NAMI Walk in Almost Two Weeks

Hi everyone! Tomorrow there will be only two weeks left to donate! Tommy and I walk for NAMI on September 21 at 3pm. As many of you may know my husband, Tommy, and I participate in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) walk every year in support of their great cause. For those of you who donated last year I would like to thank you again and ask that you do so this year as well. To those who have not donated yet, please take the time out to visit NAMI's site and think about friends, family, and colleagues who may be affected by mental illness. Thank you to those of you who have already donated to this year's walk. Even though the walk is listed under Tommy's name, I am participating as well.

Thank you again for your time and I look forward to answering any questions you may have!


http://namiwalks.nami.org/Biddit79

Why I Hated "Eat Pray Love" (the book, the movie looked even worse)

Since I see almost all of my friends loved this book, I finally had to break my silence. Basically, everything about Elizabeth Gilbert just annoys the living f*** out of me, and I was particularly turned off by the glorification of "pretty power" in the "love" portion of the book. "Pretty power?" Puke.

Red Puzzle

there's a darkness in my head
I wander labyrinths of red
with exit signs that lead the way
to night

turn the lights on, it's okay
your brain cools on a summer day
the heat slows you and you
have no need to fight

I showed my puzzle to the night
I showed my puzzle to the day
the day said, "I wish
you would put that away"

I want to run, I want to hide
hide in a room filled with night
I want to get the stars
to snag on my skin
and then I want
to slow down
look out
it's alright

and then there's day
and then there's night
as long as the sidewalk
sizzles my brain
in a summer heat sedative fog
I'm alright
as long as the red puzzle
stays in its box
I'm alright

Dark Moon Afternoons

I know this is a weird thing for me to say, but on Friday, June 7, at work, I began feeling nostalgic for January, February (God knows why), and March. Especially January. First of all, that day at work I was listening to Bavarian Fruit Bread by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, and I was listening to Hope a lot in January.

We don't get much light in Chicago in January, but the light we do get is beautiful. It makes everything it touches seem to come alive, slowly... it's like everything the light falls on begins waking up from a deep sleep. I complained about all those gray snowy days but now what I remember is that clear, barely and calmly yellow light; the light could be considered bleak, and maybe it would be bleak if it weren't for the quiet, whispered, transparent hint of warmth that subtly transforms the bleakness into peace.

I am not going to discuss the cold.

In my poem where I say "the winter sun is her halo," I am speaking of the Dark Goddess, because winter is the dark moon time of the year. Indeed, this January it was very clear that 2012 had ended but 2013 had not yet begun. That's the way it is in January. It's an in-between time, like September (when I was married) and November (after which I named my blog. Incidentally, November shares with January this sparse, precious, yellow quality of light.)

I've got a nasty case of nostalgia for everything that's ever happened. It seems like parts of the past have flavors to them and the present time doesn't have a flavor. You don't realize what flavor a time is until it's over. Even drab, dreary times when you felt like a zombie and you thought there could not possibly be any flavor, even times like that fog your mind after the fact with nostalgia for the flavor you didn't realize was there, and you miss it, even if it tasted bad, because at least, in your mind, it tasted like SOMETHING.

The soundtrack to this post is "Clear Day" by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions and "Flavor" by Tori Amos. Buy the albums "Bavarian Fruit Bread" by Hope and "Abnormally Attracted to Sin" by Tori Amos and listen to "Clear Day" and "Flavor" while you read this. (Just FYI, a different version of "Flavor" is on Amos' album "Gold Dust.") Trust me, you won't regret it!

Didn't Holden Caulfield say something, at the end of Catcher in the Rye, about how you shouldn't talk about the past because you start missing everybody, even people you thought you hated?

Self-Love Installment #2

WOMEN WHO HAVE INSPIRED ME TO HAVE HAIRY PITS
Ani Difranco
PJ Harvey
Diamanda Galas
Patti Smith
Diane Arbus
Amanda Palmer
Grimes
Hothead Paisan
Paula Cole
Clementine Morrigan
Rose Polenzani
Lydia Lunch

I started not shaving on and off in high school, and so far my senior year of high school is the longest I've ever gone without shaving my armpits.You can imagine how well that went over :P

I was and remain to be amazed at how THREATENED people-- both guys and girls-- feel by the patches of hair under my arms, not to mention my leg hair. I started a facebook club called "In Praise of Grrrls With Hairy Pits and/or Legs." I called it that to clarify that it's not just for grrrls who don't shave, but also for grrrls who shave but dig body hair on other women, and dig their reasons for not shaving.

Even more than loving my body hair, my main body image project right now is loving myself
at the weight I am. I try to eat right and exercise (the operative word being "try") but it's for my health, not so I can look like a skinny model. My doctor said the number on the scale isn't as important as staying active and eating healthy, and that I'm still within the healthy weight range for my height.

When you start noticing how many commercials are targeted towards weight loss, and furthermore how it's the norm to assume that people who are heavy want to lose weight, it's pretty disgusting. My "diet" now is that when I feel down on my body, I pop in  Margaret Cho DVD! It's just a little difficult because up until I was 19 I never weighed more than 105 lbs, and then in my 20s I gained a lot of weight. But everyone has been overwhelmingly supportive... one of my guy friends even said, "You have some tits and ass now! It's not a bad thing!"And T loves my body, especially when it's hairy. ;)

I love to see women flaunting their gorgeous body hair, and hopefully someday I can see my own full figure as gorgeous! :)


WOMEN WHO HAVE INSPIRED ME TO LOVE MY FULL FIGURE
Margaret Cho
Adele
Penelope Garcia
Venus of Willendorf
women in Rubens' paintings
Queen Latifah
Beth Ditto
Thora Birch
Kelly Osbourne (obviously until she lost weight)
Kelly Clarkson (same qualification)
most Hollywood actresses when they're pregnant
Diamanda Galas (since she gained weight)
Lydia Lunch
Clementine Morrigan

looking on the bright side

You know, a lot of people pay good money for the types of hallucinations I (occasionally) have.

"Corporate Magazines Suck" --T-Shirt Kurt Cobain Wore for Nirvana's Rolling Stone Photo Shoot

When I was in high school Courtney Love saved my life and the Rolling Stones were a band a girl in my English class went to see with her dad and his boss. I love the Stones as much as the next girl, I really do, but what's true is true.

On Not Having a Biological Clock; and Fake Feminist Guys

When you fall in love doesn't follow a schedule nor is it timed by a clock. It's especially hard for grrrls... if you lose your virginity "too early," yr a slut, but if you lose it "too late," yr a freak. Similar with marriage... if yr a woman and yr not married by 30, evidently a lot of women's biological clocks start "ticking so loud they can't sleep at night" (I don't know where I read that... it might've been in "Backlash" by Susan Faludi... the quote was evidently a Sally Field line in some movie.) Anyway, I don't have a biological clock. I swear I don't. (In case you don't know, my husband and I aren't gonna have kids.) SOME women even believe that they have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than getting married after 35-- this urban myth (because that's what it is) started in the 1980s when that frightening and erroneous statistic was published on the cover of Newsweek. I originally thought that I would use my post-grad-school twenties and early thirties to focus on my career, and then marry after 35, since I didn't want kids anyway. I even wrote an essay for a writing class when I was 24 about how I NEVER wanted to get married! I should see if I can dig that up. Well, anyway, then my wonderful, wonderful T came along when I was 27, and that was that! I should tell you that before T, I was going through a slutty phase, and hooking up with losers, guys I didn't even like, guys who somehow thought they loved me even as they wanted to change major things about me (like the guy who wanted to marry me but didn't want me to keep my last name and was "confident he could change my mind") and stupid little boys who needed to grow the fuck up-- just all kinds of no-good not worthy guys.  The last such hookup was with a guy I wasn't even attracted to, I just slept with him to get him to shut up about wanting to sleep with me (sad, I know), and my friends and I had nicknamed him "Sketchy ___ " before I slept with him. It was so depressing and humiliating, not to mention shameful, that I decided I would not hang out with, date, fuck, or otherwise waste my time with guys who as much as they gave lip service to feminism clearly did not respect me. (Okay, my other feminists are gonna hate me for saying this, but I've noticed that guys who call themselves feminists can be the worst offenders when it comes to being lame, disrespectful shitty boyfriends. Example: one of my boyfriends who called himself a feminist wouldn't offer to walk me to my car at night from his apartment in a shitty neighborhood. I had to ask him to walk me every time. But I could write a whole post about how particularly shitty this boyfriend was, so I'll stop there.) So I didn't date or fuck for a year. And then I met T. There were clearly a lot of wonderful things I noticed about him at first, but a lot of them came from how thoughtful he was. And one of the ways he was thoughtful was that he showed me that he valued my time. For instance, in the past guys had called to say they were running a half hour late and then show up two hours late. When T and I first started dating, one time he called to say he was running 20 minutes late. I thought, "Great, here we go." He showed up ten minutes after that phone call. In other words, he is a gentleman. Which is something fake feminist guys don't know how to be. (By the way, I tracked down my 2003 essay on why I didn't want to get married, and I think it's best if it stays in 2003.)

Thus Spoke Grumpy Cat

I shouldn't have to say this, because it's all over facebook and the internet in general, but this image/text is not my original work and is not covered by copyright Elizabeth Caudy.

Grimes - Genesis

quote from Philip K. Dick

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

What I Want to Know is, Where is Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction in This Otherwise Right-On (Not to Mention Entertaining) Short Video?

75 Years of Manic Pixie Dream Girls

State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls

Oh, Well, Whatever, Nevermind

Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It

update on my depression

I may regret posting this immediately after I write it. But I don't give a shit anymore.

I am so fucking depressed. You know how on the Cymbalta commercials, they say "Depression hurts?" As in, not just your mind but your body, too? It's true. For me, I especially can't stand being the slightest bit cold. When I'm at my parents' house, they say, "You can't be cold, you're wearing a hoodie." Now, my parents are great. They've helped me through some really tough times, and I'm really grateful for how loving and understanding they are. But, when it comes to the fact that I almost always feel uncomfortably chilly, especially when I'm depressed, they have no fucking idea what that's like for me. The fact that I feel chilly turns into something I just cannot stop thinking about when I'm depressed, and any other minor discomfort or inconvenience turns into a big fucking ordeal, too. Like my purse strap tugging on my long hair, or my long hair seeming to constantly get in the way in general; or my parents' cat, who I usually adore, jumping on me when I'm trying to read.

I got home to my apartment last night and bawled because it was still cold there. It's been cold there for the past week. I sleep in a long t-shirt and a hoodie, with two comforters. And last night I just couldn't deal with the cold anymore. So I took a hot bath. Which was a good move for someone who's as depressed as I am. I mean, sometimes when you're in a deep depression, you don't think of things like that.

I don't mean to be all "sad sack of shit." My psychiatrist increased my Prozac, especially since I'd been constantly experiencing suicidal ideation, and I took the larger dose last night, so I do feel a little better. It really is true that "when you smile, the world smiles with you, and when you cry you cry alone." One of the worst things about clinical depression is no one can touch you. No one can break through. I watched "The Wedding Singer" last night, and it made me feel better, except that I almost had a crying jag. I've had a lot of those lately. Like if I'm watching "Field of Dreams," or if I'm listening to "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper, or if I'm playing "Letter to God" by Hole on repeat, which seemed to be a good idea two nights ago. Or, evidently, if I'm watching... "The Wedding Singer?" WTF?

I do feel a teensy bit better even though I just started the higher dosage of Prozac last night. I'm no longer experiencing suicidal ideation (just threw that in there for everyone who might worry about me, but it's true). Maybe it's because I got a good night's sleep last night, and also it's sunny and warm today and T will be stopping by work later to keep me company, and I'm looking forward to having a nice night with him tonight and a nice day with him tomorrow since he has tomorrow off from work. Just thinking about spending time with him tomorrow cheers me up. I have this feeling, that I didn't yesterday, that I can carry on... also writing this down is helping. But I haven't felt depressed like I did yesterday-- and that depressed accompanied by the physical discomfort-- since high school before I was diagnosed with depression, bipolar, schizo-affective, or anything... I'd never even been to see a psychiatrist since the summer after I graduated from high school. I did see a high school counselor my senior year, who "diagnosed" me with "senioritis." Whatever. I think part of the reason that when you cry you cry alone is that some people, even high school counselors (psht)  don't stop to notice that you're crying in the first place (I don't mean "crying" in the literal sense, I mean, as cheesy as this sounds, more like "crying on the inside.") And can you blame them? People are busy, and they have their own shit to deal with. I stopped wishing the world would notice my pain years ago. I even built up several thick walls to hide my pain from the world.

Today at work I was listening to Pandora (I still am, by the way, I'm at work now) and Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" came on. It made me so happy. It's like what Susanna Kaysen wrote in "Girl, Interrupted": when people are in pain, they need to hear their pain structured into sound. Now, I mean this: if you are in psychological pain and you read this, I hope it helps you the way hearing Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" helped me. Just because we depressed people generally lack the energy to reach out to each other doesn't mean we are alone in feeling this way.

Dialogue On Body Image

Clementine Morrigan said: i am a curvaceous woman. i have large breasts and ample hips, thighs and ass. i also have a round and squishy stomach. thirteen months sober and healthier than i have ever been in my adult life, i am also heavier than i have ever been in my adult life. i had some trouble adjusting to this. while some of the fat on my body, such as my overflowing tits, was acceptable to me, other parts, like my stomach overflowing the waistline of my jeans, was not. feminist as i am, i was chopping my body up into pieces, thinking some of my fat was redeemable because it could be perceived as sexy, but other parts had to go. there are many things wrong with this. the first being that i was chopping myself up and not allowing myself to exist in wholeness. the second, that i was valuing my body based on its ability to be an appealing sex object. and the third, that i was denying the blatant sexiness of my round, squishy belly. fortunately, instead of declaring war on my body, i decided to work on appreciating it, and me, in all my healthy, curvy, multifaceted and squishy glory. i have decided to embrace the fat on my body rather than fight it, shame it or disguise it. in a sexist, fatphobic and bodyshaming culture, this is hard work. but it is also good, honest, rewarding work. i love myself. yes, i do. and i refuse to be ashamed of my rolls. thank you very much and have a nice day.

 

I said: I have gone through, and still sometimes go through, everything you just said. Actually, it was really empowering to me to read this, from a sister in feminism who I respect so highly. thank you so much for writing this. And-- we should se...riously talk, even if it's just facebook messages. We are so similar on this I think we could really help each other. Now, if you don't mind, I am going to share what you just said because you said some things that are so dead-on how I feel and I have not been as great as you at verbally articulating how I feel. I think part of the reason is that, since I am a feminist, I've been denying that I feel this way about my body, at least I have lately. When i was younger I was more honest to myself about hating my body, but the last time I felt seriously bad about my body, I'd been in Weight Watchers over 3 times and it hadn't work and I was like, "I know! Instead of going on Weight Watchers, I'll throw in a Margaret Cho DVD!" I think it's important to be honest with oneself that, yes, I am a feminist, AND yes, I feel bad about my body. What matters is that one does something in keeping with feminism, positive body image, and self love about how one feels about one's body, instead of keeping the feminism and the complicated feelings about one's body separate. The road to self love is a long one; it's not like you simply flick a switch and "poof!" you body image issues are gone. But going down the road is so worth it, and as I love myself more and more, reality literally changes for the better.

Books!

"I had, and have, no tolerance for those individuals-- especially psychiatrists and psychologists-- who oppose using medications for psychiatric illnesses; those clinicians who somehow draw a distinction between the suffering and treatability of "medical illnesses" such as Hodgkins disease or breast cancer, and psychiatric illnesses such as depression, manic-depression, or schizophrenia. I believe, without a doubt, that manic-depressive illness is a medical illness; I also believe that, with rare exception, it is malpractice to treat it without medication." --Kay Redfield Jamison, from "An Unquiet Mind"


"In Eastern philosophy black is understood to represent the formless state of matter, as pure energy, which is called emptiness. Devotions to the Black Mother in Eastern traditions involve meditations that cut away the delusion of dualism, which is the root cause of all suffering-- the mistaken belief that sees an independently arising self as separate from others. Wisdom lies in the realization that all that exists is unified as part of the same primal matter, and there is no difference between self and others. Life is in a constant state of flux, arising out of itself as infinite numbers of forms and falling back into itself as emptiness, the formless energy. The black, empty void is the primordial foundation of all manifested forms, the ground of potentiality for everything that exists... The wisdom of Black Mother Night, spanning Greek, Eastern, and Egyptian traditions, is that the preexisting nature of all life is a universally connected matrix of living energy whose first expression is as love. When we are ignorant of her truth, we experience a fear of the void and become involved in outer activity to escape the emptiness that terrifies us. We see this fear in those who cannot bear to have empty space or time in their lives or who have a fear of being alone.

"And so, first of all, we call forth Nyx [The Goddess of the Night] to reclaim our awareness that our original essential nature arises out of formless potentiality embodied by the night."

--Demetra George, from Mysteries of the Dark Moon: The Healing Power of the Dark Goddess.

I'm wearing my Kali pendant today!

Dude, Where's Our Sense of Wonder?

Is it possible that the popularity of belief systems such as Wicca, neo-paganism, and neo-witchcraft are a revolt against the modern times we live in where almost every phenomenon that used to be thought of as magical and vast in its mysterious unknowability can be explained away by the BELIEF SYSTEM called science-- indeed, is a belief in fae folk and whispering trees in the forest dappled with liquid sunlight a much needed balm against the tragedy of our modern society's general lack of wonder? Me personally, I cultivate my sense of wonder, that could easily compete with any 5-year-old child's, with my art, and also because I have been insane I have experienced first-hand different realities than the dominant culture's version of reality, and although the science of psychiatry can explain away those realities with the pat labeling of them as symptoms of schizo-affective disorder-- and, even though on a practical and, more to the point, day-to-day level, I know this label is true-- it doesn't change the authenticity and soul-flight truth of those alternative realities, at least in terms of how they were experienced at the time. I don't want this post to sound anti-psychiatry-- I really, really like not hearing voices or thinking "They" are "out to get me"-- I'm just saying, on a certain level, if I felt something, it was real, or at least it was real at the time. But that doesn't mean I want it to be my permanent reality, particularly because most of it was terrifying. But part of the sense of wonder I experience now because of having been insane, even after all the psychotherapy and medication, is that if I open certain doors in my mind I can LOOK AT realities I've experienced in the past; I can look at them, even if I don't walk into the room.

I Am Completely Safe

Why I Hate My Facebook Account

I have a facebook account. I de-activated it once, but I came crawling back. When you de-activate your account, when you do come crawling back, your account is there waiting for you just the way you left it. You have no need to start over from scratch. They know. They know you'll come back.

A lot of people hate facebook. "It's a waste of time." "I don't like putting all my information out there, I don't like people knowing that much about me." The main reason I've come to hate facebook is that everyone in my age group (I'm thirty-four) on facebook's main objective seems to be to show off their perfect lives and their perfect kids. (For the record, my husband and I have chosen not to have kids-- and we love being child-free.)

I have to come out and say it: I don't care about looking at pictures of your kids. If that makes me a heartless bitch with no family values, then so be it.

However, I do care about pictures of your cats. :P

Now, I am guilty of bragging about my marriage. That said, that doesn't make it right. The problem with facebook, however, is that if you're not bragging about something and posting status updates that make you sound like you have a life that makes you smile until it hurts, no one's really interested. There are so many times I've wanted to post things like, "I love me some Klonopin," but no one seems to want to hear it.

The worst thing, for me anyway, is that I have friends who get away with posting witty, sassy quips dripping with cynicism about how endlessly irritated they are by other people and life in general (and by "get away with," I mean a lot of people enthusiastically press "like"). I mean, they post some wickedly, even darkly funny stuff that I would otherwise think you would have to be David Sedaris to get away with, because I sure as hell can't seem to get away with posting stuff like that. But here's the thing: these friends of mine who post this stuff  tend to be either really badass, really hot (the latter trait which is made evident by their profile pic), or both. I am neither. Which leads me to another gripe about facebook: you get to see how much hotter your friends are than you.

I feel marginalized by facebook. I just can't seem to come up with a status update that will get 30 likes. You get 30 likes for posting pictures of your kids or of your hot self, whereas I get no likes because I don't have kids and I'm fat.

Hey. If I were hot, I'd milk it, too. And if you have made the decision to have kids, I would hope that you'd be crazy about them! Maybe this is me being paranoid, but my point here is that when you post pictures of your kids on facebook, I feel pressured to be crazy about your kids too. I know that's not anyone's intent, so I've just started ignoring the pictures you upload of your, um, adorable little munchkins. It just seems like the most reasonable course of action.

Maybe this all started when I read that article in Cosmo (another reason to hate Cosmo) about how people should and most people do play themselves up on facebook. For example, the info about me under my facebook profile pic says I work at Caudy Photography. This is technically true. I do make money from selling my fine art photography. But my steady paycheck comes from my job as a receptionist. That's just one example of how I "play myself up" on facebook, and there are probably several other ways I do it. And if I'm doing it, hell, even if I weren't doing it, I guarantee you that other people are doing it.

What if we all just dropped the act on facebook? What if we admitted that being a grownup is kind of scary and that's why we feel the need to make our lives look perfect to peers we haven't seen since we graduated from high school? What if we were honest?

Right. Not gonna happen.

Black Moods in Winter

I get these really bad. Hardcore. One time it was so bad I was put in the psych ward. The technical term is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

To break it down, basically, there is less sunlight in the winter months. Exposure to sunlight gives you Vitamin D, which makes you happy. On top of having SAD, I also have a Vitamin D deficiency, and I'm supposed to take vitamin D tablets but I don't because I'm on so many other pills as it is, which I know isn't a good reason. But what I do that's good is I sit by a light therapy lamp for 5 minutes every morning, and I do breathing exercises for my anxiety while I do this. My brother got me a Brian Eno CD to play during this ritual, but I haven't heard it yet because today the first thing I did when I got up was call the hospital where I get my bloodwork done because they got my insurance info wrong, AGAIN.

Also, I live in Chicago, where it's eternally gray from December through March. I mean, there must be SOME sunlight because during the day you can see shit in a way that you can't at night, but it's a pretty pathetic excuse for daylight.

I usually don't really use the light therapy lamp until winter because a GOOD thing about Chicago is that in autumn the light is beautiful, so even though the days are starting to get shorter if I get up before 5 pm (which I often don't) I can get my sunlight from taking a walk in... well, the sunshine.

I will now indulge you and tell you about my stay in the psych ward. Well, first and foremost, it's true what everyone says: the psych ward is REALLY BORING. Which is a good incentive for attending the exercise classes where you "exercise" by sitting in a chair and lifting your knee up and down, or the art therapy classes where you draw pictures of your "safe place."

One really unfair thing about the modern psych ward is that they don't let you smoke. I mean, they have a bunch of people who are so out of our minds and troubled that we have to be locked up, and they won't even let us fucking smoke! I'm surprised no one's called Amnesty International yet. It seems to me it's every psych ward inhabitant's God-given right to smoke tobacco.

Maybe I would like being locked up better now, since I don't smoke. Did you see VH1's "Behind the Music" on Courtney Love? Do you remember when she talked about being locked up in the psych ward for a week and the first thing she did when they let her out was light a cigarette? That was me. Only, I also sneaked cigarettes in my room because I was blessed with a single.

Now comes the icky part. Icky for me, anyway. I'm going to tell you why I was there. I had T drive me there because I was so depressed I was afraid I would kill myself. I wouldn't choose to get through the moment that way again. Even though since I was hospitalized I was put on Clozaril, which has worked out really well for me, since I've now been through the hospitalization "thing," I know it doesn't solve anything, even while you're in there. I mean, I had a friend who made a major and almost successful suicide attempt in the hospital, and I had another friend who had been hospitalized I think a couple times before he successfully ended his own life. Before I'd been hospitalized, I romanticized it as a haven. Now I know it's not a haven.

 Sometimes I still want to die. But I think of T, and my family. It would destroy my family, and I have a beautiful and blessed family. I don't think I could say I truly love T if I did that to him. It would be a slap in his face and in God's face if I killed myself when I've been blessed with T, with true love. ("This is true love. Do you think this happens every day?" -- from "The Princess Bride") I think of what Courtney Love said in tears about Kurt Cobain's suicide, that Frances Bean Cobain will never know if she just wasn't good enough for him, for him to live for. Courtney Love said, "It's stupid, man. Just live through the moment." And so I do. I live through the moment. Because, you know what? Whatever I'm depressed about isn't worth dying for, and to be honest it really isn't even worth a trip to the emergency room for. So I cry, take some Klonopin, let myself feel like a Sad Sack Of Shit, and move on. Because one beautiful moment-- and I've had those too-- is worth living through at least ten Sad Sack Of Shit Moments. And I have so fucking much to live for.

When my close friend killed himself in 2004, it left me in a desolate emotional wasteland. Somehow I got through it. I guess that's all I know, in the end, about how I deal with my mental illness-- somehow I get through it. My friend's parents told me he wasn't as strong as I am. Although I am strong, I'm honestly not fully convinced that that's why I'm still alive and he's not. I have to admit that it's probably part of it. But this discourse starts to sound too much like the idea that if you have a mental illness, you can get over it with will power and strength of character. You just need to pull yourself up by your boot straps and get on with your life.

No.

The reason I'm still alive and he isn't is that he was sicker than I am. As much as I suffer, he suffered more. I'm sure of it. Kay Redfield Jamison titled her book about understanding suicide "Night Falls Fast." Some of us are blessed with better night vision than others. Or, at least, we're blessed with better flashlights.

Girl Disappearing

This is one of the best descriptions I've ever heard of what it's like to fall into anxiety and/or depression: "Girl disappearing to some secret prison behind her eyes..." --Tori Amos, "Girl Disappearing," on American Doll Posse

Me and Kali

Kali is the Hindu Goddess of Death and Rebirth. Sometimes I, perhaps rather flippantly (although I don't mean for it to be flippant) like to think of Her as the Goddess of spring cleaning-- out with the old, in with the new. It is clear to me that Kali has been guiding me from the time I quit smoking around the Awakening of the Goddess (when Venus crossed the sun) and continues to lead me through catharses and breakthroughs in terms of self-love, self expression, art, and breaking out of my shell to explore. 

 

Book Review On "Full Frontal Feminism" by Jessica Valenti

I would recommend it as a great feminist primer for young girls/women, except for her chapter on the anti-choice movement. Some of my "fellow" feminists may gasp to see me say this, but not all anti-choicers are a) men, or b) anti-birth control. While it may be that the anti-choicers IN POWER are anti-birth control men, most of the anti-choice people I know are women who at some point in their lives have used some form of birth control. Even if they are not the anti-choicers in power, they should NOT be made invisible. Maybe they can organize to start an anti-choice movement that does not include discourse about "legitimate rape" (WTF?) and does not condone pharmacists choosing not to dispense birth control pills based on their religion (which, scarily, some pharmacists are doing). Even though I am passionately pro-choice, I think a movement like that, even if it is anti-choice in terms of abortion, would be a step in the right direction; if feminists like Valenti keep stereotyping anti-choicers in the way described above, I fear it is less likely that such a movement will emerge. Lastly, although it was refreshing to read encouraging words about a woman's choice to keep her last name when she marries, as I have done, why is it so terrible for a woman to choose to take her husband's last name and to wear an engagement ring but it's perfectly OK for Valenti to wear high heels and make-up even as she is conscious that throwing out all her makeup would be "revolutionary?"? Which begs another question, what's the difference between the patriarchy telling women what to do and feminists (aka "bossy" feminists like Valenti) telling women what to do? In "The Purity Myth," Valenti stereotypes what she calls "the purity movement" in a similar manner to the way she stereotypes anti-choice people in this book. I don't think I care for Jessica Valenti. Give me Naomi Wolf or Angela Y. Davis any day.

The Winter Sun is Her Halo: A Would-Be Tumblr Blog

description:

Only in the winter is it anywhere nearly safe to gaze upon the Snow Angel's pale yellow watery halo. Only in the winter is the sun gentle. Especially when seen through a tangle of bare black twisted tree branches or through the dirty window of the passenger's seat in a car. It is like a cry from the sea that things are still alive. You just have to look for them, before night falls, and night falls fast.

And now I will delete it

Man in Diner

caution tape

on losing one's mind

I was recently thinking that most people's top worst fears include losing their minds. Well, I HAVE literally lost my mind, but I've always found it again. And while it's not a pleasant experience, since it's not unknown territory for me, and I have go-to coping/ getting back on track strategies for when it happens, the prospect of losing my mind (again) doesn't scare me quite as much as losing their minds scares most people.

it has come to my attention that people are reading my blog. Yay!

And it has also come to my attention that my readers, well, let's be honest here, reader, likes to read what I have to say about my schizo-affective disorder. Another yay! Because there's always a lot to say.

That's kind of a lie. Sometimes there's not much to say at all, for example I'm spending all my time in bed sleeping because I'm so depressed. (Or, as is more usually the case, I'm so depressed because I'm spending all my time sleeping). Even though I've completed, since my initial diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1998 (later my diagnosis was switched to schizo-affective disorder, which means I have sympotoms of both bipolar and schizophrenia, I know, yikes!, and also means I respond to medication used to treat both illnesses) a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography at Columbia College Chicago (2006), lived on my own in New York City, travelled through Europe with a group of people I didn't know very well, got a short story published in the major literary magazine Another Chicago Magazine, gotten married, and held down the same part-time job for 3 1/2 years, those things are not the whole picture. I mean, a person's remarkable achievements aren't the whole picture of any person's life (I guess that's part of what makes them so remarkable) but for me, my day to day life is in especially stark contrast with my "life on paper" because the truth is I spend most of my time sleeping.

I'm working on getting out of that cycle now. T is key. More later...

posts from the John Lennon fan site web boards

Mick Jagger is so full of contradictions... I think of him as kind of a male chauvinist pig but then I also think of him as pioneering famous performers dressing in drag and wearing makeup... right down to Kurt Cobain, who was definitely NOT a male chauvinist pig, wearing eyeliner.

Lennon had contradictions, too, but his contradictions were separated from each other by being attributes of phases he was going through. Like he had his feminist "Woman is the Nigger of the World" phase, then he had his macho pig Lost Weekend, and then he went back to his feminist phase but this time that involved taking care of Sean and baking bread and otherwise being a house-husband. I like to think he was mainly a feminist, but I mainly base that on him being married to Yoko Ono, who is FINALLY gaining the recognition she deserves as a pioneering feminist who has riot grrrl poster girl Kathleen Hanna as one of her devotees.

So, Lennon was the feminist who complained about ppl being "faggy," and Jagger is the womanizer who was wearing eyeliner before Billy Idol and others made doing so macho in a punk rock kind of way. Curiouser and curiouser...



 Why is the fact that McCartney's going to "be" Kurt Cobain mean his reputation is sinking? I think it means he's smart enough to know that Cobain was ONE OF the most influential rock stars if not of all time, of Cobain's time. Kurt single-handedly made indie rock, previously only available to college students with radio shows, accessable to everyone... 20 years later, we're still seeing the fruits of that.

I suppose you didn't think much of Johnny Cash covering NIN's "Hurt...

I hope when McCartney performs "as Kurt" they do "Pennyroyal Tea..." that's my favorite Nirvana song and let's just say it's the song I put on repeat when I'm feeling desolate, despairing and depressed. Curiously: I believe I read in Cobain bio "Heavier Than Heaven" that Courtney Love originally wrote the song... now there's a woman whose music, along with that of Tori Amos, Ani Difranco, and PJ Harvey almost literally saved my life as a teenager...

but i digress :)

because it had to happen

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