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My Profile
Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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2:26 p.m. - 2003-08-14
I am sad. All the time. I started taking the Wellbutrin again, so it's not Depression. At least not the chemical kind which has added such a baggage of woe to my life. My health is so-so, been worse, been better. And there've been times when I was flaring big time and was still better able to cope and find joy than I can right now. Things are okay, you know? Jan is here and instead of being happy that my Berlin son is "home" I feel weighted down by him. Like I have this huge obligation to entertain him and make his visit worthwhile. Yes, Alex is going away and that would be enough to send any normal mother into a funk, but his going away hasn't really sunk in yet. Not really. We speak of it all the time, yet I haven't quite grasped that in a couple weeks my son won't be here. He's ALWAYS been here. In his 18 years I'll bet he hasn't spent more than a month's worth of days away from home. The idea that my boy will be living 300 miles away is as unreal as imagining myself living on the moon. I’m quite sure that when we leave him at the dorm and drive home with only Wolf in the back seat that a tsunami of grief will sweep me away, it will be real enough then. But for now Alex’s leaving for college is just another item on my endless to-do list. Even my little Wolf brings me no happiness. Stupid, really. His speech improves every day and his behavior is exemplary by Wolf standards. Now that his butt feels better he’s bouncy and full of fun. At the new house we fitted out his little playhouse with a wee roll top desk that I picked up years ago at a garage sale. Wolf loves his “office” and does paperwork and makes phone calls on the old phone we put in there. Then when he’s “worked” enough he plays on his swing set, swinging, sliding, and serving lunch on the attached picnic table. His imaginary friends think he’s quite the host. My friends are good and would be happy to hear from me, but thinking about sending an e-mail or picking up the phone makes me tired. I just can’t whomp up enough oomph to be social. The garden? Aside from the newbie mistakes of planting the tomato plants too close together and some overzealous weeding which did a number on the daisy bushes (they went toe up, oh well), my garden is really a success. It’s pretty and healthy and the first of the tomatoes are coming ripe. The window boxes are bloomy and lush. The hanging baskets of petunias are all a flitter with hummingbirds. Even that poor trumpet honeysuckle has recovered from its transplant shock and is starting to crawl up the trellis under the front porch and twine around as it should. The pears are ripe and are delicious. The grapes are coming on. We’ve got lots, but I haven’t bothered to find out what kind they are or when I can expect them to be ripe. They are still kind of hard and the meat is very tart, but there’s some juice to them. I guess when they start falling off the vine I’ll know they’re ready. They’re green grapes and I don’t think they’d turn any other color when they’re ripe. It’s not like they’re secretly Concords or something. I even decided on the kitchen paint. A light lemony yellow with an even lighter trim. I bought white curtains with yellow flowers embroidered on them and I think my small kitchen on the shady side of the house will be bright and cheery looking, even in gloomy winter. The mosaic backsplash is all sketched out and only lacks buying some more tiles and for me to actually put it on the wall. I’ve been saving that until we finally move in. A treat and some busywork to be chipper about during the fall rains. It looks like we’ll get some of the money that’s owed us. Not all of it, but enough that the scary budget pinch lightened enough to breathe again. I can add some meat and veggies to the stone soup. It’s sunny and not unbearably hot. There’s been a nearly perfect mix of sun and rain this year and everything is green and plump. Cranky Fred’s come by twice already to hay off the pastures and they look like they’ll be ready to be done again by the end of the week. Yet, all this bounty does me no good. I’m forever locking myself in my room or the john to cry and cry and cry. They boys tread carefully around their soggy mother, speaking to me in the calming tones of horse whisperers. Mike just looks at me and then goes off to do some chore which is his way of saying, “I love you.” He even hooked up the bathroom sink. Though I think that was less to please me than it was for his own comfort. Shaving by the kitchen sink is a dangerous sort of thing, no mirror. The edges of his beard were wavy and he had a sprout of stray beard near his collar, kept missing it with the razor. I just don’t know what’s wrong. If I feel this low while I’m taking anti-depressants, I shudder to think of how I’d be without them. I feel ugly and old and worthless. I hurt inside. All the time. And I dun myself that I should be this low when there’s so much richness to what I have, how good my life is, and how I must be the most ungrateful wretch ever born. But it’s like I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m this lost stray cow drooping along and lowing. A toad load of worthless meat which respires and cries and does nothing, in fact can do nothing to help herself or others. A waste of space. A drain on the world’s resources. Nobody with a lemony kitchen should be this sad. But I am and I don’t know how to help myself. ~LA
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