Dansez-vous le Gras Baise, la Danse!

In terms of mental health, yesterday was the worst day in a long time. I've arrived at the point where I can almost savor, or at least appreciate, how well I torture myself. Despite hundreds of hours of therapy, including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), I'm still at the mercy of my subconscious. And probably some of my conscious, too. Hell knows what else. I'm told that there are brain chemicals that help fuck things up. That's important on a diagnosis and treatment level, but when I'm bughouse it may as well be invisible elves who are responsible.

Part of the reason for my difficulty lately has to do with my trying to cut down on lithium, which is more effective than I care to admit. So I'm back up to a full dose, even though it makes me feel very tired and sometimes gives me nasty nausea. But that's betting than flinging myself out the window, or driving myself into a wall at whatever speed I can get out of a '93 Mercury Tracer. At least I'm pretty sure it's better than that. So many people are adamant that it is.

Regardless of the reasons, mental illness for me is a piquant mélange that brings together depression, anxiety and paranoia. A melody, if you will, of various and often conflicting impulses, emotions and persistent thoughts. Depression is familiar to most people, and even "clinical" depression, while uncommon, is hardly rare. It nicely sets the stage for the rest of the merry band by weakening my resolve to "get better." Anxiety is also a near constant, but sometimes it is crippling. More disabling in a sense than anything else. It manifests as stomach pain, dizziness and fear. Other things, too. During a panic attack it makes it rather difficult to breath. It's the main reason I keep a fan in my room, pointed at me while I sleep. Otherwise, it feels as if I'm being smothered. Although I've never been smothered. I can't imagine that it's at all pleasant. At all.

My psychiatrist and psychologist both tell me that this extreme depression, anxiety and panic, in addition to "aggressive and obsessed" self-loathing (as my psych put it) leads to paranoia. When it gets really bad, as it did yesterday, there is a barrage of seemingly random thoughts, feelings and even voices. Although the "voice" I hear is me thinking to myself (if I start hearing schizophrenic voices I'm either going to lick the "third rail" or go back to the looney bin). I lack the fortitude, and the medication, to deal with that alone. But this inner monologue is absolutely merciless, and there is nowhere to hide, except in lorazepam induced sleep, which I almost always refrain from doing until the evening. Otherwise, I lump it. Every mistake, humiliating moment, harmful action and regret that I can remember (a faulty memory, perhaps helped along by ECT, is my only ally) slams into my ego. Every friend and supportive family member is stripped away until I'm left alone and totally immersed in guilt. This process is so familiar and mechanical that it feels as if I'm going down a checklist of ways to make me wince and withdraw in ego-razing thought. There's something inside me that insists that I'm the one responsible for making my family and friends deeply miserable. If I really loved them, I find myself thinking, I'd end it. At the very least I should despise myself for my crimes.

You can call me a wimp all you want for complaining. Maybe I am one. Although I suspect that I'm not. I've at least gotten to the point where I can say with relative confidence that I really do have a serious problem here. And I'm pretty sure that if something else doesn't kill me within the next 10 or 15 years, I'm going to do it myself. That's just being honest, and saying that isn't a cry for help. I'm already getting excellent care, some of the best in the world, really. And I know exactly how to get myself back in hospital if need be. But if every day were as bad as yesterday I wouldn't live long enough to see Hillary Clinton get beaten in the general election. Fortunately (I guess) I have enough good days to balance things out. Maybe that won't change.

That isn't all I have to say about that, but I need to stop writing about it. Especially since I'm feeling a bit less manic today.

One little postscript, sort of. I want to thank Dan Coulter, who told me where to download the soundtrack to the novel, "Battlefield Earth." At some point, I will download it and it will be a funky trip down memory lane. I nearly fell off my chair when I found Chick Corea's name attached to such classics as March of the Psychos and Alien Visitors Attack. Didn't he once jam with Miles Davis? I thought that L. Ron Hubbard pulled a John Carpenter and pretty much wrote and used a keyboard to perform his own opi. I stand corrected.