Tag: depression

Random Musings

Cappuccino.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Cappuccino.

Alabaster froth with a light dusting of sienna cinnamon sways and bubbles in my cup to the beat of every keystroke. I’ve added enough time to my parking meter to keep me here until forever (or at least morning), which is what I’d like to do–forget about all of my responsibilities and wander city streets as a nobody, buzzing from all of the caffeine I’ve ingested to secure seats at a series of coffee shops with soft jazz music playing and people doing all the things they might do at a cafe — working, connecting, philosophizing, thinking.

A succint sip scalds my tongue and warms my lungs. Bitter. I accidentally make eye contact with someone telling a dramatic story about a police chase. I quickly look down. Back into my own world. Where I belong. Watching. Waiting. What have you.

I wonder what it’s like to be connected. Not that most people here are. I lock eye contact with another woman, who is sitting at one of those awkward large tables designed for strangers to silently sit at and do work. We both look down and never look at each other again.

I’m a double espresso topped with foam and hot milk. Or maybe I’m just the foam. Just the froth.

Frothy.

I need more substance. Sadness has a stronghold on me this week. But it’s tinged with secret hope. With flickers of the past jolting my mind like the lightning bugs rhythmically electrifying the heavy late July night air. In the desolate darkness, there is still latent light. I taste it on my tongue. I swallow it in my shadow as my body pulses with the need to believe there must be something greater than redundant redundancy.

Motherhood. There’s that. That’s new. I enjoy it. I love my son. He’s becoming a person. I teach him things. He teaches me how to be more than myself.

Another sip. I’m a horrible coffee drinker. It’s usually way too hot when I take my first sip and cold by the second. I should be banned from ordering hot beverages.

I should drive home. I should do more work. I should drink this cappuccino.

Instead, I hone my ears into individual conversations. I try to know people I won’t know before I never know them again.

I’m just sitting here seeking scalding stimulation.

I’m just sitting here sipping life lukewarm.

Random Musings

Over and Under It.

by Life With Interest1 Comment on Over and Under It.

Turning 36 in a month, I’m over it and under it. Exhausted. I’m ready for change. I’m more than ready to cease self destructive behavior for good. I’m ready to give myself permission to love myself unconditionally. I’m so tired of this recurring drive to self destruct.

I’m no special case. Abusive childhoods, even mildly abusive, cause trauma, and trauma more often than not causes lifelong mental illness. But I’m old and overwhelmed. I know this story. I know every plot point. There’s no more excitement in turning the page. I’m just done. Spent.

I don’t need my worth to be determined by anyone else finding me worthy. I can, somehow, find my own worth. My worth is in being a contributing member of society, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, and hopefully a good friend. It’s not in the negative G-forces spiraling through a clothoid loop on a coaster of my own self infliction. It’s not the highs and the lows. It’s the middles. It’s sustaining one note and reveling in its lifelong consistency.

The world around can spin on. I’m on an urgent quest to find peace. It starts with accepting that being broken is not a chronic illness. It starts with healing myself–enacting the advice of a thousand self help books—more sleep, more nutrients, more exercise, more quiet, more music, more doing, less seeking, less wanting, less thinking, less boozing, less obsessing, less escaping, more accepting, more loving and nurturing.

I wish I knew what it was like to not be the product of childhood trauma. What is it like to be a mentally healthy person? To believe that I deserve all of the goodness in the world, as long as I give that goodness back? Everyone has their issues. But some people weren’t taught that they’re always wrong, that they’re not not trying hard enough, that they’re ugly and broken—what would life be like if I was taught to love myself from day one?

Unfortunately, I’ll never know. I owe it to myself to try to understand how to have healthy thoughts and make it a priority to think that way. I can’t spend the next however many years of life being this way. It’s suffocating and debilitating. I can’t do this much longer. I’m shifting my focus. I’m reincarnating my ego. I’m cracking myself open and hoping that after all of my yoke has run out there’s still some sustenance of value left. 

I’d like to believe there’s something there, someone there, who can exist without want, without need, without all these unhealthy tendencies. It’s time to shut this book once and for all and tear out all of its pages, shredding them into a million pieces, and levitating in the lucid lightness of being scraped down to the bone and rebuilt anew.

Random Musings

Fall.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Fall.

I always want to be one of the type of people who loves fall. It’s the perfect time to put on cozy boots and cozier sweater, cuddle up with someone else or a good book (or kindle), lounge under the sharp sun rebelliously fighting the cooling air, and enjoy pumpkin-spiced everything.

But as the lush, verdant leaves shrivel into dry, dead rust, as the thin fall air suffocates my lungs with its invisible ice, as the darkness of night swallows the day earlier and earlier, I am left aching and spent. Spring brought hope and summer belief but autumn is a reminder that all life rots like those damn rusty leaves.

In the melancholy of October, minutes stretch on, elastic and taut, snapping to the next after being pulled paper thin. You are sluggish with the sensation of coming down with something, body tingles and sore lungs. Your “The Lows” Spotify mood list, with its 223 songs, is the only orchestration that seems appropriate, despite it being filled with too much Coldplay. 

You listen to “Swallowed by the Sea,” 
and it’s everything you feel right now. 

In the death of everything, hopelessness turns to apathy. Your ravenous hunger has faded and you’ve lost your appetite for anything. You just want to pour yourself a hot bath and melt into it, listening to the water rushing into water, burning your skin until you dissolve entirely and no one remembers you ever were flesh, bone, and thought.

More Coldplay. “Trouble” plays. “Oh no I see — a spider web it’s tangled up with me. And I lost my head, and thought of all the stupid things I said…”

I’m in the autumn of life now. The rotting leaves are beautiful in their reds and oranges and yellows, I ought to appreciate them. Every step is on leaves crunching under my feet, no longer piles to jump in with, but instead to clean up, launder, fold, hang up, do the dishes, change the diaper, buy the paper towels, make the dinner, make the bed, pay the bills, crunch the leaves, crunch the numbers.

I should enjoy the tea and the boots and the sweaters,
not lust for the sweetness of spring or long for the seduction of summer. 

Next song. Radiohead. “No Surprises.” This.

“A heart that’s full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won’t heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don’t, they don’t speak for us
I’ll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide”

Mental Health

I don’t know and other thoughts.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on I don’t know and other thoughts.

As life goes on time blurs into this endless stream of unadventurous survival. Some, with terminal illness, are well aware of how life is a synonym for dying. Others can avoid the thought of death as much as possible, putting it off until the last possible second, only to come to terms with their mortality with age or accident.

Bringing a new life into the world has always struck me as strangely selfish and cruel — yet I’m doing it anyway. You can say creating life is creating death much the same. The only opportunity as humans we have to avoid dying is to have never been born at all.

Continue reading “I don’t know and other thoughts.” →
Motherhood

Week 37 and Letting Go of Potential Loss

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Week 37 and Letting Go of Potential Loss

“Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything’s ok and everything’s going right.” Accurate, Alanis. My pregnancy thus-far, despite needing medication to actually get pregnant, has been otherwise complication free. Knock on wood. Yet, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you…

I’m now three weeks away from my due date, which means baby can come any day — though as a first time mom I’m slightly more likely to deliver closer to my due date or after. I’m hoping baby stays in and cooks until August, even though my hands and feet would appreciate a break from the swelling and arthritic-like symptoms that being this pregnant tend to cause. I’m hopeful my body will return to normal once baby is out.

Continue reading “Week 37 and Letting Go of Potential Loss” →