Back in the Pool

I feel like I'm on the verge of that drowning feeling again. I recently read a post from a blogger who also struggles with depression about how she has been teetering, wondering if she's fallen back into depression. Her descriptions of the endless slew of negative thoughts and feelings both overcome you and leave you wondering if you're actually feeling depressed or stressed or what.

I'm not sure what it is, but the stress of crazy days at work, managing a home that's not mine, saving money for a wedding, planning and doing for the wedding, planning and nightmare-ing about the parents and the wedding, and this nagging cold/bronchitis I've had for 2 weeks now (wah), I feel overwhelmed. Or I'm on the brink of overwhelmed. Sometimes I have a premonition of myself, balled up and crying, trying to escape and cleanse all the negativity, but it hasn't quite exploded yet. Is it about to? I'm not sure, but it sure feels looming.

As if a stereo was blasting white noise and I just couldn't find the "off" switch, feelings of nervousness and anxiety, worries that things won't get done, and fears that I won't be worthy or successful crowd out any joy left in me. Sleep no longer brings rest, and I feel like I'm waiting... waiting to let a breath out... waiting to open my eyes to some relief.

Everything inspires more anxiety. The absence of a smile. The addition of a project. The ringing of my cell phone. The notice of a new email. Why do I think it's all out to get me?

Happy Tuesday.

Nicknames

Muffin. Honey. Honeybuns. Babe. Baby. The boy and I used to always mock couples who have nicknames like these for each other. We always thought it was way too cutesy for us. Individually, we didn't really have nicknames ourselves either, with friends or with significant others.

Of course, having said that, we do have names we endearingly called each other, but we would NEVER utter them in public. So they don't exist...not really. Right?

The other day, the Czar sent me an e-mail just saying hello. That part I could get over. It was surprising but not overly so. The ending was what got me. He called me a nickname that roughly translates to "cutie" in English, something he probably hasn't called me in more than 15 years.

It was a one-line e-mail, but I thought about it again and again over the next few days. A nickname is such an intimate thing in my mind, and "intimate" is not how I would describe my relationship with him.

Maybe I've already told this story here, but it just goes to show how much it's stuck with me. I think the feeling of being a "Daddy's Little Girl" is one of the sweetest dynamics of a father-daughter relationship, but it's one that I'm not familiar with. When I was very young, probably 5 or 6, I remember watching a baseball or football game with the Czar. In typical fashion, I laid my head in his lap. But this time, he told me to get up. I wasn't to sit with him that way anymore. I was too old. The effect was like road rash. It burned and it scarred, and it changed things. It was breaking ground where a huge chasm would continue to grow between us.

So when the Czar called me "cutie," it brought me back to a time where I was Daddy's Little Girl, a short-lived time but a time that did indeed exist. So it IS true. That DID happen.