Some days I’m all Kumbaya
Some days I’m all Fight Club
Some days I’m all I can’t hear you
Some days I’m all Go Away
Some days I’m just holding my breath, and swimming as fast as I can.
only the jodi
A search for simplicity, sobriety, compassion, & the right man. Or at least not another wrong man.
February 12th, 2010
and some day, never comes…
January 29th, 2010
ode to my depression
Alcohol was my answer to The Depression. My first answer. It worked for a while, until it didn’t. It worked until it needed something…extra.
Tuinals, nembutals, lysergic acid diethylamide, seconals, amyl nitrate, mescaline, peyote, cocaine, crank, quaaludes, heroin. Just a little something extra on top of the alcohol, for the deep soul sucking hole inside of me…The Depression. It worked. For a while. Then…
Something extra, on top of the alcohol and the already extras, prescriptions were added like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae, the finish touch. Sinequan, Valium, Elavil, Desipramine, Halcyon.
It’s been almost twenty years since I self medicated. Twenty years since I stopped taking two parts of this prescription and adding it to three parts of that one. Most of those years I don’t even think about The Depression…
except when I do.
And then there was Buspar, Effexor, Paxil, Lexapro, Wellbutrin. There were meetings and prayer. There was gluten free, lactose free, de-caffeinated, organic, hydroponic, hormone free, free range, steam distilled and still, sometimes, there is The Depression.
The dictionary definition of depression includes this: sadness, gloom, dejection.
That is not My Depression.
My Depression has romance. It is alluring. It is seductive.
It feeds on isolation and it stays hungry. My depression is paralyzing.
It tells me I have nothing to say.
JD Salinger is dead. Catcher in the Rye did not change my life. I am not JD Salinger
Charles Bukowski was a drunk,
Burroughs was a junkie.
I do not read Bukowski and I am not William Burroughs.
Jim Carroll is dead. Carroll changed my life; he made me want to be a junkie.
Dorothy Allison made me believe there is an audience for the darkest of stories, but still, I am not Jim Carroll or Dorothy Allison.
My Depression turns me away from tenderness, whispering in my ear that a tender touch or a soft word will kill me, will cause my house to crumble beyond repair.
It is avoidance and it is obsession.
Clutter & filth & unopened mail under piles of clothes and it is cleaning grout with a toothbrush. It is writing for eight hours
and getting nothing written.
It is deprivation and punishment.
It is not showering, or eating. Holding off meals until this and that are done and not doing this or that. It is meals that consist solely of chewing gum. Or tea. It is nausea and headaches. My Depression fights sleep until my muscles ache and there are sharp pains in my neck. It is not being able to sleep because there are aches in my muscles and pains in my neck.
It is early mornings and not enough sleep.
It is overscheduling classes & workshops & bells & whistles. Adding this here and that there and not taking care of here and now.
It is writing this,
now.
My Depression is sleight of hand.
It is the twinkling Christmas lights covering my house that keep you from noticing what is going on inside. That the floorboards are rotting, the plumbing is leaking, the windows are cracked and a cold wind whistles through the house.
My Depression has romance. It is alluring.
It feeds on isolation and it stays hungry. My depression is paralyzing.
It tells me I have nothing to say.
December 2nd, 2009
trash menagerie
My head used to house seventeen screaming squirrels.
They were totally over-caffeinated and raucous, climbing the walls of the little boardroom in my brain, swinging from ceiling fixtures, pulling books off the shelves, tearing out pages and tossing them across the room. 
They squealed and chattered and smacked their little squirrel-sized coffee mugs on the conference table, each one thinking what he or she had to say was the most important thing of the day. Occasionally, little window washer squirrels would show up on the pulley operated scaffolding outside the big boardroom windows (that may or may not actually be my eyes). They’d bang on the windows with their window washing squeegees, demanding the attention of the other squirrels. Everyone wanted to be the squirrel in charge.
Luckily, they moved on, I don’t know where. I don’t care where. They weren’t paying rent, they were uninvited guests, squatters. The boardroom has been quiet. The cleaning crew came in and scooped up all the torn bits, vacuumed the rug, washed the squirrel prints off the windows, polished the conference table ’til it gleamed.
And when no one was looking, when the security guards let down their secure guardianship, three howler monkeys with a crack stem and a bottle of Yukon Jack wandered in.
While I’m a grateful for the reduction in the number of squatters, please let me point out that howler monkeys are a great deal larger than squirrels….
