Skinning the truth requires vision, sharp knives, and long skirts.  Or skirts that hide more souls than plain air.  Strike the cello with your faith, with your scriptures, with your colorful omniscience.  Bleed into the woodwork like a silverfish recognizing your first rain, your first damp spell that rests across your shoulders like slaked thirst, like a fresh contract.

Squeeze what light you can from the street I’ve walked, from the rooms I’ve laid down in, from the stains of your own convictions.  Scar your own skin under the freeway, between the cars and the light.  I raise you a razer and wish you a soul spit-shine.  Lay with the fishes, swim with the sharks, bleed with the teens.  This body is nothing more than a reflection of a nightmare.  Let me go.  Let me go.  Let me go.

Every knife is utility, every knife has my name etched across its metal.  You can’t see it because it hasn’t called you out.  Crooked lines lead to imperfect veins like a map you remember from birth, like skin rifting with the atmosphere, like love you wish wouldn’t flash across your window.  Like death when it splits your memory.

]]> http://www.betterthanbullets.com/skinning-the-truth/feed/ 0 http://www.betterthanbullets.com/different-types-of-depression-not-all-depression-is-the-same/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=different-types-of-depression-not-all-depression-is-the-same http://www.betterthanbullets.com/different-types-of-depression-not-all-depression-is-the-same/#comments Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:10:49 +0000 angelina http://www.betterthanbullets.com/?p=1318

Mental illness has been a subject of much fear and mystery to humans for centuries.  We fear that being mentally ill means we’re morally compromised, not safe for others to be around, tainted by the devil, bewitched, possessed, being punished by God, not trustworthy, scary, or just plain bad.  People have a very hard time thinking of the brain as an organ in our body, like all other organs, that may be damaged or neurologically different or broken.  To admit that our emotions might be largely controlled by chemical deficiencies in the brain freaks people out.  If our emotions are nothing more than chemical messages being sent from our brain to our nervous system – what does that say about our will, or spirits, our SOULS?  Does that mean that what we feel isn’t really real?  Are emotions and thoughts nothing more than electrical impulses?

Many strides have been made to change the medieval fear people have about mental illness, lots of progress has been made scientifically to expand our understanding of what causes it and how we can treat it.  Unfortunately there is a huge movement of people who refuse to believe that the brain can have disorders that are out of our control – that can’t be fixed with will power, positive thinking, diet, and exercise.  These people are very vocal and to the population of people with major depressive disorder, very dangerous.

Depression is often accompanied by anxiety, as is the case with me, but I’m only addressing the depression specifically here.  You can take it that many of the triggers and causes of depression are the same for anxiety but the treatment can be quite different.  Cognitive behavioral therapy helps ease my anxiety but does nothing to ease my depression.  So please note that I’m only discussing depression here.

It is also important to note that I’m putting this in layman’s terms but will provide links to professional descriptions of depression for you to read yourself.

Different kinds of Depression:

Major Depressive Disorder – Major depression can run in families and is commonly described as being an issue with chemical imbalances in the brain or a problem with the brain’s ability to communicate with the nervous system or deliver the chemicals necessary for balanced functioning.  It is characterized by debilitating depressive episodes that interfere with a person’s ability to function normally.  Some people may only experience one episode in their lifetime but most often this is a recurring problem.

Situational Depression – This is depression that you experience because of external factors such as job loss, death of a loved one, sickness, poor diet, not enough exercise, bad relationships.  If you address the factors that made you depressed the depression will most likely ease up or completely disappear.

Bipolar Disorder – Another chronic depressive disorder (and there is more than one classification for this one) that often runs in families.  This depression is distinctive for the dramatically alternating depressive and manic states experienced.  A few classic problems experienced by people with bipolar disorder are difficulty maintaining relationships, risky behaviors such as wild spending of money, unsafe sexual activity, and carelessness with personal safety.

Suicide – suicidal ideation may accompany any of the mood disorders but NAMI lists it as a separate issue on their site.  Feelings of being a failure, of hopelessness, of being overwhelmed, of worthlessness, and of powerlessness can all contribute to a desire to kill one’s self.  One of the dangers of suicide is that a lot of people who succeed at committing it don’t actually announce their intentions.  But if someone you know expresses suicidal thinking it’s imperative that they get help from a professional – NOT a New Age guru or from life coaches or from anyone who has no clue about the complex issues of the brain and how they can collide to inspire a person to kill themself.

In order to treat depression it is vital for a professional trained in diagnosing mental illness to discover which specific kind of depression an individual has because the methods for treating each one are very different.  If you medicate a person with bipolar disorder with medications appropriate for people with major depressive disorder you could make their condition much worse.  Approaches to therapy may also vary quite a lot.  A person with situational depression is going to have much different needs than someone with major depressive disorder.

I was suicidal as a teen and was given the most awful collection of advice during my suicidal years from idiots who knew nothing about depression and made me feel worse about myself because their suggestions didn’t fix my depression and that compounded the feeling that I had depression because I was a weak and bad person and that if I was stronger or not a complete failure then getting more exercise would lift my depression like everyone said it would.  When I finally did get professional help I wished I’d gotten it 18 years of suffering earlier.  I wish to god I hadn’t listened to so many ill-informed people who don’t know anything about mental illness, half of which really didn’t believe in it at all.  People who think mental illness (especially depression) is just a state of mind are ignorant and dangerous to those of us suffering from serious persistent mental illness.

I’ll tell you what else: my parents never knew I was even depressed.  My friends knew I was depressed and some of them knew about my self harm but I did not go around threatening to kill myself.  It may have been obvious to close friends – I certainly had a fixation with death and dying but I don’t think anyone knew how many times I came close to doing it and how much time I spent planning how I would die.  Just because someone isn’t threatening suicide doesn’t mean that they aren’t thinking about it and will become very serious about it.

Here’s my urgent plea to all of you:

If you know someone who seems really depressed do NOT give them advice on how to treat their depression unless you are a professional.  Give them your ear, show that you care and are there for them if they want to talk or need your help – but do not advise them on how to fix themselves unless you are a professional and have discovered what specific type of depression they’re suffering from.  If you want to be more helpful and haven’t already read about depression from expert sources the first thing you should do is some reading.  If you’re really concerned about someone gently suggest they get professional help.  It can be a scary step to take but also can transform a life of suffering and struggle into one of quality and balance.   I’ve gotten someone to get psychiatric help and they went from talking about suicide to living a much more balanced and happy life.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness is an excellent and reliable source for information about all mental illnesses and I highly recommend you read about the different kinds of depression listed there:

NAMI information about different types of depression

The National Institute of Mental Health is also an excellent source of reliable information.  I’m giving the link that describes the different kinds of depression but they have many more pages about treatments, clinical trials, scientific information, lists of symptoms.  Please dig through their site to inform yourself if you haven’t already done so:

NIMH – What are the different kinds of depression?

For those of you who love and trust WebMD they also have reliable information (I’m pretty sure they get theirs from the previous two sites but they word things a little differently and might strike a better chord with some:

WebMD – Types of Depression

The very first step to treating depression is to find out what kind you have.  Get help.  It may take a few tries to find a doctor you trust but that’s really important.  If you go to a psychiatric doctor and don’t like him/her then they won’t be able to help you.  I lucked out the first time and found a great psychologist but don’t give up if it takes you a few tries.  If you suffer from depression – getting professional help is the best thing you can do for yourself.  You do NOT have to take medications if you don’t feel they’re right for you (but in many cases other types of therapy are more effective in conjunction with medication – that’s just a fact, not my opinion) but you do need to find out what kind of depression you have in order to plan your treatment.

It’s not your fault:  if you suffer from chronic depression it is NOT your fault.  It is NOT anything you did wrong or anything you did at all.  External factors such as diet and exercise can definitely make clinical depression worse (or better) but that isn’t the cause and won’t be the cure.

You are not alone.

You’re part of my tribe.  Our tribe is very large and vulnerable but the more we talk about mental illness and bring it out into the light the less of a stigma will be attached to it and the less ignorance of others will hurt us.  You are not alone.

One last thing – if you or someone you know is at high risk of committing suicide please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:

1-800-273-8255

Lemons.  Whatcha gonna do with them all?  I’ve had so many metaphorical lemons in my life but now I have literal ones too.  I am infusing olive oil with Meyer lemon zest (for cooking with) and safflower oil for solid deodorant.  I am freezing the juice for use later, I need to take my time deciding what to do with the lemons my friend Emma sent me.  I’m getting another box from my friend Sharon!  I realize why lemons have become equated with a sour deal.  But I don’t much sympathize with it because I love sour things.  I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.  To me, lemons represent cleanliness, freshness, zest, sprightly flavor, bright sunshine, healing, and joy.  Make lemonade out of lemons?  Fine.  Do that.  But why limit yourself?  You can make lemon curd, lemon tarts, add lemon to tea, lemon pound cake, limoncello (which, for the record, I find bitter and disappointing but I like to think it’s possible to make this an amazing drink), lemons to clean pots and pans, lemons to degrease, lemons to infuse into oils, lemons into cosmetics, added to home made ginger ale!

Lemons are an amazing gift.  Situations that seem sour?  Also come with gifts if you’re willing to recognize them.  My mental illness comes with gifts.  Gifts that others have envied without realizing that’s the source of some of them.  Getting sick gives you an opportunity to rest your body, to slow down.  Bad jobs can clarify your mind about what you really want and need from a job giving you a much clearer path forward.  Abuse shows some people the strength of the human spirit, the ability to see it where others can’t, and sometimes the ability to access it in the most impossible situations.  Fires often cleanse a landscape and a life of debris and confusion, bringing simplicity and thankfulness where before there was clutter and expectation.  Even death gives the gift of making room on the planet for new life.

Sugar, on the other hand, shows its pleasures and gifts flagrantly while hiding beneath the surface many evils of disease, rot, and somnabulance of mind.

I prefer transparent evils and hidden gifts.

You need to listen to Fun. singing “We are Young” with Janelle Monae because it’s the only reason I’m going to sleep tonight.  Click the following link and watch these two singing.  Watch them smiling and being in the moment completely.  Be young again without having to die a thousand humiliations.  Listen.  And if you hate it, go ahead and play your Iron Maiden.  I won’t be mad if you at least give this link a listen.

We Are Young

Sometimes I feel like I’m chronicling things that will be picked apart by the next generation; by my son and your son and our grandchildren.  The things I remember will be picked apart for evidence of truth, for crumbs of absolution, and for self definition, to prove whatever the young wish to prove.  I feel disobliging.  I worry that the only thing I can prove for anyone is that your truth and my truth and their truths are never going to look exactly the same.  I can’t make angels of devils or pretend that youth is innocent and carefree.  I suppose it was for people with other truths than mine, but youth as I knew it was a painful emancipation from safety, from anything resembling sleep, from all sense of certainty.  Adulthood brought with it greater peace and less violence.

Not sure what I’m trying to say tonight.  I think music is saying it for me.  When I watch  the acoustic video version of Fun.’s song “We Are Young” with Janelle Monae I feel set free of something I didn’t even know was trapped.  It’s an old school anthem of youth, of making mistakes, burning through the morning hours.  The most charming thing is to watch the singers singing it.  They are so clearly enjoying themselves.  They are in the moment.  There is such a simple joy in recording this song.  They keep smiling, especially Nate Ruess, like this moment is the only one.  They are so completely in the present.  I think most performers are, if they’re impressing us at all.

I’m reminded of the night my best friend Carrie and I walked down to the creepy park a few houses down from hers to sing Whitney Houston songs.  She sang and tried to get me to harmonize.  I’m a shit singer.  My voice isn’t bad, particularly, but I don’t have music in my veins the way Carrie does.  She has a gorgeous voice, very full and warm.  I remember seeing her belting out “The Greatest Love of All” and the look on her face was transcendental, both removed and present simultaneously; joyous and soulful, her lungs were full of the future, the past, the minute, the notes, and I just tried to do as she directed so as to keep the spell from breaking.  I wanted to keep her singing because her voice cutting into the dark air felt daring, telling, and free.

We felt something fall on the park like a pall and with the premonition of youth, the fear of colts who don’t yet rationalize bad feelings by jaded doubts, we ran for our lives.  We ran down the street, past her house, past her neighbor’s houses, and when we reached the parking lot in front of  Uncle Charlie’s bar we stopped, breathless, and laughed at the hairs still rising on our necks.

My good friend’s son came home from Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago.  I think he’s done being young in a silly way.  War changes you irrevocably.  I can’t begin to imagine the horrors he’s experienced.  Trial by fire sweeps your soul clean of any pretenses and strips you of your filters.  Going to war is like entering my world through the grisly back door.

We have to listen to music that lights the black tunnels for us.  Your light might be different than mine.  It’s okay.  We don’t have to rise to the same anthems.  We just all have to keep rising.  Find your song for youth, for hope, for fighting the indifferent dark, and light your torch so that I can see it from my own dark night.

I am indescribably happy not to be young any more but I am also engaged in wishing a future for the young that outshines the Aurelius borealis.

I can’t believe that a country which prides itself on equal rights for all citizens and the right to pray to whatever god you choose or to not pray to any god at all, and that prides itself on being the best and free-est country in the world is still trying to limit the rights of its gay citizens in ridiculous ways, to project racial prejudices on people who appear to be from the middle east, to assume that all Muslims are bent on bringing down all non-Muslims, and I can’t believe that women are still having to fight tooth and nail to retain the right to NOT FUCKING BEAR CHILDREN and to limit the number they do have if they have them and that they are still having to fight to make their own moral decisions about what they do with their own fucking bodies.

Are we living in the dark ages?  This view of our country that most Americans have is proof that most Americans have country-dismorphic-disorder* in which the truth is not recognized underneath a narcissistic masturbation of wishful thinking.

Perhaps it’s time the United States sought the help of a trained psychologist to help us see ourselves as we really are.  The only problem is that we can’t afford to get therapy as a country because we don’t have any public health care.  Fuck this shit.

Meanwhile, I am considering the merits of learning to drive a car.  I don’t really want to.  I don’t think cars are awesome.  I don’t actually want to contribute even more to the constant drain on the oil resources that encourage our country to massacre people in other countries who just happen to be sitting on what we imagine to be an endless supply of oil.  The thing is, I’m trapped in this little town and it occurs to me that the only way to get out of it without moving is to drive my ass down the road to where I fit in.  If I visited Portland more often, and if it wasn’t such a huge deal every time I did, then I might feel less trapped.  If you’re unhappy with something then it’s up to you to change what you can.  I could conceivably learn to drive.

Judging from my suddenly increased heart rate and the little knot that just appeared in my stomach while thinking about this out loud, this might not be a good idea.  I will hold it up as a possibility to be considered with care – but I can’t forget my long time ambition to die never having driven a car.  (One that Philip completely endorses, in case you worried that he felt burdened by my not driving, he doesn’t.)

This country is so messed up with its tendency to moralize based on race, religion, and background, it even indulges in animal breed discrimination.  I think that shows a very deep level of imbalance.  I wasn’t going to keep talking about that but I looked at that sweet picture of my dog up there and was reminded.  Shouldn’t all dogs be judged on their individual merits and behaviors?  To judge them based on fear is the soul of bigotry.

Now that I’ve aired my disgust and anger at my country I would like to also say that small bright spots of hope still exist – little hints that we may actually move forward, that we just might (in spite of ourselves) become the country we see in the mirror:

This week judges ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional.  While this can still be appealed – at least this is progress.

Washington State passed a bill to allow same sex marriage.  It’s not official yet but it looks very promising.

J.C. Penny didn’t back down from having Ellen Degeneres in their ads when pressured to do so by the idiotic and bigoted group that calls themselves “One Million Moms”.  Ellen’s response to the whole situation is well worth watching.  Meeting bigotry with class and humor is not an easy thing to do and she sets an awesome example for everyone.

Those are all positive things going on out there.  I hope to see more sparks of hope soon.  We need a huge infusion of it in this country.  Time to get our hands our of our pants and actually do something worthy of all our pride.

*I just made that term up.  If a person can look in the mirror and see fat where there are only bones, so can a country see freedoms and progress where there are crosses festooned with women’s uteruses and the hearts of gay couples and the holy prayers of Muslims.

Burning Hand

The first punishment came like road rage
scorching the pavement with friction
devils uncuffed with viscous screams
thick and rich and choking with blood iron
flooding the closed room filling with metal death
small hands buried in mud, elbow deep
constricting nightmares lapping at small skin
punishment like living threads of belief
frayed to a nothing point, to a nothing thought
a nothing pain, a nothing confusion
until the mud is tight and cracked with thirst
fighting for oxygen, crying with child’s tears
for being a dirty girl.

The Weight Of It

You will look at me, sisters.
you will remember me as I am today
you will not say my name but you will feel my hair
the weight of it will hold down your chests
the weight of it will remind you that I’m free
the weight of it will remind you of your passive life
how you stood and watched me hang
how you turned your eyes away, from a nothing face
how you shut your ears to me, a nothing noise
you will look at me, sisters
you will hear me, sisters and brothers
you will see me for the first time
I may die as I leave but you will envy me
when you discover how they lied
about the cost of the freedom they promised
how we paid in wages of skin and sweat
alone we are nothing at all, not even names
we only exist in this strange forest cage
we are their trapped dreams delivering promise
we are their weapons of war against the machine
we are their fevered delusions squalling in poor light
you cannot follow me into the road
you cannot tell me I am nothing anymore
you cannot stop the machine of change

Note: these two poems constitute this evening’s notes for Baby Girl Six.  This is how I grab onto my fiction.  It is always poetry first.  It doesn’t matter if it’s good poetry or not.  We need not attach value to it.  I don’t, and I would appreciate it if you offered no critiques.  That’s not what this is about.  It serves to let me get to know a character in my own language.  A repetitive emotional shorthand.  Poetry isn’t something to “get” unless you get it.  It isn’t really a puzzle to be solved so much as it’s a script for longer thoughts, for longer stories.

When I was 23 years old I realized that poetry was my first language.  I’ve written a couple of good ones in my life but most of them are worthless to anyone but me.  Poetry is my mother tongue.  It is where I begin.  It is where I will end.  It infiltrates my prose, my most serious discussions about life and death.  You hear me most of the time as a translation from poetry to regular speech.  I think in poetry.  I smell in poetry.  I see in poetry.  I am constantly translating.  It is no wonder, then, that things go awry in my life.  Translation is not a perfect art.  If I want to write a novel I must first hear it in poetry.

Other trends emerge.  Patterns of thought connected tightly to music.   I cannot write without a soundtrack.

Tonight I learned another lesson: there are specific stories I have to tell.  All of my stories are guided by an internal switchboard directing what is revealed.  I have a beginning point that is necessary for me to tell stories from.  You don’t need to know this because it will become obvious to you over time.

Tonight it is Six I’m hearing.  Her story is becoming lucid.

I have been so scattered in the last few weeks.  We’ve had one crisis after another and yet I still managed to enjoy myself quite a bit doing things like making my own laundry detergent.  Remember Pete?  That baby snake is still in my thoughts.  Last night I was convinced that I had something terribly wrong inside my body, that something was eating away at me without me knowing and that it was going to kill me.  This is not an uncommon thing in my head.  I spend a lot of time telling myself why this isn’t likely.  The more people I know fighting cancer and other serious health issues the harder it is to make myself believe it.  I’ve been meaning to respond to an article on The Huffington Post about enjoying every single minute of your child’s life.  The article was great because finally another mom besides me is saying it’s okay to not enjoy every single minute.  What a fucking enormous load of crap pressure to put on yourself!  I remember hearing that a lot too and it was a constant irritant.  But I’m not going to go on at great length about it because as you can see, I’m still quite scattered.  I will say this:

Enjoy the great, the good, and the decent moments of parenting and feel free to not enjoy the parts that tear your heart to shreds, exhaust you, annoy you, and stress you out.  You are not obligated to listen to anyone else’s edicts on what motherhood should feel like to you.  We all have different parenting experiences and if yours feels like every minute is precious then that’s great (and I hate you), but some of us struggle more than others and it doesn’t mean you love your kid any less if you don’t enjoy every minute of it.  So do what works for you but don’t put pressure on others they don’t need.  It’s also okay for your kid to know you don’t love every minute of parenting because it’s good for them to see that it can be challenging.  It’s certainly more honest than pretending you never wish you could erase the last few hours of tantrums.  Bottom line: if you love your child that’s what your child will remember about your parenting the most.

Also: It doesn’t really go by fast at all.  It only goes by fast when you look backwards rather than forwards.  Be in the present, whatever it’s like, and you’ll get everything worthy out of your life and your child’s.

Here’s something weird – my sweet friend Kelly sent me some money with which to splurge because she knows how tight it’s been around here and so this weekend I bought two blocks of cheese (one jack and one cheddar) and beer.  My two favorite things in the consumable world.  I have to say that once I had it around again I realize that it’s not as important to me as I thought.  I’m pretty okay with it being an occasional treat rather than something we always have in the fridge.  It isn’t really that I feel physically better, but I do feel like not feeling like I NEED to have cheese is kind of nice.  I’ve been eating tofu and toast for lunch many days, sometimes with collards, sometimes without (depending on what we have) and in the past I would have obviously had it with cheese, but I didn’t miss it much.  Plus, I love tofu.  I just felt a little freer.  Ditto the beer.

The sucky thing is that after almost three weeks of eating about 75% less dairy and 50% less volume of alcohol, I did not lose a single pound.  I’m not crying in my lemon water or anything.  It just would have been nice to see additional rewards.

I’ve been having a great deal of trouble developing my character outline for Baby Girl Six.  A lot of staring at the blank screen.  I can’t start writing it until I know who she is and that was difficult.  Apparently I really do need this exercise of writing on demand and doing it more quickly because apparently I find it almost impossible to write about what other people are most interested in.  You say “Baby Girl Six!” and I say “All I can think about is Jane from the Winter Room.  So shut up.”  I’m going to have to let go of perfection, to start with.  Writing a serialized novel and trying to offer up a chapter a month is going to make plot challenges and character black holes much more visible to readers because even though I’m trying to come up with a workable outline to go from, it will not be possible to go back and change what I already have because people will have already read it.  This is an exercise in soap opera writing.  I’m sure the writers plan plots out months in advance but because they put episodes up every day they can’t go back and change things just because they came up with a much better idea for a story arc for this character or that one.  What’s behind you is done.  There’s only moving forward.  That’s how blog posts are too but with blog posts no one really expects a clean arc or literature quality writing.

So last night I was finally getting into the book I’m reading that was boring me to tears.  I still don’t love it but I’m finally invested enough to (I think) read the whole thing.  What I really need is a brand new author who has tons of books that have the same voice and type of story that I can dive into.  I’ve now read all but one Anne Stevenson books.  I want more just like that.  Anyway, I couldn’t get sleepy but really wanted to be.  So I turned off the light at 1am and promptly fell into a bunch of thoughts about Baby Girl Six and why a 20 year old would just be leaving home for the first time.  (She was going to be 18 but I just can’t write a main character under 20 years old.  Won’t do it.)  I got ideas.  My head was finally moving forward with some key information and thoughts that will allow me to begin this novel.  That’s some useful insomnia.  I didn’t get up to write notes though because I was pretending my head wasn’t finally full of ideas and pretending I couldn’t hear Philip snoring, and pretending that I wasn’t still worried that my body is riddled with cancer.

So I’m going to go write some of those notes now.  Then I’m going to order some herbal supplies so I can get cracking on making more lotion, lip balm, salves, and shampoo.  Then I’m going to wrestle some blackberries.

Hopefully will be a more focused person soon.

Haven’t been in touch for a while.  On the run.  Avoiding you, maybe.  Avoiding words you might hurl against my head.  Trying not to hear you.  Because you  might tell me what I already know.  Who writes “dear John” letters to themselves?  Who makes excuses for avoiding themselves?  Who wishes to be lost in happy stories to avoid reality?  You want me to say “I do”.

I have the urge to hang blood red silk velvet curtains across the windows like a garish swath of insolence against the eventual sunrise.  I want to crown the draperies in funereal roses of pink.  I want them to crack exuberantly against the hours you clock.  I want them to be always almost open, with promises undelivered.

I know the fate of poets.  I know I walk the same tread, the same tortured thin steep path they have all walked before me.  I add only more footprints, I add only more wear to the establishment of dead dust and gentle deterioration on the weathered climb to the edge.  The same edge I’ve reached before and pulled myself back from with inches to spare.

I wish to smear my soul across the sky like northern lights.  I wish to stop being collections of words crowding a thin head and become ephemeral like gossamer dove-grey mist streaking across the world with liquid grace as though painted by a single genius brush-stroke.  I wish to be seen from the skies of Morocco to the wide expanse of the flat endless tundra of Mongolia.  I wish children will see dreams in my shape and make wishes in my margins.

But I’m not sure I want to talk to you.  I know what words hover close on your late night breath.  I know what plaque of thought is breaking free in your head that I haven’t got the magic to dispel.  Not today.  Not this week.  I promised I would check in more often.  I promised I would take your temperature every day and then I ran.  I hope you’ll understand why I’ve stayed away.

Got my rucksack over my shoulder and the slumber of self to see me go.  My path is free of emotional sediment when I don’t ask myself to weigh in.  I can fly, I can sprint, I can soar for miles across the desert plains, across the wet forests, across the sweeping golden prairie grains, through the sleep of the damned.  The answers flicker insistently in strobe lights beating behind cloudy unconscious eyes.  Fly on, sister, before you wake up, before you remember you don’t have arms.

I know it always comes down to you and me.  I know I’ll have to answer and I wonder if the pain will be less if it’s today.  I wonder if the pain will be muted in the present, under the quiet cushion of black ink on cotton stationary as I tell you how much I wished I hadn’t missed you.  A lie we’ll both accept because it’s easier this way.  I’ll apologize to you in the morning over coffee and toast.  We’ll avoid another omelet because we can’t afford such extravagance.  I’ll try not to remember the hats, the purses, and the liqueur glasses from the night before.  I’ll try not to hear the child crying inconsolably at my feet.  The party of people I don’t care about attached to me as though by blood.  The A-frame houses we photographed in amazement.  I’ll pretend I don’t remember your velvet indifference.

I was appalled by the fake snow – the white batting fluffs you suspended from string in front of the window where the dogs were playing, where the white water was rising.  I believed for two seconds it was real and felt naive and hated you for it.  I couldn’t fit down the basement escape to get out there in the weather either, a greater crime I drank over.  It was all one big trick of your mind.  Our mind.  I woke up angry.  I think you were angry too.

I still have blue silk purses with clasps of silver and red shoes you can’t find the ends of.  I raise my hundred year old etched glass to your dour face, your smaller hopes, and your disapproval and I hope you wake up to brand new skin.  I toast you, I salute you, I give you observance.  I say a tiny wish and a smaller prayer.  I bury words in the path for you to find later when you need them.  I write this letter so you’ll remember I didn’t forget.  So you’ll have something when I’m gone.  So you’ll see pictures in the mist.  So you’ll dream something new when I’ve embroidered the past in fiction.

I’m here now.  So listen.  Just listen.  This minute will pass faster than you imagine.  We’re nothing but shadows to each other, who used to be the same.  If I cut your string you must forgive me for wishing you might sail across the ocean without tether.  There is no prison you didn’t make yourself.  There is no prison I didn’t make with you with the same hands, the same imagination.  So let’s let go.

Let’s let go now.

At the same time.

Note: This was based mostly on the last couple of dreams I had.  I was trying to capture the feeling of them even though many of the details escaped me.

I’ve heard a lot of opinions about Portland being thrown around.  But the majority opinion is that Portlanders are smug, snobby, unfriendly, and obsessed with their own scenes.  It’s a city filled with hipsters and some people I know purposefully avoid hanging out in the areas most frequented by them.

I have such a different take on Portland and the hipster crowd.  I have been met with friendliness by most of the people I’ve interacted with in Portland.  It’s a much friendlier city to me than San Francisco, a city I still love.  Way more friendly than anywhere in Marin County or in the East Bay.  They’re certainly friendlier to me than the people in McMinnville.  While I have heard them described as being snobby I don’t see it.

I think there’s plenty to laugh about when a city is full of young people who take their scenes and ideals really seriously and I feel free to make fun of hipsters the way people felt free to make fun of me when I was a young (obviously super cool) fashion designer in San Francisco running around in my 1950′s bathing suit and a man’s silk smoking robe.  However, after almost 6 years living in a blue collar town full of conservative non-hipster people who dress like there’s nothing to hope for and no one to impress, I love nothing more than to go to downtown Portland or to 23 rd Street and hang out.  I feel comfortable where the young fashionable people are bustling around.  There is no better place to enjoy such people than at Powell’s Books.

I just realized yesterday that that’s because I’m one of them.  Right, I know, you’re seeing a fat middle aged woman who dresses like there’s no one to impress and nothing to hope for.  And you’re right, I’ve been worn down and out and I dress with only one objective now and that’s to not stand out too much so people won’t feel so inclined to notice my rotundity.  But this isn’t who I really am.  If I wasn’t fat I would wear such different clothes than anyone’s seen me in in years and you would understand how I feel so at home with all those “too cool for themselves” people with their interesting fashion and their piercings and their tattoos and their interest in sustainable living and eating locally and organically and doing everything themselves, and bicycling to work.

How did having ideals and fun with fashion and having a vision of the world you want to live in become equivalent to being smug?  If so, then I’m smug too.  I suppose people have accused me of that behind my back.  That’s alright.  I’ve been called worse things than that before that weren’t true either.

If I were to ever move to Portland I would either move to my mom’s old neighborhood near 23rd street (a walk to TJ’s and Powell’s and the public library) or I’d live around the Alberta area where all the interesting looking people run around.  Because if I ever get out of this godforsaken town I’m not going to ever live in another place where people are dreary and just fine with the status-quo and where going to the grocery store with all five of your kids in your pyjama flannels is considered de rigueur.

I love Portland.  I LOVE IT.  I love the energy there, the people, and it’s the cleanest city I’ve ever walked.  I love the fashion and the stores (which I don’t shop in because I can’t afford to but I still love to look at them) and the buildings.  I love the Lucky Lab and The Kennedy School and I love the farmer’s markets.  I love the fact that I see Vespas and other scooters all over Portland streets.  I love that every neighborhood has at least 2 dog parks.  I love that the city is overwhelmingly politically liberal, that people are having new ideas and living what they preach.

Here in McMinnville it’s all about the huge trucks, good ol’ minivans to tote around your huge family in, hunting, praying, going to church events, caring for your lawns by soaking the ground in poison, and dreaming of job promotions at Safeway.  No, not all McMinnvillains are like this.  There are some cool people here who are passionate about sustainable living and buying local and trading out the gas guzzling vehicles for small fuel efficient cars and there are definitely a few people ripping out there lawns to grow food and some of them are also passionate about doing it organically, but that’s just a very small proportion of this town’s people.

In thinking about how people have different views of cities I have to admit that quite a few people I’ve talked to here disagree with me about McMinnville.  They see it as a liberal town with lots of cool people in it who aren’t bible thumpers.  So I know we’re seeing from different perspectives and we’re all judging based on our relative experiences of other places we’ve lived too.  I came up from California, from one of the most liberal areas in that state so my idea of liberal is going to be different than someone who’s always lived in more conservative places.  I also had a kinder view of this town when I had more close friends who I really understood – who were so much like us and felt like family.  It made this town’s darker side more amusing but they’ve moved away and it’s definitely stripped away my comfort and my ability to find amusement in brass testicles hanging from two story trucks.

So when I go to Portland I want to go where there’s color and life and people dressing up and having fun and being into their scenes.  Hanging out in Powell’s Books is like going to the hipster’s church and it’s also mine.  Going there reminds me that there are still cool people out there in the world, outside of my weird-ass little community.  Maybe I’m not so cool now but that doesn’t bother me.  I want the energy of the young idealists around me.  I think it’s pretty great that my mom loves the same areas of Portland and for the same reasons.  That’s why she chose to live in the 23rd street neighborhood which gave me somewhere to explore from.

Sometimes you have to make dreadful mistakes and wrong turns in life to find out what will kill you inside, to find out just how far outside of your comfort zone you can live.  I love my house and my garden here.  I have made some connections with good people here and I have some acquaintances slowly becoming friends and I have my two really close friends who haven’t moved away yet (though I don’t see either of them more than once a month usually which is not so great) so it isn’t as if I hate everything and everyone in this town.

But I’ve never had such a non-stop run with depression as I have since moving here.  That’s the bald truth.  I’ve been broke as shit in San Francisco and was much happier in general.  As a person with clinical depression I’ve never been free of the cycles of depression but when I’m happy with where I am and with my life in general the depression is an actual cycle that fluctuates giving me breathers between bouts.  I have recently realized that I’ve been solidly depressed for the past six years.  I have worked so hard against it.  Some things have improved and some things have worsened.

I think this town is slowly killing me inside.

That’s the thought that’s been rudely shouting itself out in my head all week.  A thought I’ve been suppressing for a long time, not allowing myself to say it, to think it, or to believe it.  It finally found voice and it won’t shut up.

But this is where I live.

This is where Philip has work and we have a house.

So here we are.