Oblivion Calling

I heard Oblivion calling last week. Not Death. No it wasn’t Death. It was definitely Oblivion. It asked me if I wouldn’t like to fade into it. See nothing, speak nothing, think nothing, feel nothing, move nothing, do nothing, be nothing. I agreed it would be nice. It would be a relief. But I have someone relying on me, loving me, needing me, and what if it’s not like this much longer? What if it gets better? What if I miss out on the best things in life because you tempted me with nothing, Oblivion? I think it’s worth more than nothing. I think there’s lives to save and livelihoods. I think there’s places to see and people to meet and things to do, some of which I haven’t even thought of yet. Oh I don’t expect them to make me money, Oblivion, I expect them to make me Happy. Yes Oblivion, Happy is better than you.

Besides for now I’m a bit busy. I need to make sure I can tell my children and grandchildren that I tried to make sure their world would be as good if not better than mine, even if people refused to listen. I need to take photos and paint pictures of things which might be lost through their idiocy. I need to live tales worthy of keeping their little minds enthralled.

Oh yes Oblivion, did I forget to mention Hope. Hope pokes it’s head in now and again just to give me a bit of a boost, some extra energy, some inkling of purpose. No it often doesn’t stick around for long, but you don’t understand, while it’s here, it’s better than you and leaves you a shadow for many ages afterwards.

Love’s a good one too, Oblivion. I think it might be your opposite. I think it might be everything, everything that matters Love can hold, but it needs many hearts to do so. I’m sorry Oblivion, but everything is much better than nothing. Love definitely wins that one. I suppose that means I’ve changed my mind. You had better leave. Drop by a bit later if you feel like it but I may not be available to let you in. As you can see there is a lot to keep me occupied, there is..well…everything to live for, so goodbye for now Oblivion. I truly hope we never become well acquainted.

Those who wait won’t do, and those who do won’t wait. Make me one of the second lot.

Oh when the world grates on your very last nerve. The pettiness, the violence, the hate. Sometimes, it feels like it would be easier not to feel anything at all. Sometimes, I don’t. Almost always, it’s just me shutting down. I have to. I’m empathetic. Not unusual I know, and normally, even to me, an advantage and virtue. But I am . . .  powerfully, strikingly, unusually attuned to the pain of others. I cringe like others when people get hurt, but I cringe, not because it’s disturbing, but because it hurts. I gasp when pain is glaringly obvious because I feel pain. I cry when the hurt is emotional and psychological because it is irreversible and deep and I understand.

I guess none of this is that unusual after all. Neither is the anger. The worst part is there is no one to take your anger out on. They’re all out of reach. Seemingly untouchable. So I scream at them in my head, I attack and bemoan and criticise them with a force that would knock them to the ground, no not the ground, would knock them 50 metres backward. I picture myself slapping them so hard in the face that their teeth fall out, I picture kicking them up the backside so hard they can’t see for a year, I picture them standing, surrounded by the screams of those they have wronged, fire licking at them from every angle, daggers, broken glass, spears, swords and knives all pointing in their direction, blocking any hope of escape, needles ceaselessly, randomly, unpredictably poking into every piece of skin on their body. And still I think they would not understand. They would not learn. They would not care. They would still lack sense and no amount of knocking them around could knock some in.

What piece of them is missing? What piece that makes a human human and act humanely has been omitted from their makeup? What terrible thing has occurred to make them so intractably set on their path? What stupidity could not have been taught out of them or was taught to them? What gives them the right to decide the fate of others, now and in the future?

I fail to understand but I am not afraid. I am not nervous. I do not second guess my actions and movements. I put one foot in front of another. I look to the next hour. I hope for the next day. I enjoy my time in the presence of the ones I love more than life. I float, waiting for purpose to whack me square in the jaw and ask where I’ve been dreaming. I just … be. In my sea of nothing, void of the feelings I know are paddling on the surface, deep in the safety of my state of evasion. I am afraid only, that I might need to breath and to do this I must surface. I am afraid only, of the flood of emotion that will pour, head first, into my innermost being and make my movements and actions feel like wading through quick sand. To make me useless, utterly dysfunctional, feckless and ineffectual.

I am most angry at feeling powerless. And I leave it all, floating just out of reach, poking at the bubble of space I have forced around my heart and mind. I wait for the floodgates to open. I know it will be desperate and wracking and breathtaking. I wait. And I know that waiting is a waste of time, I should be doing, seeking, attacking, but I wait.

Catch me, when did this become a cliff? And where are the stairs to get back up?

Last night my ‘up’ came to a grimace inducing, embarrassment worthy, slap-on-the-hand because the face is too harsh, close your eyes and hope it disappears, strawberry jam at the bottom of a cliff type ‘down’. Finding myself suddenly overwhelmingly tired beyond all reason I proceeded to get increasingly agitated by just about every tiny insignificant thing H found to do last night. I mean every-tiny-insignificant, not choosing dinner for me, not fixing the tv so it wasn’t green/purple, then when finally fixing it taking a dig at me for not doing it myself, not listening to my inane drivel and pretending to be interested, the choice of program we were watching (despite the fact that I like the program), oh and worst of all, he swapped to the armchair so I could lie on the couch, this apparently was betrayal of the worst kind. I could see all this going down, and I kept thinking to myself “Stop it, he’s not doing anything wrong, stop taking your tired out on him, stop it now”, but did I listen to myself? Well… in a way, I sent myself to bed.

Seems like that was the best thing to do. Today, I worked. Is there anything else to say. It sucked but just because it always does. It lasted too long, because I had to work, which sucked. I want to go to the gym but I want to sleep more, so that sucks. But generally it’s been a pretty normal day. All the above sounds normal to me. The perks of working two jobs you hate (both are the same really just in different places). I think ‘tedium’ may be ‘happy’s’ arch nemesis, well, one of the many I guess.

Oh but I’m so tired. My fingers hurt right now trying to type this. My eyes wish to close but truthfully, I’m still at work, so that’s not an option. I can’t sit up straight, pretending to smile is taking a whole lot of energy. I expect a short stint of energy around home time as I walk to the train station and sit on the train, but upon being picked up I’m sure the tired will be overwhelming and I will become unpleasant despite my best attempts at cheerfulness. Not mean spirited unpleasantness, you understand, just lethargic, really can’t muster the energy for enthusiasm, not nearly able to be considered society worthy social interaction, type unpleasant.

You know the worst part? I really want to be social. I want to go out for drinks with our friends, have a massive spring clean of the house so I can have a dinner party, attend gym classes, swim some laps, take H out for a romantic night. I don’t think my will power has much to do with it. I can be convinced something is going to happen right up until the point I’ve told myself it’s time to do it and it will not happen. I look, I sigh, I sit down. I look again, I sigh, I stand, I walk around the house, I move this or that, I sigh again, I sit back down. Maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe I don’t care enough to muster the motivation. No I don’t think that’s it either. I get incredibly frustrated, with myself. I have full on internal arguments.

The bad decisions, oh that’s a good one. Especially when I confuse myself so much I have internal arguments of a different kind, stress out because one of those arguments means I’ve done something exceedingly stupid and quite possibly irreversible, then finally discover which side was right and usually it means I should have ignored the argumentative side the whole time. Or I have actually done something exceedingly stupid and in my stupour I haven’t even noticed until far far too late and it’s already throwing rock and mud into my face.

And then there’s the days I will do all of those things in one weekend. Not the stupid things, the ones I spend so much time wanting to do. I like those weekends. I achieve a lot. There’s an invisible fount of inexhaustible energy. I’m like the Energizer Bunny or a child with a weeks worth of chocolate they just ate in two hours. I long for those weekends. I long for them to last all week. I would not complain if lasted all month. I understand the improbability of it lasting all year, but I can dream.

Self-Revelation through Joking

Oh God, I used the term self-revelation, what an odious and pretentious way to start… anything. But I can’t skirt around the truth and it’s the right word for what is true. Sure (I hear you say – oh yes I am taking this pretentious, presumptuous thing all the way to it’s extremes), ok, but what was this eye-opening event that caused you to utter such a phrase? I’ll tell you, but it’s quite personal.

The other night, no it wasn’t, it was last night, it was that recently. Anyway, last night, we were driving home from work at the usual unusual end of work hours we tend to keep these days, when H (as ‘Hubby’ shall now be known) asked why I was so happy, commenting that he didn’t actually care as it was always an improvement on over-tired or irritable (which we’ve been putting down to stress), and also asking if it was related to the income made that day. My answer, in complete jest, was “I don’t know, no it has nothing to do with the money, maybe I’m bipolar”. And his reply “Meh it’d make sense”. Boom, mind blown.

Yes, I have in recent years declared myself prone to depression, but I tended to blame it on a stint on a contraceptive pill I began in my late teen’s, you know, maybe the effects just refused to wear off. Perhaps it might also be a little naive on my part, given the fact that I keep forgetting that if the suicide of one of my grandfathers is anything to go by it does possibly run in the family. So occasionally I’d just figure I was prone to bouts of depression.

Oh, and yes I’m aware that self-diagnosis is not particularly helpful but, and you can call me a hippie if you like but contraceptive medication has a lot to answer for when it comes to my personal health, I would prefer to steer clear of medication if possible, and find herbal or mental/physical/active alternatives.

Today, spurred by the mind blowing revelation of last night I decided to do a little research into Bipolar, on the off-chance you know, just in case a word in jest turned out to hold a hint of truth. Turns out, according to the symptoms and diagnostic process I would likely be designated Bipolar II.

If this is the case, I would probably label the last two days manic days. They don’t happen often. Usually I have pretty normal days or, most often, depressive days. It would take way too long to explain why I self-diagnosed this, but maybe you’ll pick it up in the drips and drabs of my life I give you here. As I said, H is not even nearly as surprised as I thought he might be.

Perhaps you don’t consider it much of a mind-blowing self-revelation, but for someone who is used to being known in her circles of friends as the ‘perpetually happy one’, oh yes, I’m that girl that is always laughing or smiling, the one with the nickname ‘smiley’ for an exceedingly obvious reason. The revelation that I am an incredibly good actor and an awefully good liar have come as somewhat of a surprise to me.

Well maybe not so much the acting bit, apparently that has been a long standing talent (honestly, school plays were the bane of my existence as an eternally shy and introspective child), a little enhanced in recent years by classes (in part to get over some more introvertedness not dispersed over the course of highschool and varsity), but the lying and hiding of the inner goings on to everyone except H, that came as a surprise to me.

And perhaps you don’t think it was all that personal either. Well… no I have no answer to that. Everything I write is personal I guess, poems and songs in particular, which is probably why it makes me uncomfortable if people are reading them. I think there’s an element of shame in my discomfort, like the things I was feeling in order to write that shouldn’t have existed. That’s the difficulty in going public. At least here I’m relatively anonymous.

So welcome to my inner workings. You can stay as long as you like. I won’t be offended if you leave. In fact I don’t need to know if you stopped by. But I thank you if you visit.

On the up and less personal side, I’m joining my sister at a ‘Vintage Day Out’ in the weekend, full dress and makeup, just for fun and distractions sake. Planning an, approximately, 80km mountain bike ride with H and my Dad at our next opportunity, and a 3-4 day hike around my home volcanoes sometime next spring, assuming one of them doesn’t decide to erupt as it has been prone to lately and disrupt those plans once again.

Faithfully confused

I face a constant struggle these days, between my faith in God and Jesus Christ, and my utter disgust at the way certain Christian groups use the book that guides me to reinforce their own narrow understanding of a world too awesome for their tiny closed minds to fathom even slightly.

There are too many things that get under my skin to even begin to hash them all out here but the “Homosexual Issue” and the Global Warming issue irk me the most at present. Honestly it wouldn’t be so much of an issue with me if the arguments they used had some inkling of a basis other than their own misguided misinterpretation of an ancient revered book. Have they forgotten how most wars and instances of slavery were based on misguided, misinformed, misinterpreted and misconstrued pieces of writing. Pieces of it. We humans sure like to take things out of context to make them fit our own agendas don’t we.

You don’t want to get me started on the whole “Homosexuality Issue”. Having spent approximately 8 of the last 10 years at University I have learned a lot of things unrelated to the particular path I was studying. But I don’t need all the science I know to wonder why in the world certain Christians think people would choose an incredibly difficult path in life at any point over the last several centuries, knowing that they will suffer at the hands of those who think they know…. I don’t even know what they think they know. It doesn’t make sense to me. I would never choose to be depressed. I would never choose to think about death and ways out. I would never choose to be the centre of a hurricane knowing that pain may come from any direction. Humans have an inbuilt need to be accepted, can you imagine choosing to be rejected by the people you love most in this world. Who would choose that? Honestly. I… I think it renders me speechless, which is useless. How am I supposed to defend people if I can’t get the words out because there’s stupidity being blasted through a loud speaker.

And Global Warming. I am… I am seriously and utterly distressed about what we are most likely going to leave to our children and grandchildren, and theirs, and theirs. Because the damage we’re causing, is so great, so potentially catastrophic, that generations for thousands upon thousands of years may pay for our …. our greed and selfishness, while the Earth we are supposed to be taking care of tries to repair the damage we did.

I can’t get my head around the amount of time there has been that people have known that the damage is already severe and they have refused to move. How has this been an issue for my entire life, and instead of getting better, it has continued to get worse and we can see no governments in any country trying in earnest to find a solution, to follow through with the recommendations of those who have been studying this for more years than I’ve lived? I’m confounded by the fact that only now that my generation has started making their way into the workforce is this actually being taken seriously.

And Christians, I blame them even more. We are supposed to be the caretakers of this earth. This planet that is so wonderful, so incredibly awesome that we understand only a fraction of what it needs to continue functioning and sustaining life. We are supposed to be caring for the animal and plant life. We should be caring for other people. And if we let the climate continue to change the way it has been, and continue relying on fossils fuels the way we have been, then we doom ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and so on into at least 100,000 years later to a bleak future, where they will know none of the natural joys and wonders we get to see and take for granted.

Do you understand that I want my children and grandchildren to see the beauty of our country while standing on top of a snow covered mountain, and then feel the adrenaline and wonder at snowboarding (or skiing) on that snow? Or to grow their veges and fruit and understand how it works? To swim or wakeboard in a clean and cool river or lake? To mountain bike or hike through breath-taking forests? To get their feet muddy in puddles and freezy on puddles frozen over? I want them to know that I love them no matter who they love. I want them to live life like it’s a gift not a burden. I want them to know that I tried to make the world a better place for them, not for them to think that I sat around and helped in the destruction of all that I say I loved. I don’t have kids yet, but I still feel this need to ensure that they will never ask why I didn’t care what their world would be.

But I’m sitting here wondering, why don’t we care more? This is not a matter of reducing our energy use, it’s a full reduction of dependence on fossil fuels so we can stop taking them from the earth. Why aren’t we demanding action from our governments so that the people we have with the brains and technology to make this happen can make it happen. We are responsible, but I think we are in denial. We keep putting it in the too hard box. But what happens when the Pacific Islands are uninhabitable and their current inhabitants have to go mainland to escape rising sea levels? What happens when the worlds largest cities have to relocate their populations because the ocean has encroached 6 metres above road level? What happens when sea levels will not stabilise and continue to chase our children and their children further and further inland? Can you imagine the famine? The warfare? The illness and violence? I don’t want a world of fear and uncertainty for them. Do you?

Love and marriage, love and marriage, dadededadadadadadada

So if it isn’t obvious by the title, this past week or so has been much less depressing, well no that’s not entirely true, there have been more exciting and good-time-nostalgia inducing events to make the depressing period of the last few weeks more bearable. In fact, I do believe I have started a Facebook-Profile-Picture war among my friends by changing mine to one of my favourite wedding photos. I changed mine because, as hinted at by the title, I have been to two weddings in as many weekends and it made me nostalgic, so ta-da, shared nostalgia. This, apparently and only by conjecture on my behalf,  provoked a few of my friends to change theirs also, which I’m not complaining about because I get to see new wedding photos.

So I’ve concluded that Love is quite a good salve for Depression, particularly public Love. Not wispy, airy-fairy, shallow movie Love, that doesn’t help one little bit at all. It has to be real, can’t wipe the happy off your face, believe this is forever, can’t even stand the thought of standing the thought of being without them Love. It has to be an I-want-to-pronounce-that-you’re-mine-by-choice, will stand in front of people and speak even though I hate public speaking, suddenly don’t care how fat I am even though I’ve been dieting for months to look amazing in this moment, and an all I can see is you, kind of Love.

Also I’ve started writing again. Not this, my blog, whatever. Poetry, songs, music. Usually a step towards painting, at this point I have 4 blank canvases, literally, sitting in a spare room, waiting for me to be inspired.  The strange thing was, my inspiration, turned out to be the weather, rain and wind. To put this in context, in NZ at the moment 70% of the country is in drought mode. So the first rain we’ve had in months, a whole 4mm of it, fell on Saturday. So I sat outside on my back doorstep and wrote in a notebook, a song inspired by the sound of a birdsong from a tree and the feel of wind on my face and rain on my feet.

All in all, events that have made this last while more bearable, and myself less prone to random bouts of crying and exhaustion. Not sure what the end of such a busy and nostalgic period is going to mean. I’m not sure I want to think about it, I’ll let what happens happen for now. I’m sometimes surprised people don’t think I’m a bit manic. Actually to be honest, I don’t particularly care, one of the few characteristics I am glad I trained myself into during highschool, not so pleased with the procrastination.

Optims vs Pess’

I don’t know why people refer to stress as a monster, it’s more like a disease, it’s unwanted but contagious and hard to keep in check, it effects different people differently, presenting in unpredictable ways, and abating at unexpected times for immeasurable amounts of time. And when it’s yours, the world is just a mosquito buzzing about your head, annoying you with what seems like numerous trivialities.  And you, you become the monster. Unsociable, unfriendly, short-tempered, blunt. Or in my case, a blubbering mess of leaking eyes, suffering a loss of articulation, withdrawn and shutting down.

Worst of all, oh yes there is worse still, I’m completely prone to depression. A war ensues of the internal kind, one side insisting there is only a matter of time before the stress subsides and life is good once again, and the other, insisting that the stress has made residence and has been there long enough to be almost permanent, immovable concrete buildings bound to leave scars if demolished and imposing stone walls with sheer sides and no discernible flaws by which to scale them.

Some days the Optims are winning, they gain some ground, make a few chips large enough for a good hold in the walls, knock a few levels off the buildings. The other days the Pess’ have the overwhelming advantage, patching the walls, repairing and building higher, pushing back till they hold more ground than they started with.

And the only outward indication is the leaking eyes. No bags under the eyes to catch the leaking water, no unwanted lines appearing out of the fog where lines are expected, no extra blemishes appear on the far-from-flawless skin, the shoulders stay back, the back stays straight and the appearance remains pulled together. But it’s only a matter of time. Civil Wars only remain internal for so long. Eventually the rest of the world notices.

But the hope remains that the Optims will conquer, that the war will subside before intervention becomes necessary and the grass will grow over any memory of stresses past. Yeah, there’s still hope, it’s just hiding behind a cluster of trees waiting for a lull in the violent reality of life as a grown up.

A moment in happiness

So my realisation for today is that forgiveness makes me happy, in a contented way, and in my opinion that is one of the best forms of happiness. What brought this on? For a long time I held a bit of a grudge against my husbands ex-girlfriend. Not unusual I know, but I realised around our 6th month into our marriage, that it was childish and unhealthy. So I forgave her my perceived grievances, things that I should never have got my nose out of joint about in the first place, let alone let simmer under my skin and cause a spiritual septicemia. And I starting contacting her through Facebook instead of stalking her as was my previous custom.

She has recently got remarried, and being able to see how happy she is in her wedding photos makes me truly happy. My comments are sincere, she looks beautiful and over-the-moon and I wish them all the happiness and joy and lessons marriage will bring, I hope this one is her last in her lifetime. And I realised that the happiness I was feeling was a true, full heart brimming, brain numbing, smile inducing sort of happiness. Feeling that happiness made me remember why I had forgiven her in the first place, which made me feel that calm, serene, content sort of happiness.

Sometimes I wonder how people can live with so much hate in their lives. It’s so toxic. Not even necessarily for them, they can cut you out of their lives, all the better for them, and as I was once told by a very wise special elder in my life, what other people think of you is none of your business. But for yourself. It’s like a wildly out of control blood poisoning that gets in the way of the enjoyment you should be getting out of life. And so much of it is judgements you have no right to make in the first place. Their journey is full of ups and downs and ins and outs and trials and troubles and joys, that you have no idea about, and then you base a judgement on the 5 minutes you spent standing next to them having to listen to whatever mundane thing they’ve decided to talk about at that point in time.

Life is too short for holding judgements, grudges, for leaving people unforgiven, for missing out on the joys and happiness other people can unexpectedly bring into your life.

But hey, you’ve caught me on a good day. Maybe my next post will be all gloom and morbidness.

Well, here it goes

For months now I’ve been blaming other people and situations for where I am and the fact that I have no idea what I want to do with myself. Literally no idea. I now have a double major in English and Anthropology, and still I have no idea, and quite obviously my newly acquired qualifications give me no clear future career paths. Along with my husband I have also acquired part ownership of an auto-electrical business, clearly not a career I myself would have chosen and though paperwork isn’t the most challenging thing in the world to do it is also not the most challenging thing in the world to do, ie I get bored, quickly, and this is not good for the business records. So the goal in this area is to get to a point where we can hire someone else to do that.

Prone to depression, doing something that holds my attention and that I enjoy no end is really the end goal, but this is where I’ve hit that concrete wall. I mean, the wall may have embellishments and illumination, a few imperfections here and there, and small unexpected surprises hidden in a few of the cracks and crannies, but I need a way over and I haven’t found the ladder yet, or better yet, the door. But I’ve found this, I enjoy writing, even if nobody will read it, perhaps, I like it even better if I think no one will read it. And while the ultimate writers dream is to write a bestseller, I’m not sure novels are within my abilities at this point. I can barely find the time to write a short blog about nothing let alone enough time to get into a headspace, to become a character and live their journey, and make it coherent enough for other people to be able to see what I see, feel what I feel.

So I’ll start with myself, with my own headspace, the things I’m seeing and feeling, my journey as I see fit to share it, the thoughts that otherwise would have no acceptable outlet. Oh yes, if I blurted out every thought that entered my head I would probably be admitted. As it is my husband finds what does come out to be quite entertaining, lucky for him he’s laughing along with me, and I think as long as I recognise that the things I say and do are not “normal”, he will happily put up with them.

So, here goes. I’m sorry if there ends up being too much moaning, or it becomes washy, or wistful, or disjointed. It is what it is, and it will get messy.