Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, a Concept Map:
Zack said, “No offense, Sarah, but that looks insane.”
I told him, “I know. It’s supposed to look like that. They have us do it this way in hopes of making us realize how connected everything is.”
He said, “I don’t even see how they are going to read that. There are lines everywhere.”
“What’s even more surprising,” I said, “is that it’s a pretty accurate depiction of what’s happening in my head.”
Friday morning, I slammed my left hand in our sliding shower door. It bruised me, cut my first finger and ripped the pad of my middle finger apart, creating a huge ‘flapper.’ It was 5:45 in the morning, and it hurt so damn bad that I couldn’t get myself to function well enough to bandage my own finger. I had to drag Zack out of bed at 5:45 to bandage me up so I could go to the hospital for my clinical rotation. On the Infectious Disease floor. With my brand-new open wounds.
When I got to the hospital my clinical instructor pulled apart my bandaids and surveyed the damage. She told me that I was going to need to splint it so the wound wouldn’t keep flapping open. And she also told me that I was going to need a hell of a lot more than just a bandaid on there to protect my finger. I asked her if she had any ideas, and she was like, yeah. I think we can figure something out.
Turns out, all you need to splint your fingers and protect yourself against an entire day of wet, disease-filled bandaids is two fingers from a non-latex glove and some tape. A lot of tape.
When asked recently what Sarah appreciates about me, she replied only by making the following wind sound:
It immediately conjured images in my mind of the barren tundra/salt flats. Utter nothingness. Now I’m depressed, too.*
She later clarified that she simply meant I was even-keeled. I’m all better.
*Lest any of you think I’m making fun of Sarah’s emotional state, this post was her idea. I know some of you haters gotta hate, but cut a guy some slack.
We’ve been dreading this week since the first of the semester. Three tests, 2 days in the hospital with clinicals, and what seems like hundreds of assignments due. All in the same week. Since the day we got our schedules, we’ve dreaded this week, particularly today. October 28th was a day that we didn’t dare to even whisper, lest it become more real.
It looks like we all might survive. But the week’s not over yet. Until it ends, you can find me here. Nose buried in a book, highlighter in hand, trying to find a way to stretch minutes into hours so I can find a way to fit it all in.
Today I broke my car’s brake light when I fumbled the trash cans while taking them to the curb. That was before 8 o’clock this morning. The day only got better (and by better, I mean WENT STEADILY DOWNHILL) from there.
WHO WRECKS THEIR OWN BRAKE LIGHT WITH A TRRRAAASSSHHHH CCAAANN?
I started taking anti-depressants two weeks ago. It takes about three weeks for this particular brand of medication to take full effect, so technically, it’s not even working all the way, yet. Trick is, I feel better. Like, all the way better. Allow me to explain.
I started feeling better on day 5. Incidentally, I also started my period on day 5. I woke up that morning and got out of bed at 8:00. It wasn’t a school day. I think it was a Saturday, in fact. I’d been sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day for the last month, so the fact that I was out of bed at 8:00 a.m. was a really big deal. The fact that I was out of bed that early and that I was all sunshine-and-roses and I’d just started my period–that was an even bigger deal.
By the end of the day, I’d convinced myself that I was only sad because I was premenstrual and that I wasn’t actually depressed at all. Okay, maybe I was depressed, but I wasn’t the kind of depressed that needs medication. It was mild depression, at best. But major depressive episode? Hardly. I was just busy and a little sad and about to start my period and that’s why everything was so terrible!
Then I realized, if you start antidepressants because “your period” threw you into such a funk that you scheduled a crisis appointment with your therapist, girl, you NEED to be on those meds. Needless to say, I stayed on the meds. The next class day, I talked with my psychiatric nursing professor about the medication action timeframe and she explained it a little more fully to me. She said that even though it takes 3 weeks for the medication to have it’s FULL effect, it starts working at about day 4 or 5 to get you out of “The Pit.” That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was just out of the pit.
(Then, another ton of bricks. THIS, I thought to myself, IS WHY PEOPLE QUIT TAKING THEIR DEPRESSION MEDS. Because all of the sudden when you’re out of the pit, you’re like Dude. I am so totally okay. I don’t need these antidepressants because I am ffffiinnneee. It’s all sunshine and bluebirds and fields of wildflowers when you’re on these things!)
But just because I’m happier on this antidepressant doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out. In fact, I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow to switch medications.
I remember telling a friend of mine that if Day 5 felt THIS good, I was almost scared about how much better I was going to feel at week 3. Was I going to be bouncing down the street instead of walking? I doubted that I was even going to be able to recognize things like sadness and depression when the medication had built itself up to ‘full-blast’ in my system.
Now that I’m closer to ‘full-blast,’ I can see that I was right. By the time week 2 finished, the medication had redoubled my defenses against sadness to the point that I can’t cry anymore. And I’m not crying, not because I don’t have anything to cry about, but because I just don’t seem to be able to. I’ve had a few major moments in the last week that would have normally made me cry. I got into a fight with Zack. I didn’t cry through a whole counseling session (for the first time in my life). I found out that Rachel’s brain tumor was cancerous. A lovely couple from the camp where we used to work delivered their first daughter only to watch her pass away 72 hours later. I can acknowledge a sadness in my head about these situations, but I can’t feel it–not like I would normally feel it.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong for me to be happy. People seem to be concerned that I’m afraid to let myself be happy, and that’s not it. I’m just saying that it’s wrong for me to not feel. I know there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ when it comes to how much we feel, but I do know that normal for me is more than I am feeling right now. I want to be able to cry when I have a fight with Zack and when Rachel has to have chemo and when friends suffer the lost of a child. I have always strongly preferred to be intimate with life’s cycles of emotions, and right now I feel blunted. I feel like blunting my emotions takes away a part of who I am, a core piece of my identity. I love that I feel everything. I love that about myself. And in this time in my life when I’m struggling to find and cling to my identity — to these things that I know to be true about myself, and these things that I love about myself — to lose that part of me would be catastrophic. It would take away something from the very core of me, and I’m not willing to let that go.
I am finding myself spending more and more time online these days looking at websites related to menswear. This is silly for more than one reason. I am not a man, first of all. Being not a man means that I am not exactly the target audience* for menswear websites. Secondly, I am married to a man who is not a menswear kind of a guy. I am married to the kind of guy who finds a pair of shorts that he likes at a store, then buys three of them. Three of the exact same ones. Because hey, if it works, it works, right? He’s a practical man, that’s for sure.
First, I fell in love with Put This On|A Web Series About Dressing Like A Grownup
My favorite parts are the “Rudiments” clips (skip to 4:30 to go straight there), where they teach men basic lessons about fashion like, match your belt to your shoes. They are brilliant.
( Here’s a post featuring a video of a SF Giant closer, Brian Wilson, who, together with his team, will taste the bitter taste of defeat within the next seven games. Nevertheless, the interview with Brian Wilson is hilarious. Go Rangers.)
After I let Put This On sneak into my regular website rotation, I started to find myself browsing through tumblrs like that of Fuck Yeah Menswear. This is a site where the author posts pictures of menswear models and other male fashion related items, then makes fun of the reader because he is so much more awesome than we are.
Your shoes aren't more awesome than his. Don't even try to convince him otherwise. Because his pompous arrogance is freaking hilarious.
And then today, I read an article online that sent me over the menswear edge. Mary HK Choi, writing for The Hairpin, authored an article (called “All Dudes Learned How To Dress And It Sucks”) about how all a sudden, every man in New York seems to know how to put together a stellar outfit. And while this might seem like something that is earth-shakingly good, it’s actually quite terrible. Because now, she can no longer decipher gay men from straight men, rich men from poor men, program code writers from famous actors. And it’s driving her mad. This is easily the funniest article I’ve read on the internet in a LONG time. A quote:
I recently became transfixed by a pair of jeans on a lean dude who was 6’4”. The break was such that the hem fell atop his shoe in beautiful, chiaroscuro’d, raw indigo stacks and the whole thing white-knuckled me into wanting to SMELL HIM so badly that I skooched over and did what I never do on mass transit — talk to a
bedbugstranger. I decided (apropos of nothing since I have ZERO idea what dude is who right now) that he was a graphic designer or maybe a tech writer (om nom) and when I discovered he was an actor it was beyond confuselment and then when the google told me that he was engaged to marry someone SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT I was pissed. Yo, when’s the last time I DIDN’T know I was macking above my station? It’s all crazytown.
So what’s my point in all of this? Point #1) Menswear is surprisingly cool on the internet right now and SO AM I, because LOOK, I AM READING ABOUT IT, TOO. And Point #2) I am not making very good use of my time these days, but HEY. AT LEAST I AM GOOD AT SHARING.
*Or am I? Women do all the purchasing in this world, don’t we? So maybe the menswear sites are aimed at me, after all.
#1: My heart is all swelled up with love because I spent the morning with our Austin friends, the evening with Josh and MP, and all day with Zack. It feels good to surround myself with the people that I love. It also feels good to said ‘surrounding’ while imbibing red wine. And I did that all day, too. So, WIN, WIN.
#2: Apparently it didn’t readily jump out to everyone that the reason Zack is making such a goofy face in the picture I posted yesterday was because I was groping him. So have another look, and subsequently, another laugh. Because that picture is the best thing on the planet.
Love you all. Good night.
Zack and I are hitting up a Halloween party at Stocktoc‘s house tonight.
He’s reprising his role as Lt. Dangle; I am a dirty hooker. Together, we’re quite the comedy duo. He’s been arresting me all night long. WINK.
RANGERS WIN! Welcome to the World Series, Rangers!
Proud to be a Texan.
