“One need not be a chamber to be haunted,” wrote Emily Dickinson. Since my teens this poem has made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It is how I have always felt. Haunted. I used to dread my nightmares as a child. I would dream I was watching a scary movie, and when I covered my eyes, I could still see it because the images were coming from my own brain. I couldn’t escape.
I’m doing well on my antidepressants. They have enabled me to cover my eyes and not see the scary parts anymore.
The house I rent has an entire wall in the living room that is all giant windows. It gives an excellent view of the mountains and allows tons of light to flow in. Unfortunately, every now and then, a bird will smack against the window with a sickening thud. Usually they are merely stunned and fly away immediately. Sometimes they linger on the deck for a time, dazed from the collision. Once or twice I’ve had to scoop up a dead bird with a broken neck.
That’s what my intrusive thoughts are like now. Zoloft is the window and the horrors in my mind are the birds. I’m still aware of them. I see them coming. But they can’t get in. If I focus my attention on them, I can bring them back, sure. I hear the thuds of them trying to get through. The medication has given me the choice to turn my attention elsewhere.
I don’t like having to take pills to feel normal. I’m not immune to the stigma. Maybe I should be able to get exercise and sunshine and feel better. The thing is, I hate sunshine. It makes me irritable. Exercise feels great while I’m doing it, and for some time afterwards, yet it has no effect on the thoughts I cannot banish. My muscles are not armor enough for those midnight encounters with the dark corners of myself.
Everything else about me is the same, which believe it or not is a relief. I’m not happy all the time. I don’t want to change my blog into a photo essay/poem devoted to the joys of my blessed life. I have no desire to make wreaths of wildflowers to adorn my hair. Okay, maybe for like twenty minutes on Tuesday I did, but it passed.
Years ago, I stopped taking my medication because I didn’t want to be “one of those people.” I didn’t want to need it. I convinced myself that I did NOT suffer from clinical depression and anxiety. Rather, I believed that my mother, who is clinically depressed, projected this onto me from the time I was a child in order to have a companion in the darkness. I rebelled against that and stopped the meds in order to prove her wrong.
Never again.
Like the horror movies in my dreams I could still see through my covered eyes, I know those intrusive, terrifying thoughts are still there. They can come back and destroy my peace any time.
Thud.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Same old me
The past week, I’ve been deeply absorbed in the task of parenting two children while following the Dr. Conrad Murray trial. I record it during the day and watch on and off while I do housework or nurse. Today I folded laundry and listened to the prosecutor question the defense’s “expert” witness. The witness was deliciously uncooperative on cross, and our prosecutor, Walgren, got terse. It was good television.
Apparently there has been in-fighting on the defense team. Chernoff is the lead attorney, but he often seems downright unprepared. He doesn’t have documents he needs and he appears to break the holy grail of defense law: never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. His own witnesses are making the prosecution’s case.
The guy brought in to deal with medical testimony, Flannagin, is so unlikable, that even though the maximum sentence on the table is four years, I think this jury is going to give Dr. Murray the chair.
The defendant has a look of bewilderment in good moments. In bad moments, he looks like he’s wondering if he is being punked.
Having two children is not twice as hard as having one. It’s more like four times as hard. I’m at a great phase with Pringles where we spend the mornings staring at each other like infatuated teens, but simultaneously I’m at a place with Viva where there is much foot stomping and screaming “NO!”
I’m so grateful Odie is putting the little foot-stomper to bed for me tonight. My back is killing me and I’m enjoying a much needed glass of wine while I write. Today was a big day. I put Pringles down for tummy time and left the room to get something. When I returned, she was on her back, wide-eyed, like “How the hell did that happen?” I put her back on her tummy and watched her roll onto her back. She rolls! Damnit. Now I have to stop putting her on the couch and leaving the room. Well, I knew this day would come.
The days are going by too fast. I want to be with her every moment. She will sleep in her cosleeper now if I put her there, but I want her in the same room with me, where I can look over at her and listen to her sigh in her sleep. She spends the last few hours of her day in the swing beside me while I watch TV or read. It is painful to have her away from me.
Now that I’m on Zoloft, it’s painful in a normal way, not in a demons-are-eating-her-alive-in-front-of-me way.
I’m learning to focus on the positive a little more. In fact, I think that my negativity was chemical. I’ve been so completely happy and bliss-filled that I really want to start writing about the joy and magic I find in everyday experiences.
I’m just fucking with you.
Want to know what is irritating me today? The misuse of the word “definition.” For example, a woman I know wrote about how she did something idiotic and then said, “I am the definition of stupidity.” No, you are the exemplification of stupidity, Stupid.
See? Same old me.
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