Blessings,
Jane

Shame © 2012 Jane Waterman

I come to writing today wrung out, hollowed, disappointed, ashamed. I can forgive myself the days that lapsed since my last entry. I sank into the recesses of a cave, and there I went through the motions of life in the grip of a depression so strange I can not easily shrug it off as chemical or worn neural pathways or… Is it just as I feared – the moral weakness of my soul stripped bare leaves me to such suffering?

I avoided self-hate, while hating everything that I did and created. I still created, but it felt too much like a mechanical scrabbling in the dark. I observed my brain, the object of my disease, and with that objectivity lost any sense of compassion I could feel for it. This was the past, but for a while, this was my present.

It began with the evening of the hospital. Pain, dehumanizing enough, perhaps was the catalyst. Seeking some kind of new answer to the stale problem of my kidney pain, I ventured there. The doctors and nurses were kind enough in their way. I felt heard, validated, even as I realized they could do nothing for an unknown problem. Even now I wait for the results of a scan that I fear will be too much like past ones. I wonder how it is medicine can only deal with pain when bodies are exploding. When it is a quiescent form of flesh and bone, it seems the body will never reveal its secrets.

Perhaps it was the Toradol they fed to me intraveneously, offering to help ease the pain. The doctor was extending compassion as he knew how. It didn’t reach me, perhaps because I was already beyond my body, in the realm of the mind. Slowly, the dark cavern of depression spread around me, and all I could do was be a remote observer, seeing how it sucked the joy out of the moment. Each moment that came in its wake was equally grey and lifeless.

Somehow, I blamed myself for being weak, for going to the hospital, when perhaps I wasn’t really ill. My body wasn’t exploding, and the pain, though real, was contained.

Now, I pause.

I see this is how it was, for so many of my adult years. And I feel a faint tint of orange compassion spilling over the chasm of my blue prison. I never asked to be ill. I never wanted this. God knows, I never got any advantage from it. It just was.

It just was. It just is. It’s not my fault.

God knows, it is not my fault.

Blessings,
Jane

Heart of Compassion #1 © 2012 Jane Waterman

These are not the colours of my sadness and pain. The colours of the emotions I feel for the younger self I wrote about yesterday. Her sorrows are deep purples and blues, stretching into long twilights, the one searching the stars for one that might assuage her loneliness. Her longings are mauves and violets, the brief, barely felt surge when someone noticed her, when she thought she was important enough to connect to. I don’t know why I never liked her, why I never loved her.

She had this way of looking at the world that was expansive, seeing the multi-dimensions of the moment: feelings as colours, touch as pain, loneliness as a weight on her soul. She saw things in a way that I could never understand, me with my world reduced to equations of motion – she was the quantum mechanics to my solid indivisible atoms. She was the relativity theory to my Newtonian frame.

I see her with pale blue eyes, large, that shift in a moment to take on the colours of her surroundings. She noticed the small living things that noone had time for, and the feelings that people couldn’t feel. Her heart broke over so many things, and yet she put it back together and kept loving others as she could never love herself.

I see her now through the lens of compassion. Time is no barrier to stepping back to be beside her. Even for a middle child, spanned by five years either side, I can march up to her and whirl her around. I wonder if she would like that? I could dance with her, carry her on a merry jig, and enfold her in my love.

These are the colours of compassion, the unfolding flower that I give to her.

I think I can see her smiling.

Love,
Jane

Sunset over Cowichan River © 2012 Jane Waterman

As much as I want to write, I can’t find a starting place, so I’m going to use one of Natalie Goldberg’s ideas from ‘Writing Down the Bones’.

I remember…

I remember the year I was ten or eleven years old. We lived in a huge rented house, with dark stained and varnished banisters, stained glass with red and green above the door, wrought iron fancy work on the verandahs, and the frangipanni tree that grew under the bathroom window. I loved climbing in the summer and putting the blossoms in my hair. It wasn’t a strong tree though. The outer branches were like fat little fingers that broke off if you applied too much pressure. You had to stay close to the trunk.

I remember the tree in the back I liked to climb. I had a branch where I perched and watched people come and go. Sometimes it seemed they’d forget this was my place, and I felt peaceful and invincible up there. In summer I’d pull up a cup and a bottle of cordial, so I could feel like the Famous Five, and have an adventure.

I remember going to Girl Scouts because my friend did. I didn’t really like it. I was always afraid I’d have to go to camp and then people would see I couldn’t eat normal food and that they’d laugh.

I remember walking to school. It seemed a long way. I’d have a big black samsonite case, and it always felt so heavy. That year a boy often caught up and offered to carry it a little way. I remember he always looked startled by heavy it was. I don’t remember what I kept in the case.

I remember waiting for my sister after school. She was in kindergarten, I in grade six. We’d walk home together. I remember when I went to high school, I’d catch the bus over to her school, and walk home with her. I only remember walking home with my older sister once.

I remember getting home and feeling so tired. I remember waking up in the shower and realizing that I hadn’t changed out of my uniform, down to the shoes. I remember being afraid what my mother would say. I don’t really remember what she did say. I don’t remember why I lost time and woke up in the shower.

I remember my good friend, Mary. Her dad, George, ran the fish and chip shop on the corner. He would always give me a chocolate paddle pop (ice cream).

I remember walking up the back lane and finding a sick sparrow. I remember picking it up and taking it to my mother. I remember her telling me I’d get mites from the sparrow. Maybe I did. I can’t remember if I got itchy. I think she told me to put it back.

I remember weekends when I’d remember Dad. He would sometimes let us girls take turns riding in the wheelbarrow. I remember he’d run us around on the pebbled path. I never even realized he would get tired.

I remember the sixth grade teacher who stressed me out and psychologically tormented me. I remember crying and Mum coming to school and the teacher discussing why I wasn’t doing the work. I think I had shut down. I remember thinking that if I did the work, he wouldn’t notice me so much anymore. I don’t know if that helped.

I remember learning to dance on the asphalt quadrangle with my class. Bush dancing like ‘Strip the Willow’, and the Zorba, and the Mexican Hat Dance. I remember going to a bush dance with a friend’s family once. I loved it. I remember wishing my family would go, but it wasn’t the kind of thing they were interested in.

I remember playing ‘Red Light, Green Light’ on the asphalt, and having a basketball thrown full into my stomach. I remember younger kids at school laughing at me and I remember wanting to feel invisible.

I remember when the circus came to school, to teach us juggling and acrobatics. I remember not being any good at it.

I remember being invited to my first birthday party. I remember being surprised, as I didn’t think anyone wanted me as a friend. Later that year, a classmate wrote to me from Scotland. I remember being surprised that she thought of me as a friend.

I remember the day our dog left. I don’t remember if she got another home, or if it was a family euphemism for put down. I remember the day my older brother left home, and feeling sad.

I remember looking at the stars at night, on the pebble path, with my other brother, and feeling special that he wanted to spend time with me. I remember deciding I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up.

Now I am grown, I still love to look at the stars.

Blessings,
Jane

The Fall of Winter © 2012 Jane Waterman

I seem to have my sleep cycles back to front at the moment, but to be honest, I’m just trying to get through the days.

Today was a startling spring day in the Cowichan Valley. I say startling because when I came into the office in mid-morning, the light was blaring through the window. Most of my pictures were overexposed.

I used to be in touch with the ocean climate and the various atmosphere-ocean oscillations that governed freaks of nature like today. I lost touch with that world because it hurt too much to recall my self-perceived failure in the academic arena. Over time, I notice that attitude softening in myself, and the desire to look again into a world that once fascinated me returning.

Desires aside, it is not yet possible to bargain with the days to find enough energy to do so. Once again, it’s time to rest.

Blessings,

Jane

The Experience of Pain © 2012 Jane Waterman

During a discussion of pain and pain management with a good online friend (you can see his remarkable photography here), my friend Michael made the remark that the efforts of those who cope with chronic pain are heroic. It’s certainly not a typical way to view ourselves. My frequent experience in person and in online circles is that most people would rather you not talk about it. Indeed, if you do,  you’re perceived as a whiner or complainer at best, or that you deserve what you’re experiencing at worst. The following are some of my thoughts from that discussion.

It’s actually nice to think of oneself as heroic for a change. We get so used to people minimizing the experience, which is why I think many people tend to be humble and say that we do what we have to do. Myself, sometimes I wonder if it’s like the frog in the proverbial pot brought slowly to the boil. Because the evolution of pain over time is gradual, we almost become inured to the pain (or at least experts at disconnecting from the body and living in our own heads to escape it), whereas if we were dropped into a boiling pot we’d jump out in no time.

Before my emergency hysterectomy in 2008, I’d suffered 12 years of the most debilitating pelvic pain every time an ovarian cyst burst. No doctor took it very seriously, and I remember a telling situation where we were driving to the hospital, and the pain finally relinquished minutes from the door. I didn’t want to go in for another scan and be told nothing was wrong, so my wife turned the car around and we went home. During that emergency episode in 2008, I was throwing up from the pain. The ambulance came and got me and the surgeon told me about this big mass she saw on the scan. I could read cancer all over her face. Well she was surprised to cut me open and find over 2 pints of old and new blood pooled in the pelvic cavity. While I was still under, she told my wife that I was a very brave woman to have dealt with the pain I had obviously been going through. But I literally didn’t have a choice. The other scans hadn’t shown much of concern, past surgeries identified endometriosis and removed a benign tumour, but the doctors remained unconcerned despite my pain. It literally took an emergency to finally get relief. I still occasionally get episodes of that pain, and I don’t know whether to think it’s a phantom or something real.

Hence with my new experience of kidney pain, I’m not really trusting the doctors telling me it’s nothing. I don’t think it’s normal to have a dull pain in your kidney for a year.

I also think it’s destructive to ourselves to compare our pain – whether it’s constant or goes up or down – it’s pain, and we all deserve to improve our quality of life regardless. I know at the moment I have trouble sleeping with it, and it’s making me spacy. My body is wound tighter than a drum, which of course exacerbates the pain but it’s truly difficult to relax, even through meditation and yoga, when it’s so unremitting. So yes, you’re right, we are heroic, even if others don’t see the struggles we go through.

Blessings,

Jane

Storm on Jupiter © 2012 Jane Waterman

I’m far away from my first career as a physicist, but not so far that I didn’t learn a few things. In particular, when preoccupied with the search for a theory of everything and being foiled yet again, physicists discover there’s always another level of complexity that they hadn’t considered. So when someone presents a theory of depression in absolute terms, I have to take a pause, consider my fellow physicists, and realize that medical doctors are as prone to the search for an elegant theory as anyone.

The problem I have with theories is this. If you search long and hard enough,  you’ll find exceptions to the rules. Sometimes, you don’t have to search that hard.

I’m told that we have to remove the idea of “chemical imbalance” from a theory of depression. It makes me wonder why then, that the side effects of some drugs – not necessarily psychoactive ones – have such dramatic effects on the brain. Something tells me there is a complex chain of cause and effect, a cascade that trickles all the way up to the brain.

When I went on Prednisone for a vicious case of  pneumonia associated with my Sjogren’s, in a few days I descended rapidly into a suicidal depression. Likewise, when taking Plaquenil for the same syndrome, I experienced a significant mood disturbance that likewise resulted in deep depression, and as a result I could only take half of the recommended therapeutic dose. I eventually realized that any benefit from the drug was outweighed by the mood disorder. So it disturbs me that if we are to throw out a chemical theory of the brain, why do these drugs have such significant effects on mood? And if there are drugs that have harmful effects, why can’t there be drugs that have beneficial effects?

I know there are. I have experienced them, and been saved by them. If we dismiss these effects as a placebo effect, we do a great disservice to the many individuals these medicines help. To reduce depression to a purely cognitive exercise might seem elegant, but it doesn’t work. In this model, the brain is treated like a train set: we need only lay in new cognitive pathways and switch off the old ones, and the sufferer is cured. Depending on how long the person has been suffering, surely these “dysfunctional” pathways become more like superhighways?

It’s always been a source of shame that I suffered from depression, and on those rare occasions I dared to speak out, reactions from other people gave me more reason to feel ashamed. I’ve worked so hard over the years to eradicate depression*, and yet the assertion that I could resolve this in a matter of weeks with cognitive written exercises makes me stumble, and think: have I tried hard enough? Did I rely on the meds too much? Did I fail because I was morally, spiritually, physically or mentally weak?

After 23 years of dealing with it, I conclude that the answer is emphatically no! I’ve been to the doorways of hell with this illness and yet I’ve travelled so far, and maintained a deep core of love and compassion for humanity, no matter that for so many years I was a virtual leper. I’ve learned that there is no grand theory of everything, especially depression. It’s a complex disease, and it responds best to a range of therapeutic options, which includes in some cases, antidepressants. In my experience, there are so many tools for dealing with depression, and pharmaceuticals are just one item in our toolbox.

I would be the first to agree that if we don’t explore the historical roots of our disease, we only prolong the work that each person must eventually do on themselves. Sometimes, however, antidepressants are a lifeline that help us swim to shore and take stock of how we ended up in the deep water in the first place. Without this, much less, without the support of medical professionals, family and friends, we may find ourselves so many years later as I have, still struggling to shut down those superhighways.

It is vital for people with depression to regard themselves with love and compassion – the tools that I have discovered over the last two years to promise a more permanent recovery and a fuller life. While people living with depression must take responsibility for their healing, let’s not throw away a valuable tool for the sake of a theory. Let’s consider instead that the more tools we have in our possession, the better, and that a treatment modality that doesn’t work for one, may save the life of another.

Blessings,
Jane

*Things I’ve tried for depression over the years, some with greater or lesser success: pharmaceuticals, talk therapy, group therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, self-help books, Vitamin B6, St John’s Wort, 5-HTTP, nutrition, circuit training, bike riding, yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, massage, accupuncture, homeopathy, and more.

The Dreaming © 2012 Jane Waterman

Today, every word, every brush stroke, met with judgement. While I enjoyed the colours meshing and colliding, there was nothing in those moments of pure creation that I wanted to keep. Nothing I judged worthwhile enough to commit to posterity. I suppose that’s okay too. I remember a time when I wandered quite happily in my head, and no acts of imagination seemed too wild – all could be pondered and explored, embraced and then let go.

When you have lost large pieces of your life and put them back together, I suppose a sense of disconnect is not unexpected. Attachment to thoughts is different too. You seek moments of brilliance, and your inner perfectionist has to settle for mediocrity.

I will not settle, however, for less than a return to that dreaming state.

This afternoon I felt exhausted and light-headed. I rested on the bed for a moment, and it was as if I stepped back in time to some other half-sunny place. Outside was an expansive sense of spring, and it seemed at odds with the midwinter, but then not. I had to go to an appointment and listened to tales of holidays in Hawaii and Mexico. My first thought was – I couldn’t go there – not with all that sun.

Given a choice, would I? If the sun had not become an enemy, where would I go? I do miss the beautiful beaches of my childhood and early adult life. I would “go bush”, walk to a mysterious billabong, bowed down to by eucalypts and sandstone cliffs. I would cross rivers infested with crocodiles, trap tadpoles, and weave grasses into bracelets. I would wonder about my brothers catching yabbies, and what a yabbie was. I never did get to see one.

Where would you go if you didn’t automatically say, “I can’t” or “I couldn’t”? What places in memory would open up? Would you be, as I was for a moment, ten years old, and “gone bush”? Would you come back?

Blessings,
Jane

Soul Clouds #2 © 2012 Jane Waterman

The first month of my personal 365 day blogging project has passed. In some ways, it’s become a deeper creative exploration. I am enjoying painting with the computer immensely. Last night I’d barely drifted off to sleep when pain woke me up again. At 4am I started painting some pictures.

I still have gifts that I intended to send at Christmas, but it looks like these will now be Valentine’s gifts, and I know that is okay.

I am still learning the art of balancing. Like this soul cloud, I reach out in all directions as emotions swirl around me.

I continue to learn, and hope that over time, I can begin to teach. I feel the stirrings of different projects inside me, and feel the sparks of possibility ignite.

Blessings,
Jane

Reaching Out © 2012 Jane Waterman

These words are sent out into the world with love and compassion. I dedicate them to my wife and daughters.

You are good enough, strong enough and beautiful enough. That doesn’t mean you can’t be tired, scared and vulnerable too. Those feelings are all a part of us.

Don’t selectively obscure or shade your multi-faceted brilliance or your darkness, just to make yourself palatable to the world. Celebrate who you are. You are loved exactly for who you are, even if that may change at any given moment.

You are allowed to change your mind, have moments of doubt, flounder, or feel afraid. Those are things we’re made to feel. Don’t use those feelings as proof that you haven’t lived up to a standard of normality or perfection that is impossible.

Treasure yourself and nurture yourself. It’s not selfish to take the rest you need, to replenish the soul force that motivates you and which you give so readily to others. You deserve your care too.

When you feel most afraid, reach out. Maybe I’ll be afraid too, but we can hold on together. I’ve been there in those small hours of the night when dreams turn to nightmares and joy turns to pain. Whatever you may feel, just remember this – you are not alone.

You are loved, treasured and valued for what you bring to this world with you. I’m so glad we chose to travel through this life together.

I am so proud of you.

I love you.

Jane