Calm Waters Amid Stormy Seas

Several times between my last post and this one I've been seized with the urge to blog about a topic, but after thinking it over decided against making the effort.

Is this a byproduct of anti-anxiety medication kicking in, this "on second thought" life I seem to be living now?

The other day I found myself enjoying memories of living downtown Ottawa in a one bedroom apartment, my three kids and Kasey (sheltie/beagle) coming every weekend to camp out, my new partner eventually moving in to make us a party of five. This is new, too, looking back on this part of my life as "Hey, I did that!" instead of "Oh dear, I did that...".

So 😊 instead of 😟.

It's not nothing, either, this clean living, part... 4? I've been doing, and although some people would suggest it alone is making the difference in how I feel, I believe the medication led to that, too. I'm paying attention to what I can do for my health now, instead of worrying about others, what I've done, what I might do.

Finally I get it: one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, and not AA's accept the things I cannot change, but Toni Morrison's change the things I cannot accept.

It suits me better at this stage of life. Not reactive, proactive. I've read the opposite of indecision (sometimes mistaken for procrastination, which is quite different) is impulsiveness. I can certainly identify with it, decision-making being paralyzing for me, until boom - I'm living downtown Ottawa in a one bedroom apartment.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about not believing everything you read on the internet, and last week deciding to use a bag of frozen pineapple pieces by way of baking a pineapple upside down cake.

I've returned to baking as a pastime. I grew up with Gram's baking and want to become accomplished at it, particularly sandwich cookies of various types. I've watched Paul, one of the judges on the Great British Baking Show, delight in appreciating - so eating - good baking and aspire to get back to it myself.

Anyway, suffice it to say I followed the recipe on the internet - very carefully - and when I turned the cake out onto a plate, brown sugary buttery slime splashed all over it, the counter, the floor.

I'd basically dolloped cake batter (the cake was sublime, by the way, one of the best I've ever made) over 1/2 cup of melted butter, brown sugar, and pineapple pieces. When I checked the recipe later, yup, that's what it said, but really, I should have realized the mistake. Indeed, I did wonder at no butter actually IN the cake batter, but such a trusting soul of Chef Google am I that I forged ahead.

Fortunately I had a carton of whipping cream - expiry date in February, bought in December? - and the pineapple upside down cake was saved as a... trifle!

Also I live with a 6'/180lb man who's been known to eat gas station pepperoni sticks - by choice. Oh and a dog whose nose then tongue found any lingering bits of brown sugary buttery slime not visible to the human eye.

But here's the part where the medication meets an eating/drinking/drug disorder (even a smoking disorder at times!) - when my partner served me up a bowl of "trifle" the next day, I decided immediately, right in front of him, no sparing of feelings, eye contact made, to return 3/4 of it to the pan. So show him what a serving size for a 5'5"/100lb woman with an eating disorder should be. And I thought it was for him but then realized, "Aha!" it was for me, I am now consciously, deliberately, thoughtfully choosing to do what's best for me, which is also what I want to do, never mind externalities.

In other words, the medication is working, which I find hard to believe, the therapist suggesting it's addressing a chemical imbalance, which I find even harder to believe. But why? Why do I find it hard to believe I've been challenged by a chemical imbalance? Clearly I have been. And whether I always had it or developed it along the way, accidentally, consequentially, who cares?

What's with all the blaming anyway? It's everywhere, too. Someone must always be blamed.

Absurd. Guilt, shame, blame. Rinse, repeat.

And speaking of therapy, also guilt, shame, blame, I thought the panic attacks I was having had to do with others, particularly my mother, childhood, young adulthood, middle adulthood, but now I know they just had to do with me, an imbalance in, not the force, my force.

So now when I look back, which I'm only doing to reclaim it from guilt, shame, blame, it's not "Oh dear, I did that..." (to me, to others) - it's "Hey, I did that!" (for me, for others).

I even did that trick the other day of "I don't have to walk Bernie, I get to walk Bernie."

It's January in Ottawa.

I've reference my mother a lot, too much, and not fairly (widows can be a lot) but she always told me "You have to put yourself first" and "You can't care what other people think"

Well I didn't get it then but I get it now.

Beta blockers for the win.😀

From Freaktown To Normville

So to continue the journey I find myself on, I had an intake interview connected to the prescription my doctor gave me to deal with the baseline anxiety behind the panic attacks I've been having.

I'm relieved to say I qualify for therapy.

It was an interesting process. The person doing the interview sounded young which I find reassuring nowadays. I have three Millennials of my own and they're definitely more attuned and empathetic to the effects of life on our psyches than we tail-end Boomers.

Cripes, no sooner did "parenting" become a verb than a Boomer put "helicopter" in front of it.

(Sorry GenXers, I keep forgetting you're there.)

There's resiliency, and then there's a stubborn failure to recognize we're freaks and should avail ourselves of help from others qualified to give it so we can experience life as norms.

(For context, please see Marge Simpson in The Simpsons "Freaks Vs Norms" episode.)

Here's irony for you, I've gone for help before, but it was on behalf of others. Or so I thought. But listening to myself throw in everything I could think of during the intake interview, so desperate am I to get to the bottom of these panic attacks, was eye opening. Hard even for me not to draw a line from purging to be slim, in spite of being vomit-phobic when actually nauseous, in my teenage years, to panic attacks accompanied by nausea requiring I purge to feel better in my 60s.

Yikes, eh? I guess there's a reason I include having had an eating disorder in the story I tell about myself. And yet it only came up as a "by the way" towards the end of the interview, at which point I thought I should probably mention beer and pot use on and off over the decades.

Why? Why would a health nut like me play with the fire of known carcinogens? My father died of cancer when I was four ffs. Carcinogens have been on my wick ever since. I was critiquing the Canada Food Guide in grade school, reading diet books focussed on fibre, doing yoga, jogging, worried sick about my younger sister eating too much sugar, directing Gram to go easy on the white, double up on the brown, more vegetables, less meat, on and on and on I went.

I started making ratatouille, bran muffins (just a bit of honey for sweetener), glass of water with every bite.

Now for the first time in my life I'm on prescription medication that puts a distance, a distance I imagine normal people are born with, feel naturally, between me and everybody and everything else.

Life, as it were. A little distance between me and life. And if a lion jumps out from behind a bush and eats me, well, I suppose it's my own fault my fight or flight response didn't kick in.

But at least I won't have spent hours nauseous and lying on the bathroom floor before I'm eaten.

I won't cite specifics here but suffice it to say a recent situation that would've had my fight or flight response revved up to 11 prior-to-medication (I know this because p-t-m me keeps trying to do it) has been relegated to: "At ease, soldier, situation normal. Also, others are on it, anyway. Your job is actually done here so go have some lunch or something."

Anyway, I'm blogging about this because I realize now I had the same fear of prescription medication to treat my own mental health condition as so many other people in need of it do. Or maybe it was a blindspot. Certainly I had no trouble advocating it for others. But when it came to myself I finally had to make myself go back to the doctor and say it for me: "I need help".

Because I did and I do. Never mind everybody else right now. I have to put my own oxygen mask on first.

Who Am I?

A Facebook friend posted an interesting graphic this morning that connects to my mission to take the story I tell myself about me in a different direction. This has to do, of course, with the panic attacks I've been experiencing since last spring. Although I'm on medication now to treat what the doctor I'm lucky enough to have refers to as the "base level of anxiety", it may be a while before I can access the requisite therapy to cope with the actual attacks.

Having said that, the other night, after receiving a morning call from a sibling involving another sibling and the death of an uncle (the last of my mother's siblings, much younger, and unexpected) I started to feel the now familiar onset of symptoms. Fortunately, I'd only had a small dinner - at home - and knew there was no reason I should have to rid myself of it. So I laid down in bed with a cool cloth on my forehead and breathed my way through the (this time milder) waves of nausea. Eventually I fell asleep to have first one dream and then another that together implied I'd always had the power to get home to Kansas, so to speak.

It's funny, I think of myself as an ally to other people claiming their human and civil right to change how they identify themselves from male to female, but what kind of ally am I really if I can't do the same for myself in less essential ways?

One of my favourite stories of reinvention comes from a cousin, a doctor, whose very socially inhibited (at the time) young adult son decided on a beach holiday with his family to make himself talk to a couple of young adult women also on a beach holiday. When nothing other than a brief friendly exchange of pleasantries came of it he realized he could do it again. And again. And again. And so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

He reinvented himself as a young man comfortable engaging socially with people he didn't know, and maybe never would beyond a friendly exchange of pleasantries, and realized it was a way of being in the world he enjoyed.

Families are terrible for pigeon-holing us and in early days I was identified as a hypochondriac, anxious, saver for a rainy day. In short, a worry wart. As time went on decision-making became fraught, and whether to do something or not do something, however innocuous, it didn't matter, I'd be paralyzed. Along the way I came across "the flip side of procrastination is impulsivity" and recognized the truth in it. I'd even had a psychologist suggest to me "it's not a good decision or a bad decision, it's just a decision" but by then I was nearing 40 and my story was firmly entrenched.

Panic attacks are powerful calls to action, though, and so I want to change the story I tell myself about me. I have fallen into a pattern and mistaken it for my identity.

I will now step outside of it and allow myself a new way of being in the world.

Welcome to 2023

I don't know about you but this is the year I'm switching it up. No more worrying about money. That's right, I tweeted to the Prime Minister that I'm going to need a guaranteed annual income in 2024. I didn't specify the amount but I assume he knows it should be at least $25K.

I googled the medication I started taking a couple of weeks ago. It's turns out to be prozac. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1994) immediately came to mind, of course, and so I googled it. The reviews were mixed but also uniform in that the reviewers all found it "self-absorbed" (i.e. "first world problem") and it occurred to me, well yes, we know. Or, at least, some of us know. Some others of our selves have become so absorbed we're suffocating.

That's how I think of the panic attacks I started having in the spring. I'd have a perfectly nice outing with friends only to barely make it home, the feeling of dread and nausea permeating every last cell of my body on the bus, the only cure a terrifying purging broken up by what seem like interminable stretches of time lying on the cool bathroom floor feeling alienated from everyone and everything, no comfort to be had until it's over.

There are lots of possibilities as to why this is happening, although why it's happening now is a bit of a mystery to me. Not my doctor I'm lucky enough to have, however. They're the result of anxiety, a build up of it. Meanwhile, I was so used to it I actually heard myself claim in his office, "I'm not really an anxious person". Then I immediately corrected the lie "I don't know why I just said that - I'm the most anxious person I know. I've always been anxious. About everything. I'm anxious right now you won't believe I need help and I'm going to die having a panic attack."

They're very debilitating. Even the relief after they're over is just exhaustion striped with worry about when the next one will happen.

So I'm on medication for the first time in my life. Sober as a judge (again) because it suits me best, focused on right now. Never mind tomorrow - it's not real. The same goes for the past. It's not real either, just a made up story I've been telling myself, over and over and over and over and over and over...

I'm in my sixth decade and only just now realize my brain is part of my body. Also, I'm only in my head, I'm not in yours. And for whatever reason in this first world of ours my fight or flight response is way out of whack and I need medication now to treat my hurting brain.

It's early days but I think I may be on to something already. All my life, right up until now, I've thought I had to answer to somebody, so self-absorbed I didn't realize that somebody is me. Interestingly, as soon as I realized it, I could feel my lens starting to turn. Instead of just relentlessly staring in, it took a curious look out.

Again, early days, but here's to a new year and new beginnings anyway.

Christmas? What the #$*%! Is Christmas??

 John Waters said of Christmas, "You can love Christmas, or hate it, but you can't ignore it."

Truer words. And of course John Waters loves Christmas because what's tackier than Christmas?

Right - weddings. Every time I see one of those white wedding gowns now I think of silver Christmas trees. So mean, I know, but fuck the patriarchy in the ear, ladies. The only people who should be wearing white wedding gowns nowadays are Drag Queens. And why a Drag Queen would get married NOT wearing a white wedding gown is beyond me.

Oh dear. Did I just cancel myself? Whatever. Can't care about everything. And Christmas is definitely off my list of cares. In fact, I'm so past Christmas, I thought yesterday was Christmas Eve! Not that it mattered a whit when I found out, no, the Christmas people have now taken to saying "Christmas Eve Eve" and so I got confused, not having noticed the extra "Eve".

That's right - eves are being added to Christmas.

I'm on a so far not noticeable anti-anxiety medication, although perhaps the rest of you are reading this under your beds, given the weather bombs your loved ones are traveling in - during a pandemic in which our premiers have allowed our healthcare systems to implode because - clearly - they don't work for us.

No. Shut up. You're officially canceled if you think Ford Nation works for you and not the Mob.

I mean, developers.

And why it's healthcare "systems", plural, in a country with a population less than that of California is... annoying, but I suppose makes it easier for Putin to destroy Confederation via our blatantly corrupt and glaringly compromised premiers. Oh and Liberals, New Democrats and Greens who can't be arsed even to split the vote again so they squeak in to raid our treasuries for the Mob, I mean, developers, instead of march.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about a Facebook memory that came up this morning about a tweet from last Christmas Eve, before the latest Putin puppet took over Twitter:

"LOL... just realized I hadn't made the bread for stuffing yet! OOPS...on it!"

Here's my Facebook memory:

Saw a tweet: "LOL... just realized I hadn't made the bread for stuffing yet! OOPS...on it!" & I wanted to reply: "You may as well cancel Christmas dinner then because bread should be stale for stuffing & yours is going to be fresh out of the oven." But then I thought about those reminders that come up now on Twitter when it's a "both sides" issue (so right vs wrong as if wrong isn't wrong it's just different from right) to remember before replying that there's a person behind the screen. #christmasspirit

Yes, I know - "You're a riot, Alice". 

But seriously, if you're doing Christmas from scratch - and if you're not, why are you doing Christmas at all? - and you've pretty much blown it by being late making the bread, rip it all up and stale it in the oven before making the stuffing and maybe it won't be a complete washout for you.

Also, and it's likely too late now, but you should add the spice packet from a box of StoveTop dressing, so as to re-create the *smell* of Christmas, but at greater expense and effort, of course.

If you're going to host - host. None of this "no one will care if everything's not perfect" bullshit. YOU care. So don't screw up like maybe you did last year by neglecting to buy organic cranberries dried in orange juice for that hit of sweet (but not too sweet!) with the savoury.

Dollarama may have a few boxes of StoveTop leftover from Christmases past. Worth a run in the gas guzzler to check. Because, trust me on this, once you stop keeping up with tradition (with updates because, although lard is easier to work with for your pastry, butter improves its flavour AND goes better with your mincemeat) you're just one short slide away from forgetting it altogether.

Anxious Much?

 My first major panic attack came after going out for lunch on Mother's Day, a pleasant meetup downtown (Ottawa) with my partner, eldest, and two friends on a patio at a place we used to frequent in pre-pandemic days.

I thought it must've been the fish or maybe the draft lines weren't clean. I hadn't had any trouble with white fish before, although I was no longer eating salmon (or duck) due to unpleasant after effects that were not, however, like this. I'd had each twice, same reaction - unpleasant, and I had to get rid of them, but not terrifying. Also my partner had eaten half my meal and had the same draft and he was fine.

No, this was different. On the walk to get the bus home I started to feel a terrible dread, later white knuckling it on the bus. There was no stomach pain, just feeling completely alienated, plus knowing I would have to empty my body of lunch. I'm vomit-phobic too so it took some doing, and a lot of lying on the bathroom floor, heart pounding, cold, then hot, then cold again, before hours later I was able to take a couple of gravol and go to bed, relieved it was over.

I did it, got rid of lunch. Oh the relief. Blessed, blessed relief.

(I remember the Freedom Convoyer driving by during lunch, truck festooned with obscene flags, engine roaring, and the people at the next table breaking out into Ram Ranch, giving them the finger. We joined in with applause for their outburst, but it was unsettling, a reminder of the breakdown in law and order, in the end having to rely on the very police who'd betrayed us to the bullying mob to run it out of town.)

Democracy is quite the compromise these days it seems.

I still won't risk fish (or duck) anymore. My sister suggested they were farmed and maybe I was allergic to whatever they were fed. But the incidents happened again and again and again, generally after venturing out, and so no, it's not the cauliflower or vegan tacos.

The last attack, just this past Saturday, a late afternoon meet up with a couple of friends, we passed a trio, a woman draped in a flag flanked by a couple of men, this one the Indigenous every child matters flag, parading down the sidewalk like the Queen of Sheba, as my mother would say, the narcissism off the charts as is the case with all Freedom Convoyers.

Then there were the two gangs of men, young, but too old to be shouting their Freedom Convoy allegiances (vaccine conspiracies this time) back and forth across the street.

"It's a little bleak downtown", commented my partner who, like a lot of us, really just wants to punch the fascist motherfuckers, always either in a truck or a gang, in the face.

"It's a dystopian nightmare", I replied.

But we had a nice time anyway and then I got home and the dread descended and it was Mother's Day all over again. (And yes, I recognize the "M" word here - in my case a reminder of the psychological pain she was in, and so I was in, too, before we both enjoyed her MAiD.)

So okay. I'm having panic attacks. And why not? I'm the most anxious person I know. We're in a pandemic, we just experienced an occupation, and our healthcare system is collapsing.

And by some sort of Christmas miracle, and being the 50% of our household with a doctor inherited from a retired doctor, I got in to see him Monday afternoon.

One of his patients must've enjoyed MAiD instead of keeping her appointment?

So now I have a prescription for anti-anxiety medication because he basically recognized and in fact gave me the words to describe what was happening to me - I'm having panic attacks due to a too high baseline level of anxiety. (Meanwhile I denied being an anxious person before suddenly blurting out, "Oh my God - why am I pretending I'm not anxious to a doctor? I'm the most anxious person I know!" He, in turn, confessed to experiencing a level of stress in his job he'd never experienced before, causing me to add, "I know and I'm feeling your stress right now!")

I won't name the medication. It's a low dose, what he'd prescribe a 5'5" 110 pound teenager. It's to treat the baseline anxiety to hopefully prevent the panic attacks, which are very debilitating. Sunday I was in my pajamas all day, for instance, a few hours long nap in the afternoon, very light eating, lots of water.

I've never taken this type of medication before so... I'm anxious about it! But I also don't want to have panic attacks so I'll take it.

Oh and he's trying to get me free therapy because he's all about the two-pronged approach, as the best doctors are, but we both know how likely that is to happen so in the meantime I'm blogging this shit out, privacy be damned.

PS: I'm also back to sobriety, inspired by one Tweedy on Twitter, of all cyber dystopias, with, I think, I hope, more openness as to what that will mean. Also, I'm on medication now and it's $50 a month.

Twitter Leavings

So if you're not on Twitter, or left early under its latest fascist billionaire management, you're missing a lot of farewells.

"I just want to let everybody here know, I've been accepted over at X site. You can find me under my handle XX."

Although now the latest fascist billionaire management of Twitter has declared naming these new sites verboten so people are using rhyming words to let other Tweeters know where they'll be.

Almost all of these people I recognize as like-minded politicos, some more political than others, offended by the overtly fascist politics of its latest billionaire owner.

Meanwhile, other like-minded politicos are vowing to stay and fight, not cede the space to the far Right, believing they're standing up for democracy.

In their opinion, Twitter should be part of "the commons", a regulated space for politicos to express our opinions about the news of the day. Every second of the day. Thousands of us. All at once.

Having been an office temp in several of our federal departments, I get antsy just thinking about it, not that I necessarily disagree with the sentiment.

And where does this news of the day - where does it come from? Why from professional journalists of course, the most maligned people on Twitter by my like-minded politicos.

Neil McDonald, when he quit Twitter in a huff years ago now, described it as "people shouting one-liners out into cyber space". Another journalist of my acquaintance described it as "a thousand conversations going on at once and nobody listening to anybody else". He never signed up and is now retired.

Instant publication of opinion by anyone who can get it together to sign up is what Twitter is.

I retweet all my like-minded politicos' farewells so they can find each other but I won't be joining them. For me the new ownership is an opportunity to ditch a time wasting addiction, made easier by the stark realization that with a drop in retweets I'm less interested in tweeting.

Stuff your "likes". Retweet or GFY.

I also learned a valuable lesson in the last municipal election about how little Twitter matters in real life when it appeared in cyber space Catherine McKenney would soundly defeat Mark Sutcliffe in the mayoral race, instead of what actually happened, which was the opposite.

Now I imagine how different the results could have been had all the energy that went into tweeting about how great a mayor McKenney would be had gone into shouting it on suburban street corners instead.

But it was when the latest fascist billionaire owner of Twitter called us, his Tweeters, "citizen journalists",  while attacking actual journalists, I realized how I and all my like-minded politicos had fallen for The Big Lie, and were, in many instances, reacting on the basest of impulses and shooting the messenger because we didn't like the message.

Twitter tweeter twaddle.