A messy thank you.

I'm feeling much better, already.

Of course I want to say THANK YOU.  For your comments and emails and texts and phone calls, your compassionate and informed advice, and for telling me that you believe in me.

Sometimes, you make me feel like a million bucks.


My brother is getting married.  His fiance sent me a picture of herself, wearing a sassy, beautiful, puffy, mermaidy wedding gown, letting me know she found her dress.

I'm not somebody who overly cares about something like wedding dresses and all the hoopla surrounding them, but finding out that such a nice person found a dress that makes her happy made me get all teary eyed.  It really is the perfect dress, for her.  I don't even care about these things, and my heart was absolutely breaking with happiness over her unique and shining beauty.


I woke up this morning, and I didn't feel like all the world was gray.  I felt excited to be starting my day, and I have no idea why.  I actually stood at the kitchen counter waiting for my water to boil, staring straight ahead and thinking.  I made a mental list of everything I have to be excited about.  Kurt's new job, our upcoming beach trip, having health insurance FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PRACTICALLY ALL OF MY ADULT LIFE, BITCHES.  Warm weather, kale smoothies out of my garden, living in the city, having big boobs, knowing a lot about things, I don't know.  I just felt colorful, like something was up.

I think I used to feel that way a lot, but for the past year or so, I've been all murky and numb and robotic.  Some of it is just having babies.  I mean, my youngest girl is 21 months old.  We're just getting to a point where life isn't all poop and crying and sleeplessness.  On my part.  No seriously.  Being a mom of a baby is insane.

You know what I'm talking about, right?  You don't even exist.  You're just the thing that keeps a baby alive and happy and healthy.  You walk around all the time smelling like sour milk and peeing your pants when you sneeze and falling asleep during all the movies.  Or whatever.  You have your version of that thing.  You're not the person you once were.  You're not a person at all.

I think I'm just starting to come out of that phase.  I'm starting to make it to the end of the day without being totally thrashed with exhaustion.

Stopping my medicine, it's true that some of my instability will come back.  I'll cry over a pretty song when Elliott Smith sings, "I may not seem quite right, but I'm not fucked, not quite", and I'll cry because Stephen Elliott wrote a perfect sentence in a Rumpus email and made sadness out of five words.  I'll get frustrated when I can't find something and shake my fist at the sky and blame Kurt for moving it, "Dadddddyyy!!!"  And then I'll find it in my purse.  I'll have weird dreams and wake up at night, too scared to get out from under the blankets when I have to pee.  Then I'll go and pee anyway, and have to close my eyes as I pass the dark stairwell on my way to the bathroom.  I'll wake up in the morning and not be able to figure out what I'm looking forward to.  I'll get a letter from my dad full of money to help with our vacation, and I'll feel like it has always been hard to be his daughter, but that maybe I forgive him for some things.  I'll feel like I'm made up of fears, sometimes and that it doesn't matter because I could kick anybody's ass.  I'll tear up because I'm happy that my brother is marrying a wonderful person and she found a dress that shows off her beauty in an exemplary way.  It's okay.

Sometimes I need to feel messy to feel like me.  Even if it means that I'll have anxiety, sometimes.  Even if I have to take a sleeping pill because I can't stop having big, fast ideas and it's getting late.  Even if I feel lonely because it's night and everybody is locked away in their houses and if I went out, now, everybody would be up to no good.


I only mean to say that I'm okay, and thank you for knowing that, even when I'm not so sure.


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