VISIBLE CHANGES

For the past week, every afternoon, my designated "helper" at work has been coming in asking me about the holidays. He wants to know if I am ready for Christmas, for Thanksgiving, and I still can't even get my head around Halloween. Plus, I have been unusually disinterested in conversation, period.

This day, he is shelling peanuts and popping them in his mouth as he brings up Thanksgiving again. He asks me what my plans are. I tell him about how Halloween is (tomorrow! yikes!) coming up, and I have a big old box of Halloween decorations that I never even got out of the garage.

"I guess I just don't have the holiday spirit this year," I say.

"It's because you're sad," he says. I open my mouth to protest, but he waves his hand at me.

"You don't have to say anything," he says, "I know you are sad. I can see it in your eyes."

Then I realize how utterly transparent I am. Sometimes I think I am so tough, and I keep up this image that I am happy-go-lucky, smiling at my other coworkers and laughing with them, but just before my helper came in, I was fighting back tears and a dark feeling of hopelessness.

The other day, my best friend had to come over to borrow my shower. We were standing by my fridge and she is looking at the various papers and pictures I have hanging there. I point to the flyer for a 5K race coming up in a little over two weeks time.

"That's the race I was training for, " I told her.

"I know. You've been talking about it. What, you aren't going to do it now?"

"I don't even know if I can run a 5K now. I haven't been running in over three weeks."

"Why not?" Hmm. I haven't thought about how I would answer that question to someone else.

"I've only wanted to sleep the past few weeks. I haven't wanted to do anything but sleep."

She looks at me funny. "Oh, I feel like that too, sometimes." But she seems like she doesn't believe me.

There was a client of mine once at the veterinary hospital who was young and beautiful and lived with her handsome husband in a nice house. She was a stay at home wife, no kids. That in itself surprised me - why wouldn't you work? Then again, I find my life's purpose when I work, and not everyone is like that. Some have other purposes. Anyway, one day she and I were kind of talking about it, the whole not working. She told me that sometimes, sometimes meaning "often", she couldn't get out of bed because she was so depressed. She would stay in her pajamas all day under the covers. I thought that sounded like a luxury. I do not have the luxury to be depressed. I have two little boys and two big dogs and one big ol' man to take care of. It's go time, all the time.

About a year after this conversation, the couple missed a vet appointment. When the receptionist (Genea) called them, the husband told her that his wife had been found dead the night before. She was found in the ritzy neighborhood where she did housesitting. He became concerned when he hadn't heard from her before she went to bed, so he went to the residence and found her drowned in the swimming pool. No one was sure how she ended up that way. "She never mentioned going swimming....

Around this time, I had been very sad myself. I left the clinic for a lunchtime appointment with my therapist and ended up being held against my will in the psych clinic. My therapist said I could not go home without a prescription for different antidepressants and we had to wait for the psychiatrist to visit with me. "It's either that or I put you in a hospital," he said. I was supposed to be back at work and had to call and tell them I was held up. All this because I answered the questions "do you ever think about hurting yourself?" and "do you ever think about suicide?" honestly, which in retrospect I shouldn't have, because it was not relevant. I used to hurt myself when I was younger, and suicide fantasies are just par for the course, but I would never actually do anything like that, because of my children and my faith.

Now I don't want the medications that simply numb you. I don't believe in their diagnosis, but I do understand that I am usually at a lower plane, in terms of happy, than most people, and so my lows are way-lows. It dips down below normal. A couple of weeks from now, I'll be my bright shining self again. There is always hope, and things always find a way of turning around. I've been to the lowest of places, but I have always come back around, an old pro at turning the tides of these moods.

I leave my office, trying to be composed. A recently hired supervisor greets me, then puts his hand on my shouder, and looks me in the eye. "Are you okay?" he asks. I nod yes, but tears well up in the corners of my eyes. "Do you want to talk?" he asks, and I shake my head no and just smile at him, trying to fight back tears.
"Let's pray", he says, and together we bow our heads as he leads us in prayer, "Lord, hold up our sister with your strength and grace..." his arm on my shoulder, our hearts uplifted to God.

And I felt better, that day. There will be more days like that to come.

Just What the Doctor (Never) Ordered

There it was, on the open top of my husband's dresser, a pink envelope with my name on it. I had no recollection of what this was, and opened it up to find a Mother's Day card from last year from my own mother, with a generous gift certificate to the nearby nail salon and a smaller card to a nearby bookstore. I was very excited to find the bookstore certificate, because I am in bad need of some new fiction (remember in my Dick Francis review how I mentioned I don't really enjoy mysteries? I've been reading the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, for pete's sakes, for lack of anything else in the house to read), but I noticed the expiration date on the nail salon certificate, and that it was one week away. Use it before you lose it, right?
So here I go, picking up the phone to make an appointment for only the second manicure/pedicure of my life. It just feels so foreign to me, because I never would spend money like that on myself. It feels frivolous to me. I know lots of girls do it, but I am just not oriented that way. I always liked that about myself, the fact that I was low-maintenance, not overly concerned with falseness of appearance, someone who puts others before herself. I am much more likely to spend forty bucks on entertaining my children than sinking it into something that feels like a vanity to me.
After this weekend, though, I am completely changing my point of view on this. As I sank into the leather chair and rested my feet in the tub of hot water, I began to feel some of the tension of the week slide off of me. It has been a rough week. My car broke down mid-week, crashed and burned. I was without sufficient funds to replace it but desperately needing transportation to make my daily hour long rush hour commute both ways. I was in a tough spot. I had to rely on my parents to help me out, something I hated to do, something that made me feel like an absolute failure. I had gotten myself emotionally worked up about it without any real release. Well, except for those two margaritas the night before this - boy, that felt good, but seeing as I passed out as soon as we got home, the reward was short lived.
I remembered the last and only time I had been here, and how the chatter of the Asian women who worked there made me feel very comfortable and relaxed, although I had no idea what they were saying. This time, I was introduced to the massaging action of the chair, and as the chair kneaded the tightly wound muscles of my shouders and neck and the woman rubbed my calves and feet, I began to allow myself to relax. This is huge for me, a letting go that I seem to have a hard time doing.
I read something once about Virgos, my birth sign, that made me laugh. It said that because Virgos are so uptight and tend to be nervous and high-strung, they should avoid intense cardio workouts and instead pursue yoga and meditation for their physical health. It went on to explain that cardio workouts bring a soul's energy up to a higher level of excitement, but the Virgos need to force themselves to relax and instead calm their energy down. I think it is so true, but because I don't like relaxing, I have avoided yoga and instead tended towards the cardio they suggested my sign should avoid: running, stairmaster, swimming, team sports.
As the woman dipped my feet in the paraffin wax and smoothed away my skin, I wondered why, with all the doctors and therapists I've seen for my "nervous" conditions, no one ever suggested yoga, centering exercises, meditation, getting pedicures, massages, or simply practicing relaxation techniques. They always rushed to the prescription pads, wanting to give me muscle relaxers to calm down, or antidepressants to take the edge off, without really looking at the root of the problem. The problem is not that I have a chemical imbalance, but simply that I never learned how to calm myself down. I joke with my friends sometimes that even my hobbies start to stress me out, because I begin to take them too seriously. I frequently bite off more than I can chew, take on more than I should handle on my own, thinking that I am simply strong enough to bear it all. I push myself too hard and don't ask for help when I need it. I go and go and go until I fall down or freakout, and I know it takes its toll on my body.
I was having a hard time even accepting this gift. I was watching the woman work the dead skin out from around my toes and shape my cuticles and it made me feel so uncomfortable I wanted to tell her to stop and just go on home. Strangely, though, it started to make me think about Jesus. I was thinking about how in our Wednesday night Bible Study, we were talking about the events of the night of the Last Supper. Do you remember what Jesus did before the meal? He took off his robe, pulled on a towel, and began to wash the feet of each of his disciples. I remember our leader posing the question to us, "How do you think this made the disciples feel?" We had decided that probably felt pretty strange to them, pretty humbling. This man who they looked up to as their leader, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the one they wanted to serve, was instead serving them.
There is some controversy to this in some churches today. Some feel like this is a ritual Jesus wanted us to continue literally, and hold ceremonial foot washing ceremonies where they gather together latex gloves, antibacterial soap, towels, and small tubs and host a gathering where some wash others feet. Some feel like this was something that was relevant to the times, but has lost the relevancy today, and really what Jesus was saying was for us to take care of each other, even if it means humbling ourselves to do it. As Matthew 23:12 reads, "And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." As Jesus humbled himself to wash the feet of his followers, he said to them, "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." (John 13:1-7).
Does an example mean we take it literally?
Some people even incorporate foot washing into their marriage ceremony as a way of demonstrating perhaps what Jesus was trying to demonstrate - that in order to love each other, we have to love each other selflessly. We have to be willing to serve each other.
I, though, like Peter in the Gospel of John, am uncomfortable being served by someone else. Sure, we both have our same reasons. As I am thinking about this, however, a woman comes in. The Asian nail girls greet her by name, and she take the chair next to me and begins to soak her feet. Before my lady is finished with my nails, this lady (who has been very helpful to me, helping me understand what was expected of me next) announced that she had to come back later, because she had a massage appointment. As she walked out, I thought how she was a woman who was taking care of her need for relaxation. She had no qualms about being served by someone else. I found that inspiring.
Just then, I overheard one of the other customers near me telling her manicurist that "I thought I had found my path, but God had other plans for me." She was telling of a story in which God revealed his plan to, instead of having her teach children, tell her to get her real estate license and work alongside her husband. I found that comforting to think about as well.
Sometimes I think my source of stress is that I am worrying about the road I am on, and if it the one of destiny or the one of my own free will. Is my free will standing in the way of God's plan for me? I wish for signs to appear pointing me in the right direction, or assuring me that I am following it. What this woman said, though, made it all feel simpler, like I was falling backwards into the gentle hands and plans of the Man Upstairs. God will decide the plan for you. All you have to do is listen, and if you are not on the right road, he will let you know.
After these moments of clarity in the leather chair of the nail salon, I decided I was going to try to keep myself in this "pedicure bubble", where nothing could bother me. I had pretty pale pink perfect nails, and nothing could touch me. If I could stay here, I could stay relaxed.
Determined to keep my "bubble" intact, I tried to relax into other recreational opportunities. We did some fishing, I got some nice wilderness hike geocaches in, grilled some food in the backyward, went to the park. In order to preserve my bubble, I just enjoyed the hike while grabbing three geocaches, and didn't let the fact that if I don't get at least ten caches a week, I do a backslide on the Grand Poobah List give me a moment of performance pressure.
I wish I could stay in that frame, and I decided to make that my goal. I made a mental list of that I want to do more of, and what I wanted to do less of. Making a point to take care of my mental well-being by playing more classical music, worrying less, enjoying the moment fully, giving in to the massage chair, and letting go.
As I left the nail salon, it was with the realization that I had enough money left on my certificate to come again. I asked about the date and the woman assured me she would honor it.
"Don't wait too long, though."
I think I have, but I don't think I will again.



P.S. Saturday afternoon the Kentucky Derby was marred by the unexpected death of a racehorse, Eight Belles, a filly who placed second, and then broke both ankles after crossing the finish line. She was euthanized on the track immediately after diagnosis. Please watch the tribute I chose to post about her. So sad.

Is Happiness overrated? I have this question because lately I have been having some minor "freakouts" (episodes of extreme sadness, crying jags, or angry outburts), maybe five or so in the last couple of weeks. It makes me wonder if I should call for help, but then I don't know who to schedule an appointment with: my doctor, who wants to diagnose every complaint I have as "allergies", my psychiatrist, who wants to put me on drugs every time I walk in the door, or my therapist(s), who feels like someone I am paying to be my friend. My best friend says I am fine and it is just a combination of lack of sleep, stress, feeling overwhelmed with responsibility at home, etc etc. I wonder if some of it is not caused by the drop in hormones at this many months post partum. I wonder this because the same elements are there that have been there the five months since my baby was born, only they are just now causing this reaction. I have been dealing with the same things all along; why would they just now begin to get to me?
I am trying to remember to take the fish oil, which seemed to help so much with "balancing my mood" during my pregnancy, during a time where I really could have been depressed with some of the things I was dealing with, but wasn't. Exercise seems to help substantially. However, I feel like I am having a very hard time dealing with my stress level lately and feel the urge to start smoking again very strongly. It was not as hard as I thought to quit, and for months now I haven't thought about it at all, and even felt disgust when I saw other people doing it, but lately every day I have been thinking about it. Is there a Nicotine Anonymous club? Because I would so go to that. I feel like I need a 'phone-a-friend' to talk me out of it and help me resist the urge.
I want to elaborate on my feelings about the overmedicating of America by the psych industry, and my various medication misadventures, but instead I think I should clean the kitchen. My husband is probably frustrated by now by the fact that I spend more time on the computer than I do doing housework (but then again he does none of the housework himself...well that is a whole different issue, watch for further posts about the women's lib movement biting us women in the ass)