A Tricky Place In Which to Dwell

Yea to the National Health Service for their contributions to my well-being! It's working!

England is very concerned about my well-being, though I don't take it personally: they're concerned about everyone's well-being. There are signs- good, strong signs made of something durable and impervious to damp- regarding how many vegetables you eat, and what you should do if you're bullied, and the fact that your food is sourced from a few counties away (I know, it's parishes, not counties. I prefer to think of them as Shires, since everything here is within a Shire- just go ahead and picture the Hobbitses, it's easier than trying to put the Democratic Theology or Theocratic Democracy {plus bonus Royal Persons}in the same bed together.) The UK cares so much about its' subjects' well-being that it uses the word "sourced" in the signs and banners and spots that remind you to feel good about your food, rather than potentially insult your intelligence by using the phrase "comes from." I feel content with my lot in a way that I never did in the US- though that might be the drugs talking.

I'm pretty sure it's the drugs talking. I'd prefer it to be the beer talking, but I don't regularly drink becuase I'm taking drugs for my Chronic Pain Condition, which is from a nail put in my head when I was bullied in High School that's just slowly worked itself into my cranuim, past my Prefrontal Cortex and into the Medulla Oblongata, or "Middle," where it consistently pokes into the area of my brain where I think about High School. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the pathological chronic pain- your brain refuses to stop thinking about the pain. When I got over here I swore (standing in my first-every backyard, looking at the fence around it. There wasn't a sunset or a raw potato and I wasn't even wearing a Civil War Era dress, but I swore nonetheless,) that I would change medications and I would do so with an eye toward ultimately taking less of them. And I have! I switched one of my anti-depressants for another one!...and I realize that this doesn't sound like progress. It is, it is; it's such dreamy, half-satisfied progress that everything seems livelier, less effortful, and zippy. I dropped another one althogether. I'm so sort of blissed out by the fact that I've done it- I moved here from the US without anyone losing their eyesight from random stress-reflex flailing while I was packing some knives, without sending off four or five copies of any divorce papers to my already-moved spouse, just to make sure he got the point; without losing any teeth from either lack of vitamin C or from just giving up and falling face-forward onto the concrete sidewalk, mouth first. It's hard to sort out which is the greater source of happiness: my survival or my chemical intake. I'm pretty sure it's the chemical intake that's dictating I not worry about it.

I miss people. There: that's the thing, the one thing, that makes my gently muddled mind become uncertain of the justification that I should not worry and also be happy. There are people I miss, and I miss them less than I should. Pills, or just me? Am I completely enslaved by the lovely Seratonin and Melatonin and many other similarly named hormones, and am I then less sympatheric to my beloved's voices and trials and failed attempts than I one was? I though myself a lout many times before, before I came here and met my little navy-blue-and-white encapsulated buddies, for not being a good friend. Self-flagellation about how much less effort you put into your relationships in comparison to, say, Charlotte on Sex in the City is a given for those of us who just cannot put in that much effort. No matter how hard it is to button your shirt and no matter how many extra minutes it takes us to brush our sensitive teeth and touchy gums, those of us who contend with some extra Substance P (which, by the by, is a neurotransmitter that is located in the spinal fluid whose sole joy it is to transmit pain signals to the brain. People with FM have more of it, generally, but the fascinating thing about that to me is that it's named Substance P. Whomever it was that discovered it must have had a busy day, and by the time they got to the naming bit they must have looked at their array of tubes and disposable safety goggles and little puddles of spinal fluid on the laboratory floor that were still left to clean up, and said to their impatient PhD candidate intern, all ready with the pen and official naming paperwork: "You know, it's late; let's just write down...uh...Substance P. Yeah. There's the P for Pain, so that's good enough- the judges at the Nobel Institute don't need a fancy name anyway, right? The important thing is the quality of the work. Now here's the mop,")...those of us who have to contend with perhaps three times more Substance P (also could be the name of a seventies-era laboratory-based street drug) must feel guilt about it. Sorry, but we have to. It's as requisite as acquiring full-time under-eye baggies from the ongoing lack of sleep that usually comes with hurting all the time. And since I miss people, since I'm now really really far away from  them, I feel like I should be really whipping myself for not rallying and swooping into a letter-writing frenzy, complete with country cute stickers that I got at the carbon-neutral Tesco in our next town over and sketches of the house in colored pencil...but I'm not. I feel OK.

I miss people, but not enough. It's the drugs, unless it's not. The tricky part is deciding which of those things is me and which of those things is induced. The not-tricky part, I guess, is conducting my day as I always have and just getting through it, one distraction at a time, one hour-long rest at a time. I apologize, my friends; I might feel differently but it seems that won't make much difference in the amount of chi I can expend. The thing that has become clearer, so clear it's like a beautiful hand-blown glass: the ones who stick with me, who have stuck with me, through my plodding communications over the years are very good people to be friends with. We chronics are lucky that way.

Decisions, Simplified

Yesterday the cat got out of the house. She snuck off, quiet-like, and dropped the story-and-a-half down to the ground so she could see what all the fuss was about. We'd been leaving the house and then coming back and then leaving again for as long as she could remember, and in between these machinations she'd bounce a ball on the wall and wait for it to bounce back, counting the days she'd been cooped up. Naturally the dog would have to chase it and there would be some perfunctory hissing and then he'd give it back and she'd toss it at the wall, counting. She would not have lost her place because she's a cat.

The best part about losing your cat is that everything snaps into action: your vision clears so that you can see the hawks circling, your ears pick up much more sound, including any high-pitched skreeeeeee from the neighbor's mower that could be mistaken for a cat provided said cat were being mangled, your breathing swells to accompany the panic-y thought of finding the animal and the ensuing attempt to pick it up. All this because your eleven-year-old's face is making a frown that will not turn upside-down no matter how many times you jokingly order it to do so. All the regular shit (and the irregular shit when you come right down to it) disappears like lightning and you can see what you have to do: tape flyers on everything. Yeah. Tape Flyers on Everything. You've been waiting. It's such parenting legend, such a milestone, that you can easily bring yourself to near-tears imagining how fucked up your kid is going to be if they don't lose their cat: how will they cope? Where will they learn the valuable life-lesson and current #3 Parenting Buzzword resiliency if they don't lose their/the family's pet? Will your child grow up not knowing the value of Taping Flyers to Everything? My God: what if your genius child goes to college not knowing- what if they start a band?? It'll be too late! No one's gonna teach them now! They'll end up practicing in your conservatory every night until 9:30 and insist that for their birthday you continue their guitar lessons  forever!!

I'm a big fan of anything that will keep me motivated right now. I'm switching medications. The old ones were being rude to me by demanding my liver and kidneys and skin flush them out but they were poor tenants, using up all the hot water and refusing to bring down the tea plates so that mice sniff around (not that I have anything against mice, but I'm writing metaphorically here.) I mean they were the drug lord's cousin, all smiles and yessing but then sitting around drinking all of the Yoo-Hoo and putting wedges under your desk when you go to the bathroom...wait...I mean the drugs were, like, crows and the crows' brothers were elephants (just roll with me) who would be disappointed when the crows wouldn't dance, not even the hustle (see? So worth it!) I'm swimming in this neurochemical pool of mild mood shifting, and when I can look at it straight it feels like I can't decide whether or not to be in a good mood. The new pills are working, and it's making me suspicious. 

Naturally I can't decide what to be suspicious of: am I normally in a good-enough mood and the chemicals are masking that and  forcing this new, complacent fair mood on me? Am I one of those people for whom a good mood is just not really possible without some external support? Is it all a hoax perpetuated on the privileged white woman's health insurance, individual liver function be damned (CUE BIG PHARMA CEO TWIRLING MOUSTACHE, GRINNING EVIL STEEL-TOOTHED SMILE?) I think it's most probable that I've just been experiencing stress. For years. Lots of big, life-threatening, world-shattering, pelvic-floor-weakening, down-the-wrong-neural-path-making, pulling-clothes-out-of-a-sooty-wet-heap-happening, funeral-frequenting, present-forgetting, name-dropping-and-not-in-a-presumptuous-but-more-of-a-forgetting-your-best-friends'-name-way-sort-of-dropping, giant sucking chest would of a life. Not all of the time but...you know...enough. 

There is a plan, though. I have a quest (sadly, there will be no genius illustrator/directors on this quest- but I'll smile if I crass any bridges.) I must teach my girl how to go door-to-door and ask the regular strangers if they've seen the cat, and I'll teach her how to tape flyers to absolutely everything. This is a life skill that she will never need, because of computers and such, but she'll learn it. It will make me feel good to teach it to her, and since we live in a neighborhood full of biddies who haven't had their nephews teach them how to use the internet yet, the quarter-pound of printer paper she used to make up flyers will actually help her get her cat back.