Ortho Tri-Cyclone

There are some things you just can’t control. And it looks like birth might be one of them. You see, a few days ago I went to the lady doctor for a routine annual visit. And until this particular day, I’d kinda given up on talking to doctors about my depression. I just get tired of feeling so silly and whiny at the end of the appointment when they tell me there is nothing wrong with me - other than all the crazies in my head.

“Maybe you should see a psychiatrist to find out why you are really depressed. And they can give you the appropriate medication.”

“Ok doc. You’re right. I’ll get right on that,” I say to them. I no longer have the umph to bust out my phone-book-sized pile of medical paperwork that lists years of therapy, both conventional and non, and my countless attempts at varying unsuccessful treatments. But this time, as she looked over my chart, she... *gasp*... asked how I was doing! So after a long discussion about feelings, she promptly decided that my hormones were out of control and in one quick swoop... She took. Me off. The Pill. DUN DUN DUN.....

Was she serious? Could my birth control actually be making me more bananas than I naturally am? Was it possible for this teeny tiny tablet to make me monumentally mad? Or even worse, overwhelmingly sad? Although I’m still doubting that it’s the culprit, I feel like I’ve tried my hand at everything else. So this time, instead of taking drugs for the pain, I’m going attempt a lack-there-of. 

Now my ovaries are probably having a party in there with all their new found freedom. I’m sure they’ve been holding up little egg-shaped picketing signs demanding their right to ovulate for years now and they’ve finally won their battle. Which is terrifying. Because kids are terrifying. What if my ovaries decide to overcompensate to make up for all the years that they’ve been denied access to ovulation and then in turn produce like 20 eggs at a time or something? I could become the first woman to become pregnant with a score of children. What would they even call them? Scoretuplets? I don’t want to find out. 

Now I’ve thought about children a lot lately. I guess it’s because 90 percent of my close friends now have children or are well on their way to that lifestyle that consists of words like “potty” or “hiney” and meals of ketchup and chicken fingers. And although most of it sounds like the place where grown-ups and excitement go to die, I must admit that ALL of my friends that have children appear to be happier now. Now maybe this is just them lying through their Facebook statuses, trying to give a shiny- hiney exterior to the hell that their lives have become, but I think that at least part of their happiness is authentic. 

When I go to the park sometimes, I watch moms with their babies and dads chasing toddlers. They laugh out loud and smile much bigger than the people like me nearby with their dogs that are picking up poop and carrying it around in bags. (Sidenote: Why do we do that again? Gross.) And I know that the parenting people are actually going home to even more poop than the dog people, and I know that my dog doesn’t cry all night long and he’s only puked on me once. BUT - they still seem genuinely happier. 

Maybe it’s because they have something that actually gives them something back now. They have smiles and giggles and that baby smell with them all the time. They have a house full of sweet stuffed animals and new toys that every grown up actually wants to have in their home, but isn’t allowed to have until they give birth. And they have the feeling of being needed combined with an unconditional love that they give and get back. So it makes perfect sense why they might be happier. So maybe I’ve found my solution....

But no. I gotta set my biological clock back to daylight savings time so it can be sunnier a lot longer. Because after much time wondering if babies are the answer to happiness, I’ve decided that they aren’t. Because I know that until you are happy with your own life, you can’t be happy with another. I mean I don’t KNOW this, but it’s my educated hypothesis. So I shouldn’t plan, nor hope for, buying a diaper genie any time soon to fill whatever gaping hole might be in my current existence. Because I would really hate it if my kid came out of the womb with a giant scowl on their face that they inherited from their mother. But with no birth control, is this just one more element of my life that is out of control? 

Maybe if I quit thinking about my life as being this out-of-control tumultuous tornado that just gives me vertigo, and instead think of it more as just something that is out of MY control, it will help me just give it up a little bit. Give it up to the hands of my doctor. Give it up to fate or God or the Universe or whomever really is running the show here. Because I am clearly not. And if I’m supposed to be, I should really be fired. And that way, if babies make their way into this reeling realm of mine, I’ll at least have someone else to blame for it. But who knows, maybe by that point, I will have replaced the missing estrogen and progestin that I’ve been giving myself, with a little self-made happiness hormone instead. And passing on that gene would make me pretty f**ing happy. 

Youngren Love

I know, I know. It's been awhile. But if you are in fact reading this blog, you should know that I struggle with depression. And the irony of it all is that I sometimes can't write because I'm in a frozen block of the big D. And when I don't write, I get more depressed, thus perpetuating the cycle. Which is where I've been for the last little while. Sigh. BUT. I'm back. And although there's been some darkness, there has also been some light. So let's get right to that.

Miranda and Phil Youngren live down the street. They are two of my very favorite people and are who I want to be when I grow up. See, they have this fantastic apartment with these huge floor-to-ceiling windows that stretch the entire length of both their kitchen and living room. Which allows them to look out onto this adorable terrace that Miranda just “flung together.” The apartment didn’t come with this ideal outdoor escape, she just decided it needed one. So she spent an afternoon (yes, just an afternoon) creating a grassy clearing among the tall shrubs that are fragrantly freckled with freesia and some ivy that grows up the building. Then she put some wooden planks on the ground, hammered them together and adorned them with some vintage iron patio furniture that she tenderly repainted. She sits out there and has afternoon tea while she reads or writes. And sometimes she gets distracted and begins to prune all the plants nearby. She hums while doing so and doesn’t know it. I haven’t told her about her little humming habit yet, but maybe I will when I can finally place the song and start singing along. 

The Youngrens are in their sixties. They seem like they’ve been married about 50 of those years, but in reality, it’s only been nine. They met late in life, as both had been too preoccupied with careers to actually fall in love. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t marry when they were young, because they did. It just wasn’t to each other. Their respective relationships just fizzled as they each began to realize that life wasn’t what they’d hoped it would be. It wasn’t the dancing cheek-to-cheek in the kitchen to classic jazz late at night. It wasn’t the sitting next to each other on the couch and being happy as a clam without having to say anything. And it wasn’t the “work hard, so you can play hard” spectacle they had envisioned. It was really just all work. 

And so. They started over. 

They met at a coffee shop. The same coffee shop they each stopped at every morning for years. And when Phil finally decided to sit down, instead of getting his token cup to-go, Miranda was there sitting too. Well one sip led to another and something much more than coffee started brewing. Within months, Phil quit his job as a computer analyst at a major entertainment company and moved down to a less managerial role elsewhere, while Miranda became a freelance writer from home. It was significantly less lucrative than their previous gigs, but seriously less stressful as well. And the benefits that came with it were far better than fancy flex accounts. It was time. Time that wasn’t spent on the clock. 

And now, nine years later, they don’t live in some pretentious Pasadena palace with a pool and areas that are referred to as “quarters.” They have a modest, but incredibly kitschy-cool apartment in West Hollywood, that has a small kitchen stocked with silly souvenirs from their travels. Their living room has built-in bookshelves made of oak, that are imperfectly stacked with a gazillion old classics that at least one of them has read. They walk to the wine bar down the street, ride their bikes to the farmer’s markets in matching straw hats and, as they always have, pop-in to the coffee shop next door for early AM caffeination. 

They might be in their sixties, but at the time in life when most people are pretending they can’t hear their significant other, the Youngrens really are in the kitchen dancing cheek-to-cheek. And when they aren’t, you can usually find Phil sitting in the living room, feet up on the rugged coffee table, nestled into their big oversized sofa with his red wine. Cabernet preferably. Miranda sips hers in the kitchen as she whips up another Italian speciality that has way too much garlic, fresh basil from her garden and a generous portion of mozzarella. And as she prepares it, she sings along to opera music (quite well, I must say) loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. 

I hear her when I walk by in the evenings with my dog. And I can’t help but peer in. Not just into their window, but into their lives. Because I don’t really know the Youngrens. Nor do I know if that’s even their name. It’s just what I’ve decided it is. And their life together is just what I’ve made it, simply crafted by what I’ve witnessed on my sidewalk strolls. So maybe that’s totally creepy. Or it’s just a healthy dose of imagination that gives me something to daydream about during my bouts of sadness with my own life. Ok - I’ll go with creepy. I mean sure, they might really be siblings who are living together because they’re broke, the rest of their family croaked and they were left with nothing else but this apartment, when all they really want is a glorious mansion in Pasadena. 

But the “Youngrens” are still my favorite neighbors. Although, I will say, the Rosen family next door is starting to grow on me...

John Denver was a genius.

After taking a seven day course inside last week, I’m feeling very separated from reality.  (You know, reality TV of course.) But living my home life vicariously through television doesn’t exactly clear the clouds for me either. So with my first weekday “back to the grind” of...well...doing nothing, I figured I needed to do something to get rid of this manic Monday. I needed a quick way to get out of the funk. Something that could make me instantly happy, at least temporarily. And with that thought, one of my favorite men (and quotes) flooded my brain: “Mr. Sunshine on my G**damn shoulder John Denver.” If sunshine made him happy - and that much money - I’d give it a shot.

So without another thought I headed outside, dog in tow, and I walked. And I walked and I walked. Now I know this seems obvious, but to someone living in a world of darkness, the sun really did make things lighter. Not as in weight, but as in it’s shade. It actually brightened things up. I know, I know. Duh. But seriously. The fresh air made it a little easier to breathe, not just through my lungs, but in my head. And the sun has this false way of making things seem happier. Like when birds chirp it sounds cheery, even though they might be squawking at their birdie husbands to take out the nest’s garbage or something. And the cars pass by with their windows down and music turned up, and I know someone has gotta be jamming in there, even if it is to some wretched Fiona Apple song. And the color of the flowers just seem to be a little more vibrant. They actually make you want to stop and smell them. (But don’t worry, I didn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone thinking I was cliche.) 

When I lived in Boston, I often heard many references to seasonal depression. It was cold, but mostly dark, for like seven melancholy months of the year. And it wasn’t just the black that made it so doleful, but the lack of vitamin D from the sun actually prevents you physiologically from being happy. You can drink all the milk you want, but strong bones and pretty teeth won’t get you anywhere when you got nothin’ to stand up and smile about. And so now that I’m in L.A., I took full advantage of this winter season. And I drank in a big ol’ glass of sunshine instead. 

At one point, I stopped in a park and let my dog just roll around. It’s his favorite thing to do. He dive-bombs the grass like it’s a swimming pool in the middle of the desert in August. He writhes and wiggles himself all around, letting it scratch his back for a while, and then when he’s finally satisfied, he freezes. Completely still like a game of tag. Afraid that if he moves, I’ll tug at his leash to make him get up from the lawn of luxury, where he basks in the golden sun. I always giggle to myself when he does this, but this time I thought, if he’s this happy doing it, maybe I will be too. So I laid down beside him. (No - I didn't roll. Sorry.)

We laid for a good hour-and-a-half, and even got ourselves a little tan in the process (ok, just a little less pasty). I tried to just enjoy it for what it was, instead of what it wasn’t. And when I opened my eyes and looked up at the tree branches above me, I was completely taken aback by the strangest thing. Now maybe it was the angle in which I was laying or pure dehydration (you know, like one of those mirages people have in the movies), but for the first time, the tree was three dimensional. Yes. Three dimensional. Like the background of the sky behind it was distant from it. And the leaves stuck out. And some branches were closer to me than others. It was a totally trippy tree. 

Now I don’t know if I’ve just been watching too much of the idiot box or what, but in a few quick blinks, I realized that my world has apparently been flat for a very long time. And as sad as that made me, I also kinda felt like Christopher Columbus for a few minutes, suddenly discovering a whole new world I didn’t know existed. A completely new way of seeing things. Without acid or mushrooms. Mr Denver, you weren’t kidding when you said, “Sunshine almost always makes me high.” And although I’m sure I’ll come down from this trip very soon, the flashbacks will make me really f**king happy.

Meditashunned

Well whaddya know. A whole Oprah show about being happy. Once again it has become very clear, that I am not the only one suffering from this unhappiness plague. And after taking her quiz about what makes people happy, covering everything from jobs to sex to where I live, I came to one conclusion: If I want to be happy, I have to meditate or be Goldie Hawn. And since I’ve tried everything to become the latter with no success, I figured I’d try the former. 

Now I’ve attempted this whole meditation thing before. It’s a crucial aspect of yoga and probably the one thing that challenges me most when I’m on the mat. My significant other, “P”, does this every morning as well and finds great benefit in it, as I know thousands of other people do. But for me, meditating is just mega-frustrating. (And I hadn’t even attempted it at home yet.) But if Oprah says that just ten minutes a day will make me happy, then what the hell. I mean c’mon, if Oprah told me to guzzle gasoline, I’d probably do it. And what’s ten minutes?

I turned off the television, sat down cross-legged on the hardwood floor, and resting my hands on my knees with my thumb and pointer touching, I closed my eyes. I know that meditating is all about the breath. So that’s what I did - focused on the breath. I inhaled deeply through my nose and then out again. In through the nose, and back out. This wasn’t so bad. It was just breathing after all. I felt the air fill my lungs which naturally straightened my back. And as I felt the cool air come in and the hot air escape, I thought about how a buddhist monk once told me to imagine inhaling a white cloud of positive energy and to exhale the big, black puff of evil negativity. I wondered how if the good is inhaled and the bad is exhaled, what inside of us turned the good to bad? What smoke monster did I have lurking within my body? Was it like this corrupt cloud converter that worked like a machine inside Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory? And was it in my chest where the air was processed or was it in that convoluted brain of mine? And why did I go to that buddhist monk in the first place? Shit. I was thinking, not meditating. GO AWAY THOUGHTS!

Back to it. I had to focus! Really big inhale. Now really big exhale. Damnit! Now I’d blown snot out. Should I get up to get a tissue or would I have to start over then? Should I use my sleeve or did real meditators just leave the mucous all over their face? QUIT THINKING AND JUST MEDITATE! Quick sleeve action and I was back to it. Inhale. Exhale. In with the good. Out with the bad. I remembered that a friend told me that she took a meditation workshop and one of the techniques was to imagine pins zig-zagging through the breath in your body, poking holes in it from your head to your toes. So I zigged those pins right through every bit of air, so much so that I thought all my good air (or was it bad air?) must look like swiss cheese by now. Mmmmm....cheeeese. Cheese would be a great post meditative snack. How long did I have? Man it had only been six minutes! Shit! Now my eyes were open looking at the clock! How did that happen? Ugh. 

Ok. Four more minutes. I could do this. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused. In and out. In and out. I rubbed my thumb and fore-finger together to try to bring me into the present moment. I had a wicked hangnail I was dying to tear off, but no. I couldn’t. Not now. That could be my reward when I was finished. That and the cheese. Keep breathing. In and out. In and out. I eventually felt myself loosen up and relax a bit. Did that mean I had done it? Was I finished? How would I check the clock again without cheating and opening my eyes. I decided to count ten more full breaths and then I’d let myself check the clock. I’d begun to slump like Quasimodo, so I straightened up to make sure I did it completely correctly for a good ten breaths. 3. 2. 1. Oh good. I’d gone a whole extra minute. Did that mean I only had to do nine minutes tomorrow?

As I hopped up off the floor, thankful it was over, I wondered how I was supposed to feel. How long did it take for the happy to set in? Just a day? A week? A year? I wished it made me as instantly happy as this cheese did. I contemplated the possibility that the meditation had made me think about the cheese, and so maybe, in a really odd six-degrees-from-Kevin-Bacon-sorta-way, did the meditation actually bring me this little piece of cheesy happiness?? Yeah yeah. It’s a stretch. So I guess I’ll just keep trying this whole deep-breathing, snot-blowing exercise.  And in hopes that I find other happy tips, I’ll keep watching Oprah. And that makes me f**king happy. 

My faux-called-life

Today I realized that I’ve gone an entire day without saying a word. Ok that’s a lie. I said goodbye to my partner (my we’ve-been-together-a-long-ass-time-and-plan-on-continuing-it companion), as he left for work first thing this morning. But not another utterance in the past ten hours. That’s because I seem to have made a career out of my couch. And since no one else has chosen this oh-so-professional path (at least not MY couch), I have no couch coworkers, there’s no sofa socializing, and so the only water-cooler discussions I have are with my dog. If I could teach him to fetch me the water, so I wouldn’t have to go get my own in the first place, I’d give myself a much needed promotion in this very lucrative occupation.

I moved to California a year and a half ago when my partner (we’ll call him “P”) was offered a great job opportunity out here. We were buried in boredom and snow in New England, and so it wasn’t a hard decision to make. We opted for sunshine. The Golden State. The land of food and wine. But apparently, unless you do nothing but consume the food and wine 24 hours a day (which I’ve tried), life isn’t instantly sunny. 

I gave up my job in Boston without too much hesitation, as even though I had had a fair amount of success, I was over it. I looked at California like people in third-world countries look at America. Like I had been starved, battered, chained and left naked in the blistering cold of Massachusetts and now finally, the rescue ship had come to take me away to the free world. The kingdom of opportunity. CALIFORNIA!! Get a job? No problem. I mean I was a writer. And this was L.A. They even have a guild (whatever that is) for folks like me. This would be a piece of cake. Turns out it was a piece of upside down cake, because that’s what it did to my career. 

I’ve freelanced on and off since arriving, but have had nothing stable. And soooo... most of the day I sit. If the depression wasn’t hanging over me like a fat man’s belly roll, I’d use this time as an opportunity to bask in the sunshine like the people in magazines do. I’d spend hours in the gym in an attempt to finally see something on my body that stays still when I push on it. Or maybe I’d pick up one of the countless hobbies I always bitch about not having time for. You know, one of those pretty pastimes your girlfriends from high school that you stalk on Facebook are always doing. Like sewing or crafting or pottery.  But I don’t. Which thus perpetuates the cycle of gloom.

And as someone who battles depression when things are going well, I don’t exactly know what to do with this whole thing people call unemployment. I now have nothing to distract me from the people in my head. No paycheck to spend on the vices I use to get through the big D. No lunch meetings where I schmooze and booze and fake my way through, hee-hawing about how life is grand.  I HAVE NO PRETEND LIFE ANYMORE!  

I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t I supposed to trying to find the positive in all this and not just keeping a blog of bellyaching? Yes. Yes, I am. But what seems like a negative actually became kind of a nice relief for me today. My existence before was just as I stated. It was pretend. It was my faux-life. So even though most of the time, my current three-cushioned “office” seems pretty bleak, it’s much more comfortable than the cube. I might not have said anything today. But I only spoke the truth. And I really think (or am vehemently trying to convince myself) that one day I’ll look back on this period as the era in which I became my true authentic self. Even if I am just a non-crafty, Facebook stalking, upside-down cake eater. And that makes me pretty f**king happy.

If you're not happy and you know it, write a blog.

Have you ever noticed how many books there are about being happy? Well, not really about being happy. More about becoming happy. Discovering your happy. About how all the happy pros got happy. About how to help your happy. How to open your happy. How to shit happy. There are pages and pages of happy.

I know this because I stumbled upon the apparent “happy” section of the bookstore the other day, while browsing the self-help books for all of my issues that I didn’t know I had. What struck me more than anything was that this “happy” department was actually very unhappy. I mean if there are this many reads on the subject, then there must be a lot of really miserable people out there. Why, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that I am one of them.

I’ve been depressed for years, possibly decades. So much so, that I don’t really even know how long. But this year has been particularly dismal. And as I squeak down the curly slide toward hell, I’m beginning to get a little nauseous. So I’m self-medicating with a blog (my healthiest pain-killer to date) about my attempts at my own happiness.

I’ve tried to unearth my happiness in many ways. Particularly in new fields of work. In my most recent endeavor, I went through yoga teacher training. Yogis seem to be really happy people. I mean there’s lots of peace, love, and light spewing out of their mouths, even while perched in pigeon pose longer than the dreadful bird actually lives. So I figured maybe they’d tell me the secret if I pay them enough money, do enough headstands and not fall asleep at the end. Some great things came from my karmic crack at cloud nine, but when it ended, my depression had not.

But looking back, there was one thing that I didn’t do. On the first day, our guru told us that we would have one homework assignment over the next three months that would not be checked, nor graded. It was for our own personal fulfillment. We were to keep a gratitude journal. Each day we were to record something for which we were grateful. Now I dismissed this rather quickly, as I had enough yoga sutras to read and sanskrit to study. I had no time for silly games that people normally play around the Thanksgiving table (well, at least they do on TV - my family is thankful just to get food before it’s gone). But maybe this journal, or lack there of, is the one thing blocked my bliss.

So maybe, keeping with the acknowledgement theme of the gratitude journal, if I chronicle my daily contrived euphoria, I can maneuver my way through the manure and into the real thing. And if not, well at least I did something today besides eat half a loaf of bread and watch “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.” And for that, I am really f**king happy.