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The most difficult part of trauma and depression is how unpredictable it is.

I had an entire day of activities planned and I woke up sobbing. 

It was the kind of crying where I didn't even feel like I was the one crying. 

But rather the crying had a life of its own and was having me. 

And I had no choice but to let it consume me.

I've been sad before. 

But there's always been a reason, a simple cause and effect, and I've understood what I was feeling and why. 

I've known it was coming and could prepare and adjust accordingly. 

What's happening to me now is so erratic and inconsistent, it frightens me. 

I cancelled my brunch plans and am now laying down with a blanket and a book and my cat watching the leaves dance outside the window. 

I know why I'm sad, at least partially the cause, but I'm at a loss as to why it's effecting me so intensely in this moment. 

So there's no way to prevent it or even anticipate it. 

Because it has a life of its own. 

That's the difference. 

Sadness can be controlled and understood. 

Depression breathes its own chaos without any effort on your part. 

And I fucking hate it. 

I don't currently have a solution except to give in when it gets like this.

Cancelling my plans, though it wasn't what I wanted, did have a calming effect, so I guess the cancellation was what the depression wanted. 

I feel almost like I could name it, my depression.

And it would be a him, because it feels so very unfamiliar to me another female would never cause me such consuming confusion. 

And then to cause even more lack of understanding, I feel angry.

Angry for feeling so profoundly unhappy.

So I feel unmotivated and have only the energy to lay on this couch and then some other part of me resents me for giving in. 

Like I've failed and lost some war and while the depressed part of me is grateful to only lay here the angry part of me shakes its head in disgust and wonders why I don't get up and fucking do something. 

So I can't win. 

This war in my mind pulling me in conflicting directions. 

This self doubt and disgust and confusion. 

And all I want to do is sleep.

Sleep and dream of times where my mind was balanced, when I could wake up and have the day I'd planned instead of waking up blind from the amount of water pouring from my eyes. 

And I don't know what to do. 

I don't know which part of my mind I'm supposed to listen to. 

Who to give in to. 

And that only adds to the exhaustion of such confusion. 

No wonder people who are depressed are always so tired. 

We never get a break from ourself. 

Our contradictory, chaotic, inconsistent self.

Happy Sunday, indeed. 

In C Minor

I'm not really sure what put the idea in my head.

Maybe it was reading about music and what it does to the brain.

Maybe it was listening to so much Rachmaninoff.

But I suddenly decided what I want to do.

What I want to pour my energy into.

I'm going to learn to play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 2.

It's been my favorite since I first heard it in my twenties.

I've heard it live.

I've listened to it countless times.

I've always thought that if I was ever going to get married I'd walk down the aisle to my favorite part of the concerto where the music is dramatic and grand and really if you're going to parade in front of a room of loved ones and strangers in an insanely overpriced but fabulous gown I can't think of a more appropriate soundtrack than the intense drama of this piece.

I wrote a paper on the concerto in college because I was fascinated that it'd been written out of a mad depression because Rachmaninoff's previous work had been such a failure.

He locked himself away with his suffering and wrote this.

And it's incredible.  

The piece is entirely beyond my skill level. 

Laughably so.

It's the equivalent of me cooking all of Julia Child's recipes when I can barely make toast or sending a V10 on the bouldering wall when I poorly send a V1.

It's just really fucking hard.

Insanely, monumentally hard.

I don't even think I'm fully aware of the level of its difficulty.

Miraculously, (like it was meant to be or something) I actually found the sheet music free online the next morning.

I printed it off, all 37 pages.

Thirty. Seven. PAGES.

Do you know I don't even know what year it was the last time I taught myself how to play something new on the piano.

No, wait, I do.

It was 2008.

I was living in Rhode Island and it was because they paid me to play the piano so I had to learn the music for the show.

Since then I've only ever played piano music I'd already learned.

And now I was going to learn something new that was insanely difficult.

We already knew I was crazy. 

Ambitious maybe?

No, probably just fucking nuts.

The thing is, I was so excited I went home on my lunch break and spent the whole time playing through the first few pages. 

And when I got off work I sat down and started playing right away again.

And even just the few hours I played today my painfully slow tempo has increased. 

Minutely. But it's the teensiest bit faster.

That's the hardest part about trying to learn this. 

I already know what it should sound like and how fucking fast it needs to be.

Hell, I can sing it.

But I can't play it. 

Yet. 

I know it's gonna take me forever to learn this. 

Like weeks upon months upon I can't even imagine how long. 

And even once I finally do learn it it's not like I'm going to have the orchestra playing with me that makes the piece really great. 

But I don't even care. 

It feels incredible to have something to pour my energy into.

To have a goal for myself. 

To already see a minutia of growth on just the first day. 

And it even feels poetic.

Because just days after he took away his music, music that was bringing my mind peace, I found my own. 

I'm making my own music. 

And it's the calmest I've felt in a long time. 

I spent hours today working out just four pages, at a fraction of the tempo it needs to be, still not trusting the notes I was playing or the placement of my hands or even the fingering I was using. 

But I started. 

I started and I can play the opening chords of one of my favorite works of music.

And it took me thirty four years to realize I can love something desperately and revel in it entirely by myself. 

I guess sometimes losing the people you love really does make room for something else great.

And this time, the greatness would be in me.

Rachmaninoff's masterpiece brought him out of his depression. 

Maybe mastering it will bring me out of mine. 

fantasie impromptu

One of my girlfriends talks about herself as two very distinctive people: who she was before the trauma, and who she has become after.

For her, the differences are so great it's as though she really is a completely different person.

And I realize, on a smaller scale, that's how I'm feeling.

I have no desire to date.

I restarted my Tinder app but not because I really want to go on any dates but because I felt like it was what I should do.

Those fucking shoulds.

Amelie was on a date one night this week and I was at home listening to Chopin with my cat reading about amusia.

I had no desire to switch places with her.

I haven't had sex in two months.

If you'd have asked me what I'd be like going two months without sex earlier this year I'd have said I'd be one cranky bitch.

But I honestly haven't even noticed. 

It was only stumbling upon a particular conversation and realizing it's already half way through October that I even became aware of how long it's been.

The last time was him, which makes me feel like he has some power over me but I suppose it's my choice not to share my body with anyone else for awhile.

It's just a very un Reese thing to do.

She's apparently in hibernation.

Maybe she'll awaken in the winter? 

Or perhaps the spring?

The spring was such a sweet time of year this year. 

Two years in a row, actually....

What used to make me feel better isn't what I crave anymore. 

The introvert in me seems to be taking over. 

I've been listening to Beethoven and Chopin and Rachmanninoff and it's making me want to play the piano more.

So much of my identity has always been the people I surround myself with. 

And lately I've been wanting to surround myself with music and books and maybe one or two girlfriends and that's it. 

I feel strange. 

But fascinated. 

It changes you to lose someone that you love.

Especially when that someone is still very much alive.

Just no longer a part of your story.

Or even a part of the music you listen to.

You don't have that either.

You have nothing of them.

But your memories.

Hazy, confusing, but partially perfect and sometimes so very lovely memories. 

I can be a little fucked up

I'm in love with my therapist. 

She's kind of a ball buster. 

She told me she's being a little hard on me because she thinks it's what I want. 

And it's true. 

She said if she was being incredibly easy on me she'd say much more, I can see how you'd feel that way's.

I told her I don't want that at all. 

So she said, Ok then, stop judging yourself.

Apparently I'm too hard on myself. 

It's peculiar to have a stranger figure out so quickly things you weren't even aware you were doing.

I didn't want to tell you that I talked to him, I admitted.

Of course you talked to him, she replied too quickly. 

Then we just stared at each other.

That was kind of the moment I fell in love.

I don't know why it took a gun for me to finally seek out a therapist but it's really kind of wonderful.

Maybe if I'd started seeing a therapist after my first abusive relationship when I was 19 I wouldn't have begun dating a string of withholding, unavailable, manipulative, narcissists.

Maybe I'd be married with three kids.

HA.

But seriously. 

It's comforting to have someone in my life trained in what the fuck is going on with me. 

I told her about this vivid nightmare I had, and I never remember my dreams, and this one was in such detail.

And I thought it was so strange for it to suddenly all come up so vividly. 

And she said I'm right on schedule. 

Enough time has passed that the shock has dissipated and my mind has a little space, and is now trying to work it out. 

And here I thought I was just bats.

Everything is more complicated now and there are still very real parts of me that want to cling to things that remind me of my hopeful 20's.

Because I think that naive girl is still a part of me.

At least I really want her to be.  

Redemption, Reese, you want everyone to be redeemed.

And maybe they will.

Maybe they all will.

Wouldn't that be grand?

mermaids, i choose mermaids

There are tears stuck behind my eyes but they won't come out.

They remain so my eyes have this constant sadness, even when they're happy.

Sometimes when I take a deep breath it feels like I'm wearing a corset, because my lungs just stop and won't fill with any more air.

I was reading and listening to Chopin and all of a sudden a memory flashed in my mind.

Can I read to you? 

I was curled up beside him as his animated voice poured through the pages.

It was such a simple thing, really, and somehow, we'd never done anything like it before. 

It was the last hour before I had to leave to go to work and I remember being so exhausted because we hadn't slept a moment.

But also feeling so happy.  

So stupidly, profoundly happy that he wanted me there, that he had let me into his world, his books, his thoughts, his dreams.

I'd wanted to cry from such sheer joy.

And after I delighted blissfully in that moment there suddenly flashed a more recent one. 

The last time he'd let me into his world his words were so different, his thoughts, his speech, everything.

I remember very quietly asking, as though it could possess the power to restore us, if he wanted to read to me. 

I held my breath in hope the seconds it took him to answer.

No, was his reply. 

And I wonder how differently the night would have gone had he simply said yes.

Yes, I will read to you.

My darling.

What would you like to hear about?

Mermaids or unicorns. 

You can only choose one.

I choose...

Both!

You can't have both, you can choose one.

I'm a unicorn.

Yes, you are.

I choose unicorns.

This is a really good book. 

Yeah.

The book of symbols.

Read me some more?

sweets for the troll

He reads my blog.

He's reading this right now. 

Or will when curiosity gets a hold of him. 

Or because I told him not to. 

I realize now asking him to not do something is really like saying, oh please please do it, because we subscribe to the same Don't Tell Me What to Fucking Do! Logic.

That wasn't actually my intent, though.

See, I made a mistake.

7 weeks pass and I feel a tinge of kindness overshadow my fear. 

So what do I do?

I communicate it. 

And what does he do?

Rejects it. Violently. 

I don't know why I'd never thought to Google him (I'm a bad stalker) but one night I did and I found all these songs back from when he was a kid. (Which actually wasn't that many years ago)

And it was really wonderful because they were songs he'd played for me, months back, when things were wonderful and magical and I couldn't believe how happy I was just laying in his sheets. 

So hearing the music again felt like some sort of time machine. 

It let my brain exist in a memory that didn't cause my hands to shake, and it felt incredible for my thought life to exist there. 

For the first time in months. 

And I don't know, I guess I knew my friend going into his bar and throwing a drink upset him (even though he deserves worse) and I wanted to provide some minuscule fragment of comfort because that's the sappy woman I am and I just wanted. 

I wanted, whatever communication we were to have. 

If there would be any. 

To be kind. 

Loving truth. 

I'm a naive little fucker.

So I sent him a text. 

And I told him I'd found his music and I just wanted him to know listening to it made me really happy. 

And he responded that he'd made it private now so I could no longer listen to it. 

And I know it shouldn't have, but it surprised me. 

I shared this joyful secret of mine, that it comforted my heart to listen to his voice singing mournfully as I folded laundry in my living room. 

And all he wanted was to take that thing that brought me joy away. 

I guess it was one more thing for him to destroy.

And then.

THEN.

He texted me that he'd just read some of my blog and was upset about what I wrote. 

He quoted something I'd written the next day which meant he'd continued reading my blog. 

So. 

It was unhealthy for me to ask him to not make his music private, music he'd shared publicly for years. 

But it was his perfect right, to go seek out my blog, and read that, and then be upset about what I'd written, even if he admitted my words were, albeit some true.

I find our interaction so disheartening. 

Because one. 

I truly believed I'd never hear from him again. 

But instead of replying to my kindness with kindness, he was responding to be hurtful.

He actually told me to Move along.

When I read that sentence I was so stunned I put my phone down and refused to respond. 

Move along??

W O W.

I am offering a loving interaction after the literal hell he put me through and that is his response. 

N O O O.

I saw Amelie that night and told her what happened.

And when I got to the last part I said, NO. Nooooo.

And she laughed and said, That's the girl I know.

She told me once I didn't realize how much I said that. 

No.

When I'm making an important point or standing up for myself, for what I believe, when I feel I have been wronged by someone I love. 

I always say, NO.

One time when I was walking late at night alone to my car and my PTSD creeped in and tried to frighten me into an anxiety attack I said, No. No. No. No no no no no. NO.

And surprisingly. 

It worked.

So I told her I'd sent him a No text. 

Because while I don't want to have anything to do with any negative interactions with him, I also can't stay silent when something is important. 

And this probably sounds ridiculous but I've gone back and reread the text I sent him so many times. 

Because it comforts me. 

It comforts me knowing that I responded to hate with loving truth. 

It comforts me that I said exactly what I needed to say and I called him out on his shit. 

He told me once he hated that I called him out on his shit and I don't care. 

Men need to be called out. 

We all do. 

But especially men. 

There's this pressure on women to be so fucking agreeable all the time and when someone is lying to my face I am going to tell them I know exactly what they're doing. 

Feigning memory loss is a great tactic when you don't want to deal with something. 

But I am a force to be dealt with. 

And if you don't have the strength to be honest, you will never survive the winds of my loving truth. 

That shit will knock you DOWN.