August Again

There is a delight in writing that only comes after banging ones head against a wall for weeks prior.  Refusal to just do it while that grey lump of brain insists...do it. The same with painting. you can resist but eventually you give in. And you drink. And you smoke because it is all tangled up together.

The therapist suggests I make lists. So that I can survive in real life and, like, know what day it is and do my job and pay bills. I forget things. Some sort of anxious mania takes over. buzzing and moving about. I should set up a schedule she says. But the thing is...i like the energy. Bc i get it so rarely and when i do, it just feels so good to be alive.

I've started walking. Jogging. My hip is bad. No doctor can tell me why, it just hurts. I suppose f'ed it up when I was not eating and running a million miles a day. I dont know. Take it easy take it slow. It is just five pounds, but it is five pounds that need to go.

I am painting the city. I didn't mean too. At first I painted the live oaks. But now it is the city and the bridge and that weird tragic dome. All patched up with the light show and all.  I need to sell these paintings. My bank account has dwindled to nothing. I dont even know why, its so frusterating to keep up with money. Numbers floating around, they come and go. Not as pretty as insects or leaves. Seasons and dollars measuring it all.

I am older. You will be too. You think you know honesty but when you become invisible is when you know the truth. and when it knows you.

muffin tops are cute, sorry but

i think they are. I am not totally comfortable with my body or whatever but...it is annoying that people think of names for body parts just to be jokes. like why is that funny? or bad? now 8 million lil girls are terrifed of the "dreaded muffin top." lame. I think muffin-tops are cute and i think my spider veins are pretty like lavender threads holding together the network of blood and hope that is me. Sorry Mrs Vanity. I still hate my saddlebags if that makesyou feel any better.
love,
me

It's where she lies

I believe in a bone fragmented memory

I am 14 years old. I am thinner that I have ever been and I am in the bathtub staring down at my body with the usual feeling of intense alienation. I am full grown; I was full grown by 12. I found this repulsive so I tried to stop it. Now I’m older but smaller…and I only want even smaller. Staring at hipbones  beneath water…beneath skin. I want to see them closer. Really really see them. Are they really there? Are they white? Staring staring….It occurs to me quite suddenly that there is really NOTHING I can do to change the shape of my bones. Bones are solid, right?  ….and wide and thick and strong. They won’t be shrinking well they? I Stare. Immersed in water and complete powerlessness. I am a helpless soul trapped in this uncontrollable bone machine.  Is it true? …at some point there is nothing else you can do?….You can’t go any farther. Right? I begin fantasize about breaking bones and re constructing them. This seems horrible and I shudder and get up. And I dry off.

And I  get better

And I get worse

And at 17 I get hospitalized and diagnosed.

And at 31 I  write this.*

*This is supposed to go along with this drawing . But I can’t get all these bits and fragments of thoughts and images to add up. I know now, that Bones can be damaged to the point that they shrink, and surgeons can and do alter them. But as a kid I didn’t know it. I imagined them as steel. And it’s a good thing I did. It’s a good thing I believed in bones. 

Witched and Stitched

Gotta dark spot right here on my soul, ya wanna see it? it may make you grow old la la la la
So one thing i am not afraid of is the dark. My first love is the moon, tattooed on my stomach right beside a stitch with five stripes....one for each member of my immediate family including me. This ink is not supposed to be pretty or fancy...just a symbol that I wanted... that I needed. A stellarscar had to have had a stellar stitch. i need beauty. beauty and is truth. and the truth it almost always has a black spot...that I can't ignore, or look away from. Maybe it's my chemistry, my past or this world, but please don't ask me to lie.

So one thing I am not afraid of is the light. I saw some angels floating, arms up, healed and holy.

If there is a sun (god) so bright, then how can i continue to Hug My Sadness Like An Eyeless Doll?

I need this pain.

"Oh don't be so mello-dramatic. " my T said that to me once. Yes, for real. But it was okay..like knowing her and her coolness and the timing...It was perfect. Like, it might have changed my life.

So strange those moments...that come together. Stitched in time. A seam a crease a moment that SOMETHING happened

In my head i go back, and pull them apart and see if there is anything in there. I am headed straight to that dark corner to see what is in there, straight to edge to see if anyone has fallen over and i'm headed straight to the river to see if there are any snakes....and there are.....

( i took that pic today - it is a Banded Water Snake)

usually.

Im headed under the consciousness too. Like the Jung lover I am, i want to poke around in there..terrified of what i won't look away from.

Then i get bored with myself.

So I make up someone new. Some mothlike and drawn to the light, someone who will leave the darkness alone.

someone with..an apple core star heart made just for you

Margaret Atwood: “Is it necessary to suffer in order to be a writer?” aspiring writers are in the habit of asking.  “Don’t worry about the suffering,” I have tended to say.  “The suffering will occur whether you like it or not.”

Strattera VS Prozac Part II

6 weeks of Strattera. I don't have much of an appetite, I am not eating much, i am GAINING weight.

My mouth is the sahara desert.

My stomach hurts and feels full all the time.

i'm just like wtf, man?

I have no script for life and nothing makes sense and  I feel trapped

Oh wait. Maybe my script is the pharmaceutical insert in the strattera box. :C

ON THE 'NOTHER HAND..... i have accomplished more things, my focus is better, i can do my - not-even difficult-in-the- first-place -  job without

feeling like a wild raccoon being forced to do long division for 12 hours with no breaks.

I am more depressed. not terrible, but more.

Apparently Prozac and Strattera are not friends. They block each other.

in my brain.

sigh. so whatdoido?

Pretty New Drug.(and more lotus pods)

Some people dont have proper boundaries. Between themselves and other people or places or events or nature and it just gets so intensely close that the damn sunset might as well be INSIDE your heart. 
like jesus. 
but not really. 
This is the south. I can joke about jesus. and fishing. and dipping skoal and marrying your cousin. bc i do, in fact, work with a woman who is married to her first cousin. But the lady at the local college is a published poet who studied under Anne Sexton. This is a weird, jumbled up town.
Between the plantations, and 2 strips of fast food joints there is the moldy movie theatre and the 18th century graveyard.


The tattoo shop opened near a historical marker for the First American Fort ...located between the 17th century french fort and the spanish fort. and then down the road, near hte newspaper where i work, is where they put a marked down for the Native American burial ground the archaeology students dug up. I pass it on the way to work. Usually while i am eating breakfast. I eat in my car. I always do. Makes it less real. I would rather have lotus pods in my stomach than granola high fiber low fat sugar free all natural what-have-you.


30 Days Of Strattera. That is the movie i'm starring in right this minute. I called the doc to tell her that the sample packet was used up and we needed to plan a new course of action. I had a 3 page report in my head called What Strattera Did To Me and was ready to deliver it. Instead of the doc, i got the receptionist who said, "look, is it working? bc if so, we will just call you in a script." i stammered, "yes but..."  "okay, what is your pharmacy?"
oh yeah. I forgot. No one cares so much about the 2 lists I made; one of pros and one of cons.
"Rite Aid." "Okay-we'll-call-it-in-right-nowthankyoubye."


I understand that my neurotransmitters are just a very small facet of your JOB but, jesus, lady.
This is serious business for me. I dont take drugs lightly (anymore) esp not Big Giant Heartless Corp Manufactured drugs. Okay one more month. 30 more days. We shall see....


....until the lotus blooms inside me.

Strange Aches. Unfinished Business

Marya is manic.  Im almost done with Wasted, so I look her up to see what else she has written. Her book Madness, which came out in April 2008, is about being diagnosed as Bipolar.  Everything makes much more sense, now. I was expecting a book about a girl with e.d.'s but as I was reading I actually thought, " can't believe no one diagnosed her as manic-depressive" (that is the old term for it, right?. Oh, but they did. Only it was a story for another day.
Her behavior in Wasted is terrifying to me. Mania is terrifying and fascinating to me bc I have most likely never felt a single drop of it....but it always seemed like a necessary something to counterbalance the EXTREME depth of my depression. After I emerged from the worst deep  and dark depression of my life, I told my T that my brain felt wounded...that i was actually waiting for an extreme upswing..something to knock the pendulum too far over into a realm of the OPPOSITE of depression..whatever that is. Mania, I guess. Instead I documented the time between waking up and having the first 'longing for death' thought. Gradually that time increased. Slowy, slowly crawling back to life. Once I had "but i don't want to die," run across my mind, and was so shocked and excited that I immediately told my T. My brain had only offered me misery and rather gruesome thoughts for so long...the first positive idea that floated up was stunning. An Organ offering thoughts was the only way i could describe My Own Thinking...I didn't feel like I owned my thoughts...My brain was just a sick organ rotting in my skull. Radiating outward the putrid god awful thoughts...
And nothing got accomplished. I avoided everything and everyone. I finished school, I painted ferociously, but i kept it mostly to myself and had shaking anxiety fits when I thought about a Plan for The Rest Of My Life. or Promoting Me. So I did nothing. And I become nothing.
So reading about People who had
a debilitating mental illness
and survived and
even achieved.
gives me strange aches.

WASTED

I am reading Wasted…by Marya Hornbacher.(finally) I have sort of avoided it. E.D. related books give me alls ort of weird and conflicted emotions but I was ran across it in the library and couldn’t leave without it.  I was in the library bc I have been reading about the Celts and I picked a few more celt books (one history, one fairy tales) and a movie about archaeology digs of Celtic burials. I love all that..anthropology, material culure…of Others. Not Mine.

My culture is Wasted… And the ADD book self help book I picked up.

{LOSER.} shut up I amtryingtoimprovemyself

So anyway, Wasted, is on one level, something I can related to, and on another level, absolutely maniac terrifying.  The counting, the repetition, and the disassociation, the body image issues I can TOTALLY relate to. The fearless wild child ….I am shocked by and in awe of. It rings true though. All of the bulimics I have known, have been  much more fearless and outgoing…aggressive Risk Takers than the AN.  Surely, that is not true in all cases, but just the few I have know. 

The An part of me is absolutely terrified. Of. Everything. Any Change is upsetting and makes me quite aware that we are all going to die. It took an act of God to move across town… All the strength I had. It was like closing my eyes running off the edge of something. In reality it was. NO. BIG. DEAL.  So I find her experiences of fighting, drugs and sex and trouble to be absolutely mystifying.

I enjoy her writing style, how it flows almost poetry-like and has the rhythm  of a voice.

Gazing at her face on the cover, at her body..i wonder what it be like to talk to her…..to have known her in 1984, 1995, now.

What kind of brain does it take to make long series of cohesive complete sentences (NO FRAGMENTS) and express present tense thoughts about painful past tense.events?

A good one, it seems like.

The book is not a trigger so far, although I secretly hoped it would be. There I go, setting traps inside myself. Another Protective Chain Link, a Wall, a Silent little Cage. So besides just enjoying the artistic merit of her words, Maybe I'll learn something from this book. Somethin’ about getting free from this wasted cage.