A Dose of Silphium

Wow. Humans aren't smart. Even when motivated by the prospect of pregnancy-free fucking. Unbelievable.

Why, when we can't even manage our physical world, would we go around inventing a supernatural one? Just to liven up our epic fails? Self-defeating and self-destructing--just one more self- and we'd be a triple threat.

T minus four days till I see my GP and begin the likely long and unfun process of figuring out what--besides a lot--is wrong with me. Still only hearing the one Voice. I was also unbearably High, today, but in a happy-ish way, more so than angry . . . till I just got anxious, irritable and paranoid. Kept thinking everyone around me was talking about me. Not a fun feeling. I don't believe in a god anymore, but it's all too easy to imagine the universe is totally fucking with me. I'd hate to think that what's it's done thus far is borne of total indifference!

Bloodwork, tomorrow, to find out what other nuts I'm deathly allergic to these days, beside almonds.

It'd be best for all concerned if I had a massive stroke in my sleep and was cold by the time my alarm went off in the morning. For the next few days, the world's gonna be too shiny and bright to be dealt with by me someone this brittlely euphoric and itchingly alert. I'll spend all my spare moments weeping and/ or laughing, and unable to stop jittering. Cruushed by the wonder of existence.

I'm crossing my fingers for that stroke.

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.

Aaaaaand I'm back

Hopefully for keeps, this time.

Been a weird, weirdly awful five months, I must say. Don't know how to describe them, doubt it would be interesting to anyone who isn't me. Barely interesting to me, except that the process of straightening out my life has taken a turn.

I now have firsthand understanding of how dangerous a lifetime of "if not here, then in eternity" can be. A slow release revelation, you might say.

For awhile, I thought going cold turkey on all the woo might have made me go crazy, as well. That my fragile little mind might've been warped by subscribing to, you know, reality. Then I realized: I was always like this. I can remember being six and bored on occasional Saturdays but not wanting to play with my friends. So I'd lay in bed for hours, being entertained (after a fashion) by my moods. The happy one was very nice. If I was really still, I could maintain it for hours. It was intense--like a thousand summer days, filled with puppies and candy and rollercoasters--except it was in all my head. Little-kid orgasm.

The corresponding lows weren't very low, but usually followed right on the heels of it. It was more like being numb, but it felt low after the high.

I remember the actual lows, too. They'd hit like random bullets. I'd be standing in the subway with a parent or friends, or waiting to cross the street, and I'd think "I'm tired. I should step in front of that. Then it'd be over and I'd get to sleep forever."

As I got older, it of course got bigger. Worse. The happy times got too happy. Too nervous. Scary. Sometimes painful and angry. Sometimes I'd spend hours laughing and crying all at once, till I was too tired to do anything but sleep . . . not that I could. It was like being alive was too bright and wonderful, and it hurt just to exist in such awesomeness. And at the same time, I knew from experience, in a few hours or a couple days, I'd be numb, if I was lucky. Ready to buy a bottle of drano and find a secluded spot to guzzle it in, if I was wasn't.

Lately the mood-swings happen more frequently. The highs make me nervous, and as inclined to scream, as laugh. And I'm angry all throughout. Like . . . unbelievably, directionlessly angry. To the point where, if I had a knife handy, it'd be my wrists, or someone else's throat. And during the last low, I kept having to talk myself out of wandering off into the woods near my job (miles of it, then the mountains) and find somewhere quiet to lay down and die, just so I could finally be free, and rest.

For the past few days, thankfully, I've just been numb. I still feel things like amused, or annoyed, but it's very distant, like remembering how it feels to laugh at a joke you heard years ago, or remembering how it felt when something someone did six months ago kinda pissed you off. It's all very much elsewhere and elsewhen. I wish the numb time could last for the rest of my life, but I know it won't.

I don't blame any of this on my former adherence to woo, mind. The woo just let me pretend that I would get better on my own, or that I would simply grow out of it. Or that even if I was crazy now, in heaven/the next plane/my next life, I'd be sane. That when I died, Jeebus or whoever would fix me.

But he won't. I would have to say that's the biggest revelation I've had since coming out of the atheism closet--even bigger than the Grandma revelation of a year ago: if not me, then no one. If not in this life, then never. I'm on my own, so to speak, and if I want my life to be better, I have to take responsibility for and steps to make it better.

So, yeah. I probably need psychiatric help. Not in a facetious, narcissistic way, but gecause getting through my day takes more effort than my actual job. But then I have to do my job, too, so it's like working two forty hour weeks at once, only . . . getting through the day doesn't end till I'm dead. It's in my sleep, and when I eat. It's every moment of every day, and I'm too ragged around the edges to do a passable job of maintaining anymore. I keep cutting "extraneous" bits from my life in the hopes that that will stave off whatever collapse or suicide attempt I'm zipping along towards, but it really doesn't. It just isolates me, makes me feel ever more hopeless.

The self-medicating didn't go well at all, either. I've officially sworn off binge-drinking, and--well, pot doesn't really effect my mood anymore, just makes me dizzy, disoriented, nauseas, and sleepy.

But I'm pretty sure I've got some kinda chemical imbalance. Don't know what, yet, but I've got an appointment to see my GP next week, and I'm gonna tell her all my sypmtoms (life-long mood-swings getting more frequent, concentrated, and more intense, i.e., HIGH highs that make me happy, agitated, angry, nervous, and paranoid all at the same time. Lows that leave me lethargic, or leave me so wrecked and depressed, I can barely function. And if I'm lucky, some time and numbness in between these states) and hopefully get a referral to a good shrink. One who'll get me on some kinda meds, if necessary. Not that I can really afford either with my salary or insurance. . . .

I had a melt-down about this in my fiction journal, my friends list there were unbelievably supportive. I was too mortified to read their responses for days, wanting nothing more than to go back in time and delete that post before anyone saw it. But I'm almost kinda glad I don't (yet) have the ability to travel backwards in time. The resounding response, aside from acceptance and support, was: "sounds like you're bipolar. my (aunt, friend, grandmother, sister, parakeet) said she felt exactly like that, and it took awhile, but after they found the right combination of meds, they started getting better."

Maybe I am, and maybe I amn't bipolar. But whatever is going on with me, at least I'll be finally starting to fix it. Me. This life.

So. Dunno how often I'll be updating this blog. I don't really have the energy for much that isn't sleeping, maintaining, or writing fiction (one good thing about the lows, is that I tend to write prolifically and brainstorm better during those times, and world-building is still the best, safest distraction I've got. The numb times are good for editing. The highs are good for nothing at all, except possibly aquiring a felony rapsheet), but I will be reading and commenting in other blogs again. I missed you guys. I missed reality.

Shit, I better post this before I chickenshit-out and delete it--

A Dose of "Heeeeeeey!" ::Fonzie hands::

Heyya. Not dead. Just a crazy, crappy month filled with the kind of moodiness that makes me generally unbearable to others--hence the avoidance of all things blog-related. Anyone who reads this blog and who I read regularly, it'll take me some time, but I'll get caught up on your stuff.

In my rl? Nothing much of note. Piercing possibly infected. Also had a weird lung infection thing that wasn't bronchitis, but the doc put me on the same fucking antibiotics they use to treat anthrax. I was thrilled.

"No, don't worry, it's not bronchitis or tb--but we'll treat it with anthrax meds!"

Ai, ai, ai.

Nice resurgence of asthma, which doing the tango with a resurgence of my panic attacks. One'll trigger the other, and it's all just peachy keen. No doctor's appointment till the twelfth of June and my inhaler is two months past expiration.

No longer on the cusp of being fired at work. Somehow, I've improved my whatever the fuck I was doing wrong and started pretending I care. It seems to do the trick. Still tired of dealing with dumbasses all day. If I have to explain to one more cust what a model number is, I'm whip out my swiss army knife and kill the person to my immediate left.

Got a book on hypnosis. I don't know why, but if it teaches me how to mindfuck people for fun and/ or profit, then bully for me.

The new Star Trek movie is total candy, but I like it anyway. They did a good job with Bones, and that's all I care about.

Reading "As We Are Now", by May Sarton. Going to Minneapolis for a few days at the end of July. I know, the land of ten bajillion lakes, and I'm going in the middle of summer. Am I insane, you may be asking yourself. And the answer, of course, is yes.

All religiousity grates on me now. I mean waaaaay worse than it used to. I notice more when people talk about respecting religion, like religion's a struggling single mother who puts food on the table yet still makes time for her four kids. But instead of pissing me off, or sending me into a self-righteous rant, it just makes me laugh and poke mildly cutting fun at such a silly opinion.

It's like listening to a ten year old talk about Santa. I just want to (and usually do, I don't really care enough to stop myself) say something along the lines of:

"You don't still believe in Santa, do you? Aren't you a little too old for that? I mean--you're not slow, are you? Are you slow? I mean special. You're very special. And Santa will bring you an extra special present this year for being so good. Now run along and try not to eat any more paint chips, no matter how shiny they are."

Finished the love story about the Antichrist and was well-pleased with it. Started writing a novel about six months ago, and the first chapter (which oddly enough probably isn't chapter one) is done. Starting the next chapter has been like water enchanced interrogation. The whole project doesn't know if it wants to be parody or paragon--but it has a lesbian superhero with borderline personality disorder, among other worthies, so I'll do my best to finish it.

Still haven't done my taxes.

A Dose of Infection!!! Oh, Noes!!! Bring Out Your Dead!!!

Hah, not the piercings, peasants, but my lungs, my good ol' lungs.

Had to leave work early today. I could barely talk, and breathing hurt, and I was alternately sweating like a pig and freezing like a frozen thing. Everyone else in the call center was just freezing.

Practically as soon as I signed in, I begged one of my supervisors--who kept moving away from me, because I was both coughing and sweating copiously--to turn on one of the ceiling fans halfway between his desk and mine. He backed away some more, and he said I could turn it on myself, just go to this pylon in the corner, there's a hi-lo switch. . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, we had fan! And glares, since everyone else was cold.

A little later, as I executed a delirious Mary Tyler Moore-spin under the fan, I told a coworker between wracking coughs: "I wish my desk was right here."

My supervisor: "I don't."

Another coworker kept going "sooey" and telling me to go home 'cause I was probably giving everyone the swine flu. I finally asked the scheduling supe if I could leave early if I brought in a doctor's note. I could, so I did. It's not like they woulda had much choice at that point, anyway. I lost my voice shortly after I left. They'd have been paying me to do bugger-all, since I'd have been unable to answer a phone.

Doc prescribed antibiotics and special cough medicine with codeine in it, so Nyquil can go fuck its mother.

Was gonna see Wolverine tonight with friends, but it means delaying the antibiotics--seriously don't want the side effects starting when I'm in transit or in cinema--so I might not. . . .

But I really wanna. I probably will. It's not like I have to jog in place for the length of the movie. My lungs should be fine for a little while longer. And my friends already know I'm sick, so if they're still badgering me to come along, that means they don't mind the risk of contagion. Love me, love my viruses.

Nevertheless, my piercings are all swollen and crusty. I keep them clean, and choose to see that crusty swollenness as healing. But my face kinda hurts again, so I'm a bit worried.

A Dose of Face-Holes

Sweaty, nasty day. Sunlight like syrup, sticky and running all over everything. Attracting bumblebees, speeding them on their little errands--and I don't fuck around with those things since that one flew up my nose that time and got stuck.

Two massive loads of laundrey--linens, clothes, hats, everything. Got cruised by not one, but two creepy guys at the laundry mat. Only one of them was there for actual laundry. The other just walked around in his shiny, ugly shirt and picked his nose. For, like, an hour. Seriously--what did he have up there? The treasure of Sierra Madre?

Shlepped heavy ass laundry. Dodged bumblebees. And after that, because I hadn't sweated enough, I walked crosstown and got my bridge :)

Not so yay? My fucking skull. Fucking ow. And let's not even get into my sinuses (hah, I said "get into my sinuses." I'm funny). The pressure from this . . . maybe one ounce bar--gevalt! I didn't realize how move-y my face was, and now, something as simple as raising my eyebrows feels like someone hit me in the face with a stick. A pretty-stick, obviously.

My piercer guy is so sweet, and his kids are ridiculously cute.

Thinking of recording myself reading that minor milestone piece on the YouTubes--inspired by the wonderful John Evo.



Argh . . . my fucking face. . . .


"No horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace." --HP Lovecraft

A Minor Milestone

Nearly a year, now, since I admitted to myself that yes, Virginia, there is no sky-fairy.

I find that I have milestones, some large, some small. The ones that involved my death and dying--death is the end, no playing harps on clouds or even boiling in a lake of fire . . . no nothing--were surprisingly not the hardest to come to. Maybe because I find that I have to deal with it everyday. Sometimes it hits like a freight train, and I'm left gobsmacked. Other times, I'm damn near zen about it. I understand, not just with my brain, but with my heart and my gut that someday, I will die. That that day will be my last day as a consciousness, no matter what happens to my cells. The consciousness called "Rachel" will simply stop.

Admittedly, this sort of zen wasn't me on most days, at first. And I won't lie and say it's me most days now. But I no longer fear the act of dying. Sometimes I fear the pain that's likely to be attendant. I once feared not going on in an "afterlife", even though "not going on" is something no conscious being will ever experience.

Now I simply feel betrayed, vaguely cheated. Not out of living forever, but out of living for a good thousand years or so. ( Though I imagine that on my eve of my 1000th birthday, I'd be bitching and moaning about, "fucking why do I gotta fucking die fucking now? Motherfucker!")

I imagine, once I get my life on something I consider a "right track", that feeling won't fade, so much as be eclipsed by all the stuff that goes with a life fully inhabited and lived.

So no, the thought of my death wasn't the worst realization, even on my worst day. The worst was realizing there's no Heaven, in which my grandmother watches baseball games at an angelic Shea Stadium, and drinks Miller Lites. That she wasn't smiling down on me, and that I would never, ever see her again.

Eight months since I had that mini-realization, and some days it still hits me hard. Not like a freight train. But like an asteroid, and it fucking obliterates me, almost every time. The only reason I want there to be an afterlife is for my Grandma. So that maybe I could sleaze my way past the bouncers at the gate and get a hug. 'Cause she gave the best hugs. And believe me when I say, I'm not a hugger. I don't like people touching me for pretty much any reason and I do not find touch comforting. I don't even let my mother hug me and she knows not to try, but my Grandma . . . she gave the best hugs.

That's the afterlife that I mourn on good days and rage internally at being cheated of on the bad ones. An eternal hug from my Grandma.

Lately, I've looked at this mourning from the perspective of: when I'm dead, I won't miss my grandmother, or hugs, or anything at all. Death will be the cessation of desire for things I had, for things I never got and never will. Understood only with my heart and gut, it's a wee bit depressing, but with my brain in the mix, eternal rest sounds a lot better than even eternal hugs. I mean, if we had everything we ever wanted, and had it all the time . . . how long would we enjoy it before wanting something else? And something else after that? The wanting would never end, and speaking as someone who's wanted many things and gotten very few of them, desire is, more than anything, tiresome.

So, I want a hug from my grandma. Maybe not an eternal one, not anymore. But a good hundred years worth'd do me fine. I will never get that hug, and that makes me sad. But if that's the price I pay for someday, finally, not having to be, period, well, it's an infinitessimally small price to pay.

I do like being alive, but it take so much energy and effort and care. More than I can imagine expending for eternity.

So, that's my milestone. Not a huge one (or even a coherent one, skimming over this post) but it's mine. One more step of many I'll climb till I can't climb anymore. And at the end of my climb, though nowhere near the "top", I'll look forward to a sleep so complete and permanent, I won't even know that I'm taking it--or know anything else, for that matter. Forever and ever, amen.

I find myself strangely optimistic.