The Ick is has gone into remission. The Stillness is not in sight.
I have already vacuumed and broken said vacuum. But instead of making that into an epic tragedy in three parts I have decided that it will be a problem for tomorrow and today I will finish the list of tasks.
Today will be another day of timer productivity. I will be a busy happy beaver.
Someone decided that when you are an adult, you are no longer allowed to be frivolous joyful or silly. Such things are for the young. Who decided this???
Then the Judgy Asshats took it a step further and summarily included bright colors, tight clothes, revealing tops, and edgy outfits in the “Too Young” category.
If you feel good in clothing that is predominantly worn by young women, then dammit, wear it! If you love bright colors, glitter and random feathers flaunt that stuff! You want to wear your Star Wars Lightsaber – go for it!
If you enjoy wearing the current fads and you feel good in them, then flash that shit around and ignore every small minded bitch who comments behind your back or to your face. Fashion is fun, and the funkier it is the more fun it is.
There is an AMAZING bit of film on 5 women whose average age is 80. They understand. If you don’t, go watch them.
You might have decided from this post that I am walking around in some wild and wonderful outfits. Alas, this is not the case. My tastes tend toward the conservative and my depression depletes the energy it takes to look fabulous. But I do enjoy glitter, blue nail polish and am constantly considering dying my hair blue.
I do have a 50 something friend who has the lithe body of reminiscent of a teenager. She looks 15 years younger than she is. She works hard at it and she wears clothes and styles that highlight it. And every jealous bitch out there tells her she is dressing too young. Its all about jealousy not about reality.
I describe living with depression as living in an abyss.
I am at the bottom of a very deep hole, its dark, the sides are very hard to climb and in the middle of the bottom of the hole is a horrible black lake.
Because Depression is not a static condition, where I am in the Abyss describes where I am in the mental illness.
Sometimes I am underwater in the middle middle of a black lake at the bottom of by Abyss. I spent nearly two years in bed without a job and this eventually turned into homelessness. I was underwater during most of that time.
And sometimes I’m on the shore of the lake unable to muster the energy to try climbing the walls. When I first got a job while homeless, this is how I felt.
And sometimes, most of the time these days, I’m climbing up the walls toward the surface. For the last year, I have been trying to figure out a system to get the fuck out of the hole. Or at least spend more time near the top, where there is at least some light.
Sometimes I get to the edge of the surface. I can see grand vistas of normal life before I slip back in. Sometimes these moments only last for a few hours, recently they have lasted for a few days.
I dream of getting out of the Abyss and walking away from the hole. Too far away to fall back in. This is probably a fairytale, but I dream of it anyway.
I always believed in you.
In a particular future.
I hadn’t met you.
I just knew you were part of the sequence of my life.
But the moments kept slipping away.
And the time never arrived.
Fate never sought out our meeting.
And I never looked.
And then the doubts began to echo in silent places.
Uncertainty slipped out of the future,
And into the my life.
Denial of doubt began screaming,
Hiding in the denial of the belief.
But the mobius loop of denial eventually broke.
And now my fated future is recognized as an illusion.
Now that future is merely a world visited and not lived in.
Now my escape is fantasizing about you,
A man who never came.
Because he was never supposed to.
When faced with the decision about how to cast my vote, I look at it the way I looked at hiring an employee. First I have define what experiences and abilities are needed to be successful at the job.
Then I look at what I want them to accomplish in the position.
Beyond their political stance – I want the person I vote for to have certain character traits and abilities that make them a good President.
The last one means that I have to define where I think the country should go and how important each of the issues is to me. Which is another blog post.
OK. I got some pushback on the idea that Marriage is overrated. So I thought I would expand on my thoughts a bit.
This is what marriage becomes:
That is not the recipe for marital bliss.
Here’s the ideal relationship:
Yes, But what about Children?
If you want to pro-create, fine. Create a contract and set of rules. You don’t have to be in the same house when you raise the child together. Its just been done that way in the past because it was necessary. Its not necessary anymore. Just like its not necessary to ride a horse to get across town. Times change and you can change too.
Here’s the best part, if you don’t tie marriage to having children, then the father doesn’t have to be the man you are in love with, does it? It can be your best friend, or it can be ANYONE you think you can have a good child rearing partnership with. Tell me why can’t you and your best friend decide to raise a family together? The contract doesn’t have to be with someone of the opposite sex. It doesn’t have to involve the genetic parents at all. Sperm banks are everywhere. Heck, if you are a woman, free sperm donation is available at any bar in America. (Although I don’t really recommend this course of action.) Foster Children are waiting. Adoption is available.
My point is this. Stop thinking like you always thought, and think like an individual with a multitude of choices. Marriage is the most limiting choice you can make.
You won’t have to be trapped:
If you aren’t married or living together you always have choices. You don’t have the trapped, paralyzed, frozen in a life feeling. How many people do you know who are struggling in a marriage or live-in relationship but feel that leaving it is so HUGE.
Sure, a long term relationship without living together is still going to be incredibly painful when it ends, and some part of you is identified with it, but its not going to be nearly the devastation and loss involved in ending a marriage or live in relationship.
Changing your dating relationship is several magnitudes easier to manage and get over than marriage/live in.
The fun side of the permanent dating relationship:
Finally, what’s the big hurry?
If you don’t have marriage as a destination then there is no more desperation. You can actually choose a decent person to be with. No settling. No feelings of there won’t be another one in time. You aren’t getting married anyway. Remember?
Seriously, this is what I really mean.
The real reason why I advocate remaining mostly single: You are you. This is mostly a female viewpoint, but when women get married they become Mrs. And I mean that psychologically. Many women feel incomplete, less than whole, unattractive and generally worthless without a man. Even those who can’t identify with that statement very strongly, feel it at some level because we have thousands of years of culture to reinforce the idea.
Remain single and over time you realize that who you are is good without marriage. That another person is not in any way going to make you a whole person. That support comes from lots of places and expecting support from one person is both unfair and a recipe for disappointment. That you can support yourself financially and there is something incredibly self reliant and freeing in being the only source of your support. That life is not what cultures define, its what you do.
I am not vehemently anti-marriage.
I recognize that there are advantages to it. In fact, I realize that having a supportive spouse would probably have helped me with managing my mental illness. A good marriage is a built in support system.
I realize that its not likely that most people will see my viewpoint. Even the most liberal among us still get married or live together. There are many supportive and enjoyable relationships in marriages. But I think there are times when the marriage is endangering even the strongest of those great relationships. I think my viewpoint is the future. In 150 years marriage will probably be an anachronism in many parts of the world.
“Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment. ”
~Grenville Kleiser
I hate this cliched overly simplistic statement with a loathing that seems at odds with its intention. It represents an abysmal lack of understanding of what being seriously and deeply sick with depression and anxiety is all about.
It makes me despair that any of my real life family or friends will ever understand my illness or that they will ever forgive me.
Kleiser is dead but this sentiment keeps dogging us. If I could call up his spirit I would do it just so I could slap the shit out of him. In fact if I could build a field of dreams I would do one just for all the fuckers who built the train tracks to the train station of positivity – I’m looking at you Normal Vincent Peale. And then I would I would just start to rant at them.
Sadly, you will have to do as stand-ins.
I know, I sound like big pile of negativity when I say these things. But idiots spout this crap at people who are struggling with depression and anxiety. Apparently they think its just a switch in our heads. Just turn on the SMILE!
When this is said, there is an implication that because we aren’t turning on that positive switch, this entire illness is just our fault. Its a character flaw. We must actually WANT to depressed/anxious or we would just be good humored!
People think we’re just sad or being downers. ’Just think Positive!’ they say.
Yeah. Thinking isn’t really the problem, is it? Positive, negative, – any thought at all will come and even roost for awhile. But it still doesn’t make any actual movement happen. No motivation is delivered with it. No changes.
No happiness takes root because I think of happy things or funny things. I may laugh, and even smile. I may even feel hope occasionally. But it is fleeting moment and overwhelmed by apathy and despair.
You CANNOT think your way out of Depression and Anxiety. I know. I’ve spent years trying. Depression is a sickness of thinking. Overthinking. Ruminating on things. Cogitating. Sometimes we even have positive thoughts. Shocking, isn’t it?
But these thoughts positive, negative, weird, horrible, funny, insightful… They never actually result in a change in our lives. Because the thoughts live in one place and they never connect to the part of our brain where action happens. Its like there is a big canyon between the idea and the action.
Anxiety will take you into thinking holes that your rational brain can distantly see are NOT issues, but a stronger part of your brain is funneling in an emotional ick with these thoughts and now you are swimming is an sewer of fear and horror. We don’t invite those emotions into the brain, they show up and they don’t go away when we smile. Instead they can start to take over our bodies and then we have REAL physical symptoms of the horror show that is going on in our heads.
Depression comes with an apathy that is so deeply etched into our brains that many people with depression will tell you that it didn’t occur to them that this utter lack of interest was not right. That’s the trick of depression. It makes what it completely abnormal seem like its just normal.
Nor do the random positive thoughts turn all of it into a wave of serenity and contentment.
The longer you struggle against depression and anxiety the more if feels like a monster with endless tentacles that pull you back just when you feel like you might have gotten a foothold to get out.
When you say these sorts of “Smile!” “Be Positive!” things to us, you are showing how utterly invisible our struggle is to you. How our incredible battles with minor things are trivial to you.
But to us, these things, these tiny things that are everyday matters to you – they are HUGE. There are people in the world right now who are proud that they took out the garbage today. That was their triumph. For most people its just one of dozens of everyday tasks they do and so they don’t get it.
People think if we would just smile it will get better. It won’t. Please believe me.
Saying those things reiterates the feeling of isolation and self hatred in the mentally ill. It announces that this is my fault, because if I would just think the right thing this will all go away. But it doesn’t go away when I think positive, so I am a failure, I am not trying hard enough, I am not good enough at smiling.
That’s what happens when you tell someone with a mental illness to be positive.
It’s an insidious and well intentioned cruelty.
Life can often be frustrating and frightening and overwhelming and rage inducing. Or is that just my life?
Anyway, when it reaches the point where I want to implode I often want to escape to pleasant place.
One of my hidey holes is Frank Capra’s movie – You Can’t Take It With You with Jimmy Stewart. Try it.
Its like being cuddled in a down comforter but with a movie. Its silly and funny and heartwarming and thoroughly entertaining. I want desperately to move into the Sycamore household and just live there forever. 
On the one hand is my romantic, imagination driven mind. Its filled with elves, and monsters and heroes and gods and evil doers and magic. I want that world to be real. I want all the possibilities of that world. Because in that world is so much more color and soul and life. But this world isn’t real. It just exists in my imagination.
On the other hand is my logical, critical mind. I look for evidence, I assume the simplest answer to the mystery is probably the correct one, that science, not magic will solve problems. That miracles are just nature unrevealed. I live this life out loud. This mind that makes my decisions and scoffs at myths and magic. But I find this world sad because its all too predictable.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate everything about logic or a critical view of the world. I’m naturally curious and I love that I can know at least partly the why and how of most things that cross my mind.
But in this real world, I will never see a fairy. I will never see a werewolf. I will never find a unicorn. I will never converse with gods. And I will never wish upon a star and get eternal life, or super strength or any other sundry of things.
But in my imagination, those thing are real. And in my daydreams I live and play among the myths and the magic. I like that world better.
It's a Thought 