Shreds Of A Brain

Finally Got My Blog Back!

2011-07-27T19:13:00.003-05:00

My blog went into a timeless void (i.e. I lost the technical info) and I have been laboring to retrieve it (i.e. sending emails into black holes). But I think I've gotten back. Posts to follow.

"House, M.D." & The Stigma of Mental Illness, Part Three

2009-07-19T22:16:00.007-05:00

(In response to someone's comment that they'd always thought mental hospitals were terrifying places.)

Most people don't know about mental hospitals. (Personally, I refer to them as "loony bins".) They are usually part of a larger hospital, and as clean and shiny as PPTH.

"Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital "

However, the violent wards are pretty frightening...I've never stayed in one, but I've gone to AA meetings in them. It would be highly inappropriate and unrealistic for House to be in a high-security locked ward, even though he is an addict.

During my first commitment many years ago, there was a poor fellow detoxing from benzodiazopines (probably Xanax). He was shaking all over, constantly. And there was a young woman who had the mental age of six, although she was 35, and she was there because they were changing her medication and needed to do it in a safe environment. In real life, that would be the sort of situation House would be in...supervised withdrawal with psychiatric help.

There are lousier state hospitals, but even those are nothing like prisons. In the Season Five episode "The Social Contract," House went with Wilson to a New York hospital so Wilson could see his long-lost schizophrenic brother. I promise you, I have NEVER seen a waiting room like that in a hospital...dark green, dimly lit, and empty. It made no sense, except dramatically. Way to go, "House, M.D.", make viewers think that hospitals are the end of the world. Graystone Hospital, where they are filming the first episode of Season Six, looks like Frankenstein's Castle.

Graystone Hospital, closed in the 1990s. Now standing in for "Mayfield Hospital".

I wish the writers felt a greater responsibility to be realistic--or at least as realistic as television allows.

"House, M.D." & The Stigma of Mental Illness, Part Two

2009-07-19T22:10:00.006-05:00

This was written in response to a discussion board post about the season 5 finale of "House, M.D.", wherein he checks himself into a mental hospital. I will try to make it an unconfusing as possible, since it was a give and take argument. It was suggested that the show would be like "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," which is one of the most hideously outdated portrayals of mental hospitals out there. This was my initial response.)

Okay, back on my soapbox: real mental hospitals are nothing like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest!

Bedlam Asylum, 1800s

Yes, there are occasionally nasty nurses, or doctors who can't be bothered (and the food is relentlessly terrible). I know they chose the hospital for dramatic effect, but I would be seriously disappointed if they choose to show Mayfield as some sort of torture chamber. When one is mentally ill, the stigma is unbearable enough in real life. To say, as they did in one ep, that House would be unable to practice if he was on psych meds, is untrue, as is the idea that he would be given shock treatment. It makes it that much harder for those of us who live with it to have people think that's what the reality is, when it is nothing like that.

If anything, psych wards are often eerily quiet, mostly because so many of the patients are heavily drugged. (There are levels of lockdown, too--some wards have no locked doors except equipment closets, nurses stations, medication room--in the wards for the more violent patients, every door is locked, and there are small windows to look in on the patients. There's no reason for House to end up in a ward like that, he's more "Insanity Lite," as I once dubbed it.)

I can't imagine House clean and sober; I'm guessing it would be like when Foreman had his near-death experience and was briefly "happy," until House ruined it for him. This is a deeply damaged person, and one stay in a hospital cannot cure someone like that. It can help, but it can't cure.

Just today I was talking with another bipolar friend. She went public about it in an article, and the backlash has been tremendous. Suddenly everybody's attributing everything to her being "crazy." This is a smart, perceptive, hard-working person who has nothing outwardly wrong with her, but now the finger is pointed. She regrets her actions and has always told me never to go public about my illness.

I'm also disappointed because Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie's friend, has spent time in psych wards, and I'm sure HL might have done a little time in one during one of his mega-depressed periods. So why do they perpetuate this myth that psych wards are antique hell-holes filled with dangerous lunatics?

There is one thing...if he is perceived as violent or disruptive he will be placed in a "quiet room," as they like to call them. Used to be called "the rubber room" because the walls and floor ARE padded, and there is usually only a mattress with no bedding on the floor, so there is nothing to hurt yourself with. I've never been put in one, thank God, but at the last hospital (in April of this year) they were in frequent use and it was highly disturbing, since my room was in the same small wing and I could hear EVERYTHING. The daily sounds in a hospital are disturbing enough, even if they are very quiet.

I haven't thought about this for a long time...once there was a gent who would walk up to you and say "Good MORNING!" in your face at least fifty times a day, and never said anything else, at least in front of the other patients.

Then there are the schizophrenic religious maniacs--you have to watch out if you think they're addressing you! One woman sat next to me at breakfast muttering about how when Jesus returned he would kill all the women, and I said something stupid like "I beg your pardon?" She started screaming at me and the nurses had to come calm her down. This same woman hogged the one working VCR/TV watching "Jumping Jack Flash" with Whoopi Goldberg EVERY SINGLE NIGHT because she thought the movie was sending her special signals.

This was while "House" was in season, so a bunch of us who were "House" fans planned a take-over of the other television set, in the patients' lounge. We waited quietly, and then at 8 pm turned the channel and refused to change it!

You see? You can find "House" fans ANYWHERE!

"House, M.D." & The Stigma of Mental Illness, Part One

2009-07-19T22:00:00.007-05:00

Here's the first promo for "House, M.D.", Season Six.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3_1JzZ4CeI

Okay, gang, you know I've logged some serious time in psych wards, as well as visited friends in psych wards and rehab, and not just in NYC. The hospital in the spoiler for "House, M.D." Season 6 makes me so ANGRY I want to punch something! (Don't worry, the meds take care of it.) It is EXACTLY what I was afraid of...mental hospitals don't even LOOK LIKE THAT ANY MORE! The only accurate thing was the medicine window and the bank of pay telephones.

But the interior, the way it was done up, the hospital rooms...all phony, phony, phony. Dramatic, yes, but thanks for the added stigma, House writers. Orderlies don't even behave that way for fear of lawsuits! (Carry him kicking and screaming.) They do what House always does, they stick you with a needle! (I've never had that done to me, but I've witnessed it enough with violent or non-compliant hysterical patients.)

(A comment posted by someone else: When a hospital that size is only devoted to psychiatric disorders it has to be creepy inside.)

And what, precisely, gave you that idea? Are the contractors told, "Hey, it's a mental hospital, creep it up. Makes the patients crap themselves when they first come in, then we don't have to drug them as much. Oh, and while you're at it, peel the paint, willya? It's the funniest thing, man, when one of our patients starts eating it! And if you can make it dark; don't use bright lightbulbs, these people don't bathe much, you know what I mean? The nurses hate looking at dirty people. It's bad enough they smell, but poor personal grooming, well, nobody needs to see that. And dark green paint is the perfect color for the walls, make sure it's matte, no light reflection possible. Helps the suicidal ones along--they'll usually kill themselves before their insurance runs out. Remember--think creepy!"

Hate to burst your bubble, but the New York Psychiatric Institute is HUGE, and the building is as shiny as a new penny. And it's even got some windows here and there. Of course, it's not New Jersey. Maybe besides bad drivers, New Jersey has a premium on out-of-date psychiatric hospitals, fictional or otherwise.

I just need to vent...it is so frustrating to know that my favorite show is only going to make things worse for those of us who have been there, done that, by getting it ALL WRONG.

Off to sulk...dammit...I'm so disappointed. Sorry for the buzzkill, kids.

Another Year Older, But Not Deeper In Debt...

2008-11-13T12:32:00.002-05:00

The sale of the property had a salutary effect on my finances. Not salutary enough, but it helped pay my debts off (which were substantial). We bipolar people suck with money, that's for sure.

Sorry I haven't written here in so long, mostly because I couldn't find it! Right now I am in the traumatic process of changing my psychiatrist. My doctor of many years is moving to California, and later this month I will be interviewing his successor. Being a Medicare patient sucks, not the least of it is that the field of choice is incredibly narrow.

My mother bears the faint hope that a new doctor will "take me off all of those awful drugs." Little does she know...

The Voices In My Head - Present, Tense

2007-09-28T23:58:00.001-05:00

So, it's late at night, and I've been trying to fall asleep. But every time I do, I'm jerked awake by various hideous images or voices screaming. This happened last night, and I've been tossing and turning at night most nights and feeling exhausted during the day.

I don't know what to make of it...things are going well. During the day I often feel quite cheerful. The beach house was sold, and I felt immense relief upon leaving. Some activities in life have come up that have been both challenging and fun. Although my anxiety level is quite high a fair amount of the time, because of that. Is my brain punishing me? Why am I so frightened? Of what?

Saying Good-bye To The Family Summer Home...

2007-09-12T14:44:00.000-05:00

(written Sept. 4)

My last night (Labor Day) down at our beach house, which will soon be a pile of rubble, I went out to the ocean late at night. I told my husband first. The moon was out. It was a half moon, and bright orange, like a pomegranate. The stars were bright in the black night sky.

I said my goodbyes aloud, standing knee-deep in the warm ocean water, and then hurled a ceramic ashtray of my father's (it was iconic, I'd seen him using it for decades, and my mom made it) into the water, and then I just howled with grief until I was too tired to make another peep. All of the other houses were dark, people had gone home, and I knew I was drowned out by the surf. I trudged back up to the house.

The next morning, at 7:30 AM, my mother and I took a spontaneous last swim. There had been some objects in my father's workshop since 2004: a half-filled teacup, a full ashtray, and his sunglasses. It was like a still-life, like he'd gone upstairs and never came back down. I'd photographed it a few times.

Anyway, the workmen on the house next store have been stealing from us, and they'd broken into his workshop and left things a royal mess (my mother and sister refused to do anything about it), so the still life was destroyed. I took the cup and the sunglasses, and when I was chest deep in the water, I threw them into the ocean, yelling, "Goodbye!"

I had to help my mom out of the water, and she said, "Somebody's going to cut themselves on those things." I pointed out that the current was fast and going toward the jetty, so they'd probably wash up near there, and someone would wonder whose sunglasses they were. I got through Tuesday by not only taking my dope, but also a Xanax. I actually helped load the truck until my husband and Mom came back from making yet another donation to the local hospital, so it all didn't kick in until we got into the car, whereupon I passed out. When we got home, I collapsed and spent the rest of the day comatose.

Today I see my psychiatrist, and we can discuss a weaning schedule. I want OFF this stuff! It's so much better to be home, to know that I said my goodbyes. My mom and the Dauphin are going down there tomorrow for another weekend, and then he will return to do some other stuff that has to be done before the house is demolished (along with the remaining contents).

As my doctor said, "The ocean isn't going anywhere." Thank God for that.

Labor Day Weekend Continues...

2007-09-12T14:30:00.000-05:00

(written September 3)

Last night I played the Johnny Cash and Trent Reznor versions of "Hurt," on youtube for Lucretia, which was probaby not the smartest thing to do, because the lyrics had been running through my head all day.

This morning I awoke to an orgy of packing, and wrapped a huge ceramic kangaroo for Cordelia(it will go in my mom's storeroom for now). I asked my sister if I could use the computer and get on YouTube and play a bunch of "feel good" songs (hardly my first choice). So I played U2's "It's A Beautiful Day," "Vertigo," and now I'm listening to the Reverend Horton Heat. Hideously loud and percussive, but it's fun.

I'm still desperately sad, medicated up to the eyeballs. But this will be over by tomorrow, I keep reminding myself. My dog's paw is also healing, thank god. The weather and the ocean are perfect. Oh, God.

Swimming Away - Written September 2, 2007

2007-09-12T14:19:00.000-05:00

I'll admit today was the closest to suicidal I've come (not close enough, thank God).

I took my stupid pills and went swimming. The water is rough but beautiful, but nobody else would go in.

When I was an unhappy little kid, I would start swimming for the horizon, and the lifeguard would have to go get me over and over (this did not go over big with my parents). I think I believed that anywhere was better than here, and out on the ocean was as good a place as any.

I've been flashing on that a lot, and today, being alone in the water (there was a lifeguard), I started swimming toward the horizon. I had just taken all of my medication, so I don't think I was in my right mind, and my body was sluggish.

Occasionally I'd check that my feet still touched the ground, but the water was so beautiful, so green/blue and sunlit, I wanted to keep going. I waited for the whistle, but there was none. (The lifeguard knows me and knows I'm a strong, if idiosyncratic, swimmer.) Then I realized my feet were no longer touching the ground, I swallowed some salt water, and perhaps this would ruin the weekend for everyone else. Plus there are no guarantees that drowning is a pleasant way to go. (I almost tried it once under very different circumstances, during an earlier suicide attempt.) And what if a shark bit me while I was still alive? Not fun. And if the lifeguard, who was now merely a speck in the distance, had to haul me in, I wouldn't be allowed to swim again, and that would suck.

So I flipped over on my back and swam back toward shore. Fortunately I was crying but the water made my eyes red anyway.

When I came out, the lifeguard said, "Isn't the water great?" I nodded and headed upstairs to the house and the shower. I sat on the stairs and cried. Later, I told Lucretia I did not want to go swimming alone between now and when we leave. She understood.

Labor Day Weekend...The Endless Summer Ends

2007-09-02T18:31:00.000-05:00

(Written August 28)

We are down here for Labor Day weekend, to finish dismantling the house before it is completely torn down.

Tonight my mother, Lucretia, my husband and I were eating dinner (lobster!) and talking about when and how to pack what's going back. I went through the top half of the house and pulled a lot of vintage blankets and some chenille bedspreads. I think Cordelia got rid of the Indian ones!!! She also gave away ALL of the clothing, even though I had asked her not to.

My dog has a blister or something on his left paw that's making it difficult for him to get around, poor little guy. And I'm taking my stupid pills...especially because last night and this afternoon I started hearing voices. I don't know how else to explain it. This has happened very occasionally when I've been strung out to the limit...as I fall asleep I keep thinking people are screaming and it jerks me awake. Then, this afternoon I was convinced my mother was calling me while I was napping, so I got up and went out, and she wasn't. Since my last entry, I had managed to reach my psychiatrist, who told me to double my dose of clonazepam, and take a Xanax when things got really bad.

The major effect of what I call "dope to cope" is that it leaves me completely unable to move, or at least it did at first. For about an hour I would lie on the bed, and I had to hire an emergency dogwalker. I'm not taking the Xanax, this clonazepam is bad enough. "You need to be distanced from your feelings," Dr. Gottlieb had said.

We were going for 'drinks' at some neighbors' house, so I took another stupid pill, because that really shook me up and I was filled with grief.(Unfortunately, it took effect while we were at this little gathering, so I had to seek out the most senile old man there and listen to him talk endlessly about his cat, while I nodded and tried to keep my eyes open!) I don't know if I've explained the 'stupid pills'--basically heavy sedation because I had a manic episode.

The fun never stops!

Bouncing Off The Walls: Wish They Were Made of Rubber

2007-08-18T21:04:00.000-05:00

Recently I've been troubled by the feeling that I am becoming manic. All of the signs are there; irritability, agitation, trouble concentrating. Add to that an inability to sleep, a re-emerging addiction to Internet porn (which leaves me in a state of constant, unsatisfied horniness), and a spending spree. Yeah, I guess I'd say I was pretty goddamn manic.

The icing on the top of this particular insanity cupcake is that Dr. Goldstein, my new therapist, and the marriage counselor are all GOING ON VACATION THIS WEEK!!! UNTIL AFTER LABOR DAY!

Jee-zuss.

Not to mention my husband taking off on yet another trip, a visit to his mother in North Carolina. I am really, really pissed.

He'll return in time for us to go down to the beach house for the final clean-out. Oh, God. Now there's something I'm not looking forward to.

Tonight I took a Xanax along with my other meds. I'm hoping it will calm me down enough to sleep. This sucks.

Sorry to be so whiny, at least I'm bathing regularly again!

The Moving Finger, Having Demolished, Moves On

2007-08-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

(written August 7, 2007)

The thing that really sent me over the edge last night was looking out the front porch, and seeing three strangers standing there, with one guy excitedly pointing out what would be where, where our house is currently standing.

I came out onto the top of the stairs and said,"Can I help you?" He got very flustered, said he was the contractor, and they left.

Plus people who use the beach (we're the only people who've allowed beach access over the years) are storing their crap under our house! Last night I hauled PILES of beach chairs, umbrellas and other shit from under the house and pointedly left it under one of the few remaining trees on the property, right by the stairs to the beach. I mean, we still live here, for Christ's sake! It's one thing for the lifeguards to do it--until this year, we always let them park here, but the new owners of the other lots won't let them. But they can still store their equipment here.

Today was the worst yet. I met the builder of monstro-house, who was a raging jerk, and told me he was going to pull the 'ugly stumps' (what is left of our trees on one side) and then our fence will fall down, to be replaced by a white plastic fence.

He went into a long rant about how you have to build with plastic and vinyl to build next to the ocean. I pointed out our house is entirely made of wood, has survived for decades, and he refused to believe me. Anyway, at the end of it, I went upstairs and was in hysterics--thank God my husband was here. The saddest part was that all or most of the trees are gone. He said people don't want trees. But it's a barrier island! When the next hurricane comes, what do they think is going to protect their precious McMansions!

When Hurricane Andrew hit, the other side of the road was mostly undeveloped, and only one house got totaled. Now...

We leave for home tonight. First I have to walk around the house and decide what we want to take. My stomach hurts.

Altered States - Present, Tense

2007-08-12T19:01:00.000-05:00

My husband is away until either late tonight or tomorrow, depending on his driving companion's exhaustion level. I haven't bathed since Friday. Last night I lay in bed, trying to remember if I had showered that day or the day before or the day before that...

I have to have a list of things to do that include bathing, walking the dog, brushing my teeth, eating, taking my medication. Otherwise I hardly do any of these things. Thank God my cats are self-sufficient!

Right now I'm listening to music that throws me into a slightly altered state, which reminds me of my drinking days. I would listen to pounding, loud music and write. When I stopped, my head would be buzzing. The only way to stop the buzzing was a large glass of wine. (Of course, a large glass of wine was my solution to everything.)

Recently I discovered YouTube. There were all of those songs I used to listen to, with the videos--Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Live, etc. I watched the videos and went into a completely altered state--it was like having the best of my madness. Seeing wonderful Kurt Cobain again, one of my spiritual soulmates...the insanity in his eyes is beautiful.

Sometimes I'll be tripped up by a video on television that has too much resonance. For instance, when I was in my teens, I used to listen to the Doors and hallucinate without the benefit of drugs. One song in particular, "The Unknown Soldier", brought on intense hallucinations of marching troops, firing squads. At the end, when all of the bells are crashing, I imagined the soldier's widow collapsing, screaming, in the middle of a huge flank of marching soldiers.

Last year I had on VH1 Classic, and of all things, they played a video of "The Unknown Soldier." I was at my desk My keyboard faces the television. I stood up, frozen where I stood. As I watched, all of my hallucinations came to life--the firing squad, the blood on the flowers, mixed with the Doors in live performance. I shook all over, and started to cry, but I could not move to change the channel. After it was over, I ran into the bedroom, screaming hysterically, and called Dr. Gottlieb.

So you can guess that's not on my Itunes playlist. But I have been downloading a number of songs that "take me back." That's probably not healthy. So is not bathing. I'm not sure what part of me I am getting in touch with by doing this (not the not bathing, the music). It's something deep and very disturbed. I wish I understood myself.

Down To The Sea With Shits...

2007-08-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

(This was written August 5)

My oldest sister left for home this afternoon, at almost the exact time my husband arrived, so they only saw each other for half an hour.

My other sister pitched a tent in the garden (as she always does). During the night there was a FEROCIOUS thunderstorm, such crashing thunder that the house was shaking! I ran out of the bedroom, and there was my mother. We both said 'Cordelia!' but didn't know what to do. I looked in the spare bedroom but she wasn't there. I looked out the window at her tent, and it seemed secured.

This morning she told us she was lying there quaking with fear, terrified of being struck by lightning. Especially because now all of the trees are gone and there isn't anything HIGH anymore to get hit!

Earlier today I grabbed a hammer and fixed the screen door, and fixed a couple of other things. Despite having another thunderstorm, I got in a swim in the morning and a swim in the late afternoon (after the lifeguard had left).

I have this lump of sadness in my stomach. It's surreal to stand with Mom and Cordelia and talk about which figures we want from the top of the kitchen cabinets. My mother is a potter and painter, and there are literally thousands of pieces of pottery and dozens of paintings everywhere.

Cordelia started throwing things in a box. When I reminded her that Lucretia had specifically asked her not to do that, she blew up, saying she had nothing, that our brother has two houses, I have so much space, etc. "That's not what it's about!" I said. "It's about consideration for other people's feelings!"

"I don't care about other people's feelings!"

"Then you are being fucking selfish!" I was standing at the base of the stairs leading to the porch, glaring up at her.

"So I'm selfish! Deal with it! It's how I am!" She slammed inside.

We made up later, but then she remarked that she hoped my niece (who is retarded and provided for in my mother's will) chokes to death before our mother dies so we can split the money.

Tonight I've been staying away from the rest of the family . They're all in the TV room as I type this, because I just want to cry. The computer is in what used to be my father's office, and it's surrounded by all of this rusted, corroded crap. Last year I cleaned out his office and workshop, but hanging on the doorway to my right is a Harpo horn I gave him, and behind me is a bulletin board with pictures of all of us as kids and a postcard from one of my shows. To my left is a large photo collage of our garden before Hurricane Andrew.

Oh, no, it's disappeared. Jesus. It was there last night. I hate this.

At The Beach House - Present, Tense

2007-08-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since I wrote in here, and so much has happened.

Right now I am down at my family's beach house at the Jersey shore. We got here yesterday morning, and what a shock!!! My brother and mother have been here, but not me or my two sisters.

My dad had planted pines all the way around the property, and they have ALL been cut down, including the ones on the property that is still ours until September, where the house is. Also, everything else has been graded and removed,and a HUGE monstro-house with an elevator, no less, is being built in the middle lot. (The roadside lot just sold a few weeks ago.) Yesterday I walked my dog around the perimeter of the property, and went to where the edge of our tennis court used to abut the woods. There are new owners on either side of us, so everything has been torn down there as well (not the houses, but the woods). I'd always wondered what was on the other side of the far door of the tennis court, but couldn't open it due to the woods and poison ivy. Back then, in front was a driveway and a huge pile of lumber (my dad's).

Now, there was nothing, except some rotted ancient tennis balls. The workmen on monstro house have stolen a lot of stuff from the bottom floor of the house (stuff on the outside).

As we unloaded the car, I turned to my sister Cordelia and said, "I feel like God has taken a shit on my head." And she nodded. Then, carrying the luggage, I slipped and fell on what used to be the driveway and skinned my knee. It seemed appropriate.

Everywhere you look out the window, everything is different.

Except when you look straight out at the ocean. Thank God, that is the same. I got hysterical and called my psychiatrist, who said I had to "feel the feelings" of loss and grief. My oldest sister goes back to CA today until the end of the month, when we'll clean out the house. I have to make a list of what i want, as do we all. Most of the stuff here is too rotted, and there's no space for it anywhere in my apartment.

Thank God for the ocean. After calling my psychiatrist, I went with my oldest sister, Lucretia, for an hour-long swim in the ocean, until the lifeguard had to leave,and then I went back up to the house (and my dog--my husband is coming today).

As always when I'm down here, I'm channeling my dad, walking around with a hammer and fixing things. It really does feel like he's tell me what to do. Also, the part of the garden where we sprinkled his ashes last year, which is completely overgrown, has these beautiful flowers on it. I'm going to get a disposable camera and do a visual record (I do it every summer).

Later this month we'll hire people to haul most of everything away, so this weekend I need to make a list of what I want. It's not much, although there is a BEAUTIFUL wrought-iron dictionary stand that I could really use. Dad left me his huge OED, and I want to take his Bible from the office.

Gotta go put on my swimsuit...I think I am going to throw up.

Craptacular Times...Present, Tense

2007-07-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday another therapist told me I might be too sick to work with her...but she needs to have another consult with me, just in case. I was so frustrated that I said, "What makes me so much sicker than every other mental patient walking around?"

She looked at me sympathetically and said, "Don't take it as a rejection." I was supposed to see someone else today, but between that and having to peel off a junkie friend who will not leave me alone AGAIN, and then being bombarded with abusive emails, I felt like shit this morning.

When you feel like shit, you do not "present well," as the saying goes, and I didn't want the session to go into the toilet within five minutes of my sitting down. So I rescheduled.

My junkie friend does not live in the same state as me (thank God), and we first connected through our shared mental illness over the Internet. Then we became close phone friends. I knew she played fast and loose with her meds, which I don't. But I was willing to let that go until she fell in love with a much younger man who doesn't love her, and is in rehab for marijuana and alcohol. That doesn't stop him from smoking weed and getting drunk round the clock, and soon she started drinking too.

It's always the same story, over and over...life spiraling downward, and she would call me and cry, "You're the only one who understands." I would tell myself that AA is all about attraction, not promotion, and ask a gentle question.

Then finally she called me, hysterical, with a big pile of cocaine in front of her. "I'm going to break thirty years of sobriety!" she sobbed. Although my first thought was, what sobriety?

But I haven't been sober this long for nothing. I yelled at her like a drill sergeant, telling her to flush the cocaine down the toilet, flush the business card it was on down the toilet, clean the table, and then I really went off, all the pent-up rage, and I told her she needed help and I couldn't handle it any more.

The next day she called me, mad as a wet hen, telling me how selfish I was to say that my sobriety was more important than our friendship. I told her I couldn't talk to her until she'd been sober for thirty days. She hung up on me.

I didn't hear from her for several weeks, and came to appreciate that I didn't need to experience that kind of chaos vicariously. Because that is what I had been doing for a long time.

So she called two days ago. After talking to her for ten minutes, my head was pounding, and I told her I had to run. Then I wrote her an email reiterating that I couldn't talk to her until she'd had thirty days of sobriety.

Instantly I got back an abusive reply, then another, then another, then another, then another...you gotta love email. After reading the first two, I just deleted them. But I was pretty shook up.

But the bottom line was, I was relieved. There's an old joke:
How can you tell when a junkie is lying?
When their mouth is moving.

Conflicts and Other Crap...What Else Is New?

2007-07-06T18:04:00.000-05:00

This morning I had a consult with a potential therapist who told me I was too sick to be her patient...this is getting old.

It's basically just my damn diagnosis, not so much my behavior, and I'm beginning to think I should approach these things like a job interview! "Hi! I'm (Blank)!" (Bright smile) "I really want to get well, and I want to set therapy goals and have a great life! I'm the most motivated patient you could possibly have! Heck, even when I'm having a psychotic episode I'm Little Miss Mary Sunshine! Just with a deeper voice!"

Last weekend we went to a convention in another city, and took my service dog along. He performed amazingly well! Everybody oohed and aahed over the cute little service dog, and he did his job, more or less ignoring everybody unless told otherwise. (I'll try to find the picture of the workshop we attended, where the write-up afterwards identified him as a "Canine-American"!) He liked the hotel, and my husband apologized for worrying so much beforehand that my dog would bite somebody or misbehave.

The only yucky part was an assistance dog list I belong(ed) to. When I was going to leave, I wrote asking what I needed to take to travel with a dog, and mentioned the muzzle. Everyone on the list goes ballistic, I have a vicious, aggressive dog, etc. (This has come up before. My dog did have to be extensively trained because like me, he has PTSD.) I couldn't actually get any facts. When we got back, I wrote a glowing report, but made the mistake of mentioning that he growled when a total stranger, who I knew to be mentally disturbed, scooped him up when I wasn't looking and tried to kiss him! Not biting, mind, just growling.

This was all the list needed to go on the warpath. Put that dog down, never take him out in public, you and your dog are a disgrace to the Service Dog community, we give people cold chills at the mere THOUGHT of us terrorizing the streets of New York. Yeah, my psychokiller miniature pinscher...the final straw was someone suggesting that I wasn't a real person, but rather, a government plant because this was a group of people fighting for service dog access and here I was ruining it for everyone. He felt "Jerry Springerized," in his words.

And I thought I was nuts.

Here's the crazed beast in action:

So I wrote an extremely nasty response and signed off. This is the second dog list I've either left or been kicked off of. I guess I don't play well with others, except my dog.

Confrontation with Dr. Gottlieb...Sort of

2007-07-02T20:03:00.000-05:00

I have to say, after all of the rage I experienced, the actual confrontation we had was sort of a let-down. I shoved the whole thing out of my mind until the night before, and then it was sort of an "oh, shit."

My husband counseled me to start off by repeating what Dr. Gottlieb had said to me about therapy, and how I was "baffled." (I guess that is better than beginning, "Listen, you lying motherfucker--") When I walked in, Dr. Gottlieb handed me an iced coffee (he'd had to run some errands before our session) and said that the first order of business was finding a therapist. I said, "We have to talk." He turned around and said, "Uh-oh."

I outlined what I'd heard from the other patient, what was on his page, etc. Anyway, his explanation was that the patient I'd met had been seeing him for fifteen years for "supportive therapy," which was basically hand-holding and helping her distinguish reality. When I mentioned that he had psychotherapy on his page, he said he should take it off. I countered, saying he'd updated his page quite a bit since I'd seen it last, so he'd had plenty of opportunity to remove it. Dr. Gottlieb said that these days he only saw one patient for real psychotherapy, and that he occasionally felt "thrown".

"You have major issues about your body, identity, sex, and men, you come from a traumatic background, and I would be constantly thrown," he said. "You need a real therapist."

"Are you afraid of me?" I asked.

"No. If I didn't want you as my patient I could have let you go years ago."

We went around in circles for bit, but I have to say I saw his point. Assuming he's telling the truth. I was staring into his eyes the entire time, and he seemed to be. I admitted that I have a history of therapists "falling in love" with me (my last therapist inadvertently called me "darling"). Anyway, he gave me a list he'd prepared of six therapists who he knew, all women, and said that my homework for the week was to call them up for consults.

Afterwards, my husband, who dislikes Dr. Gottlieb, pointed out that the doctor had been busting his butt for me for years, and that I should take him at his word.

A slightly funny incident that happened a few weeks ago: Dr. Gottlieb has only met my husband once, after my father's death, when I was suicidal. My husband was accompanying me to the neighborhood and was going to work from there, but he had to use the bathroom. So he came to use the bathroom in the doctor's office, and stepped out just as Dr. Gottlieb came out of his office to get me. Talk about awkward moments. They said a stiff hello to each other before I headed in to Dr. Gottlieb's office.

RAGE - Present, Tense

2007-06-23T13:40:00.000-05:00

I rarely write about the specifics of what is going on in my life...keeping this blog as anonymous as possible. In fact, sometimes it frightens me how many different levels my mind functions on at any given time. Few people know about this blog, and they think of me as an accomplished person and they don't know about most of my inner turmoil.

But I am enraged, at several people. First and foremost, ironically, is Dr. Gottlieb. We had a session on Thursday morning. Over the years, the subject of whether or not he should become my therapist has arisen. The answer is generally no, in part because I tend to sexualize my relationships with men (safely, I've never cheated on my husband), in part because our relationship is slightly messed up in the transference-countertransference department.

For years I've known we're attracted to each other, or maybe it's simply my fantasy. From very early on, I've called him by his first name. (I got over my dislike of shorter men, although I still have a difficult time picturing him naked.) After the first ten months I'd been seeing him, he said we had to talk. It turned out that I had been seeing him for an hour after every therapy session, and he had actually been doing therapy with me without meaning to. "This has never happened to me before," he said, and I remember the bewildered look on his face.

At that time he had a postcard from one of my shows, the show he made possible, on his bulletin board. After that, it was taken down.

After that, I only saw him for twenty minutes at a time, until I became his private patient. My therapist left the bipolar clinic, and then an audit of the study I was in revealed I had been there three years, not six months.

This year, I have not had a therapist since March, so the subject came up again. He said he no longer practiced psychotherapy, and it was something you had to do on an ongoing basis. "Use it or lose it" was his exact phrase. He did try to find someone for me, but she is not taking new patients, and meanwhile he's seeing me on a weekly basis.

This past week, after my session, someone else went in after me and I chatted to the woman who usually follows me. I often have my dog with me, and I didn't on Thursday. When I mentioned I was looking for a therapist, she was baffled, and said, "Isn't Dr. Gottlieb your therapist?"

"No, he's my psychiatrist. I've always seen a therapist separately."

She looked at me. "I didn't know he was a psychiatrist. I just thought he was a therapist. He's been my therapist for years."

I forced a smile and left. Today, I went to his webpage, and there is it was:

Specialties: Psychopharmacology, psychotherapy

BASTARD! LYING STINKING MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD! WHY? WHY?

Whenever we've talked about our dynamic, I do all of the talking, as it were. He gives me that shut look and either says nothing or "You know I can't answer that." Dr. Gottlieb has let me know he does not like my husband and/or disapproves of my marriage, making occasional snide cracks about it. A few years ago, when I stopped going to the bipolar clinic and became Dr. Gottlieb's private patient, my husband asked me, "What is it between you two?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly.

Then, about a year ago, Dr. Gottlieb said he had to draw boundaries in the sand.

"But you don't tell me what the boundaries are until I've walked ten feet past them!" I cried. He's recently adopted a more "professional" demeanor toward me, which I've let him know I dislike, but more in a sulking, joking way than a serious way. I don't like it, in all truth, but I also think it's the right thing...

BUT!

Why lie to me? Why not say, "the dynamic is wrong between us for me to be your therapist." At least that would be HONEST. MOTHERFUCKER! I am so angry I can hardly stand it, and hurt. Deeply hurt. I can't even say how hurt. As I write this my insides shake. I want to hurt him the way he's hurt me, and I can't. Shithead. Crappy asshole shithead.

This coming Tuesday (my usual day) ought to be interesting. More about other people I'm pissed off later, but this is the Big Kahuna.

Penis Frenzy - Sometime in 2001

2007-06-22T12:17:00.000-05:00

I felt the blood roaring up my chest, neck and face even as the words left my mouth:
“Do you want a blowjob?”

Oh, God, my face was hotter than a cast iron pan on a gas flame. There was a silence that lasted perhaps a few seconds but seemed like the Thousand Years War.

My psychopharmacologist didn’t seem to have heard me correctly. “What?”

“Do you—do you want me to give you a blowjob?”

The change in his round face, usually so open, reminded me of shop gates slamming down at night. There was suddenly no expression. Why did I say that, I thought, cursing myself. Why was I such a fucking moron? Why did I listen to that fucking therapist? After I killed myself, I was going to kill her.

The two of us sat almost knee to knee in his tiny office. Behind his head was the spectacular view of the Hudson River in autumn, but the office itself was a mass of papers, boxes, and drug samples. Every object except the fax machine and telephone had a drug name on it: Celexa, Welbutrin, Zoloft, Effexor. We were in the middle of a huge mental hospital, but this section, the bipolar clinic, was always incredibly quiet and virtually deserted.

“Why do you want to give me a blowjob?” His voice came out slightly strangled.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it…” Oh, God, I was starting to cry, I hated myself when I cried, even more than I hated myself the rest of the time. “You saved my life, Dr. Gottlieb. You took me out of that HMO clinic and away from that terrible psychiatrist and now I’m getting free care and mostly free drugs, and it’s all because of you! And there’s no way I can repay you. I don’t have any money, you know that. So I thought—you know—that I could give you a blowjob. Pay you back that way.” I paused, and added, “A friend of mine gave her therapist a blowjob in the elevator of his building and didn’t seem to think it was so strange.”

Sweat ran down my sides. The idea had made perfect sense when I told my therapist about it. I’d been thinking about giving Dr. Gottlieb a blowjob for several weeks.

And now here I was, a 40-year-old 275-pound bipolar recovering alcoholic with really bad skin, lousy personal grooming, and the occasional hallucination, offering this dapper little man a blowjob. It crossed my mind that I might not have brushed my teeth before I left the house.

He wasn’t really little, just shorter and smaller than me. But then, nearly everybody was. Months ago I’d been lumbering around the subways, fantasizing about pushing people in front of the trains, or jumping in front of one myself. And now, thanks to Dr. Gottlieb, Depakote had calmed my violent impulses—most of them, anyway—and I was actually taking showers in the morning again. What else could I give him but the gift of oral sex?

“Elisa, I am your doctor,” he intoned. “And you are my patient. There are boundaries in place in our relationship. We are not friends, even though it might feel that way to you at times. My relationship with you is purely professional. I like you, but I don’t want you acting out sexually, with me or anyone else.”

He was using a tone of voice I’d never heard before, soft, controlled, cold. Usually he beamed when I came in the office, cracking jokes throughout our weekly sessions. That was part of what was so unusual about my situation. Frustrated by the treatment I was getting at my former clinic, Dr. Gottlieb had enrolled me in a study for bipolar women. When I mentioned I was above the age limit, he replied, “It’s my clinic and I can do what I want.”

That day I cried with gratitude all the way home on the train. Every week I saw my therapist, and afterward I saw Dr. Gottlieb, and we went over the elaborate weekly charts I had to keep. He was still weaning me off the ten medications I had been on when I reeled into his care.

“Is there any other reason?”

“No, there isn’t.”

But I was lying. I had a terrible secret.

Although I adored him and considered him my savior, I wasn’t physically attracted to him, and I didn’t want to see him naked.

Dr. Gottlieb had a beard, and I had a suspicion that he had a great deal of body hair. And he was shorter than me. For some reason I’d always had a problem with men who are shorter than me. But I couldn’t say that. It would hurt his feelings. His penis, alone, emerging from his expensive wool trousers, now that I could manage.

He went on talking about ‘boundaries’, ‘doctor/patient protocol,’ and all the while I kept repeating aloud, “I can’t believe I said that to you.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “now that you’ve found yourself in a good situation, you’re trying to sabotage it by acting out with me.”

Ah. That made sense. I never let a good situation happen to me if I could help it. And what was better than this?

(Note: as of 2007, I am still seeing Dr. Gottlieb, which of course is not his real name. And I've never given him a blow job.)

Adjusting to Being Home - Present, Tense

2007-06-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

My husband is auditing a course at the school he graduated from. I can't remember what it is, but I know it's something to do with one of the things that's wrong with me (oh, yes, it's all about me, tee hee). He's going to start job hunting next month, after we go to a conference where he's giving a presentation--and I get to bring my dog!!

This was our negotiation--I agreed to go to SF if I could bring my dog to the convention. I've been to SF many, many times and wasn't exactly eager to go there again. So now I have to "muzzle train" my dog because there will be so many little kids there. Fortunately I'm not expected to socialize much, and we'll be near downtown.

I did not sleep AT ALL last night. I went to bed, all right, but lay there for more than two hours, then got up again. When I went back to bed at 5 AM, I proceeded to have a series of nightmares. (It's something my late father and I had/have in common--nightmares that we have to be woken up from, because we're screaming or waving our hands in the air or gasping. My mother once said she had been told never to wake up someone having a nightmare. I assured her that it was the best possible thing to do! What a relief to find yourself out of danger!)

Oddly enough, I feel more awake today than I have for the past couple of days, but it's probably just the dexadrine and coffee. Mother's little helper.

Sorry It's Been So Long...

2007-06-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I haven't written anything here in so many weeks.

Not much has changed, except that I seem to finally have the goddamn supplementary insurance plan (a spanking extra $200/month in addition to the $15/month drug plan so that my Depakote only costs $54 for a 30-day bottle instead of $211). Nothing new on the therapist front.

However, we went to California on vacation for two weeks, which we both badly needed. I had to board my dog, but we went to San Francisco and the surrounding environs, where I saw Cordelia twice, and also saw Lucretia's new house.

(I can't help being angry when I see the Italian stone garden her husband put in front, and their brand-new kitchen, etc. It's hard feeling like you simply CANNOT forgive somebody, but I can't forgive Lucretia for not paying my father's debt to me when she has so much money.)

I needed so much to get away from everything. And both me and my husband needed to be alone together without me being crazy, which for the most part I managed. He oversaw my schedule so that I would not push myself too hard...one morning I started weeping from the pressure of socializing, and he was so sweet.

That's all for right now. It's 1 am here and I should go to bed. The best part of getting home was getting my dog back--he EXPLODED with joy when he saw me and won't let me out of his sight!

As I was writing this, he came trotting out of the bedroom to see where I was, so I know I have to go to bed! :) I love to hear the clicking of his little black toenails...one of the simple pleasures of life, dog love.

When Drugs Collide; And, Thank Heaven for Little Dogs

2007-05-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

I emailed one of my sisters about what has been going on, and she wrote back:

The whole insurance business seems so, well, crazy. Usually people are begging for inpatient treatment and being told, "Well, all we have available is a therapist you can see once a month." Wouldn't it be cheaper for them for you to see a therapist rather than something more intensive? Anyway, good luck with it. Seems like every time something like this happens you just have to keep pushing and eventually you get what you need--it's like a test to see if you really really really want it. I can't imagine how frustrating that must be. I mean, it's not like you're begging for Vicodin, for crissakes!

Today two significant things happened: my Humana card came in the mail, and THAT's the Medicare Part D plan I'm supposed to be enrolled in, not the one that's been screwing everything up, so I took it to the pharmacy to be inputted. After that's cleared up, I can go about getting a supplemental plan. Unfortunately, the guy who can help me is away all week.

The other significant thing was, that over a week ago I refilled a prescription for Dexstrostat, the low-dose amphetamine I take early every morning. I was given a bottle of unfamiliar pills, and the pharmacist (a fairly new woman) told me it was the prescription, but it didn't look right, and at the bottom, it said "Generic equivalent of Adderall."

I've been taking it for five or six days, and during that time I have been increasingly, violently manic. Of course, I didn't put it together, since I thought it was the same meds, but it bugged me that I'd never seen it on the bottle before. This past weekend I felt like an absolute maniac, like I was backsliding EIGHT YEARS (and today is my late father's birthday). I dragged myself to an AA meeting this AM and bawled, then came home and looked up the drug on the computer.

Turns out it is a completely different drug, for ADD! And it's THREE different kinds of amphetamines, and technically I am taking a HUGE DOSE. Most people take 5 mgs. a day, I have been taking 20 mgs. every morning! Not to mention it conflicts with most of my medications, my mental illness, my seizures, high blood pressure, you name it. So I called the pharmacy and asked for the owner (who I usually deal with). He was baffled and had me bring in the bottle. Turned out the computer picked out the wrong drug when the other pharmacist typed in dextroamphetamine.

God, how do most mentally ill people SURVIVE?

I have been feeling, the past two days, like I haven't been taking my depakote (the bipolar drug), even though I have. I see my psychiatrist tomorrow, at least. He was away for a month, but came back last week. He also can't help me until I get a supplemental insurance plan, but he has some recommendations, at least. Tonight I was supposed to go with my husband to a party but since I feel like I'm missing a layer of skin, I didn't.

My wonderful service dog went with me to the AA meeting in his little blue vest (he is wearing his snow suit in the picture above) and he seems to have been emotionally knocked out by me. He usually has the energy of five dogs, but today all he has wanted to do is lie down and cuddle with me.

The strangest moment was when I was putting on my shoes after a nap (I basically collapsed after drinking a cup of coffee), and my husband came into the living room. We had agreed he would walk the dog, but he didn't even have the leash in his hand, and my dog started to duck under the coach! Little psychic bastard! :) Luckily I grabbed his harness before he could escape, so my husband leashed him and dragged him out the front door. How did my dog know?

When I sit here and write, he lies curled on the couch, or if the cats will let him, the chair nearest the computer. He is just slightly too big to sit in my lap, darn it, at least at the keyboard.

Slogging Through The Mental Health System...

2007-05-06T19:50:00.000-05:00

Since I lost my therapist, I have been trying to get help, but I seem to be too crazy to get help. I went to one clinic and had an intake interview...I was in terrible shape, shaking, crying, distraught and disconnected. The interviewer suggested I go to a day hospital (it's a mental hospital where you get to go home at night). I said no, the last time I was crazy enough for that was seven years ago. He was annoyed. For some reason it was terribly important that I get across that I'm intelligent (actually, the reason is, I've seen some of my old intake notes from other clinics/hospitals/whatever. I am usually described as "fat and disheveled", and my intelligence level is rated "less than average."

There was a Miro lithograph on the wall behind the interviewer's head. So I said, "That's a nice Miro." He looked at me and said, "Huh?" I pointed it to it, and said, "That Juan Miro lithograph. It's very nice." I told him about the horrible images I was having of Dad's death, reliving it all, and also visions of Dad on the cross, based on a drawing Lucretia did that hung in his home office when I was a young teen.

The following week the interviewer let me know that I was too insane for the clinic to take on, that I should check into a Dialectacal Behaviorial Therapy ward at my local psych ward. I said no. Since I'm on Medicare, and at present do not have a supplementary insurance plan, I'm too poor to get qualified help. And I'm hearing from all sides that I am very sick, that I can't be given to an intern, the person who helps me needs to be an expert in trauma, yada yada yada.

Right now my insurance is in a tangle, so who knows when it will be straightened out and I'll have someone to talk to again. Tonight I tried talking to my husband about a conversation with Cordelia, but he got so freaked out he asked me to stop. He is feeling heavily burdened by my illness right now, and he has so many life responsibilities.

I continue to thrash through, because what choice do I have?

Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, I've Got You In A Cardboard Box

2007-04-24T21:46:00.000-05:00

My husband couldn't say someone "died" until he took a bereavement course at grad school. When my father died, we didn't have a funeral. Maybe it was because we were atheists. Maybe it was post-death inertia.

We merely watched him get zipped into the body bag.

Then my family threw a big party a few days later. I chose not to attend, and went to an AA meeting instead (it was drink and tobacco that killed him). At the party, they had a life mask of Dad with a large glass of vodka on one side and a pack of cigarettes on the other. I guess you can admire the grim humor.

Then somehow his ashes wound up in the tv room of our beach house (he died in 2004) until last summer, because nobody wanted them. Lucretia took a doggy bag 'o Dad back home, Cordelia sniffed, "I don't believe in relics," my brother and mother weren't interested, so I packed him up in his plastic box inside the larger cardboard box from the crematorium and brought him here. He's on my dining room bookcase now, in a flowered gift bag that he would probably be pretty offended by! Since I have all of my dead cats' ashes in the cardboard boxes from the pet crematorium on the same bookshelf, it seems right. I didn't take them out of the boxes because the tins look so stupid--oval with kitschy paintings of kittens. A plain white box seems more dignified. I don't own any land, so there is nowhere to bury them.

We did scatter some of Dad's ashes in what used to be our beach garden before I packed him, at my mother's suggestion. It was just her, my husband, and me. I asked my mother if she had anything she wanted to say. She shook her head. The waves were crashing against the beach as I stuck my hand into the ashes and pitched them over the garden, twice. They sparkled in the sun. Then I scattered some where he used to plant basil. Then I looked down at my hand and thought, "I've got Dad under my fingernails."

How Much To Disclose? Present, Tense

2007-04-23T14:12:00.000-05:00

Today at an AA meeting, the woman next to me shared that she identified with the shooter at Virginia Tech, that she was so filled with rage that she did not find the photos of him with guns at all frightening. Everyone was staring at her with astonishment, horror, whatever. She said, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

I sat and thought about whether or not I found the pictures frightening. I have not gone out of my way to look at them, and have avoided watching the video. Shortly after I published my last entry, CNBC (I think) ran a program on serial killers, with videotapes the killers had made shortly before their rampages. I certainly understood what they were all talking about...feeling shit on by society, misplaced volcanic rage, etc. In fact, it made me so uncomfortable that I changed the channel. I know thoughts are not reality, but to know thoughts like that are commonplace in one's own head, and to see other's reactions to it (thankfully, not to me)...one must not risk speaking them aloud.

Go see 'Grindhouse' instead (said with sarcasm). That's a healthy outlet.

Sober and Insane - January, 1999

2007-04-15T23:57:00.000-05:00

(Author's note: in the wake of the carnage at Virginia Tech, I would like to make it clear that the following was written during a psychotic episode almost nine years ago. I have never harmed another human being or living creature, except myself.)

I am shaking as I board the cross-town bus and take a seat. My feelings are concealed behind what I hope is a blank expression. I try to ignore the screaming in my head. If you looked at me you would see that most invisible of creatures, a sloppy, overweight woman on the verse of middle-age, hair pulled back into a long ponytail, wearing an anklelength dun-colored dress and sneakers, purse on her lap, gazing out the window. You’d think I was wondering what to make the family for dinner. But I’m not.

In the seats at the front of the bus are little old ladies half my size. I want to pounce on one, the one in the gray hound’s-tooth suit and impeccable white hair, throw her to the floor, and beat her head against the bus floor until her brains come out of her skull. I can see the blood and the yellow brains on the rubber matting. I once saw a man who had been hit by a truck, and that was what his brains looked like, all over 72nd Street.

The longing is so strong my whole body shudders with it. No, I tell myself, sit still, be quiet. Don’t do anything or you’ll end up back in the hospital. I take out my pocket notebook, and write: “Help help help—I feel like I’m going to explode, to FLIP OUT, to commit mayhem, either on myself or somebody else. Can’t stand the pressure can’t stand the pressure can’t stand the pressure.”

Writing doesn’t help. Before I attack somebody, I exit the bus and walk quickly down the sidewalk, disappearing into the crowd.

Andrew Goldstein is on trial for murder in the subway pushing death of Kendra Webdale. I read about it in The New York Times. A diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, Goldstein had begged for long-term hospitalization over and over again, but had been shuttled in and out of hospitals and was currently unmedicated. His defense is not guilty by reason of insanity. A verdict of not guilty rests on the assumption that the defendant does not understand that his actions are wrong.

When Goldstein recounted the killing of his victim, he said, it was an “attack” taking over his body. “It just goes whoosh, whoosh, push.” I know exactly what he means.

The prosecution is attempting to say that Goldstein is guilty because he was cognizant of his actions. That Goldstein acted out of malice, out of hatred toward women, not because he is insane. People think that you cannot be insane and sane at the same time. By those standards Goldstein should have been able to calmly describe his actions at the time of the crime. Since he couldn’t, he was a drooling lunatic. “Was he drooling, or anything like that?” the district attorney asked a detective about Goldstein’s demeanor at the time.

Like Andrew Goldstein, I am mentally ill. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was fine until I stopped drinking, in late June of this year. Then, it was like my brain exploded. At various times I have been diagnosed as schizophrenic, borderline schizophrenic, unipolar and cyclothymic. I have been told I suffer from borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, oppositional defiance disorder with a soupcon of obsessive-compulsive disorder and personality fragmentation. As one therapist I saw last year said to me, not joking, “You are the entire DSM 4.”

This past summer I spent nine days in a psychiatric ward. Miraculously it was my first hospitalization, although I have had many trips to the emergency room. Mostly due to alcohol withdrawal seizures. Let me tell you, those are not fun. You don’t feel them coming on, but then you are, with a dress hanger stuck in your mouth and surrounded by paramedics. I can’t even remember my phone number, much less where I live.

If I stay sober, at least I won’t have those any more.

When one of my psychotic episodes attacks, my head is filled with my own screams. I become agitated. If I do not throw objects or attack other people, I attack myself. Hitting my head with my fists, clawing my skin with my fingernails, slicing myself with razor blades. The attacks come when I am under stress, when I am tired, when I am upset. Ordinary anger or sadness turns into hysteria and I go off. The horrifying part is that I know what is happening to me, but I cannot always stop it. One voice in my head is saying, “Do it! Kill the bad thing!” The other is begging, “Please, stop, why are you doing this?”

At twenty years old, with a history of suicide attempts and breakdowns, I was hallucinating and psychotic. Other people were behind a wall of glass. I despaired of ever living a halfway normal life. My family thought I was being dramatic. I drank. The therapist I saw believed that hospitalization would stigmatize me, that medication was unnecessary. I could will myself out of insanity. And over fifteen years, I thought I had.

Now I no longer drink, and my mental illness is much, much worse. Booze helped to medicate my feelings, calm my internal violence, and much of my abnormal behavior in the past was put down to drunkenness.

Now, I am alone with my insanity. And it wants to kill me.

I am married, I live in a nice apartment, I have many friends, and until recently I was successful at my job. Those I work with have little inkling of my internal struggle. Perhaps they wonder why I go to the ladies’ room so much. I’d rather they thought I was on drugs than know the truth: I am shaking and crying in the toilet booth as waves of emotion come crashing over me. For no discernible reason. At times I feel like I’m vomiting from a bottomless pit of grief. I hold on to the counter in the employees’ kitchen, fighting the urge to scream and throw the milk cartons across the room.

Why isn’t this happening to any of the other people I know in early sobriety? They talk about “pink clouds” of euphoria, how relieved they are to be free of the spell of the disease. Or they talk about the discomfort of feeling their feelings. Feeling your feelings…bullshit! Try feeling THESE feelings! These are the Incredible Hulk of Feelings!

Which voice in my head is the true voice? The one I’ve kept silent with alcohol for almost twenty years? “Kill yourself,” it urges. “You know it’s the only reasonable choice. Go ahead. Everybody will be better off if you die.” I fight this side of me almost daily, armed with therapy, medication, 12-step meetings, exercise. But I know if I don’t take that handful of pills every morning, I will stop straddling the line between sanity and insanity. Insanity will take over. I’m terrified.

I do not know whether Andrew Goldstein should be found guilty or not. But I do know that you can be sane and insane at the same time. And it is a terrible place to be.

Losing My Therapist to Death...April 15, 2007

2007-04-15T23:40:00.000-05:00

Last month, my therapist suddenly canceled on me, and later called saying she would not know what her schedule would be, because her husband was going into hospice care at home. In a brief series of phone calls, we talked about the hospice experience, and whether or not she was returning to the clinic I had been going to for about four years. Turns out not. Our last conversation, she was crying. My dad died at home in hospice care, but he only had it the last two days of his life, due to medical bungling.

Then a therapist from the clinic contacted me, and convinced me that I needed "closure" with the clinic, and should consider taking therapy with her. As soon as I walked through the door, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. All of the grief I'd felt at losing my former therapist hit me right in the face. I hadn't let myself truly feel it...I mostly felt bewilderment and a sense of loss at how it had happened.

Ever since I went back to the clinic, all sorts of horrible thoughts and images are bombarding me. Talking about Dad’s death that way, and my terrific guilt about my therapist suffering whatever she might have been suffering at the time with her husband having had his larynx removed before she and I even started treatment. But I didn’t know, and she never said. Until after she had left.

I keep seeing Dad as he was on those last days, wretchedly thin, gasping for air, the window wide open and the room freezing cold. His eyes, bluer than blue, the ice blue I associated with the rage of my childhood. Only now they were open in uncomprehending panic, a sort of “what kind of huge cosmic insult is this?” Amazing how hard it is for someone to die, even when they want to.

Then I see his dead face, looking at it sideways as I lay on the drenched, soiled bed next to him. Apparently I lay there for hours. He didn’t look like himself any more. There was no soul there. Even my cat Mooki looked like Mooki when she died, which was part of why it was so hard to let Dr. Martinez take her body. This huge, gaping hole of grief has been torn open again, and it’s just plain wrong.

I miss my therapist. I miss her laugh, and her outrage, and her articulateness. I miss that she was also a writer and was never at a loss no matter what word I used, unless it was a modern colloquialism used by the younger set. I miss her funny misshapen shoes—she must have had bunions. They were nice shoes, but they always had wide elastic inserts. She parted her brown hair in the middle and had extremely thin lips. Often I would spend long parts of our sessions absently staring down at her shoes, while Bucky lay beside me. She adored Bucky, loved his soft coat, loved rumpling his ears. I don’t think she’d ever had a dog; everything about his physical being surprised her. Joan never wore makeup (maybe not the best influence for me), but she always had a pair of large dangling earrings on, and her clothing was usually from Ann Taylor. I often saw the labels of her jackets when they hung on the door. She had very good taste and middle-aged spread.

What I miss most is her ability to see the positive side of everything, since that’s an ability that was crippled in me so many years ago. The worst experiences had something to offer, even if it was only that I had survived them. When the critics savaged my show in 2005 and I was devastated, she emphasized what an achievement producing the show and running the gauntlet of the Midtown Theater Festival had been. And how I then learned enough to triumph in San Francisco, and did extended improvisation on stage for the first time. She was so supportive of my marriage, pointing out how extremely rare it was for a couple our age and length of marriage to still have a regular sex life of any kind. In fact she was so supportive of everything; that annoyed me sometimes. I guess my psychiatrist, with his strong opinions and directive-ness, is an easier quantity for me to understand.

I wish it hadn’t ended in the awful, sad way it did. I want to contact her, but I am afraid I will get her in the middle of something…she’s at the end stage of caring for her husband, and by now he might have died. I’m glad that unlike me at that time, she is surrounded by a strong, caring family.

Back at Last!!!!

2007-02-20T08:10:00.000-05:00

I have been literally locked out of my own blog since my last post!

For some reason, perhaps when Blogger went out of beta, I could not sign in to my blog, and did not get emails to help me out. I also could not go to Groups because this is an anonymous blog.

Finally, a friend of a friend who works at Google, god bless him, sent me the information to let me back onto my own blog.

I have been better since October, after having been on Pamelor until recently (yeecch). My psychiatrist gave me permission to stop taking it, although I am still on a large dose of Zoloft and a number of other meds. I have some material to post from earlier years, and will be doing so in the next few days.

Hope all who read and visit this blog are coping. Belated Happy New Year.

Survived Christmas and Cordelia

2006-12-26T19:53:00.000-05:00

My sister Cordelia is in very bad shape, complaining that her stomach is bothering her, constantly eating these disgusting green-brown health food bars. I tried one--yuuuch. She cuts her own hair, and this trip it looked like two wedges sticking straight out. She compulsively pats it down and pulls at it. She is extremely thin, and wears extremely baggy clothes to conceal it.

I called my other sister for some relief after a day spent with Cordelia, and she reminded me: "She's a crusty old spinster, and she's used to living alone. She doesn't know how to show she cares the way ordinary people do. Instead of saying 'I love you,' she will sweep your floor." That was very helpful to hear, because I know my sister does love me, but whatever is wrong with her prevents her from showing it. I feel such tremendous guilt for having any kind of life at all. Ironically, she has a part-time job and an investment portfolio, and I am the one who feels guilty...old habits are hard to break.

Cordelia's Back In Town...

2006-12-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

My sister Cordelia is here from out of town, and I saw her today. The instant I opened the door, I thought, "Oh God, no..." She was clearly much worse than this past summer; clothing disheveled, hair sticking out in all directions, color bad. Our conversation was beyond difficult. She desperately needs professional help, and refuses to get it (that doesn't keep her from stealing my medication).

More to follow...

Listening to "Push," July 2005

2006-12-19T23:50:00.000-05:00

Sitting here listening to Rob Thomas sing "Push," after I’ve packed for the show, I’m feeling stirred up and horny and ready to take on whatever audience is out there. And really, really angry.

I look across the room at Dad’s Tiffany clock and the words of the song have so much meaning: “I want to push you around, I will, I will, I want to push you down, I will, I will.” I’ve always loved this song and all of its rage. “I want to take you for granted, I will, I will.”

I hate that damn clock. Lucretia showed up at my front door when they were destroying everything of Dad's back at the apartment. She shoved it into my arms. "You take it," she said. It weighs a ton, and it doesn't work. Sometimes I think about pawning it.

Crawling Out From Under...

2006-11-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

So, my doctor put me on a new antidepressant, and has been steadily upping the dose. The good part: I feel better. The bad part: it really gives me the woozies. When I stand up suddenly, or rise from a crouch, the world spins around for a few minutes. Luckily I know to grab onto something until it passes. So many meds have done this to me that I know the drill. Hell, I'm just fortunate that it doesn't make my legs buckle under me, like the stuff I was on this summer.

I've gone from being completely paralyzed to partially paralyzed, and the suicidal thoughts are going away. When they are there, they make such complete sense. It seems the only sensible path is to kill yourself; you'd rid the world of your worthless presence, and other people could stop worrying about you and get on with their lives. When it gets really bad, the world narrows down to that one little pinprick, and everything else is blackness. Anyone's feelings don't exist, except in the concept that you make everybody around you feel bad, because you are a worthless piece of shit that should never have been born anyway.

It is still tough to leave the house, I still have to remind myself to bathe. I hadn't updated this in a while because I've been too busy with a freelance project. Of course, the people I'm working for have no idea I'm bipolar; you can conceal it over the phone.

So that's where I am right now. There's more to write but I don't have time; my deadline is tomorrow, and after that I have to survive Thanksgiving.

Going Insane - November 1998

2006-11-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

Written in early 1999:

The first indication I had that I was going around the bend was a profound restlessness. I tried to work, but I couldn’t concentrate. Since I am a master procrastinator, I thought this was simply a new manifestation of an old problem. But my thoughts skittered away from focus like mercury when you try to poke a pencil in it.

For two days I told myself that this was a natural reaction to the extreme emotional blow I’d endured earlier in the week. I had ended a working relationship of several years’ duration, and not so incidentally, a close friendship. Partially as a result of this, my personal finances were in disarray, but things were looking up. New jobs, new friendships beckoned. I thought I was handling everything well.

Then, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, I woke up feeling vaguely depressed. As I walked down 53rd Street with my husband, it happened.

A thick, heavy blanket of despair dropped over my head, as tangible as if it had been made of wool.

I burst into tears. I turned to my husband and announced that I wanted to die. He tried to comfort me, standing on the rainy street, but I was inconsolable. “I think I’m losing my mind,” I sobbed. “I just want to end it all.”

He convinced me to continue to our destination a documentary screening. I cried off and on as we went to an art exhibition and then to my parents' apartment, where I determined to act like nothing was wrong, figuring it would pass. I managed to push the feelings down and no one suspected anything.

When I used the bathroom when we were watching “Winchell”, I looked at my father’s Dilantin pills, which were in a little pottery bowl on the sink. I wondered if it would kill me if I swallowed all of it. When we got home, I cried and talked to my husband about wanting to die. Then I slept for more than 14 hours. We had guests the next day, and I barely managed to get dressed and get through watching a football game with them. It helped that they were busily getting stoned, so I was in the background.

Monday I felt better, and thought the worst was over—over the past fifteen years, most of my severe depressions have lasted two or three days on average, and suicidal thoughts aren’t a usual feature. But by nightfall the feelings came back. I wanted to die again.

When I woke up on Tuesday the feeling was even stronger. I went to a writers meeting with a woman I was working on a project with, and started crying.

I knew something was really wrong, that this was worse than anything I had felt in years and years. Life seemed completely pointless, insupportable. I kept thinking about how I had not felt these feelings since I was 24, and had never expected to feel them again.

I remembered sitting in the window in my old apartment, before I met my husband, watching the snow fall, illuminated by the streetlight. My mind was falling with the snow, drifting into insanity. It was as if I was dissolving as I sat there. That had been over a decade ago.

Now I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t sit up for more than a minute, I could barely talk. I was paralyzed. Something inside of me was broken. But I didn’t know what it was. I called my therapist, to whom I owed a lot of money.

"You're malingering," she said. "You just don't want to get a real job."
"You don't understand," I croaked. "I can't sit up."

That night, while my husband was on the telephone, I was lying in bed. It seemed that suicide was the only reasonable alternative. I thought this very calmly and reasonably, and suddenly felt more motivated than I had all day. Since we didn’t have any pills, I decided to slash my wrists.

Looking in the bathroom cabinet, I discovered that all we had are these newfangled cartridge razors. So I went in the linen closet and found a plastic pink Daisy shaver. While my husband continued to talk on the phone in the living room, I got a pair of pliers. I went into another room and proceeded to break apart the shaver until I had gotten the blades out.

Then I sat there, and looked at the large blue vein in my left wrist. I felt scared of how much it would sting when I cut myself, and angry that I was such a coward. My husband got off the phone and came in the room. When he saw the razor, he took it and flushed it down the toilet.

When I attempted to explain what I was doing, I became so consumed with self-hatred and guilt that all I wanted to do was hurt myself. I grabbed the pliers, intending to beat myself on the face or head with them, but my husband wrestled them away from me.

Once I was calmer, he called his therapist on the phone. When his therapist called back, he talked to me for about half an hour, and I talked about what a shambles my life was, how I wanted to die, how guilty I was about all the fucking up I have done in my life, etc. How guilty I feel for my husband having to pull the heavier financial load in our marriage.

(to be continued)

Why Am I Doing This?

2006-11-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

I suppose some readers wonder why I am writing this blog. At best, it's cathartic; at worst, it's mastubatory. I've wanted to write a memoir for years, but have been completely blocked.

So I decided to put everything out there, in all its messiness, changing names and identifying details. I was diagnosed bipolar about six years ago, after a long period of misdiagnosing and mismedicating. I function relatively well, but with limitations. Part of my frustration is that even though there is a family history of this illness, my family refuses to take it seriously. Or acknowledge the toll it has taken on my life. They think I am playing the victim. Perhaps I do that sometimes, but being confined to a mental hospital is hardly something I would call "playing the victim."

Also, people who do not know better think it is an illness you can conquer by willpower. Right now, during this depression, I'm urged to "think differently," "stop thinking about the past," "get out and do more." It's not a choice, it's brain chemistry. And right now, the meds aren't working.

I want people to understand what those of us who have mental illness go through. There are things I have written while I was actively psychotic. I barely recognize the person who wrote them. Psychosis is rather like being burned; when it happens, it hurts like hell. Then a few months later you look down at the scar and think, "That hurt like hell." But you don't FEEL it. Sorry, that's the best analogy I can come up with.

I also don't care how many people read this, or what they think. I want them to like it, or enjoy it, or get something out of it. But I have no control over that.

Estate Battles - September, 2004

2006-11-07T00:09:00.000-05:00

This was part of an exchange of emails between me and my sisters. My brother wanted a trust set up for his retarded daughter. In a moment of pure idiocy, my dying father asked the four of us children to work out the will. It led to the utter destruction of the family. I was taking care of our parents with the help of my nephew, who had moved in with them. My father was dying, and my mother also had cancer. My only source of steady income was Social Security Disability, so I tended to be a bit prickly:

From Lucretia:
Now that we're talking hard numbers, we should all be taking this unpleasant confrontation with financial reality as a goad to start doing whatever we can to increase our earnings and our savings, because it's very likely the estate is not going to put anyone on Easy Street, no matter how things turn out with the The Dauphin’s retarded child trust. Again, try to see this from the other side. If we are expecting the estate to bail us out, without working hard to do some bailing ourselves--well, that's a hard case to make against the needs of a disabled child.
Lucretia

My response to both my sisters:

Hi -

Lucretia, I had a long talk with The Dauphin’s mother in law this morning. Before you freak out, bear in mind that she and I have a relationship entirely separate from The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife, and have for years (i.e., recovery, etc.) and frequently IM, talk on the phone, etc. I have not said Word One to her about the wills, but she has been checking in with me a lot about Mom, and now about Dad. She's very concerned about both of them.

So today we talked about When They Are Gone. The Dauphin’s mother in law and The Dauphin’s father in law are not setting up a separate estate trust for The Dauphin’s retarded child, but rather, deeding and bequesting to both The Dauphin’s brother in law and The Dauphin’s wife evenly, as much as possible before The Dauphin’s father in law and The Dauphin’s mother in law die. The Dauphin’s mother in law is worried that our parents will both die without wills. I said no, Lucretia was working on it with a lawyer.

We got into a long, philosophical conversation (thank God I was watching my words). The Dauphin’s mother in law strongly believes that neither of her children should be favored before the other, even if one has a disabled child and the other doesn't. She thinks that's the approach Dad should take, an even four-way split, and not "penalize" or "reward," as she put it, anybody for anything. She thought the idea that he had asked his children to work it out was a disastrous decision.

The Dauphin’s father in law had the experience of his siblings swooping down on his parents' belongings and his sister taking all of the antiques, the car, etc., saying she had more of a right to it since she'd taken care of their mother while she was dying, and it was an ugly, ugly fight. The Dauphin’s father in law backed out because he had so much more money than his siblings it wasn't worth it to him.

The Dauphin’s mother in law had an appraiser come to their apartment, since she collects things, and in an hour he had appraised some of her "junky" belongings at over $85,000 in one room. She's going to have him come back to appraise the rest of the stuff, since her house is packed and she knows some things are worth thousands and some are worth pennies, and she doesn't want them all tossed out.

I asked her to give me the name of the appraiser, since Mom and Dad have lots of valuable furniture (according to both The Dauphin’s mother in law and The Dauphin’s wife) and it would be worth it for Dad to find out the value of what they have, to ease some of his financial fears, even if it might seem like smoky, out of date junk to some of us.

So, why do I tell you all this? Because this materially changes how I feel; I want a four-way split, and no estate trust for The Dauphin’s retarded child.

The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife can set one up. I don't care if The Dauphin doesn't speak to me for a few years. I love him dearly, but the basic financial inequity cannot be explained away by past behavior, emotional fucked-upness, or your general stance (with me, anyway): "Everything you feel is wrong." The fact is, The Dauphin’s father in law and The Dauphin’s mother in law DO enter into the equation, and to ignore that is just ridiculous.

We are talking about Monopoly money in the case of our parents, and real, solid wealth in the case of The Dauphin’s retarded child's other grandparents. If they don't feel The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife deserve more, why should Dad? Yes, I know he wants to help, but maybe the best way to help is to do a four-way split and let The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife handle the money the way they see fit. I'm really sick of this "disabled child trumps all" stuff, and I don't give a flying fuck at this point if anyone thinks that immature. I've just had it. And Lucretia, I know you don't want to be the trustee.

This afternoon Mom and I had a lovely visit; we mended the dog's plush toys, and Mom got a real kick out of watching him play with them as we finished each one. She loves the new carpet and the kittens. Dad is getting blood work done, today he's getting a chest X-ray, and later on an endoscopy. As usual he lied his head off to the doctor, and Mom was unable to answer some of the questions, such as, "Are you depressed?" (To Dad) She admitted that she was frightened, but hopes it will turn out to be some sort of acid reflux. I put in a call to Dr. BXXX to give him some details; because of course Dad lied again.

Lucretia, thank you for getting Mom’s cousin to call her. She was going to skip the whole idea of going to Memorial Sloan Kettering before that, but now she'll go.

Having to deal concretely on a daily basis, with Mom and Dad's health problems and knowing that I will have to do so on an ongoing basis, knowing that my sanity has already been tested to the breaking point...well, too fucking bad that The Dauphin’s wife was too much of a drunk to pay attention to her infant's needs, either during pregnancy or afterwards. Or now, for that matter. They spent their kids' college money on a beach house, they live high off the proverbial hog, and they have plenty of money. Using The Dauphin’s retarded child's disability as a bargaining chip...well, it's stopped working for me. Period. It trumps NOTHING, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I blew everything. They might blow everything. But at least it would be their responsibility and have nothing to do with any of us, or take anything away from any of us.

I am fucking tired of being criticized for being either a) greedy b) being wrong c) selfish. I know I can't retire on this money. I know it's hardly riches beyond dreams of avarice, as Lucretia put it. The Dauphin can say all he wants about protecting his child, but the means are already there, no matter what you say. That was brought up by Lucretia at the very beginning, and it remains equally true three weeks later.

How About A Post In The Present, Tense?

2006-11-03T20:26:00.001-05:00

I’ve been depressed for more than three weeks now. All I can think about is my wasted life, how my youth is gone, how my career is a total and utter failure.

Part of me is so angry at all of those people who made me promises and did not deliver. I’m even quoted in a newspaper article from six years ago, saying, “I hope it’s not just a bunch of suits making empty promises.” It was. It always is. People get excited, then they aren’t excited any more. And I move on to the next set of people who will get excited, and on, and on, and on. Until it stops.

Now life is about taking a shower, getting dressed in clean clothes, and then lying down exhausted from the effort and going to sleep. We have no money. No. Money. I can’t do anything about it. Not much, anyway, I get my little check from Social Security, which took two years to get. And I have to walk my poor dog, who isn’t getting nearly enough exercise. Neither am I.

My birthday was a few days ago. I spent it alone. My husband had to work and go to school.

Writing this has been about all I can manage, and I need to lie down.

Losing My Mind, Again, Part Two - January 2006

2006-11-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

Picking Up From Where I Left Off in November 2005:

When I came home from the mental hospital, there was an email from Lucretia saying that this was all symbolic on my side; she was worried about me, etc. I wrote an angry reply, and she responded with an email that was so vicious I deliberately responded cc’ing both Cordelia and The Dauphin, with large excerpts. (Cordelia said it made her “sick to her stomach” to read Lucretia’s email.)

She accused me of going straight to Mom to ask for the money (I didn’t). When Lucretia came to New York, I asked her to visit my therapist with me because I didn’t think I could tell my side of the story without losing it. She agreed, although she's now convinced it was a “deliberate set-up.”

Lucretia said at the beginning of the session that she had to mother everybody and nobody mothers her (I remember she stuck out her lower lip like a child, sort of joking). My therapist asked, "Nobody?" Lucretia said something like, "My friends, sort of. And my husband sometimes. But mostly Grendl." And she patted my leg.

This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to Lucretia at the time:

Wednesday’s session with my therapist made a lot of things clear. I talked it over with her last night. She was struck by how, during the first part of the session, you were warm and affectionate and genuinely cared about me. Then, when we talked about the debt, it was like you became another person: the words she used were “rigid,” “detached,” “unemotional,” and “by the book.” My therapist could see that the rules that had been set up [for the estate] were clearly more important to you than my well-being. She thought perhaps this rigidity was in part how you’ve managed to survive. My therapist is baffled by why you won’t pay the debt. I also did not know that both Cordelia and The Dauphin had written to you negatively about the debt, and that Mom doesn’t want it paid back, either. (Cordelia of course said nothing when she was here, but ironically gave the surgeon a check for that exact amount.) The Dauphin, by the way, profited hugely by that old debt, selling the apartment at a vast profit. To me, this debt is completely valid. I spent hours and hours poring over old checkbook registers, investment statements and correspondence with Dad.

Do you remember how devastated you were when Mom was going to change her will, and you realized that all of your hard work planning the estate didn’t count because she loves The Dauphin best? You were barely able to function at the time. Compare those emotions to how I feel now. Imagine how it felt to hear you say, “I’m sorry Dad gave you this illness, and that he gave you the head injuries that made it worse, and yes, I’m rich and you’re poor, but that’s the way the wheel is turning right now.”

DH is utterly disgusted and angered by all of this, and used the word “niggardly.” He feels strongly that Dad would have repaid that debt if I had let him know about it. Yes, I forgot about it for a long time, but I was both unwell and using…there’s a lot of chaos in my background. Yesterday, I talked to my friend Karen, who until recently has struggled with dire poverty. I told her what you said about the ‘enormous symbolic weight’ of the debt. “That’s bullshit!” she said. “You need the money!”

That was written in December 2005. When she said that about my illness, I picked up my hat and coat and said, “I can’t see you any more, Lucretia.”

We’d had no individual contact until I had the impulse to call her one day. One of the first things she said to me was, “I would have paid you back the debt, but The Dauphin and Cordelia didn’t want me to!” When I said I knew that now, she said, “Then why does that make me the bad one?” Because you have the checkbook, I almost responded, but I didn’t. She also said, “I’m tired of being the all-giving parent substitute to all of you.” I told her I didn’t think of her that way AT ALL. We agreed that not speaking for another couple of months was probably the way to go. I did agree to stop sending snarky replies to her group emails (I never lost an opportunity to get a dig in, I admit). I haven’t seen her since last December.

Seeing her with a counselor was worth it to me, but not for the reasons I thought. One of the things that struck me later was that this was only the second time ever that Lucretia acknowledged that I was physically abused by Dad, and that she knew it’s a large part of my illness. Doctors have told me that my latent bipolar might not have manifested except for that. The rest is genetics and booze.

Lucretia does have the gift of gab, and is good at creating narratives that have a passing relationship with the truth and making herself the victim. (Cordelia and I have a long-running joke about Lucretia’s reaction to us: “Everything you feel is wrong.”)

My Dog On The Street, November 2004

2006-10-30T16:39:00.000-05:00

Written after an encounter on the street:

Yesterday afternoon I was walking my dog down to Petland Discounts to get some toys, etc. along Broadway.

This heavyset Hispanic woman with drawn-on eyebrows suddenly gets in front of us and asks, "Can I see the front of your dog?" She lifted my dog by his front legs, and started yelling that this was her dog that she lost! She called him Tomi, although he didn't respond, and said he was a Chihuaha (does he LOOK LIKE a chihuaha to you?). She demanded, "You buy him or find him?"

I was so unnerved that I blurted that I'd found him, but didn't say where, but it had been two years ago and he was MY dog. My dog wasn't responding to her at all, although she was bent over and getting in his face and insisting he was! "He knows his name! He knows his name! Tomi!"

Running through my head is this awful scenario, can she actually take my dog, is he her dog somehow, oh my God, how could I have walked him three times a day along Broadway and this never happened??? She said he was her littlest one, that she'd left the door open and he'd run away. I'd heard something to that effect around the time I got him. But we tried speaking Spanish to him and he never reacted to it.

Finally I think she took a look at the expression on my face, patted him and said, "You take good care of my Tomi," and I dragged him away.

I went into the Petland Discounts, shaking all over. I NEVER tie him up outside because people have offered me money for him, or just grabbed at him, or whatever. There are a lot of kooks around here who get very weird around my dog, since he's so little and cute. Part of me was wondering: did she had any right to take my dog?

Now I'm afraid I'll run into her again. I hope for at least not another two years. Also, considering the shape he was in when I got him, she should help pay for the trainer bills! Just kidding--sort of.

To The Dauphin in 2005

2006-10-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

Written to the Dauphin about his mid-life crisis:

I was thinking about this recently, and it occurred to me: you should be very proud of yourself, Dauphin. You've managed to do well, even though life has thrown you some very tough curves, the stress of which I can't begin to imagine. You've run your own business for years, you have a wife and children, two homes, and work that sounds like it is quite creative and challenging. You've managed to stay independent, which is a real tightrope, given our economy. Maybe none of us has had the success Dad enjoyed during his life, but then again, we were raised very differently...I think a lot of boomer children suffer from this inability to measure up to their parents' accomplishments. And Dad was brilliant, no doubt about it.

Not to mention how much you helped him in his later years, even though I know they were filled with conflict for both of you at times. The difference in your personalities, goals and management styles were bound to create friction.

One thing I have really admired about you is your capacity to love your children...I never wanted to have children, as you know.

When you first had your older daughter, I used to watch you and think, 'Where did he learn to do that?'. I see photos of myself with Dad from when I was a baby and I can see that same unqualified adoration. I don't know why it stopped for so long a time.

I've always been unable to relate to children until they're at least in their mid-teens. I was actually afraid of Lucretia's children for many years because I knew she and her husband were spewing poison about me to them. That shouldn't have mattered so much to me. That's one reason I've always been drawn strongly to animals. The absolutely unconditional affection they offer.

I remember how hurt you were that Dad didn't take an interest in your work. That was his loss, and I don't really understand it, but he was less than encouraging to all of us (although later he was more encouraging to me, ironically, after I got sick). You probably know better than I. I was very, very pleased when he came to some of my plays later in life, although usually Mom came by herself.

I just wanted to say, that whatever the components of your mid-life crisis, you have made something wonderful and significant of your life for your family and for yourself and I'm sure for many others. And you've often been there for me when I least expected it.

Watching my father die...November 17 2004

2006-10-25T14:35:00.000-05:00

In the surgeon's outer office:

It hurts so much. Dad is like a large animal, panting and bent over. A dying lion. Annette, the assistant, told me about her mother, who died of gastric cancer at 58.

At their apartment:

Mom and Dad had a screaming fight. I stayed in the kitchen and ate reheated Chinese food. Dr. BXXX broke our phone appoinment--DAMN! Will call Dr. SXXX when I get home.
Gave Dad some Listerine Pocket Packs because he loved them so much in the hosptial. Not drinking, but smoking and sleeping.

I asked him if it was like being in someone else's body, and he said, "More and more."

The Dauphin fled to Fire Island.

Losing My Mind, Again - Part One, October 2005

2006-10-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

This is a long story, so sit back.

It was in the later summer of 2005 that I found the promissory note for the money I had loaned to Dad back in 1985 purely by accident while going through some files. That September, Lucretia emailed me that I had to write a "demand letter.” We would go through the records, and if I hadn't been paid back, I would be paid back and sign a release against any future claims. It all seemed straightforward at the time. I did as I was asked. I knew the circumstances of the loan (Dad took over The Dauphin's paying me for his apartment), and the note promised that I would be paid $11K with 10% interest as of July 1, 1985. My lawyer (yes, I have an estate lawyer) said a reasonable amount of time to wait would be two weeks to be paid back. Lucretia wrote that was impossible, since she'd have to come to the city to go through Dad's records.

Things got very weird, very fast. Lucretia asked to see my financial records. I said no. They were a shambles and I didn’t want anyone else to see how much I’d fucked up over the years. This was at the same time the Dauphin was freaking over Lucretia’s executor's fee, so there was a fair amount of email fighting going on. Lucretia and I met in a coffee shop, and I showed her the last payment Dad had made (prior to that note) from The Dauphin's trust. I had gotten my trust fund about a year later, in 1986, when I turned 30, and at that time Dad's company was going down the tubes. It was around that time he told me he'd lost millions of dollars and I shouldn't expect an inheritance.

At the coffee shop, Lucretia thrust some forms from the investment firm at me, and said she wanted them faxed to her, even though it concerned my account (there were a few months unaccounted for, although I had over twenty years of reports). When I said no, I would have them sent to me, she was unpleasantly surprised. By now, if the loan were paid with interest, it would be in the neighborhood of $33K.

She mentioned compound interest, and said that if I tried to get that, she would "haul my ass through court.” (She strenuously denies having said anything to that effect, but it was a real shocker to hear that coming from her.) I said I didn't even know what that WAS, and after she explained it, I said I didn't want it anyway. Later, the investment firm couldn't find the account records because they're so old.

The situation dragged on, and frankly, I was coming apart at the seams. My inbox was filled with angry emails from everybody about the executor stuff, etc.. With the other monetary arguments about the estate, the amount of money I was requesting seemed like chump change. Then in late October, I spoke to Lucretia's estate lawyer. He almost accused me of blackmail, and what a strange coincidence it was that I had found the promissory note right before the twenty year statue of limitations expired. Then he said that confidentially, Lucretia was interested in a settlement for the principle of the loan.

The next day, I was leaving for an audition for “All My Children,” as a trucker’s girlfriend, and I was asked to come in costume. So I dressed in a denim mini, low-cut blouse, and black leather jacket (I got the part).

As I was getting ready to leave, the phone rang, and the estate lawyer gleefully informed me that the statute of limitations had run out on the promissory note, so I wouldn’t get a penny. It’s six years, not twenty. He said that paying me back was “at Lucretia’s discretion.”

When I went to Mom’s after the audition for dinner, which we had arranged prior, the first thing she said was, “It’s so depressing how easy it is for you to look slutty.”

Lucretia had talked to her about the loan. Mom threw a shit-fit, screaming things like, “Why do you care about the fucking money? It’s been twenty years! Are you going to be poor for the rest of your life?” When I was leaving, I mentioned I’d be leaving town for Thanksgiving, because it was the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death and I didn’t feel I could cope. “You just decide to get sick,” Mom snapped.

By the time I got home (DH was traveling somewhere), I remembered I’d picked up a bottle of Xanax the day before. I sat on the edge of my bed, crying, thinking about how in the past, Lucretia would have been the first person I called, but I couldn’t call her, I couldn’t call my other siblings, Dad was gone, and Mom…well, that night it felt like I lost my entire family, and suicide seemed like a reasonable option. I had the good sense to call my psychiatrist and my clinic. The next day my therapist helped me check into the Mt. Sinai loony bin, where I spent my birthday. (Sound of violins.) I was strongly urged by the doctors there to “divorce my family,” or at least severely limit my contact.

And that's how I got to spend my birthday in green hospital pajamas and foam slippers.