Thanks

The New York Times ran a piece by Dick Cavett about depression, which I really like. I have had (non-working) days when the biggest thing I've managed to accomplish is folding up four pieces of clothing and carrying them three blocks to the dry cleaner.

I've gotten to listen to a lot of people give me advice, too, although most of it centers on the idea that if I could just love myself, then everything in my life would go well, and I would no longer feel sad. Tips on how to do this never follow.

I wonder if I hear this advice (as opposed to the playing tennis/going swimming sort) because that is the sort of advice people I know dispense, or if I hear it because it is so blatantly obviously that I don't feel this way about myself?

Funny how it all comes together at the end

Early this week, I read a story on the New York Times Deal Book Blog about Tom Wolfe’s prediction a year ago that we were nearing the “end of capitalism”. Having never read one of Wolfe’s books, I stopped by Half Price Books on my way home that day and bought a copy of The Bonfire of the Vanities. Within the first three chapters, one of the main characters has nearly been caught cheating on his wife and the other main character constantly thinks about the various women with whom he could cheat on his wife. Both men are fathers, but thoughts of their children seem far from their minds (although, around page 145, McCoy claims his daughter is the most precious thing in his world. Uh-huh). Being me, I have used this fictional story to confirm all my suspicions about men and how horrible they are, and to remind myself that I should stay away from them at all costs.

A lot of people at work are becoming parents for the first time – one woman just had a baby, we had a baby shower for another this afternoon, and two men have just become dads. I suppose I should be happy for them, and exclaim “congratulations!” when I hear the news of the pregnancy and of the birth. I suppose I should ask them about how it’s going and ooh and ahh and coo over the baby pictures and news on whether the child is sleeping through the night or the sorts of sounds he or she is making. And part of me does want to be happy for these people, but most of me is scared for the soon-to-be infants.

Instead of “congratulations”, I want to say, “well, hey, that’s great, but could you please, please, please make sure that you don’t treat your baby the way my parents treated me? Please don’t call her a bitch or tell her she’s fat or unattractive or that no one will want to be around her if she’s feeling sad or angry or bitter, or tell her you didn’t want her, or tell her she’ll never get a job. Please don’t mock her at every opportunity, both at home, or out in public in front of people you don’t even know, and even people you do know. Please don’t teach her that feeling confidence or believing in herself makes her cocky. Please don’t beat your wife up in front of her. Please do not throw your wife up against a wall in front of her. Please don’t mock and criticize everything about your wife and abuse her emotionally at every opportunity. Please do not come home every night and spend the entire evening watching TV and reading the newspaper simultaneously and ignoring your children. Please do not fly into an inexplicable fit of rage and scream obscenities loud enough for the entire city to hear over a DVD player that plays on channel three instead of channel AV1 or AV2. Please do not do this when your now-grown daughter is moving into a new apartment, scaring her neighbors. Please do not wonder, after 25 years of this sort of treatment, why she barely dates, and then accuse her of being a lesbian at Thanksgiving dinner. Please, after 28 years of this, do not mock her for not having a boyfriend when she says she needs someone to help her move speakers.

And please, please, please do not wonder why, after 28 years, she decides to stop talking to you because it’s the only way she can cope. Children are people, too. In fact, they are people first. If you treat them the way I was treated they will either go around abusing everyone in their path, or they will take what they think is the “high road” and abuse themselves instead. They will become afraid of their own emotions, hate parts of themselves, and fear that they cannot handle what life will throw at them. They will beat themselves up for every mistake they make, everything that’s “wrong” with them, and feel miserable most of the time.”

Of course, I don’t say any of this, and just half-heartedly say “congratulations” and pretend to be interested when they tell me about their child, if they do at all. It’s not as if I don’t think babies are adorable or want to have them – I do. When my friends have them, I’m always so amazed and enchanted by them and the fact that those extremely tiny creatures can somehow contain all the same parts that an adult human does. I just don’t know how to get around the fear I have for them, because I can’t get around my fundamental belief that all fathers must be just like mine, even though I’ve seen and I know fathers who are not like mine at all.

I’ve heard fathers make comments to me about their children that sound eerily similar to the ones my father made about me to people. I want to roll my eyes and say, “Oh, yeah, my dad used to say that kind of stuff about me, too”, and wait for their response, which I imagine would be something like, “See, and you get along great, right?” to which I could then respond, “No, we don’t. I haven’t spoken to him since January.” Then, I could watch their faces fall and imagine that their minds were running a movie of their future, which includes a ruined relationship with the people they portend to love the most: their own children.

Of course, I don’t say any of this, either.

Sometimes I wonder whether my dad even wanted to get married and be a father. He certainly didn’t act like it when I was growing up. It felt more to me like he got off on hurting people.

Since he was on my mind, I spent most of my Wednesday night therapy session ranting to Laura about my father, whom I have referred to over the years by every nasty name in the book. I told her about how nowadays, he sends me emails with stories likes this: an old man whose wife has Alzheimer’s disease continues to visit her daily even though she’s completely forgotten who he is. Intellectually, I know that’s a nice story, and the “message” included in the email about what “true love” is sounds rather nice. But coming from him, it feels insincere and like he’s preaching to me. In response, I compose nasty emails about how angry I am at him and how, if my mother ever suffered from Alzheimer’s, and lost her memory of him, I do not believe for a moment that he would ever bother to visit her.

Of course, I don’t send these emails. I know I’m supposed to forgive him and understand that his own parents treated him poorly so it was all he knew. I’m supposed to find the gift in how he treated me and use it to create a better future for myself. After a while, this starts to sound like “blah, blah, blah” to the emotional part of me. All she knows is that she feels angry, scared, bitter and sad. She would like to beat him up and throw him up against a wall for the way he treated her and her mother. She equates getting married with getting hit.

One of the most memorable things I learned from reading Change Your Brain, Change Your Life was that a lifetime of negative experiences seriously affects the way your brain functions. It essentially creates a “set-point” for your brain and your emotions, and causes you to interpret even the most positive events in a negative way. The only way to counteract this is to start filling your life with positive experiences that evoke pleasant emotions for your brain to store in its emotional memory bank. Besides making me feel better about myself and my own problems, and giving me tools to start dealing with them, the book made me more compassionate for others, even my father.

Knowing what I do about his childhood, which is virtually nothing, I can only guess at what it must have been like, and how difficult it must have been. Knowing what I do about his parents, I understand why he stopped talking to them years ago, and ultimately, I feel sad for what he must have experienced as a kid. None of this makes the way he treated me right, and I still haven't forgiven him.

Today, I read a story on the New York Times Well Blog on the Basics of Fatherhood, which links to an essay about principles for good fatherhood. You can read it here.

If there were one thing I could tell the world it would be that, if you are a father – whether you’d planned to be on or not – following the advice in this essay will do what it says – produce children who do well and fathers with few regrets. (I go down this list and the only one I can check off that my father did was "do your financial share", though he was the cheapest person I knew as a kid.)

I’ve yet to receive any sort of apology from my father; all I’ve ever heard from him were excuses, and often these excuses blame my mother in some way, which astonishes and angers me. But, knowing my father, I believe he does have them, and I may never know how deep they run, because he’ll never tell me. He just isn’t the sort.

I came home from work today, thinking I wouldn't post this. Then I checked my voice mail and learned that my brother's wife is pregnant. All that stuff I'm "supposed" to feel at a time like this has not shown up yet, and probably never will. I'll spare you what has shown up; all I can say is that I'm looking forward to Wednesday when I can talk to someone who will always remind me that there is no "supposed to feel".

OK, so when I said "make it stop" ...

Well, the heat is gone, and has been since Sunday. Now, instead of the air being a million degrees, the air is cold and smoky. It smells like something is burning, because something is burning — half the state of California. (Seriously, the weather forecast for Berkeley includes "haze and smoke".) But since it worked the last time, can I make a request, God? Could you please make it rain? For like a week? Real rain, like what we get at home. That would be awesome. Thank you.

OMG It's so freaking hot. And it's not even 9 AM yet.

Yesterday, we broke records with the heat -- it was 99 in Oakland. Normally, it's about 70 or 75. Today, it's supposed to be a bit cooler -- in the 93 to 95 range. Somehow, I doubt that. It's already about 80 and it's not even 9 o'clock yet. God, make it stop! Nobody around here has air conditioning. This is Berkeley. Most people don't have heat...

I'm going to go eat some ice now.

Priorities, people. Priorities!

Hmm, let's see, floods, wildfires, FBI arrests in a sub prime sting, economic crisis. I know, let's put a story about some freaks living in trees in Crazy Town in our paper. Cuz that's how we roll at the New York Times.

That woman spent all day yesterday in that platform/soap box, rallying her supporters against the university's workers. I spent most of the day praying she wouldn't fall down.

The best part, though, isn't in the NYTimes.com story. Her name, she says, is Dumpster Muffin. I am not making this up.

Instead of the rain coming back another day, it should have come here, to California, where we really really really need it.

In general, I dislike traveling for work, but two-day trips are the worst. Day one is usually a long flight, because nearly everything is a long flight from here, and day two is usually a meeting and then a long flight home. I can't sleep the night before I fly, and so I'm tired, cranky and jet lagged before the first flight departs. So I go straight to my hotel, work and then try, usually unsuccessfully, to get some rest. Then, the next morning, I have to wake up by around 3 AM my time to get to the meeting and then fly home.

This week was no exception in terms of me feeling exhausted (but smiling and doing my best just the same). However, it was an exception in terms of me going straight to my hotel and crashing, because this week I got to go to Chicago, one of my favorite cities. This time, I went straight to my hotel, dropped my stuff, and then went straight outside for a walk because it was beautiful. I walked from my hotel, which was on Lakeshore Drive across from Navy Pier, down to Michigan Avenue, to Millennium Park, past the Art Institute (which was most unfortunately closed), to Grant Park and then to what used to be the Chicago Library but what is now the Chicago Historical Society (I think).

The next afternoon, before my flight home, my boss showed me the giant baboon that Picasso gave to the city before he died, and then I went to the Art Institute. It's being renovated, a modern art wing is being added, and a bridge from Millennium Park is being built, but it's still open.

I only got to spend about four hours total exploring the city over the course of two days, but it felt refreshing to be somewhere so normal, with so many people who behave so normally. (I have lived in Berkeley for too long!) And it must have rained the day before, because it felt good to be outside. (Why on earth does 65 degrees in Chicago feel so much better than 65 degrees in Berkeley or San Francisco?) The hotel I was staying at had big square benches with cushions on them just outside the lobby. I sat there and stared at the lake and just relaxed.

The flights to and from Chicago were difficult, though, and not only because I don't like flying (it scares me some). We flew over the Cedar River and it was clear how far the river had overflowed. Roads that were supposed to cross the river disappeared into it instead. In one case, I never could make out where the road resurfaced, if it did at all. It didn't seem to be just the Cedar River, either. Other rivers had overflowed their banks. Farms far from the rivers had small lakes in their fields. One town was submerged.

I only saw the flooding from about 30,000 feet. I can only imagine what it must look like up close.

Do not expect this post to have a point. I looked for one, and it just isn't there.

People who don't know me very well sometimes get confused about where I'm from, but I suppose I can understand why. I grew up in Unincorporated South King County, Washington, which is near Renton, which is about 20 miles southeast of downtown Seattle. I went to college in Cleveland, Ohio, spent one of my eight semesters in Washington, DC, and a summer in Indianapolis. After college, I moved to Japan for a few months and then back to Seattle. I lived on Queen Anne Hill for a couple of years before moving to Berkeley for grad school. And I'm not even 29 yet. Whew!

But I was born in Iowa, at Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. Both sets of my grandparents were farmers. My maternal grandparents sold their farm before I was born and moved to Winterset, the county seat of Madison County, Iowa. This county and its bridges, you may recall, were made famous by a book by Robert James Waller. Before that, Winterset's claim to fame was being the birthplace of John Wayne.

My mother would take us to visit Winterset for weeks at a time during many summers while Ben and I were growing up. I remember going to the pool, and hanging out on the campus of the high school that was down the street from Grandpa Hart's house. The heart of Winterset was the town square, which had the courthouse and the movie theatre. The movie theatre only had one screen, and if you wanted more than that, you would have to drive to Indianola, about 25 miles east on the 92. Montross's Pharmacy was also in the town square, and it wasn't just a pharmacy; it had a soda counter in the back.

Grandpa had a riding lawnmower, which he let Ben and me ride on, and we always always got Blue Bunny ice cream when we went to the grocery store. I would break my dairy ban today and live with the resulting sinus infection if I could buy Blue Bunny ice cream in Berkeley. I looked, and the closest grocery store selling it is in Stockton.

During our drives around Iowa, I would look out the car window so that I was facing the fields growing corn and soybeans perpendicularly. If you've ever done this, you'll know why I did. One by one, the rows of crops stop blurring together as you rush by.

Growing up in Renton, and living in California, I've been surrounded by people who can be snobbish about place. Just yesterday, a lifelong Californian who had recently been to Renton told me it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. I was surprised, considering how much it's grown since I left it at 19, but considering how full California is, I understand that her basis for comparison is much different than mine.

If I had to pick my one favorite place in the entire world, it would not be Zermatt or Kobe or Osaka or San Francisco or London or Reutlingen (a town in Germany I spent a few weeks in after high school) or even Queen Anne or Magnolia in Seattle. It would be Winterset, Iowa, for no reason other than I remember it feeling safe and comfortable and I remember feeling loved.

So it makes me so sad to see that much of my favorite state is flooded and that people's homes are being destroyed. Part of me wants to get on a plane to Des Moines and help out. The rest of me wants all that rain to fall here. California is in the midst of a long drought; it hasn't rained here in Berkeley since February. Besides that, I miss the rain and the seasons. I miss the way it smells after the rain almost as much as I miss Blue Bunny ice cream.

"A picture is worth a thousand denials"

Since I started therapy, I have read several books on topics such as: accepting every part of yourself, even the parts you think are wrong or shouldn't be there, how your thoughts affect your health, how to use traumatic experiences to improve your life, and why good people do bad things. Each has been interesting, and useful in its own way, though some have certainly been more useful than others! I have recommended a couple of them casually to a couple of people. That's it.

I'm done with reading these books, at least for now, because I just finished reading Dr. Amen's book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and I was finally impressed. I would highly recommend it to anyone. At the very least, it will give you tools to deal with difficult people in your life, to be less difficult yourself, and to stop blaming people for acting the way they do. At best, it will motivate you to change your eating habits, drinking habits, drug habits (if you have one), exercise habits, sleep habits, safety habits, relationship habits, parenting habits (if you have children), and negative-thinking habits.

Also, it will probably help you feel good about what you have done for yourself over the years. I've never used marijuana, and sometimes, especially in this part of the country, I feel a bit out of place. I mean, the state of California (which that jury duty video tried to tell me was the "greatest" state in the union!) has legalized prescription marijuana. As a result, people think it's "safer" than other drugs. Even as I was reading the chapter on drug use, I caught myself thinking, "but marijuana is a safe drug!" It's not, and neither is alcohol. I used to think the movie "Kids" was the best anti-drug-and-alcohol advertisement out there. Now, I believe it is Dr. Amen's book full of pictures of addicts' brains, and the damage they've suffered.

After reading this book, I felt immensely glad I've never smoked a cigarette, tried drugs or had more than three drinks at a time (and I've only done that twice). I have enough things up with my brain that it doesn't need the additional trauma of damaging substances.

Dr. Amen doesn't promise that everything will be fine if you just think positive thoughts, or that people simply need to "identify their ego's masks" in order to change. He insists that people who need treatment get it. In fact, most of the examples in the book are of people who have responded well to medications. Many of them were eventually able to stop taking the medication without relapse. The book changed my belief that taking medication for depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or ADD is "bad" or "wrong" or a sign of "weakness" in the patient.

Also, this book costs $8.25. That's it.

(In the interest of perfect disclosure, I have found most of the books listed in the first paragraph helpful, especially The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and The Secret of the Shadow. The first teaches you how to get people to stop pushing your buttons because it teaches you how to get rid of the buttons. The second teaches you how to overcome the difficult events of your past.)

Not the Eric-Clapton-"Layla" sort of letting me down.

Alameda County let me down. I called in on Wednesday, as instructed, and was instructed to call back on Thursday at 12:15 PM. If I were needed, I would have to show up to the courthouse in Hayward, about a 45 minute drive, by 2 PM at the latest. So I called in on Thursday, as instructed, and was told that my service was completed and that a "jury had already been selected."

Obviously, Alameda County doesn't understand that I need a vacation! So I guess I better go back to planning the one I'm going to take next month.

I think I was the only one in there who was excited to be there.

I received at least five jury summons while I was in graduate school, but being a student got me out of all of them. That excuse is gone now, so I reported for jury duty today for the first time in my life. From 8:30 to 9:30, I sat in a waiting room while our jury duty emcee, Stephan, instructed us on the pronunciation of his name ("just like Stephanie, without the i-e"), on what we would have to do (wait until the first "roll call" at 9:30), and showed us a video about jury service. It was actually interesting to me, being a first-timer; besides, I was excited to have a day away from the office.

Stephan called me in the first round, at 9:30, and I went down the hall to the court room. I and 39 other people listened to the clerk instruct us some more. Then she swore us in. We stared at the prosecutor and the defendant and his two attorneys. They stared back at us. One of the defense attorneys was a young woman, probably 25; she had a gaze that creeped me out. Thinking back, it was because she never blinked. That scares me. Plus, according to an optometrist I saw once in Seattle, it's bad for your eyes.

Then, just as the judge was supposed to come into the courtroom, and just as we were supposed to learn a little bit about the case, the clerk told the attorneys to meet the judge in the hallway, and she told the court reporter to put her headphones on. Apparently, the hallway is bugged! Upon return, the defense attorney whispered something to his client, and he looked happy in response. Then, we waited some more, and stared at the attorneys some more, and got stared at some more. Finally, the clerk had news for us! We were instructed to call in tomorrow afternoon to find out if we have to come back on Thursday.

I'd had my fingers crossed for a case related to the tree people, but the defendant did not look like he'd been living in a tree recently, so no hope there. Even so, I really really hope I do get called. Keep your fingers crossed for me that my jury duty karma means I'm due.

When your focus starts to blur

I was watching PBS a bit tonight after my walk, and caught a few minutes of a show about the brain hosted by Daniel Amen. He's written a book and claims that different parts of the brain need different treatments to help them work better, and to help heal problems like anxiety, depression, and even a highly-critical and disagreeable nature. I haven't read it yet (though it's only $9, so I will probably buy it soon), but the show offered some interesting insights.

The most fascinating to me was when he said that "diagnosing someone with depression is like diagnosing someone with chest pain." Doctors, he said, don't diagnose people with chest pain, because it's a symptom, not a cause. Depression can be a symptom with a variety of causes, like being emotionally overwhelmed, being over-stressed, or having financial or relationship problems.

The striking thing about all of the treatments that he offered for things like anxiety, depression, and even being disagreeable were that they were so similar.

He recommends exercise, strong social connections, fish oil, writing down and then challenging your negative thoughts, journaling, eating a healthy diet, and writing down your goals, posting the list, looking at it every day and checking to make sure your behaviors are consistent with what you want.

When I told people I had started to see a therapist, I got the sense from many of them that they thought I was being self-indulgent. Often, it was only after I told them why I'd started seeing one, which I wrote about here, that they acted glad that I'd started therapy, or that they began to express concern for me. I wonder if I would have gotten the same reaction if I'd told them that I'd gone to Dr. Amen's clinic in Fairfield, had a brain scan, and learned that the limbic part of my brain was overworked. Amen says that when this happens, depression, sadness and guilt are the result.

Growing up, I got the sense that being depressed was your own fault and that it meant something was wrong with you. You shouldn't be depressed, because then nobody would want to be around you. Of course, when you are depressed, the thing you need most is someone who will be there for you no matter what. There are a few of you out there who have been there for me no matter what, even when I've pushed you away. And since one of Dr. Amen's prescriptions is gratitude, I would like to say thank you to all of you. You probably don't know it yet, but you mean the world to me.