blaugra

Meanwhile...yet again...

What does it mean when you walk into your therapist's office and she says, "Boy, I'm glad to see you!"

I said, "What? Really?"

"Yes, a friendly face, finally!"

Wow. Does she have some mean nasty people who pay to talk with her or what?  Are people actually mean to a therapist? Just because you're paying someone doesn't mean you can be mean. I swear sometimes I hate people with the exception of a few individuals.

What it means is I went into entertaining clown mode, telling stories to make us both laugh through my anxious tears. Despite that, it was still therapeutic. I think I'll be on the mend soon.

I'm trying to kick a phobia that I'm embarassed about because it's silly and I don't want you to laugh at me. Laughing with me is okay, being known as the girl with the goofy phobia is not.  The phobia came on suddenly and is basically a representation of aaaallll my anxiety rolled into one hairball thing that is being pulled apart now.

I also talked to the shrink, who has all kinds of old dust collecting tchotchka lining shelves in his office and I noticed for the first time (or perhaps it's a new acquisition) an antique bacon press. A pig shaped cast-iron press that says "bacon." I stared at this for a long time while I was waiting for the doctor, thinking about why people feel the need to press bacon flat. I think some of the beauty of bacon is it gets all curly. Maybe it's a message, this bacon press. Are we supposed to talk about the bacon press, since it's clearly a conversation piece? I thought it was really fucked up. I'm fucked up? Dude, you have a bacon press next to your desk.

I'm writing because a couple of people have said to me, "Why aren't you blogging?" so I did and here you go. Now I have to pee. Leave your comments below about cooking bacon or having phobias.

Carry me home

Ohmigod you guys, has this been a shitty winter. Everything is fine, just fine, except for my insides. But, I think I'm rising out of the trough which means I can express this more clearly. 

Depression and anxiety suck so hard.

Meanwhile, back at the psychotherapist's office...

I learned that my suddenly developed phobia is not unusual at all. This made me feel less freakish. The therapist gave me a few tools to quell the anxiety that is causing the intense fear. If I treat it like an illness, which it is, I think it will get all better. See that? Positive thinking already. Oh, my stars.

One of the things I have to practice, said Emily the therapist, is mindfulness.

I'm not living in the now, at all. I've been in a very dark bleak future place for a while. A gray path lined with thorny brambles and ugly twisted sculptures of scorched metal. Not at all like I once pictured the future (see: the Jetsons.)  I mean, I'm still there. I now feel like there's a light coming up on the path.

Here's one of the mindfulness tools Emily gave me to bring me to the now. I am providing this bought-and-paid-for advice to you. (which you can get anywhere on the internets.)

Hold an ice cube in your hand. Watch it melt. Concentrate on it melting.

Observe everything about the cube and how it's melting in your hand.

There's your mindfulness.

Have I tried it? No, not yet. I have to give it a shot. I also need to breathe.

Meanwhile, back at the personal trainer's office...

After some absence from Amanda the perky trainer, I decided that she was worth it. I set up an appointment.

My anxiety ramped up in anticipation of reuniting with her and her hellacious workouts. I haven't pushed myself in a while, and I've had really low energy.  My evenings have mostly been spent looking forward to going back to sleep. I popped a Lorazepam and went to Amanda. We had some time off the gym floor when I could tell her how crappy I thought I have been. She asked, "What do you need from me? Besides a Kleenex right now?"

I said, "I need a pep talk and a good workout." And that's what she did. But not before she assigned a non-exercise related activity as homework during Lent (which I don't observe but it's a good timeframe in which to make a change.)

"Get a jar, and every time you think a negative thought, put a quarter in it."  I nodded my head like an 8-year-old. OK, I'll do that.

I'll put a quarter in the jar and then grab an ice cube.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this song from the current playlist. Yeah, a part of it is in that car commercial, but the song in its entirety is stunning.

Deliberately vague post about fear

Meanwhile, back at the psychiatrist's office...

I was talking about a problem with my psych doctor and I said "I do this... isn't that crazy?"

And he replied, "Yes. It is crazy."

Usually I think saying crazy in a shrink's office is kind of funny.  Like the one time he remarked that his schedule was really crazy.

But this time I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not.

You see, the problem I was discussing was a certain extreme fear I've developed over the past few months.

Part of the reason I'm afraid is because, well, I'm just flat out terrified. I lack confidence in myself, in how I'd react in certain situations.

I'm "managing" this fear in four different ways.

1. Avoidance. I stay away from the situation that may scare me, because I can stay away from it if I try really hard.
2. Visualization. I imagine being calm and successful in the situation.
3. Terror. I imagine failing miserably in the situation and dying.
4. Self-flagellation. I tell myself that I'm a big fat loser for feeling the way I do then I beat myself up some more.

This just isn't working out well. I wish the second way would be effective. That's the way I'd like it.

I mean, I visualize all the time. The visuals trot along very nicely with soothing music in the background and happy flowers waving at me from the sideline, and usually end in a horrendous fiery mess not unlike a bad Gwar video.

The doctor said, "Yeah, there's no pill I can give you for this. You have to take the first step."

"I don't want another pill. And I've tried to take that step, I just can't. I won't. I go out of my way to avoid situations where I'd feel this way. I guess I should see the counselor again to work through it?"

He looked at me over the top of his glasses, "Yes. That would be a good thing for you to do, definitely." 

Because you're too crazy to function, and you're missing out just because you're afraid. That's what I heard even though it wasn't spoken.

"We only have 10 good years left!"

I've recently made the emotionally charged decision not to return to graduate school and the pursuit of my little MBA. It was a difficult one to leave behind. In the end, I figured that I tried it, I did really well, I grew, but I stopped liking it. And it wasn't healthy. So why keep doing it?

Enough of that business.

I was talking to a friend recently about this decision. She just got her B.S. degree. She's also in her 40's.  I asked her if she was going to continue, and go to grad school. She said she would go only if her employer required it and even then, maybe not. Because, she said, "We only have about 10 good years left."

10 years?

"Yes, because once you hit your 50s, everything goes to shit. Your body starts falling apart. Why should we spend all this time sitting, studying to get a degree during the last best years of our lives?"

She had a point. I had tended to think of myself as having a long life line with plenty of time to do more stuff. That's just not true.

A few years ago, I took what I said would be the last ride roller coaster ride of my life, and I went out on a doozy - the Cyclone on Coney Island, a roller coaster notorious for rattling your spine and kinking up your neck. I don't miss roller coasters.

Am I going for the last ride on other things? Like graduate school? After this ride, maybe. I had always imagined having an advanced degree but just like with other activities I put it off.  Then I realized I hated preparing Powerpoint presentations. I tried other things during the past few years, didn't like them, and walked away. Like, I won't be an accomplished Flamenco dancer. And that's okay. I don't miss Flamenco dancing.

So what will I pursue in the next 10 years? And what will you?

I'm still child-free, bitches!

I don't have to help a kid with homework unless I volunteer to help someone else's kid, and even then it won't be in math. I don't have to quell meltdowns in the toy department. I don't have to save for someone else's college. I'll never get stuck car pooling a bunch of rugrats to soccer games.

That's right, never.

Ever.

No one will ever call me "mama." I'll never proudly watch my own kid graduate knowing that all that homework help got them through. I shan't send out holiday cards with pictures of my happy nuclear family. When I'm in the hospital recovering from something in 20 years, I won't have a kid to take care of me.

Those are kind of selfish reasons to want to have a kid.  Yet now I can only think of those selfish reasons. How could I have benefited from being a mom? Who's going to take care of me when I'm old and gray?  Will I ever let my gray hair show? 

I no longer yearn for the job of mom. It's really amazing how that transformation is happening. I think it's biological, no? Even though I'm still, as my therapist says, healing.

Oh, don't think I don't cry myself to sleep once in a while thinking of how I fucked up nature's life cycle. Please, bitches. Regrets, I've had a few. Don't think I'm not crying as I write this.

But, I counted my friends. Not all those Facebook friends but people I can actually call on. I have just as many child-free friends as I do breeder friends. I didn't try to find that balance, it just happened that way. I'd love it to stay that way because both bring me joy and hope.

Maybe it's nature's plan that I not have kids, anyway. The important thing now is to finish grieving and live on.

Why I've decided to go to a personal trainer

My first meeting with a personal trainer went like this:

Amanda (a 20-something perky girl:)  Now I will assess you. [measures, tests, interprets]  You are in poor condition.

Me (a basketcase, of late:)  OK. [fights back tears. loses fight.]

Amanda: What's wrong? Do you want to talk about it? Ignore it's happening and move on?

Me: [chokes out] It's something I know, it's just hard to hear reality. Plus, I'm being treated for high anxiety and depression now so this crying happens a lot, and now I'm embarassed.

Amanda: Don't be embarassed. Sometimes in my client's sessions people lose it and I become trainer/therapist.

Me:  Well, I have a therapist, so there's no need for that. I think.

Afterwards I thought GREAT. Now I'm "the basketcase client." But then I replaced that thinking with "Fuck you, nobody-in-particular, at least I went through with it instead of sitting on my couch with a pint of ice cream and a giant spoon."

My second meeting with the personal trainer (a session with her is a fraction of the cost of a massage, and less than a mani-pedi) went like this:

Amanda: Get on this machine. Go. You can do better. Get on that machine. You can go faster.

Me: I just got to the point where I can go at this speed. You can't make me run, I tell you, I won't run yet!

Amanda: Lift this heavy ball and twist and squat and lunge and squeeze..... now 20 jumping jacks! Go!

Me, doing jumping jacks in the middle of the gym's freeweight area full of guys lifting things up and putting them down. I hadn't done jumping jacks in 10 years. Bouncing hair, bouncing boobs, afraid I'm going to pee myself a little. Girls over 40, you know what I'm talking about. I start to fight back tears while jumping. Aaaaaaand lost the fight again. COME ON!

One of my friends told me that working with a personal trainer can be very emotional. It's more than just "grab this giant ball and do something weird with it to work your abs."  It's personal. All of my weaknesses were on display.

The funny thing was I didn't care what other people in the gym thought of my moves or my jiggly Jell-o butt. I wasn't embarrassed by that. I was distraught by feeling dizzy, which is a side effect of one of the drugs I'm experimenting with. I was upset by feeling like I physically couldn't do what I could do 10 years ago, even though mentally I know I have it in me.

But most of the feelings weren't pathetic.

It was almost impossible to think of anything else for a whole hour. An hour of twisting with medicine balls and doing push-ups in a circuit with Amanda alongside me teaching and correcting and encouraging me, as we try to strengthen my core. I'm following doctor's orders, it's not just for my physical core, it's for the core of my whole being.

That's why I'll go back. Even though, she said as I was leaving, "I didn't work you that hard today. It'll get harder."

Get Nervous

I was cruising through old Pat Benatar albums, and I remember when I wanted the one in the priceless commercial below, but instead of forking out the $6.49, I settled for buying the 45 of "Shadows of the Night" along with a new Bonne Bell lip smacker.

I didn't understand when I was 12 what anxiety was and why it would cause hair to be mega-teased. Now, I understand it. Bummer.

Wish I could say that my recent anxiety attacks have snuck up on me but I knew they'd been getting worse for some time and I just wrote them off and didn't want to mess with meds. I couldn't deal anymore, though, so I headed to the doctor who said that my bipolar disorder 2 was off the rails, which resulted in very increased anxiety.

Traffic, cleaning the house, checking out at the grocery store, putting air in my car's tires, shoe shopping....SHOE SHOPPING.... school, going to a festival, all cause major trips in my system. I used to be able to just chill out at the grocery store and read about the Kardashians in the Star, but no more.  Perhaps the Kardashians themselves cause some of that stress.

When the doctor asked what was stressing me out, I told him: "Everyday life."

He immediately upped some doses, because everyday life is doing more than causing everyday stress. Everyone is stressed by life, I know, but, for me, I just can't handle it on my own.

I'm doing stuff to make myself better, yet I can no longer avoid the medication experimentation. I need help. Again.

If you check out the full video for the luscious Pat Benatar's "Anxiety," you'll see a totally anxiety-inducing 1980's wood paneled waiting room with a macrame wall hanging, creepy men sporting mullets, and even those make me a little nervous. Just like Pat.

How 9/11 Made Me Weaker

This is a follow-up to my previous post below, "How 9/11 Made Me Stronger."

I've thought about this a lot as we approach the 10 year anniversary.

I don't think the attack on our country made me weaker. I think it exposed weaknesses that were already there, just like it exposed weaknesses in our nation's security. I was fortunate to only be touched by the disaster and trauma through the media or through friends, and not experience a direct loss of a human in my life.

But the day brought on a heaviness that my generation and my type of person (growing up safe and suburban) had not typically felt.  A new layer of sadness, fear, and pressure. War had always been something far away from me. Now it hit home.  Everyone seemed to do what they could to cope.

A friend arrived at work at the World Trade Center on that morning. He emerged from the subway and looked up to see a burning tower, and immediately began walking uptown with the crowds. In the aftermath, he left Wall Street, built a small business across the river, and raised kids.  He was really lucky too, and he knows it.

Hippy Chick

I immersed myself in my new job at a little nonprofit professional theatre. I was creative and full of love. It was like the age of Aquarius. This love would save us from the fear and loathing in the world, I had decided.

But soon I went back to being an adrenaline junkie. I failed... a lot. I invited strange couch-surfing actors to stay at my house without asking Salty D. if it was okay with him [it wasn't.] I partied hard after our shows, I didn't sleep regularly, I lost friendships, I became very, very emotional at work, I was a little delusional.

Train Wreck

I decided that the problem was the toxic job, so I went on new job interviews and at one I was an absolute mess. It was an interview with people I had worked with at the publishing company. I remember styling my then-overdyed-black hair into a weird twist and by the time I arrived at the company my updo had half-undone, my shirt was rumpled, my stockings had a run (and ironically it was a job at a hosiery company.)  Afterwards, I anxiously awaited the call from the company telling me that I didn't get the job.

I had several nervous breakdowns. At therapy one day I talked about the nightmares I had about being attacked, or trapped in the stairwell of one of the burning towers, or throwing myself out of a window amongst all the files and papers floating down to the street. The therapist said this was really common among her patients, this 9/11-media-trauma-stress.  What had we done to ourselves? 

Steel Magnolia

I am resilient on the outside, but on the inside I'm usually churning in turmoil. I've learned to accept that there are things I can't do. Does that make me weaker? Sometimes I think so. I see people fighting for what's right and good and I think, "I have no strength to do that." Was this caused by the events of September 11? Not really. 

When I get totally stressed out, about anything, I say repeatedly to myself inside, "We aren't burdened with more than we can bear..."

I don't think that's altogether true anymore but it's one of those quick fixes I use to get through a crisis. Others I use are "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," and "Make it work," said in Tim Gunn's voice.

Over the long term there are no quick fixes for such great loss.

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*nervously  hits the PUBLISH button*

NDD

My friend coined a new mental disease: NDD. Natural Disaster Disorder. 

This hit many east-coasters the other day when we felt the earth move. Many of us felt a quake for the first time.

I was peeing. On the toilet. The floor moved and I heard the pipes clank. And yet, I had to keep peeing. How many people are caught doing stuff like that when a big natural disaster hits? I mean, it could have gotten really messy had I fallen over, but that doesn't really matter.

NDD symptoms include losing sleep over thoughts of impending doom that we can’t do a damn thing about. I'm quoting my friend. She also sent me a link to this article that can soothe some of these symptoms. While reading the article why not consume a nice bottle of wine?

Unfortunately, those with pre-existing mental health conditions who get touched by NDD react a little differently. My brother, for instance.

I decided to be a good daughter and call him after the tremors, because I figured he'd be freaking out. And he was. First he talked about how lightning struck his building earlier in the week [it didn't.] Then how the quake rocked his world, and how the two events had to be God trying to tell him something. Had to be.

I talk to my brother like he's a 5 year old. I assured him we all saw the lightning and felt the earthquake, that it wasn't all about him.

Then he used what he thought was an opening in our tenuous relationship to ask me for something. Same old pattern.  "I want...."  and I replied "No. Bye." *click*  That's enough of that.

Unfortunately, I watched the Weather Channel today and am again feeling the strain of some NDD with the hurricane approaching. I will put together an emergency box and that should ease it a bit.

Fun fearless female? Afraid not.

I envy those who are motivated by a fire in their belly or by wanting to be the change they want to see in the world. Lately, I've been motivated by fear. This is bothersome.

Example.

One reason I'm pursuing my little MBA is because I'm afraid. I'm fearful that when my present paid gig ends -- whenever that may be -- that I won't have the skills to get a new job. I'm afraid that I'll be called a dinosaur at age 40-something.

I don't want to listen to the news or read about the economy imploding but I do, because I'm afraid if I don't know about it that people will think I'm an idiot. It's not because I really want to know the bad news. I don't think I could do anything to change it, myself. It's not fun to listen to.

I color my hair because I'm afraid of being gray. I will add an extra 30 minutes to my planned driving time in order to avoid certain roadways where I am afraid of getting into a car accident. I'm afraid to tell people that I actually enjoy looking at what Kim Kardashian and her sisters are wearing in photos in OK! Magazine, and that I think they are marketing geniuses, because I'm afraid someone will yell in my face that "PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE RUINING OUR COUNTRY."  Then I'm afraid that I'm ruining our country. I freak out when Salty D and I don't mow our lawn or weed because I'm afraid the neighbors will call the municipal offices and report us as being awful property owners. I'm afraid of getting old and not having anyone to take care of me.

What happened to the fearless fire I used to have?  The courage to look a raging lion in the face and do something ballsy, and live without fear of mockery or joblessness or injury?  Where the hell did it go?