Life in Chicago

A Passing Cloud

I've been a little sad for the last week.

I'm not really sure why. Last night I finally tried to put words to whatever it is I've been feeling. I sat on the deck with Greg at dusk, the cicadas ringing in the trees and little drifts of fallen golden leaves all around us on the wood.

Tears dripped down onto my shirt and I stared out through the branches at the river swirling by.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Something is amiss. Would it be wrong to say that I'm not happy? Is it impossible to feel that I still don't have roots here, in my life in Chicago? That I miss California, but no longer feel like that place is home either? Is it possible, in the midst of all the good things in my life, I'm still not satisfied?

In one of the many articles I read following David Foster Wallace's death, I distinctly remember a quoted passage in which he spoke of his depression. He wondered if it was an American thing, this not feeling satisfied even when things are better than they've ever been.

Still, a lingering quiet dullness permeates my days. There are bright moments, flashes of fulfillment, of peace, but overall, a drifting cloud.

I'll try to be patient with myself. To keep walking. To hold still in those bright moments. To recognize the cloud for what it is, to not pretend it isn't there. To remember that life, if nothing else, is always moving forward.

Sitting

Last night I went to the first session of my three-week meditation workshop.

I tried meditation for the first time last year, and for a while I was going to private sessions with a wonderful instructor at LA Dharma in Westwood. The experience I had in the couple of months that I was practicing was profound. I had no idea that there could even be space between the constant stream of thoughts in my head.

You would think that since it was so profound I would have been working away at regular meditation, but all I've really done is read about it. And I've loved reading about it and it always sounds so good in the books. Wow, I'm always thinking, I really need to get back into this. And then I never do. I just keep reading about it.

Needless to say, it felt really good to actually meditate in class last night. Walking home I thought about how far I've come in the last couple of years. It's been just over two years now since I began doing yoga and, pretty early on into my practice, I went on a retreat to a place called Casa Barranca in Ojai. Looking back at this time in my life, I can hardly remember what was driving me to do these things -- they were all experiences that I'd been resistant to for years. I think I'd simply become desperate in my attempts to change the way I was feeling about life and was willing to try anything, even yoga.

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, I found myself at this retreat with a bunch of practiced yogis whom I'd never met, and as scary as it was, it felt really good. After dinner the first night I took a walk up a trail nearby and found a hammock strung between two high trees overlooking a vista and I sat for a long time. And as I sat there, looking out into the dusky night sky, listening to the trees rustling in the breeze above me and feeling the gentle sway of the hammock, I began to cry.

In one simple moment I realized how very long it had been since I had let myself sit and be. I realized how, over the previous three years since my father died, I'd become very adept at filling every single space in my life. I'd constructed my days so that not one moment remained in which I had to sit alone and be with myself. I was amazed to suddenly see it all so clearly, to recognize how and why I'd been doing this for so long.

I realized that I'd been unable to sit still because of all the sadness and the pain I carried around with me. There was so much of it that, even if I sat for just a few minutes, it would bubble up through me so quickly that I felt like I would drown if I didn't push it back down and cover it up.

That night, at the retreat, marked the beginning of the transformation I've undergone in the last couple of years. After that weekend I went home and I began to work at just sitting. For months I took a bath every night so that I was forced to just sit. At first it was so hard. I cried every night. I cried over my parents and all the sickness and death I'd seen. I cried for being alone and I cried for all the things I hated about myself. I cried in fear of all the pain that just kept coming up, night after night as I sat in the bath.

But eventually, (and I wasn't even banking on this happening) the tears started to dissipate and I realized that all these things I'd been crying about simply needed to be let out and acknowledged. That all this time that I'd been filling up my days and pushing these feelings away, they weren't actually going away -- rather, they were just waiting to be let out.

If you're interested, you can go back and read through some of that time period. Start in January of 2007.

Anyway, I thought about this a lot last night coming home from the meditation workshop and I felt really proud for seeing myself through all that misery. We all have it, to a certain degree. And it's really hard to sit with. Now, when I sit quietly, the only things I battle are grocery lists and article deadlines, benign little reminders that don't carry nearly a tenth of the punch that old stuff did.

But I really believe that had I not forced myself to sit, night after night, in that bath for three months and really let go of all of that pain, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I am so grateful for where I am.

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(On a completely unrelated subject, please feel free to read about the chili-cheese dog I ate on the 4th of July in a new post on She Wrote, He Wrote.)

A New Season

This morning I got up before 6AM. This is the first day of me beginning a new regime.

Last Friday, as evidenced by my last post, after I'd finished setting up my new computer and downloading all my old files and photos, I suddenly saw my life here in Chicago with fresh eyes. I was able to really think about the last year and things I've done and the ways in which I've changed.

And I realized that I'm not that satisfied.

I know, I know...that might sound whiny and I don't mean it to be. I'm so incredibly grateful for my life, for the people in it, for the work I do, for the beautiful home I live in and the trees outside the kitchen windows.

But for the past few weeks I've been waking up and feeling quite uninspired. I've been waking up and wishing I could just go back to sleep. And since I can't, and since I have to get up, I usually lay there for ten minutes or so thinking about the day that lies before me, about the things I'll do, the rooms I'll walk through, the people I'll talk to.

And while all of it seems pleasant and fairly easy, none of it feels particularly inspiring. None of it makes me want to spring out of bed, to get a start on my day. None of it gives me butterflies of anticipation.

And that alone makes me feel even a little more deflated.

Last Friday I spent some time really thinking about this feeling, this feeling of blah, of nothingness, of lacksadaisical forward movement. And I thought about it most of all in comparison to a year ago.

A year ago I was in LA just beginning work on my book. I was living alone in my little apartment by the beach and I was finishing my last quarter of grad school. I was seeing clients in two different clinics and I was going to yoga several times a week.

This morning, sitting on the couch at 6AM, drinking hot water with lemon and trying not to fall back asleep, I read through an old journal that took place during that time. I came across an entry that I wrote almost a year ago, in which I had scrawled, "I realized the other day that I'm doing everything I always wanted to be doing. For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, I'm not doing anything I don't want to be doing. I'm actually living my dream."

Wow, to have ever written something like that, to have experienced that time, even just once, is, I think, a gift. And I want it back.

And I know that so much of it has to do with frame of mind. So fine. I want that back too.

And so, last Friday and all through the weekend, I thought about it. I pondered what it is that I need to do to, again, attain such a level of living. And the thing I realized is that I'm not working towards anything big. I've been here in Chicago for almost 8 months and it's been a huge transition -- moving here was, in itself, something big.

But now I'm here and I'm settled. I have a great job and lots of friends. Greg and I are better than ever and living in a beautiful home together. Finances are totally under control. Spring is here. I'm healthy and grateful. I'm freelancing all the time, have a whole pile of little magazine articles I'm working on. We've got fun trips planned and visitors coming. Summer is almost here...

...and so what's next? I can't just coast through my days, everything being kind of pleasant and easy. I need something that drives me to get out of bed in the morning.

Hence, the waking up at 6AM plan. I'm going to start a new writing project. I'm not sure what shape it will take. I'm going to initially go back to the book I wrote last year and begin reworking it. And if that doesn't feel right then I'll begin something new.

I'm also going to incorporate a lot more yoga and meditation into my days.

This morning at 6AM, I didn't want to get out of bed. It was still kind of dark out and I was tired from working all weekend and I lay there thinking about my forthcoming day and what I would do if I did get out of bed right then and what it would be like if I didn't until it was time to get ready for work.

And I realized that I don't want my days to be the same anymore. I don't want to feel heavy getting out of bed in the morning. I want to feel inspired and excited. And if that takes work and if it takes making myself get up at 6AM every morning then so be it.

I'm ready for a new season.

Depleted

I'm sitting here at my desk at 6:30 on a Wednesday evening feeling depleted. I'm listening to Beethoven softly on the speakers and from the apartment above me I can hear the strum of my neighbor's guitar. It's snowing softly outside and all I want to do is crawl into bed.

I've been crying a bit this afternoon. I'm worried that I'm not good at my job. Today was the third day in which I spent several hours sitting with one of our dying patients. And each time I've done this it's been such an incredible experience -- I've listened to their stories and held their hands and talked about life and death with them -- and when I'm there in the moment it feels wonderful.

But when I leave and walk across some snowy driveway to Greg's little green Honda and scrape the snow off the windshield and get behind the wheel for my solitary drive home, I just feel depleted. I feel drained and a little sad and a little overwhelmed by life.

I'm worried that maybe I'm not cut out for this. Hearing these people tell me how glad they are that I came by, how they can't believe how much they talked, and how they hope that I can come back soon, breaks my heart just as much as it fills it up.

I don't have a lot left when I leave. I guess I'm just really in the process of figuring out how to contain these experiences. Each time I have one I spiral into such deep philosophical thoughts about what we're all doing here and what happens when we die and how meaningful humans relationships can be and I don't know how to not think about these things.

I'm looking forward to my beautiful new home to go home to in a month. I feel like it's going to be a very healing experience to live there. Greg and I are so excited about it. We can hardly believe we're going to live there.  It's such a peaceful place, such a writer's home, such a home. And that it's on a river with ducks and trees and frogs and little bobbing boats....

Off to take a bath shortly. Tomorrow is the 11 year anniversary of my mother's death.

It's only Wednesday and it's already been a big week.

Last Week of Nothingness

Did you know that Oprah comes on at 9AM  here in Chicago?

I wish I didn't know this. I wish I could say that I didn't sleep until almost 9 this morning and then get up and put on Oprah on low volume while I drank coffee and read emails.

It's Friday. And it's my last week of being unemployed. I have to be at work at 8:30 on Monday morning and it couldn't have come at a better time. I think I've truly reached my capacity for being alone in the house.

It's been an incredibly hard three months. I moved into my apartment on the eve of September 1st and I'm just now completing the first week of December. I really didn't think this would a tough move. Sure, I don't know anyone. Sure, I don't have a job, Sure, it's a huge new city. Sure, I'll miss my life in LA...

Three months in and I'm still experiencing entire afternoons of crying. And it's been so much deeper and so much harder than I've really admitted here on this blog. I've been sincerely depressed for most of these three months.

I was in denial about it for a long time and that didn't help anything. I was just so shocked by the sadness that crept over me. And I was so ashamed of it.

The first half of this year, in Los Angeles, was one of the best times in my life. I've never felt happier or healthier or more at peace with myself. And it was from that place that I met Greg and fell in love with him. And it was from that place that I said, sure I'll move to Chicago. I can do anything.

And so, a few weeks in, when suddenly I felt desperately alone and incredibly broke and I was having a hard time finding a job, everything seemed to just crash down. And crashing is fine, as long as you have a support system around you. But mine was gone. All my friends and my therapist, my grad school classes that constantly dispelled any notion that something like depression was abnormal or a bad thing. All of those things were gone.

And I was in this new relationship with a man, in love like I never knew I could be, and I didn't want to scare him, didn't want him to be disappointed that the vibrant and positive woman he brought here from Los Angeles had totally deflated into a sobbing heap on the kitchen floor. And I couldn't even hide it anyway and he's been so supportive and loving through all of this but for these past months I just continued to be so hard on myself. Pull it together, Claire. Stop fucking crying, Claire. Stop feeling lonely. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop, stop, stop, just please fucking stop.

And that hasn't helped me to stop. It's just made me feel worse and more scared and more alone.

But. I can finally say all of this because I'm finally starting to pull out of it. I think I fell into it so swiftly that by the time I was able to look up, I didn't even know where to reach.

In the last couple of weeks I've made a truly concerted effort to reach out to the people in my life and it has helped so much. I've talked for hours on the phone to my girlfriends in Los Angeles and New York. I've made plans with girls I've met here and I've made myself answer the phone EVERY time it rings. And each time I do one of these things I feel a little better. I feel a little more like myself.

Yesterday I talked to two of my girlfriends for a long time. Both of them have experienced times like this. One of them is going through it now and one of them is a therapist. And just talking it all out, crying it all out, saying these things out loud, made me feel so much better. I didn't realize how much I was keeping in my head and how, because of that, these feelings were just growing and growing and growing.

That's always been one of my favorite things about therapy. As a client and as a therapist I've had the experience of revealing something that you thought was so terrible, absolutely shameful and despicable...but that in saying it out loud and having it hang there in the air between you and another person, you realize that maybe it isn't so bad after all, and that it certainly isn't as huge as it had become in your head, that in fact the words, when hung outside for anyone to see, are so much smaller and simpler than you ever imagined.

One of my favorite theories that I studied in school was the Gestalt Paradoxical Theory of Change which states that one cannot change, one cannot move forward, unless he accepts where he is in the present state.

So here I am in all my tearful glory. Really grateful for the people in my life and really excited about starting a new job on Monday.

TGIF

Coming Home

I was crying before I even walked in the door yesterday.

Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful.

Could I write two more contradictory sentences?

I had the loveliest time in Ohio with Greg and his family. It was the most relaxing four days I've had in a while (yes, even more relaxing than the Caribbean somehow). We ate constantly—his mother is a fantastic cook and seemingly always in the kitchen whipping something up. We watched a lot of movies (Ratatouille, Blood Diamond, and We Are Marshall) while sprawled across big, comfy couches. We played games (dominoes and Wii) and we took a nice walk in the woods.

It was really heavenly. I slept for long hours, got started on my Christmas cards, read several People magazines and looked at a thousand wonderful pictures of Greg and his family growing up. One afternoon Greg's dad toured us all around Norwalk, walking through the impressive market his family used to run and pointing out the vast acres of land they used to farm. The town itself is incredibly quaint with its maple trees and church steeples, lovely old cemeteries and sweeping farmland.

And it was so much fun to be with such a big group of people. Going out to dinner we were a party of nine. And two of the siblings weren't even there! On the last night, going to sleep by myself on a pullout couch in the computer room, I listened to bathroom and bedroom doors opening and shutting, various siblings calling out goodnight to each other. Then I heard one of Greg's brothers knock on his parent's bedroom door. "Mom? Dad?" he said, and tears instantly welled up in my eyes, spilling over to the pillow beneath my cheek.

I miss my parents so much.

And it was hard to come home to my life here in Chicago. I'm lonely these days. I truly didn't realize what an incredible support network I had created in Los Angeles for myself. Following my father's death four years ago I surrounded myself with a firm amount of amazing people. In my old life in LA, if I wasn't in class or seeing clients, I had a dinner date every night. I rarely spent an evening alone and now I remember why.

I just feel like I've spent enough time alone in my life. I'm so ready to be part of something more than just myself. Going to sleep that last night in Ohio, goodnights being called out across the hallway and doors being pulled shut with soft clicks, I felt a sense of community and family and belonging...something that's lacking for me right now in my city life here in Chicago.

And that's why I was crying before I even walked in the door yesterday.

But.

All of that said, I know that things will begin to get better soon. I've only been here for three months. I'm about to start work (more on that soon) and I'm beginning to make friends. It all takes time and the life I had in Los Angeles wasn't something I built in a day.   

And I couldn't be more grateful to have met such a wonderful man and to get to know his equally wonderful family.

Onward!