Why can't I be you?

Envy is thin because it bites but never eats.   - Spanish Proverb

My husband puts up with a lot. Chaos usually follows in my wake, because I tend to make and ignore messes, distracted endlessly by the many shiny things in the world. I am disorganized and frivolous while he keeps the bills paid and the accounts balanced. He sees work to be done and I see books to be read. I hope I’m amusing enough to make up for what I lack. I try his patience in many ways, but right now I think Benedict Cumberbatch may top the list. 

I am obsessed with BC. If his name appears in the credits, I’m there. Now whenever I mention a movie I want to see, Dear Husband responds with wary suspicion. My Pinterest account has been overtaken by photos and videos of Benedict. I await the return of Sherlock with an intense anticipation that most people probably reserve for the birth of their children. I’m nowhere near the worst or wackiest out there. Thanks to fans far more obsessed than I, there is an ecstatic proliferation of Tumblr accounts offering an endless supply of photos and gifs capturing every performance, public appearance, change of hair color, and shift of expression. This is the standard by which I measure my sanity - at least I have not opened a Tumblr account and started creating my own screen caps. I have, however, considered creating a Sherlock themed Christmas tree.

Dear Husband  probably thinks this is my ultimate fantasy: 

source: http://imsooochangeable.tumblr.com/post/28980471547

 

Yeah, well, someone who went on and on and on and on and ON about Amanda Tapping really shouldn’t be so judgey.

I think celebrity obsessions originate in a part of the building you don’t usually visit, but if you give any thought to the matter you’ll probably discover something unexpected and possibly unwelcome about yourself, and it often has less to do with sex than with other desires.

So yeah, he definitely has 1000 watt sex appeal - beautiful eyes, tousleable auburn/blond/black curls, swoony voice -  but there is another side to this.

Really.

And if it wasn’t a teensy bit of a downer, would I even bother telling you?

So here goes, I have a silly fantasy of a long, meandering conversation in which I ask him endless questions about acting and writing, and what’s his take on the NSA/GCHQ business, and who are his favorite poets and how the hell does anyone get into character anyway (something I’ve never understood, as I can barely get into my own character). Just me and my imaginary friend chatting about creativity and art and, I suppose, the meaning of it all, over tea at a nice little bohemian cafe on some London side street. I wouldn’t even care if he smoked, but he wouldn’t, because that’s the sort of gentleman he is.

He’s so very clever. I like clever people. Clever people make me happy. I get high on clever. In interviews Benedict comes across as intelligent and eloquent. He navigates his ocean of crazed admirers with grace, poise and humor. He does charity work (check out this blog by a young girl with Cystic Fibrosis and tell me he isn’t a sweetie). He did a series of videos with the pianist James Rhodes and what’s that - he can play piano, too? He survived a car jacking in South Africa. He taught English in a Tibetan Monastery. He can go from elegant to charming, to dorky in seconds without any apparent embarrassment. He’s adventurous. He’s athletic. He’s humble. He’s exotic.

And his acting - I think he may be channeling the gods. He delivers, as one writer put it “ a level of acting almost messianic in its quality.” Oh yes. He so completely embodies Sherlock that I’m convinced the character now exists as a real person in an alternate reality. Imagine the level of talent and dedication it would take to get to that point, so it seems to flow from you as naturally as sunshine falling over water.  

And then when I thought he couldn’t get any more amazing, he does this: Benedict Cumberbatch Sends A Message To The Government Through The Paparazzi

And this.

And then he gives an interview like this, and I think I may cry from the sheer joy of witnessing someone talk using polysyllabic words.

I’m in awe, with a side of hero worship.

And I’m so very jealous.

I wish I could go back to my 15 year old self and say - this, this is the person you should take as your role model. Keep to this and you might get somewhere and be somebody. You might be something more than the chaotic, chronically distracted person who has never created anything admirable, or noble, or beautiful, who instead stumbles from day to day in a state of existential confusion with the vague sense of having missed the point.

So, at the end of that long conversation in the fictional cafe, I imagine him saying: “So what have you done with your life lately? Hmm. I’m just going to take this BAFTA now and go help some disadvantaged youth. Laters." ‘Course he would never say that. He’s too much of a gentleman.

It's better when it's just about sex.

I ditched the meaning and now I have nothing to wear

Suicidal ideation without intention. Just one more thing I think about and never do.

And wouldn’t, so don’t freak out.

That was one of a list of characteristics my therapist derived from the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test). When you take the TAT, you view a series of pictures (drawings, photos, prints) and talk about what is happening in the picture, what happened before, and what will happen after. These are my traits:

Boredom
Distractibility
Morbidity
Lack of motivation
Suicidal ideation without intention
Desire to escape reality

Well, that’s encouraging. At least I’ve always been correct in my self-assessment.

Boredom: I’ve been complaining about this from 5 years of age on. I remember my childhood as a lunar landscape of boredom, empty time unrelenting and blank, tense with restraint because movement was futile. In college I discovered hyperstimulation: late nights, clubs, drink, drugs –the quest for elation. Now I just tend to drift when I’m bored, or to seek distraction in the ever shifting world of popular culture.

Distractibility: Ooo, it’s shiny, it’s new, and there’s more here, and more there, and wow, there are just lots and lots of things/music/books/websites and I can look up anything anytime, skipping stone to stone with a pocket full of baubles.

Morbidity: The worst will happen. The other shoe will drop. Yang needs its Yin. Karma will bite back. Car accidents, abductions, murders, torture, assault, hurricanes, tornadoes, terminal disease, sudden death.

Lack of motivation: I never met a goal that grabbed my attention. I am consistent in bobbing along, drifting past the scenery, uncertain, baffled and envious of those with definable ambitions. I feel sleepy.

Suicidal ideation without intention: From the moment I understood what it was, standing in the bathroom at 16 with a razor blade wondering if I could in fact nerve myself to cut deeply enough, the possibility of slipping out of life has had its allure. But not enough to try it. I’ve talked about it and mulled it over and compared possible departure routes with equally morbid friends, and read enough Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton to induce major depression. But I’ve never collected the pills, walked into the ocean, slit my wrists, tied a noose. I want transition, but not that transition. My card is the Tower – the destruction before rebuilding, the slate wiped down and a nice new pencil, the old self burned away and the new one in the ashes.

Desire to escape reality: Fiction, fantasy, cinema, TV (all those foreign soap operas!). If you’re bored silly with what you have to do and feel trapped and hemmed in by necessity, duty and responsibility, and/or you don’t feel confident in any of these, where do you go? I am never just here, in this one place at this one time. I am not “present” as I so often hear. I am wandering over 10 or so different landscapes at once, and often not as myself.

After looking at the pictures I thought of how we filter all art this way, through our own temperament and idiosyncrasies, so that even the most objective aspects – narrative sequence, the paint and the object painted are transformed by our projected fears and desires. This is why I can’t imagine the Bible as inerrant rather than a mysterious hallway of mirrors.

In college I had to read The Possessed by Dostoevsky. The professor, it was clear, found the nihilism of the radicals repulsive. He had, after all, escaped from Communist Russia. Although I disliked political nihilism (as I like civic order), I found the idea of nihilism liberating. I thought of clearing the land for the new crop, burning the forest to encourage the trees. Everyone was so certain of what everything meant – morality is this, purpose is this, you must behave like this because of that because that is what is right because that is what everyone knows, the great immutable meaning of rightness. Useless, stagnant meaning seemed to have a stranglehold on everything. How lovely to discard the meaning and construct something more suitable.

Only, I am good at cutting away the meaning and not so good at constructing something more suitable.

Real Life Isn't Working for Me

I am so bored. My soul is rattling the cage doors. It wouldn’t know what to do if I freed it. I don’t think it remembers how to fly. I’m caught between wanting to stay in bed forever and wanting to run away. The iggly bits of daily routine seem irritating beyond belief. I am not pleasant.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant. How clichéd is that? It’s like having your subconscious hand you self-extracting Jungian software. I hope I don’t have to wait nine months to find out what I’m incubating.

Lemon without the Peel

This is just one of those crap days when my mood grows even darker than usual. No matter how many times I tell myself it’s a passing feeling, that part of it’s physical, and so on, I feel like the hounds of doom are nipping at my heels.

You know, it doesn’t much help to think, boy there are people in a lot worse situations, I should be grateful.

It’s weird how being grateful doesn’t translate into being happy.

And happiness may not be everything, but it sure helps one have enough energy to give a damn what happens and to actually get done what needs doing.

The lack of energy, the inability to organize my thoughts or to plan and set goals, it makes me feel like I’m failing my family. Myself, too, of course, but I really hoped to create a better, more stimulating environment for the girls.

Last night I kept thinking that I would end up dying like my mom, of leukemia, the disease of fatigue. She was always tired, and then she finally had a good reason to be tired.

Whatever I was meant to do, I definitely feel like it is too late. Or maybe there wasn’t anything in particular, or maybe it called for more self-discipline than I could or can summon. It may be pathetic, but my hope is for my children. I hope this mental plague skips them, that they will know what they want and find joy in the pursuit. I don’t think I walk around looking mopey and depressed. I do genuinely enjoy things, like reading a book, or listening to my girls, or holding hands with my husband, or hearing the birds. I laugh at jokes. These moments are the stepping stones that get me from one side to the other, from moment to moment and day to day.

Enjoyment doesn’t translate into happiness either.

Maybe I don’t mean happiness, but something more like “zest.” I have no zest.

Just writing that out makes me feel a teensy bit better. The rhythms of writing and reading are so soothing. No zestier, though.

And now for something completely serious

So enough of vapidness. Time for a bit of gravitas. It is Lent, after all. Not that I have ever observed Lent. But it seems a good time to accomplish a task I’ve been avoiding.

My therapist gave me an assignment weeks ago that I have not been able to process. Two assignments, actually. The first is to write about whether depression is a choice, and the second is to describe my ideal life.

Is it any wonder I’ve preferred to immerse myself in frivolity and look at pretty boys?

Of course I don’t believe depression is a choice. Who would choose such misery? There’s no payoff. When people think of it as a choice, what they are really thinking of is a bit of the blues, a soaking in self-pity, a stubborn refusal to put a positive spin on things. Those are so very different from depression. Over the years I’ve experienced all sorts of cognitive therapy techniques. Relaxation. Guided meditation. Rewriting your inner scripts. They have their place. Which comes first, the wrong thinking or the depression? Once the neurological switch is tripped, does it even matter?

I don’t know why some people just feel a bit glum, a bit low and others flail about in inner darkness. Genetics? I find that once I’m far enough along, rewriting scripts isn’t very effective. It feels like I’m traveling farther from either positive or negative thoughts into numbness. The numbness is superficial but tenacious. Underneath is a tremendous rage. Wouldn’t you be angry if you were caged and trapped? Numbness is the cage door. That is deep depression, when there is fury inside beating against enormous resistance, resistance so strong that it has drawn all my energy into itself. These are the times I feel the urge to hurt myself crawling over my skin, because that release is so calming and so immediate.

(I’ve never even mentioned my history of self-injury to my therapist. Oh, the things I leave out of my personal narrative.)

I’m thankful that I haven’t felt that way in a long time. I no longer feel the need to sneak the X-acto blades from the workroom supply, just in case. Having children is an amazing deterrent. They watch your every move. And Dear Husband. The few times I’ve slipped he has been furious. He’s so practical. If it isn’t the solution, why are you wasting your time? It’s self-seeking, self-pitying. Find a way out, any way out. For once fear and shame created a positive outcome, and so I have retrained my impulses, which is just as well. And I’m medicated. I can’t dip too deep anymore. I’m buoyed on a pharmaceutical sea.

Choices. When options aren’t available, you simply make do. When I experienced my first depression, my parents didn’t notice. Or they did and hoped it would go away. Or they did and were so afraid I would be like my mother they ignored it. Why didn’t I ask to see a psychiatrist? Did I ask? Did I hint? Did I think it was so outside the realm of possibilities that I didn’t bother? Did I choose not to talk to anyone about it, or was I rebuffed? Did I think it wouldn’t do any good, that they would simply look at me as a freak and send me on my way? Would I have even been able to describe what I felt? What would I have said? I want to die? I hate myself? I don’t understand your world? I can’t fix this? Someone help me?

As choices became available to handle depression, I took them. I’ve found that behavior can be modified, even if you still feel like shit. I have enough experience to know that the worst will pass or at least change. But depression itself, it comes when it will.

Onward then, to my second task. My ideal life. This is hard. I have a notable lack of ambition. I’ve gone through life letting circumstance make decisions for me. Even when I was young I couldn’t imagine myself into any particular life. When kids were starting to think about careers, even in high school, I simply knew that I wanted to study literature. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t want to teach, I knew that. I didn’t want to marry or have a family. Otherwise I had no idea. I wasn’t sure I was going to live past 20 anyway. I’ve gone on having no idea through college and grad school and a number of jobs.

Now here I am in my 40s and it feels a bit ridiculous to be without a plan. My mother used to infuriate me. Her constant refrain until she died was, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.” In my meaner moods I would tell her that if she didn’t know by now, she never would. And she never did. She was hindered by a mental illness far more significant than mine. She refused medication. She refused therapy. Her vicissitudes kept her confused and distracted. Here I am with lots of lovely medication and therapy, but I still have not made any advances as far as life goals.

I have vague impressions. I would like a creative life. I would like to be able to write again. I would like to be around other creative people. I would like to be around very intelligent people. I would like to be at home with my kids. That’s unexpected, and I may be off-base or it may be standing in for a simple wish for more compatible work, but it has been a longing all the same. I would like to homeschool my children, something else I think might be completely incompatible with my personality, and yet… I would like to travel England. I love England.

You see how very vague that is? I want to write poetry, but I don’t want to be a poet, with all that entails. I want to be at home, and yet I am completely incapable of structuring my own time. England…England we can save money for. Travel at least translates into a tangible goal.

I don’t exactly dream big, do I?

Sometimes I have plans. Lots of plans, but small ones. I’ll paint the house. I’ll take up knitting. I’ll finally learn to garden. I’ll do something with the photos. They go nowhere. They skitter away the moment I turn my back. They suddenly don’t seem so interesting. In fact they are dull.

Has a life of struggling with depression, or bipolar disorder, or whatever it is, rerouted my neurological pathways in such a way that I’m incapable of forming a plan, incapable of even dreaming a dream? Is that what happened to my mother? Will I be just as bad despite all my advantages – the education, the understanding husband, the medication, the therapy?

And now, what connection between this serious navel-gazing and the frivolous listing of the world’s hottest actors according to me? What do these fantasy figures mean, and why do they suddenly loom large in my imagination only to disappear just as quickly? What am I to make of such a preponderance of dominating men? Men who are lie detectors and truth tellers. And they aren’t very pleasant about it. In fact, to be in their line of sight is somewhat humiliating, but also thrilling and transformative. In Secretary, the female character is a cutter, something James Spader’s character picks up on right away and redirects into a series of erotic games. I connected to the woman right away, not because of the similar modus operandum or because I have any desire to participate in an s/m setup, but because I like the ingenious way in which he steers her away from despair by going through her neurosis rather than around it.

It all seems terribly anti-feminist. Is that the way it is, then? I respond to a male figure who dominates, judges and directs? Where’s Freud when you need him? Did thinking about depression and ambition trigger my current fascination with certain characters? Perhaps that silly list began with me feeling lost, defeated, and directionless.

What do I conclude from all this. Not much. I’ve always been good at seeing the connections. Conclusions, not so much.