Just Keep Swimming

This is not fun to write about. I am holding my breath and jumping in. I will write quickly and exhale on the other side.

Let's talk about depression.

Well, not ALL about it because I can not do that; it hurts to write and hurts to read.

It is getting better. I feel better. Lighter. The sun is peeking through the clouds. I am floating on the surface. Happy.

photo © 2009 julien haler | more info (via: Wylio)

Continuing with the swimming metaphor...

When I see someone else who is struggling, I run (swim?) the opposite way as fast as possible. It is too soon. It hurts too much. I am too afraid they will pull me under with them.

I wonder why that is. I wonder if that will ever go away.

I have mentioned before that I suffer from me-too-itis. I absorb emotions. Whatever you feel, I feel.

Despite be a very good listener, this is the reason I didn't become a counselor.

I joke about my lack of compassion, but I secretly wish I could wish away that part of me. My lack of empathy, (because, believe me, it's real) exists because... because I am so afraid of drowning with you.

Deep down... way deep down... I... I realize that feeling what you feel doesn't actually help you feel better.

Absorbing your feelings does not take them away from you.

My job is to listen, and to point you in the direction of Someone who is in the healing business. Err... life raft business.

Do you absorb the feelings of the those around you?

Little Moments

I looked around.

Literally.

I turned my head every direction, and saw that the day was gone.

Nothing was done.

Dishes? In the sink.
Clothes? On the "clothes couch."
Bills? Still unpaid.
Essays? Still ungraded.
Blog? Still unwritten.

photo © 2009 Guillermo Viciano | more info (via: Wylio)

Perhaps the children had been taught and entertained?

Maybe?
But I remembered none of it.

Perhaps we ate?
But what?

Perhaps I talked to someone?
But whom?

There was nothing the I could remember about the day.

The day... the day...

A whole day just slipped through my hands, like water through a sieve, and I had noticed nothing.

I had finished nothing.

I existed, and then I slept.

I do not ever want that day again.

I will not lose this day.

Terrorists Don't Have Books, See

Did you ever see Proof of Life?

That's fine. No one saw it.

Anywho, it's a terrible movie that happens to be very visually vivacious.

Soooo pretty. SO PRETTY! It was filmed in Ecuador, a place special to my heart. My dad grew up there, and it's the one country I've managed to spend any time in. I've watched Proof of Life a few times with the sound off, just so I could relive the summer of 1998.

If you haven't seen it, I will recap in ten seconds or less. Meg Ryan is married to you, but you get kidnapped, and she hires Russell Crowe to rescue you, but you were a terrible husband, so Meg Ryan wants Russell Crowe to succeed...sorta.

Where is this all going?

I spend way too much time worried that I'm going to be kidnapped.

Over-active imagination, anyone?

In my imagining of what I would do with my days-in-third-world-mountain-prison, besides trying to survive, duh, I realized I would have to remember all I'd memorized.

Terrorists don't have books, see.

Today, I decided to make of list of the things I could recite.

(Daydreaming! Where would I be without you? I guess daydreaming is the other thing I could be doing whilst in captivity.)

What?

Oh, yes.

List.

Random Bible verses (honesty clause: memorized when I was a kid).
The Apostles' Creed
The Beatles White Album
a few notes from friends
My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss
Laurie Berkner albums.

"Laurie's got a pig on her head / Laurie's got a pig on her head / Laurie's got a pig on her head / she keeps it there all day!"

Maybe it's time to memorize something new.

What about you? If you were kidnapped by guerrilla rebels, what would you have in your brain?

Three Things Thursday: Confession Edition

1. I'm not writing. Not even close. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

Please don't tell me I need to be writing. I know I need to be writing. That's not helping!! 

I am sorry I yelled. I'm not yelling. 

No, I'm not crying! Leave me alone!! 

Oh, for real, sorry I yelled.

2. I'm not running.

Forever-cough has taken over, and I've been camped out on the couch, feeling sorry for myself, hugging my box of tissues, and watching high school romance stories because this seems like a quality way to spend my time.

3. I waste a lot of time on thoughts I've already thought about. I am back on the racetrack, the journey forgotten.

I don't know if circular thinking is a real thing, or if I just made it up, but I'm getting dizzy.

Perhaps that is the decongestants talking?

One of my four thousand jobs ends this week, and I'm excited about a breather before I dive into the rest of the semester.

Here's hoping for quality words, miles, and thoughts next week.

What are your three things?
How's the day?
Whatchadoin?

Letters. We Get Stacks and Stacks of Letters.

I love letters.

When I was a kid, my family traveled every summer, and I would always write the random friends I had met in the hotel swimming pool or friends from camp. It was so fun to open the mailbox in October and have it feel like it was summer again.

My sophomore year of high school my English teacher found another class from another school, and we all traded letters for a writing project.

I think I said I listened to NPR and Klezmer music, and my pen pal never wrote back. Funny how that works. Sigh. High school.

I like texting because it lets you know that somebody was thinking about you amidst their busy day.

But letters?

Someone sat down to tell you about their life. They put the world on hold to say, "Hello."

Hello.

I love that. I love the idea of sitting down, blocking out everything else, and taking the time to BE. I love taking the time to find the exact word. I love taking the time to to waste... no... spend!... a paragraph dancing all around the right word.

To be silly or funny or dull or loving... to be whatever you are, and whatever you... well, maybe just whatever.

Do you owe someone a letter?

The Problem With Marrying a Nice Guy

Him: "How was your day?"
Me: [Answering his question.]
Him: [Nodding attentively.]
Me: "What are you doing?"
Him: "What?"
Me: "You're nodding with your 'I'm listening' face."
Him: "I guess I'm... listening?"
Me: "I don't understand. I really hate talking to you because I really hate talking to anybody. There's no way that is interesting or that you actually want to hear this.
Him: "You need therapy."

photo © 2010 hyoin min | more info (via: Wylio)

So Maybe: A Confession

So maybe when I said, "I just want somebody to see me," I was totally lying.

I want you to see me.

But I also want you to tell me that I am cute and adorable and talented and funny and awesome and hard-working and creative and lovely and fun and and incredible and fashionable and like, whoa, super hot.

Is that too much to ask?

Sigh.

Whatever is the opposite of self-esteem problems? That's what I have.

Anyway. I think YOU are completely cute and funny and all-around-awesome.

Is it so much to return the favor? Huh? HUH?!?

So maybe... so maybe I should work on this, too.

Seeing Is Not Enough

photo © 1973 The U.S. National Archives | more info (via: Wylio)

I was new to school (not just that school, but any school) in second grade. Because school was so new, so foreign and strange, those first days remain my strongest memories.

I remember: half-way through the first day, packing up my little book bag for recess.

"What are you doing?! We're going to RECESS."

"Oh."

I had no idea what a "recess" was.  I had never heard the word before. I gathered, however, by all the incredulous faces that it was not a place where one brought books.

I remember: it was a little into the year, so I was placed in the corner with a table full of boys. (This is, of course, the days before the boy-crazy.) I was mortified.

I remember: we had to do locker assignments, and I asked if I could share with a third grader, my friend Tiffin, the only person in the whole school I knew. The teacher thought this was hilarious.

I couldn't understand a word anybody said. I guess they couldn't understand me, either. "Where you FROM, anyway?"

Every day was a series of pitfalls, embarrassments, and mistakes.

In that, I also remember every kindness.

In the every day of trying to figure out school, how it's done, I remember one person being kind.

His name was Adam.

Here's what I remember:

I remember: a close buzz cut, brown eyes. Mostly though, I remember green pants, long-sleeved, striped turtleneck, brown shoes that were different from the white tennis shoes everyone else wore.

I remember his clothes because he wore the same thing. Not often. Always. He wore the same thing every day.

I remember: I didn't notice at first. At first, I noticed that his clothes were perfectly clean and pressed. He never looked rumpled like a little kid. Then I noticed that his pants stopped meeting his brown shoes. Then I noticed that they were always the same pants.

It seems funny now that the most obvious thing is the thing I missed.

The other thing about Adam? He was very thin.

I hated school lunches because it was Southern, over-processed, over-salted, food, but I still managed to eat it sometimes. But I remember one day when NO ONE could eat it. It was beyond awful.

Adam, however, ate every single bite. Then I noticed him noticing our trays, all of ours, left untouched.

It took years for me to realize what hunger looked like. It took years before I remembered that it was sitting right in front of me.

After that day, I remember Adam started to look a little rumpled. He started to come to school without the outfit freshly pressed. Then he stopped coming to school at all.

I have spoken before how I just want somebody to see me. Just as I want to be noticed, I want to SEE what's happening right in front of me.

Sometimes, though, seeing is not enough.

*I changed his name.