A Note From the Management

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.

Urban Survival for Complete Imbeciles

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

My Hands Went Numb Inside

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.

In the nutshell

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.

Just an ordinary day in the ICU

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.

Junkie Jews for Jesus

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

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.)

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.

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

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

". . . 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

And now I proceed to reveal my face without my flesh

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.

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

"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.

M*A*S*H

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.