strange musings of a distracted spunk

I. Sometimes, a therapy session feels like a staring contest with awkward silences and irrational tears. Am I getting anything out of it? A little bit.

B. I’m one of those people who is happier with the more they have to do. Simultaneously, I resent being told I have to do things by other people. Obligations make me cranky.

Tres: There are nine books sitting on my dresser right now, all of which need to be read for my thesis. Not a single one has been touched.

Quatre: My youngest cat likes to play soccer. We have a small ball that she chases around the house. When we tired of playing with her, we could just put it up on a shelf in our wall unit.

V. Recently, my therapist broached the suggestion of getting a medical consult. This scares the shit out of me.

F. I drove an hour and a half for an interview yesterday. I still haven’t decided if that’s where I want to be.

Seite: To help motivate me, I bought a new flash drive to store all my paperwork for my thesis. I’ve moved my documents over, but haven’t added any new ones.

Huit: She has since figured out how to jump high enough and swat hard enough to get this ball. We’ve since given up on trying to take it away from her.

IX: It scares the shit out of me because I never thought I’d have to resort to medication to fix me. GDB told me to stop being such a prideful ass and think about whether or not this is going to make me feel better.

J. I forgot how good I am at rocking interviews. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was really me or is that just a persona I carry now?

Once: It’s not that the books or subject material don’t interest me. They do. Really. I just can’t seem to stay focused on anything for more than a few minutes these days.

Douze: I really think that summer is so much better because of So You Think You Can Dance. But I very strongly feel that Comfort needs to go home, lest one of the other more versatile dancers be sent home in her place.

XIII. In some ways, he’s right. I need to stop focusing on the why this happened, and focus more on the how to move beyond it. I never thought I’d be able to discuss this sort of thing with him.

N. The me I was in the interview was bright, smart, witty, full of relevant stories, and a super qualified candidate. The me I am now just wants to go back to bed.

Quince: Avocado and Techny Besty have called me out on repeating the same things or asking the same questions several days in a row. I didn’t know memory loss was a side effect of depression.

Seize: My parents are trying to make this transition easier on me by offering to lease a new car for me to get around. It would be easier if they weren’t constantly trying to pull one over the other.

XVII. It’s strange in some ways how much it means to be able to lay all my problems out carte blanche with him. I’ve never experienced this level of openness and honesty with a lover.

R. Recounting the interview is sort of like watching a home movie of yourself during a time which you blocked most memories out. “I did that? Really?”

Diecinueve: All of this means nothing, as I still have a tremendous amount of work to do and am paying 1200 per credit to do it.

Vingt: In some ways, I’m glad they’re still fighting. It means I can disguise this more easily.

XXI. But maybe in some ways, his act of genuinely caring for me means caring for everything about me. Good and bad. And somehow, this makes things with him so much better.

V. It seems imbalanced. Like I haven’t figured out which one of those me’s I want to be.

Veintitres: Maybe I’ll get around to opening one of those books tomorrow. Maybe not.

Vingt-quatre: I haven’t told them yet about my recent relapse to therapy. I think they’d blame themselves again, when it’s really just me.

XXIV. It’s funny how depression makes you see things more clearly than you did before.

Z. Can I be both sides of the equation? I feel like I should be solving for x, but perhaps I’ve been solving for y all along.

During my latest employment venture, I was subjected to all sorts of meetings and discussions on the topic of innovation. No one could really ever accurately explain what innovation was. Is it creativity? Is it making progress? Maybe it’s just doing something different each day. So we would sit there and try to determine if our initiative to introduce innovation was successful, before realizing that no one ever understood the meaning of it.

Several months later, after the pink slip was handed down, after I moved back home and found that the world as I knew it as so utterly different that I’m slowly recategorizing myself and the people in it, I find myself thinking about my boss’s words. She once told us that failure was a part of success; that if we don’t know where we went wrong, we’ll never know when we go right.

I’m not sure that I’m going right. I’m not even sure that I’ve gone left. I think I’m somewhere straight off the middle, peering over the edge of a really tall mountain. There’s a bit of a trail that I can sort of make, but I’m not sure if it’s going to get me to the bottom of the mountain or to just another part of it. But one thing that is encouraging is to realize that no matter how low I may feel, each day…there’s something different about it, even if they all do blend in together.

Maybe it was the new flash drive that I bought from Best Buy on Saturday. Maybe it was the hours I spent researching for my thesis on Sunday. (Speaking of which, I need mellow/study/reading music for my playlist because right now, I’m singing along to everything and getting distracted.) While there are moments that make me feel like my days are such a waste now, pointless and getting me nowhere, ultimately, they will get me somewhere. I have to believe they will, or I’ll fall into complete and utter despair.

I keep having these visions of me as a mother, with post-partum depression. I don’t want to be that woman, who falls into the trap of an oven on her head. How could anyone love me then if I don’t even love myself? Why is it that I can so easily picture myself as a mother with post-partum depression but not as a happy, joyous mother? Hell, I don’t even know if I definitely want to be a mother, and if the only one I can view is a depressed one, then heck to the no.

Am I a situational depressive? Or am I truly and clinically depressed? I struggle with these labels, knowing that neither is what I would have been categorized as just two years ago. Where is the bubbly, hyper, silly girl that I used to be? I see flashes of her sometimes, when I think I’m making progress. Is my failure in finding myself at this particular moment still innovation? Am I still succeeding, even when I feel like I am anything but?

There’s a sense of emptiness, and I can’t quite place my finger on it. It’s triggered easily, senselessly, and irrationally. And then I wonder. Am I truly empty? For that matter, can a glass ever be truly empty with the presence of gas?

And suddenly, there’s a small sense of relief. That there’s always going to be me. Somewhere. There just has to be. I don’t know when it’s going to come back. But just knowing that she’s there…small steps, right?

(Thank you all for your wonderful and supportive comments. I haven’t had a chance to personally respond to some of you, but…it’s a strange and unique experience to know that the blogworld has got my back and is only waiting to see me succeed again. Somehow, it makes me want more for myself. If only to be able to write about it.)

I.

Car vs. rock.

Rock wins.

Hello debt, my old friend. How nice of you to come by again.

II.

The thing one least want to hear when one is depressed is one’s grandfather saying, “Don’t be depressed. That’s the last thing you want to do.” This is said after one breaks down in tears, something that quite possibly has not happened since one was the tender age of two and didn’t get a pretty shiny object. Once again, irony strikes. Only my parents knew I was in therapy a year ago, because I needed their insurance. This time around, only my close friends know and one of my cousins. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s pretending to be strong.

But when my grandfather praises me for how strong I am, all I can think about is, “If I were so strong, why do I feel so weak right now?”

III.

It would be easier to say none of this matters, when you’re sitting on a beach with a close friend and his sister whose mother just passed away after a two year battle with cancer. When they lead you through the house they grew up in and show you her urn sitting on the fireplace, or when they show you the scrapbook they made for her to commemorate her joyous life, it’s easy to remember what’s really important. That they can persevere and enjoy a beautiful sunny day and even get stung by a jellyfish and take it all in stride. I think if I got stung by a jellyfish today, I’d take it as a sign that I was not meant to do anything anymore, least of all enjoy a beautiful sunny day.

Why is it that when they’ve stared cancer and death straight in the face, they can still move on while I feel like the slightest breeze would blow me over?

IV.

How is it a week ago I felt so relaxed, so content, and so able to just go with the flow? Is that the nature of depression, to feel such elated highs and such morbid lows within a day’s span? I thought maybe I was making progress. I think instead, I’m just digging myself a deeper hole by trying to make myself be happy. It’s like a bulimic who throws up and loses no weight anyway.

What’s the point?

V.

I’m so tired of crying and feeling on the edge of tears. I just want to stop all of it and wake up to a happier time.

When is this hole going to go away?

Maybe it’s because my family is Jewish and it comes with the territory.

Or maybe, it’s because I’m mad at myself.

Perhaps that’s not the best terminology to use. I’m not necessarily mad, as much as I am frustrated.

Frustrated that I moved home three months earlier than anticipated. Frustrated that my course load for the fall keeps changing, and I don’t quite know what’s expected of me yet. Frustrated that my parents now live in Bumblefuck, NJ which makes it difficult for me to get around without a car, let alone commute to school easily. Frustrated that I can’t make a decision about what I want to do.

Perhaps I should have called this post “Frustration” instead.

I once read that when we have too many options, we get easily overwhelmed. I think overwhelmed might be an understatement. Because of my parents’ non-proximity to Manhattan, the world is most certainly not my oyster. So I fluctuate. I feel guilty for living back in my parents’ house, for eating all their food, for asking for gas money, for reverting back to a fifteen year old without a license, because that was the last time I really asked for money. I feel guilty for asking for money to take the bus into the city to meet with my advisor and my therapist once a week, to discuss the impending thesis of doom and the depression that dances a migraine-inducing ballet on my head. I feel guilty for moving home in the first place, for not being able to make it work in California the way I wanted.

I’ve been so independent for so long, one time working five different jobs at once specifically so as to NOT ask my parents for money, and I am twenty four, living back at home, without any clear direction of what’s going to happen next week, let alone in a month. Can I get a part-time job? Can I get a full-time job? I have so many questions, no answers, and this body-crushing sense of guilt weighing down on me. Do I move into the city and sink further into debt? Do I stay at my parents and commute without a car? Do I let my parents get me a rental car, even if it’s only for a few days a week JUST so I can get around? Do I stay at home and watch the black tendrils of depression reach for me? Do I commit to a job, to a city, to a boy, to me, when all I can think about is just finishing my master’s?

Where is the crystal ball that will point me in the right direction? It feels like so much of the last few months have been about other people making decisions for me. Is it so wrong to want them to continue?

I wish I knew what I want, how to get it, where I want to be and where I want to go. I wish I had some sort of semblance of what my dreams are or were, but I’ve since let go of them. The only dreams I have any more are the ones running rampant in my unconscious every night. As much as I loved waking up from a dream where I was America’s favorite dancer, I’m not quite sure that I want my future to hold Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy. I wish I could think of a way that didn’t involve me asking my parents for help, but still allowed me to finish school and not feel pressured to make a decision right this second.

I’m like a balloon drifting aimlessly, closer and closer to the sun. I’m tired of burning. When does the wind come again?

Dear Dance Machine casting folk,

You really should reconsider my application. I’m serious. I’m that girl - who does the fishing pole and bebops around a dance floor. There’s a reason they call me Twinkletoes. I even dreamed about stunning you all with my dance skills last night. I would apply for So You Think You Can Dance, but I’m afraid I’d have the novelty of being a hearing impaired dancer carrying me through, in addition to the fact that I haven’t properly danced regularly in about two years. But you should put me on your show, because people will loooooooooovvvvveeeeee me.

Just saying.
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Dear NYU:

Thank you for sucking my soul. It seems I will be devoting my attentions to you entirely for the next five months because of the tremendous course load. On one hand, you resolve some of my job difficulties. On the other hand you create new problems. Such as I have no money.

Is there a way to compromise on this one?
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Dear sister,

You know. Your argument of “Well, you had a car for three years before we started sharing a car” is not completely valid. Mainly because you didn’t have a driver’s license for those first three years. And I drove you around all the time! So it was almost like sharing a car. I had to drive you to work and school and camp and anywhere else you went, even if all I wanted to do was sleep. Your argument would not hold up in a court of law.
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Dear readers,

What kind of a part-time job can I get that won’t involve a lot of driving, will involve decent money, and will let me be a graduate student full-time with three research based independent studies? Methinks one that does not exist.
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Dear So You Think You Can Dance,

Thank you for giving me something to look forward to on Wednesday and Thursday nights. My life is so much better with you in it.
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Dear people born on June 13th,

According to the “Birth Date Book,” we are awesome. We have lots of energy and ambition and are unable to sit still or stay in one place for very long. In some ways, reading this was like reading a character study and a sum of what’s yet to come all at once. As I’ve been looking for answers as to what my future holds, this reassures me in a surprisingly unexpected way.
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Dear parents,

I appreciate your trying to resolve the aforementioned car issue with sister. But if you’re going to shell out cash to rent a car so I can get around when she goes back to school, you might as well shell out cash for me to get a sublet in the city. And I’m not so sure I want to move back into the city just yet. This requires a lot of thought and careful negotiation. Cause I don’t know if it’s better to save up money by living at home and working at home and making the two hour commute or if it’s better to get a part-time job in the city and live in a sublet that has no expiry.

Especially as I only have class two nights a week now and will be spending most of my time in the library.

This is another instance in which advice would be greatly helpful, dear readers!
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Dear life,

You’re funny. Sometimes, I think you build things up intentionally. When I finally admit to being depressed, it makes it easier for me to let loose and enjoy myself at my friend’s wedding. You make me feel light-hearted and able to laugh again, instead of picking fights and obsessing about everything. Is it because of the work I’ve been focused on in the last few days between wedding-madness? Or is it just because recognizing something as deep and serious as depression makes it easier to move beyond? I didn’t know what to say in therapy on Monday, and while that’s slightly reassuring, at the same time, there’s a reason I’m in therapy!

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what’s going to happen next. Maybe it’s because I have a huge workload again, but these days, I’m content to let the world pass me by and reveal itself to me as it comes.

Contentedly yours,

distracted spunk

Can be found here.

Yay for guest posting!

(Also, Dear NYU: Please stop killing me. Thanks. Bye!)

A. Catholic churches are built in such a way that making sense of words is impossible and sleep is much favored.

B. Dates are a necessity to any wedding, if only to ensure there are photos of you looking cute and boobalicious in your bridesmaid’s gown. I have forty something pictures of the bride and groom and two of me. And I look stoned in one. It’s shallow, but yes, I want a new facebook picture damnit!

C. Watching two of your close friends getting married after five years together will turn you into a teary little bitch.

D. Newly married couples like hearing “your husband” and “your wife.” It makes them smile the biggest grins you’ve ever seen. And consequently turns you into a smiley little bitch.

E. Single girls are very adamant about ALL single girls standing behind the bouquet toss. I would have much preferred to take pictures.

F. Wedding photographers have funny and crazy stories. Including one where a groom wanted a picture of his wife-to-be dressing, and instead found his wife-to-be and her maid of honor fooling around before the wedding to “relieve stress.” (That wedding was canceled.)

G. Photographers should have a photographer’s assistant watching the bridal party while the photographer takes pictures of the bride and groom, because when the camera’s not around, some pretty crazy and funny things happen. (Such as three groomsmen and one bridesmaid running after Canadian Geese. For the record, I was not the bridesmaid. Hard to believe, I know.)

H. When half of the bridal party accepts the communion, and half of the party doesn’t, the latter half feels guilty. Catholic guilt transcends religions!

I. I am anti-David’s Bridal shoes. My walking abilities have been slightly suspended.

J. I am a dancing machine. (Okay, maybe that one is more of a reiteration than it is something I have recently learned.)

K. I have no game. Three boys, and no follow-through. This was confirmed by a friend and his girlfriend’s argument about whether or not I was indeed “hitting off” with one of the groom’s friends. This was further confirmed by watching a boy I spent 24 hours flirting, talking, dancing, and just hanging out with who I had exchanged numbers with exchange numbers with another girl. I had stayed away because I didn’t want to appear obvious about being interested. (Apparently, I forgot how to be charming, witty, and spectacular enough to catch a boy’s attention and close the deal. And I’m also a fourteen year old girl again. “I like him! But I don’t know if he likes me! And I have no balls!”)

Oh. And let’s not forget the third boy who kept asking me to dance and ignored his date in favor of me. (Dear Groom. Why are so many of your friends from high school so attractive and nice? Let’s discuss this when you get back from Costa Rica, thanks!)

L. Five years is apparently not enough time for a girl to get over the fact that I “stole” her friends. What better way to make a girl feel uncomfortable by shooting her dirty looks and staring at her all night long!

M. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday than being a bridesmaid for two people that I love and trust dearly. They deserve all the happiness in the world.

Me: Can you help me make tuna?

My sister: ………Are you serious?

We said goodbye, not once, not twice, but three times.

It wouldn’t stick, as it never does. We keep circling back, falling towards the inevitable.

The first time was in anger. I told him I never wanted to see him again. We yelled, I got sick, we fought.

The second time was in happiness, surprise when he randomly hugged me on the platform of the L before he took the Q uptown and I took the N to Brooklyn. It was a solid goodbye. I was content with this goodbye. I didn’t expect to see him again.

But the siren always calls. I had a wedding the next day, a day full of pictures and posing and holding flowers as the Mr. and soon-to-be Mrs. stood before the priest. He e-mailed me. “I know we said goodbye. But I want to see you again.”

There were things I was supposed to do that night, as there are always things to do. Instead, I sat in traffic on the BQE. I got lost. He stood on the pavement in a pair of jeans, waiting for me to find my way back to him. Somehow, I always do.

It was too hot for clothes. It was July, summer, the time where love stories are written in the steam rising off the ground.

We walked the four flights to his apartment. I could never remember which door it was and would follow him blindly. Would I follow him blindly now?

His room was missing everything but him. He climbed into a box, joking that he decided it would be cheaper to just ship himself back to Chicago. I laughed, exhilarated, we had one more night. We teased, we taunted, we tortured each other mercilessly. I sat on top of him, pinned him down on his bed, one of the few things left in his room untouched.

“Look! There’s an alligator in the corner!” I gave him a strange look, and looked anyway. “No really! Do you see the alligator in the corner?”

I poked him. “Why is there an alligator in the corner?” I asked. “Because every time you look away, I get to look at you without embarrassing you.”

My cheeks burned, but I couldn’t help the smile. We were interrupted, his phone rang. “The guy is here to pick up my drums,” he said. I walked down with him, carried pieces of it out to the guy’s car. I counted out the four hundred dollars in twenties to make sure it was all there. Is this what it would be like if he stayed? I wondered. It was so easy. It was home.

I felt like a girlfriend. His girlfriend. I wanted to make the world right for him, for us, sing our story out to the Puerto Ricans yelling on the street, to the C-Town on the corner, to the plants on his windowsill. He grew life here. We grew here. I wanted to stay there forever, to mark this room as ours, because it told the story of us from our beginning to our end in New York.

We said goodbye, finally, meaning it but not. I broke down on the BQE, tears streaming while on the phone with my best friend. “Why does this hurt so badly?” I asked.

A year later and I’ll stand for two more friends at their wedding this weekend. I’ll remember how it was when I beamed with happiness at the last wedding, because what we had? It was real. I had touched it. I didn’t know what it was, but it was. I’ll remember how it was when we both lived in New York, before the distance, before the fighting, before the circles. I’ll remember the wracking sobs when I realized he was really gone, and the tears of joy when he told me he didn’t want us to end.

A year ago, we were just starting even though we were both leaving. Goodbyes never last.

I wasn’t going to add anything more.

But then I drove my sister to her bus, and some of my favorite music came on, and it suddenly hit me that I’m not happy with who I am right now. Or how things are. I thought maybe it was just not having you in my life that was making me so unhappy, but I think there’s more to it than that.

I don’t like being this girl, who freaks out about the stupidest things and questions your sincerity when you’ve done everything you can and have repeatedly explained to me what you can and can’t do. Like I said last night, I finally understand why you can’t make me promises. I can’t make you promises either, when I can’t even figure out what it is I want or what I’m doing.

Part of me wonders if you’ve ever met the real me - the one who didn’t take things so seriously and gets irrational over the dumbest things. It’s like I know I’m doing it, and yet I can’t figure out how to stop it and I hate when it happens because I get more and more angry with myself. I keep thinking maybe you can fix it for me, but all you really can do is be there for me and still care about me, even while I go through these phases, which you have been.

I’ve contemplated going back into therapy. I’ve never told you this I don’t think, but when we first met, I had just started going to therapy because I had been hit tremendously with depression. For the first time in my life, actually. Now it seems like I can’t get away from it. I don’t even want to talk to some of my closest friends anymore, and I get annoyed for no reason. I like being home; I almost resent it every time I have to leave or go somewhere. It’s weird feeling like I’m capable of being bubbly and funny and light and still having this dark cloud hanging over my head. I guess it only enhances my walking contradictory-ness. I think for a long time, I associated you with keeping the depression away because of how happy you had made me and still do.

I know I’ve alluded to all of this to you. But I don’t think I ever fully disclosed this information. When we met, I wasn’t sleeping. I more or less didn’t sleep for about three months and the doctor wanted to put me on sleeping pills. I refused because I hate medication. And it seemed weak to me, and I’ve never been weak.

Now, it seems it’s the opposite. I wake up, and I want to go back to sleep, so I do. Then I spend much of the day waiting to go back to sleep. Talking to you and a few other people are the highlights of my day. Beyond that, I couldn’t really tell you what it is that I do anymore. Except pick fights with you irrationally. I have a habit of taking things out at the people I’m closest with, which I know you’ve noticed. I hate when I do it because then I feel like a complete and utter shit afterwards.

I guess I’m writing this because you were incredibly honest and forthcoming with me yesterday. And maybe you know all this already. But I’m still figuring it out as I go along. I don’t want to be that girl, but I realize it’s going to take me some time to get out of it. I can’t make you any promises. But I want you in my life. And I guess I just need to learn how to calm down. I know one such way to do so is to have a trigger word. Something you can say that will get the message across better than something like, “You’re overreacting.” Calling me out is usually the best way to get me to think about what it is I’m doing. Avocado favored “You’re having kittens,” because it’s funny and it still gets the point across. And it usually makes me stop and think about how I’m behaving. (The same asshat boyfriend whose answering machine I broke up with would try to make me feel guilty even though he was the one cheating on me, and would use the term “You’re overreacting” to every little thing. I’ve since come to hate that term because he abused the term so badly.)

I don’t want to be this girl. I want to be happy and funny and sarcastic and silly and smart and not pick fights with you and not think so much. I’m a thinker by nature, but this is a gross exaggeration. I don’t want to lose you either, and I’m afraid that if this sort of thing keeps happening, you’re going to tell me I’m too irrational and too insecure for you. Which right now, I agree with.

So I guess the question is…can you put up with me until I become me again? Can we try using a term that will alert me to when I’m picking a fight or being a total shit? You’ve come to mean a great deal to me, but it’s only fair that as you explained to me last night, that you can’t really make any decisions until you decide what you want, that I explain what’s going on with me as I realize it.

If I could hug you, now would be a good time for it.

Yours.

distracted spunk.