kind-garowen - Tumblr blog

[kind-garowen]

Faust

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I have never read Goethe’s “Faust” even though my undergrad is in English Literature. Okay, I guess if Goethe wrote it in German originally, it wouldn’t likely show up in my English literature curriculum. Still...it seemed like a lot of people in my major had read it and I never have.

So randomly, two nights ago, I am dreaming of Faust, what little I know of the legend (and the nothing I know of Goethe’s version). So I downloaded Goethe’s English translation of his own work from Project Gutenberg and I am going to see if Faust has something to share for my life.

If so, I am prepared to be really freaked out by my subconscience.

[kind-garowen]

Trying not to suck at this

Today I had a moment of clarity that I have needed for a long time. This Tumblr is for me, really. If you read it and get something, cool. I’m happy to please others. But if it seems oddly self-serving, that’s because it is.

If you want to stick in for an explanation, here it is: I’ve been struggling with a pervasive depression for several months. Depression and anxiety have been long-time companions, but lately have been especially odious and difficult to shake. I’m currently 6 months pregnant with my second baby, facing a somewhat uncertain future. Uncertain in that my only option is to keep working and put both my kids in daycare, which is fine, but I’m nervous about doing that with a little baby in our stupid anti-vaxxing world. That’s one source of my anxiety, and the inescapability of it is a source of my depression.

The gnarly thing about the 1-2 combo of depression/anxiety, which I will shorten to Depressangst (that’s almost harder to type...) is that it erodes at your sense of self. Once I could see past the fog of first trimester illness, I realized that I had knuckled under the pressure of self-preservation and survival; I couldn’t quit life to manage my sickness, I had to keep plugging along somehow and had to sacrifice tenets of who I am in order to do that. The result was that I began forgetting who I am.

I am kind of making myself out to be a hero, and I wish I was. I’m not, this is about as common as there are people on this planet. Again, this is for me, random screaming person I’m fabricating in my head. Since I realized how depressed I was, regardless of the reason, I wanted to do something to hang on to who I am. In my head I have these pillars of my personality that haven’t been washed away by the necessity of survival. Pillars like that I am a writer, that I love the ocean, that I love the outdoors, adventures, eating, and travel. When you’re pregnant, several of those things go bye-bye, like a love of eating and exercise and travel. At least they did for me. I have a crap appetite even now, 6 months in, and am tired ALWAYS, so exercise is super hard, and travel is just a fat hassle (I have a 3 year old too, so...).

Neways, leaning against those pillars, my brain in some ill-advised attempt to help me survive or whatever is doing all it can to sabotage me whenever i try to focus on anything other than survival. Add to that that I live and work in a very Christian conservative environment but am not myself conservative and maybe barely Christian (I’m religious but I like to be private about my religiosity, which flies in the face of what’s normally expected around here) and the social pressure that women should be home with their kids, and, especially angering and damaging, that women basically trade in their personhood and humanity to become Mothers.

Oy. I could spend a long time on that one, and I probably will in future posts. This is getting really long, though. Anyway, my point is, that I am going to post on this Tumblr with pictures, with thoughts, with whatever pops into my head that helps me stay focused on my numerous, copious, plentiful personal goals in the face of a world that doesn’t care about me and a future that is promising to be demanding and draining, but can also be as bright as I want it to be.

Another basic tenet of my personality that i hate and love is that I don’t want to have to choose colors. When I was a kid and given a picture to color, I would look around at all the other kids making choices and putting colors together that definitely bespoke their personalities, whatever that meant. Maybe the colors looked good, maybe they didn’t, maybe the kid always chose their favorite colors. I would look at my options and think, “i want all the colors!” and I would usually use all the colors I could and then wonder why my final piece was such a mess. Well, in life as in childhood coloring time, I want all the damn colors and I don’t care how messy things look later. I don’t want to choose one and not the other, so as much as I can, I want everything. So this is me trying to keep myself on track to have everything I want, all the colors.