sueeeus

How’s that for a title?

I had quite a bit more stuff written here, blah blah blah, but I think the title pretty much sums it  up.

a bit morbid, yet a bit brilliant, and a bit apropos as well

I wish I could remember things I’ve written, wisdom I’ve learned, conclusions I’ve drawn, resolutions I’ve made, acceptance I’ve granted myself.  I find myself in the same place, time and again, struggling to put a finger on just what it is that I’m going through, and I browse through my blog and find that I’ve been down this road before.  Time and again.

My life seems like another version of Groundhog Day, only my reset is a bit longer duration than 24 hours.

Will I ever learn?

9/19 Back on Celexa.  Starting to wonder if/what my cycle is.  About two years ago I quit zoloft cold turkey.  Seems like about a year ago I quit Celexa.  I can’t remember when I went on the Celexa, but I remember tolerating it very well.  Wish I could remember how/what causes me to draw the line and decide I need something.  But here I am again.

I took it last night.  This morning is Day 1. I feel tightness in my jaw, and I’m very tired.  My quads ache.  My morning blood sugar was 124, the highest it’s been in ages.  I’m fairly certain the jaw tightness is a side effect.  I hardly slept last night for other reasons, so I’m not counting that as a side effect.  The aching legs?  Dunno what’s causing that.  Blood sugar?  It’s usually higher when I have a bad night, but not that high.  I also have low appetite and low grade nausea, which are definitely side effects.  And the libido?  Obliterated.

Browsing through my archives looking for dates for my adventures with anti-depressants and I see I’ve blogged so very little in the last year.  It’s kind of sad.  I used to love to write.

Mostly I have no time.  No time.  No time.  No time.

Maybe I’m thinking that the Celexa will help me normalize again so that I don’t feel so much like my life is out of control and that I  have no time.

Here’s hoping.

—–

9/20 Day 2.  Morning blood sugar 104.  Sleep quality – good enough.  Aching quads and  hips.  Low appetite, low grade nausea and headache, blurry vision.  Noticeable irritability, but feeling less internalized if that makes sense.  I can feel the effects already, the way the med buffers things.  I’m more apt to say how I feel, even if it’s irritable.  I’m not used to being irritable.  More used to being hurt or upset, but not crabby.  Contrary appetite – craving carbs – would love to dive into coffee cake or something  horrible like that, but am not willing to pay the price.  God bless the hyper- inflated cafeteria for saving me from myself.  Scrambled eggs again.  I don’t really want them, but they seem to be the lesser of all evils.

About the buffer.  I’m not as affected by things that are said.  I hear them and have the time in my brain to process the thoughts, “That sounded crappy.  Do I care?  I don’t.”  Dismissed.  I feel better that way.  So I can tell that the meds are making this difference.  Otherwise my thoughts would be, “That sounded crappy.  Why would he say that? Why would he say it that way?  Why would he use that tone of voice?  What does he mean by that?  What does he really mean?  What is he really saying?”  See?  The meds make a difference.

9/21  Morning blood sugar 126. Lordy. Terrible headache, terrible back pain, radiating through the hip joints and the upper quads.  Low appetite.  High thirst.  I’m not used to being thirsty.  Prone to tears.

9/22 Morning blood sugar 105.  Can’t take this any longer.  Not going to take the next dose tonight.  I’d rather be depressed than go through these side effects.  My body is in so much pain.  It’s so strange that this medication has such a drastic physical effect when last time the only symptoms I felt were low grade headache and low appetite and slight dizziness.  This time around, Lordy Lordy.  I have a very high pain threshold, too.  I give  up.  I actually took a vicodin to help, and it did keep things slightly at bay for a few hours.  How crazy is that, though, to take a narcotic to offset the pain caused by an SSRI.  Craziness begets craziness.

Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet’s eye
You may find him
If you may find him

There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door
You may know him
If you may

Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
While the sun God will make for your day

Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way

And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul
Undertook by the heart
And you may know it
If you may know it

While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

Be…

(Neil Diamond, from the Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack)

~*~*~

Be.  It was my defining word for this year, and this year is nearly over.  I’m finding myself struggling again.  I’m over-extended and overwhelmed.  It takes all the strength that I can muster to hold it all together.  I’m suffering from the people pleasing blues.  And it’s not all that easy to be a full time working single mom. Blah blah blah. I know, I’m preaching to the choir (just let me have my pity party, please?)

People think that I am smarter than I am.  I can’t seem to fathom why people don’t just choose to be open and trusting and kind and loving.  How foolish is that?  It’s my default state and it leaves me wide open for all manner of attack.  The thing is, I don’t expect attack, and very seldom do I experience attack.  It seems ironic that the attack I perceive is not from those without, but from those within.  My own people.

“Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”

That would be Mark 6:4.  Yep.  There’s nothing new under the sun.

I exhaust myself.  This reactionary emotional hair trigger is a beast that I have yet to master.  I’m looking for that quiet, calm place where I can have some clarity.

Sueeeus Maximus.  What does she want?  What are the desires of her heart?  What is she all about?

Guess what?  It’s so simple, really. She just wants to live joyfully.  To love and be loved.  To laugh, to smile.  To understand and be understood.  To listen and to hear.  To give and to serve.  So why all the scrutiny and judgement?

I just want to be.

And to be free to love the one I love.

Good grief.

Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl, long shadow, walking.  Lovely shape of arms and hands swaying, fifteen feet tall.  Long and lovely.

~*~*~

Out for a walk in an effort towards fitness.  Looking for ways to appreciate my physical self.  I find the shadow lovely.  It’s a start.

hope springs eternal

Spring is springing and I think I may be getting ahead of the seasonal blues, so I am hereby stopping the Wellbutrin XL therapy.

Today.

Now.

We shall see shortly whether or not this is (was) a good idea.

It’s another one of those days where I have everything in the world to joy and rejoice over, yet I find myself short of breath, anxious, and wanting to find a place to curl up and escape from who knows what.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

I wish I could put my finger on it.  I don’t like it.  I actually stole away from my kids for a moment, under the pretense of changing into my jammies, and curled up in fetal position, in the dark, on my bed.  Two minutes, maybe three.  A brief, silent explosion of tears.

The only thing I can think of is an accumulation of things observed in my periphery.  Recognizing an estranged friend of a loved one and waving a greeting.  Relief that my little guy is finally eating again, after nearly a week of intestinal distress, and with that, possibly the realization of pent up anxiety and helplessness over his condition.  Knowing there is anguish consuming people I love, and not being able to do anything about it.  Feeling the ripples caused by my movements in and out of the lives of people around me.  Breaching comfort zones.  Guilt over not calling my dad to wish him a happy birthday.  I sent him a Ben Franklin, but I just couldn’t bring myself to call him.  Frustration with myself for allowing the simple business of life and living to affect me so viscerally and physically.

Fear, perhaps?  Fear that someone or everyone will notice that I’m not, after all, perfect.  Me, the girl with the golden life, unable to meet my own expectations.

Oh, who knows.  I’ll go to sleep tonight, and wake up to a brand new day with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, and all of this will be a thing of the past.  I will wonder how I could possibly ever fall into such a funk.  I will be perplexed, unable to understand it, so I will shake my head and dismiss it.  I might even tell myself I won’t let it happen again, because it makes no sense and there’s just no reason for it.  I might even believe it.

Until the next time.

capturing a new year

I’ve noticed some of my blogging friends have chosen a theme word to help focus the year.  Simplify.  Breathe.  Listen. Words like that.  What word would best encapsulate my aspirations for 2011?  I can think of many words that describe how I feel at this moment.

Drained.  Deflated.  Depleted.

Relieved.  Relieved to have my boys home, asleep in their beds, and to have a little alone time to regroup, try to figure out where I am, how I am, and let tears stream down my face as I try to sort these things out.

I’ve had a week off from work, but it doesn’t seem as though I’ve had a vacation, even though I did get two full nights of sleep in during that week, and even though I had two fine grown-up days that bathed the senses with visual, aural, and gastronomic goodness.

Maybe this is the year to focus on loving myself the way I want to be loved, or treating myself the way I want to be treated.  Or to put the golden rule into action and love others the way I want to be loved and treat others the way I want to be treated.  In general, I think I do these things (for others).  For me,  I can give myself time.  I can carve out more time with which to do things that edify me.  That I can do.  But what of intimacy?  Why is it that I have such a deep and persistent ache for physical touch, for embracing, for intimacy?  I don’t know how to assuage this ache alone, and I can’t make it an expectation for another.  So I’m stuck, like a spoiled and whining child who wants something she can’t have.  The difference being that that which I want to receive is also that which I want to give.  That said, I like to think that I don’t come across as spoiled and whiny.  I hope that I come across as loving, giving, and nurturing.

Stuck.  Stuck is not the word that I want to use to define my year.

Maybe I will find a way to overcome the ache, and just live, just be.

Be.  That can be my word.

Be.

I learned to juggle when I was eight years old.  We lived in Cambridge, England, that year, and some of the other kids would juggle two balls against the wall or in the air during recess.  I was intrigued, and gave it a go.  There’s a certain cadence, rhyme and reason to juggling.  It’s a learned skill, and some are naturally better at it than others.  I was fairly good at the two ball juggle.  I can even do it with one hand.  I’ve tried to add a third ball to the mix, off and on through the years, but never got the hang of it.  Once that ball was introduced, control was quickly lost, and the balls would tumble to the ground.

Sometimes it seems as though my life is like a juggling act.  Working and mothering.  These two things I can manage.  They are sustainable, and I can keep things going, more or less.  It’s not always smooth or with perfect rhythm, but I can generally keep it together.   A pattern seems to be emerging, in which the addition of a relationship is akin to trying to add that third ball.  I haven’t gotten the hang of how to adjust the rhythm, and sooner or later I get stressed out, start to compromise things, my mental and emotional states spin off into the ether, and everything falls apart until I can gather things together and get the rhythm going again.

I admire those kids you see playing that complicated jumping rope game in which two ropes are spun in opposite directions, one clockwise, one counterclockwise, and the kids line up, catch the rhythm, and jump in.  It’s so smooth, so perfect.  They blend, in what looks like effortless motion.  They skip and dance and sing.  It’s a beautiful thing to behold.  I wish relationships could blend so harmoniously, so smoothly.  For me, trying to have a relationship is about as successful as me trying to jump into one of those rope skipping games.  One step and I’m tangled completely, trip, and fall unceremoniously, possibly hurting others in the tumble, after which I have to pull myself together, apologize for the damage I’ve done and the trouble I’ve caused, scrape the dirt from my wounds, and hobble off to some safe place where I can regroup and heal.

I need to learn how to accept the limitations of time.  I find myself, over and again, succumbing to anxiety rooted in the inability to mold my life around the constructs of time.

The hyper awareness of time interferes with my rationale and affects some priorities that I set, decisions that I make, thoughts that I think, and emotions that I manifest.

This is already a broken record.  I can tell, even before I get the words out.

There is only so much time available.  Somehow I have to work, mother, keep my household, foster my friendships and tend to my budding relationship.  I would like to have some self-nurturing or at least recovery time.  I have to multi-task even that, and glean whatever pleasure I can wherever I can.  Rather than choke at yet another chore, I choose to savor the upkeep of my household and the shopping for groceries or other sundries.  It gives me a smidgen of peace.

And what of this budding relationship?  How does it fit in?  How does one have quality adult time and not compromise child time?  Beaten down by logistics.  There’s no time for seeing each other during the week, which leaves only the weekend.  Friday nights are nearly shot.  It’s late by the time any meeting can take place.  Saturday, and part of Sunday constitute the window of opportunity and the dynamics shift dramatically as a function of child visitation arrangements.  How to be relaxed and content when there’s no time for just plain living?

I don’t like juggling.  I don’t like the ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality.  I don’t like not knowing what time I will have with whom and when.  For all I know, I could be dead in five years.  Or tomorrow.  I’m grateful to make it home alive, each and every day that I have to traverse the freeways in the dark, when it’s raining.   It’s harrowing.  I don’t want a future life, I want a now life.

So I am confounded and frustrated.

I don’t know how not to be anxious about the time.  I don’t know how this life balancing act works.

Sometimes I find myself in thought, and realize that I’m not breathing.  Stress.  It’s a stress of some sort.  I have to remind myself to breathe.

Maybe I should ask myself what I want.  Why is the time or lack of it so stressful or so important?  Or did I not just write ad nauseum about it?

After I’ve put the kids to bed, there is a small window of time that I get for myself.  It’s all I have, and there are a thousand and one mentally, physically, spiritually, or emotionally productive or constructive things I could do with that time.   But for whatever reason, the need to decompress and refuel is amplified lately, and I find myself floundering and anguishing, at a loss for doing this with the faculties I have available.

Ideally (this is pure speculation) decompression and refueling could be a symbiotic process with one’s partner, given that there is regular contact.  But there isn’t regular contact, and there’s not likely to be regular contact in the foreseeable future.

So I am confounded and frustrated.  And feeling alone.

I said it was a broken record.