I know that #blacklivesmatter and I feel like I'm not pulling my weight and I'm sorry

I understand ‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬ as much as I think anyone with the amount of privilege someone like me has. I really understand it and have never questioned its validity, importance, and, unfortunately, its necessity. That said, I can't watch this stuff. Videos in my feed. Articles. It makes me literally feel sick to my stomach. I made the mistake of watching the execution of Nicholas Berg (the contractor who was killed on video shortly after 9/11 - I can't even bring myself to say or write the word that describes the manner in which he was killed). That was stupid of me. I had no idea how horrific it would be. I thought it would be horrific but it was qualitatively and exponentially more horrific than I could've ever imagined. I had nightmares and flashbacks for quite some time. Then I accidentally watched the video of the young man who was killed a year or two ago. I can't remember his name but he was the 2nd man in Ferguson. I tried googling just now to try and find his name and there were so many video links, so many articles, SO MANY NAMES, that I had to give up. I didn't want to click on any of them. I accidentally saw that video thinking it was an amateur documentary. I continued to think/hope that until the moment the gunfire started. That was also horrific. Watching anyone take anyone else's life feels so unnatural to me, like cannibalism and incest. I screamed so long and hard, a blood-curdling scream that made Erik come running in from the garage to see what was the matter. I sobbed hard, to the point that I couldn't talk, for five minutes? Ten minutes? I don't know. What I do know is that I can't handle this hate, what these killings represent, knowing it is just the tip of the conscious or unconscious iceberg. I have the similar feeling about Trump supporters, knowing that he has significant support, knowing they are walking among us, not knowing who they are, but knowing what they stand for. I can't imagine living my life with this kind of fear and distrust. The closest I get to it is the feeling of being a woman in an unsafe situation but, at least for me, those occur so much less frequently as I've gotten older. In fact, I almost never even felt that while I was working in prison. Ha. Talk about privilege. In hindsight, that was so silly, the inappropriate confidence I had. The fear only ever broke through when I had to walk across one small section of the yard which was out of sight of the gun tower. Every time I did that (several times a day), I would look over my shoulder, take a deep breath, and book it until I got out of the blind spot. I can't begin to imagine feeling that every day. I really can't imagine letting my kids out of my sight knowing that they do or, even worse SHOULD feel that every day.

Anyway, I just can't see this anymore. I do what I can in my own little world. I am vocal (duh), or at least I try to be. I feel like that's the best I can offer. But this trauma... I can't do it. I feel like I'm shirking my responsibility in the situation because so many people live it and I only have to see it but... I can't do it. This is all just so heartbreaking. :-(

 This is a long and rambling post but I feel like I'm bursting with all of this. I hope I have the guts to leave it up because I feel like such a jerk for not being able to handle it, feeling like that makes me part of the problem. *This* is the best I can do today in order to try to be part of the solution and it is pathetic at best and I'm sorry.

Oh, how I wish happiness really was a choice!

If happiness really was a choice, and not just a neurochemical state of being, who the fuck would choose to be unhappy?

The other night I had a horrible night.  I don't even know why.  I think I was overwhelmed with work, not understanding the technology I needed to understand in order to set up for my next class.  The house was a wreck.  Everyone was needing everything from me.  I was in a bad place.  I just went to my room with a couple of beers, cried, and then binge watched all of The Jinx*,  I was just so SAD.  I am often in a mixed state which, to me, means I'm angry and irritable and short-tempered and generally unhappy.  But lately I've been very, very sad.  I just felt horrible.  At one point I left my room to get something and saw that my entire family was watching Jeopardy (my 10, 8, and 6-year olds - WHAT? But whatever).  It made me a million times more sad.  I was missing it.  It was 50 feet away and I was missing it.  I wasn't even busy doing something that needed to be done.  But I couldn't bring myself to be out there with them.  I just couldn't, well... I just couldn't live.

The next night, I was supposed to get together with the girls who are arguably my closest friends.  We have been friends since elementary school.  We've been through it all together.  But I feel a bit of a void has developed between us over the years for several reasons.  First, I've gotten worse and worse, emotionally, and that's what happens because people don't know how to respond to me when I'm obviously out of sorts and they don't know that they even need to respond to me at all when I'm in my good actress frame of mine.  Also, children.  Children wreak havoc on friendships.  We have kids either at different schools or in different grades or with different friends or activities and we have less time to spend with anyone outside of the new kid-centric groups.  In the beginning, there was the need to make a very quick adjustment to each other's parenting styles.  Who knew that a particular friend was down with using dessert as a bribe for eating dinner (I am not)?  Who knew that a particular friend would have easy kids and could be laid back about everything and they would take issue with the fact that I was such a horrible mom because I couldn't handle my soon-to-be diagnosed as mentally ill child.  But finally, I've made a couple of very huge mistakes in recent years of which I am unbelievably ashamed.  Most of my friends don't know.  Some know.  I think one who knows has distanced herself because of it.  But the bottom line of that is that I feel like I carry some huge dark secrets that I can't share.  I know that I'd lose some friends over it and I'd easily say good riddance to those friends.  But I'm afraid of the grapevine and I don't want my kids' peers parents to know.  I dread the day that I have to talk to my kids about it.  So I keep quiet and I feel like there's an elephant in the room.  My psychiatrist and psychologist insist that I made these mistakes while I was acutely manic, undiagnosed and untreated (undertreated for the 2nd extremely less serious episode).  It's easier for me to think I'm an asshole.**

Anyway, back to going out with friends... I barely felt up to it but I dragged myself there.  In the end, I had an okay time.  I'm glad I went though I don't know that I would've regretted not going.  But the relevant part is this:  One of my friends wrote a facebook post earlier that day about how grateful she was for her family and her life and how she was reassessing what mattered and what didn't and was trying to focus on what did.  It is not like her to even post on facebook at all so the girls asked about it.  She said that the night before, she felt like she was in a huge "pit of despair."

She said she felt like her children were the spawn of the devil, that her husband ignores her, that her house is a wreck, that nothing is going right, that she can't even run away because she has no where to go.  She said her sister called and tried to cheer her up to no avail.  Eventually she went to sleep and when she woke up...



SHE WAS HAPPY!!

She said that she realized she had a great life and that she just needed to pull her head out of her ass and realize she had a fucking awesome life.

The end.






I'll say it again:  Wait...What?  It sounds like she and I may have had relatively similar evenings the night before but we have clearly had very different days following that.  I cannot remember a time in my life when I thought, "I realized I have a great life and I shouldn't be so upset."  I would give ANYTHING for that epiphany.  If I thought it would stick, I might give LITERALLY ANYTHING for that epiphany.  It must be nice to just do a little depression drive-by and not hunker down, plant roots, and build a big ol' brick fortress solidly in the center of Miseryville.

It gave me a bit of insight into the people who say that happiness is a choice or that depressed people could just stop focusing on the negative and all would be good.  My stock response to that is 1) how fortunate you to not know how wrong you are and 2) happiness not a choice.  It is a neurobiochemical state of the brain.

Sometimes I try to imagine what life would be like if I were happy or if I hadn't fucked my life up with bad decisions that I've made while not feeling good.  I can hardly imagine it.  I look at childhood photos and I think, "That girl has no idea what shit is coming her way and I don't know how I'd prepare her for it even if there were such a thing as time travel."  I'm sure many people feel like their lives didn't turn out as good as they'd hoped.  But I really feel like mine is a bit of a disaster.  Truly.

I promise to not be such a downer next time.  I have a lot to say about Steven Avery (and his attorneys), Brendan Dassey, and, mostly about the legal system.  I have a lot to say about Michael Peterson & that "investigation."  I have a few things to say about Robert Durst as well.  Oh, and Adnan Syed.  At least my life isn't that type of trainwreck but the thing about depression, especially for a depressed person who has worked in the criminal "justice" system, I have no delusions about my security from getting pulled into such a thing.  They call it "depressed realism."







* Robert Durst is one creepy fuck.  Cah-reepy.  I was about to wax poetic on that but I think I'll write a separate entry about this whole genre.  More later.

** I don't believe I've discussed my theory of the differential diagnosis of "asshole" yet.  I'll get there.

Lather, rinse, repeat

I just started a new entry and I was going to entitle it "Depression is a bitch" but that sounded familiar.  I went back and looked and my most recent post was titled, "Depression, you bitch."  If that doesn't tell you how it goes, I don't know what does.  Whatever I wrote in that last post, copy & paste here.

You've heard it before but I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.  If you've never thought about it in terms of mental illness, please do so.  I'm so motherfucking sick and tired or being so motherfucking sick and tired.  

I've been crying because I made a typo in an email to our payroll people.  My 6-year old just came back in, 30 mins later, and asked if I was feeling better.  I'm feeling better about the goddamn typo that's probably going to cost us $50.  But I'm not feeling better about the fact that my child feels the need to check in on my well-being.  

When will his get better?  Everyone says it gets better.  Everyone is a liar.  It has never gotten better.  I can't imagine it ever getting better.  My poor children.  My poor husband.  Last night he said something about how different my life would've been if I'd married someone with money instead of him.  Is he fucking joking?  If I'd married anyone but him, I'd be alone right now because I can't imagine anyone putting up with my bullshit.  I can't even begin to understand how he does.  He said, "Well, at least you'd have money."  That gave me pause.  Yes, I'd have money.  But I'd still have the same brain and same neurochemistry and I still think I have the best psychiatrist money can buy so.... 

I would just give anything to have anything resembling the life I thought I'd have when I was in high school and college.  Even when I got married.

P.S.  The opposite of happiness is binge watching The Jinx on HBOGO in your bedroom while the rest of your family watches Jeopardy and feeling like there is nothing you can do to change the situation.  This really is the gift that keeps giving.