Angry for a Very Good Reason (FINALLY)

Ramon and I had had - were having - a lovely afternoon up on the Broadway drag. I had a 2:30 haircut with Nicole (freakin' genius at making my untidy mess look like an intentional untidy mess) at Scream Barber, and we were wandering home after, stopping by our haunts. Bailey Coy books, Linda's for brunch, I turned the prayer wheel at Vajra and a brief visit to Urban Outfitters, but only to use the privy and to sneer at the gladiator sandals and the $20 hip flasks that say things like "Bitch" and "Horny". Ramon bought me flowers.

On the way out we stopped at Dick's for a chocolate shake and some fries - the line was about five deep as usual. As I waited for Ramon to pay I heard a voice behind me; a lady on the phone.

"Yeah, someone just 'small-changed' me, so I'm buying him a burger. I'm in line right now - talk to you later." This voiced in a loudish tone of complacent ennui. I looked over at her and saw a man beside her (I had seen him a couple of times that afternoon - a little shaggy, but tidily dressed and kind-looking, asking people here and there for money), looking sheepish. Many people were around.

She looked - well, it doesn't matter, save to say that she pretty much satisfied my prejudice about what a person who said things like that, and how they said it, would look like.

Hey, I feel put-upon sometimes, lots of times, when people ask me for money, and especially if they've got some kind of 'I'm different from the others, just in an unfortunate spot at the moment' spiel (some that I've heard from the same person, day after day - I know your Aunt in Tacoma didn't forget your return bus fare for the third day in a row, love). I don't like it that I get hit up more than once every day in this town, and I hardly ever cough up. I hate hearing the conversations that people have to have about The Homeless Problem or the 'get a job' mentality of the cats who feel like they need a reason not to give their hard-earned cash to someone just because they asked for it. I still seethe with rage at the memory of the dude who yelled at me when I told him no: "Well, what fuckin' GOOD are ya?!" The whole homeless/panhandler issue is a thorny nest of not fun thinky thoughts for me. Seeing things from many sides is a sonuvabitch sometimes, no?

This one cut me down, man. Hurt me right to the heart. I hated that woman - I was so mad I was tearing up on our way home. Who DOES that to someone? Some people like buying food for folks who ask them for money, cool. Not my way, of course - I give 'em money and they do what they like with it - but still better than giving people nothing at all or speeching them out about their naughty vagrant ways. But insisting on buying food and then shouting it all over creation - WHILE the poor sucker is with you, for the love of Pete - not nice. Not loving. Maybe not worth it, to that guy.

Sorry, no 'You see, Timmy' moment to cap this one off. I'm just angry, angry, angry. And hurt. And you know what hurt angry people do in this great age - yes.

Yes, we blog about it. Good stuff.

Lara Fabian - no joke

Lara Fabian is a Canadian singer (Flemish/Sicilian by blood). I know very little more about her, except that she has a beautiful voice - she sounds a bit like Celine Dion* but beats her by a mile and a half. Now, you don't have to like the song or the singer, but watch this moment she has with her audience. It rates one tissue for the likes of me:



* Please note that I am NOT endorsing Celine Dion fanhood by any means. Not for me, anyway.

the M word

my favorite dance song doesn't make me want to bounce around anymore - today it makes me want to weep. and weeping isn't an urge that needs encouraging today; it's a tide to hold back, moment by moment. i'm not a big fan of holding back.

now is the time for work, but i don't remember what's to be done. now is the time for a woman's work - shutting up, sitting on it, picking battles, waiting in silence for a better time. for him. i never was much good as a woman.

it's time for him to be encouraged, nurtured, made safe on a long, difficult and painfully new journey in his life. now is not the time for sulking, tantrums, interruptions or pleas for comfort or attention. i was never much of a safe harbor for anybody, really.

why is it always about me? i'll tell you why - because my voice is the only one I hear. even medicated, as i am, i still hear the banshee call of me hurt my feelings express myself get it all out screaming for attention clinging sobbing pouting pretending laughing weeping laughing weeping laughing weeping.

it's all about me because the banshee wail - for good and ill, but always loud - constantly screams and croons in my head. it's all about me because his voice is so soft. soft, yes. not always sweet and loving, but always soft and modulated. there are tones in the quiet, if i shut up long enough to hear them. tones of love, impatience, amusement, anger, hurt, disappointment. and after a weekend of pacing around each other - coming together to love, separating again for hurt, coming together to work it out, again, and separating because it devolved into pain. again. - there's nothing in the softness but silence. love, yes, always, but behind a film of...if I knew what the film was I'd use my ubiquitous words to try to push it aside.

push everything aside. see joy and love in his eyes instead of an anxious, tired affection. hear truth instead of shuttered facts held back to protect me. keep me in the dark. protect him. protect everybody. push aside the gunky film of relationshippy exhaustion so that he'll hear when i speak (and the gods grant that given the chance - oh for another chance - my speaking will be spare, simple, full to bursting with love). catch fire and respond when I have a thought. like before.

i want to help. remember that song, 'To Deserve You'? ...and if i could trade my voice for the silence i know that you need... i would do that. i would do that. i'd do a mermaid Ariel and give my voice up - the whole thing - just to help you. me shutting up would help you. me not thinking so fucking much would. me being a simpler woman altogether...ah, but you'll say then i wouldn't be me. like 'me' is what you need right now. i think it's clear that for a short while at least, you could use someone entirely different.

would that i could, my dearest heart. would that i could stop - just for a season - being so perfectly, steadfastly, inescapably, devoutly, helplessly, tragically, and entirely. me.

how i love you...

Shaking Off the Funk

Ah, spring. Seattle's showing us the first peek up her skirt which is the start of spring. Eventually things will progress to the full-on, Marilyn-style skirt blowup - no grandma panties - that I like to call summer. But for now it's the odd robin (yay!), tiny green buds on trees (WOO-ha) and the almost-warmish air smells like the sea instead of just...cold air.

So, how's my mood? TOTAL SHIT. Yep - a dreadful miasma of sticky, gray, leaden FUNK has been following me around for days now, making me alternately barky or sullen, sensitive like you would not believe, and whining, whining, whining about it to anyone who'll listen. So, that would be Ramon. Poor man. We've gone back to nitpicky tiffs about nothing (last contentious topic: my hair), bandying logic, forgetting who said what, apologizing later, but even that doesn't bring us back to harmony with each other. Just...what is WRONG with me?

Just two blog entries ago it was, "oh, heavens, the meds have fixed me! Happy day! It's almost too easy!"

It was too easy. I'm not sure what's going on, but apart from the rages and/or hysterical grief taking over, which they're not, everything's the same. The rage was replaced by waspish irritability. The hysteria was replaced by either hollow-eyed (I know. I looked in the mirror), chin-trembling fear that I'm still sick - the meds aren't working - or sullen depression. I think the honeymoon's over, kids, and I've got more work to do than I thought. The pills make me not crazy. They don't make me into a nice or well-adjusted person. Drat upon drat.

I'll be OK. I always get low when winter loses its hold - define irony. I'm still in therapy, and Merrill is helping ever so much. I'm still more easygoing and accepting than before. The family stuff is getting better and better. My hair's looking fantastic lately. I would do well to remember that many things are going very well in my life and some of them are even thanks to me. Nevertheless, I'm not happy these last few weeks and can't seem to pull myself out of it. I either can't help it or I'm just enjoying the sulkies too much. But it's wearing thin, for me and Ramon, and thus I submit my list of things that I can do to cheer myself up:

1. Exercise. I quit the gym - hated the new yoga teacher - and went to look for tasty yoga delights in a studio near our flat. It didn't feel that good, the facility, so for now that's on hold. I'm ordering yoga DVDs to work on at home for the time being, and Ramon said he'd do it with me. We both wonder if the long hiatus helped bring my sadness on. I'm also getting out and running around a bit, and I felt great yesterday when I tried it for the first time. It's fun dodging around cranky lunch-breakers.

2. Get that darn flat sorted out. Honestly. I've heard that a clean, well-organized living space helps the brain and the mood, and the following things are killing that right off [NOTE: we don't live in squalor, and both of us are equally industrious or lazy as the mood takes us. But we're 50/50% on this, and we're both fairly indifferent to achieving victory in immaculate housekeeping]:

• dishes - reminds me of our hygiene habits at Luzader House at college. The pile actually starts to smell after a while
• floor - Ramon sweeps pretty often, but a good mopping? When did we last...hm
• bathroom - OK, this is Seattle. The mold thing is not my fault
• laundry - may this cup passeth from me
• filing - ditto. I bloody well shuffle papers for a living at work
• getting the gee-golly closets sorted out. Waahhh

3. Sex. Sex is good for the mood.

4. Dancing it out. Crank up some tasty, tasty musical chaos (Euro-synth-pop is especially good - I'm looking into Hasselhoff. Just kidding) and bounce around the flat for a bit. It does indeed help, though looking sexy is problematic when I have to keep hitching my lounging pants up my bum.

5. Preparing tasty, healthful meals. Well, THAT'S not happening until the backlog of dishes are either washed and put away or crushed to dust with a big, big mallet.

6. No more - and I can't stress this enough - NO MORE FRIED PORK SKINS. The ecstasy (Hey. Everybody has thrilling delights they're ashamed of, all RIGHT?) of munching is followed by the somatic agony of having ingested pure fried FAT - fat fried in fat - which is bound to get one down, as well as the waves of self-loathing that roll over me at having just eaten a snack that is both bad for me and filthy in the extreme.

7. Sunlight. Such a thing, dimly remembered, is now rising to the forefront of our minds here in the Northwest, and we would do well to soak it up instead of just complaining of how long we have to wait for it to GET here.

8. Music. I think I should get some of this screaming inside out on tape, so to speak, and maybe make a cool Euro-synth-pop song out of it. Someone could dance it out to it. Wouldn't that be rad? Geez, Cerise, we've got the gear, for the love of Kraftwerk...

OK, sweety-pantses, thanks for listening to the angsty whine of a maudlin 33-year-old. I'll let you know how this whole thing goes. And say a little prayer for the better half of me, won't you?

P.S. Part of the reason I can even talk about this is that I'm wearing my lucky fishnets today, and gosh DARN it, believe me when I say that nothing brightens a mood more than wearing a nice pair of fishnet stockings!

Schooling Prudence

[READER ALERT: In this note I am going to poke fun at Billy Graham, god, and say bitch and piss. I will also express support for people who engage in polyamorous relationships. Consider yourself warned.]

I'm kind of an advice column junkie. I used to read SO many: Dear Prudence, Dear Abby, Dear Margo, Carolyn Hax, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and every so often I'd look in on Billy Graham's column, wrinkle my nose, and whisk back out again. Sorry, god.

I finally had to face my addiction and start thinning the herd a bit. Take back control of my life, one step at a time. The first step was easy - rate the columnists and make a decision as to who I'd keep on reading.

Dear Prudence: middle-aged, smart cookie, a little acerbic but never mean (ah, sad...)

Dear Abby: Up. Tight.

Dear Margo: hands down my favorite. She's a snappy old lady with a checkered past, kind heart and wicked sense of humor. She hates the people what done you wrong. I love her.

Carolyn Hax (a daily in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer): Meh. She kind of makes a big meal out of trying to be cute. Whatever...

Dr. Joyce Brothers: Great advice, good heart, but she does go ON, which makes her a bit boring.

Billy Graham: He ends every letter - EVERY SINGLE ONE - with "And you...have you made Jesus the Lord and Master of your life? You should get on that, because nothing's going to go right until you do [my paraphrase. I'm funnier than him]." Enough said.

OK, so, Prudence was one of the columnists that made the cut. Except, EXCEPT, she just let me down in a big way. I mean, she let an advisee down and that pissed me off. Here's the advisee's letter, her response, and the bitchfest I sent to Prudence as a result:

********

Dear Prudie:
I am a female involved in a four-year-long polyamorous relationship with a married couple. We are all happy and love one another very much. They have invited me to move into their home, and I would like to. The problem is that their two teenage children are beyond angry with the relationship. Even though they are not losing anything as a result of the relationship, they blame me for breaking the family apart and are very rude to me and their parents as a result. We don't want to break up to appease their children, who will be out of the house and on their own soon enough. But I can't imagine putting myself in the middle of such an uncomfortable living situation. Any suggestions for getting these teens to learn to accept me and the relationship?

—Three Is Not a Crowd

********

Dear Three,
Teenagers are just impossible these days. Mom and Dad go out and get a perfectly nice girlfriend to share, and the kids totally destroy the great erotic vibe you've all got going with their insolent remarks like, "Ewww, gross!" and "Why can't you be normal like other parents and just get a divorce or something?" They sound like complete downers who don't even understand the stimulating couplings and triplings that could take place when they have their friends sleep over (before the friends' parents hear about this, and all of you end up explaining polyamory to social services). It's too bad these rotten kids don't understand that their parents' need to fulfill their sexual appetites takes precedence over providing them a stable home. But since the teenagers are doing nothing but making life unpleasant for your happy threesome, my only suggestion for you is to find a couple who had the good judgment not to have children and leave this family alone.

—Prudie

********

Hello, Prudence. [this is rad - observe how I get all snippy and formal] I've read your column every week for some time now, and am generally impressed with your sense of fairness and obvious concern for those who contact you. I'm writing about one of your glaring exceptions.

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 2009, you posted a response to Three is Not a Crowd, who was asking you about how to deal with the angry teenage offspring of a couple with which she has a polyamorous relationship. She was looking to you for advice on how to handle the situation. Instead she got judged by you six ways from Sunday. You inferred throughout your response that she was the interloper into an established relationship and that the three of them were in it for nothing but sex, even though she said that they'd been together for four years and loved each other very much! Polyamory is real, Prudence, and it's as likely to be a love relationship as it is to be a sex relationship. Do you really think that the only romantic love that exists is the kind that's between two people and two people only?! For heaven's sake...she came to you for help and you treated her rather hatefully. With sarcasm and scorn. I'm really, really sad for her and disappointed at your mistreatment of a reader.

Cerise Deslauriers

Well of Rage!! [or, Bipolar Lite]

Most of the people who know me know that I'm kind of an asshole sometimes. Or maybe just a son of a bitch. So, yeah, more than sometimes. Hear ye the story of The Well of Rage:

I was a frustrated, mouthy toddler. My first spanking was for spitting at my nanny in Burundi when I was about 3 or 4. In elementary school I vacillated between jubilant (to the point of off-putting) acting out, wiggly restlessness and smoldering resentment. I started fires (only little ones). I lied so much my parents had the preacher come over one night to talk with me. I stole. I backtalked so much that I wanted to slap me. Ditto my teenage years, except I was in boarding school for a lot of it and gave my dorm parents bucketloads of shit, instead of my parents. One dorm mom actually wept and asked if I was trying to ruin her life. I was angry, angry, angry, but more apt to lash out at authority figures than the classmates who angered me. I would go to the student center and fling myself around, laughing too loud, talking too much, and then escape, suddenly, to the rugby field to walk under the moon and cry for loneliness. I'm not telling any of this with pride, mind you, but sadness, both at the destruction I wrought and for the poor kid who, it turns out, was being pulled apart by emotions she couldn't control. All my life.

My adult life was similar, though I learned a few things in college about 1. keeping outbursts to a minimum, and 2. figuring out how to keep people from fucking with me. Not great lessons, I realize, but I was surviving. My friends liked me because I could always be counted on to tell the truth, no matter how harsh it was (poor things. I was hardly ever telling the truth, so much as finding weaknesses in people I didn't like and parading them around to make people laugh), I was funny (part of how to keep people from fucking with me), and you never knew what I'd do. Like the time I splooshed James' favorite cream-colored cable sweater with a full glass of grape juice. I hurt a lot of people in college. By the time MY time was up there, it was starting to come back to me from people who had figured out that my bark...etc.

Ramon helped a lot. He calmed me down. His total disregard for what people thought of him rubbed off on me. When I went from weeping my eyes raw to staring at the wall, scraping the back of my hand bloody with my fingernails (it was the only way to keep from screaming), he'd lay me on the couch in his dorm room, cover me with a blanket, and put on a movie. He gave me hope that someday I'd be OK, not an asshole, not a lugubrious, clingy, moody, melodramatic bitch.

He also took a lot. A lot. We've been together for 14 years, counting friendship and dating, and married (i.e. living together) for 10. All that time he has allied himself with a woman who is loving and devoted, yes, and very giving of her love and devotion. But also all the things listed above and prone to lashing out at the nearest body when irritated, confused, or proven wrong on some topic or another. For 13 years. He took it all in and only rarely fought back. Things started improving somewhat when I convinced him that standing up to me was the only way he and I would ever survive. I knew even then that I was not in control of my anger. I thought it had swelled to such proportions because of my childhood, those darn dorm parents and teachers (truly, for every angel there were two horrific ones), the church (still in the running for What Made Me Maddest of All). Kids that thought I was weird in school. Kids that messed with my little brother. Who knows what all. The usual list of grievances everyone has.

[note: I want to break in here and say that I had many good days in between "episodes". This all sounds very dire, but Ramon and I lived in sweetness and communion for much of our marriage, or it would surely have fallen apart before the 10-year mark. Ramon's wonderfully patient, but he's no masochist and he knows his own worth.]

I tried therapy. One cognitive therapist heard my Well of Rage theory and told me that it was a Well of Fear capped with anger. She proceeded to try to talk me out of it. That went well. I'm not pissing on cognitive therapy here, just her. She made me feel like shit - guilty for not trying hard enough to transcend myself. And oh, how I wanted to. To be free from the anger and torment and hate.

Friends of mine were diagnosed with this and that - mostly depression - and kindly, hesitantly asked me to see about it myself. I didn't think I was depressed. Doesn't that mean you're blue all the time, can't get out of bed, sleep too much, etc.? I wasn't any of those things. I was just kind of there - a bit blue - all the time with a couple of rage thingys a week and maybe one bout of inexplicable glee thrown in there for a bit of color.

I tried therapy again, this time with a wonderful, saintly woman (except she swears. I made damned sure on our first meeting) named Merrill. Merrill is compassionate, funny, earthy, giving, loving and smart as hell. She proceeded to untangle the knot of some family dynamics shit in a couple of sessions. I'm not kidding. She freed me from inappropriate emotional responses to typical family interactions (I'm being cryptic here. My parentals read this blog. Maybe I should curtail the cussing...). Then one time I was telling her the sad tale of how, in college, I loved singing - loveloveloved it, but could NOT make myself practice. Could not. No, not because I was lazy, I swear. She suggested I might be ADD and referred me to a psychiatric nurse practitioner (like psychiatrists, they can prescribe meds). I spent 1/2 hour with this new lady and she gave me her theory. She thought I was bipolar and prescribed lithium.

This was not good news. I thought ADD was glamorous and kind of tragic - plus it answered a lot of questions about my life. Bipolar disorder is...well, you know when you're having a conversation with someone about someone in THEIR life who's a crazy-ass butthead and making things miserable for everybody? And then they say, casually, "Oh, and they're bipolar and off their meds" and everybody goes, "Ohhhh" and shakes their heads? Like this person is still a crazy-ass butthead AND off the deep end to boot. And it's still OK to scorn them because THEY'RE off their MEDS! That's the first thing I thought of when she told me I was bipolar. Bipolar 2, by the way. Bipolar 1 is your basic depression-mania thing where you're either unable to get out of bed or you're shouting that you can fly and jumping over the rail at Macy's. Basically. BP 1 peeps, correct me if I'm wrong. BP 2 is like bipolar lite. I've got a low-grade depression on pretty much most of the time, punctuated with hypo-manic (i.e., less than properly manic) episodes of either total rage or more of that tasty inexplicable cheer. I never know which one will rear its head. But I'm highly functional; steady job, friends, marriage, my houseplants don't die (much), etc.

Fine. Bipolar 2. Fine fine fine. I still thought it was a shameful and unglamorous disorder, but there it was. It just explained way too much. I eased into the full dosage of lithium very slowly (I told the nurse practitioner, Donna, that if I gained even one pound, or if my sex drive went anywhere but up, I was out), and for a while didn't feel anything. Any change. Wait - I didn't feel anything!! I was a sedated zombie lab rat! I'd be one of those faceless losers who wore beige a lot and never laughed at jokes. Or, OR, a 300-pound slug with no emotions at all who camped in front of the TV watching her stories all day! Or both!! Wait, wait. I still talked and laughed a lot. I still missed Ramon all day and hugged him long when we got home. I still felt joy and anger and irritation. But the emotion would appear in me and then...just...go away again. Even the anger and irritation. It would flash red for a moment in the blackness of my brain (I always picture my brain's interior as black - like the night sky, or a chalkboard always ready for the writing) and then slide away again. Amazing. Sometimes it would escape even before I had a chance to express the emotion at all. My eyes stopped filling with tears every time I felt happiness or a connection to someone (it sounds cute, doesn't it? But it's really embarrassing and kind of a pain in the ass. I still do it, but less often). I was feeling everything I always feel, but I could control it! Let me repeat, especially to any of you who've felt the sting of my anger: I can control it. I can count to ten. I can change the subject. I can pick my battles. I CAN. [YES WE CAN! I'll blog about that later.] Mostly. I've still shot off some emails at work I had to apologize for. Ramon and I have gotten into about 3 or 4 fights since June, which is when I went on the medication. Instead of, you know, 2 or 3 episodes of screaming goodness per week. And there's been zero shouting. I've been like a starving person at a 100-course meal, tasting every emotion EVER and being able to feel it, sometimes really deeply, without being overwhelmed by it. I'll tell you, even feeling joy without control is hard on you, especially when you're around people.

That's about it, really. It hasn't been that long since I was diagnosed and treated. Do I like being one of the Mighty American Medicated? No. Not so much. We're kind of vilified in the media, aren't we? Am I still embarrassed about being bipolar? Nah. Why would I be? I'M bipolar, and I like me just fine. I liked me before I was treated. I've got people around me that I love who have it. Besides, I'm so overwhemed with relief almost all the time that it's hard to find time to be unhappy that I might be the crazy butthead that's ruining everyones' lives. No way. I'm becoming what I always wanted to be, more than anything: affable and good-natured. And still talkative, a bit fiery, opinionated, funny-ish and prone to laughter. I've apologized maybe a thousand times to Ramon for the hell I put him through and he just smiles seraphically - you can SEE him forgetting the past, I swear it - and says he enjoys saying what he wishes to say to me without fear, good man. I'm not so exhausted anymore, reining in my behavior, that I can't try new things and work toward a goal. Like with yoga and the whole fitness thing. Or maybe [claps hands to mouth] MUSIC.

I never knew the meaning of blessed until I started taking three capsules of mineral salts per night. I'm free. I'm fucking free. I'm FREE WITH THE FREE FREEDOM!!!

Thank you, sincerely, to all of you who have stayed by my side while I was still a prickly hoo-ha. I love you so. I'm so sorry.

Cerise

Frightened for Jeremy

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. My old high school classmate Jeremy has been in an accident in Malawi and has been airlifted to a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has a wife (also in our class and the apple of my eye) and three kids. This is not good.

A few years ago another beloved classmate passed away climbing Mt. Rainier. By the time we all found out it was already done. He was gone.

I don't want to do this again - grieve another classmate (Ed. grieve FOR another classmate. I'm sure I GRIEVE them all the time). I know I'm jumping the gun here, since we only heard that he was in a serious accident and is in hospital. I'm obsessively checking Facebook and my email. Please, please, please, let him get through this and get well.

Who am I even praying to?

UPDATE: We got word that although he has some seriously hairy injuries (no skin left on his back, dreadful fracture of his shin that required many surgeries, etc.), he is healing rapidly - astounding his doctors, in fact - and will return home to Malawi in a matter of weeks, not months. When I found out he was alive and healing I sat down on the bed rather quickly and cried and cried. Thank...whoever. Thank you. Thank you.