Anxiety

The Witching Hour

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

The Witching Hour

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”                   ― Stephen King

As a child I believed the witching hour was the hour after midnight. As an adult I have found it to be the 3 am hour, an hour that can often encompass the rest of the night. As much as I might wish to be haunted by certain ghostly specters, most of the spells cast upon me emanate from my own mind and create monsters that wish to consume my soul.

I once dwelled on issues that amount to little…the molehills of life.  Questions such as “Should I have bought toilet paper” when I last went to the grocery store or is there some hidden malady hiding in my water heater causing it to breakdown when I next need hot water. These issues are random and silly but rob me of my needed sleep.

I live in an old farmhouse, over one hundred and twenty years old. During the quiet of the witching hour, the house creaks and pops in the same way I creak and pop when I first arise in the morning.

The puppies squirm and whimper as they dream whatever puppy dogs dream about. Mice play in the attic…I really need to go up and check on what damage is being done. Something else for me to dwell upon while I wait for the sun to appear.

Lately my witching hour doesn’t dwell on the silly or random. Lately, my reflections focus on my bride. It has been seven months, but her death is still fresh and cutting. Many days I walk into the house expecting to find her puttering about, her dark mane of hair framing her smiling face and twinkling brown eyes.  I am heart wrenchingly disappointed.

The witching hour was the time Linda would attempt to get up, on her own, and go to the bathroom. After several falls my puppies and I learned to wake up with her. It is a habit I can’t seem to rid myself of.

In the dark of the witching hour, I struggle to see the youthful and energetic Linda Gail. I must force myself to purge the memories from the final year of her life, struggling to replace visions of sickness and pain with memories of the special times in our life.

My recent dreams seem to trigger the witching hour. My dreams have a common subject, being lost. Common locations can be seen but I can’t find my way to them. With every twist and turn they seem farther away, or sometimes, disappear totally.

I am lost on streets or bizarre corridors that shouldn’t exist. I encounter old friends along the way, folks I haven’t seen in years…many now dead. They are no help, their directions causing me to become more lost. In the dream I grow fearful and anxious.

I awaken and find that fear and anxiety are real. I lay quietly attempting to regulate my respiration before getting up and staggering outside to attempt to calm my panic with a cigar. My faithful companions come with me, guarding me until I rise to return to bed. A return to sleep rarely occurs.

I don’t need someone with a medical degree in psychology to explain the origins of my dreams. I am lost… in the dark or in the light of day, I am lost without my rudder. The seas are stormy, and I have no way to steer.  “The monsters are real, and the ghosts are real too.”

***

On a brighter note, before Linda’s transition I released the book, “Food for Thought.” It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

Blessings…

/ cigarman501 / 10 Comments

“I am tighter than a tick.  I cannot eat another bite…pecan pie you say? Well, maybe a smidge.” -quote from Thanksgiving tables across the nation

It is that time again. Belt bustin,’ pants button poppin’, asleep watchin’ the football game time. Turkey and dressing time…cornbread dressing with a lot of sage and not bread stuffing, thank you. Moist on the inside, crispy on the outside. Impossible? I take mine sans gravy.

Cranberry sauce right out of the can with the little ridges so you know where to cut it for a serving.  That was a joke, I hate cranberry sauce right out of the can even though there is a warm memory from my youth there somewhere.

My Aunt’s butterscotch pudding topped with a toasted meringue that reminds me of my mother’s butterscotch pudding that was passed down from generation to generation but went with her to her grave. Pecan pie, oh my.

My cousin Kim’s broccoli casserole, Bob’s ham, and any new dish my brother, Steve, decides to try out on us. Those bacon wrapped brussels sprouts in a balsamic vinegar reduction were dang good. My bride’s tomato pies. Yes, Thanksgiving will give me a good start on my holiday ten-pound weight increase that I don’t need.

Now if we can keep the political discussions to a minimum….

Thanksgiving and before you turn around, Christmastime…and then New Years. I hear my arteries clogging as I contemplate sausage balls washed down with alcohol laced eggnog before a drunken, snack filled evening ringing in the New Year. That is a lie, I haven’t rung in the New Year anywhere but at home in a coon’s age. Drunken? Not in forty years. I do admit that there might be a liquor drink before I kiss my bride “Happy New Year’s” …and one after.

Truth be known, I will kiss my bride “Happy New Year’s” a couple of hours ahead of time.  I am usually asleep when the New Year officially begins, and it won’t be Jack Daniels’ fault.

I hate to be a Grinch, but this is not my finest time of the year. A Grinch or a hermit? A Grinch that is a hermit. The children of Whoville are safe. I will not be coming out of the mountains to steal their presents.

The nights have grown longer, and we are still over a month away from the longest night. I feel like a mushroom and not the ones swimming in brown gravy.  SAD on top of clinical depression and the anxiety that comes with the darkness…exacerbated by the holidays.

Depression and anxiety steal your happiness and while food might be a soothing anodyne it is a placebo. Vast quantities of food and drink only covers the symptoms and does not treat the disease. To add insult to injury, I wake up the next day feeling like the Muffin Man stuffed into a sausage casing or a “blivit” which for the uneducated is ten pounds of poo stuffed into a five-pound bag…yes, more like a blivit. I get to add the guilt of a five-pound weight gain to the anxiety and depression.

No, it is not my finest time…no matter all the blessings I will receive from being around my slightly dysfunctional family at Thanksgiving, my daughter, son-in-law and two wide-eyed grandchildren at Christmas, and the Christmas elf that is my bride…but then she is just as depressed, and anxiety ridden as I am.  No, not my finest time.

Fortunately, I am a functional Grinch and with resolve will overcome my tendency to hideout in a hole somewhere. I will come down out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge and mingle, smile, sing, and of course eat. I will even have fun despite my anxiety that I will not.

The holiday season can be stressful and depressing for people who are not clinically depressed.  For those of us who are, the holiday season is exhausting…just thinking about it is exhausting. Just taking a first step is exhausting and only those who are clinically depressed understand that.

Still, the logical me knows that I am blessed. Better health than I should expect, a loving wife who is crazy enough to make things interesting. A daughter and grandbabies, my brother who is crazy funny and his wife who tolerates him. My mother’s sister and her three daughters and a grandson, the only ties to my youth that I have left. A beautiful place to live. A roof over my head, food on my table, heat…so many things we take for granted that everyone does not get to enjoy.

I’m thankful for the wonderful memories of people now gone. Friends and family who have transitioned to the stars. Friends and family who still have a place at our Thanksgiving table.

I am blessed and thankful.  Now if I can just make it back to those lengthening days of spring and summer.  Happy Thanksgiving to all, depressed, stressed out, or not.

For further Musings or a book or two go to https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR00sd2cXY1IYHpF0I_Di_B0IE6jQEXA4APINANulPSn2I3l9kAFT7wZaZM

Don’s latest literary masterpiece can be purchased in paperback or for download at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR00sd2cXY1IYHpF0I_Di_B0IE6jQEXA4APINANulPSn2I3l9kAFT7wZaZM

Nineteen Seconds….

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

 

Nineteen seconds…doesn’t sound very long…it’s not very long considering the eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day.  But it may be the motivation I need to continue living.  Compared to yesterday, nineteen additional seconds of…blessed sunlight.  Say it blesssss-eddddd!  Nineteen additional seconds as the sun begins its annual climb into the sky, a full minute of glorious sunshine by Wednesday.  Overly dramatic?  Not at all.  The Winter Solstice is once again behind me.

I have a mild case of depression.  Mild.  I laugh at the thought.  Chuckle, chortle, guffaw!  Today my depression is mild, like soft spring rains.  My mind only slightly fragmented.  A thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle fresh from the box fragmented.  Only a bit of anxiety as I prepare for Christmas.

Blam!  Tomorrow my depression may land like a warm, wet, stinking cow patty from a, particularly tall cow.  Unknown sorrows bringing a squirting, diarrheic, torrent of melancholy gloom, doom and despair for no reason at all…other than it just is.  Splat…Rumble…Rumble…Rumble…Splat!

Similar to the symptoms of diarrhea, I never know when my depression will hit any more than I know when it will end…I just know it will hit…usually in the darkest hours the winter when sunlight is at a premium.  I know not when it will end…I only hope it will end.  Oh, glorious sunshine, how I wish to feel your warm caress.

What a quandary…dilemma…predicament.  At my age, I shouldn’t be wishing my life away.  How many winters do I have left?  Yesterday it seems I celebrated a birthday…and here is another…right around the corner.  Still…I hate living from a bout of depression to bout of depression.  Is it living?  Oh sunshine, why have you forsaken me?  Bring on the heat, humidity, mosquitos, and longgggggg days of sunshine!

You think my depression might be magnified by the season?  I’ve never been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder, but you don’t have to be a savant to realize what is going on…summers with mild bouts of depression, winters with “Oh my god, I’m as crazy as an outhouse mouse!”  I’m in real trouble, my humor is not even funny to me.

What to do, what to do?  The sun is trying to peep above the ridgeline.  A walk before church?  It’s thirty degrees…ordinarily not a deterrent.  Today?  My disability is getting in the way…but there’s “gold in them thar hills,” beautiful golden sunshine.  Dress warmly, my friends.

For more of Don Miller’s musings or rantings, https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from http://7-themes.com/6937886-forest-morning-sunshine.html

 

MEN, WORK, penises AND DEPRESSION

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

My neighbor, distant neighbor, was doing some repair work for me. He is out of work and depressed and I try to employ him as much as my limited resources are able. I began to think about my own depression and how having external issues might affect one’s depression. I have always been unable to answer one question from when I was first diagnosed and my depression was at its worse, “Am I depressed because I am getting a divorce or am I getting a divorce because I am depressed?” Don’t know, just glad I got the divorce.
My neighbor has been clinically depressed a long time, just as I have been, and somewhat recently has been laid off. As he helped me work on a tractor, or rather he worked while I handed him implements, I felt the need to discuss his depression, his job loss and the loss of self-esteem associated with them, something I am familiar with.

I have lost a job, actually two. Lost a job is not correct because no matter how I searched I wasn’t going to suddenly find my job and make it mine again. It’s not like a lost golf ball. Like that really beautiful, green eyed redhead in the late Sixties, I’m not going to suddenly find her again and Linda Gail might have something to say about it anyway. Just so you know I’m not looking.

Technically I was fired twice even though one of my associates allowed me to resign and the other…let’s just say I was fired and leave it there. If you coach for a living there are only two kinds of coaches according to the late coach Bum Phillips, “them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.” I was both. More on point, I believe once laid off you try to replace your job with one just like it and you are probably setting yourself up for more failure and lost esteem…or at least I did and so is my neighbor it would seem.

For a man, and more recently with more women in the work force, a woman, it is hard to detach your “worth from your work.” I don’t believe it is chauvinist to say it is different for men. We see our work somewhat like our penises. If our penises are working fine, we are fine. Work is fine, we are fine. We have self-worth because we tend to identify with what we do…and to a certain extent, our penises. Until somewhat recently, women identified with their families for their self-worth…the old maternal instinct. This has changed, not a bad thing, except women executives are now having near as many stress related heart attacks as men, but I don’t see women ever identifying their work with their vaginas unless they are working in the world’s “oldest profession.”

Back on point, getting fired, laid off or having a failure to launch is depressing. Come on guys we’ve all had a failure to perform at least once. There is no shame and there is a reason for those little blue pills. Actually getting fired can have an effect on performance but more importantly it can have an even greater effect if you are clinically depressed. That was the reason for my conversation with my neighbor. I was worried about how he was handling his job hunting and his depression.

I don’t believe men are as willing to admit they are depressed as women because of the way we are raised. “Buck up Jocko!” “Dry those tears and get back at it!” We still have problems admitting to our emotions, committing to a long term relationship or with the inability to launch. Clinical depression is not about emotions. It is a sickness that can be treated even if you are looking for a job.

I don’t know if I helped my neighbor, I know he got my tractor running again. I wish there was some sort of sensory feedback when you assist people with their depressions but as hard as I looked and listened I received none. There was no engine roar or smell of diesel exhaust. At least he knows he is not alone.

Don Miller has also written four books, including “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” and the recently released “Through the Front Gate.” They may be purchased or downloaded at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM