Spillway

January 18, 2006

Lost, but Alas, No Dr. Jack.

Nursing school has been over for a month. I am completely stripped...of emotion...of compassion...of patience...of my resilience. I remember writing at some point that I felt like Bilbo: "Thin, like too little butter spread over too much bread." The butter is long gone. The bread is stale and moldy. Even the rats don't want to nibble it.

My brand new, exciting, wonderful life is stretched out before me and (pardon the horrible analogy) I feel like I've been freed from Birkenau and told to, "don't worry, be happy and get on with it." I am not able right now. I am weighed down with smothering darkness and it presses and presses and grinds and grinds. I feel no sense of accomplishment. I feel no joy. I think only God understands how tired I am, and I won't let him near me.

Posted by swift at 12:59 AM | Comments (1)

September 10, 2005

Someday We'll Be Free

My mother left today to drive the five hours back to her home. She calls it her nest. I call it going to ground. My mother wants to have better relationships with her children and grandchildren, but doesn't want to do it in our world. She is retreating back to her 5 acres; back to her bed and her half-gallons of ice cream and satellite television. She is a broken women, confused and worn out by her life. Was she born a prisoner or did she live her way into her cell one decision at a time? In the end, will it matter? It is the third day for her. Her spirit is broken.

I am bouncing all over the emotional map: disgust, fear, grief, compassion, dissapointment, and fear:fear::FEAR! This woman is in every cell of me and it takes so much energy to daily distill the dross from the gold. I stare down the crazy cat lady in myself every day; the cat lady person that my mother is becoming (except all of her cats have died).

Heard this today. Wish my mother could hear it and take it to heart. If I sent it to her she'd read something bizarre into it, so I won't bother. I'll just listen to it again and continue to love her while being ambivilent with myself and look forward to the day when she is free of this world.

Someday We'll All Be Free
(Donny Hathaway)

Hang on to the world
As it spins around
Just don't let the spin get you down
Things are moving so fast
Hold on tight and you will last
Keep your self respect
Your womanly pride
Get yourself in gear
Keep your stride,
Never mind your fears
Brighter days will soon be here
Take it from me
Someday we'll all be free

Keep on walking tall
Hold your head up high
Lay your dreams right up to the sky
Sing your greatest song
And you'll keep growing, growing on
Take it from me
Someday we'll all be free
I said just wait and see
Someday we'll all be free
So just you keep walking
And you take it from me
Someday
Someday
You and me
We'll all be. . .
Free. . .

Posted by swift at 8:55 PM | Comments (3)

August 5, 2005

The Anxious Empty

Part of the cycle of my brain since ever I can remember. Fight or flight. Anxiety. Fatigue. Wariness. Fear. Sadness. All at the same time. Why? I feel so deeply hollow and tight at the same time.

Posted by swift at 12:22 AM

June 11, 2005

Story Shell Game

As I drive into work every Saturday evening I enjoy listening to Prarie Home Companion. That evening’s drive is always total enjoyment. The reason why has finally filtered into my conscious brain: it reminds me of the times when my extended family would get together and settle down into serious, marathon story swapping. I loved being a fly on the wall and listening. There was warmth during those sessions, warmth and laughing and connection.

I have none of that for my children. My life feels cold and sterile to me. I don't know where my stories are. How do I pull them out? Do I want to? Should I trust the huge holes in my memory and just let them be? I have a lot to think about once school is over; a lot to sort out. School has pulled my cranium out of my okole, and that is a subject for an entire new entry.

Posted by swift at 6:26 AM

March 1, 2005

Bad Nursing Student, Bad Bad!!

Managed to be late for all four Psych Clinicals this semesters. Yes. All four. So, as a result I was given the opportunity to write an extra paper on TIME MANAGEMENT. I'm 47, a full-time wife, full-time mother, work full-time, go to school full-time, have ADD and my instructor wants a paper on time management. Sigh. Whatever. Here is my effort:

"ADVENTURES IN ADD TIME MANAGEMENT

Time means something different to people with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Within this group of individuals time is not experienced in the same way from day to day or even hour to hour. To them, time does not unfold as a linear event. Sometimes there are so many things calling to be done, so many things jumping up and down for attention that the ADD brain just stands stock-still and vibrates. Other times, one thing is just so incredibly fascinating that time and awareness of anything more than six inches away just fades out for hours. And at other times, time is supposed to suddenly be expandable and allow itself to be stuffed with three times the allowable amount of activities.

This is my life. I have ADD. Time is not the same for me as it is for people without ADD. Time is not even the same for me from day to day or hour to hour. When I was young everyone thought I was so pleasant because I just floated along in my own little dream world, but as I grew older and I was expected to follow through with growing responsibilities, problems developed. I started being labeled a person that didn’t follow through, that did things half-baked, a procrastinator, a great planner/lousy implementer, someone who would be amazing if she could just get her stuff together. Granted, people loved me. They thought I was incredibly bright and fun but such a sad case, so much wasted potential. Sad, sad woman.

So…what? Do I live out my days in mediocrity? Do I wear the label proudly and expect the world to make an exception for me? Should everyone just smile when I’m 5 (10, 15) minutes late because I had to do just one (two, three, or) more things before running out the door. Is ADD time management an oxymoron? Simply said, no. There are methods and tools. There is hope.

I’ve read several time management books over the years and even taken several time management courses. I knew I had a problem but couldn’t quite get what those linear people were telling me to do. I have tried various planners over the years and they have all quickly fallen by the wayside. I would get frustrated with them I lose them and go back to winging it. It is plain now and I have to admit and accept that the time for winging it is over. Whether a day planner is fun or not, it must be done.

Yesterday I found some helpful insight and tips in an article by Lew Mills, PhD, LMFT at http://www.millsconsulting.com/MFT/timeorganize.html. He stated three “nuggets� that I appreciate:

1. Know yourself and work with who you are.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Don’t fight yourself.

I think I’ve made progress on number one over the years. I already accept that I’m not Martha Stewart, Norman Vincent Peale, or Stephen Covey. I am just Kathleen. I have good days and bad. I have stock-still vibrating days and amazing get-a-million-things-done days.

I like things simple and straightforward. I was trying to make progress towards simplicity until I started back to school. Now my life seems to be wound up into the stratosphere. Nugget number three is the subject of an entirely new paper that I hope I don’t have to write anytime soon.

Everything that I have read in the past for general time management and in the past few days for ADD time management has a day planner as its base. All the scraps of paper, notes scribbled on pant legs, palms, note pads, etc. have to go away -- period. There can be only one place where your brain is organized. It can be a binder, a PDA, or a laptop but there can be only one. Especially important for a person with ADD is the concept that everything is written down or entered into the planner. Everything. Nothing is “remembered�.

Once you have a system that you are comfortable with, use it and refer to it frequently. This is the hard part for me. I love to buy the nice, new leather binder and pick out all the pretty dividers and pages. Then I can spend hours fussing with it: changing this, moving that. Then in a few days I get busy and it gets pushed aside and forgotten. Upon review, I like the Franklin-Covey method of sitting down with the planner in the morning to review the coming day and in the evening to review what happened and what’s coming up. I think that taking that time for myself twice each day will increase my focus and reduce my panic. And really, writing all those goals, tasks and appointments down and then never looking at them is just, well, silly.

Another important time management skill is the ability to prioritize. Any system can be used, i.e. 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C and so on. What is important is that you become aware that not everything can be or needs to be done at the same time. Huge or overwhelming tasks can be broken up into smaller, more manageable tasks. Unpleasant tasks can be moved to the top of the list to be dealt with or interspersed with something rewarding. All three of Dr. Mills’ nuggets really come into play here. Knowing how you work best, keeping your prioritization simple and not beating yourself when every day doesn’t go perfectly will help keep the whole process moving forward. During the morning and evening planning time tasks can be checked off, reprioritized, rescheduled, or removed.

Another tool for individuals with ADD that lose time (space out) is a vibrating alarm in a wristwatch or PDA. When the alarm vibrates you know its time to refocus, check your planner, or head out the door for an appointment.

While I occasionally lose time, my issue is often a case of one-more-thing-itis. I have everything ready to go in plenty of time to leave but then I have to do just “one more thing� before I leave: throw in a load of laundry, make the boy’s bed, throw a ball to the dog a few times, put the snow shovels in the garage, etc. Suddenly, instead of ten minutes ahead I’m five minutes behind. So, my solution is to now let all those “one more things� wait until I get home. The last few days it has taken some force of will to just walk out the door but my coworkers have been pleasantly surprised when I walk in the door a few minutes early. It’s nice for me but I am afraid that the dog is a little sad."

I ended with some kind of wrap up paragraph. It was lame. I feel lame. One of my study partners read it and told me I was a total and unrepentant kiss-ass. I think I'm just incredibly insightful. And so it goes.

Posted by swift at 5:03 AM | Comments (1)

February 4, 2005

Mentor and Me

Ever since I can remember I've wanted a mentor; someone I could emulate, someone who could cushion me. Sometimes the urge is stronger than others. At times I've latched onto a particular author or been hooked by a rock lyricist. No one ever lasts. No one person's total philosophy ever holds up for me. So, approaching my middle age I have made my own philosophical patchwork quilt that keeps my mind warm most of the time. I really want to say more about this but have been at work 10 hours already and can't string the words together. More later. I guess this comes up because I'm finally listening to The Da Vinci Code and I am amused and confounded at how much energy human beings spend on things that do not matter. If we would spend all that energy just being simple and good in all aspects of our lives, what would life be like? Imagine.

Posted by swift at 4:25 AM

December 26, 2004

Antartica, suicide, divorce.

Day after Christmas, sort of. Christmas day was shit, at least for the spouse and I. We are so very tired of each other, our lives, our differences, our disappointments, our rut...just the plain grind of it all. We've said the "D" word for the second time in several months. I don't want to go there, but I am so tired of trying and failing at being a wife. Or do I try? I don't know. I started out this relationship with no confidence in my ability to be married. To my credit I told my husband flat out that I had no idea what a good marriage was or how to have a healthy relationship.

He keeps blindsiding me with, "How long are we going to go on like this?" Or just basically the fact that he doesn't want to go on the way we're going on. I know I'm not an easy person to be with. I get up every morning (or night) and plan to be good, to do good, to find good. Some days I'm good. Some days I'm not. I have to accept that living with me has worn my husband down and out.

Last night, before I left for work he said that he didn't know who was going to breakdown and end the relationship first, him or me. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. (I'm damn tired of that feeling.) I was a mess all the way to work and have continued feeling messy all through my shift. I called him after several hours and basically said "Uncle". I told him that he had two weeks to find either a marriage counselor or an attorney. If he hasn't found a counselor in two weeks, the boys and I are moving out.

I know I'm doing and saying the wrong thing. I know I should suck it up and find out once again what I'm doing wrong and how I can change it, but this cycle just keeps going on and on and on. When he gets depressed and unhappy, he is verbally abusive to our boys. I do the same. I admit that I am unhappy and lonely and dissapointed with myself, but I need to do what is best for our boys. What is that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

My heart aches. Which is a better solution, divorce or suicide? If I commit suicide, my husband and boys will get a nice pile of cash and then he can move on and find a woman that doesn't tire him out. But, it would make changes in my children that could never be reversed. Could I come up with something that wouldn't look like suicide? I have all the paperwork in place to make a seizure and a spectacular car accident believable. Just have to think this through.

God I am tired. 45 years of struggle and failure. A woman living in the most enlightened country during the most enlightened of ages. Why am I wishing for death? Work has kept me going for a long time. Working in the ICU, seeing life laid bare has shored up my attitude for a long time, but I am tired. I can't comprehend of another 30 years of this. 10950 odd days of mind numbing life.

Would divorce help anything? I'd still be suffocating in this life and my children would be devastated. My husband and I have been promising them that we would never, never, never get divorced. Never. I don't know what to do. Suck it up. My life is over. I will never be anything significant other than a mother. Suck it up and do what I need to do to make myself into something my husband can live with. I have to hold it together for my children. They need a home with two sane parents. Can I do that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Want to go work for a while...Antartica, New Zealand, Kuwait, somewhere. I've been in this once place too long. I'm fat and lazy and sluggish. The years fly by and I sit still. No progress. No growth. I hate that I've been in this place for so long. I want to go. Antartica, suicide, divorce. So many lovely options.

Posted by swift at 4:21 AM

December 12, 2004

Going to That Happy Place In My Mind...

Sunday morning. Finals on Monday and Tuesday. Am in the eye of the storm. No anxiety. Feeling magnanimous and patient. How very strange. Two weeks ago I tried killing myself. Had the mortar and pestle out and was reaching for the pills. The husband took them away. Danced right along the edge but didn't go over and now I'm finer than fine-ity dine dine.

Heard a poem recited on the radio today. Made me think of my “happy� place.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

~WB Yeats

Posted by swift at 3:22 AM

December 3, 2004

Scraped Butter

12 more days left in the semester. It has been hell. I feel hazed. I feel unmoored. I feel...thin (in the words of Bilbo Baggins).

"I feel...thin, sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread."

I don't even think I could taste the butter right now if I wanted to.

Posted by swift at 5:50 AM

September 12, 2004

Brain Cocktail Update

Finally got myself ramped up on the Topamax sometime in the Spring, in the midst of my mother's festival of open heart surgery. Lost lots of weight, that was lovely, but the synapses just didn't snap. I think the hardest thing for me was I couldn't think of the words I wanted to say during a conversation. I've always loved words; the feel, the sound, the meanings, the power. My brain was just moving too slow. I had trouble tracking tasks and doing much of anything constructive. For someone with an underlying desire to lie in bed all day and wander around her mental fantasy land, this was not helpful.

So, nursing school was going to start in ernest in May. I waffled back and forth for a while -- mainly because I liked being thinner and because I had the spectre of a major car accident hanging over my psyche. Finally I just stepped off the cliff and ramped myself down. By the time I started Summer semester classes, I was off the juice.

So, how am I now, in September?? Fatter and happier and back to my endlessly chatty self. Don't know why but my moods seem more stable, at least to me. School may have something to do with my moods also. Learning has always empowered and strengthened me? So...is it Topamax residual or is it school?? Only my neurons know for sure, and they're not letting on.

Posted by swift at 6:33 AM

September 11, 2004

Fear. Madness. Denial, Oh My!

Found this buried in an email I sent to myself a year ago, 6/17/2003.

The lonliness rises and falls. And the fear along with it. Do I hold back from even those that I love most on purpose? Is it something I can change or is it a part of my essential makeup, like the color of my eyes? Why do I fear? Why? What do I fear? The fear is primal. I don't understand it, it just is. I live a life of fear. It is who I am. Fear of discovery. Fear of pain. I watched Tears of the Sun this weekend. Movies like that make me want to arm myself with weapons, with anger, with no mercy. I want to turn into an animal mother that will defend her babies with her teeth and her claws and her cunning. But teeth and claws cannot defend against humans who believe they have a divine purpose. Can they, can I? What good is cunning against madness. Once again I don't understand this world. Why did I choose to come here? What was I thinking? As a spirit, could I have comprehended the horror of this life? What was I thinking when I chose?

I live a life of denial. I want to change but I don't. I withdraw into worlds and lives of fantasy to avoid the pressure of the need to change. And I find myself lacking. I hide. I lack. I hide. I lack. I watch Oprah and feel like shit. Despite my purported lack of self-esteem, I had thought I would do great things. I have done nothing in my life of any consequence but breed. And, I can't even nurture my own offspring. I'm afraid of them. I afraid for them. I fear. I dread. I shrivel. I sleep.

Posted by swift at 6:10 AM

August 11, 2004

Every Day

Need to be here every day. Need to get out of my head. Need to write, even if it's ridiculous self-absorbed garbage. Just need to do it. I get so tired of hearing social gurus tell me that I need to take time for myself. Actually I'm tired of anyone who may tell me to take time for myself. Can't afford a massage or a vacation. Spouse flips when I spend money. So what? Just this. Just spilling out whatever is going on.

So what is going on today? I am exhausted. The first real semester of nursing school and it kicked my ass. I barely cracked a book. I just made it on listening to lectures and past experience. And...I feel scummy about doing so well in school without putting out more effort than I did. Is this not the story of my life?? (Maximum result with the minimum of effort.) What am I gaining out of it? On the other hand, every single day I feel like I'm dancing on the edge. The brain is always going. The feet are always dancing. I have to wonder if I have any grasp of me, what I'm really doing, what my strengths are, why I'm able to do what I'm able to do. I certainly have my list of weaknesses burned into my chest -- in big, red, flashing letters. Can't forget those weaknesses can we?? No sir!

Why after all this time do I have no clue as to my goodness or baseness? Why? Why after all this time do I feel that I don't have a good handle on who I am? Am I a princess? Am I a slob? Am I slimy, slanderous, and calculating? Am I wounded and damaged and doing one hell of a bang up job considering what I have to work with? I want to know. I want to understand my truth. In my soul, I know that it's possible, but am I willing to make the sacrifices it would take to reach that enlightenment. I think that I am swathed in laziness. I think that while I want to see my truth splashed up on that big screen, I am huddled down in my seat with my hands over my face, only able to peak a little. Do I really want to look at my own gore?

I've always believed that truth is a force of nature, like gravity. (Have I said that here somewhere already??) The truth cannot be changed or manipulated. It is what it is. That is what I want to understand: the am that I am.

Posted by swift at 4:40 AM

July 21, 2004

Hard. Damn.

Hard. Damn. Hard is a shape-shifting thing. Hard is able to tailor itself to fit into all the cracks of my psyche. It knows exactly what it’s doing. It knows how to teach. Yet, Hard has coated me with lovely layers of veneer and varnish. A coating that seems so seamless, smooth, and shiny. My coat is an awesome thing. The eighth wonder, but Hard knows how thin the coating is in spots. Hard knows just where to pick and chip, jab and twist. Almost daily, at work or at school, Hard hits me head on. And, I say, “Yeah baby, bring it on! Is that the best you can do? BRING…IT…ON!!!” My pride and prowess grow. I think I am tough. I can handle Hard. I can. I do. I handle Hard every single day, but Hard knows me. Hard will bide its time.

I see men and women, who should be alive and healthy, die or face a future of permanent, crippling alteration. Another layer of veneer. I see men and women, who should be dead, have their lives stretched out over agonizing days – weeks – months – years. A fresh layer of varnish. I see the constant stream of family members until their faces blur together. Everyone I see seems familiar now. Did I tell the women in front of me in the Wal-Mart checkout line that she had to leave her father’s side because the unit was closed during shift change? Did I fetch that man, sitting at the next table at IHOP, from the waiting room after his son had done a header (sans helmet) off his motorcycle into the side of an SUV? Did I look that woman pushing past me at the TRAX station in the eyes and tell her that everything was going to be all right, whether her husband survived or not? Veneer, varnish. Varnish, veneer. The thinnest of layers day after day.

Hard slipped me a good one this week. Looked up from my desk this weekend to see an acquaintance roll by on a gurney. Not the usual admit on many levels. He hopped off the gurney and into his hospital bed. There was no 1-2-3-heave. No slick ER’ish slide from one surface to the other. No trauma alert called overhead. No blood. No charcoal stool projectiled across the room. No vent. No moaning, groaning, wailing or whining. He looked like he did every night at work, except he was wearing a hospital gown instead of greens. I had no personal investment in this man. He wasn’t a close friend, just an acquaintance. He was actually on the gruff and grouchy side most of the time, but we had gotten to the point where I could tease him a little and occasionally get a smile. Didn’t know anything about him. Didn’t know if he was married. Didn’t know if he had children. Didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. Didn't know what he was afraid of. (Well...that's not quite true. I knew that he was afraid of being a patient in the ICU. Everyone that works here is afraid of that.) Until this weekend I didn't care or think much about him except how fast he could get his butt up to the unit and get busy doing what he did.

When I first got into work last night he wasn’t in the unit. That’s not unusual for his kind of surgery: in and out to the floor in under 24 hours. No big deal. Routine stuff. I briefly wondered what floor he had been discharged to, but it was busy and I was tired. There were too many other things on my mind (playing catch-up, admits, labs, chart checks, new residents, homework, damn computer giving me fits). The twelve was at an end. I felt wired, anxious to finish up and get to school. Anxious to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Please, just get me the hell out of Dodge.

Then my ears picked up a snippet of conversation. One person asking another if they knew how he was doing. “Not well…back and forth to surgery…in a coma…non-responsive to pain…wife…young children.” I am speechless (a rare occurrence). Hard just ripped me wide. I had to go sit in the back room and catch my breath, and cry, and pray; but the split widened. Widened because the same protection that I use for work and school, I use at home. Thinking about this man who is close to my husband’s age. Seeing the stunned look on his wife’s face as she sat with him. Hearing about his children (close the ages of my own) crying at his bedside. Oh my god. I had to look at the soft, pulsing underbelly of my selfishness, my self-pity, my pride, my self-absorption, and my smelly, rotten attitude.

So, I’ve cried off and on all day. I’ve tried to distract myself. I’ve inspected myself. I’ve berated myself. I’ve called my husband and tearfully apologized for being what I’ve always been (and will probably continue to be). I’ve promised myself to step out of the veneer and varnish when I pull into my garage. Leave it hanging outside on the deck. I’ve told myself that I want to be naked (so to speak) when I am at home, with no deep-seated need to protect myself from those I love. I’m still at home alone, waiting for my husband. The boys are at my brother’s. I want to be naked, vulnerable but can I? Will I? Don’t know. No sleep in over twenty-four hours and I am wrung out. Fortunately, Hard doesn’t care what I want, or what I will or will not do. Hard does not care because if I haven’t learned my lesson this time Hard will continue to rip me wide until I do. Damn that Hard. Damn.

Posted by swift at 5:26 PM | Comments (2)

June 27, 2004

What I Remember.

About fifteen years or so ago I had several regression hypnosis sessions. The hypnotherapist regressed me back to my first memory, about four months or so in utero. My first memory was a feeling: fear. That word describes much of my mother's existence and my own. Good old twist at the gut, oh-my-god-what-is-around-the-next-corner, fight or flight fear.

Shortly after that appointment I asked my mother what she had felt while she was pregnant with me. She said that she was afraid her entire pregnancy. There was a family at church that had a baby with hydrocephalus. She was afraid that I was going to be born with some horrible birth defect. Granted, this was the era of the Thalidomide baby, but I think her fear went deeper and wider than just that. I think that fear permeated every room in my mother's being. Fear and anger. Fear and loathing.

My mother was born in 1938. Wrong girl-child in the wrong era. She was the middle child: older sister, younger brother. Older sister never caused any problems. Younger brother was the golden child. My mother, out there in her own universe, caused a myriad of problems and was several shades shy of golden. She had ADHD. She was a tom-boy. She just didn’t fit, and it pissed her and everyone else off. While she was in first-grade she was diagnosed with dyslexia. We’re just beginning to understand these burdens my mother carried: social and perceptual dysfunction, not being feminine, high energy, easily bored. Sometimes I don’t think that she every placed a foot in the right spot.

...in process...

Posted by swift at 3:29 AM

June 13, 2004

My own private alprazolam

What would that be? Music. Period. Always has been. Always will be. So often now I forget how much it helps me over the roughness, the stress, the brow beating. Gave myself an MP3 player for Christmas a few years ago. Best thing I ever wasted money on. My only problem is that 20G isn't big enough. Going to have to upgrade the hard drive.

Here is what I have on my playlist right now:

Low Flying Man - Henry Lee Summer
Make Love Stay - Dan Fogelberg
How You Remind Me - Nickelback
A Thousand Years - Sting
Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews
I Can't Tell You Why - Eagles
L'iwiwi Leo Kolonahe - Lopaka Kahaka'ole
Clocks - Coldplay
Mi Corazon - Gypsy Kings
Now and Forever/Sweet Memory - Keali'i Reichel
Mad Season - Matchbox 20
The Steward of Gondor - Return of the King Soundtrack
One Last Breath - Creed
I Hope You Dance - Lee Ann Womack
Smooth - Matchbox 20
Colorful - Verve Pipe
Disease - Matchbox 20
My Sacrifice - Creed
You Don't Know Me - Iz
In My Life - Keali'i Reichel
Hold On - Sarah McLachlan
Don't Cry - Seal
So Far Away - Carole King
Unwanted - Avril Lavigne
Let It Be - Beatles
We're Forgiven - The Calling
Do Right Woman/Do Right Man - Commitments Soundtrack
One - U2
There Will Come - Faith Hill
Everything to Everyone - Everclear
Everyday - Dave Matthews (solo version)
Searchin' My Soul - Vonda Shepard
Into The West - Annie Lennox
Superman - Five for Fighting
When You Say Nothing At All - Keith Whitley
Father of Mine - Everclear
Crossroads - Don McLean
This Girl's in Love With You - Dionne Warwick
Not A Pretty Girl - Ani DiFranco
Over The Rainbox - Iz
I will Not Lay Down - Margaret Becker
Cancion Del Mariachi - Antonio Banderas
You Will Be My Ain True Love - Alison Krauss
If You Thin I'm Crazy Now - Keith Whitley
That I Would Be Good - Alanis Morissette
Dancing Shoes - Dan Fogelberg
Taking You Home - Don Henley
With Arms Wide Open - Creed
Mehameha/White Sandy Beach - Makaha Sons
Two Fisted Love = Phoebe Snow
Make Me A Bliever - Patty Smyth
The Best Is Yet To Come = Rosemary Clooney
Walk On - Margaret Becker
Walking in Memphis - Mark Cohn
Society's Child - Janis Ian
If These Walls Could Speak - Amy Grant
I Can't Make You Love Me - Bonnie Raitt
Peace Train - Cat Stevens
Suite-Judy Blue Eyes - CSN&Y
Aspen/These Days - Dan Fogelberg
On My Way To You - Maureen McGovern
Never Be An Angel- Margaret Becker
Jolene - Mindy Smith & Dolly Parton
About You - Cecilio & Kapono
Bridge over Troubled Waters - Simon & Garfunkel

The playlist changes. Some songs just make me feel good. Others say things I have inside my head better than I can say them myself. All of them save me in one way or another at one time or another.

Posted by swift at 12:01 AM | Comments (2)

June 12, 2004

Ad Nauseam

Where have I been? Weaning the meds. Pulling back into my head. Walking around in a brain that vibrates so fast that it doesn't move anywhere significant. And the mental train just shoots off the track. Where was I going with this?

I say I hate this house
But I lie.
I say I fear my husband
But I lie.
I say my children bug me
But I lie.
I say my family tortures me
But I lie.
I say I don't belong in this world
But I lie.

The thing I really hate
Is myself.
The person I really fear
Is myself.
The one that really bugs me
Is myself.
The one that really tortures me
Is myself.
The place that I really don't belong
Is with myself.

I'm tired of asking myself why I do what I do. I'm tired of doing what I do, over and over and over again. I run away from myself. I run into myself. I split myself so I can...what? Beat myself? Harass myself? Excuse myself? What? I don't understand it but then I do. I am lazy. I don't want to go through the pain it would take to step up to a better life, a better self. I don't want to sacrifice. I don't want to sweat. I don't want to stretch. I just want to drift on down the stream.

I wish it was just me. I hate having this wretched dance that I do with myself spread its greasy film over my children, my husband. I feel like I'm slowly poisoning the minds and souls of my boys. Little land mines, little erosions, little earthquakes, little destructions every single damn day. I know I don't have the sight to understand how or why the four of us are together in this family. Why we came together. Do we need to be together? I don't know. I don't know. And I want to. I want to believe that my boys will turn into something good despite me.

I am just so tired. When I don't think it's possible to be worn more thin another layer flakes off. When there's nothing left to flake, what will I be? Will I be free of my lies?

Posted by swift at 10:02 AM

May 8, 2004

Insidious Fatigue

I find it harder and harder to find the time to read, and almost impossible to withdraw into books the way I used to. Now I listen to my books; in the car, at work, wherever I can. I enjoy the sounds of the words, the rhythm that a great author has. Right now I'm listening to "Typhoon" by Joseph Conrad. I had read "Heart of Darkness" many years ago but never read anything else by Conrad. How wonderful the words feel as I listen to them. I think it is obvious when an author really loves words; loves the sound, the feel, the weight, the mixing, the the flow of them. Tolkein is the same way. When I listen to his books I can almost dismiss the story and float on the river of words.

I was driving somewhere yesterday. Don't remember where for sure. It really doesn't matter. I was listening to "Typhoon", kind of half in and half out of it. The following passage grabbed my total attention:

"These are the moments of do-nothing heroics to which even good men surrender at times. Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a case in their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism would come all at once over a whole ship's company. Jukes, however, had no wide experience of men or storms. He conceived himself to be calm -- inexorably calm; but as a matter of fact he was daunted; not abjectly, but only so far as a decent man may, without becoming loathsome to himself.

It was rather like a forced-on numbness of spirit. The long, long stress of a gale does it; the suspense of the interminably culminating catastrophe; and there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on to existence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatigue that penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden his heart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth -- even before life itself -aspires to peace."

Joseph Conrad, roughly one hundred years ago, described me -- the me inside. "...a forced-on numbness of spirit..." "...a searching and insidious fatigue..." If I just replaced a few words it would describe the numbness of my existence. I would probably say: "The long, long stress of my life has done it; the suspense of the interminably culminating catastrophe." I suspect that the gale is just going to keep on blowing.

Posted by swift at 4:24 AM

April 24, 2004

Beyond The Middle

Uhh. Hello? Just like to announce that I'm somewhere out here in the middle of my life, just treading water. I'm not going any further up the mountain. I'm not climbing any further up the ladder. Don't want to get any stronger. Don't want to get any smarter. Don't want to get any richer. Don't want to be any more powerful. Don't want fewer wrinkles. Don't want to bulk up. Don't want to tighten up. Don't want to get lifted. Don't want to get tucked. Don't want a new SUV with GPS, DVD and a HEMI. Don't want anything else shiny or sparkly that goes bling bling, or schwing baby.

You know what I really don't want any more of? I don't want to hear the constant noise of this society anymore. Constant, endless, morning to night to morning to night noise. Too much noise. Too much news. Too much information. Too much stuff. Too many choices. Too much crap. Too much foo. Too much plain old fubar. Too much much. I would like to have some quiet without having to withdraw deep into my own brain. Why can't I have quiet outside my brain??

Posted by swift at 5:29 AM

April 9, 2004

Just Plain Numb

My mother went home today. She had been staying with us since the middle of January. She had neck surgery in January. Laid in bed, ate, and watched TV for six weeks. Got up to go home and threw a clot that should have killed her. Instead it lodged itself in her heart. She had open-heart surgery (heart/lung bypass) and spent another month getting over that.

I can't even begin to sort out the feelings, the frustrations, or the revelations that the last three months have dumped on me. Since I refuse to ever go to a therapist again it will probably take me years to understand what I felt and realized -- if ever.

The most glaring realization is how emotionally detached/insulated I am. I don't even know if that's the right description. When I was younger I felt like a tiny person inside a large robot. I felt detached from my own body; inside but not integrated. Over the years I've become more integrated but I am still very insulated. I feel things. I get angry (especially). I have tender moments. I get offended. I even have a little joy occasionally, but there is still this overriding feeling of insulation.

The detachment and insulation have their good points. I'm able to work in the ICU without losing my mind. They keep me protected, girded, prepared for the inevitable slap on the back of the head.

When I took my mother to the ER and things cascaded into the open-heart surgery, I tightened up more than I ever remember. I became completely numb and compassionless. I became the little girl who was under assault and had to disassociate. Most people who know me think I am the nicest, most loving and compassionate person on the planet. How do I jive that with the person at my mother's side? The person who would have been able to flip the switch on her respirator and felt the better for it. I do not (DO NOT!!!)
understand myself...and...I want to. How can I love her and also wish that she would just wander out into the desert to die?

Five or six years ago a friend of mine had me take the MMPI. I don't remember all the specific results, but he was suprised at my high score in the psychopathic part. That has always stuck with me and made me wonder even more about myself. It would be easy to use that superficial review to convince myself that I'm a big water balloon of insanity just waiting to burst. Now I'm thinking that that score may also mean that I think for myself and am willing to step outside the mores and challenge authority. Yeah. I like that a lot better than being on the verge of walking into McDonald's naked and shooting people. Much better.

Posted by swift at 6:16 AM

March 31, 2004

Behind Green Eyes

behind green eyes
(with apologies to P Townshend)

No one knows what it's like
To be the mad one
To be the sad one
Behind green eyes
No one knows what it's like
To be slated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my waking seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame who?

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my waking seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like
To be the mad one
To be the sad one
Behind green eyes

Posted by swift at 1:09 AM

February 1, 2004

Killing Brendon

"The Surgeon General has determined that talking to Brendon while driving in the dark at high speeds can cause seizures in women." Or so it would seem for me. My brain continues to be an endless source of wonder, amusement, and disgust. Let's see, where did I leave off? Being an adult again? Snort! sigh yeah whatever. Once I got over the post holiday burn, I was feeling good. In fact I was feeling damn good. Positive, strong, dynamic...I think...if I remember correctly. What I didn't mention in the previous entry is that at some point in mid-December I tried to kill Brendon. At least that's become the joke. At least, I've turned it into a joke so I can talk about it, deal with it without punching a hole in the drywall. Because trying to kill Brendon has totally screwed me over. That is how I see it all at this point in time.

Once again, mid Decemberish, I was playing psych drug Russian roulette. Trying to moderate my rage or my mania or my bitchiness or my premenstrual dysphoric hysteria or whatever the hell goes on with me. The counselor and the NP thought I might have a (mild??) underlying bipolar disorder -- or not -- or maybe -- or not. Tried me on Topamax, a seizure drug which is also used as a mood stabilizer. I didn't care for it and didn't take it regularly. One day yes. One day no. One night yes. Not smart on my part. It made my brain feel fuzzy. My brain is already fuzzy.

Anyway, I worked four hours of a friends shift sometime before Christmas. Got off at 2300 and gave Brendon a ride home. Was doing about 80 mph down I-80, listening to him talk on in one ear, listening to the radio with the other, letting my brain do it's usual walk about. Suddenly Brendon is screaming like a banshee, my head jerks up and I see my car headed towards the void. How we got back onto the pavement, I don't know. Just did. Talk about a come to Jesus moment. Two minutes later we were trying to shake it off and act like I hadn't just about killed us both.

Couldn't get the incident out my my mind. I've fallen asleep at thewheel before. This was different. Talked to some nurses at work. Of course I got everything from brain tumor to alien abduction. Went to see my doctor, sent to a neurologists, holter monitor, labs, EEGs, pokes, pricks, prods. Result?? Baby has a seizure disorder. Mild, quiet, partial, nonfocal, nothing that anyone would really notice -- much like everything else about me. Probably had it my whole life. Great shift of life perspective yet again. Shit. Who in the hell am I? What am I? What is going on up in there?

Now have to take fuzzy Topamax every day for at least two years but at quadruple the dose. Now I have a fuzzy, wuzzy was a bear brain. Right as I start nursing school. Was a bear. Now that I bear this lovely official label of "DRAIN BAMAGED" the great, all seeing eye will not allow me to drive unless I am on said medication.

Keeping it all together and marching forward makes me very tired. Very tired indeed. I wish my body was as thin as my soul feels.

Posted by swift at 3:20 AM

December 18, 2003

Twitch

Am I here to breed?
To bleed?
Or maybe I'm
Just a bead of sweat
Running down God's forehead?

The words roll and roil and boil. Pictures. Forces. Fist in my chest. Pressure behind my eyes. Hear myself breathing. The big cat paces back and forth in its cage. Tail twitches. Whiskers jump. Everything else just paces, paces, paces, paces. Always the word why, why, why, why and sometimes what. What. WHAT??? What am I supposed to be figuring out...remembering? Why can't I don't I won't I? And people want to know are you OK? Am I OK? Are you OK mom? wife? daughter? Are you OK my little blue collar worker with the college degree? Am I OK? NO. NO. HELL NO. I'M NOT. I'M NOT OK. And so what? So what? What absolutely muckscummin' graham cracker jammin' skull fractured difference does it make whether I'm OK or not? Look 'em in the eye and lie because honestly, I'm tired of talking about it. Just stuff it honey girl. Just tuck it down 'round all the other stuffing. The big cat will just pack it down tight as it paces, paces, paces...paces. Twitches. Jumps. A while back someone I work with told me that I was the most "normal" person they had ever met. (DAMN I'm good.) Pace, pace, pace, pace. Twitch-and-a-jump! An old therapist/co-worker of mine told me that he'd never met anyone that was as good at completely masking their mental state as me. (DAMN, I'm so very, very good.) So sad that I'm not as good as pulling out the stuffing as I am at shoving it in, eh?

What was I thinking trying to fit myself into this normal life? This life of husband, home, children, dog, yada yada yada, la la la? I haven't had a single normal day in my entire life. Wasn't a normal girl child. Wasn't a normal teenage creature. Nothing normal. Nothing ever never ever. Since I can remember I have worked so hard to be normal. So hard. So tired. So tired. Now my hard won normal life has me completely caged. If the big cat thought life was tight when I was younger, mmmmmm baby, it's really tight now. Pace, pace, pace, pace. Twitch, jump...and...SWAT!

Posted by swift at 9:06 PM

November 28, 2003

The drugs. The drugs.

It's the four shift weekend. Work sleep, work sleep. I've done the Ambien experiment in earnest and I think the results are conclusive. I sleep less but my mood is better. I seem to dream more without it. During the day today (yesterday?) I drifted from sleep and dreams to being groggily awake and dreaming. Very strange yet satisfying. So, I guess the Ambien goes away except in dire emergencies. I will miss my old friend. Time to wean and move on.

The new drug, can't even remember the name right now (Topamax), seems to be the missing brain chemical link. At least for the time being. I don't' know if I'll ever be done with psych med Russian roulette, but I'm actually having rational conversations with my husband for the first time in a long time. How interesting is that? I really have no idea how normal I am to those living outside my body. I seem to be an endless source of amusement to my co-workers. My children are not quite sure what to make of the lack of screaming rages, though they still think I'm crazy. They'll probably always think that. I always will be the eccentric Mom. That can't be helped.

The drugs. The drugs. I could go on and on. I don't know if I would medicate myself if I wasn't a parent. Maybe I still would. It's a hard call. My husband says he could handle me unmedicated but I think he's liking the saner more gentle me. I would like a few weeks alone to get used to this newly chemicaled brain. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.

I feel medicated. My reactions are slower. My thinking is slower. Maybe this is how the normals feel and think. Kind of fluffy. It will take getting used to. I can focus and not explode but I don't know if I'm really me. Who would that be? Am I learning what I need to learn about myself when I use the drugs to control my rage and insanity?

Looking forward to this being the last night of work for a few days. Want to be home and get back to my nest. Need to continue to simply and eliminate and make it a place I really want to be. Thanksgiving is this week. I'm trying to work as much of the holidays as I can for the $$ and to reduce dealing with extended family crap during the holidays. That is the joy of working in the hospital. Blood, guts, and time and a half.

Posted by swift at 1:28 AM