I have started to call my left forearm my depression forearm because when I decided that I had to have the word breathe tattooed onto that arm, that not only would I tattoo it there but I became excited dreaming ahead to all the places that part of my arm will take me and what else I will feel the need to put on that section of my body along the road, down the paths my depression takes me.

This was not one of my already planned tattoos. This one just popped into my head and given what the last almost year presented to me I knew it had to go on now.

For anyone who has ever wondered or hasn’t had me explain it to them, the gerbera with the petals falling off of it through a fan of blue to embody the water represents my struggle with depression - through my favourite flower, our wedding flowers and the only flowers that people who know me buy me because Gus has anti inflammatory bowel disease and can’t eat nothing but cat food or she barfs and she has a penchant for plants and leaves, little brat, and gerberas don’t have leaves YAY! - it symbolizes a storm of sorts the flower is being torn apart likely through the tempest that is my temper.

I have added breathe as a reminder that I have to breathe through every storm. Breathing exercises really do work however cheesy they seem and are sometimes all I have to get me through a moment alone when I am freaking out heading towards the destruction of something and most likely something I really did not want to destroy in the first place. I have gone with the typewriter font because I love old typewriters, we have one, it is Adam’s, we use it, it was built between 1941 and 1943, although it needs a new ribbon we are just lazy about ordering it, and it is a font and style that begs to sit where it is typed with little symmetry.

One of the reasons that I see a shrink is because I have emotional problems.

Talk about stating the obvious.

My emotions come in so many different sizes, shapes and colors; they are wild and hard to control. But I have had the pleasure of learning that for me controlling my emotions is also about letting go and acceptance.

It isn’t necessarily as cut and dry as saying, “I’m a crier”, because in some situations where you would think I am sitting balling about something I’m not. It puzzles me I always notice it and think to myself, holy shit I feel really bad about that shouldn’t I be crying? So then I will make an effort to cry, but nothing. I am a seriously bad fake crier I can not do it. But what I can do is cry my eyes out at the most inappropriate times and embarrass the living shit out of myself and then I’m also the asshole who used to find out someone died and started laughing instead of crying, or again, I just can’t cry. It is fucked I tell you. I must have out grown the laughing thing, thank paganism for that but nothing has seemed to slow the flow of the water works.

This isn’t something you can mention in a session and expect and instant cure for; I have been the epitome of the above paragraph since I was wee kid. It has taken me five years of weekly sessions to even write about it. But this time my blubbering outbursts at the Triathlon World Championships and then in my therapist’s office had a different spin. It was from the perspective of being proud of the fact that I am so passionate about really fucking awesome things, like books and sports and friends in other countries, and people I’ve met through my blog and when I talk about books and movies and sports and people I’ve met through blogging who have helped me accomplish personal goals and helped me deal with my social anxiety I get misty eyed and I used to really try and hide it, behind things like my ugly prescription sunglasses, but just the other day when I was getting my hair cut I was telling my stylist about having my photo taken with Tri-Athlete, Lauren Groves and I got teary eyed and I had told her how emotional I had been that day in general and she looked at me and said “are you getting emotional now?” And I said “FUCK YEAH!” For the first time in my entire life I just came right out, didn’t try and hide it and owned my emotions. Because I know and am starting to accept that I feel the things and people I love so deeply that yes it makes me very emotional, I think I have stated that the Olympics on my turf could possibly drain me of tears and it may kill me.

This is something I could never figure out how to deal with, I despised it. It bewildered Adam to no end, I think we have grown together on this one though because I really have had no choice but to just let it all go, this is my husband and it hurt trying to hide the emotions, it would hurt when he would laugh at me because he didn’t understand. And the knots hurt my throat, playing the watery eyes off as allergies was fake and I’ve only had adult allergies for four years so it was also a flat out lie. And Adam actually knows me so excuses didn’t work.

This is me, see me get emotional over the finals of Wimbledon every year, see me cry when I talk about passages of my favorite books, the mere mention of Africa, movies that I think got it right with something that matters to me, see me be happy that other players are going to get to shine but still cry because no Tiger for what seems like ever, see me get teary over a Michael Phelps commercial, see me cry and scream watching Simon Whitfield come out of the water, watch me tear up sending emails and snail mail to people I care about telling them how awesome they are and not expecting a response. I could go on and on but I think you get the point. I cry, and it isn’t because I am weak and I’m finally learning to be comfortable with just how deeply I feel and how it affects me and how my body chooses to release that joy with tears but they are tears of passion for the things I love.

Have a breakdown of the magnitude of the one I’m still physically recovering from ever again.

I can’t tell if it really was that bad or if the natural progression of my age since my last bad one is making a full physical recovery seem near impossible and has gotten to the point where YAY! I don’t want to leave my house again and that is the last thing I need to be feeling right now.

Last year when I finally hit what I considered a healthy weight [see below] I was STILL criticized by some for my lack of obvious muscles, and was called fat.

I’ve always been small, until an unfortunate running injury [that I still have, LONG story!!] most people have known me to be extremely athletic with an athletic build, athletic lifestyle and always fit. I remember a day a friend and I got up, went for a run, went skiing, hit a bucket of balls at the driving range on the way down from the hill, and then decided to hit a ten pin bowling alley before calling it a day and heading for a massive meal. I was running between 44:30 and 46 minute ten ks on the pavement and in my sleep. Those days are left as some of my fondest memories and I yearn for them to become a reality again soon. And the worst is I know that I’d be FASTER now.

Adam said the other day “you HAVE to start running again” and he is right, when I am running nothing can stop me, nothing can get me down, I’m clam, collected and in control, probably a bit more arrogant than normal but someone you want around all the time not ONLY in small doses, not someone who is unreliable and not someone that there is ALWAYS something wrong with. When I look back on my life thus far the hardest and worst times have all taken place in periods where for whatever reason I stopped because of them or was already on a short break from running.

This post isn’t about my running history though it is about weight, the point there being that when I’m running which I was basically my whole life up until late 2003 you could call me thin, you could call me skinny - even though I’d be smacking you upside the head for the skinny remark in my mind and stabbing you with invisible lasers - but you could NEVER call me anorexic I was too built and I ate like a mother-fucker one of those skinny bitches [that term makes me want to rip my FACE OFF!] who could eat anything in any amount and did.

For someone who grew up being the smallest of all my friends and still is, except for one, but she has a healthy body, I got so used to the remarks that when they stopped it was as if I had descended upon some odd fantasy land where I was viewed as a WOMAN with curves and BOOBS, I was proudly referring to my weight gain as my honeymoon fifteen and did things like this, but that wasn’t supposed to mean that I’d welcome becoming an anxiety stricken unhealthy too thin depressed self loathing person in the second year of my marriage and drop to a weight that I know is lower than I’ve ever been in my adult life. I refuse to step on a scale, the lack of my clothing and undergarments fitting leave me pretty confident that my estimate of my current pounds is scary enough and I haven’t owned a scale in over a decade.

Aside from my weight, and how unhealthy I am in general, no energy, sleeping loads, hair falling out and just knowing I’m sickly I’ve been pretty happy mentally, steady happy, I’m recovering from set backs faster, when I freak out it is toned down times a trillion million for serious, I’ve had two days that have been real bad but the rest have just been the occasional normal down days there haven’t been any bouts of depression lasting more than a few days, I’ve stepped away from the computer when wanting to be an ass hole, I took a break from posting as you can see by the front page of dates and I’m coming back to posting complaining about my weight for a reason.

If you are over weight, fat, too thin or skinny which ever term you do or don’t prefer here is something I know you don’t like - PEOPLE COMMENTING ON IT TO YOUR FACE! Look, I get it, people talk, I’ve gotten that one for years and it has helped me greatly but this is where you talk behind my back about how much weight I’ve lost. Unless you want to help me in a positive way to get my weight back on then fuck the fuck right the fuck off. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about anyone who talks to me in a genuinely concerned way, I’m not talking about my inner circle I’m talking about people in general, this ISN’T just about me it is about anyone who struggles with depression, unwanted or wanted weight, trust me, just trust, when I say NO ONE wants to hear it. WE KNOW!!!!!

This is something ingrained in society that will never change but infuriates me and I had forgotten how much. At the weight in the above photo NO ONE commented in a negative way unless they themselves were anorexic. If you were in my most inner circle it meant congratulations because I had finally done it, I had finally put on weight, and I finally FELT like a woman. Right now I feel like a fucking pre-pubescent girl, I feel disgusting, unhealthy and sick and no one in their right mind should want to look how I look at present. This past week has been the worst yet. I have been sick in the guts almost every day, nauseous, winded coming up the stairs and not able to get up and stay out of bed for long periods. I’m hoping that writing this is the intervention I need to get physically healthy again and I think I need to face that I’m going to need my doctors assistance my shrink knows I’m struggling and we talk about it but that doesn’t seem to be enough. If only one of them could prescribe me a start off of twenty free pounds, I’d even sign a wavier promising not to add it all to my tits.

Starter GOALS:

Get out of the house EVERY DAY no matter what rain or shine for at least a half an hour or more,

Eat a minimum of three times a day even if I have to force feed myself or drink protein shakes

Ok so I can’t just disappear. Oops.

My Facebook and Twitter are down but I will be back. Soon.

I just need a break.

I’m supposed to be over all the shit that happened but I’m not. I’ve never lost this many friends at one time in my life before. I’m having a real hard time figuring out who my friends actually are right now and I feel lost and alone. I don’t like who I am and don’t feel I am anywhere near where I should be for 31 in *cough* three weeks and two days.

I don’t even know how to take my blog down; I had to call my host company.

I don’t feel I can get over what I’m supposed to be over already if I am all over the internet. It just hurts, I end up in tears too much: over the fucking internet. I understand that shit happens I get that but I am just sick of how much of my energy goes towards being hurt over not being forgiven, not being able to express from my side from my opinion, what happened because no one cares what I’ve gone through, and yeah that is really fucking hard. And so until I genuinely don’t care anymore I’m taking a break.

I’ll try leaving the comments open for now and I’ll converse with you in there if you want, but last time I checked my stats it didn’t look like many people even read here anymore. I have no idea how to check how many people subscribe to my feed. Really, I can put up a post add some photos and that is about it.

I don’t know exactly where I want to start because my mind is racing. It’s been racing around on the same topic(s) for months. Different scenarios have presented themselves that I’ve been involved in on both ends of the spectrum, disturbances I’ve caused and not caused, respect that I’ve lost and gained. And now everyone and their mother are posting on it in some way or another; Cyber bullying.

If you’d have asked me three years ago if I thought that blogs would posses a form of power outside of cyber space, or a real substantial message, I’d have said no.

In 2004 I started reading Raymi and Dooce, no other blogs. Although Dooce had lost her job and coined the term to be or get Dooced - this did resonate with me because I was fired over an email, I ultimately left the Travel industry shortly after in 2000 - but still, learning what I had from that, it being the only time I have ever been fired [even with my MANY mental disorders] I had little sympathy for her. I know it wasn’t widely known by employees back when she was fired just how much information companies had on you and what you spent your days really doing but I was also one of the early causalities of a firing due to in or out of office use of the internet and what you were doing with it on company time or even off it in her case.

Just under a year later when I had decided that I had to have a blog and I had to own it, that it had to be all mine and all about me I realized just how wrong I was about the rapidly forming culture I was entering.

Blogging gave me a voice I never had before, it gave me a place where I could be me. Where I could hash out all my shit and be a funny fucker in people’s comments. That’s how it all started for me.

I never thought about it, never gave a shit about where I did or didn’t fit into the blogging circles, the blogging world. I’ve always been a link whore but it doesn’t matter in the end, my links have never reflected my readership. There are Vancouver bloggers linked here that refuse to return my link yet have almost every other known blogger in the city linked and still comment and read here. Nothing if you really give it some thought makes a lot of sense in the blogging community whether in or out of Vancouver. The technology that allows for so many advancements within the Social Media Circles is happening so fast that some personal, old school bloggers like me are being left in the dust. Like anything in life, change never ceases to affect it.

The use of my voice through my depression and rage turned out to spread into the States and over a couple of continents and I did feel that I fit in those circles and still do and those are the readers that have essentially kept this site here. But that leaves the question am I really blogging for myself? I know that I started to; I know that I do again today. I know that when I tried to find a place to fit in here in Vancouver that I learned that all I had feared was true and then some, and yet I still got lost in it along the way. And about that…

You’d think that I would have learned my lesson the first time. You know, when I dragged my immediate family over the coals and my Mom had a breakdown and the people who were to become my in-laws probably wanted to hit the streets in protest of our marriage yet kept it to begging Adam not to marry me over lunch.

The only thing I look back on there and really wonder about is that some of the people who still wanted to get to know me off the blog were well aware of all of those rage filled posts, knew I was unstable, volatile, not happy, yet all chose to get to know me anyway this was long before my archive categories randomized and now you gotta search for the really nasty stuff, cept’ all the stuff about my in-laws is gone ‘cause I want a relationship with my SILS and am slowly working on building them. We may never paint each others toe nails but I love and respect them a lot.

When certain people think back I wonder what they think their real motives where, if any, for meeting me.

I look back over the last few months, from about a week maybe two before I was hospitalized and back to when the things I posted may have worked, but were not the right way to deal with my families’ issues and I do cringe. I cringe more over the stuff written during my breakdown because although I wasn’t in my right mind I still had to take responsibility for every word that came across the screens whether I meant it or not. And I haven’t read that shit back over, I can’t.

It saddens me deeply that I’ve been bullied to the point that I’ve tried to take my life more than once and that I’ve bullied to the point that energy projected out at me recently on two separate but very close occasions pierced my heart in a way so painful that I had to re-evaluate almost everything all over again. But in that re-evaluation I also can’t help but remember that I have never slandered anyone in the blogesphere by name, unlike someone who slandered myself and my husband on her blog by name numerous times spewing extremely personal lies and attacking truths about myself and my family that were too personal at the time to blog about, to the point that if this person didn’t already have enough to worry about we’d have charged her ass. And not ONE of the people who I called out in my post who where supposed to be our friends [at the time] stood up for us. In fact some shocked me in saying they had ‘saved her emails in case I needed them’ well AFTER the fact. Maybe I wouldn’t have flipped quite as bad if I’d have known certain things WAY earlier like that for one would have counted as SUPPORT. No one I hung with through blogging at that time let me talk about what we’d been through, no one asked. Behind my back on the other hand…. oh I won’t even get into it. I was SO blind.

No matter what I wrote, these aren’t bad people; they just disappointed me greatly, just as ultimately I’m pretty sure I more than disappointed them. But I think here is also the perfect place to mention that unless you live in Vancouver or are associated with a particular group outside of the city and participate in a very small and fastidious part of the blogging scene, no one even knew who I was talking about, yes it was still cruel and hurtful but in the end I’ve had more people ask me who it was about than anything.

Sure, word got around and that has been interesting to watch, people playing both sides, some people not talking to me anymore, some people starting to talk to me because of it, some people pretending they aren’t talking to me when they really are and thinking I don’t know they are pretending. And unless you are in a pretty close circle of mine I haven’t answered the question of who it was about with a particularly straight answer.

Depression is not an excuse, it is a fact. During the calling out of what I saw as a lot of fake bullshit going on in parts of the local the blogosphere - that I became a part of and ultimately wanted know part of - coinciding with lots of other shit and as bad luck would have it I had a breakdown and made a grand bullying exit from the immediate scene. Of course I have taken heat and I’ve been granted minimal forgiveness aside from my links not being removed from blogs that I thought would instantly remove me. Yes, I greatly appreciate that and it has NOT gone unnoticed.

But the fact remains; I targeted my rage at some of the wrong people and my inability to see straight, think straight, do anything straight has cost me greatly and anyone who thinks it hasn’t needs their head checked, I get mine checked once a week. Each time I have a full break I learn about myself. Someone wrote to me while I was still pretty much in the middle of the madness that they’d had an ex-girlfriend who suffered from depression and SHE’D had control over her actions and emotions. WELL GOOD FOR FUCKING HER! Everyone is different and she obviously didn’t suffer to the extent I do. The close mindedness of even those who have experience with depressed people still floors me. How you can offer up forgiveness to someone who does really stupid and idiotic things related to their depression and not another is beyond me. OH right the person I’m referring to here at this very minute is famous, oops. I have never been good with double standards just contradictions.

I think there is a fine line between telling the truth on your blog and cyber bullying, I’ve definitely crossed that line a time or two and hurt people, I have said I’m sorry and all I can really do is not do it again and the next time I have a breakdown I am seriously going to unplug the computer completely if I’m in attack mode. It has been talked about in session and with Adam, there are new plans in place to help aid in destruction control when my mind is fucking with me and telling me to kill myself because everyone hates me anyway …. You live like that day in and day out for any number of days and let’s see if you fuck up here and there.

I am greatly ashamed of all the bullying I have ever taken part in, on and offline. To me there plainly is no excuse for someone who suffered like I did from as young as I can remember in the hands of relentless bullies to project it back out onto other people but I am long done beating myself up over it, I have enough scars and will never stop learning from them.

When I get sick I am a pretty big baby combine that with seasonal allergies and night time barfing and things have been fantastic!

Boooo last Friday I had to cancel therapy re: being sick, no girl time re: being sick and I had only been looking forward to that for WEEKS! Adam is sick as well so we’ve been passing this shit back and forth and at first I wasn’t snotty I just felt EXTRA balloon migraine head with MILD head cold, NOW I’m getting full head cold and snotty. YAY! I’ve been having really awesome night sweats as well and I haven’t been forgetting to take my crazy people tits and so therefore I can not pin point a reason other than being SICK.

In other news, The Greeper has a new place that she likes to sleep. Pretty exciting shit eh? I know, I thought so too until it turned out she’s serious and has taken over half the spot I sleep in. She has of course had other phases, other places she goes back to. The fashion box, the tent, I’m sure she will get bored of sleeping right below BUT almost ON my pillow soon.

Our camera is not back from being fixed yet so we had to buy a back up one. We couldn’t delay the monkeys any more due to lack of photos, but at the same time we HAVE to be able to take photos of our product. This issue of course led us into a discussion of other things that could happen to slow us down, when we are just about done with a lot of the start up necessities and can now work on picking up our production pace. I mentioned that there would come a time that we’d make a monkey, look at it, hate it or it would not meet our quality standards and we’d have to start over. Really, did I say that out loud? Because it happened the monkey after I said it! YAY! We have informed the buyer, I figure honesty is best, there is only two of us and both of us had a hand in it sucking so we’ve had to start over. Now we have a physically challenged monkey in our apartment, at least Dr. Vegas finally has a monkey that isn’t going anywhere to play with mostly because it is blind and can’t speak. Once that red thread goes on for the mouth the suckers don’t shut up. Banana this, poo in your face that.

My Dad is supposed to be dropping two boxes of stuff off to Adam and I on Saturday, some of my stuff, some stuff they are giving us, some stuff that has been in the family forever that I am taking because I’m the last member of our family and I don’t want it leaving the family till I die I guess. Small problem though, my Dad and I got into one of our infamous fights today. Oh how I love them. Always in regards to the exact same issue(s) hidden by topics seemingly cloaked in difference that spread years, weeks, months some just days - we some how manage to piss each other off regularly even when not in big fights. My mom is going to be all upset now and that’ll be my entire fault too, I’m sure. Super awesome, we both resort to behavior befitting that of two year olds and just generally spin in circles for a while. Fun times. We have worked hard on things as a family but my Dad and I, man we’ll just always scrap, sadly that is just how we are, we can’t seem to communicate in any sort of healthy way. Wonder how many more phases this move to Bali holds in store for us.

Just finished my fifth book of the year leaving me three behind my minimum quota for 2008, I will get off my ass and post on them soon. This year has been good so far aside from The Time Travelers Wife. EWWWW.

The last key piece of bringing something around full circle, sometimes it isn’t even so much of an epiphany as it is a readiness within me to receive, process and action the information.

The last year maybe two, you lose track of time when you’ve been going for so long, of my therapy has been heavily concentrated on learning how to breathe properly, getting in touch with my inner body feeling the breath as it enters the exact cavity I aim it into. I also took some Pilates to get in touch with my core with secondary hopes of being able to run competitively against MYSELF again. I have disks on breathing I have paper work on it, we talk about it in session all the time, it is pretty mind boggling that breathing properly can be hard. That it takes specific exercises to learn how. I am wound so tight that breathing properly is extremely hard for me and using it to unlock my body is a long and arduous process.

Gus is getting old, she is getting bitchier. Her personality mirrors mine pretty closely, fourteen years together is a long time.

At the beginning of the year as a resolution type thing whenever Gus would start acting up and taking it past play fighting to OUCH DON’T BITE ME, instead of getting all super mad and OUCH DON’T BITE ME I would calmly look at her at eye level and repeat while petting her “this is the year of a calm Gus, I will not engage you”. Adam probably thought I’d keep at it for a day. But I’m still at it because without even knowing it I made a natural progression from learning how to breathe and calm myself to also changing my energy.

The thing is I have always been well aware of the energy I put out into the world and it has for the most part always been negative I just did not give a shit I really didn’t.

I don’t pay for therapy, if I’m not working, if I’m not making progress EVEN if I relapse here and there he has no reason to expend the positive energy it takes to help me, especially when there have been months at a time when talking to me is like talking to a brick wall, where I’ve spewed nothing but negative energy and he must have been frustrated as shit but he always waits me out.

There are ways that I practice learning that I made a huge part of my life before therapy, I’ve always been able to accept the reasons why people come in and out of my life, I call them good teachers and bad teachers, but if you were a bad teacher for me it in no way means I think you are a bad person, it just means I learned a lesson from you that came from a negative situation. I feel this helped me when I was single and dating, I always knew that what I was putting out was what I was getting back, I remember even buying He isn’t that into You for a friend. You can’t put out sexual sexual sexual and then get pissed off when a guy doesn’t call you back after he bangs you and you email him and you call him again and you page him and you lose your mind because YOU want a relationship. HELLO, just the other ‘night’ you were pressing those girls up into his face and dropping those panties weren’t you? Hmmm I wonder why he went RUNNING.

Even though I have always been a willing participant when it comes to learning new things and learning form my experiences with other people it never dawned on me that the energy I was putting out there was a major part of what holds me back.

My shrink started to suggest that I watch The Dog Whisperer, he suggested it a lot of times before I did but he had also started to talk about energy and how strong it is and for some reason it all just clicked at that moment that even though I hadn’t and don’t practice it all the time, I realized that I decide what I’m going to put out there and even though I have no control over what I get back, I decide, I live with the consequences of not just my action but my energy. If I leave the house having decided to stand tall and portray positive energy even though I woke up to some horrible song screaming in my ear and washed my face with shampoo and forgot to take my tampon out and am just bitchy but just because I’m bitchy doesn’t mean I have to project it onto everyone around me whether unconsciously or not. The Dog Whisperer comes in because this Cesar dude has tapped into this and is making himself millions it is pretty fascinating and beyond helpful watching him ‘fix’ the owners it is rarely the dog that needs the ‘real’ help. I know there are lots of ways to learn how to redirect your energy and how to have it help you in achieving a more positive lifestyle this just happened to work for me. I talk about animals a lot in therapy, I guess the Doc saw an in, who knows but I watch the show a lot mainly because it reminds me to practice the projecting. And what a coincidence that I had already started to practice trying to change my energy towards my cat and didn’t even realize it was going to help me in my day to day life.

The most rewarding thing about learning how to control and direct your energy is that it contains instant gratification. It doesn’t take as much work as learning how to breathe into all of the separate areas of your upper body and deeeeeep deeeeep down into my diaphragm all it takes is deciding to project positive thoughts. I don’t always decide to, but the thing is I never ever used to even think about it, I had no awareness at all for what was going on around me and how my energy was affecting other people. And I don’t know much but I do know I’m happier, not all the time but when I concentrate on it and make a point of watching the show and when I don’t make snotty comments about whoever or whatever, I know it makes me feel good about myself. Almost grown up or something.

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I do not in any way shape or form want to hurt my mother’s feelings. Although this is an extremely exciting time for my parents this is also a hard and sensitive time for my mother and I do not want her taking anything personal but I have feelings and they aren’t negative they are just feelings or I guess some are negative but I’m trying to be as positive as possible.

As I mentioned a while back, my parents have retired early, they are moving to Bali.

ASIA. From PRINCE GEORGE.

PRO: they are flying us to Bali once a year. Paid.

CON: THEY ARE MOVING TO ASIA.

My mother made it clear that IF Adam and I were having children they would NOT be going that far away. The fact of the matter is, and I’ve been given permission to announce it, Adam is having a vasectomy. He is also going to blog his whole experience, as most who read here are aware he has always done guest posts, this will be his first series.

Shortly before it was confirmed that my parents were in fact moving to Bali, I also found out that a woman who is more like the sibling I’ve never had, Rhonda, was moving to Ontario. She has since left because her and her man now own this here Edgewater Motel. Of course again this is a pro, I’m extremely happy for her, proud, every feeling you can have for someone you love so much. But con, she isn’t here anymore. I have known her since I was 13 years old. We’ve never actually lived in the same town or city at the same time but we have always been in the same province and always had regular visits or at least been in touch. Our friendship is one that is so close that I feel a complete calmness [or as close to calm as I get] and one hundred percent of every single part of me is present and Adam can see this other more of ME that exists but is buried come to the surface and sometimes it sustains me for weeks after she leaves. Almost all of my positive memories from my adolescence involve her, almost every thing ‘bad’ I did as a teen involved her which made it twice as fun. Having her at our wedding meant the world to me. Having her visit with Adam and I in our brown shoe box and such visits like last April when we BLEW UP STEVE are beyond wicked memories and watching her and Adam bond and seeing how well they took to each other made me happy because that would have been bad like Gus not liking Adam had it have gone the other way, cept’ Rhonda probably wouldn’t have made it a point to jump on Adam’s balls just to get the point across. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that I have gone through where Rhonda has not been there for me from beginning to end. GOOD LUCK DUDE!

Now I’d best start at the beginning. I never said anything at the time but both of these events although both wonderful in their own right did play a part in my recent breakdown. I’ve played the avoidance card with them both to the point that I just the session before last started to talk about my ‘feelings’ in regards to both. I was holding back all emotion because it isn’t about me and I had enough issues already going on to mask some of the real pain, it is about my parents and their fantastic retirement and Rhonda and her new business endeavor and both parties are flying us in to visit so I figured that I wasn’t allowed to be upset. But I was and as we’ve seen when I hold things in the outcomes are never good. There is no question that in the back ground of some of my misdirected rage was a shadow where these two bits of heavy news were hiding in plain view.

I was afraid if I came out and said “I’m really fucking upset that my parents are moving to Bali” that I would just get back something to the effect of “you are almost 31 and they are flying you both in PAID once a year get the fuck over it.”

I didn’t get that from my shrink, he looked at me with puzzlement and said “No, that is a loss.”

We had discussed briefly after my breakdown that it got lumped in with all the shit that had built up and that the moves wouldn’t be easy but we moved on to what was happening RIGHT THEN and I hadn’t given him that many details. Because some times stupid meaningless shit is easier to have a breakdown over than real life shit that actually matters.

What we know: I’m an only child, I’m almost 31, I’m married, and I’m not having children.

When I moved out here in 1996 I had a really hard time when my parents sent me a massive box containing almost everything I had ever owned and had left in Terrace, at 19 I had no idea that a lot of that stuff was going to have meaning to me now in my thirties and some really important stuff is gone and whether it be materialistic stuff like my old camp fire blanket or fifty plus paper back books I don’t miss at all, I’ve still at times been upset and they know it, that they sent it ALL out to me. I was upset for one because when I would go home to Terrace it was like I had never even lived there and secondly because I moved six times between 1996 and 2000, I simply could NOT hold on to it all.

When my parents moved to Prince George it was even worse, now they were in a town or I guess it has enough people it is considered a city that I had never lived in and didn’t care for, I had spent a lot of time there as a kid and it smells gross and is butt fuck ugly. Granted they did live in the middle of no where taking it back to our Smithers roots of bush living and owning horses and all the fun stuff I missed when we lived in the town of Terrace instead of in the sticks. But like anything in life I got over it, came to love going to Prince George and building stuff with my dad and doing fire wood, my parents making fun of my need to turn the ‘electric’ heat on in the room that I would sleep in. It is hard to believe that everything is sold and/or gone now, even the pets.

To me it is about ROOTS and I feel like I am losing them. I don’t really give a shit if I sound like a baby. This upcoming move is hard for me to deal with. I did not grow up in close ‘healthy’ relationships with my parents. My father and I were very very close, but it was NOT healthy back then. Now we are still very very close and it is healthier and we work on it. My mother and I were not close when I was a child and are working on building a relationship now that I am an adult. My parents and I have worked incredibly hard to deal with our pasts. But there are feelings that remain that I can’t do anything about, there is nothing that can be done to change them, there is no real ‘getting over it’ there is dealing with it which I do and in dealing with that means that sometimes I get upset about it. IT being, that I never had a say in moving to British Columbia, I was born in Ontario and my entire family except one Aunt who stole from my husband’s boss at our wedding live in Ontario. I talk to one of my cousins over MSN and one of my other cousins is on my Facebook but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken. My favourite Aunt died on September 14, 2001 after an amazingly courageous fight with colon cancer. My contact with the family in the east has always been extremely minimal for reasons that would need a whole new post and then some. As a kid I visited once or twice on unaccompanied minor tickets and we went back as a family in 1994 which was a royal fucking mess and I went back alone to see my Aunt for Christmas 2000, but of course pissed off the rest of the family because I only saw my Aunt. Umm she was dying get over it.

A feeling of loneliness even with Adam right next to me is rearing its ugly head. My in-laws are starting to warm to me a little but it is hard because building a relationship has not been easy and it dates back to when Adam and I met. So yes I’m feeling a tad sorry for myself I don’t have any siblings to turn to, I don’t have what I originally dreamed would be awesomely close relationships with my SILS because I was never socialized properly and it fucks with me in a major way in my adult life. As if that isn’t obvious to people who know me mind you. I have nothing left in the north. I have a bunch of season’s passes for the Smithers and Terrace Ski Hills and I WILL ski in Smithers again some day but the north will just feel different now. How long will it take until I’m just another brain washed city folk knowing nothing of the problems the government ignores in the north, how long will it be until I don’t even know about the pine beetles any more until the north burns down and I see it on TV because realistically I have to move on?

Our parents retire and their lives move on without us, and I’m not going to have a baby just to keep them close. In some ways we will probably talk more. Living in the sticks they are on DIAL UP! In Bali they will FINALLY have high speed; they bought us a web cam. THANK YOU! I despise the phone but I’m always on line so Skype will become my new best friend not to mention we should be able to have book club meetings via web cam. I’m trying to just let it go and not think about it but it is so far away if something seriously serious happens it is not just a ten hour drive or fifty-eight minute flight. I’m just worried and nervous and scared and excited all at the very same time and it is all very confusing. It is no secret I don’t have a lot of close friends RE: FUCK UP MOST FRIENDSHIPS BECAUSE I’M CRAZY. Oops am not supposed to call myself crazy. I will punch myself in the arm. There, ouch.

I’m working on it but this is tough, really tough. I’m seeing them in May then probably really quick in September and then that is it until we go to Bali.

So here, I’ll close with the positive, once a year we will fly to Indonesia. In Bali a driver will pick us up because driving there if you are not a native is apparently insane and only those with a death wish would do it. We will be taken to the house or villa I think it is considered a villa, it is ocean front, with pool and pool ‘area’, two storey house, master bedroom up stairs with king bed with wrap around the house patio and doors out onto it from bedroom and main room, lower floor with TWO bedrooms both with queen size beds and doors that open right onto the pool ‘area’. There is much much more but I’ll save it for when we go. A few lucky couples and friends and SILS have already been extended invites to join us after we go alone the first time of course, there is potential for this to end up having many many positives once I get over that they are in ASIA.

It is shocking to me how quickly although not and never quick enough I can go from blinding breakdown strength rage to clarity and oh shit.

I have had a few pretty serious episodes with my depression in the last few years for sure, but Adam had never been a party to anything that intense before being that the last time I lost it even close to that bad was in 2003, it was the year I met Adam but I was already a few months into psychotherapy. I did not end up in the hospital though, I did give in to my rage to the point an ex boyfriend could have charged me with god only knows what, while out of my right mind, I destroyed with him lying on the couch RIGHT next to me trying to sleep at least three beer bottles, two glasses and a wine bottle that I had to smash into the floor a lot of times to even get it to break, it left a deep groove in the floor. My apartment floor was a sheet of glass and there was red wine on the ceiling. The worst that thankfully came of it was a nasty cut to one of my feet. But the amount of injury that random glass flying around could have caused leaves me feeling lucky to say the very least, at the time it scared the living shit out of me; I scared the shit out of myself. Our relationship did end shortly after that and I don’t know if it was because he had known me for more than three years at the time or if it was mutual friends or if he is just forgiving but he did forgive me for that because we are still friends today.

There are people I hurt in this breakdown that I’m really sorry I’ve hurt and one day hope to make amends with and others that to be honest I’m just not really that sorry and I’m not losing any sleep over it, I may have handled getting my message across wrong but it has been received now and forgive me but I’m concentrating on getting myself better right now and I will deal with what I feel needs dealing with when I’m ready, if at all, I may simply let it go and learn the lessons I’m supposed to and call it a day. I can’t have breakdowns like that around and hurt people I’ve only known in person for just over a year or less and expect them to forgive me like people who have known me for years may or may have in the past for similar or worse behavior. It is hard to ignore how people expect me to react to things when this episode is over and I’m trying to move on but I have to force myself to not care and block out negative energy.

I know and believe in my own self worth and that it is worth the little bit extra it takes to get into my inner circle but I also know that because of how unpredictable I can be that some people just don’t want to deal with that.

I still need to analyze how and why I allowed myself to get so lost so far gone, yes it happens, sure it happens but looking back at when the shit storm started last August it really was just a matter of time until I cracked, I just firmly believed that my days of such destructive behavior were over. But I think being back in tune with myself and now being aware of the fact that I don’t have my temper as in check as I’d like it and that I am way way too passive aggressive are hard lessons learned and are things I’m going to work on.

There are a lot of things I need to do right now to try and prevent another rage type breakdown. It feels so bad while it is happening and looking back on it is hard to even picture or feel to imagine I could be that destructive. It doesn’t make me happy. That is why I say I’m back to regular old depressed me because as is well known I’m too hard on myself and recovery is more difficult than I’d like it but I really believed I had come far enough and worked hard enough not to get myself into any of the situations that I blew myself out of.

Some people see me as someone that there is always something wrong with and maybe they are right, but at least I work on myself, at least I try and I never asked to suffer from depression, I never asked to have to battle suicidal thoughts constantly and sure as hell don’t like feeling like I have no control over myself and I rarely say why me? Maybe this is a way of saying that I do forgive myself but I can’t really start to get better until I do.

Last week things started to have a feeling of normalcy around here. FEELS like I’m back to my regular old depressed self. She’s cool, majority of the people I know can handle me in this state. It is no wonder that Tori Amos and her music always bring me so much solace during shit times, after I finish reading The Last Days of Socrates, Plato I am going to read Tori Amos Piece by Piece, Tori Amos and Ann Powers. I picked up a hard cover on blow out for five dollars. I can’t even tell you how happy finding hard cover books I want for five dollars in perfect shape makes me. And it is still an early enough printing that the book itself is still grooved like honeycomb.

I went out on Thursday for a friend’s birthday and I bowled! No photos though, Adam’s pictures thankfully did not turn out. Thank you very much to my Bowl for Big Brothers sponsors: readers and friends of Gus Greeper put me in second place behind Tod Maffin for most amount raised, you all helped me raise $296.00 respectfully and I greatly appreciate it!

We had to leave said birthday celebrations early because my energy level was beyond low and although dinner was awesome it wasn’t enough to keep me energized very long and also with all the great people to talk with I faded out pretty fast. At dinner it was OFFICIALLY decided that I am no longer allowed at any parties without a sippy cup because I am a Hand Talker Extraordinaire aka spilly drinker. This came about only after Kimli had already spilled a full glass of water onto Adam’s crotch [hehe that was so funny] and my cat like reflexes had caught at least four or five ‘almost spills’ from my flailing talker hands, hence past parties came up where really I haven’t necessarily spilt anything, but I did almost break or did break my toe, so we came to a general consensus. I want an extremely childish one with a neck strap on it etc. It will debut at Netchick’s House Warming. Hopefully I will have gained some weight back by then and not hate cameras.

My therapist mentioned on Friday that he didn’t think I was any smaller than I had been back in 2003 when I started to see him, I was a serious wreck back then, so I had to explain to him that yes he was right it was simply the lack of muscle mass that was making it so obvious because in 2003 I was still in stellar shape.

I have taken my nerd-dum to new heights and am now sporting FLARE on my purse. This is a very out of the box thing for me to do so we will see how long it lasts. I do enjoy the extra feelings of nerdiness it gives me though.

Last week was also a killer week for mail and I’m going to show it off!

Jennie Roth sent me these seriously kick ass slippers. I’m going to hang them above my makeshift monkey making area, these mailed before I had my not so fun break down and therefore arrived just in time to help cheer me up! Thanks again Jennie me lovez them.

I normally do not post any of my correspondence because there are many many people I have met online not to mention my ‘in person’ friends - I LOVE TO SEND AND RECEIVE MAIL - I send mail to and they send me mail. This card was too cute not to post to my flickr because it made my day and made me laugh laugh laugh and then laugh some more.

And I was also in complete shock when the post woman left a package at my door which I opened to find this fantastic painting of myself to myself from the seriously awesome Tiana aka Sassy Red Head, the original photo is here.

My friends and their thoughtfulness never ever cease to amaze me. Thanks again so much!