Scarlet Begonias and a Touch of the Blues

Would you care to elaborate?

2010-04-24T18:41:00.004-05:00

I'm curious as to the origins of those choosing "the voices" in my poll. What did they say? Were they friendly? Did they use sock puppets or other non-threatening props in their dialogue? Can they explain to me why the preacher's son replied to my last (and very standard) sign-off "I love you" with "Thank you"?

I yearn to be held, but I'm ashamed to assert my existence.

NB- He's got a nice little life together for himself. I could only serve to damage it, I'm sure. He has girl children of a very impressionable age. It would be very selfish of me to push this, although I suppose I owe him an explanation. Here's hoping he figures out where to find it.

A Note From the Management

2010-03-19T12:50:00.003-05:00

After an online friend lamented the lack of boob shots that she felt my "18 and Over" warning promised, I thought I'd better explain.

Although this blog and the links provided are appropriate (and necessary) for some younger viewers/readers, I wanted to convey that some of the situations/events narrated within deal graphically with "R"-rated matter- sex, drugs, death, serious mental illness, and- occasionally- even POLITICS. (By their very nature most of my posts touch on something-or-other political, but it's the "Dear Obama"-type crap that merits a warning).

Speaking frankly, as I am often too apt to do, age is not a defining characteristic of my target readership. There are people in their 60's who may never have the stomach for my subject matter. Some of us never quite grow comfortable enough to chat casually about sex, there is certainly a large contingent of those lacking any sense of humor about mental illness, and there are more unfortunate souls walking the earth who cannot forgive themselves for their past transgressions, nor can they forgive their transgressors.

Those whose view of the sanctuary is terminally obstructed by visions of sin will have to seek truth elsewhere.

For the remainder, I invite you to debate/ suggest/ just check in and PAY ATTN TO ME as we all work towards becoming our own best selves. And stumble. And push on.

Nothing to see here

2010-03-12T19:05:00.001-06:00

. . .Because I am not evolved enough to figure out how to add new tags without making a new post. And I need a one-click method to express how well my latest cocktail is treating me.

Son of a Preacher Man

2010-02-24T22:56:00.005-06:00

On Valentine's Day I got an unexpected voicemail- from a long lost surviving member of the Northern Florida surfing gothic hippie crew. Actually, he was probably the first (new) person I met upon landing in the swamp in 1994 with whom I actually wanted to spend time. I met him when we both auditioned for a play and were cast as partners-in-mischief and (perhaps, I don't quite recall) even brothers. Of course shortly after rehearsals commenced, I met the FairyGodFaggot (who sprinkles sparkle dust on me from an adjacent plane as of November 2006, raise hell in death brother) who was, like me, cast across gender as a goofy old fortune-telling Gypsy. It felt like I had joined on with a psychedelic 3 Musketeers that summer.

The truly uncustomary thing for me- having grown up in the North- was that both of them were really chivalrous- southern gentlemen, as much as a couple of 18 year old boys in fishnets and eye makeup could be (Which, I suspect, is probably a bit more gentlemanlike than your average unadorned adolescent boy) They paid, they brought the wine and grapes, so to speak.

Partner-In-Crime guy actually did my makeup and cut my hair for me, when I was still stoically in denial about my bisexuality and far too dykish to even attempt those skills. He also regularly woke up at 4:30AM to borrow a car to drive me to work at AMOCO. (Here, "regularly" is a word meaning "for 3 and a half weeks until I got canned"). My Fairy Godfaggot dressed me up with fabulous textiles and cast off rings and bailed me out of jail and made me multiple mixed CDs. Partner-in-crime guy, on the other hand, wound up stealing a hideous heirloom opal ring from me* and my Dead Milkmen tapes when he fled up North (with his traditional zero notice). Of course, Fairy Godfaggot was far from perfect, as he had a terrible drinking-and-going-home-with-strangers-abandoning-me habit.

Generally speaking, I maintained a warmer relationship with FGF (who I'll refer to as Pryncess Xanax from here on out). Women and combustibly gay men often mate for life, and while I know he had friends out the french horn who all adored him, I have it in writing that I was one of his top 10 most favorite people in the world. I was his pet hippie and he was my, well- not to put too fine a point on it-my pet faggot. But after I moved, we strayed. I become essentially too depressed to tolerate. But I guess he one-upped me there, pulling the ultimate no-show at age 30.

Not as if the Preacher's Son (grandson, to be precise) was a cheap plastic consolation prize. Our relationship was different. I imagine part of it came from the natural intrigue a chick who (thinks she) is a lesbian holds for a young man. Another part of it, I'm sure, is that a diet high in cannabis with regular doses of LSD is key in maintaining that blissninnied-free-love state that had us all thinking it was a good idea to hitchhike across the country in March and sleep in the park in New Orleans. Further, the Preacher's Son actually introduced me to my very first Rainbow Gathering, a happening which profoundly affected the course of my life. . . until I blew it, of course, on booze and women. He was really quite generous, not even a bit of a chauvinist pig, broadened my world tremendously, and was a great sparring partner. . .

. . .Which really should have clued me in earlier. I mean, how do little boys and girls show affection for one another? Hell, I still have a certificate proclaiming me "Queen of the 'I Hate Tommy' Club" from kindergarten.

It seems he was also tricked into leaving Surfer Hippie paradise and now lives just a couple of (mid-sized, Midwestern) states away. And he decided to call me up on the 14th. And he's single, and still a cutie pie. Oh dear, watch me screw this one up within 48 hours of our reunion.

I've essentially had one "normal" sexual relationship in my life, because my preferences have led me to years of total asexuality broken up by a couple of mania-induced whirlwinds of sexual carnival tours. My ex-wife and I met at the tail end of one of those, and I always felt guilty about pulling a sexual bait-and-switch on her- towards the end as my sanity peeled away, so our sex life died after a long illness of acute loss of quality followed by ever-widening spans of behaving like roommates who sniped at each other, or childhood best friends who feel obligated to one another though they really have nothing upon which to base an adult relationship.

Who knows, though? Perhaps we'll just reignite that stiff upper-lipped justfriendship accessorized with a slice of cold, gelatinized sexual tension on the side. And- what the hell- he is alive.

*C'mon, H.! What kind of a moron do you take me for? I soothed all my resentments by making hippie- dresses out of all your stuff, though.

Urban Survival for Complete Imbeciles

2010-02-24T03:40:00.002-06:00

First and Foremost! I want to disclaim that the situation you are about to read (about?) is not my fault. The place had shitty plumbing when I moved in- generally taking 3-4 flushes to quaff a modest amount of toilet paper. I never challenged it with female products, I quit feeding it paper towels long ago, and eventually put it on the "paperless diet". It's gotten to the point where I'm happy to see it even dilute my urine in a single flush. At any rate, now that we've clarified who the victim is here. . .

Never, ever, ever assume that all brands of drain opener are the same and thoroughly compatible. Apparently, while one major brand is made of hydrochloric acid (which begs the question of what use it is in declogging a major case of bulimic toilet), others are made out of sodium hypochlorite. Which may be a base, or it may actually be the same thing in colloquial chemistry-speak. Yeah, I don't know.

All I know is that I'm so paranoid about accidentally creating a chemical bomb that I hadn't dranoed my bathtub in a year fearing the implications of hydrochloric acid mixing with any lingering molecules of dried on clean shower spray, or- god forbid- soap scum.

I finally got around to tackling my own stagnant drains when I found myself still standing in yellow water at the end of my shower and several weeks after I quit my first-world habit of trying to flush toilet paper down the loo. Hell, I even tried limiting my butter consumption It seemed to alleviate the issue to some degree, but frankly I feel that the goodness of real butter cannot be measured in plumber's labor hours.

Since I became semi-obsessed with household accidents (and germ transmission) a year or so ago, I had no fewer than three 1/2 to 7/8 used jugs of "U-bend Blaster," "Theta Pi Omega's Party Punch Concentrate" and "Facelift Strength Formula". As I recall, I used one in the shower and the content of the other two in the toilet. I must have lucked out and used the two compatible chemicals in the toilet.

Unfortunately, they didn't work. The water was still foamy with caustic goodness after many, many flushes and the dumping of much hot water. Eventually I had to break the cardinal rule against plunging a pipe full of caustic chemicals. I had to, though- see, I really had to pee and I didn't know how my sweet kidney juice would interact with the remaining drain-opening bubbles.

Unfortunately, this really has not resolved my problem. True, I can once more pee in the shower, but that's not always feasible. I don't think I can quite bring myself to defecate in the bathtub. Perhaps that should go directly into the plastic TP bag.

OR MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, MY LANDLORDS COULD REPLACE MY TOILET

On the way to the forum. . .

2010-01-25T18:29:00.002-06:00

In my haste to grab anything sweet from the snacky-items aisle at the Asian grocery this weekend, I snapped up something that falls inexplicably under the category of "Only a Native Would Love. . ."

In my defense, there's got to be some way to impress on the importers that the semantic breadth of the American English cookie is not great enough to accommodate "shrimp powder" among its ingredients. Science marches forward?

Meanwhile, I'm stuck with a fairly large bag of "cookies" that taste distinctly like something one puts baking soda in the fridge to prevent.

My Hands Went Numb Inside

2010-01-03T07:53:00.000-06:00

My hands went numb inside my "boxing" mittens inside my car when I went to deliver my rent check perhaps half an hour into sunset last night. I forgot to check the outdoor temp before I left the house, as I had just gotten up. (Yes, I'm a lazy ass good-for-nothing welfare queen.) (But I'm working on producing jewelry & patchwork stuff!)

At any rate, the heater ran virtually all night. I just turned it down from 74 degrees because it was clearly a hopeless task. Checked the National Weather Service site just now and found it is -6 degrees fahrenheit. 21 degrees below zero with the windchill. At that point, there's scarcely any difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

The weather has been cold enough to actually induce me to bathe.

Winter Cometh

2009-12-09T19:51:00.000-06:00

Severe wind conditions today. 50mph is really fast for air to travel. Especially when it doesn't have a ton of water or dust to create drag. I was very much afraid it would rip my car door off or slam the trunk shut and decapitate me while I was half in it. I was trying to prioritize my groceries in order of freezer durability with only one free hand at a time, switching off the clown mitten as quickly as possible after the glove-only hand reached a "flash-freeze" state and quit functioning entirely. Fortunately today's haul included a sizeable proportion of dry goods safe to leave in the tundra while I focused my immediate attention on dairy, bottles of condiments, and approximately 10,000 cans. It would, however, have been mighty inefficient to succeed at the sorting-juggling game had I inadvertently failed to prioritize my head and left it for later retrieval with the baking mixes and crate of boxed stuffing.

In Which I further deteriorate

2009-12-08T08:44:00.000-06:00

Another month, another brush with acute renal failure. Another 3 days on a potassium IV. Another course of tendon-eating levaquin- with a twist. This time the course is 2 whole weeks.

I suppose I'd better try to see it out this time, no matter how bad the bruising and neuropathy. I don't relish handling my medication schedule with an egg-timer for 8 more days, but I could go happily about the rest of my life without ever seeing that color in a catheter again.

Of course, this does mean I'm going to be sporting medical adhesive for another week. The pressure required to scrub that shit off leaves some unsightely marks.

2009-11-17T12:15:00.000-06:00

Wow, am I ugly.

2009-11-04T00:11:00.000-06:00

Lookit what I made.

Really getting a lot of use out of that new sewing machine. (Just kidding- I'm sure I will use it religiously, once I figure it out. And only at my mother's house- too much noise for this place.

Le Krappste

2009-11-01T02:09:00.000-06:00

God, I feel truly and completely decrepit. I've got a Ragin' Cajun UTI which, as the night has crept in, seems to be slithering its way up to take up full squatters' rights in my bladder and kidneys. I've felt nauseous all day, which somehow has failed to be relieved by any amount or matter of food I stuffed down my gullet (and kept!). And to top it all off I've got a lovely lingering headache which reemerges from the analgesic fog of APAP and/or ibuprophen every few hours.

It's really quite lovely.

I also have my longstanding tinea versicolor now possibly enhanced by a vaginal yeast infection.

And I'm supposed to be up and out of here to visit my little brother for the first time in a couple of months in just 4 hours? I really miss him. Maybe I can get authorization from my mother to go and take him out myself one weekend, instead.

Oh, yeah- I turned another year older yesterday, and I am really starting to show it.

Assemble-at-home? Not so much.

2009-10-26T07:45:00.001-05:00

Sorry, I had to delete that picture which displayed my flabby boniness in all its splendor Like, gag me with a spoon.

I had this build-it-yourself beverage cart in a box that I left idle for a good three years. I bought it while I was still staying at my mother's house; it went with a cute little bedside table that apparently- being comprised essentially of six sides- was simple enough for me to assemble by myself. I bought a matching trinket case/ bookcase that I left in the skilled-at-reading-Chinglish-hands of my father & the handy-dude at my miniscule Chicago apartment, and it, too, stands perpendicular to the floor. But the beverage cart- cobbled together by me alone- never did hold a right angle for very long.

I'm sure that my inability to comprehend the sketches and crude written instructions except by doing ( as a result of which the top table frame was never actually fixed to the legs, after I attached the brackets to the bottom of it, rather than the top) conributed to the rickety quality of the cart, The fact that the two glass surfaces that served as a center-of-balance of sorts were detached for my move and I found replacing the second one to be too much of a task until a few weeks ago made it even less stable. The really fun part is that last night, I jostled the cart with the balance ball I was sitting on, and the glass shelf I had recently placed fell and smashed the dulcimer that was laying on the wooden shelf beneath it, making a spectacular amount of noise.

I haven't played the dulcimer (bought at a white elephant option for 3$ 12 years ago) in nearly as long. And while the cart was convenient for collecting random junk, it truly did not fit anywhere, and it made a great deal of noise as it fell apart over the past 11 months.

So this morning I finally dragged the POS out to the dumpster. And I put a "free" note on the dulcimer and left it inside the front doorway, being as I'm certain that it's an amp I keep occassionally hearing, and I image an active musician would appreciate it more than I.

I held on to the two plates of glass, for some reason though.

The Pedant Still Lives

2009-10-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

Despite what my browser and /or the Blogger "New Post" template would like to believe, I did not misspell "filet" in the previous post.

More adventures from the Mcfabulous state hospital

2009-10-22T04:59:00.000-05:00

Amy was beautiful and always gave away her arrival with the forcefield of urine-stench that warded off predators for a good solid 6-8-foot radius. Those rank molecules were not contained solely by the black duster she wore day in and day out, nor in the white blouse that she never changed- not even in the elegant long black pin-around skirt that fortnightly alternated with the denim miniskirt, for the odor continued to penetrate the miserable air even in the showers.

Of two things I was certain: one- that Amy had been seriously overmedicated at some point, leaving her shapely legs unable to adapt a normal standing pose, and two- that there was more to Amy than met the eye.

Carrying a perma-stench was a grevous sin, unlike- for instance- shitting your pants. Sure, one might stew for half and hour or so during shift change, but shit was an inherently temporary state. With shit, eventually, depending on your perceived level of competence, someone would either come along and clean you up or berate you until you cleaned up after yourself. With urine, eventually, stuff dried.

By affirming my vegetarian diet somewhere in the shuffle of intake paperwork, I’d foolishly assumed that I had kosher in the bag. So comfortable and homey was the system that I didn’t even know from which end to begin my rant when the day came that my tray came out with a sticker on the side reading “BEGONIAS- VEGETARIAN” and bearing a steaming fried catfish filet.

Such are the times that testify to the utility of the trays being served by through a slit in a steel door, visual contact between patients and food first being made through Plexiglas and (if the tech is so kind) drawn blinds), requests for condiments being heard (or not) through a hole drilled through. Presumably, there was some rhyme or reason behind the restrictions placed on the number and variety of condiment packets issued each patient: the mind reels at the possibilities: Secret hallucinogenic properties of a sugar rush acquired from the consumption of greater than four packets of sugar in a single sitting? A magical midnight feast drawn together of mixed jelly, mustard, aspartame, and pepper? Generally the reasons behind condiment rationing weren’t so exciting: most often, they were simply out of stock. Occasionally, the serving tech would deem the requested condiments inappropriate for meal congruence and deny them on a whim.

Sometimes, they would decline to serve an entire meal to a patient whose behavior was, in their opinion, not suited to the kitchen on a unit of a high-security state mental hospital.

A real Bipolar Life

2009-10-16T22:59:00.000-05:00

. . .not descriptive my moods nearly as distinctively as my life. It takes a year or two for my depressive episodes to successfully mentally castrate me.

For instance, I became pretty gung-ho about suicide at the ripe old age of 9. Or maybe I was 8? What I know for sure is that I was in the fourth grade. So commenced my long, boring, often worthless/ detrimental life in therapy. However, it wasn't until the 6th grade that I opted to trade off leisure time and my brain-mouth filter for passing grades and freedom from the tyrannies of detention.

5 years after that I quit high school and, over the 7 years to follow, spent my time essentially being a winner at life. I travelled around the US and to the opposite end of the Earth. I followed the Grateful Dead (the *real* Dead) I travelled the Russian countryside "riding the dog" (Russian colloquialism for taking the train without buying a ticket.) I dyed my hair blue, red, pink, and purple and taught college classes without considering removing my nosering. I won over 20,000 dollars in grants, largely for the express purpose of going to study in countries known for hard drinking. I met a fabulous girl and married her.

Unfortunately, in my 2nd year of grad school I was socked in the belly by the most ruthless depression I had, till then, experienced. My concentration was so poor that, not only could not read for awhile, but I couldn''t even sustain attention long enough to make it through a sitcom anymore. I also lost a huge chunk of my appetite; I probably averaged a couple hundred calories a day for about 3 weeks. Oddly enough, I didn't notice that I was getting malnourished until one night in bed I discovered my cervical vertabrae. At the time, I also noted how much money I hadn't spent on groceries.

Of course, cash flow from starving myself ended very shortly. I relapsed with my bulimia in all its former glory. I was genuinely aurprised and secretly proud when I was diagnosed with Anorexia a few months later. I mean, I knew that I could puke my way thin, but this was the first I'd heard my 100,000-calories-per-day habit included in the criteria for AN.

While its true that earned my M.A. that year, and, two years later, was awarded my second FLAS fellowship to spend a year drinking in Poland, I never recovered totally mentally/physically and certainly not intellectually. My flame had burned out, and I slogged my way through the fifth year. Unfortunately, 5th year is when your committee and your advisor seem to expect brilliant ideas to actually be developed and ardent copyediting of every last draft. The ten=day long exam sounds like it would suck, as well. I started getting occasional Cs, whereas in my first term I'd actually cried about A minuses. I always felt like a mental midget in graduate school after maintaining a 4.0 GPA (in my field only) through my BA. While my specialty isn't large enough to be considered a big pond, I did feel that I'd gone from big fish/small pond to small fish/small pond.

It's pretty much been upstream in cold waters since then. I've gradually lost interest/ability in everything that once made me at least minimally sociable and lucky enough to have varying regular opportunities to appreciate singlehood (from taking exstacy to going dancing at the S&M club, to taking random jobs- some under the counter- and leaving them on a whim and dying my hair to clash with my mostly Goodwill couture). My friends were family to me and our fundamental duty to one another was to let the good times roll. Having to quit graduate school did a number on my self-esteem & my work ethic. When I thought nothing could be any worse, 2004 really was spectacularly bad, especially exogenously. (Nearly had my foot amputated, the last year of my 20s, an awful president was elected for the first time to a second term, my wife left me.) 2005 sucked me dry and spit me into the wind as I dealt with the end of my marriage by honestly applying myself to suicide. I just went round-and-round the drain of my own misery, pulling anyone who tried to care about me in to drown, too. To top it off, my eating disorder- which is now old enough to drink, BTW- has managed to mature into its most feral and extreme depths in the past 4 years.

I would really like to grow out of this stage, but I honestly believe that 34 may be too late for me to accomplish a life worth writing about, not to mention worth reading about.

(If you actually managed to read this thing, kudos! Leave a comment so I can single you out on tEEf)

But it won't get you ativan. . .

2009-09-24T02:04:00.000-05:00

I told my psychiatrist the truth and he didn't fire me.

The Moss is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Stump

2009-09-22T15:12:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the shrink who's covering my new shrink at the formerly-off-limits OP Psychiatry Department of the "better" medical center in town. I like this guy- he treated me when I was on the psych ward (local) last week. He confirmed/ reaffirmed my diagnosis as M.D.D., discontinued my "mood stabilizers", and started me on an ass-kicking new anti-depressant. It seems to be working- almost too well. I was bordering on hypomanic this weekend. But I think I just need to adapt to it. Generally my initial response to anti-Ds (that go on to actually be effective) is a couple weeks of definitive activation syndrome.

I seriously need some Ativan. I promised myself that I would do my best to adhere to Doctors' Orders with this new opportunity. The doctors and other staff of this medical center actually have some experience with Eating Disorders, which has apparently eluded the shrinks at the county mental health center despite their many years of practice and (presumably) hundreds- no, make that thousands, of patients treated.

Dr. Covering New Guy offered to get me in to see a therapist who does EDs. I conceded. Most of my experience in therapy has been regressive and clumsy at best, downright traumatizing at the other end of the spectrum. Perhaps every 12th one was moderately helpful. It's hard to treat an eating disorder on the back of the Federal Poverty and Disability Insurance. It's simply not covered. So I definitely owe myself a trial with an actual referred therapist. It probably won't kill me.

It might even make me stronger. My side of the tree stump still looks greener, despite what I expected before going around it.

Bueller? Bueller?

2009-09-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

Is there anybody out there?

I care terribly what you think of me, or even that you think of me at all.

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please leave a comment. Any comment at all, including the silly and unrelated. Just stroke my ego.

Examples: It's raining frogs and grape jelly in the UP today.

or

Yo! I'm here!

Istanbul was Constantinople

2009-09-21T21:44:00.000-05:00

In addition to colostomy bag guy, there were other fascinating characters populating the tragicomedy of my latest admit to that fine public institution, the state hospital. Take, for instance, the Turk. He spoke perfectly decent English, suitable for embellishing on his illustrious- and presumably largely imaginary- academic career. He claimed a portfolio spread of PhDs in the hard sciences and in literature, decorated by any number of Nobel prizes. Yet he also claimed to have been born in 1996, which was clearly a delusion. He was easily three times the age he claimed. He would hold forth with extended manifestos of silliness in his native language, but he was entirely harmless and generally friendly.

Unfortunately he stuck out like a sore thumb on this secure ward of a midwestern and somewhat ignorant state hospital and caught a disproportionate amount of grief merely for expressing himself in his native tongue- from both the more agitated and aggressive patients and- a great deal less acceptably- from much of the staff. He was repeatedly singled out as being "loud" and sent to his room several times a day for not speaking English.

I actually enjoyed him, in measured doses. He was neither hostile nor agressively sexual toward me/ the limited female population. He clearly had a good head on his shoulders underneath all the detritus. And he taught me a Turkish word- "dura"- which means "hold on/ wait a minute."

He also served endless entertainment unbeknowest to him thanks to his unbelievably high-waisted jeans.

I am the ultimate asshole

2009-09-14T18:43:00.000-05:00

Nothing poetic about it- I am scum of the earth and, ultimately, show loyalty and love only to my twisted compulsions.

I had some hope today- an appointment with a shrink experienced in eating disorders. I promised myself and all who would listen that I was going to do my damnedest to let him lead me and give all doctor's orders a silent but fair trial. Because clearly, I fail utterly and completely at taking charge of my own life. I was prepared to try medications that turn me into a fat-swarthed, drooling, twitching captive. I was expecting to be ordered back into therapy. I psyched myself out to be brainwashed by the 12 steps. I was expecting to be admitted to rehab or an EDU. I was hoping that he would perform some kind of magic to get me charity aid, as centers that actually treat both EDs and other addictions concurrently as few and far between, and none are covered by my state Medicaid.

Unfortunately, nobody bothered to note down that I was given an appointment today- instead they some assigned me the 30th of October. "If I make it that long," I wanted to mutter under my breath, but the reality is far too graphic and dire to diminish with a pathological passive-aggresive reply. I feel like another chunk of me dies every day and I am sick and tired and I will probably have to abruptly stop taking the anti-convulant prescribed to me because I don't have enough refills to last another month-and-a-half.

I just wish I had some goddamn ativan. And some sort of effective sleeping aid. If I could sleep until the date of that appointment, it would at least slow down the deterioration of all of me.

I wish I was a decent human being.

In which I manage to stay out of the hospital for an entire month. . .

2009-09-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

. . .Only to reemerge with a double-booking- admitted to the local psych floor not 2 weeks before being reunited with my much-maligned regional state hospital for the third time this summer.

I like to blame the latter on the former- I was discharged from the local ward on the second day of a total and abrupt restructuring of my crazy meds, scarcely enough time to pony up a life-threatening allergic reaction, let alone get all one's neurotransmitter receptors aligned and firing routinely on the same side. This was my first total med dump and fresh start in as long as I can remember. While I routinely discontinued my meds gradually in the days following a discharge, this d/c of my anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs had the unique characteristic of being thoroughly sanctioned by my prescribing physician. And please do note: I continued to take my shiny new rxes essentially as written through discharge and well back into my routine welcome-home flurry of self-destruction. I managed to spin myself into psychosis and the complementary OD on leftover anti-psychotic meds just fine on the trim new combo of oxcarbazepine and buspirone. Though I must confess that my latest delusional break was not the sharp departure from reality that customarily won me a free visit to the emergency department, and my accompanying OD was relatively trifling (a very large daily dose, really not even an overdose- though sufficient to cause partial seizures throughout my night on a heart monitor). Especially in light of the fact that I induced vomiting shortly after I began to feel the effects and called for my ride to the peanut farm not long thereafter.

I used the above as leverage for a swift and low-bullshit discharge from what turned out to be (at the time) a *remarkably* crazy bad unit of the state shithole. One night a patient decided to express his opinion regarding the shit on the unit by brandishing his colostomy bag and whipping it around the dining area and across the front desk counter. When staff denied him a replacement bag, he continued expressing himself directly onto the floor, leaving a trail as he traversed the hallways and two public TV rooms. The techs helpfully set up yellow >CAUTION! WET FLOOR!< signs around the major deposits and proceeded to ignore the human feces punctuating every major thoroughfare of the hall for a couple of hours, ostensibly in the hope that the patient have the shame? embarrassment? dignity? pity? to pick up his own shit after experiencing zero discomfort spreading it around to begin with. Such flights of fancy on staff's behalf only cost an evening's worth of major health code violation- not long enough for it to have any repercussions. And honestly, most of us sympathized with guy enough to tolerate the shitty protest for a couple of hours.
He possessed the intestinal fortitude to literalize what all of us coherent patients had mistaken for a only figurative retaliation against the unfairness of being confined to Monroe Hall. The colostomy patient shat for all of us that night.

It was particularly oppressive being female at a time when the patient population, for whatever reason, was 75% male.

2009-08-12T17:59:00.000-05:00

'Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.'

O'Brien, 1984

In the nutshell

2009-08-12T15:05:00.000-05:00

So the state hospital was an objectively awful experience. There really was no point at which I abandoned myself to a reappropriation of my careless youth, there were no moments when laughter or love took over and successfully obscured the institutional walls in the background. There was no "learning to live again" that was not sublimated by the noxious smell of stale piss, and even the stench did not curb hunger left by the state's subsistence meal trays. It was impossible to forget that I had found myself locked up behind two steel doors amidst an army of wailing, cackling, incontinent/violent social throwaways and that- apparently- I belonged there.

I think that was the worst part. Not endless unsatisfying starchy dinners or being denied medical care, nor the knowledge that this was an alternative to prison for some and homelessness for most others, not even the fear of being held there month after month, year after year, forgotten and with no chance for appeal. . . No, the most horrific thing about living in this nightmare was the constant consciousness of the fact that it was real and I wasn't going to wake up.

I fucked up big time and had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I needed my freedom taken from me lest I use it to hurt myself. There was nobody there to help me confront this stunning fact. So I, like all the other patients not fully occupied by their delusions, pressed through the days seeking to drown in sleep whenever we could grab 20 uninterrupted minutes. The line for night meds was always the longest and most quickly formed. Nevermind the sunset, all that mattered was obtaining 8 or 9 hours of oblivion and putting another day in "treatment" behind us.

My much anticipated return

2009-08-12T01:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally excavated the password reset on this blog, after many months of bitching and moaning about being locked out 4-ever. The anticipation was much like foreplay and I, in my classic style, turn out to be frigid once the "main event" culminates.

Hopefully I'll manage to post a successful entry or two (or 3000) before I inevitably re-fuck myself back into the state insane asylum. Here's to dreaming!

It aint easy being clean

2009-05-08T04:00:00.000-05:00

I have to get better. I can't stand living this way. If there still exists beauty in ordinary life, I'm blind to it. My mother offered to take me home with her when she picked me up from the hospital and all I could think of was must-get-to-binge-food. And I was so very dissappointed to arrive and find my regulation food stash niches empty.

Later, I found them in a little-used cupboard , but by then it was too little, too late. Baking gardenburgers (poo-burgers) now and perhaps that will make up for the ant manifestation that appears to have taken over my bedroom? during my furlough in the hospital. They seem particularly taken with my dirty laundry; I can only imagine it's the food-stained sheets that draw them.

I have got to get help. Soon. Help.

Just an ordinary day in the ICU

2009-05-07T23:27:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I did it. I wasn't trying to kill myself, although thanks to this little lesson I've learned that I actually have the capacity. (I'd overdosed on various pills so many times before, only to wake up the next morning or, at worst- face a quick trip to the ER for gastric lavage.) I don't intend to kill myself, and I guess it's a bit awe-making ("awesome" doesn't seem to fit the context here) to learn that the very simple, painless (for me, certainly not for my parents) relatively quick method was in my grasp all the time.

But why? Why? Why? Why? It certainly wasn't one of those accidental ods where you party a little too hard and wake up in a bed with gates and wheels, tubes in every conceivable orifice. What I took was not a "fun" drug. I'll say it was prescribed as an anti-psychotic and no more, because I don't want to issue any lessons on How To Put Yourself Into A Coma the Miss Delusional way*as seen on TV.

I can only guess it was me playing a classic borderline personality headtrip on my dad, who was down visiting, took me out shopping (ATTN: I am now the proud owner of a wall clock!) Because I took the pills while he was waiting for me in the car,; I guess I told him I needed to stop off and get something. Once I realized what I'd done, I tried to induce vomitting, but I clearly didn't do a very good job. I walked out of the apartment, and asked him to take me to (name of private local looney bin) for an assessment. Which he did. I can't tell you how it went, though- apparently I lost consciousness shortly thereafter.

So I spent I think 2 nights in ICU before they moved me to the general floor.

I need to apologize to my father. He drives almost 3 hours to see me and at least every other visit involves the hospital.

And I have goddamned oral thrush.

Something I meant to "publish" in January

2009-04-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

Dead Tour:
April 12 Greensboro NC Greensboro Coliseum
April 14 Washington DC Verizon Center
April 15 Charlottesville VA John Paul Jones Arena
April 17 Albany NY Times Union Center
April 18 Worcester MA DCU Center
April 19 Worcester MA DCU Center
April 21 Buffalo NY HSBC Arena
April 22 Wilkes-Barre PA Wachovia Arena @
Casey Plaza
April 24 Uniondale NY Nassau Coliseum
April 25 New York NY Madison Square Garden
April 26 Hartford CT XL Center
April 28 E. Rutherford NJ IZOD Center
April 29 E. Rutherford NJ IZOD Center
May 1 Philadelphia PA Wachovia Spectrum
May 2 Philadelphia PA Wachovia Spectrum
May 5 Chicago IL All State Arena
May 7 Denver CO Pepsi Center
May 9 Los Angeles CA The Forum
May 10 Mountain View CA Shoreline Amphitheater

Phish Tour:
6.04.09 Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
6.05.09 Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
6.06.09 Comcast Center, Mansfield, MA
6.07.09 Susquehanna Bank Center, Camden, NJ
6.09.09 Asheville Civic Center, Asheville, NC
6.16.09 Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO
6.18.09 Post Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown, PA
6.19.09 Verizon Wireless Music Center, Noblesville, IN
6.20.09 Alpine Valley Music Theater, East Troy, WI
6.21.09 Alpine Valley Music Theater, East Troy, WI
Fuck this. I did a really short "Phish tour", from FW or Austin (whichever is wester) to NOLA primarily for company on the drive home to FL in 95. And yeah, I vended. But I didn't go around asking for free tickets, I honestly couldn't (still can't) name a single song of there's. Here is the sum total of my knowledge of the band Phish:Trey Anastasio

So maybe I'll find a renfest to crash for a month orhmmmmmm maybe I could go visit a friend who lives in California but of course I couldn't be so forward as to straight out and say it. So she'll clearly have to learn of my plans through this blog.

July- Kick back in Wyoming with several thousand of my closest pals see how long we can survive both a) living on dried pulses, and b) the comingling of general Eau de 2 week Ripe Hippie with the natural conclusion of massive bean ingestion by thousands of humans.

Magically liquidize all my books and other bulky, pseudo-valuable crap in a single flash of brilliance, so that I don't manage to while away the money that I've saved/earned the previous few months by not paying and selling Handmade Fairtrade 100% Bolivian Sticky Dank Nothing on a Stick.

Renew my passport.
Move back to Moscow and teach Yoga and English.

Maybe I should leave a space for yoga lessons in there somwhere? Maybe I can move in with some nice asexual diggers who will tolerate my lack of money and the red x lit up on my vagina as long as I fed them well. I have found historically (from a youth spent as "her ugly friend")that that ability to hold your cool/liquor/ "non-liquor"/ tears, etc. while at once serving homemade lasagna from a casserole nestled between 15 y. o. hips and DD breads while exclaming that you're "so glad you finally got to make this- you've been on the rag all week and craving it" generally leaves them too dumbfounded to do anything but pass you the bong.

Then again, who knows- maybe I'll want to have sex with a 67 y.o. geezer perpetually adorned in a loincloth on the packed-earth floor of his gedesic home. Such things are prone to happen when I quit my ~~frigidity~~ happy/sleepy/crazy/nervy/spazzy pills.

Good god I've got so much beading and macrame and patchwork to be done.

That I might sleep

2009-04-16T00:20:00.000-05:00

Seroquel. That's put an end to this madness, for the night and perhaps even tomorrow if my vasculature gets lucky. Maybe not as effectively as Zyprexa- I still can't believe how efficiently my neglected "regular" 15mg dose knocked me out when I unwittingly signed myself in to the psych ward last Wednesday. And how immediate and unrelenting the hunger was!

Thank fuck I'm off of that. Seroquel might not hit as hard and, sure, there's those lovely extra=pyramidal symtptoms if I accidentlyonpurpose take more than 400 mg within 24 hours, but if I don't take it every night, and top if off with some hydroxizine and the bioequivalence of 20 mg diazepam, it does the trick.

Eep, I hope.

Sharps bin made of a peanut butter jar

2009-04-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

I hit an artery tonight. I didn't realize it immediately, cause the aassembly of terumos is so loose that a bit of the red flag generally pushes its way in the moment one pops through the vein wall, but .15cc of blood with a (what I realized was not the rhythm of my shaky hands but) pulsing gush (fortunately?) signalled "too good to have hit true" even to my addled brain. ANd my addled brain yanked it out and proceeded to spend the next several minutes ruminating over possible loss of limb while the drugs hemodialyzed. We hate it when they do that.

Too bad there's no 800 number for junkies in crisis. We are hesitant to seek out medical attention, for reasons sampled below. I tried calling all the exhange program hotlines in my state as I am generally reluctant to bother the local guy outside of business hours unless I'm off my gourd. Finally I settled on texting him. Hopefully my foot won't fall off. I'm going to try to meet him on Monday and I'm betting he'd feel bad if I lost a limb all because the exchange ran out of 29 gauge needles (forcing me to perform surgery elsewhere.)

I swore I was going to bed hours ago, swore I would put the sword down and yield the anti-psychotic and go-to-sleep. But something (tender, beckoning veins that dissappear under attack? the SIX fucking pounds I seem to have accrued since I was in the hospital three nights ago? insufficient xanax stores?) (I vote the latter) drew me to the pharmacy like some kind of really jittery bug to one of those electric zappers and the countdown has begun again.

Fortunately, the pharmacy with the cheapo needles nearby is closed tomorrow. (Something about nailing a Jew to a tree and then reciting the necronomicon?) And I absolutely will not drive on 3 days without sleep, so this silliness has a natural-if postponed- pausing point.

Oh, my bus pass?

This is How I am Going to Die

2009-04-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

I am a bipolar iv drug addict and a bulimic and I am dying, but not from either of these things. I am dying of ignorance. I am dying of the pervasive, erroneous belief in the healthcare field that symptoms of mental illness are just desserts, an appropriate punishment for our failure to take care of ourselves properly.

Independent of (and prior to) my real downward spiral into lowlife junkie loserhood, I was denied medical referrals for various symptoms, which were brushed off as "probably a side effect of my weight (loss)," despite a clearly documented history of external pathologies to explain various nerve and joint issues.

As a bulimic, I should have regular labwork done to monitor my serum potassium levels. I should always have a current prescription for potassium caplets.

As an IV drug user, I fear phlebotomists. Especially trainees, who populate the lab at the clinic I used to go to. But I wasn't sure how justified I was in my fear and loathing until I wound up in the ER a couple of nights ago, after a hard couple of days with more hits than misses which resulted in me looking even more of a loser than usual.

They wouldn't listen to my advice. They wouldn't let me have any water- dehydration is awful for venipuncture and the color of my urine specimin made it clear that I was dehydrated. They refused to try veins I knew would work and left me with a nice 5 inch long hematoma on the inside of my forearm. 8th time's a charm?

Apparently, my potassium was 2.7. This is actually a record low for me. The psych floor apparently waffled about taking me but I suppose they remembered how charming I was from a few weeks prior. At any rate, I had faith that whoever was sent up from the lab to redraw me the next day would be better. The last time I'd been on this floor, I'd had labs done by a magician.

No such luck, though. It was a repeat of the night before. This woman refused to draw from my hand, saying literally "because we're supposed to draw from here" (she points to the crook of the elbow, the first veins to be blown by every needle jockey.) Then she tied my arm off until it turned purple, dug around with her needle with no luck, paused for a minute to go out for a smoke break, continued to gouge me until she finally hit a minor vein. She proceded to literally suction the blood out of me for a good minute.

Then she finally released the tourniquet.

This is an excellent way to create a falsely elevated serum potassium reading.

So, at any rate- I'm not going in for regular bloodwork. The odds of getting an angels are pretty damn slim. The odds of getting an asshole who thinks the abusing me is going to anything other than send me after something to block out the pain are pretty high.

And the odds of me being admitted to rehab with hypokalemia? Well, now. That's just downright funny.

What a Dreary Planet

2009-03-07T10:32:00.000-06:00

Here's the thing about stimulants: the line between function and frenzy is drawn in the sand far out on the beach and, apparently, it's only a matter of time before the tide comes in. These chemicals have the uncanny characteristic of making everything just a bit more interesting. All objects become shinier, all people younger and better looking. And without them, suddenly- nothing holds the attention. One finds oneself suddenly, inexplicably, back in an ordinary world where everyone has to make their own fun. Worse than that, everybody has to devote large portions of their lives to the Profoundly Unfun and Drab.

Why would you ever consciously choose to live in the ordinary world?

2009-03-06T20:20:00.000-06:00

The co-morbidity thread.

Anorexia is "worse" (better?) (superior, but with a darker prognosis) than bulimia. However, binging-purging anorexia has the highest mortality rate of all eating disorders. Er, of "both" eating disorders, neglected as compulsive over-eating is in the realm of research, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that COE is the deadliest of them all.

Bulimics of whatever weight, however, are more likely to present with/ acquire at taste for reality-adjustment. Is this taken into consideration when figuring morbidity/mortality rates of the messy binge/purgers vs. the pure ethereal restrictive anorexics? And what is the prognosis for those displaying symptoms of both eating disorders and substance abuse disorders?

Not too good, duh.

But doesn't one compulsion temper the other? Compulsion requires singular dedication to perfect. If one's attention is divided between spanking the monkey and gorging the gorilla, one can only slither so far down a particular rabbit hole before self-preservation ( of a sort) retrieves the self and sets it back down in the alternate whirlpool of self-destructive cerebral onanism.

Right?

Poll!

2009-03-06T19:08:00.000-06:00

Please participate. I don't think I can make leaving feedback any easier than clicking a radio button. (Feel free to complicate it yourself, though, by clearing your cache to vote multiple times.)

2009-03-06T19:04:00.000-06:00

. . . Something about how drugs that act on the dopamine receptors physiologically diminish willpower (as in the power to abstain when indulging is easier/more pleasurable)

Junkie Jews for Jesus

2009-03-04T19:04:00.000-06:00

I've discovered an even stupider game than Race the Train. It's called something like Slamming Leftovers and has nothing to do with closing shift at the diner. I've done cottons a million times- that's something of a fact of life, of this life. It's low, but acceptable because everyone knows what it's like to be low with a lift in sight. Cottons are always in sight. But emptying out that big red box and checking to make sure you've squeezed every last drop of evil out of each barrel, collecting a murky orangey-brown pot of fools gold from the last 3 units of 6 or 8 pins, and tying off like it's just another taste--- that's just plain disgusting. It's one thing to bang a drop or so of fresh blood on your second or third try after missing. It's altogether another level of Purgatory (pardon the pun, if you catch it) to recook and inject a day and a half's worth of one's own elixir of life.

And on the title topic, I'm giving up for Lent. That's right. Just plain giving up. (I figure that as a heathen I have nowhere to be cast out of should I slip and catch hold of a ray of hope.)

News of the Stoopit

2009-01-08T03:15:00.000-06:00

My lord, did I really play race the train tonight?

I wonder it it had anything to do with 54 hours without sleep. (The first 24 all natural.)

Please Don't Donate for Christmas

2008-12-20T16:36:00.000-06:00

Everybody wants to volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving or Christmas. These are the two times a year when everyone feels generous (perhaps to their own detriment) and larger-than-average donations of food, clothing, money, and household items come rolling in. *However*, it's important to note that U.S Thanksgiving and Christmas span scarcely one month each year. Poverty spans the entire twelve months.

Please don't get me wrong, we appreciate everything you give. (Okay, TBH I don't appreciate the ground turkey, the ubiquitous beef stew, and the 7,000 extra jars of peanut butter I've amassed. Or the canned beets)

But do you want to know on which days it's *really* cool to get some unexpected treat amongst the government commodities?

National Nothing Day (1/16)
Tuesday, the 14th.
Groundhog Day (2/2/)
Mardi Gras
International Women's Day (3/8)
Spring Equinox.
Gay Pride Day (6/29- additively, Nat'l Coming Out Day 10/11)
Bastilles Day (7/14)
Rat Catchers' Day (7/22)
Roseanne's Birthday (8/10)
Hobbit Day (9/22)
Rosh Hashanah
(the dubiously named Canadian) Persons Day (10/14)
Friday the 13th,
Saturdays in any month the letters "R" or "U"

I WANNA BE AT THE YMCA

2008-12-20T15:54:00.000-06:00

I was filling out the application and noticed that each
adult membership included kids. They never specify on the application
itself whose kids they must be. The only information they ask of
potential members is name, sex, and DOB. So I went ahead and listed
my younger brother, figuring there might be a program here he'd enjoy
or he might like to come swimming sometime.

Of course *inside the program guide* in tiny tiny print they
elaborate on "kids included" tacking on "dependents as defined by the
IRS". On page 3 they give themselves of standing ovation, "In support
of the YMCA's goal to connect families in meaningful ways, dependent
children living in the same household are included at no charge on
all Adult or Two Adult memberships."

I guess another one of YMCA's goals is to separate non-traditional
families in alienating ways. The "household" rule definitely cements
the non-custodial parent the less invested (read: less loving) parent.
I have to wonder whether Heather would qualify under her 2nd mommy's
membership in the many states that don't allow for same-sex adoptions.

After that rant I realized that _the timeline fits_ for me to be
his mother.He was born in the interim between my first and second
years of college. Admittedly, my DOB doesn't reflect that, as I
was 17 at the time. But at this point in my life unwed knocked-up
teenage dropout is a helluva lot more believable than crumpled
ingenue. Furthermore, neither pleading no snooping on their
behalves will turn up any recent tax return forms for me. Among
the manifold benefits we folks living off the government
on SSI enjoy is government-sanctioned tax evasion. Er, that is to
say, we receive less per annum than a standard single deduction.

So, let's see.

In summary, the YMCA wants to

Alienate children from their non-custodial birth parents in the case of divorce

Foster hostility amongst steps and half siblings

KEEP OUT TEH GAYZE

Singlemindedly thwart my attempts to maintain a relationship with my brother

I never would have discoverd all this if I'd just filled out the
application without glancing at the flyer, as I ordinarily would.
I would have simply entered his information with mine and forgotten
about it.

I want to leave it.
But in that case, should I leave our mother as emergency contact?

N.B. Forgive the format, this is a tweaked-out rant on an e-mail copypasta sent to my mother, who is getting me GYM for exmass.

I brushed my hair today

2008-12-02T22:50:00.000-06:00

The is an event, because it was the first time I had done so this year. Well, in this year of my life, anyway. November was a month of neglect: I've been reduced to reusing the same serrated knife (for slicing cheese and bread, but also for smearing them in mustard and margarine), plastic Taco Hell spork, and pyrex one-quart liquid measuring cup for all of my domestic needs (not to mention my designated "bathroom" cups) as I ignored the mountains (and probably-by now- unique biosphere) that filled my sink by the beginning of the month. I just didn't care. Now? I sort of care- I'm sick of my binges being limited to generic boxed stuffing, day-old baked goods & Lil' Debbie knockoffs, and gigantic bags of store-brand potato chips. But now it's grown to more of task than simply washing dishes and finding adequate space/facilities to dry them. Now I fear it would involve an obligatory relocation program for the community that have surely hosts a variety of (hopefully not sentient) life-forms.

At any rate, I started with something (minimally) less daunting: brushing my white-girl-dredlock-prone nap. My hair is getting long. It's also almost back to a natural color. And here's the clincher: while using the Jaws of Life to clean out my brush after this act of self-inflicted violence, I came across an entire hank of abnormally light hair. I couldn't tell in the darkness of my cave whether it was totally devoid of pigment, or just one of those random *really* light blond streaks that decide to grow randomly out of my head to help me retain my status of blondness as my natural hair color has metamorophosed (and nearly fallen off the Map of Blond) with age. I realized that what I was looking at could actually be grey hair, sprouting in streaks.

That's when I decided to revoke my moratorium on dying my hair unnatural colors. Sure, I may looks silly as I progress through my 30s with _Vampire Red_, _Azure_, and the inevitable _Ultraviolet_ sticking out from under my hood, but at least I won't have to subject myself to the horrors of _dying my hair its own color_ in order to remain in denial. Of course, with flourescent hair the denial may be a bit more outwardly obvious, but it's easy for me to believe I'm still punkrock.

(I was never punkrock. I was a gothic hippie.)

In other news, I believe I have officially blown my one remaining median cubital vein. This sucks, but on the other hand- it means no more trainee phlebotomists when I get bloodwork done. Ever.

Intensive Carpet Survey #7154

2008-11-30T19:18:00.000-06:00

This is the part I hate most, I think. It reminds me of my brief foray into the world of crack at 15, and how smugly sure I was that I'd never wind up on my hands and knees weeding crumbs out of the carpet to administer to myself. How- in desperation- every little piece of crud becomes a potential barge to salvation: can I smoke this? sure, it's a fleck of popcorn but it won't kill ya. . . can I smoke this? nah, better not. its consistency is alarmingly similar to drywall and the taste confirms it. I made fun of our friend's little brother as he begged his elder for a taste of the ambrosian-smoke Dave still had stashed away. I'll give you a six-pack, I'll pay you 50 bucks on Monday. . . "Please Dave, I'll suck your dick," I mocked Mike because I was 15 and knew everything.

Conclusion of Survey- God, I need to clean. This place is getting seriously disgusting and I need a neutral backdrop for spotting leftovers from whatever leads into I.C.S.#7154.

What Goes Up. . .

2008-11-30T16:05:00.000-06:00

. . . must come down. And this is the part that sucks.

My crappy new add-on

2008-11-23T09:29:00.000-06:00

Мнe хοτeлоcь пробовать новый ađđ-on abcTajpu, ĸοтοрый кстати оказался нe совсем нравится. Дело в том, чтσ впервые нужно «печатать» текст показанной на экране клаватурой а не по-человечески нажймать кнопками. Слушь, несмотря на то, как я пытаюсь тереть язык этот, οднако печатаю на ней совсем не плохо-даже несколько палцами ,бывает. Но вот этой хреновой фигней нужно заниматься покрайной 5 мере дольше, чем бы ТОчНО ТАКУЮ САМУЮ ЖЕ ФИГНЮ οбыкновенной кирилиџской клав-ой. Это правдивое говно честно говоря. Навек потеряласъ человечеству можливость познатъ сколько недописнной мною эрунды.

2008-11-19T05:09:00.000-06:00

So.

I'm seeing a drug counselor. But shhh, it's hush-hush, because I don't actually do drugs. Or at least that's what I, and my parents, and the public health system, and God and my Country would like to believe.

A mixed cd

2008-08-15T11:05:00.000-05:00

Heart Shaped World- Chris Isaak
Manic Monday- the Bangles
Life is a Highway- Tom Cochrane
Son of a Preacher Man- Dusty Springfield
Hot Child in the City- Nick Glider
Devil Went Down to Georgia- CD Band
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald- Leo Kottke
Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue- Crystal Gayle
Killing me Softly with His Song- Lauren Hill
Sunrise- Donna Godcheaux

Would-be to-do list

2008-07-30T06:15:00.000-05:00

Sweep bathroom and kitchen at old apt, with use of force when necessary. (I pancreas a well-made scrubbrush. Pick up rubbish from carpeted areas by hands, catch the detritus with the bissell. Mop kitchen & bathroom floors. Scrub entirety of bathroom, floor, walls, commmode, underneath those places most people are lucky enough never to even acknowledge, let alone repeatedly apply caustic chemicals and liberal elbow grease to tamp down the level of nasty stench.

So I'll hit all the "bulimic arterial spatter" points as well, out of courtesy. You know what I'm talking about- those sprays that inadvertantly wind up 8 feet up on the wall behind you. And who hasn't experienced a rousing game of "what's that stuff stuck to the ceiling, and how on Earth did it get there?"

I need to absolutely sterilize this new place, though. I grow accustomed to the rank odor of cat piss after spending an hour or so back home, but the stench is magnified a gugelplex entering the bathroom.

I'm also meant to change my address with the post office, SSA, HFS, and- oh! unpack my own shit. God forbid. And I've decided, on my second night here, that my top household decoration priority will be drapes. Stringing up networks of scarves from Russia and the Far and Middle East has a certain kitschy charm, but it doesn't make it nighttime indoors whenever I need it to be. Further, the uneven nature of using random cloths (even if some are quite large) as window coverings is that they never*quite* fit, leaving totally unjest individual rays to hit exactly one third of the face.

More importantly, I think, is that such curtains leave such a wide opportunity for nosy sniveling snitching peepers. Mom's coming up this weekend, my freedom depending, and I would love toenable her shopping complex. (It's generally quite tempered by my stereotypical late-20th century American Jew genes.) If I had anything to contribute, I could almost say that we balance each other out. In actuality, we haven;t down much "recreational shopping" (yes, drs. do this) since I lost my TAship in 2003. And I guess I'm not as much fun to shop for, when my response to every item proferrred is "and what exactly does one do with that?"
I don't need five new pairs of shoes at a time

I will write more on how much I love my new neighbors later, but for the time being I think I'd better do my TaeBoe before another crisis comes up.

2008-05-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

I don't feel good.
I am not happy.
It's not okay.
Everything is wrong.
I alone am not acceptable.

I don't even really want to eat. I just keep bingeing because that's the only way to remember who I am. Forget who I am. Without that protective barrier of cakecrumbs and puke between me and reality I will fall into the abyss. There's no oxygen and no light there.

The only places worse have the words "mental health" or "psychiatric" in their titles.

Woe is me, car owner

2008-05-11T02:11:00.000-05:00

Are there precision tools and advanced technical training required in order to shatter the idiot panel in your modern American locomotive? Or do you think I could do just as well myself with calm hands, a steady eye, and a mid-weight hammer?

I've never had a car with such a yen to fortel doom- and such bad timing with it- before. "Low tire"? First of all, how the fuck do you how many PSI are in my tires? I'm just dicking around here, but I'm willing to bet we could pull out a tape measuring and determine that you-IL "low tire"- are actually further from any of my four tires when I am properly seated and buckled with hands at 10 and 12. Further-fucking-more- why didn't this come up a couple of months ago when it was discovered that one of my tires was as low as 15PSI? Is that not low?

Or are you telling me about my spare? You know, I may be 10 feet away from the spare tire, but you're 11. I think I have a greater level of sensitively.

Of course so as not to leave "low tire" feeling exposed and awkward, "antilock" lit up at the same time. Where the fuck did all these lights come from? I've had the piece of shit 3 years now; if this were the result of a group of drunk Chinese New Year revelers staggering in late, I could almost understand.

Yeah, almost. I'm sure this sure of thing happens all the time at GM.

The one neat thing about brakes I've learned from driving my way through 4 used American pieces of shit is this, though: anti-lock, shmanti-lock, brakes pads, maxi pads, brake lines, sprinkler systems. . .it only really matters if you plan to stop.

Institutionalization is not Housing

2008-05-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

Attention! The Good Ship Lollypop has registered a direct hit! All personnel to the Reality Tugboats and paddle for shore!

Yes, my lease is running out. Yes, I was foolish enough to bring up my housing situation as a conundrum with which the county mental social worker might help me. No, hospitalization is not a housing option. And fuck what you want to say about my health, you can't look at me and make a prognosis.

I've already addressed this. Fuck "supportive housing". Double fuck a nursing home.

I swear to god I thought your job description- attached to the "Our Vision, Our Mission" section of the facility for which you work- was to foster the maximum possible safe level of independence for us fuxtored people. You know, in accordance with the most popular beliefs about how mental health care being practiced today?

I've read a lot of the propaganda. Nowhere does it advocate revoking any aspect of an adult's autonomy to promote progress or even tease out stability. So quit swooning at me over every shitty boarding house with a nursing staff that has a free bed. I'm still a fully enfranchised fucking adult; stop suggesting I forfeit the right to un/lock my own door or I'll. . . I'll. . . I'll run away goddamnit!

Encore of the Living Dead

2008-04-01T07:14:00.000-05:00

Ahhhhhhhh! The first of the month, finally my foodstamps have been reupped. I am waging a losing battle to restrain myself from going out in public looking like a seriously hideous unwashed stinky food zombie and blowing a large chunk of them on things that make the self-righteous and uber-frugal go "tsk". But fuck them. I'm not ignorant white trash, goddamnit.

I know that it's imperative not to go grocery shopping hungry. *Honk if you get irony.*

Discuss amongst yourselves.

So I was having a chat with Mickey Mouse last night about politics. . .

2008-02-06T15:58:00.000-06:00

And on topic. People who experience the world in 2-D, who assume that she who plays devil's (republican/ recovery/ MIA queen/ recipient of disability accomodations/ devoutly religious/ nurse-who-made-a-triggering-comment's advocate must be the devil (or the republican, the recovery nazi, the MIA queen, the receiver, yadda yadda) irk me. I don't know, maybe its a fault and my brain is hyperextending (soon to implode on release, I'm sure). But wow- is it really that hard to process one or two additional bits of information on a subject that might greyscale it? Is it really that unusual to despise some of a person's beliefs while truly empathizing with some of his experience?

When a person appears to exist only as a bundle of compulsory idea/ action- devoting most of his time, thought, and energy to a distasteful pursuit like recovery/ eating disorder/ converting to Catholicism/ watching television I have to believe that he is using a new obsession as mental protection against some thoughts/behaviors that might be far more dangerous. Clearly this can only go so far with something like an ED. But if attending the seminary is somehow filling your ex-boyfriend's life, and blowing his brains out has ceased to be a viable option, maybe Catholicism deserves a break.

I mean, honestly- how can one make complete sentences without the capacity to hold two ideas in one's head simultaneously?

Hyacinth House

2008-02-04T18:45:00.000-06:00

So, before I was derailed by the threat of unexpected disenfranchisement, and caught up in the urgent need to employ as many words, in as many different places, as possible in the umpteenth reiteration of my All the Viable Candidates Suck platform (conveniently forgetting that independent, critical thought is rarely born in the eleventh hour) and spewed my unpolished endorsement all over the internet- before I bored at least 2 of my 3 possible readers off to more shameful pursuits or straight into a bag of croissants - I was starting to write about how my life came to be measured in milligrams and cubic centiliters. The History of High According to Miss Delusional, and the evolution of its role in my life.

Unfortunately I keep getting about this far- 8 or 10 lines- and running out of. . .

Another Electile Rant. . .

2008-02-04T04:32:00.000-06:00

Of course everyone knows who's going to take the D-nom
in Illinois, but it would be nice to make it clear (to
both remaining candidates) that at least a few of us
have witnessed their in/actions and words in context.
Refusing to vote odds might convey the message to the
2008 dem presidential nominee that he can't get away
with blowing smoke up our asses about social welfare.

God forbid elected officials should actually devote
some thought or attention to the concerns of their
(proposed) constituents.

Lord knows Hillary Clinton refuses. Of course I wouldn't bother with the ramblings of the unwashed and disassociating masses either, if I were that deep in the insurance industry's pockets. Hell, I'd write limericks feigning concern for the state of public health while simultaneously evading the issue of mental illness myself.

Barack Obama doesn't even know the scope of what he's overlooked. It's not bad enough that the man has failed to distinguish between Medicare and Medicaid. His regurgitation of the party line regarding the inadequacy of health care for vets truly flops when he skips the record on the particular dearth of mental health facilities for treatment of PTSD and other mental disorders available to veterans.

It's hardly as if the nation is flush with psychiatric beds or workers, with care being denied disproportionately to veterans. Veterans aren't getting adequate mental health care because the resources de facto do not exist. It's ridiculous to propose "breaking down the barriers" to care before anyone has even proposed "laying down a foundation" for the facilities which would provide that care. In a neighboring county seat, one finds the office of the two psychiatrists serving all public needs and most private for a population topping 80k. This is not exceptional, such figures can be found throughout the US. This is a national crisis, but Barack Obama should at least have an inkling of a clue about the status of his own backyard.

It will be a disaster if either of them wins the
nomination on PR and good looks alone- as far as I'm
concerned both need to undertake some serious
education before either belongs in the White House.

Please use your vote this Tuesday to give support to the candidate whose beliefs you want in the White House, electability be damned. Let's shake these two up. We know damn well by now the danger of a complacent leader.

Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good-Looking Corpse

2008-02-03T12:33:00.000-06:00

I was fourteen when I pledged myself to alcohol in the name of poetry- an idea excavated from unexceptionally critical reading of the Jim Morrison biography,No One Here Gets Out Alive. Over the next year or two, the background literature for my plan diversified and grew, as did the procedures and processes.

My faith in the fundamental utility of (at least a few random) mind-altering substances had long since been confirmed as well-placed. I'd yet to try the amphetamines so innocently sought as a 12-year-old bulimic, but in the mean time I swallowed, inhaled, and drank questionable concoctions (truly toxic or merely disgusting?) in (usually successful) attempts to change my mind. There wasn't any peer pressure to get high, I recall early attempts at ego-obliteration as being my primary objective and motivator. I was yet to even much experience social inebriation. I just wanted to lose myself, mostly. It was emotionally redeeming to find "insanity" sanctified as a defining characteristic of true artistic temperament. I had accepted that I was insane (or sane in an insane world), and now I had a realistic model for how to execute a brief and beautiful life.

Just like Janis, Jimi, and Jim- I was going to be a public crazy genius, and I was going to go out in flames at 27 before I could rot away. I almost made it out at 28, but the rot had long since set in.

Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse? Mendacious marketing propaganda from peddlers of dead-rockstar biographies and anorexia memoirs.

And it seems, schizophrenia

2008-01-18T10:25:00.000-06:00

". . . but our 15 minutes are up. We'll talk in a month."

Thanks Dr. Freud. I'd love to have an extra month to ruminate on this on my own.. Best of all would be if we could allow it to disintegrate beyond the point of no return. Let's wait years, actually!

What a ~~nice~~ psychiatrist. I really hope they keep the ECT machines well-maintained here. I just can't do. . . anything. I can't make these calls, take a shower, god-fucking-forbid I attend my stupid adult day care groups at the mental health center. And the therapist wants me to move into the goddamn group home.

I'm glad I won't have to care too much longer. Hell, if I started smoking again today betcha I'd be outtie in less than a decade- no questions asked.

I am so cold. It was so clear talking to my social worker last night that my life is over. M*A*S*H

We Interrupt this Miserable Life To Bring You Barely 21

2008-01-12T15:13:00.000-06:00

In the event that you had forgotten, this is what the weekend used be for.

Beer and bongs and board games near xmas break 96 from UF . I didn't really need to be on acid. But not everyone does coke, right? Only so many people can possibly work in the restaurant business. . .

Right, um. As you were.

And now I proceed to reveal my face without my flesh

2008-01-12T14:23:00.000-06:00

Yes I received your letter yesterday
About the time the doorknob broke.
When you asked me how I was doing-
was that some kind of joke?

Yes, it actually bothers me to be seeing a psychiatrist who believes my biggest struggle is "anorexia" (say this in your head in a sing-song voice,) then "depression". Yup, you got it. For the first time in as long as I can recall, I made it out of a quackologist's office with no Axis I complication of my affective disorder beyond "depression." Not even the vaguest attempt to force atypical anti-psychotics on me as treatment for my flaky skin, sleeplessness, flat affect, irritability, (inexplicably) depression and apathy, unresponsiveness, or anxiety. The doctor didn't even halfheartedly attempt to consider a lifetime of recurrent severe major depressive episodes as a cycle of some sort. Clearly, he had been kicked off of Seroquel's payroll¹. My last set of schizodiagnosticians had been in bed with the Abilify folks. Clearly, madly, passionate. In fact- I was threatened to be cut off altogether should I refused to ackowledge my "gradually emerging schizophrenia" and take Abilify (AAP # 5, IIRC. . . but anti-psychotics number 7.)

I refused.

And, for the time being. . . I refuse to continue. I'm filliing up everything Iwrite with non-sequitors this afternoon due to too many days with too little sleep. I also must now go to Wal-mart and return the crochet hoops, glittery spools of colored macrama twine, multiple feet of lovely, lovely trimming, a few feet or really ugly trimming (who needed blue leather braid on clothing? Why?). . . and odds and ends of fabric that I'd truly prefer not to. (all that fleece. . .chiffon, satin, corduroy. jeez, people!)

Maybe I'll pick up some actually embroidery thread at the actual hobby store as I was meant to on my way home. Gasp, shock, awe.

1.To be fair, I only later recalled reading of him drinking seroquel-flavored soup. But also in the name of honestly I must assert that he did not at all appear to be a risk at this point. Perhaps a company rep had dropped by just then to let him know how much she'd enjoyed her visits, but that she had to move and would never, ever, be coming back. The assorted caseful was sort of goodbye present. And the kids? That they had managed to escape icecream-flavored anti-psychotic soup is testiment to the patience that pink elaphant must possess to sit and wait years in the closet before emerging, and his unique traits that make him recignizabable even to the youngest of children who know that talking to invisible creatures is not worth free sweets.

Russian Music

2008-01-04T06:46:00.000-06:00

Sorry folks. This one will require not only having your whole damn "character encoding" list ( in firefox->view->character encoding-> then digging around in the options until your find the one that makes this readable.) I've got reason to belief that it's "unicode UTF-8", a c.e. of which I know nothing. Presumably because it uses transliteration rather than the real cyrillic keyboard which just screws me up. Or- if you are on Firefox- and god only knows why anyone in the free world would be using anything less by now, go check out the wet dream list of language extension tools. Right now I'm doing fine with Anykey. I noticed much more recent loads of add-ons available, including quite a few that I could potentially *use* in entirety . . .just don't see myself buckling down with- well- *any* brand new language family right now, unless I finally opt to get my head out of the clouds of pharmaceutical shell/artificial sweetener/ high-fiber cement-like items I inevitably give in to eventually, even knowing that they are primarily doomed to end up in my lower intestine. So, yeah, perhaps it's time to find a more personalized add-on until such a time as it becomes ~~plausible~~ vital to get a high colonic, in order to facilitate extraction of head from ass. It appears most feasible to expect this possibility to present itself on a grand scale during

Anyhoo. In response to this poll regarding my favorite band's latest album cover, I replied to the guy who thinks a child's picture doesn't "go" with the title.

Никите- А по-моему во фотке сосредоточитя беспредельная, заязычная радость яркокраской, тянушим морем прелестьно-глупостью (огромных очков). В самом деле она точно подходит М.Кунстливому состоянию. (т.е. тому, кодга я его знала. Может он обезсветовалась, возможно теперь на каждом концерте представляется одна и та же самая списка лишенных экспромптом песень, а ни на коем случае больше не обращаются с фанками, тем более запрещены бсе "guest musicians.") По-моему такое отчуждение темперамента появляется крайне-редко, верно следствием шок-терапии.

В любом случае, обложка на албуме должна воображать музыкантов и их творчество целом. Название в конце концов мгновенный способ проверки. Нафиг обложке ему подходить? Прелестный представитель группы, которая вызывает во мне сольнечные тропические мысли и ребячливое желание смеяться и танцовать (несмотря на взгляды других). ' '

Go check out the band whose blog I linked to in my title. I discovered them quite serendipitously in March 1997, when the band on the roster at the tiny club Кризис жанра failed to show. That was the night I understood why Jerry Garcia had to die, and about the same time I realized I had to stay in Russia as long as possible.*

Why It's Not Cool to Pick on Amy Winehouse or Other Living Creatures

2008-01-02T05:19:00.000-06:00

"My point is that idolizing this woman or her body is ridiculous."

Your point in posting here was to underscore how ridiculous the participants are? Or to see just how many cleverly-worded chops on a sick woman's appearance you could come up with, sight unseen?

I don't get why you would be participating in a thread devoted to pictures of someone who you claim makes you vomit, has lost half her teeth,and "looks like a junky". Even more surprising is that you would belong to an entire forum populated by people who probably look very much the same, despite the status of their sobriety.

I do apologize for dragging this out. I just hate it when I see this kind of attitude perpetuated on our forum. As if there's some great barrier of sanity separating those with eating disorders from the rest of the mentally ill population that grants us some right to look down upon sufferers of other (or in this case, additional) disorders. Just as bad is our instant justification of any necessary degree of slander/censor in the name of anti/recovery Depending on the way the wind is blowing in any given season- your comments would surely never have seen the light of day on this board circa 2001, smothered by the "rule" of anti-recovery.

I'm not arguing with the sentiment- if you had voiced it so simply in the first place we wouldn't have wasted a page arguing veinous scar tissue. I agree that A.W. is unhealthy. It actually breaks my heart to read so many media forum posts stating that "celebrity X can't possibly weigh that much" when "that much"= 90 lbs.

I'm arguing with the semantics. Sick is sick. Sick is universally unhappy, systemically unhealthy, heartbreaking, and at least occasionally gross. A.W. is sick. I am sick. Most of our board members are sick.* I assume, despite your initial interactions with me in the bulimia forum last September, that you are also sick.
Sick hurts too much to shower and sick is too tired to brush teeth. Sick says too much after a another sleepless night. Sick is bloated at an eternal #2 on the kidney list. Sick is unhealing bedsores and infected ulcers of pre-amputated feet. Sick is hair and shit and tumor and bone and vomit- human waste, wastes removed, and wasted human lives. Sick is universally understood to be negative and we all know that idolizing sickness is "ridiculous."

Editorializing is unnecessary. '

*Although it's important to remember that many members deal with at least one major mental illness in addition to an ED, along with a sizeable number of members dealing with one or more chronic physical disabilities/disorders.

DBT is hard

2007-12-29T06:00:00.000-06:00

This was originally a reply to the excessively chippy commentary/addendum/rebuttal? left by a Buddhist-Scientologist on MDMA (i.e. "wattsian") after a review of Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. As usual, I said too much and rambled too long. And since little in life sucks with greater force than that of amazon bandwidth published by those who've never laid eyes on the product, I did the usual. . .

I agree w/ gutenberg. I've just started trying to look at a couple of the skills with a therapist I'm fortunate enough to see2X a week, and I can scarcely comprehend a fraction of what we manage to go over together, let alone retain and apply it.

It's all well and good to use active verbs like "to encourage" "to choose" and "to learn", I suppose, when you're not struggling to effectively (conjugate) "be" through the cognitive dulling of a sick brain. Idealist- I certainly agree with you that there's a pandemic of the "worried well" in the US, and it's pretty scary that even some MDs no longer pretend to differentiate between commercial materials and clinical matter. I can bite my tongue when they crack the PDR or the DSM in conversation with me- I'm sure that's a sign of respect in the MD world. The patient feels "ownership" of the diagnosis and complies triumphantly with the prescribed treatment- the full color picture in the PDR and accompanying multipage infotorial agree, no need to disclose that pFarmkobub crafted the entry for Euphidexine and paid a nice sum for the article, with a premium for the indexing. It's hardly a secret that the manufacturer makes a wild claim in order to distinguish its drug from the 5 or 10 novelty-knockoff competitors in its therapeutic class. God forbid, Cymbalta is not an analgesic. Zyprexa is not an anti-depressant. And shyness is not a mental illness. Thank God that little cartoon showed up with a detailed explanation of a simple personality trait can uncover 8 painful symptoms of crippling neurosis, talk with your doctor about Paxil for social anxiety if you checked any of the above. . .

These are the ridiculous diagnosis, those based upon a photocopied 10 pt T-F quiz, with a logo imprinted across the top. The transparency of each new attempt to reword the question "do you have psychotic manic episodes?" is insulting. "No, Abilify-no. I do not fit the template you're marketing to today." I don't know whether the copier had broken in a fit of rebellion against Beck-Inventories, or he was out of sponsored disorders to seek for his samples, but he seemed very certain that denial of mania on the basis of that quiz, cemented major depressive disorder. With nary a glance at my records, where he'd certainly have found some food for thought. (Vanilla misdiagnosed my eating disorder, as well.)

At any rate. . .yes. Treating mental illness is tricky- particularly when there's so very much money to be made on rewriting the diagnostics to include everyone insane and patenting new uses, prodrugs, every imaginable method of administration. What remains is this: serious mental illnesses cannot be willfully righted by those in their grips. True- the brain can change. We surface or reach terra firma, as the case may be, over time or quickly, naturally. It's called cycling- and it's inevitable as ignoring bedtime, and likewise benign for a few. Unfortunately in the trough (and the peak, I'm imagining) there's no mind present to give word form to feeling. There is no thought at all- no joy (but not despair, either), no interest, no attention span, concentration, or indulgence in sanitation/hygiene. Diminishment of all the senses. No hope- it's only at this point (a fairly high point in the cycle) that I experience things I can describe as a feelings (disappointment, disgust, despair, hopelessness, loneliness, boredom, fear, paranoia, frustration, regret, embarrassment) and begin to have some relatively coherent- if uninteresting/repetitive- thoughts. While I'm ruminating on the details of my latest low, I try to shovel a path through the crap that I let accumulate, the junkmail dropped anywhere in the kitchen, laundry strewn around the house, empty wrappers, bottles, vials, bags, cotton balls, receipts, charge slips, appointment cards, sundry toiletries, office supplies, and condiments carpet the bedroom floor. Books. Everywhere. Ignore, for a moment, disasters yet to be recovered from the last emergence. Oh, forget that I haven't finished *unpacking*. There's clean, crumpled laundry in the car. And a can in the kitchen begging for the dumpster. But enough of the filth, what did I *ruin* when I was in this state?

Well, Christmas. This is not the person you want at your holiday table in any event, but devoid of all thought, emotion, and energy, I wasn't even a civil laundry leech.

And. . .my career. Or rather, confirmed its demise through my inability to produce a paper suitable for presentation before an academic audience in time to present it. Or ask someone with the dosh to rent a room at the conference to read it for me. Because I was without thought, interest, or energy. Nevermind attention span and concentration.

Yes, the brain can change. Mine has lost mileage (by almost an entire variable of IQ, if that means anything to you.) I know what I've lost, and I hate that the most.

meme from LJ Dear Santa

2007-12-20T09:06:00.000-06:00

the Great Pumpkin, amazon Abraham, Santa Claus Concrete intangibles: A sign that MY ENORMOUS WHITE FLAG HAS BEEN SPOTTED BY the only omniscient Jewish Carpenter I believe in. An evening/possibly an entire day(?) out with family parameters not limited by an eating disorder. 4 nights of sleep; 4 days of relative emotional/physical stability; and the complimentary self-care & "other tasks" maintenance. Permanent- preferably total and immediate- acquisition of the skills I need to make this 4-day show into a voluntary life, one with actual purpose. I want a DBT skills tool kit neurochip in my stocking. An endless stash of sugarfree, nutritionless popsicles, fudgesicles, and low-sodium V-8 would be nice, but I'd settle for a stocked freezer at my mother's house, followed by a mysterious string of half-prices sales in the supermarkets on my circuit. And to keep my 2nd lower right incisor, which I can tell is trying to erode away. Cliffnotes for the ADD'ed or those who just wish they were: I want my sister back, and I would like to act like a minimally normal human being during my holiday visit to my mother. I have ~~would like~~, to relearn tolive. Not like a "normal person", but like pretty much anyone, briefly, who has no issues with ADLs. For better or worse, what I wish most is actually engaged in the world-with sustaining reasons to live. The unfortunate thing is that I have to do all this "internal tinkering" nonsense until I can (I'm guessing) perform acts of self-stewardship as automatically as is deemed necessary to stay safe and healthy. I wish that it were evident to those who don't struggle; yes, entropy is easy, but digging out is inconceivable. The stench alone from the justification of week after week (it's too cold to get in the shower/ I don't have any clean clothes/underwear/socks//My linens are dirty and I haven't any to replace them- what's the point of putting a freshly washed head amongst 6 months of grime//I *miht* work out later) The latter was the true start, but I don't run anymore. There's no excuse not to shower. On the road/in the woods/ in the summertime in Moscow- I made due. Before the disintigration I believe 10 days had been my record, and this was not disqualified for intermittent lakeswims. Mine is definitely a water sparing history, mind you. But even as a stinky hippie I was conscientious enough of my own comfort to invade the local health food store with the single bathroom each morning and attend a few choice hygiene issues as needed (while iserting cotact lenses, no less.), Unlike. . . say as a deeply neurotic depressive bulimic, who managed to avoid both toothbrushing and any notanle change of clohing for days on end. Until some items became so clearly covered in food (much longer tolerence) or vomit (could take a visit to the outside world without changing to note) that a change was merely easier than keeping track of towels or having napkins on hand. But even as the outer clothing would molt, the underclothes would remain because (see beginning of cycle).
Of course itching sets in, eventually. . . and while I fully believe the odor of a single note can be covered by generous doses of an essential oil (hippie bath- "patchouli") I don't think much can be don't for the multiple odors of vomit, sweat, and byproducts of decaying flesh from the kidneys as well as the mouth, with added notes of waste products possible if diuretics/ laxatives are used excessively , or even when strength and response time lags, as it does in any severely impaired person. Depending on the state of mind, the person may not bother changing the soiled pants even after such an an episode. Unless he was stirred to shower beforehand, little short of total saturation through two layers will call for major action.

So. A dose of essential oil to the pits upon realizing that one will be forced to exit one's enclave does not disguise this. Perhaps if the drops had been scattered about the body, on a daily basis, over the weeks, it would have sufficed. Maybe if one were in the habit of looking into a mirror, one would notice half digested food remnants stuck to one's chin. Or if one were in the habit of washing one's hair, surely the vomit would have been brushed away by the running water. But at this point 5 days ago seems "recent"- you don't see the dullness in your hair. What gets you in to the shower is the huge patches of (?) skin (?) that have begun the form and flake off all the areas of hair on your body. When it was merely constant peeling of your hands and toes, your own alternately rising and disappearing unwashed stew (sweat is scarcely noted, only actual tangible pieces of vomit male an impression and are usually, albeit belatedly, manually removed, you won't likely notice your own breath - unless you have a sinus infection- and perineal odors are compounded/contained by the clothing that contains the offensive materials, meaning you only get a whiff when you've got your pants off. But the itching will eventually become unbearable, the flaked off "skin" matting your hair and turning you from a merely lazy dirty person into a disgusting dirty person. Because going out in public with vomit on your arm in jeans you'd yet to launder after not quite making it in time for a wee is not disgusting. At any rate, it is hard, especially once you'e accumulated a certain quantity of laundry- you might have been on top of it from the beginning with adequate facilities (you've no money, there's no laundry in the building, you've no detergent). It's down to figuring out what's *least* odiforous, and balancing this with maximum stain-free area. Just for the public- the ones that need to be moderately impressed with your functionality i.e. doctors, therapists, case managers, parole officers, presumably. . . potential employers. These are the same people who merit Dedicated Shower Days. If you've been in the shower within the past week, honestly- you're doing prety good. Probably- that is, I don't know what endocrinological issues you might have. But if you're getting in there frequently enough to keep the pipes from from rusting_much_ you're probably not walking around looking like a psychopathic slob most of the time. It should be noted that the genpop apparently showers every single day, as a rule of thumb, and that most people apparently can't go more than 3 or 4 days without vidually appearing "unwashed." I believe it's the hair, more than anything. Some people actually claim they find they're hair unacceptable greasy after skipping just one day, whip seems a bit excessive. However, be aware- whether you can see it or not, if it's been more than a couple of days- or if you don't remember when the last one was, exactly- you need for appointments.

Opa, right now I want a shower. But first I want to go to the food pantry. Thanks St. Rod Blagojevich.

Country Road Take Me Home

2007-12-16T20:42:00.000-06:00

I want to go live with those nice people in the country.

You know- the people with all the land, who your dad brought your dog to live with after he got sick.

mblahdblahpblahv

2007-12-15T21:02:00.000-06:00

The problem with illiteracy on the web comes into play when it obstructs meaning. This is certainly a issue with irritating contagious lolspeak- especially when it takes a word/phrase that's already slang/ acronymed and further obscures its meaning via deliberate mispelling. "Lulz," I was able to contextualize. I smiled and nodded when anyone employed "pwned" until I came across a single affirmation that my understanding of its origin is correct, then ceased thinking.

Now, "werd"- I'm pretty damn sure I had that one wrong all along. But how do you determine whether your interlocutor is a moron or not when you consistently spot this misspelled, decontextualized WORD in their writings? I confess- I noted a distinct absence of the word "weird" in the TF vernacular, and an irritating upsurge of "werd"ness. As it so frequently constituted the one word summary emotional/evaluatory response to (all manner of) block quotes, I projected.

Why on Earth would a pigin opt to assimilate and bastardise boring, utilitarian "word" rather than fascinating, multiform "weird"? I suppose this is the worst of examples to harp on: it's not applied in a wide enough range of situations to make a precise definition really important. (If I understand, at last) the lolspeak "werd" is derived from English "word," in the sense that it means "grunt". (Variously translated as "yo!" "I feel you" "straight up" "fuck that" "help me Jesus" "yes, I would like fries with that" and so on and so forth.)

It was never that important to me to know the precise meaning of "werd" (annoying, yes) because generally no one interacts with me in that language. However, if someone replied to a flame I'd made with a one-word exclamation, I would want to know whether it meant "fuck that" or "I feel you".

I think it's important to be aware of grammar and spelling, and to do what you can to avoid an obscene degree of typos. It facilitates communication. When you take the time to make your post readable, you make it known that you want me to read it. I understand random bypassed typos from ordinarily conscientious typists. I understand learning disorders. I understand non-native English speakers. None of the three seem to present consistent boundaries to comprehension. what d oes hcause iss u eswi th readability isrando mspacign and trnasposal oletters.
What kind of keyboard trouble (or eyesight loss) cause this? If you type like this and people still respond, you must be someone special.

[quote="spellcheckisnottheanswer"]
There are many E-Mail sites that have anything you want. Sometime they pester you to death but you will fine most are not looking for new customers, and if some one will vouch these guys are not your average could I buy some Valium There was a incident a couple days ago where I live base ball bats I heard it through the grapevine his buddy dropped a dime they think he'll respond to simple pictures in a year in a year or so. The market is screwed up now Cops took it down it was call link basecom. My advice do mess with it unless you want way more problems than its worth.[/quote]
This is a real post from another site. It's an excellent demonstration of how spell check/ grammar check cannot redeem total @(*$! of content. If you can stand to parse through it, you'll notice that there are no spelling errors (except those instances where spellcheck clearly autosubstituted the wrong word for the poster's original copy). Other than the absence of punctuation, it's entirely grammatically correct. It's also incoherent, no?

This poor guy is going to be part of internet infamy, because this gem of perfect nonsense was posted on a board that doesn't allow editing. He probably thought he was doing everything he possibly could to facilitate communication: spell check, grammar check, cable internet connection/social phobia/150mg of valium. . .[b]hold up[/b]! Sometimes we are so eager to share and connect that we post utter nonsense before we realize it. It's hard to recognize your own nonsense sometimes- no computer in the world is sophisticated enough to catch it. You might not be able to see what other people point out. . . without the perspective of time and a clear head.

The TF demographic is far and away more "literate" than the (most of the) other forum populations I've encountered. It would be wrong to assume that this makes us immune to creating logical nonsense. We are also youngest, more commonly diagnosed with MDs, and more commonly medicated for an MD. These three factors alone throw us straight back into the pit, as each of them might fortify false bravado, impair judgement, evoke particular thought patterns, feelings, and behaviors. Having applied it to girlie_edgehead's myspace friend's cousin, I should probably assume a prevalance on TF of some "~social phobia"- social issues are the cornerstone of a strong forum and their presence is what makes us reach out to one another. [b]Oops[/b]. . .I just implied that posts might be written under the effects of a anxiety disorder. The poster-however educated, intelligent, responsibly medicated, and (hell, yeah- why not!) far along in her ED recovery (=not distracted by starvation/ indigestion) might anxiously create a logical nonsense post that will easily pass her eyeball proofread. Having impaired judgement sufficiently to land give bizarre emothoughts concrete form as grammatical bs the wave of anxious evolves to encompass the bravado to-submit-immediately!
Her post- submited in a fit of desperate need to connect- feels in every way appropriate. She cites and agrees with a previous anonymous poster,
she identifies with the OP and shares her own situation. However, what she has posted does not make sense, despite (due to, rather) her sincere desire to connect. Had she used [b]more[/b] words, the intent of her post would have been easily decrypted. Had she been calm enough to concentrate on the post(s) to which she was responding and read through the thread, she would have afforded herself an opportunity to develop her response in consideration of the discussion, even if she was not interested in reconsidering the content of her initial reply. She would have taken some time to consider the nature of a forum as interactive, dynamic, dialectic. She might have added or dropped some words from her post in order to make [i]it[/i] more interactive and dialectic. She might have realized she needed her own thread. She might have lost her bravado entirely and saved said post away from server until she cool down/ get it back up and reassess with a clear head- whatever that might mean to her.

I need to cut enormous chunks out of this to facilitate comprehension. I want to communicate. I know it won't get read in its current form, so I won't be posting it as is. I'll wait until I can make it less rambly. Too many words are as bad as too few words. Both of which are more or less sins on an equal level of grievousness with hyper/hypopunctuation. n' abbr. disooorder!!!! Allow me to be "ageist" for just a second here: If you are old enough that you can no longer devote the larger portion of your budget to Lisa Frank, then you should not be writing this way. While it doesn't always impair (by itself) the signal as much as the other "official" egregrious errors compaired and controlled on a quantitative basis- it's more annoying, period. Your posts lose 50% on the respect factor.

To be honest, the same is true about the proliferation of netspeak. I dealt with my personal issues above, so I'm going to attempt to gloss it into this end of the discussion. It's inherently silly: anyone who customarily utilizes this pidgin on all fronts is not going to be considered particularly mature, and employing netspeak in serious social intercourse simply is not appropriate. Grammatical English has been the international language of commerce & science for some time, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. This really has nothing to do with the self-evaluations of a bunch of middle-USA 20-somethings. It [i]is[/i] "contagious" and appears to be mutating. It would be a matter of decorum if those of you who regularly engage in it would *attempt* to regulate your public use, try to limit the introduction of new words into the general population. . . or at the very least, please use English in the support forums? Trying not to catch it. . lol, I noe u don care, but some day ima need to be able 2 write agin.

Seriously. If you want to communicate in a different language, I hear German is open to bastardization.

MAS*H

2007-12-08T16:39:00.000-06:00

Suicide is selfish.
But is it really any more selfish than refusing to pick up the phone when you see my number? Deleting my e-mails? Pointedly ignoring my pleas for chaperon when I am stuck alone with my hopelessness? Well, yes, it probably is. . .however-

Suicide is painless.
"Whatif I'd answered the phone/ whatif I'd returned that note/ whatif I'd stuck by her and offered that support" may crawl in and out of your head for the rest of your life, but that will be your pain. Lift a pinky to show me that the pain my death will cause you is greater than the pain my life is causing me, and I might consider extending the deadline. Until then- call me selfish, self-involved, self-centered, centrifugal, whatever you like. But if you can't bother to pick up the fucking phone and call me, then (I'll repeat- you are out of the question)- suicide is painless.

Hold on to yourself, this is gonna hurt like hell. . .

2007-11-15T22:17:00.000-06:00

Another year. Another birthday. Another Thanksgiving I will miss. A first Thanksgiving he will miss. I didn't want to start remembering this. Not yet, only 355 days have passed.

This is not my beautiful life. How did I get here?

Into the Icebox

2007-11-11T23:02:00.000-06:00

Oh boy, there's nothing more exciting than trying to decipher a formula for keeping oneself alive as a neurotic bulimic/ binging-purging anorexic. After a several weeks keeping the local medical professionals on the ledge of their opera box getting my serum potassium under control, something in my mind has finally shifted. No need to keep vomiting for half an hour after all evidence points to complete evacuation of stomach contents every single time. Dare I say, I believe I may have even digested some (romaine!) lettuce yesterday.

But the deliberate intake of normal (or really- any) food still seems to elude me. I tried an apple yesterday. It quickly became a party order from Burger King, a vat of semolina cereal, and a bunch of other crap I'm not up for detailing at the moment. I felt such crap just now the thought came to mind that I might just give one of my old standbys the old grad school try again. I lived on these smoothies when I relapsed in my thesis year. Frozen fruit, skim milk, fake sugar. By May, I'd murdered my blender. But you'd better believe I defended that fucking thesis and got my MA.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work anymore. I don't know if it's just been too long since I bothered with real, healthy food and the feeling in my stomach is rooted in some authentic physical issue. More likely I simply lack the impetus. Either way, I couldn't stomach it. I couldn't bin it, either, though. Apparently I've already blasted through my food stamps for the month.

So I got the bright idea to tip it into my icecube trays. Frozen things seem to work for me, even when they do have nutritional value, provided there's no fat or added sugar. I don't know what else to do.

Adventures in Urban Archeology I

2007-10-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

No luck this am in the back alley behind Satan's Emporium Superstore. The only open bins were for grease disposal. Despite careful and (so I thought) inconspicuous stalking of the Hostess Delivery truck from it's initial vantage point out front of Major Superstore Too ( where I assume the driver had stopped to check in regarding inventory needs) around the back to the loading dock, no returns were to be had there, either. I had checked before even spying the truck and found nothing but a bin full of broken shopping carts. Mr. Twinkie was still at the loading dock the second time I doubled back, and it seemed a bit inadvisable to carry on loitering behind the supermarket for too long at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Dissappointing, because Monday AMs are supposed to be a big score day. I suppose there is always tomorrow. And I have yet to investigate Major National Doughnut Chain_TM and Popular Soup, Salad and Bakery Deli _TM.

Just in case I haven't made myself clear. . .

2007-10-30T06:50:00.000-05:00

HELP!

See, it appears I may have been mumbling. Or trying to communicate with aliens via radio signals from my dental fillings. Or, while fumbling for my glasses, mistaken the refrigerator for a sentient being. Or maybe I'm mute and only know Bulgarian sign language, while every last employee of the Illinois Department of Human Resources, affiliated medical professionals included, along with the collective administrations of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders are deaf and only understand ASL.

So now I'm going to use this big-ass font and put in type, out here in public. Will this do me any more good than the dozens of unreturned phone calls, e-mails and letters or the hours in line and waiting in offices? I suppose believing so requires a leap of faith on my behalf that there's an actual human being on the other side- one who can read, if not necessarily speak, English. But it's not a really complicated word. Only four letters. Not much room for subjective interpretation.

HELP

2007-10-23T17:51:00.000-05:00

I wish I could write something of merit, really I do. I've been terrified to even check my e-mail these last few days because I didn't want to see my old advisor's comments on my paper. Luckily, she was merciful. But a lot of what she had to say was stuff I already know and can't seem to put into practice. Also, telling me about new lit in the field doesn't bloody help when I have no library access.

Also, my physician and everyone at his office are morons. You just can't throw out arbitrary ridiculous prescriptions for potassium without consideration of the consequences. There's a *reason* for those dosage caps. I get that you want to correct my hypokalemia as quickly as possible. I also get that you're trying to cut corners by not checking the side effects or implementing the proper monitoring procedures. I don't want to do this at a hospital, and you'd better believe I don't want a goddamn drip. But I'm not risking another GI bleed-out and a heart attack just because you are lazy and the state is cheap.

Now if I can only figure out who I need to convey this to.

2007-10-18T04:23:00.000-05:00

I'm so fascinated by the downward spiral I cannot look away.

Dear Fucko Movers

2007-10-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank you for your services. No, the 9 hours we waited in the empty apartment beyond your ETA were no problem. We knew you'd be a little delayed, as you mentioned a second pickup and (as I kept reminding my father) the speed limit for trucks is lower than the speed limit for private vehicles on the highway. When you mentioned arriving at the second site and determining that it would be impossible to condense the two orders into one truck, however, how did you occupy yourselves for the following 5 hours? Would it not have made more sense to attempt your escape from the metropolis before 5pm on a weekday?

It was really amazing the way you worked as a team, moving from room to room to ensure an even mix of unrelated items in each box. And I have to thank you for the total absence of labelling and/or inventory on most of these. It's kind of like Christmas. Except Christmas rarely involves 3,000+ pounds of one's own belongings, rewrapped in plain brown cardboard. Moreover, my childhood holiday memories do not include memories of used bath towels, cheap underwear, and outdated USB cables. I never had to search through all of my gifts for a week before I could take a shower and change my underwear. Truth be told, the primary arena in which your packaging compares to the gifts of my youth is proliferation of alleged book boxes. The proportion of actual units of bound reading material to random wires/uncapped markers/loose bandaids/ your own used kleenex (YES!) notwithstanding, any box containing books that managed to get inventoried was inventoried "books."

Out of curiosity, you wouldn’t happen to have my laundry hamper? Not the white laundry basket you broke the handles off of when you straggled in at 11pm, but an actual stand-up hamper. It’s okay if you do, I’m accustomed to living in and out of crumpled dirty laundry carried round in a bag. Admittedly it might be of use in my foray in the world of the organized peoples, but I’m not holding my breath.

You didn’t happen to grab my unopened bottles of red hair dye along with it, eh? No need to be ashamed. I was hoping to redo my hair, but I’m honestly getting a little old for unironic technicolor dye jobs. So thanks, actually. I’m just happy that most of my empty containers of toiletries arrived safely. Somebody must be real Tetris_TM champion, judging from the 5 gallon bucket and the bathroom trashcan between which every ickle bit imaginable was split. Toiletries and bathroom supplies were coated in a liquid yellow soap and the last 100ml or so of Witch Hazel that was left in the lidless bottle.

I really must applaud Tweedlewayne and Tweedlegarth: in defiance of both physics and common sense they squeezed it all in together, somehow managing to fit a bottle of household cleanser- loose-lidded and upside down, of course, in with everything else. "Everything else" included items such as those I often stick in my mouth or eyes. Then there are the items that keep such intimate company with my face and the rest of my skin- even my hair on occasion.

On the other hand, if you have the remainder of my kitchen, I must confess that I’m a bit irked. While I appreciate the tender, loving care that you took with my expired condoms and lube and delicacy which which you packed away my sex toys, I have to be honest. Those are relics. What I need right now is the rest of my bathroom and kitchen. Keeping the Dept. of Sanitation away requires some serious artillery. These testy little bits keep me-or at least-the house clean. I'd also like the teas, coffees, remaining storage and flatware, and magical packets that turn pebbles into stew and piss into wine.

I can’t complain too much, though. I still have a coaster. I shouldn’t overlook the mixture of red and yellow curries, cilantro, and cinnamon that wound up evenly spread among the single plate, salad bowl, mug, butter knife, broken spatula, dry measuring cup, wet measuring cup, soup spoon, measuring spoon, whisk, and (unmatched) homeless knives. I never wanted a spicerack for years, anyway. I know I should particularly appreciate the open box of stale croutons thrown in a atop my fur coat.

What vaguely amused me
Ah, wait. I forget. There was actually one box of "books" that was inventoried either in more detail, or differently (I forget which). It was labeled "CD"s. Naturally, it contained aging collection of cassette tapes. I had to wonder why? Do LPs get inventoried the same way?

Praise jeebus, they packed- and delivered unharmed- a spherical (glass) light fixture. Along with a fishbowl. And two glass pipes. The latter were packed by me, for presumably obvious reasons. The first two were thrown haphazardly into a wardrobe box with a lot of random crap, none of which included wrapping paper. At the same time, they maimed my spice rack for life, broke a bottle of liquid soap, and (apparently)handled my laundry hamper, backlog of cleaning stuff, and extra yoga mat so badly as to render them invisible.

How on Earth do you deliver glass intact while destroying plastic?

Moving Day

2007-09-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

I'm halfway out of tape, but only 1/3 of the way through the boxes you brought me. You are a physicist, so I know you based your calculations on some sort of formula. I am trying to convince my myself you have developed a mathematical formula to predict laziness. 15*3³foot boxes do something 30*1.5³foot boxes take the squiggly doo from subject's most recent GAF score equals n(100)ft of packing tape. When tape is gone subject may stop, for this is all she is capable of.

Please remember light bulbs and the bolt cutters*. Just don't get pulled over on the way up, or you will get thrown in jail as a suspect for grand larceny and presumed meth addict. I know because I've seen it on C*O*P*S. I swear

love,
E

*For getting out the emergency exit landlord keeps closed w/ padlock in memoriam to Old Lady Leary.

N.B. I did not really send this letter

At the drugstore, Behind the counter

2007-09-18T13:33:00.000-05:00

I spot a sign hanging from the cigarette display: Wanted For Homicide on 82nd St. . . I see these sort of wanted/missing posters by the multitude in every store window, each time I leave the house. The only days I don't hear gunfire are those when I stay inside with the A/C on. It wouldn't be so shocking were it not obvious that it came from someone's home printer.

I'll say it again: "You can do better, Chicago!" Sure, I see the occasional mini-patrol of brave bike cops riding up the main drag in broad daylight. That's fabulous. But one block South I am mugged, and 1 block North I'm assaulted. I suppose I'm lucky that I'm not a laser-printed flyer, yet all I feel is disgust that the officials find it so easy to ignore millions of real people.

I think I need a scoliosis check, because this city is so crooked it tilts.

2007-07-24T14:16:00.000-05:00

Why do passers by feel it is within the realm of polite society to comment on my mental status? Telling me to smile seems akin to asking a random woman when she's due. There's simply too much emotional payload to be editorializing like that. When it comes right down to it, popping out of the blue to tell Anonymous Flat Affect Girl "Cheer up, it's not that bad" is statistically more dangerous. Let's face it, pregnancy is generally easier for the lay person to diagnose than mental illness.

Still, that's no excuse. Look, I've been on (at least) an SSRI anti-depressant for most of the past 8 years. This is emotional botox. The stuff is still going on somewhere inside, but I am frozen on there surface. I don't spontaneously smile at all and I rarely laugh. I can rarely cry anymore- only when I'm exhausted, angry and hopeless. In other words, only over nothing, over myself. I certainly can't cry over books or movies anymore. Worse still, I struggle to mourn family and friends who have died over these years. It's like needing to yawn for ages without ever managing to get the oxygen to satisfy it.

I have flattened out so much that one moron actually diagnosed me with schizophrenia on the basis of all my negative symptoms. But the truth is that between the drugs and the depression, I no longer have any interests nor can I sustain anyone else's interest. I've also slowed down and pulled back from society quite a bit, so it's pretty unlikely that I would ever manage this entire comeback in a timely manner in real life. So I'm posting it here, for nobody to see it.

Don't fucking tell me to smile. Especially in line at the food pantry.

@#(@)*$! Medical Residents. . .

2007-06-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

July is the Cruelest Month

Just what is it about being a million dollars in debt and spending 4 years working 80 hours a week for minimum wage that makes it so simple to peel back a that counter-tranference you psych residents have oozed into us? Come on Dr. N_____. You don't really want to take your boards, you know you don't. You've been meeting with me since February, and hence have proof positive that high-stakes interpersonally-focused, relatively abstractionist professions are very very bad for your health.

And you were such a great shrink. But really, it's all about you. Take care of yourself. According to my life clock, I will surely have 4 months' access to another good psychiatrist in 2014.

Thanks, Congress

2007-06-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

We were more than overdue for a hike in the minimum wage. The last time you passed an action on this, I was living in a state that adhered to the federal guidelines and slinging sandwiches for 4.25 an hour. So I can certainly appreciate the difference this will make.

Can you do all of us little folks living below the poverty line a favor next time, though? Keep it a secret until the law goes into effect. That way retail won't have several months advance to start gouging us on household items before we start collecting your spare change.

You Can Do Better, Chicago.

2007-05-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

Today's Haul:
The Dry-
2 gallons powdered skim milk
2 pounds dried pinto beans/ unidentified agricultural product
15 oz. toasted oat cereal
9.5 oz. triscuits
Boxed pasta salad (pasta/ seasoning packet)
4 granola bars
The Canned-
32 oz. grapefruit juice
16 oz. sweet peas
9 oz. sweet potatoes
15 oz. refried beans
6 oz. chunk light tuna in water
10 oz. cream of mushroom soup
10 oz. (Campbells!) tomato soup
The Wet-
16 oz. 3% lean ground "meat"
2 sausage links
1 personal sausage pizza

That's it. One hundred percent of everything a single adult individual receives from the food pantry for a month. No wonder others in line headed up the street to another church to hit up the one that was open from 9 am after collecting their bag tickets this morning.

This is only funny because I'm anorexic and need less than 1,100 calories a day to stay alive. While I have to give you bonus points for the variety this month, you'll never see them as I must deduct for ignorance. Basal metabolic rate doesn't account for class difference.

2007-05-24T16:27:00.000-05:00

I am currently attempting to make a noodle kugel in my electric skillet.

If I succeed, I expect to be named to some largely ceremonial executive (but perk-rich) position within the North American Association for the Advancement of Destitute Bulimics.

Prince of Darkness. Paging the Prince of Darkness. . .

2007-05-19T12:14:00.000-05:00

Right. I'm ready to make the deal. I've figured out what it is that I want. What's that you say- you already know, you're omnipotent? Oh, I thought you were merely omnipresent. Only through next January, right. Anyway, let's get to the business of my eternal soul, shall we?

I want an enchanted cheese drawer. As such it must have the power to produce the cultured dairy product of my desire at a moment's notice in every conceivable firmness, limitless quantity, and at optimal temperature. My cheese drawer will not be subject to any laws regarding taxation, import, or that ridiculous antiquated embargo nonsense. Dead white men brought me quite a lot of distress during graduate school and I beg them leave me be now. I can't think of any other stipulations at this moments, but I think my request is sufficiently ridiculous that I may reserve the right to amend it at a later date.

Shall we begin? I'd like a hunk of Jarlsberg the size of my head, please.

2007-05-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

You May Have Read This Someplace Else. ₁
Trader Joe would roll over in his cartoon grave if he knew the sort of crap they were stuffing his bags with at this food bank. It's seriously like 1985's school lunch mated with 2007's airline courtesy snack and refused to quit drinking during the pregnancy.

3 self-contained fruity-sounding individual beverages
4 POW chocolate pudding cups
3 packs BBQ sunflower seeds
2 packs animal crackers
5 granola bars
1 individual serving frosted flakes
3 packs vanilla wafers
1 box Eggo Waffles cereal
2 flourescent jello fruit cups
box pasta salad
box flavored triscuits, proving the Spite of the Divine for bulimics
~~can veg. stew, condensed veg soup, green beans~~ varicolored sodium
can tuna
inexplicable single serving packet each of salt/pepper

And somehow they also managed to come out with 2 pounds each of rice and kidney beans, and 3 of oatmeal. The salt and pepper was a nice touch, but you have to wonder if anyone really labored under the delusion that it was going to suffice for 4 freaking pounds of uncooked rice and beans? I was also under the distinct impression that ordinary people employ stuff like fat and sugar in their cooking. . . though I suppose those things can be scavenged from fast food establishments and what have you. Maybe not fat so much, but, eh- I'm more or less okay on that front.

What's more than a little disturbing is that these places appear to more or less entirely ignore dairy. And I would try to feel bad about my bitching, but how are you going to give out cereal without milk? Powdered milk would be absolutely fine. Unfortunately I live in an area where the majority of adults have managed to convince themselves they are lactose intolerant. There would probably be a lot of waste if they didn't prioritize and limit the grocery bags with calcium-rich stuff to children-and-pregnant-women-households. Somehow I can't help but feel cheated, though. The ethnicity of the neighborhood pretty much dictates the food, right down to eliminating entire food groups! Why can't I live in a Jewish ghetto, damnit? (I await your holocaust jokes with baited breath. )

Okay, I'm making light of this and complaining, but honestly this is the only place I can make fun of the charity food I receive. This is the only place I can express the shame I felt for making a veteran working at the church feel guilty when he realized I wasn't a volunteer. For not standing up to join everyone in prayer-on a Saturday morning, mind you- mumbling to the vet that I belong to a different faith. While everyone prayed I kept prying the staples out of the housing assistance packets with my fingers as he'd instructed me. I mean, I would like to contribute in some way if I can. I don't want to be a complete asshole. Though I really wanted to tell him I couldn't feel my fingers. If a black man could turn red, this poor guy would have turn purple when I raised my hand as a "newcomer" to be interviewed.

The interview was- well, less humiliating than it could have been. Though it certainly could have been easier. About halfway through I realized I could have lied about everything- my name, the number of people in my household, my address. . . they didn't ask for proof of anything. I realized this because the woman interviewed before me kept remembering she needed to come back to add fully-eligible dependents to her household. (As opposed to dependents under the age of 2, on behalf of whom one could apparently only take half a portion- or something.) I'd like to think this displays integrity on my behalf, but it's probably more dull-wittedness. That, and a realization that no household with a fully ambulatory member would send a woman with a cane to pick up food for the lot of them.

The interview also entailed explaining whether I am looking for work. (No. Yes. Does occasionally trying to read want ads and crying count?) I had to tell them when I last worked (drag myself up the mountainside) vaguely explain my profession (tie a noose around my neck) and tell them what the hell is wrong with me, so that the social worker could pick the condition she thought she could spell and write it down (and throw myself over the cliff.)

I realized my folding cane had come apart as I was getting up from the interview, and somehow managed to say "Shhhhoot" in the church basement.

This bank is once-a-month, too. It seems like perhaps they all are. But nobody seems to have mentioned not using more than one. It's been pretty clearly established that these people do not entertain any delusions of the provisions actually lasting a month.

Look, I know I'm an asshole- but what else can I do? It's almost funny how what I'm doing is immoral, but not illegal. If I were slick enough to shoplift or daring enough to run my own little business, I wouldn't be taking food from old people, vets & single mothers. I'd really only be taking from big business and the government. This is a nasty, ugly world. It protects the interests of those faceless structures to the detriment of the most vulnerable, and it makes me ugly along with it.

1.And if this is the case, you need to get outside more. You may, on the other hand, have read it two places else. In this case, you need to get a therapist.

2007-05-16T22:14:00.000-05:00

With Prozac capsules, white and green
first pressed on me at age 13
A toast of Ensure was raised by all
to celebrate my debut at the overmedicated ball.

Mr Lily's potion was not the cure,
not at 80, not at more.
His position was usurped by a tricyclic,
which for reasons unknown did not make me unsick.

So back on the 'Zac, it was time to augment
as serotonin alone is mighty bland.
Fenugreek or thorazine turned out to be overkill,
I was asked to try this salt in my hand.

Zoloft is a lovely potion-
the first weeks are like MDMA.
Sad the honeymoon must end with her fucking your brother &
leaving you drenching the sheets where you lay.

Speaking of "lay", however, I remember her fondly.
Zoloft is remarkable for syndrome Cold Fish.
With Effexor & Lexapro we could wipe out the species-
take this disclosure as you wish.

Of Remeron, I cannot recall
whether I stopped eating long enough to have sex at all.
And while the sexual side effects of Wellbutrin are legendary,
on an SSRI augment they continue to elude me.

Orgasms on anti-depressants are contra-indicated,
But generally so are Drano milkshakes.
Quit your bitching- I haven't cum for 5 years!-
If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

Sid & Nancy Rolled Up Into One with Strains of Vivaldi in the Background

2003-03-09T15:15:00.000-06:00

10:39 pm

At nine this morning my girlfriend found me passed out on the couch covered with blood. My take on the whole situation is that, since we had decided that my drug-induced spats of nodding out and cigarette dropping in the bedroom were, in fact, becoming dangerous (an entire cigarette burned down to the butt on the keyboard of my laptop, and a few burn holes in the sheets and carpet don't much compare, eh?) I had gotten up, either in my sleep or xanaxed to the gills (I am a genuine somambulent, thank you very much), I had wandered into the the living room to smoke. Not being able to find a workable lighter, I had naturally started the gas stove top to light my vigarette. I would be willing to bet that I dropped that cigarette but mistaken thought I had finished it. Naturally my nicotine cravings were unsatisfied, so back to the stove I went. Then I dropped the second cigareete, hit my nose on something or stuck my finger up there looking for gold, passed out, and bled all over myself. I'm not sure of the exact order of events. I'm prone to nosebleeds, so that event shouldn't trifle anyone.

I can, however, sympathise for my dear Girlfriend who, needing to pee at the wee hour of 9am, happened to find me and the couch covered in blood and passed out cold. That is to say, I was passed out cold and covered in blood, the couch (okay, futon) is inanimate, so its unresponsiveness bothered noone, but it was sufficently bloodstained that we flipped the futon mattress lest any of the Men in Blue (or the MIB, who I've been expecting for awhile) come around knocking on doors and asking questions after some silly girl is kidnapped and strangled running through the neighborhood streets at night, as I like to do in the summertime.

I was also dissassociating last night, which I've found to happen when I mix mind altering drugs or do a lotta lotta opiate. I was, for instance, swearing something at my computer whilst in a completely different room. I also remember an instance in which I was at some important departmental meeting whilst physically located in my kitchen over the stove.

I am also back to bingeing and purging nearly everyday and back to just about normal weight, all of which irritates me immensely. I mean, sure, EffexorXR was doing possibly irreverable nuerological damage, but I will testify that I never weighed more than 122 pounds while on it. Oh, wait, I forgot. I'm supposed to be in recovery from an eating disorder. I'm on Lexapro now, demanded because it's just about the only modern anti-depressant I am contraindicated for that doesn't lower your sex drive *that* *much*. And Buspar. My new psychiatrist seems harmless and educated and she is a lesbian, but she's really stuck on this idea that Lexapro and Buspar are the magic appleseed for bulimia.

I beg to differ. God, maybe I should just give in and let them put me on depakote. I lose my keys and wallet thrice daily, I have a collection of half-pairs of gloves and mittens, maybe it *would* be a good idea for me to try to take another pill at regular intervals.

BTW, boys and girls, if someone ever prescribes you Skelaxin (US patent) for a muscle relaxer, tell them to fuck off unto from whence they came. It costs a dollar a pill, at 8 pills a day. And it doesn't works. And it makes me much more aware of my esophagus than I ever care to be.

All apologies for having written this exclusively in American, I am too lazy to go to the other room and look up the chemical names of these drugs, and certainly too lazy to go in their and fetch extra "u"s to insert after my "o"s.

What Goes Up

2003-02-27T15:10:00.000-06:00

7:31 pm

Yeah, so the no-smoking thing lasted 18 days. That's the longest I've gone without a cigarette since before my 14th birthday. Good try, mate. A step in the right direction, and all that.

Meanwhile homelife has reached the equilibrium that I tend to drag it into. I adore my girlfriend: she's witty and thoughtful and adorable and all the other nausieating adjectives I've used regarding her since the conception of our relationship. The problem is that she is kind of a mess too. She doesn't publicize it as loudly (or really at all) as I do, but living together you know when your other half is down down down. What really frightens me is that we cannot both seem to be happy at the same time. If I'm okay, she's down, if I'm a complete fucking mess, well, she bites the bullet and takes care of things.

One special tidshit of news is that my eating disorder recovery seems to be going down the tubes, literally. I was going weeks, or at leaast multiple days, binge and or purge free and now I've done it like 5 or 6 times this week. I personally blame this on the writing of my candidacy paper. Or maybe the fact that two purges in 3 days helped me uncommit to quit smoking. Whatever it was, writing these huge papers requires holing one's self up in a world of unreality scrunched over books and desperate that you've missed an important article and facing a screen that somehow refuse to become filled with words.

I finally have a meeting at the back clinic today. Maybe they can just shove that damn disc back in where it came from. Or they'll take another 5000 dollars worth of MRI's and send me home with a script for some addictive drug that last me 3 days of dissassociative bliss.

Oh well. The good news is that my father is overnighting my Windows 98 disc to my department, should be there today and I will once again have the freedom of using more than 30 percent of my screen, I'll be able to see icons and everything. . . (ahh, the joys of safemode when you've inadvertently deleted your system.ini file)

My love to all out there in cyberland, and now I shall go take a dump.

2003-02-06T15:09:00.000-06:00

Day three. Figured I'd write while my computer was behaving and letting me use all sorts of letters, numbers, and punctuation-type doodles.

I don't need a cigarette.
I don't need a cigarette.
I don't need a cigarette.
Nobody needs a cigarette.
If I smoke a cigarette, I'll be dead in ten years.
I'm 27 years old. If I were going to go out, now would be the time, all Janis-Jimi-Jim style. Not waiting for a lung transplant at 35 with a phD and leaving a 4 year old kid and the love of my life because I am too Instant Gratification Girl couldn't stand the thought of biting her nails to bloody stumps and ingesting gallons of mints and gum and gaining 20 pounds.

Just a thought. Now I need to go do laundry, because my girlfriend is out of underwear.

1 have no eyes

2003-02-06T15:08:00.000-06:00

Fuc ths Eye have no eyes on my eyboard. 2 consonants from my surname wll not appear except amdest the mddle of a random text. managed to wrte a great entry here cuttng and pastng (w/out the plus/dash/equal button) eyes and other consonants but then eye realzed eye was not properly sgned n b/c my password has number. Had to open other browser to fnd a number to cp and logn. Hard to wrte dssertaton w/ lmted vowels and consonants though spose can do w/out one lttle number. Payne 'n ass. Not even pnched nerve.

No fags 2 days now. After more than half my exstance 1.5 pacs or more a day 2 days free. Emphysema. And no fucng commas. That was the real tool. No commas sends a man over the edge.

.75 mg triazolam and 10 mg cyclobenzaprine later

2003-02-04T15:03:00.000-06:00

7:57 am -

Good Sign Making typos
Bad Sign Appear to be catching them.
Good Sign Vaguely drowsy. Even IV it takes a few minutes. Highly irregular.
Bad Sign If the triaz was for real I would have passed out and lit the house on fire on 150% of maximum adult dosage.
Bad There are still cigarettes to be smoked and entire house to be fumigated with Febreeze upholstery freshener.
Bad I have a doctor's appointment in 6 hours now.
Bad Lexapro takes a long lime to start working. So when the fuck am I going to start working.

BadThe sun is up
Good I give up to Morpheous. Maybe he'll fucking take me under for just the right amount of time this morning.

2003-02-04T15:00:00.000-06:00

7:14 am -

Whoops. Close call there. Not addicted to dope. Apparently, if you mix up the particular opiates enough, you can stay on the nods for weeks at a time and quit with nothing other than the pain of death wrapping its way up from your ankles.

Actually I think I'm addicted to benzos. Hopefully the same rules as above apply: some diazepam here, lorazepam, alprazolam there, clonazopam. No unexpected tonic-clonic episodes on the 11th floor of the uni library while doing research for my designated professors this term.

Did I mention I missed my new psychiatric intake by 24 hours and now have to wait until March 3rd to be seen? Let's see: I've been on Zoloft, Effexor, and now Lexapro in the past 6 weeks or so. I just increased my escitalopram (lexapro?) dosage last visit. So what the fuck do I do for the next 5 weeks?

My preferred pharmacy bought a cheap new generic triazolam and filled my prescription with it. Pretty cool. I can now take the sleeping meds I once thanked the gods for at triple dosage in the middle of the day and feel nothing. After I finish this, I intend to inject .75 mg of this alleged triazolam along with 10 mg of cyclobenzaprine. The cyclo will put me to sleep. The other drug takes up space in the syringe,which is important to a person trying to intigrate a large number of personal possessions and prescription drugs into a very small apartment.

Holy fuck. My computer says it's the sort of time when non-academic employed people get up. I was going to ramble about how my grandfather is still dead, how I am 27 and have emphysema (the 5 "please"s on the answerphone message left by the internist prior to the rest of the sentence "quit smoking now no matter what you have to do" made it clear). Pulmonary obstruction. Put it into a website and see what you find.

So I have to smoke the last of these cigarettes, even though I just lied and told my girlfriend I wasn't still up to smoke them, and slap on a patch. I have an appointment in 7 hours to see whether I am full of shit or last week's MRI reveals some actual reason for the pain in my hips, ass, and back I can remember from 18 years ago.

Hoping you see some sunshine over there on the other side of the world and the other side of this meteorological belt. We had some on Saturday. I saw it through the window.

2003-01-24T19:46:00.000-06:00

2:46 pm

Forgot to add that I am off effexor since the therapeutic dosage was threatening to give me seizures. I'm on Lexapro now. I'll get back to you about my will to live in six weeks.

2:26 pm - SOS (Same old Shit)

I am having pad thai and coffee for breakfast, which I think is a totally appropriate behavior for a chronic bulimic/anorexic. Ar 2:30 in the afternoon.

I quit dope for 3 days. My doc prescribed me an Opiate/APAP for the effexor withdrwal headaches and I asked in the pharmacy to be sure they had it before turning in the script. Well, they didn't, and they substituted the same number of pills at half the opiate strength. So I headed out, after much pleading and whining, home, in order to rectify the situation on my own.

While I was buying dope opiates in Ohio, my grandfather went into cardiac arrest and died in Minnesota.

I meant to make those two little pills last, taking half at a time so it would be just like what I was actually originally prescribed. But then My Girlfriend got a voice message on her phone from my father telling me to call him while he was visiting family. And my uncle told me.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not that close to my extended family.I don't have much against them, I have more important grudges to bear. But I haven't even seen my grandparents, or any other family in that state, in 1.5 years. I cried anyway. I sobbed. Just like I did when my stepfather who emotionally abused all of us and sexually abused me died in a car crash. I cried because my mother had lost the love of her life.

So I suppose last night I cried for my aunts and uncles and my grandmother. I cried and sobbed and shook and My Girlfriend held me and and when I stopped shaking I sent abstinence from dope to hell, crushed up those little pills, put them into the spoon, and. . . if you don't know how this story ends, then go watch Trainspotting or Sid and Nancy .

2002-12-29T19:44:00.000-06:00

3:08 am

Feeling better. Maybe. No alcohol today. My girlfriend and I fell asleep in one of the Monster Recliners in front of the Royal Tennenbaums, though she denies it. She does not sleep, she does not drink water, she holds me and rocks me when the fear of the Psychiatric Inevitable threatens to reach down and snatch me up forever.

My mother has a jacuzzi instead of a bathtub. Did I mention that Little Tiny Brother's father died tragically at an early age and there was fat life insurance involved? That was 1997, though, and I think she is having to earn her own living again.

I didn't even put on a patch today. It's not my fault. At the apothecary the highest strength they had was for smokers of 10 or fewer sticks per day. What kind of nonsense is that? Those people aren't even smokers. THe forces of the universe don't align to molest, mutilate, irritate, or annoy them. THose people wouldn't drive 10 miles over icy roads at night on a cocktail of wine, sample liquers, and benzos to get a pack of cigarettes.

THey wouldn't drive 5 miles on 5 hits of acid to get a pack of smokes passing gas station after gas station seeking an open station for salvation.

God I hate these fucking death bars. Now I think I'm going to smoke another cigarette.

2002-12-28T19:41:00.000-06:00

4:36 pm

I feel like shit pate on a crisp. I have been thinking about That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Contemplated, lest I lose my status as the most fucked up self-destructive person on the face of the earth who actually isn't suicidal. My Girlfriend and I are a my mom's. I have so much work to do, to get ready to write my candidacy paper next term, find out whether it's even possible to finish the work for my Old Church Slavonic Class for last term and spent way too much money on the trip to Florida and am trying on and off to quit smoking. Apparently I am a drug addict. Oh well. I guess that's the 25 percent of me that's not perfect and she'll have to work with.

Trying/not trying to quit smoking. Put a patch on for several hours, go zoinks, rip it off, and drive for a pack of cigarettes. I will quit again after this pack.

The effexor is making my body do things I don't like, like disembodying my arms from the rest of me and making my head, legs, and arms jerk violently at untoward intervals. Hurrah I'm off the Zoloft. Boo I have to take buspar again to control the Twitch. Boo that life sucks and I am depressed and stressed and left the fated message on my psych's voice mail which will likely result in more effexor which will result in more crippling headaches and twitching and why, why, why, why do I have to go through all of this? I'm in my mom's big beutiful house with my caring adorable loving girlfriend and I wish I could just curl up in a ball and cry alone forever or as long as it takes.

I hate myself for this.

Important Updates From Your Sponsor

2002-12-22T19:32:00.000-06:00

11:53 am

If we were a normal upwardly mobile lesbian couple, I would have cleared out a section of closet/bookshelf for my lady to keep her shit her when she's away. But we are two students, me living on a yearly 14,000 USD stipend and her living on grants and loans. Therefore, neither of us has any extra drawer/ bookshelf space.

We actually got back from sunny Florida two days ago but I have not had the, erm, finger mobility to make entries thusfar. Unfortunately she left to go do an abbreviated Xmas today so I will be mournfully making entries about her over and over ad nauseum for the remainder of the the weekend till I head out for the Mother's house on the 23rd, or more likely the 24th. I finally have some X-mas present ideas. I have decided to leave my father out of it. When I returned home and checked the mail at the office, I found a check from him saying "I gave up. I hope you can get somethings you want/need with this." Nice, but I want gifts. I know this is obnoxious, but I promptly emailed my mom complaining about getting no actual gifts and begged to her to please please not give me a check and sent her the link for my amazon wishlist and a reminder that I'd already emailed her the info on the running shoes I wanted. When I arrived home again home again jiggedy jig today I had a message on the answer phone stating that I did not have to worry about getting money from her. . .

We went to the beach everyday (too cold to swim or even sit on a privately owned boardwalk and cuddle without putting on a jacket; the beach is colder than inland) but since only one beach permits driving on the shore, no Chris Isaak was specifically involved.) However, she did purchase the album containing that portion of our cheesy soundtrack ahead of time, so that was pretty neat.

I've started getting jerky twitches from the Effexor even though my dose is not up. This has been enough to convince me to go back on Buspar, which sucks but if it keeps me from having to deal with same sort of odd looks and obstacles the Tourettes Syndrome victims go through every day I guess I'll have to slide with it.

I AM OFF SERTRALINE!

Can I have a round of applause please?

I've been doing good with my binging and stuff. I purged in the hotel on the way back up and bEEped twice the first night we got back, which was a tragic reason for sending My Girlfriend to sleep at her own place. Um, I also got my diazepam, which was another reason. I've decided I'm tired of diazepam and will be requesting clonazepam for future ventures. We can make this like a guessing game and y'all can place bets on when I make the switch. Erm, should you so choose.

I gained 5 pounds on vacation which I suppose is to be expected. Though 5 pounds in 10 days seems a bit much and after one of those heavy eating days I went back to semi-starve mode for a day. But the truth of the matter is, there's nowhere North of South Carolina you can get boiled green peanuts and I don't know when we'll be making it there again. Also lots of restaurant food of questionable nutritional content contributed, I think. But you know what? Fuck it. Everyone who gives a damn would like another 15 pounds still on me.

We spent a total of 27 hours in the car together, lived in a tent in a friend's driveway for two days, and spent the rest of time exclusively disgustingly together in single hotel rooms, the cargo space of my jeep, etc. And we still love each other. So blah. This means I am finding it entirely appropriate to start thinking about where we should be apartment shopping for next year, how we shall convince our families and others that this is a newlywed situation and get homemaking gifts (queen size bed, coffee table, dining room table, bookshelves galore) out of it, and, of course, how my well-to-do mom should send us on a legit honeymoon to Walt Disney World, staying in a W.D. hotel complete with 4 day mutli-park passes for each of us in September when we have break.

That's not counting our chickens before they pop out, is it? I mean, really. It's not like we're shopping for sperm (not working on that seriously until my 29th b-day) This is the more immediate future. This is just September I'm talking about here.

I know this has been a very lesbianic entry. Should you require a cliff's notes type reading guide, may I please suggest, Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach.

2002-12-09T19:31:00.000-06:00

1:10 pm

They found the car. Didn't go very far. Alas I spoke too soon about the CDs. Also missing is her stereo, a blender that was in the trunk and a very large tarp. Why someone would want to steal a large piece of plastic inparticular is being my rationalizing powers, but it kind of pisses me off, because I really wanted to use part of it to seal off my air conditioner.

We're leaving for Florida tomorrow. We were going to take her car for gas-guzzling purposes, but a 900 mile drive in a vehicle with no stereo is really completely out of the question.

From a conversation with my mother awhile back, on the subject of babymaking (which I intend to do) and the fact that neither partner in my current relationship has any actual sperm of their own.

"You might not even mind doing it the old-fashioned way," says mom. When I relate this to My Girlfriend, she innocently inquires, "you mean, with a turkey baster?"

In Which her True Colors Show

2002-12-06T19:02:00.000-06:00

3:14 pm

We went to bed around six this morning. By the grace of my fellow pharmaceutical junkies I had a few klonopins in me, plus the requisite triazolam. So when My Girlfriend tried to get me get up and come outside with her to confirm that her car had, in fact, been stolen, at 7:50am I really was not able to do that. Of course, she missed everything she was supposed to be doing this morning: mailing bills, class, picking up a script for me, and taking her friend out to a birthday lunch. When I finally agreed to come to consciousness, around (post) noon, I felt awful when I realized that she had, in fact, had her car fucking STOLEN. With CDs and other fabulous items inside. Luckily the CDs are without cases, so they can't really be pawned.

So we wound up taking the bus back to my house. She's taken the car to go and retrieve my stuff and her stuff, including the laundry we were so excited about me doing last night and the groceries I bought for my house on the way home last night. As we were walking the bus route, the way you do when it's well below freezing and best to keep moving rather than just jump on any random bus that passes in the hopes it will not deliever you to West Virginia, I found out her car has enough gas in it to go 170 miles on the highway. Enough to get out of state, as a matter of fact. I'm fairly certain there are at least 3 different states a car leaving this city on the highway with 170 miles to go could wind up in. Perhaps 4. Maybe 5.

Lets just hope some moron needed to get to his drug dealer fast and it will be located, abandoned, outside a crack house sometime this evening. Let's hope that there's not a big market for parting out Saturns, cause that would suck.

Someone tried to break into her car last month. This was apparently a junior criminal. JC didn't try, oh, say, jimmying the lock or even breaking a window. The Stupid Criminal of the Month gift for November had been a very large bottle opener, and someone had actually attempted to pry her door open. "Maybe it's the same guy," I suggested. "He went and took a correspondence course and this is, like, his final."

I have to go do some Tae-Bo on video, toss this blunt syringe and pack up a new one in the hopes that I might be somehow fortunate tonight, take a shower, glam myself up, and head to the bar. Which is what all self-respecting people are doing at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, right?

2002-12-02T18:57:00.000-06:00

4:59 pm

Home Again

For some reason, my apartment seems to have been the only one flooded by the deluge yesterday. They did come and vacuum some of the water off the floor, and I got home to a nice soggy carpet. The problem with catching the water in bucket, etc, logical as it might seem, is that the water was leaking right through the threshold of entrance to my apartment. I would have had to have left the door open all night to catch it.

Thank god (sort of) I have an appointment with my psychiatrist on Wednesday. Down to 50 mg of Zoloft and up to 150 of effexor. I would really like to knock the sertraline off my daily to-swallow list for good. Not looking forward to another series of Effexor adjustments, but c'est la vie. Hey, I took French this summer, I finally can use such a phrase without being utterly full of shit.

Let me take a moment in praise of My Girlfriend. My Girlfriend, My Girlfriend. I don't think I've ever been so entranced by any one thing, person, or event in a state of sobriety in all my life. She is like fucking ecstacy, fabulous, amazing, bodacious, smart, hilarious, sensitive, wise and beautiful and indubitably incomparably righteous. I don't want to fuck this up. I want to roll around with her on the beach with Chris Isaak in the background, I want to take her everywhere and demonstrate her to everyone I know and love, I want her class to end so I can comfortably call her cellphone and find out when we are meeting up tonight. I shit you not, I have found the answer.

Everybody should get themselves a codependant lesbian.

In Which She Waits For Her Girl to Return from Thanksgiving

2002-12-01T18:54:00.000-06:00

11:52 am

Waiting

My roof is leaking quite insistently. I suppose I am grateful that it is only leaking (knock wood) in the hallway, but it's running under my door into my "kitchen", which distinguishes itself from my living room in that it is tiled and the living room is carpeted.

I hope it stops soon. I had a fun few minutes trying to get everything visible and damageable in the way of the flow up onto surfaces, but I don't have very many surfaces.

2002-11-28T18:52:00.000-06:00

1:45 pm

Thanksgiving in America

Okay, it seems that I've skipped a lot of information here. I'm not home a lot. It's safer to stay away. I don't binge and purge that way. I don't eat a lot either, and my weight is definitely nearing the danger zone, but we makes our choices and we takes our prize. Or something.

I have a girlfriend. This is an oddity on so many levels I cannot evne begin to explain it in the time and space I have before my server drops me and all the stores that might possibly be open limited hours today close. I don't think I can be monogamous, I'm not really certain that I'm not straight but this person and I adore one another on this bizarre level that cannot be justified by any bylaws of student-teacher relationships. Oh, did I forget to mention she was/is a student in the class I was teaching this term until I broke? I took her to the movies last night. A classmate works at the big American Multiplex. I didn't recognize him but he recognized me and I shriveled coyley like I generally do when I run into those students these days.

The effexor is working but it is giving me headaches from Narnia. I have been IVing phenobarbitol repeatedly throughout the day to kill the pain. It's not even any fun any more. It's just enough to keep me going. And it;s almost gone.

I'm out of valium. I have sympathetic friends giving me variants of the benzodiazepene family here and there to keep me going. Mostly klonopin. Ativan (lorazepam) here and there. Coke is an anesthetic and seems to go a not bad job of keeping the hammers away but I don't like to do it much and it's not there much.

I am trying to convince my girlfriend to come with me to Florida. I want to visit my friends, I haven't seen them in so long. And I want her to meet them and know my "chosen" family. I want her to know my actual family, for that matter, too. How can I be so gooey? I think it's a lesbian thing. And I am still sleeping around. And she knows it.

2002-11-13T18:46:00.000-06:00

10:16 am

Tonight I had a threesome. My first genuine one in over 10 years. I and the other 2 participants had both been having sex with one another in some manner or other fairly regulalrly, so it wasn't much of a surprise that it happened. It also wasn't much of a surprise that I'm the same egotist I was 10 years ago and know still I would have preferred to have had either one entirely to myself.

Haha, though. I won. I went home. I seem to have developed an entirely innappropriate crush on one of the students from the class I had to back out on teaching this term.

I was thinking earlier about how good I am at making lists of the things I don't want to do. 10 of 12 New Years Resolutions this year were finishers to the prompt "I will not have sex with any man who. . ."

I've broken 5 alreadys a. 4 of them with this guy alone. But it's a girl I'm thinking about.

sex.drugs.rocknroll.alternativelifestylesrevisited

2002-11-13T18:30:00.000-06:00

5:39 pm

I inhabit this bizarre alter world between my VW-bus roaming past and my serious-with-spectacles academic present (?) When I first went to work on my doctorate, I thought I could slide seamlessly between these two worlds, getting polluted as hell on my university breaks and coming back to do something I love and feel passionate about, sober, during the rest of the year.

The closest I suppose I ever come to combining these two is when I get some sort of grant and am living in a foreign country, and thus in a foreign language, getting polluted. This is what I did all last year in Poland: schelepping from pharmacy to pharmacy buying up enough boxes of codeine products to get high, day after day. I got addicted within a couple of weeks of arriving. And how sad is that? Having never been physically addicted to an opiate before, I did not bother to ween myself off. I quit cold turkey: I got sick and was in the toilet for a week.

In the New Year I discovered that if I were a foreigner paying cash for my doctor visits and prescriptions, I could get whatever I wanted prescribed to me. This is how I came to be mainlining diazepam in a Soviet-era dormitory remarkable in its resemblance to a hospital for the (perhaps, criminally) insane.

I guess it would be fair to say that I gave it a little bit of a rest when I got back in June₁. I had a couple of smaller scripts, they didn't last long, and I dealt with it. I was a grown up this summer.

But then came the Fall and then came The Fall. I fell into a major depressive episode. Stopped eating. I have lost 22 pounds, I think. I am still not eating much. I'm not bingeing and purging too much, either.

What I am doing is having sex and doing drugs. Doing sex and having drugs. Hanging out with the guys from the headshop, one of whom is a traveler who may or may not be in the process of semi-reformation. Lolling around in bed ( a futon on the floor, a futon with a frame?) with one of them mainly, the other on occasion, making out with the girls who come around to hang out or try to fuck one (mostly) or the other (rarely) of them. The mostly one is mine . Sort of. Maybe. This morning he would not let me go to sleep forever. I had smoked pot--a rare occasion for me₂-- and was utterly ready to pass out. It made good sense following all the phenobarbital, the codeine, the hydrocodone, the just-before-8-am-so-noone-gets-towed sun rising on my face I buried in the comforter. I was just too tired to have sex again. I was just too tired to do anything. I. . . . . . .was. . . . . . tiiiiiiii-

This is fine for now. I know my therapist and my psychiatrist would send out a collective plea of "Fuck that" were I to reveal the barenaked truth to them, but it's okay for the time being. I am being. I am doing. I have the rest of the term off and if I choose to spend it in bed with a pretty nice guy who actually missed me while I was out of town and does not fear admitting it, maybe I should fucking do that. If he gets his shit together and actually does get a second job so we aren't all huddled together dazed and post-coital at dawn trying to figure out how to get another pack of cigarettes, if I decide I "really like" him and not "just really like the idea" of him and it becomes a relationship, a relationship that I am having with a nice guy who actually doesn't treat me like shit, well, then, I'm actually not really sure what I would do. I've got to fuck this up somehow.

I rolled out of bed this morning and dressed as he slept. I climbed over to give him a goodbye kiss. "Where are you going?" he sleepymuttered. I'm going home. You're sleeping. "How come you're not sleeping?" I fell asleep earlier than you. "I need you." You know where to find me.

Is that playing "hard to get?" The boundary lines and goal posts of "hard to get" become fuzzier after you've seen someone naked a few times. Deep down, I really, really don't want to play games. I have never believed that love-or-something-like-it would work out for me, though, so I am used to protecting myself. But this guy actually doesn't want to hurt me. In fact, he seems to want really badly *not* to hurt me. And I think my self preservation instinct is telling me to find something wrong with him₃. Because that's what I've always managed to do.

I came up with an equation for love last summer when I was in the process of rectifying the mistake I was making again with LoveSlave 2001. The person you find to love needs to be 75 percent perfect. Any less, and someone will only get hurt by all the things that are allegedly lacking. Any more, and you will only get bored. You get the 75% and the other 25 you just have to roll with, or work on somehow.

1. Read: Drinking like it was my job and popping the overinflated egos of more or less every heterosexual male meeting the standards of my New Year's Eve resolutions with the gall to believe he was good in bed.
2. At this time. In the 90s, I was the Best Little Pothead in North Florida.
3. My self-preservation instinct was right. Not in an real earth-shattering way, but he was a man-whore, and he just wasn't anything special.

2002-11-12T18:28:00.000-06:00

6:53 pm

I have phenobarbitol, nyah, nyah!

I wonder if (when?) I should tell my therapist that I'm a drug addict. I mean, it's not as if I'm addicted to any one particular substance (most of the time, and we'll except tobacco). But she always refers to my "drug abuse as a teenager" as if it were all in the past tense. She was talking to me session before last about my MMPI (personality test) and said that, "hmmmm, you score very high for addiction potential."

It's good to know I am working to live up to my potential in some few key areas.

I'm not ready to live without drugs yet. I guess that makes me look like a junky loser right there, but I've got to have something, right? And it's only human nature, that desire to twist one's self. . .

this transmission has been cut off for emergency booty call

2002-11-08T18:17:00.000-06:00

1:22 am

Today I Saw My Psychiatrist

It seems like the Effexor is starting to work, maybe. Well, it's working on my bulimia, anyway. When this last major depressive episode started, I was on 100mgs of Zoloft. When I started forgetting things and lost all ability to concentrate, and the entirety of my alimentary activity for days on end consisted of nothing but bingeing and purging (i.e. "sudden loss of appetite") my doc decided that, since I freak out at higher doses of SSRI's it would be best to change the type of pharmaceutical dick I'm sucking altogether. So he started me off on a wee lil bit of effexor and cut my Zoloft down to 50mg, which is a big fucking leap. Into a black hole. See, even though the Zoloft didn't prevent me from entering an episode, it did mask the one thing that most people associate with depression: the hapless crying all the time over everything and nothing at all.

He should have known better. I'm very sensitive to the SSRI's₁; once he tried to increase me from 100 and I agreed to try 112.5 but got all flaky and manicky and made him let me keep it at 100. He really should have known that, if I show a change in effect with an alteration of 12.5 mg, then 50 was going to put me over the edge. Then again, I should have known better, too. But I am not the fucking doctor. Being totally ineffective at even wanting to fend for myself is one of the symptoms of my illness. Luckily when I leave a sobbing message ending with the word "fuck" on his voicemail, he gets back to me the next day and tells me to bring the Zoloft back up.

Unfortunately the combination of 75 mg of Effexor and 75 of Zoloft have made sex virtually impossible. I have complained to him about this before. But this time I was not going to let him discount me with one of those "weighing the benefits and debits" bullshit. You put me on drugs that make me unable to have sex, you'd better give me a drug that will make me able to have sex He first suggested bupropion, at which point I reminded him that I have an eating disorder.₂ (Aside from which, I really think being on 3 different anti-depressants at once would really cramp my style) Then he suggested some anti-impotency drug which is of course not recommended to be prescribed to women because our sexual dysfunction, of course, is not an issue upon which the order of life on Earth revolves. Baseball players do commercials for Viagra, but who the hell cares if 20 million depressed women are feeling even worse because they can't have sex? Nothing helps alleviate those feelings of guilt and worthlessness better than being a cold fish, right?

At any rate, I took the prescription and had to have it filled at a non-uni pharmacy because they don't carry it and my shitty insurance doesn't cover it. I actually got rather pissed off there, and said to the pharmbot "So you guys have the drug that makes me UNable to have sex but don't have the one would make it possible?"₃ Ummm, yeah. Impulse-control issues.

I always find it interesting to compare the DSM code he writes on my billing slip each time. Today, I apparently managed to "upgrade" myself from 296.32 to 296.33, i.e. reccurent major depression moderate to recurrent majot depression sever without psychotic features. I wonder if this is some sort of an omen. I will have to pay close attention during the next week as I increase my effexor to see if I can win a "with psychotic features" DX next week.

I haven't been bingeing and purging very much. In fact, I think I may have actually gone a couple of days without doing so at all. Not really eating much otherwise, though, and my weight has dropped to just a few pounds from the "danger zone." So I deliberately binged and purged tonight. I can't even begin to justify the logic behind that action. Both my father and my piece of ass called while I was bingeing. I told my father I'd call him back, I told my POA the truth and how long he should wait before coming over.

The anti-impotency drug worked, by the way. I don't even want to consider the fact that it might be the placebo effect. I want to believe. I have gone on medical leave for the remainder of the term in order that my psychiatrist might play chemistry set with my brain as he pleases. I feel very guilty for this. I am in possession of a relatively large amount of triazolam, considering that I am a mental patient known to be a both a drug abuser and very self-destructive. It actually surprises even me that I have not abused my triazolam.

I guess I do have some shred of a self-preservation instinct remaining.

1. Haha. Welcome to the human race.
2. Fortunately for the disproportionately large percentage of nicotine-addicted cold fish with eating disorders, not many (widely read) doctors seem to care about this anymore.
3. Pharmaceutical yohimbine.