swim, swim

This year has been a whirlwind of activity. Most good, some bad. I feel like I've been under water; water that is sometimes calm and peaceful, and other times turbulent and crushing. My new year will begin with a forceful current--pulling me into my first college course ever. Better late than never, right? So I am coming up for a full, deep breath of air, and off I will go for two-and-a-half weeks of what will be either an intriguing and thought provoking experience, or sheer torture. Maybe both.

Buying a house this year has us reeling. I am mostly filled with joy. There is something to be said for feeling rooted. I couldn't have imagined the relief that I live somewhere that has the potential to be so permanent. And then there is the weight that it is almost permanent, and anything that could go wrong is our responsibility to avoid, and if it does go wrong, we are in complete charge.  That said, it still feels good that our room is, in fact, our room. I'll concede that at the closing table I realized that we are really borrowing the house from the bank for 30 years. At which point I will be (with any luck), 68. Aye.

But home is where we will celebrate Christmas, with both of our families, and I couldn't be happier. Filling our house with the people who love us most, and making new memories here is exactly what the doctor ordered. Well, that and 15 mg of Paxil a day. But I feel good. Almost normal, but not in the boring, over-medicated way. Just right for a change.

We are considering adding a kitten to our pack. Because I'm still not convinced this old body can manage to pop out a child before it reaches 40. For the record, we aren't pursuing it. At least not now.

So much to think about, so little time.A deep breath, and under I go. My only hope for the first month of the new year is that I pass my course. One. Thing. At. A. Time.

Thanks, Hank. Take two.

It's been a long time since I wrote this, but once again, ol' Hank has given me the gift of inspiration. And yet another reminder that I do write. That it's part of me. I'm proud of the piece I wrote and submitted to a lovely little blog called, Bukowski On Wry. It looks like the start of a great page. I hope it's the start of a new chapter for me. Do check it out. I'm really excited that my poem was selected.

 http://bukowskionwry.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/i-love-you-an-alternate-ending-bukowski-erasure-poem-by-keyna-thomas/

how to be crazy.

Stigma, it's a bitch.

While I have a love/hate relationship with the healthcare system's way of managing mental illness, I have to say, lots of therapy and pinpointing (diagnosing) my issues has opened my eyes over the past three years. Yes, three years. It is, and will likely be a part of my life forever. As for the medicine, hopefully not. Today, I am relatively stable in and unstable world. And why is the world unstable? Because it is filled with mentally ill people that either refuse treatment, or don't know how to find it. Or just plain can't afford it. Hell, I can't afford it. Whatever. Generic mac and cheese is fine with me.

Back to stigma. Are we really "ill?" I would argue that in most cases we are not. We may be in a state of dis-ease. And who could blame anyone. I go to work. It triggers many chemicals that have no place showing up in the middle of my work day. But adrenaline runs high when the people around you take themselves so seriously, that if you haven't completed a task it is, in fact, the end of the fucking world. My (healthy) response is, "We aren't in an emergency room saving lives.We are drafting a budget to run a program, that if it does not run, people will not die. We would simply have to give back the money. Worst. Case. Scenario."

All that said, because someone has convinced my nervous system that it is the end of the world, I have too much adrenaline pulsing through my veins. Nowhere to go but down. But this is fine for all of the mentally fit, I suppose. For me and my generalized anxiety disorder, things are a little more complicated. And besides adrenaline, a shit-ton of hormones and other chemicals find their way into my body, which is really just a recipe for disaster. O.K., so not a disaster. Just a panic attack. Let me piece together the panic attack for you. It is the fucking end of the world. I am sure that I will die, because if a person can't breathe they die. If I can breathe, but my heart is beating 150 bpm, I am sure that I will have a heart attack. I tell myself that is fine, but it won't be. Because the biggest fear is that no one will help you if you are dying. Yet, I am not crazy. Nor am I ill. I am just a person that is highly affected by the stressors and difficulties I encounter in my daily life. Apparently, most other people are not. Who knew?

But this isn't even my problem today. Thanks to the past three years, all of the above is more manageable. I smoke too much, but so be it. I would still like to quit, and I haven't, which makes me incredibly sad some days. However, I don't have depression. What I have is a normal reaction to being frustrated that a carcinogenic drug has a grip on my life and my future. Even to the sane, this must be reasonable.

Moving on. I have made many, many mistakes in my life. Most of them were small. A few of them were very large, and made me very sorry for a long time. Today is the day that I must let go of that sorrow, because it can no longer help me be a better person. Instead it is dragging me down, and convincing me that somehow I am a lesser person. Today is the day that I must tell myself that I am not inhuman. I am not subhuman. That I do really have a do no harm attitude. I have been quiet, if not amputated of my voice, somehow thinking I could prevent damage, present or future. This has proved to be untrue, and an unhealthy assumption. The truth is that I am filled with love for my past, some regret for losing sight of the path I could have followed, and yet I am also filled with love and excitement for my present and future. This doesn't seem crazy to me. It seems healthy. That said, having carried the guilt for two for too long, I feel it's time I speak. Not about the past, but about the fact that good, crazy people, do crazy things sometimes. Secondly, about the fact that if you keep calling people crazy, or bad, or anything else the like, they will always be that to you. But it doesn't change their true heart. My true heart.

I have heard from various sources that many references to my name have been made with regard to how crazy I am (or, according to me and a small handful of dear friends, am not). I will speak to this only once, because you see, none of you are the first. I look different. I have looked different since birth. I have been and will be passionate about things that I believe in. To the point of ridicule. Starting in the first grade. So my experience with "crazy" is wide and varied. I'm crazy and smart enough to know that I will never, ever master it. I will however, vow to refine it in such a way that I lead my life in a way that becomes me, and at the same time helps the people I love, end even sometimes, the ones I can't or don't. Let me tell you, that last number is very low.

So at long last, here is my list of rules for being crazy. I think you'll find they aren't so crazy, after all.

DO:

• Be there for your friends no matter what the hour. Three in the morning is a good time to be crazy.
• Laugh at yourself when you do something like say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Hope that it's actually the wrong thing at the right time. Crazy people have difficulty discerning proper timing (see above).
• Should you make a mistake, forgive yourself as soon as possible. Crazy people know remorse more than anyone. Often enough they are living in their own prison. 
• Be kind, even when it's difficult. It's better to be good crazy than bad crazy.
• Don't be afraid to speak your mind when necessary. All bottles with too much pressure WILL explode. Too much pressure is a crazy person's worst enemy.
• Find reasons to be happy. If you are crazy, you will be insanely happy. On the converse, allow yourself to be sad, but don't seek out sadness in your daily life. If you are crazy, and you do this, you will also be insanely sad.
• Let go. By all fucking means, let go. Not of reality or self-control. Let go of that which you cannot control. It feels like you're floating if you do it right. Crazy, huh?
• Be a loose cannon. As in, make people laugh, jump in a lake with your clothes on, try new things...you know, a loose fucking cannon.  

DON'T

• Rely on a list of don'ts to tell you how to be crazy. Anything goes, so long as you're doing good. 

And last, but not least:

where there's a will.

Vacation log, day one: Woke up one hour later than usual. Drank coffee. Checked the week's weather. Almost checked work email, but was denied due to server being busy. End report.

The wait is over. Vacation is here and I'm feeling mostly well. There are days now that I don't hear ringing in my ears, and I no longer have the feeling that all sound is muffled. I still have swollen lymph nodes, but thanks to a tiny dose of Paxil, I don't worry about them much. Mind you, I don't love the idea of a medicated life. I hate the idea that the pharmaceutical companies are winning me over. I have exhausted all available resources, and frankly, this is the one that works, because this is the one thing that they make more readily available than any other treatment. So it goes.

However I'm getting there--I am finally over the hump. I am working almost full-time. To fill the space, I applied to college. This is a long-awaited move for me. It will be free, because I work for said college. I would be a moron to not take advantage of the opportunity. In fact, I had been applying for jobs here since the 90s, solely because it would afford me the education I could never afford otherwise. I am elated and terrified. But a life being neither of those things is not the life for me.

To add to the confusion, the other and I are house hunting. We are happy. And pre-approved. Go us.

Also, we started a band. Initially, we planned it as a one-time deal. Somehow it worked out better than could be expected, and so, we are banded. Maybe this is no big deal. It's not meant to be a big deal. It is fun, and undaunting, just how it should be. We don't need to be the best, and we don't need the money. Just a mutual understanding that we love music, and that we want it to sound better every day. I used to feel guilty that I'm a mediocre guitar player, and that sometimes I sing out of tune. As with most things, you don't have to be the best to try your best. 

In fact, I feel guilty a lot of the time. This is not something new. As my new psychiatrist mentioned, I pretty much exhibit the classic traits of a child born unto an alcoholic parent. I refuse to blame my problems on this unfortunate stroke of fate, but hey, I pretty much blame myself for everything. Been doing it since I was all of five years old. I realized that you don't have to know that your parent is an alcoholic to suffer the effects of their alcoholism. 

My sister crashed her bike once when we were little. I was sitting at home, probably watching TV, and she came home sobbing, mangled and bloodied. All I remember is standing upstairs in my bedroom dormer, looking at her on the front walk, crying and telling myself it was all my fault. To hear my mother tell it, I had been downstairs when she came home, and when she opened the door I was standing there in front of her. By her account, I looked her in the face, screamed, and ran up the stairs to my room. I don't remember that, and she didn't know that I was up there telling myself it was my fault. While this is a sad story, it's one that I use to remind myself that I am not to blame for everyone else's mistakes or downfalls. I have two years of regular therapy to thank for this. 

While the subject of mental illness, and general dis-ease may be uncomfortable for some, I've found that it's helpful to be mindful of it. Not just mindful of it for me, but for the rest of the people in the world that may be affected with it without even acknowledging it. It is true that an incredible stigma exists between the people who know they have a problem, be it anxiety, or depression, OCD, you name it, and the people who have any of these problems and are afraid to confront it. And of course, there's always the normal people. Wherever the fuck they are. 

Regardless, why be afraid to talk about it? To write about it. To be it. 

a little glimmer of something.

Like old times, a thought popped into my head yesterday, so I scribbled it down while I was sitting in my car. While I was doing that, another thought popped in, and another, and yet another. I was happy about this, because they were thoughts that I felt were worth putting into words. And then into action. I thought, "It's about fucking time."

My life has changed tremendously over the last couple of years. I think not just my life, but my mind. People don't intimidate me like they used to. I've loved, I've lost, and I'm ready to do it again. Having reconnected with old friends, and made peace with former enemies, in addition to having been dumped by my best friend who had been that since high school, I've had to do a whole lot of soul searching about how best to be a true friend. I've also had to assess what it takes to be my friend. In the end, the answers were too simple to waste time embellishing on the details--there just aren't many. 

The initial thought that prompted my pen moving was this: If you hold your friends to their faults and mistakes, they will never become to you any better. In fact, if you hold them to those things, they may never become better themselves. Why plant a weed if you want a flower to grow?

As for what I ask of my friends, and what I think I should do for you--accept help when it's offered. Sometimes taking an extended hand does more for the extender than it can for the extendee, but at least it leaves room for them (and me) to be a better person. A better friend. And in the end, assuming they want what's best for you, it will work out well for both parties. That's not to say accept it every time, but when a person really needs help and instead chooses to isolate regardless of an extended hand of friendship and love, nobody wins. 

What prompted this mostly, is that my former best friend said to my sister after she mentioned that I was feeling depressed about our disconnect, "I don't have time for people like that in my life." Instead of accepting and internalizing that I'm a person "like that," I chose to focus on the many things she thinks I am that I am not. The list of these things is long, and it took a lot of digging to determine whether or not I can overcome some of the things she was right about, and overcome the damage she did listing them off repeatedly over the course of our friendship. In the end, I've realized that I spent a long time trying to live up to an ideal that isn't my path. To define ideal, I would have been a mind-reader that when it came to her was entirely selfless. While I hate to be selfish, to be me I still have to walk the fine line between charity and stupidity. With her, I tried to be helpful, but also would occasionally find myself torn between tending to my own life, and helping her tend to hers. And on occasion, I'll admit I leaned more toward tending to my own. Those were the times I was bound to in her mind. What I've realized is that in order to redeem myself, I would in fact have to sacrifice more of myself than I'm willing to part with. In order to redeem myself, I would have to focus on un-doing everything I've ever done that she felt was hurtful. The problem is, she'd be holding me to those things so tightly, I could never be anything else. 

I'm happy to report that I wouldn't be the friend I am now without the friends I have, who are constantly encouraging me, without words to be a better human. I feel lucky to share my good (and bad) qualities with all of them. 

That said, on this perfect first day of summer, this is on the radio. I gotta go dance now.

shoulda, coulda...did

I'll be brief today. I'm just coming off a long couple of weeks of way highs and way lows. A distant acquaintance and I joined forces to save a stray, injured cat last week. We used Facebook as a tool, and it was effective. We set up a non-profit donation page overnight, and everything went off without a hitch. His vet bill is paid in full, both by us and the donations we received. I am thankful for this. We placed him in a new, caring home, and he is thriving after getting the full treatment at the vet, including a broken jaw repair. 

I swear I wasn't going to blog about this. After all, I only did it because his broken face broke my heart. To me, it was the only option. But now I'm pissed. As I was getting ready to put it all behind me, there came the thud. On a post that said how it was so great that people could pull things together and make an animal's life better, some jackass comments just this:

"Hurt animals in any town should be turned over to Animal Control."

Well, thank you for your input, lady. A little research, and it turns out the woman is the animal control officer for a town I will not name, except to say that I've worked there and this comment is just the type of response I'd expect from a town appointee. They don't like to mind their own business, and really, really like to tell other people how to do things, right or wrong. They also oppose a rail trail in their town. For why, I'll never know. Guess they like oily tracks better than a walking/biking path. 

In any case, it would make sense that she would advocate for her own job. I'm assuming she is paid for her work, and I'll concede that I may be wrong. Even so, people got together and did a great thing for one animal, and I can't imagine a reason so logical as to generate any negative/critical response. It's not like I took in a baby raccoon or something. I wouldn't. I would probably call Animal Control. But I refuse to "turn over" a domestic, abandoned, injured cat to someone who refers to it as "turning them over," as if I'm handing them a suspect. I feel in this case, I did a better job with him than most shelters are able to do given their overcrowding and lack of funding. I had funding of my own, and then I had funding from other people, so I committed myself to him for the time it required, and followed through. 

So thank you other people, who didn't fault me for trying to help. No, for actually helping.  Now my friend Jasper is in his new home, happy and healthy. I think I did the right thing. I hope you do, too. Otherwise, I may have to rant once more.

Sigh.

rolling on out.

Today could have been a long, lonely day. Instead, I've got a clean house, a devil's food cake baking in the oven, and a long anticipated cappuccino to sip on at this very moment. I ate Tikka Masala for dinner. A perfect afternoon.

After a week's long bout with whatever bug took up residence in my lungs, I'm finally on the mend. I feel like my broken heart is on the mend, too. Because even though I've met and moved in with one of my best friends to date, my battered psyche had been doing a number on the rest of me. Sometimes it still does.

Today, I am happy in the best way, in that I am also sad, but in the way you feel when you're lamenting something that was good, but isn't really anymore. In the way that you feel you can finally accept that everything has its day, however long or short or in between. I'm trying to avoid falling into a pit of nostalgia, as it really doesn't serve me well. 

Spring forthcoming (maybe), we're planning a trip to NYC, which I know won't be the same as any of my past trips. It can't be. I guess that means it can only be something new, which I hope is as good if not better. If nothing else, I now know better than to go in the heat of its sweaty-ass summer. 

That's not to say I'm not looking forward to summer here. Two things that I hope will stay the same are floating Fridays and weekends with my extended family by the pool. Both of those things are equally pleasant to me, save one thing. Having been gluten-free for a year now, one thing I certainly miss most is Guinness. Or decent beer in general. My new and improved medicated self should probably avoid most alcohol anyway. On the flip side, I'll be healthier and less dehydrated. 

In the meantime, I'm planning to play more music, write more stuff, and just take care of me for a while. It's been far too long since I was able to look at myself, at my life in a positive way. It's been far too long since I took care of me, not physically, but emotionally and mentally. So this week, I bought myself two plants. Because I need something else to love. It's what I do best, and it's what I'm happiest doing. That said, I was so relieved to learn last week that my elder kitty's thyroid levels are under control, and he is without any underlying kidney damage. Clean bill of health for him, even if he does have to take that stinky chicken flavor medicine for the rest of his hopefully very long and contented life. I never thought 13 years ago that I'd have had a friend that is so unquestionably loving and lovable all at the same time. Never mind that he's a bigger bed hog than even me. 

This is where I am, however mundane and boring it may seem. It's the only place I want to be.