Daily Dose of Lithium . . . soon-ish

It's official. For a few weeks now, but I've been trying to get someone to figure out what drugs I need. So far, 300 mgs of lithium. Can't start taking it till my CNP gets the results of my blood test. Till then, I've lorazepem to keep me calm and control the insomnia, but it doesn't help too much. Not since the first night. It knocked me on my ass in an hour. The next night . . . not so much. I knew what to expect, and I fought off the drowsiness and stayed up for another three hours.

Slow at work today, so I left early. Was suddenly just massively tired and depressed. Yesterday I was so energized and up. But today. . . .

I took my lorazepem just before I got home and slept for six hours. Watching Olbermann and Maddow, then popping another and sleeping till morning. I'm just tired and sluggish. Can't seem to get in gear since I got outta bed this morning. From the week before (despite getting suspended from work for four days, for insubordination) I was so UP. Ideas, writing, everything. I didn't need sleep. Sleep was for the weak and insipid. Now, I just wanna close my eyes and never wake up. Just tired.

I keep meaning to blog more, to keep up with blogs I like, but I'm either HIGH! and can't focus, or low, and simply don't care about anything. I think that' where I am right now because even typing is physically exhausting me.

Meh.

In other news, I keep seeing stories about Atheists getting debaptized, or de-whatever bullshit religious ceremony was forced on them at a tender or not-so-tender age.

I guess if that's what some people need to feel like "a member of the godless group" . . . but it's still the same old idiocy. A bullshit ceremony that means nothing, to erase a bullshit ceremony that means nothing. Even where I inclined to think that my baptism meant fuck-all in the For Real, you know, that place where things happen and matter, I would think it meant something because of the capital G, you know? in which case I wouldn't be getting debaptized. Couldn't possibly think a debaptism is valid.

Since I don't think any ceremony has any intrinsic value, only has the value I give it, I think they're all so much horseshit. There's no capital G, the ceremony means nothing. The ceremony to devalue the ceremony means nothing, and just gives the fundies something to bark at. I would no more get debatized, than go to a witch doctor to get de-cursed if some old gypsy gave me the evil eye. I genuinely used to think ceremonies like this confirmed one's adherence to reality, but now, I think it does the opposite, and cedes ground to the poor deluded saps that actually still believe their ceremonies and rituals are blessed by Shiva, or Allah or Jeebus.

I just wanna ask these debaptists: if someone told you a leprechaun bit you and broke the skin, and that you'd have to get a special fairy-tetanus shot to keep you from getting leprechaun rabies . . . would you rush to get that shot?

Not a great analogy, or at least not well-put, but the point is valid. To me, it's a damned good parallel. These debaptists are pushing a cure for a disease that doesn't exist. Anyone who needs that fairy-tetanus shot should reexamine what they believe, or don't believe.

The zeal is appreciated . . . cautiously . . . but aim it in a worthier direction, hey?

Aim some righteous ire at institutionalized wrongdoing that actually means something, like fighting Prop 1 in Maine. Those of us on the side of civil rights lost California. Let's not lose Maine.

Daily Dose of the Voice

Hah. Yesterday, I posted here about possibly being bipolar, and--well, I've been rolling the possiblity around in my head for a few days, and my consolation was, well, whatever, at least I'm not hearing voices.

I've been telling myself that a lot lately, and today, at work, on a particularly annoying call (they all are, really, I despise the general public. They're stupid, immature, lazy, and mean) this voice whispers, like it was right next to my ear, really, Rachel, you should just kill yourself. You know that, right?

So, I don't hear voices, just a Voice. Big difference. For awhile, I didn't really notice it, anymore. It's like a white noise, only . . . it's suicide-slanted. And it's like the boy who cried wolf. To the point where, if I have to run to catch the bus, it's there, waiting to tell me what I can do to solve that thorny problem, and in a way that doesn't involve running or sweating.

See? I'm still in good shape. Fighting trim, even. Look out, personal demons.

Dunno if one Voice even counts anyway, especially since I've been hearing it since I was old enough to know what kill and death meant. So from five onward, if not a little earlier. I used to hear it rarely, randomly. Any time--during the Highs or the Lows, more often during the nice, uber-rational, mostly emotion-free Numbs.

I'd hear the Voice, and to shut it up, give it shit-tons of reasons why I should not just kill myself. Not step in front of the D-train, or that speeding minivan. Reasons that always won the day. And did, until recently, I mean--who can kill themselves when the Star Trek franchise's received an infusion of fresh blood? Not me!

And that Voice has gotten quieter, over the past couple of months. I thought that might mean, whatever other things were going horribly, off-the-rails-wrong with me, I had that wee, death-hungry Voice beat.

Thing is, I've taken to muttering I should just kill myself aloud in idle moments. Some stressy moments, but mostly non-stressy. I've had to stop myself from doing it on the phone with customers.

("Unfortunately sir I can't look up your iPod warranty with your social security number or your driver's license number oh my god I should just kill myself because this is all this is all this is motherfucking all but may I have your phone number please area code first?")

So, I'm now saying what the Voice used to say sometimes, and sometimes the Voice, playing what I assume is Devil's Advocate, tells me why I shouldn't kill myself. But. Well. It's running out of good reasons and so'm I. The reasons used to be passable but now, they don't hold water.

But mostly, the Voice tries to sway me with logic--or the only kind of logic I'm capable of understanding with regards to my own occasional death-wish: you're tired. Life is tiring. It won't get any less so. Why put yourself through it? If you just kill yourself, you can rest. Forever. No more emotions so big, it feels like you're being ripped apart half the time. No more being afraid of what you might do in the grip of these emotions. Just kill yourself, and you can rest. Don't you want to rest?

I do. I really, really do. I'm tired, and I'm not especially motivated or strong. But for now, I'm also not there yet. Not ready to accept the Voice's logic. Or my own logic. Whomever's. My voice and the Voice are starting to say all the same things, and I really can't tell them apart anymore. Not all the time, anyway. But yeah.

I hear a Voice. It's no one else's but mine, in the end. Some better demon, or worse angel, sitting on my shoulder, dispassionately telling me how to solve every problem I'll ever have, the easy way. And sometimes, telling me why I shouldn't take the easy way out (though suicide takes, I imagine, a brass pair to go through with it). I dunno if anyone else--anyone else sane, that is--has such a Voice. But I do. It's my oldest friend, at this point. I can ignore it, shunt it to the side, but I can't not hear it. Not when it's always made so much sense, and life almost never has.

I can't see my GP for a referral soon enough. T minus five days, and counting. . . .

Guess what, though? The voice telling me to scrag myself and save all this damn effort of living? Ain't god. It ain't his evil brother Lazslo, either, so . . . I may be nuts, but at least, at long last, by logic, I am not a theist.

'And tell me who is victor....' *

ZOMG, this is a whole heap o' crazy.

However fundie my elementary school was, none of them were like this woman. There aren't even words for this kind of--it's actually beyond insanity. It's willful . . . self-loathing? Self-abnegation? And now it's being projected on an innocent child, and warping her mind.

This is why I'm an antitheist. Though, in the face of people like this . . . I feel like a cricket faced with a glacier. It's so big and seemingly indestructible. Hard and unfeeling, unknowing, causing harm just by existing.

Fuck--I don't even know a word for this kind of crazywrongbadignorant . . . but there's no way to exterminate it completely. It's a disease that will always be with us, in some form or another. Passed down from this wackjob, to her daughter, and her daughter after her. And despite their loathing for even their own children, people like this breed like rabbits. I fear they'll someday constitute a majority that has to be reckoned with. Put down like a horde of rabid dogs. Though if not them, then some other Fundies of some other crackpot religion.

Though, maybe Fundamentalism's not there to be destroyed, but to be fought. Combatted, like any great evil. One thing I agree with the Fundies on, though our definitions of evil differ greatly.

Ignorance and superstition must be beaten back. But it's wearying, knowing that the struggle against such evil will be with us for as long as our species continues. That it's a struggle we're all born fighting and will die fighting, on one side or another. War without end, or victor.

Merry Christmas.


*King Henry the Sixth [V, II]. 'Ah, who is nigh? Come to me, friend or foe, / And tell me who is victor...'

"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak."--Jayne Cobb

Bah! Humbug!

Lurking around richarddawkins.net forums and came across this thread:

What if I don't care if "God" existed or not?

To which I replied:

There's a zen koan:

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

Change "Buddha" to "God" and that sums up my feeling on the matter.
::gathers a hammer and nails::
::leans against the tree to wait::


That right there? Is the reason I can't tell my mother I'm an atheist. Not because I think she'd freak--she'd probably think I was going through a phase that's a direct result of me never getting Confirmed, or whatever the Episcopalian bullshit equivalent is--but because even one simple question would provoke that sort of smackdown response. My atheism wouldn't make it weird to be out to my mother and family (except for my mother, they can all go auto-eroticize themselves, frankly) but my boiling-over-rage at religion period, my strident, aggressive, unapologetic, junkyard-dog mean antitheism would likely alienate her. Maybe not totally, but . . . more than I'd like.

I guess this is the kinda revelation I'll have to sit on till I'm a bit more chill about it. Though in light of the aforementioned antitheism, coming out about my sexuality? Doesn't seem so wearisome and nerve-wracking.

In the meantime? Xmas, tomorrow.

I think I'll start drinking tonight.



"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak."--Jayne Cobb

Dose of Cogitatin'

Been down with a cold the past two days, and by "down", I mean forced to do all the usual shit I do, only hacking and wheezing-like, while glaring at people who wisely move away from me.

(Fuck you, lady at Shoprite with the over plastic-surguried face. If you coughed, your lips'd probably fly right off and hit me in the eye.)

But I've been thinking.

Atheism: lacking belief in any gods.

Antitheism: active opposition to religion.

Now that I've gotten over the sudden shock of realizing "I may very well be an atheist", and the fact that there's no bright-shiny afterlife where I'll spend eternity getting hugs from my Gramma--now that I've kinda mellowed, I'm starting to realize some other things about myself.

I've been a raging antitheist since I was ten, or so.

I don't know how deeply rooted my belief in the sky fairy was. Ten was the age I really started to think, and actively break commandments--not all of them, I'd have been a shit adulterer . . . but I was a smashing murderer--waiting to be struck down. Every time I wasn't, I'm sure my belief became less internal, and more cosmetic. A sort of fail-safe "just-in-case".

Just in case there really was some big asshole sitting on a cloud and judging me. Some killer of babies and smiter of women that found me unworthy.

I still believed, I think, but I hated god. The Judeo-Xtian one. The others . . . I knew very little about (though I'd grow, and maintain an inordinant fondness for the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita). But I've hated that god since I was old enough to understand what it stood for, what atrocities it committed and commissioned. I can remember being seven, and giving god the finger. And being more afraid of my mother catching me, than of god striking me down.

But that carried on to this very day. I've almost always hated religion. Like a very active burning hatred, that you only reserve for people that shoot your Pa, or ex-girlfriends that you can't seem to fall out of love with.

I hate what religion does to people, especially what it's done to me. Attending a fundamentalist Xtian elementary school made the Catholic junior high and high schools seem like a cake-walk. At least no one hit me, there. Though after six years of that crap at my elementary school and a freakish growth spurt, I was large enough to hit back and make it felt.

This hatred of religion--and by extension any god it feeds--is one of the strongest things I've ever felt, and certainly one of the purest. There's no arguing with it or reasoning against it, it just is. It's damn near perfect. It's a part of every atom of me. It's in my RNA.

If I could, I would obliterate every religion on Earth--even those wishy-washy, candyass pagan ones that I used to try to sell my brain to, in desperation to believe in something--though more would certainly spring up to replace it. Though erasing religion from the world is no real substitute for erasing it from my own heart and mind.

I'll never get back the clean slate I was born with.

So, I've been an anti-theist for as long as I can remember, and for almost all that time, I was also miserably theistic. Very self-defeating. Now that I'm embracing atheism--it's a very day-by-day choice, one that needs contant re-affirming, constant deciding, constant exploring--the antitheism doesn't burn as much. It feels . . . more right. Like there're parts of me that are finally at peace with each other.

If I'm a wobbly six on the atheist scale, I'd say I'm a Christopher Hitchens on the antitheistic scale, and have been for most of my life. I'm not as smart, well-traveled, or well-versed, but I've got that passion, and I believe it'll only get stronger and more potent with age and experience.

Is there a god in the sense of any of the Earth religions I've come across? I doubt it. It's certainly possible. A zebra that juggles live hand-grenades is also possible. But it's highly, highly improbable. But still more probable than a god. I've seen both zebras and live hand-grenades with my own eyes. The only thing in question is one's ability to juggle the other, not whether either exists.

There are some that consider the Big Bang "god", but that strikes me as silly. An event, no matter how important, is simply an event. That's all. Size and importance make it neither conscious nor intelligent.

"God is love"? Ugh, even sillier. God is hate, god is ennui, god is schaden fraude, god is the giggles, god is that empty-light feeling you get after taking a massive shit.

"God is each and every person, thing, atom, force in the universe". . . ? If one is willing to give over the idea of god being in any way conscious, intelligent, or solicitous of our comfort or happiness.

(And I must admit, if there has to be a god, I'd prefer it was one that didn't watch me in the shower.)

Still, any "god" begs the question "well, then what created it, and what created the event/thing that created that, and the event/thing that created that?"

It's a mind trap. One I doubt humanity will ever be equipped to answer. Rather, we'll have to answer every other question in the universe, know every other secret before we know that one with any certainty. And I suspect the ultimate answer will be very simple, and very disappointing.

"Plastic, asshole!"



"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak." --Jayne Cobb, "Firefly"