Oh, one other thing

[katallison]

Friends! Are you ever confused and uncertain as to whether the improvement in mental state you might be feeling on a springtime Sunday afternoon means you're actually recovering from your depression? Do you fear it might instead be just a transient uptick in mood, soon to sour and shrivel back into melancholia? "If only," you might say to yourself, "if only I could tell for sure that I'm really back on my feet again! But how?"

"How?" I hear your plaintive query, and friends, I have the answer. Here's all you have to do:

1. Go down into the basement in your domicile, wherein are innumerable filthy-dusty, cobwebby boxes of papers, unopened and unsorted for twenty years.

2. Haul them upstairs and begin going through them, only to discover they contain such gems as:

a. The entire mass of documents related to your parents' divorce, circa 1979 (and wow, you'd forgotten how bitter that particular event was, plus there were apparently some, ahem, sexual-activity-related things going on behind the scenes that you didn't know about at the time and could happily have gone to your grave without learning);

b. a stack of letters you sent to your extremely conservative fundamentalist grandparents in the early '80s, apparently recovered after their death and presenting a heavily edited version of your life at the time (and dear GOD, you'd TOTALLY forgotten that your mother saw fit to tell them that you and your boyfriend-at-the-time had gotten married, because she feared they'd stroke out if they thought you were cohabiting out of wedlock, so all the letters have your ex's last name as the return address, and how freaky is THAT);

c. All the masses of documentation related to your grandparents' slow decline and institutionalization in a series of nursing homes run by hateful and rapacious harpies, the management of all of which you were solely responsible for, from a distance of 1500 miles;

c. Your mother's academic records from the magna cum laude B.A. she went back to school and earned late in life, against vigorous opposition from your father, and you realize, looking at them, that she was at the time exactly the age you are now;

e. Your mother's checkbook, which you look at for a while, noting that the last check she ever wrote was to the old neighborhood pharmacy (now vanished), back in 1986;

d. Your mother's will and death certificate; your father's will and death certificate; your grandparents' wills and death certificates;

e. Numerous pictures of your best childhood friend, now dead;

f. Never-sent drafts of love letters to a spectacularly ill-chosen love interest from seventeen years ago, illustrating your remarkable ability to completely ignore salient elements of reality;

g. And -- best of all -- a dozen bound volumes of your journals, beginning in 1975 when you were twenty-two and in love for the first time and OH MY GOD so very YOUNG AND STUPID, and ending sometime in the early 90s, the skimming-through of which makes you THANK ALL EARTHLY AND DIVINE POWERS that LJ did not exist when you were younger, because having this astonishingly maudlin and jejune twaddle immortalized on the internet would be terminally embarrassing.

NOW! If you can unpack, look over, sort through, and make some disposition of all of these emotionally fraught relics of those now dead, and of your equally dead and misspent youth, and NOT end up feeling like opening your wrists in a warm tub, but instead set them aside, pour a glass of wine, laugh a rueful laugh, and push onward with life?

If you can manage this, you may consider yourself cured. The plane has resumed normal cruising altitude, you may unbuckle your seatbelt, you are free to move about the cabin.

Comments

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

My love for you grows exponentially.

[misspamela.livejournal.com]

Yes, what she said.

Two posts from you in a night! What a treat!

[katallison.livejournal.com]

(If you get a different reply that was deleted, please ignore.)

Thanks, m'dear, and it is good to be back; part of the depression is withdrawal as marked by not-posting, so I hope to be a little more active here.

[misspamela.livejournal.com]

*eyes you*

Was the reply along the eyes of "Miss Pamela, you bitch?" Now I'm curious!

[katallison.livejournal.com]

(*grinning, passing you the bottle*)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

My... goodness.

But yes -- if you can manage all that without having a meltdown, you are doing JUST FINE.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

God almighty, the *journals*. OMFG. Just--

OK, from May 1978: "How likely was it, when I was a boundlessly optimistic 14 year old, that ten years later I would be a bitter, frustrated, empty woman, who had systematically cut herself off from all sources of nourishment and growth--except one, and that one source a male lover? I feel like a traveller who has abandoned all the broad, comfortable, direct roads--going off in all directions, to any destination one might want, quickly and safely--instead to flounder about in a stagnant, stinking, cold swamp, with no dry land to step onto, and night coming on fast."

*HEADDESK TO THE POWER OF INFINITY*

[umbo.livejournal.com]

OMG. That--wow. You definitely must be doing okay, if you can make it through all of that without screaming.

*more hugs*, on general principles.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Why did I not toss all this crap *years* ago? (::tearing hair::) But, yeah, it's just stuff, and I can cope.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

This is AWESOME. So are you.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Awww! Thanks, sweetie. (*snugging you*)

[spike21.livejournal.com]

god, if I could managed something like that... EVER! I'd call myself a miracle and join the circus. Or something stupendous. I'm glad you're feeling better. *g*

[maygra.livejournal.com]

And yay! Kat Allison for the WIN, Ladies and Gentlemen! Let us have a huge round of applause and a BRAVA for once more demonstrating the Elastic Nature of the Human Spirit which will, when stretched tight and thin, finally snap back and smack you in the face!

I'm seriously and grievously sorry you've had such a rough time of it, babe. And for thinking you were just insanely busy instead of floundering. But ever so glad to see you again, and with HUMOR.

And yes. The boxes in the basement (and the closet and the attic and still in the back of the car) are indeed a suitable litmus test of one's ability to cope.

You rock. Ever and still.

[helleboredoll.livejournal.com]

This is quite possibly my favorite post ever. Perspective and all. Thank you. *g*

[helleboredoll.livejournal.com]

p.s. And I am most pleased to hear that you are, after all, quite well again. :)

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

You are always such a pleasure to read. (:

And hooray for you and your rueful laugh! We should all learn from your cavalier attitude.

::glances at closet where early journals are stored, and winces::

[heresluck]

Oh, the relics of youth. There's a reason I'm still keeping a paper journal as well as LJ. Some things are just not meant for public consumption, EVER, and though I am increasingly less young I still manage stupid on a regular basis, tra la.

Here's to you, dear lady; the wine's well-earned.

[dessert-first.livejournal.com]

Yay for you!! That sounds like a huge revelation, and it's wonderful to hear.

[brooklinegirl.livejournal.com]

oh, man. that is indeed an EXPERIENCE, and the fact that you came through unscathed is TOTALLY an amazing thing. You EARNED that glass of wine, baby.

[shrift.livejournal.com]

Man, I've missed you and your hilarious "TO THE PAIN, HIGHNESS" text.

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Two posts in one day? My cup runneth over. Sorry to hear about the continued job mess in your life but your ability to go through old records and post something funny about them is amazing. As are you! I raise my glass high and toast you.

[luminosity]

OMG! OMG! I did this *last weekend* and the laughs. The rueful, sometimes bitter, usually chokingly embarrassed laughs. Wait! Wait! Here:

May 9, 1982: We are all entirely alone in this world. There's no way to truly share myself with anyone, unless I come up with supernatural means. That thought, tinged with idiot hope, settled in today when N left for work. I was terribly lonely, as usual, and I realized that it didn't really matter whether he was here or not. We only have this illusion of sharing our lives.

Thank GOD there was no internet when I was younger. Kids these days think they have the patent on self-indulgent angst. The hell they think. heh

[tracy-rowan.livejournal.com]

Alas, I went through much of this before anti-depressants which could account for the vague attraction of suicide. Now the laugh is rueful, but then it was anything but a laugh. Glad to know you made it through.

[copracat]

Sometimes it seems it would be good if life's proofs faded after you lived through them. But then we would be robbed of your charming post, so maybe not.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. Congratulations!

[arallara.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness! Yeah, I had some of that when I first moved back here and started going through all the stuff I had stored here, including all my journals from high school. It was interesting, sometimes entertaining, and then at a certain point I just started to feel kind of nauseated. *g*

But mostly I was able to let it go, "appreciate my journey," what have you. Good for you, and, yes, I take that as a very good sign that you're doing better! Yay!

(Oh, and re: previous comment, no worries about my email! You know I understand how that goes.)

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Oh - I forgot to ask - where the journals written in purple/pink ink? Or some "artistic" color? Because my old ones were, complete with horrible poetry, pathetic drawings and much musing on the unfairness of life.

Yes, as somebody said, we were lucky that the Internet didn't exist them. On the other hand, we wouldn't "know" each other so (juvenile poetry aside), it's a good thing!

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

I had to do something similar when I moved recently. *raises a glass to you*

A belated "Hey!"

[kittygoslingp.livejournal.com]

Real life has been giving me a right pasting lately such that I am only now seeing your postings. I know that it's very past the post but I wanted to let you know that I was glad things are on the up-swing for you now.

It's odd the perspective you can get on what almost seem like relics from someone else's life, and this chimes with what you said in your earlier post about learning something new about yourself.

As disconcerting as it is, there is something wonderful about surprising yourself, about still being capable of surprising, even yourself, you have unplumbed depths! When the day-to-day gets humdrum and predictable and you feel like dyeing your hair puce just to introduce a little excitement into your life, quite out of the blue something happens and you realize that there is more to you than meets the eye, even the inner eye.

Your basement encounter reminds me of the story of grandfather's axe that has, after many years of use, had its handle changed and then, eventually, the blade changed too but remains grandfather's axe. You don't have a single cell in your body (well, maybe in your teeth) in common with that you who kept those journals or wrote those love letters, you're not even physically the same person any more, so it's not surprising that you differ from that other you on other levels too.

For what it's worth, at a time when it might have had some value, I would have suggested, much as your other friends did, that you apply for the job and thus give yourselves options which you can chose to exercise or not as you wish. Being me I would also say that, if time was tight, I would apply now and explain/discuss later so that you could concentrate on making a good fist of your application and, hey, who knows, maybe surprising someone else too.

I hope all is still going well with you and look forward to the next thrilling instalment of your adventures.