My New Favorite Song

Stay warm inside

I keep thinking about what a strange time we're living in. Not that I expected to go through life without experiencing any of the insanity that my grandparents did during the great depression and two World Wars. Or maybe I did...maybe I thought the security of my childhood would extend into forever. Grandpa had fought the demons with his heroic strength and fearlessness to sit back in his old age and provide security and tenderness to his grandchildren. As a side note, it seems that without him, my security in unconditional love is lamentably uncertain.

Earlier, I was washing some laundry in the kitchen sink and reflecting with a heavy heart on the most recent events in India. I wondered if a war is beginning to brew between Pakistan and India. I read on CNN today about Rwanda, and have a helpless understanding that the violence (poverty and AIDS) in Africa is far from being over. There's the report I heard about on NPR that within five years there's certain to be another terrorist attack in the West. And then our own individual, but nationally collective, spiral into economic crisis.

When I was a child I believed in something good and redeeming. That hope could come even in the darkness moments. But at thirty-one I realize that I don't believe in anything any more. After so many years of awakening to the willingness of human beings to inflict pain or death on others, I don't believe that there's a light at the end of anyone's tunnel.

So what keeps me going without a secure personal foundation of love, a sense of home to return to, uncertain beliefs for anything beyond this world, hope for peace and compassion to prevail over violence and apathy?

I think there's an answer. I think there's potential for compassion and love everywhere. Each of us just has to chose it. I think there's hope and disappointment, pain and delight in every human experience. I do believe in one thing that's eternal: the capacity of the human spirit to love, to give selflessly, to make decisions that will affect others in positive ways, and even throw some creativity out into the world. The answer's in that feeling we get when we go out of the way to help a patron find a picture of their great-grandfather, or bring some magazines by a friend's house when she's laid up with a broken leg. Or I don't know...like making enough soup to share with friends.

And for our own pockets of personal experience, I believe it's how we use the opportunity in each moment...or the more positive moments...to enjoy the simple things that emerge from daily existence and activity. As I rinsed my laundry in the sink, I took advantage of that time to reflect: many people are hurting in this world right now, tomorrow it could be me. But for now, I'm going to enjoy this music...this moment, the textures and smells and colors, and the quiet of the night.

it's like that disco song, but much sadder.

I’m leaving. Yeah, we’ve played these games before, though it’s usually you doing the leaving. I don’t understand how things have gotten to the way they are now, but the situation is intolerable, so the only choice I have is to go. It’s either live in pain for sixty years, or go and make them mine, whether they turn out good or bad.

You treat me badly. You’ve treated me badly for years. You ignore me, punish me with silence, critique everything from my choice in entertainment to friends to my technique in bed. You dislike my ambition, my love for education. You have convinced me to change for you without asking. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I’m doing all the things for a guy that I said I’ve never do: change my personality and my behaviors, and put off my dreams, and sacrifice what is important to me.

You’ve ignored my needs; I have sex only when I force the issue, which is usually about once every three months. Yet, I find you in front of the computer about 2-3 nights a week. I don’t remember the last time you kissed me. That is the part that I’m most ashamed of. You may act like it is me avoiding the physical affection in our relationship, but you describe the sensation of me touching you as “weird.” I can put my arms around you and you remain motionless. I’ve dealt with that for a long time.

So why have I stayed? You are a good father. I come home at night, and the kids are happy. I like seeing them happy. I love sharing the kids with someone who loves them the same way I love them. I promised myself as a child of 13 that I’d never put my kids through a divorce. It complicates everyone’s lives, and there are all kinds of difficult considerations: living arrangements, money, emotional health and security for the kids.

But I finally have reached that place my mother must have reached when I was 13. I can’t do it anymore. If I stay, it’s a death sentence. So I’ll go. And I’ll most likely be happy again, but it will take years to undo the damage.

The best things in life are

Today's thanksgiving and my thirty-first birthday. I began my special day by taking my first dose of prozac.

It's not a secret. I'm depressed, and I haven't been able to shake it since my Grandfather got sick and passed away in the Fall of 2006.

The thing about depression is that it can take a depressed person a long time to work up the motivation to get help. I made it to that point. I endured apathy to find out what psychologists took my insurance and made an appointment with one. I've been going to her once a month since April. That's for forty-five minutes every four weeks. Forty dollars for forty-five minutes every four weeks.

And I'm worse than I've been in months. So today, at the prompting of my good friends, I went to my regular physician for anti-depressants. I told him I was quitting my psychologist, and we talked about how I should be going at least once a week....he preferred twice a week. He gave me prozac (as Dad says: "Yay prozac.")

I feel like I've done well with the process, and things are finally beginning to move back in the upwards direction. Getting drugs, talking to supportive friends...it's very much helped me in initiating improvements.

However, I've hit a road block. While my former counselor suggested I find a way to stick with my psychologist, I find it really ironic that someone who's suffering from a deep debilitating depression can't afford to get real help. I can't afford to go four times a month ($160). I'm a simple person...I have nothing else to cut out of my budget to accommodate that. On top of all this, my insurance is going up next year, meaning I'll be making $30-$80 less on my paycheck every month. And finally, my co-pay is going up to $45. I'm finding myself slipping through a loophole again.

I'm searching for a counseling clinic with a sliding scale payment plan. I'm terribly nervous that I'll make too much money to qualify for their sliding scale (yet, too little to be able to pay for services at regular cost). It doesn't make me feel any better about myself that I can't afford help. Somehow I can't help but feel like it says something about my personal worth.

And I hope that this birthday day isn't foreshadowing of what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life. However, my prozac prescription? It's free!!

In FY09, I am going on a debt diet.

I realized that I may *need* a new car in FY09 since I have 96K miles on my car and I need to see what I can afford. In accordance with my calculations, I should have an excess of $439.00 per month to spend on a car payment however, it seems I am always dipping into my saving account to pay off a bill….or whipping out the Old Visa to put gas in my car. SO, from this day on, I will give myself a $25 luxury item a pay period and see if I can save a car payment a month and deal in cash only. No more Amazon.Com purchases, no more new shoes, no more antique furniture, no more trips to Hasting’s, no more Made In China Wal-Mart crap…only the library from now on and wear what I have and get rid of the Made in China crap from Wal-Mart! I am tired of RED!!!! I want to operate in the BLACK AGAIN!

Juicy Bits!

So um.....I've been reading The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. First time, too. It's fascinating! And it reminds me of this book I read for a class when I was getting my masters. We were supposed to read a romance novel. I don't like the Harlequin paperbacks (not because I'm a snob, but because I just can't get into the stories), so I picked up another book. I can't remember what it's called (DANGIT!), but I remember it took place in a medieval history of a land where the women were dominant and the men submissive. And the women WERE dominant. My professor asked me to read some of the more juicy passages to the class (we were a class full of women).

If I remember it, I'll let you know. And I want to check it out again :)

I feel like, since things haven't turned out the way I thought they would, I should invest some time in helping people less fortunate than me in material or educational ways. But for some reason I can't bring myself to do a damned thing to help anyone. I can't even help myself. I just want to sit here and drink. I'm thinking that I might pull out of it some when spring gets here (because winter's the devil), but I'm pretty certain I'll never be able to transcend my resentment toward certain disappointments.

I think I just need to leave this place as soon as I can. Sure circumstance is close on my heals wherever I go, but at least I'll be able to fight it in a new place. Like maybe a with a white sand beach! And I'll bring all the poor homeless people with me, and we'll have a big party.