Mood-O-Meter

I had a full design for a Mood-O-Meter in my head this evening on the way to the gym. You prick your finger for a drop of blood (diabetes raises its ugly head…we have talked about blood sugar possibly affecting some of my depression) and place that on the device, and the arrow swings wildly from one side to the other, determining your mood from the proteins and hormones rushing through your body. There are marks on the device with potential cures for each level of emotional upset…from the most mellow, which needs no more than a cup of tea, to more premenstrual types, which require sugar or chocolate. A glass of wine is certainly one stop on the meter, as is an entire bottle for those days when bad mood is worsened by PMS. Shopping for fabric (or an equivalent…I hear some prefer clothing or shoes) is on there as well. Exercise of all types has a place, including hiking and dancing. Meditation is probably also a good one. But far on the right, on the Way Far Right, almost falling off the meter, for when everything is bad sad and anti-glad, there is art…drawing…the strongest and most effective cure for moody crap on there.

I should have found the time and energy to draw tonight…but after soccer and gym and dinner and meditation, I didn’t have anything left. I’ve spent a lot of hours in the last few days wading through my own financials, trying to make it all condense down into the forms provided by government and schools. This morning, after 45 minutes of tracking down totals for my retirement and my current accounts and expenses (some very depressing stuff, forsooth), I set off for school in tears, feeling like all the have-to crap of college applications and financial aid was truly weighing on my shoulders, that I felt the pounds forcing me down into the ground, that it was almost difficult to take a breath. I did not want to be doing all this parenting alone. My ex…he does what he has to do, but no more. And we don’t really work as a team. Really…I do everything and he occasionally steps up. Tonight, he called to suggest we share some numbers (cheating!), so we would have the same answers on the test (financial aid feels like a test), and told me he would stop paying child support on my son in June. Really, he could have stopped this month, per the parenting agreement,  because he turned 18, but the reality of losing any money right now while having to consider paying for college almost made me throw up. I guess I have 5 months to prepare for that.

I know that I will still be paying all these bills, more in fact, but with less money.

I hear rain falling. That is a peaceful, nice sound (at least, right now, it is). Trying to breathe meditatively with the rainfall. Because the money stuff, it has to work out somehow. I don’t know how. The kids wanted to go to NYC to look at colleges (well, the girlchild really), but even with my tax refund, I’m looking at the money and thinking I can’t do that. I can’t take the risk…there’s not enough cushion. And I feel bad, because boychild got to go to LA, San Francisco, and Boston to look at schools, and I really can’t afford to take her anywhere…except down the road to SDSU or UCSD. It’s not just the flight costs…you have to feed the beasts. Sigh. I remember all those trips I took as a kid to all over the US…I know my daughter was insanely jealous that her cousin 5 years younger got to go to Paris last year…I wish I could have given her more of those experiences.

These depressive mood swings, I wish I could pin them down to my cycle, to hormones raging and waning, but they are not that logical. Sometimes I can tie an emotional response to my hormones…today, the girlchild was angry (there’s been a lot of that lately) and I had just spent about 2 hours sitting in the cold on a metal bench watching her soccer game, while her father did something else, and I had made a comment she took badly (I always say it wrong…if there’s nothing that’s been hammered into my brain for the last two years, it’s that I always say it wrong), and I told her I loved her as a way to soften whatever she was feeling, and she yelled, “No one loves YOU!” And the thing is, we often parry back and forth like that, like Your Mom, no Your Mom kinda thing, but today…today it was like getting slapped, and the emotional reaction was quick and painful and overwhelming and uncontrollable. And she knew she had hurt me. And I know that I should be able to take it. And I know she should try to be more careful, but when she’s angry, she is not good at that.

And all that feeds back into feeling like I’m doing all this alone. I did not imagine raising kids with no help. I dream of having a team of two adults helping each other with family and household duties, of one supporting the other, when one is not feeling well or is moody, the other picks up the slack. Of not always having to be ON when you don’t feel up to it…of having someone to lean on.

And I appear to not be able to have that.

That fucking Mood-O-Meter is swinging way over to the right. I tried the tea, exercise, meditation, the glass of wine, and sugar. Like I said, I should have drawn, but it was just too late and I was too tired to even pick up the pen. I wish I could say that I will do better tomorrow, but realistically, I still have a huge chunk of financial aid forms to get through tomorrow night…for now, I suspect attempting sleep is my best bet (although that’s been a loser the last few nights). And if I manage to get some drawing time somewhere in the next few days, I think that will be the best cure for what ails me…at least on the surface. There is maybe no cure for the deep nasty sad shit but lots and lots of time.

By the way, I’m totally pronouncing it Mood-OH-Meeter in my head, not Mood-AH-muhter…like it’s all trailer trash Honey Boo Boo meter-type, instead of scientific, highfalutin meter-type. I wanted to make sure you were hearing me say it like that in your head, which is kinda hard if you’ve never heard my voice.

“It lasted a lifetime. I couldn’t remember when it started, and I didn’t see when it would end.” The Bone Season, Samantha Shannon