Christmas 2015

Traditional dinosaur-, goat-, and heart-shaped gingerbread cookies.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season! My own has been sincerely pleasurable. Most of my shopping was accomplished on Saturday, I attended a holiday party on Monday, went on a sweet Christmas date on Wednesday, hosted a small get-together on Christmas Eve, spent Christmas Day with my Mom, and went to another gathering that evening.

After catching up at work on Saturday, Sunday was a whirlwind: I did the house grocery shopping, picked friends up from the airport, fell through my kitchen ceiling running wires across the attic, and went thrift shopping.

Yeah. I totally fell through my kitchen ceiling. Fortunately the fridge broke my fall and I am entirely unhurt, but it was a scary minute that turned into a big repair job. My friend Ambi and I will do that repair on Friday before we leave for the Caribbean.

Oh yeeeaaah, I'm totally going to the Caribbean! Ambi's family is taking me with them for a family cruise! This time next week I'll have spent the day snorkeling off the coast of Cozumel! My mantra for the past six months has been "2016 will be the best year ever...just get through 2015...2016 will be the best year ever." Starting January exploring tropical paradises is the best way to seal that deal I can think of!

What Next?

I've always been fixated by time. Like money, there never seems to be quite enough. The one thing I have sincerely experienced jealousy over is the excessive time. Whereas many adults seem to enjoy some sort of routine that includes sleep, meals, work and recreational activities, my own days were as hectic as they were unpredictable. I used to rack my mind and wreck my body trying to work out how to meet my endless obligations. Often I was too busy to attend a loved one's request, and would get the exasperated response, "You're always working," or "I don't see why you're always doing something for someone else."

In May I started using the calendar app on my phone. Certain this would force my life into working order, I scheduled in hour after hour, event after invitation after request. Something wasn't working. My daily agenda function was displaying overlap that I couldn't get past. There didn't seem to be a way to extend the day....oh.

There are only ever twenty-four hours in a day.

The math was dazzling. Twenty-four hours in a day. Eight hours spent at work. Eight hours to sleep. Roughly an hour to commute anywhere by bus. Which gives me a limited time window for "everything else." A limitation that absolutely everyone on the planet experiences but no one ever told me about. I stared at the little space and my life went into focus.

The next day I started eating, sleeping, working eight-hour days, and meditating. Keep in mind that this was also the last month of my Dad's life, exactly in the middle of my divorce-process, and I was in the throes of a deadly depression. My self-care was weirdly automated: I typed it into my phone and my agenda told me what to do and when.

I did what my phone told me to do because it protected me from the myriad other forces I let run my life before. Whenever anyone asked me to do anything, I pulled up the calendar app and gave an honest response. More often than ever before, the answer was "no." For the first time, "no" did not feel selfish. It was a simple assertion of reality, a reality I was terribly grateful for. I no longer gave excuses, explanations, or even apologies for many of my rejections. Over time, I got fewer arguments and guilt-trips from the relatives who don't know how to interact with my reality-centered self.

As my emotional health improves, my phone is less vital to my day-to-day behavior. It's no longer a crutch and a shield so much as a daily reminder of things I like to make time for. Ironically, this means I miss the occasional meal and forget to meditate a few times a week. I'm no longer robotic in my actions, I no longer look outside of myself to answer the perpetual question of "what next?"

Well and Doing

One day in August I opened my wallet to find a $20 bill. This same bill had been there for at least a week. I'd been spending cash, but not ALL of my cash. It was payday, and I hadn't run out of money. I had slightly more than enough.

I was working a regular job, paying rent, eating well, going out with friends, and meeting my basic needs. Without.even.thinking.about.it. That was a first.

In September and October I went on a couple of weekend trips with friends. Each trip was a novelty in that I could easily afford my share of gas and meals and didn't overdraft my bank account (in fact, I didn't use my debit card at all this year until last month). In the past I would work for two weeks without break, take a weekend off, and go straight back to work another fourteen days to make up for the expenses incurred in those two days. I can't tell you how much more enjoyable these two weekends were for that lack of worry!

In November I went to Ohio for Thanksgiving. I took a week of paid vacation and purchased round-trip tickets. I took a cab to the airport and bought coffee and a bagel after shuffling through security. While in Columbus I purchased a scarf, phone charger, and contact lens solution. I pitched in for groceries and treated my family to a movie. One day I spent entertaining myself, exploring shops and enjoying a quiet lunch in solitude. The day I got home there was more than enough money in my bank account to see me through to my next paycheck.

Surely this all sounds mundane to you guys - It was the Midwest, for God's sake - but this is like a fairy tale to me. Every trip of my adult life has been an ordeal of scraping by and doing without. Visiting someone meant my total dependence on them, which makes any visit lasting more than one meal painfully awkward. Anything forgotten was something I would live without, no matter what, because who has an extra $10 while travelling? Airport food has almost always been beyond my means, even if I was stuck in transit for 16+ hours, making that little packet of peanuts a matter of sheer survival. My traveling has always been laced with guilt and anxiety.

So very much of my life has been laced with guilt and anxiety. In my seventeen years of working, I've never been able to earn enough, budget enough, or save enough money to meet my loved ones' needs. I'd never been able to take good care of Dad, Mom, or Darling. It broke my heart, month after month, year after year, to continually fail at this pursuit. I'm only now learning that it was never my responsibility to meet the entirety of my mother, father, or husband's needs. I'm only now learning that meeting MY needs is a straight-forward and fulfilling task.

Don't worry, I'm not going to be travelling every week and eating ready-made sandwiches forever. I want to develop a fresh focus on frugality and achieve my 2016 Financial Goals. This is just a moment of celebration because I'm doing well. I didn't even know I was capable of doing well until now. I had no idea how far from well I was doing in the first place!

2016 is going to be amazing.

Merging of Languages

Yesterday's post took a really, really long time to write.

I've always been a slower blogger, but yesterday was ridiculous. I typed paragraph after painstaking paragraph, deleting hundreds - possibly over a thousand words - and ended up with...what? Three hundred total? A set of goals.

Maybe I lost touch with my voice in the past couple of years of inaction. Maybe it will just take time for my confidence to stabilize? I never wanted to be the blogger who posted, "nothing to say today, sorry for the lack of updates." My favorite writers can squeeze the deepest meaning out of the most finite moments. I KNOW there is more to my day than, "I craved muffins while I was at work, but didn't want to buy a 7-Eleven muffin. So I came home and baked muffins and then I ate muffins!"

There is meaning there. Depth, empowerment. Somehow.

Depression does this to a body. Collapses a rich and beautiful world, a vibrant life full of hope and opportunity, into the two-dimensional flatness of "another day, another dollar." I struggle against a crushing fatigue that demands answers to questions that can't exist in the same sphere as the answers. But the questions alone seem to have blocked me in, invisible obstacles that make daily life so freaking frustrating.

Why get out of bed in the morning? The answer, I know, is the sound of the wind in the leaves. The scent of coffee. The thrill of being the first one up, the only one up, and hearing the birdsong while the moon still hangs in the sky painted pink by the rising sun. Depression doesn't speak this sensory language.

My depression speaks an internal language, a language of the heart beating, dry eyes, sore throat, chapped lips. It is almost entirely physical in nature, and entirely contained. There is no outside, no birdsong, no color. Only warmth or no warmth, rest, deep sighs, and tears...Not hungry, never hungry. Until hungry now! Very hungry, desperately hungry. Bottomless need, unmet. My vocabulary fails me, my metaphorical mind goes blank, I no longer know how to speak to myself. And time loses its meaning, so that what was is was will be forever.

Making myself write changes the dialogue, forces an answer to the question "why," brings the internal to account for the sensory and vice versa.

The 7-Eleven right next to where I work sells the most mediocre pumpkin muffins. Bland as they are, by noon I just can't get the little carb-bombs out of my head. I ate my home-made soup and just lived with the gnawing craving until I got home from work, at which point I whipped up the most delicious whole-wheat pumpkin muffins with a decadently sweet tofu-cream filling.

I don't recall ever baking myself anything even half as elaborate. Chocolate chip cookies, sure. But before today, every culinary act has been one of nurturing others, meeting the needs - real or imagined, spoken or otherwise - of my husband or family or community. Never just for me. Never just because.

There is meaning in these things, all things, that can be found if I force myself to write it. There is power here in the merging of languages. There may be joy, I think, tucked among my computer keys. If I keep looking, if I keep writing, if I keep asking.

2016 Goals

"Once the grief subsides," my therapist said, "You'll need something to keep you busy. You don't know how much time you've spent every day being sad. You need to start setting goals."

Challenge Goals for 2016

• Resume Tracking and Tabulating All Income and Spending
• Save $1,000 Emergency Fund
• Pay Back Personal Loan ($1000)
• Save 6 Months Expenses
• Create 1-, 5-, and 10-year Plan

My intention is to refer back to this and track progress on a monthly basis. I'm still very raw and anxious about making plans in the wake of my divorce, but the time has come to start moving forward again.