"There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool will continue. The truth is, I've always been a fool."
-Big Fish
Now if that's not an inspired quote, idunno what is. It's amazing how movies can impact us. Especially when they hit us in just the right way, at just the right time. And for me lately, it's been movies about everyday Joe's who end up doing extraordinary things - or at least find themselves in extraordinary situations. And some of those people are the ones who never did anything with their life. They've never sought adventure, and they've always been a boring little piece of paper in an empty scrapbook. And then there are those who always planned to do amazing things, to travel the world, and it just never...quite...happened. But movies like Big Fish, Stardust, and the Secret Life of Walter Mitty all do this.
Honestly, I'd never made that connection until just now. I have genres i gravitate towards. There is the tragic but romantic hero(Cyrano deBergerac), the average girl who finds a life and/or romance greater than anyone ever thought she could(Ever After, Mulan), the hit man with a moral dilemma - and that has a lot to do with looking at the real man behind his occupation - (Grosse Point Blank, Bourne Identity, Assassin in Love, etc) and now there is this one. And perhaps its because i feel like I'm not doing anything with my life. Perhaps because i have friends in great jobs, my brother who is accomplishing wonderful things in Europe, a classmate who is on Saturday Night Live, people i know who are creating art and music and getting well known for it. And then there's me. Just me, working at a little shop, with stories locked inside my head that refuse to be written. I guess i just need to try and trust that there's more for me out there. I just need to find my way to it. And so I'll leave you with another quote:
"There are shop boys, and there are boys who just happen to work in a shop for the time being. And trust me Tristan, you're no shop boy."
-Stardust
Monday, September 8, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Do not go gentle into that good night
When someone you love dies, someone who has been a part of your life everyday for 28 years...what do you do? How do you go on? Everyone says it'll be alright. They tell me I'm strong. They tell me that I'll get through this. They tell me that things will get better with time, that it's gonna be OK.
How? How can anything be OK again? Yes, death is natural. Yes, we all have to die someday. But we do not all die suddenly, with no warning, in the middle of the day while trying to fix ourselves lunch. It took a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Even if I'd been home, there's little chance i could have saved him. I was the last to see him, the first to find him. I didn't cry, just screamed and shook for hours, unable to hold a glass of water without dropping it. And try as i might, i can't forget any of it.
I don't regret a lot - i loved him and he knew that, and i was always his little girl. I wished I'd hugged him that morning, i wish we hadn't argued the night before, but i spent more time with him that most people my age get with their parents. But that just means that every part of this house makes me think of him.
My faith has been shaken. I was just starting to believe that i might get through all this shit that's been going on in my life. I was just starting to believe that things might start to be OK, again. My dad was just starting to understand what was going on and doing his very best to help me, to comfort me, to make me feel safe, to make me feel like i might get through this somehow.
How am i supposed to believe that now?
How? How can anything be OK again? Yes, death is natural. Yes, we all have to die someday. But we do not all die suddenly, with no warning, in the middle of the day while trying to fix ourselves lunch. It took a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Even if I'd been home, there's little chance i could have saved him. I was the last to see him, the first to find him. I didn't cry, just screamed and shook for hours, unable to hold a glass of water without dropping it. And try as i might, i can't forget any of it.
I don't regret a lot - i loved him and he knew that, and i was always his little girl. I wished I'd hugged him that morning, i wish we hadn't argued the night before, but i spent more time with him that most people my age get with their parents. But that just means that every part of this house makes me think of him.
My faith has been shaken. I was just starting to believe that i might get through all this shit that's been going on in my life. I was just starting to believe that things might start to be OK, again. My dad was just starting to understand what was going on and doing his very best to help me, to comfort me, to make me feel safe, to make me feel like i might get through this somehow.
How am i supposed to believe that now?
Friday, June 6, 2014
If you're OCD and you know it clap your hands. 24 times.
So you have your quirks and oddities, but it's always seemed that your "childhood OCD" - the one that required you to buy the same shoes every time and resulted in every single one of your stuffed animals being named Lily - had all but vanished. And aside from the occasional nervous tick you hardly noticed any remnants of it at all.
What do you do when you wake up one day and realized that it never went away at all?
It was recently brought to my attention that a big source of my anxiety(which is a large factor in my depression) was my constant worrying and my inability to let go of things that didn't deserve a second thought. and the more i thought about it, the more it became clear that my thoughts seemed like obsessions....and that maybe that ocd hadn't gone away - it just was in my thoughts. The continuous worry about a conversation i had 5 hours ago, one that had probably been forgotten now. My day being ruined by someone snapping at me, even if the mistake i made wasn't that bad. The constant worry of something that might potentially happen, but wasn't actually an issue yet. Things that normal people can forget about, things i should be able to get over or at least put out of my mind for a while. But I can't.
I started thinking about it and how to try and break the cycle of obsessive thought. And then i started to think about if the OCD popped up in other ways that i might not having noticed. And i realized... i almost always wash my hands twice. And i wash them if they ever feel slightly dirty. I always take my shower in a particular order, washing my hair last. Messing with the order can really confuse things. It bothers me to see someone wash dishes improperly - and when i say bothers me, i mean i have to REMOVE myself from the room to keep from grabbing the dish out of their hands. And that's not even counting my unconscious need to create equality when something brushes against my hand a certain way and i have to replicate the feeling on the other hand. And all that just made me realize that all these little quirks are little obsessions. It's not even remotely near to they way OCD is usually portrayed, like having to flip the light switch 30 times or Monk style, where it's almost impossible to have a normal social interaction. Even my art if effected by it. Do you know why i used to sketch but i rarely do it anymore? I spend forever trying to draw something, but i can never get it quite right. I have all this stuff pictured in my head, but i can't get it on the paper, and then i get so frustrated that i give up and just rip the whole thing up or put it away forever.
And yet i still create art. I now draw with charcoal mostly, and i only recently realized why. With charcoal you can never get things quite perfect because even if you are quite careful, it will always, ALWAYS smudge, and you can never fully erase it. The possibility of perfection isn't even there, so there's no point in trying. Only when i put this into words did i realize that it was almost a perfect metaphor for my life. Surely if i can find a way to get around that in art, i can figure out some way to stop the anxiety ridden cycle of obsessive worrying. I just need to find it.
But today I'm having a good day. Somehow, after working 8 days in a row, my brain just decided "fuck it, I'm taking a day off." I woke up late, set up dinner to cook, returned a long overdue package, made a healthy lunch, got some exercise, walked to the local bakery for a cupcake, gave some friends some cookies, and now I'm sitting in a coffee shop on a beautiful day with a live jam band playing, and I'm having a pretty good day. Maybe it's because I'm mentally right here, right now, enjoy the moment for what it is. That's something i can rarely capture, but obviously i need to work on it. Cuz this feels pretty damn good :)
What do you do when you wake up one day and realized that it never went away at all?
It was recently brought to my attention that a big source of my anxiety(which is a large factor in my depression) was my constant worrying and my inability to let go of things that didn't deserve a second thought. and the more i thought about it, the more it became clear that my thoughts seemed like obsessions....and that maybe that ocd hadn't gone away - it just was in my thoughts. The continuous worry about a conversation i had 5 hours ago, one that had probably been forgotten now. My day being ruined by someone snapping at me, even if the mistake i made wasn't that bad. The constant worry of something that might potentially happen, but wasn't actually an issue yet. Things that normal people can forget about, things i should be able to get over or at least put out of my mind for a while. But I can't.
I started thinking about it and how to try and break the cycle of obsessive thought. And then i started to think about if the OCD popped up in other ways that i might not having noticed. And i realized... i almost always wash my hands twice. And i wash them if they ever feel slightly dirty. I always take my shower in a particular order, washing my hair last. Messing with the order can really confuse things. It bothers me to see someone wash dishes improperly - and when i say bothers me, i mean i have to REMOVE myself from the room to keep from grabbing the dish out of their hands. And that's not even counting my unconscious need to create equality when something brushes against my hand a certain way and i have to replicate the feeling on the other hand. And all that just made me realize that all these little quirks are little obsessions. It's not even remotely near to they way OCD is usually portrayed, like having to flip the light switch 30 times or Monk style, where it's almost impossible to have a normal social interaction. Even my art if effected by it. Do you know why i used to sketch but i rarely do it anymore? I spend forever trying to draw something, but i can never get it quite right. I have all this stuff pictured in my head, but i can't get it on the paper, and then i get so frustrated that i give up and just rip the whole thing up or put it away forever.
And yet i still create art. I now draw with charcoal mostly, and i only recently realized why. With charcoal you can never get things quite perfect because even if you are quite careful, it will always, ALWAYS smudge, and you can never fully erase it. The possibility of perfection isn't even there, so there's no point in trying. Only when i put this into words did i realize that it was almost a perfect metaphor for my life. Surely if i can find a way to get around that in art, i can figure out some way to stop the anxiety ridden cycle of obsessive worrying. I just need to find it.
But today I'm having a good day. Somehow, after working 8 days in a row, my brain just decided "fuck it, I'm taking a day off." I woke up late, set up dinner to cook, returned a long overdue package, made a healthy lunch, got some exercise, walked to the local bakery for a cupcake, gave some friends some cookies, and now I'm sitting in a coffee shop on a beautiful day with a live jam band playing, and I'm having a pretty good day. Maybe it's because I'm mentally right here, right now, enjoy the moment for what it is. That's something i can rarely capture, but obviously i need to work on it. Cuz this feels pretty damn good :)
Monday, March 31, 2014
Pills Pills Pills
I've never been one to use unnecessary medication. I even used to avoid painkillers, up until i sprained my ankle and learned that ibuprofen could be my new best friend. And that's how I've handled my depression so far, finding my own way to get out of it, doing things i love to cheer me up, fixing myself naturally. And then anxiety got thrown in, and i still tried to handle on my own, but i was given some meds for anxiety to have around, just in case. And i reluctantly kept them around "just in case" - and it's a damn good thing i did. Because, it turns out, i couldn't handle it on my own. Because the anxiety was hindering my ability to be myself, to function normally. It affected my mental health as well as my physical health - which caused more anxiety. And so i had meds for anxiety, meds for my other physical ailments, meds for the pain, meds for my allergies, vitamins, and sam-e that I've been taking for over a year now. And some mornings it was depressing to wake up, make coffee and take a small arsenal of pills, just to try and get back to "normal."
Needless to say i wasn't too keen on adding anything else to my pantry, even though i didn't seem to be getting better. But right now i can't write, i can't wake up, i can't smile, i can't get rid of these dreams about waking up late for work, missed flights, and running from people trying to harm me. I can't do it alone. And i called a few friends - despite my increasing phone anxiety - and i talked to them about their experiences. And they agreed that i couldn't do it alone. I shouldn't do it alone.
You have to understand something about me. I have always had to work for the things i wanted. I have always had to depend on myself to be sure something got done. I have been hurt by enough good friends that I've become more and more selective about trusting people - something that is very hard to do for someone who has a tendency to see the good in most people, even the ones that aren't easy to like. So I'm used to taking care of things by myself. But sometimes you just can't fix it all with a good walk, some Thai food and your favorite movie. Sometimes when you're depressed, all the things that used to make you happy just.....don't, anymore. And so as difficult as it is, I'm trying to reconcile myself with this idea that sometimes i can't fix it myself.
And that's OK. It's OK to ask for help. It's OK to need something or someone, especially if you're just trying to get back to normal. It is not failure, it is not weakness. It's just another obstacle, and some are too big to move by yourself.
Needless to say i wasn't too keen on adding anything else to my pantry, even though i didn't seem to be getting better. But right now i can't write, i can't wake up, i can't smile, i can't get rid of these dreams about waking up late for work, missed flights, and running from people trying to harm me. I can't do it alone. And i called a few friends - despite my increasing phone anxiety - and i talked to them about their experiences. And they agreed that i couldn't do it alone. I shouldn't do it alone.
You have to understand something about me. I have always had to work for the things i wanted. I have always had to depend on myself to be sure something got done. I have been hurt by enough good friends that I've become more and more selective about trusting people - something that is very hard to do for someone who has a tendency to see the good in most people, even the ones that aren't easy to like. So I'm used to taking care of things by myself. But sometimes you just can't fix it all with a good walk, some Thai food and your favorite movie. Sometimes when you're depressed, all the things that used to make you happy just.....don't, anymore. And so as difficult as it is, I'm trying to reconcile myself with this idea that sometimes i can't fix it myself.
And that's OK. It's OK to ask for help. It's OK to need something or someone, especially if you're just trying to get back to normal. It is not failure, it is not weakness. It's just another obstacle, and some are too big to move by yourself.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Welcome to Chiberia
So i haven't been writing much lately. The reason for that more than anything is that I've been severely depressed. yes, i started this blog with the intent of writing about that in the hopes that it would help, but it's been hard to make myself do much of anything. And then i got horribly sick. And then i had some sort of realization and being sick somehow helped me. But now i seem to be lapsing back again. And it might just be the fact that it's been so goddamn cold here in Chiberia that it's hard to leave the house. And when it's not in the negative digits, it's snowing. ALWAYS SNOWING.
BUT. On to bloggery. Something that i realized about my sudden wave of deep depression is that a lot of it was caused by stressed about things i no longer had, or couldn't do, and anxiety was caused by being worried about things to come. and that was all really stupid. So we're gonna try and fix that by working on being more in the now. We'll see how that works.
BUT. On to bloggery. Something that i realized about my sudden wave of deep depression is that a lot of it was caused by stressed about things i no longer had, or couldn't do, and anxiety was caused by being worried about things to come. and that was all really stupid. So we're gonna try and fix that by working on being more in the now. We'll see how that works.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
New Year
Happy new year. Once this time of year comes along people start dieting, start clearing out their closet, start living how they *want* to live, stop putting everything off. Everything is new and fresh and wonderful and you can do anything you want, be anything you want to be and it's great.
If you are one of those people where everything is the same, nothing is shiny and new, and it's hard enough to just do what you're doing without starting something new, then those people who have a new shiny outlook on life start to piss you off. A lot. It also starts to make you feel like you've failed because you haven't had some sort of awakening that has left you with a new outlook on life.
But that's bullshit. Make sure you remember that. Because you will try to stretch yourself to other peoples' ideals, you will believe that things really are wonderful and you're just not seeing it, you will try and pry yourself free of your comforts in an effort to be like those people who seem so happy. But don't be convinced to let go too soon. Just because you want to be where those people are, it doesn't mean you're ready to be. And that's OK. Some people can dive into the deep end right away, and some people need to work their way from the shallow end. But either way is fine, as long as you keep yourself from drowning.
If you are one of those people where everything is the same, nothing is shiny and new, and it's hard enough to just do what you're doing without starting something new, then those people who have a new shiny outlook on life start to piss you off. A lot. It also starts to make you feel like you've failed because you haven't had some sort of awakening that has left you with a new outlook on life.
But that's bullshit. Make sure you remember that. Because you will try to stretch yourself to other peoples' ideals, you will believe that things really are wonderful and you're just not seeing it, you will try and pry yourself free of your comforts in an effort to be like those people who seem so happy. But don't be convinced to let go too soon. Just because you want to be where those people are, it doesn't mean you're ready to be. And that's OK. Some people can dive into the deep end right away, and some people need to work their way from the shallow end. But either way is fine, as long as you keep yourself from drowning.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Holiday stress fest
Apologies that i haven't written in a while. What with the holiday, i had a lot of family around and the rest of the time i was working overtime, since the holidays are our busiest time of year. This also means i've had about 2 months of almost nontstop stress, which prevented me from writing. Of course, that's exactly when i SHOULD be writing but i had very little time. BUT again, i'm going to try to get back to posting once a week.
I think it's pretty important that i do because some sort of routine would be good since i think i've got a case of the winter blues. I was talking to a friend who works in retail about this, and i think part of it is having to do ALL THE THINGS and constantly moving for months - and then having more time suddenly, and it's like your brain just doesn't know how to handle it. I also have sometimes wondered in my depression might be seasonal, but i'm not sure. But the last couple days have been so ridiculously cold out that i've sort of been trapped inside with all my thoughts...and when i have this much stuff going on in my head, that's not the best thing. Especially since i sometimes walk off my stress. And let me clarify, when i say it was cold, i mean it was -15 degrees today, and that's not the windchill. They have been referring to Chicago as Chiberia, and it honestly looks like Hoth out there right now. It should have been a hang around in my pjs and watch movies day, but as i said before, i'm very bad at letting myself relax. I'm hoping with the new year i'll get better with tha, but so far this new year has been pretty depressing. And tonight i just started freaking out about all of that. So i made cookies. I don't feel that much better, but at least have cookies. And sometimes i think that's all you can do.
I think it's pretty important that i do because some sort of routine would be good since i think i've got a case of the winter blues. I was talking to a friend who works in retail about this, and i think part of it is having to do ALL THE THINGS and constantly moving for months - and then having more time suddenly, and it's like your brain just doesn't know how to handle it. I also have sometimes wondered in my depression might be seasonal, but i'm not sure. But the last couple days have been so ridiculously cold out that i've sort of been trapped inside with all my thoughts...and when i have this much stuff going on in my head, that's not the best thing. Especially since i sometimes walk off my stress. And let me clarify, when i say it was cold, i mean it was -15 degrees today, and that's not the windchill. They have been referring to Chicago as Chiberia, and it honestly looks like Hoth out there right now. It should have been a hang around in my pjs and watch movies day, but as i said before, i'm very bad at letting myself relax. I'm hoping with the new year i'll get better with tha, but so far this new year has been pretty depressing. And tonight i just started freaking out about all of that. So i made cookies. I don't feel that much better, but at least have cookies. And sometimes i think that's all you can do.
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