I have so much to say.
Yet this is the post that will never be written; an empty placeholder in my writing and in my life.
This may well be the requiem that ends the beginning and begins the end.
.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Denying Zung
I have been asked by a friend to anonymously post something he'd written recently.
I suspect he has both a need to bring light to this deeply personal subject as well as test the waters for public consumption of his thoughts.
Here he is.
I took the pill out of the bottle. It was so easy, yet almost surreal. It was if my life depended on this pill. Everyday? I don't have any immune deficiency, I'm not cancerous, no strange virus or bacteria. Yet my life, at least the way I know it, could change. It was small. No, tiny. This is it? I can't split this in half. I took the large knife off my wall-mounted magnet that I'm so proud of, got out the cutting board and pulled off a feat akin to splitting the atom. I kept one eye shut, expecting one half to go zinging across the counter, ricochet and hit me in the eye. It didn't.
The last few months I've been feeling more and more run down, tired, weak. I figured with a relationship going in the tank and work going a million miles an hour it was all stress just bearing down on me. New apartment, finally some space! I tried to sleep more, but it was never enough. Appetite was waning. I'll take some vitamins, that will help. Work some more, nose to the grindstone... it's a war, don't you know. Ahh! Leave for Christmas! It wasn't enough. For the first time in almost ten years I wasn't clawing and scratching my way out of the house to get back to work, despite being more happy with my job than ever before. I was drained.
And so the last couple weeks I've been even more drained. Well, there IS a bug going around, maybe I have the flu. Thank goodness I had a flu shot, otherwise think of how much worse it could have been! You've been tired, too? Good, it's not just me. But it was me. Everyone kept getting better. I went home early one or two days last week just to sleep. Yesterday I gave in and went to see the doc.
I learned it could be anything wrong with me. I could have HIV, cancer, anemia, a virus, bacteria, it could even be mental. So he scheduled me for a long list of labwork to be done immediately, and gave me a questionnaire for evaluating depression.
At the lab I had twelve vials of blood drawn and gave a urine sample. I went back to work and stared at the questionnaire. "Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale". I think I knew the score before I answered the questions.
A little of the time, some of the time, good part of the time, or most of the time?
That night I went out with a friend of mine to Baltimore, and we talked about quite a bit. Girlfriends, traveling, the Navy, blogging, parenthood. Not once did I bring up the Zung test. It wasn't real.
I dismiss your reality and substitute my own.
This morning I took my paperwork in to see the doc. I wanted desperately for him to tell me he saw SOMETHING in my blood work. It was all relatively normal, save for my cholesterol levels being a touch too high. Then I handed him my Zung questionnaire. I knew the score, it was written plain as day on the attached scale sheet.
Moderate to marked depression. There was no escape, it's in the open now. That which tortures me now has a name and face.
Yet my salvation also has a name: Zoloft.
It all came with a bit of relief and anxiety all wrapped together. Immediately I think of everyone that is close to me. I've been hurting them left and right. Foolish decisions were made out of loneliness and fear, decisions I would not have made had I been well. Will I be able to repair anything? Will they believe me? Is it fair just to blame it on this mysterious illness, or should I just shoulder the responsibility of my actions and deal with the repercussion? I don't know, yet. I just wish I had to do it over again.
The past few months have been so dark. There is no other way to describe it. I was in denial. No matter how much I phoned, chatted and emailed friends and family it didn't help the loneliness. I sought relief in a number of ways, mostly unhealthy and always failing. Sometimes I would feel urges to cry, yet I didn't understand why. I wanted to be alone yet didn't. Rash decisions were made with others' feelings. Again I wonder if I'll be afforded the opportunity to mend things with everyone. As I reflect I realize probably not everyone. There are certain things in life for which we only have one, sometimes two shots. I may have spent both barrels.
One possible jewel of enlightenment came by way of a 220 pound Army Master Sergeant this afternoon. "There are three ways to handle these problems. The first is through medicine, which you are doing. The second is through talking to a professional. The third, is a spiritual outlet." I adjusted myself in the chair. I stopped talking to God a few years ago when I realized I was just going through the motions because everyone in my family was a Christian. I did not have faith. "Now, I know you're not religious, but we all tend to shoulder more responsibility than what we can handle. Our jobs, children, house, wife, everything adds up. It's very relieving to be able to admit to a higher power that we can't do it all, and have it shoulder that burden for us."
For once a spiritual argument made sense. I was immediately reminded of Gagdad Bob's blog "One Cosmos" when he refers to the spiritually horizontal and spiritually vertical. Perhaps I need to be more vertical. Who knows. I'll have to explore this, I tell myself.
And so I come home tonight and immediately pull the bottle out of the bag. I turn the cap and rip off the foil seal. Before me I see little pills. They don't seem like much, but cumulatively they are the portkey to a happier me. That's the promise.
I suspect he has both a need to bring light to this deeply personal subject as well as test the waters for public consumption of his thoughts.
Here he is.
I took the pill out of the bottle. It was so easy, yet almost surreal. It was if my life depended on this pill. Everyday? I don't have any immune deficiency, I'm not cancerous, no strange virus or bacteria. Yet my life, at least the way I know it, could change. It was small. No, tiny. This is it? I can't split this in half. I took the large knife off my wall-mounted magnet that I'm so proud of, got out the cutting board and pulled off a feat akin to splitting the atom. I kept one eye shut, expecting one half to go zinging across the counter, ricochet and hit me in the eye. It didn't.
The last few months I've been feeling more and more run down, tired, weak. I figured with a relationship going in the tank and work going a million miles an hour it was all stress just bearing down on me. New apartment, finally some space! I tried to sleep more, but it was never enough. Appetite was waning. I'll take some vitamins, that will help. Work some more, nose to the grindstone... it's a war, don't you know. Ahh! Leave for Christmas! It wasn't enough. For the first time in almost ten years I wasn't clawing and scratching my way out of the house to get back to work, despite being more happy with my job than ever before. I was drained.
And so the last couple weeks I've been even more drained. Well, there IS a bug going around, maybe I have the flu. Thank goodness I had a flu shot, otherwise think of how much worse it could have been! You've been tired, too? Good, it's not just me. But it was me. Everyone kept getting better. I went home early one or two days last week just to sleep. Yesterday I gave in and went to see the doc.
I learned it could be anything wrong with me. I could have HIV, cancer, anemia, a virus, bacteria, it could even be mental. So he scheduled me for a long list of labwork to be done immediately, and gave me a questionnaire for evaluating depression.
At the lab I had twelve vials of blood drawn and gave a urine sample. I went back to work and stared at the questionnaire. "Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale". I think I knew the score before I answered the questions.
A little of the time, some of the time, good part of the time, or most of the time?
That night I went out with a friend of mine to Baltimore, and we talked about quite a bit. Girlfriends, traveling, the Navy, blogging, parenthood. Not once did I bring up the Zung test. It wasn't real.
I dismiss your reality and substitute my own.
This morning I took my paperwork in to see the doc. I wanted desperately for him to tell me he saw SOMETHING in my blood work. It was all relatively normal, save for my cholesterol levels being a touch too high. Then I handed him my Zung questionnaire. I knew the score, it was written plain as day on the attached scale sheet.
Moderate to marked depression. There was no escape, it's in the open now. That which tortures me now has a name and face.
Yet my salvation also has a name: Zoloft.
It all came with a bit of relief and anxiety all wrapped together. Immediately I think of everyone that is close to me. I've been hurting them left and right. Foolish decisions were made out of loneliness and fear, decisions I would not have made had I been well. Will I be able to repair anything? Will they believe me? Is it fair just to blame it on this mysterious illness, or should I just shoulder the responsibility of my actions and deal with the repercussion? I don't know, yet. I just wish I had to do it over again.
The past few months have been so dark. There is no other way to describe it. I was in denial. No matter how much I phoned, chatted and emailed friends and family it didn't help the loneliness. I sought relief in a number of ways, mostly unhealthy and always failing. Sometimes I would feel urges to cry, yet I didn't understand why. I wanted to be alone yet didn't. Rash decisions were made with others' feelings. Again I wonder if I'll be afforded the opportunity to mend things with everyone. As I reflect I realize probably not everyone. There are certain things in life for which we only have one, sometimes two shots. I may have spent both barrels.
One possible jewel of enlightenment came by way of a 220 pound Army Master Sergeant this afternoon. "There are three ways to handle these problems. The first is through medicine, which you are doing. The second is through talking to a professional. The third, is a spiritual outlet." I adjusted myself in the chair. I stopped talking to God a few years ago when I realized I was just going through the motions because everyone in my family was a Christian. I did not have faith. "Now, I know you're not religious, but we all tend to shoulder more responsibility than what we can handle. Our jobs, children, house, wife, everything adds up. It's very relieving to be able to admit to a higher power that we can't do it all, and have it shoulder that burden for us."
For once a spiritual argument made sense. I was immediately reminded of Gagdad Bob's blog "One Cosmos" when he refers to the spiritually horizontal and spiritually vertical. Perhaps I need to be more vertical. Who knows. I'll have to explore this, I tell myself.
And so I come home tonight and immediately pull the bottle out of the bag. I turn the cap and rip off the foil seal. Before me I see little pills. They don't seem like much, but cumulatively they are the portkey to a happier me. That's the promise.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
what I've done, and what I've learned
In the intervening days since last I posted:
~ I visited my mom and brother in California and enjoyed a warm Christmas with family for the first time in years. My father was missed.*
~ I was able to spend time with my other favorite girls: Magdalena the Magic Bullet and Lily the Smiling Idiot.**
~ A girl didn't break my heart, but she certainly bruised it.
~ I spent NYE with one of my best friends, the one I hadn't seen in over four years, in Bear Valley. We mountaineered with snowshoes and and climbed the rim of the valley, taking in amazing vistas from over 8,000 feet. (I know, hardly the Himalayas, but it beats Maryland, no?) I loved spending time with him and his wife but I did get to feeling like a third wheel. I was, on that auspicious night, quite lonely, but I survived.
~ Madison and I shared a close and loving weekend together; picking up where we left off as though no time had passed at all... a characteristic to our relationship I am increasingly amazed by and thankful for.
~ I attended a special survival course in Washington state.
~ A very cute and very timely Air Force girl renewed my self-esteem.
~ I accomplished a three-part Christmas present to myself: new ink (Persian two-headed horse at the base of my half-sleeve); new gun (Sig Sauer P229 .40); new car (MB E320 AWD).
~ I finished, for perhaps the sixth time, Far Pavilions, by M.M. Kaye, one of the best novels ever written.
~ I began attending Georgetown University for a special post-grad course.
~ I've learned that I still live life at one hundred miles an hour and I'm okay with it.
*Father: while on a plane at some point going somewhere from somewhere else, I read the latest issue of Esquire. In its "What You've Learned" special, I found the following quote:
I have learned you will never know your father as well as you do after talking with your mother after his passing. -- Jeff Isbister, 51, Holualoa, Hawaii**Maggie/Lily: my dogs.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
making up for lost time, before its even lost
Somewhere between Baltimore and Chicago today, I realized something about myself:
I tend to live life at one hundred miles per hour.
I've spent so much time gone, that I feel a deep, pervasive need to accomplish things in my life that are important to me but otherwise notionally impossible to attain while my life is on hold.
My life here is contrary to the idealized image of a soldier returning from deployment. There is no deep sigh upon my arrival and plaintive search for somewhere dark and quiet so that I can re-adjust. Similarly, there's no bender nights of drinking. There's no "come on, I've just got back! I want to watch what I want to watch. Can't you leave me alone for a while?" This picture is not atypical... I've seen it among friends and fellow servicemen countless times.
But not me.
While gone, and aside from those things that I really do want in my own right -- like a meal that doesn't suck and a cold beer -- I think -- and I've just realized this -- that I subconsciously shoulder a heavy burden of guilt. A primary but not exclusive reason for this guilt is my daughter.
Among the others? Well... my life centers on love. The image of it. The possibility of it. The ideal of it. The promise of it. The reality of it. I have so much of it myself and I want to share it. And I want to feel it in return.
Consequently, when presented with the opportunity, I run at it at a hundred miles an hour. And it is frightening. Scary. Terrifying to the object. "Intense," as someone told me recently... "Justin, there's no other way to put it; you're intense. You have so much passion."
It is different with Madison... I breathe, a little. Because I know she'll always be there. And I'll always be there. But when I see promise in another, I frantically cling to it, squeezing and squeezing.
I think it is because I'm afraid it'll leave. Because it has. That if I don't provide so much attention and adoration in that short time I am here, I won't be able to make up for the time when I am not. And I am afraid to death of not having built sufficient margin in a relationship to otherwise compensate for my frequent, maddening absences.
So. I've learned something about myself today. I just don't know how to fix it.
I tend to live life at one hundred miles per hour.
I've spent so much time gone, that I feel a deep, pervasive need to accomplish things in my life that are important to me but otherwise notionally impossible to attain while my life is on hold.
My life here is contrary to the idealized image of a soldier returning from deployment. There is no deep sigh upon my arrival and plaintive search for somewhere dark and quiet so that I can re-adjust. Similarly, there's no bender nights of drinking. There's no "come on, I've just got back! I want to watch what I want to watch. Can't you leave me alone for a while?" This picture is not atypical... I've seen it among friends and fellow servicemen countless times.
But not me.
While gone, and aside from those things that I really do want in my own right -- like a meal that doesn't suck and a cold beer -- I think -- and I've just realized this -- that I subconsciously shoulder a heavy burden of guilt. A primary but not exclusive reason for this guilt is my daughter.
Among the others? Well... my life centers on love. The image of it. The possibility of it. The ideal of it. The promise of it. The reality of it. I have so much of it myself and I want to share it. And I want to feel it in return.
Consequently, when presented with the opportunity, I run at it at a hundred miles an hour. And it is frightening. Scary. Terrifying to the object. "Intense," as someone told me recently... "Justin, there's no other way to put it; you're intense. You have so much passion."
It is different with Madison... I breathe, a little. Because I know she'll always be there. And I'll always be there. But when I see promise in another, I frantically cling to it, squeezing and squeezing.
I think it is because I'm afraid it'll leave. Because it has. That if I don't provide so much attention and adoration in that short time I am here, I won't be able to make up for the time when I am not. And I am afraid to death of not having built sufficient margin in a relationship to otherwise compensate for my frequent, maddening absences.
So. I've learned something about myself today. I just don't know how to fix it.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
through me, my father yet lives
Today I had my daughter for the first time in many months. Because of my extraordinarily high deployment rate.
I've missed her terribly. Having had her this weekend just pains me... my heart aches to have her with me always.
Alas.
In a recent conversation with my mom, I unexpectedly learned something about my father. He had only seen her once -- just for a short week -- before he passed on. Mom told me -- in one of those memories recalled as much to preserve his station in our life as to illustrate a point -- that when he'd met her, he was scared. Frightened.
At first, I could scarcely believe her. My father -- the stoic and brave -- ... scared? But I remembered. I remembered, actually, being a little irritated at what seemed my parents' reluctance... the lack of an offer to take her, alone, themselves, while I bid my time in my old stomping grounds. A chance for them to bond with her. A chance for me to taste just a bit of carefree freedom.
It was forgotten.
But Mom, telling me that Dad was scared, reminded me. Evidently, he confided in her that he'd never been so intimidated in his life. This from a man that spent his entire adult life on the edge of danger protecting other people. As a Sailor. As a cop. As a correctional officer. A three year old? Scared him?
He told Mom that he was abjectly afraid of disappointing her. My Madison. Of doing or saying or not doing or not saying something that would upset her. Because she was so precious. So precocious. So loving. So goddamned smart.
It's funny, that. My dad, the Dad. Afraid of a little girl.
When my mom told me this, a part of the inside-me broke a little. Because... in time... I'm sure Dad would have grown stronger. And would have grown more comfortable with her. And would have shared the myriad... the unimaginable and unquantifiable love and wisdom... and... he would have been wrapped around her little finger, I'm sure.
Dad's gone now, of course. He'll never get the chance. Neither will she.
It's up to me, then, to fill his void.
Earlier tonight, she spoke with my Mom: "Grandma." She later told me that she hardly remembers what Grandma looks like.
Another part of me broke a little when I realized that at least Mom's around to answer the phone.
Dad? I can only hope he answers prayers.
I've missed her terribly. Having had her this weekend just pains me... my heart aches to have her with me always.
Alas.
In a recent conversation with my mom, I unexpectedly learned something about my father. He had only seen her once -- just for a short week -- before he passed on. Mom told me -- in one of those memories recalled as much to preserve his station in our life as to illustrate a point -- that when he'd met her, he was scared. Frightened.
At first, I could scarcely believe her. My father -- the stoic and brave -- ... scared? But I remembered. I remembered, actually, being a little irritated at what seemed my parents' reluctance... the lack of an offer to take her, alone, themselves, while I bid my time in my old stomping grounds. A chance for them to bond with her. A chance for me to taste just a bit of carefree freedom.
It was forgotten.
But Mom, telling me that Dad was scared, reminded me. Evidently, he confided in her that he'd never been so intimidated in his life. This from a man that spent his entire adult life on the edge of danger protecting other people. As a Sailor. As a cop. As a correctional officer. A three year old? Scared him?
He told Mom that he was abjectly afraid of disappointing her. My Madison. Of doing or saying or not doing or not saying something that would upset her. Because she was so precious. So precocious. So loving. So goddamned smart.
It's funny, that. My dad, the Dad. Afraid of a little girl.
When my mom told me this, a part of the inside-me broke a little. Because... in time... I'm sure Dad would have grown stronger. And would have grown more comfortable with her. And would have shared the myriad... the unimaginable and unquantifiable love and wisdom... and... he would have been wrapped around her little finger, I'm sure.
Dad's gone now, of course. He'll never get the chance. Neither will she.
It's up to me, then, to fill his void.
Earlier tonight, she spoke with my Mom: "Grandma." She later told me that she hardly remembers what Grandma looks like.
Another part of me broke a little when I realized that at least Mom's around to answer the phone.
Dad? I can only hope he answers prayers.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Home Again
Home for the Holidays... I've made my sweet escape.
Double entendres for everyone!
I am happy.
Double entendres for everyone!
I am happy.
 |  |
| There | Here |
Friday, November 30, 2007
n.ever a.gain v.olunteer y.ourself
While my brothers-in-blog were contemplating the loss of their pimp-a-rific mustaches, I was contemplating the continued forfeiture of my freedom.
I re-enlisted today for an additional three years, bringing me to 17 total years of service. The ceremony was performed while I was piloting our plane over the Horn of Africa.
GO NAVY, BEAT ASS-CANCER*.
*Ass-Cancer = Army.
p.s. And to a certain very special Project Manager / Office bitch: I'll be home before we know it. I tore a ring today, by the way.
I re-enlisted today for an additional three years, bringing me to 17 total years of service. The ceremony was performed while I was piloting our plane over the Horn of Africa.
GO NAVY, BEAT ASS-CANCER*.
*Ass-Cancer = Army.p.s. And to a certain very special Project Manager / Office bitch: I'll be home before we know it. I tore a ring today, by the way.
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