Worth Writing

My dog companion, Kelly, has cancer.  I found out on May 8th.  At first the vet hemmed and hawed a little about how much time she likely has left.  When he came to see her the other day he hemmed and hawed a lot more and came up with “3 to 4 months if it’s already started to spread, and perhaps half a year otherwise.”

However, she’s sick and throwing up now, unwilling to eat more than a few morsels of food by hand each day.  I settled her stomach with Gravol on Sunday, but she started being sick to her stomach again today.  The vet doesn’t know what her immediate problem is.  I don’t think it’s much of a mystery.  She’s dying.  We all do that in our own way in our own time.  There’s nothing I can do other than try to help her through the issues that arise during the process.  And love her.  Lover her a lot.

I’ve had to make the conscious decision not to withdraw.  A vain attempt to spare myself the grief of another beloved’s passing.  I could feel myself pulling away.  Not meaning to.  But it’s not just Kelly.  I’ve been desperately trying to push or drag myself away from the here and now.  Afraid of the stillness.  As though I might succumb to it and remain inert myself forevermore.  The absence of the many years-long chaos I stole so much energy from is unnerving.  Probably it was unhealthy energy, yes, but it kept me moving.  Now, there is an enormous void, the crater left by the dissolved chaos. 

How do I live?  I always chased one disruption after another.  The conditions now are thus that I’d have to work awfully hard just to come up with a problem to solve.

Yeah, you’re getting it now, aren’t you?  Nothing’s wrong.  Nothing’s wrong, nothing requires righting, and I’ve spent so many years of my life just coping that it’s now time to live and I don’t know how.  It doesn’t feel like Enough, this here and now.  I’m tired of struggling against it, though, so here I sit.  On an old bench on my front proch in the sun.  Gentle breeze, enough to cool the sweat on my skin.  The atmosphere is kind.  A generous day.  Nothing to hide from.  Nothing to avoid.  And scared of that nothingness.

A mutual agreement: “Anybody but you!”

An agreement broken: “Maybe this time…”

“What is that?” hearing his laughter

She came to adore that sound

His wicked sense of humour intrigued

His humble sense of justice impressed

He took all blame for failures

He forgave himself out of understanding

He wanted little, knowing true Worth

She was enheartened, ready to agree

Then she met his wild children

She was heartbroken: “I’ll never survive!”

She survived anyway, learning to love

They joined lives, united their goals

Laughing and despairing together every day

Enduring much, they weathered all storms

One storm blew away their foundation

Standing in the rubble they floundered

Finally deciding, “Too late to quit!”

Clumsily seeking solace in each other

They began building their new foundation

Stephanie Hansen 2009

I had fun with this 6 word story word prompt. 

Her decision making skills were backwords.

She would let go too soon.

And then hang on too long.

Anticipation was a form of agony.

Leaving too early; staying too late.

Not wanting much, but expecting much.

Loving who couldn’t love her back.

She was defenceless against the defensive.

She forgave the unforgiveable too often.

But was angry about the impersonal.

On the outside wanting in.

Wanting out of what was inside.

Naive to much, but painfully aware.

Minute by intolerable minute, suffering days.

Ink in the pen awaiting words.

Too much to say to begin.

Waiting for purpose to reveal itself.

Waiting for that purpose fearfully excited.

Nothing was wrong, nothing was right.

She was waiting to stop waiting.

She was wanting to start wanting.

To choose indiscriminately would be disaster.

She messed up living too fast.

Homeless in fear of losing home.

Losing her mind fearing her loss.

Remembering life lived, wondering what happened.

All gone and never coming back.

Living and dying every single day.

Loving and losing every single minute.

How could she make a life?

She had to make a life.

No more crying, time to thrive.

No more excuses time to decide.

Regardless of fear, time to continue. 

Stephanie Hansen, 2009

I’m out of the Rabbit Hole but still holding the hat.  I disappeared from my blog after I admitted starting showing Signs of Life.  It’s not because they disappeared but because they picked up speed.  Lightening speed, in fact, and I went from couldn’t do anything because I was exhausted to not being able to do anything because I was anxious and hyper and unable to finish a single thought.  Okay.  That’s good.  Medication proved it could make a change in the depression.  I went back to the doctor and demanded a different, kinder, gentler change!  It was agreed upon and administered and here I am.  I have slid back into a space where it is difficult to pull myself into production mode but it is better than it was.  I think.  We’ll see.  Welcome to Life.  Life is change. 

While I was spinning I was bored.  Oh dear heavens was I bored!  When you can’t finish a though you can’t function well enough to do much either.  Menial labour is what is available to you: cleaning house, which I did.  But I’m not a clean freak.  I’m a head person.  I’m a thinker.  I couldn’t read a book or even settle into a magazine.  I wrote only the drivel on my mind as a means to try slowing it down.  The main activity besides cleaning was sorting.  I culled my books in Samurai fashion and sent several boxes off to the charities as well as three bags of clothing, both what I wore and what I was saving for art scrap.  Of course, last night I went downstairs to pick up a book to read only to find the one I wanted had been carted off.  Oh well.  These things happen.

Certainly no art was to be commenced in such a tizzy.  Any idea that artists are flighty no-minds who live and die entirely by whims is a ridiculous one.  A period of concentration is necessary to our work.  Artists have the ability to be astoundingly focused individuals for the period of time they’re working.  That’s why I spent the last two days working my way up to the point of being ready to set to work on a sculpture.  It’s a small one, but it’s the first I’ve set my hand to in….I don’t know….since before Seanna died I’m sure.  I spent time with the prep work.  Lots of fiddling.  More than was needed.  It’s just a very simple little figural piece.  It’s just that I’d tried to pick up a few different art mediums in the past while and made nothing but terribly ugly and incompetent messes.  I’d reached the disheartened stage and I figured if I couldn’t even do this one thing well enough anymore I might as well hang up my artist boots.  I was feeling very dramatically up against a creative wall, obviously. 

Well the little fellow seems to have come out of the concentrated shaping phase okay and is drying peacefully by the window.  I finished working on him just before dinner last night and kept going in the back room to take a peek at him up until bedtime.  I didn’t expect him to do anything interesting.  I just haven’t seen my own work in so long, not my sculptural work anyway, that it was both comforting and exciting a little bit.  I’m not sure what the heck to do with him yet since I used to create several of these pieces at once intended for specifically planned displays.  I’m considering learning the art of embellishment instead of simply painting him as I have always painted them until now.  A new element of expression beyond the mere bent of the simple figure.  We’ll see.

Every day seems to present me its own challenges.  The challenges unique to the artist life are something else altogether.  I can only continue to try and be an active artist knowing it will be a better fuller life if I can manage it in my own way.

Signs of life

I’m feeling a little different these days.  There are signs of a return to Steph, if not exactly Life, “Life” as in “bursting with energy, creativity, and celebration.”  It may be the result of new medication, but it may also be the result of a new bra.  No, no!  Don’t “pshaw” me!  You have no idea!  I read an article stating that a remarkable number of us are wearing the wrong bra sizes/shapes and wondered about myself.  I had myself all figured out (sorry for the pun there) years ago, but have since gained much weight and changed shape a bit.  Upon redoing the proper calculations I was stunned by how much I’d changed.  Off I went to the store and for a few days now I have been lounging around in the correct bra size and shape marveling over the lack of physical discomfort and wondering how it was possible I ever got so used to it that I never even considered it to be a sign that something was very wrong. 

The only answer I can come up with is that as the changes were accruing around my chest area, discomfort was becoming the norm in my heart and mind as well.  Gradually, it just all blended together and I could no longer identify the sources of various and sundry pinches, pulls, pokes, pushes, or note whether they were mental, emotional, or physical.  Mental and emotional distress always becomes physical. 

Besides alleviating a long-present ache n my back, I have divested myself of another physical irritation in this past couple of weeks: hair rubbing my neck.  Do I hear you laughing at me?  *smile*  S’okay.  Even I have to laugh at the wonder of what small annoyances can do to me given enough time.  Simple, my hair has been too long for too long and I wouldn’t cut it because (1) I believed it was more womanly, and (2) it was the first time it had been long since my mother chopped it off without my permission when I was young.  I felt that the long hair was like having something back that I’d lost, both because of my mother and life circumstances that had recently attacked my womanhood.  The long hair was an act of self-love and of defiance.  However, the feeling of hair constantly rubbing around my neck and shoulders was making me nuts.  I put my hair up in a pony tail every chance I got to spare myself the irritation (not an attractive look for my broad face).  Finally, I had to admit it was only sane to relieve myself of what discomfort I could considering how awful I’ve felt for so long now.  Against the protestations of my hairdresser I got the cut I wanted and I love it.  A week later I still love it.  Most importantly, I sit here with my journal wearing the right bra and smiling as my hair does not constantly fall in my face while I try to write!

But there’s bigger stuff afoot.  It’s a sign of life that even those who have never been depressed can relate to.  It shocked me when it happened.  Right out of the blue!  I had a chill I couldn’t shake and so I went into the bedroom to grab a towel for a quick hot bath, looked around the room and thought, “I’d like to change this.  When I get out of the bath I’m going to rearrange the furniture.”  Just like that!  LOL  Since I was small and figured out I could move big stuff by sitting with my back against big-heavy-thing and pushing with my legs against another big-heavy-thing, I have been The Re-Arranger.  Everyone who comes into my home knows I’m not well when things have sat in one place so long a great blanket of dust has been allowed to descend like a death shroud.  When there is no Life in me there is not Life in my house.  But last night something moved me to move something!  Woo hoo!

I like the new arrangement well enough to be sitting in the room now on the dog’s couch/bed writing in my journal and consoling the couch’s owner who does not like the new arrangement at all.  Okay, so it’s a long way from returning to my artwork, but re-envisioning anything is starting down the path toward it. 

I can try to make this sound exciting or funny, but I have to admit to myself that I’m basically saying, “I got a haircut, I bought a new bra, and I re-arranged my bedroom furniture.”  Big flipping deal.  Well…here’s the way it is: I can choose to compare these signs of life (where there were none at all before) with what an energetic, healthy person does every day including working eight hours on top of the bra shopping, hair cutting, and furniture arranging and let it push me back onto the couch under the enormous invisible weight of hopelessness, or I can try to stop worrying about looking pathetic and put my energy into getting better.  I can choose to point to these signs of improvement and shout, “Land ahoy!  Land ahoy!”  LOL  I have been, after all, forever and ever adrift. 

Last night my mate drew his fingers sweetly along the length of my arm and the sensation made me shiver with delight.  I mean just OUT of this world YUM!  This is not some new move.  We’ve been together for twelve years.  There are no new moves left.  For such a long time, however, that same move that used to make me shiver with delight left me totally underwhelmed.  Most people don’t know that being depressed means often not being able to feel physical pleasure anymore. Many people know we simply no longer enjoying activities like reading or gardening, but how many of you know that food often loses its flavour, that hot showers and other acts of care which used to bring physical pleasure only highlight how numb the body has become to fine sweet touches.  Last night, however, I shivered for the first time since god-who-knows and I was so surprised I blurted out, “I’m gonna live!” and laughed, but I wasn’t laughing because it was funny.  I was relieved.  I was really beginning to wonder. 

The Legacy

Leaving is my legacy, leaving and being left behind, as well as isolation and self-silencing.  I began my study for the aforementioned at the age of four when Mother gave me half a little white pill with the instructions to ‘take it and disappear’, Alice down the rabbit hole.  Many tears, fears, and years later I don’t need any magic or potions to make like Alice and skedaddle. A few doctors have labeled it “depression” and treated it as such, and some others still wonder if it is something more than that; what remains obvious to all is that I spend most of my life with my feet permanently dangling down the rabbit hole ready to leap or fall in for a ‘time out’ of sorts, a frequent ‘disappearing’. 

So there you go.  Now you know where I’ve been since my last post: I tumbled down the bunny chute again.  Usually I’m simply inactive, both creatively and emotionally disconnected while in there, but it doesn’t feel particularly bad, nor like much of anything at all unless my mind decides to ‘ride me’ for not being and active, life-loving member of society.  This last time was just awful because on some level I was enjoying the freedom of the daily writing about my childhood; a story long overdue for the telling.  When I fell in the familiar dark hole where the words won’t come or go, and all I could do was sit and stare up, way, way up the tunnel to the patch of blue where the words and willingness fly I found myself still attached enough to suffer deeply with regret for my consistent loss of energy, of life, of self.  It is like a temporary death, one that I am tired of mourning. 

And so I am on one last great search for a way out, a way up, something more than this constant lessening of myself before I give up entirely on having a life and eating it too.  Yes, “eating it too.”  I’ll mix any damn metaphor I want here!  A woman’s life is supposed to nourish her, fill her up, sustain her, and make her strong!  It can’t do all that if she just stands back and stares at it, for god’s sake.  She’s got to gorge herself on it.  That said; no I don’t.  But I did. 

My life has been chaos to chaos to chaos…you get the picture.  My childhood was mental and emotional chaos.  My teenage years were more of the same kind of chaos with behavioral insanity thrown in.  In my twenties I enjoyed the chaos of breaking free fro active abuse in my life and learning to love being alive.  It was wonderful, but it was high chaos no less.  Then…oh then…came the love of my life and two children of the wildest variety.  Oh my!  Need I label it?  Then very wild years!  Those years were capped off by two of the most heartbreaking and devastating imaginable and my life was totaled.  It has been a while now since the tragic ending of my motherhood, and though I still feel as though I have fallen off the face of the earth and not yet returned, I am beginning to suspect my undoing may turn out to lead to my final salvation from this endless maddening disappearing-down-the-rabbit-hole trick.

My last years with those wild girls in our wild and incredible life together are unmatchable, so totally irreplaceable, that I have not been able to move on with my life since then, since them.  The result is what seems like a terrible depression, but it is also the absence of chaos.  The pattern has finally been broken.  Perhaps now, if someone can de-condition my seemingly permanent Alice-hood, I will be able to choose what life to live next. 

Speaking of de-conditioning, I recall one person suggesting in a comment on an earlier post using the art of distraction as a way of sort of tricking myself out of my frequent forays into rabbit-hole reveries and regretful idleness.  And an “art” it is because having tried it over the last couple of weeks I’ve found it very difficult, often beyond my ability at the time, but worth practicing.  The poor dear took some flak for the mention of it as it accompanied a comment that included the term “self-pitying”, and I am still considering her words.  It isn’t the distant past I feel sorry for myself about, but for this fatigue that won’t let me be, jut be, won’t let me just live my life with enough energy to enjoy it.  But she got me, didn’t she?  She saw it.  She named it.  Smart, brave cookie.

And for my real big trick…!  I don’t have one.  Sorry.  I would have pulled it off LONG ago if I had one.  I’m still working my way out of the hole.  I walked a few blocks over yonder to get a new haircut, baked a meatloaf, and walked the dog.  That constitutes a resoundingly successful day of late, but no ‘real big tricks’ to amuse and delight an audience.  All I can do today is survive some more and keep up the search for something that will spin the magic I need to make it possible for me to once again be able to do more than merely survive my life.  Life with my Love and my girls was chaos and it was painful and it was scary and it was difficult, but it was also hilarious and exhilarating and it made me feel extremely alive.  Is it too much to ask to want to be returned to Life?

In Good Standing

In the comment section at the bottom of each entry people have been very supportive and kind.  I have also received numerous private emails of the same sort in which I have repeatedly been called “courageous” and “strong”.  I’ve been uncomfortable with the complimentary statements about my character but didn’t know what to say.  However, a recent comment, similar to others, regarding what appears to be my generous capacity to love has finally got me on the mats.  It’s time to admit that I can’t for the life of me see why others see me as courageous or strong.  I totally buckled under the stress and pain and became a pill-popping alcoholic avoider of Life from childhood to my mid-twenties.  I managed to quit killing myself slowly at that point, slough off the agonizing self-pity and rage, and put together some semblance of a life.  That was extremely frightening and difficult, but I just don’t see where the courage part comes in.  I simply reached a point where I was either going to kill myself and let my entire existence be pathetic from beginning to end, or I was going to grab hold of some small measure of peace and self-respect before it was all over.

Letting go of the anger was a compromise.  As my sister and parents demanded continually that I behave with gratitude toward my parents ‘for all they’d done for me’ and realize how lucky I was to have them, I finally reached my saturation point of Gall and reasoned I’d meet them half way: they’d never get respect and gratitude they didn’t earn or deserve, but I’d stop seething with resentment and just call the past a ‘write off’, accept that my early years were ‘totalled’ emotionally.  I would not fill the humble dutiful daughter role, but I would halt the dance of anger.  Unfortunately for them it was only then I realized my anger was the only thing holding me to them. 

As for the comment about my capacity to love, from the time I was very young I was bombarded with accusations that I wasn’t capable of considering or caring for anyone but myself.  To this day my sister claims vociferously that I am sick (based on my rejection of my parents), that I have a serious narcissistic disorder and must seek treatment for my sake and for the sake of all others.  (Wow. Just have to say ‘wow’) She obviously grew up listening to what my mother and father were yelling at me but never questioned their reasoning.  My sister isn’t welcome in my life anymore because about three years ago, thereabouts, I simply got fed up with her raving in my face and demanding that I admit to her diagnosis of my social and emotional inadequacies.  The ridiculousness of it alone with the presence of loving relationships in my life was frustrating the bejeezus out of me even if she wasn’t breaking the skin.

Admittedly, however, I struggle with fears that I am as selfish and greedy as I’d been defined by my family.  Yes, I have been giving and unselfish, but have I been that way often enough?  I have fears that the moments of greed and selfishness collected are greater than time spent behaving otherwise.  It pains me to think my family’s lack of respect or feeling for me has any basis.  These fears are – I realize – all caught up with the argument over my parents’ supposed sacrifices and generosity toward me in later years.  I am always concerned that my gestures of love and support are as trivial as their gestures were in the grand scheme of things. 

It is important to me to be as honest as I can about who and how I am and it disturbs me greatly to be seen as greater than or less than that.  At the end of the day all I really have to call my own is my character, the real foundation for me life regardless of where I live, who loves me, or what I own.  It matters most that I behave like the kind of person I can respect.  Yes, it is sad that I am constantly questioning whether I have achieved and maintain that goal.  Taking stock of one’s life is a matter of awareness; ceaselessly going over the same stock is a lack of faith. 

Family ties

When my mother returned home from PEI where she witnessed her brother’s death I sat on the end of my parent’s bed as she unpacked and waited for her to cry.  When she didn’t show any signs of tearing up after a while I made some remark about her not crying, though I can’t remember what it was now.  I do remember her response being that “there’s nothing to cry about.  He’s gone.  It’s over.”  I was not about to accept that.  Not after Geordie.

When we were in grade one or two, around there somewhere, the next door neighbour boy about my age, Geordie, was hit by a car outside the school.  When he died later in the hospital my mother came to inform me of the (to her) solemn news.  I was sitting at a small desk in my bedroom when she came into the room openly weeping, a confusing sight I’d only seen once before.  When she sobbed, “Geordie is dead,” my gut reaction was relief and I said simply, “Good.” 

Oh. Man.  Wrong answer.  Her face contorted in rage and she clocked me on the side of the head so hard I fell of my chair onto the floor.  I remember looking up and seeing her through blurred vision obviously yelling at me but hearing it like it was way off in the distance, but mostly hearing just a loud buzzing sound.  I got the gist of what I couldn’t hear though: you cry when people die, no matter what.

I utterly loathed and feared the kid.  To this day I maintain there was something seriously wrong with the boy.  He used to hide behind bushes to catch me unawares, then knock me down and shove dirt and grass in my mouth.  If he saw me on my bicycle he’d chase me and push me over.  I would go home crying to my mother with skinned whatever and bloody something, tell her what he did, and she’d say that she didn’t believe me, that he wouldn’t do such a thing and I’d made it up.  Time and again.  I learned never to ride my bike when I was alone except in circles on the driveway.  He would also collect his dog’s poo off the lawn and throw it at me, or smear it on me with a stick if he could sneak up close enough.  Whenever I wasn’t ready on time to leave for school with my brother, the neighbour psycho-boy was absolutely guaranteed to catch me and shove me painfully face first into one of the many stands of bushes on the way to school.  Yes, I thought it was a very good thing for me that he was suddenly gone.  It was like a gift from the universe. 

I was thinking about the unfortunate events of his death announcement as I poked and prodded my mother for information about her brother’s death, determined to make her cry.  I was a teenager at that point and used to her rage if she should happen to snap that way instead.  But she did cry.  He was her younger brother and she loved him very much.  It turns out that he was an alcoholic that died of cirrhosis of the liver.  “He used to be a big man,” she wept.  “He used to be a great big strapping 300 pound man!”  She told me he was tall, but I forget how tall.  “When he was dying [another brother] picked him up in his arms and cradled him like a baby.  He’d just wasted away to nothing.  He was just skin on bones!”  She wept bitterly as she told me how he’d asked for more alcohol even on his hospital death bed.  She kept saying, “I’ll never understand!  I’ll never understand!”

So I got the tears out of her I was looking for, but I got more information than I expected.  She told me next that her father, who died the year my sister was born (as I recall), had been an alcoholic as well, a violent one who used to beat her mother.  Gramma?  She was so tiny!  Anticipating a statement of hatred toward her father to follow for treating her mother that way I was totally confused when she instead expressed hatred and disgust for her mother for being weak and beaten.  I could tell when Gramma was still alive and lived with us that my mother resented her mother and barely tolerated her presence but could never understand why because my grandmother never argued with her and always seemed to do what my mother wanted (from what I can recall).  My mother said she would never forgive Gramma for being so pathetic and weak.  Years later, my mother further complicated my confusion on the matter by telling me how very much she loved her father and that when he died she “wanted to crawl in the coffin with him.”  My stomach lurched when she went on to say how much she admired him for being such a strong man that made people listen to him.  It had always been my grandmother that I admired for being soft spoken, gentle, accepting, and never rising to my mother’s bait. 

You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their heroes, but it kind of depends on what you look at, doesn’t it?

No ready comfort

All day I have been revisited by a particular heartbreaking and frightening image of my mother.  It is the picture that comes to my mind when I need to remind myself that my mother was not well when I was very young, that she was terribly tormented even while she tormented me. 

From the family rec room in the basement where I was playing at my chalkboard I could hear my mother shouting angrily in the next room which was the laundry room.  I went to the doorway of the rec room to see who she was arguing with but she was alone.  I was shocked when she reached up and slapped her own face hard and snarled, “Bitch!  You stupid BITCH!”  She then proceeded to pull her hair mercilessly and pinch her hands.  Then she strode over to the washing machine and slammed the lid down hard on her hand.  It was horrifying to watch her face twist with pain when she did it, a face that was red and welted from the slap, her hair a wild mess from the pulling.  Terrified that she might turn on me next I went back into the room and hid behind a chair.  Then I realized I’d get a spanking for sure if she came looking and couldn’t find me so I came out again and tried to carry on as though I didn’t know anything was wrong with my mother. 

It was after that that I was truly scared of my mother, but I always felt sorry for her too, even when I hated her, because I walked in on or overheard similar meltdowns over the years.  I can’t tell you how I processed what I saw, then and other times, because I was too you to know what to think about behaviour so bizarre.  I know that, as I said, I took it as a sign of her being dangerous.  Who wouldn’t fear someone who would even beat themselves up?  It was around that time that she had started talking about killing me.

One of the ways she said she was thinking of doing it was by pushing me down the stairs so that I broke my neck or “bashed my brains in”.  She said people would say it was an accident and I would be gone and she could happily go on with her life and never have to see me again.  Being so young I was still processing what exactly “death” was, but I understood it made you disappear.  And so one of the things that my mother did to me that was not considered terrible by my family but drove me out of my mind because of her death wish on my behalf was that she shoved me. 

She would reach out suddenly when we were walking somewhere in the house and shove me from behind.  Because I never saw it coming I would usually stumble and fall.  If I cried she would get very angry with me.  In front of others she complained that I was moving too slow and was in the way.  I seriously doubt she ever shoved a stranger or a friend in that manner.  I don’t know if she shoved my brother and sister quite so often or rudely, but I don’t remember them on the floor where I so often found myself.  But so it went that my mother would shove me down the hallway, up the hallway, onto the kitchen floor, up the stairs, down the stairs…all over the place. 

The stairs were the worst, though, because that was the way she talked about making my death look like an accident.  For all of the fuss she made in front of others about my not getting in her way all the time, when we were going to go down the stairs she always insisted I go first (again, this is when I was very young).  She would become extremely angry if I tried to run away.  She’d then have to go get me, drag me back, shove me in front of her and shout, “Go!”  Each time there was nothing I could do but reach up for the railing and try to get as firm a grip as possible.  Still, she would reach down and give a mighty shove when I’d gone down a step or two and my feet would be off the tread while one hand clung to the railing for dear life as she slapped at it.  If I let go of the railing I fell flat on my back; if I didn’t I twisted around pulling my shoulder painfully and ended up losing my grip anyway and landing on the stairs on my ribs, something especially painful I assure you.  I “slipped” on the stairs far too many times to count, sometimes from the landing instead of the top and ended up making it all the way to the bottom with a resounding crack of my head on the linoleum covered concrete floor.  The head injuries were only every minor though.  I still won’t go down even the shortest flight of stairs without a firm grip on the banister and am always very careful.

The worst thing about being shoved when you’re holding onto the railing is that when you land on your back and skid down a ways it leaves bruises and scrapes off skin so that you can’t even find comfort lying down curled up with your bears for as long as a week or more afterward.  There’s nothing but the awareness of insult and ache and the knowledge that it wasn’t going to stop happening to you any time soon.  It is no wonder that by age 10 I had become so permanently tense and anxious that the family doctor started prescribing sedatives for me to take during the day to help control panic attacks and soon after adding sleeping pills at night to combat insomnia and night terrors.  He was, of course, a negligent idiot for not sending me to a specialist – or anyone at all – to find out why someone so young was in such a terrible state, but that was many years ago and hopefully not something likely to be overlooked today. 

Fading Away

When I was about the height of the dining room table they sat at on bridge night my “Uncle” and godfather asked me in a boisterous, booming voice, “So!  Tell us!  What do you want to be when you grow up?!”  I smelled a set up somehow but answered honestly; “I want to be a zoologist.”  At that the whole table of adults burst out laughing, but none as heartily as my “Uncle” who, wiping tears from his eyes, fairly well shouted, “Well it’s nice to have pipe dreams!”

I burned with hatred for him right then.  I knew what I wanted to be and was well capable of becoming an explorer, a knowledgeable documenter of fascinating wild creatures and their behaviours.  I think I’m doing that now in a way.  It was a desire inspired by the encyclopedia sets and National Geographics I pored over to fill myself up with knowledge to make myself valuable.  It was a desire born also of shows like Mutual of Omaha.  I dreamed of being far, far away with other people in other cultures very different from what I was experiencing right then.

I started practicing for my career of documenting what I saw on my travels through remote forests, jungles, and deserts by writing stories about animals and exploration.  My stories, far from being fraught with the excitement and adventure I intended to practice writing about, read like bible parables focusing entirely on morality and comforting the fearful, understanding the embarrassed.  I graduated to writing stories of survival, but always exploring motive and morality issues with the strongest emphasis on compassion. 

I began to dream of growing up to write stories with the point of encouraging loyalty, honesty, compassion, and the courage to tell one’s deepest, scariest secrets in order to be free and safe once and for all.  It is a desire that has not died in my heart over the decades, but in my early teenage years it became obvious the dream would remain only a dream as addiction, drinking, and the inexplicable exhaustion that began years earlier completely drowned me.  By the time I entered high school I had become largely disengaged from life on a core level and have never fully reattached myself, not even when I was raising two children myself.

The detaching started with the incidences of my mother shutting me up alone in the dark that so utterly terrified me.  Those were times when I was too young and short to reach the light switches to turn the lights back on or when I was in the basement because the light switch was at the top of the stairs.  I would cry and beg her to turn them on again and she would either come rushing back in beating me wildly all over demanding repeatedly, “Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!” before she rushed back out leaving my aching and sobbing in the dark, or there would be utter silence.  In the silence I would be sure I heard monsters and madmen moving toward me so I’d clamp my hands over my ears and concentrate on the sound of my breathing. 

I continued to turn to my breathing after upsetting clashes with my mother.  I would lie on my bed with my bears pressed tightly against my ears or with a pillow pulled over my head, listening, concentrating on shutting out every feeling, every thought, every other sound except my breath.  I became so in tune with my breath I started listening to it all the time out of habit.  In time I started getting in trouble for doing ‘nothing’ too often, just lying on my back on my bed staring at the ceiling, or sitting on my desk staring out the window for hours at a time.  I would just stop caring about anything and everything for large portion of each day wherein it would take a bomb under my chair or bed to get me to do anything except be still and listen to the sound of my breathing.  I did not choose to be like that.  I did not know why it was happening.  And today, at age 39 (almost 40) I am begging someone to make it stop happening now so I can have a life.

It may be depression, it may be something else, but my lack of productivity was complained about vociferously by my family right up until we parted ways.  My mother and sister attacked my character viciously and repeatedly over the issue, attacks that drove me deeper and deeper into a state of real physical exhaustion that I have never understood.  I have said often, “I am too young to be this old.”  This blog entry comes very late in the day because every time I got up off the chair, couch, or bed to try and do something ‘productive’ today I merely staggered somewhere else to rest and listen to myself breathe for a while longer.

Perhaps, you might say, this is taking too much of a toll on my and I should stop for a while, but the years of profound anger and heartbreak are behind me.  I’m so tired so much of the time anyway that in a way it actually feels good to have a reason to feel drained, and I do feel this draining me.  What I know for sure is that nothing changes if nothing changes.  For a while anyway I plan to be tired for a reason.