November holidays

My family's thanksgivings are different; I suppose you could say odd, or downright bizarre. One year we set someone on fire with Roman candles--another we played Rock Band so loudly and so badly that I think the neighbors complained. We've burned a field for the fun of it. And an old barn. And possible a house, although that was more a summer adventure. But you get the picture (fire). There have been bloody dog fights and embarrassing excursions to Jungle Jims. Something, always. When I called this morning, Grandma had already dropped the turkey on the floor and someone flooded the basement with a hose they left running outside, so it sounded like everything was shaping up rather nicely.

Thanksgiving was lonely this year. I called in and skyped with everyone, and dad showed me his cracker loaded with aunt Lori's Famous Cheeseball and some fresh jalepeno jelly. My little brother Alex talked to me for an hour last night about scuba diving and pornography and how difficult life is, sometimes. Aunt Paula took the phone and told me they'd been talking about my boyfriend and decided he had to go--stuff like that. Home stuff. Uncle Gary made aunt Lori angry because he ate all the crust off of her apple pie. Mom sent me a box with jars of canned tomato juice and dilled green beans, my favorites. Aunt Lori and mom showed me grandma, trying to move the turkey again, and giggled about it when she couldn't see us. The uncles were grumbling about the flooded basement and we decided to blame grandma for that, too, since they like her and she can get away with it. And guess what? They saved me a place at the big table this year. I've been trying to sit there since I graduated college, and this year there was finally an empty seat.

I thought that was actually a bit cruel.

I was disappointed in today. I keep thinking I'm going to recreate Thanksgiving like we do at home, and I'm starting to realize that until I have my own home, and my own family, I'm not going to be able to do that. It just won't work; I shouldn't have expected it. 

Small things

Somewhere close, a dog is crying in the way dogs do when they feel that life is too sad not to voice. It's getting to me--I want to find it and love on it. Something in the sound is just so lonely. Forsaken. It tugs hard and something in me wants to respond.

Or it could just be a weird 'were type of animal trying to lure me out into the dark because it sounds pitiful and I just want to cuddle it--and then, as soon as I leave the safety of the light, it'll grind my bones and pickle my spleen and use my femurs as toothpicks. You just never know around here.

Demetri, the neighbor I complained about? We're doing better. He's still, at times, a world-class douche (think music at 2:00am), but now that he has a name and a history, it's easier to find a way to connect with him that isn't quite so uncomfortable. (Did I really just type that, and he really just turn his music on at a half-million decibels? Yes, yes he did). Anyway. He has a puppy. This little light tan pit bull puppy. And I know it'll probably grow up and be this vicious nasty biting thing because Demetri's little boy hits it and everybody is always screaming and unhappy in that house, but for now, it's just a puppy. And when nobody's outside and the puppy is in the yard, I'll sneak over and talk to it in puppy-speak through the fence. And it will wiggle everything behind its nose and lick my fingers and generally we're both just happy.

Speaking of little squishy things and happy; I did my first exam on a baby. And he was the most chubbly wubbly baby ever. And he LOVED ME. They warn us to be quick because babies will generally scream during exams, but every time I leaned over him, he just stared at me and smiled. It was so funny, too, because I was attempting to listen to his inspiratory strider (think wheezing), but he would see me and calm down and it would stop. The doctor threw up her hands and said, "You've healed him! He can go home!" It was great.

In other news. I was pretty desperate, these past few weeks. I skirt depression so often, now, and it felt like I was trying to claw my way out of a hole, and every bit of progress I made was lost just as quickly. I mentioned this before. Anyway, I had my first appointment with the new therapist. I like her. We worked out a basic plan for things I can incorporate into my life that will make me happier and feel more...human. Not quite as dark--more myself. I'm hopeful.

Ducks and stuff

More updates. But first, some pictures.

There was a boy in my life this summer. Actually, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. I was pretty excited about it. Thought I'd share. I'm allowed to do whatever I want, on here. -grins-

 There was also a duck.

Yes, this duck. I called her Duckers. Because I'm all original and crap.

She's the only duck I've raised who actually thought she was People. 

You would not believe how this thing ATE. I was actually sort of jealous.

Our turkey was sitting on chicken eggs, and the ducks got into the nest, and, well...it's complicated. 

I'm getting spoiled...won't know what to do without a summer of ducks.

Oh, and I learned how to wakeboard. :-D

Now that the pictures are out of the way, my study break is up. Besides, the other stuff I'm inclined to chat about doesn't really go with ducks and lakes--it'll hold for another post. Perhaps tonight, while it's still fresh. 

No title

I need to make another counseling appointment.

After my last bout with the first counselor, I ended up seeing the psychiatrist. We get along well, and I've been back since then. We decided meds weren't an issue--rather, I told him there were issues, and he listened. We talked about strategies to live life healthier, and to some extent, they've worked.

I never counted on being a bad patient. They say doctors are the worst--I guess I'd agree.

I had two things I was supposed to do, the last time I left the office. Schedule a sleep study, and make an appointment with a better therapist. I have numbers and recommendations for both. I've done neither. It's been over a month, now.

I always wait until things get bad again before I do anything. I put stuff off, brush it aside. I do this with so many things, not just this. The psych guy said it's because I'm controlling. Hard to put a good slant on that one, eh? But he said one reason for this might be that I hate feeling tied down to obligation or schedules, and if I don't want to do something, I simply don't do it. I don't get it, myself.

But. Life is feeling a bit gray again. Sleep doesn't rest me, I can't concentrate or study, and even when good things happen in daily life, I'm not happy for long before I become sad and afraid and weary. I waste time, copious amounts of time. I've studied so little for the hours I've had today, and yet all I want to do is turn off the light, crawl in bed, and listen to the rain fall until I go to sleep...sleep through the weekend, in the dark, by myself. And it's not even 9pm yet.

Late

Whew.

I didn't think test week could get much worse. Until they decided not to give us a weekend to relax--they had to post grades two hours after we all clicked "submit". And let me tell you, things were not pretty this time. I have to figure out a better system--something needs to change, or else the graduating class of 2015 is going to be one very small person short! Oh look. I made a pun. Or something. It wasn't very funny.

The next thing was an embarrassing encounter with my roommates's best friend. She has a tumblr blog online, and occasionally Steph will show me stuff the friend has posted. Well, when she did it a few days ago, I asked what the url was so I could check out what other stuff she had. Steph told me that she wasn't allowed to give it out, since it was personal.

My train of thought was, "Are you serious? It's on the internet. Nothing is personal on the internet. All right, I don't want to get you in trouble, I'll just find it myself." And five minutes later, I had. Oh, don't get me wrong, she doesn't have her name up as far as I know--but I knew a website she'd been on, and it was easy enough from there.

And I enjoyed her thoughts. I liked the pictures she posted. But I made the mistake of telling Steph what I'd done. Unbeknownst to me, she thought it her duty as a friend to tell. I've known the other girl's been peeved at me for days, but I thought it was for something else. And when I apologized for the something else, tonight, she confronted me about her blog.

It wasn't the time to argue about her definitions of private, or how I don't really understand where she's coming from--obviously, she felt her right to remain anonymous on a public forum was ignored. And that's the only important thing, I suppose. Even if I don't get it. She's pretty sensitive to stuff like that, and I'm wondering if any chance at a friendship is shot because of it. We'll see.

I'm a bit peeved at Steph, though. Way to throw that one in. Really. I mean, sure, tell her I "violated her privacy" if you think that falls under "best friend" duties. But tell me first. Give me a chance to go to her and tell her myself, apologize, whatever it takes. We're supposed to be friends too, and that was pretty shabby.

And I ended this long and not-what-I-thought-it-was-going-to-be day with yet another mistake. I made an assumption I shouldn't have--and I ended up being really embarrassed. And now I'm curled up on the couch, listening to the quiet of the house and wondering why life is so messy and disappointing sometimes.

Everything is just so much more sad when I'm so tired.

dark places

I don't write much anymore. I miss it--there's something about getting things onto paper that makes them more tangible, easier to handle and analyze. I write when my thoughts are disordered and hard to deal with, mostly--the process of finding the right words and making something unique and flowing is one of the best ways I know to get rid of the panic of dealing with it alone.

I've always loved the idea of journals. I have several--one for poetry, one for personal stories, and one that was meant to be a sketch journal. The poems haven't been added to in over a year--the stories require time to be written that I don't have. Sketching makes my life so much better, but again, time is lacking, and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to creating (not the perfectionism that requires "perfect", so much, but the kind that goes for a certain feeling, a nuance), so there are only a few pages filled.

I've gotten used to being dissatisfied when I read back through the stories I've written over the years. You see, I mostly write when I'm in pain. Exhausted. Lonely. Distressed, and trying to work out tumbling, spinning thoughts in my head. And so it's mostly a chronicle of sadness, which doesn't reflect what life is really like for me. Usually.

When I'm happy, I'm too busy living a story to find time to write it down. And that in itself is rather sad, in a way. I miss putting soul to paper, and I miss sharing. So, I suppose, what pulls it back out of me is a desperate attempt to make sense of the world again, and to restore myself a bit by creating. It makes things lighter in a very dark place.

...

I miss the turning of seasons. It seems stagnant here, as though time drags, perhaps stops, nothing to differentiate my days. There are no mornings of waking to rain and gray skies, and no chance of those magical moments where you wake up to falling snow. I used to love those mornings. They didn't happen often, at Southern, but when they did come it was the best feeling. So much promise in waking up and realizing, from the glow or slant of light or perhaps just a sense of difference that something good had happened--and then getting to dash into Bec's room, jump on her bed, and wake her up. It was the only circumstance in which I could ever get away with something like that. -grins- it's hard to be angry when you're running around the Village in pajamas and rain boots, throwing snow and laughing with people you never usually talk to.

That doesn't happen here. There are no trees that I see change from day to day--oh, I miss maple trees. That smoke-blackened bark, and the sheer brilliance of the yellow and orange against it. The closest thing here, I suppose, is the tangerine tree out back, just barely starting to lighten the solid green of the fruit. But even that is almost imperceptibly slow.

truth for once

It will be all right.

Do the best you can, and it will be enough.

This will all be worth it some day.

You're not alone in this--we're all here.

You're not alone.

Lies.

I've got to stop the spinning. Stop the fearing. The frightened, relentless circling feeling that I'm drowning; the water just hasn't hit my lungs yet.

Do you know what I think, when it gets late and I'm actually being honest with myself and not mouthing the phrases that we hope will carry us though each day?

I can't do this.
I don't even know if I want to do this.
I know I don't want to be here.
I'm tired of being motivated by fear.
I can't stand this not-really-living thing.
I disgust myself with how much time I purposely waste because studying repulses me.
I've stopped caring about learning. This isn't learning, and I'm not strong enough or smart enough to make it be.
I'm not even sure this will make me happy. Ever.
I can't see what I'm headed for anymore. I wonder if I ever did, or if I just made it up.
I don't know what happy looks like sometimes.
Home doesn't really exist anymore.
I am alone.

I am sick of trying to be cheerful. I hate this.

A dark walk home.

I went to bed extremely early last night. After waking up to find myself asleep on my couch at 9 pm, with my notes falling off my chest and on to the floor, it seemed the only reasonable course of action, you know? Anyway, at some point I heard our front doorbell ring. I struggled back into consciousness long enough to stumble to my door, make sure it wasn't someone important (aka, Ryan), and head back to bed.

This morning, Steph told me about our visitor. It was the resident from upstairs, the dark-haired one that we never normally see. She came and knocked last night and asked if she could come in and talk to us. I guess she was sort of stumbling around what she wanted to say, and Steph came right out with, "This is about the new neighbor, isn't it? Is he bothering you too?" and the girl was like, "Yes, he is!"

Our street has been having a pretty high turnover lately. It's a very short one-way street, just across from our main classroom and the rest of the Loma Linda campus, and we recently had a new family move in about halfway down. They consist of a big black man, who spends all day every day fixing cars, his mean white wife (?), and his little boy who roars all the time, regardless of small matters like neighbors who are trying to study. Anyway, if his wife is in evidence (and usually screaming at him), he pays us no mind--but if not, he calls at us as we walk home.

"Hey, ma. Hey, why won't you look at me?"
"Hey, girl, you make me scared riding that board so fast."
"Hey girl, what's your name? I said, what's your name? How do you keep your hair so pretty?"

If we don't answer, or pretend not to hear him, he keeps yelling at us until we're almost to our front door. When he was trying to talk to me yesterday, the last thing I heard before I shut the front door was, "Why won't you motherfucking answer me?"

Steph and I were talking about how we always pretend to have a phone call when we walk home, or how we walk on the far side of the street, or try not to make any noise if he's got his head down under the car hood, so he doesn't realize we're there. Neither of us ever make eye contact. She told me that the girl upstairs was telling her that, last night, her boyfriend walked her home and told the man to stop talking to her. He got cursed out for his  trouble.

Our landlord is a really nice older man who genuinely cares about all of us here, and I was going to ask him this afternoon if he would anonymously talk to the neighbor and ask him to stop. And that might do it--but then again, it might not, because I don't really think he's going to care that he's making us uncomfortable. Because he's going to feel that it's his right to talk to us from his own house in whatever manner he wants to. Because, unfortunately, that's rather how our society functions.

It is absolutely ridiculous that we should be pretending to be on the phone, or hiding from him, or acting like we don't hear him, in order to feel safe on our own street. I think that as women we incorporate this kind of stuff into life everyday because we know if we don't, we can get hurt really badly. Killed. So we have support groups and we plan about the best ways to avoid the wrong kinds of attention, the safe places to go, the times when you have to make sure to stay in pairs. It makes me think of the quote, "Society teaches women how to avoid rape; it doesn't teach men not rape."

And, while we're not talking about something nearly so extreme, I'm sick of it. Not on my street. I'm tired of being nervous and uncomfortable, I'm tired of having the way I walk or how often I've been home commented on every time I walk past, and I'm done with being afraid, because that's all the planning and strategizing is doing--trying to compensate for fear.

I'm considering how best to do this, but I may just talk to him myself. I'm not sure the best way to go about it--still deciding. I mean, that guy seems to get angry really easily, and even though he's big and fat and probably slow, I'm really small. So if Carter does talk to him, and it doesn't work the first time, I'm filing charges. Enough.

I couldn't even tell you.

My skin is torn, right down near the edge where it and and my nail came together in a once-perfect fit, edging around the white half-moon and the blaze running through it that is uniquely mine. It hurts, but I rub at it again, distracting myself from my discomfort, my worry, and the disjointed flow of my words as they describe the inner twists of my mind to a perfect stranger.

The beginning panic is mostly gone, now, taking the first chunk of cuticle with it. I don't know what I was so afraid of--what I'd hear, perhaps? That I'd break down and cry in that small office? It's not like me, I know, but then again, none of this is--or didn't used to be, at any rate.

They say that around 40% of medical students experience a major depressive episode at some point during their years here. They also say that, if it's happened once, chances are extremely high that it will happen again.

There is a specific period in my past that doesn't have many memories. I've tried to find some, but I just recall being...dark. Tired, all the time. Hopeless, and completely alone. Someone very dear to me recently described it as a kind of anger--if your life is good, even great, why should your mind tell you otherwise? It's not logical, not reasonable, it can't be talked around, and that made him furious. Me, it just makes me more tired. You can only argue with yourself so much before you stop believing what you're saying.

I notice a bit of blood under the nail of my left hand. We're talking about possible mental strategies to use to combat my negative self-talk--I wonder, is self-talk part of the psychobabble?--and I'm perking up a bit. This is why I came, after all. I hate acknowledging that I might actually have a problem; I'd rather chalk it up to laziness, or lack of efficiency, or timing my sleep cycles wrong. But the idea that someone could help me change how I look at life, and that this could go a long way to solving my problems, that was an idea I could have hope for--a great deal of it.

Then he said, "You seem like your head is in the right place--owning your problems and such--and I don't think counseling is going to do you much good, although we'll certainly meet a few more times. But here's an appointment for a psychiatrist, and we'll get you started on an antidepressant tomorrow."

You don't know what it's like to hear that. Depression carries such a social stigma; somebody recently compared it to being diagnosed with an STD. If you announce that you have heart failure, nobody is going to give you that funny sideways look and say, "Riiiight..." If something goes wrong with the body, you fix it. You may get sympathy for it and, if you're lucky, somebody will bring you warm soup and bread to eat while watching movies from the comfort of your oh-so-shnuggly bed...perhaps that's just my own immediate fantasy. But if something goes wrong with your head? People get really uncomfortable, really fast.

It's more than that, though. It felt like something in me froze. What? Medication? Can we not talk about this first? What about the side effects? What is it going to feel like? Are there other options to try? Is this really the first step? I don't even know you, and you're saying I need to start a series of meds that will last indefinitely? Do you even know how I feel about medication?

I tell him I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of drugs and he seems to shrug it off. I realize I need to quit playing with my hands--my thumb really hurts now. I know, I know I'm showing significant discomfort with the idea, and while I'm not doing it on purpose--it really is freaking me out--he doesn't pick up on it.

Our time is up, and he ushers me out of his office. I decide to wait and take my concerns to the person who would actually be writing the hypothetical prescription, so my questions will hold until tomorrow. Yet as the day has worn on, predictably, I've been unable to focus my attention for too long without it coming back to the session. I should feel relief, right? That there's a plan in place, that I'm going to feel better, focus better, sleep better, eat something, anything. That I will stop losing weight, that I won't struggle so hard to be happy when I'm stressed; that I will learn to cope with stress in a way that's healthy.  Even if I don't decide to go on meds, I can learn to focus on being strong in areas I'm weak. These are all good things.

It feels sick, though; and devastating in its own way. It feels broken--it feels shameful. Less. Empty. It feels like tears that I'm too tired to care about.

It feels like something I wish nobody else knew. Especially the people closest to me. Which is odd, writing about it here. But I needed to do something. I don't think I would have been able to sleep tonight if I hadn't gotten it out somehow.

Our first set of tests for second year starts tomorrow. I'm not ready for them--hellishly unprepared is a better description. What with my lack of concentration and various illnesses in the past few weeks, I'm seriously asking God for miracles on my behalf. For now, all I can do is sleep and study more in the morning.

Rebel Light

The rebellion begins quietly as the evening ends, just before the day is submerged into the coming night. Have you ever noticed? The tangible moment as the sun begins to touch the horizon...and suddenly every speck of light, every ray of brilliance grows in intensity, revolting against the coming dark and painting each surface, each shadow and blade of grass, each tired face, each piece of dandelion fluff in shades of gold that glow as if the entire world is on fire. And that moment, when the light manages to turn back the encroaching dark completely, that moment seems to last forever.

Challenge

I'm back. But where do I start? Lost inside my own head, batting aside the words and phrases that scatter around me like leaves in a fickle wind, the words that used to come easier, settling butterfly-soft into the back of my hands before sliding out of my fingertips into whatever form I chose to release them. Nobody really knows how to begin anything, the first time, but harder still is to begin a second time, with the benefit of having seen. Instead of forging ahead, blithely unaware of rocky ground and deep water, it seems safer to pick a cautious path, walking lightly and hesitating, although I would love to charge ahead, make up lost ground and dash gleefully past where I was and on into new areas. So. This careful treading and picking my way and wishing back the ground I've lost instead of taking it back myself...isn't doing me any good. But I'll treat is like the first days of summer, when I toss my shoes into a dark corner to hide until fall comes, and run barefoot out into the world. It's easy to pick and choose my way, avoiding the rough patches and sharp places--but if I do that, my feet will never toughen. It's only by choosing the challenges that I'll stumble and wince my way into the freedom to run where I will.