I spent my train ride into work this morning reading a collection of poems - Nine Horses by Billy Collins. I’ve already mentioned the fact that he is the author of my favorite poem… “Marginalia”… and I just keep finding gems in his writing.

The poem that made me smile this morning is called, “Litany” which is contained in the aforementioned collection, “Nine Horses.”

Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
-Jacques CrickillonYou are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

There are others, but I don’t want to re-type his entire book. That would be wrong.

After work, I stopped at McDonald’s because I was craving Chicken McNuggets like a madwoman. Since dinner’s been Frosted Mini Wheats all week, I figured it was OK to indulge in some crap. I went to the drive-through and there was a family in front of me ordering some Happy Meals for their kids. The employee working the drive-through asked the father ordering the meals whether they were for boys or girls. He said, “two girls.”

Of course, having taken some gender studies courses in college, the societal implications of that question started filtering through my mind, but they were far enough out of reach that I didn’t start railing against society and the fact that there are still gender-appropriate toys for respective Happy Meals.

Instead, I wondered, “Should I order a Happy Meal and then when they ask me if it’s for a girl or a boy, should I say, ‘both’?” They’d be thinking I wanted two Happy Meals and I’d say, “No. Just one. My child is both a boy and a girl.”

I’d insist upon a hermaphrodite Happy Meal and see how they dealt with that sitation.

But I didn’t. I got my McNuggets and a unsweetened iced tea and drove off into the sunset. Or, rather, away from it since I was heading east and the sun sets in the west.

Another little story: I have a cool ring that I wear sometimes that’s very sparkly and looks sort of like some antique engagement ring. It cost me a total of $15, and is just silver and cubic zirconium. Here’s what it looks like:

A co-worker came by my desk and stopped in the middle of talking to say, “Wait - is there something I should know? Have you gotten engaged?”

I spat out a (truly amused) laugh and then pointed out that it was on my right hand and then that I’d need to have a significant other to get engaged. Then I mentioned that, for now, it was a prototype of the “nobody loves me like me” ring. When I mentioned it again, I slipped and said, “nobody loves me but me.” Oops. Freudian?

Then I was thinking about how long it will take before the “nobody loves me like me” actually turns into “nobody loves me but me” ring and then into “nobody loves me” ring I plan on getting for myself at some point. Bad thought progression. And then to chase that thought out my head, I made up a stupid little rhyme (in my head):

A ring, a ring, a silly thing you place upon your hand.
You wear it there and everywhere—they know you got your man.

It’s kind of catchy, actually.

Someone’s making fish. The smell of frying fish just floated up here. I’d light a scented candle, but then it’s just going to smell like frying trout AND Henri Bendel Fig candle. If I burn some incense, it might mask it more effectively.

Also - I’ve posted up some photos on a new gallery feature. I’ll be throwing a link onto the homepage this weekend.

Latezzz.

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It’s called stress.

Between work (juggling three positions for this past week and the next two) and medical stuff and my usual worries, there is ample reason for me to be stressing.

How do I know that I am stressing? I wake up feeling nauseated and tired, even after 10 hours of sleep (like last night.) I have no appetite and no desire to do anything. I am SUPER-irritable and suffering from logorrhea, which is especially sucky at work.

The past five nights, dinner has been a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats with 1% milk (all that we drink here at home - which is fine since I’m not a fan of milk) and breakfast has been… well, tea and picking at a muffin top from the cafe next door to work. I don’t have the urge or desire to eat anything else. Lunch has been a bit better, but even then it’s not like I’m devouring a ton of food. I just get to the point where I feel faint and physically need to eat, though I have no appetite. Yesterday and the day before, though, I just had a 12 oz. cup of soup each day. Today I had a little more than that. Thankfully.

Some of my stress was decreased by calling my insurance company and finding out what the hell was up with the claim from my first orthopedist. Turns out that his office not only filed the claim well after the accepted timeframe (February office visit - claim filed in September???) but that they used the wrong tax ID code for their office, making them come up as an out-of-network provider.

I got the correct info from my insurance company and tried calling the doctor to straighten it out. I tried calling for two hours straight; busy signal or no answer. I kept calling. Then it started going to the answering service. So - I wrote a letter and sent it via registered mail. Boom. Done. I instructed them to refile the claim using the proper tax ID # and informed them that they’d have to provide a letter of explanation to the insurance company outlining WHY the claim was so delinquent. And I tacked on that any further communication regarding this claim should be conducted with my insurance company, and thanked them for their prompt attention and for resolving this matter.

I’ll have to check the signature tracking at work tomorrow to make sure bitches got it.

I also made an appointment with a regular old primary care physician-type doctor, since I haven’t had a regular old checkup in… um… five years? I’ve seen specialists and mental health professionals, and I guess my gynecologist sort of qualifies, but she’s not one for the chatting and I need to chat. Because perhaps a lot of the things I’ve been experiencing lately are caused by one thing.

Perhaps this thing is hypothyroidism. My mother was recently diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and I was tested for hypothyroidism six years ago and the results were negative. Things can change, though. Check it - symptoms of hypothyroidism:

Fatigue - yup
Weakness - yup
Weight gain or increased difficulty losing weight - YUP
Coarse, dry hair - nah
Dry, rough pale skin - dry and pale, not rough
Hair loss - yup
Cold intolerance (can’t tolerate the cold like those around you)- yup
Muscle cramps and frequent muscle aches - yup
Constipation - nope
Depression - YUP
Irritability - yup
Memory loss - yup
Abnormal menstrual cycles - N/A since I regulate that medically
Decreased libido - N/A since I ain’t got no man

The doctor might send me off to an endocrinologist, but seeing a PCP is a good first step, I gather. I’d rather do this than just pick an endocrinologist off of my insurance website and start from there. A diagnosis would be a good start - self-diagnosis can only take a person so far. The appointment is next Friday. Three weeks later (Oct. 27), I have my wrist surgery. Chances are that I will be a less active web person during the recovery.

In the land of “things I’m looking forward to” - there is tomorrow, which is Friday and an indication that I made it through one week already. There is Saturday when I will be seeing “The Science of Sleep” with Kofi and Theresa. I am quite excited about that. I’m getting a sort of darker “Amelie” vibe about it (that’s probably the Michel Gondry effect)… and then there’s the stunning fact of Gael García Bernal. Adorable. My age, so I don’t have to feel weird. And pretty damn sharp.

I saw an interview with him when “The Motorcycle Diaries” was first released (I don’t remember if it was Charlie Rose or what) and he was extremely well-spoken - more so than most of his acting kin for whom English was a FIRST language - and politically informed and just… I dunno. Dreamy. And, apparently, “when he was 14 he taught literacy to indigenous peoples in Mexico, most often with the Huichol Indians.” That’s just lovely.

Anyway, I’m feeling exhausted. I’m going to finish this mug of green tea (Harney and Sons Bangkok blend - green tea with coconut, lemongrass and ginger… delightful) and collapse on my bed. I’m not even washing off my eye makeup. Splashing any water on my face at this point would wake me up too much.

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I just checked my email and had a notification from my health insurance company alerting me that there is new claim acitivity on my account. So I logged in and it looks like - FOR SOME REASON - the first orthopedist I saw back in February only filed his claim NOW and that they miscoded or otherwise f’ed up because they’re billing me $490 for the office visit and in-office X-rays, and have indicated that I didn’t pay a co-pay. That’s bullshit right there. I went to his office once and I paid my damn co-pay.

I’ll have to see if I can pull the image of the cancelled check from my banking website, but first I have to call my insurance company tomorrow and see what the hell this is and how I would dispute it or if I even need to. The doctor is still in-network (I just checked) and if I paid my co-pay, then I don’t know what the HELL this is all about. Nice way to do it though - wait f’ing almost 9 months before filing a claim… and then try to dick the patient out of $490??

If anyone questions anything, I can always refer them to my blog entry from February where I went on about how uncomfortable the doctor made me feel by walking into the room and announcing, “You have a disease.”

To add to my stress, though in a less ridiculous way, I got my pre-surgery paperwork from my current orthopedist today and it looks like I’ll have to take off the entire week after my surgery.

This is all just icing on some grotesquely large shit-souffle that I’ve been enjoying lately. Since Friday, I’ve been feeling nauseated, dizzy, and tired all the time. I know it’s stress because if it was something physical in source, I’d feel this way all day through work. As it stands, I feel this way in the morning and then again when I leave work and start unwinding for the night and thinking about non-work things.

I can’t eat. I have had Frosted Mini Wheats for dinner three nights in a row now since I can’t even stand the thought of eating real food. I’m drinking water and tea. I’m dry-heaving. THIS is the same type of stress I last felt in 1998. When I went to the doctor and after he ruled out pregnancy and other medical reasons, asked me if I was experiencing stress and I burst out crying (which gave him his, “yes.”)

I don’t even know what to do. I’m sitting here. SITTING. In a chair. And I feel like I need to lie down or curl up in a ball. I stood in the shower this morning with my face in my hands leaning into the corner of the shower wall, squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could, wishing that my world would shrink up that small right then and there. It wasn’t a suicidal thought by any means, but this strange sort of agoraphobia. I just want to feel small and hidden and alone - but not in a cold way. Rather, I want to feel small and hidden and alone and warm - as if in a den or burrow of some sort. I guess I want to feel rodent-like.

I can’t even think about $490 for this stupid shit doctor. I can’t help but think that there’s some loophole, though, and that I will actually owe him the money. It’s simply impossible, though. He was covered then; he’s covered now. I paid my co-pay. X-rays done in-office are part of the office visit. The claim online shows that I didn’t pay anything and shows that the patient responsibility is $490. They MUST have screwed up something on the billing end, because there’s NO way. None.

The last thing I need tonight is additional crap to stress over. Isn’t it enough that I’m overweight, depressed, alone, stressed, in debt, living at home, driving a crap car, having invasive BONE REMOVAL surgery and now this? It’s not like I can even say, “At least I have my health” because I don’t. I can’t say, “At least I have my family to support me…”; their actions speak louder than their words and any amount of, “we’re here for you” is instantly discredited by their actions/arguments/lack of actual support. Work is an escape as is spending time with friends. This doesn’t make them less valid, but it means that *I* can’t lose myself in the time and enjoy it because I’m hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of the fact that they ARE distractions and that after X amount of hours, I’m back where I was before.

So I realize that the escape isn’t an escape; there is no escape; I’m quite realistically trapped in my life situation and mental state. A great deal of it is my own doing, but another solid portion is what is being done to me, that I don’t ask for or invite.

And I become very very sad and angry and frustrated because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s beating my head against a wall - metaphorical or otherwise.

I’m going to take my sleeping pills and read until I conk out. There’s no use trying to relax because it’s not going to happen. I feel sick over it. I’m just disgusted with myself and everything I am. At least sleep can provide me with some escape that I won’t be conscious of.

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While I was on the train home, the doctor called. We chatted for a bit and he’s going to give me a call the week after next when he is able to schedule my surgery for sometime after October 16th.

I’m going to be having a proximal row carpectomy. “What,” you may say, “is a proximal row carpectomy??” Allow me to explain. Rather, let me paste in what an orthopedic journal online had to say, including information on the post-op treatment, recovery time, etc., and then write up my layperson’s view.

Proximal row carpectomy(PRC)- The surgeon’s purpose in removing the bones in the proximal row is in attempt to eliminate pain but maintain ROM that wouldn’t be present with a wrist fusion. A PRC is indicated for diagnoses such as scaphoid non-union, radioscaphoid arthritis, scapholunate instability, and AVN of the lunate or scaphoid.

The primary therapy goals are to eliminate pain, maximize function and prepare for productive activity at home and work. It is likely there will be eventual decreases in ROM and strength (approx. 30%) compared to the uninjured hand.

Weeks 1- 4: The patient is immobilized in a thermoplastic splint which is removed only during therapy. Edema and pain control are achieved with appropriate techniques such as edema massage, TENS, NMES, fluidotherapy, or cryotherapy. Full active thumb and digital ROM is initiated on the first post-op visit. Digital flexion may be limited because of the decrease in carpal height and the altered length-tension relationship of the flexors post-op. The exercises should be performed 3-5 times a day within the splint.

Week 4: Gentle AROM of the wrist is initiated. ROM should progress slowly and according to pain tolerance. Throughout the rehab process, some minor increase in ROM might need to be sacrificed for a less painful, more stable wrist. The wrist splint is normally continued for protection, but may be removed for bathing and exercise. The patient will likely spend approximately 8 weeks in a protective splint before discontinuation.

Week 6: As AROM begins to plateau and reach functional levels, gentle isometric strengthening exercises are initiated as well as light functional activities at home.

Week 8: Progressive resistive exercises using weights to strenghten the wrist and forearm can be initiated if the expected ROM has been attained and the patient is without pain. Grip strengthening can begin using theraputty with progression to a spring gripper as tolerated.

OK. So, in your wrist there are eight little bones. Those are the carpals. They each have a special name; there’s hamate, capitate, pisiform, triquetral, lunate, scaphoid, trapezoid and trapezium. They’re divided into two rows in your wrist - the distal row and the proximal row. The distal row is the row of bones that’s attached to your finger bones; there are five bones in the distal row. Below the distal row, connected to your ulna and radius, is the proximal row. The proximal row is composed of the scaphoid, lunate and triquetral bones. The disease/condition I am suffering from is Kienbock’s disease, which is otherwise known as avascular necrosis of the lunate. My lunate - the middle bone in the proximal row - is dead, fracture, and turning to mush. This causes great pain, arthritis, loss of strength and loss of range of motion (the ROM referred to above).

Since my lunate bone is essentially mush, there are limited procedures that can be done. It is what my doctor called, “a salvage mission.” We want to decrease my pain and get back my range of motion. Thus, what my surgeon is going to do is a proximal row (the entire row of three bones including the lunate) carpectomy.

Now it’s time for some Fun With Roots!

-ectomy: a combining form meaning “excision” of the part specified by the initial element, used in the formation of compound words

Carpals = carpectomy.
Appendix = appendectomy.
Tonsils = tonsillectomy.
Hystera = hysterectomy. (hystéra means womb or uterus in Greek)

So… he’s going to remove or excise that second row of bones closest to my ulna and radius. Rather than becoming bionic and having metal implanted in my wrist, my body will now have only 203 bones compared to the 206 in normal, healthy adults.

I’m sort of OK with this. Less chance of infection since they’re not putting anything IN, just taking bones out. I’ll need physical therapy , but that’s OK, too.

Ah. My mother is home. I haven’t had the chance to talk to her since she got back yesterday, so I’m going to go do that now. Perhaps I’ll write more later.

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The talented Hugh Laurie sings a song of his own creation entitled, “Mystery”. His performance of this on Inside the Actor’s Studio was a little better, but this is great, too.

Update: here’s the Actor’s Studio version:

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Long friggin’ day. Like, really.

Theresa and Kofi picked me up and we went into NYC for the day. First, we spent some time at the studio where Kofi’s band rehearses.

Then we walked downtown and picked up our tickets for the Buffy Sing-Along from the IFC Center. We walked around some more, had some tea, had some dinner, checked out a few stores and I actually found several that I’ve heard of or walked by many times before but hadn’t ever visited.

There was Shoegasm (where I found several pairs of GREAT shoes by Irregular Choice, a UK shoe designer - maybe I’ll get a pair in a few months) and MXYPLYZYK (where I got a really great mechanical pencil and some hilarious birthday cards) and then the Tea Spot (where I had some great Moroccan Mint tea) and then I broke and got a Moleskine notepad at Barnes and Noble since the paper was just so nice and it was the flip-top reporter style which I totally love for taking notes on the run — much easier than a notebook with a left- or right-side binding.

We bummed around for a few more hours, sat in Washington Square Park for a while checking out various buskers and folks “performing” in the area. Kofi took some pictures of rats in the trashcans. Then we made our way over to the theatre. It was 10:00.

After standing there for a while, Kofi asked the IFC staff where they were going to start the line and when, and the guys there gave him the details. When they put up the stansions to mark the beginning of the line, we were the second people in line. After us was a pretty entertaining group of theatre folks who we chatted and laughed with.. .and totally indulged in our geekiness.

One of the gay men in the theatre-folk group told us about a game he likes to play while in NYC. There are actually two versions of the game; one is “Fag or EuroTrash?” and the other is “Hipster or Retard?” The whole explanation was pretty hilarious and included a segment on how the only people in this world who wear tight-fitting button-fly jeans are either gay men or Europeans.

After waiting in line for 90 minutes, we were allowed into the theatre. Before they played the episode of Buffy, they handed out directions on how to participate and were selling goodie bags with the objects needed to interact.

Without giving everything away, one of the fun “actions” required was to scream, “DAWN SHUT UP!” everytime the character of Buffy’s little sister, Dawn, appeared in a scene. There was also throwing of streamers and popping of corks and finger puppet stuff. However, even prior to the rolling of the scene, they did Buffy-oke (like karaoke, but Buffy related) where they selected people out of the audience to re-enact a scene from an episode of Buffy along with the scene projected on the movie screen and the subtitles. Some of the people who “performed” were really great and they won prizes accordingly. There was also trivia and just lots of hilarious conversation and quipping by our emcee…

Then the musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” started to play. It was fun-tastic and I was laughing and singing and yelling along with Theresa and 198 other crazed people. After the episode, we got to watch the original pilot episode that Joss Whedon created when he was trying to sell the series to the different stations. It was awful in some respects and great in others. In general, though, it was a really interesting “text” in the history of Buffy.

We got out of the theatre at about 1:50 in the morning and walked up to the PATH station to get back to Hoboken and drive home. The PATH was running its overnight/weekend schedule and the stations were filled with drunken folk heading back to NJ. I asked Kofi and Theresa if they wanted to play a game called, “Count the Drunken People.” However, they were hard to spot (since lots of people were just sitting on the PATH train with their eyes closed) but we sure could smell them.

There was a woman on the train with a tank top that said, “BORN TO WED” who was obsessively twirling her engagement ring the whole time she was standing there. I felt rather sorry for her.

Once we got back to Hoboken, we ran into the usual Saturday night suspects; drunken former frat boys who think it’s the mark of a distinguished social life to spend Friday and Saturday night in Hoboken bars, getting drunk and then yelling to anyone on the street who’ll listen. As we walked by one pack of these types, the guys started yelling to some women on the other side of an intersection, “Hey, mediocre looking girls! I’ve got a guy here who wants some. Can you help him?”

I was just disgusted.

Anyway, we got home, I’ve cleaned up the laundry I left on my bed and I’m getting the hell to sleep because I’m mad tired.

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I spoke with the doctor today… and there’s still no definitive answer on when and how my surgery will take place. But that’s OK. I got some piece of mind just talking to him and seeing that we’re on the same page… with him a little ahead of me, fortunately.

However, we discussed several things. He’s been reading and researching, and talking with other orthopedists and hand specialists (including a hand dude who has operated on many Kienbock’s patients and with whom my doctor would team up for the surgery) and my MRIs and CAT scans are currently with this second doctor. Basically, his main concern is picking the right surgery for me so that I have as much use of my hand as possible afterwards… that is, the smallest possible decrease in range of motion (ROM) and grip strength.

I spent about 5 minutes on the phone with him discussing what I’d found on the Kienbock’s disease website I’ve been visiting and I asked him if one of the things he was considering for me was a titanium lunate implant. He said that option came up several times and is certainly one of the things he’s considering. He just told me that he didn’t want to make a recommendation until he’d explored ALL possibilities for me… since the complications are that I’m in such an advanced stage of the disease (3b of 4 stages) and because I’m still so young and have so many years of use left in this wrist. Rather than making it easier, my youth makes it harder because, in his words, “It’s not like a broken bone where we stick a pin in it and let your healthy young bones heal together.” This is something degenerative and it’s not a matter of just setting things right and letting them go. He asked me about the case studies/personal accounts I’d read and I told him that most of the people who were posting up their experiences were older than I am, with a few exceptions.

As we’d discussed during my last office visit, I reiterated that my biggest concern was regaining some range of motion and decreasing the pain. The doctor asked me if the personal accounts I’d read online gave any indication of the difference in pain and ROM, etc. pre-op versus post-op. I told him that most of them were pleased with their surgery results because the pain was virtually gone (unless they overdid it and tried to perform headstands or something) but that there was some residual loss in ROM or strength, but less so in the case of the titanium implant - which is why, I said, I was asking him about that specifically.

He also mentioned that he was considering a new type of external fixation, but I just looked that up (at least the current or “old” version) and it’s got a minimum healing time of 6-8 weeks, which I’d spend with a large metal device mounted to the outside of my arm with pins sticking into my bones at the wrist and forearm, and which I’d have to clean vigorously to prevent my skin from grafting to the metal pins.

That, to me, seems like it would greatly decrease my usefulness in the real world. Unlike the woman who posted her experience with an external fixator on the Kienbock’s website, I don’t have a wonderful fiance who’d make it easy for me and take care of things… or give me a sponge bath… or comb my hair.

Tomorrow is Thursday already and I think I have an appointment with my other doctor tomorrow night… but I have to call and make sure since I didn’t get a confirmation phone call tonight, but I think they’re closed on Wednesdays. It certainly won’t hurt to call tomorrow afternoon… and if the appointment is for Friday, I’ll be OK too. I just need to see the doctor since today was also less than pleasant… but I won’t go into that. There was drama; I was treated like 13-year old; I cried in the bookstore.

But I talked to Theresa and she gave me some good advice and reminded me that I am an OK person and made me feel warm and happy. I was telling her that while the natural “unnatural” inclination during a depressive episode is to withdraw and recede from the world, it’s really not the best thing to do and that spending time with a good friend is as good as, if not better than, taking an anti-depressant since it naturally stimulates those happy neurochemicals and generates that sort of “contact high” from being around someone who cares about you… even when you don’t exactly care about yourself too much at the moment. So, she told me to call her even if I don’t feel like it… because it will be good for me.

And I discovered my new favorite kind of tea at Barnes and Noble - Harney and Sons “Bangkok Blend” green tea. It’s green tea flavored with coconut and ginger. I had it with a bit of honey and it was divine. I’ll have to ask my sister to get me a few tins on her next employee appreciation day, which should be coming up in October or November.

Well, I took my sleeping pills at about 10:30, so they’re going to be kicking in sooner rather than later and I need to try and get up early tomorrow since I’ve been oversleeping these past three days. Not good. There might also be an argument awaiting me in the morning, so I’d best be prepared for that, too. Happy happy, joy joy.

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From “A Poet’s Portable Workshop” by Steve Kowit

God Says Yes to Me - Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her it if was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it okay if I dont paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
________________________________________

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it and what it’s saying, but I can like a poem for the sounds and the words and withhold judgment on the message until I feel like delving into it and seeing what it means/says to me.

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So I won’t belabor the point.

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I am not taking any pleasure in the rain tonight.

I’m not taking any pleasure in much of anything lately - hence, anhedonia. I was feeling OK this afternoon when I talked to my friend Theresa, but here I am a few hours later, feeling the complete opposite of how I felt when I talked to her.

At that point, I was feeling hopeful and thinking that I’d be able to “Pollyanna” my way through this bout of depression. But now I’m realizing that I’ll be spending the next three weeks home alone, most likely carless (unless my sister says I can use her car while she’s out of the country), with my father.

I think I can safely say that it will not be a positive living environment for me. If we manage to be civil, there will be the stressed strained air of people who don’t know what to say to each other without starting an argument. The polite indifference that will be suffusing the atmosphere will be frustrating. Not knowing what to say, but knowing that it’s rude not to say ANYTHING is rough.

Also during this time, I’ll find out about my wrist surgery. That will be yet another delightful stress factor, regardless of how positive the recommendation is. Surgery is surgery; it’s going to be invasive and require a solid amount of post-op recovery, and it’s going to be my first surgery ever. Thus, whether I was having a gallstone removed or a prosthetic bone put in, it would be stressful just by virtue of being the first surgical procedure I’d be having in which I’d be under anesthesia and getting cut open.

I’ve got “Napoleon Dynamite” queued up in the DVD player, but I’m not even sure I feel like watching it. I figured that a feel-good movie might help me, well, feel good. Instead, I’m just getting a little annoyed. Perhaps tonight’s a good night to watch something French or Japanese with the subtitles turned off, so I have almost no idea what’s going on and can just stare at the moving images and get lost in thought.

Tomorrow I’ll do some cleaning. Perhaps tidying up my external living space will help restore order in my internal living space. Or at least help me feel like I can overcome chaos in something, albeit it smaller than my life.

It’s sort of good that I don’t have a car or money to go out this weekend, because I really don’t feel like being social or spending time with anyone. If anyone asks me what’s wrong or how I’m feeling, I’ll cry. I don’t want to talk; I’m annoyed and frustrated at everything. Tonight my mother commented that she doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore. I replied, “I don’t know how to talk to anyone right now.” It’s frighteningly true.

The process is something like this. I’ll think about talking to someone (say, a friend), but then realize that I’d be repeating the same things I said last time I was depressed and that I’d be boring them. Then I imagine the conversation - I would say I don’t want to be a bore, the friend would say, “but I’m your friend - I want to listen/be your shoulder.” And I’ll be convinced that they’re saying that just because they have to to be a good friend - or to be able to say/feel they’re a good friend. Then I get angry at myself for allowing myself to think that any of my friends would be a friend for martyrdom’s sake. Then I decide that it would be easier to lie and say I’m fine and put on a happy face because it really is like speaking a foreign language to try to explain depression to someone who hasn’t experienced it or known someone with it before.

People automatically come to the conclusion that depression is just being really really sad and will try to empathize by saying, “We all have our down times…” or “We all get sad sometimes…” and follow up with a story about a childhood goldfish dying or not getting a job they really wanted. While that may sound like I’m making light of someone else’s pain, that’s not my intention. I can’t compare the intensity and importance of someone’s pain to my depression. They’re two very different things.

One - sadness or grief - is an emotional response to a loss or major life upset. The other - depression - is not really an emotional response to anything, though it can be triggered by times of stress or sadness. In my case, it’s not triggered to any one specific life event; rather, it’s part of my life. It’s a mental illness. It’s a condition. It’s something I have to work with (or against, however you look at it) every day. It won’t just pass with time. Yes, it will pass, but it will come back without warning. And it will keep coming back until I find the treatment or lifestyle change or combination of the two that helps me live my life beyond the confines of this definition/depression/disease.

In the meantime, I keep reading and writing and trying to learn and think and feel and do what I can while I’m in it so perhaps someone else reading out there in the ether will think, “Hey - so I’m not speaking a completely foreign language when I try to explain how I feel. There is at least one other person out there who ‘gets it’.”

And maybe not. Maybe no one will read and no one will understand. But that’s OK. There are very few things I can enjoy right now and while I can’t say that I’m sitting here smiling and enjoying myself, I am distracted for a little while, and that can be worth more than enjoyment at times like these.

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