I Was HipNOtized

Well, if the purpose of hypnosis is to induce general feelings of anger and despondency, I would say that today's session was a rousing success.
I am just being honest here.
And quite frankly and quite honestly, I don't think this is going to work for me.
I am not saying that hypnosis doesn't work or even that it would not work for me. However...
Oh fuck it.
He wants to do EFT next week. EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and from what I've read, it sounds as if it very much relies on the placebo effect and not that I'm dissing the placebo effect but I just can't really believe it's going to do much more than cost me a bunch of money.

The doctor who does these sessions is quite elderly. Nothing wrong with that. And to give credit where credit is due, he IS a retired physician. There was no acupuncture used today although sometimes he does use acupuncture. It went about as I thought it would. A little talking and then he said that he was sure he could help me, that anxiety is actually his specialty and that he has been doing this for almost seventy years. I'm almost certain that I've heard that he's 85 so...did he begin his training at the age of fifteen? Did he get one of those courses they used to advertise in the back of comic books?
See. I shouldn't be having these thoughts.
He put earphones on me and there were the expected sounds of waves and seagulls and new agey "music" which I've never considered to be music AT ALL and it would build and then fade and the waves would kick back in and the seagulls would begin to shriek which was disconcerting because I was trying to visualize myself in Cozumel and I don't really remember seagulls being in Cozumel and so that would distract me from my visualization and his voice also came over the headphones which was also disconcerting because I could hear him in the room as well. I mean, he was only about five feet away. And he led me into a guided relaxation not unlike one you would experience after a good yoga session in savasana.

"You will feel tingling in one or both hands or perhaps around your eyes. Lift your index finger for yes, your little finger for no.
Little finger duly lifted.
Then I was told that one of my hands would feel very heavy and again with the fingers. I indicated that yes, one of my hands did feel very heavy and  I suppose it did although in that state of relaxation, what doesn't feel heavy?
And then I was told to allow my stomach to feel the clenching, nervous feeling it gets when I am anxious and so I did my best to feel that and then I was told to touch my thumb to my forefinger very tightly and to move the anxious feeling in my stomach to the fingers, etc.

Okay. I swear. I was trying. I wasn't fighting it. Hell, I wanted this to work. However, I frankly don't think that the physical sensation of my stomach being unsettled needed to be addressed on the first visit. It's not like I'm developing an ulcer or that the sensation of feeling as if I'm about to go onstage is really a big part of my problem. That is merely a symptom of the anxiety disorder and as such, it doesn't really bother me. So I don't really feel like eating sometimes? Big deal. I ain't in any danger of starving to death at this point. Trust me.

When it came time to "bring me up" he said he would do a countdown and started at 5 and I was perfectly able to feel pretty darn conscious even when he started the countdown and his voice grew louder and louder as he got closer to 1 at which point he was almost shouting and my eyes had been open since four so that made me laugh.
"You feel very emotional right now, don't you?" he asked me as he flipped on the lights which did, in fact shock me.
"Uh. No. Not really."

I did, however, when I went to pay.

And then I got angry and I'm not sure why. It wasn't just the cost. I knew approximately what the fee would be. But I started thinking about the EFT and the tapping on energy meridians and I'm sorry. I'm just not that kind of woman. I know that acupuncture can work. It worked miracles on my husband when he was crippled from sciatica. And he didn't particularly believe it would help at all when he went in the first time and now he's a convert for sure. It didn't do a thing for my hip pain but I'm sure that different ailments respond differently to different treatments. And this doctor, this very doctor  I saw today stated that acupuncture is not that effective in treating anxiety and isn't EFT sort of a continuation of the acupuncture theory? That there are energy pathways in the body and they can be opened or unblocked via needles? And with EFT through tapping?

I don't get it. And I don't think I WILL get it. I don't especially want this man tapping on my head and face.

I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing and if things don't improve with time, I will ask for an antidepressant which can also help with anxiety and that's that.
I will continue to walk and to exercise. To eat as well as I can. To face the realities of my life and try very hard to believe that there will be an end to this. To have that simple thing with feathers, which is hope.

In a semi-related way, another of Matt Haig's blog posts which I read today rang so very true to me. You can read it HERE and it is short. It addresses the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, free will, addiction, anxiety and depression. I think that Mr. Haig is an incredibly empathetic person and when I read his blog posts or his fiction, I get the feeling that he has such a tender and loving attitude about humanity which is sadly a bit rare.

Perhaps I believe in the healing powers of love more than I believe in the healing powers of moving an anxious feeling in my stomach to my thumb and my forefinger pressed together. Although- trust me! I will try that if my stomach begins to bother me too much.

So that's my report on being hypnotized.

After I was done at the doctor's office (which made me feel anxious, because it was IN a doctor's office) I went to a place that sells cosmetics and I bought some of the stuff my friend was using that I talked about on Sunday. I walked through the place feeling...angry but I bought it and I sprayed some Chanel on my wrist but I didn't buy any and I drove home to Lloyd and ate some leftovers and took a little nap and then got up and in a frenzy, swept and mopped and washed rugs and threw away some of my dead porch plants and sewed a button on some shorts because it is warm enough to wear them and swept the front porch and gathered two eggs, one blue, one green, and my husband is on his way home and I'm still feeling a bit angry, a bit despondent.

I'm tired of feeling this way but as I said, I do have hope and if one has hope, all is not lost.

Be well.

Love...Ms. Moon

Not Much

This day can't make up its mind. I woke up to chill and a sky that looked, if I still lived in Denver, to portend snow. It has warmed up and the sun has busted through it all for a few seconds at a time but now the sky is dirty cotton again and it is supposed to get so very cold tonight.

I stopped for a second and talked to another fellow walker this morning as we crossed paths. He has but one leg and yet he walks regularly into Lloyd from where he lives down the road a piece. We have a gentle banter we practice, we do not share much it would seem except that we both live here, we both walk and that is enough, plenty, to have a few words to say to each other.

The soaring of my spirits, the pulse of energy I have been feeling due to the cessation of the anxiety has faded somewhat today. I feel the beast trying to get its claws back into my back. Perhaps it is merely this dull dense sky. Perhaps it is only that.

There are things I need to do which I have been avoiding and although I know in my heart that it takes so much more energy to avoid, I choose quite illogically to do that. I have to get over this. I am going to be sixty years old this year. Will I be a prisoner of my own devices until I die?

Here is another thing I will be a prisoner of until I die, it would seem:
My pets.
Why? Why do they keep on living? I never take my animals to the vet unless there is injury. We do not medicate them, not even their vaccinations. We feed them whatever food is cheapest without actually being made of chicken feathers and pine needles. And yet (or because of this?) they live forever. A cat who lives outside whose age we cannot even comprehend. Two dogs who are at least fourteen, blind as bats, running into walls, still going, still living, endlessly scratching at the door to be let in, to be let out. Barking at nothing, stinking to high heaven.
They will not die.
Our boxer, Pearl, lived to be twice the age of the lifespan of the boxer breed.
No, I am not kidding you.

Well.

Good morning. Here's your fun fact of the day- the very first Swimsuit Edition for Sports Illustrated was shot fifty years ago on the then, almost unheard of and sparsely populated island of Cozumel in 1964. The model was Babette Beaty.

She became very close friends with the Rolling Stones.

She is now a painter.

Love...Ms. Moon

Lloyd is lovely quiet tonight. There's something that sounds like a bird making a one-tweet note but I think it's a frog. I am not sure but it is a pure, whistle sound and wait...now there are two. A conversation.
I should be disturbed that I don't even know if it's a bird or a frog but actually, I'm sort of happy not to. In my mind's eye I am free to imagine a beaky, feathered frog like something from a Mayan dream and it is beautiful.

It's been a good and very busy day. My house is still in disaster-mode, the boys having had their way with it for some hours. It's not really that bad and we had a good time together. When Owen had been here for about half an hour he said, "It's good to be back at Old Mer's house again."
He hadn't been here since Saturday, you know.
Gibson did something today that charmed my heart. I was sitting on the couch and he asked me for some milk and so I said, "Okay, I'll go get you some," and as I went to stand up, he held his little hand out and said, "Help?"
Such a tiny gentleman.

I've been thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. all day. I've been thinking about these words he said all day too:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. . . . The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

- From Strength to Love, 1963

I have to believe these words. Their message is the very essence of what I believe to be true. And I remember when he was assassinated, this man who (as Yoko Ono said of her husband, John Lennon) changed the world with his mind, thinking that the world as I knew it was crumbling and that all hope must surely be lost with his death. I remember this feeling of despair quite clearly and yet, thankfully, all hope was not lost because the world remembers him, his words, his voice, and also because he lived a life based on those words. A very human life, but one always aspiring in true action to that incredibly high belief. He did not live in vain and his message was a clear one to all humans of all colors in all countries and his words have wrought change in this world of ours. We certainly have not abolished hate or darkness or war but I do believe that we, as a species, are still capable of learning, of change, of trudging towards light and love and acceptance and perhaps, even someday...peace. 

Those days, those sixties and seventies days, were so filled with so much of the same message coming from so many different sources. We took that message in and we sang it, we danced to it, we tried, so many of us, to incorporate it into the very fiber of our being and of our lives as we lived them. 

Hell, I don't know. Humans are so very flawed, all of us in one way or another. But we all need something to rest our heart on, to hang our hat on, to choose to believe is true. And even in that choosing, I think we make a difference. 

I'm tired. But I'm good. When the dentist looked at my mouth today he said it all looked fine and everything was as it should be and that the stitches would be coming out next week. I was grateful. And then I said, "I want to tell you something that sounds crazy."

"Okay," he said. 

And I proceeded to tell him that as he surely knew, when I first came to see him, I was a person in a very scary anxious place. That it really had nothing to do with the bad tooth, the bone abscess, although that whole situation did not make it easier. 

"Well, everyone has anxiety," he said. And this is what people who have never experienced what Matt Haig calls not anxiety but Anxiety, says. I tried to explain to the doctor the difference but I am not sure he got it which is fine. If you've never experienced it, you can't know. And if you don't know, be fucking grateful as shit. BUT, what I wanted to tell him and what I tried to tell him, is something that I've been thinking about very seriously for about a week now which is that I truly believe that the very potent cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs they gave me before the procedure allowed me to somehow break free of the horrendous and hideous panic I had been experiencing for weeks. The complete relief of that panic, that Anxiety for the day and a half it took my system to clear itself of the drugs, somehow cut the misfiring of my brain and allowed it to rest, to heal, to cease its terrorizing message of insanity. To reboot and reset my mind. 

Is this possible? The dentist listened to me and he didn't have any answers and he told me that he was glad it had worked that way for me and I appreciated his listening. And the sweet angel-child assistant listened too and we discussed it a little more after he left the room to go on to his next patient. 

"Someone should do a study to see if such a protocol could work for other people," I told her. "Because I was fixing to have to go and get back on anti-depressants and beg, BEG for Xanax or Ativan and who knows how long I would have had to take those drugs? I couldn't keep on living that way."

She got it. She is very young but I can tell that she is also very empathetic. I touched her hand when I left. I have sort of fallen in love that child (whose name, by the way, is Jessie) who, when she prods the most tender parts of your mouth, does it so gently and so skillfully that you can't even feel it. 

And so that's been my day. A day as full of doing and thinking as any day I am capable of having. Trying, as always, to figure shit out and failing miserably. Making and doing and holding and kissing and hugging and touching and washing and laughing and talking and feeding carrots to goats. Thinking about lightness and dark, love and hate. 

In other words, a very good day. 

It's still lovely quiet in Lloyd tonight. I hope there is peace where you are too. And light, until the time comes for you to close your eyes and let peaceful darkness come upon you, the sweet kind of darkness which does not destroy but which heals, renews, and sustains. 

Time to go clean up the mess. 

Love...Ms. Moon

The Evening Wrap-Up Of Events

I renewed my nursing license today which means that I have now completed all of the incredibly (for me) anxiety-producing tasks which faced me this month.
I renewed my driver's license.
I did my continuing education units and renewed my nursing license.
I went to the nurse practitioner and got my lab work done to get my natural (haha!) hormone prescription renewed and have a new script ordered.

I felt as if I had just built the Taj Mahal when the pharmacist told me that yes, my prescription had been renewed and would be ready for pick-up on Thursday.

And then I realized something- I am depressed.
Not horrible depressed, just sort of regular old depressed and it's hardly worth mentioning but you know me. I mention almost everything.

So. Instead of facing an empty afternoon of beating myself up because I wasn't doing something constructive with my life I went and got Owen and brought him home with me. ENOUGH! IT WAS TIME!

And it was good and it was wise and we had a great time.
We played and we played and then we played some more. "What play now, Mer-Mer?" he asks me. We played with toys and he's getting so imaginative. Little games come about and he makes up stories for whatever he's playing with. He lined up all of his little farm animals and he told them, "Be patient." I am not sure what he was telling them to be patient about, but it appeared to me that they were, in fact, being very patient, the goat, the pig, the cow, the sheep, the horse. We did some puzzles and he rode his trike and told me he was going to get the mail. He wanted a smoothie and he wanted to help me make it and he did. He pretended to call his Aunt Jessie a lot because I told him she was going to be here soon. "Come now!" he told her on the pretend phone calls. "Okay, bye!" He rode his horse and we watched some kid videos and we watched something called Top Ten Funniest Baby Videos and he laughed and laughed at the chortling babies. He played with my old antique Zippy Chimp and told Zippy that he would take him to the store but he had to be a good boy and sit in the cart. He wanted to give Buster a treat and so we did. He saw Boppy getting ready to "fix" Buster's ear wearing gloves and he demanded gloves of his own and I found him some purple rubber ones and while Boppy was doing the dog operation, Owen insisted I lay down on a blanket on the floor and he rubbed my ear with his gloved hand and pronounced it fixed. He looked closely into my eyes with a flashlight and said that I had monster eyes. We hid from tigers, we read books, we ran around outside in the rain for a little bit until the mosquitoes drove us back in. He got so dizzy, twirling in circles that he fell over in the dirt and thought it was the funniest thing ever. Until he went into the bathroom to wash up and kept dropping the soap and then THAT was the funniest thing ever. While I was sitting on the floor he lunged for me and I pretended that he'd knocked me down and I held him to me and told him that he'd knocked me over with his love and then THAT was the funniest thing ever and he did that over and over and over again and he helped me sit back up every time and I probably have a bruised back but what the hell? Who cares?

He's my boy. He's my joy. He's my grandson full of the devil and sweet as pie.

Here he is in the fig tree. "I so tall!" he crowed.
Yes. He is so tall.

His daddy came and got him and brought Gibson in and here's what that boy looks like today:

And for Gibson, that's about a one-quarter smile.

And you know what? I don't feel nearly as depressed now. Yes, I have the melancholia but it's not the eat-your-soul kind. It's the aw-honey-go-tidy-up-and-eat-some-leftovers-and-go-to-bed-and-read-a-book-and-it's-gonna-be-all-right kind.

I also have chiggers, I think, and yes, probably a bruised back but these too shall pass. I've had my kisses, my hugs, my laughs, my smiles. And, my ear has been fixed by a young doctor wearing giant purple rubber gloves.

And now, if you haven't already, go over to Elizabeth's and read what she wrote today because it is amazing and heart-felt and she said what I feel about being an American.

Here's the link. 

Elizabeth is a jewel on this earth and I am so glad I have met her through this magical way of communication.

I'm glad I've met you too. I swear I am.

Love...Ms. Moon

Do We Ever Really Pay Attention?

I did so many things today. I did walk. I did make an appointment (tomorrow at 4:30- so quickly!), I did go to see my mother (it was fine), I did buy birthday presents.
I did, I did, I did. I even went to the mall and was astounded at what is to be found there, the way the mall has a roar about it, the vast amount of perfectly awful, tacky shit being sold which I suppose people want to buy.

I am still half-crazed. It's such a strange mixture, this feeling of completely bare wires and wanting to lie down and pass out.

Fucking adrenaline when you don't need it. When there is no bear to run from, no car to lift to save your child, no mastodon with its mighty tusks in your face.

Anyway, la-di-dah. I doubt I'll die from it.

Meanwhile, I watched a video on Youtube today and I doubt that anyone but those of us crazy old hippies and natural childbirth believers-in would be that interested in it, but here it is, just in case.
I think, quite frankly, it's worth watching just to see the way Stephen and Ina May give each other their complete attention when the other is talking. Stephen used to talk about that a lot, back in the olden days. About how important it is to really give people your full attention. Watching this, I realize that he and Ina May still believe that and practice it. And to me, it is beautiful to see. How often do most of us really give our full attention whether it's with our lovers, our friends, our spouses, our partners, our children? What would happen if we tried to practice this laying-on-of-attention? To actually listen and take-in when someone else is speaking instead of trying to figure out what it is that we, we, WE are going to say next when that person speaking takes a breath and it's our turn? Or even worse (and I am SO guilty of this) to give half-attention to someone speaking, keeping the rest of it for some other activity we are doing at the same time.

I can only imagine that this is one of Ina May's most powerful tools as a midwife. To pay attention.
That simple.
That difficult.
That rare.

Well. It's a thought.

Here it is.

Anxiety

I've got the anxiety bad today. I'm looking out and it's the most beautiful day you've ever seen and cool, too. Cool like fall with pools and puddles of golden sunlight everywhere and honestly, I can't imagine a prettier day and I'm falling off the bone anxious.

I know why, too.

Doctors.

Mr. Moon is going to have a regular physical exam today and just the thought of HIM going to the doctor makes me crazy. This is not a logical thing. This is pure and unadulterated panic with no basis in reality.
Except that doctors are always the ones who tell you you're going to die.
Probably.
And it's not that I'm afraid to die! I swear I'm not.

I don't know. It makes no sense. None.

And I have to, HAVE to, call and make an appointment for myself with my completely non-threatening NP for a physical. I haven't had a P&P in years. And they won't renew my biodentical hormones (or whatever they are) until I get some test. And I am shaking at the thought. Literally.

Just writing about this makes me want to die.

I've talked about this before. And I've gone over and over in my mind the possible reasons why I have this neurotic anxiety and I can't figure it out. I've had it for as long as I can remember. I can recall going to an appointment for my mother when I was very young and feeling as if I was going to pass out in the waiting room. I didn't know what passing out was, but looking back, that's what I was feeling.
First anxiety attack?
Perhaps.

This is how bad it is: I have been to my NP's at least twice. And I can't remember where in hell her office is. Okay. I just looked it up. I sort of remember. I remember that the office is soothing and cozy. There are fish tanks. Magazines. Not the kind that rich doctors have in their offices about golf resorts and investments which to me, is always a slap in the face. Magazines about natural health, etc.
It's a practice that's all about the holistic stuff as well as the western medicine stuff. Which is somehow reassuring.

On top of all of that, I really do have to go see my mother today. Have to. I'm so overdue there.

You know, it's like my life has this small, tiny defined circle of safety and when I have to step out of it, I just lose my shit. Inside of that circle is my family, my house, my yard, Monticello and the opera house, Publix, the library. And going places with my husband.
Outside the circle is everything else. Phone calls, making appointments of any kind, driving at night, holidays, shopping for stuff that isn't food, mostly.

I so wish I weren't like this. I feel crippled, I feel deformed. I feel less-than-human.
I feel helpless in the face of it.

All right. I am going to call. I am going to make that appointment. Then I am going to take a walk. Then I guess I'll go to town and see Mother. And go shopping for Mr. Moon's birthday which is tomorrow. Tomorrow. My sweetheart's birthday is tomorrow and I haven' gotten him so much as a card.

I can do this. I don't have to feel comfortable and I don't have to like it but I have to do it.

I'd rather wrangle snakes. I swear.

Running Away, Locking The Gate

I feel as if I have given birth to the little baby of anxiety. I am carrying her/him around, an annoying knot of a child, constantly clinging.
This is not the anxiety of four years ago which paralyzed me; this is merely one which slows my movements, muddies my dreams, my thoughts.
It wormed itself into my brain last night where I was constantly trying to catch a plane to go off to a college far away and I thought to myself, "Why didn't I even check the internet to see how people like this college? How will I deal with a new city, a new school, new roommates?" and I kept looking at my watch and my ticket and I was late, late, late.

Of course when I was eighteen, I did fly far away to go to a new city, a school I knew nothing about. It ended up being a disaster, a rocket-fast crash course on how to do drugs, how to suffer depression, how to be homesick.
Oh, I was never homesick for my own family. No, I had fled from that house with intent of escape but I left behind friends, a boyfriend, a de facto family of sorts made up of other kids with strange families who could not function properly, who had no idea what to do with brainiac kids always chasing the highway, reading TS Eliot, kids who ate psilocybin mushrooms straight from the cowshit and then listened to Bach in order clear our brains (for a moment, at least) of what was going on in our own homes where the carpet was avocado green, where the mashed potatoes came from a bag, where there might not be a lock on the door and if there was, it was on the outside, slide...bolt.

And I did fly away from that place and ended up in another place where I had no support whatsoever, I was as much a stranger in a strange land as Michael Valentine Smith, raised on Mars and dumped on Earth.

Ms. Radish King wrote yesterday that she has spent her entire life wanting to run away from her life and I think that is bred into the bones when one is young. There are lives that are meant to be run away from. That very survival depends on such running-away-from. That from the earliest moments of consciousness, there is the alarming realization that this is not right. No. This is far from right.

It gets to be a habit, this running-away from.
Even when the life one leads is as practically perfect as can even be not-imagined. And of course, the running-away-from desire is more the idea of escape from oneself, or at least those parts of oneself that are still entangled in the sticky web of childhood.

Sometimes the running-away-from desire takes the form of closing the gate and refusing to go anywhere beyond the fence, which is a running-away-from the world. Here I am safe. Take one step out and who knows? It is not an "adult" feeling and there is no logic attached. It is a child feeling. Perhaps even a baby feeling. An infant who does not want to be set down.

Well.

Sometimes I think I should spend the rest of my life in therapy and sometimes I think what the hell, I am functioning. I have my place in the world. I have my good days, even my very good days. My escapes take the form of writing, of reading, of a martini, of sleep. Of closing the gate. Even the making of a fine dinner can be an escape. The most basic functions can be comforting escape- the kneading of dough, the picking and cooking of vegetables, the sear of flame on skillet, the hiss of onions and garlic filling the safe-house with comfort. Giving comfort can be an escape. Holding my grandson, following him around as he explores this world, keeping him safe and keeping my distance, if that is what he wants, so that he can wander farther afield until some day, he will catch that plane and he will not fall into a black hole because he knows that there are arms behind him, even if he cannot see them, ready to be proffered if there is need.

All of this is on my mind today. Words written by a poet (Madame King), sparse and true as a thin arrow found their mark and opened some channel into my psyche. And in being able to see the truth of them, I am not so afraid of my feelings, this tiny knot of an infant born of anxiety's evil intimacy. He/she may cling like a monkey (monkey on my back- what a sincerely apt metaphor that one is) but at least I know where he/she came from. At least I know that eventually (maybe in an hour- who knows?), he/she will tire in its grasp, slip away.

I knew a woman who suffered from depression and mental illness so badly that she could not let her husband go to work. She threatened daily to kill herself if he left her and in so doing, she trapped him in with her in her world of illness. She had come all the way from New Zealand to escape the horrible things which happened to her in childhood- true madness she had suffered and true madness she still experienced and what is the idea of suicide but the Ultimate Escape?

Ah. But isn't it better to flee to Key West, or to write poetry, to slice vegetables? Even to close the gate? If we are lucky, that is enough.

I am so lucky.

Owen does this thing now where if he hurts himself and you kiss the boo-boo he says, "Better," and if he chokes on something and you look up in alarm, he gets himself back to normal functioning and says, "Better," and I think of that now.
He has already, at the age of not-quite two, learned to reassure himself and us too.
In his case, I think he is being truthful.
He has also learned that if he is sad he will be held, he will be comforted.
I do not think that boy will need to run away from his life. He may run towards something new, something awesome, something fabulous- his own life. But he will not be running away.

He will have no need of escape.

Well, that's the theory.

Who knows if it will turn out to be true?
Not me.

I barely understand my own self, my own life, my own dreams, either the sleeping or awake ones.

But I do know that with each tiny piece of understanding, the need to run away lessens.

In theory. And in theory, the running-away-from desire can perhaps be channeled, even at this late date, into a running-towards, an embracing of that which is. Of what can-be.

Of perhaps even joy (yes, sometimes), or of each and every morning.

Well, maybe. And when the monkey-clinging-baby-of-anxiety is threatening to choke me, I just have to know that this, too, is part of who I am and why I am. Period. The End.

This is how it is for me today. How is it for you?

Goodness Gracious!

Oh my god. So many suggestions in comments to my post this morning that I actually FUCKING do something about my crazy.
What?
I have anxiety?
What?
No. Anxiety is what I had four years ago. Now I just have...oh, I don't know. General fucked-upedness. Right?
I wonder.
I had a very good friend and her first marriage was SUCH a disaster. Not a normal first-marriage disaster. Oh no. This one involved every sort of cruelty and abuse and she finally gathered her courage and ran away from that husband in the middle of the night and slept in an alley and found her way back to where she could get help and after that marriage, no matter how fucked up things were, she had that as a baseline comparison and so, nothing was THAT bad. And she tolerated a second marriage which by anyone's standards but her own was HORRIBLE and AWFUL and there was abuse and cruelty there, too, but not on the level of what her first one had been and so she tolerated it for years and decades.
And then she left him and died soon after but hey! That's another story.

Is that what I'm doing?
Not in the marriage department. I don't mean that. I don't even have bad feelings about my first husband. Sometimes I get a little pissed but mostly when I think of him I am grateful for the times that were good, for the babies he gave me, for the fact that we're still friends and when I think of some of the shit he pulled, I mostly laugh. And hell, I wasn't perfect either.
And of course, now I am married to the practically-perfect Mr. Moon so...
No. Not in the marriage department.

I think it's so odd that these days we think that everything can be "fixed." And believe me- I know that some things must be and that's all there is to it. Otherwise, we'd find ourselves back in the old days of being shut up in four-point restraints when menopause hit and the crazies descended but if Emily Dickinson were alive today, wouldn't we send her to the shrink to get her over her social anxiety, her agoraphobia?

"Miss Dickinson," I can see the good doctor saying, "One cannot stay at home and write poems about one's garden for one's entire life. There is a great, big world out there and you must be part of it!"

Again, not saying I am anything like Emily Dickinson and to be completely fair, I did say that I don't want to be crazy. I want to be easier about things. But do I think there is a magic pill, treatment, or therapy which is going to do that for me?
Actually, no. I don't.
When I had the severe panic/anxiety I KNEW there was help and that I had to go out and ask for it. I knew that. Without a doubt.
And I did and I got it and I am still on that drug and it keeps me mostly okay and I do enjoy and love my life. I laugh, I enjoy friends, I am able to love and be loved. I function. I leave my house. I do things which are hard.

I spent another afternoon today at my mother's old house, looking through pictures.
Can I just say that my mother and stepfather were two of the world's worst photographers? And that over the years, as I said before, the colors have muddied to a very hazy gray and so I sat there, flipping through pictures of my brothers, their birthdays, trips my mother and THAT man took together, pictures that I'd sent my mother of my babies, pictures that my brother (a fine photographer whose pictures have held up very well) sent her, pictures that friends and relatives had sent her and I was ruthless, and threw hundreds of prints away, blurry and indistinct and sometimes unidentifiable and every damn picture that that MAN was in.
You know what? He was a good looking man.
So the fuck what.

There are some pictures of me, of course, but not that many. I look into the face of young me and I was never smiling unless I was holding one of my little brothers on my lap or in my arms. Then I looked happy, with purpose.
I look at those pictures and I wonder that I am as fucking sane as I am. That I ever lived to this age. That I raised babies who, in the pictures I had sent to my mother, were ALWAYS smiling. Always happy-looking. That I managed not only to find a good man but to have the sense to marry him. A man who could love me for me, although I have to say that when we met and married, "me" was pretty cute. And he was a god. I am not kidding you.
Dang.

I suppose I feel like anything I ever do or have ever done is something of a miracle and wishing I could feel easier about traveling is like wishing I could fly.
It doesn't even occur to me that there would be a "fix" for this problem.

Huh.

But you've all given me something to think about. As always.
And for that, I am grateful.
As always.

Letting Go By Running Hard

Monday morning and I have darts of anxiety striking me like tiny acupuncture needles sent directly to the points most likely to release the vein-rivers of worry directly into my bloodstream, fuck. I hate that.

Well, what are you going do?

It suddenly strikes (haha!) me that perhaps I am a person so afraid of change and what-might-come that even getting up on a new day is enough to make me slightly crazed, has more to do with my morning despair than anything. How sad and ridiculous is that?

I took a good hard walk, striking (I love that word today, obviously) the ground with my feet, hard, the way I do, the sand on the woods-trail more packed today, more dense, from last night's rain. The little drainage pond I pass is almost dry, Lloyd Creek is barely a trickle and I remember a few years ago when we got that huge storm and the railroad tracks were covered by it and no trains could run.

Everything does change, every day, every second, month, year. I think of all the things we've done, experienced, felt, seen since we moved here seven years ago.
Seven years!

So lah. I need to take a shower, cool down, make Mr. Moon's snack bag as he is going to auction tonight, get to town, do a little birthday shopping for him- his birthday is Wednesday- go be with Owen for a few hours, come home, go to Monticello.
There. The day laid out before me, a blue-print, an outline, a plan.

I think it is best, some days, to just plow forward, step, step, step, keep moving, keep going, not taking too much time to stop and smell the roses because on those certain days, if you do, odds are good that a bee will merely climb up your nose. I spend plenty of time smelling the roses, the four-o-clocks, the phlox, the magnolias and mulling about the meaning of everything.

Today I am going to try to just walk strongly through the miles I need to go before I sleep, thank-you, Robert Frost, and let the world take care of itself and I will know that despite my inattention, all will be as it should, or at the very least, as it will.

Buddha's Lap Is Full Of Flowers

Which seems to amuse him no end.

The squashes are about ready to start to pick and the yellow cherry tomatoes burst under the tooth to explode like sugar. Almost too sweet, if that is possible.

The big tomatoes are green and shiny and looking so good, some of them begging to be sliced now and dipped in egg and milk and flour and salt and pepper and then fried so that their sweetness can be released to the tongue.


Every year I try different sorts of eggplants. This one looks...you decide.


It seems to me that nature has a few themes she especially likes and uses again and again.

For example, the shape of the fig.

The weather today is insane. It's never, ever this cool in North Florida in the middle of May. Never.
But it is now.

I feel as if I am in some strange vortex of another world which looks very much like the one I am used to but somehow, is not and I hate this feeling. Everything is blooming, opening itself to the sun and the clean, cool air and if I could, I would sit here all day, or maybe, even better, crawl back into the bed and make a warm cave there, or a tent, as Owen calls it when we pull the covers up over our heads with the giant bear, the books, and Zeke stays watch as we disappear into that other small world which we have made.

Trying To Be Calm

In twelve hours I'll be leaving Lloyd to drive to Tallahassee to go to the new Nurse Practitioner I think I want to see. And as laid-back a situation as this looks to be, I am anxious as hell.
Okay. Actually I'm doing okay just now as I took an Ativan. I do have a bit of a stash provided by someone who shall remain nameless because yes, it's illegal but I take maybe one a month and so I don't feel like I am abusing them in any way at all.
I tried tonight, just taking a half and that didn't touch it so I took the other half and thankfully, I am okay now. Feeling a bit odd, but okay.

When I was going through the worst anxiety of my life I asked the NP I was seeing at my doctor's practice if she could give me anything for the truly worst moments and she offered up five Ativan. Five. The tiny ones. And I was in tears in her office, asking her for help.
I held those things close to my chest and only used them when I thought I might die.

Well.

I really wish I could figure out why going to the doctor makes me so horribly anxious. As I have said before, I remember feeling this way from my earliest memories. Even going to a doctor's appointment for my mother made me feel as if I might die- what I now realize was a sort of child-panic attack. What had happened? Was it merely the flu shots I used to get? I don't know. I do know those shots traumatized me to no end and it took the doctor, my mother, and the nurse to hold me down. So maybe that was it. I don't know.

But I do know that I have avoided going to the doctor for as long as I can remember. Look- I had three babies at home with no drugs, one of them weighing over ten pounds, just to avoid the hospital. Well, that was one of the reasons. One of many, but it certainly indicates that I will do almost anything to get out of a hospital or doctor visit.
I went to all my prenatal appointments with my babies. First with doctors, then with a midwife, and that was okay. I didn't get the anxiety so badly then. But somehow, that was different. That was for the baby. At least, that's how I looked at it. And I felt so healthy and strong when I was pregnant and indeed, I was.
And the births were all beautiful and didn't seem to be medical events at all, despite how our culture views childbirth, and one of my greatest blessings is those home births. I am not even kidding you in the least. They were and are the best memories of my life along with that of my first child, who, even though he ended up being born in the hospital, I stayed at home in labor with for over 24 hours before I went to the hospital where I was only there for less than an hour before he was born and came home a few hours afterward so it was not a prolonged stay at all.

So here I am, a woman of fifty-six who literally almost passes out (and I have never passed out in my life) at the idea of going into a doctor's office, or in this case, a Nurse Practitioner's office, even one with the name of "Integrated Care," and it makes me feel so incredibly stupid and weak. Hell, I went to four years of nursing school and am licensed to this day! And that doesn't help a bit.
I think it might even make it worse.

I hate anxiety. Like depression it robs me of the fullness of my life. I'm not saying that I think every moment of my life should be filled with joy and wonder. That ain't even possible and I know it. It's just that those two things- anxiety and depression- take every bit of possible enjoyment out of life and replace it with a thick gray blanket of despair and fear. And trying to deal with them with logic is like trying to deal with a wildfire with a child's spray gun.

Well. I'll get through tomorrow morning and then I'm going to the hair dresser and that's not bad at all. No anxiety about that. And then a few hours later I'll be onstage again and that doesn't stress me out so much either. I mean, I get nervous but that's normal and can be good for the performance. I am completely aware of the difference between normal nervousness and irrational and paralyzing anxiety. Anyone who has experienced it can too. There is no comparison. One is a slightly pissed off house cat, the other a lion focused on you with teeth bared and claws extended, no help anywhere in sight.

Last night, when the anxiety had already begun, I went to the bookshelf and took out a Larry McMurtry book which I have only read once so for me, it's almost like reading it anew. It's called Rhino Ranch, and sure enough the very plain writing of McMurtry soothed me and I fell into his world of cowboys with sex problems and oil men with wife problems and breakfast at the Dairy Queen in Thalia, Texas, and I relaxed and could go to sleep.

Here's a bit of dialogue and I think that no one in this world does dialogue like McMurtry. It's between an old cowboy named Boyd and an old oil worker named Bobby Lee:

"Ever slept with a millionairess?" he asked- it was an abrupt change of subject.
"Not only have I never slept with a millionairess," Bobby Lee said, "I've never slept with a woman who wasn't several hundred dollars in debt, which of course she expected me to take care of for her."
Boyd didn't respond.
"And being the generous soul women seem to know me to be, I always do take care of it, ever damn time."
Boyd Cotton continued to hold his peace.
"And then what happened?" Bobby Lee continued before answering his own question. "Two of the women ran off with hardened criminals and the third had the bad manners to shoot me in the stomach, which brought me to the very brink of death."
"I may have wise to mainly stick to horses," Boyd observed.

There is not one thing here that causes me to panic or have bad associations or anything at all. In fact, because this is the fifth (I believe) in the series about the people of Thalia, Texas, I know Bobby Lee well and I love him despite his weakness for women who will have sex with him, despite the fact that he only has one testicle. I know what the Diary Queen looks like and I know they have chicken-fried steak and biscuits for breakfast. I know the main character, Duane, and have seen him through high school and into marriage and work and having a huge, uncontrollable family and the death of his wife.
Going back to Thalia is like going back home and it's exactly what I need right now.
Exactly.

Having Owen here today was helpful, too, and Jessie was here too and even watched him for a good while so that I could take a nap. My babies. My grandbaby. I want to have a life where I am sane enough to be there for them and with them, fully and completely. And with my husband too.

Here is Owen, helping to cook:

He is not a clean-as-you-go kind of guy. No. He's more of a make-a-huge-mess-as-you-go type of cook. But he can stir water like nobody's business.

And here are he and Jessie as she was leaving. He was holding a wire whisk but you can't see it.

And it's quiet and an hour later, now, and time for bed.
I'll get up in the morning and get ready and go to that NP. I don't even think I need an exam because I had one four months ago. And maybe- just maybe- this can be the beginning of me feeling as if I am in control of a situation which makes me feel so out of control.

I am hoping.

I have at least made a change and it may not be the right one, or it may indeed be the right one for me.
We shall see.

And life shall go on and I'll take Rhino Ranch to the appointment with me so that I have the totem of this soothing book to hold solidly in my hand, a reminder of the fact that life can be very hard and yet, somehow works out and that which looks insurmountable may not be in the least.

Hi. My Name Is Chicken Little

God. I need an Ativan. Or is it Atavan? Or maybe Atevan? Or perhaps...SERIOUS NARCOTICS!!!!

No. Not really.

Okay, I do.

Nah, nah. I don't.

(Got any narcotics?)

No, no. I am fine. The reason for my anxiety is that I just got on the phone and made TWO appointments! And for those of you who do not really know me let me just say that I have a neurosis about making appointments, especially those of the medical kind and in the finest sense of the ironic, the main reason I need to make medical appointments is not for my physical health which is pretty darn good but for my MENTAL HEALTH BECAUSE I SUFFER FROM ANXIETY! And depression, but that's another story.

And my present doctor seems to feel that I need every type of test in the world before she will renew my antidepressant and okay, as a registered nurse, I can understand the necessity of some of that but as a person who feels that this is MY body and that I should be able to make the choice of having such tests that have nothing to do with my antidepressant, I just finally came to the conclusion that I need a different doctor.
Or in this case, a nurse practitioner whose office I just called and made an appointment with. They not only do doctoring but also deep tissue massage and nutrition and I don't know what all but I don't give a good fucking damn if they just don't freak me the fuck out every time I go see them and if they'll just give me my antidepressant.
I'm not looking for narcotics here, people. Not in real life. Only in this-is-sort-of-funny Blog Life.

So I talked to the person who answered the phone about this and she said that all I need from them is an annual physical and THANK-YOU, JESUS! and so on Friday I shall hopefully go and get that out of the way and get my 'script renewed and a layer of anxiety which has been blanketing me shall go away because I have less than a month's worth of those pills.

And I also called the woman who made me a redhead and made an appointment with her on that very same day to be re-redded and then that night I'll be Truvy and the next day I'll be Truvy twice and then, we're done with the play. Phew.
My god, I loved doing this part but I will be so glad when it's over, too.
In a way. In a way I'm going to miss it so much.
We've been working on it since Thanksgiving, y'all! Three nights a week and now the performances and I've loved it but the rest of my life has sort of fallen into neglect and for example- I am out of everything except for coffee and when I went to make my supper last night I gathered everything I had and thawed out a tiny deer tenderloin and made what I called, in my mind, "Hawaiian Venison," and yes, pineapple was involved and that did make it festive, as pineapple always will.

Okay. I'm manic at this point. I slept until nine, the dogs had shit and peed all over the house, I've made appointments, I've talked to two of my kids, the laundry is running, the potatoes will not plant themselves, I have to go to the grocery, I'm taking care of Owen for an hour this afternoon, and I'M GOING TO TAKE A WALK OR KNOW THE REASON WHY! And...we have our last rehearsal tonight.

You see? You see how it is?

Breathe in. Breathe out. The sky is not falling. And even if it is, if I take a direct hit, I won't know what hit me and that would be okay, too.

God, it's gorgeous here today. And in lieu of narcotics, I'm going to go take that walk. Yes. It's a plan. We all need one. And a grocery list.

By this time next week my entire life will be different. Again.

And so it goes, and so it goes, and yes, it goes again.

Playing Bongos With Finger Picks

I am so anxious tonight. I wrote a long post, posted it, then deleted it. Gone. Done.
Who cares about costumes? Who cares about Goodwill? Who cares about the secret life of Truvy?

Mr. Moon is out of town and I have grown too accustomed in the last few days of having him right here to hold me. His absence reminds me of how completely incapable I am of the simplest things in life. I can plant a garden but god help me if I have to pay a bill. I can cook a fish but I would starve before I was able to catch and clean one.

The dishes are waiting for me to wash them and I want to fling them into the yard.
I want to let the rain wash them or rust them as it will and let the chickens have at what's in them.
But no, I am a good girl. I will put the leftovers away and wash the damn dishes and put up the laundry and go to bed.

The dogs have noticed my agitation and taken it in to themselves. They are all pacing and prancing, and that is not helping. Each one has different sized toenails to clip and click along the floor with. It sounds like a tank full of snapping beetles in my house.

Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up and be calm. I will go out and pick the white camellias and place them in a sacred and pleasing arrangement in a vase. Perhaps there will be peace in my heart.

Whatever. The damn dishes will be clean.

It's A Beautiful Morning

I keep thinking that tomorrow will be a better day. That I will wake up and this gnawing beast in my heart will be quieter in his chewing, that my thoughts will be more placid, more in tune with the cool, sweet air, the light which pours over everything, unhindered by the leaves of the pecan which are on the ground now leaving the limbs bare and unable to block the outpouring of the sun's affection.

I have moments of epiphany where I tell myself to let things pass through me, these thoughts, these worries, these jagged bits of unbased fear, just let them in and show them the way out, leaving me untouched and fine, tell myself to breathe in and breathe out, just so.
Yeah.

I slept so many hours last night and here I am again, using sleep as a drug and as a drug, it works well. But the time comes when you have to get up, no matter. You have to. There is no more sleep in you for that time.

Eating is becoming a problem. I don't care for it. And if I don't want to eat, I don't want to cook either. Thanksgiving is coming up and god knows I have plenty to be thankful for, not the least is which I am quite certain that in a day or two I will wake up and these feelings will be calmed. I know that.

Well, until then, one goes on. There is a walk to be taken, there are nests in the hen house to clean out. There is a house to clean, a birthday party to go to. There are lines to begin learning. I started marking my lines last night and I am wondering at Jack and Jan's sanity in assigning me a part which has so many of them. Truvy is in almost every scene, offering a line here and a line there. I think I am going to love Truvy and I can't wait until I can embrace her fully and take her into myself, giving her back out onstage. Dr. Stage, the real actors call it. You may puke before you walk onto it, but once there, you are healed. I am hoping for the best. I am going to do my best but that doesn't mean I am not scared to death.

Scared to death. I remember when depression danced with me by itself and as ridiculous as this sounds, I wish it were still so. Why did it decide to bring a new dancer with it? This anxiety? I knew the dance before, the steps. I did not like the dance, but it was familiar. Now, two years after this new partner has shown up, I am still confused and clumsy. I am wishing they would grasp each other- depression and anxiety- and forget about me in their dancing, go off together and leave me be, but no, they have formed some sort of crazy bond and decided that I am a perfect hostess for their goings-on.

It will pass. It will pass. It will pass.

It is a beautiful morning. I am not lying. It is.

Here

Well, we're home and I wish I could say that all the ghosts have been exorcised, all the anxiety has been relieved, that my love for the island is as it was so many years ago but I would be lying if I said that.

It was so beautiful. Dog Island is beautiful. There are piney woods and there is the Gulf beach and there is the bay and there is swamp and marsh. There are oak trees and the pines, palmetto and sea grass. There are wildflowers and wild rosemary. There are the birds from the giant blue heron to the tiny Mexican doves which come to the bird bath by the porch. There is life everywhere you look.
And the people were there too, this weekend. Almost every house I saw was occupied which is something I have never seen before. Children and parents, boats anchored, people fishing and swimming and walking the flats at sunset's low tide as Mr. Moon and I do. All of us there, getting in the last of the goodness of it before it is killed. I can say it no more clearly than that.


There is more life in those muddy tidal flats than you can imagine. And of course, with every step we took, I wondered how long all of those creatures- the big and the small- will be alive in a month.




When we were coming across the bay a pod of dolphins met us and we stopped and they played around us and I tried to take pictures but it's almost impossible, and I prayed that those creatures are smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge before the oil slick covers the still-clear waters, blue and green, and turning teal and turquoise under the setting sun. Turning into a misty silver blue after the sun has dipped below the horizon. That water.

The old Land Rover started right up which is a small miracle in and of itself. Here. I took a picture of myself in one of the mirrors as we drove along the sandy road:

And the house was waiting for us, still standing. Always another miracle. It needs painting, the deck off the side is falling off, the steps are not so sure, but there it was.

A tiny frog, friendly and spotted, was perched just above the door knob as I went to unlock it.

The view out the back was as gorgeous as ever. The water was still, the air was too.

The two sentinel pines still stand but the beach grows smaller every month and there is only a strip of sand where there used to be a beach and I know that one day they will be gone, those beautiful pines, unless a storm somehow brings us more sand. It happens. The island shifts and changes, it has forever.

And I was happy to be there but I was not. I tell you this- I think the suffering I did while I was in that house was more profound than I even know. It was hard and what made it even harder was the beauty of it all. Add to that the death which is surely flowing our way and well, bittersweet doesn't even begin to describe how I felt this weekend.

Saturday morning Mr. Moon got up before sunrise to go pick up Jessie and two of his friends to go offshore fishing and when I got up in the empty house, I felt panicked. I couldn't eat. I decided to go for a walk before it got too hot. I left the house with a bottle of water and the camera, sunscreened and with my hat on and I walked on the Gulf for awhile where I took this picture of how clear the water is:

A man was swimming with a dog and when I walked by, the dog barked at me and tried to swim in as if to get me. I knew it was false threat but it added to my anxiety as did the blank shore of the Gulf. I do not love the Gulf side of the island the way I love the bay side. The bay has trees and so many different birds. The Gulf has that endless water, the white sand, the houses which are losing their footing as the water creeps up closer and closer and the unrelenting sun which even at ten in the morning beats down with a powerful force. I stripped down to my bathing suit and got in the water and let it rush over me and breathed into the current. I tried to slow my heartbeat. I tried to cool my body.
I crossed back over to the bay and made my way home. I found a wedding bouquet of balloons, so incongruous and odd in the dunes where the birds are nesting.

I took its picture. I wondered who the bride and groom were and where they were married. I thought about their hearts soaring as the balloons were released after the vows were said. I tossed them back into the air and they floated for a moment but came back down to earth.


Mr. Moon and Jessie came back home and brought a cobia to clean for me to cook. We played cards, I lost every hand. I was so happy to have that man and that girl back with me. The house let go of its sadness for awhile and we drank beer and listened to Prairie Home Companion and made bawdy jokes as did the people on the show. I made the most beautiful pie I've ever made, rolling out the crust with a bottle full of wine from the refrigerator.


We watched the sunset again, we walked the flats again. At this time of day, there is no way to take a bad picture. Everything is lit with magic. Everything is every thing and a metaphor for it all, lit with that ethereal light.


If there is anything more beautiful than a sunset over the water I don't know what it could be.


One's child, perhaps, sitting in the glow of it. That could be more beautiful.

We ate cobia that night, as firm and fresh as any fish I've ever eaten, and okra cooked with tomatoes and onions and corn and peppers. We watched a Northern Exposure episode in which a circus comes to town and the Flying Man falls in love with Marilyn.

We slept. We got up and I was anxious again. We did the laundry, washed all the sheets and towels, I took a picture of the pines beside the house.


And the dragonfly which sits on top of the lightening-blasted flag pole.

We packed the clothes, the left-overs, the shrimp and crab we bought on the way down we never ate, the sea trout Mr. Moon caught this morning in the surf.
We came home.

We are home.
The chickens are all here. Hank took good care of them. Mr. Moon cleans off the boat. I need to go marinate some shrimp and the trout for our dinner.
I am filled with it all and don't know where I am- here or there. Writing this, I am back there. Stopping and looking around, I am here where my phlox is beginning to bloom everywhere, bringing a pink-purple color to the palate of the green which is my yard in Lloyd. A color not unlike the sunset on Dog Island where I know the sun is setting, where I know the water, at this moment, is still clear and where all the creatures, at this moment, are safe.

People change. Their hearts and minds change. So do islands. So do bodies of water. Some change is good and some is uncomfortable and some is deadly.

We experience what we can while we can. We cross the water, the boat carries us to this side, to that, our hearts carry us up like a bouquet of balloons and then fall back down, a craziness of gold and purple in the white-sand dunes.

We think about it, we hold it all in our hearts, those crazy up-and-down hearts. We consider ourselves lucky, no matter what. We play the hands we're dealt, we do the best we can. We hold tightly to the hands of those we love.

We breathe and cool our bodies in the water. We make a pie. We fry a fish. We cook some grits.

We come home.

We do.

An Amen Post (For Lack Of A Better Title)

Sunday morning and here we are again. It got hot yesterday and humid- more our normal weather than what we have been having. There was supposedly a vote at the party on whether or not to turn on the air conditioning and finally, it did get turned on. Didn't matter much to me during the party but it surely felt wonderful for sleeping. We are wussies about the heat and humidity.

It's funny how that first turning-on of the AC changes everything about the smell and feel of where we live. And sound, too, of course. The beast of a unit makes its own bass growl and grind and when we sleep with the windows shut, I don't hear the sounds of the night birds, the crickets, the frogs. Just the hum of the fans I have trained on me for the inevitable hot flashes.
I always wonder how in the world the people who lived here before electricity managed to exist through the summers. They had no choice, I suppose, but I think of women my age who cooked with wood and who gardened in long skirts and sleeves, who had no bug spray or screens even, who had no running water!- how did they do it? I can barely contain myself and my misery as it is sometimes and I can wear shorts and tank tops, I have air conditioning and a refrigerator and a stove and running water. Oh, praise all that be for running water!
And I have medication.

This anxiety thing is a force to be reckoned with, I tell you. I have had my moments in the past few days of relief but they are more than balanced out with the moments and hours of this horrendous feeling of doom. I think I could honestly call it crushing and for those of you who have experienced it, I think you would agree and for those of you who have not, I doubt you could understand. I certainly couldn't until I became ill in this particular way. All around you can be the most perfect, wonderful day filled with so much love and so much joy and yet, here you are, walking around in this dark shadow place, unable to feel it, unable to participate. Well, you do participate, you hone your acting skills, you smile and you laugh and you go on with it the way you know it's supposed to be done but in doing so, you feel even crazier. But what are the options? If you go to your room, close the door, get in the bed, pull the covers up- you are still there with it or more precisely, it is with you. It IS you. Might as well stay in the light. Might as well.

It's funny. I saw a friend of mine in the old days go through this and I would try, over and over again to rebut his arguments of the myriad ways he was going to be suffering some sort of horrible fate but none of my logic did one damn thing to relieve him. I remember walking and walking endlessly with him because the anxiety strung his nerves to where he could not stay still and telling him over and over again that the IRS was NOT going to put him in jail. That he would NOT freeze in the winter, that...
Whatever.
None of it mattered.
His mind was telling him that everything, EVERYTHING was wrong.
I understand that now. One of the things that told me I had to get back on the antidepressant was the way I felt when I walked. I can't explain it but it's like the body just needs to push, and push and push, trying to get rid of some of the anxiety but it doesn't work. Maybe it helps. I don't know.

What I do know is that eventually the medication will truly take hold and that these feelings will dissipate and perhaps even entirely disappear. I hope so. I think they will.

I wonder if those people in the old days experienced this sort of illness. People have always gone insane and that's for sure. I feel certain that mental illness is as old as we have had brains. Hell, I look at my old dog and I know she suffers from a sort of dementia. It may not be just a human thing.

BUT- here we are in this twenty-first century world and I can't help but wonder if the way we live doesn't contribute to all this craziness. Instead of dealing with the problems that beset just us and our family and our communities, we are given the opportunity to know about and worry about so much more. Every thing that happens in the world that can cause grief, can cause worry, can cause anxiety- it's all here for the reading. Earthquakes and volcanoes, oil spills and car bombs. Not here, but somehow close because I know of it. And we don't have to wonder if we'll get enough rain for there to be enough beans to can for the winter. We don't have to worry about the foxes getting our chickens or the bears getting our pigs, thus opening our family up to starvation. No. We are worrying about things that ultimately we have no control over whatsoever and that, I think, is perhaps more crazy-making than anything.
Of course the farmer couldn't control the weather but he could, perhaps, water his beans. He could build stouter fences for his livestock, he could hunt and kill the marauding bear.

But I can't do a damn thing about the oil spill. I can't do anything at all about volcanoes or earthquakes or hundreds of thousands of injured and starving people but I know about them. It is all there, all of that terrible stuff- niggling my brain, telling me that all is doom. All is doom.

And I take all of that stuff and the way my brain processes it and I turn it into illogical and ridiculous worries about how I am fucking up on a daily basis, how I am not good enough as a wife, a mother, a friend. And logically, I know that I do the best I can but that's not what this sick part of my brain tells me.

Yeah, it's a booger. And I am going to ride it out and I am going to do my best and I am taking that medication and I am writing this here and I am sending it out so that if you, too, are struggling with this and are afraid- well- let me tell you that I am afraid too and that yet, I know, we'll manage. We'll survive. We won't always feel this way.

And that even in the midst of it, even as the buzz which radiates from the knot in the stomach tells me that something horrible is happening every moment, I can take heart in knowing that no, not really, it's not. That the sky is gray and it's windy but that's okay. This is no killing storm heading my way, it is merely weather. I can know that my daughter and my mother, too, had good birthdays and that I had something to do with that. That even in this state, I can help make things better here, for my own. That I can give Owen a bottle, that I can fix a nice salad, that I can bake some fine cakes, that I can write a pretty card, that I can say, "I love you," and mean it with all of my heart.

I can look around at my family and the friends who are family too and I can know that this is what's important. This is what matters.
The rest, this other stuff- just weather. Just feelings.

Not to say that weather can't be destructive, not to say that feelings don't matter. That would be a lie. But to say that sometimes, mostly in fact, they are just passing events bringing what they will and if we hang on, if we hang in, they will change.

Tend the garden, tend the chickens, tend my tiny world. That's what is before me and that is what I will do and the moments of relief will become hours and then days and oh Lord, won't that be fine?

I wish that for you, too, if you are suffering. I am telling you again that you are not alone, no matter how alone it is you feel.

I wish this were a more cheerful post but it's not and I am not one of those bloggers who is eternally upbeat or funny or cheerful or enlightening or grateful or timely. I am merely me, and even as I know I am the luckiest woman in the world, I know that to be honest, I struggle mightily and that's just the truth and I know you do too. Maybe not in the same way I do, but every one of us does in some way, struggle daily.

And we need to take comfort in the fact that we go on and we do our best while we wait for the weather to change or for ourselves to change or to change ourselves. Whatever.
We do our best.

And we turn on the AC when the heat gets unbearable and we are grateful for that comfort, that coolness. I remember when I was living in a trailer, a tin can of a house, and it got so hot and my ex-husband and I went to the second-hand appliance store and bought a rattly, noisy used window unit and we put it in the window of our bedroom and we turned it on and we were stunned with the sweet, frigid air that it pumped into our house, the way it cooled our sheets, our brows, our very blood. And we felt guilty about that, too, being the good hippies we were.
I laugh at that guilt now.
And I take that memory as a lesson. Do what you can to get through this life, especially the hot eternal nights. And don't feel guilty. Your suffering does not alleviate anyone else's.
Do the best you can but don't suffer if you don't have to.

Amen.