And Then There's This....

I went to see my neurologist yesterday, and we talked about the fact that my headaches are *not* actually getting better.  I had kept stubbornly insisting that they would.  After all, I am out of my former negative work environment now, and all the bad stuff there is out of my life now.  Why wouldn’t things be getting better?

He started asking me some questions, and I knew where he was headed with it - depression.  I immediately bridled at the idea, but then he told me that whatever has screwed up my brain to make me prone to migraines also means I am prone to depression. His phrase was that the two conditions frequently “walk hand-in-hand.” He is putting me on a very low dose of an antidepressant to help with the migraines since the same chemical mechanisms are involved.

I left his office, and I felt like an utter failure.  Everybody I know is on antidepressants, I think.  Hell, just the teachers are probably keeping the American pharmaceutical industry afloat.  Two other doctors have talked to me about going on them, especially after my surgery and when my stress levels were so high my blood pressure was spiking to dangerous levels.  I have resisted.  I kept feeling like, you know, my life isn’t so bad.  I have a family that loves me.  I have a home and pets and friends.  How can I be depressed?  What right do I have to it?  (Which makes no flipping sense, I know, but that's how I felt.)  I need to just pull myself together is all. If I just refocused myself or change this external factor or add this new routine, I was going to be fine.  

But it really hasn’t been, and I am increasingly thinking that maybe I'm not.

I was sick about it all day, mad and looking for some way out of what I saw as a personal failing.  But I kept thinking about it.  I thought about the questions he had asked me.  Was I withdrawing from people?  Had I lost interest in things I used to enjoy?  Was I tired all the time?  Was my sleep irregular?

Yes.  Yes, yes, and yes.

I looked up a list of symptoms online.  I was really doing it more to prove to myself that this is *not* depression more than any other thing at this point, that while I might have a few of the signs that there were certainly others much more serious that would show I was not dealing with this. This is just life.  This is just teaching life.  This is just life after 40.  Whatever.  Yeah.  That didn’t work at all.  Flipping internet.

Am I frequently irritable?  Yes.  Apathetic?  You bet. Mood swings?  Like a damn carnival ride. Panic attacks or anxiety?  Checkity-check-check-check.  On and on.

And it’s been this way for about three years now that I can objectively measure.  Maybe longer.  

That’s when it hit me like a hammer.  Is this what’s wrong?  Has this been why I never seem to get anything done now, why every weekend I am just on the couch reading or sleeping?  I haven’t applied for an out-of-country summer program in a couple of years.  Thinking about the effort involved makes me too tired to fool with it.  I make plans to clean the house, to make sourdough, to start a stained glass project, to do anything but sit with a book, and by the end of the day, I find that I simply haven’t, but despite all that nothing, I’m just as tired.

I don’t write anymore.  I don’t keep up with my friends.  I don’t craft anymore.  I don’t workout anymore.  I don’t practice the piano anymore.  Everywhere except at school, which oddly seems to be less affected by this, I just sort of….am.

Yesterday, I was angry about it.  Just one more stupid thing wrong with my stupid body, just one more way nature has found to mess me over. When I woke up this morning, though, I felt a little differently.  If this *is* the problem (and remember he is giving me a low, low dose of the medicine to help with the migraines), is there then hope?  Can I get back to a place where I don’t have to feel so bad all the time?  Can I get back to a place where I do things again?

I guess we will just have to see.

That Moment When....

...this wonderfully odd little song comes up in my Spotify playlist, and my very first thought is, "Gotta share that with ____."  Only we don't do that anymore, so I can't.

Bit of crap, that......

Insomnia and Facebook Hate

(Strong language is contained herein.  If that bothers you, go elsewhere.)

I wasn't going to write anything anywhere about recent events. It didn't seem that there was anything I could add to the discussion that hadn't been said better by other people.  My Facebook feed is largely split into two camps of people, neither of which seems to be able to understand the other at all.  One camp posts nothing but "strike down all cops" and "all white people are evil" while the other is nothing but "it's mostly your fault."  Both are wearing me slam-damn out, to be honest.  Today, I have started to see a new variation saying, "If you don't post anything (about the shootings by the police), then you must be a racist, and we know it, and we're going to unfriend you now."

Imma call bullshit on all of this.

I haven't written anything because I am numb.  For three days, I have been walking around in a daze wondering what happened to this country.  Last night, I was struggling to get my mind to calm down enough to get some rest when the BBC and CNN apps on my phone started notifying me about Dallas.  After that, I just cried.  There didn't seem to be anything else left possible to do.  Around 1:30, I took some Zzzquil and fell into a nightmare-haunted sleep that made me sicker than no sleep at all would have done.

No matter what might have been going on behind the scenes, I don't think it is possible to say that the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were in any conceivable way legitimate responses to the situations.  Did the two men behave absolutely textbook perfectly when the police showed up?  I don't know.  I haven't watched the videos and will not because I can't carry that around in my head without it destroying me.  I doubt it.  I doubt it was possible.  It sure as hell wouldn't have been for me.  I got stopped for a traffic violation and was shaking like a leaf when the patrolman came up to the car with his hand on his sidearm.  Even though I am a white woman (the opposite demographic from those slain recently), I kept worrying that I wasn't being still enough, that I would do the wrong thing.  When we get scared, we sometimes don't remember the drills we were taught, the advice to keep our hands on the steering wheel, fingers spread.  I will say this, though.  Unless those men took out a gun and pointed it at one of the officers, I cannot see that the officer response was the right one. There had to have been some other path.

My social media feed is filled with posts from former students who are angry and scared.  I think that feeling is totally legitimate.  Every time I think about that little girl watching her father be shot and killed, I want to scream.  That my students have to worry about this, have to read posts on social media, have to listen to elitists who diminish their concerns and say, in essence, the modern version of "well,  you know how it is with *those* people" as if someone's skin color diminishes their value as a human being or their protections under American law, breaks my heart.  One of my precious formers posted simply, "My life matters.  My life matters.  My life matters."  That anyone as bright, capable, charming, and full of potential to do great good things as he is has to say this to himself should break everybody's heart.

This is not my country.  This cannot be my country.  We have to be better than this.

And then there are the police.  Most of the people I know who are a part of law enforcement genuinely want to make people safe and protect them from harm.  Their job is increasingly terrifying.  Heavy weaponry is everywhere.  The most fundamental concept of civilization, an agreement to abide by certain concepts for the safety of everyone, is crumbling as everybody focuses on whatever they can grab for themselves instead.  I can't imagine being police or highway patrol and knowing that I was going to be putting my life in danger every day.  I deeply respect their dedication to protecting us.

That being said, not everybody who is behind a badge is flawless, and we are going to have to accept that and deal with it somehow before all the wheels come off this thing altogether. I have grown up personally acquainted with the idea that law enforcement can be quite a mixed bag of things due to issues of corruption locally.  Every profession has those in it who fail to live up to its demands.  There are teachers who are terminated for varying kinds of misconduct all the time, doctors who lose licenses for addiction or malpractice. Becoming a member of law enforcement does not magically confer perfection any more than becoming a member of any other profession, and while I support them and am grateful beyond belief for the sacrifices they make, I really think we are all going to have to realize that there are problems that must be resolved before the entire system collapses.

And maybe this is the thing that both of these camps on social media are missing.  They are lumping huge swaths of humanity into big, stereotypical groups.  That which is Other is by definition both Wrong and Evil when it is approached this way.  When we start dealing with people on the macro level, we lose the detail that allows us to appreciate each other. It becomes easy to pick up that first stone and fling it at a mass of anonymous faces instead of having to step up to that one individual separately, look him or her in the eye, and take aim. Stop saying "all you people" whether you are pointing a finger at the cops or those who have been shot.  In fact, any time you find yourself thinking something like, "Well, *they're* all...(WHATEVER)," some kind of mental alarm needs to go off.  No group is universally any one thing or another.

Instead, why don't we try, just as an experiment maybe, to say, "If I were in that situation, how would I feel?  What would my reaction be?"  Don't get up on your high-horse saying, "Oh, but that would *never* be me."  Instead, do the cliche and see if you can't walk in those shoes in some degree even for the smallest amount of time. Recover the basic human quality of empathy for another.

Is power being abused?  By some in many places.  Is fear slowly killing us all?  Every damn day.  Certain media outlets stir it up to get ratings.  Politicians use it as a sharpened goad to drive us hither, thither, and yon.   I don't know what the answer is.  People far wiser than I have pondered this for longer than I have been alive, and you see the state we're in. These are upsetting times.  It's okay to be afraid.  It's natural to be upset.  That being said, we cannot keep letting it make us savage toward each other. Appreciate the value of the fragile and irreplaceable humanity around you.  Quit being sure you know what's what.  For the love of the tiny baby Jesus, quit making blanket statements about entire sections of the nation, be it a profession or an ethnicity.

I guess I am going to fall back on an old personal axiom, then.  I've had it up in my classroom for a long time, "Be Nice or Leave."  I'm not going to throw stones or post hostile statuses.  I'm just going to sit over here, grieve for our hurting nation, and pray for some change.  Anyone who might want to join in with that is always welcome.

The Cure

I have been feeling really bad today.  It started this morning at church.  I subbed on the organ for the morning service, and they had baby dedication.  Then there was a presentation from a summer missionary full of all these beautiful children in need of families.  Also appearing were various announcements for all the weddings and showers that everybody seems to be having.  Every single button that I have that can be pushed was being ballroom danced across.

So I loaded myself in my little white car and drove to Walmart to buy pet food and Diet MD since I was totally out of both.  And I cried.  Embarrassing ugly crying.  Thank God I was in my car where nobody could see or hear me.

Usually, I'm okay.  Most days, I'm fine.  I stay busy, and my life is a good one.  I love what I do; I love my home; I love my friends and family.  I do not stay in a woe-is-me mindset. (And here's I'm going to have a slight Bob Dylan interlude because of reasons.)  I can honestly say that...

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind....

Most of the time.  Today was not most of the time.

I did what I could to try to pull myself out of it.  I made a skillet of faux tacos.  I watched the last three episodes of season three of Orphan Black.  I took a little bitty nap with a purring cat.

None of it worked. The overly-chirpy alarm on my phone went off, and I felt like hurling it into the wall.  Seeing those horrible technicolor rainbows around the lights and feeling for all the world like my head was about to crank up with a migraine, I pulled myself into a decent pair of jeans, loaded my red Peavy Foundation into its case, and reluctantly headed back to the church.

Only a few of us were there for our evening jam session since several of the people who usually show up were gone this weekend, but those of us who were there worked on a fun little song for the night service, and I found myself starting to feel a little better.  I tried to work on a few walks for it, and to be honest, they didn't go so well because of how badly I was feeling, but just having the instrument in my hands was somehow comforting.

The hymns for tonight were full of accidentals, and by the time we got to the specials, all I wanted was to crawl under the pew and sleep awhile.  Our music director announced the song, and I trudged up to the front, picking my bass up along the way.  We started to play, and the congregation started to sing.  The song had some silly lyrics to it, and we sang it over and over again.  Every time we went around, I found myself feeling a little better.  By the end of it, I was smiling.

The music is somehow a cure.  I don't know how it should be that this is true, but for me, it is.  Sometimes the relief comes in just listening to it, to a song that reminds me that I am not alone and that there is still hope.  Sometimes the words are the most important part. Tonight though, it came from shutting out everything except my fingers on the finger board and strings of that old bass keeping a steady rhythm.  There was comfort in every part of it, in the pull of the strap around my neck, in the weight of the body in my lap, in the smooth glide of the polished maple against my hand, in the press of the strings against my fingertips, in the mathematical and logical patterns of notes that were creating the music.

Part of me wishes I could have sat there on that front pew and kept playing forever.  That's not the way the world works, though.  Sooner or later, the music has to end.

The trick is to find a way to keep the good inside even when the instrument is back in its case.  I have to admit I'm still working on it.

Late Night Grande Hotel

And maybe you were thinkin'
That you thought you knew me well
But, no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
I feel like Garbo in this late night grand hotel
Cause living alone is all I've ever done well

~ "Late Night Grande Hotel" - Nanci Griffith

I don't have anything left.  It's all gone.  Maybe it all had to be dumped out so something new could come in.  We're not to that point, though, so I can't tell you.  I'm not hopeful.

And I used to be.

I miss the me that was hopeful.  Now, I fake the optimism, try to keep the mask in place, hope the seams and the cracks and the patches don't show too much. I stay as still as possible, try to smile a lot, use misdirection when needed. I'm not as good at it as I used to be.  Probably, I'm getting worse every day.

I feel like a bird with broken wings.  I stare up into the sky, and I know that used to belong there.  I can't get any altitude, though.  All I can do is flutter and wish.  I've been knocked down too often.  By Fate, maybe.  By careless hands that never meant to hurt me but couldn't quite help it.  By my own foolish wishes.

Tomorrow, I'll get up, and maybe the world will be roses.  Maybe my wings will be healed.  I wonder, though, after so much time lost, if I would even remember how to fly if they were.  I'm not hopeful.

And I used to be....

Lost Day

Yesterday was so beautiful.  Shame I missed most of it.

I woke up, took the dogs out, settled in for a little breakfast reading on the couch.  I had big plans to get much done.  I had phone calls to make, jeans to wash, floors to vacuum.  Not one bit of that got done.

My head started slamming me early, and I ignored it because I'm sick and tired of it.  I've done nothing but hurt all week.  I know it's been due to stress and weather, but I'm really, really worn out from it.  I know that ignoring it was not the best response, but I could not stand the thought of taking a Maxalt.  Since it was not to a level that was making me scream yet, I also thought it might back off.

You think after all this time, I would have learned....

I took a nap in an effort to shake it, intending to get up refreshed and pain-free and take care of my list.  No dice.  When I woke up, I was disoriented and sick.  Two hours later, I *was* screaming.

I took a Maxalt, and when that didn't work, I took the phenergan.  That, of course, was the game-ender.  Nothing happens after phenergan takes the field.  Even it, though, didn't kill the pain.  Every time I woke up, my head was hurting.  I would just roll over and wait for unconsciousness to slide back over me again.  The only thing I had to deal with while I was asleep was the Hell of Dreams from all the things kicking up sediment in my mind.  I won't even go into the details here.  I am still hoping that they will fade soon so I can forget them.

I'm better today.  I still can't tell if it's going to come back or not.  If it does, and if it won't stop hurting me, I think I'm going to have to call my doctor.  Probably this is just what I think it is, too much stress and weather shifting too fast, but I can't take much more of it.

The thing that makes me so mad about all of it is that I just lost a day.  It happens so much lately.  I have plans, I have things I need to do, and WHAM, suddenly I'm incapacitated.  There has to be something better than this.  I hate it.

A Week Full of Crap

This week started with the tax debacle on Monday and continued to roll right over me until it was gone.  I won't detail all of it.  There's just too much.  Today alone is worth three or four blogs.  The crowning event happened this afternoon after school.  

I took a necklace of mine that had broken to a jeweler for repair.  While I was there, I had them look at my rose of sharon ring.  It has been catching everything lately.  When the lady looked at it, she started pointing out problems and finished by telling me that I needed to put the ring in a drawer and not wear it except for "special."  It's too fragile and too old, apparently, to withstand repair.  

I'm heartbroken.  I blogged about this ring earlier, so don't want to repeat, but it's so much more than a circle of metal to me.  My grandmother gave me money, my parents gave me money, and I used part of the paycheck from the first job I ever had to pay for the rest.  It represents my family as a whole.  I have worn it every single day (barring international travel) since I got it.  It makes me happy each and every single time I look down at it.  Now I have to put it away, and it's like something I loved has died.

My finger itches from not having the ring on.  I keep feeling it with my thumb, probing for the band that should be there.  But there's nothing.  Each time I realize why, it makes me sad all over again. 

I am sure that there are other rings in the world, but none of them will be *mine*.  It is also true that it is just a little thing, not earthshattering at all, but nevertheless, to me it matters.  It's just one more thing of mine that I love but cannot do anything to heal or better.  It's just one more precious piece of me that has gone bad and can't be reclaimed.  

I am rapidly losing the ability to hide everything under a neat curtain of positive thinking and Noh smiles. The lost and the broken are destroying me.

It's Tax Day!

(insert the obscenity of your choice here.)

About 3:45 today, I still hadn't heard from my tax service, so I made one last phone call hoping to get through during what is the busiest last-minute dance between simple serf and federal overlord.  I finally got something other than a busy signal, was told everything was waiting, packed my bags and headed to pick up my taxes as fast as my little car could carry me.

I hadn't had the courage to ask what the damage would be on the phone.  I didn't feel that I could stand it if I owed much.  I have no money right now, debts everywhere and only tiny trickles of income.

When I sat down, I knew from the expression on my accountant's face that the news was not a return.  And it wasn't.  It really wasn't.  The amount would have been negligible for many people I know.  For me, it started those little shivers of full-scale panic moving under what I was desperately trying to remain a calm facade.

I held it together long enough to  write two checks which I had nothing in the bank to cover.  I held it long enough to walk across the street to the local post office where the register was locking up and causing delays.  I held it together long enough to get back across the street and into my car, to get my vehicle pointed toward home.

Then all those steel rivets sheered away, and I fell apart.

I cried so hard that I couldn't see the road.  I was shaking so hard that the only thing keeping me from falling over in the seat was the white-knuckled grip on my steering wheel.  All I could think of was that I was working so hard, trying to meet all my responsibilities, and the result of that was....nothing.  No forward motion.  Nothing gained.  Only a big finger waggling smack from the government at the end of the year.  Only a request for money I don't have.  I passed a cemetery during that trip and saw a sign on its chainlink fence advertising the cost of a plot.  I remember thinking, "My God.  It even costs money to die.  I don't even have enough money to die..."

I managed to get to Mom and Dad's, and I sat with them a long time.  I moved money from the account intended to pay for my plane ticket to Turkey, very nearly emptying it, and I felt my stomach turn over.  The debt to the nation is paid.  As to how I am ever going to find the money now to go to Turkey this summer, I have absolutely no idea.  Right now, it seems more remote than the face of the moon.

Now I'm just waiting for a night of nightmares, and all will be complete.

Like French-Fried Hell

The past three days, I've been fighting off a migraine.  The weather has been rocking and rolling.  There has been stress of varying kinds.  Today, I lost the fight.

I made it to my off period.  I intended to find a way to defeat the headache so I could finish my day.  How silly of me.  Within 45 minutes, I was literally sobbing, head-on-desk, as the room spun and evil little psychos with spiky shoes jumped up and down  inside my brain.

I vaguely remember stumbling downstairs and telling my administrator something.  My head principal heard her talking on the walkie-talkies trying to call a sub, and I will forever be grateful for the fact that he told me (through her) to go on home.  They had it.

I sort of remember struggling to get my stuff together, literally and figuratively.  I sort of remember my administrator following me out to my car to make sure I made it.  I remember far too little of the drive home.

I do remember saying something over and over as I drove.  I became aware that it was the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy at some point.  I suppose there are some people who recite a poem or a psalm in times of distress.  Apparently, and probably not unexpectedly, I turn to Hamlet....

When I got home, I struggled to walk the dogs.  Then I lay down to hear them erupt into insane barking.  I dragged myself up and went to the door where a guy from EMEPA and I scared the living bejeezus out of each other.  He and another guy had come to replace my power meter.  He kept saying, "It will only take about 5 seconds.  Your power will only be off 5 seconds."  To be honest, I wouldn't have cared if it were off for a half day if it meant I could get my dogs to shut up and let me lie back down.  I muttered something at him and nodded a lot, he walked off, I closed the door, and by the time I managed to fall down again, I heard the microwave give its excited "I-have-life-and-meaning-again" beep.  One of my last coherent thoughts was, "Huh.  It really was five seconds."

Then I remember nothing until Roux was suddenly leaping on the bed and burrowing her nose under my arm and Chewie was dancing around us both.

I still feel like french-fried hell.  I just looked up to see there is still daylight.  Well, it can just get along without me.  I'm going back to bed soon. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

The Road to Dixie

The week started off on quite a tear.  Monday was a nightmare of problems getting a prescription filled, a car that suddenly started leaking fluid in massive quantities in a parking lot, impending wrath-of-God weather, and to top it all off, a headache that robbed me of all cognizance.

I woke up on Tuesday with what I have come to think of as a "migraine hangover," still unable to focus, still processing with a significant lag, and also having the new element of a sore neck to go with it.  It was fabulous beyond words.  I desperately wanted to come back home and fall unconscious, but I had my Comp class to teach, and so instead of being able to leave at the last bell, I had to stay until late into the evening.  I came home and found the beginnings of good news with my car repaired fairly inexpensively and waiting for me to pick it up.

Today, all the clouds both mental and physical had rolled away.  The weather was cold but gorgeously clear.  The sky was that shade of blue that makes me breathe as deeply as I can as if I could somehow inhale some of that bright glory.  The daily schedule was shot to pieces because of an assembly.  It didn't even phase me.  A friend sent me a link to the new Josh Ritter album on NPR First Listen, and I spent what remained of my lunch hour exploring all that new wonder.  My copy is due to be here tomorrow.  Rarely have I watched the progress of a package on my little iPhone app with more anticipation.

The day my car tried to die, I took it through a back street in town to get it to the mechanic who cobbles it back together routinely.  I hadn't been all the way down it in a very long time, and near an overpass I drive across every single day, I found a hidden gem.  Tucked right beside the concrete arch is an old sign for the Dixie Oil Company.  The building that went with it is gone now, but this one incredibly well-kept sign stands sentinel over the mowed emptiness.  I wanted to shoot it the moment I saw it, but I had only my iPhone and a car that was trying to overheat as well as thunder capable of vibrating windows, so I kept driving.  I promised myself I would come back.

It wasn't exactly safe.  There's no question of that.  It's not in a good part of town, and it's rather isolated.  (Does this sound familiar?)  I couldn't not shoot that sign, though.  I kept thinking about it, about the light I'd like to catch on it.  Today, since I was feeling so good, I brought my camera to school and waited.  When the day was finally done, I packed up and ran for it.

The light was perfect when I got there.  There is a golden time in the morning and the afternoon when all the colors are more vivid, when everything seems glossed by wonder.  Even the old neon sign was made something more, something mystical by it.  I shot frame after frame of it, took some with my phone, and scooted back to my car without incident.  The result can be seen above.

So far, the week has been a real mix of things.  Tomorrow is payday, and so it should mark a significant upswing.  As long as it doesn't try to backslide to Monday's fun, I think I will make it out.

Flat Tires and Fake Babies

The past couple of days have been more of a rollercoaster ride than usual.  I got up to go to school yesterday, threw all my crap in my car, got almost across the interstate bridge, and I heard the distinctive thump-thump-thump of a flat tire.  It took just long enough for me to get onto the on ramp to process, and I pulled off on the side of it to get out and check.  The tire was so flat the seal had broken.

I just sat in the car for a minute, trying to think of what the best thing to do would be.  I finally decided to back up the on ramp, praying nobody came speeding down it.  I managed to get turned around and limped slowly home.

The rest of the day was about what you'd expect from such a beginning.  Late arrival at school.  Not having the stuff I needed when I thought it was ready.  Technology stupidity.  A feeling of being rushed and just somehow dull.  An unexpected meeting.  A lack of Diet Mountain Dew everywhere.  The big stuff and the little stuff all went to perdition in a handcart.

Today, I drove another vehicle.  I took an entire 8-pack of Diet MD to my little fridge.  We ordered lunch from a local restaurant.  I wore a new sweater.

And my students made me laugh.  They came in chatting about babies.  Suddenly, according to them, I was expecting imaginary ones myself.  They started coming up with baby names.  I wound up with imaginary twins:  Shakespeareonte and Shakespeareonce (a boy and a girl).  It made me smile, and I needed it.

It also made me a little sad for all the obvious reasons, but I tried to focus on the sweetness instead of the bitter.  Some days, that is easier to do than others.  I'm lucky with the students I've got right now.  They are a great assistance with it gets difficult.

Just Another Crap Tuesday

It had already been a bad day when it happened.  I was on the interstate headed home trying to outrun the things that made me sad, trying to let the music and the movement cheer me.  I saw something appear suddenly on the edge of the the road.  I started slowing, and a dog ran across both lanes in front of me.  I was scared enough, but I was happy the dog was across and safe.

Then the other one ran out to follow.

I managed to dodge it, but it got scared and couldn't decide between the safety of where it had come from and the place where its friend was.  I saw it go under the 18-wheeler behind me.

And then I just screamed.

I managed to get to an exit where there's a gas station I go to fairly often, and I pulled off because I was crying too hard to see.  It was one of the worst things I have ever seen.  The poor creature was young, alone, and scared.

When I made it home, I came in and grabbed my dogs and just held them.  They are all rescues.  It could have been them easily at different points in their lives, those times when they were uncared-for, unprotected, unloved.  I wish that the dog from today had a family that took care of it.  To think that anything dying without love is too much, even for a Tuesday.

Again

The first twinges of a migraine hit me yesterday during our faculty meeting after school.  I ignored them, not wanting to take a Maxalt, but I did pack up my stuff and come on home.  By the time I got here, my head was starting to throb.

Stupidly, I continued to put off the inevitable.  Maxalt lately has made me extremely loopy when I take it, so I kept thinking, "This will clear up on its own."  Like it ever does.

When I finally took the Maxalt, it hit me as expected, badly, and I lay on the couch dreaming and drifting until Mom came down to check on me around 6:30 and bring me some gumbo she'd made.  This was when it happened.

I was so cold.  I was bundled up under an afghan, staring up at the Christmas tree lights when suddenly and just for a moment, I saw something...dangling...off the tree topper.  It was like a little shadow thing doing a King Kong/Empire State impression.  Just like the time in the cafeteria, I knew it wasn't real, couldn't be real, but it was every bit as disturbing as that experience had been.

I went to bed almost immediately after I ate, and this morning, everything seems to have reset inside my head.  Only the day as it goes by can show that for sure.   These headaches have started scaring me with their bizarre side effects.  While the doctor has said some people have things like this every single time, I really don't think I can stand to be one of them.

Monsters

What have we become? 
In a world degenerating 
What have we become? 

Speak your mind, look out for yourself 
The answer to it all is a life of wealth 
Grab all you can cause you live just once 
You got the right to do whatever you want 

~ "What Have We Become" - DC Talk


Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

~ "The Second Coming" - W.B. Yeats

__________________________________

(Be warned.  This will not be especially coherent.)

I didn't know anything about Sandy Hook until my planning period.  I had felt my phone buzzing in my pocket all day from incoming emails, but I thought they were just the usual flurry of IFFT actions and holiday ads.  When I saw how many of them were from the CNN Alert service, I knew something dreadful had occurred.  Nothing, however, nothing at all ever could have prepared me for what was in those mails.

Everybody knows the story by now.  I won't retell it here, especially since just right now there are so very many gaps in it.  What I can't stop thinking about is how scared those poor children were and what it means for the ones who survived as well as for the families of the ones who are lost.

We take it for granted that some places are held commonly sacred, safe zones that nobody will harm.  We think of churches, hospitals, schools as places where the monsters cannot or will not go.  We take it for granted that some people, the very young, the very old, pregnant women, are not to be pulled into the violence that seems to surround us on all sides now.  I'm not sure how wise it is for us to do this, but I think maybe it's necessary.  We have to keep believing that some things are valuable, are (dare I say it?) holy, because if we don't, then the very last of the good is gone and the monsters have won.  We have to trust someone, some place, because if we don't, I'm not sure we can stay sane.

No child should ever know fear in a school.  I know that the all-pervasive culture of bullying and, for lack of a better term, hatefulness is deeply ingrained in the life of elementary and secondary students.  I know, too, that some children fear their classmates and that there are situations that make this completely and totally justifiable.  What happens to us as a world, though, when the thing they have to fear is not a cutting comment but rather the end of their lives?  We're lost.  We're so lost when this happens that I am not sure we can be found.

I am no parent, but I am a teacher.  I pray to God that I never, ever know what it's like to have a shooter in my building, to be in lockdown waiting to see if my door handle is the one that is going to turn, to hear my students or my colleagues in fear and in pain.  Still, I think every teacher in every school has probably felt that specter of fear run its icy finger down his or her spine from time to time, has thought about what s/he would do if the horror came to him/her.

I don't want to get on any high and unsteady soapbox and point fingers.  I know so many people will be doing that as soon as all the tears dry.  To be honest, I don't even know where to point the fingers.  All I can do right now is cry and pray:  pray for the grieving, pray for the injured and the broken, pray for the lost.  And by that, of course, I am so horribly and terribly afraid that I mean all of us....

Migraine Sick

It's come to be almost predictable.  The weather goes haywire and so does my head.

I got sick today and had to come home.  I took a Maxalt at the end of second period, drifted through third barely clinging to functionality, and then I made good my escape.

As I lay drifting once I got home, one image kept flashing in my head over and over.  I read somewhere that having migraines makes you more likely to keep having more.  The analogy used was that it is like water wearing away a channel; the more that passes through it, the deeper the channel grows.  I kept picturing rolling waves of blue-white electricity buzzing through my brain.  It was not a comforting vision.

I slept for several hours, but I still feel the after-effects.  I got up, ate something, am watching The King's Speech.  I hope everything in the weather patterns of my head and the sky are calmer tomorrow.

Stuff and Things, Etc.

In these bodies we will live
In these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love
You invest your life.
“Awake My Soul” - Mumford & Sons

After awhile, friction wears down the edges of the machinery.  Maybe that makes it run more smoothly sometimes.  For this particular engine, it’s starting to make everything just the tiniest - and most crucial - bit out of alignment.

I am so tired of watching people choose bad things, harmful things, things that will never help them achieve.  It’s like watching somebody in a burning house shoving away rescue.  Probably more precisely, it’s like watching someone dying of thirst refuse water.

Oh, it’s just another moment when I’m tired and sad and I don’t have anything left to give.  It’s nothing new.  That doesn’t really make it easier to deal with.  It is so hard to pull what it necessary out of a mostly-empty container.  I’m out of ideas about refilling it.

The quote from Mumford above has always been meaningful to me, never more than when I'm tired and sad, feeling defeated.  Maybe I've invested too much in this. Too much love.  Too much life.   I don't know how to turn away, though, and I don't know how to do it any other way.  I'm not sure I want to learn.

Maybe tomorrow will be Scarlett's "another day," and I will find a way to get over this.  One day, though.  One day.  I know I'm not going to get up or get over at all.

Mind Eraser

(with apologies to the Black Keys)

After an extremely stresl day, I suppose what happened was only to be expected.  I got to lunch and my off period, and the hammer of the gods struck.

It's not like I hadn't had warnings.  The lights were a little too bright.  I had those little twinges, those little previews of pain.  I had a hard time getting to names for characters, people, things.

I managed to take my Maxalt, and for a horrible little while, I lay across my desk and prayed for the pain to stop.  You know that didn't happen.  Instead, I just felt the blanket of disconnection spreading over the spikes of agony and the rolling waves of nausea.  I staggered downstairs and asked for permission to leave early.  I knew I only had a short time to get home before I would have to call someone to come get me.

I managed to get to the car, rolled down the windows, let the cold air wash over me until I got to the interstate and had to roll them up.  Then the weird crap started.

I had turned off the radio when I got in the car.  I couldn't stand the noise.  As I drove, I kept hearing music.  Very faint, but music.  I checked my phone, thinking it was ringing without me feeling the vibration.  I tried to locate the source of the sound.  Then came the horrible knowledge that it was just coming from some misfiring in my brain.

When I finally got home and laid down, somehow, I had another sensation I've never had, that of being somewhere else.  I don't even know how to describe it.  I knew I was home in my own bed, but somehow, I also felt that I was in the living room of the trailer we had when I was a small child before my parents built their house.  Maybe it was a trick of the light triggering some deep memory.  I was dizzy and quite frankly scared.

I am better now after two hours of sleep, but I still feel weak and exhausted.  I am up long enough to eat and take care of a few necessary tasks, and then I'm going back to bed.  The only explanation for what happened is that the headache must have somehow churned up the sediment of my mind.  Maybe the electrical activity was in a different part of my brain this time.  I only know that I hope I never have to experience again.

And Then There Are Those Other Days....

Today, I ran out of fight.  I was trying to get a class through a portion of a novel, and everywhere I looked, heads were lowered, eyes were closing.  Every answer I was getting was just pulled desperately out of the air.  I guess I could have launched into an angry tirade or a lecture about the importance of it all, but I just couldn't.  I felt as fragile as spun glass, like any sudden movement was going to shatter me in such a way that I couldn't ever put the pieces back together again.  I told them to spend the remainder of the period doing SSR, and I graded the quiz on the section they were supposed to have read.

Most of my students this year engage, or at least they "play along."  There are days though, as there are in every teacher's life, when it doesn't click.  Lately, because we are having the students read a novel, it's happening more and more.  I refuse to believe they can't do it.  If they were genuinely incapable, I would have more patience with it, honestly.

What I cannot stand, what is destroying me, is when they can but they WON'T.  It is unbearable to me to sit and watch somebody choose ignorance over knowledge.  It's never wrong not to know something, but it is wrong to continue to shun knowledge when it is offered to you.  Any time you don't take an opportunity to better yourself, you have broken one of the great unwritten commands of the universe - Go forth, do, and learn from it.

And yes, I know they're young.  I know they're distracted.  I know that apparently, I am failing to make it "relevant" enough despite all my best efforts to the contrary, a fact that continues to depress me.  And no, it's not everybody.  I can't learn to let go of the ones who do.  I can't deny that some part of me envies teachers who just sort make the sign of the cross over it and go on.  I am sure their blood pressure stays much lower than mine, that they don't get nasty ripping headaches.  I just don't know how to stop letting it affect me so much.

Today, just now, I need to be grading, doing lesson plans, prepping materials for the week ahead.  Instead, all I want to do is sit very still and try to pull my pieces back together.  Maybe if I can do that, then I can find what it's going to take to try to get up and go again tomorrow morning.

Sadness

I went to our church's Homecoming this morning despite the little voice in my head telling me that I should skip it.  I should really learn to listen to that voice.

I'd looked forward to hearing the speaker, a returning member of the church staff from when I was a child.  What he talked about though, just brought me to tears.  He shared from his own story about loss and grief and finally coming to a place where you're not praying for healing but for mercy, and all I could see was my uncle in those last terrible days in the ICU.  It was like I was there standing by the bed he was in when they first brought him, watching him shake and fight for breath.

There is nothing worse than having grief swamp you and being trapped in a public place.  I sat there with tears running down my face, unable to do more than raise my handkerchief to my face occasionally.  What I wanted to do was run out, run away, be somewhere private where I could cry until the pain was gone.  Instead, I had to wait, to listen, to hurt until it was finally done. I put bruises on my hands from holding on so tight so I could maintain until the end finally came.   I fled to my car as soon as I could, sat with my head on the wheel as the first wave of it passed, drove home (probably unsafely) with tear-blurred eyes.  I sat in my driveway and cried and cried until I could start to pull it together again.

It wasn't just my uncle.  How many times have I had to come to that point where I try to accept, to pray that hardest of all the prayers, "Thy will be done"?  There was Grandaddy.  Nana.  Granny.  Peepaw.  Uncle Gary.  All of it, every moment of their fading and loss was like a relentless tide sweeping over me again and again.  How many times will I have to find the strength to pray it again?

I went to eat with Mom.  I came home and read.  I took a nap.  Now I'm up again, and I'm trying to get rid of this lingering sadness.  It just won't go.  I don't know how long it will take to disappear.  I wish I had not gone to have all this stirred up.

Mouse Shower

(which, by the way, I think would be a totally awesome band name)

This morning, I had more trouble than usual focusing and waking up.  I stumbled into the shower, and turned the water on.  As I was washing my hair, I glanced into the corner under the shower curtain, and I saw something odd, a grey spot that shouldn't be there.

I paused, blinked, looked again, and the spot moved.  This is not comforting when you are in as vulnerable a position as you are when you're in the shower.  Looking through the distortion of the clear liner, I figured out that what I was looking at was a small field mouse.

I decided at that point to get out of the shower.

I wasn't scared, but I kept having this image of the mouse running up my leg trying to get away from the soap and water.  I grabbed the big plastic cup I keep in the bathroom for rinsing the sides of the tub when I scrub it, and I looked around for something thin but strong and waterproof to slide under it to form a trap.  The only thing I could think of was my Cricut mat.  I took it, placed the cup gently over the unmoving mouse, slipped the mat under it, and I hustled him outside to a less-watery freedom.  Then I came back to the shower to enjoy rodent-free cleanness.

Any day that starts out with a mouse in your bath probably isn't going to be the best.  It really lived up to its start.  The polite, damp, little mouse was actually a high point.  That should tell you everything else about today that you need to know.