Last night was a tough one for me. I can’t figure out why it happened, but I suddenly started thinking about my ex-girlfriend, a person who devastated me more than twelve years ago. I had no reason to think of her. I’m very happily married to the most wonderful person I’ve ever known. I have a beautiful daughter. But out of nowhere, this woman was in my head and wreaking havoc, snaring me in a negative thought circle, a significant aspect of depression.

The last time I even had contact with her was over four years ago. She messaged me on Facebook after I’d posted that my beloved cat, Zeeb, had to be put to sleep. We’d adopted Zeeb together, and she wrote to send her condolences. I never replied. In fact, I immediately blocked her, the anger and pain still present deep in my gut. It’s possible I haven’t thought of her again since around that time.

But there she was in my head last night, and I can’t identify the trigger. I started wondering if she was better off than me. Better job? House? Money? Happiness? Around and around it went. I know she’s married and has kids. She was seeing someone within a month of dumping me and got married soon after. I know through mutual friends that she has kids. My wondering soon changed from wondering to irrational knowing. She must have an important job. She must have a house. She’s rich and happy. Great family. She has it all. That she has scleroderma, a chronic and progressive disease that hardens the skin and internal organs, never entered my mind.

Around and around. I lay next to my incredible wife feeling angry at and jealous of a person who’d hurt me so long ago. At one point I left the bedroom to hug Minky, the cat we adopted after we’d lost Zeeb. I needed to hear and feel Minky purring. I lay on the floor with him, his purr soft and rumbling. It didn’t help. I went back and took a melatonin, spurred a few more rounds with preposterous resentment, and coveting and eventually fell asleep.

I woke up shaky and sad and told Elaine about my night’s troubles. She hugged and comforted me because unlike this person from my long-ago past, she loves me. I still don’t know what triggered these thoughts, but I do know that I got caught in a negative thought circle and I couldn’t get out myself. I’ve been working on getting myself out of these circles for years because all they do is reinforce the negative feelings you have about yourself, but I still have great difficulty even when presented with irrefutable evidence of my irrationality (see my wife lying next to me and my daughter soundly sleeping down the hall, her soft sighs ever so often coming over the baby monitor). I feel better now, but the ex is still at the corner of my brain, trying to lasso me back. But I won’t let her.
Instead I’ll think about the nice brunch I had with an old friend and his family, the movie I’m seeing in a couple of hours with another old friend, and in between, I’ll hug my wife, play with Sienna, and tell them both how much I love them. And the next time I find myself caught in a negative thought circle, I’m going to break out this blog.

Elaine’s maternal grandmother passed away a few days ago after long battles with congestive heart failure, cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc. She was 94 years old.

While emotionally wrenching for Elaine and her family, Sienna’s been a bright spot. Each day before the wake and burial (there was no official funeral) Elaine would come home only wanting to hold her daughter. Thus we decided to bring Sienna to the wake this past Sunday to help Elaine, her mother and I get through the day (we didn’t bring her to the burial figuring she’d probably want to jump in the hole).

I’ve only been to a couple of wakes and I find them eerie and uncomfortable; the Jewish custom is to have a closed casket. I also don’t do well with death. I find it unbearable to feel or hear my own heartbeat and can’t understand why singers describe listening to their lovers’ heartbeats as romantic. If I’m in a position where I hear or feel Elaine’s, I have to move because it just reminds me that she’s going to die one day and that’s something I can’t take.

I bring this up because of what happened at the wake. Sienna was the perfect antidote, of course. Elaine’s mother was thrilled to see her and showed her off to everyone who came to pay their respects with Sienna smiling, saying “Hi!”and waving to all of these strangers. Elaine clutched her daughter when she needed to as did I since everyone was speaking Spanish and despite taking 7+ years of it in school, I have difficulty following rapid-fire conversation. Sienna was her happy, energetic self, climbing up and down stairs and running in circles, but eventually she got bored and I had to improvise. Inside the funeral parlor were two huge fishtanks, so I brought her in to look at the fishies. She was fascinated and commanded me to put her down. Immediately she climbed up a bunch of boxes to get a closer look at the fish. That’s when I noticed the boxes were labeled with names. That’s when I realized Sienna was climbing on top of people’s remains! I snatched her up and brought her back into the lobby and told Elaine what happened. I’m not sure how we felt about it. Hilariously creepy? Disturbingly funny? It even gave Elaine’s mom a laugh and my parents thought it was hysterical, though also weird.

The more I think about it, the more I realize it was the juxtaposition of life and death. Here you have this little girl.the embodiment of innocence, someone wholly unaware of time passing, of finality, happily climbing a stack of boxes containing people’s remains just to get a glimpse of some fish. For those of us who know the world, it’s both funny and strange because it’s so difficult for us to comprehend death, and, since we know of the world’s dangers and our own mortality, it’s just as hard for many of us to understand the purity of life.

In the past, because of my depression, this would have had me seeping into a pit of despair. But for some reason I’ve been able to know in my heart and gut and mind that I need to treasure this time in Sienna’s life. We all need to venerate this time in our children’s lives because it’s so very short.

Excuse me while I go hug and tickle my daughter.

Forgive me. It’s been almost a week and a half since I last blogged.

I have been dying to blog about “Breaking Bad” and what it means both to me and to the pop culture landscape for weeks, but I’ve been scared to do so. This has actually been keeping me up at night – sometimes until 4-5 AM. My biggest problem is that I need the blog to be perfect which is completely irrational. I’m not writing a book. I’m not writing an article. I’m writing a BLOG the whole idea of which is to get my thoughts down and let them go into cyberspace.

I’m worried that people will think my opinions are wrong. I’m terrified that I won’t be able to fully articulate my thoughts and feelings about what I consider to be a landmark show, the best drama I’ve ever seen and arguably the best in television history. It’s almost ironic in that in wanting to write about Walter White, I’m acting like Walter White; every word, sentence, thought, opinion must be exact leading to a flawless blog.

This is not my first battle with perfectionism. It took me years to be able to write anything because I constantly edited myself. I remember going through Europe just after college, trying to keep a journal, but failing because I felt like I was a writing for an audience instead of myself. I used flowery language and deep thoughts to bring the most inane things to life rather than capture what I was seeing and feeling. I was still writing about day 1 on day 3! By the end of the first week, I’d given up. Now my memories of the trip are somewhat jumbled, and I look at photos and can’t remember what I was taking pictures of (I’m bothered by this sentence and tried to think of better ways to phrase it, but I’m leaving it as is).

I’ve been battling perfectionism in writing for most of my life, much of it caused by internalizing compliments about my so-called “creativity” as insane pressure. It wasn’t until long after my last breakdown that I started putting my raw feelings on Facebook and eventually this blog without constant rereading and revising. Now I feel like I’m stuck again, that I have to write this brilliant piece about “Breaking Bad” that will be picked up by other blogs and shared all over the world. It’s not supposed to be this way.

I hope I can one day slay this dragon, but I don’t believe I will. More important, I hope that soon I’ll write this blog about “Breaking Bad” because I feel that until I do, I won’t be able to move on blog-wise. Plus I so want to share my feelings on the show!

Perfectionism is truly evil.

I thought I knew fear, but I didn’t. Not until last night when Sienna was choking. The entire incident lasted 35-45 seconds, but it’s going to be with me for I don’t know how long. I’m trembling as I type this, so please forgive spelling/grammatical errors.

My sister, her husband, my parents, Elaine, Sienna and I  had gone to brunch to celebrate my mom’s 65th bday. We then headed back to the house for a bit. Sienna didn’t nap until a little after 3. She woke up around 6 screaming from hunger; she probably hadn’t eaten since 12:30/1. She was inconsolable, of course. I tried to give her Cheerios as Elaine got some real food ready, but she pushed the Cheerios away; she wanted something more substantial. Elaine came in with a warmed-up plate of leftover pizza cut up into little pieces and Sienna grabbed for them, wolfed them down. Elaine then heated up some corn and Sienna went after that too as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Suddenly she was choking. No sounds. Really choking. Mouth wide open. Eyes closed. Tears forming. Hands to her neck and mouth. I saw the pizza sticking from her throat. I tried to get it, but Sienna’s flailed. I yelled for help and Elaine came running. She ripped the tray from the highchair, yanked Sienna out, fell to the floor with Sienna on her belly over knee, and somehow got the pizza out. Sienna cried as if she’d just been born. I sat frozen throughout. Helpless. Elaine broke down and would break down periodically over the next few hours. I think I cried a little, but mostly I was in shock.

Sienna was fine once she stopped crying. She refused the rest of the pizza, but went right after the corn. I shakily fed her a jar of food and some applesauce. It was like nothing had happened for her. She was right back to smiling and laughing and babbling.

My little girl was choking and it didn’t even occur to me to get her out of her highchair. I was too scared and stunned. I just yelled for help. I didn’t know what to do. I can’t shake this feeling that if we’d been alone, she might have died. I can’t stop blaming myself.

I told Elaine she was the hero and I was the paralyzed onlooker, but Elaine said she got lucky the pizza was still sticking out of her throat, that she’d blanked on what to do. Her reaction was instinctual. She kept saying she was lucky. We were both very, very lucky. And then she’d break down again.

It was the most traumatic 35-45 seconds of my life. I almost lost my beautiful little girl. I’m ok, but I’m not ok. Sienna’s laughing and crawling or all over me, showing off her stuffed monkeys, but my impotent calls for help sear my mind. I see Elaine struggling on the floor with Sienna. I see the coughed-up piece of pizza on the floor. Sienna’s cries ring in my ears.

This was terror like nothing I’d ever experienced. As we lay silently in bed a few hours later, each of us reliving the experience, Elaine and I reassured each other as best as we could, but we both knew how close we came to losing our little girl. We we were lucky. Elaine said we should take a child CPR class. I’m with her.

I don’t know when this feeling will go away. Sienna’s life already has returned to normal. I don’t know when mine will, when Elaine’s will. I don’t even know what normal is. For now I’m just clutching my little girl extra tight.