The black dog

Churchill called it the black dog, but it comes to different people in different forms. Dogs feel too friendly to me. This is how it feels: you wake up with a lead blanket on you, the kind they give you when you're getting dental x-rays. Moving in any direction is an effort. The dogs will come over to you. Bean stands over me as I lay there, her nose directly in my face, her eyes staring into mine, willing me to move. She nudges me with the wet tip of her nose, very, very gently, as if to say "just a tiny reminder that we need to go out."

I managed to get outside, as I do every morning, but once there, the air felt too hot, putting one foot in front of another a chore. I didn't even feel like taking pictures.  It's dry everywhere. It rained yesterday, a paltry few drops, a tease of water, enough to make us miss it, not enough to make any difference whatsoever. We take pictures of the rain to remind ourselves what it looks like, get out of our cars, walk around in it.

Rain. Mulholland. 06.30.15.

This is entirely my fault. I was doing so well. I was working hard and dating and walking and sleeping and riding and not drinking very much alcohol and eating properly and going to yoga and seeing friends and feeling loved. I thought I didn't need my meds. My eensy-weensy little amount of celexa in the melon-colored pills that I break in half every morning. I'd almost forgotten I was taking them, and such a tiny amount, what could they possibly be doing? A lot, apparently. They were keeping this depressive person under the illusion that she was okay and normal and happy.

Your world gets smaller. Everything shrinks. Your heart shrinks, most importantly. You don't have it in you to reach out to anyone. You have to remind yourself to love, to forgive, to go into the universe. You have to remind yourself: This is now. This is not your life. Or you would give up. You have to walk outside every morning and water the tomatoes and tend to the flowers and deadhead the gardenia you've struggled to keep alive. You have to remind yourself that people think you are a happy person, a jolly person, a person who people want to be around because of your good energy because that is what they tell you. You have to remind yourself not to bore your friends with (although I am lucky, I have friends who will talk to me when I'm like this). You have to remind yourself not to pick fights with your ex-husband, because, truly, he is the only one that really understands this. You have to remind yourself not to blame your ex-boyfriend or have revenge fantasies (like a stalker, I have been blocked from email, phone, social media and let me try to tell you how that feels; to have the man that you loved, the one you thought you were going to move in with, the one you planned to be with for a long time, the one who has left little bon mots all over your house in books, on postcards, the one that called you petnames and made love to you and told you his secrets, imagine having that person essentially pretend you are dead.)

Imagine the ignominy of online dating in this state. Of feeling not quite yourself, and progressively having it get worse, without really knowing why, and every day having to flick through pictures of smiling men hoping to find the love of their lives, and with each photo trying to ascertain within seconds, if this is a good man, a kind man, an honest man, a man of wit, a man who likes dogs... Imagine having to put up endless pictures of yourself looking fetching or sexy or cool, when all you want to do is just sleep.

And then when you do match with someone, and you think, maybe this time, maybe, this will be a connection, maybe this will be someone who will want to love and understand me, someone who will want me in their life, to talk to to, to do things with, to be more than the sum of these parts. And then the disappointment.

And I know it will pass. And I know it will be better. And I know I have friends who love me, and children who love me, and lovely dogs who love me even in this most unloveable, most hideous state. It almost makes me weep to think about their loving kindness.

And all of this time I think of my father, who stayed in bed for days and took too many sleeping pills and happy pills and drank whiskey and really only wanted to talk to dogs. And not understanding that he suffered from this. And being terrified of his anger, which was, really, only a thinly disguised depressive episode. And to think of the monstrous effort he made to smile when people came for dinner, to tell jokes, to be the life of the party, to live up to his reputation. "Oh, Denis" the women would say with delight.

"Nothing to be ashamed of. I have it too," said my lovely ex-husband, "We are super lucky to have such great meds today." I know that he is right.

I drive around LA in the heat. I take a picture of the mormon temple with its ugly, spiky fence. I fill up my car with gas and try to remember to hold my tummy in at the pump. I have a meeting and drink iced coffee and it makes me feel better, more alive, more energetic. I try to listen to music I love. I try to remember that this will pass.

I'd like a wingman. I say this to my therapist and he tells me it's a good time to get used to being alone and to realize that I can do these things for myself, that I don't need a wingman. Just because I've had a wingman since I was 20 doesn't mean that I need one now. "I am very able" I say to my brother on the phone, hoping to convince myself. "I can be on my own. I am on my own." I know that I am resourceful, that I could build shelter, or kill an animal for food if it were needed. I know I could make sorrel soup and elderberry cordial and live in the forest, and I know that I can change a lightbulb, or twist the wires on a fuse, or grow a tomato, or change a tire. I'm just not sure that there is any point in having these skills if you have no-one to share them with.

Everything is connected says my brother. It's synchronicity. Once you're in the zone, everything will come to you. If you're out of the zone, you're out of sync. Or something like that. I know he's right. On days like today I am so far out of the zone I might as well be on another planet.

20mg of celexa went into my mouth this morning and yesterday morning. This is what I can do. I only wish I was able to give myself a hug with two strong arms that didn't want to let go.