Alpha

Spent the weekend at my sister’s place for her birthday. The baby is about six weeks old now, and I was excited to see her again. Not so excited about coming home. I had an inkling of how things were before I left – I keep up with my sister through texts and facebook – I could tell she was slipping again into depression. Post-partem depression. She had it with the other kids. When my first niece was born, I ended up keeping her while my sister was hospitalized and recovered. And when my nephew was born, I came home from Virginia in part to help out again as she got through it again. Despite her history, the doctor at the hospital refused to prescribe medication (apparently a graduate of the Tom Cruise school on psychiatric care), and sent her on her way. So, after sinking into despair while her body recovered from the trauma of having grown and expelled another human being, she finally saw her family practitioner (a woman) and started an antidepressant the day I arrived.

I am myself just starting to feel strong again. Wounded maybe. Maybe always will be. But I am finally starting to come out of the cloud I’ve been wandering through. Still making mistakes. Bad decisions that seem right at the time. Then I try to fix them. Make things worse. But I’m trying not to beat myself up about them so much. Trying to make peace with myself. Be at peace with myself (which is hard since the factions have been warring for almost four decades now).

I’ve been writing. Well, I was writing. Getting into a pattern. I submitted a story last week. It’s been years since I’ve submitted anything. Years since I’ve been willing to take a chance that I might actually be a talented writer. So I decided that I was being a coward. And that I was holding myself back in some combination of fear and punishment (for being such a coward).

I’ve been working really hard on forgiving myself lately. It’s been tough since I really betrayed  both myself and someone I love very much. And I thought I was done with betrayal. I haven’t been able to fix it or make up for it. I haven’t even known where to start. So I’ve just been rambling forward, one misstep at a time, trying to find the path in this fucking fog.

My sister is coming along, but the first few days were rough. A year ago, I sat in this same apartment, crying my own eyes out, so I understand far too well what she is going through. It looks different from this side. Other people call and stop by to talk to her, tell her to buck up, just shake it, just stop being depressed. I want to say it too. It seems so easy to just choose happiness, just choose not to be sad. It seems so easy.

It’s hard watching her go through this (not to mention exhausting helping to care for a newborn again). Made harder by the reflection of my own behavior over the last year. I know how badly she wants to feel better. I recognize how much she just wants that demon cloud to lift. I remember how it feels to think it never will end. So I am trying to remain strong. Be positive. Be happy, so I can show her how, even if I don’t entirely feel it on the inside. It’s a high, tight rope for me to walk helping her get through this. Last time I tried to help someone through, I ended up falling and made a complete mess of everything. I ended up crying in this apartment.

I'm not so good at this part. I don't want to have to be the strong one, all this weight on ny shoulders. Okay, it isn't that I'm not good at it. I am, sometimes, a little too take-charge. Which is the problem. I take on too much. More than my share. More than I am capable of doing sometimes. Because I think I owe the world. But then I start to turn into a bitch when I think I have to be in charge. Like the worst kind of bitch. The Alpha bitch.

I'm also not good at letting someone else take care of me. Terrible at asking for help and then just unglued when I feel like I have to depend on someone else. I start justifying it. Just to make myself feel better. And I also become a bitch.

But I can’t walk away. I have to be better than that. I've kept my footing before. Balanced between taking over and rolling over. I can’t keep walking away from the people I love, just because I think it will preserve my sanity. For one thing, I think the sanity ship has done sailed. For another, it gets lonely being sane.