Stuff Tantrum

Yesterday a good friend of mine announced on Facebook that she was turfing a bunch of shoes from her collection.  This friend has bags of style, a decent wage and is secretly called Imelda behind her back (okay, not actually behind her back, we're well past that point). She also just happens to be about my shoe size.  Since I am perpetually broke thanks to mortgage and kids (childcare for the two actually costing more these days than my mortgage does, if you can believe it) I tend to live from one pair of $12 Kmart flats to the next (with the occasional pair of wicked heels from the Rivers outlet store at DFO).  So I couldn't type fast enough to plead my case for a chance to plunder Imelda's fashionable leavings.

Absolutely, she writes back, I've also quite organically moved onto clothes, interested in those too?  *swoon* Imelda has always been a couple of sizes smaller than me SHE MIGHT BE THROWING OUT THINGS THAT FIT ME NOW.  THINGS THAT WILL LOOK GOOD.  You might have detected a small amount of panic just there amidst the excitement.  That would be the "holy crap I've lost over thirty kilos and have nothing to wear this Summer" panic.  Did I mention no money to buy new stuff?  Here was salvation!

What ensued next was a little like drugging a cat and pointing it at the catnip.  My pupils immediately dilated to kewpie doll status, I was rendered practically speechless, there was lots of rubbing against stuff (yes, just the clothes) and when I was done I had a bit of a headache and needed a sleep.  I came home a happy girl with no less than three massive bags of very, very pretty things that would have taken me two years of saving to achieve, even if I'd bought it all on sale.

Unfortunately the acquiring of new, pretty things coupled with the events of this week meant the story doesn't end here.  When it comes down to it, I'm not a huge fan of stuff.  And yet I seem to have so much of it.  Probably because I couldn't be bothered addressing it until it threatens to overwhelm me.  This week I got overwhelmed.  With the warmer weather I tried things on that I hadn't worn for a while while attempting to get ready for work.  I got increasingly frustrated as four tops, three skirts and a dress got turfed for being sack-like before I resorted to trying on a dress I bought two months ago when it was a size too small.  I was somewhat mollified when it fit beautifully but I needed to face reality - we are no longer at a point where I might gain a kilo or two and suddenly need this stuff, it is time to do a thorough vetting.

So today I spent FOUR HOURS going through everything I own and tossing anything that doesn't fit or that I don't like.  I am now on the verge of a massive, massive tantrum followed by a lengthy sulk because almost everything I own that I love is too big for me.  And not just put a dart in it and it will look spankers big but, holy hell dude if we get a gust of wind that sail you're wearing will blow you onto the next continent big.  Steel boned corsets.  Lingerie.  Sexy nightgowns.  Very expensive evening gowns and cocktail dresses.  Business suits.  Everything.  At one point I flirted with trying to estimate how much the stuff I was turfing had cost me but right around the point where it became the GDP of a small nation I realised I was well and truly on the path to a migraine.

I am now thoroughly flat, quite miserable and in possession of five crates of clothing destined for friends who plan to rummage followed by a very grateful Salvos store somewhere.  Every time I start to cry I go stroke all the pretty things Imelda gave me.  Come Monday I'm going to be so pretty in clothes that fit.

Postcard from the edge

The thing about being depressed is that mostly I'm fine until I'm not and then I'm in the bottom of the well and everything is dark except up there, where everyone else is.  On the days when I'm fine my depression is almost something I could love because out here, living on the edge of oblivion, the world is so beautiful and my emotions are the whole rainbow and then the colours that don't exist like octarine too.  I write better like this, I understand my kids better like this, I feel everything more acutely like this... I am a different person like this.  Unfortunately, a somewhat fragile person and that's the part I hate.

Today is one of those days.  I am stressed out and exhausted after driving to Queensland and back with two small children in a week.  I am emotionally strung out thanks to the events of that week.  I feel so thin I'm sure I'm transparent.  It's the perfect environment for a trip to the bottom of the well.  And here we are.  I have a tendency to write when I'm out of the well.  To share when I have clarity and distance.  But I'm never brave enough to write from my misery.  Or at least, not brave enough to share.

But recent events and experiences indicate that what is required in my life is bravery.  So here goes - a postcard from the bottom of the well to those of you at the cocktail party of normalcy at the top.

I hate everything about myself and the way I feel at the moment.  I hate feeling vulnerable, I hate second guessing everything I say and do, I hate being paranoid about my relationships with people, I hate being stuck inside my skin and wanting to just crawl out of it and AWAY.  I hate wishing I could just curl up and die somewhere unnoticed.

There is a filter of negative that suffuses everything I look at, even my logic.  I know I'm the sort of person who will hold anyone while they cry and soothe them.  I know I've done that for the most random of people.  I know the extraordinary lengths I've gone to to cheer up those nearest and dearest to me in their darkest hours.  I know that I've laid myself bare and told people everything I feel for them, even when it hurt to do it, so they would understand that what they are is something special in a world of ordinary.

You'd think, given all of that, that I'd cut myself some slack and lean on some of those people I've been there for when I feel like this.  But then there's the pervading paranoia ready to undermine everything.

In the back of my head, where the logic is, I know that I'm a positive force in the lives of many people.  And I know that I'm loved for all that I am.  But here in the bottom of the well I am absolutely certain that if I go to the people I need the most and I'm honest with what it is I need they'll laugh and tell me to harden up or pull up the big girl panties and then I'll die inside, smile while I cry and agree with them.

Which is why when I feel like this, I choose instead to disconnect from everyone and everything, to not write, to not tell you how much I need you and how ugly it is inside my head.  Chances are three days from now, given enough sleep and exercise, I'll have dug myself out of it and I'll be back to posting stupid crap on Facebook.  And no one need ever know how much I hated myself and how much I wished I was dead or how much I needed them right here on the edge where the world is beautiful and bright but inside me is as black as midnight in the grave.