Month: April 2005

I oughtn’t be awake right now. It’s 11 pm, and I have to get up before 6 am tomorrow…but my sheets aren’t dry yet, so here I am, staring gaping at the screen.

Sasha is meow/crying to go outside; I probably shouldn’t let her out, but I will anyway. C will be up for a while…he can let her in.

Which is by way of saying that I’m sleepy, and listening to public radion on Canadian politics doesn’t really help. 😉

* the toilet tank cracked and burst
* but we were able to replace and fix it for less than $10
* we painted one wall of our soon-to-be bedroom
* but didn’t manage to finish the project
* the rack and trunk I bought for my bike didn’t fit
* but the bike shop gave me an amazing deal on the rack specifically designed for my bike
* I was entirely overtaken with rage/despair several times this weekend
* but I kept coming back

so, yeah. I’m not entirely satisfied with the weekend, but I’m not entirely dissatisfied either. I look at the bright green wall, or the new toilet tank, and I feel like, yeah, I’m capable of doing something, and doing it with C, at that.

If you are logged in and posting as yourself, and your profile has only a partial URL, then it will do exceptionally strange things. But that’s all better now. 🙂

And mostly, this is just for future reference for myself.

pixy’s color schemer 2, the warm purple, triad, pastel.

in other words, I’m using what energy I can muster to do *something* creative, even if it’s not any of the forty bazillion things I actually need to be doing.

something weird just happened when I tried responding to Dorothea’s comment. I may or may not fix it tonight; might wait a day or two, depending on time & all that.

The thing about cycling is that at some level I can stop thinking. There’s a poem I love by Mary Oliver, which I’ve probably quoted here before, that sums up something like this: walking in the snow changes nothing but makes everything better. (Yes, it was better how she wrote it.)

I took the rest of the day off after my appointment…felt totally wrung out and drained. I even slept for a couple of hours, which felt wonderful, going totally oblivious to the world. Then I rode out to the credit union to get my vanpool check, which was due today, dropped it off and rode back.

When I’m riding and either there’s some challenge to the terrain, or I’ve just been riding for a while, I can zone out and be totally in the space of hurtling down the road, feeling myself more in the wheels than in my head. I can’t quite express how much of a relief that is. This head of mine feels like it’s been a burden for too long.

I don’t know if I wrote this yesterday, but yesterday I wrote out a timeline of sadness, essentially, and there’s way too many years there. I’ve given away too much of myself to this.

I feel just a little hopeful. She reminds me of Stella from when I was at UPS, which is totally a good thing. (IIRC, Stella was the one who made me do the crayoned relationship chart, which I still have, because now it kinda cracks me up, even if at the time it was entirely too stressful.)

I also feel as if I’m dancing on some edge writing about all this here. After all, if you look for my name, this is what comes up: not just to old friends like Kermit and Heather (yes, Heather; maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow), but family (including the inlaws, who I love, but still) and colleagues. But I feel more right than wrong doing it, so for now, I’m going to keep at it.

I’m taking some big steps in my life that may look like baby steps. I’m still trying to decide whether and how much to write.

But I have to say that writing, in general, has been a saving grace in my life, and this space here, with the people I’ve gotten know or reconnect with, is one of those parts of my life that I treasure most. Thank you.

today has not been an easy day. I almost had a full-on emotional meltdown last night, and today I made an appointment to go back to counseling.

I want to write about it and I don’t want to write about it. I actually wrote this humongous entry that I have saved as a draft, with a personal timeline of emotional lows and highs, plus some rambling about my current/recent state.

I hate being in this headspace…like being in a cave where you can’t find the opening.

so instead I’m going to grab a random writing prompt and see where it takes me.

Write about a time when people around you were taking too many pictures.

Which is funny, because off the top of my head, I don’t remember any time where there was too much picture-taking.

What occurs to me first is a time with not enough picture-taking. Last year I got a card from my favorite aunt with a couple of old photographs, one of which was of me at my high-school graduation. It’s sunny, and I’m wearing the green cap and gown with my favorite little sunglasses, back when I could manage to wear non-prescription sunglasses for a little bit at a time. My hair is blond near the tips, splaying out wildly under the cap, framing and not-framing my face.

When I saw the photo, I was surprised at how young I looked, how skinny: the kid who’d never even been as far north as Oregon, just getting started with everything. What I remember feeling is unhappy, irritable, lonely. Happy only to be done with it, but unappreciated. I wanted a party.

And I feel embarrassed at my…what? Selfishness, which doesn’t make sense, since it was one of those rare life-moments when one is supposed to be the center of attention.

Details I don’t remember, which is one of those constant frustrations I have in describing my life: I know what it *felt* like, I can feel that roiling in my head, but I can’t tell you anything more than these vague images, looking down into the amphitheater, the last time I’d ever sit on the benches where I ate lunch and played cards for four years.

Now I have this uneasy and yet entirely overwhelming feeling of saying too much, the wrong things, of expressing things that aren’t interesting even to me.

Boring, boring, boring.

I’m not a writer; I haven’t been a writer practially since the q dissolved 4 years ago. I don’t even know what I have to say anymore, or whether I had anything to say in the first place.

don’t know if/how I can be normal today. want to curl up & sleep, or shriek and bang my head against a wall.

***

but I guess I’m managing. work and coffee do miraculous things, as does a return call from Group Health.

***

a history

1978-ish – mom’s journal of my preschool days mentions that I am shy around other children, much better with adults.
1980-1983 – I am shy but generally happy. at some point in here, I am identified as having a balance (?) problem that sends me to adaptive physical education. I find it embarassing.

1983 – dad dies…everything goes wrong. family counselling starts here, lasts through the 80s and into the 90s. change schools, none of my old friends go to my new school. Coco, dad’s cat, dies about 6 months after he does.

1984-1985 – begin my first diary. remember these years as being particularly unhappy. first new cat (Grey) dies.
1985 – start junior high. first real friend (Thao) since ’83.
1986? – begin writing poetry & fiction seriously.

1988 – start high school.
1990? – start first job.
1991 – first boyfriend. resume journaling seriously. junior year is high point of high school; successful, most friends. writing consistently.
1992 – severe depression; first one-on-one counseling. leave for washington/college.
1993 – come out to self. resume counseling, off and on, through 1996. another severe depression, lasting through the winter/spring of 1994.
1995 – start at CMT. death of grandma N, grandpa D.

1996 – H moves away; breakup with R. graduate college, start working fulltime.
1997 – major break with H; G moves away; start dating C, then move in together. start at UWPC. writing published. we get Sasha.

another major episode somewhere in the period 1998-2000. lots of work stress.
1998? – death of Uncle Bill, grandpa N. start of writer’s group. we get Maddy?
1999 – KT moves away.
2000 – start at Pierce. get married.
2001 – end of writer’s group.
2002? – low-grade constant depression, off and on up to present.
2003 – move to Olympia. C starts school. we get Boingo.
2004, March – begin disassembling kitchen, etc.
2004, August – almost file for divorce. restart counseling, through Dec. 2004.
2004, September – we get Pico.
2004, December – injury to knee
2005, January – death of grandma D
2005, March – C graduates. get back in touch with H.

the end of the writer’s group and the move to Olympia seem to have been the catalysts of this ongoing thing.

why? the loss of friends from both changes. the additional stress of C going back to school and the responsibility of the house. not as much support for writing.

plus gradually increasing responsibilities at work, increased interactions necessary with IT.

I bounce back and forth between feeling — happy, productive and competent — naked impotent rage — and curl-up-and-die despair. sometimes from minute to minute. plus overwhelmed…which seems to be a native state of being.

a long time ago I remember describing it as being on top of the wave or drowning in it.