Snow!

We got our first stuck-to-the-ground snow of the season last night in St. Louis. It was such a beautiful ending to a crazy month – here’s hoping that December is much more chilled-out. Rimshot!

I just barely finished NaNoWriMo yesterday. My new medication was making me soooo sleeeepy that I’ve been napping every day after work and sleeping all through the night as well. I could not write at home, I had to go somewhere away from my bed and couch and sit up straight and eat something in order to work. To that end, I fell in love with The Gelateria on South Grand. Gelato, hot tea, coffee drinks, pastry, panini… and their lack of WiFi made me super productive since I wasn’t distracted by LOLz.

The meds have kicked in now though, and my body and brain are adjusting nicely. No more panic attacks, no more hiding under the covers because I don’t want to face the world.

I know that there are a lot of people who don’t believe in using drugs for depression, and a lot of people who don’t even believe that depression is a real disease that can require medical treatment.* My depression is a subset of Type II Bipolar Disorder. My doctor compares this to diabetes. It won’t kill me, but it requires a certain lifestyle in order to be healthy. I may be on medication for the rest of my life, she says – both mood stabilizers and antidepressants. And you wouldn’t deny a diabetic her insulin, would you? I don’t care if my meds are artificial or synthesized or if they come from a Bolivian coke farm. Gimme. I’m chemically unbalanced and actually meet the requirements to be considered disabled by the ADA.

Anyway.

When I wasn’t writing that 180-page brain barf of mine, I was spending a lot of time with E and our friends.  He really is racking up the points by taking such good care of me. I don’t know WHAT came over me one night, but I started ordering shots (we did one called “Your Mom”) and got pretty messed up last weekend. E woke up and saw me literally banging my head against the wall because I was in such pain. I was crying and pulling my own hair… it was like every hangover I’d ever had converged on me all at once. Worst. Pain. Ever. I think I’d rather have been in labor.

It really freaked him out, so he got up and walked down to the gas station in the cold to get me some Excedrin. He said that when he walked back in the house I was out of the bed, laying on the hardwood floor and didn’t respond the first time he shook me.  Eek. I don’t remember that part. Nor do I remember the fact that I had the dry heaves for an hour after we got home and that he laid down in the tub so he could stay with me in the bathroom while I slept on the floor for awhile before I could crawl into the bed. He said he was a bit drunk too and was afraid he’d drop me if he tried to carry me back to bed.

I got completely gorked on the Excedrin and my head only stopped hurting when it was pretty much numbed from the inside-out. E made me an ice pack with a Walgreens bag and ice cubes. I love that boy.

Maybe that night wasn’t such a good idea. Okay, it REALLY wasn’t a good idea and I am a moron. Healthy lifestyle, not so much. But some diabetics have a slice of cake now and then. I was doing so well at avoiding hard liquor! I guess this was just reinforcing the fact that I still can’t handle it. Back to beer for me.

And back to blog )

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* And if this is you, I bite my thumb at thee. Now shove off.

I hate keeping secrets. Like my job, I am generally very good at doing it but sometimes it makes me want to tear my hair out and/or crawl in a hole and hide. When things are trapped in your head and you can’t let them out, you can feel horribly, desperately alone. This is why PostSecret is such a huge success. Send in your secret and breathe a sigh of relief. There. You got it out. The world knows the secret and since you have shared and others have shared their secrets with you, you’re not alone.

Do you ever find yourself in a situation that you can only discuss a problem with one particular person? Maybe your other friends will judge, maybe they won’t understand, maybe they’re not close enough friends or are too close to someone else involved. Maybe you can tell some, even most of the story to other friends but you have to keep some parts secret. But the whole thing, unedited?

What if you can’t fit it on a postcard, or anonymous mail-in confessions aren’t your thing? Then you need that someone, that very specific friend.

That person is detached enough from the situation to be able to help you keep perspective. That person is close enough and trustworthy enough that you can tell the whole thing and empty out your heart. That person will let you be upset and hurt and cranky and not try to make everything better. Because that person knows he can’t make everything better – he can just hold you for awhile and hand you kleenex when you’re teary and pillows to punch when you’re angry. All he can really do is remind you to breathe.

That person is strong enough to catch you and not crumble. He doesn’t try to cheer you up or make you forget about things; he respects that you feel what you feel. He won’t belittle your worries or your fears. He won’t force you to be happy, but he’ll offer to share his happiness with you, not as a distraction from your troubles but as means of coping. And remember: if you will share and someone will share with you, you’re not alone.

But it can be hard to remember that you’re not alone when you really are physically alone. Right now, no one can hug me or hand me tissues or even look me in the eye and say it’s okay to be upset. No one is here but me. So I just have to remember that someone shook me out of bed today and said we were going to the zoo, and we saw a lion climb up a tree and an angry ostrich chase a giraffe and a zebra rolling on his back in the dirt.  He didn’t take me there to mean “Don’t worry about your troubles, they’re not important, just look at this instead.” He meant “I know you’ve been feeling weak. I want you to feel good so you feel stronger. Let’s have a beautiful day.”

So even though he’s not here right now and an alone-ish feeling is creeping in around my edges, even though I know he’ll never read this:

Thanks, E. I wouldn’t have made it through these days without you.

Who hears your secrets?

It’s funny that it’s October again already. This week last year was when E and I first started dating. I don’t believe the poets and their yammer about springtime, fall and winter are the perfect seasons for falling in love. Spring is rainy and puddly and muddy and great if you want to fall in love with your galoshes or your Shop-Vac. But fall here is gorgeous: blue, blue skies on crisp days and stars out on cool nights. E and I used to make out in the Jeep with the top off and leaves would fall in from the trees around us. The weather was perfect for patios and porches and curling up under blankets. There was Halloween, E in his Superfan costume (way too realistic) and me in my Playboy Bunny outfit. At Thanksgiving there was ping-pong at my parents’ house and my dad trounced E, who then privately informed me that we could never get engaged till he could beat my dad at ping-pong and ask him for my hand. I slapped him with a paddle and told him to start practicing.

Then there was snow, holding each other up on slippery ice patches, and snowball fights that turned into snow wrestling, culminating with E shouting “This is why I love you!” for all to hear as I shoved snow down the front of his coat. There was walking on the shore of Lake Michigan on Christmas Day, taking pictures of the sand formations sculpted by the snowstorm two days before, and sharing earmuffs because we’d only brought one pair. There were Sunday afternoons of football and nights spent under a down comforter.

It was never a fairytale – there were misunderstandings and arguments and hurt, one particular knock-down, drag-out, tear-filled fight the day before Christmas. But there was love.

I’m feeling nostalgic tonight because E and I had one of our perfect fall days today and for a few moments, it really felt like nothing had changed. We stayed in bed till noon, sat on the porch and enjoyed the blue sky for awhile, watched football. We snuggled on the couch and almost fell off together during the ridiculous last two minutes of the Colts game. He held my hand when I drove him to work.

But I took him to work at a different restaurant today. I didn’t have a beer with him while we watched football. He has a different quarterback in fantasy football. My hair is shorter, less highlighted. He’s lost a little weight. Superficial things have changed and while we’re both aware that we can’t start over fresh (because can you ever?), the timing of this reunion of ours just seems very poignant right now. The air is crisp, the leaves are just starting to turn again, and maybe we’re turning too.

Or maybe we’re not. Maybe this will implode again tomorrow. Maybe this is a love that, no matter how good it once was, can’t be salvaged. I’m trying to be realistic, to step back and look at the events, good and bad, of the year that brought us to this point. But the funny thing is that no matter how pragmatic or even cynical I try to be to protect myself, the tiny things keep adding up. It’s football season, the leaves are changing, it’s the first week of October, and we’re back to staring into each other’s eyes and wondering what comes next.

It’s time to learn to trust each other again.

This is really a follow-up to yesterday’s post “The gauntlet has been thrown,” so if you haven’t read it, you may want to do so first to get the gist of this situation.

I could hardly work on Tuesday. I was completely brain-dead from an overly-emotional night capped off with a mere four hours of sleep. And it wasn’t that I was just tired… I was SAD. The rage had tapered off and all I wanted to do was cry through my three-hour morning meeting. I was sad for myself and my own hurt, disappointed in my actions and my willingness to trust again so quickly, and, like a sap, sad for him and whatever was inside him that was making him do this. It was tearing my guts out to think of him so locked up inside himself because deep down, for all my angry words and screaming and stomping, I knew where he was. I’d done it. I’d shut out the world and the people I loved and hidden in my bed, curled into a ball and unable to deal with the simplest things from a fear I couldn’t name. And I thought about me, about who I was at that point in my life and the way everything and everyone seemed to be putting such immense pressure on me when all anyone wanted was for me to be better.

I’d done it too. And I survived it because people yelled at me and made me get out of bed and LIVE when I was afraid of the mysterious whatever.

“Just… life,” he says at his apartment later, after my completely unproductive work day. “I’m scared of everything, of so many things I want to change and so many things I feel like I can’t change.”

“Why are you afraid of me?” I ask quietly. He doesn’t say anything, but flops backward onto his bed. “You told me over and over that you wanted to be more open with me and more able to share those things with me so I could be there for you. But you’ve got to tell me, E. You’ve got to let me in.”

“I was scared because the other night you said you love me.”

“You’ve been going on and on about how you’ve never stopped loving me,” I remind him. “You got this big stupid grin on your face when I said it. So when I told you I’ll give you the chance you asked for, what scares you about that?”

“Because now it’s real.”

I lay back on the bed with him and we stare at the ceiling. “I know you’re scared of a lot of things,” I say. “So am I.”

“What are you scared of?” he asks.

“My job, I hate my job and I’m scared to even look for another one. I’m scared of being stuck here. I want to move, I want an adventure and I’m afraid to even try. And I’m scared of you hurting me again. I’m fucking terrified.”

“Oh.”

I roll over and look at him. “I thought we were supposed to help each other, E. Not shut one another out. You feel so alone and scared and you say you need me, but you have to let me in. And you have to take care of me too. I have things I need from you and you have to give those to me just like I want to for you. There’s no other way to do this.”

He turns and faces me, puts a hand in my hair and brushes it out of my face. “I do need you. I wasn’t lying when I said that. You’re the only person who makes me believe I can make my life better – I feel inside like I can do more with myself and one of the reasons I love you is because you push me to do that.”

“You need me to scream at you and tell you to grow balls?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to have to be a bitch to get you to treat me right,” I say firmly. “I will not do that. I don’t deserve that. You have to step up, because I’m not going to hurt myself just to wake your dumb ass up. I may have gone a little crazy, but I’m not replaying last night.”

“I deserved that.” He looks miserable.

“It’s not that complicated,” I continue. “You – WE don’t have to make this so complicated. Just do one thing at a time. Job later. Apartment later. This is today. You love me?”

“Yes.”

“You want us to build a relationship together?”

“Yes.”

“You understand that I’m not proposing to you or anything?”

“Yes, but if we head that way–“

“You said you wanted that. Do you?”

“Yes. But it scares me.”

“God, E, it scares me too! But quit worrying about that now! We’re NOT THERE. We’re not on a stupid timeline. I wouldn’t marry you now if you asked me. If we can just get on the right track and do this together, THAT is what I want. I need you to give things to me too. I need you to call me back. I need you to keep promises. I need to feel like I am a priority in your life and I need you to consider my feelings when you make decisions. That’s it. That’s all I need from you right now. Can you just focus on that?”

“Baby, I love you. I don’t ever want to hurt you, but it’s hard for me to open up because then you… you see my weaknesses. And I never wanted to show you that.”

“Answer me. Can you give me those things I told you I need? Because if you can’t promise me that, I am walking, no matter how much you need me. You can’t tell me you’re scared to just be respectful and caring to your girlfriend. Make me little promises. Promise you’ll call and then do it – just simple things so you can help me trust you again. Can you do that?”

He closes his eyes and pulls me across the bed to hold me close. “Yes,” he says.

I push him back a bit and look him in the eye. “Say it again and look at me. Promise me you’ll just do those damn simple things and I will be there for what you need, for your weaknesses, for whatever it is.”

“I promise.” I want so desperately to believe him.

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And so we tried to recapture what we had before that was simple and good. Again. We go to the grocery store and pick up a chicken, some veggies and biscuits and a bottle of wine. We cook together in my little kitchen and give little kisses across the counter like we always used to. I set up the trays in the living room so we can watch the baseball game, and he brings out the plates. He really can be very sweet sometimes, asking me if I want more of this or that, telling me the potatoes I cooked are good even when they sucked (there’s a reason only one of us is a chef) and saying “thank you, baby” when I bring him another drink.

“I just want to watch a movie and curl up with you tonight,” he says tiredly, pulling my feet into his lap and rubbing them as I push the trays out of the way.

“Mmmm, that sounds nice.” I close my eyes. “Let’s pick something out.”

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Why does it seem that we are always so good together when we’re in my house? Why do we hold each other close there, make promises and make dinner and make love there, and then walk outside into fear?

I’m still scared of so many things but I don’t always want to curl up in my bed and hide anymore. I want to face things, and I’ll come right out and admit that I want to face them with someone by my side because I need help sometimes too. Maybe that’s why I wanted to give him that chance, why I’m already putting up with what hurt me before, why I’m screaming at him to be a man – because when I was in that blocked-off state of mind, someone pushed me and I finally got up. What he does hurts me because I care about him, not just about myself. And maybe that’s why I’m still such a fool for him, because I recognize the pain in him that was in me, the fear that I thought I could hide from everyone, and because I love him I can’t let that go.

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I pull his feet up into my lap and we do mutual footrubs for a minute. Then my phone rings and the tone of the night completely changes.