True Love

She entered my life out of nowhere. I had taken a sabbatical from work due to the Covid pandemic. When I returned, she was working there. We hit it off immediately. I remembered her from high school even though we had literally never said a word to each other back then.

She asked me for my Facebook, and I balked because my Facebook posts were mostly very far left political rants at the time. But she insited, fortunately, and we started messgaing back and forth. One day, she started messaging me and we traded a number of hilarious and flirtatious messages. She suggested we should go to The Bar (literally the name of the place) and I said “Sure, when do you want me to pick you up?”

We went there, had a couple drinks and laughed so hard together. We connected right away. From there, things proceeded like an avalanche. We fell fast and hard for each other. It was easy.

But…

I had not disconnected completely from my last relationship and things crashed hard and fast when she found out that my ex’s car was still in my name, and her phone and insurance were still on my accounts. It was a crushing blow, one that would have waylaid most burgeoning romances.

But, this was no mere romance. She was a truly special woman. She stayed. She went through the pain of being a part of a break up that she had reasonably assumed was already complete when she met me. She celebrated the small victories she saw as I grew and learned from my mistakes.

This is true love. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Best. That. Ever. Happened. To. Me.

I still make mistakes. The difference I have learned from her is that I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to be honest. Always. With her and with myself. It is not always easy, but it is absolutely necessary.

It’s a new reality that I am still adjusting to. But the reward is that I get to experience everything with the love of my life.

Revisiting Old Posts

I wrote this at a time when I had already checked out of my relationship with her. The memories I was having was of someone for whom I had unrequited and unfulfilled feelings at the time, but who now I know was also toxic for me.

It is unsettling how I never really heard what the words were saying. How cursed I was in the moment. How my lack of courage had trapped me in a stagnant and dying relationship devoid of love, but how I futilely tried to convince myself everything was ok.

My sister recently confessed that my mother asked her after every time I left, “Do you think he is as happy as he is trying to convince us he is?”

It is astonishing how the heart and mind work together to delude each other.

And this was written on the same day. I think I should have been listening to the words and thoughts expressed that day.

Red Flags

I have undergone some major changes in the past four months. I have cut someone completely out of my life who had been a major part of it for the past eight years. I have discovered, thanks to people who deeply care for me and are looking out for my best interests, that the person I removed from my life happened to be toxic for me. There is a lot of self-criticism and soul searching that accompanies this. This is a start to some of that…

Red flags…

The first time we met, I remember physically being somewhat repulsed by her. I dismissed it as being immaterial, as we had connected online and messaged for a long time before meeting. But even then, the quiet voice spoke up and I should have started listening.

We moved in together way too soon. I rationalized it even in the moment as making sense from a financial standpoint. And it did, since I was driving half an hour one way every day to see her. But, it was way too quickly,

We entangled our lives too much too quickly. Yes, we had separate accounts and each contributed a set amount to common expenses, but that line was quickly blurred. She had all kinds of reasons in place that nothing could be in her name. It created a reliance on me that was unbalanced.

I willingly spent too much money on what she wanted. To my financial detriment and sacrificing things I wanted.

I am a caretaker, and she is to a point, as well. It was a profoundly co-dependent and enabling relationship. Bad bad bad.

I thought making life easy was the point. But it isn’t.

I was never really much attracted to her physically. But I was never honest about that because it would hurt her feelings. I don’t think I was that attractive to her, either.

I checked out sexually and emotionally by about year three. We limped on for five more years. She cheated on me with an ex, and I literally did not care. She declared she was polyamorous and explored being with other men. I rationalized it and really did not care. I should have ended it in year three.

She manipulated me emotionally, because she knew that caretaking and guilt were big motivators for me.

She and the ex she cheated one me with asked to use my new car to drive to Florida on vacation, I said yes. They cracked my windshield on that trip. The ex never offered to fix it. I never asked her to fix it either. It’s still cracked.

I gave in to get along. I had zero courage to improve my situation.

She used her medical conditions and past as a crutch and as a way to manipulate. I refused to recognize that.

I am profoundly angry with myself for allowing myself to be manipulated and for not having the courage to break away.

I often thought about being with other women, and came very close on one occasion to having sex with another woman.

She talked about marriage, even bought centerpieces and dresses. I bought a ring for her. I never really wanted to be married to her.

We “broke up” a year ago, but she still lived in my house until this past July. She constantly manipulated me to keep connected. She claimed she could not have her car titled in her name because it would be repossessed to satisfy a past debt caused by her ex-husband. She said she hoped I stayed friends with her sons because they would be so disappointed if I did not. I still poured money into what she wanted even though we had “broken up”. Literally noting had changed except she could now date and have sex with other men with zero guilt. I was so co-dependent I did not even see this reality.

Right after we “broke up” she fell into a depression and became suicidal. She voluntarily entered inpatient care at a local hospital for two or three weeks. I was the only one who visited her while she was there. I am not certain whether she was actually suicidal or if that was manipulative.

When I finally addressed the idea of her moving out this summer, she made it happen in less than a month.

When someone helped me see that I needed to end all ties with her, she was able to transfer the car title to her son and acquire her own insurance in less than a week, and change her phone to her name in less than a month.

She was still doing laundry, canning, and storing most of her possessions at my house, even though she had “moved out”. Everything she did was to keep connected to me even as she dated other men. I convinced myself that this was friendship. It was not.

She was still texting me good morning and good night even while she was in a relationship with another man. She also sent good night and good morning texts to no fewer than two other men she had had significant romantic and sexual relationships with. She was having her cake and eating it, too.

She had been financially dependent upon me, or at least convinced me she was financially dependent upon me. She is currently living in an apartment with her own vehicle and phone, and is financially independent of me. She used that to stay connected to me.

If someone had not entered my life and shown me how she had been draining me emotionally and financially, I would have never changed anything.

My Own State of the Union 2018

This past year has been one of upheaval and change.  While we have faced many challenges and struggles, we have started to confront troubling issues and have brought the darkest faults of our nation to light so that we might build a brighter future.  There is much work for all of us to do.

The president, the administration, and the current congress have all proven themselves unable or unwilling to handle the responsibility of leading us.  They have fallen short by refusing to build up the people – ALL of the people.  Their inability to grasp the importance of caring for one another, their absolute resistance to a diplomacy of peace, and their exploitation of workers and the natural world has led us to another low point for humanity.  How can we escape the downward pull of corruption and greed when our public servants serve only themselves?

It is far too easy to dwell on the failings of others and that path leads nowhere.  What this moment requires is bold and visionary leadership.  That bold and visionary leadership is already growing all over the United States.  We have seen it in the leadership of People of Color and Indigenous in organizations like Black Lives Matter founded by Patrice Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, Honor the Earth inspired and co-founded by Winona LaDuke, and the MeToo Movement founded by Tarana Burke.  We have seen leadership and activism on the streets of Ferguson, the rolling hills of Standing Rock, and the playing fields of the NFL.  It is this leadership that offers us a clear path to a better future.

What world do you want for your children? As mothers and father, as uncles and aunts, as teachers and mentors, we want a future that is better than our present.  What does tomorrow’s world look like and how can we get there?

We must build a world of equity.  We not only need to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the wrongs our nation has committed, but we need to actively work to allow those who were oppressed and marginalized to take the lead in building our shared future.  We must provide reparations to those we have enslaved and murdered.  We must give them the opportunity to succeed on their own terms, and to stand back while supporting them.  Educational opportunities must be culturally relevant and of the highest quality for all.  Economic opportunities must be community based and provide equitable pathways for financial and social prosperity and security.  These opportunities must give priority to those who have not been offered them before.  We must examine real and effective options to the current law enforcement model.  The current model of law enforcement is not only not working, it is actively oppressive and dangerous.

We must build a world of abundant beauty and sustainability.  Rather than exploit natural resources for profit, we must develop a cooperative relationship with our natural environment.  We can still benefit from using the resources nature has provided, but we must do it in such a way that the health of our environment is given priority.  We must find alternatives to destructive and dangerous mining practices, we must never engage in clear cutting of trees, we must maintain a healthy balance between our needs and the health of the world which gives us life.  This means making changes, sometimes radical changes.  We can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels immediately and dramatically by investing in public transportation, bicycles, walking, and cooperative transportation.  We can reduce the negative impact of automobile-centered planning by making walkability and bicycle use a priority in municipal design and zoning.   We can develop a highly accessible, energy efficient, affordable, and mobile national system of fast rail transport  between cities and further reduce our dependence on inefficient modes of long distance travel.

We must build a world of opportunity.  But this opportunity must not be mired in the exploitation of the corporate capitalist system.  We must provide sustainable opportunity locally as well as nationally.  We must empower people to come together and make their voices heard.  We can do that through the establishment of cooperatives and worker owned businesses.  We can do this by returning legal protections to democratically organized worker’s unions. Through local utility cooperatives, we can make faster and reliable internet services both available and affordable for everyone in the United States.  Through public banking initiatives, we can return control of the financial sector to the people for the benefit of all.  We must transform agriculture by promoting farming methods that are sustainable and soil-enriching and by a return to seasonal vegetable and fruit production in appropriate climate zones to keep the land healthy, the water clean and plentiful, and the agricultural economy diverse and vibrant.  We must commit to best practices in education so that every child and every adult has access to an education that develops lifelong critical thinking and creativity.  And we must make that quality education accessible to all, regardless of economic status.

We must build a world of peace.  We have wasted too many lives and too much money in the pursuit of the diplomacy of violence.  We have allowed our military and militarized law enforcement to not only command an unfair share of the economy, but to determine how we interact globally.  Our military and law enforcement are not protective of the people, they are protective of the wealthy and powerful.  They are an arm of violence wielded by the corporate state to induce or create fear and allow more and more freedoms to be sacrificed.  This must end.  By engaging in real diplomacy, by agreeing to unilateral dismantling of all nuclear weapons, and by shutting down military bases outside the United States, we can ensure a more peaceful future.  By removing the constant threat of violence that we have impressed upon the world, we can start building a future based on mutual understanding instead of greed and fear.

All of this requires a radical shift in priorities.  We must transition from a society founded on war and exploitation, to a society of peace and prosperity.  We must transform our economic values from greed and selfishness, to an economy of cooperation and mutual benefit. We must transform our relationships from those of division and hatred, to relationships of interdependence and respect.

It will take great effort, but we have always risen to the challenge.  The challenge starts now.

 

Honor the Future

We talk about the past in our country… a lot.  We reminisce about the good old days, we ruminate on how we used to be, we long to make ourselves like we were.  Our feet are firmly cemented in the past.  As a student of history, I understand the importance of knowing from whence we came, and, more importantly, being aware of whose perspective is reflected in our knowledge of the past.  But, as a Progressive, I see real danger in drowning ourselves in the quicksand of misplaced sentimentality.

This has most insidiously manifested itself in the oh-so-patriotic campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”.  That statement relies on some assumptions that do not hold up well to scrutiny.  The obvious mistaken assumption is that America was ever great.

There is a valid argument to be made about the Enlightenment thinking that informed the white males who drafted the Constitution of the United States, and how it signaled an important milestone in governmental and social evolution.  However, those same enlightened white males also excluded women, ignored indigenous nations, and codified the brutish and ethically barbaric practice of slavery.  So, how great, exactly, was America for these groups of marginalized people?  Oh, you say, but America changed and learned.  Yes, I suppose, slowly, painfully, violently, and reluctantly, white males loosened their grip on exclusive power.  But, of course, it historically has required a lot of killing and oppression to make any progress at all, and we are still experiencing the overwhelming effects of those morally reprehensible views and choices today.  Well, there’s money to be made in making people work for nothing, keeping the majority of people from voting, and stealing natural resources from the people who already lived here, so… CAPITALISM!

We saved the world from Hitler!  Um… no.  Many young American men lost their lives opposing a destructive, hateful demagogue, and while their sacrifice contributed to the effort, the involvement of the US was not the decisive factor.  The USSR sacrificed FAR more lives and had more direct effect on destroying the Third Reich than anyone else, and they did it with little material help from any other country.  The staggering suffering and loss of life suffered by the people of the USSR, especially Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, is almost incomprehensible – 26.6 million dead. Almost an entire generation destroyed.  Had Hitler not stupidly wasted his resources and military on the Eastern Front, there would have been little the US could have done to prevent Hitler from conquering all of Europe eventually.  But, Japan, right?  Well, there is considerable evidence that the mere threat of the USSR invading the Japanese home islands, and the ease with which the Red Army obliterated Japanese forces in one week in Manchuria played a much bigger role in the surrender than even the atomic decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that an actual US invasion was neither imminent nor necessary, despite the often repeated stories otherwise.  As for those atomic bombs, we are still the only country to use a nuclear device as a weapon.  We did it twice.  Against civilians.  Not exactly a sign of greatness.  Well, there’s money to be made in dropping bombs on people, so… CAPITALISM!

Industry!  We were the manufacturing giants of the world!  Yes, this is true.  After World War II, the United States was the only major country to survive with its manufacturing capabilities intact.  So, what did we do with this?  We created, for the first and only time in our history, a vibrant and economically secure middle class, and finally started to live up to the American myth that had been created around rugged independence and prosperity.  With one major caveat… you had to be white.  Really.  Oh, there were non-whites who found their way into the middle class, but they were most certainly not living any kind of dream.  And it was not just the South that relegated non-whites to the status of second class citizenry, just in case any Northern self-righteousness crept into your consciousness.  Then, a mere thirty years later, we pulled the rug out from under everybody who made the engine of industry run.  Even white people.  Now, once again, it’s a crime to be poor.  Literally.  Well, there’s money to be made locking up poor people, so… CAPITALISM!

But we were a super-power.  Ah, yes.  We possessed far more death-dealing devices than any country on earth ever has in history.  We had the capability of ending life on earth several times over.  Fortunately, we have not given our quite ill-mannered and intrusive military-industrial shadow government the political or “moral” opportunity to use them, as they not surprisingly would have liked to many times.  If we don’t use them, then they don;t need to be replaced with more, so peaceful foreign policy is bad for business. Well, there’s money to be made in killing or threatening to kill people in other countries, so… CAPITALISM!

Living in America’s past does not bode well for any kind of future.

The truth is that we are still Neanderthals more concerned with the short brutishness of our own self-centered existence and demise rather than highly evolved beings with the experience to comprehend how deeply everything we do matters to everything else on this little blue dot in the great expanse.  We are far more concerned with honoring and respecting the dead rather than honoring and respecting the living.  We gaze longingly at the past, suspended flawlessly and completely inaccurately in amber, while our fellow humans and our planet suffer horribly around us.  We weep over yesterday instead of preparing for tomorrow.  We condemn ourselves to stupidity, suspicion, superstition and strife instead of freeing our minds and souls with knowledge, understanding, vision, and peace.

We need to look forward.  Progress.  Change.  Adapt.  Evolve.  Live.

 

The Boogeyman

Stop it.

Stop using fear to try and convince me that voting for the lesser of two evils is reasonable.

Stop trying to convince me that some orange goblin is going to destroy our country.

Just.  Stop.

The GOP has drifted off the end of the world. There is no hope left there, so why waste our time?

As for the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders will concede at the convention.  He will keep his word and not run as an independent, because he is an honorable man.  Then, the DNC will pay lip service to the Progressive ideals brought to the forefront by his campaign.  Finally, they will summarily ignore those ideals and keep drifting to the right – inexorably, unceasingly – in their Quixotic quest to stay relevant.

There is another way… all those independents, progressives, and conservatives who saw the importance of an equitable economy, who recognized that we need to get involved and stay involved to keep our government accountable to us, who long for principled leadership,  and who have seen past the illusion of choice in the two-party system have the opportunity to change how we choose our representatives.  Vote for Jill Stein. It would be monumental.  An intelligent, energetic woman from a third party serving as President and making change and hope a reality.

Maybe it is naive to believe there is enough political energy to allow her to win, but your vote would not be wasted.  By garnering a mere 5%-6% of the vote in most states, the Green Party is given the same advantages of public funding and access afforded to the other two parties.  It can happen for Libertarians, too, or any party that you feel actually represents you and what you value most.  It takes will.  It takes energy.  It takes courage.

You may fear a Presidential candidate who is a bloviating windbag without a shred of political capital, a wealthy dilettante and narcissist who will serve one useless term and be gone when he realizes that leadership is far too much work, a candidate whose own party is repulsed by the Frankenstein’s monster they have created.  The only reason his absurd and ridiculous mental drivel has a soapbox is thanks to the complicity of the media intended to watch out for us. He should have been laughed off the stage months ago, but the infotainment media does love their circuses – and the inevitable ratings that follow.  They’ve built him up into this frightening boogeyman from which we need a savior.  It’s brilliant, really, in it’s singular manipulative way.  But, I don’t fear him.  I don’t think about him at all, because he is truly irrelevant.  Even if he were to become President, he would oversee a four-year term where very little of consequence would change, because we have been headed this direction for over 30 years.

Politics in the US have been shifting economically conservative since 1980.  The Democratic Party decided to sell itself completely to the new captains of finance that erupted from the pustule of President Reagan’s deregulation and militarism binges of the 1980s.  Their betrayal of the people became complete with the financial deregulation and self-destructive (well, to workers and small business, anyway) trade agreements enacted under President Clinton in the 1990s.  Since then, both parties, while serving the only master that matters in this financial Gilded Age – money – snipe and spar over social issues and engage in nation toppling like so many toddlers in a sandbox, rather than battling over issues that have real meaning for families struggling to merely survive.  They throw us the crumbs while they feast.  And you think more of the same is a good idea?  I fear the status quo far more than I fear a reality star turned politician.

The status quo in D.C. serves two things – power and money – that happen to be the two most corrupting forces on earth.  Don’t you think it’s time to change that?

Stop trying to convince me that the 30+ year slide to the right by the Democratic Party isn’t so bad, that their betrayal of workers, the poor, and the vulnerable while they curry the favor of the wealthy and maintain their own power and wealth isn’t hypocrisy of the highest order.  Instead of universal health care, we have the smoke and mirrors of the ACA which still allows catastrophic, long term, and terminal health issues to result in bankruptcy and financial ruin.  It is not a step forward, it is a step sideways.  Instead of addressing environmental concerns head on, we have half-measures that prop up those who would destroy the world around us for their own gain.  Instead of doing the will of the vast majority of citizens and enact real reforms about gun ownership, we cower ineffectually in the face of moneyed lobbyists.  Always money.  Enough, already.

I don’t expect free stuff, I expect better utilization of resources.  We need a government that leads by protecting its most vulnerable, that accepts the rights of all to access quality healthcare, that places more value in people than armies, that doesn’t believe that the ability to pursue justice rests solely in the ability to kill, that recognizes exercising global influence means more than installing puppet governments, that understands that a healthy economy is built from the bottom up.  The Democratic Party has failed miserably in almost all of these, and I refuse to curse us all to more of the same.

My vote goes to Jill Stein, nominee of the Green Party.  We are long overdue to elect a leader who is a woman and we deserve a candidate who we can be proud to call Madam President.

Purple

The sudden death of a famous musician is always a time for fans to come together and memorialize and mourn.  What I am seeing and feeling with the loss of Prince Rogers Nelson is something different.  Of course there is sorrow, a feeling of loss, regret for not having seen him in concert, but there is something else – a vibrant outpouring of love, music, and togetherness.  It is more than just shared sorrow, and I could not quite put my finger on it before, but it may be one important physical fact about Prince is why this seems less about loss and more about celebration.

Prince stayed in Minnesota.  Fiercely so.  He was ours and we claimed him with a passion that can only be understood by those who happily endure winters of bone-numbing cold and summers of sweat-drenched heat.  When someone local rises to the level of celebrity, it is a moment of pride for us.  Then, usually, they leave to pursue their dreams.  They escape to the coasts, or to wherever the rich and famous go to be rich and famous.  Prince remained anchored here in a way to which we were not accustomed.  F. Scott Fitzgerald left.  Judy Garland left.   Bob Dylan left.  This mercurial musical genius who had the world worshiping his music, his persona, his energy, not only stayed, but helped define one of the most vibrant music scenes in the nation.

The music.  It was the soundtrack of my teenage years.  And my twenties.  I lost touch with him for a few years as my tastes diverged from his projects at the time.  Then, he started creating some of the most intense rock music of his career with 3RDEYEGIRL.  Wow. He spilled genius like others spilled milk.

As with any genius, he had his eccentricities.  I imagine he reveled in them, and considering his well-known sense of humor, he may even have crafted some just because.  Kevin Smith famously cued us in to some of them, and I suspect Prince could be difficult and strange.  He made music on his own terms, so it is unsurprising that he certainly experienced life on his own terms.  But, he did not submit to the usual downfalls of fame: drugs and alcohol. He was not dogged by scandals.  He apparently had an astounding self-awareness.  He loved Dave Chappelle’s skit about him so much that he used a shot of Chappelle in character on the album cover of his “Breakfast Can Wait” single.

It sounds self-serving to say that he was one of us, but he was.  He was uncompromising, something we northern types admire, even as we politely conform.  He was a brilliant musician.  It turns out he was an incredibly generous philanthropist, something his faith did not allow him to make public.  He was goofy, sensual, intense, enigmatic, fascinating, frustrating, odd, complex, energetic, focused, spiritual.  He was human. He was us. He was a Minnesotan right up to the day he left us.

And he left us some of the best music ever written.

Don’t rest in peace, Prince.  That wasn’t your style.  Funk it up.

Why My Vote Matters

In 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate.  I and others who chose to do so were excoriated by establishment Democrats who felt our votes had assured victory for George W. Bush.  There were three important reasons I did so.  The first was that the eight years of the Bill Clinton presidency had moved the Democratic party too far to the right for my tastes.  Progressive voices had been shouted down and drowned out as too radical and unrealistic.  The second reason was that if the Green Party, whose positions on issues I found more in line with my values, received enough of the vote in my state (they did, by the way, so my vote made a big difference), they would receive public funding, a vital necessity to compete on a state and national level.  But, the most important reason was because I realized that voting is not a diametric choice.  No one has to settle for voting for one side of the same coin, if they don’t want to.

We have been force-fed the idea that we have to abandon our values and choose between the lesser of two evils in order to maintain the strength of our democracy.  Absolute hogwash!  What benefits democracy is when citizens are allowed to give voice to the issues that matter to them. In absence of any political power, citizens have been forced to organize and protest in order to effect change.  How long would it have taken Civil Rights to become a reality without a powerful chorus of regular citizens forcing politicians to change?  It was not happening through the ballot box, because the values that mattered to African Americans in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were not clearly represented by either major party.

The two party system perpetuates the status quo.  It is resistant to any kind of change, no matter how positive.  Oh, there have been times when strong Progressive voices have broken through, but they are blunted by the next flip of the coin that gives power to one set of politicians or the other, not us.  There is little democratic value in having two political parties manipulate and control our entire system of government.

So, when asked the question, “If Bernie Sanders loses the primary, will you vote for the Democratic nominee?”  I will answer with a guilt-free, “No”.  I am NOT a Democrat, nor am I a Republican.  I am a citizen and I choose to support the candidate that I believe in.  If Bernie Sanders is not that candidate, then Dr. Jill Stein will be my second choice.

It is at this point that the daggers come out from many well-meaning friends.  “If you don’t support the Democratic nominee, it’s just like voting Republican!”  No, it isn’t.  It’s voting Green Party.  You cannot shame me into supporting someone who I believe will do little to nothing about issues I find vitally important.  Do I think Hillary Clinton would be a better option than any of the Republican candidates?  Sure.  But this is not a diametric choice, despite those who want you to believe otherwise.  Jill Stein is a better choice for me than anyone other than Bernie Sanders, my first choice.

Democracy requires courage.  It requires the courage to stand on your principles and vote for those who would best represent you. It requires energy to advocate for and support those politicians who you find representative of you.  You won’t always win, but your voice will be heard.

The current system of being limited to voting for one person is one of the main obstacles to reforming the US into a vigorous representative democratic republic.  Ranked voting would be a radical improvement.  In this method, you would choose your first choice, second choice, etc.  This would give a far more accurate representation of what the citizens want, and would make a multiple party system a near certainty.

And if enough people break loose of this myth, if enough people realize that voting for the issues rather than the personality or party is central to a healthy republic, we can change the country, and the world, for the better.

Enter Sandman

Today is brighter than yesterday.  Tomorrow promises even more light.  Sleep is an incredibly underrated but extremely vital component of maintaining mental health.  Sure, you may think you can get by on less sleep, or by switching up your sleeping schedule, but lack of regular sleep can have an immediate and negative impact on you, especially if you are dealing with a mental illness or depression.

Lack of sleep caused by the Gardening Beauty’s recent shoulder injury and the difficulty she sometimes has in shutting down her mind at night has helped deepen this latest low. She had a couple appointments today and now has some medication and some strategies to get her sleeping on a regular sleep pattern, like getting out of bed at 8am regardless of when she went to sleep, in order to recondition her body’s inner clock.  Right now she is sleeping, and that is a small triumph, since she has been unable to get to sleep before 2 or 3 am for the last two weeks, and often has not been able to get to sleep until 5 am, if at all.

My only worry is that she will dream.  Dreams for her tend to be vivid and extremely emotional.  She also has some recurring dreams.  The mind is so very complex and the dreams that are stitched together by our subconscious are most often riddles and quilts and montages.  Not having an explanation for these enigmatic movies in our minds, we struggle to find meaning in them.  Are they signposts or visions? Are they of the future or the past? I currently believe there is little meaning in dreams other than how they give us insight into the almost infinite complexity of human thought and the amazing capacity of the brain. But, I know that is not a widely held belief.  My simple desire is that she experiences some deep REM sleep and that the dreams do not occur as frequently as they have.

Sometimes I struggle to keep positive.  ON those days when it seems like she always puts a negative spin on everything, it can get tiring.  She blames herself.  It is one of the things that keeps many people who experience depression from socializing; they want desperately to be around friends, but they don’t want to bring everyone else down.  Add in anxiety, and you have a toxic soup of doubt and guilt.  It requires patience on those who care most about her.  But, it’s ok to have days when you just can’t deal – we all get to be human.  Just keep understanding that if she could escape from these negative feelings, she would.

I am hopeful.  She is still struggling, but I see this as a major step forward.  Next up is to get some exercise.  We need to walk, and the weather is turning cool.  My favorite time of year!  One day, one step, one more beam of hope.

Loving Someone With Depression

We all have been depressed.

Heck, it’s one of the five stages of grief, right after bargaining with the devil for your soul, or something like that.  It’s a place none of us enjoy, but it is necessary to move through it on our journey.  Can you imagine being trapped there?  Yes, you have days, sometimes weeks, where you escape it for a shining moment, but it is always there, dragging you back down.  It is a destructive force like a black hole.  Drugs and therapy help keep you above water sometimes, but not always, and there is no cure.  Just a constant distorted rollercoaster.

Metaphors notwithstanding, depression is an illness.  It differs from epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, cancer, and every other illness and disease only in that far too many people do not recognize it as a an illness.  But, it wreaks the same havoc on the person and on their friends and family.

I am in love with an amazing woman who has depression.

Before I met the Gardening Beauty, she had attempted suicide.  Twice.  For some men, that would be a signal to turn and run away.  Even today, when her depression is really challenging her, she reminds me I don’t have to stay.  But I do, because I am in love with her.

Why didn’t it scare me?  Well, it did, a bit.  But, I have a caretaker personality, and she is an amazing cook, so my personality and stomach made the decision.  No.  That’s not completely true.  Seriously, I can’t answer why it didn’t scare me off.  It just didn’t.

Since meeting her, I have learned and experienced so much about depression.  Have you ever heard some of the various tips people give for getting over depression (as if that were even a possibility)?  They include: “Just watch a funny movie”, “Think happy thoughts”, “Snap out of it”, “Think of all the good things you have”, “Stop thinking about everything and just enjoy”. [In fairness, one or two of those may or may not have been uttered by me.]  Some of these are well-meaning, but they are meaningless. COMPLETELY. MEANINGLESS. You might as well tell someone having a seizure, “Just hold yourself still!” Or declare that all one needs to do to be cured of cancer is “Think the tumor away!”  Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Yet, these suggestions are heard over and over and over by those who deal with clinically diagnosed depression.

One thing she says to me is, “I know that’s what you meant, but this is how I feel.”  I never really understood that until the light went on today.  While intention is important, sometimes, perception overrules it.  It’s not that her perception is wrong or invalid, it’s just very important in how she reacts to something.  She admits that the intention of someone can make a difference, but often, it relies more on how she perceives it.  And when her mind starts working against her, it can end up in a very ugly place.  That doesn’t mean people who know her need to walk on eggshells around her.  It means that she needs them to understand what she feels, to accept that her perception is a valid as their intent, that her feelings are as valid as their feelings. That must be one of the most infuriating, most hopeless challenges of depression – lack of understanding.

You can’t see the damage.  You have to listen close to hear the calls for help.  You have to make an effort to understand something so debilitating that it will literally keep someone in bed all day. There is no telethon for it, no one holds bake sales to help someone pay for their therapy or drugs, hell, you are lucky if someone just takes the time to ask you what they can do to help.

Every single person who is diagnosed with depression experiences it differently.  You may have a relative or friend with depression, and something may have worked for them, may have helped them manage their illness, but there is no guarantee it will work for someone else.  Every person has their own triggers.  One of the most insidious triggers for the Gardening Beauty is the implied “but”.  You can tell her the most amazing thing about herself, give her the most incredible and well-deserved compliment, but she may hear an implied “but”.  She says it stems from her childhood and the overwhelming feeling that she had to be perfect.  She remembers going two weeks without a spanking at one point, but what stays with her is the sense of failure when she could not avoid it longer.  Rather than blaming her father for his ignorant and damaging use of corporal punishment, she blames herself for not being perfect enough.  That feeling and fear of being less than perfect permeates her response to everything.  When she takes over a project, sooner or later her drive for perfection and her fear of failure take hold.  Then, she feels unworthy, unmotivated, insignificant.  People interpret that as her giving up, and it is, but not in the manner they suspect.  She gives up on herself.

It is a challenge for her to accept criticism without taking it personally, especially when she has invested herself in something, because experience has taught her that way.  For example, she obviously adores gardening, and she is incredibly knowledgeable.  She is willing to admit when she doesn’t know something or when she is wrong, but that does not happen too often.  It is her passion, and she comes alive when discussing it and doing it.  This summer, she had a rotator cuff injury.  It limited what she was able to do, and the garden took a little step back.  For someone who does not experience depression, you do what you can and pick up and move forward.  For her, she lost her motivation.  Then, as the vegetables began to over-ripen on the vine, it overwhelmed her to even look at them, because she felt she had failed.  The flowers she had lovingly planted no longer gave her joy.  “What’s the use? I screwed up.”  Her mind did its damndest to work against her.  The only thing I can do is try to offer coping strategies.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.  The one I have stumbled upon that seems to give some relief is asking her to make a list that we both can tackle.  Small things, small steps to offer some light, to lift the haze.

It is challenging for me, and I love her.  It must be doubly challenging for people who are not closely invested in her well-being.  But it does not hurt any less when they lose patience with her, or when they dismiss her out of frustration or ignorance.  What I dread is when someone makes assumptions about her, believes that because she has never been formally trained that her opinion holds little weight, or that even though she has dared to take the lead in a project, slowly and surreptitiously remove her responsibility because some days are challenging for her.  Being with her, loving her, working with her, takes patience, boat loads of patience sometimes.  Some days, my patience admittedly runs damn near empty.  We struggle together on those days.  Together.  We sometimes yell at each other, cry, get frustrated, but we work together.  It pains me to watch others abandon her, turn on her, or refuse to take the time to understand her.  Sadly, that happens to everyone who faces a debilitating illness.  Some people are not equipped to deal with it.

“Why are you with her?”

It’s a question no one has asked me outright, but I am sure has crossed the minds of those who know us.  I love her.  She adds more to my life than I do to hers.  Her kindness, generosity, love for nature, open and giving heart, and her wickedly twisted sense of humor all give me reason to get up and do what I do every day.  She is a talented cook, has a fantastic eye for design, she’s opinionated, honest, infuriating, flawed, clever, and full of more confidence than you might expect.  Some days I like her, some days I don’t, but I love her everyday.  She just happens to be diagnosed with depression.  It is not who she is, it does not define her, but it is a part of her that needs to be understood.  I hope that I understand more days than I don’t.