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The Experiment

Ok, so I'm trying out Wordpress, seeing how I like it. So far, I'm just annoyed that you can't really mess with the html. I can't remove the tags, and can't change colors of anything. But for now, the blog is sistered at

http://mysadalterego.wordpress.com

Take a look, tell me what you think.

On Makeup and Magic

I have a strange relationship with my looks. As a child, I could never quite remember what I looked like. I would go about my day, and be faintly surprised every time I caught a snatch of my reflection in a windowpane or in a puddle. “Oh yeah,” I’d think. “That’s who I am.”

I was a beautiful child. It always surprises me now to see pictures from that time. Feral, yes; I hated for anyone to cut my nails or hair, and living in a sunny climate, ran around all day in a bathing suit or less, so I was bronzed, with golden-white streaks bleached into my hair, but beautiful in a healthy, wild way.

When I was 11 or 12, I started to gain weight, the kind of weight that girls get before growing into height, the little bit of extra fat needed for the estrogen to take over, and push them over the brink. But my father was merciless about this. He worked in a profession obsessed with the female figure, with adorning female beauty, and sometimes even satirizing it in drag. When I was a toddler, I was another mannequin for him, a doll to dress up, to paint with too much makeup. When I got fat, he called me things like, “thunder thighs” and “fat ass.” From that time, I felt ugly, repulsive, even though in pictures I was even kind of a cute, round kid. But from then on, I developed character. I always have a sort of ironic look on my face, even then. And I wasn’t even really overweight.

I am not sure this is a bad thing. It helped me realize that I would never be a great beauty, and let me develop all kinds of other things. I got funny, sarcastic, and, following my body’s inadvertent rebellion against his idea of the perfect daughter, I got braver in rebelling in other ways. I wasn’t what he thought a woman should be in looks, so I could start to think that I wouldn’t be in character, either. I ironed out most of my femininity, and good riddance. I became androgynous.

And yet…when I grew out of that weight a year or two later, into a female body, and into a scarily, precociously pretty 14 year old with a hundred year old soul, the way I felt about how I looked never caught up. I still felt androgynous, rough, like “one of the boys,” but now I looked like a wild woman full of sex. While all of my friends’ parents were drawing lines in the sand about makeup, my father always encouraged excesses of dress and paint. His idea of the beautiful woman was stagy, and I was always encouraged to wear more makeup, not less. I developed a style of heavy makeup that did not fall into the category of goth or punk. Dark eye makeup, sharp, dark lips, more costume than rebel or harlot. I had a lion’s mane of ethnic long hair, nothing like all the girls around with their straight, orderly lines hanging smoothly down their backs. Other kids at school used to tell me that I reminded them of different actresses on popular TV shows, always the token ones who shared my ethnicity. They had no idea that they were recognizing ethnic lines, not personal ones.

This lesson about feminine wiles and tricks wasn’t a bad lesson for a headstrong, contrary daughter. The view he imparted to me was that it is hard enough to be a woman, let alone a smart, ambitious one, so I should use any advantage I could get - the fact that a pretty woman is less threatening, that sex appeal is a manipulative tool. Gloria Steinem versus Betty Friedan: Gloria can be radical, as long as she wears the miniskirt, while ugly, conciliatory Betty is shunned. My dark pouty lips became just another tool for my ambition. I bent male teachers to my will with my soft voice and softer breasts, and I liked the power in that. No matter how intellectual the milieu, how purportedly un-shallow, pretty women will always get away with more. I learned how easy it was to carry a cutlass, as long as it was kept well-hidden in feminine frills.

But it never quite felt like me. Underneath, I was still, in my own mind, androgynous, more boy than girl, still ugly and fat, even if I had mastered a woman’s enchantments and put them to good use. I still don’t think I am very pretty on my own. My heavy makeup is my warpaint.

This bred a strange duality: armed with my makeup, I feel ten times more beautiful than I really am. This feeling alone is enough to summon the illusion, to imbue me with power. In our culture, the cruel double-standard of misogyny and advertising convinces even the most beautiful woman that she is flawed. It is a distortion of reality, but in this strange world we live in, it may be a sign of health for a woman like me to truly believe and feel beautiful, and to recognize the politically incorrect power that that bestows.

Without my warpaint, I am none of these things. I am ugly again, and fragile. For all my feminism, all my pushing ahead in a rough, man’s field, making myself harder than the men around me, I cannot leave the house without makeup. It is a primordial magic; the ritual of application transforms me from impotent, rejected orphan to fiery sorceress. Like Eve, I cover my nakedness, and beyond. I paint myself a shield and sword.

And yet, I long for the day when the illusion will become real, when I know that the power is not conjured from without only through strange rituals and painted hieroglyphics around my eyes and lips. Now that my thousand and one mystical masks have brought me through storm and roiling sea, I have finally reached a calms shore, a place where I would like nothing more than to rest, respite from this amaranthine sorcery. In these calm latitudes, the ritual has become onerous, is no longer as imperative or as seductive as it once was. I feel a slave to the rituals of potions and dyes, but am afraid to risk offending the source of the protection that carried me safe through adolescence and across the seas. No one in this place I live even wears makeup anymore, except me. I no longer have to prove myself again and again and again. Sometimes, I want to be who I was before, naked. I don’t want to look invincible anymore. Having become the witch, I just want to be human again, now that I am in a place where female humans might be allowed to survive.

I have tried to trick the magic, but I cannot give it up entirely. I dress much more simply, even shabbily, reverting to boyish cuts of jeans, the clothes no longer my conspiratorial altar items. I have let myself go to work with very light makeup, light enough, in fact, that I’m sure it isn’t much different from not wearing any. But…I am. It is vastly different than not wearing any. I have tried to have people drop in on the weekends when I am theoretically not painted, to show them a glimpse of the woman behind the curtain, but I cheat, washing my face lightly, so smudges of smoke remain around my eyes, leaving traces of the mask, enough for me to know that it is there should I need it, that the dark lines surround my pale features that I am afraid would blend into nothingness without ritualistic demarcation.

Sometimes, when I feel unlike myself, I play with the idea of going about my day with no makeup, wearing my vulnerability and my fragility for all the world to see, perhaps even enticing someone to offer me consolation. I never do, though. The furthest I get is to the door, before I dash back, terrified of losing the source of my protection, of arousing the wrath of She who has kept me so well, to add a smudge of kohl around my eyes, a touch of pomegranate wine around my mouth, an ambivalent libation; the mark of my consecration to her cult on my face for all the world to see.

Just when I thought it wouldn't get any worse, I'm in love

Once again, life threatens to spiral out of control.

This piece will be shittily written, because I haven't thought out what I want to say, haven't felt inspiration. But writing is all I know how to do when I can't rest and can't get up.

The one saving grace is that this one will probably remain fantasy only. This guy is a consultant that work has hired to teach us something. So he's my teacher. My first real lust was a teacher when I was fourteen and he was twenty five, young, he was, and in my strange precocious Lolita way, there were charged moments when he wanted me too, almost-consummated, stopped only by his pregnant wife. The dynamic: a happy man living a simple, pretty life, drawn to whatever is dark and wild about me. This repeats, and never has ended well for me.

This teacher is also gorgeous. And nice and personable and patient in that way that I guess you have to be if you make your living selling teaching services. But he is a little younger than me, I think, so now I am the corrupting leader. He is tall and dark, with a beautiful jawline. He is a pilot as well. As in, ahead of me in learning pilot school. A man with almost more balls than me; something I have never had, not really, yet the possibility never fails to inflame me...until they cave in and I see that it was all illusion. But on the surface, he is the perfect canvas for all my fantasies.

This is complicated because I have been living with someone else in a common-law type relationship for years. I don't love him, but these years have been the best of my life. I have been stable and productive. I think I might be happy, even. Once I understood that my work, my writing, books, would be my one true love in this life (an understanding that came to me in a dream), everything became so much easier. No longer would I chase after the heel of some sadist who waits to crush me. Then, all the messiness and tears and hate and storm fell away.

And we are like brother and sister; we enjoy the same things. I never feel like I have to impress him. I can be my own weird, nerdy self, and it's ok. We enjoy the same things, the same humor, the same theater. We can sit and watch documentaries all weekend without pressure to go out and do all those things I hate like dancing or going to bars. He tolerates my bitchiness and controlling tendencies with aplomb. He doesn't really understand my darker moments, because he is basically happy and hasn't experienced them himself, but he tolerates them. He is also madly in love with me.

And I with him, not so much.

This is cruel, I know. I keep wishing that I could fall in love with him, but I just don't think that it is going to happen. I tried to break up with him once, for someone else I was "in love with" who turned out to be the biggest asshole on the face of the earth, who mistreated me, but at the beginning, gave the illusion of knowing my darkness. Ditto this for pretty much everyone I have ever been "in love with" before him, except for one.

This new guy, he is...out of my league. He is far too good-looking, and too accomplished, and too nice to be with someone like me. It is like high school or Gatsby all over again, all those tragic books about lusting after the beautiful, developed, sunny girl. I mean, I am pretty, and accomplished, but I'm also nerdy and really sort of a bitch, no matter how hard I try not to be. My temperament, as much as I try to curb it, is essentially wound too tightly. This is the kind of guy who would, after a while, fundamentally not get my need to curl up with a book, why I hate going clubbing with his friends, why I sort of think he is shallow. But he is nice, genuinely nice, and so beautiful, one of those people who seem charmed, who look like the physical embodiment of some metaphor like "sun shines out of him." Someone who is living happily and luckily. Someone unlike me, maybe a little like what I look like when I try my hardest in front of people who don't know me very well.

And I know from my work that those people aren't really like that either, that into every life a little rain must fall or whatever, but still, for them, it is enough of the time really like that, and the rain is so mild; there are people on this earth who are blessed by the gods with beauty and quiet souls, and happiness. And they are so unattainable for wretches like us. It's like that song/poem:

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

One of the shittiest things about a being a woman is that those kinds of thoughts are forbidden. You can't admit that you want in that way. That I want his body, but not much of his mind. And that if I really wanted him, I would have to be coy, and flirt, and get him interested. I am not free to pursue, to chase. I am not allowed to have these appetites. I am not allowed to reach out my hand, to take what I want, in the way that men are.

And men like that can go slumming with someone like me, but they get to use women like me, girls like me, and discard us, because we are not good enough for them anyway, because their friends and people they know are all thinking, "What is he doing with her?"

In my secret life, I keep a lover. I stay with my current life, my brother-partner, because we do have a happy life together, and because we are all going to die anyway, so you may as well love whoever is around you who loves you back. But I also keep throughout my life one lover, someone I could never live with, but who I meet with now and again, even sharing my life with, in a limited, secondhand kind of way, through the years, and we love each other in a way that we never could if we had to live together. We meet to fuck, and then to talk, to reenact a shadow marriage of the one we both live out in our daytime lives. We worry about each other and care deeply, but the distance from day-to-day life keeps the attraction from growing stale and the inequality in the eyes of society from interfering. He doesn't really understand my darkness, but the fact that we are together so infrequently means that it remains fascinating, rather than onerous, for him, just as his sunniness remains fascinating, and not shallow, to me.

Does this make a horrible person out of me? I am not sure. "The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them - sometimes three." I don't think I'd be upset if the one I live with had someone like that. I'd be relieved that someone is loving him in a way I can't. He deserves that.

The one thing I repeat to myself as consolation for the mundane, primitive tragedy of wanting something that I cannot have is that the fantasy is always better than the reality, because it is always exactly what you want. It has been claimed that fantasy is worse than cheating for that same reason. Maybe it is best to just leave him a fantasy, to keep my decent, quiet life.

But then there is always that pounding in my gut, wanting more, more, more. It has a life of its own, is a strange, willful creature; my own little demon inflaming my insides. I wish he would shut up, go away, torture someone else for a while, but no matter how I ignore him, suppress him, drug him into docility, he always comes back, with his pitchfork, and delicious little horned feet dancing on my womb.

My first time

Since I'm procrastinating on preparing for Friday's big work thing, I figured I may as well go ahead and write a little. Mood is not good now, and I said I was going to write about the first episode I had. Probably better to do that than to whine about all the shit that is going on in here now.

I was in sixth grade the first time I had a breakdown. There were signs before that. I was always a moody kid, fearful yet rebellious. I was creative, always writing something. Had a bitter sense of humor for as long as I can remember. In trouble in school (and by extension, with the parents) because I hated it, felt it confined me, was bored. I spent a lot of time thinking how to best antagonize my teachers. There was a blip of a depression in third grade, perhaps three weeks when I didn't go to school...but at that age they could pretty much make me go, and remain blind to everything else. Public school seemed like the perfect metaphor for the inside of my head: stifling, minute-by-minute torture, having the books I was reading taken away, replaced with government approved readers. I always get the feeling that had I not been in such an external torture chamber, I might have had the inner resources to combat my internal torture. But by that time, the brave, free-spirited waif was long gone.

In sixth grade, I really lost it. I got that pre-puberty growth spurt last bit of baby fat, started to get breasts, and everyone around was starting to get interested in things like clothes and popularity. I got my period that year, which is possibly relevant because they do say hormones change this stuff. But I was still a kid - 12 years old. My school hate was getting worse, though I did have a teacher who I liked, who had a good sense of humor, enjoyed my writing and didn't make a big deal if it was off topic, and who was content to let me coast through and not make a scarlet letter of my genius IQ.

Side note on that: don't ever let schools test your IQ. The number will follow you around and haunt you forever. Every year, the teachers would chastise me for not "working to my potential" (on things that I had no interest in, naturally), which would lead to increasingly harsh punishments at home. All because of a stupid number, from a stupid test that I had sobbed and begged not to take at age 6. It's funny, in retrospect. At the time, I just didn't want to take that test, didn't want to be put in special classes. I sobbed and cried, begging not to go, until finally, my father hit me with an iron and made me. The funny thing is that I couldn't have possibly known at that time what influence that one stupid number would have on my life, yet it seems like some primal, prescient instinct must have taken over me. Sadly, I think that being forced to go there was one of the things that really broke my spirit. After that incident, I just retreated on some fundamental psychic level, lost all my instincts, suffered in silence. One IQ test ruined my childhood.

Sixth grade. The girls were girls, or starting to be. There was one girl who wanted to actually be a model. She got popular. Things started to shift around, both inside and out.

Then, one day, I just couldn't take it anymore. I can't remember very much about how it started, though I remember the time period itself better. I finally told my parents I was too sick to go to school, and proceeded to lie in bed for six weeks. I did not eat. I watched television a little each day. I went from my nearly 100 pounds to 85. Cute baby fat was gone. The only relief I had was when everybody had already left the house to work or school, and I was left alone to not really watch morning TV, make it through one more day in blessed silence, in a dark room.

I try to reconstruct my thought processes at the time. I don't think I was suicidal. I just couldn't take everything anymore. I don't remember it being a horrible time - except for the fear that I would have to eventually face the world again. The ringing phone made me sick to my stomach; calls from the school to find out where I was, when I just wanted to disappear, for everyone to leave me the fuck alone and let me rest.

Due to HMO shifting, I ended up with a new pediatrician. She was wonderful, and I am grateful to her for everything. She was a former school nurse who took a special interest in adolescent girls. She was kind to me. She knew, somehow, and managed to keep me from invasive tests for the weight loss, and to keep me out of the hospital. I think she intuited that the problem was school, and my father. He always hated her, I suspect because she was on to how crazy he was. And he was. His own moods were worse than my own, but then he would take them out on us, make us listen while he tearfully and drunkenly debated suicide, drag us on manic excursions for ingredients to make fresh gnocchi from scratch, only to cover the entire kitchen in flour, and then leave to chase some other manic pursuit with equal fervor.

She told me that I couldn't stay out of school forever, yet knew that I couldn't confess what was really wrong to her. I think that at the time I didn't have words for it myself. When I was about 16, she got me a referral to a psych for medication, but at that time, she knew that were I to admit the abuse at home or the depths of my own disturbance, that she would be forced to thrust me onto a child welfare system that would be infinitely worse than whatever torment my brain (or my father) had devised for me. So she didn't ask. And so, almost two months later, somehow, I just climbed out of things, went shopping one night with my mother for a few new clothes that fit, and went back to school.

It's strange the details I remember from that time. I cannot reconstruct my mental state. I just don't remember. I do remember, however, the alarm clock that went off every morning in my mother's room, the pillow I used to recline on while not-really-watching TV. The carpet. The curtains. The dreaded phone in the kitchen that would ring with some well-meaning schoolmate or teacher asking what was going on. But I do not remember being sad.

I, of course, had tons of make-up work to do. One of the things was to do a biography of someone, then dress up and present it in the first person to the class. I had to do this after everyone else had finished. I was previously famous at the school for doing a similar project in third grade on Jeanne D'Arc (which was excellent due to my father terrorizing me into hours of practice). Everyone expected elementary school greatness from me as Florence Nightingale as well. But I just couldn't do it. I did the bare minimum. I hated it. Who wanted to be martyrous Florence Nightingale? Not I. (Ironic, as I turned out.)

Was there a manic phase that year as well? I don't remember one, but it was the same year that the whole class would beg me to write scripts, to write stories, because they were so funny and fun to read. They used to ask the teacher to read my assignments out loud. They loved my satirical version of the Knights of the Round Table, my strange puppet show dramatizing the beheading of the explorer Balboa. (We must have done explorers that year. Snore.) There were times when I was undoubtedly witty, charming. I won writing contests in newspapers. And if I was writing that funnily, that profusely, with that much sense of an audience, then I suspect there was an undercurrent of exuberant enthusiasm there, at least for something. I wanted to spread my expansiveness, my laughter, my spinning-out-of-control with everyone around me.

But I was never really the same after that year. It's strange, that year is such a cutting point in my life that I think of my life as before that year and after, yet I hardly remember its emotional tone. I know there was rage, I know there was withdrawal; more than that, I do not know.

Things just went downhill from there. We moved to an even more ridiculously white-bread nouveau riche suburb where even my strange talents were not appreciated, no doubt my father's grasp at respectability and mental stability. I was immediately in trouble with the administration for, god, I don't know, just being too weird, and I missed my old friends from sixth grade, where, even if I wasn't the popular and pretty girl, I had a place as the entertainer, the writer, and there were a few other weird genius kids who made me laugh. I never got back the confidence to try to make other people laugh again, to bring them into my joy and expansiveness. My lows, well, during them I was just lonely, but I kept going to school in a fog, knowing that, like the entropy of the universe, even if it was cosmic and essential and of vast weight, it didn't really matter where I sat and took my broken mind away. I did not speak much; I turned inward, dreaming of sailing ships, theaters, constellations, beautiful men, and colors. I painted my face with heavy and different makeup every day, my appearance becoming the only canvas visible to the outside world of the storm within. My immense manic appetite for the world and experiences, so long frustrated, knew that only more of the same dull disappointment would follow, and learned to content itself with fantasy, more real than any of the people around me at the time.

And I slipped into a semi-existence for the next four years, with only brief, bright points of feeling and shuddering with pleasure or pain - my first sex in the back of a speeding truck on a winter's night, the cold hard metal of the truck and gears beneath and the hard muscular body of the first man I ever had touched like that; a firework, set off illegally in a manic frenzy felt cosmically, felt at that moment in the depths of my being, as the perfect metaphor for my youth and the evanescence of that mood; devouring the Spanish textbook and teaching myself that language in a month. The next manic blip led to me yelling at the high school principal and leaving school, never to return and complete high school, off to seek high adventure in a tropical jungle. Finally, my rebellious self surfaced for the few moments necessary to save my soul.

But then, after that, I went back into hibernation, and now, whenever I wake up, I am shocked at the conservative, boring, altruistic life I have built for myself. The routine, the ability to see where, if I continue on this path, I will be in one, three, ten, twenty years. I am now far too medicated, and too thankful for the relief they bring, to freefall anymore.

So that is what I remember of the first time I went crazy, the point of no return. Now, drugged into sanity, I guess I should work.

Long time, no write

Yeah, I've been busy, sort of. Up and down, as usual, that same sort of sadhappysad that only people with an unlucky constitution or set of stars can know. In my main career, the one I keep trying to buy stability with, I've only been half-assing it. Fortunately, I've been lucky so far and not called out on anything big, but have a big day coming up next Friday for which I have barely prepared. I am hoping this week will go slightly better, but who knows?

It's the restlessness that gets you every time...gets me every time. The same restlessness that sent Byron to Greece. I have been doing lots of things, even a lot of writing. But nothing purposeful. Spinning wheels. Maybe it is time to change meds. I have been neglecting sleep for maybe three weeks now. Not totally, but never quite sleeping a normal night. Maybe 3-6 AM, I sleep.

One hard lesson that took many years to learn was for me to not feel guilty for feeling bad. I wish the modern world were more accommodating of people like me, who do contribute to society, but not at a steady, even, work-drone pace. I need these times to admit that I feel bad, to curl up in bed, recover for the next round. It isn't such a horrible thing. I've never much minded being depressed (it's the mixed episodes that kill me, feeling horrible and no peace), as long as I really can curl up in bed, read, sleep 18-20 hours a day. The problem started when I was 12, and my parents and doctors and the school system, everyone, just kept screaming at me to get up and move. Maybe I'm not made that way. Maybe I (and a lot of us) are more cyclical creatures - having periods of flame and fire, learning languages and producing and mastering professions in short periods. And yes, those times are often as filled with suffering as the down times, the hibernations...but no one needs to add societal disapproval. I can't help the way I am. I can help all kinds of other things - like not dragging other people down with me, not breaking laws, not taking welfare from others - but I cannot help being who I am. Maybe you wish I were different; hell, even I wish I were different, but I was born this way. I am what God made me, if you prefer.

Getting to accept this, with no blame or stigma, was one of the hardest personal challenges I've faced. It took years. It is a story for another time. Bottom line: stigma helps no one.

Again, I am conflicted by my dual nature. My day job, the serious one I chose at the expense of my wild side, choosing at the time to choose a stable life, unlike the one of my manic father, my brother the screenwriter, is slowly eroding away my soul. I thought that by hard work in an alien field, a respectable field, I could buy a respectable woman's soul. But I can't. I feel like I am drowning. I hate it. It is not fair to clients.

This weekend I was at the ocean at sunrise. It was breathtakingly beautiful, after a storm, with a confused sea and strange swell. There was a beautiful man there, someone way out of my league, something I know even when I'm manic - far too tall, dark, and beautiful for me. And he was nice. And normal. I know I can never have someone like that, but now that I'm in a serious life, I can't even fuck him once. Life without that seems unbearably long. Not the fucking, but the possibility, the possibility of adventure.

And this huge thing at my respectable life's job is hanging over me, and all I can feel is resentment, and avoidance, and I miss my real soul, the one my cruel father understands, the one that buys chariots, and writes, and sculpts. But you aren't allowed to do any of that where I am now.

Hardly anyone reads this blog, and I have certainly neglected it, but I just now went back and looked at it again after a few months. I rather like it. It is honest. There are lots of topics I want to hit. I think I may write about the onset of my illness/nature/whatever it is. It started very young for me, and really went undiagnosed and untreated for so long that I grew up and only know myself as being like this; normalcy bought by pharmacopoeia never feels quite right. I am not sure if this is good or bad. It would probably be an interesting idea to revisit my first major episode.

What can I do to quiet this thundery thump in my gut? Then, if I did that, maybe I could come back to being Respectable Sara. Sail the Indian Ocean? Hitchhike through Tanzania? Run away? Finish writing a book? The pull of the respectable life keeps me from doing any of those things. Why does it look so fucking tempting? It isn't. It is full of staid, boring assholes. But they don't seem as miserable as all the crazy people in my family. They act like adults. But what the fuck do I know about people like that? Maybe they are just better at hiding their despair.

And I'm high again

It feels good, actually, except for the no sleep part, and maybe the slight misuse of stimulants to keep it going. I am a little worried about what I know will come later - the crash, but for now, I'm alive so fuck it all.

That's why I haven't written on this blog; I've been amazingly productive in other things - none of them important, but fun and giving me lots of pleasure. I started writing in a language I've never written in before, and even though I haven't written anything terribly important, but it's been interesting trying to do it and seeing that it is at least entertaining to other people. It's strange, in that language, I could hardly write anything coherent for years, and all the sudden, I can do it. Not without errors and stuff, but in a way that manages to capture what I want to say and have a "voice" and all that. I am pleased, mostly because it widens the circle of people from whom I can try to get love by writing.

That's not why I'm back to this blog now. I'm here because I just woke up from a dream that was half manic, but wonderful. Since this is the place I can tell the truth about everything, it becomes the place where I can confess this one. Beware: it is a sex dream. I think later it will be one that I want to write or use as good writing material, so I need to get the details down so that I can come back later and pull out the poetry that was there.

I dreamt I was in New York again, but not real New York but some kind of dream New York mostly influenced by the markets of various other countries: crowded, colorful, full of tight alleys. In the dream, I wandered the shops with two men that I had to do business with, one older, one my age or so (not anyone I know in real life). At first we were at all these business meetings, which I hated because they were all about all of these things that I hate like business and finance and technology, but then we went out together for them to show me New York.

We got lost in those alleys...they went into a pizza place, but it grossed me out because it was pizza with meat. (I have been a vegetarian for at least 15 years.) I stepped out, but it was like we knew we'd get lost from each other. I didn't mind, but I felt obligated to them...it wasn't clear anymore whether they were my friends or what.

I walked down an alley of the giant New York market - which looked like a covered mercado or souk, definitely not an American place...but it was full of shops selling New York things - endless milliners' shops with hats that I wanted to try, family intergenerational businesses run by orthodox Jews. They were full of fashionable hats and strange hats that I wanted to try, to find the one that would be perfect for me. I felt bad that I got separated from the other two, but I kept trying to ignore the buzzing cell phone that they called me on because I wanted to explore alone.

Tucked in among the hat shops I saw a small stand/shop, with a small opening facing the market, and the opening and doorway were covered with the merchandise. The store had a stained-glass sign sticking out into the alley, with pseudo-medieval lettering in bright red with the name of the store: CLEFT. It was one woman's store, she was the artist and owner, and the art was mostly female erotica. The stuff spread out on the entryway, and on a table blocking the door were all these black-and-white photographic portraits of young women - their faces - looking angry, mysterious, strong. They weren't particularly good artistically, but I liked them.
She told me that they were pictures of women who had been victims and weren't anymore - victims of what, she did not say. It was her artistic mission in life to photograph them, to capture them somehow.

She knew I wanted to go in and invited me. The store was full of these black-and-white prints. I came in, aroused, knowing that even though they weren't great art, that I wanted one of them as a souvenir. I kept looking around, but couldn't find the one item that would speak to me. In addition to the black-and-white photos, there were a few wooden objects, painted by her in brilliant flowing colors.

The owner/seller was an older woman, maybe late fifties, and not conventionally beautiful, but to me she was. Long, spirally curly gray hair, and as colorfully dressed as her store was black-and-white. She was in these bright long multicolored robes, and once I was in the store it was clear to me that she and her store were the "goddess merchandise" type hippie places, with books on female spirituality, drum circles, etc, except that she was the real thing. She was not wearing makeup at all, didn't look young, but had that sort of clear-eyed hippie look you sometimes get, like some of my mother's friends. She was definitely overweight by western standards. To me, she was absolutely beautiful...all that femaleness, the female flesh. She was one of those witchy wise women, tres feminine, very free.

It was strange. In theory, I also am attracted to female spirituality and I'm a hard-core feminist, but those kind of places always seem weird to me...the women in them too often seem like they are grasping for any identity, the neo-paganism/Wicca is just a sad postmodern shadow of what those religions are really striving for. Also, I'm a pretty hard-core rationalist, and all the crystals and fairy stuff bugs me. The excesses of "goddess worship" seem as ridiculous as the masculine phallic excesses.

About this woman, though, she was spectacular. I remember that her name was something like Deborah, which surprised me, because that's a warrior woman's name...not a witchy feminine one. The other thing that surprised me is how complete she seemed. She was utterly feminine, goddess-like, without the brokenness that you see too often in the real women who are drawn to those circles. She was a real witch. She was untouchable, unbroken, truly feminine and truly free.

This is another thing I don't have a lot of experience with. Again, in theory, I love women and I'm a super feminist, however, the path life has taken me has made me (or I have chosen) to look to the female warrior for inspiration and strength, for a model to base myself on. Because of that, I've ended up with few female friends. Women seem so reluctant to be the protagonists of their own lives, to be their own heroes (obviously this is due to society that tells women they can't be), and I've worked so hard to not be that way, to not be supporting cast in my own life, that I just don't have much in common with most women anymore. Most of my friends are male. The two female friends who work with me in my vocation also have no other female friends, because, having worked so hard to beat "female weakness" out of ourselves, to be tougher even than the tough men in the field, we find ourselves utterly contemptuous of women who are weak.

That's why this goddess-woman was so surprising. She was so feminine with all the moon stuff and goddess stuff and witchy stuff, but she wasn't broken at all. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted me. She offered to paint me something new if I couldn't find the right item in the store. She wanted to make love to me, and she was clear and unapologetic about it, just waiting for me to come around. Which didn't take long; I found her irresistibly beautiful, myself aroused. As I walked around her store, looking at her women, her painted items, I wanted to let her...and I did. Her wild gray hair and brilliant robes dropped down between my legs, and, unlike men, she knew what she was doing and my letting her was unconflicted, and I woke up in a wonderful orgasm, just as she finished with me, and gave me the perfect gift from her art that I hadn't been able to find myself: a wooden spoon that she had painted in all the colors of the rainbow.



********************

Weird, huh? I wanted to get the details down so that at least later I can go back and take this and write it as real erotica, as it definitely had the potential for that. I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing. Manic-depressives are supposed to be intensely drawn to bright color or "color-reactive" or something...and her colors were exquisite, the first thing I noticed. She was older? What does that mean? She wanted me, which I guess still leaves me somewhere in a traditional feminine role, but that kind of aggressive pursuit would have been gross coming from a man.

Incidentally, I'm not a lesbian, which is sort of a shame because my life would be a lot easier if I were. If any family would be fine with it, it would be mine. (When people ask me if I am, I often answer, "In everything but the sexual orientation part.") But also, human sexuality isn't black and white, and I doubt there's a woman alive who can't appreciate the beauty of the female form...or if there is, that must be kind of sad for her. It seems that to identify as bisexual or homosexual nowadays doesn't mean loving women as much as a whole socio-political construct ("It's a lifestyle...I'd have to get a whole new wardrobe...") in which I have no interest.

I was also glad to discover that I really do love and respect the women's women, the witchy women...I'm not really contemptful of them - just the ones who aren't fully realized, and that I guess I still believe that the real ones are out there.

And what of the spoon? Not even going to go there.

Facing the weekend

Yesterday I left work late. I stopped at the book fair on the way out, and bought a Curious George Collection - but as it turns out, they aren't the original stories at all, they are these crappy new ones that someone wrote in the style of the originals, even though it was listed as being written by H.A. Rey. I am so pissed off! When did everything in the world go to crap?

I also woke up angry today. I changed phone numbers because I work such odd hours and telemarketing often wakes me up. Somehow, they didn't make the new number a blocked one either, so I had to file this special request to make it unlisted. So - 8 AM on my day off, what happens? The phone company calls me to tell me that, yes, thank you, they have made the change. Fuck.

They are building a house across the street. One day, it was extremely hot and the construction workers asked for some water. No problem. But now, one of them comes here banging on my door and yelling my name every day to request that. He is incredibly creepy, always looks like he is casing the place, or casing my bod. "You live here alone? Are you married? What do you do?" It is gross. I am also sick of washing glasses for the neighbor's construction crew. I know this sounds terribly bitchy, like, Christ, all they did was ask for some water, but it's over and over again. What, they never can bring water for themselves? You can't even be nice to anyone anymore.

Then I got to panic about how much money I owe for student loans. The calculator said I'd have to make $180,000 a year to pay them back.

I guess some of this must be PMS type stuff, which also was not nearly as bad when I was well medicated. I guess there's a whole field of perinatal/gynecological psychiatry, and guess what - people like me get worse with hormones and especially pregnancy. It just gets better and better.
In non-pleasure reading, I came across this title: How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying To Kill Me. Anyone know anything? It looks like it might be good, and I notice that they say she said something about how suicidal thoughts seem to be addictive, which I've noticed too. But it looks also like I might already do most of the things she says. I mean, journaling - here, helping others - my job (and yes, it does help immensely), feelings vs. facts - I do that reminder all the time ("It's just how you feel, not a fact"). The excerpt has something about recognizing and not feeling guilty for the thoughts - that they are just a symptom; also very good advice that helped me a lot that I found on my own. Actually, it looks like this book is sort of what I wanted this site to be. Might be worth a read anyway, though. I like the title, but wonder if she intended it with the twist of irony or wryness that I hear in it.

The photosensitivity from the previous good med has stopped, or at least I'm not noticing it when I use good sunblock, so now I'm tempted to try taking it again.

I am sort of worried about this weekend. I have no plans, and was counting on being able to read that Curious George book for a while. I also have Moby Dick and am still dragging through Lie Down In Darkness...but nothing is really sucking me in. I could use some exercise, but it's hot right now. I also should make some minimal house-cleaning effort.

No one is really in town this weekend. Usually I like alone-weekends, but something about this one is making me nervous. I'm not sure why. I think that I have become fairly sensitive to things that aren't really happening yet - the ability to feel when a mood is going to swing before it has started to.

It is something deep, in my mind, always like tectonic plate shifts - beneath the surface, invisible, out of control, and carrying tremendous force.

I had a blip of a high this week, one night I worked all night and didn't sleep and the next day I was so happy and everything seemed funny. That was actually good, because after a few weeks (how long has it been? I have no idea, time gets all bent weird in those states) of crippling hopelessness, to slip out of it for a while, to feel happy, to feel alive again...it feels like crawling out of a grave or hell or some other bad metaphor. On that day, I walked to the parking lot with Jake after work, and we were laughing. I was funny, and the sun was shining and it just felt so good to be alive. I can't even tell if that is because things were really swinging into a high, or just that the relief of the misery and the return of hope were so profound at that point.

And then I felt strange. I realized that the worst thing about melancholia is how it robs you of hope. People can survive anything if there is a reason, or if they know it will end. I was convinced that things would never change, that my brain would never be able to think again (as I said, this time the cognitive problems got to me more than anything). It was impossible to imagine anything different. Then, the plates shifted, scarily, lurching out of control, but they settled fortuitously, and I was myself again. Even more than myself.

As we were walking and the hills behind the lot were so beautiful, and everything was blooming, I felt resurrected. I felt a little sorry for Jake and everyone else, who would probably never feel as exquisitely and unconditionally and gratefully alive as someone who, suddenly and inexplicably, rose out of her own grave, was granted something that felt like a miracle.

And then I see why I want to write books about myth and legend and larger-than-lifeness.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

I guess it's time to find a new med. I cannot function anymore. Even worse than the feeling is the mental slowing.

I've been doing a lot of the work that is sort of para-work from my actual field - the customer stuff, intrapersonal crap, all that. It's been fun, but today, there was a serious yet simple technical issue, something I should know cold. I had no idea. I couldn't scan my memory, just could not make my mind move.

I was semi-ok for the rest of the day, though the co-workers commented, and I hid from this boss lady who is just scary, because my ego couldn't take yelling from her. So I just did crappy tasks that no one else wanted to all day. That was ok, actually.

But then I got home, and hit the sofa, and I am also getting over some plague-like disease that someone from one of those visiting offices gave me and I'm physically exhausted, and also can't really exercise which is another thing making this worse, and I put Napoleon Dynamite on, just for something inocuous to watch, with maybe a few laughs, and it was sweet, and just the right thing, and I fell asleep, which felt good, but then I woke up with this vague, yet crushing agony. I found myself lying on the sofa, literally writhing in some kind of pain that I could not identify.

So - agony + mind-numbing stupidity = problem.

What the fuck am I going to do now?

Other than that, I've been reading a little about Byron, decided I need to read his works. The excerpts are good. And I feel sorry for him, but on the other hand I envy his money and social status that allowed him to indulge his nature. I'd love to buy a set of peacocks, a chariot. I'm also reading Lie Down In Darkness by William Styron because I liked Darkness Visible so well, but this I'm liking less. It's just another one of those Southern tragedies. Not that it's not good, but it almost feels like a cariacature of the genre. And the racism is hard to take. I know, it's Southern, different times, but it's brutal, at least sometimes or for someone of the touchy-feely 1990s generation.

Rage Dreams

When I was a kid, when I had nightmares, they were often the "being chased by something you can't escape" type.

For the last few years, I have less fear dreams, and more rage dreams. The content is not consistent, but the tone is - I am furious, sometimes screaming at someone, sometimes physically trying to hurt them. Tonight, it was a travel agent who screwed up my flight plans home after some miserable work trip, and I couldn't get home. I was furious, and screaming on the phone. Somehow, it descended into physical fighting.

These dreams are exhausting. I wake up with all my muscles tight, my body aching, tired, and, of course, furious.

I guess that if I had to inherit the legendary temper and temprament of my father's family, at least it comes out (mostly) in dreams and I'm not forever shooting out people's tires and such. In fact, I am so terrified of my temper that usually no one ever hears when I am furious. I just walk away, then take it out at home or something. I am the most frightened of myself of anyone.

I am not sure this is a good thing. No one ever knows when I am angry. Or at least, never the right person. People think I'm very calm and collected. But I wish sometimes I could let myself be like the rest of my family - make huge, angry scenes that frighten everyone in hearing distance.

The mantra: It could be worse

Things are still hard. My brain is still stuck. Mornings are still hell. Things still swing around a lot, like last night, when I really wanted to go to bed, but suddenly just had to run and also write about something funny that happened to me yesterday on my regular blog. So I went to bed late. And woke up crappy.

Now I had a semi-short day, finished around 5, did an errand, and came home. Crashed on the couch. I think I finally picked up some infection from one of the various sick people at this visiting work site. So far nothing too bad, but it feels like the start. Ache in the throat, neck, headache. Physical exhaustion. Whatever.

I've been working at a different place, and they seem to like me, even offered me a job (for which I am not yet qualified), which was sweet of them...but I just am getting ready to be done at this site. I'm lonely there without my work friends.

But I have a lot to be thankful for. I was so settled in for the worst that I really am surprised that things aren't so bad. I was assuming crash position. So far, things have been so much better than they could have. For this, I am profoundly thankful. So I can't work, can't think. So what? I'm alive, managing to go through the motions at least minimally. That's a lot.



In other news, I'm just kicking myself for not buying some of these last time I was in Istanbul. They are so hard to find and expensive online. And they were everywhere there! But I just didn't have time to stop and really try things on and stuff. Damn.

Going through the motions

It's not that bad. (I am probably dooming myself with that statement.) But seriously, I was expecting things to be a lot worse by now.

True, I can't get anything really important done. I can't work on hard things that actually have some meaning. I can't write, though I haven't worked on the book for a long time, and I miss it. I've been reading more background research stuff for it, but not even getting inspired like I usually do. Day to day, I'm really forcing myself through the motions.

But...it could be so much worse. I expected it to be so much worse. I have not had one of those sprees of calling up everyone I know like a drunk person, but without the somewhat understandable excuse of actually being drunk. I haven't broken down sobbing or screaming in front of everyone I know.

The thing is, mornings, the "high cortisol hours" of 4-6 AM are horrible, and it kills me to get going. But I do get going. Even if my heart isn't 100% in it, if I'm just going through the motions, I am at least going through them. I don't feel horrifically horrible all the time.

There is the other side. I cannot work. My brain is oh-so-slow. All my work and my writing, the things that makes life worth living for me, are impossible. If I stop and think about that, I feel terror. Have these years on the drug fried my brain? Will it ever work again? Will I be able to think again? This, if I let myself ponder on it, freezes me. Will I ever be back? Will the spark come back? Will I ever care again?

And I see signs that things may get worse. Last night, after a quietly decent day, I went to bed after finishing an entire novel that was good and interesting, but couldn't sleep, had to get up and watch mindless TV. A vague discontent settled upon my quiet, beloved home.

But it could be so much worse. I thank God it isn't, at least not yet. Even if my mind is blown, I'm not actively suffering. I thought about alternate careers I could have if my brain never comes back. I could be a mechanic, either autos or boats. I probably would make more money and be just as happy. The university I left has a program in naval architecture, though it probably requires that my degree be an engineering one. I could go back. It wouldn't be the end of the world.

Thinking like this has been eye-opening. I guess that's a good thing.

On Going Down

I'm so fried that I can really only do busy-work. I did data entry for hours tonight. It's alright; I had to catch up on that anyway. Today I worked long hours again, because if I do that, I forget everything else sometimes.

I put the radio on in the background. It was hard to find something I really wanted to listen too. Nothing seemed right, which I guess is a pretty good metaphor. But when I did fall onto beautiful songs (which for me usually is related to the lyrics, because I don't have a great sense of music), they almost moved me to tears.

Every time I stop taking meds that have worked well for a long time, it is sort of interesting (beyond the "look at the car accident" kind of interesting) to have the real me resurface. It's horrible, no doubt, but also sort of familiar. Hello, there, you! You've been gone a long time. Nice to know you are still alive somewhere.

While I certainly cannot fathom actually writing something worthwhile, being effective, doing something useful, when I am like this, in some ways it feels right to be back there. It channels a certain kind of energy, one that is usually surpressed with drugs. These drugs undoubtedly make me a better person, relieve suffering, allow me a normal life. I would probably be dead without them. That said, I wonder how long you can cheat the universe. Letting the real me stumble back out from time to time feels like letting things return to their natural order. It feels wrong, but also right. The drugs pound back reality, alter it. It's nice to know that they don't really change it, that without them, everything is as it was.

The monster is back, the freak. It's funny how for so long I became normal, and then I don't even miss her. But now, at the beginning of sliding back, before the horror becomes overwhelming, there are a few brief moments where I remember the freaks, the twisted, the broken. I remember their odd beauty, which, when I am well-medicated and happy and normal, is either too odd for me to recognize the beautiful part, or too frightening to look upon closely. I forget that I am one of the grotesque. I work hard to do so, and with long term drugs, it becomes more natural. But I'm not sorry when I am reminded of what I am, even if life is easier when I am not that.

It's funny that as all the color, even if it is dark, comes back into the world, I get hungrier for sex as well as for tears. Tonight I want to really cry, to read some really amazing poetry, but I also wouldn't mind really fucking. Which I also haven't done in about a million years.

Still here

Yeah, I'm still around. It's just that the going back to work and all that is killing me. I am very tired...even though I slept a lot this weekend. I wish I could just sleep well for once.

I am also now a couple of weeks with no meds. I forgot the actual physical feelings that come back that good meds treat - the mysterious pains, fatigue, heaviness in the limbs. How goddamn hard everything gets. Tonight I came home and slept a little on the couch. I need to empty the dishwasher, and do the dishes in the sink. I'm not being overly ambitious. But even those things seem impossible.

Heh, the opening posts of this blog were so ambitious and purposeful. Now, I'm reduced to whining. I guess it was bound to happen. That's ok, though. That's what this blog is for. I promise that once I start feeling better, I'll put more life advice up here.

I read something about the post-depression shame: it's sort of like after a bad night of drinking. You have to go back and figure out what you did to whom, in front of which people. I already am seeing the effects. Huge blowup with my main doctor, embarrassment at minor meltdown in front of Jake. The worst thing after these storms blow over is the cleanup, the aftermath, the realizing that I have acted like a totally crazy person (which is fair enough, because I guess I am one). I hope I manage to get through this time without fucking up too badly or too publicly.

Oddly enough, that gets easier with time, because the memories of GREAT SHAME from previous times are a great motivator to keeping your shit together in public at all costs. Lessons learned the hard way. Miles to go. All that.

Where to go for support

A good friend who has been following this latest drama suggested I look for some internet forums for support or something. A good idea, in theory.

The problem is when you actually get there, those forums are full of people whose issues are so different, so much deeper. Their lists of meds are the "shut the fuck up" psych meds. They are all on some heavy antipsychotic, clonazepam, and an anticonvulsant. Usually they also are on opiates and have a myriad of the various syndromes: neck pain, chronic Lyme disease, fibromyalgia. Lots of the conversations revolve around how to get more social security and disability benefits.

There are just not many people on there working, living normal lives. I don't mean to be judgmental and I do understand that they are suffering and all that, and probably this superior attitude is what gets me into half the trouble I'm in, but still...where the fuck is everyone like me?

I do sort of know where we are. We're hidden, afraid of stigma. Jake told me of someone else working with us with the same thing. I overheard another conversation once last year about someone else - with no name mentioned. We are all destined to ride it out alone.

Freak out

Somehow I let myself fall asleep on the couch for about 4 hours. It was going to be a short nap, but then I couldn't get up. My whole fucking body felt stuck.

Of course, the one other side effect this med has is sleep paralysis for me. So I had that for a long time. I had to try to pull myself out of it for about the last half hour. I feel horrible. Had dreams with no visual parts - just the sensation of spinning. I felt truly like I was losing my mind. These dreams also sometimes have me dreaming that I wake up and wander, very realistically. So that happened too.

Now that I'm finally up, I feel like I am sleeping partway. Things feel unreal, slow, frightening.

It feels like I am really and truly losing my mind. I keep saying to myself, "Psychosis is treatable too...psychosis is treatable too..." and drinking caffeinated cola right now to help myself wake up.

Why am I still trying to stop this med?

Continued...

Have I lost my mind? The one-third of a daily dose that I took yesterday because the withdrawal was so bad did me so much good. I slept like a human being. I got up today to work like normal. My body stopped hurting (except for my face). So why am I stopping?

I think the best option will be to cut this off for a few months, let it get out of my skin and system, because I had a lot of good years with this drug, and it didn't fry my skin before. I found a couple of articles where they did skin biopsies, and found these weird deposits in the skin, but they went away after several months. Since it took a few years to get to this, maybe I can then take it again.

The other option is to see the shrink I last saw four years ago, maybe he has a brilliant idea. Maybe a different drug in the same class. Maybe lithium. But I don't want to spend more money on shrinks, because it always sucks to go there, and I'm not really sure I like the guy. And I left there promising myself I'd never go back, that I could handle things myself.

No one seems to understand what I'm so scared of. I guess it's because I've only known Jake for about 4 years, that is, post-good-med. He has never seen me crazy. He only sees my serious, work side. He doesn't know how bad it can get. He probably couldn't believe it if I told him.

Actually, I did tell him. It was really hard. I think I am glad I did, though. What happened was like this: I told him I just really need to talk to someone - which he knew. One afternoon last week, we were outside on a break, and I said that I just didn't know if it was a good idea to tell him or anyone related to work...and that I just didn't know how to say it. I slipped down from the side of the planter we were sitting on and sat down on the ground, because at that time I was all dizzy and messed up, both from withdrawal and also from the nerves of almost being exposed.

I just sat there for a while. He said, "Well, even if you can't talk to me, you really should talk about this to someone." I told him I had one girlfriend who knew. More silence. "Is it your family?" I was sort of surprised and said no. Then he said, "It must be something medical." Pause. "Don't worry, people are understanding about that." Ha! I sort of laughed, and said, "No, they really aren't."

At this point, I was, obviously, incapable of going on. Somehow he had to go do something or I did. But he was on duty til late that night, so I didn't go home. I called him and told him that I would be around, whenever he had a slow hour. Finally he did, so we went outside again, sat down by the wall, and just started talking about other stuff. Gossip, important stuff in his life, the future, fear, and then the conversation sort of slipped into secret telling. I still couldn't talk to him, could literally not bring myself to say the words, so finally, I just reached into my bag and pulled out an article about the safety of long term lithium use, and let him say it. Of course, he blurted out, "Manic-depression?" - the term that sounds so fucking, well, crazy. I cringed just hearing it.

We talked for a while about that, not a ton of details. He said he knew someone else who works with us who also has it. He asked what happens. I can't really explain. The thing is, all the crazy shit I've done, I tell as these cocktail party anecdotes, so it sounds funny. That's the only way I know how to tell. So it made him laugh, missing the stuff in between, the horror parts. That was ok. It sort of softened everything. He couldn't understand why I am so scared at the thought of having a med problem now, not being able to keep going on this one.

Anyway, I am sort of glad I talked. I feel much less dishonest, like I'm hiding a secret from everyone. It was just a good conversation overall, for a lot of the other stuff too. He also understood why I hated shrinks, didn't think it was bad to try to avoid them, didn't think I was being, well, insane, about that.

This probably wasn't the most interesting post, but that's how it turned out. We chatted until the sun went down, and he had to go back in, and I had to go home.

The other good news is that I'm looking at my to-do list for these two weeks off and thngs seem to be going ok. I didn't do the hardest things on the list, but it isn't like I just was frozen the whole time. I did some stuff. And I'm doing lazy stuff for work too, so even the time in which I can't face really hard stuff isn't totally wasted. Thank God for that. For these two weeks, for them not being too hellish even if they are rough, for me seeming to be ok now that I took just one pill, for seeing the possible solution of stopping and restarting this drug later.

Scared

I'm off meds now for about two weeks. Things are getting scary. I wake up at 3:30 AM. I itch all over. I am having serious withdrawal. Today I had to take just 1/3 of a dose, just to sort of make it stop.

I talked to my regular doc about this. He tried to give me Cipralex. No fucking way. That is "1000x more serotonin selective" which means it would make Sara feel dead, or deader than the ones that were already too bad. He is trying to keep me off lithium, I think because it makes him nervous, and because he doesn't want to have "bipolar" on my file, because of aforementioned career reasons. I am considering seeing the last shrink I saw a few years ago, who was only semi-evil, just to get more input. But I'm always disappointed by shrinks and their unhelpfulness.

I read a lot of Akiskal's articles this week. One paragraph in one of them that I liked (Journal of Affective Disorders 62:17-31, 2001) was that the use of mood stabilizers has to be balanced against the benefits of instability, and another article by him said that it is important to find a psychiatrist who understands that perfect control might not be desirable to the patient, that the patient's identity and understanding of who they are is a person with these kind of swings, and that it is ok to not have a "full response." Thank the goddess there are some thinking psychiatrists out there. I also found the concept of using the traits and mixing of them to determine personality type or disorder type (like, high fear and anger vs high fear with low anger) . Someone out there gets it.

I was also glad to see that Night Falls Fast has been translated to my native language.

That said, I'm kind of a mess. I'm happy, sad, crazy, lazy. One thing that is harder than I remember is how physically bad I feel off the med. Every peripheral nerve in my body is going a little crazy. Stomach pain, can't move, keep dropping everything. I hope that is just the withdrawal and not how bad I can be on my own, which I suspect it might be.

And I'm terrified of how bad it can get, how bad I will end up. I want to know how long I need to wait before deciding that I've stabilized.

Anyway, I have to entertain company and stuff, so I can't keep writing. But I'll try to be back tomorrow.

Oh, and I talked to Jake. I think I am glad I did. More on this later.

Anxiety

Today I made and ate almost a whole lasagna. A friend ate too, but I ate most of it. Any weight loss I had from the last three months of hard work is going to be GONE.

It's the middle of the night. I just got up and ran for half an hour. I was that nervous.

Why?

Because today I was in the sun for a total of about 5-10 minutes, but this med, the best one I have ever had as far as making me feel ok, be able to work, and not be totally numb, has made me incredibly sensitive to sunlight. My skin has aged a ton since starting. And I get a sunburn from the slightest exposure. I'm not even particularly light skinned.

This, with the blood pressure drops and the racing pulse and the weight gain, is making me think that I might need to switch meds. This is going to be a hassle as I have no shrink. And I'm afraid to mess with something that is finally working.

But it didn't used to do this. So maybe the levels are too high. I guess that's the first step. But god, it's so damn hard. I just do not want to deal with this right now.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

Last night I exercised hard. I slept almost all day, did almost nothing. I slept outside a bit, got a lot of sunshine at least. Tried going for an exercise walk with a friend, but was just too slowed. But somehow, in the evening, I managed to drag myself onto the machine, and also do some weight training. It felt great. I guess you really do have to do it every day for the difference. I slept ok, even though I went to bed late and slept most of the day.

And somehow, today I got up flying. The neighbor's car alarm went off for about 15 minutes, making it impossible to keep sleeping. Since I've been up, I've been on the phone to insurance companies, am writing a work letter I've put off for months, ate breakfast, started hitting my "to-do" list. I wanted to do some writing on projects that really inspire me that I haven't worked on in months. I bought not one, but two kites on impulse yesterday. Then I came home and searched the internet for an even bigger third kite that they didn't have at the store!

But I also have that sort of scary swinging feeling. The one that comes out when things are shifting. You feel sort of like you are on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall or to fly, and you're just not sure what is coming. (Hmmm, I really like that metaphor.) I am scared of this feeling. It feels out of control. You never know if you are going to crash or suddenly be flying, or be in the worst place - agitated with tons of extra energy, but feeling bad.

I am a control freak. I do not like this feeling. I am tired of spinning, not knowing who I will be when I wake up. I am scared, that one or the other of my crazies will come at a very bad time, a time I need to function well.

But maybe that's just my baseline personality. Maybe when I'm not horribly depressed, I'm tons of fun, funny, witty, exuberant about life. This has always been the problem - are my highs damaging? I get all my best work done during them. I pick up language textbooks and learn new languages fast when I'm like this. I mean, sure, there are definitely little bad things like the incessant talking. It must be like hanging out with someone on coke. But that's when I write, I actually work on the novel I want to write someday, when I do good work in my field, when I can learn new things at a rate that dazzles everyone, that I can convince everyone to jump on board for a wild idea.

For example, the time before last when I was high, I somehow - God knows why - got it into my head that I wanted to learn to fly a small airplane around the world. For about 2 months, I drove everyone apeshit about small airplanes. No matter what they said, I'd swing the conversation immediately back to how cool it was to fly around the world. It drove everyone crazy. It was surely at least a little insane.

Get this - now a friend and I are enrolled in a small aircraft pilot course. The friend now also wants to fly around the world. And I'm afraid to fly. Is this a good thing? Should my crazy be so contagious? And is it good that I'm getting this license? Saying you flew yourself around the world is cool. It is probably a very cool experience. But why the hell am I off doing it, randomly, with no connection to anything in my life, and even, in fact, when I'm somewhat afraid of it? I mean, I never do anything dangerous-crazy when I'm high. In fact, except for the irritation I feel, the agitation and anxiety, and how I probably drive people around me nuts, I end up doing a lot of cool things from it.

Now I debate going to my GP. I also debate lithium. The thing is, I work in a field that requires a license. I'm not an air traffic controller or anything like that, but there is a background/medical check. I am afraid of having that on my record. I would never endanger anyone; I'm not that bad off, but the stigma is so bad.

And I'm scared again. Where am I going?

Why

Now that blogger seems to be working better, I thought I'd go on a little about why, now. What are the things weighing on me at this moment?

I feel like I am a million years old. Not old in a physical sense, but old in that I've lived so hard, so extreme, so much. I'm tired. I've done hard things in life, and it's not that I couldn't do them again, it's just that I feel used up. Worn out. Like I've seen enough, am vaguely afraid of that statement, "They can always hurt you more." The loss of innocence on innocence seems unbearable, and utterly irreversible. I'm tired. Tired in an existential/spiritual way. They say I was born an old soul, and I feel like it's just gotten older and older.

There are all kinds of things I want to do in life: write a novel, travel to some places, etc. But I can't imagine anything else I want to do in the future that would be worth the work of actually getting there. And all of that is futile too - once you die, it's the same as if you never did any of it. And we are back to point A: I am tired.

But tiredness isn't enough to kill me. It will be when I'm racing, speeded up, can't find rest, too much energy and nothing to stop it.

And I'm back to being all needy, wanting to call a friend.

I found another site that said one reason that is a bad reason to tell someone is wanting sympathy. You'll never get as much as you need, and may not get any at all. Sounds familiar.

And in the meanwhile, I just, like some crazed Energizer bunny, keep on going about life as if all were normal.

Will try to post again tomorrow, or even later tonight if I can't sleep.