Grounded

When I was little being grounded only meant one thing: trouble. I was the youngest and anyone who's the youngest knows that this status typically gives us immunity from the wrath of the parents. This was not untrue for me but that didn't stop me from being terrified of the punishment.

Grounded for me meant no phone. It meant no visiting friends, no sleepovers. For me being grounded was to be separated from my thin social spiderwebs. I didn't fully understand how important it was then for me to be connected but looking back I felt very deeply that going without would mean certain death. I would do anything my mother said if it meant I could keep the privilege of being social. Girly laughter, aimless commiseration, hours of being in rooms together without saying a word but becoming so utterly close - those were the moments I lived for. I still feel the same way.

I've grown up a little since then - it's debated as to how much - but I know these days that being grounded has a secondary meaning. Grounded, in it's original sense, means to place on a foundation, to fix firmly, settle or establish. It is that moment when a person feels solidly on the earth, connected at the feet with roots shooting up your straight back and holding your shoulders perfectly parallel to your body. Here, your head is facing forward. Your eyes are seeing clearly and your ears hear everything important that is said. To be grounded, one might say, is to recognize in a moment you are exactly where you need to be at exactly the moment you need to be.

As when we were children, being grounded isn't always pleasant. Sometimes it's rude, unpleasant and unwelcome. Sometimes we are shocked into the knowing the exact consequences of our past actions. Sometime we are shaken into knowing that if we don't create certain future actions the repercussions will be heavy. Being grounded can be like a weight; like a pressure. Yet every second of being completely connected to the roots of your life are evidently essential. Without it we would never know sadness and we would never know bliss.

Coming home for me has been all of the above. I can see exactly where I have been (in ruins) and how quickly I could be thrown back there (immediately, if not sooner). I can see how much I have missed in being away, who has been worse for the wear of the year passed and who has flourished. Time does not stand still. And yet I am blessed. I have been able to jam myself briefly back into the lives of my loved ones and it is as if no time has passed. I am still the youngest, I am still an aunty, a sister and a daughter.

I am still poor. I still cannot speak French and I cannot budget. I still dream absurdly big dreams, much to the anxiety of my mother. I still cannot do anything to help her. I see the gravity of where I have been and feel the pressure to succeed in where I plan to go. I still am not getting any younger.

But I am right where I need to be. Coming home has helped me see that. Even though sometimes it has felt like a waste, I am crawling slowly towards my goals. I am going in the right direction. I have a second home now - a strikingly beautiful one that sometimes doesn't fit - that is filled with a second family. I have loves and best friends and reasons to get up in the morning. I will never be able to change that, I will never be able to leave that behind, even if someday I have to move. From this place I stand, bolted firmly into the earth with my roots shooting through my crooked spine I can see my future and my past and I am happy to be right here. On vacation between my two worlds.

In Which I Get A Wonderful Christmas Surprise

Just one week after I left for Paris, Houston was hit hard by Hurricane Ike. In a flurry of evacuation my sweet (but neurotic) cat Simon escaped from my mother as she transported them to the designated safe spot of my uncle's house. With so little time to leave the area she couldn't catch him again.

I was devastated. Simon had showed up on my mom's patio in 2003 with huge bat ears, a circus full of fleas and a pipsqueak meow. He was immediately stolen (and then returned) by a coveting neighbor and shortly thereafter moved with me to my apartment in downtown - the first apartment I ever lived in alone. He had been from Houston to Austin and back to Houston again with me. He slept under my covers at night and followed me like I was his mother. He was Fitch's best friend and brother. I couldn't stand the idea that my cat may have died in the storm but there was nothing I could do from France to help find him again. And though my mother put up fliers and my uncle kept his eye out, Simon never returned to us.

For a year and a half I stayed hopeful. Months and months after the mess from the hurricane was cleared it was rumored that he was seen hunting birds around the neighbors house. Occasionally my Uncle would spy a little grey cat darting across a lawn. I had dreams about finding him. He always came home safe to me.

So naturally today when my mother and I went to my uncle's for Christmas dinner, the first thing I did was excuse myself to wander around the neighborhood and look for him. I walked for a half an hour in all of the directions I thought he might go calling his name and making the silly high pitched cat noises that used to call him home. He was no where to be seen.

After dinner, as I sensed my mom was getting tired and ready to leave, I took my cousin on one more walk - just to see. We wandered the one street I hadn't gone down and a couple I had but he still hadn't turned up.

"I'm just sad," I said to my cousin. "It's all I wanted for Christmas, to see my cat again."

As we got to the front door I paused and looked across the street one last time. I caught my breath.

"Oh my God I think that's him." I said. Before my cousin could respond I was walking towards a green garage with a frightened grey ball beside it.

We walked slowly and I kept calling his name as I approached. He didn't move and as my vision sharpened I saw quite clearly my cat - very much alive - for the first time in over a year. As trucks pulled out loudly on the street behind me I knelt down on the sidewalk in front of the empty driveway and began to cry. Slowly, skeptically, Simon crept towards me.

"Can you please do me a favor," I turned to my cousin with tears in my eyes, "Can you go get the can of cat food that is on the credenza in your dad's house?"

"Is that really him?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes! Can you believe it?!"

He ran back across the street to fetch the food.

For ten minutes I slowly followed Simon closer to the house, coaxing him out with the can of smelly wet food. I examined him and though he was clearly being fed somewhere he was not being kept. His once glossy, rabbit soft fur was coarse and his lean slevt body was thick with tom cat muscles. He warily let me pet him.

In a moment I realized I couldn't even think about leaving my baby to live outside for the rest of his life and I snatched him up in my arms, gripping him as strongly as I could. He was petrified, gripping around my neck like a child.

Oh but the look on my mother's face when I walked inside with my cat. We had all thought him so long gone - uncatchable - for so long that it was like seeing a ghost.

I opened the can of food for him and he wandered around my uncle's house meowing loudly, no longer comfortable being indoors. He went immediately for the window sill, feeling safest there.


Simon is nearly feral now. I knew immediately that we couldn't take him home to my mother's house because, even if we had the money between us to get all four cats up to date on their vaccinations (which we most certainly do not), there is no telling how he would behave with the others after being a stray for so long. I suspect he will re-habituate to being indoors quickly - he has already remembered my caresses and even let out little purrs when I talked to him - and so I am hoping that one of my nearby friends will be interested in letting my little love bug learn to be a sweet pet again. I don't know what I'll do if I can't find a place.

For the moment, I am not thinking about it. Though I am wishing he was curled up on my belly just like before I left for France, I am contented knowing where he is, that he is safe and warm and that my sweet kitten will have a happy home again soon.

It makes for a Merry Christmas indeed.

Do You Miss Me?

I've been in The United States of America for twelve days now and I've only posted one thing? Travesty. I apologize for the injustice. Can I post some photos of my amazingly cute neices and nephews and our various activities to make up for it? Just say yes.

Little girls with flour on their nose = adorable.

My adorable nieces. Sister S's children.

Sister S's dog Winston. When he's not doing this he is jumping four feet vertically.

The baby niece. Who can resist those eyes?

Sister L's older children as Mary and Joseph. (Baby Jesus playing the football in this version.)

Gorgeous, no?

Making gingerbread house. Obligatory.

My nephew's Advent Calendar. Lego = BADASS.

Photos by Sister L.

Skating and stuff.

And the silly face. Most beautiful gingerbread house EVER.

It snowed too. I even played in it, though you won't see any photographic evidence of THAT. This afternoon I am on my way back to Texas to celebrate with my mom and my cat children. Should be a good day for travel - even though there is a terrible storm somewhere in the country the sun is shining here.

I hope where ever you are you are happy, warm and loved. Merry Christmas to you all!

HOME

I left Mr. Boo Radley in the caring hands of a friend Thursday night. I must say the two nights without him were impossibly quiet and not nearly cuddly enough. I mean, look at this face.


What's not to miss? But when I finally made it to my mom's house in Texas - after eight hours on a plane and one and a half in the car - I was greeted by this:


My first boy, Fitch. Even after a year and a half, he remembered me. And he's a little pissed that I've been gone so long.

So far I haven't done one single productive thing here in Texas. And I'm damn proud of it. Now, my mother and I are watching Fargo on censored public television and it is so Fliggin good that I can't be bothered by posting more than adorable photos of my cats.

And maybe I'll have some more eggnog.

I Can't Believe It Either!

I am packed! And even with the presents I have managed ONE bag just under 50lbs. HOW AWESOME AM I? No, don't answer that. I know you know.

Yesterday was spent shopping for my nine year old nephew and can WOW it was hard. It's amazing how big the jump is from eight to nine and how much more difficult shopping for boys is. They don't like the things that eight year old boys like. And what I realized quickly is that the age group for "children" jumps from about seven to sixteen. I can either get my nephew tinkertoys or StreetFighter BLOOD AND SEX edition. Where are all the good intellectual toys for the in between groups? OR why can't he have just been another girl because the general consensus is that girls are so much easier to shop for. We're much less discriminating at that age, what can I say? (I kid. He's my only nephew and he's probably the most awesome boy I know. And I am not just biased because he's my Godson.)

Alas, I have a nine year old nephew who is highly intelligent and creative and so basically nothing was good enough for him. You catch my drift?

Meanwhile, side effect Day Two were a very short anxiety attack in the Virgin megastore (but who doesn't get those) and the usual cotton mouth. I find that I already have more energy than on the Paxil which came in handy because after I got home from shopping I had two hours of ironing to do for the family - I think every shirt the boys and Host Dad owned - and I still needed to pack. Thankfully my short nap on the train refreshed me just enough to make it through. My mood is decidedly up, with only a few blips around dinner time which probably has more to do with being hungry than depressed. I am damn near normal.

And NOW! NOW I AM OFF! I'm fairly certain I haven't forgotten anything integral and even though my head is throbbing from the celebratory wine I imbibed whilst packing and chatting with family and friends last night, I couldn't possibly be MORE excited.

Guys - After a year and a half I'm going home.

See you on the other side of the pond!

Side Effects, The Upper Edition

I hid under the covers for a couple of days while the tears came on. I was crying because I didn't know why not to, but other than that I didn't have any other side effects. I halved the half pill and slept as much as I could while trying to get ready for this trip.

Then yesterday it occurred to me that I have no way of stepping UP on the new drug (because apparently my idiot doctor has never prescribed anti-depressants before and didn't offer me a step up of 10mg first) and no matter how out of my system the Paxil was jumping onto thirty milligrams of Cymbalta is going to crack me out and so I might as well get the worst of it over before I see my family. I don't want to ruin any moment with them.

And sure enough, I popped the pill this afternoon - remembering that afternoon was the best time for me to take it - and not even thirty minutes afterwards my head started spinning like a bad amusement park ride. The nausea hasn't set in yet but if I remember right that shouldn't be too far behind. I am trying to stay well fed, that usually keeps things down, but mostly I can't remember what I was going to put in the next sentence of this blog, let alone what I had planned to eat or when.

It's a little bit creepy how quickly these things effect your body chemistry. It's strange to think that depression can be such a slow painful decline and then one day you take a little bicolored pill and your whole existence is different. I am certain that the long term effects of these kind of medications - so understudied - can't be all that good. But if my choice is "be happy today and die young" or "live a long, dark and miserable life" I don't really I have a hard time deciding. And how many people would?

Anyway, for the moment I am still in side effects-ville but at least I this time when I stabilize it won't be on the sad side of the fence. So despite the fact that my lips are numb and I have a nice cottony coating in my mouth I am looking forward to that.

Now off to make some lists, lest I forget my head in my other purse...

It's Not About You, Honestly

An Open Commentary on Depression, Not To Be Taken Personally.*

You know what is the worst part about being depressed? Don't get upset, this is not a commentary on you, but when a depressed person is at their worst no one wants to be around them. And that is when we need people the most.

I mean, I can understand it, I really can. If you've never been depressed it's impossible to understand that someone could be so bottomlessly sad, so empty without being able to be filled again. The common response is "Well, just don't be sad anymore!" Or "It's a choice to be happy, you just have to decide to do it." Or my personal favorite of late "It's much easier to be depressed. You have to make an effort to feel good."

As if depressed people are just lazy, pessimistic mizers who don't understand the complexities of happiness. Oh God how a depressed person just wants to be happy. I don't think there are people more desperate in the world to "just be happy". And it's not for lack of trying, generally. Though there are surely a large percentage of people who just choose to ignore their depression or do derive some bizarre satisfaction from it, for the most part when our brain chemicals have stopped functioning it's us more than anyone else in the world who wants to be fucking happy.

But the sun doesn't shine. The hours of sleep are never enough and nothing you could possibly do seems to be worth the time. Hands are too heavy to pick up and create, to pick up the phone and call a friend, to lift a pan to make food, to open the door and leave the house. They have just the right weight for a remote control or a keyboard and mouse. Just barely enough lift in them to keep us generally distracted from our own minds, if we're lucky. Enough weight to pick up a bottle or a pint of ice cream.

It's nearly impossible to explain this to people who have never felt it, to someone who has never known someone so effected. I am not stupid, I can understand that - just as I can understand that for most people it's not the most enticing plan for a lovely day to be with someone who just can't smile no matter what you do.

There is a feeling of defeat on their end. A feeling of helplessness and frustration. Sometimes anger. I'm depressed, but I can empathize. No one wants to hang out with the sad kid. I learned that twenty years ago.

But for a person feeling so down it is just exactly the thing to get us through some days - to have a friend volunteer to come to your house with a stack of movies and some snacks and just be that other breathing entity in the room. To stop by unexpectedly for tea. To offer to make you dinner, to clean the dishes, to suggest they stay just a little bit longer than planned. These little empathetic gestures mean the difference between getting out of bed and getting dressed in the morning or sleeping through the day. They mean the world to us.

I sometimes think about carrying around a picture diagram of the chemical components of the disease Depression. I would take it out at any time someone insisted I should just "be happy", shaking my head, patiently and pointing to the receptors on the diagram that weren't connecting properly, fizzling and crackling like a severed electric line. And then I would hand them a pamphlet explaining that I didn't want anything special from them, that my being depressed was not a reflection on their inability to perform as a friend, but rather in spite of it. It would outline all the little quiet things they could do that would give me the extra bit of strength to get through to the other end. I would hold their hand and tell them not to be afraid.

It's more delicate than that, though. People will fear that which they don't understand till the end of time, and asking us to try to understand is sometimes too much for us to bear as humans. And so for each fear a person who needs an extra moment of kindness is going to go ignored today. For each frustration there is a person who is reaching out who will be overlooked in lieu of the more fun things on the agenda. For each impatience there is, so unfortunately, one person who begged for help who is giving up on life. For that I am sad.

Me, I am on the way to recovery. Aside from the inevitable intensified weepies I am not having any other major side effects to make note of. And I have a light at the end of my tunnel. In four days I can jump start my brain again and move on with my life. It's just days like today - in the middle of the process - that I wish I had someone to be with. I miss my Austin friends who were so spontaneous, intuitive and open. They were not afraid of my sadness and knew just the ways to lift my spirits. They knew when I needed them. They came when I called.

Not to worry about me. I've been through worse, and I have plenty of support from people all over the world. I will be on the other side soon.

*For the record I know some of you are concerned, but I've decided that I owe it to myself and to all those other people who need help and understanding to talk about my depression here in this forum. Consider it documentation. But I'm serious when I say I've been worse (a year ago was so much more so!) and it has a definitive end point. I promise I'll be back to normal. By next week even! I thank you for reading and for all your kindness.

Tallyho?

Day one of down stepping went off without a hitch. If I'm lucky Paxil will be nothing like when I went off Cymbalta. It's not the same kind of pill so that would go without saying, I suppose, but everybody reacts differently and so...Well the coming days will tell better I think.

Though getting a good nights sleep surely helped a lot of things. I have cough syrup with codiene to thank for that. It even counter balanced my horrible nightmares (that I have come to assume are a gift of the Paxil) and offered me bizarre yet slightly fluffy dreams about babysitting and making cookies and twelve thousand monopoly dollars in my hand that could be used as real money.

I wouldn't say I woke refreshed, because I could scarcely do that - it is codeine after all - but I didn't so much as balk when the time came to clean the house. I even took some pleasure in using the brand new fancy vacuum cleaner (A setting for the curtains! Oh MY!).

Then, of course, evening rolled around and just like any old night of being depressed I was sorely wounded when my very last minute plan to ride the sparkling Grand Roue on the Champs Elysees was met with ten responses of "Can't tonight!"

I went out anyway, met Jasmin for a hot mulled wine (she really is a trooper!) and went back the way I came, happy to crawl into my pj's and not have to pretend further that I wasn't let down. Well, it's a silly thing to be let down about but there are times in my life when I feel like one giant outbox, waiting for a reply. Who will it be? When will it come? Am I alone again tonight? Sometimes I feel I have to put out such mass messages just to receive one in return. Oh we all have separate lives, I know. And most of the times my organized events are not so ill planned and come off quite lovely. I have nothing to complain about.

So I suppose I should leave it that for now and hope the week continues with the same momentum. Nary a tear shed yesterday, and only nine days until I see my momma again, thirteen until I get to kiss my nieces and see my sisters and twenty until Christmas. Things are on the upward swing, that is for sure.

Happy Holidays! (And a Merry Withdrawl!)

After a couple melancholy posts and one silly breakdown I finally went to the doctor. I wanted to think I didn't have to change my medication - that I could get through it all on my own - but it's just not my time. And I've long stated that I'd rather be medicated and happy then "clean" and unable to live. It's time to suck it up and start following through with that.

Of course getting my doctor to change my meds was a battle (because she's an idiot). It went something like this (but in French):

Her: So why do you think that you need to change your medication?

Me: Well, the other one has started to not work.

Her: How do you know that?

Me: Because I'm depressed again.

Her: Well you're still going to be depressed, even if you are taking something!

Me: Ummmm....

Her: So why do you think you need to change?

Me: Okay. About three months ago I went through withdrawl symptoms...

Her: What?

Me: Withdrawl? I don't know the word in French. You know when an alcoholic or a drug addict suddenly stops -

Her: No, tell me why you think you need to be on something new.

Me: Listen. I am telling you right now. It's a story about why I know it's stopped working. Just wait a minute.

Her: (Dumb pause.)

Me: So I went through symptoms of withdrawl -

Her: What?

(Here we go through the same song and dance as before until she understands what I am talking about.)

Her: Okay so you're meds have stopped working. And what are your symptoms?

Me: Lack of energy, sleeping too much, lack of hope and motivation, crying easily...

Her: So you're depressed.

Me: (EUREKA!) Yes.

Her: So let's change you to...

I interrupt her and tell her I want to be on Cymbalta because it's worked for me before and I know what to expect.

Her: Okay well let's try you on Blablabla, it's basically the same.

Me: Okay. So does it work on the two different chemicals in the brain, like Cymbalta?

Her: Well no but it's basically the same.

Me: Okay, but what are the sexual side effects?

Her: What? Nobody knows that!

Me: Um, well, yes. For instance Cymbalta has significantly lower sexual side effects than Paxil.

Her: How do you know that?

Me: Because I basically couldn't have an orgasm the entire time I was on it.

Her: And you're sure it was because of the drug?

Me: Yes. I'm SURE.

Her: Hmmm... (flipping through her drug book because she had no idea what she was talking about) And you took the Cymbalta how many times a day?

Me: Once.

Her: And the Paxil?

Me: Once.

Her: Well, I think we should put you on the Cymbalta because this other you have to take two times a day.

I smile and agree with her that that is a marvelous idea and leave victoriously.

On getting home, though, I realize that she didn't tell me how to go from one drug to the other (I am really not sure why this woman is a practicing physician) and so I ended up calling my pharmacist in Texas - a little old man whose family has owned the corner drug for decades - and he outlined for me perfectly.

So starting today, for seven days, I am halving my dosage of Paxil so that I can start anew on Cymbalta. I've put my friends on alert and am bracing myself for the inevitable withdrawls. Because I won't be quitting completely - and because, in effect, the pills have sort of already stopped working - it shouldn't be so bad, but I am still nervous. There will be tooth tingling and head lightness and probably some tears but the end justifies the means. I am ready to start living again (as opposed to living in my apartment, alone, surfing the internet all day.)

Here's to day one, half a pill down the hatch. And here's to moving on with my life.

Speechless

Lately I don't have much to say. I have a few blogs in my hat for later this month, but nothing too earth shattering. I want a breath of inspiration but all I've got is snarky, self deprecating comments and mindless blurbs about parties I've gone to.

And while you might find that entertaining (dear god, you're still here?) I personally keep waiting for that muse fountain to erupt in my mind and trickle through my fingers. I have a pile of art projects begging for me to pick up a pencil and put it to them. I have a have finished essay waiting on my computer that I keep opening thinking "If I keep it open I'll be more inclined to work on it." It eventually gets closed.

I think this week I am going to make an effort to get in the mood for this holiday. Because truth be told I don't feel cheery at all. I feel like staying in my pajamas, laying in my bed and not leaving my house until my flight to the states. The shit part is I am sick (again!) and still so broke I can't go to see the doctor. (I don't have the golden Carte Vitale and so have to pay out of pocket and be reimbursed.) Among other things I have all the intentions of asking her to change my medication because it's clear this one is no longer working. Apparently they only make antidepressants that work for a year now?

Anyhow, so long as I don't get any more sick I am going to drag my poor ass out the house tonight and wander along the Champs Elysees. The lights have been up for at least a week and the Christmas huts should be arranged in all their splendor to tempt me with dancing Santas and scarves. I don't mind doing it alone, and I don't have to spend a dime.

Anyhow. Enough whining for today. Here are the photos from the resplendent Thanksgiving celebration that got me through the weekend. Despite my melancholy I love my Paris family. They are such good people, always on hand to lift my spirits.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer