"You have held your breath in all of your life"

 I often think I should be spending more of my not-with-spark time on Spark-related things.  Reading books, making a busy board, buying or making foods they might like, researching places to go.  You know, that sort of thing.

 

I also often think it's time to change psychiatrists.  I've been on this buproprion-sertraline-Gabapentin-Ambien combo for a while and I've been with this psychiatrist who is at best poly-skeptical for a while.  And I feel like science has  made some progressive, but at least the buproprion-sertraline combo is one that I was also on twenty years ago, if memory serves.  I'm reading a YA book about mental health and one of the authors describes the beginning of a depressive spike(valley) as feeling a little bit like an oncoming flu, achy and irritable and slow.  

 

Once upon a time in college, I had a massive crush on someone. Everyone, including the crush, knew this.  The crush did not return my feelings, started dating someone else  and he and all of our mutual friends decided the easiest way to deal with things was to just not tell me he was dating someone. 

 

I eventually found out, (shocker, 20somethings living in each other's laps are bad at hiding things) and was mortified and angry and hurt.  I wrote a bunch of bad poetry about the heraldry of pelicans and stewed in my shame.  And something about this stuck, just like something about all the times I've been a dirty little secret stuck, and I'm afraid of what gets said behind my back and how it confirms or contradicts what gets said to my face.  And that combines with the child-me theory that if I can just figure out what's wrong with me, everyone (my parents) will finally love me.

 

I want to be fearless, I think.  I want to interact with people openly and kindly, but still say the things I want to say, and sometimes I'm okay at that and sometimes I fall too easily back into placating patterns, where I try to figure out the thing the person wants to hear and say that instead.  I'm put in mind of those old lj memes, where you said ten anonymous things to people that you couldn't say directly and how indirectly one could say unkind things, and I wanted to be someone who didn't have that sort of list but of course I had one.  (and I've disliked the idea of brutal honesty for a long time, because it always feel like it's more about the brutality than the honesty) 

 

 Today's three for three on the crying front..  And it feels normal, like this is just what I do.