Check it off the list. Finish the job. That task will be hanging over my head until it’s completely done. Any of those sound familiar? There are two sides to every coin. On one side is laziness and lack of impetus to get started. On the other is an impulsive, burning drive that pushes me to keep chugging along, a fire that never quite goes out.…
“You’re too young to wear sunglasses.” I’m having a conversation with a good friend, lamenting the currently unbearable distance is between where I am and where I want to be. She looks at me, smiles, and says, “You don’t really want to be famous yet. You’re too young to wear sunglasses.” Remember those movies about the small-town singer who becomes a superstar or the little obscure…
December. My baby’s four month anniversary. Christmas rush. Maternal exhaustion. Guilt has no place here. It’s really the last thing I need. Outside my home, the frost sheaths the brave blades of grass that raise their heads. Inside my home, Christmas lights offer no warmth as I weep and share two huge, aching desires in my heart: to be a mother to my beautiful son and…
Sometimes my times in darkness shape me just as much as my times in the light. Depression is like a deep sleepwalk, a fog cutting me off from seeing the world like I once used to. I can’t touch or sense things the same way. I’m trapped in a sleep/death. Sleeping Beauty lay in a dreamless prison for a hundred years. Snow White ate a poisoned…
This week's had some highs and lows for me. Lows: a bout of depression that forced me to cancel all commitments and reassess. Highs: camping with my best friend and my husband by Diablo Lake. The lake was the temperature of glacier melt--in my humble, screaming opinion--but it felt incredible after a long, sweaty hike. Another high: getting beers with two very dear friends who helped…
I've decided I'm part plant. You know, those things that start as a seed and uncurl little leaves? It's why I pout when my herb garden withers. It's why I lose pigmentation when I'm stuck indoors under thick cloud cover. My mother, tongue-in-cheek, said she’d be a sun worshiper if she wasn't a Christian, and I think that I've inherited her sun adoration. Halfway through drafting…
I considered titling this post CONFESSIONS OF AN ADRENALINE JUNKIE. You'll see why. I never considered myself an addictive personality, especially not when it came to my productivity and social life, but that was just ignorance blindsiding me. It was very sneaky about it. Some of you read my fog and purpose post two weeks ago about a depression that was troubling me enough to post as documentation…
This post may strike you as rather philosophical, but there are seasons of our lives--and minds--when nothing else fits the bill. You hate it when the status quo is simply to pretend like everything is always fine and dandy, right? And you equally hate it when people you know launch themselves from crisis to crisis as if they truly inhabit an endless chain of traumatic evens and…