Dodo Bird

Jeff and I have been busy sewing the seeds of love so the blog has taken a bit of a back seat. And, to be perfectly honest, I have been a little engrossed in obsessively watching Season 2 of Thirty Rock and downloading Tori Amos songs. I am sure there is a connection there, but it certainly escapes me.

Remember when Gweneth Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love? Remember her speech and that pale pink gown she wore? (Remember how you could see she had no breasts at all and she looked sort of ghostly thin?) I read shortly after that, she fell into a deep depression. The report I remember reading said that people were constantly telling her that she should be so thrilled because she just won the coveted prize of her profession, but she was depressed.

That little vingette reminds me of something my friend Karen said the other day. With complete earnestness, she said, "I am getting everything I want in my life, and I am totally depressed." Most people who heard her say that laughed at the recognition of life's great irony: getting what you want make induce depression.

Believe me, when I come face to face with my creator one day, the first thing I will ask about -- after getting to the bottom of the why a benevolent creator would create a world where morning breath exists-- is why the depression after getting what you want most in the world?

Can you see where I am going with this? I have wanted to settle down with a great guy since my early twenties. I am in my mid-thirties now. The man I am marrying exceeds every single fantasy and vision and dream I ever cooked up. For the love of Moses, the man is building me a 14 foot closet with his own two hands! And, this weekend, I felt a lethargy and a depression. I was thinking it was the gray, 32-degree weather. Maybe it's hormones. Maybe it's premature wedding post-partum. Maybe it's stress. Trying to figure it out just makes me more lethargic. The point is that any fantasy that marriage will fix my moods or change my personality has gone the way of the dodo bird (See above).

So, instead of searching on-line for the perfect sunlamp or an "all natural" antidepressant -- exercise has worked just fine for me-- I am just going to lean into the feelings. I also know I have a pattern in my life that before something amazing and transformative happens (like, say, a wedding), I have all the negative feelings that are not "normally" associated such such events, like depression, or loneliness or sadness. Then, when the actual event finally arrives, I am seized with such joy and such jubilation. After the fact, I always feel happy that the more negative-seeming feelings came first so I could go through all of that to "earn" my joy. The slight hitch in that formula is that before the joy hits, I can only assume that it's coming. I have to take it on faith that come wedding day (or, God willing) rehearsal dinner day, I will be in possession of all the joy that my body and mind and heart can handle.

Til then, I think I am in good company with Ms. Paltrow and the other people similarly affected by such malaise.