Holly the cat on holidays and writing for the TWIM blog

Meow. Yes, it's me. My human, Susan is reading on the couch, so I thought I would get on line and say "Meowry Christmas" to all my friends on the computer.

Personally, it was a frustrating year for me. I did not become a LOL cat. I did not meet Maru. I did get cans of Fancy Feast though, and much love from my human and her friends on line. So maybe next year I can become a LOL cat. And meet Maru. He's a boy cat you know!

I am what you might call a "therapy cat". Yes, there are therapy dogs, but I keep my human alive and moving. So I am a therapy cat. And she loves me- except when she has to clean my litter box.

My human is doing a bit better than the last entry, but, well, she's sad. She loves this time of year, but she is lonely. I don't understand, but then, I had six kittens, all who went to good homes. And then I got spayed. Mom hasn't gotten that yet. Maybe she would feel better if she had it done. I think they do it for humans. I don't know.

This is my favorite time of the year. For those who don't know my back story, I was adopted from a shelter that was planning on putting me to sleep on December 23 many years ago. It was a long time in kitty years, but Mom says it was only 2000. I was heavy with kitten. A very nice lady rescued me, and I went to live with her until I could find a furever home. The problem was- I didn't get along with the other kitties in the foster home, and I didn't place well when they had open houses to adopt the kitties. My kittens were adopted as soon as they were weaned. The other cats in the foster house came and went like wraiths. But no one wanted me. Until my mom adopted me. She needed me, I needed her. She is my best friend and I am hers. We have been together for almost ten years.

I keep my human sane. She is a really nice person for someone who is not a cat. That means I feel sad for her, she doesn't have a tail, she can't rotate her ears, she cannot purr. She doesn't know the sheer joy of having the sunshine on your tummy fur.

It's been a rough year for her. She lost the function of her kidneys last year, according to the doctor they are working ok, but every now and then they "hiccup" and things shut down for a bit .But she is ok. She's having some other health issues, and I know she is in a lot of pain but I think she is doing better. She just passed the one year point being off all psychiatric meds. The only thing we have in the house that alters brain chemistry is catnip.
That's mine!

Mom is doing well with her psychiatrist, but she still hasn't found a therapist. I've been serving as one, but frankly, I fall asleep after a minute or two. I am a cat. I have the attention span of a butterfly. Speaking of butterflies.....

Oh yes. Therapy. Cat's don't need therapy. We would nap on the couch. If the doctor showed us Rorshacks everything would look like birdies, squirrels or tuna. Maybe a ball of yarn. A catnip mousie.

This picture is copyrighted and I don't know how to remove it, but thank you to the photographer

Silly isn't it? Like I said, cats don't get depressed. Unless we think of all the other cats in the world who need homes that are in shelters.

I am grateful my mom did not die last year, that she still is with me. That she lets me snuggle every night with her in the large bed with my stuffed panda bear.

Now for the first time in a while mom is sad. She isn't depressed, she says she just feels out of sorts. Not physically sick. Just sad. Lonely. She has me, she shouldn't be lonely. But I think it's more than that. I think mom is starting to feel her age, and worry about the future. I know she is upset when she thinks of money. Money is nice, it buys me kibble, tuna, and other nice things. A scratching post.

She goes out to run errands and one day gets a lot of things done. Then she sleeps for two days, afraid to leave the apartment. If I didn't wake her by doing the "I am hungry" dance, she might not feed me or water me. She stays in bed, listening to talk radio as white noise. She likes this one station called Coast to Coast that she's been listening for years, but found a station on the internet that broadcasts it 24/7 so she listens to that. I like it too. I wonder if the announcer knows that he has a cat who likes listening to him.

All and all we are doing fine. Mom is  cleaning once a week. She still forgets to shower everyday but she does it every other .She is getting out, which is good for her agoraphobia. It's hard for her, I know. She's always been a homebody and to her nothing is better than reading a book or watching TV with me by her side on the big couch. 

I know writing is hard for her, so I recently wrote a piece that showed up for the Twim blog. It was fun, so many blogs to read. So many bloggers who have cats, dogs or both. If you aren't familiar with Twim, it's done by a group of people in the UK. Most of the blogs are from the UK, and both Susan and I are honored to be the first Americans/Americats to write for them.Right now they are having a vote for best blogs. I wish they had a "cutest cat" blogger category. There are some really good ones there to vote for.

 This is something that mom would like- for the bloggers in all the countries to unite and help each other more. We are all going through the same experiences and maybe we can all help each other by sharing what we've learned on this road we are all traveling together. 

I will tell you what I have learned. I am blessed to have a human, and I wish that all the shelter dogs and cats can find furever homes too. 

Happy Holidays from Susan and me-ow. I hope next year is a better year for everyone, and that Santa Paws brings you happiness. 

Trying to write when it's impossible, a bit more about me

Lately, my writing has been sh*t. I know that, and it upsets me. It seems that since November when my kidneys failed, it's been impossible to write due to illness, and now, impossible to write from depression. And it's not even depression. It's down and out suicidal despair.

I've always been able to write when depressed. I've always been able to function at work- just getting through the day to the best of my ability. Perhaps it's because for the most part I've always had jobs that I was so overqualified for I could do them in my sleep. What kept me going was knowing when I got home I could write for hours on end. It was lovely. I am, by nature, somewhat of a hermit, an introvert. I would be perfectly happy to be stranded on an island with no other human company if I had my books, paper and pens to write with and a cat or two.

Since my kidneys failed, I sleep an average of 18 hours a day. It might be from the kidneys, it might be from depression. Sheer depression, I don't want to wake. I will only get up when the cat runs across my bladder, hitting it hard and reminding me it's time to go to the toilet.

I don't know what I would be able to do if I didn't write. It was the only thing I was ever good at, as a child, I would spend a lot of time alone, I never really bonded with the other children my age. I would make up stories and by the time I was 7 I had started out of the juvenile books to the adult books, starting with authors who started with A and reading everything in the library.

School, other than English classes was hard. Math was the worst. I was expected to do two hours of homework a night by High School, and an hour of clarinet on top of that. When it was done, I had a journal, which was my best friend and I wrote all night long until 11 when the lights were turned off. Then listen to talk radio- back in the day when WOR radio had Jean Shepard, Bob and Ray, and Long John Neville. I didn't sleep, I lived on fumes, and dreamed of the places from the books I would visit when I was 17 and out of school. I've written I was bullied, first from the fact I was one of the youngest girls in my class, and by 8th grade I had a full blown bosom, when the other girls , a lot older were stuffing Kleenex into their bras. I prefered to be alone, and got teased for that. And so on and so on.

I went to college/uni because I didn't want to work, it was the lesser of two evils. And for the first time in my whole entire life, I was happy. Genuinely happy. For now I had professors who actually knew something, not the awful teachers I had who were draft dodgers and had not gotten out Vietnam by teaching would have done something else. By the time I got them , the war was winding down, and for the most part, they stayed with a few more years before leaving to go into the private sector, where they wouldn't be destroying children's dreams by their ignorance and complete inability to impart knowledge to minds that were as soft as sponges and like sponges, trying to absorb it all.

I graduated with honors, and finagled a grad assistantship that paid for my tuition and housing. I taught Sunday School and cleaned houses on the side, and tutored high school kids for the SAT and Achievement tests in the summer. In three years, I had two degrees, I was completely manic at this point, existing on coffee, sleeping three hours a night and taking 12 courses a semester, including summers. I was happy. I didn't know I was like a watch that was wound too tight, going to fast, and about to break.

I broke during the time I was defending my thesis. I was going for a MA in English Lit, and when it came time to submit a thesis, I handed in three names to the department for them to pick. Joyce, Tennyson and Dickens. Joyce, was pooh poohed, wasted on a MA and should be saved for a PhD.  As for the latter two, I did love them to bits, but they were- well, everyone does them. Why not an American writer? Because I don't like them, other than Salinger, it's the Brits that speak to me. American writers prior to 1950 for the most part bored me.

It was then my advisor gave me a very bad piece of advice. Try Raymond Carver, he suggested, handing me a copy of "Cathedral". He's writing now and there's hardly any lit crit on him.

I picked Carver. For those in school - never do a thesis on a living author. Wait til they are dead, at least a couple of decades. While I did fall in love with Carver's writing, it wasn't the time to be doing him. It became the thesis from hell. By sheer stubbornness I stayed with it,  while part of me begged to go to the English Dept and ask for a "safer" author, like Dickens or Hardy.

And so it went. Last semester, filling out applications for PhD schools,  where I stated flat out I wanted to study Joyce; writing a thesis from Heck, and finishing a stage in my life. Then the s**t hit the fan. The guy I was dating dumped me. He was my first boyfriend, it was the first time my heart was broken. The exams were all passed, orals, writtens, foreign language requirement. Just the thesis was still not quite right. Never worry, I still had two more weeks before it was due. Then the impossible, something I am not comfortable writing about, but I was raped one night going to my car from teaching a class- to this day, it's like something out of Faulkner to me, and I why I will never wear the color pink, and a mini skirt.

And like a watch, that is overwound, the springs exploded. I was almost 23. I handed in the thesis, went back to the apartment I shared knowing the roomate would be gone all weekend. A bottle of vodka, mixed with orange juice and pills. Note left on the night table.
Woke up by the police on Monday when I missed class, brought to hospital, in a semi coma, stomach pumped, and then six weeks in hospital, where I heard for the first time I was "manic-depressive".

Since then I've seen 28 different shrinks, and been on over 40 different drugs. I've been in hospital 5 times. I've not had a good shrink, I am jealous of those who have had. Mine have destroyed me, first telling me I couldn't go on for a PhD, I should take a year off. Of course, I never went back. It would be too stressful, you cannot do it. I was told I would never have a full life, I would never accomplish anything, I've peaked. My parents were advised to put me in a state hospital because I would never be able to hold down a job, or do anything with my life. I was put on med after med after med, which side effects made me go from a slender 105 lbs to an obese 220.

This is one of the reasons I started blogging. I noticed there was a plethora of blogs by twenty somethings, and they all were so different than I was twenty years earlier. The diagnosis of "manic depression" in 1986 was a Scarlet Letter, it was a cancer, it was a death sentence. In 2006 I noticed it was just a label to them, attitudes had changed, and it wasn't talked about in hush hush tones like it was when I was diagnosed. Things had changed for the better. I don't want people to forget what it was like.

My ex once told me I could write about mania and despair better than anyone else he knew. I wanted someone, who did not suffer from this, to understand it. Maybe they had a sister, a wife, a mother, a co-worker, who was bipolar, and wanted to understand it. And that's what I did. Or tried to. Maybe I should have stayed with this. I look on my blog roll, and the other blogs I read, and there really aren't any by anyone over 50. Or even 45. I wish there were more writers out there in that age bracket. Maybe they are like me, ashamed of the label. Had their  original dreams destroyed and had to rebuild with new ones.

Or maybe they just don't make it to 50. This is a fear of mine. Maybe they are like me, body worn out by decades of drug use, P-docs who only prescribe drugs and don't care about the side effects and still tell patients to quit meds cold turkey and go on to another drug. People who are psychiatrists, who became psychiatrists because they couldn't pass to become surgeons.

Which leads me to the present. I'm on disability, I long to be off to work again. My body is too broken right now I would have to work from home.  In the last few years, I am both anemic and borderline leukemia from side effects.  (Only a blonde would have blood cells that cannot figure out which way to go). My kidneys failed, and my bladder still isn't working right.  I haven't been manic in about three years, a few bits of hypomania, but nothing proper mania. Just depressed. Constantly depressed, with the last three months suicidal existential anguish.

And the only two things keeping me alive, not going into that good night that I wish I could- are this- this blog and my cat.

I am grateful to whomever took the time to read this, and I want to tell you, you aren't alone.

Walking To California- Rerun

(Susan's note- I have 3 outside writing projects due by Friday. This is one of my favorite pieces, especially right after the anniversary of September 11 - It's worth a rerun. I hope you enjoy!)


This is too much. One month ago, I was sent home from work, on a leave of absence. The company said they would let me be out for up to six months , no worries.

I was Working for a company based in Manhattan, on Wall Street, that lost employees in the Trade Center, has been beneficial to some degree. Sometimes out of the most horrid of situations, a small, good thing, can happen, like the story with that title by Ray Carver. Being a rapid-cycler, even if there are no offices, and everyone is out in the open is ok, if someone walks by my desk and sees tears rolling down my eyes, as I stare into one of the 6 computer monitors on my screen, watching news wires from all over the world. People cry now. It is acceptable. It is blamed on 9/11 fall out.

It is March and Manhattan is healing. The stores and restaurants near Ground Zero are opening again. The new Mayor has been doing a great job of taking over the reigns left by his magnificent. predecessor. Only the stream of tourists demanding to see the site, the once majestic skyline now looking like a beautiful woman who has had her front teeth punched out, reminds us, as well as a daily report in the tabloids of another victim, being pulled out of what was once the World Trade Center. Time heals all wounds, and the part of me that was born in this great city, is amazed that is has become stronger, more unified from this.

I wish I could say the same thing for me. In some ways, I am stronger, in some ways not.

I have not been to work for a month. I did not plan on this, I went to the HR dept to complain about my new boss, and ask to be assigned to another department. Their response was to put me on a leave of absence.

The first few days were fun. I slept till nine instead of waking up at five. The employee assistance program was calling me daily to check up on me. I was hooked up with a new shrink, who seemed to be nice, an older man who strongly resembled the author John Updike. He listened to me, heard my story, and put me on a dose of Lithobid. And for a week it was fine. Then he would discuss raising the medication doubling the Lithobid and adding Wellbutrin to the mix. I started getting physically ill. But I was home, and that was great. I could stay in my pajamas all day on the days I did not have therapy and write. And as anyone who knows me , either from here, or in real life, my raison d’etre is writing.

I found myself rising and falling, going from very mild mania to very mild depression, but it was all good. I didn’t mind. I was coping. The depression wasn’t low, the mania, nothing more than what would happen to someone after a double latte at Starbucks.

Then it fell. Old suicidal feelings took over me. I haunt the train station here, waiting for a train to jump under. Too many people. I take the train into the city, and sit by the platform, waiting with the homeless, the prostitutes and the alcoholics. I talk to them. Maybe I don’t have things so bad. I have a roof over my head, and despite bad genes towards alcoholism, I have been sober for six years. I see all types go by, the businessmen and women rushing, always rushing in their 300-dollar suits and pristine leather briefcases. The traders, the lawyers, the vice presidents who are too low on the company totem pole to get a car service and take the train. The commuters from Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

My medication is adjusted, blood is drawn to be evaluated. I get on a first name basis with the lab technician who does this. I find out that she and I share a love for “The Simpsons”, and we discuss the philosophy of Homer (Simpson) while she draws blood 2 times a week. The lithium goes up again, that is not working, and yet a third medication, another mood stablizer is thrown in for good measure.

I get manic. I go to the doctor, in a manic state. He is surprised. Instead of coming in sweats and keds like I have been doing, I come in with a pair of linen pants and a silk blouse. My hair is perfect, and he has never seen me wearing makeup, or shoes, or even jewelry. I sit down, on the couch, crossing my legs, in a determined manner. All this is new to him, these are not the moves I make when I am depressed. And I start talking. And instantly he knows, I am not better. I am worse. I am higher than a kite.

I find myself calling a lot of old friends during this state. One night, I decide to call a very good friend of mine, who lives on the opposite coast. The next morning when I call him, I am witty, I am humorous. I am flirty. And I proposition him. He and I are good enough friends he knows something is wrong, the last thing you could ever say about me is I would do something like that. And although he is flattered, he tells me no, and talks to me. But I am off laughing, nothing can go wrong. Everything is lovely. I feel good. Every part of me feels great, it's like I am a Christmas Tree, all lit up and beautiful and I want to show everyone how bright and pretty I am.

The next time I see the shrink, he asks what I am going to do, and I tell him I am going to go to California to visit friends. That is ok, he says, but how are you getting there. Plane? How long do you plan on staying? Are you sure you want to fly out for what would only be a day or two?

I am going to walk. It’s only 3000 miles. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.

Uh oh. Warning.

“Susan, you know you can’t walk from New Jersey to California”.

I laugh. The doctor is sooo stupid! Of course you can. You can do anything when you set your mind to it.

“Susan, have you written anything lately”,

No. I cannot sit still long. Even sitting on the couch, I cross and uncross my legs rapidly, tapping my toes. I meet my parents for lunch later that day, I can’t sit still. I am ravenous, inhaling the food like I was a teenager.

I decide to clean the apartment, do redecorating. I wash the car. Finally one afternoon, after several days of only sleeping maybe two to three hours a night, I lie down for a nap. I am suddenly tired. I realize with all the extra exercise my muscles suddenly ache, and I start to count each aching one as I nod off to sleep. It is roughly four in the afternoon.

I wake up and it says six. It is still light out. Hmm. That shouldn’t be. I go to the kitchen, rummage in the fridge and see a school bus drive by. Huh? Six thirty ? In the sunlight?

I realize I just slept 14 hours. The thought saddens me, but I shrug it off, I was tired. I go to the kitchen table, glass of OJ in hand, and turn on my laptop. I have 40 some pieces of e mail. Wow, I have been asleep. I feel like I should write, and try to. But the thought of writing becomes insurmountable. Instead, I turn the button off, move the screen down, and decide, let me sit in the bed for a bit, and read. I have a doctors appointment soon, so let me just kill a few hours before I go.

I pick up a mystery by an author I like and start to read. I doze off, the phone rings. It is my doctor. I missed the appointment.
The thing is he calls me again, “Susan?” I don’t know anyone with that name. I look at my cat, and don’t recognize her. My head hurts. I’ve done it again. I crashed. The pendulum has gone back and forth, mania to depression. Always depression. Within minutes of my awakening, it goes back to that existential bleakness that becomes suicidal despair.

And during this time, I realize one thing. This time is going to be bad. Indeed, it is. Meds are readjusted, levels raised. I stop eating, and faint from it. I have to take a taxi to the doctor, and am admitted to the emergency room to get hydrated again. I beg the intern, please stop it. Give me something to make it better, or take me outside and shoot me. The intern is tired. There are real sick people here, not just some stupid person who cannot take care of herself.

Can’t they see that I am just as sick? True, I am not about to give birth, have not been maimed in a car accident, or bar room brawl.

I have not worked now for four years. I want to work!!

My heart is sick, my soul is sick. In the long run, bruises heal, stitches fade, bones mend.

A soul that is torn asunder by a chemical imbalance in my brain I did not ask for, does not heal as quickly, and the scars will be much deeper to assuage.

When will people understand?

mania-and a week to ten days hiatus

Dearest Readers,

I look at so many of you as family, it hurts to write this. As of now, I've flipped into mania. Real bad. Cannot sleep, and some real bad side effects..... won't go into now.....pdoc worried, friends in real life worried, hospital has been called I am fighting going in cause I don't wanna go, no one will take care of kitteh, but if  I don't go in in the next few days voluntarily, I shudder to think of going in involuntarily and what will happen to kitty. The only good news is it will be a diff hospital.

So I am going on hiatus for a few days I don't trust myself to write- I am writing, but I cannot post what I've been writing.... Not here, not on FB.... I'm scared shitless. I don't wanna go. I wanna try to sleep a good 12 hours get better by my own......

Anyway , comments are not going to be watched. Play nice.

Is Depression like snow?

I cannot help but wonder- is Depression like snow flakes? Every episode different and beautiful in it's own way??

Since this past Saturday, I have been experiencing a Depression different than any other I have ever experienced.  Listen-

I cannot get out of bed, and have no desire to use the toilet. I cannot eat. Indeed, I have not eaten anything since Sunday other than water and iced tea. I get up solely to feed and water the cat and change her box.

The cat is ignoring me. I suppose I would want to ignore me too. No bathing, no brushing teeth, not hair. Why bother? Europeans in the Middle Ages never bathed.

I cannot sleep. i am sure I do in fits and starts, five ten minutes here and there- but not more than that. I close my eyes, I see myself dead- hanging from a tree outside my apartment, bleeding to death in the bath tub- dying from not eating- dead from a broken heart. Indeed the last one concerns me, my heart is racing so fast I cannot breathe. The last time I saw the doc last week, my blood pressure tapped out at 160 over 120.  Not good. I never had this problem before. I cannot read, I cannot watch TV, I can barely write. My thinker seems broken.

And the worst part is, I have never experienced this, and even worse, after a day or two- I should be starting to flip back to mania.

There was no mania this time. I did not fall from mania, I did not get it. Instead, this bout seems to be triggered by a writing by someone I actually know, that upset me, no - made me retch. It seems to me, the older I get, the deeper and longer the depressions get- and the worse the suicidal ideation gets as well. The mania - when I get it is different too. Most of the time it's mild, like I have OD'ed on coffee- but now, for the last 3 years, every July I get manic- to psychotic, to paranoid, to I am putting the Reynolds Wrap on the windows so the neighbors cannot hear my thoughts. This is new.

And the weirdest symptom of all - now- is I am afraid to leave my apartment. Right outside my door I have a rose bush. It officially died this summer because I could not get outside to water it. I have a mail box right outside, and i cannot even go and get that. I don't understand. There are 17 stairs to get down to the front door- I cannot walk down them. The cat runs down them, I cannot bring myself to walk down them.

I think the worse thing is, i have not seen another living soul, sans cat since Saturday Night. This is not good. I cannot even talk on the phone without crying copious amount of tears.

I murdered my roses. I feel awful. Those little guys never had the chance. I wish I knew how to murder my depression and get back in the land of the living again. I do know the tools- I have them. I just cannot get out of bed to do it.

All these symptoms are new. So I wonder, is Depression like Snow?

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang-Repost

I am in the mood for a repost, while I try to get my brain around several posts I am working on in a white hot bit of mania. This is the second piece to be written for this blog.... Enjoy.

I am losing it. Everything that I have is about to be taken away from me. For the first time in my life I am, really powerless. I am having problems at work. I cannot think anymore. I cannot do my job.  I cannot compartmentalize, work,  and home anymore. It's like my life is a house of cards. it is about to come crashing down. I am loosing everything. I am scared. 

This is still true. I am not working now, but trying to work. Trying to rebuild my life, brick by brick, again. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, rebuilding from ashes.  But people do it. They do it after catastrophies, and they do it in real life after something shatters and turns your world upside down. I've done it before, but this time, I'm older, and it's harder. It's harder and harder to stay afloat.

I look at other people in my online support group, and my support group in real life. People have spouses who help them. I never had that. I have a network of friends, but  I cannot call them or ask for help when I start the black thoughts, my brain starts drowning in it's morass that is darkness, depression clutching my black heart and dragging me into the undertow, bashing my brain against the rocks while a siren sings, but not for me. For anon.  If I do reach out, I am afraid I will loose them.

The point is moot anyway. It looks like my brain is turning against itself, the gray matter leaving. Perhaps going South for the summer to warmer climes, only never to return. I feel alone and lonely and that adds to the black morass. Is this the way recovery is supposed to be?

I was once an intelligent person. I have a college degree and a graduate degree. I was asked to join Mensa, but didn't think I was smart enough to join. Turns out I passed the test to join, but didn't. I don't know why, maybe I didn't feel I was good enough.

I know I have suffered from low self esteem all my life. I never felt I was good enough for anything. I always felt like a fraud when good things happened to me. So maybe the masochist in me should be enjoying the fact my brain doesn't seem to be working anymore. And if and when my money runs out.....

I loose my apartment, and my  way of life. I have been homeless before. I know I can do what I did in college, wait on tables, schlep drinks. Work retail. I don't mind working, I would rather work than be on disability like now.

I am upset. I didn't ask for this. Yet when I found out about my birth mother, I found out that everyone in the family was either bipolar, schizophrenic, or a combination of both. Lots of horrors, lobotomies done in the 40s and 50s, too many suicides and no one dying of natural causes. I hope I can escape the genes, but sometimes I wonder if it's something I have to deal with, like Oedipus first hearing the prophesy  he was going to marry Jocasta, runs away to  escape and ends up marrying his mother anyway.

I don't have curtain pins to tear out my eyes. But I do hope I  can escape the genes. Keep the illness under control, and live a "Normal" life. I should have realized that "normal" is only a setting on the washing machine.

 I don't like the fact I cannot recall things. I get stressed and cannot talk. People confuse me. I cannot handle crowds anymore. I cannot handle being around people anymore. Even my friends overwhelm me if I am with more than two or three people at a time.

I use to be the life of the party. I was the class clown. Now look at me.

My father tells me I have let myself go. I can still pass for 10 years younger, but maybe I have. I don't know. Sure, I could loose some weight, but who couldn't? Maybe that is all I need in his eyes to feel better. Loose 30 lbs, go to the gym, lighten my hair and bleach my teeth. In my grandfather's day they toled women to go out and buy hats. This generations it's a pair of Manolo's.

All I know is I am loosing it. I don't feel anything. I should feel anger, but I don't. I don't feel resignation though.  I feel nothing. Hollow. Empty, devoid of feelings. It is like I am watching my own funeral, but cannot feel anything. I don't feel it's normal. And if I cannot work, once myinvestments are gone, I am going into a home.

I don't feel suicidal though. Not now. I just don't feel. Is this what being dead is like? No feelings, just numbness?

I don't want to leave the human race yet. I want to stay productive. My prayers aren't being answered. I sit and stare in front of the computer and cannot recall how to write. Then I write copious amounts where I cannot stop.

The other night I was driving home and I drove past my apartment. I never did that. I forgot where I lived. I didn't realize my error till about ten miles later. This isn't like me. I have been driving home on the same road for over 10 years now. I can drive back and forth in my sleep I know this road so well. Yet I forgot.

I feel like my brain is turning on itself, eating itself alive like a female praying mantis does to the male when it mates. I am scared.

I keep thinking of my grandfather. He was in his late 90s when he died. When he was in his late 80s my mother and father and aunt and uncle put him in a nursing home. He had Alzheimer's. I remember the nursing home, one of the best in the state at that time. How happy my mother and father were to get him in there. I was in high school. We visited him almost every weekend, rain or shine. Some days he didn't know me, some days he did. I can still smell the nursing home in my memory, it smelled like Lysol, sweat and tears. At that time I thought it was like living in a hotel, grandpa had his own room and took communal meals. He had his own shower. But the furniture was standard nursing home issue; it reminded me of my dorm room furniture, only with a hospital bed. We brought him a meal, flowers, cookies. When I was in college aI visited him once or twice a week on my own between classes. I remember I did that every semester when I had a four or five hour gap between classes.

What stays with me are his eyes. Dead empty blue eyes. the nursing home did that. Every other resident had the same stare. Empty, dead. Like the only thing they all did was wait for God to send them home. Grandchildren, great grandchildren, were cherished. But when they left at the end of the day leaving only a memory and an photograph taken from a Polaroid camera that would spit out the film, the dying began again in ernest. TS Eliot wrote about measuring your life with coffee spoons. Here your life was measured on days on a calendar, only instead of marking the days til Christmas like an Advent calendar, it was a giant advent calendar of death. Don't fear the reaper, minus the cowbell.

Is this to be my life soon? When I can no longer work or write, to be shuffled off to some home with my books and my crocheted afghan to serve as my bedspread? To measure each day as one more closer to my death, instead of one ore day that I was grateful to be alive?

Or is it that you die once you go to a place like that, your soul and your spirit  leaves you and you do the opposite of a physical death, instead of waiting for your body to return to dust, you wait for your body to stop breathing.

Was it a curse on my forehead, from the time I was first came into this world, backwards of course, that made me who I am? The sins of our parents- when I was born was it determined by the Greek Gods that this is how my life would end I just exist while I wait for Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos to cut my thread?

The weird thing is if I had a choice up to now, to be normal, or to be bipolar, I would pick bipolar. I have seen remarkable things and done remarkable things when manic. I've done some beautiful writing when I was depressed.  By contemplating suicide, could I understand existentialism. True, I have been alone, gone to bed so many nights wishing there was someone I could hold on to, hold me and be held, make love with. But I have the gift of writing instead. I love to read and write. Would I have been so creative if I wasn't bipolar? I don't know. What the Greek Gods give they also destroy. They gave me bipolar so I can create. I know ths. I have to suffer. Don't I?

Last night when I brushed my teeth, I looked back at my reflection. My blue eyes reflected back and they are still alive. I breathe the air and I am grateful for the small stuff.

I don't know how my life will end. Someday t will end. I just hope  my brain chooses to fall softly on itself, slowly, ever so slowly and gives me another couple decades of good life.

Bless You Andrew Sullivan

This is one of the most beautiful essays on bipolar I have ever read, and it's almost like I wrote this- it practically echoes my life in my twenties- only I didn't crash and burn until I was 23, lucky enough to get through school through mania interspersed with mild bouts of depression. It comes from today's blog by Andrew Sullivan.

When I'm off my medications, I will alternate spells of tearful anxiety fits with depressive episodes of 14 hours of sleep, the inability to concentrate, and near-constant suicidal thoughts. When I was kicked out of college (the first time) for bad grades, I was turned down by several private insurers for my pre-existing condition. And when my dad changed jobs, I was left in the lurch again. I've seen close to 12 doctors about it in the past four years, and believe me, as hard as it is to find a primary care physician, it is even more difficult to find a therapist that you like, trust, can afford, and who can treat your condition. And when you have a mental illness, you often have to switch prescriptions, dosage, and cocktails until you find a mixture that works for you. Sometimes, pills will stop working for no good reason, and it takes a quality professional to realize it and pull you out of a tailspin that you thought was being treated. And I'm sure your readers can tell even more stories about being turned down for jobs, being denied coverage, being hospitalized, and struggling for decades through the red tape, secrecy, and shame.

The author is lucky to have a good doc and realize that meds can poop out. I've never been able to find one and I've seen over 27 docs since my diagnosis.

The rest of the article is here.

Slow Suicide or Chemical Hairshirt

When I set out writing this blog, I like many didn't have a clue what I was doing. I just new some how, I was going to do something different. I wouldn't rail against the drug companies, there are bloggers out there who do it and do that brilliantly. I wouldn't write about recovery- steps needed to get well, there are others who write blogs about that and do that brilliantly. My niche would be something different. What goes on in your head during the thoughts of a broken brain crying out to the heavens to be heard when it is in it's madness. Sort of like Pepys and his diaries, only without the verbiage of kissing dead Queens of England.


So I write about brief periods of madness, the down and dirty about manic depression and mania. And a couple of cute fixes or pictures of my cat, because what are the joys of sharing your life with a pet if you cannot post their pictures on the Internet?

So it should come as no surprise to those who read this blog, that last Friday I went to a conference to man a booth there, for an organization I belong to at the State level. I had a nice lunch, and enjoyed the company of some real nice, wonderful people. About 1 pm I was feeling so tired, a side effect from Leukocytosis, I think, I drove home, and crashed. But on the way, stopped at the supermarket and bought some food, and some supplies for that time of the month.

Sometime between Friday night late, and Saturday morning, the black dog came. Maybe it was from a weekend of so many deaths- famous people, who seemed to go in threes, Natasha Richardson, Jade Goody, Nick Hughes, and and those not famous but still die by their own hand.

My brain is rebelling. I don't know how I am going to get though that weekend. I have no desire to write, I am too depressed to write. Something that has never happened before. I have always been able to write even from the deepest depths of hell. But my Mac mocks me. I cannot even bother to turn it on, despairing at the emails I need to write and the thought of blogging or working on my novel- it's too much. It's too much to even stroke the cat. That is a huge warning sign. When she is not Queen of my Universe, and most Exalted Feline, you know I am depressed.

It seems life has passed me by. No children. No marriage. My wedding dress hangs visible in the closet mocking me. Despite everything, that was the best day in my life. I should get rid of it, but somehow, just cannot though it torments me. I feel so empty right now- I need to be held so bad. If "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was possible- I am certain I would sell my internal soul for ten minutes to be held and to hold someone. I am also incredibly horny- it's been two and a half years now- but that's neither here nor there. Yeah, I am feeling hyper sexual. Maybe that is adding to the mix. I don't know. I just know, I cannot see myself being past this weekend. I don't want to get past it. I want to sleep. And it's been several days since I have slept. So I have bought a bottle of Advil PM, 50 pills, a bottle of Sominex, a bottle of CVS blue capsules. I have my prescription Motrin and my lithium and Cymbalta. And sometime over the weekend, I try to lie down to go to sleep sleep for an hour and go into the kitchen , pour a glass of milk and take some pills. Anything to sleep. And crawl back to bed, and sleep for another hour or two but I cannot get more of two hours at the most, and long for sleep, for blessed unconsciousness. And it's not coming. Back to the kitchen and more pills, more milk. Lie back in bed, turn on the radio, and listen to the sound of some DJ droning as I hear my heart beat like it's coming out of my chest like a Tex Avery cartoon. But still, no sleep. I just want to sleep.

Sunday night the vomiting starts. Monday morning I wake and see I have emptied all the sleeping pills bought- all in the effect of trying to sleep. And from Monday to Friday I cannot keep anything down. It is on Friday I realize it's from the pills. I basically overdosed without knowledge of over dosing- 50 Advils, 5 Motrins, 25 Sominex, 8 blue capusules. Was it intentional? I don't know. I can recall my last attempt in November 02 where I tried to hang myself and the rope broke. I can recall taking a kitchen chair outside with me, making the noose, looking at the moon, and kicking the chair away. I recall what it was like to start dying. But this- this wasn't to die. This was just to sleep, to find sleep, and maybe never wake up again, but maybe not.

A lovely friend came by one night to baby sit- I was still vomiting, and shaking. I tried to lie down and rest, and lay, sweating and trying to breathe, trying to cough to bring up phlegm, crying but not able to make tears. I look terrible. My apartment is a wreck. I haven't cleaned in a week or so, there are dust bunnies and cat vomit on the hard wood floors. I just stopped caring. I just can't deal with it right now. He stayed with me, fed me, held me and listened to me. I don't deserve such people in my life.

And right now, I feel like I am being punished. It's not "Wait til your Father gets home", it's something more visceral. Did I try to suicide- could my brain have worked that way this time? No note, I've never not had a note. I've always planned the few times I have attempted. This wasn't planned. It just-was.


And maybe that is why I did not die though now, talking to the doc, I realize I should have. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be this time. Maybe it wasn't supposed to happen. It was a fevered brain trying to cope as best as it can trying to hang on, to live.

I just know I am still shaking, still sweating, cannot stop crying. Weak as a new born calf. Anxious when I never get anxiety. And maybe I need to feel this too, as some type of divine punishment for my sin(s) this past week. My own chemical hairshirt. I don't know. I just don't know. I just know that I am not suicidal right now, which is a blessing. I have a lot of learning to do this weekend, unlike last.

The waiting is the hardest part

I AM waiting for results from a doctor. It's going to be 1 weeks before I know anything, and it's the waiting is the hardest part. He was very nice but I gather something is not quite right.


I am slipping back to depression, Unable to sleep. I had a nice run of normalcy, for 2 weeks, so it's time to crash.It's from the doctor. I have never been so scared in my life. 

Oh if anyone is interested, I am reading the Bipolar Workbook by Monica Basco. It's a keeper.




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