May | 2013 | Aimeeland

A year ago today, I fell down the rabbit hole.
I’ve said that sentence in my head about 100 times today, and any number of times over this last little while as I’ve pondered the swervy, curvy journey of the last 17 months and where I stand now.
My fall into depression was both dramatic and endless. The final straw a year ago sent me to the floor in a heap and, frankly, scared the figurative piss out of me. But that last tumble, to a place underneath a towering rainbow painted in cascading shades of black, was merely the exclamation point to an unraveling that took months.
I knew something was happening. I just didn’t know what, partly because of the whole loopy menopause trip that I took at the same time, and partly because I didn’t want to know. Ignorance is not bliss, though, and I paid for delaying my own rescue and recovery.
Hours and hours of ongoing counseling later (Dr. L is mine and you cannot have him), not to mention drug therapy, have helped the rainbow regain its gaudy ROYGBIV colors.
I’m discovering, though, that the journey — which is really just another way of saying the learning — never really ends. That’s especially true when it’s at its most tiring, and tiresome.
So what have I learned?
That emotions are fleeting. This is not an easy lesson. Happiness fades far faster than despair in my reality.
That my endless need to understand everything isn’t always productive, especially considering that some events and some people defy understanding.
That letting go isn’t getting rid of. Letting go is letting be. This is my favorite thing. I read this in a book and I love it. My inability to let go is decades old. This catchy little saying is the closest thing to a mantra that I have. I say it in my head all the time. Sometimes it even works.
That life and people are complicated and that’s true no matter who you are.
That everyone goes through hard times. So get over it.
That people come and go. And there’s nothing you can do about it. My journey has been marked by loss, both in my whole life and in the past year. Loss is the thing I fear most, I think in part because I have no control over it. People die, people move on, people decide to cut you from their lives. The dichotomy of me is that to alleviate unexpected loss, I push people away. This is ever true. It’s easier to anticipate loss when you know it’s going to happen.
Still, it’s the absences you don’t anticipate that take your breath away and bring you to your knees.
It’s an internal struggle that I think will never end. All I really want to do is to live more comfortably with it. To just let it be, when I must.
I’ve also learned that I probably should have spent more time taking my psychopharmacological aids. A bump here, a twist here and suddenly, the rainbow is less brilliant. Is it sadness, or the edges of depression? Did I just have a night or two of poor sleep, or is the cycle beginning again? The questions, and questioning, remain.
The journey continues.

This is a story about a cat. Not the greatest cat in the world (1), but, still, a good cat. A cat that hunts.

At least this one is a cat toy

Smokey is a Keys cat, who began her life as an indoor cat. When Wilma hit in 2005, though, it wrecked the screened-in porch and gave Smokey her freedom. She was young then, little more than a year old, and took that freedom. Much like a Genie that has escaped its bottle, it’s nearly impossible to make a cat that has found the outdoors to go back to being an indoor cat. So, when Smokey goes out she catches interesting and exotic creatures such as lizards, moles and snakes.
Indoors, she catches even crazier things. Although we get the occasional lizard inside and, even less frequently, a teeny, tiny frog in the house, what she mostly catches is inanimate objects. Like these.

Smokey does not fear The Angry Bird

These are all pictures of things she has caught, some of them more than once.

She routinely captures the Gator pillow

Like all cats, Smokey does her best hunting at night. So, yes, in the dead of the night I sometimes have to get up, go find the caterwauling cat who is trying to show off her kill, congratulate her on her prowess and then confiscate and hide her prey.
OK, I don’t hide it. I just put it somewhere Smokey cannot find it.
Then I go back to sleep.