Mama Bean was driven to poetry (!)

On this windy morning
this Arctic wind
pierces your breath
drives out any thought
but the next immediate task
get inside! then fold
face the very centre of
what's real
(the need for warmth)
while anything else
you thought real
is blown away

On this grey morning
when the sky pulls down
like a helmet
leaving a band of pale light
just an inch over the horizon
life condensed again
just a ribbon
clinging to the road and trees
over there a patch of
vaguely brighter haze
where the sun
may be rising
but why would it
bother

On this morning which,
in short
(too late, too late)
insists on being melancholy

give in

let yourself fold down
like a helmet
against the wind
and give in to
that broken place

or if you must unfold
look up at that grey
look! it is empty
and waiting
to be painted
with your memories
or your dreams about
memory

but curling inside
one could simply
carry that grey sky
like a swath of cotton
and mist
carry it pressed to the wound

the wind has polished you
cleaned the surface
who would know
what you painted
there
and held
(so tight)

To this day, Mama Bean balances between pain and beauty

In the first six months of 2012, I lost 30 pounds. I changed my eating habits, following the old Weight Watchers program; it helped that Papa Bean did it, too. It helped to have online support from a group of close friends. I increased my activity, started the Couch to 5K program, got to week 7 of that program, got to the point where I could run 20 minutes in a row.

I lost 30 pounds. Enough for people to notice. Friends, patients.

Today, I have gained almost every single pound back.

-

In the summer, I got depressed. Hard. I said I didn't really have a reason, but that wasn't really true, and with eight months of hard-fought self insight, let's talk reasons. 

For one thing, a guy harassed me while I was running, and I couldn't see past my fear of him to do anything but run away, and that made me feel weak - makes me feel weak to this day. I keep rehearsing the should have and could haves - and as I perform this mental dress rehearsal, I am enraged by my own helplessness; I only rehearse because I am so sure this will happen again. This could always happen again. Or, even worse, it will happen to my daughter. And I don't know how to fix that. And so I feel weak.

But the bigger thing is this; my parents came to visit, and dismissed my weight loss in the same breath they celebrated my husband's. Worse than just ignored it or didn't notice - it was nice that I'd finally lost something. But it wasn't anything worth noting. It wasn't something to celebrate. It certainly wasn't enough.

When I came in from a satisfying, amazing, personal best jog of 25 fucking minutes straight, my dad said, with the loveliest shade of derision, "Back already? Just a short run then, eh?" And to tell you my inner self crumpled with hopelessness and unlovedness and despair does little to describe what truly happened in my core.

I was never bullied by people at school, despite being socially awkward, a bit of a nerdy pariah. But in my own home, in the place where I should have been safest, from the person whose words spoke my identity to me from the time I was born, I have always been told that I am fat. 

I have always been told that I need to eat less and exercise more, I need to provide a healthy body for my great mind, I need to take up less space and look nicer. None of these messages on their face seem all that bad, they don't sound wrong. But to the mind of a young girl, bombarded by cultural messages that nothing about her matters but her beauty, bombarded by conflicting messages that her brain could take her anywhere (but only in the right body), to the mind of that little girl, they hurt. Anyone with an ounce of fucking sense would know they hurt. 

Yet when I had the courage to tearfully and desperately express my pain, I was told they were messages of love. Messages of caring. Messages of wanting what was best for me. Never mind that what was fucking best for me, what is best for everyone is knowing they are Loved without question, Accepted without caveat, completely Worthy and Enough, no ifs/ands/buts. What is best for everyone is knowing they are loved without being told to lose a few (or more.)

To this day, I cannot parse the reasons why I both refuse to lose weight yet desperately want to. I cannot explain why I both love my life but hate my self. To this day, I want to prove They Were Wrong by staying just as I am. Because to change, to get skinny, to be more of what I "should" be and less of what I already am, would be like an admission of guilt. An admission that I am not good enough, and that they were right. An affirmation that what really matters about me, what really holds the most value, is a fucking number on a stupid, meaningless, scale. A measure of gravity.

As if my life amounts to nothing more.

Yet every day, I wake up to two gorgeous little faces who prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life amounts to so. much. more.

I am not the only person with a story like this. That video up there has been viewed millions of times. Dozens of friends shared it on my facebook. I'm not holding this up to win some Pain Olympics, like I deserve a Gold Medal. There is no Pain Olympics, people! Everyone's pain is valid, and it is not your place or mine to place it into perspective for them. So don't tell me what I should be grateful for. Don't tell me I don't get a voice on this. 

Listen, my story will not end in weakness. My father recently apologized for some of his comments over the summer, and though it's tough to look at that through the lens of a lifetime of pain without a touch of cynicism, it was a step in the right direction, and certainly quite healing. Though I cannot parse it, I will change my life however the hell I want, for the best reasons I can muster, while ignoring anyone else's reasons as best as I can muster, also. I'm on the path to strength, of many kinds, because I have to be. I have to be a better Me to Myself. I have to be a better parent for my kids. And I have to make a better world for them and me to live in. 

"we are graduating members from the class of

fuck off we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty." 

-Shane Koyczan

Mama Bean is going to do one thing at a time

I have had the most fantastic New Year! And it's for the nerdiest reason: I've been cleaning. Well, reorganizing. purging. fixing my Space. It is so amazing! There are boxes and boxes of crap leaving my house to the garbage bin and the recycling bin and the giveaway bin. We have RUN OUT of boxes, people.

What prompted this? Well, Bean has been alone on the upper floor, but Sprout's grandparents bought her a bed that's been waiting in the second bedroom up there, along with boxes and dressers and a wardrobe full of clothes and toys and crap. We decided Sprout's ready for her big girl bed, which means turning the All Purpose Dumping Ground into a Real Bedroom. Ha! So where did we start? Oh, the basement. Of course. 

Stuff Management, at least in my house, is like one of those grid puzzles where you slide the squares around until they line up into a big picture - you can't move one thing into the place it belongs until you move that thing over there which means moving that thing down here which means... you get the idea.

Some stuff from Sprout's new-room went to Bean's room, and then his stuff came into our closet and basement. The other stuff from her new-room went into the closet of her old-room. The stuff from that closet came downstairs to the cold room. The stuff in the cold room was given away or redistributed in other parts of the basement. Those parts were likewise cleared out. My desk was cleaned off, and the filing cabinet was reorganized. Sprout's old-room is going to become the Guest Room, so we shuffled bookshelves and hutches, and tomorrow we'll take the bed up from the basement. Every day, I'm piling up more stuff to get out of my house and it feels so freaking cathartic, I want to dance with glee every time I walk by it - or put more stuff on it!!

Anyway, you're on the internet so you don't care what my house looks like, and if you know me in real life, you'll see it (in person or pictures on facebook) soon enough.

This post, surprisingly, is about Resolutions. I'm not making any this year, in the formal sense. I spent 8 (or more) months of 2012 in a deep fucking pit of depression - all I want for this year is to not do that again. I've taken some of the right steps, and continuing on those paths have nothing to do with January 1st, y'know? But I like the idea of giving the year a theme or OneWord (as is the bloggosphere trend) and I need a better Theme than Not-Depressed :P 

So my theme or focus is going to be One Thing At A Time (what's OneWord that will sum that up? Any ideas?) By which I mean, I can't Fix My Life all at the same time. It's like this whole Sprout's Room Project - we had to do each step one at a time, in the right order, while still feeding and clothing ourselves and our children. If we'd done too many steps all at once or not in the right order, it would have been total chaos. As it was, things definitely got Worse around here before they got Better, and there's still a pile of fifty or so books sitting in my living room for donation.

I read something last Fall that K directed me to, can't remember the link of course, but it essentially said, in a very encouraging and affirming way, that ya can't have it all. I can't have it all - at least not right away. I can't have the clean house and the organized meal plans and the orderly laundry and the well-adjusted well-behaved children and the happy spouse and the close walk with Jesus and the sassy girlfriends and the smoking sexy body and the happy peaceful spirit all at once. Not all right away.

But that doesn't mean I can't have any of it. It means I can only work on one thing, for a bit, until I get the hang of it, while still feeding and clothing ourselves and our children, so that it's not total chaos, even if some things get worse before they get better. And when (When!) they get better, I move on to the next thing. 

This dovetails nicely with a book/method I've been trying (inconsistently) to help normalize my emotional control; it's called Calming the Emotional Storm for anyone curious. The central tool is Mindfulness, as in keeping your mind in the moment, with the task, on the one thing you are doing right now and enjoying it for whatever it is. Turns out, I pretty much blow goats at mindfulness. And to be honest, with young kids around, complete mindfulness is almost impossible, but I keep trying. And it is helping. I can feel my emotional resources draining from my body when my brain is getting to far ahead (or in the past) of itself, and I feel myself get calm when I bring my head back into the present. Just this one thing, MB, cook the dinner. Just this one thing, read Bean a book. Just this one thing, fold this one load of clothes. Just this one thing, let your husband hold you. Just this one thing...

And then on a bigger scale. Reorganize the house. Not done yet. So. I don't know what the next thing is and I'm not thinking about it. Because I can only do One Thing At A Time.

So it's not like I'm going to do some kind of regular update thingy here about how my One Thing Project is going, but I hope it will be apparent that things are getting better and that 2013 isn't sucking as hard as 2012 if only by the fact that my posts won't be so sad sack all the time ;) Let me know if you have a resolution or OneWord or even a One Thing that I can support you with this year.

Mama Bean's going on a lion hunt (But she's not afraid...)

"What's going on; why are you depressed?"

It's not that there's no answer. It's just that it's... a long one. And not terribly clear to myself, so I certainly can't articulate it. I know my triggers, I know my weaknesses. I know what proximity to which persons created the right soup for the wrong mojo. So. If I don't give a neat, two-sentence answer, please don't hold it against me.

What pains me is that, naturally, I have no obvious reason to be depressed. My life is fucking fantastic, for real. I have an amazing husband, beautiful children, great job. My day to day, while exhausting, is plenty fulfilling for any normal North American - all my problems are firstworldproblems. I know.

And I suppose what pains then is the sense that I must somehow legitimize being sad. Like, behind the question all I hear is criticism: "What do you have to be sad about? Who do you think you are, being depressed? You can't really be depressed. I know people who've been depressed, and you don't seem like them." I know that's not really there (I mean, it's all friends who are asking, people who care enough to ask, so obviously, that's not there. My friends wouldn't require me to justify my mental health. Ostensibly.) But that doesn't mean an unhealthy mind won't hear it.

In many ways, there is no (word) reason (but a biological one.) Like, this is why we have serotonin fixers, this is why there are valid, beautiful chemical solutions. (There are other, less valid but still beautiful chemical solutions, but I will not be pursuing them lol.) I don't know why it happened this year, this summer, this way. It could have been any year, any season, any way. And that adds yet another layer of frustration - why did it have to be this year, this summer, this way?

I understand the drive to find a reason. I am a healthcare provider; every workday I face twenty or so people who want me to tell them why they hurt, and I don't always know. I often don't know. And that's hard (for all of us) because, without a Name, it feels harder to Fix. It's harder to find the solution, to strategize the escape route, to prepare the defenses, to know how to prevent it. If I can't even name it (wrap it up in a box with a pretty bow, this is The Why) then I can't kill it.

So here is one of the twisted mind holes of depression. I don't know why I'm depressed - Sheesh I can't even explain it - Oh God I have no right to be depressed what is wrong with me - This is so discouraging - I am so depressed - Sheesh I can't even explain it - etc.

But. I feel like I've done enough loops, I've circled close enough to the drain, that I can claim it. As in, I don't feel the need to prove, and I'm not interested in its legitimacy. This is mine, and imma wrestle it. I don't want to turn away from the pain; I am making myself go through it. Because I think I have missed a lesson on this before, and I just have to find it on the other side somehow.

I feel like this is why it's been so emotional, why there are so many tears, why there's so much profanity and anger and angst. Soooo much anger, sooooo much profanity. Much. Ask PB. It makes me really awful to be around (and that sets up another twisted mind hole, trust.) (I'm sorry, in advance, that I'm so awful to be around. It's a selfish process. I'm sorry to be selfish.) (See? Mind hole.) (But I am sorry.)

And this method still will not give me The Why, and I am comfortable with this. It will not tell me why it was this year, this summer, this way. And it won't necessarily help me prevent it from happening again. It will just spit me into After. And I have to have faith the lessons will make it easier for the next time, next season, next way. 

I have to think the thoughts I think towards my patients at myself, "Let's move on. Let's just focus on getting better. You have all the right tools, just use them" and what I say out loud "You're doing all the right stuff. It just takes time."

Love yourselves, friends, for whatever lions you're hunting. My deepest gratitude if you're gonna come hunting with me. Can't go over it, can't go under it, absolutely cannot go around it. Have to go through it.

Mama Bean wishes this time did not involve so much crying

(image by Katerina Bodrunova via twenty-two words)

The word "sad" does not even begin to describe. It is a disservice to the millions who suffer from it, let alone my own emotions, to call it sadness. Even depression cannot begin to capture. And I am so tired of it. I am so tired of trying to romanticize it, as though I enjoy this separated reality. Enjoy sitting on my couch, the mechnical buzz of fridge and dehumidifier, furnace and fish tank, so totally incongruent with the moving, bright, active world I can see outside. The wind blowing the trees, the cars scaling the hill, the people walking to school. The separation is constant; even when I walk out into that wind, scale that same hill to teach my class in a few minutes, there will still be the buzz of my mind, the incessant swirl of insecurities, the emptiness of my heart. -Deus Ex Maior Quam Is

Because this is not my first (nor second) time at the rodeo, I can indulge in (too much) analysis - compare, contrast. What's the same and familiar, because depression is an old friend at this point. What's the same but I'd forgotten, or has been amplified/changed. What's brand new...

What's the same is the separation this quote speaks of - like I'm underwater looking out through the tank walls, or being muffled under a layer of wool that makes things both dull and too bright to keep looking at (and so I turn away, into the soft numbness.) I think this is when I finally acknowledged, shit I've been bitten again, when I felt that heavy hopelessness settle in - it is very much like a buzz or drone in my, I dunno, sure why not be melodramatic? It's my blog - a drone in my very soul.

What I'd forgotten is how frustrating it is. You'd think the frustration of it would help a person, say, try to avoid this phenomenon altogether, but then, it's not that easy, is it? I forgot that, in so many ways, I am still so maddeningly functional - every day still happens, stuff still gets done, life still happens. It just happens at a distance. This is amplified by the fact I'm no longer a student - that now I absolutely must remain competent and functional for the sake of my patients, my staff, my family. And it doubles the frustration, the grief, when I somehow can't keep it up - because I don't fail at work, it's always my family that bears the brunt of my failures.

I didn't remember how much it feels like being masked, and how it feels safer to be ignored, but also hurtful to be unseen - ambivalence, I forgot the ambivalence. Hence, the dancing picture. Some days I'm happier (?) no...relieved, relieved to just give myself over, to be comforted by my old friend - because it is comforting, to just fall into seclusion and malaise. But at the same time, I know it's wrong and I shouldn't want it, and I'm tired of it, and want out. Slow underwater tortured tango.

The brand new? This time around is markedly emotional. I think previously I have just fallen into apathy and inertia. This time, I am volatile. There is a simmering anger, I feel like a volcano, like I have fucking Emotional Magma inside me under the pressure of momwifework (not always in that order) that periodically erupts. In shakes, or yelling, or slamming and throwing things, and (I don't know why this is the most disturbing one to me) sobbing uncontrollably. It is exhausting.  I recently had two friends on separate occasions remark on my patience as a parent, and I felt like such a fraud - because what looks like calm is just repression, just holding it in, until later, when it can all come out in a disgusting mess of noise and fluids.

I feel like digging down into this feelingsness is the way out, but, like, I don't want to. Even this writing process is ambivalent - I enjoy doing it, it feels like relief, but I am terrified, of receiving either pity or rejection/judgment, and also annoyed that it keeps me from my RSS, and also exhausted by it. But I'm just going to keep doing it, and keep hitting publish, because...because. This is a safe place of my own creation, and it is so vast and uncontrollable, yet I feel controlled here, in a way that my real, immediate surroundings are not controlled, are not...safe. Who ever knew the internet would bring us here?

Mama Bean wants to write about depression but doesn't want to be depressing

It's a tall order. But I want to write about it, because words are my friends and I need them, because I feel like I can write through the depression, because I have written through depression before, because this is as close to praying as I get sometimes (often.) 

But I don't want to be all sad-sack and off-putting, or alienating. 

So I'll start with as-positive-as-I-can-get:

Taking a daily B complex vitamin is helping, yay! The one I take (SISU brand because that's what my clinic sells) has 25 mg B1 25 mg B2 50 mg B6 20 mg B3 100 mg B5 0.2 mg B9 and 100 mcg B12. B vitamins are not psychoactive in any way (unless you are deficient, which will cause distinct neurodegeneration) and most of them (all of them? I should know this...) are water soluble, so they don't bio-accumulate, you just pee out whatever extra you don't need (and it makes your pee really yellow.) All of them are involved in energy production, so they help with my energy levels. A couple Fridays ago, I didn't get enough sleep (surprise surprise) and I forgot to take my vitamins before leaving the house, so the first hour of work I was absolutely dead in the water. I grabbed a bottle off the shelf (work perk!) took two (normally I only take one) and within 15 mins I was almost hyper. It was a fricking miracle.

I actually started taking it almost a year ago, when I found myself at pregnancy-fatigue-levels long after Sprout had been born. The supplement-guru at our office immediately recommended B, and now I recommend it to any women (especially moms) who tell me about fatigue (or just look fatigued ha!) I got lax about taking anything for awhile (months...) and rediscovering this little gem has been a life-saver. If only in the sense that being depressed leaves you resourceless (feels like you have, in fact, negative resources, less than zero) and so if you're gonna function with nothing, you should at least be peppy about it.

Other things that are helping (or would help, if I'd do it consistently): sleep. music. my husband's willingness to love me broken and all. interacting with (not just consuming) social media. 

Things that are not helping: motherhood.

So stay tuned for more * uplifting * words about that...