Haunted

 
I decorated for Christmas this past weekend. I know it's super early but I love the holidays and I can do whatever I want. The decorations are conducive to my mood as well. A Christmas tree adorned with white lights is perfect for sitting in a darkened room and staring off into. The musical box that plays Winter Wonderland and always ends on slow, sad drawn out final notes always hits the right chords within me. It almost seems to strain itself to try to complete the entire song. It never does though. It always stops short. So I turn the dial and listen to it again. 


I had another music box as a child that I loved. I guess I shouldn't call them musical boxes since the Christmas one is in the shape of an igloo and the one I had as a child was shaped as a little girl. She was in a light green dress splattered with dark green shamrocks and she played "When Irish eyes are smiling." I used to play it over and over as a little girl, trying to fall asleep in my dark, quiet house. It was a weird time. My parents had just gotten married and there were ghosts in my house. I would see their faces floating over my bed at night and I can remember the face of one of them. He was an old man with a very wrinkly face. My parents never believed me when I told them I saw ghosts. I remember being really scared though and I know that I have a very active imagination and a chemical imbalance but I don't think I am crazy enough to conjure up images like that. And I was only 4 at the time. 


My roommate and I have a vague fear that our current apartment is haunted but I'm not sure about it. She felt like someone was walking around her bed and she heard rustling in her closet. I haven't really experienced anything though. Except my bed would shake sometimes but it's against a wall so I couldn't tell if it was a ghost or the people who live downstairs. 

I think the only ghost in our apartment is me.
I just glide around from room to room searching for something I can't find. 
Quietly observing the world around me, wondering how I have gotten so far away and trying so hard to get back.

But most days are lessons in stillness. 
Sitting in darkened rooms. 
Looking into white lights...

In a dreamworld

I am quite, quite sick right now. Sick enough that I am kind of having hallucinations so don't expect this post to be very cohesive or coherent (I just had to look up if those two words actually mean two different things). I've had a sore throat these past few days, ever since my trip to NYC, but I attributed it to the hookah bar we went to. It was Daylight Savings time so we decided to repeat everything we did at 1a.m. so we got another round of margaritas and another hookah. I sucked that think down. I used to smoke in high school but I kind of just got sick of it and quite my Freshman year of college but I still smoke occasionally. It satiates whatever desire I have left. Anyway, this sore throat has gotten worse and now I am achy with a general all over sick feeling. I don't own a thermometer but I'm gonna guess that I have a slight fever. Once I said that I felt sick out loud was when I started to feel worse. I acknowledged it and it just blew up. Like anything in life really. "To call each thing by its right name."

I guess that's why they say the first step in fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. Once you admit it, you own it. It becomes a part of you and something you can't deny and only then can you begin to move on. For instance, I just told my parents yesterday about what is going on with me. Usually those would be the first people you would call but I was nervous. This is a big decision and I just wanted to make sure that I had everything all figured out before I unleashed it all on my parents. My best friend had to talk me into it to be quite honest and I'm glad she did. I could have held off on doing it for a long time. But it was killing me that they didn't know and here I am writing about it on my blog and telling everyone else but they were left in the dark. It went well, as well as it could go, for what it was but I feel so much better now that it's out there. Now everyone knows. I've owned up to it all over the place and now I just feel...peaceful. Now everyone knows who I am, at this point in my life. I've got the troops behind me now. 

Back to the hallucinations. I'm not on anything and I've never taken psychedelics so I'm not tripping or whatever. I'm not seeing people or other worlds...I just keep seeing things out of the corner of my eye. This worries me because this is Boston and mice exist so there's that but I'm pretty sure I would really know if there were 4 or 5 mice skittering all over the living room. I imagine I will have some pretty great fever dreams tonight. As long as they aren't like the nightmare I had last night where I was stuck in a cage with a bunch of other people and a woman came with a machete and threw it into the cage and hit some other person on the head. Or more specifically, right in the face. I don't watch scary movies and I'm scared of the ghost that I'm pretty sure lives in my apartment so it really pisses me off when I have a nightmare because I try to stay away from anything scary. I think that dreams have meaning but I don't even try to interpret these dreams. Their only purpose is to scare me in my sleep as far as I can tell.

I love dreams though, good ones that is. I'm a daydreamer. I'm never bored because I always have something going on inside of my head. I've gone on many mental vacations. My roommate hates commercials and will spend those few minutes switching between channels but I see that break in a program as "me time." I can occupy myself with a few images of me in a new job, or just imagining me at a friends place in Vermont. I've got a very active imagination. So eight hours of just laying in my comfy bed dreaming is awesome. It's what I should go do now considering how sick I feel and I can feel myself slowly getting worse but these late night talk shows aren't going to watch themselves.

My rebellion

I got pulled over this weekend. I had just dropped my roommate off at the train station in New Haven and I was driving her car back to my parents house where it would stay until it was time to pick her up a few days later. I was coming up to a light that was yellow but I decided to just gun it and try my luck. Just as I passed underneath the now red light, I see a cop car to my left and say, "Fuck!" and immediately start to slow down. The car rolls around the corner and the red and blue lights start flashing. The police officer approaches my car and I see that it's a lady cop and she asks why my headlights are off. Whoops. I always forget to turn the headlights on in my roomie's car. In my old car, which my father donated to charity behind my back, the lights would turn off when you turned off the car and turn back on when you started it back up again. I'm still used to that I guess even though I haven't had that car for about 2 years now. The streets were well lit and I could see perfectly well so I had no idea that they were off. Then she told me that the light I passed through was definitely red and took my license and all the other stuff. There was a guy cop with her too and he was waving his flashlight all over the place and then he just stood by the side of the car. At this point I was worried that they thought that I stole this car. They keep asking me where I was coming from and I've got a CT license driving a car with a PA license plate that is not under my name.

So after like 20 minutes of the police officer just standing there and people staring at me as they walk by, lady cop comes back over and says, "Ok I am going to tell you what I'm supposed to do and then I will tell you what I'm going to do." Score. So then she goes through the whole speech of how much each fine would cost and then finally reveals to me that I am just getting a warning. The first time I got pulled over I wasn't so lucky.

Three of my friends and I drove to Miami for spring break out Sophomore year of college and we all took turns driving. We only stopped briefly at a hotel to shower and nap and mostly just drove through the night. On the way down I did quite a nice job of pushing the Saturn Ion we were driving to 120 to race some boys in Delaware and made it through the entire state in around 20 minutes and didn't manage to get pulled over. However, on our way back home I was driving the night shift and was cruising through Georgia. It was probably 2 in the morning and the roads were clear...just me and a cop. I was doing 93 in a 70 and got a citation and summons to court but I just ended up paying a hefty fine to avoid court. I don' really stress out over getting pulled over. I like to drive fast and I just kind of assume that I'm not always going to get away with it. But most of the time I do. In high school I used to push my car to 100 on the highway to see if I could get to the mall a few towns over in 15 minutes or less.

I was driving my parents car this weekend and my mom was with me and we were driving on this windy back road. I had never driven on these roads before so I was taking it kind of slow but then this guy rolls up behind me and he's not back there for more than a minute before he speeds up to pass me, crossing into the oncoming traffic lane and cutting me off. So then I'm pissed. There is nothing I hate more than someone cutting me off or implying that I am going too slow. So I started to ride his ass and my mom goes, "Mal stop following him so close, he could have a gun!" I laughed and said, "And he's gonna shoot me for tailgating him? That would be ridiculous." He ended up speeding up and basically drove in the oncoming traffic lane the whole time to cut off the whole line of cars that weren't going fast enough for him. 

I've always liked driving and I seem to be one of the few people who do. I was desperate for the independence when I turned 16 and being able to just get up and go was fantastic. This independence turned into me skipping almost 40 days of school my senior year and it was all due to having a car...and hating school...and getting into college in December so I didn't see the need to try anymore. I would pick up my best friend and we would actually drive to school but in the parking lot we would usually decide that today wasn't a good day and would instead spend our time at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble. Later on when I got caught and my parents found out my mom asked, "Why didn't you just go to her house and sleep?" We hadn't even thought about it. We liked to drive around. Go on adventures. See where the day would take us while everyone else was sitting in class. Now that I live in Boston and use public transportation I don't need a car but I miss driving. Speeding down the streets with the music blasting. I love that. I just walk fast now, but its not the same, even if I'm listening to my iPod. 

If I have somewhere to go, I want to get there quickly. I don't want to waste time along the way. That is what has been the hardest part about this whole getting better process. I just want to be better, to feel it instantly now that I have made all these changes in my life. But then I would be missing all that life has to offer along the way. So I'm forcing myself to slow down a bit. (I want to keep interjecting car metaphors like put on the brakes, sit back and enjoy the view, something about detours, scenic views, etc etc etc...but you get the point). Everyday is progress, everything that I am doing now is for me and will benefit future me. 

Oh and while I am talking about the future and cars...this past weekend I went to NYC for Halloween and some guy pulled up in a DeLorean dressed as Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He even had smoke billowing out of it. That's commitment.

"...the sea's only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head..."
— Bear Meat by Primo Levi

I was scared to be honest about my depression because I didn't want to feel weak and vulnerable. But people keep calling me strong. Brave. Admirable.
When I felt strong, I was actually just weak and hiding my depression.
Now that I am honest and feel weak, I appear strong to others.
I'm learning so much.

When I stopped singing along to songs, I knew something was wrong. I am one of those annoying people who knows the words to every song and will gladly sing along to them. I listen to a song once and then I make it my job to sing along every time I hear it for the rest of my life. I've been known to exclaim how much I hate a song and then sing along to it. If I know the words I'm gonna sing 'em and no I do not have a good voice by good voice standards but I don't mind my singing. It's fun for me. But recently, I haven't been singing along to songs. I've barely been listening to music at all and when I do put on a song I'm barely hearing it. I'm too far away.

Depression is something that has always been there. I could always sense it, like a phantom limb, it was a part of me whether it could be seen or not. But usually it would go away, or I would have a good laugh and feel a little better. Better enough to carry on with my life. But it's bigger than me now. Rather than just carrying it around, it has seeped into every pore and I carry it in every cell of my body. It is my blood. It consumes my thoughts. In every inhalation, in every heartbeat, every step- I feel it. I am depression. It has swallowed me whole.

So now, as predicted, with this depression comes a loss of interest in things I would normally enjoy. As I mentioned in a previous post I can no longer read books and a recent venture into reading a magazine article proved futile as well. I can't take much in but I am certainly letting out a lot. I've told basically everyone how I am feeling and I know that talking about it will help me get through it and writing this blog has been a big help as well. It is one of the few things I have the motivation to start and actually finish. School and my internship are two things that fall into the can't finish category. I'm going to be taking a leave from school to focus on getting better and will probably return next Fall. 

I mean, this is kind of a big deal. The whole leaving school thing, I mean. Feeling depressed is big too but I can't believe how much it is affecting my life this time around. When I first started thinking about leaving school I was pissed. This is not something I had planned out, obviously, and I felt like I was ruining everything. Why couldn't I just suck it up and tough out these next 7 months so I can graduate on time? But every time I think about that I remember how hard it's been to even look at a syllabus, never mind completing an entire assignment. The normal things in life have become burdens and the only option is to get away. Take time for me so that one day I can do these things and not feel like a ton of bricks are laying down on me.

I've always been a very headstrong person. I only do things that make me happy and that I will enjoy and if I don't like something, or someone or somewhere I will not hesitate to remove myself, or not get involved at all. I just simply don't want to wast my time. I know what I like and what I don't like and I won't settle for anything less. That is why this decision to leave is so hard. I love my program, and the people who I have met. I love working with children and families and learning how to help them. I don't want to be the one left behind as the rest of my classmates excel and graduate in May and all travel together to Phoenix in June to take the certification exam. 

But I can't worry about that too much because for as long as depression is the only song in my head, the only song I know the words to, I have to leave some things behind. Make room for what is to come. To start over.

But it still sucks.

This is for me

I went to the Boston Bookfest today with my college roommate. It was a rainy Saturday and usually I would spend the day lazing about the house but I decided to brave the rain and venture out.


There were various seminars going on that I wanted to see so I sent her a text and met at the BPL. We had missed the seminar I wanted to see which was on writing memoirs so we got a seat at a seminar on thrillers and killers instead. We got there an hour early and spent the time catching up on each others lives.

I love listening to writers talk about their process. I love just being around writers. To know that some of us make it. Andre Dubus III author of 'House of Sand and Fog' said that only 200 authors in the US actually make a living out of writing. I don't know where he got this number from but I believed him. The other writers present were Joseph Finder, Stephen Carter and Jessica Stern. 

They said that the advice to "write what you know" is terrible. I was relieved to hear this. When do you know something? I've been waiting to know something so I can start writing my book. I think I would have waited forever. They said it's all about writing what you are interested in and learning more about it. They said a great novel leaves space for the reader to fill in their own ideas. You fill in the blanks. Everything doesn't need to be spelled out for you. They said that they don't write for anyone but themselves. If someone likes it, great, but it's an afterthought. A pleasant surprise. 

I felt so good after hearing them say all this. I've dreamed of becoming a writer since around age 5 and now it is something that tugs at me everyday, like a child pulling on her fathers pant leg. When will I be a writer? Can it start now? I wanna start now! Pleaaasseee. I guess anyone can be a writer, but I want to be an author. A novelist. I mostly just want to drop everything I am doing now and live the life I've imagined for myself. Become immersed in my writing. Write my little heart out. 

I don't know whats stopping me... 

Procrastinating

Procrastination has completely consumed me. I half-assed an essay this morning and since then I have been gearing up to do the rest of my work but so far no luck. I have to write a grant proposal and I find it dull. I don't like having to research and find facts and numbers to plug into specific spaces. I am proposing a grant to fund a child life program at Gesundheit Institute. It was created by Patch Adams and I think what he does relates to child life and I think that maybe someday he should give me a job at his yet to be built hospital. It's a fake proposal. Just something to help us learn how to write one so maybe one day I can submit a real one. Wouldn't mind if it was for Gesundheit. 

I work to normalize a child's hospital experience and help them understand procedures. But a big part of my job is play. It is how a child interprets their world and I get a front row seat. It's fascinating work but it's also sad because I only get to see these children because they are sick. My job wouldn't exist without them. You should look up child life, and if you know a child is going to a hospital you should ask if they have a child life specialist on staff. 

So this is me procrastinating some more. It's funny how when there is something important to do you often do things of less importance first. To get them out of the way, rather than just tackling the big project and worrying about those little things later. Such is life. So far I managed to clean the house, checked facebook and twitter a million times, unpacked, found some interesting articles to show to someone who might like them and now I am updating my blog which I just updated yesterday and which I have nothing really interesting to share since then. I guess I could talk about child life some more. Since my homework is for my child life grad program maybe this will motivate me.

I found child life when I was volunteering in a resource room at a certain big name hospital in Boston. I was in the main resource room where all the adult patients came to use the computers and pick up informational packets about different diseases. I had heard about the pediatric resource room and I knew I would be happy up there and that I would have a lot more fun. Then one day my supervisor told me that the person who runs the room would be going on vacation so I would have to take over! Hooray! But when I told my friends about this they all looked sad and said, "So you are going to be hanging out with kids who have cancer? Won't that be depressing?" Well...I hadn't really thought about it. I just thought kids=fun. I kind of forgot about the sick part.

It was all sunshine and giggles. They are kids! They still want to play regardless of how much hair was on their head or what their cells were doing. I couldn't believe that it was someone's actual job to play with these kids. You get to meet these wonderful little people and you can help make their visit to the hospital a little happier. The woman who ran the room went to school to get this job, and the school she went to was right next door to my college! I applied and got in and now I am at my second internship and feel so lucky to be here.


There was a particular patient at that big name hospital who cemented the idea that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. She was a little girl and her blond hair was just starting to grow back. We were playing with a dollhouse together and she started telling me how the boys at her school made fun of her for having no hair, but then she beat them up. She told me how they stopped making fun of her that and how happy she is now. A happy kid with cancer. We had a nice little chat and got along well and then she had to go see the doctor and get her chemo. The next day when I came in I found out that she had made something for me. It was a little blue felt bunny wearing a little floral dress. I was just so taken aback. Here is this little girl who is experiencing something so much bigger than she is and she made a blue bunny for me. It just really touched me. I felt like I should have done more for her; made her something to take home, and I told this to one of my professors and she smiled at me and said, "You did give her something. You sat and listened to her stories, played games with her and treated her like just another kid. She didn't walk away empty handed." I forgot about the sick part of her.


Some of the strongest people I have met have been cancer patients. For my first internship in grad school I worked at a not so well-known hospital in Boston. I was in the hematology/oncology clinic so once again I was working with beautifully bald children. Child Life Specialists can work in many different hospital settings from inpatient units (where I currently intern), radiology, ER, and so on. I just like working with oncology patients. But the thing is...it does get sad. You will meet a million strong little children but the fact is that not all of them will beat it. Four children died during my 5 months at this hospital and I learned that a patient I was close to died soon after I left. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what happened to the kids I worked with after I ended my internship. Part of me just wanted to think of them as living forever. Getting married, having kids and dying when they are very old.


They were all wonderful kids. They are still wonderful kids.


That's the thing with facts and numbers and the specific spaces they fill. They are all so final. They can't go anywhere else once you plug them in. No room for imagination or stories. Alive or dead. Nothing else.

But as you know, I don't always live in reality. So while I know the facts, I also know that I can think however I want. In reality I have a grant due tomorrow and it is a big part of my grade and I haven't even started it yet. But in my mind I know it can wait. I know I will get it done and that I will probably get it done 5 minutes before it is due but I don't want to go there yet- to that stressed part of my mind. I will stay here, in oblivion and be happy about it.


 I like this...


"Those who are dead, are not dead, their just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell, I've been living there as well."