Lost

There's a Firefly quote that's coming to mind today:

Inara: (to Simon) You're lost in the woods - we all are, even the captain. The difference is he likes it that way.
Mal: No, the difference is the woods are the only place I can see a clear path.

I feel like I'm lost in the woods these days, like I can't see my clear path. I stumble around my days, the apartment, looking for things to do, but unable to focus enough to do them. Jb's on my case again about not doing anything around the apartment other than cooking, bills, and groceries. These days, that's a lot to me. It's difficult enough for me to sit down and write up a list of groceries for 13-14 days worth of meals, but now that our budget's so tight, I have to add in the math, the coupon/circular, the adjusted cost, how many meals I can stretch one pound of meat. I know useless things, like eggs cost $2, milk $3.50, butter $4.50, cheese $5, unless you find a 2 for $6 sale. Sales on meat are deceiving, and unless you get there early, they're gone. It takes me all day to create a list.

I'm also lost as to what to do with myself. I once saw a clear path: Master's in Writing, writer. Then that diverged and I threw a possible PhD in Rhetoric in there, afraid I couldn't write. Then even that branched off to library work, my job at the library downtown, thoughts about a Master's in Library Science. But every time I saw a clear path, it split on me, until I had no path, only the woods closing in around me, and the knowledge that I was scared and unhappy. Now, I've lost everything: all direction, any clear path. And shouldn't that be freeing? But now I'm pigeonholed: "unstable," "bipolar," "irrational," "emotional," "depressed," "anxious," "unemployed." It's a loss of control and power, and I'm floundering. I can't see the tress for the forest.

I re-read those first two paragraphs, and they don't even make sense to me. Everything is disjointed. I'm starting to sleep more, later. Napping. I am swinging back down into a depression. In one of McMann's web pages he talks about going into the doctor to talk about his moderate depression, or his major depression, or the minor depression on top of his major depression, as if depression were a house of blocks that could be built. It's like a Dave Carter song:

One fine morning when my ship comes in
Gonna pack my fortune, take it home again
Stack my sorrows like stones until
I've built me a mansion on a high, high hill.

Depression is so full of metaphor. And sometimes I wonder if that isn't why while depressed and even manic, I've read that so many of us turn to music, poems, lyrics, like magpies, constantly murmuring others words in our heads, over and over, as if they could speak for us when we can't even speak for ourselves. It's like the butterfly in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn:

You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't seem to keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.

And this is where it begins to get tragic for me. This whole post--useless. Rambling. Incoherent. I can't remember my point, I can't remember my metaphors, all I hear in my head are lyrics, poignant quotes, and all I feel is this upwelling need for meaning, somewhere, somehow. Sometimes I think the only thing that mattered to me was the stint I spent teaching. Peter S. Beagle again:

Only reason I've lasted this long is I had this stupid job teaching beautiful, useless stuff to idiots.

And what writer would depend on every other writer to supply her own words? But I can't use them now, and I fumble. Everything is subject-verb-object with a conjunction thrown into the mix, usually the same conjunctions. So I might as well end this with one last quote from The Little Hours by Dorothy Parker:

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

And that's my mind these days. That's me.

All in My Head

I don't know who I am. I can't define myself by any one title: friend, daughter, partner, writer, bum, mentally ill. I love animals, books, words, things beyond my ken. But more and more, Shakespeare runs through my head:

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That thousands of strange shadows on you tend.

I live so much of my life in my head that at times I feel completely disconnected from reality and from those around me, as if the only reality is that of my dreams, my inner imaginings. Characters, dialogue, scenes, whole stories, vivid dreams, they play themselves out inside my head so that it's more interesting to reside there, where things seem more true than the brittle reality of the world around me. I always feel twice removed from the world.

Maybe that's why I'm always so desperate for my loves to pull me into and keep me in the real world, as if they could possibly have responsibility for me. It's an expectation doomed to disappointment. And I always am. Stupid me.

2:06 p.m. Huh

I feel . . . befuddled today. Slightly off. Not necessarily depressed, but not necessarily well. I feel confused, and a bit sharp, with some back and forth between the two. My focus still wanders, and the four walls close in when you're not working, and I haven't been terribly useful, but I did quite a bit of reading today, which means my mood is shifting. I'm starting to wonder if I didn't go into the hospital manic instead of depressed. Because I don't remember being depressed. I do, however, remember being suicidal, and my research has told me that suicide is more likely when a patient is in a manic state. I know I'd had a shuttery, jittery, can't sit still, hyperventilating sort of breakdown the morning I was hospitalized. Once I knew I was leaving my job and that it was unlikely I'd be back soon, I packed up all my things and ran. I couldn't wait for Jb to come get me. I had to get out. I had to get away. I went to wait at Starbucks to be picked up, and I could barely keep everything in. In the hospital, I was irritated, angry, antsy, often walking the halls, going from room to room, unable to sit through a whole group therapy session. But . . . I don't know. Every emotion is put into question now, and I don't know how I truly feel at any given time. Maybe that's why I feel so befuddled. Are mentally ill patients emotionally stunted? Unable to know how they're feeling because they have no sense of what a "normal" baseline feels like?

Change

As Jb puts it, "It happens." But then, so does shit if you believe the bumper sticker, and this week has just been a shit kicker for me. Major life changes have always been a trigger for me. This move was no exception. The last few days before the move I was already in a passive-aggressive state. The two days of the move, I was snappy, angry, bitchy, and hard to deal with. Jb and I went 'round several times during those two days, and even more since the move.

I actually had a small breakdown over not being able to put my own computer together. This from the girl who's always been capable with her own computer setup, who used to troubleshoot computers for her co-workers, etc., etc. This time, though, the wires were too much, and I sat there throwing things around and having a tantrum, all the time looking at the wires like they were some foreign entity I couldn't wrap my mind around. And that pissed me off. I can't explain the frustration. Somehow the fight escalated to me swearing I'd leave Jb -- and all sorts of irrational nonsense.

That night, in bed, when I was far calmer, Jb told me that I couldn't control my moods anymore, that it was worse now than before I went into the hospital. And I feel so helpless in the face of these moods. They overtake me on a whim. I hadn't realized how mercurial my moods had been until Jb pointed it out to me. And at least, at the time, I was in a rational state where I could really look back on the last few days and see that Jb was right. That hasn't stopped the moods, though. We had another fight yesterday, and I ended up sitting in the bathtub for a while. We've already snapped at each other this morning.

The following are among the things that are setting me off:

• My computer setup: I hate it. It's uncomfortable, too compact, and I have no where to put my feet up, which is crucial to me because of the lymphadema in my legs. But I have no space, and I can't stand that. I can't stand not having personal space.

• The bed: It is on the floor sans frame. I hate this. It's difficult to get up, and frankly, I slept on the floor on a futon the entire time I was in college and at my ex's place, but I was 21. I'm freakin' 32-years-old. I want a proper bed frame. I'm too old for this shit, and I wake up every day feeling like someone pummeled me during the night.

• My knee: The osteo-arthritis is acting up. Maybe due to all the rain we've had, maybe because it tends to be seasonal. Either way, it hurts like hell when I'm trying to get to sleep at night, and the computer setup isn't helping any, neither is the bed.

• Cutting: Jb wants to cut this Ikea bed table we have to give me some sort of setup that gives me more room, but (1) I don't want him cutting up a $200 piece of furniture and (2) it won't solve anything because I need a solid base, like the end of the bed frame, to put my feet up. I've been trying a storage container, but the sucker moves all over the place, my keyboard feels like it's sliding off my lap, and it's uncomfortable as hell.

Also, when Jb brought home the saw and measuring tape to modify the Ikea table, I broke down in a crying fit, trying to explain that it was too much change all at once. That I needed time to test out the new setup, to even see if I liked it. I was so brittle from all the newness. I needed time to get my bearings. I swear to God modifying that table would have been the last straw for me.

So, in summation, the apartment is quite nice with its hardwood floors, its quaint window frames that sometimes need to be propped open, and the wild jungle that is our backyard and which I can see through the kitchen window. It's grown on me, though I spent the first few days walking through the place, touching things, opening and closing things, like some befuddled ghost who's trying to understand her surroundings. The neighborhood is quiet, you can hear birds, but little else. And it smells green and loamy when it rains. The apartment feels homey, mostly because it's one of five apartments in an old house from the 1940s. (This is why it's quaint. I'd swear the cabinets and a few other things hail from the '40s, as does the washer/dryer and the stove.) We've met the upstairs and downstairs neighbors.

All this change makes me feel very Benny and Joon-ish, though, as if I'm Joon: fine as long as I'm in an environment I'm comfortable in, but change anything, take me out of my comfort zone, and I start to flip out emotionally, lashing out at Jb and exhibiting a sort of dysphoric mania: the depression and the anger and irritability of hypomania mixed. It's a little like being in a life raft in a raging sea with a small bucket, trying to keep the water from overwhelming the boat. Unfortunately, Jb's no Sam, and he's not dealing well with my outbursts of late. Not that I blame him, but it does remind me that bipolar people are "three and a half times more likely to [`divorce'] than the rest of the population."

Furthermore, the entire time I was unable to log onto the internet because of Comcast's ineptitude, I didn't write. Even Jb asked if I'd been writing, suggesting I probably should be keeping up with that, that he thought it was a good outlet for me. But I simply didn't want to. I felt like I had nothing to say. When in reality, I had plenty to say, especially to Jb. It just all came out in this destructive, irrational way. And part of me feels guilty about it, and part of me feels like I had the right to vent my spleen. That's the grandiosity: the thinking that I'm entitled to more than other people, that I'm different, better somehow. More and more I hear Jb telling me: "You don't care about my feelings, that I'm hurt. You just don't care." And to a point, he's right. There are certain moments when nothing matters to me but me. As if I'm due more than everyone else. And that's solipistic to say the least.

I do care, though. I just don't know how to show it anymore. I feel like an emotional retard, unable to access certain emotions, while others are making hay while the sun shines.

10:58 a.m. Forgetful

I wake up at 10:31 a.m. from some dream where I'm driving around with two younger men, trying to keep them occupied, for what reason I don't know, and the front of my sweater is unraveling. The boy driving seems to be waiting for it to unravel completely, which I find flattering, assuming he has some sort of cow-eyed crush on me. The dream ends with an ego-shattering realization that he simply likes looking at breasts and it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Waking up always leaves me groggy now, and it's not uncommon for me to wake up 2-3 times, then go back to sleep, while the morning creeps into afternoon. The latest I've slept this week? 2:30 p.m. A new record for me.

I've gotten up to get some bread, butter, and cheap brie (I'm proud that it's cheap, and that I'm eating it in quarters) for breakfast, but I'm not really hungry. If I think about food, I think about the cookie dough in the fridge. That's the sugar cravings from the Remeron. The grogginess and disturbing befuddlement that comes and goes may be the Remeron, too.

Because I'm forgetful now. Small things. And big things. Like locking myself out twice yesterday. Once because I forgot my keys, and the second time, because I picked up the wrong keys. I stood down in the mail room yesterday looking at the wrong keys in my hand absolutely unable to comprehend that I had keys in my hand, and that they were the wrong ones. Once my brain had established this in its painfully slow way, I went to try to open my mailbox with them anyway. Within seconds, I'd forgotten I had the wrong keys in my hand.

Then, this morning, I completely forget the maintenance men were supposed to come do the preliminary walk-through of our apartment before we move. The knock on the door is a complete surprise. That I'm surprised, however, doesn't surprise me. Instead, I think I should start writing these things down.

That I want to write... Now that's something that also surprises me, but in a completely different way. I haven't written or read anything since hospital. That's coming on three months now. So I wonder: Does this mean I'm getting better? Are the meds kicking in? Or is it only another up in an up-and-down world. And if so, when will the down come? And how deep will it be?