Emerging From the Mists

It has been happening gradually, but it is happening...I am becoming less and less depressed over time with the help of medication and counseling. It seemed a bit frightening at first. I really did not know how to exist any other way as it seems I have probably spent the better portion of my life in a somewhat depressive state. This is probably one of the reasons the unhappy memories of my childhood have always seemed at the forefront and I have always had to fight to recall and retain the moments of happiness I know were a part of my life as a child - I have seen the photographs and home movies (silent on 8mm film) and I am smiling and playing in most of them. Certainly more potent evidence than the bitter or sad memories for which no photographic or written records exist. Even the poetry and stories I wrote were happier than I can recall feeling most of the time. The mind can be such a strange dwelling place.

This is not what I initially set out to record today. It occurred to me as I signed in to my blog to write "the other" something, but it is a more cheerful and less naughty something than what I will be mentioning shortly and I think it sets a more cheerful tone for the entire entry than otherwise would have proven to be the case.

The reason this topic springs so readily to mind is because over the past several days, despite some health issues that I have had to deal with (sigh, sigh, sigh!), my thoughts have been turning more toward the writing of poetry and this blog. I have also been drawn more and more to certain books that I thought looked interesting but have not had the mental energy to cope with until now. It seems I am waking up with the approach of Spring, and it does not feel as if it will be a rude awakening in any sense, but a release of old shackles; bonds of a lifetime held hostage by grief, sorrow, bitterness, anger, self-pity, fear,...thank God for the love and strength that grew despite all of that adversty of spirit!

Now, on to the fun stuff. I wanted to let all of you know that I got "tongued" the other day as I drove over to our veterinarians. Now you have to realize that I am fat and fifty and have been around the block (so to speak) a few times, so I was not so much shocked as just, "Oh, puh-lease!" The young woman who did the tonguing was not the driver of the car (which was sort of a scrunched looking SUV type of vehicle) and looked like she lived to have sex with anything as long as it was on a ski slope somewhere. When I got to our vets (to pick up IV fluids for our kidney failure kitties) I asked the receptionist (who has been there longer than we have been taking our cats there) if there was some sort of colony of wild and rabid lesbians living in the area and told her what had taken place. She gave a little bit of a laugh and said that she thought someone must have been bored.

This was one of the times I particularly miss Patty or having "She-who-declines-to-be-named" with me in that they are (were) both much faster thinkers in these situations than I am and would have "slapped back" immediately, while all I can do is wish I had thought of grabbing one of my breasts and jiggling it back at the twitiot in the other car, or perhaps giggling ecstatically and nodding "Yes" too enthusiastically in response to the tongue-play so disgustingly aimed in my direction. Another acquaintance felt that such a response would likely have caused an accident and, since I have no wish to send some poor and staid elderly person into cardiac arrest before God and nature have decreed such an event, am rather glad I just took the "What idiotic piffle!" approach instead.

Several weeks ago, before I realized I was progressing to the extent I seem to be, I was driving along the river road and saw three Eastern (?North Eastern) Bluebirds perched in the bracken between the water and the roadside. I get ridiculously excited at the sight of bluebirds because you don't often see them in our area and there is something so cheerful about them, much more so that the robins, who are more dour in their suits, and certainly more business-like in their demeanor than the bluebirds. The sky was a crisp, clear blue; the air clean and cold; the sun bright and high, high, high up in the sky. It was a day to take your breath away, to close your eyes against the sun and feel the full beauty of nature against the skin of your face, so when I started to feel anxious, worried and depressed shortly thereafter I wasn't sure why.

September 11, 2001 we received several emails from friends that seemed rather strange. They were telling us to turn on the TV, asking if we were stupid or dead (my significant other was between contracts and sleeping in and I had been doing other things before I checked our email that day - I had not turned the TV on at all) and generally trying to get our attention through a medium that, in retrospect, screamed in its silence that day. I did not know what was going on so I turned on the television just in time to see the live broadcast of the first of the Twin Towers collapsing. I think it was Tom Brokaw who was saying, "What can you say?" The beautiful crisp, blue sky glowing with the light of a clear Autumn sun framed the picture of dust, panic and destruction that, eight years later helped cause what I described to one of my therapists as an "anxiety incursion."

Thankfully, all of our loved ones were safe and well, or as well as possible, that day but even the memory of the bluebirds did not seem able to bridge the void in my heart created by the events of 9/11/2001. We lost my boyfriend's mom two years, or so prior to that, my own mom just that February. We had yet to learn that my dad was to undergo three bouts with cancer, that my one of my sisters was going to die of leukemia, that my boyfriend's family was to lose his brother-in-law very shortly after Patty died, that several of our VIPs (Very Important Pussycats) would also be lost to us, that there was to be more pain than we could possibly have imagined ourselves surviving in our futures. We are still here.

The memory of bluebirds seems particularly fitting at the moment. I just finished RSVPing to a wedding invitation for two of our friends who will be married in May up in Maine. We both hope to be there to wish them well and celebrate with them, sharing in their joy in one another and in life. They deserve such happiness, as do most of us. It is anticipated that blue skies and sunshine will be on the schedule but prudent plans have been made for the occurrance of storms as well, so there will be no hinderance to ceremony or celebration. I must , rather selfishly, admit I am sort of hoping to be indoors as Maine is cold in May, but if there are bluebirds I can forgive a lingering chill to the air.