The Beast Inside
Man, Depression, with a BIG D and a little i, is a beast. I've been dealing with it for at least a decade, probably longer than that if I were to really analyze it. A good two decades at least. I've tried different medications with various success, but often with doubt that we humans should be medicating ourselves for something like this. Still, I'm currently on medication and probably won't be stopping anytime soon. This past week I've been on a downward spiral. Down, down, down.
I guess I'll email my Doc and ask if I should increase my medication. I've been on vacation the past week. I've also been sick. I've also been to a lot of films. I took the time off so I could get to a number of them during the month long Seattle International Film Festival. I didn't realize I'd have a month long cold virus thing that has made me exhausted, congested and a coughing machine.
I was planning on using this past week as one of those reinvention weeks - getting my house in order, so to speak. Staring some new healthy and interesting ways. That didn't happen. Quite the opposite. Ending the vacation in far worse shape, minus the sore throat thankfully, than I started. I did see some good films. Met my favorite porn star. Ate popcorn. Drank coffee. Not a total loss, but if you make columns of Pro and Con, Con is bigger.
Dealing with that dang Gay Men in Relationships Issue #1 thing too. I've been on all sides of this one before. Thought I had it figured out. Thought I was pretty sure about it all. I don't have it all figured out and I no longer know how I feel about it. I do not think monogamy is natural and I don't know if it is ever really possible with two men, but I don't remember ever being this conflicted about it before. Maybe it is because I've taken myself out of "the scene" for a number of reasons (and well, I've naturally fallen to the waysides as well). I thought we had a pretty good policy that I had drafted; not in the city in which we live, not with friends, I don't want to know UNLESS I ask and then I want the truth. I came up with those rules based on my 70's Code of Conduct. I'm old. That didn't account for things like Facebook and text message buzzes. It is hard not to know even if you say you don't want to know.
As life turns out, right now my friends are mainly my co-workers. Right now my co-workers are all straight women (and one non-straight for now woman). This isn't a conversation I can have with my friends. More alienation, more isolation, more depression. I wish I knew more men.
I don't know how I became 52. I look around and don't see a lot of folks that are 52. One of my favorite Seattle events has always been this festival called Folklife - music, art, food, people - kind of a lovely relic of those hippier times, although it is far from just traditional folk at this point. This year the crowd seemed to be about 3/4 folks under the age of 21, and most of those seemed to be those (I think self-defined) gutter punks and crusties, the ones who roam about in layers of unwashed thrift store clothing, with dirt darkened sunburned skin and body odor, who never seem to be without a cigarette and a pitbull, and who have forsaken jobs and society but not iPhones and junk food. When it is good - when they magically combine the best of the hippies and the punks, when they have a true understanding of anarchism and socialism, when they form communities and have survival techniques that they polish - I have a lot of admiration for them. When it becomes another excuse to be aggressive and arrogant, cruel to domesticated animals while being a political vegan, blowing smoke in the face of strangers and trashing the planet, I'm less impressed. Either way, I feel really old.
I have been enjoying the Crass reissues immensely. I listen to them from the comfort of my home with all the sell-out comforts I can afford. I'm a fake and a phony, I'm old and obsolete, and my radical personal philosophies have come home to slap me in the face and they sting.
I'm grounded by a 19 year relationship (in transition), our dogs, our chickens, a mortgage and the need to have health insurance and an income. I wish I could just move to Paris, or Mexico and start over. I wish I could find a little cabin in the woods, near the ocean where I could hole up for six months to write and draw and walk through trees and by water. The boys, the human ones once in our care, no longer depend on me. My job doesn't need me - I'm replaceable. I feel obsolete and out of shape and cranky. I'm good at judging others and terrible at being judged. I know better and do worse.
When my man was in Portland, celebrating his birthday, visiting friends and having his "approved" private liaisons with at least one person too ignorant to know the social graces of social networking, he bought me a book by Greil Marcus (whom I love) on Van Morrison (whom I love). I've carried it around with me all day, but have only read a handful of pages. My mind wants to just ponder and weep (my eyes do not weep, but my mind does). But damn it, I'm taking that book to bed and I'm reading some of it and tomorrow I think I should start to learn French somehow, so if I ever get the nerve to just quit it all, I won't be one of those dirty rude kids, but someone prepared to start over.
I guess I'll email my Doc and ask if I should increase my medication. I've been on vacation the past week. I've also been sick. I've also been to a lot of films. I took the time off so I could get to a number of them during the month long Seattle International Film Festival. I didn't realize I'd have a month long cold virus thing that has made me exhausted, congested and a coughing machine.
I was planning on using this past week as one of those reinvention weeks - getting my house in order, so to speak. Staring some new healthy and interesting ways. That didn't happen. Quite the opposite. Ending the vacation in far worse shape, minus the sore throat thankfully, than I started. I did see some good films. Met my favorite porn star. Ate popcorn. Drank coffee. Not a total loss, but if you make columns of Pro and Con, Con is bigger.
Dealing with that dang Gay Men in Relationships Issue #1 thing too. I've been on all sides of this one before. Thought I had it figured out. Thought I was pretty sure about it all. I don't have it all figured out and I no longer know how I feel about it. I do not think monogamy is natural and I don't know if it is ever really possible with two men, but I don't remember ever being this conflicted about it before. Maybe it is because I've taken myself out of "the scene" for a number of reasons (and well, I've naturally fallen to the waysides as well). I thought we had a pretty good policy that I had drafted; not in the city in which we live, not with friends, I don't want to know UNLESS I ask and then I want the truth. I came up with those rules based on my 70's Code of Conduct. I'm old. That didn't account for things like Facebook and text message buzzes. It is hard not to know even if you say you don't want to know.
As life turns out, right now my friends are mainly my co-workers. Right now my co-workers are all straight women (and one non-straight for now woman). This isn't a conversation I can have with my friends. More alienation, more isolation, more depression. I wish I knew more men.
I don't know how I became 52. I look around and don't see a lot of folks that are 52. One of my favorite Seattle events has always been this festival called Folklife - music, art, food, people - kind of a lovely relic of those hippier times, although it is far from just traditional folk at this point. This year the crowd seemed to be about 3/4 folks under the age of 21, and most of those seemed to be those (I think self-defined) gutter punks and crusties, the ones who roam about in layers of unwashed thrift store clothing, with dirt darkened sunburned skin and body odor, who never seem to be without a cigarette and a pitbull, and who have forsaken jobs and society but not iPhones and junk food. When it is good - when they magically combine the best of the hippies and the punks, when they have a true understanding of anarchism and socialism, when they form communities and have survival techniques that they polish - I have a lot of admiration for them. When it becomes another excuse to be aggressive and arrogant, cruel to domesticated animals while being a political vegan, blowing smoke in the face of strangers and trashing the planet, I'm less impressed. Either way, I feel really old.
I have been enjoying the Crass reissues immensely. I listen to them from the comfort of my home with all the sell-out comforts I can afford. I'm a fake and a phony, I'm old and obsolete, and my radical personal philosophies have come home to slap me in the face and they sting.
I'm grounded by a 19 year relationship (in transition), our dogs, our chickens, a mortgage and the need to have health insurance and an income. I wish I could just move to Paris, or Mexico and start over. I wish I could find a little cabin in the woods, near the ocean where I could hole up for six months to write and draw and walk through trees and by water. The boys, the human ones once in our care, no longer depend on me. My job doesn't need me - I'm replaceable. I feel obsolete and out of shape and cranky. I'm good at judging others and terrible at being judged. I know better and do worse.
When my man was in Portland, celebrating his birthday, visiting friends and having his "approved" private liaisons with at least one person too ignorant to know the social graces of social networking, he bought me a book by Greil Marcus (whom I love) on Van Morrison (whom I love). I've carried it around with me all day, but have only read a handful of pages. My mind wants to just ponder and weep (my eyes do not weep, but my mind does). But damn it, I'm taking that book to bed and I'm reading some of it and tomorrow I think I should start to learn French somehow, so if I ever get the nerve to just quit it all, I won't be one of those dirty rude kids, but someone prepared to start over.