wink     ; )

Vacation

Tree is off work! I'm done with school! That means it is vacation time! We'll be going to New Mexico for a while to visit some friends and see the sights. I might actually have decent internet access this trip so maybe there might even be some updates during this one.

It's not a bug, it's a Feature!

I'm building an e-commerce site for a client using a prepackaged system. One of the features of this system is that I can use scripting. So I build the site using PHP and have trouble making the actual store portions of the site work. A call to tech support reveals that using scripting breaks essential funtionality of the store. So apparently scripting is enabled, but it is also useless. Gah!

Fluctuations

Started getting better, then got worse again. Am now starting to feel better again. Who knows how I'll be feeling tomorrow.

Sudden Sickness

Yesterday, I got sick. I started off the morning feeling groggy with a sore throat. As the day wore on, I felt progressively worse. My stomach started feeling queasy and every task seemed hopelessly daunting. My muscles started aching and my skin felt sensitive everywhere. Spark was particularly needy as well and kept asking for things which I couldn't give him. (He kept wanting to see various friends, but they weren't available to play.) At one point, I just lay on the floor exhausted. Spark chose this time to beg insistently. I was at a loss. I ended up apologizing to him that I couldn't give him what he wanted and just started crying.

That didn't last long. Spark is a bit too empathetic at times--he started crying too. This was not helping matters, but I knew that he wouldn't stop until I did, so I pulled myself together and struggled through until naptime. He woke up from his nap feeling fine. I woke up feeling even worse.

Luckily, by then Tree had come home from work and was able to help me out. That was also the low point of the day; I started to feel better after that. By the end of the day, I felt merely bad instead of miserable. Today, the only remnant of yesterday is the sore throat (that it seems to be getting worse). (Oh, and the Shadow I got today was a doozy, but that had nothing to do with getting sick yesterday.)

Besides being a sob story, which this is, it is also a reminder to me that moods are contagious. This is one of my main concerns about my Clusters/Shadows. They pretty much suck the joy out of my life and push me way over on the despair end of the spectrum. But meanwhile, Spark is a naturally happy and joyful toddler. Normally, his joy is infectious and I end up happy too. But in times like this, my despair is too stubborn. That'd be OK if it stopped there. But if Spark can't influence my mood, then I end up influencing his. So if he can't make me happy, then I end up making him grumpy, and that is not something that I want to instill into him. I want him to remain happy, even if I can't be. But life doesn't really work that way. I end up pulling him down with me into my foul moods.

I do my best to prevent this, but with only marginal success. I can only hide my moods from him so much and it's not like I can flip on a happy switch. I'm kinda at a loss for what to do. Things would be OK if it were just me, but I don't really know how to best care for Spark in all this.

Preaching

I finished my preaching class last week (well, the classroom portion of it at any rate; I still have post-class assignments to do) and it went rather well. The week was spent half in standard classroom lecture format, and the other half in workshop format. During the week, we essentially learned how to prep and structure a sermon during the lectures and then we actually preped and structured a realy sermon during the workshop portions. Then, on Friday, we proceeded to preach the sermons we had been preparing.

I had never preached before and I was nervous beforehand. I had wanted to go first to get it over with, but I'm glad I didn't get my wish. I learned a lot from the people who went before me because our prof would immediately give us feedback as soon as we finished. (We were mostly being graded on the structure and content of our sermons, not the presentation and delivery, since that was the focus of this class.)

My sermon went very well. I didn't forget anything, and I didn't have any long uncomfortable silences. I knew that my structure was solid. I ended up getting no negative feedback from the prof. (That's not to say that I'm any good at preaching, for I'm not. It just means that I've got the basics of structuring a sermon--which was the scope of the class. I still can't deliver one well to save my life.)

Tease

Just as I thought that the Shadows are going away, they came back and whacked me good today. Ah well.

Summer School--Don't expect much from me this week.

I'm in the middle of my intense one-week summer school course. It is going well, but there is no time to take a breath, and not way to recover if you fall behind. And if you stay up late one night to finish homework, there is no way to make it up until the weekend.

Intense. Wild. Good. Exhausting.

Despair and Reprieve

I woke up weeping.

The prospect of facing another agonizing day had reduced me to tears before I was even conscious. Despair had slipped around my mental defenses while I slept and taken over. And anyone who was able to discern that 90% of my last post was wishful thinking, braggadocio meant to bolster a weakening resolve, well...you get a gold star.

At any rate, I couldn't just lie there weeping in bed. I had to get up, at the very least to get some Advil, but more importantly, to take care of Spark. So I forced down the tears and despair and got moving. And I just kept moving and moving and moving because in every quiet still moment the tears sprang back up. Catch my breath by the sink--start crying. Dry my hands in the bathroom--start crying. Finish strapping Spark into the carseat--start crying.

I drove to my sister's for our weekly playdate. She saw how miserable I was and sent me off to bed. I told her to get me up in an hour when it was time for Spark's nap and I'd put him down, then I went to bed.

I woke up four hours later.

I knew that I was exhausted from fighting my Shadows, but I had no idea that I was that exhausted. But my sister could tell and she let me sleep for as long as I needed. I felt remarkably better. Despair had been banished once again and tears didn't threaten to overflow with every lapse of motion. That evening, Tree made me go to bed early as well--9:00. She has been enforcing reasonable bedtimes ever since and will continue to do so until the Shadows depart. Why? Because I'm actually happy again.

Even though I'm still in pain, I'm finally able to enjoy Spark again. He's a very happy bubbly boy and his joy is typically infectious. But these past few weeks, I haven't been able to enjoy him; I merely take care of him. But ever since my sister's generous gift of sleep (one week ago), I've been able to laugh again, much to my family's relief.

Thank you Sis. You're the Best!

Seeing the Dark Cloud

Apart from the very obvious pain, one of the hardest things about Clusters/Shadows is how exhausting they are. Pain management quickly drains my physical and emotional reserves. This is fine for a day or two, but Clusters are a marathon, not a sprint. By the time I'm two weeks in, my reserves are tapped out and I'm dreadfully aware that I have another two weeks ahead of me. Or maybe two months.

It is at this point that Despair begins to sing her seductive song.

The advice from other cluster sufferers is to Get Angry--anger does a wonderful job of chasing away despair. And they're right, it does. But anger requires a lot of energy, and by the time Despair come knocking at my door, I'm usually fresh out. The other problem is that Anger just isn't very sustainable. I can get angry for an hour no problem. But I don't know how to sustain anger for the weeks or months necessary to fight Cluster-induced Despair. Anger is great in the heat of battle, but it does little to sustain you during a siege. And that's what this is. I am besieged by pain and despair and they are waiting for my will to fight to starve, for me to collapse and surrender from exhaustion.

Anger doesn't help in this long-term siege, so I'm forced to convert that anger into something more durable. Revenge is the ultimate long-term version of Anger, but there is no one to exact Revenge from. (I could try to exact Revenge on Clusters in general by becoming a neurologist and curing it, but let's just say that that isn't going to happen.)

Resentment seems to be my next best option. It has an infinite shelf life and requires little energy to maintain. But I still have no one to resent (except maybe God) and by nature I don't seem to hold onto Resentment very well. Bitterness is an option too. It has nearly the shelf life of Resentment with the added bonus of having an appropriate object: I can be bitter that I'm afflicted by this condition. But I don't want to be a bitter person and I don't want to inflict my bitterness on the people around me, the people I love.

So what does that leave? What weapons do I have left to fight Despair? To ride out the Siege? The only one I can find is Grim Determination. I will resign myself to the fight, even if I know I will lose. There is a heavy cost to this: I must give up hope. Not the hope that I will eventually be OK, but the hope that tomorrow might be pain free. I cannot resign myself to the fight and hope for a reprieve at the same time. The disappointment of unrealized hope breaks my fragile resolve. In addition to giving up hope, I also give up joy. There is no joi de vivre in Grim Determination, no delight. There is only the setting of my feet to the path laid before me. And when all you see before you is battle, stopping to smell the roses just brings sadness and longing, not joy. However. This is a price worth paying in order to keep on fighting. So I soldier on as if it is my destiny. I do not flinch when the pain comes. And I do not surrender to Despair.