Bottles and Tops

There’s a bag in my cupboard.

It’s crumpled, you’ve left it there, unknown and unwanted, it’s paper worn and soft now, aged.

I don’t know what to do with it.

You know exactly what to do with it. You’re scared.

Am not.

Are fucking too.

Fine. I’m scared. What of it?

You’re scared to throw away all the expired reminders? All the things you tried, all the reasoning to yourself that the problem was you-that it was always you, and there was some magical way to fix it with a pill.

Stop.

Let’s go through them shall we, or at least what’s in this bag? There’s so many which aren’t.

Let’s just not. Let’s throw them out.

You can’t do that. You have to “safely dispose” of them, as you’ve been saying for all these years, walk them to the pharmacist and absolve yourself of your martyrdom. You ready to do that?

- – - um- – -

Exactly.  Bupropion.

I had hope for that one. Hope that it would swell and make me better, make it all simple and smooth, like planed wood. Nothing like that happened. The dead inside didn’t disappear.

Risperidone

 

Wanna make a girl feel awesome? Put her on something labeled and anti-psychotic, when she knows she’s not. If I remember correctly, these are from when I put myself in the nuthouse for a week. Maybe they aren’t. But I do remember, the tiny brown pills, the leap into oblivion, the allowance it gave me to not fix anything. Tears and rage and blame. Fires banked, but healthy.

Divalproex

Not indicated. Not indicated for what’s wrong with you. But we’ll try it anyway, and the side effects only count if they include explosive shits and crying fits. Maybe we can’t fix you. Maybe you don’t want to be fixed. Maybe the problem isn’t you!

Citalopram.

More of the same. Blind flailing in the dark. The refrain from the doctors that lack of sex wasn’t a side effect that concerned them, like taking away my humanity wouldn’t make me less human. Bloat and wheeze and still, that hole in me, the whistling quiet.

and on and on and on. Is it enough? I spent years shoveling something, anything in my mouth to avoid one thing. ME. And still I end up at the same place. Is it enough?

Are we enough?

_____

I can’t help but wonder, on my way home after another long dreary rainy day, if I’m not coming full circle. I talk to a friend who’s sick, who has bipolar, and I shake my head in near awe. Like so many people, like normal people, I can no longer grasp wanting to die, each and every day. I no longer do it. I wake up, I go about my day, I make lists and plans and I’m happy to do so. I dream. I see something other than a knife to a wrist, a speeding bus, a hearty river I can be lost in. I don’t have those days anymore, and feel like finally, I’m becoming the person I should have been, the woman behind all the years of shit and misery pretending to be a life.

My friend is still floundering through it, most of the time better than others, but I’m reminded to vividly when she says “I hear nothing after I take my pill.”

and I thank anything that listens that I am not sick like that anymore, regardless of why it happened.

Maybe I was never really sick at all, but escaping that voice, muffling it. Maybe I just didn’t know what else to do, trapped in a space and time that couldn’t ever try to lift me up to see above the shit I was mired in. Maybe I was lazy.

Maybe. But I also know that there are no magical secrets in bags and bottles. The work? It’s the hard lonely part, piecing a person back together.

 

Life Divine

Every morning, Vivian gets up around 6:30, plugs in her iPod, and blares me out of a dead sleep with Rhianna, or Lady Gaga, or Beyonce, or something else high pitched and treble laden. Mostly I can ignore it, covered as it is by the white hum of my room fan, and the syrupy lure of 20 minutes of more sleep. I hear bowls, or toast, glasses and humming. Flat, off key 8 year old singing. (I just downloaded her the new Lady Gaga album, so this is only going to get worse. I won’t get Judas out of my head for weeks now.)

This morning was another just like this, full of the usual. Probing for dinner ideas. Packing lunches someone might eat. Finding the “right” long sleeved shirt for Ros. Convincing Vivian that yes, you DO need to brush your hair and that soon her friends will comments on the greasy hair rocker look she’s been sporting. Most morning also tend to include brief lessons in “why you cannot wear THAT shirt with THOSE pants.” Variations on this theme include leggings not being pants, holes and stains mean it cannot be worn off the property, and real waistbands won’t kill you.

So color me surprised this morning to see my daughter resplendant in beige, pink and brown culottes and a plain pink shirt. She looked pretty my tomboy! She looked, frankly, quite lovely.

And so grown up. It seems like she’s sprouted wings and stretched these past few months, growing lanky, limber. She’s 8 so soon that I’ve taken to calling her 8, because frankly she’s always been older. But now, her body betrays me, and when my bones creak, hers rejoice and I hear a tsking noise in the backround, that reminder, voices when she was just a baby.

The relative nature of time which causes me to press a silent “fuck you” into the abyss directed at Einstein.

My eldest daughter, my baby girl, she grows too fast. I can catch wind before I can catch her, flying past me without thought. I let her though, I know I must. This is my place, the soft place to land, with limits and terms. I must cast her forth, with hope and beauty.

Most days she’s cranky and snotty and laughing at farts. But then there are days, days like today when I see the woman I have brought forth, the mother to be, the someday wife, the pride in flesh I have wrought.

And proud I am.

Buy Nothing Month-First Weekend

Ah the weekend,  time of relaxation, contentment….

Unless you work a shitty job that makes you work on Saturdays, in which case your weekends are….odd.

I did pretty good, if you consider my boyfriend did the spending for me. Found me a booster seat for Viv for less than 20.00, for which pay day will repay. Grabbed all the bread at the outlet when I realized it was the OTHER store that took credit cards. Bought me the most delicious pizza for dinner on Friday. (Yes I love Panago. Even more, I LOVELOVELOVE their Tropical Hawaiian. Without the freaking fruit. LOVE IT. Seriously. Send me coupons, please. It’s likely a good thing they don’t deliver to my area of town.)

Ahem.

The money I spent was, sorta kinda necessary. We went to Scholars Choice since I never get there and wanted to look for ideas for Vivian’s birthday…and I bought her a snap bracelet watch. Which technically she needed, since I want her walking home alone next year, and need her comfortable with telling time analog. And a cheap pencil for Ros since, well….it was only 2.00 and I’m still trying to break the habit of needing to get both of them something. (And she loves the watch. It was time.)

So that was only 20.00 or so.

Sunday we went here and stopped in Alma for lunch, which was delicious Turkey Veggie Soup and THE BEST BREAD EVER. I even tried some of his seafood chowder (and was disturbed by tingly lips later so my quest to conquer my seafood demon might need to be cautious ones.) I bought lunch. Not because I had to, but I wanted to. I can’t deal with anyone, even my boyfriend, paying for everything. So, 15 bucks or so, but totally wonderful food, and totally worth it.

Keep in mind that I did not buy anything at the gift shop, nor did I buy anything when we browsed in Value Village or Homesense or any of the other places I drooled through other days. This was balanced by a driving need, or desire all Sunday to figure out how to afford to sell my house, buy cheap land on the coast and support myself. (I swear I’m going hippie, without the dreads and Patchouli. But look at this! Or this!)

It’s a dream, and one I think I can pull off sometime. I even drove again! (Can I mention how much I love that my lover can push me to try things without being overbearing or nasty? He just believes in me. So very cool.) But this dream, it gives me focus. Before I can even think of living out in the country I need to know how to drive. And I need to sell this house and save some money. And I need to have a plan for work.

A dream is a focus though. I finally feel like I can have a dream, and a real focus. Control.

It all comes back to that word. Control. If I can control spending, then I can control everything else. I can start to really plan, instead of living day to day as I have for too long. This weekend reminded me that yes, I can spend some money, but I don’t need to buy everything I see, and that it’s nice to have a little money set aside for when you find something you need.

Bad Thing this weekend? I spent some money, and felt bad not having more to spend when at the park. I hate not being able to carry my own weight.

Good things this weekend? Going to a national park, having fun for nothing more than the entrance fee. (which, if you care, is worth buying for the season if you go more than once. So I will be doing that next time. Also makes it more likely to camp there.)

Other good thing? Seeing this.

Buy Nothing Month: Day Two

Beans are cheap. Beans are tasty.

Beans are…windy.

It’s amazing what 50 cents worth of pinto beans, some onion, garlic and cumin and a little cheese can make. I gorged on bean burritos at lunch and am now, 8 hours later, still pretty damn full.

Bean power! (I am pretty grateful my lover is NOT here tonight since I would likely blast him out of the bedroom. Apparently 1 cup of dried beans makes you a little…powered. :p

I was good today. Yay me, right? I needed to grab a few things at the grocery store, which filled me with dread. (If you’ve ever been to the major mall in this city, you’ll understand.) I went straight to Sobeys though, grabbed what we needed (emphasis, need, with the exception of the Coke) and left, disturbed by how little it felt I got for 20.00.

And for the record, there’s something terrifying about the fact that a 591ml bottle of sugar water is almost as much as a 1kg bag of frozen corn.

Since I had some time to kill until the next bus, I wandered through the mall, window shopping. Most of what I find falls into three categories

1. Doesn’t fit me
2. Hideous
3. Pointless

I looked at some pretty things I’d never use, some ugly things I might. I remembered I need to buy teacher gifts soon. I poked around in the shoe store since with feet like mine, you are pretty much forced to look whenever you can. Ape feet aren’t easily shod after all.

Then it struck me, just how much crap we buy. There are 4 stores devoted to bags. Not even bags that are more than passingly useful, but tiny stupid little purses which cost more than I make in a day. Expensive bags made in another country which took lord only knows how much fuel to produce and arrive at this mall. 4 stores. FOUR.

Don’t even get me started on all the stores selling virtually the same ugly, 80′s inspired hoochie clothes.

It hit me, as I conciously thought about “stuff”, that most of what we have, most of what we want, we don’t need. And yeah, I know that isn’t totally profound or anything but think about it. In the run of the average day we lust after things-iPad’s, cute shoes, yet another book on gardening, new underwear. Cameras and helper monkeys. We spend time thinking about stuff, and it’s never dire. It’s stuff bought to facilitate the purchase of more stuff! Most of which is usually plastic, potentially lethal, and boring by the next day.

So how do we determine need? Is it a need if I would die without it, like food or pants? Is it a need if it makes me happier, like yet another bottle of nail polish? Is it a need if I just fucking want it?

I suspect that far too many of us would answer the latter. Whether we’d admit it publicly…well, that’s another thing entirely.

When I break it down to it’s essential parts, there isn’t much I need, not in the form of little pieces of junk at the mall. I would *like* to treat myself to a new bottle of kick ass nail polish at some point. But I don’t need it. I would like a second lug mug so I have one for coffee and one for my mint tea (it’s nasty to mix. Oh how nasty it is to mix). But I don’t NEED it.

My kids need sandals, shorts. Sunscreen and hats. We need more children’s asprin, and will need some milk next week. These are needs. These needs aren’t sold at La Senza or Payless or Toys R Us, or any other place in the business of telling you that in order to feel wonderful, you need to spend.

I think I’m done with riding that particular train, and you know, I kinda like the air on this other one. It was freeing today, just walking through, sitting to read my book while waiting instead of buying something.

It was nice to spend nothing.

What was bad today?-I bought that coke. Sigh. It’s my one fucking vice and it LOVES ME and refuses to let it’s claws go. So that one is a hard bitch to beat. And I spent .50 cents on Mike and Ike’s at work when I should have eaten the pudding I brought from home. So, I spent around 3.00 on stuff I shouldn’t have. That’s already 6.00 in two days. SIX DOLLARS I spent on little crap. Treats add up.

What was good? I didn’t buy a coffee at the mall while waiting. I was starving but I didn’t eat. Because I could eat when I could get home. And I did. Beans. Delicious delicious BEANS.

Lesson? Those little treats add up, and I don’t need them. Try harder grasshopper. You can do it.

Buy Nothing Month: Day One

Yeah, I suck. Spent 3.00 in vending machines at work. Because as tasty as Kamut puffs and yoghurt and granola can be? THEY AREN”T CHOCOLATE.

However, since I’m down to 2.50 in my wallet, this problem will resolve itself soon.

Spent the day determining if new headphones are a want or a need. Considering I will start walking at least one way to work each day again soon, they are a need, but not a pressing one. They can wait until payday.

Ran out of popcorn. This is a snack need, which, along with the corn I forgot to get for my enchiladas (damn peas! You fooled me!) will be grabbed tomorrow. Dinner is a need.

Lesson today? Leave the damn cash at home. Make it a pain in the ass to spend.

What sucked today? Nothing aside from freaking gale force winds….and vending machines with tasty Fritos.