Tag: Depression

13Oct

Thinking Without Responsibility

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

It’s the third full day of some eerie symptomless sickness that has left me bedridden. There’s no pain or congestion or nausea or anything out of the ordinary except for a vast hollowness where my head used to be, and even reading ten pages of a book tires me out. In between the heavy sleeping and the dizzy waking, I’ve been thinking. It’s nice to be able to think without responsibility, when no one expects you to be coherent or figure out so much as a lunch menu.

I’ve thought a lot about the upcoming elections and America’s future. I have little faith in candidates’ platforms, though I am concerned what McCain and Obama plan to do regarding our drowning economy. I find myself drawn toward the candidate exhibiting the most sincere goodwill toward people—not America’s status in the world, not its corporate wealth, not any generalized patriotic ideals—but individuals who are struggling to pay their rent. Who can’t afford health care (raise your hand, anyone?). Who don’t make enough to support their families because of corrupt corporations and an impersonal government. Who feel cheated by decisions our leadership never adequately informed us about (no names, but it rhymes with Shmiraq). Our nation needs a hefty dose of TLC.

I pretty much keep my political ideas confined to 1) my husband, who has always respected what I think, and 2) my own head, because people are pretty polarized about the presidential election and I have no immediate death wish. So no, I won’t tell you who I’m voting for… but here’s a hint: If you’re Alaskan, we may or may not agree. ::Grin::

My thoughts of late have also been occupied with family life. I am a hopeless perfectionist, and my addled brain has latched onto the following ideal of motherhood:

  • Takes the kids for daily hikes, nature walks, and/or camping trips. Teaches survival skills, knot-tying, etc.
  • Structures each day according to Somebody-or-the-Other’s accredited theory of education, packing spare knowledge into all empty spots of the day and raising bright-eyed geniuses. Creepy nighttime learning tapes optional.
  • Plays regular sports with the family. Kids get a wide enough exposure to athletics that they can make educated decisions whether they want to become MBA players or make the Olympic curling team.
  • Converts a portion of the house into a communal art studio, complete with miniature canvases, safety glass scissors, and sippy cups of gel medium.
  • Earns the nickname Mrs. Montessori for her colorful playroom always stocked with dress-up clothes, abaci, and imagination enhancement drugs.
  • Reigns over her little domestic kingdom in high heels and oven mitts, singing supercalifragilistic ditties to scare toys into place and always baking something light and fluffy. By age four, kids would know how to scrub grout and make perfect quiche.

I feel like I’m just now waking up and OMG! I have spawn! and OMG! I have no parenting archetype! It feels a lot like the flu. I’ve done a lot of problem-solving over the last 3.6 years—figuring out how much rice cereal to fix at a time, how to battle diaper rash, how to get a stubborn toddler to stay in her bed—and I’ve relied heavily on mamalove to fill in the gaps. It’s not a bad way to parent. And yet, I want incredibly special girlhoods for my daughters. I want them to remember a mother who was fully present with them, not constantly thinking about writing or worrying about the dirty house. I want us to use our imaginations together and create sparkling memories, whether we’re learning multiplication tables or simply having a ticklefest.

I haven’t done a good job getting my genetic anxiety under control, and OMG! it’s time for me to relax and enjoy life already. Especially with my little girls, who matter 1,000,000% more than anything I spend my time worrying over. So now the question: How to parent more purposefully without stressing out about all the versions of mother I am not? Because I so am not a sports person. Survival skills I have none. We have no space for dress-up clothes, and I don’t even know how to use gel medium. Something tells me that I don’t have to be perfect at everything in the world to be a great mom, but that something has a “Kick me” sign stuck to its bum, compliments of my brain. Stupid brain.

My bedridden thoughts have also drifted toward holiday gifts and Matt Damon and tarte tatin and how I really should shower once this week and I’m just going to stop there. After all, sick people aren’t responsible for hygiene any more than they are for perfect parenting or political involvement. OMG! whew.

6Oct

Social Housefly

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Summer has been a sore loser this year. Rather than make its curtain call and exit gracefully, it’s been brooding backstage, pulling down sullen clouds to mask any potential autumnal glory. I can handle rain and wind and sun, but I never can figure out what to do with sulk. Feel free to blame my recent blog neglect on this.

Of course, by the time I finished writing that last sentence, the sun had flexed its ironic muscle and blazed through every wisp of mopey gray. It’s hard to stay pessimistic when the world is so stubbornly beautiful. It’s just… The things I’ve always loved the most about fall are all social. School starting up with fresh lined paper and gooey nuggets of knowledge to share with my classmates. A Halloween costume party with pumpkins to carve (though one year, I had to resort to cantaloupe), hilarious group games, and cauldron cakes. Thanksgiving dinner for everyone we knew didn’t have a home-cooked meal at his or her disposal; Cajun turkey and angel biscuits and no less than three types of pie, our large dining room bursting at the seams. I grow a bit desperate for community when the sky glazes over.

Last year, I was too busy bringing forth offspring to wallow in loneliness, but this fall, I’m fighting my blessings tooth and nail. We have a lovely apartment in our dream country; I should be bowled over with gratefulness every time I walk in the door, but I can’t stop focusing on its size. Which is close to that of a matchbox. It snags at my sense of purpose not to be able to invite groups over, have overnight guests, or keep an open-door policy like we used to have for our friends. Tiny apartments, especially those inhabited by tiny children, are always, always, always a mess, and I’ve been keeping visitors at bay.

I should be glad I’m not in school too. I mean, I am glad to spend my days unshackled by assignments or deadlines. But oh, I miss the learning environment. I had some amazing classmates in college, and my brain goes into a panicky flutter when I consider never being in a circle of like-minded academics again. I’m aching to go buy pencils.

For the record, I have no reason to be lonely this autumn. We’ve made more friends here than we can manage at once, and all it will take is some effort on my part to coax out a fulfilling relationship or two. And other people have been quite willing to open their [larger] homes for our feasts so far. But the clouds are back, mountains of damp smoke piled just outside my window, and they whisper of a bleak social future.

How does a natural pessimist stop reading her fortune in the weather? And how does a shy conformist break out of her bubble to find community?

24Sep

Leaf Piles of Failure

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Yesterday was one of Those Days, the kind you can’t help laughing over when retelling even though you really want to weep. To get my mind off of writer’s block and the subsequent gloom-and-doom of my future, I spent over a significant chunk of day cooking, peeling, and pureeing pumpkin. I whipped up two loaves’ worth of spicy-sweet pumpkin bread batter and deposited them in the oven… at which instant the oven breathed its last. I had to leave the kitchen as-is, heaped with dirty dishes and unbaked bread and orange splatters aplenty, to pick Natalie up from school, and then it took us over two hours to get back. A certain three-year-old—no names, but you catch my drift—dragged her feet to the extent that I pushed two girls with the stroller up-up-uphill. First to one store, then to another, then uphill yet again for an essential we forgot. A certain eleven-month-old—again, no names—threw her hat as we were crossing a spectacularly busy intersection, and the resulting car honks and angry shouts made me die a little inside. Then the stroller tipped over at the park, our grocery bag burst, and we all limped back to our pumpkin-besmeared home spewing a trail of white sugar in our wake. That was when the doorbell rang.

I’m learning that all you can do with a day so determined to be a failure is to let it. Roll around in its messiness and stupidity like a pile of fall leaves and have a blast scattering them to the wind. (Though honestly, I have hated rolling around in leaf piles since I was eight and realized that they probably contain bugs. And also dried leaves, which are awfully poky. And also bugs. Nevertheless, the metaphor stays.) Once I get over my unreasonable expectations, such as productivity and basic hygiene, failure days can be kind of fun. And the best news? Hours away is a brand new day that, chances are, has already learned to behave itself.

(I may acquire a taste for optimism yet… Who would have guessed?)

23Sep

In Between

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Sweet vanilla chai this morning in a quiet house, stuck in between paragraphs of a story. My mind wanders as always. To the four neat publication packages tied with invisible bows, probably somewhere over the Atlantic right now in a gray bin of papercuts. To my wilderness of a kitchen, ravaged as always by the elements of children and smallness, stickiness concentrate. To the jewel of a morning outside but never inside, no matter how many windows are open or how earnestly I coax the world to slip in and bustle with me awhile. To my baby’s runny nose and the doubt-gremlins in my head and my chipped nail polish and the dust in the cracks of my keyboard and the photos my old harddrive took down to its grave and the marching ranks of to-dos.

When I’m in the groove, words sprinting from warehouses in my brain to my fingers to the page, I have no trouble with the world. Dishes could be heaped in the bathtub and bills perched in a line on my desk, but as long as I had written something to be proud of that day, Polyanna herself could not be more optimistic. On the flip side, writer’s block makes me forget how to be content.

Today I need to remember.

Fresh pumpkin waiting in the fridge (and not having to pull anyone’s teeth to acquire it this year)
Sweet baby gurgles and quacks from the other room
Natalie’s sunny change of heart about school
Cinnamon cocoa
My favorite ultra-petite laptop, The Organicow, suddenly being back in commission when I need it most
The luxury of hours to spend as I choose
Anne of the Island
Bright orange flowers sunbursting on the balcony
10 minutes mapping out melodies on the piano (and discovering my fingers aren’t quite as rusty as I thought)
An afternoon espresso date with Dan
Always, always, fresh starts—new bursts of oxygen to the brain, new ideas, new hours with opportunities all their own

9Sep

Doctor Popeye

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

The public health system here is fantastic in that it only costs pennies compared to what you’d spend in the great US of A. Pediatrics, obstetrics, geriatrics, emergencies, and general practitioner’s visits are completely free, while other medical care requires only a small fee comparable to most American co-pays. (And, to assure anyone who has the same doubts I did upon moving here, Italian doctors are up-to-date medically. They might have a few different philosophies on medicine—i.e. painkillers should make pain tolerable, not erase it completely—but they do know what they are doing, and they do it well.) So, fantastic!

The only real downside is that the public health system here was designed by hamsters. Here, for instance, is what goes into a typical doctor’s visit:
You call your doctor to make an appointment.
You show up, pick a number, and wait your turn.
You visit with the doctor, who gives you a prescription for blood work.
You go to the public health office, pick a number, and wait your turn.
You give them your prescription and receive an appointment to get your blood taken.
You go to the testing center on your appointment date, pick a number, and wait your turn.
You show your prescription to the person at the window who stamps it so you can pay.
You walk to another office, pick a number, and wait your turn.
You pay the fee (oh so tiny, glory be!) and get a receipt.
You walk back to the testing center, pick a number, and wait your turn (catching a theme yet?).
You show them your receipt and are given a new number.
You wait your turn.
You are called back, have your blood taken, and are given a receipt.
You return to the testing center the next week, show them your receipt, and get your blood test results.
You make another appointment with your doctor to discuss the results.
You race around a wheel seventy-nine times and scurry off to bury your head in the sawdust.
Etc.

I won’t even tell you what went into our dentist appointment yesterday because you would cry, and enough tears have been shed on that account already. Suffice it to say that you have to learn (Bethany, are you listening?) to give up the American ideals of efficiency and fast results and just accept Italy for what it is: laid-back. (I am still writhing from a profound sense of bureaucratic chaos that I insist on taking personally, and I want to tell you that “laid-back” is just a euphemism for “lazy,” and I want all those government employees who are enjoying their espressos on company time to feel the depths of my frustration toward them. But honestly, I love living in a country where dreary jobs come with sunny coffee breaks and long lunches and built-in naptimes. Italians have mastered the art of relaxation, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Truly.)

So all this has just been a prelude to the fact that 1 ½ months after calling the doctor, we finally have an idea of what’s been causing my unmanageable fatigue: anemia. It’s not much of a surprise, as I’ve always hovered near the low end of healthy and I’ve leaned further and further toward vegetarian—or chickentarian, you could say—in the last year. So there it is. For just over a week now, I’ve been taking iron tablets that taste like compressed leaves, and the difference is incredible. Is normal always this glorious? Because the freedom to have good and bad days instead of bad and worse is making me a little giddy.

Less than one week with Natalie all to myself, and I finally have the energy to play with her, come up with special starting-school rituals, and hop over to the playground to help her meet new friends… all the while keeping the house in decent shape, going out with friends, signing up for Pilates (!), and writing up a storm. It’s kind of like I’m a real person again.

So thank you all for your kindness and sympathy while I was trying to figure out the mushy liquid my brain had become; misery doesn’t just love company, it needs company. Yes, you deserve a heaping bowlful of thanks. And also, if you’re feeling chronically tired (Bethany, are you listening?)… Eat your spinach. That Popeye was onto something.

15Aug

Free-Range Eggs

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Everything is quiet now. A brief thunderstorm earlier this evening scrubbed the air clean of all its sticky summer-night noises, and the whole world has gone to bed. Our vacation is almost over, and even though it has sucked every puff of energy out of my body, I’m still reluctant to give it up. I know that like all good things, this has to come to an end to make room for other good things, but I have a hard time with little transitions.

I can’t explain this vague dread I’m harboring of the upcoming year (years have always started in September for me, no matter how many balls drop in January). It sounds ridiculous to say this year contains too many unknowns, considering that this time last year, I was hugely pregnant and Visa-less. But then, I guess I knew which basket my eggs were in. Right now, life looks a little formless and void, and I can’t tell where the firmament separates from the wrinkles in my brain. There will be so much rampant growing in my precious family this year, and here comes the dread: It’s always a gamble whether that growth will bring us closer together or shoot us in opposite directions.

It seems that daredevil bike rides and stormy stroller races and fried octopus dinners have been only the prelude to the real adventure of stepping in own front door together again. And oh, it will be epic.

30Jul

Captain Courage

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

“We should go out,” Natalie observed this morning once we had finished muddling through breakfast. Oh boy. After twenty-seven deep breaths and a booster shot of Zen, I forced myself to agree. We should go out. It can’t be healthy to cluck around inside our tiny coop alldayeveryday, and maybe the giant-sized world outside would go easy on us — a wee flock of homebound girls with shy feathers.

But first, there were naps and a shower and diaper changes and potty time. Clothes were procured from the laundry line (because one can’t wear a bathrobe forever, you know), hair was brushed, makeup was applied. Sunscreen was dolloped onto wriggling fair-skinned girls, and my industrial-strength corduroy purse was filled: wallet, no wallet (who wants the extra weight?), keys, phone, wallet again (we need to get eggs), lip gloss, tissues, camera, baby food, dirty bib, oops, clean bib, spoons, napkins, water bottle, water to go in the water bottle, sunglasses, did I already get the keys? Natalie got her holey jeans and socks and her cool silvery tennis shoes, plus a polka-dot headband—her latest fashion obsession. Sophie got a hat, until I remembered how she always flings it in the mud, and those great Velcro sandals she loves to remove with her teeth, and I buckled her into the stroller. We were going to do it.

Out the door we traipsed into my Tim Burtonesque imaginationscape. Curly, sunken-eyed trees, purple-tinged sunlight, whimsical hostility at every turn. But I could not in good conscience let myself become a hermit. At least, I could not retreat until we had spent at least as much time outside as we had spent preparing to go out, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place* and marched on.

Natalie skipped and picked pink flowers that “smelled like candy!” while Sophie kicked for joy and occasionally tried to dive-bomb out of her stroller. We bought eggs without any meltdowns or blitzed grocery displays, and my outlook slowly softened. Maybe these great outdoors, buzzing with life and warmth and green, were not so terrifying. Maybe I really could find my way back to my lane in the flow of normalcy and be the kind of mom who breezes her girls to the playground every morning without a hitch. And even if I found it tough to pry myself away from home, I could do it for them. Just seeing Natalie’s palpable excitement about going to play with other children made the trip worth it.

Except that by the time we got to the playground, it was deserted. Every one of the other kids had gone home for lunch. Natalie, ever an optimist, asked me for her pail and shovel (“Sorry, we didn’t bring those”) and then for her soccer ball (“Uh, we didn’t bring that either”) and finally just wandered forlornly around the empty swings and seesaw. I sat down on the winner’s bench for Crappiest Mother of the Year and fed Sophie her puréed blueberries, which she alternately spit out and sneezed out, and my head slowly began closing in on me. The sun was gothic cartoon again, the olive trees dense and grabby. I remembered the piles of dishes and laundry and misplaced toys I had ignored for the sake of this trip, back at home breeding and throwing wild parties like housework tends to do when left to its own devices. And suddenly, I needed to be indoors RIGHT AWAY.

I hate how easily panic hits me these days. There is never a reason or an obvious trigger, though anytime between noon and 7 p.m. is fair game. It just strikes my brain like a lightning bolt, and I can’t catch my breath. I can’t think straight. All I can see is the future billowing in flames around me and some abstract shapes of terror, urgent terror. I wouldn’t be surprised if my eyes turned white during these attacks, like the character from X-Men who summons tornadoes with her thoughts.

There might as well have been tornadoes shrieking over my head as we rushed home today. It had been too much. Simply going out had been too much. Or maybe it was going to all that effort, so much effort, just to reinforce our collective loneliness. I had suddenly acquired a taste for agoraphobia, and it chased me up the elevator, shaking, into our front door. Goodbye world, hello chronic wimp.

Much later in the day, as I was relocating messes and bludgeoning myself over the brain, a quote flashed through my mind: Courage is the willingness to accept fear and act anyway.** Despite my fragile state of mind and irrational fears of the world around me, I made the effort to walk out my front door today. What’s more, I survived. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that hey, this pretty much makes me Captain Courage. With way cuter clothes.

The End

—

*I have a thing for Shakespeare. Don’t tell Dan.

**Not Shakespeare. Not Jesus. Not sure who said this, in fact. Was it you?

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