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Showing posts from 2013

People Matter.

Last night I was talking to a lifelong friend about her relatively new job. She's had a long, successful career that I've often envied and always admired, and she's had tons of variety and opportunity. Well, in this new job, she has the longest commute she's ever had (at least one hour each way), works a night shift, is not particularly challenged by her responsibilities, and isn't getting paid as well as she has elsewhere. However, the people that she works with are fantastic, she tells me. They're thoughtful and considerate, and she feels like she's part of them; she feels deeply appreciated, even more than she has at other jobs where she's been in important leadership positions. It just goes to show you how crucial relationships are, and what a difference they make. People *really* matter.

Sometimes Momentum Has to be Manufactured

Sometimes creating one's own momentum is the only way to start working one's way out of a depressive episode. Yup—I've been depressed. Like, actually depressed. As someone who has been clinically depressed for pretty much the entirety of my life, it's too easy to see depression as the normal way to live. It's easy to forget what it feels like to just feel centered and balanced and just okay. Not exhilarated. Not over the moon ecstatic. Just...okay. In general. Without feeling like everyday life is rubbing my nerves raw in a persistent, insidious way, making everything gray and achey and foggy and sluggish and difficult and muddled.  Granted, this hasn't been a great winter. Between being *really* sick in November, and the lack of light and the "goings-on" in January—experiencing the illness, hospitalization and death of my grandmother, I've totally lost my stride. And it's been dawning on me: I see the signs:  —I've barely b

'Wee Hours

Well...asleep by 10:45 p.m., awake at 4:30 a.m. after hours of vivid melatonin dreams. I may just get up and *stay* up now and see if I can actually keep reasonable hours. There's much I want to do, and losing the day to catch up on sleep always leaves me feeling rather defeated.

The Wastefulness of Anticipatory Grief

It just hit me: in the last year—if not longer—I'd have a daily sense of anticipation and anxiety that I'd receive a phone call from my mom saying that something had happened to Granny—that she'd taken sick or died. I carried that fear around for a long time. In fact, I think I've carried that fear around for decades. It became a habitual thing, that anticipatory grief. I just had that old sensation once again, like feeling around for a tooth that I used to wiggle, but finding only space. It's very disorienting. Anticipatory grief has done me no good; I certainly don't feel more prepared for this loss, and it only stretched out the sadness over the years.

Realization

Like a constant hum, insistent, hard to tune out:  gone she's gone she's gone

Memorial Card Text - January 15

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Remember, my darlings,  The memories we shared Gathered like treasures Throughout the years Think of our laughter, our visits, The times we embraced. I'll be there in spirit When you make a hot cup of tea.  Life is fleeting and precious With love carrying us through; Despite the loss and the pain Love will bring us together again.

Room B530 on January 11, 2013.

Room B530 The beeping of machines and the dripping of morphine are somehow synchronized to the rhythm of your soft breathing and the beat of my breaking heart.