All over the place

Being au naturale once more is strange.

I mean, of course, that I no longer have prescription pills dissolving into my blood stream and balancing my brain chemicals any longer.

And it is strange.

I say strange because I don't know quite how to feel about it.

My moods certainly aren't stable--as I have a mood disorder--but they are , at least, my moods.  Mine.  Not some manufactured stability, or some chemically enduced high or low.  It is nice to know that the way I'm thinking and reacting and feeling, that its all mine.  I may be fucked up, but at least it is my particular brand of fucked up and not attributable to prozac or abilify or whatever.

Somedays it feels wonderful.  I feel energetic, motivated, organized (well, as organized as this lady can get withour serious intervention), and productive.

Other days, or even hours, I feel easily distracted, frustrated, self-destructive, unhealthy, low-energy, depressed, and all sorts of other negaitive things.

And there's no controlling which way I'll feel.  good things can happen and I still feel blue.  Bad things can happen and not seem to tip the scales if I'm feeling great.  That resiliance is nice, really welcome;  but the unshakable negativity even in the face of acts of kindness, activities I enjoy and the people i love?  Well, that's why I tried pills in the first place, right?

And I miss my therapist.  I don't miss taking time out of a very busy schedule to bitch about my problems to a near stranger (ahem). But I miss her.  She was great.  And inspirational and motivational and kind and understanding.  And sweet.

I'm trying to follow simple, clear, practical advice.

Such as, I'm trying to give myself a break.  She always said that.  I'm, as a rule, incredibly hard on myself.  Punishing, even.  If someone treated any one of my friends the way I treat myself, it would be absolutely unacceptable! i'd be up in arms.  And I wouldn't think of treating anyone the way I treat myeslf.  So I'm trying to have patience, be kind, and understanding.

I'm trying to eat better.  Trying is the operative word.  Trying to eat regulary and relatively healthily.  Trying to give the body what it needs, but aknowledging and understanding when the soul needs to be comforted as well...

I'm playing games and interacting with my husband as much as possible. 

I'm going to sleep early and rising early-- listening to the schedule my body wants to keep.

And I'm making plans for the future--which is perhaps the most significant change.

For the first time in a very long time I am entertaining the notion of having a family.  Of my own.  You know.  Like, a baby.

I know, I know, I know.  I'm an unstable mess.  I'll be the first to say it.

But for the first time in so, so, long, the idea of having children isn't repulsing me.  Isn't so terrible.

Obviously I'm not ready to get knocked up tonight with these luke-warm revelations, but I'm taking the padlock off that particular door.  Maybe we'll open it afterall.  Someday down the road.  When I know more.  When life is a bit more stable.

But if you know me and my journey, hearing that I'm starting to warm up to the idea of a family again is quite something.  Entertaining the notion that I might not be the world's worst mother--why that's downright miraculous.

I might be ok, and that's intriguing.

This is in large part thanks to my incrediblpe partner, who helps me view the world through a lens of possibility.  With him as my partner, sure I can parent.  With him as my helpmate, absolutely I can get through this life.

Of course I'll only truly be ready to be a parent if I can honestly say that if he disappeared tomorrow, could I still do it?

When I can answer yes to that, then I'll be ok.

I think I've got a long way to go on that--I'm pretty fucking co-dependent.  We're like trees whose roots have grown together and whose branches have fused in places.  We've been together through all of our formative years--we've become adults as a couple.  To imagine doing anything without his support is somewhat like trying to imagine a new color; they say it isn't possible.

But life happens all the time, and if I'm not able to say (and believe, and know in my heart of hearts) that should anything happen to my partner that took him out of the parenting equation that I'd be able to rais our child well on my own-- then I'm not fit to be a parent.

Besides the not having a secure career, an income above the poverty line, or a place to live...

So, like I said.  Padlock off, but not opening the door yet.

Just.

Just not detesting, abhoring, and shunning the notion.

And that's progress.

I'll be damned! **Edit**

Well, would you look at that?

NERVES

The All Important Third Date

I said I would and I did.

Amazing.

The deed, not the writing.

Though these scenes always makes me grin like an idiot.

It's Nolan as he's wooing Zahra.  You saw their first date and how they met and all that.  Now the THIRD DATE, which Nolan has made somewhat unconventional.  This is a sorta prelude to the date-- the getting ready.

I also love seeing Grey as a little boy--cracks me up.

Enjoy!

All in a day's work!

Why'd I stop posting to Cedar Falls?

My Cedar Falls Blog?

Because Lord knows I have like a hundred little vignettes just sitting her being read by noone but moi.

Of course, If I posted them to the wild blue yonder of etherspace, they'd be there being read by noone but me in cyberspace...

But I think I stopped because a friend urged me to put them in order.

But I don't think in order.  And being forced to sort of stop and order them before all the writing was done killed my zeal, I think.

So Today, I believe, I will post to the Cedar Falls blog again.

I can't promise it will be a new one (I'm talking to you, D); but I promise it will be the one I feel like posting.

And guess what?  Not only am I getting laun dry done, not only have I been fucked hard in the ass this morning, not only have I been to the supermarket, but I have also written down a cold open and a first scene for the LBJ series.

Suck it, anti-depressents, mood stabilizers, and thyroid pills!

Baby Stepping Down the Stairs...

The decision was made, by myself and my husband, to cease the meds and stop with therapy.  He is backtracking now, saying all he wanted was to stop the meds, but he completely told me to stop going to therapy because it isn’t working and if anything, I gotten worse.

Now he claims otherwise, but had he not said that I wouldn’t have made such a drastic decision.

But it has been over a year.  And I agree.  I’m not better.  Not sure I’m worse.  I’ll trust the person I live with.

But I’m off meds. 

And guess who’s back to play?  Our Cedar Falls pals!

Apparently crazy is what makes me creative!  The oldest cliché in the book, I know, but the evidence is undeniable.  Both times I’ve seriously gone off my meds are the only time in the last 14 months that the characters have begun speaking again.  While on meds they and all other creative juice lays still and fetid.

Now it is all stirred up!  I want to write all kinds of things!

I want to write my Bridgewater Triangle movie;  I want to write my TV series about LBJ (Called :”Johnson” in honor of the man’s enormous endowment!), I want to write a miniseries about Eleanor of Aquitaine, and yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES—I want to write more about my incestuous little town.

The test will be whether or not I actually DO write anything, or simply think about it ad nauseum.

I have other stupid endeavors occupying my feeble little flurried mind.  Such as designing an in-law addition that may theoretically go onto my parents’ house.  And designing other houses, because I have ADD and cannot focus solely on one projects at a time, which is unfortunate since multitasking is not only not my strong suit, it is the bane of my miserable little existence.

And come Wednesday I will not be sitting with my therapist, whom I love very much.

And I’m unclear how I feel about this. 

I am certain I bawled my eyes out over it in the car after I told her my plan.

Certain  I felt shitty and awkward and stupid while explaining that it wasn’t her—she’s great—it is all me.

She says this feeling is part of my neuroses (new rosies!).

I could care less.  I need a break.  See if I can’t figure this out on my own.

She doubts that and is extrememly worried about my safety.

I very honestly assured her that while I think about suicide every day, about how wonderful it would be to kill myself and end the suffering, end the doubt, stop the pain and the hurt and the miserable existence—I haven’t yet, so I doubt I’ll ever have the balls to do it.

You see, I’m a fucking coward.  And when you’re a coward you look for easy, painless ways to off yourself.  And you panic and chicken-out if there’s a chance of failure. 

I should have taken all the sleeping pills in my possession a few months back, but did not.  I had the means, the motive, and the opportunity.

And I pussied out.

There’s a gun shop on my drive to work (oh the rural parts of our state) and I could stop in some day, apply for a license or whatever.

And yet have I?

And I won’t.

Not because I don’t desperately want to.

But because I am a feckless fool.

But maybe I’ll write again.  Remember how that gave me purpose?  It would be nice to have a purpose aside from trying to not get fired from a job I don’t love and at which I am not particularly skilled…

Hamlet, the sequel?

I've decided to cease and desist with the therapy.  Aaron reckons I've gotten worse.

So I'm going to stop seeing the therapist and stop with the medication (not that I'm on much right now anyway, due to healthcare snafu).

Tomorrow's therapy session will not go well.

The Therapist will not agree with my assessment.

I'm not looking forward to it.

And I will miss her alot.

But if it isn't working, it isn't working.

And I'm googling ways to kill yourself with common household objects.  So I'd say it isn't working.

The money makes me want to die.  The job makes me want to die.  The living situation makes me want to die.  My inability to cope with and manage most aspects of adult life makes me want to die.

And my guilt over what this is all doing to Aaron?  I want to curl up into a little miserable ball and expire.

But comes a time one must, surely, stop passively longing for release and finally take action, right?

If only there were a poisoned-sword duel I could attend.  Alas and alack.

That is the question...

SO yesterday was sort of bullshit.  I mean, it wasn't, at the time.  But now I feel very dissimilar.  Such is the way of things when you're bipolar I guess.

My therapist made me, I mean physically stopped me and held me and made me look her in the eyes and promise I'd call her if I felt like harming myself.

I made the promise, but not easily.

Everytime I have felt like harming myself I have stoutly refused to call her, or anyone.

Because when you're in that frame of mind you don't want help, you don't want people who care, you don't want to be saved.

You want to finally screw up enough courage to fucking get it fucking overwith already

Because.  Cowardice.

A few weeks ago, when I was feeling similarly to this, Aaron took the day off of work to stay home with me. This is a man who doesn't get paid for sick time.  He was concerned enough about what I'd do at home if left to my own devices that he stayed home despite losing all the pay.

And in his arms we spoke at length about Hamlet's soliloquy.

You know the one.

Everyone thinks they know it.

We've all hear it, or, rather, parts of it, again and again and again and again.  in movies, cartoons, tv, in other fuc king plays, in passing party conversation, in song and ad infinitum.

To be or not to be that is the question.

Most of us associate this line with hack acting.  To most of us, this line IS the quintessesntial shakesperain line, coupled with some affected british accent thespian in a ruffled collar holding a skull.  The charicature shakespeare.  Shakespeare distilled.

But that monologue, when read correctly, when you get past all the centuries of bullshit (I mean, actors dread having to give this soliloquy simply because it is so fucking over-exposed.  You feel like a quack the minute the words spill over your tongue!), once you really look deeply at it?

It is absolutely and on a deeply human level, so fucking TRUE TO LIFE.

If your life is that of a person who frequently considers and contemplates suicide.  It isn't this big existentialist (before there was a term for that) wankfest.

It is the real conversation that depressed individuals have with themselves over and over and over.  It is filled with reason but colored by cowardice.  It is aching and yearning and absolutely riddled with pain.

And, sitting there, in my husbands arms and going through that soliloquy line by line (he memorized it when he played Hamlet in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, of course), I wept.

I wept because someone knew my heart completely.  Understood my tangled, thorny thoughts better than I did myself.  I wept because I wasn't alone, as I so often feel in those times--not because I was cradled in my lover's embrace (you see, in a deep depression this closeness can sometimes have a numbing effect--can sometimes make one lonlier still, because being so close to a vital being, a pumping heart, especially of one who 'loves' you?  This often makes the depressed person feel more alien.  Further distances them from their own humanity.  Look at the way Hamlet treats Ophelia!), but because someone, some fucking PLAYWRIGHT in some dusty theatre's backroom, scribbled this amazing piece of revelation down onto vellum.

To exist or not to exist is the problem, the question at hand.
Whether it is braver, m ore righteous, to suffer your fate
or to take a stand and say "fuck you" to the hand you've been dealt.
To just... go to sleep, nothing more!  And by doing so,
To take matters into my own hands and end all the pain, the misery, the awfulness.
It is something to strive for, to reach for, it is a desire...
To die.  To just sleep... (how nice would that be?)
But there's the fucking catch.
Because in this sleep of death, this eternal sleep, what kind of dreams/nightmares will take me?
It gives us pause.
And it makes our lives long and full of suffering.
The fear of what's after death is what makes cowards of us.
We're afraid to take control and kill ourselves because nobody really knows
What waits after we draw our final pitiful breath.
 Because why else put up with a shitty, awful, miserable life, but for fear of the afterlife?
The undiscovered country from which no traveler returns (thanks, will).
It weakens our resolve.
It holds us back from taking that last, final, and yearned-for step to freedom.
These THOUGHTS, these useless fucking machinations of the cowardly brain
they stand in the way of ACTION
and the moment is once again lost...  Till next time we start this whole fucking debate again...


But there's a reason everything sounds better coming from the bard...


HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action

 

Tomorrow is Today

Grades are due today, so I took the fucking day off.

I am almost $500.00 overdrawn until my direct deposit goes through tonight at midnight.

My health insurance is still in limbo or non-existant.

Which means my medication is slim to none (leftovers and free samples)

And my stress level is through the roof because by june I may not have a job and simultaneously may not have a place to live, as my landlord wants to move back in here...

But the election went the way I'd hoped (with a few exceptions).  I am not going to work today (double edged, but I'm choosing to enjoy the pleasant edge), we have monday off, Thanksgiving is within sight, and I live with and love my best friend.

So despite the instability of my mental/emotional state, and despite the overwhelming burdens of work, finances, and paperwork... despite all that I am feeling glad.

And not like killing myself.  Today, anyway.

Though I'll confess the prospect of accidental death almost never feels like a bad prospect.

I suppose with continued therapy I'll get to work through that.