NOTE:There are a couple things I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t write about on this blog anymore, including depression/mental illness because I’m just over it and, even though I might be duking it out with my brain’s chemical makeup for forever, I don’t need to dwell on it and rehash it all the time anymore. I’ve done gobs of therapy and heaps of acceptance of the illness and have a grasp on how to tackle it and deal with my bouts and symptoms and I know that sitting around discussing it publicly just perpetuates the idea that it rules my life, which isn’t true at all.

However, because a few readers have expressed appreciation for it, I may continue to mention it from time to time. I’ve found that, even after over a decade of dealing with mental illness, there are so many facets and avenues I’m still uncovering and grappling with that I really haven’t considered as separate subcategories under what seems to be the endlessly massive umbrella of “Depression”. Somehow, it makes me feel better to have acknowledged these to myself and, truthfully, I always feel incredibly comforted when I get the occasional email from a reader saying, “Oh, thank God… Me too.”

ALSO NOTE: I apologize if the language in this is hard to follow. I think the text explains/excuses that a little.
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Up until recently, I’d always thought that there were only two types of depression in the technical, chronic mental-illness/chemical-imbalance category (versus the post-traumatic or “longterm blues” varieties.) There’s the chemically-induced stay-in-bed-all-day-unable-to-focus-on-anything-long-enough-to-make-any-physical-changes-to-your-situation-while-time-escapes-you type of depression that I deal with in giant waves about once annually. And then there’s the I-hate-myself-and-my-life-is-a-black-hole-of-nothingness-and-it-would-make-everyone’s-life-easier-if-I-wasn’t-here type of depression that I haven’t dealt with in a long time thanks to major life changes and years of therapy. (Naturally, I’ll have spells where I’m positive I’m wasting my life and I’m just a worthless person but, really, I think any introspective person is prone to those every now and then and they aren’t unhealthy if I can take something productive away from them.) And, of course, there are instances of depression that are combinations of both of these types, although perhaps involving different ratios of each. (For example, I started out with the chemical type in my preadolescent years, which developed into and later fed into the emotional type for a number of years until I got a handle on the latter and went back to just having the former, with tiny bouts of the latter every so often. Does that even make sense?)

ANYWAY, recently, I’ve been having a type of depression I can vaguely remember having when I was very very young and that might be more frustrating than any other: In the last few weeks (especially last few days) I’ve had this heartrending feeling that “something is wrong” and I can’t seem to shake it. It’s not a feeling of fear so much as a feeling of longing and heartache, where my chest seizes up and I feel like I’m on the brink of tears for absolutely no reason at all. It’s kept me awake until 2 or 3 a.m., just lying awake and shaking, with my mind uncontrollably reeling with memories and instances in hopes to figure out just what exactly it is that I’m so heartbroken over.

Even if I try to sit and meditate and repeat my mantras to myself and have fully realized that there’s no reason for this sadness and pain, it still persists. I begin to hunch over and stay quiet/secluded and I pull my sleeves down over my knuckles, even in 80-degree weather. All I want to do is stare blankly at the television or listen to “Surfer Rosa” on repeat. I fight the urge to self-medicate with mind-hushing wine or a couple Unisom. Sunlight physically hurts and social engagements are exhausting, if not overwhelming. I get angry at people around me for what seem like completely valid reasons at the time and then aren’t thirty minutes later. And I huuurt. It feels like someone is tightly wrapping a fine steel floss around my heart and it hurts to breathe, not unlike the symptoms of teenage heartbreak. Also like a post-breakup adolescent, I’m prone to crying in great, heaving, soul-jarring jags with no forewarning or buildup. (For the record, I’ve never even been this bad when I was um… hormonal.)

Again, usually when there are bouts of emotional depression, there’s something to focus on or some sort of trigger on which to blame the oily cloud of gloom I seem to drag around with me but, this time, there’s nothing, which I think may be somehow worse. At least when I’m all weepy and self-loathy about a personal shortcoming or an existential crisis or whatever may be momentarily plaguing me, I don’t have to waste energy trying to figure out why I’m upset; I can use all my resources to try to drag myself out of the funk and back to a level of regular functionality. My present situation is exhausting on a new level because, not only am I actively fending off the typical symptoms and habits of depression and working to move forward but I’m also unable to stop wondering “Where is this coming from? Is there something legitimately wrong going on in my subconscious? Do I need to go see a hypnotherapist? Maybe I can replay every painful event from my past - again - to see if any of those memories strike a chord with what I’m feeling. Good Lord, has my depression evolved again?”

I’m reminded of a weird joke one of my old pastors told that everyone laughed at but couldn’t pin down why exactly:

A little boy goes to his mother and says, “Mommy, it hurts when I do this.”
His mother responds, “Well, then, don’t do that.”
The little boy then tells her, “But that makes it feel better.”

Sometimes I honestly wish that I would just go ahead and lose my mind completely, so I wouldn’t have to struggle so much to wrangle in my thoughts/feelings. Like I’ve said [repeatedly], I’m really over all this and am ready to move onto something else that defines my immediate reality. One would think that, after so much time and treatment and medication, my mental health would get to a point where low-energy maintenance-only effort would suffice.

Don’t worry; I’m still keeping up hope that it can. This is just a bump-in-the-road of a different color and I’m taking it as a lesson to be wary of mental curveballs.

Recently, I have been emotionally distraught over the disgusting act of cruelty that happened to Constance McMillan. I cannot understand how, 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement began, we are still teaching each other that it is alright to hate others because they are different or because we don’t agree with them. I cannot understand how Christians really believe they are doing God’s work by lying about His supposed hatred with someone else and how they could think that treating His children like this would be an effective way to encourage them to attend their churches.

Anyway, I could go on and on about how sick this is, how wrong this is, how I hope Constance is listening more to those who are sending her love and support than to those idiots who are trying to get her to hate them back and how I hope she knows that she is perhaps the strongest teenager I’ve ever heard of for going up against an entire town and enduring this with grace. And I could especially go on about how I dread the day that I will have to explain, with shame and embarrassment, that people actually humiliated, beat and killed other people simply because they wanted to love someone that other people didn’t agree with, much like how my parents explained Segregation to me.

However, I think The Bloggess did this topic the most justice with far more poise and eloquence than I could so I’ll send you in that direction and work on trying to forgive these hateful people in my own heart.

My point in posting this particular entry is simply to state this:

In 2000, I attended the Soccastee High School prom with a girl. There were no questions asked. There were no raised eyebrows. There were no death threats. There was no press coverage. There was no picketing, no rallying, no angry parents screaming about how we were evil and wrong. There was only a prom in a small town in South Carolina where everyone did the same things that all teenagers do at proms across the country - got nervous beforehand, ate at a restaurant while way overdressed, danced a little, talked about what everyone else was wearing, got drunk afterward, perhaps lost their virginities, etc.

Whether or not we attended the prom together as friends or as lovers was never asked of us by anyone. Nobody pointed and laughed when we had our picture taken together. Nobody made snide remarks under their breath. Nobody stopped and stared when we went out on the dance floor together. It was peaceful. It was normal.

This was ten years ago in a state that only took the Confederate flag off their capital building a month later.

My point is that there is hope. Just like in any group of people, the loudmouthed, ignorant idiots cannot be expected to define the whole bunch.

Although it is rare in any region, I was raised in a family that believed in unconditional love. My parents and grandparents taught me to be colorblind, to ignore others’ social statuses, to believe in the goodness of people without smothering them with stereotypes before I’ve even met them. In my house, anyone was welcome around our family’s dinner table as long as they used their manners and didn’t smoke or drink in the house. My family taught me to forgive people who wanted to hate me and judge me and make my life difficult because they thought I was different. They taught me not to fight hatred with hatred and how I would be a better, more peaceful person if I learned to forgive and love. My parents told me that this is what Jesus taught and that’s why they were proud to call themselves Christian. I don’t think they ever thought that hatred was an option, even though I’m sure they were tempted on a daily basis.

This is what I was taught to believe. This is what I intend to instill in my child(ren).
I am not unique because of these traits. And I am Southern, too.

In this exhausting, cathartic, havoc-wreaking, daily-self-inventory-and-renovation I’ve been undertaking since I actively started working on recovery a few years ago (I might’ve mentioned it here… a few times…) I’ve had to dig out a lot of personal muck (usually of the self-induced variety), filter it, clean it and then put it back in my foundation where it belongs. It’s been pretty taxing and has lead to what seems to be an unending series of epiphanies about me as a person but, for the most part, I’ve been able to look at it all, deal with it accordingly and then move on when the time is right.

As it should be, I think.

But in the last couple years, it has become more and more obvious that I wasn’t just a terrible person when I was drinking or in my throes of depression or even when I started adolescence, as I’d first suspected when coming out of my drink-driven stupor. In fact, in the last six or so months, I slowly became aware that there might not’ve been a time in my life before a few years ago when I wasn’t completely self-involved, malicious, spiteful, wrathful, jealous, insecure and pathologically dishonest. And that stings way worse than the thought that I had an illness or even an addiction to hide behind.

I’ve discussed this ad nauseum (so if you’ve read anything on this blog before now, feel free to skip this paragraph because you’ve probably heard me talk about this ten times minimum) but, basically, I sobered up and started trying to figure out this whole mental illness-cum-self loathing lifestyle I’d clung to for the better part of a decade because I realized that I sucked to be around to everyone, especially myself. And I kinda went about all the follow-up work (making amends, identifying my flaws, addressing my insecurities, avoiding the catalysts/antagonists) in hopes that, eventually, it would chip away at this character my addiction and illness had created and reveal the bright, polished, pure person I used to be way back in the life I could no longer remember, mentally or emotionally. That was kind of the end goal- I wash away all the muck so I could get back down to basics and start rebuilding from there.

But what really happened was that I started making amends and looking at my flaws objectively and doing the really embarrassing/humbling work of raking myself over the coals to find out what the hell I was doing and try to fix it all, only to realize that my original foundation was made of crap to begin with.

I know that sounds really harsh because, for Christ’s sake, I was just a kid when the depression really started setting in. (I can remember my first episodes at 11, which is still “childhood” for me, I guess.) But even before that, I was never a nurturing, compassionate child. I was bossy and domineering and totally self-centered and brutal and meeeaaaan. Good Lord, I was mean.

Don’t think this is me just feeling sorry for myself or blowing typical childhood cruelty out of proportion; when I had this epiphany, I spent a good while going “No, that can’t be right. You’ve had friends since you were a kid; surely you didn’t suck that much. You’re just in a funk. Go walk it off and come back and look at this more objectively.” And, after a ton of deliberation it seems that this isn’t just a fluke.

I was manipulative and dishonest for as far back as I can remember. I can remember bullying other kids and enjoying taunting people who made me feel weak and imperfect as early as preschool. I can remember saying horrible things to and about other people at every age. I can’t remember doing selfless or unprompted kind things for those around me at all… not even once. And what’s worse is that I can’t remember doing anything really kind or selfless for my siblings at any time during my childhood, which is something that really tears me up to think about, to be honest. I could go on but, truthfully it hurts a bit too much. The point is that the evidence is present and clear. These are the things that were only magnified once the hormones and disease kicked in later on.

And, yes, okay, I’ve realized and explained where all my chronic meanness came from before now. I totally get it. I was so insecure and was so certain that someone was going to jump out and mentally assault me (which, incidentally, happened a number of times) that I preemptively did it to as many people as I could in hopes that… ::sigh:: it would make me feel better? I could beat everyone to the punch? Who even fucking knows? It’s all very textbook. It’s all very pathetic. I know. I get it.  And, as aforementioned, the worst part was that I honestly thought I was so insignificant that the awful things I said and did to people couldn’t possibly have any sort of repercussions because who the hell cared what I had to say? I didn’t. And, as blathered about for a few years now via this blog, this is what I’ve had the privilege of wading through and sorting out in my search for sanity and a better, cleaner, lighter soul. So far, it’s been working.

But now, at the bottom of all of it, when I make deliberate actions and I’m fully accountable and responsible for everysinglething that I do or say or think and I don’t do anything or say anything I don’t mean, I find that there’s not anything else that’s left for me to work with. There’s no real memory of anything likeable about me from before I was some sort of monster and I feel like I’m sort of grappling at straws while having to deal with this awful realization that the reason I was so eager to escape my reality to begin with was that I’d always just sucked to be around since I was like, 3.

Ouch. Didn’t see that coming.

Now my personal recovery is not just about knocking down all the rubble and shaking it off my limbs but it’s also trying to figure out likable aspects of myself as a base skeleton.

Shit. I don’t have the energy for all this. Wouldn’t it be easier just to do an Etch-A-Sketch restart where we shake it clear, pretend it never happened and start over?

And, of course, more than half of my problem with this realization is the utter grief and remorse I have for being that person and not realizing it up until now. Naturally, this is the part that I’m honestly trying not to assault myself with the hardest but it’s proving to be nearly impossible - seriously, who wants to think that they were never a genuinely nice person at any point in their youth? I just have to keep reminding myself that rolling around in the muck isn’t going to help me get clean. (I love cliches. Thanks, Aldous Huxley!)

But still, there’s a level of defeat and frustration to this huge realization that I’ve been working to fend off in order to keep moving forward. I guess I had always figured that, if nothing else, I had a real pure Self under there that I was hoping to recover and reconnect with once I got my Demon Era properly handled and filed away. Problem is, it looks like this going to be more of a discovery/construction mission than a reconnaissance one and I’m not sure I packed the right tools.

Liz Pardue-Schultz

Honestly?

I don’t even know anymore.*

*Not that I really did, although I was convinced that I did up until about six or seven years ago. But now I’m certain that I don’t. And I don’t know where to start or if it’s even worth starting and it’s not bad and it’s not good and what it all boils down to is that I’m a giant wuss and no amount of begging the Universe for a pair of white-gold-dipped balls is actually changing that at the moment and that’s frustrating on top of everything else slowly stacking itself on each other. So, even though there’s a lot going on, there’s really nothing happening.
Because of me.
Being chickenshit.
And then hating it.
And then hating myself for hating it.

… And I’m tired. I think tired is coming in at a close second. Like, really long-term, weary, worn-out tired. It’s like I’ve spent since I was 13 overanalyzing and oversentimentalizing everything and then I ramped that up in the last few years with the mental workout of recovery and now something in my brain just finally powered down and now I don’t want to do any of it which doesn’t really help me because I’m pretty lazy when it comes right down to it but I kinda felt productive in my inactivity before now because at least I was dissecting and understanding everything but now that I’m not even doing that I’m really just not doing anything at all.

I really miss being able to blame my ineptitude on being completely out of my mind.

Usually, I’m one of those positive-energy mongers, always pushing myself to keep the Big Picture in mind and seek out the good and/or humorous in everything. It’s been a very rewarding practice in the last couple years since I adopted it, actually, and is something I hope to pass along to my kid(s). However, in the last week or so since The Bad Thing descended on my psyche, I’ve felt like more things have begun to weigh on me. Even with my inherent Autumnal Excitement and the good things that are going on around me right now, I feel like my mind is going, “Wait! I just need an effing break from all this positivity. I’d like to look at some things objectively and note that they suck without having to think of a way to make them better or fix them or whatever. Just gimme a second.”

And, because I do believe in the Law of Attraction, I know that a lot of the negativity that’s cropping up has a lot to do with the negativity I’m wasting time thinking about and/or being frustrated over. So, while this Release of Complaints to the Universe could really go either way, I’m hoping that I’m just using this as a means to exorcise these thoughts from my consciousness. Perhaps I’ll counter this with a Counting of Blessings post. That actually sounds like a good way to recharge myself after the following Whineage Dump.

Lessgo:

~ I’ve become completely disillusioned with Facebook in a way that’s beginning to depress me. Admittedly this is mostly my fault for making my frequent visits a daily habit. I sort of justified posting pictures and commenting on people’s pics and stats to myself as me being able to stay in better touch with people I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. And for the most part that’s pretty true.

The thing is, I have 630+ “friends” on there, all of whom I know by name and have had real actual conversations with in real life. (And only one of them is an ex boyfriend!) At first, it’s really a lot of fun to pull a High School Reunion and go look through photo albums to see how one’s 2nd-grade crush has turned out or find out if the prom queen got fat and any of that other stuff that keep people returning to reunions with people from adolescence. (Thus the reason that h.s. reunion attendence has declined in the last couple years.) But after that you just kind of find yourself hanging on to these electronic connections between these people for the sake of manners or some other new internet etiquette bullshit for absolutely no reason. After a while it becomes apparent that laughing at how that middle school bully turned into a fat, ignorant, racist drunk just isn’t as much fun or validating as it used to be and that the only thing that connection succeeds in doing is reminding you why you hated him so much in the first place. Sure, there are instances where I’ve been able to forge new connections with people I wasn’t necessarily friends with in high school and I’ve even been able to have really intellectual conversations with those types of people that have broadened my thinking and challenged my beliefs. But really, who cares? If we all really wanted to be involved in each others’ current lives, wouldn’t we make it a point to do so? We can share internet memes and funny websites with each other via email, we can pick up the phone and call people who live out of town, we can organize parties and arrange reunions without the use of a formal “Event.” Hell, we can even go about our daily activities without requiring commentary from everyone we know.

And before we start weighing in on my inherent hypocrisy, I realize that I’ve bought into the hype as well. I syndicate this blog through my profile and post recent pictures of funny things that I’ve seen or experienced and send friends links to hilarious new websites and take meaningless quizzes about what sort of famous person I’m supposed to be an embodiment of. Like a lot of people, it’s become a bit of a lifestyle if not only a habit. I check it when I get bored, I kill time by commenting on other people’s ramblings. But after a while, it all just seems like perpetuating our own desperate need to be noticed and recognized (much like, say, a blog) where we’re throwing every detail of our lives into a public forum in hopes to prove that we’re still alive! And existing! Look! Here are pictures of me with other friends hanging out in real life!

And the truth of the matter - and the thing that makes me the most depressed - is that it’s apparent that Facebook is sort of like living in a small town; while there are people who are genuinely exciting to be around and may find you exciting to be around as well, mostly there are just a bunch of people you don’t particularly wandering around believing in the great myth of themselves and living in this state of circular nothingness that’s not exciting enough to warrant even an hour’s worth of conversation, let alone constantly updated spot on a News Feed. Same people. Doing the same shit. With the same other people. This time via the Internet.

Aside from the fact that the whole system is kind of boring and trite, I’ve become bothered with my need to participate in this as often as I do and even more bothered by the realization that I can’t just cut myself off from it just yet. I think this may be a weaning, trimming-of-the-fat situation in which I whittle down my friend base to just the people I care enough about to keep in touch with in the Grand Scheme. And then there is the adjusting-of-the-frequency-of-my-visits. I wonder how much I could get done in my day if I didn’t stop by Facebook so often to reply to someone’s commentary or share a funny link with everyone I know. I wonder if I could do everything on my To Do List in a realistic amount of time and I wonder how far I could go about developing this Great Image I have for myself and my life.

I feel like in anyone’s life there are ways to create distractions from our higher purpose and even if I get rid of the habit of Facebook, there will always be something that will invite me to slack off and divert my attention. But I also think that this is a major thing that is also draining a bit of me personally. I gotta do something about that.

~ My haaaaair. It’s not really as awful as I make it sound and, after scrubbing it with Dawn detergent and superduper dandruff shampoo, it’s getting better but it’s still not what I wanted. I hate wasting an autumn on a mediocre hair color.

~ I think I’m going to have to ditch some friends. This is always hard for me because of my weird thank-you-for-noticing-me mentality I developed in jr. high in which I just feel honored that anyone is taking note of me at all (I really should start growing out of that. I’ve had enough therapy. It’s time.) and I should be lucky to have friends at all, so I don’t want to run the few I have off. And really, in the last three years I’ve become much much better at cutting off people who like to perpetuate self-loathing insanity and the resulting drag-everyone-into-it drama that inevitably ensues. (These are the people for whom I used to prepare arguments to defend my reasoning and give them a respectful “This is why I’m cutting you off” speech -complete with bulleted points and relevant examples - only to have them completely disregard it or not get any of it at all. Now there’s just a personal severance.)

The problem at the moment is that the [useta-be] friends I’m having to cut off at the moment hit a little closer to home. I’ve not always been a good friend to a lot (a lot) of people that I consider my friends and I’m incredibly lucky to have received love and forgiveness from many of them, but these days I work really hard on being selfless and giving and nurturing and attentive and all that. I really do. And, again, I’m incredibly lucky to have a handful of really good friends who give me the same - or moreso - in return. (Some of these friends I haven’t even met in person. I know that sounds weird but I’ve had a small group of old message board buddies that I’ve known for about 5 years who have been amazing to me.) But I have a few friends who have been very Take-Take here recently and I think it’s about time I pulled the plug on it. And I’m not the type to just give up on someone but if it’s been a couple years and I’m not getting anywhere and they’re not “getting it” then I don’t really feel bad at all. In fact, with one of the friends I’m shocked at how apathetic I feel about the whole thing.

Behold, a cautionary tale of the most genuine sort about how faith and visualization sometimes aren’t enough, especially when inexpensive hair dye and inexperience are involved.

Last year, I got a wild hare in my ass after the high of my sudden domesticity came down and I dyed a bright purple streak in my bangs in a sad attempt to save myself from Boringstonville. I adored it, but after six months of fortnightly bleaching and weekly color touch-ups I had to resign myself to the fact that if I did anything else to this small plot of follicles, I would only succeed in enlongating my forehead.

So, I took myself to a real live professional (a rare, raaare occurence for me) who spent TWO HOURS putting stripping treatment on this 6″sq to no avail. She then dyed everything all one color in hopes to obscure the remaining color - again, to no avail.

Six months later, my hair has grown out significantly and it has become apparent that the color it was dyed is notably lighter than my actual hair color. In an[other] attempt to remedy this once and for all, I go for a hair dye in “Dark Chocolate” because it best matches my roots and it’s one of those things I love sporting just as the leaves start to change.

When I am dyeing my hair, I visualize, long, shining, luxurious locks of dark, flowing tresses that mesmerize and seduce. I hope to channel something Megan Fox-y or Catherine Zeta-Jones-y or [perhaps more realistic, if only a little] Kim Kardashian-y.

I am sorely mistaken.

When I was whining about my misfortune to a friend, she asked, “Okay, seriously. How bad is it?” I then relayed to her the story of a visit to a local convenience mart mere hours earlier during which the gum-chewing, brace-laced, dead-eyed minor behind the counter had [relatively] excitedly exclaimed, “Oh, wow! Has anyone told you that you, like, look exactly like Amy Lee? Like, identical.”

My friend didn’t stop laughing for a whole three minutes.

I would vow to remain in seclusion until I can afford another hair treatment (physically or financially) but that would only further the image that I am now one of the pale, mopey, anti-social Goth chick that I loathe so very. very. very much.

At least Halloween is next month.

Things are not good right now.

The rain was due to come, eventually; it always is. I just wish it was a shower I wasn’t so weary of. And I even wish I could blame myself a little; somehow that would make it seem more controllable.

Or that I had packed an umbrella.

I’ve often heard and have grown to believe that the best way to make God laugh is to make plans. Apparently, I needed a refresher course.

Since the Bear is adamant about spending as much time as possible outdoors, I thought I’d change up the scenery and take her out to a local park while my hubs did some stuff around the house. It was mostly cloudy with a generous amount of breaks which was great because it meant we could spend the middle of the day outside without burning alive.

So we get down to the Kiwanis Family Park, one of our city’s beautiful playgrounds with big fields and running trails and grills and the whole bit.

Chloe is ecstatic and tears off at a dead run (which only translated as an effortless trot for me) and flailing her arms while screaming “WHEEEE!” I decided to take her on one of the trails as she’s not spent much time in wooded areas. She couldn’t have been more excited and, in the first few minutes she’d already picked up the words “creek” and “bridge”.

We’re hiking along and Chloe is loving every minute of it, pointing at birds, scampering down the trail, waving to every person that passes. I try to get her to turn off onto the paths that would lead us back to the starting point, but every time she screamed and cried, pulling my arm to let her take the long route.

Although I knew it was a .75 mile trail, I kind of shrugged and laughed about it thinking, “Well, I guess the worst that could happen is that she gets exhausted and I have to carry her back.” Plus, we were still around people in that I could see houses and major roads through the trees, so if we were bitten by a snake or something awful, we wouldn’t be far from rescue.

We get to the end of the trail and I have to pick Chloe up, screaming and kicking, to get her to turn around and go back the way we came. After a few minutes she gave up the fight and we were off. About five minutes in at Chloe-walking-speed, we started to feel a little bit of light rain but were under a thick canopy of trees, so Chloe really enjoyed it. As we walked, the rain gradually got a tiny bit heavier and I was still chucking to myself, thinking, “Ah man, we’re going to get so wet.” But still, Chloe was enjoying herself and even though I’d picked up the pace and was keeping us toward the edge of the path for more cover, we were having a good time.

AND THEN THE EFFING BOTTOM FELL OUT.

Regardless of how long this summer storm was going to last, I knew Chloe would only find heavy raindrops pounding her body for a few minutes, so I scooped her up and began to run while yelling, “Whee!!” Now, I think it’s important to note that, because I was prepared for a leisurely day at the park, I was wearing a skimpy camisole, a flowing hippie skirt, and cheap leather sandals that I’ve had for a few years and have completely worn the tread off of. Also, I’d left the diaper bag back in the car but was hauling around my big leather purse with my wallet, keys, camera, juice boxes, etc. Still, though, we were giggling and I was kind of enrapt with how funny this all was and what a ridiculous story we’d have when we got home.

But about five minutes up the road, the rain somehow increased to the point where we couldn’t see ten feet in front of us and Chloe became hysterical. The fact that I haven’t been exercising recently was already a factor, but add to that the fact that I’m carrying an extra 25 lbs on one arm and trying to run in sandals in such a way that I don’t fall and hurt both of us, and I was working harder than I believe I have in the last ten years.

I was torn between trying to run fast and trying to keep my balance while soothing Chloe’s terrified screams so the .65 mile I was running took literally 10 minutes to cover (I could easily walk a mile in that on a normal day.) And then, just as I breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude upon seeing the clearing up ahead, a bolt of lightning hit a tree less than a mile away (we saw it as we were leaving the park later on) and elevated our level of panic to outright terror. There hadn’t been any signs of lightning before that moment so, even though we were soaking and Chloe was really upset, I was safe in the knowledge that we weren’t in real danger. When that was snatched away, my adrenaline kicked in and I somehow sprinted out of the woods, into the clearing, and another 200 yards to the nearest shelter.

Just as I hit the slick floor of the shelter, my treadless shoes became worthless and I hit my knee harder than I think it’s ever been. However, because of my wildly flying hormones and emotions, I didn’t even notice it until a few hours later. As a few dry families watched, I sat on the floor right at the edge, rocking and soothing Chloe as best as I could while she wailed and shivered.

Even though the shelter was lying elevated on a hill, it began to flood and I realized I was sitting in a slowly spreading puddle. I moved us to one of the picnic tables and kept rocking and clutching the Bear. I was terrified she’d get hypothermia or pneumonia or something and it’s honestly the first time that she’s screamed in public and I did not give a shit what anyone else was thinking, although I hardly think that’s praiseworthy or unnatural given the circumstances.

After about ten minutes, I noticed one of the men in another family come running back from their car, soaking and clutching a bag. He handed it off and his wife and her daughter walked over and handed me a clean, dry set of little boy’s clothes and a new diaper. As I tried to tell her how much I appreciated it, it became obvious that she spoke no English at all and I was reduced to pitiful, broken Spanish and an idiotic redundancy of “Gracias”es. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and, to be honest, as I’m writing this, my eyes are welling up with tears, (although that could be the residual effects of the day messing with my emotions.) While I changed an increasingly chilled and frightened Bear, the woman calmly stabilized Chloe as her daughter spoke softly to her and tried to get her to smile. Realizing that I couldn’t hold the Bear up to my chest to warm her as my clothes were soaking, the woman made a gesture to ask permission and, after I nodded, she picked Chloe up and held her for a few minutes. When Chloe finally settled a bit, we sat her down and I became pathetic with gratitude, probably driving the woman insane with my relentless thanks. She held up a hand to tell me it was no problem but ran back over to her purse and handed me a small bottle of Bio Salud!, a revolutionary Mexican dairy beverage that is loaded with live cultures and nutrients. Suffice to say, I was floored.

After Chloe calmed down, she went back to her normal self, sitting beside me while I wrung out my skirt a few dozen times and babbling and pointing to the rain and smiling at me with wonder. I even took the opportunity to get a few pics, because I’m pathetic and thought I should have evidence of the story when I tell her one day.

The rain died down and the woman and her family stood up to leave. Even though I hated the idea of stripping Chloe of warm clothes, I knew we had some clean ones in the car about 200-ish yards away and could make it work if we had to. I made feeble gestures to tell the woman that she could have her son’s clothes back but she adamantly shook her head and patted me on the back with one of those “knowing mother” smiles.

It took me about an hour after we left the park to settle down and realize how exhausted I was. I just felt deflated after the intensity of the emotions plus the unrehearsed running.

I’m sure, though, that this is one of those days I’ll remember. Not to oversentimentalize things but the culmination of the fear that was so easily diffused by one family’s simple generosity made the whole experience remarkable. I know, it’s not like I was a refugee taken in by strangers, but still the lessons here are twofold:

1) ALWAYS prepare for the worst when out with children. Al. Ways.
2) Don’t be so cowardly or cynical as to doubt the existence of real, good people, no matter how much you see evidence to prove otherwise.

Q: What’s more fun than croup-y, barking 18-month old who is exhausted from a midnight trip to the ER and two nights of general sleeplessness from pain who won’t let me do anything but sit with her and watch television all day in our individual exhaustion-based dazed stupors?

A: A baby who meets the aforementioned descriptions and is suffering from a bedsore on her hip from recent extensive travel while confined to a carseat and is going to have to spend a few days in cloth diapers.

Wha - fucking - eee.

Last night at about 8:15, Chloe started screaming. Every breath was a literal ear-ringing scream and she would not be consoled, no matter what we tried. She had a runny nose but no fever, so we tried suctioning to no avail. We tried holding her, letting her lie alone, rocking her, walking with her, sitting still with her… nothing was changing her tone at all and we really started to get terrified that there was something wrong. We called all the necessary doctors, who told us we might need to go to the ER if we couldn’t find out what was wrong. And then, after about 45 minutes of incessant screaming, she was done.

Suddenly, abruptly, she was chatty and smiling and playful, running around and giggling. We put her down an hour later, relieved and optimistic that she’d beaten whatever had been troubling her.

At 10:50 we heard her screaming again. This time it was the same thing. She screamed intensely for 45 minutes and we were literally picking up my car keys and walking out the door to go to the ER when she stopped. We can’t figure out if it was massive waves of gas or something completely unconsidered. Maybe she’s just so exhausted from the last week of traveling she’s lost most of her immunities, maybe the negativity we’ve been dealing with has worn on her… whatever the case, we were terrified to say the least.

She woke up two more times during the night screaming but I was able to get her to settle down and go back to sleep within minutes, probably because she was so exhausted.

She woke up at 7:30 this morning as usual and has been runny-nosed and a little fussy but okay for the most part. To be honest, I have no idea what to expect or what I’m dealing with here.