Depression for Dummies

It's been a rough patch lately, and among other things, I've experienced three distinct forms of clinical depression. Allow me to taxonomize.

First came agitated depression, in which mania and depression occur simultaneously. This is regarded as a particularly dangerous state because the built-in safeguard of depression -- lack of energy, lack of will -- is bypassed. You're depressed, but you have the ability to act on that depression.

This is the most intolerable of my mental conditions. There is no way to settle down until things pass -- I'm compelled to physical activity, usually walking the streets.

When I'm like this, I'm a disturbing, unpleasant, even threatening presence. Frankly, it makes me feel like a terrible person, a bully and a bastard.

Then the agitation passed, and I got into the regular old 'there is no hope once the capacity for joy is eliminated' vanilla depression.

So my eating, sleeping, and so on have been thrown all to hell.

Thankfully, the missus has been particularly sweet and that's enough to lift my mood. This puts me into a particularly tricky situation.

Right now, I'm capable of experiencing pleasure and hope, and of feeling gratitude for the good things in my life.

This is swell so far as daily existence goes. But it's pretty much a pile of leaves and branches hiding a pit with spikes on the bottom. Because while this state is easier for everyone to live with, it is still clinical depression. Decreased appetite, decreased sleep, nausea, lack of motivation and focus, easily confused, emotionally volatile, etc, etc.

This state was a serious issue for me for a long, long time. I'd assume that since I didn't want to gouge my eyes out with a fondue fork I wasn't depressed. But when I'm like this, there's a genuine apathy in regard to my well-being. Last winter when I was like this while the missus was out of town, I wound up not eating for a number of days and then not drinking for three solid days. Pure inertia. Apathy. "Hmm. Seem to be going downhill here. Tongue feels slick, like leather. I bet this is real bad for my teeth."

So I've learned to keep a close watch on myself when I feel okay while displaying clear symptoms of depression. It's good, in that it's a step away from the pit. But it's tricky.

Right now I'm trying to decide whether I should try and get myself pumped back up again, or if it's time to start hunkering down for the winter and just accept that I'm going to be useless for a while.

Now that I put it into words, the answer seems obvious. So. That's the next question. What to do for a moral boost.

I will think of something. Goddamnit.

What The Hell Is Going On?

I'll tell you about this later. It should be -- oh, shit. Is that a bear?

It's been a while since I've posted. Life has been interesting in the proverbial sense...

But here's the big news.

1. I made my first performance, unless you count speaking at weddings and funerals.

2. I spoke to a psychiatrist, and have tentatively begun treatment.

3. Swill is out.

So I'll talk about the shrink first. Get it out of the way.

It was interesting. The nurse running the place immediately slotted me for a two-week stay in the bin, to be monitored while they determined my medication.

She said, "They'll be delighted with you."

Thus we have my relationship with the mental health profession. It's kind of like Where The Wild Things Are. "Oh please don't go! Oh please don't go! We'll eat you up, we love you so!"

I wound up speaking with the doctor for quite some time. Near the beginning of our interview, she said, "Normally these are much shorter, but you're so interesting!"

In my lowest moments, I can think back on moments such as these, and comfort myself with the thought that women find me of great clinical interest.

So, I've mentioned in previous posts that I've been diagnosed with agitated depression and borderline schizophrenia. Well, the doctor told me that there is no longer such thing as agitated depression, and 'borderline schizophrenia' never existed -- some shrinks use it as a shorthand for, 'well, there's something going on in there, and it's making me nervous.'

What she said? Post-traumatic stress disorder (which, interestingly, Jim MacDonald diagnosed for one of my autobiographical characters) and obsessive-compulsive disorder. "You've got a little bipolar, too, but all artists have a little bipolar." And I'm hypomanic. If you know me personally, look up hypomania and nod in recognition.

There was something I very much appreciated. I mean, she's letting me keep my bipolar! (Well, hypomania is pretty functional.) She specifically stated that the goal of my treatment was maximum creativity, minimum medication. "Maybe just stabilizing your sleep would be enough."

Yes, yes, yes.

She also said something interesting. "I don't think you represent a danger to yourself or the community at all." She said it with the definite air of a woman making a contradiction. I suspect it was directed at the nurse, since the doctor didn't put me in the bin after all.

Instead, I received an initial prescription for two anti-depressants and an anti-psychotic. Which I guess is minimal medication for such as me.

The missus, bless her heart, after all this... after making me go to the emergency room, insisting that I do the follow-up, driving me to the appointment...

"They're putting you on a caaaaahk-tail! That stuff is poison! It's addictive, you know. Have you talked to ______ about how they feel on their medication? (the individual in question has behaved violently when not on meds) You won't be able to work."

And so on. Her great fear is that I'll wind up a broken zombie. I told her that if she doesn't like what it does to me, I stop. The point of this is to make me as easy to live with as possible. So we'll see. She's having me hold off for a few days, which is fine with me. Get one last band session in with beer before the long drought -- no drinking with meds.

I think talk therapy will be more useful to me -- but it's going to be a long time before I can get that going. Turns out Berkeley is hurting for low-cost counseling.

And so.

How'd the performance go? First off, let me thank everyone who showed up. I have got a swell community and I am grateful for it.

And as for the performance. It turns out that my completely unreasonable confidence was not unreasonable at all. I have a talent for performing that isn't obvious until I have an audience to fuck with.

I'm good at it. Real good. The video will go up at some point, but I will tell you in honest pride that I kicked ass. I was told a number of times by a number of people that I was 'the hit of the evening.' What's sick? I didn't need to be told. I knew it; I was there.

This was something for me. A while ago I began attending readings, and soon found that I wanted to be on the other side of the podium. I can even put a date on the birth of this ambition -- my birthday in 2009, when I attended the Litpunk reading. To concieve an ambition, and see it through to completion at a high level of skill in a prestigious venue? On purpose? Dang. Didn't know I could do that shit. Bodes well for the future.

Okay, I'll confess. When I was told that I was going to be opening, I smiled and nodded and agreed internally that it was only smart to put the new guy in first. First time out, you can't expect too much.

But something in me said very distinctly, "You're gonna eat that."

Not a nice statement, is it? But there it was. Something in me felt challenged, and responded. I don't think I would have done as well if I didn't have a wee touch of malice in my motivation.

It was interesting. I was in a distinctly altered frame of mind. Normally that kind of busy-busy atmosphere -- people bustling around, eating, talking -- shuts me right down. Instead, I was able to smile and converse, but I felt a real distance from everyone. That was my only bad feeling of the evening -- I felt guilty about not being able to spend real personal time with all the friends who had come out to support me.

And here's the other thing that was weird. When I looked at the audience? They were all just a horrible undifferentiated blur, a genially horrid many-handed monster -- except for women I found attractive, who gave the impression of being arranged like chocolates in a box. Very disturbing. Between that and the disassociation, I think I have a better understanding of how celebrities get into trouble.

But I'll tell you what. After an initial stumble, I had them. I got laughs I wasn't expecting, but when I turned the screw they shut the fuck up and listened. The missus later explained that stumble to me. At the start, I mentioned that I'd brought the wrong copy of the manuscript.

At first I argued with her about that -- I was just being candid, which is part of my thang, etc. But on further thought, I decided she was right. (Sweetie, here it is in front of everyone -- you were right, and I was wrong.) I think an audience likes being told what to do -- if you have convinced it that you are in charge. By admitting an error, I cast doubt on my authority, which made the audience suspicious until I proved my mettle.

And once I thought of it that way, I realized the pleasure I'd experienced in performing. It was that of dominance. Control. I work hard on being polite, deferential, cooperative, a person of service. I do this because the alpha male I have locked in the basement is a motherfucker and I do not trust him.

Performance gave me a time and place to let him out for a while. I liked that. I want to do more. And it felt safe. It was appropriate for me to be extreme, demanding, and unquestioningly in charge. It was the time and place where I was serving by ruling, to put a ridiculously overweening caste on things.

And like I said, it's safe, it's harmless. I mean, some crazy artist getting sick power thrills from the control of crowds? What could possibly go wrong with that?

I'll tell you about Swill tomorrow.

This Is Your Brain On Art

There we go. Much better. And I've got a new one I might be able to finish today. It's got a new feature -- a human being! After all, what's the point of doing landscapes like these with no-one in them to feel distressed, alienated, and threatened?

So to shift the current focus of the blog a little bit, here's some information I recently received that gave me a fresh look at the relationship between mental illness and creativity. This is, as you may imagine, a subject of great interest to me. There are so many factors that come into play here -- everything from tenacity that looks a little like OCD if you tilt your head to childlessness to poor boundaries making characterization and dialog easier to write to vulnerability to sensory input to the stress experienced when one lives in a culture-hating culture -- on, and on, and on.

Look. I know healthy, stable artists who are sick of the 'crazy artist' stereotype. Sorry, folks, you seem to be in the minority. When people apply it to you, it's a stereotype. When they apply it to me, it's observation.

Artists of any kind tend to be a little messed up, and when they aren't, they are usually kinda weird. I used to go through phases of being upset when waves of mental illness seemed to sweep through my friends, and then I realized that I only like hanging out with driven creative people.

Well. I think I have figured out one of the reasons why art is so good for those of us who have a few screws rattling loose in the cranium.

The information came from two different sources. One was the book This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin, the other was an episode of the Mythbusters TV show.

The Mythbusters included a segment on the idea that you use ten percent of your brain at any given time. Bullshit, of course, but there was something very interesting that came up near the end. If you aren't familiar with Mythbusters, they're a TV show devoted to the scientific (on a crude but real level) investigation of everything from turns of phrase to movie cliches. They investigate the myth, and then when they're done, they try and either replicate it, exaggerate it, or completely reverse it.

In this case, they wanted to turn the myth around and have someone use their entire brain at the same time. Do you know what the subject did that used their entire brain simultaneously?

They told a story.

Memory, sensory details, emotions -- everything came into play. And as they described what was going on, I realized that if I had a chart of the areas of the brain, I could intentionally activate any of them through an act of imagination or memory. (They're pretty much the same thing, actually, or so it looks these days.)

You could do it too. It's not hard at all, it turns out.

And in This Is Your Brain On Music (a wonderful book, if you think you might be interested in it you should read it), it was revealed to me what part of the brain is used when you play music.

All of it. The whole meghilla.

Let me tell you a little something. I play bass, and before my music buddy became a father we were pretty serious in a garage-band way. Recorded an album that's actually listenable in a way. But my bass playing stalled out a bit, and I recently figured out the totally-obvious reason why.

With my back, I don't practice any more. The more I sit, the more I hurt. It's a simple formula.

But recently music has been taking off on me. I had a couple of baritone ukuleles that I found at yard sales. The nice thing about ukes is that with their short necks, I can play them lying down or sitting in my recliner. Well, a few months back I found something else. A pair of violin stands that are the perfect size for the ukes. I tuned one uke EADG like a bass, the other DGBE, which is standard baritone uke tuning, and then set them out on the floor. Where they stayed in tune a hell of a lot better, and they were there. I could just reach out, and there was an instrument that I could actually play. And I would.

In fact, I do. I've gotten in the habit of periodically breaking while working to play a melody or a scale or a few chords. Sloop John B is my current favorite, and those who remember the VPXIII singalong will be amazed to hear that I've got it sounding halfway decent.

It's gotten to be a habit because when I do it, it's like running a comb through my thoughts. The bristly stray cognitions that have begun to block my work in writing or visual arts are put back in place, and I can return to work refreshed and confident.

Very interesting, no?

And there is a feeling that I've been getting with my writing more and more frequently -- a sense of control. Of knowing that I know what I'm doing. It's actually intoxicating.

I think it's my whole brain going at once. I think one of the great attractions to art is that it allows the artist to fucking make their brain shut up and do what it's told.

Here's another anecdote. (I know, the plural of anecdote is not evidence -- but I am not claiming to do research here. I am saying, hey! You! Research this for me.)

For me, creating visual art does not feel like a complete experience in itself. I need music to fill things out. I don't want music when I write. People who write to music might want to ponder this a bit. Is this the reason I'm a second-rater in the visual arts? I need the music to propel me through the laborious parts of the process. If I was actually interested in each brush stroke I'd be a better artist. (Although Chuck Close works to music, so that theory might be blown right there.)

Last Saturday I was working on a print, and instead of playing music, I played an instructional CD on learning rhythm. Fascinating, delightful stuff -- here it it -- and it riveted me. I was chanting along unconsciously while I worked, occasionally taking time out to do a little hambone. It was a great fucking afternoon. I came out of it feeling euphoric. And I'll bet I maxed out my brain. Overclocked that son of a bitch.

I think I'm a whole-brain junkie. I think my brain is like one of those high-end sportscars where if you just drive it in traffic, it gets fucked up. You need to take it out on a track every once in a while and put that fucking pedal down.

Or so I suspect. Anyone got an EEG so we can check this shit out?

Emergency Room!

Guess where I've been?

And so. To get the real issue out of the way. Everyone who wanted me to see a doctor? I saw a doctor. There is no serious emergency, just further evidence of the same old villain at work.

If you aren't familiar with the ongoing drama, part of my new identity is Dude Who Pukes. A Lot. And There's Blood.

I got to choose a lot of aspects of the emerging persona. I did not pick this one. It started off as a persistent vague feeling of nausea that would spike during moments of stress, causing me to rush from the room from time to time.

Then came Taos. Hey, everyone at Taos? I admire your forbearance in letting me stay in the room while vomiting almost constantly, but if this comes up again, I'd suggest just pitching me over the rail into the parking lot.

This was followed in July or August by the stomach flu that inspired me to a frenzy that actually ripped a little opening somewhere in my esophagus. Which is where the blood comes from.

Since then, there have been two times when a combination of drinking and overeating have caused me to go into serious pukeathons. This last one started Sunday afternoon, and the missus made me go to the emergency room today.

The Missus: That's a lot of blood. That's pretty scary.

The Oaf: I got more.

The Missus: Doesn't that scare you?

The Oaf: You're not gonna like this, but I simply do not have a healthy regard for my own physical well-being. I take care of myself so I don't screw over the people around me, but it's not like I really care.

The Missus: You're right. I hate that.

She started asking me to go in last night, but at that point my physical state was so wretched that I couldn't imagine the car ride, let alone the time spent in the waiting room.

(As an aside, the music my brain played during my delirium was the Richard Thompson version of I Live In Trafalgar Square.)

But this morning, when she asked me again, I was both well enough to imagine completing the trip, and weak enough to be manipulated. (Yes, the Oaf is as putty in the hands of a stronger will, when you can find one.)

Glad I did it. Partially, I was pleased to find out that despite feeling crappy all the time, I still am possessed of a healthy body. No HIV, no cancer, liver is rockin'.

One thing that I found interesting, was that of course questions about drinking showed up early. But then at one point the physician asked me if I was a writer, and when I said yes, the drinking questions went up about two notches in terrifying implications -- "So, how often have you experienced withdrawal from alchohol?" "Not so far, not likely ever." This came up a few times, and given that I told them what my drinking habits were, I have no idea where this came from.

The final tentative diagnosis? "There's a whole bunch of stuff in here. I think you probably have what we used to call an ulcer in your esophagus. Your drinking and eating habits are going to irritate your digestive tract. But mostly, I think it's stress and anxiety."

This is where I ask the trombone player to step out and play that familiar melody:

Bwa-bwa-bwaaa.

Basically, when I hit the point where I am in a sweat-drenched writhing delirium for hours and hours and hours? That's not so much a puking problem as puking setting off a psycho problem. I do experience those episodes as visionary though unpleasant...

I knew this. And I knew that addressing my diet and drinking more deliberately would keep me from experiencing a lot of these episodes. But hearing confirmation from a number of different medical personnel kinda settles things. I don't have the option of knowing but refraining. The missus knows I know.

Thing is, is I went in complaining about puking blood, and the medicos made it plain that my real problem is my crazy. "So, given your condition, are you able to go out at all or do you have to stay at home?" seemed a tad harsh, but actually? The combination of chronic pain and depression has kept a lot of nasty little bedrooms occupied full-time. I ain't doing that. But I'll tell you what. If I liked opiates, I could have gone that way.

They also threw some antacids my way.

As an aside, the people at the county hospital were genuinely wonderful. If it weren't for the extreme physical discomfort (they gave me morphine, and people don't believe me when I tell them that opiates agitate me), it would have been a lovely day.

But just for the record. Home remedies suck. Orally-administered anti-emetics? Are you familiar with the concept of the design flaw? And I am sorry, I don't give a shit how many pediatricians love the stuff. Pedialite is unbelievably nasty. There are moments in life that are not enhanced by the presence of artificial grape flavor. Give me blue Gatorade. It does not make you think of food even a little bit. Instead, it tastes the way those curiously appealing blue disinfectants smell. Mmmmmmmm....

Still. I preferred being the guy who could eat or drink anything without puking. Oh, well. One step closer to the grave.

Head Case

I know, I need to do the last section of the Atheism essay. But I need to do this first.

I've been going through it the last couple of years. I try not to turn this blog into a whinefest, but there are times when it helps me to get things out. Writing on my blog doesn't feel like talking to myself; it feels as if I'm conversing with a friend. So, buddy, here's what's going on...

My head's been getting worse. By this I refer to my being, well, a crazy person. I'd been on a slow but steady path of improvement for a very long time, but the last two years have seen things degenerate. This last winter and the current spring are giving me extra difficulties.

My insomnia has gotten worse. If I can get five hours of sleep a night, I'm okay. But lately I haven't been able to get that. I'm averaging three or four hours a night. That's still better than my worst, but it isn't good.

I've been spacey and irresponsible in ways that are totally new to me. Missing classes and appointments, forgetting things that I have to do, going to wrong buildings, etc. I mean, I thought I wasn't the kind of person who did those kinds of things, and here I am doing them.

And I've been finding myself just freezing for extended periods of time, sitting down at the computer, doing a quick web surf, and then realizing I've been doing it for hours. Or realizing that I've been walking back and forth between the living room and the kitchen for hours. Pulling out stacks of books and reading all the introductions and afterwards and none of the actual material. That kind of thing. It happens when I think about all the things I could be doing, all the things I should be doing, how lucky I am. How privileged.

I've been troubled by obsessive disquieting thoughts badly enough to lose sleep over them. Here's a sample -- imagine holding a steel tetrahedron between your teeth -- the taste of the metal, the smooth cold feel, the sense that it's harder than your teeth, the feeling of electricity where it touches your fillings. Bite down until your teeth break. Feel the splinters of tooth, taste the blood, and as you lay there in the dark, experience that bite over and over again.

That's a mild one.

There are times when I walk while I'm infuriated, slapping signs and kicking newspaper vending machines and muttering furiously. Every so often I'll get a strange look from someone in public, and I have to wonder if they've seen me during one of those little excursions. A pal of mine recently spotted me on the street while he was driving; he said I looked like someone you'd cross the street to avoid. At first I felt amused and complimented but hey. That's not really wholesome, you know? Behaving abberently in public is just not good.

I've been self-medicating with alcohol, and that isn't good, either. I swear off drinking alone, I stick to it for a while, something comes up that I know booze will help get me through, the booze helps, my prohibition loosens, eventually I get offensively drunk and swear off solitary drinking again. Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm not talking about daily drinking -- I couldn't fucking afford to be a real alcoholic -- but both my parents and both my grandfathers were alcoholics. I can't take drinking for granted, and I don't feel entirely under control of the situation.

No point in going into more detail. It's just not been good. And at the same time it has been good. I've gone through real creative breakthroughs during this time, I've found that there are times and places where I'm valued, where I have something real to contribute. The missus is convinced that it's because of the progress I've made with my art and writing -- that it's fear of success.

I don't think that's all of it, but I'm not saying she's wrong...

Right now I'm at a crucial point in my life. I've proven to myself that I've got what it takes as an artist and a writer -- but that's all I've got going for me. I need to find some way to make a living, and being crazy is not helping me here.

And a big part of what's going on is that I simply don't know how to live life on the most basic level. I actually tried to sign up for a basic life skills class last semester, but found out it was for developmentally disabled people... I shoulda taken it anyway. Let's face it, I'm just Rain Man with a vocabulary. Taxes? Job hunting? Savings? Jesus! I have no idea how people do that stuff. I am but a cork, bobbing in the current...

When I've read up on this stuff, the message I see over and over again is, "Seek professional help." I'm reluctant to do that. My previous experience with counseling and medication was almost entirely negative -- my shrink did turn me on to Robertson Davies, but that was it. The more analysis, the worse I felt, and the anti-depressant (Nortryptiline, if you're curious) did me no good at all. My counselor and consulting psychiatrist were terrified of/for me. If I hadn't been intimidated by the forms I had to fill out, I would have been committed. I still feel guilty about how depressed I made my shrink.

But things have changed since then. I'm nowhere near as bad off as I was at that age, even with my current troubles. And there have been a lot of advances in medication.

So I've decided to bite the bullet and investigate the possibility of getting back into some kind of therapy. I spoke to the missus about this, and she's started nosing around, bless her. She says there are a lot of free options around here. I don't know how I feel about medication -- I've heard some real horror stories about the adjustments people have had to make while figuring out their medicinal regimen, and the idea of suddenly turning into some kind of goddamned pharmaceutical werewolf is both chilling and not entirely impossible. But just having someone to talk to would make a difference.

Hey. It's worth a shot.

Oh, Boy -- Here Comes The Winter Crazy or Don't Bother Reading This One -- It's All Complaints

So I went to my first life-drawing session in years a few months back. Loved it, loved it, loved it -- but the room was too crowded for me to be able to shift between standing and sitting so afterward my back was a disaster.

This was a blind contour drawing -- keep your pen on the paper at all times so as to draw with one continuous line while never looking at the page.

Since I could only carry materials in my knapsack I worked on a small pad with pen and pencil and wound up longing for charcoal and a larger piece of paper -- I wanted to work with tone instead of line.

After all this time I was pleasantly surprised when some of my sketches were halfway decent. Having a good model really helped. That does it -- next year I'm taking a life-drawing class.

Okay, here's how it works.

There's a certain mood that sets in at our household when winter really hits. I get moody, the missus gets bossy, and we both get sensitive about the way the other person is treating us. Things hit a peak in February, when we have both of our birthdays and our anniversary and thus feel entitled to nice treatment from one another.

For the past few years it hasn't been bad at all. That's because the drama of the situation is my problem, not Karen's. The reason things have been better is that I've been able to track my mood and keep my emotional state under control. But this year my support system is sucking and I'm in a more volatile state than has been typical.

A big part of this is that I'm taking actions to move my life forward and I'm experiencing some success and it's freaking me out, man. But there are some other things going on in my world (birth and death and divorce and mental illness and on and on and on) that are raising my stress levels past the point where I can stay cool. They're peripheral in my life -- the real issues belong to other people and I'm just catching fallout.

The main sources of emotional comfort that I have when the missus and I are at odds are not there for me now. They may come back, they may not, who the hell knows what's going on? But right now I have no-one that I can talk to about what I'm going through that isn't directly affected by by the circumstances, who won't have feelings of guilt, resentment, or legitimate irritation with me if I try and unload. And since they're dealing with things that are far more serious than my emotional stability I feel like a shit for wishing there were more support for me, me, poor little me.

When I start getting weird, the missus starts gets heavy into compulsive controlling behavior, constantly telling me what to do. And since she's extra-sensitive as well, when I complain about it she feels hurt. Hey, if you're reading this you've probably read a lot of my blog. Imagine me complaining at you -- loud, long, and lucid. It really is awful.

When we were talking about this last night she explained that she can't help trying to control situations that make her frightened or uneasy. This is something I can understand. I can be more patient with her now that I really see that her behavior is a compulsive reaction. She has flat-out told me that I can't ask her not to do this because she can't help it.

But she's steadfastly refusing to see that my reactions to being bossed around aren't any more subject to control than her compulsions. When she tells me to do something -- and this is Queens-style bossing, rude and peremptory -- it hits a node at the base of my brain and I'm jolted with fight-or-flight rage.

See, I was raised in a metaphorical Skinner box that taught me a very bad lesson -- if someone disrespects you then it will eventually escalate to physical violence. I react to disrespect as if it were a physical threat -- accelerated heartbeat, hyperventilation, muscular tension -- my body prepares itself for a fight.

Which can lead to bad behavior on my part. Look, it's not like I hit or threaten people. But I get very loud and emotional and sometimes there are things like stress-puking and wall-punching and suchlike.

Since I recognize this pattern I can usually stay on top of it. But right now I'm vulnerable and so it's difficult for me not to explain to her how and why she's contributing to my problems. Which makes her feel shitty. Which makes her try and control me.

So I'm the one who has to play grownup. And I do not want to. But I can't control her behavior, I can only modify my own. So that's what I'm doing.

But she's driving me nuuuuuuuuts! Last night after we settled down and talked things out and were in a pleasant space of forgiveness she fucking started in on it all over again.

She says she knows it's micromanagement but she thinks I should listen to the Pachelbell Canon on headphones, my latest treatment for insomnia.

So from now on I'm gonna think about that moment every time I think about that piece of music -- this is part of my crazy, these things imprint on me -- and I'm gonna get that rush of pissed-off adrenaline. So a real tool for dealing with my sleep issues has been taken away from me by someone who only had my best interests at heart.

Then when I reach for the melatonin so as to have a shot at getting to sleep, she wants me to take these pills her doctor recommended to her for insomnia. They're calcium pills with "something else in them, I don't know what." So she has no fucking idea of what the pills are going to do or why but if I don't go along with the program the fight starts all over again and I'm the bad guy. This is an example of control for control's sake, of her using me as a means of soothing her neurosis. (Which, admittedly, I've triggered.)

I reluctantly agree. She bring them to me along with a glass of water, bless her heart, and I take them and I wait. And they do not do a fucking thing. So I reach for the melatonin and she tells me not to take it because she wants to know if the new pills work.

Remember, this is taking place in the aftermath of a spectacular fight over my criticizing her over her control issues. When she rudely bosses me around it's out of love and when I complain about it I'm a psycho and/or a prick. It's her refusal to admit that what she's doing is out of line that drive me nuts and it's my bitching about this that makes her defend her actions. So I'm in the wrong no matter what.

That catch twenty-two, it's a hell of a catch.

I've got a ton of stuff that I should be doing. But I'm fucked up and miserable right now. I slept some last night but not much, I puked up my dinner as a result of stress, I've got the horrible hangover that accompanies an emotional fit. (I honestly suspect that an EEG would show some kind of seizure going on when I get that way, no fooling.)

I'm blowing the day off unless I can find a way to make work a release. I've got business at school this afternoon but after that I'm gonna resort to booze. I shouldn't do this but right now my options are limited. Hopefully that'll relax me enough to think about eating, which would make it easier to sleep tonight.

Which means that when I plunge into someone else's drama over the weekend I'll be in a better position to be the good and supportive person I wish I had been last night.

Damnit.

Riding The Bummer Train

Here's my studio and myself in the late eighties, back when I had a dog and some hair. This was done in pencil and ink on tracing vellum for an architectural rendering class -- I drafted the room from the blueprints, then drew the rest with a combination of classic perspective and guesswork. Yeah, that is the actual shape of the studio. And at the far end, that is a lavender staircase.

I took the line drawing and had it copied onto watercolor paper. I took six of these and painted them simultaneously, discarding the ones I fucked up until I had this at the end. I hate trying to get accurate results with conventional media... Note the boot print in the upper right-hand corner, a not uncommon feature in my work. I need to learn a little respect.

Well, there's a good chance this post will fall into the Too Much Information category. Please, if you don't have any interest in the complaints of an overprivileged white boy skip this. It's all pissing and moaning intended to get my bitching out of my head so I can get on with my work.

I've been going through a very nice little period in my life for the past week and a half. Last night it came to a screeching -- or rather a hollering -- halt.

In many ways I'm an extraordinarily fortunate person. But there are a few issues in my life that give me real problems and make me feel concerned for my future. And unfortunately they act to reinforce each other.

They're located at each end of my spinal column.

I have a bad back and I suffer from mental illness. As a nut, earlier in my life I was able to find refuge in physical labor. If I slapped my headphones on and worked until the sweat flowed I was able to cope and be useful at the same time.

My last job of this sort was in the warehouse of an employee-owned book distribution company, BookPeople. After working there for a couple of years I had the single most physically demanding job in the place, restocking the gravity flow racks. These were a series of racks with wheeled tracks installed in them and they were where the fastest-moving titles were stored. Instead of stacks of books on a shelf, the gravity flow rack held whole boxes of books, typically five or six boxes of a given title at a time.

This was a perfect job for me. I was able to work four days a week (yeah, I took a substantial pay cut for this -- but I had no real choice -- explanation to follow) I had my own little kingdom, I had minimal interaction with the people around me, and I had as much work as I could handle. But during my first couple of years I had a bad habit -- I'd straddle the cart I used to carry the boxes and then twist to the side to load the box into the rack. These boxes averaged about thirty-five pounds each and went up to about seventy-five pounds and I did this all day long.

When I was told that this was a really bad practice that could lead to a bad back I changed the way I worked. It was too late.

When I started to feel sciatic pain I countered it with exercises that helped for a while. My routine involved getting up at four-thirty or five and doing an hour's workout to prepare myself for work. Let me tell you, I was in monstrously good physical condition. I miss it -- having a genuinely powerful body is a real pleasure.

But the pain continued and got worse. And they installed a new set of gravity flow racks and the most strenuous part of my job was doubled. Finally after working in constant pain for well over a year I went to see a physical therapist. Who after a while had me get an MRI. One disc compressed, one disc spectacularly ruptured. And it seems that working hard for a long time has given me nerve damage. I will never not hurt again.

That was it for my career as a big strong guy.

I don't want to go into detail about the drama that attended my settlement. Maybe in a later post. But I will say that everyone associated with my rehabilitation training -- including my insurance adjuster -- told me it was inadequate. If I'd been injured a few years earlier I would have gotten a lot more rehab. If I'd been injured a few years later I would have gotten a much larger settlement. I was just lucky enough to hit the sweet spot. And the lawyers who act on behalf of the insurance companies are honest-to-God sociopaths. No fooling.
If the money that had been spent on the PI they had videotape me (which actually hurt the case the insurance company was trying to make against me -- truth is always the best defense) had been spent on my rehab I'd fucking well have a job now.

So. The reason why I worked part-time? I'm nuts. The one time I was in counseling I asked how I'd be diagnosed. The answer was complex.

Agitated depression with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, violent and suicidal impulses, accompanied by visual, tactile, and auditory hallucinations. The last shrink I consulted with said he'd tentatively peg me as borderline schizophrenic. The combination would seem to indicate psychotic agitated depression -- but I think the schizophrenia and the depression are compartmentalized enough to clear me of that diagnosis.

(Of course I never told her about my Whitley Strieber-style saucerman experiences. For the record, yeah, abductees experience the things they report. I believe that it's a form of mental illness rather than an exterior phenomenon. I think that getting caught up in the mythology around UFOs is really, really unhealthy for people with schizophrenic tendencies. I think it should be studied and I damn well would like it if they came up with an effective treatment.)

I was given tricyclics -- Nortryptiline, to be specific. It was worse than useless. These days they say that anti-depressants are bad news for people with agitated depression -- powerful tranquilizers are reccomended and I am considering getting a supply for emergency use. My couselor told me I was the sanest person she had ever met. She also wanted to have me institutionalized because I represented a danger to myself and the community.

Agitated depression is the kind of mental illness that results in death. Here's one way to get a glimpse into the condition. It's a metaphor but I suspect there's some literal truth to it.

Our emotions are generated by physical structures in the brain. (I suspect the body as well -- my own belief is that the mind is concentrated rather than isolated in the brain -- but that's just one nut's opinion.) Just as with any other part of the body things can go wrong.

So imagine the way you felt when you were betrayed by someone close to you, or someone you loved died. Think of the very worst that you have ever felt, those moments when it seemed as if there was nothing good at all in your life. These feelings are generated in your brain. What if your brain generated these feeling spontaneously? Think of it as emotional epilepsy.

Or imagine that your ability to feel pleasure suddenly vanished. That nothing felt good, tasted good, looked good. That every sensory stimulus was a source of irritation. It is possible to be blind to pleasure the same way you can be visually blind, or deaf, or lack any other sense.

Those two states are components of depression.

In agitated depression this misery is compounded by a flood of nervous energy that compels some kind of action. This is what makes it one of the most dangerous mental illnesses. And this is what I've got.

And how did I get this way? Heredity and environment and plenty of both. A violent life during childhood and my teen years and a history of mental illness on both sides of the family. It's like I'm the result of a eugenics program intended to produce the craziest redneck in the world.

The thing is, when people at work (I was a janitor in a high-end department store at this point) found out that I was seeing a shrink they were baffled. See, if you aren't right in my immediate circle I come across as a really nice guy who seems to have his shit together. (Haw! Haw! Haw! As an aside, this period in my life is one of the major elements in the novel.)

Potential employers -- I'm great on the job. I'm a good friend. When the crunch comes down, when there's an emergency -- that's when I shine.

But living day-to-day? I just don't have the knack. I think of myself as being like one of those British sports cars that are soooo much fun to drive when they aren't in the shop.

And at the same time my creativity is directly linked to my insanity. That's why I have to work part-time if I'm going to function in society. Creative activity, whether art or writing or music, is the best therapy I've found. Ol' Lunchboxxx commented on my ability to crap out art -- this is where the ability comes from.

For those familiar with drug use, at my most sober and stable my mental state is comparable to a half-hit of bad acid. Twitchy, excitable, nervous, uncomfortable, and vaguely hallucinatory around the edges, just waiting for the overwhelming visions to roll in. Distressingly, the closest I come to what I would regard as a 'normal' mental state is when I have a mild hangover. There's a strong history of alchoholism on both sides of my family so this really isn't the solution I'm looking for...

When my back pain is bad, the only things that can make a dent are narcotics. But they tend to trigger my depression. But so does the pain. Cue the trombone -- bwaa-waa-waa.

So. Two things that are important for my maintenance of a tolerably mental state are eating and sleeping. And that's why I'm back on the bummer train.

My back's sensitive this semester. I have a four-hour class on the same day that I have band practice and that hurts and the next day I have a three-hour class. It takes me days to recover from that one-two punch. When I attended the Digital Arts Club Meeting followed by the Milvia Street release party Friday before last it screwed me up. Saturday's writer's group meeting didn't help. And on Monday I went to grill some lamb for lunch (I do the cooking -- my food tastes better than what you'll get in most restaurants) and found that the missus had stacked a bunch of plants and planters around the grill. The lamb had been coated with a mustard/garlic/horseradish paste and thus was not fit to put in a saute pan. It had to be grilled. I moved the pots because the missus wasn't home.

Biiig mistake. If I take care of myself I hardly notice my back. This makes me start thinking, "Dude, you are totally goldbricking. Time to find your lazy ass a fucking job." And then I push it and I wonder how long it's going to be before I need more surgery. I need a job I can do from my workstation. That's why I'm trying to be a writer/artist -- but when the novel's done I'm getting training as an editor. Please, please, please don't make me have to go on the public tit, no SSI, no welfare...

So for the last two nights my sleep has been interrupted by a new pain. It's like two sharply curved hooks coming out of my spine and jabbing into my hip joints. The only place I can be comfortable is in the recliner that's the center of my workstation. Which means I can't sleep. Which is why I'm sitting here bitching into the intertubes.

And for the last two nights I've gone to make myself dinner and found that the missus had eaten the last of a crucial ingredient. She's got food issues (my take on it is that the masculine tendency is to be perverse about sex while the feminine tendency is to be perverse around food) and so if I've bought something for my own meals -- I don't cook all of her food, since she's a food nut and thus is compelled to eat a lot of seaweed and pureed green slop and so on and so forth -- she will unexpectedly devour it all.

I have to be patient; I have to understand; but it screws me up. If I'm in an emotionally delicate state I have to convince myself to eat. I have to focus on what I'm going to make ahead of time and coax myself into looking forward to it.

And if I can't have what I've set myself up for, I either eat randomly until I get indigestion (best case scenario and that happened Monday night) or I can't eat at all (the more common result and that's what happened last night). If it's because the missus has eaten all of something she's sworn she will never eat again I become frustrated with her.

So last night when I found she'd eaten the salami I'd intended for a pizza I snapped at her. Keep in mind that I'd been in a state of pain for the last two days and have slept badly even by my (typically five hours a night) standards.

But she was going through a hassle with one of her friends and was emotionally delicate herself. So she got mad at me for being mad at her. I think of this as two-for-flinching. She does something to piss me off and then punishes me for being unhappy. This ain't the typical mode in our relationship -- but it is one of the typical hassles.

So the bottom drops out and I plunge into the pit. And she tells me that because of what's going on she feels like there's no one she can turn to, that she's alone. So I choke down my feelings and comport myself in a way intended to alleviate what she's going through.

But inside I'm eating out my fuckin' liver and she knows it. But since I'm being nice she doesn't press matters. Finally, when we're in bed at the end of the day I'm laying next to her seething and hating myself and I realize that if I lay there I may scream or put my fist through the window or some goddamn thing and the best recoure is to go to the studio and work for a while. But when I get upstairs the kava and melatonin I've taken in order to have a chance at sleep make me incapable of functioning creatively. And she had earlier told me that when I went out walking she worried (quite legitimately) that I might do something that would get me in trouble.

I kept my voice even and my manner low-key when she asked what was going on. We lay next to each other and talked ("I don't understand how you can go from the top to the bottom so fast.") and we both settled down and appreciated the love we feel for each other. It was a satisfactory ending to a stupid conflict. Despite these occasional flareups we really are good for each other -- thank god, because we love each other enough to stick together no matter how bad things get.

But my back still hurts and I didn't sleep well and I was only able to eat one meal yesterday. I'm back on the bummer train -- but the last week and a half was great. And there will be more good times in the future. But.

I been shot at and missed, shit at and hit.

I've got a hell of a lot to do today -- get three stories ready and delivered to Milvia Street (the editor contacted the woman who runs the Saturday writer's group and asked her to get stories from me -- I quit submitting short fiction and now editors come to me), so I'll be taking a walk downtown. While I'm there I may as well make an appointment with the school shrink and see about those tranqs. I want to knock out a full chapter of the novel (I'm almost done and if I crank hard I can be finished in two weeks), and I want to do a logo for Deborah. But if I can find the time I'll put up a more cheerful post to compensate for this disgusting outpouring of self-pity.