The Furious Spinner

I'm sitting on my couch listening to Annie Lennox's new album Songs of Mass Destruction. Jesus H. Christ. This isn't a happy album. But then, this is an Annie Lennox record. Happiness ain't a goal.

"Check it out, check it out. One more time for Womankind."

What I love about Annie besides her voice is that she understands irony. One of my favorite Annie songs is "I need a man." (This is definitely who I would have been had I been taller, thinner, and had a voice...)

Mario was sitting on the floor looking over his stash of new books. He was a happy man. He's upstairs now. I'm coming out of a drunk. Which is especially why Annie appeals to me right now. Depressed moi appreciates her Walking on Broken Glass attitude toward life.

I'm on a sugar drunk, not alcohol, although for me there ain't much difference. Although my liver might be happier with the sugar. Yes, sugar affects me in much the same way as alcohol affects other people. I used to get drunk on alcohol, so I know.

Annie is now singing, "Oh sugar, oh sugar..."

Stupid. I don't eat sugar except on rare occasions and only a little bit at a time. Just so this doesn't happen. But I was tired tonight, it was at the end of our wonderful beautiful trip, and I splurged. No big deal since I know what's going on and why I feel like I'm drunk. My brain isn't working right. I have absolutely no patience. And I'm dancing on the edges of depression. I remember when I first really understood what sugar did to me, especially sugar combined with milk. I was eating ice cream and watching television. All of the sudden (it seemed) I started sobbing nearly uncontrollably because I just knew my father didn't love me. I was 26 freaking years old. Mario and I had been married about three months. What do they call those? (Whoever they are?) It was a light bulb moment. I knew my deep deep sadness didn't have anything to do with my father or whatever memory I was delving into that moment: I was on a freaking drunk from sugar.

And yet I continued to consume sugar for quite a few more years. I gave up alcohol before I gave up sugar.

"I've seen too much, I've heard too much, I hurt too much..."

Why do we do self-destructive things?

Because we think we can get a way with it.

Everything is going well. Look! You can do it. Shhhhhh....

On our way home yesterday Elyn Saks was on NPR discussing her book The Center Cannot Hold about her lifelong struggle with schizophrenia. She was fascinating—as was her story. As far as I know, I don't know any high-functioning schizophrenics, although after listening to Saks, I realized I could know some and not know it. (Does that make sense?) I realized how ignorant I was about the disease. Good for her for talking about it. I think it's so important to talk about mental illness (even though I hate that term). That's why I talk about my own mental illness. It ain't nothing to be ashamed of. It's just an unfortunate part of our lives. I wondered as I listened to Saks: Do I have a mental illness even when I'm not depressed. Elyn Saks always has schizophrenia, even when she's not experiencing symptoms. She is always on medication. If I feel good am I still mentally ill? Or is it like getting a cold. When I have the cold, I'm sick; when I don't have the cold, I ain't sick. When I'm not depressed, I'm not mentally ill.

"So screwed up, so screwed up..."

When I was about sixteen I read I Never Promised You A Rose Garden about a girl with schizophrenia, and I was terrified. I actually went to my mother in tears (unusual for me to go to my parents about anything bothering me when I was that age) and I told her I was afraid I had schizophrenia. I had a fully realized imaginary world. I still talked to my imaginary best friend. I don't remember if my mother was able to reassure me. I do remember I drove to St. Patrick's church. I parked in the empty parking lot, and it was there that I said goodbye to my imaginary world where women and girls had incredible powers, where we were the heroes of the Universe, where men and boys stayed home and took care of the house and raised the children. I told my best friend (imaginary) that people would think I was crazy if they knew I still had this imaginary world at my age, so off you go!

And that was that.

When I was almost thirty, I developed a snarl in my brain and things were never quite the same again. I knew it wasn't schizophrenia. That was a young person's disease. It was something I ate. Or something. Sugar? How many people go crazy, how many people split-up, how many fights are started just because someone ate or drank the wrong thing for their bodies?

You've heard all these stories before. Why am I telling them to you again?

It's been jarring getting back to real life. Can't remember if it usually is. I don't think so. Mario and I had our version of a fight today. We don't fight. We have passionate disagreements and discussions about various subjects. I love those kinds of discussions, first and foremost because Mario is so smart and articulate and me likewise and we can talk and listen and get passionate about a subject. My father was listening to us "discuss" assisted suicide some years ago (Mario on one side and me on the other) and my father finally said something placating, like "There are good points to both sides." We stopped our arguing and looked at him. We then realized he thought we were angry with one another. We explained that this was a really cool discussion to us. Cuz it was just the facts, ma'am and our beliefs about the topic. Never any personal attacks. Ever. I have had many many discussions with people over the years and with a few wonderful exceptions, if I'm talking with a man and he disagrees with me, he almost always tries to end the argument with a personal attack. ("Well if you didn't hate men, you'd understand..." "If you understood what a real woman was...") So Mario has always been a joy to argue with because he never even considers personal attack.

"One more time for the womankind. Check it out, check it out. Oh baby he's got precious eyes..."

Anyway, this morning Mar and I were out of sync, and I was cranky as hell and not happy with him. So we went to look at the salmon. Our gorgeous fallin' apart walking skeleton salmon at Eagle Creek. Oh man, they were that deep deep maroon blood color. I stood on the shore in my maroon jacket feeling my blood pulse salmon-like. Ready to give birth to...something. A small bird cried out, landed on the water, dove down, came up with a peach-colored pearl: a salmon egg. Then it flew to the shore of the stream with the pearl in its beak. It dunked the egg into the moving water. In and out. Washing it? Polishing it like a miner panning for gold?

When Mario is upset he disappears. That's what I call it. Before we married, I told him what I required, what I needed, what I had to have, as a marriage vow. "You've got to talk to me," I said. "I don't care if you talk to anyone else, but you gotta talk to me." So when he goes all interior, I feel as though he has broken his marriage vows. And to me, I would rather be physically alone than in the presence of someone who isn't present. So I told him to take me home. "If I'm going to be alone, I'd rather be alone." He said this was fair and he took me home. We went our separate ways until he could figure it out.

Which he did.

That's always been a thing with me. I am perfectly fine with my own company. But I don't want to be around people who disappear. Did I already say that? My brain is starting to come out of its sugar daze...How do I explain it? My mother disappeared from illness and my father just disappeared sometimes even when he was in the same room with us. This isn't a blame thing. I'm just saying I remember that from when I was a kid and I didn't like it then and I still don't like it. I think I do it myself. When I can't articulate what I'm feeling, I think I disappear too. I can feel myself doing it, but I don't always know how to stop it. Like the Invisible Man after he's drank his potion. It's probably why I write. Much easier to express what's going on through my characters.

"Sick and tired of devastation..."

You know what? I am a woman of 52 years and sometimes I feel like I did when I was sixteen. I think that means that an 80 year old woman must feel like a sixteen year old sometimes too. And in our society no one looks at her as anything more than an old woman without any desires. Any dreams. Any need to press her skin against anyone else's.

"Everybody is an island of their own. And you say everybody has a tender heart..."

I dreamed the other night that this grand woman picked several of us to be in this play about goddesses or the Valkyries or something. At first she called me Valiant, I think, but she changed her mind and said I was Gertrude. I woke up wondering who Gertrude was. I was given a name in a dream once before. Ursula. But I understood that. Bear goddess supreme. I could handle that.

But who is Gertrude?

And then in Colorado, I dreamed I offered to take care of the house of a woman who was leaving on vacation. Instead, I went with her and several other women. We ended up in this open-air market or some kind of bazaar. The woman went to pay her respects to her dead husband somewhere, and I was left to look around. I saw a couple of mermaid statues, but I didn't really like them. They weren't Old Mermaids. Then, in the dream, I saw in my mind's eye these necklaces: On a black string was a skeleton key. I could see them very clearly, necklaces for sale that I'd created. In the dream, I thought I might carve a word or two on the keys. Peace. Love. Etc. When I woke up in real life, I thought this was clearly and absolutely a message from myself to myself.

But what message? Put skeleton keys on a rope and sell them? Neckeys? Merkeys? Keys to Well Being? The Key is Me.

As I drove that day I listened to the radio and realized again again again that the politicians are not going to get us out of the mess we're in. Historically, politicians do what the people kick their butts into doing. Each one of us has to take responsibility for doing something oursleves. I have to take responsibility. The key is me. The key is we. We is the key. I don't want to scream at these people any more. I want to stop this war with Iraq. I want to stop the coming war with Iran. I want to be effective. The key is me. I want to inspire, encourage, enrich...

The key is me.

Soon after we got home yesterday, I dumped out a jar that holds about a zillion pens. At the bottom of this jar was a skeleton key. I found a leather rope from an old necklace and I dropped the key onto it. And I put it around my neck.

The key is me.

Man, then we is in big trouble.

I feel like the dream meant more, but I don't know what yet...

Time for sleep.

My man is upstairs waiting for me.

And we all know that I need a man.

Labels: depression, mental illness

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.