Becoming Sunny

"Sunny Day Sweepin' the clouds away, on my way to where the air is sweet." I've also heard "Keep on the sunny side always on the sunny side, Keep on the sunny side of life, It will help us every day it will brighten all our way.  If we keep on the sunny side of life" a lot!

My mom named me Sunny Elisabeth Clark.  Everyone assumes that my parents were hippies but they were not.  First, they were a little bit too young to be hippies.  Second, they lived in the Midwest and attended religious boarding academies.  There wasn't a lot of cultural "room" be a hippie.  They did have long hair and bell bottoms, but I think pretty much everyone under 30 did prior to 1980.

However, there was Avon.  My mom happened to be flipping through an Avon catalog, browsing the jewelry, perfume and lotions when she noticed the president of Avon was named Sunny.  My mom really, really liked that name.  So, I became Sunny.

It's a funny thing growing up with the name Sunny.  I get complimented on it all the time, people want to meet me because of my name and I have endured endless jokes about it.  The most common joke was "Is your brother's name Moonie?"  My somewhat snotty reply was usually "No, he is not a naked butt."  At least that is what I said starting at about age 11 when I was annoyed by whom ever was making that joke for "like the MILLIONTH time."  And singing, as you have probably guessed, I get serenaded a lot. I am always super impressed when someone knows a song with my name in it that I haven't heard before.  I have had thousands of comments like "Oh! How sweet, you must be just like your name!"  Um, no.  It is one of the great ironies of my name that I am not always like my name.  In fact there have been significant periods of my life, long periods of my life where I was completely unlike my name.

I have depression.  If you want to be specific, I have Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, Moderate to Severe (atypical symptoms), With Full Interepisode Recovery, With Seasonal Pattern.  Depending on who is doing the diagnosing, though, my diagnosis can also be Bipolar Affective Disorder, Type II, Moderate, With Melancholic Features, With Seasonal Pattern. 

You probably didn't notice, because you are not sitting here with me, but I just took a giant psychological leap back, put myself into doctor mode and distanced myself from the pain of having all that while having the expectations associated with my name.  And by admitting that, I stepped back into the pain.  It is very, very painful. 

I have two types of depressive episodes- lethargic, sad, guilty, tired, self-hatred, crying, hyposomnia (sleeping lots and lots), avoidant, ahedonic (not feeling pleasure), and amotivational (not motivated).  The second type is agitated, irritable, restless & angry added on top of the symptoms of the first type with out being so tired.  I have the first type of depression in the fall and winter.  I have the second type in spring.  How the party doing the diagnosing categorizes the second type of depression,  determines if they think I have Major Depressive Disorder or Bipolar Affective Disorder, Type II.  It's a grey area and is open to interpretation.  There is a lot of stigma attached to Bipolar diagnoses because those are the people that are often considered "crazy."  I am aware of the stigma but the diagnosis isn't what is painful, it's the experience, so I don't care what label I am given.  Plus, I am a doctor so I get that it is all from a chemical imbalance anyhow.

Did you see how I did that again? I went into to doctor mode.  It's easy, it's safe and I am much more comfortable in it.  When I am in my doctor mode, I am Sunny.  I am bringing help and hope and relief to people.  In fact, I am most comfortable in whatever mode I can avoid certain parts of myself.  When I am interacting with friends, I am Sunny.  When I am with my daughter & husband, I am Sunny. When I am with my extended family, I am Sunny.  When I am with my coworkers & colleagues, I am Sunny. 

If I am not managing my symptoms or I hit that self-critical piece of myself, I would probably be better named Stormy.  Even when I am managing my stuff or I am in place of greater self-acceptance, I am never, ever a morning person.  Moonlight or Starshine would be much more appropriate.  My brain chemistry has also gifted me with a couple sleep disorders, which set my biological clock to be a "night owl" and create a need for at least 9 hours of sleep a night.  My name is a misnomer on multiple levels!

I recently received feedback from someone I am acquainted through a Facebook group.  Part of the feedback included a comment about how I didn't match my name because I was critical of myself.  Well, yes, exactly.

I generally do a pretty good job of leaving that aspect of myself out of my day to day life.  It hurts when it is noticed.  It makes me feel anxious and ashamed.  And when I write, it leaks out. It leaks out all over the place.  And while I like writing and I want to write more, I avoid it.  I don't make it a priority.  I do so because writing creates leaks for areas I need to work on.  Greater self-acceptance, creating space in myself for something just for myself, feeling like it is okay to have something in myself just for myself, all come to mind.  For someone who was taught that self-sacrifice was the greatest form of love, doing something purely for myself creates a lot of angst.  I already have a lot of angst to begin with.  A lot of un-Sunny-like angst. 

Some of that self-criticism derives from the chemical imbalance in my faulty, amazing brain.  The rest of that is because of ingrained attitudes about myself that I picked up in my childhood.  I can explain the origins of some of those attitudes and I believe that some will forever remain a mystery. 

Regardless of the cause between my mismatched name and myself, the current struggle is that developing as a writer means putting stuff out there.  Well, that's not so fun, when you are leaky.  It requires courage and determination and willingness to be vulnerable.  I am not always super willing to be vulnerable but I am courageous and determined.  So, I will use those things to push me into vulnerable places, which will force me to confront the leaky stuff, which will then move me to a better place.  I will inevitably hit other areas of vulnerability and continue the cycle.  My life will always be a process of becoming Sunny and letting Stormy go. 

Reconciliation vs. Refrigerator

Time for a confession...my husband and I are legally separated.  Yep, as in one step prior to divorce type separation.  And at this point, we have opted to wait on reconciling. There are more important things on our agenda.  If I were to pause and ask what those other priorities might be, guesses would likely be to attend couples therapy or decide if we really love each other or something maritally relevant.

Nope.  Mainly we are delaying our reconciliation for a new refrigerator.  So, my husband and I are choosing a refrigerator over altering our marital status.  Based on that snapshot, we totally sound like people who should just go straight for the divorce!  What kind of people want a refrigerator instead of reconciliation?  Very, very romantic people.  People who got married for tax purposes in the first place!  People who got legally separated to buy a house! People who have a new house with a very old, leaky refrigerator!

Well, technically, I do not own this house.   My husband owns this house and the leaky refrigerator.  I live in this house and we call it "our" home but that is a big fat lie.  It's totally my husband's house, I own all the furniture.  That's how we divided it up in the legal separation.  Except we didn't actually have the house when we separated, just the furniture.  Technically, he got nothing in the separation.  He was however, able to rid himself of my horrible, horrible credit.

Are you thoroughly confused?  So was the realtor and loan broker.  The family law lawyer wasn't confused at all.  She totally got that I was an ignorant, my person who didn't get a lawyer in the first place when I got a divorce from my first husband.  Because I made a stupid choice, my divorce documents were not written out correctly.  They were correct enough to ensure that I was no longer yoked to my first spouse but not correct enough to remove me from the mortgage of the house I owned with the aforementioned first spouse.  Which wouldn't of been a problem for my credit, except for the lovely human being that is my first husband decided it was good idea to stop making payments on the loan.  The bank didn't think it was a good idea and my credit score dropped by about 400 points.  That was an exciting time in my life!

So much for the plans to buy a new house.  There was no way that was happening with my credit score.  At this point, having a wife was more of a ball and chain than usual for my poor second husband.  Not only could he not date other women, my husband was stuck in a less than desirable abode.  No wonder we separated!

Seriously, though, we couldn't buy a house when we were married.  My poor credit made it look like I was "too risky" for a bank to approve a loan for me and because of the laws in Washington, my husband couldn't buy a house without my credit being taken in to consideration.  So, we figured out a work around.  The work around was to get separated and have my husband buy the house.  We could of just gotten a divorce, but despite being incredibly reluctant to get married in the first place (i.e. hands gripping the steering wheel until the knuckles were white and focusing on my breathing as we were driving to the court house to get married kind of reluctance, reference first marriage), I didn't want to get a divorce.  I felt sad and as it turns out, I liked being married the second time.  Choice of spouse obviously makes a huge difference! 

People were kind of horrified.  Initially, I was kind of horrified too, but it beat the heck out of getting a divorce.  Especially since in my county divorcing parents have to take a parenting class.  How fun! Local child psychologist in a parenting class!  It sucked having to make major life decisions based on the fact that I was dumb (as in ignorant) 6 years prior when untangling myself from a very unhealthy relationship.  It sucked that my ex-husband was intruding on my present life.  It sucked to have no control over my credit.  It sucked.  The whole thing just sucked.

Enter the work around.  Separated in September 2012, husband was pre-authorized for a loan in October 2012, house hunting commenced November 2012, offer on house accepted December 2012.  Move in date: December 31, 2012.

We have the house now and the house I owned with my ex-husband that was ruining my credit sold in a short sale (hallelujah!).  All the reasons for separating are now gone.  People keep asking "Are you married again, yet?"   The answer is, "No, because we want to buy a refrigerator!" It costs about $400 to file the paperwork to reverse the separation.  That goes a long way towards defraying the cost of a new fridge!  It seems like it is in the better interest of the family to go with the appliance.  Our anniversary is November 29th, I suppose I could always file the paperwork as a surprise anniversary present! Because, I am romantic like that, right?

Moral to this story- 1) Lawyers are important, 2) Lawyers are important, 3) Lawyers are important.  Well, no, not just that.  While I don't believe that all things happen for a reason, I do believe that good can come out of anything.  This whole scenario forced me to be patient, to develop greater trust in my husband, confront issues related to my ex-husband, and educated me regarding laws about marriage, divorce & property.  It also caused me to delay gratification, which has heightened my appreciation for our new house. I really, really like our new house.

Of all of those, developing more trust has been the greatest gift.  By virtue of being the second, my husband got handed a lot of baggage that wasn't his to begin with.  I didn't have much faith in marriage in the first place, given that the divorce rate in my family was about 80%. I didn't want to deal with divorce as an adult.  I was pretty full up being a child of divorced parents.  I took a risk on my ex-husband because he seemed "right."  I had developed this idea that if I did everything "right," I could end up with a good life.  The "right" spouse was someone who was from a family with no divorce, well educated, good work history, long term friendships, no substance use, shared interests and shared beliefs.  My first husband matched all of the above.  He looked good on paper and his family looked like something straight out of Norman Rockwell. What he kept hidden rocked my world and shook my faith in everything, including my ability to make good judgements.  What I had left was a pile of rubbish.  

Enter my second husband.  We started dating approximately 30 seconds after I left my first husband. (What can I say? When I am done, I am done.)  I had so much baggage I needed a pack mule, so dating wasn't the wisest choice on my part, but I was done with doing everything "right."  I had so very carefully attempted to live my adult life "right" and got burned.  So, I was just going to start doing what I wanted to do.  What I wanted to do is date the total sweet heart that is the man who became my second husband. I decided to screw what what was "right" and so called "reasonable."  So I jumped, both feet first, into a relationship toting all this baggage and a pack mule.

Lack of trust was probably the biggest of the bunch.  Lack of trust in marriage, men and most importantly, myself.  When your judgement has been so epically poor it is hard to have much faith in yourself.  I came to terms with the idea that I made the best choice I could with the information available to me.  When I got more information, I made another choice.  Those choices brought me to a life I love.  So, I did gain confidence in myself and in my husband.  Confidence enough to have a baby with him and then marry him when the baby was 8 months old.  But, not enough confidence to be entirely anxiety free, remember the white knuckles on the steering wheel?  I shed much of the baggage and no longer needed a pack mule, but like a miser, I hung on to bits and pieces. 

Back to the house and the work around.  This, clearly, is not the "right" way to buy a house.  It is not wrong in the illegal sense, but it is certainly non-standard!  Getting separated allowed us to buy a house, but it required that I relinquish all control of the process and have faith in my husband's decision-making.  I wasn't involved in (read: in control of) the loan process, the real estate stuff, home inspection, nothing.  My role was only to offer opinions on properties.  Control is something I have used to alleviate anxiety in the past and it wasn't going to work here.  Control as a coping strategy has limited utility, as I learned in my doing everything "right" phase.  It is a place that is easy to slip back into, however.  I needed to let go and go with the flow.  And I did, and we landed in our awesome house, where I sit now. 

Okay, I guess I should say my husband's new house.  But, remember, it's my furniture, so the combination makes it our home! Now, if we could just find a darn refrigerator....

Poem #2

Run, child, run!
With freedom nipping at your heels
like a mongrel dog.
Joy coating you like dust from the gravel road,
left with imprints from your little feet.

Dance, girl, dance!
With intensity twining around your arms
like fingers of smoke.
Uncertainty dangles like jewelry from your mom's bureau,
left with imprints from your young hands.

Love, woman, love!
With anticipation pulling at your mouth
as if by magnets.
Passion stripping you clean to the bone, your body
left with imprints from a man's lips.

Birth, momma, birth!
With strength emanating from your womb
the inner super nova.
Dedication cloaking your soul,
left with imprints from her little feet.

-S. Clark 10/05/13

Liquid Breath

liquid breath of the Pacific Northwest
paused, for a moment
falling drops, drizzle, downpour
begins again, drenching
autumn leaves
glistening ruby, russet, rust
drift down, dressing
forest floor
softening land, loam, loess
sit silent, absorbing
liquid breath

Small Unauthorized Mammal

This is not my cat sitting on my husband.

My 17 year old brother, who by virtue of his age, is a little drain bramaged, err.. brain damaged.   He brought home an unauthorized kitten.  An authorized kitten is trouble enough, but an unauthorized kitten is another thing all together, especially when said unauthorized kitten is found when one is going into the aforementioned brain damaged person's room with the expectation that it is free of small mammals.  In other circumstances, this would be a reasonable expectation, but NOTHING is a reasonable expectation when it comes to the 17 year old male homo-sapiens.   He keeps his clean laundry in his bed, and leaves his dresser empty.  His dresser is used to pile dirty dishes.

So, small unauthorized kitten waltzes out into the rest of the house.  This delights my small girl child and her slightly less small friend.  They proceed to pop the kitten into a laundry basket and haul it around the house.  These are very pleased small girl children.   The promptly named him Skittles, because "he skittles around the place."  I, for my part, do not name the kitten, because to name the kitten is to own a kitten.  For a variety of very legitimate reasons, I am not interested in owning a kitten.  If I had wanted a kitten, I would have brought one home myself!

The dog, Kona, also appears delighted.  She is doing the whole play bow routine and bounding around the house.  She was 120 lbs of pure joy.  She has probably named the kitten, she loves the kitten, she loves everything, everything is made for love!!!  At some point, our adult female cat Shzung, is exposed to the small mammal.  She most definitely has not named the kitten, she hates the kitten, she hates everything, everything is made for hate!!! This kitten is not amused by any of this and does an excellent miniature version of "the Halloween" cat, arched, puffed and hissing.  He really seem unimpressed with all of us, as if he could be picky.

Fast forward a few (writers note: unauthorized kitten just jumped on the lap top and stomped "000" into the middle of this sentence) days, the small mammal is stalking around the house, attacking ankles, bossing my 120 lb dog away from her food dish, chasing Shzung into the basement, trying to eat my cereal, licking up left over spaghetti sauce, and generally owning the place.  Meanwhile, my brother has named the unauthorized kitten "Jack," but "Only if we get to keep him," says the brother.   Ha!  We're not even sure we want to keep my brother!

So, back to the kitten, what I have found very intriguing about him is that he doesn't seem to realize he is small.  As far as he is concerned, he owns me, my house, my animals and my family.  He is offended when I don't allow him on the kitchen table, or to dig his claws into my calves, or dash into the back yard, or pick on Shzung.  Which has lead me to a thought.  What would life be like if I didn't realize I was small?  Not small in physical stature (which I am, and I totally realize that.  The only thing being unaware of my physical stature would lead to is constant frustration that I was inexplicably unable to reach the top shelves) but small as in limiting myself or my ideas about what my life might be.  What if I stopped limiting myself?  What would I do, what would my life be like, what would I do with myself?  What would you do?  I am going to take an art class. 

There is a Basketball in the Bathtub and Other Thoughts on Parenting

Written in May, 2009

I am an expert in parenting, which I find hilarious because I have one child, she is only two years old and she watched 11, eleven, episodes of Dora the Explorer today. She watched 253 minutes of animated television. You don't have to be a parenting expert to think that maybe, just maybe, 11 episodes of Dora is about 10 episodes too many for a two year old. But it goes to show that parenting, like many life experiences is not what you expect. It is not even not what you expect. It is some other animal entirely. An animal that lives in some other universe that your feeble mind could never in its wildest dreams conjure up. I knew she would be her own person but I expected her to be, well, a little more like me but a lot less like me. Who knew I was so freakin' stubborn and moody? Besides that random genetic component (Aden, I am so sorry you have your father's skin and your mother's short legs, I'm sure you'll learn to cope. If not, there is always therapy, I can make some good recommendations.), the other wild card is your co-parent, someone who grew up different than you, has a different idea about what is important and in my case is NOT a parenting expert. He is awesome with her but we have wildly differing philosophies at times. My husband's happiest childhood memories involve movies and he probably spent 3/4 of his life with only the TV or his thoughts as companions. He has a sleep disorder and it has invovled many hours awake while the rest of the world was asleep. Given that frame of reference 11 episodes of Dora is completely fine, in fact, it is probably beneficial. After all, it is educational. And then there is food. Or rather, the food our daughter eats. I do not consider PBJ's, cheetos and popsicles to be ideal toddler food. I want her eating green beans, pasta and milk. She knows what is in a donut box and I had to move our small stash of chocolate because she remembered where we kept it and would help herself. She said "coke" before "Poppa." Her mother, who tends to be more of a health freak and less of a junk food junkie is afraid the battle for healthy eating habits will by lost. Who can compete with High Fructose Corn Syrup? I love screaming fits because she wants to have the 3rd popsicle of the day. It all just goes to demonstrate STRONGLY that I am not really in control of anything, which is why there is a basketball in my bathtub. Control freak here thinks all play things should be carefully stored in their designated spot. Just to be clear, the bathtub is not the basketball's designated spot. Control freak also did not buy the basketball as she tends to buy toys that are developmentally appropriate. A WNBA-sized basketball purchased before the child could walk doesn't quite qualify as developmentally appropriate. But, "what the hell?", I say. Aden likes it and its fun to have in the bathtub apparently. So, I am trying to make sure we hit the high points (treat other's with respect, etc, etc) and assume that, in the words of my friend Martha, "She won't be doing this when she is 15."

Haiku