It's My Pity Party, I'll Cry If I Want To

Last night Jessie went out to eat with Lily and Jason and the boys. Here they are, having a fine time. I asked Jessie this morning if the boys had been good. She paused and said, "Well, you know Owen."

It's just impossible for an almost-three year old to sit still at a restaurant. She said that he put a bunch of mustard on his sandwich and then he didn't like it. So his mother licked off the excess mustard.
I have said it before and I will say it again- Lily is the BEST mother.

While they were eating out, I was at home with Mr. Moon in the biggest funk you can imagine. It started in the afternoon, that funk, and it hasn't dissipated yet. I just feel completely useless. I feel as if I don't exist until someone needs me. I feel as if the stuckedness I've been feeling has set like concrete, finally drying and is now hard as a parking lot.

Watching hours of Bravo TV yesterday did not help matters. I didn't even feel like reading. I'm reading a good book but it's depressing. It's depressing because it's about people who get stuck and it's depressing because it is beautifully written and it's a first novel and I didn't write it and there you go. It's depressing because it's just depressing. (For the NYT review of the novel, go HERE.) At one point while watching Bravo TV I decided that even if I didn't feel very well, I could go upstairs and pull out those boxes of unsorted pictures from the past thirty-six years of my life. I could start going through them, at least try to file them in some sort of order.
I reached into the closet to pull out one of the boxes and just the sight of those drug-store photo envelopes holding images of people from three decades ago, some of them now dead, made me want to weep.
Just go ahead and stick a gun barrel in my mouth, I thought. I shoved the box back into the closet and shut the door and went back downstairs and the mice can continue to shred those pictures into nests.

I'm struggling. I am really struggling.
I think that sometimes when you are prone to depression and you fall physically ill, it feels like depression and then, depression does follow. Does this make sense?
No. Why should it? There is nothing logical about depression.

Well. I am going to take a shower, I am going to go to town to run a few errands. I don't have to but I can't simply sit here today, beating myself up for all of the things I am not doing, all of the places I am not being, all of the ways I am not succeeding, all of the dreams I have not allowed myself to have.

Birthdays. Aren't they great?

Happy Friday, y'all.

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

This Is My Brain On Not-Enough Sleep

Dear god, I am having the hot-flash of the ages and if I had a swimming pool, I would tear my clothes off and jump in but I do not and so I sit here, bearing it. 

That is all you can do with a hot flash. Just bear it. Know it will pass.

I've actually been sitting here trying to write and just the very boldness of such an activity is giving me the hot-flashes. It's been so long since I've done this. With every word I type there seems to be a demon poking me with a hot pitchfork, yelling at me to shut-up! you suck! what the hell are you doing? and why aren't you out there in that garden, getting some real work done? You afraid to sweat, woman? Well, I'll give you sweat anyway, you fool.


Or something like that.

It's been a decent day. I went for a walk and then Lily and Jason and the boys came over. It was a treat to have them all here and we went out to the porch and the chickens came up,



thinking that maybe we were out there to feed them so I went and got some bread and we did and Owen ate some of the bread, too.
Owen owns this house and the yard too. He knows it. Everything here is his for his use and he knows all the hiding places and all of the secret stashes of his bamboo and how to feed the chickens and where Mer-Mer keeps the chocolate and the juice and which cup he likes to use for that juice. I don't know why but this just amuses the hell out of me. Three adults wandering around the house going, "Owen! Owen? Where are you, boy?" and he's only been gone for seven seconds, if that.
Gibson, of course, still has a lot of learning to do in regards to Mer-Mer's house but he'll get there. The other day I wiped Owen's old walker down with bleach and Fabuloso and when he's ready, it'll be there, ready for him to get around and start to figure it all out.

I tried to get a decent picture of the two of us on Photo Booth but he suddenly decided he needed the ninny and in the three seconds it took for me to pose with him, he went from smiley baby to throwing-a-hissy baby but I think he's cute anyway. Isn't he getting chubby?



Owen's getting pretty darn annoyed with the camera. I hear that down in Satellite Beach one of his great-aunts started paying him dollars to let her take his picture. This cannot be good. His Mer-Mer is certainly not going to be paying him for the privilege of taking his picture. But I guess if I only saw him every six months or so I probably would.

Right after Lily and Jason and the boys left, Judy and Caroline came by. That was nice too. We sat on the back porch and visited and talked about such things as sexual abuse and aging and death and dying and I don't know what all. Women, after a certain age, do not fuck around. We get right to it. I appreciate that. I don't have the time or energy for garden-club chit-chat. Whatever that is. Maybe garden-club chit-chat is a myth in my own mind. Since I have a policy of not being part of anything that has the word "club" in it, I guess I will never know.
Which might be my loss and I admit that.

I've talked to May on the phone and then Lizzie called me and I talked to her. No garden-club chit-chat in either one of those conversations although Lis and I do talk about our gardens. I told her that my latest fantasy is buying and moving into a townhouse. She laughed at me. She knew I was kidding.
Sort of.

And Mr. Moon's gone to auction because thankfully, someone wants a car, and I guess I'll cook some green beans

 and potatoes and tomatoes for my supper. Maybe with chick peas. In a sort of curry thing. I wish I had some coconut milk but I don't.

It's time to put the chickens up. I've got the air conditioning on. I'm going to try and sleep tonight. I sure hope it happens because I'm tired of feeling even crazier than I usually do.

I heard a guy on the radio today say that perhaps depression is not really a mental illness anymore than homosexuality is, but simply part of the human condition and that "normalcy" doesn't really exist and that made me feel some better. My normal is not yours and his normal is certainly not mine and yet, even within my normal, there is abnormal and I'd just as soon get back to regular crazy.

Does that make any sense?

I doubt it.

Well, what in hell DOES make sense these days? Grandchildren do and so do friends and love always makes sense, even when it doesn't, and it makes sense to have a smoothie for breakfast made of yogurt and fresh fruit because no matter what you eat for the rest of the day, you have had your fruit.

That's about all I know.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

A Killing Frost

I really screwed the fucking pooch last night.
It froze. The ground is carpeted in pecan leaves. They must have all dropped off at once in the night. I am almost surprised the sound didn't wake me up. The banana leaves are that dark-green color of dying chlorophyll lying limp against the stalks.

I didn't wrap or move one damn plant.

I hardly have the heart to go around and look and see what I've lost.

I guess that later I'll take my cart and my clippers and cut everything back and hope that the plants themselves are not truly dead.

Oh well. I wasn't paying attention. And truthfully- some of the plants are in pots so big that it takes me AND Mr. Moon to bring them in. But I could have tried- I could have brought some in, covered the rest up.

And now I have a project. I have cart and clippers, I will wear overalls and gloves. I will spend time outside in the sunshine. It's already warmer out there than it is in here. And by next week, it's supposed to be in the eighties again.

It is good for me to have a project, albeit such a depressing one. I am struggling with this stuff going on in my head. I read an article the other day about how depression may actually be connected to physical inflammation. I believe that. When I am feeling like this, my eyes feel strange, heavy somehow. They do not hurt or ache, they just feel heavy. Different.
And of course there is the need to sleep. There is a lack of appetite. But I just ate an egg with a yolk as golden as the sun from any planet and a piece of toast and I have talked to three people on the phone and every one of them told me they love me and I told every one of them that I loved them and I have thrown some things away and tidied some areas of the kitchen and so I am okay.

I am going to move about the yard in the sunshine, I am going to cut away that which is dead and hope that the roots are good. I am going to be as gentle with myself as possible, physically and spiritually and emotionally. I am going to remember that there is a strong tie between all three of those and that no matter which part becomes ill first, healing can occur from all directions. To treat one aspect is to treat all three.

Yes. That sounds right. And tonight I will put on my serving clothes again and perhaps I will stay for the show but whatever it is that I need to do, I will do because I have been given this gift right now of time to do whatever that is and the quiet to listen to myself to know what that may be.

Does this make any sense?

I hope so.

Love From Florida Where It Surely Froze Last Night...Ms. Moon

What If It's All A Virus?

The sun came out and I went for a walk. That's what you're supposed to do, you know. Exercise.
I did it.
The air was thick with dragonflies, each on a mission of his or her own.
Yellow and purple flowers are blooming. These are the color of fall here. I picked a few and brought them home and put them into one of my favorite blue vases which shines like a jewel in the sun. I love colored glass. Cheap colored glass. Jewels you can use. That vase was in As I Am.
It held a potion.

Billy called me today. He told me about something that he'd done and he said, "If you tell anyone I told you this I'm going to say you're a liar."
And then he proceeded to tell me a completely hysterical story which started with the words, "So I found some of Shayla's jeans in the freezer," and went on from there.
I am not going to tell you the rest of the story but I did tell it to May and she laughed a lot.
Here's a picture of Billy I stole from the Facebook:

Is he cute or what? Handsome, too.
That's him at work. He works at the local New Leaf Market and he's in charge of wine and cheese or something like that. He's a manager of some sort. Every one loves Billy. You would too if you knew him. He makes me mixed tapes and shares his grandparents with me. He's married to Shayla who teaches "under-privileged" kids and who has red hair and they have a son named Waylon. Not only is Billy about the funniest person I know, he is also one of the smartest. And bravest.

The story he told me used the word "Bedazzled" in it too. That's all I'm going to say about that. I do not want to be called a liar.

So I went for that walk. I picked flowers. I saw dragonflies. I came home and picked up fallen branches. I talked to May and to Kathleen and Billy and Lily on the phone. I did some laundry. I took a bath. I read "Masque Of The Red Death out loud again. While I was in the bath tub. It wasn't quite as abysmal.

Mr. Moon came home and he was wearing a blue shirt and he is so handsome. Blue is a very good color on him. He changed into camo and went out to hunt buck with a bow. It is buck-bow season. There are so many different hunting seasons. I do not know why. Doe-bow, buck-bow, rifle-doe, rifle-buck, muzzle-loader this and that. As far as I know, there is not a season where you can take a deer in hand-to-hand combat. If there were, Mr. Moon would train for it.

It's been one of those days. One of those days where you get through it.
It's so hard to describe depression. And it is so hard to justify it when you have this jeweled, beautiful life. This BEDAZZLED life.
Look- depression has no desire to be justified. It just is. Maybe they will discover that it is a fucking virus like herpes and there are remissions and exacerbations. Maybe it only looks to be hereditary because you catch it a a young age from a parent. Maybe they will discover a vaccine. Or a remedy which does more than treat the symptoms. I think this is entirely possible.

Wouldn't it be a fucking RELIEF to know that it's a virus? Because no matter what they say- that mental illness of all sort is real and that no, you cannot control it with your mind, if you suffer from it, you think that surely you CAN control it with your mind. And then you feel guilty and weak and stupid when you can't.

A virus. The depression virus.

Someone should study this. Someone should get a grant. Maybe the reason that there's so much depression these days is because it's contagious. As in really contagious like the flu, not as in contagious like laughter or yawning.

Maybe I'm talking through my ass.

Well, the sun is going down. Tomorrow will be a different day. It will be colder, that's for sure.
Take care, y'all and as Mr. Moon said in a note he left me once, "Stay warm like the place I have for you in my heart."

Like that. Exactly like that.

I really mean it.

Perhaps Prozac Could Hire Me As A Spokeswoman. And A Lifeboat Company, Too

When I feel this way, it is as physical as it is mental. My body hurts, each and every part of it aches with what I can only define as the dregs of some sort of poison which has flooded through me.

Yes. I think that may be what this feels like- a dark poison set spreading all through me, mind, body, heart, soul.

There is no logic to it, there is no fighting it. There is only the understanding that like a toxic killing red tide, it will eventually pass. It depends on many things- prevailing winds, distant storms, the temperature of air and water, the time of year. Who knows? Perhaps even the prayers of the fishes who swim in deep, far-away cold waters may affect it all. The dancing of the giant squid, the leaping and rotation of the great whales, the songs they sing which sound as if they emanate from hearts as big as houses, red like liver, like placentas, like the hearts they are. Or perhaps something as seemingly insignificant as the smallest ripples set in motion by the tiniest silver fish, swimming purposefully in schools as big as prairies in water shot with the same sort of light which pours down into my tree-filled yard, glittering the fish, their eyes always focused ahead, even as they are set sideways on those flat, thin bodies.

Whatever.

It is so hard to explain- this deep ache. It is as if, when it arrives, there is a part of me which recognizes it so profoundly that I cannot help but allow it entry like a relative who brings nothing but sorrow and pain and confusion but who cannot be turned away because...he is brother, he is father, he is blood.

Barring the door would do no good. He has the keys to every door in the house. He knows the entry code. He slides the windows up as they were greased and slips in with night time's shadows.

And yet, I know it will pass. The unwanted, unbidden visitor will slip away like the red tide always does. I will be Grandmother again, wife, lover, mother, woman. This is the gift of age and experience. This true knowledge.

I am giving it today and tonight. I am saying, "Here is the table, eat. Here is the bed, lay down and rest. Please do not be here when I wake up tomorrow. There is no room for you in this house."

The fishes' prayers will change as will the dances of the giant squid, the great whales will sing different songs and leap in different ways, the tiny fish will find new seas to roil with their swimming.

The door swings this way and that. The windows allow entrance and exit. The body will clear of poison. The mind will still be there, like the sea or the sky after a storm. Like a body after a fever has been cooled.

Please don't feel you have to respond to this. I know all will be well. And like I said, logic has nothing to do with any of it. It is just part of who I am, these waves that catch me and carry me under. They always let me go and I wash up on shore again, safe in this harbor I am so blessed to inhabit, this shelter, this soft beach, this familiar curve of land.

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?

Best I Can Do Today

Sorry guys. The Black Dog is gnawing his way through my front door and you don't even want to hear about it.
So.
I'm going to link an old post. Really old. Three and a half years ago old.

Read it if you want.

It's entitled What's For Dinner.

I have to go lock myself in the closet now. That damn Black Dog has gotten a snout and one paw in.

I'll be back when he's decided to leave me alone.

Nothing But Everything

I dreamed last night or this morning that my entire purpose with the blog had become the way I see things. In my dream, I was looking through my camera's view finder and framing a picture and that, that was the purpose of it all.
Started with words, became visual.
Well, I don't know about that. I still don't even know how to operate the camera properly.
I think that writing and photography are two of those things that everyone looks at and says, "Shit. I could do that."
We all see (mostly) and we all use language every day.
And in my heart I do not take these things seriously that I do with words and pictures. Not one bit.
I woke up this morning after that dream and since it had rained all day yesterday the dogs had not been open to the suggestion that they go out last night to pee and poop and so what greeted me was...well, filthy.

I looked at a river of pee, flowing down my hallway and I said, "Well. It's going to be that sort of day."

And then I looked outside and this is what it looked like:


Light pouring in over winter's bones and moss and dripping left-over rain drops and glory everywhere and the downed branch with the resurrection fern like some dinosaur femur, green covered and alive again, somehow, rebirth even as the branch itself rots into dirt, slowly and with great dignity.


This, this is what is happening in my back yard while my soul feels like a hardened, small nugget of failure and bitterness, enclosed in this old body, enclosed in this old house and I am not paying attention and as I wrote to Ms. Bastard-Beloved already this morning- am I just peddling along here, waiting to die?

Ah-lah.

And I record with pictures that anyone could take and with words that anyone could write and meanwhile, the real raw reality of it all is that my floors desperately need mopping, my lines desperately need learning, my husband poured and took with him all of the smoothie and the blackbirds are still with me, right over my shoulder, eating like demons, and a cardinal is fussing somewhere and the dogs don't give a shit (!) that they are fouling my nest.

Well. The loquats are blooming like I've never seen.


They are full and heavy and are waiting for the bees to come and make love to them and the train whistles and comes charging by and this is life and this is my small part of it and there is no one to blame for filthy floors but me, no one to record this life but me, no one to write these specific words, to take these specific pictures and already the light has changed, the sun gone behind a cloud that was not there twenty minutes ago and here I am.

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.

Hiding

Here's the thing about depression- you hide it.
I've been struggling again for awhile, it had made its appearance all week on and off and I wrote about it some but then I'd cowboy up, cupcake, and I'd write something cheerful or grateful and that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

Yesterday I wrote a post that was horrible. Just, so fucking depressing and I deleted it and posted something else entirely which may have hinted at things but didn't go there, exactly.

So when I finally admit it, when I finally come here and write the words that tell how I am really feeling, it seems so very sudden and oh yes, here's Ms. Moon again, babbling on about her struggle with depression, blah, blah, blah, blah, we've heard it before, tomorrow or the next day she'll be babbling on about how glorious it all is, blah, blah, blah.
Right?
Right.

And I DO feel guilty about being depressed. Fuckin' A, I feel guilty! What right on this earth do I have to feel depressed? Okay, sure, there is adversity, my friend has cancer, the holidays are coming up (and for those of you who don't know me that well, here's a fact- I hate the holidays with a red, royal passion), and oh, I don't know. The fucking beans got frost bit. Who knows why this stuff triggers something in me?

I'll tell you this- I do honestly think it's very chemical. I have bad chemicals. And I take an antidepressant and I hate doing that. I take fish oils. I take magnesium and Vitamin D. All that stuff. And I don't know if I am just DNA'd to suffer depression or if something happened to me in the womb or in early childhood or what, but depression is part of my make-up. Some people meet adversity with renewed determination. I wish to god I was one of them.
But I'm not.
And I KNOW that depression and anxiety limit my life. I dreamed the other night that Mr. Moon was with a group of people, paddling a canoe across a lake to see a beautiful house and there was light everywhere on that lake and the woman in his canoe with him was a gorgeous creature with shining black hair and I stood on the shore and watched these people paddle off and I was so sleep-struck in my dream I couldn't even yell out for them to wait for me. I was stuck in sleep. On the shore.
You don't need to be Freud to figure that one out.

I also dreamed that there was a little girl who had been abused somehow by a predator and he had been seen in the area. She asked me if I thought she should do something about that. And thinking about it, later, of course that little girl was me.

A few days ago I started writing again on a memoir that I started awhile back that I am including recipes in. And I was writing a part about a particular time in my childhood where my stepfather had been at his worst with me and hell- that's a pretty obvious link.
So yes, I should DO something about that predator. Well, metaphorically, at least. But my god, the years I have spent in therapy, the years I have thought about it, worked through it, accepted, fought, accepted again, respected the effect it had on me and cherished the good parts, WHAT ELSE DO I DO?
Yes, I've done burning and release ceremonies too.
Don't ask me to do another. I don't have that kind of heart. If I did, I'd just go to church. Or something.
The supernatural, whether it comes in the form of sage or Jesus just does not work for me.

So what does work?
Exercise. Time. Patience.
Writing about it.
That helps.
And yet, here I go, feeling guilty again.

I write about it and my son calls to check on me.
I write about it and I now it causes my family grief.
I write about it and I am afraid that my friends won't tell me of their troubles or troubled thoughts.
I write about it and I feel tremendously self-indulgent.
I write about it and it eventually passes and then I feel stupid. Why did I write about something that I KNOW will go away?
Because.
While it's happening, it's so profoundly affecting.
While it's happening, it's impossible to believe in the logic of the knowledge it will pass.
While it's happening, there is no logic to be found. Oh sure, it's still there. The logic of knowing, though, and the logic of feeling are two entirely different things.
Chemicals.
Fucking chemicals.

I stole that picture from The Dishwasher's Tears. I didn't even ask permission. I THINK I saw somewhere on his blog that Tearful said it was okay to use his stuff. Did he or did I dream it?
I don't know but I do know this- I have never in my life seen an image which recreates the visual of how depression feels better than this picture.
Tearful created the image to illustrate grief on July 2, 2010.
Grief. Depression. Fear. Anger-turned-inwards. Anxiety.
It says it all, somehow.

So. Now I've written a self-indulgent post and stolen an image from a writer/artist whom I admire tremendously and I'm not proud of myself.
But I'm not hiding.

And I am going to go out into the world this afternoon. We are going to town to see Owen and get a few things we need.
And I did take a walk.
And I did pick up trash.
Trash which had been hidden by summer's growth but which is now visible as that growth dies back.
I am doing what I know how to do.

And I'm not going to apologize.

(I'm sorry. See- I can't stop myself.)

But as I keep saying- I know I am not the only one. I know I am not alone.
So if you know exactly what I'm talking about, know that you aren't either.

And we don't have to hide. It is not shameful to be depressed or tell the truth about it. It is not shameful to get help. I am going to call the doctor this week and that is one of the hardest things in the world for me to do.
But I'm going to do it.

There. Done.

We go on. As long as it takes. Nothing lasts forever. Etc.

My Blind Eye To The Sun

It's Sunday. He is home and all is well, the light is pouring like honey over the yard and house and this entire world we live in.
And yet- oh. God. I am struggling so.

You know, many people just quit posting at all when depression overcomes them. I suppose I should too.

I ain't fit to be with.

Do you know how guilty it makes me feel to have everything, every thing in the entire world and to feel this way and not be able to appreciate these blessings?

I hope you don't. I think many of you do.

Time to walk. Time to get out and put one foot in front of the other, quite literally, and then come home and continue to do so.

Too Bad, So Sad

Elvis is crowing. I hate him right now. I hate him because even though he is a good rooster in some ways, he attacks Shalayla, jumping on her and doing his cruel, quick rooster fuck and she is scared to death of him and now life, too.

It is the most beautiful day. I woke up crying from a dream and I can't seem to quit. It's October and just as surely as the trees will lose their leaves, I will lose my shit.

It happens every year. I hate it every year.

The feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness come over me and there you have it. I want to be done. I want to crawl into bed and let it be done. I am perfectly content to watch the same episode of "Flipping Out" over and over again. The idea of planting a row of lettuce is more than I can bear. Maggie May wrote about self-pity today.
She hates self-pity.
I hope she doesn't read this.

I literally wring my hands. It is cold. Perhaps I am just trying to warm them. I don't know. The left one is going numb again all night and wakes me up. It did this for years. It is doing it again. I am falling apart. If I am in this much pain and discomfort now and I live another ten years or so, how will it be then? I can't fall apart. I have to keep up with that boy. And I know I'm strong. I can lift him up a thousand times a day to sit on my lap, to walk with me across the yard, to take him to the bed to change him, to hold him up to see if there are eggs in the nest.
I can. I do.

I have to.
I have always had a stubborn pride about being tough.
I don't feel tough. I feel as if I am made of steel wires that are fraying, sharp edges poking out everywhere, the tensile strength of the whole made weak.

How can it be that one day I am riding atop a bubble of this existence, this life, everything so sharp and clear and pure and good and the next, I am reaching up to touch bottom, as a woman I knew used to say? Don't tell me I'm bipolar. I don't go out and buy things. I don't stay up for days at a time. I am merely appropriately in love with the life I have on my really good days. Content.

Well, with age comes knowledge if not wisdom or peace. And even if this day I feel as if there is a complete falling-down, falling-apart, failing-at-it-all, I know that even by this afternoon, I may feel differently. Strong again, perhaps even tough. I will have shaken the dreams, I will have taken the walk, I will have folded the clothes, I will have cuddled the boy, made the bed, done the grocery shopping.

In short, pushed aside the beads on the abacus one more time to add up the sum of the day of the life.

I may not be able to grab onto the ride with both hands today and lift my face to the sky to laugh at the speed and the rush and the wind but but dammit, I can hold on until that happens, which for me means to maintain the order of the actions which will keep me steady until it does.

Elvis crows, Shalayla cowers, I need to go let them out of the coop. I don't hate Elvis. He is just a rooster and Shalayla is his favorite hen.

I don't hate my life. I don't even hate myself.

I just hate these feelings. And they will pass.

That Black Dog Is Sitting On My Porch Again

Yes. I can see the light.
Can you?

And although I can see it, that light, although I know it's there, it's not doing a damn thing for me.
I've got it. The full-tilt, definitely not a boogie but rather a boogie-man of blues. Depression. Whatever you want to call it.

It's found its way back like an traveling salesman carrying his pack on his back who has arrived back in his circuit of sales and he's set his bundle down on my front porch and stretched and I made the mistake of offering him a drink of cold water from the well and when he opened his pack, instead of the pins and needles and pots and pans and yards of calico one would expect to see, it was full of snakes and dark green poisonous herbs and dead spiders, all wrapped in the shrouds of their tattered webs and the peddler laughed a croaky creak of a laugh and set off down the path at a lope, leaving me with his horrible goods.

Or something like that.

You'd think at this point in my life I could just shut the door and stand behind it and say a spell and the evils would melt away and I could get on with my life but no, even now, even now, I don't know what to do when this mess is dumped on me.

And the rotten thing is, I don't know why this particular bout of it has descended. I can't put my finger on anything. My husband and children are as loving as ever, my grandson is about to turn one, I'm involved at the Opera House with wonderful, beautiful people,



and Kathleen is doing well and is so strong and the garden is cleaned out and Mr. Moon came home last night and planted cabbages and greens and last-ditch tomatoes.



I have spare coffee and paper towels and my chickens are all present and accounted for and laying eggs. The firespike is blooming

and I have cotton sheets and I have friends I love so damn much that every time I talk to them I cry.

I don't think that's normal, though. In fact, it's a sure sign that I'm depressed. Billy calls and I cry. I hear Lis's voice and I cry. Mr. Moon calls from work and...I cry. Not big gulping tears or sobs, just stupid little eye-leak and I'm doing it now, too. I wish I could just break down and weep like a real human being. Just let it go. Just cry so long and so hard that eventually, my heart would give up the reason for this sadness.
Ah. It probably wouldn't help. I'd just go to that place I always go during times like this- all the old sorrows that I should be grown up enough by now to laugh about or at least just accept as it-is-what-it-is, it-was-what-it-was and go on.

Well. La-di-dah and so forth. It's all just feelings and they will pass. They always do. It is heartening to know this. When I was younger, it was impossible to see that they would when I was in these depths but now I know better and that knowledge alone makes it all more bearable. And it's not anxiety- which IS unbearable. Well, okay, there may be a tiny bit of anxiety-flavored morsels tucked in with this black pudding of depression but it's NOT the same and for that I am MOST grateful. I can live with depression but not with the anxiety.

I don't even have it in me to do haiku today. Maybe later.
I'll go take a walk and see if that helps. As I just wrote to dear Ms. Bastard-Beloved in an e-mail, depression is just like this bottomless pit of sorrow and no one in the world can fill it up.
You just have to wait until you float to the surface, see the light again. Not just see it, but feel it entering your heart, your soul.
And it will. It always does. I've got my eye on it, that light. I've shut the door on the sorrows, I'm trying real hard to remember the spell to break their curse.

And so it goes on this Friday, September 10th, 2010.

Be well, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Winter Walk

It was because I am struggling with the depression again that I had no words this morning. I still don't. Well, I do but they're all so familiar and who in the world needs to hear that shit again?

Sleeping too much, overwhelmed, always tired, guilty, guilty, guilty, etc.

La-di-dah.

It becomes such a physical thing, depression, to the point where you don't know if it's all in your mind or your body and where is the dividing line, anyway?
So I took a walk. It's such a beautiful day. I took my camera. So here are some pictures and I do feel some better although Jesus, I would love a nap. Since I slept for approximately 10 hours last night, I sincerely doubt I need one though.

Well.

This is proof I got up off my ass and walked out the door and into a small part of the world, a part I find always beautiful. I have done this before, taken pictures of my walk, one only last August but things are so different in January. Click here if you want to see the contrast.

I have written about this old, falling-down abandoned house several times. In fact, one of my favorite posts was about the wallpaper inside of it and now I can't find it to link to. Oh well.
One of these days I'm going to walk by it and find that it is no longer standing. I see it shifting and sinking and leaning upon itself more and more all the time.
But for now, here it is.


That wallpaper.


Are the wisteria vines pulling it down or holding it up? I can't tell.


A strong oak branch, host to Resurrection Fern. If it had not rained recently, the fern would be brown and dried up and I wouldn't even have seen it.

A particularly nice beard of Spanish Moss.

The receding lake which the creek has made. See those palmettos there in the center? They do NOT grow underwater. Normally. I saw two ducks rise up and squawk their way into the sky right before I took this.

Which reminds me that I saw two hawks mate on this walk today, too. I have never seen hawks mate. They do it with more elegance than chickens. Believe me.




The little hidden graveyard in the woods.


A gopher tortoise hole where, when I am lucky, I see the turtle himself, sunning. He moves so quickly back into his hole that I am sure I will never get his picture. He is big.


A path made by animals. I have seen fox and deer both cross the trail from this path.


The railroad tracks and our post office which is the old train station.


Two of the amazing oaks in Ms. Petit Fleur's yard. She is my next door neighbor.

My yard from outside the fence.

New shoots coming up on the hydrangea.

It is nap time yet?

I guess I'll wash the dishes and try to put it off a little longer. Feed the chickens some grapes. I hear lots of clucking out there so perhaps there are eggs today.

Keep going, y'all. Keep moving. There are things to do. There are things to see.

Proof. I have proof.

God. I'm sleepy.

It's All In Our Minds

My eyes are watering. No. That's a lie. They are seeping sadness. I am at a place that is not a good place. Aren't you tired of hearing about all of this?

I'm tired. For no reason. I slept very well last night burrowed down in weights of covers, cold air slipping through the cracked window to cool me when I had a hot flash so that they did not last so long. But I'm just weary. Weary of myself and this mind that tells me repeatedly that there is really no sense to any of it. I open the paper and a German woman has killed her grandchild on St. George Island, a place I went to for healing several summers. Killed her grandchild? I close the paper. Perhaps the doctor visit wore me out, even though it took approximately ten minutes and there was nothing at all for the doctor to be suspicious about. He took his little can of freezy stuff and left after he looked at me while lecturing the entire time on the ABCDE's of skin cancer.
It's good that he gets this information across but I swear to God I want to smack the holy living shit out of him after he says the same thing for about the fifteenth time, me standing there, clutching the gown around me to preserve some semblance of modesty although the bull done left the barn on that one after all the places he'd looked. He did tell me I have a fine head of hair. At my age, I'll take that as a compliment.

When he left, I asked his assistant if she doesn't go insane, listening to this speech over and over and over again, all day long, five days a week.
"I just zone it out," she said. "I have to."

So the doctor and the holidays which, although they were not so bad this year, really, they weren't, they have worn me out too. Even my house, which is my place of peace, is not giving me solice. I look around and see dirt and clutter. I open a drawer, a cabinet and I think, I should clean this up, but I don't have the energy, I shut it back but can still feel the chaos in there, even though I cannot see it.

Outside, everything is brown and dead and dying. Even the camellias are dying on the bushes. Their bright colors turning brown, brown, brown. I hate brown. Anyone who paints a house brown is suspect in my book.

Winter. It's just winter. The season of no-hope. I know, intellectually, that things will change. That buds will open, the azaleas will blossom, the tiny violets will cover the yard with white and purple, the dogwoods will make snow of the flowers in their limbs. I know all of that.
I know that Miss Allegra will get through her chemo and will find her strength and health and joy again. But today, she is in hell and that makes me sad, so sad. I think of all the suffering in this world and it bears down upon my chest like a heavy weight.

Well. Owen is coming tomorrow. He is everything- promise and reality of joy now. Life can be hard. It usually is, truthfully. We keep traveling. What else can we do? My chickens cluck and bawk and lay me eggs, still, even when it is so cold. They, too, are promise.

And so I write myself into hope. Words can promise, fingers type out the ones that tell the story of now and of tomorrow. Perhaps.

I suppose this is why people who have religion are, at heart, happier than those who do not. They can put their focus on the glories which have been promised, or at least believe there is a reason for suffering.

Not for me. No, not for me. I can only hold the thought of my grandson in front of my heart like a carrot on a stick, also the azaleas and the dogwoods and the tiny perfect violets and go collect the eggs and look up into the clear winter sky and see the remnants of the blue moon we celebrated, knowing it will fill and fatten again, that moon.

And tomorrow will be different. Hell, in an hour things will be different. Change is inevitable.

It's okay to leak the heart's sadness through tears. It's okay to be sad for someone we know is suffering. It's okay to close the paper. It's okay to think of eggs and sassy chickens.

It's okay to go on. It's what we do. We humans.

Bless our hearts. Yours, mine, bless us all on this cold winter morning when we have to remember that yes, there is suffering but joy can be found if we turn our mind to that. That's what my fingers have typed. I must believe it.

I'm A Loser, Baby

I don't know. I just don't know.
I'm having a hard time of it recently. Just...nothing new, nothing big, just a hard time.
Nothing's lighting my fire and even at play practice I'm feeling low. My jokes come out lame, my inexperience shows when I say a line and then ask the directors, "Was that right?"
Mr. Moon's depressed too. The car biz, real estate, the mysterious electrical problems in the house.

Having a loser wife.

And I should be the good partner I want to be and go find a job which seems to me to be more than impossible. Just having to make a phone call for a reservation or an appointment is enough to freak me out for an entire day. Even going to Publix, my safe, safe place is stressful. I have to force myself to go walk, which I do, but it's hard.

In short, I'm heavily invested in feeling like the world's biggest loser.

Loser, loser, loser.

What am I good for? What is my purpose on this planet? Why can't I pull up my petticoats and be a normal human being who functions?

I joke about how Caroline Kennedy is being called a role model for returning-to-work mothers but I'm just as in awe, or perhaps more so, of women who go out and get a job at a library or a school or a Circle K convenience store when the situation calls for it and I feel just as inadequate and unfit to do something like that as I would to be a United States senator.

It's no joke, feeling like this.
It tugs at my heart to feel like I'm not being there for my man when he has always been so solidly there for me.
Everything just seem so overwhelming from trying to figure out the rest of my life to filing my fingernails. I remember once a friend of mine said it was a major life crisis for him when he ran out of toothpaste.

I laughed then.
I ain't laughing now.
Because it's not funny when it's happening to you.

And the worst part, the very worst part, is the guilt that accompanies all of this. The little guilt-worm lodged in the ear which continuously shouts, "What RIGHT do you have to be depressed? You're faking this bullshit so you don't have to be a contributing member of society."

And you know what? Part of me is completely convinced this is true.

And the other part of me feels like every day I've been set to plowing forty rocky acres with a dull plow and no mule and so what's the point of even getting up?

But I know that depression has its cycle and even with meds and even with doing all the other things that can alleviate it and make it not so miserable, it has to run its cycle.
Which it will do. Eventually.
I don't actually believe this but I know it to be true. There's a difference.

So. Until things lighten up a little I'm afraid I'm going to be the worst sort of self-involved blogger who offers only the most self-involved and ridiculous blogging. I honestly am not writing all this to get nice comments from the beautiful people who visit here. I'm writing it because it's what's going through my mind, day and night and night and day and it's honestly all I have to offer at the moment.

I SHOULD just shut-up but let's face it- I'm not that ready to give up.

And who knows? The way these things work, I could be filled with the joy and spirit of life by tomorrow and have something pithy and poetic to say about, oh, I don't know. Anything. Anything at all. Besides my own pitiful, non-poetic self.

I'll work on it.

I promise.

Who Does Depression Hurt?

Miss Maybelle and I were laughing the other day about one of those ubiquitous anti-depressant commercials on TV. The tag line is, "Who does depression hurt?" And it showed a depressed man and his dog who was obviously not getting the happy walk he deserved because his human was depressed.

It would appear that depression even hurts DOGS!

Then this morning when my dog, Dolly, was singing her good morning song to me which is a joyful chorus of soprano happiness, I looked at her and said, "Shut-up, Dolly!" I didn't even think about what I was saying. The words just spilled out of my mouth.

She looked me with a hurt expression and did indeed shut up.

Poor Dolly. I have hurt her with my depression.

I have hurt my dog with my depression.

This is ridiculous.

Looking Up

When I was on my way to the doctor's office yesterday morning, I saw a sign in front of a small church that said, "When you need peace, look up."
Well, I did and saw plenty of blue sky and light and I thought that was fine advice no matter what level you choose to take it on. Of course I had to turn my eyes quickly back to the road to drive, but that second of sky and trees and light was calming.
I had forgotten that sign until I I downloaded this picture I took yesterday afternoon. This banana spider has made her web not on the porch, which is where most of them seem to, but way up in the sky between a young magnolia and a post we used to put the pea-climbing fence up for the garden last spring.
This web is high in the air. I mean like maybe oh, fifteen feet up. That spider- she is looking for high-flying, juicy traffic and I'm not sure why I glanced up to see her there when I was outside, turning the sprinkler on the garden but I did and I was amazed. Her web stretches at least ten feet from tree to post and she is poised on it like she was dancing on thick, strong air.


The doctor visit went fine. I saw a different nurse practitioner whom I'd never met and to make a long story short, she actually touched me as one human to another and we both teared up, discussing the empty nest. Her son moved out twelve years ago and she is still missing him and didn't find it ridiculous that the recent changes I've found myself going through would be enough to send me into this mysterious and tentative place I seem to be inhabiting. She encouraged me to find "someone" to talk to and I swear, I will. It's time.
I came home and Miss Maybelle came over and we watched an old movie called Crimes of the Heart with the dogs all over us and we wondered why they don't make movies like that anymore. Movies where people act like people really do, pulling up panty hose and laughing inappropriately and wearing the lime green gardening gloves of a dead person to work in the garden and having really, really bad days.
Both of us are trying to find the light again, Miss Maybelle and I, and it was lovely to be able to laugh together at three sisters, trying to do the same in an old house somewhere in the south.
I sent her home with a plant that I'd rooted and a quart jar of soup and a bunch of old magazines and Lord knows I'd do anything for any of my kids, but that was all I could do today.
She did more for me than she knows.
I know she'll be okay, Miss Maybelle, because she's wise and she's endured more pain than most people I know and can still dance.
I can't tell you how proud I am of my kids and the way they've moved into the world, each of them with more bravery and bravado than I can ever imagine having.
They look up. My kids look up. And whether any of us will ever find peace, I have no idea. I don't know if that's really what's on the agenda for us humans. But it's a good thing to do, looking up.
When there is darkness in the soul, it's good to be reminded that there is light in the sky and that no matter what is going on in our hearts, there are spiders building webs that will probably last longer than they themselves do, stretching from tree to post. Spiders have short lives, and so do we, relatively.
We can pass all of our physical exams with flying colors and die suddenly of something no one could have detected.
Or, we can live long, long lives. There is no way to know.
But continuously looking down is no way to live. That church sign had it right. We need to remember to look up. Not necessarily for a god in the sky, but just for the sky itself. To be aware that although we may not be here forever, there is a sort of eternity and that we are part of it. At the very heart of it all, our being here has some sort of meaning, even if it is only that we are one tiny, minuscule strand in the brilliant web of it all.
That each strand of us has some purpose in all of this.
That's what I try to remember.
That's what I try to believe as I walk through this life, my feet so often literally in the dirt. That it is good to look up and be reminded.

Letting In The Light

Six weeks ago today I was in terror. There was nothing going on in my life to cause such fright, such suffering. Which made it all the more disturbing.
I could find no moments of peace in my life. None. Every moment was a waking nightmare of anxiety and fear.
It came on slowly and grew and grew until I was filled with it. I did everything I knew to fight it. I exercised. I ate well. I got my sleep (and thank God, I could sleep) and I tried desperately to talk myself out of this irrational terror.
I tried being with people. I couldn't talk to them.
I tried going off alone.
That made it so much worse.
I couldn't make phone calls, I couldn't write. I could only try to keep my head above water and try to stay afloat. I was afraid. I was so afraid.
I finally had to admit that I had no choice but to go to a doctor and get help and I began taking Lexapro that day.

That was five weeks ago.

Today I was in the grocery store. I was reaching for a bag of pinto beans and I realized something- I was happy.

Again- there is no external reason. I have not won the lottery. I have not gotten my book sold. I haven't lost ten pounds and my dogs are still here.
I've done nothing today that is out of the ordinary. I went to yoga, I breathed, I stretched. I walked and I sweated. I went out in the garden and I dug up weeds and I sweated some more. I came in, took a shower, went to Publix.

And I realized I was happy.

I saw a woman I know at the store whom I have heard from a relative is also going through anxious, hard times. She looked anxious today and worried. We're not close, but I had the urge to hug her. I remembered how it felt when I was so afraid and in the full force of the storm of that horrible illness (for what else could it have been?) and how much hugs had meant to me then. How much I had craved that touch of a another human. I needed it like I needed air or water. I hugged that woman and I could tell that she was expecting the sort of hug that we would usually give each other- perfunctory and short. Instead, I pulled her in tighter and for just a second, I tried with all my heart to transfer to her some energy, some pure feeling of being okay.

I have no idea if she felt it. It wasn't weird or anything. It only lasted a second. But I hope she did. I hope she felt what I was trying to give her.

I am grateful beyond belief that I had something to give her.

I am grateful beyond belief that the medicine has worked for me. I know I may wake up tomorrow morning back in a dark place. But even if I do, I will know that there is still light and I will be able to see it again.

I have to say thank-you to any and all of you reading this who were worried about me, who posted comments saying, hang in there, we're thinking of you, I've been there too, you'll come back.

You'll never know how much that meant, how much it helped. Without my family and without my friends and without you people who read these words, I think I would have slipped underwater and I am not sure I could have struggled my way back up to breathe.

So thank-you.

Back during the darkest times when I was on the island, I posted some pictures of sunsets that were so amazing and so wrenchingly beautiful that it would have seemed that witnessing them should have cured me. Or at least given me some sort of sense of relief. But I was so deeply disturbed that even the incredible majesty of those light-shot skies reflected in the water could not touch my soul. But I look at the pictures now and they do.
So I'm posting one more.

And I'm thanking you and I'm thanking every good thing in my life and I am aware of it all and I am grateful. I am peacefully and amazingly and happily grateful.