That is the crystal grid I made today :) It turns out that I had purchased the exact right number of crystal points from the rock show, it worked out perfectly. I'll talk more about that in a minute. Maybe, if I remember.
Obviously I have not blogged in a little while. I am just coming out of the worst part of a low. It's really strange because I don't recall having been hit quite this hard after April last year, so I'm not sure why I had such a low so late in the depression season. I'm not completely out of it yet, but if it were a fog, I've moved past the most densely compacted thick center and am now working through the smoky haze at the end. Soon the air will clear.
I've noticed some weird things about depression physiologically. As we know, it is more difficult for me to orgasm and less satisfying when it does happen. Also, I can not get enough sleep. I am extraordinarily tired, all the time. These things I already knew. I made another connection at work last night, though. My standard rate of speech is pretty fast, to match my standard rate of brain activity. My mouth moves quickly because my mind does. However, when I hit a low, my brain slowwwwwwwwws dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwn. I can't find the right word, I struggle to articulate concepts, and it takes some time to even put a sentence together. So my brain and my mouth fall out of synch.
It's like an assembly line, and coming down the belt are thoughts. Normally, my thoughts are coming down the line fast and furious, so I pick them up as they come and as soon as I've picked one up, another one is ready, and so on and so forth. An endless stream. Sometimes, the belt slows down. But I'm still working just as quickly, so I pick up a thought, spit it out, and turn to grab the next...and it isn't there yet. I stutter. Fill in the gaps with meaningless words and sounds. Flounder for verbiage, flailing as if I am gasping for air. Feeling dumb. I sounded like SUCH an idiot on the phone last night. I'm so used to having the words right there, ready. They just weren't.
Anyway, so I hit this low I think originally when Joth and I broke up, and I bounced back a little. I'm not exactly sure when I slipped back down, though. There was no external event which precipitated it. It was not triggered, although maybe all of my energy and anxiety going toward court sort of siphoned my joie de vivre. Court was Thursday and I paid my ticket Friday, so while it's reasonable to assume that those things were sucking my vitality, then why was I still immobilized all weekend and yesterday? Or was it that, having done the court thing and paid off the ticket, I was finally able to relax?
Remaining in an anxious state does take quite a bit of energy. But maybe as self-preservation, I felt that I needed to remain in that state -- a fight-or-flight state -- for my protection. I had to stay aware, alert, and ready to respond at the drop of a hat. I couldn't afford to relax. Then, once I took care of that on Friday, my body must have compensated by slipping into this frozen hibernation state.
It's different from regular depression in that my mood was fine. I was not feeling hopeless, suicidal, or even apathetic. I was happy -- I mean, shoot, I spent the weekend with Joth after not having seen him for like a month! Maybe 3 weeks. I don't know, it was a long time. So, I definitely WAS happy. I just was sooooooooo so tired. We slept pretty much the whole weekend.
I'm thankful that he didn't judge me or push me to be more active than I was capable of at the time. I feared that I came across as lazy or unmotivated, but sometimes we ebb and sometimes we flow and the sooner we learn to honor our natural rhythm, the better we will be. And he understands that, which is yet another reason why he's the perfect partner for me. I love him so much!
Tristan had a good week last week, with the exception of a rough day on Wednesday. He is having trouble handling the grief of losing his friend, which is understandable. He just needs to learn acceptable ways to deal with his feelings. It's okay to be angry, but it's not okay to hurt someone because you're angry. It's okay to be frustrated, but it's not okay to destroy things in response to your frustration.
Today he had to be picked up from school, though, and I am struggling to stay positive. I really had all of my hopes pinned on these medications. I never considered what I would do if they didn't work. This was the last resort, end of the road. I never imagined that this, too, would fail. Or thought past this as to what I would do if it did. I never thought my son was beyond help -- in fact, I refuse to believe that ANYONE is beyond saving. But what else do I do? Then again, WHY am I taking one bad day to mean complete and total failure? Let's have some perspective here. It's one day. I know we all have them. The thing is, though, for a normal student having a bad day, they don't throw chairs and have to get picked up. I don't judge him for having bad days, he's allowed to. But I guess I just hoped that with the medications, his bad days would look more like the bad days of a normal kid.
Then I look at Baltimore, and these kids rioting in the streets, throwing bricks at police and setting their cars on fire. Looting the liquor store and, ugh, what a MESS. I mean, I understand the anger. I believe the anger is justified. But, as with Tristan, the expression of that anger goes beyond what is acceptable because now it is putting others in danger. They say two wrongs don't make a right, and I think logically everyone agrees with that. But I have sympathy because it reminds me of when Rachel would purposely provoke me by making some dumb-ass comment like putting "your son" in quotations, as if he isn't REALLY my son, knowing that by pushing these buttons eventually I would explode. And when I did, she would say, "Oh look how emotionally unstable you are. See, how can you be a good parent if you can't even keep yourself calm. You're so DRAMATIC." And it was, again, all still my fault.
It's a popular tool utilized by disordered individuals, I think. Oppress, oppress, oppress...then judge the oppressed for the inevitable uprising. The police have unnecessarily killed too many. The black community feels outraged and helpless. They don't know how to make it stop but they can not just sit by and watch it continue to happen. Desperate for some way to communicate their refusal to tolerate such injustice, they resort to the methods we now see blazing on every TV. Rioting, looting, violence.
And what do the psychopaths that instigated this rage have to say about it? "See, look how uncivilized they are. Black people are so violent." And sure, this is NOT the way to handle it. But honestly, I feel for them. It's a no-win situation. What CAN you do, to make your voice heard? How CAN you effectively, peacefully stand up for your rights? Is it a choice between being trampled on or trampling back? Is there an effective non-violent method which would have any impact? I don't know. I don't have the answers.
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