Advice Taken

Today, I am taking a friend's advice. I may want to kill that friend before I'm through, but I'm taking the advice anyway.

I'd love to have a funny little story to tell you today, but I've got nothing. I'd love to sit here and type about how fine I am. How nothing is bothering me and my life is wonderful. But I just can't seem to manage it.

The truth is that I am depressed. Do you know how fucking impossible it is for me to admit that? As I told my friend, "But I don't want to be depressed!" He doesn't seem to think I have a choice in the matter.

His advice was to write about it. I resisted, because, frankly, if your blog is only as good as your last post, than I've had the suckiest blog around lately. And I don't want to be that person.

But today I realized that my choices seemed to be to write about it or to crawl into bed and escape in sleep. And writing about it is probably healthier.

I have a lot on my mind. I'm worried about a lot of people.

Some friends of ours took on a five-year-old nephew as a foster son about six months ago. On Friday, for the first time, they took him to the squadron social. On Sunday, he was dead. He contracted meningitis and died very suddenly.

Now, I'm not the closest friend with this couple, but my husband is pretty good friends with the father. I'm not really mourning with them or even for them. But their loss certainly stirs up a lot of emotions that I'd rather ignore. It's impossible not to imagine your own family in the same situation.

And that especially sucks when your husband is away. The circumstances of this deployment have meant that my husband and I don't really get to communicate like we usually do. The times are all off for phone calls and his e-mail is not secure. I just don't really know how he is feeling and it is killing me. I feel like he is angry and resentful, even though he tells me he's not. But I can't look into his eyes and tell for sure.

My baby boy is sick. In fact, he begged me to put him to bed at about 9:30 this morning. I managed to get him to eat a little before I let him sleep. I just feel so bad for him. My poor baby. There is only so much I can do.

The day before he got sick we spent a few hours playing outside with CB and her kids. CB and I talked about some of my gay friends for the first time. It was sort of interesting. But mostly it just made me think more about some of my friends and what they are going through. Talking about it with her somehow made it even more real.

And to top it all off, I somehow got into a discussion with AH during ballet class about religion and gay marriage. AH is actually quite liberal, but she still pissed me the hell off. But the angry feelings didn't last for long. They turned into sadness almost immediately. Sadness for all the hate in the world.

For me, when mad turns into sad, instead of the other way around, it is time for me to stop being stoic and brave and start admitting that I'm not fine.

I will be. And I'm sure admitting it is a good thing. And, well, I hate to admit it, but writing about it did help.

Now I think I'll take my friend's next piece of advice and start cleaning my house and getting my life organized. If I can even manage to cook dinner tonight, I'll feel just a bit better.

In fact, I think I'll start by making my bed. It will help me feel accomplished and deter me from crawling under the covers to escape myself.

Because I know that without a doubt, when I crawl back out of those covers, I'll be waiting right there to slap myself in the face with even more reality. And I don't think I can handle the confrontation right now.