I'd like to take a moment and try to explain the reason why I have gone missing from this blog for the last several months.
My best reason: I have no good reason. I simply cannot explain it.
The fact that I can't explain it frustrates me, because I think about things too much and the more I think about it and can't come up with a good answer, the more frustrated I get.
Which leads me to the reason that may be the right answer. I am, in general, quite a frustrated person. I spend the majority of my life feeling frustrated about various things, because I want everything to be the best it can be and constantly want things to be better, BETTER, BETTER!. These things include (in no particular order) my job, my home, my dinners, my garden, my community, my country, my children, my friends, myself... which therefore includes (also in no particular order) my fingernails, my floors, my carpet, my pores, my zits, my toenails, my children's toenails, my boss, my friend's relationships, my relationship with my friends, my organization of my email address book, my kid's toy room, my flabby stomach, my choice of paint color on my walls, my dirty refrigerator and crusty stuff spilled inside it, etc. etc.
You get my drift, I'm sure.
On the surface, I appear happy. And most the time, I do feel happy. It seems like I've got it pretty good compared to so many others... I was raised in a rather normal home - sure, my parents were hippies - and I do remember some naked skinny dipping stories from my childhood, but, geeze, they didn't beat me or anything... I've never gone hungry... always been clothed and loved...
In my adult life I've got a husband that holds a steady job, brings home the bacon, loves me, as well as does laundry, bakes pies, and grocery shops. I've got two adorable kids - a boy and a girl, who are smart, healthy, have all their limbs and all of their brains. I go to yoga class, eat plenty of fiber, drink lots of water. Aren't I doing everything right!? We are the American DREAM!!! What the hell do I have to bitch about, right? Why would a person like me be frustrated, huh? Middle class life is grand! Hooray! Yippee! Zippidy doo dah!!!
Funny thing is, I, Miss America, am labeled as Depressed. I currently take medication for depression, prescribed by a real, live, Psychiatrist, who I also go and talk to once a month, give or take. Last year, I went a bit mental. I stopped sleeping, stopped eating, and started panicking constantly. I just went a bit nutty.
My explanation? I was overwhelmed with life. I wanted everything to be the way it is supposed to be, but I simply couldn't handle it, and my body freaked out.
So the medication helped. Funny thing though - I noticed when on the medication, I had no desire to write - whereas before medication, I wanted to write all the time. I tried to get off of it a few months ago, and the symptoms started all over, so now I'm on it again - although now it's Cymbalta instead of Zoloft. And I have been wanting to write again, when I can find time when the children are away or napping or I'm not at work, or at home staring at my pores or cleaning the crusty stuff in the refrigerator while wishing I was 20 pounds thinner.
Yes, I, am the American Dream: Tall, blonde, college graduate, married to my handsome high school sweetheart, with a house, children, two cars, one television, with a new computer, iphones, with healthy amount of credit card debt, and a pill I must take each morning to get me through my day so that I feel happy, even though for some reason I am not.
Something about this all just doesn't seem right. Am I the only one out there who thinks the thought of taking anti-depressants is, itself, depressing? And maybe we're all trying to live lives that may not be the right kind of lives to live? Is the American Dream really just... a dream?
Oh shit. Gotta go. Forgot to take my anti-depressant today. Hence, the melancholy post.
Toodles.
