I’m reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind and loving it, which is strange because usually when I read memoirs about addiction or mental illness, I end up feeling worthless and trite. A lot of times I walk away from the book feeling empathic but completely useless as a writer, with the inherent knowledge that my illness is not only textbook, but has been discussed ad nauseum and, therefore, shouldn’t be blathered on again by myself or any other person remotely sharing in my general demographic characteristics. What I love about Jamison’s book is that she is a Doctor in psychiatry and yet, manages to speak about her illness as someone who has stepped around all the pretenses of what it means to have such a high social standing, bridging the gap between the Healer and the Unwell. She writes about emotions and mental sensations that I am entirely familiar with from a standpoint of a physician who fully understands her mental incapacities, but still doesn’t allow herself to bolster her tone with any ego or condescension. It’s really a fantastic work that I highly recommend anyone reading, whether or not they’ve been exposed to mental illness.

This being said, I’ve recognized in her writing that one of my new medications sends me into a light mania during the day. Granted, it’s not nearly intense enough to be classified as an actual manic spell and it wears off around the time that the extended-release capsule stops emitting drugs, but still, there’s a definite “high” that I experience during the day due to this drug. I am active and creative and productive, I get scores of things done and have wildly enthusiastic ideas about my potential, I feel great about life and where I am and who I am, and it’s like a completely new feeling for me to be flying so high and feeling so wonderfully optimistic. I’ve never suffered from any sort of mania at all if not chemically induced (read: illegally) and none so pure and bright as this and I’m really enjoying it. I love the feeling of accomplishment I feel at the end of a busy day and how bright, confident, and competent I magically seem in public. I love wanting to dance and sing and write and play all day and I love the palpable feeling of excitement and ambition that I feel when I start my mornings.

The problem, of course, is that I do tend to enjoy things that feel good to excess and I have this sneaking suspicion that this full-steam-ahead feeling that I experience during the day isn’t something I need to make permanent. Sure, it was good for drastically reversing my depression, getting me out of bed, making me a productive member of society, etc. but any more than this and I’ll slowly go to the other extreme of mood disorders and that’s not something I want to invite on myself when I’m doing so well. I’m supposed to be feeling happy and successful and confident because of the reality that I create, not the reality that pharmaceuticals create, right? I mean, I intend to stay on antidepressants, but the stimulant is something I know in my heart I need to get away from eventually if I want to be truly happy and healthy.

Damned morals.

Jamison talks about adoring her manic spells because she felt like she was floating up and away past the rings of Saturn, feeling like a million bucks and hurdling herself headlong into life. Aside from her manic spending-sprees and overzealous behaviors that she exhibited during her manias, she really enjoyed the feeling of invincibility and bliss that came with mania and really missed these when she started to level out. I never thought that such a notion would apply to me, but it does right now.

Now is when all that AA training steps in and takes over, because if it was up to me, I’d let myself feel maniacally exhuberant every day for the rest of my life and just deal with the inevitable crashes in mood that come later on. But instead, I made a commitment to being healthy and finding balance, and so that’s what I’m working toward, even though I have to give up the first consistent, productive rapture I’ve ever felt to do it.

Damned morals.

Wow, Rick Levine. You said this about me today:

~~~
Monday, Dec 29th, 2008 — You may have a hard time knowing what you are feeling as your emotions change from one extreme to the other now that the Moon is back in your sign. Optimism and excitement give way to fear of change and then back to anticipation of what may be next. Others cannot keep up with your mood swings, so it may be best to keep your intensity to yourself until your high-strung energy settles back down.
~~~~

Schyah… Tell me something I don’t know.

Why is it that even after years and apologies and moving on and blissful times and a genuinely better life with an exceptionally perfect man, a single image of his recent return to town can turn my insides completely inside out?

:::sigh:::

Damn you, Facebook. No, I do NOT want to see pictures of people I distinctly, purposefully ”unfriended”… for a reason.

I’m effing exhausted from soaring emotionally upward and then crashing down so often in the course of a week, all because of the new drugs I’ve been trying for the last couple months. I’ve never had bipolar tendencies in that when I get depressed, it lasts a longlong time and then I come out of it and return to my normal self for a while. I’ve never been manic except in short half-hour bursts and only if/when caffeine/other substances are involved, so that’s been ruled out of my diagnosis as well. However, with this new medicine, I’m very up and cheery and perky and uberproductive and optimistic and creative and perfect during the day until that inevitable instance once or twice a week when I plummet back to rock bottom. (And if I’ve had caffeine at all during the day my meds decide to pull the rug out from under me, the depression is even more exacerbated and hopeless.) This constant up-and-down has never happened to me before [yes, even when I was drinking] and, I have to say, I’m not fond of it. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE how I feel when the medication is in full swing and I’m bright and perky and everything seems beautiful and wonderful, but the comedown seems hardly worth it if it’s risking my sanity every few days. That’s not really a decent trade-off in my book. I want to be leveled-out, even if that means not feeling blissful on a daily basis. Euphoria’s fun and all, but the nature of a balanced universe insists that I have to come back to reality and, frankly, I’d rather just live in real emotion with natural peaks and valleys than these drug-motivated ones.

So, even though I received some really very cool, really very hopeful, really very dream-fulfilling news about my professional life last night and had a genuinely great evening, I still sat in the darkness of my house feeling empty and scared and alone until 2 a.m. when I finally meditated myself into a restless sleep. And it wasn’t based in anything at all, [not even those ridiculous self-loathing mantras my sick brain likes to repeat to itself during my bouts... I think they were taking the night off] which is more evidence that these deep crevices are purely from the drugs. That ain’t right.

Auuughh.. I’d like to be fixed now.

This is me peddling more wares, although this time it was a bit accidental. I’d been making this divine sugar scrub for friends and family for Christmas gifts when I received a random order for five more jars and started thinking “Hunh… that’s interesting… Wonder if anyone else would be willing to buy this stuff?”

So, I opened an etsy shop and I’m giving it a whirl. I don’t think I’ll sell even 10 in a month, (especially after the holidays die down) but I’d like to see how the general public responds to it and if it’s worth getting a business license and trying my hand at selling a few in little schwanky boutiques in the area. At the moment it’s at a pretty reserved price considering Bath and Body Works sells the same stuff for $15, but I may be making adjustments to play with my market a little. May be worth a shot.

Anyway, the site is HERE and features some tragically makeshift photography of mine that shows off the new creation. Greg helped me with the label design and really, I think the product is both adorable and effective.

See?

Yet another creative venture.

If you’re interested in a free sample of Yum in the Tub! Scrub, please let me know via email what essential oil flavor you’d like (Choose between Ylang Ylang, Rosewood, Lavender, Eucalyptus or a combo of any of those mentioned for right now. Send requests to liz.ps@live.com) and I’ll hook you up with a tiny little bit for no charge. Because I love having readers who give a crap about what craziness I’m getting into as of late.

Thaaanks!

It never ceases to amaze me how one whole week of Feeling Really Great and Being All Productive can be completely obliterated by one single evening of Shaking, Sobbing, Deteriorating Crazy that just descends on me from out of nowhere. Nothing caused it, mind you. My mind isn’t off beating itself up for sucking in general, I’m not sad about any certain, specific thing; I just started sinking and couldn’t pull up out of it. So, instead I sat on the couch in a tight little ball all evening, trying to focus on a movie that Greg put in for us and wringing my hands like I’d just snorted a line while little white flashes of light darted around my periphery for no reason. Occasionally, I’d need to inhale so abruptly that Greg would dive to my side to make sure I was okay like I was on the brink of dying. (Poor guy; three months of this has to be making him wonder why he’s married me.)

————————————————-

Okay, God,

 I’m exhausted with this now. I know I’m not one to argue with your judgment but seriously? Haven’t I done this enough? I’ve worked my ass off this round, not sitting back and taking it or drinking myself into dysfunction. I’ve been charitable and objective about my needs in recovery and I’ve changed my meditation and medication and eating habits and gone out and gotten some physical activity and rerouted my focus and talked to my therapist and gone to a different doctor and gotten out of the house to do things that I like and expressed gratitude and appreciation when I could and made amendments where I felt I needed to (no matter how outdated) and read scripture and self-help books and been still and tried to let You talk to me and had friends come to visit and literally every-fucking-thing I can think of to put into motion my feeling better and expedient recovery. I’ve held up my end of the bargain… 

…So, for fuck’s sake could I please just go for one whole week (or two) without contemplating opening a vein or overdosing on sleeping pills and wine in my bathtub? I’m literally begging You now. I haven’t had a week like that since early September, which is bullshit in itself because it almost completely wrecked the time around my wedding. (The week in Hawaii was bliss, mind you, if only I could have staved off those sleepless early mornings of quivering in my neuroses that I tried to hide from Greg in an attempt to keep him from worrying about anything on our heavenly honeymoon.) I mean, I don’t want to get all vindictive and fist-shaking and screaming stuff like “YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!” but dammit, would it really damage me and my personal character development to be completely content and catch my breath for just a little while? I’m just wondering.

I appreciate Your consideration and expedient response in this matter.

Ever Patiently,

Castallare

Sometimes, very very late at night, when I’m awake by myself and writing or reading or staring at the ceiling from my bed (or someone else’s as the case has been in the past), I feel this sensation that’s so overwhelming it’s all I can do to hang on in the midst of the sensation. It’s that whirring, whooshing, whirling feeling/notion that everything that could have happened already has, that everything that’s going to happen is just about to, and that everything that can happen is happening right this second. I can’t explain it, really, but I’ve sensed it in the quietest of moments, in the darkest, calmest moments of solitude, ever since I was very young. It’s deafening and inspiring and exhausting and envigorating all at the same time and it feels like the most tangible example of Life and Truth I’ve been exposed to.

It’s like during the first chance my mind has a chance to stop observing everything and just exist, it gets caught up in this delirious, pulsing flow of the world and all of It. It’s far above flashing cameras on red carpets or towering mountains above cities or Christmas morning glee or first love tingles or the great blue-light-inducing arc of orgasm or any of the other stupid, tangible, visible things humans seem to think make us really involved with life. It’s just this buzz that would seem frantic if not for it’s consistency in intensity and it’s unwavering intertia. It’s huge and yet it’s strangely familiar when I hear it.

And I realized recently that this strange whooshing is only familiar because it somehow whirrs quietly in me every day, whether or not I choose to acknowledge it. Even if it’s whirring to drive me into the ground or buzzing to push my spirit upward, it’s always there and yet I don’t notice it until it’s very quiet and dark and I’m alone and not trying to be or feel anything I assume I’m supposed to be. It’s the most prevalent when I’m not busy trying to find it. Figures.

I’ve always had a hard time that this wrenching, captivating, thundering intensity exists only to me at 3 a.m which is why I’ve always perked up when people mention that force “that keeps them up at night” in cheesy scripts and wondered if it’s pieces of the same force that makes rejected lovers “sob themselves to sleep” at night. I wonder how close I can pull this force into the daylight without seeming like a brainless eccentric and I wonder how I can slow my mind down enough to have access to it when I have the freedom to act on it. I wonder why people try so hard to sweep it under the rug. I wonder why nobody talks about it except in cliche films. I wonder if everyone else has learned how to deal with this and, only as my mind is starting to stumble back into functionality am I able to focus on it again. (And then, of course, I wonder why I always assume that everyone around me has everything figured out years before I do.)

I wonder if I should just shut the hell up for once, quit trying to overanalyze the shit out of something mystical, and just enjoy it on a level without language. I’m thinking that’s the one.

I saw you smash our mailbox last night. Thanks for confirming what we’ve always said about you being tacky, unstable, and probably inebriated. It gave us a good chuckle this morning.

“There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself - an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.” ~ Antisthenes

In my development of this blog, I’m working through uncovering what theme and tone I should maintain, what angle I should play, and what sort of rhythm and routine this blog’s content should contain. I have hundreds of different options, really, and am having trouble streamlining my essays and notions into something consistent. I’m delving into all my writings and trying to pick out a singular voice or angle to really focus on and develop in the life of this new blog and then I realized… Holy crap, I write a LOT.

The more I kept looking, I realized that only about 20% of what I write actually makes it to my main blog [or to my Facebook notes feed or whatever.] Why is that exactly? Alright, well I have separate journals lying around for various topics. I have an Artist’s Way journal to document my progress while I’m doing the course and a Affirmations, Aspirations, and Beliefs journal that I keep with Greg so we can compare and discuss what we personally believe and want for our lives together and have a reference book for Chloe when she asks. I have my New Recovery 2008 journal that charts my moods since starting new medication a couple months ago and discusses my mentality on a daily basis so I can keep track of my overall progress and what areas I need to work on, where my therapy is, etc. I have my Dreams and Tarot Readings book to keep track of what’s going on in my subconscious and track my life in relation to what my spirits are telling me. I have a very small Food Diary that I break out when I need to start holding myself accountable for my lack of discipline with food that also tracks how much exercise I’m getting and whether or not I’m losing weight healthily. I also have a journal that my mentor and friend gave me when I was pregnant to write family stories and my memories to one day give to my children called Reflections from a Mother’s Heart (Or something prefabbed and sappy like that) and is filled with prompts and questions Chloe may one day ask. And, of course, while I was pregnant, I kept a pregnancy journal/scrapbook that’s tucked away with Chloe’s baby book now.

Holy crap. I must be manic, right? The thing is, I’ve always kept a handful of journals as personal reference, almost like I’m doing research and documenting my life in specific files. I’m not regimented to them on a daily basis, but I always check in with them periodically and keep them up for years.

And then there are the blogs. Ohhh, the blogs. Since 2005, I’ve had my Main Blog that I’ve used from everything to a recovery tool to a message board to a journal to validation for my thoughts. This is what I’ve moved over to here in hopes to take my daily writing in a new direction. However, this doesn’t mean that this is my only blog. I also keep a syndication of my blog at Skirt! and now at Myrtle Beach Moms so I can build in my networking and reader base, but that doesn’t really count since it’s the same content as here. I’ve kept my God Blog for about three months now and am finding it to be the best way for me to pray as I work best putting my thoughts on paper instead of trying to organize an impromptu speech to The Maker in my head in between my tendency to get distracted. (I pray like I leave voice messages: “Uh, hey, God. It’s Liz. So, I wanted to thank you so much for not letting that cop pull me over and thanks also for keeping an eye on me and my little family and um. Thanks for you know, life, and love and um… the world and everything you’ve created. Which is a lot. But you knew that. Anyway, um. Please keep an eye on Sudan these days and other areas that are hurting more than I’ve had to know and those stupid people who are out there spewing hate that I want to punch sometimes… Oh! And thanks for Obama! And sunshine! Um, I’ll talk to you later. By-amen!”) And I started another secret blog a few years ago where I write erotica and get feedback for that from other writers in that genre (or creepy guys perusing “safe” porn sites while at work.) And then there’s my other other secret blog (the “Once…” blog) where I write stories from my life as a means of flushing them out and collecting them for future use in novels or memoirs or short stories or campfires or whatever. And then of course, there’s my FitDay.com journal that tallies calories consumed and burned and lets me track my fitness and health to correlate with my tangible journal on the same thing if I don’t feel like putting pen to paper and need a calculator to magically know the calorie content of a Subway Chicken Parm.

These blogs don’t even count the few blogs that I read and comment on and the message board I’ve been a member of since 2002 and the other various forums where I’m a contributor for networking/exposure’s sake. And they don’t include the job I have with a local food syndicate, writing restaurant critiques and book reviews or the other freelance gig I recently landed doing about the same thing and compiling info on local festivities.

Ah, I’m beginning to think I have a problem.

Until I started thinking about it recently, I kinda just assumed I wrote for validation or for someone to notice me, like when I started keeping a diary in first grade because it was popular and the diary looked cool. Or when I wrote while I was in the mental hospital because I hoped to turn it into essays or a memoir one day. With all this mounting, secreted evidence to suggest otherwise, it seems that maybe I’ve actually been doing it for myself all along.

How is it that something as simple as organizing 26 memorized symbols can be such an imperative, integral part of my daily life, like breathing or eating? It’s not even so much as a passion as something I physically have to do. There have been so many nights where I’ve had to get out of bed at 1 or 3 a.m., wrap myself in a robe and get something into text, that I think I may have a real compulsion issue here. The thought that there are people who don’t write anything other than grocery lists escapes me, really, and yet I’m the polar opposite of this, always scribbling on a list or conjuring ideas for some other blathering in some other form. Maybe I have a little “crazy artist” in me after all.

I am, however, opting not to medicate or therapize this out of my system… Honestly? I think I like it.

Eehhn.

So…

…Recently, I’ve noticed that my new meds are giving me the energy and the courage to follow through on things that I ordinarily would procrastinate on, which is a blessing at first. I’m getting things done! I’m answering phone calls! I’m sponsoring poor kids! I’m bathing! I’m initiating projects (like being Secret Santa for a friend and her kids who live out of town!) And soon I found myself doing those things on my God I Wish I was Insane Enough to Do This list, including a particularly massive “What if?” that’s haunted me since late 2003.

I’ve thought about it. I’ve pondered it. I’ve talked myself out of it. For a solid half decade. And then, early one morning this week, I just freaking did it. Finally.

And this is me freaking OUT while awaiting fallout from The Single Most Insane Thing I’ve Ever Done In My Whole Life.*

Fingers crossed, I won’t get burned too badly and everyone can go about their lives with sanity intact and not too much boat-rocking involved…

*Yes, I plan to be vague about this for as long as physically possible, but, seriously!?!? After all these years? What the hell was I thinking ?!? I must look like one of those deadly loons one reads about on CrimeLibrary.com!! With some sort of unresolved parental/prepubescent/attachment issues or something!! Who does that!? Baaahhh!!… I mean, would it absolutely kill me to leave this life with even one regret? It’s like I won’t let one “coulda woulda” sit in my pocket anymore fer nothin’… for Christ’s sake…