DEPRESSION

long time...  lots to catch up on.
for now...

depression sucks the soul out of my life
I often don't notice I am depressed until I realize I haven't showered in 5 days
but I still don't shower
it will make me feel better and I don't deserve to feel better
Or, by feeling better I will try to do things and just fail again as usual
so, it's best to just lay in bed where I feel safe and warm and can sleep
maybe if I sleep long enough I will never wake up
and I can sleep forever and dream forever

it used to be that I cried and knew what made me depressed and sad
I don't know now what it is really
it's not one thing and I can't cry
if I cried I'd feel just as bad
maybe screaming would help

I am in a prison of my own making
I grew up in a prison so I feel safer in one
I feel secluded from the world and isolated from outsiders
I was trapped then so now I trap myself
with excuses and aches and worthlessness
I could walk out the door at any moment and escape
but I don't
I could... if I wanted to
but, even though it's miserable here, it's familiar
outside is strange and crowded and scary
outside is where people go to be successful
the only thing I have ever been successful at is being a gigantic failure

depression. sucks.

Today's Haikus

Dying your hair red

In the shower looks like you

Slaughtered someone there

_________________________

watching kittens feed

on mothers milk with blind eyes

is more than I am

_________________________

the purpose of life
is not to "love" an idol
but simply to love

Dead kitten lying
On top of a dead kitten
Only two survive

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the amputated
tiny foot defines how life
is delicate and...

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always trying to
save someone; to mother them
I just smother me

I'm on a haiku rampage!

now no energy,
eyelids drift, body sinks in
I want chocolate

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Expectations are

Expected. Malignant  choice.

Pressured acceptance.

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Capitalistic thought

Attaches to consciousness

Breeds greedy, blind youth

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The ignorant vote

Against their self interests

Free America

I have two haiku for you...

subway old man drowned
in filth and luggage picks shit
from bellybutton


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wind blows rain soaked clothes
umbrella skeletons now
litter river streets

stiffened muscle numb

burning aches and random shocks

I miss my real breast

to sleep at midnight
tired, oh so tired, snug in bed
slept fourteen hours. smile.

sometimes I think I
can go forward and move on
sometimes I just hurt

forgot word, lost thing
burned peppers in the oven
stupid chemobrain

I've been writing little haikus lately.

outside walking through
heat scorched streets cluttered amongst
brick and horn and breeze

My Mom’s Ridiculous Sayings. Part 1

When I was a kid my mom used to put me to bed by saying, “Good-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite”... Bed bugs?  I think this is what started my insomnia.

I would lie awake imagining all sorts of possible scenarios that included a wide variety of mattresses turning into bugs, much like the asshole typewriters of William S. Burroughs, and, sometimes even a chair or sofa cushion style bug. They all had sharp, gnashing teeth and were on the hunt for little girls like me.

Of course, I also imagined actual bugs, the thought of which was far more terrifying than a mattress that turned into a bug, mostly because they were small and unseen in the dark. At least if my mattress became a giant, snapping monster bug it would wake me up! My imaginings took me to bugs of all sizes and shapes, with hidden little teethies that packed a big punch. Some crawled slowly on me as I slept, some traveled in giant packs or swarms and smothered me in my sleep; some swarms covered me like a blanket and held me down as I wriggled to get free. The bugs would bite me all over with their Drauculian teeth, or burrow under my skin and bite me from the inside like that internal itch on your kidney or rib cage that you can never reach but never stops itching.

All night I would spend imagining the horrors of bugs lining up to take a bite out of me, and what the results might be when they did. And, usually somewhere in my terror of awakeness that turned into nightmares of bugs or of becoming a bug myself, or of being bitten by my mattress, I would hear a voice and feel a warmth and realize, in my struggling, aching exhaustion, that my mother was now saying “Rise and shine!” or “Good morning, merry sunshine!”, which I thought was a nickname for me: Mary Sunshine, and I took it as sarcasm since, after the night I’d just had, I was far less than sunny…

In a chair with no arms

I sit down and feel like I may fall off. In either direction. Land on the floor unable to get up.
I can't lean when I'm tired. I have nothing to hold onto.
But I hold on. I keep reaching out. I kept reaching out...

You. You were always one step ahead of me. Or five steps behind.
Never in sync. Never aligned. Wobbly chair. Even a matchbook under the leg couldn't fix this one.
Unstable. Insecure. Unprotected. If I fell you'd fall with me...?

I am the adirondack. Fall back and I will hold you forever. You can't fall out.
Did you ever notice? Did you ever try to sit down? You...
You were always the chair with no arms. Letting go of me like I was no one you liked.

2013 MF

So... I have been neglecting my blog. Not sure anyone reads it anyway.
The plays... Oh, fuck me, the plays... I'm procrastinating. I'm not good with success; it's too foreign to me.
But here is where I am:

Pretty Little Pincushions is the first play, but really they can be in any order as they should (in theory) stand on their own. It focuses on Maddie, my central character, as she traffics through the chaos of chemo and loneliness.

The Lion and the Airplane is the second, and I know it can stand alone, although it needs more work. It focuses on Maddie visiting her family after chemo, & how they treat her if she's merely gotten a short hair cut. The impact of her near death & ENORMOUS struggle is only hers, and she has to learn to navigate within her already dysfunctional, and recently unglued, family as this new person that even she has not met yet.

The Imp of the Perverse is the final play, but, again, could stand alone (I hope!), and even go first if you want to Tarrantino the whole thing. In Imp Maddie, making attempts to find someone to latch onto, or someone to save her from herself, has to discover, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, that home & love & what she really wants is and always been inside of her the whole time... Or, at least that is what I'm aiming for her to discover, but I'm still writing.

The entire thing is called The Afterlife Trilogy or Afterlife Plays. I hope to get back to writing very soon. I'm not sure if I took a break out of fear, out of laziness, or because I needed to discover things for myself before my alter-ego could. Plus, (and this is my big excuse) it's very difficult to get any writing done when the lady in the apartment below me is constantly screaming at someone.

So, there's that. My update on my progress. If you can even call it that. I'll try to write more soon, probably about my shitty brothers. I need to get that out of my head, so writing it down may truly help. We shall see...
Until next time
M

A woman in an online group posted that she was still feeling bad, as in mentally and this is my response. I felt it might translate to others. It really is why I have chosen to focus my plays more on the afterlife of cancer. It seems like less covered terrain.  

 I had a major mental & emotional collapse in the year after ACT, during Herceptin. It's common. I've heard others say they get depressed & anxious. I will admit that I thought about suicide. I had a great therapist at Sloan-Kettering who got me into a program to deal with everything that came up during chemo/cancer. It turns out that having a terrible childhood and then getting cancer as an adult don't go well together. So it did allow me to deal with my shit. I'm also on Lexapro & Klonipin. And I'm on disability for the PTSD & other things. I agree about the "blinders" idea. It's so overwhelming that we can only look at a piece of our experience or just the part we are in, but when it ends we look back at the giant bomb that destroyed a city, and we think 'oh shit, that happened to ME!' My therapist said that most people go through life taking certain things for granted, like the daily risks of life- driving, walking across a street, etc- when faced with death we are suddenly seeing the other side of a coin that we never really knew had another side. And it's hard to unsee that. I hope that translates. I send you hugs & highly recommend a therapist twice a week at least, and art therapy- it's changed my life! I'm still not where I want to be but I am far better at accepting that this is where I am now, and that is okay.