Category Archives: Notes & Scraps

The Stone Roses

This is just a short post. Think of it as a musical interlude.

“I Wanna Be Adored” feels like a cold winter evening, a cool spring morning, ice crystals, fresh green grass.

It feels like a clear, beautiful moment. I want to savor it, so I listen to it over and over and over again.

Oh, man. I wish I’d been at Spike Island. At the concert, I mean — not at the chemical factory.

Seasonal Depression

This last push toward spring always gets me. In my head, I’m walking up a hill filled with daffodils — and the promise of better weather and warmer days. About halfway up the hill, though — that’s when I’ll hit the first slick spot. There are always two or three slick spots, or muddy spots, or icy spots on the big hill.

That’s what late January and early February feel like, for me.

The first time I noticed that I was depressed, back in 2013, I had trouble showering, cleaning up, shaving, trimming my nails, etc. I’ll readily admit that I had hygiene troubles — and it was because I couldn’t get my brain to take care of the basic business of living.

Back then, I remember that one of my dental hygienists asked me if I was brushing my teeth properly. I was completely depressed — and I feel like other people besides my hygienist noticed it, but absolutely no one else said anything about it.

People are too polite to meddle — when it’s something really serious, I mean. Some people feel free to give an overweight person unsolicited advice on dieting or exercise, because they feel entitled to comment on what would make someone else more palatable or pleasurable — to them, the outside observer. It’s a disgusting type of behavior — to try to throw a life preserver at someone who doesn’t want or need one.

But these same people are nowhere to be found when someone is genuinely struggling, or genuinely in need of a support system. These same people absolutely struggle to give advice to — or to even be around — someone with depression, because … I guess they think thoughts-of-suicide are contagious.

At this point, I have to admit that I’m lucky to have not struggled with suicidal ideation. I usually just … I feel trapped where I am. I feel like moving on to something else would suit me better, so anytime I start to panic, I begin making plans for a completely different future. I also catastrophize, yeah, but I keep telling myself that I can start planning for a different future, with a different life — and that’s always kept me focused on living.

Wait a damn minute. Is that just maladaptive daydreaming? I don’t think so, because some of my plans have come to fruition. Some haven’t, of course, but that’s …

That’s probably a good thing.

Now, eleven years later, you’d think I’d be used to depressive episodes. And I am. I’ve found ways to cope. But I’m perpetually exhausted. I do everything I possibly can, even when I’m low on energy, but then I collapse at the end of the day.

So, instead of not showering, I do make sure that I carve out time for bathing. But it’s an almost Herculanean feat. I will shower, but it will take nearly thirty minutes to take care of everything — showering, shaving, etc.

I can trim my toenails or brush my hair, but then I’ll have to take a fifteen or twenty minute break to mentally regroup. And the most confusing aspect, for me, is that I don’t feel like I should feel fatigued.

I don’t do a lot of strenuous work or exercise, but because I spend my days overthinking, I exhaust myself.

I’m not physically exhausted, but I get mentally overwhelmed. It drains me, trying to keep up with just the basic tasks of living. Being interested in living is tougher, when the grass isn’t green and the sky is always a little too gray.

By spring, these signs and symptoms will dissipate. I’ll start feeling more normal and, with more daylight hours, I’ll feel like I have more time to get things done.

I just have to make it through this last little window of winter. And I’ll try my best, one minute at a time.

Royal Tea

I’ve written before about how — after tracing a branch of my family tree back to colonial Virginia — I found out that I had Congolese ancestors.

After years of researching this side of our tree, I learned quite a bit about Chesapeake Creole folks and Melungeon people.

After hearing about Prince King Charles’s (alleged) fears about multiethnic/multiracial families, I wondered: What would that bloke think of Melungeons?

It’s not that I actually care what he thinks. I just think that he’d be secretly a little bit afraid to meet anyone from Kentucky, Tennessee, and that particular corner of Virginia. The not knowing who is “what” would completely confuse him.

I doubt he’s coming to this part of the country. And that’s … that’s fine by me.

It’s more than fine, actually.

Miss Behavior

In a psychology class I took when I was 20, back when I was smack dab in the middle of a severe depressive funk, we had to come up with an activity that “defies social norms.” We had to go out and do this unusual activity in public (or around family and friends) to gauge reactions to our anti-social behavior.

Because my very existence defies social norms, you’d think that this would be an easy activity for me.

It wasn’t. I was feeling down and dull, so I decided to do something simple: I stared at people, to see if or when they noticed.

At 29, I feel more creative. I wish I’d done something silly, like wearing all my clothes inside out.

I’m not talking about a Superman situation, I should say. I’m keeping Victoria’s secret. But flipping my jeans over and wearing them with the lining-side on the outside? I could do that. No branding, just … just lining.

I’m a consumer, but I don’t let it consume me.

The Perks of Waiting It Out

Every time I’ve waited before buying something — apparel, in particular — things have turned around for the better.

When I was 15 or 16, the kids at my school shopped at Old Navy, Aeropostale, American Eagle, and all the other stores at the mall. Charlotte Russe. Gap. Other stores that have since closed.

The Walmart clearance section and the clearance bins at these stores — that was a precursor to fast fashion. We would buy all sorts of clearance clothes that we didn’t need. Shirts that we didn’t wear outside of the house. Shirts that said Baby Girl Surf League.

Or Big Dawg Lil Pup Pound Town Party. Which would probably go over well in certain circles, now that I think about it. I need the guy who messed with the Sara Lee social media accounts to get on this. I have a new idea for your next basement rave, honey.

It was hard not to be at the forefront of whatever trends were going on — but now, in my late twenties, I’m glad that I haven’t bought tons and tons of clothes that I never wear. I find myself being disappointed by (and sometimes disgusted by) overconsumption and waste in the fashion industry.

Any time I’ve thought about ordering something online — fast fashion, specifically — I remind myself that, five years from now, I’m going to remember two words: Abercrombie and Fitch.

I shudder to think of all of the polos lining landfills. Some of them, I’m sure, still have the collars popped.

My Cousin Died — And It Warped My Mind

I had planned on writing a much, much longer essay on how I became a germaphobe — something I struggled with at the beginning of the 2010s, managed to overcome by 2017 or so, and then struggled with again after March of 2020. (For obvious reasons.)

But this has been a tough thing to write about — and I really wanted to explore my germaphobic tendencies on a deeper level. I may get around to that, eventually. For the time being, here are some early notes I made on how I was personally/directly affected by the pandemic.

The mental strain was enormous, to the point that it spilled over into physical pain. I could feel the tension in my body, the ache of anxiety. And the tingling tension wasn’t the only physical manifestation of my stress. For about six months, I had a wound on my hand that wouldn’t quite heal.

My cousin’s death — during the height of the pandemic — rattled me. I was shocked, I was sad, I was pained.

Some would probably say that I should link that to the “excessive” hand washing we did back in the early part of 2020, but — no. I’m glad I tried to stay hygienic. And the hand washing was only part of the process. I would cover the wound, I would change the bandages, but it never quite closed over. The wound itself would itch and itch and itch, and it seemed like it would never heal. It was a visible manifestation of the way grief lingers.

Eventually, the wound began healing. It took months, though — and even now, I can look down at my hand and my memory can retrace the borders of the pain.

Back in the fall of 2020, as the pandemic was about to enter its first big wave, my older cousin — my mom’s cousin — contracted COVID. Within a few weeks, as she thought she was recovering, she had a stroke. She went to the hospital, and then to a nursing home. From there, she came back home — but this was only because she was placed in at-home hospice care. A few days afterward, she passed away.

Several things can be true at once. She was a bit older – but she wasn’t ancient, and she was still very active. She was disabled, true, but this was because of a recent car accident. A car accident that someone else caused, I should say, lest she be accused of being “old and senile.” Old people and senile people deserve respect and protection, of course — but my cousin was not doddery. She wasn’t the type to hurt herself or anyone else. She was agile and active and alert.

She could still walk just about anywhere — and she did. She went places. She was active — and not just in an I-like-to-go-out-and-sit-in-a-corner-of-my-garden way. That’s something that I do — and I’m not quite 30.

For her, activity meant being active. Moving. Being out and about with people. Going to a major social gathering, with hundreds or even thousands of people. That’s likely how she became sick in the first place.

But because she had a stroke, and then never recovered from that, it did something to me. It snapped some synapses or something.

I became afraid of ending up in her situation, fighting off a deadly disease, fighting for my (boring, but precious) life.

And I still think about her. I think about her all the time. Whenever anyone mentions the pandemic in the past-tense, as if they’re glad that it’s all behind us now, I think about how it causes lasting trauma in my own family.

I am sorry that my family is traumatized. Not because it inconveniences or annoys those who want to minimize the impact of the pandemic — but because I’m sorry that such large-scale trauma happened in the first place.

It’s something that lingers. Just like the happier memories, grief and trauma have a way of holding on, of not letting go. Of making an invisible wound — or a spot that closes over, but leaves an unfading scar.

LinkedOut

We need a website that’s a cross between Topix and LinkedIn.

I’m thirsty for some workplace gossip about people I don’t know IRL. (This is probably why many of us read Ask A Manager, TBH.)

I can’t believe it, but I actually want to read about what it’s really like to work for the people who write those just-keep-hustling essays. I would read any/all of the anti-hustle exposés.

Now, for those who don’t remember Topix, it was this great terrible controversial website where people gathered to talk smack about their hometowns.

In my hometown — which is in Kentucky — we would often get hate messages from as far away as New York and California, which shows that our sphere of influence is … wide. Wide-ish? It extends beyond the seemingly endless fields of burley tobacco, to places where people actually care about things like propriety and having a decent reputation.

LinkedOut would be a site for calling out the folks in the C-suite. And it wouldn’t be organized around locations — it would be organized around the corporations themselves. I want to know which CEOs (allegedly) have secret second (and third) families.

Does Glassdoor have a section for gossip and blind items? If not, that’s a missed opportunity.