Dear Chris,
Tomorrow is your birthday, and like I have done for the past five years since you died, I will visit your grave in the afternoon, leaving a sprig of Rosemary, for remembrance, and plant flowers.
It doesn't seem that long ago when I got the call you had died. You were over at my apartment the night before you died, and we spent 7 hours talking. You talked about your divorce, and cried. You talked about the girl you had just started dating and you just couldn't get over your ex. I had just come home from the hospital a week before and was still shaking from the ECT. You cooked me a meal, and told me the funniest story about women and toilet paper.
You tried to cheer me by bringing over your favorite VHS tape, the one from Saturday Night Live with More Cowbell.
We laughed til we cried.
I had just gotten Holly and we discussed plans to get a kitten for you at the shelter that next weekend. You really fell for her. When you left, I handed you your Christmas present, a box set of Lord of the Rings.
You left at 11. You were so tired, so not like yourself, I begged you to sleep on the couch . You wanted to drive home, you had just gotten a new car and was itching to drive it.
The next day I woke up at 6 am. I couldn't reach you. I knew something was wrong. I tried to call you all weekend, sending you email after email, text message after text message. Nothing.
Monday morning I got several calls. One from work saying you had died over the weekend, no details known. An hour later a call from the Jersey Cops saying they found a Christmas card and the books in the car and gave me the third degree in my relationship/friendship with you. Then they told me what I already knew. You had died. Then the worst call of them all, from the owner of your complex, asking for my address. There was a letter in his apartment. To this day I have not opened it.
I miss you every day of my life, I don't think a day goes by where I don't think of you. And wish I could have said something, done something, tied you down to the sofa so you could sleep.
I wish you were still with us, not sleeping in the ground.
So tomorrow I will visit you and when I come home watch More Cowbell. And cry, and miss you.
Where ever you are dearest friend, have a happy birthday.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Depression in other languages, inspirational
The German word for depression is schwermut, which literally means heavy courage. I'm not sure how that word came to be used in that way, but I believe it is appropriate.
Musings on Anna Karenina
When Mark Twain was asked what book taught him how to write, he replied "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina,, Anna Karenina".
I add to the list Miss Havisham's wedding cake.
It seems that Tolstoy, as urban legend has it, was writing a book with Levin has his protagonist, since Levin was a mirror image of himself.
Then one day he and the missus were reading the morning paper over breakfast and found a small blurb about a married woman who threw herself under a train because of her lover.
This fascinated Tolstoy. as he discussed it with his wife, over toast and coffee. What would drive a woman to such despair she would throw herself under a train?
That woman was reborn as Anna.
I was train spotting long before Irvine Welsh wrote his book in 93. I never jumped, but I was fascinated by the trains.
Blame it on my father. When I was five he bought me a Lionel train set complete with a locomotive that blew smoke.
[img]http://www.legacystation.com/Lionel06/pg6-7-590.jpg[img]
Again, I am not suicidal. Just fascinated. I haven't train spotted since my last relationship ended. I am afraid to, it's too close for comfort.
I just know I am tired, I am weary. I could sleep for 1000 years, with apologies to Lou Reed. I just want to go to sleep for 1000 years, and wake up iike Fry in futureama in a better place, even though since I read RUR, robots scare me.
I add to the list Miss Havisham's wedding cake.
It seems that Tolstoy, as urban legend has it, was writing a book with Levin has his protagonist, since Levin was a mirror image of himself.
Then one day he and the missus were reading the morning paper over breakfast and found a small blurb about a married woman who threw herself under a train because of her lover.
This fascinated Tolstoy. as he discussed it with his wife, over toast and coffee. What would drive a woman to such despair she would throw herself under a train?
That woman was reborn as Anna.
I was train spotting long before Irvine Welsh wrote his book in 93. I never jumped, but I was fascinated by the trains.
Blame it on my father. When I was five he bought me a Lionel train set complete with a locomotive that blew smoke.
[img]http://www.legacystation.com/Lionel06/pg6-7-590.jpg[img]
Again, I am not suicidal. Just fascinated. I haven't train spotted since my last relationship ended. I am afraid to, it's too close for comfort.
I just know I am tired, I am weary. I could sleep for 1000 years, with apologies to Lou Reed. I just want to go to sleep for 1000 years, and wake up iike Fry in futureama in a better place, even though since I read RUR, robots scare me.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Been sleeping
thank you all for your concern.
I have been able to get an average of ten hours each night for the last two nights.
Cycling down from mania to extreme depression, but I will be OK.
The old black dog has nothing on me this time.
I have been able to get an average of ten hours each night for the last two nights.
Cycling down from mania to extreme depression, but I will be OK.
The old black dog has nothing on me this time.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Day 5, still no sleep
Sleep is still alluding me. It's day five now, I got an hour and a half, but cannot sleep. It's raining and thundering and lightning outside, so that should be good to cool off from.
But still cannot sleep. The cat sleeps, on her side looking lovely.
I slept on my side and had the strangest dreams I have had since I got off Seroquel.
My skin cannot stop itching, I took a shower and scraped it raw with the loofa. It bled and it is still itching. It's like it's moulting and I have fleas.
Maybe it's a good thing I am back awake.
I can lie back and listen to the sound of the rain on the roof. And scratch.
But still cannot sleep. The cat sleeps, on her side looking lovely.
I slept on my side and had the strangest dreams I have had since I got off Seroquel.
My skin cannot stop itching, I took a shower and scraped it raw with the loofa. It bled and it is still itching. It's like it's moulting and I have fleas.
Maybe it's a good thing I am back awake.
I can lie back and listen to the sound of the rain on the roof. And scratch.
When I was first diagnosed
I've been trying to catch up with my favorite bloggers and their blogs that I missed during my illness. I was reading Stephany's blog,
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/
when I came across a piece about the time you were first diagnosed. Strange that I can remember this like yesterday, it's one of the few things I can recall as vivid as what I was doing an hour ago and hasn't been blasted out of my brain by ECT.
I was 23. I just finished school and was supposed to start a PhD program in the fall. My life was spinning out of control, I had over 70 graduate credits under my belt and for the last 3 years all I had been doing is working on two Master's degrees at the same time, while being a teacher's assistant, tutored writing and history in the learning lab, cleaning houses and teaching sunday school. In the summer I took classes, lived on campus as a Residence assistant, and taught and tutored SAT prep off campus. I was treated as a peer in my department, and if they saw anything suspect, which some of them did, they just wrote it off to me being ultra creative and one of the budding geniuses they ever saw. Several professors were mentoring me as a protege, and all of them saw me finishing the PhD by the time I was 25, landing a job at some college or university and writing and publishing and teaching. And that was what I wanted for my future too. I had just finished my first novel, and was happy. The only time in my life that I was ever happy, truly happy was when I was in school. Only one professor, said to me "You're the next Sylvia Plath. You will be a suicide too by the time you are 33".
Yeah, right, I told him. Right along with Anne Sexton and John Berryman.
Then, that April my life started spinning out of control. By the end of the semester, I threw down my dissertation on the English Chair's desk and went back to the apartment I shared off campus with a female roomate and her fiance. And slept for several days straight, waking only to use the toilet. I hadn't been depressed before, never like this. Maybe it was residual from the rape the month before. Though I had thought about suicide before, I never attempted.
I had a bottle of Tylenol, 50 pills, downing it down with ice cold vodka and OJ. Gagged a lot, and semi regurgitated, but kept going until the entire bottle was finshed. I washed the glass I had used, put it on the drain board, and tucked myself into bed. And fell asleep.
Woke up in the Emergency room of the hospital. The guy I was dating at the time found me, unconscious and unresponsive. Apparently he called an ambulance and I had my stomach pumped. He stayed with me the entire time, but when the admitting doctor told me I *HAD* to go to the psychiatric hospital, he stared down in my blue eyes and told me he could no longer date me, now that I was about to be labeled "crazy" and going to the "nut house", I could keep f***ing him, but we were finished as a couple. This was the first but not the last of the boyfriends I lost because of my illness.
The first doctor in the hospital diagnosed me as unipolar- he was just dealing with the suicide attempt. He put me on Prozac, which had to be stopped after a few days because I literally felt I was crawling out of my skin.
The second doc I saw actually spent time with me and asked the right questions. And then I heard it. Manic Depression. He sugar coated it by calling it Van Gogh's disease. Maybe this would help amielorate the blow must of thought, knowing how much I adore Van Gogh. I don't know. Eventually Manic Depression was out and Bipolar was in. Now I was Bipolar 1.
I never accepted it, though I knew in my heart I was, my brain didn't want to accept it. I took my lithium like a good girl, and did the mandatory blood work required by the doc. And I went through all the other meds I went on, not questioning, just taking because part of me thought if I took these meds it would go away and I would be normal. I would have a normal life and live happy. if I just took the meds and ignored the diagnosis, I would be normal, and my life would be normal. I was the perfect consumer. I didn't question the pills, didn't investigate them, and even though most of them gave me terrible side effects I kept taking them because I just wanted to be normal and thought this would let me lead the life I was meant to live.
My family didn't accept it either, my father telling me to buck up, and try harder. My mother just told me to take the meds, go to the shrink and go to work, and in my spare time date. I got to be quite good at dating, mastering the art of the blind date. But I just didn't feel normal. The meds left me weak, gave me the runs constantly. They never told anyone else there was anything "wrong" with me, and I know this caused a rift in their marriage, my mother believing the meds and hospital stays and ECT would cure me, my father saying there was nothing wrong with me that hard work couldn't cure and I didn't need meds.
And it didn't work that way. All the meds, all the different shrinks, other stays at the hospital, even ECT trying to bring me back to normal. I've lost jobs, lost countless relationships. It's always been the same. Good enough to f**K, never good enough to have children with, should they wind up like me. I tried to ease the hole in my heart and soul by food, but that didn't work. Alcohol made me comfortably numb like nothing else could, but it's been almost 13 years since my last drink.
So here I am struggling. The last year I've had to go a complete overhaul with the med cocktail and at one time I was on 9 different meds in my cocktail at the same time. This year alone, I've gone through two psychiatric hospitalizations, one regular hospitalization and one rehabilitation hospitalization from this illness. It's cost me the last year of my life.
All I have is my writing and my cat. I know I will never have a family of my own, or children from my body. I can deal with that, and I am accepting it, but I get so lonely sometimes. Some nights it is so unbearable I just lie in bed with the thought I need to hold and be held so bad I don't think I will make it til the dawn. I don't think I will ever have a relationship with a man again, I have friends who are men, but to have one that I can live with and grow old with, I think that will escape me, much to my chagrin and heart ache.
This illness may have robbed me of a life, but it won't rob me of ME. It won't destroy my soul. I came into this world half dead, backwards, kicking and screaming. That's how I want to leave it. Kicking and screaming, putting up a good fight.
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/
when I came across a piece about the time you were first diagnosed. Strange that I can remember this like yesterday, it's one of the few things I can recall as vivid as what I was doing an hour ago and hasn't been blasted out of my brain by ECT.
I was 23. I just finished school and was supposed to start a PhD program in the fall. My life was spinning out of control, I had over 70 graduate credits under my belt and for the last 3 years all I had been doing is working on two Master's degrees at the same time, while being a teacher's assistant, tutored writing and history in the learning lab, cleaning houses and teaching sunday school. In the summer I took classes, lived on campus as a Residence assistant, and taught and tutored SAT prep off campus. I was treated as a peer in my department, and if they saw anything suspect, which some of them did, they just wrote it off to me being ultra creative and one of the budding geniuses they ever saw. Several professors were mentoring me as a protege, and all of them saw me finishing the PhD by the time I was 25, landing a job at some college or university and writing and publishing and teaching. And that was what I wanted for my future too. I had just finished my first novel, and was happy. The only time in my life that I was ever happy, truly happy was when I was in school. Only one professor, said to me "You're the next Sylvia Plath. You will be a suicide too by the time you are 33".
Yeah, right, I told him. Right along with Anne Sexton and John Berryman.
Then, that April my life started spinning out of control. By the end of the semester, I threw down my dissertation on the English Chair's desk and went back to the apartment I shared off campus with a female roomate and her fiance. And slept for several days straight, waking only to use the toilet. I hadn't been depressed before, never like this. Maybe it was residual from the rape the month before. Though I had thought about suicide before, I never attempted.
I had a bottle of Tylenol, 50 pills, downing it down with ice cold vodka and OJ. Gagged a lot, and semi regurgitated, but kept going until the entire bottle was finshed. I washed the glass I had used, put it on the drain board, and tucked myself into bed. And fell asleep.
Woke up in the Emergency room of the hospital. The guy I was dating at the time found me, unconscious and unresponsive. Apparently he called an ambulance and I had my stomach pumped. He stayed with me the entire time, but when the admitting doctor told me I *HAD* to go to the psychiatric hospital, he stared down in my blue eyes and told me he could no longer date me, now that I was about to be labeled "crazy" and going to the "nut house", I could keep f***ing him, but we were finished as a couple. This was the first but not the last of the boyfriends I lost because of my illness.
The first doctor in the hospital diagnosed me as unipolar- he was just dealing with the suicide attempt. He put me on Prozac, which had to be stopped after a few days because I literally felt I was crawling out of my skin.
The second doc I saw actually spent time with me and asked the right questions. And then I heard it. Manic Depression. He sugar coated it by calling it Van Gogh's disease. Maybe this would help amielorate the blow must of thought, knowing how much I adore Van Gogh. I don't know. Eventually Manic Depression was out and Bipolar was in. Now I was Bipolar 1.
I never accepted it, though I knew in my heart I was, my brain didn't want to accept it. I took my lithium like a good girl, and did the mandatory blood work required by the doc. And I went through all the other meds I went on, not questioning, just taking because part of me thought if I took these meds it would go away and I would be normal. I would have a normal life and live happy. if I just took the meds and ignored the diagnosis, I would be normal, and my life would be normal. I was the perfect consumer. I didn't question the pills, didn't investigate them, and even though most of them gave me terrible side effects I kept taking them because I just wanted to be normal and thought this would let me lead the life I was meant to live.
My family didn't accept it either, my father telling me to buck up, and try harder. My mother just told me to take the meds, go to the shrink and go to work, and in my spare time date. I got to be quite good at dating, mastering the art of the blind date. But I just didn't feel normal. The meds left me weak, gave me the runs constantly. They never told anyone else there was anything "wrong" with me, and I know this caused a rift in their marriage, my mother believing the meds and hospital stays and ECT would cure me, my father saying there was nothing wrong with me that hard work couldn't cure and I didn't need meds.
And it didn't work that way. All the meds, all the different shrinks, other stays at the hospital, even ECT trying to bring me back to normal. I've lost jobs, lost countless relationships. It's always been the same. Good enough to f**K, never good enough to have children with, should they wind up like me. I tried to ease the hole in my heart and soul by food, but that didn't work. Alcohol made me comfortably numb like nothing else could, but it's been almost 13 years since my last drink.
So here I am struggling. The last year I've had to go a complete overhaul with the med cocktail and at one time I was on 9 different meds in my cocktail at the same time. This year alone, I've gone through two psychiatric hospitalizations, one regular hospitalization and one rehabilitation hospitalization from this illness. It's cost me the last year of my life.
All I have is my writing and my cat. I know I will never have a family of my own, or children from my body. I can deal with that, and I am accepting it, but I get so lonely sometimes. Some nights it is so unbearable I just lie in bed with the thought I need to hold and be held so bad I don't think I will make it til the dawn. I don't think I will ever have a relationship with a man again, I have friends who are men, but to have one that I can live with and grow old with, I think that will escape me, much to my chagrin and heart ache.
This illness may have robbed me of a life, but it won't rob me of ME. It won't destroy my soul. I came into this world half dead, backwards, kicking and screaming. That's how I want to leave it. Kicking and screaming, putting up a good fight.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Cymbalta cold turkey
Has anyone out there in the blogosphere gone through withdrawal?
I need help, and- I need help, dammit. I am not suicidal. The side effects here are driving me to distraction.
To top everything off, my .mac account seems to have been frozen. Apparently they are switching to something called Mobile Me. I cannot get anyone in Appleland to answer the phone.
So- if you know me in real life, (and I think only 3 people who read this do), write to my Earthlink or Gmail accounts. Or call.
I would give my right arm for a phone call.
But right now I am off to the gym. I don't know what else to do with all this energy.
I need help, and- I need help, dammit. I am not suicidal. The side effects here are driving me to distraction.
To top everything off, my .mac account seems to have been frozen. Apparently they are switching to something called Mobile Me. I cannot get anyone in Appleland to answer the phone.
So- if you know me in real life, (and I think only 3 people who read this do), write to my Earthlink or Gmail accounts. Or call.
I would give my right arm for a phone call.
But right now I am off to the gym. I don't know what else to do with all this energy.
3 am again, another dark night of the soul
Hello.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?
Why do I feel like I am the last living person in the world?
Why this time is it overwhelming ? Why is it happening now? It's like the humidity outside, 100 percent cloying, seeping into every pore, making it impossible to breathe.
I would give anything for the phone to ring. But then it won't. I'm the only living girl in New York.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?
Why do I feel like I am the last living person in the world?
Why this time is it overwhelming ? Why is it happening now? It's like the humidity outside, 100 percent cloying, seeping into every pore, making it impossible to breathe.
I would give anything for the phone to ring. But then it won't. I'm the only living girl in New York.
Holden Caulfield and Thomas Chatterton
Thoughts from a fevered brain:
Holden Caulfield- Don't ever tell anyone anything. If you do, you start to miss everybody
Isn't it strange that by dying Thomas Chatterton started the whole Romantic movement, yet as he lay dying from poison, he had a change of heart and wanted to live? And after Goethe wrote "Werner", and French girls were drowning themselves in the Seine in record numbers- the Paris coroner could tell which girls had a change of heart by how messed up their finger nails were?
I popped a sleeping pill and slept for almost 30 minutes. I won't be able to sleep tonight come hell or high water. I called the p-doc. She will get back to me in the morning.
I am going to lie back down in bed, turn on the radio and hopefully the voices of the mermaids singing I hear will go away lest I drown.
Holden Caulfield- Don't ever tell anyone anything. If you do, you start to miss everybody
Isn't it strange that by dying Thomas Chatterton started the whole Romantic movement, yet as he lay dying from poison, he had a change of heart and wanted to live? And after Goethe wrote "Werner", and French girls were drowning themselves in the Seine in record numbers- the Paris coroner could tell which girls had a change of heart by how messed up their finger nails were?
I popped a sleeping pill and slept for almost 30 minutes. I won't be able to sleep tonight come hell or high water. I called the p-doc. She will get back to me in the morning.
I am going to lie back down in bed, turn on the radio and hopefully the voices of the mermaids singing I hear will go away lest I drown.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Cut off from Cymbalta, cold turkey
It's now entering the fourth night since I have slept. Weatherman says it will be another 2 days of this oppressive heat. 4 days running and four hours total.
I took a Klonepin about noon, after I got back from the gym. I was so tired but couldn't sleep. I had done 10 miles on the treadmill, 20 miles on the bike and climbed over 10,000 steps on the stair climber. Came home, showered, popped a Klonepin and fell asleep shortly thereafter.
Woke up 40 minutes later, The grass outside the apartment was being mowed and the noise was deafining. No use. I couldn't go back to sleep, and I was covered head to toe in sweat. Another shower, remade the bed with clean sheets. And changed clothes again, and went back to the gym. I couldn't sit still.
The p-doc called at 9am and told me to quit Cymbalta immediately. She thought maybe the Cymbalta was making me manic. I don't know. I said I was on 60 mg of Cymbalta, shouldn't we taper it down to 40 and then 20 and go slow?
No, she said, immediately stop.
So now it's the start of day four without sleep, approx 4 hours and ten minutes of sleep in the last four days. I can only blame the East Coast heat wave so much for my trouble. The other symptoms, well , I don't know if the exess sweating is from sitting here in an apartment who's thermostat is over 90 degrees, or it's from the Cymbalta. My skin feels like it's moulting. I feel like I am made of light and pure energy. This must be how a Superhero feels.
And yet I know I cannot read. I cannot listen to music because my brain is going to fast to absorb it. I am writing quicker than I can type and I type 60 wpm. I;m rapid cycling and mixed states at the same time.
And to top everything off, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I get a visit from Auntie Flo.
After everything I have been through in the last few months, it's enough to make me wonder if I am the reincarnation of Job.
Time to take another pill, hopefully sleep will come, and the mania will cease.
I took a Klonepin about noon, after I got back from the gym. I was so tired but couldn't sleep. I had done 10 miles on the treadmill, 20 miles on the bike and climbed over 10,000 steps on the stair climber. Came home, showered, popped a Klonepin and fell asleep shortly thereafter.
Woke up 40 minutes later, The grass outside the apartment was being mowed and the noise was deafining. No use. I couldn't go back to sleep, and I was covered head to toe in sweat. Another shower, remade the bed with clean sheets. And changed clothes again, and went back to the gym. I couldn't sit still.
The p-doc called at 9am and told me to quit Cymbalta immediately. She thought maybe the Cymbalta was making me manic. I don't know. I said I was on 60 mg of Cymbalta, shouldn't we taper it down to 40 and then 20 and go slow?
No, she said, immediately stop.
So now it's the start of day four without sleep, approx 4 hours and ten minutes of sleep in the last four days. I can only blame the East Coast heat wave so much for my trouble. The other symptoms, well , I don't know if the exess sweating is from sitting here in an apartment who's thermostat is over 90 degrees, or it's from the Cymbalta. My skin feels like it's moulting. I feel like I am made of light and pure energy. This must be how a Superhero feels.
And yet I know I cannot read. I cannot listen to music because my brain is going to fast to absorb it. I am writing quicker than I can type and I type 60 wpm. I;m rapid cycling and mixed states at the same time.
And to top everything off, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I get a visit from Auntie Flo.
After everything I have been through in the last few months, it's enough to make me wonder if I am the reincarnation of Job.
Time to take another pill, hopefully sleep will come, and the mania will cease.
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