Two-day journey

I'm on the recovering end of a difficult 48 hours. The past two days or so (mainly Monday and Tuesday) have jostled my bones. Because of a healing blend that Ty and I like to call "God + pills," I don't go into code red crisis mode too often (anymore). So this week has felt, whether objectively it was or not, tough. I believe God used the time to slow me down and show me a couple of things, things he probably would have shown me sooner if my daily avoidance tactics didn't require a crisis mode to shut them down.

Chronological order. Set up: I've been stressed at work, which yes, yes, is an exotic affliction unique only to me, I know. Nevertheless, work's sucked for quite a long time. In life, I've been stressed. Not knowing how to resolve these particular stressors results in an "there's always a billion people who have it worse off than you" coping mechanism. It's great for a temporary attitude adjustment, but the fact that the Sudanese and the Tibetans and war veterans and so many others have life worse doesn't make my stress simply go away.

Fast-forward to Monday. We had gotten a memo at work about the vents or mold or whatever getting cleaned on our floor Sunday night. We'd been warned that we might want to work from home (smart co-workers did; I did not) because of the fumes or something. They'd done the same thing the previous Sunday night, with Monday resulting in a mysterious migraine and nausea. Power of suggestion, I thought. Then this past Monday afternoon, another migraine with stronger nausea came on, and I almost fainted at my desk. I've never almost-fainted before. I was slightly dizzy. Also, even more mysteriously, I started getting ... crazy feeling. I didn't understand it, but that's how it felt. I later would realize it was the beginning of an anxiety thing grabbing hold. I have no idea how those symptoms materialized, and they were so strong that I couldn't blame the power of suggestion (the cleaning came to my mind only once early in the day, then I forgot about it). I finished up what I was doing and left early. I texted my editor and told her I was for sure working from home Tuesday.

The latter part of Monday was hard. Same physical symptoms. Increasingly, the crazy part got worse. It got sickening and oppressive, to where the other parts didn't matter anymore. I'll stop calling it "crazy" now — I'm fairly certain it was some sort of anxiety, I guess, attack. I have depression (beautifully managed by God + pills), but I don't experience anxiety, at least not on that level. If you had asked me what the matter was, or what I was freaking out about, I couldn't have told you. These things have no root in logic. The mental/emotional fissure, however, was allowing a whole bunch of my stowed-away junk to surface. I didn't want it to. Stuff from as early as six years ago to stuff that hasn't happened yet, that I won't go into here. Much unwanted weeping took place. You know it. The deep down kind, the polar opposite of the belly laughter you can't stop. I prayed and prayed and prayed. The fact I hadn't prayed like that in a while wasn't lost on me. Which made me feel guilty, adding to my already-crazy condition.

I knew things were bad when I busted out the steno notebook. It's the non-descript spiral I only write in about once a year or so, and only when in total despair. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I hate to get all "the power of journaling" on you, but in the process God showed me the root of much of my current life-stress. As you might notice, when I DO write, it's a novel. Writing kept me up til around 4:30 a.m. I was mad about that fact. But it offered revelation and detox, which is, apparently, what I needed.

It was awesome rolling out of bed and immediately sitting down at my laptop. That's two hours of getting ready and commute swapped out for literally 2 minutes in order to begin my work day. I thought, Why don't we do this more often? (Note to self: Talk to editor about that).

I woke up with classic cold symptoms, on top of raging nausea. The nausea either caused me a little anxiety or vice-versa, I don't know. I scarfed some of my sister's herbs for bad moods. The fact I could take a break from the rat race and work alone without constant office space drama for a day made a major difference in my recovery yesterday. I was thankful for it. And much more productive than an average Tuesday in the office, too.

I periodically read my Message-version Bible that was sitting by my laptop. I was in Ecclesiastes. When you think of parts of the Bible people typically read for comfort and assurance, Ecclesiastes wouldn't be the first answer. I love the translation — the book's running theme is "it's all just smoke and spitting in the wind." Essentially, all the things we normally dedicate our lives to, like making money, accumulating stuff, pleasing people, having babies, staying healthy, traditions, politics ... it's all meaningless. We all end up at the same place — dead. On its face, that's depressing. But it very much wasn't. It gave me comfort to know that someone thousands of years ago understood that truth. The solution made it even more worth while. Since you're going to die anyway, just try to be a good person and seek out good times. Good times! That's what I'm talking about. People with depression tend to view their connectedness to the world as much greater and more important than it actually is. It's not. So just have fun. That's liberating.

Still feeling ... crazy? .. so I took a break. Took my yoga mat into the backyard with plans to stretch, breathe, pray and just be for 15 minutes. Being in the sun always cheers me up, but it was overcast. That was ok. The 15 minutes was wonderful. But I still had that inexplicable "thing" inside my chest and stomach, the anxiety, fear, confusion, darkness, whatever you want to call it.

My sister's yard is spare save this faux-concrete miniature statue thing of a lion and lamb lying down by each other. She also has little matching stepping stones leading up to the statue with scripture on them. "Be still and know that I am God." I know the verse like the back of my hand. But for some reason, I was transfixed. They've been in the yard for a long time but I've never paid much attention. I sat in the grass and stared at the verse for a while, trying to absorb it down to my bones. I touched the lion, which was gazing peacefully down at the lamb, and the patina rubbed off on my fingers. For whatever reason, touching it, stroking it made me ... get it. I sat and just touched things for a little while: the lion, the lamb, blades of grass. It made me feel grounded.

I felt better. I took Mylanta for the nausea, and I felt even better (see? God and pills). I slept well. I had a dream that affirmed the message God had written inside me. But I'll save that for another post.

Texas presidential primaries '08: Oh dear

It's going to be close, but I'm telling you ... this Obama character is quite the formidable opponent. Brian keeps saying "Obama's totally going to win Texas," to which I plug my ears and answer "la la la la." But if I had money riding on it, my predix would be for B.O. Sigh. What do you do. All I know is that I could NOT run for president. Flying to a million states in 24 hours, talking to 10 times as many people while running on 4 hours of sleep. NOTHXKBYE.

AP's calling the Republican nomination for McCain, who just won Texas.



I'm working in Metro tonight as part of the results team (that's me with Marissa and Holly in the pic). I love working elex: Free food, get to see old Metro folks, score a little OT in the process. It's past 8, and I should probably start paying attention.

I voted this morning at a nearby elementary school. I was actually aghast at the longish line for Democrats and the empty Republican line. I mean, Ellis county, hello. Then I remembered the McCain "why bother" domination. If I were a Republican, I would have stayed home, too.

Not only murdered, but dismembered

... Sorry, that was the last line from the anchor on the new program my sister's watching.

I'm partly proud of myself, partly not. I've worked more hours this week than I think I ever have. I did my normal job, then I stayed til between midnight and 2 a.m. putting together lists of polling places for Tuesday's paper. But the week's over, and I'm through. Extra Metro freelance, bay-bee.

Speaking of, I'm about to take on one more police blotter, bringing my number of weekly freelance jobs to eight. Two Good Kid columns and five blotters. That will increase to 10 if two other ones come through. I'm excited about the money, but, honestly, wary about my life.

The family gathering at mom and dad's on Sunday was fun. Keena's 18 now. Me and Janiece the other night were lamenting that there are no "children" in our immediate family anymore. I was like "one of y'all better get busy!" Cause it sho ain't gon be me.

Nightline is about porn tonight. Martin Brashear moderated a debate at Yale with a topic of, essentially, porn-good vs. porn-bad. The two sides were a guy that started the XXX Church and some guy who used to be a porn producer vs. some porn star chick and Ron Jeremy. At first I thought, "What's the news peg here? It's not sweeps. How cheap." But it's great having this discussion. With hand-held phones and 24-hour accesible internet, you're just a couple of clicks to porn anywhere you are. No one hides it like their dirty little secret anymore. Porn is here, so discussions about it should be, too.

I'm hardly an objective viewer. But even though Ron Jeremy is a surprisingly articulate guy, there's nothing you can say in support of the porn industry that can't be shot down. The idea that porn doesn't exploit women and contribute to the already universal view that women exist in order to pleasure the other half of the world population is ludicrous at best. When Ron Jeremy was asked if he'd be happy for his daughter to star in some of the movies he's starred in, the stuttering commenced. Of course he wouldn't. Wherein lies the point.

I'll be the first to tell you that suppression of all things sexual is a problem. No, God never meant for us to turn sex into a shameful, hidden mistake that only dirty whores and male degenerates partook of. Trust me, I know of this harmful distortion, being raised in a well-meaning but bizarrely strict evangelical environment. But the strictest of Pentecostal traditions doesn't have anything on the distortion created by porn.

The sex industry (film, images, strip clubs, etc.) really does create smoke and mirrors about the most important, consequential activity two people can share. With sex comes facts. Whether we want it to be or not, sex is a big deal. It's huge. It makes babies, even when you don't mean for it to. It bonds you to another person, even when you don't mean for it to. It's personal. When regularly consuming media that turns sex into something it's not, something that purposefully strips it of its essential elements in order to create a deceitful fantasy, you're altering your perceptions of you.

Sure, Disney and others in the entertainment industry serve up the same fantasy-making. But when someone allows their reality to be altered by Disney, the worst that happens is that they turn into a annoyingly perky, suburban Stepford drone.

Never mind the feminist angle. The whole argument of "the women engaging in porn are making their own 'choice'" is insulting. I didn't exactly make the choice for her to help propagate and industry that makes bodily fluid receptacles out of women. We Americans, especially, like to think we live in an individualistic Wild West of a bubble, but the choices we make do in fact affect others.

It's along the same lines of the language revolution, where now it's not the norm to use the male pronoun ("him," "he," etc.) when referring to a population in general. "He or she" has become more commonplace, and why is that good? Because language matters. It forms how we perceive the world around us, whether we realize it or not. It helps shape what you believe to be important and what you believe to be irrelevant. It helps shape your values.

It's the same with media consumption. I'm totally on board with countries that are trying to severely restrict advertising (there are at least two that I read about in Adbusters magazine, but I can't remember offhand which), especially outdoor advertising. It completely retards growth of an independent intellect and forms a society of consumers, not thinkers. In the formation of you and your very essence, media consumption matters. That's why porn matters.

More disheartening is that the biggest stylization of porn is the whole fantasy of doing a 14-year-old, the "Barely Legal" brand of the trade. The question of, Would you want men undressing your 14-year-old daughter in their heads, is a no-brainer. If you don't have children and cannot therefore empathize (like me), ask yourself the same question about your nieces. It would be hard to regard the abstract masses as nameless faceless nobodies if we adopted the village approach and tried to view each other as family, as God intended. Porn would take a completely different shape, in which case.

Should basic porn be outlawed? Absolutely not. I stand by the First Amendment and will fight for it to the death. I'm a journalist. Is that in contradiction with me cheering countries trying to restrict outdoor advertising? Maybe, but that's another blog.

Is the world going to explode in a big ball of hell-fire if you've viewed porn? Um, no. I'm just challenging what's considered acceptable consumption. The discussion of sex? Let's have it. Celebration of sex? Let's have it — but of sex, not of the denigration of people.

The porn industry will always exist in one form or another. But choices can reshape it. We can at least relegate the industry and its consumption more toward where it used to reside — in whispers, on the fringe.

Huh, look at that. I didn't mean for this to turn into The Sex Episode, with Your Host, Christy Robinson. But that's what happens when you freestyle. Time go night-night.

Hither and yon

Saw most of a DVD tonight w/ my sister called
Across the Universe. A musical set in the '60s to Beatles songs. So over the top, so musical, so angsty and dramatic. It's overwrought and they know it and rock it. Which I love. A little slow in parts, but other parts are fah-ree-ken TRIP-ay!!@#@ I was seriously like "WTF!" but in a good way. They got my favorite Beatles song in there, "Strawberry Fields," so that's all I cared about. Visuals were brash and yummy, too.

A gauge if you'll like it or not: You'll probably like Universe if you like Moulin Rouge ("Spectacular SpecTACular!!"). If you don't like Moulin Rouge ... stay far far away. Moulin Rouge is better, though.

You know ... my sister and my niece Janiece talked around the kitchen table tonight — me with a glass of boxed wine, them cracking me and each other up. It was a little on the magical side for me, since that's not a usual Friday night for us.

BLUH .... That full, week-old basket of clothes over there isn't going to fold its contents on its own. Then again, apparently I'm not going to, either.

I picked up extra-extra freelance at work, on top of the freelance I already do. It's just compilation kind of stuff for the primaries, but ugh, so time consuming. I refuse to do any of it this weekend, so next week's going to be busy.

Brian and I have one of our many here-and-there pre-marriage counseling sessions tomorrow afternoon. I keep meaning to take along an actual list of stuff that could use discussion. We usually just wing it, then it's over, then I'm lying in bed in the dark every night afterward like, "Gah! I forgot to bring up that!" Rull grrr.

My ::baby:: niece Keena turns 18 on Monday!! I can't believe it. The family will celebrate Sunday evening at mom and dad's by pigging out on tacos that mom and Brian make and smearing our faces with mom's chocolate birthday cake icing. That's what I'm talking about. GET THIS. Keena's turning the magic number that makes her all grown AND my other niece, Janiece, is the age of my favorite number .... ::drum roll please:: 23. Ka-pow.

Ugggghhhh. I'll be wallowing in self-hate tomorrow morning. I suppose them's the ugly, insomniac breaks.