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The Burden of Being Upright, Part 2

I’ve written a lot about the frustrations that come with trying to be a good man when you carry so much baggage. The burden of being upright is something we all carry, but it’s really been weighing on me of late.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/KNcvGwaJ-lI

This isn’t a pity party. But I’ve learned over the years that listing my issues and what I’m doing about them can help put them into perspective for me and can encourage others to do the same. The stressers in my life are not unique to me; it’s the kind of stuff every human being must deal with.

So what’s going on lately?

My father is bedridden and in a home, and my aunt — his sister — suffered a stroke and was unresponsive in the hospital for a couple of weeks. She’s responding a little now, but still. I’m not dealing with either of these things on my own, however. My sisters have been particularly awesome about communicating with my aunt’s doctors, and my stepmom has tirelessly seen to my father’s needs.

My frustration stems from the fact that I can’t do more. Living an hour away, traveling frequently for work and raising two young sons means I can’t drive to my father or aunt at the drop of a hat. This makes me feel guilty and failed as a son and nephew. Does my frustration square with reality? Probably not, but I feel it all the same.

Meanwhile, my depression was particularly brutal this past winter. And since the cold air and piles of snow are still here in April, I’m struggling more to come out of it.

I worry about not doing enough to keep the connection with my wife and kids going as strongly as it needs to be. As a result, some hang-ups have taken hold, the kind of stuff that comes from insecurity and is too personal to get into even here.

What am I doing about all of this?

I’m doing everything I can to move forward. I’ve played my guitar every day. I’m even taking walks most days — not yet consistently but more so than I have in a long time. And since I have a charity walk to prepare for, I’m going to keep walking.

My diet could be better, but I’ve managed to stabilize more than it has been in recent months.

I’ll keep plugging along with that stuff, and it’ll work. But it’s going to take longer than I want. That’s OK, though, because as long as I’m moving forward, I’m moving in the right direction.

face being punched by a boxing glove

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The Winter Bill Blues

This is a typically a shitty time of year for me, when I come off the high of summer and crash hard onto the cold pavement. When the days grow shorter and the air colder, I become easy prey for seasonal depression.

And when that state of mind sets in, I usually do something very stupid.

Winter 2011: By February, I was forgetting things all the time, including Valentine’s Day. I was traveling on this day of romantic feelings, and I forgot to sign my wife’s card and leave it where she could find it. I left it in my storage drawer in the garage, but I got embarrassed and lied to her, saying I got to San Francisco to find her card still in my laptop bag. At some point during my time away, she went to put a stray pair of gloves in my drawer and found the card.

Winter 2012: It was nearly a year to the day since that last big fuck up, and I was sitting at the airport waiting for another flight to California. Erin called and asked me if I told Duncan he could stop taking medicine we were trying out for his ADHD. The day before he had been freaking out about the potential side effects he heard the doctor mention, and in a moment of weakness I caved. I promptly forgot, and now, while I was at the airport, Erin was dealing with Duncan and what I did the day before. The worst part wasn’t that she had to deal with a difficult child. It was that in a moment of not thinking things through, I arbitrarily made a decision Erin and I should have made together.

A very stupid chap, that Winter Bill is. A hurtful, stupid chap.

The real kick in the ass is that I do deal with winter better than I used to. The last couple winters, the depression came and went. In previous winters, the depression was constant.

And so the challenge is to get through an entire winter both less depressed and more mindful, which will prevent me from doing the really dumb things.

In recent days, signs of the Winter Bill have emerged. I forgot to deposit a check that needed to get into the savings account. I had an episode of crankiness yesterday that came out of nowhere. And yet I’m not dreading the coming winter and shorter days as I have in the past. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that I’m taking a mindfullness course that should give me new skills for getting out of my self-absorbed head.

Another is that I have picked the guitar back up and am looking forward to the joy it’s going to bring me as my skills grow. Nothing gets you out of your head like making music.

In past winters the feeling was all dread. I was annoyed that I’d have to deal with these feelings, that I couldn’t hang on to the good feelings I got from the endless summer sun.

This time, I think I’m eager for the challenge. I want to learn to enjoy life despite the darkness. Oh, I won’t go through it with zero depression. That’s just not realistic. But I think that maybe I can do this without the big annual stumble. I’m ready to try.

I have my eye on you, Winter Bill. You don’t scare me.

 

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For Winter Blues, Listen To Van Halen

I originally wrote this in 2012. But as I sit here in 2015 listening to Van Halen to celebrate Eddie Van Halen’s 60th birthday — and with a major blizzard on its way to my neck of the woods — it’s worth a re-post. This is about using music in winter to put the brain in summer mode.

Mood music:

As I search for the necessary adjustments to get past bouts of S.A.D. (winter-induced depression) each winter, I find that I feel better when I listen to a lot of Van Halen. I’ve mentioned many times before that music is one of my most important coping tools, the medicine that gets me through all the rough patches.

The thing about Van Halen is that the sound and lyrics always transport my mind to summer. And summer has the weather and long days that put my brain at its healthiest.

It’s kind of fucked up, because as a child I used to prefer winter to summer. Bad things always happened in the summer. Except for my brother dying in January, winter was always like a blanket to me. It was an excuse to be all cozy indoors.

It makes sense in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t want to deal with people back then. I just wanted to stay inside, play with my Star Wars toys and watch TV. Summer meant I had to go outside and face people.

I guess the blanket started to smother me as I got older.

People often fail to recognize that there are different flavors of depression — the debilitating kind that can put your life in danger with thoughts of suicide, and the milder, grumpy-old-man variety where you’re in an ongoing state of crankiness and tiredness, but you see it for what it is — a chronic condition that comes and goes, like arthritis or sinus infections. The dark spots always pass.

But before it happens, something like Van Halen will always make me feel better.

I prefer the David Lee Roth era, which makes me more receptive to the new song than others are so far. But I like most of the stuff they did with Sammy Hagar, too. In fact, one of my favorite “Van Hagar” albums is “Balance” — the last with Hagar and not one of their more popular efforts commercially. But it has a moodiness that fits me like a glove.

For a similar reason, my favorite Roth-era album is “Fair Warning.”

Edward Van Halen’s guitar sound is what really puts my brain in a sunnier place. Even the moody stuff. I don’t know why. It just does.

Say what you will about the material they’ve released in more recent years. Complain that Michael Anthony’s bass and backing vocals are sorely missed on the last album. In the bigger picture, any new Van Halen album is like a long lost sunrise to me.

Eddie-Van-Halen