Where I'm Going, Where I've Been

*Expecting Indy, Idaho, July 2006*

Here is the road block I run into over and over again:

I blog about my life because I want other people to know they're not alone. This involves the sharing of pain, but I don't want to dwell on pain, to nurture it. To feed that wolf.

This is my mission because twice in my life, my suffering has been deeply compounded by the belief that I was alone in it.

Weeks after getting married, I was struck with the worst depression of my life. I couldn't get out of bed. If I got out of bed, I couldn't get out of the shower. Mr. V went to work and instead of going to my last semester of college courses, I'd sit in the bathtub immobile, imagining myself spread out on my white bed spread, with red plumes of blood flowing from both of my wrists, staining the sheets. I don't know if I deeply intended to create this image, but I nurtured it in my heart.

I was 21. I was attending an evangelical church and angry there. Religion was a thorn in my saddle but I couldn't admit it yet, too scared of going to hell if I didn't go to church. Church contributed to my depression; everyone around me having transcendental experiences with a God they said was like a father (a punitive one), insisting Jesus could heal all wounds (like magic) and me, shriveling inside, my heart a stony pit. I wrote fragments in those days, (too disturbed for real narratives) pouring out the terrible images that filled my head. I felt myself rotting from the inside like a deer carcass in the moss. I imagined that my skin smelled of sour milk, that I was spoiled down to my very flesh.

I wanted to go on anti-depressants but we couldn't afford health insurance.

I've had people in my life determined to tell me that my pain has never been worse than their own. And now I only hold in my heart these words, from Amanda Palmer:

you can't measure human suffering with a yardstick.

those who try to do it end up vindictive, even when they're

trying to be helpful.

because the minute you start measuring suffering, you invalidate somebody's suffering.

. . . and that just never works. that's where the whole shit starts getting ugly.

anyone who says "my pain is bigger than your pain" is speaking from fear.

anyone who says "my feelings are more valid than your feelings" 

isn't speaking from empathy.

there's no pain that isn't 'real' because somebody has it worse off.

I sat in church and I prayed the only prayer I could: please help please help please help.

Eventually I felt better. Then I became pregnant by mistake. We were evicted from our apartment. The day we moved out, friends took us out to dinner and gave us two or three hundred dollars. It brought our bank account balance back to positive and remained pretty much all we had in the world. (Besides each other?)

We lived with his parents, we lived with my parents. I had a baby and brought her back to a house with a $800 rent we couldn't afford. Depression hit again. I didn't know it was common. I thought I was fundamentally broken. Marriage and motherhood were supposed to be two of the best experiences of my life, and both sent me into the darkest place I'd ever been. When Ayla was a baby I didn't imagine myself dead, but I was filled with such rage. I broke dishes, dashing them to the kitchen floor. I kicked a hole in the wall one day while my baby cried in her nursery, knowing only that I mustn't go to her. After four months of independence, we had to ask to be released from our lease again, and were back to living with parents, in an ugly room with sheets tacked over the windows, in a life I hated.

Through both these experiences I felt so terribly alone, and this is why I blog. I remember the overwhelming relief I felt, years later, watching an Oprah that said that huge percentages of women feel depressed after they get married. I wasn't fundamentally broken.

I was normal. I wasn't alone.

And eventually,  I got out.

I went to hell, and I came back.

It took years. It wasn't easy. It's not a one-time journey, a final destination. You don't arrive in paradise and stay forever. Sometimes things get difficult and I catch myself treading back toward the dark woods. I don't know why. Because it is a familiar way, a path I know, a path that seems to be ingrained on my heart. These ruts.

But my heart, like my brain, can form new connections, spark new life, learn new paths.

Sometimes it doesn't seem like I've allowed myself to choose the path. Sometimes life just smacks me there. I land hard in a scary place, all the wind knocked out of me, and I sit down and cry.

I have to remind myself to keep looking for the light.

This will be the journey of my life, learning to tread this meandering walk way that twines between the thick wood and the sunlit beach and back, learning to turn, again and again, away from depression and darkness and if I have anything to offer it is my truth. The story of my depression and the story of my spirituality are the same story.

I've been to hell, and I've been back.

I found my way back, and so can you.

La Belle-y

It was during my first yoga class that my active mind slipped away and I was suddenly and wonderfully aware that there were two of me in here. I knew that I was not, in fact, my mind.

Inside this body were two unique halves. Never before had I felt them quite so intimately. One was caught up in all the trivialities of the day, worrying about how it looked and whether or not it was doing this--this class, this day, this life--correctly. The other me was the deeper one, the true spirit, blissfully unaware of it's surroundings and circumstances. It was smiling with every part.

But I've gotten ahead of myself.

The night before I'd been up late, padding around the house, when I was unexpectedly brought face-to-button with my belly. I was svelte once, in college, (put that on a t-shirt) but I haven't seen that body since I got pregnant at twenty-two. The body my husband fell in love with was pale and freckled and wore a size 8. Even then I took that body for granted, feeding it pizza and wishing it would be a 6. This body, eight years later, isn't one I choose to see often. I dress quickly. I don't even own a mirror that reflects my lower half. That night, in the bathroom, it jumped out at me like a monster from behind a corner.

I beheld my belly and told it I hated it.

The awareness of the two of me came during a particularly challenging pose. My body was quivering all over with the effort to hold itself in the form I had asked of it. My muscles were burning and my mind was self-conscious, but as I continued to hold, and to quiver, all that mind clutter slipped away and a deeper voice proclaimed clearly: I love this.

It was my spirit. That quiet, knowing part. It was, I believe, the spark where the divine rests in all of us. And that part of me was having the time of its life. Underneath all my cares is the deeper self that is gazing at this life in wondrous adoration and isn't worried at all.

We ended the class by laying on our backs in what I believe is called the Shavasana Asana, and it was then that my belly began to speak to me. Throughout class, as I had asked my body to bend and twist and withstand, my spirit had been whispering to this soft, freckled space how much it loved it.

And my body had spoken back. In warrior pose, it told me I was powerful. Doing cat-and-cow, and a particularly bendy combination of poses that requires one to both torque and expand, my body felt sensuous and strong.

Now as I lay there, I could hear that my stomach was bruised. The night before, I had looked in the mirror and hated it for not being flat and taut, for the stretch marks that will grace it like pumpkin flesh, always and forever. In my mind, I made war on my body, telling it things that were ugly and cruel.

But this body has done so much for me. This belly, that has stretched beyond its capacity, beyond endurance, to shelter the spirits and flesh of two children. This entire body, that did what I asked of it, that withstood until I shook all over, until I felt I was about to collapse from exhaustion, and then withstood some more.

I lay there in Shavasana Asana and I apologized to my belly. I told this soft part of me, this part that refuses to conform to all Western standards of beauty, that I have punished with words and loathing and Spanx--that I loved it. I was so proud of it. I thanked it for doing so much for me.

A few days later I would find myself again in front of that same mirror, in a degree of undress. This time I beheld my beautiful body, this thriving, healthy gift. I was, I realized, everything I had experienced myself as in yoga. Sun-burnt and moon-pale. Rolling and lush. Wildly curvacious and sensuous and strong.

My spirit said something like: va-va-voom.

And later, as is the way of things, my husband did too.

**Painting: La Belle Rafaela, Tamara de Lempicka. 1927.

Hunted

A lot of stuff went down today.

I guess that should be expected when you get up to have a pee in the dead of night and in mid-act hear your husband's alarm going off. Because it's 2:30 a.m. and time for him to head to work.

Some days, I don't know. Life hunts you down. "Oprah says you can't solve emotional problems geographically," I tell the husband, but sometimes the urge to flee is so strong. Sometimes you want to feel safe in your world, even though you know that doesn't exist. We rushed over to Oskar Blues Homemade Liquid and Solids because that's what the male V and I do when we're feeling hunted. We eat and drink, the girls blow up Death Stars and, as I would come to find out hours later while in emergency room triage, stuff sand down their pants.

Don't judge their sandy-bottomed joy.

After that we had no strength to venture out in the cold. We headed for Barnes and Noble in Boulder. Within five minutes I realized our mistake and we left. Ayla asks for everything. Her requests the white rabbit, I leap down my black hole. I'm getting better at what my Blood Sister A calls "thought-stopping". When my brain starts to launch me into my old "universe is out to get me" or "good things don't come my way" soliloquies, I can usually tell her just to knock it off. Depression is a wolf howling at the door, who says you have to open it? But when she knocks in the form of my children having desires, I spiral downhill fast. "I want to ask Santa to bring me Legos for Christmas," says Daughter A and seconds later I'm shivering in the corner, mind whirling with every sparkly gift I can't afford to buy them. Christmas is coming. Get the hell out of the retail stores.

Fortified now with hot beverage, we drove to the park. My husband tossed my daughters around in the leaves to their everlasting delight. The dog stalked squirrels.

Somewhere in all this I canceled our cable, found a rejection letter in my email, and decided to dye my hair brown. The day grows dark. We buy produce for a vegetarian dinner, healthy. Just what we need.

Everything happens when mom goes to the bathroom. From my moment's peace, I hear a yelp. A yowl. I open the door and my Indy is crying. I rush to her and grab her little face, which is smeared in blood. She had been resting her head on the dog. The dog has nipped her. One cut on her lip is very small but deep enough that I bundle her back into boots and drive her to the emergency room. Ayla is sobbing, she stays home with dad.

In the Emergency Room a couple checks in. She's twelve weeks pregnant. I assume she's had bleeding but later I hear whispered 'throwing up'. I don't know. I count my blessings. My baby is shaken, but she's here on my lap.

In the emergency room, we discover the sand in her britches.

No stitches required. They say she won't have a scar.

I email Blood Sister A. I tell her I wish a wise person would swoop into my life and tell me what to do.

Then I figure, maybe that wisdom's just waiting here.

Within me.

















(This picture is of Indy feeling better and playing with the syringe they gave her. I love the fierce concentration on her face. She was plotting about how she was going to come home and squirt Ayla. Like that.)

Tension

On Friday morning, I got up before four am to watch two people I'll never meet get married. My husband couldn't sleep and we sat together in our pajamas drinking coffee, eyes burning tired, and I cried when I saw the bride get into the car. And I wasn't thinking about wealth, or titles, or fashion. I was thinking, it's always beautiful to witness love.

On Sunday morning I read an article on NPR telling how three of Gadhafi's young grandchildren had been killed in a NATO strike on his home.

On Sunday night, I learned on twitter that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Some people celebrate. Some remain solemn. Some quote the Bible on Facebook to justify violence. They use it as a sword. Other people quote it as a reminder of love. The Bible is confounding and can be used to justify nearly anything. Which is more dangerous? Sword or love?

I'm not saying that the death of people who do evil deeds is never necessary. It's just that this world is not a fantasy novel. This isn't Stryder leading us to the keep, this isn't Harry slaying Voldemort. This is real death and real war, and I don't see a reason to rejoice.

"Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule." Buddha.

"Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr

When It Rains

So: the day we got the new ac adapter delivered, our keyboard decided it didn't really want to type the letters 't', 'y', or backspace. Or do any capitals or punctuation. I secretly suspect Mr. V spilled beer on the keyboard, but we are not going to talk about that here.

Needless to say, a new computer is not in the cards (oh I laughed so hard I cried over that idea. Except I skipped the laughing part?).

It's fine, really, that I can't blog because thanks to a friend my life has been hijacked by the show Supernatural.


I am a little embarrassed to put this picture on my blog.

It should mean something to you when I tell you that I'm finding the third season to be alarmingly sexist and I'm watching the show anyway.


The sexism disturbs me. If the women aren't helpless and panicking, they are straight up demons. You heard me. The devil is a busty chick and she wants to ruin your road trip with your brother. It's like these writers aren't aware of the fact that their audience has to be about 99% female.

Seriously. How many men do they imagine are watching this show about two strapping young lads with the looks of George Clooney and Ryan Reynold's love child and the chemistry of a regency romance novel duke and red-headed hoyden before they hook up?

(If you are a male and you love Supernatural, first of all: We love you. Second of all, you are probably a bit of a sensitive guy, and that's really lovely and don't be ashamed. And third, I'd be willing to bet that you were one of those guys rooting for Pacey when all your bros were feeling Dawson. Yes?)

I'm hoping to be able to buy a new laptop in. . . um, March. When we get our tax return. Right now I'm blogging from the library and I just can't get over here without the girls more than once a week at most. Maybe in the meantime I can post some funny pictures of cats in microwaves? Oh wait, that one was absurdly unfunny. I'll try and think of something.

I just needed to let you know that I love you. And I am going for a little while, but I'm like a hero on a sci-fi show who's been sent to hell. Or heaven.

I come back.

I am Vesuvius and I want to ruin your road trip with your brother.