback.  Both of these arguments seem flimsy to me, and more than a little judgmental.  I suppose it is a sensible thing to recognize when a bad thing has officially & irrevocably happened & to realize that no amount of grief or regret can change an outcome that has already come to pass.  I suppose, also, that it is wise to keep one's misfortunes in perspective.  But I cannot help but think that this cliche misses the point of what it is to be human completely.   

I keep telling myself that today should have gone much more smoothly than it did.  I had an appointment with a nurse at Planned Parenthood to discuss birth control options.  This is not as straightforward an issue for me as it is for most people due to my connective tissue disorder.  The hormones in the pill cause an increase in ligament laxity, which is the last thing a hypermobile gal like myself needs.  I've tried a couple different kinds of pills with varying levels/ratios of hormones, & all have exacerbated my pain & joint instability.  Not to mention the number they did on  my emotional health.  Boy howdy, was I a weepy bucket of slop on those things! 

I'm not sure if I have a latex sensitivity or something, but condoms have always been uncomfortable & even painful for me.  Plus, they seem like an odd choice for someone in a committed relationship.  They seem putsy & annoying & not the most spontaneous or intimiate thing to bring to the bedroom.

So I went to the doctor to discuss IUDs--which sounds way to close to 'improvised explosive device' for something that is slated to be in my vagina--& the possible complications Ehlers-Danlos could pose to their safety and effectiveness.  I've read about the greater possiblity of "spontaneous expulsion" and "uterine perforation upon insertion", neither of which sound like a party I'm anxious to host.  I knew that I would have to educate the nurse about my condition today; that was a given.  I didn't know that she would treat my legitamite concerns as being silly and paranoid.  I wasn't looking for a conclusive, expert answer, but I was hoping for someone who would treat my concerns with respect and would do more than cursory research before deciding I should try the NuvaRing. 

I wish I had been able to summon the steadiness to articulate what I was feeling, but I just nodded without making eye contact and waited for the nurse to leave.  Then I left the prescription with the receptionist and walked quickly to my car.  I understand the nurse could not spend hours with me, studying every aspect of my condition & allaying all of my fears.  I know that it really just comes down to making a decision and hoping for the best.  And I know that the tears streaming down my face as I left the office were for more than one small frustration on an isolated day.  They were tears for years of pain without answers, for countless visits to rheumatologists, physical therapists, chiropractors, pain management doctors, orthopedists, and genetic specialists; for having lost a job due to this chronic condition, for trying so hard all of the time to simply function, to get through a day, for having had to bow out of so many fun activities due to pain, for feeling crazy at the lack of control I have over my own body & also guilty for being a burden, for needing so much help and understanding from everyone.  Perhaps most acutely, my tears were for truly wanting to have a baby some day, but doubting very much that my body could manage the strain of a pregnancy, and wondering, if I made it through the delivery....Would I be able to care for my baby? Would I be in too much pain to even hold or carry her? 

That initial cliche which rang so false led me to another cliche which always strikes me as tragically & universally apt: "The straw that broke the camel's back".  How many burdens are we able to carry at one time and how long can we manage?  I am infamous for losing my shit over what appears to be a dandelion spore landing on my shoulder.  But trust me, I've got a goddamn freigher strapped to my back.  I think we all do.  And I know it is high time I unpack mine and scrap the boulders.           

Prop 8, Religion, & Facebook

Over the past few days I've felt alternately incensed and hopeful in the wake of the Prop 8 Supreme Court case.  The ubiquitous media coverage has presented impassioned arguments by both opponents & proponents of lifting the ban on same-sex marriage in California.  I've heard religious leaders touting traditional values & claiming that same-sex marriage threatens to completely unravel the fabric of our society.  I've heard gay couples speak about having been given a right & then having it taken away, about having a legitimate union rendered illegitmate in the blink of an eye.  And I cannot dare to venture into the dark waters of the litany of benefits denied same-sex partners unless I clear my schedule and commit to weeping for the rest of the day. 

In the midst of the sadness & injustice, I was buoyed by the countless straight allies in my Facebook feed yesterday.  By and large, I find the entreaties to change your profile picture or repost an image or quote kind of ridiculous.  They are either no-brainers (Share if you have the best mom in the world!  Change your profile picture to a brown ribbon if you think colon cancer is the worst! Repost if you are against child abuse!), or they present a false dichotomy & attempt to scare or guilt you into making a choice ('Like" if you love jesus! Keep scrolling if you want to burn in hell for eternity! Share this picture of a limbless veteran if you support our troops! Don't share if you don't care about human suffering and are unpatriotic!)  But this one was different.  It didn't accost or needle you.  It simpy asked you to identify yourself as an advocate for equality for one day.  It was a small token of support, & a simple reminder that there are more allies out there than you might think.
     
Although I know we are headed in the right direction, I am frustrating with the slow-going nature of progress.  And frankly, I cannot believe that gay rights and marriage equality is even up for debate.  The combination of free speech and freedom of religion cannot justify a campaign to limit another person's rights.  You have the right to expound upon how horrible you believe gay marriage is & your church has the right to condemn it, but that does not give you the authority to make same-sex marraige illegal.  This isn't a measure that should be on a ballot.  It is ludicrous to vote on who another person is allowed to love and to marry.  Many of the people who oppose same-sex marriage are desperately parsing The Constitution & using semantical gymnastics to try to make their case. This is the epitome of obeying the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.  Our forefathers did not anticipate every single goddamn issue that might arise.  And we've made corrections & adjustments along the way (Amendment 15: Black Suffrage; Amendment 19: Women's Suffrage).  Clearly, the spirit of the law has deep roots in equality and social justice. 

Obeying the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law is precisely why this non-issue has been ballooned into a cartoonish mega-issue.  People who interpret The Bible literally--to the letter--are the people who so vehemently oppose same-sex marriage, & homosexuality in general.  If you look at the vast majority of Christ's teachings, the over-arching theme is love, compassion, forgiveness, & genorosity.  None of those tenets are upheld when you actively seek to limit another person's freedom to love and marry.  If you adhere to the spirit of The Bible, you will be far more Christ-like than if you attempt to adhere to every single ambiguous & sometimes outright contradictory passage written. 

And why are Christians so selective with regards to the Bible passages they trumpet?  There is a lurid fixation on one tiny verse in Leviticus about homosexuality.  Meanwhile, another verse in the very same book clearly & harshly condemns the act of adultery.  "And the man that committeth adultery with (another) man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death" (Leviticus 20:10).  Yet Christian organized religion has not collectively expressed outrage over this "sin" & used its resources to limit the freedoms of adulterers. 
  
I've heard people who oppose same-sex marriage say that their stance does not mean that they fear or hate gay people.  In fact, many protest that they actually love their gay neighbor; they simply do not agree with who their gay neighbor loves.  My response to this is simple: you do not understand the definition of love.  Love is big and welcoming and warm and inclusive.  Love is unconditional and strives to learn and to understand and to accept, and then to love even bigger and better as a result.  Love does not impugn another person's freedoms.  Love does not pass judgment.  Love is not preoccupied with what consenting adults choose to do with their genitals.

Perhaps we should be less concerned with how we define marriage & more concerned with how we define love.  Because the patronizing christian version of loving thy gay neighbor (while simultaneously holding a firm belief that their "lifestyle" is sinful, AND while actively working to disallow a full & equal union with the person they love) isn't love at all.  It's not even tolerance.  It is bigotry masqueraging as faith, & I highly doubt that God is enjoying humans marginalizing other humans in his name. 

Music Without Music

I think we need a secular term for "blessings" sometimes.  Because that word is just a little too saccharine-Christian for my liking.  It's just that I'm becoming more closely acquainted with gratitude these days & I wish I had better catch-all word to call those things I'm grateful for.  In any case, I encountered many things that made my heart effervesce with gushy, gooey love today.


My physical therapist is one of the most positive and enthusiastic people I have ever met, & and middle school/ early high school Tracy would have likely found her overly perky and annoying.  But that poor little 13 to 17 year-old Trace was surrounded by the facade of enthusiasm-- ever-smiling peers involved in numerous sports & activites who were "dating" other extracurricularly over-extended peers, with none of them being terribly kind to the less beautiful, less gifted, & less charismatic classmates.  Thankfully my understandable confusion (which bred cynicism) toward the outgoing go-getters lifted later in life, & I am now able to identify when joy & enthusiasm are genuine.  This is most definitely the case with my therapist.  She is preposterously sweet and kind and generous.  Today, after the patient scheduled for the appointment after mine called to cancel, my therapist offered to work with me for an extra half hour.  I eagerly took her up on that offer & got some divine, knot-busting soft tissue work for my low-back and feet.  Throughout the visit she & I chatted like old friends, & when I told her about the strange gas leak from a mysterious left-on burner the day before & joked that someone might be trying to off me, she said, "Yeah right, like this adorable, friendly, fun girl here has any enemies."  And all of this just broke my heart into a million beautiful twinking shards of awe & gratitude.  That someone could be so very selfless & sweet, & that this extraordinary person could recognize similar qualities in myself.....well it just made me want to laugh and cry and dance & behave in any number of conflicting & lunatic-like ways.  And then, as so often happens with me, the intense gratitude and love I felt toward this person began to ripple outward-- to the family and friends who have seen me through very difficult times, to the menagerie of adorable animals who have graced my life, to complete strangers, to enemy-type people who, at some point, made my life a living hell, but who also made me the person I am today.  To my goddamn savior of a boyfriend who teaches me about patience and generosity and big-heartedness everyday.  Fuck, man.....it was intense. 

And of course every minute of life cannot swell like some orchestral climax.  But when you expereince a moment or a series of moments like this....it can make you tremble like a plucked harp for some time.  It can grant you temporary amnesia & some much needed respite from pain.      

Expanding

Today seems like kind of a bust, if I'm being honest. I slept til noon. My greatest accomplishment was driving to the credit union to deposit my unemployment check. That in and of itself is laughable because I have the option for direct deposit.  I have had some technical difficulties in making that happen, and somehow, despite having all the time in the world, I've been unable to summon the patience to remain on hold for upwards of an hour with the unemployment office to have the issue rectified.  For me, certain tasks elicit instant disdain & complete certainty that they will devolve into harrowing ordeals.  Most of these tasks involve talking to customer service representatives about my finances.  These severely disagreeable tasks are not totally isolated to finances, however, as anything involving paperwork & organization & the slightest bit of follow through strikes terror into my heart.  Which brings us to tomorrow.  I will be taking my little folder of tax papers to an accountant at the crack of noon.  Until this tax season, I've always consulted my mom with any problems I ran into & always asked her to double check my work.  This is highly embarrassing for a 32 year old to admit, I realise, & even more so because my taxes have always been the EZ variety.  But I have a paralysing fear of anything remotely mathematical.  The consequences of errors of arithmetic were relatively mild in high school, but the stakes have been raised considerably in adulthood.  I don't think I have the constitution for an audit.  There would likely be more math, and accountability, neither of which are my strong suits.  And this year is a bit more complicated because I lost my fulltime job a few months ago and needed to withdraw a substantial amount of cash from my 401K to pay my bills.  I am hoping that my accountant will know some radical jui jitsu tax move that will keep me from incurring a steep penalty.  We shall see.

My lovely boyfriend went to bed a few minutes ago.  Before he said goodnight, he remarked on how he is bothered by how filthy the back of the fish tank appears.  He was really inpsecting the grime & he vowed to get some sort of sponge on a stick thing to really get after it this weekend.  He and I certainly complement one another in perfect, bizarre, and hilarious ways.  He is so focused and goal-oriented, absolutely single-minded about the things he needs to do & the things he would like to do in his life.  He makes plans.  He takes small steps to accomplish a bigger goal.  The upkeep on a saltwater fishtank is nothing short of intensive.  It is an expensive and time-consuming hobby, but Dion is all in.  I adore observing the little ecosystem in action & have grown very fond of all the little fish & snails & urchins, but I don't think I would have ever had the fortitude to bring even this small dream to fruition.  I get so bogged down in big picture living that I am unable to see the small, everyday steps that eventually make big things happen. It all just seems so massive in scope, impossible in execution. 

I frequently get overwhelmed with all of the things I feel I am supposed to know, & would genuinely like to know--local, national, & world news & politics; countless books, music, film, comedians, plays etc.  Plus, there is the stuff I think I should already be well-versed in--history, art, science, & all the sub specialties therein.  Not to mention all the glorious plants I want to know the names of and be able to identify.  So many writers write gorgeous, intricate prose about regional flowers & greenery, & I feel like my own knowledge would be limited to evergreens and dandelions.  I just feel so knowledge-deficient sometimes, so terribly ignorant on so many topics that I wonder how I have the temerity to write anything. 

For the past couple weeks I have been trying to read this wonderful novel called "Flight Behavior".  It explores the habits and instincts and compulsions and mysteries of human behavior & of animal behavior.  It is rich, sumptuous writing with interesting, fully developed characters, & yet I find my mind wandering.....thinking of all the things I should already know or should learn soon, the things I should have already accomplished or had better accomplish immediately.  The irony is a little too on-the-nose for me.  My own hard-to-shake flight behavior of awe & overwhelm & insecurity that keeps me endlessly fleeing from the task at hand.  These small, manageable, & potentially engrossing and rewarding tasks could teach me lessons far more important than simply accumulating trivia in some cold warehouse in my brain.  How is it that most of us know, on some level, what is important in life, but we get lost in a wilderness of bullshit?  How can we keep that simple recognition at the forefront & filter out the extraneous nonsense that undermines our spirit & our dreams?  If you have any ideas, please send them my way.  Because I spend far too much time digging through rubble for treasure when I could just look up at the night sky and see stars sparkle like flipped coins.

   

 

Ill At Ease

A dark living room illuminated only by a laptop. The fish tank light has been off for over an hour now--an early bedtime for Benny, Nora, Eric, & Amadeus, as I usually make them keep me company until 1 or 2 in the morning. No television flashing, no iphone at my elbow ready to be consulted for a host of inane reasons. Just this.

I feel a strange detachment toward the world tonight, but I don't think it has anything to do with being less plugged-in than usual. If anything, limiting my contact with electronics helps me to plug into what's really going on inside me. The surreal otherness of the world around me may have something to do with not having stepped outside once today, & with only having had brief exchanges with humans that were limited to the phone before Dion got home from work. It just felt right to stay put today. The snow was swirling caustionary messages outside my window all day. My muscles were still screaming from having overdone it at the gym on Sunday, The house was still all clean from my frenzied housework yesterday. It seemed a perfect day for lounging and reading and dreaming. And I did these things, but felt removed from my own relaxation, somehow.

I feel I don't have the words for any of it right now. The fatigue in my body seems to have spread to my mind & spirit, but the heaviness is only unpleasant when I fight it. I almost feel like this all-consuming lethargy is protecting me from myself. It is intercepting anxieties with exhaustion so immense I cannot summon the strength to entertain my worries.

Or perhaps I'm just spinning the story in this direction because I'm sick to death of my days being at the mercy of my body's whims. No, I don't feel well at all. That's the truth, I guess. And I'm saddened by not having the physical or mental energy to tackle all the things I want to: writing several pages a day, working on jokes & regularly attending at least 1 open mic per week. But perhaps this isn't exactly the case either. I need to realize that I can carve out time for these things, but I have to do them in my own way with emphasis on self-care. I can go to an open mic and not drink. Ta-dah! It sounds impossible, but I think it would go a long way toward improving my health & making comedy viable on a consistent basis. I can write one page per day right after breakfast before I begin the litany of chores and errands that leave me exhausted and in pain.

I can work at my own pace & impose reasonable limits. I don't have to give things up. I just have to do things differently. I can work with ehlers-danlos. Fighting agasint it only exhausts and confounds. And now, I must sleep so that I might feel better tomorrow.

Pity is a four letter word

There are some days that my pain refuses to cooperate and ease down to a managable level, despite all my efforts.  Today was one of those days.  It is so disheartening to be doing everything right and still not find any relief.  I hope to outgrow the childish "this is so unfair!" thought that sets up shop in my brain every time I have a day like this. 

I knew I was in for a rough one right of the bat.  I woke up limping, barely able to put weight on my right foot.  So I declared a self-care day & set about making myself the healthiest nutriblast in all the land--spinach, kale, carrots, raspberries, walnuts, almonds, flax meal, fresh mint, unsweetened cocoa & coconut milk.  Blend.  Then I kept moving with some light housework to work the stiffness out of my arthritic joints.  Then I did 45 minutes of yoga.  I even treated myself to a tofu burrito at Outpost. 

But as I struggled to carry my groceries upstairs early this evening, I could feel my fatigue rising & my muscle strength & control waning.  Almost as soon as I walked in the house I began crying.  Dion recognized how exhausted I looked and urged me to sit down & rest.  He asked me why I didn't call him to help bring up the groceries.  I couldn't answer that because I knew I'd only cry harder.  The truth is that he always goes far above & beyond the call of duty for me.  He is kind and understanding and generous and so very patient.  After working a 12 hour day it is not at all uncommon for him to see that I am in pain and offer to give me a massage.  On my good days, I try to do as much as I can to make life a little easier and more pleasant for him-cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping.  On my bad days, feeding the cats is a small victory.  I know I shouldn't compare his contribution to the relationship to my own.  I know it's not a competition.  I know I'm doing my best.  I know my health problems are not my fault and that he feels no resentment toward me whatsoever.  But I harbor resentment toward myself, on his behalf- on everyone's behalf, really.  All of the plans I've had to cancel with friends or family due to pain, all of the things I wish I could do with and for people, if I only had the strength and the energy....I cannot seem to let myself off the hook for this. As much as I understand that ehlers-danlos syndrome is not my fault, I still blame myself for all the things it prevents me from doing.  I need to find a way to let go of this toxic and irrational thinking.

I was able to teach my evening water aerobics class in spite of the pain, & when I got home, more achey and tired than ever, a cheerful Dion called me into the bedroom to look at what he had just ordered online: a couple of books on organic beekeeping & a pump for a large mouthwash bottle.  I don't know if I can convey how goddamn sweet both of these things are, but I will try.  Dion really listens to me & respects my opinions about things, which is sort of novel for me in a relationship.  He may tease me about how much I spend on organic produce, but he knows how much I value health & the environment, so for him to look into a non-toxic, sustainable method of beekeeping really meant a lot to me.  As for the mouth wash pump, I had mentioned how hard lifting and tilting the 1.5 liter mouthwash is on my dumb ehlers-danlos wrists.  So he found a pump on amazon.com and ordered it for me. 

Writing this is helping me to see how very lucky I am.  I may have a chronic & difficult to manage condition, but also I have someone who is happy to stand by me through all of it.  If I can find a way to stop beating myself up for not being able to do more, to do as much as I want to & as much as a "normal" person seems to be capable of doing, I will be in a better place & I will be a better partner.

If this post is unbearably maudlin I'm going to blame the sleeping pill I took 15 minutes ago.

G'nite!

Some Happy Places

It's possible that I'm learning how to take life's stressful, but relatively minor fiascos in stride--the same ones that used to send me into a panicky tailspin.  I was scheduled to teach to back-to-back water aerobics classes this morning, & I pressed snooze just enough times to make my morning uncomfortably rushed.  On these self-inflicted frazzled mornings, I invariably encounter something that will test my patience and rationality.  Umm....where the fuck are my car keys??

I charged from room to room checking & rechecking all the obvious places.  I was just about ready to call my boss to cancel classes & disappoint 40-60 darling elderly people when I decided to mentally retrace my steps from the night before.  Somehow I arrived at the strange & correct spot: laundry basket!

The anxious residue that usually sticks to me for some time after a harried morning washed off easily today. I can thank my brigade sweet &/or sassy old broads for helping me take a break from worrying about troubles, large and small.  During my second class, one lady was teasing another lady about having a crush on a man half her age who was swimming laps.  "You'd need your heart pill with that one, Mary."  Mary quipped back with exaggerated weariness in her voice, "I don't take a heart pill.  I'd need a motivation pill, though."  There's nothing quite like good-natured banter amongst elderly women about flagging sex drives, ya know?

After class I picked up subs & headed over to my folks' place to watch a movie--Seven Psychopaths. (LOVED IT!)  Mom & Dad shook their heads and marveled at its weirdness when they weren't laughing really hard.  Mom said, "True to form, Tracy introduces us to another weird thing."  To me, this is the ultimate compliment.  I love taking my parents to restaurants or plays or comedy shows that they wouldn't otherwise know about or go see.  That's a really lovely thing about hanging out with people from different generations.  I'm certainly glad that my dad exposed me to The Andy Griffith Show & Columbo when I was little, & that my mom had my brother & I color popsicle sticks with a marker so we could race them down the creek in south milwaukee from one bridge to another, like she and her siblings had done when she was a little girl, & that both of my parents had really great records for me to sift through as a kid.

As I write this I keep reaching for my glass of water on the end table, but then stopping myself because I remember just in time that I witnessed Millie drinking from it and dipping her little gray paw in there a few times.  I know we all know this, but goddamn it animals are just so happy-making.  While Pops was eating his sub sandwich today, Boomer came over and sat as close to him as possible, staring up at my dad with a dead-serious look on his face.  And then, without having been asked to shake, he began lifting & extending his paw over and over to my dad, hoping for a nice morsel.  Dad laughed & looked at his giant dog with great affection.  A bit later Boomer & Daisy leapt at the chance to take the short ride from street to garage to park the car for the night with my mom, & although this is pretty much an every day thing, my mom looked overjoyed to have their company for the 45 second trip.  ANIMALS!!!!

Tonight's final notable lovely-thing was Dion's reaction, or non-reaction, to my frantic, ravenous dinner--a can of organic refried beans & a piece of chocolate cake, eaten standing over the pan (there was no time for knives or plates, I tell ya!).  I still feel a bit of shame over eating like a very peculiar wild animal, but Dion didn't raise an eyebrow.  God bless him.   

     

The Intoxication Proclamation (3 Strong Beers & The History Channel!)

Happy President's Day! How did you celebrate?  By going to work?!!

My favorite president may sound unoriginal until you know why he's my favorite.  Lincoln: Because he was depressed and hilarious.  Kindred spirit, bitches! 

I read a book called Lincoln's Melancholy that revealed the depths of Honest Abe's clinical depression, & I developed something of a crush on the gaunt sonofabitch.  What is most inspiring to me is how much he was able to accomplish in spite of, or perhaps in part because of, his profound sadness.  Depression is a genetic thing, I suppose.  I mean, I believe that it is a medical issue,& that there is a genetic predisposition to it.  I've got the damn thing, after all.  But there is some emotional intelligence at work there, I think.  In a lot of cases, I think depression is a valid reaction to life; it means you have been paying attention.  The biggest problem is getting snagged there-- marooned on that island of despondency without seeing any resources to improve your own situation, much less anyone else's.  Although if a second, unclouded look were possible to the depressed person, he or she would probably see coconuts galore & a cruise ship docking 10 yards away. 

Lincoln was able to see human suffering acutely through the lense of depression.  But there was something inside of him that was able to push past the horror & pain to a place where he could work toward making things better. 

Also, Lincoln was goddamn funny.  Are you familiar with this man's quotes?  Holy shit, they're fantastic!  And even more so if you picture the lanky, morose man uttering them. "When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."  "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."  Just one deadpan zinger after another! 

Also, he freed the slaves, which is rad.

It's difficult to know when to relax with your sorrow for a bit, to listen to what it has to say.  And it is even more difficult know when to extricate yourself from that sorrow after you have learned whatever lesson is had to teach you--when it can, from that point on, only provide you with useless pain.

And it is difficult to know when joy is useful in the face of sorrow, suffering, & anxiety.  I spent a little time with my dad today.  He is putting on a brave face, but I know he is scared that he could suffer another stroke.  I know that he is upset that he cannot walk without concentrating and holding on to things.  To counter the unbearable gravity of it all, I behaved much more cheerfully than I felt.  Perhaps it even pained my dad to be in the presence of such obnoxious cheer.  I sang ridiculous songs to the family dogs & parakeet.  I made jokes and laughed at them too loudly.  Then again, perhaps he saw through my own facade of joy, right down to my pit of deep sadness, & that was what really pained him. 

The evening was was an obstacle course, or a balance beam, or a minefield.  An emotionally impossible-to-navigate terrain.
 
But I blundered my way through it with an offer to help & a dumb joke & a sob held tightly in my chest.Which is pretty much a blueprint for any halfway decent political speech.  Nailed it! Medek 2016.          

          

Death & Writer's Block

There is a restless ache inside of me.  The intensity varies, but the feeling is always present.  When I am busy & distracted enough, I'm able to keep it somewhat at bay--small and muted, suppressed.  But more often than not the feeling wells up into something large & uncontainable.  But contain it I must, because it's not the sort of thing that can be squelched or doused or smothered or extinguished by any method.  It's mine.  I've created it and I carry it with me.  When I examine the feeling, it is clear that the feeling is fear.  And while I wrestle with countless anxieties, when I take the time to trace the fear back to its source, the common thread of every last worry I have is death. 

Right at this moment, I am forcing myself to write.  It is one of the last things I want to do right now, & if I'm being entirely honest, ever.  I'm always glad that I've written after I have done it.  There is catharsis there, & at times, a sense of pride or satisfaction at having articulated something particularly challenging.  But for me there is dread at discovering that I have nothing worthwhile to say.  That none of my thoughts, feelings, or experiences are particularly profound or interesting.  And if that is the case, what do I have to offer this tender, precarious, precious life?  The age-old question: Why am I here?

And looming even larger is the terror of confronting the dark & the painful.  Writing is an exercise in controlled suffering much of the time.  I want to tell it all & to tell it authentically.  To give voice to everything I see that deserves attention.  To tell it unflinchingly.  Of course there is joy & compassion & mercy & magic in life--and I want to talk about that too.  But I cannot ignore the dark stuff; to do so would be dishonest. And I don't seem to have the constitution to tackle suffering & death head-on too terribly often.  So for an embarrassingly long time, I've written almost nothing.  I'm just so afraid of looking death in the eye.  And I'm afraid to write because it forces me to do just that.  But I'm also afraid to not write, because I don't want to spurn any gift I may have been given or to risk not telling a story that desperately deserves to be told. 

I don't even want to think about the fact that my dad just suffered a stroke. It triggers this fight or flight panic inside of me, but I don't have the power to do either thing, really.  I can't fight his blood clot or flee from the reality of his & everyone's mortality.  And coping with my fear in a healthy manner (whatever that means) doesn't seem to be an available option for me either.  I'm incapacitated.  I just hope I can begin to make some headway with these fears that paralyze me.  I'd love to find some wellspring of steadfast courage inside of me, but for now I may have to settle for being propelled by anger. 

I'm fucking pissed off about death.  Truly & completely furious about this human condition.  So I may have to be livid & contemptuous about the whole thing for a little while.  I suspect that this may be a degree or two healthier than incapacitated.  At least there's a driving force, some spirit fueling the fire.  And I hope I can rage my way to the other side, to a place that where I can find some measure of peace & acceptance.  Because this shit is exhausting.

Thank-you to whoever or whatever kept my dad alive.  And as I used to say during my terror-stricken childhood bedtime prayers: "Dear God, Please keep everyone I know & love alive, healthy, & safe for 100 years."  I prayed the same prayer every night for hundreds of nights, and I never amended the timeline; it was always 100 years.  Perhaps I thought God wouldn't notice & would continue to honor my prayer forever, in effect making me & my loved ones immortal.  I really wish I could give little kid Tracy a big hug sometimes.  She had so many scared, tearful nights worrying about losing the people she loved.  Not that much has changed, I guess.  Only now I have a precription for a sleeping pill so I can turn off that pesky, scared, bursting-with-love-and-sorrow brain of mine. 

     

Microcosms

There was certainly no time for music & dance this morning.  I was awoken around 4 a.m. by a phone call from my mom informing me that my dad was in the hospital.  She told me he had woken up an hour or so earlier with a tingling feeling throughout his body & had been unable to move his legs.  Initially he thought maybe his limbs had fallen asleep, but it became clear that something more serious was going on, so my mom called the ambulance. 

Dion & I headed to St. Luke's in Cudahy soon thereafter.  I suppose had I not been running on two hours of sleep & had been in my right mind learning that he had suffered a stroke (a mild one, thankfully) would not have been quite so surprising, considering his symptoms.  But it was & still is shocking to me.  He is 59 years old.  And he's my dad, so he's not allowed to die, or to even come close to dealth.  Ever.

It was a huge relief to see that he appeared intact cognitively.  He seemed frustrated with the prospect of having to be transferred to a different hospital that had an MRI machince & more stroke treatment expertise, & he was downright irritated that he was still unable to move his ankle.  Still, his sense of humor was strong as ever, & his proclivity toward practical joking as unshakable.  He old the following tale with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. My mom was down the hall using the bathroom when someone came into dad's room to bring him to radiology for a CT scan.  They decided to head past the bathroom toward radiology to intercept my mom & let her know where they were headed.  My dad asked the nurse if he should put the blanket over his head like he was a corpse when they wheeled him past my mom.  A morbid & cruel idea? Absolutely.  But it was a wonderful to hear he was still planning pranks & making strangers uncomfortable. 

On the ride over to the hospital this morning at the crack of dawn, Dion asked me if I thought it was kind of strange that my brother and I had talked about how worried we were about dad last evening, & then that he & I had talked about death for about 20 minutes before bed.  Oh darling, Dion.  Have you met me? Of course that had not escaped my notice.  And yes, it seems weird to say the least.  I imbued those exchanges with something I can only term as psychic foreshadowing as I worriedly brushed my teeth & dressed this morning.  People are always looking for ways to make sense of life, & I am no different.  Or, I am different only in the creative, far-fetched ways I make myself feel responsible for life's tragedies. A sneak-peek into my mind:  "If I could have somehow convinced my dad to quit smoking......If I had only bought healthy groceries & cooked healthy meals for him & mom for breakfast, lunch & dinner.  I could have done this; I've been unemployed for months now.  I should have done this. How selfish am I for not devoting myself to being his live-in chef & health consultant?"  I take myself to task over all of this & much, much more, realizing full well how ludicrous it is.  I don't really think I should martyr myself to care of everyone I love.  Insinuating myself into every aspect of my dad's life in an effort to keep him healthy is an impossible, absurd, & highly officious undertaking.   But when I feel helpless, I suddenly have the need to control everything.  And when this invariably proves impossible I take it very personally.  So I'm in the throes of that insane loop right now. 

I'm going to sign off for now.  Dion just tested the water in his aquarium & the ammonia levels are quite high.  He's heading to the store for purified water & is going to do another 10 gallon water change shortly.  We are worried about a little clown fish named Eric who is not looking so good right now.  I'm going to coo to him until Dion gets back.  Because I can't control his entire ecosystem for him.  But maybe I can bring him some comfort.    

Tangential Love

Today's abbreviated morning dance party was to some krautrock from Neu! (many thanks for introducing me to them, Matt Meeks)  Wikipedia taught me a thing or two about them today.  Their music seems to have influenced some pretty amazing artists--Bowie, Iggy Pop, & Stereolab, to name a few. I had to cut dance time short this morning to make an acupunture appointment, but I got a solid 10 minutes in to a tune called 'Hallogallo'.  As repetitive as the song was, I never really grew bored of it.  I liked the how the driving rock beat served as an anchor that allowed the guitar to kind of wander off & find its way back, & then stray again.  The beat felt solid & confident, Rolling Stones-ian.  My hips snapped back & forth, & my shoulders followed suit.  I did a lot of rockin' out rythmic nodding, as well; & I'm usually not that agreeable in the morning.  My hips grew more adventurous as the song went on, with some circles & a little thrust action--ala Garth in Wayne's World to Hendrix.  Perhaps a little sexier, as I called on some tips from my Cardio Burlesque exercise video.

All in all, I headed out the door in a pretty good mood.  And acupuncture helped solidify that.  I loved my acupunturist gal today, even though she & I had no flow to our whispered dialogue whatsoever.  She would ask me a question & I'd begin to answer, & then she's pipe in, thinking I was done, realizing--nope, not quite.  Then there would be a three-mississippi pause, when neither of us was sure who should speak.  Then we'd start talking at the same time.  Luckily, both of us seemed to be amused by our graceless conversation skills.  It sort of felt like learning to kiss, minus the angst. 

My  very favorite part of the appointment was about 20 minutes after the needles had been put in.  Generally, I become very relaxed during acupuncture & travel to some zen place where I'm not asleep, but I'm not awake either.  Or I actually doze off.  Today I felt calm, but undeniably awake and alert, so I was looking around the room at paintings, ceiling fans, & pillows.  Suddenly the acupuncturist appeared from across the room & I instinctively snapped my eyes shut, as if frightened that she would find me anything less than in a tranquil coma.  I immediately realized how idiotic this was & opened my eyes.  Then the whole thing seemed extraordinarily hilarious, so I closed my eyes tightly & concentrated really hard on not laughing out loud & disturbing my fellow acupunturees.   

After acupuncture, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting my best friend for lunch at Outpost, & I was thoroughly delighted by her sleep-deprived silliness & the urban slang she has consciously picked up from a new friend.  Uber lovely afternoon, all in all.

I briefly descended into some PMSy, achey jointy, oh-the-hopelessness-of-it-all state around 4:00, but was lifted out of it easily by this guy named Dion.  The greatest thing in the world to do on Valentine's Day is to mercilessly tickle Dion, I've decided. I love that he sees us as the sort of couple who will not stoop to celebrate Valentine's Day because it's so trite & commercial.  But I think he wanted to make sure I was on the same page (I was) because he did some hilarious thinking out loud.  Some of it was on-purpose funny, & I think a bit of it may have been accidentally funny.  You sort it out.  Here are a few separate, loose quotes I decided to make into a single Dion monologue: "Baby, do you want to do anything for Valentine's Day? We're not Valentine's Day people, are we?  It's not a real holiday. How about I make guacamole for Valentine's Day?  Let's have sex tonight.  Or wait....should we not do it on principle, because it's Valentine's Day.  We'll do it, but we won't tell anyone!!!"  End scene.

Holy shit I love that guy.

Later on I taught a water aerobics class that only one gal showed up for.  It was laidback & fun.

After class I stopped by my parents' house for a visit.  My mom had a little Valentine's Day care package for me: a little vase with a single red rose & a bag of chocolates.  My mom is about the sweetest person in the world, I'd wager.  She told me she had bought a dozen roses for my dad, but didn't sign the card.  She just put them in a vase & when he asked who they were from she shrugged & said there wasn't a name on the card.  So far Pops hasn't figured out that the flowers were for him & from mom.  I wish this were a cute little story about my mom lovingly teasing my dad & my dad being adorably clueless. But it's more a story of a marriage that is far from perfect, & a wife who knew that this was the only way there would be flowers in the house on valentine's day.  The dynamics of a marriage, of a family, are complicated to say the least.  But in some ways, everything is sort of simple.  People need to know they are loved & appreciated.  Whatever heavy burden you are carrying, from time to time, set it down.  The weight will be waiting for you when you're done showing the person you love how much they mean to you.  I have plenty of my own demons that I battle every fucking day.  But I know that I'm not going to let the bullshit raging in my head keep me from showing the people I love that they are loved.  That is never going to be something those close to me have to guess at.  And I think that's a decent first step to.....something.  Happiness?  
        

        

The First Flail

Well, I did half of my strange little experiement/resolution this morning.  I woke up, had a little something to eat, & then I queued up my music & danced!  My plan to blog about the experience immediately thereafter didn't quite pan out, but I'm doing it now....that's something.

Today's musical selection was the album Reptilians by Starfucker. Tracks 1 through 10 added up to approximatedly 30 minutes of dance-stuff for this drowsy gal.  My schedule of late has been: wake up around 10:30 a.m. & fall asleep around 2 a.m.  So it was something of a miracle that I woke up around 6:45 this morning and stayed up to dance around. 

I thought that I'd have jostled myself out of my sleep-transe 10 minutes into dancing, but that was not the case today.  My brain fog didn't lift until much later in the day--midway through teaching water aerobics this afternoon.  My dancing was begrudging and heavy-footed, not the joyful, bouyant celebration I had hoped for.  Granted, it takes my joints longer than most to loosen up when I get out of bed, thanks to ehlers-danlos syndrome.  Feel free to look the condition up yourself, as I am not in the mood to expound upon it this evening.  Or stay tuned to future posts, as I'm sure the topic with be a recurring one & that I will delve at some point.  Suffice it to say, this morning's pain levels were quite high, & my dancing certainly reflected this.  Dancing is a generous way of putting what I was doing;  more accurately I was performing a slow, surly trudge around the apartment.  Eventually it became, if not dancing, at least rhythmic movement--side steps with cautious hip-dips & sweeping arms, occasionally weaving through the air in some wannabe tribal exaltation.

There were a few strange pockets of time while dancing to Starfucker that I felt a sort of percussive emptiness in my temples and in the pit of my stomach.  I could feel my pulse as finite, beating toward an end.  These valleys seemed to happen during the songs that were not sung. A man antiseptically recited sad, existential spoken-word pieces over music.  It's really no surprise that I fell into this melancholy, surreal landscape. I looked up some of the lyrics later....they weren't, uh, cheerful:

 "If you are aware of a state which you call 'is,'
Or reality, or life, this implies another state called 'isn't.'
or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness, or death.

There it is, you can't know one without the other.
And so, as to make life poignant,
It's always got to come to an end.
That is exactly, don't you see, what makes it lively.
Liveliness is change, is motion.
And motion is going 'nnnnnnneeeeeaaw!,' like this,
See, they fall out.
You can see you are always at the place where you always are,
Only, it keeps appearing to change"  

The lyrics were apt on a lot of levels-- some obvious (dance=motion) & some slightly more subtle & supremely uncomfortable.  All of the things I'm striving to set into motion here: waking earlier & with dance & then writing about the experience- each of those things I seek to change in myself represents some kind of fear that I carry inside me. 1) Getting out of bed and facing a host of life's problems with an uncooperative body, which is at it's most stubborn upon waking. It's certainly easy to sink deeper into my blankets & postpone life/pain. 2) Dancing is a conversation with my body, & it's going to be a different one every day.  The pain increases and it decreases.  And it moves around.  Yesterday it may have been in my neck and shoulders, predominantly.  Today, my feet are giant knots and my wrist is throbbing.  I want to scream at my body, to MAKE it work.  Or I want to ignore it, because I know it will not function the way I want it to, & it is too frustrating & overwhelming to even begin to address.  Dancing is a way to check-in with where I'm at at to coax a little healing into the places that need it.  I can zero in on the stiff, painful areas & try to move them in a way that feels okay, & then I can zoom out again and try to enjoy & expereince my body as a whole, to feel the amazing elaborate concert of it, working together & doing not-so-bad, considering.  3) The writing is the most difficult part of it all, because my impulse is to keep a tight clamp on all the pain & wild emotions, lest they spill out & refuse to obediently go back IN!  The invariable onslaught of raw emotion is acutely painful to me, & I need to find ways to let it out in manageable rivulets.  The flood of it hurts like fire, & is destructive like fire.  It is difficult to make writing a productive & restorative thing for me.  But I'm hoping to learn.  And I think I will if I stay with it.

This is nothing like what I expected to write.  I thought I would  talk about how when I began dancing today, I was in the living room, directly in front of the picture window, & when I looked out, I saw that my boyfriend's ex had just pulled up in front of the house (duplex.  she lives downstairs.  that is a tale for another day), & I was clearly visible to her.  I dance-shuffled into the bedroom & awkwardly boogied there for a bit.  I thought I'd remark on how foolhardy beginning this dance-blog untertaking while in the throes of major weepy PMS. 

I will talk about all sorts of stuff in this blog.  I'm not going to plan, censor, or edit it in any way.  Some days it will probably be funny & amusing, & other days, it will undoubtedly be a place to cry & rage & hopefully find some meaning & humor mixed in with the pain as I document it.  If you've made it this far, I'm truly impressed.  Stop by again some time.