The Third Wheel

Monday morning this week I woke up and I was in a bad mood. When I am grouchy, I try to do this exercise where I ask myself:

1. What am I feeling?
2. Why am I feeling this way? Is there a cause?
3. What am I going to do about it? How will I react?

I’ve had to adopt this strategy since I started working again as it is not acceptable or sufficient to haul off and tell people they are pissing me off. But don’t think I’m all zen or whatever. I’m not.

So Monday I am grouchy.  Did I watch too much Ali “being a stay-at-home mom is like being in solitary confinement” Wong and now I am hostile at the three people who put me there?

Yeah, possibly.

This past weekend was my daughter’s prom and Mother’s Day.

First, the boutonniere debacle. Claire-Adele ordered flowers to be delivered for the prom. For Winter Ball, her boyfriend wanted to get her a corsage and she did not see the point of spending an hour of money she earned on something that she’d wear for a night then it would shrivel and die. For prom, she got the point and ordered flowers without fuss. She failed to check her voicemail until Saturday afternoon when she heard a message from earlier in the week from the florist saying they couldn’t deliver her flowers because they were slammed with Mother’s Day orders. She learned Saturday around 1:00. She was leaving for dinner at 7:00.

She was stressed. Jack drilled her with questions: Did you get a confirmation? Did you call them? Did you get your money back? The Boy said he was going to call the florist and yell at them until they brought her a flower. She became more stressed.

I looked at the Boy and Jack and said, "You guys need to go buy some bike parts" as I shooed them out the door. Claire-Adele went to her room and cried.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked. "The roses are in bloom in front of the house. We can make something."

"Leave me alone for five minutes," she said through sobs.

I thought for three minutes. I yelled up the stairs, "I can call Met Market and see if they can get you a flower."

"I am texting Robby," she said. "Okay, call Met Market."

I did. The woman at the other end of the line was as cheerful as a florist could possibly be before Mother's Day. "I can get you something by six. Does that work?"

"Sure." I told Claire-Adele.

"Robby got flowers from the Safeway where he used to work," she said. "Can you cancel yours?"

After the crisis was narrowly averted, neither Robby or I were going to cancel our flowers. Better to have two boutonnieres than none. "Robby can wear two," I said.

When he arrived and flower time came, Eleanor pinned on Robby's lapel the flower Robby brought. Of course she should. He's the boyfriend. I'm just the mom. It is my job to stand back and let her stand on her own. She should take his flower.

But still. I decided to not let a good rose go to waste, so I unwrapped the flower and put it in a vase by my kitchen sink.

Then next day was Mother's Day. Jack and I decided to go for a bike ride, and I was delighted the Boy decided to join us. It was a warm, sunny day, prefect for a ride across the 520 bridge. When we got to the park on the Eastside, we admired the view for a bit and then I was ready to go back home.

"I'm hungry," said the Boy. Which means his hunger has slowly been building for a while and now he was ravenous. 

"Why don't we go back and got to lunch in Ballard?" Ballard is full of fun places to go for lunch on a Saturday. That suggestion was met with ridicule from Jack and the Boy.

"It is only three more miles to Bellevue," Jack said, not looking at the elevation gain. As we left, we rode down a giant hill. Which meant on the way back I'd have to ride up a giant hill. Fuck. And then there was the mile uphill climb. The ride to Ballard is along the water and is as flat as a any ride you can find in Seattle.

Jack and the Boy were consistently twenty yards ahead of me. Once in a while, Jack would turn around and yell "You can do it!" Just because I could do it, doesn't mean I wanted to. And this was Mother's Day. It was supposed to be my ride and it was turning into theirs. I was getting pissed and I was the weak link, holding them back. Plus, I was carrying the Boy's water.

Literally.

We were the sweatiest people Bellevue Square has ever seen. Truckloads of people were dressed up and at the mall on the nicest weekend day of spring so far this year. It was weird. I didn't bring my saddle bags, so I couldn't shop--for much! I did manage to get a little "treat yourself" Mother's Day goodies in my fanny pack from Lego and Lush. The boy got Jamba Juice.

I was in need of some powerful feminine energy after riding with the Boys. And lip gloss.

The ride from Bellevue Square back to the 520 bridge wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. When I got to the bottom of the steep part, I found a mantra--In two months, I'll be in London. London is flat. There are no hills in London. Magically, the hill I was terrified about wasn't nearly as killer as I thought it would be. Evan, my physical therapist, would have been proud.

At the end of the day, I had fun slogging to Bellevue Square, even though I was swearing under my breath for the second half of the ride. I had 16 miles to add to my "Bike Everywhere" log for May.

So why was I so grumpy on Monday? Did I watch too much Ali Wong over the weekend and I was deeply pondering the inequity women face in the world?

Perhaps it is the realization that for so long, my world revolved around them, and that there never will be a day where their world revolves around me--not that it should. Still--I'd like a weekend where I am not the third wheel in my family events.

The Black Dog and the Bubble

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with depression. I have other friends who have depression but I met them after they were diagnosed and already into treatment. For a variety of reasons, this friend can't take medication for her depression. She has to rely on psychotherapy and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to minimize her symptoms. She is discovering the before and after of her diagnosis. What used to be perceived as tiredness and lethargy she now recognizes as depression.

I have another friend with type I diabetes. This friend can prick her finger and get a quantitive read on her blood sugar levels. She then has to figure out what to do next to adjust so her blood levels return to normal. People with depression don't have something that concrete to tell them something is off or amiss. Plus, your mind thinks what it thinks, and it often thinks it is find, even when it is not.

I remember when I was consulting, there was an expression "You can't manage what you can't measure." There was a strong emphasis on trying to quantify things that might not necessarily be quantifiable. How can we quantify a mood like depression? I wish it were easy to measure so then it more easily be managed.

My son's elementary and middle school used to use the Mood Meter created at Yale to help kids label their emotions, but I am not sure how it can capture fuzzier emotions, like "I want to sit on the coach and watch YouTube videos for hours instead of going outside" or "I don't really have any feelings right now. Everything is gray."

I wish there was a depression simulator, where you could go into it for fifteen minutes or so and experience depression. Not that I really want to go there, but I want to know what it is like inside her head so I can be a better friend and support her. Depression are migraine headaches are the two illnesses I fear the most. I don't want to take a drug to give me the feeling of depression; I would fear the drug might be permanent, and that would suck. J. K. Rowling gives a great description of depression with the Dementors in the Harry Potter series.

And then I wonder how much of the Black Dog has visited me, and perhaps I have been unaware of it. I wonder if Jack has a mild case of it, too. Maybe both of us live on the bubble, and have managed to keep it at bay with exercise, socialization and getting good sleep. Maybe the Black Dog would have a more permanent part in our lives, but so far we have managed it.

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike everyday after school except for days when I had extra-curricular activities, like Drill Team. I needed a full night's sleep to feel normal. Now I also need a fistful of vitamins to feel perky: cod liver oil, folic acid, and Vitamin D and B, plus magnesium to ward off Alzheimer's. Jack runs or rides his bike to work everyday. When he goes three or four days without exercise, he is grumpy and short-tempered.

"I need to go for a run," he said the other night after dinner. Yes you do, I thought. I no longer think of exercise as a luxury. My campaign manager for when I ran for School Board would occasionally ask for a few hours off to lift weighs.

"No problem," I told him. If he needed to exercise to feel normal, I needed him to exercise.

I was recently talking to a group of moms and it came up that almost all of them were on anti-depressants. I was one of the only ones in the group not to need them. (Yet.) After my ACL tear and surgery, I needed to exercise everyday for forty-five minutes to build strength in my legs. What should have been a perfect excuse to sit on my butt and feel sorry for myself ended up being not that bad. I was almost surprised that I wasn't more miserable that I was. Part of me I wanted to be miserable so I could figure out what to do next with my life. I couldn't possibly be happy or content when I was in such a sorry state.

But I kind of was content. I wasn't euphoric or ecstatic, but I wasn't as miserable or painfully bored as I thought I'd be. I somehow managed to keep off the bubble. I am a firm believer of listening to your body and mind "Pain is your body's way of staying 'Stop!'" is one of my favorite expressions as it applies to so much more that physical pain. Boredom serves a purpose: it forces me to find something new and meaningful to do. Misery tells me I need to change. I look at these feelings as a gift telling me to move, not something I need to dread.

I can say that but then I still have a healthy fear of the Black Dog approaching as I age. I don't want to live where I have to be so diligent to keep my sanity. My dad manages his type II diabetes with diet and exercise, and as long as that works for him, he isn't on medication. I plan to do the same to keep my mood in place.

What if I get injured again or become ill and can't exercise? My mom had a bad case of depression after my brother and I were both out of the house. This time also coincided with menopause. Is this something I have to look forward to? Will depression be an accessory that comes with the change of life? I pray not. I read somewhere the estrogen protects women's brains from mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Some women are sane until they hit menopause, and then they become certifiable. If this happens to me, I will hopefully gracefully submit to medication, therapy, and whatever else I might need to keep my mind.