I'm Tired

The problem is: The sooner I fall asleep, the sooner it feels like I wake up and have to go to work.

Crap.

Before the Giving of Thanks

Dear Blog Readers,

I am going back to work in Cowtown the Monday before American Thanksgiving. This means I will probably be moving in with my parents for a while. A much shorter while, this time, I hope.

My mother and I drove around looking at houses yesterday. Some were rentals, most are for sale.

The most significant factor in where I'll end up is the snow line. I feel mostly safe driving myself, but I hate most of the drivers out there. (I mean who thinks it's smart to stop while driving uphill in an inch of slush covered in two inches of snow?)

Also, there's the whole me just being me factor and sort of, kind of freaking out about nothing and everything over the job, over living with the parents, over the crappy neighbors that don't yet exist.

Yeah. Just wanted to share. Aren't I great?

Sanctioned Fan-Fiction

I am usually in bed at this time. My meds usually make me yawny and that means get into bed. Tonight, though, I stay up to watch Elementary. The show is enjoyable, but not one that I have to watch see each week. This week Sherlock's older brother is back.

Mycroft Holmes is my favorite character that Conan-Doyle created. Sure, this Mycroft is different from the one in the books, but I still want to see what's done with him.

I love that fan-fiction can be loved by mass audiences and companies will spend millions of dollars on without slutting up any of the characters.

Dear Gramma,

Thank you for the casserole dish.

10 Years

I started this blog 10 years ago. It is a success in that I've been posting for that long. I've never been a popular blog, though. I flirted with huge readship one time when I kept writing about comic books and made sure it related to gender issues in some way, but that wasn't ever what this blog was intended to be. The number of posts is nearly one post every other day, which is pretty good, especially since I don't get paid for writing. Even checking Facebook several times a day hasn't completly stopped me from posting. No regular interwebs connection and sever depression almost stopped, but I eventually came back.

So, yeah, 10 years. If I was someone else I would point you to my favorite posts. I'm too lazy for that, though, and the few that visit probably don't care anyway.

The Hard Part

I've been watching The War. Ken Burns's documentary series about World War Two. Like his other documentaries it's full of images and film from the era. You see people of all sorts dying or already dead. The part that's the hardest for me to watch, though, is the people who were there talking about what they saw, what they did, and what they felt.

How these men have lived so long and so well with that war is baffling. One guy talked about how, after dreaming about a certain incident, he would lose the use of his right hand and his wife wouldn't say a thing she would just place a cup of coffee on the table with the handle turned toward his left hand. They got married right after the war and they never talked about it.

Inside My Brain

I found the 3rd season of 30 Rock for $10 and been watching it this weekend. So I've got to thinking:

A few years ago it was really popular for porn companies to make "parodies" of popular TV shows. If I remember correctly, 30 Rock is one of the shows they parodied; I think 30 Rock even made fun of the idea. I started thinking about the many combinations of characters they could go through and I bet that they had Liz and Jack get together. And that thought upset me.

One of my favorite things about 30 Rock is that Jack and Liz are friends with little to know sexual tension. They even refuse to kiss; they just can't imagine doing that together. And a porn that I haven't seen, but know exists bothers me because it, probably, gets a fictional relationship wrong.

Friday Nights

I seem to be watching Undercover Boss on Fridays. I don't particularly like the show, but I like how good the editors are at manipulating emotions and creating a story out of hours and hours of footage full of nothing.

"V" is for Peace?

During World War Two, holding your first two fingers up and spread apart stood for victory.

By Vietnam, the same gesture meant peace.

When and how did the come to be?

Friday Nights

I seem to be watching Undercover Boss on Fridays. I don't particularly like the show, but I like how good the editors are at manipulating emotions and creating a story out of hours and hours of footage full of nothing.

And the Tears Won't Come

There are times when everything wells up inside and I feel like crying. Not just a few brief sobs and then done, but real tears that just don't end. Usually it happens at work or some other time or place where it would be inappropriate, so I refuse to let myself. At those times, though, when it would be okay to cry I try to let myself, but the tears just won't come. I sit feeling scrunched up inside with no release.

Sometimes, those moments, or at least a reason for those moments is understandable. Today I got some news that was upsetting. Not just because something was cancelled (to be honest I wasn't that excited about a party), rather it was the mindset of the person who cancelled. And it scares me and I hope this person will be well. For a good long while I was scrunched up. Now, not so much, but behind my eyes feels very heavy.

Makes sense, right? Last night, though, I was reading Jess Fink's outstanding We Can Fix It: A Time Travel Memoir and it happened. The book starts out with Jess traveling back in time to keep herself from doing embarrassing relationship/sexual things. Then it changes to her looking at some horrible things that happened in her life. After that she decides to look at these little moments in her life that made her laugh or brought her joy. Thats when the feeling started and nothing could come.

Of course before I could sleep I spent an hour dwelling on it, dissecting everything I had thought and felt while reading. In the end I figured out the why and fell asleep.

I'm not going to write what the why is because it actually has to do with the last time I cried and I'm not comfortable putting it out there right now because when I did the crying I was mocked for the thing that upset me. I really don't need to go through that again.

First Time Top Five

On Friday, The brain doctor told me that I am one of his top five patients. He then told me that I didn't want to be in that group because those are the patients he worries about the most.

Is it wrong that part of me feels flattered for being in his top five?

Blackbird Singing

The best thing about Glee doing The Beatles is that I can sing along with all the songs. Although some of them are a bit odd. I think it's the voices more than the arrangement.

Strawberry Jam

Made strawberry jam this afternoon. One just popped. Hurray!

I don't see any stars.

The brain doctor keeps saying that my life seems depressing. Every time he says it I wonder what's the point.

He wants me to go out and do thing with people around. A class, maybe. Something where my mind is occupied on thoughts and things outside of myself and, he believes, eventually I will come to strike up conversations with the people around me and make friends and then start going out and doing things with people and eventually I'll be happy and I won't think how I currently think. He also says that this will take time and will be hard for me; he has no idea how hard.

The thought doctor jacked up my medication to the highest approved dose a few weeks ago. I didn't notice any positive difference. He doesn't want to put me on another drug because he's afraid of generics and what may be in the pill. (Generic drugs have to be + or - 20% the brand name levels of the active chemical and the FDA doesn't monitor what else goes into them.I looked it up.) I'd like something else, though, I've been on this drug for three months and while it has helped a little, it doesn't feel like much change.

A friend who is on a different medication said that she thinks more clearly and more purely herself. I envy her both. Over the last couple of days my brain has felt muddied and slow and sometimes I feel like I have to pull really hard to get thoughts out and then have concentrate even harder to make sure that I'm understood by others. As for feeling more like myself, I've been down so long that the only self I know is the one in a dark pit, so deep I can't even see the stars at night. I don't know if the medication she's on would do the same for me, but I'd like to spend a day feeling like she feels.

The doctor also said that if I am as depressed as I say I am he finds it to be incredible that I can function as well as I do at work. I tried to explain to him that if I couldn't get out of bed and make an effort to get to work and do my job that I may as well end it all and I can't do that because I made a promise about 25 years ago that I wouldn't. So I haven't. So I don't plan to. So I won't.

It's strange to be talking with someone about these things and being very specific, not vague like here. What's stranger is knowing that he's been doing this job for longer than I've been alive and he can still be surprised and shocked by some of the things I say. I assumed that someone who's been in the brain doctor business for this long has pretty much heard it all. He did tell me that he hasn't hospitalized one of his patients in 20 years, which, of course, sent my brain into overreact mode and I wonder if he's considering hospitalizing me. If he does I may just let that be the end; stop there.

I feel like I should apologize for putting this out there. I know that very few people read this and I've heard that getting your thoughts and feelings out is a good idea, but I don't want the few that read my thoughts to worry or think that there's something that they should do or something that they can do.

In time I'm supposed to enjoy the things that "normal" people enjoy. In time I'm supposed to be able to find a reason or reasons like "normal" people do. In time certain thoughts are supposed to fade away and I'm supposed to start thinking more closely to how "normal" people think. In time.

Finished Yogurt

With peach jam.

Yogurt: Successful!

Currently, three of the quarts are draining for the Greek style.

Today I Make Yogurt

I hope it turns out.

Increase Without Increase

Last week, with great hope, the brain doctor upped my dosage. The idea is that since there have been some positive effects with the lower dose the higher dose would, hopefully, give my brain a push to the next step and I could really start getting better.

Tomorrow I get to tell the brain doctor that it's not working. I don't feel any different this week than I did last week or the two weeks before that. Which isn't so bad because my insurance won't cover this drug.

Besides what I wrote on Tuesday about how those okay moments make me hate my job they also make me really want to get better. Having those moments of okay make some of the horrible times hurt, really hurt. I don't remember a time when I really wanted to be better. It's kind of scary.

Work Misery

The bad thing is that the more often I feel okay to good the more I realize just how miserable my job makes me.