Where I Go for News

Channel Sunshine

 

I would assume that MOST people would take this as “the news” so the internet might be a choice, maybe breaking headlines during one of my yummy television shows like Grey’s Anatomy or Brothers and Sisters or Modern Family or even Parenthood or….I think I’ve said enough. When I have bad days from chronic pain from my Fibromyalgia and Auto-immune disease, I tend to watch a lot of television. I know. My bad. But, I will not watch “the news.”I will not watch any channel for the news unless it is absolutely necessary. Honestly, I get too overwhelmed, too stressed, too sad and mad and I am left feeling completely helpless and extremely anxious.

Bad personal news, however, should always be prefaced by a “Honey, I need to tell you something” or “I have some bad news” even “I think you should sit down.”This should only be done IN PERSON. It makes my brain prepare myself for something that I know will be unpleasant or upsetting, generally both. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of good news going around right now. Here are more television analogies: Oprah, to me was good news. Ellen, funny, warm news, Rosie, straight shooter and wonderfully pro-children, pro-democracy, pro-truth and yes, a little pro-nutty but that’s perfectly okay with me.

Many years ago I used to watch the news at night; not a chance anymore. I couldn’t fall asleep after hearing about all the tragedies and the deaths, murders and dismemberment that the newscasters would cheerfully declare. You always find out the bad news, it’s the good news that should be broadcast. Life is too short, we know the bad stuff, that spreads quickly. Good news? That, should be on it’s own special channel, MY channel, broadcast and celebrated everywhere, every day, even every hour throughout the country, throughout ALL countries in the world. Don’t you think it would make for a better day? I do.

because i can’t even speak

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when someone you love is hurting you hurt double because you are sad and depressed and of no help and that makes it worse. so together you are alone.  pumpkin bread is baking in the oven but the smells of nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon don’t even reach my senses. i don’t know if i should allow myself a really good cry (why do they call it “good?”) or keep sucking in the stress like a dyson vacuum cleaner going over the carpet where my sweet, shaggy dog sleeps. even her warm brown dog eyes look sad.

i wish i didn’t cling to the last hope, the last ember in the fire amongst the dying coals. outwardly i am pessimistic but hidden deep inside me is a wisp of a wish, no stronger than a single blade of grass in a summer breeze. yet still i hope for a miracle and he does too, even though we say all hope is gone and it’s really, really bad. and it is.

i am numb and trembling, silent and screaming, shaking and still. my worried face is too obvious to the world; i wish i could hide my feelings and be like that mean francine who i hated but she could pull off  a fake happy face in half a second.  my feelings show on my face even if i try to fake it and then i crumple like a paper ball tossed into the trash. i don’t call my mother tonight even though i call her every day because i don’t want her to worry and i know that’s what mothers do. my silence, even for a day, signals my message to her.

i need to hold myself together so i don’t break down in front of my children; no matter how old they are they still don’t like to see their mama cry. and i wouldn’t just be crying, i would be sobbing and crumpling in the fetal position and rocking, rocking, rocking. if the situation in a situational depression continues and continues when does it just become depression. i may have crossed over into that, maybe he has too. i want to support him  but i don’t know how to do it anymore. i am failing the one i love the most because i can’t bear to see his flat, deflated face. he lacks affect and looks gray and defeated, worn, sad. we are mirror images of each other.

there’s certainly nothing to look forward to, not that there has been in a while. yes, i do count my blessings and yes i am grateful but i am feeling less lucky and more like a victim with a really long run.  we are not alone in our misery many people share this sadness but who would feel better because of that? it just makes things worse.

the beep beep beep of the timer goes off and i stick toothpicks in the pumpkin bread and burn my finger. the pain feels good, it feels like something, instead of this numb, internal despondency.  this is what depression looks like, it feels like everything and nothing, it lingers inside me, on and on like an unwelcome guest you can’t ask to leave.

Fibro Frights And Fatal Fantasies

 

Image by FlickrJunkie via Flickr

 

I messed up and didn’t realize that the PFAM’s ( Patients For A Moment) blog carnival deadline was by midnight tonight. The subject was fear. I’m wondering if deep inside I just didn’t feel up to writing, competing, finishing or if I was dissassocating myself from the project. I was going to talk about the web of anxiety and how it feels when it starts to swell in my stomach. It always starts in my stomach beginning with a slight twinge, quickly advancing to panic and anxiety. My arms and legs feel tingly and somehow not connected to my body, I am alternately hot and cold or both together.

The first time that queasy sensation started was the summer before my freshmen year at college.  I was eating dinner with my family in a fancy Italian restaurant in Queens, NY.  I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t speak, it was the first time I had ever felt anxious and I remember calling it “cold dread.” How could I explain this new, horrible feeling when I had never experienced it before? How do you name something you do not know?

Those fearful sensations in my body became like a close cousin to me. We lived as if we were conjoined; I could not separate reality from frightful fantasies. It was something that I have learned to live with and deal with.  I started with a tiny germ of truth and blew it up out of proportion. There was no stopping my obsessive worrying, nothing helped: warm milk, hot baths, reading a book, distraction.  I remember a time when I was sitting in the trolley in Boston and thought what I had whispered to my friend was overheard by someone else and I became overwhelmed and frightened. What if? What if? It became a wakeful nightmare for me.  I did a lot of catastrophizing back then and even now, once in a while, it still tries to creep into my brain. I need to forcefully push it away, as if an intruder was about to enter and I had to slam the door hard, with brute force.  Sometimes that is enough, sometimes it isn’t.

My cousin’s stomach ache could be pancreatic cancer,  my sister’s low throaty voice could mean she was manic, my narrow-angled glaucoma could make me blind in a second.  I worked with a hot-headed, explosive employee that I thought, for sure, would bring a gun to a grievance meeting and shoot us all. I remember strategically seating myself closest to the door, just in case. I lived in a world of tragedy, of horrendous outcomes, death, madness, cancer, stroke, coma, terrorist attacks, murder, mayhem and more. “Health and welfare” is what I worry about as I tried to succinctly wrap it up like an adorned Christmas present, perfect silver wrapping with a tight red bow.

The truth of the matter is that now we DO live in a fearful world and something COULD happen.  Fear perpetuates fear and even while  I am writing this down I feel the first fingers of anxiety like a gray mouse with darting eyes. I take deep cleansing breathes. I ask myself questions: “what are the odds of that happening?” The media doesn’t help: “Don’t go to public places when you are traveling in Europe” What? Of course we would go to public  places if we were in Europe. Is too much information just too much?  I refuse to watch the news on TV before I go to sleep.  The only thing we can do is try to push the worry aside and live as normally as we can; even if it takes enormous strength and effort. Carpe Diem as they said at Boston College where I worked: Seize The Day, as best as you can.

Tiny Different Pieces of Ugh

I’m in a funk. I had two days of happiness from the good news that Celine Dion was pregnant with twins. Now this: Al and Tipper Gore are getting divorced? Thanks to SNL’s cast members Seth and Amy all I can say is: “”Really?” and “Are you kidding me?.”  It’s not even the Clintons’? We wouldn’t be shocked then. It’s the Gore’s? The one with the romantic kiss that we all swooned about?  Seriously Tipper? This is very unsettling. I’m one of the last believers in true romance and you had to spoil it for me. Thanks. What happened to the comfort of companionship? Is there more to this? I almost wish there was. It would be easier to understand.

Is there nothing good in the world anymore? We have massive oil spills, the extent of which we will never really know, wars in G-d knows how many places and deadly diseases  that seem no closer to getting cured. There’s poverty, devastation, tsunamis, hurricanes and the fact that bacon is really, really bad for you. I’m cranky and I deserve to be.

I write my soon to be ex-guru Dr. in the City and tell him I have been having pain almost every day that is incapacitating for the last 4 weeks because of the new medication and ask his sage advice. I’ve long given up on support or bed-side manner. He writes back a terse note and says “continue for 4 more weeks.” That’s the answer, the cure, the solution? I want to tell him to go to hell but I refrain. Though, I have to say I am sorely tempted.

My husband’s ex-employer and royal pain in the butt boss went on-line today to say how “exited he was for their new venture.” What new venture? He hasn’t paid my husband or anyone else that worked for him in at least 6 months. New venture, my ass. I totally dislike this dude, who should be named Skipper because he is an extremely wealthy brat that has huge amounts of family money and doesn’t understand that people, like us, need to be paid, in order to eat and pay the bills.

Ted Koppel’s son is dead, the Israelis are apologizing at the same time I receive an essay with a photo of attackers with swords trying to seal Israel’s fate on that boat. I have stomach cramps and didn’t get enough sleep. I watched Sarah Ferguson on Oprah which I swore I wouldn’t do and I did and it was truly pathetic and not in a sympathetic way either. Let’s excuse everything to addiction now: drink, love, sex, spending money and hey, Hallmark cards. Sarah Ferguson, you have sunk to a new low and I can’t even feel sorry for you.

I’m hoping for a loud and boisterous thunderstorm tonight, thrashing trees and a downpour of crystal sheets of rain; maybe it will move all the bad stuff away. Except for the fact that I just found out the loving Rue Mclannahan, from Golden Girls, passed away. That’s making both me and new cult-hero Betty White really sad. Just bring it on. Really. We’re used to it.