Transitions

This is how it goes. You have anxiety out in public, so you don’t go out in public, because you start anticipating the anxiety before you’re even out in public. So you stay home. And you’re by yourself. And even though you’ve completed a year of therapy and continue to go, to help this transition go more smoothly, you start telling yourself things you promised to never say anymore. You’re not good enough. You’re lazy. You’re fat. You snack too much. You aren’t productive enough. You have too much anxiety to get anything done. People don’t like you. People think you are weird. Your friends are just friends with you out of convenience. And these things start to become true to you. And it makes you sad, so you make them truer. I wish I could just tell myself, “you’re you, you’re different, and it doesn’t matter why, it matters what you do with that.”

No wonder babies cry so much!

I have so much to say! Really! But I lack the energy to get it all out here. Maybe another day, another post, I can really dig into the things that have been on my mind lately, but I come home from my retail job exhausted, sometimes brain dead. Or even better, I need to get started on my part time work right away. Even with all my wordy abilities, when I am exhausted I lose all articulation and patience with myself and just want to cry! Not necessarily because I am SOOO sad, but because I can't get anything else out! No wonder babies cry so much. They haven't learned spoken or written language yet and can't get anything else out than crying.

So I'm poking out my little exhausted, inarticulate head to just say that I want to say things. That I'm here and I think about my blog every day. I think about things to write about every day on my way to work, and by the time I get home, I just can't do it. So I watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Andy, or we play a game, or I read news and other people's blogs on my computer. Yes my life is so exciting, I am too overwhelmed to write about it! Hehe.

Well, it is indeed exciting, because 2012 marks more or less the beginning of my third year with a wonderful man, and promises a lot of new growth and progress on the emotional front. With mental health and finances on the mend, I look forward to what I will learn about myself, my passions, and what I am truly capable of!

Hitting rock bottom

I haven't done this whole blogging thing for a good long while and I may be rusty. The nature of this post may also be a bit jarring and out of the blue since I haven't been updating on all the good things happening around me. Just be warned, it's not the happiest of topics, but I at least am feeling more upbeat now than yesterday when I was going through it all.

I hit rock bottom yesterday. And for no particularly good reason. It is always hard for me to admit this and share, but here I am doing so. Not for attention, not for sympathy, but to just let it be known that depression is a real illness that sometimes locks you so deep somewhere there is just no reasonable solution. Although sometimes I wish it really was as easy as the Bob Newhart "Stop it!" skit on MadTV. You must look it up! I fail at posting links apparently. :)

It's so embarrassing to be sad and not have anything to respond to the question "what is it?" I feel like if I knew what it was, I probably wouldn't be in this much despair. It's also embarrassing to call in sick to work and then be asked about what bug you had the next day. Other people take a mental health day and go shoe shopping. I stay home and cry. And then I cry over the fact that I'm crying for no reason and then it escalates. I feel like a child at these moments. Part of me embraces the child, yet another part wonders what I am acting like one for. And in the end, I have no new shoes to show for my mental health day!

I'm feeling really vulnerable by posting this, so please don't come at me with all the things I should be doing or should have done for myself. I'm still processing it all and took today to simply mellow out and be mildly productive-I swept the upstairs, made some tea and looked out at the bay, left for work early and sat down by the lake for half an hour, I listened to my good friend talk about her own troubles, and answered each phone call at the store with at least one deep breath, two if I could fit them in. Not once did I get overly irritated with customers. And I had soup for lunch to round the whole day out.

And so I'm going to finish off with all the good things you've been missing out on this past year (and apparently I forgot about yesterday): My brother got married in September! My other brother, sister and I were all in the wedding and it set so many good familial feelings in motion that my sister and I planned a big Thanksgiving dinner and invited nearly twenty-something of our family members and honorary family members (thank goodness only 18 of them could come!) which we have not done in, literally, ages. Andy came and met my family for that and they really like him! Not surprising, he's very likeable. :) We also went out to Balboa Island to search for the Arrested Development Banana Stand and other geeky A.D. filming spots. We are pretty certain we played air hockey in the arcade where Gob gets distracted by a claw machine.

Andy and I had our milestone one year anniversary in December, although come to think of it, we didn't really do anything special other than hang out with his friends who were in town, but come Valentine's Day he did give me a Claddagh ring with an emerald set in it (because my favorite color is green, he says, and he is right!). I had just come down with a nasty flu that afternoon, and so as he was getting me set up in bed with a bit of ginger ale and I was loopy from the Nyquil, he pulls out the gift he'd been trying to give me all day. I was so tired, sick and miserable that I broke out in tears of joy. "Really, it's not much and it might make your finger fall off.." he said. I remarked (or maybe slurred) "Well, we'll just have to find out because I'm not taking it off!" My finger is still quite intact!

This past June we moved into a new house with a spectacular view and lots of space-a great deck to hang out on, Andy just planted a small trial garden, and I have my own office with an extra desk so I can work on my collages. Right in the middle of the move, Andy and I finally headed out to Kansas City, MO to meet HIS family (sans sister), and I think they like me? I hope! I get a lot of good vibes (aka texts and gifts and all sorts of fun things :)) from his mom and sister, so I think that's a good sign. We had a really nice time out there seeing fountains and soccer and columns and consuming bbq and fried things and beer. And at last Andy's sister came to visit us during our housewarming party and my birthday which was really a treat since I still hadn't met her until then! It's too bad she can't stay with us all summer.

And then just a few days ago I was able to catch up with an old friend over sushi, bottomless sake, and some karaoke, and I had a really nice time with her. So, lots of nice, great things have happened too. Lots of big important things! So why all the sad? Maybe it's all this transitioning and new things that got to me somewhere in that bizarre brain of mine, but I have good reason to acknowledge how fortunate I am, how loved, how cared for, and whenever I am capable I'd like to help make that true for others.

I went to the woods to work deliberately

About a month ago, something very exciting happened to me. I was offered a part-time temporary position at a very popular independent new and used bookstore in Oakland, Walden Pond (we just won best bookstore 2010 in the East Bay Express!). This part-time temporary work was to be my foot in the door, to possibly acquire more hours and shifts in the future if I seemed to prove myself worthy. What was supposed to start out as a temporary gig two times a week, became in no time a nearly full-time job. I guess I proved myself? I'm pretty certain my entire body is not even in the door but far past it. And I'm really enjoying being a bookish nerd again, taking charge over the used fiction section, and having such a variety of projects going on at all times. Motivation to read has increased enormously, my list is growing yet again, and I find myself reading til I zonk out, something I haven't really done in awhile.

In the style of Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree, the books I have recently finished, am in the middle of, and recently picked up are as follows.

Recently finished:
Herself in Love by Marianne Wiggins: Short stories focusing on mundane existence reminiscent of Raymond Carver, but far less sparse syntax. Each was better than the one before it, particularly "Insomnia" and the title story "Herself in Love".

The Effects of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits: A satirical look at a post 9-11 reality in which plane hijacking preparedness is protocol was sadly disappointing. It feels like it could be Nabokov kind of cool, but really goes nowhere with its point other than to point out that people don't change.

Working on:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers: Figured it is about time I read this classic! So far it is an intriguing character driven story that explores human behavior.

What is an Emotion? Classic Readings in Philosophical Psychology edited by Cheshire Calhoun & Robert C. Solomon: Bought this in Portland LAST AUGUST and finally cracked it open a number of months ago. The Introduction is hefty and I'm nearly finished just with it.

The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini: Chose this for a book club because the last tutoring session at the high school was on this book, it has been on the NY times bestseller list for at least 4 years, and we had a lot of copies at Walden Pond. Only a few chapters in and we're meeting on Saturday to decide when to finish it. It's told from the perspective of a man living in San Francisco who grew up in Afghanistan about what he experienced in the way of class and racism. At least, that's what I gather so far in a few chapters.

Coming up:
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Magister Ludi (or The Glass Bead Game) by Hermann Hesse
To See You Again by Alice Adams
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Look at this stuff, isn't it neat?

The irony zoomed past me as I got tunes from "The Little Mermaid" stuck in my head the night before Andy and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Contemplating our afternoon later on Friday out on the sunny, breezy oceanside deck of the aquarium, I ashamedly realized the significance. I had just seen some sebastians, flounders, scuttles, and flotsam and jetsam, too. Coming to the end of my list, I demanded to see some mermaids. And maybe a sea witch or something. Yeah, that would complete the afternoon. But seriously, all in all, we saw a lot of creatures. A lot. From tiny to enormous, smooth to roughly crusted, furry to spiky, leafy, squishy, gooey and, of course, fishy, I felt oddly like these creatures were putting things into perspective for me. It's not just the diversity that is beautiful. As Andy I sat watching the kelp forest tank, he remarked on how some of the fish were content to remain still and float and drift with the movement of the water back and forth in unison with the seaweed. The sea dragons and sea horses had the same lethargic looking inertia to them, horses hooked onto thin grasses just bob bob bobbing in currents while the leaf looking dragons just afloat and drifting, sometimes even bumping into each other, their appendages blending and getting lost together. The jelly fish also seem to drift, pulsing through a serene starless space with only existence on the "nerve net," the closest jelly fish equivalent to a brain (jelly fish also don't have a central nervous system). A crotchety looking bittern seen in the flamingo exhibit didn't move from his sagely perch in the 3 or so hours between our first and second viewings, and the giant octopi remained wedged between rock and glass as long as possible. On the other hand, there were also frenetic seeming small fishes darting back and forth, like the schools of sardines that, flashing and glinting as a large united body of individuals, followed an unseen path through the open waters between hammerhead sharks, dolphinfish, tuna, and also barracuda that were all too interested, every once in awhile scaring the body and inciting an explosion of sparkling fishes in multiple directions before they reconvened into their tight-knit defenses. And the Magellanic penguins "flying" beneath the surface rarely paused long enough for a decent picture. They were awfully cute though. In another category entirely, the sea otters reminded us of their mammalian nature, seeming to play in their grooming practices, floating on backs and pulling their hind flippers up to their tummy almost in a fetal position. Though it looked like a cozy and safe way to curl up, they were actually keeping their poorly insulated feetsies from getting too cold in the water.

I think it is clear I got a lot out of our day at the aquarium. It reminded me of the stresses I tend to put myself through without really needing to, the things I complicate my life with that are more just games my mind plays with itself than efforts toward growth and productivity. And isn't that what is driving these creatures in some way? Or at least, that is what we ourselves are interested in learning about them. We learn the basics: development from birth to adulthood, what they eat, how they defend themselves (or hunt), and how they reproduce. Surely these are the basics to all life, and not just what we as humans think are important. In a metaphorical sense, growth and productivity are also immensely important to being viewed as successful. And so I ask myself, am I successful?

Sure played a mean pinball

For Andy's birthday, I drove him, his roommate and a couple friends from his cohort--and myself of course--out to a pinball museum last night in Alameda and as the majority of the games there are playable (90 to be exact), we had a blast playing all the machines for two and a half hours. I suspect Andy would have stayed much much longer if it hadn't been closing time. I never imagined how addictive pinball could be! It's especially so when you start on the 2-3 player friendly machines and get into a competitive groove. And it's especially so when the Indiana Jones themed game has a gun for the ball launcher which you pull the trigger on to "shoot" the ball!! Anyway, tell your friends and tell your family if you decide to go. Then they will know where to find you when you go missing.

I mentioned recently that I was most likely taking the GRE again (graduate record examination) and was thinking of changing my focus somewhat from school counseling to psychology research. I feel pretty good about it now. If I take it slow, I feel I will be able to transition through all the stages of the process more readily, whereas in the past, even with simple projects, I sometimes rushed myself out of excitement and enthusiasm and then lost steam or got discouraged when things were changing too quickly or not quickly enough.

Anyhow, I believe the coming of spring has been an enormously uplifting event for me. New births, new life, new outlook. Peace for now.

Spring fun in the sun

My friend in New York can attest to the importance of sun. He feels it during the winter when it snows for days and 20 minutes of sun brings the whole neighborhood outdoors to walk the dog, grocery shop or just shoot the shit at the corner bodega. Perhaps that is why my winter New York trip was not as enjoyable as the hot humid and sunny July trip. He says he feels like his body gulps up every bit of sun it can, when it is out of course, to make up for long days of clouds and snow.

He must think we're spoiled out here in the Bay Area right now, what with our days and days of sun, spoiled only by a few days and nights of pouring rain. As soon as the good weather started showing its face, I started going down to Cesar Chavez Park by the Berkeley Marina for a good walk in the sun and a gorgeous view of the bay nearly every day. Many of you know already that I've been driving around an advertising car and the parking lot there seems perfect for some face time. It turns out the park is perfect for me to get some face time, too, but with sunshine!

Being in the sun, but I think more specifically being out in the park, walking the mellow hills and gazing out across the bay, has really lifted my spirits. I'm somewhat slow at times with thinking through options and deciding which direction to head next in life, and the walks have helped me take the time to focus on these moments. A few of my next steps include finding a job since unemployment is probably up in July (I have a few leads and am crossing fingers), taking the GRE again to attempt more impressive scores (I think completely doable as I didn't study much last time and still received average), and trying to utilize my extra time as best I can. I think the new school plan may be to apply next year to school psychology programs next year. My passion for helping direct students may be better used in research or as a school psychologist.

I'm looking forward for more great weather, but a rainy day inside here and there isn't so bad either. It's a good excuse to get a lot of reading done.