Depression part 58

The most difficult thing about depression isn’t the soul-sucking, I want to slit my wrists, nobody loves me and no one will miss me, I am all alone and nobody cares feelings.

It’s the apathy.

At least suicidal thoughts are active and require some brain power. It takes focus to figure out whether hitting a freeway divider at 85 mph will be enough to really kill you or will it just leave you as a vegetable and a bigger burden on those left behind. That requires math to figure out. You’re at least thinking.

Apathy is what can kill you with depression. Nothing matters. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is nothing you care about enough to actually rouse yourself to do more than sit and stare at the walls/ceiling/TV/cat. Your brain just simply stops, not wanting to touch the emotions that are buried deep down inside. The apathy and numbness mask all that you are thinking about and make you absolutely unable to function.

That’s the worst thing. The not caring, the not wanting to care. That’s what leads you to cut yourself off from your friends because it’s just simply too hard to actually try to reach out and contact somebody. Because you just don’t care. Or maybe you just can’t care because the rest will all fall open and you’ll be suicidal and crazy again. At least apathy is quiet. Numbness is silent. It requires nothing from you other than to sit and be silent.

You can blame so much on that apathy. “I was depressed so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” It sounds so much better than “I was apathetic so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” Not so much sympathy and understanding for apathy.

I see the same expression my mother’s face – apathy. She won’t let herself be depressed, she won’t let herself be happy, she won’t let herself be anything because that would mean she’d have to FEEL something. So she tries to go on being apathetic instead of acknowledging the fear and the sadness and the anger and the depression underneath, which only makes her more angry and more sad and more frustrated instead of numb. She relies on the wine to make her numb.

I see the same expression on my sister as she tries to tell me what I’m doing wrong and how happy her life is and what everyone else should do. When we try to discuss anything worth anything, she pulls on the apathy mask. It’s easier to just push away the feelings and the pain and everything else and just be apathetic about what’s going on around you (her apathy is disguised as cynicism but it’s the same thing). She also uses alcohol to keep the numbness going rather than accessing the big scary part inside.

I don’t want that. I don’t want to be apathetic. I don’t want to numb my feelings with other things, which I find myself thinking about more and more. A drink, two drinks, 20 drinks and maybe I won’t have to think about all of this anymore. Just shut down, just don’t care, that will make it all better. To not feel, to not care will make things easier.

But I left my marriage to feel, to throw off the apathy, to get rid of the mask I had been made to wear for at least half of my marriage.

But every day is a struggle. I don’t know if it’s hormonal – being a woman of a certain age. I’m going to start back taking Estroven today and see if that helps. It takes a week or so but if you haven’t taken it, if you’re over 40 and you’re finding you’re struggling, too, try it. It does help when times get very bad.

So that’s where I am. Trying to overcome the apathy because I have so many projects in front of me that need me and they really mean so much to me that I want to push this apathy aside and tackle them with all of my attention, not with 50% with the other 50% hiding somewhere underneath. I created this life to live it, dammit, and I must find a way to do that fully.

Two films in two weekends.

I shot a long short film on the 8th - "The Hit", based on the play by Kerr Lordygan. It was a blast. The script was so good, the actors solid. It was great to work with some of the actors from the Eclectic, since that's where my next few directing projects will be. They're a terrific group, really excited about working on new and exciting projects.

Then I succumbed to the lure of the 48 Hour Film Project and shot "A Hit to the Heart" from a script written by myself and the funny David Smith. Tiny little crew, including Anna B. as our boom bitch for a short time. Erik's kids came and helped out and were terrific. I think Jean wants to be a director at 3.

Here's the link for the photos from the two shoots, if you got nothing better to do.

If you'd like to come out and support the 48 Hour Film Project, please join me for the screening of "A Hit to the Heart" on Wednesday, June 18 at 8 PM at the Fairfax Beverly Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles, CA. 90048 (323) 655-4010. Tickets are $10 and not available in advance. Please come early as they almost usually sell out. The audience gets to vote for its favorite film so please come out and help us get more votes!

Thanks to all who came out and helped, to the actors for their marvelous performances in both films, and to my usual suspects for their dedication. Thanks particularly to The Piper Downs and Deena Rubinson for allowing me to use their music in "A Hit to the Heart."

Hawking my wares

If you've ever admired a piece of jewelry I've created or a purse or a notebook, or you've desired to own your own print of one of my pieces of artwork, you now can purchase one of these items for your own.

For my jewelry and purses and notebooks, please go to:

Lee's Take-Out (Accessories To Go!) at Etsy.com.

For prints of my artwork, please go to:

Lee's Take-Out at Imagekind.com. Not all of my artwork is up there, in fact, there are only a couple of pieces while I track down a large scanner I can use to scan in my bigger pieces. But Imagekind allows you to pick the size and type of print you would like - simple glossy poster or museum wrapped high end canvas. You can also order a frame to go with it.

If you feel you'd like a custom purse or notebook or a particular painting of something done, I'm more than happy to accommodate that, with a small 10% custom fee.

So, please check these out. Feel free to pass the info along to your friends/family. A more formal invite will be issued once I get my own personal website up and running but for now, this is the best place to find my stuff!

Fragility

My horoscope today:

“Like a newborn, you are most powerful in your fragility because you are the closest to divine presences in that state.”

Particularly powerful today as I have been feeling very fragile as of late. In fact, I added a “Define me” application to my Facebook account recently and “fragile” is the one word most people chose to describe me.

Fragile.

I have often felt fragile inside but it kind of freaks me out that fragile has made its way to the surface.

I have spent my life trying to prove to the world that I am strong and powerful and independent. Now, suddenly, the word “fragile” is echoing throughout my life.

Is this the universe trying to get me to acknowledge my own fragility?

I have never been allowed to be fragile in my whole life. Neither of my marriages allowed the luxury to be fragile. Both men expected me to be strong and powerful – Wonder Woman often comes to my mind about how I am supposed to be. (Alex Ross’s Wonder Woman mostly, who is strong but human and flawed) God forbid in my family that I should any fragility at all.

Fragility has always equaled weak to me. And it’s disturbing to suddenly be defined all around as a word that reflects weak back to me. It makes me want to cover up all my emotions and just present this hard-nosed, closed down person to the world so that people will find me powerful and strong and not fragile.

But is fragile a bad thing? Here’s the definition:

frag•ile – adjective (Middle French, from Latin fragilis)

1. a) easily broken or destroy (a fragile vase) b: constitutionally delicate: lacking in vigor (a fragile child)

2. Tenuous, slight (fragile hopes)

Synonyms (too many to list but here are a few) brittle, crisp, friable (substance that are easily crumbled or pulverized), weak.

Oh, yeah, I guess it is.

This recent view of me as fragile has me all messed up. I don’t want to be viewed a fragile. I don’t want to be viewed as weak. And fuck the horoscope, explain to me how it brings me “closest to divine presences” when I’m weak and breakable.

It rattles me, I guess, because I’ve always been told the way I feel is irrelevant and just as I’m starting to feel stronger in my life, where I don’t feel like I’m one big ball of emotion, the one emotional personality I am most afraid of showing is apparently tattooed on my forehead.

So, what does all this mean? I don’t know. It means I am off my pins, sets me off my game. I have been feeling vulnerable these past few weeks, tied strongly into how lonely I have been feeling as well. But fragile? FRAGILE. It’s a big word to me and something I need to look at and see how I am projecting fragile to the world.

Maybe I do need to stop expressing my every emotion and every feeling. Maybe I need to hide a bit more of what I feel and stop broadcasting it to the entire world. Maybe I need to cover up that fragility and hide it from the world. I don’t want to be seen as fragile. It’s something I never thought I would be defined as. Yet, I think it is a word that almost perfectly describes me.

Maybe that’s the biggest fear, is that I am truly fragile. Because then it means I am easily broken. Which I am. And I don’t want to be broken any more. I want to be whole and strong and powerful. I’m not sure how fragile can possibly fit in with that.

So fragile will be the thought of the day. See what that brings.

Cuz I needs gas money

Please check out my store at Esty.com at Lee's Take-Out, Accessories To Go.

Lee's Take-Out, Accessories To Go is a re-branding of an older accessory company I started many years ago that remained dormant for a while.

There are some hand-crafted purses and notebooks up there right now, hoping to expand and include some of my Asian-inspired jewelry as soon as I can find the time to reshoot the stock. I also will be adding in some of my original oil and watercolor paintings as well.

So check it out, buy something, put some gas in my car. I highly encourage custom orders, if you don't quite see what you want.

I don't need fixing

I realized that I thought he would fix me. I thought he was everything I wasn’t. He was smart, clever, educated, talented, ambitious, focused, reliable, consistent. So many things I thought I wasn’t. So many things that were different from my first husband, who was talented in a different way, focused in a different way, etc.

I saw myself at that time as drifting. I was thinking I was an actress but never really believed it, despite high praise from Susan Strasberg about my talent. It never felt real so I felt like a phony doing it.

He knew all about the entertainment industry, so I thought, and I figured he would be the one to guide me to success, because I didn’t know what I was doing. He would fix that. He would make me successful, after he was successful, of course. Which was fine with me then.

He knew about all my faults and was able to talk about how he perceived his own faults. I thought it was refreshing to find someone so in touch with themselves. He would help me and fix me in that way, help me to find myself and be in touch with my own flaws. When he criticized me, I thought it was because he was trying to help me, to fix me, to make me better.

I liked the fact that he was consistent and reliable. If he said he’d call by 7, I knew he would call no later than 7:02. He would help me be reliable and consistent. He would show me how to be a better person that way, because I wasn’t, or so I thought.

He would fix my flightiness because, god knows, I thought I was a mess. I needed someone to show me how to keep my feet on the ground and not go off daydreaming about what I wanted to do with my life. I had to be practical and he would help fix that in me.

He was supposed to fix me. He was supposed to save me. He was supposed to be the one who saw my flaws and loved me in spite of them. He was supposed to be the one who would find a way to help me become a better person, to be a stronger person, to fix the broken me that was standing before him.

And that’s just too much to put on a person. To stand naked and vulnerable before someone and say, “Here I am, broken and shattered and afraid and needy and uncertain and weary and wary and insecure and unsure about everything. Please take me and make something of me because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.” Of course he wanted that job. Most men want to “fix” those they love – make things better for them, solve their problems, repair their car, whatever it takes. That’s their job.

And he took the job. He “fixed me.” Or at least he tried. He tried to fix me so that I would be whatever the person was he saw me as. He wanted me to be his ideal, his vision, his beautiful creation. Pygmalion.

And I wanted so much to fit that mold. I wanted to be what he saw in his eyes. To be the perfect wife, the perfect partner, to be exactly what he wanted me to be. And I almost died trying to be that perfect.

What I never realized until it was too late was that I didn’t need fixing. Maybe I needed a tune-up or someone to hand me the tools and suggest where a bolt needed tightening. But I wasn’t broken. I just couldn’t see it then.

And by handing the reigns of myself over to someone else, I gave them permission to take the raw sculpture in front of them and hack away at it with a chainsaw so that they could reshape it into what they saw. I gave him permission to take what I saw as a Degas sculpture and chop off my head and try and turn me into the Venus De Milo. Both very beautiful works of art, both completely different things. Both very different visions.

It’s taken me almost five years since that very dark, horrible night to finally see the sculpture that is me coming out of the block of stone. I have been seeing glimpses of what I want to become here and there but I am finally seeing the shape I want it to take, trying very hard not to let someone else’s vision – no matter how beautiful or tempting – to interfere with my work. After all, the only one who can see what I see is me. Hopefully, in the long run, the whole world will be able to see and appreciate the work of art that is truly, perfectly me.

100 things (cont'd)

32. Must know how to play with me and make me giggle like a little girl.

"I was alive and I waited, waited..."

...to paraphrase Jesus Jones.

“I was alive and I waited, waited/ I was alive and I waited for this/Right here, right now/There is no other place I want to be/Right here, right now/Watching the world wake up from history.”

I realize this song has a more global purpose and message but, for some reason, those lyrics resonated very personally today.

“I was alive and I waited, waited…”

I spent so many years waiting for my life to start. Figuring I had all the time in the world, I could wait for it to get better, for things between us to get better, for everything to get better. I was asleep, living in history and not thinking about the next day/month/year. Just getting through the history of that day.

“I was alive and I waited, waited…”

I waited for him to define me, to tell me who I was, who I am, who I would be. I waited because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t realize I could wake up and find my own definition.

“I was alive and I waited, waited…”

Waited for someone else to save me, because I knew I couldn’t save myself.

“I was alive and I waited for this…”

Waited for a life worth living, waited for friends who allowed me to be who am I, waited for a history that would begin new and not be weighted down by the history I dragged along behind me.

“Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be…”

Simply true. Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be. “Watching my world wake up from history.”

Right here. Right now.