When the Emotion Ends…

It’s a damn good thing I have a job that allows me so little time to be introspective. I make it through most workdays without having to dwell in the nasty place my brain has dug for itself. That said, meditation seems to be helping. Maybe. Sometimes. Hell, I don’t know. I keep looking at happy, at the word, the definitions, all the silly Pinterest pretty quotes about being happy, choosing happy, waking up happy (do people DO that? Without caffeine? Do they have teenagers? I didn’t think so.).

Dammit. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, changing small things as I can. I’m not going through a midlife crisis here. I don’t want to go out and party until the cows come home, I’m not trying to prove that death is far far away, I’m not trying to change my life into something brand new like that will magically make me a different person. I can’t do most of those things. I don’t want to do most of those things. I don’t want to join a bunch of new groups that have more claims on my time than I already have (seriously, people…I’m still buried in my life…nothing has changed there). I don’t need to be up all night dancing and drinking and hanging out with people…that isn’t going to make me happy, and I think honestly any 40-some-year-old who is doing that on a regular basis has some major growing up to do anyway. There needs to be something you care about in the world…if it’s your job, that’s great. I can see if I were a full-time artist, that would be the case. It’s not, though…realistically it will never be. But I can still make a daily place for art. I don’t want brand new. I don’t want much of anything at the moment…just brief glimpses of contentment, peace, maybe humorous moments (one of my students tried to hook me up with a cop friend of hers today…I tried to explain to her why Ms. Nida and cops aren’t probably the best match, but she wasn’t having it), and anything resembling joy? Well…I will get there. I don’t know when. But I will.

At times, it seems like never. Seriously. It does. But I am resilient. I will get through. To somewhere.

Yes. It was a rough day. Then again, most of them are.

I made it to the gym, though. I’m reading a frustrating book there. It makes it harder to concentrate on the reading. Stupid mindfucks keep creeping in. I have to try to hold on to the person I know I am…the core of me. It’s there. I know. I hear her. She’s pissed. She’s mad as hell. She’s also sad, but she’s mad because of that. I’d watch out for her if I were you. She’s got a sketchbook AND a blog, and she’s not afraid to use either.

Anyway. Meditation talked about trying to keep track of when an emotion ends, because it helps you realize you don’t feel like that anymore…but how do I know when the sad ends? I don’t even know how to define the end of the sad? Even in funny moments when I’m laughing, it’s lurking behind all that. Maybe sad isn’t ending at the moment. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I should give them levels…Sad Level 1, Sad Level 2…or colors…Sad Code Red, Sad Code Yellow. But then I need a rubric and a measuring system (can you see the left brain all over this? I am evenly balanced between the two, if that matters any more). I guess it’s to remember that the emotion is not a permanent state. Logically I know that. Emotionally, I know nothing.

I cut out Wonder Under for a good chunk of time tonight.

Yes, I should have been grading. Instead, I cut out flames and smoke and rocks and skeleton parts (those are the tiny little pieces). It was a giant pain in the ass. Seriously, lots of tiny pieces and then pointy pieces and just fussy cutting for ages. I’ve been cutting for almost three measly hours now and I’ve made it through two yards…only four yards to go (another 6 hours? Seems light…).

The next yard has body parts and feathers…

fewer pointy parts, so hopefully it won’t be as much of a pain to cut out. Not that it really matters. It’s time spent making art. It doesn’t feel like anything at the moment, because this is the boring work part, but the next step, the fabric-choosing part…that might be OK. LONG, but OK. I just need to keep making. The making is important. It’s…it’s how I am fixing me. Still broken, yes, but fixing. I don’t actually know at the moment if I’m fixable. I have to assume I am.

Speaking of fixable, my bulb on my digital projector at school has been dying since school started…it’s getting darker and darker and kids can’t read anything. They won’t replace it (at $300 or so a pop) until it actually DIES…seriously, the fact that kids can’t SEE anything is apparently irrelevant. So now I have this dark brown splotch over the left side and it was awful looking, so I rigged this…

I turn the light off, but shine a bright light on the doc cam base where the paper is…it works pretty well, although I get a shadow on one corner. Yes, I had to MacGyver my classroom…again. So annoying. We have our new computers, too, but the broadcast doesn’t work on them until they do something I don’t understand. AND our broadcast is totally pixelated, which we’re supposed to ignore (it’s very artistic-looking)…an example below.

They tried fixing it yesterday with no luck. AND we’re getting some type of Google tablet for teachers only in the next month so we can figure out Google docs or something (wish someone would tell me WHAT I’m supposed to be figuring out), because we’re doing some wacky grant stuff in the future, along with Common Core collaboration AND new standards AND I don’t even know what else because I can’t keep track of it all.

Meanwhile, when I borrow the computer cart, 15 of the 32 computers have dying batteries. Like because they’re old and need replacing, not because they’re not charged. It’s a fun technical world we live in. Don’t tell anyone, but I let them use their phones as timers the other day during a lab, because they don’t know how to read an analog clock. I know. Next, we’re teaching them cursive.

Anyway. I’m trying not to wallow in the suckitude. I don’t like all the quiet in my life, the lack of conversation, like the kind where you’re sitting next to someone on the couch or at dinner with them and having a long conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of that damn asshole happiness. That said, it’s not like I had the energy or the opportunity to do either of those things tonight…tomorrow night, I will have the kids and we will talk. It’s not ideal, but it’s all I’ve got.

Throwing Peas

When I’m tired, it hurts more. On a long day like today, what I need is to know I’m going home to a sympathetic ear and maybe a back rub. What I have are two know-it-all teenagers and a drop off and pick up at soccer practice, plus I need to make dinner. I need someone to tell me it will be OK and to sit next to me on the couch and make me feel OK. Someone to help. Maybe they got my text that I’m finally coming home, and they have a cup of tea waiting for me when I get home.

Or not. I wonder when that will stop hurting. The not having.

Girlchild needs back surgery. I know she’s sad and scared and depressed, but she’s been screaming at me since I walked in the door. Teenaged anger, reminding me that I don’t have exclusive rights to sadness. She apologized later. So I leaned over and rubbed the dog’s belly and dripped tears into her fur. She doesn’t care…she just loves the attention. The dog. Maybe the teenager too. I can’t handle that level of demand at the moment.

I feel so disconnected. Like I can’t actually connect…it’s not even a choice. I think that’s why all those “You Can Choose to Be Happy” articles drive me nuts…really? I can? I just wake up in the morning and the hole in my chest and my gut, they’ll just be gone? The ache will be gone? My brain will just give up on filling in the blanks, writing stories? Having hope? Not having hope? Realizing that I was wrong about everything? That I believed and trusted in something that didn’t exist? I wish there were an easy way to work past all that. There isn’t. No happy pill. No forgetfulness drink…unless you were never paying attention in the first place. Then it must all be very easy. I think the people who write those Choose Happiness articles are smoking crack. Or maybe I have a gene, some weird wiring in my brain that doesn’t let me be that perky-ass person. Choose Happiness. Choose My Ass.

Days with too much free space for thinking, but not enough sleep. Or recharging. The two are related, I think.

I choose art. I choose creativity. I choose a visual experience that few others can achieve. I choose Me. I have lived with Me for a long time. Me is not a bad person. She’s conflicted and messed up and emotional and doesn’t see things the way you do. If that’s a problem for you, I don’t know what to say. Me is also pretty truthful with you. She often makes decisions that benefit you at her expense, because she cares about you. Me does not always make the best choices for herself because she is looking out for other people. This might be why Me is doing the hermit thing at the moment, because if she doesn’t take care of herself for a while, there will be no Me of which to speak. It’s easier to take care of Me when everyone else is gone.

I had professional development all day and then a union meeting, so I was at the District Office for entirely too many hours…with almost no caffeine (mistake) and food I shouldn’t have eaten. Not a good combo. My brain had too much time to wander.

I came home briefly and had to shuttle girlchild to soccer. Yes. She needs back surgery and she’s still playing. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. Pain is an interesting beast. She can’t actually make the injury worse. So we’ll see how much of the high-school season she gets through as we wait for them to schedule the surgery. I’m the mom. I have to be the strong one. I have to manage her freakouts and not have any of my own. She is going to be depressed. Soccer is a huge part of her life. Not having it, even knowing that she WILL have it in the future, puts her in a deep hole. I know that hole. So I have to try to hold her up, out of the hole, from within the hole where I have been for over 4 months now. Hard job. Need stronger muscles.

Dinner happened between drop off and pick up and then exercise and meditation. The days have some routine to them…maybe too much routine. I don’t know. Is it better to have a routine I can depend on and that doesn’t challenge my limited emotional capabilities at the moment, or is it better to shake it up? This weekend has some opportunities to shake it up. I don’t know if I have the energy, mentally, physically, or emotionally. In meditation, he talked about how emotions change quickly, how you can go from one to the other, and we usually only notice the actual change. I change from sad to really sad to painfully sad. Sigh. Deepening sadness. Tinges of sad. Sadness followed by a grief chaser. There isn’t a lot of relief from sad.

Choose to be happy, my ass. I just keep going. Someday I’ll get somewhere.

I had a little Wonder Under cutting time…

Not a lot. It’s slow going…lots of teensy weensy pieces with really annoying and complicated shapes. Stupid designer. This is going to take me a lot longer than the other quilt.

I’m still a total klutz…I mean, I’ve never been a particularly graceful person. I’m the queen of spilling things. But it’s been worse in the last few months…this was a good one. Making dinner, had the strainer full of peas, draining water, and went to put it in the bowl with the pasta and somehow (SOMEHOW) hit the cupboard door (which is at head height…no, I don’t know how I did it).

The dog was very excited. Apparently she likes peas.

Am I depressed? Yes. Did I cry today? Fuck yeah. Multiple times. Did I laugh heartily (or maybe just like a crazy person) when I threw peas all over the kitchen? Damn straight.

Bring on the Happy, Dammit…

First of all, I am moving on to the next step on the Celebrating Silver quilt. I might pinbaste the other quilt this week, like on a night when I get home before 9 PM maybe. I will be quilting it over the Tday weekend, so it’s not a rush. I do need to get started on Silver though…ideally getting some fabric cut out before that week as well. Cutting out Wonder Under is relatively boring. I watch TV while I’m doing it, but it’s also nitpicky and fussy, especially with all the tiny little pieces, so it’s hard to start when you’re already tired, because it often feels like work.

But I did it anyway, because I’m persistent (and crazy) like that…

I didn’t do a lot, 45 minutes, but it’s a start. I got one yard cut out, but it was a yard with lots of long big dirt pieces in it. If I work on it every night, it won’t take very long, and then I can start picking fabrics for that one as well, which means I need a background fabric, which means I have to make a decision about the color of the background fabric, which means I have to start coloring that sucker in my head. No problem. Especially if I have another insomniac night when I wake up like three times for no apparent reason and can’t go back to sleep. Meditative breathing got a real workout today, starting about about 1 AM. At least I’m using what I learn in meditation practice, eh? I’m hoping that between the lack of sleep two nights running and the bitchy workout I did at the gym that I can sleep through tonight…because little sleep makes Kathy really sad and unhappy and that’s not good.

I read an article today about 10 simple things you can do today that will make you happier (backed up by science)…the article is here. Is it OK to get irritated by articles like this? I was angry at first, because they make it sound so easy and it’s not that easy for me at the moment, but when I read it the second time (no, I’m not obsessive, shut up), I realized I do most of this stuff already…

I do exercise a lot. I’m revising HOW I exercise, but I don’t think adding 7 minutes/day is going to make a difference…I’m already over 9 hours/week. Wow. That is a lot.

I don’t sleep enough, but hell, it’s not for lack of TRYING. My biology is fucking with me. How do I deal with that? I can’t force myself to sleep more. My brain wakes me up, completely wired, and refuses to go back to sleep (last night truly sucked, and I’m convinced a lot of it is hormonal).

My commute is 2.47 miles. I could walk to work if I didn’t have to carry all that teacher stuff.

I do hang with a small number of friends and family. I could improve on this…but is it quantity or quality? I vote for the latter. It’s on my mind and I’m taking steps.

I could go outside more…although teachers do spend more time outdoors than a lot of office drones. I get to stand outside between each class and walk back and forth outside regularly. I could add to that…not sure how, but working on adding some hiking to my exercise repertoire (more hours!).

Help others, 100 hours/year. Now, does being a teacher count for that? Because I feel like all I do is help others some days, when some days maybe I should spend more time helping myself. I get all helped out. The article talks about spending money on others (being a teacher definitely qualifies for that). So I spent a ton of money on my students and about 6 hours a day for 183 days a year. Seems like a lot.

Practice smiling. Despite the depression, I do smile and laugh every day. Sometimes it’s some dorky kid thing (whether it’s a student or my own children); sometimes it’s something someone wrote (Tanya, Sion, and Monique are good at making me smile). Sometimes it’s that dorky video of cats. Or dogs. You know what I mean.

Plan a trip but don’t take one. OK. That’s just depressing. BUT…that said…I realized yesterday that there were some places I wanted to go, and yes, money is incredibly tight, but at some point in my future, the kids will be gone and on their own, and I could travel, and I am no longer limited by…um…well…certain factors that limited me, shall we say. I talked to my SIL years ago about going to India together…

because neither of our significant others wanted anything to do with that trip. I want to go to Antarctica…

the Galapagos Islands (can you say science teacher? Iguanas that swim!)…

Hawaii for the volcanoes and that park you have to walk into…

I found a friend’s picture of Machu Picchu from when she went a few years ago (at least, I think this is her picture)…

All those places…the Mayan temples, the Egyptian pyramids, all the places I’ve seen in pictures and read about, minus the tour guides and that crap. I just want to go. So I guess I can plan for that, even if it’s 10+ years in the future and I don’t get everywhere I think I want to go. Even if I’m going by myself. There was some animal reserve on the West coast of Chile where only a certain number of people were allowed per year. There. I want to go there. So. I guess that’s a plan. Of sorts.

Meditate: yup. doing that. every day. So there, brain. Take that.

Practice gratitude: I talked about this yesterday and how it goes against my nature. But if you look back at my years of blogging, I do show gratitude…for good books, good movies, good art, being able to make art, pets, kids, donuts, stupid shit, beautiful landscapes. I do it all the time. I just don’t use the words “I am thankful for…”. Maybe it’s just the triteness of those words being trotted out every year in November that I object to…the being thankful for the stuff that keeps me sane and here on the planet? I can do that. I do it all the time. I just don’t label it properly (much like the water faucets in my shower, says my plumber…I blame Dad for switching them around). Tonight? Tonight I am thankful for apples and a decent cup of tea. In a minute, I’m going to be thankful for a warm bed and a Kitten. I’m hoping to be thankful for a reasonable amount of sleep. Did I cry today? Oh yeah. But I still did the stuff I needed to do and even some stuff I wanted to do. I’m thankful for Brussels sprouts, however weird that is.

So that’s it. I’m doing all the things that should be making me happier. I need to sleep more and go outside more. OK. I’ll do that. Bring on the happy, dammit.

A Persistent Drive to Create

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.

Wishful Thinking

I get to milestones and they don’t register. Or they don’t register correctly. You finished a step in making a quilt! Cool! Yup. Not feeling it. It’s almost worse getting a step done…because then I think, wow, you don’t feel any better, any different. You are still sad, depressed, slogging through the days, taking the next step and the next one, waiting for something to make a difference, to make your heart show up, to make the feelings get out of the sad realm. But they don’t. It’s just the same.

I ironed today.

Every tree needs lightning bolts.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter that I ironed today. I also helped the boychild with his college apps; we got through the worst of it (well, he still has to write essays and ask for recommendations, so that might be the worst of it, and I have to pay for all of it, which also could be painful). I cleaned a bathroom. I grocery-shopped. I wrote a quilt statement. I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing. I worked out. I added a new bunch of exercises to my regimen, because if I’m going to be an antisocial, lonely old lady, I might as well be a strong, buff, antisocial, lonely old lady who does not have osteoporosis. None of that really mattered. I don’t know what matters.

I found the eyelid, after I had cut another one. That whole pile is pieces that I’ve found after I cut another one, or pieces I had cut out twice, or pieces that were totally the wrong color. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems mean to throw them out simply because I fucked up when I cut them out.

I’ve found that most TV shows right now rub me the wrong way. People are so shitty to each other in relationships that I can’t handle it; it makes me feel sick. So I’m watching X-Files. Mulder is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he’s well-meaning. I can handle shows from the 90s. Great. And Masterpiece Theater Mystery. That’s about it.

I didn’t start ironing until after 9, I think. I don’t know where the day went. It just went.

Once I got it all ironed together, I pulled it off the ironing sheets and rolled it up while I got the background ready to go, ironed it flat and laid it out on the floor.

I laid out the base first…the tree is easier to put down once the main section is ironed flat.

That’s most of it…missing two toenails, a fingernail, some drops of blood, a question mark, some dots over i’s, and a plug. I did get those on too, but didn’t manage a photo of that. You’ll see it again, once it’s stitched down. I’m hoping to do that tomorrow. It’s about 40″ wide x 50″ high. Something like that. She’s not happy, is she. I drew this back in June…before my life fell into a crack in the earth. I guess she knew what was coming. But she’s not crying…

I have to admit to a new emotion that’s showing up in meditation. Why do I have to admit to it? Because it’s scary. Admitting to it will hopefully make it less so. What emotion? Fear. Straight up. I’m scared of my future (or lack thereof), I’m scared of not feeling safe and comfortable…like…almost…ever. I’m just plain scared. I thought I had the future figured out. I knew shit would happen…it always does…but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t know then that everything that made me feel safe would just be gone. Without any input from me, without any chance to have a say or work on things…just gone. And I know that’s what happens when you put trust in other people, which we have to do to be in this world. OK, some people don’t…it’s true…but I don’t want to be one of those people…I’m already a bit of a hermit, and I know I could go further along that road, and I may very well wander down there for a good long time. It’s quiet, there are very few people, and I don’t have to deal with other people’s stupid shit affecting me.

But I don’t like being scared. No one does. We rush around when we’re anxious and scared and we try to control everything so we feel better, safer, and it doesn’t really work. It’s inside us and we have to work on the part inside us that reacts to things; that’s what causes the fear. It’s not the other people, the things…it’s us. So if I see scared in meditation and I feel scared in meditation (and elsewhere), I just have to face it and figure out how to make it feel safer INSIDE me. Because that’s where it lives.

Tonight’s meditation kept talking about my mental state…and I kept thinking, “like California?” A state as in a physical place with a flag and a state flower and state bird and state motto, “In nothing we trust,” and a state tree. A state of mind. A state of being. A state of matter. And then Mr. Meditation started talking about the blue sky, and that’s when I lost it…my state? The theory is that the blue sky is always there. It may be obstructed by clouds, sometimes light and feathery and easy to push through, and sometimes big and black and dark and thick…but if you just push through, you can see the blue sky. I don’t know how thick the layer of big black clouds is, but I can’t see the sky. I know it’s there, though, and that makes me sad…knowing it exists and I can’t see it, I can’t figure out how to get high enough to see the blue. It’s there though.

So yeah, that makes me cry. I’m fucking hopeless some days.

And during the 20 seconds when we’re meant to let the brain just do what it needs to do, and we sit back and observe and “note”…it’s screaming…full on screaming its head off…and I’m crying. That’s not stepping back. That’s not noting. That’s responding. That’s watching the movie and feeling it in your gut, your heart, where your heart used to be but where there’s a giant sucking hole now. That place.

Boychild sent me this link to the DSM-5 reviewed as a dystopian novel. It’s actually fairly amusing, especially when you know you’re experiencing a few of the things in there. I should just think of my life as a fucked-up dystopian novel, write it as a book, and make a couple million (someone’s debut novel just made them that amount…seriously? What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. I’m not writing a book.).

I realized today that I had meant to ink the Earth Stories quilt, but then I forgot. Or something. My brain not being itself and all. So it’s photographed for the catalog already, but I didn’t ink it. So I was thinking…should I ink or should I not? It doesn’t ship until March or April of next year. I have time. How the fuck did I forget the inking? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. My brain, it wanders off and does things without telling me, and I don’t find out for days or weeks after. I could just leave it alone (the quilt, not my brain…my brain needs me to pay attention to it). Fuck. I don’t know. Does it matter if it’s different than the catalog? It probably won’t be hugely noticeable? I don’t know. I will have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I could think about that instead of all the angst my brain currently dwells upon.

Wishful thinking.

Hard

Today’s blog post is brought to you by R.E.M.

Every time I watch this video, listen to this song, it just kills me. Even if I’m in the best mood in the world, this song makes me cry. For some reason, I’m listening to R.E.M. today. Mood music. Maybe not the best choice…but it’s my choice.

Yeah, I know I’m getting better. It doesn’t feel better really, but I can feel shifting in something. Whatever that something is. That said, today was a throwback. I had an hour or so intermission in the evening with art and food and wine with a good friend, but it was sandwiched by Crying Act I And Crying Acts II and III. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I can pinpoint an event or a thought that warranted all those tears…they just happened.

The art was good, by the way…the new exhibit at Visions Art Museum is recent purchases by Del Thomas, a big collector in the art quilt world, and it is definitely worth seeing. There was a good variety of quilts, some truly beautiful works of art. It’s there through January 19. You can see some of the work on Del’s blog (link above in her name). I enjoyed seeing Charlotte Bird and Cathy Denton’s works about words that start with C as well. The intermission was appreciated.

Mr. Meditation tells me today to step away from the feeling as I identify with it. I step away from some pretty fucking overwhelming sadness and fall into the hole behind me of deep dark weeping. Nice. You could have warned me, man. Seriously. What am I aware of? Did you just ask me that? I’m aware of feeling like shit right now, Mr. Meditation. I’m sure there will be a positive outcome from the meditation in the long run, but today? Not so much. Today it is just sad.

I had goals today…I wanted to get grades done (it’s the end of the Trimester), so I would have the rest of the weekend free. I had to be up at 4:40 AM to take the girlchild somewhere, and when I got home, I went back to sleep. I was going to be all gung ho and go to the gym, but when I realized they weren’t even open, I was much more cavalier about the day. It’s not like I really had to BE anywhere. No one was waiting on me to be done with my stuff and be free. So I went back to sleep and Kitten tried to head butt me awake, but I put the pillow over my head, and then Calli (the dog) was whining, but I didn’t get up until she started farting…because that’s never a good sign.

It took me about 4 hours to get through all the grades, but I did it. Then I finally packed up the two quilts that are going to Poway…which should have been shipped already, but whatever…they’re not late yet.

Dehair, label on one of them, cut a dowel and put in eyescrews, pack it all up, print labels, tape it up. Shipped it before I went to the gym. Then home and showered (the cold-water faucet is stripped…makes showers very exciting at the moment…plumber can’t come until Monday)…and off to VAM. I cried all the way there. Don’t know why. Really don’t. It just happened. I got it under control about 4 times, the last time while walking across the street to go in to the museum. Good thing…I know a lot of people in there.

Babygirl witnessed the grading…

by sitting on the gradebook. It’s either there or she sits behind my neck on the chair, like an overly heavy scarf…with claws. That’s where she is now. It explains the crick in my neck.

When I got home from food and drink, which was a pleasant experience…it was nice…I ironed for a while. I really want this thing stitched down by the end of the weekend.

I don’t know if that’s really possible, but I can try. I don’t have anything else important to do, well, except shopping and lesson planning and dealing with plumbing and pet food and kids and helping the boychild with college apps and probably saving the world if I get around to it. Did I mention housecleaning? No I did not. Someone still owes me a year of housecleaning. This would be a good time to have that. In the above picture, I’m ironing the eye and the face separate from the rest of the body. I actually lost the eyelid. It’s a big piece. Usually I lose small pieces. Who knows where it disappeared to.

Once I had all the pieces ready, I ironed the head onto the body.

This piece is holding together pretty well as a single, large ironed piece, which means I keep having to move it around on the ironing sheets…they’re not big enough for the whole quilt. I finally pulled off the whole body so I could do the top part with the tree and the hair…

Here’s the already-ironed bits (from the back).

They look a bit different. And there it is with the body ironed to the hair and the tree…

With the body hanging off the edge of the ironing board. The roots that belong on the neck are sitting to the left, waiting to be ironed on.

All I have left is everything in the tree…which is about 130 pieces…not too bad, but not getting done tonight. Too tired. I’m almost 5 hours into the ironing. At least a couple of hours to go, if you count ironing down to the background.

It was after the ironing that I hit Crying Part III. That was meditation’s fault. Sigh. Obviously there’s a reason for all of it…I’m just not allowed to know what it is right now, except if you watch this TED video…

TED Talk Ash Beckham

There is no competition for who has it harder. There is just HARD. Coming out of any closet. I guess I’m out of the depression/grief closet. Sort of…because I do close the door again sometimes when I can’t deal any more, keep hiding in the closet. It’s easier to be on here and write about it than to talk about it in person. It’s easier to draw how I feel than to talk about it. I don’t know what that means in the long run, whether it will take me longer to get through the grief than it would someone who shares more than I do in person. I can’t really do anything but what I am doing, though, so it will take as long as it takes…and while it’s taking its time, it will be hard.

Not Normal. Cracked. Kittywampus.

I went to sleep early(er) last night, knowing I was tired. Then woke up an hour early and was completely wired, couldn’t go back to sleep, tried meditative breathing and pretending to sleep. No luck. Like I was being electrocuted. Then the have-to list kicked in and there was no hope. I just wanted to sleep for the last hour. I’m writing this early tonight, because I’m exhausted from this week (I ran three labs this week…plus all the other crap that inhabits my brain and makes it tired) and I have to be up to get the girlchild somewhere…I think I have to be up at 4:45. I know. Really.

Sigh. Whatever.

Meditation: Wants me to notice when feelings begin and end. Can’t. Tried. Really hard. Also he talks about being at ease with whatever arises in the mind. I am getting better at this. I practice at school, noticing when my irritation levels get super high and talking myself through it, paying attention, breathing and remembering that kids are kids and it’s not about me. But it’s still hard to drop certain feelings. The sadness feels like a shawl I am constantly wearing. I shrug it off and when I think about it again, it’s back, too heavy on my shoulders and somewhat scratchy. Horrible yarn. Get it off. Feels like it’s choking me.

Counselor says I managed to be positive during the session today. I didn’t come up with any “buts”. Yes, this, but that. I don’t know. I don’t feel positive. I told her I felt flat. Like the emotional waves were less extreme (most days, certainly today and yesterday), but that the entire wave was still under the X-axis. Yes, I used a math analogy. I guess I really am a geek. I also talked about protective walls, how mine are still all the way up…and they seem like they will be that way for a while. A teacher friend asked me if I was really depressed, because I laughed. I do laugh. I don’t laugh a lot. I do laugh. I can fake it too. Have to. On a regular basis. I hate that phrase “fake it till you make it.” I hate being fake. I just want to be me, and if me is depressed, then so be it. Eventually I won’t be. But there’s only one person I have to have a relationship with for the rest of my life, and right now that person is sad and wandering this misty world of confused crap…and I’m just following her until she finds the way out. It’s cold in there.

I had this vision of a dead tree coming out of the uterus or the vulva area. I did a bunch of grading tonight (grades are due Tuesday) and had about 15 minutes of a show left and didn’t want to just sit there (I never know how to just sit and watch)…so I pulled out the almost-full sketchbook and started one version (there are about 5 in my head at the moment)…

It’s not done. There’s a window. She needs a head. Although that might be problematic…fitting it in and all. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Or draw it again. Who knows.

I also have ideas for menopause drawings. Reproductive function shutting down. All the stupid stuff we deal with…the stuff that colors huge parts of our lives, and then it’s gone…but it causes such massive pain and chaos on its way out. Don’t appreciate it. Don’t want to become one with it. Uterus is like an alien at the moment, asserting a parasitical nature. Speaking to me.

I am tired. Yes. Counselor asked when I felt normal. I said I thought I needed a new normal, that the old one was no longer relevant. Sufficient. Locatable. She thought I might feel normal while teaching (nope. definitely not. I am a different person this year.) or while being a mom (nope. not there either. and they know I’m not in my normal state). What is normal any more? I don’t know. I still feel damaged, broken, lost. It’s less in-my-face-at-all-times, but it never stops. Do you feel normal when you make art? No. Then I really know that I’m broken and trying to fix it with fabric and thread and pen and ink. I feel that broken in the making…I feel like I’m desperately trying to put myself back together by sort of frantically making art at all hours…it’s obsessive even.

It’s the way out, I know that…but I also know I don’t feel normal doing it. It’s…um…not quite right. I think the work coming OUT of it is fine, good even, but the doing of it is damaged…the reasons behind how and why, the feelings while actually doing whatever art activity I’m doing? Not normal. Cracked. Kittywampus.

My Unruly Mind

Brain fuzzy. Forgot, completely, totally, to eat breakfast this morning. Didn’t even cross my mind. Don’t know what I was thinking about instead, but I’m sure it wasn’t good. Remembered at about 10 AM, when I tripped over a step and thought, “Why am I feeling so spacey?” Oh yeah. Food. Hmn. Diabetics need to eat. I do keep food at school (and plenty of other people do as well), but I hate that feeling that I’m so disconnected from my brain sometimes that I forget the stupidest (and most essential) things.

Food wasn’t good today…lunch…yuck. I just didn’t do well until nighttime. I don’t know why. I rarely know why. My unruly mind, as Mr. Meditation calls it. I need to be kind to my unruly mind. Sigh. I just need it to show up, check in once in a while…make me believe that it’s paying attention. Someone should.

Tiring day at school…cardiovascular lab where we exercise (by dancing crazily around the room, if you’re a teacher trying to motivate 7th-graders to actually MOVE) and then determine recovery rate. It’s kind of a fun lab, although frustrating when the kids are being lazy. I always tell them that if the Old Lady (me) can do it 5 times (5 periods), then they can do it once. I turn on music and we dance. No biggie. Exhausting by the end of the day though to manage the lab and the kids AND exercise every 50 minutes.

Boychild had Academic League after school, so I stopped by to hear him answer a bunch of questions about math, dance (!), and other stuff. I’m realizing how soon he will be leaving for college…it’s scary. I wonder if he will ever call or email…he’s not the most social beast. I will miss him.

I did grade a little. Mostly I sat and stared at the computer for about an hour…I was so tired…and I realized I haven’t been reading blogs hardly at all. I don’t know why. Easier to read fiction than reality? I’m not really spending a lot of time just sitting at the computer…except to write this each night. Maybe that’s where the blog-reading time went…from passively reading other people’s stuff to writing my own crap out. Who needs NaNoWriMo? I’ve been doing it since July. I’m averaging about 1200 words a day…that means I’m up to about 135,000 words. Wow. It’s not really a novel, though…just the story of my unruly mind, my wandering intellect, my moody and emotional mental midget, trauma, disrepair, dissolution. Sigh. I wonder when I will not have to think like this any more. I wonder when I will stop having long conversations with my mind about holding it together and not losing it in the car or the gym or the grocery store…when life will seem real again. Fuzz. Fog. Mud.

With a mood like that, I needed to make art…especially after not doing it last night. Three and a half hours in. About 300 pieces ironed together. Still missing a fingernail piece and two toenails…of all things (they’re small…they’re easy to disappear). Either I’ll find them in the last box or I’ll cut new ones…and then weeks from now, I’ll find them somewhere…and be unable to throw them out, because that’s how I roll.

But the cat is done. Hi Kitten…

I managed the torso and upper arms…

Next is the head and the crazy heart tree above it…

Still got 200 pieces to go, but I’m past the halfway mark. I might actually get this ironed down to the background this weekend (grades due…aargh)…stitching down next week maybe? It could happen…like if I don’t look at the calendar and all the stupid meetings and crap I need to go to. OK. Some of it’s not stupid. Some of it is actually social, or at least as social as I get these days…like three people I know really really well who won’t freak out on me. I can do that. Or complete and total strangers that I can tell nothing to. I can do that. I can make art. I can do that.

Fucking slog.

I like this song. I don’t like the video. Or I do. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too old for it.

And then I watch it again and it reminds me of those old paintings of groups of philosophers and scholars…like this one…

School of Athens by Raphael. OK…is that a weird comparison? Artist brain. I don’t know why they’re linked up there, but they are.

And this video…yeah…totally (except not flowers)…

Tattoos in a New Light

I would do that. Reminds me…followup mammogram number three for this year is coming up. May my breasts survive the experience. When she starts to tear up…I do that a lot…and I don’t even have cancer. But that’s how close everything is to the surface. I’m not sure I could get a tattoo that someone else had drawn. And if I were to do one of my own, I would just keep adding details until it turned into a 70-hour extravaganza. Not sure that’s a good use of time or money. Will think good thoughts though. My followup is unlikely to be a problem…he’s just being overly cautious. Deep breaths. Don’t think about bad stuff. Don’t think about the future (you don’t have one at the moment…it’s just more of the same). Don’t think? That’s harder.

I’m in that fuzzy place…not the good fuzzy, but the blurry fuzzy, the muffled mess that seems like a psychiatric hospital, the crazy ward, the mental ward, the strait-jacket and smells-like-disinfectant ward. Not a good thing. Need a remedy for that.

Holding on…

I’m feeling lost in today’s space. Meditation is focusing on, as he puts it, becoming friendly with our emotions so we can live more peacefully. I think I’m a little TOO friendly with them sometimes, but it doesn’t seem to give me peace. Tuesdays are always difficult for me…stupid anniversaries of painful shit. I tried really hard to modulate emotion today…successful for part of the day, but the end was…the end…and I cried on the way home from school. Tired is part of it, I know. Sleep has not been great with the time change. I wake up way too early so completely tense that even with meditative breathing and pure exhaustion breathing down my neck, there’s no way I’m falling back to sleep. So that doesn’t help. Plus grades are due soon, and that’s additional stress.

I made it to the gym tonight after a meeting at school and then a bunch of paperwork and management stuff I needed to do here. The gym…I wasn’t all in my head…I don’t know where I was. It wasn’t anywhere good. I did read. Then I came home and finished the book and remembered to eat. Didn’t want to eat. Wish I could just get an injection once a day and never deal with food at all.

Before you freak out about two posts in an hour, the Houston one was half-written this morning.

The book I finished was The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey…

Yeah, more dystopia, with aliens! It was well-written, actually. I enjoyed it. It’s the first book in a series, so there will be more. I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the series I’m reading at the moment.

I should have drawn tonight or ironed fabric, but no, I graded papers. So now I’m sad. Depressed. I can say that word, can’t I? I am depressed…and not the one-day phenomenon when you got an F on your test or when you didn’t get into a show you wanted to get into, but the depressed that goes on for weeks with no end in sight. I know it’s better than it was, but…a friend today asked me about Houston, about whether I enjoyed myself. ENJOY. What does that mean? I think I got through the days there just like I get through the days here, one step at a time. I had a couple good conversations. I had one good night’s sleep. I read a lot. I saw some quilts I liked. It’s probably no different than a day here when I might read, get some sleep, and iron a quilt together. I probably get more of a sense of achievement out of putting the quilt together. But the trip was planned long before all this crap happened…so I can’t really read a lot into the experience, except to think that maybe planning trips for depressed people isn’t so helpful.

Who knows. We probably need to get out of the house occasionally, but who knows if that’s what will tip the boat, toss me into the water of real life again. Doubtful. I think it will just take time, and lots of it. Time to put pieces back together and figure out the huge knotted mess in my head that all used to make sense…what I thought about love and my future and where I’d be in five years. That’s all trash at the moment. Thinking more than 24 hours in the future is dangerous these days.

Not so for Babygirl…she’s trying to clean herself up, get herself ready to sit on my lap again. Little does she know that I’m going to bed early tonight. No really, I am. It will probably backfire on me and I’ll be awake at 3 AM for an hour or so, but at least I will have tried.

I try all the time to be normal in one way or another…not too normal, because that’s not how I roll, but normal for me. Who am I now? I don’t really know. Kathy the artist. That’s all I can hold on to today.

A Slow and Sloppy Process

I didn’t think I would have the energy (mental or physical) to make art tonight, but my post-meditation mood was so dim and dreary that I knew I just had to push through that and do it. It’s the same stubborn streak that had me running cross country with multiple stress fractures in high school. Some people might call it driven, some might call it just plain stupid. I don’t know what it is, but I know I feel better with some art under my belt every night, so I just need to do it…just like I need to exercise, meditate, and apparently eat food (I’m not keen on the last one, but my body seems to require it).

So at 10 PM, I got my butt off the couch, wiped my face…multiple times, because I couldn’t stop crying for a while there post-meditation…and turned on the iron. Part of why I was apprehensive about starting so late is that the next section was hands…fingers…complicated little buggers…

But I decided to iron the arms off to the side and then put them on top of the legs, which worked pretty damn well. An hour later, I had both arms down about halfway up the biceps…

I’m about 200 pieces in, about 2 1/2 hours done. I like how it looks. More tomorrow.

While the pieces are laid out, I have to protect them from a cat lying on them, so I use the bins with sorted pieces to cover up all the other pieces…

Progress. Deep sigh. It really does feel better to do that. I need to write that down somewhere so I can remember. It seems like a duh moment, but some days, I really have a hard time remembering to do the things that make me feel better, push the misery off my shoulders and into the trash. Not that it will stay there, but it’s the thought that counts.

Midnight has been guarding my stuff…

Not really. She threw up on the Wonder Under and she leaves dirt everywhere…need to change her flea meds. I did clean up the light table, though, figuring I won’t be tracing Wonder Under for a while…need to finish these two quilts before the next one is due. Deadlines first, I guess…although there are two or three drawings from the last three months that are clamoring to be quilts. We’ll see…after December, when I get these two done.

I didn’t get much stitching done on the trip to Houston…I was more into reading, I guess.

But I did get some done…the backgrounds for the orange birds and getting the green birds sewn down…now they just need all their parts. I have another post to write about the vendors and shopping at IQF and some other stuff…like the apparent milk shortage in Houston.

Today, I had my students study these…

Sheep hearts (reasons why science teachers need cutting boards, hot water, gloves, and big knives). MMM MMM Good. Not really. Lots of squealing and some stupid behavior. It gets them ready for the eyeballs, which are way more gross and gooey and squirty. Two more labs this week…exhausting, lots of cleaning up after students. They will survive. I might too. Who knows?

I finished a couple of books on the trip…Elizabeth George’s new book Just One Evil Act…

This was a bit weird…it had some issues…but I love me some Elizabeth George, so I enjoyed it. Barbara Havers is such a messed-up character and Lynley is such a good guy (well, he can be a mess too, honestly)…definitely worth reading.

And then I read Michael Scott’s 4th book in the series about Nicholas Flamel, The Necromancer…

still loving this series. I need to wait a while to read the next one, though, because two more real live books (as opposed to the electronic ones) just showed up at the library, and they’ll be due in a few weeks. Plus one is for a book club (yes, I’m trying to do that again…we’ll see if I survive)…so I’ll have to finish it sooner rather than later.

I also finally finished this book, Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser, which made me cry every time I read it (hence the length of time it took me to finish it)…

Every time I read it, tears. Not sure why. There didn’t seem to be any one thing that did it, and sometimes I just found her incredibly irritating, plus I’m not really a God person and he kept showing up there. It was recommended by a friend who had read it and benefited from it. She wasn’t wrong.

I have quotes from the book…”For a while I just went off the edge of the world.”

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.” Rumi (this is my excuse for making art every day and blowing off the grading…I shouldn’t say that…I graded for an hour and a half tonight, so I’m not blowing off ANYTHING. But making more time for art is never a bad thing.)

“Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning–get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of ‘closure’ and move on. I am not a big fan of ‘closure.’ It sounds so abrupt, so tidy, so final. I prefer old-fashioned words like mourning, lamentation, and grief. They suggest a slow and sloppy process–one that involves emotional upheaval, interrupted activity, and dark nights of the soul.” I don’t have closure. Apparently closure should have taken me a whopping 51 minutes or so…well fuck that shit. I don’t even know that closure makes sense…I think our emotional existence is a constantly changing landscape and you don’t get to close off one part of it and lock it away, and if people are doing that, I don’t actually think that’s healthy. We need to process through it, wade through the shit and mud and have it cling to your shoes and clothes for a while until you can get it all cleaned off, and even then, it will rise up and slap you around every once in a while. It’s possible that my existence is somewhat messy in general, though…so I’ve had to learn to deal with that. Where do the drawings come from? Well…there…not locked up…but vomiting all over the paper. I wanted to draw tonight, but didn’t have time, speaking of vomiting over the paper.

“Our tears, and the calm hands of grief that follow, are not signs of some tragic and evil reality…Grief is the proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us.” I’ve said this before, that my grief is a sign of how deeply I was committed…and I shouldn’t feel like that was wrong…I should keep my eyes on working through the shit, but I’m not wrong for the level of grief I’m experiencing…it’s related to the level of emotion I hold (held?) inside me. There’s nothing wrong with that. Without that depth of emotion, I probably wouldn’t be the artist that I am.

“Grief is often confused with depression or self-pity. While one can certainly go into a woeful tailspin during the grieving process, in the long term, grief is not the same as depression. If we gloss over our grief, we might become depressed. Unfelt feelings and unexpressed grief have a way of dulling life. It is as if with every grief we do not feel, we stuff another handful of our vitality underground, until we are numb or sick or embittered.” Yeah. That. I might feel dulled at the moment, but I’m really not…I’m feeling all of it.

For some reason, when I’m going through piles of emotional shit, I save quotes. I have notes on the phone and the iPad of quotes from books I’ve been reading. I have quotes taped to my office door from the post-divorce reading frenzy. They seem to help me focus. I don’t know why.

Toenail revisited: I managed to half rip my big toenail off on Friday night…it wouldn’t come all the way off though (yes, I tried), so I had to bandage it back down and let the ooze and blood restick the nail to my toe…goddamn, I wish it would just fall off. Sigh. What a pain. Sometimes I dream of a cleaver and my toe. Not good.

The most useful and exciting thing I’ve done in the last week? I managed to successfully pair my old bluetooth earpiece and the new phone. This was not as easy as you would think it would be, and required many bizarre maneuvers and clicking on and off in a particular order. But I was successful! I know. Simple pleasures. It took me a long time to get it done.

So. Mood all over the map today. Whatever. At least I was aware of all its wanderings…and I managed them. There’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s all getting me somewhere…Montana? Not happy yet. Mr. Meditation wants me to be happy. Content. Double sigh. I think Mr. Meditation has a simpler life than I do.

Make art. Save lives.