Meanderings: January 9, 2000

Sunday,
January 9, 2000

I'm going to try and describe something. I doubt I'll do a good job of it, but I want to try and do it anyway.

I was sitting here, feeling rather wretched, to be honest. My sinuses are killing me, I just saw a picture of me taken this summer that makes me look like the side of a barn, I have a user guide that needs to be handed in ASAP and I'm still working on it, I have a whole sheaf of problems that need to be addressed before I can go back to the States -- on top of being sick, it feels like I have this huge, looming monolith just waiting to crash and fall on me.

Things like this should not be addressed when your immune system is working overtime, by the way. It's an unnecessary distraction and division of your internal forces, and can make you feel intensely depressed.

It's times like this that I find myself muttering, "I want to go home," or "I hate life." Of course, I'm sitting in my house at the moment, and I don't want to die. Both of them are word symbols for the same thing -- I want all the frustrations to go away, just for awhile. I want to be in a space where I feel happy, and productive, and useful, where thinking about the future is a joy and pleasure.

There was a very specific period of time in my life when I felt that way. For maybe six months in the spring and summer of 1992, things were finally easing up for me. My mother and brother had moved into their own apartment after living with me for close to a year, during which time I was the only employed member of the family and had been supporting them both. I was at a point where I could start reducing the debts I had built up during that year and the two previous ones, when Mom had been unemployed. I had quit my hellish job as split administrative assistant for a research center and administrative office at the University of Chicago, and was working as a secretary for a medical department. I had my email friendships with a number of people, including the man who would eventually become my husband, the Bodacious Brit.

Best of all, I had semi-co-written (my credit was "script doctor") and was performing in a play in Chicago, "Maniacal Normality." Okay, so we billed it as the first lesbian one-act comedy in Chicago, and the reviews were disasterous. But the sheer creative energy that we generated when the cast would come over and rehearse at my apartment, or later when we would rehearse at the coffeehouse on Clark that doubled as our theater, was incredible, absolutely electric. And for the first time in what seemed like eons, I looked forward to getting out of bed in the morning. I didn't have panic attacks anymore, wondering where the money would come from for that month's rent, or how I would deal with being torn between a research center past its prime and the administrative office that wanted them out of their offices.

In short, I felt fucking fabulous. Life was good.

And then, things came to an abrupt end. My boss decided that I wasn't the secretary he wanted, and fired me. Looking back, I now know that I could have had another job within the month. But the shock of being fired -- by a man I liked, who I thought liked me and my work -- was destructive. I thought I had recovered from the bad times, when all I really had was a scab over the pain. Being fired ripped off the scab and let all the destructive stuff boil back to the top. I effectively curled into a fetal ball and couldn't deal with anything. I wound up going on unemployment and moving in with my father for nine long months. From the pinnacle of creative joy, I dropped down to a point where I traded renovation skills and hours of listening to my father's endless bitching for a place to live.

Could have been worse, of course. I still had my car, and a little money from unemployment. I had a roof over my head, food and clothing, and I was volunteering with my high school band. Compared to someone who was homeless, who was dealing with an abusive spouse, who was addicted to something -- who had real problems -- I had it made, right?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course I had problems -- I was miserable, I hated my life, I had nothing to look forward to. Looking back, I now realize that I was clinically depressed, and I should have been in counseling, instead of listening to my father rabbit on hour after hour about all the horrible things that had been done to him in his life. I wasn't living anymore -- I was existing, just like I had been when I was supporting my mother and brother, when I was dealing with prima donna researchers or yuppie scum queen managers. The only problem was, this time I knew what it was like to live. Somehow, that made the situation even worse. (Things are much, much better now, by the way. I'm married to a man I adore and who adores me, and while I do have some hurdles to overcome before I move back to the States, life in general is fairly good. But for about nine months there, I was stuck in a deep, dark hole with no way out.)

Told you I was going to describe this badly.

So I was sitting here, feeling generally miserable because of small shit, and I start thinking about those good six months and wishing I could be back there again, just for awhile. It would be such a lovely vacation for my soul, it really would. And then, I remember other good times in my life -- not necessarily a period of time, or even anything as long as a day. Just good moments that stick in my memory -- like the time I drove solo down to see my friend Kate in Durham, North Carolina and stopped on some mountaintop in Tennessee to give the car a break. I looked out the windshield, then blinked and got out of the car so that I could see it more clearly. There in front of me was a backbone of the Appalachians, spread out to the north like a giant's rumpled blue blanket. Staggering.

Or when my high school division teacher (on whom I had a massive crush for years) applauded me when it was announced over the PA that I had arranged and hosted an honors assembly. Performing with the Blues Brothers band I had formed with friends from the high school symphonic band. Dancing back from the theater with a group of college buddies after seeing "Footloose." The times when Mom would drive to this little store just over the Illinois/Indiana border for cigarettes and pop, and I'd sit in the car, comfortable in the dark around me while the occasional car passed by on the little side road. Or driving through industrial Northwest Indiana at night and seeing the steel mills and refineries lit up like futuristic palaces, all shiny silver beams and white lights. A lot of moments came while driving, probably because I enjoy it so much -- driving through the desert north of Las Vegas on the Great Fletcher CaliQuest of 1995, heading down to Bloomington to see my best friend Patrick in a play, or crossing cold, frosty Ontario farmlands on my way to meet Lyndon in Montreal. I still remember everything about that night -- the spearmint odor of the car's air freshener, the moonlight shining on the fields as I listened to "Sleeping Satellite" on the radio, wondering what was going to happen when I finally got to Quebec, looking forward to my first kiss with Lyndon.

And you know what? I feel better. I really do. Maybe that was all the vacation I needed.

I've had so many good things happen to me, so many moments of beauty and joy. Maybe someday I'll be able to describe them better, because I do want to share them with folks. But the thing is, no matter how deep the shit may get in the coming months, I do know that there are even more moments of joy ahead of me. I just have to be patient.

In the meantime, I have my memories. And that ain't a bad place to be.

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