Irish Spring

No, not that kind. Today, February 1st. Irish Spring, Imbolc, a very ancient festival of spring, later St. Brigid's day. It's a time for dancing and lighting fires, for beginnings, a day to look forward to brighter things. As the wind throws rain against the window like hail, I have to laugh. Okay, it's spring. If you say so. 

It was a busy winter. Lots of travel and lots of new plans. Yet another change in direction. I feel stronger and surer than ever before. I feel healed in new ways. The first month of this new year is already past and I hardly felt it go. I didn't make any resolutions this year, in particular. I have remained very quiet internally. The same washes of stress and anxiety come from time to time, but I've been waiting them out. I've marveled at the love and patience of my nearest and dearest when my fretting makes me irritable or just annoyingly obsessive. I've taken that love and patience with gratitude and wonder, and it's made me less trapped, more open, more able to extend love and patience myself. It's a virtuous cycle, and it's a precious thing.

The closest thing to a resolution, I guess, has been a commitment to that quietness of heart, and also to letting some of my harder scales fall away. I've build up a residue of cynical self-protection over the years. I am a natural critic, which has great usefulness in my life, but it had gotten out of balance. I instantly see the cracks in most things first, before I see anything else, and my perception has too often stopped there. I am a great skeptic, and I have a hair-trigger bullshit detector, and I am grateful for both, but I have also dismissed many things out of hand. My instincts have become reflexes, and my reflexes have been too quick. I've kicked out and fended off many moments which may have been bringing me gifts. Inspired and instructed by some dear examples, I'm trying to do that less. It's working. It's strange. There are many gifts.

I am open to small joys. I have permission to embrace the "corny", the "cheesy", the emotionally frank. Underneath the scales I am softer. God forbid, more sensitive. I cry a lot, at silly things, which always makes me laugh. They are a different sort of tears, and it is a different kind of laugh than I've known in the past. 

Sensitivity is a funny thing. Like vulnerability. As a child and young adult I was excruciatingly sensitive. Ridiculously, maladaptively vulnerable. Having very little skin wasn't a safe way to be, and I was wounded often, until I was so sore and scabby that I wasn't much use. 

Nobody can get on my nerves faster than C.S. Lewis. I suppose he's like family that way. But as I was typing this I thought of one of the most arresting scenes in Narnia. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, greedy grumpy Eustace has become a dragon. I'll skip over everything until we get to the un-Dragoning. Basically, Eustace peels and peels and peels, but can't get all his dragon skin off. It takes Aslan's claws, and a lot of pain, for the boy to break free. I've thought about this scene a lot in my life. It sticks in the head, probably because of the graphic comparison to the wonderful sensation of peeling a ripe scab. (Ugh! And yet...but ugh!) For other reasons, too. The dreadfully literal allegorical idea of God stripping your heart bare is a useful one. A bit violent, a bit redolent of "this is for your own good..." but effective. I have often thought back to this moment when I was in pain for one reason or another. I have spent a lot of energy in self-examination and self-flagellation for one thing or another. I have decided that the pain I've endured, I've earned. Or at least needed. That it was for my own good, somehow.

It's complicated, because, yes. I have learned and grown a great deal from a lot of the pain I've been through. I have learned lessons about empathy, and lessons about forgiveness. The idea that pain is, or can be, transformative is a powerful idea. We don't have to go all the way to the crucifixion to talk about that.

And yet. I read a comment from a friend somewhere on Facebook which struck me dumb for days. It was in response to the casual use of rape depictions in TV as a plot device, or as a vehicle for growth for the character. I wish I could remember or find it again because she said it so beautifully, but her point was this: the pain and trauma caused by violence (sexual, physical, emotional) are a net loss. The energy and resources which must go into repair and recovery are a loss. Yes, triumph over victimhood, yes, redemption, yes, yes, yes, but personal growth? That is a very tricky equation. How much personal growth could have been for the survivor who didn't have to spend years processing the traumatic experience?

I just hadn't thought about it that way before. And yet, of course.

So anyway. Back to the scab. Back to sensitivity. Back to vulnerability.

I've talked a lot about healing in this past year. Healing is kind of a gross process, physically. An example: I burned my leg severely last summer, and the burn got infected. It was painful, it was disgusting, it was inconvenient, and it was disfiguring. I had to lie on the couch a lot and have things brought to me. I had to rest. I had to take a lot of pills. I cried. My leg leaked. I had to have professional bandage changers. I couldn't work. I was useless and irritable and exhausted, and my whole world seemed to shrink until it revolved around this stupid, stinking, searing wound.

I have a big obvious metaphor to put here, and I'll skip to the gist. I was cared for. I recovered in safety. I didn't even form a scab, because the doctors carefully protected my wound with a second skin. That second skin couldn't come off until the healing had finished. And it was removed very, very gently, with regard for the tenderness beneath.

Physically, emotionally, and spiritually, these are the conditions under which healing can take place.

When I think about Aslan and the Eustace-dragon, I feel sad. I came into this world tender and open. I knew how to be generous and compassionate before I was hurt. The hard scabs and scales I've been bearing are the result of injuries received under frantic circumstances, where the necessary care wasn't available, for one reason or another. I could not be sensitive and vulnerable in productive ways without a sense of safety. To recover, I didn't need more violence from myself, or the world, or the universe, or a God-lion with fearsome claws.  When I thought I least deserved sympathy and tenderness, I needed it the most.

So, I've been giving myself safe and quiet and careful places in which to recover. I've received priceless gifts of acceptance and understanding from others. My sins of selfishness, of irritability, of weakness, of uselessness, which no amount of shouting at myself have ever cured, have responded to love and patience, gentleness and kindness. (There's a long way to go yet, but there's been some movement.)

I don't know what next. I know the call of faithfulness does require that we step outside of our shelter, outside of our safe spaces, that we love much and risk much. To suffer for others. I aspire (have always aspired) to that. My miscalculations in this regard, however, have caused resounding failures, for myself and other people. A net loss. I don't say this in despair but in thoughtfulness.

Back to bother and live a lot being lost?

-AmandaBot

That's a computer-generated status from an online toy called http://what-would-i-say.com/. I discovered it on Facebook this morning and was quickly fascinated with that particularly narcissistic curiosity that has often driven me to fill out dozens of pointless "personality quizzes" online. The premise is simple: you give the bot access to your Facebook status updates and, with a similar action to a particularly dynamic word cloud, it spits back a status that it "thinks" you would say, based on your history. It's both hilarious and damning. Clearly over the years I've quoted a lot of poetry, complained an awful lot, and obsessed about cooking. Swearwords, anxiety, and silliness are prevalent.

A euro worth of shrill desperate meows. I think I somehow doubt this

-AmandaBot

It's an explicitly self-conscious exercise but randomised just enough to startle me into seeing myself in a slightly different light. I don't consciously craft my social media "persona", and though I've grown a lot of filters since I was last blogging, I think I was surprised to find how much of the bits of myself I think I'm good at hiding still come through. I'm self-centred, somewhat dramatic, somewhat profane, often uncertain. I guess what this shows me is that I'm better at hiding from myself than I am at hiding from the world, even through the screens of the internet. 

They are terrifying the exhausted and hardworking blackbird parents currently cloistered existence.

-AmandaBot

In a similar but more serious way, reading back over some of this blog again was difficult. There's a large part of me that would like to knock it down and start again, but I find the ugliness and the pain instructive. I'm amazed at how different I am now, and equally amazed at how much the same I still am. The parts I like best and least about myself are all still here and accounted for.

That feeling when night I addressed the light. Someone needs to sleep.

-AmandaBot

I have a fairly respectable lifetime behind me now, and as I turn again towards "something greater than myself" I'm struck again by how interior, and how self-centred I have always been. My religious explorations of the past have always been (by necessity it seemed, or I thought) entirely based on my own experiences, thoughts, ideas, and longings.

"Therefore be still awhile from  your own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires and imaginations, and be stayed in the principle of God in you, that it may raise your mind up to God, and stay it upon God, and you will find strength from him, and find him to be a God at hand, a present help in time of trouble and of need."

I'm sure I've probably quoted those lines from George Fox before on this very blog, but I know I almost never succeeded in putting them into practice. The second half was especially difficult, because my thoughts, searching, seeking, desires and imaginations were all about "God" and again and again I found myself stopped there. I desperately desired an exterior God to swoop in and heal me and cure me and make me fit for life.

So stressed about my life has been wanting to sip a little sick.

-AmandaBot

My mental health is sound now, but like many people, I still often feel as though I am somehow not quite equipped to face the day, even in its most practical and selfish aspects. It leaves me feeling weak and afraid when I think of trying to reach beyond myself to help anyone else or to make any difference in the world. Without supernatural intervention (which seemed at best a fickle thing, obviously outside of my control to command, in the unlikely event it existed), it seemed to me that getting through my life day to day was a big enough job for me, so I shut the rest down. 

I have heard and read and encountered the truth many times, in religious and psychological contexts, that the only way to "Salvation" was to go beyond yourself, to "deny yourself" through love, for the good of another, and I've misinterpreted that truth in various ways with various unhappy results, so I withdrew from that, too.

So I switch to defensive tactic #2 self mockery. Works every time, most of it

-AmandaBot

Starting again, I have had to come to a very calm and silent and empty place. No god there, no no-god there. Myself as it exists: the movements of self-protection, the movements of love, the layers of experience, the celebration, the worry, the strife. Daily failure and daily triumph, and all of those thoughts and desires and seekings and imaginations. I am not trying to judge them, or destroy them, or even to sift through them, I am only seeking to be still a while from them. Even the principle of God is a risky thing for me because it so often consists of all that stuff, and it gets in the way of moving out of my own narcissistic circle.

So the principle for me is this: to put aside the grandiose expectations for and of myself which give me an excuse to feel like a failure and give up. To be honest about who and what I am, to give what I actually have in the moment, and not demand or expect more. To value and have gratitude for my gifts as they exist now, and not as I wish they would be, if I were "better". To see abundance in myself where I am tempted to see only lack. To find the humility to accept and exist in the moment-to-moment struggles and joys and (most of all) choices with a sense of faithfulness and purpose, and to lay everything else aside.

Housekeeping

It's strange to poke my nose back into the Quaker blogosphere. The landscape is almost entirely different. I looked around and found conversations I'd missed, a couple of years old, which I'm sure I would have had a lot to say about. I found that many of the blogs I read and loved and wrestled with years ago are dormant, or taken over by spambots, or simply just gone. I went in to tidy up my links and ended up just deleting the whole thing. I'll be adding links as I go, just adding what I read and what stirs my mind and heart, no matter where we stand on opinions and theology.

While it's a little disorienting and maybe even a bit lonely to discover that the conversations have moved on without me, in a way, it's very freeing, and a bit exciting. I positioned myself very strongly when I first began to blog. In my early twenties, full of fire and notions and the excitement of a new way to see the world, a new place to stand. I was urgently seeking truth, usually with a capital T, and I dove headfirst into matters of theology and conservatism and liberalism and testimony and ministry. I can see now that I didn't really understand these things, but I know how badly I wanted to understand them. And even from this distance I can appreciate the qualities and gifts which fueled that drive, and I can be grateful for them. It's almost a decade since the birth of this blog, and my approach to life in general has lost a lot of that blazing urgency and conviction. I don't exactly think of it as a loss, although occasionally in a sad moment I'll feel it as one. At any rate, it wasn't thrown away, it was traded for things of different, but hopefully equal value. Things which have more utility in my life as it now exists.

I'm rambling a bit, but there is a point somewhere in here. In thinking about why I left meeting and the community behind, I realized how much of it had to do with fear of disappointing people. If I ended up a non-theist, it would be embarrassing. That sounds much more trite than I intend it to. There is some matter of pride in there, though not monstrously. In fact, "embarrassment" was the Victorian euphemism for bankruptcy, and it felt a lot more like that. I felt impoverished, unable to meet my commitments. I felt as if I had failed to fulfill the promise of my early passion. I felt, in fact, like something of a fraud.

It goes to show how little trust and faith I actually put in my community, the Friends who loved me no matter what, in spite of and because of my questioning and changing. I like to think that if I had stayed in the community, I would have learned better. I would have healed and grown, perhaps, on a shorter and sweeter timescale. You can never be sure. I'm not too hard on myself for the choices I made. I was who I was, and circumstances are powerful things.

Then there's the name of the blog. When I laid down plainness and had taken up the overwhelming and involuntary concern of my serious depression years ago, I changed the name of the blog. It was a slightly glib way of attempting to be brave and truthful, though as usual I may have over-egged things a little. "Cracked" is a bit of a loaded, silly term, although as always interpretation is everything. I can't really think of a replacement at the moment, so I think the name will stay.

I intend to write as I always did here, sharing the impressions and movements of my heart as they occur. I think I will be less striving than I was. I will endeavor to be honest in the moment, though I no longer have that overwhelming urge to track and then nail down a Truth which I can then display for the benefit of humankind. I expect this will be a relief to us all.

And almost another year...

Well, it took many more months of wandering and wondering to bring me back again. I have may more to say, I may have more posts in me, I'm not entirely sure.

It's been a year of tremendous healing, and a general restoration of my self. It was a tough time when I was last writing here regularly, and it was a tough time when I wasn't. I'm in a much better place, now, and it's only now that I've been able to begin to revisit the part of myself which used to move me to write here.

I visited Frederick Street meeting in Belfast today, and it was good. I've been to less than five meetings on either side of the ocean in the last five years. I actually attempted to go last week, but got lost, and ended up finding myself in Saint Anne's cathedral, lifting up my soul on the sung service of the Church of Ireland, where the police posted by the door stood in dark contrast to the light and joy of the young choir's voices singing Mozart. I was moved by the music, and moved by the priest's generous sermon on mean little Zacchaeus in the tree and his change of heart. I still felt more outside of the experience than inside of it, but bid my fretful (a)theology be quiet and just sat with the experience. I escaped before tea, but felt the warmth and love of that little congregation in the huge church, and was glad my misadventures had brought me there.

This week, armed with better information, I arrived at Meeting just in time. I sat down in the very warm room, made a series of decisions about the several sweaters I was wearing, and tried to settle.

There were a lot of reasons why I had avoided meeting for the last five years. The most pressing was the continuing disintegration of my "notions" of God. I kept erasing and re-drawing the line for years, desperate to find some firm sense of who or what I was speaking of or to, some line of experience I could hold fast to, but I could never lay my hands on something solid and sure. I felt "cut to the heart" again, and again, like Margaret Fell.

"Then what had any to do with the scriptures but as thy came to the Spirit that gave them forth? You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a Child of Light, and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is inwardly from God, etc?"

This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart, and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat me down in my pew again and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, "We are all thieves, we are all thieves..."

but it didn't stop there. I couldn't trust my experience. I could not say at all that anything came inwardly from God, because it seemed to me that I couldn't truthfully say I was ever sure that what I experienced was not "simply" the agitation of my own emotions, the ignition of inherited ideas and forms, and again and again I found myself thrown against a possibility I didn't want to consider. It was desperately painful, another wound in a very wounded time of my life.

So I withdrew entirely. I avoided the question, I diverted what little "spiritual" attention I still possessed into a nominal humanism and tried to live my life by the "light" of what seemed the most loving and right thing to do at the time. I was still struggling with the aftershocks of a personally devastating breakdown, but I threw myself into a new country, a new relationship, and new pursuits.

And there was a lot of good there. I recovered some of my creative power, I made wonderful friendships, and I grew up in many ways. I entered therapy and did a lot of deep work.

But my world was bound by the simple existence of the day to day. My eyes and heart were focused on the business of keeping my mind together and keeping my relationship together. I avoided conversations or even thoughts about "spiritual" things. I resigned my role in any greater "plan" and even my ability to make any real difference in the world beyond my small immediate sphere. Many times, I even sincerely doubted my power there.

I'll skip over the gulf of pain and despair and hope and betrayal and my own many, many, many mistakes and say I finally washed ashore and found my mind and heart free for the first time in a long time, and I began to carefully feel my way back, and like I said, I began looking for some precious things I left behind. Most of them were questions. I've spent the last ten months examining them gently.

I still don't have any answers, and there's still no line I can draw, or hold. To put it plainly, I still don't have a God I can define, let alone address, or trust, or expect to speak in, or to, or through me.

What I do have, though, is some peace with that. And a strong conviction that I do need a community, and a space where I can raise my mind and heart to things beyond myself.

So I sat in meeting and waited. Listened to the messages. Sweated in my thermal shirt. Tried to clear my mind. Someone spoke of forgiveness, and I thought of repentance, of turning back. I thought of lifting up my heart, of how there is almost a physical (metaphysical?) sensation to that. So I did, I lifted up my heart, even without a God to lift it to. I lifted it out into the meeting, and out into the nothing, and everything. And I felt it, there, again, for the first time in a long time. That electric thump, half painful, in the centre of my chest, and the sting of tears at the back of my eyes. That sense of connection, that sense of height, of clarity and warmth, of light, of love. It is unmistakable and good and knowable, and it informs and changes your life. Wherever it comes from, a "divine" source, a mess of associations and expectations in my mind, or mere neurology, I don't care any more. It is good, it is a source of power, I have missed it dreadfully, and it is necessary to my life. I'm just going to follow it, and I am not going to worry about its origin anymore.

I am laying down that concern, and I am simply going to continue to lift up my heart, moment by moment. Lift it up, with courage, a dozen times in a day of depression. Lift it up in the face of the world's pain and my own confusion. Lift it up, consciously, continuously, with conviction and with discipline. I'm going to read more Whitman.

And I'm going to go to meeting.

Oh, hello again.

I've been away. It's been a long time. It's a long story. I think maybe I'd like to come back.

I spent this Christmas alone. (It's a long story.) It was a peaceful day with a lot of love in it, for all its solitude. But for some reason I was drawn back to this old home of mine, and I read it through--all the way through. And I shook my head and I smiled and I marveled at that very intense girl I used to be.

Well, I'm still pretty intense.

When I left this blog, I'd been through the wringer and I was squeezed pretty flat. I ran away across the ocean chasing a dream.

It's five years later and I guess I've woken up.(It's a long story.)

I'm in a very different place now. It's been a long road and I've left a lot behind me. I don't know what's coming next but I think I'd like to gather back up a few of the more precious things that I dropped along the way, things that I'd like to carry with me wherever it is I'm headed. I'm still intense, but I'm a lot quieter than I used to be. All of than angsting and raging can really wear a girl out.

 ----------------------------------------------------------

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played, (I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.
Ah, come with me!
I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
 I’ll sing you the jacinth song
 Of the probable stars;
 I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
 Until I find the Only Flower,
 Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
 While the moon comes out of the sea.
 E.E. Cummings

 ------------------------------------------------------------------

I am a little tired. I'm also a lot less tortured, a lot less convinced of a lot of things, a lot more sure of one or two. I am still a bit confused, but more quietly curious.

I am looking forward to this.

Bless technology

So, even for me, this past month has been profoundly obnoxious as far as communication devices. Between laptops left on airplanes, rescued from airports, then dying monitors and viruses and volatage differences and chargers that do not work and tri-band cell phones that don't work in Ireland or even in the states, and a microphone and headphone jack that won't let Skype function, etc etc etc I have disappeared from the face of the earth. Only my poor mother has seen my shadow bobbing by now and then.

Right now I am in Boston. F. came back to the States with me and we spent a week between Boston, NYC, and the mountains. It was the first truly lovely weather of the year and this past month together has been so right and so natural that while I am already missing him something fierce (he left last night) I am feeling pretty subdued and deeply, gently happy about the whole thing. We'll be together again in a few weeks, and for the entire summer. There are already a tonne of things to look forward to...we have little house projects and a bunch of concerts and festivals lined up, and maybe even a



!!!

and again I say

!!!

My time in Galway was wonderful. Most of it was actually very low key...lots of cooking dinner together and watching DVDs of shows like Father Ted and Extras. Lots of afternoon or evening pints and some drives out over the country where I sickened everyone with my sincere (and very chaste!) love of sheep. Sheep are awesome. Lucky for me, there are more sheep in Ireland than people. There are also genuinely enormous cows and the smallest ponies I have ever seen. You could put one of those ponies in a Christmas stocking, and only its forelock would stick out. Tiny! Very, very small! Minuscule! Tiny.

It's hard for me to describe Ireland, because while Galway is a truly beautiful city, (just the right size for me, parks, colourful houses and pubs, water, etc.) my whole trip was about the people. And while of course it was one person in particular who mattered the most, it was also about everyone I met. One of my favourite things in the world is strike up conversations with strangers, and so far it seems as if there's a conversation on every seat and above every pair of shoes in Galway. The people I met were warm, smart, verbal, excitable, and funny as hell. To be very *cough*narcissism*cough humble, they reminded me of me. All kidding aside, the Galway people I met were almost all incredibly easy to hang out with. There was a minimum of gesturing and social goofery, and then everyone just gathered together and got down to the business of enjoying the evening. I made friends in Ireland that I've only known three weeks, but have already claimed a sizable space in my heart. The best and worst part about moving so often and so widely is that wherever I go now, there is always someone to miss.

I'm enjoying my little time in Boston so far, though I miss F. more than I can say. I'm staying with one of my dearest friends in the world, who's doing a slew of shows I wouldn't miss, and another friend is getting married next weekend. I am back at the flower shop and actually really enjoying it. After weeks of gentle dissipation (I was productive and useful in Ireland, don't get me wrong, but I was unemployed and encountering everything for the first time) it's kind of cool to re-submerge myself in the familiarity of something I know and do well. I am a really good florist. Put that on my gravestone. :)

I don't have much more news than that. I just know that I am happier than I've ever been in my life. I know that anyone who hasn't seen me for a few months is shocked at how different I look. I can breathe. I don't think I even knew how to be this happy before I came through the other side of my breakdown. I just passed the one year anniversary of my first hospitalization last week, and I look back at that very recent Amanda and feel much more compassion for than identification with her. I still don't know what I am doing with my life in particular, I still don't have a degree. I am still fairly good at angsting if given a topic and sufficient naval-gazing time. I am still having mild depressive/manic streaks. (look at the word count for this post and guess which I'm in now) but the periods in between are becoming smoother and longer.

I am not sick anymore. I have a condition to manage, but the hardest work of managing it is behind me. My meds are pretty stable, only tweaked when they have to be, and while taking these pills every day is still intrusive, I just have to take a deep breath and think back to what my life was one year ago.

I was going through some things I wrote at that time, and this one caught me. I wrote this March 30th, 2007, just days before I had my big break down:

Sometimes I wish I could just go to sleep. For a long time. My doctor asked me about death or suicidal thoughts. Sometimes I wish I could be "put to sleep" but that is it, and I am not sure what that means. I get very tired. I love people, and I enjoy stuff, but sometimes it feels like I am either Crazy or Tired, and I don't like either choice. Of course, right now I am typing at almost 2 am insomnia, so that counts, too. I don't get how I can feel so happy and content and grateful for life for a little while and then just be so Tired of everything that I just wish there was an off switch.

One of my close friends asked "is it always hard? Is every day hard?" and I didn't know what to say. Parts of every day are hard. Half of all days are all hard. But I guess I often don't know how "hard" life is for everyone else. I expect quite a bit harder than my "hard".

I get mad at myself because nothing in my life is that hard. Great friends, great boyfriend, great job, almost free rent. You know? So how come I always just want to be asleep?

I am not feeling sad most of the time now that the freaky panic attacks are gone. Just Tired. And kind of sad that I am always so, so tired living a cushy life at 24.

That slowly ebbing fatigue and apathy led to another series of crippling panic attacks, dissociation, and other PTSD symptoms. A few days later I was very quietly psychotic, a danger to myself, and hospitalized.

I am so incredibly blessed, looking back. I did have friends and doctors and communities that worked really hard, individually and together, to hold me up. And I was held up. it was horrible, but I was held.

And now I walk down the street and if I'm not stepping in a puddle, swearing at a bus, or spilling coffee on my coat, I am smiling. Just plain smiling. Almost always. Until recently, I didn't know what a habitual or reflexive smile felt like. Most of the time, smiling was an act that I did consciously and with some effort, like a sit up or a push up.

Now my face smiles truly and randomly and often, all by itself.

In a few weeks, I'll be heading back to Ireland to smile up at the face I love most in the world.

I leave tomorrow...

and the radio keeps playing this song from roughly the era of my leaving for college. It has new relevance today as I prepare to leave a place where I have some of the hardest, most rewarding, painful, triumphant and all around strangest times of my life. It's by (shame!) Green Day, and it's titled "Good Riddance" which is not the sentiment I am feeling, but it's still humming in my head over and over and over...


Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still-frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

See ya, Boston!

There are no more Fridays

before I leave. It's astonishing.

I am so happy, and so overwhelmed, but over all, so, so happy.



And ee cummings is telling me about God again:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

--ee cummings

Two weeks

To the day. This time two weeks from today, God willing, I will be somewhere over the
Atlantic ocean.

Woah.

I am so excited. I am also sick, again. I hope Irish germs find me less attractive than American germs.

Speaking of American germs, my new green card came in the mail today. Huzzah! Enclosed was a pamphlet: "Welome to America!" Thanks, America! It's been real, it's been nice, it ain't been real nice, see ya later.

No, I'm really glad to have it. It means I can re-enter the United States with a minimum of harrasment. And as the biggest part of my family lives here, that's really kind of important.

My list of things to do, find, get rid of, pack, etc, is mind boggling. I am in a bizzare time warp where time is flying and crawling all at once. Agile, that time.

I learned a new word today: epistaxis. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection, and was reading what the doctor wrote on my chart, because I'm nosy (Ha! Nosy!) and I was like: "Hey! What the heck is epistaxis?" The doc said "it just means nosebleed. If it was a dribble, or if it had stopped a few hours ago, I's just write nosebleed. But if it's a bad nosebleed we like to use a scarier word." Ha! I really like him.

I also learned a new smell: electrocauterized nose. Someday I will make you all a scratch and sniff sticker...it really has to be experienced to be believed. If you'd like to try it at home, you'll need some gauze, a cattle prod (or super-heated fire poker), a large hammer, and a nose. As the doctor swabbed anti-pain gell in my nostril and then shot lidocane or whatever in my nose, he said "in the old days, they just rubbed cocaine up here instead." I was trembling, but I put on my evilest grin and said "well, I'm an old fashioned girl!" Luckily, he laughed. And then stuck a cattle prod up my nose.

But what are a few cattle prods up the nose if in two weeks you are flying overseas for the first times, into the arms of someone you adore?

I might be smoking a cigarette...

...but I'm still adorable.

Thanks for the photo, and the ticket, SKB!

Things that make me smile today:

From dear friend S:


Aslan, I totally feel you. PLS STOP SNOWING ALREADY K THNX BYE

Boots bought yestersday, to help in survival of slush and swamp workplace slime. Also Pink:



PINK!

Grown up siblings (landmark birthdays coming up: leap year for Jenny, 21 for Miguel, all this month. Woot.):



Heck, all siblings:



PASSPORT CAME IN THE MAIL:


There is an e-ticket to Ireland sitting in my inbox.

I turned the heat up in my room. Because I can.

Being crazy in love never hurt either.

La la la

Well, I made it to meeting this morning and had a good one. I spoke a message that I'd been carrying around for a while and it felt faithful. That's always good. I have a pretty heavy case of the sniffles, but then I usually have the sniffles from October through April, and then the pollen comes and I have another three months of them. So not sure why I ought to be bothering to moan about them at all.

Anyway, the sun is shining and the Superbowl is on. I don't care about football, but I do like snacks and people, so I'll be hanging out at my dear friend S's house (actually I am already there) for her super Superbowl party.

Also, I am going to visit Ireland in March. Yay.

Hello Friends!

Well, I am still doing very well. To the friend who commented in the last post, worried that I was in a manic state: fear not. I have an entire team of psychiatric professionals with whom I meet many times a month, in one permutation or another. In fact, at one point in the last few weeks I asked my therapist if I might be manic. She said "There is mania, and there is happiness. I have seen you manic. Right now, you are happy."

There is no cure, let alone a "miracle cure" for being bipolar. As of right now my disease is well controlled by medications, but it is still present and it is still a part of my personality. It always will be. When I am happy, it is likely that I will feel it more intensely and display it more passionately that the average happy person. When I am sad, it is likely that I will be more depressed and take things harder than your average sad person. This is part of my disease, but also a part of who I am. This is how I move in the world.

In the past week, I've had some elated times and some very hard times. It can be scary to navigate though emotionally intense times for the most emotionally well-adjusted person, but when you've been made necessarily aware of your slightest shift in mood, it can be quite frightening. There is a stigma to any mental illness, and the self-inflicted stigma can be the most devastating. For every shift in mood there is a corresponding shift in self-observation: is this an emotion, or is this a symptom? Am I reacting to the world, or am I getting ready to be locked up again?

It has the potential to be paralyzing, when faced alone. How is one to navigate the very human world of stimuli and responses when you cannot trust your own perception of stimuli, nor your ability to respond in a non-pathological way?

If it is possible at all, it is possible only with a great (very great) deal of training and experience. As of this writing, I am never quite sure, when I experience an emotion, if I am having a genuine emotional experience or a pathological expression of that experience. My intellect and reasoning and if/then mental flowcharts can only take me so far. I have been (mightily) wrong before. I might (probably, likely) will be wrong again. To be blunt: that sucks.

But I am not alone. I have doctors, I have therapists, I have friends, I have family. If my personal barometer is off (and sometimes it is, though increasingly less so) then I can count on them to let me know. So far, the most brilliant and rewarding moments of my recovery have been the reactions of these dear people around me. Friends notice how much healthier I look. My family has not seen me so relaxed since infancy. My therapist is calmly elated at the difference between the shrinking, shy, self-hating, depressed and manically anxious girl who scuttled into her office and then tried to kill herself, and the tall, calm, gentle and observant (if intense and often overly emotional and overly analytical) woman who comes to see her now.

It is often difficult to extract the “disorder” or “disease” from the fundamental personality traits of the patients. I always have been and I always will be intense. I always have been and I always will be prone to unreasonable flights of fantasy that cannot necessarily be grounded in reality. I always have been and I always will be easy prey to debilitating depressions in response to seemingly minor provocations. It is part of my disease. It is part of my disorder. It is part of who I am. With medication, with therapy, and with time, it will become easier for me to discard and control the parts of this phenomenon that are not “me.” As my brain chemistry is corrected, and as the corrupted thinking patterns and deep-seated wounds in my self esteem and my vision of the world are healed, I will be able to embrace with more and more confidence and peace the passion and intensity that makes being Amanda worth while. It is already happening, and though it may not be a “miracle cure” it is none the less a miracle.

If I sound manic in my posts, it is necessary to know where I came from. I have poured out my soul on this blog, but only so far. Even though I am bipolar, for a long, long time, the only symptom I displayed was depression. It was a depression so profound, sunk so deep in my bones, that I had been carrying the desire to die from an obscenely early age. My mania never announced itself in elation or joy or grandiosity. When I was “manic” my symptoms mimicked a major anxiety disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, or obsessive compulsive disorder. Even manic, I was never happy, at least not for more than a moment or two at a time.In my depressions, which would last years (interrupted only by "manic" sessions of obsession and fear) I could not bathe, I could not eat or I ate too much, I could not leave the house, and when I left the house I felt that around every corner lay someone ready to despise me. I sometimes could not go to work and when I went to work the burden of my own perceived incompetence crushed out any ability I might have had to prove my competency. There was a deep sense of doom clouding almost every waking moment. I lost jobs, friends, and relationships to this unspeakable sadness. Compared to the bone-crushing, heart-breaking, soul-smashing intensity of the depression I carried before, any glimpse of happiness would seem positively manic and obscene. And of course, when I express it, I am going to express it even more loudly and obscenely than my gentle non-mentally ill bretheren.

But I don't just have a glimpse, I have whole vista of happiness. And even with the many distressing and tragic and painful worries that remain in my life, I am full of joy and thanksgiving. I am so, so happy that even without a comparision to my earlier miserable state, it might seem unreasonable.

For a long time, it has hurt. It has hurt to be. It has hurt to be me. And though I still feel hurt (sometimes deeply), it no longer hurts to exist. And beyond that, the hurts that I have carried so long have given birth to the happiness I hold now.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.

— Rumi

Some prayers of happiness

Dear Friends!

I am so well. It's been a while since I wrote here, but I am very, very well. They found the right medications for me, and my soul has never been so free. It's a miracle of the highest order, at least in my little life. The heavy, murderous shadow that has weighed me down from early memory has been lifted, and I am well.

I can't say it enough: I bore friends with my constant repetition of how happy I am. And not just happy, but peaceful. I never knew what a miserable burden of anxiety I carried, even on my best days. I knew it was hard to be me, but I didn't know just how hard it had been until that burden was taken away from me.

I still encounter the range of emotions: elation, anger, sorrow, joy, pain, silliness, seriousness, love, and the mild panic of a paper due and an exam to write.(Monday! Ack!) But I feel these things more freely--they aren't overwhelming blows. For so long, living with bipolar, I was prey to every stray thought and feeling. Everything was terrifyingly significant, everything had to mean something, and I had to find out what it meant right away or something terrible might happen.

And that is all gone.

I am speechless with gratitude. All of my prayers and psalms begging for mercy and deliverance have been answered, and far beyond my wildest expectation. I longed for freedom from misery, but couldn't know that beyond that freedom was so much capacity for joy.

And best of all, I can feel God again. I was so desolate and alone for so long, but the tyranny of my pain has been broken, and I am free to seek and find God, very close.

Alleluia!

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
for his faithful love endures forever...

...In my distress I called to the Lord,
he heard me and brought me relief...

...I was pushed hard, to make me fall,
but the Lord came to my help.
God is my strength and my song,
he has been my saviour...

...I shall not die, I shall live
to recount the great deeds of God.
Though the Lord has chastened me sore,
he has not abandoned me to death.

Open for me the gates of saving justice
I shall go in and thank God...
...I thank you for hearing me
and making yourself my saviour.

The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
This is the Lord's doing,
and we marvel at it.
This is the day that the Lord has made,
let us be glad and rejoice in it...

...You are my God, I thank you.
All praise to you, my God.
I thank you for hearing me,
and making yourself my saviour.

Give thanks to God for he is good,
for his faithful love endures forever.
(Psalm 118)

On top of this great gift, I have found a great love, and I am finally fit for love. For the first time I can love without the sense of dread and fear of rejection. I don't have to waste my energy shielding my partner from the fact that I am me. I don't have to feel in need of constant renovation and revision. I give happiness and receive happiness, give love and get love, and know that the gifts I give, as well as the gifts I receive, are well worth having. I can give myself as I am, and be received for all that I am. It's the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me, and sometimes I think I might pop from the sheer joy of it. Hooray!

One of the tangible gifts that my love has given to me is a beautiful little blue book called "The Book of Uncommon Prayer." It is full of some of humanity's best tributes to God, and I have a lot to share from it. For tonight, I have a blessing for all of my friends, and one especially.

The winter will lose its cold,
as the snow will be without whitenes,
the night will be without darkness,
the heavens without stars,
the day without light.
The flower will lose its beauty,
all fountains their water,
the sea its fish,
the tree its birds,
the forest its beasts,
the earth its harvest --
All these things will pass before
anyone breaks the bonds of our love,
and before I cease caring for you in my heart.
May your days be happy in number as flakes of snow,
may your nights be peaceful,
and may you be without troubles.

Yule Be Miserable

I just bought an album by this name, and it has made my night. It's a collection of Christmas songs by blues artists, like Louis Armstrong's "Zat You, Santa Claus?" and Ella Fitzgerald's "Santa got Stuck (In My Chimney)." It is RIGHTEOUS. Here's the cover art:



As for myself, I am back on my feet but in the middle of the worst panicky moments of packing. Moving day is tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Mending

I still feel like posterior but I think I am getting better. I just could not make it into work yesterday and have pretty much been in bed for almost 48 hours. I made it to the local cafe and bought some containers of good organic soup and like 50 bottles of vitamin water. I realized (because of massive leg cramps) that I had pretty seriously dehydrated and while getting a plain glass of H2O down is too much work, I will drink the silly rainbow water when I will drink nothing else. Good to do that before I got to the pedialyte or IV fluids stage. So about 3 gallons of brightly coloured nutrient-tinged water later and I think I am in better shape. I tried going to meeting this morning but bailed pretty fast. The kids left for first day school and I left for lying-under-the-covers-and-reading-blogs school. That's one thing I'll miss about living here...I only have to go up or down some stairs if I change my mind about going to meeting. No trudging through the cold.

Oh man, will I ever be trudging through the cold in about a week. I went ahead and put a deposit on some Very Sensible Winter Boots so that they'd order them in my size. The boots are not sexy or sporty and are probably more suited to the middle-aged but I needed something I could wear with professional clothes or jeans while walking 1.1 miles twice a day and these are just easy. Expensive as all hell, but easy. And hey, I can still wear them when I'm 40. They'll be just as stylish and age-appropriate. (those photos are kind of flattering, but really the boot looks like black leather knee-high galoshes. I just hope they are warm. To add to my attractive profile I've ordered them a little big so I can wear my super sexy double-knit wool men's socks under them. Pair these with my longjohns and I am going to be one hot cold-weather fashion model this season! Hoo yeah!)

Another sign of returning wellness is that I am typing comfortably with two hands and no brace. I was soooooo tired before that even my wrist ached and I couldn't deal so I was pecking everything out with the middle finger of my right hand. No disrespect intended.

PS. Tomorrow (at 9 am, wail...) I have another immigration appointment to get an appointment. Pray for me. Things are still complicated because of my two stupid last names.

Typhoid Mary Rides Again

I'm usually pretty stoic about accidents and illnesses. I'm such an immune-challenged klutz that I really have to be. But this has gotten me. I am a very sick rabbit. Last night I got home from work around 5:30. I left "early" because I was literally falling over, and a propped-up florist is only so productive. I came in my door and laid down on my bed in my coat and shoes to catch my breath. I woke up five hours later, hungry, confused, and still exhausted. I ate some grapes (how convalescent of me!) took some pills and syrup, took off my coat and boots and crawled back into bed. I am a big howling baby about this one. I think it's cause this bug makes you so weak and mewling and kitten-like. The bone cracking cough-til-you-hurl fits are unpleasant in themselves but I could deal with that. It's just that each of them is like an Olympic workout and I'm totally not in that good shape, so after each very challenging event I need to lie down and whimper. Then there's the fact that between the drugs and the cough/gagging, food is nearly unmentionable and way too much work anyway so I am lucky to average a meal a day. On thanksgiving, the ladies of our meeting saved a plate for me and that was lovely. Yesterday I found some very terrible (long-canned, industrial/institutional, served up in a Styrofoam bowl at the diner) chicken soup, but it did the job so I'll go back for more today. Other than that I can only manage random fruit, if I can drag my germy butt to the kitchen and muster the will to pick it up. (The fruit, not the kitchen.) Then again, lying around and moaning only takes so many calories so it is probably just as well.

Anyway, all I want to do is lay facedown in my pillows and whine, which is kind of what I'm doing at the moment, though my pillows are under my elbow and my whining is virtual.

I'm also creeping about my room "packing" after a fashion, which at this point is mostly arguing myself into throwing out a thousand scraps of this or that which I want to keep for "a project." I finally threw away two trash bags of stuff (the garbage juice of yore that plagued me when I wrestled with our giant barrels is now garbage ice) and put on another load of laundry. Every time I do a wash I pack half the clothes, and only keep out things I think I will want in the next two weeks. It is very liberating. Frustrating busy new roommates have not replied to my query about a good time to start moving in next Sat, key accessibility, and (!) street address (Don't laugh. It happens.) and I am frankly too tired to chase them very much. BUT HOLY EXCREMENT I AM MOVING IN EXACTLY A WEEK. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

And I have to go be a propped-up florist again in two hours. I hope I give all the roses cholera or something.

And I have to get better fast, because super exciting visit from friend is like ten days away!

Turns out...

That I have not only a sinus infection but whooping cough and may have infected my entire family, 2 buses, 3 airports, 4 airplanes and a partridge in a pear tree: MINUS 40

That I will be without an ATM card or a neighbourhood branch for 14 business days: MINUS 20

That I had to stand in line for an hour to see someone who would give me an appointment to come in Monday to stand in line for an hour to see another person who will hopefully give me another appointment to get my fingerprints etc taken. I would council myself to take deep breaths but that's not very easy what with the whooping cough. MINUS 10 BILLION

BUT

I have tasty narcotic cough syrup. PLUS 20

I got a beautiful package in the mail all the way from Ireland, nestled right at my doorstep after a long, cold, exhausting day. PLUS 15 BILLION

I got Skype working and can now talk to dear ones all over the globe for free free free. PLUS 25

I just noticed that my brain meds are working really well, and that makes me feel great and hopeful. PLUS ANOTHER DOZEN BILLION, LET'S GET RECKLESS

I have a job interview on Tues for a Harvard position that might be perfect and that I have a good feeling about. PLUS 20


I'm too wasted on cough syrup to do the math, but it's not so bad. Must find food, though. Also have to work tomorrow if I have any hope of getting the rent together for the moving that is coming too fast, and I am in no shape for that, so pray for me.


Happy Turkey Day, all. I know despite a really difficult year, I have uncountable blessings (even using billions) to be thankful for.

Rawr

The good: got home safe from a fun "early thanksgiving" with my family. Not even 5 hours in the St. Louis airport could bring me down. Shout out to awesome friend with the killer phone bill who entertained and soothed the savage beast (me) as I chugged $7 michelob or whatever the heck that beer was.

The bad: Some jerk managed to steal my debit card number and buy sheets from Bed Bath and Beyond in NY, gas in LA, and god knows what (beer?) at a convenience store somewhere else in CA before my bank figured out this was weird. The fact that I was buying stuff in NC at the same time may have confused things. Now my account is frozen and I'm going to have to go fight the good fight to get everything put back where it belongs. In the meantime all of my automated payments will be bouncing joyfully for the next week or so. There is an expletive right...here.

The ugly: Man, I am siiiiiiiick. Like run over by a truck that then backed up over me and spun its wheels sick. Sick as the proverbial dog that is sick sick. Why was I so smug about not getting sick yet this fall sick. I am alternately screeching and whispering at people as I can't hear myself through plugged ears and I have to talk through 7 layers of gunk before any legible words come through. Plus symptom symptom gross symptom symptom. That's all you want to know. Ewwwww.

The annoying: My stupid over-rated lemon iBook is killing me. Or rather, dying slowly while sucking my wallet down with it. I should just throw it in the dump where it belongs and buy a loaded PC laptop for the price of the constant repairs but I am now an apple junkie and cannot remove the OS from my arm. As I will never (never = at least not in the next 3 years) be able to afford a new apple I am going to have to perform continual CPR on its dinky dinged white carcass. (almost literally, I have to tinker and pump and prod and breathe on the brand new $80 power converter to make it work.) More expletives...here.

Prayers for me tomorrow please as I hit up the Department of Homeland Security for some paperwork I really need. I'll be giving them my fingerprints, my DNA, (free cheek swabs for all!) and my pretty pretty profile in return, so the least they can do is stamp my form, please? Love you too, Uncle Sam! Here, have a retinal scan on me!

On a Mini Vacation This Weekend

I took myself out of Boston for the long weekend and have spent it with friends and alone in a pretty perfect proportion. Lots of time walking solitary or riding the bus with my iPod permanently stuck on Brandi Carlile. At some point I will have to move on, but of all the music that's moved me in my nearly twenty-five years, who'd think it would be a country-pop cowgirl who would steal my heart and mark a musical epoch in my life? It may just be that this is a super intense time in need of a super intense sound track but I am becoming a broken record myself by repeating how much I love her. There is this one song that would make me cry by itself, but then, for the love of all that is holy, there is this remix from a live concert in Austin. With cellos, for the love of god. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?

That's right. Cry like a baby. You know, Ever since I got out of the hospital I cry on average about 10x the amount I used to. This is supposed to be good, but I am not sure. I don't mind so much when it's with music.

Sorry I'm only human.
You know me:
Grown up?
Oh no, guess again

My days always
Dry up and blow away
Sometimes I could do that too
But make no mistake that

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

Progress, changing
Growing, then giving up
Somehow we're never quite prepared
But I understand it

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

So taking me with you would be like
Taking all your money to the grave
It does no good to anyone especially
The one you're trying to save.
But it's so hard not to save.

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

It's the first few lines that kill me. As my last relationship wans ending and it felt like my heart was shattering into a million pieces, I said "I'm sorry I'm me." And I really heartfeltedly meant it, which is the sad thing.

But today I have to say I'm really not sorry at all. Not today.

So, I got the gigantic two-rooms-to-myself apartment in the hinterlands of Somerville with the awesome surprise-Quaker roommates. (no dog, though, I got mixed up). In exactly two months I will on here bitching about walking 15 minutes through a frozen urban wasteland to a bus that is never on time while paying $150 a month for heat. But for now I'm really excited. Half my room is packed already. It's disgusting how much stuff I have. Moving to Cambridge is the worst thing that could have happened to my used-book addiction. They are all awesome and they are all orphaned and they are all only two dollars! What else can I do?

So now I just need to get a job to pay for the apartment and the moving and the used books. Yeep. Thank you god, for flowers. Yes, because they are beautiful, but also because I get paid $12/hr net to slaughter them wholesale and stuff them into foam. Amen.

Oh, and another song that makes me cry hard when I'm insomniac and lonely at the same time. This one is on repeat a lot.

Look to the clock on the wall:
Hands hardly moving at all.
I can't stand the state that I'm in.
Sometimes it feels like the walls' closing in.

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me.
Alone is the last place I wanted to be.
Lord what can i say?

Try and burn my troubles away,
Drown my sorrow the same way.
It seems no matter how hard I try
It feels like there's something just missing inside.

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me:
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say?
Oh Lord what can I say?

How many rules can I break?
How many lies can I make?
How many roads must I turn
To find me a place where the bridge hasn't burned?

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me:
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say?
Oh Lord what can I say?

Damnit, Brandi Carlile, stop singing songs about me getting my heart broken or I will...

...

...okay, fine, please keep writing them.

For one night at least, I might be an insomniac but I don't feel lonely. Tonight I am in my favourite city, with people who love me, with a glass of wine and a good helping of hope.