Off Day

I’m feeling off today.  I don’t know why.  Yesterday I had a great conversation with my therapist, but today I’m just down.  I feel like all of my emotions are bubbling up to the surface and I’m afraid I might lose control of them.  I’ve worked so hard at keeping things under control.   

Today I went to my nutritional therapist and she talked to me about energy work, suggested I might look into it.  Part of me is really curious, but the scientist in me balks at the idea.  I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m feeling somewhat desperate.  It definitely wouldn’t hurt to get some energy work done, it’s completely non-invasive.  But would I just be wasting my money?  We'll see.

Movies, Books, TV

Well, I'd written a post this morning and had internet problems and lost it all.  But oh well.  Maybe this post will be better.  Who can say?

I spent the weekend reading books and watching "The Big Bang Theory," which always makes me laugh.  That's a good thing too, because the books I read were sad.  I read "The Silver Linings Playbook" by Mathew Quick and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky.  Both deal with mental illness.  Both seem to have an overall optimistic ending.  Both made me really sad, though.  Life is just so difficult for so many people.  It makes me wonder what the point is to life, anyway.  I suppose the best we can do in this life is to be there, in anyway possible, for others.  I know I've been blessed to have people do that for me.  And I can only hope that I've been that for others.  But I just worry that I'm missing out, in an important way, of being there for others.  I worry that I'm going to miss some cue from my children and be totally ignorant of struggles they have or will go through.  I worry that my kids will grow up and I won't really know them and they won't come to me with their heartaches.  For sure that's the pattern for me and my parents.  I don't think my parents really know me; I surely don't share with them how I'm really feeling.  Maybe not my dad as much as my mom, but my dad's dead, so I'm left without him.  And I seem to have a hard time just letting people in.  Sometimes what I carry feels so heavy and scary that I don't dare share it fully with someone else.

I think I need to find a lighter book to read.  I also need to go grocery shopping and pay some attention to my messy house.  I hate housework.  On a more positive note, I found some on-line teaching gigs.  The only problem is that I can't seem to find the energy necessary to apply.  You have to write a "teaching philosophy" which I seem to have lost.  I can't say I feel teaching is all that important anymore.  I used to be sure of things, at least a few things.  Now I'm unsure about everything.  I must be going through a mid-life crisis.  How can I be this far in my life and feel so lost?  It's like I'm back in my teenage years.  Except back then I felt a passion about life, about learning.  And also, I have teenagers of my own now. 

Lately it feels like I'm living my life very superficially.  I don't want to analyze things--people, ideas, events, myself.  I used to do this all the time, but now I don't want to think too much.  I don't want to dredge up anything complicated and messy.  I want to assume everyone is trying their hardest to be the best person they can be.  This makes it hard to really be there for other people, because life is basically complicated and messy.  I just don't want to have any conflict in my life right now.  But I worry that I'm sacrificing relationships because of it.  I'm even tired of trying to figure myself out.  I guess that's why I so readily loose myself in movies, books, TV.  But, as this weekend showed me, I have to pick my books, movies and TV out carefully.  Just good escape stories, nothing that will make me think too much.  This makes me sad though, because there was a time in my life when I loved a challenging story.  Maybe this is just a phase and I'll find my old, analytical, caring self again. 

This Life

I was going to write yesterday and talk about how much better things are going.  I was feeling more energized, more hopeful, more interested in life.  But I didn't take the time to do that.  Now today, I'm feeling down again.  It's exhausting, this life. 

Baby Steps

Okay, I'm starting to feel a little bit better.  I'm still depressed, but not at the end of my rope anymore.  I don't know if the effects of daily exercising are kicking in or if my changes in diet are making a difference, but that doesn't really matter right now, it's just nice not to want it all to end anymore.

That being said, I am giving myself emotional whiplash.  The kids have started school and I have a tendency to take all their stress and anxiety so seriously.  It weighs heavy on me, even though they're doing fine.  I tend to fixate on it and let their anxiety turn into mine.  It sucks.  Also, with the start of school, I'm left wondering what to do with myself all day.  I no longer have the dissertation to work on and I have no job.  There's plenty of house/yard work to do, but I really hate that type of work, so I avoid it at all costs.  Some of the time I think I really need a job, other times I think I'd just like a job, and still at other times I have no desire to work at all.  And I go through these feelings several times each day.  I used to be so focused, I knew what was important in life and I had the desire to do those important things.  But now, meh.  I really don't know what is important and I just can't find it in me to care.  It's hard to try and apply for jobs, go to the farmer's market, get outside and weed, do laundry, go to Costco, vacuum . . . Everything is still just takes an inordinate amount of energy and I'm not sure what to do about it.  Baby steps, I guess.

Nature

Our family went backpacking this weekend in the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness in the Blue Mountains of south-eastern Washington.  I was really banking on this trip; in the past the one thing that grounded me was getting out in the wilderness.  It took a lot of energy for me to make this trip happen.  I wasn't sure I had it in me to really get out there, but I did.  I had been looking forward to the possibility of backpacking for weeks, it was the one thing I knew would help me feel better.  But this trip failed to recharge me.  I felt isolated out there and strangely scared.  I couldn't find the wonder of nature.  I couldn't enjoy the wonder my children felt being out in nature.  Everything was wrong.  Now I'm at a loss of what to do.  If Nature can no longer ground me, get to the essence of my self, then what is there?  I feel like something fundamental in me has been broken.  I'm just a shell of who I used to be--I don't know myself any more.  And I don't like what is left. 

Empty

It's been a month and I've gone from feeling like a squishy invertebrate to feeling like a caged animal.  There seem to be 2 choices for me right now: pace around maddeningly or sit and do nothing.  I sit.  There’s no purpose to a caged animal, it cannot fulfill the measure of its creation.  There is no purpose in me, I do not know what the measure of my creation is.

My depression has worsened over the last month.  I feel empty and cannot find meaning to my life.  I feel like a story-teller who can no longer see stories in the world around me.  I am finally medication-free and now looking at alternative therapies like nutritional therapy.  I met with a nutritional therapist yesterday.  The skeptic in me doesn't think it will make much difference, but I will give it a shot.  She started me out on a dysbiocide to balance out all the microbes in me.  And she wants me to eat veggies at every meal.  That will be a challenge, especially since eating isn't high on my priority list.  But it can't hurt.  I'm also trying to exercise every day.  Again, it's a challenge.  I guess I'm not completely hopeless, because I am trying a few things to counter the depression.  But it all feels like a feeble attempt.

My entire life was spent with the feeling that I was supposed to get my PhD.  Now that I have it, it doesn't seem to matter.  The only difference it's made is to make me question what I thought was a true part of myself, one of the defining parts of myself--the academic.   Now academia seem pointless.  My life seems pointless.

I will try

It feels like I have been chewed up and spit out with the end of the dissertation.  It's been over a month and I still feel all mushy and gooey--pretty much like any invertebrate--no backbone.  However, it's not all bad.  My medication content is slowly going down and I don't feel any worse; not any better, but not any worse.  So that's good news.  I'm very blessed to have good people to talk to--therapist, sister-in-law, friends. . .I have been dragging a bit lately, but right now I feel pretty good.  The overall messages I am getting for life is to follow your heart, be honest with yourself and others, just keep trying.  Now to implement all of these things; it will be hard because I'm feeling so squishy right now, but I will try.  Like the poem by Mary Oliver "I will try."