New Year, New Song

So many good, amazing, wonderful things have happened in the past year, but I feel like I’m at a similar point as last year.

This is my current song on constant repeat:

Maybe it’s a bit melodramatic…maybe. But, damn it, I’ve been emotionally dried out and my heart feels like it was scraped across the road. Less so now, though, which is a good thing.

So easily, I became wrapped up in an intensely intoxicating whirlwind of a person, and then I was ejected out and left alone to claw my way through feelings. Claiming oneself to be emotionally unavailable is a maddening cowardly thing to do. Claiming that love is unconditional and infinite is a way to avoid doing real emotional work required of any sort of relationship, even friendship. Claiming to be wacky and quirky is a thin veil for actually being a self-absorbed, self-important prick.

The problem with being compassionate and empathetic is that one can easily ignore red flags. Oh my goodness, the red flags.

Anyway, here I am, trying to begin another year without cynicism and skepticism, but dang it…it can be difficult.

Thank goodness for awesome friends…real friends who don’t use cop-outs like being emotionally unavailable…who don’t mind listening to me spew endless rantiness and tears.

Things will be better…I just have to get over this yucky little speed bump called a mishandled and slightly broken heart.

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Nighttime

Sometimes I think I’ll never have normal sleep again.

Last night I had three hours before waking up at 2:30. At 4:30, I wrote my professors to notify them that I wouldn’t be in class today. Then I took part of an Ambien and slept until 9:00. And now…now I’m trying to work through post-Ambien haziness.

I’ve been having some difficulty lately with Just Being. I hate wanting something and not knowing things.

I can often push unpleasantness to the edge of my mind during the day, but the cracks in the night bring forth a flurry of unwelcome thoughts and dis-ease.

What I really need right now is a remote lake. A place where I can sit alone and watch the water ebb and flow and become okay with the ebb and flow inside me.

Awake

No matter how good the day has been, self-doubt, anxiety, and fear sometimes visit at 3:30 am and take me prisoner.

Rob me of my sleep and make the coming day grueling.

My heart pounds, my mind cracks open, I spiral in sleeplessness.

Cowboy Junkies and Ambien, please help.

October Again

This year has passed slowly and quickly with paralyzing sadness and great happiness. Most of it was, to be totally cliched, a roller coaster. One of those old wooden ones that creaks and loses bolts.

I woke up this morning with the unpleasant realization that it’s October 1.

The beginning of my allergy season, and a week away from what would have been 12 years.

I’m already trying to figure out how I’ll feel next Monday, which is now just a regular day. A non-anniversary.

And I’m trying to figure out what to do. I’ll go to class for sure. But then will I sit alone to bear witness to what might be crazy feelings? Or will I try to distract myself from feeling anything?

Right now I’m fighting the urge to wall myself off from others, to disappear inside of myself, to check out for a couple of weeks.

My walk from the Metro this morning was a teary-eyed one. I worry about the rest of the week.

I revisited this post from last October, and I remember how being broken felt. I might feel sad now from time-to-time, but nothing like that. It was the most horrible period of my life. While I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, I’m glad to have swum through the depths of depression. Knowing the darkness I can feel allows me to appreciate the light like I never did before.

On Mornings Like This

After a night of little sleep, of anger-filled dreams in which I’m running in the rain while crying, I listen to this song on constant repeat:

If

If I had known the night before moving out was to be my true last night with Porkchop, I would have stayed awake all night holding her and whispering my love instead of insisting on talking about hurt feelings or whatever else I did.

I would have shut up and made time stand still to savor all the last things.

Yeah, I know these are self-torturing thoughts.

Cracked

2012 seems to be off to an already auspicious start.

And I write that rather sarcastically.

Yesterday Porkchop and I went to Elephant Rocks State Park and climbed around some big rocks.

Big rocks

The rocks are red granite and were formed by big deposits of molten lava. Seeing the rocks and the old quarries makes you appreciate all the natural forces that have formed this little planet of ours. Thinking about a big volcano in mid-Missouri is kind of crazy.

Speaking of crazy, while sitting on the top of a big buried granite boulder, I plunged headfirst into the crazy waters.

It’s been a tear-filled week for me, but sitting on that boulder, I really let it rip. I sobbed and let snot stream out my nose (thanks to Target’s generic Mucinex).

Things that happened over the summer and fall cracked me open, spilling out everything inside of me. It’s been a couple of months, and I still haven’t been able to figure out how to put everything back inside and sew myself up.

The feelings I have weigh me down and wear down those around me. Worst of all, I have intense envy for people who have been able to move past things. I feel stupid for not being able to deal with my shit, and I feel like my growth has been stunted while life continues on for others. I didn’t ask for any of this, and I don’t want to be like this.

I used to have an intense feeling of being homesick, but now I just feel broken. All I want to be is the person who I used to be, not this sack full of sadness and envy and anger.

Given all of this, I guess it’s time I make the call to the therapist who I saw in the fall and talk about antidepressants. This pains me greatly because I wanted to be the one child in my family who didn’t need antidepressants.

Is this the face of depression?

My new alligator buddy

Is this the face of depression?

Keetah being stately

My biggest fear is that antidepressants won’t work. What happens to your thoughts and feelings? How does it change how you feel about things that happened?

While visiting my parents over Christmas, my mom told a family story that I had never heard. In the early 1960s, one of her cousins disappeared. He was headed from Kansas to Colorado to visit his mom, but he never showed up. All of this was on the national news, and the FBI investigated the case, but the cousin was never found. His car turned up later somewhere in Kansas. His horse and cowboy gear were all at the ranch where he worked in Kansas. His bank account was never touched. There didn’t seem to be foul play involved; it was all just very odd. My mom’s aunt was in poor health anyway, and she died not too long after her son’s disappearance. Five years later, he surfaced outside of Phoenix where he was working at a ranch under a different name. Nothing bad had happened to him; he just wanted to start over somewhere completely new.

My family had nothing but bad things to say about this cousin, but I kind of understand him.

Sixteen Days

Life again is a measurement of days.

Six days until my semester is over, ten days until Christmas, sixteen days until we can shut the door on 2011.

2011 has been an intense year of deconstruction, reconstruction, irrevocable change.

I’ve felt things I’ve never felt before nor want to again. I hit bottom in a few areas of my life. I hope to build some things anew, and I hope to scrap other things entirely.

More than anything really, and perhaps most selfishly, I’m striving for pain-free days in 2012.

The other night, as I sat in bed on a folded up blanket with my left leg dangling over the side in the hope of not irritating my hip, I realized I’ve had very few pain-free days in the past 19 months. While I’m past the days of wanting to cut off my leg and just be free of the damned thing, and past the days when it felt like there was a butcher knife in my butt cutting through my muscles, I’m still worn down.

Chronic pain isn’t a fun topic, so I don’t talk about it much these days. It has become this thing in my life that I try to ignore until I can’t anymore, and then I feel like crying. It makes me want to throw plates against walls, to set things on fire, to smash large panes of glass. It’s a frustration and anger that becomes bigger than me, and I think that makes people uncomfortable.

2012: here’s looking to you.

Asunder

When one’s world is thrown asunder, at least one can count on Margo Timmins to articulate one’s feelings.