Dear Allison,
At church today, an elderly woman stood during the “Joys and Sorrows”-sharing part of the service to tell the community about her sorrow, which was that she was unable to be by her “best friend in the world’s” side as her friend’s life was coming to a close on the other side of the country. She told us this, then took a moment to look to the side before blurting, “…I don’t know what I can do… or what I’m going to do…” and then turning to light a candle. Meanwhile, I buried my face in my hands to hide my now-convulsive sobs; I wanted nothing more than to intercept the woman with an embrace as she made her way, deflated and burdened, to her seat. Without thinking it, I realized that that woman may one day be me and I may be talking about you.
And then I thought, “God, I hope I die before Allison does so I never have to live without her.”
And then I remembered how much you fucking loathe that Winnie the Pooh quote about him wanting his friend to die a day after him so he doesn’t have to live without him and what a selfish douchenozzle move that is to wish on a friend - that they’d spend their last day in total misery because their BFF just died AND they’re slowly dying. And then I started giggling about how that sort of thing pisses you off enough to make one of your rare rants about it.

We met ten years ago to this week, by the way.

I’m sure you’ve realized in retrospect that you met me at the exact moment I reached the precipice of my freefall into unfuckingimaginable insanity/destruction after years of a slow-but-consistent descent in prologue. Really, the fact that we were still friends within a year of meeting each other is miraculous in itself because HolyLordballs, was I busy losing my damned mind.

I have a confession I never actually verbalized to you: you were my Bright Spot then. I remember meeting you and going to your dorm room and seeing this art that you’d created just because you wanted to make a prettier space for yourself (wha?! I didn’t know people did that! I thought people made art to show it off to each other or because their art teacher assigned it or because they wanted to submit it to something and get “famous”) and you sang songs that you’d written for your own amusement and you were this completely self-actualized, energetic being in a world of idiots (read: me) who were flailing around trying to leech energy off anything they thought was “cool” or “important” at the time and it was an unbelievable state of mind to encounter from where I was. Because, most of the time, when there’s someone who is somehow “above” the mentality of their peers, he or she has to have some sort of following or need to declare their mental/spiritual/artistic superiority to everyone else - especially if that person has been recently liberated from the confines of high school. But not you, dude. You just sort of did what you did and you liked what you liked and you were completely oblivious to the fact that you weren’t just “different”, but really, genuinely, special. (And not “special” like our generation’s everybody’s-special-in-their-own-snowflake-way “special”, but special like holy-shit-she’s-going-to-change-lives-and-do-shit-that-bends-reality special.) I’m not saying that either one of us knew what, exactly, you were supposed to do with all that “special”-ness at that point in the game and, you know, you’ve had a bit of a learning process with it, but I still knew then. Even though at the time, I was busy being either a)completely obliterated or b)completely absorbed in that disgustingly destructive relationship I was enamored with, I still recognized the energy we had together, even when people around us did not. (And still don’t, I think. I’m okay in the idea that we confuse people, though.)

ANYWAY. I don’t wanna bore you with a wordy scrapbook of memories ’cause, you know, we’ve talked about them to a masturbatory degree. (The only people who love talking about how awesome their situation is more than we do are Burning Man attendees…)
But, after a decade, I’m convinced that there has to be something Bigger going on here than two weirdos having befriended each other in a bullshit theater class. (Seriously. That class was buuuulllshiiiit. “Constructive Rest Position”? Learning to tremble? Bite my ass, Jermaine.)

You loved me when I hated myself so much I literally tried to murder myself. You have loved me when I let my demons reject you from my life. You have had that same delusional faith in me even when my life was nothing more than rolling out of my bed at my parents’ house and driving to the technical college up the road in my pajamas day after day because I’d failed at literally everything else. When I told you I was pregnant by some dude I’d been dating for 3 months, (less than a year after my second mental hospitalization, ohbytheway) your immediate response was to exclaim “CONGRATULATIONS!” and send me a bouquet of my favorite flower (lilies) the next morning, even though everyone else around me provided me with silence and fear for the next month. You have cheered me on from the sidelines, even when you were literally my only enthusiastic fan and you have never once shown any doubt that I wasn’t the person you’ve been trying to convince me that I am, even though I’ve done things to contradict that hypothesis many, many times.

Even though the noises in my mind sometimes get too loud for me to focus, I want you to know that I have never stopped loving you just as much. I cried every night you slept in the hospital and, aching with powerlessness, leapt at the chance to cram all your necessities (read: record player, paints) into my Jeep from Greensboro to Charlotte. I blew all my money from that coffee-shop job of mine for those monthly (sometimes fortnightly) treks up to Asheville to see you and I never once hesitated to plaster your art all over my dwelling space the minute it was given, in any form. I made sure to practice singing along to the more obscure PJ songs so I’d know all the words for the “next time” we got to see them perform (it totally worked!) I have always continued to talk to Chloe about you and show her pictures so she wouldn’t forget her godmother between the times she got to see you.

But I am, by no means, unaware that I’ve dropped the ball a lot and, when looking at this friendship and identifying its role within my life from this vantage point, I can’t help but feel the deepest regrets for the times I’ve let you down - you more than with anyone else I’ve ever disappointed. (Don’t tell my mom.) Dismissing your declining health and its symptoms (and understandable insecurity of those symptoms that compounded them) as “selfishness”, I pulled myself away from you and cut you off completely, in the name of “self-preservation”, instead of bothering to find out what, exactly, was at the root of your uncharacteristic actions. In my heart, I knew better, Allison; I know you better than to assume you’re just another brainless, unaware victim of self-absorbed-twentysomething-ism… why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I stop to look deeper? Why didn’t I at least recognize that you weren’t being yourself - that something was obviously hurting you? I don’t know, Allison. I’ve spent hours of time wondering to myself what the hell kind of mental state I could’ve let myself get to in which I would completely ignore the “you” I inherently know and then regard your disease as your Self so much that I’d turn my back on you entirely. This time spent has only caused me insufferable pain - pain that worsens when I contrast my actions with the ones you’ve made when the roles have been reversed. As a friend, by comparison, I have been a selfish coward whose actions haven’t supported all those rambling speeches about your greatness I’ve made over the years. I don’t know why I have ever betrayed your trust or love when you have never once been disloyal to me, but I do know that I may never forgive myself for it. It’s just another testament to your wonderfulness that you somehow have, as always, seen that these actions aren’t indicative of my real Self and have forgiven me. Additionally, you have never once held me hostage for my shortcomings… Don’t think I don’t always carry those truths with me.

I always say that Chloe was The Thing That Saved My Life, but you need to know that YOU have constantly been The Thing That Makes Me Better. You bring out something in me that makes me a totally different person than the one I always thought I was; the energy I get when you’re around makes me love being alive and love being present and love being creative and fucking LOVE being myself. That sounds inane and melodramatic and really, really adolescent, but it’s true; you make me really happy to love the things I love. (”I JUST LOVE THE STUFF I LOVE!!!”) Just like I’d always kept my burning passion for Pearl Jam stuck in my pocket until I met you and let it reignite like crazy ever since, you’ve been the one to give me permission to really hurl myself at my loves, regardless of how idiotic they look to everyone else. You’re the one who lets me ramble for hours about Jim Henson/“Sesame Street” and who wants to watch “Tommy” 4,000 times to blabber about its nuances with me and you’re the one who will introduce me to new stand-up comedians or let me subject you to them and then dissect their genius for years upon years and you’re totally okay with spending Bear’s naptime just hanging out, smoking a hookah, drinking a shitload of Cheerwine, watching/running commentary during “Gia” and giggling about how fabulous it all is after making freshly-picked-strawberry-jam and you’re the one who gives me confidence to submit my writing to other people when I think it’s not terrible and you’re the one who gave me the balls to actually put that first stencil to use tagging various landmarks by immediately shouting “YES! LET’S DO IT!” and you’re the one who fucking laughs her ass off when I make a joke that I think is pretty good. You’re the one (many times the only one) who encourages me to not only figure out exactly what it is that I am, but to get really good at being that thing and then showing it to other people, when you will cheer loudly about it. Jesus Christ! Just writing that makes me feel unworthy.
Oh, but oh yeah! AND you’re able to do all of this cheerleading while also going out and seeking your own identity and truth and rocking at that, too.
DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS!? Do you have any idea how fucking lucky I am to have found the aforementioned person AND that that person hasn’t totally given up on me yet AT ALL EVER (maybe because she’s insane, but I’m okay with that)!?!?!?! Because I don’t. I literally cannot conceive the odds of finding someone as special as you, having you come into and stay in my life for this long, and giving me all the gifts you have (and not just because I’m terrible at math…)

So, yeah. I just wanted you to know that I thought about all this today in church and realized that I’ll be talking about you still if I make it to 70 years old. And I realized that I would literally peel the skin off my back and sew it into a greasy, bloody skin-shirt for you if you absolutely needed it [in some post-apocalyptic, dystopian reality where that would somehow be crucial for survival.] (That sort of plot-hole is why I don’t write sci-fi.)
And I hope you know that everything I’ve ever said about your energy and vibrancy and incredible talent is the truth and is one of the rare, few things I Definitely Believe In. And I hope you know that I love you and have loved you no matter what my slow-to-adapt mind has convinced me of. I feel like you know these things, but I also felt like I needed to state them plainly and in print, where they could be cited and referenced.
More than anything, though, I’m so grateful that you’ve been such a definitive part of my last ten years. I don’t want to say anything hokey or forecasting about the future because that always seems to backfire for morons (ex: “Hope I die before I get old” - P.T.), but do know that these last ten years have been wonderful (even when they were fuckinggoddamnawfully terrible) because you have been in them.

Thank you so very much, Allison. Even if all our inside jokes and all our co-creations and all our memories and all our shared loves were suddenly stripped away from my conscious mind, I would still love you and everything you inherently are. I promise.

Right behind you,
L P-S

I had a handful of things I was distraught about within my daily life before the holidays started and, so, to distract myself from those things, I flung myself into festive insanity headfirst, like sending Christmas cards and arranging for a visit from an old friend and planning overzealously for a day-with-a-bride-friend and eating at my local cupcake shop every day for a month and, you know… stuff. Don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed these distractions, but I ultimately knew that it would mean my return to my Underlying Problems eventually and, alas. Here we are.

Some things in my psyche have changed in big ways, which is good for my day-to-day mentality: I’ve found peace with and befriended a major antagonist from my past (no, for real) and learned/came-to-peace with some other truths surrounding the whole context of our relationship, which clears up an absolute ton of weight sitting in the back of my subconscious (although I’ve tended to keep that part quiet in the years since we last spoke because, frankly, I hated that it was even there. ANYWAY.) Greg and I are in a really good, forward-moving, mentally healthy place; the Bear is slowly becoming more independent and I feel like I’m able to liberate her to her own volition a lot more, which is more rewarding than the feeling of being sapped of needs. A friend gave me a new perspective on writing this memoir (write it more like an editor reading someone else’s work instead of trying to re-live all that emotion and horseshit for the purpose of producing “authentic” work. So, basically, start editing those blog entries I’ve kept on a hard drive for some 8 years now) which is also incredibly freeing.

But, aside from that, there is still the Fear I’m finding myself faced with in my writing and the loneliness that’s been dragging me into stasis. I have set-in-stone, proactive plans to fix these things in the near future (like, I’m starting yoga classes this week and I’m taking the Bear horseback riding on Saturday and I’m making a writing schedule for myself so I’m holding myself to at least some sort of discipline.

But, if we’re being honest here (and I am), I woke up this morning and found that my excited, engaged energy from the last month has ground to a halt and I’m staring into the abyss of 2012 with a feeling of familiar dread and sinking morale. No matter how much I’m pep-talking myself (and, again, I definitely am), I’m fighting off tears and the urge to create another distraction for myself. I feel confident I could wallow in either for years if I really wanted to, mostly because I already have.

I’m reminded of an old saying a friend once shared: “On good days, chop wood and haul water. On bad days, chop wood and haul water.”

It’s funny; you would’ve thought with all my therapy and introspection and noisy, unrelenting psychoblather about myself in these last years, I would’ve picked up on this before now. But nope. Finally hit me tonight.

It doesn’t matter how many people love me and give me so much of their time and patience and attention and unconditional (perhaps delusional) encouragement and how many people have done so over the course of my life that have outnumbered those who haven’t, if I am rejected by someone I thought was a friend without any closing discourse or response to my humble attempts at communication, I go into Ultimate HolyCrap Meltdown Mode. It doesn’t matter if this person/these people (it’s plural at the moment) are people that I’ve known for my whole life or less than a year, or if they’re people I’d keep on my Top 10 List of Friends, being rejected and dismissed without the consideration/respect for an explanation (even when I’m practically begging for it), I just straight-up lose my shit, reminiscent of the aching nights of self-loathing agony I endured in high school.

Without any adherence to the Four Agreements I tend to strongly believe in and desire to live within, I immediately/automatically turn inward and start tearing things apart. I begin to question my entire self-worth, what I’m doing with my life, what kind of person I am, why people bother with me in the first place. There is the old, almost-forgotten impulse to drive sharp objects into my forearms and thighs, the desire to randomly contact every person who ever rejected me in the last 20 years and demand answers, a barrage of memories to reiterate that feeling of impact when the realization of rejection first hits, the compulsion to contact any person I feel I might have wronged in the slightest and beg forgiveness for being such a shitty, horrible person in general and thank them for taking time out of their significant lives to pay attention to me, and that great, ever-present urge to drink or medicate myself until I can’t feel the powerlessness anymore.

Whoa.

Aaahhhm, I’ve still got some shit to deal with, apparently. Luckily, this all comes right after my physiological problems have been beaten back for a while and I’m actually in a level-headed spot for the most part. So this eruption of emotions comes at a time when my mental state is relatively stable, thus alerting me to the fact that it must be some sort of trigger. And, while it sucks a good deal, it’s definitely beneficial to be able to recognize these things, although, again, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long. Maybe I just needed all the exterior bullshit stripped away before I could deal with this one major quirk as it is singled out.

No, I know I have a shitload of people who care about me (and who bother to read me as I continue to ramble about being a neurotic nutjob) and I know I have a solid base of at least 10 friends whom I could call at any moment, after any length of time without speaking and say, “I NEED you,” and that person would be right there with me - no questions asked. I know that I have people I’ve tricked into believing that I am intelligent and capable and one of them even thought I was pretty enough to sign some papers saying he’d live with me and give me kisses every day for the rest of our lives. I know I’ve been blessed with scores of people who believe in me and don’t give up on me just because I’m a bit “off” and tend to screw up from time to time. (In fact, I just reunited with an old friend with whom I’ve had an on-and-off/kind of roller-coaster-y friendship with - due to our varied insanities/personal lives - who still finds me “amazing and intelligent” after having not spoken in two years and is okay with me just diving right back in where I left off.) I’m surrounded by so many wonderful people that it’s baffling, actually, but, should I lose one or two, my entire sense of self and my belief that I’m capable of maintaining a decent friendship are both shaken to the core and I am left with nothing short of the inherent knowledge that I am worthless and unlovable.

Instead of, you know, considering that their reactions might not have anything to do with me at all (like a sane person.)

I mean, mourning the loss of a friendship is one thing, but being immediately driven to attempting self-destruction because of someone else’s inability to rationally discuss a relationship-ending problem with a friend like an adult? That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I should probably have that looked at…

So, yeah, right now I’m hurting a lot. And I’m confused and vulnerable and fighting the temptation to just shut up and hermit myself away forever, in fear that everyone else in my life will eventually figure out what these recent rejectors must’ve and leave, too. And I’m scared that, because I don’t understand why I was rejected and why I wasn’t respected enough to be given an answer, I’m doing something wrong in my relationships that’s going to continue. And I’m probably crying too much.

But I also learned something about myself that’s apparently pretty fucking huge and may explain a great deal of my actions in the last 15 years. So I’m gonna be one of those obnoxious ever-self-discovering-types and thank the Universe for this learning experience, just like those doe-eyed optimists I always want to punch in the face. I’m grateful for the opportunity to realize that I have an unnatural reaction to human conflict/dynamic and now I have the ability to fix it… even though it’s probably going to suck, ’cause most therapy does.

Wooooo. Lemons to lemonade and stuff.

But, for now, I’m going to sit here and be confused and try to distract myself with funny videos of cats and fight the urge to send my first boyfriend yet another email about why he broke up with me in 1997. At least there’s no Ben & Jerry’s in the house; I’d hate to be an all-encompassing cliche.

No, Look, You,

I thought I told you we were effing done, CrazyMind. I pwned your usual springtime depression, deflected your counter-attack of mania and said my adieus. So whateverthefuck you’ve got hanging on right now is not fucking cool with me.

I’ve lost 15 lbs. in 2 weeks. My house looks like a meth addict lives here. Every single emotion I feel causes ripples of pain down my body entire body, even to a muscular level (even going out and getting the goddamned mail.) My brain WILL NOT shut the fuck up. About anything. I grasp onto one idea/thought/sentiment and it wears me down until I can’t even breathe anymore (or sleep, for that matter), even if it’s the most banal thought to begin with.

And, oh, how I’ve tried to quell you since you started your usual Mental Tantrum back in March. I’ve tried meditation, I’ve tried hypnosis, I’ve tried breathing, I’ve tried going out for a stroll, I’ve tried warm baths, I’ve tried reading, I’ve tried smoking a hookah while watching “30 Rock” reruns, I’ve tried writing this all out by hand, I’ve tried hammering this out with my spouse and making valiant attempts to change my habits, I’ve tried inhaling Love and exhaling Fear,  I’ve tried waxing/waning moon rituals, (obviously, I’ve tried my medication), I’ve tried cleaning my house, I’ve tried volunteer work, I’ve tried taking days off and enjoying split-second moments of bliss (successfully, I might add, which is maybe the only reason I’m sane enough to write all this) and I feel more and more like my life is being fueled out of unnecessary fright and unwarranted insecurity (which I KNOW is all you, because my life is fucking perfect otherwise, you dickhead) and manipulated with Crazy. I’m keeping it together on the surface but, goddammit, if you don’t shut the hell up and leave me alone, I’m going to take a proverbial baseball bat and mentally smash any semblance of sanity I have left.

Seriously. Go away. Nobody fucking wants you here.

Furiously,

L P-S

This is one of those rambling ones. But with bullet points. And some might be seemingly passively-aggressively directed toward someone specific, but those are really just things I wanted to say but didn’t that are being directed here at nobody in particular. And some of these are just facts. And some of these could be sung out loud to the tune of “Lady” by STYX. Maybe.

~ A couple weeks ago I was yelling along with the “Pick of Destiny” soundtrack as per all my solo roadtrips when I came upon the “Dude, I Totally Miss You” track. Now, a dear friend of mine and I have sworn to sing it at the other’s funeral, depending on who goes first and I’ve howled along with the song dozens upon dozens of times since we made that pact, but, for some reason, driving down the road all by myself in the middle of nowhere in broad daylight, my mind somehow conjured up the emotions that would have accompanied my performance if I was actually doing it at her funeral. Like, you know how sometimes you get so lost in a fantasy or a thought or a memory on the road that you kind of drive without thinking for a while and when you “come back”, you don’t remember a chunk of the trip (they referred to it on “30 Rock” once as “driving amnesia”)? Basically, that happened as I was absorbed into this insanely elaborate fantasy regarding me singing in front of a packed cathedral, being backed by Tenacious D on guitars and vocals and Grohl on the drums and I was sobbing as though it was all real. Okay, I’m sure that sounds nuts, but I figured it was just a manifestation of my subconscious grieving the fact that she was moving far far away relatively soon. Either way, I gave a harrowing performance that I’m sure looked more than a bit alarming to anyone who passed me on the road, but that definitely had Peter Dinklage weeping slow tears in the fourth pew back.

~ (WARNING: Here be euphemisms) When I’m “in need of a fix” and I can’t “get my old engine out of the station” so I have to “double-click my own mouse”, the most efficient visual aide for the last 10 freaking years has always been watching Pelle Almqvist in the “Hate to Say I Told You So” video. Literally nothing “gets the job done” as quickly or as effectively as that… not even “Stoya Kills the Bear” (the latter is NSFW, should you choose to Google it. Heh. I’m kinda hoping a few of you do, actually, ’cause I love bewildering people.)

~ I did not know that “Mahatma” was a title of sorts whereas “Mohandas” was Gandhi’s actual real name until this week, when I finally read the back of his autobiography, which has been laying beside my bed in a pile of literature for over 6 months now. And I feel like the biggest moron on the planet for that.

~ When your name pops up in my Facebook Notifications, I get uncharacteristically giddy and bashful and giggling-behind-my-curled-in-hand weird. At my computer. All by myself. Every single time.

~ Today, the Bear and I were tumblin’ around together and she pulled me over into a position where I was lying halfway over her on the couch, with my elbows supporting my weight, but my legs still dangling off the front as though I was sitting upright. Suddenly somber, she reached up and pulled my head into the crook between her neck and collarbone on her left side and started stroking my hair and giving me kisses on my forehead. Obviously, she was mimicking an action I’ve done for her many, many times but she kept it up for about 20-ish minutes, just stroking my hair and softly saying things like, “I love you more than anybody.” and “You make me sooo happy, do you know that?”  It was more healing than many of my years in therapy.

~ I totally voted for you even though I knew about some scandalous (no-harm-no-foul-type) stuff way before all this other junk hit the news. What I mean here is: you should probably hire somebody to write “thank you for not ever saying anything” letters for you full-time ’cause you’ve got looooads of people who ain’t talkin’ and haven’t been for a long time, apparently.

~ My daughter is obsessed with that story about the girl with the green ribbon around her neck who grows up and asks her husband to untie it and her head falls off… and it’s creeping me out how often she wants me to read it to her and then answer her probing analytical questions regarding the plot.

~ It is literally mind-numbing how much hotter you’ve gotten since high school… which is why I act like a moron when we communicate…because my mind is unable to process the very obvious, basic reality with which is has been presented and, therefore, cannot possibly be expected to do anything else.

~”Swingers” and “Ghost World” are both overrated crap, along with “Lost in Translation”, no matter how good any of the individual performances were. There. I said it out loud.

Oh, heeeey, Crazy Mind!

Y’know, I was using all that sudden, unexpected mania you’ve been hurling at me recently to fire off an angry missive to you about it late last night until I realized you might actually be really impressed with how innovatively I’ve upcycled your spiteful curveballs. So I thought I’d share, ’cause I’m actually quite proud of my results and you know how I like to talk it out with you when we’ve been at odds. Have a seat.

See, originally, I was admittedly pretty pissed at you for throwing in such an underhanded game-changer this far into our relationship. I thought we had a decent arrangement going; after years of torment, you let me settle into a “normal” life and only drag your crippling depression out once a year just to, I dunno, prove you still can or something. And, sure, I’d acquired enough tools in my belt to handle your inevitable arrivals and just kind of wait them out without getting all self-loath-y and self-destructive, which may have pissed you off a little, but you brought out some new tricks of your own to up your efficiency (like this year when you introduced your new “drooling on myself unconsciously while staring into the middle distance and, thus, taking my self-confidence down a peg or two” app. Quite effective at rattling my sense of sanity. Good work on your part.) so I just thought we’d continue like that for forever. I’d accepted that as a highly probable life path and was cool with working around it so that we could interact without it turning into a downward spiral again. But I guess my implementing active recovery on you these last few years and not bothering to toy with the idea of self-harm ever again must’ve pissed you off something fierce.

And, I gotta hand it to you, springing an abrupt series of mania on me was a damned genius plan on your part. Seriously, not only is it the polar opposite of what I’m well-adjusted to and prepared for but it completely manipulated my strengths and my penchant for ongoing recovery so that my manic episodes were spent obsessing about how to right past wrongs and address old, unanswered questions and other “Step 9″ motives we all know I worry about too much when I’m leveled off. So, not only did I have this crazy super-energy keeping me up all night and this unusual sense of overblown confidence (which, apparently, is a symptom of mania I was not aware of) but I also had you using my good intentions and deeply-rooted beliefs in daily recovery practices as fuel AND justification for my resulting actions. Well played, indeed!

Unfortunately, however, your plan kind of backfired on you, ultimately. Oh, sure, I spent a handful of sleepless nights hammering out massive emails to people in my past to whom I felt deserved an apology (but who, in reality, probably never needed or wanted one or even remembered the original problem) and, with my good intentions squarely before me, I made sure to really delve into the topics at hand on all emotional, personal, psychological and philosophical levels for what I thought would be the benefit of the reader. After these emails came an exchange with an old friend with whom I’d had a brief… fling? (we never really defined it) that ended abruptly and from whom I’d kind of always wanted to know what happened, during which I continued my oversharing, babbling rhetoric. And even after that, there was the completely irrational overreaction to a friend’s response on a debate in freaking Facebook that caused me to panic and send her 7 text messages apologizing for any inadvertent insult I may have delivered while expressing disagreement. Naturally, after each of these instances, I would step back and think, “WHOAWHATTHEFUCKAMIDOING!??!” and feel genuine fear at my inability to stop these impulses that seemed so necessary and imperative while I was implementing them. And then there was the terror of trying to control myself at night by just lying down and trying to breathe while my brain whirred with worry and the desire to get up and remedy things (friendships, messy dishes, touch-up paint jobs… didn’t matter) and my body wouldn’t lie still and I had this constant urge to just start screaming. Oh yeah, your plan was fucking effective; it scared the shit out of me with the idea that there was a new type of Crazy going on and you were somehow evolving along with my recovery, it destroyed my moods during the days when I was delirious from insomnia, it made me mortified when I revisited the crazed messages I’d been sending out, it made me stop trusting myself… you did well.

But, again, it didn’t work. I’d lie and say that I hate to crush your hopes because I know you worked really hard on all this and had a lot of hopes for it but, really, I do like to gloat about crushing your intentions.

See, unfortunately, the people to whom I sent my blathering volumes of hopeful reconciliation turned out to be genuinely chill and understanding and responded with casual appreciation for me having broached the subject. (And NONE of them sounded terrified by my overzealous rambling.) So that part turned out to be nothing but beneficial and did, incidentally, help in my overall recovery. Thanks!

Also, my deteriorating demeanor finally pushed my husband to be honest with me about how my depression has been affecting him and our marriage negatively (a big deal for him) and we sat down and made a game plan for how I could better manage his generosity and kindness without sapping him of energy or neglecting his needs. And that lead to us having one of those big happy talks about why we love each other and what we appreciate in each other as people and how genuinely happy we are to be together. And then we had a freaking amazing two-person bedroom party (seriously, it was in the Top 2 or 3 ever.) And now I’m all motivated to shift my focus and work harder on managing myself in terms of my role as a family member as opposed to just someone with depression. So thanks for that, too!

Oh yeah! And then! When I posted something publicly to vent about how your little week-o-fuckery was making me a walking social disaster, my friends came out of the woodwork to tell me that that’s actually something THEY LIKE in my character (in moderation, of course.) And, during all this, when I went to whine on my blog (to God, specifically) with self-centered pity about how rough I’ve been having it in the spiritual/emotional department (which, by the way, disgusts myself and is kind of painfully redundant when you look at everything I’ve written here over the years) people still came out to send good vibes and wish me well. I know! Craziness, right!?

Ohohoh! And I lost that ten pounds (and change) I’ve been freaking out about since January because I’ve been weirdly not hungry but have been loaded with energy. THANKS A BUNCH!

So, I guess what I’m really, ultimately trying to say here, Crazy Mind of Mine, is FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCK YOOOOOOOOOOOU.

Gleefully still alive in every possible sense,

L P-S

Hi again, and, again, thanks for meeting me here; it’s just easier for me to talk to you this way; keeps my mind focused on the intent instead of wandering off to whateverness or dwelling on specific aspects of the content instead of just making my point and wrapping it up. Writing just works for me cognitively and functionally and I appreciate Your taking the time to read.

Look, I was going to be all playful and friendly about the last time we spoke and how we’re totally cool now because I didn’t even make it all the way through that entry before I admitted to not being mad at You in real life, etc. etc. And I hate to greet You by just slumping over on Your shoulder and being needy but, to be honest, that’s all the energy I have for today. And I desperately need one tiny, really simple favor from you. Please. I mean, honestly, it’s a really. Really. Tiny thing.

Also, this is going to be a LOT and it’s pretty heavy and, while I’m honestly going to stray from complaints, it’s going to be pretty crap-laden news I’m relaying. Heads up.

I’m not going to intensely recap the last week for You because 1)You were there; You saw it and 2)After rehashing it to my human support unit, I just don’t think I can deal with revisiting it all again on an emotional level. And I’m not an idiot; I know I wasn’t hiking through the Congo ambushing rape gangs with spears and saving women and children or exerting myself to physical/emotional extremes. I know what I’m about to say is going to sound pretty melodramatic considering the millions of alternatives, but, honestly, I wouldn’t say it to You if it wasn’t true. (Because, You know, You can just call “bullshit” on me, like, instantly. So, that’s pointless.)

Anyway, at this very moment in time, I am literally the most exhausted I have ever been in my entire life on all my intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual planes. And I really didn’t see it coming, God, ’cause I’ve been working really hard to do good things and “move in the positive” (I’ve always liked how Stevie Wonder phrased that) and I just got pelted with it all, suddenly. Oh, and this covers a variety of instances and subjects, so if you get bored with the petty first part, please just keep reading because it gets better and the first part lends a dichotomous arc to the general story. Trust me.

I mean, last weekend was disastrous, sure, but I was totally proud of myself for using my Gandhi-like deflector skills to try to dodge the almost-comical-but-literally nonstop barrage of angry negativity constantly spewing from an old acquaintance I chose to visit with literally no provocation for her ongoing (and I do mean ongoing) tirades except her own inner hatred of everything. And you know me, biting my tongue while someone loudly proclaims blanket racist remarks in front of varied ethnic groups in public or publicly insulting the small beer purchase I surprised her with in front of an entire bar (where even the bartender looked at me like, “Whoa. What in the hell?”) without so much as an ounce of gratitude was a struggle for me in and of itself (Look, I was desperate to have a good weekend, I ignored crap I never would’ve tolerated at any other point. And she was just so busy attacking everything - people, inanimate objects, beautiful vacation resort towns… to name a few - with such violent hyperbole, I realized none of it had to do with me to begin with and handled my negativity shield accordingly. And, when I was finally exhausted from having to deflect her rampant angry tirades at nothing in specific and had just wrapped up an argument in which she adamantly, aggressively wanted me to believe that after one’s high school years, life just turns to shit and then proceeded to counter every positive, uplifting counterpoint I could conjure to such an absurd, ignorant thesis with genuinely empty volleys that were non-freaking-stop, even after I started laughing with incredulous hopelessness at the absurdity of the whole conversation and situation, I calmly told her that I was going to go home (even though it was midnight-thirty and “home” was 4 hours from there) Oh, and God, You wouldn’t have believed it… I know I could barely believe it but she wanted me to argue with her so badly she was getting into desperate-try-anything-territory with her responses and blind indignation, and, the more I kept calmly stating that I just wasn’t, the more ludicrous her attempts to lure me in became, flinging out character flaws that were irrelevant to the actual topic at hand and low blows regarding nothing in particular and, I honestly couldn’t believe how calm and serene and determined I was, God (’cause You know me and how much I really enjoy utilizing my singular gift of rhetoric to humiliate opponents verbally when they’re attacking me and making themselves look idiotic in the meantime… ’cause I’m just awesome at it and it’s one of the few things I can really do well and that makes me feel empowered and intelligent and good about myself, You know? You know…) but I didn’t give in to any of her petty attempts to bait me into any form of argument because of this bizarre, uncharacteristically weird, serene calmness that I’ve, again, NEVER had during a falling out with a friend (which totally came from the realization that she wasn’t actually mad at me; she’s just angry at the world and her life and she needed someone to yell at so she could get it all out or cry about it the next day or Youonlyknowwhat.) No, seriously, I didn’t even take the bait on the inane, superficial “insults” she attempted whose devastating counter-attacks were in the palm of my hand, had I chosen to casually fling them in her general direction. I mean, I hate to brag (and totally negate that whole Gandhi-channeling thing I was proud of finally “getting”) but I was kinda floored by my own behavior. I didn’t even laugh out loud when she started with the passive-aggressive “I’m sorry you feel that way”s and the “Whatever makes you happy”s. (I’ll quit gloating at how awesomely Zen I handled that because I know that’s WAY against the whole point, but I was just amazed. Obviously.) Anyway, I honestly, calmly told her I wasn’t mad (she angrily asserted that I was) but I was not going to make this situation worse by arguing with her because it was pointless and I didn’t want to make things worse by resorting to obvious insults old acquaintances could obviously hurl at each other forever, as that, too, is fruitless. I wished her the best and happiness in her life (which is true and, actually, was the point of the whole evening) and I started my drive home. And, for the first little bit, I was still kind of in awe with the amount sanity and clarity I’d managed to access for that and how I was totally proud for growing a pair and pulling the plug on a relationship the minute she stopped being a good friend. (I have a history of tolerating a “friend’s” hurtful bullshit for years before I make a big “thing” of it and then calling it quits. Recently I enacted the rule that my friends are welcome to be as messed up and chock-full of idiotic decisions as they want and I will listen to them deal with their problems until we die, so long as they are giving the same love, considerate and nonjudgment in return. I think that’s sane and fair, right?) I was kind of glowing with pride that I didn’t get sucked into the angry quagmire she sadly wants company within… But then the whole mood turned when I finally realized/admitted to myself this sad truth that I’d known but had been avoiding stating to myself for the last 10-ish years that we’ve hung out here-and-there which was that, no matter how many times I’d listen to her repeated mistakes and let her cry about how screwed up her personal life was at any given time, she would never actually reciprocate actions or sentiments indicative of a “friend”. There were never any baby gifts or wedding gifts from her, she kind of only called to see if I wanted to party with her or be her sidekick when she was off getting over another inevitable heartbreak with the guy she’s letting ruin her life. And, fully realizing that she was inevitably out there whining to this guy about what a horrible, heartless friend I was to her, I drove through the night with unexpected heartbreak and the sad reality that I was the only one in the relationship who’d actually let herself give a shit about the other time after time. And I was just too much of an optimist/idiot to notice until she literally started insulting me to my face and then refusing to listen or acknowledge it when I was standing before her saying only, “I’m leaving because you’ve hurt me personally.”

I mean, it was inevitable and I’m glad it happened the way it did, but it stings. All of it. Especially the fact that she pulled her patented “I’m done. Whatever” refrain thus signalling that she’s supposedly finished with whatever drama is present, even when a friend she’s had for 10 years, who has listened to her endlessly whine about her same mistakes and problems that entire time was standing there and honestly not judging anything about her lifestyle or plethora of easily-targeted faults but was simply saying “You hurt me to my face and I can’t tolerate that in my friends.”

So, yeah, God. I felt like an idiot. And one who had wasted her weekend to be pelted by someone else’s unbelievably overzealous misguided anger. Rough.

The next night, however, one of my very old friends with whom I’d recently reacquainted myself sent me a text saying that she was back in the hospital, alone, and would really like some company. Although I was exhausted from having caught up on sleep all day, I was eager to help a friend, even if it just meant sitting in a hospital chair for a few hours. The incredible dichotomy between that evening and the previous one should have been rejuvenating and awe-inspiring to me and, in many ways it was.

This is a girl I’ve known since we were in kindergarten together, who just finished throwing a gala for 400 disabled teens (all with donated supplies; ballroom, gowns, hair, makeup, band, performers, etc.) and who has been suffering from a disease that is slowly filling and destroying her lungs for many years and, yet, being around her is like having a fresh strawberry ice cream cone in blistering summer heat. She’s so full of life and optimism that, when you first meet her (or re-meet her, in my case) you kind of wonder if it’s all some sort of Stepford-Wife facade… except, you know, dressed in comfy hippie garb and with a penchant for elephants and steampunk art. I show up to this hospital room where she is clearly exhausted and in her bed but still starts trying to make me comfortable, “You need anything? You comfortable?” Being that this is the only time we’ve actually had a chance to take some time and “hang out” in two decades (she’s been busy getting the gala together since we reunited) she wanted to talk about her stepgrandkids (she’s my age, by the way) and show me photos of her last cruise with her husband (and insisted that my husband and I totally join them on their next one) or photos of her being wheeled around DisneyWorld in a full-on formal gown because she wanted to be a princess, dammit. (I love the story of her going to the Princess Luncheon - an overpriced “character event” where you eat and get to be photographed with the Disney princesses in the castle - and, when the hostess said, “Um, we don’t really allow adults to dress up because we don’t want to confuse the kids with who is an entertainer and who isn’t.”, she retorted, “Look, lady, I’m fat and in a wheelchair; I don’t think anybody’s going to confuse me for Cinderella.” Awesome.) I hadn’t seen her in 20 years until we reunited on Facebook and I learned of this incredible gala she was putting together on no budget (oh, and while waiting on new lungs) and, without having any idea what kind of person she’d become since last we spoke, I said “YES! SIGN ME UP TO VOLUNTEER!”

And, I know You know this already but she’s nothing short of a phenomenon. She’s like a cute, girlie, Southern Dalai Lama with her easy-as-pie wisdom and effortless optimism. And she’d been handed a good deal of shit in the years we weren’t friends (seriously, some of the stuff she told me had my jaw dangling and I was seriously using, “Oh hey! I’ve been in a mental hospital, too!!” as a means to try to relate in some way to the serious shitstorm she’s been and continues to go through.) And she does EVERYTHING; she designs cakes, she hosts silly parties at her house every month, she went to Burning Man, she makes fairy dresses for little girls (and, sometimes, big girls) and, when you talk to her, she’s just so comfortable with who she is and this life that she has and the inherent joy she finds in everything and, while most people like that would get on my last nerve, she presents optimism in such a way that it isn’t preachy but is just kind of how she looks at life… and you’d feel like an idiot not believing her because she makes such valid points about the awesomeness of things in general (without, you know, going out of her way to try to actively prove a point or shove it in your face.) And, while all that is amazing, what is the very most affective/unbelievable aspect of this whole story is that she’s going about all this while her body slowly deteriorates. Every other week (if not every week) she’s back in the hospital, treating the ever-worsening symptoms of Cushing’s Disease while she’s waiting on a lung donor. She told me (after I asked) that she sometimes has to rest up for days in order to be able to attend something special and, while she can get around without it, she does rely on a wheelchair and guide dog when necessary. Basically, getting to re-know her in the last three months has smacked my humility in the face. Hard.

Anyway, I went to see her late at night in the hospital and finally just enjoyed taking it easy and enjoying her company (which is like a vacation.) And, you know, I tried to make harmless jokes when shit got rough; for example, she was taking a steroid aspirator treatment and an RN came to check on her. She wasn’t able to answer, so I attempted a, “Yeah, man, she’s totally Bogarting that thing… hasn’t passed it over once.”… I know. Comic genius here.) and when she asked if I had planned to stay the night, I answered, “Um, pshyeah. We’re like, 20 years overdue for a slumber party.” And she squeezed my hand but I swear to God, those pathetic, predictable excuses for jokes and a hand-squeeze when she needed it were all I could offer and, dammit, I did my best, but I’ve never felt so useless in my life. (I know, this isn’t about me… I’m getting there.) And she kept saying things like, “I hope I’m not keeping you up with my coughing.” to which I didn’t even know how to respond. Really?! You’re coughing fluid out of a collapsed lung and you’re apologizing to me for keeping me awake!? Seriously. You’re fine. Knock off all the selfessness for a few minutes; I’m here for you, remember? She woke me up once (profusely apologizing as if this wasn’t the exclusive purpose for me being there) to ask if I’d hold her hand through a shot she knew would be superpainful. I was the one who ended up holding on way too tight.

I left the next morning because I had to, but I would’ve stayed if she’d needed me to, fumbling around to do my best to be of any help I could. I was still dumbstruck by the sensation of it all; watching a girl I was childhood friends with as she was slowly falling apart (until they can find her a donor) and not at all complaining about the monotony of her situation (I’m sorry; after 35 spinal taps, I would be a whiny bitch and I would dare people to tell me to can it.) but, instead, making plans for her upcoming adventures and talking about how grateful she was that the gala had gone so well and how she planned to start a non-prof organization to help manage the one next year and asking me to join her in future escapades, of which she was excitedly planning many. It wasn’t just fake optimism for the sake of making herself look awesome; it was all real. And incredibly humbling. (And, yeah, I wanted to drive out to my negative ex-friend’s house, snatch her by the hair, drive her all the way back to that hospital room and make her sit there with my radiant, optimistic friend who would share her excitement for life while being hooked to IVs and monitors and aspirators that aren’t actually healing anything for a couple hours, just to show her that the only difference between the two of them is their attitudes toward life…grumblegrumble) I drove home, exhausted and a bit shell-shocked from the extremes I’d experienced in the last few days. I knew I’d been granted extreme gifts and lessons, but it all seemed like a lot to absorb at the moment.

(For the record, it took me four whole days before I randomly got knocked on my ass and started uncontrollably sobbing about seeing my friend in the hospital. I don’t want her to know that, actually, because she doesn’t go for sympathy and I certainly don’t want her to think my wailing was out of pity; in fact, embarrassingly, my sobbing was because of my own self-centered attitude and guilt and this feeling that, even though I was so so honored she trusted me to come by and hold her hand, there was nothing more than that than I can/could do to help. And then I got obligatorily angry, like “Why is it someone legitimately awesome who’s dealing with this? Why not any of the hundreds of thousands of sucky people? Hell, why not me? On my best days, I’m barely 25% as positive and productive and selfless as she is!” and, to cut an hour-long sobfest’s storyline short, I basically went ahead and adhered to every cliche of being frustrated at seeing someone so rad have to deal with something so, so shitty and unfair… Um, I may have even considered shooting a hobo to harvest his lungs so she’d have a new pair, but then I thought about how they probably wouldn’t be a match and you never know what’s in a stranger’s lungs, etc… But yeah, I threw myself a big ole pity party about how pissed I was about it and how powerless I felt when I really just want to DO something to effing FIX it and then I felt all guilty because my mother (who was on the receiving end of all of this wailing) simply said, “Well, SHE’S not sad and mopey about it so what right do you have to be?” and that just made me feel worse and I just blurted out, “Yeah, well she’s more ridiculously enlightened than me, which is why I’m so frustrated to begin with.” Ugh. But I’m glad I got that out of my system, if we’re being honest. I don’t anticipate that happening every time I hang out with her or mention her, etc. I think I just needed to process it because it’s heavy stuff.)

Also, something weird happened at the hospital that I kind of didn’t put any credence to until today. Lemme explain. Long before I knew anything about “energy” and “vibrations” and all that, I visited a friend who was living with a well-known (except to me at the time) violent psychopath (like, he gets disability for this condition. His name is known around town as synonymous for “RUN AWAY!!”) and during our visit, he was a little intense for my taste but wasn’t glaringly insane or anything. Anyway, while I was there, I was suddenly overcome with the sudden, urgent need to vomit - the kind where it didn’t percolate in my stomach for a while but it was coming rightfuckingnow. I ran from the room, hovered over the toilet and nothing came. It was bizarre and happened a couple more times while I was there, actually (and, of course when I left, I was fine again.) I had no explanation for it until many many years later when I started getting into metaphysics that I realized “Holy crap. Could it have really been the energy of Evil McMansonEyes conflicting with mine that caused that?” and, even though I’m not one of those people who is supersensitive to people’s energies unless they’re verbally declaring it, I kind of bought that theory ’cause that dude’s evil was palpable to everyone he met, apparently.

Well, ANYWAY, the same exact thing happened as I was lying on a chair next to my friend’s bed and it was the first time I’d had that since the aforementioned incident, which seemed weird because, again, she’s a freaking ray of sunshine. Again, I just thought, “Hunh, weird. But I know it’s not her, so whatevs.”

I spent the next couple days in and out of sleep, trying to recover from sleeplessness and the intensity of the weekend. (In retrospect, I can practice Gandhi’s tactics all I want but that guy had a lot more spiritual strength than I do at the moment so, I should probably pace myself a little.) I couldn’t focus to meditate because my brain was all over the place and I tried to pray like a normal person (i.e. not in a blog) but my brain would fixate on just one of the negativities I’d encountered or the incredible guilt and sorrow I felt after visiting my friend and feeling powerless to change her situation, so I’d get off track and never really commit to a full prayer. (Sorry to leave you hanging there. I hope you were answering more important calls than my self-pitying introspection at the time.) I just felt… wrong… and I didn’t know why, exactly.

When the hubs and the Bear got home on Wednesday, I honestly did the best I could to show them how relieved and happy I was to have them around again but my brain was just all over the place and, apparently, I was distant and acting not-like-myself according to my husband, who has, at this point, calmly tolerated my annual about with The Crazy (yes. it comes in the Spring. Like nobody else on the planet experiences. Moving on.)

And then, despite my best intentions to act like I was okay, it aaalll kind of came to a head last night when, out of nowhere, I went into one of the two manic episodes I’ve ever had in my life. (We all know I’m not a manic-depressive kind of Crazy. I have a long history with depression and, while I’m not happy when it’s around, we know how to handle each other. I’ve got his bullshit on lockdown… I think that’s what that expression means.) And it was fucking scary, really, because I have no idea how to handle those (what with the tiny amount of experience I’ve had) and I was awake all night, heart-racing, OBSESSING about things that ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered me at all or that I could’ve handled without too much worry. Like two friends who read my blog got all weird and insecure and decided to attack me about passive-aggressively using that forum to insult people reading it to their faces when literally anybody who knows me as a person (or even as a blog-writer) knows I’m not um… an idiot who handles problems with friends that way. And, instead of just saying, “Yeah, there are childish people who are into that but I’m not the type to try to get my friends or readers paranoid about my opinions for fun. Because I respect my friends. And am an adult. And have done this exact thing before. So settle down.” I got really defensive and really angry/offended about it (even though I know it’s all based on their insecurities and the irrational fear that I might insult them publicly for no apparent reason and has nothing to do with me, since, again, I’m not into that and they should know that.) and felt the need to really stand up for myself loudly and extravagantly and, then, when a guy from my past whom I’d cared about and kind of lost after a short relationship of sorts gave me a short, direct, perfect answer to a question I’d [passively-aggressively publicly put into a lame public blog to hide my terror when I[ asked, I responded with a gigantic volume of overzealous insight and, seriously, couldn’t stop myself, even though I maintained the whole time that I had the best of intentions. (He says it’s fine. This makes me feel better.) Seriously, it was a sense of mania I’ve never experienced and it freaked me out a lot.

When my husband woke up this morning to me being loopy and exhausted from a night of involuntary mental fuckery, he kind of broke down and admitted that these months of my unpredictable bouts of depression had been really wearing on him and he loves me and is worried about me but he’s starting to become exhausted with it all, which broke my heart, especially knowing how patient he’s been with all of it. He never threw out ultimatums or said he’s leaving or stupid go-to jargon a lot of couples tend to resort to, but he did say that this was wearing on us and would continue to do so and that he didn’t want that.

And then, strangely, he mentioned something out of character for him, which was that, ever since he got back from his trip, there’d been a “weird energy” around me; not just in the house but that gave off a sense of hopelessness and despair (which, as bad as things have been this week was nothing close to how I was feeling.) And I remembered the feeling I had in the hospital and wondered if, in my subconscious desire to take some of the pain away from my friend, I’d absorbed something harmful and taken it with me. (I know, it sounds a little nuts but, seriously, when my husband says things about “vibes” and “energies”, I take him seriously because he doesn’t subscribe to that stuff very often.)

Anyway, he looked exhausted and on the brink of giving up (which I know he’d never do, but his eyes said, “I’m out of options. I don’t know what else to do.”) and, not to overshare our personal interactions as a couple but, it became obvious that, crippling springtime depression or not, I needed to make some changes because 1) obviously my tactics for dealing with these bouts aren’t helping me and 2) my husband is starting to resent me because I let my disease dominate so much of our time. And, after watching my friend push through every day with optimism and selfless nurturing for the people in her life (she was counseling a heartbroken relative late into the night as she was struggling to breathe through the aspirator, for example. Seriously. She’s amazing. I’ve said that.) while having half the physical capabilities that I do, I realized that I was going to have to find a new tactic for dealing with my daily mindfuckery so it isn’t destroying my support unit.

And, yeah, I’m totally scared about giving myself some tough-love. When I’m having days where I get a panic attack just trying to decide what to wear to the grocery store, it’s going to be tough to try to power through it instead of “just laying down until my head gets straight.” and on days where my mind can’t connect thoughts enough to physically enable myself to get out of bed or form sentences, it’s gonna be a bit of a challenge to um… do anything. But I know there needs to be a change, even if it’s not for my spouse (which, primarily, it is at the moment because, frankly, I really like taking naps instead of trying to get my brain to work.) So I told him to make a list of things that he gets frustrated about when my depression is in action and I told him we’re going to make ground rules to stop enabling me using his kindness to the point of exhaustion and resentment. That seems like the best I can do right now (even though I’m secretly glad that he’s still hesitant to sit down and brainstorm a list entitled “Things that Make You Sucky Because of Your Disease”. He was awfully beaten-down and frustrated and resentful today but he still loved me enough not to want to do something like that, even when I asked him to, so I can make changes to make us happier. Yeah. I’m a lucky girl.)

ANYWAY, all of this summed up comes to one very small, very simple request I have of You. I know You’re busy and I hope You’re paying more attention to starving children than me, when it comes down to it, but I intend to spend today resting and restoring myself from last night’s delirium and the past week’s intense emotional lesson plan (Don’t worry; I took notes. I got it all down and am reviewing for the test.) and I might even try meditating if my brain will just chill out for a change and be.

But what I’d really, honestly, appreciate is if You’d grant me an evening of genuine rest in every sense of the word. I know that sounds like a hefty order for an 8-ish hour snooze, but I’d really like a calm, serene, rejuvenating sleep that isn’t interrupted by nightmares or images of people my subconscious brings up as ancient personal mascots of self-doubt or anything bad. I don’t need any visits from relatives or any cool messages from the Beyond (the one you slipped in the other day was pretty intense, though. Thanks for that. Oh, and for the record? I’m sorry for totally getting pissed at what you were trying to tell me in that Tarot reading before my weekend trip a few weeks ago. I was pissed because I was still trying to figure out where to venture on my own and you were totally foretelling how to handle the negative-friend situation which I didn’t even know would be an option at the time so it didn’t make sense to me and I got all pissy and I didn’t mean to call you bullshit because I didn’t understand. Seriously, I can’t see into the future; I’m sorry.)

I’d like a sleep that will wake me up outside of this negativity I’ve seemed to get bogged down with in the last week and ready to focus on revitalizing myself and my household and all the things that are legitimately important in my immediate life and maybe even be rid of manic spells (because I’m really not good at that, even when they’ve been driven with my best of intentions so far… thank Yourson) Seriously, leave me with the depression; I’ll deal with that sack of crap for the rest of my life if I have to but the mania has to go. Please.

Please just let me rest tonight and get my (mental/figurative) head back to where it is most comfortable and my spirit back to a quiet, centered place so I can get back to being the productive, positive person I feel like I’m really capable of being. (I know better than to try to read Your thoughts but I have a hunch You kinda believe that, too, right? C’maaaan. You think I’m capable of good stuff, too…) I don’t wanna be greedy and ask for strength to push through my whiny, spoiled attitude so I can work through the physical limitations of depression and make myself active and not a drain on my family anymore but, if You wanna fling that in as a bonus, I’d be grateful as well, of course. But mainly the all-encompassing rest would be much appreciated. That’s what I’d really really like and kind of need right now. Do whatever work on my unconscious self that You’d like; I trust it. Just rest. For energy to go after some change. Please.

Oh, and thanks a lot for everything else. All these people who inexplicably love me and send their support and my family and the one kitty we have who knows when I need her to curl up and purr into my abdomen and the flowers I planted and haven’t killed and the forgiveness I’ve found from people in my life recently and, seriously, everything. Thank You for my life and for helping me manage it.

Most sincerely,
L P-S

Oh yeah! I forgot the big one that I have to resist the urge to blurt at least a couple times a year to various people!

~ ::stomps foot:: ::whines:: NNnnnoooooooo-wah! I don’t waaaannna match your elevated vocal pitch to greet you and then pretend to be friendly and listen to what you’ve been “up to” for the next five minutes just because we visited the same cluster of buildings for a few years about a decade ago. You never even made eye contact with me then and neither did the friends of yours that I don’t wanna hear all about eiiittheerrrrr-ah! Go awaaaay… I’m still weird and unpopular and subscribing to crazy hippie ideals; you won’t like me any more now than you did then. I promise. Seriously. Let’s just save our time? Please?

No, okay, look; I know having Asperger’s is nothing to joke about and I would never ever ridicule anybody who has select moments of genius while getting away with saying whatever is on his or her mind because he or she can’t pick up social cues. In fact, I’m pretty jealous of the ability to live without a filter and, at least once a day, I yearn to momentarily escape the confines of a life well-conditioned with manners (…and “manners” in the South, no less; so take whatever your definition of “manners” is, multiply that by 4, and then add some nonsensical unspoken rules and therewego) and blurt out exactly what I’m thinking with the full realization that it is wildly socially inappropriate but with none of the oppressive feelings of conscience.

So in this Friday Confessional, I’ve decided to just come out and publicly say all the shit that I’ve reallyreally wanted to recently but know better than to broadcast in a public forum (again… manners) or even hint that I have an opinion about because, admittedly, some of it is none of my damned business. I know this may seem like a completely passive-aggressive way to address my problems and/or those people to whom I’m responding from the standpoint of the reader, but, hey, nobody said this blog was put here for your benefit. Maybe this is all part of my personal therapy and purging my ongoing unspoken frustrations is a meditational tool to help me move forward. Ever think of that? Maybe I’m just venting just to put it all out there in the Universe and clear my conscious of untackled sentiment whether or not it’s ever going to be read by anybody. Nobody asked you to read this; there’s never been a request that you check in on my happenings. Never stopped to think about that, didja? Well, now we’ve both had some introspection… You’re welcome. (And if you have a response to that, feel free to post it passive-aggressively to your own public blog.)

LET’S BEGIN!

~ You used to hurt my feelings until I stopped and realized what a total loser you’ve grown up to be. It’s weird; I’d always subscribed to and carried around this underlying, inherent idea that you were “cooler than me”, so I never really reevaluated who you’d become over time, (even though that’s what I want everyone to do to me and get frustrated when they don’t) and when I finally did, I realized that you kinda suck. You kinda suck a lot.

~ Whooooooanononono. You don’t get to run away again until you at least give me a freaking answer. WHAT WAS THAT?! There was this, like, affinity and then you got all angry for no reason and then there was the apology a couple years later (out of freaking nowhere, I’ll add…from another STATE) and then a “oh hey! Look forward to getting to know the ‘new you’!” reunion and then you’re gone again. I mean, I’m chalking it up to “sociopath” (as opposed to, say, “tortured genius” or “enigma” but still.) But seriously, what is your deal, man? What was the point of all that in the first place? People don’t just act like that, you know. Not over such an extended length of time and toward one person. It’s weird.

~ IT’S ALL A LIE, EVERYBODY!!! ALL OF IT!!!! I HAVE PROOF!!! I REALLY DO but if I share it with you it’ll just appear to be for my own benefit and it’ll make me look like some crazy, vindictive stalker, which isn’t the case; I just happen to be privy to a lot of information. BUT IT’S A LIE!!! A LIE I TELL YOU!!!!

~ So, um, I know we’ve joked around about thinking each other is hot ‘n junk but, if we had made out when we hung out, that would’ve been weird and made things all awkward and never would’ve gone as hoped, right…? I mean… right?

~ Okay, look. It’s no secret that you were always in love with my friend and that’s cool; she’s one of those people who is literally enigmatic in her creativity and beauty. And I get that I was probably a consolation prize of sorts - I wasn’t really heartbroken by the prospect to begin with, considering I wasn’t the first and I was honestly just into having a good time at that point in my life -  but, I would kind of like to know: we had fun, right? ‘Cause, like, we didn’t speak and then we suddenly did again and we were all “oh hey, cool person! nothing ever happened even though the last time we spoke I was a little pissed at you! But you’re still a generally rad human being I’ve always liked!” That’s kind of how it’s always been, right? I’m not missing anything? There’re no buried resentments on your end? All on the same page here?

~ You see? This? This right here? This is the reason you paid for years of your kid’s therapy and rehab. And, ohbytheway, EVERYBODY knows it. Everyone. Every single person who knows who you are and/or knows you by name. Most of the people who look you in the eyes every day. Everyone. Even you, apparently.

~MAKING RACIST JOKES MAKES PEOPLE WITH BRAINS UNCOMFORTABLE, YOU MORON. I don’t care how “educated” or “hip” you are; you sound like a fucking idiot when you make terrible jokes (and I mean “terrible” in the “not-funny-and-painfully-cliched-and-OMG-so-offensive-I’m-embarrassed-to-be-around-such-ignorant-rhetoric”) about entire groups of people when they’re 20 feet away. Also, white people joking around with the “n” word is the reason I effing hate being white a lot of the time. It stopped being funny a long time ago - like, before we were born. Pay attention.

~Oh, see, by the time you get to be our age, being generally mad at the world and wanting to tell everyone about it all the time is kinda lame. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of us are angry about “The Man” and corporate America and a whole laundry list of junk, but, after you get past the hating-your-superiors era in your late-teens and the self-numbifying-through-self-medicating era of your early 20’s, you start learning how to channel that general “The World is Effed Up” anger into productive things like, I dunno, activism or getting into politics or creating art or volunteering to make the world a better place. Not wearing chains and carving 666 into everything to actively scare the “mindless everyday people.” Because, honestly, nobody really cares how you’re “expressing the darkness”, no matter how loudly you do it. Seriously, you look like kids 15 years younger than us shopping at Hot Topic so they can “fight the power” and “be individuals” in the hour their moms have dropped them off at the mall. And the only statement you’re actively, loudly making is, “I’m sad on the inside and don’t know how to grow emotionally.”

~ Your life sucks because you made it that way. And I’m tired of listening to you whine about it. Actually, everyone’s tired of listening to you whine about how you’re on the brink of making changes and then not ever doing it. It’s really. Really. Tiresome. In fact, even making fun of you saying that you’re going to make changes and then not has become tiresome. And that’s when we know it’s bad.

~ Wait. Wait. Wait. You’re against gay marriage?! Didn’t you… used to be gay?! Oh, we’re going with that whole “I was tempted” thing? I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works… For example, I’ve been “tempted” to have sexual relations with men and women, but never with animals or children… it’s not like lustful temptation is just nailing people with desire willy-nilly, causing them to gravitate toward anything that’s able to fornicate. So, yeah, you sound ridiculous right now.

~ There’s never a good/convenient time to leave your spouse. And I know there aren’t set “rules” or “manners” for this sort of thing, but if you’re going to talk about leaving him/her every six months behind his/her back and then expect me to be comfortable when you’re keep procrastinating, you’re just making your company uncomfortable. FYI.

~ You’re still so beautiful, it makes me sigh the same way I did whenever you were around me in high school. Even though now it’s just though the computer, which is slightly weird, now that I’m actually admitting it to myself.

~ I always feel guilty talking to you because we had such similar “accidental” situations and mine has turned out so much better than yours and it just feels awkward talking about it because my story very easily could’ve been yours and I’m so sorry because you’re just as deserving as I am of a stable, happy life and I’d have you move in with us as a means to even the karmic score or something, but that would make you feel like a charity case, which would make the dynamic worse and that’s not what I want but, dammit, how did I luck out when I was making plenty of deliberate, bad choices at the time? I hope you know I think about you all the time but that’s why I don’t call as often as I should. That’s the honest truth. I know, it’s really really effed up and even saying it out loud sounds like I’m all high and mighty and braggy and snotty and looking-down-y, but it’s true. I feel guilty a lot about it, actually.

~ I don’t give a shit what brand of moron you’re into at the moment, when he started hurting and scaring your kid, I lost all respect for you. It’s not about you anymore, idiot; you’ve known that longer than I have. Quit acting like a hopeless, lovelorn tween about some dude with emotional issues, grow a pair, and get your kid out of there before you’re paying for his therapy… or bail… You’ve got a really cool kid; I’d be livid if you screwed him up because you were pulling this selfish, helpless crap until he moves out.

~ Really? You really lost respect for me because I put into legal documentation the love that I have for the man who fathered my child? What a totally awesome feminist mentor you turned out to be.

~ I realize how totally and completely lame this is but I’d honestly like to know what your opinion of me was back then and what my role in that group dynamic was. I keep getting the feeling that our viewpoints were pretty conflicting judging by the things we share with each other now, but I’d like to get everybody liquored up and have aaalll the truths come tumbling out sometime. We’re in a place where retrospective insights can be shared without fear of hurting each other, right? We’re all totally over whatever drama happened to those people we were back then, right? C’maaaan… Like you don’t want to know the same about our insights to the whole thing… I mean, we’re still friends. What’s the worst that could haaappeennn?

~ No, seriously; how do someone’s looks peak in high school? You’re starting to make me think the “It Gets Better” Campaign is exclusively for gay kids.

~Oh, hey! Now that you’re finally “out”, are you still starting needless personal drama with your vulnerable, adolescent pupils or are you done being wholly motivated by your mismanaged anger now?

~ Heads up, you guys; we’re all living “lifestyles of sin”, which is why those Bibles you supposedly check in with daily say you guys need Christ in the first place. So, refusing to go dancing with gay people because you don’t support their lifestyles and you’d “be uncomfortable around all that sinning” not only contradicts pretty much everything Christ instructed his followers to do (like hanging out with the “castoffs of society” and “not judging others”), but must also mean you don’t listen to ANY music at all because, you know, those guys live in sin (again, as we all do, which is why “we need Christ”… am I talking in circles here?)

~ Hey, uh… I know this is whoa-belated but, was that a date? Because I’m never any good at telling whether or not I’m on a date unless I’m already in a relationship with the person I’m on a date with OR it’s been stated as “a date” instead of “hanging out” and so I’m still confused… well, I say “still”, but, actually, it didn’t dawn on me until, like, years later that, “Holy crap. I think he meant for that to be a date. And I participated in a way that would’ve made myself repellant.” (This one applies to a couple people, actually. I apologize if I was raining on your parade or being a total cock-block; I’m a little inept when it comes to how people get together.)

~ Wow! What leaden testicles you must have, to be able to ignore the earnest and sincere apologies of someone humbled from when she was acting like a complete and total colostomy bag toward you in the distant past and who came forth to make amends on multiple occasions! The maidens must fawn about you and weep at your virility for being able to blatantly ignore formal apologies and, yet, you continue in tolerant strength to keep this humbled, beseeching, flawed soul on your Facebook “friends” list! O, such might of character! Ah, such power! (No, but seriously, I unfriended you a couple years ago. Stop acting like an indignant ass about an imaginary online power struggle.)

~ Your spouse is a snooze and nobody has any idea how you guys got [and stayed] together. I mean, you seem really happy, which we definitely like to see and be around, but we feel like you may be in love with a wax figure and that worries us a little. But, again, as long as you’re happy, we’re happy. Confused, but happy.

~ CHILDREN ARE NOT HIP, COOL ACCESSORIES YOU STRAP ON WHEN YOU WANT TO LOOK MORE WORLDLY AND IN-THE-NOW. Seriously. They’re going to loathe you one day if you keep this up.

~ I seriously hope you haven’t been reading all these entries. I mean, I put them out there so that everybody can, but I always make that assumption that you’re off, you know, living your life and not thinking about me, so you’ve missed whatever I’ve been self-centered and rambling on about recently. But then, on the other hand, I want you to find me fascinating. I kind of never change in that regard. (Disclaimer: I’ve never once proposed to have rational feelings about anything, especially not this situation.)

~ Dude, you really really hurt me that last time, but I didn’t say anything because 1) you’re my friend and 2) I still feel guilty for crapping on you all those times for the same reasons way back when. (And, yes, I know holding myself hostage over the past is wrong and unhealthy.) But that really stung, dude.

~ Your husband is icky and creepy. We’re very very happy that he makes you happy and he puts you first and he’s genuinely a good husband and we’d never tell you to leave him because it’s not that serious and, again, he makes you happy and he’s a good guy and he’s what you need… but he’s icky (that’s the technical terminology for the attributed characteristics in full. I looked it up), which is unlike you.

~ Every time I look at your life I get so so grateful and happy about mine. And, while I admittedly indulge in schadenfreude from time-to-time, this honestly isn’t what that is [anymore]; I’m not pointing and laughing at you/your chosen situation [anymore]. I’m just sooo effing glad I don’t have your life… and I hold those emotions in a peaceful, non-aggressive way… in which I still chuckle to myself… with personal glee regarding my situation exclusively. It’s different.

~ I love you more than 99.998% of the people I’ve ever met. You know me better than I know myself sometimes and, still, you have this deep, unwavering (perhaps delusional) belief that I’m something phenomenal and remarkable and world-altering. We’ve been through so much shit (deactivated lasers with maahh dick…) together in this last decade and I’m so freaking proud of who you are and who you’ve become and what you’re getting ready to do with your life and how hugely you’re going to impact the world when you open up and let loose with all your game-changing talent. It’s obvious after all we’ve done together that I’ll love you no matter what happens or where our lives take us. But sohelpmeGod, if you get out to LA and “Woody Allen” yourself into a scared little self-doubting corner where you do nothing out of stupid, inherent fear of your own wild success, I will board a plane to the West Coast, find your apartment, ring your doorbell, slap your face as hard as my physical body is able, crumple in a ball to recover my energy, and then fly back home without saying a word. I swear to God. I’ll panhandle and/or max out my credit card to afford a trip for that explicit purpose. I’m not joking. I’ll smack the white off your face, you hear me? Because I love you. Dammit.

Hey, thanks for meeting me here,
Look, I want to preface all of this by saying that this is just something I need to get off my chest and have put off for some 17-ish years and that’s my fault.

By no means does this indicate that we’re done with this relationship that we have, nor does it mean that I’m not still incredibly grateful for the abundance of gifts that You’ve heaped upon me. Trust me, I remember and appreciate every single one and, frankly, am still amazed at all the times You’ve bailed me out and stood beside me, handling my incredible fuck-ups. (I’m thinking specifically of that time around 2003-ish when I drove 2 hrs. completely obliterated on an entire bottle of Unisom and 99 proof alcohol while listening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on repeat and somehow made it to my destination without hurting anyone or anything. You were in the driver’s seat, then - no doubt. I still have yet to wrap my head entirely around that one.)

And you know what else? In my years and years of dealing with my mental illness (which You probably know this post is going to be about) You’ve given me a ton of great opportunities and chances at “fixing” things and a support unit of unconditional love and, again, I am eternally, consistently, constantly, exhaustedly grateful for all of that.

But I need to vent to You for a second. And I feel like we’re at a place where You’re going to understand where I’m coming from and not hold it against me. So I’m just going to be honest here and let it all out. And I apologize for sobbing all the way through this.

It has taken me 17-ish years to muster up the courage to say all this and admit all this to myself but I’m fucking pissed off that I got slapped with such an incredibly bullshit disease as mental illness. Hey, did you know that this month is National Mental Illness Awareness Month? Because I sure as shit didn’t… along with, like, 99.5% of the American population. Meanwhile, we’ve got cancer walks and charities out the ass; there’s a whole Youdamned month for breast cancer; there’s a differently-colored ribbon to support every effing thing under the sun (You know what the color is for “mental illness awareness”? It’s green, which is also the color for kidney donation, and is more recognized as such, which is a big  “FUUUCK YOU” to us crazies out here… personally, I think it should be psychedelic tie-dye, but that’s for another discussion.) So what exactly is my point here? Basically, my biggest complaint is that I’ve been given the gift of a chronic illness that has tried to fucking kill me (specifically, about 6 “official” times, if you want to get technical here) and that MOST PEOPLE THINK IS COMPLETELY FICTITIOUS.

There are people starving to death and being destroyed en masse every day. There are children living in homes where they are abused and unloved and there are millions upon millions of people who are aching to have a life that resembles anything close to mine. And so, when I start telling people at age 11 that there’s something wrong with me and I’m depressed and don’t know why, I get told to suck it up and get over myself. When I tell family members and friends that I’ve been contemplating suicide in my late teenage years, I am brushed aside and reprimanded for “just trying to get attention.” I am called “melodramatic”. I am denied treatment. I am cursed with stigmas. I am lead to believe that all of this aching, relentless mental torment that I am experiencing on a daily basis isn’t real, that I am just an ungrateful product of a privileged lifestyle.

Naturally, none of this would have happened if I had, instead, complained of a tumor growing in my skull or, you know, something physical that doctors could point to and say “Ah yes! Here’s the problem!” so everyone around me could rally to my side immediately. I could’ve just combated the illness right out of the gate. I wouldn’t have had to spend years pleading with people to listen and/or believe me if I had something like cancer or lupus or a collapsing lung or an aneurysm. Nobody would’ve accused me of just trying to get attention; nobody would’ve refused to listen or tried to make me feel like less of a human being because of ancient misconceptions, myths or stigmas surrounding these sorts of diseases. I would never have tried to self-medicate for a decade or let myself give in so easily to my disease over and over for years if I had something that the masses acknowledge as a legitimate illness. Nobody ever would’ve mocked me or called me a “drama-queen” or a “whiner” or told me just to get over it or that I “just needed to find Jesus” or “just put a smile on my face and be grateful for what I have” when I tried to tell them why I needed help. (I’m thinking of a plethora of family-related specific instances here, but I think we both know what/whom I’m referencing, so I don’t want to drag that into a public forum.)

And, yes, I’m aware it could’ve been worse; I could’ve been born in a country or an era where people with ANY type of mental irregularity would be completely ostracized or locked in an institution or burned at the stake or whatever was deemed necessary at the time. So I definitely do understand that I’m blessed to at least live in a time and place where treatment is available.

All this in mind, I have to admit that, yeah, I’m kind of pissed that I landed here in a society where everybody and their mother is seeing a therapist and being medicated for somethingoranother. So, not only do I live in a society where there’s a stigma put on the mentally ill, but I’m also simultaneously existing in a reality in which so many people are overmedicated to avoid feeling human emotion that nobody takes real psychosis seriously anymore and, God, I gotta tell you THAT IS FUCKED UP. Even to a person who is mentally unstable on her own, that scenario is literally insane and yet! Here I am! Trying to just get a steady treatment/regimen going so, like someone with diabetes, I can live my life taming and managing the disease I’ll have to learn to live with. However, unlike that lucky bastard with diabetes (that’s sarcasm right there, btw) I get to play “musical doctors” for the last ten years because psychiatrists are just handing out various medications like they’re flinging them off a pharmaceutical company’s sponsored Mardi Gras float. Seriously, I hate to sound rude but it’s the only disease in the world where I have to fight against the stereotypes that abusers have set - I doubt if anyone receiving chemo has to listen to WASPs make publicly-acceptable jokes about what kind of IV they’re “tooootally addicted to” these days.

I swear to You, it’s an uphill battle in every Youdamned direction; I gotta fight with society, my family, my friends and these throngs of doctors just to get taken seriously ON TOP of having to fight my own fucking mind, which is perpetually trying to fucking kill me when it’s left to its own devices.

:::sigh::: No, I’m not mad at any of these people anymore and, yes, I’ve learned to deal with public ignorance about it and just do what I need to do for myself so that I can survive; I’ve been living (sometimes just barely) with this shit for almost 2 decades now so I’m mostly on Autopilot at this point. I hope You hear me tell You how grateful I am every single day for this incredible life I have right now. Please don’t think that I ever forget it.

But, dammit, that doesn’t make any of it hurt any less, God. And that’s what I’m so so very angry/frustrated about right now and wanted You to know. It hurts to think about how lonely it all was. I ache when I remember how alone I felt every time I went to the hospital, where nobody sent flowers and only my family attempted to talk to me like a person. I’ll never stop hurting when I remember the looks on my friends’ faces after the hospitalizations, like they were in a room with a wild animal and were too afraid of getting hurt to try to learn how to talk to me. It fucking hurts to remember having to be my only source of comfort during so many nights… both before and after I started any sort of treatment… always for the same reasons… It hurts to see my scars and try to rehearse how I’ll explain them to my daughter one day because I know in my heart that she needs to know.  It hurts to think about how I’m still not done; how I’m still having to deal with my Enemy Mind and how I’m just so damned exhausted with it all, God.

It fucking hurts, God. When does that part stop?
Can you make that part stop?

I’m not really mad at You, God - not when it comes right down to it. I know You’ve spared me from far far worse things and I really, honestly am grateful for where I am and the progress I’ve supposedly made and all that noise I feel like I’ve repeated into a cliche at this point….

I just want it to go away now, God. All of it. The recurrences/relapses and the memories and, hell, even the scars, if I’m being honest here.

But mostly the pain, God. I can deal with any more insanity and craziness and mental bullshit You wanna hurl at me, God. Bring it on. I’ve gotten this far and in far worse conditions.

But please. Please take away the aching. I’ve had enough pain from all of this; I’m so fucking sick of hurting from this one stupid problem that it’s now compounding into anger for still feeling it in the first place and it just gets heavier and heavier and I can’t fucking tolerate it anymore, God. I can’t…

…And I know when I say “I can’t” that You’ll stand right there with me and You’ll see to it that You can prove me wrong and that I can get through anything and all that crap that “people of faith” like to blabber to each other when shit gets rough so allow me to clarify:

I probably can tolerate more but I really, really do not want to. Seriously, I’m finished.
I mean, I didn’t even have the energy to be angry all the way through this letter, for Christ’s sake.

So yeah. That’s where I am. I’ve been ready for this to be over and done with for a long, long time.
And I would really, genuinely love it if we could both be on the same page with that.

Please?

Most sincerely,
L P-S