vacation time!

not yet, but it's coming, soon. i've been so tied up, and tired lately, that i'm really starting to look forward to ten days off or so. the photo here is from the last real vacation i took, which was tremendously odd.

first of all, personally, i was having one of my more serious times with my bipolar. the ubiquitous They had decided it was time to try a new drug, and there's really nowhere better than the middle of the wilderness to go through the side-effects for the first time. my entire nuclear family (myself, adult brother, and divorced parents) all crammed ourselves into an 280 square foot RV, and set sail for Wyoming (state motto: more horses than people!) it was an unusual trip, and i'd make it again in a heartbeat. even if i did have to sleep on the kitchen table.

if you want a really humorous take on it, oddly, in reverse order (from the end of the trip to the beginning) please visit the archives here, and find September 22, 2003. that's where it all begins. ends. whatever.

also, i'm apparently an attention whore, and i have some fantastic photos i want to share.

anyway, i'm back from the week from hell, and getting ready to begin the next one. i've just worked 7 days in a row, and in five more, i get one off. by my reckoning, that equals two days off a month. sigh. but it's all scratch for whatever adventure i'll be taking at the end of August. i'll find a picture of me in my browns, and you'll all get the firsthand experience of laughing until you want to puke. also, you'll be prepared for the nonstop moaning that the christmas season causes. ah, i love the transportation industry.

i want to thank all 5 of my readers for their continued belief in my sanity, and existence. you guys are the collective bomb.

FFF

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but in reflection not having any...

money for another pack of smokes should have been the bartender's first clue that i wasn't going to be able to pay for that sixth vodka either. it didn't matter. certainly not to me, anyway.

i stared into my drink and tried not to linger on any of the memories i had remaining to me.

everyday now, i wake up and know less and less of who i am, who i was. where i had been, or where i should have been going. waking up, and looking into the closet of a stranger. who wears these things? and looking around, finding no one else, realizing i must. wandering the halls, staring into the pictures of people in places, and not knowing their names. feeling that feeling when you pass someone on the street who is familiar in face, but you can't recall why, with every picture on the walls. the diploma with the name i assumed now was mine.

i only speculate that the things i call my memories are mine, and really, they're only flashes of deja vu. it seems like i've been to this bar before, and it seems correct that i should be wearing this dress, although i can't recall either of these things clearly before today. so i drink the drinks i think this person i am must like, and smoked until the pack was empty.

i haven't talked to anyone here, as i haven't any small talk to make. am i employed? i don't know. am i married? am i straight? do i like the music here? i don't know. i don't know.

and the not knowing isn't making me crazy, it's making me more invisible to everyone else here. people, as far as i can tell, are products of their environment and genetics, and i don't know any of these things about myself anymore, so i begin to exist less and less. literally. it is possible to feel translucent? when i looked in the mirror this afternoon, across the bar and slightly hazed with smoke and liquor, i don't know which reflection is mine. so i wave into the mirror, and look for the person waving back. was my hair that color yesterday? it isn't familiar. and i look at something at the bottom of the pond, something obscured and crooked by refraction and distance, and when it waves, i know it's me. without the mirrors, i can't remember what my own face looks like.

i'm not worried about paying for these drinks, because i came here to die today. i've died to the world already, and have died in my own memory, so it seems the next natural step. i want to break my own heart with this longing for something i can't remember, but even that begins to fade, and everyday wandering through the world without direction has lessened the longing.

i figured i'd smoke, because i found cigarettes and ashtrays in the house i woke up in. i found the pills, and looking them up, figured the appropriate dosage, when mixed with liquor, would make me translucent enough to fade completely away. i fondle the 'scrip bottle in my pocket like a lover, and hope that i can remember to take them when my liver is sufficiently crapped out from the vodka. i even wrote myself a note on the palm of my hand, in blue ink from a pen i found on the bar, that simply says "remember".

i stare into my drink and wonder why this is happening to me, and wonder if it's happening to anyone else in here, perhaps everyone? i try not to think, because all the logical paths in my mind go dead end somewhere. so it's moot to think..

if i could just remember one detail of any other day that didn't feel like a commercial, or a radio song, then i might reconsider. but looking at the note on my hand, i sense only the word 'remember' floating above the bar on a hand-shaped cloud of smoke. somehow, that makes me sad, somehow emptier. so i stare into my drink instead. and wave again at the woman across the bar from me, who has blue ink smeared across her palm.

but she doesn't look like she knows who i am, even as she waves back, so i stare into my drink.

busy busy busy

i'm so sorry all, i haven't had time to do any quality blogging. i'll be back in a day or two.

cheers,

AA

more on the supernatural

i have another story to tell. this one also deals with things outside of my common frame of reference (sorry, physics kicks in, and it's all relative), but is not creepy.

anyone familiar with carl jung and his ideas on dreams? jung says that we have two kinds of dreams, "little" dreams, which are as we know, a dump for the subconcious. "big" dreams, though, are an expression of the collective subconcious, and can have great meaning. jung also says that this is another form of communication, that, well..i'll let the story speak for itself.

when i was a sophomore, my mother's sister was in the hospital with leukemia. apparently, there are four kinds of leukemia, and she had the worst. it was a long, horrible summer, and the end was, in the end, inevitable. she did eventually succumb to the illness, and it was .. there are not words to say how bad this was for me. Susan did not have any children of her own, and as such, she treated my brother and i as her children.

she helped me buy my first car.
when i was in trouble with my parents, she was the one i would call.
she helped me to cope with the onset of womanhood, from being a girl.
she was one of my best friends.

in august of that year, she died. i flunked physics II that year, because i was unable to function at a high enough level to deal with all of this. i lost a close family member, too young. i lost my first great love. i flunked a class for the very first time. too much loss. too much pain. i was a little lost, and a lot scared. my roommate was living with her boyfriend at the time, so i had a lot of free time to sit and be with myself in my mind. i drank a lot, to cope, to sleep. to get over the guilt at having not been there all the times i wasn't. and one night, i had a dream.

i was living in a college apartment complex. not very spacious, not very chic. my bedroom had a window that faced west, and from the beginning of the night to the middle would let the moon in. one night i awoke, from someone rubbing my shin and urging me to wake up, very gently. i did, and when i could focus, i saw that it was Susan sitting at the foot of my bed. i recall being almost driven to tears at the idea that i had one more chance to talk with her. and we did talk, altough i don't recall about what.

and i was warm and comfortable in her company, like i had been so many times before. i insisted that she was dead, was gone, and she retaliated with a smile that said it didn't really matter. that just this once, it wouldn't make any difference where we were or what we were, and it made me simply happy. so i stayed curled up under the comforters, and talked with my aunt at the foot of my bed, who would laugh and occasionally slap me on the leg for something, some itinerant joke.

and then, somehow i knew, she had to go. the only part of our conversation i recall is the end, where she looked at me most sincerely and told me, it's okay. you need to go on with your life. and reluctantly, i agreed, i can do this, if you want me to. and she assured me, it's okay. and then she was gone.

when i woke, i didn't know what had happened. that is, i didn't know if it had been real, or one of my incredibly real dreams. i only knew that somewhere inside me, i had a feeling of peace where only a hole had been before, and i felt certain that it was okay for me to get back to me. that i could stop punishing myself. that there had been nothing to punish for.

is this one of jung's "big" dreams? did someone come back from wherever to tell me that they were okay? was it only a product of my subconcious to assume that i had been visited one last time by someone i loved? will i stop asking rhetorical questions?

i don't know. i only know, as with the last story, what i felt. i felt it was real. i could see her, see the moonlight reflect off of her round cheeks that so resemble mine. and more than that, i had comfort and i had closure, and that i couldn't deny.

so i leave it to you, humble reader, to decide what you think of this story. i will attest to my dying day that it happened, and that i felt it, and i know what it was. i needed something, and for the only time i can recall, the universe answered me. so if it was a dream, then please let me keep dreaming, and if it was a fantasy, then let me have more. and if it was supernatural, then please please, let the supernatural be real for everyone.

for susan, whom i loved very much.

once again

i'm totally going to rip off JJ. he posted a terrific scary narrative today, telling of his close encounters with the supernatural. i think i'll tell of a couple of mine. i was going to write about why i dropped out of school, but i can summarize: it's expensive.

once upon a time, i lived in lovely downtown lawrence, kansas. famed for it's basketball team and local shopping, there's another reason to know lawrence: stull. stull is a little bitty town about six miles outside of lawrence, unincorporated, and purportedly home to one of the seven gates to hell on earth. that is, on certain days of the year, there are apparently "gates" to the netherworld that open up, and all the baddies can convort for one night. the only other one i know the location of is supposed to be outside of new york somewhere.

there was a church, decrepit and abandoned, in stull, which had a cemetary behind. there was some controversy as to whether the gate was somehow attached to the church itself, or was in the cemetary. fittingly, the church and cemetary were atop a hill, and visible from the road as you drove by. the church has since been demolished, as the local curiosity was drawing entirely too many visitors, and many of these would swill beer and dump their trash while waiting for the dark prince or marilyn manson, or whoever they were waiting for. moreover, it was still the private property of the town, and being there was trespassing.

the rumors were such that on rainy nights, the rain would hit a roof where there wasn't one anymore, and run down where the roof should be, leaving the interior of the church dry. that you could throw things into the shadows against the walls and that these things would simply disappear into said shadows. that glass wouldn't break. this was supposed to have been a place where they hanged witches, and was therefore a dark place, a cursed place.

offered as evidence, it's said that when pope john paul II flew over the united states, he would have the flight path changed to avoid kansas altogether.

while i must doubt the veracity of the people who said they'd seen "something", i do not doubt that there are things that we do not see or cannot sense that inhabit this world with us. i believe in ghosts, aliens, the loch ness monster (i'd have been a shoo-in for the ghostbusters). but something happened one night to me, that scared the shit out of me.

i'd been out for a drive in the country around lawrence, just to get some quiet and some me-time. i decided on a lark to go look at the old church, just to get that delicious shiver of fear that comes with hauntings. it's pretty night, with clear skies and luminous moon, and yet driving by in fun left me with that cold clamminess inside. i figure i've got the jibblies, or the heebie jeebies, or perhaps even the utz, and try to blow it off. continue with my drive. unable to shake the feeling, though, i start to decide that alone in a car is not where i want to be. head home.

and damn my navigational skills, i have to drive by the church again on my way home, and this only intensifies the feeling, as if something knew my cockiness and disbelief needed just one more shot to fall entirely. something hitched a ride back into lawrence with me. i sped up. turned the radio up, and sang along to dispell the feeling. it's not working, and i start to freeze a little inside with anxiety. the interior of the car seems colder, and fuller. you know that feeling you get when someone's staring at you, and you know it? (is there a word for that?) the sound in my car seems to be bouncing not off the back window anymore, but from something closer, somewhere in the backseat.

i know this is only paranoia, only a product of my imagination, and i told my invisible passenger so. i told it that i wasn't going to turn around and look, and grant it that reality. if i have to turn around and look, then i give it more of a foothold in my mind than it already held. and with this in mind, i only focus on my driving, narrow the range of my vision. and then something touches my hair.

approaching the lights on the west side of lawrence, i speed up more, and sing louder with the radio to mask any noises there *might* be emanating from anywhere else. i'm near to screaming. i arrive back at my house and run inside to the warmth and light and company of things i can see, can touch, and spend the rest of the night shaking the feeling that i'd had some sort of near-miss situtation.

i don't know if there's any truth to the stories about stull, and i don't know if it's possible to determine anything more than what we know already. i do believe however, although i can't really define it, that by believing that a place is "bad", or that some charm is "lucky", that we begin to endow those places and things with that power. if i determine that my kitchen is an evil place, and tell people so and they begin to believe it as well, then slowly but surely, i think the kitchen will begin to live up to its' reputation. no more or less do i think that decades of people being scared of "something" in stull provided it with the power to frighten me that night.

i don't have some comeback ending, that i went to my car in the morning, and the back window was busted with claw marks all over the upholstery and paint. i was genuinely frightened that night of something that i was pretty certain might have been my imagination. in a non-zero possibility situation, there's always a chance i could have been wrong.

math nerd seeks (apparently blind) nerd

i'm just a little bit uninspired. nothing of real interest has happened lately except..

one of my coworkers said something to me that made me feel remarkably cheap.

and then, incidentally, nick posts about why women pick evil men. it's tremendously odd how the blogs seem to follow the same subjects and such, at least the ones i read.

so there's that.

i try to be good, i try to be myself, more than anything. i'm a nerd, really more of a geek perhaps, but i know more about math than you and your family combined. promise. and i'm a reasonable person. believe me, i've done more than my fair share of introspection lately, and i've come to the conclusion that i'm alright. so how am i to have a healthy relationship with someone else when i'm still learning to live with me? rather, that i'm learning to be okay with me?

so i'm okay. i'm not overcome with self-confidence, but i know who i am, and what my weaknesses are, and i can live with this. i'm convinced i can. so how is it the men around me seem to know exactly how to kick me in the ass? gentlemen, i ask. what's wrong with you lot?

is it not enough to be a genius, and a genuinely caring person, someone who still wants to save the world and believes that it's possible? so i still don't look like jessica simpson. i know what's in the Chicken of the Sea can.

dammit. i'm not looking for a pity party, i'm just responding to what the nick had to say.

anyway, i have to get up in oh, four hours, so i'm going to be frustrated and go to bed. bleh.

nightmares and secrets

does anyone else read Post Secret? while i think it's beautiful, it's kind of painful, and i have to wonder how much of it is true. and i wonder what i'd tell them if i decided to send a card.

i have secrets, anyone does. i remember my therapist telling me once that where there's a secret, there's an unresolved issue, and that at some point, i have to tell someone. so i did. i told someone my darkest secret, something i've been trying to forget for years. and when i did, she told me something equally shocking, and something that affects me directly, and now i have two secrets. i see why she would want to hide hers, she has a family now and what would they say? but while i see mine as something awful, hers could be wonderful, if she'd embrace it.

i guess it's all in the mind of the beholder.

does anyone have someone they trust so much that there is literally nothing they wouldn't tell them? or does keeping some things to ourselves somehow reinforce our "selfhood"? i don't think there's an answer to this..i'm just wondering out loud, i guess.

there were three things i decided to keep to myself. one of those was my bipolar, and so i suppose now i'm down to two. i don't tell my coworkers, or most of my friends about it, however. i don't want someone wondering if i'm going to bring a gun to work someday when i run out of meds, or something equally ludicrous.

i remember judging someone i used to date on the basis that he was seeing a shrink. if i could find him again, i'd tell him i was sorry for that.

the other two, those are still mine. some of my family and closest friends know, in that they were somehow involved in getting me out of the trouble i'd found myself in. and now that i'm anonymous on the net, nevermind AMAZINGLY ANONYMOUS, i know that some of you have figgered out who i am, and this is no longer the safe place i thought it was. so maybe Post Secret is the answer, hmm?

and nightmares. i only cry these days when i'm frustrated. i don't cry when i'm sad, which leads me to believe that i'm a little less than human. so the things that disturb me most are the things that frustrate me, i suppose. my nightmares are sometimes wooly scary things chasing me, but often as not, they are those dreams that show me how i limit myself, how i'm tied to my own damaged psyche.

why am i so wierd? why can't i just accept who i am and get on with my day? i think i'm better, i think i'm doing so well, and i'm not! my unconciousness tells me i'm not. and i guess i choose to believe it.

someone come kick me in the ass, i need to be propelled in the right direction, or in any direction but dead-ass stop. argh.

and for something entirely else: i've almost finished my first pope hat. i can't decide what to put on the front of it, tho. any ideas?

in other news

http://www.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/18889.exclude.html

i don't know enough HTML yet to just make a pretty link. but it's not a pretty poll.

also, USA today has determined that we spend more time trying to find people gone missing if they happen to be attractive, white and female. which is okay for me, but not so much for men and minorities.

sigh.

Harry Potter tried to kill me

i work for a shipping company, and while i can't specify which one, i can tell you that we're world-renown for the color of our uniforms. the harry potter books shipped this week, and were not to be recieved by anyone (save retailers) until today. we worked a deal with post offices here in the States, where we would take the packages and drop them at each consignee's local PO and the PO would deliver today. not a problem. but the quality department, as per usual, found a way to make this task more difficult.

a little backstory: i suffer from intolerable insomnia. i've been to specialists, tried herbs and hormones, and nothing really works. so i deal with it. occasionally, sometimes as often as three times a week, i'm up all night. this happened thursday. i was to work a double on friday. and friday was HP day.

so i get tied to dispatch for a long long day, and have to track *each* and everyone of those damnable books all day long and make sure they don't leave authorized hands. at the end of the day, i was dreaming not of sex or wealth or fame, but a couch. a bed. anything horizontal. anything i could lay on and pass out. my roommate brings home a carload of drunk women, the phone won't stop ringing, and i want to cry.

i got my sleep today, and went on a bit of a donut bender. but i still hurt. damn you Harry Potter!

Area Man to Interview Pilled-Up Blogger

JJ over at Purgatorian has stolen an idea from Viva Las Vegass (his new BFF, according to local sources), and was kind enough to share the joy with the rest of the blogging community. Part meme, part mad-libs, all glorious fun.

Here are the instructions:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying "Interview me." "Blow me" or "Eat me" are not acceptable substitutes.

2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different. I'll post the questions in the comments section of this post.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1. You've just one a Major Award. It arrives in the mail in a crate. What's inside?

none other than the leg lamp of "A Christmas Story" fame. it's Italian, you know. for excellence in math nerdery. (see the fishnet looks a lot like a graph and...)

2. George Clooney is at your kitchen table waiting for the fine dinner you've prepared, when the doorbell rings and it's Brad Pitt with a bouquet of roses. What do you do?

probably forget to put my pants back on before answering the door

3. What is your Sunday morning routine?

first i limp to the side like my leg was broken, shaking and twitching, like i was smokin'..

4. You aren't one, but you play one on TV...

this is hard, as i find that there are three correct answers: a MythBuster, Agent Scully or a socially inept, drunken robot

5. The great guy who really loves you or the bad boy who apologizes so well?

and one honest answer. oh cripes. i'd like to make you all of proud of me here, but in my past it's been the latter. i'm old enough to know better now.

Anyone else want to play?

shame

alright, i'm gonna get off topic a bit here, and dispense with the capital letters. what i want to discuss tonight has not a thing to do with mental health, politics, or nick's pants.

i'm a terrific audiophile, i love music and happen to think i have pretty good, relatively eclectic taste in music, and yet..yet. there are some songs in my beloved iTunes playlist that i wouldn't want people in general to associate with me.

what's the most painful, shameful CD or tune in your collection? anonymous posts are fine with me if it's that bad. alright people, it's group hug time. let this dirty secret out of your closets.

regularly scheduled programming will return whenever.

and to kick off the festivities, mine is Roxette's "Joyride"

Vonnegut for Judge Judy, SCOTUS

Judge Judy gains in the court of public opinion

Kurt Vonnegut has climbed aboard the Justice Judy bandwagon.

"I'm all for Judge Judy for the Supreme Court," the 82-year-old novelist told me. "I don't want any other judges, just her. She is so fair-minded and so ideally American."

Vonnegut, the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and other best sellers, is joining columnist Richard Cohen - and me - in urging President Bush to consider television jurist Judy Sheindlin to fill one of the vacancies that will be left by the departures of Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

"She represents the authority of the state at its most humane and reasonable," Vonnegut said. "She represents an America that I would like to belong to."

Vonnegut told me he "got hooked on 'Judge Judy'" a few years back, when he was in Northampton, Mass., teaching at Smith College and recovering from the effects of smoke inhalation suffered in a house fire.

"She's a swell performer. But that's just fun. And she is very attracive, spiritually. I like the way she deals out justice."

Vonnegut, a self-described "New Deal Democrat," said he has no idea what Sheindlin's ideology is. "I'd like to hear what she'd have to say about abortion and gay marriage," he told me.

But as for skeptics who point out that presiding over a TV small-claims court is worlds away from sitting on the highest court in the land, Vonnegut answered: "There is no difference. She refers to the law again and again. American law is American law."

Lloyd Grove, NY Daily News, July 11, 2005

homework blues

arghhh..I just finished writing a paper, which isn't anything extraordinary. What is, the damn thing runs to 5500 words and is something like 22 pages long. So I'm a little spent.

It's been an interesting day, but here at the end of it, I feel pretty productive. I've got this abomination complete, the laundry's on it's way to a happy state of warm and fragrant and I find myself thinking about a little sumthin sumthin for a midnight snack. Maybe a sloppy joe? Temptation.

If you haven't already, you really must check out Owl's blog (see link at right) and get an eyeful of the Freaking Green Elf Shorts. Not much can elicit from my cold heart the kind of giddy schoolgirl laughter that these did. I'll learn the HTML to implant the link in my text another day. I've done enough of the fancy book learnin' tonight.

Point of all this is perspective. I have come a long way in healing myself, and in finding myself again and learning to like who I am, but I still have pitfalls every now and again where I lose perspective completely. Lucky for me, I have a rather well-grounded mother and a good friend who doesn't care when I call, as long as I do so, and they're both gifted at smacking the reality of the situation right back into me. When faced with finishing a paper, especially when it's near completion anyway, there really isn't that much of a challenge. To give you an example of what I mean when I say problems with perspective, I'll illustrate with this example: I was down today, a lot and for no reason. I'm concerned about my job, about finances, about lots of things. There's stress in anyone's day-to-day. So I'm down, and I start fretting about the quality of this one paper (which by the way, regardless of quality can't possibly take my grade under a B) and this leads me to question the sanity of my going to school at all, which leads to what the hell am I doing making plans for the future, and so on. So I find myself at the bottom of a dark hopeless place as a result of my own imagination.

This happens more frequently than I like, and I can tell myself the entire way down that this is a delusion of mine, and that it'll change soon, that I can get out of this..but it doesn't stop the fall in every case. Sometimes I need that hit of reality. Today it was going for bubble tea with my brother. He also has a certain aura of reality about him, and a tireless good humor and we have a way of making each other laugh about absurdities, and that helps like none other.

There's a cheesy old saying about how nothing suceeds like success, and in my case it's true. Finishing my paper, and getting the household chores seem to have been enough to being me back for the evening, to a place and time that I like, that I'm in control of. Perspective is one of those effluvial things that are only really defined properly in the mind of each individual. You might as well try to concretely define art, or the color blue for someone else, as tell them what their perspective on the situation is.

So that's my nugget for the night. Now go look at the shorts!

The Quote Below

I felt inclined to steal the quote from Ms. Jamison below, because I've been talking to a friend of mine who's got a friend who is bipolar as well, and struggling with the drug issue. I know that there are some of you who read this who might have a little insight into why it's difficult to take the pills, to relegate yourself to that lifestyle.

I'm looking for some input from the public at large. What we need here are some resources for the people who have to live with us, that is...I did my research on how to live with myself. I need to know what to provide to the people in my life to give them some understanding. I don't mean touchy-feely hugs-via-words, I mean actual support and forums. A place to communicate.

I've added a link to the Icarus Project out to the right here, please peruse if you find yourself where I am now, where many others have been before. Understanding and communication are key to surviving this, it seems. I didn't like the idea of talking about it, but it seems to work. Reach out and touch somebody, baby.

excerpt from "an Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison:


People go mad in idiosyncratic ways. Perhaps it was not surprising that, as a meteorologist's daughter, I found myself, in that glorious illusion of high summer days, gliding, flying, now and again lurching through cloud blanks and ethers, past stars, and across fields of ice crystals. Even now, I can see in my mind's rather peculiar eye an extraordinary shattering and shifting of light; inconstant but ravishing colors laid out across miles of circling rings; and the almost imperceptible, somehow surprisingly pallid, moons of this Catherine wheel of a planet ... I saw and experienced that which had been only dreams, or fitful fragments of aspiration.

Was it real? Well, of course not, not in any meaningful sense of the word "real." But did it stay with me? Absolutely. Long after my psychosis cleared, and the medications took hold, it became part of what one remembers forever, surrounded by an almost Proustian melancholy. Long since that extended voyage of my mind and soul, Saturn and its icy rings took on an elegiac beauty, and I don't see Saturn's image now without feeling an acute sadness at its being so far away from me, so unobtainable in so many ways. The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness of my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness was one I should willingly give up. Even though I was a clinician and a scientist, and even though I could read the research literature and see the inevitable, bleak consequences of not taking lithium, I for many years after my initial diagnosis was reluctant to take my medications as prescribed. Why was I so unwilling? Why did it take having to go through more episodes of mania, followed by long suicidal depressions, before I would take lithium in a medically sensible way?

...

In my case, I had a horrible sense of loss for who I had been and where I had been. It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

My family and friends expected that I would welcome being "normal," be appreciative of lithium, and take in stride having normal energy and sleep. But if you have had stars at your feet and the rings of planets through your hands, are used to sleeping only four or five hours a night and now sleep eight, are used to staying up all night for days and weeks in a row and now cannot, it is a very real adjustment to blend into a three-piece-suit schedule, which, while comfortable to many, is new, restrictive, seemingly less productive, and maddeningly less intoxicating. People say, when I complain of being less lively, less energetic, less high-spirited, "Well, now you're just like the rest of us," meaning, among other things, to be reassuring. But I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

And I miss Saturn very much.

sunday night

It's easier for me to tell you when I'm writing than to come up with clever headlines..apologies, but I'm saving myself for an undeniably vigorous turn in academia: I've a paper to write that I have put off to travel, but I blog. That and Farenheit 9/11 is on, and I can't help but watch with my mouth open in shock.

Nonetheless. Bloggery here to be done. I went to my good friend from college's wedding in another state. I guess technically, it's not a wedding since we don't allow two women in love to marry in the U.S. these days, but that's what it was. And it was beautiful, and fun, for a change from most weddings. They always make me a little contemplative, and maybe even a little sad. There was enough of a devil-may-care attitude about this one though which always adds to the fun. We sat on the porch and made up new obscenities for slinging. We went to a brilliant bar. I got to see her brother and his wife again, whom I've not even talked to in perhaps 8 years. There was much beer drinking, and plenty of cats, and even a little Indigo Girls.

This has all been a segue to this thought: I can't believe the people of Kansas sometimes. We had a vote back on April 5th on the "Defense of Marriage" act. Which is a nice way of saying we don't want them filthy homos gettin' hitched. Seventy percent of the state was in favor of this. Before you pass judgment on the entire state based on the actions of only a portion of them, realize that 30% against this was probably a very good showing for the liberals of the Bible Belt. Exactly what are people defending marriage from if the act in question prevents people from getting married? Unless we outlaw it altogether, marriage is not protected. And from what? What dissolves marriages? Divorce. And 70 some percent of Sedgwick county has been divorced, at least once.

Anyway, it still bugs me, and I have to give my old friend props in that she had to fight for who she was against the law, and against her family, and the prejudices of the people at large. Also, I like her little woman a lot. What exactly are these freedoms we're defending in America if we can't grant fair rights to all of our citizens? We put civil rights up to a popular vote.

I have no clever opening or closing for this particular installment. I'm tired, yet I must make for myself a positive GPA that I may escape this place someday.

I love Kansas. We have beautiful sunsets and rises, that characteristic midwest warmth, we have lots of space, and believe it or not, a lot of us engage in thinking from time to time. It's just a terrific bastion of conservativism, and while I appreciate many aspects of (particularly fiscal) conservativism, it's hard to be a liberal here. It's hard to be taken seriously. I am frustrated, and I know that it will take some time for this state to swing even a little from it's far-right hold, but I want to go see what the sun looks like somewhere else.

thursday morning

I turned on CNN this morning about 6am, Kansas time, to see that someone has done something in London, bombs or devices found on the subways and buses, apparently. Listening to some jarhead in the US Government talking about London law enforcement "extracting casualties".

Let me repeat that: Extracting Casualties.

Oh god, this is the world we live in. These are, were, people going to work. Something I didn't even have to do today. They're on their way to work. Those aren't casualties, those are people. Some got up late, maybe? Ran out the door thinking to grab coffee at the office? Didn't wake their signifigant others, let the spouse sleep late instead of waking them to say goodbye?

You extract teeth. You extract vanilla from beans.

Those were people.

That's all.

wednesday night

I've been thinking a lot about the things that scare me. At the height of my bipolar paranoia, I was afraid of some awfully mundane things. Case in point: I was afraid of my mailbox. To the point that I stopped checking my mail. After a couple of months, my insurance bill hadn't been paid, and they (the insurance folks) called to let me know that they would cancel my insurance if I didn't pay it. This cycle repeated a couple of times. I finally decided to face the demon mailbox, but I had to find my mailbox first. I had honestly not checked my mail in enough time that I forgot which box was mine. I tried the key in a few dozen boxes before finding mine, and shockingly, it was empty.

I called the post office and they informed me that as it hadn't been checked in so long, mailbox got so full that is, that the PO decided I didn't live there anymore and sent all of my mail back to the senders. Which only increased my anxiety.

I'm better now, which is sort of a general and blanket statement, but now and again I have one of those unnatural fear flashbacks. Every now and again, my phone rings and I am terrified to answer....just for a second. And I hate myself for it.

Interestingly, I am so quietly proud that I can function in society again, that I can go out in public and buy groceries without Xanax to make me not care. Yet I still have these issues with self-loathing. It's not the pills, I don't mind taking the pills everyday. It took me years to get over that particular issue. There is something I can't put my finger on, something that still haunts me, something ephemeral..maybe it's in the air? Maybe the pills have flavored my spit so that I can taste the what? Distrust of the world at large? I don't know.

More or less, I am so much more comfortable now. I am not overjoyed on a daily basis, nor do I live in a perfect world, but I am not living in distress anymore. This is the point. I am in control, and yet once in a while, my mind slips a little away from me and I thought I was so much better than this. This loss of control, even for a second makes me feel like I'm back on that inevitable downward slide and it makes me want to to throw it all away, all the progress I know I've made, and let it happen. Sometimes I don't want to fight anymore.

Because it is a fight. I read on someone else' s blog that we fight until hell freezes over, and then we fight on ice. And that is what life is for me sometimes. It is a fight on ice. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.

I own a goddamn lot of sweaters. I'm ready.

I Had No Idea

Wow, we are everywhere, no? I thought for a long time that I was the only one with issues, or whatever you'd like to call them in these days of creeping-PC-ness. I want to say thank you to all of you who've read thus far and are willing for whatever reason to take this odd little walk with me.

I do want to ask a question in general: Why is it easier now to discuss mental illness than in years past? Are we just now realizing the depth of the problem, or able to recognize the symptoms for what they are? When I first approached an actual MD about the drug BuSpar (this was back in 97, I believe), I was blown off utterly. He didn't ask why I was interested in this drug, nor did he inquire where I'd heard about it (this is back when Preparation H was the most widely advertised drug on TV). In fact, everytime I talked with someone in the health field about my mental health, I recieved no input, save the occasional, "Hmph." I had to get to a crisis level in order to be taken seriously...I find that it fits well with today's health industry, where you don't get help staying healthy, you only recieve care when you're sick. It's bizarre.

Speaking of doctors, I'm going to get a little something off my chest at this point..when you're a professional, you are to leave your personal prejudices at home and focus on the job at work, right? When I go to work, I give up privacy and dignity in some cases in order to get the job done and keep the customers satisfied as best I can. I give out information that helps to solve problems. I had one doctor tell me, after reviewing my history on paper, that I'd have eventually ended up crazy or an alcoholic, and that I should be grateful that I at least knew which one I was. I had a (former) boyfriend tell me that had my faith in Jesus been stronger, I wouldn't have this disease. And now Tom Cruise is an expert on psychology. Who are these people? When exactly, did Mr. Cruise suffer post-partum depression? Where in the Bible does it say, "Thou shalt not be all wacky in the head"? And a doctor! Making a joke out of something a doctor ignored until it required another effing doctor? And people wonder why we keep to ourselves, why we don't ask for help earlier.

So I keep it to myself. A caring physician will tell you that it's not unlike being a diabetic, you wouldn't expect a diabetic to stay home and think happy thoughts until they felt better. You don't tell someone with high blood pressure to cheer up. There's supposed to be no stigma attached to being sick. You should be able to seek fair and decent treatment. Nonetheless, people don't joke about a diabetic having a bad day and then bringing a gun to work. You don't hear people calling high-maintenance women bitches (they're like, totally bipolar! Ohmigod!). Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this particular diatribe. More later.