Dancing with Tears In My Eyes

I haven't been here in quite awhile and actually this time it's been a deliberate thing.
You really wouldn't have wanted to hear what I had to say...

I've been fighting a boulder size case of depression. The real scary kind. The kind that gets you a standing with a therapist every week. The kind that gets you a new pill to pop. The kind that you fight every morning just to get out of bed and get moving.

I couldn't tell you what led to it. There were signs, yes. Trying to buy a new car last spring and sobbing when the salesman was less than kind about my trade in, the terrible pain of turning 40 with no spouse or children, the constant deaths or cancer diagnoses in my family and friends. Upheaval at work, losing my greatly respected manager, a verbally abusive co-worker and a second admin who seems to constantly undermine me. It all just took its toll.

And in the midst of these things, I began to cry a great deal, weeping and sobbing and found myself unable to stop.

 I've started rethinking the act of crying. There is a lot of it in depression. Sometimes it comes out when you don't want it to. At work is a problem, and in the company of others. I sought treatment for depression more for the prevention of embarrassment due to tears than anything else. I hated them, they ran makeup, they made my nose red and my eyes swell. I felt that they made me appear weak when I wanted to be strong. I worked and strove and damped down feelings for years trying to keep them at bay. But come they would.  It's as if all of the tears and pain that I pushed down and held back for years came gushing forth like a dam breaking it's wall. They and I could be held in no longer.

Boom...depression.  Tears and more tears. A monsoon after years of drought. Years of telling myself, "I can handle this."
"I am fine."
"I don't even want children, plenty of people live fulfilled lives without them"

I break down and then I work at therapy. I fight and I fight to just hit the top edge of happiness before falling back down. Sometimes it even happens.

A few weeks ago, I travel for the first time in my life to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Anxiety and panic have kept me from making this trip for years and years. I am 40 and I catch my first glance of the mountains. Hear a wail emanate from somewhere deep inside of myself and then I can't stop them, the tears, rivers of them. The first sight of this majestic mountain range has me sobbing like a child. My companion asks, 'Am I okay', and I laugh while sobbing,

"I never thought I'd get here."
"I never dreamt they were this beautiful...they really look blue...."
On and on I babble, for once the tears are present, but they are a manifestation that something... something good and joyful is happening within me. All of the cares and worries of my life seem to diminish, to melt away in the face of God's awesome creation.

Then last week, the night before the election. I am anxious and uneasy, I am ridden with worry about the country, things like ISIS, Ebola, my company has just announced a 25% reduction in the workforce. Did I make the right decisions, did I do enough? What is enough?

I stand in front of my bureau. I don't know what prompts me...I start to march in place, it feels good, I try one rhumba step, I try a cha-cha step and the next thing I know I am dancing. I am moving my hips, the muscle memory of 'Cuban motion', it comes back, it just feels so good. I am dancing the cha cha, the rhumba, east coast swing, west coast swing, some tango hustle, the cupid shuffle, the merengue, salsa steps. Oh I'm teary, but I'm dancing.  Dancing with tears in my eyes...It's 30-40 minutes before I stop and later when I lay down, the worries that have beset me, they are nowhere to be found...I close my eyes and drift into sleep.

Love in a Plastic Bag

My last few posts have focused mainly on Generation X as a whole, on what's happening to us in the media, economically and sociologically.

This one gets a little personal, a little touchy-feely so if you are looking for another bitter diatribe against the press, et. al or society as a whole, I fear you will be disappointed.

I'm a Generation X'er certainly and I wear my day-glo badge with pride, I turn the radio up loud on 80's Friday nights, I'm a denzien of You Tube scouring the retro ads and TV shows of my youth. I remember exactly where I was when Challenger exploded on that frigid Florida morning in 1986, (Ms. Gilbreath's 6th grade math class)  when President Reagan admonished Mr. Gorbachev to "Tear down that wall!" and that miraculous night in 1990 when that wall ACTUALLY DID come down!  And in the last few months, I've also attained a new Gen X badge, my Gen X Unemployment badge. Yep, there, I've said it, I'm unemployed.

I am very aware that like so many of us, I'm just a statistic, another name on one of the thousands and thousands of resumes that whiz to and fro throughout cyberspace, resumes that carry our education, accomplishments, statistics and our hopes that maybe, just maybe, this will be THE ONE that defies the odds, lands us the job, and for the first time in a long time we can finally breathe. The ONE that will release us from the torment of haunting Craigslist, Careerbuilder, Monster, Hot Jobs, etc like Mr. Leroux's phantom prowling the dungeons under the Paris Opera House.

Every time the phone rings my heart leaps into my throat and like Pavlov's dog, my pupils dilate and my mouth waters with anticipation of what I'll say...what they'll say. Perhaps this time will be THE ONE, or at the very least I'll net an interview. Even an interview says that they kind of...want me.

After months of this process, interviews for positions that never materialize, the stress of analzying and scrutinizing every word I say, every word they say, worrying over things like "was there lint on my trousers ?", "did I sweat too much?" "is there any lipstick on my teeth?","did I answer that question properly?", am I too old, too young, underqualified, overqualified", I broke down. In a scary way. No, not suicidial or anything like that. I can't become an alcoholic, I can't afford to drink! Can't smoke, can't afford cigarettes (plus the smell of cigarette smoke makes me nauseous, there is that) In a way it became almost worse. The longest and most protracted period of depression I have ever known, in short depression has become a state of being for me. I never knew or could have imagined the hell that true depression really is.  The chronic insomnia (on the plus side I have greatly increased my knowledge of old movies, Time Life music offerings, and episodes of Married with Children), the weird almost flu-like body aches and pains, the total lack of appetite, lack of interest in anything.  Thinking back to how glibly I would toss off the phrase, "I am so depressed!" when faced with trivial things like a relationship not coming to fruition, a bad haircut or not finding a pair of shoes to match an outfit, makes me grimace in shame.

On this past weekend though, I had an opportunity to be the recipient of something so remarkable, a respite of sorts from the depressive state I live in, which came to me in the most unusual way. To celebrate the wedding anniversary of my mother and stepfather, members of our family took a day cruise. I have to admit, while wanting to be there for my parents, I equally DIDN'T want to be there. I wanted to be holed up in my cocoon, not facing the questioning stares of other family members, "does she have a job yet?", being irrationally angry at them for having jobs, having loving spouses, children, disposable income. I put on my happy face though and for a time I WAS actually happy enjoying the company of my family and their children.  My sadness though was never far from the surface no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. Something in me has been broken and I've been at a loss to discover how to 'fix the hole (whole)'.

The game changer came in the form of a green plastic bag. My mother throughout these weeks and months has been my lifeline, patiently listening to me as I poured out my fear, my worries, listening as I vented my spleen over the colossal unfairness of life, the abandonment I felt by the government, former employers, friends, and even God Himself. She listened and I selfishly thought, "She doesn't really get it... I mean she's got a job, she's not suffering like I am...". I cringe even I type these selfish thoughts.

Before I left the docks that day, my mother handed me a green plastic bag, the kind that newspapers come in, and as I waited for the car to cool down before driving home, I opened the sack. What I found there were weeks of newspaper articles covering every topic from depression to interviewing tips, books to encourage me, books that she'd picked up for me knowing the kinds of subjects I like to read about, a favorite movie on DVD. In short, love. Right there in a plastic newspaper sleeve. She WAS listening to me all the time. I cried, all the way home. In fact, I cried as I wrote this.

But, some tiny shoots appeared today in the barren sands of my heart. And today, for the first time in a long while, I remembered to eat breakfast...