We had always wanted to go to this revamped bowling alley nearby. We heard the rumors of virtual reality video games and food there being top notch. Then we checked the prices. Twenty bucks for one game of bowling. Everything was set in motion, we would wake up, go bowling, play some video games, eat some great food and let off some steam while acting like a bunch of oversized children. On the 16th, we arrived at our destination, tickets in my wallet ready to play. We walk in the door to be greeted by a huge abstract sculpture of a bowler. Immediately on the right was the virtual reality we heard so much about, to the left was the restaurant. We sat down, and admittedly our eyes were bigger than our bellies. The menu had options for someone like me, who is gluten free but misses the gluttony of being able to consume a whole pizza. They had items for him who needed to be meat free on Fridays. We both ordered pizza, mine gluten free with my usual black olive, pineapple and chicken. His; a large veggie pizza. His pizza was glorious, it had every vegetable imaginable on it from artichoke, to peppers. Mine was presented on a flat pizza pan. His was presented on a metal stand, much like a trophy worthy of the winner of the Triple Crown, gleaming in the dimly lit restaurant, light reflecting off the greasy cheese. As I was finishing the last few bites of my pizza, I looked up to realize he had only eaten half of it before he was full. This is abnormal for him. I started to not feel well, throat sore and beginning to ache all over my body. I looked up badly wanting to join the baby-boomers listening to oldies and celebrating strikes in the alleys. We somehow managed to make it to the gaming area. There I knew I could sit and rest while he had fun playing some of the more physically intense games. We had fun but my body was tired. It was time to go home. His pizza was in the fridge for a couple of days. I was at home sick. It just sat there, tempting me to eat it, but I knew better. The gluten would send my already dizzy head from the cold into a further downward spiral. Avoiding it, I had to look for other options. Needless to say I consumed a lot of the oatmeal as it was soothing my throat and warming me up while I was running a fever and having chills. My husband came home from his job hungry. He heated up some slices of his illustrious bread dripping with marinara and veggie goodness. I was sitting on the bed watching some unimportant show on my tablet. He sat down and when both of his hands were occupied trying to settle in to eat I snagged a piece of artichoke. My eyes were on the screen of the tablet again, with me keeping visuals on the location of his pizza in my peripherals. When both of his hands were occupied once more, one holding the plate, the other feeding himself, I stole a black olive slice. He then uttered the words I will never forget. Yes, because you can walk into any restaurant and they will have entire menus written on their hipster chalkboards about how their oatmeal has components that were free range and raised in a good home. Yes, because there are hordes of restaurants dedicated to the many various ways you can prepare oatmeal inventively and consistently make new and traditional dishes from it. What is something you and your significant other have had a disagreement or funny moment over? Some might even label them modern day parables. The agony was very real, and not in a lovelorn way, but in a rather small, but violent way. A bit of back story… It was 1991, living in small town America there had been growing concerns of the Gulf War and how it would affect the future of not just our nation but the world. Operation Desert Storm ended quickly in February with a surplus of American flag pins. Everyone had one in their pocket, or in my case, in the pencil holder of my desk. By the end of March my childhood concerns of recycling, rainforest deforestation, pollution and war were quickly dashed by surging teenage hormones. A new boy had come to town, and lucky me the new seating arrangement in class forced him to sit within reaching distance to my right. As you can imagine, as some of you have seen my 7th grade picture, my self-esteem was not very high. This was the year of V-cut bangs, which when tackled with a hot iron looked like a neatly curled tumbleweed resting on top of your head. All of the girls in class reminded me of how lucky I was to be sitting next to the new boy. All I remember is sitting there nervously in a shirt that I thought looked Hawaiian and cultured, but really it was just covered in red and purple fruit. I was nervous and not old enough to vote, but this process was much easier leaving little room for rigging. We had library after recess, again the girls in class reminded me of my good fortune. All I remember was when the bell rang at the end of the day on Friday I had my first boyfriend. Next came the hard part. When I got home I had to tell my parents. Their alarm and concern immediately made me wonder what was wrong. I explained innocently it is when a boy and girl decide they want to stand next to each other in line at the water fountain, talk during recess, maybe sit on the swings near each other and possibly hold hands in line. An immediate sign of relief was displayed on my parents faces, they returned back to being happy and at dinner time dad made sure to tease me about having a boyfriend. By Saturday night, the pressure was too much. What if I wanted to work for Green Peace? What if I went to Africa to help other starving 11 year olds? What if I went sailing with Jacques Cousteau to save the whales? Sunday night I settled into bed with the mindset of conclusion and finality in this relationship. After the first recess on Monday it was done. We had officially broken up. Apparently a few days after we broke up he already had a new girlfriend. Not only was she new, but she was also very pretty. Something ugly began surging in my body. When the teacher had to excuse herself from the classroom, I decided to make a move. It was a move of revenge, not just for me, but to do something for all of the wronged vengeful American women and teen-agers. I looked no further than my pencil holder and found my American flag pin. While the teacher was out I waited for my former boyfriend to get up out of his seat. He of course got up to do something mischievous as the teacher was out of the room. Before he sat down I jokingly placed the pin in his chair where he would see it. Which he quickly handed it back to me smiling as the class watched. Just as he was in mid-air about to sit on his chair I thrust the pin where I knew his rear-end would make contact with it. Bear in mind, I watched a lot of cartoons. As he shot up out of his chair, the teacher entered the room to find him bent over, stumbling to her desk while he was fondling his backside trying to find what became stuck through his blue jeans. The class was stunned and immediately I felt guilty when a classmate ratted me out. He was being the better person in all of this. I never got in trouble from the teacher, something tells me maybe she had enough of the mischievousness too. What silly guilt have you carried for a long time? This month I started my first round of anti-depressants. This may come as a surprise to some of my family and friends, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. In 2008 I first noticed a dip in my energy levels, and several changes happening with my body. I went to an OBGYN to see what the situation was and if she could help. This was my first and last visit with her. At the end of my visit she prescribed me a low dose anti-depressant claiming she was excited because it was the first one she could prescribe without having to give me a referral to a psychiatrist. That night I took the meds along with some antibiotics. My body had a violent reaction. It felt like I was coming off of a drug rather than trying to start something to make me feel better. I had to quietly rock myself back and forth on the couch to stave off the volatile queasiness in my stomach while my family played a board game in the background. The next morning my body rejected the pill. As I slept through the night and I slipped into unconsciousness I could no longer rock myself back and forth. Upon waking up, everything bubbled up inside of me. When I could finally open my eyes, there in the wretched former contents of my stomach lied the pill I had swallowed the night before. The coating was gone, but the pill remained. This started my fear of prescription medicines. At that particular point in time, I finally found a doctor who figured out I had low T-4 hormones in my thyroid. As it turns out, having low thyroid hormones can also cause you to go into depression. This was the first doctor who listened to me and what I had to say. As an added bonus, she was also the one to discover I had two sizable tumors on my thyroid glands as well. For a while, the new thyroid medicines worked. Then slowly the energy drop came, I had the bouts of feeling horrible, and inevitably, as a result of the depression, it felt as if I only had a few people in my life who understood what I was going through. Later on as I was going through a divorce a friend introduced me to boxing. Boxing was a saving grace for a while. I tried kidding myself. I tried telling myself that I just had to deal with issues. I just had to get through it, push through and it will all be fine. Eventually I completely shut down and became anti-social. I quit talking to friends who had initially helped me through my first mess and then for some reason anxiety developed and there I was again, curled up in a ball on the hand-me- down forest green couch which crawled out of my child hood and into my adult hood with me. I was in denial it was depression. I had a few doctors try to tell me I was clinically depressed but refused to believe them. So I moved back home. I moved where it was safe and not a whole lot of people I grew up with knew everything I had been through. If my divorce was the earthquake, then the drinking was the tremors. I was ashamed my life had turned out the way that it had. I felt like a huge disappointment to everyone in the big city. So, I moved home. After moving home, my friends from childhood and my parents helped bolster me back up. My spirits became raised and even though I was geographically distant from my friends and family in the big city, my communications with them became stronger and they slowly understood the purpose for moving away, self preservation. After I moved home, a slew of other problems had started to take place. The job I was offered was now on the line due to unforeseen circumstances, so I immediately started searching for another job which I still have! About a month after getting the job, my Grandfather passed away, the month after that one of my best friends passed away. Things were looking pretty grim. It was as if life had sucker punched me, waited for me to fall, and then kicked me in the stomach while I was lying on the ground. For a short time life became good again, things were going well at work, I started dating my husband and shortly after we were married, my brain went berserk. Old things crept up. I started struggling with thought processes again. As I sat there, I could pin point all of the good things going right with my life, yet if a Freight Liner ran me over or a T. I have no explanation for feeling this way. Again I was ashamed. It took me months before finally breaking into tears and admitting to my parents what was going through my head and that running in front of a truck was going to feel better than anything that had passed through my mind. Then as life would have it, my brain started playing tricks on me. It started feeling better. The dark thoughts went away but were replaced by restless sleep, phantom aches and pains in the body. The desire was there in my heart to go out, do my boxing routine, do the laundry, clean the house, but my mind had other plans. My mind demanded that I be tired and in pain 16 hours out of the day. It demanded I felt as lousy getting out of the bed, as lousy I had crawled into it. Last month, my mother was perusing a website for a family member and stumbled across some medical information. All my symptoms sounded like Fibromyalgia. As a shot in the dark, I was desperate to do anything to feel better. I was willing to do anything to return back to the bubbly woman my husband fell in love with enough to marry her. I was desperate to be the friend my besties remembered who was the one you could always count on to make them smile when they were going through a tough time. I wanted to be able to focus on others rather than focusing on myself. I made and went to the appointment last month. She agreed it could be Fibromyalgia, however Fibromyalgia can go hand in hand with depression. The short version of the long story, she prescribed me anti-depressants. At first, I was dumbfounded. Even after I had told her the story of the pill coming out the same way it went in, she still suggested taking the medicine I had been dreading. Reluctantly that night I took the pill. What did come up was three short rages of emotions, one in which my husband for the first time saw all the rage and anger that needed to work its way to the surface. The only thing he could do or anyone could do in that moment was stand in the kitchen and witness me screaming and cursing profanities at nothing particular while kicking a sandal I had just tripped on because I thought it had spited me. We decided to wait a month and see how the medicine was working and if the Anit-depressants would help things in the meantime. Then my husband had to talk me down. Another small burst of tears came later in the day, and then I was done. By the way, did I mention all of this happened on his birthday? This is a true testament to his character, he understands what it is like to feel pent up anger and rage and not know why. He understands that sometimes you have to get things out in order to feel better. He understood me…he too suffers from depression. Then I realized shortly thereafter, I was an Ogre. Once the pain started fading, I had a jovial conversation with my Mom and then separately with my Husband, they both said the same thing. With this medicine, there will be layers removed that have been built up over time. No matter what caused it, whether it was self imposed or caused by things in life, it will just take time, and for once I laughed during conversation. Luckily, I have people in my life now I am not afraid to show what lies beneath those layers. They understand I am not always the happy-go-lucky person everyone used to think I was. I try to be that person, I want to be that person, but it is going to be a while in getting back to that person who is no longer jaded by life or a victim to her own brain chemistry. If being an Ogre meant having layers, then that meant sharing similarities to other wonderful things like, Onions, or Parfaits. What have you gone through that you have had a hard time admitting to yourself you needed help? How did you go about getting help? The other week I caught a whiff of something, it was a me back to 1994. It reminded me of a particular perfume I used to wear when going out with a particular boy. Even more so, it reminded me of the trouble my friend had gotten into the very night we went on a triple date. This was a new experience, somehow she caught wind of this shindig from some of her friends and then told myself, one of my other best friends and the person I was dating at the time about it. Even though we dressed the same as we did at school, here we were free to be ourselves and feel good about our social experience no matter how horrible we were at slow dancing. In preparation for that night, I set my other bestie up with a guy friend of mine. I get nervous when hanging out with other people no matter how well I know them; I never wanted to be the smelly kid. My date and I arrived at the lodge, which from the outside looked more like a temporarily built corrugated metal building. My date was wearing his faux cowboy outfit he obviously was trying to completely reinvent himself and I was wearing my favorite wool plaid dress which looked like a Piet Mondrian painting. In order to complete this look, my friend and I purposely wore mismatched socks featuring Sylvester the cat on one and Snoopy on the other. Even though we were mismatched, we at least matched each other for fun. Topping off the mismatched socks we also wore Birkenstock sandals. Yes dear readers, we were awesome. We made our way inside to find our friends dancing, and boogying down with many other teenagers in a dark one room area lit with Christmas lights. The MC was quite a bit older than the rest of us and burst out some dance moves none of us had ever seen before. The more he danced the more we egged him on to keep going. It was at this point his hip or back gave out on him and he gave up dancing for the night. Shortly thereafter the party kind of died. The next week I
