Saturday, July 15, 2006

Death, Debt, Deployment… Depression

Emotionally, the past month has been an especially brutal one for me.  Within 3 days’ time, tragedy struck two families I know, leaving two barely-past-newlywed, pregnant widows; one of whom I felt compelled to defend from attacks in the public sphere due to her celebrity status.  Then I was forced to come to terms with our dwindling finances (blecch!). Last, but certainly not least, I learned that a dear friend of mine is going off to war for a year an a half.

Oh yeah, and I’ve been having a few health issues, too.  I fainted one night; I think it’s the second time in my life I have done so.  The first time probably shouldn’t even count, as it was most likely directly related to the substances I’d ingested that night.

I suppose it says something about my state of mind that it’s 10:30 PM and I’m still in the little dress that serves as a nightgown that I put on last night.  I’ve been sitting outside with my laptop, smoking cigarettes while reading and posting on Pharyngula since I woke up at 7 AM, even though it was 114° here today.

But it’s time to write things down, so I can get my feelings out, get myself together and carry on.  The anti-depressants seem to work fairly well to keep the “normal” stresses from hurtling me into the abyss, and to tell the truth, even these more severe stresses seem to affect me differently now than I’d have expected.

I don’t have that crushing despair type of feeling, or constant dread; but I’ve noticed that I’ll quite suddenly feel overwhelmed with emotion to the point of crying, or nearly so. And it’s not just feelings of sadness or even only negative feelings that wash over me in such a way that I can’t speak without a sob escaping or at least a catch in my voice.

These recent emotional stressors or events are important enough, to me at least, to warrant separate posts.  Especially since they’ll be more like stream-of-consciousness ramblings and attempts to put into words those things which have of late caused deep feelings to rise to the surface, and have driven me either to tears, or to sit behind this monitor and keyboard and read/write about something… anything that provides an escape from the realities I don’t want to deal with at the moment.

Gotta get a grip… and get back to something like “normal"…

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

And when I die…

I’ve had this post in “draft” mode for more than three months now, and although I’ve meant to finish documenting whatever thoughts it brings to mind (and they are many), for one reason or another, I’d leave it for “another day.” I guess today’s that day. 

2006-04-02 09:10 AM

Today would have been my Dad’s 82nd birthday.  He’s been gone now for 19 years, yet there’s not a single day that goes by when I don’t think about him, miss him, and wish that he was still here to talk to.  There are so many things going on in the world that I think he’d find fascinating, or infuriating or just plain interesting enough to converse about; not to mention his almost-all-grown-up-now grandchildren that, sadly, will never know the man from whom they may have inherited some of their artistic, intellectual or genetic traits.  Only two out of the 8 children with a parent sired by The Rock ever even met him: my sister’s son, Patrick, who will soon be 20 and lives here with us; and my brother’s son Robert, who’s 27 now.  So in essence, there’s only ONE grandchild who even remembers the Old Man.

And when I die, and when I’m gone,
There’ll be one child born
In this world to carry on,
to carry on.

That song runs through my head quite frequently, because it was one of Dad’s favorites… and I remember us singing it while tooling down the road in whatever rather beat-up old car Daddy was driving at the time (they were all pretty much beaters, but they did their jobs - and if not, they got fixed, and I got to watch!).  We both considered it a matter of personal pride to know ALL the lyrics to the songs on the radio, or if we didn’t, could “fake it” enough to pass OR spew out some outrageous alternative.

Even though I don’t believe in souls, gods, demons, or “going” somewhere when I die, that’s still one of my all-time favorite songs.  The older I get, the more it seems I have to think/talk about dying and death… especially my own.

Just let me go naturally...

Since April, I’ve had plenty of conversations that brought me back to this post, intending to add to it or to finally get it published once and for all. For example:

The chat with Teebiscuit about my not wanting my husband to mourn my passing for years on end, but hoping he will instead start a new life with someone who would make him a good wife… who would take care of business and love him as I did.  I know that doesn’t make sense to most people, who believe I’ll somehow “know” what happens after I’m dead, but it makes sense to ME; because someone has to love my loved ones when I’m gone.  And someone’ll have to collect up the digital detritus I’ve left strewn along the information superhighway, in hopes that one day someone somewhere will find the words I’ve written and it’ll make a difference… even if I inspire just one small positive change in one person’s life, that’s immortality enough for me.

And there’ll be one child born in this world… to carry on… to carry on…

UPDATE 10/30: turning off trackbacks on this entry due to spam from some asshole in the Netherlands pushing pharmaceuticals.  Die, you fuckstick!!!