Depression Talk

My boss and I went on a beer run tonight, the type of run that is not uncommon for girls like us. We generally guise our beer runs under some other thing, like “Us leaving the farm right now will help the farm succeed through this season. As a result, it is pertinent that we leave. Now. Heading South. And I swear, its totally a coincidence that we must go South and the Beer store is South of us.”

We were on this run when my boss went on a diatribe about the people I date and I have to say, My God, is that really the impression people get? Because I swear, I’ve totally dated nice people. It just so happens that they’re generally terrified of a psycho like me, and head for the hills after my first outbreak of hives. If that’s not the case, I have to toss them soon, Very, Very Soon because what’s wrong with him if he’s sticking around? Clearly, a lot.

But, we happened across a handsome man this evening, one driving a minivan which either means he is so young he’s not legal for me to date, or he’s got seventeen kids and he’s met and needs to drive around at least five of them. I commented on his attractiveness and sighed. My boss could contain himself no more and shrieked “Amanda! He has only TWO LIMBS and they both come out of his NECK!”

“Wha-?”

“Amanda’s dream boyfriend: No speak English!”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that for the love of GOD, you need to date someone who doesn’t have an obvious deformity and who’s native tongue is compatible with yours!”

“But-”

“And he can’t be a chemist because that’s code for someone who WORKS IN A METH LAB!”

“They typically are more covert about their –”

“And just because he’s HIGH ALL THE TIME doesn’t mean he can call himself a pilot!”

“Well, now, I’ve never –”

“AND his native language needs to have developed a form of WRITING COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS XP!!”

And you know, I’ve never really thought about it like that before, but maybe she has a point. Maybe I should look for someone who’s limbs number more than two, that extend from a part of his body that is entirely separate from his neck.

Somewhere between managing twenty five staff and eight million members of the public, after the last case of beer was gone and the lung infection cleared up; but before the long weekend rush I realized that THE FOURTEEN HOUR DAYS ARE KILLING ME. I love this job and I love what I do, and a lot of the time I really feel like I’m doing something useful.

The problem is that my day starts at about seven fifteen in the morning. My alarm clock (Read: The people who own the house I live in) haven’t been waking me until, oh I don’t know, around 7:08. The next problem is that it doesn’t END until about eight thirty. And then, if you’re like me, after you’ve showered and cleaned the day’s filth off yourself, once you’ve donned your boxers and tank top for a solid night’s rest, once you’ve consumed a number of beers you realized that your boss is doing tractor wor and you have yet to remove the eight miles of fence you put up on the first day.

So, you, your beer, and your boxer shorts head off through the field nearing ten at night, when the mosquitoes are at their finest and the wind is blowing mightily.

AND THEN YOU SPEND THE ENTIRE NEXT DAY SCRATCHING YOUR ASS BECAUSE THERE ARE JUST THAT MANY MOSQUITO BITES ON IT.

I’ve been feeling great these last few months, stopping occasionally to weep in my bed over this and that. I’ve been feeling especially great since I’ve been home, since I’ve had my horse, since everything has seemed so perfect.

And then for a day or two I’ll hit a low, and I’ll think: Why do I have to feel this way? Why must this cloud of impending doom hang over my head so that all I want to do is lay in my bed listening to bad country music and eating Cheez Whiz straight from the jar?

I suppose the good thing here is that working in BerryLand forces me out of bed every day, forces me to continue in the land of the living. I like my job, I love being here, I wish every day could go by like the last six have gone.

At the same time, though, the Cheez Whiz and the music sound pretty good right about now.

And after that, there were people, and after the people came a desire to eat the fruit, and then all reason was lost.

I don’t know why it is so difficult, and you’d think that managing fruit and who picks where would be easy, but it is not so. It is difficult, it is trying, it is madness inducing and mostly the people doing the picking are mad themselves.

Its hard not to throw up my arms in disgust. Like, if you went to a fruit farm to pick fruit, and you saw a big white sign that read ‘Picking Here Today’ and then you saw a large number of little blaze yellow flags beyond that sign, wouldn’t you think that PERHAPS you should obtain fruit AT THAT LOCATION?

I need Xanax.

On this date, my mother weighed close to two hundred pounds and she was really, really pissed off because a twenty day old person had taken up residence in her uterus and was refusing to leave.

Twenty three years later, here we are, my poor mother having given up being pissed because she has finally accepted that SHE WILL NEVER BE RID OF ME. She finally managed to get me out of her person, twenty days later than I should have gotten out, and I suppose that having undergone that struggle, she decided to just suck it up when it comes to my taking up space in her house. As long as I don’t use the wrong pot for the macaroni.

It is my birthday today and I feel many ways: I feel tired, but that’s just because I’M INSANE and I’m doing a job that only INSANE people would do. I’m elated to have made it this far, I’m looking back over the last few years thinking ‘Whoa Now…’. I’m looking forward to the next years, I’m excited and interested to know what this world will toss in my direction over the next decades.

But mostly of all I’m looking forward to some cake. The kind that the Berry King gets me every year for my birthday, with all of its yummy goodness to be eaten in the presence of all the Berry Babies and the people I love best.

I’m away from home now, living at the berry farm I work at with my mother. I will stop and tell you right now that WE DO NOT PICk THE FRUIT. We do everything we can to avoid touching the fruit at all costs, and it only really touches us when angered customers aim well in our direction. We are in management, us Berry Babes, and as managers we do things lie laze about in the sun drinking Ice Caps while the pickers sweat in the sun and the customers look on.

I feel that goals are very important and as such, I’ve developed a list of them to aspire to.

1) Don’t get hives.

2) Don’t get a bad case of Athlete’s foot. (My boss has informed me that breaking out in any sort of distasteful rash this year will result in my termination. I’m not sure that its legal, but its probably for the best that I don’t test her when fruit rot is threatening because of the muggy weather)

3) Don’t be the first to cry.

4) Save my first screaming, crying, hives inducing fit for when the thirteen year old Berry Girl and he best friend are not in front of me.

5) Sleep well, and sleep every night.

6) Gain fifteen pounds, all from consuming Ice Caps and chips in the hot sun

I often talk here about wilting up and ceasing to exist. I’ve seen a few things wilt up and cease in my life, like that flower that one guy bought me before I broke up with him because I couldn’t stand his laguh; and then the time that those little kittens ran away from home when I was young. They simply just ceased to exist.

I’ve felt that way a number of times. In 2003 I had what I would call a Pretty Rough Year. I’m not sure which year was worse, the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, or the whole of 2003, but its a pretty close call. That year, when I was still young and had a little bit of faith left in humanity, I would wake up every day and think “My GOD. I’m still living this life!” And while I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to commit suicide, it would have been really, really nice if I could have just ceased to exist.

I wanted to be something other than what I was, living elsewhere than where I was living. I wanted my life to be the same: I wanted my same family and my same things, but there was certain history that I was more than willing to just toss off. I think the best option would have been to simply pack up everything and everyone I new and head us off to Zurich, or maybe Arkansas or even Rio De Janeiro, and we would just start all over without any more insanity or screw-ups in out pasts.

I now how ridiculous it all sounds; I know that there would be no point in waking up and starting over and having only perfection in your past. If that were the case, how would we ever really learn from any of our mistakes? ANd then how could you be perfect without learning?

At the same time, though, sometimes I just really wish that for a little while, once in a while, I could be that perfect person, with no hideousness behind her, no reason to wish that things weren’t any other way but how they are.

Trisha Yearwood sang the song “Believe me Baby, I lied”, and it has the lines “If there ever was a time/ That I could use your trust in me/ And if there ever was a reason/ For me to get down on my knees”.

Sometimes you just feel desperate. Like you desperately need faith and belief in you as a person to continue on, and that faith and belief needs to come from someone important. Like without it, life will just simply stop going on and you can wilt up like an old flower and be done.

And then sometimes when you feel that way, you have to find a good radio and listen to sad music until you kick yourself in the leg and snap out of it.

I was sick the other night, so sick that I thought at one point I was simply going to stop breathing. Not because I wanted to stop breathing, you see, but because I was physically incapable of breathing any more. At that point, I spiked a fever and decided to call the health line that our province has set up for us to use.

So I called and the lady on the phone was absolutely lovely. First she asked me if my lips were turning blue, and after a quick glance in the mirror I assured her that they were not. She asked me questions for a good twenty minutes and then, in a very serious tone, told me that she would like me to be seen by a doctor within the next twenty four hours. Like, she personally would be saddened by my not seeking medical attention; as though the happiness of her soul rested on my desire to get off the couch and see a doctor.

I went to the hospital after that because my doctor’s office is closed this week and there are no walk in clinics in CowTown. Unless you count flagging down the vet when he passes you on the highway and he really, really hates it when people flag him down and ask for mass quantities of veterinary-use-only penicillin.

I think its really neat to go somewhere with a physical ailment rather than one floating about in the depths of your mind. The doctor who saw me didn’t even bother to sit down a safe distance in front of me. He didn’t eye me cautiously before he started questioning me and he didn’t look anywhere but directly AT the crazy person when he got out the checklist.

Further, he didn’t ask me my favorite question: “Do you ever hear or see things that other people may not see or hear?” And I was a little bit sad that I didn’t get asked this question, because usually I try and think of something really creative to say, something that will catch their attention and never allow them to forget me. Something along the lines of “You mean St. Joseph didn’t just ask you to bring us a large double double the next time you come in here?”

I am going to combust.

Seriously.

SO MANY PEOPLE have been doing revolting things while in my presence in the last week or so that sometimes I just want to scream for everyone in the free world to stay ten feet back at all times.

What makes things worse is that now I am sick. Clearly, there can be no other reason for my sickness than the disgusting things people have forced me to inhale over the last few days.

Some examples include, but are not limited to:
1) Burping so that I have to inhale the burp air.
2) Coughing without covering.
3) Not washing hands for thirty seconds with warm, soapy water before leaving the washroom.
4) Not even pretending to wash hands after using the restroom.
5) Breathing heavily where I have to breath.
6) Allowing their air to waft over to where my air is, so that I am FORCED AGAINST MY WILL to inhale the air of others.
7) Maintaining a level of stench upon their person such that I am sure that the air infected by said stench is full of harmful bugs.

These are only a FEW of the nasty things that people have done near me and if one more inhabitant of this world causes me to ingest the cast-off nastiness from their person, I will simply cease to exist.

The other day I was in Wal-Mart and I watched a woman come out of the stall from using the restroom, change her baby’s diaper, pack up her baby and its belongings, and leave the restroom without washing. She even had the nerve to leave through the door that I had to leave through, leaving her trail of germ-y goodness for me to be forced to put my hands in. Every time I’m in a line, it seems as though I’m standing behind or in front of a non-covering sneezer.

I blame these people, these diaper changing, non-handwashing, non-covering sneezers I run into in Wal-Mart and Tim Horton’s that I’m SICK. I’m stuffed up and sore-throated and I can’t breath and I haven’t slept and I’m just a big old barrel of sunshine really, really pissed.

GAH.

“Oh, crap. I forget that guy’s name…”

“Which one?”

“The one with the cars. What’s his name?”

“I dunno. What about the guy who gave me hives? Do any of us remember his name?”

“I thought he died?”

“No, no. That was the guy who called me Dumb as a Table. He died. Hives man is still alive and kicking.”

“And probably searching out fruit.”

“Have you bought yourself a new tube of itch cream?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Berry season is soon to be upon us. This year there is actually a part of me that doesn’t want to go to berry season because I just GOT A HORSE and I’m kind of sad to leave him behind.

At any rate, I get to spend three weeks consecutively managing the field, among other duties, at a friend’s fruit farm. This job is one of the most interesting I’ve had in my lifetime, probably because of the guy who called me dumb as a table and that other guy who made me break out in hives.

Its three days until we pack our bags and leave for the fruit farm. I’m going to need novels, batteries for my MP3, my laptop so I can sqitch up the music on my MP3, a case of beer and lots and lots of valium. Valium that I refuse to share with anyone.

I got up bright and early today, at seven thirty, and decided to run down and see my horse. I was planning on feeding him, watering him, and cleaning out his stall, but my father had beat me to it. So I stood, instead, and scratched his friendly little ears while my dad finished up the cleaning.

Later I was feeling a little bit bad that my poor father had to clean out two horse stalls instead of one, and I asked him if he would like to trade off days on stall cleaning, or work out some kind of deal.

My dad pondered for a little minute before he looked at me and said “Well, Dear, I just don’t think you could do it to my satisfaction.”

And a lot of people might be offended at a comment like that. Like, what, I can’t shovel shit good enough for you? Like, I might shovel shit the wrong way? Is there a wrong way to shovel shit? I’m sure that many people would be put off by such a statement.

But not me.

See, I accepted a long, long time ago that my parents are Farkin’ Insane. My mother has a thing about the pots in her kitchen: Each one has certain tasks, certain foods that can be cooked in it, and if you cook the wrong food in the wrong pot, heads just might start to explode.

My father is equally insane. The way that I garden maddens him to the point that this year, he banished my garden to behind the chicken coop. We’re talking a location that was once a rock pile. Yes. It was once a rock pile. Not a pile of, say, compost that might have desintegrated in the last thirty years. It was a rock pile. (On a brighter note, it was mentioned to me today that since I’m managing to actually grow things in this rock pile, I’m making quite a statement about my agricultural skills. Good point.)

I think I was eight or nine when I decided that since I probably can’t beat them, I might as well join them. And I then went on a campaign to end the improper stacking of coffee cups in our home.

Since then, every time I find an improperly stacked coffee cup, I fiercefully whip open the cupboard door, produce the cups from within it, smash them together with the right amount of force and care such that they don’t end up broken, and slam the cupboard door shut. Occasionally, an imbecile trundles through our kitchen and stacks the coffee cups the wrong way but I am generally quick to remind them of their errors. And then they promptly quit coming over altogether.

And so, the fact that I probably can’t clean out my horses’ stall to my father’s satisfaction doesn’t worry me one little bit. I know that I’m a good shit-shoveler. in fact, I’m probably one of the best shit shovelers. I even throw that little tidbit out in conversation whenever I get a chance!

Its just that skill can’t compete with Crazy, and so most of the time, I don’t even need to try.

I am that confident in my ability to shovel shit.

I rode the Chestnut Thoroughbred on Friday morning, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. It was more, even, because I got to ride him in a ring and then I was given the opportunity to go for a hack with him and his owner. We had a lovely time, a lovely chat, and I really felt that I got a good opportunity to meet and understand the horse before making a decision.

He arrived at the Ranch house Sunday afternoon. His first hours here have been lovely: He seems to be getting along nicely. We had a lovely ride together and now he is tucked away in his new stall for the night.

I’ve heard people speak of passion in terms of dealing with anxiety issues and depression. If you can create something in your life that you have a passion for, the ick that exists seems easier to deal with.

I’ve always been an incredibly passionate person. I’m passionate about my music, about writing, about the people who are important players in my life. I suppose with all that to be passionate about, I probably shouldn’t feel like I want one more: But I do.

I am passionate about this horse, about me returning to the ring, about my big ol’ butt getting back in the saddle. Perhaps it can help to stave off The Crazy that much longer. If not?

It will certainly be worth its while regardless of whether I lose my mind again or not.

Depression, Fighting Depression, Horseback Riding, Equestrian, New Horse, Passion

I met the Chestnut Thoroughbred Gelding on Wednesday. He nuzzled up to me in the pasture, he allowed me to lead him to and fro the barn. I stood with him in his stall, examined his feet, ran my hands down the length of his barrel and through his tail. I averted my eyes while my mother and father examined his physical condition, looked at his teeth and inspected his legs.

I was discussing the various breeds of horses with a good friend the other night. I was explaining that my dad’s horse, an Arabian, is quick on her feet, good for sporting, but with drawbacks like a load of energy that a rider like myself would want to avoid. I explained to her that I wanted a horse who was slow, bumbling, built thick and kind of boring.

“Oh, I get it!”

“Get what?”

“Your horse. You want a slow horse, one who’s big around and not quick on his feet!”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Just like the people you date!”

Sure. Slow, bumbling, thick. Just like the people I date.

I go to ride him this morning. I have decided to not fall head over heels with him just this minute; I want to walk him, trott him, wonder if he is too strong for me to pull up from a spook.

When I’ve dismounted, when I walk away with muscles screaming, walking like a cow-boy, bow-legged and in search of beer: Then I’ll know if I can take down the little wall that I’ve built up, put my face to his, and call him my very own.

Guilt has been a major issue within my Insanity throughout my life. When I had a relapse of Insanity last fall, after almost three years Insanity-free, I was plagued by guilt. At the time I was living in the Big City, studying Sociology. I had an apartment, a cat, a family who loves me. I had food, I had new shoes, I had comfy clothes to wear. I had a good job with a great boss, I had friends who would cook me dinner and not banish me from the house when I burned holes the circumference of pop cans in their couches.

And I was unhappy. I was so, so lost inside this feeling of being clouded in. I felt that nothing was possible in my life, that forever I would be living in a city I didn’t want to be in, pursuing an education that I wasn’t sure I wanted. My brother was overseas in Afghanistan, and I had just lost my grandfather. My student loans hadn’t come in, I was taking six full time courses, and working enough to try and make the rent. The very small, teeny tiny little part of me that is sane and rational knew that period in my life was temporary.

I felt like everything bad in this world was looming directly in front of me. The task of getting out of my bed was one so great that I attempted it only when absolutely necessary. I had a constant feeling that pure, unadulterated badness was approaching in my life, like nothing was ever ok, that nothing would ever be ok.

I felt guilty over all this because I knew that I had everythign I needed in my life to be perfectly content. And yet still, I wasn’t happy. And that made me feel bad.

Now I am back living at home, I’m officially a graduate from university. I have everything I need or want in this world, emotionally and physically, and what do I feel?

Guilty. I feel bad because I’m so happy and there are other people out there who aren’t nearly as happy as I am. There are still people out there fighting battles with depression and so many other issues.

I suppose that guilt is something I either need to do away with or accept as part of me. Regardless of what my situation is, I seem to be plagued by it.

Depression, Relapse of Depression, Guilt, Happiness, Hopelessness