An Amazing, Enlightening and A Little Bit Frightening New Year's Eve Dream

When you are in therapy, dreams mean everything. Once I had a dream that I was running away from wolves and masked men dressed in black. In the dream, I find a little girl. I grab her by the hand and at every threat, I SAVE HER. When I tell this to my shrink she says, "You know that little girl is you."

This is profound to me... that I am strong enough to save myself.

Now, I'm not in therapy but LAST NIGHT, New Year's Eve Night, I have this amazing dream that I feel WILL BE SOMEWHAT LIFE CHANGING. Here it is:

I dream I am doing laundry. I unscrew the top of the detergent and there are two stickers around the spout. One says something like, "Will not take tough stains out." I'm upset, I NEED MY TOUGH STAINS TAKEN OUT!!!

The other sticker says, "The help you give to other people will be your legacy." In the dream I smile, a smile so BIG & BRIGHT it wakes me and I realize, I SMILED MYSELF AWAKE. I have this feeling like, now I have NOT only found my PURPOSE but that their is some greater EXPECTATION of me. And it thrills me and scares me at the same time.

But mostly, I feel this RELIEF that now I know what to do with my life even IF I still have to figure out how.

An Amazing, Enlightening and A Little Bit Frightening New Year's Eve Dream

My Almost Nervous "Whole Foods" Breakdown

I could start to feel the dark stormy cloud coming over me again. It's an easy mathematical equation to know if you are depressed: “Are you asleep more than you are awake?” If the answer is yes, then you might be depressed.

I don't know what it could be.

Yes, you do. You started it by asking all those questions about your past, your mother's past, you couldn't leave well enough alone.

Oh, yeah, that might be it.

One thing that always makes me feel better is if I write. So I decided I'd go out and do a blog entry somewhere where there was internet. (Because we don't have it here, at my parents' house. If you can imagine a place where you have to wash yourself in a bucket and cook gruel in a pot in the fireplace, you pretty much have the technical advances of my parents house down. Oh, also, if you're coming by, bring a coat, you'll need to wear it indoors.)

First I try Panera Bread. No go. Then Border's Books. No go. You need T-Mobile there. “OH, I'M SORRY, DID THE THREE BUCKS I JUST SPENT FOR A CUP OF COFFEE NOT ENTITLE ME TO TEN MINUTES ON THE INTERNET!!!!”

That's what I would have said, had I spent three bucks on a cup of coffee. But I didn't.

So then I try Whole Foods. This is definitely going to work. I have used their internet before. Only it doesn't work. AND I CAN FEEL A RAGE BOILING UP IN ME like you would not believe.

I may be a lot of things. Eccentric, emotional, silly, high-strung, neurotic BUT I'm not usually a rage-a-holic-maniac type girl. OH, BUT RIGHT NOW I AM!

I seriously want to shake somebody. Or worse. I imagine (because I hate guns, so I would never think of shooting anyone with a real gun) that I have gun-like apparatus that instead of shooting bullets, IT SHOOTS FRUIT.

“Oh my God!,” they'll scream, “She's reloading in Produce.” Bam! Bam! Bam! I take down (and by “take down” I just mean “PELT IN THE BUTTOCKS with my fruit gun. It only leaves bruises in the shape of the fruit you were hit with AND AN INABILITY TO EVER EAT FRUIT SALAD AGAIN).

I reload with Grapefruits, that's how mad I am. I'm looking for the Manager who is responsible for my HARDSHIP of getting the on internet. I'm gonna get 'em, get 'em good.

The loud speaker comes on. “Maniac on aisle five.”

“Crap,” I think. “Now I'm gonna be on the news. Those bitches from high school will see me and think, 'She got so fat' and 'Did you even see what she was wearing?' “Please, like I could get past how bad her highlights are!”

I SNAP OUT OF MY FANTASY to see that BY SOME MIRACLE OF MIRACLES, that the INTERNET CONNECTION WORKS.

I write my blog and I check my Sitemeter to see how many people have been on the past few days. (I do this to see which entries people like best.)

The number of visitors is the hugest NUMBER since I started the sight. Maybe double the best number I've ever got.

That's when I start to cry (See? Emotional.) I just feel this amazing gratitude that people like my work, that they respond to it, that they see themselves in it. And also, I feel like a jerk that I was so close to having AN INSANE FIT over nothing, especially because I have EVERYTHING. (Okay, so maybe not a job... or a boyfriend... or any idea what's going to have to my family but... I'm figuring ALL THAT OUT. So, "EVERYTHING".)

And I also feel like a loser for wanting to shoot the lovely people at Whole Foods with my fruit gun.

My Almost Nervous "Whole Foods" Breakdown

If You Say Something I Don't Like, I Will Never Speak to You Again

My sister E has a way with the truth. In that she speaks it. She's the only one. When you have never heard the truth before and then someone starts saying the TRUTH, it will only sound like lies.

E says things sometimes, things that I think she says just to be shocking. So when she said maybe two and a half years ago, “Mom is Bi-Polar,” I was so furious that if it was a movie, I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN UP AND SLAPPED HER ACROSS THE FACE and then the director would cut back to me and I would be sitting on the couch. (The “slapping of the face” being a fantasy sequence because I never act on my emotions.)

In real life, I probably just walked out of the room and didn't speak to her for a while. Maybe six months. That's usually how long we'll fight before someone gives in. It sounds unreasonable BUT PEOPLE WHO SAY SUCH PREPOSTEROUS THINGS such as, “Mom is Bi-Polar,” THEY MUST BE PUNISHED.

Because then maybe they'll learn to keep such preposterous things to themselves.

I don't want to really talk about the day we took my Mom to the hospital until E will sit down with me. Her memory is unparalleld. I think I chocked down enough stolen Klonopin and Shiraz Yellow Tail (not stolen) during that time, that I might need my memory JUMP STARTED.

But I will tell you this one thing.

When we were sitting in the Emergency Room hospital room this time last year, and when E sat on the floor because she was literally shrinking from the weight of the secrets my mother was spilling to the Psychiatrist at such a fervent pitch it was as if someone was holding fire to my mother's feet unless she CONFESSED EVERYTHING RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW, the Doctor turned to my mother and said:

“How long have you known you have been Bi-Polar?”

My Mother said, “A long time…. My whole life, I guess.”

Is there another expression for, “My jaw dropped?” It doesn't fit WHAT I WAS FEELING at all. And it feels dated. No, it does not capture the moment at all.

You know those old “LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN shows? The good ones where he would drop things off the roof of his building? I felt like the TV on the sidewalk just seconds after he released a bowling ball into the air. My guts were everywhere, even though they were still inside me.

Just that, in one moment, MY LIFE WAS BROUGHT TOGETHER AND SPLIT APART. Somehow so many things made sense but in a really sad way. Now we could never SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG. Because a Doctor said it, and E said it and Mom said it, so now it must be true.

I looked at E. She looked so small sitting there on the hospital room floor. We made eye contact. But she did not say, “I told you so.” Which is weird, because she's kind of an “I told you so” kind of girl.

But she knew it was not the day for “I told you so.”

If You Say Something I Don't Like, I Will Never Speak to You Again

It's A Good Time To Make Lists!

A few posts ago, in "Of Purpose, Picket Signs and Big Girl Jeans," I blogged about picketing our lives. Here's a lil' excerpt in case your memory (or hangover) is as bad as mine:

"If any of you are feeling dissatisfied with your life, I have some advice: YOU NEED TO PICKET LIFE... What are you dissatisfied with? What are you MAD AS HELL about and NOT GOING TO TAKE ANYMORE?

I'm taking this mentality of picketing and protesting and I'm APPLYING IT TO LIFE. Let's write our lists, let's make our signs, let's draw our line in the sand. Let's claim what we want, when we want it and how we're gonna get it! Get your bullhorns out, get your signs made, get marching FOR WHAT YOU WANT IN LIFE. When you look back in ten years or twenty, you'll be so glad you did."

So I'm starting my list, right now. Today. Things I'm going to go after with all the gusto in the world. If I think about what my life was two years ago, I only one goal: GET OUT OF BED. Now that I have, I want to ENJOY LIFE. Every day, I come a little closer to circling BACK TO THE ME I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE.

Here's a start to the list (though it will be updated along with what I'm doing to make it all come true):

1) I want PINK hair. Not a huge goal. But I want it. There.

2) I want to go to Italy. I loved it there when I went. I've always wanted to go back. I might need to hold a fundraiser, but hell, I'm going.

3) I'm going to write a book.

4) I'm going to lose forty pounds. I MUST! I don't like this weight, it stinks. Forty won't even get me to thin, it will get me to healthy.

5) I've always wanted to run a road race. Even a five K, I don't care. Spring is coming, there will be lots of them.

6) I want to redecorate my apartment. I want it to reflect the NEW ME I AM TRYING TO BECOME. That means color, brightness and beautiful. Out with clutter, in with organization and necessities.

7) I want to make something. I've narrowed it down to: POTTERY, SOME KIND OF JEWELRY MAKING OR I've always wanted to learn how to upholster furniture (all though me with a high powered staple gun could BE VERY DANGEROUS.) Maybe paint.

8) I want to volunteer. I've already made the contact on this one. I'm going to teach writing to sick kids.

9) HAVE MORE FUN! Every day carve out time for FUN.

10) Investigate my life, figure out who I am and stop repeating patterns that are learned and that have hurt me.

11) KISS MORE BOYS.

And that my friends is just the beginning, to a new and beautiful life.

It's A Good Time To Make Lists!

Adventure Grrl, Private Eye: Getting Down to Why & How Everything Went So Horribly Wrong

It's weird being back home. But I did come with the goal to be a private investigator in my own life.

What I really need to find out: Who knew that my Mom was CRAZY and when. The first time this question piqued my curiosity was when my sisters E & K and I were in a car in Ireland four years ago and E & K were casually having a conversation about how after E was born (I was five), my mother RAN AWAY FROM HOME, leaving the three of us with my dad, without having having ANY IDEA WHERE SHE WAS. (The police showed up to confront my oblivious Dad 12 hours later who hadn't even noticed she was gone. ENOUGH SAID.)

Soon, we were split up. K & E went to live with one aunt and uncle and I went to live with another. ONLY I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO MEMORY OF THIS (except of constant dreams of velvet paintings with Giant Heads and disproportionally large eyes - later I learned my aunt and uncle had these of their two children and family dog.) K knew all along, she was a year older than me. She has told E, BUT NO ONE HAD TOLD ME. I asked K, who I shared a childhood bedroom my whole life, "HOW COULD YOU NOT TELL ME?" "Oh," she said, "I thought you knew."

Which is just how things work in my family. We assume we know all about the painful parts and we assume WE SHOULD NEVER SPEAK OF THEM.

So HERE'S WHAT I HAVE COME HERE TO FIND OUT:

1) What did my Dad know and when?

2) What did my Mom's younger Brother and Sister know and when?

3) What did my second Aunt who was my Mom's closet confidant, and also took care of K & E all those years ago, what did she know?

4) Why did no one do anything past the first nervous breakdown when I was five?

5) Why was this such CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET?

6) E (who is sitting here with me know) says her question would be: "If she was a mother and wanted kids so badly, why did she seemingly hate us all?

Great. I never even thought of that. But E always cuts through the bullshit and gets right to it. Sadly, it's a valid question.

Adventure Grrl, Private Eye: Getting Down to Why & How Everything Went So Horribly Wrong

Is It Bad To Pray To God to Lose Weight?

That's what I did last night. Just a little.

Dear God,

I know you're busy with other things like wars, genocide, floods, hurricanes, people starving, earthquakes, the earth melting, illnesses, plagues, homelessness, extinction of certain kinds of eagles, but on the off chance you could SHINE A LITTLE LIGHT THIS WAY, could you please have the scale at WW read 2 pounds less. That's all I'm asking. I'll even take 1.8 since you seem especially busy.

Love, Me

P.S. I waited until 22 to lose my virginity and I feel like that should count for something.

Stay tuned to see if it worked!!!

Is It Bad To Pray To God to Lose Weight?

Why We Do What We Do

One thing that's good about being YOUNG is we don't have to have jobs that we don't love if we don't want to. Our parents did, but we don't. It's a pretty awesome thing to love your job. Some WGA writers who are on strike are writing these essays, "Why We Write" so I thought I'd take a stab at one.

I was shocked by how emotional I got when I wrote it. I guess that's what happens when love is involved.

WHY WE WRITE

"When I was a kid, my Dad was sick… I'm talking really, really sick. The kind of sick where priests come over to give lasts rites, wills are made behind closed doors and you find yourself running to a neighbor's house to get someone, anyone to take your father to the hospital because the ambulance is taking too long.

For two years before my father received his heart transplant, he laid in bed. A TV was brought up to his room and that's where we watched Letterman, Saturday Night “Don't Tell Your Mother I'm Letting You Watch This” Live, “Cheers” and “The Simpsons.” I was young, sometimes I didn't get the jokes, sometimes I didn't get the double entendres but I did understand that TV MADE BAD THINGS GO AWAY.

TV was the escape from nurses who poked and prodded, Doctors who gave bad news, the anticipation that my sisters and I were being split up to live in different homes so my father could have surgery 3,000 miles away. It was the escape from begging outside Church and grocery stores for money to supplement my father's surgery and the countless relatives that stopped by the house with their “sad eyes” and their avalanche of casseroles.

But most importantly, TV made my father laugh. A man with maybe six months to live without this surgery, who was wasting away at 140 pounds on his six foot frame, you just had to hear him roaring at NBC's Thursday Night line-up and when you did, you could actually dream the possibility that EVERYTHING WAS GOING TO BE OKAY.

That's why I write.

Because TV gave so much to me, a hopeless and helpless kid, who, had she lost her father (and Thank God she didn't) would at least have those amazing memories, of watching TV, the family gathered 'round, not looking forward to anything else but THIS MOMENT, laughing together and escaping life, thirty minutes at a time.

I always thought, if I could do that for someone, life would be pretty awesome. And it is."

I'm going to dedicate this post to the most fantastic and dynamic boss I ever had. I knew her reputation before I ever met her - she was smart, funny and really cares about the people she employs. She did something for me, that she will never understand, which is pluck me from a miserable job and give me the chance at my dream job - to become a writer.

And then she mentored me and taught me everything I know, all while (and I mean this with great jealousy) looking fabulous doing it. (Seriously, she never had a "bad outfit" day).

If I could, I would work for her and only her... I've probably felt that more now, that we aren't working together, the feeling that the work environment she created, I might never experience again.

Why We Do What We Do

A Holiday Miracle!

In an amazing turn of events that boggles the mind in the same way that Mary Mother of God could give BIRTH AND BE A VIRGIN AT THE SAME TIME, I have news just as astonishing and unbelievable.

My jeans fit. I can zip them. It's a holiday miracle.

These are the jeans that I blogged about in "Of Purpose, Picket Signs and Fat Girl Jeans," the ones that I could not quite close entirely and therefore had to rely on a knotted bandanna through the belt loops that made me most closely resemble an unwed PREGNANT GIRL whose belly button had popped. (If I put the knot to the side, I just looked like a expectant mother with some sort of side stomach tumor.)

BUT TODAY, they fit. I can sit in them, I can eat in them. They do not cut off the circulation between my upper and lower body, WHICH I THINK IS A GOOD THING.

Part of this is hard work, the other part is the fact that a horrifc cold has hijacked my taste buds and left me comatose for most hours in the day when I might be eating. But mostly hard work. With a pinch of fear of facing the Weight Watchers Lady with the petulant puss who I know is expecting ME TO FAIL, BUT I WILL NOT FAIL. I will be VICTORIOUS.

This week, she will give me more than just a surprised look on her face when I step on that scale. SHE WILL GIVE ME BRAVO STAR STICKERS. They will probably ask me to lead the meeting, be their national spokesperson and be on the cover of their magazine (bizarrely called "Diane") which I will rename "Former Fattie" and be featured in a ten page spread. Or maybe I'll just get my Bravo stickers.

I must sign off. My dog Cooper is violently humping a toy horse I gave him and if this goes on much longer, I might not be able to sleep in my bed tonight.

A Holiday Miracle!

To All The Awesome Readers of This Blog

There seems to be a lil' confusion about my last post, I wanted to clear some things up. When I post with the title: "How It All Began" I am going back two years ago to when my cousin died and that's when I feel all my depression began. (At some point, I'll put that on the front page, I can see how it would be confusing.)

As for the Prozac stuff, thank you for all your concern. The best book I ever read about anti-depressants was called "Prozac Backlash." It's from a Harvard doctor who in essence says anti-depressants are good, but only for short amounts of time and ONLY COMBINED with therapy, which I firmly believe. (Why just dull the pain but never get in out of your system?)

Which brings me to my next point, yeah, I broke up with my therapist but I still want to be in therapy. I'M A COMPLICATED GIRL, Y'ALL. I've been through some stuff. Why I broke up with her is I felt the lack of being challenged anymore and she would never PUSH ME to talk about my cousin's death even though week after week, I CAME IN THERE LOOKING LIKE A BIG SAD, FATTIE who obviously was deeply sad and troubled.

So I decided to challenge myself. What if I wrote about that time? What if I exorcised those demons on my own? What if I stopped keeping everything on the inside? What if I stopped pretending it didn't happen? What if I pushed myself to do new things out of my comfort zone? What if I SAID YES TO EVERYTHING instead of NO? What if I got out of BED?

It seems to be working, though when my insurance benefits kick back in, on January 1, I hope I will find someone new to help me with the journey.

Other things you might want to know, sometimes I feel bad if I blog about sad stuff so I will then blog about something ridiculous. Sometimes I am blogging without pants. Sometimes I blog from the library and there is a man on the next computer wearing no pants.

To All The Awesome Readers of This Blog

How It All Began Part 3 "How To Act and Dress When You Are Asking A Reputable Doctor For MASSIVE AMOUNTS of Drugs"

At this point, I know I am in the deepest depression I have ever experienced. When I was fourteen and my cousin Michael died in a skiing accident, I was not so much depressed right away as in an incredible amount of shock.

With David's death, there was shock and yet, I felt pulled into that deep dark place with it's vacuum like power, just taking me down. "I will not survive this." "I can't get on that plane." "I can't come back here... I can't go back to a job where we tell jokes and LAUGH all day. IT'S NOT FUNNY! NOTHING IS FUNNY ANYMORE. Nothing makes sense anymore."

I better get some drugs. If there ever was a time to get some prescribed drugs, NOW IS THE TIME.

I had already called the doctor and made the appointment. I KNEW ONE THING FOR CERTAIN. I wanted anti-depressants and I wanted sleeping pills. MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF SLEEPING PILLS. They need to be strong enough to overtake the crying, sobbing, howling, heaving, quiet screaming.

The anti-depressants, I had already done research on. Not for me, but for a guy I once dated. (That should HAVE TOLD ME SOOOOO MUCH. Hello red flag. Not because he was depressed but they have to want to get help on their own, ya know?) I knew what I wanted. PROZAC. They're pretty, white and blue and they don't make you gain weight.

EVEN IN MY GRIEF, vanity rules.

The other thing I knew is, if you are going to a reputable doctor, as I was, you cannot look like A HOT MESS, such as I did. They do not give you MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DRUGS when you look and smell homeless. They have, like, standards, people. If I was going to get what I wanted, I needed to look and dress the part.

Only I couldn't. I couldn't even get out of bed. I forced myself, at the very least, just to get some Ambien so I could sleep. But I did not brush my hair nor my teeth. I did not even put on clothes, I just wore what I had climbed into bed in the day before. Sweats and some kind of top that made it (in my mind) easy to get away with not wearing a bra.

Okay, I thought as I drove over, you look half crazy. This is all going to be about ATTITUDE. DO NOT CRY. IF YOU CRY, YOU WILL NOT GET MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DRUGS, which I am telling you, YOU NEED, or you will not be able to function. You will not be able to go to the funeral and you will not be able to come back from it.

NOW SMILE PRETTY FOR THE DOCTOR.

But this doctor was not buying it and this doctor was not having it. He immediately hit me with some Prozac but he was not about to let a DEPRESSED MESS like myself who's cousin was just murdered, near any kind of sleeping pills. "PUH-LEEEEEEEEEEEEESE," I begged. "No," he said. That kind of authorotative "NO" that let me know I was already skating on thin ice. And if I wanted my Prozac prescription, I better just shut up. So I did. He gave it to me and I ran.

Because I had another plan to get what I wanted.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

How It All Began Part 3
"How To Act and Dress When You Are Asking A Reputable Doctor For MASSIVE AMOUNTS of Drugs"