I Heard the Devil Call My Name

Not really. Not literally, because that would put me into a whole new class of crazy.

This is the essential trap any loony faces: I'm on meds. I feel great. I have friends. I'm friendly at work. I don' stay at home, sitting on my hands, counting the minutes that I've managed not to kill myself.

So hey! I must be all better, right?

And when you've been sick and you're better, what do you do? You stop taking your medicine.

No.

First of all, I have been warned many times in many degrees of harshness of the foolishness of that act.

Secondly, I no longer have a death wish.

Thirdly, I have forgotten how horribly painful it was to be sick in the head.

I've got these meds fine-tuned now, to the point that I know I need to increase the anti-paranoia meds within the prescribed limit and can tune down the anti-anxiety meds, again within the prescribed limits.

Lately, I've read some articles about how people with a similar diagnosis but apparently deeper pockets have found themselves in a holistic program, which only makes sense. Healthy mind in a healthy body and all that.

I can probably organize this myself, although I doubt that it will be as easy. Still, I think I'm going to give it a try.

First step: Establish a baseline. That's the easiest part. Well. We'll see.

I am compliant, which is something relatively new to me. It astonishes me that it brings good results.

Constant Alert

Not like I used to be when I lived with my mother and lived with Xman. I suppose that was walking on eggshells.

It's good to have a diagnosis that fits, even if I don't like it. (Bipolar. Ugh.)

However.

The downside of this is that I have to question every flash of genius that I have. I could try to look at it, judge it, and say either "That's a fantastic idea!" or "Hm. Sounds good." But I shouldn't trust either response. Of course, there are always the "Are you out of your mind?" responses to things like "Hey, let's go to the base camp of Everest!"

I look back over my life and hindsight being 20/20, I see the things that came about due to a fatal moment of mania. One was thinking I could be a good project manager. That came about because I answered one question, ONE question, in a book about project management. From there came a long string of manic moments that got me deeper and deeper into trouble. Is it any wonder that now I'm constantly second-guessing myself?

This will be a subject to take up with Dr. A once the new year and my new health savings account kick in.

What is the litmus test for a manic idea as opposed to a rational one?

Granted, my manic moments involve things like (see the above) buying a bracelet for $70 or saying "I can do that" before someone has even completed the sentence.

The past six months or so have consisted of me turning down things for fear that accepting them will get me up to my neck in things I can't do.

I can see where that will lead me if I continue down that path and I'm not keen on the final destination.

Like It Hasn't Happened Before

This morning I realized

1. Yesterday flipped me over to depression. I am on turtle on its back.
2. This was further added to by more financial chickens coming to roost.
3. I have to buy cat food.
4. I let the calendar get away from me again and have been tripped up on my meds.
5. All of my meds need to be refilled. $$$.

For some reason, it always seems to be money and lack thereof that gets me.

I'm sorry, buy-nothing-ers, but I must buy some things today. And I have to get out of the house before I go more bonkers.

Wonders Never Cease

Guess who's bipolar?

Me! Little ol' me.

Dr. Yeow didn't say it. He just accepted it when I said I was cycling pretty high these days and in a way that has nothing to do with a peloton. Or Lance Armstrong. I described my symptoms and my shockingly shameful behavior lately, which I have been too ashamed to blog, on my farewell tour or not.

He changed my medication. Dr. Yeow is always very careful in changing my medication. He also knows that I am not always a compliant patient. If it's a complicated dosing regimen, I usually manage the morning but the rest of the day is lost.

One thing I have realized about this blog is that I use it as an emotional crutch. Personally, I think it's a good thing. Especially since I've come home every day this week and gobbled everything edible in sight (excluding the cats and their food).

Maybe I'm like Cher - taking another farewell tour? Too hard to say goodbye?

Because right now, I'm thinking maybe I don't want to make a whole lot of changes at once.

My head hurts.

Oh - Mark - email me.

The Darkness Comes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX3vsw2F_DA&ob=av2e


Yes, yes. Naughty me. The non-compliant patient me. About a month ago, I stopped taking Drug 1 because it's $130 / month. I also stopped taking Drug 2 for high blood pressure because it meant I would have to go back to my doctor ($100+) to be lectured and told I am still fat. Drug 3 has been petering out. I'm supposed to take two a day. Sometimes I take one. Sometimes not.

So yes, it was a whacking great surprise when I sat at my desk this morning and wanted to just Not Be. Wanted the pain to stop. (What pain? How do you describe it? It's like fibromyalgia pain, I imagine. You bloody well know what it feels like, but people roll their eyes at you, yeah, yeah, right.)(Like trying to explain cramps to a man - okay. Imagine someone's reached up into your gut, you say, and at that point, you get whoa, whoa, whoa, stop! And he runs away. And you don't even get to finish saying, "Someone actually pulls your gall bladder out with his bare hands. After squishing it like a tension ball a couple of times.")

Oh, the horrible things I say to myself. The horrible things I want to do. And I hate it. I hate being mental. I hate not being able to live without these drugs. Please don't give me the old saw about it being like diabetes, because I know non-compliant diabetics, too.

Most of all, how on earth do I explain the last couple of days....weeks...month...to my boss at work? I don't, that's how. There is exactly one person in my building who has a visible disability, a guy about my age who has CP and really and truly looks like he's going to fall on me because his balance pitches the top half of him forward. If the wild proliferation of people with physical disabilities is any indication, I can guess how it would go over if I said, "Isadora, by the way, the reason I act kind of strange sometimes is because I have a mental illness." Here's your tin foil hat, what's your hurry?

Oh, and granted the Big Finance campus is huge, but I have only seen one person using a wheelchair and I think he was just here for a conference.

How could I tell my recruiter? Again, I can't. I can just see her laughing at my jokes (she always does) and surreptitiously typing, "Do not send the Crazy One out again, ever!"

Although I can tell when I'm rushing headlong into disaster, it has to get pretty extreme before I put the brakes on it. Usually I do that when it's too late to rescue the situation.

Is it now? I don't know.

I tried four times to call my shrink after he canceled the last appointment a month ago. It was only today (brakes screeching) that I was able to get through and actually make an appointment.

And the crazy thing? Going to the doctor, going to the shrink, and paying for a month's worth of meds is about what one day off from work costs. I don't know how many days the cray-cray would have taken to get straight. Even now, I just know that I've stopped on my Path to Destruction and turned around. I have no idea how long it will take to get back to where I was.

But I do imagine there will be some time spent working on my resume this weekend. I've already started to clean off my desk.

I hate being mental. I hate it. I really, really hate it.

And when you - you know who you are - asked me if I had suicidal ideation, I didn't even answer you. I wanted to say, "No, but I imagine you can get it fairly cheap on eBay" and the answer was yes. But you probably knew that. And you probably know how much I hate being mental. I worry that I might have BPD, as we diagnosed Emma. I just don't know any way of telling the work world about this.

I Must Keep in Good Health and Not Die

Actually, I can do either. I can't do anything in between. I can't get sick. I can't get hurt. But I (preferably) can stay in good health or I can die. Anything else is right out.

I'm thinking of canceling my health insurance. I can't afford to use it. The money it would free up would ease my worried mind greatly.

When I went for my physical, the doctor wanted me to have an ultra sound done of my tummy. She wanted me to have an MRI for my back and hip. She had great aspirations for me, but the end result is that I haven't had any of that done.

And when I went to the gyn a little earlier, she wanted me to have a mammogram. I'm not having a mammogram. Because honestly, if there's anything going on in there, I don't want to know.

When I was updating the "Jingle" blog - actually, before that - it occurred to me that maybe I don't have ten years left. In a weird way, I hope this is true.

I was talking to my insurance agent today and he was nagging me about Roth IRAs and I told him, "I can't afford to retire. I can afford to work. I can afford to die. I cannot afford retirement." He laughed uneasily. No, I don't have life insurance with him. I don't have life insurance, period. What would be the point?

Of course, this all coincide with or is because of the medicine drawer running low to empty. I have to go this evening to pick up everything.

This morning when I got to work, exactly on time for once, I sat in my car in the nicely darkened parking deck. I leaned my seat back and I slept! For half an hour, but still, it amazed me that I could sleep anywhere other than the pile of mattresses with no peas under them.

Then later I was sitting at work and I realized why I have not been beating my brains out at work.

It's because I really don't give a fuck. Stock options, tranches, expirations, I really don't care. It's about as relevant to me as some rock falling into a quarry in Italy.

I realized that I haven't cared for a long, long time. Probably since Fezziwig & Co. made me walk Spanish down the hall. But I think it might have been earlier than that.

Maybe I'll care if I medicate myself.

When I see the young 'uns at work, when I see how fired up they are about dividends on expired options and how deeply they're into it, it's a nostalgic moment for me. I remember caring that much. And I remember what it got me.

No. Truthfully? I don't give a fuck. I only care as long as I can keep getting a paycheck. Maybe I'll care if I medicate myself.

Cumulative Effects

Yes, I know I'm depressed. Yes, I have an appointment today with my psychopharmacologist, aka, my shrink.

Yesterday was hard. I realized that I am not over Katy's death and I am not over Phoebe's death. The Taylor scare was almost a direct hit on her scrawny hide and if I didn't have her to press to my heart now, would be in another tally column.

I realized last night and this morning that I have had a lot of unpleasant things happen to me that I've yet to recover from. Part of this is because I've been in a battlefield situation for the past 11 years. I'll spare myself and everyone else the fact that this has been going on since, oh, 1956.

And I also just realized that I don't want to do a year-by-year toting up of the sad, bad stuff. It's sufficient (and avoidant behavior) to say that a lot of bad stuff has happened and I haven't had time to recover from one bad thing when another bad thing bounces its way into my cave like a hand grenade.

I only know that it has left me sad and exhausted.

Along with the grenades jumping around like Mexican jumping beans, I have to deal with the fact that Everyone's Gone to the Moon is a way of life for me at certain times of the year. I think it's fair to say at this point in my life, I will not suddenly become Miss or even Ms. Popularity and will have to sit in my boudoir with my morning chocolate fetched by my maid, creasing my pretty little forehead with worry over which invitation I will accept. EGttM days are hard on me. I thought I had prepared for this one, but it didn't work out that way. And I didn't have the emotional wherewithal to pull together a Plan B.

I know that if another grenade gets tossed into the cave, I'll deal with it. It's what I usually do. Only I have to figure out a better way of dealing with them than throwing myself on them, belly-down. Throwing them out of the cave doesn't seem to be an option.

I realize this sounds like it's out of self-pity, but it is actually a question. Asked of the universe (silent, as usual) and God (silent, as usual), but I wonder when I'll get a break. Worse yet is the thought that maybe I've had a break. That I'm having one now and not a psychotic break. That would require too much energy and the tank is on E at the moment.

When I consider breaks I would like (right now I'm thinking of a massage in a glass-windowed room overlooking the prow of an ocean liner in the Caribbean), I realize how unlikely they are.

Then I go off to brush my teeth, take a shower, and go to work. And be grateful that I have a job to go to.

I think that overall, this stuff is going to add up and become its own grenade. And it's going to be one big motherfucker.

Ever the optimist, c'est moi.

My Mood Matches the Weather

Flood Warning

According to weather.com, Jersey is in for another 2 - 6 inches of rain.

It wasn't until this past Thursday that Main Street in Bound Brook was open. Poor Bound Brook! Or as Xman used to call it, Un-Bound Brook. Bound Brook, Elizabeth, and Wayne always get the worst of it. People died in Bound Brook during Hurricane Floyd. Buildings that were one story underwater caught fire and burned down to the water line.

My favorite place on earth at the time, the Palmyra Tea Room, was flooded out and the owners never had the money to start again.

The Army Corps of Engineers did three parts of a four part project, so Bound Brook still floods and it's going to flood again.

I hope that all it means for me is that I'll have to find a different route to work, because right now my trip takes me along two rivers that always flood. I hope there isn't a recurrence of Lake Becs, but I have a feeling there will be.

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Google'll Getchya If Ya Don't Watch Out

I googled someone's nom de net today and found several unpleasant surprises. There's nothing quite like getting gut-punched on a peaceful Sunday afternoon. I don't have the energy or inclination to cry, but I do feel like someone took my guts out, unwound them, then stuffed them back in.

Even though I've suspected this for awhile, it still hurts.

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Eat This, You'll Feel Better

The other day, I thought, all I have at home is poor people's food. Frozen meaty bits that I should cook up. Yesterday, I got yet more poor people's food. Today, I'm cooking it up. I planned a menu for this week, hoping to avoid the expense of the cafeteria. And the torrential rain coming during the next couple of days.

I had broccoli-cheddar soup for lunch. I'm baking brownies right now and I'm getting ready to go put a corned beef brisket in the pot. After that, I'm chopping up the poor people's fruit into a nice, handy, easy to pack up fruit salad.

And I do feel a little better after the soup.

Ah, the brownies are done.

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Canceled Due to Inclement Weather

No long ride this week. No short rides until the rain goes away on Wednesday. And now, of course, I kind of miss it.

I need to find consolation in something today, even if it's whatever I can dig up on Netflix or Hulu. I had been watching "Rescue Me", but that will not serve to rescue me from the gut punch I got today.

Thar She Blows

Dr. Yeow has frequently warned me to look out for manic episodes. I think he thought I was having one.

I don't want to say he's right, but at the moment, I'm feeling pretty low.

I got another love letter from Wells Fargo. This one said that I could put off paying my mortgage payment until Jan 10, 2010. Then everything would be due - three months of back mortgage payments PLUS late fees.

What f*ing saints.

And someone kept telling me they don't want my house?

And it turns out - it really does turn out - that I was making more money on unemployment than I am now.

I have been pushed and pushed and pushed and now I can't be pushed any further. Not unless someone comes and takes me where I've fallen down in a heap and bodily throws me off the precipice.

I've been crying and crying. The stupid cow at Wells Fargo kept saying, "You have to make more money and reduce your expenses to get into another program." And I kept saying, "How much more and how much less?" And she kept saying, "But that doesn't give us a true picture of your situation."

And finally, sobbing, I hung up.

I'm going to take some clonazepam. And maybe when I wake up, things won't feel so f*ing horrible.

The Drug Report

Other than the Dress Side Effect, all goes swimmingly.

I know. Can you believe I actually said "swimmingly"? But I mean it. All kinds of minor miracles have been taking place in the past few days. If it's the placebo effect, please to keep giving me some of the sweet, sweet placebo.

Examples of said miracles:

• In the early hours, I find myself singing. There's almost always a sound track rattling through my mind. Yesterday's choice was "I Could Have Danced All Night". A sure sign of depression for me is a lack of interest in music. Right now, I am starved for music. Pandora Radio can't feed me enough.
• I applied for two jobs yesterday. Including a cover letter and a brief review of my resume.
• From the library, I checked out two books on job hunting and I actually read a chapter in each. In the past, they would have languished on the bookshelf nearest the TV until the library sent me threatening emails.
• I finally manned up and extended my job search to include New York City. Hey! I just found out there are a lot of jobs there! Who knew?
  
• I looked up words in the dictionary. This may not seem significant to you, but it is to me.
• Last evening when I went to the library, I was there for two hours and spent them (with the exception of my brief blogging) engrossed in looking for jobs.
• I left a message with Ari the Therapist, asking for an appointment.
• When I started watching a PBS series on Netflix, I was not compelled to watch all six episodes at once.
• This morning before I left for Mass, I put together my gym bag so I can go to the acqua-cise class at 10.

I know! I can't believe it, either. And this is only a week on the new medication regimen. I suppose it helps a lot to have the right diagnosis, scary as it sounds, and the right doctor to prescribe the right drugs.

In Layman's Terms, "Seriously F*cked in the Head"

I saw Dr. Yeeooow yesterday. He's a nice man. He's a nice man who went to Ivy League 1, Ivy League 2, and Ivy League 3, topped off with a stint at Extremely Well-Known NYC Hospital.

And I'm sure at this point in life, has a very fat portfolio, a choice vacation home and probably a condo someplace tropical. Good for him.

He asked how I was referred to him and here it got a wee bit tricky, as I anticipated it would. There are a few people in my life who know I have Condition A. that I've had this since I was a mere tot of four or five. Condition A is unusual and only coming to be known in psychiatric circles. There is a research doctor who's conducting a study on Condition A and it was he who got me the referral to Dr. Yeeeooow.

Of course, Dr. Y wanted to know more about it. I told him the basics of what I knew, then worked hard to shift the conversation / history-taking back to the fact that I'm depressed.

I told him a couple of deep dark secrets that I'd only recently been able to admit to myself and he nodded.

I was expecting that he would tear all my meds away from me, wanting to go for the whole tabula rasa thing, but no, he didn't. What he did say was, "Okay, we'll up the dosage on this and this, keep you on this, and by the way, we need to rev up everything by starting you on this. And start going back to Ari the Therapist. You have a history and I think he's been more helpful to you than you realize."

We talked about money and he's willing to work with me. I'll see how it shakes out with my insurance company.

So. Diagnosis?

Major depression
General Anxiety Disorder
and... (drum roll!)
OCD!

OCD? OCD! Who knew? No, srsly. I knew I had bits of things here and there and I was willing to say, okay, I'm extra-finicky about a few things, what's the big deal?

But no, the OCD is a deal. Not a big deal, except that it was a contributing factor in getting laid off three times.

OCD. Ha. Well. Who knew? At least it isn't the kind that has me scrubbing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush at three o'clock in the morning. Although I wouldn't mind a little touch of it, given the present state of Ma Maisonette.

This seems like a lot to be crammed into one person's poor head, but that's okay. At least there are names for it and while it may not be curable, it's definitely treatable and of that, I am very glad.

I Want a New Drug

Through a circuitous route, I happened to take part in a clinical study run by a psychiatrist. (Go figure!)

It involved a lengthy telephone interview. I knew others who had participated in the study and as I was talking to Dr. A, he said, "Oh, and what was the family crisis that derailed you when you were twelve?"

"Oh, that was when my grandfather was arrested for molesting my friends."

Brief silence from Dr. A. "And did he molest you?"

"No. Just my friends and cousins. Not me."

Dr. A cleared his throat. We went off in another direction and at one point, he stopped me and said, "So why were you living with your grandparents?"

"Oh, my mom was in a car accident and was hospitalized for about six months when I was little."

"Six months?"

"Yeah. Six months."

On we went. There was some backtracking here and there, but in the end, Dr. A did a summation and said, "So. As I understand it, your parents divorced when you were quite young, your mother was in the hospital for six months when you were a toddler, various relatives looked after you, you had no contact with your father, your mother was physically and emotionally abusive of you as well as negligent. And as you were entering puberty, your grandfather was charged with sexually assaulting your friends and young cousins. Then..." Okay, then I kind of tuned it out.

Because stepping back from it, I thought, dang, and we haven't even gotten to the whole marriage to Xman and being laid off three times part yet. And although I've put everything that happened to me before, oh, age 45, into a box in the basement, it's kind of not-good when I think about this. I mean, this is a lot of stuff.

Dr. A inquired politely, "Are you in therapy?" And I thought, holy God, I should be.
I said not currently.
Dr. A asked if I was satisfied with my therapist. Then it finally dawned on me. "You know, I've been seeing Ari the Therapist for twelve years and I'm not any better at all than when I first started. So no, I'm not."

"Would you be interested in a referral? I may be able to find someone who can help regarding medication."

Well, sure. Sign me up.

To Dr. A's enormous credit, he got back to me within 24 hours. I now have the name of a colleague of a colleague. I have permission to drop names. "It helps sometimes," said Dr. A.

I'm going to call the number tomorrow. Because, um, honestly, if there's anybody out there still paying attention, I need a new drug. My old ones haven't been working for ages. I've been playing fast and loose with dosages. My head is doing things that scare me.

Like this...

Yesterday, because I wanted to feel like a normal human being, I went shopping. At my first stop, I found a pair of truly adorable shoes and I tried them on. I loved them, but they were a bit too big, so I moved on. Two hours later, in the same shopping center, I saw another pair of shoes and I thought, oh, I had a dream about these shoes! Then I realized, no, these were much like the shoes I had tried on only hours before.

It doesn't sound scary, does it? But it does scare me. Because for the past...I don't know how long...I've been living my life under a brain cloud. Sometimes I'll think I dreamed something when it turns out to have been real. Sometimes I think something has happened, when it hasn't happened at all. I feel unmoored, but I've been too terrified to admit it.

I lose things. Things slip through my hands like water. I'll be looking up something to put on my Netflix queue, then poof! It'll be gone. What was it, I think. A documentary. Someone who makes documentaries. What's his name? Not the fat one. Wheel. Spur. Horses? No. Mason Spurlock from Wheeling.

I'm lucky if I can keep hold of Mason long enough to look him up.

Honestly, after awhile, I've just given up trying to hold onto those things and I've been even more terrified to admit it.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who said she had a terrible time retrieving words when she had been depressed. Yes, I said, I've had a terrible time too. "Pen" has become "the thing with ink."

Look, I'm really tired of my adventures in psychiatry. I know I've been very depressed for years and very, very depressed for the last five years, with little hypomanic episodes tucked in. (They were nice. I miss them.)

I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of the roller coaster. I'm tired of not having any friends, I'm especially tired of not having a job. I'm tired of a lot of things.

I hope Dr. Referral doesn't dick me around, because I honestly can't take many more of shenanigans a la Dr. Lavender.

That's all.

Hello, Darkness

I've been depressed for about a week now. It's gotten progressively tougher. This weekend, here's what I did:

Saturday:
- Goofed around the house, doing not much of anything until it was time to go to
- Fred's MIL's wake
- Came home, scrubbed off makeup, changed clothes, wrapped myself in a blankie and fell asleep on my bed for five hours.
- Went to E's party.
- Came home and fell into bed.

Sunday:
- Goofed off around the house, feeling increasingly miserable until it was time to go see "Journey to the Center of the Earth - 3D!"
- Walked across the parking lot to a little Thai place that had just opened for Sunday brunch. It was beautiful. And delicious.
- Came home, wrapped myself in a blankie and fell asleep on my bed for six hours.
- Woke up long enough to answer some email, watched a bit of a DVD, then went back to bed.

You'll notice that there isn't a lot of work being accomplished in any of this. That's because when I'm depressed, it feels pointless and idiotic. Besides, I am so busy fighting for my life that I'm exhausted.

There's also a lot of sleeping in here. That's because if I'm asleep, I can't go droning on and on to myself about what a miserable, shabby life I'm leading, how unloved I am, etc. etc. Plus, I'm also exhausted from fighting to stay alive.

I have gone through rounds of this since I was fourteen - probably younger. They've gotten worse over time. I will hit some nice, smooth areas for awhile and I'll be loving life. Then the rogue wave comes along and it's Bec's own private Poseidon adventure.

I know when I Get Like This, I try hard to fight it, but I'll bet it shows. In this manifestation, I am nearly out of my mind about the cats.

Butch is in chronic renal failure. As beautiful as he is, he is losing weight, then more weight and now I can feel each rib when I pick him up. He also once confined himself to the kitchen - to the table and the top of the little china closet. But now he's wandering and wandering and wandering. He's looking for something and I don't know what it is. I put him in the room where the cat boxes are and he freaks out. I don't know what he's looking for and his constant wandering drives me out of the house.

I'm so frustrated about this. But I know if I took Butch to the vet, I would get a sympathetic shrug from Hunky Vet and not much else, because truly there's not much else that can be done. It gives me no comfort to know that Butch has maybe another six to twelve months on this mortal coil.

It goes on like this, you see. A spiraling downwards, a sense of futility and helplessness. Nothing helps - at least, not in a positive sense. I could go lapse into another coma again right now, but when I woke up, the laundry would still be heaped high, the dishes stacked in the sink, no food in the fridge.

I've taken today off work in the hopes that I can get some of this done, even if it means confining Butch to quarters.

This is one of the costs of depression - time missed from work. I think I've only once called in to work because I was depressed that day, but I know that there have been a handful of times when I've taken a vacation day to do what was left undone while I was depressed over the weekend.

I can't help that I'm depressed. I do what my doctors tell me to do. I follow the literature. I also know that this round of depression was kicked off by a change in my blood pressure medication. The best that I can do is hang on, take my meds as prescribed, and find some routine that I can wedge myself into that will give my life a semblance of order, provide hand-holds to get through the day.

If you have never been depressed, you probably don't understand that depression is not self-imposed. You don't understand that the worst thing you can say to a depressed person is something along the lines of "Snap out of it!" or "Just cheer up!" I wish it were that easy.

Just imagine yourself waking up every day for a week or a month or a year with a steel skewer going through some random part of your body. You can't pull it out because your hands are tied. You know it won't be removed until some random time you can't foresee. You try to live as normal a life as you can, try to work over the pain. But the next day when you wake up, maybe there's another skewer. Or the old one has been taken out, but two new ones put in. And imagine how you would feel if someone told you all you had to do was cheer up and the pain would go away.

Imagine, too, how many friends you would have. After a month or six months, how many would be left to ignore your obvious pain? Not many, I'll bet. And maybe after a year of it, you just quit trying to make new friends. You're damaged goods.

But maybe there'll be a day when you wake up and you notice your hands are no longer tied. And the skewers are gone. There are wounds, but you know what to do to make them heal.

And you can go about, trying to repair the damage done when you lived in the shadow lands. And try to get everything ready for the next time it comes around. Because no matter how hard you hope and pray and work to make sure it doesn't come around, it will.

Now. Go cheer up!

How Not to Spend a Sunday Afternoon

I do not recommend watching any of these movies, especially not on the same day. Or if you think you will, please up the dosage of your antidepressant.

They are:

- The PBS/Ken Burns production of the life of Mark Twain. At least stop with Part I. Part II is all death, destruction, poverty, foolishness, and more death.

- "Sprited Away", a movie (anime?) by the guy who did "Princess Mononoke". It is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But it is also extremely strange. Just remember: if you ever find yourself in a deserted theme park and suddenly piles of sumptuous food appear, don't eat it.

- "Dr. Zhivago, part II". This is the BBC production, with Keira Knightly as Lara. Are you kidding me? Look, I have some problems with Dr. Zhivago, period. Like running off to screw Lara while his wife is 85 months pregnant, and that's just one thing. But Keira (Kiera? Keira? Who cares?) Knightly as Lara is just too far beyond the pale for me. Julie Christie is Lara. Will forever be Lara. Julie Christie is and always will be exquisitely beautiful. This Knightly child just looks like an underfed schoogirl. Plus there is a disconcerting lack of snow. And Varykino is practically a mud hut.

- "Prince Charming", with Bernadette Peters, which is a kid's movie that assumes children are stupid. They are not.

I also do not recommend reading Hard Times by Studs Terkel if you have all kinds of issues about poverty and being poor and being laid off and not being able to find a decent job. This is the local B&N book club choice for September and I'm finding that there aren't just triggers but strings of firecrackers on nearly every page.

The good news is - Autumn is coming early, the refinished floor is now dry and absolutely gorgeous, the new stove is in and is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm about to go to breakfast with E.

Now that's more like it.

Suffering For My Art

I am moving along nicely on the "Had she been beautiful" thing. Still, early days yet. I guess I'm twenty pages into it and half of it is backstory, the dreaded Expository Lump.

I watched "The Age of Innocence" the other day, on VHS from the library. Oh, how I wish I'd seen this at the movies. And a couple of years later, I really don't get the big deal over Daniel Day Lewis's and Michelle Pfeiffer's performances. The real stars of the show were the art director and set decorator. I think I need to re-read the book.

But nothing on earth can entice me to re-read "The House of Mirth". It was one of the first books-on-tape I listened to and the impact it had on me was stunning. It threw me into a depression that it took me years to climb out of. Actually, Edith threw me down the hole and a variety of natives from the Indian sub-continent kept chucking other things down on top of me while I was there.

So. I did order it from Netflix. It's here. It's sitting on the bookcase next to the TV. Can you hear it? Ticktickticktick.

Knowing that there would likely be emotional repercussions from 'House of Mirth', the next on my Netflix list is 'Harry and Kumar Go to the White Castle'. It should be here tomorrow.

Do I dare watch the movie without emotional backup?

Hm. I think I should go for it. If it gets too bad, I can always throw 'Dave' in the DVD. That always cheers me up.

The Broken House

When you live in a broken house, after a while, you don't see the cracked panes, the tumbleweeds of dust on the floor, the dreary drips of rainwater leaking in through the punctured roof.

I hadn't realized until yesterday that I'd moved into the broken house, or rather, that it had moved into me.

Like someone who suffers migraines or even epileptic seizures can sometimes tell when one is on the way, I have my own warning signs about depression, but I refused to recognize them.

To me, taking medication is a sign of weakness. From previous work experiences, I have a dread of having any record of psychiatric treatment showing up on my health benefits. I have been taking medication, but at half the recommended dosage. To prove I was tough, to prove that I'm not crazy (or only half-crazy), to prove that I can gut it out.

But I can't.

Yesterday morning, I didn't want to go to work. I wanted to stay home and sleep. If it hadn't been for two meetings scheduled, I probably would have stayed home and that would have been a very bad thing.

What I decided yesterday was to take the medication as recommended. Instead of collapsing at my desk as I usually do around 2 pm every day, I was actually doing work. Not thinking about it, not making lists for it, but actually working.

True Boss noticed this immediately.

I guess it was further along than I realized.

Now I have to take care of what I've neglected for so long, to pick up the pieces and deal with them, as I haven't been able to deal with them since December, when my aunt died and the disastrous trip to visit Emma.

I will go to New York this weekend. I will likely go to the Metropolitan Museum and drink in the Impressionists. I will buy myself a bunch of flowers.

I will get out the hammer and nails and set about rebuilding my broken house.

The Party To Whom I Am Speaking

When I got to work today, I discovered that Emma had tried to call me there over the weekend. Twice.

I knew she would probably call me again later in the day, and she did.

In the meantime, I got back the properly distant email from Xman, thanking me for letting him know I was okay. I wondered why it mattered to him after he had done such an effective job of running me off eight years ago.

Emma called in the afternoon. Her voice sounded dead. "Is this it?" she asked. "Are you not my friend anymore? Are you not speaking to me anymore?"

Cautiously, I said, "I won't be for awhile. I need to think about some things."

"I'm sorry you had such a horrible Christmas." But her voice was only weary. Then she told me her 84 year old mother had attempted suicide again this past Saturday. I said nothing.

This sounds cruel and horrible of me, doesn't it? But I know better. You're coming in on this at the end. You don't know about the several times she called me to tell me good-bye because she had just taken handful after handful of tranquilizers. Or the time she called me up, screaming and hysterical, threatening to slit her wrists. A thousand miles away, I was nearly helpless. I told her to either get Sven to check her into a psych ward, or I was calling the cops right now.

Three years ago when I was desperate for security of some sort, of any sort, she promised me three acres on her two hundred acre farm. When I went out to visit her that year, we walked up the rise to my theoretical three acres.

"So this is mine, huh?" I said. For the first time in years, I felt a tenuous little thread of hope and security sneaking out, like a tendril on a grape vine reaching for the fence.

Emma said brusquely, "Oh, no. No. We decided we'd only rent it to you. And you can't put a trailer on it, you know."

"Oh. So I would build a house on land I didn't own?"

"Yeah."

Quietly, I said, "I think things are going to work out just fine in Jersey." When I didn't think any such thing.

I have gone as far as I can here, for now. I don't know if I can go any further. But I do know I've gone beyond any call of friendship. And for now, I've had enough.