Work In Progress

Imagine you have been an at amusement park all day, wandering the park, going on rides, eating and the park is closing and you are heading home.  Half way home you suddenly get this weird feeling and reach for your wallet.  It's not in your pocket, or your purse.  You pull over and it's not in the car.  You rack your brain to remember the last time you had it in your hand.  You remember setting it on the toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom. OMG, maybe you left it there.     Ok so that, that right there, that stomach flip feeling of dread, terror, guilt, self-deprecation, fear, your mind racing to how you will possibly replace all your ID, cancel your credit cards, THAT is the feeling I have been living with every morning when I wake up. It's a new experience.  The other two times I have been off work, trying to unspool my doom spirals, I was always able to get up in the morning.  It's possible, I got up those times because I had somet...

I have been browsing my writing. Just a few samples here and there. Noting the gaps--like the big one where I posted on the eve of 2020 not knowing a global pandemic would shut down the world and then didn't post again until just last week. Feels like that would have been a good time to write. During a pandemic.  Write about survival mode, collecting oldest and his gf from their rental to camp out in our basement bedroom for five months, the middle home as college was closed and R and I getting a week to figure out how to be online college instructors. There were days of washing groceries, yelling at my mom and step-dad to get their asses home from Florida before the boarder closed and scouring the internet for toilet paper and masks. It was exhausting and scary and bitterness flowed unhampered at every #qualitytimewiththekiddos" posting of crafts and puzzles and tiktok dances from those who found themselves at home, not working.  It was all hands on deck at our place wi...

"It's normal.  Totally normal.  Like me, you are passionate about your job and Monday to Friday, working, has been the framework that's defined you.  And now it is gone, while you are off work, doing this other work, this really really important work, on you.  Weekends and weekdays don't hold the same meaning.  It can feel really scary...you feel out of control.  I use a big print calendar on my wall to help with that sense of floating around.  It helps, some." She looked at me skeptically.  "Yeah, well it makes me feel like I have become stupid. Sometimes I feel like everything is on pause and then fast forward....." "I feel that way too.  One of my therapists in big on mindfulness, and she has helped me understand how my biggest challenge is accepting how things are--right now, today---life on play so to speak.  I can't rewind and fix the past, I can't fast forward through all this hard stuff I need to go through to get well...

In 1998 it was bi-polar type II. In 2012 it was Major Depressive Disorder with Anxiety. Now in 2024 it's bi-polar type III (which I didn't even know existed). Is this a cycle thing? A result of supressing the whole COVID thing? Left over hormonal menopause issue? How did I end up here again---off work---depressed and anxious, in the ER---weighing my options between swallowing a million pills or carving up my wrists in the tub. I don't want to be like this. Which turns into I don't want to be. It's a scary shit show and every place I seek help is throwing darts at a possible medicinal solution to get me back to my overperforming, perfectionist, self back on the stage at the front of a classroom. "You can't expect medicine to solve it all!" Yeah, I can hear you thinking that. I've been in therapy for six months now---as often as once a week and am currently juggling two therapists as I try something new. I used to know this stuff. I regu...

It's hard to not feel helpless on this planet most days.  Or maybe more accurately, it is hard to feel at all.  What would happen if we actually put down our phones, stopped scrolling, drinking, eating, shopping, Insta-ing to just sit and allow ourselves to notice..... what humans do to each other in the name of ideology...to our planet, to animals, to themselves.  It's too much.  So we ostrich.  Because there is nothing you can do.  Have another cookie, a beer, a joint, go to sleep, take your meds, suck it up, carry on, hold your breath.....don't worry, it's just until you die. I know it is only a day in the Gregorian calendar---bridging decades---but I can't help but find some significance in the fact that it is going to be 2020 in a few hours and maybe this year we take a very clear look ---at who we want to be. So here it is. My intention.  I throw it out there, by the handful, into the wind,  like so much confetti and hope ...

"What day is it? I can't seem to hold on to days any more. It's really bothering me."  My new friend M asks, shading her eyes to squint at me as we pause beside a swollen stream on our spring walk.  Trees reach out to each other above our heads, the path hugged by budding greenery, spotlights of sun dancing on the earth at our feet. I chuckle softly. My problem had always been the opposite.  I had a firm grasp on the days. Monday November 26, 2012 - The day I was admitted to the adult mental health ward. Monday October 6, 2014 - Returned to work.  March 11, 2016 - The day the darkness loomed so great I left work again to save myself. How could I have changed all the moments that led up to those days?  Now that I am unemployed, what will my future days look like? "It's my favorite day.  It's today," I reply with a smile.   I can tell she is not happy with that answer.  

One of the things my psychiatrist noted in her update to my insurance company was that I had been able to spend a few hours a day at my "desk" which seemed like a step forward.   What she failed to note was that "at desk" time could be interpreted by the insurance company  as "doing something productive/can concentrate".   The reality is "at desk time" is spent doing one of two things: Writing here. (AKA brain dump) Or Flipping frantically back and forth between a series of websites in an obsessive compulsive sort of manner.  What pets are up for adoption at the shelter now?  (Oh this is how I got three dogs....) Any insurance requests for information?  Refresh, refresh, refresh. Oooo look a 24 hour sale on cruises. Wonder if they have posted any new animals for adoption..... Are there vacancies at the campsite I went to last year? E-MAIL CHECK---nothing ok so ....FACEBOOK CHECK. Ohhh cute kitty video---and look at...