clickmom

21,25,29

Tomorrow I have to take the husband for some kind of scan on his heart. It’s a PYP? He gets a dye injection at 11 and then we have to hang out somewhere for three fucking hours so they can scan him at 2. I might just bring him back to the house, even though the appointment is 20 miles away. Maybe I’ll make him wait in the car while I buy things that don’t require refrigeration at a big box store. When we went to the heart specialist last week the husband admitted to having a couple of episodes of chest pain…. WHICH HE NEGLECTED TO TELL ME ABOUT. Did I tell you this already? I’m feeling so stressed these days everything seems like a dream or a deja Vu.

Once, long before his whole failing health/dementia situation, back when we were living in stepford, he told me that 90% of a person’s life time health costs are typically acquired in their last year of life and that it wasn’t sustainable and that we need to, as a society, learn to say goodbye earlier. Hahahaha. I think about that from time to time. I wonder if deep down inside he actually does know how fragile he is and that any day could be his last, or maybe as some of my friends occasionally point out, he thinks he will live forever so he just might.

I think that from now on I’ll refer to my kids by their ages. It seems strange to me that they’re all in their 20’s right now. And by strange I mean it is actually blowing my mind. I’m having that boring existential crisis that I don’t want to admit to. I used to say “I want three solid good decades of me time when this over.” Now I’m willing to settle for one. I really want reassurance that when the sick/dying/dead spouse dust settles not only will I have the time to focus on myself but that I will also have the emotional energy to get myself there. I think often of Pal’s experiential advice to me. He tells me that once “it’s over” I’ll look back and see how hard it really was. He told me I’d look back and have no idea how I managed to make it through and I will marvel at how much energy I spent worrying. He said it’s not possible to have clarity when you’re in the thick of it. But Pal didn’t have to be a full time caretaker during a pandemic, so that might be a crucial difference in our experiences. Also, my husband is hanging on longer than Pal’s husband did.

I was thinking about how when 29 (how is it possible that I am the mother of a 29 year old?!?) was a baby I was so overwhelmed with the 24/7 of motherhood. I remember thinking a few weeks into motherhood that it felt like the longest babysitting job I had ever had and that I was still expecting someone to knock on the door and tell me that I wasn’t grown up enough to do this and they were taking the baby back. Of course I didn’t know at the time I had PPD and PTSD. That could be why every passing moment felt so surreal. Was I really living that life? I remember very clearly how it felt. I remember it the way you experience things when you’re underwater. The sounds are muffled and you can’t really focus your vision. I really did white it knuckle it though those first couple of years. And in retrospect I thank god for that second miscarriage because it righted my PPD in an instant. How did I live a life where everyone I knew completely failed me? How is it even possible that no one tried to get me help? Crazy. Do I just fake it on a professional level? I have no idea. I don’t know if anything could have been done to get me back into the real world any faster than it happened but to think that not a single person sat me down to address my depression blows my mind. How can it be possible that I was in such rough shape and not a single person (outside of that one friend who counseled me to go to a support group) stepped in to help. Jeez.

Sometimes I wonder if all the babies I lost are in the spirit world waiting for me to join them. The two second term miscarriages everyone knew about, Evan’s twin, and the miscarriage I don’t speak about. Four babies. That’s a lot.

I need to take a break from the photo coach. I just don’t like the feeling of pressure to perform breathing down my back. I’m not giving up. I just need to take a break. I need to go easy on myself for a little bit. Super easy. I’m the delicate flower now. Time to look out for myself.

plain black sky

I don't want to beat a dead horse... but, here I go again with the moon.

The moon rose at 2:38 this morning. Obviously I wasn't about to wake up in the dark and drive down to the open sky at the beach or anything like that. It wasn't because I didn't want to. It was because just like how I became obsessed with timing my walk to the subway station each morning (and agonizing over every crosswalk I had to stop and wait for traffic at)  after being gifted a digital watch, I knew in my heart that photographing the moon had the potential to set me off on a path I shouldn't go down for my own mental health and well being. That's why I had to put the digital watch in a drawer and wear a watch with no minute markers for years after the digital watch experience. So, anyways, I had to make a rule for myself that I wouldn't do a thing like wake in the middle of the night to get a glimpse of the moon. I am not the kind of girl who can function well when tired to begin with and I know I have a predisposition to get mildly obsessed, so I made some rules. Rule #1 is "Don't lose sleep trying to get the photo."  Also, I have 100% convinced myself that keeping the moon at night photos to a minimum will be best for the final project. A white moon on a black sky is pretty basic, and while basic works for a space holder it does not make for the most interesting series. Okay, now that I am thinking of it, basic would totally work for a series, and also represent the mind numbing monotony of my personal pandemic experience. I am two plus years in and still blessedly covid free thanks to my ability to be isolated and bored/boring. Dammit. I feel I may have missed an opportunity. It's to late now that I am 4 months into this series of trying to find something of visual interest other than the actual moon in the image. Clouds, birds, tree tops, etc...... Maybe the project will evolve back into basic. It is so like me to make something pretty out of something sad. Thats why I have called myself a depressed optimist. 

Anyways... what I stopped by to share was how spotting and capturing the moon (at 7:45 this morning) despite the southern sky being cloaked with clouds was so uplifting I am kind of in awe of how fantastic it made me feel. It's getting the day off on the right foot, with an early sense of accomplishment, and now I feel like today's possibilities are limitless. I laugh at myself because despite this limitless feeling. We all know with concrete certainty that for me today will end up being much like every other day of the past 2 years where I lay low and don't catch a potentially deadly virus with the potential to cause "parkinsonian type symptoms" down the road for a hefty percentage of folks who have been infected. I am going to try to hold onto this good feeling for as long as possible today. Maybe I will even sort through the tremendous pile of mail that is waiting to be sorted. I hate mail and it is all the fault of all the idiots who send the mail no one wants. So much unwanted mail. Wasted paper, evil to the environment in multiple ways. Especially the stuff which is designed to confuse old people into thinking it is urgent. I would like to shame every single person making that strategy for their junk services. Shame on them! 

Anyways, I am tossing the idea around of taking a mental break from expecting myself to work towards photo marketing goals when I am hardly functioning right now. I do feel like it is foolish to pretend we are living in a normal world. Every single person out there, (with the exception of those who directly help other people) is fucking part of the problem. I'd like to make the difference between me and them more obvious.  Also, if V Pudding nukes us all I would prefer to spend my final days relaxing than writing query letters to museums to see if they'll buy my future book. (I did get a reasonable quote for a box though. Yay!) 

feels

I would love to get out of my own head and live in someone else's for a while. I just want to know how other people see the world. Let me be more explicit: I would like to spend some time existing in the head of someone who does not suffer from depression or any other mental illness, or have loads of childhood trauma which has basically suffocated their ability to live in the present world and see things clearly. 

Me: I think I would like to wean off the antidepressants now

Therapist: Next time we talk why don't we redo that depression test and see where you land?

Me: ......

Me: um.........

Me:..... ah.... yeah...

Me: Forget it.

I think it is reasonable to feel depressed when being a full time caretaker to a dying demented man whose only concern is his own immediate needs, during a world wide pandemic where people are too selfish to mask up while in public. I don't know how I could possibly feel any other way. So the big question I want answered is... Should I, or even can I, medicate the sadness away? When I started on this medication I agreed to take it because I was crying every waking hour. AT first I felt relief but now.... I think I feel like I would feel if I wasn't taking medication. I don't want to take any medication, ever. And I don't want to take that test because I know I'm going to score in the mildly depressed category. And now, thinking about taking the test has made me feel even more sad than usual. The thought of it has set me off. I am so sad. Is depressed the same as sad? I have no answers. I just don't want to feel this way. 

looking down

I grew up on the upper east side. Our apartment overlooked two huge con ed smokestacks and if you leaned close to the window you could see the east river. 

One time there was an awful smell. It was putrid. Just awful. I remember sitting in the big picture window of our living room with my mom and she explained to me that the smell was from a barge that had slaughterhouse waste going up the river. At the time I thought it sounded believable. It sure smelled like a possibility. As an adult, though, I am wondering about the probability of a slaughterhouse boat going up and down the east river. Where was it going? Where was it coming from? I can't recall the direction the boat was going. Was it coming from Staten Island? That would be a straight out garbage barge. And where would that barge be going? The bronx? Long island sound? It's been half a century and that is something I still wonder about. It might be on the list of top ten things I ask when I get to heaven.

The other time I recall staring out the window was because there was a crazy sound. I found my mom standing by the picture window again. It was a continuous sound and it was some kind of steam or smoke coming from (high power blasting from) those con ed smokestacks. I wonder what was coming out of those stacks. I wonder if it had anything to do with making my mom sick with cancer, even though I am 99% sure that illness was asbestos tainted  baby powder from a certain huge corporation. I probably don't want to know what was in the smoke. Just breathing is enough to get us in the end. 

Once when I was in high school I got caught in the rain coming home. I decided to relax and enjoy it because I was soaking wet anyways. I danced and puddle jumped my way back to the apartment.  I got home, slipped into some dry clothes and went to snuggle up in front of the TV. I hopped onto the couch. Then I realized that I smelled foul. That rain smelled like a chemical bath. It was so vile I had to get up and shower it off. 

From the kitchen window I could see the older sister of someone I knew having sex while standing in front of her bedroom window. I just happened to glance out while eating one day and the sister and boyfriend were definitely putting on a show for the neighbors. That was extra weird because sometimes the elevator would stop on the way down and the exhibitionist sister would get on the elevator with her mom. The guy who wasn't putting a show on for the neighbors was the one who would "touch" himself while lying on top of the blankets on his bed. From our apartment we looked down into his bedroom, maybe by 3 floors, and I am pretty sure he thought his bed wasn't in anyone's view.

Here is a nice thing we could see from our apartment. On the roof of one of the 5 story buildings behind (our view was to the back) my sky scraper apartment building were pigeon coops and if I got lucky I could see the guy who cared for the pigeons letting them out and directing the huge flocks to fly around in circles with his flags. I wish I had a photo of that. That was pretty freaking magical.

Moon spotting

Last night I really wanted to catch the full moon rising. The ceiling of the sky was covered in clouds but I could see clearing to the east along the horizon. So I hopped in the car and zipped over to the beach. At first I was super psyched because this is what the eastern sky looked like.

But then the pesky clouds from every other part of the sky floated over and I was ���.. upset. That���s putting it mildly. I was anxiously lo panic texting the two friends I bore with my photo stories.

Once the time of moonrise rolled around I decided to stick around in case I could at least get some moon glow showing through the clouds.

Then I realized there were thin ribbons of open sky between the clouds and I sat there for an hour- jumping up with my camera every time the moon passed through one of those narrow passages and I could photograph a part of it. And in the end I got what I came for. Maybe parts of the moon are cloud concealed but I got what Mother Nature ordered. I couldn���t grab a phone shot of it because it moved so fast and I couldn���t put my big camera down and potentially miss a shot.

The moon was forecasted to set at 6:45 this morning. So I rolled out of bed and headed to the beach before 6. And I got the good reward.

I���ve been trying to stick to a once a day moon spotting in an effort to not get obsessive about it, but tonight the moon will rise at the same time the sun will set so I am going to go down to the beach for the second time today and see if I can get a nice red moon shot. Fingers crossed.

Tired and irritable. What else is new?

Oh my god. Just had to be mean to the husband and nip his feeble attempt at gas lighting me in the bud. Background: never in the first 32 1/2 first years of our relationship did he ever wake before noon outside of going to work. Before kids I would spend the weekend mornings alone in Central Park with our two dogs. After kid I’d spend the weekend mornings alone with the kid and dog in prospect park. I specifically remember gazing at all of the couples doting on their kids TOGETHER and thinking “Wow, that mom is not alone”. Or worse, seeing all the dads playing with their kids to give the moms a break.

So, in the last 6-12 months he’s been super irregular with his sleep. Often going to bed before dinner and sleeping half the day and into the night- and then getting up early. This is not anywhere near his normal. Totally new behavior.

This is how things go down in this house these days. I rolled around in bed for a while this morning because the moon wouldn’t even be visible today even if it wasn’t completely overcast and at 9 when I descended the stairs with my sweet puppy I heard the television on downstairs. (ER marathon- a whole other story for a different day) So, I say to my sweet pea “Daddy is already up” to which the husband declares “It’s 9 o’clock!!” With utter disdain in his voice as if he is a morning person who never sleeps past dawn and I am saying something absolutely degrading and absurd. So I say “I KNOW YOU and you can’t pretend with me. I’ve been here for 33 years and spent the first 32 1/2 on my own every weekend morning, so don’t try to pretend to be the person you WISH you were instead of the person you actually ARE. You can’t gaslight me”. AND NOW HE IS PISSED!

I told him he better not pull that shit with the person who waits hand and foot on him day in and day out. And luckily he’ll definitely forget about the whole thing.

Seriously!! SERIOUSLY!! People in my old neighborhood used to be shocked to find out I was married. I refuse to live in his fantasy world where he was engaged and involved.

But in the mean time he said he was going to write down what time he wakes up every day to prove me wrong and I said he’d have to start in 1989 and his historical behavior is what counts because I know him. Can you imagine pretending to be someone who behaves completely the opposite of the way you have lived the past 3+ decades of your life? I’m way too tired and irritable to deal with this.