It is my sincere hope that in a short year or two, when I’m standing somewhere under bright lights in a fabulous dress and a smile that won’t quit and someone holds a microphone up to my face and asks me excitedly, “Tell us! How did you do it?”, that I’ll experience a shimmering waves moment and drift back in my memory to right now. The second week of August, 2010. I hope I will be able to say, “Well you know, my adoring public and family and friends… it all started back in the summer of 2010, not too long after I turned 35.”

I want this to be it. I want this to be the last new beginning for a really long time. I once said in some other journal somewhere that I am sick of beginnings. I’m so sick of base camp, LIFE 101, the bottom of the mountain, the bottom rung, the first step of a thousand-mile journey, Level One, prolegomena, all that absolute beginner crap. What I want now is to know what the rest of it looks like. I want to know what it’s like to be in the middle of something. To be halfway done, almost done, and then done! It must be a better feeling than knowing what every single square one in the world looks like, I swear to Cow.

To that end, I spent most of today reading from the books I got from the library yesterday. To the casual observer, they might well seem to represent a jumbled pile of random (and slightly odd) interests. But if you line them up in a particular order, they seem to me to clearly spell out a desperation, a cry for help etched into the sands of the beach on which I find myself stranded.

• An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

The capital letter ‘H’ in HELP ME. The first attempt ever to understand my own experience of this disorder within the context of someone who has also been there. Maybe this square one will prove to be the launch pad into my life I’ve been looking for.

• Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

Once the novelty of finding out you’re not alone wears off, the question becomes, now what? This book promises to be an exploration of the multitude of ways in which people with bipolar disorder have managed to be creative and productive.

• A Patient’s Guide to PCOS: Understanding and Reversing Polycystic Ovary Syndrome by Walter Futterweit, M.D.

I’ve been interested in the degree to which my almost-diagnosis of PCOS might be contributing to the difficulties I’ve had lately… perhaps by way of a nasty soup of unbalanced hormones? Seems a little unlikely, but…

• The Hormone Diet by Dr. Natasha Turner

…this book suggests that entire legions of problems, mental, physical and emotional, can be caused by one or more hormonal imbalances, so I decided to look into it, as I am quite desperate about my physical health as well.

• Walking: A Complete Guide to Walking for Fitness, Health and Weight Loss by John Stanton

Which led me to to pick this book up! The hormone book also extols the virtues of walking, and I loved the “foundation” concept of training, and also the idea that I could be training for a marathon or something. I mean, I can barely walk to the car and it takes me over an hour to do the grocery shopping, but hey… dream big, right?

• Walking for Fitness: The Beginner’s Handbook by Marnie Caron

But uh… not too big… this book would be me acknowledging that in the meantime, I’m still very much a bottom rung person.

• Finding our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices by Brian McLaren

Which depressed me so much I started thinking about all the other times I’ve failed, and how hopeless I still feel about ever changing for the better, and then I immediately went for the only thing I know I can count on when all hope is (apparently) lost. God.

• The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible by James L. Kugel

Specifically, the God of old. The God of Abraham. The God I know from my studies of biblical languages and the ancient documents that didn’t make it into our canon, but which still hold incalculable value for any critical, in-depth study of God and His word.

• The Gospel of Judas edited by Rodolphe Kasser et al.

Like this one! Ever since I read the history of the Gospel of Judas (Bart D. Ehrman), I have been looking for the English translation of the actual gospel. This book also shows how I get so unbelievably sidetracked and eventually wander away from what I started… which brings me back to the beginning of this post.

Please, God. Let this be it. Let this be the launchpad I will remember as being the one that finally sent me on my way to all the things I should be doing!

I did absolutely nothing today. Nothing at all.

I just sat on my big butt and talked to my mother on the phone.

For four and a half hours.

Heh.

A series of efforts today to try and stave off the menacing grey. It’s like a fog that has weight, the grey that steals over me sometimes. Instead of weighing me down from the outside like something real, it seeps into my limbs and deadens my fingers and makes everything ache.

It’s not depression. I’ve been depressed before, I know how it feels. Or maybe it is depression but I don’t buy into brain chemistry and the need for drugs. The medication doesn’t prevent these episodes, so it’s not the answer. Fighting it is the answer. If only it wasn’t so tiring.

So, efforts. Paying bills, sweeping the floors, doing even just one, exhausting load of laundry. Sticking to a promise to cook healthy meals at home instead of constantly ordering out – even tonight. Even tonight when it was so hard to drag myself to the kitchen and stand over the stove. Perhaps especially tonight. Handmade turkey burgers with guacamole and Monterey Jack cheese with a side of triumphant exhaustion!

Take that, $%@#$ greyness.

I once heard someone on a show about severe obesity explaining the problem with food being that it’s not like you can eat enough food for the week on Sunday. You have to eat multiple times a day and every time you eat, you confront your problem with not eating more than you need.

I’m like that with music. It’s never enough. No matter how much I love my old favourites (and by now I have thousands of them), I am constantly falling in love with new songs, new artists, whole new genres even. Ishi has no idea how lucky he is – how grateful he should be that I work so hard to keep my music lust in check and how little I spend on new CDs and MP3 downloads. If he even had the first clue that I have said “no” to a new CD at least 150 times before I finally give in and buy one, I’m sure he would be beside himself with gratitude. Right?!

But every once in a while I hear something and the notes go down inside me and awaken a deep, bottomless hunger and I know, just know I have stumbled across something that will change the very shape of the horizons of my life’s soundscape.

Tonight, at the beginning of the final scene of tonight’s episode of Flashpoint, a line from this song played and I was just agog. I can never hear the words, but I heard these: “how many more days can you hold out”. Thanks to Google and some very creative rephrasings, I found it! It’s called “The Sun Is Shining Down” by JJ Grey and Mofro. I wasn’t the only one it impressed; you can hear the whole song here.

I bought the CD within ten minutes of the show ending. I think I found my next old, old favourite.

Yesterday and today were gray and cold. The gray seeps into my bones and the cold stiffens my fingers until I am unable to do much of anything beyond making a cup of hot chocolate and retreating to my warm nest under the covers with a book. It looks like I’m going to have to declare it officially summer if the weather won’t co-operate – life is too short for nine months of winter!