I have been taking vitamins and other supplements for about 5 weeks now. Faithfully, each morning, I swallow a handful of "pills" with names like Omega-3 and SAMe and B blah blah complex. This has been all so I don't find myself needing to swallow Prozac or Valium, or any of a dozen other mood enhancing/stabilizing/moderating drugs.
Trying to get myself (with help) out of depression is taking a whole fucking lot of effort. I don't want to take any meds, so I am doing all the other stuff. This blog is just the tip of a very cold, steep, slippery iceberg I cling to. I am looking for some sunshine.
I need to confess something though. Something I just figured out about why I write, and more importantly why I stopped, and why I have started again. I wrote before that I have been journalling for years. What I didn't mention is that I stopped. Oh, I had fits and starts, and have pretty, but empty, leather-bound and engraved journals to prove it. But mostly, I have been only making myself write consistently for the last little bit. I stopped writing on a daily basis in September 2000.
Here is the backstory.
I was a year and a half into my now-defunct relationship with my ex-husband. We hadn't exchanged rings yet, so he was still my boyfriend and lover then. We had hit the usual wall when initial newness wears off, and the real work of a relationship begins. The place where your good and honorable commitment kicks in, or you go your separate ways. I was ready to call it quits. We were not progressing. We never went anywhere together. We never spoke about love and adventure and holding each other as the most important part. I was already getting the inklings of the verbal and emotional abuse that would come later, and I had lost even the idea of myself along the way. I was at the bottom of my own list, and involved with a man who always had himself at the top. I did not exist, and as liberal a woman as I like to profess that I am, my 50's housewife ideal of a perfect marriage was evaporating.
He had recently begun talking again to a woman he had known before me. I didn't know at the time that she was very young and had just been dumped by her boyfriend. My ex was sympathetic, and had begun to show feelings for her again. In a strange way I was relieved, but I was also panicking. I had already allowed myself to become dependent on him for my feeling of financial security, and home stability. I had already given up many of my friends, most because they did not like him and I took sides. I had already failed at one marriage , and was feeling like I could not pull out now when I had such a great guy in my life, one with a family I already adored. I was willing to settle for that less-than feeling because all I had had in my life until that point was nothing. I willing accepted this going nowhere "relationship" as a step up. Maybe even all I deserved.
Still, I started saving money, looked for higher paying work, and writing every single day in my journal, making plans to leave. If I were to re-read the journals, I would not be surprised to find the word "survive" as all I was hoping for. I remember writing it a lot. When the day came that I had enough strength to ask him about the other woman (who I had known about for weeks), he basically begged me to stay. It was not what I expected, and had nothing to counter with. I had hoped for him to give me an out, tell me that he was in love with her blah blah blah. The fact that he was still seeing her was wasted on me. I was numb. Before I could get myself out of numb (about three weeks), I found out I was pregnant. Pregnant with Seth.
I was trapped. Here I was, joyous that I was having the baby I was never-supposed-to-be-able-to-get-pregnant-with. Having a baby with a man, that just a month before, I was leaving because I could not even imagine being with him forever. And a baby to me meant forever. I would be my parents. Miserable but responsible. Accommodating and abused. I would live his life because I had no choice. And looking back on it now (with the help of some counseling, thank you!) my previous outlet of journalling went away. I complied, and in essence, ceased to exist. From then on, I would be a dutiful wife, a perfect and giving mother, a homemaker and housekeeper and a perfect model citizen. I would be the ever ready lover, the never tired partner, and the giver of things to please, never even questioning if it was right for me. I would not need to write because it was all already written for me. No one would know. How could they know? I was already invisible.
This goes back to why I write now, and why I am opening eight different bottles every morning. I am reclaiming the person I was, healing the wound I kept hidden. I am also becoming someone I have never been. Someone on the top of my own list. Reclaiming isn't even the right word, not really, since I am not sure I want her back. A different, healthier version maybe. I am reclaiming the writing though, remembering that I have a story, and again, that I exist. I think this is a theme. Time for me to relearn my own core, become better than my teachings and experiences. Allow me to feel for myself, and reject the idea that my future is already etched by someone else. That, and keep myself from having to swallw one more pill. I know I have swallowed too many bitter ones already.
