Wet Metaphors

I've been treading water for almost two years now.

And I'm sinking. My head's still above water, but my limbs are so tired they're just about numb, no longer even burning with the effort.

But it isn't my physical exhaustion that's making me sink. My soul is tired. My heart and my soul just can't do it anymore. They're so heavy and they're weighing my body down and now I'm swallowing saltwater with every wave that passes over my head.

So now before I start to drown, I'm once again going to ask for help.

I'm a very proud person. I am a person who always expected to be able to swim because I've weathered so many storms, but the storms have passed and there's an eerie calm and it's this that I was not made to sail.

I've switched sea analogies midway through. I do that sometimes. Ken once told me I'm like a Tamarian. I think that's probably true.

I cannot sail with no wind. The waves are tiny and gentle, but I am succumbing to each one like a tidal wave.

I have capsized. I am clinging to the wreckage.

So it's time to ask for help to build a new boat, or at least a viable raft, before I really need it.

Analogies. Am I right? Analogies.

What I mean to say is, it's high time I started therapy again. So I suppose that is what I'll do. The past two weeks have gone from signals of potential danger right into the danger itself far more rapidly than I had anticipated and now here I am.

Again.

I hate asking for help.

I think maybe Chad's metaphor* wasn't perfect. I think I have bootstraps. I know I have bootstraps. But the depression tells me I don't. And I believe it. I can't see them and I can't feel them and I can't find them. But I know they exist because, dammit, I've used them before and I know I can use them again if I can just find them!

Well, I'm going to enlist a therapist to help me locate them. To help me get a grip on them. To help me build the muscle to pull myself up.

I was pretty adamant previously about returning to my old therapist because I liked her a lot, but also because I wouldn't have to explain my extremely complicated history of trauma, which takes about three therapy sessions just to cover the timeline. But she's up at Lincoln Center and that's a long way from Brooklyn. It was very convenient when I was attending Circle, but it's about an hour of travel from my apartment. And I also feel anxiety about even just calling her back up because of the way I kind of flaked out (although it was a big scheduling issue) and disappeared. Which I have a habit of doing.

So I think I'm gonna start new and hope they're not terrible. And just deal with the time it's going to take to catch them up on the Series of Unfortunate Events that has been my life so far. It also helps that the place recommended to me is supposed to be pretty low-cost. That helps massively with the guilt.

Thank you to everyone who talked to me after my last blog post and offered me their phone numbers and shoulders for crying on. I considered calling each and every one of you today, but the fact is that I don't feel right taking your valuable time with my totally preventable dip into depression. So I'm gonna pay a stranger to do it. I think it's better for everyone this way.

Don't worry; if I really need to talk, I won't hesitate to call.

But I'm mostly fine. And for everything else, there are whole professions of people out there who specialize in this sort of thing.

In other news, the place that was recommended to me is acronym'd ICP. When you Google it?

Insane Clown Posse.

* "People who have boot straps probably like to hear about boot straps. Depressed people don't have boot straps. That's what depression is. Not having boot straps."


* Addendum: As it turns out, this new place is at Columbus Circle, so that's hardly better, but at least I can take the B all the way there.

* Addendumum: Isn't it strange that this is almost the exact date in 2009 at which I made this decision last time? I wonder what it is about October/November.

The Questing Beast

This is a depression post. Sorry. Except not really sorry. My blog. You deal.

The problem is that I can't deal. Somehow in the process of my life experience, I never learned how to deal with the living of life itself. I can handle the big stuff. Death. Trauma. Crisis. But I must have missed the lesssons about motivation and will power. About how to get out of bed in the morning and face the day and work a job to make ends meet even if it's not what you want out of your life. I must have been absent that day.

Of course, the truth is, I've been absent from a lot of my life. Dissociation has been key to my survival as a functioning human being. Dissociation and fantasy. So for at least ten years of my life (formative years, too -- we're talking all through adolescence and into young adulthood) I lived in alternate realities for large portions of the day. This is how I deal, Mandy Moore. Or rather, this is how I don't deal.

When I quit that cold turkey on November 1st, 2009, I vowed that I would actually live my life.

Except that here I am, October 16, 2012, sitting on my couch marathoning Star Trek because the reality of my current position is bleak and my depression is making it worse. Because I don't know how to get a job or go out and meet people and I've had one actual honest-to-God boyfriend in my entire life and that was when I was 18 - 20 and now I'm twenty-six and sometimes I think something horrible must be wrong with me.

But the only thing actually wrong with me, the only thing that really probably keeps me from dealing? Depression.

Fuckin' depression.

Some days I feel great. And then there are days like today where I feel like I can't breathe and I'm crying by myself on the couch with my hands pressed to my forehead and trying desperately to think of someone I can call who's actually gonna give a shit and understand.

Please don't misunderstand. I know I have friends. I have great friends. I have a family that loves me and would be perfectly willing to have me call them sobbing, mid-panic attack for the millionth time.

Part of it is that I don't want to be that girl to anyone. Because once upon a time I was that girl to people and they dropped me like an AT&T call in New York City (topical humor!). And because I am fairly proud and I do like to maintain a little bit of dignity. What little bit of dignity I have left.

Do I have dignity left? I hope so.

The difference between this swing of depression and most of my previous swings of depression is very important: AWARENESS.

Oh my God, awareness is a wonderful thing. Depression lies. And now I know that. So when a thought pops into my mind saying that I can't do something, I usually can say, "That's not true. I can absolutely do that. And it's going to be fine."

And I have some really incredible people in my life, so I (almost) never feel isolated and ostracized. I mean, I feel self-isolated and self-ostracized at times, but for the most part, there's always someone who wants to have me around. For that I am grateful.

I'm not really sure where this post is going. It was, originally, a way to stop myself from crying (and to do something that feels even mildly productive) and to talk about money.

But not a lot about money because, in fact, that's a very tricky and complicated subject.

But to talk about the fact that I'm getting into what I just now decided to call The Danger Zone with depression. I've been walking a fine line for some time now, dipping a toe on one side or the other, but never really losing my balance. Just a-wobblin'.

Well, it's getting worse. There are signs: panic attacks that include difficulty breathing, a burning sensation in my chest, a crushing pressure on my sternum, occasionally dizziness; bouts of crying for no reason in particular or for a very deep reason that a healthy person might not delve into with that magical dwelling ability that depression gives me (many's the time lately I've cried over things that are long since past or things that have yet to happen...I'm like Mr. Scrooge with tears); jealousy; an inability to leave my apartment most of the time; insomnia; etc.

These signs? They're all there right now. Now I know very well that if I can get my exercise regimen back to where it was before Labor Day and before I lost my gym membership, that will fix a lot of things. The insomnia, for instance, and the sitting around my apartment. It'll help with the stress and cut down my dwelling and crying alone time. And I actually feel totally capable of making myself go work out, so that's good. Therefore I am not so long gone as I have been previously.

You wanna know something ridiculous? I remembered today that one of the big reasons I stopped taking my medication at the beginning of second year was because I was feeling very complacent with myself as an actor instead of taking big risks all the time just to see if I could take them. In retrospect, maybe I had just reached a place of confidence and I should have stayed the medicated course. Whoops.

I like to think I'm an exceptionally intelligent human being, but then sometimes I cannot believe the dumb shit I do.

Anyway, the point of talking about money was this:

There are two things I want right now, health-wise. Okay, three. The first is that I want my birth control to not cost me $80 a month because that is fucking ridiculous. And Republicans can take it right up the damn ass on that one because screw you guys. I haven't had sex in going on seven years, so these pills are solely to keep my body in its healthy rhythm and for, you know, in case I get raped. Because I would rather not get pregnant with the child of an assault. Just a personal preference. ANYWAY. The second thing is that I really need to go in to a TMJD specialist in NYC so that I can get a new mouth guard and reduce the life-interrupting tension and pain that comes from having a way messed up jaw. The third and perhaps most important thing, though, is that I probably need to go back into therapy. I think even if I were not as depressed as I am, it would be a good idea because I have some major sexual issues I need to work through and probably some serious abandonment issues as well before I think I can actually be a socially normal adult.

The problem is that I'm twenty-six and still living off my parents. Because I'm a depressive loser. Okay, maybe I'm not a loser. I'm a depressive child. And I cannot ask them for the money for something like that when they're already paying for everything else.

"Why don't you just get a job waiting tables?" you ask.

Fuck you. Haven't you read anything I've written so far? Depression is hard. And my depression makes things like regular full-time jobs terrifying. Terrifying to the point where I fall even deeper into depression and keep calling in sick and then I get fired. Welcome to my life, all you people with actual work ethics and sadnesses that manifest in ways that don't completely debilitate you. (Although if things don't start working out the way I'd like them to work out, I may have to just suck it up and deal and hope that I don't fall apart like wet toilet paper.)

And also don't think that I don't ever do anything with my time. I'm actually very busy, considering how often I end up useless and miserable, trapped inside my apartment walls.

When I didn't realize I was depressed -- or when my depression was latent and held back by a nuclear bunker wall of Ignoring My Feelings -- I used to read the posts of people with depression and be like, "Get over it. My life is shitty and I'm not complaining all the time about my feelings. Your life is totally normal for a suburban teenager. What are you crying about?" People would post something dramatic (this is all back on LiveJournal, mind) about how they should just kill themselves and then everybody would be like, "Oh, no, don't do that! You're so great!" And I'd be like, "Seriously? They're just trying to get attention." (But, obviously, I never actually said that out loud or posted it as a comment.) And to be fair, they were. But that doesn't make it any less serious or painful for them.

It wasn't until someone I love very much attempted suicide that I finally got it. Got what depression can make a person think. Got how far it can take them away from who they really are. And it wasn't until I went to college for the first time that my depression (good ol' late bloomer that it is) finally completely took over and ransacked my life that I figured out what it's all about.

Guys, depression is super fuckin' hard.

I consider myself a very brave person. I've dealt with a lot, I've survived a lot, I take a lot of emotional risks in my acting work, and these days when I notice I'm very afraid of something, I find the most extreme thing I can do within that fear...and I do it. Just to prove I can. I do a lot of things just to prove I can.

But in reality, in my life as a whole, I'm a coward. I'm a little kid curled up in a corner, afraid of the dark. There's a light on in the hallway if I would just open my eyes, run screaming across the room, and throw open the door. But mostly I sit in the corner and I tremble and I wonder why my room has to be so dark and when did the lights get turned off anyway?

My life is ruled by fear. Fear of failure. Fear of abandonment. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of losing something or someone I love. Fear of being judged negatively for who I am. Fear of not being good enough.

Of never being good enough or worthy enough for the things that I want. Even the things that seem to be the right of every human being. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.

But then, the unalienable right isn't "happiness," is it. Just the pursuit of it.

Each human being is on a life-long quest for happiness, like Pellinore in The Once and Future King. They chase the Questing Beast of Happiness their whole long lives and maybe they catch it sometimes and maybe they keep it for a while, but ultimately it will always get away and they'll have to chase it again.

Depression is a peat bog on the Quest. You stumble into it without even really realizing it's there and you struggle on because that's life and there's the Questing Beast ahead of you, just out of reach. By the time you notice that you're no longer moving ahead, it's too late. You look down and realize you're waist-deep or chest-deep or chin-deep in muck and the more you fight, the more you sink. You feel like someone else will have to come along and pull you out, but no one can. You're too deep in and they'll risk themselves if they get in it with you (and anyway, they probably don't understand how you even got that deep in the first place) and Happiness has long since gone loping out of sight and it's been so long since you've seen it, you start to doubt that it ever existed in the first place. You don't remember what it looks like or what sound it makes. And you sit, barely holding your head above the sludge, watching other people go racing by after the Beast and hating them because they somehow missed the bog entirely.

I think there are very few people who will read this that knew me before I fell into the bog. I wonder what kind of adult I would have been if I'd run right past it. I wonder what kind of adult I'll be if I can just climb to my freedom.

What must it be like to have healthy sadness. I imagine it must be beautiful.

The Born Identity

Brace yourselves, equal people of the world: this one's about sexism and marriage in English-speaking culture.

Women. Am I right? Women.

When once I was a little girl, I had fairly normal little girl tendencies. Sure, I played a good deal with dogs and went hiking in my backyard and wanted to do the things my brothers did and played soccer and climbed trees and preferred 101 Dalmatians to The Little Mermaid and spent a longer period of time with Legos and TMNT action figures than I did with Barbie, but I also have a picture somewhere of two-year-old Vanessa (or Nessie Boo, as she was then known) proudly wearing her little dress-up costume that was a wedding dress and veil with a toy bouquet.

I spoke of getting married as a given. One time, in fact, I told my parents that I was going to marry a black man -- but a real one, not like Michael Jackson (dubious racial progress!). I have (and still do) planned my wedding and the names of my children and thought about who my husband will be for as long as I can remember. My parents love each other very much even now after forty years of being together and thirty-eight years of marriage, through nearly every possible kind of horrific catastrophe a marriage can sustain from the outside of itself, so I have high standards and high hopes for what I still strive to eventually attain in a partner and a spouse (assuming I ever get a boyfriend). I am, on the whole, pro-marriage and pro-not-too-extravagant-wedding.

When my mother married, she went from being Donna Kay Tanner to Donna Tanner Bellew (which I've always considered an upgrade because...wouldn't you rather be the bear in the Jungle Book than someone who tans leather for a living?), so as a child I grew up expecting that one day I'd meet someone and we'd get married and then I'd stop being Vanessa Lauren Bellew and start being Vanessa Bellew Hislastname and I did at one time consider it a charming prospect. I remember, however, always feeling a little grumpy about the fact that I was expected to lose my middle name (even though I've never really liked it). I also was jealous that my brothers would always get to be Bellews. And I had a very strong sense as a child that because there were no famous Bellews that I was aware, when I was famous (be it from writing or acting or both), I wouldn't pull a Natalie Portman and change my last name for privacy. Oh, no. I would be Vanessa Bellew come Hell or high water so that some other little Bellew girl out there could look at me and go, "Yes! She's a Bellew and so am I and I can be like her!"

So began my long-time decision that I would be Vanessa Bellew in public, but probably I would take my husband's last name in our personal lives (especially assuming that he had an awesome last name like 'Moriarty' or 'Picard' or 'Zombieapocalypse'). This, I felt, was a good compromise because I wouldn't want him to feel emasculated by my powerful famous woman-ness. Because apparently being a strong, independent woman makes your husband less of a man in the eyes of society, or so I understood to be true at one point in my life.

This summer my very best friend in all of the world ever ever ever, the beautiful and clever Danielle Boss of the Texas Bosses, tied the knot with her long-time paramour Daniel McDonald. I believe our conversations about what she'd do about her last name have led to this post (or perhaps a natural progression of awareness about my identity versus my identity as a woman). Danielle decided on hyphenation: Boss-McDonald, which is understandable, socially accepted these days, and a credible feminist stance to take.

Danielle and I have also been friends since we were in sixth grade. We went through middle school and high school together and then went to different colleges, but have stayed very much in touch. At this point in our lives, nearly ten years after graduation from twelfth grade, we speak just about every day. So we've been discussing the engagements and marriages and children of our friends and acquaintances throughout the years, usually in baffled, incredulous terms. An average conversation would maybe go like this:

Danielle: um, did you see that so-and-so got married?
Vanessa: Oh my God, yes. What was she thinking? She's nineteen! She hasn't even finished college!
Danielle: seriously. too young.
Vanessa: I don't even know how to take care of myself, much less be married!
Danielle: same here.

Fast forward to age twenty-six and Danielle, who is completely capable of taking care of herself even if she occasionally admits to not really feeling like an adult, is now a married woman who shares her life with another human being. I still, closer to thirty than to eighteen, am completely at sea when it comes to being a functioning grown up. I can't imagine I'd be very good in my current condition at being married.

As time has passed and I've seen more and more of my peers become happily domestic (usually aided by Pinterest), I've noticed a disturbing trend of what I shall henceforth refer to as Housewife Mentality*. Please do not misunderstand: my mother was a housewife for most of my life and she is bitchin' at it, so I am not disparaging housewife as a life choice. It's just a shorthand way of saying that they are following the preprogrammed societal expectation that a woman is absorbed into the man in marriage like a too-small twin in the womb. It would be one thing if these millennial young women were making this choice fully aware of themselves and how culture has shaped them and told them what to do and what to be, but for the most part I'm pretty sure the girls I've been watching checking things off their List of Life Steps (high school, college, boyfriend, fiance, husband, dog, house, baby, etc.) are particularly proud of their old-fashioned roles, almost as a reaction to the modern have-it-all woman.

Yesterday a friend of mine who at one time in her early adulthood said repeatedly that she would never get married...got married. She seems perfectly happy and for that I am glad. What struck me, however, was that immediately on Facebook, she changed her last name to his and then posted how pleased she was to be Mrs. Hislastname. And that is what started my brain train down these sexism and marriage tracks.

Danielle, on Facebook, is still Danielle Boss. And as always, I turned to her to air my grievances with this new development. I said I found it repugnant. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me that women have been societally expected to completely give up their Born Identity (get it?) when they get married. All this time, all these changes in the perception of what women can and can't do, and here we still are, traded off to someone else in marriage because of traditions of property that somehow we've turned into 'cute' and 'quaint' and 'sweet'.

Having said that, I still have every intention of having my father walk me down the aisle and give me away. So these traditions have their hooks in me as well.

This also got me started thinking about how sexist our prefixes are. A boy is born a "sir" and a "mister" and remains a "sir" and a "mister" his entire life. A girl is born a "miss", grows into a "Ms." and a "ma'am" if she isn't married by a certain time, and, upon her marriage, becomes a "misses". First of all, I can't ever imagine anyone calling me "misses" and I have no warm feelings whatsoever for the word itself. I think it's dumb. I much prefer being a "miss" and I don't think I will ever refer to myself as "Ms." even on an envelope. I am not a piece of fruit. I do not lose worth with age. And I am not a stray cat, to be given a new name with each new owner (sorry, Nietzsche).

So I think today I have made a new life decision. When and if I am married, I will remain forever the person I was born: Vanessa Lauren Bellew**. I will never be Mrs. Anything, but will prefer to be called "Miss" for the rest of my life. And I suppose in the next few years, I'll have to spend some time thinking about the naming tradition for children in which they only inherit their father's last name, as if half of their DNA were not important.

I am woman. Hear me roar my given name.



* Did you notice that I set up that terminology and then never used it again? Me too.

** Exceptions will be considered in cases of extremely awesome last names as previously mentioned. How could I pass up being Vanessa Picard? I don't think I could.