May 2014 - Mental Health Awareness Month

Too much?  Ya think?

May is Mental Health Awareness Month which is incredibly good timing because it coincides with me needing to recycle last year's blog post announcing Mental Health Awareness Month.    Dumb luck or what?

So here's an oldie but goodie that I post every year to try and keep it real for everybody and I hope you'll like it but I probably won't notice if you don't because I'm hanging on this emotional rollercoaster ride at the moment by a very thin thread.  Because OH BY THE WAY I'm amending my Petition from Legal Separation to Dissolution which is the D she wants in "She Wants the D" (a friend told me).  But you should totes be aware of mental health and PAY ATTENTION  because it sucks being blamed for being sick.  You just never know what's going on with someone so just don't assume.  Unless you see me wandering around in the supermarket in my bathrobe.  Because then you should assume that you need to take my elbow gently but firmly and lead me back to the car and drive me home.  But I digress. Surprise.

I wrote this post before I even had a blog.  I was inspired by a friend who had just been diagnosed.  She was in a full-blown manic episode.  Watching her go through that reminded me of what my own episodes were like.   I'm calm enough now to articulate what it feels like to be so brilliant that you can't describe it.  Which is pretty goddamn ironic, if you ask me.

The hallmark of mania for me is how I feel like a superhero.  Creative and brilliant and simply on *fire* with wit and humor.    When I was riding the crest of a manic wave,  I used to say that I didn't need to eat or sleep because I was bionic.  I got really angry with people who said I was wrong to feel that way and that I needed to go to the hospital and take meds so that I wouldn't feel that way any more.   I would get so angry that I would snarl at them and claw and hiss and refuse to get out of the car.  Wouldn't you?  After I was finished the treatment that stopped that wonderful, invincible, genius feeling, I would quit taking my meds cold turkey.  I would carouse until all hours of the night, telling anyone who would listen my bright new ideas that tied up every loose end in the universe with one beautiful bow.   Holding court on the floor of my room in college, knocking over the bong with my expansive sweeps of my arms as I pontificated to my housemates, who thought I was brilliant, but knew I was nuts.  Destroying relationships.  Winning hearts and breaking them. Staying in my room for days, talking to myself and scaring my roommates away.  Ending up in the nut house time and again.

Now I can recognize when that superstar quality starts to burn and I know I have to nip it in the bud.  I let the few people close to me know and I go see the shrink and get extra support and all that good stuff.  It is the hardest thing in the world to voluntarily let go of that genius feeling.  I simply cannot tell you.  But I know that I must.  As great as the high feels, the low is going to be a gut-punch that knocks me flat, even though I know it's coming.  So I take my meds and I gather my loved ones around me and I brace myself.

     

A Beautiful Mind     

The hallmark of a depressive episode for me is not wanting to be here. I don't think about suicide per se.  I don't want to die.  I just want not to be here.  Everything I've done wrong (which is basically everything), every mistake I've made, every conversation gone awry, every wasted opportunity with my kids, my career -- they all gather together in a threatening thundercloud that hovers over me.  The horrible angry voices of what I call "The Committee" begin the litany of exactly how worthless, no, harmful my presence on the planet has been.  As evidence of why I shouldn't be here.  Shouldn't *have been* here.  This whole time.  I just want to curl up as small as possible, until I take up no space.  No one sees me.  I'm not here.

So.  Staying in the middle is a good thing.  Boring and safe.   Learning to feel my feelings, but not too much.  That's a tough one.  Because I feel my feelings.  A lot.  Possibly more than I should, whatever that means.  Apparently there is a normal amount of feeling, though how you could measure it, I don't know.  It certainly doesn't sound very fun to me.

My job is to stay safe.  To have creative energy, but not too much.  And to channel it in ways that make me glad to be here.  And to let it be okay to feel sad, from time to time.  But if "worthless" pops up on the psychic horizon, it's time to blow the whistle.  Time to remember to do the things that help me, in addition to my meds.  Swimming.  Playing music.  Creating this page, working out my thoughts, writing, laughing.  Making people laugh and shake their heads in self-recognition.  And maybe a little relief that they are not alone.

I have a mantra that is blinding in its banality.  It's insultingly simple.  And yet it works for me.  I'm embarrassed to admit it, but my mantra comes from a sitcom (yeah, I watch TV, I have teenagers, don't judge) called "How I Met Your Mother."

"When I'm sad, I stop being sad, and be awesome instead.  True story."

Of course it's not that easy.  But it reminds me that this too shall pass (god I hate that expression, yeah, this too shall pass like a goddamn kidney stone) and I will be awesome again.  Until I'm not.  And so on.  In the meantime, I have a blog.  And a page.   And a lot, I mean, like a metric fuck-ton of friends I've never met.  Who get it.  More than most people I know in real life.  I'll take it.  I mean, what else ya got?

Namaste.  And if you're wondering what that means, suffice to say that we meet in the middle where there's mutual respect and understanding.  We give each other the benefit of the doubt. We forgive ourselves and each other.  We're good to one another.   We don't have a choice. This is it. 

Namaste, you Nutjobs, you.    Happy Mental Health Awareness Month.  

Amateurs.

It's Nature's Way

How do you describe pain?  A sick feeling in the chest that flows out through the abdomen.  A aneurysm, no, an embolism.  A foreign object making its unwanted way through the circulatory system.  There's a reason we focus the description of our painful emotions on the heart.  The ache of unrequited love, the stabbing anger of betrayal, the claw of longing, the rage of jealousy.  That all happens right here.  She points to her breastbone, rubs her fist in a circle around it, massages it with the ball of her hand.  And dissolves for the thousandth time, the ten thousandth time, into the inexorable tears that feel so good in a twisted way.  The cheesy sayings, so trite, so true, wash away my trouble, wash away my pain, it's a wave that rushes up, out of nowhere, blindsided on the daily by it, after fifty years, still new every time.

She buries her face, not in her hands, but more profoundly than that, more like surrender really, into her bent forearms, cradling her head, wrapping herself up tight, the only comfort a solitary person can offer herself.   No one can do this with her.  She is all alone.   She takes brave, deep breaths, and shudders on the exhale, trying to muffle the sadness as it ripples through her.  Her friends sleep across the hall of thin walls.  They are worried about her.  She stays at work so late, then the gym, then the tutoring center to pick up her son.  She goes home finally after everyone's in bed, so she doesn't have to see their kindly questioning concerned faces.

She turns into the cul-de-sac and rolls up to the house.  Through the parted curtains she sees her ex-husband, talking with someone, her daughter probably, in that pedantic way he has, as though he were instructing, not lecturing exactly, but he has an irritating, condescending way of speaking. He knows more than you, so he has to be right.  Has all his answers ready to go, favorite book, favorite movie, or at least his top five, his top ten.  Let's see who can name more Oscar-winners.  Who won Best Actress in what year, for which role?   Now she sees him losing confidence, faltering, maybe even reeling, from the blow her departure has dealt him.  

She had dinner this evening with some friends and there was an endocrinologist there.  Even though she knew it was rude, she couldn't help herself and pumped the woman for information, for validation.  

Q.  Could someone with two bouts of acute pancreatitis in three years continue to drink?   
A.  No.  Telling the patient that it would be okay to drink would be malpractice.  
Q.  And could "the patient" just up and keel over at any moment?  
A.  Possibly.  But he needs to stop drinking immediately or he will definitely die soon.  

Maybe some day she will see him finally capitulate, abandon the stubborn denial, and ask for help.  Or maybe he'll drink himself to death.  It could go either way.  And either way, not her problem.  Not her fault.  Really and finally.

Through the parted curtains she sees her former life, wrenched from her by the people who were supposed to love her best in the world.  A life that she worked so hard at pretending she loved. Decades spent trying to fix what was wrong, to deflect blame, to dodge guilt, and failing at all of it.

The embolism of pain makes her slump over the steering wheel, the wind knocked out of her.  That life is gone, and with a mixture of relief and trepidation she considers the new one that remains to be forged.  She bids her son good night and watches him walk up to front porch and sidle in through a door barely open so as not to let the dogs out.    With a profound sigh, she releases the brake and steers the car out of the cul-de-sac, away from the stabbing anger of betrayal, the claw of longing, into the rest of her life, a vacuum waiting to be filled with the worthwhile things she brings from her past and the terrifying and wonderful things she will craft for herself from the wreckage of the last twenty years.

Valentine's Day - aka Amateur Night

I want to write a Valentine's Day blog.  I want to have something to say about Valentine's Day other than how much it sucks.  Once again, a holiday designed to make you feel like a loser if you don't have all the appropriate gear.  Starting with a lover.

Even when I was married, I didn't like Valentine's Day.  Too much pressure.  Is anyone going to live up to the plans we make for them in our heads?  Wouldn't it be great if x and then perfect if y.  If he could intuit my fantasy and make it happen without a word between us.  Destined to fail.  Unless you date yourself, it's not going to be exactly the way you want it.  And even then, you're kind of hit or miss.

I have the unique perspective of having had pretty much all the different Valentine's Day scenarios there are.  I was the kid in second grade, making valentines for all the kids in the class but forgetting one boy.  They passed out a list and I lost it.  Sorry, Bill.  It didn't have candy in it so big whoop.

Then I was in high school, no boyfriend, scorning all the Valentine's Day shenanigans because superior.  More like smug, actually.  I was probably getting high in the smoking lounge (can you imagine having something like that today?) before heading off to Honors English.  I had range but no boyfriend.  No magic on Valentine's Day or other day.

When I finally did get a boyfriend, Valentine's Day was nothing special, although I vaguely recall an erotic drawing, maybe of me, maybe of the previous girlfriend over whom he was not yet.

I started dating my ex three days after Valentine's Day, so we had a whole year before Valentine's Day reared its ugly, awkward head.  Privately, I though it would be cool if he proposed, but he didn't, so that was yet another disappointment.  After we did get married, he would dutifully bring home flowers and we would go through the motions, but by then I was so disinterested in him that it felt like a chore to muster up the appropriate responses.   I had set impossible hurdles to jump over that we couldn't have afforded even if he had thought of them, weekend trips to the wine country, or his and hers massages and an hour wrapped in towels with cucumber slices over our eyes.

Please let me tell you that all of these perceived deficiencies were mine and mine alone, and before you begin a sermon about being glad for what you have, let me hasten to add that I was grateful to have a partner to perform these rituals with, with whom I had what passed for love.  I even felt it most of the time.

Then there was the Mother-of-the-Year Olympics, with each mother trying to outdo the rest with elaborate valentines for the class that they had clearly made themselves, because calligraphy was not one of the electives offered in kindergarten.

So now I have come full circle, having the first real Valentine's Day without a lover in 30 years.  Once again, being alone on a holiday doesn't bother me as much as the perception that other people have of how sad I must be and how pitiful it is.  So they assuage their consciences by including me in whatever they have going on.  Valentine's Day is the worst for this as you might imagine.  It's a day and more importantly, a night when people worry if you're okay, which you totally are until they ask you (thank you Schroedinger or is it Heisenberg?)  Which is why I'm going to spend Valentine's Day with 135,000 of my closest friends on Facebook, jamming to good music, pulling up our chairs and having a simply lovely time being Nutjobs together for Flirtation Friday, and far more important, pitchers and catchers report to start spring training.

I'm all about priorities.

The Worst Thing About Depression

The worst thing about depression is knowing that it will never really go away. Even if it subsides periodically.  Even as much progress as you think you're making.  Even as much progress as you really ARE making. It's always been with you. It always will be with you.  It's like looking down the tube of your life and knowing that you are always going to feel this way. This too shall pass?  I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. This too shan't pass.  It never has and it never will.   Nice try, though.  Good guess. Thanks for playing.  We have some lovely parting gifts.

When it gets really bad, there’s the familiar response.  Wanting to curl up as small as possible. Under my bed.  Under my desk at work.  Tucked away in the furthest recess I can find. Backed up against a wall in the corner.  Please.  You don't see me.   I take up no space because I’M NOT HERE.  I don’t want to die, exactly.  I don’t want to kill myself.  I just want to NOT BE HERE. Marking time till the next thing I dread is over.   So I can just please stop. Stop thinking about everything I fucked up simply because I was there to fuck it up.  My kids, my marriage, my husband’s life.  Ruining everything for everyone.  

All my kids' memories will be bad ones.  They will go to therapy and talk about all the things I did that made them feel horrible about themselves.  All the things they learned from me that are fucked up, measuring other people with the same impossible yardstick I use on myself, hating other people because I hate myself, making fun of them because ultimately I am the most ridiculous thing of all.  

The Gamer:  Mom, why aren’t you coming with us to the party?

Troubled:  Mom won’t go to the party because she hates people.

Me:  Hey, I don’t hate people!  I just prefer them when they’re not around.

PreMed:   Good thing we got Caller ID because this way, at least we know who was calling when Mom didn’t answer it.

Me:  Let them leave a voicemail!  Who talks on the phone, anyway?  

Remind me to tell you about the time a pushy acquaintance that I never liked wanted to see the progress on the remodel we were doing on the house.  How I let the call go to the machine (this was back in the day).  How she left three messages in the space of an hour, are you home, can I come by?   Finally, and I don’t know how people have the balls to do stuff like this, she just showed up, turning her minivan into the cul-de-sac and pulling up to the house.The kids and I were in the great room. They were watching TV and I don’t know what I was doing.   But I saw right away that it wouldn’t be enough for me to go to my room and hide, my first instinct, always. She would see the kids in the window and ask them to get me and then what?

I’m not proud of what happened next.  “Get down, get down, come over here, hide behind the couch with Mommy,  Jennifer’s here but I don’t want her to come in, let’s pretend we’re not here.”    I hid from my friend like Anne Fucking Frank and I made my kids hide with me until she got back in her car and drove away.   We laugh about it now.  But WTAF.  Grist for the therapy mill if ever I saw it. My mother, the narcissistic misanthrope.

Though self-taught from a young age, and even with a natural aptitude,  I can't seem to get this depression gig right.  Depressed people talk about not being able to get out of bed.   As much as I would prefer to crawl back under the covers in the tight little ball that I covet, I simply cannot.  I can't stay in bed because I'm petrified that my complete and utter failure will be revealed.    I can’t stay in bed because there would be yet another example of what’s wrong with me.  I can’t stay in bed because I have to get up and do more, try harder, be better.   I can’t stay in bed because my superego is a harsh mistress and the switch she wields is swift and sharp.  I can’t stay in bed because panic, masquerading as hope, pretending to be courage, compels me, propels me, and I hurtle out of bed, already exhausted before the day has begun.

Even though I understand that the universe finds me flawed at the cellular level, I like to think that I that I hide it really well.   How arrogant is that!  People tell me all the time how clever I am, how witty.  How I express what they are feeling in just the right way. How much I've helped them.  I always joke "that's a tragic and near-fatal case of the blind leading the blind."  I'm thrilled that anyone gets something out of this nonsense.  But I'm also dismayed.  I'm a sham.  How have you people not seen this yet? Your failure to recognize my failure diminishes us both.

It's so much a piece of me that I have never thought to question it. Only in the last few years has it dawned on me that other people don’t live this way.  Other people aren’t just waiting for time to pass until it’s over or wishing they weren’t here or fantasizing about putting a revolver in their mouths or driving off a cliff.   I have started at least a dozen times to tell someone, anyone, that I feel this way and realize just in time, “Hey, Self!  That’s suicide ideation which means 72 hours that you just can’t spare right now! And who knows how many more days, weeks maybe, after that?”   

So, no.  That’s crazy.  Who would do that?  Not this Nutjob right here, my friends.  Uh-uh.  Not me.  No way.  I’ll just keep plugging away, writing this blog, listening to music, cracking wise on my Facebook page, and looking down the tube of my life knowing that even when I’m feeling good, better than good, magnificent even, I’m always going to have this thing, this depression, this horrible self-loathing that has grown, in the cruelest of ironies, into the most profound friendship I could ever hope to have.

The Backstory: A Blog Post in One Sentence

You know how you're staying in your house with The Gamer for the week while your ex travels on business and the house is so filthy and destroyed that you can't even breathe from the panic and you can't figure out whether you should clean up or leave it be since it's not your mess but you're literally nauseated as you to look around and you don't even want to put your food in the refrigerator and the dumbass has the sprinklers set even though he let the dogs tear up the back yard so all there is is mud and of course the dogs track it in and out and that explains why the floors are so horrible but as you wash them you can see that they're going to have to be redone because who the hell puts hardwood in the kitchen but you did because you knew you would wash them and buff them with Murphys only you haven't lived there for a year and so of course they are being destroyed and there is chaos everywhere so you run around taking pictures of everything document document document and you text your friend (in another state) and ask for help and he tells you to pack your ex's stuff and kick him out and you know you should but you're a sad, scared helpless Nutjob who isn't as strong as everyone tells you you are and you just sit down and cry and yell and curse at the dog who is not really the problem but one of many symbols of the problem because your daughter snuck (sneaked?) her into the house and wouldn't train her or get her shots or anything you need to do to care for a dog what the fuck is the matter with her but it's your fault somehow that she never got what you need to do to be a human on this earth and that's just another in a laundry list of things you hate your ex for because couples are supposed to be parents together and not let one (you) be the bad guy without supporting but in fact undermining what you are trying to do which is teach discipline which doesn't have to be harsh if it's done with love but since you never get your way it ends up feeling harsh and you feel like all you do is yell and he encourages them to understand that it's because there's something wrong with you that you're always yelling even though you go around to your friends' houses and they all seem peaceful and clean as though there is some order in place that everyone lives by but when you go home and ask for things to be like that all you get are eyerolls and mocking and passive-aggressive bullshit from your ex who is "fiftyteen" as another one of your friends (of course in another state) said which is absolutely brilliant and your friends are all very supportive but unfortunately most of them are far away and it's very difficult and scary to be alone trying to handle this even though everyone tells you "you're stronger than you know" and "you got this" that just adds to the feeling you've always had which is what other people want is more important than what you want so you let it all be okay until it just isn't okay any more so you finally move out and then everyone blames you for either not dealing with the problems sooner or not dealing with them at all but running away from them instead and there's no way to explain to them that you are trying to let your ex reach bottom because he's what they call a "functioning alcoholic" which is the worst kind because "what's the problem I go to work every day and make a lot of money doing important things so why shouldn't I have a drink or two" (or four or five and let's not forget how many nights he throws back an Ambien or two with them) so part of the plan is to let the house get completely destroyed so that at some point you can go to him and say "you have to go because you aren't handling it" but then you have to go in and fix and clean it because you want to show your son what normal looks like and it's not this believe me so you've completely fucked up the plan because he'll come home from the trip and say "thanks babe" (because he still calls you "babe" which is just fucking nauseating if you'll excuse the language) "place looks great" and now you have to start over and your friend says "throw him out" but how the fuck do you do that when you're a scared Nutjob who has never trusted yourself because everyone always told you you overreact to things and oh by the way you have a neurochemical imbalance which clouds your judgment and even though you take your meds you're still always suspect so you've found this great outlet which is to write these elaborate run-on sentences which is a literary device that you constantly have to tell people because maybe they don't get that you really do know how to write but anyway there's a sentence that's a blog post and you hope that some of it resonated with someone?

Yeah, me neither.  That's crazy.  Who would do that?

My First Separated Christmas

I don't have anything funny to say about this pain in my chest.  I will say that clenching my abs when I feel this pain begin sometimes helps.  I will say that Assistant has taught me to lean forward when the tears well, that the damage to my makeup and overall facial composition will be less severe if they run down my cheeks than back across my temples to my ears as they do when I lean back.

Fuck Christmas in the neck with a cookie cutter.  I'm homesick.  I'm exhausted.  I'm longing for the normal that never was.  I'm forgetting why I left.  I'm angry.  I'm resentful.  It's Troubled's fault I can't go home.  It's Juvie's fault I can't go home.  It's Mr. K.'s fault I can't go home.  I'm waiting for him to fuck up and stay a drunk and go to the hospital for the third time and maybe finally admit that he needs help but it will be too late because he's already lost me.  Anyway, he's taking too damn long to implode, and, in the meantime, I'm missing Christmas.

I want to make cookies.  I want to see unpack my Christmas things.  I want to argue about whether it's the year for the small tree in the bay window that I like or the large tree taking up the whole damn room, even up against the wall, that Mr. K. likes.  We alternate years because I'm accommodating like that.  I know lots of couples where the wife gets her way about everything, mostly because she cares about getting everything just so, and the husband cares more about keeping peace and being left alone. But in my family, I want things a certain way, but I don't feel strong enough to fight for them.  Mr. K. wants the opposite almost on purpose.  You can tell it wasn't something he felt strongly about until he saw that it would be a fight.  That he would always win.

I want to make Christmas.  Except I don't really.  In fact, a small part of me is rather relieved that I don't have to make Christmas this year.  Because either Christmas makes me hypomanic or my hypomania makes Christmas, but either way, it's a huge effort.  One that I used to make, and gladly.  But this year, because I don't get to, I don't want to, and I'm glad I don't, because I don't have that manic energy this year.  I only have sadness, regret, longing, nostalgia, anger, and malaise in equal measure, in quick succession or all at once, I can't really tell.

I will stop by the house to bring the kids their presents, having agonized whether Troubled will be there, whether I should give her a present, whether she will give me one (last year she gave me two left suede pumps from Walmart, I am not even kidding right now), whether she will once again make herself the center of attention in that we will all nervously anticipate whether she will come and how she might act, whether she will be high, whether she will bring Juvie, whether he will enter the house, whether I will freak out about it when he does because you just know he will.  The friends I see once a year will be there, and they will pull me aside and we will go into the bedroom where I will recount an abbreviated and watered-down version of the Nightmare Year, with the fact that we haven't discussed it until now hanging between us in a cloud of clumsy embarrassment.  And the thing that will save me, the thing I will remember, the thing everyone will remember, is that I will have swept my adolescent son away to the movies, to the horror or amusement or envy of the gathering, for a joyous, irreverent viewing of Anchorman 2.  

Well, that escalated quikly

In Which I File the Papers

The local branch?  The maple kind, yeah?

The local branch, could I go there?  Would they accept the filing there?  Did I have to go to the main courthouse, far away in the county seat?
Who could tell me?  Only automated answers, no help I could trust even if a person answered.  They're all civil servants, marking time until their union-enforced ten-minute break, who cares if they give this desperate woman with social anxiety and OCD the correct information about where to file the papers to legally separate herself from the man she has been married to for TWENTY-TWO YEARS.

This is really happening, I am doing this.  The decision has been made.  I am merely carrying out the plan -- going to the courthouse (fuck, the COURTHOUSE, OMG) but it's not open yet.  Okay, then, Starbucks, double tall soy vanilla latte, feigning nonchalance, waiting for it to be time to drive up the street.  Isn't it on the right?  The even numbers on the right, the odd on the left side of the street.  Isn't that how it goes? Maybe not in this town.  Rules are never followed when I need them to be.  I drive to where I think it is, but maybe not and there is traffic behind me, I shouldn't slow down to check.  Nope, that was it, there I go right past it.  Now a U-turn, but now there's a median and nowhere to cross so another U-turn.  The symbolism is not lost on me.  It never is.  My life is one fucking symbol after the next.  That's the way my mind works.  Metaphors in everything.  Fuck there it is, a low-slung building, ranch-style, mission-esque, my Kalifornia Kitschy Kounty Kourthouse.    Papers in my briefcase in the trunk, *are* the papers in my briefcase, *is* my briefcase in the trunk?  I have to check, I always have to check, I could check and see that they were there, and then check again and they'd be gone.  I try to make it easy on myself by announcing the beginning of a new system:  I'm going to keep these important papers HERE.  THIS will be the new place for them.  And promptly forget so that there is new terror when I go to look for them everywhere but in the NEW PLACE.

Lately, this has been getting worse, I think as a function of having no real system any more.  I haven't put a new system into place, so these little "okay THIS is the calendar I am going to use from now on" and write down five dates in it, then lose it, or abandon it for some new system that will be equally ineffective.   ZOMFG and then I got my first smartphone.   Assistant kept nagging me, then begging me, then shaming me.  "Klonnie, they're a dollar now, you deserve it, what the hell are you waiting for, get the contract while he still has to pay for it."  Assistant is so wise.  Young enough to be my daughter, yet so far beyond me in so many ways.

So I got the smart-phone on a recent impulsive, defiant whim.  And now add guilt to the mix (kidding, it's the main ingredient), I'm supposed to be using the phone to run my life and whatnot but I don't know how and I keep meaning to sit down with it and really learn it but there isn't that "okay this is the official smartphone-learning time."   So I catch as catch can (note to self, GTS the origin of that phrase sometime) and fly by the seat of my pants (ditto) and just teach myself to do the basic things like jot notes, ask Siri for directions, send texts (now I can see the conversations, or in my case, my unanswered messages to Mr. K., four in a row or even five sometimes, screenshots are awesome little pieces of evidence aren't they?), and run my FB page (not very well, the app is weak and I'm dumb about what it can do).   Let's see, what else?  Oh!  Rdio is cool but I thought it was a free trial but now that's over but everyone else can still make it play songs and all I get are playlists.  Whatever.   I manage all this better on my Chromebook, anyway.  The Chromebook rocks, thanks, Google, for that, for everything really, except it sucked not having bank when you IPO'd, once again a missed opportunity, once again a disappointing metaphor.   On the other hand, talk-to-text has been life-changing.  Welcome to the conversation, as my asshole friend likes to say.  (This is a test to see if he reads my blog.)

Where was I?   Right.  The courthouse.  Right.  I got the big shakedown at the door, two sheriff's deputies lanky and laconic.  ("Morning, Sheriff," I always think when I see them, tipping my imaginary hat and straightening my imaginary holster like in Bonanza or some shit).  There is one of those metal detectors like at the library although the one at the library is only there to make sure you're not walking off with some book you didn't check out.  Library larceny, although let's face it, that's almost always an oversight, just forgetting to check out the book, you're not really there to STEAL FROM THE LIBRARY and isn't the whole concept of a library kind of larcenous anyway, considering you are getting to read a lot of material whose author has only been compensated once despite the fact that hundreds of people are going to enjoy it for free?  Don't get me wrong, libraries are in my top five favorite things today.  Wouldn't it be cool to make a list like that every day or a certain day of the week on the Facebook page, only call it Today's Five-orite Things?  Hang on, let me ask Siri to remind me about that later.  Siri-mind me.

Where was I?  Right.  So I got through the metal detector (sorrow detector?  bullshit detector?  idk but I got through), and the next thing was to determine what line to stand in for which window.  It wasn't a huge decision, but I was having trouble seeing because Maintenance must have been hitting the place pretty hard with some anti-seasonal allergen tear gas made of onion juice, although looking around, it didn't seem to be affecting anyone but me.  So I figured it out and got in line and there was only one other person at the window so I waited pretty far back because I figured if there was ever a time to respect someone's privacy, this would be it, and not some pharmacy consult (because let's face it, I've listened in on a couple of those and I could have done a better job with no notes).

Suddenly, it's my turn and I make my way to the window, which is low enough that even I gratefully accept the chair that awaits my bottom.  I sit with all my papers, looking at them and praying that everything's in order (even though I don't pray ordinarly, apart from the "dear lord I'll never ask you for another thing if you <insert some dreadfully important and yet somehow inconsequential thing>).  So far so good, as the very kind woman (thanks be to the Goddess of Insecurity and Social Anxiety) is stapling and stamping to beat the band and I overhear at the next window, a man talking in a very agitated manner, with a heavy accent.  He's supposed to be paying child support from what I can gather, but he was sent to the wrong office (I KNEW it) and now they can't help him and he has to catch a bus and take a 45 minute ride and he's already had to miss work and they might give his spot to someone else if he doesn't show up in 20 minutes.  So right then and there, I knew my problems were pretty insignificant, relatively, so I started having some embarrassed guilt, which helped strengthen my resistance to that onion juice tear gas that had been plaguing me earlier. When the woman asked me for my $400 check for the filing fee, the flash of adrenaline I felt before I remembered I had it in my wallet made me feel very much like the woman in the that meme about first world problems.

JK I only have one Lexus.  JK I don't have any Lexus.

So.  Ticked and tied.  Licked and stamped.  Done and done.  I walked out through the metal detector again (had I somehow PROCURED a weapon in my brief stay in the clerk's office?), through the doors, out into the parking lot.  I looked down at my hands.  Trembling.  But other than that, I didn't feel much different.  Married, divorced, separated, it's complicated.  It's just a Facebook status in the end.  So much more to a person than whether they were ultimately brave enough to stand up and say "enough" to propping up an alcoholic, "enough" to emotional abuse, "enough" to feeling panicked and inadequate and scornful and alone.  There had been many tears, and doubtless there would be many more.  But today, I stepped out into the mid-morning sun, thankful that the traffic would have abated by now, and that my drive to work would be smooth sailing.

THE VERTIGO: In Which the Run-On Sentences Take Over Once Again

I stayed home from work with THE VERTIGO this morning. My head doesn't spin and I don't feel faint but I don't have any balance.  I'm just wobbly.  I get up and it feels like I am going to fall over if I don't hold on to something.  This happened once before and I went to Urgent Care because I thought I'd had a stroke or something.  And they took it seriously enough to give me a CAT scan and all kinds of other stuff including a prescription for something really expensive that turned out to be Dramamine.  Thanks, WebMD.  I should send you the invoice.

Anyway, the point is, it's better today but I still feel wobbly. I'm trying to get it together to go in to work because my desk is messy and I have projects half-done and someone might rifle through my papers and judge.  I can't let it go and just stay in bed, even though when I called to confess that I had been careless and let myself be weak and ill, that's exactly what Assistant said to do.  

Yesterday, I was practically crying over being wobbly and not being able to do anything but lie here, practically crying over being wobbly and not being able to do anything but lie here.   Well, no, I wasn't practically crying.  I was literally crying.  (But NOT snot-crying.  There's a line.)  I'm freaked out because I feel like the world is judging everything I do because I left my home and my marriage and to an outsider it might look like I abandoned my son.  

My best friend forever, hereinafter known as BFF,  told me that I never take any time for myself and this episode is a sign that I need to take a break and just rest.   But I can't take a day off to be sick, especially with something so whackadoodle as THE VERTIGO, because I'm a Nutjob who has to take psych meds and here is one more example of everything that's wrong with me.   I can't have this!  I'm losing points in the Passive Aggressive Olympics!  

You and I both know that I am right for leaving Mr. K. because he is an alcoholic who will never get well if I keep propping him up and making it seem like everything is okay when it's not it's not it's not!   <stamps foot, pounds table, rubs stomach, pats head>.  BUT I KEEP FORGETTING.  And I think maybe there *is* something wrong with me for leaving Mr. K. and my home and not talking to Troubled any more.  I must be a horrible, unforgiving, petty, angry Nutjob with a mood disorder who can't trust her perception of reality because feelings.  

I know it probably looks like that to the rest of the world and let's not kid ourselves that is what really matters and maybe there really is a Passive Aggressive Olympics and that Mr. K. and I really are competing for who is more worthy of sympathy (him) and who is more blameable (me) and that little red underline is telling me "blameable" isn't a word but fuck that noise because it is too a word because it's what I am.  

So once again the run-on sentences have taken over and you know I do that for effect and to make you smile because goddamnit if I can't then at least someone should and I bet you are going to send me some really nice and supportive messages full of helpful suggestions and you know I love you for it but I do moderate the comments so you might not see them until I can find the little "publish" button because of the crying from the horrible guilt and fear and all the things because THE VERTIGO.

I Told You So or I'll Save You a Seat: Equally Good Titles And I Can't Decide

Her ex-husband died of pancreatitis, more specifically, organ failure as a result of pancreatitis.  Chronic; necrotizing; fatal.  In his particular case, the pancreatits was caused by decades of drinking, every night, till he got drunk, not a little high, not tipsy, but swaying and pontificating in a voice thickened with bourbon.  He died of pancreatitis and she went to the funeral with her adult children to prop her up, though she didn't really need propping.  His doctors showed up to pay their respects.  At the gravesite, she walked up to them, spoke to them, very clearly and very plainly, so that everyone could hear.  

"He said YOU said it was okay to drink."

Everyone suddenly became very quiet.  The doctors looked helplessly at one another. Turned together and walked away.

Okay, that didn't happen.  Correction, it hasn't happened yet.  But it might.  And it will be horrible.  But inside the horror will be a tiny shred of vindication.  

I told you so.  

How can you say "I told you so" to a dead man?  But "I told you so" will be the motet that will ring out loud like bells at whatever memorial service we end up having.  Presumably he will have enough time before he dies to realize that he needs to make that clear - what he wants us to do about him after he is gone because he would not help himself,

You might think I am a monster for letting this scenario play out in my head.  But it's probably more likely than another fantasy I have where he has an epiphany, goes to rehab, turns into the awesome person he might really be under all the disease and denial. That fantasy is a little scarier even than the dying one.  He goes through all that, does all that work that I've told him for so long that he needs to do, and we get to the other side and I find that I still don't like him.  I learn that I prefer to be on my own.  I don't want to reconcile.

I need him to stay sick so that I have a concrete reason to leave him and stay gone.  An understandable reason.  A forgivable reason.  Not just "she up and left on a whim one day so she could go be happy alone and on her own."  That's the story he is telling.  The sad victim.  Shaking his head and wringing his hands like the weakling that he is.  Like it matters what people think.

Fantasy, the prequel:  He has another bout of pancreatitis and wakes up in excruciating pain.  He gets up to go the bathroom.  He falls.  Hard,  And noisily.  He hits head, he passes out.  The Gamer finds him, calls me in a panic.  I'm there in seven minutes, get him to the ER.   Here we go again.  And I'm the hero.

My online friend teases me.   "That's a very stirring story, Klonnie, but you're no hero.  I saw you in your fantasy.  I saw how it really was.  You didn't go straight to the ER.  I saw you drive around the block about 27 times."
I protest.   "Hey!  I was listening to a 'finish in the driveway' song.  I couldn't pass that shit up."
We laugh and he says, "You're going to hell.  I'll save you a seat."
I mock him.  "You always know just what to say.  Now get out of my fantasy.  You're kind of ruining it."

Dear Reader, smooth your scandalized brow.  This is gallows humor.  My fantasy won't conjure these events.  You can't make things happen by wishing them so, and you know it.   If that were possible, wouldn't we have fixed all this ages ago?  

Still, can you blame me for hoping he waits till I can lose ten pounds?  I've got a black dress that hugs the curves a little too tightly right now, but give me six months and I'll be all set.  See you there.  

I'll save you a seat.

In Which I Am Invited to Rejoin the Household

There's a very brief  scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, when Alvy Singer is trying to find a couple who seem happy together so he can find out how they make that work.   He sees a beautiful couple walking down the street and he runs up to them asks them, "Here, you look like a very happy couple. How do you account for it?"  And the woman, lithe and blonde, says  "Well, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say." She looks to the man who says, "And I'm exactly the same way."

*   *   *   *   *

Money and kids.  The one-two punch of arguments in a marriage.  My husband and I are going over the budget. We come up against the following issues without actually fighting about them.

--  His nephew, Artist, an adult, who has been living with us for a solid year, rent-free.

--  The low five-figure cash account he has -- funded by jointly owned savings bonds, cashed in and ostensibly used for ski trips and other out-of-budget items.

--  The cash account I opened as a hedge when he started talking about separate accounts.

--  The money he gave to Troubled and Juvie, including $1,600 to pay off warrants, $1,400 for their "apartment" that turned out to be a room in some house of which they wouldn't even give the address, let alone let us see, and other surreptitious fistfuls of cash over the course of the last year.

-- The impounded car and who's fault it was (his) and how I had to use the last of the money I had inherited from my mother to pay off the car loan before it ruined our credit.

Each time one of these issues comes up, I will myself to sit silently.  I start to say something, and snap my mouth shut before I do.   Keep your mouth shut. Do not engage. My anger comes in brilliant flashes.  The injustice, the betrayal, the hurt come flooding back despite months of protecting myself from all the feels. 

"We could save a lot of money if we didn't have to pay your rent," says Mr. K.  Again, my mouth opens and closes like a fish on a hook.  We have to pay rent for me to live somewhere else because he drove me away with his drinking, his indifference, his refusal to be a husband to me and a parent to our children.  Now he wants to blame me for our unbalanced budget.  Nothing new here.

"If you move back here, we could save almost $10,000 a year."  (By switching to Geico? I think, with an internal squeak of hysterical laughter.)    "What do you mean?" I say aloud. At first I thought he meant that one of us (him) would move into PreMed's room now that she had gone to college.  He watches me expectantly as I tried to envision it.

"God.  I don't even really know what you are talking about.  What would that look like? Would you take the room, or would I?"  Thinking,  how would we be separated if we lived in the same house?   Dismay with a tinge of bemusement.  Like the attorney who wanted to see us together in order work out our separation, he just doesn't get it.  He was boldfaced and innocent and optimistic and hopeful.  Imploring me silently with an almost desperate expression.

"I thought you might move back in.  With me.  Get back together."

I stare at him as it washes over me, what he thinks is possible that I would agree to.

"I'd like to invite you to rejoin the household."

Is he fucking kidding me right now?   Reconciling.   When a mere conversation about the household budget provokes decades-long anger and resentment and bitterness.   The feelings that won't subside until we're really apart and can use that distance to get perspective, to start trying to forgive.  But he is immune to that, determined to pretend everything is okay.  He just wants it to be okay again.   Just.  Please.

I can almost hear his thought process, a waterwheel grinding the grain of blame and denial.  Please just move back and make everything okay.  Because when you won't (and I know you won't), I can blame you for being unreasonable.  Look, Troubled has moved back home, she has a job, she is registered for school. All the things you were unhappy about are fixed.  Why can't you come back now?   

It's so much easier to charge me with the job of breaking up this family on a capricious whim  than to accept his role in the collapse of our marriage.  Easier to accuse me of walking out on our family when what I did was walk out on him and his emotional abuse. All that is far preferable to dropping his denial to the floor and manning up for the hard work he refuses to even consider that he needs to do.  

Just please, he implores with his enormous and tear-filled eyes.  Please let us be the happy couple in the Woody Allen movie.  Please just be the blonde woman, very shallow and empty, with no ideas and nothing interesting to say, so that I can be the man with her, exactly the same way.  

In Defense of Hot Messes Around the Globe

I got a fair bit of blow-back today in PMs from my Facebook page for my (and I'm paraphrasing here) irreverent, disrespectful and callous treatment of the situation with Amanda Bynes.  And although I don't need to apologize for the nothing I have done wrong,  I would like to say this in response:

Hey.  Don't talk to me about how I've treated the situation with Amanda Bynes.  I *am* Amanda Bynes.  A very, very, very lucky version of Amanda Bynes.  Who had the sense to lose her mind well before the age of Instagram and Twitter.  Who didn't have to get her batshit crazy on in front of millions of people glued to their iPhones lest even one humiliating minute go unremarked.  The final scenes of the trainwreck unfolding in the libraries and lecture halls of a midwestern college town as opposed to racing back and forth between New York and Hollywood, and culminating in a convenience store in Ventura County.  I had to share my nightmare with only a small group in OT, not with a world-wide audience on TMZ.  If you have to go crazy, stay home, because it turns out there is such a thing as negative publicity after all.  Phew.  Dodged a bullet there.

But I'm confident that Amanda and I shared at least one aspect of our respective psychotic episodes:  absolute terror.   What in God's honest fuckhouse is happening to me?  I can't understand it and I can't control it and I AM PETRIFIED.  In case you were wondering what's going on with that "hot mess" (your words, not mine) Amanda Bynes, she is, among other things, PETRIFIED.

While Hollywood mocks, and her family wrings their ineffective little hands, and we decry the stigma of mental illness in our society, and lament how law enforcement's hands are tied, and shake our fists that the person really has to ask for help, and on, and on, and on:  Petrified.  

And I mocked too.  Jeez, Amanda, sit the fuck down, you're ruining it for the rest of us.  Good thing she finally figured out how to drill down to the necessary "danger to yourself and others" clause.   When all else fails, go for the flammables.  Remind me next time to hit the Rite-Aid for lighter fluid early on and save everyone about six months' worth of butterfly nets.  Oh yes.  But to the righteous defenders of the celebrity infirm, lest you think me monstrous, just know that I mock because recognition.  I scorn because empathy.   And I do stand-up on a soap-box because attention. 

Who has two thumbs and is crossing everything crossable that Amanda Bynes can finally right the ship with the support she's finally getting because she finally put the necessary points together to finally take it to Level 5150?   

This Nutjob.  This Nutjob right here.

Blame, Avoidance, and Denial, Oh My

Bitches be blogging about George Zimmerman, but not me.  I'm way too self-absorbed for that.  Besides, as a white woman living in a progressive state, what new dimension could I really bring to the discussion?  Race relations in this country are as bad as they have ever been?  Possibly.  Our hearts go out to the Martin family?  Definitely.  

<polite yawn, thank you, Klonnie, next blogger, please>  

Just because I *can* blog about something, doesn't mean I should.  By the same token, just because I'm not blogging about the current issues doesn't mean I shouldn't blog at all.  So instead I offer the following, another chapter in the ever-growing tome titled:  My Book About Me.

Today's blog post is brought to you today by Anger

It's one of those days, you guys. Riding the rollercoaster. They don't call it "rapid-cycling" for nothing. Dear Lance Armstrong. I ride this cycle more rapidly than even you, and I don't take steroids, I take mood stabilizers. Whatever.

Hey, I'm fragile lately. Troubled moved back home last week and the clusterfuck, temporarily suspended, resumes.  My soon-to-be-ex, never my ally when it came to raising our kids, showed his ultimate true colors by encouraging, financing and facilitating my daughter's relationship with her loser, drug-dealing boyfriend, throwing me under the bus and destroying our family in the process. Now she wants to come back home and once again, Mr. Fucking Useless Passive Adolescent Addict So-Called Parent refuses to set any kind of limits, citing his reasons to be that 1. I fucked her up with my anger issues and 2. I don't have a say because I left.

<outstanding>

I tried to get Mr. K. to lay some ground rules for her being there -- for example, she has to be in school, there can't be any drugs in the house, and Juvie can't be here.  Ever.   At all.   She was hostile, sullen, resentful, and mocking when we sat her down to lay this out for her.  Of course Mr. Fucking Useless Passive Adolescent Addict So-Called Parent was apologetic and conciliatory.  Five bucks says Juvie will be back in the house within ten days.

<frownie-face emoticon>

And guess who's going to be gone for two of the next three weeks on business, but "whatever you decide to do, you have my complete support"?  Mr. Fucking Useless Passive Adolescent Addict So-Called Parent, who has never done one thing to support me in running this family except stand aside and mock me and judge me. 

<whereupon Klonnie bursts into yet another round of ridiculous and useless tears and runs away>

This dynamic permeates all of our family relationships.  Mr. K. wrings his hands over The Gamer -- "He plays video games all day.  I'm so worried about him.  I offered him some alternatives. I tried to make him stop but he won't."  Of course he won't, he knows you are Mr. Fucking Useless Passive Adolescent Addict So-Called Parent.   Step aside, let me show you how it's done.  I go in to The Gamer's room and start dealing out instructions and consequences and not backing down and of course everyone is horrified. I am a mean bitch.  Really?  Really?  That's fine with me because (stop the presses) mean bitches GET SHIT DONE. 

From making sure *his car* gets smogged because the registration is due next week, while he leaves important papers for me to find days after action was required,  to flicking the switch in the circuit breaker that turns off video games in The Gamer's bedroom, while he looks for the charger to his iPad, I GET SHIT DONE.  From holding the line on spending so that PreMed's tuition gets paid, while he plans a trip to Portugal, to calling Social Services and counselors and everywhere else I can think of to deal with the trainwreck that our household has become, while he has "just a quick nap," I GET SHIT DONE.  

From kicking ass to taking names,  I GET SHIT DONE.  

While Mr. Fucking Useless Passive Adolescent Addict So-Called Parent sits in sullen silence, like the teenage children I am trying to raise.  Watching, judging, and blaming.

But I'm sugar-coating it.  Some day I'll tell you how I really feel.  

Namaste.  

Disoriented

She's back in her house for the week, while her (ex?  when do you start saying that?) husband is on the East Coast for business.  So far, the reviews are mixed.  It's nice to be able to take care of things as she thinks of them, but the clutter and chaos are maddening.  If she could, she would just pack three boxes of things to keep, back a Dumpster up to the front door, and haul everything else away.

She woke up, disoriented, in her own bed, in her own house.  Her phone alarm went off, but it wasn't on the right side, like it is where she sleeps now.  It was strange, to wake up in a familiar place and yet not know where you were at first.  And then the sick feeling of recognizing where you were, and realizing why it didn't make sense that you were there.  She wore that feeling all day, a cloud she couldn't shake off, no matter how defiantly she shrugged her shoulders and tossed her head.  It's impossible to get out from under the cloud when it descends.  Panic ensues when she sees it coming, no way to get around it.  It's like a train is bearing down on her.   A trainwreck, more like.

They had planned to play Boggle after dinner, but something struck her while she was doing the dishes, and she just couldn't face sitting down to the game.  The waves roll over her and she has to hang her head, and run the hot water to try to make it look like it's not tears, but perspiration that is making her face red and wet.  "What's wrong?" people ask.  The answer used to be that she had a mood disorder, that nothing was objectively wrong, it was her responses that were wrong.  Now what's wrong is her marriage is over and her family is in ruins.  And she has a mood disorder.  Let's not forget that.  No.

It is overwhelming to think of all the things there are to do, all the decisions to be made, all the awkward moments to go through.  All the feelings.  Exhausting.  The manic months of the Nightmare  Spring have caught up with her and she can barely slog her way through the evening's activities.  She just wants to sit on her (former) bed and drink beer and write about all her feelings in the third person in an effort to make them somehow literary and not pathetic.

So we'll always know where it is.

It's disorienting, to feel all the feelings, all at once.  She's been doing that her whole life.  Apparently it's not a good thing, although for so many years she didn't know that, and she didn't really have a choice.  Now she understands that she is somehow different.  She mistrusts her responses.  She cries a lot, seemingly out of the blue.  She laughs out loud, hard, sudden laughter, maybe disproportionate to the joke, but it feel so good pouring out of her.  She feels angry, she feels love.  And these days she feels distracted, exhausted.   Like usual, only more so.  Even more so.  As if that's even possible.

Does This Seem Right To You?

As the day begins, she is at her best.  A morning person.  French roast.  In the driver's seat by 6:30 a.m.  The last person on Earth who still listens to broadcast radio.  They do play good music sometimes, music she hasn't heard for a long time.  Music she has never heard before.    She listens to the traffic report.  Every ten minutes on the eight.  It is a big production.  Sky Three.  Mobile Two. She loves the traffic report because as rough as her commute is thought to be, there are others that are generally much worse.  She wouldn't live in the East Bay for any amount of money.  Well, no.  That's an exaggeration.  Piedmont is nice.

As Faye Dunaway looks on.

Exaggeration is her medium.  Hyperbole is her argot. A big tough talker. She mentally pounds her fist on the desk.  Says "goddamnit" to just about everything.  "Seriously?  Really?  Fuck me dead." Phrases that pepper her interior monologue.  She stomps her foot on the gas, changes lanes without signaling, without looking.  Things that would enrage her if someone else did them.  Fuck that noise.  She pounds her hand on the steering wheel (oops, that was the horn, huh).  Mad as hell.  Not going to take it any more. Cue Peter Finch.

Because it's not fair.  None of it.  Being blamed for the current clusterfuck is particularly outrageous.  She owns the things she did do wrong, a long time ago when she was sick and no one would help her.  She rakes herself over the coals, she analyzes and examines and has insights and revelations and tears upon tears upon tears until she laughingly gets up to rehydrate.

Because how they got here happened in the last ten months.   The wrongdoing is so recent that it is still raw.   He won't even acknowledge, let alone apologize and atone.  All he can do is fold his arms, grit his teeth.  And deny, deny, deny.

By day, she gathers up her righteous indignation and drapes it like a shawl around her brave, squared shoulders.  Pounds her fists and swears her swears.  Goddamnit.  Motherfucker.  Yes.  All the injustice.

"Does this seem right to you?"  As the day progresses, she grows tired.  And uncertain.  Doubtful of herself, her judgment, her ability to assess situations.  When she was little, she learned not to trust her version of things.  What she thought and felt couldn't possibly be right.  Then she grew up and was told the same thing.  You have a mood disorder.  Everything you do is suspect.  Every thing you feel.  None of it is real or right.

"Does this seem right to you?"  She is embarrassed to admit she doesn't know and so she refrains from asking other people.   If they said (which they did), "No, not even a little bit, not even close," the next thing she heard (even if they didn't say it) was "How come you don't know?"  And the next thing she heard after that (even if they didn't say it) was "Why haven't you changed it yet?"

They are fair questions.  Why indeed?  Goddamnit.

She takes off her wedding ring, with many tears, and little fanfare.  And rubs her finger where that ring used to be.