Doing the Black Dog Jig

If ever I needed a patron saint of stressed out women with two kids trying to leave the state so she can pack up her house and finalize a separation, but can’t due to multiple snow storms; I do now!!!! I have spent the past few days storing my things away neatly here to please my mom, cleaning up, packing what we’ll bring with us to NC, finalizing travel plans and I’m literally on the road this morning when our accommodation plans fall through. So I turned the car around and here I am at my Nana’s once again. At least it’s clean. But then all the kids toys are packed away and I have no wine!! Ok… I am not going to let the negativity win…. we may have less than two hundred dollars in the bank right now but I can’t sink! I’m trying to change my patterns. My inclination, with depression, is to passively allow myself to go with it, to float slowly down and down, to feel it as completely and thoroughly as possible. It could take hours or days for it to cycle through and while I’m in ‘The Black Dog’s’ clutches I may be lethargic, anxiety ridden, short tempered, self-conscious, or all of the above. I definitely tend to be more creative when I’m full of sorrow. I’m starting to realize that I cannot continue this pattern, that it is very selfish of me to allow myself to descend so easily. I shouldn’t expect my children to adapt to this or to fend for themselves while I’m unable to deal. This is not the history I want written in their future journals or therapy sessions. I know that depression is a part of me and will never cease to be an issue but I can fight it when I feel it coming on! This morning in the car I forced myself to smile instead of cussing out the world and my chest felt less tight almost immediately. I will always feel things deeply and empathetically but I don’t have to own all the sadness in the world. And when it comes to love and attraction, I don’t have to be a moth, distracted from its course by every shiny light. Now that I’m getting ‘freedom’ from my marriage I feel a little giddy, unstable and untrusting of my sensibilities. I need a sexy sequined pair of blinders to keep me on task! I already have exemplified how terrible I am at playing hard to get (J) and am in danger of compromising my inner guide with some one else I haven’t introduced yet. I’ll call him Doc, which is how I addressed him seven years ago when I worked for him. He has been a great comfort to me this past month; he’s made me laugh, taken me to dinner and has been adjusting the kids and I for free which is a tremendous gift. He also is very interested in me romantically which I can’t fully reciprocate. I’ll admit that when we first kissed the night we went to dinner, I was totally living out a fantasy I’d had when I worked for him but passionately, it ended there for me. We recently went to his house for pizza and a movie (he has a son two years older than mine) and when the kids were out of the room he’d rub my back or play with my hair and we kissed a few times. Honestly, it felt nice to sink back into some ones chest, to feel that strength and steadiness. It was a relief! It was a reprieve from the loneliness of my days and the stress of holding it all together for the kids and I. But I have to be so careful not to allow this to go beyond what I want and what I can give. I don’t want to get myself right into another situation where I can’t give a man what he wants! My economy can’t handle another deficit.
The good (?) news is that my sexuality is alive and kicking again. There was some down and dirty blues playing on the radio last night and my thoughts went to J (am I crazy or what?). This was some hair pullin’ hip grindin’ blues and that’s exactly what was going on in my mind. At least I know that my body isn’t dead but does it have to respond to some guy all the way in Northern California who has a girlfriend?! I totally jumped the gun with J by saying in an email that ‘the odds are once again stacked against us’. Which implies that he was even contemplating an ‘us’. We’ve emailed some more but he has yet to respond to that particular one. True to my old form I am incapable of being appropriately disinterested and always put myself in a vulnerable position before I’ve even tested the ground. But as I was saying to my friend N this morning, I have never been good at it, I have zero interest in aspiring to be good at it and if a man can’t or won’t appreciate this quality in me then eff it! (The next time I’m curled under the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey because I’ve scared off another man will you kindly remind me that I feel this way)
N gently reminded me that perhaps he doesn’t think I’ve jumped the gun at all, he could be processing, or simply not know what to say. Actually the reply he sent to that email was simply a black and white photo of a dead plant intertwined amongst barbed wire with the ocean in the back round. I sent him photos of wire cutters and a watering can. See- I’m changing my patterns! I’m not throwing that Black Dog a bone. Heel Boy!