I found the solution

It’s April. I started dieting December of 2010. I have lost about 33 pounds. If I lose four more I will qualify for Lifetime Membership, which means I met a goal weight and don’t have to pay $40 a month anymore. I’ve talked about this before, but I have quite a new new readers, so I’ll tell it again.

At 207 pounds I thought I was probably about fifteen/twenty pounds over weight. I took funny pictures of myself looking sad eyed at the camera. I was pretty fat, but not all that fat, I thought.

I lost fifteen pounds and I was excited! That calls for New Pictures! Imagine, to my astonishment, I was not only still fat, I was still very fat. The weight began to creep off and I did (most) everything right. I tracked my meals on eTools program, exercised some, and showed up to meetings. (As of press I have missed two meetings in almost 2 1/2 years.) I got down to 173. And it stayed there. Every week I was either up a pound, stayed the same, or down .2. This has gone on for months now and I’m tired of it. I know how I lose weight: Follow the Weight Watcher’s Program. I will do that, guzzle water, counting points of everything I eat and exercise.

But wait, there is more. It’s warm out and I really wanted a cold drink, like a freddo from Pete’s. I decided to save a dollar and go to McDonalds. Shamrock Shakes are here for just a little while, and I have good memories of a friend who has fallen by the wayside, and Shamrock Shakes. While I was there, I’d get a “Mini Meal” A hamburger, french friends and Diet Coke. (For the record, Diet Coke and mood disorders usually don’t mix. I popped an Ativan just to get through it.) They did not have Shamrock Shakes.

Bait your breath no longer: I managed to find another milk shake. It was good – I sucked it down. It had 2/3 of my Weight Watcher Points Plus for that day and I am pretty sure the hamburger and french fries knocked the rest of them out of the park.

Why would I do such a thing? I am so close to my goal and, when I am asked if I’d like fries with that, my answer is, low and breathy, “yes, oh yes.”

Here some of the reasons I might do such a thing:

I prefer being fat – As T so elegantly put it I want to hide under a huge mound of fat.

I don’t want to reach my goal. I’d rather have the life of gobbling whatever it is that I want, anywhere or time than I want than that of health and wellness.

I hate myself and am going to let my body know it through a steady diet of junk.

I’m afraid of being thin or attractive.

I don’t want to succeed at this or anything else. Keep me plain, chubby, unaccomplished. It’s easier this way. Except for it’s not easier. I could have popped in to Trader Joe’s and got any of their deli lunches. It would have taken about the same time as it did for me to go through two drive-thru menus. Being destructive is a chore with physics on its side. Being constructive needs creativity and planning. I am creative. Sometimes it is difficult to put this creativity in motion. It’s like words that catch my ear and sound beautiful. It’s like a just right jar of red paint – on clearance. Maybe if I saw my body as an act of art I would take better care of it.

I want a tattoo that says, “TOSKA” except for in Cyrillic. I won’t get one. He says they are too expensive and that it would be even more expensive when I decided I didn’t want it anymore. He won’t get one either.

“Toska – noun /ˈtō-skə/ – Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

So Richly Grieved

It’s a simple story – we were friends. He moved to LA, fell in love with a woman that didn’t like me (partially because I drank too much, I think, and I her boyfriend and I were too close.) They moved in together and pretty much that was it. I’ve seen him only a few times since then. They’ve long broken up, he’s moved to Africa and back and married a different woman.

I wish it was that simple.

It’s almost like he chose death. I can’t have my friend back, ever. No one believes me that I never was in love with him – but I was pretty drunk the summer we spent the most time together and we never wound up…. I won’t insult you with going into those details. I thought our friendship was strong. Turns out it wasn’t. I won’t go to any effort to contact him again. My donotcall.mal list is getting longer and longer and I can’t figure out why. It’s men, gay men, married men, married gay men, that either forget about me or decide they don’t want a relationship with me any more. I am naive enough to wonder why.

My bff T has reminded me, under a different situation with a similar end, that people would die to have friends so perfectly matched as the two of us. She is right – and she makes me really happy to think about. She is wonderful fun and kind and oh so generous. If I am wearing something new while drinking Peet’s coffee, it is because of T. I have another great friend, the mighty peridot (greenegem.wordpress.com) and we can talk about everything and do. She is not-bipolar, but has the heart of someone who does. I can even count my husband most of those days. While we are not very BFF we are going to get that way again, I am confident about that. I am so grateful for them! They bring so much light to my life. Today the sky is periwinkle. I am serious. I am not trying to be poet-or (and I never would use periwinkle in a poem anyway.) Thinking about my friends makes me think they are partially responsible for this clear, periwinkle sky. If they didn’t paint it, they helped make it possible for my head to be tilted back so I can see it.

When I’m thinking of my current non-friends I don’t think about my really good now friends. I, naturally, want to think about all the others – and of course they are many – that have broken or fallen by the wayside. They make me yell with frustration. Why do I even let them in to my new brain? I am reminded of Sherlock Holmes who has no idea the way the universe works but can sniff out a murderer with one of her abandoned shoes. If I could fill my little heart only with the people that loved my back, maybe my heart could grow until I truly can love my enemies, not in a way that frustrates me or degrades me, but with a pure, clear love. No mushy stuff – yes Jesus stuff.

the day I deserve

I am off kilter. Last night my husband and I watched Sherlock over the internet. If you have any sense you will find it and watch it yourself. I thought about it all last night and woke up this morning with him in my brain. I feel frightened. I’m attributing it to the scary British tv show, not to anything real…

But I’m anxious, no matter what caused it, I still am anxious and I need to do whatever it takes to get out of it so it doesn’t become depression, and depression doesn’t lead to death. The last time I was depressed my seven year old asked me, “Do you feel like you don’t deserve anything?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Yes, yes I do.” That really is a part of all the moods I travel through. You can call it self-pity. I don’t care what you call it, actually. For me, those feelings come and bad things happen. No chemically balanced person can say that.

“You deserve ME!” She told me with out stretched arms. A perfectly acceptable time for a hug. I deserve her.

I asked her if she ever felt that way. Her answer was a simple “no”. This child has so much self esteem it is, as her North Dakotan aunt would say, “disgusting.” She is confident. She is happy about 80% of the time. She will pretend to be sad, some of the time, but I have never seen her pretend to be happy. Maybe it comes naturally to her and maybe we’ve built it in to her. Either way, the feeling I don’t deserve anything is mostly gone for me today. It’s just the fear without discernible cause that is getting to me today.

It’s so Racy

I want to write something racy today.  Think Girl Interrupted – I am gorgeous and wild and am queen of the asylum.  I want to scandalize, break hearts and ruin other people’s relationships.  Oh yeah, that’s gonna be me.  I will make mental illness mine.

I will make it mine, but that means honesty.  Honestly, honesty for a person with any sort of chronic, dare I say permanent? disability is usually dull.  Every morning I drag myself down stairs, put something in my belly so I can pop a dozen pills.  I don’t tongue them (pretend to take them) and don’t take others so I get peppier.  (I did that once and that’s how I earned my first hospital vacation)  I don’t wash them down with a bottle of vodka.  Would that be wonderful and dramatic if I did?  Well, I don’t.  I quit drinking about two weeks before I landed in that hospital.  If I was still drinking, I might have wound up in jail or worse.

It took me about an hour and a half to make up this card.  It’s a 5×7 and has my legal first and last name, the insurance numbers and phone numbers, hospital numbers and addresses and the info for my shrink and my med doc.  The other side contains drug allergies and the drugs I take.

It’s so glamorous.  I wonder how I think I can write a memoir about mental illness when what I should do is write an encyclopedia with all the joy and wonder and humor.  Yeah.  Let’s do that.

Bells Might Ring

A lot of my friends are getting divorced, or want a divorce. It seems kinda funny to me, but I’ve heard this story before. Most of us marry in our twenties. A lot of us divorce in our thirties/early forties. Some of us want to remarry, and divorce with the hope they will find someone better, others swear they will never marry again.

My therapist is about six feet tall and has a Ph.D. She has been married five times and told me that her husband of many years is almost perfect. She says that moving out to California was a challenge before because of her liabilities, namely the height and education. I don’t know if Californians are less intimidating here in California or what, but she met her husband that day she moved here. Good for her. She is a smart cookie and I like her much more than I thought I would.

She rarely works with bipolar patients, but that is okay. She said that I do quite well. Many of her patients lie on the couch and watch t.v. all the day. I do creative, productive things and have relationships. I liked that she said that. I wonder if it is a disguise or what. My illness doesn’t spread over everything I do. There are days I am totally in control, and there are others where I run up a $350 bill on art supplies. Last week I had really bad cycling. I had minutes where I said, “What is bipolar, anyway? I don’t have it, I feel great.” By the time I parked my car I was ready to die. That went on about three days. It was thrilling and disappointing. I wasn’t sure if it what would happen. There was no living in the present. I like that idea, living in the present can be wonderful so some people, but when one is suicidal, there is nothing to comfort yourself in that moment. To live with a mood disorder means living in the next moment, and knowing that the moment will change.

More about that later.

The thing about prescription medication

I’ve been off kilter lately so I’ve had quite a few conversations with myself. When things get intense, we talk about tough stuff, like prescription medication. Whitney probably died because of some trouble with her prescription medication, and we know Michael did. Ya know what? I was right there with them. My doctor specifically said the only reason I didn’t go was because it, “wasn’t (my) time”.

Months later I recognize that it’s like I’ve gone through a dangerous initiation. Let’s say I did take the “I” tablets three times a day and the “I” pills twice. (That would be three times the prescribed dose) Top it off with some “A” or a glass of wine and that would be it. If there was an investigation they wouldn’t be able to tell if it was a suicide or a homicide. If I were famous there would be a great outcry against psychiatry and psychiatrists in general, even if the problem lies with me. Do I need to be less responsible for myself? Is it possible for me to be more?

I honestly don’t know. It’s 8:25 and I am exhausted. I pretty much made cards all day, with a quick trip to TJ’s. A friend, who ordered a dozen, is having a lot of trouble with her gastric bypass stuff. She likes giraffes and ordered a dozen cards so I will be back on the giraffe wagon. When I last talked to a banker he asked what my occupation was. I thought about it for a minute before I told him, “artist.” This year alone I’ve been “writer” “therapist” and now “artist”. All of them sound pretty cool. I say this so as to warn you: I am not pretty cool. I’m wearing green and pink snowflake pajamas at eight o’clock on a Saturday night. I am getting a sore throat, too. But enough of all my complaining.

Talk about Lucky….

A long strange trip. I’ve heard I’ve been lucky by a number of people who count. For those of you new to the blog, Since December 16th of last year I had been taking three times the amount of a cholesterol/heart attack prevention/anti-tremor drug. I was “lucky” I didn’t die.

This week, we get to take care of “Lucky”, our neighbor’s dog. He loves it here. We let him in the house, we take him on walk after walk and run and play and cuddle him. They will be home Thursday, and that is very sad. He is a charming fellow, and after we deciding making him sleep in the garage, like his owners do, was not going to work, he became a mild to moderately quiet dog. He doesn’t bark when someone comes to the door. He doesn’t knock anyone down. Of course, he is a doxie mix, and that is generally not something a small/medium dog can do. I want a dog so badly and love Lucky so much, it is really hard to give him back. I remind his mom we’d take him at anytime. Of course they love him, too. How could they give away their baby?

Maybe we can get “Lucky”. It’s not a miracle, it’s just a nice thing that could happen. (I believe that, the fact I am not dead after my medication error is a miracle.) I’m pro-miracle, but anti calling everything nice that happens to you a miracle. I don’t do it. I don’t have super passionate feelings about it, but think it’s an inaccurate view of life. I read somewhere that there are two ways to view life, one is that everything is sacred and a miracle or everything is not. I don’t believe that too much. I do believe I have been miracles; I believe I have felt them. Some times it is in the form of a phone call just at the right time, but I don’t think every phone call is a miracle, brought down by God.

But who cares what I believe? I’m alive and perhaps I shouldn’t be. I have seldom done anything so risky.

How Far Do you Go?

I deal with a lot of health care practitioners – I have a serious, incurable mental illness. (Bipolar, along with OCD and ADD). Before my diagnosis I played around with different things to help my depression – Rescue Remedy, that I became psychologically addicted to, St John’s Wort, which I never remembered to take, and therapists.

Once I was diagnosed with depression I was adamant that I would never need drugs for my illness, and if I’d just cowboy up it would go away. We were talking about a “major depressive disorder.” Years later when I received a more accurate diagnosis they admitted me to the hospital and started putting me on medications. [spoiler] Five years later I take at least eleven pills a day. [/spoiler] I see a therapist every couple of weeks and when I need it I go to group therapies. One of the groups I was a part of was called Dialectial Behavior Therapy (DBT) It is based on Buddhist teachings, although I believe it never fell in to heresy.

I think the “heresy” is where my long ole post fits in. In the groups, we studied mindfulness, learned to avoid black and white thinking and radical acceptance. These are a part of Zen Buddhism. While nothing in the class offended me, I did read a book by one of the speakers that I thought was repugnant. He repeatedly and purposefully used the Bible out of context to prove that all religious teachings espoused the same thing. It was frustrating and I am at the point I cannot take any of his teachings graciously because he so offended my faith. Now, if his messages totally turned my life around, I may not be so quick to kick him to the curb, but ultimately I believe that someone so spiritually lost is not someone I want to take spiritual advice from, even if the temptation was great. If he were a psychiatrist, though, that would be different. My psychiatrist is from the Middle East and shared with me that she meditated, but we didn’t discuss it further. It’s not appropriate, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she is an excellent doctor. If she was handing out crystals and fliers inviting me to worship them with her, that would be different, but she’s not.

All of this medicine that I am about to take is taken by someone who eschewed aspirin. Sometimes, when I get tired of it, I think, why do I do this? And the answer is, because you are going to die if you don’t.

I do want to be healed, most of the time. Bipolar can cave in on you if you’re not very careful. I am not willing to deny Jesus to do it, though. I think there are all kinds of practitioners that can do great work but I would not be willing to set aside my beliefs or relationship with God to have it done. I’m not passive, I just don’t want to be a part of it. I want my end of the equation to ultimately glorify God. For some reason I am thinking of that old “psychic surgery” scene in the end of the Man on the Moon movie. He has incurable, un-treatable cancer and he flies around the world for a “miracle.” http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xy53Un2AXpU (work safe) He sees that there is no miracle to be found.

I’m looking for a point to everything I just wrote. I suppose it’s this. I went far looking for help for myself. The best way for me to help myself was with medication and therapy – both decidedly “Western” although the medication more than the therapy. I also needed the body of Christ is work towards being well – that’s a Universal idea, right? I’m not ever going to be 100% well on this side of paradise, but I know that Western medication is going to push me along that path. Medication can be miraculous too, right?

Shoes, yes shoes

I like clothes. I look for beautiful colors and soft fabrics. Once I went in to a vintage store right after I got paid and bought, at a very good price, every single cashmere sweater in the place. I just bought two pair of shoes, frantically purchased at Famous Footwear because the outfit I was going to wear wasn’t going to work out and the solid grey I put together desperately needed silver shoes. I found them, and a pair of gray boots, too. But one, get one half price.

It’s not just that I love clothes. I love my daughter, my husband and having good hair. I love Jesus and the Holy Spirit and God. Chocolate and Italian sodas make higher on my list than clothes. I easily love them more that shoes, however: Shoes do something to me. I rarely need a pair of shoes, such as running shoes, go in to a store and buy them on sale. That is what people do that do not have psychiatric issues. I buy shoes when I need them powerfully. It happens during a severely depressive day or bad week. I think like this, “I can kill myself, or I can buy some new shoes.” So far, I have always chosen the shoes. I’ve come home with eight pair. I took them home and tried them all on and took some (not all) back. I reasoned that I should try them on in a place I felt comfortable. I will not be taking my boots and flats back. They are cute and I like them. They are also silver. I will give my husband the birthday and Christmas money I get and that will make us “even”.

Ah, glorious shoes. I will go upstairs, now, and clean out my closet.

A to do list

Just like you, I have too much to do. There is a lot of basic things I need to do every day to be healthy and whole. However, I do not do them. Life itself is so difficult, then ya throw in a few psychiatric issues and a job and a kid and things get totally unmanageable.

What I feel like I should do and want to do everyday:

Wake up at 6:30
Read some Bible
Do some yoga
Apply skin medicine and sunscreen
Wake up Small
Eat a nutritious breakfast
Brush teeth
Take medicine
Put on cute outfit with socks
Go to work
Come home
Do chores or go to Psychiatrist/Therapist/whatever appointment
Get Small from school.
Spend time doing creative, productive things
Participate in event/outing.
Exercise
Put on skin medicine
Brush teeth
Go to bed at 9:30

And sometime bathe, shave, and wrangle hair.
Also, blog and do other writing.

There is no way I can do all of this. I wouldn’t even want to try. But I want to do it.