Pyroclasm

Adrift

2011-09-01T13:21:00.000-04:00

Lobster boats in the fog, Lands End, ME

When I was 11 or 12 years old, we were going to a small christian fundamentalist church about 4 times a week. It was meeting in the chapel of a local college and there were no other kids my age. Actually, there were seldom any other kids and maybe two dozen adults on a crowded Sunday. I was the kind of kid in need of approval and acceptance, so I tended to latch on to any friendly adult who'd put up with me.

One younger couple, with no kids of their own, took me under their wing. She taught me a few songs on the piano, he taught me stupid jokes. When there were enough kids at church to warrant it, they were Sunday school teachers. I confided in them, in her especially, and I trusted them.

I trusted them so much that when I started having what I now know were minor auditory and visual hallucinations, it was to them that I nervously confessed. "I think something is wrong with my head. I think I might be having a nervous breakdown." Of course, I didn't even know what that really meant, not back then.

Her eyes went cold and her face pinched closed. "It's a demon," she told me. "The Bible says God won't give us more than we can bear. You have a demon in your head. You let it in somehow. You need to pray."

Fast forward 7 or 8 years, and I'm sitting in the office of my college psychology professor.

Since that day all those years ago, I'd been careful to keep my "demons" to myself. I told people that I dropped out of my first college after a month and a half because the brand of Christianity they preached was too liberal. Too much love, not enough hellfire. The truth was I'd suffered a complete disconnect from reality. I saw things, terrifying things. I heard voices. I stopped sleeping. I dropped out and went to a hyper-strict fundie college.

I prayed as hard as I could, and I read the Bible, and I pretended I wasn't walking through nightmares every second of the day. I found a verse that "spoke" to me and I wrapped myself in it. "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

And that worked, until I found myself curled up on some bathroom floor with a razor blade.

A way of escape.

Days later, I showed my psychology professor -- also the head guidance counselor for the school -- my wrist. "Help me. Please."

He turned his face away. I still remember how he turned away from me. "I can't help you. You need to pray, girl." Then he asked me to leave his office.

I don't really remember what happened after that. I know it hurt. I know a week or so later I was home and I never did manage another attempt at high learning.

Frogs Don't Go Crazy

2011-08-17T12:05:00.000-04:00

I'm alive. And I took a picture of this frog. Look at him. He just wants me to stop poking him and leave. Then he'll go eat a bug or a worm or something. He doesn't have a care in the damn world.

His kids don't have dental problems he can't afford to get fixed.

He isn't trying to think up new ways to feed four people for less than $50 a week.

His mortgage isn't getting paid a couple days later every month.

He doesn't have an electric bill.

He doesn't need to buy a car he can't afford.

His isn't trapped under the weight of his family's failure to thrive because of him, because he's a fucked-up loser who can't hold down a job.

He's just a frog.

Lucky bastard.

Wordless Wednesday and Proof of Life

2011-07-06T10:22:00.000-04:00

I am godless.

2011-06-12T19:32:00.000-04:00

I had the idea, for good or ill, to use Sundays as a dedicated space for "Atheist Share Time." Like in kindergarten

It's important to me, my atheism. As to why, well.. That'll make a good essay, won't it?

A friend shared this video with me today on Facebook. It's hard for me to watch, as it contains images of some of the violence and suffering perpetrated in the name of various gods, as well as other instances of human desperation and suffering that people have justified or excused in the name of their imaginary friends.

Powerful stuff.

The Most Honest Thing I've Ever Written

2011-06-07T10:41:00.000-04:00

I don't pray, but sometimes I still talk to you. I know it's talking to myself, just like all those empty prayers I used to send up, but I need to do it. I make no excuses for the weakness.

Two years ago, I watched your chest hitch and rise and hold for an eternal second before it fell again. It didn't rise, after that. It stopped. You stopped. Two years ago at dawn, you ended. I try not to think, "You left me." I admit sometimes I can't help it. Sometimes in my small selfish moments I feel like you deserted me.

I still need you. I was your little girl all my life. Those stupid months when we didn't speak, when my teenaged angst and smugness prevented us from being close, I was still your girl. I got older and wiser. I had a daughter of my own. That was what made me realize how little I knew and how much I needed you. The older I got, the more I needed you.

Here I am, aging every day, knowing less and less. Every day I want to ask you something. Every day I have some thought that remains intangible and invalid because I can't share it with you, the only person who'd truly understand. Every day I look at your picture on the shelf and wish I could hear you tell me one more time that I'll be alright. That I'm strong. That you love me.

I have a CD in my drawer with your voice on it, a sound clip. "Hi, this is Lynne, I can't get to the phone so leave a message." I haven't listened to it, not once. I didn't even make the CD, I had B do it. Is that strange? I'd give up anything to hear you again, but I can't listen to that. I don't want a recording. I want you.

It starts in spring with my birthday. We had Easter dinner on my birthday at your house and I think that was the day I realized how soon it would be. I couldn't ignore the weakness in your hands or the pain in your eyes. I think that was the most bitter meal I ever choked down.

Then Mother's Day. It feels silly to celebrate it now. Why would I? I don't have a mother. I have to force myself through it, smile and be grateful for my children, their gentle and thoughtful celebration. I think H knows why I'm sad on Mother's Day. She's more perceptive at 13 than I am now, sometimes.

And then your birthday. Oh god, oh god. How did I get through your birthday? Why didn't everyone there know I was breaking inside? Your birthday comes and the weather gets warmer and I remember I just wanted to be near you. I just wanted to touch you. Be close to you. Stay with you forever.

But forever isn't something people get. I got two more weeks. Those last days I stayed awake. I haven't talked about that so much. I don't think I'm ready to, not even yet. But I stayed awake for three days and I watched you breathe. I watched your chest rise and fall. I was watching in those strange orange hours before dawn when it slowed. Less regular. Longer and longer between those hitching mechanical breaths until I knew it was time. Would being well-rested have made it less surreal? Less terrible and consuming?

No, I don't think so.

Wait, What?

2011-05-31T10:46:00.000-04:00

When I wrote in that last post that I wanted to update my blogs more and remember why I keep them, I promptly had an ontological seizure. Why am I doing this? Why do I keep these blogs? Why are we here?

Having reminded myself, it feels like a good idea to record my answers for the next inevitable session of doubt.

I keep a blog about my greyhounds because they are my very best friends and they're freakin' adorable. They make my heart smile. They're my sunshine in a simple, selfless way that human beings can't manage. I realized that when I share them with the world, other people smile too. That's why I keep that blog: to share the happiness that dog bring me.

I keep the writing blog -- which I haven't really made known -- in a dismal effort to take my writing seriously. Honestly, it stills freaks me out to admit that yes, I string words together for fun and that yes, I would like to Be An Author, whatever that means. I need to work out my mental problems about that, still.

This blog here is ostensibly about living with a mental illness. Sometimes I get frustrated, because there are so many other things I'd like to write about, but I'm uncomfortable sharing and I want to keep the focus narrower. I'm trying to shed that and come to the understanding that I can write about parenting, for example, because my parenting is deeply affected by my twisted brain. Any topic I choose could be tied back into this. My worldview is focused through a unique lens. I need to relax and learn to share more of myself, but I've had a couple unhappy experiences with reactions to what I've written here that still upset me. I'm working on it.

Now, how long before I forget why I'm doing this again?

Line in the Proverbial Sand

2011-05-27T13:41:00.000-04:00

When am I being gentle with myself and when am I making excuses for myself?

I'm in a decent place now, with my brain. I hope I can stay here for a while. I'm wise enough, self-aware enough, to know that I can't expect permanence of any mindset. I'll change and revolve, eventually. For now, this is good.

Everyone struggles. I think each person has some barrier that keeps them from whatever goal they might have. Finances or location or family pressure or ill health or lack of education. I understand that my biggest obstacle is my brain. I'm in my own way. Sure, sometimes it's money or my allergies or bad back, but there's one giant thing always blocking my path: Pyro Jones herself, and the changeable mental state thereof.

I am adept at working around myself. Unfortunately, I'm even more adept at catching myself trying to sneak past myself. Did you follow that? I swear to you that while I am on occasion dissociative and I have a personality disorder, I don't have the dissociative identity disorder. It's all me. One me, I mean.

This is a long-winded way of saying that right now, I see my problems. Complacency, helplessness, laziness. I don't want to go out and do yard work, so I list all the reasons I can't. I don't want to go to the store, so I scheme up other ways to get the things I need and shift the burden. I don't want to worry about money so I let the partner deal with the bills and stresses and tell myself it's okay since I don't spend anything.

I'm getting nowhere like this, and I'm sick of myself.

So I'm starting small. My health, for one thing. My doctor has put me on a prescription dose of Vitamin D. The strength of the dose is startling; my levels were critically, dangerously low. It's already made a difference in terms of aches and pains and mood and energy. Less inclined to sit around all day and eat toast in front of the computer, I'm starting to get small amounts of exercise doing yard work. I don't want to re-injure my spine and treat myself to another couple weeks in bed. The housework is -- gasp! -- caught up and easily kept up.

And I'm going to be better about blogging. I have three: this one, the one about my dogs, and the one about my writing. I'm going to be better about posting in them, and that's it. I'm going to remember why I'm doing it and I'm going to keep at it.

I don't have any faith that this disciplined outlook will stick around forever, but I am at least hopeful that it will hang around long enough for me to have developed some decent habits.

Absence, Disinterest

2011-05-06T18:06:00.001-04:00

I'm tired of myself. But I went on vacation with Drive to Gettysburg, and we saw this pig.

I think I did well. All panic was kept to a relative minimum, thanks to having my dog with me. I was with people I knew, meeting up with people I had for the most part met before. My back injury didn't trouble me, as I refrained from my usual stupidity regarding when to rest myself.

I remembered that it's not all about me and that I must give people the benefit of the doubt. I think I did okay. There are lots of little situations that arose, here and there, which would probably be interesting to examine. Odd reactions, anxiety, thoughts about life and aging... But I just don't care. I just don't want to think deeply about it and lately when I find myself getting introspective I either have a drink, turn my brain off with Farmville, or take a nap before it goes too far. I don't want to think about it, not any of it.

Haters Gonna Hate

2011-04-26T13:47:00.000-04:00

I am my own least favorite subject lately. I'm just keeping myself busy with dogs and kids and cleaning and laundering. Dusting and cooking. Detailed grocery lists and itineraries. Anything to keep me focused on anything that is not introspection.

So here's a saturated picture of my current favorite tree.

Yeah.

What's the Difference?

2011-04-06T14:08:00.000-04:00

So having stated that I'm not bipolar, I was prompted to do a little research. I love the internet, I truly do. Everything is just right there! Knowledge and entertainment, dense and moist and chewy and frankly indistinguishable from each other. Nom.

Is it obvious I'm writing at lunchtime again?

I don't know what it's like to be bipolar, so I needed to ask the internet and then compile the difference between BPD (referred to herein as "me" for ease of use) and bipolar disorder. Both are, on the surface, characterized by emotional disturbance and fluctuation. I understand there are variations within a bipolar diagnosis, but my waters are muddy enough. These are generalizations, and my only "authority" here is my experience as a crazy person.

Holy thesis paper, Batman.

Mood Fluctuation: The differences here are in range and duration. A lot of people on earth experience ups and downs, but for a bipolar person, they aren't hills and valleys. They're chasms and cliffs and you reside in one or the other for weeks or months at a time. For me, the moods fluctuate along a different axis: anger and anxiety. Additionally, they're whiplash fast, from a couple of minutes to a few hours. Sometimes a bad episode will last an entire evening. Personally, when I am able to form the thought "This can't last," it brings no relief. After all, I'm just going to be some other shade of messed up in a little while.

Impulsive Behavior: I said that on the surface bipolar and borderline both appear as mood disturbances, but it's important to remember that being borderline is all about instability, not just of mood but of perception, identity and behavior. At some points, a bipolar person in a manic stage will engage in self-destructive behaviors; these stem from feelings of god-like invulnerability, according to the internet. When someone like me is being self-destructive or self-harming, it's an attempt to stop pain. You read that right. Imagine your brain screaming at you so loudly that you will damage your body to stop hearing it. Can you wrap a sane mind around that thought?

Remission: Whoa. New to me! Bipolar disorder can go into remission? I should research things more often. Remission isn't something I can expect. Once BPD manifests, it's with you for life with little reprieve. (Some lessening of symptoms may be experienced with age or wisdom.) I get frustrated with the crap shilled to people, especially online. I found several websites touting their "cures," which included such tactics as "developing maturity" and "re-parenting oneself" and "accepting responsibility." What the hell? I keep expecting to find mention of Jesus' love in there.

Triggers: I has them. Bipolar mood changes seem to happen regardless of circumstances and without any definite triggering factor. Not so for me. Any event -- a stray word, a look I can't interpret, an irritating noise or a flash of memory -- can send me spinning.

Remember, this is all for my own education and this is an amalgam of superficial information gleaned from the internet and not intended to be useful to anyone but me. There. Is my ass covered?

I'm gonna go make some brownies.

I'm Not Bipolar.

2011-04-04T17:35:00.000-04:00

In a weird way, saying that feels like an unveiling. Even in a blog that is ostensibly about what it's like to live in my head, I rarely discuss my diagnosis or the impact it's had on me in the past or whatever dim hope I nurse for the future. When I'm at my worst and neediest, I do the opposite of what is typical, expected behavior. I go emotionally fetal, curl up and send the spikes inward. I keep the venom to myself as much as I can.

I fail, sometimes. And I lose friends when I fail. That's the price I've always paid. My relationship of ten years is the single longest standing relationship I've ever had with anyone who was not my parent. I don't have any of those "best childhood buds" around. For me, the promise "We'll keep in touch" is another way of saying good-bye.

My behavior patterns aren't psychologically deep. I don't like losing people, so I don't "acquire" them in the first place. I'm aided in this by generalized anxiety, avoidant behaviors, panic disorder and agoraphobia working together to keep me at home, and the sincere desire to just not bother anyone.

The internet helps me socialize. The friends I have "out there" are real, beautiful, fascinating people. A few times a year, I even force myself to overcome emotional inertia and make real-world contact. I went to Vermont last year. I'm going to Pennsylvania at the end of this month. These little trips are stressful for me, and I typically spend a lot of time smiling faintly to disguise the slow-rolling storm fronts of panic I am trying to breathe through. I don't speak much in person. It's enough to be there, to listen, to smile and nod and share a laugh and a glass of wine.

So here it is. I'm not bipolar. I have borderline personality disorder. It's a stigma. Mental health professionals don't like to treat people with BPD and frankly, there isn't much you can do for it. There are quite a few other stickers on my chart, but it's all related. And all of those things listed under "Symptoms" are true of me. I have never admitted to some of this; I am ashamed in a profound way that they are true. I feel like I should have been stronger. I feel like I should be better than this.

A desperate, frantic need to avoid abandonment. Intensely unstable relationships. Markedly unstable sense of self. Impulsive, potentially self-damaging behaviors. Recurrent self harm. Affective instability due to hyper-reactive moods. Chronic emptiness. Difficulty controlling anger. Stress-induced paranoia and dissociation.

I am admitting to all of these things. This is me. Is it a portrait of me, or is the frame in which I am showcased? It's really all just one unit, I guess. There's no practical difference; look at the whole thing.

The Blob That Stings

2011-03-22T12:45:00.004-04:00

I'm treading carefully around myself at the moment, because I want to complain. I just want to wail and bitch and stomp and curl up with some warm self-pity. When I most feel like just whining about How Unfair It Is, I don't let myself write here. I am suspicious of my human need for attention and I don't like to indulge it by unproductive angst-wanking.

Whining is pointless, anyway. Other than letting people know you're a whiny little baby, you aren't accomplishing anything. Not solving the problems, not addressing the issues, not trying to make things better. Self-pity is a loathsome indulgence and I prefer to do it as privately as I can manage.

I've made some tentative entreaties lately, small hesitant steps in the direction of enlarging my community. I don't have any place I can discuss my mental health, unless these carefully restrained blog posts count. And frankly, the rare post that contains actual raw emotion has had unpleasant personal fallout I am unwilling to risk again. That's right, one person ruined it for everybody. The whole class gets punished. Since the punishment is "You don't have to read those uncomfortable words anymore" I guess you'll manage.

Finding fellow atheists with whom I can converse and discuss has been easy. I'm thrilled with most of the friends I've made in various forums online. There's a slew of stories like mine about the slog out of religion.

Finding other BPD "sufferers" or whatever you want to call it, that has proven more difficult.

To clarify, it's not more difficult to find them, but just close your eyes and imagine this. A room full of people, bright-eyed, unusually perceptive in some ways and startlingly oblivious in others. What they all have in common is a diagnosis that in itself means they are by nature hypersensitive, manipulative, unstable and frankly, a little self-involved.

Yeah, I don't want to hang out with them either.

I've always had this difficulty connecting. I think I've found a balance with my mostly-online social life. I love my friends, but no matter how much that is true I am compelled to keep a minimum safe distance. I disappear every so often, fade back a little, not to see who will miss me but more to give people a break from me. (The former, I am ashamed to admit, used to be true quite frequently. "I'm leaving! And if you don't chase me it means you never loved me!")

The drawback: I'm having problems and I don't know where to go with them.

I am not asking for people to step forward and sacrifice themselves on the altar of my emotions. That's not necessary and I wouldn't be comfortable accepting any such offers. I don't know how to be that vulnerable. Besides, there's no solution. There's no practical help or advice that can be offered. It would be a torrent of angst and confusion and hurt that would accomplish nothing aside from the spreading of angst, confusion and hurt.

And I try not to do that when I can avoid it.

Nothing Always Changes Sometimes

2011-03-07T11:35:00.005-05:00

A whole month between posts? Great job. Yay.

I don't know how to describe where I've been. Am, rather. Injuries and illnesses, none life-threatening and all bothersome. Domestic chores that need doing every damn day. Children that refuse to be self-cleaning or self-amusing. Restless sleep and uneasy dreams. Endless winter gray.

There haven't been any giant moments of crazy, no spinning flamewheels of rage or chasms of depression. The one "incident" that comes to mind was an obvious hormonal fluke, handled somewhat capably and forgotten.

Spinning my wheels? I'm not that desperate. Treading water? I'm not working that hard. I'm floating. I'm muffled. I'm somnolent.

But I think the fact that I've posted is at least a sign that I'd like to wake up, a little crocus-head of hope that some color will return to my brain soon. I want it back.

There Is Only Snow

2011-02-02T15:08:00.004-05:00

Reach for It

2011-01-31T11:49:00.003-05:00

I've been depressed, but it's the comfortable sort. The sort where you're sleepy and quiet, distant and serene in a numb, disinterested way.

I decided last week, in a moment of over-caffeination, that I would shake myself a little. Wake up a little. Force myself from behind the comforting veil of not caring.

It's going well.

Le Sigh

2011-01-18T16:17:00.002-05:00

The task of updating this blog is on my To Do List, and we all know I am a reluctant slave to The List.

I try to remain self-aware of my emotional state, but there's one current that slips by me relatively often. A month ago, I stopped interacting. I blamed it on the busy and much-loathed holiday season, but I think the truth is I have been depressed.

You would think, since I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression about twenty freakin' years ago, that I would recognize it. But it's not all magma and explosions like the rest of my mood-related problems. It's a muddy river that sucks me under so gradually I don't noticed until I've drowned.

I just want to sleep. I want to feel sorry for myself and sleep.

However, having recognized -- finally, I know -- the issue at hand, I'm going to attempt to combat it forcefully. My To Do List is out and I've accomplished... Well, I updated this blog and I compelled myself to be social today, even if only online. Honestly, that's the only way I'm social anyhow. Now I will update the other two blogs (dog here and writing here),even if briefly. I don't know what glorious things will occur after that. Maybe a nap.

I have to remember that the degree of difficulty of my daily life has not increased exponentially. I just got less able, or something. I feel far away, as if I'm viewing the world distantly, through water. It's hard to care and I'm faking it.

All that said, I'm not so bad as I could be.

Part of My Plan

2010-12-29T13:16:00.002-05:00

Everyone has a standard operating procedure when it comes to making plans and decisions, and this is mine.

1. Chew on the issue until I have gnawed it into the shape of a well-defined question that will support a concrete answer.

2. Decide the best course of action, with several options, redundancies, switchbacks and emergency hatches all built into the plan.

3. Enact plan, allowing for setbacks and changes of mind.

4. TELL NO ONE.

5. Content to remain unfathomable, conquer life one step at a time. Stop for breath often.

It's that step #4 that's really precious to me. I hate to make commitments. I hate to make promises. There's so little wiggle room in a promise. My favorite word might be "might."

So to make a long story short I promised the father of my children I would Do Something with this story I wrote. This ridiculous 100,000 words of lurid space flashiness. It felt like a safe promise to make because "do something" is so vague and open ended. I mean, I could just decide to edit and revise it. Again. That would be doing something, technically.

In a rare fit of growth as a human being, I decided to honor the spirit of the promise and not try to squirm out of what we all know I was really agreeing to do. But I've still taken two months to work out a careful plan with concrete answers. What is Something and what are acceptable methods of Doing it? Honestly, my plans are like choose-your-own-adventure books. The kind where there's a chickenshit option and you can choose to run away from the haunted house and never confront the ghosts within.

So anyway, I'm working up my courage to write down my plan here. I'm trying to be less hung up about my worthiness issues and just have fun with what I do.

C'est Moi

2010-12-13T13:04:00.004-05:00

For the curious, I am illustrating this post with a self-portrait I have titled, "I was trying to wipe dog snot off the lens and bumped the shutter button so I'm calling it art." The astute viewer may even notice the dog snot in question.

I feel sort of obligated to follow up my last post with a reassuring "I'm not dead yet" post. So... I'm not dead yet. I'm not feeling much better, but I'm not dead.

In the interest of trying to get my life to suck in at least a different way, I'm trying something new and terrifying that I'm not ready to talk about. If I say it here, it's harder for me to shrug off. It's nothing dangerous, I promise. And when I can bear to say it "out loud" I will.

I'm really honest in this blog. I'm a really honest person in general, to the point of detriment, so as a counter measure to that I am in reality a very close-mouthed person. In being open about issues that are important and serious and under-documented, I'm trying to tell the world to look twice. What you see is a frump, a housewife in gray, a stand-offish and over-sensitive bitch. I can't tell you those things aren't true. But I can tell you that it's not the complete truth.

Post-Failure Self-Castigation

2010-12-03T10:34:00.004-05:00

Disclaimer: I will regret publishing this post, because I'm going to be honest. To make sure I really do publish it, I'm not going to indulge in my usual squeamish hours of editing and second-guessing. I don't really want to talk about it in a "dialogue" sense, though you're welcome to ask questions. I'm saving them in a file with the nebulous plan to answer them all at some point.)

I want to share some things with you.

But I probably won't.

Being "open" about having mental illness(es) turns out to be exponentially more painful for me than I thought it would. I think part of that is the specific dysfunctions I have and part of it is my underlying personality, what there is of it.

I am clinically thin-skinned. "Emotional burn victim." No matter how casual your touch is or what you mean by it, I can come away wounded, infected, re-injured, blah blah blah. You're smart people, you can extrapolate a metaphor. No one that has read one of these posts and responded, either in comment or in person, has been anything less than kind and supportive. That doesn't stop me from wincing and tensing and anticipating the pain.

I am also shy and insecure. I don't know if that's who I am or who my symptoms make me. I am uncomfortable with your concern. You can't help anyway, so I'm going to tell you it's fine.

It's really not fine. I'm increasingly frustrated as I crawl closer to 40 and nothing seems to improve. I'm waiting to outgrow this. It says there on the Wikipedia that people do, you know. Symptoms lessen over time, it says. Could I just wait it out?

I think that one of the hardest parts of being "open" for me is that people who know me "in real life," the people that have known me for so long like my remaining parent or my in-laws or my aunts and cousins, can all read this. I feel constrained by that. These are the people from whom I have been hiding "how bad it really is" the longest. I'm afraid of their concern.

Last and far from least is the humiliation factor. I hate being this way. I am embarrassed and disgusted by myself. I still cannot accept that I can't always control myself. A few days ago I broke down and I'm still mentally engaged in the post-failure self-castigation that will go on for weeks. I am dismayed and ashamed at some of the things that I did and most of the things I said. I can't bear my own company and I can't escape it.

I don't even remember it all correctly.

I remember being on the floor. I do not remember throwing myself there. I remember running down the street. I do not remember leaving the house. I remember the throb of bruises rising and I do not remember hitting myself. I remember being desperate for the end and I don't remember the beginning.

This is why I can't meet your eyes.

(Because I mentioned it previously, I feel obligated to mention I did actually complete NaNoWriMo. I wrote something like 50,150 words in a story during the month of November. I'm counting it as a partial success because I didn't actually completely the story. More specifically, I haven't written a single word since about the 29th. Nothing. It died. It was a desperate rush at the end to at least meet the word count, even though I knew finishing the whole draft would be beyond me. I can feel these shut-downs coming.

There are a couple things I can do to jump start it again but none of them are available to me. Sadly, these are also the things that would ease my desperately symptomatic behavior of late. So I wait and maybe it'll come back. Maybe it won't, this time.)

I Kind of Hate November

2010-11-23T13:46:00.003-05:00

Oooh, an update.

I am churning away at NaNoWriMo. It has occurred to me that I am actually the one being churned. Either way, there is some churning going on. I did have a rough couple of days around the two-week mark due entirely to my brain frothing up in a ragey lather and I got behind then. Then I ran out of "creative juice." (Literally. Let me know if you have a hook up.)

November is always a busy month for us, with a profusion of birthdays, anniversaries, the usual season-change chores and the beginning of the holidays. Rest assured there will be a post on my deep and abiding hatred for all things holiday. (Seriously. I don't even like fucking Arbor Day and I have nothing against trees.)

It's also the month when illness settles upon us like a feverish migratory bird of phlegm. Our teenager is some kind of a mutant who never gets sick, but our toddler is a different story. From November to March every year he is a fountain of snot and he is not happy about it. Given that I spent ten days in the hospital in February watching him breathe through a nasty case of RSV, I have developed something of a paranoia about his health. We were in the emergency room with him less than a week ago when his fever spiked over 103 degrees.

So I'm a little behind on my word count. So far in 23 days I have written 34,705 words. If you do the math. A little over 15,000 words to go and a week to do it in.

No sweat.

Pardon my dissonance.

2010-11-19T08:37:00.003-05:00

I am calm, dammit.
I don't need sleep.
I don't need peace or quiet.
I don't need anything.
I'm FINE.
I always grind my teeth when I'm calm.
It's white-knuckled serenity.
Zen by fiat.

It's more fun if you put your arms up.

2010-11-15T08:59:00.005-05:00

It's nothing like a roller coaster. Part of the thrill of the roller coaster is knowing that drop is coming. You're carried slowly up and swept cleanly down. It's all exhilaration and that giddy not-fear, that happy sort of terror. A thrill ride.

It's more like being shoved off a rocky cliff in the dark. There's more tearing and scraping and screaming and breaking than with the average roller coaster ride.

The worst part, sometimes, is that moment when I think I'm at the bottom. Is this it? Has it stopped? Can I start to climb?

Not yet. More falling, failing, crashing.

There's one horrified thought all the way down. This is my fault. I did this. This is all my fault. They need me up there and I don't know how to get back out.

I'm scared ~~sometimes~~ ~~a lot~~ all the fucking time.

Trudge. Trudge trudge trudge.

2010-11-07T11:58:00.003-05:00

NaNoWriMo is teaching me a lot about myself as a writer. I'm learning that I'm ridiculously ponderous, for example, and that the idea of "just not editing" gives me hives. I'm at -400 words for the day, because I needed to eradicate a giant unwieldy lump of exposition.

When I was a kid I could erupt forth with thousands of words, whole plots mapped out within days.

I still have some of that writing.

It's utter trash.

I'm still going to finish this draft in 30 days, though.

Ta DA!

2010-10-31T22:21:00.002-04:00

So I've been sort of crisp and snappish for a couple of days, and the spell finally broke today. I even managed to relax enough to go outside and rake some leaves. I went grocery shopping with only minor incident. I even managed to finish a prologue that has been haunting my every waking moment. If I could only get GoogleDocs to perform for me at all, I would be a happy camper indeed. I regret you, GoogleDocs. :(

So anyway, here is a picture of a window. You can't tell, but there was an angry chicken glaring at me through it when I took this picture. I'm supposed to start a new book tomorrow for NaNoWriMo, and I am mildly nauseated. Then again, I have been eating Halloween candy.

Worry-Free Wednesday

2010-10-27T12:10:00.002-04:00

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line...

2010-10-26T18:17:00.003-04:00

I feel like my brain is crunching to an inexorable stop, revisiting all the intermittent issues of worthlessness and despair. As many times as I've done this, been here, felt this way, I'm never sure. Should I fight? Should I relax and let it happen? We have always started up again, rusty and reluctant but somehow functional. I wonder if I could save myself some trouble if I just accept that, for a little while, I'll be loathsome and useless. We're just at that place in the road again where we have to coast through the dark.

The hardest part right now is my crisis of confidence. It's impossibly inconvenient for me to have no faith in my abilities. I'm forcibly reminding myself that I must go forward with my projects regardless of how I feel about them now*. I have spent hours a day for the past couple of days trying to pick apart my self-esteem and attain some objective idea of how skilled or not I really am, with no luck. I'm sure everyone will be treated to a hideously masturbatory navel-gazing blog post sometime in the next couple days.

*Case in point, I'm still updating this damned blog quasi-regularly. :P

A Tractor

2010-10-25T12:56:00.003-04:00

A Tractor

So this tractor has nothing to do with the content, just for your information. I hope you aren't disappointed.

My challenge to myself today is to write an explosion-filled prologue for the book we just finished. I have my excuses for failure all lined up, I've noticed. It's freezing in the house, but we're low on pellets so I have to put on socks and that stifles me creatively. Additionally, I think I'm getting sick again. And seriously, GoogleDocs is screwing with me, and not letting me add the last five chapters to the main file. That is really giving me fits.

Perhaps I will drink another pot of coffee and take the toddlermonster upstairs and sit in the library with him. Perhaps I will just go write it. Even though I suck at action scenes.

How Not Write a Blog Post

2010-10-22T19:45:00.004-04:00

Ten easy steps to zero productivity with maximum angst, friends.

1. Get really excited about something and experience the miraculous urge to share, to reach out and connect with another human being.

2. Enraptured with new thought / concept / facet of reality, lovingly draft blog post in head.

3. Remember you are too cool to experience enthusiasm.

4. And everyone will look at you funny.

5. You're such a dork. Science fiction, really? A writer? You? No way. Loser. Wannabe.

6. Squirm in tortured indecision for an hour.

7. Decide no one cares enough, least of all you. Right? That's right. We're tough. We don't really care. It's just a stupid story. Talentless hack.

8. Hey, there's beer in the fridge and it is twenty past four on a fine Friday afternoon. Slack off. Fuck this "writing" thing. We'll care later. Privately. When no one can see.

9. Make a note to punish yourself later for being a passive-aggressive attention whore.

10, optional: *sigh* Wish you were braver.

This is not a book.

2010-10-21T10:27:00.005-04:00

There are a couple of things in my life that have shaped my self-perception of my own identity. Foremost is probably my diagnosis as a person of, let's say, differently-framed cognition than "The Norm." (Whatever that is. Who cares?) I have mental illnesses. Brain structure problems. I have to work around myself to get things done, like a lot of people. Since some of these problems directly relate to identity, you can understand why it's sort of crucial to me sometimes to consider my perceptions in a more objective way.

The other is a little more personal. I write. I've mentioned this before, in the self-conscious way a wrestler might mention he also enjoys ballet dancing. But I take a little sheepish pride in my writing, because it says right there in the DSM-IV-TR that individuals with my brand of crazy are chronically haunted by boredom and emptiness and "unable to enjoy hobbies in a meaningful way."

So I have this hobby, and it's pretty damned meaningful. I don't ever remember not writing. I have stuff in boxes that I wrote when I was 10 and had a painfully shallow grasp of plot structure and grammar. (Yes, I am always this self-critical.) But this hobby is something I'm shy and uncertain about, in the same way I'm shy and uncertain sometimes about how much I am "allowed" or "supposed" to share regarding my brain issues. It doesn't help that I sprang from a close-mouthed people and operate my life in general on a "you don't need to know" basis.

Why am I mentioning this? Masochism. And tonight I'll probably finish the last revision of a book I wrote that's about 86,000 words long. That's decent, right there. I finished a book, I revised and edited and had fun, it was all meaningful.

Every time I think about being done with it, about not writing it anymore, I start to panic. It's the same kind of panic I felt when I was done being pregnant. Okay, well, made a baby. What the hell do I do now?

Do I have to do anything with it? Am I somehow obligated? Life partner says yes, but what if -- bear with me -- what if the process of sending an inquiry to a few people is so disheartening I end up suicidal? You gotta think about these things!

In the meantime, I'm going to spend November writing another book really quickly and I'll talk more about that later.

Almost Wordless

2010-10-13T13:02:00.002-04:00

I think I need to change some things.

I can't wait.

Look at it another way.

2010-10-06T08:38:00.001-04:00

Ah, shifting perspective. My eternal nemesis.
And sometimes dearest ally.

People are not shock absorbers.

2010-09-30T19:54:00.003-04:00

There's a kid in the shower; I can smell her mango shampoo. There's another kid in his crib, and I can hear his father reading The Cat in the Hat to him. I'm so tired, but I feel like patting myself on a back. I pulled out before I hit the ground, this time. It's been a nasty few days to be in my head and I was pretty stuck there.

I isolate myself when I'm at my worst because I've cost myself a lot of friends by "virtue" of being toxic with rage and hate and hurt. I worked back from that more than once and I have some incredible people in my life now. Internet friends! I've met many of them and I want to meet more. They're real people, just like I'm a real person. I believe in their friendship.

So if I'm suddenly made of razorblades and terror, I pull back to spare innocent lives. That's all. And that way, I have people waiting for me when I'm human again.

Fuck. You. Too.

2010-09-29T15:07:00.006-04:00

"I take the very controversial point of view that cluster B individuals (as they aren't sufferers from their own disorder) should be killed."

From the comment thread on this post on some random blog. Cool, huh? BPD falls into Cluster B. That's me he's talking about, without knowing me at all.

Because I don't suffer, I only make other people suffer.

I swear to you if I thought my loved ones would be better off without me, if it wouldn't damage my babies beyond bearing, I'd kill myself. That's why I am still alive. That is the only reason. Because my husband loves me and my kids need me. If I didn't believe that were true I would gratefully end this--

Oh, wait. I'm not suffering, apparently. Never mind.

This random jackass isn't any kind of a professional. As far as I can tell, he's some smug sociopath who knows everything. But I've seen a lot of doctors, and you know what?

A lot of mental health professionals feel this way too. There really isn't help for me.

Brain, meet Possibility

2010-09-15T11:18:00.004-04:00

I had a fantastic weekend. That's not the catchiest opening line I've ever written, but it's still surprising me every time I remember it.

I decided to meet people in the most terrifying fashion ever. I went away from my home, alone, for two entire days and a night, to meet about 5 or 20 people I only knew from an online community. I did it with no drugs and no dog of my own.

I know I did well, because not once did anyone ask if I was alright. That's usually my first clue that the facade is cracking; some kind soul will ask me if I'm okay in a specific "you aren't looking entirely sane" tone of concern. Not once!

It was because of the dogs. I didn't have one of my own with me, but it was a gathering of dog-lovers and there were plenty to go around. I'm more interested than ever in someday having a certified emotional support dog in my life. The difference in my human interactions when there are dogs around to soothe me was stunning. And the best part is that all those wonderful people think I'm well-adjusted because of it. I had three separate panic attacks and no one noticed.

At least, no one felt obligated to ask if I was okay. That's a pretty positive sign.

Now here are some wild pigs I found wandering near a garden center, because I keep all the dog pictures for my other blog.

I have quite a few of these.

2010-09-08T14:03:00.004-04:00

Now, you'll need to click on this one to see it bigger and read the words. This is real screen grabs from a conversation I had -- the second-to-last conversation with her, as it turns out. We attended Pensacola Christian College together, and she friended me on Facebook after so many years. Apparently at no time did she read my user info ("Atheist, anti-theist, progressive democratic socialist," and such plainly stated.) I was agog. AGOG, I am serious about that. All caps. I kept waiting for her (or her hateful brother Gree Bar, there) to realize I was fucking with them. They did not. In fact, when I wrote this woman a kiss-off, she denied that I was an atheist or a liberal, because I had just agreed with her in this thread.

Memo

2010-09-06T10:56:00.004-04:00

TO: Amygdala -- Putting you in a sack and hammering on you is better than you deserve, you bitch, but that's all I have.

I'd rather panic.

2010-08-25T11:11:00.006-04:00

I read an aquarium-keeping book when I was a kid, and it had a whole chapter on ways to euthanize your sickly or less-attractive fish. The author's preferred method was to put the fish in a sack and then swing that sack as hard as possible against a brick wall.

That's what clonazepam (or any member of the benzodiazepine family) does to my panicking brain. It takes it from "swimming frantically in a shroud of formless yet predatory terror" and slams it hard it into "liquefied, possibly smeared all over a wall, definitely not functional." It's not fun. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

Summary

2010-08-23T13:13:00.000-04:00

You have a disease for which there is no cure.
There is no truly effective treatment for your disease.
There will be constant pain for which there is no salve.
No one will see your pain; it will be in your head and your heart.
Emptiness will swallow you every day.
Rage will tear at you every day.
Grief will cripple you every day.
Fear will stalk you every day.
Loneliness will erase you every day.
You will not learn who you are; you will be someone different every day. Sometimes every hour.
You will not know what you want for the same reason.
Nothing satisfies for very long. Nothing stops the pain for very long.
You will hurt the people that try to love you. You will drive them away.
You cannot trust anyone, least of all yourself. Least of all, yourself.
You will hate, intensely and passionately, the source of your pain: again, your own twisted self.
It will never stop.

Believe in me. I have good reason to go on living.

(Disclaimer: I've been writing more entries "for later," so please don't take anything you read here as a reflection of current mood or circumstances. Please don't call me, all freaked out that I'm going to swallow a bottle of pills. You should know better; I can't even take a vitamin without barfing.)

Go, Me!

2010-08-18T13:51:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I really want to excel. I just get this powerful unshakable urge to be really good at something. It almost doesn't matter what. So I pick a skill in which I have confidence and go to town. A lot of times, there are cookies involved.

Sunset Greens

2010-08-16T10:51:00.002-04:00

"Out of the cradle
onto dry land...
here it is standing...
atoms with consciousness
...matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea...
wonders at wondering... I...
a universe of atoms...
an atom in the universe."

- Richard Feynman

A Little Tilted

2010-08-14T15:22:00.002-04:00

I just snorted and giggled my way through a funny tale of my childhood, sharing a happy little anecdote with my love. And at the end of it, I realized it wasn't funny. I remember it as being funny, but the truth is I just told him a story of being helpless and terrified as a child in blatantly dangerous and unsettling circumstances.

I didn't realize it until he failed to laugh.

Talking about it doesn't help.

2010-08-12T09:48:00.004-04:00

I'm not going to start in with the excuses for not updating in a month. In spite of all my best intentions to blog openly and honestly about being crazy, I've learned it's really, really hard to write down how I'm feeling in the worst of it, for a few reasons. Today I'm teetering on the edge. I'm fighting to keep out of the darkest headspace. It's not even 10 a.m.

When my moods get dark and savage, the last thing I want to do is analyze and decipher them, but that's not the difficult part. The hardest part is standing on a platform of any sort and admitting, "Your comment about the best apple to put in a pie enraged me and I hate you now." Obviously, I have made up a comment there but it's indicative of the sort of thing that can send me spinning.

I know in these cases -- and most of the time, really -- that I'm reacting inappropriately. I have tried in the past to explain the circumstances. "Your comment was upsetting to me, and I need a little space to process my mood before I can get past it." The problem is that with the exception of my domestic partner and a few close friends who make the effort to understand, I've gotten universally negative reactions. I don't believe it's worth the effort to explain how I'm feeling, most of the time.

Think about it. My moods are invalid and transient and incongruous and disproportionate. By the time I've finished explaining one mood, I'll be probably be on another. I've noticed that no matter how timidly I say, "I was a little hurt by that, but I know you didn't mean it" people still react angrily. I give up. It's so much easier to let people think I'm just a selfish, rage-filled bitch.

And I guess I am, strictly speaking. I can understand how someone would come to that conclusion.

NOTE: I'm not happy with this post. It feels whiny and at the same time vulnerable, passive-aggressive and self-pitying. I may be publishing it as an attempt to punish myself through public exposure of my own weaknesses.

I Wish You Knew

2010-07-10T16:16:00.016-04:00

I can't help it, and that's what I hate most. It's the part of this whole mess that feels, to me, most like a cop-out. But I understand intellectually that in the same way a depressed person cannot just "cheer up," the same way a person with Tourette's Syndrome has no control over their tics, I am not able to control the intensity or appropriateness of my emotions. I am unable.

I am aware. I know that my reactions are too strong. I know also that it's equally disconcerting when I detach, when my affect is flat. I am aware, even during some of my least rational moments, of how irrational I am being. It's a helplessness I cannot describe accurately, like watching myself hurt in a car accident over and over, unable to stop it.

I am exhausted. The act of generating, feeling, surmounting, experiencing emotion is a physical act. The brain uses tremendous amounts of power and energy to manufacture moods and emotions. A simple conversation, when I am symptomatic, leaves me feeling as if I've run a marathon, especially with the added effort of keeping my bizarre reactions from showing.

I forget how much I care about you. Rather, I sometimes cannot see it. Because of the "splitting" behavior, disagreements and disappointments quickly become interpersonal event horizons for me. Whether you've made some inadvertent flippant comment I perceive as an insult or dismissal, or perhaps you in some way overlook me or forget me -- according to my perception -- the pain and anger I sometimes experience over tiny matters like this makes it inconceivable to me that we were ever close. Because how could you do that to me?

I distrust myself. Because I am aware of my condition, and I am aware that I am emotionally malleable and unstable, I have come to understand that my feelings cannot be trusted. They are not an accurate representation of or reaction to any objective reality. To make you understand this: when I feel the urge to embrace someone, I first ask myself why. Before I open any conversation on any topic, I consider my motivations. And then I consider them again. And then, usually, I dismiss the idea of saying anything. Just in case I might be wrong about my motivations.

I need you to stay. When I meet someone new, someone I am interested in, within moments of realizing I like them I wonder how long I will get to "keep them." I expect to be left, in some fashion. What you may not understand is how subtle this can be. When I am told, "Fine, I'll give your space" I hear something more akin to "I don't want to deal with you anymore, I'm going away." Abandonment issues are a pathetic, trite, and central hallmark of this disorder. If you leave to give me space, whatever that even fucking means, you have deserted me. You have left me alone, and I am not safe alone.

I fail at blogging again still always.

2010-07-06T15:21:00.003-04:00

Been on something of a hiatus just because I'm turbulent right now. Thrashing. And even though the point of this blog is to wander frightened through the labyrinth of self-discovery, I've discovered more and more that I am awful at being "out of the crazy closet." I have very little for myself, when I'm like this, other than shame and derision. Spraying people with that kind of toxicity doesn't help.

Life Lessons

2010-06-30T09:19:00.000-04:00

I learned I'm still terrified of heights.

365 Days and 5 hours and 45 minutes ago

2010-06-07T09:13:00.004-04:00

I don't want to mourn for the rest of my life.

I don't want to make this day some annual event about loss and pain and fear.

A year, a whole revolution, and sometimes I'm still waiting for you to call me. I don't answer the phone anymore, because it can't be you. I just want to hear you say my name again. I want to release the millions of words that withered inside me because I couldn't speak them to you.

We had only days left.

A year ago I watched you leave. Have I written about that? I have all the details sealed inside myself. I remember the smell and feel of your warm cheek that last time I kissed it, and I remember the relief and the agony of just watching you end. You stopped. I watched it happen and I was so grateful that your pain had ended.

Mine is pretty much all still here.

I don't cry every day, anymore. But every single day something happens and I want to tell you. Every single day. It's not crippling, not anymore, but it's like trying to live with another handicap. I still don't know what I'm doing unless you make that face at me, the one that says, "Come on, now. You know the right choice to make." I don't know if it's alright unless you tell me so. I can't find that inside myself.

I miss you so much.

Forget the adjectives.

2010-06-02T13:34:00.004-04:00

My son has this little outdoor playhouse, one of those monstrous heavy-duty plastic beasts. He loves the thing, loves slamming the doors, putting toys in the cabinets, and having a Popsicle while he sits at the little table.

It's pink.

It was a gift from someone whose daughters outgrew it, and for years my daughter loved it. She's moved on to bigger things and more expensive toys (I hate you, Nintendo.) But my boy adores this little house.

He doesn't seem to care that it's adorned with flowers or pink shutters.

We spoke briefly about getting some spray paint, since the means to turn this into a "boy's" house were available to us for a few dollars. And then we let the idea go. My son does not care. And unless I trained him, unless I make it clear that he is compromising some imagined value by playing in this pink cottage, he never will.

If I had a girl who'd inherited a cottage targeted at boys, I wouldn't paint the damn thing. Why do that to my son? Why make up his mind for him?

Toxicity

2010-05-28T09:00:00.004-04:00

I have "anger issues."

I think a lot of people do, and the only thing that makes mine stand out is that they're writ somewhere on official papers. Oh, and they're "deep-seated."

Nu-cu-lar

Maybe it's the same way the Earth just rolls through every day, able to ignore the roiling magma coursing through the deepest layers. I've found one of the best ways to "deal" with my emotional regulatory issues has been to just disconnect. I am, for the most part, an observer of my own mental state, staring into the crater. I catalog my emotions rather than feeling them.

But the anger is trickier. It's hard to ignore, sometimes. I've reformed a little, I guess. I don't enact violence on other people. I don't manipulate and ruin. I don't smash my belongings or put holes in the walls. I do not harm myself anymore. I've come to terms with those impulses and I do my damnedest not to indulge in my symptoms.

I'm pissed off all the time. Last night it choked me. My arms wanted to swing. My vision was clouded. My jaw is sore from clenching. My muscles ache from the tension. Last night I felt dangerous again, precarious. My crust was too thin last night.

It doesn't matter what triggers it. What matters is this morning. I've got to deal now with the unease and anxiety that results from peering into the chasm of my own rage and seeing everything that ever hurt or angered me. Seeing everything that tried to shape me. Seeing all those scars as new ones grow over this breach.

No one was hurt last night, but I'm reminded that I live on shaky ground. I'm reminded it could topple and burn.

Spoke too soon.

2010-05-19T13:29:00.002-04:00

Can you tell a crawl from a climb?

Don't read into it.

2010-05-16T18:31:00.003-04:00

Fortunately they don't depend on camouflage.

I think, slowly, I'm starting to come out of my stupid mood spiral. I want to write about it, but not tonight. We had a great weekend as a family, I spent some quality time with Drive, and I managed to finally finish editing another chapter. We walked about two miles through the woods and then went for a ride in the car. There was excellent food and perfect weather. The post-emotional-episode analysis can wait a bit, really.

2010-05-11T20:12:00.001-04:00

I had to fight hard today.
I didn't win.
I don't want to talk anymore.
I'm sorry.

Houstonia Caerulea

2010-05-10T19:13:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if we're seeing the same thing. If so, how can our interpretations be so wildly different? If not, which of us is mistaken? If neither is mistaken, we're screwed because I reject the concept of solipsism. There must be some concrete reality apart from human observation. Frankly, I'm more willing to trust your interpretations than mine. I've been very, very wrong before.

Bluets

I'd explore, but I'm not allowed to get arrested.

2010-05-06T19:34:00.002-04:00

I pass this house so often, and every time I wonder if there's a person in the world somewhere who still loves it. Somewhere, maybe a woman sips her tea and remembers her dear auntie's house, playing in the kitchen while dinner cooked. Maybe she wishes she could explore those woods one more time. What color were the curtains? Are the dishes still inside?

It all hangs on this.

2010-05-05T17:24:00.002-04:00

Saphira

2010-05-03T15:23:00.002-04:00

Who names a chicken Saphira?

Excision

2010-05-02T15:19:00.004-04:00

Dear Facebook Friend,

I probably don't know how we met. I seldom remember shit like that.You probably displayed sparkling wit, rational perspectives, freethought tendencies, intellectual pursuits, the ability to laugh, a shared fondness for my preferred intoxicants... Any number of things could have arranged this little meeting in space.

I will drop you just as quickly. See, my Facebook wall is my own space. I set it up the way I want, so that I have a soothing space to gather in virtual community with like-minded and challenging people. Of course, my family is on there too, and they're pretty safe from deletion.

I don't think this is an emotional issue. I am trying not to be reactive. This is me, defining my space by carefully choosing the people I have around me, even on the internet.

There are some issues on which I will not bend, nor am I willing to entertain propaganda.

Arizona: I do agree that illegal immigration is a problem. Harassing people like you're the Jospeph Fucking McCarthy of White English-Speaking Entitled Amerikans is wrong. Go after the employers. I'll say it again. Go after the employers. Your Amerikan sweatshops are the ones getting them in here, you know. And keeping them. If you believe that any citizen should be required to present proof of their identity to whatever asshatted authority figure demands it for whatever rainbow-glittery imaginary reason he makes up, I don't want to know you.

Abortion. No restrictions. Period. Accessible and protected. Disagree with me? You may choose never to bring it up, to ask some respectful questions, or get your reproductive choice-hating ass far away from me.

Welfare. Oh, I have a rant coming up on welfare. I support it. Fully. Wholeheartedly. It's a government system and therefore has inherent problems and loopholes. But you know what? If you've ever stood behind a "welfare mom" and made nasty comments under your breath about what she's buying or driving or how her kids are behaving and "Hey, whore, where's the daddy?" you are a hateful person. Period. Because maybe you were doing that to me. Maybe you were kicking me at the lowest fucking point in my life. Maybe that was me you were looking down on.

Mental Illness. I have had people tell me that I am faking. I have had people tell me I'm crazy because I am not right with god. I have had people tell me there is no such thing. I have physical prolems in my brain that cause a number of symptoms and conditions. I live with this every second of every day, even while I sleep. If you have no belief of or sympathy for people who aren't as "stable" or "reality oriented" as you, let me offer this. "Fuck the fuck off." Oh, and I'm probably still more intelligent than you.

Religion. I am a staunch atheist. Preach at me just once and you're gone. Keep your beliefs away from me and my children. If you would like to have a respectful discussion and debate, that's one thing, but attempts to convert me will be met with vengeance.

Socialism. Learn what the hell it means. Obama isn't a socialist. I am.

Environment. Think Global Warming is a hoax? Think "the earth will repair itself?" Think God has blessed us with dominion over this sphere? I think you're a retard. Please take Sarah Palin with you on the way out.

Marriage. Everyone or no one. I personally favor the "No One Ever" approach, but obviously there are legal benefits to putting on that yoke -- or I wouldn't have done it. People should marry any number of people of any gender in any state for any reason. If this is an issue that interests you, check out The Alternatives to Marriage Project.

Sentient life. Animals. No harm to them.

Being a self-important asshole. That is, of course, your right. Exercise it elsewhere.

Hangovers make me cranky.

2010-04-30T13:06:00.005-04:00

There are always so many labels flying around. I've had to notice them more lately because of "A Week" on Facebook. It was an event to encourage atheists to come out of the proverbial closet and form more of a vocal community. It's been, if you'll pardon my co-opting a term, a true blessing for me. There's a sense of camaraderie now among all the assholes. (If you're interested in learning more about it, please look into The Out Campaign.)

I'm sorry, what? What-holes?

Yeah. Recently my life partner of choice shared with me his opinion that "most militant atheists like you are smug assholes that don't respect anyone that doesn't hold the same view." For the curious, boyfriend labels himself a "weak atheist."

Now he went out of his way not to directly call me an asshole, as was prudent. But he did call me a militant atheist. So we have militant and weak and "anti-theist," and as a bonus, I was also introduced to the term "theist sympathizer."

So am I smug? Am I militant? Am I anti-theist? Does it matter?

I am an atheist. I wasn't always. Maybe at some point I'll be more willing to talk about my relationship with Jesus but the break-up was messy and I have some scars. Am I a smug athiest? I suppose that's open to your interpretation but I will tell you that I am proud. Maybe if I hadn't been indoctrinated and cowed for so long by religion. Maybe if I hadn't been emotionally raped by fundies. Maybe if I hadn't suffered to the point of suicide attempts at the hands of theists, I would be more casual about my devotion to reason and freethought. Maybe. Does having a fierce pride in an intellectual journey make me smug?

I have thought for a while about the whole "militant" angle. I don't generally use the term to describe myself, but I've been watching the people who sling the phrase and the people who claim it for their own. You know what I think it means? I think it means, "You're loud." Being vocal is not the same thing as being aggressive, folks. If you want to label me as a passionate advocate for logic and science, you may.

Honestly, only one aspect of the diatribe delivered by Friend-with-benefits really bothered me. He asserted, strongly, that if someone refuses to agree with me regarding the lack of any god in the universe, I lose respect for them. I've been thinking about that and I admit he's right.

If I tell a Christian I think they are deluded and propigating societal harm, they lose respect for me pretty quickly. Why am I obligated to respect a person for willingly, knowingly associating with a notion I find intellectually inferior and dangerous? I don't respect meth dealers, either, but at least they are only trying to sell you meth and not imprison your psyche.

No, I do not respect your religion. Yes, if it matters, I do lose a little respect for you every time I'm reminded about it. For me, it's the same thing as saying "I don't believe in math." I automatically think, "Well, I guess you're too dumb to understand it."

A sigh.

2010-04-26T10:31:00.002-04:00

Today my desire to be kind is overwhelmed by my desire to alert the mouth-breathing masses to their shallow ignorance and to cast aspersions on their parentage.

Caught Off Guard

2010-04-24T21:03:00.008-04:00

I went into Boston today, for a fun day with a friend I hadn't seen in years. We're the sort of friends that fall back naturally into each other's presence and conversational patterns, and we have a long history. It was a great day with her.

I've spent a lot of time in Boston. I drive myself there, I wander around, I don't look at all like a tourist -- apparently, since I got asked for directions half a dozen times. Sorry, people. Vague gestures are the best I can do.

But in all that time, I had never visited the New England Holocaust Memorial.

Today it was between us and our destination, so we chose to go through it.

I wasn't expecting it. I know of the Holocaust. I can barely let my mind touch it before I have to look away. Today I looked.

I wasn't expecting the way I ended up feeling. The memorial is a reminder. It is a graphic reminder. The things you must know, the things you wish you did not.

It's claustrophobic, even though the sides are open and they're six stories tall, these six towers. That grate covers a six-foot deep pit. Steam rises up from underneath. In the evening, the pit is illuminated by glowing coals.

How do you grasp the idea of six million souls?

How do you ever, ever downplay what the world allowed?
What we still allow?

I wasn't expecting to weep.

Here is another picture of junk.

2010-04-21T13:23:00.000-04:00

Out of Tune

2010-04-20T09:20:00.004-04:00

So yesterday, I went to see my primary care physician. She used to be my "doctor," but bureaucracies will be have their insidious, verbose way. Let it be made clear that for the first time in my life, I like my doctor. I like the whole practice, even (perhaps especially) the office ladies. My children both see doctors in this practice. We're happy there and blessed with insurance through the life partner's work and sacrifice.

Annual exam time. Joy. I was saved somewhat since the Doctors Who Decide These Things have decreed that annual pap smears are no longer strictly necessary. So next year will be soon enough for that, thanks. I have to get some blood tested to confirm my usual insane vitamin deficiencies and then receive my lecture and some shots, but otherwise I'm apparently in pretty decent health.

Except for the things she can't see. For those, she suggested I perhaps should consider returning to therapy. I presented this kind and good-humored woman with a list I had headed "Paranoia." She reassured me about a couple of the items. For example, it is not completely abnormal for your skull to change shape, I learned, and it doesn't necessarily mean some rare form of skull cancer or a bad sinus infection.

I haven't seen a therapist in about a year and a half. I think my most recent excuse for quitting was that I had no sitter for a baby who was no longer interested in gurgling in his carrier for an hour while I tried to think of things to say. She was a very nice lady, that one, but more passive than I'm comfortable with. If I have to lead the therapy, I assure you it isn't going anywhere. I try to tell the therapists right up front: "I don't want to be here. I just know I need to."

(I should confess that half the time I hold the opposite opinion. I think of Pa Ingalls -- he looks like that hunky Michael Landon! -- and imagine him talking to a therapist. You know that guy went through some shit out there on the prairie. But did he ever whine to a shrink? No! He sucked it up, plowed those locusts under and reseeded!)

In the interests of being reasonably functional, I am going to look for a therapist. When the big kid was much smaller she called it "the talking doctor." I have had to acknowledge that some of my fears are starting to get the better of me. I don't want to end up dependent on anti-anxiety medications, which shut my brain off like a switch anyway.

I hate discovering new issues when I haven't resolved all my old ones yet, but I suddenly find my occasional bout of hypochondria has grown into a full-time hobby. It's not something I discuss, because I feel like talking about it gives it credence. Like Sarah Palin. But I'm aware of the issue and will take means to combat it.

My hypochondria, I mean. I haven't figured out what the hell to do about Sarah Palin.

Even pretend birds want to fly away.

2010-04-14T09:29:00.001-04:00

Extant for 36

2010-04-12T10:51:00.002-04:00

As the life partner left our so very humble abode this morning, I whispered sweetly, "Remember. I hate cake."

It's my birthday. I have never really cared to celebrate it, and in some cases I have gotten, let's say, heated in my attempts to avoid festivity. I still sometimes feel like I should apologize to the witnesses to my 18th, for example, but that's a scab better left unpicked.

Last year, my birthday fell on Easter, the only holiday I might hate more than Christmas even though it requires far less effort from me. (For example, this year I threw $10 at my older child for candy. Finis.)

Last year, I wrote this weepy drivel, which I have kindly abridged.

I got up this morning and made about five meals. One was a large ham and some mashed potatoes and a cheesecake, which Husband and Daughter bought yesterday. Took all this food up to see my mother and stepfather.

I didn't want to be there and she wasn't having a good day, very tired and weak. Not as good as last time I was there, moved from spending time on the couch to spending time on the hospital bed set up in the living room. That's where she ate. I cleaned up, I left all the food in their fridge. I didn't really eat.

I did drink the massive White Russian my stepdad made for me. He tried to make some noise about owing me a present but you know what I want? I want more time with my mother.

On the way up there I was doing make-up in the car and noticed that my first gray hair, which I lovingly plucked and mounted on colored paper to showcase it, had been replaced by many of its friends.

I don't care about my birthday, I don't care about presents. I don't like the attention and it remains a struggle to be gracious through the well-wishes and back-slaps. And to hear my mother apologizing for not getting me anything. To see her face when she was wrong about how old I was, how that bothered her...

I'm just so sad. I'm so fucking sad and I don't know how to deal with it.

I'm not in the same place this year, but I am remembering what it felt like to be there.

Let me know if you figure it out.

2010-04-05T13:42:00.002-04:00

I think you should know I just had a spasm of hilarity over how pretentious this whole blog is. What do you think it means?

It was a good weekend.

2010-04-04T20:44:00.002-04:00

The hidden, unexpected beauty isn't found by looking.

The Dirt

2010-04-02T12:59:00.004-04:00

I'm not one of those people that exercises on purpose. I managed to sail through three decades without really appreciating "the value of honest labor," which turns out to be pretty subjective and abstract. But last year, while spring bloomed and my mother's life faded, I picked up a shovel.

I think my intent was to smash it into a tree and see if that made me feel better, but I had a moment of cognizance and jammed it into the earth instead.

We have land, just under an acre and a half. And it's lumpy and squashy and the care and feeding of it falls to me. I started shoveling, and I realized that working hard that way did something I hadn't accomplished in months. It distracted me. All of the rage and fear and grief fueled me into some sort of digging machine. I leveled a nice-sized piece of my lumpy yard, and then I starting moving rocks. And then I cleaned flower beds. And then I hauled leaves and branches. I got stronger, and I found a little bit of peace. My hands got rough. Flowers blossomed.

When Mummy died, I worked harder. I built a wall. A physical wall, I mean, out of rocks. (This is New Hampshire. We have a lot of rocks.) I processed, to some small and helpful degree, that incomprehensible loss as I moved the earth and reshaped it. I exhausted myself.

By the time fall rolled around, and the leaves had been raked and blown, and the wound wasn't quite so consuming, I was ready to stop working. Snowblowing? That's not my job, that's the partner's.

But it's spring again, finally. And I was surprised to learn today that when I ventured outside, my wild animal of a son in tow, that working hard outdoors still feels good, still satisfies.

The callouses on my hands feel less good.

Chance Encounter

2010-03-31T22:50:00.001-04:00

Brain, leave me alone.

2010-03-30T10:52:00.004-04:00

In my nightmares, it's seldom monstrous beasts that consume me.

Last night, the jumble was incoherent, which isn't unusual. I woke up crushed and near weeping; also not unusual for these sorts of nights. It seems to last all night, no matter how many times I'm awakened, no matter how I pace to "shake it off" before attempting sleep again.

The bits and pieces of it will not seem so dangerous or upsetting, I know. Bear with me.

In one disjointed vignette, I discovered some young trendy teenagers had taken the entirety of my wardrobe and stuff it into toilets. Used toilets. I had tried so hard to be pleasant to these girls, to not intrude or interfere, but for some reason we were forced to share space and this was the reward for my kindness. I got shit on.

I was showering, at some point in this series, and discovering a similar group had rigged the stall so the whole world was watching me while I stood in the shower and cried. It wasn't that I was naked, although that's always a good hot source of shame. It was that I was weeping. That was what I hated them seeing. I hate people hearing or seeing me cry. It's like being a bird with a broken wing. Everyone feels bad for you and then a fucking wolf eats you.

Anyhow - at some point in these dreams I found Friend. (Not his real name.) I threw my arms around him and sobbed, and he took that opportunity to grope me. To get forceful about it.

I ran. There was some weird garbage involving donuts that I refuse to believe is relevant, and then I found Close Friend. Ah, here was the one that could save me. Right? Hysterical, desperate, wrapped in a borrowed shirt and nothing else, I broke down and I clung. "Please take me away from here. They're so unkind, I didn't do anything, I don't deserve this." Close friend shook his head and patted my shoulder. "Come on," he said with a smug little smirk. "You know you probably shot your mouth off. You know you earned this."

I ran. I found my way out of the house but there was no landscape. There was this one point in space surrounded by fog. No other place existed. My phone was in my pocket suddenly and I started screaming into it, really screaming with everything I felt.

"Where are you? I need you! You promised you'd be there for me, you fucking liar!" It was a rush, this eruption of rage and terror. There was no voice on the line, and I can think of so many people that rant could be aimed it there's no point in speculation.

I guess it's not a subtle dream. They never are. I wish I had more talent for resolving my issues during the day, so that maybe I could get a little rest at night. When I was younger, there were a lot more literal monsters. Or perhaps the giant horned things, the devils and wild things that ate me up, maybe those were the figurative monsters. After all, those are hardly the beasts I deal with in real life. Those aren't the creatures that haunt me.

Nightmares are other people.

Oh, how I go on and on about nothing.

2010-03-27T21:35:00.009-04:00

I went to a wedding today. I'm not a fan of weddings or marriage (yes my spouse knows this), but I don't try to get out of going whenever someone in my large and glorious family decides they need to tie that legal knot.

I am a huge fan of seeing people when they are truly happy, radiant with joy and Jack Daniels.

I'm very tired, though. I will skip the whole I-am-introvert spiel again, but I am and I am drained. I want to rest, but there's editing to do and there are so many thoughts in my brain it keeps cramping. (That might be my sinuses, though.)

This health care thing. I chewed on a lot of crazy over it, but in the end I think my greatest lesson has been this: It doesn't matter if I am reasonable and respectful, it doesn't matter if I call someone names, it doesn't matter if I make a joke. Someone is going to be offended and no one who has already made up their mind is going to listen. I think that was the most frustrating aspect of the mostly-Facebook-contained mess; I could find very few people with opposing viewpoints even willing to talk rationally.
The invention and evolution of compassion in human society, and to a lesser extent how it may seem to exist in animal societies as well.
My own "moral schizophrenia" about animals. I love them and I eat them. Could I say I love my children and still eat them? Does the possession of sapience versus sentience matter? Any excuse I might make here is weak tea about how "difficult" it would be, to turn my family vegetarian, and that's not acceptable when the issue at hand is the death of another living being.
Vermont.
Spouse and I know where we want to be in few years, situationally speaking. If we are at Point A and we can clearly identify Point B, what's the next step? I weep at the very thought of listing all the obstacles in our way, at itemizing our roadblocks. We know what we want, but we are so trapped in our lives we cannot imagine how to escape.
My parenting could be better. That's an issue.
Atheism. How prominent do I want this aspect of myself to be? How much of my life should be viewed through this lens? How much should my freedom from the chains of imaginary deities define my existence? Some people are just casually atheist. I am vehemently so. More on that someday, huh? Maybe.
Prostitution. No, seriously. I've always thought in the past it should just be legalized. But recently I was given a reason to reconsider the idea. Yes, a human being should have domain over their own body. But there is no getting around the fact that prostitution commodifies people, mostly women with no other choice. It's legal to work at Wal-Mart, but really... you don't do it unless you're forced.
Gardening. I need more lilies. And ivy. I think I want to work harder on covering the little slope we have in the front with ivy and phlox and creeping things. Lots of yard work ahead and I'm looking forward to it. This year I swear I am going to manage to produce vegetables, and I am going to remind you that last year the failure was due to 40 straight days of damn rain.
Nightmares. I'm really good at having them! Like all my various sleep troubles, nightmares come and go. But they are in the "ON" position right now and they are troubling. I have been considering relating some of them hear but I'm afraid it would be too revealing or senseless or... I don't know. Besides, no one wants to read a nightmare. I do write them down, though. It's how I exorcise.

It's actually how I exorcise everything.

Why are you saying these things?

2010-03-16T20:39:00.006-04:00

One of the things that keeps me from blogging as often as I'd really like to is this fear factor of how deeply necessarily personal it gets, to discuss how I feel and why and what I might do about it. I think about the people that will worry no matter how I say not to. I think of the people who will assume it's all about them. I think of the people that will back away in mouth-breathing bafflement. I think about the people that will laugh. I think about the people that are dismissive.

Those people, and my thoughts about them, keep me from writing. It's strange that it's this way. My mom is gone, and she's really the only person I didn't want to hurt/scare/amuse/worry. It was her opinion that mattered to me that most, more than anyone. With her went a lot of my worry about what people think.

Except about this, except about the crazy.

I am trying to be braver. I'm trying to just let the old self-expression off the leash, but I'm not a solitary unit in a lot of ways. I do think I'm obligated to not embarrass my children too violently. And I respect my life partner enough to keep aspects of our relationship private.

So what should I do, in this case? In the past, I have foregone expressing anger to keep people from surmising that my relationship is in trouble. I have held back disappointment and frustration and regret so no one will think I am a bad parent who dislikes children. (I may be, and in general I do. Mine are acceptable.) I have kept in despair (I'm not suicidal) and repressed agony (No you can't help me) and I find myself staring at this stupid page.

Wondering what I am free to express. Anything? Anyone?

Today I was enraged. Today I was disappointed. Today I felt dull and useless. I felt as if the insults and disrespect were deserved. I felt unworthy.

That place, emotionally, is like a black hole. It drains everything else, it grabs hold of anything pleasant and taints it. Pulls it in. A moment of pleasure over a sunbeam mutates into guilt over my wasted time and my wasted life. I cannot drink a fucking coffee without apologizing in my head to the minutes I am squandering by not doing more. Being more.

I hated today. Subject verb object. If you prefer it could be a subject-verb-adverb thing, that might even work better.

I couldn't take my eyes off him.

2010-03-13T15:28:00.001-05:00

I think I am just starting to process how scared I really was.

Concerto

2010-03-11T09:33:00.002-05:00

Even the voice inside is timid when it asks, "How did we get so very far away from the stage? When did our life become so... small?"

One A.M.

2010-03-03T01:10:00.002-05:00

Past a certain point, night becomes interminable. Time stops. There is only this night, and it may never end.

The music is loud, especially for headphones. I'm going to go wall-eyed, because I can't hear. I have to look. On my left is my son, dreaming. On my right is the monitor that shows me the saturation of oxygen in his blood. There is a mystical threshold. He must stay above 92%, and we can go home.

We have been here more than eight days now.

I'm terrified to sleep. I need to watch him and I need to watch that monitor. My brain is locked around those two things, willing them both to perform. Breathe deep, sweet baby.

I need to go home. More than I need sleep or nutrition or anything else, I need to take my son home. So I must therefore stay vigilant, and watch his chest rise and fall.

It's cracking something inside me, the twisting tearing way that a green branch is broken off.

When my mother died, I watched her chest rise and fall for two days. Straight. I watched until her chest stopped moving. Exhaustion made the grief and rage that much more surreal.

There's no danger I'll lose my child, but that same feeling is haunting me as I'm watching his respiration. I am alone, I am crushed, I am powerless, and all that matters is the rise and fall of that chest.

Soundtrack:

Curses

2010-02-25T00:01:00.004-05:00

It's a couple of minutes after midnight. So technically, we've started my son's fourth day in the hospital.

He's going to be fine. I mean, no one is questioning that. He's got a viral respiratory infection that hits babies hard, so he's on oxygen. He's 23 months old.

Here is the situation.

I am a socially anxious agoraphobe with a mood disorder and a side of severe panic attacks.

I thought I was taking my boy to get a bad cold checked out and I was ordered to the pediatric ER. Chest X-rays were alarming. His oxygen saturation was too low. He was working too hard to breathe. He was admitted.

No one has given me the same answer twice. No one has volunteered the same information. I found out ten minutes ago - after three fucking days - that he won't be going home until he's been off oxygen for 24 hours. Earlier today someone suggested he could go home if he did well during a nice nap. When I confronted Useless #2 about the "nice nap" bullshit, I got a shrug. "Or that."

This is my third night on this awful bed with my son curled up next to me. And I have been informed, with a sympathetic shrug, that it probably won't be my last.

I am a socially anxious agoraphobe with a mood disorder and a side of severe panic attacks. I am trapped in one small room with a bored, unhappy toddler. I am away from my home. I am away from my daughter. I am away from my dogs. I am away from my husband. I am forced to talk to dozens of strangers all day, repeating myself over and over because apparently no one is writing this shit down. And I have to remain reasonable at all times and not get too emotional, confrontational, or overtly anxious.

There are these screams in my chest and I can feel them pushing, crawling towards my throat.

I haven't named it yet.

2010-02-21T18:49:00.006-05:00

So I have this laptop now.

It is both shiny and also warm. In fact, it has the delicious potential to scald the unwary, and I prefer to nestle it a pillow rather than on parts of me that are roast-able (most of me is).

We have more than one excellent computer in this house, but I have manage to convince myself that a laptop is going to make a real difference for my writing habits. For one thing, I am certainly more comfy and relaxed out here on the couch. I hope, sincerely, to start posting to this blog regularly, and to Drive's. It isn't any need I have to be heard or examined, it's my need to think out loud, to overprocess my every thought.

I don't have any momentous "first post on the laptop" planned.

I'm only curled up with it on the couch for one particularly odd reason, killing time until I have to start giving baths and putting small people into diapers and feetie pajamas. See, my husband is in the other room making a CD, and I cannot accidentally hear it.

It's my mother's voice.

Since she died, my dearest most painful wish has been to talk to her again. I have so much I need to ask her. Just stupid things. Maybe I would skip all the questions and beg for some reassurance. The point is, I have longed to hear her voice again.

I never thought to call her phone.

My stepdad has been paying her phone bill, so that people could call and hear her greeting. I never thought of that, and when he asked if I had I almost went fetal. How wrong that seemed, how empty it would be to me. "Hi, this is Lynne, I can't get to the phone. Leave a message and I'll get back to you." I don't need to listen to it, I heard it a million times.

The associate at the phone place helped my stepfather save those sound files, and I transferred them onto my computer. My husband has a talent for decoding and reformatting files like that, so now I have a CD with these brief little messages on them. And I have not listened to them.

I can't. It's not the same.

In other news, I am very deeply unstable at this time and I keep leaking angst and rage everywhere.

This seat was never filled.

2010-02-21T11:50:00.002-05:00

I am a placeholder for the person I should have been.

Safekeeping

2010-02-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

Shh.

2010-02-03T13:56:00.002-05:00

I fail at blog.

2010-01-29T11:34:00.005-05:00

There might be some legitimate excuses for why I couldn't manage to get a single post up, not even a picture, for more than a week. I have been sick and I have been busy -- for me, anyway. And that really is a taxing combination. But I think the bigger problem is that my thoughts are entirely disorganized. I have so many things I want to think about with no idea how to organize my thoughts into anything worth saying. Also, I'm lazy. It's much easier to just make excuses than to commit to something.

Since I don't want to let this become just another way in which I disappoint myself -- full up there, thanks -- I am working out some ideas for actually producing content. Today, though, I'm not doing anything. Today I'm just playing FarmVille. I'll spare you the details of the illness, but the short story is I've learned Claritin does make me sleepy and stupid, just like Benedryl. And it didn't help that much. But I will not bitch. Anymore.

While I'm not talking about anything in particular, I've also learned that writing is simple compared to editing. Editing is giving me nightmares and dissolving my prior confidence in this story. Editing is going to make me an alcoholic or something. I finished editing chapter two and I still hate it. If I were a muppet I would be smashing my head against a piano about now.

2010-01-19T17:55:00.000-05:00

"It's not a cure. It's supposed to take the edges off."
"What would be left of me then?"

These are my confessions.

2010-01-15T10:12:00.005-05:00

I'm still a little lost. That paranoid veil of approaching social doom is starting to feel somewhat suffocating. Still taking the 5-HTP although I forgot last night. Whatever. My head hurts. I don't feel like talking about it.

So instead, here is a story about what I do, because I've been doing it a lot lately.

A few years back, the husband and I -- and this might have been before I made him an honest man -- were driving home from a trip to Ottawa. It's a ten-hour drive, but it can be beautiful, depending on the route.

On this occasion, we were taking the ugly and direct route under a violent storm front that was, apparently, 12 hours wide. The whole time, we drove under bruise-colored skies leaking percussive rain and car-shaking thunder. Our sweet little girl slept, for the most part, or listened to to her headphones. So little, I remember, and already so utterly disinterested in us.

To amuse ourselves, to keep the trance and house and eletronica-techno we like to listen to from putting us in a coma, we started talking. We talked about our role-playing characters. And a little world started spinning up around one, around mine. And I started imagining. Why is she in this alien place doing these things? I wondered. What was she thinking? What were the other people around her thinking and doing?

Over the course of twelve hours and two incredible diner meals and a couple of sight-seeing stops (I will stop to look at rocks and trees, yes) we talked out the plot of a novel, that simply. When we got home, I banged out a rough draft, sketchy and puerile, in about a week.

That was a few years ago, and it's been a great hobby. Lately it's more than that, though. It's an obsession. I have to get each word perfect. I have to polish it. I have to convey exactly what I mean in tone and context, translate an atmosphere into words, make this person and her surroundings very, very real.

Yesterday I finished my "reasonably final" edits on chapter one. Yesterday my brain got a little crushed by the enormity of what I managed to do and frankly, I was somewhat proud of myself -- an emotional state that makes me uneasy in short order.

I don't know what we're going to do with it, but I wrote a book.

It feels precarious.

2010-01-12T10:34:00.007-05:00

I haven't wanted to write about myself. My brain feels tedious. It's only been over the past couple of days I considered the idea that perhaps I feel that way because depression has decided to make a resurgence. It never leaves me completely, but sometimes I can pretend that empty despair is supposed to be there, like the little trash basket on my computer desktop.

Trying to decide which action or thought is a result or symptom of which illness or deficiency is a fucking chore, alright?

I'm tired all the time. Am I not getting enough sleep? I am not. Iron? I am not. Serotonin? I assure you I need more. Maybe I am depressed. Maybe I am fighting off a cold. Maybe, I worry when I'm awake in the middle of the night, something entirely horrible and insidious is at work and I won't know until it's too late. Maybe I have chronic fatigue or sleep apnea.

I started taking 5-HTP again. It's a supplement that increases serotonin production and I've had some good results from it in the past. This morning I spent 20 minutes in a fetal ball on the couch wishing I were dead or at least stomach-less and then I spent another hour wondering if it was the supplement or my breakfast causing the agony. I still feel flushed and out-of-focus. Is it the capsule, my coffee, that half a cookie I ate?

I think it's my impossible desire to reduce the sheer volume of variables in my life that will eventually reduce me to real madness. I want it tidy.

I'm having an explosion of self-consciousness and I've grown paranoid about my welcome. Unless I have something stunningly nice to say, I'm trying to keep to myself. Along with that comes the uneasiness about what people are saying to me. I have to work lately to convince myself that my perception of something as hurtful is by no means an indicator of the other party's intent.

What the hell am I doing with all these cookies? I think I'm just desperate for people to reassure me that I'm not useless. I might have a skill. Maybe it's because cookies are easier than writing, which is what I feel I should actually be doing, rather than making care packages to buy people's temporary adoration.

He can be greedy.

2010-01-10T19:46:00.007-05:00

They give the baby a piece of toast without much hope that he'll eat it. For a few minutes, he wanders the living room, letting each of the three dogs sniff the buttery aroma. He mumbles his approximations of their names. He considers carefully and they wait. Whose turn is it? Which dog will receive his blessing? Again, the baby makes the circuit before he stops in the middle of the room and -- making sure the dogs are all watching -- shoves the toast into his own mouth with a triumphant little grin.

The mother sighs. "It's like watching a game of Duck-Duck-Screw You."

She was so loud.

2010-01-09T20:50:00.004-05:00

I had a nifty long post here. It's still in a draft form and maybe I'll look at it some other time. It's all about my social anxiety. Things are going okay for me, socially, and I'm getting more paranoid about losing it. Everything. My mind, my friends, my creative abilities, my will, my voice. That's the cycle; I am strong and supported and then I am nothing and alone.

Today I was angry. It was volcanic. From the core of me was this rage that spewed out and melted any convenient target. I almost murdered a waitress today. Not even our waitress; the one at the neighboring table was some blowsy drunk who would not. Shut. Up.

Today my husband got to laugh. He thinks I'm funny, when I'm pissed off. Whatever heinous torture I was wishing on that loudmouth skag under my breath was apparently hilarious.

Today I feel like I won, because other than getting snappy a couple of times, I didn't make anyone cry and I didn't hurt anyone's feelings and I didn't hurt myself.

The only spectacular thing I did today was not lose control. I'm exhausted, and I'm a little proud of myself.

Birds Out, Spiders In

2010-01-06T08:33:00.002-05:00

10 Random Things about Me

2010-01-04T12:39:00.006-05:00

1. On days when I don't have to leave the house, I just shower and change into fresh pajamas.

2. I have zero tolerance for a sad story about a kid or animal. Seeing a picture of a helpless creature in distress can literally ruin my day. There's so much of this going around on Facebook all the time, too. Thirty seconds of video inside a high-kill animal shelter had me nauseated this morning.

3. The food I eat most is probably, I'm sorry to say, dry wheat toast. The runner-up is probably mashed potatoes. Who needs flavor or nutrients?

4. I keep my nails short most of the time because of the potential for all sorts of self-injury.

5. Ethically I believe in vegetarianism but I'm anemic and malnourished and vitamin-deficient as it is, and I don't really like most vegetables. So I eat critters and hate myself for it. Delicious murder.

6. My ethics are determined mathematically by a chart I designed as a reference guide for myself.

7. I would rather be lost for an hour than stop and ask for directions. But chances are that given enough time, I can figure out where I am anyway.

8. It's easier for me to write a novel than a short story. I've never completed a short story; I either get frustrated and give up or it mutates into another lengthy multi-volume epic.

9. I have absolutely no idea why my middle name is Jean.

10. I still tend to shave a large percentage off my IQ when I talk to people, to lower their possible expectations of my abilities.

(Illustration: Portrait of author as toddler with utterly doomed easter chick, 1976)

Two Thousand and Nine

2009-12-31T18:54:00.005-05:00

In January, my mother told me her cancer was at stage four and that she would not be pursuing any further treatment.

In February, I spent hours playing nice with the school system to get an IEP that would meet my daughter's needs.

In March, my son turned a year old my mother left her house for the last time to attend his party.

In April, I turned 35 and we still didn't know if we might lose our house due to my inability to work and the housing market that flipped our mortgage.

In May, we celebrated my mother's last birthday. For Mother's Day, I got a tattoo. For me and for her.

In June, I lost a piece of my heart forever. I watched her leave.

In July, I went into my mother's house to get her houseplants. She loved her plants and I wish I could be more confident I'm not going to kill them all.

In August, my beloved paternal Grampy died.

In September, my daughter turned 12 and began junior high.

In October, my cherished paternal Grammie left me forever.

In November, I celebrated two anniversaries, a birthday, and Gluttony - what we call your "Thanksgiving" around here.

In December, I could almost breathe again, through sadness and exhaustion.

I am tired of loss and grief and uncertainty. I am tired of being afraid, lost, lonely. I am so tired. There is nothing in me but relief for the end of this year.

Tonight I am burning away tears and rage and I am celebrating joy and peace and friendship and love. Tonight I am overcoming my neophobia in a massive pyroclastic flow of hope and ferocity.

Twenty-ten will be better for me. It has no choice.

Wordless

2009-12-30T08:44:00.002-05:00

Freshmaker

2009-12-29T09:30:00.002-05:00

I'm having trouble coming up with a metaphor or visual image. I will try simile.

I feel like someone threw Mentos into my emotional Diet Coke. I can't stop frothing.

Cherished Thoughts of Resentment

2009-12-28T12:33:00.005-05:00

Some days, I fight with myself. I can see that my mood is reactive and unpleasant, that my responses are inappropriate. One days like these, I simmer and explode, retreat and adjust, flow, struggle, shout, fight. I fight like hell, and by evening I am exhausted. In that exhaustion, there is a blessed nothing. Too tired to feel, too tired to analyze every stupid detail of every meaningless response. Too tired to do anything but rest and leave all the likely apologies I'll need to disperse for the morning. I fight against my own urges all day, the need I have to spew rage at the world.

Some days, though, it's not like that. Some days it's worse. The past few days have been more difficult than usual in spite of the pleasantries of a low-key holiday. I had great food and rage, quiet conversations that left me agitated, paroxysms of resentment and bitterness over cookies.

For a few mornings now I've opened my eyes already angry. There's no reason for it, not even an alarm clock these past few days. I just wake up ready to pour gasoline on the world and toss a match. I don't know how to shake it and I don't know how to fight it, but I haven't tried very hard. I keep my mouth shut and beg for a little understanding. Don't push me, I'm treading close enough to the edge. I don't want to take you over with me.

I've attempted more than a few times to divine the pathology of this rage. Therapist love this shit. In my experience, therapists love a mystery. Therapists do not like a client who begins with an introduction of, "I am not interested in sorting through the shit in my past. I need to function now." I have yet to find a therapist who is also a pragmatist.

So I've been trying to write and I've been trying to understand and I've been trying to stay calm, and I am failing merrily at all three. I need to keep my head down until I'm not made of churning and loathing. I am the opposite of zen in spite of my increasingly desperate scrabbling to get there.

Whoops.

2009-12-27T21:04:00.001-05:00

I can't remember what I meant to say, but what came out was, "You don't understand how much I hate everything."

Look, here is cookie recipe.

2009-12-22T18:34:00.011-05:00

I couldn't find a cookie recipe with the flavor I wanted, so here was what I came up with. I am still working on a couple other ones that will be seasonal -- if I manage to get them right before this season ends.

Orange Almond Cookies

1 c. unsalted butter -- Do not screw around with this. Use butter.
1 2/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. light brown sugar
4 eggs
2 oranges
4 teaspoons baking powder
4+ cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Coating:
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. each ground cinnamon and cloves
food coloring (I used 2 drops of red and 3 of yellow, that was a little peachier than I wanted.)

Zest and juice the oranges pretty thoroughly. I used the zest from both and the juice of one and a half of the oranges. The other half was summarily eaten by a scavenging child. I think next time I'll use all the juice, through.

Cream together the butter (which should be softened but not melted) and the sugars. Once they have been made pale and fluffy like frosting, add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each egg. Add the almond extract, the zest and the juice, mix it all up some more.

Sift together -- and by that I mean "scramble together with a fork" because that's what I did -- 4 c. of flour, the baking powder, cinnamon and cloves. Add this to the butter mixture gradually. I usually do it a cup at a time. For the first cup or two you can still use the beater, then you'll have to switch to a spatula or wooden spoon or something. Watch the consistency carefully and once the flour is all added, decide if you need more. It's better that the dough be a little sticky than heavily floured, though.

Slap it down on some wax paper and form it into a log, wrap tightly with the wax paper and then in plastic wrap. Stick it in the fridge for at least a few hours, but overnight is best if you can manage. When working with it later, work in batches, keeping what dough you aren't working with in the fridge. The dough will get sticky and gross if it warms up too much.

Put all the ingredients for the sugar coating in a plastic container with a lid and shake them violently. That should mix them up. Probably make sure the lid fits tightly. You know, before you spray sugar everywhere.

I use a little cookie scoop to parcel the things out. It's like a teeny baby ice cream scoop. Either way, use something to make little balls no more than an inch in diameter. Toss these into the sugar mixture you have cleverly prepared beforehand, and shake gently to coat. Place sugary balls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Use the bottom of a glass -- like this one, that came free in a gift set of Irish cream -- to moosh the balls into a wafer shape. Don't make them too skinny unless you like crispy cookies. These would make nice crispy cookies, that's just not my thing, you know?

Bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes. Start watching them around 12 minutes, let them get just slightly browned. Cool on a rack or on the pan, store. Possibly just eat.

I think I'm going to play with the proportions a bit more, but as it stands this is a pretty good recipe. Let me know if you try it.

Hirsute

2009-12-19T20:19:00.013-05:00

I got a haircut today.

My hair is pretty wrapped up with my fluctuating identity. I either sincerely don't care, or I am obsessed with getting it just the right color and shape. (Sadly, the colors and shapes I prefer are found mostly in crayon boxes and anime, respectively.)

I have not cared much about my hair for more than a year now. So it's been an incredible shade I'll call "natural dishwater, used" and the shape... well...

I did it myself. When it started falling into my eyes the last time, I was angry and grieved and inpain. My mother, who always wore her hair long and loose and induced in me untold jealousy, had recently lost every silky chestnut wave to chemotherapy. So what right did I have to care about it? To have any damned opinion at all? How can my hair mean anything? Hers was so beautiful. I believe it pained her to lose it, it muse have, not that she ever showed that. She shrugged. Just hair.

So while I was inconveniently and immeasurably distraught over my mom's hair loss and everything that it implied and everything that it reminded me of, everything it made real, I needed a haircut myself and I wasn't able to deal with it. So I took clippers to it myself, and it looked like exactly what it was. The style of someone who cut it herself while not in her right mind. It suited me nicely, because I was in a happy angry place where I didn't care.

Today, in light of an unexpected holiday bolus of monies, I sought and received a cut and style by a "professional." As a reward, I ended up with something that aged me ten years and involved backcombing. I will spare you my horror. Dubiously, I nodded. Walking through the grocery store, I could feel it. I could feel my hair failing to look even halfway attractive.

It took me ten minutes just now to hack it all off with clippers and fix it. I look insane, my few precious white hairs show brightly at my right temple, and I cannot even describe to you the guilt I feel over the money wasted. I am so very angry that my "stylist" tried to sell me that flattened rat's nest as something she did on purpose. No way could she have really been pleased with her work, there.

I am so much happier after my own revision, I'm thinking of making it blond and pink again. I might even let myself care. What's left of it, I mean.

(All pictures are of my actual hair at various points, including a windy day at the beach. And my left eyeball, there.)

Word Choice

2009-12-15T09:33:00.007-05:00

I wish there were another way to introduce the whole subject of my... whatever.

"Hi, I'm mentally ill." Like whooping cough or Tay-Sach's or bovine spongiform encephalopathy or something. I hate sounding like a sick person.

"I'm crazy." Everyone says that. Everyone is. Crazy about pop groups, crazy for lasagna, crazy in love. It's so lighthearted.

"I have a condition." Right. Being human?

"I'm insane." I don't think I qualify, actually. I can be pretty rational, most of the time.

"My brain functions are suboptimal." Better believe it, but that doesn't paint the right picture.

How do I start a conversation (or in this case, a post) in which I want to make someone understand me a little better? I can hide my anxiety and fear behind the guise of a prickly anti-social bitch for the rest of my life, but I'm so tired of being mislabeled, dismissed and lonely. My online social networks are so meaningful to me, and I think they've given me a little courage in this regard, that I even want to try to explain why I'm such an interpersonal fuck-up.

I just need to find the right words.

(Image © Me, 2006)

Borked

2009-12-12T09:38:00.004-05:00

There was a scene in 30Rock where Liz yells at Jenna, "This is not the time to go crazy!" and Jenna yells back "Too late! I'm getting that hot feeling in my head!"

I have that hot feeling in my head. I'm in a place where I know I won't be able to fake rationality very well. Right now I'm having a violent panic attack over the idea that I might have to make a phone call later. I don't know if I'll be able to manage it and I feel so pressured not to fail like that I keep having to swallow a scream.

That's hard for people to understand. When I say I can't make a phone call, I can't. I can't just snap out of it, I can't force myself. If I got so far as dialing, I'd break down and lose the ability to speak; it's happened before. You might as well tell me to stop bitching and fly. No amount of flexing my shoulders or flapping my arms will get me off the ground.

I wish I could make some people understand that I don't do this for attention or to be obstinate or to prove a point or punish someone. This is not something I do, this is something that happens to me, and no one hates it more than I do.

Ante Meridiem

2009-12-10T14:04:00.001-05:00

I hate the way my morning sets the tone for the whole day. I understand it; I subscribe to the notion of "begin as you mean to go on."

The problem is that my mornings aren't under my control. (Okay, that's an issue I have anyway, not being able to control minutiae and yet needing to.)

How would my life change if I started each day with a few quiet moments? A cup of coffee and a thoughtful passage in a book. Maybe a little exercise with one of the dogs. A moment of clarity and sanity as my starting point instead of what I have now.

Jerked out of sleep by an alarm meant for someone else, thrown into the grumbling complaints of a couple otherwise lovely people who resent being awake and being forced to work or succumb to education. They are cranky and harried. I get that, really. I don't quite know how to deal with it, though.

I wonder if I could make the decision to change my mornings. I could get up early enough to have a few moments with myself and a dog and a coffee. I could walk or read. I could breathe. The problem there is that I have sluggish tendencies -- like most humans, I know -- and I get so little sleep (and that of such poor quality) that the thought of voluntarily giving some up just seems crazed.

Still, I think... The next morning I find myself staring at 5:30 a.m. in the offensive red glow of the digital clock, waiting tensely for it to shriek, I'm going to take the upper hand and get up first. I don't know what I'll do with those moments, but I will find some way to begin as I mean to go on. I'll let you know what happens.

Snowblind

2009-12-09T20:12:00.002-05:00

I had a long dreary post half done about my last nervous breakdown. The memories of it, distorted as they are by crazy, tend to be stirred by snow days. And oh, it was a hell of a snow day. It's strange how I hate leaving the house and feel trapped at the same time, isn't it?

I don't feel like reliving my sanity failure right now. I feel like letting the muscle relaxants I'm on for my back injury work. It turns out, though, that taking them before you go out and shovel a metric shitload of heavy snow does not preclude reinjury. Live and learn, Pyro.

I think tomorrow I am going to start something new. I've been reading collections of literary science fiction and cyberpunk, genres very dear and personal to me. I think I'm going to use this space to explore that a little as well. A lot of these short stories, though considering genre-bending or -defining classics, are new to me and I'm learning so much. I can feel myself becoming a better writer through exposure. I'm actually excited to start on some edits I've been putting off while busy being mundane and colorless.

(Yes. I write. Whole books. Now I've admitted it.)

Dreaming on Darvocet

2009-12-08T04:52:00.001-05:00

"Most children grow out of nightmares."

I still remember the disinterested doctor that shrugged at me when he said that, and I've researched the subject since then; he wasn't lying. I just failed to be "most children."

I have always had nightmares. I can still remember horrors visited on me when I was in elementary school: adult-sized Sesame Street muppets invading my home with hands saws to take my head off. The Great Owl from The Secret of NIMH ate me like a field mouse more than once. People I trusted shoved me off cliffs. Landslides, stairs and crushing falls were so prevalent I still get anxious around steep hills. Stars fell and burned the world.

You get the picture, and they've never really gone away. Not as frequent, at least. Maybe only once a week or so do I wake up afraid.

At the moment, I'm on pretty stiff drugs for a back injury. Steroids, muscle relaxants, painkillers. It's impossible to tell which is stirring my neuroses but every time I've closed my eyes for a week it's like drowning.

I woke up sobbing two days ago. I had dreamed of loved ones standing by while a former friend choked me to death. (I had asked him to get out of my bed.)

An hour ago, I woke Paragon by crying in my sleep again.

I don't usually know how to measure the significance of these dreams. My subconscious is never subtle and it's easy to point at the real-life event that triggered the nightmare.

Yesterday, December 7th, marked six months since my mother died.

The dream wasn't entirely about her, though. My Grammie was there; she died in October. My Grampy, who passed in August. My Grampy Foster, who died when I was still a child. My beautiful Nana, who left us when I was 16. My Uncle Scott, gone for a few years now.

Oh, of course there's more. Every "friend" that ever broke a knife off in my heart. The kids that beat me up when I was a kid, too. Every teacher that ridiculed me. Every adult that hurt me when I was defenseless. Every eye that looked at me coldly. Every goddamned shrink that shrugged and just tried another pill, throwing darts in the dark.

My ex-husband. Yep, by the time I was 25 I had an ex-husband. Easily the worst mistake I have ever made, a self-inflicted wound that would have killed me if I hadn't had a child to care for and no time to let my heart bleed out. I can't recall seeing him in dreams before, but he was there last night. Another mistake, another loss.

Every hurt, every loss, every horror, every betrayal, every grief, every mistake -- all there in this one nightmare, and it was worth it because I heard Mummy tell me again that she loved me.

Labels

2009-12-04T07:02:00.003-05:00

This morning I entertained the possibility that there might be an additional disorder lurking behind my eyes. I got a little giddy. Bizarre, I know, but imagine you spent 30 years of your life with no tiny clue why you behaved in certain ways. I love explanations and answers. Finding a diagnosis was the start of an incredible adventure for me. When you know what the problems are, you can address them.

However.

I'm not currently medicated or in therapy, and I'm not stupid enough to diagnose myself like this anyway. So I don't know what to do with this information other than file it away as trivia, as a possibility. I hope someday I can find a good therapist again. It's like there's 99 smug assholes hacks out there for every counselor who genuinely cares and connects.

2009-12-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

I'm typing this in bed, mostly one-handed. Something to kill the time until the Hydrocodone really kicks in and I can drift off into a happy place where my nerves aren't wrapped around the jagged shards of what used to be my spine. Medically it's not quite that bad, but it's bad enough that I called the three people I know in meatspace who might have been able to help me, by taking me to the doctor or taking my children or something.

My husband is trapped at work. I can't get a hold of my father or stepmother. And that's it. I have other people in my life, of course, but the rest of my family is consistently very busy in addition to living an hour away. The couple "real life" friends I have are, again, an hour away and busy with real lives full of exciting things like leaving their houses, interacting with humans, working for money, so on and so forth.

My community is virtual. The comfort I receive from a sympathetic friend in a Facebook wall post is meaningful to me, and I know some people are puzzled by that. But you have to understand, reading these posts or interacting with me in some forum give you a truly skewed idea of what I'm like. Of who I am.

It's all true, though. It's just aspects. Facets. I prefer written, electronic communication because it gives me the necessary time to consider my words. I'm forced to check what I'm saying, because I'm a natural-born editor. So while I correct my grammar, I will also consider my word choice. I keep in mind that the friend receiving this message cannot see my face, hear me laugh, or decipher my vocal intonations, so I must be clear.

Yesterday, dancing around in my little online world, I engaged in spirited discussion and passionate arguments, I laughed at someone's dog and shared a picture or three of mine. I made a deal with two different artists friends -- I love supporting local artists! -- and I made several new friends because I spoke up, unafraid. I feel, in the places I haunt, supported and loved.

We have so many different things in common! Greyhounds, children, a former high school, a love of Farmville, political ideals... The list goes on. I am proud of myself for learning to accept the whole of a person, to overlook a "flaw" or two in favor of overwhelming admiration.

I'm not anyone. I'm an overweight housewife with a mental illness and a temper. I buy thrift store clothes -- but not anything interesting or colorful. I collect a government check for being crazy and I dick around on Facebook. I write a blog about my dog. I read. I write.

My internet friends are real people with real lives and passions. I would buy any one of them the adult beverage of their choice. I would even hug them, if awkwardly. I am grateful every day for the wide array of experiences and interests these beautiful souls have to share. I learn so much. I connect in a hundred ways on a thousand levels.

So it's rare that I wish I had more meat-friends. It's a bitter, terrible feeling and I get so angry at myself for it. As if by wishing I weren't the sole adult in this house right now, as if wanting someone to hold my hand in realspace somehow demeans the people I truly care about.

But today, I wish I had someone to hold my hand until I sleep and then care for my children until I can do it myself again.

My daughter just told me I'm one of the toughest people she knows. I can do this, I know. I've been in more pain and I've been alone more than not. I'll be fine on my own. I just don't want to be, today. Today, I wish I had a friend to call. I wish I knew how to work friendship in the real world.