I don't get the blues, I get the grays. Life seems colorless and little annoyances seem sharply defined because of contrast. The few joys in this state feel faded and evanescent and cause for more sadness because each one is small and fleeting.
This emotional landscape can stretch for months or years. My mom died in January after a slow slide toward incompetent mental confusion and a broken hip in January. But the grays started when Jeanne died almost four years ago.
Numbness persists, literal numbness in my left leg and and hand because of injuries to back and elbow. I have medication for this but it seems too strong, pushing me toward manic, unfocussed activity. Now I'm living alone for the first time in my life. I've never lived alone for any time longer than a month or so.
I got a dog back in late February, a little black mini-poodle. She's a sweetheart and she makes me laugh and is constantly urging me to get out of the house and take a walk and smell of those odd things lying on the ground that she finds.
I had a terrible fight with my best friend a few months ago right when I needed him most. It helped only a little that I knew the fight was fueled by his own health problems. It took him a month to apologize because that sort of thing is hard for him due to the malicious abuse he got from his father growing up. But the weeks without hearing from him hurt terribly.
I bought some video games and played them obsessively for a few days over the last week or so. The repetitive small problems with known solutions seemed like lotion on the roughness of my soul. Corny, but it worked.
It happened a few days ago, the grayness began to break up. On the freeway, going to get a sandwich at a favorite deli, I realized that I felt pretty good. My hand is still numb and my left leg hurts but those are minor things, really. It's gloomy today and I don't feel like getting out of the house because my hips hurt when it's damp. But this isn't numbness in the soul, it's just in my fingers and toes. If I can keep from bumping my elbow again for a few more days, the pain there will go away. And summer is coming when my back and hips will be just fine.
I went to see Iron Man last night. I hate going to the movies alone but I went and had a great time. What a fun movie and Robert Downey, Jr. is perfect as Tony Stark. No one has nailed a personification of a comic book character so well since Chris Reeve in the first Superman.
I signed up for music lessons, piano, about the time Mom died. I've started writing music and having fun with it. Last Saturday, I took a piece I wrote to class and my instructor's three friends, professional musicians, played it and decided to include it in a show they are doing this Saturday. I can hardly wait.
My dog is sleeping on the bed behind me right now, snoring in a way that apparently only mini-poodles are taught how to do. I've got this website and you amazing people out there who write such astonishing stories. I've got friends, in person and online, and in two weeks I'm going to go up to spend a few days with my brother in the Bay area.
Life is good again, a mosaic of colors, a palette of promise.
Be good to each other,
Hugs,
Erin
Comments
Good For You Erin
I know what you mean about your Poodle, i have had the joy of being Poodles too. My sister raised poodles and gave me a black and ginger Peekapoo named Booger. I hope that your trip to see your brother is full of joy.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Nothing can snore like a spaniel!
Not even Bonzi although he gives it his best shot.
Elaine, I'm glad things are coming back into colour for you, I hope the summer helps to consolidate the view. Have a super holiday, you do deserve a break from all the work you do for us ingrates!
hugs,
Angharad
Angharad
Wonderful
It's great to hear your gray skies are clearing and you can see the rainbows above. This is a good time to give you a huge thank you for all you've done here at TopShelf. Even while mired in the gray's you've provided a place for us to gather, read, and write. Oh yeah and even have a little fun and silliness sometimes. :)
Great Big Hugs!
grover
For All You Do,
you get scant praise or positive strokes. I have told you in private, now I'll do it a bit more publicly. You are appreciated and loved, Erin. You have created a HOME for so many of us who are considered "questionable" or otherwise by society. We come here to be entertained, consoled, comforted, to get information, even to get opposing points of view. You have done SO much, for SO many, and it's more than high time you get credit for all the hard work you've done in maintaining and improving Top Shelf.
I'm SO glad you are finally starting to feel better and coming out of your "greys." Taking time for yourself is the key, Erin. All work and no play makes for a sad Erin.
Huggles and love from,
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
The grays are sneaky, good to hear your's are clearing
When my own mother died three years ago this June I took it hard, Dad took it VERY hard -- and it still affects me at times. The death of my older sister on New Years Eve of the same year added to the pain. We are all mostly recovered but it hurts.
You've grieved enough. Remember the good and the bad, enjoy your life, have some fun. My cousins had a small poodle years ago and except for frequent snarls in it's coat it was a freindy and extreamly tolerant dog of all us grabby children.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Wishing you clear weather!
Hope all the gray blows away!
Kaleigh
oh, so now you tell us!
Funny how that works. We tend to not talk about it while it's happening, that's part of it .......
But it's amazing that even with the solid grays you still did so much for others. Running this site,
mediating our silly squabbles, offering encouragement and excellent writing advise.
If anyone deserves a full palette in this life it's you, dearest Erin!
I wish ....... Well Ray Davies said it better than I ever could:
"Here's wishing you the bluest sky,
And hoping something better comes tomorrow.
Hoping all the verses rhyme,
And the very best of choruses to
Follow all the drudge and sadness.
I know that better things are on the way.
It's really good to see you rocking out
And having fun,
Living like you just begun.
Accept your life and what it brings.
I hope tomorrow you'll find better things.
I know tomorrow you'll find better things..."
~~~BIG HUGS! Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Down with the greys
Our holiday cured ours for us, I hope it happens the same way for you too.
If you're anything like us, you can't go anywhere or do anything without it becoming an adventure. We hoped we'd have an adventure and we did. Actually, we hoped we'd win the lottery too, but sadly, that didn't come to pass.
Whatever, the lead-up to and the holiday itself were a real tonic and whilst all of our troubles have not gone away, our outlook has brightened considerably and things don't look so--well, grey.
I sincerely hope that it will brighten yours.
Best of luck, Erin
NB
:)
I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.
oh.. I know
I mean it's not a big problem yet, but I check the mirror and I'm avidly watching those Andie McDowell Loreal ads and... oh, sorry...moods yeah I know those too. I'm sure a few of us do. It is good to hear you're back into colour, it is generally nicer except maybe in old movies. Or Ceri's photos of course, but those are black and white not...shudder, grey.
I'll echo the others in saying thank you for this place and all you do to make it what it is, without you it would not be that I don't think. Close maybe but not the same. So do look after yourself won't you and not just because I like this place. Funny how puppy kids help isn't it? My first one's nearly six, gee doesn't time... and I'm having the opposite trouble after years alone I now share and sometimes it drives me up the wall, but I do love her. Everyone should have a mad Auntie, nice mad, not real loopy mad. Now if only she was a rich mad Auntie... ah well.
Be well Erin or Joyce even and have fun with the music stuff, it can be great... a little sound file snippet attached to a blog maybe?? BC music to tune up your aura...
Kristina
My music
I think I posted this before but here's a short clip of a song I wrote. It was intended as sort of theme music for Donna Lamb's "Green Sun" and it's NOT the piece being performed Saturday but that one was also inspired by Donna's writing of "Blue Moon" -- it's the "Too Drunk Boogie" which is one of the songs in "Blue Moon" the lyrics of which Donna wrote instead of me. It's about five times as long as this one and I don't have an mp3 of it so this will do. :)
I wrote this in Finale Songwriter, saved it as a .midi file then massaged it in Garage Band. The instruments are piano, two guitars, alto sax and percussion.
I've also put my own "Moonset" and "Lincoln Green" and "Ice Cream Has No Bones" to music and am working on some others.
Hugs,
Erin
Making the World Round (706.75 KB)
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Worm Quartet
Just as a by the way, my "Ice Cream Has No Bones" does not resemble the Worm Quartet song that has that line as a lyric. :) Great comedy band though. Mine is a funk version of an ice cream truck jingle I wrote after hearing about such a contest on the radio -- after it was over--but hey, inspiration is a nickel you find in the couch. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
A thousand shades of grey
I don't know why people have picked on blue. Singling her out, making her the scapegoat for all all woes and miseries. Blue must feel very aggrieved about it. Now if it were grey that stood thus accused, his cries of anguish would rent the heavens and we would all be called to witness the unjustness of it all. But poor old blue just suffers in silence. Nary a word in her own defence.
It's all very odd. Today is beautiful here. Sunshine and blue, blue, skies that make the heart rejoice after a winter of bleak unrelieved, drab greyness.
So Erin is quite right. It is greyness in all his myriad indistinguishable shades that is the real enemy. It is grey that saps the soul, draining colour from life. Blue is the harbinger of hope. A herald to confirm that there is still happiness in the world.
All this is greatly over the top. But I am infected with it today. This feeling that I live in a most beautiful part of the world and that I have only to enjoy it. That I am lucky to be here and be who I am.
And I think that it, this feeling, was triggered by Erin's own rediscovery of her mosaic of colours, her palette of promise. A palette whereon blue in all its cool soothing beauty must surely figure.
Hugs,
Welcome back to the colors, Erin
I think we all could have your message stored somewhere on our computers. You tell us that there is something on the other side of the grey zone. Some of us have had perods so dark that we could not even see the the nueances of the graynes. But there is still a spring coming and with that light and renewal of Nature We just have to follow your example and start observing the way Nature returns every year to us with the light and the flowers.
Thank you for your warm message, and the inspiration to keep on, even if Life has it's down periods now and then.
And that we have friends here on the net. They have saved me.
Your
Ginnie
GinnieG