perhaps sometimes my lyrics do have a bottom.

As is obvious by the lack of updates and last timestamp, I took a sabbatical from posting.

This was not intentional or at all forseen, and is not a sign of a good blogger. But alas, life's jaws opened, dragged me into their growling maw, and tossed me about, gnashing away and pulverizing until I was a bit of an unrecognizable pulp. Between the upper jaw of work (deadlines being the molars, difficult clients playing the role of the canines), and the lower jaw of viruses (the back-to-back, month-long swine flu mutations as the molars, the Boxing Day stomach flu being the incisors), it's a miracle I came through it as a reconstructable pulp, rather than an irretrievably damaged mess, vomited with such force down a subway grate that I was never to be seen or recognized again. Instead I was able to gather my wits and pieces and pack them into a plane to spend the holidays in Seattle and paste myself back together. I beleive I have regained a semblance of an individual who can, indeed, survive on non-workplace air, and who in return, doesn't always breathe out toxic viruses.

I'm now back in New York with a clean slate. Anyone want to hang out?

Do I still have friends?

oh, and one thing

I'm really hoping I don't die in my sleep tonight.

I'm about to go to bed, and I woke up last night in the middle of the night, like 3:30 a.m.. I woke up with the worst food-poisoning symptoms and was up for an hour or two after that. No fun.

I slept in and recovered in time to make it to my exciting annual office survey meeting today, but am now feeling a little crampy in the suspect area again. I'm just hoping I don't go the way of my first-grade teacher, who mysteriously died of e-coli in her sleep, out of the blue.

I recently saw a movie where the lead character was getting teased about being a middle-aged woman living alone, and how sad it is when people die by accident choking or falling while living alone, and now it's making me, usually the epitome of devil-may-care, slightly paranoid. I may not be middle-aged yet, but I do eat real fast, and those things that others might be concerned about the age of.

Here's to waking up to face another day at the office...

26 now, and falling apart

I somehow managed to sleep so wrong last night that I've got a horribly painful muscle/ligament/somethingorother going on... I've had this ridiculous Quasimodo effect going on at work all day. For some reason my head has to have the muscle in question extended or it hurts. You'd think it would be the other way around.

On top of that I'm stuck crouched over a table, hand-inking a drawing. I don't think that's good for the situation, with my head all kinked up, straining to draw my lines smoothly. It's not even an interesting drawing; it's a plan of a park set within a hydroelectric facility. It's full of fences and power lines and pipes. My eyeball is threatening to revolt and leap out of my head from the strain.

Hopefully the massage I'm getting after work (a splurge for me) will remedy the issue. If that doesn't, I might have to resort to more extreme measures. Like personally removing my own spinal cord, as I threatened to do to my coworkers earlier today in a splash of melodrama.

so hot right now

As though it's set on some sort of schedule, our AC goes out at work every single summer at its hottest point. We must have a super crappy unit or something, because it happens every single year, like its little PacNW soul is just shocked by that ninety-degree heat every time, and has to go blow a regulator in its exhaustion. Haven't we figured this out yet?

So there I sit, in my "lucky" atrium-like view seat by the water, roasting like I'm in some sort of life-size tropical terrarium. It's actually usually over-ACed in our, but by the end of the past couple days I've found myself feeling super sluggish, bordering on comatose. Me, inefficient? What a surprise.

The weather outside has been pleasantly balmy, however, and I walked up to the market to go for a swim after work, which promised to be refreshing after my afternoon baking. I was slightly bummed that the pool, which I usually hit up later in the evening, was full at the five-o-clock rush hour, but I doubled up with someone in the last lane nonetheless.

After a few laps, I stopped at the end of the lane to fix my bothersome goggles and just as my head came out, I looked over the edge, I literally gasped. Just a few feet away from my face a human foot (sporting a Teva sandal) and calf were laying up against the wall, the top portion shrouded by a towel. Call me naive for not being accustomed to meeting prosthetic limbs in passing, but it took me a couple seconds to register that there wasn't an unfortunately severed limb chilling poolside at the Seattle Athletic Club.

Sure enough, the SAC has its own Heather Mills, taking up a lane right next to me. As I realized this, and observed her one-footed doing the work of two, I gave herself a symbolic Hell Yes.

Hell Yes!

there are some good tunes playing here at Ladro right now, earlier were some choice selections from the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, a little Siouxsie & The Banshees, a little Gang of Four; now we're listening to a little Tom Petty. Right now, his American Girl- a classic:

Well she was an American girl
raised on promises
she couldn't help thinkin' that there
was a little more to life
somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
with lots of places to run to
...yeah, and if she had to die tryin'
she had one little promise
she was gonna keep

Oh yeah
all right
take it easy baby
make it last all night
...she was an American girl

It was kind of cold that night
she stood alone on her balcony
she could hear the cars roll by
out on 441
like waves crashin' in the beach
...and for one desperate moment there
he crept back in her memory
God it's so painful...
something that's so close
and still so far out of reach

Oh yeah
All right
take it easy baby
make it last all night

...she was an American girl

Word.

hot and cold

Well, it's 88 degrees here, today, and I was supposed to be hiking my last training hike today, which I was going to have be pretty intense -and soaking up the delicious weather- before Mt Adams (which is next weekend, hallelujah), and here I have come down with a really nasty virus. I was in denial yesterday, but it's unavoidable today.

It hit me last night in its full-body-ache, phlegmy, inability-to-swallow glory. So I played it cool last night and stayed home with my period-piece George Sand Netflix movie (it was okay). Today I woke up feeling uber-achey and ended up staying in bed all morning, then rolled into the living room to watch the second half of the Euro Cup Final (way to go, Spain).

I'm pretty peeved about this virus. I usually take the bear-through-it approach, not taking much, and not letting it get to me, but I'm not excited for the idea of having compromised lung function on the mountains in the next couple of weeks, so I'm kind of a toxic cloud of vitamins, supplements, and over-the-counter stuff. Bleh. Let's hope it works.

eph you, Ruby

or, An Open Letter to my '93 Dodge Dakota

I know you're getting old, and that I haven't taken the best care of you as I am primarily a public-transport rider. I know I let a little too much time pass between oil changes, and I let your shocks go bad, and let my dad replace your broken back window with plywood rather than forking over the cash to deal with these things properly. I know that it's not your fault the EPA started testing environmentally-friendly paint sealers in 1993 and it was a bust and caused your fair, white complexion to peel interminably right after your warranty expired. I'm sorry I only had the patience to repaint your hood, and gave up when your roof and doors caught the virus, giving you the appearance of having vehicular leprosy. I respect the fact that you got me to the Gorge and back recently for Sasquatch without giving out. I know you are feeling your 248,000 milles.

But what the fuck, man? I put a lot of time and $250 bucks into personally replacing your radiator when you sputtered and died after a long, hot ride to my mom's house last month. Somehow it's my fault this new radiator and its hoses sprung a few leaks. But now you give out again, dramatically, at rush hour at a scary intersection in the city (on a birthday-cake delivering errand, no less), and I have to spend eleven hundred bucks to fix what appears to be the same radiator issue, all over again, and immediately when I get you back home you do it all over again?

Understand that I am at my wit's end with you. After all of the crap I've had to deal with lately, and the things I'm paying for on my shitty architect's salary, I barely had eleven dollars to fix you, let alone eleven hundred, and now you insist on going back to the car hospital for the same issue, rendering that thousand dollar bill pointless, and setting me up for an additional repair fee. Do you understand that aside from your age and medical conditions, the current economic/political climate is rendering automobiles with giant, eight-cylinder engines and very low gas mileage to not be looked upon favorably? You are not in a good position to act like a princess right now. I know you were hot stuff when you came from the factory- good soundsystem, AC, burly engine and all, but you've faded. It's time to play like a team, because your moody, passive-agressive, deceptive behavior has me about ten steps away from selling you, sending you off to a fate which likely could be dismemberment with some of your parts heading to a grim fate in industrializing nations.

Since my father bequeathed you to me when I passed my driver's license exam almost ten years ago (and I'd been hoping for something more compact like the Civic I learned on), we have acquired some good stories. I have fond memories: messages written by male suitors in dry-erase marker on your windshield in high school; sleeping in in your bed on a roadtrip down the west coast with glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to the inside of the canopy; hundreds of campus parking tickets found under your windshield wipers in college (many contested, most with late fees); numerous trash-can and light-pole-tapping incidents pockmarking your chrome bumper (accountable to your limited rear-visibility, esp due to the plywood back window); both rear-ending and being rear-ended on the Tacoma Narrows bridge (separate incidents); countless loads hauled moving throughout Seattle; intense singing and yelling sessions held within your soundproofed cab, and my cats destroying their carriers to roam around inside and wail neurotically during moving, to name just a few.

Nostalgia, the need to see my suburban parents without holding court in the city and expecting them to come to me, and the stubborn refusal to purchase a car before my anticipated departure to more metropolitan environs has kept me from forsaking you until now. But I'm very close to coming to terms with parting ways; you and Ron at the repair shop are going to have to come to some sort of terms before I put you back in my good graces and take you off probation.

It can go either way. I don't want to have to make the call that may cause you to end up in Truck Heaven, but it's in your hands at this point.

on depression- II

The process of articulating and objectifying what I went through, naming it clearly as something separate from myself was and is therapeutic in itself. Reflecting upon it rationally helps bring understanding, and brings sanity and clarity to an experience that feels so completely insane, confusing, and demoralizing.

However, I cannot help but re-read what I wrote previously and feel that it sounds somewhat odd to be so cool and removed in expressing something so emotional. It kind of reads like a documentary written about me by a third party. Granted, I wouldn't expect to have people take me seriously if I came off as melodramatic or overreacting. Still, I think that in chronicling the experience objectively, I understate the extreme emotion of experiencing depression.

I'm generally a pretty level-headed person, so that may be part of what made me sensitive to the overwhelming emotion. Also usually a cheerful person, this new-found deep sadness, the despair and isolation and shame, the inability to feel any hope on the horizon despite the strong desire for it to improve...it was too much for me to take in, and was drowning me. Even though, intellectually, I knew that it would get better eventually, and those supporting me during that time tried to help me feel hope, I couldn't, and I was isolated in a lonely haze of depression that panicked me. I've always been influenced, even fueled by my relationships and interactions with others, and here I could not see past the haze of isolation to attempt to get there again. It was frightening. All of it was very frightening.

Going through that taught me to put less pressure on myself and be kinder to myself. I'm pretty driven and can be ruttish; this has helped show me the importance of sometimes taking things as they come. I'm still trying to figure out what's most important to me at this point in my life; where I want to be living, what I want to be doing and how and with whom, but I know now that it's best to take it bit by bit and see where the winds take me, rather than stressing out about not having everything bundled together into one clear solution until my head implodes. Or at least that's what I'm trying to impress upon myself....

In all things, balance, moderation, and empathy.

on depression

-

It first hits like a mysterious, dark, unknown force wreaking havoc on your life. For me, it seeped into my existence like some sort of invisible acid through my veins, slowly eating away at piece after piece of my being: it corroded my soul, my thoughts, my relationships, my health... masked as my own personality until it was clear that some sort of beast had taken over my once-competent, once-sunny, once-healthy person and was sabotaging it.

It is clear now to me in retrospect what this beast is, and how it works on me, but at the time, not knowing why things seemed so out of control was frightening and disabling. It took months of unhappiness, sleeplessness, dozens of pounds lost as the result of not eating, hopeless, despondent crying in every imaginable setting, the inability to focus or complete work, and a physically aching, ailing body before people- friends, parents, coworkers, finally practically shook me to get me to realize that something was really wrong, that it wasn't a sadness I should or could deal with on my own or "pull through," as I'd wanted to believe. Something had taken over me and was increasingly sapping me -as I and others knew me- away, and it got bad enough to frighten the people that cared about me.

Though it was excruciating not only to go through this but to drag those around me through it, I will be forever grateful to those who held my hand and walked with me during that trying time. Even now, in reflection, I tear up.

It is difficult to convey the essence, the feeling of depression to anyone who has not experienced it first-hand. Experts explain the onset of depression as being a predisposition stimulated by circumstances. That's where the clear, simple analysis ends, as I see it. According to professionals and those who have been affected by it, there seem to be a common menu of experiences and feelings associated with it. Of course, like most conditions afflicting the vastly complex and varying human body, it can manifest itself differently given severity and the individual. Being a condition mainly associated with the mind, personality becomes a lens for not only experiencing it, but perceiving, interpreting, and expressing it also.

The conditions that provoked my depression are complex, still sore, and not worth belaboring here. I lost a lot that was important in my life and was treated hurtfully by those I had held very dear to me, and it was enough to send me into shock, apparently. There was an extended period of denial and avoidance that allowed both my own condition and the conditions in my life that stimulated and parlayed my depression to worsen and snowball. One of the hardest things for me to reflect upon, now, is how I was floundering through life during this time, unaware how the depression was sabotaging so many aspects of it, and how if I'd have been depression-free, or at least cognizant of the force that was affecting me, I would have handled things differently; how things might have played out differently. But it was out of my control then, and the past is certainly complete.

My life, and the future I saw for myself, morphed into something unrecognizable to the me of a year before. The shock became accompanied by a deeper sadness than I'd ever known, along with loneliness and isolation, and hopelessness, another beast that was new to me. It was as though I was physically being filled to the brim with sadness and loneliness; it was flowing out of my body in aches and tears and entire nights spent by the toilet. At the same time a plug had been pulled somewhere else- all the color, happiness, and beauty had been drained from my existence. Nothing interested me- I couldn't even get close to books or music or cooking or gardening, I had the mental nor physical energy to do anything; neither the patience or interest to focus or think about anything but the sadness welling up from within. My labor-intensive garden in my expensively-rented real estate shriveled up, and the food it did bear rotted on the vine. I remember, repeatedly, lying in bed and trying the tactic I'd used historically when I was blue- asking myself what one thing could make me happy right now, what could I do, or have, or make, or eat, to make myself feel better, and there was just a scary black hole where that answer should have been.

The hardest part in all of this was how it affected my identity. I have always viewed my brain as my biggest asset. My creativity, intelligence, humor, and passion for having a positive effect in the world have always been my defining features more than any tangible parts of me or things I'd achieved or acquired, and I felt depression stealing them from me. My often quirky and comical personality was now lame, clunky, slow, and placid. I could not design, could not analyze, remember, be a good or even amusing friend, could not do much for very long before checking out into a vacant or downcast stare or crying. For a stubborn, independent-minded individual who never let others see me crying previously, it was a huge blow to my identity, and a glaring sign that something needed to be done. I became good at crying silently, and looking like I wasn't while doing it. (I remember thinking that it's probably quite unsettling to look at someone with a blank stare and tears streaming down their face; I think I'm well beyond that now, thankfully.) I have always had a memory that selectively checked out occasionally, but I found myself forgetting important things,-work assignments, entire conversations and promises, and where I had put things, in a matter of minutes, over and over again.

It was disturbing to have not only my emotional acuity compromised, but also my cognitive and analytical sides, which I never would have realized would be affected. What would be left of me but a pile of vegetable matter, at this rate?! Twice, after driving to work under unusual circumstances, I left my truck parked by the office and took my usual bus all the way home before realizing (or having someone remind me of) my error. It's very scary to have your brain revolt on you, and I'm finding that my cognitive rebound is slower than I'd expect, given the emotional progress. I still find myself unfocused oftentimes at work, and do a lot of forgetting. I'm becoming better at writing things down.

Another disturbing symptom is the physical effects. Some of it, naturally, was a direct result of my reaction to the distress- not eating or sleeping will hurt. But headaches and body aches would come and go, ones I'd had like never before and unrelated to, or long after the sleep deprivation or hunger. Apparently it's not uncommon, but it still remains bizarre to me how such a mental issue can stimulate something so entirely physical.

It's taking a lot to get beyond it, and it might be something I see manifest itself in my life again even after I do make it past this bout. As slow as it was, the process of gradually rolling toward this hole before diving deep into it may end up being equal to or even less long of a process than that of climbing back out of it. The depression ebbs and flows, seeming to have vanished at times, and then, stimulated randomly, creeping up on me and sucker-punching me when I'm least expecting it. I'm learning to fight back. As the professionals reminded me, it's an illness, and it has to be treated, like any other ailing part of you would. Mental illness sounds very strong, something for those within rubber walls and straitjackets, but depression is a type of complicated ailment of the brain, also, even if very different from the stereotypes. It took multiple trips to the doctor to get me to allow them to come to the diagnosis and help me treat it, but the many-pronged fork to tackle this for me has included research, counseling, autobiographies, and yes, medication, but most importantly, support.

I cannot overstate how valuable support is to someone suffering with depression. It's people without support, or too severely depressed to take support, who contemplate suicide, as the pure hopelessness and desperation causes people to question the value of their continued existence. Depression got scary for me, it was pretty severe at times, but I never thought about suicide. When a couple of the few people I held in my first ring of support were not there for me, I made the mistake of avoiding reaching out to others for support because I was proud. It is very difficult to see someone one cares about battle significant depression, I could tell by the reactions of the people around me. I did not want to be the needy, fair-weather friend who had been absent when distracted and happy, and then came crying when they were sad and needed something. But being proud was silly and only prolonged and worsened the painful suffering that stems from loneliness and isolation; it was glaringly obvious to many when I spent any time with friends that something was up, and once it became apparent, many people were more spiritually generous than I'd have ever expected. It was wonderful to be reminded of how many kind people I had in my life, even when I don't see them all the time. As I became much more cognizant and accepting of, and communicative about the situation with time, it also became much easier to accept support.

Not only is it difficult for people to see loved ones battle depression, it can also be very hard to help them through it; it's a very introspective dilemma with related introspective questions to ask oneself and obstacles to overcome. For me, no specific conversations or strategies offered by others would lead to feeling better, it was mostly just having people to talk to, commiserate with, distract me, and be a physical presence that became the healing/coping process that helped.

The black hole shrinks slowly, and until it's gone I need periodic support and distraction. It's so very much smaller now, but I haven't been able to forget its presence once, and I can't predict when it will contract or expand, the change in momentum causing me to lose my footing temporarily like a packed bus slamming on its brakes in rush hour. Perhaps the biggest part was learning to recognize the gaping maw of the beast, even to recognize that I was being consumed in the first place so I could react and defend myself. ...and have the foresight and wisdom to let others have my back as I meet it head-on....