I’ve long thought that if I could just change myself, I’d be happier. If I was just thinner, if I was just prettier – smarter – more outgoing, I’d be pretty rocking. Twice in the last month and a bit, in books by two different authors (though right at this moment I can’t recall the first one), I’ve read that you can’t change who you are at the core. You can only change how you act.
I keep running that through my head. Isn’t changing how you act, changing how you are, though? Or are you just hiding who you are inside? Do you think that true complete change is possible? Because I don’t know. I know that thoughts jump into my head and I haven’t the faintest idea of how to make them go away once they’re there. I think judgmental thoughts about people I’ve just met. I am not a very nice person inside. A lot of my kindness is merely tolerance masked. Can I actually change that? Could I alter my very thoughts before I’ve thought them?
Can you strip the leopard of his spots? Morph them into stripes instead? Or is a leopard always spotted, no matter how hard she tries not to be?
I’ve had this post sitting in my head for weeks and weeks. Then The Bloggess wrote about her very intimate struggle with depression over here and the burning need to get some of this off of my chest intensified. Then one of my very best girlfriends sent me a very sweet and concerned text message- afraid that I was back to self-harming.
Yes, I said back.
My struggle with depression isn’t something that I talk about a lot. If it comes out, it’s usually because it’s kicking my ass and I have to let it out in short little spurts of “I hurt!” and that’s all that I can handle. I don’t share well, much to my friend’s and my husband’s chagrin.
Depression for me isn’t necessarily being mopey all the time. I can switch on and off in a flash. Usually from on to off – the pepping up can take longer. Yeah, I can be sad, but I don’t show it in public. I don’t cry in front of my friends or my family. When Ana turned two, my parents had told me that they couldn’t make it to her birthday party and I was devastated, not that I’d let that show. When they surprised me by driving across two states and a border to show up announced to everybody but me, I cried and another one of my very best friends actually commented on the occasion, it was so rare. And we’ve been friends for fifteen years.
No, depression to me is self-loathing. It’s being so consumed with self-hatred and disgust with myself that I can’t think of anything else. It’s of wanting to curl up into a ball in my bed and moan because I will never amount to anything. It’s looking in the mirror and seeing rolls, or seeing the number on the scale, and wanting to smash the mirror with my fist so I never have to look at myself again. It’s looking at the clock and realizing it’s way past my bedtime and another day has passed where I have accomplished absolutely nothing.
It’s writing ten pages in my journal of slanty messy writing, documenting every failure in recent memory – and not being able to recall any successes. It’s sitting on the computer looking at my bank account on payday and wondering when I will EVER be able to not have to worry about how I’m going to pay all the bills.
Depression, to me, is a hatred so deep so that in my past I hurt myself. That in my past I almost put myself out with Ibuprofen capsules. It’s driving down the road and wishing I had the courage to swerve off the road and into oblivion. It’s sinking into myself and not knowing how to pull myself out.
I’m not really okay right now. I am hurting and I am hating and I’m not really sure what to do about it. This is probably the most that I’ve ever talked about it and these are only a few brief paragraphs that can’t even begin to delve into this. This isn’t a suicide note or even close. I’m not harming again. I won’t drive off the road. I value my daughter and my husband too much for that.
There’s a girl I used to work with, her name is Mandi, and she is amazing. She’s hilarious and smart and a smart-ass and did I mention she’s funny? She was also completely and totally insulted when I left my previous place of employment (left her, in other words) to go to my current position. She was my work-wife and we worked better side by side, we laughed a lot and we sometimes got into occasional trouble, too.
Now we text back and forth all of the time and Mandi calls me her ex-work-wife mistress, but still threatens to divorce me (can you divorce your mistress??) if I don’t maintain contact.
The following is a text message exchange we had the other day.
Mandi: Hey how’s it going?
Me: My life is full without you.
Mandi: Woah.. Um.. so I don’t fit in your life anymore?
Me: Hahaha! What a horrible auto-correct! It was supposed to say dull!
Me: And I’m driving so I wasn’t able to look that closely! (disclaimer: I only answer/read texts at red lights. Not while actually moving.)
Mandi: I as hoping that was wrong! We still on for Sunday?
Me: Oh so wrong. And so bitchy! My phone is a bitch!
Me: The one time I hope to hot red lights so I can answer you and I’m not getting them!
Mandi: You hope to hot red lights. Lol, just drive. Msg me later.
I missed posting yesterday, but I think I’m okay with that. I’ve decided that I’m not going to try and fulfill the lofty targets of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, but that I’m going to make it my goal to do a little each day.
I will try to blog every day, but if I don’t make it, that’s okay, too. I’m going to try to write a little every day, but if I don’t hit the daily target of 1,667 words, well, that’s okay, too.
I’m about a measly four pages into my novel, but ya know what? It’s four pages more than what I’ve had in the last year that I’ve had this plot running around in my head and that… that is progress.
I haven’t blogged every day this month, but I’ve blogged four times which is four more times than I blogged in October so again, we have progress.
Really, need I ask for more? Baby steps. Baby steps.
I love bowling. I am absolutely terrible at it. I’m ecstatic if I break 100, but I just love it. It’s something about that atmosphere and that scene that just makes me smile.
I went out tonight with some friends from my last job and it was so good to see them again. I really had the best training class in the world and I was so fortunate to have these girls there with me that even now, nearly two years later, we can say that we’re going home and wind up standing outside the bowling alley in freezing cold weather talking for another 45 minutes.
Depression is a funny thing. I can be amazingly happy and feeling high one moment and then I get home and it takes nothing, nothing at all, and then I’m just down. Like right now. I had a great night and a decent (albeit stressful) day at work and right now I just feel beat down. I feel tired and sore and just… kicked. I wish I could make it go away.
Ha, this isn’t even at all where I meant to go with this post, but hey, I guess that’s what happens when I try to post every day and don’t set up posts with any intention at all. There you have it. Me in a nutshell. Random and depressed.
This is going to be pretty scattered because it’s late and I’m tired, but I wanted to get a post in anyway.
Am I the only person on the planet who hate the song Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People? Here’s the thing. I love the tune. I find myself singing along to it if it comes on the radio and I’m not consciously singing about it. But then I catch myself singing along to, “run from my bullets,” and I’m changing the station.
I find it completely baffling that I heard this HUGE kerfuffle over Britney Speaks singing “If you seek Amy,” and it sounded like F-U-C-K me. Parents were all abuzz about how inappropriate it was, blah blah blah. And then comes this song, about a freaking school shooting and how all those other kids with their pumped up kicks better run from his effing gun and… I’ve heard nothing.
Has there been a stink and I just haven’t heard it? I know that music is not what makes bad things happen. I know that. But I also know that I don’t like songs that are about a man beating on a woman. I don’t like songs that make women out to be nothing but bodies. And I don’t like a song that seems to encourage school shootings.
So what’s the deal? Am I missing a key part of the lyrics? How has this song managed to become the huge hit that it is considering its subject matter?
So I had this crazy idea that I was going to do both NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo this year. That is, blog every day in November and write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. To summarize, I was going to write a shit load of words this month.
Then November 1st happened. And then all of a sudden it was November 2nd and, uhm, I didn’t blog and also didn’t write even a paragraph of a novel so we’ll just say that we’re off to a rather poor start. Perhaps I will blog until December 2nd then.
I’ve been finding myself sorely lacking in motivation lately. I’m short-tempered and irritable. I usually am a pretty humorous gal, but my humor seems to have fled the building these days. I’m snapping at Ana at the slightest provocation. As I type this I’m feeling guilty as I listen to her cry after I just screamed my head off at her for refusing to just be quiet and go to sleep. But seriously. Just BE QUIET AND GO TO SLEEP. After I say it for the fifth or sixth time I just lose my mind, I swear.
I am a bit shaky. I don’t really have a reason for it. I just started a new job and while I always find a new job stressful (the rollercoaster of feeling like you’ve got it all down pat and then the plummet when you think you have not a freaking clue as to what you’re doing) it hasn’t been that awful. I have definitely had more stressful first weeks.
My relationship is actually doing well. For the first time in a few years we’re actually in a very good place. It’s actually quite nice to not be days away from filing for divorce for a change.
So why the eff am I so damn depressed?
Maybe if I actually write some of this out, a little every day in November, I’ll sort this out.
And that, I suppose, was my convoluted way of saying that I’m going to try to blog a lot more. It’s going to be a lot of personal stuff. It’s probably going to be downright depressing some days. A lot of days. But you know what? That’s okay. Because right now that’s me.
^^ Ana’s first blog post. At the ripe old age of three. She’ll be a computer nerd like her momma. It starts out with x’s because Ana is currently OBSESSED with the letter x. She saw an episode of The Backyardigans where they were pirates and they were following a treasure map. Now she talks about treasure maps and finding the x constantly. We’ll be walking through a parking lot and she’ll see where the parking stall lines intersect and she’ll start jumping up and down, “An x! An x!” Railroad crossings are also quite popular for their x factor. It’s hilarious. Derek drew her her own little treasure map and she carries it around everywhere she goes. “Through the trees, and to the x,” she’ll exclaim to anyone who will listen.
I’ve been struggling with my return to running since I hurt my ankle a while back now. I was out for five weeks. I’ve gone back four times since then and while the first two went fine, the last two have not been great for me. I know that I should be happy that I’m out and exercising at all, but I just am so OCD about this stuff, but the fact that I haven’t been able to complete a 20 minute run straight is killing me. I felt worse getting home after my workout than I did if I hadn’t gone and that kinda sucks. So, I just have to push past it and keep repeating this workout until I hit it. That said, I can feel my ankle hurting as I’m typing this so I’m crossing my fingers that I haven’t screwed it up even more/again.
I got fed up with my hair and chopped it off again. Not much else to say about that.
Hmm. Yeah, my life is pretty boring these days. I start a new job in about a month so that should be interesting. I’m a bit meh about it. I’m grateful for the change in hours and days off and for having a lot more consistency, I just know that I’m also tired of being the new girl and, well, here I go being the new girl again.
And on that note, I am being beckoned to go jump like a kangaroo by a precocious three-year old.
I guess if I mean for this to be a blogging comeback, I should maybe perhaps blog a little bit more, yeah?
Anywho.
So I’m now almost two months into this whole no shampoo business and it seems to be working. I have had a few weeks where I notice the grease factor a little bit more than I’d like, but honestly, it was no more than when I *was* using shampoo. I am finding that adding the apple cider vinegar rinse to the baking soda cleanse helps keep it softer.
Sadly, my side by side pictures? Not showing much of a difference. Oh well. Can’t hurt to keep it up. It’s certainly not harming me to do it.
I have to admit, a large part of me was looking forward to turning 30. I was excited about a new decade. I was looking forward to being taken seriously now that I was no longer a twenty-something.
And then I woke up on August 5th and realized, hey, I’m 30 years old. The harsh reality of what being 30 means rolled in and I was a miserable grouch for the entire day.
I was mad. I was mad that I’ve made it to 30 and I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything. I was mad that I still work entry level in a job where I can’t even get a single weekend off through the summer and that I’ll have to put in ten years before I can get Monday through Friday and daytime hours. In ten years, Ana will be 13 and she won’t really much care if I finally have weekends off to spend with her and her dad, now will she?
I was furious that I weigh the same number that I did last year. And the year before. I’ll have to write up an entire post about my food struggles one of these days, as fascinating as it is to NOBODY except myself.
I guess I just hit 30 hard. I feel like I’m in the exact same place that I was a decade ago and, quite frankly, that’s damn depressing.
Comes With Sprinkles 