And yet, strangely, we're back again.  Back and not back.  This is still locked.  I'm dancing around the idea of closing down all of my internet exposures.  The mystery or glamour or allure of spilling my guts on a creepily epic level....has died down with the prospect of wanting to advance my writing career and not look like a total wingnut.  I'm aware I am a wingnut, but I can cook, dammit!  I'm sort of a domestic savant.  I hate the phrase idiot savant, I am not an idiot, but when I'm not delusional or drunk I make a mean scallop brown butter linguine.

I don't think that redeems me on anyone's terms, but I'm drinking now, and made some stuffed portobellos earlier.  Retreating from the internet is an active process now.  I will keep this blog, it is an artifact to me, a record, but I will probably keep it locked for a long time to come.  You see, my ambition gets in the way.  I want things.  I want an agent.  I want Featherless to be well-respected and allowed to exist, I don't want potential Featherless readers to  be scared away by my mutterings. A separation of the private and public is so, so essential.

I'm aware that I have a functional impairment, I am schizoaffective, but I am good at certain things.  I work hard to keep them going.  Even tonight, when the voices were telling me not to go outside, that there was danger outside, I went and got Katie her alka-seltzer from Rite-Aid.  Fetching medicine isn't one of the things I tell myself I'm good at, but I was trying to push past the delusions.

 What does redeem me from the damning status of mentally ill disabled.  Does anything?  Do I need to be redeemed, I enjoy the stipend and the freedom, as well as having a free pass to act like I"m 22 for the rest of my life.  The problem is I'm a greedy monster, I want to accomplish things and build that stupid CV and publish more, and thus, and thus, I need to not be quite so public about my mental issues.

And...we're back.

I had to take a little blogging vacation, I was getting too paranoid about the over-exposure of personal information on the internet, the swarm and strange omniscient feeling of a thousand staring eyes.  Even if no one is watching at all, I installed a statcounter (wave, it can see you, too) and realized only my dear few read this thing anyway.  But, for a few months there, I really had to close up the slats and batten down the hatches.  Pardon the terrible metaphors.  But I missed blogging.  I'm back.

Back, and, then, to what?  What has changed?  It's January.   I last wrote in October.  Katie and I are still planning our wedding, which draws ever closer.  A few holidays happened...yes.  I grew a bit disillusioned with tumblr, which seems so image-based and less tolerant of lengthy text posts.  I separated my personal from my professional tumblr and found both to be less fun. I think part of the frission of disclosure, the glamour of vamping before the invisible eye of the computer, was that it was so scandalously labeled with my full name.  Heavens.  I'm unemployable for sure.  And, well, still unemployed.

It's hot today, it's one of those deathly hot days where the melting sets in and the fact that we returned the air conditioner so that I could afford to go to the doctor begins to seem like one of those Faustian bargains.  It's okay, though.  Apart from the fact that the veils have been taken off my eyes as to the transparency of the internet, the contact points reached and transgressed....I see you.  You see me.  Hi googlebot.  Let's shake hands and be friends.

Sweep the crazy-talk to the side of the table, Andrea, you're trying to blog. Yes.  I am quite happy today, despite the fact that a new creditor has added her name to the roster.  Hi Denise. We will never be friends. I am happy today because I got into the writer's workshop that I applied to.  Wordlab.  This will be my first foray into the organized workshop setting, into any sort of organized thing that is not hanging out with my friends or an event of some sort, since CalArts.  Since my breakdown.  I am excited, a little nervous, going over poems and stories and novel scraps and trying to bring some text to the table to work with.

Today it is so hot, though.  I have opened the windows, I have both fans on, I am wearing a sundress.  The bunny is lost somewhere in the apartment, I assume he is asleep under the bed.

After a bit of a health breakdown, I'm back up to normalcy again.

First the ears were lavaged with the scary-looking syringe, by the nice folks and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center.  It is so amusing to me that gay culture has advanced to such a degree that I can go to an all-gay hospital and get my earwax/deafness problem addressed.  It's good to be a lesbian in Los Angeles.  And now I am no longer Helen Keller.

Then, of course, in the usual way that things go from better to bad to worse to horrible to awesome to hilariously ridic and back down to broken, I ran out of Ativan for two days and was all sorts of out of sorts.  Luckily I didn't end up in the ER this time, as I avoided espresso shots (multiple and singular) and wikipedia surveillance articles, I had my hands full with sleep lost over auditory hallucinations of circus music (later figured out to be the neighbor's windchimes), mixed with fears of gang shootings.  I pulled myself off the mattress, threw water on my face and went to the psychiatrist, who wrote me extra refills on the anti-anxiety meds, and told me that my fears of walking at night in Echo Park were very real, that gangs were not funny, that I was right to feel that danger did lurk in my neighborhood at night.

And for the first time he asked me about my plans for the future, as if I had a future beyond being a mental patient.  I told him about featherless, and he seemed very surprised and pleased.  He mentioned work or school, neither of which I really feel quite ready for (well, school I can't afford, I'm about to default on my loans already, and work....who would give me a job, if they aren't hiring my more sane and qualified friends)

But productivity.  I told him about the novel I'm working on, and about how I'm thinking of taking a writing workshop to help focus and drive accountability in the text.  Basically to kick myself in the ass to work on this book.

Then I went home and slept, renewed my prescriptions,  slept even more, and finally the Ativan and Topamax and Abilify on my system evened me out and I felt better, normal, functional.

I had realized, earlier that day, lying on the bed next to my sleeping girlfriend. Waiting and wanting my anti-anxiety medication, all the anxious worried came back.  My fears that after, essentially, being out of normal society for three years, not working, not being in school, just focusing on my disorder, taking medication, going to therapy....that I had lost fundamental skills and functioning that I would not be able to gain back.  Sure, I have a lovely and supportive group of friends, I am not totally isolated, and they have helped me keep from becoming an alcoholic recluse.  Katie has been integral to my healing and regaining functioning.  But it just takes the lack, the absence of one or two of these little white pills, and the whole fragile structure falls to pieces.  I feel like it would be irresponsible for me to commit to something like a full-time job, knowing that I could fall apart at any moment, that my stability is so fragile.

But, regaining confidence after being out of the loop so long, it is difficult.  It has been a long, gradual process, for a long time I would never think of going to a bar, or a club, or an art event outside of CalArts.  Now I feel more comfortable doing these things.  The long trajectory from the pit of isolation in post-graduation psychosis in North Hollywood to now, where things are moving up and coming together, it is a journey, and it is not yet over,  I have a long way to go.

My attempt at Katie's Dulce de Leche cake came out looking more like this:
Yet was quite delicious  Not a crumb remained the next morning, when I awoke from my drunken stupor.  Yes, I overindulged a bit in the vodka department, too much stress over too many commitments, a day spent cooking from dawn till dusk, washing sink after sink of dishes, the tension of entertaining when one must put on the bright face of happy house.  We are happy here, in the happy house, and it is true, we are.

But there are those moments when I drop my lipstick and take an extra Lorazepam just to make it through the party.  Perhaps we have been entertaining overmuch.  It is the mania, and it is the hypomania.  Bipolar disorder plays tricks, it plays the trick of , "I'm normal," and the trick of, 'If I take my pills I'm just like everyone else and everything will be normal."  And in many ways, on many levels, I act like and have the capacities of a normal 33 year old woman.  Who hasn't worked in three years.  And who hears voices on the north side of the apartment.  Who will clean the apartment loyally and not leave it until 3 pm each day.  Who thinks her mail is being stolen when it doesn't show up.  Who checks the mail seven times a day. Who takes five pills a day.  Who is a lesbian.  Who has paranoid delusions.  There are many reasons that I am and am not quite as others.

I am working on an novel and it is difficult as always.  Featherless is coming along more successfully.  We are quite excited for August's lineup of poets, which will be announced at the beginning of the month.  There is talk of a combined reality institute and featherless happening, a date has not yet been set for this, it is in the very nebulous planning stages.  I am finding that I really enjoy setting up and holding events.  It is exciting  to watch each one take shape, as we gather the writers and the bartender and door people and frantically run around the day off with veggie trays and then in a warm wash of light it all comes together, in Brenda's beautiful Wordspace.

 

Shakedown, the wheat from the chaff.  As Katie's parent's left and she and I settled into our new lives together, I did some looking into the SSDI "Ticket to Work" Program. By this program, disabled people currently receiving social security funds can experiment with working under supported conditions to see if it is something that they can handle.  I feel like I am moderately stabilized on the Wellbutrin, and I am interested in taking on new challenges at the moment.  However, what I found was not promising.

After perusing the internet for what seemed like hours, the "Employment Networks" and "Vocational Rehabilitation" facilities (their jargon, not mine) that I was able to locate in my vicinity offered very limited employment choices.  Now, I'm well aware that we are in a recession, and were I not disabled, even with my schmacy education I would not necessarily be able to find anything at all.  Due to my publication record I would not pass background checks, so that dismisses a certain range of jobs, and then there's the whole reason I'm on disability on the first place, a clear verdict of unemployability would make keeping what I could get rather difficult.

The premise of working within a supported setting that acknowledged the disability, that had seemed encouraging.  One night, talking to Omar, making "golden ticket" jokes, he suggested that maybe I could get some nice library job, given my qualifications, and I felt hopeful about the process.

However, upon looking at the employment networks, they all grouped the disabled together -all together - in their employment groups, meaning special snowflake me would me working side by side on the factory floor with the severely developmentally disabled, down syndrome fellas, (retards) all of us doing either custodial or factory/packaging sort of work.  Let me show you a picture, from Build Industries website. My employment here would be brief, and death would come quickly and blessedly.

I imagine myself as the maniacal chick in the teal jumpsuit.  There was also the option of sweeping floors in the Goodwill.

So, I called my father for advice.  He said, "if you go into a situation like that, you are doomed to failure".  He said, "You have everything you need right now all lined up to write another book.  What are you doing not writing another book?  Treat it like a job, and just haul ass on it until it's done, sell it, and write another one.  That's your job, and you'll be much happy doing that than cleaning toilets with epileptics or whatever."

I thought...huh.  He's RIGHT.  So, manic me got to work.

Feeling a bit better today.  I went to see my psychiatrist and got a pill switcheroo.  Off with the lexapro and lamictal, on with the wellbutrin and topamax.  I am feeling pleased and hopeful.  Preliminary internet research predicts drastic weight loss, I'm so, so ready.

It's a hot night in echo park and downtown shimmers from the window, silver and orange skyscrapers tipped with red lights.  The ground is darker than the sky, the freeways hustles always.  The cat and rabbit are flopped, waiting, waiting for the evening to cool and the fan to end its squeaking.

Last night was really horrible, the death of Athena just triggered this horrible depression, and I kind of went off the deep end.  They are together again now, and it is time for me to move on. I can, I should, I just really should hose off and move the empty cage, fold it up in the closet so I don't have to look at it and see death.

I'm hoping that the new antidepressants lift me up a bit.  There's only so much one can block things and blind things.  Last night I was staring the perceived emptiness of my life square in the face, and it took ambien, ativan, a good nights sleep and some quality time with my dear girlfriend to really put me to rights.

My life is not empty.  It was, I think, the feeling after finishing two fairly all-consuming (and again narcissistic) projects, that of redoing my website with the tumblr platform and embedding my blog with amazon tags (hi, amazon) and enhancing the links and pics and whatnot.  As I'm on SSDI, I have to assign myself projects or else I go batshit. 

An old writing teacher at CalArts used to talk about my thesis as an effort to fill the void with anything and everything, whether drugs, sex, rampant socializing, boozing it up, etc...  Now in my newly cleaned up life, there are far fewer things I am willing to throw into that void.  I seem to have latched on to the internet as a way to fill that, the emptiness of living, free time mangement, etc...

That's an equation I can accept.  I remember the old devil's bargain a friend and I made, pinky-swore, that we'd rather be drug addicts than fat. I'm done with drugs, and trying to be done with fat.  What next?  Veganism? Scientology?  Reiki?  Master Cleanse?  Oh hell no.

I'm lashing my wagon to pills.  please, get me over this pass.

I have decided that it might be wiser to stop looking for the cameras all the time.

All of this anxious paranoia came to a head on Saturday, after a really lovely week of perhaps-manic partying and the like:

Monday: Bunny funeral, sadness and vodka.
Tuesday: Stephen and I went to wildness, met some nice people and danced, it ended up surprisingly fun.
Wednesday: Cozy times with Katie
Thursday: Alex Castle came over, and he, Stephen, Katie and I drank and played the ungame.  At some point I put on the romper and romped.
Friday: Woke up with a nasty cold sore, but then Jonathan came to visit, we hung out with him and Rob and Stephen, did tarot readings, ate pupusas, had a lovely day into the evening, when Stephen's friend Mario came over and we all did interpretive dancing in the kitchen.

Whew.  I am not usually quite this social.  Problem is, somewhere along this lovely trail of amusing funtimes, I ran out of ativan/lorazepam.  Took the last one on Friday, and work up Saturday with an ungodly case of the withdrawals.

So, no make-up, just a bloody pusing cold sore (lovely!). I work up early after a restless sleep, rife with nightmares of voices outside, the police stalking me, my creditors investigating me, my parents, even, whom I know are way too busy to stand outside my bedroom window.

I woke up around six and decided a booster shot of espresso was necessary.  Had four shots from the machine, then read the wikipedia article on surveillance.  This is probably the worst thing I could have done.  I had taken my usual pillsies that morning (abilify, lamictal, lexapro, but no ativan) and read a little bit of The Peep Diaries, so by that point my paranoid psychosis was in full swing.  Armed with Katie's big black hoodie and peering anxiously out of the curtain, I decided that there must be someone out there watching me.

Looking for the camera, looking for the camera.

And then...the withdrawals began to escalate.  I had chills, shaking, shaking so hard I thought I was heading into another seizure.  Voices whispering watching.  I kept throwing up first coffee, then bile, then water, then mucous, more bile, forget eating anything today.

Katie woke up and we decided I should go to the ER.  This is the sort of decision I had been fearing for along time, because I fear being locked up in the psych ward again, of course, and I'm not so keen on the huge bills.
But, ativan withdrawals can be fatal, and I knew my immune system was way down.

The hospital ended up being not that bad, not at all as bad as I had anticipated and feared.  There was no one else in the Emergency Room except for an old couple and a young women crying hysterically into a salad bowl.  I got in fairly quickly, and after telling my story several times, showing them my prescription bottles and
talking to a social worker who thought the cold sore indicated domestic abuse....soon I was sitting there on the stretcher with a pill of subcutanious ativan dissolving under my tongue.

All the jitters and the voices and the seizure-fear shaking gushed into a warm pile of loopy-loos.  I felt normal again.  I felt happy and silly and calm.  Soon Katie and I were joking about what the devices on the wall must be for, and all was well.

So after that experience, I've decided I must be more careful, both with allocating my prescriptions (I have a pill wheel), and with doing things that aggravate my anxiety.  The night after getting out of the hospital, I watched Lawrence Welk with Katie and Stephen, and drank chicken broth and popsicles.  Slept for the entire next day and night after that.

Now it's Monday, and time to think and work again, if I can.  I'm on my third cup of coffee, and it must stop here, I think, no more caffeine.  Katie-dear is still sleeping.  I have been thinking about what I can do to not feed the paranoid anxiety, and that means:

• not going to things like the Psychiatry Museum of Death
• not researching surveillance and especially not on dubious internet sources
• not rereading The Peep Diaries, as much as I would like to
• taking one mg in the morning and one at night, as opposed to both in the am.
• Stop looking for the cameras.  Sure, they're there, there were several in the ER, even in the room I was in, but it just validates the paranoia to keep spotting them.
  

I'm dying my hair right now, the scalp stinging.  Black, of course.

Every few weeks I go on a frenetic mind-blast of paranoia.  Late nights hearing voices yammering about what I may and may have not done or seen or be or become.  The knawing cruelty of unpaid student loan debt.  The general tizzy.

I suppose today is the anniversary of 9-11.  Well.  Enough has been said on this topic.

More exciting anniversaries to come - October 3rd is me and Katie's anniversary.    October is the release date of the book.  October is Halloween, for which I am going to be Ashley, and Katie is going to be Farrah, from Rock of Love Bus/Charm School.

October is also my 33rd birthday - jumping jesus on a pogo stick.

Really, though, the level of potential surveillance through facebook - blogs - internet - support group websites - the mind boggles.  How little privacy we really have, or do you really want.  My therapy records could be subpoenaed if necessary...nothing very interesting, though. I suppose it all could be written off to the submergent purrings of potential schizophrenia.

I'm up early revising a poem. problem at hand: translation. Does what seemed clever in Spanish and French work in plain bold English. Then to Swedish.

Cold water: the dark of morning

Two websites that have caught my eye recently are shrink rap and crazy meds. Both deal with the wide fun world of psychiatry: the former from the perspective of the professional, the latter from the consumer. Shrink rap has at times made me so angry I almost had a seizure at the computer. "How dare they! So this is what that bastard thinks when he ignores me and throws prescriptions." Crazy meds, while a bit web-design challenged (let he who is without sin, yes, true) has been quite helpful.

I'm sitting here on a day in late March. Realizing that so much is the boundary between the personal/private and professional. Since going on disability I have let myself be resoundingly unprofessional. Perhaps that is okay. Perhaps everything is okay.

I have been hypomanic lately, fairly gleeful at times, at the moment a little calmer. It's time for projects, rebuilding, drafting. It's a time when I realize that I need to write a new book, or a new writing project of some sort.

Free time management.

I'm doing an interview for Prim and Unproper, I'll put the link up when it comes out.

It felt really good to unload all of that. The cockroaches, actually, have been absent this morning, perhaps the extermination effort did work.

I took the rats home today after, I'm so glad they're back with me. Getting that cage in the car was...a lot. But echoed by the amusing satisfaction of walking around carrying a giant cage of rats. There are exactly two.

I have been reading Vice's mental illness issue. Should have known this might be a mistake. What started out as funny and validating became, wow, I'm a circus animal to these bastard hipsters. Then I relaxed and realized...ah, silly me, it's Vice, a little is great and funny and all that, and too much and I get queasy.

I am tired, but somehow sleep is difficult.

The Group Home photos were especially depressing. There's something about...okay, where in the DSM-IV or where else does it say crazy people like collages? Is it just lazy caretaker art therapy? Sorry, no crayons for you!

And then the really annoying part about being in the psych ward and being told to make a collage is they won't give you scissors. Of course not, a pen is a big deal. It's all about wet and tear.

There's something validating about looking up bad tattoos and clown tattoos.

Is there something here about the desire to feel better than/worse than someone? Perhaps.

That felt really good. Really good. I was looking back over this and realized that a few entries ago I was on bliss farm. It's called Ativan. It's a great medication. Every month I run out of it, and the real weight (I can't bring myself to say weight of the world, It's the CalArts talking) I don't know, I crash really badly and hear voices for a bit and get really cranky. This time I accidentally took too many when I was going to my grandmother's funeral, which involved a lot of extended parent time, including a 10 hour car ride with them on the way back home.

Here's a few others for the list, it's really satisfying to complain right now, and I'm awake, so why not. These are more trivial. They are also less obvious. Wow, that's obvious.

1. Blogs with ads all over the sidebars.

2. The fact that my mental health office is so overwhelmed that they have 400 people and two psychiatrists, so I see him for 10 minutes every 2-4 months. During which time he throws pills at me (thanks!!!) and is notably absent if they backfire.

3. The fact that I'm so overwhelmed by living (and the clutter in my apartment, which is getting really gross) and a number of other things that it's immobilizing, and instead I pop pills and complain.

4. Lights going out in my apartment. Wow, it's darker. And I wonder why I can't/don't read books anymore and instead read internettery obsessively.

5. I was thinking about all of this overwhelmed feeling, my difficulty with cleaning or sometimes leaving my apartment, and traced some of it back to my parent's impossibly high expectations of me. From youth through high school, I excelled, gifted program, lala, straight As, won awards, driven, all that, blew it out early, and then I went to college and had a nervous breakdown. All that schizophrenia and bipolar in the family, that has popped up all over since, came bursting out. Now, a decade later, I've actually accomplished some of the big things I wanted to do, but somehow for them it's not enough.

My father's father (schizophrenic) used to sit him on his knee and say, "don't end up like me, get an education, get ahead in life." And so he'll sit down and check off how many children of our generation have doctorates. It was his big dream to have his daughters get married, have kids, get PhDs, have great jobs, etc.. etc...

Well, I'm never going to do those things. There would be absolutely no point to me getting in more student loan debt. I'm fundamentally unemployable. I don't play well in groups. The economy is in free-fall. I barely made it through my masters. I'm done.

Anyway, he projects onto me his wishes and expectations for the life he wanted me to have, and he's a good and kind man and all that, but...it's so unrealistic. My mother, too, she's great, but she has this whole idea for how I was supposed to turn out, and I didn't. And they love reminding me of how I'm failing.

Anyway, Ativan is great. It really helped me get through that car ride. Thinking about my parents expectations is really depressing. I should probably save it for therapy. But wait...I'm not in therapy.

For some reason I've had a lot of trouble getting myself to sit down and write. Anything. To the point that I feel ridiculous calling myself a writer. It feels so pretentious, really, but it's a nicer catch-all identity than eccentric deadbeat who has given up on life and needs a kick in the ass to... to... do any number of things. Finally today I sat down and made a list of things that had been bothering me that felt so obvious they were not recognizable to someone.

WTF???

1. Obviously...Scientology is a creepy cult! I went walking in Hollywood today, and, like anywhere else in LA, there was a giant, ridiculously opulent Scientology building.

2. O...hai, i'z in yr list.

3. Obviously...private student loans, I'm the wrong person to prop up your collapsing economy, I have a degenerative brain disorder. I'm mentally ill. I don't know where that money is going to come from. This one because I realize now that it's become my hobby, getting mouthy and overly personal with student loan people, namely those that call about the ridiculously desperate private loan I took out to go to CalArts. The federal people, bless-em, have this wonderful ability to defer endlessly, but this bank...wow, you only have a year's deferment...wow, I have to fill out a form that explains how it's all going to change in a year...I owe you ungodly thousands of dollars...DEGENERATIVE BRAIN DISORDER!!! It makes me feel like one of those lonely elderly people that get all excited when someone calls them, and then get all chatty with the telemarketers. It's in fact, very much the same. But, in a sense, I don't know what else to say. This brings up all these issues of making bipolar disorder my identity...my mother would say "leaning on it." But, then again, I'm on disability, I'm living on a very tight budget right now, and, really, I feel amazingly lucky that I still have my apartment, I will live on crackers to keep it, but, WTF CITIBANK???

Oh, by the way, thanks for the amazing education. I now plan to sit on it and let my brain turn to slush.

4. Obviously...website + rats (does not equal) small business. It used to be amusing when I got these sales calls. It's not anymore. No, I don't want to promote my small business. No, my employees don't need anything. They eat birdseed. Okay.

5. Obviously...guy that chased us off that mall-ish courtyard by the Kodak theatre today. No, I'm not impressed by you sticking your face in the fountain. Please stop chasing me. This sort of shenanigans makes me so glad that I'm the sort of orderly mentally ill person that does not harass strangers on the street. Take away my funding and the vault of pills...might get there. I love making idle threats to the internet.

6. Obviously...Seagrams has all the gross vodka flavors. Wild grape? Espresso? (this is sort of like caffeinated Cisco...danger) Blackberry? Is Nyquil far behind? Did you play tennis with the guy from Smirnoff and lose?

7. Obviously...Tegretol is not helpful. I'm not making foolish manic decisions, but it's yet another Faustian bargain, of taking it before I go to bed and waking up in cold sweats of four foot tall cockroaches chasing me as I vomit sardines and wake up in a sweater dress caked with my own feces, only to wake up again and realize...yes, this happens every time I take it before bed... Or, alternately, taking it in the midafternoon and feeling like I've been lobotomized and being socially retarded for the rest of the evening, only to realize, well, it's an anticonvulsant, so if I go off of it, I'll have seizures. Fantastic.

8. Obviously...cockroach problem is not eliminated.

On a more personal level...I got my SSDI bebi!!!

et mi corazon esta conmigo

I think that everything is going to resolve itself.

There's an old song that goes..."everythings all right, everything's fine."

When I got out of grad school, I thought I would be a teacher. I went on SSI. It was the summer of sangria and cards, of serotonin sanitaria sangria schizophrenia. It was the summer I decided my life was over. It was the summer I got a book deal and lost the will to live. It was the summer I got a blue rat baby and regained it.

Summer. I read the philosophy of Andy Warhol every morning and felt blank.

Just awoke from a horrible dream.

That I was a contestant in a reality TV show, aping grad school.

Nobody knows, the trouble I've seen. Actually, some do.

Is it possible to have post-traumatic stress disorder from one's education?

I am watching my friends go back to school. It is through a glass, darkly. I am too sick to go back to anything. It was a dream marked by pity. I am going on disability because I can't work, my degenerative brain condition has become overwhelming.

I tell the internet this. The internet listens.

I think this dream was triggered by the comedy show taping I went to last night. There was a joke, under the hot lights, a comedian in a shiny shirt said, "it's like, emo, you know, they used to say, "are you ready to rock?" Now it's "are you ready to blog?""

Well hells yeah, I'm ready. What else am I supposed to do at five in the morning?
And yes, I did get these skinny jeans at hot topic.

Emo jokes weren't the trouble, though.

For three hours we watched six back to back episodes of a comedy show that will remain nameless, E and I. It was fascinating, the huge cameras, the forced applause, the occasional zinger, the blonde lady who came out during breaks to shine the host's bald head.

I watched in the audience, with surprise, because I usually can't handle crowds. But we were all neatly pointed forwards, with the assumption that we didn't have to speak.

The trouble came halfway into the third episode. The large iced coffee that had been so delicious before the show made it's presence uncomfortably known, amidst a barrage of bed-wetting jokes. No, this isn't the story of how Andrea wet her pants on national tv, it's more like how I made a break for it.

I got up, and wobbled past the three people in my aisle, hopping awkwardly to the floor. The douche in charge darted up and said, "Hey, hey, you don't walk out on a Dick Blick taping. You just don't do that."

At this point I should have said something witty about irrigating my neighbors or something, but I hissed the actual reason and a nice "key grip" or whatever they're called walked me to the potty.

But somehow there was this hot wave of humiliation. This wasn't my job, I wasn't getting paid, like some of the audience, but I was screwing up drastic when all I had to do was sit and laugh. I had been panicking, watching the swerving spotlights, the yells of "applause, applause."

I leaned against the wall of the bathroom, nauseous, thinking, you let douchy mcdoucherkins over here shame you, you're a grown woman?

It is perhaps a segue from jr high, from high school, college, grad school. The concept of shame in the body, in what the body does, how it acts out, sweats, fucks, produces waste.

It's really not that big of a deal, I told myself. are we ready to blog? Godammit, yes.

I enjoyed the rest of the show quite a bit, and after E dropped me home, I cuddled with my boo and fell asleep.

It wasn't until night, and dreams. I dreamed that I was trapped on a reality tv show involving elements from the previous, my pervasive agoraphobia and mistrust of others (paranoia, yep yep yep), and gossip girl!

Woke up in a cold sweat. Are we ready to blog?

And how.

It's Saturday morning, and I'm reading Elizabeth Wurtzel.

This book is so, so funny to me right now. Her grandiose self-absorption, her delusions and manic riffs. It is perhaps not acceptable to say that bipolar disorder and addiction are comic topics...but I've been there, so somehow it's real..though, of course, didn't have her resources.

Human dread, raised to the next level...yes. And somehow, because she is so ridiculous, when she gets arrested and panics about not getting to take her Ritalin and read a magazine in the cell...it becomes divine. Because, really, I would be terrified, too, especially if denied my medication for a prolonged period of time. Seizures are not cute, nor are they pleasant.

Reviews of this book

It gets a bit annoying after a point, by about page 125...yes, that's the point I'm at now. But, hey.