When parenting is your mother

I'm trying to get the girls to clean their room in under 6 hours so it can be vacuumed & the sheets changed before bedtime. I'm asking a lot of the universe, I know. I can't even help them--no one over 4 feet tall can get in there at this point. I just stand in the doorway and urge them to focus on categories: dirty clothes, trash, dress-up stuff, books, legos. I go from screaming to encouraging to criticizing to single word directives. This is so hard on all of us. I hate it. The categories are the only improvement I've made to the hideous routine, learned from my mother. I KNOW it has everything to do with my serious avoidance of housework that has always kept me from enjoying any of my homes. Oh, and I try to keep my lectures shorter.

Long time, no hear

It's been almost two years since the last time I posted to this mostly private blog. I commented on a friend's blog post and wondered what would happen if she clicks on the link next to my comment and found it will bring her here. That is a frightening outcome. I never meant for anyone to read this, turns out, despite the fact that it's online. Anonymity in a crowd? Was that the plan? All I know is that when I come back and read this harsh, sad stuff I learn from it. I need to write more often. I'm not sure how to make it completely unaccessible, except to suggest: Heather, if you found your way here from your blog you may want to stop now. I'm enjoying our acquaintance and your positive, vibrant self, but you might not believe that if you keep reading. Thank you for the lovely experience with all your family's students last night. We'll all remember it for a long time.

Everyone is older now. James is almost 14, Lucie is 8, Alice nearly 6. I'm 40. I've let myself go so much I think I've aged 10 years in the last 6 months. I've started in a limited therapy thing at Kaiser, with a psychologist I like very much. She believes what I say, understands my reluctance to stay off anti-depressants, my kids are real to her (she is a child therapist, too) and she is giving me new information. She said, "...and I suspect you are behaving impulsively..." Is that what it is when I say something I don't want to say but can't stop myself? I think it is. I've never had a word for that before. Her saying it the way she did made me think it can go away, can be treated. I never knew that. I was terrified that I am losing control and it might get much worse. It may have, if I hadn't IMPULSIVELY called and signed up for treatment we can't really afford. I didn't remember how long I've been thinking about it until I read the previous entry in this journal just now. This is long overdue. This is the year I take care of myself again. I even went to the dentist for the first time in over 10 years. All the pain is gone, just from having a cleaning. Maybe therapy will be as profoundly helpful. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I called.

Shoebox. Cancer. Shit. Goddammit. Stupid cracker. Fuck you.

These are my tics. Shoebox has a funny origin, cancer does not. Do I have Tourette's? Not so much, I guess. I don't usually tic in front of people. Not yet, anyway. But I'm full of anxiety and worries and when they peak, I tic. Fatigue makes it worse. Not exercising makes it worse. Knitting makes it worse, as I get more and more tense in the neck and shoulders. I can't seem to find my way out of it yet. Can't find any task mindless enough to start and work my way to the hard ones. The house is a mess, my office is a mess, the Park is a mess. Big visit scheduled so far in advance great things were possible, but no longer. I'm stuck, have been stuck and no idea when I'll get unstuck. Frozen. I knit, I watch stuff, I surf the 'net, I read. No work. No laundry, cooking, dishes, sweeping. No parenting. Lots of videos and dvds. Too tense to cry, no place to do it anyway. Keep thinking about therapy, counseling. AS IF. Done it so much I have a committee of counselors in my head, full of sympathy, platitudes, helpfulness and all the true things they never say. What do they really see? If I knew would I be able to fix it? Lazy? Deluded? Narcissistic? Average? Not average, please. Can they see what I'm really afraid of? Would it kill them to fucking tell me? Would a new one be any different? Better? I'm trying to figure it out. What I'm afraid of so far: Being average. Being seen as average. Being seen as mean, hurtful, thoughtless, selfish. Being hated, by anyone. Being/looking like any type I despise. Fat, cheap, ignorant. Being seen as someone with all these fears. Being seen as someone who wants to look intelligent. Being seen as low class. Being pitied. I used to think I was so smart, so intelligent, so educated. Now look at me. Hanging on to my hard won knowledge like any loser. Maybe its the same old problem--I'm too judgmental and in fairness turn my judgment on myself and it hurts. I do myself major harm. I do others harm. That's not a fear, it's a fact. I do others harm. I'm wrong so often, mostly led by my fears, I have made serious judgment errors. I don't know what to do.

What I left out of my post to the unschoolers list

I think my biggest worry is that I made a mistake. It’s really hard for me to stay engaged with my kids and see an idea or interest all the way through. I don’t expect every off hand question and exploration to lead to a major project or thesis, but I think sometimes I kill an idea before it’s born, just like my parents did. Because I’m tired. Because I have no notion how to proceed. Because it seems like work and I don’t want to do anymore WORK. Because I’m not used to
follow thru. I’m a product of a public education and working class divorced parents. I often find myself wondering how others do it. Sometimes I tell myself it’s the job, other times I think it’s me and I don’t know how to begin to fix that. I repeatedly come to the conclusion that I need support, which I’m seeking, and involvement (can’t make it to the HSC conference again) and more books (stopped reading about homeschooling a long time ago…) and then I realize that I need to know that someone coming from as bad a starting point as I am has actually made it. Someone with no degree, doing a job that has little to do with her heart or inclinations, from a background that doesn’t breed much success. And then I need to know how they did it. How did they get past the urge to just play spider all day? Or read a novel? Or let the kids watch videos all day. How did they . . . and then I remember I’m doing it. It sucks and I tear myself up over it all the time, but I’m doing it. My kids may not get to Harvard or Stanford but Lucie can read better than I could at 6. Probably better than I could at 8 and I was considered smart. James has a stronger sense of self than I have ever had… and that makes me remember I’m not doing this alone. James’ dad gives him so much I can’t. Curtis is a great husband and father and he gives them his complete down-on-the-floor attention as often as possible.

Goodbye

Madeleine L'Engle is gone.

Tight, tight circles

Why can't I get into a situation and be at peace? Job, class, club, group, friendship, whatever, I will torment myself and twist myself up in it until I would rather die than face it. Rules I don't enforce, standards I don't uphold, something always that makes me feel INVALID. Powerless. I fuck around, being weak, until I am completely powerless. Sometimes its real, sometimes its imagined, but I always decide that I have done wrong and have no say. WHY? And how do I fix it? More therapy? Move? Quit? Die?

New Post

Anything to make that stupid Dayquil letter go further down the page.

So ... how are you? ... great, great. Ya, I'm good. Doing much better than before, further and further from the Zoloft withdrawals. No, still not taking anything. Road rage? Oh yeah, that was bad, wasn't it.....well, I still get pretty unreasonable about tailgaters and those who Refuse To Use Directionals, but I talk to myself a little more productively these days and can usually get calm, find room to think. I remembered recently that there are signals to tell someone they are following too closely. They sort of work.
In fact, I came up against all my driving fears the other day. Planning a daytrip for last Saturday I put myself into a spiral of craziness and anxiety that I couldn't pull out of until I was yelling and throwing things and realized I was about to crash. Visions of terrible things that can happen while driving far from home gallop through my brain and they are so fast and familiar I'm barely conscious of them. Like a dream, I can't remember much either, except vignettes of fatal crashes, car trouble I can't afford, scary men offering to help, poverty, homelessness. That's it right there. I'm worried we won't make it back home. Turns out, I do this every time I have to drive long distances without Curtis. I went on Zoloft when 20 minutes became too far, too long to drive without such severe anxiety that I couldn't bear to watch. Yeah. I couldn't bear to watch WHILE DRIVING. That is a personal definition of crazy for me.
Luckily, I'm not having that particular difficulty right now. I can watch the road, find my way, listen to music or audio books, talk with my kids, share snacks... in fact, we did pretty damn good on Saturday. It was the drive itself that gave me time to figure out why the idea that was so appealing at first became a panicked frenzy for me as we loaded up the final necessities and I had to get behind the wheel and go. Curtis was stoic, as I screamed at him about stupid shit, giving me room to see myself and what I was doing... and I figured out what I need to be able to go places, with or without Curtis and not get crazy. These are the things that made this most recent attempt work:

1. No children under 3
2. Money in the bank*
3. Driving the route of my choosing, even if it seemed impractical and I can hear my dad lecturing me about it all the way. I hate I-80 and I-5 and that is a reasonable way to feel.

#2 is flexible. I don't always have money, but I do have family and friends who would help me if I needed it. It sure feels good though, knowing I can pay for repairs, get a room if I can't go any further, and feed myself and the kids as often as necessary. I seem to spend less when I feel safe, too.

Where shall we go next?

Dear Dayquil,

What happened? Where is the love? Once, when we first began, I knew it could never be serious. We could never be together more than a few days at a time, you had your life, I had mine, but those days! Talk about hot! And, I knew you cared. We were a team! When the bad times hit, I only needed 1 of your lovely orange gel thingees to feel human again. Only 1, and I could work, breathe, stay awake--you know, like you promised? You seemed to really care then. I thought you'd always be there. What did I do wrong? I did what you wanted... recommended you to my friends, introduced you to my family, I even used you to keep people coming to work when, really? they needed to stay home. Sharing you has never been easy, but we looked out for each other and you were always there for me, every time. Until today.

Was it a perceived lack of faith? Was it that I eschewed my usual single capsule and went straight for the double, the recommended two gel caps? Do you not see how miserable I am? That it wasn't lack of faith, but an undeniable need to drown myself in your squishy, orange relief? What made you turn your back and leave me like this? With a stuffed head, packed sinuses and no chance of getting any sleep? I've had to turn to your scary older brother and let him take care of me. Yes, it's that bad. I've gone over to the green guy and I belong to him now and I'll never be able to get away... and I'm not even sorry! I have kids now, babe. I gotta get some sleep. This is the big time.

You think about what I've said and we'll talk again in the morning. I just want to say, I don't know if you can ever make it up to me.


[Sniff. Cough],

Jamie

The local lingo

Just in case you drop by and my children try to communicate with you...

Fortilla = tortilla

Pustard = mustard

Pop-sea-ul = popsicle

Empty-three-player = MP3 player

Neckflix = Netflix

and our new favorite:

Hot Bear Balloon =

Crack that whip

There's this thing that I do, but kind of try to ignore and never mention in print. I don't want it to be part of my identity, don't want to be identified with it. Friends and family are in the know, of course, but we keep it in the, "you're only doing this right now, because you have to," category. We do not allow it to be me, something I own. It's an ugly little thing....

I work.

Confused? There are many reasons this is a problem. #1, I never really wanted to. Not that I am lazy or interested in free-loading, but I have a low tolerance for any kind of daily schedule or routine. Truly, I can really suck at the basics of employment. I'm late, unorganized, tired, depressed, obsessive about how much I suck.... really I'm just not cut out for most jobs.
#2. Most of my peer group does not work. Wait. Are we peers if we don't match on something as major as being employed? Okay, save that one for later, but, I mean, my best friends don't have jobs outside the home. They are homeschooling mothers at varying levels of granola-hood. I want to be them and have that life, so I homeschool my kids, but I failed to make sure I wouldn't have to work during this adventure. Now I work, badly, and I homeschool, also badly. Homeschooling could be really cool, and I feel my kids are still better off, but wow, it could be so much better.
#3. The work I do...is what plenty of smart yet under-alphabetized (as in, degree-less) folks do. I manage. I used to manage a video store, these days I'm managing a mobile home park. My family lives here, gratis, and we earn a small monthly salary. I live where I work. I live in a mobile home in a funky, all-age mobile home park. None of these things makes me feel very good most of the time. Like the way I deal with my body , I don't like how my life looks, so I spend a great deal of time not really seeing it, making sure I pass by reflective surfaces, or moments, quickly and from the best angle. Also, I look far too long at things I wish I had or did and sometimes I take that stuff on as if I had the where-with-all, the funds, the whatever. I forget who I am and what my current status in my life is. Or, maybe I used to do that and we're still living with the consequences. Hmm.

This is sad though, because when I'm in the moment, taking care of a great resident, confounding a bad one, having 5 minute conversations with the owner that take 2 hours because we only email and never call... I can be pretty happy. I have a sea of neighbors, most of whom I love and care about. My god, the stories from our four years here.... how can I pretend this isn't real? Or important? How can I keep telling myself how bad I am at this if I'm still here?

More later. This is a big thing. For now, gratuitous cute:

This is your brain...

Off meds update:

Things are mostly better, and then they suddenly turn very, very much worse. It's RAGE. It was worst the first week, occurs less frequently now, but still comes up and it is terrifying, for me and for the kids. Mostly it's road rage. I've never used my horn like I have in the past two weeks. And I scream at people, as if they could hear me over the continuous horn blaring.... Sunday afternoon I tried to get out of my vehicle at a stop light so the driver (who was just as out of control as I was) could benefit from my screaming at him up close and personal. And when he drove off, I followed him to yell some more. My kids were in the car. When it was over I considered driving to the hospital and admitting myself.

I had asked my friend early on, when this uncontrollable anger first surfaced, "So, tell me the truth... How mentally ill am I? Have I always been like this?" This was not the me I remember from before the meds. I was depressed, anxious, tired. I was not violent, not like this. I told my husband about the incident with the driver of the Lexus and how I behaved, with our kids on board, and asked him, too, "How mentally ill am I?" He didn't get to answer because we have those kids and kids, they do not like for folks to have private or productive time. EVER.

So, I went to my computer and googled, "off Zoloft." What I found let me know just how much of my intelligence I checked at the door of my adult life. How could I not have figured this out? I finally have a name for these changes from the last few weeks and it is WITHDRAWAL. [slaps forehead] Why did I do no research on this drug? Turns out that Zoloft is one of the top four toughest antidepressants to stop taking and that many, many people try repeatedly and fail to get off it. Most of the gross crap I've been going through is not from removing the antidepressant effects and revealing a worse depression, but from moderate withdrawal effects. I say moderate because while I do have fatigue, irritability (rage, I know), crying jags, dizziness and an odd sensation in my head sometimes, I do not have migraines, electric shock sensations, flu symptoms or panic attacks and the symptoms are lessening significantly with each day, after only two weeks. Taking the supplements I do helps enormously, as I found out over the weekend when I forgot. Exercise though, is the BEST. It makes all the difference.

Even if I have to get treated for depression again in the future, which is possible, I will never take Zoloft again. And when I thought about it, it wasn't really working for the last several months anyway. I was still depressed, still having anxiety attacks, and that blessed (and much needed at the beginning) emotional distance or buffer the drug provides just gets thicker and thicker as time goes by until... well, a friend said she never saw an emotional deficit in me, and I didn't really either, but now I feel so much more connected to my life and my kids and all, I can see that I was quite close to comatose before I stopped taking it. It made me bored. Bored with my kids. Can you imagine that? Suddenly they are precious, priceless and interesting again, not just irritating, contrary and committed to my unhappiness. How much of their childhoods have I missed while in that cocoon?

What this all nighter is missing...

is chocolate.

Which . . .

I left at my office.




Crap.

Paper? Plastic? Spastic?

That was a rough first 10 days off the meds. Also, it was PMS time. Nice timing there, spaz. Not that I believe it's over or that the peace I'm feeling today will even last. I'm still touchy, still get mad quickly, cry even more quickly, but when I'm not mad or crying in that overstressed, getting over the hump way, I feel so much more. . . real. It's as if that skin the meds give me becomes wool batting after a while. Everything is muffled and it's hard to take in how things really are. Hard to empathize, hard to take action, hard to just feel things as deeply as I do unmedicated. I'm not the first person to say all this, (indeed, it's not the first time I've learned it) so I won't take time to reiterate a common complaint. After all, I have things to make.
Here's a fun project: I have started purchasing reusable store bags. Trader Joe's has these handy insulated grocery bags, for frozen and refrigerated items and Safeway has the best cloth bags I've seen so far. They are made from recycled materials, are lighter than the canvas bags I could never get used to, and they carry twice as much.

Also, I actually remember to use them, which is a first. But, I don't like advertising for these, or any, stores. The bags are little billboards and I won't be suckered into carrying them around that way. Last Sunday, as a my sister and a friend sat in my kitchen and we BS'ed, I dug out some fabric paints and covered up the Safeway logo with black, to match the rest of the bag, then decorated with wonky flowers and vines until the girls noticed and wanted to paint, too. Sigh.


The first experimental one was fun, and I did hand over half the bags to the girls to do themselves, but now I want to do something better and have been looking through all my motif books.



Aren't Dover Books the best? I never appreciated them until I started wanting to make things beautiful and had given up on waiting until I was an artist. I think I'll google a few things I don't have, too, like oak leaf and acorn motifs, and see what says, "Pick me!" the loudest.
Anyway, I'm trying to tell that voice in my head which mocks the admittedly odd ways and places my need to create manifests to shut the fuck up. So what if I'm spending time, effort and materials on grocery bags. If it were up to that asshole, all I'd ever do is bitch on this blog. ; )

A catalog of certainties

that occur when coming off anti-depression/anxiety meds:

1. You will have no skin. No way to deflect the slightest hint of negativity. Every exasperated sigh, even from people you know love you, will cut you to the quick.

2. You will be paranoid. In absence of any or very little evidence, you will believe that strangers hate you and think you are crap at everything. You will hate them back and lash out without being able to stop yourself. The words and actions you visualize come forth, despite all efforts.

3. You will feel exposed. Walking through a store or other public area you will feel certain that you stand out, and not for any good reason. Your inability to cope/function/fit in is being broadcast in your smile, eye contact, clothing choices and hair color.

4. You will feel intensely. All emotions will be heightened and result in crying, even the good ones. Sentimental tears held back will make the muscles around your eyes ache. Your breathing will always feel like the post-crying kind. Frustrations will be epic and you will feel certain you are actually oppressed by even the most minor obstacle.

5. You will be certain that everyone in your vicinity does everything they do to either hurt you or help you. You are the center of it all.

6. You will make bad decisions. You will find your instinct/judgment to be off often enough to be frightening.

7. You will get worse when you end each episode with the litany of self-hatred. You know you have one. That's what got you here in the first place.

Knowing this does not always help, but Don't. Give. Up.

What the meds do can be accomplished at home, folks, the old fashioned way. It's what you say inside your muddled, probably dizzy head. Forgive yourself. Forgive everyone else. Give the world the benefit of the doubt. Assume your husband loves you and does not consciously take advantage of opportunities to subvert your authority or happiness. Assume your kids don't know they are ruining your life with their fighting and slovenliness. Remember they don't know you even have a life to ruin. Don't expect appealing to their (inappropriate/non-existent) concern for your happiness to work.

That is all, for now.

Back to the new hobby...

I've spent the last 4 days making recycled paper. It's been coming on for weeks...ever since I first read No Impact Man. There's a link in his early posts to instructions for making paper from junk mail. I tried to talk myself out of it, for fear of having another obsession. If I allowed myself to know how much money I spent when I finally fell for beads, holy shit...But, suddenly I had to make paper. Turns out it is slow, backbreaking, and really, really cool. There is such satisfaction in the work of it. The shredding, the soaking, the processing... I love making up the paper pulp. The racket of the food processor (just slightly younger than yours truly), the quiet when moving my hands through the water stirring up the slurry... its just fantastic. Waiting for the individual sheets to dry is hard, but what beauty when it's finally ready! My friend scoffs, says it's hard to write on recycled paper with a dip pen (we don't discuss my habitual use of ball points. It's beneath us), but why write on this? Just making it, looking at it's texture and the feathery edges, it's almost enough even if I never use it. And yet, I've seen wonderful art work matted with paper like this. The paper itself can be art! If I manage to get a flower press and learn to use it before summer is over this could turn out to be something really lovely. Pressed Sonoma County bounty in handmade paper? It's all been done before, but turning so much wasted paper into such tactile and visual wonder? Where's the downside? I know she's imagining getting a stack of dark grey, chunky "homemade stationary" as a gift, but another thing I learned this cycle (!!!) is not to combine learning a new craft with gifting. I wait to see how it turns out and what I feel like doing with it. No more learning how to make something so I can, at the same time, start a temporary Christmas sweatshop and make a ton of them. What a way to strip something of any fun or creativity. The pressure, fer Chrissakes!
See? It's like this year I finally grew some sense. And I'm terrified of losing it. Or worse, of finding out I've lost it many times before.

So, about papermaking. I've taken many pictures, as if to do a tutorial, but going along with a resolution not to teach things I've only started to learn myself, recommend books I'm only half way through and movies not yet seen, but sitting in my Netflix queue, I will refrain from actually posting that way.
.

However, I would like to point out 3 things I have to add to the excellent tutorials already out there, there and there (and now here!) on the web, that I came up with as I went along:


#1. I did not make my own frames with wood, saw, nails/staples. I dug out some old frames with broken glass and used a hot glue gun to attach window screen fabric to the inside of the frames. This only worked with wood frames, not metal, but it worked beautifully. Being submerged in water does not seem to affect the adhesion at all.







#2. We (Lucie helped for a while) added pencil shavings, from an electric or hand sharpener, especially colored pencils to our white pulp. You get the specks of paint from the outside of the pencils and the small wood fibers that look lovely in the finished sheets of paper. I do recommend rinsing the shavings in a fine strainer to remove most of the graphite. Lucie and I find the smell unpleasant.

#3. After the first batch of pulp and finished paper I decided to sort my raw materials a little. I started to separate newsprint from computer paper and first class junk mail. Newsprint turns a dark grey I don't love, although it has it's purposes (later idea to pursue), and I found that white computer paper that has been printed on makes nearly white recycled paper. The best discovery though was the few pieces of colored computer paper. We made a gorgeous batch of pulp with purple and pink , a vibrant blue, and, finally, a tiny batch of yellow. As we used the scant amounts of these colored pulps the slurry got pretty thin and I would add our white pulp, making the colors softer and lighter with each sheet.