/ Church of the Contradiction

current status and todd mcgowan; or: of social media and aliens

Once again, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged. Is that still a thing? Can minutes still have temperature? Or is that just slang of the Olds? For someone who spends as much time on the internet as I do, I am not current on slang among the kiddos. On the other hand, I do have some concept of what “skibidi” is. At least I have that going for me.

It’s scatting, right?

Speaking of time on the internet, part of why I’m blogging as we speak is that I’m attempting — once again — to limit my time on social media. Specifically Instagram and Mastodon, since those are the only socials I use. Neither of them is inherently bad — it’s just that for me, they suck me into a brainspace where things tend very quickly toward black & white, right & wrong, in the club & out the club, etc., and all the outrage and anxiety that sort of stark binary tends to produce. In me, anyway. YMMV, as per uzhe (which, if you don’t know, is slang for “usual”).

My brainspace is none too great these days, because I was sick with random mild viruses twice during July, then caught COVID on August 1st and spent 16 days in bed-ridden quarantine. Lemme tell ya, even this introvert was desperate and despairing for significant human interaction by Day 5. It’s a myth that introverts don’t like people or don’t like being around people. That is the definition of a recluse or, at worst, a misanthrope. Introverts, on the other hand, simply get their energy from alone time. Alone is when we best fuel up mentally and emotionally, which then allows us to go be with people and actually enjoy ourselves. It’s when we don’t get that regular alone time that we turn churlish.

Anywhich, all of that to say that 16 days of seeing nobody but my masked husband and my masked child, and each only sporadically and briefly, was a major blow to my mental health. That, plus being so very sick for so long. COVID also triggered the chronic sinusitis, so in the midst of my 16-day misery, I was also on antibiotics for a sinus infection.

The end of quarantine didn’t mean a return to normal, though. I was ridiculously weak, both from fighting the virus and from muscle atrophy. I was still sleeping most of the day. And the brainfog was unbelievable. Then, right as I was starting to feel a little better, the kiddo brought home another respiratory virus and I caught it. Which of course triggered another sinus infection necessitating another round of antibiotics.

I really, really need that septum surgery, y’all.

Today, I finally feel like the sinus infection has almost passed. But I overdid it this past weekend and the few days prior, prepping for and throwing the kiddo’s birthday party. Now, I feel weak and tired, and at some point in the proceedings I strained my left inguinal ligament again. That pain isn’t too bad, but it’s another frustrating setback.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY that because I’ve been sick and/or severely weakened for the past 77 days; have spent much of that time in shallow interactions with others or no interactions at all; have been in my head A LOT; and haven’t been physically able to engage in Zumba or weightlifting, two of my main activities for staving off the Babadook — my anxiety levels have been through the stratosphere, and depression has spiraled me lower than I’ve been in well over a year. Both anxiety and depression have been lying to me about what’s happened to me and what I need to concern myself about. And I’ve been listening, because I’ve been too weak to do anything else.

I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And I have been terrified to go around people, which has led to al sorts of delightful crisis management schemes in my brain, none of which were reasonable or healthy. It has not been a fun time up in there, y’all. Anxiety especially is its own kind of virus — and what’s extra insidious about it is that it’s contagious.

This past weekend, though, I might have turned a mental and emotional corner. Seeing my therapist last Thursday helped. Later, talking it all through with a close friend helped tremendously. And somehow, even the kiddo’s outdoor birthday party helped. I got to do an arts & crafts activity with a group of particularly creative children, and that’s probably the best treatment for anxiety and depression I could’ve had at the time.

Thus, I am limiting my time on social media and blogging here instead. Which leads me to Todd McGowan.

Together with a bunch of other folks, I’ve been discussing McGowan’s EMBRACING ALIENATION — WHY WE SHOULDN’T TRY TO FIND OURSELVES in an online book group led by Peter Rollins. The group is great, and I enjoy the challenging and insightful discussions. I wish we didn’t all live scattered across the entire globe.

The book itself is great, too — although, as I told the group, “I read Todd with a desperation to understand what the hell he’s talking about.” HA. The group as a whole discussed Chapter 2 yesterday, and though I was online for part of the conversation, I only finished Chapter 1 this morning. In the past, I have told fellow writers that “sentences are not mini-vans,” meaning that not every possible available word must be packed into them; sentence-ending punctuation is your friend. That said, McGowan’s every sentence is a mini-van packed not with excess verbiage but with a plethora af deep concepts I have to think through before I feel I comprehend what the sentence is expressing. I have to re-read almost every paragraph and underline and circle key words and phrases in order to see how it all fits together. It is by no means a slog, because I’m enjoying the read. But it is challenging.

The lingering viral brainfog has not helped. But that, at least, is finally clearing. As I finished Chapter 1 this morning, I realized that I wasn’t needing to re-read quite as much….

What prompted my desire to blog some McGowan was something I read this morning. He writes:

Identity consists of the various social positions that one occupies: job, familial status, religious affiliation, political preference, ethnicity, and so on. No matter how much I see myself as any or all of these identities, I am never fully identical with them. This failure is subjectivity. No matter how I might mold them to fit myself, none of these identities can fully coincide with my subjectivity….
Subjectivity is undefinable. Who we are as subjects is a problem that has no solution…a question that has no answer. Symbolic identity of whatever stripe — man, woman, Chinese, Italian, Hindu, Muslim, lawyer, dentist — constructs an answer to this question, a solution to this problem…. But no matter how much effort I expend to identify with a symbolic position, I cannot traverse the distance between my subjectivity and this identity. I’m left with a failure to fit in….
All identity is conformist.

–Todd McGowan,
Embracing Alienation,
pp. 10-11, 12

So. Each of us is a subject. Not in the grammatical sense, here (with verb and object). In this sense, I am a subject because I am not my various identities. I identify as female, as a writer, as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a confidante, as a daughter, as a wyrde individual, as a seeker, as an a/theist, as a person who deals with various chronic illnesses, as a dancer of Zumba, as a gardener, as a painter, as a hobby linguist, etc, etc, etc.

But my “I” is not equal to any one of those identities.

Each of those identities is a symbol. Every time I say “I am a writer,” I am calling up a host of ideas, thoughts, concepts, practices, experiences that all belong to The Definition Of “Writer”; these are all things that manifest (demonstrate) my writerness or the ways in which I possess writerness.

But at the same time, “I am a writer” also calls up a host of ways in which I do not possess writerness. “Writer” is a symbolic identity. And who I am will never be exactly what “Writer” is; who I am will never wholly possess writerness.

The same, by the way, holds true for “I am Courtney.” Every time I say that, I am standing at a distance from “Courtneyness” and pointing at it to claim it as my identity. But it is not the whole of my identity. There is always going to be a part of my identity that the word (or signifier) “Courtney” cannot express. There is always going to be a part of my identity that the signifier “Courtney” negates. Opposes, cancels out, is not equal to.

Every affirmation requires negation.

Every time I say “I am Courtney,” I am also saying “I am not Courtney.” Reversing those is valid too: when I say “Courtney is who I am,” I am also saying “Courtney is not who I am.”

This not-being-at-one-with-self, this inner dislocation, this lack of completely identifying with self — it’s called “alienation.” “Alien” comes from the Latin “aliēnus,” which means “belonging to another person, place, or object.” We all harbor an inner foreignness to ourselves.

Whatever your name, familial statues, friendship status, profession, religion, worldview, politics, hobby — not a single one of those will ever signify who “you” is. If you say “I am an underwater pizza deliverer,” you are also saying “I am not an underwater pizza deliverer” or “underwater pizza deliverer is not who I am.”

“I” is not reducible to who I believe I am or to the signifiers I claim.
“You” is not reducible to who you believe you are or to the signifiers you claim.
“They” are not reducible to who they believe they are or to the signifiers they claim.

There is always more to each of us than the signifiers (words and phrases) we use to describe ourselves. What really bakes the noodle is that we know only some of what the “more” is. A truth of every human is that there will always be part of our identity that we’re not even aware of. And the scary, thrilling, beautiful part is that the people around us are more aware of that part than we are. The people around us hear our words and see our behaviors, and those words and behaviors are the outward signs of the things we don’t know about ourselves. This is one reason why the people we dislike the most are often our most accurate mirrors. (And sometimes, the reason we dislike them in the first place is that the mirror is too accurate for our comfort.)

This is why none of us can know even part of who we are unless we’re in relationship with other people.

I think about these things, and I want to deny them. On an intellectual level, I have seen, heard, and experienced enough for them to ring fully true to me. But on an emotional level, I still freeze like a deer in headlights, panicking with anxiety. That’s part of why my anxiety has been so high recently. It’s not just the danger of COVID or of Long Covid or of any other damaging viruses. It’s (primarily?) the fear of accepting these things as true, the fear of embracing my alienation.

I’ve been so terribly scared to move…when what I need to fear is the lack of movement.

Last week, I shared these fears with a friend who listened, let me know he understood why I was feeling that way, and then told me the blunt truth about myself.
That I’d been in a closed-loop brainspace that did not allow for reality, hope, or joy.
That anxiety and depression had been lying to me and I’d been listening.
That I had been choosing the fear.
That I could choose to stop feeling frozen.
That chasing the greatest possible safety was yet another example of my chasing the perfect instead of the creative, the hopeful, and the joyful.
That I could move.

I won’t say that this one conversation fixe everything. As I told my friend through tears, “I don’t know how to just let go of this.” The anxiety freeze and the depression spiral are still there.

But.

I do think their power is lessened. Their attraction less magnetic. Their pull weaker.

I have been humming again as I go about my day.

I’ll take it.

A question I have now is:
Yes, in a significant way, I do know that I don’t know who I am. I do know that I am alienated from myself.
So, how do I go about engaging with peopole who don’t know that they don’t know who they are? who don’t know that they’re self-alienated?

And the beginnings of an answer come to me in the memory of my friend, who offered me kindness and warmth but also did not pull any punches…my friend who gave me such extraordinary grace:

“What grace is given me, let it pass to them….”

/ Courtney / Inspiration

what is fun? (baby don’t hurt me)

Yes. I chose that title specifically to get a certain song stuck in your head. If you’re American or GenX* or both, you’ll know which one it is. You’re welcome.

(*I’m planning a near-future post concerning my thoughts on the very American phenomenon of shoving humans of the past 130ish years into boxes labeled with specific generational names. Watch for it.)

Even since before I started my brain reset, I’ve been pondering what “fun” means. Mainly because the time span since March 2020 has not felt very fun, and I wonder how that’s affecting all of us.

But what *is* fun? What is it in abstract? What is it specifically to me? How do we figure out what it is we consider “fun”? My most recent experience of depriving myself of certain “fun” things that, in retrospect, turn out not to be quite so enjoyable has made me want to put my wonderings into some coherent form. And so, here we are. I’ll leave it to you, Gentle Reader(s), to decide whether or not I achieve the coherency part.

I’m not a psychologist. I’ve had some education and a little bit of training, but it’s all juuuust enough for me to get myself in trouble. I’m certainly not a psychoanalyst, sociologist, or anthropologist. So don’t expect much science from me on the subject of “fun”. All I have to go on are my own experiences, things I’ve read, conclusions I’ve come up with, and questions. That’s your caveat emptor.

What I can give, at least for starters, is the result of my very brief etymological research. (Etymology is the study of word origins. That’s a little reductive, but it’s enough for my purposes.)

FUN comes to us via the Middle English word “fonne,” which basically meant “fool.” Further back, its origins are unclear, but it’s related to similar words in Norwegian and Swedish, which means it definitely has a Northern Germanic root somewhere. And that’s all’s I got on the etymology, which I find very disappointing.

What’s fun? Apparently, behaving like a fool. “Fool” itself comes from a Latin word meaning “bellows,” as in the big leather bag smiths used to stoke their fires. So, having fun makes you a foolish windbag, which is also disappointing as well as a little insulting.

Moving right along.

We have fun. We enjoy fun things. We think things are funny. We think we are funny. The word origins and historical usage give me an overall impression of laughter, goofy behavior, and holding forth in a silly manner until other people get annoyed. But there are other ways of having fun that have nothing to do with foolish actions.

I have fun researching word origins. My friend Jenai has fun organizing things. My husband has fun listening to a piece of music and analyzing the chord progressions.

It occurs to me that I surround myself with nerds.

But acting goofy is fun too. My daughter, who is nearly 10, has an inordinate amount of fun reciting lines from Vinny Thomas’s Galactic Federation video over and over and cackling maniacally. Over and over. Did I mention over and over? I adore the video and laugh about it often. But I don’t need to hear lines from it every day, and certainly not ten times a day. To me, that is not fun. That is annoying. But to her, it’s the best thing ever and never stops being funny and fun.

Thanks to Marie Kondo, I know that fun is whatever sparks joy. I know that’s not how she means for people to use her phrase, but it works for me in this context. Sadly, it doesn’t work for me in the context of getting my home in a semblance of order, because that activity, to me, is not fun. It doesn’t spark joy.

Although I will admit to having felt joyful satisfaction as I rearranged the kitchen utensils drawer this morning. Is this adulting?

I can think of so many things that are fun to me. Books are fun — both reading them and organizing them and looking at them. All those beautiful, magical otherworlds just waiting for me to explore them. Exploring! That’s fun. Nineteen years ago in Ireland, my dad and I explored the ruins of a castle while the husband and my mom waited in the car, parked on a beach. My dad and I were having so much fun, we almost didn’t get back to the car before the incoming tide cut our vehicle off from the road. That was fun. The husband and the mother disagreed.

Hiking is fun. Another kind of exploration. Dancing is fun. As of this writing, I haven’t participated in a Zumba class in nearly two weeks, and I am dying for that type of fun. Even weightlifting is fun, although I don’t usually feel that way until I’m finished. One result of my various chronic illnesses is that I don’t get The Endorphin High as quickly or as often as other people. That makes exercise not always attractive. Or fun, as it were.

Maybe that’s one reason I’ve never had fun playing competitive sports. Volleyball in high school was utterly demoralizing. Badminton was meh. Dodgeball in elementary school was torture. I don’t have fun watching competitive sports, either, unless it’s dancing. Or figure skating, which is kind of like dancing but with murderblades strapped to your feet. I have fun watching football with enthusiastic fans, but it’s because of their infectious enjoyment, not the sport itself.

Watching other people do the thing is not really my thing. Friends and cousins used to want me to watch them play video games. What to heck? What am I supposed to get out of this? I’m watching you have fun but not getting to participate in the fun. I enjoy playing video games until I win, and then it stops being fun.

Board games can be fun, if it doesn’t take 12 hours to play and there’s a lot of conversation and joking around. Chess is fun, but it’s hard to find other people offline who agree. Card games are fun in a big group if everyone’s a good sport and keeps it light and chatty. Clearly, I’m more about the social interaction than the competition. The minute someone starts getting frustrated or angry that they’re not winning, I stop having fun. Even if I’m winning.

Social interaction is fun, but not if I have too much. That’s draining.
Time by myself is fun. But not if I have too much. That’s…untethering.

Certain societal demographics tell me that as a middle-aged mother, I’m supposed to wear shirts that say things like “it’s wine o’clock” and “they whine, I wine.” But wine mom culture is insidiously depressing to me. “I have stress, so I’m gonna lean on alcohol for support.” This wine-momming phenomenon is not fun. Embracing that culture would mean giving myself over to the same state of being as I’m in when I’m doomscrolling social media. Just another thing to distract me from facing my actual life.

Good drinks and conversation with friends? YES. That’s fun.

Things that are fun to me and things that aren’t. Those are some specifics. But what is fun? I feel like Lt. Cmdr. Data as he does all he can to define a human emotion without having experienced it himself. Is fun even an emotion? Or is it an activity? Yes? I’ve experienced fun, but it’s still an amorphous concept. What’s fun to one person is deadly dull to another. Can there be an objective quantification?

This meme is fun.

Fun is what sparks joy. Neurons firing, endorphins flooding brain tissue. Yes? Maybe?

Amanda Doyle says: “Rest is to work as play is to gloom.” After we work, we need rest. After we’ve gloomed, we need play? We can’t have fun if our physical, emotional, and mental needs aren’t being met. If I’m not getting enough sleep and regularly, I’ll have no energy or even desire to engage in fun. Does fun take effort? Yes? Or does the enjoyment make it feel effortless?

There’s a lovely quote about fun and play and their opposite. Online sources can’t seem to agree if it comes from Simon Sutton-Smith, Brian Sutton-Smith, or Stuart Brown. But it goes like so:


“The opposite of play isn’t hard work; the opposite of play is depression.”

As someone who has suffered from depression for more than half her life and is now, at age 45, struggling to define what “fun” is, I can confirm this. Play — or fun, if you prefer — requires a certain lightness of heart, a willingness to let go, even a commitment or determination not to let daily cares or the state of the world drag you down. Depression is anything but light. Depression clings with desperation. And depression, even when it’s not circumstantial, sucks you deeper and deeper into an abyss with every personal or universal difficulty.

Looking back at my life, I can identify the times when I played least, the times when I had the least fun: it was during the times I was most lost in depression. I couldn’t play or have fun; I didn’t want to play or have fun.

Work can be fun. Some of the most fun times of my life have been when I was working, when I was putting great effort and resource and time into making something. Creating is always fun for me, whether it’s alone or with other people. Work, if you’ve picked the kind that suits you best, is fun.

Depression is not fun. Depression is play’s opposite. All work and no play means Courtney’s depressed.

What is fun?

Fun is what sparks joy. Fun is play for the sheer joy of it. Fun is work in creating. Fun is an emotion. Fun is an action, a series of actions. Writing this blog post has been fun.

I asked my daughter. She said:

Fun is enjoying things. Running around and getting really dirty!

Sounds like fun to me.

/ Courtney / Creativity

pandemics make poor fodder for 42: a brief history of All The Things since March 2020

When I last left this blog, I was in the middle of Atheism for Lent, bleeding my thoughts onto the digital page as I processed everything I was reading, watching, listening to. I remember feeling as though I were in a good place in life. My writing was going well; we had recently gotten our 7-year-old daughter into a better 1st grade environment by requiring the school to move her to a different classroom; I was feeling and seeing the benefits of my workout program; my heart and mind were finding expansion in all the new-to-me things I was learning and pondering.

On Wednesday, March 11, I took my daughter (CM) to school and then came home to do my AfL reading and blogging.
Before that day, Oklahoma City had seen zero cases of COVID-19. We knew it was coming; it had to be, considering how quickly the virus had bypassed borders, international waters, and state lines.
Sure enough, later that day, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID in OKC, and the Thunder-Jazz game was called. I don’t pay much attention to sports, but even I knew that this was a highly unusual and somewhat alarming turn of events.

The next day, Thursday, March 12, 2020, I dropped CM off at school. I probably went to the gym; I don’t remember. (I have notes somewhere but don’t feel like sifting through them at the moment.) Toward late morning, or maybe early afternoon, the school left messages with all parents that we should pick kids up as usual that afternoon — but not bring them back the next day. The following Monday was the start of Spring Break, so the school said they’d “see us after the break.”
That afternoon, I stood talking with Rosalie*, the mom of my daughter’s best friend. When our two girls came out, we decided to take them around to the playground so we could continue our conversation. While the girls played, Rosalie and I shared our shock at the cancellation of the NBA game and our concerns over how quickly and easily this novel coronavirus spread. We agreed that keeping the kids at home the next day was wise. We asked each other, “Do you think you’ll send her back to school after Spring Break?” Rosalie wasn’t sure, but I had already decided: “I think we’ll keep her out for two or three weeks, just to be sure.”
Privately, I wondered: Could we be giving each other the virus while we’re sitting here talking?

Two or three weeks.

As of this writing, it’s been 432 days.

“Can we see the Murrays* today?”
“No, sweet girl, not today.”
“Later this week?”
“Probably not. I’m really sorry.”
“Why? Do they have school?”
“No. Nobody has school right now, remember.”
“Oh yeah. Because of the virus?”
“That’s right.”
“But if they’re not in school, why can’t we see them?”
“Because of the virus.”

It became a sort of mantra. Why can’t we go to the splash pad? Because of the virus. Why can’t we go into Oma’s house? Because of the virus. Why does Daddy have to wear a mask to work? Because of the virus. Because of the virus. The virus the virus the virus….

Eventually, this led to outbursts of “I HATE THIS STUPID VIRUS!”

Me too, babygirl. Me too.

masks and gloves

She understood, to certain extent. So did I — to a certain extent. What I couldn’t understand (and still cannot) were the people laughing off the situation, refusing to mask up, refusing to stay home, mocking all of us who took the CDC’s and Dr. Fauci’s warnings and recommendations seriously. What I couldn’t understand (and still cannot) were the intelligent, discerning people of my acquaintance who heard the then-POTUS say “it’ll just disappear overnight” (or something equally inane) — and they still believed he was the right person for leading the USA.

Well, if you want to lead an entire nation into a deadly pandemic lasting well over a year, he certainly was the right person for the job.

But I digress, eh?

Except, not really.

Stress and worry over the virus, its spread, its effects, its lasting effects. “Long COVID” wasn’t quite a thing yet, but it would come soon.
Stress and worry over keeping safe: Do we need to wipe down the mail before bringing it into the house? Do we need to leave our shoes outside? If Ed rides his bike to work, could there be virus clinging to his tires which he then brings into the house at the end of the day? From mid-March through at least July of 2020, Ed came home from work and went straight to the shower without touching me or CM. We sanitized every grocery item before bringing it inside.

Spring Break had come and gone, and CM’s school gave every family free resources to use “until school starts again.” CM’s package included a Nation Geographic crystal-growing kit. We made crystals. I struggled to get her to sit down for the worksheets and online educational activities the school provided. Before the semester was over, I gave up and we just went right ahead with Summer Break.

We accomplish school however we must.

CM missed her friends. There were drive-by birthday “parties,” awkward and kinda sad, satisfying nobody. We went to my parents’ house and sat chatting with them and with Grandma (then 98) through the glass storm door. CM cried because she missed her friends and missed going into her grandparents’ house. Eventually: “I don’t even remember what their house looks like on the inside!” She cried and we held her, and I missed my friends, too.

We had lights in the lightlessness. Walking “with” neighbors from down the street: they on their side of the street, we on ours, shouting conversation across the unforgiving asphalt. Six or eight weeks into our lockdown, Ed stayed home with CM while I drove to the lake and sat and walked and breathed air by myself for the first time since the afternoon when I’d last picked up CM from school.

If I don’t get time alone, I forget who I am. If I don’t spend time with my beloveds, the people with whom I “reach” in heart and mind, I forget who I am.

#PandemicLife means losing a part of your Self.

It’s not an irretrievable loss. But when you find that Self again, she is altered from what you remember. And you are altered too, and now comes the challenge of living out the how of bringing those Selfs back together again in something at least resembling harmony.

Lights in the lightlessness: resuming CM’s horseback riding lessons, masked; sitting outside with family on my parents’ back porch, masked; FINALLY getting together outside with friends, masked. Ed bought some Hanes brand cloth masks, and I bought some fun ones with things on them like “Shaka when the walls fell” and “free hugs” from an Aliens facehugger. Eventually, I would abandon cloth masks for myself and CM and buy disposable KN95 masks off of Amazon. We stopped sanitizing the groceries, and Ed hugged us every day when he got home from work.

armor on for dentist appointment

I hadn’t set foot in a store since March. We did our shopping online, either for delivery or for curb-side pickup. (Still do, for the most part.) I spent too much on Amazon. I bought seeds from catalogs and launched a summer-long project of amateur landscaping. My sunflowers were my pride and joy, caterpillars and snails my bane. (I love caterpillars, but not on my sunflowers. I love snails, but not on my hostas.) I had long known that gardening was excellent therapy, but this summertime project proved to be my equivalent of spending two months in in-patient care. The summer and the garden took me in and cared for me and nurtured what little spark of creativity remained me.

In May 2020, I finished the first draft of what still might end up being the best novel I’ve written thus far (Return of the Pelegrin). I wrote “The End” and set the story aside, planning to come back to it in six weeks or so for the first read-through. I puttered around on the third draft of The Priestess Murders but didn’t make much headway. I puttered around on final draft of The Flight of Elfled unBlessed but didn’t get far there, either.

We enrolled CM in a charter school which, in the Before Times, was half online, half in-person. In these, the COVID Times, the charter school went online fulltime. CM’s 2nd grade started in September 2020. I split my focus between her schoolwork and my writing. After a great start, she completed her entire 2nd grade Reading curriculum in the first semester. We celebrated, and she started 3rd grade Language Arts & Reading.

In the meantime, her rough 1st grade (another long story) was catching up to us. By mid-semester of 2nd grade, it was clear that she had missed a major foundational block of 1st grade math. With math not my strong suit, and feeling wholly inadequate to the task of helping my child, I poured what energy I had into supporting and coaching her in math. Her progress was slow, but she made progress. Online, her teacher coached her and me both in how best to proceed. I never felt as though I were handling the situation alone — but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the inevitable frustration meltdowns of my stressed, worried, isolated child.

Her birthday was half drive-by, half-“real”: a few masking and quarantining friends and family joined us in the back yard. We set up a portable toilet in a small tent next to the garage. It splashed one of the parents. The kids thought it all an epic adventure. Masks came off for cake, went back on after, and I was thankful that Grandma hadn’t come, in case one of us infected her.

More lights in the lightlessness: Following CDC guidelines, we and the extended family decided we felt collectively safe for Ed and CM and me to come into my parents’ house masked. No more uncomfortable visits on the back porch in 100 degree heat. In November 2020, we joined them for Thanksgiving ever — on the back porch unmasked, so we could eat. By Christmas, we all felt comfortable enough to spend the day inside together, unmasking only to eat. The three of them sat on one side of the long dining room, and the three of us sat on the other side. “Merry Christmas, everyone!” from twenty feet away.

Throughout it all, I tried to Zumba and yoga my way into maintaining some semblance of fitness. The spirit was willing, but the house is too small for much exercising, and the flesh wanted chocolate and alcohol. My evening drink started being my afternoon pre-evening-drink drink. Every night after CM was asleep, I dulled everything with wine and sweets and Netflix. I talked to my therapist over the phone twice a month and let her coach me into a slightly healthier space inside my head. The chocolate stayed, but the alcohol was no longer a daily thing. I couldn’t say I felt any better for the lack. After all, the pandemic continued.

Another thing that continued was the 2020 Presidential Election. I rejoiced at voting for Elizabeth Warren. I wept when she dropped out. Intelligent, discerning, compassionate people of my acquaintance were expressing support for the POTUS who suggested fighting COVID with injections of bleach. I facepalm-headdesked and wished I were irresponsible enough to drink myself into numbness.

We lost acquaintances to COVID. We lost one of Ed’s aunts to COVID. We worried over the immunocompromised family members who insisted on going to the funeral. I imagined being the person to spread COVID to one of my elderly family members, and I shuddered.

Knowing how desperately we all needed away, Ed and I used our stimulus money to buy a used pop-up camper. We got to use it once, for a glorious two-night getaway at a sort of Airbnb for camping spots. Our spot had an air conditioned “tree house,” which CM fell in love with. Shortly thereafter, Ed was helping me dig up part of the yard for a new flowerbed. He had to stop much sooner than I did, which surprised us both. He felt weak, dizzy, exhausted. We blamed dehydration, the sun, stress, lack of sleep. When he got worse instead of better, we blamed COVID.

Three COVID tests begged to differ. He saw our doctor. Blood tests confirmed: Ed was suffering from a relapse of Rocky Mountain Spotted fever (which he’d contracted in 2018) ON TOP OF a reactivated Epstein-Barr virus, aka mononucleosis, which he can’t remember ever having. He basically spent three months in bed — in the middle of a COVID pandemic. It would be another nine months before we took ourselves on a second weekend getaway in our new-to-us pop-up camper.

I could not write.

In November 2020, I saw a call for horror short stories with a Hallmark-movie feel. I thought “Ah! Wheelhouse mine!” and set to work. And work. And work. I backspaced and deleted, I discarded draft after draft of story. Nothing clicked. The submission deadline passed and I had squat.

I reported to Twitter: “tfw when the Teach Your Kid Math session morphs *yet again* into a Counsel Your Isolated Worried Kid Through A Pandemic session. I. am. so. tired.”

I stayed up too late and got up too late. The now-8yo discovered all sorts of fun ways to use her computer for things that were not school when no one was looking. I forced myself to get up earlier. I tried to get in bed earlier but had no willpower to resist staying up late. I read about it online: “revenge bedtime procrastination,” staying up late to have the undisturbed alone time to do whatever I want. Yup, that fits.

“How’s Babadook?” asked my therapist in every call, using the shorthand we’ve developed for referring to my depression. “Restless,” I usually answered. “Wanting more attention. Wanting more food at my table. But all I have is scraps.” “Lean into it,” she told me. “Spend no more than three days doing absolutely nothing. Let yourself feel all of it, so Babadook will weaken.” I lay on my bed with the cats for an hour while CM played a computer game on my laptop next to me. It was healing, and I wanted at least those three days. I didn’t get them.

I voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by absentee ballot. As always, I took my daughter with me to vote, explaining to her what we were doing and why it’s important — especially the vote for the first Black and first Asian woman in the White House. I had never visited the County Elections Board before. We wore masks, and one of the security guards laughed and complimented me on my facehugger. Now that I have spent that past six years paying closer attention to local and national politics than ever before, I realize now that I have not voted in enough elections since I became eligible. Voting in a facehugger mask for this specific Democratic ticket during a pandemic will surely be one of the post memorable patriotic experiences of my life.

“Everything is political,” I wrote on Twitter. “Wearing a mask actually is political — and it *should* be. ‘Political’ simply designates the things we do that determine how we live in this world together. Wearing a mask shows your care & concern for the fellow humans you live with in this world. Everything. Humans. Do. Is. Political. Including all forms of art. Including creative writing. Including not talking politics. Yeah, even that IP you heart so much. And everything done or said by its creators. Everything humans do or don’t do is political, so ‘keep away from politics’ is an inherent impossibility.”

I screamed into the abyss of the empty wall before me.
“Eat at Joe’s,” the abyss screamed back — or something equally useful.

I ate at home. I ate chocolate and drank wine at home. I ate Tex-Mex takeout and picked the cheese off my pre-made salads. A new Braum’s opened up the street, and the now 8yo discovered burgers and fries. I ate too much of all of that and my gastro-intestinal system rebelled against this year of poor diet. I ate crackers and Ramen.

In November 2020, the American people expressed definitively their distaste and disgust for the Trump regime. We elected Joe Biden in a fair and square election, with reports of “voter fraud” being debunked over and over and over again. I had stocked up on canned goods. As fate would have it, we needed my stash for an ice storm instead of Civil War II. But the insurrection and coup attempt on January 6, 2021, sparked the thought: it’s not over yet. Horrified, I watched the images on tv and struggled to explain to my daughter. I couldn’t even explain to me.

Evil and foolishness, racism and white supremacy, anti-masking and anti-vaxxing. Someone remind me why I came back to this country in 2007?

I reported #PandemicLife onTwitter: “Ahhh, the age-old eternal question…the one that keeps humans awake at night and leaves us confused, disoriented, and incapable of accomplishing anything useful on a Friday…. Is it a sinus infection? Or is it COVID?”

Concerning 2020, 8yo CM opined: “This year is full of poop and scary.”

I couldn’t agree more. My neck, shoulders, and lower back developed permanent knots in muscles. We put up the Christmas tree in November, the earliest I’ve ever had a tree up, because we needed something happy.

With painfully slow momentum, the number of vaccinated and at least half-vaccinated Americans was rising. Friends and family who are “essential workers” rejoiced to tell us they were fully vaccinated. I hoped that Ed, who had worked steadily throughout the pandemic (minus the mono-RMSF-recovery period), would be able to get vaccinated sooner than soon. I didn’t expect to qualify for the vaccine until summer 2021 at the earliest. The rollout was so agonizingly bungled, I couldn’t imagine the number of fully vaccinated people could possibly make a dent in stopping the virus.

Then Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office on January 20, 2021.

He’s no perfect person, and he’s no perfect president. I take issue with many of his statements and policies (which is all another story to tell another time). But one thing I could and can say for certain: when he said his administration would be focusing on stopping COVID and getting the vaccine out, he was neither lying nor exaggerating. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, all the adults in my family qualified for the vaccine. My friends all qualified. I qualified. The day before my 44th birthday, I drove two hours to the small town of Marietta, Oklahoma, to get my first Moderna shot. The next day, I felt tired. Two weeks later, I felt hopeful.

Ed got his second Pfizer shot before I got my second Moderna. He felt exhausted and flu-ish for two days; I felt like death for four. I chronicled my experience on Twitter, hoping to encourage the vaccine-leery. Truth is only scary if you believe or know for sure that someone isn’t telling you all of it.

We laughed at the anecdotal evidence, gathered from friends and family, that women get Moderna and men get Pfizer. We started spending time indoors *gasp* unmasked *gasp!* with friends and family who were fully vaccinated. CM got to hug and play and tumble with her friends.

Schooling-in-place: doing math
Me: Don’t think about whether it’s easy or hard. Just think about what you have to do to get to the answer.
8yo: I have to go to the bathroom.

Modern math is weird, y’all.

By necessity, I took 8yo CM with me to Sprouts Farmers Market. With me vaccinated and both of us as well as all store patrons and workers masked, I felt comfortable enough. The store looked much bigger than I remembered. We went next door to a used bookstore, and she spent an hour happily reading on the floor of the kids section. I wandered and browsed and bought, feeling my introvert bookworm heart grow three sizes. Ed had taken CM into a store two or three times, but this was the first time I had set foot in a grocery or bookstore in 14 months.

Life, the universe, and everything: that’s how my brain prefers to occupy itself consciously and intentionally. #PandemicLife sapped all energy and creativity for such mental endeavors. Delve more deeply into my old and new beliefs to see what works and what doesn’t? Leap into the lightlessness with both feet, submerge in lightlessness, come out on the other side with newfound understandings? Paint, draw, or write the thoughts and feelings and stories and whatnot that are my mainstay in all times but especially trying ones? My brain said no to all of it. No, we don’t have the energy. No, we don’t have the creativity. No, we don’t have the will. All of that is pouring into survival of Self and of child and of family and of friends. There is nothing left over for the deeper considerations of existence. I begin to understand why women of history collectively made less of an obvious mark than their male contemporaries. They didn’t have time — and frankly, my dear, they were just too damn tired.

“But brain,” said I, “we need to write something. Even if it’s just a grocery list.”
“Okay,” said brain, “let’s rewrite Gone with the Wind as a fantasy novel.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said I.
“Haaaaaa, you got jokes,” answered brain.

Not far into it, I began thinking of it as my Pandemic Project: Gone with the (Wind with) Dragons. I’ll write more about the process, the pitfalls, and the possibilities in the future. But for now: working on it at least kept some of the writing skills from rusting into oblivion. Edit, rewrite, add, delete. I wasn’t generating new story, but the alterations I was making at least challenged my “second draft” skills set. And then, one Monday, it happened.

I woke up, made breakfast, fed the kiddo, got her started on school for the day, sat down at my laptop — and wrote a 5k-word short story over the course of about ten hours.
Two days later, I started another, longer short story — and finished it in less than a week.

My sense of relief spilled out of me all over the place. Metaphorically(?) speaking, it was a glorious, glittery, rainbowy mess. It’s not gone. I still have it. It’s all still in me. Had I been questioning whether or not I would ever be able to write again? You betcha. Anxiety had convinced me that the magic had left me and I would never get it back. Turns out the magic just needed some hope to let it flow outward again. It’s no coincidence that this sudden flow of easy inspiration came almost a month to the day after my second Moderna shot.

I still feel bleak. I still feel unsettled and disturbed and sorrowful. This is not done, and this post has no obvious ending. I am anxious for a vaccine for the below-12 crowd so my daughter can safely rejoin society. We are never going to back to “normal.” Death is not the only concern when it comes to COVID-19. Long COVID, the chronic illnesses that survivors develop, will affect ALL of us for generations.

We
and
“normal”
are
never
ever
ever
getting
back
together.

And in many ways, that’s actually a good thing. But we also get to mourn the present and the future we thought we would have.

There’s a lot more to say, of course. More thoughts about things that have happened in the pandemic thus far: in my inner circle, in my family, in my city, the nation, the world. There’s more heartache and sorrow and rage and worry, more wonder and joy and curiosity. But if you’ve read this far, you know I’ve said as much as I can for now.

In the meantime, I am ready to discover what our new “normal” will be.

It just can’t happen yet.

*names changed for privacy

/ Courtney

i I have no mouth, and i must tweet

So, I am currently in Twitter jail for unknown reasons. The lack of ability to spout my thoughts into the Void / Not-Quite-So-Void is driving me a little batty, so I’m actually blogging! GASP AND EGAD.

Hopefully, since I can’t even tweet a link to this post, it will still reach someone out there in the ether who actually has an interest in the goings-on of my life and brain. IF YOU’RE THERE, HOLLABACK Y’ALL.

So, without further ado or adon’t, here are some random thoughts courtesy of m o i ‘s (Powers-That-Be)-inhibited heartsoulmindbody:

•One of the reasons I haven’t blogged in the last few months is that I have been sick a lot and by a lot I mean, like, A LOT. Like, the Snot Monster GOT me. And by got me, I mean I was vanquished utterly and defeated yea unto the mud. Back-to-back sinus infections, woop woop! 😃 The official count was 2 (two), but I suspect it was either 3 (three) sinus infections one right after the other in the space of 6 (six) weeks, or one single sinus infection that lasted a total of two and a half months. I DON’T KNOW.

At any rate, it required a high-powered antibiotic that made me feel like there were ants running under my skin in the middle of the night, before the sinus infection ultimately yielded and gave up the ghost. Since I have chronic sinusitis, I am not entirely sure that it is entirely gone for realsies, but at least I feel better.

The other factor in the Saga of Wrathful Illness is that in the middle of the high-powered antibiotic treatment, I came down with the flu. Yay. 😀🤪🙃😳😰😫😱😵🤒😭 That was so much fun. Can you hear the unadulterated sarcasm in my voice? No, you cannot. But, believe me, it is there. Palpably. If you were with me, you could touch it.

This was the first time in probably 15 years that I’ve had the flu, and the utter exhaustion and miserableness of the experience is barely describable. One of the most difficult parts was the continuous brainfog anytime I was awake, a brainfog which lasted at least a week after I actually felt like I no longer had the flu. I even had Tamiflu, and I still felt like I’d run a marathon anytime I was vertical for more than 5 minutes. As of now, I am finally feeling like a human being again and can participate in activities that contribute not only to surviving, but also to living and ye gods actually thriving. Hopefully this will continue through the holidays which will be, for various reasons I don’t want to get into right now, a lot more active and tiring than I had originally planned on. But such is life, c’est la vie, c’est la guerre, c’est la dreck.

(Side note I am currently using voice-to-text for the first draft of this post, and the app is translating that last sentence as “c’est la vie salon salon track.” Seems legit.)

•In other news, I am watching The Magicians Season 4 on Netflix and enjoying it immensely. Every season of this show just keeps getting better and better and I love it and it is completely in my wheelhouse, up my alley, it is the cream in my coffee, it’s all the cliches that indicate that this show was written specifically for me, my eyeballs my ears my brain my heart my gut my unmentionables. Right now I’m on Episode 9 and it’s funny to me that I am enjoying Margo so much this season. I didn’t like her really at all until maybe the middle of Season 3? But at this point in the proceedings, I think it’s fair to say that she is my absolute favorite character and…yeah, I probably shouldn’t say what my gut reaction to her really is. At this point I just want to share my thought that there is no one in the universe as regal as former High King Margo Hanson stalking out of the castle, holding her birthright box with her chin held high and her nose in the air and her entire being radiating a resounding f— you to anybody who’s watching. I WORSHIP THIS WOMAN.

Also, I. Miss. The. Real. Eliot. And I need him back as soon as possible PLEASE.

•On we go! To absolutely no one’s surprise (and if you are surprised, Gentle Reader, then I must say you don’t know me at ALL), I am utterly thrilled about the impeachment of the current American president. I could not be happier. I am well aware that impeachment does not necessarily mean removal, and it is very likely that he will continue to be president until January of 2021, and it is entirely possible that he will be re-elected in November 2020, in which case he will remain president until in January of 2025. I have had a glass and a half of wine, after not having any alcohol for several weeks, so I might not be doing that math entirely correctly, but y’all get my point. The decision to impeach does not mean that we are shut of him. I am not advocating any kind of untimely death, but the fact of the matter is that we will not be shut of him until he is dead. Honestly, hopefully, of natural causes.

But.

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hope that there is a conviction just over the horizon. It would be incredibly wonderful if that were to happen. I will not hold my breath. But there is still hope.

•In further news, tonight is the premiere of the newest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, and I am not at said premiere, and it is a tragedy.

•In other further news, my LIFE.

And that is all for now.

Happy Festival Month, you utter cuties.

P.S. Gabbard is a coward and the entire GOP is slime.

P.P.S. Somebody at an OKC mall shot somebody in an argument that took place in a shoe store, and in not at all related news, we desperately need sane laws regulating firearms.

P.P.P.S. I want to see the CATS movie and I don’t care who knows it.

/ Courtney

Here is my depression. Let me show you it.

“Wear a smile on my face, but there’s a demon inside.”

–from “Jekyll and Hyde” by Five Finger Death Punch

Don’t Google or YouTube that. (No, seriously. Don’t.)

I don’t for a moment think it’s a literal demon. Let’s just get that out of the way right from the start. I haven’t invited anything in, I haven’t been messing around with Ouja boards, I haven’t opened any metaphysical doors I can’t close. When I talk about having a demon, I’m not talking about being possessed. Because I’m not.

The “demon” is a metaphor.

So is the dark cave. So are: the quicksand, the black dog, the She-Hulk, the dark cloud of doom, the shadows closing in, the sludgy ocean. All of these are metaphors for the thing I’ve been dealing with that’s called depression.

This has been a long time coming

(and the cards are stacked…).

I’ve been disgnosed with depression, and I am now ready to talk about it.

Depressive Tendencies

As a teenager, I suffered depressive episodes during which I just wanted to curl up and stop everything. There was a lot of crying in the bathroom. I chalked it up to academic difficulties in school, relationship difficulties with friends, relationship difficulties with parents. Hormones. When I was 14, a psychiatrist told my parents I was “well-adjusted.” I took that to mean I could rest on my psychological laurels. Turns out I was just a good enough actress to fool a therapist.

In my 20s, I struggled through a long depressive bout that (I believe) resulted from my inability to say “no” and give myself the alone time I needed to recharge and recenter myself. Self-care has never come naturally to me; it’s always been Put Others’ Needs First, Second, and Third. Things improved when I learned to respect my need for solitude — and when I learned to require others to respect my need, too. Peace entered in when I listened to my spirit saying gently, “It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to take care of you. It’s okay. They’ll be just fine without you. Go do you for a while.”

I got better. I made the life choices I needed to make when I needed to make them. I became a full-time writer. I changed my eating habits and turned myself into a runner. It’s amazing what writing and exercise do for my spirit. There’s really no comparison.

Family History: Depression’s Descendant?

I won’t overshare here, because some things are not mine to share in public. Suffice it to say that there’s a family history of depression and anxiety. Nature or nurture? I believe it’s both, and that both get passed down through the generations. I have a great-great-grandmother who tried twice to stab her husband to death. Her daughter beat my grandfather. And so on and so forth.

Whatever it is, it goes back at least a hundred years. It gets diluted with each successive generation…like a poison poured into a glass of water, poured into the next generation’s glass, and the next, and the next. It’s diluted — I’d venture to say we can’t quite taste it anymore — but it still sickens us ever so slightly.

I fear for my daughter. I want her glass of water to run clear and fresh and pure. I know I can’t protect her fully. And yet, I refuse to give in to fear. “There is still hope,” as the elf-saying goes. I haven’t lost that.

Or rather, I lost hope for a while, but I’ve regained it.

The Demon Called Depression

On Death

I’ve never been suicidal.

Oh, there have been times when I wanted to be dead. The pain was great, and I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to kill myself, never even pondered methods. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to be dead because I wanted the pain to stop. And because I’m a Jesus-follower, I knew that part of what Jesus promises is “no tears” after this life. I desperately yearned for the “no tears” part. The “no pain” promise was for me, and if ever someone wanted it, I did.

So I prayed for God to take me — in a painless way, preferably while I slept, so I wouldn’t have a clue what was happening. I prayed he would comfort my family and friends after I was gone but reassure them they’d see me again. In the meantime, I would enjoy the lack of pain and sorrow.

But never once did I consider ending my own life. Was I still suicidal, since I was asking God to end it? I don’t know what the professionals would say, but I don’t think I was a danger to myself. I thought of myself in the light of the apostle Paul, who said, “If I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live” (Philippians 1:22-23).

If Paul could talk about wanting to rest with Christ, why couldn’t I?

Downward Spiral

From 2012-2015, I plodded on through a rough pregnancy, delivery, and post-partum recovery:

  • Mentally and emotionally, I was a mess because I spent most of the 9 months terrified I would miscarry. (I suffered a miscarriage in 2006; looking back, I have no doubt that a major depressive episode followed, possibly outright depression.)
  • During my first trimester one of our cats died unexpectedly and in a shocking way. (A botched spaying basically led to internal bleed-out and heart stopping). I grieved her loss as only a terrified, exhausted pregnant woman can. I haven’t really gotten over it yet.
  • I only threw up once the whole pregnancy, but from 10 weeks on I spent every moment feeling nauseated. Eating and drinking were anathema (unless I felt ravenous). Somehow, I managed not to get dehydrated.
  • During labor and delivery in September 2012, my tailbone broke. Thankfully, I had an epidural, so I didn’t feel it. But I heard it. And after the epidural wore off, I felt it. I felt it until, oh, April 2015 or thereabouts.
  • Four days after delivery, I visited the ER for ultrasounds on both legs to make sure I didn’t have blood clots. (I didn’t.)
  • Six days after delivery, I visited the ER again for an impacted bowel. I swear, you haven’t lived until you’ve had a cute little 20-something girl pump soapsuds up your–
  • Well, you get the picture.
  • Somewhere in there was a UTI.
  • Two months after delivery, I discovered that my toenails had died and gotten infected. Apparently this can happen as a result of physical trauma, because the body pulls resources from non-essential systems. They took a year to grow back normal.
  • Hair loss.
  • Baby weight that still hasn’t come off.
  • (Percocet for broken tailbone post-partum) + (sleep deprivation while caring for newborn) = hallucinations
  • Re-injury of back (torqued sacrum, to be specific) in June 2014.
  • 11 months total of physical therapy for spine injuries.
  • All the stress, frustration, worry, and guilt that go along with being a (new) mother.

And the stress, frustration, worry, and guilt refused to let up. Instead of decreasing, they increased. They turned into anxiety and anger. By January/February 2015, I was pretty sure something was seriously wrong.

Duh, you might say.

But have you ever been so close to a situation that you couldn’t see the truth of it? That’s a rhetorical question, because I know the answer is “yes”; not seeing the forest for the trees is pretty much a constant of the human condition. With everything I dealt with from 2012-2014, maybe it should’ve been a logical conclusion that I’d spiral into a major depression. But you know what? Maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t so obvious.

Maybe I’m just a good enough actress to fool myself in addition to fooling a lot of people around me.

Maybe my smile looked genuine enough in the mirror to fool even me into believing that a demon hadn’t taken up residence inside me.

Decision

About six months ago, I realized I felt angry pretty much all the time. I also cried a lot. I had no desire whatsoever to be around people. I didn’t want to leave the house for anything. I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stay asleep. I couldn’t wake up in the morning.

My thoughts were not normal for me:

“I can’t do this (read: anything, really).”

“I didn’t sign up for this kind of life.”

And, most telling:

“My daughter deserves a better mother than this pathetic one she has. I can’t do anything right by her.”

“God made a mistake when he made *me* a mother.”

Without getting deeply into theology, I’ll tell you this: the idea that “God Commits Errors” is not part of my belief system. If God chose to make me a mother (which I believe he did), then his choice was not an error. Intellectually, I was confident in this as Truth.

Emotionally, I railed at him for inflicting me upon this beautiful, innocent child.

My anger increased. And, to make a long story short (too late), most of that anger was nonsensically turning in the direction of that beautiful, innocent child.

That, my dear friends and neighbors, is unacceptable.

For her sake, if not for my own or my longsuffering husband’s, I had to change.

In May 2015, I saw my general practitioner, who agreed with my self-diagnosis of depression and prescribed Zoloft.

Defining Depression

Depression is sitting in a dark cave, curled with with your knees to your chest and your arms wrapped around your legs. You’re terrified to move, because if you move, Things Will Get Worse. You don’t know how or why, you just know that they will. You’re curled up in this dark, dank, miserable place, and you cannot see an exit. Your eyes are wild and wide, but you cannot see even the faintest hint of light. You are incapable of movement. You are incapable of reaching out or calling out for help. Somewhere deep inside, you hope that someone will reach in and wrap their fingers around yours and tug gently. If that happened, maybe you could follow that gentle encouragement back to its source, back to the light and the warmth and the real. But very few people know how to reach in like that. And even if they do, you find that all you can do is twitch in response. You can’t actually move enough to follow them anywhere.

Depression is a dark cloud of doom that hangs slightly behind you and overhead, always just out of sight no matter how quickly you turn to confront it. It never goes away. It follows you everywhere. It blocks out warmth and light. It is an invisible, intangible jailer, and it mocks you.

Depression is like you’re trying to use one potato to peel another potato. *If* someone offers help and you accept, you find that they’ve handed you another potato.

Depression is Sisyphus.

Depression is running through a dark, foggy forest full of pitfalls and sharp rocks and trees that reach out to grab you. A black dog with blood in his teeth is chasing you. You can’t outrun him. You can’t outsmart him. You can’t hide from him. Every time you throw a terrified glance over your shoulder, HE IS RIGHT THERE, tearing at your heels. You scream, and he howls in triumph. You can feel his damp breath and smell the rot that follows him everywhere. And no one can keep him off you.

Depression is a sweet voice pulling you further into the darkness with seductive whispers.

Depression is a rough, gravelly voice that beats you down with the “truth” that you’re not good enough, you’re a terrible person, if people really knew you, they would hate you, you’re worthless.

Depression is the She-Hulk, a rage always boilling beneath the surface, and once she breaks her bonds, you can do nothing to stop her. She takes over, grows to insane proportions, and destroys whatever is in her path.

Depression is quicksand grabbing you around the knees and pulling you into its suffocating embrace, and you can’t apply the anecdotal “fix” of stretching out flat on top of it and “swimming” to safety.

Depression is a vast, sludgy ocean that sucks you down and contains no life, and you can’t see a shore or lifeline anywhere.

Depression is dark shadows overlaying everything you see. (For some people, this is literal.)

Depression is a demon that lives inside you, an invisible disease of your will and emotions. The demon makes you smile when you don’t feel like it. The demon makes you participate in activities you don’t want any part of. The demon uses your body and your face like a meatsuit, playing at human life with the goal of keeping up appearances. The demon doesn’t want anyone else to know it’s inside you. The demon acts human so that no one will find out that it’s devouring your internal organs, eating you from the inside out. Only sometimes does the demon show its true face — and then only when it knows that the witnesses can’t (or won’t) do anything to cast the demon out.

“Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depression, major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and depression may make you feel as if life isn’t worth living.

“More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn’t a weakness, nor is it something that you can simply ‘snap out’ of.

“A variety of factors may be involved, such as: biological differences, brain chemistry (neurotransmitters), hormones, thyroid problems, inherited traits, [and] life events.”

–Mayo Clinic

Dealing with the Demon

The day I got the prescription, I started taking Zoloft. My doctor warned that it would be weeks before I felt a difference, if I felt one at all. It could be months.

Maybe wishful thinking or psychosoma took over, but I swear I felt an effect within two-and-a-half weeks. There came a weekend where I looked back on the foregoing week and realized that I hadn’t cried or even felt like crying. Another week, and I found myself putting on real clothes and washing my hair and taking the toddler to playgrounds. By June, I wanted to be around people. In July, I found myself more active in our house church, and the sudden influx of family for a reunion didn’t send me into the fetal position.

Best of all, I was exercising patience with my child.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors “increase the extracellular level of the neurotransmitter serotonin by limiting its reabsorption into the presynaptic cell, increasing the level of serotonin in the synaptic cleft available to bind to the postsynaptic receptor.”

–Wikipedia

Zoloft is an SSRI: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor.

I remember learning about those in college psych classes. On exams, I never had trouble recalling anything I’d learned about them — because they sounded so poetic. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The words flow off the tongue in perfect sibilants and labials, consonants forming a lovely rhythm. The “reup-” diphthong encourages a perky, upward motion of the head as you speak, as though the word itself on your lips is part of the treatment. The entire phrase is a poem of the soul, designed to move forward, move along, move on, get past this, leave behind all the dullness and lack of melody.

These drugs I’m now taking, I used to think they were poetry.

I’m not a professional counselor, but I’ve had counseling training, and I’ve been in a position (by necessity) in which I’ve counseled others. Some of those others have suffered from depression. I took care not to offer anything in the way of “professional” advice; I always pointed those individuals toward the fully trained, the licensed, the practiced.

Still, I sat only on one side of the “desk.” I settled myself in the “chair” instead of on the “couch.” I functioned as counselor, not client. I was the listening ear and the shoulder to cry on — not the one to speak or to weep.

Now, suddenly, *I* am the one with the disease.

It is a weird and humbling experience, and I don’t like it.

It isn’t poetic or perky at all.

Suffering from depression represents yet one more fracture in my illusion of control. (All sense of control is an illusion; if you don’t believe this, you’re still in illusion’s grip. I recommend the red pill.) Maybe I didn’t offer advice…but as long as I sat in the chair instead of lying on the couch, I could at least fool myself into believing I was master of my situation. That belief, though ever tenuous, has now crumbled. I’m not adrift, as I remain in possession of my firm foundation, but I’m still at a loss to reconcile Who I Think I Am with this ill person who requires anti-depressants in order to function.

Like I said. It’s humbling.

Which isn’t a bad thing. Humility is never a bad thing. And through this whole experience, I am learning greater sympathy and empathy toward others who experience depression. That’s not a bad thing, either.

It’s just such a strange thing to acknowledge consciously and intentionally that I have a mental illness.

I have a mental illness.

I have a mental illness.

Decision

I do not say that I’m mentally ill.

Mental illness is not something I am, it’s something I *have*.

Just like I *have* neurocardiogenic syncope, premature ventricular contractions, a milk allergy, arthritis, scoliosis, hypermobility, and chronic sinusitis.

I am not these (mostly invisible) diseases and conditions. I have them, but they do not define who I am. I must deal with them on a daily basis, but they do not determine the nature of my person. And they certainly do not decide what direction my life goes.

(Speaking of those other conditions, though, I’ve noticed a pleasant “side effect” to the anti-depressants: I haven’t been experiencing nearly as many premature ventricular contrations since I started taking Zoloft. Instead of three per day, I’ve been feeling maybe three per week. This lovely development has led my cardiologist and me to cut my beta-blocker in half, with the goal of eliminating it altogether within the next few months. Since beta-blockers have some fairly onerous side effects, I am all in on getting rid of them.)

So. I’m not mentally ill. I have a mentall illness. It’s more than just a semantic difference to me. It represents my acceptance of this but also my determination not to let it rule me. I am not subject to depression. I do not belong to depression.

The demon does not own me.

Direction

I am aimed at and headed toward healthy.

When my doctor gave me the Zoloft prescription, she said, “We do not call these your ‘happy pills.’ If anything, we call these your ‘normal pills’ — because we’re trying to get you back to what’s normal for you.”

With her help, I came to realize that I’ve dealt with depression for at least three years, likely longer. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I haven’t had some form of depression since the miscarriage in 2006.

When you’re just just trying to live your life from one day to the next, it’s difficult to step back and see the big picture (see: Forest for the Trees Syndrome again). It’s even easier to tell yourself this is just a temporary setback, I’ll get past this, it’ll be fine, tomorrow is another day, ad infinitum. But finally, I am seeing more of that picture and realizing that I’ve been treading water, close to drowning, for a lot longer than I’d realized.

The good news is, the dark cloud no longer hangs over my head.

The black dog no longer nips at my heels.

I have a potato peeler.

My organs are regenerating, and the demon’s presence has weakened.

I still have bad moments, bad days. In fact, as I write this, I am coming out of a particularly bad week. I missed some exercise days, and that has contributed to the lows. I also just published a novel 20 years in the making, and it took a lot of extra oomph I really didn’t have. But I gave it anyway, and then I crashed*.

The dark cloud no longer hangs over me, but I know it lurks beyond the horizon.

The black dog no longer nips at my heels, but sometimes I can still hear his howl.

My potato peeler isn’t always sharp.

The demon has weakened, but it’s still there.

I can hear it waiting.

And so, I do what I must to take care of myself.

I take time for me. Alone time. Writing time. Workout time. Friends time. These are all separate times, and I take them. It means being away from my family. So be it. I am a better mother and wife when I take time away from them.

I take my exercise. I run. I zumba. I don’t yoga as much as I’d like, but I’m working back up to it.

I take my meds. I’ve always had an aversion to taking pills. But I don’t mind taking these little blue ones at all. They make me feel that much better.

I take a step back. When emotions start to get the better of me, I take a step back and ask myself what I’m doing and whether I need to step out of the room. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Either way is okay.

I take these healthful resources because I need them.

This is where I am. No guilt.

I’ll stay here for as long as I need to.

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*Vegging in front of the TV, watching “my boys“. They’re great therapy.
; )

P.S. I will see a therapist at some point, but I’m not quite there, yet. In time.