'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

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

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

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

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

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

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.