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The reason for the persistent lack of blogging boils down to my freaking depression. To put it simply. Lately especially I've felt like a completely boring person whose words are all mundane, trite, repetitive, and generally not worth reading. This sort of sentiment plays very badly into the inspiring-Tina-to-write-ness.

I've thought, perhaps I should write about the medication situation. Perhaps I should blog about my frustration with the search for a therapist. Maybe about my worries for my little brother's mental health needs. Maybe about the flash in the pan interests I get every so often (see currently: transgender rights and queer theory). Certainly all of these could be turned into interesting topics. I could write about my 'plans' to tour Europe, or my literary ambitions, or even the obsessive knitting I've been doing lately. I could talk about new people at work and the latest restaurant drama/gossip. My life isn't boring.

The problem is that depression warps the most exciting events until they feel totally lifeless and dull. I'm in one of those episodes where on many occasions I feel nearly catatonic.

It doesn't help that when depressed I obsess over all the minor details in everything. Pertinent to this blog would be the way in which I analyze each entry and come to the conclusion that this blog has lost any sense of direction and is possibly beyond repair. I further pursue this train of thought to examine whether I should redirect it toward eating disorder related topics and current events which relate to the subject, or narrow it into a recovery journal encompassing any of the many things from which I'm trying to recover. Then I worry this would result in a journal blog, and I decide that I've had far, far too many of those since I first discovered the internet.

For now, I'm thinking the best decision might be to allow the blog to continue without a precise goal and hope that something congeals in time.

Shifting topics back to more recently visited waters, I'd like now to discuss the Abilify situation. To put it bluntly, I've stopped taking it. While on it I noticed absolutely no benefit; in fact, it seemed to be giving me more of an opposite effect. While I've not been suicidal in quite some time, while on Abilify my feelings of hopelessness increased significantly. I'm not sure if Abilify has any sort of extended release, but around six to nine hours after taking it I invariably experienced a major mood crash which left me surly and miserably depressed without any apparent triggers. The final kicker was that around the start of week three I started getting major nightmares which pretty much zapped my sleep of any value. I got some pretty ridiculous nightmares on Zoloft, and these reminded me a lot of them. (The fact that I almost never get nightmares normally but was experiencing them even during brief naps on Abilify was an indicator to me that the medication was causing them.)

So that's that.

I see the psychiatrist again on the 25th and am staking quite a few of my hopes on the appointment. Granted, I'm under no delusions thinking a trip to the doctor will cure everything ba-boom! but I'd still like to hope maybe some sort of progress will be made. The last time I saw her (and also the first time I met with this one, actually) we discussed the various medications I've been on and she basically said we may want to try trycyclics or even MAOIs if we can't find an effective alternative. MAOIs scare the crap out of me and, as such, I'm only going to try them if all other options have been exhausted... But honestly, to be reminded that there are still so many options yet untried is really encouraging to me. Watching so many SSRIs get scratched off the 'possibles' list is more of a depressant than whatever is causing the depression to begin with. Lol.

...I'm tired. I shouldn't blog tired. It makes me say inane things like 'lol'.

I'll end here, I suppose. Sleeeep. It sounds so nice.

Rambling status report

I'm having one of those days where I have absolutely no clue how to begin an entry. Everything seems trite, cliched, or simply like a lame hook to grab the reader and keep you interested. I hate it when even my writing, the thing which keeps me getting out of bed in the morning, manages to feel like so much work.

Yesterday I met with a new psychiatrist at Aurora Mental Health. About a month and a half ago I'd gotten prescriptions for Effexor XR and Welbutrin XL through my Md, once I explained to her that I'd been on them before and had been forced to stop taking them because of insurance and financial troubles a few months ago. However, with how complicated my depression's been proving to treat, the Md made me promise to find a psychiatrist to take care of any further prescriptions. I had an intake with a therapist at Aurora a couple weeks ago and she referred me to a psych within the practice.

God, that all sounds so complicated. Seriously, the referrals and phone calls and rescheduled appointments and intakes and continued appointments and referrals and referrals and referrals are freaking exhausting, especially to someone in the midst of a major depressive episode. Funny how my depression truly has gotten WORSE since I started on the meds this time. It will be such a total relief to finally find a treatment team I can work with so that this ridiculous searching will be over. If I have to keep hopping from doctor to doctor as I've been doing for the last ten months I will not last much longer.

Things with Chris, the new therapist, have not been going well. After the intake I realized her definite lack of experience with the areas in which I'm in need of expertise. After the second session it became clear that there was no way we'd be able to work with her... She's never worked with DID before and took a very Jungian approach to the whole matter, addressing 'personality parts' and stressing that each alter is not really an alter but just an aspect of our person as a whole. Perhaps needless to say, but this did not go over well.

Fortunately, the meeting with the new psych did not go nearly as badly. I was happily surprised to find a female doc (my last psychiatrist was male and I had an unexpectedly difficult time with it) and more pleased to find that she really thoroughly knows her stuff. She was not even surprised when I mentioned having been on Lamictal for antidepressant purposes (a relatively newly found use for the drug) or Provigil, or when I asked about other meds or used terms obscure even to the psychiatric community. Dr Sharpe seemed not much more familiar with DID than anyone out in Colorado has been so far, but at least she seemed to take me seriously and didn't act all condescending or disbelieving.

Dr Sharpe and I decided some med tweaking is very much needed. I've been medicated for nearly eight weeks now but have noticed absolutely no positive effects. In fact, the effexor has been making me so absolutely exhausted that I'm barely functioning anymore for how sleepy it makes me. I slept fourteen hours straight the other night and after being awake for just a few I was ready for a nap. Considering these factors, Dr Sharpe's view was that I should wean off it. Discouraging to think that I've only been on it eight weeks and now I'm going off it again...

For now the Wellbutrin's staying as it is. Dr Sharpe was rather irritated to learn that someone had prescribed Wellbutrin to a recovering anorectic, but...eh... Be that as it may, and inadvisable as it is, I'm staying on it for now. Historically it's been the drug which has given me more benefit than any other. At the same time, though, the doc did point out that it could be a huge part of why my appetite has been so seriously reduced lately.

Last but not least, she's having me start a new drug: Abilify. (LAMEST NAME FOR A DRUG EVER.) It's primarily listed as an antipsychotic and mood stabilizer but says that it may be used for alternate purposes as well. Yes, sounds kinda weird and dirty, but whatever. It's a pretty new drug, only FDA approved five years ago, so the full array of uses hasn't yet been determined. We'll see how it goes... It seems there's about a fifty fifty chance it'll make me completely somnolent or a total insomniac. Huh. Not sure why it has those two opposite affects on random people.

I'm starting it at 2mgs a day for a week then upping it to 5mgs. This actually seems to be a really low dosage in general.... A lot of people start at 15mgs and then move to 20 or 30. More than that sets most people stuporous, from what I've read on the forums. I guess time will tell how it affects me... I'm really just hoping for something positive this time. I need a break.

Dr Sharpe also said she'll try to help me find a therapist who'll actually be helpful... Right now I just can't manage to keep searching. I'm worn out and depressed and the meds are making it worse.

This is also just about the worst effing entry I may ever have written. It's got about the same profundity as the things I write when stoned... Only I'm experiencing much less enjoyment at present. It appears anti-depressants are not as tasty as good pot. :-P

Report from the negligent blogger

It's been difficult to write lately, for a couple reasons.

Primarily, depression's been rendering me verbally and intellectually useless. Actually, for that matter, I've pretty much been worthless for any sort of activity, either... I've been sleeping ten, eleven, twelve hours a night, taking naps when possible, and otherwise lying on the couch all day like some random inanimate object.

The other night I woke in the middle of the night screaming... I tried to explain to Crystal that I felt like all the sorrow of the world was seeping into me, that I could feel all the horrible things that were happening (particularly to children) in every part of the planet and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I still feel this way to some extent, only less...dare I say, less narcissistically? I know that there is no possible way I can beging to understand all the suffering in all the world. There are a ton of things I've never experienced or seen or heard, and hope not to. But still... What I do know is enough to make me feel miserable.

My eating has gone to shit lately, the worst part of which being that I have really, truly, honestly been trying so, so hard. The problem is that every bite now takes an effort the likes of which I've not experienced in several years. I chew and chew not because I'm counting but because all my muscles feel exhausted and my throat refuses to accept the food unless it's down to almost nothingness. If anything, all this battling to eat makes it feel as though I've been eating significantly more than usual, despite clear evidence to the contrary. A couple people are pressuring me to go to the doctor, if for no other reason than to prove to me that my weight is getting dangerous again. (I haven't owned a scale in about ten months, haven't been on one in a month and a half.)

It's so hard to write about this subject honestly and yet withhold as many triggers as I can. Ugh.

I'm seriously left trying to understand where my eating has gone so wrong as to cause this weight loss. I guess it's hard to notice such things when weight loss doesn't immediately trigger a warning light for me... At first it feels like a nice reprieve, becoming something comfortable and easily ignored before it becomes a serious concern. I could stop worrying about how I'd afford new clothes when I outgrew the ones I've worn for years. Worry less about affording food. Continue for hours and hours at work without becoming distracted by hunger.

Starvation habits are just so damned familiar to me that even when I'm trying to eat well and take care of my body, it is beyond simple to slip back into them without even realizing. I guess that's what it boils down to.

Returning to restricting habits has, I suppose, been more of a comfort and an anxiety alleviant than an active fear of food/weight/body or a conscious war against it. Toss in the long hours at work, financial concerns, and stress over the secondary issue I'm about to bring up... And it would appear that the result is me, quietly disappearing.

To abruptly transition... A huge factor in my recent stress levels has been a little kid called Danny Jr.

This four year old is Crystal's half brother, who lives relatively close to us with Crystal's dad and stepmom. He is freaking adorable, super sweet, loving, silly, intelligent, creative, curious, imaginative, and generally awesome. He's also been subject to a serious amount of neglect over his lifetime and, increasingly, physical abuse. (God, I feel like some sponsor-a-child ad.)

Jr's dad, D., has been a severe alcoholic since (if I remember correctly) he was about thirteen. He was abandoned at a young age and taken in to a foster family who housed kids for the government money; all in all two foster parents and five foster kids living in a trailer park. I've heard stories of how D.'s 'parents' would regularly dose him and his siblings with Nyquil when they wouldn't quiet down fast enough. One of D's siblings is currently 19 and has three children. Another is a cocaine addict. The others I don't know about entirely... D's foster parents still live in Illinois, although his mother is close to her end now from a wide variety of health issues, many of which have been brought on by negligence in personal care (i.e. extreme obesity, diabetes, lung problems, cirrhosis of the liver, etc).

Jr's mom, S., also abuses alcohol. I don't know very much about her beyond that she dropped out of school sometime around or before highschool, ran away at some point, and has been surviving by waitressing at Denny's and filling odd jobs for years.

Currently, D., S., and Jr all live in the back room of a skeevy dog kennel and grooming shop right off the highway. It's one of those run-down rows of brick buildings, glass windows held together with tape, iron bars, parking lot paved maybe twenty years ago, only ever frequented by people who've been going there for twenty years. Also in the lot are a liquor store, a nail salon, and a sign for an architectural firm filling a dusty, empty window.

When you walk into the front door (which I was glad to see finally got its glass replaced; every time I've been there before it was splintered like a brick had been thrown against it) you're first accosted by the noise of the dogs. I've never been there without seeing at least a half dozen of them.

A split second after the noise comes the smell... The dogs all run loose over the rippled linoleum, shitting and pissing as god wills it. One wall of the kennel is floor to ceiling dog crates in a sort of wood and steel frame, a few lucky crates lined with pillows. (There is a hand-printed sign encouraging patrons to donate pillows for the dogs to use... The few that have been given are a motley collection of worn out throw pillows and lurid couch cushions.) Even the stainless steel grooming tables are encrusted with dried out filth, gradually flaking off to join the rest of the mess on the floor or settle beneath curls of torn linoleum. It's hard to determine what color the floor is supposed to be... Perhaps needless to say, it's a grimy shade of yellow-brown, accented by rugs in each corner resultant from dozens of doggy haircuts.

Jr isn't really allowed into the shop, though. The owner, B, understood that the conditions of hiring D and S to work there meant that he'd give them room and board and allow Jr to live there as well, but he wants him neither seen nor heard. Jr pretty much stays in the back room unless B is out, the shop is closed, or someone comes to see him. They get paid now and then, under the table, a couple bucks in cash so that they're off the books because D owes so much money in back child support to two ex-wives and four ex-children.

The other day, in explaining how she defended their home to a social worker who recently visited, S described their home as being "just like a studio apartment". When Crystal and I lived in a crappy Washington DC studio, it was a lot bigger than the place the three of them live. Additionally, it had a kitchen. And a bathroom. With a shower and bathtub. This place has none of the above, except for a small toilet room and the shower heads used for grooming the dogs. D and S have a small, electric stove which rests on a table in their room, making up the kitchen. When we went to visit for Christmas this stove was actually out on one of the grooming tables in the shop to allow more room for cooking.

I'm not afraid of filth, let me make that clear. Normally, smells and mess and years of accumulated dust won't phase me. Bother me, yes, some, but I can deal. I've had many friends and several relatives over the years whose houses have been several miles below what you might come across in Home and Garden. My grandma smoked copious numbers of cigarettes and probably hadn't cleaned her house in a good forty years despite generations of labrador retrievers and all that smoke and the usual dirt of living. I'm relatively accustomed to uncomfortably dirty environments. B's shop really, really bothers me. It is truly hard to stay there more than a minute. When we go to get Jr I try to stay in the car if and when at all possible.

When you enter the family's room, you first notice the oversized flatscreen TV in the corner. It's always on. You see shelves with a few food stuffs and the range stove I described earlier, along with a few Broncos memorabilia and a dart board. You see discarded wrappers and crumbs of varying sizes and colors littering the 'kitchen'. To the left is a double bed which D and S share. In the middle is a faded floral couch which looks either to have come with the place or been dragged in off the side of the highway. The couch is the focal point of the place, the center of activity, the throne for the sedentary rulers. It typically is adorned with over-filled ashtrays and sour, empty beer cans. To the far right is a toddler mattress on the floor for Jr. The kennel dogs come and go.

I don't doubt that D and S love Jr. My quarrel is that love is NOT enough. They DO NOT know how to treat or care for or raise a child. Whenever we're over there, D and S try to chat with Crystal and I while yelling at Jr to be quiet and go sit on his bed. He's learned the art of crying in silence.

Jr adored me from very early on... My guess is that I was one of the only people he's ever known who got down on his level and talked with him seriously about whatever he wanted to - even if that meant a two hour discussion/game of what if your eyeball fell out and you had to look for it on the floor and put it back in. He's a four year old, and beyond that he's a very active little boy, so when he tries to play rough with me I don't mind it. He's not trying to hurt me, anyway... When he throws a little punch it's to see me groan and throw myself back in an exaggerated parody of defeat. When D or S see this behavior, though, they scream at him to not play rough with girls and to go to his bed for time out. It doesn't matter that I explain it's my fault, I encouraged the game.

As Jr's gotten older, it seems that D and S have found him increasingly difficult to deal with. He went from baby to mobile toddler to opinionated, rapid, excitable little boy. I don't think they know what to do with him, don't know how to respond when he doesn't behave calmly and quietly like an adult. Over the last few months, spankings have progressed to beatings, sometimes and sometimes not alcohol inspired. He always has new bruises on his head and arms when we go to pick him up, which he explains with shrugs and avoided glances. One recent beating sent him to the hospital.

Connected to the fact that they don't know what to do with him anymore, D has now announced that he plans on shuttling Jr off to live with his foster parents in Illinois. (Do you remember these foster parents? If not, please see the above description.) Initially he said the family would go live in Illinois... Now the plan is to find a car, make the drive up, dump Jr and leave. In some twisted, morbidly ironic twist of fate, living with the foster grandparents might actually be WORSE than the environment he's in now.

Crystal and I have been trying to take him for a day or two frequently over the last few weeks. It's never much... Just take him to a park or let him play with our cats or read some stories or play some games. Just socialize with him. Love him. Whenever we have to take him back, he doesn't tantrum or cry but becomes sullen, obviously upset, distressed, anxious, starts telling wilder and wilder lies about why he can't go back. Something which upsets me in a seriously visceral way is that he doesn't even call it going home... He just says over and over not to take him back to B's. Last week he said, "I don't want to go back because mommy and daddy don't love me anymore, and so I don't love them neither."

So now, the source of my distress. We love this little boy. He's tied to Crystal by blood and me by marriage, albeit future and pending on legality. It's bad enough to watch his present situation deteriorate, but the thought of him being sucked into that trailer home in Illinois is worse. Right now, Crystal and I are very seriously contemplating the long, arduous, emotionally wrenching, financially draining, exhausting concept of a custody battle for Danny Jr.

For many reasons, Crystal's and my home would really be the only readily available place to take him in which could care for him and give him the love and nurturing he needs and deserves. Also for many reasons, I'm scared shitless. Crystal and I are still trying to get financially stable, just the two of us; what the hell would we do with a four year old? Even with government aid we're looking at a seriously low socio-economic level for the forseeable future. And besides, I'm only twenty-one years old. Crystal is only nineteen. Are we prepared to raise a child? Maybe. But beyond that, are we prepared to fight for, adopt, and raise an emotionally damaged four year old?

We keep going back and forth and up and down and inside out and sideways over the same questions and the same answers. Maybe, I don't know, probably not, we could try, what other options do we have. The truth is, both of us really do want to raise Danny. We love him and know him enough to see so much potential, so much worth fighting for and nurturing. We would love nothing better than to be the ones to give him the care and love he needs.

But how the hell can we do this???

And now we return full-circle, as life is wont to do, to the subject of my not eating. Maybe it's got to do with the ENORMOUS FREAKING ULCERS that all this stress is causing. (Okay, so maybe they're figurative ulcers. Mental ulcers?) When I eat it's not even just eating dollar bills anymore... It's eating dollar bills that should be going to help this little kid. ....God, yes, I know I'm talking crazy. I'm good at that. It's a talent, perhaps a hobby.

Does anyone have advice to chip in on this one? Please, this is an open request and plea. Send me a website, tell me an anecdote, give me some phone numbers, whatever you've got. Even just an, 'I'm thinking of you.' Something tells me I'm in over my head on this one.

Still alive and still kicking that dead horse

Jesus H. Is this REALLY the FIRST chance I've had to update my blog since returning from MD on the 2nd? Answer: Yes. Yes it is. Suck.

Our piggy-backed internet officially decided to give us the boot at home, so that greatly limits my ability to update. Then too, working 40+ hours since the first morning I was back doesn't help at all in the free time department... I've been making a lot of money, but, god am I tired.

Today would have been my fifth double shift in a row but for the fact that a friend offered to pick up the AM shift so that I don't have to be in until 5:45 tonight, allowing me time to settle my ass at It's A Grind (BEST COFFEE SHOP EVER), with an iced chai (I've recently become a fan: finally, I'm a true lesbian!), a checkbook to be ballanced (hooray internet banking; I don't want to begin to think about how snarled it is), a blog to be updated (at this point I feel the need for a parenthesis after each statement), and a doctor to be found (I suppose I'm trusting to fate and location since I know no one here). (Parentheses: the new black. Or comma.) Damn but that was the longest sentence ever.

Oh yeah! And also, I have a birthday party to plan if I have time! Old as I may feel, I still am only partially legal. Isn't that lame? It's not even as though I drink, but the mere fact that I can buy and own a car, rent an apartment, join the military, what-the-f-ever, but not get a glass of wine at a restaurant pisses me off. All this will change on September 16th when my last Big Birthday for twenty years will occur. It's weird, planning my twenty-first... Honestly, I've felt so old for so long that it seems trite.

...Wow. What do I have to say? This is nothing but a tangle of rambles, all frustrated before the point of meaning. This is actually how I've been feeling lately about my life in general, though whether or not the two are in any way connected is debatable.

Lately, waitressing has felt even more thankless and dead-end than it already has... Though I'm still bringing in a fair amount, enough at least to pay the bills, I get off a shift feeling more as though I've been begging for change or turning tricks than legitimately being paid for a job well done. Every 5$ tip on a 90$ check (see also: last night) makes perfectly executed service feel like a joke. If the person will pretty much tip what they're going to tip regardless of the service I give or the check they run, why bother? I ruin myself every night trying to make sure each table receives exemplary service but whether or not I'll be paid for that effort is a crap shoot.

My shoulder has been bothering me again, too, increasing with the hours I work. Hell, it's only been about eight months since my surgery and I'm back to double shifts pretty much every day I work... At this pace, the healthy, whole parts of my body won't stay such for long. People don't realize that waitressing takes an incredible toll on your body. Although I've been eating more I can't gain any weight or keep on what I've got because of waitressing so much... I may be eating Cheesecake Factory food every day, but the calories are all offset by the loaded plates I cart all over the restaurant, the trays of drinks, and constant speed-walking. I'm solid muscle, knots, and strains.

Yucky part is, I've got no clue where I'd rather work or what I'd rather do. What job can I get with a year's worth of college that has adequate pay, benefits, and satisfaction? That I'd enjoy? I have no clue. Especially with working in a mall, it seems that everyone here is older than I and stuck working too many hours in a dead end job because it's the best option they got. So many people here in Colorado are working to pay for the homes, cars, and KIDS on minimum wage, yet I'm making at least twice that and complaining about it. Why does it feel like that makes me a terrible person? I don't think it does...

Last night I was mourning my complete lack of connections here. I didn't exactly have the most outrageous network in DC, but I still new enough people that I could know where to go if I had a question about something, needed help. I had a Pulitzer prize winning author, senior literary professor at George Washington U offering to mentor me and help me become a better writer. I had opportunities. Now that I'm half a country away perhaps I'm not completely cut off from any way to improve but I certainly feel the disconnect. I don't know where to go or who to talk to. I've got no school, no professors, no friends outside my dead-end job. The only way up at Cheesecake is to step into management and I'll be damned before I become THAT much of a corporate whore.

...Of course, then I look at complete complete train wreck entries like this one and think that I ought to have learned better by now than to still have literary aspirations. I can't even keep a blog in one piece.

Well, my thought are trickling out at this point and I'm having a hard time sifting through the silt that remains. I'm going to now return to my doctor search... I've finally got health insurance now through Cheesecake, meaning that I can at long last find a therapist to stick with, a psychiatrist, and get back on some medication. With any luck, maybe my thoughts will be a little more cohesive and I'll have a better time trying to plan and think and do anything with some cocktail to temper my crazy thoughts. It's about time, I can tell you that much. I'm tired of crying myself to sleep at night with absolutely no provocation.

Idle hands...

It's odd how days off actually seem to be what kill me a little.

Working thirty-five to forty hours a week exhausts me on every level, but conversely it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, shower, dress nicely, and generally pull myself together. I've lately had a bad habit (tongue in cheek on that 'habit' part) of dissociating somewhat throughout the work day... I'm the dead-end job zombie on so many levels. Is it better to go through a series of depersonalized days, but to get through them nonetheless, or to be like I was in DC and fall apart all the time at work? I'm starting to think the reason I never was promoted to a trainer position was that they couldn't trust my emotional stability... God knows how many times they had to send me home because I couldn't stop sobbing.

When I've got a day off, though, it tends to be bad news. Work keeps me busy, work keeps me distracted. More importantly perhaps, it keeps me talking to people and smiling a lot (even if the smiles are fake - fake it 'til you make it?). Days like today, I'm bogged down with household chores and domestic errands, like three hours at the DMV and hundred-dollar grocery trips. By the end of a 'day off' I'm more tired and emotional than a work day. More prone to sobbing and manic cleaning sprees as a method to hopefully ward off self-injury.

I play with my keettens and try to channel the emotional tension/energy into art projects, but more often than not I get frustrated with the whole affair and stare hopelessly at a blank page for hours. I try to read, but internal chaos can be unbelievably distracting. It's like being on a poorly fitting medication; the words jump on the page, lines blur and buzz, my eyes read and reread and generally can't stay focused for sh-t.

Being alone while Crystal's at work is especially bad. I talk to myself, I talk to myselves, I talk to the kittens, I talk to the walls. I fall silent when I feel especially crazy. The silence hems me in and makes me feel crazier. I turn on the TV for company and get angry at the characters for always saying the same things, never varying, never wavering or blinking if I scream at them. (Film characters are quite pretentious that way, it seems. Worst of all, if you watch the same movie twice, you'll notice no one ever does anything new, not so much as a sigh or a sneeze. ) So I turn off the TV and am again stuck with that god-awful silence....

Come August first my new insurance kicks in. God help the man who stands in the way of me and a psychiatrist... First thing I'm going to do is get on some meds.

Don't get me wrong, I still think medication tends to be overprescribed. From what I've seen, too many people are on it who don't need it, and the stigma surrounding medication because of that means that too many people who legitimately need it are afraid to take it. Our system is completely f-kd up. I want to slap every media guru who's referenced happy pills and made derogatory comments about crazy people, therapists, Freudian psychology, psych meds, and on and on and on. All this stigma and negative stereotyping doesn't make our lives any easier. It's hard enough to get onto medication because of personal fears; external derision helps nothing.

....Can you tell I'm a little out of focus tonight?

That's why I need medication... To calm the racing thoughts just a little, temper the moods, ease the rumination, soothe the reason-less hurt. Medication really does exist for a REASON. It really is meant to help, not stupefy or control or drug you happy. It doesn't work that way, for one thing. Medication isn't going to cure me in the slightest. It's just going to help calm me enough that I'll be able to get a more solid start on recovery.

Reflections on self-injury

Sigh... After an eight AM meeting, I opened this morning... And now, coming on briefly after I got off, Crystal closes tonight. So no baby all day. Makes me sad.

Feelings of instability have increased markedly lately. My feelings about eating (if not quite my habits themselves) have begun to improve, but the depression and anxiety hang around as they always have. It's been about four or five months since I last cut and the urges are strong again. They never really go away.

I don't talk about my cutting much. I guess that it's something which feels like it's always been with me and still feels more like a friend and companion than a bad coping mechanism or dangerous, destructive habit. It's one of those things which therapy has yet to talk me out of. So far most, if not all, of my previous therapists have wanted me to go to an inpatient facility to tackle the issue.

I've always argued around aggressive treatment/inpatient as primarily a matter of affordability (after all, right now I can't even afford therapy in and of itself) and secondarily as a Not Really Major Issue. Somehow the infrequency of my indulgence makes me think it's less of a problem. (Isn't it?) Things have never been so bad that I'd cut multiple times a day (well, not usually) and as a general course have been once every few weeks at most. Over the past year and a half or so, once every few months. That's not a big deal. Right?

Of course... There is the porning. Like I used to food-porn with anorexia, I cut-porn now. Most recently, the scenes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Professor Umbridge's wicked little quill have provided both a trigger and feelings of satisfaction, at least to some degree. The internet teems with triggers and 'porn'. The imagination fills in where my physical actions continue to refrain. While physically I may not have cut for months, I guess you could say I'm a total porn addict. A few times a day, maybe. Constant daydreaming, sometimes.

Here's the thing, though. Technically, I'm not harming anyone by this. Beyond that, I'm not sure how to stop it. Beyond that, I'm definitely not sure I WANT to stop.

I never 'gave up' cutting as a personal resolution or a decision to recover, heal, overcome. I never have wanted to stop. (This was another reason I argued against inpatient: most places, unless you're a serious medical harm to yourself/others, require that you sign a contract certifying you're entering the program of your own initiative and with a strong desire to recover.) I suppose it's a sign that my thoughts in this area are still ruefully unhealthy or something, but no one's ever managed to convince me either of how cutting hurts me or how I'd be better off without it.

The reasons I've physically stopped are simple: other people. Namely, Crystal, my little brother, and total strangers who see my body and look horrified. Were I completely alone and able to ignore others better, I'd probably continue to self-injure on a weekly or daily basis.

I don't know how to deal with the sense of loss. I don't know how to cope with the feelings of self-hatred, anxiety, loneliness, emptiness, self-loathing, inadequacy, helplessness, mania - even just boredom. These are all some of the things which drive me to self-injury, physical or imaginary. When I'm not self-injuring regularly I feel a loss of identity and a lack of completion. Something is MISSING. I grieve for it in a way usually reserved for close loved ones. In the same way that I get confused about who I am if not an anorectic, I don't know who I am if not a cutter. (God, how BDSM does that sound?)

There's a hotline that I've often been referred to and never called - 1-800-DONT-CUT. It's supposed to be really good; I've read much of the book written by the people who started the line and they actually run the only inpatient program I've so much as considered for self-injury. (The reason I've never called is that when I'm to the point that I want to actually self-harm, I don't want anyone to talk me out of it, deter me, or break my mood.) Lately I've been wanting to call them just to talk about this in lieu of a therapist: how do I face the sense of emptiness that comes without cutting?

I wonder a lot if this is a normal feeling. More and more the Powers That Be are looking down on calling self-injury an addiction, opting instead for a more learned behavior, benefits/rewards approach, but I still feel like 'addiction' may be the best term. After all, don't recovering alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts reference this feeling of confusion, lack of direction, etc? (Hell, isn't that part of what AA and its higher power teaching is about? Just redirect that passion!) I don't know. It's one of those areas that I'm left aware both of my personal lack of knowledge and the communal lack of understanding in this area.

Therapists have given me dozens of worksheets and thought pattern charts and you-name-its to fill in, to understand the thoughts and emotions that drive my urge to self-injure. These charts often backfire and, instead of helping me to break it down and understand my feelings, lead me to think that I'm either too damn crazy for a chart or just plain have a glitch in the system. I've got so many filled out charts with reasons ranging from the classic 'anger at' whomever to things the docs can't understand (or accept as truthful) like boredom, feeling 'too' happy, feeling distractible, and missing someone.

Several docs have been adamant that all my urges are simple: anger turned inward. ...even though anger is rarely a motivating feeling.

Several tell me it's frustrated sexual energy, or sexual fear, or sexual something. (Freud is aliiiive!)

Others still insist I just want attention. (After all, I gave up a long time ago on trying to hide all the damn scars where most cutters will still opt for long sleeves no matter the weather.)

In the end, I often have to wonder if anyone truly has a solid understanding of self-injury, its triggers and motivators. Maybe that's why it's so hard to want to give up: if no one can help me understand what it is and how it works in the first place, how can they convince me it's an altogether 'bad' thing?

------

In other news, August 1st my new insurance kicks in. I stopped seeing Shelley about a month ago and have been (again) out of therapy since then. I've been unmedicated since February due to the whole insurance cut-off fiasco. All improvement, stagnation, or backsliding has been the result of lack of any sort of treatment whatsoever beyond the self-nurture I've learned to give myself.

I have the number for another therapist with whom I'm supposed to call and set up an intake... She has a lot of extensive, varied experience and works with an organization which seems to have really good policies toward medication... So I guess that once August rolls around we'll see what's what with that.

Assortedness

It's a bit of a weird day... I'm really homesick for my alma mater (which technically isn't, since I dropped out. but I'll always think of it that way), to the point that I've been sitting around studying textbooks for the hell of it and accidentally typed in my school e-mail address when trying to access my blog account. It's bizarre and painful to think it's only been seven months since all that sh-t happened. I'm all droopy and benadryl-groggy, too... Wasn't feeling well earlier today, took a pill, slept all afternoon, and now just feel disoriented. Hooray! >.<

'Lots been on my mind lately. Not updating makes me feel like a heel, but then when I open ze laptop I have no idea what I want to say. Usually ends up I say nothing, as you've seen. I wonder then if anyone still reads, (remind myself there have to be updates before there will be readers), wonder whether I've said so much as ten meaningful things in the last few months, wonder why I bother. Recovery lately has very much been a story of stagnation. Perhaps my thoughts and entries (i.e. the lack of content in said entries) merely reflect that.


The past couple weeks had me worrying quite a bit about Frank Warren, the PostSecret curator. There was a week's lapse in secrets for no explanation; the only change made to the site was to remove the link to the suicide hotline and one of the encouraging survival stories that's been there for ages now. Being the anxious sort of person I am, I e-mailed him a few times and when I didn't receive a response went so far as to find where I'd put his contact information ages ago and called him. If you followed the facebook drama especially, you'll know that hundreds of people were worried something seriously wrong had happened to him or his family - I include myself in that number.


Thankfully, he reappeared this Sunday with a new batch of secrets and a brief message of explanation. I gotta be honest, though: as a long time blogger, xanga-er, livejournaller, I still feel kind of hurt at the way he disappeared. I mean, a leave of absence is one thing. I've done it myself numerous times when things have gotten really bad. When you've got a huge crowd of readers, though, who have come to anticipate punctual updates, you can't just stop without any sort of reason. In the lj world, that's called pulling a limeybean. It's akin to internet suicide.


Blah.


To transition to something less angsty and pissy... I give you CAT MACROS! We got our two little kittens last Thursday and they're the cutest pains in the ass you'll ever meet. Frankie is a grey tabby, Tallulah is a black-and-white 'socks' kitty. Unfortunately, my bluetooth receiver isn't working (i.e. no phone pics) and I don't have a digital camera, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to tell you what it's like with teh kittehs. Cat macros are my latest obsession and so, without further ado, here's my Life Wif Kittehnz post.






Approximately what Frankie looks like. And yes, that would be Frankie as in Sinatra, because this boy is the loudest whiny little brat EVER. He is a little more grey than this kitty, with more moozlepoof (see the rules of cuteness at cuteoverload.com).

Did anyone ever doubt the trouble and naughtyness of a kitten? Or two kittens...? Yes, they is naughty monkeys. But oh so cute.

Especially at night. When I'm trying to sleep. Only, imagine vampire cat attacking YOUR neck, ot the other cat's.

Tallulah has a problem. She begs. Shamelessly. FOR PEOPLE FOOD.

KITTEN FARTS KILL OMG.

Aww squee. See, at the end of the day, THIS is why we got kittenz. (Cheaper than therapy and meds?)

OH YEAH, and, P.S.

We saw Harry Potter and TOOTP last night!!! God was it awesome. Yes, there were flaws... I mean hell, they turned the longest book into a barely two hour movie. But STILL, it was awesome. Go see. I will see it again.

PPS.

For more cat macros, go to www.icanhascheezburger.com. Kthxbai!

Is this really what passes for a blog these days?

So basically, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am to move to Canada once Crystal graduates. More on that later, I guess...

It's been incredibly difficult to think what to write. Despite having days off and an overactive mind, I can't seem to focus any of these thought trains into a chiseled sort of entry or, for that matter, any form of writing longer than a disjointed paragraph. Additionally, as I've tried to consider topics worth discussion, I've been painfully aware that most of what's on my mind is depression-related and depression at my level is excruciatingly boring. Friends often challenge me to write a book and I can't seem to convince them how any book I could poop out now would be little better than Dr Zhivago right now. The depressive's mind, by nature, ruminates on topics like a cow that ate a bag of mulch and gravel. Endlessly. And often with indigestion. Depression is an endlessly churning sack of monochromatic muck.

Even exciting events can be turned dull when viewed through the depressive lens. I could tell you about the hail we received or Amber's graduation last night or how we almost got killed after a booksigning in Denver a few days ago. All these things, in the appropriately caffeinated fingers of a witty person, could be turned into side-splitting or riveting anecdotes. At the moment I'm more likely to say, "Yeah, we went to see Barbarah Kingsolver talk a couple nights ago and there was this big thunderstorm and then we walked home in the pouring rain and got chased by a raving drunk who was packing heat." (Granted, that one may be kinda interesting REGARDLESS of the bare bones explanation.)

Side note about the experience in Denver: I am about fifty times more frightened of downtown Denver than I EVER was of Washington, DC. I was less afraid walking home alone in DC than I was walking three blocks to a LightRail station with Crystal and Jody the other night. Because damn. People can officially give up on trying to convince me to look for an apartment downtown.

I ought to write about how pants that should be too small are baggy, about how depression kills my appetite kills my motivation kills my giving-a-shit. I should write about how my new therapist broke up with me after two sessions and I'm back looking for a new one again. I should write about the fact that I'm working six of seven days this week.

Sooo many topics to cover! So many books to write and bills to pay and t'shirts to make/send and apartments to look at and the rest and the rest!

Instead, I watch Michael Moore films while crocheting doilies and getting ready to leave for work, and when I DO finally get myself to open ze laptop and attempt ze entry, it looks like THIS.

Mental illness is ridiculously frustrating.

Motivation? Anyone? Anywhere?

There's nothing like hacking your lungs out on a beautiful, breezy, sunny day off work. I mean seriously. You should try it sometime. Because wow.

Actually, today's been anything but exciting. I tried to get downtown first thing today for my second appointment with the new therapist but it didn't work out so well... Crystal and I forgot to set the alarm and as such were out the door about ten minutes later than we should have been. By the time we reached the LightRail station (in a breathtaking eight minutes instead of fifteen...yay sports car!) the lots were all full. At this point in time I was feverish and sneezing and completely out of it. I vaguely remember giving Crystal a tearful "I GIVE UP THERE IS NO POINT LET ME DIIIIE!" speech, but it's hard to say what really happened, given the fevered memory.

Although it was only around 9:30, it's at least a forty-five minute trip downtown from the station and that is assuming you can find a place to park. My appointment was for 10, meaning the soonest I could arrive would have been about 10:20, and since it's a training facility they're really strict on the fifty minute session rule - i.e. I'd be lucky to get thirty. I tootled around the parking lot for a while, determining to call the therapist and let her know I'd be missing today's session. Considering I am still pretty sick I figured it wouldn't be that far a stretch to cough a little more than necessary and play up the hoarse, croaking quality my voice has adopted.

Next stop was the bank. I found out Friday that some lame-ass company has been trying to make fraudulent charges to our checking account, so we needed to close it out and transfer the funds to a different one. This, my friends, is a major pain. (To be fair, I am really glad the bank caught it early and we didn't have a whole bunch of disputed charges to deal with.) Sooo we had to do that, closing out our barely three months old account in favor of an even newer one. (And then I had to come home and figure out on just how many different sites I had to change my account info.)

I've been sick with this cold thing since Sunday, I guess it was, and it's zapping what few mental faculties I had left me. I was trying to reflect about this in my journal yesterday, but the thing I hate most about major depressive episodes is that I get really, really, really damn boring. I can't think. I have no energy. I can't write worth a load of monkey dung. I honestly lose whatever it is that makes me feel like a mildly interesting, or at least not totally dull, human being. Damn cyclothymia or disthymia or bipolar whateveryouare! Give me back a little hypomanic spark, why don't ya? I need to be productive again!

What's better? Monochromatic depressive episode or frenetic, sporadic mania?

...God, this is depressing. My train of thought has already fizzled out in spite of all the grand plans I had for an entry. I apologize to all my readers, or what few of you remain in spite this insipid progression of words. Blah blah blah blah!

Latest and Greatest

I am delighted to unveil the following two things.

1. My new haircut!

And beyond that, the thing I am most super excited about and have been working on for weeks and months and aaaages. At long last, Tshirt Design Number Two is revealed!

Front:

Back:

This design will be available on Etsy tonight, once I'm more awake from my nap. ^.^ Also, shirts are still customisable (to a point)... Should you want to, say, have the back of this design and the front of the other (the 20% Will die from their eating disorder) please just be sure to specify as such in your order. (And because I don't have enough parentheses in this paragraph, the stencil for 'Bulimia is a disorder, not a lifestyle' is on its way and almost finished.)

In other news, I saw my new therapist today for the first appointment after the intake exam. She's arright, I guess... Interning and I'm not totally sure she knows what she's doing, to be honest, but for ten dollars a session (THANK GOD SLIDING SCALE) I think it may be worth it to give her some time.

One other thing I don't like so much is that because she is working under the UCDenver counselling center, she'll be moving on to some other location/assignment after the end of the summer. This means yet another therapeautic alliance which will just have time to be created before it ends. Which, for some of the things I'm trying to address, is really not the most helpful, nurturing environment. I suppose it may not be the best thing that my first response was, eh, I'm used to it. :-P Well... We'll see how it goes.

Um, um, um. Hm...

C'est tout!

Recovered? Functioning? Surviving?

You know, I wish that my depression was caused by my eating disorder and that developing a healthy relationship with food would heal the depression, too. In many cases, depression is a sort of side effect or symptom of an eating disorder... In my case, the more I look at it, the more I feel like it's either the other way around or they're just unrelated for the most part. Perhaps two illnesses which, while caused by different things, happen to have certain overlapping symptoms. (Probably the most likely scenario.)

Earlier today I was looking over some of my old journals, particularly the one I started while on a week-long stint in the hospital following a series of suicidal acts. For one thing, it was a little depressing to be reminded how much better my writing is during periods of hypomania than straight up depression but that's neither here nor there... It's always heartbreaking to me to read my old journals and see how completely dominated they are by calorie counts, weigh-ins, and self-abuse of all kinds. All I talked about was loneliness, jealousy, constant attacks against everything which makes me human and female and a teenager.

....Train of thought is completely derailing, goddamnit. Frasier's on, my stomach is full, my feet and legs are sore from standing all day, my eyelids are droopy, and I've got t'shirts and debt on the brain. I'm terrified I've ruined Crystal's and my life and we'll end up living in a shack in West Virginia we've built ourselves out of cardboard and cinderblocks surviving off doritos and coke and hamburger helper. I can't keep thinking about all this f-ing debt or I'm going to bring on a panic attack. Like, now. God...

My mental health is so much better, in some ways. I eat, more or less regularly, I don't actively focus on restricting, I function, I hold a job (for which I haven't even called out on account of mental breakdown since I started in January!), I pay the bills on time, I make t'shirts and e-mail and blog and help support others, I even have sort of made a couple friends at work. And yet... "function" may be the key word for my current status.

I've been going through days with a lot of depersonalization lately. Just kinda going it minute by minute and trying to make sure I get done what I need to do. Even when I've had the opportunity to do fun things, when I've been getting honors and recognition, when I've been spending time on dates with my girlfriend, I haven't been all there. I've felt incredibly fatigued all the time and that not-quite-sick-but-still-kinda-crappy meh-ness almost non stop. I've wondered if it's a flare up of the mono I had a couple years ago but now am starting to think maybe it's just depression. (Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Cymbalta...)

Let's hope that the CU Denver counselling center decides to call me back at some point in the near future. And that I can last without meds until I get Cheesecake Factory health insurance in July. Meeeeehhhh.

A more thought-out continuation

Well, I don't know how to directly link MP3s into this thing, nor can I find an actual music video for this song, but I want to put it in so...here is. It's just the song with a boring backdrop that never changes, but the point is that the song is there and in good quality (unlike most of the videos, which are cell phone video recordings of live performances).



The song is called 'Swing Life Away' and always manages to make me feel a little better. Granted, I'm still feeling quite shitty about the money situation, but despite how romanticized the song is it's still a reminder that Crystal and I aren't the only people in a really bad way who nevertheless manage to get by.

In fact, it got me thinking about pretty much all my close friends who've ever been eating disordered or major depressive or just plain crazy... One of the biggest consequences that never gets mentioned publicly is DEBT. All of us seem to be in major sort of debt. More than half have been forced to drop out of college. We've all got incredible hospital bills looming over us, nutritionists, therapists, psychiatrists, medications, ER bills and surgeries.

Continuing briefly on that last comment: yes, surgeries. I have no doubt that, in some way, my poor physical health contributed to me needing my shoulder surgery when I did. I've had joint problems for some time which I have no doubt are resultant from malnutrition taking a toll. Many other girls have nasogastric tubes to pay for, surgery to correct gastroparesis or perforated esophaguses. Surgery and eating disorders have a pretty damn high correlation from what I've seen. I mean, lets be honest.

Eating disorders don't just f-k with your head: they destroy your health. They suppress your immune system leading to a higher instance of other illnesses (i.e. chronic mononucleosis, in my case), brittle bones and osteoporosis, weakened muscular system, damaged tendons and ligaments, liver and kidney problems, tooth decay, on and on. These are all the quiet consequences no one notices until the systems start to break down, and then don't realize that they are, in fact, due to the eating disorder.

Sooo... I'm in a lot of debt. But I'm also not the only one. Maybe I just complain more, and more publicly? Who knows... Today I'm calling AES and the independent lender and working out payment plans, as well as sending off the first small check to start repaying my hospital bill.

I keep trying to remind myself that yes, I've got a lot of people to repay, but I'm only twenty years old. (Did you know that?) I may feel like I'm fifty, but in reality my parents aren't even quite that old. I've got a long time left, hopefully, and if by some freak accident I did kick the bucket then I wouldnt' have to worry about those debts anymore, anyway. Even if it took me ten years to repay these I'd be free by the time I'm thirty.

That's really not so bad in the grand scheme of things...

Right?

...insert witty title here...

I suppose I'm so obsessed with watching Frida because it in many ways feels like I'm watching my own life played out. Except that she's a lot older, the pain is more physical than mental, her anger is more outwardly directed than inward, and she had about five million times the talent I have. If I could have that much potential for the creation of beauty... I mean, damn. I'm more or less all right with words but my fingers lack any skill with a brush or pen. Sigh.

Force-feeding myself is getting a little easier. I can't say the depression is easing or the appetite increasing but I'm adapting to it a bit more readily, I suppose, and making sure to feed myself is gradually becoming a habit. It's so ridiculous, after all these years fighting my hunger, denying it's there, refusing to acknowledge it, I can barely recognize it at all. I can finally see the face of Hunger but can't recognize it.

Something I've noticed here is that Colorado seems to have an enormously disproportionate number of underweight women. Perhaps it's that Maryland is one of the 'fattest states' in the nation (which is true) and I'm accustomed to being The Skinny Freak, but it is truly heartbreaking to see so many women around me starving. What once would be a serious trigger is now something of a reverse; I get so upset witnessing their suffering that I want to prove I can overcome it. Even from a purely visual standpoint, the constant bombardment with fashionable emaciation repulses me as I can see how unappealing it is. The lanugo, the bones and bruises, the skin sagging and prematurely aged. I want to be sexy. I want my hands to stop shaking, freezing all the time, looking like they belong to someone twice my age.

I can't count how many times a day I'll witness girls bone-checking while staring at the dessert case, chewing gum like their lives depend on it, clearly terrified of so many calories surrounding them. How many times I'm asked for the nutrition facts in a certain dessert. (I know most of them but, thank god, we are honestly not supposed to tell.) More than once, women with bloodshot eyes and sores around their mouths have ordered cheesecake to go and I've wanted more than anything to refuse it to them. Or at the least, beg them not to do with it what I'm sure will be done. I'm usually trying to hide that I'm crying as I toss forks and napkins into the bags.

If I could afford enough medication to numb myself out, I'd go for it. Beyond depression these days, it's like I just can't handle the heartbreak of the world. Numbing me out might be more like ballancing me at this point. Everything sets me off. I have to stop myself, constantly, from saying something to all these girls. (As if I have any idea what to say, anyway. Please eat? I know you're hurting but it's not worth it? Are there ANY right words for a situation like that?)

At the same time, it's so impossible to fight against the non-hunger. Why force myself to eat when I'm not hungry? Shouldn't I be grateful? Shouldn't I feel lucky? It's to the point that I'll go all day and realize sometime around bedtime that I had nothing, or a banana, or a piece of bread. The old bruises are showing up along my spine and back hipbones. I'd gotten used to having warm hands and feet but so much for that. My body is again covered in lanugo, or at least, more covered than it typically is... Gah.

I wish I could afford to go inpatient. I need a break, some hard-core internal work to sort things through once and for all.

Zip. Nada. Zilch.

I have felt completely worthless the last few days, when it comes to writing, advocacy, awareness, and any other productive sort of thing I ought to be doing. It's hard to explain what's wrong, what's bothering me, why I can't seem to manage to do...anything... F-k depression, yo.

I need to get back into therapy and have been thinking about it quite constantly. Problem is, I do not want to be in therapy. Screw therapy. I hate therapy. It's one of those things that makes you feel worse before you get better and it seems that no matter how much time I spend working through issues it isn't enough. Bi-weekly, once a week, twice a week, twice a week with two different therapists, psychiatrists, medications, group, inpatient, intensive outpatient, I'm so sick of all of it.

Which thing is finally going to help me, let alone cure me? I'm in a new place now, do I have to start all over trying to find a new treatment team, setting up all those support systems and networks of trust all over again? (And please, for the love of god, DO NOT start in on me with any crap about finding a church. I did that. Long time. It caused most of this, don't tell me that now will be different, now they'll make it all better.)

The most twisted thing is that I am beter in many ways than I have been in years. Even if I still regularly self-injure, sometimes can't get out of bed, am dropping weight again like...something you drop quickly... Well, point is, despite it all I'm still holding a steady job. I'm still in a relationship and we're still in love. I'm at least surviving. I haven't tried to kill myself (or done anything seriously dangerous) in over a year.

It's a record! Yay!

Gah.

And as Crystal points out, I've basically already written this entry. Probably five dozen times.

Depression is so damn boring.

Musings, sundry and disconnected

SIIIIIIIiiiiiigggghhhhh. If I never have to shop for a car again I think I'll be happy. (Except, that's totally a lie. Whichever car we end up finding will no doubt be so gnarly that I'll want a new(er) one as soon as can possibly be afforded.) I hate car shopping. Really, really hate it.

This rapid-cycling depression and hypomania is making life completely impossible and incomprehensibly exhausting. I'm either too hyper and unab le to focus to get anything done or too lethargic and unable to lift my head off the pillow to do anything. The past week or more I've been doing well to make it to work and last my shift without a breakdown, let alone contemplate updates.

Speaking of, I was thinking about this yesterday: DC Cheesecake Factory was remarkably patient with me. I never got fired, never even got a write up, yet I was probably right up there for the Most Unstable Employee award. I suppose consistent competence was my greatest selling point or something, whothehell knows.

Sunday morning I nearly didn't make my bus because dragging myself out of bed and into my work clothes was such a completely overwhelming task. Eventually I'd pulled on my uniform and just sat on the edge of the bed crying, staring at my untied shoes, thinking simultaneously how impossibly difficult and pointless it would be to tie them. But, somehow, I still managed. (And literally all day long almost every friend I have there found some way to tell me I "look[ed] like sh*t", which made me feel a whole lot better.) I still got to work on time and made it through the shift intact without screwing anything up severely.

This anecdote actually brings up two points: first, I'm actually quite a bit more stable than I used to be, despite the fact that it feels quite the contrary. Secondarily, it's evidence to the whole DC-was-more-tolerant point... There were several times at that restaurant where I had to call out because of severe depression/anxiety/whatever, faking the physical only to a small extent since I was so depressed I truly felt sick. Beyond that, however, they had to deal with me disappearing mid-shift now and then, emerging from the coat closet or walk-in freezer after a while, all tear-stained, for no discernible reason. A couple times I came in for my shift begging everyone in sight to pick up for me so that I could go home because either I couldn't stop crying or just couldn't stand the thought of six, seven, eight hours with a plastered fake smile, ingratiating myself to people for their money.

And, of course, there were the couple of shifts that I simply could not go onto the floor because I could not stop sobbing. Including one memorable night that they were already short people and refused to send me home, instead telling me to go to the bathroom and try to pull myself together. I called Crystal, panicking and completely distraught for (as is my bent) no discernible reason, who dropped what she was doing and came running to work as quickly as she could. I'm sure I was completely pissing the managers off since I was...wow, how to describe it? totally unhinged? and they couldn't understand why. All they wanted was a reason but no one had died, I hadn't broken up with my girlfriend, wasn't getting kicked out of school, nothing. I think the explanation I gave was a nothing-everything-I DON'T KNOOOW!!! sort of thing, which didn't seem to cut it.

In the end they really had no choice but to send me home. (I think they gave me like two hours to try to pull it together, though, but it was no use.)

And yet, they didn't fire me. If anything, they undeniably handled me with kid gloves for a few weeks after that; they immediately cut back my hours, no further questions asked, and did all they could to help me through it.

I really don't think this location would be so understanding.

Although, an interesting thought connects to all this: had they fired me for an emotional breakdown, could I have sued? :-P I wonder where psychiatric illness falls on the legal end of things...

...arright, I'm all written out, I think. Don't you just love how my entries sort of fizzle instead of conclude these days? Le sigh.

...Okay, actually, I have NO CLUE how to end this. So I'm just going to let it drop... Crystal suggests saying

THE END

On Suicides and Faking It

Although this has been several days in the brewing it’s hard to determine how to begin an entry with this particular subject… The reason it’s been so on my mind is that, aside from the fact that depression makes you think of it, one of the girls whose blogs I follow seems to be preparing her own internet death.

I know that to accuse someone of getting ready to fake their death is an enormous, outrageous, melodramatically serious thing. However, I do know what I’m talking about: I’ve dealt with it multiple times in the past. I’ve thought that I’d lost close friends four times in the past only to find out later that they faked it. I don’t have a clue how many other cases I’ve heard of in which the heartbreaking loss of someone loved and admired turned out only days later to have been completely fabricated.

A suicide attempt is not something to shrug off lightly as a grab for attention. In fact, that misconception is among the top three falsely held beliefs about mental illness that drive me absolutely batshit, right up there with eating disorders are vanity and depression is ungratefulness, etc. Similarly, I think that to say faking one’s suicide is purely for attention is also a grave misstatement. At the same time, though, in all the cases I’ve observed I do feel that attention is a large part of it.

Even for suicide attempts the attention thing usually has at least some role, although I don’t feel it’s in the intentional, manipulative way people typically believe. Any attempt, serious or not, is desperation to get relief and find some sort of comfort. In many cases the comfort sought may well be the element one gets when hospitalized – being completely taken care of, getting a break from school and bills and all the crap contributing most heavily to the depression that led to it in the first place.

For many people caught in a suicidal depression the thought of committing oneself is a lot scarier than the idea of dying. As such, if a mild attempt can serve the same purpose without the humiliation of checking into a mental ward, it seems quite a bit more desirable. Additionally, it lends a twisted feeling of legitimacy since you have concrete evidence proving the depression and need for care.

…This is unlikely to make any sense to anyone who hasn’t felt what I’m trying to explain. That’s the totally sucky thing about mental illness: it isn’t logical and it’s impossible to explain logically to someone who isn’t already crazy.

In any case, what I’m trying to explain is that depression makes you feel completely horrible, hopeless, and helpless. If it hasn’t quite gotten to the point that one seriously, one-hundred-percent, for sure wants to die, a half-hearted attempt shows the world how bad it really is inside and hands over that helplessness to someone else to deal with so that you can have a few minutes to breathe and heal. That, in my opinion, is the attention-grabbing aspect of suicide attempts. It seems selfish to all looking on from the outside but to the depressive it’s the only last-ditch effort that makes any sense. Again, don’t forget that depression is anything but logical.

Returning to the concept of faked deaths.

This… I don’t fully understand. I have theories but I’ve never faked my own suicide, only gone with the real attempts... (Which is more f-ed up? God knows.) In all the years I’ve spent online making friends, having feuds, falling in love, suffering explosive fights, I’ve known dozens of people and grown close to many of them. Because most of the circles I’ve frequented in the past have been eating disorder and mental illness related, close friends have gone in and out of hospitals, inpatient facilities, outpatient treatment centers, disappeared without warning, called me on the phone, sent letters, etc, etc.

Two of those friends killed themselves. One died when she was fourteen and I was sixteen. She just disappeared from the internet and I didn’t even know for sure that she had died until recently, when her mom e-mailed me after reading the article about my t’shirt project and asked if I’d ever known her daughter Jade. The other was not a close friend, but a close friend of a close friend… Her parents found her in her car in a coma a few days after she’d gone missing to us in the online world. She died later of liver failure.

::sighs:: I’m sorry for all the cheer here.

The reason I’m bringing those memories up is that in order to talk about faked suicide with the gravity it warrants, you’ve got to understand the reason it causes so much terror and pain. Because it isn’t always fake. It tears us apart because maybe we’ve lost people in the past and maybe we’re afraid of losing you, too.

The thing that angers me so much about faked suicide is that, while I’m almost sure it isn’t malicious and I am sure there’s just as much hurt going on as in a real attempt, the very nature of it is such that the faker gets to sit back and watch everything going on while they’re supposedly in the ICU, judging all of our reactions, trying to see who’s going to miss them most and who “really cares”. It’s just completely… I don’t even know what word I’m trying to find. Low. Dirty. Under-handed. To lead all your closest friends on, convince them you’re dying or dead, just because you want to see who your ‘true’ friends are…? It seems totally sickening to me.

The hardest part about it is that when you’re in the position of watching the drama unfold it’s almost impossible to call the person out. You’re emotionally shredded, scared half to death yourself, and the thought of falsely accusing your friend of doing this to you is beyond reason.

Right now, the blogger I initially mentioned has supposedly just come out of a coma, her kidneys failing from years of anorexia, now in an intensive inpatient unit. Her neighbor is supposedly the one updating her journal to keep all her friends informed of the situation is her neighbor who, without explanation or apparent reason, suddenly has the keys to her house and all her credit cards and everything. The whole situation is completely impossible to make sense of…

I don’t want to go into all the details there. If she really is as sick and close to death as the writer claims, I don’t want to talk badly of my friend. If she isn’t, it’d be almost as bad to write a vitriolic expose and thereby risk pushing all the buttons needed to make the theoretical situation a real one.

That’s why fake suicide sucks so horribly. There’s no easy way to handle it one way or the other. It’s a full and complete double bind, catch 22, rock-and-a-hard-place suckfest.

Melissa, I hope you’re okay.

Still alive and still taking her meds

It's been pointed out that I haven't spent much time talking about eating disorders here lately... I know that I have, and that in doing so I've really kinda been skirting my original purpose for this blog. Really... No good reasons or excuses.

I guess that with how things have been going lately I've been rather distracted from any of my life purposes beyond those basic survival instinct dealies. Additionally, internet access has gotten sketchy again (sigh...screw you, Amber) so I'm not as up-to-date on information like I used to be, or at least used to try to be. I don't want Novare to fall by the wayside but at the same time, right now it looks like trying to keep on keeping on has to be my main focus.

...You know, I really don't have much of a life to write about at present.

When I'm not working I hang around the house all day like a lonesome, whiny puppy dog impatiently awaiting the people's return. I watch CNN and LOGO and sometimes a movie or two. Read Borges and crochet, write in my journal and draw. Stare at walls a lot. Dismally ponder the lonely depths of despair. Things like that. ^.^ I need to be rich and have good insurance so that I can be on the appropriate medications at the appropriate dosages at the appropriate times. Instead of, you know, being all depressed now, needing them, and weaning myself off them because I can't afford them.

By the way? I'd just like to say one thing about medication and depression, or medication and mental illness in general. I don't care how many times you've heard this from how many sob cases or doctors you think are quacks, but mental illness is legitimate illness. True, maybe it isn't caused by an identifiable pathogen. Neither is diabetes, Lupus, cancer, arthritis, Lou Gehrig's disease, asthma, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and on and on and on. That doesn't make those diseases any less legitimate in your mind, does it?

The body falls apart in a myriad of different ways. Sometimes bodies are born with deformities and genetic defects which cause significant impairments to a person's quality of life. Men and women suffer from infertility, yet we see it appropriate to treat that. We see treatment as being appropriate for headaches, for allergies, unwanted zits, astigmatism, fatigue, insomnia. Almost all things physical which can be naturally impaired are deemed in need of treatment. (I won't go into details, but, Viagra?) So why is it that people continue to hold on to outdated beliefs about the treatment of mental illness??

...Taking a moment to breathe, here...

I'm not saying stop your asthma treatment or throw out your eyeglasses, because I see those treatments as being appropriate and necessary! In fact, I find treating your depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc, etc, as being just as vital as treating any other physical ailment. If anything, treating them may be more vital than many physical ailments. It's a lot easier to live through those zits or live through that obnoxious hay fever than to survive suicidal depression or manic psychosis.

Yes, the first course of action in treating many mental illnesses should be talk therapy (or religious therapy, whatever you want). Just like the first response for a mild headache should be sucking it up. However, if things get out of hand and the person can barely make it out of bed anymore because the world feels too heavy and their thoughts too dismal, maybe medication should be legitimately prescribed.

And maybe, the person taking that medication needs it. Maybe they're not just taking some drug each day like popping happy pills.

Hell, if it was that simple, I'd say screw Welbutrin and give me some weed. Chances are it'd be cheaper and have less long-term damage on my liver.

(Says Crystal in awesomely witty postscript: "So Bush, you have a choice: legalize pot or provide universal health care.")

Meh. The depression ogre says, "Why post?"

There is really very little of interest going on here lately. I feel like a puppy, left home alone all day while the owners go to work and school. :-P Crystal's gone most of the day, most days, Jody and Amber are gone, the cars are gone... Just me, the pets, and the TV.

The good news is that I've set up and interview at the Park Meadows Cheesecake Factory on Sunday!!! YAY!!! Heh, when I called the GM was very confused as to why I want to cashier if I'm trained as a server (less money, longer hours, pain-in-the-ass duties). However, all of course becomes clear when I'm like, "Well... I can't really use my right arm for anything involving carrying things over, say, two pounds. Yay shoulder surgery." I want to start freaking MONDAY. I need something to DO.

If this entry seems strained, it's because I'm working hard to force myself to update. Despite being bored, I also have no energy. I sleep ten to twelve hours a night and am still exhausted and listless all day. I don't feel like doing anything at all.

The one silver lining is that I've managed some art projects, including a few ink drawings that I'm actually kinda proud of. Rather surrealist and Philip Guston esque. I half-joked with Crystal last night that I should list some of my work on Ebay and see if anyone would want it. :-P This led to the question of how do artists actually start selling their stuff in the first place? I still lack an answer. (I also lack a scanner, or I'd be more inclined to upload the images.)

One final note would be that I have changed my e-mail address. Please take note! fadedamaranth@yahoo.com = bye-bye. novareproject@gmail.com = CONTACT. Believe it or not, the main reason I've switched is the ads. Since Christmas, yahoo mail has been rife with weight loss ads and with the state I've been in the last thing I need is to be told every five minutes that I need to lose weight.

The part of me that says I absolutely DO need it is why this e-mail switch has taken close to three weeks. I want to be told I'm a fatass. I want incentive to hate myself more. If there's one thing I've taken away from therapy, it's that I am the biggest cause of my own depression. Or, at the least, I'm the reason I continue to be depressed. I set myself up for it and lock myself in to the cycle. Changing my e-mail is a little step to try and loosen the hold.

So... That's about it. Again, please try to forgive my terseness. It's nothing against you, I swear.

Letters to Self

Dear Large Intestine,

Please poop. Seriously. We're worried about you! And besides - you're making things really miserable for the rest of us by being so damn stubborn. Whatever you may think in your twisted, cavernous mind, not pooping in no way makes you superior to the rest of the normal human race. Yes, humans are really gross. They eat, they poop, they piss, they fart, but it's still just something they gotta do. And in case you're forgetting? You're part of this body, too, and you have responsibilities.

So get on it. Go.

Sincerely,
Your neighbors in the digestive tract

***************

Dear Serotonin, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, and whomever else it may concern,

Where the hell did you go??? What is your problem?? We know that it's cold in Colorado but that is no excuse to go on some tropical island vacation without warning. There are lots of systems back here who really depend on you to function. We keep providing you with as much help as possible to keep up your morale; hell, you're probably the most pampered little beasts in this whole body. What more do you need? Silk myelin sheaths? Extra padded, fur-lined receptors? Suede dendrite gloves to keep you warm?

I mean, come on, this is ridiculous. Would you please just do your job so the rest of us can do ours?

Sincerely,

Brain, Tear Ducts, Energy, Body

***************

Dear Brain and Stomach,

There seems to be some sort of miscommunication going on between you two. We've checked the axons and the connection seems clear, no kinks or cuts in the line. Somehow, though, either someone's not listening or the message isn't getting through. We know Stomach is hungry because the rest of us aren't getting our fuel and instead have to listen to him complaining day in, day out. Hate to break it to you, Brain, but we can't force-feed him. It just makes him cranky and upset, and Mouth doesn't want anything either since you're apparently not sending him info either. Stomach's hungry but at the same time you're not sending him the message to tell him to eat or even make sure he knows he's hungry. You know he tends to be kinda stupid and someone's gotta get the message through since he doesn't understand himself.

We really don't have much fat left, here, man. Please send fuel soon.

Sincerely,

Muscles

***************

Eh. That's as clever as I can manage right now.