So you are bipolar? Don't fret, so is SpongeBob!

Sometimes being bipolar makes me think no one understands me, and I am alone in the universe. I am alone no longer, SpongeBob Square Pants is also bipolar! Or at least, this is what his creator, Stephen Hillenberg said about the sponge back in 2003.

"Spongebob spends a lot of time laughing and crying. He’s a total bipolar character. Always the extremes. There’s no in between with Spongebob. He’s either completely giddy and ecstatic or so far down in the dumps."

Various Stages of Depression and When You Should Seek Help

Defining Depression

What's difficult about dealing with depression is that it can manifest itself in a number of different ways. For some people, depression is merely a short bout of sadness that resolves on its own. But for others, it's a long running presence that makes them feel ineffective, as well as hopeless. Some of the more common symptoms of depression include:
Feeling sad

Feeling hopeless

Becoming irritated for no reason

Anger and frustration

Loss of interest in favorite activities

Change in eating habits

Change in sleeping habits

Thoughts about suicide

Diagnosing depression is tricky because it requires that you have these symptoms for extended periods of time – normally at least two weeks continuously. And while some people can easily identify their down times, others might not recognize symptoms like anger as being consistent with depression.

The Stages of Depression

While the American Psychological Association doesn't define clear stages of depression, there does seem to be a pattern among the way that depression progresses among people. Here are the basic issues that may lead to depression in many people:

Feeling frustrated or overwhelmed – When life begins to become burdensome, you can begin to have troubles dealing with the emotions that come along with this anxiety.

Sense of sadness at the way things are – Feeling like everything is out of control, you begin to feel sad and despondent.

Loss of interest in things you enjoy – You begin to isolate yourself from others and from the things you love to do.

Changes in eating and sleeping – You might begin to change the way you eat and the way you sleep as a way to cope with the burdens of your feelings.

Feelings of hopelessness – As you continue to feel bad, you might begin to see things as hopeless and beyond your control. You begin to not care about anything. You might stop bathing or handling even mundane tasks.

Feelings of death and suicide – Those who feel like they are completely alone and have no one to turn to will often begin to have thoughts of death and finally 'ending' it all.

When You Should Seek Help

Ideally, depression is best treated when you identify the symptoms early and begin treatment in the beginning stages. When you first notice that you are having troubles being happy, you might want to start talking to someone about how to handle these emotions.

However, if you don't get help at that point, you will want to certainly begin to seek help if you have any feelings about suicide. This is the lowest point that you can hit and while you might not feel you are serious about following through on the feeling, it warrant some additional counseling and guidance. When you may become harmful to yourself or even to someone else, you will need to get professional help.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

From an email mailed to a friend today.

Pall Malls. I didn't know anyone still smoked them. Vonnegut smoked them. Philip Jose Farmer died today. He was 91. He had a good long run as a SF author. RIP Kilgore Trout. Venus on the Half Shell. Died in 04 as a suicide supposedly, died again today.

I feel like that right now to. Just tired, tired of living, tired of breathing, tired of existing, holidng on by a thread called cat.

Thank heaven for Cat.

Send Chicken Soup! Stat!

Mom/Susan is running 102 today and feels worse than she did yesterday. So she apologizes for not blogging the last couple of days. I, on the other hand, have free reign over the computer, so I emailed my beaus, Michael and Shen, and and then I sent memberships to the mouse of the month club for all my feline friends. .....

And am answering mom's email, and reading mom's friends blogs.

So if you haven't heard from Susan- or are wondering why she sent a silly email, know it is me.

And no, Virginia, Cats do not watch the Oscars- why should we? The only dress than any cat ever liked was Bjork's Swan/Duck dress.

Meanwhile, gentle kind humans, enjoy this pretty picture of me-ow.

Love,

Holly the cat aka The Striped One .

RIP Sock Clinton, A Very Good Cat Indeed.

From the AP Newswire, Breaking....


Socks, the Clintons' White House cat, dies
February 20, 2009 9:01 PM EST
BALTIMORE - Socks, the White House cat during the Clinton administration who waged war on Buddy the pup, has died. He was around 18.

Socks had lived with Bill Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, in Hollywood, Md., since the Clintons left the White House in early 2001.

Currie confirmed Socks' death Friday evening and said she was "heartbroken." She did not give details, referring calls to the Clinton Foundation office.

The foundation released a statement from the Clintons:

"Socks brought much happiness to Chelsea and us over the years, and enjoyment to kids and cat lovers everywhere. We're grateful for those memories, and we especially want to thank our good friend, Betty Currie, for taking such loving care of Socks for so many years."

Socks had reached his late teens - an advanced age for a cat - when reports surfaced in late 2008 that he had cancer and Currie had ruled out invasive efforts to prolong his life.

"It's not a happy prognosis," presidential historian Barry Landau, a friend of Currie's, said at the time.

Socks was what feline-lovers call a tuxedo cat - mostly black with white down the front and belly and on his feet, suggesting a fashionable dandy in a black satin evening jacket with a snowy shirt peeping out. He had markings that looked a bit like a mustache and goatee.

Chelsea Clinton's pet first appeared in the news in November 1992 after then-Gov. Bill Clinton won the presidency and the family was the still in the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Ark. Socks became an early symbol of privacy-vs.-media in the Clinton era when photographers got a little aggressive as he took a stroll outside.

Life changed for Socks in the White House, when his easy access to the out-of-doors was necessarily curtailed. One official conceded that, yes, Socks was on a leash while outside.

Things took a turn for the worse in late 1997, when then-puppy Buddy, a chocolate retriever, arrived. Relations between Socks and Buddy were cool from the beginning.

"I'm trying to work that out," Clinton joked at the time. "It's going to take a while. It's kind of like peace in Ireland or the Middle East."

A few weeks later, in early 1998, the two pets had an encounter on the South Lawn. "A very agitated Buddy approached the cat and began barking as the president restrained him with a green leash," The Associated Press reported. "Socks, hair raised high, stood his ground until Clinton and Buddy made their exit to the Oval Office."

But their pairing enchanted pet lovers, especially children. In 1998, then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton put out a book of children's letters to the two pets in "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy."

"Can you please send me a picture and a paw print," one youngster wrote Socks. "Do you have fleas? I think my cat has fleas."

In the book, the first lady wrote she had been taking daughter Chelsea to a piano lesson in spring 1991 when they spotted two kittens in the music teacher's front yard. "The black one with white paws - Socks - jumped right into (Chelsea's) arms," she wrote.

After the Clintons left in early 2001, Socks moved in with Currie. Buddy, meanwhile, made the move with the Clintons to Chappaqua, N.Y., but he was struck and killed by a car the following year.

Socks continued to live quietly with Currie, sometimes making appearances at programs held by pet welfare groups. Landau said Socks enjoyed sitting in the sun and that Currie doted on him, cooking him special chicken dinners.

Coincidentally, the White House cat in the Bush era, India, died Jan. 4 at 18, just weeks before Bush left office. Bush daughter Barbara, then 9, named the shorthaired black cat after former Texas Rangers player Ruben Sierra, nicknamed El Indio.

Like Socks, India had to share the White House with the canine side: the Bushes' Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, who were immortalized in Internet videos.

---

Associated Press writer Polly Anderson in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Wordless Wednesday

You are all my heroes

More Cymbalta Hell

Reader Advisory- The letter quoted in here was written in December, when I was not safe. I am safe now. Please do not read triggered by suicidal ideation

Gianna Kali has a post today on Cymbalta. And it addresses why people on Cymbalta want to kill themselves.

I understand why. For a time this past December, I too was experiencing suicidiation like I never experienced before. All from this drug.

The following below is an email I sent to a very good friend in real life in the throws of what I thought was madness and suicidal anguish like I have never experienced before. Please do not read if you are easily triggered.

December 17, 2008
Dear Uncle -

Mommy thinks she be going mad. She woke up after 2 hours sleep, once again covered in sweat, and crying and shaking. She said she hears voices, and goes to litter box.

She takes two Tylenol for her cramps, and a glass of milk. Makes it chocolate. Sits down in kitchen and lights a fag. (She just tells me now I cannot say that word it's bad word for kitties like me to use).

She says cigarette calms her and make voices go buh-bye. She is kind not to blow smoke up my little pink nose. She cries and puts cig down in dish and says when did i get so fucking old Holly?

I look at her quixotically and she just says, look at the white hair coming in.

I give her the same look, paw her and meow. She sighs, picks up cig and inhales deeply, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looks at me and says "Holly i wanna chop off my head".

I jump on her lap and give her the merrooooww that means pet me, stroke me behind the ears. She continues, putting cig down and stroking me. "Holly I am going to Home Depot tomorrow and making a guillotine so I can chop off my head".

"The voices are telling me to chop off my head, Holly. I just dreamed I was dead, the same way King Edward II died. Only they didn't shove it up my ass, they shoved it up my female parts".

Meooow. More purrs.

"It's just as well, Holly. I got a dried up Crone, I feel like I am an old woman, I don't have a flat stomach, my boobs aren't perky anymore, no one would want me I even have stretch marks and I never had a baby".

I roll over on my back, tummy up in the air so she can see my tummy not flat either. Both of us aren't 17.

She looks at me and says "I had a perfect hourglass figure until I was 25 and the meds really fucked me up".

I don't know what to say. I blink.

"Holly, I don't want to be here. i really think I am going mad. If I tell my mom and dad I am put in a home.I cannot get power of attny back, Holly just want to die, not by pills but head cut off, or pour gas and light. Something that will hurt like hell but will work. I cannot take this anymore. I just cannot work up the courage right now, so i am safe."

She cries some more, but no tears come out. Just snot rockets, which she wipes on her sleeve like a child. This isn't like mommy. She would never do such an etiquette faux pax. She lights another cig and her hands shake. She cannot get the match to light, she goes through five or six before she has success. It lights and she takes a long drag. I let her shut her eyes and think.

Holly, I don't want to go mad. She finishes her milk, and just stares into space while the cigarette burns by her. I know she has been struggling with burning thoughts the last few weeks, and has been successful in fighting them. Now is hard. She will get better because she does not want to go mad, she does not want to go on Clozeril.

She talks looking at the window, not to me, but to something I cannot see. My predecessor's ghost maybe?

When I was sick earlier this year in Princeton hospital with pneumonia, they thought I might die-and one night when my parents were leaving my bedside, I was half conscious doped up on pain meds, my mom leaned over, adjusted the blanket, and kissed my cheek. My father kissed my cheek. My mother put a stuffed animal that was in the window in bed with me. For one brief second I felt warm and safe, like I was a little girl, and my parents would tuck me in and kiss me good night and kiss my dolly good night too.

I want to feel warm and safe and secure like that again.

She extinguishes the cigarette, goes into the bathroom, her hands shaking as she tries to brush her teeth, and washes her face. Brushes her hair and puts it back up in a pony tail. I rub by her feet, her ankles.

"I feel better now Holly. The cigarettes helped the voices, and I feel better now I washed my face. I am safe little one." She picks me up, rubs her face in my fur, scritches me behind the ears, on my back, on my head.
Carries me to the bed, plops me down on it and goes into it, after moving the pillows around. Good night my sweet baby. she says.

I hope she can sleep a bit now and no more bad dreams and voices. I wanna dream of birdies and baby mice and warm beds and fireplaces. Good cat stuff.

We love you and mom wants you, if you see this, to keep it so one day if you ever get your book written, and mom has gone mad you have something written by someone in the throws of madness.

Tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning bedtime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
-William Shakespeare

First quote I ever memorized from Shakespeare. Even though I am not a fan of Valentine's Day, i wish everyone a happy one.

I Am A Cover Girl

For those who want to know what I look like with the 56 lbs I lost- I can show you now. I am on the cover of this month's Sports Illustrated!

Let All The Poisons That Lurk in the Mud Hatch Out-Repost

This is a real oldie but goodie.

There is a line in Oedipus that goes like this;

"

Let all come out however vile.
However base it be, I must unlock the secret of my birth.
The woman, with more than woman's pride,is shamed by my low origin. I am the child of Fortune,
The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.......Born thus, I ask to be no other man than that I am, and will know who I am."

One of the things I am working on in therapy is dealing with my birth mother. It is difficult. I have known all my life about my birth mother's faith, the adoption agency only allowed adoptions from that faith to parents of the same. I never knew much else about my nirth mother. It would make me wonder all the time, I was the child with the fair skin that couldn't tan, blonde hair and blue eyes. The only other person on either side that had blue eyes was a paternal grandfather. My sister on the other hand, resembled both sides, and didn't get the kind of stares i got as a child.

When I was 20 I had to go to court to open some records regarding a physical problem I had. I found out the problem was heredity, and that was that. And it was then I learned my birth mother was a child when I was born, a mere 13. And had it been legal in the year I was conceived, I would have wound up down the drain and not been born. As is, I was conceived on New Year's Eve by a drunken sperm that swam up the Charybidis, and hooked up with an egg that was drunk too.

That was enough information. I didn't want to learn anymore. I recall going back from my mother's house , driving back to school and drowning my pain in a few brewskis we had in the dorm room.

I kept that information close to my chest, carrying it around like an albatross for the next score. It really was no one's business, and somehow the pain was my own and I didn't want to share it with another soul.

I consoled myself with the Oedipus quote. It was my fault for finding out the secret of my birth, it was my fault for treading on the carpets after I was egged on to do so. I deserve anything and everything the universe would throw at me.

Fast forward to September 16, 2001. I spent the night before in a hotel I love, 3 blocks from the Empire State Building. Lovely Art Deco, it was home to Tesla in his last years. I had a view of it all night long, from 4o floors above street level and sat on the bed with the window blinds open staring at it al night. Petrified that an airplane would hit it and I would be dust. Afraid to put on my pajamas in case I had to run down 40 flights of stairs to the street. It was strange being in the city so close after 9/11. Everywhere I saw missing people flyers. At Grand Central. On the street. Over the newspaper recepticals. But what was strangest of all was the city seemed to be going in slow motion. Normally it goes manically fast, but that day every thing was slow, people were smiling and talking to each other, and even the taxi I flagged down stopped and the driver got out to open the door for me. Is that a NY Miracle?

The social worker who greeted me that day was tall, elegant woman in her 50s. She shook my hand, and ushered me into a cramped office cluttered with papers and manilla folders.

She sat down crossing her long legs. I noticed she still had sneakers on, the fashion of working girls in the city. Go into the city in Keds, change at your desk to pumps. She obviously hadn't changed yet. She asked if I wanted a cup of coffee, I could tell it was an excuse for her to get one. I declined, but she went out, coming back a moment later with a mug, and sat back down again.

"Ok, Susan, you asked a few months ago for the records your birth mother's social worker kept. I can not let you have them, but you can write anything you want on this pad here." She passed me a pad and pen. And then it began.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out', said the Emperor Claudius shortly before he died. I should have never gone into the city that day. I should have ran out the door and flagged the first NJ transit train back home. Ran , not walked. What she said grew more and move vile, more accursed to my shell like ears, as she put a box of Kleenex in arms reach and stopped occasionally as I sobbed.

My birth mother's age was known to me for one score. There was no mention of the father, they were not sure who the father actually was. The social worker who checked on my mother when she was carrying me could not get anything out regarding that.

But she interviewed my birth mother, and her mother, over several months until I was born. This is what I learned. My mother was the youngest of 5, 2 sets of twins, identical and fraternal. Almost everyone in the family tree had problems with drinking. The social worker turned around in her chair, and said "Alcoholism runs in this family. Do you have a problem with alcohol, dear?". I told her I was in AA and had a long run of sobriety.

But I told her I wish I had known that since I was a child. I would have never, ever, had one drink.
She paused for a minute, got me a glass of water and continued. On my birth mother's side of the family, everyone, except my birth mother had problems. None of the siblings had graduated High School, but it was her dream to do so That was why she was giving me up. Noble. More things, it just kept coming out like torrents and waves from a hurricane.

All the sibs had mood problems. The girls were considered "high strung" the boys were known to the cops for drinking and fighting. What struck me were the aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles. All who died, either died by heart attacks or their own hand. those who died by their own hand, all died by the time they were 40. Most did actually die by their own hands. There were some great uncles and aunts and grand parents who had been lobotomized in the 1950s.

She looked at me with those big brown myopic eyes and said- "I am so sorry. It says here that most of your family was schizophrenic".She stopped and handed me another Kleenex. I didn't want to hear anymore. It was in my genes. It didn't matter that I learned that day my mother and her sibs were all blonde and blue eyed. That is where I got it from. It wasn't anything I could change, just like I could not change my eye color. I take that back, I can change my eye color and hair , but what was in my genes made up my soul.

For a while when I was in college I use to imagine my life was controlled by the Greek Gods. (This is what you get for too many semesters with the Classics). They would play with me, deciding what turns my life would take until they tired of me and dropped me from their warm clasp. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos cut the thread and I would return to dust and sleep. They alone would decide what would happen to me in this life. I don't believe it anymore. You make your own fate, you control your own destiny. If my life was subject to the whims of something more powerful than me, I would be dead now. I would spend the rest of my life in an asylum measuring out my days by coffee spoons.

I am blessed I had a good childhood and if there is a curse on my house, I have escaped it thus far. Nature vs. Nuture, I am proof of the latter working harder than the former. If there is a curse on my house, it won't catch up to me. But I will be running so fast it won't find me.

Praying for Australia

In this domicile, Holly and I have been praying for those Down Under affective by the wild fires. We have never been to Australia, we have never been to anyplace in the Southern Hemisphere. But we know that out of the first 100 visitors that ever came to the blog- 5 of them were from Oz. To this day I know there are people from Oz who read me, but I don't know who they are.

I just want them to know, my heart and prayers are with them during this terrible time, I am mourning the loss of life- people from these fires as well as all the property being destroyed, people's homes and everything they own, and the animals that are dying as well.

-Susan

It's Holly's Birthday!

February 8, is Holly's 9th birthday!

All are invited to come. Humans will be served cooked salmon, and steamed veggies, all kitties will be served dry Hills and wet Fancy Feast Tuna.

The birthday girl requests cans of Fancy Feast Tuna for presents, or donations to the local animal shelter. RSVP.

Below are pictures from a prior party, you can see the cake she had, minus the candles, and the birthday girl herself. Enjoy.
(Click on pictures to see Holly in all her glory)

Churchill's Black Dog

I am no stranger to Churchill's black dog.
So much so, that when a friend of mine suggested his quote "Going through hell" for this blog, I leapt at it.

Lately, his black dog has been my constant companion, staying with me during the day, eating my meals with me, watching over my shoulder when I relax with the TV, music or a book. Holding me tight, like a lover, when i try to fall asleep.

i am held deep in it's clutches, and it is slowly destroying me, not allowing me to come up for air. i cannot breathe, the life force of me, my very essence, body and soul are being sucked dry. I fight, I keep fighting, but deep down I am more afraid than I have been in a very long time, that I won't be able to fight much longer, and will slip completely into it's grasp.

Somehow I always knew that it would win, that it would win during September 2008 and September 2010. And thus, I wonder, at 4 am in the morning, with a pitch black sky, rain and no stars, if what the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed was true. That our destinies are set in stone from the moment we draw our first breath coming out of the womb.

Or maybe Shakespeare had it right in Julius Caesar- which ironically was the my first thought in naming this blog....

"Men are Masters of their fates,
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars,
But in ourselves,
That we are the underlings"

And Now For Something Completely Different

I know a lot of people are out of work right now and hurting. I hope this video helps a little.

Depression Hurts, Cymbalta Hurts More

This is, with the exception of Haldol, the worst drug i have ever been on.



An explanation of what Cymbalta is



This is how I feel and most of the side effects I am feeling. Please note, the doctor does not discuss these, nor does Eli Lilly, the manufacturer.

Thanks to Gianna Kali from Beyond Meds for helping me post these videos. You rock Gianna.

ETA: I just got an email from D. Bunker, the webmastere of Psychiatry, It's a Killing, and he just blogged about Cymbalta today too. It's worth looking at.

Staying Alive

Not the Bee Gees song. Ugh.

But if your brain is playing tricks on you, and all you want to do is hurt yourself so badly that you would be pushing up daisies, would you go to Bedlam, allow yourself to be pumped full of Thorazine, plopped in front of a large screen TV, wearing a pair of adult diapers, but at least you would be alive and the chance, however small, your battered brain might recoop? Or would you continue to wait it out, white knuckle it, as the meds get reduced a bit and your brain turns tricks on you faster than a prostitute working the former not Disneyfied Times Square?

And pray to what ever g-d you believe in that you don't wind up a statistic in some medical abstract against Eli Lilly?

How much longer did Ulysess tell the Sirens to fuck off without breaking the mast in half in a manner like Sampson and drown?

(Picture above is Hogarth)

Obama Battles Big Pharma

Gianna Kali at Beyond Meds, has found this gem from the (UK) Independent.
I normally don't discuss politics or Big Pharma on this blog, but, this is important for any and all American readers to know.

“We will lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programmes and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.” The wording of President Obama’s healthcare policy could not be clearer and should send a shiver through the boardroom of every major pharmaceutical group in the world.

For some time, the big players in the drugs market have faced a simple problem. Treatments that the likes of Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have spent years and millions of dollars developing are increasingly coming under threat from the generics companies, which invest nearly as much energy in challenging patents and developing cheaper alternatives. The established groups may consider the generics firms parasitical, but the likes of Barack Obama and the European Commission are tiring of the big beasts hiding behind patents ensuring that healthcare is more expensive to the ultimate user.

Gianna then sums it up much better than I can, so I will let her prose do the talking

Promising beginning. I didn’t buy that Obama was in pharma’s pocket just because he got more donations from individuals who worked for pharmaceutical companies then McCain did. So let’s hope this is the beginning of some saner policy that ends up policing big pharma in big ways.

Bob Fiddaman also reported on this and has this to say,

For some time, the big players in the drugs market have faced a simple problem. Treatments that the likes of Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have spent years and millions of dollars developing are increasingly coming under threat from the generics companies, which invest nearly as much energy in challenging patents and developing cheaper alternatives. The established groups may consider the generics firms parasitical, but the likes of Barack Obama and the European Commission are tiring of the big beasts hiding behind patents ensuring that healthcare is more expensive to the ultimate user.

Bruce!

He's a Jersey Boy from Monmouth County, I'm a Jersey Girl from Middlesex County. But Bruce was magical in the Super Bowl...

I still have goose bumps. He's almost 60 and moves like a man half his age, and still has the greatest derriere to appear on a album cover. Yeah, I know there was also the greatest touch down in Super Bowl history, 100 yards. But then-

Bruce, Steve, and Clarence. Glory Days.

OMG= they did 10th Avenue Freeze Out, Born To Run, Working on a Dream, and Glory Days.

I cannot wait for it to be on You Tube- Fiddy, my fellow Springsteen fan, this entry is for you.

Happy Ground Hog Day!

Staten Island Chuck prepares for his big day. For more information on Groundhog day, Punxsatawney Phil and the movie, you can go to the official site, or check Wikipedia. But i will stick with Chuck. He's a local boy, and awfully cute.

Groundhog Staten Island Chuck vs. the Shadow

ETA: PHIL SAW HIS SHADOW. 6 MORE WEEKS OF WINTER

Yer Blues

I don't know what sins or bad things I have done in this life time or in a past life to be punished like this. If I could make it better by penance of some kind, wearing a hair shirt, fasting , I would do it gladly. I would make a pilgrimage. I would self flagellate, I would do something, anything, to make this depression go away. It's choking me so hard right now I feel like I am drowning in a morass of black fog, choking off my windpipe, clogging my lungs, blocking my arteries so my heart cannot beat.

I feel like if Dante could get in my head he would discover another level of hell to write about .Those of us who live with depression but are not dead. Yet. The walking dead, the wounded. Those without hope. Those without dreams. Those who aren't living anymore, but are merely existing. Those who have the proverbial gun in their mouths, can taste gun metal, fingers on the trigger, hear the bullet in the chamber, the click- and don't have the balls to pull the trigger hard enough to set the gun off.

Greek Mythology has a nice myth about Pandora- opening the box and letting all the horrors of the world out- and the last thing to come out of the box is hope. Hope. There is always hope. At the darkest night before the dawn there is hope. A marvelous, magical thing that can get people though the most horrific things in the history of the universe, nature made acts, war, abuse.

But when hope is gone, how quickly would it be to pull that trigger? See your brains splashed out all over the walls, like something out of "Pulp Fiction"?

Right now, for the last several days I am in the worst depression since 93. It's so bad I can barely get out of bed to urinate or feed the cat. I don't have the strength to get dressed, to eat, to do the simplest personal hygiene. But I am alive. That is something.