here in my head

It’s been a rough couple of weeks and I’ve been increasingly retreating inward as a result. I stopped taking my anti-depressants about four weeks ago, weaning myself off them with the doctor’s okay. I’d been doing really well, and we both decided that, if I could do without them, it would be better for some future plans I have.

However, it appears that I cannot do without. In an almost beautiful dance of symmetry, as the amount of antidepressant swimming around my neurotransmitters decreased, my depression symptoms increased. Work and travel kept me nicely distracted while the slumbering dragon stirred…

I keep telling myself that this has nothing to do with the lack of medication; that life has been incredibly busy with workload increasing dramatically, with trying to get the house in order in case we decide to sell it soon, with drama in our social circle, with the fact that life and fate seem to be conspiring to keep me from my therapist and I haven’t had therapy in close to two months… But, my life has been crazy and hectic all year, and I’ve dealt with it without falling into tears and despair and thoughts of slitting my wrists. Until last week…

I’m doing better today – hours spent the sunshine over the weekend digging up weeds and planting colourful flowers has helped, even if it’s left me stiff and sore. I’ve called my doctor for an appointment to discuss my options. I’ve demonstrated some key pieces of self-care that have been missing from my life lately – I took the time to paint my toes, to sit with me, to arrange some coffee dates with friends to help me avoid becoming so isolated, like I usually do when things get dark. And I’m slowly learning to accept that I function better when taking the meds. Kind of like learning to accept how I feel better when I don’t eat wheat, despite my reluctance to giving it up…

(aka Sunday Random 10 on a Monday – The forgotten music edition…)

It’s been a lazy holiday Monday afternoon (and thus it feels like a Sunday…) spent listening to music newly discovered, or forgotten and rediscovered while digging through my iTunes archives. I have far too many songs to ever really listen to, and far more cds not yet added to my electronic library. The iPod has changed how I listen to music – rarely do I listen to an album from start to finish any longer, but rather put my favourites in playlists to listen to at random. I love afternoons like this, where I have nothing more pressing than listening to good tunes while rocking in the sunshine, cuddling my cats… Here’s the 10 songs I’ve listened to most recently today:

1. Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Once Soundtrack. (Gorgeous song from a wonderful movie. I have no idea why it stopped being put on my playlists…)

2. Where I Stood – Missy Higgins, On A Clear Night. (I apparently downloaded this sometime last year and listened to it all of one time. But it’s a gorgeous song and deserves to be in heavy rotation on the iPod…)

3. Running up that Hill – Placebo, Bones Soundtrack. (I really like this version of Kate Bush’s song. It’s slower, more deliberate somehow than the original. And despite my love of all things Tori Amos, I’ve never really been able to embrace her predecessor in the same way…However, I only downloaded this song because the album cover had my beloved David Boreanaz on the cover. Shallow, I know. That I like the song is simply a bonus…)

4. I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You – Black Kids, Partie Traumatic. (I’ve never heard this song before, but threw it on my May New Songs 09 playlist for that precise reason. I’m going to assume it was a Free Single of the Week on iTunes once as I have no recollection of downloading it. However, I kind of like it – it’s rather catchy in a fun brit-pop kind of way…)

5. Pretty Piece of Flesh – One Inch Punch, Romeo + Juliet Soundtrack. (I listened to this soundtrack repeatedly the spring of 1997. It was my accompaniment on the trek home from Winnipeg after dropping out the University of Manitoba’s vocal music program… I have hard time believing that that was 12 years ago…in so many ways it seems like yesterday while in others it seems like a lifetime ago… This song instantly takes me back to that time in my life.)

6. Better Man – Pearl Jam, Vitalogy. (I think this is my favourite Pearl Jam song, although there are many that I love. Why I’ve never been more than a casual listener of this band despite really liking most of their songs, and loving Eddie Vedder’s voice, I don’t know. I haven’t listened to PJ in months and months, which is why this counts as a forgotten song…)

7. There is a Light that Never goes out (Smiths Cover) – Automatic Pilot, You’ll Wake the Neighbours. (I downloaded this song today while downloading one of this group’s covers of an Ani DiFranco song. I prefer the Smiths version, but this one is interesting in it’s quiet, gentle approach to the song…)

8. Epilepsy is Dancing – Antony and the Johnsons, The Crying Light. (How I love Antony, I can’t even begin to tell you. I recently discovered this singer’s amazing albums. I just downloaded this album today…)

9. Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak – Macy Gray, On how life is. (I used to work out to this album, and apparently forgot about it shortly after I added it to my iTunes. Figures. I’ll have to pull this music out again for the 1/2 marathon training…)

10. Everybody Here Wants You – Jeff Buckley, Sketches for My Sweetheart. (Buckley’s album Grace is on heavy rotation both on the iPod and on my CD player, but Sketches for My Sweetheart gets forgotten, and I don’t know why…)

I have a little forest growing on my front lawn – a little forest of baby maple trees. Apparently we didn’t do a very good job of raking up the keys as they fell in the fall. Either that or this happens every spring, and my wonderful next door neighbour who loves to garden looked after plucking the baby trees from the ground each year. But the neighbour has moved, she left three weeks ago *sniff* and now I have a mini-forest on my hands. Part of me likes the idea of fifty trees vying for space on my lawn, and part of me realizes that there are reasons forests are not often seen along sub-urban streets. I suppose I have some arbour-cide to commit in the near future…

But not too near future – as I’m off in less than 12 hours for Iqaluit, Nunavut! For work, which makes it somewhat less exciting, but still exciting, nonetheless. I’ve never been north of 60 before, and while I’m not loving the fact that I have to dig out all my winter clothes I’d just put away a few weeks ago in order to go, I can’t wait to see the North. I’ve been working on Northern-related issues for the last five months and I am so excited to finally get to see where it is I’ve been reading and writing about.

Already, the sun is shining from about 3:30 in the morning until sometime before 10 pm. Not quite the midnight sun, but far brighter than what we’re seeing down here. And spring is supposedly a good time to see the Northern Lights. I’ve been told I have to try some Arctic Char while I’m there, and perhaps some Cariboo. And at some point I’ll take a walk to the road to nowhere. I’ve decided to not take my laptop (I KNOW!!! what will I do without it?) but I will have my camera, so I’ll update you all when I return at the end of the week…

I’ve been working stupidly long hours lately, practically living and breathing nothing but work. But that’s okay. I’ve come to realize something. I actually really like my job. Sure, there are days when I get frustrated or bored or insecure in my abilities and I wonder why I work in a field that I fell into, that clearly I don’t know what I’m doing, and I get dissatisfied. And I forget that while I like to think that this career chose me, I really did chose it. That is wasn’t a mistake I ended up a communicator even if sometimes I fell like I have trouble finding the words I really want to say. That, if I stop to really examine my choices, I could have been doing what I like to think was my ‘calling’, except clearly it wasn’t because I gave it up in order to do this. I chose this career over more school, over working towards that other career, consciously and fully. And then pretended I had no choice. I do that a lot. And it only really hurts me when I do that. I lose out on the pleasure of enjoying what I chose for myself. I miss out on liking what I have. Which is a job that isn’t glamourous and is hard work sometimes and boring other times, but really, in its small way, makes a difference, not only in my life, but for others. It’s aligned with an interest and a passion I didn’t really know I had.

Now it’s just holding on to that, when the dissatisfaction creeps in…

Life is crazily, stupidly busy at the moment. I’ve been working non stop for 10 days straight and I don’t see an end to the crazy any time too soon. Mike, as of this morning, is off on a business trip for the rest of the week, leaving me to seriously fear for my sanity. He does a very good job of making me laugh, and so these last few days, when I’ve gotten home exhausted from working 13 hour days, he’s ensured I’m fed nutritious food and had a smile on my face. Granted, I am the master of my own destiny and all that crap, and I can chose to be happy and make healthy dinners all on my own, but it’s been so nice to have him there to lean on. I miss him already and he’s only been gone since 6 am…

Yesterday afternoon, while I stayed attached to the phone and my blackberry, Mike was off at the theatre doing sound for a kids show. But not just any kids show. He did the sound for two heroes from my childhood: Sharon and Bram. He sat and had lunch with them. And told them that his wife’s inner six-year-old was freaking out that he got to meet them. (They hear that a lot apparently…) I was far more excited about him doing sound for Sharon and Bram than I was when he did sound for one of my favourite rockers, which frightens me, really… He reported back that the concert itself was pure torture, really, what with the songs all geared for the under-ten set. And it got me thinking of what we’ll do when we have kids. Because, really, looking at it on this side of the parenthood divide (the one where we’re still without kids…) the last thing I want is to whenever we have them is to give our children free reign of the cd player, and my iPod is too precious to fill with kid entertainers. But realizing how much joy the music of Sharon, Bram (and their pal Lois who no longer performs with them) gave me as a kid, and how I still, almost three decades later, can sing along to every word makes me want to pass that along to my (still hypothetical) children…

Just as long as we can balance the skinnamarink with the death cab for cutie, we’ll be fine…

Tonight, I looked across the couch at my husband, typing away on his laptop. It had been one of those nights. We were both exhausted, Mike due to fighting a cold, and me from putting in enough overtime over the last seven days to get me four off in compensation someday in the future, once the latest crisis is averted. Three-quarters of the way through the movie we’d put on to accompany our Indian take out dinner, inspiration had struck and he started working on some code for work he’d been puzzling over earlier in the day. Watching him as he worked it struck me.

“This is not how I pictured my life,” I said, and he looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not at all who I imagined I’d marry.”

“Oh yeah? Who did you think you’d marry?”

“I figured I’d end up with an artist.”

“I’m an artist,” he said as he gestured to what was, to me, the incomprehensible gibberish on the screen.

“I meant some kind of tortured soul artist. Like a poet or something.”

“I write poetry.” There was a pause.

“Really?”

“Sure. Code is poetry.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is. Listen.” And then in his very best terrible Shakespearian actor voice: ‘Oh, line 36,123, why dost thou vex me so. Why must you send me these errors thus…”

Nope, he’s not a poet. But he does make me laugh…

*the title of today’s post is taken from the song of the same name by Canadian comedienne Nancy White, who shares a love of the poetry and genius of Leonard Cohen. And the song really does echo what I’m feeling today – that melancholy when you look back on how you thought life would be when you were younger vs where it is you’ve really ended up…
“And I had one of those flashes that hits you now and then
About experience manqué and certain sadly missing men.
And I realized in horror as I stroked my double chin,
Leonard Cohen’s never gonna bring my groceries in!”
I don’t have a copy of the song, and the album it’s from is sadly out of print. I was introduced to this song more than 10 years ago, when I had just turned twenty, and the song had very little relevance to my life. But it must of stuck with me somehow, because it popped into my head tonight as I was writing this post…