i obsess.

like a faucet.

I was just spouting off yesterday.  I need to do it occasionally, so the damn doesn't burst, etc., but I feel better today.  Well, okay, anyway.  J is at my parents' house and that helps, but mostly I just want to finish having to slice deep into my gut and reveal the black memories that dwell therein to my therapist in order for him to add it all up, all the pieces that will help him best determine what kind of pills I can pop that will bandage up the wound I had to slice open in order for him to make that determination and OY.  Well, alright, to be fair, because I'd already sliced it open when we moved, but it was a messy, imprecise cut, less cut and more rend, and this latest one was medically administered with a sterile knife, but after I leave a session of pulling out spaghetti intestines and the blood has spilled anew and I have to somehow shove it all quickly back in and run through the gray rain to my gray car on the gray road and keep it sealed for a week, for another session of poring over the grisly, tar-coated innards, well, I'm not entirely capable of keeping things sealed properly.  I was always that kid who picked at the scabs, pick pick pick, and yesterday, I had not allowed the bandage to adhere cleanly to the wide-openness directly beneath its immaculate surface, I had to peek along the edge.  Just to see, you know, whether it was still there or whatever, and then - hey!  Oh!  Right!  I was raped in high school, and also molested in the eighth grade, which, while I don't count it as my first kiss, it technically was, and then there was Alaska, and god.  I shiver over sharing these things, these scary details, because who wants to see the wreckage?  People want to read blogs to laugh, even at the goriest of news items, we want to see them and shiver darkly and then get a good punch line to lighten the load, and I have no punchline.  Instead, I'm angry, I'm pissed, PISSED at those FUCKERS who have made things so much goddamn harder for me, this life that is already not a simple trot through each day, even for those who have been lucky enough to escape molestation on any level (of whom I am convinced there are but few).  So, I'm angry.  And I share because - you wanna know why?  Because there shouldn't be a ban on talking about having been taken advantage of.  I was stripped of my power in those moments, and -- here's a funny (although not punchline-y, sorry) thing:  when I was a stripper, throughout the entire experience, I recall hearing people say things like, Oh, you know, women who are in the adult entertainment industry have all been molested or raped at some point.  And I was always like, huh.  Well, that makes me an anomaly, doesn't it.  Since I'd somehow managed to completely forget that I was molested *and* raped before I finished high school.  You know why?  I'm gonna tell you that, too!  Because I didn't relate to the textbook definition of molestation or rape.  I thought about those precise, defined specifics, and compared my versions to those, and went, oh, nope!  None a' that here!  And when I shared the stories brokenly to my friends, their blank looks and non-responses or the occasional "Oh." brought me up short, made me think I was over-sharing and frightening people and I should probably just stop telling those stories that frightened people and made them not want to hang out with me.  Shame on me for having told anyone, was all I could feel and think. 

Isn't that all terribly funny?  Funny-weird, I mean.  I know it's not funny.  I don't feel like laughing.  Rather, I feel -- like I don't want to have a daughter.  Because I'll be compelled to tell her what I went through, and though in a perfect, best-case scenario, my explanation is clear and clean and her reception is solid and logical, and she learns from my stories and is careful about where she goes and what she does, but -- dude.  The guys who molested me in the eighth grade?  Were in the middle of a party of kids who were not drunk or stoned or high on anything other than their own selfish agendas and thought the whole thing was funny anyway.  So do I ban my future daughter from attending social functions altogether?  Well, no, but I would hope she would know to push someone away and call attention loudly and clearly to the inappropriate behavior, strong enough and confident enough to know that the molester should be humiliated to attempt such a thing in the midst of a fucking party.

But would she be successful, even then?  What if it didn't matter - what if she were molested anyway? 

How could I live with myself, having not prevented such a thing, and having allowed this precious charge of mine to experience something that has fucked me up like a rake in a hurricane?

Ah.  This is all such a THING, this mess.

SEE why we have to talk about it?  The more it's out there, the more stories we share about our losses of power at different but still important moments in our lives, the more "textbook" definitions there will be available for people to learn from, to see as mirrors or useful comparisons, to watch out for as roadsigns, to draw strength from, to recognize their own experiences as having been something more than a private, shame-filled thing to closet and keep buried.

Let's talk about it.  Talk about it here.  Please.  Don't give it any more power, not just over yourself, but over the future would-be molesters.  Let's use our old pain as a weapon for our kids.

If you don't want to identify yourself, you don't have to.  Be anonymous.  Or email me your story and I'll post it sans name.

This is one way to keep our kids safe.  You see, I'm aware that this could happen to my son, too, whether I ever have a daughter.  I don't want it for him, either.

plain/plane.

You know how sometimes you walk around pretending everything's dandy, with that flat expression on your face, and you're busy enough/everyone in your little world is simultaneously busy enough to not really notice the flatness?  So you get away with it?  You don't bother to voice what might be just beyond that flat space, even to yourself?

It doesn't work if you're a blogger.  Because you have to explore the space beyond the flatness all the time, which = not being able to get away with going to bed every night under the smooth, unbroken counterpane with smooth, unbroken thoughts that don't bend at the edges or smolder threateningly in your direction if you look at them for a few seconds too long. 

Which is all to say that I can't.  Open the space beyond the flatness.  Not right now.  Which = crappy blogging.

Sorry.  I just want to go to bed at the end of each day, at least, I have for the last few of them, and maybe will continue to want to do the same, to slip beneath the unbroken, glass-smooth covers and slide seamlessly into the edge of darkness and come away from it in the morning without working out the details.

For now.  For the next little while.  Until something catapults me away from that need for seamlessness.

Please forgive the flat space here in the meantime.

Love, Debbie

the mother of personal epiphanies.

When I was diagnosed with Cyclothymia, years ago, it didn't feel right.  And even though I'm aware that it's possible to be simultaneously afflicted with, say, an anxiety disorder, or depression, or even the bipolarism, along with AD/HD, I don't think that's the case for me.  (Although I'm quite certain I possess a tendency toward obsessive/compulsiveness.  Example, and please understand that it brings me no small sense of horror to air this to anyone other than myself and my partner, although to do so is freeing and also helps communicate the seriousness of my malady:  I often go large spans of time without showering because of my phobia regarding the cleanliness of the locations where such things are done.  Kind of hilariously ironic, non?  I can't get clean because the place where I should be cleaning myself isn't clean enough.  It just makes me laugh and *laugh*.  Really.  Oh, so funny.)  (Cristina, I was freshly showered when we hung out.  I can let the phobia go in hotel rooms, for some random reason I cannot explain.  A place I was staying when we met.  So.  You can heave a sigh of relief that your newborn babe is not going to live its life as a leper thanks to my scaly, unshowered mess of a self.)  (And Blogher-met friends - same story.  Hotel room.  Hotel room showers.  Safe from lildb brand of leprosy.  For nowwwww.  Duh-duh-duh.)

Anyway.  This just couldn't feel more appropriate, this potential diagnosis, something I hope to confirm through means of scientific head-nodding tomorrow (I have an appointment to discuss just that thing with my doc in the afternoon).

Please understand - I've never felt so sure of something before.  Every single item on the list fits me to an absolute T, even the knowledge that I've had this thing hanging around my whole life, from the time that I was small.  Any one of my teachers would probably agree, and if my parents believed in the possiblity of mental imbalance as a real-life tangible instead of the figment of my clearly-silly head that it must be in their minds, they'd assuredly chime in with their agreement.  (Nothing like being supported by one's parents.  It's AWESOME.)

I've just always, ALWAYS wondered why I couldn't make myself behave like my peers, and I sort of just hoped I'd eventually fade into the correct attitude and behavior, like the chameleon I often flatter myself to be, with time and maturity.  And it's never happened.  I'm still a sore thumb, a crazed, over-loud, inappropriately boisterous freakshow that can somehow never manage to keep track of anything and is always late, always interrupting, always hopping from one! exciting! genius! new! sparkly! better-than-ever! idea! to the next, without even recalling what the last thing was, five minutes after it's been hatched.  I miss information all the time because I drop out of the conversation because I'm so absorbed with whether so-and-so thinks I just looked at her boobs even though I was merely looking down to check whether my leg hair was announcing itself to the masses or if it was just me thinking it might be doing so, and then it seemed like I might've been staring at her chest, only I really wasn't, but then I couldn't. stop. thinking about it, the idea that she thought I was doing so, and ?  I'm sorry, could you repeat that last paragraph, please?  Or maybe I was solving a quantam physics equation, but the point is the same.  I miss things, and then I don't want to be rude so I pretend I heard it, and then I just feel like an UBER idiot because I have no idea what's going on, and it FUCKING AFFECTS MY SOCIAL LIFE, OKAY?  I've had the rockiest friendships since I was a kid because everyone thought I was so inattentive and self-absorbed, although, gosh, I can't see why they didn't love those traits, since they're such good friend-making qualities.  Actually, I'm quite good at *making* friends because I'm funny and gregarious, but in the friend-keeping dept., not. so. much.  And this is a result of years of the same cycles, of being attractive enough, both physically and personally, to draw in any number of aspiring compadres; but somewhere along the line, I know they'll find me out, they'll discover my incapacity to be anything but late, self-absorbed, inattentive, uncommitted, interrupting, loud, over-excited, silly, etc., and I sabotage the relationship in order to not allow the usual rejection to occur.  I'm damaged by this thing, this AD/HD thing.  I'm not broken, but I'm damaged.  And frankly, if I'm gonna have been damaged by something, I want to know its name.  I want to know just who, just what I'm doing battle with on a minute-by-minute basis.  I want to wrestle with a creature who isn't hidden in a fog, and when I KICK ITS FUCKING ASS, I want to see it writhe in its frustrated, inevitable throes of clutching, ever-weakening gasps.

Yeah.

And I refuse to be ashamed anymore.

mind: blown.

Dude.  I think I might have AD/HD.

Woah.

Gimme a second while my mind finishes reeling around in drunken circles.

Check this out.  (Taken from this website.  Thanks, website.)

Impulsivity

Impulsivity negatively affects social relationships because others may attribute impulsive words or actions to lack of caring or regard for others. Failure to stop and think first often has devastating social consequences. Impulsivity in speech, without self-editing what is about to be said, may appear as unfiltered thoughts. Opinions and thoughts are shared in their raw form, without the usual veneer that most people use to be socially appropriate. Interruptions are common.

Huh?  HUH? 

Makes for good blogging.  Not so much in the real-life scene, though. 

Trust me on this.

brain, brain, go away.

When I encounter information that helps me better understand the stuff in my psyche that doesn't like to participate with the rest of the body, and makes things (life) difficult, more so than it oughtta be, I feel really good (for a little bit).  I feel validated.  I feel composed and recognized and comprehended.

This article about OCD was for me, today, one of those kinds of encounters.  I feel like I get it a little bit more, this weird, ill-fitting aspect of my head.  If you tend toward the obsessive-compulsive, I think this piece sheds some interesting light on the thing.

Yay!  For information.  It's better than cupcakes.  No.  It's not, really, but I had to try it out to see how it sounded.  It sounds wrong.  Ain't NOTHIN better than cupcakes, my peoples.

**********

And sometimes I write about random stuff when my heart hurts, which it does, today.  My mom told me that the mother of a friend of mine from school days died in February.  I remember her better than most other adults from my youth; she was a beautiful, warm woman with a constant, glowing smile.  She was a fantastic cook; she was a teacher whose students worshipped her.  She treated kids like people.  She was never without a glass of Gallo chablis; there were several jugs pushed together in the corner of the kitchen near the table.  (Her liver was the ultimate cause of her demise, according to my mom's report; the alcoholism had ruined it and it wasn't able to fight when she developed a staph infection after having fallen several months ago.) 

She was so kind to me when my life was in chaos during high school; she treated me just like her own child.  I loved her.

I wish I would have known she was ill.  I would have gone to see her.  I would've gone if she wasn't ill, too, because I missed her, these last several years.  But now I can't go at all.

I'm sorry, Nancy.  I wish I'd known.  I wish I could have told you how much it meant to have you care about me.  I admired you.  I thought you were beautiful.

tickets for the emotional roller-coaster not required.

But you may want to strap on a seatbelt for the next little (long?) while if you plan on reading anything contained within the rectangular confines of this web log.  This is thanks to THE AWESOME HORMONE EXTRAVAGANZA inside whose wriggly grip I am uncomfortably tucked, courtesy of weaning last - um, Wednesday?  I didn't mark it down, which I ought to have, since I also began a series of anti-depressants the same day.  I need to remember to write things down.  I need to remember to remember to write things down.  Maybe I should tattoo that on my arm.  Wait - am I in a movie?  Is this - do I suddenly resemble Guy Pearce?   I'd be okay with that.  He's hot.

Hi.  How are you?  I really need to clean my kitchen.  Did you want to know that?  I'm sure you did.  I find it terrifically fascinating.  I must, anyway, because it continues to distract me, though I continue steadfastly to ignore its beckoning filthy layers of filthy filth.  Filth is a fun word.  But if you hit that magical number in the repetition game, it quickly devolves into a sound reminiscent of a lump.  A gray lump.  Hmmm.  Is that assonance?  Quick, G, help a girl out, here.

I think I may have mentioned the inner fireworks display I'm being shown in a steady stream, oui?  Oh, goody.  That means I can count on you to understand when I show up here at all hours for the next several days and ramble unhygienically (and while that is not truly apropos, nor is it even necessarily a word at all, as if I let that sort of thing ruffle me, it seems to work, which means I accept its entrance here in this paragraph.  You, oh grand unhygienically, you are accepted.  You're a member.  One of us.  Welcome aboard our rocky craft.  It is small, but it is cute, and there is a refrigerator.  With beer.  Hooray!), can't I.

I go through cycles of fear involving reading other blogs.  I find that sometimes I'm too porous.  Too fragile.  I get involved too quickly, feel too much for the person whose thoughts I'm scanning in downloadable format, and it becomes overwhelming.  This isn't an apology.  It's not really even an explanation.  It's just something I wanted to say.

I'm afraid of so much.  I cackle loudly and let my inner ass bray with feigned confidences about seemingly snobbish beliefs and - in the end, I realize that I'm only playing pretend, only trying to convince someone/anyone that I am worth something.  As though being gilded in the right, most chic, most *wink-she's-clearly-done-her-homework-in-this-territory* habits will convey that.  As though, somehow, the person that I am is lacking, is not substantial enough, not balanced enough, just not enough.

But I'm so confused.  I don't understand how to operate.  I can jump in one minute and tap-dance my way into the hearts of almost everyone in the crowd, so that just as they're eating out of my - my - what the hell are people doing eating out of my - gross!  get the fuck off!  run run!  But I don't run; I ignore the whispered urges, I

keep talking, I keep dancing, I keep shining and thinning out and spinning like gossamer nonsense and it hurts my throat and I know I sound frightening, too loud too loud too bright too much

it's too much

but I can't hide, my hide aches from imagined slights the night sends a shiver through the glass in my hand there is sediment a cinnamon scented intoxicant the talk is blunt the shiver is whispered the room is empty of regard

my eyes dart blindly for the neon-green announcement that is my cue to bow out gracelessly true to form I mumble some idiotic platitude while scrambling for the door the frame set to outline my imagined stage left

which opens onto the quiet of black smoke hanging like nothing quite so simple as that

Wow.  I hope, one day, to not look back on this whole series of revelations as a giant waste of time.

That would suck.

(This is not me being brave, btw.  This is me being me.  Saying too much.  Frightening people with my much-too-much-ness.  Don't congratulate me for it.  Not that I don't want you to try to comfort me here in this uncomfortable, dark, messy space.  Obviously, I hunger for compassion.  This is a difficult place, and I'm grateful for any reminders that even while I sit, cross-legged, hoarse, hungry, antsy, thirsty, cross, -- that you know.  That you are willing to sit next to me in the dark smoke and hand me a cracker from the box you just picked up at TJ's.  Maybe tell me a joke.  Remind me that there's warmth and food and light beyond this thick smoke.

Just don't say I'm brave.  I'm not brave.  I'm a coward.  I'm scared.  I wish this were over, already.)

good feelings (won't you stay with me just a little longer).

So, sure, yes, I've waxed suicidal in various more recent posts here on the blog.  Yeah, I've cracked wise about the suicide IRL in recent months.  And, uh-huh, I've squeezed my eyes tight, real tight, and imagined (be it ever so briefly) the freedom from this harrowing existence, during the more ass-crack-y moments spilling out of such a state of being.  (So many places to go with that, I simply can't choose.)

And you just can't imagine a more comforting moment to get to expose the truth in alla that wise-crackery than during a conversation where you're trying to nail down an appointment to see your internal medicine doc any sooner than the next fucking century, a conversation you're holding with, no, not even a goddamn advice nurse, someone who AT BARE MINIMUM has an educational background in things that may have pertained to mental (ill) health for at least ONE BLOODY SEMESTER when they were nineteen, or twenty four, or whatever, but -- nuh-uh, it is your special privilege to bequeath this information to the MOTHERFUCKING RECEPTIONIST at your HMO.   While you squint and try not to see how much play-doh (or, maybe more appropriately, play-DOH!), your sweet son is pushing into the cracks of the heating vent as you explain that you can't wait for an appointment to see your doctor in seven weeks, because your mental instability is really not into allowing itself to be shunted aside or compartmentalized for more than a few minutes, lately, and is certainly not going to be shelved (read: CAGED LIKE A PACING, STARVED WILDEBEEST THAT HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO OCCASIONALLY SNIFF FRESH BLOOD FOR WEEKS ON END) for that infinite quantity of time before it feasts on every last scrap of brain and quashed spirit it can stuff into its sabre-toothed maw.  Not that this occurrence will slow your son down one teensy iota in his attempt to fill to the brim every available opening in your home with play-doh, scraps of paper, bits of crayon, mites of cheese, cracker, lunch meat, and banana.  No.  That is not to be.

Do you know how surreal it is to have a chirpy admin assistant state back to you the thing you just broke off to her in a cagey, clipped tone - the thing you really don't like breathing to people unless it's couched in a stupid attempt at humor?  "So, you say that you're suicidal?  Uh-huh, okay -- just a moment -- yes.  I'll pass this information along to the appropriate staff member.  Thanks!"  *skin crawls completely off body and crumples into a tiny ball, while shuddering morphs into a seizure*

(To say that it made me wanna die, um, well, that just seems a little redundant.)

Also, to anyone who may have been or may currently be concerned about my management of this particular issue, SEE?!?!  I'm being proactive.  I am!  Now, can I please go make myself a cyanide-laced milkshake, since I was such a good girl and called my doctor's office?  It's NOT MY FAULT that they aren't all that into helping me.

I kid!  I'm gonna keep on keepin' on re: the follow-up with the customer service dept's resolution of my suicidal issues.  Really.  Really n' truly.

But maybe just a teeny swig of the milkshake while I listen to the hold muzak?  No? 

Damn.

***********

Updated to explain that I am not currently in dangerous waters re: suicide; I was simply forced to explain that I was in order to get past the appointment desk and through to an advice nurse, who would then be able to schedule an immediate appointment with my doctor.   I need to be on some anti-depressants when I wean J, given how bad off I was a few weeks ago when I tried to wean him at that point.  And I've overshot my ability to continue nursing; I want very much to quit.  I'm really, really tired of it - I want my body back.  I want my breasts to be my own again.  I'm sure that sounds selfish and I don't much care.

Anyway.  That's so you's guys don't think I'm currently standing on a ladder with a rope twisted around my fingers, lost in thought.

And it means more than I can explain to know that you care so much.  Thank you.

alone, but not lonely.

Ever get irrationally angry at your laundry for its having tried to jump free of the pile you're carrying free-style, clamped together in your arms, trudging through the house, you know, the house you live in, the one with the super-dirty floors that you would clean if you ever had a second where there wasn't about to be some small, frenzied human charging over them before they were dry, thereby TOTALLY dismissing the point of having cleaned them to begin with, and you're trudging, arms full of fresh towels and little socks and t-shirts and your underwear is, of course, dangling along the edges, begging to be set free from the constraints of this evil, human world, mostly consisting of your nether regions, with only minor snatches (like that?) of time devoted to being swished at a monstrous rate in the cruel confines of the washing machine?  So, if you're the underwear, naturally, you're going to bolt.  Or at least attempt to.  And if you're me, trudging through the house, carrying too much and trying to make it happen anyway because you don't want to have to make a second trip, and dripping pieces of laundry along your route, onto the extremely dirty floor - AND IT'S ALWAYS YOUR FUCKING UNDERWEAR and not anything else, not even your husband's stupid boxers, trailing in the muck and dust.  Laughing at you.  Laughing square in your face.  You can practically hear it (and, in case you've wondered what that noise was before, you'll recognize it by the distinct rustle of elastic bunching around the holes, er, distortions in the fabric of the underpants - oh, yeah.  They're laughing.  At you.  Because they can).

So -- it's just me with this special hearing issue, then? 

Oh.

we swear because we care.

I'm blown away by all the love (that, yes, I deliberately pleaded for in my, um, commitment post) that you've sent me.  And the concern, and the really excellent advice.

I just want you guys to know that I'm working on this, and that I think I'm having a terrifically, astronomically awful reaction to weaning.  I was guessing until last Friday that my thyroid (hypo) was hinky again, because my symptoms were seeming appropriate (low energy, depression, weight-gain, memory loss -- even worse than its generally abysmal state -- etc.).  But then I got the blood test results back, the ones showing "no significant abnormalities," and I had to return to my former illuminating position of "huh?"  (An unbelievably super place to be when you already don't feel like doing much other than eat cookies and imagine not having to ever stand up again.  So convincing yourself to do actual research re: your steadily-eroding mental poopiness is a toughie.)

Anyway, I looked around yesterday afternoon for some information about typical weaning hormonal adjustment complications, because I am, after all, weaning, and found a wealth of help to support this particular vein of thought, re: my body's seeming incapacity to handle hormonal see-saws (for instance, I can't take any form of birth control because of the affect on my hormones, resulting in terrifying mood swings - the Cyclothymia no likee.  Ol' Cyclo has a jealous grip on my mood-swing situation, and gets very upset when the hormones interfere.  It's all very logical, at least from Corporal Cyclo's standpoint.  Although it makes me really curious as to why El C didn't get involved during what could have been a richtering crash of a post-partum situation - maybe it decided to cut me some slack, or maybe it recognized that I was sort of expecting a modicum of PPD to smack me, given all of my past experiences with hormone crashes - maybe it's just trying to keep me guessing.  Fabulous.  Even my mood disorder has its own sadistic personality).  

If, even now that I'm armed with what seems to be a more educated understanding of what I'm going through, and knowing the hormonal re-situating could take at least another month or two, I find myself not capable of managing everything, I already plan to throw the reins at the appropriate medical personage(s).  I promise.

Meanwhile, you are all the wind beneath my wings.  Thank you. (Even in my insanity, I'm still capable of committing musical abominations in your presence.  That's not much of a gracious move.  Forgive me.  It's the crazy acting out.  And there's the yang of insanity - getting to blame the crazy for random stuff.  You knew there had to be a yang.  Okay, there didn't have to be.  But it's nice that there is.  Silver lining, people.) 

Swear I'm gonna take care of this.  (Thanks for caring enough to make me wanna swear.)

I'm gonna get some sleep, now.  Ni-night.

about that cry for help.

What if I told you I'm writing this post deliberately to exact your pity, and your sympathy, and your typed versions of compassion?

What if I told you that I want to, for the first time in my life, really want to electively commit myself? 

What if I told you that I only don't know how to begin the process, and that it's the only hurdle currently keeping me from doing so?  That I only know we can't afford it, because even though we have health insurance, there isn't coverage allotted for mental unwellness?  Even though, as the mother of a young child, the mother who stays home full-time (supposedly the goal of those in charge being to keep the mothers at home watching over their young, in support of that fabulous chestnut of family values), my health in all areas, not just physical, are kind of crucial to that end?

What if I told you I want out?  Out of my role as wife, out of my role as mother, out of my role as human?

What then?

(And what if I mentioned, as an afterthought, that I don't know quite how to tell my husband that I want to check myself into a psych ward?  Because I'm afraid he won't believe it's all that serious?)

where i reduce everything down to a before-and-after. (maybe TLC will want to make it into a reality show.)

I want: To be rapturous.  To feel that bizarre, wracked, elated set of emotions that comes immediately prior to touching the lips of one's newest sexual conquest; and the peaks and chasms that follow in at rapture's heels, but are not content to remain heeling.

I want: To journey.  To brush against strangers in still-stranger locales.   Places that reek of unfamiliar spices and body odors and terrain.  More garlic than one is accustomed to.  More intoxicant.  More novelty.

I want: To feel heartbroken.  To have the sense that my life has been upset beyond recognition -- and to steal away to a corner and limply nurse the wound for as long as it takes to provide the minimum scabbing, while epiphanies dawn at each waking.  Weeks of time.  Weeks and weeks.  Most of which is spent sleeping.  Ignoring all the unimportant noise of pleas for return.

****************

I will: Face each day.  With sore shoulders.  With weathered skin and pride.  With lackluster vision.

I will: Drink coffee.  Copious amounts of it.

I will: Attempt to find beauty in the still pools at my ankles, even when the water is chilled and I hurt to move.  Even when my anger threatens to eclipse my tiny resource of wisdom.  Even when my weathered skin and sore shoulders do not seem hearty enough to withstand the blasts of my current situation.  (Although then I'll only look for ruddy survival in the water, and not beauty, but maybe late in the day, when I reflect on the reflection in those pools, I shall see a sort of beauty, a tough, bizarre, twisted loveliness, mirrored back from the depths.  But I'll not expect it.)

I will not:  Quit.  Opt out.  Commit suicide.

I will, on occasion: Imagine how nice it would be to escape.

please don't bother reading this. (iow, I would do anything if you would read this. including rolling in a pile of germs. and I'm germ-phobic. so.)

Hi!  How are you today?

Oh, me?  Oh, yes.  No.  Really.  Fine.  I'm FINE.  See?  See me over here, trembling only very, very slightly, holding my arms under my breasts like they're liable to become wanton criminals, heckling random passersby and attempting gropes in odd places on strangers if I let them escape from their down-and-locked position (which totally reminds me of an episode from the Steven Spielberg eighties classic, "Amazing Stories," starring Kiefer Sutherland, involving a WWII fighter plane, and a gunman trapped in the belly of the plane, a cartoonist, who could draw amazing (yes, that's right!  amazing!), adorable pictures of airplanes with big eyes and round, cutesy wheels, etc., and he sketches a plane with the wheels down-and-locked because the landing gear is hinky and they're going to have to land the plane on the belly, thus smooshing the gunman, unless something magical happens, and he repeats the down-and-locked mantra for about a million hours, or so says my absolutely perfect memory, and my brother was a big fan of that episode, he's the one pointed out Kiefer's glasses, how they cast a shadow that made him look super-evil, he was super-observant about random stuff like that, metaphor, imagery, etc., and I never noticed those things until after he mentioned them, boy was he smart, my brother).

Wow.

Um.

Heh.

Did I mention how much of a mess I am today?  I went to OMSI with J, and I was on the brink, surveying the brink's depths, wondering whether the houses down there were located on a street less fucked-up than ours, weighing my options, while feigning interest in my kid's interactions with the other children, and even that stuff was messing with me, because I felt so emotional about everything happening.

I hate days like this, where I'm skinless and boneless.  My spine disappears when I'm this vulnerable, and what if someone had tried to fuck with J?  I would've just smiled lamely and moved on, and J would've seen my total broken-ness, my gross gross gross stupidness icky sniveling miserable ineptitude.  And been disappointed by me.  But not for the final time, sweetheart.  Oh, my, no.  Gracious, no.  You've got a whole boatload of that left to look forward to.  Because mommy is a psychopath.

That should totally be the name of my blog.  Because, really, who'm I kidding?  Exactly no one.  I'm a mommy-blogger, and an insane one to boot.  In my boot-cuts.

(Because even psycho-mommy isn't going to toss herself into the potentially-good-real-estate-brink wearing those silly skinny jeans.  At least, not while they don't have the Guess jean zippers on the ankles.  Holding out.  Holding out for the zippers.  Then brink.)

Zippers then Brink.  That should be my blog's name.

sunshine makes me wince.

I'm too accustomed to the dark, dreary gloom that is an Oregon winter.

But!  To brighten up my own wee corner, I've added a few new things to the shop, specifically, a few custom options for the peeps out there with a wish for such.

And I think they're mighty cute, if I do say so my damn self.  (I love referencing Fletch; it's funny *and* it reminds me of my brother from a happier, more light-hearted time.  As in, when he wasn't loony and living as a homeless person in Florida.  Not that you haven't had me beat you senseless with that information yet, but I thought I'd remind you again.  Because I can.  Because whining is highly underrated.)

(Yes.  I am aware that this picture, herego my camera, sucks.  But I broke it last summer when I was hanging out with Mignon at Jameson Square, not that I'm suggesting a link b/w hanging out with Mignon and breaking my camera, although I kind of am, just by sheer linking of words in a sentence, but it's not Mignon's fault that she's so magnetic as to attract my camera toward her, thereby compelling it to make an escape from my bag, thus falling dramatically to the brick surface that is the floor of that park, and Mignon, for the record, I TOTALLY don't blame you.  At all.  Well, maybe a little, for having such delicious children that my son was blinded by their fabulousness and ran away from me and toward them, causing me to chase him, causing my bag to bounce wildly at my hip, causing my camera to flee forth and toward you, but instead smacking its stupid, brick-notwithstanding exterior on the unforgiving walk.  It was kismet -- at least my camera thought so.  Until it fucking BROKE.  Stupid camera.)

Anyway.  Here's sucky, but still cute, picture number two of the custom.  The adorable, loverly custom.

I swear, just as soon as we can afford to, we're replacing that dumb camera.

Until then, I have to sort of forgive it, for it has provided me with this:

And also this:

And even this (which is diminished somewhat by my hideously underslept, baggy-eyed presence, since I'm pretty fucking unaccustomed to playing a role in the action in front of the camera, but it's cool, babe, I really don't care, I swear, why would I want to be in any pictures with my rapidly growing son?,  I mean, that would be total foolishness, me in pictures with him, or with the two of you, ever, at all, more than ZERO ZIP ETC and no I'm not REMOTELY BITTER seeing as how it's sort of day late/dollar short -- or maybe that should be SEVERAL dollars to account for inflation given how much time has already passed -- to offer now since he's A YEAR-AND-A-FREAKING-HALF so, no, really, please don't bother just smile and let me take ANOTHER fucking picture of you two already and then maybe after that you could pick him up and walk away and all the mothers on the playground can watch and think you're so adorable for being so gentle and loving toward our son while I lag behind with the stroller and the diaper bag and the snacks and our jackets and a smoldering case of resentment):

(Lucky for Caleb I still think he's hot as a damn firecracker.  And he really is all kinds of devoted/gentle/loving toward our son *and* me.  Bastard.  *wink*)