This is what it feels like.....

.......when anxiety rises.........

you know that exact moment when something scares you and your heart is suddenly the size of your chest and somehow in your throat at the same time?

when you've had too much coffee and every nerve is dancing on razor blades?

when your hands are shaky from hunger and your legs are begging you to please just sit down?

when muscle tension draws knots across your shoulders that turn to stone?

when you just can't stop fidgeting and scratching and plucking at yourself and your clothes?

Now imagine all those things happening at once and lasting for hours.

That's what my anxiety feels like.

Grinding poverty.....

Poverty, like anything else, is relative. I've never been homeless. I've never been hungry for prolonged periods of time. I have had warm clothes when the weather is cold. And I've seen my breath inside my house. For prolonged periods of time.

Several years ago, I found myself living in a cheap rooming house. It was above a restaurant in downtown Fredericton. Horrible city. Hate it.

I was one of the lucky tenants. I had one of the larger rooms and it had a refrigerator. I wouldn't have to risk placing my food in the common kitchen. I had recently read the L-Shaped Room by Lynn Reid Banks. I tried to make it seem as romantic as possible. I had known people who had lived in rooming houses and it seemed so cozy, so practical to have everything in one room. I wasn't working at the time and was waiting for my unemployment to start. I'd fallen into quite a clinical depression at this point and was unable to obtain my medication.

Then it started. A Saturday came when I didn't have the money to buy the Globe and Mail. The price had recently gone up and it was now about $2.14 or so.

Since university, I'd always bought the Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail. And coffee cream. I'd make a coffee and spend time with the paper. I'd read all the sections, except for business and sports, and last I'd do the crossword puzzle. In ink. I always do them in ink and I never cross off the clue when I fill in the word. Drives other people crazy.

I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter. It was only this week that I didn't have it. I'd just have to remember to set aside enough change to make sure I could always get it. The coffee cream wasn't that important.

But I knew that wasn't true. I knew this was connected to having to share a bathroom with people I literally wouldn't sit around on the bus. It was tangled up with the Church group that came about every other Sunday. I'd hear them coming downstairs as they went through the halls, knocking on doors calling out "Sandwich and a pop?". My second day here they'd knocked at my door and made the same offering "sandwich and a pop?". Now I just sat quietly in my room and ignored their knocks on the door. Sometimes they'd leave a sandwich and pop for me outside my door. I'd give them to the guy who lived in the room next to mine. I think it used to be a closet. Seriously. It was long enough for a single bed, an 18 inch space and a narrow table that ran the length of the wall opposite the bed.

Then the day came when they left the sandwich and the pop and I didn't give it to John. I put it in the fridge and ate them later that night. I'd seen the word furtively applied to eating in novels before. But until now I never really got what that meant. I ate that sandwich furtively. I drank the pop as quietly as I could. Opening the can sounded like a gunshot going off in that room.

By the time I realized that I'd lost enough weight that my jeans were sliding off my hips, I was ready to face the reality of the situation. I'd been living on pasta noodles with Italian dressing for weeks. I was almost out of dressing. It was time to go to the food bank. By this time I'd cut up towels to use as pads, hand washed underpants with shampoo in the bathroom sink and for 2 guilt ridden days I had only rice to feed to my two cats.

I'm not sure what other people's experiences have been with food banks, but the one I went to could not have been nicer. I went feeling ready to justify why I needed their services. I was wearing the baggy jeans. I never had to justify my need. Not one person made me feel at all like I did. When it was clear I was getting upset, the man interviewing me offered me a tea. He made sure to tell me to ask for anything particular I may need, like toothpaste. I wasn't sure how to phrase the question. He was a grandfather aged man who was very sweet. He guessed what I was trying to ask for and called one of the woman into the room. He told her to get me set up with whatever I needed, then he whispered to me "You can tell Mary what you need dear".

That didn't stop me though from getting heartburn the first few weeks I ate food from the food bank. I knew it was mind over matter and eventually I didn't mind so it no longer mattered.

I came to rely on the public library as a steady source of toilet tissue. They used those huge mutant rolls, so I'd sit there and unroll enough to get me through until the next day. Saturdays I had to remember to take lots - the library wouldn't open again until Tuesday.

But it wasn't all bad.

I met my husband there.

Buddy update

Buddy is still hanging around and seems to be feeling much better. Someone put a flea collar on him but not before some of his fleas moved in and took up residence on my 2 cats Jinx and Echo. Poor Echo has never had fleas before and he's quite confused. I'm hoping that the fleas don't get to entrenched before I have the money to buy the proper flea stuff.



But Buddy still breaks my heart really. I've never seen him walking about with his tail high in the air ~ the sign of a happy cat. He really just wants a home and a lap but my 2 just won't have it. I suspect if I could get him fixed they might come around.

So, I give Buddy all the love I can when he comes around and hope that somehow I'll be able to get him fixed and give him a proper home. Winter is on it's way and I don't want his feet to get like they were last winter.

The Black Dog

*this was originally written for another blog I used to contribute to

It was Winston Churchill who first coined the phrase the black dog ~ it was what he called his depression. And it’s a metaphor that really works and in many ways makes it easier to try and understand what Depression is like to live with. Although my best friend Tanya made a good point when she said that Depression is like childbirth ~ you can have someone tell you all about it and understand it on an intellectual level, but until you’ve gone through it, you really don’t get it.

I’ve always had Sparky ~ my black dog ~ but I didn’t realize he was there until my late 20’s when my Dr discovered him. And then began the process of learning how to care for Sparky ~ my black dog. The first thing I had to do was accept the fact that Sparky would always be a part of my life and that having Sparky was not a character flaw, a weakness or my fault. I was never a dog person and accepting the fact that I now had one of my own was a long and difficult process. And Sparky is a very picky eater. He’d eat a certain food for awhile and then decide that he didn’t like it and act up. And then the search for a new food would begin again. And this would be after Sparky was given different portions of the same food. When he continued to act up, then a new food would be looked at as a possibility. Different foods at different portions, all the while trying to keep Sparky under control.

That’s the other reality of having a black dog. Even when he has the food he likes at the right portion he can still act up. Often for no reason at all except that he feels like it. And most people don’t care for being around an unruly dog ~ even when they know that you are doing your best to contain him. And even when he is behaving, he is always at your feet. You just do your best not to trip on him or wake up him and have him get too active. Looking after Sparky is a tricky business. When people realize you have a black dog you often are then in a position of explaining to them what having a black dog is really all about. It can be extremely difficult to accept you have a black dog when others are always questioning his presence. And Sparky himself adds to the questioning. He’ll try his best to control me. When he is acting up, he gets bigger than me, overshadowing me until even I feel invisible. And the bigger he gets the stronger he gets. The tricky part is knowing when he’s about to get stronger. Recognizing the signs of agitation. Accepting the oncoming, and often inevitable, period of bad behavior.

But there are things I can do to rein in Sparky as much as I can. I make sure that I have a professional trainer to help me when Sparky acts up. I do my best not to listen to Sparky when he tells me that his presence is shameful and I should just hide him and myself away. Sparky tells me that merely having him makes me unworthy. He wants to me the master and control me. It’s a balance between knowing he will act up and working not to allow him complete control. When Sparky is in control it is easy to allow him that control, to let him call the shots and submit to his will. At these times Sparky doesn’t like to go outside, see other people, eat, sleep or even take care of basic hygiene. He even barks at my partner, scaring him and keeping him back. Some friends are so scared of Sparky they never come back.

And Sparky has offspring and they tend to wake up when he does. Generalized anxiety, social anxiety, OCD, PTSD……..and they require a different diet than Sparky. And the diets themselves can be just as hard as having Sparky. Decreased libido, hand tremors, increased need for sleep, the sensation of being muffled from the rest of the world. Other than when Sparky is acting up, the time I feel his presence the strongest is when I have to feed him. It is a daily reminder that he is with me and he will always be with me. You can’t put a black dog down. You can do your best to control him but you’ll never be rid of him. And I mean no gender bias when I call Sparky “him” ~ it’s just how I always thought of Sparky.

So exercise him. feed him properly. Take care of him as best you can but accept that he’ll always be there. Accept that there will be times when you can’t control him. Accept that some people will never accept him. Do your best to explain Sparky’s presence to those that will accept him as part of your life. Inform others what it means to have a black dog. But most of all remember that having a black dog is not your fault. He is not a punishment and you should feel no shame in having him.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me either here or privately. I want people to know about black dogs and to hopefully educate them about black dogs. I am including a link for a book that is the best I’ve come across in living with a black dog. Simply written and with illustrations that also reflect the black dog’s presence, it is an invaluable book for showing others and yourself what living with a black dog is all about.

http://tinyurl.com/l3cogr

LOVE this blog..... Barefoot Foodie

This chick rocks. Seriously.

http://barefootfoodie.com/2009/08/20/her/

I stumble. A lot. I'm quite addicted actually. But the point is that I scan a lot of blogs. This one caught my eye and then had me laughing out loud when she described her husband's vasectomy. I spent hours reading away and loving every word.

Enjoy!