And After Mt. Olympus, Then Came Hades

Dr. W stares at me and tells me to up my meds or hospital. I look at him, he is no longer laughing at me manic, I am back down to earth, past earth to Hades and back to suicidal despair. Indeed all I can think about is death. I tell him I don't feel safe. I clutch a small striped tabby stuffed plush my friend M and K bought for me when J left - a momma and baby cat . I put the baby in my purse ,and stroke it, trying to not be in the moment, but be four years old again.


I want someone to hold me like I was four. I have a friend on Facebook who's avatar is holding his small daughter, and I long to be held like that, comforted. I lie to the doctor, but I really don't want to be alone, I don't feel safe. I want someone to hold me at night, to grab my hand when I try to pick up a knife or a bottle of cleaning solution. But I don't have anyone. Just my cat, who stares at me with those green eyes and says "meow" and I realize that even though I am not safe, I cannot go- yet, no one will take care of her. But I wish, wish wish apon a star, i had someone who could do a one on one with me here in my apartment until this feeling passes, because it's really bad this time.

The other night was my sister's birthday and the whole family went out. I surprised everyone by grabbing a glass of pink champagne and ordering veal parm. I have not eaten veal since I was in 7th grade and learned about veal calves. Dr. W. said I'm so depressed nothing means anything to me anymore. It's common with depression. I don't know. Dr. W is good man. He was the doc who suggested the ECT back then, and apologized, said of all the people he had seen it happen I am one of probably 5 failurers. I am tired of people telling me I am a psychiatric statistical abnormality. First with the ECT, then with the Haldol= I want to scream I am tired of being maimed and hurt by you Viennese Head Thumpers! But I don't. Instead, my mother orders me some chicken parm, and a Diet Coke. The waiter asks if I want anything else. Before I even think , I say "White Russian". My mother says, "She will just have a Diet Coke". That's it. Man, I can taste that Kalhua in my brain. But would I actually drink it? I am afraid to know. Part of me would. Part of me would grab my coin in my purse, my AA coin, and drink the Diet Coke and the water on the table. My sobriety is important. Not eating veal means something to me. But not that night.

I just don't feel like myself anymore. I don't know if it's the med cocktail I am taking reluctantly, or it's from the therapy, my personality seems to me to metamorphosing into a poisonality. No one else sees it. Just me. I really hate myself. I hate therapy...I don't know if it's bring out issues I have hidden away so tight in my memory I don't want them to come up. Tear down the wall.... I don't know if it's the fact everyone I know in real life is telling me to take meds and won't support my wishes to get off all psych meds...I don't know what to think. My walls have kept me alive all these years. If they come down, will I die? I don't know but I have a gut feeling I am going to find out shortly.

I reluctantly tell the doctor I started self injuring again,, something I haven'd done in over twenty years. I am also hypersexual, again something that hasn't happened in twenty years. I just cannot stop thinking about sex. I don't understand. But I want to. I really want to, I'm just scared. I think the only life that is easy is the cereal Mikey likes.

This Time it's Different-A New Hollowness in my Soul

She sits in front of me in a big overstuffed black leather chair, black patent pumps swaying softly while she crosses and uncrosses her legs as a nervous tick.

She is made up and looks like she just stepped out of Vogue for working women. I, on the other hand, look like an unmade bed. It's been a week since my hair was washed, and that long since I showered. I did brush my teeth and floss before I got there, and brushed my long blonde hair, tying it up in a scrunchie. My jeans are clean, but the shirt I threw on, a black turtle from LL Bean, has a white mark from deodorant, and should have gone straight in the laundry pile. No make up , not even a trace of lip gloss. My shoes are brand new and hurt, brownish tan clogs from my parents for Christmas to replace the blue ones the cat destroyed a few months earlier.

We are discussing my current med cocktail. The fact that it appears that my thyroid has shut down or is shutting down because I am constantly tired and sleeping close to 16 hours a day. I cannot eat but am drinking copious amounts of water. I crave sugar. The Dunkin Donuts across the street is singing a Siren Song to me.

Lithium is being raised to 3100 mg, Cymbalta is staying the same at 60 mg. If the lithium doesn't start working soon, I will be weaned off it and go on Lamictal. All I know is it took every ounce of effort to get there this afternoon, to get dressed, brush my teeth and drive the two miles to the therapist's office. Climb the 15 stairs to get to her room in the building. I am winded like I was in my childhood when I had asthma.

All I know is I am in crisis. My brain knows this. My mind and my soul know this. Life hurts and every breath I take makes me feel like a medieval torture devise of being crushed or weighted to death in the Tower or some other gloomy place. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. But surprisingly, I am not suicidal. I just don't care- I just want to go to sleep and wake up as worm bait.

Raising the lithium, with the Cymbalta, now- it's not passive anymore. it's active. But not active like it was when I was on Remeron and got so suicidal I knew to get to the hospital pronto. It's different this time, but isn't every depression slightly different, like identical twins are never really totally identical?

I find it more violent, the ways I want to go out would give Stephen King a new novel and a literary hard on. It would make Jeffrey Dahmer a new recipe for madness. No OD'ing on pills and slipping gently into that good night. These are painful, horrible, dreamscapes and nightmares from a fevered mind sparked from neurons and gray cells not reacting or over reacting to chemical number 3 on the Periodic Table.

I hover between periods of sanity and insanity- wondering to go into the hospital and make arrangements for the striped baby girl, or just going to Home Depot, buying a few items, and going out one night in the parking lot when everyone is home and asleep and ending it all, the last moment of consciousness dialing 911 and telling the cops to seal off the parking lot.

Right now I can hover. I am scared I might slip. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but hopefully not soon.