Mostly I just don't give a shit about anything. I'm not sure if that's due to the depression, or just clinical detachment.
Mind you, this behavior and thought pattern is just when I'm alone. With J I'm a bundle of fun and happiness and want to go-go-go anywhere and everywhere. I'm suddenly full of nonstop energy and grand ideas. Let's go take a drive, let's get dressed up and go out to eat, let's go to the garden center and look at patio furniture, let's go shopping at the antique store. Suddenly when I'm with J I just want to experience everything! But, I'm not usually with J, because like most husbands he works for a living outside the home and he's gone. I just wish I knew how to bottle that weekend energy I give to J, and save some of it for myself on the weekdays when I'm home alone, or venturing into town by myself. This week was particularly bad- even though J left on Monday, it took me until Thursday before I could rouse myself out of my funk and away from the house to just go drop off his dry cleaning. Honestly, I did not want to move here just so I could continue on my same self-destructive path of becoming a hermit. There is TOO much to do in this area, I should be sailing out the door every morning to take on something new! Even if it's going to a farmers market to buy tomatoes.
Since my last post we took a long Alaska cruise. We had a gigantic estate sale back at the old house (five grand in our pockets and all our old shit gone). We've had family come stay with us for awhile. And we've been digging away at all the boxes in the house and garage. Trying to find our old life and institute it at the new house. I guess I should stop calling it the "new" house now, and just say HOME.
J got up Monday morning in the dark and headed for the airport. This week he doesn't get to come home over the weekend due to a work project on Saturday. So he'll be gone for eleven days. The night he gets back, he will have time to change clothes and pee, then we get in the car and head to the beach for the next five days. Not for anything enjoyable, it's an obligatory visit with family, which I never consider fun. Today it's storming all day, dangerously so. I'm staying in to attempt to catch up on chores. My plans are for me to keep unpacking boxes. And to do some pottery. Yes, pottery, because it's been too long.
I know I still have a long way to go to get the house put back in order, and I'm trying not to stress out over all the clutter that surrounds me every day. But for the most part, the main living areas are done. The kitchen, the bathrooms, the living room and sunroom and bedroom. The things still packed up are odds and ends, a lot of craft stuff, and just junk. So I told myself that this week, since I have an "extended" schedule of being home alone, I'm going to take a break and work on pottery. It's been w-a-y too long, and I deserve to spend a few days getting muddy and being creative. And it took quite an effort to convince myself that I did deserve a break. Even so, as always I feel that ticking clock hanging over me. I know that my job, first and foremost, is to be a housewife. During the week when J is gone, I can be whoever I want to be. But eventually that cycle kicks back around, my husband is home, and I have to shift into wife and happy homemaker mode. And I'm cool with that, because I love J so much and I'm proud to be his partner. But dammit, I'm always faking it for him.
Having the estate sale behind us has been a huge relief. It's just one more tie to the past that I can cut. One step closer to being able to completely cross that house and town off my list of things to think about. Now that the old house is empty, the contractor will get his work done in two or three weeks, and our house can go on the market. Luckily for us, the market is still hot in our area, houses in our little neighborhood are getting snapped up as soon as they go up for sale. We're hoping that a month from now, it's still going that strong. Since last summer, maybe two dozen houses have sold, but so far we'll be the first one with a basement. Our realtor said people should line up for that, because it's such a desired feature. We're crossing our fingers.
Mostly I'm concentrating on shifting my mindset these days. In the past, with the depression and anxiety, I've succeeded in always playing the helpless victim, and I've let it "happen" to me. I'm sick of it. I want control over it. I want to fight it. I want to manage it better. When it hits I always feel like I'm drowning, but I'm ready to learn to ride a surfboard on top of those waves of anxiety, I'm ready to learn how to swim against the currents of the depression instead of allowing it to sweep me farther out to sea. I make this sound poetic, but it sucks, it's hard work, it's exhausting, it's demanding, and sometimes I end up completed defeated.
But I feel as though I'm doing a little better. The depression still comes. The anxiety still pops up. However, it doesn't seem as though it lasts as long each time. Which is a relief. I would like to think my new surroundings help. Ever since we bought this house and these few wooded acres of privacy last year, I dreamed that once we moved here permanently my life would evolve into something shiny and new, like a snake shedding off and leaving behind its old skin, moving on towards the next day. It's only been two months, so I'm not giving up hope that this can and will happen. Maintaining this house will be its own form of hard work. Right now I'm doing my best. I will continue to strive to make that best get better.
I'm giving myself until the end of this year to truly make strides in redefining my life. By then everything will be unpacked, everything put away in its proper place. My craft room will be up and running again. The old house will be sold and will become just a memory. In other words, the world should be back to "normal" again for us as far as daily and weekly routines. We never plan on moving again. Things may change, J's job my change if he so chooses, family ties will change. It's time for me to stop using the fact that I was living in a house and town that I hated, as my excuse for just giving up on myself.
I'm still doing a halfway okay job of faking it on the outside. J still knows better, even though I try to be all smiles and coy winks when I'm with him. He also feels like this- the move, the new house, the new town- is my last chance at happiness. A few months ago he said to me that I've just got to try harder to get better. That's difficult for someone with crushing depression to listen to, but that was my old mentality of having the depression just "happen" to me without asking my permission first. J also went on to tell me, if there's something about my life that I don't like, then I have to change it. Again, hard to hear, but very much the truth.
I've got the home I've always dreamt about finally. I now live in an awesome college town swarming with culture and coolness. It's everything anyone could ever want. So I'm bound and determined to not fuck it up this time around. Life and love and laughter are out there happening every minute. It's time for me to jump into the mix and enjoy this ride.
MISS GEE
