Seven hours to iron it all down. Two and a half hours to stitch it down.
It needs a good ironing, then batting, backing, and pinbasting.
It was quick and easy. But I cried a lot while stitching. Not sure why. Too much free brain space.
The back…the brain really shouldn’t be allowed out on its own. It causes trouble. Runs amok.
I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but I got some done. I never get as much done as I want. Goals keep resetting as I get closer to them. Never be satisfied. Always you could have done more. Why didn’t you? Failure.
Sigh. A persistent drive to create. It’s an obsession. It gets me up and out of bed.
I had troubled sleep last night, partially because my brain just worries about stupid stuff and can’t drop it, especially if I’m too tired to MAKE it drop it. Also, the girlchild was up really early to go to some soccer thing (thank god she sets her own alarm and I don’t even need to get out of bed, but it still wakes me up and then I drowse until she’s gone). So there were two dreams that were interrupted in all of that. I usually dream a lot, but lately, um, for the last 4 months, to be specific, I’m not remembering any of them. That might be a blessing, who knows, but since they’re usually pretty random, it might not be. The first dream, I was at school, in class, and kids were handing in their homework…one of the more stressful times of the week, since I hate excuses, and that’s all I hear for the whole day…my dog ate it, you didn’t give it to me (one of my favorites), I didn’t know it was due today, I had to go to the hospital last night because my sister was having her baby (were you helping her?). So I was collecting homework and it was supposed to be strips of paper that kids had written some stuff on and their names (another thing they have issues doing, writing their names on their papers), and as I collected them, I realized it looked like they had done the work and someone had then cut all of it up into strips, but not so everything lined up, so someone’s name wasn’t on the same piece of paper as their sentences, and I couldn’t tell whose was whose. The kids were thrilled by this, especially those who hadn’t DONE their homework, because they thought I should just not count it, because I couldn’t tell who had handed in what. Stubborn Kathy. I sat down at one of the desks and started laying the strips out, matching them up with the pencil marks, taping them together, while the kids groaned. Dammit. Talk about obsessive.
The second dream was in a doctor’s waiting room…god knows, I’ve spent enough time in those during my life. I was sewing. I’m always sewing. I don’t know why I was there, whether it was for me or one of my kids, but the room is full, and I look up, and there’s Jim K. (from college) with his MOM (no really, he looks like he’s 12) and he’s ignoring me. They’re talking to one of the doctor’s staff, signing in or making an appointment, but even though I wave at him twice, he purposely doesn’t look at me. There’s someone else in the waiting room that I know, but in the time between dream waking and waking up enough to type the basics on my phone, I forgot who it was…someone from school, like high school or college. Why do we go back to that so often? Or is it just me? The third guy was Mike S. (from high school, names shortened to protect the innocent, because I really don’t know why my brain has picked these people out of all the people in the world that I know), but before I saw him come out of the door, I saw his mom and sister. Actually, I saw a mom and sister I thought I knew, but I couldn’t figure out why (this happens to me all the time), and the girl waved at me and I waved back, and then he came out and smiled at me and talked to me, and then his sister sat next to me, held my face towards her, and spit at me like a camel, a huge wad of goo, and for some reason, I found that hysterical and started laughing. That’s when the girlchild started squawking in the hallway (for real) about her shoes to her dad or something, I was half asleep so I only half heard any of that.
Unless the dreams are working through something for me, I’m not sure this is that helpful, brain.
What am I scared of? I wrote about being scared last night. The funny thing is, I don’t even know that most of the time there is something specific that I am scared of…I am just scared, like when you’re walking on a dark sidewalk in a not-so-great part of town and you wish you weren’t walking alone, but you’ve got to get from A to B…that kind of scared…or when you wake up in the middle of the night with your heart pounding and you have no idea why. Then there’s the standard fears: not enough money to (a) send kids to college, (b) ever retire, (c) pay the bills. There’s the fear that I will never really get over all this shit, that I will be damaged beyond full repair forever. I don’t think that’s a realistic one, but it’s hard to get past it when you don’t FEEL better. The two are linked. The fear that I will be alone forever because there is something inherently wrong with me that caused all this. That’s one I know is unreal, at my core, at least the second part, but the first part? You don’t get to control that. This whole experience (this whole experience being the last 25 years of my life) has made me think I am perhaps a difficult child…and that may doom me. So I have to get OK with just being here on the planet by myself and not blaming myself for it…because deep down, I know I wasn’t the issue either time. I picked badly, but I was not the issue. I’m afraid of screwing up at my job, I’m afraid I’ll have to be a teacher forever and I’ll start to hate it (there are parts I hate now, but that’s true of all jobs). I’m afraid I’ll get old and there will be no one to help me. Yo! Kids! Guess what? I’m afraid I will never stop crying. I’m afraid I’ll be a hoarder. I’m afraid my really old car will just die and I won’t be able to afford a new one. I’m afraid the kids will move away and rarely come back (a real fear, that one). I’m afraid of my health issues, the diabetes, the family heart issues. I’m afraid of going blind or deaf. I’m afraid my computer will die and I won’t know how to fix it…or be able to afford to fix it.
So lots of them are money-related. Those are very real fears. Many of them are about my future, which my counselor has advised me to stop thinking about, because worrying about something that hasn’t happened doesn’t stop it from happening, and I’m just wasting a lot of good mental energy on that stress and worry. That said, I should plan for some things (I have…I have retirement money, some…I have college funds put away for the kids…some. I don’t have a plan for the car. I am doing my best to deal with the health and mental issues.).
There’s this song, All Cried Out…
by Alison Moyet…I think of her as the Adele of the 80s (or Adele is the Moyet of the 2010s?). Apparently she’s released a new album this year (and she looks a LOT different).
I keep wondering when I will be all cried out, when I will run out of tears, when things will not affect me like this. My med-pro friends will say that is a sign I need to be on anti-depressants, but I don’t think the crying is a problem…it would be if I didn’t do my art and shower and leave the house and do my job and do the shopping and buy Xmas gifts. That would be an issue, but I DO all the things I’m supposed to. So yeah, I’m sad. I’m depressed. But I don’t think meds that push that sadness away are going to be the answer. I don’t know what the answer is besides time and lots of it, but I don’t think it’s meds. You don’t have to agree with me. But I’m the only one who really knows my brain and how it works, and I spend a lot of time watching it and listening to it. So I get to make the decision.
The toenail finally fell off…
Friday. During class. Yup. I bandaged that sucker up and kept dealing. It looks lovely…which reminds me. It’s that stupid Gratefulness month. I’m not a fan of the post-a-note about your thankfulness every day…it just seems trite to me, like we should try to be that way all the time, and with fighting the depression for the last year and a half, I haven’t felt very grateful for anything. It’s too hard. It feels painful to be thankful. I can’t really explain that. But I was thinking about it while stitching stuff down today, which made me cry (the stitching and the thinking, potent mixture), and then I read an article about being mindful and how being thankful is part of that paying attention part…so I tried.
I’m thankful that my toenail finally fell off and it’s not too painful. I’m thankful for my kids keeping me sane (and alternately driving me insane) and requiring me to be present on a regular basis. I’m thankful for the driven creativity that keeps me going and out of bed and away from illegal drugs and scrapbooking and compulsive online shopping and other nefarious pursuits that would not do me well at the moment. I’m grateful for all the authors out there who write books for me to lose myself in, so I don’t have to be alone with myself all the time. I’m thankful for Kitten when she’s snuggled up against my back at night in bed. She is a comfort. I’m grateful for the plumber who came today and quickly and cheaply fixed my cold-water faucet so I don’t have to shower in the kids’ bathroom again. I’m thankful for British tea, PG Tips. I’m thankful for a brain that takes the worst and tries to deal anyway, that rages against the way it is and tries to make changes, even as it sinks into depressoid mud, that rails at me and tells me it’s going to be OK, that I am strong and I will survive this, yet again, and it will not take me down. I’m thankful for warm socks, because I am cold all the time these days. I’m thankful for all the words that help me clear my brain each night…hopefully to sleep like a child, without nightmares though…the dreamless sleep of the truly untroubled innocents.
Kathy Nida 