personal history

Day 11 Of My So-Called Retreat

Yeah…..It’s more like I’ve been retreat-ish; still have my toes in the water…

The damn news. News of what’s going on “out there”. It’s an itch I can’t quit scratching.

I’ve been good about not getting on FaceBook or Instagram. But I’m still in the habit of scrolling through my news feed on my phone and of pulling up YouTube on my computer. It’s a terrible habit. It’s a time stealing, sleep-delaying habit. At least I’m just reading the headlines (for the most part, though some articles will draw me in…argh); I’ll hit “save” to read later…I can tell just from the headlines whether or not it’s gonna stress me out and that’s really the thing that I’ve been trying to retreat from: the stress. I’m specifically retreating from the anger and frustration and dismay and anxiety that inevitably results from that stress. The stress that humanity gives me.

I’m happy to report that my stress actually is down though – just from the little bit of retreat I’ve managed so far.

I think one big factor in reducing it has been getting outdoors. What they say is true, people! Touch that grass!! Get out into Nature!!! Even if that nature is your tiny, oddly shaped backyard in a city neighborhood which needs a lot of work. But only if it isn’t swelteringly hot and humid…because that situation will just wilt your psyche and make you cranky as hell. I’m not so sure, now that I think on it, that the zombies in “The Walking Dead” became zombified because of a virus or more because of the god-awful climate of the South. Anyway, I’ve been taking advantage of the cooler temperatures of Spring and trying to “make hay while the sun shines” as the old saying goes. Trying to work towards creating a little backyard oasis in which to…yes…retreat when needed … not just for me, but for my family. It’s something positive to do.

My psychologist observed something about me in my last visit, that I don’t think I’d ever realized fully about myself. She said, while encouraging me on this path to cocoon myself in order to repair my mental health, “I know, you want to save the world…” She called me an “activist”, because I care about social issues.

A couple of friends of mine and I have joked in the past about us getting together at our little klatsches in order to fix the world’s problems, but it’s funny that I’ve never actually thought of myself as someone who wants to do that. And I know that I’ve never thought of myself as an “activist”. But my psychologist is onto something about me. In my mind, and in the words of other people throughout my life, it’s more like I’ve always just been overly sensitive, a “goody-goody”, taken things too seriously, just cared too much. But, the way she put it…”wanting to save the world”. She distilled it out of my well of distress. That has been my “problem” for a long, long, long time, I think. And maybe I’m starting to feel a bit lighter because it’s finally sinking in that I can’t do that. There’s no way I can do that. There’s no way any one human being can do that.

“But I can do something about the one in front of me…” My dad’s favorite line from a story about someone who was told they couldn’t save all the lost and distressed creatures they ran across…

Yup. It is true. You can do something about the life that crosses your path. And the life that is most immediately in front of me is mine.

Car Thoughts

My husband is one of those people who cannot drive anywhere without music playing. Before he pulls out of any parking space, he has to make sure he has his playlist synced with the bluetooth in the car; and if he can’t have his own music going for whatever reason, he has to have a radio station on. It can’t be talk radio though – it has to be music. He needs a soundtrack.

I used to be one of those people. But as I got older, I got sick of the music stations and all of their schticks – commercials, banter, suckier music, etc. – and sometimes found myself wanting to listen to the news instead. Even after I joined Spotify, figured out the car bluetooth thing and had my song playlists, I felt pulled more toward things like NPR, Podcasts, and Audio books. Why the talk and not the music?? After all, I love music and just about all genres of music, in almost any language and culture, with only a few exceptions (really heavy metal and most country…but even then, I can find a few songs I like…) Music is one of the wonderful, enjoyable, beautiful things about human life. Music has been a comfort throughout my existence. But more and more, I don’t necessarily need it playing in the background, whether in the car or even at home. And more and more, I find myself not even listening to anything at all…not even the talk.

I drive my teenage son back and forth to school. He still doesn’t have his driver’s license for a couple of reasons right now (nothing criminal, no). He usually wears his headphones so he can listen to his own playlists, and more importantly: not have to interact with me. But even with his headphones, he used to turn the car radio on, and he can’t understand why more and more, I drive with silence. He finds it weird. Though he prefers it to when I attempt conversation with him. And my husband as well can’t understand not having anything playing at all. And one reason occurred to me this morning: my brain is like a radio when I’m driving. Well, also anywhere else, but mostly when I’m driving. Whether I’ve got some song on repeat in my head, or I’m having some sort of dialogue with myself, musing about one thing or another, it’s constant chatter, constant noise. So, no, I don’t need the extra…I’m just chasing thoughts around and those thoughts are loud and distracting enough already.

Anyway, one thing that has always bothered me about my thoughts while driving is that I can’t stop to write them down. And I don’t know why I have had this need to write down my thoughts, get them out of my head, discuss them with others, even way before I ever learned to drive…I only know that I have. And the thoughts I have while driving always seem to be the thoughts I want to explore further…the epiphanies, the connections, the curiously odd ones, the philosophical ones…. and by the time I get home, it feels like I’ve been down so many rabbit holes already, through all the connecting tunnels, that I’m already forgetting what I wanted to hold onto.

So, here I am, grabbing a coffee, after returning home from dropping him off at school…and documenting the fragments to maybe explore at a later date: God as Consciousness, Consciousness beginning with Language, or is it the other way around? The Word manifesting (as they say), Humans need to constantly communicate, Why do we do it, Misinterpretation of language, The problems of conveying feelings through words, back to God as consciousness – How our brains process everything, The universe looking like a network of neurons, God as Universe, The impossibility of humans being Godly or God-like, though we keep striving because our religions say we need to, but the impossibility of that because…Human, Why do we regard some people as more intelligent than other people? Why do we think of some people’s opinions more important than other people’s? The constant human need to Understand Things, to Connect…Communication being a process of sharing and judging thoughts, Thoughts leading to actions or to inactions, The physical world vs. the intellectual world and the interplay between the two, back to the Intellectual being part of Consciousness, back to God as consciousness, reason….The Macro and the Micro, and what lies in between….Life is everything being connected and yet everything being separate experiences at THE SAME TIME….Time and Consciousness being related…Parenthood…(Yup. Mind jumps around like that…but it IS related)…Creation…Universal creation…What effects what? What do we really know? Why do we keep wanting to know? Everything matters and nothing matters…Human beings as Thought Sifters…..Thought Sifters, hmmm….God as Thought….back to that….Energy….Where Energy fits in…My father’s theory of God being Gravity….Humans are weird, Human experience is weird, (as opposed to what other living organisms’ experience, right?…or as opposed to God’s experience?) and we’re all just trying to get each other through it….

Everything Everywhere All At Once. There’s more than one reason that I loved that movie. The title alone describes my mental state.

But why does it always get activated most while I’m in the car, when I should be paying more attention to the road?

Anyone need a ride?

Retreating more…

At the beginning of this month (so, 3 days ago), I set myself the challenge of ghosting social media, as well as mainstream media, and seeing if it would help my state of mind at all.

How it’s going so far:

1)Been waking up pretty crabbily. (Not that I’ve been a person who ever, ever, cheerfully wakes up). Can’t say that my mood has improved much. It might actually be getting a bit worse.

2) In terms of dedication to this challenge, it has been slightly difficult. Not so much with the FaceBook or Instagram: I manage to catch myself whenever, out of sheer habit, I click the apps on my phone, and I quickly back out. But with my news feed, or on my computer, it’s been far harder. Getting out of the habit of seeing what’s happening in the greater world is so ingrained in me that the anxiety of not knowing what is happening lately is just as great as the anxiety of knowing . I’ve been peeking.

3) I’m wondering if my irritability is a side-effect, like withdrawal from any addiction.

Now, there were many mitigating factors to my state of mind that have been in play for several months (hell, who am I kidding? Years!)…that I don’t have the energy right now to get into….which made me embark on this effort. It’s all been feeding into this current mood swing of wanting to isolate and retreat. And I know that I’ve had a tendency to do that anyway whenever I’m depressed. But this time feels very different. I’m not really depressed, per se. I don’t want to end my life. I don’t hate life. I still see many things to appreciate and enjoy, and do. But I’m just not so sure anymore that I care to be as involved with anything outside of my immediate environs, i.e., my family and my home and wherever I happen to physically find myself. If it isn’t within 20 feet of me, or if it doesn’t involve someone I am personally acquainted with, (and, even then, if that thing does not involve me at all…) do I really care to know anymore?? That’s how I’m feeling. Unlike my lifelong feelings of depression, I know precisely from where this sentiment has developed….Namely, Disappointment and Disillusionment…and possibly Disgust. (More about that another time).

Anyhow, many people, especially those in my immediate vicinity, keep advising to step away from social media and the news of the world. They say that it will reduce the stress and anxiety. So, that is a piece of advice I have decided to put to the test.
And in addition to seeing how it affects me, we will see if those who advised me to let go will be relieved or appreciative of the fact that I did….

Retreating

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, The Internet in general….Those are the main ways that I’ve been engaging with the world ever since I became pregnant, “quit working”, and chose to stay home to take care of my kids.

I’m of the generation that still remembers the main way of getting news of the world: in print, on radio, on TV. I grew up seeing my parents reading the morning paper, listening to news stations on the radio, getting magazine subscriptions in the mail, watching the nightly news broadcasts on television. And, more often than not, I was right there with them, reading and listening and watching.

I’m an only child. I find that a lot of us tend to be rather “bookish”. Without siblings to distract or annoy us or to follow around, our parents are often our main companions and role models. Who else are you going to argue with, discuss things with, learn from? (Well…for those of us only children who are not complete extroverts, anyway). So, being informed about what was happening around the world was obviously, based upon the behavior and talk of my parents, very important. It was simply a part of being educated. And education was of the utmost importance. How did one stay educated? Well, reading was a huge part.

One would read, and yes, listen and watch, and then one would discuss the things that you read and heard and saw with actual live people you knew and encountered in your life: friends, family, teachers, fellow students, co-workers; sometimes with strangers on buses, in waiting rooms, in lines, at the park, wherever…Oftentimes, on the phone. Because that’s where people were. And human communication involved such social things as voice intonation, facial expression, body language, etc…Manners, in general. Sometimes this communication was civil and sometimes it was not. I think we really tried to be civil though, because when you’re face to face with someone, or ear to ear, there is an immediate feedback, an immediate, physically felt, response.

It wasn’t just the news of the world you would share with each other either. It was news of what was going on with you personally. That’s the stuff we really enjoyed talking with each other about, more than anything probably.

And all of the above communication involved time. It took us a lot more effort back then. We had to fact-check, with multiple sources, often involving print-based media, which took more than just a few minutes or seconds, and sometimes involved miles of travel to arrive at its destination for distribution. We had to pick up a phone, engage in conversation that could meander off-topic and back. We had to edit, and re-edit. Question and re-question.

With the advent of the Internet and “social media”, obviously, things have rapidly changed. I haven’t been sure for a long while now how I feel about it. I know I’m not the only one. I know I certainly can’t speak for kids who have grown up with it and who don’t know anything about the “before” times… All I can speak to is what the experience is for those of us who can remember and how this strange new world of communication has affected us. The thing is: how it affects us has been affecting them. They see us, they watch us, they imitate us, they note what seems important to us, how we get our information, how much time we spend on it….

I’ve digressed…as I am wont to do….because I really started out thinking about how I’m embarking on a month-long quest to completely ignore Facebook and Instagram (luckily I never got mired down in Twitter or SnapChat or other platforms – FaceBook and Instagram were enough trouble in themselves) and also to try ignoring the news of the world. Yes, I am going to attempt to do something that used to feel like heresy, like anathema, to me – retreat, somewhat, into ignorance. I’m going to retreat into my own immediate world. Why? Because with the advent of all this new technology and means of communication, the personal has merged with the political (world events) to an extent that I feel has never existed before. Yes, as my dad and others have always said, “the personal is political and vice versa”…But, also, as my mom has always believed, “it’s all in God’s hands”…

In other words, I’m realizing that in this era when the Internet has brought all the info, all the communication, all the things, at full throttle directly into our faces at all times, from everywhere and everyone, because I am someone who cares maybe a bit more than the average, and because I am not God-like in being able to actually do anything about any of it, and because this caring about what happens and this caring about information feels so damn overwhelming that it has essentially paralyzed me for years and years now… I need to face the things I can actually take action on…my own little piece of this world…and only this piece: my physical life, the physical lives of my family and small circle of friends. The world is too much of a distraction….an extremely scary distraction right now.

Faking It

“Fake it until you make it”.
“If you forget your part, or lose your place, just fake it”.
That first statement is one that most everyone has heard. Not sure who to attribute it to.  The second statement is something that our high school band director would advise us whenever we were participating in school symphonic band competitions.  “What people always remember during a concert is the beginning and the ending.  Have a strong opening and a strong close and in between, if you personally get messed up, just fake it until you can catch up”.  Although, if you happened to be a soloist, that advice didn’t work so well.  Hard to hide mistakes if you were the only one up there making noise.

People who are depressed are actually quite good at faking happiness and general “normalcy”.  For whatever reasons, it feels like an adrenaline push to conceal the truth whenever out in public spaces.  And it is EXHAUSTING.   It’s probably much like how wounded and sick animals will try to hide themselves or behave as if everything is perfectly fine; they’re just, you know, taking it easy right now.  Pet owners know this.  It isn’t until your cat or dog is actually quite ill, or is not eating or drinking anymore, that you end up at the vets office where they inform you that something is urgent.  “What?? But, he’s been acting like his usual self!”  If animals could actually speak our language, maybe it would be different.  But then again, mammals have an instinct to not appear weak or injured because other mammals tend to attack or shun each other when they behave that way.  They tend to eat one another.  And humans, after all, are mammals.

However, humans are different from other mammals in many other ways.  We have a language that is incredibly nuanced, massively creative, endlessly evolving, and our language can do other things besides warn or beckon or comfort or express joy.   Our language can actually affect our own brains, our own feelings, our own behavior and health.  Our language can influence other human’s brains, feelings, behavior, health, attitudes.

When I was depressed, I couldn’t remember a time when I did not disgust myself; when I was not ashamed of myself; when I did not hate myself.  The playlist in my head, which ran constantly included such hits as “I’m A Failure”, “I Can Never Do Anything Right”, “I Will Never Accomplish Anything”, “I Am Stupid”, “I Am Worthless”, “I Am Too Weird”, “I Don’t Belong Here”, “I Don’t Belong Anywhere”, “I Always Mess Up”, “I’m An Idiot”, “I’m A Fool”, “I Will Never Do Anything Right”, “I Hate Myself”, “I Am A Disgusting Mess”, “Everyone Thinks So Too”…..and so many more! OH SO MANY VARIATIONS!

The psychologist who managed to change things for me made me do something on our very first visit.  It was after my last episode of feeling suicidal – and it was one of my worst episodes.  It was during my first visit with her after getting a reference from my psychiatrist (and after starting back up on a new anti-depressant).  After acknowledging with great sympathy just how broken and shitty I was feeling, she made me do something, which she laughingly told me was “going to feel really stupid and really silly and really corny right now and it’s something no one likes to do”.   She made me say out loud, “I am wonderful”.  I shot her a look.  “We aren’t going anywhere or talking at all until you say it”.  Then she made me say it again with a little more conviction.  I started crying.  She handed me a box of tissue with an encouraging nod and an even more sympathetic face.  Then she told me to say, “I love myself!”.   I indicated that I just really couldn’t fathom uttering those words and she said, “It doesn’t matter if you actually feel it right now, just say it out loud.  Say it because it is perfectly fine to say it!…Let me tell you, I love myself! That’s right! And I’m proud of it! It’s okay to love yourself! It doesn’t mean you think that you are perfect.  NO ONE is perfect. We all have our issues and our flaws….and it’s okay to love ourselves anyway!”

So I did.  With a huge eye roll.
So she made me do it again without the huge eye roll.

“Okay. Now we can begin to get you feeling better…. because you deserve to.”

Basically (and she acknowledges this) it was a form of “fake it ’til you make it” therapy.
And I have to begrudgingly admit that it works.

It’s not like I don’t still get mad at myself, or even have some suicide ideation anymore, but I’ve come to recognize exactly when something has managed to hit the high volume button on those old tunes.

Breaking those 24/7 recordings in your head of all the stuff you hate about yourself and replacing them with soundtracks of kindness and love towards yourself is crucial to being able to get better.  You have to think of yourself as a friend or family member that you love dearly and don’t want to lose.  Would you EVER say those nasty things to them? Of course not! Would you EVER believe those things about them? NO.  And you know exactly why you would never say or think those things about that person?  Yes. You do.  It’s because you LOVE THEM.  You love them despite whatever quirks or issues they have.  And EVERYONE in this world has quirks and issues and flaws and mistakes.  You do not have to be flawless to be loved.  You do not have to be flawless to exist.  You can love your own self.

A lot of depression has to do with chemistry.  I happen to know that well.  A lot of it also has to do with language; namely, the language you use with yourself.  If you can beat yourself down into a pulp with negative language in your head, it stands to reason that you can help to heal yourself with language too.  If you can fake happy language outwardly to other people, why the hell not fake it to yourself?  The only difference is that instead of deceiving other people to make them feel okay, you can change the way you think of yourself in order to actually crawl out of the hold that depression has on you.  And that is worth doing.

It’s hard work because it involves breaking lifelong habits.  But it isn’t impossible.

 

My Intentions Are Always Good

My follow-through is bad.

I’ve never been quite able to figure out why.  I’m suspecting it’s because I’m an ambivert. I just discovered that term this year in an article about introverts and extroverts and new research about them. I was most definitely an introvert when I was younger – or at least I was when I began school. I morphed somewhat into an extrovert later after getting some life experiences under my belt.

 
Perhaps this is where I should insert a link to my favorite Courtney Barnett song, “Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t Go to the Party”,  but instead I’ll just skip to the resonant chorus for me:

“I wanna go out, but I wanna stay home”

And how apropos that song is, indeed, for today.

You see, right about now my daughter and I should be heading out to a wedding across town. Way across town. Normally it would take us about one to one and a half hours to get there (Texas and its’ major cities are big and sprawling, y’all). However, our city happens to have, or rather always seems to have, freeways under construction.  I’d forgotten about that. Until I called my sister-in-law a little bit ago and she said that they were just about to leave because of all the road closures. A little trill of panic fluttered in my chest.

We were going to carpool with them, because my husband, who is the one related to the person getting married, refused to go.  It followed that if my husband was going to stay home, then my son, who has ADHD, was going to stay home as well. Neither of them are particularly social; it’s downright tortuous for them. My husband wasn’t always this bad about it, but he’s still trying to crawl out of the Depression Pit.

I’d already RSVPd for all four of us to attend.  In light of the heel-digging, however, I figured that we’d just say my husband and son were under the weather and my daughter and I would do our best to enjoy ourselves there. The truth is that I did not particularly want to go either.

No. Wait. That’s not entirely true. When we got the invite in the mail, I remember thinking, “Oh! N. is getting married! How nice! Of course we will attend. We haven’t seen them for a long time now”.   I operated with that intention for a couple of months.

No, wait. I’m going to back up again.

I did indeed intend for us to go when we got the “save the date” notice in the mail. Then came the invite to a wedding shower for the bride. About 3 days before the actual event. With no email to respond to. And the wrong phone number.

The bride is on my husband’s side of a very large family. She is the daughter of my husband’s cousin (I can never remember if that makes her his second cousin or his 1st cousin once removed. I forget how that works). She is someone I think of fondly because I remember how cute she was at our wedding and she always sought me out at the infrequent family get-togethers in the past. But since my mother-in-law passed away, those get-togethers where her family’s children and grandchildren are invited are much fewer and farther between.

My husband and his brother have always maintained that they’re never quite sure who is who at these gatherings, aside from the cousins, aunts and uncles that they grew up with. Like I said, it’s a pretty big family and it takes awhile at these reunions to figure out which kid belongs to which person and how they are all related. In other words, we aren’t all that close.  But I give them an A for trying, because they are a lot closer than my dad’s family of seven siblings and all their children who never really even bothered to get together at holidays. My dad says it’s because none of them could last very long in one room without getting into an argument. So, we mostly see them at funerals.

My mother, one of two children, finds this terribly tragic and just plain wrong. She was raised with strict focus on etiquette and the importance of milestones such as birthdays, weddings, graduations, etc. It doesn’t matter what your relationship is with your family members, no matter how you really feel about them, you GO. So, at least my husband’s family makes an attempt.

But when I reached the automated message informing me that the phone number of the family member throwing the shower, the only contact I had for her, was disconnected or no-longer-in-use, I found myself a bit indignant. WHO the hell puts only a phone number on an invite, and a wrong one at that?!?  Since we don’t keep in close contact, it wasn’t like I had any of their information.

Ahhhhhh. But there is Facebook, I have to remind myself. And Facebook is also the reason that I initially suspected that the wrong information was deliberate.

Because, here is the other wrinkle: I am actually “friends” with many of his family members on FB and that is the only way we seem to keep in contact, through “likes” and smiley faces and general posts; much like I do with my dad’s side of the family.  Facebook is actually how our families got to know each other better.  I’m sure that since most people are by this time familiar with, and users of, social media, you can sense how that has gone.  Yeah. Not too pretty!

I never realized how many closeted racists I was related to and how deeply that racism ran. I never realized how fanatical some of my relations were. I didn’t know that they were practically ALL zealous, right-wing, conservatives.  For their part, they never realized I am a liberal die-hard Democrat, a feminist, and embracer of all races.  And they didn’t know how “yappity” I am about it.
I’ve been blocked by, and have blocked, many family members.  On both sides.  You might as well disown someone if you do that because it is basically the internet equivalent.

But back to the wedding issue…

I got over my indignation about the invite because it didn’t really make much sense.  We were set again to attend. I bought the gift and it will be delivered soon. My daughter and I chose what we were going to wear. I was going to run out this morning and get a nice card to leave at the reception. We were going to carpool, as I mentioned.  I had good intentions.  Firm intentions.

Until I woke up quite groggily at eleven a.m. this morning and my daughter woke up even later. You’d think I would have planned better, set my alarm for earlier, right? I did, though. Snooze buttons are a useless invention. My daughter is even worse. She sets her alarm and then sleeps on, oblivious to it for up to hours.  She doesn’t even manage to wake up to hit it!  We are terrible night-owls. I exit sleep at a turtle’s pace. My children are following in my footsteps. (God only knows how we are going to handle it when school starts back soon!!)  I’ve been wondering if I need to get my Adderall refilled.

However,  I still, unrealistically, thought we had time to get ready. And then I called my sister-in-law. And I hadn’t yet had my second, most necessary, cup of coffee; and my teen-age daughter was still in her pajamas; and so was I; and we both needed to take showers; and we both needed to get dressed; and we both needed to put on make-up; and I still hadn’t run out to get that card; and there were so many things that still needed doing while we were gone which I knew my husband wouldn’t do because he was still in bed. I didn’t want to embarrass ourselves by walking into the ceremony half-way. I didn’t want us to show up just to the reception because that seemed too awkward and a little rude somehow.  “Hi!! We only showed up for the chow!!”.  Uh, no.

My husband mumbled from his pillow, “Don’t go. It doesn’t matter. You won’t make it in time anyway. They really won’t notice. You sent a gift and that’s all what it’s about anyway.”  Did I mention yet that my husband is a pretty cynical guy?

My mother will most likely call me tomorrow and ask how the wedding was. I might have to lie to her, because she is the original fount of my sense of guilt and shame. I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m feeling like a horrible, no good, terrible, no-class and very bad person right now.

I said we would go, and we didn’t. My intention was good, but it failed.

I wanted to go, but I ended up staying home.

Am I awful? Am I rude? Am I lame? Am I overthinking this?

Am I the only one who does this? Please tell me no.

It’s really hard being an ambivert.

 

 

 

 

Introspective Lesson No. 1

I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I was going to write about everything. I  was going to write about everything I experienced and noticed about the world and its’ occupants. I was going to create compelling stories and powerful essays!
But mostly I was going to write about THEM. I was going to write about all of THEM who thought I wasn’t smart or smart enough. All of THEM who thought I was weird. All of THEM with whom I did not fit in. All of THEM who couldn’t understand me because I was, actually, smarter than them, better than them! They were shallow and cookie-cutter. They were such sheep. Nay, lemmings!  Conformists all. They didn’t realize how incredibly simple minded and crass, ignorant and, yes, shamefully mean, they were. And I was going to reveal it to them. I was going to SHOW THEM ALL.

I was going to shame everyone who made fun of my love of reading, everyone who teased me for being quiet, everyone who called me a bookworm, as if that was somehow a degrading thing, everyone who said I had my head too much in the clouds. I didn’t consider at the time that since they were not avid readers themselves, that this particular form of revenge would be essentially ineffective.  All the stupid, random, bigoted and boorish utterances that fell from their mouths I would document. I had a special fondness for Harriet the Spy.

They would get “theirs” – oh, ho, ho, yes, they would!!! And in doing so, I guess that I was also searching for those who would, in fact, “get” me. Who would understand and appreciate me. I think I wanted to entertain people too, which was strangely contradictory to my mostly shy nature. I also had a special fondness for Carol Burnett and Erma Bombeck.

And, somehow, this writer’s life was going to be an inherently exciting life. Full of travel balanced with hours of fascinating research in really cool libraries. I was, of course!, going to live in a book lined apartment in New York or Paris or anywhere in Germany. I wanted to “make something of myself’ – on my own terms. In other words, with something that I, myself, held in high regard; something creative and interesting and not the same as everyone else around me.

I was different from THEM.

I was therefore BETTER than THEM.

This has always stuck in a nook in my brain, from one of my favorite books:

“But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam ‘unskilled laughter’ coming from the fifth row. And that’s right – that’s right – God knows it’s depressing….But that’s none of your business, really. …An artist’s concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you.
…

But I’ll tell you a terrible secret – Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know – listen to me, now – don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is?…Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ himself, buddy.”

Zooey. Franny and Zooey , J.D. Salinger

I was a snob.

Current State of My Union

My husband is deeply depressed. Deeply. Depressed.
I, myself, have fought depression almost all of my life and feel like I am dancing on the edge of it every day.
Thank God my medicine works for me! What a couple, right?
He’s my soul mate. But sometimes that can cause some problems.
Our poor kids. They’ve got a pretty crappy gene pool really…Mental Illness, Cancer, Diabetes, Crohn’s Disease….
And although (thank GOD and knock on wood!) they haven’t displayed any terrible signs of trouble – aside from ADHD and a little Anxiety…I’m noticing how our depression is affecting them. And it needs to stop. It’s needed to stop for some time now; they miss out on so much because of us.

Anyway. This post isn’t about all that. Not directly anyway.

It is New Year’s Eve and I’m trying to get my head around a bunch of stuff because I really need to pull myself together. Things are getting to me big time.  Again. And I’m really tired of this waltz.

I’ve decided that I’m going to do what everyone else does on New Year’s Eve and try to make a new start on a new year. Not that it’s ever worked for me in the past, but whatever. Hope springs eternal. Even when you are slightly depressed.

So, I am permitting myself to indulge in some junk food (Cool Ranch Doritos) and some Prosecco (Hey! Don’t judge the combo…) this evening as I wait for the old year to roll on out (good riddance!) and my new year of (hopefully) better habits to roll in (which will, obviously,  not include junk food or alcohol).  Oh, and better luck! PLEASE PLEASE let some better luck come on in!!!

I’m just going to proceed to spew some thoughts I’ve been having lately; some musings that have replayed and jangled around my head about a particular subject. And I’m probably not going to exhaust them all just now.

I’m trying to find my way. I’m needing to readjust my perspective, and to do that, I’ve got to figure out what my perspective is to begin with.

So.
I’ve been obsessed with Housework for some time now. And not because I love it.

For the record: I never wanted to be a Housewife in the strictest terms. I do not enjoy housework. I do not enjoy cooking.

I do enjoy kids, however. I find them pretty adorable. I do enjoy living in a clean environment as well.

Hence, a dilemma: I don’t like to clean or cook BUT I do like being a mom and I like a clean environment.

(Unfortunately, we do not have the income to afford maids and cooks. Never have; probably never will…)

I think this subject has been at the forefront of my mind ever since I became a stay-at-home mom, around 2001.
(Geez. I wish there were a less awkward term, or another term that isn’t so archaic as “housewife” or “homemaker”…. And, weird, how those two terms should make me bristle. I think I blame it on being a product of the feministic 60’s and 70’s. And, yes, for the record, I consider myself a “feminist”. I am a woman and I like having legal rights. But, I digress…..)
I envisioned a clean, comfortable, tidy, pleasant, home for my children. Toys being scattered about was a given.
Stickiness and dirt and pet-hair and dust and food debris and sour laundry didn’t factor into my vision so much.
Or who would be responsible for IT ALL getting taken care of.
I was just going to be there for my kiddos and play with them and feed them and read to them and and love them and keep THEM clean, at least.
So, I did my best doing those things I felt were essential to my children. Making sure they had my attention and trying to revel in that particular time of special baby-smell and coos and grins and socializing.
I tried not to let the state of my house bother me.
I was, in fact, told not to let the state of my house bother me, by more experienced mothers. Told I should enjoy the various stages of their early development. “Quit worrying about the house!”, I was admonished by many.
Not to mention, I was also very, very, tired. Breastfeeding, diaper-changing, laundry, etc. etc.
My hubs worked.
He was exhausted when he came home. He had a god-awful one to one and a half hour commute every day.  So he usually was DONE by the time he got home. Done for the day.
Still, I felt terrible about the state of the house.
To the point that I didn’t want to invite anyone over.
Because, everyone else’s house always looked nice. At least, presentable.
And they had little ones too.
Maybe not as many pets as us (at least 3 to 4 dogs and 3 to 4 cats at any given time). Yeah. That’s a lot of work too.  Litter boxes. Poop scooping. Vacuuming. Feeding. Playing. Exercising. Not that I was great about getting to all of that either….after all, I also had the kids. Lots of love to go around. Just not a lot of energy. (Needless to mention, our dogs are not the most well behaved….but I digress again)
I was 35 when I had my daughter. 38 when I had my son.

Oh, and I never had that “nesting” impulse while I was pregnant. 9/11 occurred in the weeks leading up to my first child’s birth and I was a bit distracted and distraught over what kind of world we were bringing a child into. And I think I mentioned that I’ve struggled with depression too, did I not?

Anyway. Housekeeping has always been a huge chore to me.
A. CHORE. An all day, all-encompassing, hold-your-nose and do-it CHORE.
I was an only child of working parents. A latch-key kid. And, truth-be-told, despite my problems, a pretty good kid….for the most part.
So, while mom and dad were working, who was responsible for helping out with the housework?
When I was in junior high, beginning in 6th grade, I would come home to an empty house, usually pretty upset about something or other, my depression was setting in, and get a call from my mom, checking in on me and then giving me a list of things I needed to do, like vacuum or dust or pick up or clean the bathrooms or whatever she needed help with. Set the table for dinner. Doing my homework was also a given. The grown-up me understands. The youthful me just felt like Cinderella. It continued throughout High School. I was not allowed to leave the house until all my chores were done. Until all the drudgery had been taken care of. Including the weekends. And I still can recall having some of it being criticized when I rushed through it. Streaks on the bathroom mirrors?! Heaven forbid!

Did I always do my chores? Always do what I was told, on time, on a regular basis? Hell NO! Because I was a kid!! I resented the HELL out of missing out on meeting up with friends  because I had to clean the house! and I absolutely hated the guilt trips and the arguments (as I’m absolutely certain my mom did too) when I didn’t do it and shirked it off.

Housework and Resentment soon became close and intimate associates.  And they have remained so until this day.  This is what I need to examine. This is the partnership I think I need to destroy somehow.

 

Never Say Never

I consider this my Life Lesson #1:  Never say never.

My mind flashes back to so many moments in my life in which I uttered sentences that began with “I will never…..”  Oh, the many blog posts I could write on all the examples of when I so confidently announced what I would never do!  

(There’s a thought!:  A blog devoted to all the the things I said I would never do and how it all came back to bite me in the butt. Because there’s nothing more that Karma loves than the meaty challenge of a fool proclaiming “Never!!”)  

(I never thought I would actually start a blog for one, but I digress…)

I never wanted, nor planned, to be a Housewife. A Hausfrau. Oh, you should have heard me as a teenager! “Never!”  Yet, here I am.

If I had known that that is indeed what I would end up doing, perhaps I would have elected to partake in those Home Economics classes in high school. Do they still teach those classes? Are they still called “Home Economics?” I didn’t take them because running a household and cooking and cleaning and budgeting and sewing and mending clothes were things I was not interested in. Certainly not things that I imagined at the time were going to factor greatly in my future. I apparently did not go so far as to wonder who was going to be responsible for those things in my adult life. That was a bit fuzzier. All I knew is that it wasn’t going to be all up to me.

When I got married I still didn’t picture it all being up to me. I was working (in the “outside world”) at the time and I had these strange visions in my head of my husband and I making the bed together, doing the laundry together, cooking together, washing the dishes together, one of us dusting while the other one vacuumed. A day or two a week set aside in which both of us cleaned house as a team and then in the evening afterwards relaxing together. I don’t think we actually ever discussed this wonderful, romantic, plan of mine in the mandatory, but very brief, “couples counseling” sessions requested by the pastor who married us.  In fact, I think the session involved us turning in questionnaires that were given to us to fill out at home and then listening as the pastor tallied up the score and said that though it looked like there were “things we probably needed to work on”, in general, it seemed we were compatible. No. We didn’t really delve into how we planned on managing our household “together”.  I think we just figured it would evolve organically. Do couples ever plan out these things? Looking back, I probably should have mentioned to my bridegroom that I really didn’t love to clean (are there really people who do?) despite the fact that in our very first long distance conversation over the phone, that first call after I’d given him my number, he caught me meticulously dusting and Lysol-ing my parents’ books and bookcase. What can I say? I don’t love to clean, but when I do, I want it really, really, clean.

I don’t enjoy cooking either. I wish I did. But, in truth, I don’t.

When I found out I was pregnant, there was never a doubt that I wanted to stay at home with our baby. I had been a latch-key kid from the time I was 11 and for me it wasn’t such a great thing. I knew that I didn’t want that for my own child.  Not particularly enjoying my job history, and the costs of daycare and commuting, certainly factored into the decision to stay home as well. We weren’t sure how long I would do it, but we were willing to try.  Again, I had very romantic, hazy, sorts of ideas about how this plan would go.

Excuse me while I take a moment to laugh somewhat hysterically to myself.  Oooooo, hoooo….yeah.

Again, there was that whole not really thinking through who would be “responsible” for this or that or the other. It just wasn’t going to be all on my shoulders. Because, after all, especially as a child of the “Free to Be, You and Me” era, this (cleaning), that (cooking) and the other (everything else involved in maintaining a house) was never anything I had seriously considered as a “vocation”. As a life’s “work”. As “my job”.  As an identity.

And here I am. 

The thing is, as a somewhat introverted person, I love being at home. I love being able to operate on my own schedule. I love not having to answer to a boss. I love not having to deal with the general public and the lousy days that they may be having. I love not being chained to a desk in an office. I love being here 24-7 for my kids (I really do!).

I just really don’t like the whole “housekeeping” bit. It is, and has been, a huge struggle for me. I guess because I still don’t see myself as a Housewife. I was never going to be a Housewife. A wife – yes. A mom – yes. An artist who worked from home? – a dream, but yes, please!! A Housewife?

Never.

Karmic lesson gained: I realize now just how judgmental, how snobbish, how ignorant I was about housewives.