Trigger Unhappy

Well, I woke up feeling like shite anyway.

Then I'm reading one of my regular forums and someone made a comment in response to one of my comments that really triggered me. I'm trying to tell myself that's why I feel this horrid combination of depressed, furiously angry, afraid, frozen...my therapist says when you hit a PTSD trigger you get frozen like that...

That and the fact that I just can't respond to the comment for various reasons, one of which being that it has to do with religion. And when people get entrenched in religious beliefs, well, there's just nothing more to be said. It's like ramming your head against a wall.

Most religious entrenchments don;t affect me this way. I can just blow them off. But having had some experiences with a particular religion that were...shall we say, less than healthy, I have a particularly hard time with that one. I want to be able to say, "Believe what you believe and it doesn't bother me." But there's an ego factor involved in this one that is curiously disguised as lack of ego. And you just can't discuss it in any rational fashion without getting "the knowing smile" and the general response that "when you reach a certain point you'll understand." Which just activates me on so many levels. It seems to assume that--and I'm having a hard time going on here without naming the religion so forgive me--when you reach a particular place in your spiritual development you'll just naturally see that everything you've believed before is wrong. I don;t believe that.

My own spiritual views have a LOT of leeway for various paths. But any path that masquerades as being open while so many of its adherants (sp?) practice a One True Way philosophy really gets me.

So I'm triggered today. I want to go back and hide under the bedclothes. I want to say, "well, of course from the inside it looks that way to you." I want to...do something to feel better. And I feel helpless and powerless and like I'm going to be punished if I do any of those things.

So I'm sitting writing this blog, for which I also feel as though I'm going to be punished, and smoking way too early in the day and feeling like I'm going to have a heart attack.

Happy New Year's Eve.

A Sequel

1:23 am Christmas Morning. Snowing heavily. I can;t sleep. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, I am afraid to sleep.

This fear has tormented me every since I was a little girl and learned the so-called "Children's Prayer:"

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

This verse always set me off thinking about dying, of course. And at six or seven as now, having some undefinable and unknowable Lord take my soul did not seem adequate compensation for a life cut short. So I would lie in bed in terror that I would die before waking and wondering about death. I was a morbid child as I am a somewhat morbid adult.

I have never lost anyone close to me but I have known many people whose lives have been cut short in various ways. Some just lay down and never woke up again. This is the kind of death that scares me most. The idea this could happen. Without warning .

So it is Christmas morning and I am afraid to lie down beside my snoring husband and go to sleep.

There are things I want to do yet. Small things, but things all the same. I want to watch the movies we rented for the holiday. I want to finish the book a friend in Liverpool was kind enough to send me. I want to learn, one day, to play the Irish flute well. I want to eat a real cheeseburger again, not a weight watchers' substitute. As I said, little things. Not earth shaking things. Not things of consequence. Perhaps some people would even say selfish things. But does that justify the possibility of death? Nothing does.

Yet we all die. I'm having a hard time with that concept and thinking about it a lot, as this blog and my last show. I guess many people never think about it or console themselves with religion but I don;t seem able to do either. Maybe because I've never lost someone close to me I fear it all the more. But then, not many people are clsoe to me, so why shouldn;t I fear it? If you have 20 friends losing one doesn;t make much of a dent. If you have 2, losing one is half the world.

Maybe that was crass, but it's verging on two in the morning now.

I really need to sleep but I am still afraid.

Morbid Thoughts

A friend of mine had to have his cat put to sleep yesterday. Another started a thread on my fave forum about remembering those who have left us in this last year. And I suppose it's not unreasonable to be having these thoughts as the old year dies (whenever you celebrate that fact) and the new year comes in.

So I've been thinking a lot about death--my own and death in general. Well, to be perfectly honest, I think about my own death a lot. I'm terrified of it. Actually, a strange mixture of terrified of it and attracted to the idea, like looking over the edge of a tall building and feeling an overwhelming urge to jump.

I did not used to be terrified of death. I was scared of the thoughts that drove me towards bringing my own about sometimes, but the thought of death never scared me until I had a really bad acid trip and nearly died. And I suppose I had an out of body experience then, but instead of its being really full of light and love and all that crap that it's supposed to have, it was nasty. So I've been terrified of my own death ever since although sometimes I crave it.

I can;t stand the idea of me not being in some form. I can;t conceive of it. I don;t think any human can conceive of it, which is why we make up glorious stories about whatever afterlife seems best to us and go with that when we get too scared. But I don;t know what I believe anymore. I was brought up Christian, but I never believed in that much; it's hard to when your father is the minister and you know all the tricks behind the curtain, so to speak. I went through a brief period of devout Hinduism. I am now nominally Wiccan, so I should believe in some form of reincarnation. I guess I do. It makes sense. Energy is conserved somehow. It has to be; this is a natural law, isn;t it?

But then I think, if there is reincarnation then it has to apply to everything. We can't be egotistical to the point of just applying it to human beings. Every spider and every bird, every blade of grass even, must reincarnate. And how is that possible? Maybe if you equate humans with blades of grass...or maybe as humans increase certain species die out and that explains a lot of mass extinctions...I just don;t know. I can't wrap my mind around it.

One time, shortly after my last miscarriage, I saw my cat eat a spider. And the spider was there and living one moment, gone the next. The sight revolted me so much I had to throw up. It still disturbs me that life and death can be so narrowly entwined--living in one moment, dying in the next. Maybe that's what frightens me most: the thought that I am not ready and I may never be ready: that death may come suddenly from some unknown source and I will not have time to prepare.

I know this is why a lot of people turn to religion. It helps them prepare somehow. It does not do that for me.

I am home alone and writing this is freaking me out to the point that I think I have to stop or move on. Whatever. I can;t make sense of it and I can;t know anything about it and that naturally triggers me.

I guess I just have to live with that, as I have to live with so much else.

A good day?

I got out of bed. I brushed my teeth. I got dressed. Somtimes, a woman on my BPD forum says, that constittutes a good day. The fact that I did dishes is a bonus.

But I wonder when I'll feel better. I wonder how long I have to keep trying different drugs, trying to find the one that will help. Another BPD woman has told me, "When they find the right ones, everything is different." I am obviously not there yet.

Watched Live Free or Die Hard last night. I love those movies. I like watching things explode. Is that weird? At least it distracted me from this grey place for a couple hours and that's good thing. If weird.

I have a loving cat in my lap and that's a good thing.

I can;t think of any other good things right now. I can;t think of any particularly BAD things either. I guess some people would consider that a good thing in and of itself, but I don;t. I'm tired of feeling nothing at all.

A funny thing...

Funny that I should mention The Unquiet Grave last night. Today I got the letter of doom. "Thank you but it's not what we're looking for right now." I guess it could have been worse. It could have been: "Merry Christmas. By the way, YOU SUCK! BWAAA HAA HAAA!"

So all of you who are waiting to read the adventures of Caitlin and Timber are going to have to keep waiting, I'm afraid. This is one I'm NOT going to self publish, no mater if it sits on the shelf for a hundred years.

That's all.

In Between

I had a pretty boring day today. No psychosis, probably due to the fact that I've been shutting the cats out of the bedroom in the morning and thus been able to get beter sleep. I did have a bit of a migraine, but not too bad a one.

Mostly I'm in this in-between place. Which I hate. I'm in between with my writing. Locked is as finished as I can make it for now--I'm waiting for copy editing and other feedback before I submit it to my POD. I don;t really feel finished with it...or I am finished with it, but I don;t really feel done with that world, that space, so I can;t go on to another. This leaves me a lot of free time. But I'm in between with my depression too, so there's nothing to go in that free time, really. And right at the moment I'm in between with everything because I need to eat something with my night meds but I can't yet because I have to have a 12-hour blood draw tomorrow and the clinic doesn;t open until nine-thirty. Thus, I can't eat anything until nine-thirty, which is still more than half an hour away.

Waiting. I hate waiting. M. said last night that my life must be like always waiting for an appointment you don;t really want to keep and it is like that. Waiting to accomplish. Waiting to "get better." Waiting for the Solstice to come. Waiting for Christmas. Waiting for...so many things I get tired of listing them here. Waiting for the kittens to stop being total spazzes. Waiting for money to drop on me from the sky. Waiting to find out what's going on with The Unquiet Grave. Or so I really want to know that? Sometimes I imagine that I'll get THE phone call saying the publisher I sent it to is interested, at least in seeing the rest of the manuscript. That would be enough for now, I think, even if they didn;t eventually buy it. Sometimes I imagine the letter in the envelope I addressed to myself saying, "No thanks."

I'm writing this to fill up some of the time but i don;t really have anything to say. I never really feel that I have anything to say. Bad for a writer, I know.

Waiting in the in between place.

Psychotic Reaction?

So I've been taking this new med, Lamictal, three days. Only every other day, mind, because they break you in on this one very slowly to avoid strange physical reactions that are possible. but what about mental reactions? I ask myself. Because I feel almost psychotically angry this morning. It really didn't help that two of the kittens started in on me at 6 am--okay, that's always annoying, but I'm seriously thinking about killing them to make them stop and let me have some peace and quiet; that's not normal. No, that's not quite right. I'm not thinking about killing them so much as I'm worried that I'll lose control and just hurl one into a wall because I'm so angry.

This is troubling. Fortunately they have calmed down at the moment and are not tearing around the house, getting in my way as I type this, licking my eyelids with little sandpaper tongues drooling in my ear, or doing any of the other things they do to annoy me at early hours of the mornings. They're not even breaking anything at the moment. So I;m given some space to breathe and hopefully I will calm down. Maybe I'll be able to take a nap this afternoon.

But it makes me wonder: at what point do I call my doctor and say, "um, is this possibly a reaction to this medication?" I mean, obviously I want to do that before I actually have a psychotic reaction or something. But if breathing and a bath and a nap are enough, maybe I don;t need to bother him.

"Oh you're a Stoic," he said at one of our first meetings, and I guess I am, but not...It's funny to me that a Dr.'s job is to be bothered by people and I always feel so wrong for bothering them with stuff. Stuff about me. When M. had to go to the hospital I had no problem with it. But when it's me I can't make the decision for myself. I know I'm on some pretty heavy duty medications and I need to keep an eye on them and notify my Dr. if things get hairy-scary but it's still so hard. I feel like I'm just nothing, unimportant--like I said, like I shouldn't bother people with my stuff.

So maybe that's not Stoicism. Maybe that's just neurosis. Maybe Stoicism is a neurosis. I wonder how many philosophies came out of Neuroses? I'm convinced that at least half of Buddhism did. Siddhartha comes out of his palace where he's lived a very sheltered life and finally sees the world and all its grit and of course decides that "All life is suffering." Blow me.

I'm having a cigarette now and talking philosophy so I must be calming down a little. But I think no more coffee for me for a long while. Maybe a nice cup of Chamomile tea....

where's my snow?

Here it is, Christmastime in the mountains of Colorado. And for the last three days it's been RAINING! It looks like snow clouds outside; it even feels like snow in the air. The weater forecast says snow. But no, all we get is this fecking rain.

I think I would not be so depressed if it would just let loose and snow. As it is, I'm depressed, M. Is depressed, even the cats are depressed. That doesn;t keep the younger ones from getting into trouble of course; it just means they're extra bad.

It's hard getting into the Christmas spirit this year. We have no money and we're in debt so thick you can cut it with a knife. The one credit card that isn't maxed out we;re using to buy groceries with. I hate that. So there's not much room in there for gift giving, which always makes me happier. Not receiving so much as the giving.

Plus with three demon cats wrecking half our stuff--and I;m sur they have plans for the other half--we've already decided no tree and few decorations are going to be part of our "celebrations."

I refuse to give up my roast goose, though.

I really have nothing else to say so I'm just going to let this end here...

Still Depressive

And freaking out because I have no fire. That sounds like a pretty ancient fear, but I'm afraid mine has a terribly mundane source: no fire means I can't light my ciggies and I have desperate need of one right now. I found a whole bunch of allegedly "Stike anywhere" matches but I can;t get any of them to light. our stove is electric. My lighter has died. No fire is no smoke. Arrrrgghhhh. I have to wait until M. comes home in 2 hours before I can get this craving satisfied. I want to say "get my needs me," but I DO realise smoking isn;t really a need. It seems like one for me right now because I;m having a particularly bad day. But it's not a need.

Particularly bad day? Woke up very depressed and crying, cats getting on my nerves worse than usual, bad dreams, no money and no prospects, M. having rough time at school with 2 papers to write, including a really long one, in the next 2 days, and NO SMOKES = bad day.

BTW, Oni is home with us and well enough to be a total spazz once more. The vet says he had a "Bile blockage." I don;t know what that is but it sounds vile.

Rough Day

yesterday. It started with a visit to my psychiatrist, which always has my stomach in knots. But it went pretty well. He seems to be more comfortable with depression than he is with anxiety; at least when I told him I was no longer anxious but I was now depressed he seemed relieved: here was something he could do. I actually give him points for understanding that the feeling of nothingness is worse than the feeling of pain. We talked a little about that and I really couldn;t believe he got it, but he did. Good on you, doc. Then he prescribed me a new medication which is supposed to really help Bipolar Depression. It did NOT help me to hear this med can cause a reaction that is potentially fatal "in some extremely rare cases." I don;t care if the cases are extremely rare; I don't want to be one of them. Honestly, I'd almost rather not know about stuff like that, though I suppose I have to. But it makes me not want to take the meds at all.

well then when we got home it was to find one of our cats had started puking blood. Very scary. We rushed him to the vet where we spent 90 minutes standing around while she ran various tests trying to find out what was wrong and not being able to. We ended up having to leave him there overnight, poor kitty. I just callled the vet;s office and the assistant told me Oni is doing much better but she doesn;t know what the vet wants to do about him yet--the vet was out on a farm call--so we can;t bring him home. I'm suspecting he'll be there another night.

I am wearing his collar as a bracelet for good luck. It was awful when they were drawing his blood; I had never heard a cat make noises like that!!

We went out for Mexican food and I totally went off my WW program but it felt so good! Well, it tasted so good; I really didn;t feel so good after consuming more in one meal than I had in months, even at Thanksgiving! The funny thing is, after this orgy of consumption I weighed less today than I did yesterday. Only now I am having, shall we say, a volatile reaction to the beans. Oh well.

Watched Monty Python to end the day. I laughed some.

So I guess all in all it was not so Rough a day as it was a full one. And that's always a bit hard for me. I have to be something.

Did some Christmas shopping no the web today and now I have a total anxiety stomachache! I hate spending money when I know I don;t really have any.

I think

...I think I just finished Locked. It came on me very suddenly; I was just working on the final chapter and I wrote a sentence and all of a sudden it hit me that there was no more to say. It was like when you're shuffling a Tarot deck and all of a sudden you just know you're done. Maybe you've never had that experience but I have...or maybe like looking for a perfect spot to have a picnic and all of a sudden you just stumble on it. I've never had that experience, but maybe you have!

I am elated and terrified all at once. Elated that it's done; it's over. terrified by so many things. The emptiness that comes after a project is finished once the elation has worn off--yes, that. And the prospect of publishing: definitely that. I wonder now if I should even do it. I feel I cannot risk, just CANNOT risk my mother seeing it. I care about her reaction because she still has the power to hurt me. The rest of the family, well, I couldn't give two shites about whether they see it or not. But my mother, no. It would probably bring on another heart attack and kill her or something and then that would be my fault as well as everything else.

I would not be so worried about this had I not found out that my sister actually gave my mother a copy of Dragons of the Mind, which I had not intended her to see until I was ready. I only decided I was ready this last October and what do I hear back? "Oh yes, I've read it; Barb gave me a copy." Way to go, sis. Knowing Barb I have to wonder if she had some hidden agenda in that. I mention my dysfunctional family in one story. I wonder if Barb meant my mom to pick up on that. Or I don't know--maybe she was just trying to be nice and say, "Look what Kele's done." It could just as easily be that, I suppose, though my natural inclination towards paranoia where my family is concerned says otherwise.

Anyway, Locked...I think the acctual writing is finished. Now comes the (hopefully minimal but no less arduous) task of rereading it and making sure it all makes sense and all the characters have consistent names and whatnot. I don't know if it really makes any kind of sense or has any value other than being a kind of cathartic experiment for me. But anyway, I'll have some time yet before publication. Time to decide what to do. Whether publishing is even a good idea.

I have to admit, I have a fantasy about a real publisher picking it up and selling the movie rights for loads of money. I mean, it worked for Girl, Interrupted. Why not for me? :lol:

Smoking way too much today...

PS--Happy Birthday Noel, wherever you are!

Did I mention...

...that I;m sick to death of this stinky diet? I think I did. It's ten-thirty pm right now and more than anything I want a big greasy cheeseburger and fries with all the fattening trimmings. Special sauce even. Or a big plate of fettucini alfredo full of butter and cheese. No, the cheesbiurger sounds way better.

I think I'm going through this because I'm so depressed and the depression makes everything taste so bland and all the food I can eat so unenjoyable. And because our big turkey dinner made me all the more aware of what I'm missing on a daily basis. But knowing that isn;t stopping the cravings.

I'm glad the diet is working, of course. I've lost almost 40 lbs and I intend to keep going until I've lost the 30 more I have to go. But I think I may break soon and get that cheeseburger. Maybe it will make me happy for a little while.

Marginal

Feeling marginally better today. Actually did my pilates workout. Cats are not driving me quite so crazy. But now it's one and I don't have anything to do for the rest of the day. I know some people would think that's bliss, but I don't. The problem isn't that I can't think of things to do or things that need doing. It's that I can;t get motivated because none of them hold any...I want to say meaning, but that's not quite it. I want to say there's nothing I WANT to do but that just sounds like complaining about my lot; I mean, in adult life there's lots of things you have to do that you don;t want to do and I get that. I don't really want to do the dishes every day but that's part of my job and I do it.

No, what I mean is that nothing has a hook in me. Nothing really affects me. I don;t feel anything. I know I've said this before. But somehow it's easier to do something you really don't want to do--like doing the dishes or even my Pilates sometimes--than to do something that has no value (and I mean value as in colour, not as in worth) because at least you;re having a reaction to it. And you know if you do it and get it over with then you won;t feel such revulsion anymore.

But this flat grey place just seems to go on and on forever.

I've been thinking about drawing again sometimes. I have a pad of paper and oil pastels sitting on the coffee table staring at me every time I sit on the couch. But I feel fear of it. I don;t feel at all inspired to draw; I think about it in my head, not in my heart.

I think that's what bothers me most about where I;m at: everything is in my head and nothing is in my heart.

But anyway, some kind soul gave me advice for getting drawing, about just experimenting with colour. And that's part of the problem, really. I feel no colour. I feel grey and dead inside. If I were to pick up the pastels and the pad, I would just colour a whole page as grey as I could make it, I think. I wonder if I should do that.

I know there's something more than this. I stay in this grey place because it's safer in a way, than the place I was in last night. I don't want to hurt myself here.

But it's also...I feel it as being underneath the black place of self-harm, like a sinkhole in a mine. I feel that in order to get to a good place I haveto come up through the black place and that frightens me. What if it hurts? What if I don;t make it through?

I don;t trust in drugs to make my condition any better, really. I hear and read so many stories about people getting on antidepressants and their whole world changing and it's just not been like that for me. I go up and down and all around, but never really happpy, never satisfied, never in a place where I feel I can accomplish anything. Maybe my pdoc just hasn;t foudn the right combination of stuff, but I'm So tired of trying different things...it's been over a year now, almost 18 months I think, and I still don;t feel well. Well, every time he raises the level on one drug I feel great for about a month, but then I sink back as my brain chemistry adjusts.

And I don;t think it's my fault. I work so hard at this. I go to therapy. i cooperate. I do what I'm told and it doesn;t work.

I'm beginning to think nothing will work and I'll just be stuck here in this grey place forever.

So maybe I'm not better, maybe I'm worse. I don't know. I really don't know.

Night

M. is asleep. The kittens are tearing around in their nightly spazz. I am not asleep, obviously. I lay there for about 45 minutes feeling miserable and depressed and then took a sleeping pill and came to write here. I didn;t want to take a sleeping pill because I took one last night and I hate taking them two days in a row. Actually, I hate taking them at all, but I need them more and more the more depressed I get. I used to be able to take one a week and that would set me up fine, but now. But now it;s not like that.

I also don;t like taking them because it seems to make me more depressed the next day, which is also different. It used to be, I;d take a pill and feel really happy the next day after a good night's rest. Now it's not like that, either.

It's very cold out and cold inside and cold inside me.

I'm getting really tired of this diet thing. I have 30 lbs yet to lose, too. And lately I can;t get excited about it. I just feel deprived and think of all the foods I would like to be eating--fettucini alfredo is much on my mind. I hate writing down what I eat every day. I try to force myself to exercise and I can;t do it and hate myself, both for not doing it and for the fact that I have to force it. Force feels like hurting myself and it makes me want to hurt myself more. This is crazy, I know, but there it is. I feel that I should be punished.

My therapist tells me I need to stop beating myself up, but I can;t seem to. It's a way of life that was instilled in me from the time I can rememeber.

Sometimes I wish I would just contract some terminal disease. It almost seems it would be a relief. Not to have to struggle with this anymore.

I'm in a bad way. Lately I;ve been thinking again that I won;t be here long, that I won't make it through the winter. I don't know why or how. The not being doesn't scare me but the process of it does. Mostly because it's so lonely. Everyone is born alone and everyone dies alone, in the end. No one can do it for you or really be there for you. It's very personal and private.

Yet I don't feel suicidal. I don't feel that I want to actively MAKE myself not be. I just want to not be anymore. No--I don;t want to kill myself, just hurt myself. And the hurting can get out of control when you;re alone with it; I know that from past experience. But I want the hurting to stop. And the only way of it stopping that I know is not to be. I guess that's why I spend so much time in this grey state of sitting on the couch just staring at the walls. Not being while existing. And that is painful in and of itself.

I think it would bebetter if I could cry over it or have some reaction to it at all. But the tears are all dried up; I've cried too much. Sometimes in therapy they come out, but it's without volition or connection to anything. They just come and have no more meaning than anything else. They offer no release. No catharsis. I think that's because the pain is so old, maybe. I have nothing in my life to be sad over and it troubles me that I can feel this way without its having a direct cause. When I was younger and living in a dysfunctional and abusive environment, okay, I can see why I cried a lot. But now it's just as dull and boring as anything else in my life.

I feel very exposed writing this in my blog. But that doesn't keep me from doing it.

Well, my last cigarette is spent and I think the pill is kicking in so maybe it;s time to try this bed thing again...

continuing...

...in this depressed state. I had hoped that once I got off teh anti-depressant I was on I wouldn;t have to try another one but it looks like I may have to. Everything just seems too hard. Getting up is hard. Getting dressed is hard. here it is noon and I'm still in my jammies, not wanting to do anything at all but go back to bed.

Major Suckage.

I don;t know if I should write this here because I really don;t know if I want potentially the entire internet world to know about it, but I have no where else to put it and it keeps circling in my mind and I need to get it out. My therapist yesterday told me I was showing "increased suicidal ideation." I don;t know if I agree with her. Partly because the idea of my own death has been with me for so long that it seems...almost boring to me. That doesn't scare me. When I lie in bed thinking about what it would be like to bring it about, what upsets me is not that I;m thinking that, but the thought that no one would be there to stop it. I could just wait 'til my husband was asleep and I was awake, for example, and cut my veins in the bathtub and no one would notice until the next morning. And that's a grief to me--the loneliness of that thought. The loneliness of being with any of these thoughts and not having any way to get out from under them. It's a great pain to me: one of the only pains I feel, actually, because most other thing are just flat. And maybe I cling to the idea because of that: because it's something I can feel. I think about suicide, sure. (And in my mind I think, "doesn't everyone?") But it's a distant thought, like a sweater you keep in the back of the closet because it's too ugly to wear in public but you can;t get rid of it because it's really comforting to have it there somehow. Maybe it's fuzzy, or maybe someone you value gave it to you, I don;t know. Maybe you wear it around the house, but you wouldn;t take it out and display it.

I don;t even feel like my suicidal thoughts are really suicidal thoughts. Just sitting around, thinking of death, as Moaning Myrtle might say. But I don't think I would ever DO anything about it. I know it would upset people and I really don;t want to do that. And mostly, I don;t really want to die, I just want not to be. I don't know exactly how that would come about. Maybe I'm accomplishing that now, but not getting up and getting dressed; by not being excited about the day. Is that a choice or something I have no choice over? Some philosophies would have it one way, some the other. I think, if there is no meaning in my life pretending will not make things have meaning. "fake it 'til you make it" is a big lie. A big lie that puts still more pressure to accomplish on people who don't need that.

The kittens are being holy terrors today.

The Next Morning

I didn't get to sleep until about 2 a.m. because the kittens decided the bed was the place to stage late night big time wrestling. Then I woke up at 6 to pee and couldn't go back to sleep because Onyx decided that he liked playing with my hair with his claws out, especially the wispy hair around my face. Needless to say, I am not feeling at all charitable towards the kittens just now.

I still feel scumbossa. Maybe worse that I did yesterday and I can;t decide if I think that's a good or bad thing, because maybe I'm feeling SOMETHING, but it's very, very bad things. Like not wanting to be here. Like just wishing I wouldn't wake up. Well, those are thoughts, not feelings. The feeling is a pain in my heart that radiates down into my stomach. I guess I associate this kind of pain with sorrow or grief but it just sits there and doesn't do anything, doesn;t move and go on. It's just been there in a lump forever. And I'm so tired of being here; so tired of being. And I feel guilty for writing that because I know some people will read it and get really upset that I feel that way, but sometimes I feel like I'm just staying on this planet for other people, that there's nothing for me here at all. Everything is hollow and empty and lifeless.

I finally heard from my brother; he sent me a birthday card with a note in it. He said he thought it was a very brave thing to do, telling the family about my Bipolar diagnosis. ("from a few months back," he said, yeah well, I guess a year and a half constitutes a few months...). And it puzzles me because I don't consider that particularly brave; it just seems responsible if you find out you have a genetic illness to inform the people who share your genes about it. Then it occured to me that maybe he thought or meant that by telling people about my illness I was taking the blame for things that happpened, the difficulties I had as a teenager. And that made me really mad. Because I'm not taking responsibility for those things; I';m trying my best NOT to take responsibility for the fact that our parents were at best neglectful and at worst abusive of me. The fact that I'm bipolar has very little to do with that and doesn;t excuse their actions.

I'm really very tired. I need more coffee.

Later that Night

I have a headache and can't sleep. I make myself a cup of sweet brown hot water (otherwise known as instant cocoa) and write this. The long hours of the night stretch before me like a dull knife blade, tarnished and rusty, inefficient and useless without grit of joy or sorfow to give it shine. Nothing is accomplished here. Simply still more random mutterings. everything seems the same as always: me writing and smoking leaves the realm of the ritual and becomes merely repetetive, meaningless tasks to fill up time.

I think I am mad at my psychiatrist. I think I cannot tell him these thigns as I would like to do, for fear he will urge me on to still more meaningless tasks to fill up time. "Do volunteer work," he says and doesn;t seem to recognise that doing volunteer work without meaning is useless. The meaning does not come from the work like a rabbit coming from a magician's hat. The meaning must come first or the work itself is de-meaned. I imagine telling this to my psychiatrist and him telling me I have to find my own meaning and my telling him that's bullshit; I've been searching for meaning these twenty years or more and not found it. Everything is flat and grey. This is not the black pit of depression and I wish it were because at least you can feel something there. This is something in between, or maybe even lower. The grey place. The paths of the dead maybe, where the dead have no names and no identity. I feel I have no name anymore; there is no me in me. All those things that once defined me are gone like ash on the wind.

I wonder if this is how the Elves feel when they forsake Middle Earth and go to Valinor, and wonder why in the world they would want to go somewhere that grants them eternal life.

I woke up this morning...

...and realised I'm really depressed again. Actually, "Realised" seems like too strong a word. It was just something I knew or recognised maybe, like you can have a cold for a long time and then one day it's gone and you don;t know how long it's been gone, you just suddenly recognise that you aren't hacking and coughing anymore. But the element of surprise wasn;t there. There was no element of anything. And maybe that's what made me realise--that word again--that I'm depressed. Because everything seems so flat and without character. Not just joyless, but without anything. I don;t feel bad, I don;t feel good. I don;t feel anything. But here it is after noon and I haven;t got dressed yet and I haven't done anything although there are things that need doing. Like I have to go Downtown and pay the water bill or or water is going to be shut off and I can;t give a shite. I can't give a shite that it's a beautiful day outside although I can see it; it means nothing to me. Nothing means anything to me. I have no grief, particularly. I have no wish to harm myself. I'd actually feel relief if I did because that would mean I felt something. I just don;t feel anything at all.

I see my pdoc next week and I probably should be glad about that but in fact I don;t really feel anything about that either, except the vague ... expectation that he'll say something dumb like, "well, you can;t be that way!" because often that's his response when I try to tell him what I';m feeling. And my inner response, though I never say so is, "Why not? why can't I be that way? Tell me that." And I don;t think he could come up with a good answer.

I feel like I probably should be crying but there is nothing left in me to cry. There's nothing in me at all.

I Am Whacked Today

I had a really scary experience last night. To make a long story short, my husband went to take a pee and passed out in the bathroom last night about 9:30 pm and then the dizziness wouldn;t go away and he was having all these seizure symptoms and such-like, and I had to call 911 and get an ambulance to take him to the hospital to get checked out. Then I had to call his folks to take me to the hospital 'cause I can;t drive at night (I don;t really drive at all, but if it had been daytime I would have). And we were all there until 2 in the morning, while they ran a whole barrage of tests on him--heart and brain tests and blood tests of all kinds and such like.

Well, it turned out he was okay--the doc thought it was just dehydration and the fact thathe hadn;t eaten anything since Thanksgiving dinner at noon causing what's known as a "syncope," which is basically an episode of fainting for no other discernable cause. But it scared the shit out of both of us. I know he was scared because when the ambulance EMT suggested he go in to the hospital and get checked out he didn;t make too much macho protest.

But then we came home at about 2:30 am and had a very early breakfast and had to finish watching Return of the King, because we had left Frodo stranded in Mordor. So we didn;t get to bed until 4:30 am.

Then I was awoken at 8 by Onyx, who for some reason at that hour needs to wash my eyelids every day. IT HURTS! A little scratchy kitty tongue on the sensitive skin there is not a pelasant sensation. I guess he finally stopped and I went back to sleep because the next thing I knew my phone alarm was going off to remind me to take my morning meds and so I got up. But I don;t think I'm going to do anything today...not that I have a lot to do. Th usual cleaning of the house that I put off so much. And I have to fill out the papers for my SSI disability appeal. That scares me, though I don;t know why.

I just took a vitamin and it is making my stomach rumble in a nasty kind of way so I probably need to eat something...

Anyway, Thanksgiving was pretty nice. We went over to my Inlaws' place and there were some relatives there I didn;t know too well but I found them to be pleasant people. I actually lasted four hours before I started having a major anxiety attack and we had to leave.

I am very Thankful on this day that nothing major was wrong with my husband because I was so afraid. I couldn;t get along without him. I think if he were seriously ill and I had to take care of him I could do that but if I lost him I wouldn;t be able to go on. This thought haunts me in dark moments and last night really brought it home to me.

So let's all take a moment to breathe and be thankful for good health and good friends who will come over late at night and help you in a crisis.

I am.

P.S.

What the freak time zone is this place in, anyway? I just posted and it said "posted at 9:33 a.m." at the bottom of the post. But my computer clock reads 11:00!

Inquiring minds want to know.

well, I think...

Oni has Ringworm (he's in my lap as I write this being really cute and making little squeaking noises and generally getting in the way). Which means giving another cat a bath--hooray! But I don;t know about treating him with the cream we used on Obi, 'cause the Ringworm is right up next to his eye and I don;t know if that would be safe...time to call the vet, I reckon.

I think I'm as well mentally as drugs can make me. I still am suffering intense anxiety, especially when it comes to Locked...I feel all the time as though I'm going to throw up. Especially at night when it seems that all the thoughts about it that have been building up during the day are trying to explode out the top of my head all at once. except they don;t take the form of real thoughts--that would be easier because then I could at least write them down. They are more feeling and bodily sensations: I feel sick; I feel I can;t breathe; I feel afraid; I get restless and bored and nothing makes sense to me and all in all I feel that I'm reliving those days in the hospital--experiencing them in a way that I never experienced them then because I was so divorced from my own experience.

So there's that. I feel anxious all the time, especially at night and I've been taking a lot of sleeping pills because of that, which I hate. I don't like the groggy feeling the next day, although they do take the rough edges off the corners of the morning and make it more bearable to get out of bed.

But I really think I;m as well as drugs can make me, unless my pdoc wants to prescribe me something that's really going to do something about the anxiety--like Valium or something, a sedative or a tranqulizer, which I doubt he would do and I probably wouldn;t like anyway.

I don't know why this anxiety is so tenacious. It hasn;t responded to any of the anti-anxiety drugs I've been on. The only time I haven;t felt anxious in as long as I can remember is last week, when I first had a cold and was too sick to feel anything at all and then when I had to get the shot of demerol for my headache. That helped the anxiety quite a lot. So I can see why people become narcotics addicts; if I had the opportunity I probably would too. Except I think that would probably be expensive and that would make me more anxious and it would just be a big self-perpetuating cycle.

I think I'm as well as drugs can make me and I have to just get through the rest of it. I hate that and it frightens me into lighting my first cigarette of the day.

Migraine

Today the cats were acting like dogs, I swear. The kittens managed, between the three of them, to pull the afghan completely off the bed and drag it into the living room, where they thoughtfully placed it in the water dish, so not only did it get soaked but it wicked all the water out onto the floor. Maybe they wanted a lake, I don;t know. Then they got on the coffee table and pushed off the tacky little bamboo coaster holder and all the coasters. The holder was smashed (at least that was along a glue joint; I think it can be fixed). The coasters went all over the place. They, fortunately, could be picked up.

Gwion, at least, was just being a cat, wanting in and out every five minutes.

I have a migraine. I woke up with it at about 8, to the tune of my "Submissions Representative" from my POD company leaving a message on my machine. I have told these people I prefer e-mail contact; now they phone me to tell me they're going to e-mail me. How thoughtful. But not at 8 in the morning--I wish these people on the East Coast would remember that there's a time difference. I e-mailed the guy to remind him of it and to request he not call me before ten Mountain Time, if he has to call me at all. Let's see if that works. I think sometimes a lot of East Coasters just forget about the rest of the country altogether. There's something vague called California WAY out west, and everything in between exists in some weird state of limbo, an idea on a map but not really a place people live and breathe.

I have a migraine. Well, it's getting better now. I took every medication known to man and none of them worked so I finally resorted to calling the clinic and requesting my migraine shot. I was informed that they might not be giving the shots out very much longer. I can understand this, as it consists of some strong narcotics. And there are people who make a habit of calling and requesting the shot every week or so. I try to hold off until I can;t stand it anymore. Why anyone would do that for fun I don;t know. Or maybe I do. The drugs give you a kind of nice floaty feeling and it's good to be so relaxed. I still wouldn;t do it on my own, though I would have once. At least they didn;t tell me to go to the ER since I couldn;t get there anyway (one of hubby's school days, no transportation.) And I never feel that my migraines, no matter how much pain they cause me, constitute a real emergency. I mean, I know I'm not going to die from the pain, although sometimes it feels like it and sometimes I almost wish I would just so the pain would stop.

Mental pain is like that too. I believe that even with a migraine I finished part one of Locked today. I thought about starting part two, as thoughts for it were going round and round in my head (another aspect of migraines you might not know about--you get these mindworms in your brain and they won;t let go and it drives you mad). But I felt too shitty to write, really, and much too shitty to start something pretty much new. I'm surprised I managed to do anything to end part one, but it was only a couple of paragraphs. Now I';m Whacked on demerol and other various drugs and I KNOW starting something new would be a bad idea. So I'm stuck with the thoughts.

Beginning to feel sleepy-ish. I think I should go lie down. Soon.

Not So Great

Today. Actually, pretty bad today. First of all, I didn;t get to sleep until 2 am and then I had to get up at way to friggin' early for me to go get blood drawn to see how the Depakote levels are in my system. Always pleasant, getting out of bed and getting poked in the arm on no breakfast. The cats are being terrors. I accidentally shut Elvira's paw in the t-shirt drawer when I was getting dressed. She let out a squeal that made me think I had killed her, but 20 seconds later she was running around like nothing had happened so I suppose I didn;t do any lasting damage. Still, upsetting. Then I tripped over a cat and started crying because it seemed like I couldn;t cope with this simple obstacle and like obstacles are everywhere. Then, AFTER confirming that I would indeed buy the $500 publishing package from my POD company to use for Locked at a later date, ny sales rep e-mailed me to "Consider the premium package!" Which just happpens to cost three THOUSAND dollars. I e-mailed her very nicely that I couldn;t afford that much, that I could afford $500 and that was what I was going to spend, thank you very much. I mean, I have to keep reminding myselff that these people are in the business to sell themselves, not to help authors. I don;t even know if I'm going to use the package I signed up for: My husband seems to think we couold get an agent to take Locked on. I don;t know, myself. I didn't write it--I;m not writing it--for art's sake, just for getting the words on the page and I have no intention of making it into art or going back and cleaning it up or editing it in any way. Anyway, it's not finished and I don;t know if it ever will be so what's the use. I did sit down and print out the whole MS that I have so far and it's about 130 pages so I suppose I'm about haklfway through it.

All in all, having a bugger of a day and I just want to go take a nap but I've been smoking like a fiend and I'm all riled up so I don;t know if I could even do that.

Now Onyx has decided to come help me write this so maybe this is a good place to sign off for now.

By the Way, Did I Mention...

...that I hate Wednesdays? Not on general principle, but because it's the day my husband has to stay really late at school and I get really bored towards this time of late afternoon (4:30-ish). I miss him a great deal.

Plus, I just found an enormous pile of cat vomit in the bedroom. I knew there was a small pile there, which I was studiously avoiding all day, but I finally managed to move the laundry and remove the afghan and what did I find but another pile--or more of the same pile--which not only was gross and disgusting but it looks as if it's been there a long time and people have walked over it so it's kind of ground into the floor.

I don;t do cat vomit. If I try to clean it up, I start imagining how it got there and before long I'm having heaves of my own and sometimes have to make a quick dash to the bathroom. I suppose then it;s a good thing we never had children, with all the goo and mess involved; I;d never be able to look after one.

Children these days remind me of Alice in Wonderland, where she's inducted to nurse the Duchess's baby and ends up with a piglet. As she said, it made a very bad baby but a rather fine pig. And I think that about a lot of children. No offense to those who have them. I just know if I had to take care of a baby it would end up turning into a piglet. And then what would I do with it? I could never take it to show to my in-laws. I could never send proud pictures to my family. This is the piglet I raised....it seems fitting somehow.

The White Knight is sliding down the Poker. He balances very badly. The white King KNEW he hadn;t written those words, but he couldn;t say just who had. A lot of writing is like that. You know those words didn;t really come out of you but where they came from you just don't know. Then you have to do tiresome things like go back and edit.

I intend not to edit Locked at all.

The POD company I;m thinking of for Locked is having quite a good deal on a package I'm interested in--for the next 24 hours. I can buy the package now and use it when I'm ready, they assure me. I just don't know if I can afford that package now, especially with the money problems we're having. In fact, as I think about publishing it, the end of it gets farther and farther away until it recedes into some far distance where it becomes not merely insubstantial, but a vanishingly small probability. It is a story without a real ending. As this blog could conceivably go on and on until I run out of random thoughts that are linked by only the most tenuous of threads. So it will not so much end as stop, without coherence. Can that possibly be satisfying to a reader or even to me?" I don;t know.

I have not been drinking absinthe although I have always wanted to try it.

The White Knight Is Sliding Down the Poker...

Obi is chasing his tail in the bathtub. Oni and Elvira are chasing each other through the house, occasionally stopping to play with the roundy-roudy (this is our name for the trapped ball in the round thing with the holes in it so you can poke a paw through and make the ball spin). The combined noise sounds like a herd of elephants dancing in tap shoes, except I've just remembered, Elephants can;t jump.

Now someone seems to be playing with the bathroom toilet brush. that's what it sounds like, anyway.

Dacs is looking on from the kitchen ledge, hunched over like a vulture and occasionally screaming her distaste for the goings on. She will not be comforted. She will not go anywhere else and she will not shut up.

This is the morning spazz, or as we call it, the morning Schmeerskahooven, although it is nothing like the Schmeerskahooven from Pinky and the Brain. Still, it's a great word and I like being able to say it whenever the cats go on a tear, as they are now.

Actually now they've calmed down for the moment.

I'm at the point in this cold where everything is draining or trying to drain. The stuff that's alreqady drained down into my throat is being coughed out and the stuff still in my sinuses is being blown out and I feel both better and altogether miserable about the whole process, if you know what that feels like. Well enough to want to do something but not well enough to actually DO it. So I;'m sitting around watching the cats play--or listening to the cats play, as they move so fast you can;t actually WATCH them; it's kind of like watching a bunch of black streaks that on occasion materialise into cats and then are off again. besides, my eyes sting too much for watching.

A woman I had lost track of actually got in touch with me and wants to do lunch sometime! That's a happy thing as usually I'm the one trying to get in touch. And she's funny and not psycho, as far as I know. So this may be the beginning of a friendship I was not looking for.

Now I think I have to take a rest.

About the same as yesterday

Still sick. Actually cancelled both my massage and my therapy appointments because I don;t feel well enough to do them. That's rough, not feeling well enough to get a massage! And my massage therapist is so heavily booked she doesn't have another appt. open for a month. Oh well.

can;t say I feel bad about cancelling my talking therapy. Can;t imagine hacking and coughing my way through a session--they always take a lot out of me in any case and I just didn't think my immune system was up to it...besides, I don;t feel like I have anything to say except, "I'm sick. Blah." I probably caught this from my therapist anyway--I can;t think where else I would have got it.

I'm pissed that I'm sick actually, because it's a beautiful fall day with a beautiful blue sky and I think some fresh air would do me good.

financial crisis still in maximum overdrive. Weight crisis not so bad--dropped a couple of pounds there so I figure most of what I put on must have been water.

Elvira keeps getting her lower jaw stuck through her collar and it really freaks me out because she freaks out and won;t let me help her and I worry that she's going to do it sometime when I'm not THERE to help and strangle. If she keeps doing it anymore I think we;re just going to forgo the collar entirely.

The boys did not have this problem.

My husband started a blog so I will add the link to my list of blog links. He also started some weird audio channel somewhere so I will find out what I can about that so you all can here the random sounds he is working on. It would make him so happy, so I encourage you to visit him.

I feel crappy. So Now I'll quit, as this is all a chain of totally random and unimaginitive as well as less than profound and wonderful thoughts.

The Blahs

it's funny how you can go from feeling fairly happy to feeling very down in seconds. Just one little thing can trigger this whole flip flop of emotion.

Like now. On my birthday, 3 days ago, I was feeling really good. We were going to town to do stuff that I wanted to do; I weighed myself and was happy with my weight; I felt well in my body and my mind. But now, I'm sick as a dog with some kind of virus (and why is it "sick as a dog?" Do dogs get sicker than other creatures?); I gained about ten lbs overnight (why does this happen???) and my mind is having a crisis about all kinds of things that aren't in my control, or don't seem in my control. I'm totally in tears and yet I;m the same person with mostly the same stuff going on as 3 days ago.

Of course I had decided that my birthday I was going to be happy and not worry, but it's hard deciding that every day. It's a struggle. Some people seem to have the gift of happiness; others have to work at it. I'm one of the ones who has to work at it.

I look at the picture of me I posted in my last blog and I still think I';m looking pretty good. I don;t feel as old as I am; I feel like I';m still in my 20's or sometimes even in my teens. And yet, today I don;t feel god ABOUT these things; I feel...just kind of blah. And it doesn;t help that I'm sick, either.

So I;d better go take my medicine. Sorry, I thought this post was going somewhere.

Belated Birthday Blog

So yesterday was my 45th birthday and I actually had a pretty good time. I did a lot of shopping--well, duh. Some of it was for the cats. The cats got a new condo for my birthday, heh heh. Some was for me. I got a new corset--I can really get into this corsetry thing now that I'm somewhat less blimpy looking...

Not bad for an old woman, eh?

The dinner wasn't great. Unbeknownst to us the restaurant I wanted to go to had changed hands and had an entirely new menu and the thing I wanted most to eat wasn;t on it. Neither was the chocolate cake I had hoped for. But I got some cool presents and had a good time anyway.

I got socks!

FINALLY heard from my mum today. She told me that she'd already read Dragons of the Mind--my sister gave it to her. Gee mom, you could have commented on this earlier, like several months ago, so I wouldn;t be sitting here wondering if I should send you a copy or if it would totally offend you. But that's my mom. It;s kind of my sister too--I have suspicions she had ulterior motives in passing the book along because there's one fairly true-to-life story that isn;t too complimentary about my family. Oh well, I'll never know.

Now I'm sitting here waiting for DH to be tired of working on his paper so we can play a game together. Not THAT game. Heh heh. Just a game. You know, a computer game....oh never mind.

I should drink wine more often.

Sucky Day

Well, it;s been a sucky day. aside from the leftover grunge in my system from my psychiatrist appt. yesterday, all kinds of things have gone wrong. Let's see, from less bad to worse? Well, a game i've been looking forward to for a long time--months--crashes every time I try to run it on my computer. It runs on my husband's laptop just fine, so I don;t know what the deal is here. I guess that sounds trivial, but I have so little I really look forward to that it's a big issue to me.

Second, I just talked to my husband and the bank has refused to refinanace our home equity loan. Honestly, I feel just as relieved about this as not--I didn;t know how we were going to keep up with the new payments and I worried about it every night in bed. But we were counting on that money to get us through a rough spot. Now we have no food and no money and no way of getting either.

So I called the Social Security office to check on the status of my disability application. "Oh, they made a decision on that weeks ago!" the helpful lady on the other end of the line said. It was turned down. I can appeal, but I haven;t much hope anything different will come of it.

So here we are--no money, no food, a bank balance that's way overdrawn....and my birthday's comin g up and i wanted to have a good time without al these worries on my head. We should have just gone to Texas--I could have charged the whole thing and we wouldn;t be any worse off than we are now. And at least we would have had some fun.

Now I'm bored and tired and I think I'll finish this cigarette and lie down....

Ruddy Psychiatrists

i just got back from my pdoc appointment. It was one of those that I came out of in tears. The first part wasn't so bad--I found out that the blood levels on one of my meds are half what they should be and so he upped my dosage from 1000mg to 1500mg--that might take care of a lot. But then I tried talking to him abut my anxiety.

I swear this guy just does not get it. I'm afraid to leave my house and all he can say is, "The only way to conquer fear is to just do it." here I am having dry heaves when I have to go to the grocer, or even when I make a shopping list and he says, "Just do it?" I mean, if I had a phobia of snakes would he suggest I adopt a tank of snakes and bring them into my house? That sounds really good--bring the source of your phobia right into your house with you. NOT.

And it makes me feel so weak and worthless to hear him say these things--like I;m just not trying hard enough to get better and if I really put my mind to it I could...just overcome all my fears and anxieties and be a better person, a normal person. I don;t agree with him on this one. He keeps saying, "Katherine, I don;t know what to tell you." Well, I don;t know what to tell him either if every time I try to describe my mental state to him he comes out with some BS like "Just do it." Just doing it can only go so far and it makes me worse, not better.

My therapist says that in cases of trauma this kind of desensitization exercise actually does more harm than good because it re-trigggers your trauma and makes you feel like it's happening all over again. I think my pdoc does not understand the PTSD aspects of my condition. Would he tell a Viet Nam vet to go back into the service? I DON'T think so. And that's what it's like for me every time I think about going out of the house--going back into the place that abused me, the place that gives me nightmares about being tortured in various ways. Am I really supposed to do that? Is that what I really need?

Now I'm crying and I've cried myself into a headache. I feel so damn worthless. I feel like I'm not doing it right and not trying hard enough and all those things are trauma triggers for me so this appt. was NOT a good thing to spend my Tuesday morning doing. I want to go shopping and make the pain go away for a little while. But all I can do is sit here and smoke and think about all the ways I'm fucked up.

That's all I can write right now.

Depressive

Or not? I'm not sure. There are things I still can;t do like read or play my flute, but other things I canj do like keep this blog and update my website.

By the way, if you follow my website you migh tbe interested to know that today I posted a page of the original Locked poems: pieces I wrote years and years ago that describe the experience maybe even better than the prose does. There are only five of them, but I think they;re pretty good. So you might want to check them out. Link at the bottom of the Excerpts page!

But other than that...I feel like I'm having a depressive day. Nothing has any colour in it for me. It was nearly impossible to get out of bed and nearly impossible to function when I did. In fact, it's 2:38 by my computer clock and I just managed to take a shower and get dressed.

Maybe this is something I can expect. Maybe I can;t expect every day to be a good day. But not getting dressed until two doesn;t seem hedonistic to me: it seems wrong and unhealthy. So does ignoring things like gardening and housework. Maybe all these agendae are things that have been put on me by other people. No one says I HAVE to garden. I just feel...I like things to be nice and tidy and when they;re not and I don;t take responsibility for it I feel bad.

So I'm sitting here having another cigarette and a cup of coffee and wondering if I'm depresed or not. Maybe my Pdoc can tell me--I see him tomorrow.

That's all, really. Mostly I wanted to tell anyone reading this to go to my website and check out the poetry. It was the last poetry I wrote, so I value it. Hope you do as well.

Birthday Thoughts

No, it;s not my birthday, but it;s coming up later in the week and I've been thinking about it a lot.

Honestly, I never thought I'd get this far. I was sure I'd die somewhere in my thirties, either from suicide or depspair. But now I'm coming up on 45. I have a lot of people to thank for that, not least my husband and my current therapist. But I don't really know what it means.

I guess it means I'm middle aged--my family is long lived and ninety or more is not unusual. But I don't feel middle aged. If anything, I feel younger and happier than ever--if you discount the recent "Mixed State" affairs. I think I look better, I wear bettter clothes. Sure, my hair is going grey but that's nothing a little dye every month or so can;t fix.

Still, there are things I want from life that I haven't been able to get. A steady mood that allows me to work. Steady income from some source; I don;t care where. I'd like the aches and pains of middle age to miraculously vanish overnight. I'd like my weight to come down to a managable level and stay that way without my having to watch it all the time. I'd like to quit smoking but that doesn;t seem to be in my near future with all the stresses of my mental condition riding me all the time. Most of all, I'd like to have a book published by someone who would pay ME.

I'd like to be able to work without pain. I'd like to be able to leave the house--or even think about leaving the house--without having an anxiety attack. I'd like a relationship with my family -- like that's going to happen.

Still, I'm alive and I guess anything is possible while that remains the case. Like the story says, the horse might learn to sing....

Not Feeling so Well...

I;m not feeling so well tonight. My stomach hurts and my head hurts and all I want is to get a dose of a major narcotic and go to bed. But I don;t feel bad enough to go to the ER and have them believe me, so I guess I'm stuck in this situation.

probably two of the reasons I feel so bad right now is I'm trying to work on two things that cause me pain and grief: Locked, which you all should know about by now if you read this blog regularly, and a letter to my mother. Locked is easier.

I often wonder why I go to the trouble to keep in touch with my mom. This is a woman who caused me untold pain in my younger years. She never beat me or anything--she hardly touched me, when it comes to that. But she's cold emotionally and her own traumas really prevent her from sustaining any kind of satisfying relationship with anyone, much less her children. Plus, she is a woman who is full of blame. Blame for the things that went wrong in her life. It's never her fault; it's always something else, like bad kids, that cause her grief. I can't count the number of times I was told that my two older sisters were bad and caused her pain and I was bound to turn out just like them. (I wonder if my middle sister ever heard this? She was the "Good" one, I guess). because I had problems no one could fix and thoughts and feelings no one wanted to hear about. That made me bad in her eyes for some reason.

I still don;t understand thesde things and I don;t think I ever will. We went through a period of family therapy but all that got me was my mother denying she'd ever said to me things I KNOW she'd said--I'm not THAT crazy thank you--and my father telling me again that I was terrible and treated my loving parents like mud. I don;t know what the therapists thought of this; they never told me.

Yet I still keep up with her. Asmuch as she;ll let me. I write her a long letter every month or two or three and I never hear back from her except at times that it would be no trouble and in fact is a requirement that she respond. Like my birthday or Christmas or my wedding anniversary. And she never says anything real. Just the same old stories of how her garden and cat are doing and what she's doing at church.

But I told myself long ago that it was my choice to keep up and not my responsibility to make her respond or not.

I wish sometimes I could have a real mother, one who really cared. One who would give me love and attention, who would have had some kind of reaction when I told her I was Bipolar. One who would have written right back when I told her I had published a book and was thinking of publishing another one. But mine never goes into those things. I don;t know why but I do care and I hate myself sometimes for the caring. I cant let go.

I know lots of people who have divorced their families over less and I have thought of doing so. But frankly, all I have to do is wait for my motther to pass away because I have no contact with any of my siblings and I doubt they'll keep any up once she's gone. Besides, coming out and divorcing my family would be like kicking a puppy. They would never understand beccause they have never taken the time or put in the energy to understand me. I imagine their sad little faces and then the blame coming down: well we always knew she was a bad 'un. Of course she'd go off and do something crazy and hurtful like that.

I'm not a hurtful person. I keep writing. I keep sending the Christmas cards and the birthday cards to the sibs who send them to me. I just have to stop hoping someone will understand some day, because that's not going to happen.

My stomach feels a little better now but I feel like crying. I wish I could.

Frustrated

I;m feeling frustrated right now because I can;t do my job, that is, writing. My therapist says that my job at the moment is to get healthy, but I can;t buy it completely. I'm a writer, I should be writing. Of course I do SOME writing--like I wrote this blog every day in October and I've lately been creating diaries for my cats on catster. Is that lame or what? I don't know; i don't really think so but sometimes I do.

but the big projects are ecsaping me. I had an inquiry today on Locked. She wanted to know when it would be finished so she could buy it. Well, I had to tell her I don't KNOW when it will be finished because trying to write on it right now is like wading through a pool of maple syrup. I wrote 15 chapters without a break and now I'm totally stuck. I have the first few lines of the next chapter revolving in my head like some kind of insane carousel but I don't know where it goes from there. When I started writing it, this didn;;t bother me. I meant it to be totaly stream of consciousness. My stream, however, seems to be dammed at the source.

And She Moved through the Fair. I still have those same five pages on my hard drive and nowhere to go. Or rather, I know where to go but I don't seem to be able to make it go there. I think about writing and I just get all nauseated and shivery. I guess I'm having some kind of writer's block about it. I guess this is a natural part of the process. I guess that when you;re trying to get stabilised from Bipolar Disorder it's normal to put other things on hold.

But Dammit I WANT to be writing. Not just blogs and cat diaries, but stories. How can you want something so bad and not be able to do it? This is what I don;t understand.

I;m afraid. I know I;m afraid of writing these things and I don't know why. Fear of failure? Fear of success? i dreamed again last night that I got a message from Tor that they were going to publish The Unquiet Grave--again it was quite surreal, but it was a positive dream. S why am I so afraid? I long for the days when writing was not only an escape but a joy for me. Mayeb that's it--I just don;t experience joy at all. When I look inside myself all I see is this festering pit of old pain. I gues it's not done with me, or I with it, yet or something.

Maybe I should do something else for a while like paint or draw or needlepoint...

pics of my costume

As the GReen Fairy (La Fee Verte) , muse of Absinthe drinkers....







happy all hallows. Im beat.

Happy Samhain

I'm feeling better. When I got up this morning I thought it was going to be a shit day--I had a migraine, the costume thing was bugging me, I had a lot to do to get ready for tonight. BUT things have improved quite a bit. I took migraine drugs and they worked; I managed to bathe and shave my various bits and colour my hair in preparation for the night--I even painted my nails, which I don;t often do. Best of all, the key element of my costume actually arrived. So if the rest doesn't come I can improvise with other stuff in my wardrobe.

I always feel like I should celebrate Samhain with day of the dead type things. But to tell you the truth, except for two cats there's no dead people in my life I care to honour in that way. I suppose I should set up little alters for Luke and Tamlane but I always forget.

I;m bad that way about holidays. They just don't stick with me. Here I am, actually a priestes of a religion that has eight major holidays a year and I can;t be arsed to actually celebrate any of them. What's up with that? I guess my therapist would say, "Well, you need to decide what a holiday means to you and celebrate it that way..." which I guess is true. I mean, we had a good Lithe even though we didn;t dress up in robed and cast a circle and chant or anything.

So maybe Samhain to me means honouring the unseen world by dressing up in costume and handing out candy to the little ones.

BTW, I think this is a good time to remind everyone to go to my website and read "Moon turn the Tides" on the Excerpts page, which is a story I wrote (and actually published) about this time of year. I'd like to get more hits on my website anyway. So go there.

Waiting for M to get home to see if he found the rest of my costume in the post...

Where's my Stuff, you Morons???

So Sunday night, after months of thinking I was going to skip Hallowe'en altogether this year, I got the idea for a perfect costume. The problem? I don't actually own any of the elements of this costume but would have to buy them. And ship them overnight express. I debated about this for a long time--in fact, I even posted a poll on my favourite web community forum--should I or shouldn;t I. I really wanted to and the poll results came back with a resounding "GO FOR IT!" so I went ahead and ordered.

That was yesterday. Today, I did not receive my stuff.I have not even received confirmation e-mails that the stuff has been ordered, much less shipped EXCEPT from the one company who clearly stated that they did not do overnight orders!

I'm pissed, top say the least. I paid about $50 to have this stuff overnighted and now it look like I'll be without the costume at all. Unless by some miracle the stuff arrives tomorrow, which I'm not holding my breath hoping for. I mean, I'll have all the costume elements for next year but it was such a good idea and i wanted it NOW.

morons, they;re all morons.

I don;t know, can I get my money back? If the stuff doesn;t show up tomorrow I'm certainly going to try.

So now I;m in a bad mood about this Hallowe'en and I think again I might just skip it. After all, kids come to the door dressed in bedsheets and plastic bags. They can see me in my jammies with a scowl on my face.

It'll probably be scary enough.

Scare in the Night

I woke up, I thought I woke up, to pee sometime around 1 A.M. I disctinctly remember pullinhg the covers back and petting the cat and getting out of bed. But the next thing I knew...>CRACK! My brow ridge has forcibly connected with the door frame of our dining room. So I must have been sleepwalking.

This really freaked me out as well as freaking oout my husband who I made to sit up with me for an hour because I was afraid to go back to bed. Then he had to keep waking me up at intervals to make sure I was okay--you;re supposed to do this for a head injury.

I don;t think it's too bad really: the left side of my face is swollen and I have a cut on my eyebrow. Oh, and yes, my eyelid is now turning a lovely colour of puce. Should I be worried about this? Only if it clashes with my clothes, I think.

But it really did freak me out. I'm not a sleep walker in general and I keep thinking "What if it happpens again?"

So that was my big scare....

In other news: at the last possible minute--last night--I thought of the perfect Hallowe'en costume. The only problem is, I'd have to order a lot of stuff and have it shipped overnight express for it to get here on time! Is this worth it? I wonder. I think it would make me really happy to have this costume NOW instead of ordering the stuff and waiting until next year to use it as some people have suggested. On the other, would this happiness make up for the guilt I'd feel at spending thhe money when we;re in such dire finanacial straits?

Speaking of which, someone is coming to appraise our house tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 8 in the morning. I'm all freaked out because the house is a mess. Michael assures me that they don't care what it looks like, they just want to be sure the property actually exists. But still. What about the cat puke I haven;t cleaned up in a week? Well, it's pretty much hidden behind the dining room table (and what's YOUR excuse?)

Haven't even got dressed today because of the nighttime scare and I'm still feeling a little offish from that. Plus it's grey and gloomy outside; we're getting a lot of haze from the California fires out here. Some days it's just okay to hang out in your jammies....isn;t it?

Almost time for my meds so I'm out of here.

Kind of a Nothing Much Day

Got up too early for a Sunday morning. Had my usual internet coffee clatch with the gang at MCHY. Did laundry. Did dishes. Did Pilates. Played with the cats. Was so bored I spent some time composing diary entries for my cats on Catster--you can follow the links on the sidebar of this page to see my furrfamily. My cats had something to say even if I didn't. And still don't.

Went to dinner with M's folks and that was nice. Came home. Now I;m doing this. Smoking another cigarette.

Another friend with BPD assured me life will get better but I have my doubts about now. I;m not in the terrible mixed state I WAS in but now I;m feeling more depresive. Still can;t concentrate. Last night I felt so low I wa actually wondering what it would be like to swallow half my bottle of Klonopin. I would never do that, just wondering.

Need some motivation and excitement and I don;t know where to look for it. Is this what some people get out of doing drugs? I ask myself.

Now my back hurts 'cause I'm on my period and I already took painkillers so I can;t take any more. Bummer.

So kind of a nothing day all around. Not a BAD day, just a nothing day.

Maybe tomorrow will be better?

What Kids Know.

yesterday, on one off the forums I frequent, someone posted a link to a very disturbing article about a 7 year-old who hanged himself in his bedroom, presumably finding the rigours of school and family too much for himself. This article disturbed me not so much in the content as in the somment by one psychologist that "kids don;t really undertand death..." Apparently kids think it's only temporary and they;ll come back to a better time.

come off it. how many people on that forum posted that they hated their younger years and made their first serious suicide attempts at that age or not much older. I was one of them. What kids know is that death is a permanent solution; what they DON'T know is that things can get better and hanging on by the scraps of your fingernails can sometimes leqad you to a better life without so much of th pressure that's put on you by peers, adults, and others. ASchool seems forever, especially if you;re being abused there. Having to make top grades seems forever, especially if you have the kind of parents that look at a card full of A's and one B and ask "What happened here?" instead of praising you for the good work you did. It seems you;ll never get out of it.

I was one of those kids. I started thinking about suicide when I was twelve or thereabouts, soon after one of my brother's friends asphyxiated himself in his car after a failed love affair. I remember the phone call about this vividly. I was sitting on the living room floor doing something--drawing maybe--and the phone rang. I thought, "It's Mrs. Denman and James is dead." I knew exactly what that meant. I knew what it woould mean for me if I took that way out.

people think that suicide attempts in the young are a call for attention or help, and why shouldn;t they be? Is there something wrong with asking for atttention or help? In my family is seemed so. I can;t think how many times I heard, "You just want attention," as if seeking attention from one's parents were something shameful that should be avoided at all costs.

This is one of the reasons my suicide attempts were never really serious. I KNEW what it meant to be dead and I didn;t really want to be. I just wanted things to be better. I knew if I could just hold on they were bound to get better. But I also knew that if I really tried to kill myself I would succeed because no one knew or cared how I felt. No one would check on me. No one would some looking for me until it was too late. That's a bad feeling and it makes my stomach hurt to this day. Of course this let me in for a lot of grief when I finally DID get to go see a counselor, because I was labeled as attention seeking. There's that term again. What's wrong with wanting attention???? I don;t get it even now. I also was accused of wanting to get out of school, which I did, but not by dying, really.


But what are you supposed to do when you see no other way out? Kids don't know this and it's up to us to teach them, not sit in judgment.

Parents don;t like to be blamed for kids' suicides and I agree that they have enough grief, but I also think they SHOULD be blamed. For not listening. For not being available. For waiting until it's too late to see a problem. Teachers too. I know it's not a teacher's responsibility to bring up a kid, but I can;t help but think how much easier my life might have been--not happier, just easier--if there had been ONE sympathetic adult in my life.

Why are adults so afraid to face these things that kids know? Because they have some weird notion that childhood is this magical time when everything is shiny and new? Because they've forgotten how cruel kids can be to other kids or how cruel parents can be to their own? I don;t know.

But the kids know and we should listen to them.