What It's Like

The Plague Year

The anniversary of the morning my mother fell and injured her hip is in twelve days.  From that day on, she was never the same and in a sense, it marks the death of her as part of my home family.  I want the day to go by and to put the last twelve months behind me.  There have been wonderful things in this year -- going to Prague, going to the Pacific Northwest, meeting a lot of people on Facebook -- but there has also been a lack of energy to write, sadness, bad depression, family schism, and a bit of a broken heart.  Add to all that, weight gain and increasing social anxiety.  It hasn't been pretty.

In making some choices to speak up and claim parts of myself, I've lost a couple of friends. Just recently, another seems to have rebuffed me, although I haven't tried to find out why.  For the most part, I've probably been a distant friend this year, absorbed in family events and trauma, sunk in a wordless place when I was confined to quarters for two months, traveling, watching Angry Fat Girls tank, and getting abstinent, which always makes me go underground with civilians.  If my illusiveness has caused more rupture in my friendships, I'm sorry.  But it was, on the whole, a year in which I had to put the oxygen mask on myself first.

For the last five weeks I've struggled against my anxiety to get anything done.  While I was in relapse, I had occasional hard work days because if I didn't do something, I'd feel so miserable that I'd want to die.  Without sugar, I've been feeling what's going on.  Not much is happening in my life to blog about because that's what I've been doing: feeling.  Therapy has been like boot camp and I joked on Facebook one day that I think I need a therapist to talk to about therapy.  There and in my step work, I'm facing some demons.  There are days when I just go to bed after crying through an assignment or therapy session.

All of this is by way of saying I'm sorry to anyone and everyone who reads this and who has felt slighted by me.  I've been curled up in a very tight ball.  My life is about to blasted open if we come to an agreement with Berkley about the next book.  I'm going to have to go on about a hundred first dates and write about them.  Am I ready?  I don't know.  You can find out by going to my new blog, "Assholes in the Headlights," which I should have started yesterday.

My blogs: sheesh.  I blog about food/addiction/depression at Psychology Today, snarky dating experienced at Headlights, about publishing on my website, and about my other stuff here.  I feel fragmented but somehow, also, that any other blog needed to wait until I could write this.

So I'll see you around the Web, and I'll see you in Starbucks.  I'll be the large woman having a stilted conversation about what the guy opposite me does for a living.

And I'll try to come up with events to report here on as regular a basis as possible.

Brought to You from Facebook...

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to as many people you like. You can't use the band I used. Do not repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think but as the list spirals down to the last questions, you'll find yourself surprised by its power.

Have fun!

Pick Your Artist: Joni Mitchell


Are you a female or male: Woman of Heart and Mind
Describe yourself: Big Yellow Taxi
How do you Feel: I Don't Know Where I Stand
Describe Where You Currently Live: Two Gray Rooms
Describe Where You Wish You Could Live: California
If You Could Go Anywhere, Where Would You Go: Free Man in Paris
Your favorite form of transportation: Ray's Dad's Cadillac
Your best friend is: A Strange Boy
Your favorite color is: Blue
Your favorite animal is: Daisy Summer Pipers
Favorite Time of Day: Chelsea Morning
What's the Weather Like: Eastern Rain
If your life were a tv show, what would it be called: I Wish I Were in Love Again
What is Life to You: Waiting for the Car on the Hill
Your Relationships: Sweet Sucker Dance
Your fear: Last Chance Lost
What is the best advice you have to give: In France They Kiss on Main Street
If you could change your name, you would change it to: Hunter
Thought for the Day: No Apologies
How I would Like to Die: Taming the Tiger
My Soul's Present Condition: Song toAging Children Come
My Motto: Help Me

One of those Days...

It started yesterday. I wanted to give my morning dogs a work-out & I ended up being out for three hours with them. I barely had time to have snack (cottage cheese & a pear) before I was off to take care of Italian greyhounds. I crashed when I got there. I was suddenly so, so tired...& I had more dogs to walk.

It's my first week back with the full compliment. My foot barely twinged.

I decided to catch up on Facebook a little & took one of those "Everything About Me Quiz" quizzes. I'm fond of Facebook. I've found friends from grade school there & people I was scared of in high school who've turned out to be very cool. I know what my nieces, nephews & cousins are up to. I've made some friends.

But the quiz got me. I answered one of the first statements, "I am________." "Brilliant."

I believed it, too. But a half hour later I was kicking myself for not remembering the names of all the characters in the Palliser novels & nothing about biochemistry. I revised, in my head, that I'm brilliant at what I'm brilliant at. Sometimes I feel brilliant.

I should not have put that sentence out there where everyone can see it. I posted a bunch of new pictures kind of in the hopes of burying it. The statement haunts me.

When I get tired, I get cranky, & when I get cranky I either turn it on myself or on the world. I wasn't sure, as I dragged Daisy back from Henry's house last night, that the world would escape my anger. All I knew by then was that I hadn't gotten hungry for lunch until it was too late & that I was now starving. I also knew I didn't want to stand there & prepare anything. I ordered out. The meatloaf had gravy on it. I scraped it off as best I could & Daisy loved it. I took her for a quick pee-walk & went to bed with Conversations with Other Women in the DVD player.

I set myself up well for today -- tired, stressed, feeling a fake, no writing done, too big a dinner & a really depressing movie that made me think about things I'd rather not think about.

So I pour some milk into my coffee mug at ten minutes before seven this morning but it chugs out. F---. Gone sour. Coffee without milk. Uck.

I step on the scale. Up 1.8 pounds. My rice takes twice as long to cook than it should, thereby closing my option of getting to the store before breakfast & dogs. Then I cook the rice just long enough that I can scrape all the rice out but have to soak the pan. I now have a sink full of dishes to come home to.

The dogs were my reprieve, along with washing my hair & finally chopping a head of cabbage for my salad mix. I stood up from eating lunch & promptly tripped over my feet, nearly crushing the dog AND my knee & spraining the two smallest toes on my right foot.

Which is nearly mended from a fracture.

I'm starting to turn it on myself.

I'm afraid, I tell you, to go out in the world now. I have to walk Henry & go get essential groceries. Many things could happen. I could say any number of stupid things to myself. It's one of those days.

January 10th & It's New Year's Day

I made it. I made it through Christmas. That was all I asked of the end of 2008.

It's my first day back in Brooklyn & I'm thinking, finally, of MY 2009.

"My" is capitalized because the last six years have been given to self-indulgence in the forms of over-eating & weight gain, financial fear, depressions of which one fraction is my rage at being fired sixfuckingyearsago, developing agoraphobia, dogs, isolation, silence, fear of writing, fear of being a public enough person that you, Dear Reader, are turning to this blog.

& I'm tired of it, & tired in general. So many harsh emotions boomeranging back on myself in physical & psychological ways is exhausting.

I've been thinking what my New Year's Resolution(s) could look like. Here's a random list:

* Lose weight.
* Get back to The Rooms.
* Get back to step work.
* Get back to my sponsor.
* Finish my novel.
* Listen to music & the radio.
* Shower every day.
* Blog more.
* Get out of the house more often, without dogs, without going to the store, bank or CVS.
* Get back to church.
* Answer my huge backlog of email & letters that I'm too scared to answer.
* Look for adjunct teaching.
* Weed through my junk.
* Say goodbye (& hello) to New York.
* Go some place where my parents aren't.
* Study up on how to use my camera & Adobe.
* Get ABT tickets.
* Go to Montana.
* Wear earrings often enough that it's not a struggle to put earrings in.
* Be a better friend.
* Look around for a boyfriend.
* Train my dog.
* Start writing a journal again.
* Listen to meditation CD's & start doing Yoga for the Rest of Us.
* Get a new TV, DVD, VCR that work.
* Learn to say "no".
* Learn to decoupage.
* Get out of debt.

The thought of all of this is, to say the least, both overwhelming & impossible.

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So I want to look back at 2008 first, & not at my failures but at my successes & at my lessons.

The election brought me back to the news. I'm not only deeply interested in several politicians but am exceedingly pissed off at the invasion of the Gaza Strip. I haven't been interested in the news in years.

I finished the first draft of Angry Fat Girls. Oprah regained 40 pounds & Kirsty Ally also obliged me by validating the need for this book. It might be more important than PFT.

I found some old friends &, in doing so, resolved some jagged endings & made some new starts. D., U., C., N., L., M., K., D....that's a considerable number of friendships reclaimed from time, distance &, in some cases, bitterness.

I've begun to make some friends via Facebook. At least I have good feelings toward them.

I wrote one really terrific Lab Lady blog that I will stand by forever.

I've pretty much decided to move to Seattle about six months after AFG pubs.

I cut my hair off in an act of self-mutilation & only got rave reviews of it.

I began a novel that feels Right.

I have become closer to members of my family -- my parents during their health crises & during my depressions; my brother; nieces & nephews I can watch on Facebook; a cousin; my sister-in-law.

I have learned that I don't handle stress well & I learned where several of those stress lines are. I THINK I can learn to handle stress better again & I think I can stretch the boundaries of where too much begins.

I understand some of my weird fears better, or I can at least articulate them.

I continue to see Providence at work in my life.

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Not a bad haul -- & probably not a complete one. I do so much lamenting on this blog that I don't want to go into specifics of boundaries & stress, ruptures of old friendships, my weight gain or how much, the shades of depression, the losses & scares of the year.

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When I look back at 2008, the moments I want to remember include:

* Sobbing through Sunday in the Park with George
* Singing musical comedy tunes with BJ to our dogs on a bleak Promenade
* A long conversation with my oldest friend that was so funny & so dead-on that it's enough to last for months
* Hearing the Ohio poles come in while walking Daisy on the street & the feeling of unity & good will that pervaded my neighborhood the next day
* A series of suppositions BJ & I wove into a story that had us rolling on the sidewalk
* Getting a slightly larger advance for reselling AFG than the original sale
* Conversations with A Boy in which that frisson of wide-eyed wonder at synchronicity buzzed around my head
* Sitting on a stoop one afternoon with the dogs when suddenly I felt Henry rest his head on mine

These are the photographs of 2008 that I want to remember.

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I'm eschewing as much sadness as I can here. It's my New Year's Day. It's time to look forward & continue building on what is good & scrapping what isn't so good.

In the forefront of mind, of course, is keeping every one of those resolutions. In the middle of my mind I have decided to limit it to one sort of group resolution for the time being: shower every day, wear jewelry more often, brush my teeth at night.

Simple? Ha! I've failed at all of them at least once. But in selecting this cluster of things, I'm opting for some self-respect, some focus on my body. I'm voiding some of my excuses for why I can't go to Starbucks or a meeting or church or to see a friend. I'm making it less likely I'll binge at night.

Come to think of it, I guess every day is the start of a new year. I'll pick up some other resolutions as I go along with 2009. I happen to be abstinent today. It feels energizing in the dead world of January.

I don't know what tomorrow's resolution will be but I think I should print out these lists & remember that resolutions to & resolutions of sometimes simply happen. I'm sniggering a little as I write this, thinking of Awful Rat-Faced Alix quoting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which she regarded as her Bible. "Ultra-ultra secret," she would say with her rat-smile of some huge book deal she was handling that would entertain a lot of folks but not improve the world beyond that.

The proper quote, I know after finally reading the novel, is "Ultra, ultra sensitive."