I think once you embrace that you're having a minor nervous breakdown, life becomes a little easier. To clarify, I don't mean to denigrate people who are having or have had an actual nervous breakdown, I know I'm having a "First World Problem," and I'm trying to take it for what it is.
I got married, I'm getting divorced, I have depression, and I have no idea what to do with my life. There. There it is in a nutshell. Oh, and my uterus is drying up as we speak, so I may never have children...I think that's the meat of the emotional rollercoaster I'm riding. I know I'm not the first person on this ride, but as I may have mentioned repeatedly, I have minimal (at best) coping skills. I find that I have a really strong urge to just scream. Not at anyone, just scream until I feel better. I may try it...just in a department store. No, I kid...about the department store, not the screaming. Maybe I can start a Scream Therapy group.
I've been sleeping in my childhood room since Saturday. If you want to feel like a real winner, I suggest doing that with the realization that you don't know when you'll have the wherewithal to sleep somewhere that you either own or on which you pay rent. Also, my room is tiny. I guess I didn't notice this growing up, as I was rarely in there, and I, too, was smaller, but I feel like Andre the Giant sleeping in a milk crate.
When I say I don't know what to do with my life, I'm not being hyperbolic. In fact, I hope I don't run into any members of a cult in the next little while, because I would be very suggestible. You worship chipmunks and wear bras on your heads? That sounds amazing! So we live in underground bunkers and an Oompa Loompa is our leader? What a brilliant idea! I am totally in!
All I can say right now is that I am enjoying singing at the top of my lungs again, appreciating the written word, and the fact that I am tabula rasa. I can go live in Tibet with the Sherpas, or I can join the Peace Corps, neither of which are very likely, but I can do them if I want. I lost myself somewhere along the way in the last 6-8 years, and the upside of that, is that I get to find myself. I remember myself being delightful, so I think it will be worth it.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
A change will do me good (let's hope)
I am moving back to Mississippi. I have packed up my clothes, groceries, and has many shoes as I could carry. Hint: it's not even scratching the surface of what still lies in my closet, and I cried nearly the whole time I was packing. This has been my home, my touchstone, my retreat mostly lately, but it's mine.. I truly believe I'm making the right decision. Further, I truly believe that my future decisions have to be about me and me alone. People are going to formulate opinions: Emily's gone crazy, she's fragile, she can't handle reality. They might be right. But rather than bull-shitting my way through knowing I need counseling and support before I secure my next step, I'm actually going to do it.
I have a depressive personality. I've had it since college, the first time I took an anti-depressant. Mostly, I seem fine to other people, upbeat and social and always cracking a joke, and mostly I am. But the lows I experience with this affliction, especially when major life upheavals happen, like my father, grandmother, and brother dying, along with the end of my marriage, are the lows that cause me to sleep 19 hours a day and wish I could disconnect my phone so I don't have to worry anyone when I don't answer and just want to sleep.
I have so much potential. It's there, it's like dangling from a tree I can't reach right now, and I have to find the mechanism that controls the potential that leads to my happiness. I know I'm capable of happiness; for a depressed person, I'm pretty funny. That's what helps me deal with things, courtesy of my father. I don't know if he was depressed, but he had a dark sense of humor that I wholeheartedly inherited. I'm genuinely trying to find my way and my purpose and my happiness again. I know it's there. I don't think it exists in the pre-accepted normal professional life, and that's okay. I can gain the tools to find what my "special" purposes is.
I don't want to be some 40-year-old living off her mother, whining about why society didn't treat me fairly. I have no bones with society, except the Tea Party, and that's a whole other conversation. I just need motivation to get off my lackadaisical ass and do something. Teach, help impoverished communities, work with children, counsel, and still maintain my writing. I dunno. I feel our generation was given a set of tools that stopped applying once the economy took a dive, and I need to chisel my way out. I am not this whiny, self-centered person, and I am smart and capable and want to teach and help in a greater, macro-way. I just need a good freaking counselor to tell me to stop crying that my marriage is over and tell me it's not completely my fault. I don't think that's asking too terribly much. If it is asking too much, screw the psychotherapy industry. Trust me, I got issues.
On a side note, after I cried while packing my house, I watched "Hot Tub Time Machine," which I highly recommend to cure the doldrums.
I have a depressive personality. I've had it since college, the first time I took an anti-depressant. Mostly, I seem fine to other people, upbeat and social and always cracking a joke, and mostly I am. But the lows I experience with this affliction, especially when major life upheavals happen, like my father, grandmother, and brother dying, along with the end of my marriage, are the lows that cause me to sleep 19 hours a day and wish I could disconnect my phone so I don't have to worry anyone when I don't answer and just want to sleep.
I have so much potential. It's there, it's like dangling from a tree I can't reach right now, and I have to find the mechanism that controls the potential that leads to my happiness. I know I'm capable of happiness; for a depressed person, I'm pretty funny. That's what helps me deal with things, courtesy of my father. I don't know if he was depressed, but he had a dark sense of humor that I wholeheartedly inherited. I'm genuinely trying to find my way and my purpose and my happiness again. I know it's there. I don't think it exists in the pre-accepted normal professional life, and that's okay. I can gain the tools to find what my "special" purposes is.
I don't want to be some 40-year-old living off her mother, whining about why society didn't treat me fairly. I have no bones with society, except the Tea Party, and that's a whole other conversation. I just need motivation to get off my lackadaisical ass and do something. Teach, help impoverished communities, work with children, counsel, and still maintain my writing. I dunno. I feel our generation was given a set of tools that stopped applying once the economy took a dive, and I need to chisel my way out. I am not this whiny, self-centered person, and I am smart and capable and want to teach and help in a greater, macro-way. I just need a good freaking counselor to tell me to stop crying that my marriage is over and tell me it's not completely my fault. I don't think that's asking too terribly much. If it is asking too much, screw the psychotherapy industry. Trust me, I got issues.
On a side note, after I cried while packing my house, I watched "Hot Tub Time Machine," which I highly recommend to cure the doldrums.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Taking stock (not chicken), and it's not good
I'm a smart person; I don't mean for that to be conceited, I just think empirically, most people would say that I was smart. I'm well-read, up-to-date on current events, and I like to imagine I can carry on an intelligent conversation with just about anyone. All these things beg the question: Why do I do the dumbest possible things at the worst possible times?
The timing aspect is not always necessarily true, but it brings to mind a story that was told many, many times in our family. When I was younger, my parents had a silver tray that rested on a mahogany structure with wheels on both sides. If you tipped it even the slightest, all manner of silver goblets would clang onto the floor as the cart (?) overturned. I was told countless times not to do this, not to touch it, because I did occasionally run into as children do. Then, as I began to realize how annoying it was and how much my parents truly didn't want me to knock it over, I started doing it out of pure spite. That may have been around the time they started the James Dobson series "How to Raise a Willful Child." I can't be sure.
I seem to have a self-sabotaging mechanism lodged in that part of my brain that also lets depression overtake me and doesn't give a time, because I'm too tired. I've only been in one truly wonderful relationship in my life (my soon-to-be-late marriage), and as much as I want to push all of the blame on my husband, and he does have his fair share, I'm almost more responsible for it. I have issues; really, I do. I don't wear a sheet and dance around with a plant on my head, but there are some days that sleeping for 19 hours makes me feel better than facing a new day. I haven't dealt with those issues properly, and my life is showing the repercussions.
I'm a great thinker; I feel like Dr. Seuss. I think so many grand things; I shall make them so! But, I don't. I give in to emotional exhaustion and try to get through another day, week, month. I am not a bad person; that's probably why I still do have the few people around me that care about me. However, I am a disappointing person. I have such potential and light and humor and intelligence in the right circumstances, and then the "fog" takes over. I could name the "fog" over the years: realizing depression, the breaking-off of an engagement, losing my grandfather, father, grandmother, the notion I might one day have a good relationship with my brother, my marriage, and my zeal for anything that disallows yoga pants. I don't want to be a blamer, I really don't. Nothing causes this but my own self-deprecation.
I imagined myself so differently at 36, and I'm trying so desperately to adjust the expectation. I have the worst coping skills since Sybil, and despite my smarty pants attitude, I do not know it all. I know less than 50%. I want to make a good life for myself, and I don't want to arbitrarily waste it. I don't know what the coming weeks, months, and years will bring, but I want to be a person you'd be proud to know, and a person on whom you can rely, and an example for my nieces, nephew, great-nephew, and children, should I be lucky enough to have them. I have been such a spoiled, entitled jerk for 36 years, and I don't want to do it any more. I want to be able to earn love and trust from everyone in my life, and I promise that I will do my best to achieve this. Feel free to call me out if I'm not living up to this deal.
The timing aspect is not always necessarily true, but it brings to mind a story that was told many, many times in our family. When I was younger, my parents had a silver tray that rested on a mahogany structure with wheels on both sides. If you tipped it even the slightest, all manner of silver goblets would clang onto the floor as the cart (?) overturned. I was told countless times not to do this, not to touch it, because I did occasionally run into as children do. Then, as I began to realize how annoying it was and how much my parents truly didn't want me to knock it over, I started doing it out of pure spite. That may have been around the time they started the James Dobson series "How to Raise a Willful Child." I can't be sure.
I seem to have a self-sabotaging mechanism lodged in that part of my brain that also lets depression overtake me and doesn't give a time, because I'm too tired. I've only been in one truly wonderful relationship in my life (my soon-to-be-late marriage), and as much as I want to push all of the blame on my husband, and he does have his fair share, I'm almost more responsible for it. I have issues; really, I do. I don't wear a sheet and dance around with a plant on my head, but there are some days that sleeping for 19 hours makes me feel better than facing a new day. I haven't dealt with those issues properly, and my life is showing the repercussions.
I'm a great thinker; I feel like Dr. Seuss. I think so many grand things; I shall make them so! But, I don't. I give in to emotional exhaustion and try to get through another day, week, month. I am not a bad person; that's probably why I still do have the few people around me that care about me. However, I am a disappointing person. I have such potential and light and humor and intelligence in the right circumstances, and then the "fog" takes over. I could name the "fog" over the years: realizing depression, the breaking-off of an engagement, losing my grandfather, father, grandmother, the notion I might one day have a good relationship with my brother, my marriage, and my zeal for anything that disallows yoga pants. I don't want to be a blamer, I really don't. Nothing causes this but my own self-deprecation.
I imagined myself so differently at 36, and I'm trying so desperately to adjust the expectation. I have the worst coping skills since Sybil, and despite my smarty pants attitude, I do not know it all. I know less than 50%. I want to make a good life for myself, and I don't want to arbitrarily waste it. I don't know what the coming weeks, months, and years will bring, but I want to be a person you'd be proud to know, and a person on whom you can rely, and an example for my nieces, nephew, great-nephew, and children, should I be lucky enough to have them. I have been such a spoiled, entitled jerk for 36 years, and I don't want to do it any more. I want to be able to earn love and trust from everyone in my life, and I promise that I will do my best to achieve this. Feel free to call me out if I'm not living up to this deal.
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