hand eye crafts

Following the lead of my twinster  and knitting a Color Affection shawl.  I'm always late to the game on stuff like this Hot-Pattern-of-the-Moment.  But elann.com  is selling yarn packs for Color Affection, and I thought I'd dive in.  I went with Night Flower , if you're interested. Heading off to Stitches South tomorrow.  Can't leave until after 4, which will most likely put me 1) in Atlanta 5 o'clock traffic and 2) driving into some strong thunderstorms.  But once I'm there, I'm there, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday stretch out before me. It's possible I won't spend that much time at the actual Stitches events.  I couldn't sign up for any classes --- too expensive.  So the only place for me to go, really, is the marketplace.  Not that I'm complaining. Hopefully, these few days away will help me mentally.  My therapist called my trip to Folly Beach last year (last YEAR?) "as good as ElectroShock."  I am in desperate...

Having a monumentally bad day.  Inside, I'm screaming, "What is the point of going on?"  Keeping it inside is setting off waves of panic attacks.  And if I type about it anymore, things will get worse. So let me type something that I found the other day.  A while ago, the magnificent Stephen Fry published a book called  The Ode Less Travelled , which helped its readers write all different types of poetry.  I found my workbook from when I read the book, and am rather fond of the following. We were called upon to finish "Fry's Ballad," which began thusly (my contributions in bold): Now gather round and let me tell The tale of Danny Wise: And how his sweet wife Annabelle Did suck out both his eyes. And if I tell the story true And if I tell it clear There's not a mortal one of you  Won't shriek in mortal fear. For Annabelle was fair of face, A comely shape and size. She won young Danny with her grace, But everything was lies. Her...

Right now, I am going through as bad an emotional spell as I have since I was suicidal.  No hope, no energy, constant worry. I don't want to lay it off on the acupuncture, but after each session I've had, I've been immobilized --- the first time by physical pain, this time by emotional.  I just stare straight ahead, unable to move, unable to find a reason to move. And blogging about it is iffy, as I already feel that I've scared away friends who had once stood steadfastly by me, but lately, have been nowhere to be found.  If I were crying wolf, I'd get it.   But I'm not.

Second acupuncture session today, and it was a disaster.  The needles, the cupping caused pains that made it difficult to breathe.  One needle to my hand sent electricity through my fingers.  One needle in my foot, in a place that one was last time, caused me to gasp in pain. Then, all of a sudden, I was crying.  Not just tears leaking out of my eyes.  Huge, racking sobs.  I couldn't stop. If I can't even endure the treatment, how will I ever get well?

I am 52 years old, and have experienced my share of sadness.  But what happened yesterday in Connecticut has me, for the first time ever, wondering about and questioning God. It's been a long time since my two children were in Kindergarten.  Those two first days, however, are very clear in my mind.  After I left them in their classrooms and walked back to my car, I cried both times.  They were so small, and they were setting out on such a big adventure.  It never crossed my mind that, on any given day, I might not be able to pick them up in the line of cars, but would have to go to the medical examiner to retrieve them. That someone the same age as my younger child could walk into a school and shoot 6 and 7 year-olds over and over again defies reason.  That parents had to wait after getting that horrifying news, that those babies were still lying where they fell and they could not get to them, is something my heart cannot bear.

It struck me at some point over the weekend that most, if not all, of my headaches and knotted stomachs and a good deal of my depression has come from temporariness. Since I last worked, in December, 2010, every aspect of my life has been unsettled.  My mother's health.  Her death, and having to deal with the estate.  Being unable to find a job.  Problems with my children's lives.  Them moving out of the house, then in.  Finances.  All of these issues have been ongoing, without any ends in sight.  I've been saying that it feels as though my life has flown apart into pieces, and those pieces are just circling my head.  I can't catch any of them and put them to rest.  Or think clearly enough for long enough to try and make sense of them.  My life has been, still is, up in the air. And although I still have no idea how to deal with all of it, it's comforting to understand it a little more.

It is 11:57 PM, I have taken SEVEN Klonopin, and sleep is not in sight.  That is double the dose I am supposed to take.  I'd take more, but that seems a little dangerous, and I am so awake now, I doubt it would help. I am angry, and I am in pain, and I want to lash out at people in my anger, and I want them to hurt like I hurt.  Because they don't seem to care right now.  My son and I had a SCREAMING telephone call this afternoon, and I'm willing to bet when it was over, he went back to playing video games or whatever he was doing and never gave it a second thought. My daughter spent all day in her room, until friends came to take her our for pizza.  We've said maybe 8 words all day.  I've got plenty of things I could yell at her. Why am I so angry?  Where is this consuming rage coming from?  I just want to smack everybody down.  I'm being cruel to our pets, I'm throwing things --- I don't have any control. I lost my mind onc...

For as long as I've had a political sense (and that's a long time;  my father was quite political), there have been years where I really wanted the candidate I backed to win, but felt that waking up the next day would not feel all that different if (s)he didn't. Tonight, I am scared.  I am scared about what will happen to this country domestically and internationally if Mitt Romney is elected.  I am honestly fearful for what he would do in and to this nation that my children will be reaching adulthood in. I don't know what else I could have done here as far as re-electing President Obama, but I am so very terribly nervous that all of us who back him might have missed something, and will be paying (in almost countless ways) for it.

My last week has been spent in a knot of fury.  I'm mad because this is not how my life is supposed to be.  I'm mad that I can't seem to do anything about it.  I'm mad that other people in my same situation are moving forward, and I'm still stuck here in Unemploymentland I'm mad that I'm mad.  I'm mad that my depression continues to deepen.  I'm mad that I can only meet with my therapist once a week, and then I almost literally crawl through the next 6 days until I can see her again.  I'm mad that settling my mother's estate is taking so long.  I'm mad thinking about what I did wrong in trying to get it settled.  I'm mad that I didn't bring more things back from the house.  I'm mad because I know she's mad that I didn't do better. I'm mad that I can't sleep all the time, because that is the only reprieve I have.  I'm mad that my children both seem to be having a hard time grasping the concept of ...