A Palimpsest of Soul and Skin

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 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...

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Once again I am ruminating about the sense of belonging. It seems to me that I've spent a great deal of my life trying to really feel convinced that I belong. But what does that mean, really? As far as I can recall, it had to do with identifying with a group of people, and interacting with those people in a recognizable place. As someone who moved a lot, and as someone whose biological father was not present for the first 17 years, a sense of belonging was not something I had a firm grasp on. That's not to say I didn't ever feel that I belonged; it's just that it was enough of an issue to cause me some definite pain. Did I belong in Toronto with my mother's side of the family? Or out west, near my uncle and cousins and, eventually, my father and sisters? What about my friends? How did I carve out the substance of my identity? All of these questions (and more) generally went unanswered with any lasting measure of satisfaction. I thought I could find that sens...

Fragile moments of temporary vulnerability, parting like curtains in a dark room. On the bus ride home after work today, packed in tight with other droopy bodies, a gangly, pale, red-eyed man got on with his companion, a woman so thin and pale that she was not much more than a whisper. "We don't have any bus fare; she just got out of the hospital and we had to get medication" he said to the driver in a plain-spoken but steady voice. No entitlement or arrogance, but definitely a tone that expressed that he was dealing with troubles far greater than regular conventions could even touch. The bus driver had him pass through quietly, and the pair unsteadily made their way together and sat right across from me. She was thin like a bird, and I could see on her wrist that she still had her hospital identification and a Medic Alert bracelet. She was so thin that I have no idea how she was even standing, let alone out in public on a crowded bus. The woman leaned against the gangl...

I went back to the gym this morning after about a 9 week slump. I've already been through the entire self-hatred cycle about that so I'm not going to even bother picking that apart in this entry. Need to look forward, only forward. I will say, however, that I see a fine line between finding momentum and getting frantic about exercise, and I was getting a bit frantic, methinks. Whatever the reasons (over-ambition, self-defeating patterns, perfectionism, simple laziness), I stopped exercising, and man , did I feel it. Anxiety and inertia crept in like mold and I started to feel immobilized and raw. Sometimes it takes my anxiety and depression to grow intrusive enough to make my skin actually hurt before I listen to it. When it gets like that, my thoughts ring loudly in my head like bad electric guitar feedback, distorting my perceptions and taking up way too much bandwidth. I can't concentrate. I feel  hollow. It takes me to darker places, and with the summer just around ...

In the last two months (since December 7) I've been going to the local YMCA and working on the Couch to 5K program. I fell off the exercise wagon for two and a half weeks in January shortly after my father died because I fell into a slump, but about a week ago I felt really compelled to get back to my program again. The rush of endorphins after a good thirty minutes is the medicine I need to keep from going into a depressive episode or get overtaken by anxiety. Even at the best of times, I need to fight hard to stave those chemicals off. Earlier this week I was rather unfocused on the treadmill. Either my music was all wrong, or it just felt so boring to run on the machine .  This morning I realized that it's getting light enough in time for me to run outdoors, so I ended up running (slowly, of course, it's still pretty new for me) down to Dallas Road from Quadra and Fort. I felt like I really needed to see the ocean today. It was still frosty and a bit dewy in the ear...

I go through phases where I feel positively ravenous for more learning, more creativity, and more activity than time and energy seems to allow. Then I become immobilized and overwhelmed, because I have perfectionist tendencies that end up defeating me before I begin. I often just give up before I've started.  At other times, I will start with a bang, only to fizzle out. I'm  still  beating myself up for what I call "my Garden of Shame”. 1  Now, to be fair, we'd only  just  moved into a new rental house in February of this year, so starting a new garden (as an absolute beginner) was quite ambitious. Additionally, we were decompressing from a cross-country move a few months previously, as well as reeling from Warren's unexpected unemployment, not to mention acrimonious court shenanigans over the Christmas holidays involving my ex-husband and his impulsive and ill-advised plans to relocate  both  of my kids from Qualicum Beach to Fort McMurray w...

19 Sept 11 A fresh cake of soap In a newly-scrubbed shower On Monday morning.

The Earth is drowsy And the sun's light has shifted To Fall's wistful slant.

Tears in the morning Makes for an exhausting day, But this too shall pass.

I've big plans for labouring around the house today. I've been terribly negligent about housekeeping this summer. Warren's new freelance status and Daniel's return to school is inspiring that autumnal nesting instinct, however. Still working through Writing the Natural Way , but finding it a bit strenuous (in a positive way). I'm still going with my Haiku a day for September: 04 Sept 11 Dredged-up sediment In my mind's deeper waters Ruined a good night's sleep. 05 Sept 11 French toast and coffee Being made by my husband Brightens the morning.

Seems I've begun a new habit without consciously meaning to: 01Sept11 First of September  and there's a hint of color blushing in the leaves 02Sept11 In one squished accord Claustrophobic commuters Endure one more day. 03Sept11 Spider's silken web Placed softly on pine needles Gleams with morning's light.

It's the day before a full moon, and I find myself rather feeling a bit introspective and somewhat restless. Also, for the last two weeks, I've been experiencing repeated moments of synchronicity, too mundane to relate, but significant to me in their precision. Today, I received an email from a new friend, with whom I had occasion to share the following excerpt (from Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale ). She told me that only an hour before speaking with me yesterday, someone that she'd just met had encouraged her to read this very same book. Her enthusiasm about this synchronicity was a tremendous encouragement to me this morning. I am pleased that, despite my relative distraction and introspection about my upcoming wedding, I am inexplicably plugged-in on some other level. Comforting. The following words were shared with me a number of years ago while I was in a tempestuous relationship that ended up completely falling apart...and quite contentiously, at that. It n...

Obligatory blog entry. Since my last post, I secured a position with a local magazine that was, well, a mutually poor fit. It afforded me some local credibility and publishing experience and a segueway into a much more suitable position in the self-publishing industry. Warren, too, found a job as a writer/editor/researcher with an SEO company and is getting some valuable training. Between the two of us, we're building some marketable skills that are going to be the vehicle for becoming self-employed (ideally), which is something we've been talking about for a few years. Yes, we are so sickeningly into one another that we can't stand being apart for ten hours a day. 4.5 years of being together and we still exchange easily 20 emails a day. Anyways, since my last post (as I said earlier), we've found work and moved into a new abode, a nice, solid little house with a huge deck and backyard near the water. Daniel has moved in with us, and Leah has relocated to Alberta with...

...and as usual, Life is what's happening while we've made other plans. Warren's transfer died on the vine a few days after we arrived here, and I'm still trying to break into the job market here in Victoria. I've done some networking, provided a little bit of design work on a freelance basis, and knocked on hundreds of doors. So, we're here, we're on Vancouver Island, but it seems like there's some...resistance. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I don't want to overlook what it is that's inside me that's holding me back. Doubt has always led me astray. I don't doubt that moving to BC was the best thing to do, and that it was done at the right time. My heart and my gut tell me so. Seeing my kids in the last little bit confirmed that. Being in Montréal while they live in Qualicum was just tearing me apart. Knowing that I'm closer to them now (if even a 2 and a half hour drive away) has knit something together inside of me th...