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.

Easter Happened

You know my brother-in-law, Justin? His parents live on a farmish. They invited us out for Easter. Now wasn't that nice?

Indy at the start of the Easter egg hunt. A very civilized hunt. Nobody threw down or cried.

My niece Eisley holds this chicken which had a name and scared me a little.

Me and the husband all celebrating Easter before it was cool.

Ayla. Snake-charmer.

"These things can't flip over, right?" My sister says unto me before gunning it over a hill. "I don't know, Heather," I answered QUITE CALMLY. "I bet they could."

Here I'm all like, glamour pose! And my dad is all like, I'm too young to die.

Cousin (second cousin? first removed?) Moriah feeds this beast with horns which is very friendly, I am sure.

Noah and Ayla, in repast. There was also a two-year-old Noah there, which got really awkward anytime someone said "Hey, Noah, want a beer?" (Or, "Noah is embarrassingly drunk".)

Indy had the time of her life on Pepper Ann.

The responsible adults ribbed every child to go "no hands". Ayla, snake-charmer, obliges.

The city slicker in red boots accidentally double-clicked her tongue at the horse and the horse galloped. It was awesome. (Really).

By the end, Indy was in Peeps-and-pleasure induced tears. No pictures for her. "I hope Indy doesn't turn around for the picture," said my mom, trying to reverse-psych her. "Mom," I said. "You can't out-Indy Indy."

I guess this is the part where I say, Happy Easter?

I'm not really a photo-blog type person. You may have noticed.

Roughing It And Other Things First World People Do For Fun

I really love Starbucks Via and the pleasant suggestions they print on the sides. For instance, just now I opened my coffee cupboard and there on the Via carton it said "For your hotel stay." That made me think happily of the trip we're going to take to California--where, come to think of it, we won't actually be staying in a hotel--and I saw myself, in a tasteful yet economical hotel room, waking up next to my husband and puttering, happy and relaxed, to the, um, hot pot or stove which I'm sure, now, they will have, skipping the hotel coffee, and fixing up a Via.

I am a marketers dream. I am open to all manner of suggestion of pleasant times. You don't even have to try. All you have to do is write in a book what a character is eating and I will crave it. Reading "The Crimson Petal and the White", I craved tea and cinnamon scones. "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" had me eating potstickers and green tea ice cream for weeks. I don't remember a thing about the Narnia books, which I didn't love, except that in one of them they ate sausages as fat as your fingers (I quote loosely) and drank frothy hot chocolate. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo posed a bit of a problem, as the characters were prone to eating things like sandwiches of egg and sardine, or tomato and cheese and raw garlic, but I solved that by making tuna melts, always with coffee on the side, just like Mikael Blomkvist.

So on Sunday night when Noah said, "Let's go camping", I thought two things. One, yay Via, and two, yay Campfire Marshmallows. Campfire Marshmallows are what all the ladies on the Mormon blogs are packing for their families. One marshmallow is about four times the size of one measly Jet Puff. Seriously, these marshmallows make Jet Puffs look like guppy chow. I'd bought a pack in advance and had it sitting in my cupboard, driving my girls crazy with longing in happy anticipation of our camping trip.

We forgot the marshmallows.

I would like to blame the fact that I was a little carsick, but instead I'll tell the truth which is that, as Mr. V put it, "S'mores are the whole reason mommy goes camping". Which isn't entirely true, I also go camping to sip coffee in the woods in the (late) morning. It improves my self-image; allows me to view myself as 'outdoorsy' and 'contemplative', as woodsy and and earthy but low-maintenance, sitting there quietly with a hot mug and beatific smile and ignoring Mr. V's curses as he struggles with the fire and the bacon and the fact that we didn't bring any garbage bags and the kids have soiled all seven of their spare outfits.

I go camping solely to eat the s'mores, and that is my only excuse for the fact that I, a thirty-year-old mother of two, started to cry when I realized we'd forgotten the Marshmallow's From the Land That Time Forgot.

Mr. V set up camp while I told my kids to look sad and pathetic and dragged them across the campsite to bum marshmallows from some fellow campers. I am enormously brave in certain situations, mostly when I am drunk, but also when my access to s'mores and/or sugar and alcohol is threatened. The ladies kindly gave me twelve of their inferior Jet-Puffs and refused to let me pay them. Later I would suspect these self-same ladies of conspiring with a nearby retired couple to murder us in our sleep. But that wouldn't come until much later, when the sun went down and the fires went out and I found myself awake in the deep deep dark, and look we thought we had seen a bear and even though it only turned out to be a stupid bear-cow, forcing Ayla to turn to art therapy to sketch out her frustration at being gipped out of the sight of a real bear, I had bears on the brain and the kindly ladies had walked around the site and then STOPPED to TALK with the RETIRED COUPLE WITH AN AGING YELLOW LABRADOR which can only mean that they intended to murder us with axes in our sleep and make off with our Hershey Bars and Via.

Tent camping is one of those things only first-world people do for fun, along with slaving in the hot sun to pick our own berries, making our own cheese and yogurt, canning preserves, and wearing high heels. Everywhere else in the world they call these activities what they are, which is "hard work" and "things I would never, ever do if I didn't have to".

This is why I think I might be what you'd call "over" tent-camping. This and the fact that I can liken the experience only to pine-scented torture. Like the Viet Kong decided to mop the floors before laying into me with the bamboo shoots. We didn't have cots, or air mattresses, or even thick blankets, and so I spent the night cold and in pain that reached about five or six on the pain scale, I'm not ashamed to say I could have used nothing more than a Valium-Ambien cocktail, kept up by visions of my own death by Golden Age pass members and really, I don't see why I'd want to do that again.

But I will. I'll do it again, because it's fun for the kids. Because there's nothing kids enjoy more than repeating "we're bored!" and "noooow can I have a marshmallow??" while Mom and Dad sweat it over the rain clouds, and the Amazonian volume of mosquitoes, and the bear-cows, and the tent, and the rain fly, and the axe murderers, and the forgotten hammer and trash bags and the eighth outfit they didn't know they were going to need because they had underestimated how difficult it is to make a number two in the woods when you're four-years-old. I'll do it again in spite of, or maybe because of, the bear-cow; for the time-honoring of the tradition, complaining the whole way about the ride, complaining about how long it's taking to pack in and pack out while mom and dad slave like suckers, complaining about the smoke that blows always in your eyes, and the marshmallow you burnt to a crisp before losing in the fire, while Mom and Dad shuffle exhausted from the picnic table to the fire to the car, like Zombies without a will to keep on un-living, wondering why they do it, why they bother. Because for five minutes the clouds break and you can see millions of stars. Because, in spite of all this, you drive, ripe and weary and wondering if it's too early for a hip replacement, back into the hot and shiny city, balking at the noise, squinting at the glare, you remember the cool of the river and the quiet in the trees, and you wish you could do it all again.

Now I Will Me To Be A Bold Swimmer

I've been thinking a lot about the hero's journey these days.

I've never read Joseph Campbell, because Neil Gaiman scared me off of him without meaning to, but I'd like to think I know my fair share about heroes' journeys because let's face it. I am a sci-fi and fantasy geek and I always have been. She hid in secret for awhile, but she was always there.

I've been thinking about the hero's journey because a trial has come and I want to know if I can pass the test. Like the hero does.

Me and the heroes, we do ok for awhile. We deal with our little trials. Dust a vamp here, slay an orc there, use an expelliarmus before sitting down with a butter beer. We recognize we are looking for something and hey, we always knew there would be bumps a long the way.

But there was something on the horizon that we couldn't see coming, wasn't there? And so, for the heroes and for me, the stakes heighten. The little reavers we patted ourselves on the back for offing were never going to be the real trial. The world is so much larger than that.

So comes the point where the hero fully comprehends the task set before her. It is so much more difficult that she'd ever imagined. So massive and lurking and advanced. She knows that this time, the task is too large. The gods have required too much.

I felt like I hit the point where I can't carry on. I can't do it anymore. I fell off the horse and I can't muster the gumption to put my foot back in the stirrup.

The gods have asked too much.

(Because I don't want you worrying and imagining terrible ominous things, I want to stop 'coding', as I've been told I do, and just say it straight here: I was smacked with a depression that is a little bit seasonal and a little bit genetic. And I heard a new career wish in my heart that feels too crazy to be possible and too desperate to be ignored. Together, they leveled me. They melded into one massive creature that I would like to call, fondly, the Demon Cyvoldereaver Vampiremort Number Six.)

All those demons, all the monsters--they are the struggles we face in our own lives. Struggles to remain soft in this world that sometimes seems bright and brimming with possibility, but at others feels overwhelmingly large and cold and yes, ugly. They represent the struggle for us not to turn to stone. Not to live in eternal winter in our hearts. Our struggles to be kind, to remain open, to wonder, to explore, to just be alive in this world when often things aren't easy and there are never any guarantees.

The moment comes for every hero. And, as it turns out, for me. They see the task before them is too great. The battle can't be won. Survival relies on achieving the impossible. They feel weary and broken and that they can't go on.

They always do the same thing. Jesus, Harry Potter, Buffy, Starbuck, Cap'n and Zoe, Dean Winchester (Hi Kimmy!) Strider, Gandalf, all of them.

They spend a dark night in contemplation. They allow themselves a moment, an hour, a night of blackness and fear.

Then they come out guns blazing and fight the damn thing anyway.



Fight even though they know they can't win. Fight even though too much has been asked, too much is required.

I'm trying not to get too 'everyone's a hero in their own way' on you here. But we love the stories because they show us the things that we, too, might be capable of achieving. We don't slay demons or dragons or cylons, but the things we do face, are, I believe, much harder.

The heroes realize this truth: The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.*

Survival here requires more than training and practice with magic or a sword. It requires us to dig things up from the bottoms of our souls and our selves, things that hurt as they grow--when they're not refusing to grow at all.

It was time for me to go down to my depths and I felt like I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep going. It's been too hard. I felt broken. I felt a hardening inside me. I was too weary to fight, and I couldn't see my tribe.

The hardest thing in his world is to live in it. Monsters are slayed with a weapon, in a moment. That was never the real battle.

The real battle is the one within ourselves. To be of good faith. To let that little thing with feathers keep singing in your heart, even when sometimes you think hope is so stupid you'd rather strangle it than hear it chirp again.



I have a soul manifesto and it is this: I am on a journey. I have not arrived, and I respect that journey, with all its trials and all its dim lanterns and all its tangled, diverging paths. I respect the search. I believe one harmonic soul benefits the whole universe, like ripples in a pond. I will take hope and faith and love wherever I find them, and for those I will not stop searching. I will encourage the journey of every soul toward its own liberation. I don't want to be firm. I don't want to be stone. Here I will do my best to be open and tender. It hurts. It's what heroes do--the thing that scares them. The thing that is too much.

And I always wanted to be one.

See? My guns are blazing.

I am Vesuvius and I'm a big damn hero, I just decided.

*The quote is from Buffy. I believe it was written by the BDH Joss Whedon.