Archive for the 'Straight Jacket' Category

Survival of the fittest

September 12, 2008 | Filed under: Blogology, Straight Jacket, Whoopdie Doo

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

You know those people who when you ask them how they’re doing, they reply fine all rapid fire like and succinct and then when you press for details because you are genuinely interested in knowing how this person’s life is going, everything is a one word answer? Those people who say “Fine. Oh, I’m fine. Everything is fine. Just fine” as if “fine” is the only word they know in the English language and to find a replacement would require a thesaurus. I am that person. The person who answers ‘fine’ to everything and then thinks that that is a perfectly adequate answer and nothing else should be inquired as to the state of my general well being. Obviously I am alive and breathing without an assistive device so clearly nothing can be that bad. Right? Right. But oh, oh, the way I can put on a front. I should have been a damn theater major with the way I can smile on the outside while feeling as if every ounce of happiness is being sucked from my insides with the force of a Dyson; well, it’s an art.

And the Oscar for Most Able to Look Happy on the Outside While Dying a Slow and Painful (and somewhat exaggerated) Soul Sucking Death on the Inside goes to…Heather Barmore.

My shoulders are starting to hurt due to the number of times I’ve given myself a congratulatory pat on the back for not sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth and threatening to bite people if they come near me with another asinine question. And that is the best way to describe how God-awful this summer has been. Then again, in the grand scheme of things and as I stated so eloquently before, I am still breathing and standing unassisted but still in the grand scheme of things known as my life and mental well being, I think this summer would go down as the one when I almost ended up in a straight jacket.

But of course, I was FINE! No really, just FINE! So fine in fact that on July 31st, I wrote something that will forever be saved in DRAFT and there it will stay until I have a teenager and my teenager throws herself on the floor in some crazy dramatic fashion because life isn’t fair and she has it so hard and OMFG I didn’t let her stay out until 2 AM. Then I will show my teenage daughter this DRAFT post and tell her that she can’t over drama me. Oh hell no, if she wants to see overdramatic hyperbole and prove herself worthy of throwing an excellent temper tantrum, then she needs to try a little harder. For her mother is wholly unimpressed.

I’ll give you a paraphrased excerpt. The part where I literally walked around a small coastal town feeling as if I was losing my mind while everything inside of me broke in two: “I’m wearing shades not because my future is bright but because I can’t walk around town in tears. I make calls and stifle each sob as I wander up and down the main street trying to find some sense of relief. I head to the Ferry to get a schedule and peer over the edge. There’s a railing on Beach Road but it’s almost waist high and the water isn’t nearly deep enough to incur the damage that I would really need at this point. So instead I hoist my bag back over my shoulder, wipe my eyes and head home.” Actually, I walked back home and drank Bacardi straight from the bottle and cried myself to sleep. Then I woke up had some clam strips and was suddenly right as rain.

The summer was all about taking several small things, having them crash together at the exact same time as if they all planned to converge based on wind speed and temperature to fuck with my brain and lo a tornado has dropped down in my cerebral cortex. All of the little things were only exacerbated by my already fragile mental state and then stick me on a plane all over the damn country and as you can imagine there were moments when I was about as a pleasurable as a colicky six month old with reflux who is teething and thinks that sleep is for pussies.

The other day I stepped out of my office and it was slightly chilly. Not freezing but a nice 73 degrees and cool enough for a ¾ sleeve jacket. It smelled like fall. Like right around the corner would be pumpkin spice lattes and pick your own apples and cowl neck sweaters. That was the night that I finally turned off the fan and decided that I wouldn’t be in need of it anymore. It wouldn’t be hot as hell anymore and the interminable hell that had been a personal slugfest through summer appeared to be over. At last. I’ve been looking forward to September for quite sometime. Perhaps because I would be adding colors like ‘eggplant’ and ‘plum’ to my wardrobe or because I knew that if I could make it to September without quitting my job or life, then I would be OK. And then it would be smooth sailing and my parents would high five in a few weeks on my 25th birthday for raising a child who made it a quarter century without going to prison on charges of Losing Her Shit.

Yesterday, I finally felt a bit more settled. As the remainder of the summer weight was lifted off of my shoulders and I felt my feet a little more firmly planted. Yes, I thought, I feel good now. When I got home a package had arrived from Suebob. In it was a note that I read first before tearing into what was in the bubble wrap. You see, during one of my jaunts through somewhere, I lost all of my favorite jewelry. Including my superhero necklace and my pearls. Yes, these were material things that can easily be replaced but my superhero necklace always made me feel better and my pearls went with everything. The note from Suebob was expressing her sadness for me when I lost my superhero necklace and that she saw that I had been wearing one in most of my BlogHer photos. She happened to have two and one of them wasn’t her style and so she sent it to me. She sent me a brand new superhero necklace. But! And there’s always a but, when I thanked her there was a caveat. The caveat being that it needed to be a Pay it Forward scenario. She made me thrilled beyond believe with her generosity and now I had to be a little kinder. A little less acerbic and less bite to my words. “Wag more, bark less” she said. Cease with my feelings of woe is me and life is too hard and I should just pack up and move somewhere else because I’m not cut out for anything. So I agreed. And now that the end of summer has arrived, for once I am not lying through my teeth when saying that I feel a little bit better than my previous self.

Farewell, summer. You were a Goddamn royal pain in the ass like nails on a chalkboard and metal hitting a filling and like being kicked in the groin repeatedly for sport. You will not be missed. Bring on the knee high boots and turtleneck sweaters.

Hypomania

January 4, 2008 | Filed under: Humdrum, Straight Jacket

“The mind is the most capricious of insects - flitting, fluttering.”  ~Virginia Woolf

Euphoria frightens me. As do moments of high productivity. But who doesn’t enjoy gleaming hardwood floors at midnight? I swear you could lick my bedroom floor right now. Who doesn’t like a continuous flow of ideas and words that seem to exude with sudden aplomb? Why, it’s a lovely change from my normally fainéant behavior, isn’t it? I get things done while checking things off my list and being disgustingly jolly. All the while it’s as if everything inside of me is hyper extended. It isn’t limited to my mood; everything races and continues joyously to an abrupt stop of depression. It’s not a slow abatement but imagine driving down a freeway listening to The Steve Miller Band; happy as can be and humming along, feeling completely exhilarated and then hitting the back of a Mack truck.

The episodes of hypomania are so few and far between that I notice them more once they occur. I fear discussing it partly because I still find it baffling and also because – and forgive me for being a cliché – having a bipolar disorder doesn’t exactly define me. Which is something I realized when I attempted to write about it on a regular basis. It’s just one of those annoying things that I rarely think about because I try not to let it become a big deal. I take great joy in telling Doctors and Nurses what medications I’m on and having them look at me as if I will fling myself across an exam room to rip their head off while cackling during a fit of mania. It isn’t that extreme but these ebbs and flows - however slight -  are still felt and noticed, sometimes more often than not. It’s manageable. I’m lucky and so very fortunate. This entire ‘thing’ makes me feel empathetic yet helpless towards those who are not.

The crazy

September 12, 2007 | Filed under: Blogology, Straight Jacket

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”  ~Ray Bradbury

When Leah and Jess started Real Mental a few weeks back, I jumped at the chance to post just once. In the hope of finding and opening up a vein to unleash the mish mash that has been going on in my head for the past few months. Before I moved back to NY – and the two having nothing to do with each other – I was diagnosed with a Bipolar II Disorder. Which in the grand scheme of things isn’t a big deal, but it’s been something of which I’ve had a most difficult time writing about or expressing. In fact my jumping at the chance is a manifestation of my desperate need to say something about it and now I’m hopeful that I’ve found that space.

I still have trouble telling people, even those that have known me for years, but I have no trouble strolling up to the pharmacist at CVS at regular intervals to get my Lithium and Klonopin prescriptions because they are the key to my not going completely fucked up, raging mad. I mean, really? It’s been weeks since I’ve given anyone the finger for having the audacity to merge.

So for now, what I once felt was sacred, I’m trying to be a little bit more open about in hopes that I can fully accept my new ‘normal’ without having an outer-body experience whenever I tell someone. Like maybe if I say it quietly they won’t hear me, better yet, maybe they’ll forget that I’m fucked up. In all honesty, my friends that know aren’t judgmental or fear me or think that I’m ‘special’ or speak to me V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y. They’re actually relieved to hear that that I have an actual medical condition and not just a permanent case of grade a BITCH.

I plan to pass on my nerouses

August 27, 2007 | Filed under: Humdrum, Straight Jacket

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”  ~Will Durant

I’ve been contemplating progeny as of late. Which might give one false hope that I have found someone to procreate with or that I’ve turned 35 or that I’ve become delusional. I think the last one describes my train of thought as of late to perfection. That is because for years I was quite delusional in thinking that by 24 I would have made my television debut on The Real World and that it’s a perfectly acceptable age to get married and have children.

I also once believed that a large white man came down my non-existent chimney to deliver presents with tags written in the same exact handwriting as my mother’s. Odd.

So you see, I’m prone to believing things but have managed to get past that faulty logic only to spend the years – decades, perhaps – prior to even having children painfully agonizing every aspect of my future parenting skills. Thus far I’ve analyzed parenting without marriage, adoption, the use of a midwife and whether or not I could handle my child screaming at the top of his or her lungs because of…I don’t know…whatever small children scream about. Like, the way the wind is blowing and why someone had the audacity to touch their perfect pile of twigs and leaves. I just don’t think I’ll be able to handle that shit without completely losing mine.

In fact I’ll probably end up with children who behave just as I did in my youth. Remind me to have my mother tell you of the great grocery incident of 1985. A story sure to cause a mass hysteria of sudden tubal ligations across the land.

Really, I’m not sure why I am pondering it and yet I have been and at length, only to confess of it now in hopes that I’ll stop questioning how I am going to parent a person who is light years away from actually being thought of really seriously. Not this kind of crazy talk, but like SERIOUSLY. Especially since I’m really only good with very few children, one of which has spent the last year simultaneously pissed off because I’m in his space and giving me kisses. See, children? They perplex me. I probably shouldn’t one. Even more interesting is that I was born to a woman who literally hated with almost every fiber of her being the thought of having children. Then she had one – me – and realized that it wasn’t so bad so she had another – G – upon which she quickly learned from that mistake and stopped. Or so I would imagine.

Regardless it’s a silly, silly thought process that’s taking up valuable space in my head. Space that should be reserved for the eternal Canon/Nikon cage match and what to pack for my mini-vacation later in the week. Also if I keep thinking about it more, I’ll get into personalities and then holy motherfucker, I could end up with a child JUST LIKE ME. And trust me when I say that a child like in anyway similar to me is about as pleasurable as a swift kick to the stomach by a large horse.

How I’ll be spending the next two weeks

August 10, 2007 | Filed under: Fotografias, Straight Jacket, The Great Moving Caper, This side of the Hudson

“ Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.” ~George Santayana

I’m really not sure how much longer I can stand this. But since my suitcase is now permanently stuck to my floor. I should really think about doing something about all of this:

(Best viewed large if you aren’t easily disturbed)

(This puts Chris Jordan’s “My suitcase from BlogHer has yet to be unpacked” to SHAME)

(I should also mention that parents? This is what you need to be prepared for when your child leaves, then moves roughly four times in six years. Fair warning)