Farewell for now, Wholehearted House

It's moving day here and I'm up early (but not too early, thankfully).

It's a chilly morning, about 7 degrees outside (and I'm sure inside as well). In a few days, it is forecast to go down to 3 overnight, and eventually, if this winter is anything like last winter, it will be -17. Brrrr! 

I know in my bones that I am making the right decision. I really don't want to be stoking the fire every two to four hours, 24 hours a day for the next six months. I just don't have it in me. 

Downgrade me from Eco-warrior to Eco-Peace Corps Officer, I guess. 

Although actually, that's not entirely fair. While this place is super-sustainable in warm weather (low water and electricity use), the windows are so non-air-tight, I'd be heating the outdoors all winter trying to stay warm - and that is not a very ecologically sound thing to do. And it would also be exhausting. 

The winter accommodation I've found is only about twice as big as my tiny home and it's properly insulated with much better windows. Yes, it wins the efficiency (and ease) contest by a mile. 

I'm going to miss this place. There is a very special energy here. Last night she gave me a farewell gift, this sunset:

And while I don't have the technology I would need to take a picture of the moon and stars last night and this morning, take my word for it that they are glorious!

I'll be back for visits! And although spring is six months away, it will return eventually!

%$#&, I'm Depressed

Wow. Those are not words I thought I would ever say.

During my life, I've been around a lot of people who struggle with depression. I've been in relationships with them in various capacities: lover, partner, friend, family member, colleague, etc. Sometimes the depression was spoken and/or diagnosed, sometimes it was not. Sometimes the depression was masquerading as alcoholism. Sometimes it seemed like it was the other way around (I'm not entirely sure how depression and alcoholism are related, but it seems pretty clear that they are – they have far too much in common to be otherwise. A Google search for "Which comes first, depression or alcoholism", pulls up 1.2 million hits, so I'm not alone in seeing that there are connections).

I have never been very tolerant of other people's depression. It hurt me. It scared me. Especially when I was a child and adolescent. People with depression often behave in ways that I will simply categorize here as "not very nice". Mired in darkness themselves, they do and say things that are, well, dark. In order to protect myself, I adopted a stance of contempt and self-righteousness. I labelled people with depression as "drama queens", "bullies", "weaklings", "a$$holes". I decided that I was better than them and that I would never be like that. 

But wait, %&*#!—

The trouble is that depression is contagious. (A Google search pulls up more than 800,000 hits for "Is Depression Contagious?"). From my first relationship with a depressed person, it was already too late. I could fight it and I could struggle to heal. And I did. I went to therapy for years and I worked out a lot of things. But I had a big block: I would never accept that I experienced depression. Depression was always an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). 

Eventually, there had to be a day of reckoning. In order to heal the wounds that depression has inflicted on me and the depression I've internalized, I would have to accept that depression is in me too.  
 

It happened last week. That's when I realized that I'm currently depressed. This revelation came to me at the start of my yoga class last Monday, when for no apparent reason, I began to cry. (Which reminded me of being in a yoga class years ago in which someone burst out crying and proceeded to spend most of the class having a breakdown in the middle of the room. I remember being in a silent rage about it. Didn't she have the decency to leave the room? Didn't she know that the rest of us were trying to relax? Yes, when I say I approached depression from a place of judgment and intolerance, that the kind of thing I'm talking about.)

I managed not to disrupt class last Monday. I was able to keep my tears quiet and eventually I got them under control. I feel grateful that I managed to not make a scene by leaving or by sobbing all over everybody else's yoga. But bursting into tears in a public place, even if few people noticed, forced me to admit to myself that I've been experiencing a lot of unprovoked crying lately. And a number of other tell-tale signs. 

I'm depressed? What was my first clue?

1. okay, the unprovoked crying thing is a major giveaway
2. excessive irrational irritability
3. a tendency to go back to bed in the middle of the day and stay there for a suspiciously long time
4. difficulty sleeping at night (tossing and turning or waking up at two, three or four a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep)
5. things that used to be pleasurable for me currently are not
6. I started writing my first blog post about depression eight days ago and every day until today, I've tried and failed to hit the "Publish" button. 
7. I feel listless and am having trouble getting motivated to do things (for instance, I'm moving at the end of the week and I haven't really packed anything yet)
8. I have periods of feeling totally numb and/or not present (aka: zombie mode) 
9. random pain: tummy aches, ear aches, headaches
10. feeling removed from my normal appreciation of the beauty of the world (For instance, I drove past the LaHave River valley last night as the sun was setting and it was gloriously wrapped in autumn colours. Normally, such a sight would fill me with wonder and awe. Last night, I thought, "That's pretty" and I didn't feel anything.)
11. an inability to suppress or deny the dark thoughts that I used to be able to suppress and deny
12. I hear things coming out of my mouth that I wasn't thinking and don't mean (or wasn't consciously thinking and wish I didn't mean)
13. the future feels like something to hide or run away from, not something to make plans for or embrace
14. the dirty laundry is shin deep and I don't want to do anything about it
15. I can smell something rotting in my fridge and I'm not the least bit interested in looking for it and throwing it out
16. I can smell something rotting in my car and I'm not the least bit interested in looking for it and throwing it out (I mean, seriously, my car has fruit flies and it looks like the only thing that's going to change that is a good hard frost)

Saturday was our last West Dublin Community Market of 2014 and not one, but two people made a point of saying to me (with kindness and concern) that they were glad to see me looking better – that at the last market two weeks ago they had been worried about me. And you know what – I'm not even really able to remember that market two weeks ago. Obviously, I was in zombie mode and didn't even know it. But it was apparent to others.

 

I know I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'll take it as a good sign that two smart and perceptive people think I'm "looking better" than I was two weeks ago. And my ability to push the "Publish" button seems to be returning, so I take that as a good sign, too. 

 

What now?

I take hope from simply being aware of what's going on. Given that I've been refusing to admit to any kind of depression for most of my life, I'm a bit surprised at how quickly I've been able to accept what's happening now. Obviously, something in me has grown and softened. I'm not angry at myself for being depressed. I'm feeling humbled, but not humiliated. I'm making some plans for how I'm going to work this through. And I know I have resources to turn to if those plans aren't enough.

 

I expect I'll have a lot of things to say about this experience. There will be more blog posts. Even if it takes me a while to hit the "Publish" button, I'll get them up here eventually. 

 

NOTE: by a happy(?) coincidence, Canadian singer-songwriter Amelia Curran distributed a wonderful video about depression last week. As I'm struggling to make sense of where I'm at, I have found it to be good company. It points out that 100% of Canadians are affected by the impacts of mental illness through themselves, a family member or loved one. Given that all of us have some experience with depression, it's kind of shocking that we don't often talk about it and its impacts. I am lucky to have a few dear family members and friends with whom I can talk and/or exchange letters about depression. I didn't feel much like talking this past week, though, and this video was a wonderful, safe-feeling way to be reminded that I am not alone. I encourage you to watch Amelia Curran's video at the thisvideo.ca website (or simply click play below). 

Beginnings and Endings

I'm currently taking Firefly Creative Writing's online Coming Home to Writing course – for the second time. It's the kind of course that I could take an infinite number of times and ​I think I would ​get something more out of it each time.

In last week's class, our facilitator, Chris Kay Fraser, distributed her awesome Life C​ycle of Creative Projects. We discussed it as a class and ​I found it very interesting to see the many similar and different takes people have on the process. (If you're interested in exploring this yourself, I encourage you to take the class!)
​ ​
As a second-timer, I've seen the Life C​ycle before, but this time through, It led me ​in​to an epiphany about my process and about myself.

I hate beginnings and endings

The stuff in the middle is all cool. I love all the ideas and chaos and the processes of writing and editing. But I hate the fallow stage before a project and I hate the process of finishing a project and rendering it up to the world.

This holds true in my life as well. I love living my life and I don't mind tweaking things here and there, but starting and ending – jobs, relationships, homes – makes me feel crazy. Just ask anyone I've ever dated if the first two weeks were not stupidly insane and insanely stupid? So much so that many people have opted out after the first date or two​. (Or I have run like hell – anything to escape feeling so awkward).

Once I get over that initial ​hump, I don't do too badly, but getting in​to a relationship is hard – it stirs up so many difficult emotions.

And endings, well, I tend to drag those out – desperately postponing inevitable changes.

Given my life experiences, these tendencies make sense. My infancy was crappy, much of it spent in the hospital. Not a pleasant beginning. The first major ending I experienced was the break-up of my parents' marriage and the upheaval of ​our family when I was 7​.​ Also not fun.

So, my initial experiences with beginnings and endings were difficult. I was too young to make any sense of them, so instead I developed other strategies: a tendency to try to​ JUMP over beginnings and to DRAG out endings. My aversion to major transitions has led me to make some poor life decisions when my avoidance of beginnings or endings overruled my desire for what I wanted or muffled my understanding of what was right for me.

This feels like a challenging pattern to try to change.

Cultivating love and grace in beginnings and endings

I saw this meme on Facebook this week:*​

From https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaysha/9641391266/
​*Please note that according to fakebuddhaquotes.com,
this quote was not actually spoken by Buddha – it is adapted
from Jack Kornfield’s Buddha’s Little Instruction Book.​

It strikes me that I live pretty gently as long as I'm in the middle of things. But in beginnings, I fail to love (embrace, welcome) and during endings, I fail to have grace (I clutch, I balk).​

So here is work for me to do – learn how to relax into beginnings and endings. To cultivate more love and more grace. There are more beginnings coming (hopefully) and definitely more endings, (including the ​BIG ending: Death).

​It's never too soon or too late to work for internal changes that cultivate greater peace and open up more opportunities.

Debt Reduction: Please Stop Trying to Loan Me More Money!

So remember when I posted a few weeks ago about my debt situation? Well, I filled in the paperwork to have the limit on my line of credit reduced by $5,000 and instead, the bank increased it by $10,000. So now I have access to $15,000 that I don't want. I wanted my temptations reduced.

I long to buy a 'round the world ticket and then declare bankruptcy.

I am a responsible adult. I am a responsible adult. I am a responsible adult.

Farewell to the beach

It's starting to sink in that I am moving away from the beach in 18 days.

I'm going to be moving 50 minutes away. Sure, I'll still be only five minutes away from the ocean, but it's rocky coast where I'm going, so I'll be cut off from the long, solitary, sandy walks that I've come to love.

I've decided that as long as it is not pouring rain, I'm going to go for a walk on the beach every day until I move.

On today's walk, I took this photo:

This is what I love about the ocean and the beach – the reminder that things are impermanent and that we are all insignificant in the face of the inevitability of vast forces that sit outside of our control. All of us are just specks: you, me, Janna (obviously)  and even Frank. Eventually, the tide rises high enough to wipe all traces of us from this earth.

All the dramas and upsets of daily life, all of the broken hearts and disappointments, all of the moments of joy and elation, they are all easily re-absorbed into the ocean that is time, life, the VERSE (Very Enormous Random Swirl of Events).

I find that comforting, when I can remember it. And the beach helps me to remember. I will miss it.

Body Wisdom Part 3: Getting hurt and getting healed

It's been a doozy of a week. 

Over the weekend, I noticed my cat, Salinger, was acting strangely. He was cranky and hissing and growling, which is very unlike his usual behaviour. Earlier in the day, I had spotted the neighbour cat (Sal's nemesis) in our home scoffing Sal's food and I put his mood down to that. But on Monday, it was obvious that Sal was in pain, sick, listless and favouring his left rear foot.

I booked the first available appointment at my vet clinic (for the early afternoon) and spent the morning watching Sal and worrying. Once at the vet I learned that Sal had a high fever and then discovered that he had a massive abscessed cat bite under his left rear leg. The vet clinic I go to is wonderful. Sal was swiftly sedated, injected with an antibiotic and had his abscess lanced. I paid the bill and Sal was released into my care: woozy and limp. 

He's spent the days since convalescing: antibiotics twice a day, warm compresses as often as he'll let me. And he's been healing day by day. Today he's much improved - walking without a limp and able to hop up easily on the chair or bed. From now on he'll just be trying to break out of the house. But I want to keep him in for at least another day, maybe two. And so we're hanging out in our tiny home - trying to have some fun and some cuddles and spend this time well until he's mended enough to go back out into the big, bad world. 

My experiences with Sal this week have got me thinking about hurts and recovery for myself as well. 

Like Salinger, I have a naturally exuberant, gregarious personality. I love my life and I love being out in the world. But lately, I've been cranky and down-hearted. And for exactly the same reason as Salinger - I got hurt. And it got infected. 

I sought out the lancing, but I haven't been taking my antibiotics and I haven't been keeping myself safe indoors and scratching myself behind the ears and telling myself that I am a good Alex.

Salinger's terrible week has taught me a lesson. To slow down, to be kinder to myself, to keep myself safe until I'm healed.

His hissing and growling over the weekend has made me look at my own tendency to hiss and growl, lately. It is a natural reaction to become defensive and hostile when one is hurt. Animal Behaviour 101.

I can see where this path could lead if I don't take care to find healing for myself soon. I don't want to become bitter and harsh just because I got hurt. Getting hurt was not my choice, but what I decide to do about it is. 

So, I've decided that this is going to be the winter of naps in sunbeams and healthy food. Of jigsaw puzzles and meditation and yoga. Of staying in and journaling and relaxing. I'm going to hang out and lick my wounds until they heal. Until I feel like myself again. And I'll be in good company with my little, orange buddy.

Theatre Review: It Is Solved By Walking

SPOILER ALERT! This review reveals important information about the plot of this play. If you are in Newfoundland, you have the opportunity to see this play at the LSPU from October 22–26, 2014. I recommend you go see the play, rather than read my thoughts about it.

I went to see a play yesterday at Neptune Theatre: It is Solved by Walking, written by Catherine Banks, performed by Ruth Lawrence and Hugh Thompson and directed by Mary Vingoe.

The play makes use of Wallace Stevens' poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird as a structure for the play which explores art, sex, ambition and the politics of the relationship between the protagonist, Margaret and her (now dead) husband, John.

The play essentially looks at the way sex and love intersect with the work of being a creator (in this case, a poet and poetry scholar) and a woman.

The story of Margaret and John's relationship and of Margaret's "twice deferred, never defended" doctoral thesis is teased out in a conversation between Margaret and Wallace Stevens, who appears here as her imaginary friend, scrutineer, mentor and tormentor.

The questions the play raises are many: Did Margaret's husband sabotage her career? Did she use him as a convenient excuse to not do the work of her thesis and her poetry writing? Was her need to be loved, and to show her husband that she loved him, greater than her need to do her work? What happened to the ambition and confidence she felt as a young woman? Did the inequality that grew in the face of her husband's status of "Doctor" silence her? Did the glory of her husband's rise to Dean of Graduate Studies eclipse her? What role was played by the sexist external culture at play in their lives? What by the quality of the relationship that existed between Margaret and John? And what by the uneasy relationship between Margaret's body and her mind – her sexual longings, her pregnancies, her miscarriage, her abortion? Or the complications of her pregnancies in her fundamentally insecure relationship with her husband (symbolized by her realization that "If I have this baby, he is going to leave me. If I don't have this baby – he is going to leave me.") What of the inevitable breakdown of their marriage and her husband's affair? And years later, his death in a brutal car crash?

Toward the end of the play, Margaret takes the props we have seen in use during the play: several books of poetry, a roll of paper representing her husband's PhD, the red silk shawl he gave to her early in their relationship (when they were in love and in the height of their lust for one another), a crumpled sheet representing the last, hateful time that she and her husband had sex and the bowl of oranges she had always kept in her bedroom in reference to Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning: "complacencies of the peignoir, and late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair". She rolls the bowl of oranges on to the floor – a representation of the elemental force of chaos, to my mind – and then decribes the "Universe of Margaret", carefully stepping over each item and leading Wallace Stevens in her wake. She is making sense of her path, her twisty, winding, complicated path.

Throughout the play, Wallace Stevens calls on Margaret to pay attention to the "sensations". To forget the words of "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", to forget the thoughts and memories about John and her analysis of their relationship (likening that to running electrical current through a dead frog – my favourite line in the show; I wish I could remember it word-for-word). Wallace Stevens calls Margaret to get to the reality of things, to the sensations, to her actual experience of being alive. 

Does it matter how she went astray or why? Or even if she went astray at all? At the end of the play, Margaret composes a couple of lines of poetry with which she feels somewhat satisfied. For me, this is where we have been headed all along: through the grief and the betrayal, through the lust and pleasure, back to the calling that Margaret clearly feels, though she has struggled with it and against it for most of her life: the call to create, to put one word after another in the right order until she has expressed something true, something that satisfies her.

And it is something that satisfies Wallace Stevens, too. He has spent much of the play perched at a height, his writing desk and chair at the top of a stepladder about 12 feet about the rest of the set. Sometimes, he has come down to wrangle and grapple with Margaret, to take a role in the unfolding drama of her narrative. Some of these scenes felt to me like balletic pas de deux (kudos to Alexis Milligan for the play's choreography). At the very end of the play, Wallace descends and Margaret ascends to write her lines. Perhaps it was Wallace Stevens she needed to work things out with, more than her husband. Perhaps it was the inner critic, the unreachable standard, that she needed to lay to rest and with whom she needed to make her peace. We leave her writing. As it should be.

To my mind and heart, this was a fascinating play and an excellent production of it. 

If you are interested in reading the play, you can buy a copy of it here. Or ask for it at your local library.

There is something in the autumn... Let's call it wisdom

A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

–Bliss Carman

This is one of the many poems that I associate with my grandmother. She would recite it often in the fall and to this day, when the asters are out in full force along the sides of the road in Nova Scotia, fragments of this poem run through my head anytime I go anywhere.

I am missing my grandmother quite a lot lately. A friend posted this link on Facebook this week, a video interview about how to design a good life for oneself. In it Debbie Millman talks about how most of her design contemporaries feel like frauds who are always striving to do work of which they can feel proud. She says the only designers she's spoken with who don't seem to feel that way are mentors of hers who are in their 80s. They seem to know who they are and to feel confident and competent in their work, their choices, their lives.

In the wake of the turmoil and upset of the past year, I suppose I'm feeling a longing for the equanimity of age. I had the great benefit of my grandmother's company into her late 90s, and she could always be counted on for perspective and wisdom (along with a pot of tea and a hand of cards). I know if Nana were here she would reassure me that next year will be better than this year. Or if not next year, the year after. Having lived through many challenges herself, I know what she would say of my recent struggles with heartbreak and with peri-menopausal symptoms: "The wounds we get leave scars that we can see for the rest of our lives, but after a while, they don't hurt anymore. Don't pick at it – it will heal faster."

She said that to me more than once while she was alive. I didn't always agree with her: at times in my life I've needed to pick the scabs off things and let them bleed clean. But this time, I think her words are right on the money – I need to stop picking over my hurts and stop dwelling on feeling bad. There is nothing I can do to change what has happened. And while I do feel bad right now, I think I'll feel better faster if I don't indulge those feelings. What is done is done and the best thing I can do is accept it and let it go.

I am very grateful that I listened to my Nana while she was alive.

I am grateful I stored her wisdom in my heart against the current need, since she isn't here to tell me herself:

It will be better in time.

Don't pick at it.

Thanks, Nana.

Debt: Getting in and getting out

A bunch of years ago, I worked for an IT department at one of the big five Canadian banks. It was probably the worst job I have ever had and I lasted about eight months.

As soon as I got there, they explained to me about the awesome perks of staff banking – no fees and the offer of a huge, unsecured line of credit at the bank's prime interest rate. I was making more money than I had ever made before (or have ever made since) and like a fool, I accepted their offer of the giant line of credit. 

Falling in, Crawling out

I racked that line of credit up about halfway - paid it off - and then racked it right up to the hilt. The money went to tuition when I was in school in Toronto, it went to rent, taxes, emergencies, meals out, trips and all kinds of "wotthehell" moments. 

I can be quite undisciplined about money. I'm in good health, I see many working years ahead of me and I have no dependents or other pressing responsibilities. This encourages me to throw my money around - I love feeling open-handed and relaxed about money. I come by this honestly, since my family is full of people who fit the description: "last of the big-time spenders". We are generous to a fault. This is something I rather like about us. It's really fun to live that way. But when the money behind that lifestyle is borrowed money, there's a dark side.

After I quit that job at the bank, the interest started to climb. They put it up and up, and with the balance climbing as well, it all got more and more painful. Eventually, it has come to feel like the proverbial albatross. 

In over my head

I'm not going to reveal the shocking amount that I owe, but suffice it to say that I've spoken to many telephone bankers over the years who are simply amazed (and probably appalled) when they realize that my line of credit is not secured against a house or other asset.

The bank bet only on my honesty and sense of responsibility when they loaned me that money. And it was a good bet. I borrowed that money in full, adult knowledge of what I was doing and I'm committed to paying it back. I got myself in and I'm going to get myself out again.

This time for keeps. 

This year, I made a plan to reduce my debt by 5,000 bucks every year until it is gone. And to protect myself against my own profligacy, I am going to have the bank reduce the limit on my line of credit by that amount each year. Hilariously, I have to fill in paperwork to ASK the bank (perhaps BEG would be a more appropriate word) to reduce the limit. Please don't let me borrow any more money from you. PLEASE!

I wasn't sure I was going to be able to fulfill my goal this year. As usual, I've made some less-than-responsible decisions with my money lately. But, work and decreased living expenses, in combination with a surprise gift from one of my generous family members, has put me in a position to meet my goal. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment at the bank to fill in the paperwork that will relinquish five grand of borrowing power. I'm painfully aware that that could be a massive trip or a down payment on a small Nova Scotian house. However, I'm also aware that I'm paying about half that amount in interest each year for the privilege of being so far in the hole.

Here's to debt freedom, folks! Five grand at a time!

How's your household debt situation? Any plans or resolutions to get out of the hole? Feel welcome to share your thoughts in the comments.