Crawling Back Out

Hey, y’all.

It’s been a while, I know.

Here’s the truth: I’ve been pretty depressed for the past few months. In January, when I basically stopped sleeping altogether, I finally got up the nerve to admit defeat and march myself down to my old therapist’s office, who promptly referred me to a psychiatrist, who promptly prescribed anti-depressants.

The adjustments to the medicine — something I’ve always been ambivalent about anyway, but hey, I’m trusting the good doctor for now after “healing myself” definitely did not work — have been weird, and I don’t think it’s over: while I’m generally feeling better mood-wise, these last ones have made me so sensitive to caffeine that even some chocolate triggers a migraine; all of the ones I’ve tried have weird sexual side-effects that I feel fairly certain would simply not be tolerated if antidepressant use were as prevalent among men as it was among women. Switching makes me impossibly sleepy or keeps me awake, and I’m never quite sure which a change will bring.

My therapist, a lovely and wise older woman who reminds me of some kind of lion goddess and who I’d basically like to be by the time I’m her age, has gotten me through some tough times and is doing so again. Her advice was simple: “Do the minimum you can, and don’t put pressure on yourself. Pretend you’re hibernating while you heal; there’s no way around slowing down for a bit; hunker down until the spring, the natural season for waking back up anyway.”

So, that’s what I’ve been doing. It turns out, though, that even in doing “the minimum,” there’s still quite a lot to do to keep my household afloat. Most of my various jobs are somewhat erratic: it’s fairly impossible to keep a schedule because, for the majority of them, tasks are offered to me when they’re needed, which means I’m constantly playing a making-money version that fruit ninja game with little control over when/if it comes flying at me. I did manage to get a steady-ish gig, at least, which has me feeling a little more tranquila. It doesn’t pay as much as the others which means I have to spend more time doing it, but a little security can go a long way when it comes to one’s mental health.

So, I haven’t done too much creativity-wise other than what I’m paid to do; for the rest, I’m still in hibernation, though the sun is starting to peek into a crack through the door, at least. Will spring really and truly arrive? Like, all the way?

That said, I believe my depression is situational, perhaps with a dash of genetic predisposition thrown into the mix. The world is crazy and sad. AI is coming, inevitably, for all the ways I make money in a world where no one has to give you a job but you do have to work to survive. My ex has been, preposterously, insisting for over a year now that he doesn’t have the couple of hours to spare needed to mediate our divorce, meaning I’ll have to sue him at some point if I ever want it to happen (I very much do).

But I’m trying. I’ve got a list of project ideas if I can ever work up the confidence and energy to see them through. I’m happy with my partner; I’m happy with my daughter. I have a nice family and good friends. And I came over to write to you, so that’s progress, right?

Soon, soon. Finding the strength to make things better for ourselves and each other is all any of us can hope to do.

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Teenage Bird

There’s a video making its way around social media that’s meant to be adorable but won’t stop haunting me.

In it, a small open-mouthed bird marches after a worm. It gets close to the worm, and the worm wiggles away. The bird seems nonplussed for a moment, then follows it and opens its mouth again.

This repeats a few times, and a text appears to explain what’s happening: when baby birds leave the nest, the only way food has ever gotten into their mouths up to that point has been from their parents putting it directly into their mouths. Apparently, there can be some confusion about how to make it happen on their own.

It’s pretty adorable unless, as I do, you horrifyingly see your current self in the baby bird.

But the bird’s probably got it easier than you or me. We all see the straightforward solution to its plight, and we know that it will eventually figure it out. It’s got instinct on its side, after all.

For me as for many others, those open mouths might stay open for a very long time. I know I’m the bird, but what’s the worm? In my case, it’s a symbol for nourishment: work that can get me the things I need like food, shelter, and possibly massages.

The video showed up for me during what’s turning out to be quite a rough time. As a writer and translator, I’m a contract worker everywhere; though I’m constantly on the lookout, I haven’t managed to nail down an actual full-time job with fair pay or benefits. It seems my generation was 10-15 years too late to the good employment party…what a difference I see between the opportunities of those currently in their 50s and 60s and my generation!

For most of the year, things have been great: I’m good at what I do and have had a constant stream of assignments that have kept me living well (in Mexico, anyway) and able to provide myself and my family with the benefits that a job won’t, like health insurance and some meager savings.

But since October, things have gone down. I’ve gone from being constantly busy with tons of fun work to having almost nothing to do, and am facing some very serious financial setbacks very soon if something doesn’t change.

Being in Mexico means that most new job offers want to pay much less than the going rate (“You don’t need that much, you’re in Mexico!” being the main assumption).

I’m officially “hired” at several different places (never put all your eggs in one basket, as they say!), but I can’t force anyone to actually give me work assignments. The word for the past couple of months has been, “Sorry, we don’t have anything for you right now…but we’ll let you know!” In the meantime, my savings are dwindling and there’s no new money coming in. Like that little bird, I can’t oblige anyone to give me work, no matter how willing and talented I may be. If I stay a contractor forever, this will be my working reality forever. I just can’t seem to get that steady job worm to hop into my mouth, and I’m not sure how to scoop it up myself.

Humans being the superstitious creatures they are, and me being human, I’m of course trying to find some meaning in all this.

Is it a sign? The message from the gods would seem to be to not depend on outside employment for income, but how do I “do my own thing” and make enough money at it to live?

I’ve long dreamed of becoming a professional organizer and decorator, which is another creative passion of mine: making places beautiful. But how, especially when I live in a place where people would likely not be able to afford what I’d need to charge to make it a real business and not simply volunteer work? And more importantly, how do I get money to support myself and my family in the meantime? It’s not that I’m trying to make excuses to wiggle my way out of a new venture, I just need to see a path where we’ll get to keep eating while I figure it out.

How, oh how, do I scoop up that little worm?

To end, here’s another great meme I saw, in the form of a headline (the satirical news site Reductress always brilliantly saves the day): “‘I Need a Second Job,’ Says Woman Who Actually Needs Different Economic System.”

Ah. There it is.

The House

My sister told me that she dreams of the house we grew up in all the time.

“That’s weird, I’ve never dreamed about it.”

My most recurring dream, though, is always about houses. In them, I’m in a house that, were it not in a dream, would be unbelievably creepy. Sometimes these are houses I know and have been in before, and other times they’re places that I haven’t seen — at least not consciously — in my waking hours.

When I’m inside these dream houses, I’m excited. In my dream, I’ve just remembered: oh yeah, this is my house!

I then proceed to come up with decoration ideas for each and every room, and almost always, additional rooms appear as I walk through it and I think “ah, of course! How could I have forgotten about this one? I can do so much with this.” I do this until I wake up, never actually beginning the decoration process.

Since I told my sister that I never dreamt of that house (which was only a week ago), I’ve dreamt of it three different times. The dreams are never very nice. I’m always stuck in it somehow, unable to make changes and feeling vaguely unsafe, usually with some gross task (last night, it was cleaning up piles of poop, which isn’t drastically different from one of the actual tasks I did there).

While my recurring dreams seem like an obvious metaphor for my subconscious, the dreams about this house seem like one for the constrictions of everyday life: feeling the limitations, the unfairness, the need for some kind of yet-unknown wily trick in order to escape it.

I had a great time during my sister’s visit, but since she left, the stress of everyday life has been closing in: the places I normally work (always as an independent contractor, though I’d much rather have a “regular” job) have suddenly stopped giving me much work, seemingly all at the same time. My partner is stressed and sad, his own business plans not panning out. There’s more to be done, certainly — the universe is full of infinite possibilities, and at least to some extent, the economy — but trying to explore and try out new avenues when you’re against the clock and oh, so stressed is like trying to run a race through molasses. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but there are some major walls of cortisol to break through, and the evidence is clear: a lot of people simply don’t and just spiral down instead. Social problems disguised as individual problems abound.

The house we left was beyond any repair that we were able to give it, and there was no choice but for my dad to abandon ship. The roof needs to be redone, there are holes everywhere, and it’s infested with rats, so much so that I needed to wear a mask while working inside of it to keep from getting a headache from the fumes. Luckily, the new buyers are enthusiastic about it and have the means to fix it and make it beautiful again in ways that wouldn’t have been possible for us. My dad moved into a place not without problems, but that at least doesn’t have rats or a leaky roof.

Will we also be able to escape a sinking ship? My dream world seems to have its doubts.

All the Money, Part II

One of the headline news stories in the New York Times the other day was about the Providence hospital system, a “non-profit” organization required by law to provide free care to patients who make 300% below the poverty rate.

The deal they have with the IRS is that “in exchange for not paying taxes, they must provide free care to the poor in the communities they serve.”

Apparently, this is not what’s happened, and they’ve been exposed for hounding patients into paying for their care after all (sans itemized bills, of course) and sending them to collections agencies. Many of the patients’ credit scores are ultimately ruined. Doing this was, of course, illegal, but guess who paid for it? Absolutely no one… except for the victims. Doesn’t this just seem to be the way things work lately?

My mother worked at Providence Hospital in Waco after training as a respiratory therapist in the ‘90s, her first truly middle-class job. She liked her work and was proud of what she’d accomplished in learning an in-demand skill that could support herself and her daughters.

Still though, at least from what I can piece together from my memories, she was forced to take on debt to keep all the moving pieces together.

She switched jobs a couple of times as she moved up the ranks in reputation for her work, but in the spring of 1996, was fired, essentially scapegoated for a higher-up’s consistent mistakes with patients.

I first remember us getting several calls a day from collections agencies as a middle school student. In the beginning, I’d dutifully and politely pass the phone to my mother when asked. She’d try to tell me to say she wasn’t there, but I’d just stare helplessly as I tried to get her to take it (I’ve never been a good or willing liar).

Soon, she’d taught us to always say she wasn’t available for one reason or another when anyone called asking for “Miss DeVries” (always pronounced the wrong way), as they were always collections agency representatives.

I was not comfortable with it at all. I hated lying, and I didn’t understand why my mother couldn’t just do what she was supposed to do so I wouldn’t have to. One time when I told a bill collector that she was “in the shower” he became aggressive. “I know you’re lying.” “No, I’m not!” I said nervously and hung up the phone. My heart raced for at least 15 minutes after that.

Now, I get it. And I wish I could apologize to my mom. She was literally doing the best she could, a realization that I think all parents hope their children have at some point in their lives.

It’s not that she simply didn’t feel like paying them back or was trying to chat anyone out of their money, which is what the cultural message was (and remains) about those who fail to repay their debts. But rent had to be paid, car payments had to be made, groceries had to be bought, and it would also be nice to give her kids some Christmas and birthday presents, which I now see she made a great effort to do.

I also see a few more layers of context at this point. First, the macro: our economy is built on debt; it enriches a lot of people and keeps things going, and keeps people spending on things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. If everyone decided to “be responsible” and not use debt to buy anything, our economy would collapse, full stop. When people can’t pay, we scold them, but if everyone ceased to use it because they can’t pay, this would all be over.

A bit closer to home for me was the debt post-divorce.

I remember several tirades growing up from my father as he railed against credit cards and credit card companies. “They want people to spend money they don’t have so they’ll have to pay back even more money!” I didn’t pay much attention since I didn’t totally understand the concept of credit; I just knew he was against it.

Fortunately, for him, he could afford to eschew the system entirely. If things got tight, and they often did, he could always obtain “personal” credit through his older family members, and was helped out in ways that counted for so much… ways in which I can’t even imagine being helped myself.

How must my mother have felt seeing him being gifted several cars over the years, as well as the house where he lived (to be fair, half the house officially belongs to my sister and I, which is the only inheritance I’ll see) as she struggled to support us, even with child support, as debt collectors kept her own phone ringing more than ten times a day for years? Did she know about the shoebox full of “IOUs” that my uncle once gave to my dad as a Christmas present, all his “debts” forgiven? And how much was she kept up at night worrying about how she’d get everything paid for and about her daughters’ obvious discomfort with “covering” for her several times a day as if she were some sort of criminal?

Thinking about it inspires so much sadness and compassion.

Things got better when she married my stepdad, another respiratory therapist. Suddenly, we had money to spare. We moved to a nicer apartment, and got a better car, finally trading in the only new one my mother had bought years later.

But then, double-tragedy struck: Richard had a heart attack and needed bypass surgery. Right around the same time, the hospital they both worked at shut down from one day to the next for mismanagement and fraud. It declared bankruptcy, and, as far as I know, completely got away with having let go all of its workers at once, as well as not having paid the insurance premiums that had been taken out of their paychecks. Low and behold: the surgery wouldn’t be covered by insurance after all, and they were both out of work. Back to square one.

They both got new jobs, but my mother was not the same. She started having some more serious health problems around this time, and they soon realized she couldn’t work. And though she was fainting frequently, hitting her head and breaking her bones, she was rejected for disability benefits; “falling” isn’t a disability, they said.

Our economy, after all, is not made to help people that aren’t in optimal working condition. It doesn’t matter if they’re sick and can’t work. Though she clearly couldn’t work, the assumption was that she was a drug addict who was trying to live off the government because she didn’t want to. No one gets lectured on “personal responsibility” more than those struggling to survive, it seems.

I’ve had much better luck than my mother. To start, I had a great mother who took care of me the way she never had been through a childhood of abuse so bad it was a wonder she even survived long enough to have us; I also had two great dads, and a grandmother who was often there to help fill in the gaps with our care (and payments for ballet classes and braces). My uncle, the one who forgave my father’s debts and gave him the house, paid for the college of his nieces and nephews in full, so I am mercifully not saddled with student debt.

I am saddled with debt now, though. Partially, it’s just life: it’s expensive. Sometimes you have to pay unexpected taxes, or travel to another country because your mother is dying, and those things can get you into just deep enough a hole that the “what the hell” effect kicks in (what’s a little more debt?). It’s usually later that you realize your financial optimism was not a great position, and an endless string of independent contractor and freelancer gigs stop being as consistent as they once were. Savings are accumulated, then spent plus some for rainy days that come because gigs are, by definition, not that steady. A global pandemic hits.

But debt collectors don’t stop calling. Money from the poor doesn’t stop rolling endlessly up to those who have more money than they could ever spend. And we’re the ones who feel bad about it.

My Little Cage

I’ve spent the day today reading The New York Times’ series on mothers during the pandemic.

The outlook is bleak. I thought reading them would make me feel less alone, but I think I feel worse: sadder, more defeated, more hopeless. I’ve been feeling like this for several days already. Is it hormones? Several people now have told me that they notice in me a tendency to want to “blame” hormones instead of just admitting that I’m a complex human being going through difficult circumstances. Still, though. The hopeless feelings do seem to reach an extra high pitch at predictable intervals.

I also felt, when reading, like a princess crying over a lost golden ball. I make enough money to live (now I make money, anyway…I survived most of the previous year by taking advantage of my previously fantastic, now average credit), my daughter is with her father about half the time, which leaves me with precious free time that I know others would love to have even a taste of, and I live in a place where I can afford for someone to come to my house twice a week to cook and do housework. I’m relatively well-known for what I do. I have a nice boyfriend. I even finally bought health insurance and life insurance, something I’ve been meaning to do for years. Compared to so many, I’m really not doing badly at all.

You’d think I’d be more relaxed about things. Instead, I’m like an anxious lion in a zoo, pacing back and forth endlessly, exhausted, but unable to stop. I spent most of my life believing I was an introvert. It turns out I was just shy, which, I’ve now learned, is not the same thing. I’m an extrovert, and I have just had it with all this isolation. I can’t spend one more day stuck in this pandemic, and yet, I have to. And so does everyone else.

This week especially, I’ve felt so tired that it feels as if I’ve been drugged. I drop things, I run into other things. In order to write, I wake up several hours before my daughter has to get up for her virtual classes. Like every mom all over the world right now, it’s a guilt-ridden juggling act: get my paid work done before the sun comes up, breakfast, dishes, help with class while I edit what I’ve written, too much TV time, a long walk, lunch, more dishes, even more TV time, dinner, dishes, tooth-brushing, story, song, and then fall asleep much too late every night, no matter how hard I try to plan it.

The background noise of this for me, as for everyone, is the pandemic. I separated and moved to a new place just weeks before it began. By the time I’d gotten completely moved into the new place and would have been able to receive guests, schools closed and we were discouraged from going out at all. The pandemic hitting just as I acted on it sure has complicated things.

Sometimes, my brain simply protests. My daughter goes with her father, and the take-charge version of me says, “Okay, time to get to work!” This is typically the point in which my brain simply turns off and refuses to budge. (If anyone figures out how to override this, please do tell).

All this said, things have to get better. Right? My relationship with my kid’s dad will improve at some point (I hope). She’s going to go back to real school at some point. We’re going to get vaccinated at some point. I’m going to have a car again instead of relying on taxi drivers who drive much less safe than I’d like.

But it’s all in the future. For now, I pace back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Consider this a sad wave from my cage to yours. I miss you: you, collectively. Here’s to loneliness and overwhelm not lasting forever.