Joe VS. The Driveway

Today we had a bit of Joe Vs. The Driveway. My husband and I are lucky in that in MOST cases, it's usually only one of us that freaks out about a situation, and the other can still freak out, but to a lesser degree and try to help the other remain calm...or tell them what an idiot they are being. Regardless of the chosen roles or tactics, one of us is usually calm-ish...and one feels irate. This musing has to do with getting stuck part way up the driveway, 3/4 of the way, to be exact...and THAT is a metaphor!

My husband was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. If this was a dream, I would say that is a significant note. I don't know about in real life. (No, really---I don't know about it.) During this particular incident, I was actually the calm one, which I love, because it honestly doesn't happen as often. I usually am the one dealing with the unstable mood or explosions of emotion, and will occasionally need to calm my husband down here and there when he does the same. So, needless to say, I feel awesome when I'm on the other end...like I'm a god damn Zen master or some shit. I revel in it...just a tad...because it's a good lesson. And, as synchronicity would allow, it usually has something to do with what I am personally working on in my inner world at the time. (Go figure!) And explaining or teaching, seeing something from the other seat, as it were, is one of the best ways to LEARN what it is you are teaching. So not only because I don't feel like the idiot, but because I get a chance to SEE how I should be reacting all of the time. I get a chance to see my reactions mirrored...and see how futile they are. How self-sabotaging, how pointless. Preach it, sister! Preach it! It's amusing to me, although, it is a humble sermon, because I am too often in the driver seat...literally. I am the one stuck in the driveway and not the one just watching the drama unfold. Sometimes you lose sight of that.

So my husband was getting angry as we were going up the driveway and backing down again and again trying to get past where we were. Meanwhile, the snow was just continuing to come down, not making it any better. But we had full bellies, we were in our own driveway and we were together. This is what I told my husband. No big deal. We'll get 'er! We were 3/4 of the way up the driveway...and a day later I would realize how odd it was that our driveway is shaped exactly like the arc my therapist made with her hand when she was describing how I was doing progress wise, and we got stuck in the exact spot she stopped her hand in the air and declared that I was at...3/4 of the way...riiiiiiiiight near the top of the LAST little hump before you're home free...where you keep sliding off track! Hmm...interesting. Where you are tested with what you have learned thus far. You can't make it up smoothly without knowing what you've learned. Do I digress? 

In all actuality, I just had the car stuck in our driveway a week prior on my way back home from my friend's house one night. (It was a BAD winter for our driveway!) Luckily, I had a little wine in me, so the cold wasn't bad at all and it turned into a beautiful moonlit walk, as Sam Cooke serenaded me via Pandora the entire length of my trek. "Darling, you send me...Honest, you do, honest, you do..." It was actually rather enjoyable, as I sneaked up to my snow covered abode like it was a hidden cabin in the woods. Which takes me back to us being stuck in the driveway. It's no big deal...it is what you make it. I had decided to walk and listened to Sam Cooke! It was enjoyable. It could have been made into an ordeal. I could have become so pissed that I tried to kick my tire, slipped, and fell on my ass! I could have broken my coccyx! It COULD have happened. But I CHOSE to enjoy the moment. This is what I was thinking about when we became stuck after our outing for breakfast that morning.

In my husband's defense, though, he was the one in charge of unstucking the car both times, so I am sure that is why he wasn't enjoying the moment as much as I was. I didn't see much amusement in his eyes when I replied to one of his outbursts with, "I"m having a really good time!" and a large grin. Maybe now wasn't the time? But if not Now, when? Now is exactly when you need to have a good time! Even when you are stuck 3/4 of the way up your driveway...because you're almost home. No matter how much you keep sliding into that deep drift, no matter how long it takes you to pull yourself out...no matter how many times you have to back down the drive and get a head start back up...you're gonna make it home...even if you have to walk. That's a metaphor...and a good life lesson.

Half Full: Shots From the Crystal Skull

Throughout this healing journey or whatever you want to call it that I have been going through I have focused on the importance of avoidance, the wisdom in limitation and the worth of enough.  Many things require LESS of (something, a behavior, a substance, a person) in order to see improvement.  Some changes to make are things you need to stop or limit, while some are things you need to start or free.  Some areas of your life you need MORE of (something, a behavior, a substance, a person) in order to move forward.  If you need more of, you need to go through the same rough stage where, instead of learning to cope without (insert trigger here) you learn how to deal with (insert trigger here).

I have a few vices and negative behaviors, but one of them definitely was binge drinking.  At the beginning of 2013 I was mostly left with vodka, the only thing that I could binge on yet without horrible repercussions.  My friend got me a Skull of vodka for my 33rd birthday...last October.  It has since become somewhat of a ceremonial piece, for true occasions of need and/or want.  I have passed the skull around a few times and others have drank from the great crystal head.  Surprisingly there are still a couple of shots left in her, yet!  The only reason I guess I mention it is that I was very into vodka a year and a half ago.  Before I started therapy and got on meds I basically self medicated my anxiety and depression.  I numbed myself a lot of the time for socializing.  A bottle of Svedka wasn't drank in a day around here by any means, but it was lucky to last a few weeks let alone a month...let alone 9!  I wasn't so much an alcoholic as I was a binge drinker.  My crystal skull has survived 9 months.  I've carried this baby for 3 trimesters, longer than any vodka I have ever had.  My friends helped in her consumption, yes, so I guess this shows that I'm not doing that bad?  I didn't even drink all of it.  Less drinking, more eating.   Now, if I can just get off of these meds and kill the Ed in my head.  Imagine being able to live vice free? I commend those people who have no vices, but sometimes it is hard not to believe that such a person is only the romance of myth and legend...although I have witnessed some in my time.  Regardless of the vices of others or lack thereof, I'm finally beginning to get a grip on mine.  The skull is half full.

Stop Signs: Turning Right at Intersections

Last December I came to an intersection in more than one sense of the word: physically, literally, metaphorically, spiritually. Emotionally. I'm speaking also of this actual intersection. So, I come to this intersection and I STOP.  I do, of course, because there is a stop sign, but also because you need to look both ways before turning. You need to think about which way you want to go. In this moment, I wanted to go RIGHT in every sense of THAT word. Home was right. My family was right. What was left? Just a long and winding road through a familiar dark wood...a road that I have traversed all of my life.

So there I sat at the intersection of HOME and DARKNESS. I have come to this intersection a myriad of times in my life; I stop every time. I take a pause. On this day I took more of a reflective pit stop. Luckily, you can go hours at times without seeing another car on these roads; I had the time to sit there. So I sat there until I knew exactly which way I was going to go.

I was thinking about an appointment with my doctor that I had the next day...an appointment that my husband had made for me.  I was deciding whether to go or to entirely flake out on it in fear.  It wasn't a check up...it was a nightmare...or a dream...? I was, at the time, floating head down in a breakdown soup that was possibly 25 years or so in the making. But is that really true? What the fuck is truth anymore? This. THIS is truth.

I'll write about Doctor X and this amazingly awkward adventure more another time because I have been asked too many times about my religious views by him and I want to 'splain that situation.  (This nightmare was actually the last appointment I have had with him, I have since switched to his (female) physician's assistant...for many reasons.) So, I already didn't feel comfortable with him, I already knew what the appointment was for and I already knew what he wanted to put me on and what he wanted me to do.  I sobbed at that intersection, thinking of Doc X and my husband talking about the past months of my descending mental state and chest pains and all that rot, behind my back, as it were.  I, knowing how my husband tends to exaggerate but also knowing how bad I REALLY was at the time, was worried they thought I would hurt my child or something?  I did make a slight cry for help, asking my husband to ask Doc X about Deplan, which is a prescription folic acid (B vitamin) he had told me about before.  He instead, while at one of his check ups, had got me an appointment for that same week and discussed putting me on Lexapro.  Truth is, I can't "fix" myself alone.  I've needed help for a long, long time.  A window of opportunity was there:  therapy and meds.  If I went to that appointment, that would be my future. The decision was mine.

And there I was at that intersection, wanting to make it right but having emotional problems with the solution.  Therapy wasn't the hard thing to accept, or decision to make.  I've always "craved" it in a sense.  But, did I really need the use of an antidepressant?  I sat at that intersection for a good twenty to thirty minutes crying my fucking eyes out.  I had never been to therapy or taken "crazy pills"  or any of that, and even though some people are incredibly cavalier about popping their Flintstone meds, ironically, I was raised to not think the answer came in a pill. I thought about my dad and how disappointed he would be, or just the fact that he would disapprove. I didn't want to take them.  I knew that pills wouldn't "fix me".  I knew that they could only potentially treat the symptoms...but not the causes, suspending any real healing in a faux elation.  At least, that's what I thought at the time. 

I had been working on myself for years and years and have made continual progress but I had reached a point where I couldn't anymore.  My symptoms were worse than my causes.  I was seeing the changes in my daughter's behavior before my very own eyes and THE TRUTH was that I was the cause of her negative behavior.  I was THE CAUSE coming 'round full circle.  I was neck deep in the programmed legacy.  I was falling apart.  I was in the Dark Night of the Soul.  My mind had never been so fucked up.  So, I made my choice. 

Years from now, I may not be proud of myself for opting for mind pellets, but why should pride keep you from anything that is that important to you?  I had been robbed of my full potential long enough and I didn't want to be a victim anymore.  I went to the appointment.  I accepted a prescription for Lexapro.  I agreed to therapy.  For my husband and for my innocent  daughter, stranded in the storms of this legacy, I decided to go right.  For my Self and for myself alone, I chose to go home.