“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
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!
"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.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
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.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
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
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
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