Okay I am still counting this as Monday so there.

Well I have a lot on my mind so I'm just going to keep typing and we'll see what comes out.

I have been dealing with some of my loneliness by going out and talking to strangers. I met "Mayor Marmaduke" at the Davis Square station tonight. He told me he liked my shoes, and that in his native Senegal, everyone piles on a bus and talks together and that it's too lonely to ride the T without someone to talk to. So we went ahead and piled on the T and talked together, and it was lovely.

I met another new friend tonight, too. We went out for a beer and then watched Becket, a 40 year old film I could have sworn I'd seen before but never had. It was really moving: a tragic love story, really. My friend, not familiar with Western history, kept saying it was a comedy and I was like, "Um. I don't think so. I really don't think so. I mean, maybe, but that would be pretty creative." There were some funny moments in the beginning but in the end it was as I thought. Some good heart-wrenching moments..."My heart! My heart! It is my heart! It is too fond! Too fond!" It really hit home for me in a lot of ways: first, it made me nostalgic for the church of my childhood, and it was also a story of the misery wrought by conflicting loyalties. (not to mention frustrated love.) I don't write much about my experience with the Catholic church here as I know my family reads this blog and I love and respect them and their deep faith so much that I am always afraid to give them pain, but it is a real and ongoing issue in my life. I was so deeply religious as a child, and so convinced of my truth. My mother, knowing I was feeling down, recently wrote me a very loving letter. She ended it with "though you may have strayed from the cradle of your faith, you have never strayed from our hearts." Though I chose to take it in the spirit it was intended, it was still painful, at least before I had given it a lot of thought.

Sunday, I was sitting in meeting in a lot of pain. It was nearly a silent meeting, and I was able to center quite deeply, something that's been extremely hard for me for a very long time. As I sat, the words to a song I haven't sung in over ten years popped up in my mind.

I will come to you in the silence,
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear my voice,
I claim you as my choice,
Be still and know I am here.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I am hope for all who are hopeless,
I am eyes for all who long to see.
In the shadows of the night,
I will be your light,
Come and rest in me.

I am strength for all the despairing,
Healing for the ones who dwell in shame
All the blind will see,
The lame will all run free,
And all will know my name.

I am the Word that leads all to freedom,
I am the peace the world cannot give.
I will call your name,
Embracing all your pain,
Stand up, now walk, and live!

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I didn't have all the words right, but it was close. I was deeply moved to have this song come to me at such a black, dry time. When I learned that song I was 14, visiting the Daughters of Saint Paul. I was sure I wanted to be a nun. I was secure in my knowledge of God's love. Squirreled away in a vacant nun's cell after a busy day of vocational activities, I'd sneak out of bed, past my snoring roommate in the middle of the night and secretly pad my way to the adoration chapel in my nightgown and kneel there for hours in ecstatic prayer. In fact, at that time my main objection to joining the order the moment I turned 18 was that the third Star Wars movie would not be out and I might miss it, being busy with nunly duties. If I had known then what I know now about the third new Star Wars movie, I might be writing to you from under a veil.

But I "strayed." Did I? I certainly wandered. I've certainly spent my time lost. I've traveled aimlessly through deserts in my time.

The specific words of that hymn touched the most broken parts of me. I sat there, lost in thought and memory for a long time, until I was sure that I was being led to share them. I felt a great pain. Never in my life have I felt less like singing. I was afraid I would not be able to deliver the message without bursting into tears. I shakily stood and sang the best I could, very low and very trembly. I was soon released, and sank down to my bench in gratitude and fatigue, shaken and still grieving, but at peace. I didn't cry until I sat down, and then not very much, though other sobs broke through the silence. I was disturbed for a moment, worried I had done the wrong thing, but I was assured. All of our tears were between us and God.

I have been nostalgic for my "cradle." And it was a cradle. I grew there. It is still a matter of pain to me that I cannot see any way forward to reconciliation with that church. I was driven from it by force, in miserable circumstances, but by the time I began to grope my way back towards God, I found that I could not reconcile my conscience and my revealed truth with certain matters of church teaching. Watching Becket struggle silently, in agony, with the contest between what he had been shown was right and his love for his king brought back to me all the pain of this conflict. It is a hard path, being rocked out of the cradle and onto the ground, expected to stand up, walk, and live.

My friend and I listened to some Leonard Cohen in the car.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh man.

I think I had more to say but I'm drying up. Good night, good morning, and good luck.

I wish my bird were friendlier

We have been cheerfully yelling at each other all day but he hates to come out of his cage and I hate forcing him. I've been sitting on my bed for 90% of the day. There are practical things I could be doing but instead I am just sitting here yelling at my bird (Even though he's just a parakeet, he's still a parrot, and so to him loud=HAPPYHAPPYHAPPYHOORAY plus I yell nice things at him like "HEY YOU STUPID BIRD YOU SURE ARE GOOD LOOKING, TOO BAD YOU'RE SO MEAN THOUGH, I GUESS YOU REALLY LIKE THIS JOHNNY CASH SONG HUH!") and reading and staring at the computer.

I am not used to being along so much. I have lots of awesome friends but company requires planning and calling and scheduling and things. No more just sitting in the same room with someone all day, doing your own thing but talking. Unless you count the bird. I'm not feeling sorry for myself but I am wondering how to adjust. When I lived at home my life was the obvious other extreme--never alone at all. When I lived in Brooklyn there were several standing dates around town, so company didn't require coordination, and here I was spoiled by being in a relationship. I've always been good at doing things alone, going to dinner with a book or a movie by myself, but it's the in-between stuff that smarts. For some reason I've always pictured myself as a loner but I really don't think I am. I always thought I was an introvert but I think I may just be an atypical extrovert. I think I am happier when I have someone to focus on besides myself or the silly yellow feathered thing over there. I don't know if that makes me co-dependent or simply a functioning communal mammal.

sob whine snivel.

Last night I did go to a party. I got to hold a very enormous, friendly, warm and cuddly python or boa constrictor or something. He was seriously lovely, would look you in the face very intelligently and then lay his pointy little head on your shoulder. He could have eaten me for dinner but he just liked snuggling up to my body heat--I was like a well upholstered rock in the sun as far as he was concerned. A very classy reptile. It was an odd party, tattoo artists giving tattoos in an upstairs bedroom which seemed a little dubious (beer + tattoos = just don't.) though everyone came down looking fairly un-maimed. In case anyone is alarmed, I remained happily unmarked. I wouldn't want to go to a party like that every day, but it did pep me up a little, reminded me of the life I had back in NYC. I wouldn't want that life back entire, but it's nice to know I can still go out and rock the fishnets and all on occasion. I didn't sleep at all though, so that wasn't very clever and may have something to do with my miserable mood.

Something (not the snake) bit me at some point last evening and raised a horrible stinging welt. It's swollen and painful even now. I should put something on it maybe. I have no idea what kind of bite or sting it could be. It's so severe it's bruised in the middle. I'd say spider but my spider-studying friends mock the blame-the-spider approach and say spider bites are outrageously over-reported. They may be biased, but they are probably right. Whatever the hell this thing was it was mean. Ow. Whine.

I need a new playlist. These songs are killing me. I have about 3 happy songs in my entire collection. I should go outside (I've only left my room for meeting) and I should eat something (I've only had some sunflower seeds so far.) There should be some sunshine left, and maybe I'll get a sandwich and eat it by the Charles. I can pick one of my books I haven't read yet or recently and bring it along. That might be nice. My dumb bird is not invited.

There will be shooting stars tonight.

Boring boring boring

Not much to report today. I'm on duty at the MH, waiting for a concert to get out. They were supposed to be done 1/2 and hour ago. I just went over and got assertive with them. "I'm the official party-pooper...' Okay, not that assertive. But hopefully they'll be wrapping it up soon. Good music, though.

La lala

Hooray it is done!

Yay. May I never see the inside of another psych hospital as long as I live. *superstitious spit*

Don't have much today. Talked to some school people who assured me that they do not send the "call us and try again" letter to many people. It looks like I am going to have to dive headfirst into math and science, without any warm-up, so I am a little scared,and need to take out all my workbooks to prepare. Still, I am not stupid, and I am sure that especially with help I can manage this.

Also I've been feeling that as long as I have the scaffolding up around my life I might as well continue renovating. I've still got lots to pull down, build up, scrape away, paint over, replace, etc. Onward, self-improvement.

After that spasm of bad temper

Here is a nice bit of poem:

Now for a breath I tarry,
Not yet disperse apart--
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
~A. E. Houseman

Well, yay

I "graduate" from my full-time therapy program on Friday. I'll have a few weeks of disability left to get steady on my feet and all. I may not be traveling after all, who knows. It doesn't really matter what I do, especially since some people in my life seem to think that these past months have been a tropical mickey-mouse-island-hopping vacation, and I really have to push down my anger. I'll trade places, people. See how you like being shuffled in and out of hospitals, warehoused with angry addicts and criminals, spending all your money on pills that make you fat or give you headache, staring at the ceiling every night praying for sleep or death or something in between, losing the love of your life to the ravages of mental illness. Oh yeah, it's been awesome.

I'm not really that bitter, at least not every day, it just comes out sometimes. I was on the phone with some college admission people today and they wanted to know how I'd spent my summer. I so wanted to tell them I'd done a semester abroad, or an intensive summer program at Harvard, or interned for some fascinating lab, or even "just working hard." I couldn't tell them everything I've been doing. All I could say was:

"I've been ill."

and those few words just don't cut it.

Gloom and doooom.


This is making me laugh, though. You may have to be a certain type of nerd to understand why. Thanks, SKB!

http://www.notablogtm.com/category/lolcat-bible/

Okay

The bird's name is Simon. No offense to the real Simons I know out there, it's just that he reminds me of a mumbling cranky character in the (potentially quite offensive) Adult Swim cartoon Frisky Dingo. New season at the end of this month, yay. You can check it out on YouTube if you are curious.

Spent the day sleeping, knitting Christmas gifts, reading, talking on the phone. This Much I Know is True ended with every loose end tied squarely in a neat bow, which worried me, but I can't say I know what I would have preferred. I still recommend it highly. I am planning a trip to San Fransisco and ignoring well-meaning acquaintances who recommend I renew my online dating account. I can see it now:

Hi! I am an overweight, insane, rebounding 24 year old divorcee. I've got lots of dirty baggage and three hospitalizations under my belt, and I'm ready for friendship and much much more!"

Gag.

Blaaaaah. (this is Snoopy's noise of despair)

Maybe later.

A lovely friend in England sent me a bunch of gorgeous wool. I am dreaming up patterns I'd like to use it in. It's a deep sage green with a metallic gold thread running through it.

God bless knitting.

Budgie-Face

Maybe that will stick. I don't know. I keep accidentally calling him Percy, the name of my first bird. I don't think he was actually mine, I think he was a birthday present to one of the little kids. But I'm the one that trained him and cleaned him and hung out with him as long as I was home. I don't speak Budgie so I am not sure if he is happy to see me when he makes these crackly static noises and puffs up his face. From the poop-patterns (sorry) it looks like he hasn't moved around much. Poor Budgie! The people on various budgie forums assure me that many budgies take weeks to settle in. I don't know if I was more patient or Percy was more personable, but I don't remember him being such a sad feathery lump. Poor Budgie-Face!

I think I love my Dr. Please Fix It. She did! She didn't yell at me for deep-sixing the horrible medications the horrible doctor at the horrible hospital gave me, especially since I kept the important one that I'd been on all along. She agreed with me that the other pills were inappropriate. She also appreciated my saying that I was feeling terrible but okay, that given what was going on in my life it was hard to separate which "symptoms" were pathological and which were situational. She gave me back my sleeping and anti-freakout medications and said if I was happy off the rest of it then I could

(hey! Budgie just chirped at me. You talkin' to me? Hey he just did it again. Maybe the static noise is him imitating my keyboard! Wow, he's making all kinds of pretty noises at me. Yay!)

stay off. And oh my I just saw that she gave me all kinds of refills. Huzzah for Dr. Please Fix It!

According to a Bird Body Language Dictionary (nobody ever said I wasn't dedicated), Budgie-Face is feeling okay:

Preening themselves when receiving attention
May be initiated when you scratch their neck or just when they are sitting with you. "Thank you. For you I'll make myself look better."

Opening up the feathers on face and neck
Head may appear puffed. Symbolizes calm contentment - happy, pleased.

Now that makes me want to puff up my face, too.

Three Posts Today, Whee!

Well, my little bird is looking a bit better. He even scooted a few claw-lengths nearer to me while I talked to him tonight. If he doesn't die I think I will call him Pistachio. Pissy for short, because, well, he is.

Back to meeting today for the first time in a long time. Very empty, nearly everyone off at Yearly Meeting. I choked back a message that wasn't ready after a rather heated internal debate, and was glad--that was right. People talked about the gospel of Matthew. I've spent a lot of time in there lately, and noticed that Jesus had...a few problems. I was reading it for the healing stories...in the past I have compared my illness to the possession stories, or even the story of the woman with the hemorrhage. Most of the healing stories are almost interchangeable: Son of David/Have Mercy/Your Faith Has Healed You/Go In Peace/Tell No One. But there are a couple of odd ones in there, ones you don't hear about very often. One that always chills me is this:


Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."
But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."
He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.

I wonder if that woman was being humble, or if she was reproaching Jesus. I wonder if he felt ashamed for a moment when she answered him like that, if he blushed, swallowed, looked away. If he broke eye contact. Was she old enough to be his mother? Was she young and beautiful? Was she angry? Did he regret what he had said to her, then, thinking about the suffering daughter? Did he realize he had basically called this suffering stranger a dirty bitch and then repented of it when she called him out? Had he forgotten for a minute his mission of peace or was he still learning about it? Was she relieved? Frustrated? Humiliated to be publicly scorned and insulted by this famous Rabbi from the dirty little town, this wild-eyed young preacher with the magic hands and magic words? Did her love for her daughter overcome all of that?

I don't know. Could be the scene never took place. But it haunts my heart. All of the famous intersections of suffering and humility and faith are curious places. Is it a dog's faith that God requires of his Friends? Take a kicking, bow our necks to the blows, go howling away and then come whinging back to the table, tails between legs, pleading for crumbs, endlessly forgiving, endlessly loyal, endlessly patient, dumb suffering beasts? I don't think so. There's much more there, crammed far back out of the reach of theology. There's deep marrow in these bones.

"Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Still awake, still reading, still typing. Feeling deeply lonely on the one hand but warmed by the invisible presence and thoughts of far-away friends on the other. I took myself to a funny movie today and cried, then laughed at myself for crying and then cried some more. I wasn't keeping score but I think I'd have to say the laughing won this round. Thank God.

"Lord, help me."

I have been singing to the bird

and also playing him Elvis. He seems fairly interested by these developments, and he will step onto my hand if I gently poke his belly, but he's just not thrilled about life. I'm like, "Little dude! I have treats! Eat this!" and he just stares at me. And if I don't come up with something soon his name is going to be Little Dude.

I could name him Pistachio, another delicious green thing I have been eating lately, but the point is to convince him that I DON'T mean to eat him, so maybe it's not a super name. He's yellow and blue, and supposedly will become green with age. He looks like he might be grooving out a little bit to Ain't That Loving You Baby.

I could just name him Elvis...

Oh dear

I missed a Saturday post by one minute. I could cheat and turn the time back on the post but that's not fair.

I had a day very full of friends and a new little feathered friend who does not like me very much as yet and has no name. But he has a big beautiful cage and may eventually forgive me for abducting him from parakeet paradise in a small takeout box.

I am deadly tired, eating watermelon (not green! except on the outside) and reading I Know This Much Is True, a veryvery sad and veryvery good novel by Wally Lamb about a middle-aged man and his schizophrenic identical twin brother...and much more. It is such a good book and such a long book that I am constantly clutching the pages and wishing loudly in my head "don't mess it up! don't mess it up!" I am not sure what I am more afraid of, some sunshiny plot twist, or some melodramatic tragedy when the book is already pretty much pure tragedy.

I smell and need a shower. Yucky.

Pretty much all my friends and compatriots have now fled to NEYM. I can't make it this year, as I said, just too many things going on. I'm feeling pretty sad about it tonight though it was the right decision. But I am praying for them and their very difficult work this year. If you have an extra prayer or thought, I am sure they'd be glad of it, too.

As would I.

Oh my

It is almost the end of this day but I don't want to write about anything. I ate a bunch of falafel, which is also green, and so mildly disturbing. And now my friend Sarah is here and I would rather talk to her than to the computer so this is all I have to say.

Better things

A fairly pointless day today. I woke up (finally slept at 4:30 am) with a sick headache and knowing the heat of the day was only going to make things worse, called into my program and spent the day tossing and turning in front of my fan. I did go out and buy a little healthy food, some eggs and cheese and wholegrain crackers. Despite my constantly ballooning weight, I am have a hard time eating. The mere thought of any food but granny smiths and limeade (It's not easy being green?) serves to turn my stomach. Gah.

A tearful day. I am literally sick of crying. It's not healing or relieving any more...it feels like I have the emotional dry-heaves. It's horrible. I am sure that part of it is the sticky heat but right now everything nauseates me: food, crying, moving, sleeping, conversation. It is tedious and gross.

I've been thinking of the first day in New York after I'd left my husband. I'd just turned twenty one but it seemed like my life was over. I had sobbed myself sick (though I am sure the wine and cigarettes had played their parts) and I was an exhausted damp heap leaning against the headboard of my friend's bed. I will never forget it: she played this song for me, and somehow a little sunshine worked its way into my heart, just when I thought I would never see the light again. I've been listening to it over and over, and while it's never had quite the same effect, it's still helping a little.

Here's wishing you the bluest sky
And hoping something better comes tomorrow
Hoping all the verses rhyme,
And the very best of choruses too
Follow all the doubt and sadness
I know that better things are on the way.

Here's hoping all the days ahead
Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you
Be an optimist instead,
And somehow happiness will find you.
Forget what happened yesterday,
I know that better things are on their way.

It's really good to see you rocking out
And having fun,
Living like you just begun.
Accept your life and what it brings.
I hope tomorrow you'll find better things.
I know tomorrow you'll find better things.

Here's wishing you the bluest sky
And hoping something better comes tomorrow
Hoping all the verses rhyme,
And the very best of choruses too
Follow all the drudge and sadness
I know that better things are on the way.

I know you've got a lot of good things happening up ahead.
The past is gone, it's all been said.
So here's to what the future brings,
I know tomorrow you'll find better things.
I know tomorrow you'll find better things.

I am determined to sleep like a normal person, or as near as I can get, tonight. My medications are all a mess. (Luckily I get to see my own Dr. Please Fix It on Monday after the clown parade I've been dealing with lately) I am not taking the useless benadryl nonsense they've given me for anxiety. It does bugger-all for anxiety and just takes me from anxious and panicky to tired, stupid, anxious and panicky. Awesome. But I might take advantage of the tired and stupid part and see if it will help me sleep.

Wow

this no sleeping thing is really getting old. Here is my link for the day. I expect it will probably be pretty apt:

Ouch.

Drained

It was a pretty grueling day. I will say though that I am experiencing a lot of gratitude lately, especially considering how beat-up I'm feeling.

Mostly I am grateful for my friends. I have a large handful of amazing, kind, loyal friends. It is hard for me to realize this sometimes as I've been so used to thinking of myself as someone who has a hard time making friends. And I am making more friends, in therapy, which has surprised me hugely. There is a certain type of hothouse intimacy that springs up in group therapy and hospital environments that is dangerous and which I have tried (successfully I think) to avoid. Considering how guarded I've been, it is a delight to me to discover that over the course of this program I have made three wonderful new friends.

These people are amazing in and of themselves, but there's a added bonus--we know each other's yuckiest stuff and nastiest secrets. There is no need for preambles or disclaimers. Unlike interaction with "normal" friends, we don't have to worry about the "Dementor Effect" (I promise to stop making Harry Potter references) because we KNOW that we are all depressed and dealing with a lot of negativity and that some days we just feel awful and that's all there is to it. There are no apologies necessary for needing to hide or flake out or freak out now and then. And when we are feeling good, we can have so much fun and silliness without the burden of worrying when it will end, or if it will end at an inconvenient time, because we just know it will, and that's okay. We don't have to talk about how therapy is going or our prognoses, because we already know them, and we've already had those conversations. And it's such an honor to be friends with these women. We are all strong, beautiful women who have each come nose to nose with some of the worst the world has to offer, and we have each chosen to fight the good fight and rise above. I am grateful for their presence in my life.

I am also grateful for bunny rabbits. There is a family of cottontails living somewhere in the meeting house yard and every time I catch a glimpse of one the sight very gently pats the sore spots in my heart and comforts me.

So maybe the last post wasn't so short

But this one will be. Sometime last week I was stopped by the word "crucial" in the sentence "That crucial, formative time." Having both suffering and Harry Potter (Crucio!) much in mind, I realized that the word was related to "crucifixion", and to "crossroads": the cousin of one word, the daughter of another, and sister of "crisis."

It was a very full thought. I don't have much to articulate on the intersections of all of those words at the moment but they all rushed to the front of my head at once, and I've been carrying them around there since. Suffering, change, choices, pain, importance...

Plunder the thesaurus and it gives me "acute, central, clamorous, climacteric, climatic, compelling, crucial, deciding, decisive, desperate, dire, essential, face off, high-priority, imperative, insistent, momentous, necessary, pivotal, pressing, searching, showdown, touchy, urgent, vital"

and

"alliance, annexation, articulation, assemblage, attachment, bond, coalition, coherence, collocation, combination, combine, concatenation, concourse, concursion, confluence, conjugation, consolidation, convergence, coupling, crossing, crossroads, dovetail, elbow, gathering, gore, hinge, hookup, interface, intersection, joining, joint, juncture, knee, link, linking, meeting, miter, mortise, node, pivot, plug-in, reunion, seam, splice, terminal, tie-in, tie-up, union, weld"

as well as

"adieu, bisection, break, breaking, breakup, crossroads, departure, detachment, divergence, division, eighty-eight, farewell, going, goodbye, leave-taking, partition, pffft, rift, rupture, severance, split, split-up, splitsville, swan song, valediction"

and

"climax, crisis, critical juncture, critical point, critical stage, crossroads, crucial moment, decisive moment, defining moment, emergency, high noon, moment of truth, pivotal point, point of no return, turning point, zero hour"

You could play in the dictionary for days on this one. Aaaaaaand doing so has gone and padded the post, so now it's long.

Like a person with a fever, I think my life reached the crisis at some point last week, and I'll survive, I am going to make it, I have rounded the bend and I am finally coming back.

Just a short post today

Unrelated things:

I spent the first half of the day fighting buses and heat. I lost both battles soundly. I made it to the saint shop, but most of the cards were laminated which was disappointing. Plastic spoils everything. I still got some cool things, and finished up the shadow box, I think.

I am getting all sorts of opportunities to practice my "skills" from therapy in my everyday life. I always have a hard time drawing the line between doormat and generous/thoughtful/giving. But the more often I say "No" when I mean it, and "I need this" when I do, and "I do not want that" when I don't, the stronger I feel. It's like a tonic. And I don't feel I'm losing any of my thoughtful/generous/giving nature through all this. In fact, I'm discovering how much more honest it is, and what a relief it is not to walk around covered in the weight of a thousand little "this does not bother me" lies.

Finally caught in the snare of the LaRouche Cult, I spent a good 1/2 hour in the sun debating Canadian (!) politics with a very very very veryveryvery earnest boy my own age. My usual dismissal of canvassers with "I'm Canadian!" didn't work this time, cause he was too, which is weird. Long discussion about imperialism and why Canada never had a revolution. Learned some scary things about the Canadian constitution, which I am afraid I had never read before. I went home and looked it up and it's all true. Anyway, I finally admitted that the questions they are asking sound interesting but the answers (and the org) are a bit (!) frightening. Walked away with a pamphlet but did a good job explaining why I was not going to make a donation of any type. In the old days I would have given away money I didn't have to an organization I didn't care about, just out of some odd sense of not wanting to hurt the other person's feelings.

Had an entirely random interaction with a tiny Irish Mr. Clean. He was almost unintelligible as he walked by me sweating miserably at the bus stop, (and I'm usually not bad at understanding people through accents) but once I'd run the translation, I realized he'd said "Ah, didn't you hear all the buses are broken down for the day! Ha, just kidding you! Ha ha!" At least he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was so cheerful it almost knocked me over.

I've been laughing a lot recently, and it feels very good. I'm still really depressed, and there are moments when it stops me in my tracks, when I can't catch my breath and I think my heart is going to stop from sheer sadness, but there have been as many (possibly more) moments of full, real laughter. It's good.

What is not funny are the last six rows of this thing I am knitting. I keep messing up somewhere critical, and I try to fix it until I am wild with frustration, and then I put it away for three days, rinse and repeat. I may have lost to the buses and the sun, but I am going to win the battle of the sticky pink yarn.

Three Things I Did Not Write

These are three moment in literature that I have found tremendously helpful and healing. None of it is...cheerful. People might cry "Macabre! Depressing! Why are you reading this stuff!? Here is a nice book about puppies and rainbows, it's much better for you." But people rarely understand that one of the worst sufferings of mental illness is how unnameable and unutterable the sensations and emotions can be, even within oneself, let alone in beginning to describe or share them with another person. Each of these writings names some emotion in a way that heals me to read. And so I read them and read them, because I am in need of healing. So I read them over some more. And then I copy them into my blog just in case somebody else could use them.

One:

From A Moment's Liberty: The Shorter Diaries, Virginia Woolf. This entry always stuns me with its graphically, technically detailed, accurate description of a few moments in the life of a depressive.

Wednesday 15 September

"A State of Mind. Woke up perhaps at 3. Oh its beginning its coming - the horror - physically like a painful wave swelling about the heart - tossing me up. I'm unhappy unhappy! Down - God, I wish I were dead. Pause. But why am I feeling like this? Let me watch the wave rise. I watch. Vanessa. Children. Failure. Yes, I detect that. Failure failure. (The wave rises). Oh they laughed at my taste in green paint! Wave crashes. I wish I were dead! I've only a few years to live I hope. I can't face this horror any more - (this is the wave spreading out over me). This goes on; several times, with varieties of horror. Then, at the crisis, instead of the pain remaining intense, it becomes rather vauge. I doze. I wake with a start. The wave again! The irrational pain: the sense of failure; generally some specific incident, as for example my taste in green paint, or buying a new dress, or asking Dadie for the week-end, tacked on. At last I say, watching as dispassionately as I can, Now take a pull of yourself. No more of this. I reason. I take a census of happy people and unhappy. I brace myself to shrove to throw to batter down. I begin to march blindly forward. I feel obstacles go down. I say it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I become rigid and straight, and sleep again, and half wake and feel the wave beginning and watch the light whitening and wonder how, this time, breakfast and daylight will overcome it; and then hear L. in the passage and simulate, for myself as well as for him, great cheerfulness, and generally am cheerful, by the time breakfast is over. Does everyone go through this state? Why have I so little control? It is the cause of much waste and pain in my life."


Two:

From The Essential Rilke, trans. Galway Kinnell. Every woman closest to Jesus was named Mary. And the name Mary means "bitterness" or sorrow. The sadness and wholeness and wistful longing and love in this poem smooth something out inside of me that usually prefers to stay twisted.

The Quieting of Mary With The Resurrected One

What they felt then, is it not
above all other mysteries the sweetest
and yet still earthly:
when he, pale from the grave,
his burdens laid down, went to her:
risen in all places.
Oh, first to her. how they
inexpressibly began to heal.
Yes, to heal: that simple. They felt no need
to touch each other strongly.
He placed his hand, which next
would be eternal, for scarcely
a second on her womanly shoulder.
And they began
quietly as trees in spring
in infinite simultaneity
their season
of ultimate communing.


Three:

The Only Animal by Franz Wright. Especially if you are identified as depressed, people really freak out about poems with first lines mentioning suicide. But this is not a poem about suicide. It's a poem about the gift of life, the most forgiving poem I've ever read, a poem that God must have written first and then passed on to Wright, a poem I come to again and again and again whether I need tears or hope. It's visited this blog before, and it will probably visit it again. I'll probably have something from it carved on my urn. I love this poem, have you noticed?

The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked and abruptly
returned,
the room empty.

The only animal that cries
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth—

Somewhere

the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backward in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.

And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I’m never coming back
and yet

this morning
I stood once again
in this world, the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can’t imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry

strangeness of being
here at all.

You gave us each in secret something to perceive.

Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child

You said, though your own heart condemn you

I do not condemn you.

I spent a large part of my day today

on a wild-goose chase. I have been making a lot of art recently, mostly collage. Right now I am working on a shadowbox based on a few lines of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem that have always haunted me:

"I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints..."

In the box already are a picture of myself at one with my teddy bear and a bottle hanging out of my mouth, a picture of myself at six with my pony, a pile of tiny rocks from the Canadian maritimes, two tiny naked dolls, some lavender, some gold stars, a candy necklace, curtains made of the silk gauze from my wedding veil, and a blue enameled pendant I bought one day dreaming of a possible wedding some other day in the future. But I need some of those old-fashioned gold-bordered "holy cards" -- little trading-card type devotionals with pictures of different saints. I have some coming from ebay but I was caught up in the inspiration of the moment and wanted them NOW so went on a mission to find a Catholic gift store. It was hard! I traveled all over Boston from the North End to the South End, from the Italians to the Irish, and for all the billions of Catholics around I couldn't find a single store! Several trails went cold when I arrived at a site only to find yet another benchfull of old men or old women who would tell me that the nuns had packed up and gone to the suburbs, but they thought maybe there was a "saint store" over in...

With the help of a savvy friend I finally tracked down the mildly startling SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE FAITH store, and from the window it looks promising, but it is closed on the weekend, so my quest will have to slumber till Monday.

Working on this project and meditating on the lines of the poem remind me of when I was first learning about God. I was shown the tabernacle behind the altar and told that Jesus lived there. My six-year-old mind imagines a tiny dollhouse holy palace with a four inch Jesus waiting for someone to open the door, and I am crazy with desire to see it. But it was only opened at the end of mass, and the priest's wide vestments always obscured the view as he put the host away, much to my pained frustration. I don't remember how long it took me to realize that there was no golden doll furniture, and no little walking talking Jesus to be found behind the little locked door, but I'm afraid it was a disappointment.

I reach back and try to remember what it felt like to so easily believe that you could just open a door and find God sitting on a little golden chair, waiting for a chat, if only somebody would unlock it for you.

PS: I think I am going to start linking to a few ancient "greatest hits" posts from the past when they feel relevant to my condition. I've been doing some re-reading, and damn if that bright, energetic, verbose little girlio wasn't fairly awesome. She certainly had no idea. I want to find her again someday. So:
December 21, 2004 (I'd just turned 22. Gawd that feels like ancient history somehow.)

Somewhere today

I got an idea for a post, but I forget what it was. Oh well.

I took it easy today. I finally slept after three days but it was a sick drugged kind of sleep so it took me a long time to ease into the morning. Once I got outside I cleared up remarkably. I ran an errand, and went to therapy.

You know, they do this thing on a person's last day in the group that I used to think was really stupid and cloying. They have a "rock ceremony" where the person picks a little rock out of a bowl and then it is passed around the group and everyone takes a turn saying something about the person and "infusing" the rock with some quality, commonly peace, love, strength, fortitude, etc. and then the person takes the rock home and treasures it for life, etc. I spent a good deal of time fretting about how I was going to deal with the rock ceremony of a certain person who was leaving today. I really disliked this person, found them abrasive, consistently negative, whining, always talking but never having anything to say, and so on. (interesting how we loathe in others the very things we are paranoid and insecure about in ourselves) I really had tried to support this person all along but I couldn't think of anything genuinely good to say about her, no matter how I'd sought that of God inside her, which was confounding. I was trying to dream up not-untrue positive phrases but feared they'd be transparent and I would hurt this person by being false.

Finally I decided that I would just make my message about rest and peace, because they were two things I could see this woman really needed, and I could be genuine about it, and I'd let it go from there.

And you know, when I held that rock in my hand and opened my mouth, the spirit moved in me and suddenly I could see a dozen little beautiful things about this person and her way of moving in the world, and I said them. And it was a gift for both of us, because my eyes were opened in such a peculiar way. I always thought I'd been trying to see the good in her, and apparently I was noticing things all along but hadn't registered them. The Spirit was seeking more deeply than I was, or rather, I guess the Spirit knew what I had not perceived.

I don't know. But it was cool.

As for me I'm grieving today but steady. I've been given a good dose of grace to deal with the latest Sad Thing in my life, and one blessing of this S.T. is that I've been able to see a little fruit from the weary tedious work I have been doing in therapy these months. In the past, a S.T. like this would have sent me directly to some sort of self-destructive act, some sort of self-loathing reinforcement, some sort of despair. And I don't feel any of those things. I can't express how deeply sad I am, but it's a purer sadness, with the hatred (self hatred, but still hatred) that I've lain with in the past removed. So that is good.

Amen.

Little bird

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickinson

I took out my window screen to put in a fan. I turned off the fan when I left the house. I came home and was home for an hour before I realized that there was a sparrow hiding in the corner of my room: I heard it rustle. It didn't move as I came towards it, but it didn't look petrified. It just looked at me. I betrayed his trust but saved his life (there is a cat) by throwing a towel over him and then tossing him out the window.

I feel like someone has thrown a towel over me and tossed me out the window. Only question is whether I can fly away sputtering madly but free, too.

I've learned of a new artist

named Elvis Perkins, and he is a connoisseur of grief. People yell at me for listening to sad music when I am sad, but they don't understand what ballad writers have always known, and Shakespeare said best:

Give sorrow words
The grief that does not speak
whispers the o'er-fraught heart
and bids it break

Anyway, I am listening to Perkins' It's a Sad World After All, and it's helping.

Stay if you want, there is enough
sadness for the both of us

Follow the sound to the table underground
there will be plenty tears goin' round

And I would be happy for you to stay
with me till tomorrow can be called today
In a sad world, in a sad world.

But when you leave
my powders and my teas
will speak their heads off to me
Here everyone knows their own name
in a sad world no two are the same.

"Real soon," assures the spoon,
"Watch out" says the twine
"Water, give me water,
Remember me," begs the rain
of a sad world, of a sad world.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and iTunes has got your back. :)

For good measure, here I am crying at my sister's wedding:

Blaugh

Okay, so it was technically already today when I posted, but I have something of note to say: not two hours later and I got the 2nd worst fit of gastroenteritis I have ever had (#1 was las Christmas) and spent the rest of the night in the emergency room, being given IV fluids and giving large quantities of my blood in return. I also got some nifty dissolves-in-your-mouth-not in-your-stomach anti-nausea meds, but even those made me barf, so I ended up getting a miracle Please Stop Vomiting Already, Vomit Girl, Okay, Thanks drug in the arm instead. And I did stop barfing. But before that I barfed on my Harry Potter book, a little, when I was trying to read it to distract myself and my IV got in the way of moving it fast enough. And all I could think of were Puking Pastilles.

I have never horked on a book before. It feels terrible. Also, it's nausiatingly lovely how many words there are for vomiting: heave, hurl, keck, regurgitate, spew...

My mood is surprisingly good given the no sleep and the upchuck festival. Which is a little worrying, maybe. But then, I did regurgitate all my meds.

*urp*

Of the best stuff, but cracked.

"When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time...When I was crazy, that's all I was." ~ Sylvia Plath

It's been a long, long time since I've posted anything here, let alone kept up with the blogosphere, and there's a good reason for that. For the past long time I've been bearing the heavy burden of mental illness, and it has ravaged not only my blog, but my job, my school-life, my faith-life, and my relationship. For the past 4 months I've been on leave from work, and hospitalized or in 5-day a week therapy the entire time. I've been on and off of a total of 14 different psychoactive drugs and 5 different diagnoses. (They've finally settled on Bipolar II and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I've been in some really dark places. I just got out of the hospital again today, a particularly brutal and unhappy stay.

I've finally decided to re-vamp this blog and write again. I've been aching to write, but my identity as Quaker has been being nudged out of the way by my new identity as Mentally Ill. I've found myself feeling increasingly alienated from my own blog, my own voice. I haven't known what to say, in part because I've been alienated from a lot of other things as well.. In fact, I can't go to Yearly Meeting this year because of the financial and personal toll the Crazy extracts from me. How can I sit in Sessions when I've got 5 "sessions" a day to attend at a partial hospital program?

I've decided to be open about this because I know for sure that there is a deep and important nexus somehow in this kind of suffering and faith.

In Let your Life Speak, Parker Palmer devotes an entire chapter to depression: "All The Way Down," and he begins it with a quotation from Pinsky's translation of the Inferno:

"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard--so tangled and rough

And savage thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

I'll tell what I saw. . ."

and it's a good preface to my own writing on the subject, as well. I'd like to share some of Parker's words, too.

"Hour by hour, day by day, I wrestled with the desire to die, sometimes so feeble in my resistance that I "practiced" ways of doing myself in. I could feel nothing except the burden of my own life and the exhaustion, the apparent futility, of trying to sustain it.
I understand why some depressed people kill themselves: they need the rest. But I do not understand why others are able to find new life in the midst of a living death, though I am one of them. I can tell you what I did to survive and, eventually, to thrive--but I cannot tell you why I was able to do these things before it was too late."

And that's what I want to do here now. In this space, as I struggle to survive and thrive, I want to share "the good I find there as well" when it comes. I know that just the sharing of it, the writing of it, will be part of that good. I am going to make a commitment to write here every day, even if it's just a line, circumstances and God permitting, for at least the next month. Maybe it'll be my own yearly meeting, to start with.

Much love to all my Friends. See you tomorrow.

Suddenly Summer

I don't know what happened...I guess May! It's hot as blazes here and I haven't got any idea what to wear. All my more summery clothes are buried under mounds of sweaters. Also, I have a feeling that if I did dig them out they wouldn't even fit. Grr.

Hey, here's a picture of me in character for my upcoming show. Yikes, right?




Vice, vice, vice. I do a good job playing the washed up Girl Gone Wrong, even in front of a blackboard. Finally, the anti-ingenue!

I think that's enough for now.

Hoo boy

What a month. I don't even know where to start...

Well, I did not get into school. But I did get the "good" rejection letter that says something like "Please try again next year. No, really, please try again next year. No, really, I'll call you sometime, we should...hang out...or something sometime. Yeah. Yeah. Good to meet you. Bye."

Okay, I am a little bitter. It really was the good letter and they are offering to help me out with my application next year. But still, sigh.

It is almost time for finals. I have one paper, one big final to study for, and a song to whip into shape for public performance. Well, and then another paper talking about my experience in the singing class.

At this moment I am in my last Conspiracy class. The class itself was fascinating. The question-and-answer section often gets a bit boring, though. And we're having an extra-long one because it's the last class.

I got really sick early this month and spend three weeks in the hospital or under daily care. It seems to be under control, and I got a lot of good help and new medication. But it sure threw a wrench in my life. I'm still really tired and kind of just plain wiped out from the whole thing, but I am slowly scraping all the bits together and carrying on. I used up all my vacation time, all my sick time, and all my personal days. Luckily, some of those should accrue back pretty fast.

I'm going to be taking an intensive Spanish Class this summer, 8 weeks, 5 days a week, 3 hours a day. I'm really excited about it, except that it has suddenly occurred to me that this will make Sessions really difficult for me. (that and my lack of Vacation days) I don't see that I can miss an entire week of class right before exams. I need to think about this. I'm on the Correspondence committee for the YM, so I kind of need to be there.

Okay, grad students are presenting papers. Off to listen.

The Beggar's Song

Always I go from gate to gate
rained on, scorched by the sun,
suddenly I press my right ear
into my right hand.
And now my own voice comes to me
as if I'd never known it.

So that I'm not certain who's crying out,
I or someone else.
I cry for a pittance.
The poets cry for more.

At last I close my face
by closing both my eyes,
lying so heavily in my hand
it almost looks like rest.
So they won't think I hadn't
a place to lay my head.

~Rilke.

Waiting for notification. The Letter From The College, and other things, too.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Prayers, please

My (big) little brother, age 20, has had Viral Myrocarditis that went undiagnosed for over a year. The past month he's been under treatment, but had to rush to the ER today with severe chest pains. I'm awfully worried about him, even though he is so big and strong. I hope he is okay. It is hard to be so far away.

Rememberance

A few months before the final end of my ill-starred marriage years ago, I had a temp job at a big Halloween-costume factory store. It was a fun job, wearing costumes, counseling customers around their disguise, getting side-jobs as a makeup artist.

I met two people there.

One was a beautiful woman, whose name I am ashamed to say I do not remember. She, like me, was in an abusive marriage and afraid to get out. Somewhere inside me I found the courage to help her do what I could not. There were several weeks of bargaining and wavering. I helped her get away, and I stayed several scary nights with her in her apartment while her ex beat on the door. We cowered in her bed and turned up the volume on 3am Oprah re-runs. Eventually he gave up. There were several weeks of tears and I made her a birthday party a week later to help her cheer up. In helping her I learned about what I could and would do when my time came.

I don't know where she is now.

I prayed for her tonight.

Another was a beautiful boy named Jesse. All the blond cheerleader teenage employees were drooling after him, being too young and innocent to have any sense of gaydar. Jesse and I somehow bonded instantly. He was a mess, lovely and vulnerable, also with a taste in abusive men. He was funny, bold...lovely, lovable, fragile and joyful and childlike despite his almost thirty years. I was a mess, a child bride, frightened, lonely, overworked with no sense of fun. I found in Jesse the solace and attention and care-free, strings-free love I had always missed, and he found in me a confidant, a protector, a loyal and gentle friend. Jesse gave me the adolescence I'd missed along the way. I got to pretend to be bad, after so many years of being the good one. We played jokes, we walked around the mall wisecracking. He took me to my first drag show. We shared cigarettes outside unspeakably filthy bars. I got into my one and only physical fight defending him in a bar fight. (I won, though I still bear the scar to prove it.) One of the few gay bars in our southern town was also the only goth bar, once a week. We'd dress up in baby-goth drag, calling ourselves the "Dark Children," both skinny kids, me a dapper, hip young man with huge eyes, and him my slithery date in too much eyeliner. We'd go out and dance till 3 am. I was still underage, so he'd buy gin and tonics and we'd share them, giggling, in adjoining stalls in the men's room, passing the glass back and forth under the partition. I loved him. When I finally fled my terrible, abused existence, we lost touch.

I don't know where he is now.

I prayed for him tonight.

I've been grieved many times over the fate of these troubled lost friends. My prayer is that they have both been somehow lead to a place of faith and healing, like me. Slowly, step by step.

I pray for them tonight.

I remebered the first friend's name. It was Diamond.

Another dream:

I was at a meeting for worship and it began with random people blessing each other with water and setting up for a mock-mass. I was horrified and left the meetinghouse and sat outside with my family, who appeared out of nowhere. I was very upset that the meeting was doing this, and decided my time would be better spent with my family, since this meeting was obviously going to be terrible, and my time with my family was limited. So I chatted uncomfortably with my parents and cuddled the little kids.

After meeting a group of weighty Friends surrounded me and began to elder me "If you're serious about joining the meeting you are going to have to submit to the sense of the meeting, even if it includes sham sacraments." I was torn and confused and felt ill. My parents seemed triumphant at this failure of Quakerism, and I felt shamed in their sight and the meeting's.

And then I woke up.

Gah! Commitment-phobia, anyone?

I had a (much!) better real-life time with Quakers tonight, getting together with Liz Opp, Robin, Will Taber, Rob, and many other wonderful Friends for a lovely dinner of pizza and conversation. There was a traveling Friend from El Salvador with us, and for some reason I was deeply moved by the rhythm the conversation took on from the process of translation--rather than being choppy it seemed more quietly fluid, with the natural pauses for the translation giving a graceful, thoughtful sway to what was being said. Translation of conversation is very different than translations of speeches or messages, I think. I am not sure why. But there is an added earnestness for understanding and listening and clarity that stirs my heart. Thanks, God, and Friends, for a beautiful evening.

I promise not to make this a diet blog!

But this is a big part of my life right now, and I feel the need to talk about it.

I am using www.sparkpeople.com to track my food intake. It's pretty eye-opening. I thought I was pretty good about portion control, but it turns out that I've been eating a lot more than I thought I was. It's also very good for me as a vegetarian, because it's confirming what I suspected: my fat intake is pretty good, but I consume way more carbs than I need and way less protein than I need. Maybe if I ate more protein I'd be less exhausted all the time. It's hard for a veggie on the go to the get the protein she needs. It's much easier to grab a cookie or a bagel than to cook up beans and lentils and tofu. I think I will be eating more hard-boiled eggs. It's hard to stay in the recommended calorie allotment, too. I think it's a matter of re-training the body. Anyway, tracking my intake and nutrients this way is educational, even though it's hard.

I am hoping to use this diet as a bit of an exercise in simplicity. Not surprisingly, the packaged and take-out foods my regular diet relies on are high in calories. It's no secret that good home cooking, if you're gentle with the butter and cheese, tends to be better for you (and often, the world.) I'm working on buying less processed ingredients and making the time to pre-pack lunches and breakfasts, and even dinners for school days, where I often don't get home till 10pm. It is a struggle, but it's good stewardship in more ways than one.

I'm also having to cut down my alcohol calories. I'm not a big boozer, but my delicious beer is at least 200-300 calories a hit. Gone are the days where I could absentmindedly spend a few hours in the pub with some friends and slowly down 3 pints. That's most of my daily calorie allowance! And that sort of liquid diet's not overly recommended.

Ah me.

Anyhow, maybe I'll save some money and spend my time a little better while I'm being careful about what I eat.

I'm waiting on a dreaded scale to arrive.

Blog and it shall be given unto you.

Hey! SAT scores and an email saying the old transcript is on its way! All in one day! Whoo!

Thanks, Universe. I needed that.

Dream dream dream

When I do sleep, I have intense dreams. They are always very specific. These days they are often medical, which I think is a combination of my hopes for medical school, my general physical health, and a sense of continuing healing/sickness around my emotional life.

I had a very detailed dream about having leukemia last night. And it was so matter of fact. I just went in, was diagnosed and listened to what they told me I'd have to do. Then I sat down and rolled up my sleeve and got the IV push of drugs while watching some sort of historical romance movie on a tiny, tiny television. And then I went and laid down outside. I felt spinny, like I'd had too much to drink or had stood up too quickly. The ground was damp but the sky was blue, and I closed my eyes to rest. And then I opened them and I was awake.

Very strange.

Cloudy today

But still with a warm breeze. La la la see me blog about the weather.

Giant but exciting project at work is eating my life. It should be over this week, God willing. Also, the ballet theatre has a show opening this Friday. I've been too sick and tired to do anything about it until now (my involvement was supposed to be minimal anyhow) so we are kind of scrambling to get costumes together. As usual. It's a ballet I have done with them before so I know my way around the costumes. I was hoping to do some fun embellishment stuff with them, back in the planning stages, but I think as of now we'll just be glad if everyone fits in something before we push them out onstage. I was there first thing this morning with my measuring tape and pins, and now I am drooping a little at my desk. I am still intensely sleepy and hoping to find some time for a nap between work and class tonight.

Mmm. Nap.

You know, I was really annoyed with the time change, but last night, when quitting time came and I could still see my hand in front of my face, I was happy for the extra daylight. So I am grudgingly approving Daylight Savings Time, even though it doesn't make the giant task of waking up any easier.

Hey, I think I see a little sun peeking through. A square inch of sun!

Now I need to go climb into the library and photocopy my boss's essays out of a book that does not circulate. Sometimes I wonder if repeatedly photocopying one's head would be an antidote to SAD.

Not that I've ever been diagnosed with SAD. I just wonder.

I had some nice quiet time over my sandwich this afternoon and did some praying along with my chewing. Mostly just holding-so-and-so-and-this-and-that in the Light stuff. Not any deep conversation with God or anything. But still nice and grounding.

Okay, off to the books and the photocopier bay. Maybe I can catch a few Zs in the stacks.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

~Robert Frost

PS. Perfect A on the midterm! Hurrah!

PPS. Sun came all the way out! Double hurrah!

Spring! And things.

After several weeks of hellish coldness (heh.) today has a warm wind blowing. It is lovely.

I am doing some great Quaker reading that I hope to share about soon once I've done some more processing. Going to Business meeting has done a lot to re-invest me in my search, and I'm really glad that I started that again, though there are so many frustrations and heartbreaks to be had down those lines, as well.

One of the main reasons my blogging has been so sparse is that I'm just exhausted. I've always struggled with fatigue, but this no-sleep-without-pills or 12-hrs-of-sleep's-not-enough-with-pills cycle is pretty merciless. I have a good new doctor and I am hopeful that things will straighten out someday soon. I have already found my mood greatly improved, and I think the new medicines combined with the return of the sun are responsible for that. I haven't had a meltdown or any big Days of Darkness in months, and that's amazing. So, if I could just not be tired, that would be so great. Right now sleeping is my main leisure activity, before knitting, cooking, even reading. And that's not a great way to be burning calories.

Speaking of calories, thanks for the words of wisdom on the last post. One of the great things that came out of my foray into plain dress was a certain degree of freedom from worries about my looks. Though, as Cat says, simplicity may be cuter on a size 6 frame, I haven't been a size 6 in years and don't really expect to be again. Wearing one of three generously-cut, un-sized dresses every day made obsessing over pant-size irrelevant. I wasn't likely to notice small day-to-day fluctuations in weight. None of the three dresses "made my butt look big" and that was that.

I stepped away from traditional plain dressing because I grew increasingly uneasy with the fundamentalist politics the dress seemed to broadcast. Traditional plain-dressing, especially for women, came to seem inextricable from certain ideas about gender-roles and misogynistic sexual morality, wherein some man has care of rationing out a given woman's virtue. And to be honest, with a new desk-job, it no longer felt at all suited to my way of life. I didn't feel as though I was witnessing, I felt awkward and out-of-place. I could have just switched to wearing less distinctive plain dress, but instead I simply drifted back into regular clothes, though 99% second-hand.

I'm not blaming this switch, because I DID gain 60 lbs. And I am fairly content with my wardrobe as it is. But it is interesting to me how quickly I can fall back into freaking out about a pant-size. I know there is vanity involved, certainly. Not so much about the way I look, because I am tall and I don't look that different, especially in the still fairly-plain clothes I wear day-to-day (I'm not trying to fit into a mini-dress or hip-huggers.) But I think I am vain just about the "thought" of my weight. Maybe I was proud of the old one.

Still, I want to lose it, for health-reasons and for self-esteem reasons, even if there's some vanity involved. So it's something I am thinking about.

I've also been dealing with huge frustrations with my application to school. I've got my heart set on it more than I should, and I am trying to let go a bit and just wait and see if way opens. In the meantime, way is being continually obstructed by bureaucratic idiocy, not on the part of the school I want to go to, but on both a larger and smaller scale. The school I went to (where I flushed away my anti-depressants and then proceeded to waste the next three years of my life in a miserable abusive relationship) no longer really "exists" and getting paperwork from them is like pulling teeth from a chicken. I'm angry that I have to think about it so much. The process is reminding me of my divorce: the impossible paperwork, the indifferent and unresponsive other party, the dredging up of horrible memories, and the drawn-out aggravation. Also, the College Board has hung me out to dry for over a month as they do an "archive search" for my ancient (6 year old) SAT scores, which they wouldn't need if I had gone to a "proper" highschool with a "proper" transcript, instead of reading the Western literary canon at home while helping to raise a passle of children. Everything has to be official, ratified, signed, undersigned, cataloged, numbered, ordered, serialized and stamped by some Authority, and it's making me crazy. I am running out of time to get these documents and can't help feeling annoyed that I even need them. I am smart! I work hard! Why is that not enough?

/rant.

This is not ruining my life, despite my vehemence. I'm feeling pretty happy, believe it or not. But it's sure taking away a lot of my energy.

But then, I saw a crocus today.

Oh my goodness

This has nothing to do with Quakerness, but maybe to do with Lent. I just went to the Dr. and I have gained almost 60 lbs in a year! A lot of it has to do with meds, but still! WOAH.

Man.

I am trying to figure out a response. Um, gym, much? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH/

In other news, after several trying meetings for business, God told me to apply for membership.

Well, okay.

So I did. I am now nominated for Care and Support, pending my membership. I feel like maybe this is where my gifts lie, if I can ever stop thinking/talking about myself.

(ME = MOST FASCINATING SUBJECT EVER)

Oh god.

I think If I felt more honest I would blog every day. But I am afraid of the family and friends. Maybe I should go back to anon blogging. Who knows.

Life seems suspended until April, first week, when I learn if Welles*ey wants me or not.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Could I be more obsessed with myself?

SIXTY POUNDS. FIVE POUNDS AWAY FROM OBESE. HOW CAN I BE DEEP RIGHT NOW?

My application is in!

I've worked so hard on these entrance essays, and learned so much in the process that I want to blog them. They'll be slightly edited for confidential content, but largely intact. Without further ado, I present:

Essay one: Autobiographical statment discussing previous academic experience and the reasons for interuption in education:

I spent my home-schooled years in Canada and North Carolina hungry for college. The oldest of many children, (twelve at last count) I daydreamed about wide-open libraries, uninterrupted stretches of time just to read, and most of all, intellectual companions. My parents were rightfully consumed with the serious business of keeping us all fed, and my young siblings had no patience for my obsessions. I was sure that once I made it to college, the opportunities for discourse and discussion would be limitless.

At eighteen, my passions were split cleanly three ways. The first was science. I’d tasted the possibilities in local classes and teetered at the edge of pursuing a degree in computational chemistry. But left to my own devices with a dry textbook, I’d floundered in math and doubted my ability. Worse, a warning rang in my head: “A doctor? Why spend nearly a decade in school when you’ll be staying home with your children in the end?”
Directly opposite lay my desire to perform. In the last months before college, I’d won a place in a regional theatre camp: eight blissful weeks of eight-hour-a-day immersion in improvisation, choral singing, stage-fighting and prop-building. Joyfully, I imagined four more years of the same. I was accepted to UNC-Greensboro, intending to double-major in music and theatre.

Superseding even my love of science and theatre, my Catholic faith was the underlying principle of my life. Throughout my intensely religious childhood I had courted the possibility of a religious vocation. The seeming hugeness of this first life-decision (magnified in my mind by its potentially eternal consequences) haunted me, and I was racked with doubt over my choice. If this life was simply preparation for a heavenly career, it would be a terrible vanity to waste my time with art! Mere weeks before check-in at UNC-G, I performed a repentant about-face. A flurry of paperwork and phone-calls secured me a place in an extremely conservative Catholic college. It promised a rigorous liberal-arts education and daily religious formation: a chance to steep myself in both books and faith until God decided what to do with me.

My first year broke my resolve and my heart. It truly was a school for full immersion in a certain worldview. It was the worldview I’d assumed I’d always hold, but as the straight and narrow path closed in, I stumbled against the restrictions. I was scolded for reading Joyce (“a mere profane stylist”) and forbidden to produce a play by (“the scandalously homosexual”) Wilde. Turning to the library for comfort, I found that it lacked even Yeats (“a known occultist”). Disappointed and confused—in the throes of my first crisis of faith—I withdrew my heart and my mind from my studies. Ready to flee one disappointment for another, I left school behind.

Nap time?

Alas, it is not. I am at work during a slow period where my only duty is to man the phone. I have been a busy girl, though. Yes, I have.

I've been writing and re-writing my personal statements. I think I am almost there. I've found two references and am pondering the third. I have copied, researched, emailed, typed, faxed, labled, mailed and fed-exed nearly non-stop. I've dredged up the ancient memories of my unschooling homeschooling experience. It really wasn't that long ago, but I feel as though I've had so many lives between now and then--it is like stretching back into the dark reaches of time. It's been an exciting and exhausting experience, but I have to say I am feeling proud of myself. None of this sort of thing comes easily to me. I can write a thousand exposés of my life: pulp fiction, inspirational fiction, narrative non-fiction, whatever. But to truthfully share the light and dark of those times in a way that is quiet, calm, measured, and mature takes a great deal of thought and strength. It's been a good exercise, and I'm not done yet.

A week after I first learned about the main program I am applying to, I had my first dream of flying. Most accounts of flying dreams seem to feature soaring, swooping, and watching vivid scenery flash by far below. When my dream began I was standing still in a dark place, looking at my feet. I had gone to bed with aching shoulders from several days of shovelling and ice-chopping. In the dream I was very aware of my arms, but when I looked at them, they had been replaced by the huge, soft, strong white wings of a snowy owl. The atmosphere was cold, thicker than water. I raised my wings above my head with great effort and slowly brought them down through the congealed air. The physics of dreams are uncertain at best, but I rose a few inches from the ground and hung suspended, resting. Each time I repeated the action I rose a little higher. It was extremely difficult, and sometimes I would stop and rest in mid-air for whole minutes at a time. As I gained altitude the air grew more clear and bright, and my wingbeats more free and easy. Before I woke up, I had reached no final destination: the only direction was a slow staccato ascending.

Waking from the dream, I lay very still and heard the phrase "trample down" resting in my mind.

Go through the work, and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample down all that is contrary.

--George Fox

I seemed that in the dream I was pushing down this dark air, but it was beyond a mere trampling: the dark air was also the means by which I rose above the worst of it: the resistance was necessary.

It was a fruitful dream, and I find it interesting that past transformative dreams have also featured large white birds.

And I know other people's dreams can be boring, but I had another meaningful one: I was dying of a blood infection. A doctor came up to me and told me I was septic, and that doctor was also me. Doctor-me gave patient-me a transfusion and I was cured. The end. Huh.

Step up to the line

I've been tangled in a morass of possibilities these past few days. My iTunes are echoing my reality...

But you'll fight and you'll make it through
You'll fake it if you have to
And you'll show up for work with a smile
And you'll be better
You'll be smarter
More grown up and a better daughter or son
And a real good friend
And you'll be awake
You'll be alert
You'll be positive though it hurts
And you'll laugh and embrace all of your friends
And you'll be a real good listener
You'll be honest
You'll be brave
You'll be handsome and you'll be beautiful
You'll be happy

I am busy being an insomniac and making insomniac promises to myself. I am applying for two "non traditional scholar" programs now that I am finally elderly enough and quailing before all the lines and lines and lines and lines of self-aggrandizement and assessment required. How many qualified people can check the "exceptional" box for me? What has my life been up till now (and from now)? Can I explain myself in 250 to 500 words? Can I make an account of the blessed disaster of my past five years? Can I tell them what I thought would happen to me at eighteen, what happened to me at twenty-one, what's different at twenty-four, and what I hope for myself at twenty-nine, all in the space allotted? Can I plead my case? Can I beg forgiveness, earn a second chance? Can I prove that I was worth it all this time? Can I compress my years of pain and doubt and fear and hatred and coffee-shops and learning and growth and despair and hope all into one essay?

I don't know. In the meantime I think I will cry a little bit. Heh.


In my dreams
I see myself hitting a baseball
In a green field somewhere near a freeway
I'm all tan and smiling and running from 3rd base
And it's hot and
The kids keep on playing the driving game
And they're singing the same goddamn refrain
And the sky is a blueish grey.
And its become just like a chemical stress
Tracing the lines in my face for
Something more beautiful than is there
I've barely been gone.

In my dreams
I see you at the foot of some mountains.
And we're taking some pictures or something
And we'd better hurry up
And it's late and
The sun keeps on shooting through pine trees
And the grass stains are wet on your new jeans
And we'd better hurry up
And I've become just like a terrible mess
searching the lines in my face for
something more beautiful than is there
the crowds keep me coming back. Cheering.

In my dreams
I see you asleep on a twin bed
The covers pulled up over your head
Am I asleep or awake?
And it's morning
And the captain is playing the radio
And hes just put the paint on his new boat
Am I asleep or awake?

And it just feels good when you're waking up
And it just feels good when you're next to me
And it just feels good when you're coming home
And it just feels good when it's waking up

And I've become just like a chemical stress
Tracing the lines of my face for
Something more beautiful than is there
I've barely been gone
and I'm not a failure
I swear
I wish you could see it from over there
I've got a lot over here without you
I've barely been gone
gone
dreaming

(All lyrics courtesy Rilo Kiley)

How to shed 20 years in 20 seconds

Oh man. I just spent a few minutes on youtube watching commercials from the 80's. It is amazing how nothing else can take me back so forcefully. GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, The Chipmunks, My Pet Monster, Teddy Ruxpin, "The Real Ghostbusters"!

One 20 second commercial and I'm once again below the age of reason.

Wow.

(I know these latest posts haven't been too heavy, but this one is for real! How is it that an entire childhood can be summoned by a few flashing images and a theme song? Eek! And this was TWENTY YEARS AGO. OH MY GOD.)

Also, every single animated series of the period seemed to be a 20 minute commercial for the matching toys. Sigh.

What Generation am I? Somewhere in between X and Y. (Born at the tail end of 1982) Whoever we are, somehow it seems like we got the biggest blast of unadulterated commercialization, before irony and savvy marketing caught on. I think maybe we did have it balder (but maybe better) than the target-marketed kids of today. (Even if I did own 10 My Little Ponies, and even if I did constantly try to trade them for Transformers!)

Hee

In class again, during Q&A, and I just found this quote, which made my evening.


"Adults are just outdated children, and the hell with them." - Dr. Suess

A Few Things

1.) Thoughts on laptops in class:

a.) good! taking notes is awesome with typing ability.
b.) good! can ignore people who are asking boring questions by blogging.
c.) bad! blogging during class bad!

2.) Thoughts in worship:

a.)"It can be hard to tell the difference between a stomach ache and a message."
b.)"I think I have both."
c.)"Meeting is too chatty to tell for sure."

3.)Oh my crap:

a.)Most boring guy in last semester's class who asked the most inane questions is here!
b.)Asking the same questions again!
c.)And making the same inane comments!
d.)Will never stop talking, which is why I am blogging.
e.)He is still TALKING.

Some poems to take into worship

1.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape. Walk out
like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You are covered with think cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest
sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon comes out now.


2.

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplied silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

3.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you truly want.
Dont go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill.
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

~Rumi
Trans. Coleman Barks.

Borderlines

I am being all skittery about changing to the new google blogger. Darn all these ongoing innovations.

It's interesting times here. Trying to get a grip on the monster final paper due tomorrow. I also just realized we're supposed to go out for drinks when we hand it in, but I'm down the dregs of the bank account. Poop. I am working on fixing up my financial life so that I don't spend so much of my mental area chanting almostfridayalmostfridayalmostfridayalmostfridaaaaay... though I've been financially independent (oh, so very different from independently wealthy) for six or so years now, I still generally end the pay cycle with -3.98 plus -58.00 bank fees. Eeep! Enough! I need to work my way past my financial puberty and become some kind of fiscal grown-up. I'm also trying to tidy up some messes left behind with ancient unpaid medical and cell phone bills and other things that make for ugly credit. And trying to get one of those “build your credit” credit cards without a billion dollar annual fee. Yawn! Why am I still typing about this? I bore myself. Ick.

I went to my first business meeting at the "new" meeting (the one I've been attending for 18 months and living at for 12? Yes. That new meeting) It was pretty powerful and I've resolved to go more often. Several long-long term weighty attenders applied for membership this round, which made me feel like less of a waffler. Other people wait a long time to join, too! Nyah! Ahh, defensiveness.

The "thereness" of my spiritual life waxes and wanes with my moods. I am still battling chronic depression, but I'm well armed this time with therapist and other helpers. Okay, lots of unquakerly word choices there. But it gets the point across. A lot of the time it is a battle, with all the weariness and bloodiness the word implies, but hopefully, in the end, with a much more positive outcome. It is kind of depressing, how much energy it takes to be depressed. Or, rather, to try not to be depressed. Sometimes I think that if I didn’t have to spend most of my time managing my mood, I would make a million dollars and take over the world. Le sigh.

I've been spending a lot of time sinking into a search for the core of my spirituality…sort of plumbing the depths to see what’s in there, what’s solid. I am always sort of doing this, but recent events have driven me to a deeper, more methodical exploration. As usual, I’m not entirely sure what I am coming up with, but I am getting an idea.

Christmas was a very hard time. I was physically depleted by a violent attack of viral gastroenteritis that left me sniveling and shaking on the bathroom floor and delaying my flight to NC. There was also had a big emotional and spiritual purge that left me feeling similarly drained and shaky: my parents, who love me very much, informed me that any hypothetical Quaker wedding of mine with my dear, Queer friends invited will be unattended by the family.

Which, while still hypothetical, is really, really sad. It has been hard to work through the initial shock and grief into a better place of spiritual adulthood (not that I am there, yet.) It left me feeling a bit orphaned, though I know my family meant nothing of the kind. But I guess a line was finally drawn, a wall was finally raised, and in the end, I found myself standing outside.

It is a perplexing reality that my parents and I are standing on opposite sides of the same Bible verse:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

with both parties feeling a little bit crucified. I cannot deny the truth I feel is revealed in my heart without being unfaithful to my revelation of Christ. My parents cannot deny the truth they feel is revealed by the Church without being unfaithful to their revelation of Christ. I can feel their pain because I'm sharing it, but through the looking-glass.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother...

What does this even mean? I've always struggled with this text, but unlike other trying verses, I've never been able to properly discard it. Obviously a loving God can gain no satisfaction from family strife. In a sanctified world, there would be none.

I know I am growing, in many ways, because of this separation, and I know that is good, and holy. But what a price.

And it is a separation. Even though we are still communicating with love, and still trying to be there for each other in all tenderness, there is a breach. There is a tear. There is a wound.

When the news hit, the first warning that my heart gave me was the extreme importance of not snapping up a martyr role. (Woe is me, as I suffer for my faith!) The second was to examine my soul and make certain that I was sure. Sure of what?

Of my conviction that I have found a true and fruitful spiritual home outside of the Catholic church, one which is founded on solid ground, no matter how fragile my day-to-day practice. Of my conviction that God blesses each and every relationship founded on openness, generosity, and deep love, that the fruits of love are holy, and that all true love is sacred in the eyes of God, without regard to exterior gender or preference.

And the answer is, I am sure.

I am ashamed, in a way, that it has taken me this long to post that. I have hidden much of my own declaration of faith, especially the part about the equality of same-sex relationships, out of fear of rejection and outright condemnation from my family. I have not denied, but I have not affirmed.

I am blessed that my family does not reject me or condemn me outright. Their love for me is strong, and I have great faith in that love to keep our relationship intact over these walls and these seeming chasms of difference in faith. Their courage in drawing the line as lovingly as they can has lent me the courage to examine and declare where I stand. In my deepest heart, I wish that this were a simple matter of difference of opinion, as I had hoped it might be. I would give up my attachment to a great many opinions for the sake of my family, and I think they would do the same for me. But in the end, this is not a difference of opinion, but a difference of conviction.

Please pray for us all, friends.