Getting up the Gumption

                                                             

Yesterday, Jill and I went to North Carolina Pride for the first time in several years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy looking at all the color and soaking up the festive atmosphere. Usually, when Pride day rolls around, it seems like too far to go, too much effort to drive all the way to Durham ---- twenty-some miles ---- and anyway, if you've seen one pride, you've seen them all.

Home Sweet Home

But that's the way life seems to be these days.

I was never much of a homebody. Just ask my kids, who claim that they had to go to their friends' houses to get a good meal. That's only partially true --- I did work a lot of dinner hour shifts when I was waiting tables back in the day, but I cooked, really I did. 

Right from the get-go, I was a busy, busy girl. I liked to be out and about. I wasn't a sulky teenager, sitting in my bedroom with the music playing and the curtains closed. I wanted to hang with my friends, ride the bus out to the Staging Area for movies or bowling or horsing around in the snack bar. By the time I was 14, I gleefully added going down to the strip to drink beer at Gertie's Hole in the Wall. My Bremerhaven peeps know what I'm talking about.

After I got sober at 30, I had a whole new world of social activities ---- meetings, coffee with friends, the meeting before the meeting, the meeting after the meeting, sobriety dances and gatherings of all sorts. And lots of time on the phone. I've got a long history of being a social creature.

So why, now that I've got plenty of time to do what I want, am I sticking so close to home? Part of it is that I really like it here. I get to be with Jill, which I definitely enjoy. The critters I live with are entertaining and sweet, and I don't like to leave them alone for too long. My books and computer and movies are home-based. I pretty much have everything I like to do right here at home. And, for some reason, it gets harder and harder to be among people. 

Age? Fatigue? Developmental Stage? (Yes, adults do have developmental stages, too.) I hover over that deep, black pool of depression, but I haven't dived in lately. And maybe that's the deal. It takes effort not just to stay afloat, but to avoid being sucked to the depths. And I carry that effort all the time.

The voice in my head ---- you know the one ----- says "Just get out and DO something. Commit. Don't be lazy. Show some gumption."

It doesn't feel that simple. I wish it were. I never meant my "golden years" to be haunted by clouding darkness. I couldn't have predicted it. I do what I can to regulate this part of myself that feels so foreign and, at the same time, enticingly familiar. And I keep on walking.

If you, invisible reader, have wrestled with depression, or know someone who does, please be kind. It takes more than gumption to tame this beast, which can attack without warning and leave a teary puddle in its wake. Bootstraps and will-power are not the best defense, though they may play a part. Just don't rely on gumption. Acceptance and love will work better, I believe. 

Out of the House and Into the Streets

Stadt Theater, Bremerhaven, Germany

So this is it. This is how it works in the real world. I've spent most of the past 5 months hibernating, squirreled away in my house, surrounded by all the things I love, battling demons and scratching out words, trying to make sense of something, anything. And then the sun shines for a few days, and the temperature warms up and what? I shake off the lethargy and stretch and yawn and drink some coffee and next thing you know, I've got car keys dangling from my index finger. 

I could never figure out how a person could be agoraphobic. I have been on the go since I got my first permission to ride the bus by myself. I wanted to be with my friends and go places. If I was stuck in the house, I was on the phone talking about future plans. I was the girl, 50 years ago, who would put on a nice dress, flip my hair and put in the little clippy bows above each ear, smooth on stockings ---- yes, with garters, because pantyhose hadn't been invented yet ---- and go downtown on the streetcar, with my best friend, to that upstairs restaurant kitty-corner from Karstadts department store, and order coffee and pastries, just like grown-ups. Then we would stroll down the street admiring the window displays until we reached the Stadt Theater, where we would attend a matinee performance of an opera or symphony concert. How very ladylike can you get at 13? Okay, this was in Bremerhaven, Germany. I doubt we would have done it in the States. But it was emblematic of my passion for being out and about with friends.

Fast forward five decades and here I am, glued to the couch for an entire winter. I don't want to go see friends ---- I don't want to answer the phone. I make myself get out for a few meetings, and once a month or so push myself into the nearly overwhelming company of a couple dozen women and a table full of potluck food. It doesn't help that Jill is a congenital introvert who depends on me to blast her out of the house in the best of times. And the longer I stay at home, the harder it is to get out. So now I see how that fear develops. Even today, when the sun is shining and my countenance is cheerier, I have to assure myself that I can always leave, I'm always at choice, I don't have to stay, it's okay to come home.

This morning, I joined up with a couple hundred of my closest friends to be educated about the pressing issues being presented in the North Carolina legislature, now that it has changed hands. There were some people I actually know, and most I did not. I went to the wrong church first ---- and didn't use that as a reason to turn around and go home. I allowed myself to catch the spirit, to remember my convictions, to rekindle the connection I have with others who feel, as I do, that there is injustice afoot that must be stopped. I even leaped up from my seat and went to the front when the call went out for volunteers from the throng to be the visual representation of diversity in this movement for fair play and justice. I didn't veer off to the parking lot when we moved two blocks to the legislative building. I found the offices of my representatives and spoke my name and left my concerns, and yes, I felt good afterward.

Will it make a difference? I don't know. I believe that efforts like this make more of a difference than sitting on the couch forwarding cartoons on facebook. What I know for sure is that it makes a difference to me. And I guess that's really what counts.