Andrea Wilson Woods' Blog

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10. You watch Lifetime movies.

9. You like Lifetime movies.

8. You watch Lifetime movies even when you don’t like them.

7. You record Lifetime movies.

6. You watch enough Lifetime movies to know that the ones on the Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) are always better than the ones on the regular Lifetime channel.

5. You get genuinely upset when your cable provider has a dispute with LMN, which seems to happen every six months.

4. You know what Pick-a-Flick Fridays are.

3. You IMDB the actors in a Lifetime movie because they look familiar only to discover they have been in other Lifetime movies that you have already seen.

2. You watch two LMN movies in a row and don’t realize you have already seen both of the films until the end of the second one, yet you don’t care that you have wasted four hours of your time on a Friday night.

1. You lie down, watch four Lifetime films back-to-back, and after eight hours you cannot recall the plot of any of the movies. Oh—and you forget to eat. Or you eat an entire bag of chips. Or a pint of ice cream. Or both.

AWW — XoXo

Posted under Entertainment & Health | 1 Comment »

Most Americans spent this weekend celebrating Thanksgiving, which means eating turkey, watching football, and visiting family members whom you rarely see. However, I look at Thanksgiving as the 20-mile marker in a marathon. My muscles throb and my joints ache, but I am in the home stretch toward the end of that terrible time between summer and winter. You see, fall is my least favorite season.

One factor is that my sister Adrienne died on October 9, 2001, but even before I lost her to cancer, I often found myself depressed after my birthday (i.e., August 15) until around December 30.* The leaves may change colors, but the days shorten, the weather chills, and the holidays begin. When I walked into Michaels last week, I saw the Christmas decorations and heard The Nutcracker piping through their speakers. Seriously? We haven’t even passed Turkey Day yet.

Given my hostile reaction and less than festive spirit, I examined what bothers me about the non-stop holidays throughout this season:

• I like dressing up in costumes, but Halloween was Adrienne’s favorite holiday. Enough said.
• I love pumpkin pie and stuffing, but Thanksgiving holds no sentiment for me. I also hate to cook.
• I like decorating a tree and receiving gifts, but Christmas began losing its magic when my mother told me that I needed to wrap my own presents. I was ten years old.

I’ve thought about the many autumns over the past 25 years, and my mood has always dipped significantly with some exceptions. The fall of 1990 was one of the happiest times of my life because I had just moved to Los Angeles to begin my first year at USC. The fall of 2006 I married and started graduate school within a two-week period—a joyful yet stressful time.

I find it interesting that my “happier” autumns relate to school, and I am an excellent student. As a teacher, however, I dreaded returning to the classroom. I didn’t want to become “Miss Wilson” again—the mean lady with two primary rules: work and respect. The stern woman with the loud voice who had to repeat herself a minimum of three times hoping that the students listened at least once, or their parents might blame me for not giving specific instructions. I only taught to be on Adrienne’s schedule; I never expected to be good at it. Even though I like kids, being a constant disciplinarian exhausted me.

I also don’t like fall because as a child I never wanted the summers to end. I loved staying out late playing under the streetlight in our cul-de-sac. I loved swimming at the local pool and at Kerr Lake. I loved my birthday even though friends often missed my parties because they were on vacation. I liked playing baseball with the boys, basking in the sunshine, selling lemonade, and living for another day of adventure. Summer meant freedom. Why would anyone want it to end?

I wondered if I had Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I know someone who moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles because he was diagnosed with SAD at a young age. He needs sunshine more than he needs seasons. I may be sad, but I don’t believe that I suffer from SAD because I can tolerate winter under certain conditions.

• I don’t mind dealing with low temperatures in Mammoth because I like to ski—the only purpose for snow.
• I found my dream house during the coldest, wettest, nastiest weather in Gold Beach, Oregon, and it hasn’t deterred me from wanting to live there one day.
• My husband and I went on our honeymoon in Australia during the end of fall. I wore my black wool peacoat everywhere, and the chilly air and cloudy skies didn’t bother me except when the rain ruined our photos.

Besides the above anecdotal criteria, I don’t have many SAD symptoms including oversleeping and overeating. In fact, I can’t sleep right now without medication and I continue to lose weight despite forcing myself to eat. It’s simple: I don’t have SAD, but I feel sad because this time of year sucks. I am counting the days until New Year’s Eve.

AWW — XoXo

*I realize that technically autumn begins with the autumnal equinox and ends with the winter solstice, but I define my “Funky Fall Blues” by my own dates. As my ex used to say about Adrienne and me, “They play by their own rules.”

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Ever since I heard the expression “Depression is anger turned inward” I have wondered what actually causes depression because that statement seems not only simplistic to me, but it also does not apply to my situation. Finally, I asked my very experienced psychiatrist what he thought, and he listed three major causes of depression: Loss, Genes, and Anger.*

Loss
Look around you and think about how much you could lose and how you would feel if you did. You could lose your loved ones (e.g., death, divorce), your money, your house, your job, your self-esteem, your dreams, etc. You could lose your material items. My grandparents’ house burned to the ground when I was a child, and they lost almost everything—except their photo scrapbooks. When I touched the albums’ charred edges, I understood why my grandfather grabbed them at the last minute despite the smoke that must have been choking his lungs. In that moment, I fell in love with photography because even if you lose a loved one, the camera captures their images and preserves your memories. If our home suddenly went up in flames, I would save the three P’s—people, pets, and pictures—in that order.

Genes
Unfortunately, we have no control over our genes, and our genetic makeup can determine our predisposition to mental illnesses such as depression; schizophrenia; and bipolar, personality and anxiety disorders (to name a few). Sometimes, I feel like I could throw a dart at the DSM-IV, hit a diagnosis, and name someone in my mother’s family. However, many people never develop any mental issues despite their DNA. In some cases though, people who appear to have perfect lives (e.g., no losses) may still develop a mental disorder due to a chemical imbalance in their brains. I am not saying people are not responsible for their behavior, but understanding the cause is crucial to treating the problem especially since our society often self-medicates in order to feel better. (Hope you’re listening, Miss Lohan!)

Anger

Ahh … anger … the cause of depression that I don’t fully comprehend. Sure, I feel angry sometimes, but I don’t walk around hating myself. I may not be perfect, but neither is anyone else. I don’t always make the best decisions. I am often too blunt (you wouldn’t believe how much I really restrain myself), but overall, I possess a good heart. If I care about you, I love you with such depth that if I tried to explain it, I fear my emotion would scare you. However, that pendulum of intense passion swings both directions. Don’t piss me off because I don’t get mad at myself. I focus my anger on the person who upsets me so I didn’t get the whole “Depression is anger turned inward” concept until I witnessed it a few weeks ago.

In a support group that I occasionally attend, a man whom I’ll call Richard has to be the most self-loathing individual I have ever met in my entire life. On an intellectual level, Richard understands his depression, that anger causes it, and the source of his anger. However, he still believes the cure to his self-hatred is the right woman’s love. Now I’m sure his numerous therapists and psychiatrists have explained to him that no one will love him until he loves himself. Richard has attended support groups and self-help meetings for years. By all appearances, he participates in his “recovery.” Although he did give one female shrink an ultimatum that if she didn’t love him, he would leave her. Guess what happened?

I have only met Richard twice; yet, I know more about his personal life than I should because Richard dominates the group. He twists every topic back to his desperate search for love. When I offered that people often meet someone when they are not looking, but there is nothing wrong with trying, he made a snarky comment about me being married. After gritting my teeth and chewing my lip at the last meeting, I realized I had to find another group. If I ever see Richard again and hear him whine about how a woman will fix him, I know the devil in me will say, “Go jump off a bridge already, will ya? I hear no one survives the Golden Gate. I’ll even drive you there.” Terrible, I know, but at least I direct my anger toward the person who deserves it.

I cannot empathize with Richard, but I should sympathize with him. However, my inability to do so reminds me of the many people who don’t understand the cause of my depression. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard “Get over it” or I’ve seen those unspoken words reflected in someone’s eyes when I cry over my sister Adrienne. Nine years? Seems like yesterday to me, asshole.

I won’t return to that particular support group. I mean, who needs chipped teeth and chapped lips? But seriously, I don’t want to be one of those people who says something horrible to Richard. I wonder though, if I angered him, if he could stop being mad at himself—if only for a moment.

AWW — XoXo

P.S. The photo of the house on fire is not my grandparents’ home, but it closely resembles it.

*These causes of depression are my psychiatrist’s experience, and he listed them in this order of common occurrence: Loss, Anger, and Genes. After some research, I discovered that physical factors (e.g., hormonal changes) can also cause depression. For more information, visit Web MD Depression and the Mayo Clinic.

Posted under Adrienne & Health | 1 Comment »

I want to apologize upfront for this extemporaneous, stream-of-consciousness blog entry—especially since it has been more than a month since I have posted and this material is not at all related to my Learning to Love LA (again) series, which I promise I will finish.

I was sitting here on my couch watching the news, and I remembered a funny story from my first year of college. My roommate whom I’ll call Julia asked me, “What’s your major?”
I responded, “Journalism.” At the time, USC had one of the best journalism schools in the country and I had written a brilliant bullshit essay to get into the school. Getting my degree in broadcast journalism at an expensive university was easier to explain to my father than my true ambition—to be an actress.
Then Julia asked, “If your major is journalism, how come you never watch the news?”
I spoke before thinking (a bad habit in my youth), “I hate the news; it’s depressing.” When I saw the look on Julia’s face, I realized I had no business taking that spot in the journalism school. I dropped out the next day and changed my major to theatre. My father was not pleased when he found out, but that’s another story.

The funny thing is … now I watch the news all the time. I am a News Junkie; it is my drug. I watch CNN, Fox, even MSNBC. I read The Week, an awesome magazine that provides all points of view on a variety of subjects. I can tell you when I started paying attention to the world—when my sister Adrienne died. You see, I was so busy pursuing my dream, trying to earn a decent living, and later being a parent, that I didn’t make time to watch all of the ugliness around me. (At least that’s my excuse.) Maybe my conversation topics at dinner parties were limited, but I have always gotten by on my smile and my charm. I knew I was the ditzy, funny redhead of the “group”; in fact, my friends often compared me to Lucille Ball. “If only you could get your own sitcom,” they would say.

I liked playing that role. I miss That Girl. Goofy, ignorant me didn’t know anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it didn’t bother me even though my former-roommate-turned-best-friend Julia was Jewish. Hell, it didn’t bother her either because Julia loved being the super-intellectual. Her favorite phrase was, “Does that make sense?” because we dimwits could not possibly comprehend her level of genius. The difference between Julia and me is that I knew I was smart but I never felt a need to prove it. I was comfortable being Lucy because in her shoes, the world was beautiful.

Ever since Adrienne died, I have been trying to figure out who I am. Being her parent gave me an identity that completed me, more than anything I have ever experienced in my entire life. Having that taken away from me—having her taken away from me—I struggle every day to find not only my identity, but also some beauty in this ugly world.
I found a butterfly lying on the ground in our backyard yesterday; it was dead. Perfectly intact, yet devoid of life. I lay the creature with its delicate yellow wings in our pomegranate tree because I didn’t want our dog Winston to step on it.

I don’t know if the butterfly is still there because I cannot bear to look. I need that brief moment of beauty to get me through the next week.

AWW — XoXo

P.S. I think I should stop watching the news or buy a pair of rose-tinted glasses. Either way, I’m open to suggestions.

Posted under Adrienne & News | 2 Comments »