depression

Comfort And Joy

December 29, 2009

Christmas has come and gone and we are still picking figurative tinsel out of our hair, even as we move forward into a difficult week, clinging to the hangover of joy so that whatever pain the next few days bring is blunted by its residue. We’ve come west to try to finish the work of [...]

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“Who, If I Cried Out, Would Hear Me?” On Twitter, Tales And Tragedy

December 21, 2009

Not all of Twitter’s stories are saving stories, sure. Some of Twitter’s stories are banal. Most of those stories, maybe, are banal. But, too, some are great and some are beautiful and some are terrible and the great stories and the beautiful stories and the terrible stories – all the saving stories – live alongside the banal stories and all of them, all of them draw us ’round the fire to hear and to share and – sometimes – to survive.

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Of Shoes And Ships And Sealing Wax And Hoarding Stuff And Things

December 8, 2009

My dad was a hoarder. When he died, they had to cut through the outside wall of his house to remove his remains. There simply wasn’t room for the coroner to get him through the packed hallway, the corridors lined with stuff. They cut a hole in the wall and pulled out the contents of [...]

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Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

October 16, 2009

Emilia asked me this morning why I am worried. “I’m not worried, sweetie,” I said. “But you have a worried face.” “I’m okay, sweetie. Mommies sometimes just have lots to think about.” “You should stop thinking, Mommy. So that you can smile more.” Point taken. So today we will go have hot chocolate and cupcakes [...]

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Shame And The Mom: A Boob Story

October 7, 2009

Before I had children, I was deeply discomfited by the idea of breastfeeding. Neither pregnancy nor childbirth alarmed me – both would be uncomfortable, I figured, and the latter would involve some extreme measure of pain, but, really, nothing that the ordinary horrors (the monthly bloating and cramping and general misery) of womanhood hadn’t prepared [...]

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Swamp Monster

September 24, 2009

I keep insisting that I’m stuck, that my creative feet are wedged in the mud of sadness and anxiety, and yet I keep going. I wiggle my toes against the muck and pull my heels up and will myself forward. Some days, I advance by an inch, maybe two. Other days the mud wraps itself [...]

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Stuck

September 10, 2009

I don’t know how to write here, right now. I don’t know how to write here, because I am caught between the imperative to move forward in my life, in this life, in my life as Catherine, and the imperative – the desire – to dwell a little longer in this space where I am [...]

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Ephemera

September 1, 2009

In the last year of my parents’ marriage, my dad had an affair. I’ve always known this, my mom has always known this, it was something that we all talked about, in later years: his regret, his remorse, over this thing he had done, its effect on my mother, its effect on our family, the [...]

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Out Like A Lamb

March 9, 2009

I don’t understand how this works, but for some reason, getting away by myself for one night this past weekend seems to have caused me to become even more tired than I am usually. Of course, the fact that getting away for that one night involved flying to New York and attending an event that [...]

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