Anxious Bloom

A continuing discussion about anxiety

I sometimes think that no matter how often or how carefully I try to explain what anxiety is for the clinically anxious, there are always people who cannot accept that anxiety doesn't follow rules of reason nor rely on cause and effect to furrow itself deep into a nervous system. There are so many people who still, no matter how much we learn about it to the contrary, believe in their hearts that it's a choice we are making; to be depressed, or anxious.

Am I deficient in vitamins? Am I not getting enough sunshine? Have I not squared my shoulders and faced it all? Could it be that I need more meat in my diet? Do I just not assert myself enough? Do I just need to look on the bright side? If I was a stronger person would all the dark disappear? Would the emotional roller coaster ride turn out to be just a gentle bicycle ride? Is it possible that it's not anxiety I feel, but rage? Is it possible I've almost made it 39 years without being able to tell the difference? Am I angry rather than panicky? Could warm milk before bed take away the incessant buzzing in my head? Did the St. John's Wort not work because I didn't believe in it enough? Have I been choosing to hear the world around me fall apart in my head because I LIKE being crazy?

No. I spent 19 years looking for answers. All the while my anxiety growing, my depression obscuring the mushrooming panic. 19 years without help from anyone. 19 years without therapy, medication, or a diagnosis; knowing all those years that what I was going through was like "normal" on steroids. In other words: not normal. I knew when I started cutting myself that it was not a normal expression of anger or depression or anxiety. It worked, it helped, it ameliorated a terrible splintering in my head and then brought me back from complete physical numbness. It soothed when no one else had the power to sooth or even noticed the need in me.

I have tried every herbal concoction said to aid in all that ails me. Every tea. Every supplement. Multivitamins for months and months. Herb pillows, warm milk, Valerian drops, tinctures of every description, meditation, yoga, exercise, healthy food, positive visualization, creative outlets, writing, writing the brutally boring minutiae of my head just to release a valve, just to get it the hell out, talking with friends, pep talks, hot baths, discussing my problems with cockroaches that lived with me (not my choice), walking, deep breathing, spa treatments, shopping, educating myself.

And those are just the healthy things I tried.

I knew that what was wrong with me wasn't something a cup of tea could fix. The tea might help incrementally, but not nearly enough to keep me from wanting to smash my hand through a window just to distract myself from myself.

You know how when you fall down and you hear a big crack and you suddenly can't use your arm anymore and it hurts so bad you think you're going to vomit and you just know that you broke your arm, even before you get to the doctor? When you're broken in the head or nervous system you know it in the same way. You just feel it. Maybe you spend a long time denying it, but you know.

People- lots of people- probably you (because there are very few people who haven't thrown this one out there) are fond of asking "What's normal anyway?" or "No one is really normal." Or "Aren't we all a little crazy?" or "Everyone is fucked up in one way or another." Not all these statements are true, but the more important thing is that none of them are remotely helpful and when I hear people say them I feel like I've just been told that I don't know myself, that my discomfort, that the danger inherent in being me, is bogus.

It throws doubt on all the experiences I've had. It makes me question my carefully honed and honestly earned judgements. It takes all hope of help away from me. If we're all crazy then what could I possibly complain about? What could I possibly need more than what I've got? That my problems don't matter. Don't count. Aren't worth talking about. Are nothing. I'm a big baby. I'm a whining idiot. I'm not taking responsibility for myself. I'm choosing to be miserable. I'm choosing this hell for myself!

But when someone complains about having heart problems do people say "Well, don't we all?". Lots of people do have heart problems. Sometimes from their diet, sometimes from their lack of exercise...but for a lot of people with heart disease, they inherited the tendency from their family genes. Regardless, when people discuss their heart problems others don't fall into the same kind of talk that they do around people with mental illness. They don't say things like "Well, if you just exercise more it will be fine." Because, if they're wrong, a person could die.

If a thyroid stops regulating itself and a person is suffering and tells friends that they're all messed up and miserable and are going to have to take medicine to regulate it for the rest of their lives, do you hear friends saying "Well, maybe if you just meditate it will start regulating itself again!" or "Why don't you just stop eating wheat, you're probably just allergic to wheat." or "Everyone has some kind of medical condition..."? No, because if anyone talked like that to someone with a physiological condition only a complete ass would talk like that.

But when it comes to the brain and the nervous system people always want something else to be the reason a person is wanting to die, or to never leave their room again, or to pick at the skin on their heads until their scalps bleed. It must be curable and there must be some simple remedy.

But there's not. There are a lot of things a person can do to support their mental health but even if they do everything known to help, they are not ever going to be fixed. And nothing is going to change the fact that their brains don't regulate the chemical messages sent to the nervous system, or make enough of the right ones. It is what it is.

And one thing it's not: normal.

My anxiety isn't unrecognized anger. There are plenty of things I feel angry about. I know the difference. The anxiety I feel is caused by my body not making enough of the chemicals I need in order to be more balanced, or my body is making enough of the chemicals but my brain (for whatever reason) is unable to use those chemicals properly.

Basically, when I feel panicky at the sight of carolers my brain is sending my nervous system a false message, or too strong of a message. What might ordinarily be annoyance at having to deal with an uncomfortable experience and hear music I hate becomes something I would much rather run from than face just to ease the racing heart and the blipping fritzing mind. It isn't rational, or reasonable, and what's really going on isn't a thought out response to a situation but a physical reaction brought on by a physical malfunction.

Mental illness is a physiological problem.

Which explains why getting exercise, a balanced diet, plenty of sleep, and sunshine all help ease depression and anxiety. But until we understand exactly how all these chemicals work, until we can map out exactly how the brain doles out the chemical messages to the nervous system and what precise function has gone wrong when things aren't working well, nothing will really fix it.

Medications such as the one I take help a great deal. They help people like me come back to near-normal brain function. If I wasn't on Paxil I would be obsessing about imminent earthquakes*, serial killers, death of my child, wood rot, my friends not being my friends, slipping and falling again, and meteor showers destroying my house. I would not be getting any sleep. I would be worried all day long about everything I've said in the last week having caused someone offense and wondering how I might have said things differently; replaying every conversation in my head over and over until I get it just right. I would be yelling at my kid and my husband all the time just because of the crazy amount of noise that three people living together makes and constantly dreaming of floating away on a boat by myself to a little cabin where no one can find me and I can scream the primal scream on the top of my lungs until my throat bleeds.

Is this how you are without medication? Because if you find yourself saying "That's exactly how I am." then I have news for you: YOU ARE NOT NORMAL EITHER.

So today I am on the low ebb. I am feeling lonely even though there's people all around me. The snow is falling which I love, but part of me is riding around an old groove with old songs and messages and I have a hunger for something that doesn't exist. I keep reaching out and feel disconnected anyway. Maybe Internet life is unhealthy for me. Maybe constantly throwing words out there hoping it hits something or someone is like casting a net of fragile thread across the milky way.

The kid has been home for six days straight and I'm tired of the noise and filling needs and not being good enough and soothing frustrations, wiping away tears, brushing off everything I can't fix. But it's all still in my lap. I am not good at this game. I need an empty house. Empty of everyone. Of dog. Of boy. Of man. I need to not be needed all the time. Tomorrow will most likely be another school day, followed by a two week vacation from school. I feel shredded already.

But this is just how it is. There is always going to be low ebb. Like low tide. Everyone feels that rhythm in life, that part of my experience is normal. Off days and good days. It's just that they're amplified for me and people like me. I get tired faster and for longer.

There may be no Christmas cards sent out again this year.

Even as I speak the kid is combusting with his own imperiousness which is stressing out the man and they bicker and the dog is whining for something I can't give her. I need a safe empty place to curl up and not be.

Anyone have a padded cell I could borrow?







*I've been known to go on six hour crying jags over earthquakes that haven't happened yet. I've also been known to not sleep for three weeks after experiencing small ones.

Anxiety

What if you spent your entire life training for the last breath you take? What if every shadow had a face, a possible name, a criminal history, and it wanted you? What if every day you had to get up like a shot out of a hot cannon? What if you woke with your heart racing, as though you'd already been running a marathon for all the hours you were sleeping, so that, in fact, you wake up exhausted but in motion? What if every time you step out on a balcony a voice in your head compels you to see what would happen if you jumped? Right now.

What if your world was never quiet? What if every situation in life presents you with five hundred angles that require close examination before you can proceed?

And what if you hear all the people in the world crying, laughing, hacking, dying, grabbing, loving, hating, bleeding out, escaping like little whisps of natural scentless gas into the atmosphere with the smallest whoosh, the smallest exhalation before sliding away. What if you always heard the entire world all at once and could never turn it off?

What if you couldn't sleep for weeks? What if you spent every night listening, because you had no other choice, and you become exhausted with living, with breathing, with not sleeping, and you begin to see life on separate planes all at the same time? Like a clairvoyant with no answers. Like a prophet with no wisdom. You just get more tired; hungry for sleep like a wild beast in a trap, waiting and hoping for something else.

I remember the 70' tree in our yard in Santa Rosa which caused me some fairly serious "concern". We had had some pretty intense storms and I was afraid that the tree, which was absolutely tilting, was going to kill the neighbors behind our house who lived directly in the trajectory of the great tree- I had figured out which way it was going to fall by close unscientific observation. There was no question in my mind that it was going to kill some people and that there was no amount of insurance that was going to make that come out alright.

Philip did not see understand my concerns at all. He said it was solid, even if it was tilting, and no storm was just gonna blow it over. I thought he was awfully condescending to think I had no solid basis for concern. Because I'm just a person that worries. About everything. We had unresolved discussions about the tree. I would have felt a lot better just chopping it down. Because then it wouldn't be able to kill anyone. We settled for getting an arborist to make sure the tree was healthy and not about to topple.

Meanwhile, our neighbors Matt and Sue (who we loved!), were having a similar quiet unresolved disagreement about their own Douglas Fir tree which had been topped at one point and Matt thought was quite dangerous. It had dropped some branches. Sue thought Matt was just worrying too much. Being a real ninny about this stupid tree thing. We all four of us chatted about our dangerous trees and Philip and Sue rolled their eyes while Matt and I completely supported each other in the debate. I absolutely agreed with Matt that a tremendously tall (but topped) fir tree is a danger in a terrible storm. He agreed that a 70' tilting fir tree was enough of a menace to look into.

But then we were relating the very same situation over the fence with another neighbor and he said to me "You worry way too much about everything!" And I looked at him keenly, like I'd just seen my first human and thought "If this dude even knew a quarter of what was going through my brain all day he would cry like a baby and beg for shock therapy."

Some time later I was talking with Matt, Sue, and Mike again and I mentioned casually how I had never had a license to drive a car and they all became slightly more electric, but polite, and asked me why. I said that I never wanted to be the person behind the wheel that kills other people's children. I'm not sure what they expected me to say. Mike said, again, "You really worry way too much. You've got to stop worrying!"

"Yes. It's a clinical problem. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder."

I said it very matter of factly and to do my neighbors justice they all just took it in stride and never again cajoled me for worrying too much.

You have to imagine what life would be like if everything you did, and every person you met, and even your own brain, was a dangerous entity full of constant threat. It isn't rational and that's what's maddening. I am cognizant of the irrationality of my brain but helpless to enforce more rational thought. The impulses of my brain have been reinforced by my life experiences. I was literally never in a safe environment from the place where I was born until I found myself living alone. There has never been a day in my life when I have felt protected, safe, or sheltered. I lived in a physically and emotionally dangerous place for every single year of my life until maybe it became safer, more sheltered, and calm when I lived by myself when I was nineteen years old.

Who would you be if you could never trust a soul? Who would you be if you couldn't count on love, family, or any adult in your life, to make you safe? Who would you be if your whole experience of life was that you had to protect yourself and know that when you were a very small being you couldn't protect yourself?

You carry it with you.

There is no recrimination here. I do not look back on my life with any bitterness. Truly. I save all my bitterness for the vicissitudes of fortune in the past few years. Those I've loved, those who've loved me, my family, my friends, there is no blame and no need for sorrow, digressing into those tense years of the past. I don't wish to punish, to accuse or open old wounds. I wish only to tell those who might not know, how a person gets to be like me.

How a person lives a life never once truly trusting another human being.

I have said before that I am the master at appearing alright. It is true. You will never see all my true colors. No one ever has. I attempt to show them here on my blog because in spite of its exposure to the public, it feels more safe and private than any other place I've ever been. Because I can turn everyone off here. If I feel attacked I can moderate comments. I can shut you all out if I need to.

You can't shut out the people you'd die for.

It is so difficult for me to reveal any truths that involve my family because we are a fragile group. There are secrets that aren't only mine to tell. I can't say a lot. Partly it's because I love my family more than I think they ever really know.

My mom: who I always wanted to protect more than myself because she is one of those incredible exotic rare flowers that burst wide open into the desert heat- fearless for the burns she will inevitably suffer- she is the most gorgeous human I have ever met and she lives large and is generous in her heart and unwise in every way a heart can be. She is part child and part wise woman. It is almost impossible for people to not love her on contact because she is so breathtakingly daring and when she loves she loves with all of her.

My Dad: whose enjoyment of life and whose loyalty to kin have given me a great example to live by. Our relationship is fraught with thorns, yet he has always been there like a solid wall- paying for my root canal when I was 21 years old and broker than the ocean- encouraging me to get to know my biological father though it must have cost him something to seem so casual about it. I love his laugh, his enjoyment of the silly, his simple expectation that we will continue to work things out. He has gone through transformations gorgeous.

My brother: whose tough spirit I so relate to. Whose obsessive need for control is like a second heartbeat to mine. When we were growing up I would have given up my soul to protect him from his constant malevolent harm and abuse. I think he will never know how much I saw in him a warm heart, a genius artist, and a funny brother. It broke my heart a thousand times that I could not be an effective big sister. That I was powerless to stop the abuse. That I was so paralyzed by fear that I could only watch and fall apart inside. He was my second soul.

My sister: whose sweet/tart nature I abused because I was too envious to appreciate her properly, for which I've been ashamed for years. Whose love I have been striving to earn ever since. A woman with whom I have the most piquant things in common such as our love of airports. I watch her now and see that she is as beautiful and swelling with generosity as the mother we share. I see her like a movie star and I want to be worthy of her admiration. She has grown up alone in so many ways and I wish I'd known she needed me as our brother did. I love her so much that sometimes I think I'll explode with it.

All of them have their own part in my life. Things I can't tell because it's their story too.

I have often felt invisible to them all. I've begun to feel my mother's eyes on me. I'm so damn far from perfect, her little mentally ill first born. But I have heard her speak now in ways I swear my little infant self never heard. Maybe I wasn't listening loudly enough.

There are ways that those like me become who we are. Some of it is because of the way we're wired when we're born. And then there's the rest of it. Some us can say why, some of us are bound not to. Secrets can be corrosive but sometimes just knowing why is enough. Telling others may not change a damn thing.

I have never, a single day in my life that I can remember, not felt this pressing fear. A sense of vague (or acute) danger. It has been present in my body my whole life. Getting a diagnosis was, therefore, a relief. It helps to know that it's not something I can just wish away. It's not something I can meditate away. It pulses in my blood. I will worry about the texture of the paper I'm writing on because I can hear the pen moving across the fibers as though it was a sound that everyone can hear.

There were many days of my life when the fear was a rational response to the unsafe environment I lived in. So for me it is always real. Even when it's not.

Every morning I wake up I kind of hope it's all over. The worrying. The vague dread. The panic. The sense of danger. And every day I wake up to the same anxiety about what today will bring.

Today was pretty wonderful. I got stuff done, I hung out with friends, I rode my bike with my son, I enjoyed my wonderful spouse's company, I enjoyed the setting sun on a rooftop bar in the town I've settled down in, and just enjoyed myself royally. Really, I did. But the point of this post is that in spite of all this enjoyment there is still a shadow of anxiety that lives in my flesh. It is unshakable. Like a heart defect, or a cancer. This is what my legacy is. My neurological challenge. My brain doing it's own thing.

The main thing, at the end of the day, is that I still love my family and friends, no matter what.

My Own Small Spy

There are few things my boy likes more than being loaded down with fake weapons and tools for spying. What does it say about him? What does it say about me as a parent that I indulge him in his fantasy of violence and secret agent activity? Why don't I insist that he dress up in some gentle fashion such as pretending to be a cluster of grapes, or a bible figure (you know, one of the bible characters that didn't kill, rape, sodomize, or steal other people's babies), or insist that he dress up as an age appropriate Barney?

Because I'm a bad mommy. That's why. It is, of course, deeply ironic that I should land myself with a child who loves weapons and video games and dare-devil activities seeing as I would like to level the human fighting field by removing all automatic weapons, bombs, and missiles from the planet. While my son thinks it would be so cool to fight an opponent of some kind with a deathly quick weapon in some crazy design, I think guns and bombs and missiles are cowardly.

Violence is not something I celebrate. Never the less, my kid wants to be a spy.

They are gone. I have put a note on my door to not ring the bell. Take some candy and go. I am having palpitations. I loath this holiday. Please forgive me Amanda! I have been completely stressed out over Max's costume for days, first because he wanted me to make something I wasn't capable of making, and then because I didn't have enough time to make the costume he settled for when I convinced him I couldn't make him a suit of cyber-armor. Right as they were going out the door, the plastic keys to his new plastic FBI agent handcuffs broke and he decided that come hell or high water, he was not going to go trick or treating.

I insisted that he go. Firstly because I know that once he gets down town where half the children in McMinnville are going to go trick or treating, he will unbend and have a good time. Unlike me, he enjoys romping around with a million other hyped up immature souls. Secondly, I had just finished sewing the black spy outfit that I'd been frantically not getting anywhere with for twenty four hours.

What I want to do right now is hide under a thousand blankets and watch old episodes of "Friends". I want to drink beer and not think about all the craziness out there. I want a serene evening of curmudgeonly pursuits. I don't want to see all the kids in their costumes. I went to Max's classroom to their "harvest party" which consists of doing a bunch of really cheesy artsy projects like making spiders out of pipe cleaners and lolly pops. I didn't know I was going to be a volunteer, by the way. It's not like I had a terrible time or anything. In a weird kind of way I think I get kids more than most adults. I like them and view them as immature people, which is what they are. I see them and I recognize in them a hundred different paths their life may take them down. I don't see them as innocent little bugs of fun.

Children are not carefree little beings. There are a million agonies each of them is experiencing. Figuring out your place in the social strata is a constant shuffling activity full of mortification, pride, hope, fear, camaraderie, and also loneliness. Adults often gloss over those little childish skirmishes and play down those experiences as though they are just funny little things kids go through. In reality, a child's mortification over not being picked first for a classroom group is really no less than an adult experiences when their partner breaks up with them in a bar. Adults like to think their problems are so much bigger than a child's could ever be. You have to consider scope. You have to consider the scale of a child's life.

Anyway, I tend to get along with most kids because I can see on their level and I don't treat them like sweet little angels of light and airy goodness. I talk to them like they're people and treat them like they're people. Most kids like that. I enjoyed interacting with the kids but it didn't ameliorate the stress I feel about this holiday.

There was a time, long, long ago, when Halloween was my second favorite holiday. (Thanksgiving was always my first favorite) There was a time when thinking up and executing costumes gave me an intense joy. I actually won a couple of school costume contests,which was great since I failed to distinguish myself in any other way. But those days are gone. Maybe I did too much dressing up? Maybe I invested too much too soon and I burnt out young.

Here I am, thirty seven years old, and I dread Halloween. I hate having to answer my door all night long to complete strangers and "ooh" and "aaaah" to all the kids and glare at the teen-agers who have come with their pillow cases open and have not bothered to dress up at all. I hate the noise, the commotion, the whole to-doing. It always stresses me out to have strangers knock on my door. On Halloween they come in droves. Or they don't, but you have to be ready in case they do. There's the whole candy thing- do you give each kid a handful, two pieces, or just one? I like to be generous, but if a shitload of kids come to my door how will I be sure not to run out of candy? Or what if I have enough to give several pieces to each child but only two kids come (that happened once) and I'm left with enough candy to make an effigy of Jesus with?

You think my worries end there? What if the kids don't like the candy I'm handing out and are disappointed? Or what if I run out of candy and don't get a note on the door fast enough... the door keeps ringing and ringing and ringing? What if some creepy posse of teen boys decides my candy isn't what they're looking for and they'd like my wallet instead? What if a pedophile comes to the door with his niece and I don't notice? What if I have to talk to people I don't like?

Yeah. I know I have problems. Have I ever tried to deny it?

It's quiet out there right now, but that's because it is only just now getting dark. My boy is out there in that crazy world. I would actually prefer him here, where we can all take part in our usual comfortable routine, but at the same time, I don't want my boy to be like me. I don't want him hiding out and missing the "fun". He's not even quite seven years old yet. I don't want him to get heart palpitations from anxiety.

Most of you people I know are out there right now too. Romping joyfully with your kids. Loving the magic that is childhood*. You are laughing at the cute antics of your miniature selves and relishing the family time that is the hallmark of life with children. You aren't wishing your medication could be doubled up on nights like this. You aren't baking potatoes and desperately looking forward to when all people are in bed and asleep again. Because that's when I'll be at ease again.

Incidentally, this is the only time of year when I eat candy bars. I don't tend to eat a lot of candy. I don't crave it. Except on Halloween. I would feel that Armageddon had arrived if I passed a Halloween without eating those bite sized candy bars en mass. They're kind of nasty, actually. But I can't not have them. So I have broken with my new local eating ways to accommodate a tradition that I'm pretty sure is written in stone.

I have failed so royally today. I didn't get any pumpkins carved. I made a lame-ass costume for my boy that I finished up a half an hour after he should have already started walking downtown. I didn't make dinner. I didn't do any housework.

Oh boy. Now the damn dog is all riled up. The people are coming. This is in real time, by the way. Kind of like reporting in the trenches. Only I'm hiding in the sand-bag. How surly of me that I don't want to see kids dressed up like ridiculous Disney characters. Seriously, the dog is nuts with the interesting noise out there, barking nonstop.

It's almost seven. I guess I should check on the candy supply? But what if I run into people coming up the path? I'd like to slip out there invisibly. I have Friends on. I have beer. My potatoes are almost done baking. When the kid comes home it will take almost an hour to wind him down from the evening's excitement. During which time I will be desperately watching the clock for that inevitable time when he must be tucked in.

Ah, my starchy goodness is all ready for me. Back to my television and my bed where I await the end of the evening where-in I will revel in the gloomy quiet that always follows a fevered holiday. Good night all. In spite of my own personal feelings about this holiday-I really do hope you all have a good evening free of palpitations and barking madness!




*Not my view, obviously.

Dog Eared

Remember when the mail used to arrive in the mailbox instead of being shoved through a hole in the door where the dog turns into a vicious rabid beast and tries to rip fingers off of the postman? Back when there was no dog to haul favorite publications into "secret" corners where she drags all forbidden treats to maul them in private? Ah, those were good times. Philip isn't a magazine whore like I am, but there are three publications he looks forward to: The Rivendell Reader, Dirt Rag, and Bicycle Quarterly. This last treasure was hauled off to the "secret" corner and was violated by my dog's teeth.

Indeed, they can look so beseechingly up at you and you wonder how the heck such a compact package of muscle, teeth, claws, and dense black fur could bring upon one house such mayhem, such disorder, such complete destruction of personal property.

No I don't. I don't wonder at all. The only thing I wonder about is how I fell under her spell in the first place. It's the irony of the black dog.* The irony being that in twenty five years of being terrified of dogs, I was always most terrified of black labs. And now I have one. And I love her.

I can feel that this post is going to wander all over the place. I want to report that Max has had two temper tantrums and neither one brought about a blood bath. One of them was a spectacular show of screams and wails and hyperventilating, a show which only last week would have brought on the side show. So that's promising. Hopefully not misleading.

I have been so happy canning food and picking produce at the farm, riding my scooter on the back roads in the countryside, and watching my jars fill up. This is the kind of thing I love to do the most. I was bound to crash from that high. It's inevitable. I started thinking about how I have to look for part time work. I checked Craig's list for jobs. Then I checked the local newspaper listings. And then I got really depressed and panicky at the same time. My favorite emotional cocktail. I don't want to work outside my home. It's not because I think I'm some kind of princess. It's not that I don't want to help Philip keep us afloat.

I started thinking that here I have this company, I have stuff to sell, I have this business that I've painstakingly built into a multi-dollar institution. I realized that what I ought to do is go get some wholesale accounts. There are lots of cool stores in Portland. Then I was thinking about how I want to produce my apron patterns to sell to quilt shops. So I actually did what I've been meaning to do for all eternity and went to a couple of local print shops to find out how much it would cost to print one. The answer is: they will happily take your left breast for one large printed page. It has become immediately apparent that I can't produce them commercially to sell wholesale. It's too expensive. I don't know where other people get them printed and how many they have to print to make it affordable, but they aren't doing it through my local copy shops.

So my bright idea plummeted and my mood went south with it. I got to feeling like every which way I turn, I am no longer capable of earning a living. Even if I want to. I could work at a mushroom farm for $8.00 an hour and put Max in daycare. That sounds like fun. (Actually I keep thinking about it. Unfortunately I don't think we could afford daycare with a salary like that.) I'm not qualified for most jobs now. It's the classic risk of staying home to be with your child for any length of time. You lose your spot in the professional world.

I would much prefer working on my business. I would like to find out how to promote my web-store, how to bring customers to my shop directly rather than shoot myself in the foot trying to make it doing wholesale. I would like to have my company do well enough that I don't have to work for someone else. First of all, to do that requires time and energy. Two things I won't have any of if I work outside the home even part time.

Secondly, I have not regained my confidence. Remember how I'm the HUMAN MONEY REPELLENT? Is my company worth working on? I've been doing it for three years and it's gone almost nowhere. They say a business takes a long time to establish, but how do I know if it's headed in the right direction? How do I know if it's worth giving CPR to it? This used to be the kind of stuff my gut would help me with. I have no inner compass anymore when it comes to business. The only thing my gut is telling me is that I SUCK AT BUSINESS.

Which reminds me: I found out yesterday that I can take a seminar on running my small business and making it more profitable for the small class price of $595. Doesn't it seem like anyone (like myself) who really needs a class like this is probably not in a position to hand over what amounts to their life savings? It seems to me that a good business decision would be to keep my $595 in my pocket.

Anyway...Philip thinks I should work on my business. Since the refinance went through we have a little leeway before the other shoe drops on our life as poor people. His saying I should work on my business shows a level of confidence in me that I don't think is much deserved. I'm scared to make the wrong decisions. I'm worried that I've already been given the message to stop trying to make money with my own designs and get myself to the mushroom farm where I'll at least get exercise. Is there any reason I should believe that if I do some more work on my company that it'll start picking up?

I started writing mental letters (a favorite past time) to Moda:

"To whom it may concern at Moda,

I think it would be a big mistake not to hire me to come up with great ideas for your "Sliced Bread" line.

Sincerely,
The Human Money Repellent"

I do have lots of great ideas. My head is full of them. (Even as I write this I am wondering if that's actually true.) If I can't use them, wouldn't they be a great asset to someone else?

I really don't know what to do. I don't know what's the smart choice. I know I can't do everything. I know a direction has to be chosen. I think this not knowing what to do is payback for all the times I have been exacerbated by other people not being able to decide what to do. Here's me: with their shoes on.

Why oh why did Max's Magic Eight-ball kick the bucket??!!!!

Philip has basically decided for me. He wants me to work on my company. So we agreed that I would spend the next week finishing up my canning projects, then clean and begin the torturous process of cleaning up and organizing the garage, and then I will hunker down and start to clean up and organize my business (which requires that the garage be cleaned and organized since it's filled with my business and store things). I just hope I'm not wasting more time and energy on a horse with a broken leg.

I need an expert to step in and advise. If any of you are experts, please step in and advise. Otherwise, just watch and see what happens like I'm going to be doing.

In other news, it is a gorgeous day out there. Fall is here. I feel it in the air and fall is a great time to not be depressed. I love the cold as it creeps into the sunshine. I love how it grabs at your bones and fills them with crisp energy. I'm going to go pick more tomatoes and enjoy my last few days of "care free" homesteading fun. Doing the things I'm best at doing. And listening to the first four songs on the Wilco album that features Billy Bragg and is nothing but Woody Guthrie songs and poems made into songs. The same four songs...OVER...AND...OVER.

The poor neighbors.

*I really think this should be the title of a book. Since I'm not writing any books but keep coming up with great titles for them, I wonder if I could come up with a career based on selling book titles to authors?

Update: I have had a chat with a good friend who has helped me begin to clear away all the extraneous crap that stands between me and doing what I want to be doing. What I need to be doing. I can tell you that I am already breathing more deeply. She's going to help me come up with an ORGANIZED plan. This is why we have friends. I will report more on this at a later time when I am not in need of blasting music before the kid comes home from school. I don't know if there's an end to this tunnel, but I do know there's some light somewhere ahead of me in it. I hope it's not "white" and filled with Jesus.

17 eggplants, 20 tomatoes, 5 zucchinis, 7 hot peppers, 2 bunches basil, 3 onions, and 2 cucumbers for: $23.18

I picked the eggplants and tomatoes myself. Now, in my new bargain shopping ways, wouldn't you say that I got quite a lot of produce for my money? Considering that I once paid $9.00 for three tomatoes at a pricey (but gorgeous) upscale market* I feel like I've done quite well here. The way to shop during the summer is to do as much u-pick as possible, preserve tons of what you can't eat fresh, and don't buy any produce between four walls.

This is nice in theory, but I do still have to buy some things in the market like cilantro because no local farms are selling it. This region is very short on fresh grown herbs.

I think Russian accents are way sexier than Italian or British accents.

You weren't expecting that, were you? It's one of those things that is just randomly floating around in my head.

It's already 10:27 and I haven't started my laundry yet, which is a problem because I haven't got any clean underwear. So I should go start a load right now. But there's nothing I feel like doing less.**

That was also floating around in there.

Some good news is that our refinance loan got approved! Yay! So if it all goes through smoothly, we will be able to keep our house, for the time being. Plus there may be a part time job I can do from home, but I won't know if I'll get it for a few weeks.

There are lots of little things nagging at my brain right now. I wish they would go away, but they're like fast fruit flies that are always just ahead of the swatting hand. They slip into shadow where I can't find them until the air is still and then they're right there again, hanging onto the wall of my brain. In case anyone is wondering what it's like to have a clinical problem with anxiety, this is how it is most of the time. Medication really helps with the bigger issues but it doesn't really kill the brain flies. Without constant maintenance the flies multiply quickly. Sometimes I worry that they'll start coming out of my nose. They do often come out of my mouth in the form of random and often inappropriate thoughts being expressed without regard to the company I'm in.

Life is much too messy for a person like me. I feel best when I am immersed in a project that takes absolutely all of my concentration and the hours fill with the drive to see to the task at hand. Which is why I love becoming obsessed with preserving food in the summer. I can temporarily forget all my concerns. As soon as I slow down, like today, all the little threads that need tending start to press in on me and I want to crawl away from them and have someone clean up all the messes while I'm not looking.

At least my burn is no longer leaking.

Zac Ephron (the "hunk" in all the magazines who is in some show I've never seen about a high school musical, which frankly sounds like an awful nightmare to me) looks like a pre-teen. It makes me uncomfortable that such a baby face is being called a hunk in grown up gossip rags. Are adult women swooning over him? Why is he everywhere? He looks like a girl.

More things floating around in my noggin.

I think the word "hunk" should stop being used. I hate it. I think it sounds very course.

Well, I better go get dressed. Lots to do today. Like place an order for oilcloth. Finish up two courage boxes. Take photos for Etsy. Copy some recipes from my well used cookbooks into my recipe box. Make tons of food to can and freeze. Work on a cushion covering project. Work on sending out an Etsy order. And do laundry.

Max's bloody noses are back. I'll leave you with that little bit of brain float. Have a great afternoon!

*For the record, I had no idea the tomatoes were going to be that expensive until I was rung in. I have a problem making a ruckus at check out stands, a little problem of mine, and so I meekly paid for the tomatoes while feeling that I had just robbed Max of his college education.

**Right after I wrote that I decided to drag my reluctant bones to the laundry room with a load and I found my "last" clean pair. That's in quotations because who knows if there's really another pair lurking in that mountain of wrinkled clean clothes?

The First Carrot

(And all kinds of talk about faith and karma and other heavy topics.)

This morning I came in with more beets (all small in size), one carrot, one tomato, two impossibly small yellow crookneck squashes, and a few more pickling cucumbers.

I also managed to pick this modest vase of flowers. If I want more flowers I'm going to have to go out there and pull up a truckload of weeds which are choking everything out. I'm going to have to deadhead the roses and pinch off the dead flowers from the daisies and zinnias.

Where I will find time for this while caring for my child who refuses to go outside unless I fight him tooth and nail, while Philip sends in resumes and looks for work which he needs to have if we are going to avoid having to sell our house, I really don't know. If I were to manage to squeeze out even a few moments to accomplish any fraction of the above chores...I have to pray my sore back doesn't turn into a broken back. I wake up every morning unrefreshed with that nasty ache in my shoulders, neck, and back. I think it's my bed trying to kill me in my sleep, but I can't seem to catch it in the act. It would never stand up in a court of law.

A low grade insistent insidious depression has been gracing me with an annoying inertia. I have no energy to do anything even when I have the time. Partly that's because having the store made my household come in last place for a year. Things are so out of order (and I have all the furniture and my whole studio from the store packed in my garage) that to do any small thing here requires a huge chain of events to precede it. Like, if you want to put away the emptied out canning jars as we use them, you must first make room for them somewhere which requires shifting everything in the kitchen just a little.

There's also this colossal anxiety. Always. Every day. Panic in my chest. Dread. Which mounts to an untenable cacophony every single day I listen to my boy complaining about pretty much everything in his life and how he may as well have not been born. Philip does a great deal to add to that cacophony with his own anxiety and the fact that he is always saying the right things to piss our boy off just a little more. How does a six year old access so much negativity? How does he come to see a spat with the neighbor kid as conclusive proof that he will never find any boys his own age who like to do the exact same things as him and he shouldn't even bother because there aren't any in our WHOLE TOWN?!

I guess the apple didn't even bother falling off the tree.

On a lighter note, if I just push everything aside for a few hours by using my superpowers to freeze the whole world in it's tracks, I could do my first batch of pickles of the season today. Maybe. If I can muster up the energy while I put Max in his closet with his game boy, just maybe I could do it. I've got enough from my own garden for a small batch. I love dill pickles.

One thing that feels really good and is a tremendous relief to me is the clean wood floors in my kitchen and dining room. AAAAAhh. No more repulsive animal and people stained oatmeal colored area rug. It's wonderful to walk on that smooth clean mopped surface. Cool to the toes, not harboring diseases or nasty little what-have-yous. The kitchen floor was just scary. I am not crazy about having wood floors in there, I mean to say that while hardwood is my all time favorite flooring, I'm hard on everything I own and use and the kitchen is a room in my house that gets tremendous wear. It just seems like that finish on the wood is going to wear out super fast.

Maybe not, though, it actually still looks pretty good when I mop it.

I don't have a lot of spiritual faith. Most of what I believe in I believe because I can see that it's true. Like karma. The concept of karma is even in the bible. It isn't called karma, but it's there. The whole concept that there are consequences for behavior, whether good or bad, that will lower on our shoulders. When we live thoughtfully with compassion for others we tend to have better relationships and people will reach out to you in times of need. If you live selfishly and meanly then you will find yourself shut off from all help in times of misfortune. This is a concept you can verify in your life. Try it and see. It's true that you will reap what you sow, though perhaps not immediately. That's not something I have faith in, it's something I believe because I've seen it born out my whole life.

I also believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything that happens is supposed to happen. I came to this sometimes uncomfortable conclusion in my early twenties when I found it couldn't be refuted by a reasonable mind. I don't think there's a person on earth who hasn't wished to refute it at some point in their life. But if something has happened, you can't reasonably say it wasn't meant to happen. Maybe YOU didn't mean it to happen, but it was meant to happen because it did. You can reasonably say that YOU didn't mean something to happen, but if you unload your own intentions and back off a little, you will see that the Universe, or God did mean it to happen, because it happened. Humans do not control the universe. Nature, facts, life cycles, maybe even God does, but we don't. So ultimately, what we mean to have happen in our lives is only a small part of our life. We have only control over the choices we make, not on the outcomes of our actions.

Somehow I think I may not have spoken as clearly as I had hoped.

It has always bothered me when people say "He/She wasn't meant to die so young!" But how can that be true if He/She is, in fact, dead? We are surprised when people die young, we are devastated, we are sorrowful, but how can we know what is meant to happen except by seeing what is happening and what has happened?

I take comfort in these beliefs. I have never been able to believe in the idea that God will take care of your needs if only you have faith in him. Oh yeah? I don't know about that. That's not something born out by proof in my opinion. I guess it depends on how you think God interprets our needs. I know that there are a lot of people out there who desperately need food and are dying because no food is available to them. Does this mean that what they really need is to starve to death? Or that they don't have enough faith?

It's entirely possible that when the bible mentions God always taking care of his children that it means only in a spiritual sense. Not in a literal corporeal sense. But if that's so, then I think it's unconscionable to tell people that God will take care of their needs as a form of comforting the poor, or the sick, or the lost and letting them think that if they pray enough and give the church money or whatever it is having enough faith means, that their sickness will be cured, their poverty lifted, or that they'll find their way back to themselves.

The idea of faith bothers me a lot. Faith as in: a belief not based on proof.

I do believe in the other definition of faith: confidence or trust in a person or thing.

They are not the same. Often, religion asks you to have a faith not based on proof.

I guess I'm thinking about all this right now because I believe that whatever the future holds for me and my family, whether we have to sell our house and rent something to get by, or whether we are fortunate and find work and get to stay here in some degree of comfort, I believe everything will unfold just as it's meant to. What we can do for ourselves is keep slogging away at trying to find work, put our best feet forward, try to tame the chaos that having and then closing a store has wreaked in our lives, and if we still end up a wreck, then that's just what we have to go through. As scary as it is to me to face joblessness in this strangling economy, I do not get to decide the ultimate outcome of my life. I steer it as best I can and then the rest is up to nature, luck, the forces that be, and possibly even karma.

The thing that worries me is that getting therapy, chiropractic medicine, massage, and counseling for Max, plus necessary trips to the dentist all cost money we can't afford to spend. Not to mention visits to the vet. I don't feel I'm in a position to take care of these important things until we have an income again. It's a classic American problem. It doesn't matter how important all of these things are, if you don't have the money for them, you don't take care of them.

I think I need to drink more coffee. I just heard from Philip a minute ago that the new pot of coffee I brewed spilled all over the counter because I failed to put the pot in correctly. Damn.

What's weird is that we are exactly where we were a year and a half ago. Exactly. As though we have made no progress at all. It kind of freaks me out. How long can a person go without work? No, don't answer that question, I already know the answer. I'm going to go investigate the coffee situation and put my head in the grounds.

Panic Rising

So we're having a "huge" cocktail party at the store on Friday. I put "huge" in quotations because, honestly, I have no idea who will come, how many will come, and all I can hear in my head is this question:

What the mother lovin' hell have I done?

I hate parties. The bigger they are the more I hate 'em. Having to make small talk with more than two people I don't know in one evening is just enough to make me want to crawl out of my own skin. If you've ever seen me in action at such an event, you will surely be dying to say "But Angelina, you seemed totally comfortable and were talking to everyone. I can't believe it's as bad as you say." That is the single most frustrating thing about normal people, they assume that everyone wears their discomfort on their sleeves. I have spent a life time trying to blend with the crowd and not seem completely batty. I've gotten very good at it.

Seriously. I'm very good at making you believe that I am totally comfortable when what I really want to do is pull out my arm hairs one by one*. Some might call that a very fine ability to lie. I call it a well honed ability to appear completely at ease so others aren't made uncomfortable by my discomfort. It is very self serving as making other people uncomfortable just makes me feel more like an outcast.

Here's a really fine example of my small talk skill: I'm sitting with a married couple I have just met an hour ago and I ask "So, how long have you guys been married?" They've been married for twenty years. So I say "Wow, That's awesome!" Pause, while a worrisome thought occurs to me which I spew out "Hey, you aren't about to get a divorce or anything, are you?"

Exactly one hour into meeting them and I'm already asking them something considered by most standards to be off the charts personal. Right above "So, have you gotten a boob job recently?".

That's what happens when I'm actually comfortable socially. I spew stuff. Random stuff. Chilling thoughts. All kinds of dark alleyways in my conversations open up and suck us into party-worthy discussions such as "How do we define ourselves sexually and at what point are your sexual practices a matter for public concern?"

When I'm uncomfortable I tend to seem like a breezy person capable of inhaling an entire bowl of chips while I pretend I'm in my element. Snacking helps ease the burden of being sociable. Another indication of my true state of mind is in my hem twisting.

Never heard of hem twisting? I'm sure tons of other people do this too, right? RIGHT?

I twist the hems of my shirts around my fingers quite often. Really hard, so that my shirt hem becomes a finger tourniquet. The more uncomfortable or anxious I am the more constantly I twist my hem around my fingers. I often don't know I'm doing it. If anyone else has ever observed this habit, they've been kind enough not to point it out. I work really hard every single day of my life to control this compulsive habit. It bothers me that I do it but I've been doing it since I was a kid and it hurts my head to not do it when I have the urge to do it. Which is most of the time.

So we're having a cocktail party on Friday and I don't want to come to it. Can I bail on my own cocktail party? I only decided to do it because it's what most people would expect. Some big send off with a big sale. It's what at least five different people asked if I was going to do before we decided to do it.

Isn't there a back door in my life that I can just slip out of quietly?

There's a really long list riding on my shoulder too. I'm doing my best to ignore it but it keeps throwing peanut shells at my head.



*This will especially impress anyone who's seen my arm hairs which are plentiful and long.