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They say to write what you know and write what you feel.  If I’m feeling depressed, it’s hard to write about anything else even about Silas’s new obsession:  the word and act of farting.

photos by my husband, Paul

Last weekend, I started a post in which I was describing a ho-hum afternoon:

It’s gray outside.  I’m still in my pajamas.

I’m trying to approach this fact with a glass half-full mentality.  It’s a luxury really.  To be in one’s pajamas at a quarter past one…

…Still, how do you conquer the afternoon in which you just can’t make it to the shower?  You know the type when you just stare at the yellow walls. Just stare.  Maybe wash a dish or two.  Get tired.  Continue staring.

That’s the kind of afternoon that I’m having.

…I’m completely unmotivated.  Not even to eat really.  And, now with Silas asleep and Paul setting up for his big gig,  it’s just you and me baby.  And since you are not even really real.  Then, well, it’s just me.

So, again, today, this is the kind-of afternoon I’m having.    Except that today is sunny, I was in my pajamas until 2:30 not 1:15, and Paul is working instead of preparing for a gig.  There is an obvious pattern here.  Of depression.  On the weekends of all things.

Today, I woke up late (blamed my medicine), missed church (blamed Silas’s low-grade fever), waited for Silas to take his nap so that I could get some work done (because our house is trashed and I’m behind at work), found it challenging to get anything done because I abhor the state of our house (Amityville), moped about (of course), talked on the phone with little to no enthusiasm (most likely spreading my ugly state of mind), and then finally decided to forget the house and the work and to lie on my bed an read (Ahhhhh….).

And, voila, a little bit of happiness ensued.

Why couldn’t I just have read on my bed in the first place?  It’s as if I have to have an excuse to do something pleasurable.  Like I just can’t allow myself to be happy.

Right now, I’m reading a novel, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, in which a group of men and an opera singer are taken hostage in a house by a group of terrorists.  Despite their situation and due, in most part, to the fact that they have little to do but sit around and think and listen to the soprano sing, many of the hostages are finding elements of true happiness and discovering profound bits of truth within their lives.

I can relate to their situation.  I find that I have to be forced into moments of pleasure the same way that these men are forced into having the space that allows them their mental freedom.

I long for my breastfeeding days in which I was forced to sit and rock and hold my baby and read.  I found that the week I had to stay home with Silas when he had the flu was one of the most pleasurable and intimate times that we have spent together lately.  At the end of my pregnancy I was put on bed rest and while I originally resisted it, it turned out to be some of the best days of my pregnancy.  Even the stomach flu last year allowed me, between visits to the restroom, to be relaxed and to reflect upon the things that I love most about my life.

But should it take being bedridden to be relaxed?  To find happiness?

I should clarify, and I hope if you have read this blog before you already know this, but I don’t go through life and all I do in it feeling like there is a grey cloud hanging over me.  I really do relish life.  The odd thing for me is that, unlike the men in Bel Canto (and I am simplifying their situation here), I am most often depressed when left to my own devices.

In the past, I have written of silences and how I covet them with an almost unextinguishable fervor.  I’ve written about how silences– silence from work, from home, from family– often give me the now unusual opportunity to express myself without interruption.

flowers and weeds

But, as you can see, silences can go either way for me.  On my own, in a silent house, I too often see the piles of laundry, the unswept floor, the lawn that needs mowing.  I find it difficult to relax and then difficult to conquer the mess (some of which is in my mind, so I am told by friends and family) that is my home, my work, my sanity.

In my unfinished post, the one started last week, I discussed the work that I do with my therapist.  The reframing of negative ideas and the thought-stopping that is often so hard to do.  In this the “negative silence” everything is magnified.  The neighbors hate us, the house is a rotting mess, I am a worthless pile of fat and flesh and bones.

Recently, on Nina, my friend wrote about focusing.  She wrote about the separation of work and home and the ability (or lack thereof) to focus on the good life and the good moments with your child.  At home, in and out of my silences, I find it difficult to stay present, to look for the beauty in the chaos.

It’s like I don’t deserve to be happy when my kitchen looks disheveled.

This choice of mine– and it is a choice even when it doesn’t feel like it– to be wrapped up in the negative, leads to these hum-drum afternoons, to this inability to better my day, to this lack of focus.

I shouldn’t need to have to make excuses to be happy.  I should make pleasure a priority and paranoia a thing of the past.

I should focus on my son blowing bubbles in the tub, on my husband’s gigantic, delicious pot of jambalaya, and on the sunshine that is filtering through my windows.

As a friend said on the phone today (and this didn’t help my mood any), we live and then we die.  I am living right now.  I should be making the  best of it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Just (not so) Plain Life, On Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.