Equilibrium

Right now, I am quiet. Grounded. At peace. All is right with the world, and I feel at one with the universe. At least until the fuzz ball wakes up from her nap and demands her supper. But right now all is as it should be.

My father is home, resting. He is as fragile as a day old colt. Which makes me wonder because he is looking forward to watching the Kentucky Derby tomorrow. My dad and horses. Before he met my mother, he owned part of a race horse with several other army buddies. It didn't last very long, one summer, it ate up too much of their money, they wanted that money to spend on cars and girls. Ah, times may change, but young men's desires never do. Cars and women. Gotta love men. My dad never looked at the women, he just loved the cars and the baseball. The only woman he ever fell in love with was my mom.

My brain is fried. Fried , too much going on, sensory overload. I don't know what it's like for others, for me, I am just exhausted. I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years. Too tired to write, too tired to read. The last two or three days I have become addicted to Twitter. I will be there for the next day or so till I  get fully back on track- back with my med cocktail, and my family. Please join me, the hyperlink is on the side bar. I look forward to your tweets- as does Holly. Cats need tweets too.

Milestones And My Dad

Something amazing happened over the last few days. When I first set up the blog, back in October 2007 I didn't know about stat counters and what so when I finally put one in  four months later, I lost a lot of hits. Math was my worst subject in school, I still have nightmares about Alegebra!; but I realized allowing for this four month stat- I hit a magical number last week.   To that I am grateful and humble.

I've spent some time over the last two weeks or so re doing the blog roll- it's gotten bigger. I took off several blogs who's bloggers stopped blogging. And added a few blogs that I thought were wonderful.  I also added a one or two to the funny blogs list.  What amazes me is how many new people are coming into the world of blogging and how talented they are. So many of them are in their late teens and twenties and so full of hope with the diagnosis. How things have changed in the twenty or so years since I was told by my p-doc that I was "Manic- depressive"  then several months later "Bipolar type 1" and I would never be able to live a normal life and my parents should think of placing me in a state hospital or nursing home. We have a long way to go to banish stigma, but look how far we've come in twenty some years!

Lastly, blogging will be spotty for the next few days, and there is a very good possibility it may stop for a week or so. I also apologize if I won't be visiting any blogs.  A very beloved family member was rushed again to the hospital last night and the prognosis does not look good. I am praying he has, like my cat, nine lives, and still has one or two left in him. But alas, I fear, this may not be too much longer.  Get well dad. You have to see the Yanks win one more World Series before you get to Heaven.

(I like this photo. It really does look like me when I was a little girl, and my dad... doing the thing he loved the most in life... baseball and being a dad and a husband).

My Heart Is Too Big But It Won't Break

I have been so sad this week. I don't know if it's sad, depressed, melancholy, acedia; the semantics don't matter. My proverbial pen is sterile and dry. I've been unable to write.  A comment on FB, a comment on one or two blogs so people know I am alive, but mostly off the computer. Mostly just trying to chillax, trying to read, though it's reading the same sentences and paragraphs over and over again.


I keep thinking of this line from Supertramp's The Long Way Home-"Then your wife seems to think you're loosing your sanity/ oh /calamity/ or is it you're way out?" Well, I don't have a wife.  Or a husband. But substitute parents... or my beloved cat, and you get the idea. They were singing about a mid life crisis. I haven't had one of those yet. At least I don't think so. Don't have a fancy sports car, or a Ken doll in the front seat. Wouldn't know what to do with a boy toy/Ken doll anyway. Besides, any girl knows Ken dolls aren't anatomically correct. And I do want a boy friend, even if he would be a boy toy, to be someone I can discuss current affairs, politics and understand the  current Picasso exhibit at the Met with.

I can't read the news anymore. It's breaking my heart.  Take for example the news in NJ over the last few weeks. A dad throws his 3 month old daughter over the South Amboy bridge (12 lanes). A 15 year old girl allegedly takes her 7 year old sister to a party and allows her to be raped by several men at the party, while she drinks in the other room with some other party goers.  New York gets a second Kitty Genovese case where people walk over a dying hero taking pictures of him dying with their cell phones but cannot call 911. My mother is upset over the affairs in Arizona- with immigration laws. I see something else- a divide in the country not seen since the Civil Wars of Lincoln's time. Coffee Parties, Tea Parties- Not relating to Snapple or Starbucks.  And what got me to tears? Bret Michaels. Yeah. And I am not even a Poison Fan. Instead, I am a fan of that stupid VH1 franchise- the Flavor of Love/which begat Rock of Love, which begat I Love New York, which begat Charm School, I Love Money, etc.... all the shows that got me sane when my relationship ended that I watched over and over and over. And I get choked up and teary eyed over Bret Michaels. He who sucks spit with countless ladies (including one I interviewed back in the day I was an entertainment writer). All I can think of is he is my age, and he's got two small children.  He's smart- has anyone seen him on Celebrity Apprentice? If he hadn't gotten into rock and roll, he clearly could have been the CEO of some Fortune 500 company- he really is that smart. Maybe not the book smarts, but certainly the street smarts.


So why would I break down over Bret Michaels? I'm not a Poison fan, like I said. He's talented. I bought his latest song w/ Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. It's good. But I feel like-  It's like an episode of M*A*S*H, I recall. Hot Lips/Margaret is upset with her nurses during the episode, they keep breaking down in surgery while patients are dying. She keeps telling them to buck up, understand it's war, patients die, get a spine.  The nurses hate her and gripe about what a b**ch she is. Then at the end of the episode, a stray dog that a Margaret has been feeding gets run over by a truck. And she goes into the shower and cries like her heart will break. Over the dog. That's how I feel. All the news stories for the last few months have been causing me to bend, almost loosing my father and the loss of my friend caused me almost to break. And then something like a Celebrity death- or close to death reminds me I am about to break, stop, breathe- you are going to break. Cry now. Take care of yourself now.


We all have to do that. Everyone has breaking points. Here's one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite novels.


"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him? To shrug.", Francisco D'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged. 

Sometimes we have to shrug. Sometimes we have to walk away, to take care of ourselves. Get off the computer. Turn oft the TV. Go outside in the sunshine.  Especially those of us who are fragile and suffer from depression- we are the most important people. We aren't good to our friends and family if we aren't good to ourselves. That's what I have been doing the last week, trying to take care of me, because I am so fragile. My father's health is as fragile right now as a butterfly's wing. I still have nightmares about my friend's suicide. Maybe I needed the time off to heal. I'm still healing. I am grateful for my friends, family and the therapy cat. 

Here is the first episode of Rock of Love for those who can view it , who want to see some totally mindless TV. Get well Brett. Get well. You got more rocking to do.

My Personal Writing Space

Today is a day I am dreading. First I go off to get my lithium levels checked. Not so bad, I don't mind that. Then I go a few hours later to the Oncologist to get my white blood count checked. I've been running a low level cold for the past two weeks or so, and the last time I saw my GP she said my levels were elevated and she wanted me to check with my Oncologist.  I am hoping he tells me I won't need a bone marrow biopsy. It's been two years since my last one, and I keep having to get my levels checked every four-five months. It's been about six - seven months, because I've just been so busy I forgot.  I'm just thinking positive thoughts.

The picture is my writing space- in the kitchen- where I do all my writing and blogging. It's my iBook G4. You can see the second hard drive and the cookbooks, and Beanie Babies that surround it. From the window I can see a big, very old Oak tree, which in the Spring and Summer houses a bird family. Every year, like clockwork, they come back, build a nest and raise baby birdies. Both my cats would watch this progression, like it was number one on the "Cat TV" list. Either that or they were dreaming of ways to serve the new born baby birds.  I am grateful there are two panes of glass separating them from the birds. And they have never been outside.


I will give a brand new Beanie Baby to the first reader who can tell me the applications resting in the Dock. 

Guest Blogger- Holly The Cat. A Cat Ponders On Depression

Hello. For those who don't know me, I am a tan tabby cat, ten years old. I've lived with Susan since January, 2003. The woman who rescued me named me Holly since I was rescued a day or so before Christmas, heavy with kittens. A Christmas miracle. But Susan says it's really Holly because her favorite TV show in the entire universe is "Red Dwarf" and she couldn't name me "Cat" now, could she? And "Dave", was out of the question, since I am a girl cat. And if she named me "Rimmer", the ASPCA would come and arrest her for animal cruelty.

My human's been really down in the dumps the last few days.

Susan's  also been feline poorly the last few days. She struggles to get out of bed just feeling tired and has a fever.  She's seen her GP who said she has a cold- and did some blood work. Her white blood count was elevated and she has to see her Oncologist next week. She isn't happy. Meanwhile her head aches more, and she has terrible night sweats so she has been running the air conditioner, and it makes me cold. I go under the covers, and she just sees my tail. Brrr. She says I look like a metronome, only fuzzier. 

It makes me wonder, what is depression, and why my poor human has it so badly.  Susan refers to it as a "Black Dog" an idea she got from someone named Churchill. I don't know about Churchill, other than he lived a long time ago in a place called across the pond. Does that mean he lived near ducks? And it's called "Black Dog". You wouldn't call it "Black Cat". Poor Mr. Churchill. I wonder if dogs get depressed. Cats don't really get depressed. Not like my human, if she can be an indicator.

I mean, cats do get depressed. This past winter I was sad because it snowed so much and all the birdies and squirrels went away and I had nothing to look at from my window sill. There wasn't enough sunshine to stretch out and languish on my tummy fur. But I didn't cry. I slept and  and played with my toys, dive bombed my human's mail, knocked over some books and cd's, and meowed at the TV. I may not be a kitten anymore, but I still know how to play and get into mischief. Susan on the other hand spent days in bed not sleeping, not doing anything, just listening to the radio and not happy. I am always happy if I am not sleeping, or eating or using my litter box.

I think the difference between cats and humans is simply this. Cats live in the moment. We don't think about yesterday or tomorrow. It's all about the moment we are in. Right now, I am on the computer. In a moment I will be in a fluffy comforter, in a nice warm bed, in a patch of sunshine with my stuffed panda bear.

That is nice. I guess we are all Id.  Maybe if humans were all Id, too they wouldn't be so sad. Humans should be more like cats. Or the Cat from Red Dwarf, just live in the moment, and think about eating little fishies. And looking cool.   Something like that.

I won't comment back but paw hugs, head bonks, scritches and tuna is appreciated.  I got some serious nappage to do now, I've missed two naps, and it's almost bed time.  Meow.

When I Was First Diagnosed-Repost/Rewrite

I was almost 23. I just finished school and was supposed to start a PhD program in the fall. My life was spinning out of control, I was completely in the thrall of full blown mania. I had over 70 graduate credits under my belt and for the last three years all I had been doing is working on two Master's degrees at the same time, while being a teacher's assistant, tutoring 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. A major publishing house wanted to publish it.  Looking back, 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. Not really. At least I hadn't thought so at the time. 

I had Tylenol, 50 pills, downing it with a bottle of 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, with my teddy bear. And fell asleep.

Woke up in the Emergency room of the hospital. The guy I was semi- 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 much later,  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 14 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 past two years 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.

Some changes in the template and a great play wins a Pulitzer

My friend Peter is working on the blog template, so things might be a little wonky over the next few days. I really appreciate the time and effort he is putting into this, since I am really a Luddite when it comes to adding bells and whistles on my baby. Yes, I think of my blog as my baby. Let me know what you think.
When it's up and running it should be a master piece. He will be available to do other blogs as well... He is starting is own business.

I am proud to report that "Next To Normal" won a Pulitzer yesterday for drama. I was fortunate enough to see this play last year with my friend Peter, and funny enough with blogger Sandy Naiman, at the same showing, but we didn't have each other's cell numbers and missed each other! Dang!

Next To Normal- what can you say about this play- it's the story of a family, who's matriarch is bipolar and has to deal with depression, death of a child,  suicide attempts, ECT, and takes your heart and soul out of you, yet somehow you leave the theatre feeling like there is hope. Sandy has a brilliant review of it here. I tried to review it, but the whole ECT scene triggered me so hard I was weeping. When the lights went up, I found out I was sitting next to the wife of one of the big New York magazine editors and she was weeping too; her Aunt had ECT and we were swapping Kleenex. It's going on a national tour, I highly recommend it.

Words To Live By

I love this band. I still don't know why they never caught on  at this side of the pond.  Been playing this song over and over along with the rest of their stuff and it's helping.

Bless you all and may it help heal all those in pain, and find the solace I found in it.

Fragile

Gratitude. Dad came home from the hospital yesterday. We came so close to loosing him,  had things gone slightly worse by a few hours and they had to operate, we would have lost him for sure. Grateful he is still here, and that he watched baseball on TV today, and was almost able to yell at the umpire. Thank you all for the well wishes. It meant so much to me I don't know what to say. 

I feel fragile, like I am in mourning somehow, and my dear friend Mary is in mourning over a friend who died the same way... the world just seems to be going topsy turvy and is making no sense. Maybe it was always this way. There is so much I want to write and I cannot. I'm sterile. I have ideas, but they dry up after a paragraph or two. This has never happened before. It's like the egg gets fertilized but doesn't implant. Yet you feel like you were pregnant. Maybe in time I can pick up what I have been writing and finish it, but right now, it's unusable, unworkable. Dry. 

I'll remind you all I am on Twitter, trying to learn it, and would love to have people follow me. I just posted the following quote on writing on my Twitter feed which is "Going Through Hell". 

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

April may not be the cruellest month, but today was the cruellest day

Of all the pieces I have ever written this is the one I don't want to write. Over the weekend my father got sick. He was rushed to the hospital early this morning, and after some tests, a CAT scan and some other tests, he is resting comfortably and will be in hospital for a few days. For a little while, we thought it was touch and go.

On a younger person, they would have had tests, been hydrated and sent home. On an elderly person, they stay in to make sure all systems are go. He is in some discomfort but he will be ok.

Not so for one of my favorite readers, Jenn. I won't use her last name, suffice to say she lived on the West coast, and was always astute in her comments, and wrote the most marvelous emails to me on the side. She was a suicide survivor, and like me, was physically hurt from one of her attempt and took some time to heal. My last email from her was on April 1, when she was worried about my own struggles with the proverbial black dog, and how I was doing everything in my own personal power not to go into that good night.

About an hour ago I got a phone call and an email from two separate people telling me that Jenn gave into the Black Dog this weekend and left this sphere. I don't know any thing more than that, and won't until I get a promised letter from her. I do know this, she was so depressed that a friend of hers came up from the Mid-West to visit so she wouldn't be alone, and she had her cats, and had just gotten back together with her boyfriend.

I don't condemn her. I understand what it was it's like to be at that point and want to jump. Maybe she wanted to succeed or maybe she didn't. A. Alvarez in his seminal work " The Savage God" makes a salient point that the Sylvia Plath he knew didn't want to suicide when she did, it was a cry for help to Ted Hughes she wanted him back and she was homesick and over-whelmed with two small children. Alvarez is convinced Plath misjudged the gas by comparing UK gas to US gas and makes a convincing argument that Plath simply miscalculated the gas equation.

Maybe that is what happened to my friend. I just hope that where ever she is now she is at peace.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.