sarahntastic

After seeing her for a few months years ago, I was well enough to start thinking about re-starting my life, this tiny, long-haired, nose-pierced, bright green toenail polished, Stanford educated M.D., Indian woman said, “Don’t complain about not having a boyfriend when you leave the house looking like THAT.”

Next she lectured on the “fact” that fat women make compromises in their mates, because they can’t snag a good looking man who also happens to be a good man.  She knows so, she said, because she sees it amongst her friends.  Perfectly smart, able, ambitious women–fat women–pairing up with men who, in every way, are inferior, but hey, that’s what fat gets you.  So can I please get over myself and do something about my weight?

I always wondered which Stanford class, exactly, she learned to be so bitchy forthright.  I liked it, though.  No bullshit.  I couldn’t pull my sob story for long with her.  She succeeded in properly medicating me so I was much better than when I dragged in months earlier having been in a fetal position on my couch for six months prior to that.

So when I needed to see her again, because the dark abyss of depression had crept up on me this year, after a few years of sanity and clear-headedness, I was running late.  I put on jeans, rather than yoga pants, knowing she would cringe.  But I didn’t put on makeup.  I didn’t dry my hair.  I really couldn’t.  Didn’t have the energy, physical or mental, to do much more.  But I knew she would have something to say about it.

I explained my descent back into near-severe depression the last six months, and my frustration and anger with myself that I just cannot make myself do anything.  She did her doctor thing.  She told me she would adjust meds.  She told me that I am depressed, duh, so no amount of self-pep talk is going to work until I’m moving out of the dark parts.  She suggested I try to do small things, allow myself accomplishments on a much smaller scale.

Call a friend back.

Clean off my desk.

Blow dry my hair one day.

And there it is, folks.  Psychiatric honesty at it’s finest.  For $250, no less (no, she doesn’t accept insurance).

I can’t wait to see her again in two weeks.  Needless to say I won’t dare show up makeup-less or with undone hair.

I have always felt ill-equipped intellectually to read poetry.  Perhaps I hadn’t enough life experience or the right frame of mind to appreciate what a smart man so simply explained to me is “just concentrated prose.”

And so I have read a bit of poetry recently.

“Music Swims Back to Me” immediately took me to a time my mother broke into a million pieces.  My father’s mother, my beloved grandmother, the only mother figure my own mother knew, died.  We were all distraught.  She was the most loving, funny, silly, sweet person all of us knew.  My mom had a horrible mother.  My grandmother took my mother in when she was 17, cared for her, and loved her as her own for 30 years.

So, when my grandmother died, my mom left us for months.

She was with us physically, but so far gone emotionally, we had no idea what to do.  Most attempts to coax her out into the world were met with anger, lashing out, screaming, complete and utter despair-filled, fetal position on the floor, sobbing.  She checked out of life.

She remembers little of this now, many years later, long-recovered from this break.  This wasn’t the first time my mother exited reality for the broken place in her mind.  Her recollection is disjointed, makes little sense.  Yet she remembers details so tiny and specific, I often think she created them in her mind to soothe herself:  the exact shape of clouds on a particular day; music on the radio when we would go for drives; a book I suggested to her.  These are the sort of details she would never, ever remember under normal circumstances.

Having had my own tortured mental breaks in my life, I know how important these tiny, pleasant bits are.  What swims back to you when you are broken is what keeps you, in the sane times, remembering why you never want to go back again if you can help it.

There was a time not too many years ago depression meant sleeping for days on end, no showers, binge eating, never getting dressed, going to the store dirty and smelly, wandering in a foggy haze to walk the dogs, feeling nothing, never crying, jumping at the sound of the phone because I would forget there was any sound other than silence.

And slowly I came away from that.  With help.  Some from friends and family, mostly thanks to medication.

And I’ve spent a significant amount of energy since then making sure I never fall into it again:  the darkness, the isolation, the irrational thoughts, being locked inside my head, being someone no one knows what to do with, yet causing pain and grief simply because I am so far away, so completely unreachable.

And recently I feel it coming back.  Not nearly as horrific.  Certainly I’m functioning, at least a bit.  But I’m not working.  I’m not doing anything.  Except for keeping my head above water.  It’s all I can do.  Simple things like try to exercise, walk the dogs, talk to friends, go to the store.  But I’m teetering.  Losing my balance, not feeling the strength to stay in the clear, instead stumbling into the very foggy place in my head that makes no sense.

And because I can feel everything now (before medication, I felt nothing but exhaustion), I’m crying a lot.  I’m confused and terrified and anxious and not sleeping.  Because  I’m obsessed with making sure I stay here with everyone else in the world.  And it takes a lot of energy.  And the days go by so quickly and without any sort of productivity.  Just today it took me many hours to exercise, then take a shower, and now I can’t figure out how to get dressed, or why I should.  I can only cry.

This is my ultimate fear.  That the depression will never go away.  That it will keep coming back like this, to eat up my life and take away huge chunks of time I will never get back.

I am coming undone.  Again.

This morning when I finally had a good cry – - the kind where I’m in a ball on the floor getting it all out, my mind hurriedly running through my list of people I might call, a decidedly short list to be sure, and realizing there is not a single person in my life I can trust with my shit or want to burden with my shit – - I realized I am just like her.

She might be out-of-this-world wacky.  Over a gender-confused man who wants nothing to do with her except when it serves his ego.  And she might be a compulsive liar.  And she might take a handful of Xanax every night.  And she might teeter between reality and her not-so-carefully crafted delusions.

But I’m just like her.

I want what she wants.  Love.  Acceptance.  Someone to tell me I matter in this world.  Someone to remind me of my value so that I steer myself from this detour of mediocrity, depression, and sadness I’ve been on for far too long.

Too bad she’s not just like me—keeping my motherfucking crazy to a few paragraphs on the interwebs where no one can find me.

_____________________

p.s.  so I wrote this earlier today only to learn her lies have reached epic proportions tonight.  I will just say this:  mental illness is not a joke.  No matter how ridiculous and sad this chick is, I have endless empathy for her, because she is so ridiculous and sad.  And because I am just like her, minus the delusions.

p.p.s. and my endless empathy will not serve to deter me from talking about her crazy, just in case you were wondering if I had some sort of epiphany.  I didn’t.

I lost a lot of weight.  I stopped losing weight.  I gained 20 pounds.  NO ONE is more disappointed, sad, depressed, horrified, terrifed than I am.  I don’t need you to look at me, comment toward me, or otherwise spend any energy on me and my fat.  Because, rest assured, I think of little else.  One doesn’t get fat without obsession and addiction.  And the obsession and addiction doesn’t just stop with food.  Anger, shame, disgust, self-hate, worthlessness are all things I am plenty skilled at feeling-obsessing on-being addicted to feeling all on my own.  If I could replay the tape that is on loop in my head 24/7 you couldn’t handle it.  Because it’s horrifying.  How much I hate myself.  So, thanks, but no, I don’t need you.  I’m already plenty fucked in the head about this.  You? I just want to beat the shit out of with all my fat.

So, I was wrong.

I thought I figured out how to not be obsessed with, and controlled by food over the last few years having fairly easily lost nearly 100 pounds and starting a decent work-out routine after doing neither in my life before.  But, it turns out, 2009 was a huge piece of shit.  And not big piles of shit, but various and many smaller piles of shit that I didn’t always notice until I realized the fetid smell following me was not going away.

I am more and more bogged down and depressed as time passes.  More later on the deep fear I have of  another depressive episode.  I’ll leave it at this:  it can’t happen again.  I won’t survive it, I am sure.  And not in the suicide-type of survival way, but the simple emotional-type survival way.

Food.  My greatest love, and my worst enemy.  My sustenance both physical and emotional.  My hobby and my joy.  My poison and my torment.

I’ve gained nearly 20 pounds this year, most of which piled on in the last few months–the hardest months I’ve had in a long time.  When I binge, I know intellectually I am hurting, and bandaging with food.  I hover above myself, watching the preparation of snacks and meals comprised of ingredients that have not, until recently, even crossed the threshold of my front door for years:  peanut butter, butter, chips, tortillas, cookies, candy, half and half.  I used to allow myself a dinner out for these trigger foods, and the results were fine.  However, I’ve talked myself into believing I somehow have control over these things, so I’ve brought them into the house.  But of course, that’s a huge lie.  I’ve brought them into the house for bandaging and love and support.

Funny thing about medicating with food.  It has the opposite affect of what you want.  It’s the same as any addiction.  Goddam, I feel good right in the minute.  The tastes, the smells, the textures, the sensual memories.  And then.  It ends quickly.  The high is gone.  Maybe it doesn’t come at all depending on how much I’m hurting, how deep the hole is that day.  Sometimes I graze forever.  Sometimes I have the strength to sit on my hands as it were.  Most of the time I don’t.

I have no answers here.  I carry my pain and fear in a constant lump in my throat, on the verge of tears most minutes of the day; in my folds of flesh that reveal my weakness and hurt to the world; in my chest that is always tight; in my head that always aches.  Today serves as a day of forcing honesty.  Reminding myself I’m fooling no one, least of all me.  I need to somehow get back to the high I got from losing weight, getting into the next smaller size jeans, people noticing my confidence and happiness and lightness–and not the size kind.  Because I’m not sure how my mind twists from knowing how good it feels to lose weight and being in control to bingeing on food and false control.

It started with the realization that my COBRA subsidy ended December 1.

It continued with deepening depression about my financial situation.

Then there was a really shitty bff birthday party.

Then sweet Miss Callie went to doggie heaven.

Then competition and nosey-ness reared its ugly head.

Then sweet Miss Abby went to doggie heaven.

Then I had to figure out how to pay bills.

Then I couldn’t stop eating.

But.

I spent days and days with Cutest Baby.

I got two (small) cupcake orders.

It’s looking like I might just sell the BMW and get a little cash to live on.

I met fantastic women who will help me build the diaper bank.

But.

I am still hoping for a few less things that suck next week, though.

I went to San Diego to visit my brother, hike, eat cupcakes, and get energized to come home and finally get my act together.  Instead it was far more emotionally challenging than I was prepared for.  That is, because I wasn’t prepared for it to be emotionally challenging at all.

I don’t know if my melancholy and sleepiness today is because of this or because I’m back to reality.  I do know that I didn’t jump out of bed today with my shit together.  In fact, I didn’t jump at all.  I haven’t done anything I promised myself I would do, and as the day rolls on, I become more sad, more defeated, more sluggish, more sad.  I just walked the dogs sobbing, for chrissakes.  I haven’t showered or even put on a bra—yes, this means I’ve walked the dogs three times today without a bra on.

It did not help that I had a dream about visiting my ex.  He said “I had no idea you’ve been trying to contact me for FOUR MONTHS, and no, I didn’t steal nearly TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS from you, you just have the account number wrong.”  Waking up realizing this dream isn’t going to come true did nothing to start my day off well.

I’ve read blog posts, books about motivation, books about successful women in business, sought out successful women to network with, and still, here I am, weeping and melodramatic.

I need something, something, something.  Because I’m really sick of this being stuck bullshit.