I listen to Mika at work thanks to be friend recommending their music to me. It's just the best ever. So catchy, so positive, and it just makes you want to get up and dance. Of course I've been on the manic edge for a while now so this song absolutely will not leave my consciousness. But I'm OK with it as it's such a cheery song. Like cotton candy and sparkles. check them out.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
I know what I am, I'm not a liar, I'm a whore
So I'm writing a book. Or perhaps, I'm arranging the pages of all of the stuff I have already written. The latter though sounds much less impressive.
A friend of mine has reinvented himself once again. He can do that sort of thing as he's brilliant and brilliantly creative. He's the Madonna of creative directors (thank god he left out the pointed bras). He strikes new poses so frequently it's hard to find him in a crowd. This particular incarnation of his involves helping creative types channel their creativity into a finished work of some sort. He promises to help you get from idea to product in 100 days. (Oh, and did I mention he's good at marketing?)
And he's been bugging me to take this blog and turn it into a book forever. He seems to think it's a "weekend project" to just organize existing material. I tend to disagree. I find the prospect of having to mine my 1600 posts daunting, at best. I've been wanting to do it, really, but it's scary. It's too much me. It's so much work that I just can't make myself start. But my friend is giving me a solid push in the right direction. It falls into his current wheelhouse, and it's quite possible he has slightly more invested in it than the average project that's brought to him.
So I'm hoping that in 100 days I will actually have a real book to stand behind. Something that is not just about me and who I am, but about what this disease is and some paths to surviving it. My friend talks about finding an arc to the book, and I told him an arc was impossible as the ending is too entirely fucked up. But he seems to think that not dying is the arc. Survival is the happy ending. I so much wish I could do better than that. It feels to me a lot more like a jagged line, than an arc. But maybe that will be a new genre. The jagged plot line. Going to be huge.
I must say though, it's really difficult to take this step to admitting that I think I'm a good writer. Sh. That's a secret. I don't tell people that. Makes me sound egotistical. Raises expectations. I'm a dumb girl. Honest. It's a safer place for me to be. It's a little corner where no one looks. It's easier to disappoint people when you're standing out in the light.
And I also know that choosing to share thoughts with a broad audience will lead to disagreement and dissonance. All of a sudden now when I say that antipsychotics are evil (which they totally are, by the way) people get all offended. Pro-spoon-lobbiests start a campaign to force me to stop torturing one lone spoon.
And the family. HoleyJesusFuck. Not only would they hate hearing about themselves (duh) but they would hate hearing about me. It's a whole level of honesty that has never been present in our relationships. Now, all of a sudden, they would know all about me. And that, really, was never part of the plan. These people don't even keep up with my latest hair colour let alone my latest scar placement.
But.
Ultimately you stand up to who you are in front of everyone, and accept the consiquences. Don't get me wrong, most people would never do that, but I think it's the honorable thing to do. I am, just, who, I, am. Flawed. Messy. Complicated. Confused. But here. Just here. I fuck up, and that's OK. I do some decent things and that's OK too. Easy to make peace with that in the dark, but in the light it's much, much scarier. But the alternative is simply not as elegant, beautiful, open, or useful. The feathered complexities of real life simply have more power.
So, obviously, if you're reading this post I'll be needing you to promise to buy at least 10 copies of the book each. Excellent summer gifts.
A friend of mine has reinvented himself once again. He can do that sort of thing as he's brilliant and brilliantly creative. He's the Madonna of creative directors (thank god he left out the pointed bras). He strikes new poses so frequently it's hard to find him in a crowd. This particular incarnation of his involves helping creative types channel their creativity into a finished work of some sort. He promises to help you get from idea to product in 100 days. (Oh, and did I mention he's good at marketing?)
And he's been bugging me to take this blog and turn it into a book forever. He seems to think it's a "weekend project" to just organize existing material. I tend to disagree. I find the prospect of having to mine my 1600 posts daunting, at best. I've been wanting to do it, really, but it's scary. It's too much me. It's so much work that I just can't make myself start. But my friend is giving me a solid push in the right direction. It falls into his current wheelhouse, and it's quite possible he has slightly more invested in it than the average project that's brought to him.
So I'm hoping that in 100 days I will actually have a real book to stand behind. Something that is not just about me and who I am, but about what this disease is and some paths to surviving it. My friend talks about finding an arc to the book, and I told him an arc was impossible as the ending is too entirely fucked up. But he seems to think that not dying is the arc. Survival is the happy ending. I so much wish I could do better than that. It feels to me a lot more like a jagged line, than an arc. But maybe that will be a new genre. The jagged plot line. Going to be huge.
I must say though, it's really difficult to take this step to admitting that I think I'm a good writer. Sh. That's a secret. I don't tell people that. Makes me sound egotistical. Raises expectations. I'm a dumb girl. Honest. It's a safer place for me to be. It's a little corner where no one looks. It's easier to disappoint people when you're standing out in the light.
And I also know that choosing to share thoughts with a broad audience will lead to disagreement and dissonance. All of a sudden now when I say that antipsychotics are evil (which they totally are, by the way) people get all offended. Pro-spoon-lobbiests start a campaign to force me to stop torturing one lone spoon.
And the family. HoleyJesusFuck. Not only would they hate hearing about themselves (duh) but they would hate hearing about me. It's a whole level of honesty that has never been present in our relationships. Now, all of a sudden, they would know all about me. And that, really, was never part of the plan. These people don't even keep up with my latest hair colour let alone my latest scar placement.
But.
Ultimately you stand up to who you are in front of everyone, and accept the consiquences. Don't get me wrong, most people would never do that, but I think it's the honorable thing to do. I am, just, who, I, am. Flawed. Messy. Complicated. Confused. But here. Just here. I fuck up, and that's OK. I do some decent things and that's OK too. Easy to make peace with that in the dark, but in the light it's much, much scarier. But the alternative is simply not as elegant, beautiful, open, or useful. The feathered complexities of real life simply have more power.
So, obviously, if you're reading this post I'll be needing you to promise to buy at least 10 copies of the book each. Excellent summer gifts.
I'm now, officially a Twit
I've decided to join Twitter. I've sort of flat out rejected all social networking sites but this is kind of a wordy thing more than it is a social thing.
So, if you'd like to hear oh-so-many of my crazy thoughts, check me out.
So, if you'd like to hear oh-so-many of my crazy thoughts, check me out.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Playing the Spoons
(No, I don't recommend you do anything written here. I'm crazy. Don't follow my lead.)
I have a spoon that sits in the back of my cutlery drawer. It doesn't match the rest of my cutlery. I have had it forever. I don't never know where it came from. It's just a plain, mystery table spoon.
Now, you might wonder why I haven't thrown this spoon out. It doesn't match, and I don't need it, so really it belongs in the trash. Except that I need it. Really. I can't take the chance of ruining a good spoon, now can I?
And while I could use a lot of things, a spoon is what I use to sear my flesh. I heat up the stove burner then set the spoon on the burner, and then apply the spoon to my flesh. Either end works, I've used both. A large round burn on my left thigh placed where I knew my skydiving harness wouldn't rub. Stripes along the forearm. And tonight, burns along the right wrist.
If you have the element on high, you only have to leave the spoon there for a couple of minutes. And then touching it to your flesh for a tiny fraction of a second will result in knee-buckling pain. In fact, the pain will likely be so bad that you will barely burn your flesh at all. Momentary pain, not lasting pain. Might be the goal, but with me, probably not. If I can't feel the pain for a few days then what's the point, really? No, you'll probably have to wait for the spoon to reach just the right temperature so that it's hot enough to burn flesh but not so searing that you can't force it against your flesh. It's a balancing act really. First and second degree burns are better than third. No, not because third is more severe but because with third you actually burn the nerves that transport the pain signals to your brain. No pain, no point.
I will say that the crush of adrenaline that comes with so much pain that I can't help but scream and fall to the floor is something quite extraordinary to experience. Impossible to ignore. Not pleasant, naturally. But extraordinarily distracting. And sometimes I would pay a lot of distraction. I'd even pay with bits of flesh. It's not like I was really using them anyway.
I have a spoon that sits in the back of my cutlery drawer. It doesn't match the rest of my cutlery. I have had it forever. I don't never know where it came from. It's just a plain, mystery table spoon.
Now, you might wonder why I haven't thrown this spoon out. It doesn't match, and I don't need it, so really it belongs in the trash. Except that I need it. Really. I can't take the chance of ruining a good spoon, now can I?
And while I could use a lot of things, a spoon is what I use to sear my flesh. I heat up the stove burner then set the spoon on the burner, and then apply the spoon to my flesh. Either end works, I've used both. A large round burn on my left thigh placed where I knew my skydiving harness wouldn't rub. Stripes along the forearm. And tonight, burns along the right wrist.
If you have the element on high, you only have to leave the spoon there for a couple of minutes. And then touching it to your flesh for a tiny fraction of a second will result in knee-buckling pain. In fact, the pain will likely be so bad that you will barely burn your flesh at all. Momentary pain, not lasting pain. Might be the goal, but with me, probably not. If I can't feel the pain for a few days then what's the point, really? No, you'll probably have to wait for the spoon to reach just the right temperature so that it's hot enough to burn flesh but not so searing that you can't force it against your flesh. It's a balancing act really. First and second degree burns are better than third. No, not because third is more severe but because with third you actually burn the nerves that transport the pain signals to your brain. No pain, no point.
I will say that the crush of adrenaline that comes with so much pain that I can't help but scream and fall to the floor is something quite extraordinary to experience. Impossible to ignore. Not pleasant, naturally. But extraordinarily distracting. And sometimes I would pay a lot of distraction. I'd even pay with bits of flesh. It's not like I was really using them anyway.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Magic Never Reveals Its Secrets
Something great happened to me yesterday. Great things don't happen all that often, but this thing, was definitely great.
I had lunch with a friend of mine. A very good friend. He and I were the bestest of friends for a while, but then he went off and fell in love, got married, and slid away from the girl his wife was jealous of. She didn't have a thing to worry about but jealousy seems to know no logic. (By the way, jealousy is just a lack of trust in your partner. Great marriage trait. Speaks so highly of the relationship.)
He and I had the odd communication here and there. He and his wife would join my friends and I for our big brunches sometimes, and he and I would catch up online here and there. Enough to know he was doing well. And happy. Which is a lovely peek to have into someone's life. He understand more than most that I'm not so happy. But he tends to be so analytical and intellectual that it can come across as a lack of caring; which isn't accurate. He cares. He has proven that to me in amazing ways throughout our friendship.
But as I've said, he isn't big on the emotion. It's OK. He and I have the greatest conversations due to his brilliant quick wit and sharp mind. There just never seems to be an awkward pause, even after not seeing him for months.
So after our lunch, he needed to run to a meeting and he said to me, "you should come back more often, I miss you."
I miss you. I swear those are three of the most powerful words in the English language. I honestly wouldn't have through that he did miss me. Even though I love him dearly, I just always feel like when I leave the room, no one gives me a second thought. And for him to say that is like breaking through a brick wall. He was admitting to me that he has feelings for me. The cockles of my heart have rarely been so warmed.
I suppose it's entirely selfish, but I love it when people tell me they miss me. It makes me feel like I matter on the planet. Like I haven't just been assimilated by the Borg to be erased from the memory of all that came before. I left almost three years ago now, and yet people miss me. It's magical. It gives me a sense of worth, that just doesn't seem to be intrinsic to my being.
And right behind that is naturally the fear that it will go away. That everyone will wake up one day and not care if I ever show my face again. No one will remember me. No one will miss me. And I really will have simply evaporated. Into absolute nothingness.
Because the fact of the matter is, even though I moved away years ago, I can't seem to make a life in my new home. I have beautiful things, and loving felines, but other than that, I am absolutely alone. I just can't make connections with the people there. My connection creator is broken. I don't exactly know how it worked before, or why it doesn't work now, I only know that it doesn't from all the empirical evidence sitting around me. Connectionless. Solo. Alone. I don't know why. I only know that it is.
And this is why I come home. I really only need to see a few people to be reminded that I still exist. Yeah, I know, that type of feeling should not come from without, it should come from within. But it doesn't. So sue me. Yet another piece of me that's broken. The broken list is long.
So now I'm going to try to hang onto the moment, and make it last until the next time I can come here. Until the next time I can see someone's eyes who smile when I enter a room. It's hard to cling to that moment for so long, and so tightly. But I'll try, because it's a rare moment of magic that happens between two people. It should be savored.
I had lunch with a friend of mine. A very good friend. He and I were the bestest of friends for a while, but then he went off and fell in love, got married, and slid away from the girl his wife was jealous of. She didn't have a thing to worry about but jealousy seems to know no logic. (By the way, jealousy is just a lack of trust in your partner. Great marriage trait. Speaks so highly of the relationship.)
He and I had the odd communication here and there. He and his wife would join my friends and I for our big brunches sometimes, and he and I would catch up online here and there. Enough to know he was doing well. And happy. Which is a lovely peek to have into someone's life. He understand more than most that I'm not so happy. But he tends to be so analytical and intellectual that it can come across as a lack of caring; which isn't accurate. He cares. He has proven that to me in amazing ways throughout our friendship.
But as I've said, he isn't big on the emotion. It's OK. He and I have the greatest conversations due to his brilliant quick wit and sharp mind. There just never seems to be an awkward pause, even after not seeing him for months.
So after our lunch, he needed to run to a meeting and he said to me, "you should come back more often, I miss you."
I miss you. I swear those are three of the most powerful words in the English language. I honestly wouldn't have through that he did miss me. Even though I love him dearly, I just always feel like when I leave the room, no one gives me a second thought. And for him to say that is like breaking through a brick wall. He was admitting to me that he has feelings for me. The cockles of my heart have rarely been so warmed.
I suppose it's entirely selfish, but I love it when people tell me they miss me. It makes me feel like I matter on the planet. Like I haven't just been assimilated by the Borg to be erased from the memory of all that came before. I left almost three years ago now, and yet people miss me. It's magical. It gives me a sense of worth, that just doesn't seem to be intrinsic to my being.
And right behind that is naturally the fear that it will go away. That everyone will wake up one day and not care if I ever show my face again. No one will remember me. No one will miss me. And I really will have simply evaporated. Into absolute nothingness.
Because the fact of the matter is, even though I moved away years ago, I can't seem to make a life in my new home. I have beautiful things, and loving felines, but other than that, I am absolutely alone. I just can't make connections with the people there. My connection creator is broken. I don't exactly know how it worked before, or why it doesn't work now, I only know that it doesn't from all the empirical evidence sitting around me. Connectionless. Solo. Alone. I don't know why. I only know that it is.
And this is why I come home. I really only need to see a few people to be reminded that I still exist. Yeah, I know, that type of feeling should not come from without, it should come from within. But it doesn't. So sue me. Yet another piece of me that's broken. The broken list is long.
So now I'm going to try to hang onto the moment, and make it last until the next time I can come here. Until the next time I can see someone's eyes who smile when I enter a room. It's hard to cling to that moment for so long, and so tightly. But I'll try, because it's a rare moment of magic that happens between two people. It should be savored.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sun-Envy
This morning I saw the sunrise. Seeing the sun rise provokes a confused reaction in me; I am both honored to see the exalted beauty of the sunrise, and personally affronted at having to be awake at that hour of the morning. I recommend moving the sunrise to around 8:45. Most people will be on their way to work then, and so, will get to enjoy it.
But seeing the sky ablaze is almost worth the suffering of rising to see it. Today I got to see it peaking over a hillside and then being reflected off of the water in front of me. Pinks, oranges, and crimsons that only light the sky when the sun first makes it's appearance, or I suppose leaves the room. The sun is what you might call, dramatic. A diva. It's the diva of the solar system.
Sometimes a diva enters with an exquisite ball gown, sometimes with a devastating backless number, but it is always worth noticing. Probably because for moments, we all want to be her. I suspect the sun never gets depressed. She simply wouldn't allow it.
But seeing the sky ablaze is almost worth the suffering of rising to see it. Today I got to see it peaking over a hillside and then being reflected off of the water in front of me. Pinks, oranges, and crimsons that only light the sky when the sun first makes it's appearance, or I suppose leaves the room. The sun is what you might call, dramatic. A diva. It's the diva of the solar system.
Sometimes a diva enters with an exquisite ball gown, sometimes with a devastating backless number, but it is always worth noticing. Probably because for moments, we all want to be her. I suspect the sun never gets depressed. She simply wouldn't allow it.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Dishwasher Battle Royale
When I was a kid, I had to help with the housework, or mostly do it all, depending on who you ask. I was a woman, and it’s what women do, don’t you know?
Part of this work was cleaning the kitchen, and by the time I was twelve, loading and unloading the dishwasher. It’s not a big thing, loading and unloading the dishwasher, it only takes a few minutes, but those minutes became somewhat of an epic battle, where my family was concerned.
My brother, never had to do the housework. Occasionally he’d be told to do it, but he never would, and he’d never get in trouble, presumably because of that man thing I was mentioning earlier. My mother, while outwardly espousing equality and gender equity just didn’t follow through with actual actions. “My children are different, they have to be treated differently,” she’d say. Not surprisingly, I think, this made me rather irate. I was constantly complaining that this wasn’t fair only to be told over and over again that life isn’t fair. (Which naturally is true, but difficult to swallow when it’s happening in your house with the people who are supposed to love you. It’s like for judges, there just shouldn’t be even an appearance of impropriety.)
So when my brother was supposed to load or unload the dishwasher, I would try to make him do it. I would (yes very childishly) refuse to do it knowing full-well that he wouldn’t either. My mother then would come home and yell at both of us generally letting us know that she was working so hard for us, and we were just being bad children. It was sibling rivalry, meets gender inequality, meets single-parenting, meets martyrdom. Afternoons in my house were seriously unfun.
[One day my brother and I had been yelling at each other after school, probably over something similar, and my brother got so mad at me he punched a hole in the wall in the stairwell. Yes, the stakes were high over such things in my family.]
And oddly enough, the dishwasher is still an issue with me. Dirty dishes in the sink needing to be loaded into the dishwasher, the dishwasher needing to be run so that I can then have a bowl to eat from, and the clean dishes calling from within the dishwasher to be put away in the shelves above my counter. All of these things just waiting for me to get up, and put in a few minutes of effort.
But now it has nothing to do with the mother, or the brother, or rivalry, or martyrdom. Now it has to do with disease. Can I get up long enough to put away the dishes? Can I muster up enough interest to bother producing a bowl from which to eat?
The answer to any of those questions can very easily be no, when I’m so sick and so depressed. It seems like nothing matters, not even opening the blinds to allow light into my living room, so bothering with the dishes is just pretty much out of the question. It’s one of the daily battles I’m likely to lose because of the neurons being stepped on in my brain; just like paying the bills, and washing my clothes and reading my mail. In the triaged list of life, these things just don’t make the cut.
I do like the parallelism, though. A life spend fighting over a dishwasher. A life tormented by spans of minutes and minute amounts of effort. Spoils consisting of a cereal bowl, or a juice glass. So tiny. So petty. The minutia of a troubled life gone so horribly wrong. Battles too small to be noticed, by anyone outside my brain.
The disease makes your world that tiny. It makes it that inconsequential. Forget pondering the meaning of life, you’ll be pondering how to obtain a clean juice glass. If Buddhists are right, and god is in everything, then even tiny, and small, and inconsequential, god exists in quest for clean dishes.
I just haven’t seen him there, yet.
Part of this work was cleaning the kitchen, and by the time I was twelve, loading and unloading the dishwasher. It’s not a big thing, loading and unloading the dishwasher, it only takes a few minutes, but those minutes became somewhat of an epic battle, where my family was concerned.
My brother, never had to do the housework. Occasionally he’d be told to do it, but he never would, and he’d never get in trouble, presumably because of that man thing I was mentioning earlier. My mother, while outwardly espousing equality and gender equity just didn’t follow through with actual actions. “My children are different, they have to be treated differently,” she’d say. Not surprisingly, I think, this made me rather irate. I was constantly complaining that this wasn’t fair only to be told over and over again that life isn’t fair. (Which naturally is true, but difficult to swallow when it’s happening in your house with the people who are supposed to love you. It’s like for judges, there just shouldn’t be even an appearance of impropriety.)
So when my brother was supposed to load or unload the dishwasher, I would try to make him do it. I would (yes very childishly) refuse to do it knowing full-well that he wouldn’t either. My mother then would come home and yell at both of us generally letting us know that she was working so hard for us, and we were just being bad children. It was sibling rivalry, meets gender inequality, meets single-parenting, meets martyrdom. Afternoons in my house were seriously unfun.
[One day my brother and I had been yelling at each other after school, probably over something similar, and my brother got so mad at me he punched a hole in the wall in the stairwell. Yes, the stakes were high over such things in my family.]
And oddly enough, the dishwasher is still an issue with me. Dirty dishes in the sink needing to be loaded into the dishwasher, the dishwasher needing to be run so that I can then have a bowl to eat from, and the clean dishes calling from within the dishwasher to be put away in the shelves above my counter. All of these things just waiting for me to get up, and put in a few minutes of effort.
But now it has nothing to do with the mother, or the brother, or rivalry, or martyrdom. Now it has to do with disease. Can I get up long enough to put away the dishes? Can I muster up enough interest to bother producing a bowl from which to eat?
The answer to any of those questions can very easily be no, when I’m so sick and so depressed. It seems like nothing matters, not even opening the blinds to allow light into my living room, so bothering with the dishes is just pretty much out of the question. It’s one of the daily battles I’m likely to lose because of the neurons being stepped on in my brain; just like paying the bills, and washing my clothes and reading my mail. In the triaged list of life, these things just don’t make the cut.
I do like the parallelism, though. A life spend fighting over a dishwasher. A life tormented by spans of minutes and minute amounts of effort. Spoils consisting of a cereal bowl, or a juice glass. So tiny. So petty. The minutia of a troubled life gone so horribly wrong. Battles too small to be noticed, by anyone outside my brain.
The disease makes your world that tiny. It makes it that inconsequential. Forget pondering the meaning of life, you’ll be pondering how to obtain a clean juice glass. If Buddhists are right, and god is in everything, then even tiny, and small, and inconsequential, god exists in quest for clean dishes.
I just haven’t seen him there, yet.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
My Not-So-Secret Love Affair
I have a Roomba. I, in fact, am in a love affair with my Roomba. It's a deep and meaningful connection. My coder friend used to say that coders are the laziest people and that's why they spend time automating functions with code. My Roomba and I connect on my inner geek and inner lazy person.
And honestly, they are mesmerizing. Everyone that sees it just wants to watch it magically vacuum along walls, and run into things, and take off at random angles. I though, wouldn't let anyone get in the relationship of me and my Roomba. I only let them watch for a few minutes so they don't get any ideas of coming between us. My Roomba and I were simply meant to be together.
I found a video of a cat who seemingly has fallen hard for a Roomba also. My cats don't seem to take to the little, round noisemaker, but maybe they just sense our strong bond and don't want to get in the way. Smart kitties I have.
Oh, and I still haven't decided what to give my Roomba for Valentine's Day. I'm thinking cinnamon hearts. I can dump them all over the floor and the Roomba can pick them up. Perfect.
[On a more serious note, as a seriously depressed person it means that my carpets are always vacuumed in spite of me almost never having energy to do cleaning of any sort. If you can afford it, I recommend it.]
And honestly, they are mesmerizing. Everyone that sees it just wants to watch it magically vacuum along walls, and run into things, and take off at random angles. I though, wouldn't let anyone get in the relationship of me and my Roomba. I only let them watch for a few minutes so they don't get any ideas of coming between us. My Roomba and I were simply meant to be together.
I found a video of a cat who seemingly has fallen hard for a Roomba also. My cats don't seem to take to the little, round noisemaker, but maybe they just sense our strong bond and don't want to get in the way. Smart kitties I have.
Oh, and I still haven't decided what to give my Roomba for Valentine's Day. I'm thinking cinnamon hearts. I can dump them all over the floor and the Roomba can pick them up. Perfect.
[On a more serious note, as a seriously depressed person it means that my carpets are always vacuumed in spite of me almost never having energy to do cleaning of any sort. If you can afford it, I recommend it.]
Friday, February 13, 2009
Word of the Day
Word of the Day for Friday, February 13, 2009
OK, seriously? That word is so disgusting it should be expurgated from the English language. Yuck.expurgate \EK-sper-geyt\, verb:
to remove objectionable words or passages from a document
Grimms' fairy tales have been expurgated for children.by 1621, from Latin expurgat-, from expurgare, from ex- + purgare "to make clean"
f
How Am I?
I'm sort of like this:
(You'll have to click on it to really see the details. These are moving averages and not exact values.)
What is painfully obvious from the above is that the Zyprexa/Celexa combo really does work. Unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, it's not like on it I feel "good" per se, but I don't feel as bad. Reduce the Zyprexa, and feel worse. I didn't need a graph to tell me that, but it's hard to argue with a graph. Stupid numbers. Stupid accurate numbers.
Funny, I feel worse than it looks.
But then, don't I always?
(You'll have to click on it to really see the details. These are moving averages and not exact values.)
What is painfully obvious from the above is that the Zyprexa/Celexa combo really does work. Unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, it's not like on it I feel "good" per se, but I don't feel as bad. Reduce the Zyprexa, and feel worse. I didn't need a graph to tell me that, but it's hard to argue with a graph. Stupid numbers. Stupid accurate numbers.
Funny, I feel worse than it looks.
But then, don't I always?
Sunday, February 08, 2009
The Unhappy Unending
I've taken a vow of silence, which is to say that there was no specific vow involved but I just really don't want to talk to anyone. I haven't been returning calls, or even emails, of people who have been trying to reach me. Talking to them, means lying to them, which makes me ache just thinking about it.
Being crazy bring with it a whole host of problems, one of which is telling people you're getting better, and one of which is telling people that you're getting worse. They both kind of suck, all things considered, and I like to avoid bringing both of them up.
First, there's the obvious suckiness of telling someone that you're getting worse. The medication isn't working. There are scars building on my legs right now. I don't know how I'm going to survive. The doctor has nothing hopeful to offer. This is all, obviously, bad news to deliver. It's news that, over time, your friends will steady themselves to hear. They will eventually stop being shocked by it. They will eventually even expect to hear it. Many of them will stop caring about it. Their caring doesn't help, doesn't change anything, so why should they care?
This is awful, as a sick person. People don't care that you're sick anymore. You have to wake up and care about it every day. You have to take care of it every day. But they get to be tired of it. They get to be fed up. They get to ignore it. Because they can. And it's easy to hate them for this. It's easy to hate that they no longer care that you're well and that they get to get on with their lives like no pain that you're in ever matters. You want to avoid telling them you're worse because they either feel bad about it, or they don't, and both of those options are awful.
Second, there’s the telling them that you’re getting better. I know that seems like it should be the vastly better of the two options, but it turns out, it’s really not. While everyone wants to get better, and I myself are in that everyone, experienced crazies like me know it’s extremely unlikely to happen. Any improvement will be a blip, and transient, and not a real change, not a real cure. By telling someone you’re getting better you’re either telling them that you’re manic (which is bad) or you’re telling them that you’re going through a brief un-bad period that will remind you of happiness just long enough to make it all the more painful the next time you’re squashed like a bug on the sidewalk by depression, and worse, your friends too, will be squashed. Nobody gets out of the cycle alive, nobody gets out with their heart in one piece.
You friends, being you friends, will want to believe you, will want to believe that you are better, than this is it, that you’ve been sick, and now you’re better, just like they’ve heard about, just like it says in the literature, your medications are finally working and now they will see you like the person that you used to be, like to deserve to be, like you really are. They will be happy and grateful and reflect on how long it has been and how painful, but that all of that’s OK now because it’s over. They won’t know that you’re setting them up for a fall. They won’t see that this is just the smile before the stabbing. Even if you tell them that this isn’t going to last, they won’t believe you, and they’ll tell you “not to think that way”. They’ll be incapable of seeing reality, even if you can. They’ll forget that you’re not sick like they get sick. They’ll refuse to believe that it’s for the rest of your life.
They also don’t tend to understand that “doing better” isn’t the same thing as “doing well”. Doing better just means you’ve eked your way up the pain scale slightly, it doesn’t mean that you’re having a good day, or feel like smiling, or consider it enough to keep living. Nope, “doing better” can decidedly still suck, just like doing worse can.
And needless to say, telling them that you’re doing better is inevitably followed by telling them that you’re doing worse. It’ll always be that way. And you get to see their heart break again. Not as much as the first time you cried all night in their living room, not as much as when they had to visit you in the hospital the first time, but it’ll break, just the same. It seems that hearts only get repaired so that they can get stomped on again. No relinquence, this disease. No sense of fair play, or forgiveness. Just shit-kicking steel-toed hatred aimed at all your softest spots. Subdural hematoma of the soul.
So I’m not talking. I’m not telling people how I am. I’m not lying about how I am. I just am it, all alone, in a tiny apartment, in a part of the world where almost no one knows me. I don’t know any better, I don’t know any differently, I don’t know anything that will change that. There’s no point in them going down with me. They can be given the gifts of time and ignorance. They’re excruciatingly expensive gifts for me to give, and no one even knows that I’m giving them, but give them I do. I suppose in all honesty, if I friend of mine were suffering like I do, I would want to be told, and I would want to be there, even if there was nothing I could do, but I think the difference is that my people need a rest. Need a break. Need a build-up of reserves, before they have to deal with me again. A hater of your life. A hater of life, is probably the worst thing that you can be. And it’s what I am. It’s the reason no one can stand to be around me. People want to be affirmed. People want to believe that life is good. People are desperate to believe in happy endings, in fact people desperately want happy middles. And I don’t have one. I’ll never have one. I just have this. Only this, semi-modulated with the time.
I hear on the radio poets that were reading poetry from Guantanamo Bay prison. Before I changed channels, (because seriously, depressing) I heard one of the poets say that they commonality of everyone that survived there was that they all believed they would get out. They all believed they would someday be free again. See their families again. Go home again. And I think this is a fundamentally human trait. We absolutely, hopelessly, and against all reason believe in the happy ending. We believe that it will be OK in the end and if it is not OK, then it is simply not the end. And I remember doing it too. I remember being a young person, and in pain, thinking that someday I would look back on that pain and see it in the past. I saw myself happy, fulfilled, with a high-powered job that I loved, and I partner and friends that I also loved. I saw beautiful surroundings, and this unbelievable sense of contentment at joy. I just knew my adulthood would be like that. After I got through my teens, and then went through a suitable amount of therapy, I would come out the other side OK. It would come together. I would come together. It wouldn’t be just years and years of pain and suffering. That wasn’t fathomable. I was just simply better than that.
I, of course, was wrong. I believed what I had to believe to get through the hell I was living through. It worked. I didn’t die. Even though I wanted to. I didn’t. I survived to see my own happy ending destroyed and to see everyone around me insist on everyone getting one. And I’m just this horrible outlaying case of pain and suffering that refuses to conform with everyone else’s happiness and thus makes them worry that one day it could happen to them. Don’t worry if you’re feeling worse, because one day you’ll feel better. Of course you’re feeling better, that’s because it’s time for your happy ending. Stop greasing my grasp on what I insist is universally true. The happy ending is coming. Just you wait and see.
(And if you don’t, please don’t tell me about it.)
Being crazy bring with it a whole host of problems, one of which is telling people you're getting better, and one of which is telling people that you're getting worse. They both kind of suck, all things considered, and I like to avoid bringing both of them up.
First, there's the obvious suckiness of telling someone that you're getting worse. The medication isn't working. There are scars building on my legs right now. I don't know how I'm going to survive. The doctor has nothing hopeful to offer. This is all, obviously, bad news to deliver. It's news that, over time, your friends will steady themselves to hear. They will eventually stop being shocked by it. They will eventually even expect to hear it. Many of them will stop caring about it. Their caring doesn't help, doesn't change anything, so why should they care?
This is awful, as a sick person. People don't care that you're sick anymore. You have to wake up and care about it every day. You have to take care of it every day. But they get to be tired of it. They get to be fed up. They get to ignore it. Because they can. And it's easy to hate them for this. It's easy to hate that they no longer care that you're well and that they get to get on with their lives like no pain that you're in ever matters. You want to avoid telling them you're worse because they either feel bad about it, or they don't, and both of those options are awful.
Second, there’s the telling them that you’re getting better. I know that seems like it should be the vastly better of the two options, but it turns out, it’s really not. While everyone wants to get better, and I myself are in that everyone, experienced crazies like me know it’s extremely unlikely to happen. Any improvement will be a blip, and transient, and not a real change, not a real cure. By telling someone you’re getting better you’re either telling them that you’re manic (which is bad) or you’re telling them that you’re going through a brief un-bad period that will remind you of happiness just long enough to make it all the more painful the next time you’re squashed like a bug on the sidewalk by depression, and worse, your friends too, will be squashed. Nobody gets out of the cycle alive, nobody gets out with their heart in one piece.
You friends, being you friends, will want to believe you, will want to believe that you are better, than this is it, that you’ve been sick, and now you’re better, just like they’ve heard about, just like it says in the literature, your medications are finally working and now they will see you like the person that you used to be, like to deserve to be, like you really are. They will be happy and grateful and reflect on how long it has been and how painful, but that all of that’s OK now because it’s over. They won’t know that you’re setting them up for a fall. They won’t see that this is just the smile before the stabbing. Even if you tell them that this isn’t going to last, they won’t believe you, and they’ll tell you “not to think that way”. They’ll be incapable of seeing reality, even if you can. They’ll forget that you’re not sick like they get sick. They’ll refuse to believe that it’s for the rest of your life.
They also don’t tend to understand that “doing better” isn’t the same thing as “doing well”. Doing better just means you’ve eked your way up the pain scale slightly, it doesn’t mean that you’re having a good day, or feel like smiling, or consider it enough to keep living. Nope, “doing better” can decidedly still suck, just like doing worse can.
And needless to say, telling them that you’re doing better is inevitably followed by telling them that you’re doing worse. It’ll always be that way. And you get to see their heart break again. Not as much as the first time you cried all night in their living room, not as much as when they had to visit you in the hospital the first time, but it’ll break, just the same. It seems that hearts only get repaired so that they can get stomped on again. No relinquence, this disease. No sense of fair play, or forgiveness. Just shit-kicking steel-toed hatred aimed at all your softest spots. Subdural hematoma of the soul.
So I’m not talking. I’m not telling people how I am. I’m not lying about how I am. I just am it, all alone, in a tiny apartment, in a part of the world where almost no one knows me. I don’t know any better, I don’t know any differently, I don’t know anything that will change that. There’s no point in them going down with me. They can be given the gifts of time and ignorance. They’re excruciatingly expensive gifts for me to give, and no one even knows that I’m giving them, but give them I do. I suppose in all honesty, if I friend of mine were suffering like I do, I would want to be told, and I would want to be there, even if there was nothing I could do, but I think the difference is that my people need a rest. Need a break. Need a build-up of reserves, before they have to deal with me again. A hater of your life. A hater of life, is probably the worst thing that you can be. And it’s what I am. It’s the reason no one can stand to be around me. People want to be affirmed. People want to believe that life is good. People are desperate to believe in happy endings, in fact people desperately want happy middles. And I don’t have one. I’ll never have one. I just have this. Only this, semi-modulated with the time.
I hear on the radio poets that were reading poetry from Guantanamo Bay prison. Before I changed channels, (because seriously, depressing) I heard one of the poets say that they commonality of everyone that survived there was that they all believed they would get out. They all believed they would someday be free again. See their families again. Go home again. And I think this is a fundamentally human trait. We absolutely, hopelessly, and against all reason believe in the happy ending. We believe that it will be OK in the end and if it is not OK, then it is simply not the end. And I remember doing it too. I remember being a young person, and in pain, thinking that someday I would look back on that pain and see it in the past. I saw myself happy, fulfilled, with a high-powered job that I loved, and I partner and friends that I also loved. I saw beautiful surroundings, and this unbelievable sense of contentment at joy. I just knew my adulthood would be like that. After I got through my teens, and then went through a suitable amount of therapy, I would come out the other side OK. It would come together. I would come together. It wouldn’t be just years and years of pain and suffering. That wasn’t fathomable. I was just simply better than that.
I, of course, was wrong. I believed what I had to believe to get through the hell I was living through. It worked. I didn’t die. Even though I wanted to. I didn’t. I survived to see my own happy ending destroyed and to see everyone around me insist on everyone getting one. And I’m just this horrible outlaying case of pain and suffering that refuses to conform with everyone else’s happiness and thus makes them worry that one day it could happen to them. Don’t worry if you’re feeling worse, because one day you’ll feel better. Of course you’re feeling better, that’s because it’s time for your happy ending. Stop greasing my grasp on what I insist is universally true. The happy ending is coming. Just you wait and see.
(And if you don’t, please don’t tell me about it.)
Alliteration Adds Adroitness?
I’m back in the coffee shop today. It worked well last Sunday, so this Sunday, I am back. It’s really a heaven for writers. There’s nothing but books as far as the eye can see and downstairs there is cheap, good food, great coffee, and all the wifi you can gulp. And on Sunday, the café is private, but not lonely. There are about 15 patrons here who are reading or talking, or enjoying Greek eggs, sunny-side-up served right in frying pan, and the all combine with the background music into a solid hum with the occasional pops and clicks of people pushing in chairs, or shouting out orders for colour. It’s a sunny, relaxed Sunday here, no matter what is going on on the other side of the door.
The burns on my hands from earlier in the week have blistered. Small blisters, certainly, but it doesn’t take long for a 400 degree oven to sear flesh. Yes, it’s been that bad.
I’ve been sliding for two weeks now. Notably. Lots of pain, lots of suffering. Reduced work throughput, increased flappability and tears. The norm I guess, for the crazy, and no one cares much, least of all my doctor. In his eyes it always registers as “non-optimum reaction to medication”. It’s sort of binary with him. I’m well, or I’m not. Shades of grey seem pointless. It’s an idiodic way to handle the crazy, really, as it gives you no indication of depth or colour which in turn removes your ability to predict what’s to come next. “I lose more patients that way…”
I suspect he thinks that I would just tell him if things were really bad. Really? Seriously? Whatever gave him that idea? I pretty much treat him just like I treat my mother: he gets only the information I want, or can handle, him having, no more and no less. Honesty doesn’t really enter into it. If I thought he could help I’d tell him. But he can’t. We both know that.
I spent most of the day yesterday reading a book, which is weird because you know, I don’t read. It’s generally too much effort, I already read too much for work, and very little holds my interest enough to devote myself to it; which reading requires. You can’t read while also watching TV and preparing your taxes. You lose track of where the evil is, in the book, or the IRS.
However, I stumbled upon a book that really did its job: True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, by Michael Finkel. This is a fascinating tale of a man who murdered his wife and three children and the reporter whose identity he stole, Michael Finkel, the author. It is indeed, a true story. It’s such a bizarre set of coincidences and outrageous happenings that it seems like it couldn’t possibly be true, but by all verifiable facts, it does seem to be accurate.
Chris Longo, the convicted killer in this case, kills his whole family and then ultimately ends up on the FBI’s most wanted list and flies off to Cancun. While there, he impersonates Michael Finkel, a New York Times reporter. Longo said he liked Finkels writing and considered his career of being mostly a travel writer to be something that Longo would have wanted for himself.
Oddly, just before Longo was arrested in Cancun the real Finkel was outed as a fraudulent reporter. It was shown that Finkel wrote a story he claimed was about one African boy but in reality was a composite of different boys he had interviewed in Africa. He also printed a picture of another boy, claiming it was the one he had written about. Naturally he was fired from the New York Times and completely discredited as a journalist in spite of the fact that no other story he had written was shown to have any inaccuracies.
Due to the odd timing of events, Finkel had a lot of time on his hands right as Longo was put in prison, and not surprisingly, he became somewhat obsessed with a killer who chose to take on his identity. Finkel contacted Longo in jail and the two of them began a very strange relationship where both played the cat, and both played the mouse in a game that neither men seemed to be clear on at different points in their relationship. Longo wrote hundreds of pages of letters to Finkel and spoke with him on the phone for over 50 hours. I suspect this is one of the most thorough accounts of one who commits familicide in existence. This is particularly fascinating to me as Longo he no history of violence, never even an accusation of being violent to anyone and yet one day decided to kill his wife and three kids. (He actually doesn’t admit to all four murders. He claims that he committed two and his wife committed two, but in reality, he probably committed all four.)
Finkel intertwines his own life and personality with that of Longo and draws striking comparisons between his deciding to publish a false story in the New York Times and Longo’s decision to kills his family. Finkel seems to write about himself a little too much, and stresses his own reasons and rationalizations around submitting a false articles just a little too much; to the point where he comes off as narcissistic. Which is fascinating as Longo is diagnosed by four separate psychologists as having narcissistic personality disorder.
Both men share a portrait of narcissism, they both fear failure in other’s eyes to the point of behaving immorally or illegally to avoid it, they both intellectualize their acts as “moral” because their reasons represent a superior morality, they both think they are much more important and grand than they really are, and they both repeatedly lie, and admit to nothing even in the face of damning evidence. Now, to be fair, of course, Finkel is not a killer and his act was not criminal in any way. He just shares an amazingly similar number of tendencies with a murderer. If I believed in kismet I would say these two men were destined to meet as Longo had a lot to teach Finkel, I think, about himself.
I doubt that Finkel really saw the parallels as obviously, or as explicitly as an educated outsider or a professional would, but it is clear he does understand some of the similarities. He does a great job of weaving his own life in with Longo’s and suspensefully unfolding a story in spite of the fact that ending is known from page one.
Even though it’s clear that Longo is a con man, his perspective on his own behavior is still fascinating. What seems clear is that he felt a sense of pressure from everything around him. Being a Jehovah’s Witness, his parents not wanting him to marry young, his wife, his kids, his job all seemed to contribute to a sense that he had to “pull it all off” “no matter what”. He always wanted to take care of the appearances for today with no forethought of later. When things would crash down he would simply lie his way out of it. Over, and over, and over. Steal a minivan. Pass fraudulent cheques. Lie to everyone about everything, just to make it appear that he was a bigshot. His big break was always “just around the corner”. He would always “find a goldmine” that for some tragic reason just didn’t pan out. He had suffered so many “bad breaks”. Except that he didn’t, of course, he just chose to live outside his means. And instead of standing up to take care of the problems, he would do anything to make it seem like they weren’t there. He conned himself, which the best conmen always do.
Looking at all of this, is of course, like looking at my family, my brother in particular. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an interesting one as at its core (some say) is the belief that the person themselves is fundamentally flawed, and so outwardly they cover this up by being exceptionally self-aggrandizing and self-centered.
DSM criteria is listed as any five of the following:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
And while we all know some of these people, with some of these traits, you can imagine how devastating it would be on a person’s life if they actually suffered from five or more. My brother has 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9.
Hypothetical causes include:
1. An oversensitive temperament at birth
2. Overindulgence and overvaluation by parents
3. Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem
4. Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback
5. Unpredictable or unreliable caregiving from parents
6. Severe emotional abuse in childhood
7. Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or talents by adults
8. Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for poor behaviors in childhood
And in my estimation my brother has experienced 2, 3, and 5. Maybe more. Tough to say.
Now obviously my brother (thankfully) is not a killer. One could easily though, make the argument that his life has unraveled (if it ever were, in fact, raveled to begin with) just like Longo’s had. Longo went from happy family man to four-time killer on death row. My brother went from promising, young boy full of potential to drug-dealing, drug-addled, broke drunk on my mother’s couch. More notably though, is the way he got there. He got there by a path of lies, and self-delusion, and cons of all sorts, alienating himself from pretty much anyone who has considered him a friend.
Of course, a lot of this is just typical druggie-type behavior too, so tomato, potato, let’s call the whole thing off.
Anyway, thought-provoking, to be sure. And I give a gold medal to anyone who is able to hold the attention of my leaky, neurosis-festering brain. And if I ever met Michael Finkel, I might tell him that. Right after I told him that the title of his book sucked. For the life of me, I could never remember it straight even when I was reading it. I think he was trying to show how smart (mea culpa) or clever he is (alliteration) right in the title. But honestly, there is no need. The talent between the pages is clear. And so is the luck, or karma, or something of having such a story just drop into his lap.
The burns on my hands from earlier in the week have blistered. Small blisters, certainly, but it doesn’t take long for a 400 degree oven to sear flesh. Yes, it’s been that bad.
I’ve been sliding for two weeks now. Notably. Lots of pain, lots of suffering. Reduced work throughput, increased flappability and tears. The norm I guess, for the crazy, and no one cares much, least of all my doctor. In his eyes it always registers as “non-optimum reaction to medication”. It’s sort of binary with him. I’m well, or I’m not. Shades of grey seem pointless. It’s an idiodic way to handle the crazy, really, as it gives you no indication of depth or colour which in turn removes your ability to predict what’s to come next. “I lose more patients that way…”
I suspect he thinks that I would just tell him if things were really bad. Really? Seriously? Whatever gave him that idea? I pretty much treat him just like I treat my mother: he gets only the information I want, or can handle, him having, no more and no less. Honesty doesn’t really enter into it. If I thought he could help I’d tell him. But he can’t. We both know that.
I spent most of the day yesterday reading a book, which is weird because you know, I don’t read. It’s generally too much effort, I already read too much for work, and very little holds my interest enough to devote myself to it; which reading requires. You can’t read while also watching TV and preparing your taxes. You lose track of where the evil is, in the book, or the IRS.
However, I stumbled upon a book that really did its job: True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, by Michael Finkel. This is a fascinating tale of a man who murdered his wife and three children and the reporter whose identity he stole, Michael Finkel, the author. It is indeed, a true story. It’s such a bizarre set of coincidences and outrageous happenings that it seems like it couldn’t possibly be true, but by all verifiable facts, it does seem to be accurate.
Chris Longo, the convicted killer in this case, kills his whole family and then ultimately ends up on the FBI’s most wanted list and flies off to Cancun. While there, he impersonates Michael Finkel, a New York Times reporter. Longo said he liked Finkels writing and considered his career of being mostly a travel writer to be something that Longo would have wanted for himself.
Oddly, just before Longo was arrested in Cancun the real Finkel was outed as a fraudulent reporter. It was shown that Finkel wrote a story he claimed was about one African boy but in reality was a composite of different boys he had interviewed in Africa. He also printed a picture of another boy, claiming it was the one he had written about. Naturally he was fired from the New York Times and completely discredited as a journalist in spite of the fact that no other story he had written was shown to have any inaccuracies.
Due to the odd timing of events, Finkel had a lot of time on his hands right as Longo was put in prison, and not surprisingly, he became somewhat obsessed with a killer who chose to take on his identity. Finkel contacted Longo in jail and the two of them began a very strange relationship where both played the cat, and both played the mouse in a game that neither men seemed to be clear on at different points in their relationship. Longo wrote hundreds of pages of letters to Finkel and spoke with him on the phone for over 50 hours. I suspect this is one of the most thorough accounts of one who commits familicide in existence. This is particularly fascinating to me as Longo he no history of violence, never even an accusation of being violent to anyone and yet one day decided to kill his wife and three kids. (He actually doesn’t admit to all four murders. He claims that he committed two and his wife committed two, but in reality, he probably committed all four.)
Finkel intertwines his own life and personality with that of Longo and draws striking comparisons between his deciding to publish a false story in the New York Times and Longo’s decision to kills his family. Finkel seems to write about himself a little too much, and stresses his own reasons and rationalizations around submitting a false articles just a little too much; to the point where he comes off as narcissistic. Which is fascinating as Longo is diagnosed by four separate psychologists as having narcissistic personality disorder.
Both men share a portrait of narcissism, they both fear failure in other’s eyes to the point of behaving immorally or illegally to avoid it, they both intellectualize their acts as “moral” because their reasons represent a superior morality, they both think they are much more important and grand than they really are, and they both repeatedly lie, and admit to nothing even in the face of damning evidence. Now, to be fair, of course, Finkel is not a killer and his act was not criminal in any way. He just shares an amazingly similar number of tendencies with a murderer. If I believed in kismet I would say these two men were destined to meet as Longo had a lot to teach Finkel, I think, about himself.
I doubt that Finkel really saw the parallels as obviously, or as explicitly as an educated outsider or a professional would, but it is clear he does understand some of the similarities. He does a great job of weaving his own life in with Longo’s and suspensefully unfolding a story in spite of the fact that ending is known from page one.
Even though it’s clear that Longo is a con man, his perspective on his own behavior is still fascinating. What seems clear is that he felt a sense of pressure from everything around him. Being a Jehovah’s Witness, his parents not wanting him to marry young, his wife, his kids, his job all seemed to contribute to a sense that he had to “pull it all off” “no matter what”. He always wanted to take care of the appearances for today with no forethought of later. When things would crash down he would simply lie his way out of it. Over, and over, and over. Steal a minivan. Pass fraudulent cheques. Lie to everyone about everything, just to make it appear that he was a bigshot. His big break was always “just around the corner”. He would always “find a goldmine” that for some tragic reason just didn’t pan out. He had suffered so many “bad breaks”. Except that he didn’t, of course, he just chose to live outside his means. And instead of standing up to take care of the problems, he would do anything to make it seem like they weren’t there. He conned himself, which the best conmen always do.
Looking at all of this, is of course, like looking at my family, my brother in particular. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an interesting one as at its core (some say) is the belief that the person themselves is fundamentally flawed, and so outwardly they cover this up by being exceptionally self-aggrandizing and self-centered.
DSM criteria is listed as any five of the following:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
And while we all know some of these people, with some of these traits, you can imagine how devastating it would be on a person’s life if they actually suffered from five or more. My brother has 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9.
Hypothetical causes include:
1. An oversensitive temperament at birth
2. Overindulgence and overvaluation by parents
3. Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem
4. Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback
5. Unpredictable or unreliable caregiving from parents
6. Severe emotional abuse in childhood
7. Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or talents by adults
8. Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for poor behaviors in childhood
And in my estimation my brother has experienced 2, 3, and 5. Maybe more. Tough to say.
Now obviously my brother (thankfully) is not a killer. One could easily though, make the argument that his life has unraveled (if it ever were, in fact, raveled to begin with) just like Longo’s had. Longo went from happy family man to four-time killer on death row. My brother went from promising, young boy full of potential to drug-dealing, drug-addled, broke drunk on my mother’s couch. More notably though, is the way he got there. He got there by a path of lies, and self-delusion, and cons of all sorts, alienating himself from pretty much anyone who has considered him a friend.
Of course, a lot of this is just typical druggie-type behavior too, so tomato, potato, let’s call the whole thing off.
Anyway, thought-provoking, to be sure. And I give a gold medal to anyone who is able to hold the attention of my leaky, neurosis-festering brain. And if I ever met Michael Finkel, I might tell him that. Right after I told him that the title of his book sucked. For the life of me, I could never remember it straight even when I was reading it. I think he was trying to show how smart (mea culpa) or clever he is (alliteration) right in the title. But honestly, there is no need. The talent between the pages is clear. And so is the luck, or karma, or something of having such a story just drop into his lap.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Brand Name vs. Generic Medications (again)
I've written about this before; here and here, but I thought I'd mention it again as I just officially got bitten.
I've been taking Celexa as part of an insanely large combo of medications, specifically as a counterpoint to Zyprexa.
[Zyprexa (antipsychotic) and Celexa (antidepressant) in combination seem to make each med more successful at lower dosages. Note that Zyprexa is actually sold combined with Prozac under the name Symbyax. This combination is tested and approved by the FDA (for whatever that's worth). This is a very similar combination to Zyprexa + Celexa, but my particular doctor prefers the Celexa over the Prozac as the antidepressant in the combination. By not using the preformulated combination, not only get to pick the antidepressant, but you can also tweak the dosages individually.]
Initially, I got my medication filled at a local pharmacy and was given Citalopram (DRR). This is the generic name and the maker (DRR). Nope, I don't know what DRR is. Then when I sent my prescription in to get it filled through the mail, as required by my insurer, I got sent back Citalopram (HBR). I don't know what that is either, only to know that it is different. The pills are completely different looking so the different manufacturer is very obvious.
And when I tried the new generic, it seemed to do nothing at all. It was as if I wasn't even taking it. The change was immediate. It was bizarrio.
In all the medications I have taken, all the bands, all the generics, I have never seen this exact situation, but I can honestly say that it seems like the drug doesn't work at all for me. And I really don't appreciate this variation in efficacy. Consistancy is ulta-important to a cycling mood disorder.
So, as a reminder, generics are cheaper for a reason. They may not have the same quality control, binding agents, or other ingredients that may effect your particular reaction to the medication. They aren't bad, necessarily, but if you switch from brand to generic, or from manufacturer to manufacturer, watch for new side effects, or changed efficacy. You are unique, and how you react to drugs is also unique, so you're the only one who will see a change, if one exists.
(Oh, and if you need to know, click on the articles I linked to above. Admittedly, some of the information an generics is downright frightening.)
I've been taking Celexa as part of an insanely large combo of medications, specifically as a counterpoint to Zyprexa.
[Zyprexa (antipsychotic) and Celexa (antidepressant) in combination seem to make each med more successful at lower dosages. Note that Zyprexa is actually sold combined with Prozac under the name Symbyax. This combination is tested and approved by the FDA (for whatever that's worth). This is a very similar combination to Zyprexa + Celexa, but my particular doctor prefers the Celexa over the Prozac as the antidepressant in the combination. By not using the preformulated combination, not only get to pick the antidepressant, but you can also tweak the dosages individually.]
Initially, I got my medication filled at a local pharmacy and was given Citalopram (DRR). This is the generic name and the maker (DRR). Nope, I don't know what DRR is. Then when I sent my prescription in to get it filled through the mail, as required by my insurer, I got sent back Citalopram (HBR). I don't know what that is either, only to know that it is different. The pills are completely different looking so the different manufacturer is very obvious.
And when I tried the new generic, it seemed to do nothing at all. It was as if I wasn't even taking it. The change was immediate. It was bizarrio.
In all the medications I have taken, all the bands, all the generics, I have never seen this exact situation, but I can honestly say that it seems like the drug doesn't work at all for me. And I really don't appreciate this variation in efficacy. Consistancy is ulta-important to a cycling mood disorder.
So, as a reminder, generics are cheaper for a reason. They may not have the same quality control, binding agents, or other ingredients that may effect your particular reaction to the medication. They aren't bad, necessarily, but if you switch from brand to generic, or from manufacturer to manufacturer, watch for new side effects, or changed efficacy. You are unique, and how you react to drugs is also unique, so you're the only one who will see a change, if one exists.
(Oh, and if you need to know, click on the articles I linked to above. Admittedly, some of the information an generics is downright frightening.)
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Expenses
So I’m sad. Really sad. Lonely. Helpless. Hopeless. Lost. Depressed. I know.
When I was a kid, like most kids I expect, I loved to have sleepovers with my friends. We would ride our bikes and play outside, and then when we were older, we’d put tacky makeup on each other and stay up all night talking about life (oh, and boys, I’m sure they were in there somewhere). And sure as the sun would rise, I would have the best time with my friends, running around, and playing, and talking, and just Having Fun. Best times ever. And then, as soon as they would leave, I’d feel terrible. Awful, lonely, sad, lost, and I suppose, depressed, although I didn’t know what that word really meant at that age. I was still lucky enough to have never heard of bipolar.
I have no idea if this is exactly what happens with all kids, but I can tell you, looking back, the excessive energy, speed talking, not sleeping, not eating, constant Fun, followed by horrible depression looks just like bipolar to me. It might just be me, or my twisted memory, or an attempt to put an order overlay onto a childhood of madness, I don’t know, but from this side it looks all too familiar. (The mother, by the way, states that I was an odd child with odd mood swings that she could never quite understand. And that may mean something, or nothing at all.)
Fast forward to now. Now I’m a girl who clearly has a mood disorder, who is very clearly crazy, even heavily medicated. Now it’s exactly the same but worse. Always worse. My friend’s visit elated me. Every moment like eating the perfect birthday cake. Fun. Joy. Elevation. Exaggeration. Tearless. A very wet lifetime suddenly tearless. Highly notable.
So now, of course, I’m paying. I’m paying a very big bill. Genuine smiles are so expensive. Fake is generally all I can afford.
And even in the rare event that I’m happy, it never “feels right”. It never feels honest. It never feels complete. It’s always a mood swing and never a mood. And I know that right behind it is this. I try to just take what I can get and be thankful for any meager crumb the happiness ferry leaves behind, but even though I try to thank the universe it’s only questionably worth it. A moment of genuine joy followed by far too many much more genuine moments of pain is just, not, a good deal.
It felt bad when I was a child, but it always feels like the End of The World now. I grew up and my pain grew up too I guess. The whole in my heart as a child ached, but now it feels like it could swallow the world.
When I was a kid, like most kids I expect, I loved to have sleepovers with my friends. We would ride our bikes and play outside, and then when we were older, we’d put tacky makeup on each other and stay up all night talking about life (oh, and boys, I’m sure they were in there somewhere). And sure as the sun would rise, I would have the best time with my friends, running around, and playing, and talking, and just Having Fun. Best times ever. And then, as soon as they would leave, I’d feel terrible. Awful, lonely, sad, lost, and I suppose, depressed, although I didn’t know what that word really meant at that age. I was still lucky enough to have never heard of bipolar.
I have no idea if this is exactly what happens with all kids, but I can tell you, looking back, the excessive energy, speed talking, not sleeping, not eating, constant Fun, followed by horrible depression looks just like bipolar to me. It might just be me, or my twisted memory, or an attempt to put an order overlay onto a childhood of madness, I don’t know, but from this side it looks all too familiar. (The mother, by the way, states that I was an odd child with odd mood swings that she could never quite understand. And that may mean something, or nothing at all.)
Fast forward to now. Now I’m a girl who clearly has a mood disorder, who is very clearly crazy, even heavily medicated. Now it’s exactly the same but worse. Always worse. My friend’s visit elated me. Every moment like eating the perfect birthday cake. Fun. Joy. Elevation. Exaggeration. Tearless. A very wet lifetime suddenly tearless. Highly notable.
So now, of course, I’m paying. I’m paying a very big bill. Genuine smiles are so expensive. Fake is generally all I can afford.
And even in the rare event that I’m happy, it never “feels right”. It never feels honest. It never feels complete. It’s always a mood swing and never a mood. And I know that right behind it is this. I try to just take what I can get and be thankful for any meager crumb the happiness ferry leaves behind, but even though I try to thank the universe it’s only questionably worth it. A moment of genuine joy followed by far too many much more genuine moments of pain is just, not, a good deal.
It felt bad when I was a child, but it always feels like the End of The World now. I grew up and my pain grew up too I guess. The whole in my heart as a child ached, but now it feels like it could swallow the world.
Limited Time Offer
Today I went for a trip to a magnificent bookstore. I thought, perhaps, if I were around a lot of words that other people had written, I too, would be able to write something.
I don't think it works that way.
It does happen only to be the best bookstore ever. Which is nice. The 150,000 books on hand-built cedar shelves lull me into the sense that writing is not, in fact, dying. Not today, it seems, anyway.
It's a good thing that all these people are, successfully, getting words together, as left to me, writing really would, be dying. It seems I have so few complete thoughts these days. My thoughts just seems to flit and flutter away in the breeze, never quite coming to fruition. It's so, unsatisfying.
For a while there, I was pretty convinced that writing was something I could actually do. I could actually put letters together into words and those words into sentences and those sentences into paragraphs which expressed thoughts and those thoughts then eventually became Writing. Something beautiful and fragile and precious. I liked that. It meant that I wasn't a single-dimensional being of pain. It meant that I was more than that. I was a conduit of learning, making sense of the senseless. It meant I could inform and entertain. It meant I could produce something. Something from nothing. Something that was all mine. Something, from less than, nothing.
But it's all over. My thoughts are over. My brain is over. I'm over. The one thing that felt like something is gone. I never knew where it came from to begin with so now that it has vanished, I don't even know where to begin to look for it. It's just, gone.
In the Dexter books, Dexter, the lead and serial killer, talks about his Dark Passenger. It's the dark part of him that drives him to kill, gives him meaning, gives pleasure through killing, and guides his actions. It has just always been there. With him. Helping him along his way.
And then one day the Dark Passenger vanishes. It's just not there. Dexter wakes up and finds that a piece of him is missing. He knew it was there yesterday, but now it was just gone. And how do you find what makes you You. What is a serial killer without killing? He's nothing. The thing that defined Dexter vanished. He has no idea what it really was, where it really came from, or where it went when it left. He's just Alone. Meaningless.
Now me, I'm not making a living from my writing, and I don't "need" it, per se. I don't have a business card that says Writer, nor do I have much of a following of people that care whether I writer or not. But it was the thing about me that I actually liked. And that's a hard list to get on. The list is short. And sharp. And jagged. And cutthroat. It's a list eating itself.
Meaning.
Meaning. Everyone is looking for this. Well, at some point they all do. What matters? Why are we here? Well, why am I here? Let's face it, we're selfish. I. Why am I?
Naturally, I don't know. People have been arguing about it since there were, well, arguments so I'm not about to crack that nut personally. I will say though that while I think being crazy is one of the worst things to happen to a person, the one silver lining for me was helping others to make sense of it. I can say things that other people can't say. I can express things that other people can't express. I can help point out paths to people. I know that being crazy feels like there are no paths but I can usually help out and point out the teeny, tiny, widely-spaced breadcrumbs that someone else may have forgotten.
And that was my sip of meaning.
Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was self-aggrandizement masquerading as meaning. I don't know. I just thought that if I can't find love, and I can't have children, and I can't seem to connect with real-life people, and I'm sick, that I could have this. It was my gift with purchase. I bought this shitty fucking lifetime so they gave me this free tote bag. Which turned out to be very useful indeed.
Selfish, I know. I want, I want, I want. But. I want. I want my present back.
I don't think it works that way.
It does happen only to be the best bookstore ever. Which is nice. The 150,000 books on hand-built cedar shelves lull me into the sense that writing is not, in fact, dying. Not today, it seems, anyway.
It's a good thing that all these people are, successfully, getting words together, as left to me, writing really would, be dying. It seems I have so few complete thoughts these days. My thoughts just seems to flit and flutter away in the breeze, never quite coming to fruition. It's so, unsatisfying.
For a while there, I was pretty convinced that writing was something I could actually do. I could actually put letters together into words and those words into sentences and those sentences into paragraphs which expressed thoughts and those thoughts then eventually became Writing. Something beautiful and fragile and precious. I liked that. It meant that I wasn't a single-dimensional being of pain. It meant that I was more than that. I was a conduit of learning, making sense of the senseless. It meant I could inform and entertain. It meant I could produce something. Something from nothing. Something that was all mine. Something, from less than, nothing.
But it's all over. My thoughts are over. My brain is over. I'm over. The one thing that felt like something is gone. I never knew where it came from to begin with so now that it has vanished, I don't even know where to begin to look for it. It's just, gone.
In the Dexter books, Dexter, the lead and serial killer, talks about his Dark Passenger. It's the dark part of him that drives him to kill, gives him meaning, gives pleasure through killing, and guides his actions. It has just always been there. With him. Helping him along his way.
And then one day the Dark Passenger vanishes. It's just not there. Dexter wakes up and finds that a piece of him is missing. He knew it was there yesterday, but now it was just gone. And how do you find what makes you You. What is a serial killer without killing? He's nothing. The thing that defined Dexter vanished. He has no idea what it really was, where it really came from, or where it went when it left. He's just Alone. Meaningless.
Now me, I'm not making a living from my writing, and I don't "need" it, per se. I don't have a business card that says Writer, nor do I have much of a following of people that care whether I writer or not. But it was the thing about me that I actually liked. And that's a hard list to get on. The list is short. And sharp. And jagged. And cutthroat. It's a list eating itself.
Meaning.
Meaning. Everyone is looking for this. Well, at some point they all do. What matters? Why are we here? Well, why am I here? Let's face it, we're selfish. I. Why am I?
Naturally, I don't know. People have been arguing about it since there were, well, arguments so I'm not about to crack that nut personally. I will say though that while I think being crazy is one of the worst things to happen to a person, the one silver lining for me was helping others to make sense of it. I can say things that other people can't say. I can express things that other people can't express. I can help point out paths to people. I know that being crazy feels like there are no paths but I can usually help out and point out the teeny, tiny, widely-spaced breadcrumbs that someone else may have forgotten.
And that was my sip of meaning.
Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was self-aggrandizement masquerading as meaning. I don't know. I just thought that if I can't find love, and I can't have children, and I can't seem to connect with real-life people, and I'm sick, that I could have this. It was my gift with purchase. I bought this shitty fucking lifetime so they gave me this free tote bag. Which turned out to be very useful indeed.
Selfish, I know. I want, I want, I want. But. I want. I want my present back.
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