Fumbling Towards Byzantium

I haven't posted in a while.  Sorry about that.  But after writing about my dad, it's been a little hard for me to make myself post anything that will cause his image to scroll further down (and eventually off) the page. Something about it just seemed... wrong, somehow.  Like if I could just keep writing and let that post move through the queue I'd be erasing him or something. 

On the other hand, that post got such a response (both online and out in the meatspace) that I feel like I need to write more.  I've ignored that, whether out of lack of inspiration or out of fear of letting Dad's post go, or something else entirely.  But I want to get back into it. 

Some of what you may see here will be mindless drivel.  Or me babbling about pop culture, or me whining about why the Mets can't just play consistent baseball, or me scheming on how to get Firestar into Avengers 2.  Some of it will be higher quality content when the inspiration and ability strike me. 

And some of it will be continuing to talk about mental health.  I promise this is not going to become Tara's Depression Blog.  Pinky swear.  But some of you have said my posts on that topic really helped you, and writing things out always helps me to organize them in my brain, so I'm going to stick with that while trying to interject some other stuff as well. 

In a way I feel like I owe this to my dad a bit.  A lot of people at his wake and funeral asked me why I'm not a writer and I didn't have a good answer.  The best I could come up with was, "I don't really know how to be a writer."  But I'm reminded of the advice Neil Gaiman says he always gives to young writers:  "Write. Finish things."  So that's what I'm going to try to do.  Maybe it'll go somewhere, maybe it'll just help me keep my head organized and allow me to connect with all of you who read these things.  Either way I feel like it's a win. 



Post title is an unholy mashup of this Sarah McLachlan song and this William Butler Yeats poem.  Don't you judge me; I'm a complex woman.

Running Up That Hill

So my last post didn't yield much of a response, which made me skeptical about continuing.  But someone suggested I keep going, and to be honest the process is sort of interesting to me, so I'm hoping that this doesn't get too boring or preachy or what have you. 

My intention writing these things is absolutely not to suggest that I'm an expert on mental illness of any type or how to deal with it.  I'm really only a journeyman at dealing with it myself.  But I've made concrete, trackable progress over the past year of which I'm very proud, and if what I've done and experienced can help anyone else, then I'd be thrilled.  If not... well, then I hope you don't mind too much reading what goes on in my addled little brain. 

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off.

After my last post (which got an amazing response, by the way, and I'm really grateful for all your kind words) someone asked me to write about how I deal with my depression.  I'm a little hesitant to do this for a few reasons:

1) I don't love giving advice.  I catch myself doing it, but I don't like it.  Unless someone specifically asks for my opinion I feel like it's not my place to assume I know better than they do what they should do – or that I know better about anything, really. 

2) I'm still a work in progress.  I've come leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, but I still have my ups and downs and I don't want to give the impression that I've got some kind of a miracle answer or that I've reached some great revelation of zen. 

3) Everyone is different.  What works for me may not work for you.  Every brain works differently, both chemically and psychologically, and the medications or devices that do great things for me might do terrible things to you. 

But bearing all that in mind, maybe I can still give some insight into what works for me and you can take it with a tablespoon of salt and adapt it to your own situation.   So here goes nothing...

In the wee small hours of the mourning...

I hate these hours of the night sometimes.  It's when I'm awake, because my circadian rhythms were apparently installed upside down, and I've pretty much adjusted to that and made my peace with the fact that most of the world thinks I'm some kind of psychotic.  I just can't be an "early to bed, early to rise" type.  I've tried.  If I go to bed before 1am I just lay and stare into space while my brain does acrobatics of anxiety and dread.  But that's not what I tell people – I tell people it's because I'm a genius. 

It's not new.  In high school and college I used to stay up all night listening to the local alternative/new wave station on my little pink boom box and reading until I heard my dad flip the kitchen light on at 5:30am.  The overnight DJ always played the best music anyway. 

But it's lonely some nights.  The AIM Buddy List dwindles down to nobody, and Twitter and Facebook stop updating, and suddenly I'm very aware that it's just me and iTunes and whatever web pages I haven't already read or a book or whatever.  And my brain. 

I really can't be left alone with my brain.  Too long without something to distract it and it turns on me.  Little voices filled with doubt and self-loathing creep in at the edges and start to whisper the kind of thoughts I try to keep buried under constant noise.  Nightmares get remembered, anxieties and paranoias analyzed into madness, and little nighttime noises turn into horror movie scenarios waiting to be played out. 

When I'm alone I rarely bother trying to sleep until I'm utterly exhausted.  The longer I lay there without something to do, the more I start tying myself in knots.  Half the time I don't even bother with my bed anymore; I just sit at the computer until I'm literally nodding off and stumble over to the couch.  It beats letting myself think. 

Are other people like this?  Are there other people who need some kind of external chaperone to keep their own mind from hacking them to bits?  Who have to constantly find ways to compensate for the fact that they can't just sit the fuck still and think without it all going sideways? 

This is sort of a downer post, I know.  Sorry about that.  But I'm somewhat fervent about being open about my depression because I feel like mental illness still gets such a stigma that any little tiny bit of light I can shed might help somehow.   Plus sometimes all that really helps is exorcising the stupid thoughts from my head into some external format – it's a temporary purge because they always come back, but when all you've got is a Band-Aid, that's what you put on the bullet hole. 

Anyway.  Sometimes I miss that little pink boom box and the assurance it offered me that someone else out there was awake too and that I could think about something else for a while.  But one way or another, the mind always catches up. 

Welcome, 2012.

Happy New Year, everyone!  I know, I'm a little late.  My internet was down for a few days so please forgive the tardiness of my sentiments.

I hope you all had a fun New Year's Eve, wherever you were.  I always view NYE as an excuse to wear as much glitter and sparkly stuff as I can possibly fit onto my person.  A night to let loose and guide the old year out the door with enough fanfare that you won't remember it all when the next year begins.  A night where the mayor of a major city can begin peace talks with the queen of our new alien overlords.  

Bloomberg later stated that the denizens of Planet Gaga presented him with
a tome entitled "To Serve Man," leaving him optimistic about future relations.