It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

So I’m working nights now, a seeming throwback to a lifetime ago. 9 years ago or so I was working nights, a younger me, early twenties, riding the subways and streetcars at empty hours, alone with the hush of the snow, the warning bells, the odd drunk.

I’d stumble home near 2am, on paydays I’d order pizza and rush to the nearest bank machine, starved. No debit at the door then, and I, without credit, had to run for money. Sometimes I’d catch the delivery man getting out of his car, and exchange money for food in monosyllables as the moon rose and the air chilled.

It was just a job, a way to pay bills and support my magazine and coffee habit, the one that had taken root at Bloor and Bathurst, in a cup of muddy water in the sun.

Years later, a world away, not just a few provinces and languages, I walk home under the same dark sky, the stars a little dimmer in places, my legs perhaps a little weaker. Sometimes the same music blasts in my ears as my hair, flares in my wake. It’s changed. With two children and age, my hair has settled to me, it’s wave defined, it’s body stripped and weakened. My body has changed, my hips clicking into a place I can now love, marks from pregnancy tattooed across my belly.

Things are different, but not quite how imagined them. I look back at the girl doing this same shift, much the same job, and wave to her silence, to her solitary time in the hippie bookstore. But I don’t wish to return. There’s a woman here now-borne of time, of age, of marriage, of children, of choices, of mistakes. She misses the magazines, the time well wasted. She misses indian food weekly and lying in bed all day with her love.

But she loves her confidence, and she loves being loved. She might grumble at being  jolted awake by a small sticky face 5 hours after falling into bed, but she’s miss it if it wasn’t there. She loves to stare at the same stars, and try to remember if she dared wish for any of this.

30 seemed so far off, so daunting, and so firm an ending. Her reward for it’s passing? Finding her, finding the girl she lost, the woman she should have been, and picking her up, setting her gently on her feet.

I would never go back, except for one thing. I could run on a lot less sleep then.

******

I’m so so bloody tired lately. I know it’s the switch but DAMN it sucks. I can sleep for days, and still wake up completely exhausted. The other day I had dizzy spells so bad for a few hours I couldn’t move without holding on to things, something I’m attributing to eating these ridiculous little “entrees” for dinner each night then walking 3.5kms. And headaches-at least 2 of 3 nights my head pounds until I want to be sick.

Other than that, I’m enjoying work. I’m good at it without working hard, and have already been told people have noticed my performance. (In a good, non-sexual type way) Granted, if I wasn’t good at this job, I’d kill myself, but paving the way for the promotions I want is never a bad thing, even three weeks in on the job.

It’s strange to have a drive to get somewhere, whereas before, I didn’t much care.

I’m relaxed though, and happy enough to go to work. I’m happy to see my husband, happy to see my kids-hell, I was singing and dancing while roasting a chicken today. I’m just…well, happy.

And I damn well deserve it, even if it’s taken years to grab on and cling to my shoulders.

Beyond the Birds and the Bees

There’s a fabulous new site called ” Beyond the Birds and The Bees”-it’s talking about sexuality, and children, and how we as parents handle it.

If you’re like me, and worry about how to say things, or handle stuff, it’s a great place.

You can also submit your stories, as I have. Jump over here to read Cherries. (It’s not a happy story, so a trigger warning might apply)

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

My favorite memory of my father is a bright spring morning, where the sunlight was shiny and squeaked when you came to fast around a corner. I was wearing my easter dress, as we had just come back from mass, this being way back in time when retail type people didn’t have to ruin every single day of the week letting other’s buy tchotckes. I can recall the sway of the ruffled hem, and the tiny, almost transparent hat on my head. We were walking down the main street of our tiny little town, just walking.

My father reached back, and up, and pulled me to his shoulders, my dress lifting in the breeze as I giggled. He grunted, let out a quick breath as I settled on his shoulder, and held my hands for a moment before I slapped them on the bare skin of his head.

“Last time babe. Your Dad can’t pull this off anymore.”

But despite his aching back, 45 or so, he let me ride in the sunlight one last time, proud of my new height. And we walked to the river, my mother beside us, quiet.

*****************

My father left us for another year today, and I, ungrateful child, couldn’t even rouse myself to say goodbye. I felt an ache at my rudeness, texted my brother to apologize when he landed.

But it’s more than being rude. Every year he arrives a little bit older, with more grey, more wrinkles. He’s not a young man. Ever year he leaves and I worry, will he be back? Will he return? Will the hug, the back slap, the joking nudge be the last time I see him, last time we touch in life?

It’s horribly morbid but I think it every year-how it’s only a matter of time before age robs me of him, steals my one last person, another inch of my family and soul. He’s finally taken to walking with a cane, after being hounded all winter. He’s admitted, to himself, that aging is inevitable.

But I have trouble. In my mind he is still the vibrant, witty and private man that raised me, the man so steadfast in his love and devotion for my mother that I have never once heard a complaint or regret over their life together. A man who did whatever, anything, he could do for me.

I know it’s not all true. I know my father has many faults, faults that have sliced me in hidden places. My father has been, a various times, a drunk. He hasn’t always been the best father, hasn’t always treated me well. But grief shows itself in many forms, and I knew that, even then.

What we have been to each other are companions on a road I wish on no one. With my brother out of the house at university when my mother died, it was merely Dad and I, facing the world, facing the terror. We closed ranks and marched together, one holding the other.

I left home at 16, and knew then, as I know now, that I helped drive him to drinking. I’ll never forgive myself for that.  What was a problem we might have resolved exploded, and home was never home again. He couldn’ t be the same father to me anymore.

But we had seen the same jaded sunsets, written the thank you message for the paper after the funeral together, dealt with my period and posters of Corey Haim. We had been there, in the echoing no-man’s land of after, and had found a tenuous allowance. We understood.

When he leaves, I feel it. I practice for that last time, for the after again, the place without him, where only memory slips through my hands, instead of advice and wisdom, sadness and anger. I practice for imagining myself as an orphan, alone without the guidance of either parent. I imagine the loneliness, the wiped clean whiteness of it all, glimmering.

*********************

I’ve watched my father these few months, enjoying his granddaughters, their laughter, their reactions, their intelligence. I want so desperately for my mother to see him like this, unguarded, interested, mischievious, in love with the daughters of his daughters.

They take him for granted now, knowing he’ll be there. Tomorrow they’ll wake up and realize the bed really is empty, and the basement strangely quiet.

They’ll know then.

I’m sorry, is The Mother’s Act trying to help women? My bad…

Once upon a time, everything was wrong. I knew it. I couldn’t bring myself to where I needed to be. So I lived with it, we worked around it, we did what we could, the people in my life, me. But when there’s a fuzz in your brain you can never quite shake, you can’t see through it. You can feel the wrong vibrating through your life, but you can’t quite settle it.

Even if you talk to a doctor, even when I sat down and said, please, I want to die, I can’t hold it in, they saw nothing. The next time I’d be fine, and bouncy and wonderful and life was grand and they saw nothing. So I carried on, with the wrong still buzzing, believing I was doing what I could do.

But then pregnancy, and pregnancy again, and there was a slight snap that let loose the dogs of crazy, and I slipped slowly into the vibration, becoming consumed, becoming someone I wasn’t, someone who I can’t recognize today.

They didn’t see it. They didn’t watch for it, they didn’t ask. My urine was more compelling than my mental state, even after the first time, even after being through it, after asking for help. Nothing. No one. They watched me crying, sobbing in a fetal position 3 hours after birth and did nothing. I should have been happy, shouldn’t I?

More and more foolishness comes out on the Mother’s Act. More lies, more blatant bullshit (prozac in a baby’s eyes? Really? People BELIEVE this crap!?!?) more obstacles to providing women with nurses and doctors who pay attention to their emotional state, who stop and ask them if they’re ok, who take a moment to look them in the eyes and tell them it’s ok to admit if maybe it’s not all puppies and rainbows.

Honesty. Caring. Compassion. Research to prevent post partum mood disorders.

I read a story like this one, where a mother kills her son. And I read how the family felt “she did not express the typical love of a mother for her child.” And how nothing had been done before that. How the mother said she killed him because “she did not want him to grow up with no one caring about him, the same way that she had grown up where nobody had cared about her.” She then walked the streets of her city.

If she never reacted properly to her son, why would no one ever see, or be told, or help? How long? From birth? Could this have been stopped, years before? This mother, who now waits to be tried, who wants now to die, who felt this was the only way, could she have been helped by something as simple as a doctor noticing, at some time, what was going on?

As a Canadian who has suffered a bad case of PPD, I’ve been watching the Mother’s Act hopefully, and wondering if we can implement something similar in Canada. Something that would extend a hand when it’s needed, not forcing or demanding, but merely being a support when it’s so desperately needed. Education for doctors and nurses to recognize the signs.

I’ve also been watching the backlash, the ridiculous claim from out of nowhere that this is basically an excuse for “big pharma” (I’m so tired of that term) to drug everyone into insensibility, make oodles of money, and giggle maniacally in their lairs. Because it’s hard to believe that anyone, even a senator who is paid to represent the constituents, or a mother who lost her daughter, might only want things to change for mothers. Because nothing can ever happen on a broad scale without some sort of conspiracy attached.

It’s disgusting, and infuriating, especially when coming from other mothers. I didn’t take anything when I was suffering-I went through therapy, and was eventually diagnosed, nearly 2 years later, as bipolar. Which I should have been diagnosed as years before. I elected to start treatment with medication, and did my research on each until we found one that corrected the imbalance in my brain, and allowed me to function, NOT exceed, but merely FUNCTION at the same level as everyone else.

I CHOSE my path. I still see a doctor, sometimes more, sometimes less. I take my medication because for me, talk therapy isn’t the only answer. But I refused anti-depressants twice, and was merely told that they were available, if I needed or wanted them. As with many women I know, I didn’t want them.

But some women might. And women should have the choice, since free will, after all, is a bitch.

There are lives to be saved here, women’s lives, children. By simple screening, questions, a kind word, someone paying attention. And yet we constantly see blowhards screaming their agenda, which is not so much about women but about their misguided attempts to protect. We see people who have never ever even given BIRTH, who decide, based on their vast experience, that this bill must be evil evil evil.

We have hundreds, maybe thousands of women, every day, suffering in silence, suffering in from of medical staff as I did, who get no help at all.

We are a compassionate people, aren’t we?

****

So I went to read the bill again. Looking for the “feed me Risperdal” clause.

Yeah…no….

(1) Basic research concerning the etiology and causes of the conditions.

 

Research=good, right?

  

(2) Epidemiological studies to address the frequency and natural history of the conditions and the differences among racial and ethnic groups with respect to the conditions.

 

 Again, research, especially about incidence, good. 

(3) The development of improved screening and diagnostic techniques.

 

Awesome. Better ability for doctors, nurses, medical staff to assist. Kick ass.

  

(4) Clinical research for the development and evaluation of new treatments.

 

Could we find specific therapy methods more valid? Could we find better diet in the last month of pregnancy, first post partum month helpful? Could mean ANYTHING, and is RESEARCH.

  

(5) Information and education programs for health care professionals and the public, which may include a coordinated national campaign to increase the awareness and knowledge of postpartum conditions. Activities under such a national campaign may– 

Gee, educating the public? Kirstie, are you listening?

 

(A) include public service announcements through television, radio, and other means; and

You mean, get the message out to mothers in crisis that they can get help? Oh the HORROR!

 (B) focus on–

(i) raising awareness about screening;

 

 (ii) educating new mothers and their families about postpartum conditions to promote earlier diagnosis and treatment; and

You mean, let people know what it might feel like so they can educate themselves? NO!
 

 

(iii) ensuring that such education includes complete information concerning postpartum conditions, including its symptoms, methods of coping with the illness, and treatment resources.

And education means providing ALL options and alternatives to the woman, so SHE can make a decision like a big girl wearing big girl pants? How progressive!

 

  

 

Frankly, I don’t see it. While I take medication, and it has literally saved my life, I don’t like pills either. I hate taking them. I’ve declined many medications because I don’t want it in my body. I would never support something that mandated medication. And this doesn’t. Unless there’s some super special secret page that only Amy whatshedrinking can see with all her friends. This is about education, and providing women with the tools they MIGHT need to help them get a handle on things.

Maybe I am insane, but I fail to see how this infringes on freedom, goes against the constitution, or any of the many things it’s been accused of doing.

It’s trying to help. People who have been there are trying to help. What’s really in it for those trying to prevent that help? Dollars for Scientology perhaps, more money for “natural” remedies that might also poison you? Is this just another way for some women to convince you that you aren’t a real woman if you haven’t “toughed it out” if you suffered true post partum, and not just baby blues?

I’m not proud. I deeply desired to give away my daughter at birth. To harm her and end my life. Many things too painful to write down. I recovered with therapy, with the help of a very aware lactation consultant who called at the right time. What I felt wasn’t natural or normal, and it took me a year to connect to her, despite fighting for therapy and assistance.

Now imagine the woman without an advocate.

That’s who you’re destroying here.

“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there is a light shining somewhere nearby.”

Lordie I’m tired.

Going from working 7-3 to 4-12 doesn’t go down too well on an old lady. The sudden inability to sleep before 2am isn’t helping either. I like the nights, but I liked them better before children.  I’m happier now though. I don’t bring stress home with me. I don’t feel a burning in my stomach like I did before. I don’t cringe when the phone rings.

It’s so nice.

I’ll move beyond what I’m doing eventually, but right now, for me, it’s just fine. Although I could use more money. Send money, m’kay?

It’s weird, feeling so closeted about the bipolar though. I keep hearing the word “crazy” in jokes, in “doooode, I got CRAZY messed up last night!”, in all the casual ways people (myself included) use it in casual conversation. It’s been bothering me, in this relatively inane way, how often it’s used, and how no one ever has a campaign against it like they might for the word “retarded” or “cripple”. And maybe it’s different-maybe no one has ever looked at crazy in the same light, but I can feel it. When I say crazy, I mean batshit, not drunk and peeing on a wall. It’s almost like the use deflates the meaning, makes it less of a problem. Simplifies it.

Or maybe I’m just petty. I can’t put my finger on why it’s been bothering me so much. Maybe because I don’t feel safe to talk about it with most people, preferring to be judged solely upon my merits right now. Maybe because I’ve grown tired of hearing people called “crazy” because they’re loud or dress weird. Crazy to me is work. It’s effort to stay together, to not break, to take meds daily, to hunt down a doctor. Crazy is ill, not fun. Maybe that’s my problem.

I’ve been stable though, blessedly so. I’m watching, hawklike, for the summer surge of my mania to crack through, but so far, aside from being a little happier than usual most days, I’ve been safe. What scares me is that part of me misses that wave of joy, the bliss of loving the people in my life just that much more, the heat scorching my body. I don’t miss what happens when I start to crash, but the body wants what it remembers, right?

So I’m hoping I just won’t climb up, and that all will be ok. I have a doctor, I have a plan if something escalates, and I have a job that isn’t stressing me out to the point of tears once daily. It can only be better now.

I worry about that too-that I’ll never keep a job with responsibility ever again. It’s frustrating to have the talent and the brain, and just not the will or ability to keep it going. As a coworker once said “There’s no one better then a Dora on a good day.” Problem is finding those good days. I always want to be in charge, to own projects. But I always unravel if they go on too long. I lose my momentum, I run out of steam, or I crash from manic to depressed, unable to move. My smaller cycles of hypomania to depression have never helped.

Being desperately unhappy at my last job didn’t either.

I just wish I could talk about it more. I feel much better, talking about it. I wish I could do advocacy work at least, talking to groups, schools, workplaces about living, working, thriving with mental illness. I wish I was doing more.

But, for now, having the day off tomorrow will suffice. If only I was drunk in the bush somewhere, peeing on my shoes against a pine tree.

Ah, Canadian adolescence in the woods. How I miss thee.

Pron!

Working for a cable company, and realizing just how much porn people watch, normal sounding, Mom and Dad type people, is traumatising me. The sheer volume is stunning-I never realized! Listening to a sweet polite gentleman or woman on the phone while reading “Big Blonde “S__ts!” on their order lists never fails to make me blush.

Gimme your best porn story, while I fend off the spam.

(and hi. It’s been awhile. I’m busy, working nights, and the laptop gave the blue screen of FUCKYOU! so….yeah…)

The Girl Next Door: Elizabeth Noble

Let’s state at the outset that I’m not really big on anything that even slightly resembles chick lit. I’m just not. To me, it’s like the small talk you make at a party-inane, possibly amusing, but at the end of the day, possibly fattening and distracting. But hey-I read cheesy fantasy novels for my escape, so who am I to judge, right?

Penguin Canada sent me a copy of Elizabeth Noble’s newest book, “The Girl Next Door” a little while ago, and I shut down the cranky judgy part of my mind, and just read. In taking a look at the press release, she’s also written something called “Things I Want My Daughters To Know”, which are letters from a mother dying of terminal cancer to her daughters. Reviews for that called it “an unashamed tear jerker”. So I was ready to be manipulated to emotion at the drop of a hat.

I was ready, and possibly even willing.

I would like to say I enjoyed this book. I can possibly say I didn’t mind this book. But half way through, I literally put it down and said “this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read.” Granted, it did try and redeem itself at the end, but honestly, it wasn’t enough.

The Girl Next Door is an interconnected story of apartments in a New York building, and the people who live in them. It’s also a story full of stereotype and people who never feel fleshed out. The main thread of the book revolves around Eve, who has moved from the U.K. with her husband after he’s transferred. She’s lonely and out of place, and it’s the big chewy metaphor for everyone else in the book-feeling out of place, out of time, awkward.

Eve meets an old expat, Violet, in the building, who was a war bride in a stagnant marriage, and who suffers tragedy in her second coupling. The building also contains Trip, a spoiled son of well to do parents, Emily, the beautiful go getter, Madison, the scared, hard slut, Rachel and David, the wonder couple who have their relationship crushed by infidelity. And Charlotte. The lonely librarian, living in her old little world of romance novels.

Everything else aside, what really bothered me for the first half of the book was that characters were fleshed out not by writing, but by things-the fifties style apron Charlotte is wearing, the brand of dress Rachel might be wearing. We’re meant to infer who these people are by the stuff in their hands, and frankly, it seemed stilted and lazy. I was happy to watch this type of writing wear off by the end of the book, leaving the author to actually try and inhabit the character instead of just describe them. Many of the examples were also very dated and contrived, leaving me feeling like I was talking to my father as a teenager, with him trying to be “hip”. It was really quite awkward.

There was also the inclusion of the building weirdo, who you only saw in pieces, and then two pages when he dies about how he was at Dachau. It made no sense, and felt like more had been cut to tie it in. I understand it’s there to make one realize that you don’t always know why people are they way they are, but it felt pap, and rather last minute. It actually threw me off the main story lines for a bit, waiting to see if it popped in somewhere else.

If anything, The Girl Next Door is guilty of cramming too many people in one book. The actual relationships-those were compelling-Trip pursuing Emily, and his change of person, however unbelievable I found it. Rachel and David, being the lovely, golden couple who lose it all, Eve and Ed, and how their life is rocked by change, and the loss of their daughter. Violet, and her memories.

Because the book drew me from place to place, I was unable to feel for any of the characters,  unable to really cry or smile because it was patently obvious that these were only copies of people you would meet. When Eve and Ed are saying goodbye to their daughter, born too soon, I felt nothing, not a thing. It was too contrived, too unreal. It struck me that a good writer will make me feel it, will pull that sadness from my chest. 

I felt nothing like that.

Tinkle Tinkle Little Ros

So…those of you with a 4 year old, please, pay attention.

Our dear, sweet Rosalyn, she who has been potty trained for over a year now, seems to have some issues.

Namely, remembering to go poo when playing/reading/the least little bit distracted, and waking up to pee at night.

She’s even told me that she’s had dreams about peeing. Still doesn’t put it together.

I took her to the doctor, to check for infection, as it’s been getting worse. Nope, nothing.

If one of us wakes her up around midnight for a tinkle, we’re ok. Otherwise, I’m glad I left the plastic bag on the new mattress.

She’s not getting any sleep though. And she refuses to wear a pull up or anything that even remotely smells like a diaper.

Honestly, I don’t much care-I know that it’s likely as my father says-that she’s recently grown, and her bladder just didn’t get the memo. But the poor little thing is exhausted, and I know it’s not her fault. She just doesn’t wake up. (Frankly, she could sleep through a nuclear exchange)

So-my question is this-have any of you dealt with this type of bedwetting? Is there anything I can do that I’m not doing? I absolutely am not punishing her for any of it, aside from a stern reminder to listen to her butt while playing, and I know she’s not doing any of it to punish me. There’s been no major stressors in her life, and she’s the same happy little demon she’s always been. Neither side of the family has a history of this, so I’m a little lost.

So-advice? You has some? I wants some.

Doctored

I’ve spent the week feeling moderately horrid, since I’ve caught/recaught the plague from my husband, who has himself been arguing with it since February or so. My usual action would be to stay home the first day, but since I’m still training in my new, hourly job where calling in sick means you might as well just not come back, I’ve had to drag my ass into a small room with no air circulation and cough all over every one.

The burning pain of my throat-you’d think it was strep, you really would.

Today, convinced by said husband to go to the clinic (I always harass him but rarely take my own advice), I get asked if I’ve been to Mexico on the phone making the appointment. I can’t help but giggle as I tell her no.

“Gotta ask!” she chimes merrily

When I get there all the chairs are empty, and the office quiet. We’re shown right into the office, Vivian dragging some toy behind her. I barely have time to wash my hands when the doctor comes in.

And immediately starts lecturing me on how I should know exactly what my allergy to Penicillin is.

I tell him I really don’t know, and frankly, I’m not too eager to figure it out.

“Ask your mother,” he says, distracted, “She should know.”

I’d love to I tell him, except for her being DEAD.

He doesn’t skip a beat. Tells me to ask my father. I glare at him, wondering if he’s actually serious.

Call where your original doctor’s notes would be. Because it’s really hard to treat someone who is allergic to penicillin.

Which it really isn’t, since no other doctor in the last 20 some years has EVER stated that this is an issue, regardless of the infection. They might say we have less options, but they’ve never made it sound like it’s my fault that I believe I’m allergic to something that could fucking kill me, and that I’m unwilling to confirm this by taking the drug.

I rarely get antibiotics because I don’t want to build up any type of immunity to drugs that I can avoid, and because I don’t like to. I usually go to the doctor only to confirm, and check that nothing very serious is going on. I’m a good patient. Yet in 5 minutes, this man managed to make me feel like I was being irresponsible for not getting my mother to write how I was allergic to penicillin as she was dying.

When the lecture was complete, he donned a mask and took a sample from my throat. Just in case.