And Another Year Has Come to Pass…

On New Year’s Eve 2022 I randomly chose three statements from my day-by-day calendar that I had saved because they meant something to me on the original dates when I read them.

I’m doing the same this New Year’s Eve. I’ve randomly chosen three dates from my “You are a Badass” daily calendar that I had put aside on the date I originally read them. I am also posting 2 other quotes that really hit me in the feels this year. It has been a pretty rough year. In September I started by journey to ketamine therapy for treatment resistant depression. I finally had my first treatment session with the ketamine on 12/02/23 and it didn’t go well. I was much more depressed and had strong passive SI (suicidal ideation for those of you not in the mental health biz) after that session, but my care team helped normalize that for me and my second session was truly a breakthrough for me. I met with my personal individual therapist, my ketamine clinician, and my ketamine therapy Guide during the week after my second session and felt 75% less depressed and anxious. I checked in with myself and with all of those listed above to assure myself that I wasn’t experiencing hypomania or mania, which I wasn’t. I was probably feeling what those with a healthy, balanced emotional life and home/work life feel. Regardless, it was the first relief I’ve had from crushing depression and electrically charged anxiety in well over a year.

Today, 12/31/23 I completed my 5^th of an initial schedule of 6 sessions. “Session” being defined as taking the medication and the preparation and integration that happens on session days.

So, back to the task at hand: here are the dates and messages from 3 randomly selected desk calendar pages from 2023!

Saturday/Sunday January 14/15: Your brain is your bitch.

My shrink, who I’ve been seeing since 2004 and with whom I regularly talk about how “the mind” is not necessarily in my corner (or anyone else’s for that matter), when it comes to processing experiences and the accompanying emotions post-experience. The longer we live, the more inaccurate and irrational thoughts and emotional responses we gain/develop over time. It’s classic CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). It takes a lot of work and repetitive practice of learning how to “respond versus react” to whatever experience we encounter during any regular, ho-hum day, much less the “biggies” which is a definition we create for ourselves. A “biggie” for me may be a phone call from my mother when she’s sobbing and whatever she’s saying is something I can’t translate so I let her ramble on for a few minutes before I tell her I can’t understand what she’s saying and end up hanging up the phone.

Thursday June 22: The thrills from the little wins will keep you rolling toward victory.

Despite how much I “know” that big changes result from small, day-to-day changes in habits, the way I think, and how I manage my expectations, it still fucking sucks that the changes I want to see in my life don’t happen when I want them to. I’m a classic addict: I want what I want when I want it. I don’t want to do the day-to-day shit, I want the miracle of change to happen simply because I say so and because I want it. This was a good reminder for me to get back to my “recovery roots”: one day at a time (sometimes it’s 5 minutes or 1 minute at a time). Nevertheless, it’s a good reminder for me to slow down, accept it is what it is, and keep taking those small, regular steps that eventually will be life changing.

Tuesday July 25: You are responsible for what you say and do. You are not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it.

Oh, dear Lord if I could truly embrace this concept life would be so much less work! There are versions of this I’ve heard in my life such as “It’s none of my business what other people think of me” which in my rational mind I know is true but fuck this is really hard for me to embrace. Until I found “my people” in junior high which happened well into 8^th grade, I was shoved into my locker once, had the books I was carrying slammed out of my hands by a girl who would eventually become a nurse who took care of my dad when he had his prostate surgery. I had my rebellious periods during junior high and high school, which included dying a part of my hair orange and then blonde, then dying the whole thing platinum blonde the night before high school graduation. Seriously this is how I “fought the establishment” in the upper-middle class that was Appleton, WI in 1989. As I accumulated more life experiences throughout college and into early adulthood, even I giggle that this was my big stand against “the man” and the personal oppression I felt when I was 17 years old.

The other two quotes I’m just going to post, and you can interpret them as you like. As always, I will close with a quote from the New Year’s Even anthem, Old Lang Syne.

                                          

We two have paddled in the stream
from morning sun till dine
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                         

 

Finding Mini Surprises Part 2

As the end of another trip around the sun nears, I’ve been looking through some mish-moshed paperwork, receipts, and all sorts of crap that has been accumulating on miscellaneous bookshelves, on top of temporarily empty boxes labeled “XMAS DECORATIONS”, and basically any flat surface in “the Patio Room” which is where I work from home.

The space is likely intended to be a third bedroom, but because we already have a twin bed in the “guest bedroom”, and there’s a full-size patio door in the room, this Patio Room has become my default office-I hate calling it that because I want to use the space for more than just where I work from, forty hours a week. I plan on setting up my piano keyboard in that room, once I have sorted through and organized the mish-mosh that takes up 90 percent of its space.

So, before I get into the visceral guts of what I want this post to be about, I will share another mini surprise I found when opening a 4” x 6” 60 sheet journal that was buried under unopened 401{k} quarterly statements and invoices from Apollo’s new vet.

There is no title, just the date of 02/23/23. 

There you were,
looking at the skyline on a
humid August evening,
methodically swirling the Pinot Grigio
in your wine glass.
Not knowing better,
one would assume you were
mesmerized by the passing skyscrapers along the Milwaukee shoreline.
But I knew you were looking through the passing urban landscape.
Your mind turning about,
you and her
me and him
you and me.

 

 

Finding Mini-Surprises

Scrolling through my laptop's Documents looking for the Storycatcher's folder to post the "sage advice" Word document I read from last night I happened upon a folder titled "Poetry".  Prior to opening it, I thought I knew what was stored inside. I have some standards that I re-worked for so long, I can practically recite them from memory.

I was surprised to find pieces that, after reading them, I'm surprised by. I haven't posted them here before. I scrolled through all of my posts to make sure. So, I'm going to post a few of them now. Each of them bring me back to the environment, event, or experience that prompted me to write in the first place.

Where Hope Fears to Tread (02-11-17)

For twenty-four weeks I did your time too.
My cell: a desk, a chair,
a steel door, window banks of bullet-proof glass.

You retreat
behind your steel door, cover your window
with toilet paper, feces, blood.
I was constantly displayed for you,
to shout to,
to shout at;
demanding I fix your crisis or
be the target of your disgust for the system, “the man”, your lawyer, your victim.
Demanding my self, my values, my soul.

“Fucking bitch!”
“Kristine, why don’t you come talk to me?! Why the fuck you ignoring me?!”
“Come suck my dick!”

Ten hours later, I leave my cell, exhausted and empty.
Despite time and distance,
we both know tomorrow; these roles begin anew.

County Drive (12-10-14)
A heavy hawk lazily
circles, riding currents of a swift autumn breeze.
What were once proud and regal sunflowers
bow their weary heads;
time in the late summer spotlight expired.

Low laying fog, the smoke of smoldering brush
settled over farmers’ fields,
some already turned for the coming snow.
Harvest complete, their usefulness fulfilled
for another season.

Maybe You're Not As Good As You Think You Are

 

In a world that often encourages us to be our own biggest cheerleaders, with meditation, positive self-talk, and an entire field called “positive psychology”, it was a sobering thought for me to consider that I might not be as exceptional as I believed. I learned this lesson from my revered high school orchestra conductor in my senior year of high school, aged a tender18.

When Mr. Wolfman retired after 36 or 38 years with the Appleton Area School District, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Post Crescent to somehow commemorate what was a long, steady career of inspiring students, challenging students, having high expectations of students, and demanding it from us. All the while playing some of the most difficult, well-known, and eclectic classical music.

Every spring the orchestra played a Commencement Concert at the Lawrence University Chapel. This was an opportunity for seniors to audition to solo backed-up by the entire West/East High Schools’ symphony. As a senior cellist, I yearned to solo. And I didn’t want to play any cello concerto, I wanted to master the Dvorak cello concerto; a big, intense concerto that puts all others to shame.

I was confident that my passion for great music, especially the Dvorak, and the surprising progress I had made as a cellist since my first year in the high school orchestra, were going to be enough for me to claim that coveted solo.

My audition was appalling. I had started butchering the concerto in January. The concert was in mid-May. I took weekly private lessons with a music ed. major at Lawrence and after our first month in, I could barely play the first three bars. He asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to play?” I was adamant. In my mind, I had mastered everything I tried and if I recognized that a skill, a project, or anything else in life was something I couldn’t master, I threw it in the “Disinterested” bucket. That maladaptive thinking is what kept me trudging on, week after week, Dvorak, I imagine now, screaming from his grave, “STOP HER!” to the universe.

When the list of soloist’s names was taped to the inside of the orchestra room door my name wasn’t there. I felt an aching hurt in my soul. I cried in front of the entire symphony then ran from the room, not returning for rehearsal that day. I didn’t know I was on the cusp of learning a great life lesson.

Later, my conductor said to me, “I think you got so emotional because you’re not as good of a cellist as you think you are, and that's ok.” Well, that’s a hard smack of reality right to the forehead. It stung like hell…but it was true.

The lesson I learned that day is that life is not fair, and sometimes we’re all not as good as we think we are…and that’s ok. No matter how much of the spirit of the music I felt, how much I believed in myself, how much passion I exuded, I had to reconcile with my “Disinterested” bucket. I had to take every piece of failure out of that sloppy, long-ignored pail and own it…and it’s ok. I needed to learn from those failures instead of burying them. I needed to learn that true success can only come from attempting, failing, reshaping my efforts, and attempting again.

Life in Chaos

 

In relentless chaos

I perform a turbulent dance.

Each day a storm, a wild tempest

this is my chaotic world and I am imprisoned.

 

Pieces of my fractured soul

strung back together at sunrise;

in the midst of turmoil

I must co-exist.

In the pandemonium, in a life of chaos

I am bound.

 

Through the labyrinth of disorder, I roam blindly,

embracing the tumult, my life lived in chaos

yet uniquely my own.