Moody Meow

Moodswiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingggggggggggg!!

Isn’t this fun?

• to write
• to think
• to feel this blue
• for questions and answers
• for bitter tastes
• to understand
• for unfinished homework
• to be the fat girl
• for a peircing to act up
• to think about moving
• to say thank you
• for conversation
• to really give up smoking
• to deal with the shitty phone setup at work
• to be nice
• to be understanding
• for the silence without my iPod
• for another smoofie
• for class

I am feeling sorry for myself today. No, there’s no reason. I just feel shitty. Comes with the territory I suppose. There is a certain ammount of responsibility that I should take with this bipolar shit, but I can’t seem to motivate myself. That was a condition of my lesser meds - use the natural blanace of the body chemistry through movement. There’s the issue with weight gain. I’m balanced about 40 pounds heavier than I should be. That’s a lot of weight, and to make it disappear, I have to fight with my seroquel. That drug likes to add weight. Maybe I just need a nap. Maybe I am afraid of failing today. Maybe I just need a good cry to wash this blue out of my head. Although, today I think a cigarette would work as well. I don’t count the days anymore. I’m a recovering smoker. I think I always will be.

And I just got an e-mail about Northwestern’s Liberal Arts Masters. A co-inky-dink (sound it out) considering all that pulled me to Chicago is gone. I also have to apply to UBC this week. Scary shit, I tell you. Scary scary shit.

I went back to the headshrinker on Monday. I must say, her assistant is adorable. She has a whispery voice and an easy smile, and I saw the peek of a tattoo as her sleeve rode up on her shoulder. She told me later, as I left, that she has a full back piece of a phoenix. I always smile when I hear about “normal” people with remarkable tattoos.

But back to the Dr. I’ve been very honest with her about my moods, what I was feeling, that I had started drinking and smoking again and that I was quitting for the millionth time. She believes, and I agree, that I am mostly balanced.  The moods still swing and waver, but I have enough space to understand why I feel what I feel. We decided to err on the side of response rather than a complete eradication of my mood disorder. There’s a reason for this. I fear the complete abortion of my moods swings will disconnect me from my muse. She’s small these days, and terrified. I need emotions to feel her. Need space to be just a little off kilter. It’s a manageable amount and I am willing to risk a little pain for the sensation that drives my writing.

I told my Doc that I had a blog and that I write about my illness. She surprised me with the brightness of her smile. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed about my bipolar, and she was impressed at my journey to frank conversation. Then she told me about a few of her difficult patients, specifically one who suffered through multiple angles of treatment without telling the Doc that there was a cocaine problem in addition to her mood disorder. The Doc knows about my drug-laden past. Self-medication through narcotics is a pretty common occurrence among those with a mood disorder. It’s just the wrong way to fix things. I had to really stumble into the depths of madness before I quit doing hard drugs and got help. But I’ve been helped, and I couldn’t be happier. 

So, the reason for this post. I am now on a bi-yearly schedule to visit the Doc. We are both confidant that I am to the point where I can make daily choices about my meds and such that do not require a doctor’s care. She made me promise to sleep when I needed to and to try to keep a workout schedule up and running since that will temper some of the remaining swings (which usually come when I’m hormonal). I will not see her until March, and that makes me feel like I have a great hold on things. With all of the chaos going on in these past few days, I forgot to contemplate this news. I feel better for it.

And we are on day 4 of no smoking. :)  Happiness.

I hate small talk. Just so you all know. Hate it. I am interested in true dialogue. Don’t ask me how I am if you don’t give a shit. And whispers are just rude.
I am coming out of a fog this morning, and am more than a little grumpy. Nothing really happened. Last night’s class (Ital Ren) was wonderful, and I love that Vanya is going to be my partner for our project. Tonight I have editing essentials, and I am more exicted about the professor than I am about the class itself. But I talked to my sister last night and sent off Mom’s package. I am just grumpy. Sometimes people just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I wanted to stay in bed….. I guess more coffee will fix this…

/end grump

• Roadtrips are not all they are cracked up to be
• Not eating is a very bad thing.
• Sometimes taking a break is the hardest decision to make.
• People do stupid thing when they are tired.
• You have to remember to bring the battery for the camera if you intend on taking pictures.
• Dr. Pepper is not a meal.
• Showers are lovely and should be had more often.
• Gainseville is fucking scary at 2:30 in the morning.
• Tennessee is scary all the time (although the mountains are beautiful)
• Going 55-60 on major highways pisses off everyone on the road.
• Text messaging is fun.
• Camera phones are fun.
• Sleep is a necessity, not an option.
• My husband rocks.
• My Chrome bag should not be filled with electronics because it’s damn heavy.
• Flip-flops are dangerous according to the morons at OIA. (I wasn’t even wearing fun socks)
• Playing Bejeweled makes me happy.
• I don’t have a very good singing voice.
• There are Seemores all over the country.
• Deer are very pretty, although it made me damn nervous to see them on the side of the road.
• The soap in rest-stop bathrooms lingers on your hands for hours.
• There are some polite truckers on the road, but most of them are large and fast.

I am mostly recovered. When I got home (and during some of the trip) I had full on hallucinations. It was more than a little disturbing considering that I haven’t dropped acid for almost a decade. If I hadn’t had those experiences then I know I would have freaked out. Sometimes doing drugs is a good thing. Near as I can figure it was cause by the lack of sleep, not taking my meds and a bitchin case of dehydration (Dr. Pepper is not hydration). My eyes started to get very uneven when we hit the Florida line. I had a hard time focusing and the colors of the grass and the lights really brightened up. I had a dizzy spell and realized that I was screwed.  When I laid down to go to sleep I heard and saw things. Instead of waking D up, I went onto the porch and smoked a few cloves. I shouldn’t have, but I took my meds (it was waaaay late for me to take them) and I eventually fell into a very deep sleep. The auditiory hallucinations were the worst. I heard things in the engine of D’s car, and something singing from the fan (we sleep with a small fan that blows very loudly - it drowns out the cars going 95 down our street) and music coming from the street. I checked my cell phone twice because I thought I heard it ringing, and then I thought Voodoo knocked it onto the floor. I didn’t want to bother D, so I made my bed on the couch. When I went into the living room, I watched Valentine swirl and morph into strange animals, all the while still being Val. I know this sounds more than a little wierd, hell it was kind of fucked up when it was happening, but it didn’t scare me. It annoyed me. I also recognized the feeling of post-partying again. It wasn’t coming down from the drugs that bugged me, it was the dehydration and lack of sleep. At the tail end of the trip, I felt that familiar weariness. For some reason I never attributed that feeling to those things. But now I know.  So I take from this trip some lessons learned and I plan on applying those lessons to our move out west. Most importantly - you need to rest on long hauls like those. That, and Dr. Pepper really isn’t a meal.

I’m off to nap again…. home sweet home….

Frickin Wordpress ate my first post, so it’s lazy time for the Erica. I’m too damn hungry to string along cohesive paragraphs, so you get a list.

• My enchiladas are still the best out there.
• Sometimes its best to just shut up and forgive, but I’m not taking my own advice right now.
• I love Morrowind and had a lovely time playing.
• We didn’t get any biking in…so sad
• My unexpected phonecalls stirred up some emotions for me
• I am still figuring out how to process them
• I forgot to return one of the Schiele books to the library. I have to do that before class.
• We need groceries….badly!
• I am not really looking forward to my birthday, not because I am turning thirty…but for other reasons.
• Those reasons are still developing.
• Given the choice, I would rather take the risk of moving than stay in our ultra-comfy spot in Orlando.
• I think that risks make the successes all the sweeter.
• I am in a pretty foul mood…so I will go back to working and save you all the trouble of my pissy attitude.

I thought I was okay when I went to sleep. I was reading about narcissim and the artist’s mind. D woke me gently, pulling the book from my hands and placing it on the bedside table. I fell soundly to sleep.

Go to 1:15. Something woke me up (I know Val contributed) and I was livid. D tried to talk me back into bed after I stormed off into the living room. He looked mad when he went to bed. I wasn’t nice. I cried a lot. I don’t know why. There was no reason really. I get very frustrated with the sleep thing, waking suddenly and the inability go back to sleep. Perhaps it’s the lingering issues with the darkness or something.

I sat on my computer for a while. The screen glimmered and winked at me, but I didn’t really pay any attention to what I read. Then I went to my car, grabbed the last cloves I had from Anne’s birthday and smoked. The frogs chirped, happy with the  rain. Seemore tinkled as the wind blew just enough to make him whisper. The heavy, wet leaves spilled rain onto the lower branches. And then I cut. For the first time in a long time it didn’t make me feel better. I smoked the rest of my cloves and went back inside.

Val and Voodoo sat with me. Perhaps they were trying to will away my misery. It didn’t really work. I fell asleep with the light on, reading another book for my thesis. For the rest of the night I woke up every hour. I am exhausted now. I wore a long-sleeved shirt this morning because I didn’t want any arguement with D about my arm. He went back to bed, not knowing what I did. (he’s going in late so he can wait for the AC guy).I know I will hear about it later…but I just wanted to get to work so that I can get this day over with so that I can go back to bed this afternoon and take a nap.

I was waaaay medicated yesterday, and today I remain medicated, but I less so.

The diagnosis for this whole mess was as a “side effect” of one of my meds. My understanding for “jittery” was far different from the Doc’s. The jitteryness started. I freaked out. Then a panic attack. Then a visit to the headshrinker who immediatly took me off the offending meds. Then home, to take the tranquilizer. Then sleep. And somewhere in there was a dinner of potato pancakes.

Today the jitters remain, although, not to the degree that they were before. I remain on the main medication and the tranquilizer. but I didn’t go into work. I was more than a little embarrassed about the panic attack. My coworkers were wonderful for shielding me from prying eyes. I am every grateful for their understanding.

I’m glad that mess is over.

I can’t be eloquent under this kind of medication, not this. This is for those times when I want my skin to seem bizarrely luminescent and for the metallic taste in my mouth to accompany my fine doctor pepper.

Heavily medicated, I write to you. Post-panic attack. After David left his new job early to take me to see my shrink because I started twitching and I couldn’t stop and I scratched the back of my hand until it bruised. Until I couldn’t breathe from fear.

So if I spoke to you today or ignored your calls or somethiing that required conversation, please forgive me. I was not in my right mind. No not at all. I was in panic and the worst throes of a miscommunication between meds and my brain. See they aren’t cooperating and to quell unending movement I dillute the complulsion wiht two doses of a tranquilizer and a boatload of potato pancakes….(we bought them from Whole Foods two days ago).

I am going to remove myself from this little glowing computer so that I may rest with David who rescued me from the throes of madness (brought upon by new meds….damn them) and sleep away thisi night and the next and pray with my drugged mind to rest well, with a stomach that stops aching. It just won’t go away

I am sorry to some and thankful to some and I will iron it all out after sunrise.

I called into work again. I feel bad for it, but I had no business driving this morning. When I’m awake I feel better, but the challenge is trying to wake up. I snapped again last night, spent the early morning hours watching my recorded episodes of 60 Minutes and CSI (all except Miami, which is the dumbest of the lot). I got about an hour of sleep. Still heavily medicated, I took D to work because he was having issues with his car and we had to drop it off at the dealership. I’m awake now, feeling guilty and in dire need of something to eat.

I’m feeling sorry for myself. I want to have a tantrum, but I know that’s not generally a socially acceptable way of releasing tension. On one hand my meds and brain are cooperating nicely. On the other hand, the side effects are a bitch. What’s more important? Moodswings or a job? So, that’s where my head’s at, and not up my ass.

I think Mr. Hurricane Alberto needs to piss off. We need the rain, but I like the 24 hour storms. We’ve lost power a couple times for minutes. Just enough time to freak the cable out and make the dogs tilt their head in confusion.

I had a dream that we sold our couch and bought plastic lawn furniture. Strange.

I need to eat. Happy Monday

I should rename this blog “Sleepy Meow.” Again, another night without sleep. I woke at 1:30 and went to lay down on the futon in the front room. And I stayed awake for most of the night. I am guessing I got 3-4 hours again. This is going to kill me. Usually when I have insomnia, I crash hard the next day. I honestly haven’t gotten a solid 8 hours since I went on these meds. I am stitching together spots of rest between suddenly waking. Sometimes there is a reason, but more often there’s not. And all of the promises I made to myself this week, the research and exercise, have been broken. All I want right now is a frickin nap. And I won’t get that today because I have my first day of class.

**

(four hours later)
I am awake now. I woke because I was sitting in the Dr.’s office, watching people line up for their meds and getting antsy when it takes too long. It did take too long today. My appointment was at 10. She didn’t get to me until 11:45. Surprisingly, I have patience with that kind of thing. After talking things over with her we are going to try a new approach. I am adding to my cocktail of meds. I  need something to bring me down from hypomania (which is why I haven’t slept this week) but not something I have to take all the time. It’s a game with my brain, but I don’t think I am losing anymore. She’s understanding about my fear of weight gain and some of the less happy side effects. So I get to play with the chemicals in my brain, yet again, and see if we can find something that sticks. If not, I am thinking about just exchaging my brain for a jar of pickles.

Tonight is my first night of my last summer class. There’s something surreal about it. I started, way back when, with Leslie Boles’s Intro to Art class, and I am going to end with her husband’s Films of the 80’s class. It’s a nice thought. I started 4 summers ago. This is my last summer (I graduate in December). It has a bittersweet taste to it.

Although I started the day in a slump, I am feeling better now. Think it was my veggie buffalo wings and iced tea. Or, maybe it was yet another mood swing, but I won’t analyze it to death. Instead, I will just sit here happily listening to DJ Krush.

I had to finally buy a support brace for my right hand. It’s the one I am having problems with and it’s pain. It’s gray and has some gel insert. A few years ago I bought a flesh colored one and it worked for a bit, but it got dirty and started to gross me out. At the rate I’m going, I’ll have to get one for my left wrist and then just start typing with a straw.

Somehow, someway, I bypassed getting my ass handed to me by a cop on the Ivanhoe onramp to I-4. I’ve complained before about the people using it as an avenue to bypass the traffic on I-4 itself. There’s an off ramp to Colonial and the on-ramp to Ivanhoe, so it’s a busy little hiccup. Today, as I got on, two cars - a small pale pickup and an Audi raced by me, in the left lane, making me gun it to get all the way to the left before my road ran out. At the top there was a lovely bike cop who nailed those two weenies. D told me as I left today not to speed. I was a good girl and finally someone else got what they deserved.

Had a wicked manic snap last night. Slept, maybe, three hours. I feel so frustrated, because I honestly expected my meds to make the really bad swings to disappear. I have yet another med check on Friday. So, once again, I didn’t run because I was trying to bleed a little more sleep out of the hour I normally run. I should have gotten up. The cats were chirping and running causing chaos and I never really got back to sleep.

Now it’s time for a coffee infusion.

Almost every month I have to sleep in the living room at least once. It’s some kind of mental penance and an attempt at keeping my lover out of harm’s way. I admit I can be a bitch about this under normal circumstances, but there’s been a mental release for me. We rode yesterday, walked the beagles and I was physically exhausted. As I lingered on the edge of sleep, David moved. That was all it took for me to understand that I was going to be awake for the rest of the night. So, I grabbed my pillow, made my apologies and closed the door most of the way so the felines could exit and enter as their moods struck them. I then spend the rest of the night cursing the building of Baldwin Park because the cars raced down my street long after 1 in the morning.

So my thoughts wandered all over the place as they do when I can’t sleep. I thought about the points in the ride where I almost pulled over and puked on some stranger’s lawn. Half an apple pop-tart is not good before a steaming, hard ride. I thought about the lingering disconnect between me and the fam, and the isolation I feel. I thought about a move, anywhere and the big blue spot in the corner of the TV that irritates the snot out of David. I thought about the lack of roaches in my house, the first rain that washed my world clean in weeks, about the color of the sky prior to that rain, and the particular shade of orange that dusk gives us. I thought about our plans for the weekend which include a trip to the Bird of Prey center, a ride on West Orange, X-men United, a trip to the headshrinker, dinner with Vanya, doggie parks and lots of good Erica food. I thought about my weight gain and how disheartening it is for me. I thought about how I felt last weekend when I smoked and the phlegm I’m coughing up now (the lingering smoking hangover). I thought about David singing me silly songs to keep my mood up and how he sits on the couch with me when I play Morrowind. I thought about Pip’s dandruff (who knew a dog could have dandruff) and how much I love listening to NPR in the morning. I thought about seeing Vanya driving home while we walked the doggies and how nice it was to have a friend in the neighborhood (that queues a song in my head…but I don’t remember which one)…and then I fell asleep.

My dream involved snow. My parent’s place. Honest happiness and no guarded facades. Papa-san was working on installing a new floor in the kitchen and Mom was painting something. There was snow outside and it was warm inside and I never felt more out-of-home in my life. Not that I wasn’t welcome, but it was not my home. I knew, even in dreaming, that my home included creatures, green and D. I was just visiting. It felt right, that feeling of not being home. I think dreams sometimes make us understand what our waking mind wants to ignore.

When I woke in the morning, I was rushed by beagles (they knew it was breakfast time) and I watched Voodoo run around the house, and a sleepy David came to wake me for my day. I felt at home…

After thought and consideration, I’ve decided that this site needs some honesty. I started blogging to find my own voice and I swim in the darker corners of myself in order to understand my own inner workings. If that elucidates a response from strangers and the known participants in my life - then that’s just groovy. But there’s been an unhealthy dose of self-censoring. I’ve worried myself into silence in order to protect you and you and you. The cost has been to myself. I find that I utter “But I thought you knew… (insert text here).” And when you come back at with me with “You never told me!” I feel like a shit head. I feel like I’ve been hiding something, and I realize I’ve been hiding my own feelings.

I‘ve got this problem with feeling everything. All of it. The good, the bad (and the bad is mighty fierce) and the ugly. You and you and you are probably scared of me. It seems a lot of people are. Not that I am going to fly off the handle and kick your ass, and hopefully not that I am going to hurt your feelings. But you are scared none-the-less and I can’t figure out why. My ferocity doesn’t come at the expense of your feelings. I am overly concerned about those around me. But I am fierce. It is how I exist.

I am ripe with change. The precipice looms and all I have to do is strap on a parachute and jump. those that come with me will enjoy the view. Those that don’t will never know that they missed in not risking themselves. I don’t want to leave you and you and you behind, know that much.

So how does this translate to Moody Meow? In terms of the site, beyond posts about work, I am not going to make any of them, and please understand this - any of them - private. I’m awful at hiding my feelings in person and to do so in this digital world goes against the grain for me. When I am manic and full of illogical rage, you will hear about it. When I am amused at my own folly, you may read that as well. When I doubt the substance of friendship and family, you are going to be witness to that. All of the things that make me Erica are going to be here, because they are there in person as well. This silence and retreat was as much about trying to figure out my own misery (because I know for a fact that it wasn’t my manic-depression) as it was about planting my feet and ceasing my backwards motion.

It came to me, just yesterday, that my withdrawal may have hurt some feelings. I honestly didn’t think about how my retreat would affect those around me. It was better for most that I did what I did when I did it. Understand that I never meant to offend or hurt you and you and you. I admit to being a monster sometimes, and recently I’ve had to come to terms with the more interesting aspects of myself. But if you listen to me for a moment, and really see me, not the seeming banality of my life, you would see that there are tempestuous waters beneath the pinched smile. But I am back, pinched smile and all. I need to make some phone calls I’ve been putting off, and come back to the real world. That’s my responsibility, but give me time to do it.

I ask that you fear me less. I promise to work on making me a better person. But also understand that there are reasons that I feel what I feel. Perception is the key to all relationships. I know you and you and you aren’t in my skin and won’t be able to fathom all of the choices I make. But there is sanity there, I swear it. And I hope you and you and you come with me on this journey. If you’ve got the strength to jump, I’ve got the parachute

I had a manic snap last night and slept on the couch. By the time I realized I wasn’t going to sleep it was almost 3. Too late to take a pill. Too late to walk. Just too damn late. So I am doing okay right now, but I am projecting a sleepy afternoon.

I don’t like the story I wrote (which I finished in the midst of mania) but I have to use it. I don’t have tht time to come up with a new one, although I have some interesting ideas - mostly social commentary. I decided to get away from stories close to me and focus on other characters. That being said I just realized I need to change the point of view of the story.

The prior post concerned something I had to get off my chest, but it’s locked because I don’t feel like explaining myself. I just needed to get some things off my mind…
Onto better things. The scan came back negative for a clot. That’s something to cheer about. And I went and saw the headsrhinker and told her about my sleeping problems (how I wake msyelf up, and wake up often and then fall asleep at my desk the next morning) and she assured me that when I get up to my full dosage that I will be fine. I still have a boatload of Klonopin (or how ever you spell that) and I can take those as half pills if I need to sleep. She seems to think that the therapy is going well, and I have to agree. The test is going to come in the next weeks when I fly full-force into PMS. That’s the real test of my sanity and the mental health of those around me.
The weekend is going to go like many of our weekends - homework. I have a final and a story due next week. wh00t for the end of my last spring course! Hope you all have a fantastico weekend…

For a while now, I’ve had this sharp pain in my left lung. It grows increasinly worse when I get winded, and I’m getting winded a lot lately. I can’t bike, because it pulses like a fanned ember. It hurts like hell. Well, after some prodding by David, I’ve decided to go to the doc. It seems like every time I turn around, something else is plagueing me. I hope it’s something small, like a bruised rib or something. Although, I can’t really figure out how in the hell I could have done such a thing.

I paid sixty-eight dollars in library fines yesterday. I almost swallowed my gum when the librarian told me how much I owed. It doesn’t pay to leave books in your trunk.

Julie, David and I watched Apocolypse Now. It was kind of a class assignment, as we were looking at it in relaitons to Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” I saw the parallels, but I didn’t like the short story, and didn’t particularly love the movie. I know they are two different creatures, but I think that dark, evil characters make me sad. I don’t like being sad. And I know for a fact that my mental fragility (is that even a word?) would not lend itself to that kind of madness. That said, it made me really fucking uncomfortable to watch them slaughtering the cow. People death I can deal with. Animal death - a whole different story. This shouldn’t shock anyone. Although it paralleled Kurtz’s death, and I understood the death of the cow was the death of Kurtz, I would have rather have seen his arm lopped off rather than brutality against an animal. But, that’s just me.

The weekend was uneventful. D and I watched “A History of Violence.” I liked it a lot and there were some interesting sex scenes. I think the cast was really well done, and the violence was a touch on the comical side (imagine someone’s jaw being blown off). . But I liked it overall. I’m all about Viggo.

The week is going to suck. I’m working a half day tomorrow so I can be home for the fireplace guy, but I have to make up the time on Saturday. Same goes for Friday. I hate working the weekend, but I don’t have the spare vacation time.

Did I mention that I’m in a craptastic mood? Blech….

Struggling through these meds, what they are doing to me, and the reality that I am going to be on stronger ones later, really freaks me out. I am serious when I say that I just woke up. I’ve been “awake” since 6:00 this morning, but I spent my lunch with my head on my desk, asleep. I’ve got strange impressions in my forehead and I feel like I need to brush my teeth. It strains at me to lag so hard. I try to remind myself that this is necessary. And I am going to avoid coffee at school. That seems to be a precursor to my over-wakefulness in the evening.

Last night, instead of the regular class, Leslie took us all to the lecture at the Church about Art Theft. The FBI agent was conversational, but seemed to cater to the monied crowd and not to the few students sitting in the back of the chapel. I was also disappointed when he told us that 90% of art theft is an inside job, but he never really touched on a case. Instead he went for the glam-cases. The robbery of wealthy Spanish woman and the theft of pre-Columbian art from Peru. Those were the flashy cases. Vanya did go up after the lecture and to ask him whether the inside jobs were more for profit or because the curators/students/officals who worked near the art wanted to keep them for themselves. It seems money is the evil in that case, and many of the works are stolen for the cash, not because they are overhwlemingly wonderful.

I am meeting with the Monday professor to get my extension signed. And I shall also spend a few hours in the library working on my newly approved thesis. I have a feeling I am going to have to pull 20 pages out of my ass, but that’s okay. I am a consumate bullshit artist.

On Saturday (after the ride, which means sometime after 12) I am going to spend a good deal of time at the library. If you would like to join me, give me a ring!

Tonight I get to go to my fiction class. The story I wrote has potential, but I need to do a fair ammount of editing before I feel ready to workshop it in class. The stories I have read so far all have a tinge of sadness in them. I felt like my own possessed a wistful tone. Regardless, I am going to class in my happy pants (shall I choose my purple ones, or the ones that say “I love dorks”?? Decisions).

I hope the rest of your day is wakeful. I need to find some good links to post. I’ve been neglecting that aspect of my blog.
And iced tea rocks.
That is all.

I don’t think I can take that stuff regularly. Beyond its highly addictive nature and almost assured weight gain, it knocks me off the level of the waking world and pushes me knee-deep into a weightless drunkenness. David observed that its effects were similar to alcohol in me: one moment I am silly and sane, the next I am dead asleep. I will tell you that my addiction to this drug wouldn’t come from the physicality of the effects, but rather from the sleep it induces. I swam deeply in my dreams, and woke, only begrudgingly, to the sweet sound of David’s voice, enveloped in my warm duvet (see: woobie). I wanted more sleep. Needed it. Considered calling into work. (they know about the meds and such). Instead I sat on the toilet, my underwear around my feet, and contemplated a shower and if I could manage any kind of balance.

Shower done, I felt clean. Not just externally, but internally. As if that blessed sleep finally healed something long raw and unchecked. Festering it was. Now I feel healed. That is what I can become addicted to. This unwavering sense of “yes, I slept.” It’s a drug all on its own.

I will not take this med as directed by my doc. It’s a small dosage, but I will take it as needed (as she told me verbally) when my thoughts race and I have trouble sleeping. It’s an anti-anxiety med with sedative properties. I don’t need it all the time. Sometimes I think the patient has the right to make their own calls. I don’t do this ignorantly. I’ve read up on Klonopin and it’s reactions with my main meds and what they will both due to my system. Perhaps this is boring to you all. I can’t imagine that blogging about meds and mental illness (god I hate that term) would be the most interesting read. It isn’t necessarily who I am, merely part of how I function. Erica, beyond the manic-depression, is still inherently Erica.

Tali and I were online yesterday talking about Chicago and what we would do. My not drinking kind of puts kink in many of our plans, for there are many pubs and bars that call to us. And I don’t smoke anymore. And I don’t eat meat. This is a radical shift from the Erica you all knew seven years ago when I moved here. I drank. I did drugs (although it was much less than when I lived down south). I hope the steadier creature I am becoming doesn’t disuade you from understanding that I am still Erica, still the ass-kicking softie with mean cooking skills and an obsession with being on time. I don’t know if I am trying to convince you or myself, but I’m not going to change much. Just become more “normal” I guess.

I am wiggling around in this calm skin, trying to get the feeling right. The change from the week I was in Colorado to now is radical. I think it’s not only the meds, but being at home and being comfortable (mentally and physically). If you want to know the best of me. Come to my house. Play with my creatures. Take a rest on my porch and have a conversation. Then we all can rest and I will make you the best omelet ever. I am still Erica….just a little more medicated.