Manic Depression

Warning!!! Do not read - run!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is the responsibility of the artist that cares to express that which is uplifting. To express love for others, one must try to either make them feel something good - maybe laugh, smile, love.

Once again, I'm wrong-headed. Not right. My emotions are so intense sometimes i feel like i'm in a living hell, through the spectrum of (color) feeling so happy, and convinced that everything's gonna be alright, and knowing the answer to the universe.  So I am supposed to go to some cement cell underground, because the state of humanity disturbs me so that depression is my constant enemy. When it subsides, the spectre of it is almost always looming. Conducive to self-loathing. Wanting to crawl out of your skin.

Where's that p&*k bucket, dear Leyesa. Upriver, upwind, with a black hole in it.

I do love humanity, but I have to express my experience of this d**ned disease. So what the fluff do I do? Spare the oar?  Spoil the audience? (if there was one)  I have to express this pain for my own selfish survival. And as I have always done, publish to the web.  Why?  It's my only incling of connection to society, even if it's in my head. And they can't take it away from me. And it's as close as I can stand - far far away on a foggy night - in the outermost reaches of far off universes. This way, no one can hurt me directly, only indirectly, through thier music, if they are so inclined. Pity hurts. Keep it. It hurts as bad as the discrimination.

These blues are the darkest of midnight blues, and the blindingest of sunrise. In order for humanity to overcome, we must all know inherintly that it must be top priority for humans. Silly, stupid beings.  The unfairness of life kills me.  Why do some kids swim in a pool, and others have no clean water. sometimes i forget what it feels like to be at peace. i felt this acutely as a child. guilt for being alive in america.

Work - business (sorry, I won't risk becoming an enterpreneur.  Every time I've tried to do anything on my own the disease has destroyed everything, except for this infernal writing.) - I have to work for a company in a 'lesser' supporting role.  It's about all I can handle.  Can't barely deal with people on a daily basis - never mind manage them. So never make enough money, other than to pay the rob peter to pay paul bills. Common nowadays - 'but the story of my life. somebody's heart is broken, and it becomes your favorite song.' - Dave Matthews Band

So I hold as much of myself in as possible.  It's agonizing. Don't want folks to recognise the tell-tale symptoms of madness.  Some may use it as a weapon against you.  You don't exactly win friends with an uptight personality. It's not terror anymore, it's moderated to degrees of discomfort. Holding in your personality really sucks - but I have to do it.  Otherwise I might get scary for some individuals. 

I have to hold myself down as well.  If I get too happy - it can spiral out of control.  This may sound crazy in itself, but it's the only way I can function on very low doses of medication. 'Recommended' doses of meds take away my soul, creativity, sex drive, any emotion, ability to work, ability to think, ability to run a household, you name it - it's like being medically lobotomized. Never mind the side effects, which make me so sick I can't function anyway, and the messing with your thyroid, and making you get brain freeze, gain weight, dizzy, exhnausted, dry mouth, eyes wiggle sometimes if you don't get 8 freaking hours, nauseous, etc. So i only take about a third of the 'recommended' dosage. 'Recommended,' my butt.  They want to profit off of keeping people sick, slightly managing their symptoms, and make us even more sick so we get hooked on more prescription drugs.  It's an evil scene of corporate, wall street and government (legacy) greed. Sleep deprivation is killer and triggers mania. Then the heavy artillery comes out. Anti-psychotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, a sudden, gaunt weight loss from the additional nausea from all of them. Course it doesn't stay off when you can eat again.

The therapist I have is great.  My first PHd, and a lovely woman.

The RN psych nurse is great too.  But it's always standard treatment, compared to individual needs, and I insist on these very low doses so I can have a life, limited though it may be, and they don't entirely trust me.   More undermining, but this disease is tricky - so many of us can become just not right - which is why we can look so bad to society.  Yes, disabled by degrees, and even by the very thing that's supposed to 'help' -meds. I'm tremendously lucky.  Folks can't access medication and sometimes become homeless. Many who suffer from this don't respond to medication.  Or get so sick from it they have to stop.  Depends on the care you get, if you're lucky enough to even get care, and your ability and opportunity to advocate for yourself.  I wish Abbie was still around, lecturing kids with manic depression they way he did me that time. Of which I have been extremely blessed.  I was incredibly stubborn as a child.  So I pretty much did what I wanted, no matter how wrong-headed.  (yikes - a pity what my parents went through)  And I refused the medication the nut-prison forced on me at 16.  Abbie's pharmaceutical industry 101 lecture was intense. Resisted meds until 30 - right about the time the photo was taken, about 20,000 years ago. I resisted because I was convinced that if I wanted to rebel against psychiatry and have a chance at good life, I had to try to preserve my physical health as much as possible.

Manic depression messes with your metabolism, your persona, everything.  Weight bounces up and down with the annual cycle of moods.  Then there is a daily layer upon that of rapid cycling - not all the time.  If it seems scary ... believe me, as much as I try to hide my fear, no matter how much I try to protect others from myself, emotion is infectious. Was a terrified child/teen/young adult. There is still fear in my eyes - it's hard to look at people in the eye that I don't know, or that I am not open with about the disease.

The worst thing is that there is a huge chunk of people that gossip.  They find out you have 'emotional problems' or whatever and then they judge you first and formost or even soley on that - without ever having a conversation with you or knowing you in the least.  Funnily enough, this discrimination causes so much sadness and rage in me, that it makes me more of a lunatic. These people make me sick. And usually they don't even treat you like a person. Stare at you in disgust. Whisper about you together as if you weren't human.  Then many go to church, pray to their gods and have a hypocritical sandwich on rye for lunch.

The meds did calm the delusions and hallucinations. 'Course some crazy shit was really happening anyway, as I saw to it to sesek out as bizarre or difficult a life as possible.  It was all I knew since a wee child, I wasnot right, so only crazy people would ever love me.  Strange compulsion - self destruction. The meds have also taken years off my life, in trying to find one that was tolerable, trying over 6 different types and getting extremely ill either right away with reaction or once I had a systemic reaction:  8 months to get sick, 8 more months to 'recover.' And working full time and going to school nights and being a stepmom/wife at that time. Neurontin, an epileptic drug.  Neuroleptic. Had braces on my wrists from what they were saying was carpal tunnel.  Surgery was the option.  (I've had to learn to be very careful of regular doctors as well.)  Depakote, a different neuroleptic I tried, gave me huge mouth sores that were extremely painful. Suffered that bad for over 2 years getting worse when a dental hygenist - a young girl, discovered in the Physician's Desk Reference or whatever that the antidepressant wellbutrin (buproprion) in conjuction with the mood stabiliser (depakote) was likely causing these huge horrible sores.  My mouth would swell and I'd talk funny. Add that to feeling absolutely out of your gourd.  Kept having to try different things.  Until finally had to come back to the soul-stealer of last resort, old lithium.  I stay on it mainly to hold down a job.

I stay alone a lot for other's protection and of course my own.  I realise I'm going to be on my own for the duration. As much as at times as I'd like to grow old with someone, or get lonely, I feel enormous relief being alone.  I do accept myself mostly, so there's no one to judge, or tell you you're wrong-headed. I may not be conventional, but I'm right.  Yes!!!!!!- all human beings should share resources. No!!!!!!!(not you, No) war is wrong!!!!!!!!!  Violence is wrong.  Drinking & drugs to excess is wrong.  Hurting yourself or anyone in any way is wrong. When Geo. W. Bush was elected the 1st time I was just hateful of all the sickening red, white and blue ignorance.  The 2nd time I knew we were homicidally and suicidally insane and sick with greed, and as a country needed to be punished with a steep increase of lithium.

Lithium's mood stabilizing effects was discovered by accident in like '52. They don't fund much trying to find anything decent for folks. Psych meds are on of the pharma industry's cash cow. Neglected and sufficient. Just stuff that makes us folks have metabolic syndrome, diabetes, thyroid disorders, obesity, chemical lobotomiztion, financial problems, etc.

Thank god...for the current administration.  Blessed be, and iron-clad, indominable protection surround them.  A brilliance of spirit, strength of love.
That ^ helps relieve some of the panic attacks.

If it weren't for this incessantly indominable instinct for survival of mine, I would have been long ago.  I'm tired, yet pretty healthy physically and with my luck I'll last till 117 years old, no matter how much I would love to get taken out and go to the sprirt world.  Damn human survival instinct. 

Just now I schreiked!!!!!!(sp) - like if you felt a huge bug on you or a snake - because I felt a touch.  I'm alone in the cabin, (naturally). A gentle loving touch, but it did startle the hell out of me.  Then I sat next to the wood stove (yes burning in the raw June) and felt it again, lighter.  It was Amy.  She wants me to live, too.  So do all the spirits of loved ones that have passed, ancestors, fairies, elves, gremlins, trolls, thumbelina, dieties, whatever entity comes to mind, whatever entities that visit, and other angels, animals and spirit guides that surround me. Solitude has had some great compensatory rewards. Amanda does get my attention sometimes. She's here now. I am writing to avoid going to sleep, but I have to work tomorrow.  She wants to say more to me.

I have all these reasons I have to survive. two little kitty cats I adore. Neighbors that keep to themselves, but and (seem) kind and caring for the most part. Friends, a nephew, former step-kids, a Mum, co-workers, a job at least of some social value. A cabin in a pine wooded valley in a rural area. Rasberries.  Wildlife. Flowers. Birds, hummingbirds, butterflies, fireflies and the starriest in the blackest of skies, a honking milky way shooting over the cabin.  When I backed in to the ditch in torrential rain, my neighbors, a family, got the caterpillar and towed me out.  That was so kind.  I feel a safety living amongst them. Tree across the road? No problem.  Capable & reliable.

The delusion I have, of someday writing something of real social value, not just indulging in communicating truthfully.

'
constantly
     - Posted by Pandora Faraone