The Crash

Everything had been so normal, productive. More so than anything I'd experienced since the hospital. It reminds me of my childhood, the abuse. You could go days full of normal, and then out of nowhere, you'd get slapped down. Literally. Even now I have to use "you," second person singular, to distance myself from the memories. Depression feels like that. You find normal, if only for a few days, but there's always that trepidation that you'll have to pay for it -- with a slap out of nowhere, a hand that slaps you down, and there's a sort of a detached surprise when it happens, and then, like someone abused for a long time, resignation.

Mondays are the hardest for me. They're the first day I have to deal without having Jb around. That's strike one against me. But the previous day, we'd been driving in the car, and some country song had come on about weddings, fathers and daughters, the love and hope of a wedding. And it was disturbing how quickly it sent me back to my own wedding. Over ten years ago now, and I still remember it. How perfectly planned. How I never thought I'd end up separated, divorced. How maybe I shouldn't have married him. About how I'd felt myself shout "no!" inside when he'd given me the ring. How I should have listened to myself. It reminded me of how little I do. And it reminded me of failure, of a lifetime ago. And I felt such grief for that person that I was. For the tender moment with my dad. For the grief of leaving home.

Jb saw it, or part of it. There are things I can't tell him. There are things he simply can't know, having never gone through a wedding, a marriage. But he saw the part about my father. Knew I was thinking of him, and brought up a picture from my wedding I'd entirely forgot. It's the best picture taken from that wedding. My dad, in the library, holding an open book in his hand, dressed in the only suit or tux I've ever seen him in, with a silver glint of earring in one ear, and a mischievous grin for the camera. The big joke being that my dad's functionally illiterate, and he'd never in his life pick up a book or look like a man of leisure in a library and tux. He's always been blue-collar, down home, Southern through and through. And I love that about him.

It all was enough to trigger me, I think. I slept most of the rest of the evening, getting up for a couple cheese cookies I'd made for my birthday the day before and a drink. Then I crawled back into bed and slept the rest of the night. I'd get up for the bathroom, but I literally slept from 5 the following day until 4 o'clock on Monday when I knew Jb would be home. I had to be up when Jb got home, so I forced myself to take a shower. But the depression of those two days was so dark and deep that I couldn't fathom leaving my bed. And all last night, Lucy Kaplansky lyrics from "The Tide" kept running through my head, over and over and over and over.

From Up to Down in 10m Flat

Jb and I go out driving, one of the things we do almost every weekend since we've so little money. Usually, it's just what I need: time out of the house, good tunes, time with Jb away from the tv and the computer. Today, it's fine for an hour and a half. Then we end up at a lighthouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence that makes the shabby attraction look like a prison yard with the Chesapeake just beyond the fence, a concrete divide between the haves and have nots: those who can afford to be out boating on the lake and those who stand, locked away from the private beach. It's hot, depressing, and we're an hour and a half from home. I'm restless to get gone, and snappish by the time we're back in the car. The second half of the drive is full of crap music, silence, and then a song comes on and starts triggering me. I'm suddenly desperate for home, missing my family, my childhood, thoughts full of the last ten years, the knowledge that I'm already 32, almost 33, knowing the likelihood that I'll be anything come 40 enough to make me tear up, and there I am, crying behind my sunglasses, trying not to let Jb see, even when he's asking what's wrong. And what is there to say? I'm sick of always saying: I don't know. I just went from fine to depressed in 10 minutes, and I'm so pissed at myself that the disgust is thick. I'm tired of this. Jb must be tired of this. I can't ride these crests and dips. I know, there, in the car, that I need someone to talk to. I need to find myself a therapist. And soon. Because I am not dealing. I am not dealing with this up and down, this here and there, and the guilt of my mood always affecting the people around me that I love is strong. I'm so frightened that they'll suddenly see, suddenly see me, and throw their hands up in frustration, wash their hands of me. I can hardly blame them when I feel like doing the same myself sometimes. I'm even convinced, sometimes, that it'd be better for everyone involved if I lived my own life, away from everyone else's.

Snap

Just like that. I'm standing at the kitchen sink, shelling shrimp, lost in despair, and singing Roseanne Cash's "Bells and Roses" in my head:

Everything was mine
But it's long stripped away
Will you love me if I'm naked
Or as silent as a grave.

If you see who I really am
Will you still wanna stay
There's a danger in this love
And I want to be that brave.

Bells and roses
A sign of departure
But I love them just the same
Bells and roses
A sign of survival
On the door into this pain.

Jb comes home in a dark, snappish mood. Suddenly, I'm seven again, and my mother is raging at me, and there's no perfection I could ever achieve that would ease her pain. Because, like me, she's mentally unstable. And when Jb lashes out at me, I curl inward, go quiet, and the same thoughts play over and over: Maybe if I were sane, maybe if I were beautiful, maybe if I were the right size, the right shape, the tv girlfriend, the perfect girlfriend. Maybe then, he'd be happy with me. Maybe I would do something right, and I wouldn't be repeating stanzas of songs over and over and over while the water runs in the sink:

Now I'll go in if you say I must
But I'd rather let it go
There are people I will never trust
And things that I can't know

Kiss you 'til we turn to stone
Or fight you 'til we're blind
But you love me when you're left alone
And it makes me wanna die

Bells and roses
Wake up the senses
To remind me who I am.

And I'm reminded: I am flawed. I am broken. The trigger is like a switch, my mood like night and day. And I can't let the pain or the fight go.

Ahem.

Tori Amos, "Snow Cherries from France:"

You question me,
"Can you ride anything?"
Lord, do you mean like your moodswings?

Ahem. Truer words sometimes. Poor Jb.