MEA CULPA...

It seems I haven't posted anything but statistics, horoscopes, and the endless stream of sonnets I write the Goat in a long while; I do apologize. It's just that at the moment my head is very full, mostly with the circular arguments for and against a house in dreadful condition I am considering buying; my heart is full, most recently due to a complete lack of Goat which feels like it has been going on forever, but which in fact will have been less than two weeks when he arrives tomorrow afternoon; and my life is full of lots of little things [like work] that conspire to fill time and keep me from the things I really want to be doing...

So, the spare time and energy to post has just not been there. It hasn't been for lack of the wish, I just haven't been able to make it happen. While the Goat is in fact arriving tomorrow, he is bringing two friends from the Southern Borders with him, and I get to play Smiling Host -- not my favorite role, in case you were wondering -- for the 24 hours we are together, instead of just being able to be with him. I am going out to the Big Woods next weekend, but he will be knee-deep in a PR event at the school [fishing for the better sort of applicant, apparently], and I will be knee-deep in the emerging facts of this house I am looking at, and probably on the outer edge of mania as a result. Even without forgetting to take my meds...

That "outer edge" was where I was for real on Thursday. Yikes.

My psychiatrist has decided that it is time to see if I can't manage life without the meds. I am all in favor of this, in theory, but in practice the process seems to involve my not sleeping as soon as I get down to zero of one medication. That is much less appealing. Wednesday night, I was so exhausted from two weeks of sleeping about six hours a night, that I clean forgot to take the pills I was still allowed, and only slept four hours. If that's life at zero, I can't handle it. I was scattered and on edge all day, as well, quite sure that the Goat and I were doomed, and that this whole scheme of moving was somehow all being done at my expense... depressed, paranoid, agitated... all the better symptoms.

What amazes me, now that I am back on the reduced but not vanished doses, is the way the Goat handled it. He talked me out of my funk by asking a series of questions that really made me face what was going on: are you feeling depressed? [oh, right, so that's what's going on...] are you feeling agitated? [oh, yeah...] You get the picture. He used to be a counselor before he bailed out and landed in the Big Woods, so he has all the tool at hand. He has even had nutty lovers before, but no one, I imagine, quite as off the "normal" end of the scale as Yours Truly. He has been racking up large numbers of gold stars somewhere...

Now that I have to face leaving, I am suddenly realizing that I have grown extremely fond of the Weird Little House, Nowheresville in general, its little gay scene that treated me so well, and even my do-nothing jobs here. Joni Mitchell was on to something there: you really don't know what you've got till it's gone. That covers the last several years of my life, from employed and married to quitting the jobs I have left and moving, pretty much in their entirety.

What psychologist genius said that you should avoid loading too many stressors into your life at one time? I would really like to find whoever it is and nail them to the side of a barn. Where do they get the idea that you get to choose how much upheaval hits you at once? You end your marriage and you pretty much lose your house and your family right there. I saw no choice but to leave town, so I lost all my support group as well. I had already lost my profession. Now I lost my income [and it was borne in on me the other day just how far beyond my means I have been living in the last year -- always with apparently good reason -- God help me]. Excuse me, you shouldn't be interrogated by the Gestapo on top of everything else, it could be quite stressful and bad for your health.

Oh, well. Someone outside academe needs to keep parroting yesterday's wisdom without really examining how much of it makes sense -- like my teenage therapist with her chirpy investment in Isay's advice to go out and live "an authentic life." It seemed to have escaped her notice that he had since backed off his advice. Now, why does no one ever feel the need to apologize when it turns out they have been giving out bad advice for twenty years?

Maybe I should go back to church. Then I'd have something more interesting to obsess and complain about. There is a post somewhere in the back of my mind about the upcoming end of special-interest theology, but it will have to wait, along with the rest of my life. In one half of my mind, I have not only bought the house I am looking at, I am already busy furnishing it, magically not spending any money this time... well, at least I can bring a lot of the Weird Little Home-furnishings I bought last fall along with me. And with hot and cold running Goat, I should not be depressed enough to buy stuff I can't afford... maybe...

Hang in there, all.
I am trying my best, but it sometimes feels like a hard shift, for all the advantages I have.
C