7 Ways To Love Your Life, Right Now

Depression has had me in her ugly grip since I was 5 and fabulous. That’s a slight exaggeration, but barely: by the time I was 8 or 9, my mother had nearly been killed by my father (she needed 175 stitches to close the gaping wound she suffered when she punched out a door window trying to escape him. The police the next day had my mom leave the house while he came and packed his stuff.) before she divorced him; I was molested by more than one person; my best friend bled to death after running through a plate glass door (this was 1974); my favorite uncle died of bone cancer; my babysitter had been killed in a freak accident on her family’s boat, which hit a wave and sent her flying into the air and then under the boat and its propeller; we moved from New York to New England; my wonderful and kind grampa was diagnosed with cancer (and would die in 1976); and my bastard father. Well, I am not going to discuss him here, at any length. Just know that he was a vile, brutal, abusive bag of flesh, whose sharp intellect masked a monster under his professionally successful self.

That was an awful lot of death and loss and pain for a kid. (Oh holy shit. I just googled my grampa’s name to get his date of death and came up with this little gem: 65.4 years is the average lifespan for people named XxxXxxxxx. EEEEEEKKK!!)

The internal chaos was compounded by the external chaos and by the time I was 9, I was pulling out my eyelashes and then my hair. I gained dozens of pounds, girding myself against the outside world that had valued me as pretty and, in the case of my molesters, exploitable, vulnerable, less-than. I then took to cutting myself with razors: See, world? I am bleeding. I am hurting. Still, I took solace and refuge in reading.

So I knew that my depression this year was getting really bad when I couldn’t read. I mean, sure, I could do the twitters because 140 characters. But to escape through the page; to live another’s life, through words and imagination? Couldn’t do it.

Right around the time I started going deep into the rabbit hole, aka, the shallow end of the crazy pool, I met Him. Someone amazing. Someone whose whole being, it seemed to me, was connected to mine in a way I’d never imagined. Who could make me think and laugh and cry and feel and sing and mine the depths and feel things physically that I didn’t know I could feel. Or maybe didn’t think I could find at the age of 50. Someone whose soul gave me goosebumps, as if I’ve known Him forever. His voice is familiar and washes over me like warm rain, makes me wet and nourished.

He was my safe place. Talking with Him was the only place I felt whole and loved and peaceful and outside myself. Because talking with Him brought me the only peace I could find; like a bookstore, his being was/is refuge.

In late spring and then summer, I was drinking to cope with the shitstorm that was my head and, it felt like, my life. Drinking to blackout, most nights. We had conversations that I couldn’t entirely recall, but I knew I had fucked up. It is all so awful and mean and not who I am. I had never been a nasty or shitty drunk; I’d always been happy. Booze allowed me to take the edge off and just be part of the experience — not BE the experience. Until depression started creeping back in. I would literally sit in my cubicle and cry. I’d get in my car and cry. I’d walk around the block on break and cry. I’d pull into my garage at the end of the day and cry, dreading coming into the house.

I think I became dehydrated by excessive teardrop loss.

My life was full of couldnts at that point. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t shut my brain off. Couldn’t open the mail. Couldn’t deal with an attorney who I needed to deal with. Couldn’t advocate for myself. Couldn’t talk with my teenage daughter without angst and sadness and guilt and anger. Couldn’t finish work assignments. Couldn’t stand to be around anyone. Couldn’t understand why once again the blackhollowness, was enveloping me, swallowing me whole.

And so. Drinking let me escape and led me to isolate; I’d go downstairs to the momcave and self-medicate. It was all a vicious circlecycle. Sad, drink. Drink, become more sad. Sadder, drink more. And in between, try to life. Yes, life, not live. Because I wasn’t, much of the time, living. I was going through the motions. The only good was when I would talk to Him.

We can talk about anything and everything and often do. Yes, my tenses are back and forth here, because I am not sure where this is all going: past? future? present? Back and forth we go, on the phone, in the car, in a hotel room, exploring new places, on his bed, his couch, texts and emails: we never seem to run out of things to talk about. Families (dysfunctional), marriages (deeply let-down), children (deeply loved), books (Catcher in the Rye, always), politics (progressive), atheism (Him), progressive christian with lots of questions (me), organized religion (not fans), sports (Giants, me; Cowboys, Him; Red Sox, me; Orioles, Him; Celtics, Us), and music, always music. He’s a musician; he plays guitar (beautifully) and sends me audio files of Him playing or singing or singing and playing, and I can’t believe how full my heart feels.

There is physical distance between us; about 240 miles from home to home. That is simply an unmovable fact (no pun intended). The first time we met in person seven months ago, I was a raw ball of fiery nerve endings; so sure, was I, that he would look at me and not be attracted to me. All that phone buildup — those long hours spent learning about each other, growing more attached with each revelation, more bound with each confession of the pain and mistrust caused by betrayal and violent heartbreak — was heady stuff. What if we met and the emotional connection didn’t translate into physical attraction? Is that possible?

I was literally shaking as I waited in the commuter lot for Him. The plan was to go to Rhode Island to see my sister, and spend the following three days exploring my homestate and Connecticut. It was an absolutely gorgeous late May day; the warm air tinged with scents of early summer in New England. I felt so alive. Finally, after weeks of talking and laughing and revealing ourselves and planning for it, he pulled up, smiling as he drove towards me. My heart literally fluttered (JFC! I canot have a heart attack on Him! Calm DOWN, I told myself); I took a sharp breath and tried to contain my happy girl grin. Face to face: Him, long and lean, a wide soft mouth curving into a sexy grin, and oh so beautiful; me, shorter by inches, and curvier than I would have liked. We looked good together. It was all so fucking magical. And it only got better. Those 96 hours together were the happiest four days that I have ever had. Each moment revealed something new. It was easy and right and fucking perfect. All of it.

This, I felt, was what I meant when I said I wanted to be 50 and fabulous: to be wholly alive, to give my love and have it returned by someone amazing, to connect with someone on an intellectual and emotional level, and to have all of those feelings and emotions translate between us in sex and sensuality.

I felt recharged for a period; I managed to rally a little but the depression began creeping its way around my brain and I really started drinking heavily. One night, we were talking on the phone and I don’t know what I said but the next day he was upset, confused. I’d been blacking out and couldn’t tell Him. I was the kind of drunk who generally didn’t slur words. He later told me, after I confessed to binge drinking and blackouts, that I would get loud and repeat myself. Worse, though, was when I got ugly. I would turn in a nanosecond and without reason, from being happy to being pissed and accusatory. I said things I don’t remember, and they were neither true, nor nice.

Things started to reach an unstable crescendo for me one night in August. We were on the phone; I was drunk, really loaded. Suddenly, I was holding my phone in my hand and he wasn’t there. I knew two things: I had utterly no idea what I had just said, but whatever it was I had probably just lost the best person I have ever known. I don’t know the how or why of the latter part of that, I just know that I felt sick and certain. It was late, drunk o’clock or drunk-thirty. I started panicking (depression’s ugly cousin anxiety is also part of my makeup) and then did what no sober, rationale, mentally healthy, smart person would ever think of doing. I threw some things in a bag and ran out of my house. I left my purse, my wallet, my cigarettes, and most of my sane mind behind, as I got in my car and drove to his home.

This was not a good idea.

I am lucky that I wasn’t pulled over by police; drunk, no ID, irrational: total shitshow material. I was lucky I managed to make it to his house in one piece and without killing someone else. I was lucky, frankly, that he opened the door at 6:30 in the morning to an unwanted, slightly drunk, definitely crazy girlfriend who had said some nasty things to Him just hours before. But he did. I am still grateful for that. I slept badly in his bed while he lay on the couch; when I got up a little later that morning, he was gone. I have never felt more stupid. That was not a #50AndFabulous moment; it was a cringe-inducing nightmare. Not only had I lost Him with ugly words, I just revealed myself to be selfish in ways that no one deserves. Especially not Him. I will spare myself the public embarrassment of explaining how I made it home on $18 in quarters for gas and cigarettes. I will acknowledge that sometimes guardian angels take the shape of toll-takers on the Tappan Zee Bridge, clerks behind the cash register of Weis gas stations, and people who answer suicide hotlines.