Kindness.

Sometimes we get packages and regular mail together, so our mailman will drive up our steep, annoying driveway when the top is often filled with lots of toys or building materials, and cars, and even our big pool...  But he drives up, anyway, to make sure the package gets to our door and not just leave it on the porch down below.

Stella and I were outside planting all these various perennial bulbs that Sam had bought for me a few days ago.  We spent time thinking about where we should put each plant and why it would fit just right there, or over here.  Stella was watering the gardens when I saw the mail truck driving up the driveway.  I advised her to not spray the mailman, which inspired a 'duh' expression from Stella, who said, "I wouldn't do that mommy!"

The mailman gave me an envelope and said he had a bigger box in the back.  He explained how FedEx passes off deliveries to the postal service when they feel like it's too difficult to find a house, or if there were tough driveways for their bigger trucks to maneuver.

     "Weird," I said to him.  "I hope they pay you to make the deliveries for them!  Next time we'll give you a tip."  He laughed and I told him it was always okay to turn around up there however he can, even if he has to drive on the yard.  He said, "Really?"
     "Trust me, we don't care," and gestured towards the mess that was all around us.

After he left Stella put down the hose and sat on one of the swings, facing the garden she had been watering.  She said, "That is a friendly mailman.  Why was he talking so nicely to us?"

Stella loving her grampy up.

I explained that he was a friendly person and that he was also one of her classmate's fathers.
     "Did he talk to you in a nice way, because he is her daddy?"
     "No, he is just a friendly, good person.  There are lots of friendly and kind people in the world, Stella.  It feels nice when you meet someone like that, though, doesn't it?"

She was sitting on a swing, and she looked down, dragging her toes on the dirt... pensive...  thinking... "Mommy, when I meet someone like that, it makes me think of...  Well, I don't want you to be sad."
     "It makes you think of Grampy John, doesn't it?"
She looked up and smiled, sadly, "Mommy, he was nice to everyone.  He cared about everyone."
     "You're right, he did.  It doesn't make me sad to think about Grampy John.  It makes me happy when we talk about him," I said, watching her smile creep back.  "And he would be proud of how kind and caring you are.  Grampy was very special and I'm glad you think about him sometimes."
    "I think about him all the time, mommy."

When I'm Gone.

Watching Anna Kendrick.

      Right now I'm watching my sister, Mikhaila, and my daughter, Stella, practice the Anna Kendrick, "Cups Song," routine.  They both say they knew how to do it at one point, or thought they did.  They just needed some practice, they said.  I'm trying not to cry.

     This moment: this moment in time, and place, and situation, and sound, and sight is something I have wanted to see since I can remember.  My sister and my daughter.
      "I'm just trying to become the best teacher I can be... Haha, I really am," Mikhaila giggles as she focuses her attention on Stella, but realizes I am watching them.

      They have the same mannerisms, talking with their hands, and expressive faces, even when they aren't trying to copy Anna Kendrick's video.  They are a lot alike, really. Mikhaila is watching Stella so attentively, being so very encouraging, and smiling.  Stella is delighted, and being her feisty, expressive self. 
     "I can't sing that fast.  I'd have to be a rapper to keep up with that beat," Mikhaila says and Stella smiles. "You just want to make it a competition of who can do it faster, don't you?"
      "No, I just like doing it faster."
      I was 10 when Mikhaila was born and she was my little buddy.  I think Mikhaila always wanted my daughter to be her little buddy, even though she's my best friend.  It's the natural succession of things, right? Stella is trying to do "cups" so fast, she has to keep flattening her palms against the cool glass of the doors behind her. "This hurts my hands," she says.
         "That's because you're doing it so fast! I'm a little scared of you right now."  
         Mikhaila looks up at me and says,  "She's a youngin', she's got faster reflexes."
         She and Stella Giggle.  "I'm like, uh..." Mikhaila says, mimicking the speed and force of Stella's version of the routine.  She can't keep up with this eight-year-old fireball.  Who can? They finally got it, to some sort of "performance ready," although Stella keeps changing the plans and the rules.  Mikhaila is laughing as Stella gives her instructions...  Oh, I remember a little girl just like Stella...As they grow in confidence, I film their performance, and suddenly Michael throws a rubber snake into the mix.  "Machete Snake!" he yells and runs off.  
          "We've got one child who made cups lethal, and one child who got a machete snake.  I'm a little frightened of your children right now," my sister takes on her perfectly serious, not serious voice.

        Stella begins again, ready to keep practicing, despite the snake attack, and Mikhaila looks at me, smiling knowingly, and starts clapping and slapping her cup.

 

      

Emergency.

My original blog post disappeared and I was very sad.  I spent a lot of time writing this particular piece and reflecting upon my time at the ER and about what led to me needing to be there in the first place.  The general consensus of the medical professionals was that I needed more intensive treatment for my depression.  What were, at the very least, fairly "normal" feelings for me on a monthly basis, were not something the PA, the nurses, or the HCRS professional could grasp as normal, or even "okay" in any way.  They said they had admitted people for much less than what I was telling them and what I had done... But I'm intelligent about my PMDD and depression, and I understand that situational stress can push me over an emotional cliff if it's serious enough... and it has been many times... I had just never texted my EMT sister to ask her about the shit I had taken when I was in the process of passing out.  I guess I knew it was something more serious--the feeling of not wanting to wake up.  It was more than a not caring, or being careless; I consciously hoped that I would not wake up.  I wanted to sleep, and not feel anything, and I hoped that relief lasted forever.  So, anyway... here's the beginning of the old post... that's all that was retrievable from the blog feed:

"I used to welcome sleep; I looked forward to sleep. Sometimes, being awake seemed so unbearable in my worst emotional and psychological states of PMDD, I would feel relief and even mild (yet tired) excitement if I were able to get into bed early and could drift off into another world easily... I liked dreaming. Being in bed *all day* maybe takes away the respite of bedtime. Laying on my bed for hours in daylight, staring at the wall, or doing something mindless because I am unable to close my eyes, exacerbates depression, and makes sleep more difficult at night. If you can get out of bed, do it... do it. Don't stay in bed all day.  Get out.  I can't sometimes..."

I'll try and fill it in, as I remember it.  I figure that can be therapeutic, right?  Let's do it!  Alrighty...

...I can't get out of bed, because I'm frozen in a feeling of apathy, that is impenetrable.  I don't care if I move or breathe or do anything.  I feel nothing.  When I feel nothing I still have a sense of all that I am missing, and I sink deeper into the mattress and hide further under the quilt.  And that night, I really just wanted to go to sleep, after a day that didn't feel so great...  And I know I wrote about how awful it feels to be a mother and to love my children so desperately, and so deeply, yet still feel the urge to sleep the big sleep...


Wow...  I can't go back a write something I've already let out of my system.  I know that the concern was the "impulsivity" of my actions.  I would drink and take sleeping pills, and prescription pills all together, without a thought of the outcome--Impulsive in the not caring what would happen.  When you feel trapped, even if it's in your own mind, you just want out.  Sleep is an out.  "Make me sleep" I can think, but then the not worrying about waking up was an issue for the second shift, (midnight to deep into the early morning), PA in the ER, who was also named Sam.  And so I sat there, in a propped up hospital bed, with an IV and monitors, making sure my organs weren't going to shut down, for over 5 hours, wide awake.  The nurse was surprised, after all that sleeping medicine and the sedatives that I would not pass out.  I told them I had thrown up as much as I could before I got there.  That didn't seem to matter.  It was that I had done it in the first place and that I had known I had taken enough to need to throw up too...

And Finally, Sam the PA, who was sitting on a stool next to me, alone, (after Sam left to get some personal items for me at home), said he could only put it into the perspective that if I were his family, if "You were my family, if I were that Sam," he said pointing at my Sam's empty chair, "I would want to want to be alive, and I would want you treated for this depression as aggressively as possible."  I told him I understood, but I tried to explain how PMDD would mean that I would be feeling better, less impulsive, I thought, within a day.
I agreed to stay the night there, and sleep, instead of going to an inpatient facility, and I was moved to a hallway where there was a little room, with heavy sliding glass doors, and a security guard sitting outside the room.  It was quiet.  There was an elderly woman with dementia in the room across from me who was being taken off of a medication, and she had become aggressive in her assisted living facility and was now sedated and sleeping, I found out later, when her daughter came to visit her the next day, wondering what she would do next, what was there to do next....

 The nurse brought me warmed blankets and said, "goodnight, try to sleep," and after asking the security guard to show me how to lower the bed so it was not in an almost sitting position, and asking him if he thought scratching poison ivy made it spread, (I couldn't stop scratching my legs--he whispered in that the internet said that scratching wouldn't make it spread), I laid down on the blue vinyl mattress, covered with a white sheet, and I covered my legs with a blanket, and hugged one that was still warm against my chest, and I started to fall asleep... It felt safe and good.  I felt safe and sleepy... but as I drifted off, I realized I still didn't care if I woke up.