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.

John Updike March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

"Men are all heart and Women are all body. I don't know who has the brains. God maybe." (Rabbit, Run)

"The great thing about the dead, they make space." (Rabbit is Rich)

"Masturbation! Thou saving grace note upon the baffled chord of self. (A Month of Sundays)

"Tell your mother, if she asks, that maybe we'll meet some other time. Under the pear trees, in Paradise." (Rabbit at Rest)

One of the best short stories I ever read- A & P. Liz Spikol reproduces it here.

Author of Krusty the Klown's biography on the Simpsons.

Huge Med change today

My meds are changing today. Cymbalta- stays at 60 mg. Lithium is going from 2600 to 3100. I'm clutching at straws trying to get out of this horrible darkness, it's not only Churchill's black dog this time, it's more like Cerberus.

As Bette Davis said in "All About Eve"- "Fasten your seatbelts= It's going to be a bumpy ride".

If I can post later I will,If not back tomorrow.

In the mean time, if anyone knows about Lithium Orotate, please contact me.

Best Cute Fix in the Universe

This has to be the best cute fix in the universe. Other than puppies and babies, what else is cuter? KITTENS!

Trust Liz Spikol, to come up with the mother of all cute fixes= A Kitten Cam.






Ah Liz. You might have a girl crush on Michelle Obama, but I sure have a girl crush on you.

A friend writes of his father's suicide

I am just going to let this speak for itself. It is a beautiful, heart breaking piece written by Andy Alt, to his father who died by his own hand when he was just eight.

For every joke he tells, there is a sadness. Each sadness buried by one joke. Once he thought the joke transformed the sadness, but the joke merely blanketed the sadness to comfort it.

It’s said that tears clean one’s eyes. If the the dam broke from all of the tears from his sadness — crying an ocean over the loss of his father, the loss of his child-hood, the loss of what-could-have-been-but-never-will-be, what he never knew, what he’ll never know, feelings he’s never felt, feelings he’ll never feel, a father he can never know, nor the father who can ever know his son, a father who can never be proud of his son, a son who can never be proud of his father, a voice he’ll never hear, a father who will never hear the voice of his son, the son who can never have his father, the father who can never have his son, the life that never was, a life that never included a father, the life of a father that isn’t — if the tears for all these were shed, he could throw away his glasses and have perfect vision. And the tears would wash over his soul and clean the taint of blood and terror. All emotions, love, hope, happiness, sadness, fear, and many others, would be uncovered and laid out — existing, coexisting peacefully upon the cool sheets of time and the future.

A trickle of these tears were shed this night, for the death of a father over two decades past, and the death of a son over two decades past, each only happening yesterday. As the tears fall he could for a moment sense and feel what the father felt at the time of his death, and then the son shed even more tears for the pain which the father felt at the moment the father’s finger was upon the trigger. The son could almost feel the father’s presence, and the son reached out his hand, but there was no hand to take it. He told the father that he missed and loved him, and that he knew the father missed and loved him as well.

And I realized that I do indeed have a father, but he is dead. Some of the sadness now uncovered, the tears dry, the ink falls from my pen,
and I see that I’ve written about the loss of two men.

I don't understand people,

and I don't think I ever will.

Two news stories leading the media tonight. Each involving a beautiful two year old girl. Both dead, each allegedly at the hands of the very person who brought them into the world. And both mothers allegedly allowed their daughters to decay in a most horrible manner before they were found and given a proper burial. I say allegedly because under the law, these cases have not been to trial and in the USA you are innocent until proven guilty.

One girl, was named Riley Ann Saunders. Her mother and father allegedly beat her to death, and then stuck her in a plastic container and dumped into Galveston Bay, Texas. The story is here. Not for the faint of heart. The other, unless you have been hiding under a rock, has been the staple of cable media since June 2008, is that of poor Caylee Anthony.

According to the DSM I may be "mentally ill", but I wonder about these mothers- what they are. And I hope, the DSM V can come up with a word to explain it. Because all I can think of is "Evil".

I feel like this cat. Just want to hide and never wake up. I hate people sometimes. I just see the badness and horribleness, and it's so hard to remind myself there is good.

There has to be good .

On Pondering the Meaning of Life and Ferlinghetti

Currently in the worst depressive episode since April 93. Spent the entire day in bed unable to do anything, cannot eat, just want to sleep and never wake up again.

One of my favorite poems in the universe. I don't want to get out of bed ever again until Keats' Lovers touch. I don't think they ever will, and Keats, and Shelley and Coleridge and Browning are all dust. I've spent my whole life waiting for Godot. What is the meaning of life?

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Philip Dawdy-Hero Against Zyprexa

Will someone give Philip Dawdy a Pulitzer?

For the last few years, Philip has been writing tirelessly about Zyprexa on his blog Furious Seasons. He was one of the first, if not the first to unlock the Zyprexa documents. Award winning writer David Dobbs is the first (and lets hope not the last) to notice all that loyal readers of Furious Seasons know- that Philip is a tireless reporter and news breaker , working for little or no money and hopefully this will be the start of something good for this talented writer.

The story by David Dobbs is here. Liz Spikol has her own take on this here , and Bob Fiddaman here.


Maybe someone reading these pieces will see what a gem Dawdy is and nominate him for a blogging Pulitzer, which he so deserves.

I'm In A Coney Island State of Mind

Very bad migraine from Cymbalta today. One tool I use when I am this sick is to think of a wonderful place and imagine myself there.

One of my most favorite memories from childhood was visiting my Grandmother in Brooklyn and going to Coney Island. Without further ado, I bring you my Coney Island State of Mind.

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The World Is Going To Stand Still

Just like the world slowed down to a halt as people watched the late Princess Diana's funeral, the world will stop later today and watch Barak Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. He will place his hand on Lincoln's bible, a bible that has never been used since Lincoln himself used it.

Taking the day off to watch history. As should you. Tell your children and your children's children.


Sometimes, life really is wonderful.