Depression

I spoke at a conference on Friday. The previous 2 days I was barely functional. Sleeping, crying, listless, an effort to put on clothes. I have dealt with depression most of my life, my own, and the depression of those around me. My Mother, Father and sister regullarly talked about how they wanted to die or kill, I just thought about it, I still do. Death was ever present. My means of escape was the Mall, the TV or silly pop and disco records. I still like silly pop and disco records, but the escape in to them never felt as unhealthy as when I would become submerged into the TV. Or the hours spent looking at clothes I couldn’t afford, making up stories to the sales people so I could try them on and get out of there without feeling too bad. I don’t think I realized until much later that there were healthier ways for me to escape and deal with my depression. I don’t always remember them.

It’s hard right now. really hard. nothing is solid. I have no home. My mother is dying. I have no regular income. I still can’t stand this City but I can’t leave it either. Can’t stand is a bit harsh. It drives me nuts, it has a few redeeming qualities, but mostly it’s a soulless, passionless hole with bad architecture. So i’m all over the place. I started with talking about the conference because it helped with the overwhelming depression I was feeling. In my mom’s place there is a TV that is on alot. She can’t do alot other than shop, eat and watch TV. So I do that with her. The same mechanisms for dealing with depression that I used as child, as a teenager, and as a sort of grown up. They are easy distractions, they don’t require alot of work. At this conference the other day, a man who was speaking on the last panel about sustaining activism, told me I needed to take care of myself. He looked me in the eyes and told me” You are precious. The world needs you. You must take care of yourself. Excercise, eat well and meditate.”( maybe not exactly like that, but that was the gist of it.) He then put his hands on my face, gave me a kiss on cheek and hugged me while I cried. He has worked for Greenpeace for over 20 years, front-line Greenpeace, on the ships, chained to pipes, arrested, arrested, and arrested. Arrested for saying no you can’t destroy this planet. So when he told me to look after myself the other day, the world needs me. I believed him.

I know what is best for me. I know that I need to exercise everyday, make things that are responding to the world around me with other people, and meditate. So yesterday It took me until 2pm to leave the apartment, get out of my nightgown, go to the store to get some things for my Mom, and then I went to the beach, put my feet in the ocean, washed my face, overthought things I can’t fix about someone I can’t and don’t want to fix, looked at all the shells, matched a bunch by colour, shaped and direction of grooves, and then watched them get pulled away. Walked up to the pool, swam ten laps, came back to the apartment, had a shower and went for dinner with a friend. This morning I watched “Sketches of Frank Gehry” which I have seen before, but my mother hasn’t . She loved it. So do I. It doesn’t feel like an escape it feels like a gift. I went swimming again today. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes. The irony of depression as any one who lives with it knows, is that the things that make you feel the best, or at the very least, give you a bit of energy to keep you moving and communicating with the rest of the world, are the hardest to do. Or maybe they aren’t. For the most part, I know it’s a mind wrestle. The image of the arm wrestle is in my head, which way will I go, to the pool or the couch? I’m voting for the pool.

Maybe i’m crazy. I feel like there is a level at which I am perfect, fine, just as I am. Quite sane and healthy. On another level, the one I live on each day, I am always sick, my head is a mess, and I feel distant from everything, and very little seems possible. My triggers are worse than they have ever been. I have a sense that crazy me, hypochondriac, sick, frightened, traumatized me, is on the verge of some kind of break, or explosion, like my brain is going to bust from all the thought. My body will collapse from all the draining feelings, and then the shell will drop, the garbage will be dumped, and I will emerge sane, healthy, and dead. I don’t know why I said dead. I just imagine that’s where I’ll be when I get to that point. Or that this perfection is boring, and all this whiney stuff I do, it’s also me.

Every time I go to the Dr. I’m fine. My whole body from head to toe is in pain, or feeling discomfort in some way. My blood pressure is almost always fine, xrays, bloodwork, my eyes, throat is a little red, but that’s it, and the bleeding has an explanation too, nothing sinister, just passive body care. I sit there and I wait for her, and I think about where to begin. Do I talk about the blood on my rectum, the constant pressure on the right side of my head, my achilles tendonitis flaring up, the sore back or the sore thumb? Does any of it matter, I know why most of it’s there.

I feel so far away from everyone. Thoughts of the old life, where I was nice to people and didn’t mean it alot of the time, are fading, it was some other girl, some other Sharon trying to make it all better. I am done. I can’t help anybody, and I don’t want to. I have sacrificed my self all of my life. I tried to be something special for people. Someone nice, soothing, non-judgmental, caring, hopeful, and supportive. I wanted to be hope. I wanted to crack people open, like I have been cracked open, to feel what is happening, to stop the bullshit. I use to think that If I could just say something in my purest voice, youngest, most compassionate and innocent part of me, that still exists, through a mutilingual loud speaker that would reach every soul in the universe, I would say “enough”. The problem is, I don’t feel like I care anymore. I don’t care because I think we deserve what were getting. I don’t care because I’m tired of trying to figure things out. I don’t care because I am alone. I am responsible to 2 cats, a mother who is dying and friends that have their own lives, partners, kids and work. I can be anywhere, free, no mortgage or car, or child, or partner, or company, or job. So why don’t I feel good? Doesn’t everybody want to be free?

hollow words or insulated feelings?

I am embarrassed sometimes that I use the internet this way. That it has become a place to expose my feelings like it has for so many people. Maybe it’s like going to confession, or visiting your favourite old tree. You can say everything and not be judged, and if you are, you can’t look them in the eyes and feel the judgment. It is anonymous, like confession.

I am deeply sad right now. Dissappointed with most of what’s around me, but this isn’t news. Some days it’s worse. I listen to my mother talk about my sister and my nephew on the phone. She’s more erratic than usual, no surprise, learning your dying by something specific will do that. I listen to her though, and I hear a hollowness in her voice, like she’s saying emotional things, but there is no emotion. She’s angry but it feels like nothing. I wonder how often I am like this. I say love, and often I don’t feel love, or I say it when they’re not around and it makes me cry, I say it to the air or to an image of them in my head. I’ve been crying alot. Things are unclear with someone I think I love very much. I can’t talk to him right now. I’ve been thinking so much about it, I don’t even know what I would say If I actually talked to him. I had this thought that if I thought any harder about it, my brain would start to bleed. I sometimes think there is something wrong with me. Like mentally wrong. I think so hard. I am always trying to figure things out, and I mock people and call them arrogant for thinking they have found the one thing that will solve all our problems. Bio-diesel, recycling, sprititual movements, books, money, compassion, love. Who can blame them. It gives people hope to think there is something that will save us.

I listened to all these people last night who are doing social justice work. I was documenting them as part of the Peace Summit. Nothing stuck for me. All the words ran right through me, except for 2. Knowledge Economy. Only 2 that resonated. That this place, my blog, my confessional, my old tree, is housed in one of the only environments where there is the potential to level the playing field. As I know from all my thinking, there is no one thing that will make it all better, no one person, and no particular word. I don’t remember when it first came to me, and it’s not anything particullarly brillliant, but I realized we need to try as many things as possible, the things that feel right for us. Not just the two options, but the 3rd and maybe the 4th. Not just harm-reduction, but abstinence too, and they don’t eliminate each other, they are options. If we are an open society, then that would mean we had choices, not just the lesser of two evils, like everytime I go to the ballot box. Heads hurting again. I should take my advice and try meditating, my brain is needing a rest.

Cancer is our legacy.

My mother has pancreatic cancer. It might be the kind that is less aggressive. It has metastisized on her stomach and liver. She has no obvious symptoms. She is tired, but her spirits are better than they have been in a long time. Maybe it’s because she knows she has less time, maybe it’s because I’m staying with her a bit right now while I figure out where I need to be, mostly I need to be close to her. We have been getting along better, laughing alot and being more affectionate. She has been sick most of her life and isn’t interested in a brave fight against cancer. She doesn’t mind leaving, and I’m not interested in a brave fight to keep her here. I am interested in spending good time with her, and being there for her as much as I can.

My mother getting cancer of course makes me think about it even more than I already do. She is one person, and one person experiencing the disease of our culture. The cancer, the growth, the thing that invades our bodies and most often kills us. If the last hundred years were to have a particular legacy it would be cancer. Over a hundred years of plundering, raping, and poisoning, the earth and its inhabitants, with enthusiasm, or should I say greed, or addiction? Cancer is often used as a metaphor, something deadly that must be removed. An invader. I want to understand it. I always feel like understanding something will help me find some peace with it, or feel less helpless that my mother is going to die of cancer. Although we joked the other day it could be a heart attack that kills her, she’s had 4.

The misery blog

Well I tried to write something happy, and it sucked. I can just rename this misery blog, come join me in my misery, and my insights on misery and universal stupidity.

I went to this herb farm a few days ago run by a woman named Robin Wheeler. I was there for 5 days. I cooked, canned, picked and got happily bonked in the head by peaches, painted, slept, ate, didn’t shower, got dirty, and listened to the rain pound on the roof. I looked over books written by people who escaped from the city and are happily living country life, they also had money. I came back. Woke up the next morning, looked at the concrete towers surrounding me in my mom’s apartment, and the crap on the TV and was struck by how abnormal it all was, everything I was looking at, sitting and living in. I thought about this place I just spent some time in. It felt normal, and that everything she is doing seemed to be about respect, and making amends to the land.

I have many parts to me, I know that. I have the part that falls in love with dresses I can’t afford. Likes parties where I can dress up, eat nice snacks, drink, and have brief conversations with people. I am going to work in a medium where there is huge waste and cost prohibitive materials. I also feel it in my body when I have taken something from a tree or a plant that I shouldn’t have, and experience genuine guilt. I cried harder for a Cypress tree than I did for my father when he died last year. I grew up around horses and felt closer to them than any of the humans in my life. I wrestle with the part of me that is in love with the idea of being in New York City, and the other part, the part that knows that cities are killing the earth, that they are unsustainable, and even with all the green roofs and recycling programs, we can’t erase what’s been done. Cities rely on girls and boys like me( but with more money) who fall in love with “things”, and want the fancy life.

The fancy life vs country life. Country life is not idyllic, I know that. It isn’t really an escape either. You have less people to deal with and fewer social buffers. It is hard work, daily hard work. If your choosing to take care of land, and make amends, like Robin has. I say make amends because of something I heard her say when she was talking about a piece of land in the nearby area. She talked about in terms of being raped of it’s diversity, turned into a lawn, so city folk can have fancy and country at the same time. She also said it just needed the right people to take care of it and it could thrive again. Make amends. These feel like powerful words. I have harmed you repeatedly earth and I want to do whatever I can to let you know that I care about you, and I don’t want you to die. I don’t want all the animals to die. I don’t want to live in a world without Tigers, Elephants or Polar Bears, a world without Redwood and Yew Trees, a place where the air, water and soil are toxic. This is where I live, and this is what is happening, and if it means anything at all I am sorry. I am sorry that people are so stupid that they don’t get that putting poison on food gives people cancer, depletes the soil and kills animals. I am sorry that we lack the wisdom to realize that profit is a lousy motive. If it means anything, I want to do better for you. I can’t promise I won’t fall in love with anymore dresses, and I won’t want fancy things some times, but for as long as I’m here, I will take better care of you. I love you. I love you like I love nothing else.

before I left my apartment I wrote this blah, blah that’s kind of like the rest, but..

a little different.

http://www.liberatefreedom.com/archive/2006/10/15/freedom-—-to-give-our-brightest-deepest-truth

I was just re-reading this article written by Derrick Jensen in 2006. It’s about freedom and slavery. I have one of those metal chords with magnets hanging from my ceiling next to my desk- it’s my idea chain. Something resonates, or connects with some larger story I think I want to tell and it goes on the chord. I found a button the other day as I was cleaning out my desk drawer. It was a quote by Paul Robeson- “The artist must take sides. They must elect to fight for freedom or slavery”. I read this button and the words felt like they were the most perfect thing I could hear. I am packing up my place, a place I’ve been fairly miserable in. Trapped by a rent I can’t afford and bills I can’t pay. I read here, I wrote here, and I hope I have gotten clearer here. I read “A language older than words” by Derrick Jensen two years ago. When I finally got through it, I felt something change in me. I realized I was strong enough to hear and see what is going on in this world I live in, even if it breaks my heart. What is truth? My truth? I don’t always know, I just know that I’m not free. I know that when I eat my fruit I wonder about the crap that’s on it, and if it’s going to kill me. Buy organic. Why do we even make it an option between making stuff that causes cancer and stuff that prevents it. Blueberries with pesticides, blueberries without? You choose. I realized the other day, after walking with Murray down to the lake and seeing a huge pile of garbage outside the garbage can, that really we just don’t give a shit. We don’t care about our freedom, other people’s freedom, our earth, the animals, the fish, the plants, the babies, the women, the men, the elders. We don’t care. We don’t care enough to say no to all of this. To pick up our own shit, to be ourselves in all our imperfect awkwardness, to stop if people need help, to love each other, to really challenge each other to do better, to do what makes us happy, to share, and to see each other. All I hear is blame shifting. I’ve needed alot of time to heal and am still healing from the violence I was raised in, the violence I live in on this planet. I hold this place inside me that is young and hopeful, innocent and full of love. She, I can see how people suffer, even the people who dump the garbage at beautiful Brohm Lake. They don’t care, because they have lost hope, we don’t care, because there doesn’t seem to be a point, because the Government is just going to do whatever they want anyway, and so will the cops, so will the medical and education systems and the developers that are planning our communities.

I don’t want to feel this way. I never want to go there, to the place where I realize most people are content with slavery. Enslaved into a system that requires us to be addicts, ignoring the needs of each other and the planet. I am leaving my apartment in a few days, and in the process of getting rid of as much stuff as I can. I’m putting the rest in storage for a couple of months until I figure out how I can do this all different. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know that I’m prepared to give up my stuff, or do what it would take to live in a way that feels better to me or if it even matters. my deprivation or cutting of ties isn’t going to change it, it could just push me further into a too serious, earnest and kind of boring place. Right now I don’t want to set up another apartment, accumulate more stuff, eat more fruits and vegetables covered in poison because organic is too expensive, get a partner, bring a child into the world so they can do the same. I wish I was one of those people who believed I was just here for me, and that I should just have a good time and fuck everyone else. I want to some days. I want to be one of those people who doesn’t give a shit, who doesn’t care. Oh well.

a time management exercise

practicing time management today. I get so easily distracted I need to find a way to manage it. I have wasted so much time it hurts. First block is going for a walk. Dejavu just this second about the writing about going for a walk. My brain feels weird, my whole head. I feel so angry. Congested with something, I feel like it’s coming from my stomach, but I don’t know. I have one minute until my walk starts. I’ll stop now. Come back at the next break.

Back from the walk. So many creeps out early or at least one in a red car, slowing down. Pig. I don’t know that he was slowing down to look at me, but it seemed like it. It doesn’t even matter what I was wearing, it never does. I don’t wear makeup, I am not skinny, and I dress in whatever I feel like wearing, this morning jean shorts, and a grey t-shirt. I have been approached while wearing a raincoat overalls and army boots, I have had cars slow down beside me when I was wearing leopard tights heels and a long vintage leather coat. It doesn’t matter, women are for sale, so why wouldn’t I be. Anyway, there were also sweet birds on my walk, but pretty quiet, except for the noise in my head, maybe that’s why it hurts. Too fucking loud in there. I have 13 minutes to start writing about something I sort of care about. I care about my friend who asked me to write. I care about the money I could make writing for her and I care about design. So why is it so hard for me to write these blogs for her. I don’t want to dissapoint her. I’m making it harder for myself than it is. I’m thinking of it as an obstacle to overcome. I’m making it hard, and I don’t think it has to be. I’m being a bit of a baby. Now I have 8 minutes and want to set a timer on my computer. So I’ll stop here for now.

Why I love flubs

What I like about recorded flubs is that they make really talented people look human. I think that’s why bloopers are so popular. I was listenting to my favourite version of “The Weight” by The Band performed by Harry Manx and a bunch of other accomplished musicians in his recording of Live at the Basement. There are a few points where they forget the words, and they laugh, everyone laughs with them, they keep going, and me and my friend who are listening on the other end, are laughing too. Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “Mack the Knife” is one of the best, because she skillfully and humourously moves through the lines that she didn’t remember. I often find things and people that appear perfect, oppressive. Probably because it’s not natural. I realized when I was working on my final project for school, that I was trying to make it perfect, and it was never going to happen. It was going to be what it was, and the best I could make it. I admire people who work so hard to get really good at what they do, and love what they do, and have enough confidence in themselves to laugh at their own stuff.

I want to write something happy…

for you who stumble across this blog, and for me to write from a genuinely happy place, an unforced happiness. I want to write something happy, because there is so much misery in the world, and I don’t want to contribute to the pile. I want to tell stories that are redemptive, but I know I can’t always do that. Sometimes there is no happy healing ending, sometimes it’s just painful, and then maybe later, after some of the pain has run it’s course, there is relief, some brightness, something touching and beautiful, sweet, funny, and warm.

Random thoughts

Monday- August 10- Sitting in Waves at Pender and Main. Got some slime on my fingers from grabbing the underside of the counter, I think it was honey. Amazing what happens when your away from something long enough. I’ve become a total germaphobe. I used to walk around barefoot at the corner of Main and Hastings, wash people’s feet with my bare hands. Feet that had been walking in pissed, bloodied, and feces soaked pavement in the same socks for weeks in the rain. Feet that belonged to bodies and souls of people living with AIDS, HIV, HEP-C, TB and/or Cancer. I have said many times since those days that I was possessed by some other force during that time. I had no regard for my own body. I responded constantly to whatever anyone needed. I did the same as a child. Always responding to need. I still do, but much less.

I have experienced things in the past few weeks that I don’t remember being able to do or feel. Sit for 20 minutes in a form of meditation and not move. I felt a trust in something greater than myself, a universe, a plan, and that whatever happens to me in the next while is what is best for me. I have also said – I want to be free, and I meant it, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’m not a very trusting person, so these experiences have felt unusual. I don’t trust that people won’t hurt me, physically or emotionally, or that when I say I will get what I need or what is best for me that it isn’t tainted by the thought that what is best for me might be that I end up harmed in some way or dead. I live with alot of fear. I guess that’s what the desire for being free is- to live without fear. Not to be without concern, or caution, but to not be crippled by it. I have been.

Thursday August- 13-I hear things on the radio some days that are so horrible I’m not sure how to process them. I imagine if I am at least able to hear it without turning it off or getting really triggered, then I am healing. I was trying to imagine what it might be like for the journalist who just had to read that broadcast about bodies being disintegrated in a pool of acid- drug war violence. Where does he put it, or does he just turn off, that’s what it sounds like- 10 seconds on the bodies in acid, and another 10 on increased taxes. To say this is madness is a joke. Of course it is. It’s made so normal, so matter of fact, that we kill people every day, for money. I always feel like a naive young girl at this point. Someone could step in and say” Of course dear, this is the way the world is, we are a kill or be killed kind of people, and more so since we have developed things to fixate on that make us feel so powerful, even though we have destroyed cultures, people, land, and food supplies to generate this power, it doesn’t matter anyway, we won’t be around forever, so who cares.” That’s where I get stuck- who cares? How did the people who submerged the dead bodies in acid feel when they were dropping them in there? when they were killing? Or are they like the journalist, did they just shut off, do the job, and then go for lunch. Or did they throw up? It has to go somewhere, no matter how often we shut off, not care, only look out for our own interests. The impact, the pain, the violence, the trauma it stays with us. It may not sit in our brain somewhere, but I can speak from personal experience that while the brain may not be able to handle what it’s seen or done, the rest of the body will hold it. In my right eye I’ve absorbed so much trauma, that it makes my eye sore, and vibrate when I’m triggered. We can ignore, shut off and disassociate into the comfort of our complacency and not see each other, and I may be naive, but I’m not foolish enough to think that just because I stick my fingers in my ears or cover my eyes- that maybe it didn’t happen, that none of this is real, or that I can tell myself it doesn’t matter because It’s not happening to me. It’s not, and it is. I am of this world and in this world, a fact that can not be escaped.