I Get Lost Sometimes

I've had so much on my mind lately and I've wanted to blog. But I can't concentrate, and I can't seem to string two sentences together. I can't even write in my daily journal. There are weeks of empty spaces, and it makes me sad and angry at myself to see all the blank lines. I paid good money for that journal, damn it, and I'm pissed at myself that I'm not using it. I've had so much going on and I feel it all building up inside of me. The anxiety has been building the closer we get to the holidays. The depression has been dragging me down. This is the first year EVER that I did not put out one decoration for Fall. I didn't even hang the wreath on the front door. Like everyone else, Fall is my favorite time of the year, and I have boxes and boxes of decorations with pumpkins and sunflowers and leaves and acorns and all the other things you would warm your hearth and home with. I am absolutely 100% not feeling it this year.

We had another nice vacation recently, to Niagara Falls and New England, to see the colors. Frankly, the colors up there were no better than the colors back here at home. We did so much driving that we didn't have time to stop and actually do anything. And it rained almost the whole time. My entire vacation was experienced through the windshield, strapped in the front seat of my car. We had two days at the Falls, but the rest was a mind-numbing road trip that for me was agonizing. The pain of sitting all day, and the car sickness I get sometimes with my claustrophobia. Of course being with J was the main objective for me. He said he had a great time, it was one of his favorite vacations ever. I was thinking, I wouldn't even put it in my top twenty. I guess he got something out of being on the road that I didn't feel. But he had a wonderful time- and we didn't fight except for the few hours we were lost and driving aimlessly in New York City at rush hour. He was fine. I was freaking the hell out. Sometimes being in a car with someone nonstop for eight days would drive you crazy. But we did really well. It gave me hope that maybe we can take another big road trip one day. At least, if we can stop and DO things and GO places, instead of just zooming by and saying oh look there's....okay never mind, we already drove by.

When we got home, it was obvious that one of the cats had injured himself while we were gone. This is the cat who hides from the pet sitters, they can see him wedged behind the washing machine and the wall, so they know he's alive, but that's it. He and our newest cat tend to fight, or rather, the newest cat tends to beat up on him because she's very high energy and likes to play rough. And when that happens, he always gets stressed and anxious and develops a UTI- which leads to peeing all over the house and blood in his urine. This time it was so bad he became anemic. But after three appointments- and $1000- he began to improve. Of course, one of my cats being sick is like a massive bomb going off in my world, triggering an avalanche of anxiety in ME. I got buried in it this time. While he was sick, our other cat with cancer has started feeling worse, and in the middle of all that, one of my dear friends back home died in a tragic accident. I spent many late nights texting with friends about the meaning of life and why did shitty things happen to decent people while scumbags seem to rule the world.

It's been a long few weeks. Next week I'll be with my family for the holiday. J will stay home with the cats. The cat with cancer has to be boarded because he's on three medications a day and chemo. The other cats of course stay at home and our lovely pet sitters check up on them. But, it's stressful for them all when we're gone. Since we just had two back to back long vacations, we decided it would be best for J to take the week off from work and stay home with them. Ditto for Christmas- we had a trip planned but we've cancelled it and instead my dad will be here staying with us.

I loathe Thanksgiving, for real. Ever since I moved away from home, my parents have always rented a cabin in the mountains so the entire family can come together. For J's family, Thanksgiving is the biggest time of the year, so from day one of us dating he put his foot down and said there will be NO compromises on this one thing. He (we) will spend the holiday with his family. Since we've been together, I've seen my family either the few days before Thanksgiving or the few days afterward. But the actual day itself is spent with J's huge family. I know every family has drama, but J's family wears me down. There will be 19 of us this year. Ugh. J's sisters and nieces breeze in at the last minute- they don't help their parents with anything, not even cleaning up afterward- they huddle off in little corners with their whispers and laughs and glasses of wine. I've always felt excluded, even after these 15 years. They're wonderful women, but gatherings at their parents' house seem to bring out the worst in them. My oldest SIL can barely tolerate being around her parents, and she doesn't attempt to hide her feelings.

I will see my family at their cabin the few days before Thanksgiving, but even that has become stressful since my mom died. My sister is resentful that everything has fallen on her- in other words, she has to do all the things my mom did. Well, there are 5 of them and they'll be there 8 days. On the other hand, there's just little ol' me and I'm only popping in for 3 days. Sorry, I have no plans or desire to "take care" of her family and cater to them while I'm there, no matter how much pressure she is putting on me to "help" out. Her texts were dripping with meanness and guilt and sarcasm about what she "needed" and "wanted" both me and my dad to be in charge of. I volunteered to cook for everyone- ONE night. She had the nerve to send me this huge shopping list- which included things like toilet paper and laundry detergent. Uhm I'm sorry, I'm not providing all the supplies for you and your husband and your sons. She said she was busy with work this week and couldn't get to the store. Well, she has an able bodied husband and grown children who can go for her. J said NO way, I shouldn't feel guilty and cave in to her demands. So, I will be glad when the holiday week is freakin over! And I'll be damned if I'm going back to the cabin next year, I will suddenly get the flu or something.

My health is horrendous right now. No matter how much I promise myself that I will DO BETTER, I just never seem to be able to pull it off. It's like a magic trick whose secret continues to elude me. Last week I went to the grocery store and bought a shitload of healthy groceries, yet this week I've lived off popcorn for lunch and pretzels at night. Because it was easy, because I had no energy, because I've been in that I don't give a fuck about myself mindset lately. The weather isn't cooperating either. It's glorious and lovely on the weekends when J is home, and I'm grateful for that. But during the week when I'm floundering, it's been shitty and rainy and gloomy and damp. Every week. Every Monday through Friday for weeks now. It's miserable. It's making me miserable. The one day I did kick myself in the ass enough to go for a walk, it sucked.

But everything in this blog is just one big stupid meaningless excuse as to why I can't get my shit together. There's nothing in this post that millions of other people don't regularly deal with and overcome easily. I know I'm my own biggest obstacle, but how do you get around yourself when you are trying to help yourself?! I try to imagine my depression and anxiety as a road block sign in the middle of my path. If I was out driving and trying to reach my destination, what would I do? Just sit there staring at the sign? Turn around and go back home? I would find an alternate route to get to where I wanted to be. But instead when it comes to my depression, I'm not even on the road. I'm hiding inside because I already know that road block is out there, and there's no point of even trying to go anywhere. I don't know what to do to shake that feeling, to get over that. I don't know how to convince myself that there are a thousand roads out there and just taking the wheel in the first place is step one to a happier and healthier me.

MISS GEE

When Did It Start?

I've tried to go back in my memory and pinpoint exactly when my depression started, enough that I noticed it. It's maddening to me that I keep going back to the year that J and I moved out of state for the first time. I know that's not when it started, but it seems to be the time period that I was at my lowest and was suicidal. But I believe it just happened to be all the circumstances of that year- unemployed, new strange town, strong meds, debilitating pain, sitting alone in a dark house day after day- that caused me to feel as though I was beyond help, with one foot in my own grave.

I have always suffered from anxiety. I can remember being in elementary school and being on medication for constant stomach aches, which the doctor believed was caused by stress. I would walk around with my arms permanently cradling my abdomen, the pain was so severe. We're talking back in the early 70's, and I was maybe in third grade. Little kids didn't get diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but apparently I had a very forward thinking doctor who recognized I was undergoing some kind of stress- enough that it was causing physical symptoms.

I was also always very very shy, quiet, an introvert. I was always scared of everything around me, I never spoke up, I never spoke out. Even as a kid I was extremely controlling and a perfectionist. I recently found the letter I wrote to Santa Claus when I was 8- it was TYPED. Yep, no scrawling baby words for me, it was a letter with fully formed sentences and typed out. And I even erased and corrected my typos. I remember the little red plastic typewriter, my mom got it for me when I was about 5 or 6, even back then I was writing stories for myself- most were fantasy and horror. Luckily she saved them, so I have the dated proof that I was a dorky nerd as a child. I was that kid who was always reading, always drawing, always building with Legos.

I liked being alone, I liked playing alone. Even then most of what I engaged in were solo interests. I didn't care to run around with the neighborhood kids, I had no desire to have tea parties or play dolls with other little girls. Or even my sister. I climbed trees, I collected bugs and rocks, I would sit in the driveway and thumb through comic books, I loved stargazing in the backyard. I was a tomboy, but I was also a loner. And I think I was happy as a loner, I don't remember being sad or upset, I wasn't an outcast against my will- I always chose to hang out by myself. The few times I did want to play with other kids, I never had issues with making friends or getting along with others. I wasn't disliked or bullied. As a teen I had friends, dates on Friday nights, played in the marching band, sang in the choir.

It's fair to say my upbringing was happy and normal, that I was happy and normal. There was no trauma, no abuse, I wasn't molested or beaten. My parents didn't drink or party, we went to church but we weren't obsessive about religion. My dad always worked and my mom always stayed home to take care of the house and family. We always had money, we took vacations, we visited family, had birthday parties. We went to the beach, went to the skating rink, swam in the pool, went out for pizza, played little league sports, had fun at the fair or Disney or the movies. I had my own room by the age of ten, filled with a stereo, TV, nice clothes and shoes, toys, a phone. You name something from childhood that was fun, and I probably did it. I graduated high school, went to college, always worked.  My shyness persisted- I wouldn't even order a pizza on the phone- but I came out of my shell with my first office job. I continued to write, paint, draw, read. I lived at home until I was 24, when I met my first husband. I always had a car, lived in a clean home with good food, my parents were very demonstrative with their love and praise, they never shot us down and always supported whatever we wanted to do. I was never arrested, I never got pregnant. Even as a teen, I never drank alcohol, never experimented with drugs or cigarettes- and still haven't. I lived in my hometown until I was 30.

So I can't put a finger on when my life started to take a darker turn as far as the depression. I know I was unhappy with my first husband. He created a world for me that I wasn't used to. He was a drug addict, he was chronically unemployed, he was verbally and emotionally cruel. For years his actions bordered on being physically abusive, until the end where he finally started to lay hands on me in anger. He was the first and only person in my life to make me feel stupid, lazy, unattractive, not worthy. He tore me down. I gave up all my creative outlets. I gained almost 100 pounds when I was with him. I can remember days when I would go into work with no makeup, not having showered. I was always angry back then, defeated, I felt hate for him, for everything. But I never looked at myself in the mirror and said, "Girl, you're depressed." I never thought that I wanted to give up on my life. I spent 13 miserable years with him, but I never wanted to kill myself, I never wanted to disappear, I never felt as though my life was pointless. I was too busy being pissed off and fighting with him to look too deeply at myself.

Once I got away from him, I guess I expected everything would be sweet and bright and shiny and happy. Certainly with J in my life, taking care of me, supporting me, loving me, you would think I could shrug off the stink of my first marriage and move on. But I couldn't. It was then that I started to recognize I was suffering from depression, and it certainly wasn't anything that J did or said. It had nothing to do with him at all. Even though I was immersed in an amazing relationship with a man who adored me, even though I was surrounded by all the comfort money could buy, I was literally at my lowest point not long after we got married. But it absolutely wasn't caused by J or being with J. He was the only good thing in my life.

Have I always been depressed? Was I depressed as a young person who preferred to be alone? Was I actually depressed those years with W? Why did I just start to "feel" the depression once I was snuggled safely with J? Maybe being with J allowed me to relax enough that I could look back on my first marriage and see just how horrible it was, realize just how badly my ex screwed me up. I know depression can be caused by circumstances or trauma. I know depression can be the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. I'm not sure if my first marriage caused my depression or if it was already there, and my ex simply pushed the right buttons. Maybe the ingredients were always there, waiting, fermenting, and W finally lit the fire that cooked it all up into one big messy recipe of sadness and self-hatred and emptiness.

Maybe it's not really so important to know when the depression started or figure out what first triggered it? I know it's there. I just need to figure out how to get beyond it, to live the life I know I deserve.

MISS GEE...

...last week in Mexico...

I Remembered My Password!

Yes, it's been so long since I was on here, I couldn't believe I remembered how to sign on. But here I am. I am having one hell of a week with my depression, and told myself it was time I started back on the blog to sort through my life. I can't seem to keep my written journal going, and I can't seem to be honest in it. I don't know why. I've been meaning to get back to the blog, for so long now. No one reads it, but it's very therapeutic for me, and that's enough. I find myself falling asleep at night, "writing" blog posts in my head. Like, if I get up and blog tomorrow, this is what I want to talk about. I think about finally going to see a therapist, and I have conversations in my mind- what a therapist might ask me, how I would answer it, what they would tell me to work on. Then I convince myself I don't need anyone to listen to me or guide me, because I already know what's wrong and what I need to do to right my ship.

So here I go again, and I'm giving myself the goal of getting on here every week, or at least twice a month. I see people who blog every day, so weekly seems like a goal I can manage. That's one of my major flaws, and one of the most frustrating parts of my depression. I make goals all the time, very small easy goals that most people take for granted, and I can't seem to accomplish them. This week has been one of those weeks, today has REALLY been one of those days. My head hurts, inside and out. The self-hatred and negative thoughts have overwhelmed me and beaten me down. I had been doing well, at least for me. Last week we took a vacation and as it always does, my world crumbles when I get back home.

I don't know what it is about taking a vacation that inevitably pulls the rug out from under my feet. I think mostly it's because J still travels full time for work- it's been 3 1/2 years now of him just being home on weekends- and when we go on vacation together it's a comfort and happiness and safe feeling that I don't normally have in my day to day life. Then we come home, he unpacks the vacation suitcase, packs the work suitcase, and I'm home alone again for the week. We've had four vacations so far this year, with one more on the calendar, and of course J will have time off with the holidays. I feel like my world, my life is split into two parts. Time with J, time on my own. Most of it is time on my own. A little is a good thing, no doubt, but too much of it brings a crushing yet empty weight down on me. J isn't likely to change jobs any time soon. He's been with the company 22 years now, and although he's recently been offered promotions which would mean coming off the road, they all also meant moving again and we just don't want to do that right now.

We talked about this being our forever home. I talked about how I thought moving here would be the "cure" that I needed. Now neither of us is sure about that. We love our house, and our eight acres, but I don't know if we see ourselves here twenty years from now. Maybe not even ten years from now. I thought living here would open up a new existence and new opportunities for me, and although the potential is there, I'm still hiding in the house and not living out in the world. I'm starting to wonder if moving somewhere we were both already so familiar with was a mistake. J was born and raised here. And in the 16 years I've been with J, I'd visited here a lot before we bought this house. Before we even moved here, we already had favorite places to go and things to do. So in a way, although I'd never lived here before, nothing was really new. The only thing new was that I had the ability to go and do and see it all on my own, any time I wanted. Now we both think it would have been better to move somewhere truly new, to explore and discover and be awed with new experiences and new sights.

So much has happened in the last two or three years, it's been a very difficult phase for me. Not just turning 50 a little while back. Moving here to J's hometown and being around his family, sometimes more than I would like. J still traveling full time- the "glamour" of that first year has worn thin. My mom passed away. I'm still struggling with my own health issues, not to mention the depression and paralyzing anxiety. We lost one of our beloved cats, we took a new stray kitten in. The other cats have all either had life-threatening illnesses that required surgeries and long recoveries, and one currently has cancer and is going through treatment. I still fumble around with my pottery, but I can't seem to elevate it to anything more than a money-losing hobby. I am still unbearably overweight and in constant physical pain. I hate being so old and feeling so lost. At my age, I should have the answers already, but I still feel tragically behind the eight ball, all the time.

Well I'm going to keep my normally epic-length posts shorter, so that I will hopefully blog more often. My favorite, newly discovered quote: Never A Failure, Always A Lesson.

MISS GEE

Finding Routines In Chaos

I've been meaning to get back on here, but I've been so busy. That's part of it, but a big part of it has just been the depression. I walk into the office, look at the computer, and can't even muster the energy to turn it on. Yes I've been busy, but I've also spent way way too much of my down time vegging in front of the TV, eating junk food, drinking soda. Stuff that's okay if I was a college freshman with no classes for two days. But I'm an adult, with chores and responsibilities. I'm an adult with the freedom to go do anything I want. I'm an adult with health issues, both mental and physical. I just can't seem to find a reason to care enough about myself to live a better life. Most days, even though I may not be feeling the sadness that most people use to define depression, I do struggle with the other factors. Loss of interest, indecisiveness, confusion, trouble concentrating, no desire to do anything at all. For me the depression also feeds my feelings of immaturity and irresponsibility. I'm like a petulant child- I don't wanna do it!- and the depression is sweetly agreeing, of course you don't have to take a shower today.

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

Quick Hello

A super quick post to report on Week One of living at the new house. Other than J having to now get up at the unholy time of 3:15am on Mondays to catch his flights for work, things have been good.

I didn't expect all of my negative behavioral issues to change overnight, so I'm not going to get upset that some of my worst habits continued last week. The laziness, the brain fog, the days where I forgot to shower and just vegged out in front of the TV. I know it's going to take awhile for things to settle down, for me to create my new routines. To unpack. To find direction. To just "deal with it" every day.

Unpacking has been the hardest thing to deal with, but I'm not going to stress out about it. Eventually I will "find" everything. Eventually I will figure out where I want things to go. Having a much smaller house, and now having no basement, will produce challenges. But I'm not going to worry at this point.

The cats have settled in nicely. That was one of my main concerns. This house has windows galore, so they've been happy watching the birds and squirrels. I met with the new pet sitters last week. I have reservations about them, but I'll give them a fair chance. They were recommended by family members, so I have to put my trust in that. We leave this Friday for vacation and won't be returning until the next next Tuesday. It's a long trip, and a long time to leave my babies in a relatively new environment, and I will worry about the new people in my home taking care of them. But I will try to put that out of my mind and relax and enjoy the vacation.

J needs this vacation badly. He is extremely stressed out about work, so this two week break will hopefully let him recuperate from a tough assignment. Even though we get back on Tuesday of the second week, since he travels for work, his boss is allowing him to "work from home" for the rest of that week. That's extra good news for me because he can help do some things around here that I'm not physically able to do. Our "first" weekend at the new house, was actually spent back down at the old house where we finished up some cleaning and packing. And bought a new car. Yes, really, from a friend. We towed it to the new house in an unrelenting storm that caused flooding on our new country road. We almost didn't get back here. But as always, when J is in charge, everything worked out fine. He has the golden touch, I swear.

I'm looking forward to the vacation, but I'm looking forward to getting back here so I can get things done, unpack, organize, find my new life. I know it's going to work out, I feel it already. My mood has been so much lighter. I can't say my anxiety is gone, because any small glitch in my day can cause me to spiral out of control. But so far it's been manageable. I just tell myself that everything is new, and everything is going to be different and unfamiliar right now until I get used to it. Then this new phase of my life can truly begin.

MISS GEE

One Last Week

Well this is the last week living at the current house. The newspaper has been cancelled. The cable and garbage pickup get cancelled this Friday. The mail starts getting forwarded to our new address in a few days. The new lawn service will start next weekend. The freezer is empty and the refrigerator is almost bare. I've been drinking coffee out of paper cups because everything is packed up. It's about as real and final as it gets.

But regular life goes on too. Monday morning started off the same, with J up at 4:30am to catch his flight. Normal chores are still on my list of things to do. Laundry, going to the pharmacy and post office, taking the recycling, meeting friends for goodbye dinners, checkups at the vet. Toilets need to be scrubbed and carpets need to be vacuumed. And somewhere in there I have to pack up the very last of our belongings that are still here-clothes, pots and pans, canned food in the pantry, bathroom stuff. AND we go on a big 12 day vacation the first week of May that I have done absolutely zero prep work for. Since I may not have a computer for a little while once we move, I have to take care of all that this week too.

On this coming Saturday morning J will pull out of this driveway with a small moving trailer behind him. I will be right behind him with my SUV loaded down with junk, houseplants, and the three cats. Then we make that 250 mile drive north once again. Not too many of those left, thank goodness. It doesn't sound like much, but when you always have to make that drive at 3am to avoid the horrendous, ridiculous, standstill traffic going through "the city", then that drive gets very tiresome very quickly. If I never see that particular stretch of interstate ever again, I will count my blessings.

We are coming back down here the following weekend, to do more cleaning and yard work, and to pick up a few last things. And that should be it for awhile. I've already handed over the key to the house and the code for the alarm to the estate sale company. After next weekend the house, and all that remains inside and out, is all theirs. And we've left a shitload of stuff. If you walked into my house right now, you'd never know we even moved anything at all, because we are leaving behind all the furniture.

We're disappointed that the estate sale company can't do our sale until June. But in a way that's nice too because we can move, go on our vacation, and not have to think about anything for a few weeks. We don't have to come back down here for awhile. In fact, they don't even want us at the sale itself- it's their policy to have the client not be there. Which is fine by me, I don't really want to watch the living room set we paid $5000 for walk out the door for $500. J said he still wants to come to town that weekend, and late on the last day of the sale he is going to stroll in and pretend to be a customer, so he can check out what's left. They didn't meet with J, so they have no idea what he looks like. He just wants to get a good idea of what all we will have to deal with once the sale is over. No estate sale sells out completely, and whatever remains will just get donated. If we left it behind in the first place, we don't need it in our new life.

We also finally met with our real estate agents this weekend. It was surprising for me. Not because of the meeting itself. But it made me realize how negative I always am, how much I beat myself up. I guess from the way I've been talking to my agent, she thought the house would be an utter disaster. But she walked in with her partner and they were both like, there is nothing wrong with this house! Fresh paint on the walls and that should be it. I was prepared to replace hardwood floors and kitchen appliances, everything from floor to ceiling, they said no need. She explained to me, this is NOT new construction, there is no reason to redo the entire house and try to compete with brand new homes. I mean, I wanted to replace the fridge because it has scratches on it. She said that is not even anything to worry about. They said our basement gives us a $25,000 added value over most of the non-basement homes in the area. I like the sound of that! They did say that we should have the carpets professionally cleaned once the house is empty, then they can see if we need to replace it or not. I know there are stains from the cats, and we've always overlooked them. I'm not sure the average home buyer coming in will be able to do the same.

So it's probably going to be July before we get the house on the market. And I'm okay with that. Again, it gives us time to relax and enjoy life at the new house. We won't have to rush back down here and do a bunch of stuff right away. And these days, agents handle most of that anyhow. I know we will have to make a few trips back here for things, but not for awhile. It's good timing. A few years ago when the economy tanked, the value of our house dropped to about $80,000 less than what we paid for it. Now it's worth about $60,000 more than what we paid for it. So we really want to sell as soon as we can, so we can get our new mortgage paid down down down. Although the new house is much smaller, it was about $100,000 more than this house, because of the almost 8 acres of land. The current house has been paid off for a few years now, so it's our goal as we go into our 50's eyeballing retirement, to get the new house paid off as soon as we can. Selling this house for full market value would get us there quickly.

Since we bought the new house a year ago, we've spent every weekend either packing or moving a load up there. Even on "free" weekends we were busting our butts at home doing work. I feel as though I haven't had a moment to catch my breath in a long long time. I know if I worked outside of the home, I couldn't do this. I know if J didn't have the travel job, we couldn't move at all. But it has all been extremely tiring, and I'm so ready for it to be over. It has been very very difficult these last few months, having most of my "life" sitting in boxes in a garage 4 1/2 hours away. Everything- my crafts, my books- even most of my clothes. Even our bed is up there already, and we've been trying to sleep on the tiny lumpy guest bed here. Most weekends J ends up sleeping on the couch because of it. I'm tired of that too. I've been living here for many weeks now with just two pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, one set of earrings, and a few shirts that I wear over and over again- the jeans now have holes in them! That has fed into my depression quite a bit. You would like to think you aren't a materialistic diva, but when you have to live without all your things for a few months, you realize you ARE materialistic. And that's okay.

I know when we first bought the new house, we thought of it as just a "second" home that we would move to "one day". But every time we went up there, we loved it more and more, and it became almost impossible for us to think about anything else. We knew we couldn't wait several years to move there permanently. I won't say this has been the worst year of my life, but it's certainly been the longest and most exhausting. It's been stressful, but as always, it's stress and anxiety that I bring on myself. As far as any outside influences go, everything has been smooth sailing because J always makes it that way. I guess it's because his job requires him to take charge and make decisions and be strong, and that always carries over into whatever we're doing at home. When I start to go off the rails with my anxiety, he gently leads me back to the path without fail. He is definitely a steady yang to my crazy-ass yin.

Well I'll be back soon. I don't know when I will have the internet up and running once we move. Hopefully it will be quick and painless. We are out in the country, we don't even have cable TV out there, so I'm not sure what we're going to end up with. But whatever it is, it's worth it just to be there instead of here.

Our new front porch- by next week I'll be having my morning coffee here!

Getting It Together

Well I'm back, and I'm going to give the blog another try. I've been wanting to start a new blog (and I still might), but I realized that I've just left this one hanging for so long now. And my depression and anxiety are no closer to being gone. I started the blog to journal my ups and downs, and they still continue. Things have happened in my life lately that I don't really want to talk about now, but I know I need to vent eventually. Right now we have a big event looming, and that's all I can focus on. My time, my energy, my body, my emotions.

We are two weeks away from finally moving to our new house. Yes, the house I blogged about a year ago. It's taken all this time. Most normal people move over a weekend. But of course we don't do things the normal way. We've been spending weekends moving everything one pickup truck load at a time, making the 500 mile round trip- sometimes in one day. It's been exhausting and painful. Physically painful for me, doing all of this packing. And emotionally painful because we go to our beautiful, peaceful new home for just a few hours, then come back to the crappy shithole town and neighborhood we've lived in for almost nine years. I'm ready to be gone, for good.

My body is a wreck. I have days I can barely get out of bed, I ache so much. All the scrubbing and vacuuming and carrying boxes is more than I can handle in my current state. The cleaning supplies give me awful headaches and agitate my asthma. My hands are cracked and bleeding. Seriously. Moving is for younger, healthier people. The last time we moved, here in 2008, J's company took care of everything. Before that, it was just moving to houses on the other side of town. This is a first for us, moving ourselves so far away. And what you can do at 30, is a lot harder at 50. And I know I still have to unpack once we do finally move.

I took the photo above, in the fall, and it's my favorite one from the new house. I'm standing about halfway up the driveway, looking down. You can't even see the street out there. It's amazing. I have been hanging on for a year. These last two weeks are draining me. J still travels full time for his job, although he's become severely unhappy about it. He's been at his current assignment since the first week of this year, and he hates it. I think once we move, he will start looking to find a local job. We know he won't make nearly the money he makes now, but he'll be at home and he'll have a lot less stress. Sometimes money can't compete with the things that give you peace in your heart.

For now, even though we physically move to the new house on Easter weekend, we have a lot of work that we will leave behind. We will have a big estate sale- the people from the company come tomorrow to look at all our remaining stuff. Once that is over, then J and I will have to come back down here and get either Goodwill or Salvation Army to take the unsold items. Then we will have to get a contractor in here to fix up the house. Two realtors will be coming in this weekend to give us appraisals. Both are friends. I'm even feeling anxiety over choosing one friend over the other. Seriously. J said to let it go, they are professionals, they probably get turned down for listings on a regular basis.

It's nothing major, but anyone who has pets and carpet, know that the two don't mix very well. The house needs all new carpet, hardwood floors, paint. We also plan to replace our worn out appliances, and freshen up the landscaping. Then it goes on the market. I don't think it will take long. Houses in my neighborhood are selling within days of going on the market. We had six houses sell in about two weeks. Of course, we won't be ready for probably two months, but hopefully the desire for houses in our area will still continue.

All of this has caused tremendous anxiety for me. J keeps telling me it will all be okay, it will all work out. And I know it will. We're not doing anything different that thousands of other people are already doing every day across the country. But for me, with my anxiety out of my control, I can't help but to worry and pick apart our plans and find fault in every decision I'm making. It's been a long year. But now that we're at the end of it, it's oddly been even harder for me. No sense of relief, just increased angst. Because everything is more urgent now. And people- strangers, neighbors- will be coming into my house. Judging me for how dusty my furniture is. For the pet stains on my carpet. For the scratches on my floor. For the cobwebs I missed in the corner. For the musty pet smell in the air. For the weeds in the flower beds. All of it. J tells me, SO WHAT?! Who cares. We don't know these people, we'll never see them again, once it's over it's over and we move on with our new life. They are meaningless, their opinions are worthless.

He is so right, but it's hard for my brain to grab and hold onto that idea. And because of that, my anxiety right now is a 15 on a 1-10 scale. I try to just look forward to the joy and happiness that awaits us in our very near future, but I instead dwell on all the work I still have to do here. I dwell on the mistakes and bad choices of the past. I am paralyzed with it, and the depression has become overwhelming again. I drive by the house two doors down that sold in 11 days, I see their moving boxes stacked neatly in their garage, and I watched the two full moving trucks pull away on Sunday. I tell myself, see they just did it, easy peasy! Why the hell am I worrying myself to death!

Gotta go pack a few more boxes. I will plan to be back next week.

Still- MISS GEE

(The living room at my new house- can't wait to be there now!)

Unspoken

I shouldn't be on here today, I don't have time.  J's first art show is in less than 48 hours, and as soon as it is over we are leaving on vacation for a week.  I am overwhelmed right now with getting everything ready, for both.  But I felt as though I had to get on here and defend myself.

I've made it a habit of not getting too political on my social media.  I keep it light and post photos of my cats or the critters in my yard, share vacation photos, post where we've gone out to eat.  I don't want to do anything else on there.  I may have put a few funny memes about the stupidity of Trump on my page, but I don't want to post anything "anti" this or that.  I try very hard not to offend anyone.  I've found that my friends and family are pretty much split up the middle- I have those who share similar feelings to mine, and I have those who believe the complete opposite.  I am cool with that.  I'm not out to hurt anyone, I'm not out to piss off relatives because they are from another political party.  Plus I think too many people are cowardly online, they take potshots at people in their replies and comments, and it disgusts me.  I don't go on FB to be disgusted.  I don't want FB to make me angry.  I have even unjoined a few groups due to comments from others.  Hey, social media is a fucking fake life anyhow, it doesn't bother me to drop the newsfeed from any particular person or group.  It doesn't bother me to get unfriended by someone on there.

I am truly live and let live.  You can support and vote for anyone you want, you can go to any church- or not- that you want.  I don't really care.  I have my beliefs, I live my life the way I intend, and I don't worry about what the neighbors think, and I worry even less about what they are doing.  If everyone minded their own business, the world would be a better place, but that's never going to happen.  The world will always be divided into a million little pieces- it always has been, and it isn't ever going to change. But I accept that.  I will die 20 or 30 years from now with political parties still sniping at each other, with religions still going to war with one another.  In the meantime, I will continue to live my life surrounded by the ones I love, and that's my real world.

If I thought I could totally drop off FB, I would, but my family would rebel because they would no longer "know" what's going on in my life.  I stay on social media to avoid constant phone calls and emails "checking in" on me.  For the most part, I only read a very select few posts from only good friends on FB, the rest of it I scroll through with a glazed look of boredom.  If I "like" a post, then I've read it.  I may not always agree with it, but I agree that my friend has the right to post it.  I like FB least of all.  I prefer Instagram and Pinterest and Etsy, because I can relax and be happy and look at gorgeous photos of art and kitties and beaches, get DIY ideas for my house and yard, and ignore what is mostly garbage anywhere else online.  I can't even stand going to my email, because I have to sift through all the news stories before I can even sign on.  They pop up on the screen so that I can't ignore them.  Depending on where you live, the local stories are just as bad as the global ones.  Where I live, on the outskirts of the big city, the local news is filled with the latest shooting or murder. Truly, there is one- or more- every single night on there.  One evening last week I counted and the first FIVE stories were shootings and killings.

You can become a hermit.  Or you can take it all in and deal with it.  I may sound cold, but for the most part, I am deadened to it all anymore. I think a lot of people are. Evil is so commonplace that we stare it in the eye every day, shrug, and move on with our normal routine.  If I stopped to rage and rail against the gods every time, it would consume me and burn me alive.

But the other day, I let a post get under my skin and offend me.  It wasn't from some random troll or internet crazy.  This was from an actual friend, one from real life, the person I always sit with and talk to before my Friday morning support group.  I've known her for a few years now, she even comes to see me when I have a booth set up at craft fairs, and she's an amazing artist herself.  I don't normally let FB posts goad me, but this one did.  In her post, open to everyone she knew, she stated that if your FB page was "silent" about the Orlando shootings, then she had to assume you didn't care about it.

I tried to understand that she was coming from a place of grief and pain, but I felt the finger pointing at "friends" was unnecessary and quite frankly, it made me mad.  I responded, not in anger, but I couldn't help being defensive.  She wasn't at the meeting last week, and I know I'm going to miss the next two meetings, so we won't have a chance to talk face to face.  I basically told her that it's my personal choice not to post anything political or "newsy"  or "controversial" on FB.  I told her that I discussed my feelings privately about the shootings with my friends and family, and didn't wish to write anything on social media about it.  What I wanted to say was, how dare you assume anything about me based on my silence!  My silence does not convey ANYthing about how I am feeling, and it certainly doesn't condone what happened.  My silence is meaningless, it's not even a factor.  Her response was that we have to "fight" to "protect" our way of life.  I did not reply.

I don't want to fight anyone, I don't want to fight against anything.  I have enough trouble fighting down my own demons.  I can't take on all the ones out there in the world. If I can live my life right and be true to myself, then fuck everyone else out there. Some days I don't think I can even save myself.  I can't and won't take on the burdens of the universe.  I know there are injustices against humanity.  But if you are in the streets rioting against injustice, you are still rioting.  I am not being a bitch.  I am being realistic.  I think standing up for and supporting causes is amazing, and there are wonderful people out there working tirelessly. But I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to get people to NOT vote for a presidential candidate.

Most of the time our brains are so scattered we can barely decide what to eat for lunch.  Yet we want to tell others what candidate to support, what god to worship, who to marry, what we can and can't have and do in our own homes.  It's all crazy, but there are those out there who truly believe they "know" what's "best" for the rest of us.  Again, it's happening on BOTH sides.  I am not pointing fingers at one particular group.

I would rather spend that time on finding a home for an abandoned puppy, saving the bees, supporting local farmers, feeding my city's homeless, getting better healthcare for poverty stricken children, cleaning up the streets I see every day.  Things I can touch, things that matter in my little circle of being.  Some people would snicker and think that is all lame and unworthy.  "How can you worry about animals in shelters when people are getting gunned down in public?!" they would cry.  I would answer, how can you NOT! How can you not start caring at the most basic level?  I'm not out for publicity, I'm not trying to slay all the giants. If I worry more about a tiny kitten getting euthanized because nobody wants her, then I guess shame on me for not choosing to picket the capitol instead.

I would rather take care of my own environment, because I can't fix Washington. I've watched on FB how my cousin and an uncle are tearing each other apart with their comments because they each support the opposite party.  It's ridiculous. Fuck Trump.  Fuck Hillary.  Neither of them are an actual, integral part of my life. Seriously.  We all know how the government works.  No matter who gets elected president, the opposition will find a way to vote down and stymy anything they want to accomplish.  Presidents are powerless.  Presidents, alone, do not enact laws and create policies.  It's been proven over and over again throughout the decades.  Do people REALLY still believe their vote counts?  Maybe I'm just a cynic.

They are all politicians.  They are NOT leaders.  There is no one running for any office, that I would wish to follow or support.  It's especially not worth my limited energy to bully my friends and family when they "like" the other party.  This world is already spinning too violently with its "us against them" mentality.

I know the shootings have weighed heavily on everyone, and at a time when the country is already so divided and angry and hurt and scared about the future, this just seemed to crush everyone.  Everyone, as always, is quick to rush to judgment and even quicker to condemn.  The shooter, the victims, the government, guns, religion, sexual identity, immigration.  BOTH sides are doing it.  We're all screaming at each other so loudly that NO ONE can be heard at all! People are taking a tragedy and turning it into a political platform, on both sides.  It sickens me.

Some people are too young to remember the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where 168 people were killed.  I happened to be visiting in the area when it happened, and although I wasn't right there at ground zero, I did go back later to see the aftermath, the memorials, to walk quietly around the chain link fence to stare at the emptiness and devastation.  I stood there, in complete silence, and was engulfed in the agony.  I remember the photos of firemen carrying dying children in their arms.  It was a horrible blight on our country, that one of our own could do this to his fellow Americans, including babies and children.  This wasn't a gay thing.  It wasn't a Muslim thing.  It wasn't a race thing.  It wasn't an immigrant thing.  It wasn't even a gun thing.  But it was still tragic beyond comprehension.  Do I hate or blame or fear young disenfranchised white men for this?  No.

With 9/11, I became one of those people who fell into a black hole, not able to sleep, not able to tear myself away from the 24 hour coverage on the news.  I watched it over and over and over again.  I grew angry at my then-husband because he literally did not care about it.  At the time I hated him for it, for not being there to support me and talk with me about this anguish I was feeling.  Maybe I was being unfair to him.  I've gone to New York and I've seen the beautiful and awesome "Freedom Tower" that now stands on the site. But it doesn't erase the most terrifying vision I saw from the original attack- that of a man in a business suit sailing through the great wide open of nothingness as he made the decision to leap from a thousand feet up rather than burn to death. The news said he would have literally died from fright and shock, long before his body hit the ground, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.  Do I hate or blame or fear Muslims for this?  Absolutely not.

I could go on and on, I could go back into history as far as there are records.  I could remind people about the mass killings and abuse of my own ancestors, the Cherokee people, at the hands of the greedy American government.  By the thousands.  Can you imagine today, the American government herding a certain race of people into camps and slaughtering them for no reason, and having the rest of the country be okay with it?  To even encourage it?  Why?  Because they feared these people who were of a different color, who spoke a different language, who fought back when their lands were invaded.

I can tell stories about the other side of my family, how at the time when my grandfather came over from Sicily, Italians were the most hated group of immigrants and were treated like animals and regarded as dirt.  All because they worked harder and took jobs- for less money- that other "immigrants" (those Europeans who had come over earlier) wouldn't do.  It was said that at the turn of the century, the Italians were the only people who were happy and willing to work side by side with blacks.  So they became hated, as a group, and the prejudice was staggering.  Landlords didn't want to rent to them, businesses didn't want to hire them.  In fact a large percentage of Italian immigrants from that period actually ended up returning to Italy, after saving up money for their families.  And here we are a mere 100 years later- can we imagine Italians being treated that way today?  When now we all flock to Italian restaurants, want to drive Italian sports cars, wear Italian fashion.  And visit Italy.

There will always be hatred and discrimination and fear.  There will always be sides waging battle with each other, to prove their belief is the right one, that their way of life is correct.  Politics, sex, religion, class warfare.  This will never never ever end.  It happens not just in our country, but all over the world.  To say we hate this or that group, is insane.  I am a liberal, always have been and always will be, but I don't blindly follow the party line.  I do have some conservative beliefs.  I don't hate people who think differently. I don't try to force my ideology down anyone's throat.  Every person has their right to an opinion, and we all know the old saying about opinions- they are like assholes, everybody's got one.  Me included.  I'm not making fun, I'm just saying it's utterly pointless to A- try and change someone else's mind, and B- expect everyone to always agree with you.  Never.  Gonna.  Happen.  And our differences should be celebrated, not lambasted.  It's easy to say oh the conservatives do this to the liberals.  But don't we all do it to each other?  It's not just coming from one side, people, wake up.

Evil isn't one particular religion or race.  It's not affiliated with just one political party.  We all feel that we are well-guarded against evil, that we recognize it when we see it.  But it's gonna sneak up on you, sorry.

No one on either side seems to really truly want peace, they want domination.  People want total annihilation of the opposition.  No one is talking about how to live together in harmony. Everyone is talking about how to crush the other side.  We use combative phrases like let's "defeat" the opponent- I don't see anyone saying let's "understand" the opponent, let's "accept" the opponent.  What we all really want is to be heard and respected.  But instead people yell and rant, no one wants to discuss things intelligently.  Especially this election year.  I'm sick of it.  It's destructive, and I don't have room for that in my life. As long as people are different from each other, there will always be fighting and protesting, misunderstandings and suspicions, fear and rage.  It's human nature.  I have a big rule at my house- I refuse to watch, read, or listen to any news early in the mornings or late at night.  I do not want to start my day off or try to drift off to sleep with all this lunacy ringing in my ears.

Unfortunately, and sadly, people will always react and behave badly, and they will lash out to hurt others.  Whether they walk into a crowded club or movie theater with a gun. Or drive a truck loaded with explosives into the garage of a building.  Or fly a plane into a skyscraper.  Or stand at a podium and use their words and persuasion over others to incite more anger and hatred.

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your beliefs, and getting emotional.  As long as your brain is also engaged along with your heart.  As long as your passions don't swallow you whole and cause you to bring pain to others.

Even if you just get on social media and accuse friends of "not caring" about something.  Let's start thinking before we speak.  Isn't that really what the world is needing?  Forget guns and bombs.  Words can provoke more damage than any weapon.  Words can cause death and pain, words can create a hostile environment where no one feels safe.  Yet words are the easiest thing for us to control.  We all have the ability to do this.

People now make fun of the late Rodney King's speech, "Can we all get along?"  It's an impossibility, but dammit, he was right in wanting it.

MISS GEE

Subbasement

This last week was perhaps one of my lowest in a very long time.

I spent the entire week in the same clothes nonstop.  I went four days without a shower, without brushing my hair or teeth.  Even, holy crap, withOUT coffee because I couldn't find the energy to even make a single cup.  I didn't take J's clothes to the dry cleaners.  I didn't do the laundry.  I didn't take all my medications.  I let dirty dishes and towels and mail pile up everywhere.  I didn't clean the cat litter boxes.  Because J was due home Friday at lunch, I set my alarm for 5am on Friday and forced myself to get up and clean the house like a frantic wild woman, so he could be duped into thinking it had looked that way all week.  I even scrubbed the shower, for which he hugged and kissed and thanked me, because I haven't cleaned it since, well, I can't remember when.  Then I had to take a nap, I was mentally and physically exhausted solely from vacuuming.  I just hate this feeling.  It makes me feel less than human, it makes me feel like the poorest excuse for a wife.

The saddest part is that I didn't even try to do anything that was good for me this week.  I didn't go to the grocery store, but instead ate stale bread and old crackers, because it was effortless.  I cancelled my regular physical therapy session.  I skipped my weekly support group meeting.  Hell, I didn't even READ all week.  I sent a long rambling email to my best friend, begging off talking to her for awhile.  I sent a text to my dad asking that neither he nor my mother call me for a few days, because I wasn't feeling well.  My sister had surgery this week and I didn't even reach out to her.  That's a pretty shitty week when you actively tell the closest people in your circle, people who love you and care about you, to just please leave you alone because you feel like utter crap.  I tried to sound chipper on Facebook, but most of my posts came while I was huddled miserably on the couch or stuck in the bed because I couldn't make myself get the fuck up.  I literally was an unmoving, uncaring lump all week.

When J got home on Friday, I was my regular phony-baloney self.  Fixed up, dressed, ready to live a normal life.  Sometimes I think he sees right through me. Yesterday he asked me if I was still feeling depressed.  I said, oh I'm okay, just tired.  We really only had Friday evening and Saturday together, but I forced my best smiles and laughter for him.  Now it's another six days without him.  This current Sunday through Friday schedule ends this week, and then he'll have four days off at home before he starts his next assignment.  This morning I asked him if he could stand four days at home with me. Without words he simply gave me a big squeeze and held on tight for a long time, his face buried against my neck.  Was he happy at the thought of time together, or just trying to compel me to stop bashing myself?

So which is the real me, my true self?  The scraggly-haired dirty person who shuffles through the house, or the woman who gets dolled up to spend time out in the world with her husband?  My happiness does not depend on J, I realize that.  And I don't blame my depression on his being gone.  It started long before he began traveling full time for work.  And it continues on weekends when he's back home.  It's just that when I'm home alone, I don't have to fight it as much, I have no one to put on a show for.  And I don't care enough about myself to do anything about it.  But because J loves me, I try so very hard for him.

I vowed I was going to have a better week, because I deserve it.  I deserve to be good and kind and loving to myself.  As soon as J left this Sunday morning to head off for the week, I showered, fixed myself a lunch, started a load of laundry, and I even put shoes on- glory be.  I am determined not to have another wasted screwed up week, to find a purpose and DO something, even if it's take a bag of clothes to Goodwill.  I don't care.  DO anything.  Any god damn little thing for myself.  Sometimes just getting started in the morning is enough momentum to carry me through the day, the week.

We were supposed to have a yard sale this coming weekend, but I begged J to postpone it a few weeks.  After he capitulated to that, I then begged him even harder to postpone it until the fall.  I just don't have the energy for it right now.  We had a yard sale in April, and the unsold items are literally piled up on my dining room table and all over the garage, in limbo because we intended to have a second sale so soon after.  But I can't stand seeing it all over the place, the unwanted clutter is like an old brick wall, crumbling, untended, constantly threatening to topple over and bury me in debris.  I just can't look at it anymore. The old picture frames, coffee mugs, books, paintings, knickknacks, clothes. All the things we've decided we no longer want. By getting J to agree to pushing the sale off another season, I promised myself I was hauling it all down to a corner in the basement, where I can continue adding to it and pricing things, but not in a place where I have to trip over it all.

It takes a lot out of me these days to go up and down the stairs, but even if I make one trip down and have to rest for 30 minutes before I go down again, I have GOT to get all this shit out of the way.  It's enough that I have boxes sitting around of stuff to keep and take to the new house.  It's enough that I have boxes sitting around of all my pottery and jewelry for the craft shows.  It's enough that I have boxes sitting around filled with vintage items for our Etsy shop and antique shows.  Now I have boxes sitting around filled with J's artwork for his new Etsy shop.  I feel as though my home and my life are in limbo, contained in plastic tubs, scattered all throughout the house.  I keep stumbling over everything every day.

J left me with quite a daunting bit of work to do this week, because he's working a craft show in a few weeks.  Unless I apply myself every day, as much as I possibly can, I'm not going to accomplish it all.  I am tired of disappointing my husband, who works so hard to give me everything, who allows me to stay at home, who encourages me to find my peace and pursue my happiness.  The very least I can do is get all his signs sanded down and painted, so he can come home on Friday and see me as his helpmate, instead of the albatross around his neck.  He's always there with me when I work a show, and I want to repay him and give him his shot at success.  Anything we do, we always do it together, and it takes teamwork for any of our endeavors to become triumphs.

But I've first got to get my head above the water, before I can ever hope to make it out alive to crawl onto shore.

I read an interesting article in the paper today, where someone was asked if they were happy. They said, "You're always stronger if you try to find a positive in something.  Because a day is going to come when I'm going to get a phone call...telling me something genuinely bad, and it's going to floor me...And every day that that doesn't happen is a brilliant gift."

My life doesn't suck, I've got to start embracing that realization.

MISS GEE

Finding The Words

This past weekend we went up to the new house for a few hours.  J is still on his schedule of coming home on Friday and leaving again Sunday.  He expects it to be this way at least through the end of June.  I won't say this hasn't been getting to me, he's barely home and then he's off again.  He's talked about asking for the week of July 4th off, but hasn't put in for it yet.  Even if he takes it off, we won't be taking a vacation.  We'll use the time to make several trips up to the house. But we will be together.  Each time we go to the house, we load the truck up with our stuff.  At this point, we are just dropping things off- pottery, baskets, books, items that are easily boxed up but things we can live "without" here for awhile.  It's going to be this way for the next year or so.  But it's also pretty cool because now I walk into that house and hey, there's my stuff.  This IS my new house, soon to be home.

This Saturday we took the first of the furniture up.  We took the guest bedroom set, so we will have a place to sleep now.  We usually get a hotel room when we go visit his family.  We left the old mattress here and bought a new one up there.  I've got my old bedroom set down in our basement, and we'll move that upstairs now for my parents when they come to visit.  They will be here for the Memorial holiday.  I told J the other day, I resent the fact that I have to give up an entire room in the house for "guests" because, let's face it, no one comes here except my parents, and that's only 2-3 times a year at the most.  Here, with four bedrooms, it's been okay.  Going to three bedrooms at the new house, I almost wish I didn't have to have a guest room.  I swear I would rather just let my parents stay in our room and we can use an air mattress when they visit.  But I suppose having a guest room is the "proper" thing to do.  I just really harbor a grudge about it, and I admit that makes me feel like a selfish heel.  It's a room in our house that WE basically can't use, and we have to give up that space so it can be used by someone else three weeks out of the year.  Ggrrr.

Earlier last week I sent J a long rambling email, apologizing for my irritable behavior lately.  Sometimes it's better for me to communicate serious subjects that way. It's not that I can't talk openly or easily to J, it's just that when I email I can take my time to compose what I want to say in the right words.  I tried to explain to him about this latest bout of depression I've been having.  This one has gone on nonstop for about a month now, and I can't shake it off.  It's been a bad spell and I don't see an end in sight, and the body pain that comes along with it seems to be settling deeper into my bones every day.  Of course as a man, my husband wants to "fix" things and I tried to assure him this isn't something he can fix.  He took me to lunch on Friday, at my favorite pizza place downtown on the square- a place he hates and never wants to go to.  So there he was right away, trying to make me happy.  He wanted to talk about it.

I had great trouble trying to put it into words for him.  He was looking for tangibles, concrete evidence of how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way and mainly, what was causing it.  I told him it wasn't a "thing", it was just a heavy feeling inside my chest that overwhelms me with sadness, making me feel lost, robbing me of any normal happiness.  I don't think I made him understand, he seemed to get frustrated.  As usual, his response was for me to see my doctor or find a therapist.  If I can't find the right words for the person I love the most in this world, how can I do it with a stranger?  I don't discount therapy, I just don't think it's right for me.  J said, well there is medication for it, and I said I won't go that route.  I take SO many pills right now for physical ailments, I can't add more prescriptions to my regimen, I just can't.  I know how it goes. It's a slippery slope of playing with dosages and labels, I've watched it happen to friends and family before.  If I had someone here with me to monitor me, I might consider it.  But the fact that I'm home utterly alone for the week, scares me.

It's not that J can't understand or sympathize.  J gets paid a lot of money at work to identify problems and correct them, it's what he does best.  So it's hard for me to explain to him about these gloomy feelings that come into my soul, unbidden and unwelcome.  J is looking for a hard edge to grasp in his hands, he doesn't understand my confusion, he doesn't accept it when my answers are "I don't know" when he asks what is wrong.  For J, every situation has a solution. It's difficult for me to break it down like that.  I don't see my life as a situation. I see it as a long tumultuous road of ups and downs, nightfall and daybreak, warm springs and sharply cold winters.  J is always by my side, always supporting me, but this path is mine to walk alone.

J believes my depression has a root cause that he can reach out and fine tune, he's looking for a knob to dial down the static in my head and instead play a happy song for my heart.  He worries that it's because he's gone all of the time with his job, he thinks it's because I don't have close friends here or because I gave up my job and I need a purpose now, he wants to know if this move is causing me undo stress and suggests I slow down, he asks if I'm just still sad about our kitty who recently died.  Sure, it's all of it and none of it, I know.  He doesn't want to believe there is something wrong with me on the inside.  He wants to blame my depression on some external force, some monster hiding in the closet that he can heroically chase away.

So I try to smile, hoping HE will start to feel better about all of this, and stop worrying.  I don't want to bring my husband down.  I don't want to be a burden.  He says he worries about me constantly while he's gone. What wife wants that?  He hugs me and says he wants me to be happy, to take better care of myself.  He wants me to eat better, take vitamins, go for walks, call my mom, soak in the fresh air and sunshine, take a fun class, go back to yoga, ask friends out to lunch, start a new painting.  I want to tell him, if I thought any of those things would cure me, I would do them.  But I just smile, again, and say it's okay, I'll be fine. Neither of us ever believes it, but we pretend, and we go on.

I know the darkness will lift eventually, it always does, and then I have long periods of contentment.  It's just hard to be in the middle of one of my spells. We've got a lot going on right now, we've got company coming, we've got a couple of shows on the calendar, we've got this bright new future of ours to work on together.  And I'm grateful for all that J does, for all that he is.  When I'm weak he is strong, when I'm anxious he is calming, when I'm overly emotional he is logical.  He's the only one in my life that is there to tell me everything will be okay.  I know my heartaches have nothing whatsoever to do with what's actually going on in my life.  But it's tough lately to push through it and keep moving forward.

MISS GEE

Use A Pencil Please

One of the things I like least about having a husband who travels full time for work, is the loss of our old routines.  There weren't many, so giving them up created a much more obvious and gaping hole in my life.  Nothing is certain with us any more, even our weekends, because work can pluck J out of my date book with one text message.  I've had to cross lines through many a written down plan this last year.  We've given away concert tickets, we've lost nonrefundable craft show fees, we've rearranged reservations.  We've celebrated anniversaries or birthdays "not" on the actual days, but whenever he can be home.

And this isn't going to change, not as long as he keeps to his current position.  From the discussions we've had lately, this will probably be the job he'll stay in until he retires, as long as the company will have him.  So routines are gone, plans are pencilled in with question marks instead of inked with confidence.

Maybe I'm whining because he didn't get to come home the last weekend.  The warehouse he's been working at lately went on strike, so panic ensued and he had to remain in place to man the helm.  I had to work a planned craft show by myself, a miserable experience.  I had a few acquaintances say they would have set up with me, but alas they already had their own plans.  Yes, I did too- my plans were to work the show with my hubby!  This isn't the first time J has not come home on the weekend.  There have been a few other times when warehouses either went on strike or threatened it, which is just as bad because then everyone sits there hovering on their chairs, waiting.

And this definitely won't be the last time either.  Although most of the divisions in the company aren't unionized, he is after all a troubleshooter, and the union warehouses seem to have the most trouble.  So this is something that I will just have to shrug off, and learn to roll with.  They wanted him to stay through again this weekend, but he said no I won't be gone three weeks.  And although he came home Friday, here it is Sunday morning and he is already long gone, back to a gloomy soggy North.  But I remind myself that this job is the reason why we have a wonderful life and have this amazing future to look forward to together.

Most of the routines I'm talking about are just the simple daily ones, nothing profound, nothing world-changing.  I'm talking about having dinner together in the summer while watching baseball on TV every night.  Picking up a Redbox movie (yes, really) after our Friday date night dinner out. Shooting basketball in the driveway after work.  Morning coffee and reading the paper before he shuffled out the door to the office.  Things I can certainly continue to do by myself now, but they sort of lose meaning.  I still eat dinner of course, just at 5:30 instead of 8:30, when he would get home from work.  After 30 years of getting up at 5am to go to work, my body still wakes up early on its own every day, so I'm still up before the sun making coffee and catching up with the world news.  Just by myself now.  And even if I wanted to sleep in, the cats don't allow me that luxury.

But I am dealing with it, as we approach the One Year mark of his travels.  I am making my own new routines every day.  I might love to dabble with art and be creative, but I also like schedules for myself.  I like to know that my day has a beginning and an end.  Maybe that's the former accountant in me, I don't know, wanting to tick off all the boxes.  As I mentioned before, change is hard for me, even the smallest, most insignificant ripples in my day.  But change is part of life, and I'm finding lately that the best way to deal with change is not just allow it to happen unchecked, but to meet it and challenge it with my own expectations.  If this is being taken away from me, then I will do that instead.  You can't always control things, but I can control my reactions to them.  I talked about that enough in my last post.

No matter what happens I just want to be able to, at the end of the day, at the end of my life, look back and say yep, it all came out alright and I did okay.

MISS GEE

Fear of Falling

I have had control issues from a young age.  I am that person who always has the last word, who always has to be right, who always wants things done my way. I've always been like that, and I know it's deeply ingrained in my soul.  My mother is the same way, and so is my sister.  When I was in high school, I never drank and still don't.  I used to say it was because I didn't like the taste of alcohol, but I think it was my fear of losing control.  I would go to parties on Friday nights, sit around and watch my friends become idiots, and on Monday mornings back at school I would be the one telling them how dreadfully stupid they behaved because they couldn't remember.  I didn't want to be like them.

It's been a recurring theme in all my relationships- with people, with work, with strangers, with road rage.  It's one of the reasons I make tedious to-do lists even when I'm home alone all day.  It's why I make elaborate "itineraries" when we go on vacation.  It's why I spend an hour on MapQuest before I drive anywhere new (I can't even let myself trust a GPS). It's a character trait/flaw I've long wanted to change, but I have a tremendous problem dealing with it.  It makes others around me unhappy, and in the end, it stresses me out more than I need to be.  I made a promise to myself over the weekend that going forward, I was going to actively work on this.

J and I had a bit of a tiff over the weekend, on the way home from buying the new house.  We rarely fight, and I wouldn't even call this an argument, but we spent a few hours in stony silence afterwards which is horribly unlike us.  All because J said he wanted to buy a particular piece of furniture for the new house, and I immediately shot down his idea because I didn't think we needed it.  And I do that all the time.  I know it, but I can't help myself, the words come spewing out of my mouth before my brain engages.  Most of the time I wish I could suck them back in, but that's never possible is it?  Once we were speaking again, J said he is so tired of me being that way.  J rarely speaks negatively towards me, and for him to do so, I know he truly is upset with me.  And if my easy-going husband is upset, then this is something I need to work on.

I know part of it is the control.  But part of it is also how badly I deal with change.  Any change.  Every year my company had the same boring questions and categories on our annual reviews.  No matter what department, no matter what job, no matter what boss- when it came to the question about how does this employee deal with change, I got terrible marks.  It was always always the one category I failed, every time.  And if people I worked with saw it, how bad was I behaving with the people I lived with?  Because I did it with my ex as well.  It was a different situation with him- because of the abuse and disrespect and mutual hatred, I always thought I had to "fight" for what I wanted, that I always had to be ready to defend myself and my way of thinking.  In that relationship, we were always combative. It was dog eat dog, and if I didn't speak up first or speak the loudest, I got trampled.  If I didn't get it my way, then I was crushed under the weight of W's decisions.  

W was selfish and angry, his choices were meant to hurt, to demean, to dominate.  J is not like that, he always bends over backwards to please me.  He is willing and happy to make compromises for me.  Why can't I do the same for him?  Why can't I loosen my grip on the rope?  It's not as though he will take it all and use it as a noose on me.  Right now I seem to always be in a tug of war against him, but he doesn't want to play.

If we planned to go to lunch before we go to the garden center, but J decides to go to the garden center first, I instantly start listing the reasons why I think we should go to lunch first.  And I do that ALL THE TIME.  With everything.  No matter how small or insignificant the issues.  It's like I never allow the man to make decisions.  For me, it's a (bad) reaction to a change. To J, it's me telling him he's wrong and proceeding to point out the reasons why.  If he has an idea about how to do something, I almost always find a way to "correct" him, and come up with my own version of how we should continue.  I usually end up sounding like a smarty pants, and even I see that.  Why do I assume he doesn't know how to use a certain tool, pick a restaurant, buy his own clothes?  Do I try to control all the decisions in order to feel needed, to feel necessary in his life?  If so, that's going to backfire eventually.  No man wants to constantly feel like a child, married to his mother.

I don't want to do that to him, and I don't want to make him feel bad or belittle him or make him, as he said he does so often during these conversations, just give up and "let" me have my way because he is worn down and it's easier just to give in.  "Yes dear."  Back when we were dating, I half-jokingly told J I was high maintenance, that I was raised a princess and a daddy's girl and was used to being spoiled.  And J has always treated me the same way.  It's one thing to be spoiled and showered because the giver is freely doing it, entirely with an open heart.  It's another thing to get your way because you have demanded it and browbeaten your spouse.  There is a fine line between being a princess and being a spoiled brat.  I don't want to be that way, but sometimes I think I am.  I am worried that J will become resentful eventually.

J told me this weekend that it is tiring and it is easier to let me get my way than to argue with me.  That makes me sound like a bitch.  I know he wasn't calling me a bitch, it just makes ME see myself that way.  I know J meant to open a meaningful dialogue with me, but I snapped at him about how I won't be a doormat, I have opinions, I won't keep my mouth shut.  I realized with a painful stab to my heart, that in my mind I was arguing with my ex-husband.  It was like I didn't even see J standing there in front of me.  Why can't I get that awful fucking waste of a human out of my head after all these years!

I tried to explain it to J- that when I say "no we can't do that!" I sometimes mean "that idea scares me" but I don't know how to say it the right way.  I don't know if he understands or not.  J just sees it as me being negative.  He said he deals with that all the time at work, his ideas are always met with resistance and negativity. People will say "we can't do that" or "we've always done it this way we don't want to make changes"- and he said he really doesn't want to hear more of it at home.  I tried to let him know that- whether or not he thinks it's a big deal- things scare me sometimes, but of course he doesn't understand that either because he is my protector and my support and my white knight.  He is always telling me not to worry, not to get upset, everything will turn out okay, he will take care of it.  And it almost always does work out fine.  But it's a nasty symptom of my anxiety, to be fearful of any change, and so I try to defend myself with the word NO.  And that's fucked up.  Even if our Saturday routine gets shuffled in the middle of the day.  Even if J wants to buy a fireproof safe to put in the storage room of the new house.  I always react, and normally I react and overreact badly.

J sees it as me battling against him, and that's the last thing I want to do.  We always say we are a team.  It's one of his catchphrases for whenever we have a bump in the road.  We're a team!  We're in this together.  I should chant that to myself before I open my mouth, to remind myself that I am not his mom, I am not that naggy henpecking type of wife, I'm not his boss.  J has a tendency to ask for my opinion, a lot.  Most of the time it's on innocuous subjects like matching a shirt with dress pants, or will I read an email he's writing and let him know if it sounds okay, or what should we buy his mom for Mother's Day.  And of course, sometimes he makes these same decisions without me and I am fine with that.  But I am also sometimes quick to tell him the green shirt doesn't go with the gray pants, or his mother doesn't wear the necklace we got her last year so why buy her another one this year.  I have a tough time drawing the line on what is constructive criticism and support, and what is just plain damn control and nitpicking.

For months now he's been asking my thoughts about buying a particular kind of car.  Well it's a car I absolutely can't stand, I think they are ugly, and I don't think they are a car for a manly man to drive.  So every time he brings it up, I am utterly and completely negative about it.  I say ridiculous things like, well that's a girl car, anything to talk him out of it because I don't like the car.  But then I will say, like a snot, well it will be your car, you do whatever you want.  Of course at that point, I've spent ten minutes ranting about how much I would hate it and I wouldn't want to ride in it.  The damage is done, my point was made, he has been beaten down.  WHY WHY WHY!  It's a fucking car, and more than that, it's HIS fucking car.  He works hard, we have the money, why am I being such a petulant child about it?  What does it matter?!?! 

WHY AM I THIS WAY?

I have GOT to stop this.  My husband wants a certain car, and he deserves it, no matter what I may think about it.  I am scared about getting rid of our current vehicle, the fun and fast convertible we've had since we were dating.  But it's a car, I've attached all sorts of crazy sentimental emotions to it.  J has wanted to sell it for five years now, and I keep saying NO.  Why?  The fear of change?  The fact that I think I have to control every decision we make?  I don't know.

That's just one small example, it's the one facing us currently.  People sell cars and buy new cars every minute of the day.  Hell, I got a new car last year.  If it was MY idea to sell the old sports car and get a new one, it would be cool, and J wouldn't care.  But it's like it's because it was his idea, that I can't let it go, I can't process it and be fine with it.  My husband is an amazing man, with sound judgment, outstanding morals, intelligence.  Wouldn't it be so much easier on my anxiety, so freeing for me to just let him make the decisions and be okay with them?  He won't steer me wrong, he won't let me fall, his decisions are for "us" and what's best and he will take care of me.  J always makes certain my needs are met, no matter what he has to do.  Why can't I shake off the anxiety, the tightness, and give him the the respect and freedom he deserves?  I've got got got got got to work on this.

I've got to work on this right now, because with this move to the new house, we have a million billion decisions to make.  I cannot allow myself to control every single one.  I won't.  J works very very hard, he's made a lot of sacrifices, to take this traveling job.  His personal comfort, never being at home, missing us and me missing him too.  But it was a great opportunity and now it's allowing us to make this move to the new house.  I need to remind myself of that whenever he wants to do something, or buy something, or go somewhere- even if I don't want to or don't agree.  THAT is compromise, that is a true partnership.  One person caving all the time is not.  Eventually that person is going to be so far deep down in a hole, they will tunnel their way out and move on to a better place where they can live their own life the way they want to.  I don't want to lose my husband over decisions about paint colors or lighting fixtures. It's not worth it!  I have an amazingly patient husband, but even so, there are limits for everyone I believe.

Arg, it's frustrating and sad to know I am like this.  Why am I still making him drive a car we bought in 2004, just because I am overly fond of the memories we've had in it over the years.  It's a broken down money pit we hardly ever drive anymore.  The wonderful memories will always be there. LET. IT. GO.  Let J plan where we go to eat lunch on Saturday, and when.  Let him hang the silly sports posters in his office if he wants to.  Let him wear those crazy bright blue tennis shoes he picked out and bought without me last week. Let him decide how to design the new signs he is making.  It's like I can't even sit back and allow him that, I have to have my finger in every tiny pot, stirring.

Let it go and let my husband be happy with making a decision and let ME be happy letting him do it!  Why is my little world so complicated?  Why am I MAKING it complicated, more than it ever needs to be?  Me and my anxiety and my stupid control issues.  I need help.

MISS GEE