Escape
Sharon October 15th, 2009
I want to go shopping. I don’t mean I need to go shopping - I don’t, particularly. I just want to go out to a store somewhere and spend money and buy something fun or pretty - a trashy novel, cute clothes for the boys, yarn or maybe a nice tablecloth for my table. I need to spend money, I really do.
I want to watch television. I don’t mean I want to watch some particularly good or edifying television show that I’ve been longing to see. I mean I want to get a tin of pringles and zone out on the couch while watching something completely mindless, maybe in the infinitely repetetive “Law and Order” family, if they still exist.
A big pile of celebrity gossip magazines would do, maybe. Particularly if it came with a gin and tonic and a big pile of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and maybe a couple of lottery tickets to allow me to dream of having all the money I want.
And yes, I’m quite serious. A reader of mine asked me how it was that I deal with all the bad news and the fact that my kids are going to be living in a much tougher world than the present one. The answer is - variably - some days gracefully, some not, sometimes lightly, sometimes heavily.
Right at the moment, I deal with it about the same way most people do - I want a high from sugar or spending or numbness from a drink or television, and a good healthy dose of denial thrown in. I’m a normal person, and if I were in a yarn shop right now, there’d be no stopping me. All cookies flee from me right now.
I’m in a lousy mood - I’m tired from a late, sleepless night. I’m depressed by the news on the economic and climate front. I have a cold and my back is bothering me. Various other minor affronts are bugging me, and Eric is pissed about a mistake made by our bank and stomping around the house.
Now the good thing about this circumstance is that my ability to indulge my desires is pretty low. We don’t have tv reception, and YouTube plays so slowly that I might as well not bother. I don’t have any gin or tonic, no reeses, no lottery tickets. I can’t bring myself to go to the yarn shop, given the size of my stash, and I don’t have time to go anywhere further out. I suppose I could drive out to the local convenience store and read the Enquirer, but I’m just not that desperate, or quite that pathetic..yet.
I also know it will pass. Truly, I do. I know myself well enough to know that in the end, I won’t enjoy the feeling if I eat too much junk food (this does not mean I don’t ever do this), or the time spent reading trashy magazines. I might enjoy the shopping, but, well, the boys have to go to Hebrew school and the car with them, and I have to stay home and milk and cook dinner.
I hate this feeling, and I want to escape into something, anything else - a fantasy, denial, anything to make the lousy feeling of fear for my kids and sorrow for my world go away. I know that this too shall pass, and it couldn’t possibly happen soon enough for me. And it will - I don’t usually stay down long.
I don’t want my boys to grow up in a warmer, more depleted, more damaged, poorer world. I want better for them than that. And not just my boys, but my nieces and all the kids I love. And I can do a little bit about it - just not enough. Not enough. It sucks. It hurts.
Mostly, I choose to focus on the work to be done, and not on the likelihood of failure. Mostly I choose to focus on the day to day. Mostly I choose to hope things won’t be as bad as I suspect, or that if they are, I can insulate my kids, protect them, that somehow my children and I and my husband and the rest of the people I love will get to be insulated. I don’t know that I believe it, but since I can’t know what’s going to happen, I try and trust that there’s a future worth having out there.
And I know that people do have decent lives who are much poorer and live in tougher circumstances than I do - my great-grandparents and those that preceeded them had lives worth living, joys and comforts in with the tough times. I try and distinguish between the objects that we associate with a life worth living, and the life itself - to remind myself that the objects themselves are only objects.
But I still miss them in anticipation of their loss. I still have my down moments. And I’ve tried chocolate, and exercise, I’ve tried beer and television, I’ve tried fantasies of escape and retail therapy, I’ve tried lying to myself and reading escapist novels. They all work, for a little while. I’m not really opposed to any of them - they all have their place. The problem is that they all have a small place - otherwise they become pathological, an endless repetition of something that fails to bring you out of yourself, and just makes it worse.
The only ones that work for me in perpetuity are these - prayer, the kind of disciplined, conscious prayer, that, if there is a G-d, one can imagine penetrating the divine consciousness simply from the sheer annoying repetition of it 
, and good work, ideally in service to an idea or to other people. Even better is both at once. So I’ll find myself some good work - ways to care for my kids or for other people, things that need doing on the farm, and silence the noise in my head with the music of prayer. And probably sneak some chocolate in there somewhere, too. As we’ve noted before, I’m not perfect.
I’m writing this, by the way, not to get your sympathy, or just to whine, but because I actually thought it might make a few people feel better to know that I’m not immune to whining either .
How do I deal? Pretty much the way you do - I whine and I cry, I get grumpy and bitter, I deny and I fret, I pick fights and I slack off. And then, when I’m done, when I’ve allowed myself a little time to feel all these rotten things, I try and put them back in the box for a while - and no, it isn’t easy. But I do try, and mostly succeed, because the darkness of the future isn’t all there is, and it would be as false to wallow in my suffering, to indulge my anxieties for longer than strictly necessary, as it is to escape endlessly into celebrity magazines and chocolate. In some ways I’ve got it easy - I don’t tend toward depression, I don’t have to fight my biology the way some people do. I know that, and I’m grateful. Just not that grateful right now .
Sharon
- future
- Comments(34)
You could go and critique my post on the garden deisgn course. It might not help you, but it would make me feel better.
Acutally, I’m sorry you are so down, and with good reason. Short of tearing off your clothing and rolling in the yarn, I can’t think of much that would help. You’ve tried a cup of tea?
You are the person many of us turn to when we feel that there is no point in keeping going. I hope that knowing that we are, bit by bit, grumpling, snitting at each other, sometimes, and trying to help each other, most of the time, will help you get through this.
Lots of love from MEA
Thanks MEA - you know I didn’t so much write this to get other people’s sympathy as to just observe that like probably everyone else, I have my lousy days, and that it isn’t necessary to always be upbeat
.
But I do appreciate the kindness. I’ll take it
.
Sharon
sigh, its hard to be human, I needed to let something loose today, anything, so I took it out on my kitchen..I made homemade pasta sauce, the kind that takes hours, and homemade chicken broth for chicken soup tommorrow. Again the kind that takes hours, so that I don’t have to think about all the other stuff I should be doing but don’t want to face…
I get overwhelmed with what I think needs to be done, while surrounded by people who think I’m starting to get eccentric
)
chocolate sounds good about now too….
I for one so appreciate your site, and the fact that your human as well!!
Amanda
I’d be lost without escapist fiction. When the reality of peak oil and our converging crises finally sank in, good hardbound copies of essential fiction reading were among the first things I “invested” in (along with some good gardening reference guides). Of course it was a justification. My dirty little book buying habit was cast off very reluctantly, I can assure you. Still, I think we will need good reading in times to come. I’m working on acquiring titles especially suited to being read out loud to a group doing the after-dinner, small hand task sorts of activities. Hard to identify those, but I’m working on it.
Cheer up, Sharon. Or don’t. Wallow in a good funk as long as you need to. But know that many of us can relate. And thank you, as always.
I’m glad I made you feel better, since I never got around to saying that I hope the fact some of us were doing “like you said.”
MEA
I don’t have any hope in hell of changing anything, but my current lifestyle is insurance against future guilt. If anything I will be able to tell your grandkids, “hey I didn’t do anything do screw things up for you.”
Not having a TV, car, or whatever other “essential” material comforts U.S. residents think is a need makes it hard for me to just dive into any banal entertaining activity. I do visit celeb gossip sites from time to time although lately I’m completely lost since I have no idea no anyone is these days. I mean I think I’m somewhat familiar with the 90s shows, but the new ones - no clue!
Rolling in the yarn sounds like a great idea. Especially if you can pretend you just got the news that all the world’s currencies have collapsed and the world leaders have gotten together to declare YARN the new “gold standard”. (I’m imagining Eric coming home to find you flinging balls of wool and angora blend into the air yelling “I’m rich! RICH!”)
Me, I like to tell stories. To other people, to myself. Sometimes listen to other people’s stories-that’s what the “Law & Order” impulse is, candified. Story without the interpersonal connection that makes it therapy instead of escapism.
It helps to know you have these moments too!
I share the feeling today, Sharon. And have come to the same conclusions - the escapes only offer temporary relief. I’m craving Reese’s peanut butter cups today, too, even before coming here, but they offer only a brief high and a long low. Too much of that indulgence in the first year or so of finding your blog packed on mumble-mumble pounds already. It’s time to face the music and deal with reality. *sigh*
I’m with you, Sharon — been there, done that (and probably will again). I spent several months in a funk after the 2000 presidential election debacle, which wasn’t healthy but understandable. And I’m now fighting a form of impotent rage over the fact that, while the climate science news keeps getting worse, the deniers keep being awarded far too much credibility throughout the mainstream media.
What helps me at times like this is just changing gears completely and getting away from the laptop, the TV and the radio news: a casual lunch out with my husband, a trip to the beach, even a ride on my bike. A glass or two of wine is also nice : )
Yesterday I read a post on another forum that completely freaked me out.
So I do what I do. I canned chicken stock, tidied my cupboard, took stock of what I should get done before the snow flies…oops it flew the other day. I bought late season local produce to can. Because even if it all fell apart tomorrow we still gotta eat.
I read stories to my little guy. I made pancakes for supper. ’cause I like my breakfast for supper sometimes.
Then I sat down after little guy was asleep, watched some Doctor Who, added a few inches to the sweater I am making.
Brushed my teeth and curled up with “Dark is Rising” by Susan Cooper.
And this morning I woke up. Still freaked out but grateful for the day.
Boy was I ever having a lousy day . . . got up early to unravel a complicated personal tax issue for which time had caught up only to be locked out of several electronic accounts and on hold for infinity with my bank, with the result that I ended up staying home all day to work on said brain puzzle for Cesaer rendering, plus my back hurts but only a little more than my tailbone and it’s cold, and dreary, and very rainy. But then my partner made me a really nice lunch, the tax knot finally undid, my assistant stopped by on her way home with cinnamon pumpkin donuts, and my boss just called with good news.
The little stuff really does help.
And yup, I’m looking forward to a night of escapist TV.
Tomorrow, we go out to buy our winters worth of potatoes.
Made me feel a bit better. I work parttime and study parttime. The weather here in Sydney (Australia) has been extremely windy and also it’s
cold for this time of year (spring). I think the wind is affecting me I feel out of sorts and had a rotten day yesterday, among other things lost a $50 note which is pretty bad news for someone on a low income. Oh well today is another day, hopefully the winds will stop soon.
take care
Jo
Barbara Holland, _Endangered Pleasures_ . You need it now. It is the most delectable thing anyone can do. Get it now! Everyone reading this. Library, bookstore, Amazon, whatever. You need to suck. Just suck. This has tons to suck on. Delicious.
Sharon,
All your “I wish”s are about comfort. You want comfort, and maybe you also want to be comforted.
The image that comes to mind is sharing with a friend - bake a couple pies or cakes, and visit the neighbors or a friend. Share a hot beverage. Friends remind us that we aren’t alone, that we have many resources when we need them. And you might find comfort in gracing another with your smile.
You aren’t ready to ask someone to take care of you, but expecting someone to notice and bless you with that hug, that grin, that touch of love, that can isolate you amidst a crowd - or family.
Get a grip, make a cup of tea (or soup, or hot sandwich, or cookies), and see if anyone around you might share a hug for a moment.
Blessed be!
Thank you, Sharon. I found myself last week stuffing some plastic shopping bags that had somehow migrated into our house into the garbage(!), saying ‘I don’t CARE - it’s too much, and it’s too LATE ’cause climate change is going to happen anyway, and…and…and” and then I visited friends on the weekend and found my gratitude again. I’m glad you show that the heaviness affects you too, and there’s hope in knowing that it eases.
Sometimes it’s best to live by Lebowski 3:16
“F-ck it, Dude, let’s go bowling”
or sometimes Thom Yorke
“And if the world does turn, and if London burns, I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar”
Life goes on. All we have is right now. Drink a beer, smoke a J, play your guitar, or roll in the leaves. And when you feel like it, dust yourself off, brush your teeth, and get back to saving the world.
I do have 6-12 #10 cans of Hersey’s baking cocoa in my food storage at all times…. I think it is a necessity - just to help us through days like this (and for birthday cakes of course)
Some days I’m not sure whether I’m clinically depressed or just depressed. It’s somewhat re-assuring to realize that others are dealing with this also. My only palliative is to keep on working on what I think is important. Today it was harvesting the last of the garden and winterizing the chicken house. Not much, really.
Sharon after your post the other day on climate change I was disturbed all day. Still am. Even Reese’s wouldn’t have helped. It never occurred to me to pray about this but since your post I have said a prayer before bed now for our beleagured planet and its peoples flora and fauna. Glad to hear I am not the only one.
When in book stores, yarn stores, fabric shops, and garden stores - I get totally into the desire for more money so I can buy all the great yarn, books, plants, seeds,trees,and fabric I want.
I agree - read a mystery. You do need respite once in awhile. I have hardcovers of all the Holmes and Christie stories. I do not know if this mention is ok on this site - if not I do apologize - but there is a great site where you can swap your books for others you want. I love it cause it means a book only costs postage (media mail - very cheap)and that I also have a place to pass on books. It is Paperbackswap.com. No cost to join or anything - just list the books you would like to swap. Once you get a swap you earn credits which you can then use to get books you want. I was able to find new homes for all those college books I shall never look at again. In return I have a great collection of garden books and mysteries that I do not have to return to the library - they are mine (she says with a strange gleam in her eyes). Okay - I get nutty about books.
Dear Sharon — You prayed for me recently, and it just warmed my little achy-breaky heart, and made me feel better. I forever hold gratitude in my heart for your kindness.
Now, come here and let me French braid your hair, and you go find a bird’s fine feather fallen somewhere in your garden to adorn your pretty self and your pretty hairdo.
Even from far away, I reach out and put my hand on your shoulder.
I’m scared shitless, and have plans to accomplish tomorrow…..
Warmly,
~xdcx
Sharon, I don’t know if you are a runner or not, but a good long run can put me back in a functioning frame of mind. I suppose other types of exercise can work almost as well, but a long run outside in the fresh air is hard to top.
Sharon, I can’t help but feel that all this has something to do with the weather. The past two days here have hovered in the low 40’s with a constant gloomy drizzle. Even the chickens are depressed, sitting in the barn complaining and looking bedraggled. Very different from spring, when the green shoots were rising and we were planting and looking forward to the harvest or summer when the days were long and we ran around in shorts harvesting beans and
tomatoes.
Now the garden is over and we are facing the evidence that the bugs and the critters got more of our bounty than we like, the produce looks damaged and forlorn, and we have a cold winter ahead of us and no knowledge of what it may bring in the way of hardship and collapse. Our stores never seem to be large enough, we have always forgotten something, the cold damp makes us ache and the wars and looting in Washington go on.
We have reason to feel down, so lets indulge ourselves a little, and then remember that spring will probably come in March or April.
Thanks everyone - I truly appreciate this. I’m a lot happier this morning - some of it may be the weather, although I usually like autumn. Who knows. I appreciate y’all letting me use the blog as therapy!
Sharon
One of the things I adore about your blog is your reminders that the author is human too! That in between homeschooling kids, milking goats, and exceptional sharing of knowledge/encouragement, you have a messy house, weeds in the garden, and days you’d like to just lay on the couch (except that the kids would dance on your head). If I were to only hear about the good/productive stuff, I’d probably give up. But somehow, knowing that there is rough to emphasize the smooth, makes it all more worthwhile.
(side note: I was very puzzled by your original comment of kids dancing on your head. But now that I live with an 8yo, it makes perfect sense! For some reason, that image really resonated with me, and I frequently use it to keep myself going.)
Sometimes a depressed wallowing is necessary.
But “All cookies flee from me right now” cracked me up so much that I snorted coffee out my nose.
Glad things are better now.
Glad you’re feeling better. Still cold and drizzly here. I have always liked fall too, but this year the weather has come increasingly unhinged in southern Indiana. We had a hurricane last fall and a 2 inch ice storm in February (with predictable effects on our beautiful woods).
No “October’s bright blue weather” for us this year-it has been like a cold rainy late November. I long for a crisp sunny day to work in the garden and yard and walk in the woods!
Until then I’ll feed the sluggish woodstove and crabby chickens, and remember to be grateful that I have all this!
So you say, you write this to let others know that they are not alone and I say the same thing to you, Sharon. You are not alone. But, you do a lot of great things that lighten the burdens and frustrations and enlightens the hearts and minds of others. No matter what you and your family are deprived of and this is an inspiration to those of us with even less.
I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better, Sharon. why is it that everyone I know in Real LIfe or the internet is really down down these days? I know there is plenty of cause but it seems that everyone at once is that way. Usually, some of those I know are up when I’m down a vice versa.
Thanks for this place, Sharon and you and your readers!
Peace to Us All,
Shamba
Bad Sharon. Spank spank. You went and made me want chocolate.
@ Shamba,
You ask, “why is it that everyone I know in Real LIfe or the internet is really down down these days?”
I can imagine one reason - many of us feel abused by the President and Congress. They seem to be deliberately doing things to hurt us, they treat us as if we were stupid - they clearly have no respect for us. They ignore what some of us feel is important.
The lunch I bought at the local store for $4.50 last year is $7. Even without a soft drink tax, prices are up from 40 to 60 cents a 12 oz bottle or can. Including bottled water.
Working part time at the movie theater had few perks - free movies, movie passes for friends and family, free popcorn and drinks. That came to a halt last week.
Congress is apparently letting Obama’s union guys take over - and override the Right To Work laws passed by some 22 states.
The local veteran’s counselor at Job Services started a newsletter for veterans. Jobs dried up, retraining programs are oversubscribed, and Congress responded by making states pay another 14 weeks unemployment. States, I should note, that are already adjusting to reduced levels of revenue. Too bad that isn’t hampering our First Family.
Crop reports are mixed - some good, some bad, lots of corn and beans picked wet and dried - that is, consuming large amounts of fuel gas or electricity to do what might have been accomplished in the sun in the field - or the crop lost altogether to vagaries of weather. So, if farmers are often going broke, corn seed set to rise from $220 a bag (bushel equivalent for planting purposes) to $300 a bag for GMO/patented seed - the Big Three have bought out and closed down almost all their competitors, and credit of all kinds shrinking - how can we not presume that next year will see fewer farmers able plant fewer acres? Which means less food in the world.
Yes, open pollinated corn and other heritage preservation sources are still available for small scale use, that could expand in time to replace GMO seed. But the market and distribution channels have already been reorganized to handle all seed as if it were patented . . by the big three.
We have major disagreements of truth, belief, and policy being played out on national drive-by media. Diametrically opposed beliefs have most everyone being ridiculed by someone.
At the same time that the USDA is touting their “Get to know your famer” localization program, Congress proceeds with the Food Safety Enhancement Act to strangle all food production, transportation, and storage entities - including farm side and road side stands, farmers markets, grocers, and anyone selling candy for people or animals.
Perhaps you have hear the (tasteless) one-liner, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
We have people distressed because others aren’t preparing for the coming troubled times, at the same time that others are peeved about doom-sayers and survivalist militia anti-capitalism tree huggers. We have people being called racist and bigoted because they criticize deliberate disrespect and untrue statements from others.
Thank goodness Sharon is already feeling better - she know the breadth and depth of the troubles facing America and the world, and the disarray of those that should be responding. Maybe she was just distracted by that “Easy on the eye” picture on PeopleOfWalmart.com.
Now I just finished reading an article on Wired.com that hard boiled eggs are getting tougher to peel. (It seems they get to the store fresher. Eggs peel easier after a few days.) I mean, the world seems to be falling apart, except it also looks almost like it has. But not like last year. Last year my thermostat was set at 62. Today it is set at 58. Will that last? I shudder to think it might get set lower. Shudder, lower, get it?
And, cloudy seasons like the last little bit, along with shorter days, shift our attention from building and growing to hibernating and waiting. Depression, especially fall-to-winter seasonal onset depression, might be an unrecognized natural response to the changing seasons. As more people retreat from the artificial brights and hots of the high-tech, single family dwelling, Double Income No Kids type of ideal life - we may need to find again what we should be adapting to, and not lamenting - or drugging ourselves - about not being “normal”. Normal for what, at this time of the year? I am not convinced we know anymore, as a culture.
Perhaps Sharon was nesting and adapting naturally yesterday, and today has retreated to the season-insensitive norm we have told, since the industrial revolution, is expected.
But if I had to guess about why your friends have been down - they had to pay their utility bills.
It may be a bit late…as I can’t read your posts every day…you see, all of this makes me sad…I’m not depressed. I’m sad. But, I keep this on the refrigerator and it helps, a lot. (thank you so much Wendell Berry…)
The Place of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the place of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
I hope its okay to print someone else’s poem…it has brought me back on a dark, dark day. I hope it does the same for you and your readers…
Yarn store?
You need some better fantasies!
For me, it’s a cold beer, and put the headphones on and pump some live Grateful Dead through them.
Sharon: I see that you have 30+ replies to this post, and I can’t respond to them all. Just know that you’re not alone in your questions, doubts and fears. It is so easy to slip into feeling isolated and alone and none of us needs to be in that space. Any thinking, aware person can see we are all in for a real shitstorm. I wonder what it will take for folks to come together and confront the challenges ahead. All over the world, people are rejecting the supposed wisdom of globilization and capitalism, both of which have proven to be bogus systems.
Like you, I’m susceptible to the momentary satisfaction of “shopping”…orgasm is, also, momentary—have you seen Rev Billy and his Church of NOT SHOPPING?????? But I do love to shop………….at my local gun shop!
These days, I’m putting my limited resources into garden tools, guns and ammunition. I aim to protect myself and my loved ones. Isn’t it amazing how many folks are beginning to feel this way? I long for the days when things seemed slow, long and peaceful. My fear is that those days are long gone. I can’t imagine any thinking person who isn’t trying to prepare for the change(s) to come. They will come, no doubt and no argument. Your degree of readiness and willingness to accept the change will pretty much define the scope of your life from hereon.
I wish I was more aware and ready. In fact, I’m scared shitless. As much as I thought I “knew”, I’m finding I don’t know near enough.
Thank you, Sharon, for broadening our knowledge and awareness.
Bill
Years ago when I was living a life of (mostly) voluntary simplicity I would have dreams of winning the lottery so I could buy some new underwear and socks. I finally realized I really could afford to purchase a few pairs of new undies and wool socks with the limited funds I had - I did not need megabucks!
Sometimes it is enough to know we can survive with far less than the standard american lifestyle, and how to do it. There is no reason not to keep a supply of escapist literature and a bit of chocolate on hand as well as extra underwear and socks! I shall not admit to the amount of yarn and fabric I have tucked away - it does make good insulation when stored in drafty corners. Going through older stored items can be as much fun as shopping if your memory is bad enough!