“I wept not, so to stone within I grew”

Io non piangea, si` dentro impetrai.
-Inferno, Canto 33
It is 3:40 AM, the witching hour, and my being awake cannot be a good sign.
Of course, I have been awake at this hour every day for quite some time now. Maybe wanting to get up and write is a good sign.
Things here are, well, empty. I suppose [...]

On Chronic Depression and Myth

One of the things that occurs a lot in the mentally ill, especially, thought not exclusively, in the mood disordered, is that a mood episode is treated with medication, and the cycling of moods is stopped, yet the person remains miserable, suicidal, even, and suffers a lingering handicap. In the world of psychiatry, this is [...]

Enough

I finally wrote what I thought was a reasonable letter to the shrink, since he never seemed to hear what I said…about how I can’t live in the dark about what is wrong with me or how to fix it, that I was deeply hurt and concerned about the borderline thing, etc. I hoped that [...]

I did not see this coming

The latest in my escapades – no essays or deep thoughts or medical stuff here, just my personal update.
The anxious racing episode, naturally, crashed into a depression that hit hard and fast. Or maybe not so fast, but I didn’t feel it until it was out of control.
I think I am more and more becoming [...]

Crying at the shrink

I did cry at the shrink’s the other day, and that was strange, because I’m usually so hard and in control. But I was so strung out by anxiety and three days of no sleep from the bupropion that it took me a few minutes to even calm down enough to talk (this kind of [...]

The Rest of My Life

I’ve been writing kind of heavy stuff lately, and I think it has skewed what this started out to be, which was a chronicle of how people who are crazy live in the normal world, how we are mostly invisible to everyone. Lately, you’d think that all I ever am is crazy.
Which is understandable. This [...]

Sinking into a depression

It started really two weeks ago, was progressively getting worse. The last time I saw the (useless) shrink I mentioned it, to which his answer was, “The things that are bothering you are things that medication doesn’t treat anyway.” I am not sure what to say to something so unhelpful. Mostly because I know that [...]

Things lithium has stolen from me, or the drug of forgetting

My love of aviation. I am too nauseous all the time to continue.
My love of reading. I can still read poetry or essays, but I cannot read a novel because I simply don’t remember what I read the last time.
If I weren’t so drugged, this could be a like a Borges story: The Drug of [...]

Borderlines?

The followup was this: I was there again, and he admitted that’s what he thought of me. In some ways, he was really immature about it. For example: instead of just telling me when asked  what I thought he thinks, he threw it back at me, “What do you think I think?” and I said [...]

Inspired by BPLC

As always, brilliant describes BipolarLawyerCook. Inspired by that, here are my old friends. It isn’t that they are necessarily my absolute favorite books ever, but when you move countries often, most of your stuff gets left behind and you are constantly starting over. If I really need a book, I usually have to replace it. [...]

Zero-point-five

That was my lithium level last week. Not quite enough to count, but enough if you are of the “low-dose” school of thought, which, of course, my doc is not.
From my point of view, I may as well have had a lobotomy. My personality is gone. And wherever it went, it took my brain and [...]

From Don Juan

I need to make this into some kind of title over the graphic:
 
Her rage was but a minute’s, and ‘t was well—
A moment’s more had slain her; but the while
It lasted ‘t was like a short glimpse of hell:
Nought ’s more sublime than energetic bile,
Though horrible to see yet grand to tell,
Like ocean warring ‘gainst [...]

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate

I guess it’s time to find a new med. I cannot function anymore. Even worse than the feeling is the mental slowing.
I’ve been doing a lot of the work that is sort of para-work from my actual field – the customer stuff, intrapersonal crap, all that. It’s been fun, but today, there was a serious [...]