• weird dreams

    Last night was the night of weird dreams. I had two pretty wild ones.

    Notable because I rarely actually remember my dreams.

    In the first, there were commercial planes crashing all across the country, and the problem was particularly bad in my hometown of Carrollton, GA. One crashed in the backyard of the house next door, actually, though, it was the backyard of the house I grew up in, and the backyard was bigger than it is in reality. And I lived in the house I grew up in with Jared and the boys. But Porter and Liam were maybe 6 and 4.

    And in my dream, we were trying to get to my parents’ house, because for some reason that was deemed safer than anywhere else.

    And it must be that in my psyche Porter and Liam are forever going to be 6 and 4 years old, because they were those ages in my other dream from last night, too. Except Oliver was also in this dream, maybe 2-3 years old, as he will probably be forever to my subconscious.

    In the second dream, it was maybe 2015 and we had sold our Fairfield house in 2010 and moved. And the people who had bought it were selling it again, and I wanted it.

    That part is based in reality– our old Fairfield house really is for sale right now. But we sold in 2016, not 2010. And I do kind of want it back, but not enough to pay what they are asking without serious concessions, both for flooring and roof.

    But anyway, we had bought the house back and the people who had bought it had put a bunch of stuff we’d left back in the house, and restored the original paint colors to the colors they were in 2007 when we bought the house.

    But there was also a newborn baby, that we’d apparently left when we sold the house.

    The kicker is, the newborn baby was ours, but we’d been gone 5 years and it was alive and well, but frozen in time as a newborn baby– it hadn’t developed at all in the 5 years we had been gone.

    And I was mortified that I’d left a child behind– a child that, in my dream, I didn’ t remember having at all, such that there were actually 4 children.

    Now, 2010 was a pivotal year for me– that was the year that I left my last real big girl job, and it was the year that I had a breakdown that saw me realizing that I’d been sexually assaulted by multiple people I thought loved me, and it was also the year I started my first blog.

    And I will say, the takeaway is that I feel out of control in my life– both personally and professionally, as well with the general state of the crazy world we live in. That much I pretty much already didn’t need my subconscious to tell me. And I’ve pretty much felt out of control since 2010 or so, actually.

    Apparently my subconscious is telling me something has to give.

    I’m actually doing my best to do things about this fact, this out-of-control feeling.

    I let my psych nurse practitioner up my Latuda dose at my last appointment.

    I’m trying to more consistently keep my sleep schedule up. Bedtime ideally is 8:30 PM and while I like to wake up about 5 or so, I have let myself sleep until after 6 AM both of the last two mornings.

    I’m trying to better tend to my marriage. That one– that one has been hard of late. Jared and I are in a rut. And that’s all I care to say.

    I’m trying to watch what I eat, and manage better the timing of meals and snacks.

    I’m watching what entertainment I put into my brain– I’ve started listening more to my Moongate brainwave app during the day, and less to my random, mostly sad, Apple Music playlists.

    And, despite taking the bait on Facebook this morning with the whole Trump/ Tylenol debate (which is utter “horseshit,” to use the word of one of my exes turned friends who is genuinely a good guy)….

    I am actually thinking about leaving Facebook. Or at least not scrolling, only posting.

    I am back to using my therapy app.

    I am going to try to do more writing….more private journaling, more writing here, more writing in Scrivener since I re-purchased it for the purposes of writing a fictionalized memoir.

    And, I’m going to try to have more of a routine at home, just in general, for myself when nobody else is here.

    And, I’m mostly going to ignore my dreams. They take me on wild rides.

    It was a great night of sleep though. I did wake up rested.

  • identity crisis

    I’m grasping for an identity.

    Because you see, it’s always been about work.

    For years, my identity was in my status in my non-profit work.

    Then, I struggled when I became dependent on SSDI.

    Then, I took up photography.

    Then, I opened a photography business.

    And, for eight full years, I basked in my status as a very part-time wedding and portrait photographer. I may have been very part-time, the business may not have been profitable, but by golly, I was an official photographer.

    And then, earlier this year, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into both heath-wise and money-wise, it became the prudent thing to close the business.

    And at the time, I told myself I would still be a hobbyist photographer.

    And then money got tighter– or more to the point, I got more serious about managing our finances more responsibly, and it became the wise thing to part with some of my camera gear.

    And I didn’t take more pictures for myself, my own personal art, like I said I was going to do.

    And life happened, and interpersonal drama happened, and my hormones are still settling from the hysterectomy, and….

    Well, depressed.

    And worse: struggling with a major identity crisis.

    And of late, I’ve felt like the answer was to move us all into Atlanta, away from Carrollton.

    The truth is, I know I can’t run from my depression. It will follow me.

    And, this house that I am sitting in, when we bought it in 2021, was my dream house. It was the house I wanted to grow old in just like the elderly people who lived here (twice) before us did. The primary bathroom is already outfitted for disability access, even.

    *sigh* I don’t know what I am doing.

    I do know that my psych professional says that seasonal affective disorder is on the rise earlier this year, and so I am sitting here just before bed (the wrong time of day, but I give myself points for doing it at all) with my light therapy lamp as she recommended I start now instead of waiting until late October like normal.

    And, it’s time to write more. I let myself get so caught up in analytics, and audiences, and I forget that the most productive, happiest years of my blogging was when I was using my blog primarily as my journal. And yes, I wanted readers, but the readers came because the content was raw. And real.

    So, here I am, telling you I am still depressed. And I don’t know where it’s going.

    And true to form in typical fashion, in an effort to bat away the true identity crisis and deal with it, a crap ton of job applications went out yesterday.

    Because I keep running from what I need to do: process my traumas, figure out who I am apart from being a wife, mother, and any vocation, and remember that I have been a writer since I was eight years old and that is how I deal with my feelings best.

    Stay tuned. I’m going to try to post more regularly.

  • the sun rose a little bit

    The stunning Grinter Farms in Lawrence, Kansas

    It’s no secret that I have been depressed for a while now.

    Apparently I just needed to go see my aunt and uncle, who moved to Kansas a while back, all by myself without the boys or Jared.

    The above picture was taken at Grinter Farms this past Saturday, just after some hot air balloons took off:

    The morning was stunning.

    But while Grinter Farms was nice, it wasn’t the photo op that made the weekend.

    It was spending time with the people I have known who I have loved and who have loved me and treated me as their own my whole life.

    It had probably been since before I married Jared that I had been to see them by myself.

    And while I was there with them, I remembered that life is not so bad.

    I remembered several craft projects I used to do on a regular basis, projects that would probably make pretty good Etsy store items.

    I remembered that consistency is the key to having a tidy house.

    Best of all: I remembered that I am loved. And very, very lucky.

  • nothing is in focus right now

    I took this photo with the X-S20. Apparently I am not so good as the selfie culture at making the camera work in focus with the full articulating selfie screen.

    Yeah. Depressed.

    Feeling my age, my ribs are on the move in a twisty way that isn’t fun feeling. Bored, tired of Carrollton.

    Jared tries. He took me out to the Marina again tonight, after taking me on our weekly outing for Burger King ice cream cones.

    Fun fact, at least in Carrollton, GA: You can get two ice cream cones for $2.12. That’s the main eating out we do during the week.

    And all that was well and good. Until I started in on how I hate Carrollton, how I want Jared to find another job so we can move to Atlanta.

    The same old same old.

    And I don’t know why, when I feel rejected, I go on this whole self-implosion thing.

    Something happened last week that made me change some plans in the next couple of weeks. And as it happens, I am going to see my aunt and uncle instead of doing the thing that I was going to do, and I will likely have a far superior time seeing them and being loved on and all that than I would have had doing the other thing, which was probably riskier than I really want to admit it likely was, to begin with.

    And I’m still mad about last December. Mostly because I’m mad at myself for thinking that inviting drama back into my life was a good idea at all.

    I’ve spent the last nine months pretty darn unhappy because of it. And had an arguably necessary-anyway hysterectomy because I got all freaked out about cancer risks because of that encounter.

    I guess in that respect, I should be grateful for last December. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry about cancer risks if I hadn’t had that encounter last December.

    And mostly I go around mad all the time because it feels, to me, like just about everybody in my life has some sort of purpose, has their shit together, and I’m just sitting at home.

    And I guess it’s accurate to say that some of the people I have in mind do actually have their shit together.

    But none of them are married to Jared Price. I’m the only one who got to do that.

    And probably not many of them are told on a daily basis the things he tells only me.

    It’s about now in the depression cycle that I realize that it’s been about a week since I’ve done a gratitude list.

    The truth is, not much about my life has turned out the way I thought it would, or honestly, the way that I wanted it to.

    And I mostly walk around mad, angry at the world, and despondent because of it.

    And I think back to that 18 year old and I would tell her to ditch all the preconceived notions about how life should go. That it’s all about to change, like, tomorrow.

    But probably, she’d already known that for a good couple of years or so.

    Tomorrow is a new day. I’ll go volunteer in the city with “my ladies,” as Jared calls them.

    And then I’ll go see my aunt and uncle for the weekend, and probably have some yummy Costco mac and cheese, which I haven’t actually had since the last time I saw them, in February.

    And, I do actually realized how privileged it is that I was born into the family that I was born into, and that we can afford to feed ourselves despite the fact that I do not work.

    It does not negate the fact that I feel somehow that I am not living up to my potential, and there have been missed opportunities. And squandered opportunities. And lost time. and lost relationships.

    But tomorrow, I can try again.