I decided that I wanted to go someplace warm, and probably that has a lot to do with the wind-chill factor and the single-digit temperatures that are whittling me down to a shivering little nub. And I’m going to leave everything I own. Even the books? Even the books. Even the pictures? You love your art. Even my art. Even the cat? Maybe the cat. Okay, not the cat. Anything else? No, nothing else. I don’t need anything else.

And I would leave my cell phone on the dining room table and get in my car (Your car counts. Okay, I don’t need anything but my car. GOD.) and I would turn the key and slowly lower my foot and probably tear off the bumper along the driveway curb again and then I would pull out and get on the highway and I would reach over and turn off the radio and in the silence of my car (except for my yowling cat, who has no sense of poetry) I would drive and drive and drive until no one could find me.

Florida, maybe. It has a west coast that no one ever remembers. Somewhere in Virginia, which is for lovers who will always be looking in each other’s eyes or at each other’s bits, and not me. Southern California, some college town full of unobservant kids? All the way to Mexico, and then deeper in, stopping only for ceviche until I hit ocean or impenetrable jungle.  Fang will love the beach and or the swinging vines and mysterious pyramids and vibrant parrots. I will be dying to check my email but eventually you detox and I will support myself with alligator hunting and beach combing and cloud spotting and sunscreen neglect and I will forget how to type and my voice box will shrivel up and one day I will simply cough up its little dessicated corpse and eventually I will die in a sandpit and leave behind a burnt-leather corpse.

But that sounds like a lot of work. And the What If game is a lot of pathos. What If nothing catastrophic happened? What if my life continued on its current path, which is sometimes difficult and exhausting and frustrating–but mostly, pretty happy, and full of pleasure and goodness, luck and loveliness, things that are good and things that I am grateful for.  That would be crazy! I could try, maybe, playing the game What If You Didn’t Always Expect the Worst.

Jennette was my inspiration—she announced, I am going train for the 5K! Oh boy, that was totally easy! she said. And I thought, holy crap, it’s totally easy! I can do it too! And then I might have totally blamed her for leading me astray when, after rising bright and early for a vigorous dawn run, I staggered home and crawled into bed, safely out of range of mooses, and pretty much slept like the biggest Wuss in Wusstown, population me,  for the rest of the day.

It could have also been the fact that I did not eat before I went out, and I forgot to bring my water bottle, and my iPod conked out so I tried to time my intervals in my head but kept losing count and erring on the side of “I will jog for an extra twenty, thirty hours just to be safe.” But it is easier to blame Jennette, really, because then I get to demand recompense. I prefer it in the form of cookies.

The next time I went, I did not make those mistakes. I made lots of different, interesting ones, but not those ones, and when I finished up my run with my shoelaces untied and my iPod cord tangled around my head and my sweat jacket trailing along the path behind me and the sun burning my eyes and a long trail of spilled water all the way down my front and somewhat unsure where my keys were, I felt absolutely fucking fantastic. I felt like a goddess. A damp, sweaty, squinty, total mess of a goddess who had just jogged, very slowly and with poor form, probably an entire total of 100 feet, and was absolutely and entirely, absurdly proud of herself.

I jogged! Outside! I was wearing spandex and a sports bra, in public, under the great big blue sky where anyone and god could see me, and I ran and ran and ran until it was time to stop and I wanted to do it again and again and again.

I managed to do it three times more before a trip out of town got in the way. I packed my running clothes and my shoes and I had very determined plans and yet somehow, ended up at a breakfast buffet, face down in a pile of waffles and fresh cream and ripe strawberries instead of on a treadmill in the bowels of a hotel in Vegas. Weird. But I missed it! I’d start again on Monday! Except I was sick on Monday, and tired on Wednesday, and on Friday I had missed both Monday and Wednesday so what was the point?

The point is that I miss it. I have never run outside, not on a treadmill before, and it was spectacularly awesome. It was fresh air and changing scenery, trees and grass and dogs passing by (I am a fan of all these things) and running through the shade and out into the sun and alongside the river all the way up to the dinosaur park  and back and it was just about one of the best things ever, and I am saying that about exercise, I want you to understand, and I miss it.

image by Today is a good day

The problem with happy endings, though, is figuring out where the ending is. Sometimes, it is very very easy. The hero and the heroine kiss, that’s one. The family torn apart is reunited, there’s another. The small, wiry kid wins the national boating championship despite all odds and is hoisted up on his teammates’ shoulders and there is cheering.

Weight loss stories are supposed to have very definitive endings—you reach your goal! You have triumphed! There go the harmonicas, and here comes the hero of our story, wearing a slinky dress in size whatever, newly proud of herself and her accomplishments and her rockin’ bod, and there she goes off over the horizon and into the setting sun that is as hot as she suddenly believes she is and then the credits roll and you are dabbing away a little tear and pressing your fist to your heart because it is throbbing with the beauty of it all, so hard it might just thump right out of your chest.

I keep waiting for the credits to roll, I think, and that is my problem. After the credits roll, I can stop thinking about my body, and what I eat and what I drink and if my intestines are going to be difficult that day. I can stop worrying about how I look in jeans and that my belly is still sort of poochy and I can stop hating my boobs and I can just go on and live my life the way life is supposed to be lived, after a happy ending—completely off-screen, without a director’s commentary, without wondering what’s next.

As I understand it, that happens pretty often when you reach a goal. You plant your flag, you look around, and you go “huh. Well. That’s done.” And you realize that there’s nowhere to go but right back down. Here’s where the mountain stops, and it looked pretty high when you were down at the bottom, but now that you’re up there, it looks pretty boring.

I’ve lost all the weight, I’ve gotten the high fives, I’ve gone woo! And now I am waiting for the flourish of trumpets to let me know that I can stop waiting–well, for the flourish of trumpets. Now I am just kind of torn between relaxing into just giving up and forgetting all about it (this is who I am, now, and this is how it’s going to be and things are easy-peasy, from here on out) and fading undramatically into black, and being very disappointed that there’s not more to it, getting mad that there’s nothing left.

Things were so exciting when I was losing the weight. Things were dynamic, ever-changing, and it was a Thrilling Adventure, Full of Spills, Chills, and extra, additional Thrills.  And now things are not exciting. Things require work. Pushups and running and vitamins and being healthy without the immediate reward of five pounds down and a compliment every time I see someone I haven’t seen in ten to fifteen minutes.

A few weeks ago I visited San Francisco—my incredibly talented friend Josh Mohr was having his book release party for his (awesomely best-selling, completely amazing) novel Some Things That Meant the World to Me. He was in my grad program; people and instructors from the grad program showed up, and over and over they gasped, and hardly-recognized-me, and told me I looked wonderful and asked how I was and it was startling, to be in that place again, where it was all new and fresh and completely astonishing, how much weight I had lost and how different I look and how awesome everything in the world was and how totally I rule.

I missed that, I realized. I’ve been just ordinary for a long time, and sort of coasting along, waiting for someone to tell me that things were over and done with, and I missed the rush of it. The validation. The high fives and the wows and the holy, holy that comes when you do something dramatic and people recognize how very dramatic it is. I had forgotten, a little bit, where I used to be and what I used to look like, and how I had passed through the gates of paradise and had been issued my passel of virgins and my portion of olive oil and grapes and been warned that this was the way it was going to be, from now on. It crept up so slowly, the complacency and the odd, ungrateful boredom.

There’s plenty I can do—I can declare that my next goal is Ultimate Fitness. My next goal can be a marathon. My next goal can be a six pack. My next goal can be buttocks which can crack a walnut. My next goal can be a triathlon. My next goal can be curing cancer and finding missing children and rehabilitating abused hamsters and looking for the face of god and brokering peace in places that are broken. My next goal ought to be accepting that I had a happy ending, even if I can’t reach out and place my finger directly on the moment where that happened—maybe as far back as when I saw the scale drop below 200 pounds, or the first time I walked up a flight of stairs without dying, or the time I realized that I was worth something, that I had been worth something all along, that I would always be worth something, and I took the batteries out of the scale and gave it away, cue the triumphant kazoo.

I’m done losing weight, and I have been for so long, and probably it is long, so long past time to stop being vaguely dissatisfied, maybe, and figure out what’s next.  Cue the extra-triumphant entire band of kazoos.

image by LunaDiRimmel

A came and got her Friday night, while I was out. I stumbled home kind of tipsy, was confused when no dog came exploding with joy to see me, limbs akimbo, tongue lolling, stub of a tail beating back and forth in a wild blur. She is supposed to circle around and around me and through my legs and push her face into my knees and cover me with love when I sit down to scratch her butt and then climb on my lap and sigh and put her head down like everything is finally right with the world and she couldn’t imagine anything being any better than it was right there and then, forever.

But the house was quiet, and she was gone and E said, reasonably, You knew he was taking her soon, and I did but I still found myself sitting down right on the floor and bursting into tears, because she is gone, and she wasn’t ever my dog, anyway, and how can anyone possibly take care of her as well as I did and how can anyone possibly make her as happy as I did and how can I ever possibly be as happy with another dog when I had the best dog ever in the history of them?

She wasn’t the best dog. She’s a crazy dog, with a lot of crazy dog problems, neurotic, jealous, possessive, anxious, destructive, aggressive. Crazy. It’s better for her to be an only dog; it’s better for E’s dog and his roommate’s dog to not have a crazy, neurotic, aggressive roommate of their own. It’s good for her owner to take responsibility for her, to be grown-up and adult and meet his obligations to the animal who belongs to him. It’s good for everyone! It doesn’t feel so good.

She is still the best dog. I kept it together for awhile, for a whole day and a half. And then when we visited friends, they said “Boy, I bet everyone’s glad Min is gone,” (because her Crazy is widely known) I almost started crying there and I have been crying on and off ever since. I miss my dog. She’s doing very well–A spends a lot of time with her, he walks her twice a day now, she had a wonderful time at the dog park and made best friends with a poodle, she is learning to deal with her crate and not be on furniture and so happy to have A back and to be loved the most and not have other dogs trying to butt in on her love. But I am feeling very sad, and very sorry for myself, and I miss my dog.

Spring. Hi. I missed you. You’re cute. Let’s not ever fight again, okay? Because I really did miss you. I missed bare legs and pink collarbones and giant blue skies that seem much closer and clouds that are so much cuddlier. I missed the sun creeping closer and closer and getting goldener and goldener. I missed warm rain and wet grass and trees that burst into lavender and white, boom. I want to shout BOOM! every time I pass a new explosion of flowers. BOOM.

I missed the dog park, and even the smell of the dog park. I missed standing in the middle of the field and watching an entire pack of dog fling themselves wildly across the grass after a ball or a stick or a Frisbee or just because they are dogs and that is what they do, but they will always come back and tell you all about the exciting adventures they just had and what they saw and what they did and they were gone for so long and experienced so many things and it was so interesting and they were so adventurous and had such good adventures but now they are back and they MISSED YOU SO MUCH. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself when you’re knee-deep in dogs who love you love you love you love you love you HI.

I missed open windows and the waft of a curtain, blowing out, settling in, blowing out, settling back in. A cat in a loaf on the windowsill in a sunbeam, supervising the change in weather, that slow yellow blink the strongest signal of very strong approval you’ve ever seen. I’ve missed turning off the heat and hearing the noises of the apartment unfiltered through the white noise of a furnace. Coming home to a still-bright apartment, still warm from the sun.

It was worth waiting for, this spring stuff. Utah does spring right. Utah has the big blue sky and the enormous, craggy mountains changing colors. Utah knows from puffy clouds and warm breezes and fields of green and the smell of fresh hay. Utah can rustle up some outdoor dining at a cafe table in the sun, a prettily manicured, green and leafy park at lunch time, surprise bursts of surprise flowers, surprise! Utah knows how to balance on the edge of warm but not hot, rainy before it dries up, sunshine bright, for long enough to let you appreciate it, to whirl around barefoot with your head flung back, Exclaiming About the Wonder and the Beauty of It All, and Aren’t We So Glad to Be Alive in a Such a Beautiful World? Yes.

Photo by wildpianiste

It happened with a quickness that is still a little puzzling to me, and makes me think that it was some extended practical joke that was broadcast live somewhere in a European country where smoking is still considered sexy. Things were rough, for a bit—a crazy man and threats of having my dog put down, and money woes, always the money woes, and endless, neverending, eternal fucking winter—but there was Mexico! Sunshine! Sunshine in Mexico! I will be cured! And for a week I was the happiest thing in the land.

And then I came back to a happy cat and my clean apartment and was glad to be home, except that things started to feel inexplicably bad, and badder, and the worst, until a week or so later I was up out of my bed and googling “painless suicide” in my underwear.

Googling “painless suicide” will make you feel a little bit like a dipshit; it will also, probably usefully but not in the way that you hope at three in the morning in your underwear, not provide you with the answers you’re looking for. Which will also make you feel Even More Alone and really totally unclear about what to do next.

I’ve been depressed before, terribly so, can’t-get-out-of-bed depressed, wishing-it-would-all-go-away depressed, endless-fits-of-utterly-prone-and-snotty-weeping depressed, but I have never hit that sweet spot before, where you’re depressed to the very specific degree that you want to die, and can also still function adequately enough to make that magic happen.

Usually I am far too weighted down with woe to do anything about it. This active, go-getter kind of despair was a new one on me, and having the possibility, the option of a way out, was, luckily, flummoxing enough that I wasn’t entirely clear what to do with it. You mean I really could just, you know—stop? Quit? Flip over the board and storm off? Take my ball and go home?

(No one would miss me, and no one would care, and people would probably even be better off and why shouldn’t I? What’s stopping me? I was talking myself into it, even if it would hurt. It would hurt for just a second, right? Unless I fucked that up, too. Oh, look, a rabbit hole, back around the way we came, and two, and three, and four.)

The idea was appealing, and the appealingness of the idea was terrifying, and I spent a lot of time terrified of myself and what I could end up doing, if that makes any sense. I’ve done stupid shit before, in fits of impulsiveness. I could do the ultimate stupid thing from which there is no handy Ctrl-Z.

Luckily I am no good under pressure, froze up, and waited it out quietly. A flurry of wretchedness, of isolation, of something that felt like perfect clarity but was as muddled as simple arithmetic after a jug of vodka. Keeping a secret, keeping it all secret because I felt like a ridiculous teenager.

Eventually confessing to E. I am alone, and lonely, and isolated, and scared of what I could do. And the look on his face was like a punch in the gut. Sometimes you need the punch in the gut.

Clawing my way back, every step careful, conscious, calculated. Add in: vitamins. A walk. More water. A protein shake. Start answering the email that’s piled up. Send out a short story. Finish my book proposal, send it out; start writing again, even just the tiniest bit. And think oh, hey. That’s what hope feels like. Interesting.

Enough measured, deliberate mimicry of human behaviors, and eventually you become a human being again. Eventually you feel human enough to count, to take up space in the world and not feel like you’re wasting it. Eventually you’re the person you think of as you, again, and not the heaped-up pile of mistakes and errors and trash you started to feel like, instead. I can hang on for a little while longer. Especially if spring comes soon.

photo by Kruggg6.

Not best, but when am I ever? But it was a little scary there, for awhile.

I’ll be back shortly, for reals. I just wanted to say, in the meantime, your emails and your comments–shit, you guys. Thank you.

Sometimes the post was to explain away an absence of posts for days or weeks or months and sometimes it was to round-about apologize to the friends in the audience who may or may not have been reading who may or may not have even been my friends any more, to say—I’m sorry I’ve been flaking. But it is hard to put on pants when you are choking in a black hole under a night sky that is drowning in sorrow, am I right? Except without the danger of possible embarrassment and potential ridicule and or doubt and or skepticism that might arise if I actually was brave enough to resurface and apologize in person.

Sometimes the post was to purge, and to say, hey, things are hard and I am sad and I just wanted to say that. My biology is messed up, my headology is a wreck and I never learned any useful coping mechanisms and here we go again. I’ve been aware of the endless cyclical cycling and I have always had the feeling if I were to look at a wide-angle shot of all the things I’ve ever written over the course of my online life, a very clear pattern would emerge and then I’d have to go cry into some pudding.

I’m pretty tired of documenting my bouts of depression. I’m tired of them occurring, and I’m tired of them hanging around, eating all my cold cuts and drinking all my beer and leaving crumbs on my couch and thumbprints on my mirrors. I’m tired of giving in to depressions and accepting the idea that occurs to me, that I cannot function and always I will be sad. I’m tired of saying that I’m tired of it.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and trying to cope with it for about as long. There’s not a lot left for me to do, besides  electroshock therapy. Medicines, doctors. Going for a brisk walk! Buying myself flowers. Making lists that include the items “get out of bed” and “take shower.” Aerobics. Sunlamps and heat lamps and changes of scenery. Just giving into the lying in bed and crying until I am all cried out. They help; they don’t cure. What I want is a cure. What I want is to never again have to write a post full of metaphors about being smothered under wet blankets/frozen in an icy sea/beaten with flannel-wrapped hammers, accompanied by an acknowledgement that I have a great life and am very lucky and I don’t mean to be ungrateful and I’m really sorry, I am, I am.

photo by loop_oh

When E and I booked our fancy vacation the hell out of winter, I thought we should go as soon as possible. No, E said sagely, as he has lived in winter climes for the entirety of his life, we should go as late in February as possible. Because that’s when we’re going to be sick of winter. That’s when we’re going to need a break. But I want to go nooooooow, I whined. Believe me, he said. You’ll be grateful at the end of February. You’ll be glad we waited.

I would like to be grateful and glad we waited but I can’t right now because it is a week and a half before we’re in temperatures above freezing, and in the meantime, snow keeps falling from the sky in blizzard-like sheets, and I can’t get warm and I keep slip-sliding over the ice, starting to fall, jerking up, starting to fall, jerking back, starting to fall, jerking sideways, so that I look like a marionette with a clumsy drunken monkey at the strings. I kind of wish I would just fall already and break something and never have to leave the house again. I kind of regret writing that sentence, because my next post is now obligated to start, “Remember when I said I wanted to fall and break something? Funny story…”

This morning, three cars were stuck in the snow that came down last night. The snow is now almost to the top of my boots. The top of my boots is almost directly below my knees. I have stubby legs, but that is still, you must admit, a lot of goddamn snow. It is less snow than some people have, I am sure, but it is more than enough snow for me, is what I am saying. It is snow that used to make me go “snoooooow!” but now makes me go “graaaaaah!” which is a sound that neatly combines rage at the elements with despair for my continued survival.

My hands are blocks of ice and my fingers barely bend. The tip of my nose is gone. I am snow and freezing wind all the way through to my core and back outside again. Blankets do not warm me, hot showers do not thaw me, life is very difficult and I miss you, the sun. Where have you gone? Why have you forsaken us? You are yellow and warm. I remember yellow warmness. I remember having toes. Those were good times.

There are some things I like. Pretty pictures. Hiking around the mountains with the dogs who love bounding through the snow and catching snowballs. Not being in the snow, because you are inside with a guy who’s got a core temperature like a furnace and does not mind being used as a blanket. I’m fond of hot cocoa. Tiny marshmallows are a miracle of the future, but it’s not enough any more.

Winter, I am done with you. Won’t you please get finished with us? Won’t you please wander off somewhere else where they are very tired of high temperatures and sunny days and picnics in the park and swimming and ice pops and bare toes? I’m sure they’ll be happy to see the backside of all that bare skin. So to speak. Go where you’ll be appreciated. That is my advice to you. That is my advice to everyone, in fact! Go where you are appreciated and loved! Thank you, winter, for making me see an important life lesson. Now get the fuck out.

I started them first, because the garlic had to roast for awhile, and then peeling the potatoes took an age and a half and also a knuckle. I focused on my potatoes as they came together, almost like magic. Garlic-smelling magic. The boiling, the concentrated mashing, the adding the entire stick of butter and the cream, the careful seasoning, the whipping in the soft, roasted cloves, the careful adjustment of seasoning, the struggle with myself to not put my face in the pot–at every stage it came together so beautifully, I nearly cried.

And at every stage of the garlic mashed potato caper, I had to try them. At first just a nibble, but as they got more delicious and buttery, a spoon, another, a third. Spoons lining up next to the stove because tasting my garlic mashed potatoes was a very serious business I take very seriously. Especially when you are serious like me.

When they were finished and staying warm on the stove, as I started to put together the salad and cook up the steaks, I kept sneaking back to the pot of potatoes for another bite, and another, and another. I finished cooking, plated the food–a big slab of meat and two, a tong of salad and then another, a mound of potatoes, a spoonful for me, a mound of potatoes, a spoonful for me and then another spoonful.

I sat down across from E with our plates.

“You have something on your chin,” he said.

“I was saving that for later,” I said.

There was an entire pot of mashed potatoes for later, and I was so grateful. As I generously splotted the stuff on our plates, I kept a careful eye on the level of potato left behind, and was thankful to see that it was still pretty robust and magnificent. I had a whole plate of steak and salad and mashed potatoes waiting for me, but I was already planning how I would have potatoes with corn for breakfast, and potatoes for lunch and then potatoes tomorrow night. I was not enjoying my present potatoes, because I was already hoarding my future potatoes. “Hoarding My Future Potatoes” is also the name of my forthcoming personal investing memoir/how-to.

It’s also a little bit nuts–I mean, I know garlic mashed potatoes are delicious. They are proof that if God existed, he would love us. But the mashed potatoes had taken over my mind. Mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes. I could not finish my dinner (I barely started it) because I was so full of mashed potatoes. As we snuggled on the couch watching Mad Men, I was thinking about how I’d have mashed potatoes later when I got hungry. As we drifted off to sleep, when I woke up, as I moved through the day, in the back of my head was the countdown to mashed potatoes, and everything was an obstacle to them–no I can’t go fax something for you because that means I am no where near the mashed potatoes if I need them Yes of course, sweetheart, no problem.

I should make a little sling for my container of mashed potatoes. A mashed potato hat. A potato IV. I should inject mashed potatoes subcutaneously. I should become a mashed potato when I grow up. I should consider that I have some kind of problem–a humorous mashed potato problem, which isn’t as hilarious when I consider all the food that has haunted me, made me tap my foot impatiently when I was delayed in getting back to it, made me sigh gratefully when I was reunited with it, made me worry about what would happen when it was gone.

You try being logical–you can make more, you can buy more, this is not the last food that will ever appear in front of you–your mashed potatoes, the box of cookies, the donuts that appear in the break room and they’re not even very good donuts. But that low-level anxiety remains, and you’re torn between the need to devour immediately and hoard forever and either way, you end up with a stomach ache. Or maybe that’s just me.

photo by ohskylab