Everything I touch is poisoned.  I am a walking trauma.  I fail at every turn.  I hurt more than I help.  I fail others as I am failing.  My world is a black hole that I want you to avoid.  Save yourself:  Cut me loose.

You may have noticed that I've been a tad tiresome of late.  I have been struggling with an ongoing low, which I really didn't want to face or own up to.  It has secretly alarmed me, injured me and fecked with my mind.  In particular, my humour, something I rely on heavily.

On Tuesday I told my p-doc that I failed to see the point of continuing medication, as I end up feeling this way.  Typical of my depressions, I cannot recall being happy or content.  He reminded me that I have felt better and that we'd wanted to see me stable for a while before I start to come off the meds.

To that end, he has prescribed a dopamine medication, as the Ritalin worked so well back when.  As it is not usually a p-med, the fecking insurance refused to pay for the $160 it took to fill the script.  I am so sick of the way I feel, that after I walked Griffin, I called CVS back and said I'd pay for it.

Which right now means that Cricket will pay for it.  She has shelled out the money to pay for me to go back to school, and more stuff than my pee-brain can handle right now.  Yet she is insisting I make sure I am well myself, first, before paying her back.

I hate myself right now.  I wish I were done.  I am too exhausted and overwhelmed.  I would leave this mortal coil, were it just me.  This sea of crashing depression is cold, harsh, relentless, with rip-tides and strong currents.  Even if I find a life-raft, it will be a short respite before I am tossed into the sucking, dark waters of despair again.  How can I continue and why?

For now I have to live.  I have no option.  My mess is something I would not wish on anyone.  I have cats that I have chosen to care for.  I have an incalculable debt to Cricket, which has nothing to do with money.  In short, for now I am living for her and my beasties, because I cannot bear to live for myself.

I'll try and write, but please understand if I am not answering emails, comments and calls.  Thank you.

I just wrote a huge bitch-fest which I subsequently erased.  It was possibly warranted, but definitely horrendous.  Happy News and all that.  A gift:  I will not bitch tonight.

In light of that, I have scrubbed the sad and deadly words I wrote a timeless click of madness and sorrow ago.  Instead, I offer the sweet love of animals, the visions given by our minds and souls and the endless drift of soft clouds of loss and life.

I saw my p-doc today.  As I watched him looking at my shaky, restless hands I tried to slow the stream of words.  I told him that I was much better than the last time we'd met, but that I was rapid cycling.  My speech rushes along to push the relentless patter of my mind out, while I handle my anxiety by tearing at the skin of my feet.  Waves of depression swell over me, leaving me achingly sad.

He took me off Pristiq, which we'd added last month as I was at the outside level of Effexor that SSDI insurance covers; 300mgs.  I have done well on 450mgs, but can't afford it.  Pristiq works better at lower doses and Doctor Z said that my rapid cycling was a result of too much anti-depressants.  I have been unable to work, because of my stressed mind, which is not great, in light of the expense of life, this season and the on-going debt that I owe Cricket.

Cricket is my best friend, who has sometimes been confused, by some, like my doctors on lock-down wards as my imaginary friend, or when they meet her, my life paramour.  She stood by me when my sister shut me out, when my father refused to see me ever again, when I should have been put in a State Hospital.  Which, without her, would have been my lot in life.

Anyway, I was over at Liz Spikol's site, where she had a link to an article about Holiday Depression Busters.  I haven't read the whole piece, because of relentless pop-up ads, one of which gave me pause.  The ad was for Pristiq, which along with being annoying, was a little offensive to me.

The ad features a woman of no particular ethnicity.  (Having studied voice-over as well as on-camera acting, I know that is now highly desirable, after decades of Caucasion persuasion).  But my problem lay not with the woman, but with her wardrobe and pose, which revealed a plunging cleavage.  It may just be me, but if I, as a heterosexual woman, finds my eyes looking at the decolletage, then what does it say about me, the ad and the message therein?

I couldn't shake it, you know?  That sick, cloying, self-ignited smell of sadness, of burn-out, of defeat and depression.  Waking from a tortured sleep, drifts of the last nightmare still smudged my mind, I realized dully that a life had been lost, again, to the power of addiction.

Despair and grief took a firm grip on me.  I was shaken and exhausted by the efforts that I'd made for the past week, in a losing battle.  The woman who had fought so hard to overcome her addiction, in part through me, had succumbed.  I only knew this because she never called me back after we split, nor her girlfriend, nor the old neighbour who'd put her up, temporarily.

I was supposed to go with Cricket to the shore today.  But the concept of even making words come out of my mouth was daunting.  I wanted nothing to do with people.  Nothing to do with the excitement of a holiday that isn't even mine.  I wanted nothing, but to be alone and lick my psychic wounds.  I wanted that ephemeral space that is not granted to those in need.  I wanted hope.

I went and had a terrible meal at the Mexican Post.  I should have stayed in my neighbourhood, where the food is authentic, cheap and great.  I next went and spent mad money at Head House Books, because this brand of escapism seems reasonable right now.  I moved onto Atlantic Books next, relentless in my persuit of other people's lives, other people's visions, other people's perfection.

I have an obscene ability to read.  I devour works on paper as a starving creature eats.  I've tried to curb my reading appetite by reading books of volume, complex concepts and even "quitting".  Of the latter, I would say that this was instrumental in creating this blog.  A frustrated reader attempting to write.

Speaking the truth is a quality that I have learned over the years.  It's a value that I have embraced, maybe to the discomfit of others.  The problem is, is that though the truth may set you free, some still are wrapped in the false promise that addiction states.

Addiction, like a mental illness, wants you to believe that you are well, regardless.  It, like mental illness, bares the odd fruit of desire, for it's effects.  It makes you believe that even though it has made you depraved, it is your best friend.  I believe that it induces that most confusing of diagnoses: Stockholm Syndrome.  How can one not help but fall for the drug or alcohol that at first made us feel everything that we had longed for?

The problem is, of course, ourselves.  Our mind and body have been usurped by a silent predator:  Desire.  The wish to be normal, fit in, feel O.K. about ourselves, to be beautiful, be happy, accepted, loved and painless.  For the addict, alcohol/drugs become a gateway to these desires, but ultimately backstabbing, lethal and relentlessly violent, the alcohol/drugs slam doors shut.  The only option left is surprisingly hard.

Death, or a sober life?

Well, I canceled all my social engagements for the day. Now I'm free to grub about in the disaster that's my back yard. I've hacked back the fig from it's jaunt into my neighbour Junior's tidy yard. I've chopped down a young tree that showed up through bird poop, which was threatening to break my other neighbour's new fence if I didn't murder it soon. I've spent a few hours laying brick down over the cracked and weedy concrete and I feel sweaty and oh, so much better! Amazing!

The problem of living with a Bipolar II Diagnoses, is that you can never be sure if you are physically or mentally sick. For example, two days ago I started thinking that cutting myself would be something that I should do. I didn't, partly because I was stabbed by the sharp claws of my bete noire chat, Henrietta. I bled, it hurt and the impulse was gone. In the meantime, I'm in serious "crash" mode. It's probably P.M.S., which doesn't make it any easier.

I haven't worked the past couple of days because I just couldn't do it. Right now, I never want to go to work again. Ever. Trust me when I say that this is NOT a slacker point of view. I take pride in my work. But I feel so overwhelmed, that the idea of going anywhere is causing me to literally quake. The thought of talking to anyone besides my best friend Cricket fills me with horror. I have a great friend of mine from High School, who is couch-surfing here whilst he looks for apartments. I'm avoiding him like the plague. He was supposed to leave yesterday, but he's still here.

So I'm hiding in my room, because I don't want him to know that I'm here and struggling. He'd probably try and apply stuff from his own problematic mental health issues. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear him. I don't want anything from anyone. I just want to never feel this fragile, low, dreadful and fucked up again.