Me party

That's right. I had one.

But now my gut's paying for it. I think there might've been gluten in the rinotta. Can't find my Librax.

Oh wait found it.

Me party still worth it.

Met with a new writing group today--total strangers, read the first chunk of my book out loud in a coffee shop to people I'd just met. For an introvert, that shit is like jumping in a pit full of ravenous hyenas, but I've got to get feedback on this beast before I can start querying. And this is how you do it. You talk to people in the real world. If you believe enough in what you're doing, then you swallow your fear and you deal with it. You just, fucking, do it. So I did it.

The writing group was good. Small. They have a good dynamic and they gave me thoughtful feedback. I suspect they will be the kind of people who will be able to tolerate my bipolar bullshit.

As I was reading, the character of Jerome took on an entirely different tone. Much more angry than he was in my head previously--the way his voice came out of my mouth and said his lines, I suddenly felt this humming inside him, this undercurrent I knew was there but hadn't found the shape of yet. I suddenly got him a lot more. Which is saying something, becuase the boy's been in my head for 16 years now. You'd think I'd know everything about him.

So glad I went. Brilliant writing from some of the other group members too. This could be just the thing.

Today's picture.

Credit

One of the most infuriating aspects of mental illness is the way it strips you of your ability to give yourself credit for living with a mental illness. If the disorder in your head were to manifest in your body instead, like say some day you couldn't get out of bed because a disease has made both your legs shrivel up into useless toothpicks, or maybe one day you wake up and your eyeballs are only functioning at 25%, or whatever--you'd have this very clear, distinct thing you have to live with, this cross to bear so to speak, that you'd be a lot less likely to blame yourself for. It wouldn't make you question whether the thing that's wrong even exists in the first place, or if everyone's this way and you're just handling it badly because of some fault in your personality.

But man, fucked-up brain chemicals are just as debilitating as having a body that doesn't function that well. And I want to give myself credit for living with them without breaking my life into pieces, but it is so hard to do that. Today I was walking out to my car to go pick up my kid and I had one of those moments I've had a million times in my life, when there's this insanely powerful surge of emotion that rips a hole through my brain like a tornado and leaves destruction and silence in its wake, and once it passed, I thought, well god damn. Normal people don't have to live with that, do they? Normal people can walk from the house to the car and not have to think hard about breathing because there is this whirlwind serotonin onslaught wreaking havoc with thoughts and impulses like there's no tomorrow. Normal people can just get right in the car and start driving without needing to sit there and slam their head into the steering wheel a few times first. For no apparent reason. It's not like I just found out I was fired or I heard my grandma died or whatever, nothing terrible just happened, but my body is suddenly acting like I've heard awful news when I haven't. There is no news. There is only strong, gnarly ghost emotion. Teeth and claws that don't exist.

And then of course I think, well obviously I've been thinking the wrong thoughts, that's why I have that surge rip through me like that. Like I've dug this canyon into my mind by thinking the same wrong thoughts, and it's unearthed some slathering beast. Like it's my fault. My fault that I can't keep a better lid on my crazy, even if I do all I can to not let it show that I feel like I don't have a lid on it. Whenever it starts showing, whenever I do something that makes me think, oops, people are gonna know that I'm a nutjob, I castigate myself for being weak. Letting it show is a weakness. I am weak if I let it show. I've got to turn down my personality. It's too damn loud. Too much.

But that's the crazy talking! It's just the crazy! AmIright?! Yeah. Now I just have to remember that, at the times when it's hardest to remember.

And, huh, there we are again.

Anybody got any brilliant tips for breaking the cycle of suck? Maybe I could get "It's not your fault" tattooed in reverse writing on my forehead so every time I look in a mirror I'm reminded.

Then again, I usually realize about halfway through my work day that I haven't bothered to look in a mirror yet to make sure I look normal. That whole "crazy" thing.

Matters

Up and down and in and out today. Not down, down's not the right word, it's not that kind of down. Or up either. It's nothing to do with sadness/happiness. It's energy spinning and crashing. Dizzying. Came close to puking/passing out on my friend's kitchen floor after a hard uphill bike trip in the sun to her house hauling a 60-lb trailer. It was great. I put my head between my knees and she covered me with ice packs and then ten minutes later i was fine and we watched Motherfucking Bike and everything was funny and OK. She makes most things funny and OK. Thank God.

Saw Dr. M this morning and he preauthorized Abilify to the ins co while I was in the office. Risperidone = failure. It sucked sitting there listening to him tell the insurance company that I'm bipolar 1 and spelling out for them all the drugs that have failed. Like it was a hammer hitting this nail over and over and over, this failed, that failed, this also failed. I don't think he liked it either. I kept trying to turn off the agitation while he was talking to them but by about halfway through I couldn't keep the lid on it and I was shaking like a #@%$. I felt like crawling under the fucking leather couch, which, hello, newsflash, vegans are not cool with leather couches. He was all, you're still having a lot of agitation.

ORLY?

Hopefully Abilify will get the edge off this. I can't remember ever being like this so long, about a month and a half. Downs have lasted that long easily, longer, sometimes almost a year, but ups, usually three, four days. This is unusual. It's more of an agitation than an up, though it's great when that sparkles into it with its hard diamond edges. And the creativity has been off the charts. There are not enough minutes in the hours in the days to brain-dump everything happening in there. That part's good, the alternate-reality functioning in a fairly non-crazy way constantly going on. I want to be able to devote time to it but the current living/working situation does not allow enough. Each day would have to be about 37 hours long (with no sleeping) to even start to get it all out.

I'm going to see Hunger Games at 12:10 a.m. with my brother tomorrow. Yes we are those idiots. Then if it's not lightning and craziness I'm going to get up early and bike 20 miles to work Friday morning. I have so much energy when I get about three hours of sleep. The trick is to not hallucinate while I'm riding, ha. It's excellent that the bronchitis is gone. I think half the problem recently and in Mexico was that I couldn't burn off the energy spins because of the breathing problems and the hacking fits. But that's mostly over now and brutal bike trips really help. Not with the weight problem though, and yesterday the three-bite food problem started again. Not good with all the other weight loss since December, which wasn't extra weight in the first place. Seems like every time i get enough padding on me to hold my clothes up, wham, some kind of stupid bullshit in my brain or body goes wrong and I'm either too mental to eat or too sick to digest for just long enough to wind up with all my ribs showing again.

Right, shut the fuck up Lurid, no one wants to hear you complain about not being able to keep weight on.

Here's a picture of the way the word "MATTERS" at the end of "I Do Not Want This" looks in my head. It comes in from the right and gets this shape and color as it passes through the moment between when it's in the future and when it's in the past. The construct of now.

It is jagged at the edges because it's screamed instead of sung, and shaped like a fish because of the way the "t"sound comes out like a "d", which pinches words and flips the right-side half upside down so the whole thing is like a smashed-flat two-dimensional representation of a helix in my head.

Since the last part of it has been screaming through my head all day:

I wanna know everything
I wanna be everywhere
I wanna fuck everyone in the world
I wanna do something
that
MATTERS

That sums up mania, right there.