Here's The Thing

Complete and utter breakdown in the middle of a movie that triggered me, right? Today? Zilch. Some anxiety about going to the class on being your own defendant for a bankruptcy suit, which would probably cause quite a few people anxiety, but otherwise, nada. Course, the extra dose of Klonopin could be helping with that. As soon as I feel The Nerves coming on, I pop my mid-day pill. It seems to work quick enough, or so my mind thinks.

But some days, like today, I'm still amazed at all the fuss, the taking of pills, the two sessions a week of therapy. I feel -- really feel -- that I could handle this on my own if I'd only pull myself up by the boot straps and be brave. And get this, of all the things I remember today when writing about this, I remember a random Dolly Parton song I caught while changing channels past CMT:

"A girlfriend came to my house
Started cryin' on my shoulder Sunday evening
She was spinnin' such a sad tale
I could not believe the yarn that she was weavin'
So negative the words she had to say
I said if I had a violin I'd play."

And that's why we have therapists. Because I mean, truly, who wants to listen to such a person. Waiter, pity party for one please, with some cheese and whine to go with it. I'd certainly rather belong to Our Lady of Piss and Vinegar and show a little more backbone. Sometimes I wonder how much of the mental illness is what impairs me and how much of it is my grief over the diagnosis. In time, the mental illness I can manage, and God knows, I'll get over the grief.

Big Mistake

HBO had Girl, Interrupted on their OnDemand channel listing, so I told myself I'd watch it, when Jb wasn't home. And it's not me, it's not what happened to me, or where I went. It's the 1960's for Christ's sake. But there's so much there that rings true, and when the head nurse dumps Winona Ryder in the bathtub... I had to stop the fucking movie.

Valerie: You know, I can take a lot of crazy shit from a lot of crazy people - but you... you are *not* crazy.
Susanna: Then what's wrong with me, huh? What the fuck is going on inside my head? Tell me, *Dr. Val*. What's your diag-nonsense?
Valerie: You are a lazy, self-indulgent *little girl*, who is driving herself crazy.

Is that all I am? A lazy, self-indulgent "little girl?" Because I don't fucking feel crazy. I don't talk to myself, I don't cut myself, I don't lose complete touch with reality. But I can't stop crying, and part of me wants to be back in the hospital, back where I had friends, where I knew people, where seeing someone get discharged was enough to blow you over so that you were lying in bed all day. And each day new people rotate in and out, in and out. But you know the score, and when you snap, the staff is paid to deal with it, not like your boyfriend, not like the ones you love. And every day gets harder and harder.

Jb and I had a fight last night, and he walked out on me this morning--without even a word. Got dressed and left. And it's my fault. It's my fault. I feel like I'm going to explode. Like that game you played with dandelions, singing, "Mama had a baby and its head popped off." At least in the hospital, you all spoke the same language, and when someone broke down, you understood. No one judged you, no one asked anything of you, no one cared what you did as long as you took your meds and showed up for meals. But now things matter, and I can't even commute to the therapist without feeling like I'm going to throw up.

From Up to Down in 10m Flat

Jb and I go out driving, one of the things we do almost every weekend since we've so little money. Usually, it's just what I need: time out of the house, good tunes, time with Jb away from the tv and the computer. Today, it's fine for an hour and a half. Then we end up at a lighthouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence that makes the shabby attraction look like a prison yard with the Chesapeake just beyond the fence, a concrete divide between the haves and have nots: those who can afford to be out boating on the lake and those who stand, locked away from the private beach. It's hot, depressing, and we're an hour and a half from home. I'm restless to get gone, and snappish by the time we're back in the car. The second half of the drive is full of crap music, silence, and then a song comes on and starts triggering me. I'm suddenly desperate for home, missing my family, my childhood, thoughts full of the last ten years, the knowledge that I'm already 32, almost 33, knowing the likelihood that I'll be anything come 40 enough to make me tear up, and there I am, crying behind my sunglasses, trying not to let Jb see, even when he's asking what's wrong. And what is there to say? I'm sick of always saying: I don't know. I just went from fine to depressed in 10 minutes, and I'm so pissed at myself that the disgust is thick. I'm tired of this. Jb must be tired of this. I can't ride these crests and dips. I know, there, in the car, that I need someone to talk to. I need to find myself a therapist. And soon. Because I am not dealing. I am not dealing with this up and down, this here and there, and the guilt of my mood always affecting the people around me that I love is strong. I'm so frightened that they'll suddenly see, suddenly see me, and throw their hands up in frustration, wash their hands of me. I can hardly blame them when I feel like doing the same myself sometimes. I'm even convinced, sometimes, that it'd be better for everyone involved if I lived my own life, away from everyone else's.

And Away She Rides

I'm soaring right now. It's 11:53pm and my eyes want sleep, but inside, inside I'm wired. I've been like this most of the day, neither here nor there, not able to concentrate on any one thing. Spurts of productivity followed by spurts of a scatter shot mind. Tonight's trigger is Carbon Leaf, "Under the Wire," "Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat" and "The Girl and Her Horse." When Dar Williams used to send me flying with songs like "The Ocean" and "Iowa," I used to wonder if certain chords triggered certain states. If there was a correlation between sound and mood. If songs in the key of G were the ones most likely to set me galloping, and maybe those in the key of E, maybe those were the ones that sunk me. Sure, stress, seasonal change, major life changes, these are all triggers, but I swear that my daily triggers are much smaller: music, poetry, books, writing, ideas. I'm two for two today. I'm reading the kind of good, effortless writing that kills, sets the characters off in my head, until I'm doing as much fantasizing about the book as I am reading it. Ten pages read, twenty minute intersessions, lost in make believe and a vast inner world that's all too easy to slip into. And music, if it strikes me, I listen to over, and over, and over, ad nauseum. I can't get enough of the high it sends me on, of the thought of an open road, an open window, wind whipping fresh in my face. It's the runaways, and they're worse at night. Night drives are as much a trigger as the result of a trigger. They're my great escape, my run for the border. Something has to fill me up inside, freedom, miles, lights. And I want one tonight, but Jb can't keep up with me tonight. So I'll lie in bed, good and sweet, and my mind will go 'round and 'round, setting up scenarios, letting characters come to the fore, focusing on phrases, the repetition of words, until words are only sound, and the sounds become foreign, and I keep repeating them, repetition bringing them back 'round to meaning. But there's no sleep in that, not until my body simply gives way, or my mind runs out.

Snap

Just like that. I'm standing at the kitchen sink, shelling shrimp, lost in despair, and singing Roseanne Cash's "Bells and Roses" in my head:

Everything was mine
But it's long stripped away
Will you love me if I'm naked
Or as silent as a grave.

If you see who I really am
Will you still wanna stay
There's a danger in this love
And I want to be that brave.

Bells and roses
A sign of departure
But I love them just the same
Bells and roses
A sign of survival
On the door into this pain.

Jb comes home in a dark, snappish mood. Suddenly, I'm seven again, and my mother is raging at me, and there's no perfection I could ever achieve that would ease her pain. Because, like me, she's mentally unstable. And when Jb lashes out at me, I curl inward, go quiet, and the same thoughts play over and over: Maybe if I were sane, maybe if I were beautiful, maybe if I were the right size, the right shape, the tv girlfriend, the perfect girlfriend. Maybe then, he'd be happy with me. Maybe I would do something right, and I wouldn't be repeating stanzas of songs over and over and over while the water runs in the sink:

Now I'll go in if you say I must
But I'd rather let it go
There are people I will never trust
And things that I can't know

Kiss you 'til we turn to stone
Or fight you 'til we're blind
But you love me when you're left alone
And it makes me wanna die

Bells and roses
Wake up the senses
To remind me who I am.

And I'm reminded: I am flawed. I am broken. The trigger is like a switch, my mood like night and day. And I can't let the pain or the fight go.