a little dizzy

I’ve been in a funky place this week. Feeling overwhelmed, like I can’t keep up with things. My sinuses and itchy spots seem to have taken a turn for the worse, too. I’m starting to get to that obsessive place, wondering if it’s because I made some baked oatbran with carob chips, a recipe I found on one of the candida websites so it “should” be candida-friendly, but everyone knows that oats are a controversial grain (duh!), and so now I’m not sure if it’s something I should have eaten or not but then feeling crazy for feeling like I’ve strayed way off course because I ate OATS and UNSWEETENED carob, for crying out loud. This is the place I was afraid of.
And so, here I am - hyper-aware of every “symptom” and then wondering what it might be a “symptom” of – life?
I also have these crazy bruises all over my body. Not sure what that’s about. Has there been some kind of change in my blood chemistry? Or am I just really out of my body and trying to get back in?
I think I feel okay, being off the meds. (really??), although today I realized that I’m having trouble feeling like I’m kicking into gear. But that could be because of just about anything right now (see above).
I want to be able to just be here, where I am, without having to know “why,” as if my entire life is a disease.
Meanwhile, had a couple’s therapy appointment yesterday and am feeling very confused about that. About reality. I love my husband and he loves me and yet part of me feels very closed off or shut down or dead. And then there’s all the “why” questions again. I’m beginning to look at myself and my behavior and its impact in new ways, which I think is a good thing but for the moment, while my perspective is dramatically shifting, I feel myself reaching for the walls to steady myself and slow everything down, but what do you know – the world just keeps on turning anyway.
I turn 39 today.

an experiment

I have two pills left. I have been taking Wellbutrin, an antidepressant, for the past six months (has it been that long already?), and in two days I will stop taking it. I think. I’m nervous about going off the meds, even if I feel ready. I don’t really have a sense of how they are affecting me, and so I don’t know how I will feel when they are out of my system. I don’t even know if I was actually depressed before, but I guess that’s part of the whole conundrum. It’s not a black-or-white thing.
But wait a minute. Yes. Now that I think about it, I was depressed. I was experiencing a darkness I had not previously known, but the sense of darkness was accompanied by numbness, so everything, even the memory of it now, seems muted.
I did not make the decision to take an antidepressant lightly. It was one of those things I thought I would never do. I believed that antidepressants were taken in situations where there was a vague, free-floating kind of heaviness with no identifiable cause. I felt as if I could point to specific things in my life that I knew were causing me pain. The answer, then, was to “fix” the problems. If I took a drug to make the pain go away, I might forget I had problems and would be tricked into thinking they were gone. I was afraid I’d be a Stepford Wife.
But the medication did what my therapist at the time said they might: gave me some perspective, lifted me out of a deep pit of darkness. I feel more clear now than I have in a while. I’m still aware of the issues in my life and feel the pain of them but I do not feel hopeless and despairing over them.
I do not feel depressed.
Sometimes I feel like I didn’t really “do” anything to feel better and so my current state of more-happy was not fully earned or deserved or is somehow not real. I might only feel this way because of the medication. I guess we’ll find out.
I’m also not sure if I’m going off of them the “right” way. When I started taking them, the doctor gave me three days of a half-dose to take before the full dose began. Now I’m just stopping. I’m also not sure if it’s wise to go off them now, during this cleanse of sorts, given that the carb withdrawal has sent me reeling through dramatic shifts in mood and energy level. I guess we’ll find out.
I know it might be best if I was under the care of a physician at the moment, but I don’t feel like it. I’m not sure if I’m being childish about that or if I’m listening to some inner wisdom that tells me everything will be okay. I guess we’ll find out.
Meanwhile, I am working on being present, remembering to choose happiness, and accepting the parts of myself that butt in and keep me from doing that. I am open to being sad. I’m afraid of not being able to not be sad. I want to learn to let myself fully feel and express my sadness so that I can let it go. I’m not sure what will happen now. I guess we’ll find out.

I’ve been thinking about Karen’s posts over the past few days, about happiness and how we think about happiness. And wouldn’t you know it, just today I happen to open a book to this poem:


The Happiest Day
by Linda Pastan

It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn’t believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the younest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn’t even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day –
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere –
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then . . .
If someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

communing vs cheating

Last Sunday I attended a baby shower. At the shower, I ate pasta, blue cheese, bread, mushrooms and CAKE, among other things which were or were not on the “allowed foods” list I have been trying to follow. I have decided to be okay with this. Before going, I considered the fact that the shower was going to be held at an Italian restaurant, and I weighed some options for lunch: I could eat only “allowed” foods and abstain from others, a choice which might involve picking through the salad bowl as it was being passed around the table or requesting a complete ingredient list from the wait staff. I could take whatever is offered and move the food around on my plate. I could tap my fork against my water glass and make an announcement: “While I am happy to be here, I will not be eating lunch today because I’m not consuming wheat dairy sugar fungi as I am trying to rid my body of candida which is a systemic fungus….” And then go into more detail, as requested by the other guests.
I pretty much thought I would do what I did, which might be called “cheating.”
But I’m not calling it that. I’m calling it “communing.” I took part in a ritual. I might have done so without the cake, but I had my cake and said mmmm with everyone else. Because I wanted to. I worried a bit about the ritualizing, in general, of eating certain foods simply to have an excuse to eat what we know is not good for us, a custom quite prevalent in our culture and most definitely in my family. Any occasion is an occasion to eat, and to “cheat” on whatever particular diet we might be following at the moment, so that we can then punish ourselves again on Monday. But then Monday is “woo-hoo Monday!!” Time to eat donuts. And on and on.
But this felt different. At this event in particular, I wanted to celebrate life and affirm the pleasure of cake-eating. It seemed important to not worry about “rules” and enjoy myself with the other women in my family, cousins I see only on holidays, and with Elizabeth, the mom-to-be, because the baby we were welcoming has spina bifida. He will be born via planned C-section and taken immediately for surgery to close his spine. More surgeries will follow. Beyond that, much is uncertain.
I wasn’t sure what the tone of the shower would be, or if any of this would be acknowledged. I was happy to see that Elizabeth seemed excited and nervous in the way most moms-to-be are nervous as they near their 8th month of pregnancy. She looked beautiful as she unwrapped the onesies and the changing table pad. She was excited to receive the exersaucer and the bouncy seat she had carefully selected for her registry at babies r us.
There was no sign that she felt in any way “cheated” of a healthy, “normal” baby. She was already in love with her son.
The cake being passed around looked delicious. I took a slice and enjoyed every bite.