Run away,,,,

Depression and anxiety disorders affect almost 25% of the over 18 American population each year. You may not know it, but several people you know well are suffering from some version of depression or anxiety at any given time. Guaranteed.

Some people are anxious or depressed for an obvious reason. Divorce, death of a loved one, a child on the path to ruin, financial pressures - all are common causes of the situation anxiety and depression that almost everyone has experienced at some point or another in their adult lives, if they have lived more than a few years in the real world. That is called situational anxiety or depression, and when the source of the problem either disappears or you learn to cope with it, the depression and anxiety improve as well.

For some of us out here, however, severe chronic depression is am ongoing battle, a lifelong condition, that can sneak up on us and lay us low without warning, for no reason or any reason. We may not even see it coming. Life, in all it's forms, just overwhelms us, and suddenly, we are ready to give up and run away from ourselves for a little while.

I have been informed, on a variety of occasions, that depression is something to hide, like a criminal past, or wrongdoing. Apparently, in the view of some, the mental illness that is depression, is something to be ashamed of, like a moral failure to be insufficiently tough or something. This is, I think, not peculiar to Americans, but more profound to us. There is a hard core in most Americans of severe moral rigidity, and any crack in the facade is seen as failure of virtue, rather than mental mushiness.

I would postulate that without depression in the population, we would be without much of the greatest art, music, and literature of history. Creative geniuses are notorious for their emotional fragility, and their most creative periods frequently coincide with their deepest and darkest life phases.

Severe chronic depression is a battle I have fought for virtually my entire life. It is a deep, dark pit in my life journey that I often stumble into, sometimes without even seeing it lying in wait for me. It is often, for me, not the large incidents that will shove me in the back and suddenly, I am without my footing. Often, if not usually, in fact, it is an accumulation of many small things, all adding up to a Chinese water torture of sorts, the drip, drip, drip finally sending my emotional stability on a quickie vacation to another dimension, while the physical me remains grounded in my own life.

Depression is, like many mental-based conditions, unpredictable, but one thing I do know. You are never really clear of it. It waxes and wanes, and it can certainly get better, but the reality is that you will never be fully free of it. Like an alcoholic or a gambler, my particular vice is always lying in wait for me, biding its time until that final straw turns my own mind on myself.

But there is a hopefulness for me, too, because I have beaten it back many times. Each time I am able to fight it down, it gives me more ammunition for the next round, because I know it is possible to be in a better place, and if I don't give in, it will get better sooner rather than later.

There are a lot of tricks which I have learned over time to help jar myself out of the negative cycle of depression, and sooner or later, it is usually effective. When I start to go around the corner, heading into dangerous territory, I have people who warn me, and remind me that there are a lot more good things than bad in my life and the world at large. I can go out and do yard work, I can play with my dogs, I can bake a cake, I can do positive things that put sights and sounds and smells and feelings in my path to help me overcome the negative emotions that depression induces.

The single most important thing for me, however, has always been my sense of humor. It is ever present, and whether it is in a gentle phase, or sarcastic mode, it allows me to make fun of myself, to see life with humor, and to minimize, or perhaps put things in their rightful place. If laughter is the best medicine for most people, humor is the catalyst for me to climb out of the pit of despair and into the light.

In the last few days, I've had one thing after another - drip, drip, drip. In life, some people are fortunate souls. Things, by and large, just seem to go their way. They are people for whom, generally, it was a close call, but everything worked out all right.

I am not one of those people. On the contrary, if it can go wrong, it generally will, often in more than one way. For example, this weekend, I decided to attack a small case of rot on a window in my family room. I expected it to be a bit of a job, of course, it was a fairly widespread area, but I assumed that ultimately, with some filler and a little elbow grease, I would be in good shape.

Well, right off, I jabbed my screwdriver in there to see how deep the rot went, only to have it go all the way through. Even better, it broke the glass in the window as well. Then I started to glance at other windows, and realized that I have a severe situation on my hands, rot on several windows, an overwhelming job that I simply cannot deal with, given the limited amount of time available to me.

Needless to say, on top of a number of other things which also went wrong at exactly the same time, I went into melt-down mode. My long suffering mother had to listen to me whine and complain and throw a pity party for myself for hours on end, until, eventually, I was able to have a sense of humor again. I realized, talking to her, more than ever before, the sign that my foundering ship has righted, is signaled by the reemergence of my sense of humor - a joke at my own expense is a sign that I have stopped taking on water, and I am once again bailing as fast as I can.

My lovely daughter is as subject to the vagaries of my depression as I am, since she lives with me, but her role in helping me overcome it is more direct and to the point. As I was bemoaning the fact that I have to cope with all this maintenance on my own, and it would be nice to have a guy around to handle some of these practical matters, she scoffed at me. Then she pointed out that while I would appreciate some things about having a guy around full time perhaps three times a year, the other 362 days I am perfectly satisfied as things are. In fact, she went on, the husband I did have was useless in dealing with home maintenance anyway, so there is really no point in taking myself down that road.

In the end, of course, I am paying someone to swoop in and fix what I cannot handle on my own, life as we know it has not stopped, and we have moved on to the next problem this morning. It's an endless drip, but the good news is, you won't drown from a drip unless you decide to stick your own head in a pail.

I would encourage you to look around yourself and see who you know that has been feeling down for longer than they should be. It may be that they are depressed, and need a listening ear, or a kick in the psyche, from someone who doesn't see them as fatally flawed, but as creatively challenged. And remember, under that lost interior, there may be a a genius looking for a way out.

Happy Halloween!

Since it is Halloween - I actually started this Halloween morning, but then the nightmare that constitutes my real life intervened, and I simply couldn't find the energy to finish, so I'm finishing it a day late, sorry - it seems like a ghoul time to tell ghost stories. I am not much of a believer in ghosts and goblins, but there are times when the unexplained meets the unexplainable, and the result is a story worth telling. This is such a story, so I'll tell it in the midst of the spookiness that is all around us this evening.

Some years ago, when my daughter was a very small child, my mother-in-law briefly lived with us. My MIL, whom we called Ba Noi, grandmother in her native language, was a bit of an enigma, to put it mildly, because she didn't speak English, and she had some pretty interesting habits. One of her oddest habits was her fear of being alone, especially at night. She was genuinely afraid of ghosts, and she would turn on every single light in the house in her effort to keep them at bay while she was holding down the fort by her own self.

One night, the whole family was sitting at the kitchen table together having dinner. The table sat in between the kitchen and the family room, so it was sort of centrally located in the major family living area. The table overlooked the entryway, as well, where the stairs went to the upper floor. Although it was dark in the entryway, unless we intentionally had it lighted up, the light which hung over the table would throw a dim shadow in that direction, casting a faint glow in the evening.

On this particular evening, we were discussing with my MIL her long deceased husband. My ex-husband's father, who died when my ex- was only ten years old, succumbed from some form of cancer, I believe, although I was never too sure.

One thing you learned early in that family was that they never broach any topic that is actually important. He never really knew what his father did for a living - he had a "government job" of some kind - and he didn't know what his father died from, either. Ba Noi started to weep, as always when his name came up, which was a fairly incongruous thing, since my FIL's name was Song.

So it was a fairly unusual situation for them to be discussing Song at all. They were fairly intent on their conversation, with my ex- asking some questions which he had long harbored way back in his mind about his father, and his mother giving us her usual vague answers. My ex- also offered, rather unusually, some memories of his own, and for the first time, it seemed my FIL was taking shape in my mind as a real person.

While they discussed their stories, Adam listened with a vague inattention, as he usually did, there, but not really present. Erin was busy, off playing with her toys, and not listening to us at all, going in and out as she went back and forth getting her dolls and her toys and whatever else she was interested in.

My MIL, of course, told stories of Song as a ghost. Like many Catholic Asians, she was an extremely devout and religious woman, attending mass each morning, and spending hours in prayer every evening. But at the same time, she continued to observe some of the cultural traditions that seem to be imbued in everyone who spends their lifetime in Southeast Asia. In particular, she engaged in a sort of veneration of the deceased, most particularly, her long lamented spouse.

Among the many qualities she attributed to him, she felt he had posthumously accomplished various things for her during the course of the time since his passing. I listened with a rather skeptical ear, since, as I said, I have never believed in ghosts, and I certainly wasn't prepared to believe in a benevolent spirit that actually appeared on earth and helped her out. Guardian angels, okay, but definitely not dead spirits of long gone relatives.

As we sat talking, suddenly my little girl ran back into the room from the entryway and told us a man was on the stairs. We didn't exactly take her seriously, because she wasn't afraid, as she surely would have been if a man had actually broken into the house and headed for the stairs. More curiously, she didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with a man being there, either, which was certainly odd, if freakishly scary. We didn't go into panic mode, but we did go running out there to see what she had seen. But there was nothing there, so we just giggled at her little fancy, and went back to the kitchen to sit down.

There was to be no peace, however, because she insisted he was still right there on the stairs in front of her. In fact, she seemed to be quietly observing him, and she gave us a play by play of what he was doing. Which mostly seemed to be observing her back. She continued to be unafraid as she talked about him, but it was clear she believed what she was telling us, even if it couldn't possibly be true, since we could clearly see that there was no one there.

She was able to describe him in detail, right down to the clothing he was wearing, as though he were right there in front of her, tangible and real. We asked her what he was doing, and she told us he was just watching us and listening to our conversation. Then she informed us that he was going upstairs.

We thought it was an odd episode, to be sure, but didn't take it all that seriously. She was very little, only about two years old at that time, and had an invisible friend by the name of Funston, so another invisible person was not, in our opinion, that far out in fantasy land, at least for our imaginative little sprite.

We went back to our conversation, more or less benevolently ignoring her. She continued to play in the entryway, glancing up the stairway every now and again, obviously waiting for the mysterious stranger to return. We thought it was going to be a long wait, until she told us he was coming back down the stairs a few minutes later. Again, she was talking about him as though he were real, alive, present in the flesh. It was spooky, but in an unexplainable, non-frightening way.

Then we asked her to describe him. The description she gave was an exact depiction of her grandfather, a man who died years before she was born, and whose picture she had never seen. He looked nothing like her own father, either, so she couldn't have been listening to our conversation and just imagining. I will honestly say, at that point, it couldn't help but to get our attention, since she was describing someone to whom she had a connection, and she didn't even know it.

We were pretty incredulous, and asked her to continue telling us what he did and where he went, and he entered the room where we were all sitting, although he didn't come near to anyone. He made no attempt to touch anyone, or to come close to any of us. He didn't appear happy or sad, just serious and watchfully observant.

My MIL insisted, of course, that it was her husband, and that he was there for a reason - that he wanted to tell us something. My ex- wasn't as thrilled about it as you might imagine - I think he had a guilty conscience, and didn't want to consider the possibility that his father knew what he was up to in his life.

Ba Noi used that opportunity to remind my ex- about another occasion, during the war that had been a part of my ex-husband's formative years, when the government changed hands, and their family was at risk. There were papers long forgotten, and she felt quite strongly that Song had come back to them and reminded them in time to destroy them, so that they weren't found with anything incriminating. So she was quite certain that Erin's ghost was Song, and that he was there for a reason.

After a few minutes, Erin told us that he left the kitchen, and then went out the front door. He never returned, at least not as far I know, because Erin never talked about him again. She never saw another invisible ghost, and she never talked about anyone else that was long gone.

We will never know what was in the eyes of the child that night, but on Halloween, the eve of All Saints Day in the Christian tradition, I can't help but wonder if my daughter had a visit from the other world, and if, for some reason, Song came to her that night for a reason. If he did, I don't know what it was, and I guess I never will. But it remains in the family lore as our one and only visit with a ghost. It seems we are fortunate - our ghost is benevolent. I hope, if he ever returns, that he will still be so kind.

Happy All Saints Day! And All Hallows Eve.

Procrastinators Unite.... As soon as you get around to it, that is.....

I feel vindicated this morning. I read in the news that a Swedish study has now proven what I have always suspected to be true - the early bird may get the worm, but they die younger, so they don't get to enjoy it, anyway. So what's the point?

I have never been an early bird, unless you count staying up all night and seeing the sun rise. I don't keep those kinds of hours any more, of course. You hit 40 and that's all over. But in college, I was quite the little night owl. I am not sure it was so much that I enjoyed staying up late as it was that I didn't get around to going to bed.... But that's neither here nor there, really.

It does, however, bring me around to procrastinator's clubs. I like the idea. I should be a charter member. In fact, I would be a charter member, if only I had ever started that club I have been meaning to start for quite a few years now. Or at least joined a club, which I've also been meaning to do, but I never seem to get around to it.

One little hurdle standing in my way, other than the obvious, of course, is that I've always been a little suspicious of people who organize procrastination clubs, or at least, the ones that get them off the ground. I think it's a teensy bit fishy that someone who claims to be a first class procrastinator is structured enough to put a whole club together.

I fear there may, in fact, be a Type A personality hidden behind that slacker facade. You just never know. Once given the gavel, they may use it pound mercilessly on those of us who truly are organizationally challenged.

There would be no fear of such a thing happening if I were in charge. For starters, I would probably lose the gavel right off, anyway, so that would be the end of my calling anything to order. Not that we would ever have meetings, because of course, we would all procrastinate, and probably never arrive in the first place.

I know of what I speak. I attend a monthly Bible study, and the reality is that if I am there, we know there won't be anyone else arriving, because I am generally half an hour late. At least. For me, that's early, actually.

Fortunately, we seem, as a group, to be chronologically challenged, because I am hardly the only one. Shall we say, if anyone ever got there at the appointed hour, they would be there alone? For a rather sizable time frame, in fact. You know, perhaps I should shoot for that after all. It would give me a half hour to get the lesson done.

It's not that I intend to be late, of course. That would be rude. It's just that I get on the phone, or I am working and don't get my shower taken on time, and then there is the Bible study we all know I've never completed, and suddenly, before you know it, it's time, and I haven't even picked out my shirt and pants for the day.

My brother's birthday was over a month ago. I was feeling rather smug, because I actually got his present this past summer. It remains as one with the server in my dining room, on top of the card I prepared well ahead of time, determined to be on time, for a change. I have a friend whose card I purchased some time ago - it was very funny, made me giggle. Naturally, I cannot find it now. Nor can I seem to locate the little something I was going to throw in the envelope with the card.

So it seems that even when I have excellent intentions, and I try to plan ahead, I remain behind and hopelessly outdated. It is maddening to be so inefficient.

I have passed this unfortunate lack of organizational acumen on to my offspring as well, which has been neither blessing nor boon for either one of them. My son has never owned a thing he couldn't lose instantly. He has had the same pair of gloves two years in a row, and always manages to lose them before the following Christmas. He has three sets of keys around in various places, so when he loses or forgets where he left them, he will still be able to get into his apartment.

My daughter is becoming legendary for her inability to locate her belongings. I am beginning to think a homing device may be required for her, because half the time, I can't remember where she is, either, to say nothing of her stuff. Except for the stuff that is piled on the stairs, of course, which is always right there, out in plain sight. I would complain, but at least we can find that stuff, so perhaps it's best to just let it remain, in case it's vital and we need it.

One of these days, however, I am going to pull myself together and organize a boycott of the airlines until they have transparency in pricing. I, for one, am sick and tired of having 250 seats on a plane, and 250 different prices, with surcharges and taxes and hidden fees like baggage check fees. It's time for the airlines to simply state what it costs to fly the plane, and then charge accordingly. I think the public should refuse to cower and cringe and allow this sort of abuse, and it's time for us to take a stand.

Which I will organize, just as soon as I get around to it.

Virtual vacation

In the interests of being a success at something, I am going to have to take a virtual vacation for the next 24 hours, and will not be back until Thursday. You will have to live without my words of wisdom until then. I know it's a sad thing, but it is what it is. Try to be brave.

Where was my.... Rats! I forgot what I was looking for....

This morning, I read a brief item on CNN that made me feel instantly relieved and much better about my life. Apparently, the sudden onset Alzheimer's I feared I had developed is nothing more than advancing middle age. I say, thank God, because I was really worried about myself, and had spent some time in prayer on the matter. It's nice to know that I am not the only person my age who has forgotten more than some people know in a lifetime. I had begun to wonder if too many paint fumes had so reduced my ability to think that I had lost my mind irretrievably.

There are days I am surprised I remember my own name. I have forgotten my home phone number. I have forgotten the names of people I have known for years. I have forgotten appointments and meetings and events that I was genuinely looking forward to attending. I routinely forget everything that I am told unless it's in writing, then I am continually surprised to find out I ever knew it in the first place.

My children are becoming well versed in the routine, as they put in yet another phone call to chastise me for the latest failed effort on my part. Lunch money that I was reminded of twenty times? Didn't happen, because by the time I got to the computer and got online, I forgot why I needed to get there in the first place.

It's gotten so bad, that recently, my son and I had the following exchange.

Mom: "Hello, Adam. What's up."

Adam: "Mom. I told you I needed my rent money. You haven't transferred it yet."

Mom: "Oh, that's right. I forgot. I'll do it in a few minutes."

Adam: "No, you won't. You will forget again."

Mom: "Don't be silly. I will remember this time."

Adam: "I'm sorry, Mom, but I actually need the money, so I can't play that game today. I am going to stay on the phone with you until it gets done, so I know for sure you did it."

I will admit to being a little irritated with him for his cheekiness, but of course, he was probably right. In fact, by the time I got to my computer, I had already forgotten what he wanted me to do, and he did have to remind me yet again. It doesn't help that he always calls right when I am in the middle of something, after all, when am I not in the middle of something? But the reality is, we have now devolved to my being babysat by my irritated children if I am to accomplish what they need of me. It's demoralizing.

I have, of course, devised strategies to help me cope with the sudden brain failure I've been experiencing. If I need something at the store, I put the empty carton or container in front of the door so I cannot miss it as I leave the house. It's the only chance I have that I will remember to get it while I am out.

The other day, I had a little pile of packages clipped to the door with my magnet, and grabbed them on the way out. I shoved them into my back pocket, and when I got to the store, pulled them out to serve as my list. It's an odd method, but I find it works better than a list, which I generally forget to bring with me or lose track of before I reach the store. It does, however, result in some odd looks from the people who work there, all generally under the age of 20.

I am almost afraid to go to church any more, because every Sunday, it is almost a guarantee that I will see someone I know and whose name is escaping me. This leads to the very embarrassing situation of them knowing my name, and my not knowing theirs. Of course, I can remember every single thing about them except their name. But it turns out, they may be having the very same internal struggle themselves, which is reassuring in some bizarre way, since then we are all in the soup together.

Like so many people, I recently found myself calling the dog by a name usually assigned to one of my children. I was irritated the dog didn't respond, until I heard myself in rewind, and realized what I had done. I was relieved said child was not there to hear me, since she would have been less than thrilled to see the dog promoted like that. It was totally without malice aforethought, of course. Turns out it was apparently nothing more than the result of overwhelmed working memory. What a relief there is a logical explanation, and I am not just a ditz.

I am currently studying for a licensing exam that I must take and pass as soon as possible. I read, and reread, and read it again, and I simply do not seem to take in the information as I would wish to. It is driving me mad, because I wanted to take this exam weeks ago, and I can't seem to retain the information, no matter how hard I try.

To make matters worse, I know I can forget most of it as soon as I have passed the exam, so there is little incentive to commit all these useless facts to my long term memory, thereby cluttering up what little space is apparently still available. I only need to have it in my recall just long enough to get the truly mediocre passing score I must achieve in order to get the license I need. It is pathetic to see, as I sit and nearly weep over the frustration of it all.

I have always considered myself fairly smart, except for math, at which I am less than adequate [read hopeless.] But I am no longer feeling that way about myself. I have felt like an academically challenged second grader; I can read it, but comprehension is simply not there. Retention is a long forgotten dream. It is, quite simply, a futile effort, and I am apparently never going to get it.

This article, outlining the difficulties that other people in their 40's are experiencing, made me feel a lot better. In fact, it seems the author is even more troubled than I am, and is forgetting more than me. It left me feeling relieved, if not morally superior, since I am afraid I am heading in her direction sooner rather than later.

I have decided that these name tags every company employee seems to be wearing on a lanyard these days is simply the way that management has devised to remember who it is they are laying off to pay for the golden parachute of the latest failed executive. Perhaps instead we should all have them, cleverly displayed with name facing outward at all times, to aid those of us over 40 in our helpless pursuit of short term memory. I think it's an idea whose time has come, since the Boomer generation is rapidly approaching senior status, and it can only get worse.

If you find yourself in the grocery store, and you run down the nearest aisle to avoid meeting me because you can't remember my name, although you can recall with perfect clarity what car I drove when my son was in elementary school, put your fears aside. I don't remember your name either. But I can tell you, I really admired your dress at fifth grade graduation ten years ago, if that makes you feel any better.

I have to go now, because I know there was something I needed to do this morning. Or somewhere I was supposed to be. Or some way I was supposed to be spending my time, but it wasn't writing this blog post. I am pretty sure of that. Now, what was it? In the immortal words of my favorite magnet, I've gone to find myself. If I get back before I've found me, please keep me here.