I'm 46 today. I don't feel 46, however that's supposed to feel. My Mom is 68 and she doesn't feel 68, so maybe we're just all playing catch up. I remember nursing school like it was yesterday, and that was 15 years ago. A patient told me recently that though he was 70, it was only yesterday that he was 50. Where is all this time going? When you're a kid it just crawls by. The whole year is just spent waiting for Christmas...and it takes forever. For me, Christmas will be here tomorrow and I won't be ready for it. So, I'm 46. Middle-aged. Over the hill? Not quite, I guess, because it still feels like I'm crawling up it.

So, I'm going to enjoy the day...every minute of it.

March 1st. It seems like only yesterday that it was Christmas. And here it is, March. I think time passes so quickly when we get older is that we rush through our work days, we wish we were anywhere else but work, and those minutes just fly by, whether it seems that way or not. I can't tell you how many times I hear a co-worker say, "I can't wait for this day to be over." And if we say that every day, we rush through 40 hours of our lives, week after week after week, until it is nearly Christmas again and we wonder where it all went. I was admitting a patient last week who said, "I'll be 63 next week and it seems like only yesterday that I was celebrating my 40th birthday." Why does time go by so quickly when we're older? Can it be that we're not living in the moment? I've been very conscious of this lately, and I've been playing that statement again and again in my mind that my therapist used to say to me, "Tracy, keep your head where your body is." I have not been doing that. When I'm at work I am watching that clock, baby, and it does fly by. If I stopped myself from doing that, would time suddenly slow down and let me appreciate every moment? Instead of saying, "I can't wait for Saturday!" should I instead be appreciating Thursday for what it is?

It's a personal experiment I'll be trying this week. Instead of rushing to work, I'm going to appreciate the drive. Instead of watching that clock, I'm going to gaze in the wonder that is that very minute. If not for anything else, it will at least be a slow, steady practice of keeping my head where my body is. It will at least be that.

Lately I feel like I'm the only one left blogging in the world. My readers have long since abandoned ship and I am at the mast, alone, writing to no one, writing nothing of significance or beauty. But I can't seem to give it up. While everyone else is Facebooking and Twittering (Tweeting?), I continue to write here, swimming against the tide and wondering why I still do it. This blog will be 8 years old this year and the only regret I have in writing it is that a few years back I did a serious edit and deleted many of its entries. I shouldn't have done that. But it doesn't matter now, does it?

There remains in me a desire to write it all down...not for fame, not for fortune, not for anything other than documenting my own life, with all its wonder and torture, despite the fact that I am the only one reading it. And though the waves are as a tall as mountains sometimes, I write and write and write. I write more when the tide is so strong as to pull me under, because writing about it makes it all manageable.

I remain in an upright position these days. I push through the depression and I am fucking slaying the beast at every turn. And I am writing, as dry and empty as it may be, because I have to. I don't know why, and I've stopped questioning it, but I think if I didn't write, it would all be over for me...no matter who is or isn't reading. I will just keep typing out one word after another until I die.

I'm back. I don't know what happened to my blog...I didn't fix it or anything, it just came back on its own, but here it is. We had a wonderful Christmas. Spencer got a cell phone and loves it so much he sleeps with it. I got LTD a GPS, which she so totally doesn't need but uses even to go to the store down the street. She could find her way out of a cave in Mexico, blindfolded, and drive to the center of North Dekota with one arm tied behind her back. She is just that good. But she wanted a GPS, and a GPS she got. I got an MP3 player, which I have no idea how to use, but it's what I wanted. I also got a Bluetooth and am now one of those people you see talking to themselves in their cars. But hey, I commute and therefore am justified.

New Year's Eve was really exciting. LTD and I both worked, and Spencer saw the New Year in alone, which he much preferred, being a teenager and all. He's doing great in beauty college and talks non-stop about hair, highlights, weaving, extensions and all kinds of hair-related stuff.

I am still working. I still have an ucler, am still on anti-anxiety medication, am still losing my hair and am still smoking. My only resolution this year was to make it through work each day and to read more. Such is life. Such is life.

It's so good to be back. I've missed writing. I will leave you with something a patient said to me a week or so ago. She came in refusing all medication and mad as hell. They finally had to go to court and get a forced-med order on her and then she had to take the medicine. She had also been refusing to allow people to call her by her first name. After a few days of forced meds, I took a chance and said, "Hey Jane (not her real name), how's it going today?" She turned around and looked me up and down and said, "You can call me Jane because they're stealing your soul too." How do they know?

On the box my beloved Pamprin came in were these words: Do not use this product if you have an enlarged prostate. These kinds of things really piss me off. Like that shit with the little bags of peanuts on airplanes: WARNING: May contain nuts. WTF? Spencer once saw a warning label on a blow-dryer that said, "Do not use this product while sleeping." Are these things really necessary? Did some man use Pamprin (God, for whatever reason, I cannot imagine) and then his prostate exploded? Did someone sue an airline industry because they were allergic to nuts but ate the fucking peanuts anyway because there was no warning on the bag? Who the hell slept with their blow-dryer and caught their blankets on fire? How the hell sue-happy are we anyway?

In lighter news, I just dropped off Spencer for his first day of beauty school. He's so excited, as am I, and I can't wait for him to reach the level where he'll be able to do my hair. I can never explain it to stylists the right way and it always comes out looking bad.

Speaking of total bedlam, our kitten has stripped the bottom fourth of our Christmas tree of all its ornaments. Yes, the tree looks stupid, but it's cute in its own way now. She is an absolute terror and I vow to give her up every week, but then she does something that is too adorable for words and I cave. Stupid cat.

Work sucks. There's no other way to describe it. My ulcer is rumbling as we speak. Last weekend from Friday night to Sunday morning they had 17 admissions and 26 discharges. All the places I've ever worked before, three admissions during a single shift was pushing it. This place is totally fucking ridiculous. It takes me nearly 40 minutes to get there and the whole time I'm saying to myself, "Just turn around. It's not worth it. Just turn around!" I never do, of course, and whatever hell I imagined my shift was going to be never compares even slightly to the horrific events that actually occur. I do imagine myself just walking out one night, at the cost of my nursing license. I've taken up prayer. Have I mentioned that? I actually pray on the way to work. It goes something like this, "Please God, just let me survive this night." How sad is that? Another thing I'm doing to counteract the misery I face there? I'm reading "The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich." My hell is nothing compared to what the Jews suffered in that hell. But then, how bad is your work place when you have to lighten it up by comparing it to Nazi Germany? It does suck that bad.

LTD and I saw our third anniversery come and go in October. We didn't celebrate it in the usual way, but we felt it dearly. I love her more and more every day and she is like a god to me. Now that Spencer has started school, we are all on a different shift, but she makes it workable without freaking out. And that calm rubs off on me. Well, I still worry like crazy that it's going to fall apart, but I have her staying the course. What would I do without her? Two years have unfolded and I haven't been in the psych ward. I think much of that is owed to her.

I will keep showing up for work. I will keep praying that I don't kill anyone and that no one kills me. I will do my job the best way I know how and I will eventually stop smoking again when the pressure is not so intense. But for now? God help me. God help us all.

I had my monthly psych appointment today. It was wonderfully boring. There were no symptoms to report, no lack of sleep, no episodes of mania, no spinning wildly out of control into the black abyss. We talked about my new job. We talked about Tasha becoming Spencer again. At the end of the session I said, "You see? I'm cured." He said with a smile as he shook my hand, "You're better."

I'm better. It's not quite where I want to be, but I know he's right. I'm still not where I once was--confident, self-assured, kicking ass and taking names. Well, was I ever really there? Confident? Self-assured? Just how long have I been sick? I have been sick for a long time--years and years, hiding behind my nurses uniform, hiding behind that crooked smile, running hard and fast against the tide, but mostly, hiding in places where sickness is all around me...sickness so ugly and derranged it made me look sane.

And here I am, back again. When people ask me why I was out of work for so long, I say it was because my son was in trouble and needed me home full time. That is true, mostly. He did need me. But that's not why I wasn't working, why I couldn't work. And what should I say? I toed the edge too closely and fell in? Who would get that? Who among the many nurses I work with now would say, "Oh, yeah. That can be bad." None that I've met so far. And I guess we'll just keep it that way, lest the investigators come out and start eyeing my work. When you have been mentally ill, you are ALWAYS mentally ill, no matter the circumstances or the outcome. It's a sad fact, but there it is.

So far I haven't done much of anything at work. I've been shadowing, which is simply following another nurse around and watching everything she does. I'm confident that I could start now and be competent enough to pull it off. Or would I? Who's to say? I don't know where I am, really, and if thrown in the fire, would I douse myself with foam or run screaming down the hallway? We shall see...

I will let you know when the philosophers start to talk.

We are all standing on the edge of something, looking down and over, wondering how everything is going to turn out, and not knowing...not knowing at all the outcome of this big thing. I embark on a new job tomorrow and I am afraid. I think the thing that scares me the most is not liking the people I'm going to be working with. The job I can handle. Give me the craziest, shit-slinging, balls-to-the-wall violent patient this side of the Mason-Dixon line, and I can handle it. What I can't handle? Working with mean people. I'm a Pisces. I need to know the other little fish in my tank are friendly. LTD faces losing time with me, not having me home always with her, waiting for her. I've been home for two years. I've been sick for two years. She has grown accustomed to taking care of me and now, she has to let me go to the big, wide wonder and hope that I'll be okay. And Spencer, who has changed so much that even I don't recognize him, who now prefers to be called Spencer instead of Tasha, has these great big, enormous transformations happening to him that I can neither stop nor influence in any way, and he is growing away from me, off in directions that are natural for the course of a person's life, but my god, how I want to stop him. He has passed his GED and will start college in a few months, will be studying for his driver's test, will be applying for part-time jobs...you see? I can only stand by and watch him grow up and out of my life when it has just been the two of us for sixteen years. I don't know how my mother ever survived this--five children, jumping ship one by one, seemingly months apart and all she could do was wave good-bye.

There is no good way to know that your child will be experiencing things, painful things, that you cannot stop or shield him from. There is no good way that LTD can know that letting me go back out into the world when she has been watching me hard from the watch-tower that I'll be okay. There is no way I can know that I'll like this new job and these new people.

None of us can know until we do it, until we toe the pricipice and jump. Faith must be the strongest of all feelings. But must it always be blind?

It might be my age...it certainly is my age, but I finally feel like a grown-up. Of course, it might be medication too. My moods have stabilized to a point of predictability--a calm, soothing water with a dangerous undertow that I am careful to steer clear of. There have been many changes in this house, especially of late, where things have been talked out, discussed, turned over and about. Spencer got his GED and will be signing up for beauty college in Decemeber. We'll be getting the driver's handbook for him to study so he can start driving and soon get a car. 18 is just around the corner. It's too fast. It's way too fast.

LTD and I skip along our merry way, happy and content...a few disagreements here and there but nothing so big we can't stand up under. She has been a tremendous force in my life and I don't know what I would've done without her. She is the most amazing person I know.

As for me, it looks like I'll be going back to work soon. My disability runs out this month and there is no choice for me but to return to work. I don't know how long I'll be able to sustain it, but I'll try my hardest to keep it together and not give in to that beast, however hard he tries to get me to succumb. I have a family to support. I have a mind to keep fluid. I have a soul to guard over. I have my sanity to fight for. I have sentences that end in prepositions to write.

Changes. Shmanges. I can do it.

The worst part about having insomnia is that there's nothing to do. If there are other people in your house sleeping, you can't very well vacuum the living room or clean the bathroom. Mowing the lawn is out of the question. Sounds are very loud at 3 a.m., even the clinking of plates as you are unloading the dishwasher. So I usually find myself surfing the channels and watching infomercials. The AbCircle is pretty cool. There's a new mineral based make-up out called Smooth Cover that I would've purchased had I had a valid credit card. Marie Osmond is touting a vitamin enriched something or other for menopause. When I got sick of these celebrity-endorsed ads I found myself watching, for the very first fucking time ever....Grey's Anatomy.

I used to hear co-workers talking about the episodes at work. I knew a little something about Dr. McDreamy? Is that right? Anyway, from the reports I always figured Grey's Anatomy was must-see TV that I was missing.

It was the stupidest piece of shit drivel I ever saw in my life. The acting sucked, the plot lines were contrived (there was this sick ten-year-old girl who they didn't even try to make look sick even though she had a giant tumor wrapped around all her internal organs)...man, it was just the suckiest ass shit I ever saw. I swear, it was almost as bad as the epic film "Bring it On: All or Nothing."

I'm hoping not to see it again tonight, meaning that I'd rather be sleeping, but if I'm up, I'll have to watch it. It is a sweet kind of torture to share your insomniac misery with actors on the screen who wouldn't know good drama if it flew out of their assses and sat on their faces. What could be worse? "Desperate Housewives"?

Bring it on.

I don't know if it's being in love, or feeling a deep and abiding connection with my child...it could be anything, even mania, but I've been having episodes of what can only be described as omnipotent potential. The feeling is being so happy that one drop more will open my soul a thousand miles wide, and I am well aware of feeling it, and knowing that it is a danger signal. It happened for the first time last weekend when I proclaimed that is was a "GREAT Saturday! A wonderful Saturday!" I was as high as an eagle can fly, soaring and tumbling through the ether, feeling the uplift in the takeoff and the thrill in the dive through the open air. I had to consciously say to myself, "Come down...land. You're too high. It's a long fall." It happened again this afternoon, just walking through the grocery store with my lover and I had to pull myself back...I had to stop myself from singing, from dancing through the aisles. But I wanted to spin. I wanted to twirl with that free fall into heights so expansive, it would take years to traverse the divide. I managed to calm myself down and not cause attention to myself. I managed to reign myself in and be appropriate. At the same time I had to squelch the disappointment of the moment. Why can't I dance in the grocery store if I'm this happy? Why can't I sing out loud because I'm in love? Why? Because I am heavily medicated, that's why. And as much as the medicine does its job in keeping these manic symptoms at bay, the disease itself will strive just as hard to push itself through. It is a constant battle these days, both sides of my mood taking swipes and swings at one another with me in the middle blowing the whistle and throwing the flag. The medicine is not working as well as it used to. I realize this with a sense of dread. There will be an increase, or there will be a switch, but whatever it is will cause an upheaval. What I dread most is that it will rob me of these recent episodes of overt happiness, that I will go back to the middle of the road feeling nothing in the extremes either way. I've told the story of my patients from detox...the ones sweating and struggling through pain one can barely imagine--when asked if they would rather feel that pain or feel nothing at all their answers were always the same. "I'd rather feel pain." And so would I. Give me sadness with desolation so black one can scarely see a ray of light shining through, but my God, don't make me numb. At the very least, let me have these few moments of ecstasy. The depression that follows is worth every tear. The price to pay is worth having that feeling of being weightless, of being free, of being inside the unfolding of one moment of utter happiness. All I need to do is learn how to stop it from taking over. I need to learn how to hold it all in and not let it explode all over my life and the people I love. That has always been the trick. Controlling it. How do you experience the thrill of speeding down the highway in a red convertible with the top down without pushing that gas peddle all the way to the floor? How do you stop yourself in mid-flight after realizing the jump was too high and that you are going to hit the fucking floor face-first? I don't have any of these answers. All I do now is open my mouth and swallow the meds, and hope that it will be enough.

LTD and I have been together for nearly three years. I know that's not a very long time for most people. For me, it is monumental. What goes beyond explanation is that we never fight. I've known of couples like this...couples that meshed, that flowed together so well...but I've never been a part of something like that. I always thought fighting and chaos made up the passion component of a relationship and without it, things would be very dull. Such is not the case. What is so amazing about being in a relationship like this is that when things go wrong...when an ex happens back into your life and makes things miserable...when your child has a meltdown and throws life into upheaval, the relationship becomes stronger. That is totally new to me...the ability to present a united front, to band together and face whatever ugly beast rears its head, and fight it together. The three of us have never been so close, even after experiencing some pretty horrendous shit lately. I'm just amazed. I'm just utterly amazed.

The title about says it all. LTD's father died last Thursday and was buried on Father's Day. LTD and her brothers banded together and dealt with it pretty well, but their grief during the funeral was heart-wrenching. It was only the third funeral I have ever been to, but there is something about all of them that sticks out in my mind. It is that image of the family, sitting before the casket in the front row, that embeds itself on my mind. They always look so strong, sitting together like that, that I am taken aback by the image. LTD has handled everything pretty well, but she has slept and slept and slept.

The very next day, this past Monday, Tasha had what can only be described as a total fucking meltdown. This is par for the course in transgendered teenagers. Hell, it's par for the course in "normal" teenagers. But I can't fix this. I think I could take on any other aspect of teen angst--drug addiction, alcohol abuse, truancy, social problems, self-esteem issues--hell, give me anything else, but I can not fix this. We're not dealing with normal, run of the mill self-esteem problems. We're dealing with gender dysphoria, with the fact that she is picturing herself as a girl and seeing a boy in the mirror looking back. And the explosion that occured as a result of this leveled the fucking field.

We are a family scrambling to put the pieces back together. It was a wake-up call. My eyes are wide open.

It seems to all be behind them now, past hurts...frustration and animosity. When I first met LTD, she and her father weren't that close. You could ascertain this in the way they interacted with each other, or rather, in the way they didn't interact with each other. Since his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer last year, they've been closer, not emotionally, but physically closer. They hug more. They sit closer together. There seems to be no need in hashing out the past and settling matters. They've just come to terms with the clock, and how few hours they have left on it. I watch them all the time, and it is amazing to me that forgiveness has come without words...that things are settled. Without words. Without pain. Since his diagnosis, she has told me more of the happy stories from her childhood, funny things he's said and done...she told me about a picture of her that he's carried in his wallet for probably 35 years. Father stories. I watch them now and they are...tender. I wonder if dying brought this, or would it have occurred naturally at some point...when they both got too tired to hold on to the painful things.

When the Lioness was dying Dr. K told me, "Watch her closely, Tracy...she is teaching you something." I watch LTD's father and what he does now when he's not sleeping is sit back in his chair, quietly, and watches his family. He doesn't have a lot to say. He smiles more. And he loves to talk about times when his children were young. Dying must bring just the most essential thing you will ever need--family, forgiveness, and sitting back in your favorite chair. I know LTD is watching...and I am watching her.

Lex is dead. Lex is dead. Lex is dead. I can write it a hundred times, repeat it to myself a thousand times over, and I still can't believe it. I found out a month or two ago, but it hasn't quite sunk in. I was with him for more than a decade, breaking up with him and getting back together, for my whole life, it seems. When I was five years old I thought I was going to marry him. I was in love with him, the only man I was ever in love with, for all my life. His blatant alcoholism kept me sober for years. He was part of my soul group, and I thought my soulmate, for most of my adult life. And he is dead, overdosed on a combination of alcohol and oxycontin--I always knew he would go like that--and yet I still can't believe it. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that he is no longer in this world. And I guess that's just part of the process of letting someone go, denying that they're gone, until your heart can say it's okay to admit it to yourself. This is the first time I've ever lost someone close to me and I'm surprised at how it...lingers. I can just be going through my day, thinking of nothing at all, and it will pop into my brain..."He is dead." He is dead. I wasn't with him when he died. We hadn't been together for years and I wasn't even in love with him anymore. But he had been such a huge part of my life. And now he is dead. At 48. I cannot imagine what losing a lover must feel like. I cannot imagine what a loss that big must feel like.

I just wanted to give him some space here. He deserved at least that much.

You start to think that way...disabled, after you've been on it a while. You start to think in terms of things you can't do. I am constantly setting myself up for failure, knocking myself down. And just when things seem okay, I find out I have to pay $6,000 in income tax. Do they still have debtor's prison?

Tasha is doing well. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but she's been homeschooled since last July. And she's kicking ass. She's blown through nearly every school book and work book assigned, except for Biology (and she's only a few chapters away from finishing that). And she's soooooo smart...much smarter than I was at that age. Her plan is to get her GED in May and start college in the Fall. Hopefully she'll qualify for some grants and such. Kids sure do get more expensive as they get older, don't they?

LTD is beautiful. She'll kill me for saying that, but it's true. I have never been paired up with a more perfect partner. We've been together for 2.5 years and we've had one fight. It is wonderful.

Life goes well as long as I don't stir the pot. If I just keep my hands out of it and let it happen, it goes very well indeed.

I wanted to share this. It is a blog entry from six years ago, when I could still write. I hope you enjoy it.

October 29, 2002
THE ABSOLUTE AGONY OF AUTUMN

If you’ve never gone your whole life without color, you cannot possibly relate to my predicament over Autumn. Kermit the Frog said it wasn’t easy being green, but what is even harder is to grow up in a state with a perpetual summer, where every day of every week of every season is the plainest, ugliest, most uninspiring color of green you’ve ever seen. After a while, the color green becomes a gray reminder that there is nothing more colorful to look forward to…that there is no Fall, where tragically, nothing is ever so beautiful right before death.

It is the hardest thing for me to drive along these rainy streets and not pull over to gaze at this wonder which is all around me. This color, this absolute riot of color, seems to beckon my attention at every turn. I seldom notice anything else now. Just a blood red oak, a neon yellow leaf that floats casually to the road as if taking a mid-day stroll…the oranges blazing like cool fires on hills and tree-lined streets.

If you have never seen color your whole life, and then one day you wake up to these vibrant testaments of God’s existence strewn about like little love notes, then you will not know what it is like to see beauty like this and know how fortunate you are to see it, to be filled up by it. If you are driving by it today, cursing traffic and looking at your watch, you are missing something which no Floridian would ever take for granted. Look out your window and give your eyes fully to what must not be missed, ever. I hope you see it. I hope you never forget one moment of the changing of those leaves.

Vibrant, blasting color…heralding an absolute agony, right before dying.

It is something that could drive someone crazy...if they weren't already crazy. Nevertheless, when something like this happens, it makes me take a step back and wonder, "Am I losing my mind again?" I discovered it quite by accident...

It was a hot day one day last week when I let the dogs out back to do their business. Because it was so hot, I didn't let them dawdle around like I usually do and called them back in when they were done. Our dog Layni ran right up to the door into the house, but Casey (LTD's mother's dog whom we're babysitting) wouldn't come in. I called her several times, clapped a few times (the dog is blind and responds better to noise, well, as opposed to flagging her in like an air-traffic controller) and then I went to whistle...

...when I discovered that I couldn't. I couldn't whistle. What the fuck is that? I've been trying it ever since and I cannot fucking whistle. I've attributed this strange phenomena to medication. Because, let's face it, what else can it be? And why is this driving me so fucking nuts? Because no one just stops being able to whistle, that's why. I used to be quite the whistler, a loud and obnoxious whistler. I could whistle Dixie any damn old day and the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show was a piece of cake for me as well.

And now, I'm whistle-less. Nothing but air. WHAT THE FUCK?

LTD's mother is doing very well. She still can't walk, but she's in Rehab and is getting stronger every day. It's amazing to see because just a month ago she was hooked up to every conceivable machine in ICU and was very near death. Every phone call was like an alarm going off and LTD was out of her mind with worry and despair. Her mother has come a long way and we're all amazed. Our worry now is that she get the strength back in her legs. They won't keep her in Rehab forever and if she can't walk, she can't go home. We don't even want to think about nursing homes right now. We're just praying she takes those first few tentative steps that will get her on her way.

This morning we found out that LTD's father has pancreatic cancer. This is a rapid, aggressive cancer with a life expectancy of 1-3 months. And once again I find LTD with that look on her face, as if a bomb just blew up in her face. And there I sit, not knowing what to do or say, just sitting very still and being very quiet. LTD is not as close to her father as she is to her mother, but in some ways this is worse. There is not enough time to patch up old wounds. There is not enough time to get closer. When she visits the hospital now there is a struggle over which way to go first, to see her father on the second floor or visit her mother on the fourth.

I wonder how much one person is supposed to take. What entity is piling it up on top of her to see how much she can stand before she breaks? And it pisses me off. Her parents are in their sixties and these things shouldn't be happening to them.

Again, I'm at a total loss and I have absolutely no idea what to do.

Recently a "friend" told me that my blog was dying. At first I was offended but when I got to thinking about it, I realized she was right. In fact, my blog has had many deaths.

When I first started this blog six years ago, the entries were mainly about on-the-psych-job observations. It had a huge following. It got a write-up in Psychology Today. It was in the top ten blogrolling 100. I got scores of comments on every entry and emails from off-blog commenters who wanted to tell me what a great service I was doing. When I wrote my entries, I wrote with my readers in mind--what they'd want to read, what they would like. It went on like this for a few years.

But then I got sick. I started writing about personal observations about what it felt like to be bipolar, first-hand observations about what shock treatments were like, and basically anything that spoke from the abyss of mental illness and fighting the beast.

After a while (recently), it got too difficult to even do that. I couldn't write that way anymore. The writing itself was forced and strangulated. But I still did it. I'm doing it even now. I have to.

I've mulled it over that I should just stop writing the blog altogether, but strangely enough, my psychiatrist always asks me if I'm still blogging, as if that were some gauge about how I'm doing mentally. It is. If I stop writing, I might as well stop breathing. What I'm writing might be total horse shit, but I still have to do it. So whether or not my friend thinks this blog is dying, it doesn't matter. What really matters is that I put words on this screen in some readable manner, no matter if it sucks or not, because just doing it is so often what's keeping me alive.

So, this blog may be dying. This blog may be dead. But the person on the other side of this screen is alive and well, typing out one letter at a time, hoping some sweet person is reading sometimes, but knowing as well that it doesn't matter anymore. These words are my life. I'm alive. Thank you for reading.

So, it keeps getting hotter and hotter and it comes closer and closer to my nervous breakdown, which usually happens during the summer months...and I just don't see it happening. While LTD still has to occasionally force the meds down, I take them on my own as much as humanly possible. I hate taking them. I hate it too much for mere words to describe, but I take them anyway. And they are keeping me sane. I tried to barter away a few of them at my appointment with the shrink, but that was a no-go. He always has to remind me that the better I feel, the less I feel the need for meds--but indeed, it is medication that is making me feel better. It's a viscious cycle.

Feeling the need to get political for a second...John McCain scares the living shit out of me. And I'm talking like anti-Christ scary. He's like Bush with Brains. He's BWB. *shakes it off*

These days there is more laughter than tears, more feeling safe than being afraid, more exposure and less hiding. The fact that I'm exposing my breasts shouldn't matter. I'm getting out there, people!

And I'm in love. This is gooey, mushy, heels-over-head love...all day, every night, non-stop bliss. We used to wonder why we never fought, but we seldom do that anymore. Strangely, this safe, sane, vanilla love has been the most passionate experience of my life.

If love is all you need, then why do I still need medication? Hmmmm? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Good news first: LTD's mother spoke her first words today...lots of words. She's been mentally alert and aware for over a week, but she has a trach, which prevented her from speaking. When we went to see her this morning, the nurse told us outside the room that LTD's mother had a surprise for her. We thought it was that she was eating now, a soft diet, which is a major improvement. When we got inside the room, her mother waved and T asked her how she was doing. She responded, "I've been waiting all morning for you to get here." I thought T was going to pass out. She's been on cloud nine all damn day.

Some other good stuff: We had a great vacation. We went to the beach, ate dinner at the Tiki Hut, went snorkling for sea shells, I got to see Susie and the baby, LTD got to see her first live and wild alligators in Lake Okeechobee up close (my brother Eric can mimic the call of a baby gator in distress, which moves the alligators closer to the shore line), we visited with family and it all went by way too fast. It wasn't as hot as we expected because it rained almost every afternoon. Everything was perfect...until the very last day.

LTD, Tasha and I went to see my brothers (two of which came from miles away to see us). It was widely rumored that my father was going to stop in since he was doing business in that town. I had a sinking suspicion that he wasn't. When I asked my sister-in-law if he had planned to stop by she just shook her head and said, "He's not coming." I should've just left it there, but I had to know. I said, "Is it because of Tasha?" and she said yes.

I haven't seen my father in six years. He doesn't answer my emails. He doesn't pick up when I call him. I never came right out and asked him why, because, well, I couldn't get a hold of him to do so. So now I know for sure. He's rejecting Tasha and rejecting me by proxy. As it stands right now, I will never see my father again. Why would I even want someone like that in my life, right? But I'm so curious. How much fear and intolerance does it take to cut your own daughter out of your life because her child is transgendered? All you need is love? Maybe he just doesn't have enough of that to get passed this. The very first time I held Tasha in my arms, I knew there would never be anything bad enough that she could do to make me stop loving her. Did my father ever have that feeling when he held me? Was it always just conditional? Did he always know that he would love me unless I disappointed him, and then he would have to cut me out of his life? Well, he's dead to me now. It rips my heart in half just to write that. I don't know if I'll ever be able to say it out loud.

Tasha'a father cut her out of his life a few years ago. It never seemed to bother her. She had no real desire to understand the why of it and when I ask her about it, she just shrugs and says she doesn't care. I finally know what a big lie that is.

I have a little problem I've been turning over in my head for about a week. It involves a kid--not mine; someone else's kid--who is heading for nothing and nowhere fast. We'll call him "Matt."

Matt is a friend of Tasha's who she met through some other friends when they were hanging out at the mall. Over a period of about a year, Matt and Tasha got closer and closer and decided to date. They broke up after a very short time and Tasha's heart was broken. A little while after that, they again met up at the mall and started going back out again--and by "going out" I mean simply that they talk to each other on the phone and hang out at the mall. (We keep very strict tabs on Tasha.) And here's why...

Matt is the kind of kid I've always referred to as a "nowhere kid." He's 19 (Tasha is 15). He dropped out of school in the 8th grade. He's been arrested for possession of drugs, has been on probation, has violated probation and does nothing all day but play video games. He doesn't have a driver's license, no G.E.D., and no hope for any kind of future. He has two siblings that live with different fathers and he lives at home with his mom and grandmother, neither of which he gets along. His father left home when Matt was one. After that he had two step-fathers that didn't like him very much. He was once kicked out of his house and had to live in a shelter.

He said something last week when we gave him a ride home from the mall that perked up my ears. It was simply this: "I can do anything with electronics." Since then I have him on the path to a Bachelor's Degree at ITT-Tech. I'm not kidding.

I took him today to the orientation to the G.E.D. at the local college. I had to pick him up and will have to drive him home. He has to go again tomorrow to take the practice test. If he scores high enough, they'll schedule him to take the actual test. If not, (and he says he's not very good when it comes to reading and writing), I will have to tutor him.

After that, I'm going to get him a study book from the license bureau so he can study for his driver's test. I don't think any of this is a lot to do. It's mainly just driving him places where he can work on getting his life together.

But the big picture bothers me. How far do I think I can take him? He'd qualify for all the financial programs and grants offered at any local college, including ITT-Tech. With a bachelor's degree in electronics, he'd be set in life as to career and stability. He also likes to take computers apart and put them back together. The future could be very bright for this kid.

But tangible things pose problems. He doesn't have a car. His mother and grandmother share a car. He'd have to get a job to save enough money to buy a car before he could go to school, but how will he get and keep a job if he has no way to get there? His criminal record could pose another problem. Will it effect his getting a job in the first place? And then there is still the car issue.

And why do I care? Well, someone has to. But I think it stems from my friend Susan and how she helped me through school. She let me live in her house. She got me a car. She paid for all the food, all the bills, bought me clothes (and maternity clothes) all in exchange for me watching her daughter a few days a week. I guess I'm trying to pay-it-forward. And there's something in this kid that I believe in. I don't know what it is. It's just a feeling, I guess.

So, do you think he stands a chance? Or am I just a big fool?

LTD's mother is in the hospital. After entering the hospital to have a hysterectomy, she ended up getting the gamet of post-op complications and has been in ICU for eight days. She has tubes going in and out everywhere, is not breathing on her own and has been sedated into unconsciousness since after surgery. The doctors have given her a poor prognosis and she remains in critical condition.

LTD and her mother are very close and this has put LTD under an incredible amount of stress. She has cried in her supervisor's office. She has cried with her co-workers. She has cried in her mother's room in front of the nurses there. I suspect that if the mailman asked her how she was doing she would just break down in sobs. But she won't cry in front of me.

I know people handle stress differently in different situations. I've seen some of the "toughest" people go down in a heap of despair under lesser situations. I've seen the "weak" rally around their families and keep everything together. But I don't know why LTD keeps her tears from me. And what can I do really? I just sit quietly next to her and watch her fight for composure, watch her battle fear and pain that is too big to stand up under. I just sit quietly.

I've never been through this with anyone before. Are there things I should be saying? I don't buy into the everything-will-be-alright bullshit or it's-in-God's-hands mentality. What do I do? How can I help her if she won't let down her defenses enough for me to get through?

Say a prayer, light a candle or send out good thoughts for LTD's mother. We need help here.

It is said in the lesbian community that butches are clueless when it comes to someone hitting on them. They have to be hit over the head with a board to finally notice the flirtation...thus we say they belong to the "2x4 club." LTD is a butch, NEVER notices when someone is flirting with her (and I have proof of this because she missed the signs when I was hitting on her), has to confirm that someone has said or done something to her "out of the way," and blushes like crazy when proof of this has been presented. I've had to hit her over the head so many times it's a wonder she has a neck left.

So today we went to Fox & Hound restaurant to play pool and when we walk in the door a very cute, very blond 18-year-old waitress starts checking her out. And I mean like giving her a slow once over, up and down, followed by a big smile. We walked by her. She ended up being our server. She was VERY solicitous, checking on us every fucking five minutes, filling LTD's drink to the top after just a few sips...shit like that.

We had to leave earlier than expected to pick up Spencer from school and get this, this bitch gives LTD the bill with her name and total circled with hearts! Her name was "Michele" and she put a little heart around it. And she circled the total with a heart. And she wrote "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" on the top of the bill (LTD had a birthday coupon, which is how she knew, but I digress). Fucking hearts.

Still LTD doesn't think anything's amiss. Now GET THIS! I had to use the restroom before we left and made LTD go with me. This chick was in a position where she could only see LTD, who was trailing me by a few steps, walking in that direction. While I'm reaching for a paper towel to wipe my hands, this woman opens the door of the bathroom, sees me, and then TURNS AROUND AND WALKS AWAY!!!!!!!!

I know it may seem like I'm making too much of this, but LTD insists the chick wasn't flirting with her and I've been smashing that 2x4 over her head all damn day long. I said, "We'll see what my readers think! They'll give us an honest assessment." And please know that despite whatever LTD may write in comments, I have not embellished this account in any way whatsoever.

So what say you, dear loyal readers? Was this flirting or not? Swing the board.

We've been doing some gardening around the house, and by we I mean LTD. She found some black piping that snaked around a few trees near the edge of the fence. Someone who lived here had, at one time, planted a flower bed that has since grown over with grass and weeds. LTD put down some landscaping tarp over the area and we covered it with pine needles. There's also a little patch of land behind the house perfect for planting flowers. She bordered that with wood. It looks very pretty.

What is it about getting outside in the sun that boosts your mood? It is almost a given for me that I'm going to feel ten times better after being outside and yet, I avoid doing so unless forced. Planting flowers must be a type of therapy in itself and I look forward to putting flowers down. What kind, I don't know. I want lots of colors, vibrant petals that will thrive with little care. I've not had much luck in keeping flowers and plants alive. I killed a cactus once. I'm appealing once again to my readers for suggestions.

Do you garden? Do you grow vegetables? What makes your garden grow?

I have been sick as a dog for ten days. It started last Sunday with a slight fever and body aches. It progressed to the worst cough I've ever had in my life. The whole respiratory thing was just excrutiating...and the cough has lingered on and on without relief the whole fucking time. I haven't even been able to smoke. I'm pondering if I should just stop now or not. I haven't been able to finish a sentence without taking a breath in the middle and was thinking that if I keep smoking, I'm going to end up like this anyway. So...I've temporarily quit smoking.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be 44. I'll be 8 years older than LTD. I'm practically robbing the cradle with this one. She seems oblivious to it, though. She has the whole house decorated for tomorrow and already gave me one of my presents (a spa day for an eyebrow wax and a pedicure). I've never had a pedicure before so I'm totally excited about having it done. I do expect to have lots and lots of sex, too. Yummmmmmmmy! I won't be blogging tomorrow.

I am not a pill-taker. That is, taking pills is a tedious process for me. As a nurse, I've given pills to thousands of people over the past thirteen years. There are definitely people out there who are just natural pill-takers and those who aren't. I've seen people swallow ten pills without water. I've seen those that just throw their heads back and swallow. Done. For me, with a literal handful of pills to take every night, there is a process to it. First, the glucophage...because it's the biggest. After that, the trileptal...because it's a bit smaller, but larger than the rest. The rest go down by size after I've stood for a while between each one willing myself to go on. I hate it and every single night is a grueling battle over whether I'm going to continue taking them every day. I know I have to but the psychological bullshit I put myself through every night is a wonder to behold, just because I hate the process so much.

In related news, I've also found myself to be quite the insomniac over the past several weeks. I can't sleep. Rather, I can't fall asleep. I found out that there are different types of insomnia, primary and secondary, and also that there are degrees and levels of both, like the insomnia you have when you can't fall asleep as opposed to the insomnia you have when you can't stay asleep. What absolutely does not help at all is the fact that LTD falls asleep the minute her head hits the pillow...and I'm talking like the very fucking second her head hits the pillow. She could be in the middle of a sentence and BAM, she's asleep. Insomniac's can lose sleep just thinking about the fact that they won't be sleeping. I do this every night. The pressure is on to fall asleep and what's going through your mind is "Am I going to fall asleep? Am I going to lie awake for hours listening to the clock ticking away? Maybe if I roll over, or if I sleep on my side, or if I don't think about sleep..." It could go on all night, and sometimes does, while your bed partner is sleeping soundly, snoring softly, mocking you in your sleepless state. It's excrutiating.

Other than that, life is good. LTD bought me a treadmill and I've been doing 15 minutes a day. My plan was to do an hour a day but that was ridiculous the first time I tried it out. I am sooooo out of shape and can barely walk for the 15 minutes that was suggested by the health plan insurance lady I told you about a few weeks ago. Or was that a few months ago? Who knows? Time means nothing to me now.

I'm not crazy. That's something. But hey, if you have any suggestions about how to fall asleep, I sure could use them. Relaxation techniques would come in handy....as well as ways I can turn off my brain. You would not believe what's going through my mind while I lie in the dark.

I've just finished reading Jane Eyre by Bronte, before that The Mill on the Floss by Eliot, and before that, Pride and Prejudice by Austen. One right after the other, non-stop, until I had read them all. I then remembered the problem with me and reading. I don't stop until I'm through, to the detriment of anyone and everything else. I don't know where this completely obsessive personality came from....certainly not my father. Perhaps my mother, who is somewhat OCD when it comes to counting things and numbers and such. But I'm going back to McKay's tomorrow with my voucher for $39.48. I can read a lot of books for that.

I am in a fight with two of my friends. One is aware of it; the other is totally oblivious. I also have a problem expressing negative feelings to friends when they've done something that upsets me. Or rather, unless that friend is an ex of mine, I have a problem uttering a word. With the friend I am really close to, I unleashed a manic torrent the likes of which could not be rivaled. But I was manic at the time. Or moody. Moody and manic. No excuse.

Here's a little ditty though, apart from everything else. I've read recently that dogs and cats have no affect. That is, they have no facial expressions, which I've found increasingly interesting because everyone I've told this to steadfastly disagrees and points out how their own dog and/or cat most definitely has an affect. Now body and behavior mechanics don't count. Head down, tail between the legs, or jumping up and down when you come home...those are all behaviors, not affect. I'm talking about the ability to express, with their faces, the concepts of joy, sadness, confusion, contentment and the like. Can yours? Just curious, really, because I've been watching my animals very closely since and I'll have to admit that Brina, the cat, has but one affect: disgust, while Layni, the dog, seems to manifest all of them at the same time.

It'll be interested to hear the outcome of this as my dog is sitting beside me right now just smiling away.

What do you buy for someone for Valentine's Day who has no liking for flowers, cannot eat chocolate or candy, and refuses, for political reasons, to wear diamonds? Such was LTD's predicament, I'm afraid, when it came time for her to hand over the intended gift. She did quite well, however, and I was perfectly happy to receive it.

It is a silver band, with three stripes of turquoise that glitter in light, that strangely enough fits on my right fourth finger but will not fit on my left. Could this be because I have such an aversion to marriage that my left ring-finger refuses to cooperate? Such is a moot point, since lesbians can't marry (which angers me to no end), that I will not belabor.

It is a beautiful ring and it came on such a day that I was treated like a queen throughout and taken to a dinner that was beyond my expectations (we even shared a dessert of strawberry cheesecake since diabetics should have no fear of sweets on such a day). All in all I was very happy and would say that LTD did very well.

*sending a sweet kiss to my lover*

Last night LTD and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for, well, wings. We were seated against the wall under a huge TV screen while UNC played Clemson. Unfortunately, UNC won. And also unfortunately, we got a taste of something other than sweet BBQ boneless wings.

Two women were seated at the table facing ours so they could watch the game. When seated, one of the women, a black woman, said as clearly as she could and loudly enough for me to hear, "Oh great, now I have to look at the lesbians all night." LTD didn't hear it and at first I thought I hadn't either. But when the woman got up and switched seats so her back would be to us, and to the game, I was pretty sure I had heard right.

I mention that she is a "black" woman because it always surprises me when I'm discriminated against by another minority. I guess that could be discriminatory in nature all on its own, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I can handle homophobia across the board without batting a lash when it comes from some close-minded, usually male, fundamentalist. I don't know why, but I seem to expect it on some level.

*shaking it off*

On to other important issues. I was wondering if my readers would do me a favor. I'm in the mood for some marathon reading and would like some suggestions as to which books I should read. I'm looking for novels and books that stimulate the mind, the soul, but not quite in the mood for "how-to" books. I was thinking along the lines of "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen (?), but will check out any books suggested here. What is your favorite book/novel? What is one book you've read a hundred times? Or what is a book your life wouldn't be complete without? What is a book everyone should read before they die? It's that urgent.

Well, here's hoping you didn't have to stare at lesbians the entire evening last night, and if you did...I hope you enjoyed the view.

LTD had to work three 12-hour shifts in a row this week. That left me alone to whittle the hours away doing practically nothing at all. I can't tell you how I've wasted my time watching the clock tick, walking around the house, letting the cat in and out and basically looking for ways to pass the dry hours without going completely mad.

I have no desire to work on the book. Writing about bipolar disorder from a personal stand-point while you're in the throes of it is very hard. The rejections keep pouring in. I don't think I'll ever get published. I've yet to take this handy little laptop to Borders to "work." I can give you a thousand reasons why I can't do it.

Meanwhile, I battle depression. The month of January has got to be the most horrible affliction on the human race ever. It's so gray. It's so still and gray. But I'm hanging on. The depression part of bipolar disorder is much easier to battle, for me. LTD's mother has been very sick and I have to be strong for that. Tasha has to battle the school system and I have to be strong for that, too. I haven't been much help to a friend who's having trouble, unless just listening is helpful. It does seem pepping myself up from the bottom is a lot easier than battling that MANIC MONSTER. I continue to swallow the meds. I have to be strong.

If January doesn't kill me, I just might make it.

We went to the Moravian Lovefeast and I was left uninspired. It was my hope that I could find my church there, but it didn't happen. I have been searching for a church for months and months, starting first with the MCC, then making my way closer to home to the Parkway United Church of Christ. Neither one lifted me up, or for that matter, grounded me. I gave each three chances to do it, but I left empty each time. I tried another church which opened me from the middle out and I cried during the entire service, but I was dealing with my issues with Spencer's transgenderism and was in a state of near collapse. When I returned to that church the next Sunday, I again was left homeless, Godless. The next church I tried was the Unitarian Universalist church and there aren't even three words to put together to describe the hollowed feeling I got from them. The problem is that I don't know what I'm searching for. I keep getting the same feeling I get when I'm writing...just an emptiness that feels bottomless, a feeling of pure echo that flaps about, bounces off things and finally dies out in the pit of my gut.

Last October I thought I was going to die. And that came about because I had lost God, the feeling of being watched over and protected. I felt like every step I took brought me closer and closer to death. The really bizarre part of that was that I wasn't sad about it. I knew I was going to die and it meant nothing. The closest I got to despairing about it was a feeling of disappointment. I was never going to see Spencer grow up. I was never going to write a novel. I was never going to buy a home. I don't think I was ever suicidal before or since that period in my life but I knew, suddenly and completely, why people kill themselves, how they do it, why they leave behind their loved ones without a care, without heart. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. There's nothing left. It's just time for you to die. It was time for me to go.

Talking to Daniel helped. I told him everything. It was difficult because we were both working on the unit at the time and in snatches of downtime, I poured it out. I had become an orphan. And I was going to make Spencer an orphan. I was going to leave. He never judged me. He never tried to talk me out of it. He just listened. "I've lost God. I'm practically homeless, nothing is going right, prayer doesn't help. There is nothing in me...and there is nowhere to turn..." or something to that effect. He said something that saved my life. He said, "Tracy, you can believe that God is all-powerful or all-loving. I choose to believe that He is all-loving...and He loves you." I chose to believe it too. Not right at that moment, but it came to me little by little and it nestled somewhere in my heart enough that I put the insulin bottle back and threw out the syringe. I haven't thought about killing myself since then and when things get really, really awful, I know God loves me and suffers with me, so I just suffer through and take it all in.

But I don't know why I can't find Him in church. I don't know why it echoes. Daniel recently gave me a book, Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott, in an unspoken quest to help me find my way. And though I love Anne Lamott, have read all of her books, and find expansive spirituality in everything she writes, I found this book lacking. Nothing came.

And I don't know what I expect to happen. Does everyone who believes in God, who is filled up with God, experience an earth-shattering reverence that explodes above them, in them...does it complete them? As LTD and I were leaving the Moravian church, I felt such a longing, such an incredible need, to be lifted up, to be flung about, to be whole again. "We need to go to a black church...I need to hear gospel." We both considered it and LTD even called a friend of ours at work to see if she knew of a church where we could go. It didn't work out, though, and we went home. Without the gospel.

What I realize as I write this is that I'm not searching for God. I've come to terms with that. What I'm looking for is a way to say, "Thank You. I'm doing okay. I couldn't have gotten here without Your help." And I want to do this is a big way, in a church, where I can feel Him, where I know He's listening...no, where I can feel myself saying it. And I know the premise that God is everywhere, but I want to find my church. I've been searching for a long time. I'm still searching. I will search until I find it.

She is my friend Kelly and she is the most beautiful mess I have ever known. That is really all I want to say, except that I love her and there is nothing she could ever do or say that could change the way I feel about her. With every wondrous and amazing thing about her, she can't see it. I wish I could reach inside her and smooth over all the ugliness she feels inside. I wish I could erase away all the hurt that makes her want to drown it all away. I wish I could make her see herself the way I see her...so that the next time she looks in the mirror or catches her reflexion in a window of a shop downtown, she would know how utterly perfect she is--and then she would settle for nothing less than the absolute perfection that she deserves. If I could accomplish this, I could stop plotting the death of her husband, who is not even worthy to lick dogshit off the bottom of her boot. He's not even worthy to be that close.

Dara is probably one of the most intelligent women I have ever known. Time and time again she makes these insightful and profound comments to my entries that stop me dead in my tracks. I don't know how she does it...where such intuition comes from...but she always nails it dead on.

While I have been gearing up for this year's episode of psychotic manic depression, I have been working overtime bolstering my defenses. I have been keenly in tune with the changing of my moods. I have a partner who takes note of the dips and dives of my emotions. I have looked deeply and headlong into the coming of that black cloud and I have felt the rumbling of its impending onslaught. I've patted myself on the back for having the courage to see it, to stand up to it, and to prepare for the fight with a new and improved outlook. And I have been proud of that bravado. You see? If I appreciate the full potential of its destruction, if I recognize it for what it is, I can fight it on my own without the chemicals, without the therapy, without the psychiatrist. I am healthy. I am strong. I am capable. I have so many things toasting on the burners; school, writing, projects at work, so many, many things to keep me going. I was thinking this at the precise moment that I casually slipped a bottle of insulin and three 100 unit syringes into my lab jacket. The thought was clear, logical and without any sense of remorse. "I'll need this if I can't fight it. I'll need this to get out." I'd be dead before I hit the ground.

That is how insidious madness is. It is a fucking snake. It is a puff of smoke blowing by on the wind. Just one second when your back is turned, the engulfment is so complete that blindness sets it. You are immediately crippled. Your native language is unrecognizable.

I am not suicidal. I have no plan to kill myself. What I am is scared half to death. Each time it takes me, it takes something from me...things I don't get back. And if that weren't enough, it leaves things in their place....regret, fear, a cold chill of hopelessness, an exhaustion that could rival the evisceration of chemo. And probably worst of all, a starting over from ground level, clawing my way back to sacred land. I don't want to do this again. And why I think I have to face this empty and defenseless is beyond me. Is it the challenge I want? Do I have something to prove? Look at me...I'm a fucking circus freak...the only bipolar in the world who can battle her illness without meds! It's a miracle! It's amazing to behold.

There is a seduction in madness. There is freedom there. But it comes at a huge cost. It will exact payment from everything and everyone in your life. And I just can't fucking afford it anymore.

My appointment with Dr. K is Wednesday at 4:00pm. He will resume the medication. He will resume the therapy. He may even order maintenance ECT. But I will not lose my mind. I will not miss work. I will not have to be hospitalized. And all the while that mother fucking beast is scraping at my neurons with a pickax, I will be putting one foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing, and taking every bit of help offered to me. And though LTD will be in the watchtower this year, it matters not. I will not hand it over and let her take the brunt of it.

July looms. We're going in and we'll be heavily armed.

All is well. Now. It was a close call.

Sometimes I have to walk through a geriatric unit at work, depending on where I've parked, to get to my unit. It's not a long walk...not in terms of yards, but it is a long, slow descent through the dark side of life. If I'm late or not paying attention, I barely notice the smells, the moans, the dead eyes as they peer from their beds into the hallway. But tonight, I did. Sometimes you have to look death head-on to appreciate what you have. Sometimes, however, death serves only to remind you that you're breathing and whatever soul-searching that could be derived from that hallowed place goes unseen.

What I always wonder is why sick, dying, elderly people cling to life so desperately. I see it in those rooms. They are fighting for breath. They are fighting for life. And no matter what heinous things we do to their bodies, no matter what orifice we plug up or unclog, still, they fight. I always thought I'd be one to welcome death, if I were old enough and had lived hard enough. I always thought that I'd beg a good friend to put a pillow over my face and help me on my way. But lately...

I see this dying in my relationship with Kim. I've held on. God, how I've held on. I've begged for second chances. I've grabbed onto her and pleaded. I've sucked up the air around her as if it were the last breath I'd take, and I've clung to what life used to be like, and prayed it would be so again. I've been in denial. I've been angry. I've bargained and I've been depressed. I've gone through those stages of grief twice over and back again. But I have not accepted. I am those patients in that long hallway who stare out of empty eyes who have not accepted that it's over.

It comes in waves. I can go hours, a whole day, without thinking of her. I can sit at home and easily resist the urge to call her. I no longer look to see if her truck is parked in her mother's driveway on my way home from work. There are no tricks or manipulations to see her. There is no need. Sometimes this apathy echoes inside me. I feel its absence. I know I'm dead. Sometimes the absence of this pain makes me hurt. Many people believe that numbness isn't painful. It's excruciatingly painful. I think some of that might be the brain's way of saying something is hurting...you just can't feel it. But you know. You know its supposed to hurt. But now, I feel nothing. I can't feel a thing.

A technique I use on my patients when they're writhing in pain, when they're so miserable they want to suck on the business end of a .45, when they're in the throes of detoxing from alcohol or heroin...when the pain is right there at the tip, bubbling over, and they don't think they can stand another minute of it, I always ask, "Would you rather feel this or nothing at all?" Some will answer right away. Some get back to me later that day. Some think it over again and again. But the answer is ALWAYS the same: "I'd rather feel pain."

Yes, because pain is alive. Pain is feeling--something, anything, everything at once...but feeling it. It makes me wonder about those geriatric patients fighting for their lives. Do they want to feel it? Is one last look, one last breath, worth the pain it takes to get there? Maybe it is. I think for most of us when we say we'd never want to live like that, we should think again. Maybe every breath is worth it.

And maybe feeling numb and empty is as close to the jumping off spot that anyone should hope to get. What is there to fight for? What is there to live for? If your life was in peril, would you even throw up your arms to ward off the attack?

Every once in a while a wave of appreciation rolls over the barren shoreline of my brain--the new puppy, the kid, the person-who-shall-remain-nameless--all of them remind me that there is still something to fight for, to live for. It's just not Kim. It's just not Kim anymore.

Did you ever wake up and know it was going to be a perfect day? I did...this morning. I've been up since 3:00 a.m. and I've cleaned my entire house. Everything is neat and tidy. My bathroom shines. My kitchen likewise. I'm going to clean and vacuum my car out today. (Yes, the great and powerful Dr. K has upped my meds.)

My friend Tracy surprised me with a puppy two days ago. I had been looking for a small apartment dog and you'd think that would be easy, but it isn't. We've been searching for months. We went from trying to find a rescue Chihuahua to being prepared to take anything. What I got was amazing. We're not sure what kind of dog she is (she hasn't been to the vet yet) but she looks like a miniature Sheep dog. She's white and tan(ish) and is the sweetest creature you've ever seen. She's ten months old so house-breaking isn't a problem. And to top it all off, she looks exactly like my favorite childhood dog, Brandy. We've named her Layni (Lay-Nee) and the name fits her perfectly. Brina can't stand her, of course, and has spent her time in the corner of my closet and the top of the dryer. (I will post a pic of Layni when I can get my digital camera working. Plus, I think she'd be quite embarrassed right now as she isn't groomed and looks quite a fright.) Tracy and Erin had to give her four baths before bringing her over. I just love her. I absolutely adore her. (Yes, the doctor has upped my meds.)

This is going to be a perfect day. I'm going to take Layni to the dog park and then do nothing at all besides hang out with Spencer. Life is very good for me right now.

Lesbians, by their very nature, don't date. A popular joke about lesbians sums this up beautifully: What does a lesbian bring to her second date? A U-Haul. I prefer Ryder, though I am a U-Haul kinda gal. I moved twice by U-Haul. Well, one time actually because when I moved in with Lori, I did so in a little BMW (having minimized all my possessions and shoving what I needed into the back seat). With Suzanne, she flew to Florida, helped me load the U-Haul, drove it back to Ohio with me following behind in a Nissan Pick-up. Kim moved to Cincinnati, but then we both U-Hauled it back to North Carolina...so U-Haul has had a significant place in my life. I really should've purchased stock.

But back to the dating. Or rather, the non-dating. Not every lesbian moves in with the first woman who swaggers along. Well, I do, but the sheer numbers otherwise contradict that. Though many don't actually take up residence together, they are considered a "couple" after a few social outings. If you took a close look at the gay men's world and the gay women's world, you would find them on very opposite ends of the dating map. Gay men date...a lot. Some men have "rules," even when living together, about who and when they can date other men ("date" being highly subjective). Lesbians do not do this. They don't mate and move on. They bond. They connect. They meld and settle.

Why? Why? Why? Is it because we are intuitively drawn to that nesting syndrome? Is it because we are so maternal in nature that we wish to have a stable home life with someone we can grow old with? Why is it that we don't duck and move, play some tag in the field and live a happy existence to ourselves? Well, there are quite a few butches I know who do this, but it isn't easy for them--not when you're banging femmes who have their hearts set on a house in the country and a specific China pattern.

I've been presented with an incredible opportunity to date. There are five women...five women I could be dating right now and I'd be having a verrrrry good time. They've shown interest. They've asked me out. They've met me for lunch, for coffee at Borders, for dinner and it has become obvious to me that I could easily juggle this bonsai of butches and have the time of my life. And yet, I choose not to. Why? Because lesbians just don't date. Even if I decided that I would graze in those pastures, one, if not all, would demand exclusivity. It has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with a woman's nature to be part of a couple.

Of course I'm speaking in generalities here. I'm not saying there is no lesbian in the free world that doesn't want this stability, but I have never met her. I have never heard of her. I know she exists somewhere, but I don't know where and I wouldn't know how to find her...I don't think I'd want to.

I have never had a rebound relationship. I don't break up with someone and then have a fling with the next woman who comes along. No...I go ahead and take up housekeeping with her. But I find myself now questioning the whole thing. I've been doing an assessment.

I'm in a relationship now with someone who can drive a U-Haul, but wouldn't. Though she insists on a monogamous relationship, it is clear that she is staying where she is and that she prefers I stay here. And I just can't wrap my brain around that. Have a relationship without living together? Is that even a real relationship? How do I handle this when it is as foreign to me as sushi? I'm treading new ground here and there are huge cracks in the pavement that continually throw me off balance. How can this person totally control me if she doesn't live with me? How can this person totally take care of me if I'm on my own? How can I morph this relationship into the exact patterns of my old relationships if we're not together 24/7?

The answer is...I can't. And I really don't want to. This is a new thing for me, this separateness. I find myself struggling with the ideas that I have to have more control over myself. I have to take care of me. I have to constantly balance my needs with hers. I have to push and pull, give and take, and in the process, I have to make sure I don't lose myself (when every fiber of me wants to give it all over). Patterns. I can't stamp out the template with her there and me here. Is this a good thing? Yes. Is this a bad thing? Yes. I'm 42 years old and I'm careening over rocks and valleys with no path to follow. This is new geography.

I know the old topography very well. We will meet. Move in together in a few weeks. There will be total passion throughout the entire relationship even after she realizes I have a mental illness and she can't handle it. There will be passion even as she's walking out the door. Familiarity sits well with me. But this new thing? It's kinda nice in a way that I was unprepared for.

But I'm still not gonna play the field. I throw like a girl anyway.

There is definitely something strange about working the night shift. I have another night to go this week but I'm off tonight. I slept all day (from working last night), so I'm up (at 2:30 a.m.) and finding it hard to keep myself occupied. Luckily I have a friend on night shift who's working tonight and she calls to keep me busy. Still, I have all this time on my hands with nothing to do. So...here's how I've been spending my time:

1. Organize every single bill I've ever received. One pile is for bills that I'm going to pay. One is for bills I'll pay later when I have more money. The other piles include bills I'm never going to pay and bills that require more than just writing a check...these are bills that require confirmation, phone calls, pleas of mercy.

2. Clean out all the closets. They're clean anyway, but they can never be too clean, can they? I say no.

3. Write anything at all on this blog (as you can surmise by now) and hope I'm conscious enough not to sound like a complete fucking idiot.

4. Play with the cat. Well, I don't really play with the cat. I don't like cats and she doesn't like people. I tried to cut her claws a bit earlier and got two paws done, but she had had it by that time and scratched my arm and tried to bite my face.

5. Call Spencer (who will be home Monday) and talk about nothing at all. There was a time when he would talk my ear off, but now, in his teenaged state, I get nothing but diatribes about new music he's heard, electronics he wants for Christmas, his new boots and how bored he is. Like Lori laments, "He's not five anymore!" Unfortunately, no. When he was five he thought the sun rose and set up Lori's ass. He followed her everywhere. He thought she was the Alpha, the Omega. I'm glad that's over!

6. Smoke. A lot.

7. Clean out the litter box. Fun thing to do at 2:30 in the morning. It can never be too clean though, right?

8. Write emails to everyone in my address book. I'm sure they appreciate this as I'm writing to them the same thing I'm writing right now. Oh, joy.

9. Try to squelch the manic phase that seems to be looming like a big, white fluffy cloud above my head. Kim talked to a co-worker today (whose wife is a doctor) and this doctor said a change in sleeping patterns and going from dayshift to nightshift can definitely set off a manic phase. I'm enjoying for what it is so far. It's keeping me busy. I sure hope Spencer comes home soon.

10. Organize the homeschooling books and check Spencer's work. He's been pretty much on his own (as most homeschooled kids are at this age), but unlike most homeschooled kids, he's not really doing the work. Back to school, baby!

So, that's my nightshift. I can't wait to work tomorrow night, er, tonight. Hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep. I don't worry about it though. I sleep much better during the day than I do at night.

If only I could turn down the sun a bit.

While Spencer has been in Boston I have had time to ponder some very deep thoughts. At the depth of my soul and to the expanse of my being, I have thought long and hard about:

1. That guy on the State Farm (or is it Nation Wide?) commercial who says, "Are you in good hands?" I think he's sexy as hell. Sure, lesbians are not usually drawn to men, but most of them can come up with the name of a man or two if asked about attraction to the opposite sex.

2. (Man #2) That guy on the Dockers commercial who's running around in dress/casual/golf pants to the tune of "Go boy, go!" This man is sexy as hell. And he seems fun to be around, too.

3. What do the employees at Wal*Mart do at that little cart positioned near the registers? I never see them do anything, but there they are standing around looking all official and shit with their big notebook and stickers. Is it a tax-exempt thing? Is it a secret political poll? Are you sent there if you bring a monkey into the store?

4. Speaking of Wal*Mart...I have discovered that the best time to go there is 8:00 in the morning. I don't know why this is. I've gone to that store at midnight before and it was packed. I've gone at noon and couldn't find a parking spot in the entire lot. But at 8:00 a.m.? The store is yours, baby.

5. When I meditate I often find it difficult to keep my mind off the fact that my legs are falling asleep. I try to reach a higher state of mind and being but I always end up wondering about nerve endings.

6. I'm working the night shift this week at work so I'll be up until the wee hours of the morning. If I think of any more profound and soul-searching thoughts, I'll be sure to post them throughout the night. I know y'all must be sitting on the edge of your chairs waiting for them. I'll try not to disappoint.

7. Why is David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) the least liked character on Friends? Why is George Costanza so hated on Seinfeld? What happened to Elaine on that show? She started off so cute and funny but by the end of the show's run, she was just a mean ole bitch. I wonder if this transformation occured in her real life. Why should I care?

8. Why does Food Lion depress me so much? I didn't set out to hate that store. Nothing horrible has ever happened to me there. But I'll tell ya, when I walk through those doors my mood bottoms out. It's no different than any other grocery store. It's the closest store to my apartment. Should I take an extra anti-psychotic before going? Should I meditate about it? I really need to figure this out.

9. Why do I hate the blonde woman on that commercial about little kids playing video games and their mom is talking about how much the children are learning (you see, I hate the blonde woman so much, I can't even concentrate on what the commercial is pitching). I hate her. She inspires homicidal ideations. That character should die.

10. By far the best commercial I have ever seen is that new Visa commercial where the guy enters that deli and all the employees and customers are dancing around in a perfect, choreographed routine. When the idiot steps up to pay for his lunch with actual money, it throws off the entire store. I fucking love that.

11. Are there still mail-order brides? Or are they now email-order brides? Can they be delivered by file attachment? How were they delivered in the pre-Internet days? By UPS? And how come there were never any mail-order husbands? What's that all about?

12. More to come...

There was nothing very special about today. I didn't shop. I didn't have my eyebrows waxed or get a pedicure. Mostly I just padded around the house and appreciated what I had. Spencer has been in Boston with Lori for the Thanksgiving holiday and though I'm missing him terribly, I'm also happy for the time I have with myself. That's major right there.

This was not so a few days ago. Black Friday came and went without my being able to make a purchase on a very good deal on computers at Best Buy. I agonized about getting that computer. I nearly burned out my brain trying to come up with a way to move money around in my bank account to make the sale. Finally, I had to just let it go and not be bitter about it. That's another major turning point for me--wanting what I want when I want it no matter what. I let that go.

I think this all must be some sort of perceptive adaptation. The way we deal with things, how we react to situations--it's all perception. My perception about being alone, about letting things go, about not always getting what I want and especially, realizing that not everything is about me is slowly changing.

Though I had to work Thanksgiving, my son was gone, I had no family here to break bread with, it was still a very good day. What I realized was that I had so much more; a good son, a good job, a nice place to live, good friends (four invited me to their homes) and relatively good health. It was an unfamiliar way to look at the initial dire circumstances of being alone on a day when it feels like every family in the world is together, but it felt good--not in that I was happy about it, but that I was able to take it in stride, see it for what it was, and adapt my perception of the event.

And the Lioness was very much with me that day. I kept thinking about what she said about the way we perceive our lives, and how that perception shapes our actions. I blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. The story is of four people traveling in a car on the highway. There is a horrible accident but somehow they all come out of it unharmed. Three of those people have no problem driving again, but the fourth one can't even sit in a vehicle. Though they all went through the same thing, one perceived the accident in a very different way.

I didn't make it a point to have a happy, positive attitude. It came to me in waves. By the end of a very stressful 12-hour shift, I found myself sitting around a dining table surrounded by people I barely knew, and giving thanks for being there.

The lesson of this in itself feels strong. I could feel myself learning this new coping mechanism and I've applied it several times since then to other things--especially to not getting a computer that was $400.00 off the original price. And now I feel armed and ready for the next potentially awful thing that presents itself to me. Will I be able to wrap my brain around it and reshape my thinking? Will I be able to pull back and look into it, see it for what it is, and not freak out about it?

I'm putting it into practice every day. I think because of that, this Summer will be very different indeed. I'm preparing myself for it even now. I am vowing to be like one of those three people who got back behind the wheel. I am hoping to avoid the accident in the first place.

Time heals all wounds. As true as that statement is, you never quite believe it when you're mired down in the muck of things and the wounds are spurting forth such a torrential agony. Days pass, weeks go by, and sooner or later you realize that you are falling asleep and waking up without that weight in your chest. I had opened myself up to pain, exposed myself to it fully, and it infiltrated, got comfortable in my veins, and then...it lifted. What is left is this enormous introspection of time, of pain--the knowledge that I survived the worst of it. Still, there is the awareness that it will come again, in whatever form, and that I will have to sit still with it, feel all of it, and wait.

I am not a patient person. I have been forced by circumstances to let it engulf me. But this time, I did not run. I let it descend and devour me. And I did not die. Not even a tiny piece of my soul succumbed. If anything, it expanded and took on a colossal, extraordinary embodiment of what I'm capable of withstanding. The feeling is nothing like pride. It is certainly not boastful. It feels more like walking away from the front lines of a gory war, grateful that you survived yet knowing that parts of your self still bloodies the battlefield.

Yesterday I was driving down the highway after having bought Spencer a bed in a town quite a distance from my house. With nothing much to do on the way back, I caught myself staring out the window, distracted by trees. I have not seen them before the way I did yesterday. Autumn leaves always leave me speechless, feeling the abundance of color and breathing in those hues and shades. These winter trees pulled me in. The starkness alone begged attention. And I looked.

It is the epitome of exposure. When all color and cover have been stripped off, they stand tall and sway with the breeze anyway. There is no shame there. I could see branch over branch, feeding like arteries into one another. I noticed the fruitless bark withering under the threat of winter. I could see what courage it must take to be barren and cold, letting all defenses fall away, and standing under it, feeling all of it, without benefit of cloak or disguise. There they were, one after another, lined like soldiers along the highway, offering themselves for scrutiny even while dying. And they were absolutely alive with it. Leafless, unmasked, revealing an anguish of pain--the beauty of those blackened, rawboned branches reaching hard towards the blue of sky was almost too much for me to witness.

There is always a lesson in trees, though the introspection might leave you vulnerable and unhidden. It is not enough to lay one's soul flayed out, twitching through yet another tragedy, when pain is the only thing you come away with. The challenge is to do this in the middle of a hard winter when everything you've ever used to hide yourself behind is slowly dropping at your feet in piles. The challenge is in the acceptance that you are charred and ugly for all to see, and then standing as straight as you've ever stood, with your arms wide open, knowing that every gnarled bone and every bloody stump of you is majestic with the revelation.

Ah, what would we do without challenges? If we weren't challenged or even forced to do something, would we? Would we get out of bed in the morning and go to work? I certainly wouldn't without the knowledge that my life would fall apart if I didn't. It's stress. Good stress and bad stress. I've got both right now.

The thing that bothers me most are the good intentions. It's one thing to read the books, make the lists, look at what needs to be changed, but figuring out the things I can change and the things I can't is indeed a muted line.

Homeschooling is failing miserably. What I can get out of Spencer is done with force, threats and absolute tyranny. It is definitely not the same homeschooling we did in 2nd and 3rd grade. He wanted to learn then. He was excited about learning. He's 13 now and NOTHING is working. He just won't do the work. So, if he won't do it for me, he'll have to do it for traditional classroom instruction. That's right, folks! The kid is going back to school. There goes half my stress.

The other crap is just financial hardship (which I know will soon pass) and readjusting my relationship with Kim (which may not). This has not been easy. I am so used to depending on her for everything. I am so used to her being the strong one, making everything right, smoothing out the wrinkles and handling all the hard stuff. Can you imagine the pressure that put on her? And now that I'm in the position where I am responsible for all this crap, it has not been the slightest bit easy.

Blech. I am totally hating the world today. There is nothing good in it. There is nothing to look forward to. There doesn't seem to be a reason to do anything. Life fucking sucks.

I could read every book ever written on meditation, learning to love emotional pain, being content in my own skin, but eventually, I have to actually experience all of that. It is not an easy thing to learn. The book I just finished reading, When Things Fall Apart, offers insightful commentary on the whole aspect of "leaning into the sharp edges" and not being afraid of loneliness, being filled up with it and walking about with this suffocating discomfort. But putting it all into practice has been daunting at best, especially for someone who has constantly, her entire life, believed that running from pain was the only way to escape it. Traveling that road over and over again, I found that it was a race-track of repeated patterns and that what started out as a freeing flee from anxiety actually led me back to what I was running from in the first place.

I have no real experience with staying the course. It is inherent in my nature to just run, pack up and move, change the scenery. What is so frustrating for me now is to re-think my motives, re-evaluate my behavior, and just punt. I'm doing that now and it is very uncomfortable, not just in doing it, but in realizing that this may be a permanent situation for me--being still, not trying to manipulate the details to produce a picture that is comfortable for me...just being in the moment, however painful it might be, and liking it. My previous belief that pain must be avoided at all cost has crumbled, but in its place is absolutely nothing. I am trekking over unfamiliar ground.

It is easy to read a book. It is easy to agree and ponder the possibilities of what may be. It is altogether a different thing to practice this. In the wake of my epiphany, there is nothing really to fill the void. It is far from reconnecting with my spirituality. It is miles away from replacing something with something else. What I have now is an utter void that when stared into for too long is a painful and disquieting emotional abyss. It seems the more I look, the more painful it becomes--and knowing the philosophy of this nothingness and the transformation that will eventually begin does little to fill up the hole with anything substantial.

You have to walk with it, eat with it, sleep with it, cry with it and be willing to give your whole self to it. That's what I do these days. When I'm not blissfully distracted by normal, mundane chores...when I'm not in the company of friends that refocus my attention away from the hole, I am swimming in that hole. It is unfortunate that this hole isn't filled with salty water from the sea, in which I would feel comforted. It is sad that this hole isn't flooded with spring water that I could drink up and be quenched. This hole is nothing but a black pit letting in no sunlight, casting no shadows against clever insight, highlighting no clues to the real answers. It is a hole filled with anxiety, grief, horrors of past relationships, memories of all the pain which I have been avoiding for forty years. And now, I have to be very still while allowing these tidal waves of fear and uncertainty completely engulf me. I have to open my mouth wide and swallow it in pieces. The hard part is liking it. The most difficult aspect of all of this is being calm among the ruins, picking through the ashes, looking square into the gaping wounds and diving headlong into it with no idea of what may happen.

Probably the most profound discussion I ever had about this was with my friend Von. God, how she tried to help me. The words she spoke are ones I will never forget. She said, "Tracy, you're just putting bandaids on gaping and festering wounds. What you need to do is stitch up that bitch where it bleeds." It completely took my breath away. But now, with this new philosophy, I cannot pull out needle and thread and make everything nice. I have to actually take the bandaids off and let the wound bleed freely. Stitching it up now would infect the entire organism.

So, I am swinging from the noose over the alligator pit. I am jumping from tall buildings with no net to break my fall. I am forcing myself to stand bravely in the median of a busy highway. It is very easy to forget the introspection so required to successfully walk this path. Sitting before the throne and swells of meditation, lighting the candles, listening to the running water tripping over smooth rock, clearing my mind of all earthly matters...that is easy. Finding meaning in that has been difficult. Right now all I can really do is breathe in and out. I cannot even pray for enlightenment. I cannot pull the strings for knowledge. I am not the maestro for this orchestra. I am not the composer of the opera. I am simply sitting in silence, thinking nothing, letting the darkness descend and then giving myself over to such a frightening and overwhelming pain that I dare not run from it. I dare not move. Stillness is the only way out.

The first time it happened I was lying on the floor at my friend Carrie's house. Spencer was on the couch. It was about 5:00 in the morning and all was quiet and peaceful when all of a sudden...an earthquake shattered the silence. I'm not kidding. It sounded like a plane had crashed right outside the window. Spencer thought it landed on the roof. It was the loudest noise I ever heard. The entire apartment building jumped. Spencer and I sat up at the same time. He said, "What the hell was that?" I got up and looked out the window expecting to see a plane in flames. "I think it was an earthquake," Spencer said. I shook my head. "No baby, there are no earthquakes in North Carolina. There's no fault line here."

But indeed there is.

'Micro' Earthquake Shakes North Carolina
AP
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Oct. 17) - A "micro" earthquake with a 2.6 magnitude rattled central North Carolina early Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter was about 3 miles east-northeast of Winston-Salem at 4:56 a.m. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the USGS in Golden, Colo., said earthquakes are rare in that part of the country. Since the quake wasn't very strong, no major damage was expected, she said. About 150 calls came into the Winston-Salem Police Department after the quake, said police Lt. David Kiger. "They reported a loud explosion and ground shaking," he said. "They just want to know what was going on."

We didn't call the police. Having seen no plane crashed outside my window, I just suspected there was heavy construction going on somewhere. Spencer said, "It was an earthquake. It felt just like one." Well, the kid has never experienced an earthquake and neither have I. I was still convinced that North Carolina had no fault line, so how could it be?

Apparently (from what I heard in a pool hall), there is an epicenter in the Blue Ridge Mountains that spawns a fault line all the way down and right through Winston Salem (okay, so now you know where I live).

Spencer and I were thrilled actually that we felt the earthquake but we had no idea more would follow. Going about our daily business these past few weeks, we've experienced about 8 more. Once in the grocery store a huge BOOM made everyone stop what they were doing and balance themselves. Again, driving down the road...BOOM. Once in the apartment crossing through the living room, BOOM!. The globe I have sitting precariously on the computer table fell off and hit the ground. Spencer and I just looked at each other and said, "Wow." There were more that I didn't feel, but Spencer did. In the mall with friends one day, three aftershocks hit in succession. Spencer and his friends thought it was "cool."

I think the highest measurement was 3.1. Nothing really when you compare it to California's 8's and 9's. I just can't imagine. These micro-earthquakes are enough to get your attention, make you stop whatever it is you're doing and freeze--for a few moments all you can do is wait, listen, and hold your breath.

I don't like to think about it. The next time I'm having sex (if I ever have sex again), when an earthquake hits I'll tell my partner, "Damn girl, you rocked my world."

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." [From the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.]

I have lived with this statement for days. I have read it repeatedly. I have chewed it up and spit it out. I have let it overtake all my senses and take me to the middle of my despair. I have sat with it and allowed it to sidle up my spine, wrap itself around my throat and choke me half to death. Melodramatic? Yes, perhaps. But that is the very lesson it teaches. Feel all of it. When pain knocks on your door, open that door wide and let it eviscerate you. I am being eviscerated.

I have found that opening this door has also opened every pore of my body, mind and soul to total and complete vulnerability. It is quite something to be an emotional infant and feel every tiny little thing as if it is gutting out your insides. I used to run from this. I used to hide this from everyone. I used to be able to put up a good front and not make anyone uncomfortable with my true feelings. But now? I am letting myself be hurt. I am letting myself feel this pain. I am letting other people see this pain and I am not apologizing for it. I am exposed.

Right now I am sitting alone in a dark apartment, the only light coming from my computer monitor, and I am fighting the urge to turn the TV on for company. I am fighting the urge to run. I am fighting the desire to strike out, to maim, to seek revenge. And it is eating a hole through my intestines. But I am feeling it. Willingly.

It amazes me to discover that patterns of behavior have dictated my entire life. It is disconcerting to me to realize that most people who read this blog could probably predict how I'm going to react to a given situation...but that I could not. I still don't see them very clearly, though I know they're there. I know they hover and wait for me only to reach out, put them on like a comfortable pair of jeans, and then walk a thousand miles through my life in the same way, reacting the same way, hiding the same way I have my entire life. I have only just discovered that doing this takes me back to the same point, to start all over again. I have probably walked the length of this planet and back. I am hollowed out by it. I am hollow.

I have seen the destruction bipolar disorder leaves in its wake. I have seen my patients struggle with it. I have seen their families hopeless and despondent. I have seen them angry and tired. Is it total denial to believe that I have been spared this destruction? Even through all the moves, all the relationships with people who couldn't take it and left, above and beyond the realization that without medication I will lose my fucking mind, I still hang onto the one shred of hope given to me. I plow through. For whatever reason, it does not kill me. For whatever reason, I am still able to go to work, to pay bills, to have responsibility and accountability for my life. But could that be the very destruction I think I've escaped? Am I one of the unlucky ones who has to see this, believe this to be true, and trudge on anyway? Would it not be easier to just let go and give myself to it? Why the fight? Why should I face the demons every summer, let them rip through my chest and eat out my guts, grasp for the lifeline in an ocean of darkness, when I could just hand it all over and live blissfully in ignorance? All I know is that the hope that I'll get better will not release me. It will not give. I am forced by this hope to hang on, to plow through, to fight that mother fucker as if my life depended on it. In the end I am shredded to the core. I am gasping for air. I am full of medication and my brain has been shocked. And yet...I'm still here. I'm still here.

I recently lost my medication. I had packed it into a box and lost track of it during the move. For a week I went without medication. What happened because of that is unbelievable. I plunged into a suicidal depression. I had no control over what I was thinking. I felt like each minute that passed brought me closer to death. Though I wasn't planning my own demise, it seemed to me to be something which didn't need my permission, that it was going to happen whether I wanted to die or not. In that despair I faced some of the darkest moments of my life. I wondered who would take care of Spencer. I wondered why I had to die before publishing a novel. I cried over having to leave my child with the anger and grief of having a mother who killed herself. I wondered who would attend the funeral. I ached for my own mother, who would have to live with the fact that she had buried her oldest daughter. Every step I took was just taking me one step closer to death. When I found my meds, I took them immediately. I swallowed them whole and without water. And I waited.

It didn't take long. In a few days, the suicidal haze lifted and there, in its place, was the most amazing sense of awareness I have ever had. Floodlights lit the path for me. For the first time ever, I accepted my illness. I stopped blaming it for all the shit in my life. I ripped off my skin and totally opened myself up to it. I was respectful of its power and I bowed down to it. I was annihilated and I was happy to be so. I felt resurrected. I have been resurrected.

I walked around for a few days as if I were a gaping wound. I welcomed the infection. I knowingly and purposely exposed myself to toxic air. And fuck, it hurt. But I felt it completely...and it did not kill me. In the aftermath, I prayed for direction. I prayed for guidance. I prayed to the Universe. And then my co-worker, Aaron, bought me a book called When Things Fall Apart. It saved my life. It taught me not to run away. It taught me not to move. It demanded that I live...and what's more than that, it taught me to open myself up to pain, to give myself to it freely and to be grateful for feeling something, anything.

The path is not clearly laid out before me. For this, I am grateful. I will have to make my way over the jutted rock and traverse the ups and downs with equal respect. I will have to go into the dark with nothing to light my way and feel every fucking bit of that fear. And I will have to learn, to know that eventually I am going to come out on the other side. To do that, I will have to learn stillness. I will have to continually open myself to annihilation and not fear it, but learn to like it, to pay heed to its message.

Am I pain-free knowing this? Hell no. But that is the very point, isn't it? I am in pain every day of my life. But right now, I am nestled inside, safe in the belief that I no longer have to fear it or run from it. I am, with great respect, letting it all in. I am alive.

To say Spencer and I have had a rough time of it this past week is putting it mildly. We stayed with my friend Carrie during the transition of moving from house to apartment and it was as close to being homeless as I ever hope to come. We lived out of a BUM bag, having to wash the same clothes over and over, had most of our toiletries in a plastic grocery bag and were in limbo--having nowhere to go and nothing to do several days before having only a few short days to do a million and one things. The anxiety was overwhelming. Spencer handled it all with great resourcefulness. I, on the other hand, was a screaming basket case.

Moving out was a nightmare (is it ever not?), but moving in was even worse (we are upstairs, 16 steps). I was lucky to have help from Tracy (from work) and a friend of hers because my extra help, other friends from my email list, weren't able to make it. At the 11th hour, it looked like only Spencer and I were going to be moving (in which case, I would not be writing this right now).

To sum it all up, we survived. There were no real injuries except when Tracy's friend smashed Tracy's hand in the latch on the back of the U-Haul. Even Brina made it intact, though barely, as I had to shove her half sideways into the cat carrier at the last minute.

We're here. We're getting settled. I've got Spencer's homeschool bookshelf set up in the dining room and we're all set to go. Things are a bit cramped right now, but so far, it's been okay. At the very least, it is warm. Now, if I could just find my toothpaste and my sock drawer, everything would be perfect. I'll keep you posted.

Well beautiful people, I will be offline for about three weeks starting tomorrow. Kim is moving into her new apartment (and taking the cable with her) and I will be moving into my new apartment in the next few weeks and not getting cable hook-up for about two weeks after that. So...unless I can post from work, I'm outta here until then. Please, please, please hang in until then. I promise there will be lots and lots of juicy, exciting things to add when I come back (yeah, like moving is exciting).

On a different (and much more depressing) note, I have lost God. Somewhere between the time my therapist died and all the awful things that have been happening with Spencer and all the financial tragedies that come with being out of work for three months, God has suddenly disappeared from my life. I have always had a deep spiritual faith, if not a religious belief in any one deity, but even that is gone. And it has always helped to know that that strength, that power, that protection, has always shielded me from harm, from the greatest travesties and would always be there for me. Being without that has left me with an emptiness that has literally left me hollowed out. I walk around echoing of nothing and even when I think of material things that might offer some comfort, that would get me out of this utter mess I'm in now, I can find no solace. I can find no relief or comfort from this loneliness.

Being back at work has helped...when I'm there. I can focus on work. I can give out the meds. I can help the patients. I can work alongside my co-workers and talk to the doctors and residents. But I can offer no real compassion or empathy to anyone, really. Not like I used to. Because there is nothing here. I can't even see beauty in them anymore. Because there is no light shining through. God doesn't speak through them anymore. There is no message imparted. There is no music of angels, no divine intervention, no movement of glory on behalf of the Almighty. There is nothing but sickness, illness of the mind that God didn't cause, that God can't cure, that God has nothing to do with. And now there is no meaning to it. Now there is no poetry.

I have to believe that if God didn't cause it, and God can't cure it, then God has no infinite power. And if that is the case, then who do we pray to...and why? This has left me extremely sad and alone. There is nothing now but the deepest spiritual hole that I have ever looked up from. I can't even see the light, though I know it's there, perhaps in some other shape, some other shade. But not God's. Not an angel's. Nothing of Heaven's hue. Maybe something of the light that trees shadow over the ground. Maybe something like that. But to find it...from the bottom of a hole, what of that? How? This is a struggle I've never fought before. How do I climb out? I have no tools. I have no experience. Maybe I can find one tough root that climbs upwards. Maybe that. A good strong earthly root. And maybe something like God will help me. Pray for me. Pray to Something to help me.

She will limp off into the brush
and die quietly alone,
because that's what lions do
when they die.

She will no longer travel with her pack,
no longer be a part of the hunt,
because any sign of weakness
is too much for her to acquiesce.

She is no longer the lioness
that roared such booming philosophy.
She is no longer the lioness
who can roar without coughing.

So she will limp off into the grove
and die her silent death
and leave me here to mourn her...
my silent tears quietly drowning out
even her strongest protests.

The Lioness died a few hours ago. That is all.

I have a new baby. Isn't she adorable? It was a pain in the ass squeezing her out, but she was soooo worth it! Power steering? I haven't had that in so long. This is very important to someone with rheumatoid arthritis. And Chooch fits so comfortably in the back. I'm going to take him for a ride today and then for a walk at the park.

I don't know if I mentioned that Spencer and I are moving into our very own brand new apartment. Spencer will have his own bathroom and you'd think I'd said, "You will have your own home just off the main hallway." I swear his eyes glistened. I guess having one's own bathroom in one's own bedroom is that important to a 13 year old. The apartment is beeeeeyoooootiful. There is a work-out room there that I will never use and a pool as well that I will not be seen dead in until I'm thin enough. My friend Carrie lives there and it's right across the street from the Mall (DANGER! DANGER!). I'll keep myself restrained...literally.

I was talking to my Mom earlier today and just out of the blue she said there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There was just a pile of dirt. I said, "Sheesh Mom, why'd ya hafta go and kill my illusions?" She said someone had to do it. That's my Mom for ya! I didn't realize how much I missed her until I saw her last week. I think my heart caved in.

Oh! I have a new stalker! But this one is NOT nice. This one is very mean and scary. I am saving all her emails.

Hmmm...what else has happened since the cops came over to investigate the call for abuse? Oh! In class last night the professor passed around a numbered sheet titled POETRY/NON-FICTION/FICTION for each student to sign up for her particular genre for an in-class work-shop. The sheet was numbered 1-5 (POETRY), 6-10 (NON-FICTION) and 11-15 (FICTION). (There are only 15 students in this class.) Knowing this was coming and knowing where I was sitting (the first row, the ONLY person in the first row), I was casually gesturing MADLY for him to hand the paper to me first. He walked to and fro, his pointer finger and thumb hooked through the first hole of the paper, swinging it back and forth, and told us that these work-shops would be solid critiques from our classmates. We would sign-up for one of these genres (and if it was poetry, we would have to submit three poems for critique) and during the work-shop, the other students would eviscerate and humiliate offer helpful advice on our writing. He then handed the paper to....the first girl sitting in the first row on the OTHER side of the room. I prayed not to get stuck with poetry. I prayed. He talked about something else while that paper went 'round, but I don't know what it was and by the time the sign-up sheet finally got to me you can guess what was left. SLOT #1 - POETRY. Not only do I have to go first, but I have to go first with poetry. And a poet, I am not. Not even close. I've been nauseous ever since. Blech. Let us just get on with life. I'd rather deal with my stalker than this shit.

By the way, I celebrated my 18th year of sobriety Saturday night. ; ) That's a good thing, yes? So, life is happening. Good things, not so good things, but happening all the same. I can't complain...not really. And I think I won't. I will embrace the fucking poetry.

So Kim and I were playing pool the other night and realizing afterwards that we didn't have coffee or creamer for the next day, we stopped into Food Lion to load up on some groceries. (No, we're not back together, but we are starting to become very good friends.) For some reason, Kim, going against the grain of her standard Vanilla creamer, opted for Butter Pecan flavored cremora. I was shocked at first, but she had had a few drinks at the pool hall and wasn't in her right mind.

Next morning when I made coffee and Kim got the creamer out, she studied the container for a moment and said, "What the fuck is this pansy ass bullshit?" I thought I was going to split my spleen from laughing so hard.

I'll tell you something else she said that made me take a quick inhalation of breath and hold it for a few moments. We were talking about our relationship--which we don't see as a "failed relationship" as much as a "transitioning" one--when I said, "Everyone always says forever. 'I'll love you forever. I'll never leave you. We'll be together forever, and then inevitably, they aren't.'" She simply gave me a very wise smile and said gently, "Tracy, friendship lasts much longer than forever."

For a few minutes, I felt the presence of God.

I've been up since 4:30 listening to music. For over an hour I kept it low so as not to wake Spencer until I realized that he wasn't in the house. Now it's blasting. Well, it's blasting for 5:30 in the morning anyway.

I have been out of work since July 13 and I have yet to receive a disability check. I'm tapped out. I can't even buy laundry detergent. Yesterday I had to spend $178.00 on the friggin' dog for his allergic dermatitis. He's allergic to everything (just like his mother). But they gave him a shot to stop the itching, a medicated bath and then put him under a softly-blowing hot air dryer. I can't imagine how he felt.

My class is going well. The professor is highly enthusiastic about writing and luckily, has the same taste as I do in literature. Two of the books we have to read are Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont (which I've read a gazillion times), and Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. It was bound to happen that some idiot in the front row raised her hand and said, "Can we watch the movie instead of reading the book?" He sighed, dropped his shoulders and shook his head back and forth for about five full minutes before saying, "My dear, you cannot watch the film instead of reading the book. This is a writing class and to be a good writer one must be a good reader. The film was crap! The novel is excellent. Do yourself a favor and read it." That girl never made it to the second class and that makes me one step closer to being officially in the class. (There was one slot left when I signed up and four people on the wait list.) We won't know until Monday if I'm still in the class or not. I'm just going to refuse to leave. I'll audit the class if I have to.

Meanwhile, the writing is coming and coming and coming. We have to write 5-7 poems by November 30th. I've already written them. We have a 5,000 creative non-fiction project due by the end of January. I've already started it. We have a 5,000 word fiction essay due by the end of the year. I started that too. The poetry is the hardest to write. I'm not a poet. Trying to pull myself off as one is quite hysterical. Here's my first effort (about my cat):

Sabrina

She is as black as night
As sleek and elongated as an eel
She is the skinniest cat I've ever seen
And fast like a panther, chasing a zebra

She situates herself gracefully
On the corner of a blue draped table
On the back porch surrounded by unlit candles
Royalty, other cats dare not inhabit

Hours of grooming, her paws are white as cotton
Her black is ebony and sleek, like a shimmering material, made for dancing
The tuxedo color of her fur dares not challenge
Her sultry gaze, her seductive stretch, her feminine ascendancy

She may as well be a lounge singer
Or a madam conducting business in a high-class brothel
So assured she is of her powers, of her place
That I sit and lust for that confident endowment

I told you. I'm much better at the "fast typing" as Spencer used to say when he was younger. Poetry takes so much out of you! Every word, each line, stanza by stanza...I am completely drained after writing one. And then to be writing bad poetry on top of it? Not good. Bring on the creative non-fiction, buddy!

I think today may be my last day in Partial. I'm going to beg to be released. (At first I wrote, I'm going to bed to be released.) Might not be a bad idea. I need to get back to work before I forget how to even be a nurse.

I have not heard anything about the Lioness. No word at all. My heart is stuck between beats.

The Lioness lingers on. I expect with every ring of my phone that it will be someone telling me that she is gone. I'm not going to get a chance to say goodbye. That kills me. I just hope she knows how much she helped me.

Spencer has been in Georgia with his paternal grandparents for the past two weeks. With all the craziness around here, I was glad he had a stable environment to go to. But then he called me and said he wanted to stay there and attend a Charter School for this school year. I was devastated. At first. Now it doesn't seem to be such a bad idea. I could finish my degree. I could get a small apartment and save about $500.00 a month! I could concentrate on getting well, not just getting better. I could visit him all the time. He could visit here. And with phone, emails, snail mail and text messages....well, I got over my initial shock and considered it. Like he told me on the phone, "Now Mom...don't feel about it, think about it." Who is this wise child?

It would give him the opportunity to really know his grandparents. It would give him a chance to spend quality time with his grandfather, who may not have long to live. He'd be living in a house on a lot of land with his own horse, dogs, cats and the like.

I've talked to a thousand people already and the concensus is this: What is best for Spencer at this point? And the direction points to his grandparents house. The problem is, I'd be Spencer-less, which usually throws me into a manic phase. But I've got to learn how to control that and find Tracy again. I've been Spencer's mom for the past 13 years and have quite lost myself in the process. I can hear the Lioness say, "He'll never regret the opportunity to stay. But he may always resent you if you don't at least allow him the experience."

So I've decided to let him stay. I'm going to see him this weekend after he gets back from New Orleans with his grandparents. It's a field trip, ya know. ; )

What say you wise people out there? What would you do in my situation? How would you work this out with a 13 year old who is, unfortunately, stuck in between childhood and young adulthood and still requires other people to make major decisions for him? I can use all the advice I can get.

The Lioness is very sick. She's in the hospital, in isolation, inside the loneliest moments than I can even imagine. I don't know what to do, what to think, how to feel. I can't lose her, but I am. I'm losing that roar, that swipe of paw, that stare-down that makes me sit up straight and pay attention.

She was fine yesterday. During our session I had said something that made her throw back her head, throw up her arms and say, "Tracy, please let me die in peace!" I am. I know how. I know everything she's taught me and I'm going to be strong, a veritable wall of strength. For her? For me? Does it matter?

We had a ribbon-cutting ceremony here tonight which she had planned on attending. Spencer's home-school is named after her. But she couldn't make it. She couldn't make it. Will she make it? The cancer is tearing her apart, despite her best efforts to defy it. She has said, "Okay, I have cancer...but I don't want to be sick." And she hasn't been. She's put up the big fight. She's gone down swinging. Day after day I wake up and wonder if I'm going to get the phone call. And today I did...a call from her. Pneumonia, shingles, neutropenic. Isolation. Concealed from my horror of what's happening to her.

There is death all around me now. There is the constant dying of things, of life, of love, of people.

And oh yeah, Kim and I broke up.

Kim went camping with her childhood friend C and C's husband M for four days. They do this every year (or try to) and I was glad she got the chance to get away from this hustle and bustle. I woke up this morning and stretched, picturing her already drinking coffee, sitting in front of a smoldering fire, comfy in her chair, listening to the birds and the sound of nature when all of a sudden I got a whiff of intergalactic buffalo shit.

It rained last night, y'see. It rained and rained and rained. The lightning and thunder hovered over our house for hours and hours and the dog refused to go outside. I even tried once to go with him, but a huge branch from our neighbor's yard snapped and flew over the rainbow (and with wind gusts that felt like they were topping off in the hundreds, I was taking no chances).

The dog doesn't care for thunder, either. When I walked out into the living room, I was greeted with about 45 piles of nervous 130-pound Rottweiler dog crap. My eyes began to tear immediately. The dog sat in a corner looking ashamed of himself. I filled four plastic grocery store bags of feces and for just a split second got an evil idea of what to do with said excrement, but shook my head and tossed the bags out the side door.

Next came the cleaning and the scrubbing and of course, the mopping up of the urine that accompanied all this fun. I had to go to the store to buy some kind of industrial dog shit carpet cleaner. I think the actual name was Dog Shit Carpet Cleaner: Industrial Size. I had to move furniture and wash the floors.

This was all before 11:30 in the friggin' morning...on a Sunday when I had planned to read the newspaper cover to cover and not be bothered with anything.

Spencer and I went out to the porch with some coffee and were just settling in to enjoy the rest of the day when we heard a bird that sounded as if it were in the tree right outside our screen. I got up to take a closer look and the box under our table jumped. The bird was trapped behind the box. No problem. I told Spencer to get a broom and we'd just gently coax him from whence he came.

Nothing is ever as easy as it sounds.

Turns out, my bad kitty Brina caught the bird, broke it's wing and leg and left it on the porch for me to enjoy. Why doesn't she ever KILL her prey??? Anyone know this? I didn't know what the hell to do. I had been up to my knees in Rottweiler shit for the entire morning and now I had to deal with euthanizing a baby bird? It was pitiful. It couldn't fly. It couldn't walk. Everyone once in a while it would hop on one leg and then fall over.

I called Animal Control and got no answer. Lovely. If I had a ravenous, rabid dog in my yard, what the fuck? I called Kim's mom. She suggested calling my friend K's husband J and see if he could help. Well, poor J had a traumatic incident with a hunting excursion when he was a boy. He had shot a squirrel out of tree and when it landed, he realized it wasn't dead. He had to shoot it in the head. It still wasn't dead. I think he ended up beating it against a rock along the riverbed, but I tuned him out at the point and started to think of all the things I don't know about calculus.

So J wasn't too keen on killing this bird. He suggested we let it outside and see what happens. Brina was sitting on the other side of the neighbor's fence and P-Diddy was lounging it under the trampoline. This idea was not a good one. I suggested we put it in a box and rush it to some State Hospital for Birds. (Not really, but compared to the other suggestions we got...). One such suggestion? Throw it over a fence and then when the cats go back to gouge its eyes out and break its neck; I won't have to see it. I wanted to put it in a plastic bag and take all the oxygen out. I just couldn't think of anything more humane. J at this point said, "You want me to just slam it against something and maybe cut his head off?"

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?" I asked calmly. "Aren't you already traumatized enough from the squirrel incident?"

"Well," he said, "it seems the most humane way. Get it out of his misery."

"That seems like the most humane way?"

In the end...oh my rheumatoid...I'm not even going to tell you what we did to that poor sweet defenseless baby bird. But he's covered up with enough of Chooch's dog shit to choke a fucking horse.

To know Kim is to know that at any moment in time a simple, soothing conversation with her can take a sudden twist off the back lot and veer headlong into the middle of the abyss of space? Of a bottomless sea? It matters not. Wherever it is, you will find yourself, legs dangling weightless, unsure of your composure, questioning what is up, what is down, and how the hell you ended up there in the first place.

Not that we were having a simple conversation to begin with. We seldom do. But last night in particular, sitting on our back porch, enjoying the scent of marijuana roses and hibiscus wafting over from our neighbor's yard, we fell into a conversation about death.

"I think being burned alive would be the worst way to die," I said out of the blue.

"Awake or sleeping?" she asked.

"What?"

"Being burned alive while you were awake or sleeping?"

I couldn't see why it mattered.

"Well," she said. "If you were sleeping, you'd already be dead...by smoke inhalation. By the time the fire started burning you..."

"Okay, okay. I think being burned to death while I was AWAKE would be the worst way to die...like if I was ON fire and running down the street and my eyes were OPEN and shit."

"Gotcha."

"The second worst way would be by one of those old-fashion stretching machines where they just slowly stretched you out until your arms ripped off and your organs inside started to tear in half."

She didn't bat an eye. "Why would it have to be old-fashioned? I think I could make one of those."

"My third worst way to die would be by electrocution, and then hanging would be fourth."

"You can only have three," she said.

"I can have as many as I want. I don't think rules exist for this morbid shit."

"Okay," she said excitedly, "it's my turn! My first favorite way to die would be getting slowly tortured by arsenic poisoning over a period of four to four and a half months...and I'd just get sicker and sicker until I died."

"Uh, Kim..."

"My second favorite way to die would be by Chinese water torture..."

"Kim..."

"...and my third favorite way to die would be to get stung and then eaten by scorpions."

"KIM!"

"What?"

"It's not 'What are your top three FAVORITE ways to die?' Who does that? Who has favorite ways to die? It's your worst, most terrifying ways of dying! Like some people fear drowning the most, or some people fear falling to their deaths from a tall building."

"Well, you never know when you might need this information."

I tried hard to think of an occasion when I would.

She helped me out. "Let's say we're at Couple's Night playing How Well Do You Know Your Partner and this question comes up: 'What would your partner say is his/her second most favorite way to die?' You might have a pretty good chance of beating out all the other femmes at getting that answer right."

"You think anyone else would even have an answer?"

"If they know their partner they will!"

Dangling...weightless, floating like fluffy cosmic navel lint into the ether, averting the firey tails of the comets lest a spark flickers and alights.

I have been overcome with an obsession to read. I started, unfortunately, with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. I hated it. Spencer hated it. We read it cover to cover anyway, perhaps hoping for some ending that would make it all worthwhile. I was sadly disappointed. The chaplain at work promised me that what Kim has been proclaiming to me since I met her was true: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was perhaps the greatest piece of literature ever written and I would not be disappointed. They were right. I finished it off like a chocolate morsel, stuffed with soft caramel, wanting more of the same...wanting to start again, right then, right at the first chapter as I finished the last word on the last page. Instead, I picked up a novel I have been avoiding my entire life. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. A day and a half later, I still wasn't sure if I should have read it. All these years, I never knew if she had made it out. I don't know if my ignorance was self-imposed...that I just didn't want to know. I know now. I wish I didn't. From that last page, I immediately picked up White Oleander by Janet Fitch...and I was dazzled by this writer's poetic prose. I don't think I have ever read such lyrical narrative. It was over too quickly and I absolutely hungered for words. I found a book the Captain had sent me years ago by Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel and dug in a few days ago. Again, poetry. Sheer lightness, playful trips and skips around phrases and at the same time, sharp and detailed, edgy and raw, sucking me in and away from pain that is too real to face here, in the real world, looking me square in the face through its purpled and bleeding eye...

The Lioness limped through the unit about a month ago, unsure and cautious, her gait so unlike her usual determined battle march that all the nurses froze and watched her, shocked into silence. It was the first time I had seen any sign of sickness about her. I held my breath and looked away and by the time she entered the nurse's station, I was all smiles and back in denial. She sat down next to me, barely breathing. "I can hardly catch my breath!" I got a pulse ox to get a reading. Ninety-six percent, as I recall. "You're okay," I said more for me than her. "You need a treatment. Are you getting breathing treatments?" We discussed it. She's bull-headed as crap. Doctors are the most difficult patients. Her blood counts were low. At her levels, she'd be prime for any virus floating around. I begged her to go home. "And do what?" She's obstinate. She never does anything I tell her to do.

She got better. She started marching around the unit again. She got that head-snapping thing again when she gets impatient with people. She felt better. Things were fine. And then one day she came in and looked at me and all the oxygen left my lungs. I couldn't get any air. I covered my mouth with both hands. I stopped the tears immediately. She said quickly, "It looks a lot worse than it is." All the blood vessels in her left eye had ruptured and even under the eye there were black and blue, angry swollen purpled bruises. Over her skin, above her cheek, it looked as though someone had punched her hard right before they took her purse and ran. But her eye, her eye...it was as if the tiniest mulberry jellyfish in the world had attached itself to the covering of her eye socket and was busy sucking out her brains. It was all I could do not to stand up and detach it. She had spent time in the ER, in isolation, her blood counts dropping lower and lower.

I found myself holding onto the chair. I was so fucking angry I almost screamed. I was so fucking angry. I was so fucking angry. I don't know what to do with this much fucking anger. I don't know where to put it. There is not a box or crate big enough to hold it. I don't know how it even contains itself in my body. I am so fucking angry.

The other day Spencer and I were out in the yard raking leaves and I found, incredibly, this small patch of ground at the end of the stairs leading down from the side porch. It has been covered by dried leaves from this past Autumn that we never bothered to bag up because they had been well contained there in the corner and we had raked and bagged so many thousands of leaves already, it was too tiring to even think about. But something caught my eye, or rather, my nose. I raked some leaves away and caught a powerful scent of good, fresh soil.

And then...I went a little crazy. I started to rake leaves out of the plant as much as I could, pulling away the ones lingering on its edges. I tossed the rake aside and knelt down beside the plot. I removed leaves by hand, digging beneath the plants and pulling the tiniest leaves from around roots, smoothing the dirt, throwing pebbles and rocks aside. I inspected the greenery for bugs, for infestation...for cancer. I felt along the branches as if studying exposed arteries and veins. I looked at the sky for the location of the sun, noted the time of day. If I planted flowers here, what kind? What would grow best here in this cornered little manor?

In my mind, I had cured it of its bad cells. I had removed all the harmful substances that had been scabbing the surface all these long months. I had uncovered its potential. But it was now just a square of dirt with a few plants, stagnate and unmoving, with no quest...merely waiting to see if it would unfold into something beautiful...or wait once again to die when Autumn would embalm the plot.

As crazy as I have been, as close to the edge as I have gotten in the past, why do I not think it's insane to imagine that if I plant flowers here, I can cure the Lioness of her cancer? I'm not too far gone to understand they'd have to be a certain type of flower. They'd have to have wondrous names, or healing powers, or be associated with lovely and delightful myths and legends of goddesses and poets (and lionesses, of course).

Any suggestions for this botanical quest are most welcome (as most of you know, I have killed cacti). All gardening tips are welcome. You can see I'm starting out small and it is very important for me to do this all on my own. I need tips on everything. Mostly, I need to know about bugs. I want no bugs feeding on my flowers. I want nothing sinister crawling along the veins and arteries of these organs. I want no jellyfish.

And nothing in this garden must die. That is the utmost of importance. Nothing in this garden must die.

My life these days could be the script for a roller-coasting, out-of-control, unbelievable, psychedelic, panoramic unfolding dream of epic monstrosities. Most of the time I have to remind myself to take a breath after I've stood for moments upon moments literally starved for air, disbelieving, shocked into my own reality while realizing there is no easy way out, no possible way to find any easy path...that the only way through is totally uphill through rose bushes without petals to soften the sting of the thorns. My skin has been literally shredded bare and left me bleeding and exposed to whatever ugly toxic virus happens to be floating around looking for an easy receptor.

Are those enough metaphors? I could on and on. I can only say so much here as I am protecting my son. I am purposely not telling you that life has descended upon him and casted down possibly the cruelest thing it could to turn his life into hell, inside and out, and that there is little I can do to protect him from it, but watch. I can watch. And I can pray it doesn't kill him. He it trapped inside it and it rages inside him and it rages outside him and he is totally powerless. And I only have so much power to fight it...to fight the "system" to help him. And that system is so much stronger than me. The people I've worked with are wonderful, but they fight a system that is stronger than them, and the people in that system are fucking bastards. At every turn we fight. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. And the clock ticks away. Time is the biggest beast we fight.

For me, it has been a lot like walking along the shore on the beach. Most of the time the waves lap up at my feet. They are a constant reminder that Spencer and are treading the waters. We are constantly on this path no matter where we are or what we're doing. Step after step, the water laps up. It is comforting to know that we've been getting things done. But every once in a while the enormity of what is happening totally engulfs me and the water becomes a tidal wave, a tsunami, and without warning, at work, in the grocery store, driving, at Kim's mom's house, in a patient's room, the water washes completely over me and I am tossed, unaware if I am upside down or right-side up, and I am desperate to reach the top for air, gasping for breath, scratching at my throat, desperate for all of this to go away, and I can't find Spencer, he has just been washed away, he has given up, he can't fight it anymore, he can't live this way anymore, and he has given himself to the rush of those waves and let himself go with the fierce tide and has felt free for the first time in his life.

And for me, there is no need to breathe anymore. It seems impossible, but the very next second, there where are again, Spencer and me, walking the shore again, the waves once again, lapping just over our feet, cooling our toes, our footprints still visible behind us, zigzagging this way and that and I know we'll get there, wherever there is.

Even if Spencer said it would be okay to open this up on my blog, I don't know if I'm ready to write it. For me, writing something down has always made something more real, more permanent, than speaking it. I'm sorry to say you'll have to deal with my writing in metaphors for a while longer. There is too much pain. There is too much blood. Already my keyboard is covered with it. I fear the screen will be dripping with it as you read this.

I only ask that you pray for my son (if that's what you do), or light a candle for him (if that's what you do), or just think the kindest thoughts you can for a child who is going through something that is horrific and scary and terrifying. What I wouldn't give for good old-fashioned teenaged angst.

Ugh....I hated doing this, but I couldn't not do it. I horked it off Suzie's site. The Johari Window has always fascinated me. I first heard about it in college and I guess the most compelling part about it is that there are things about ourselves that we are totally unaware of that other people around us get right away. Anyway, here's mine. I'm quite afraid to look.

UPDATE: Ah, what the hell...I can take it: The Evil Tracy!

Don't you hate it when you go around singing a song that you can't stand? It gets stuck in your head like a record with a scratch and the same stupid lyrics keep popping out of your mouth even though the song itself makes you cringe or want to claw out your own eyes? I've been doing that with "Just an ordinary, ordinary day...just an ordinary, ordinary day." Yeah, I think it's the ditty for a fucking maxi pad commercial.

The kid had a science project due today. He had to get one of those gigantic display poster boards that are always way too big for the project itself where you spend most of your time moving construction paper around trying to cover some of the white space. His project was on the effects of adding salt to boiling water. It was absolutely engrossing. We boiled some distilled water, added a tablespoon of salt, watched the water boil again, added another tablespoon of salt, measured the temperature and repeated the procedure until I thought I might take that candy thermometer and run it through my nasal passages and lobotomize myself.

I was going to give him a ride to school so he wouldn't have to lug the project on the bus when I discovered something unusual about my car. Unlike Karen, whose car was stolen, I wasn't so lucky. Mine wouldn't start. I'm hoping it's just a dead battery, but I have this sneaking suspicion that it's something more. I have a feeling it's something way, way more than that. I think there might be gremlins or some kind of mojo phenomenom happening under the hood...something which will require a complete overhaul of the engine that will end up costing more than the truck is actually worth. Why do I think that? Because I just got my tax return back and I'm flush with money, that's why.

Kim and I went out Saturday to play a few games of pool. We ended up playing 29 games. Why? Why? Why? Because we are both competetive bitches, that's why. I had her 9-3 games to start, but she caught up. Then we were pretty much tied throughout the tournament. We both hate to lose, but I had to redeem myself from last time we played when she had me 11-10. We both played really well and have decided that it's time we joined an actual league. That way, we can just kick the shit out of other players instead of each other. Spread the wealth, I always say.

Spencer and I start our Healthy Families program at the Y tonight. I don't know how we're going to get there, but I'll find a way. Kim has been out of town on business three times this week (twice to Ohio and once to DC) and it has royally sucked. Yeah, her career is taking off like gang-busters, but I'm really bored. My career is not taking off. It's just sitting there like a grounded plane with no flight attendant. And the passengers are running amok!

That's life for me right now. Ordinary, hectic, rushed, stopped, frustrating. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've erased this sentence twenty times. Twenty one times. Twenty two. I just can't bring myself to erasing it again. I'm all stuffed up. I'm blocked. Do they have a pill for writer's constipation? Can I just do a word purge? It's my blog, of course I can. But will anyone read it? That's the real question, isn't it?

I live in a city where if someone gets shot it makes the front page news, interrupts live TV, headlines the six o'clock news, feeds across the bottom of the TV screen during regular programming, and gets delivered via singing telegram door-to-door during the dinner hour. Everyone in the city goes to the funeral. Everyone is related to or knows someone who is related to the deceased. What's my point? There is no point. This is a word purge.

Since I've been working at this hospital, the psych unit where I'm employed has NOT ONCE, NOT ONE SINGLE SOLITARY TIME, had one person in 4-point restraints. Not once. Since June of last year. I have agonzied over this. Can we say this: There are no violent people in this city. No, we cannot. Can we say this: The nurses at this hospital are better psych nurses than the nurses in Cincinnati. No, we cannot. Then WHY have we not had one episode of 4-point restraint at this hospital in the seven months I've been employed here and we had at least ten a week in Cincinnati? Okay, this is not a word purge...I'd really like some answers here.

Another work-related, sorta-kinda thingy. I know these two gorgeous women. And I mean, like, YOWZA gorgeous. And they are both beeeeeayoooootiful in very different ways, but gorgeous. Luscious, even. Like, delicktable. But shit, I digress. When I first started working on this unit, I liked both of them. I could imagine the three of us getting together and going out, laughing our asses off, playing pool or shopping or having coffee and just laughing and laughing. They are both extremely funny and endearing, charming, engaging. And let's not forget, absolutely beautiful. But the problem is, they can't stand each other. That really pisses me off because it puts a slight, um, kink in my plans. Sure, I could go out with one somewhere one day and then go somewhere else with the other, but what I really wanted was a threesome threeway girls night out thing. I've tried fixing the situation by talking with one and ironing things out, but it only got her mad at me and risked my friendship with her. Kim wisely advised me to just stay out of it, which I've since done, but damn it! It really pisses me off that I can't have my Ménage à trois little trio!

Well, this is all starting to hurt my head. Sometimes during quiet moments like this, deep in the abyss of my soul where my sadness and discontent collide, I really wish I still drank.

If you've watched anything on TBS recently you've been fortunate enough to see classic Samantha (played by Kim Cattrall) in action on previews of Sex and the City (which airs weekly on Tuesday and Wednesday nights). The scene is the usual diner where the four women meet for casual lunches.

Samantha says with a confident tone, "I know for a fact that all married couples stop having sex eventually."

"That's not true," Miranda interjects. "You've had sex with plenty of married people."

Samantha looks at her with a raised brow and replies, "That's how I know."

I don't know why, but every time I watch this scene, I fall off my fucking couch in hysterical spasms of gut-wretching laughter. I mean, it takes me about five friggin' minutes to catch my breath. When I think about it at work, I giggle incessantly. Today during a HORRIBLE exchange with one of my patients after she returned from ECT treatment, I thought about the look on Samantha's face with that raised eyebrow and that knowing look and I could feel the giggle start to bubble up in the pit of my stomach. My patient was telling me what it felt like to be lost in the abyss of doom and blackness...a place I know all too fucking well...a place where I found myself not too long ago people, and that tiny little bubble crept its way up, bouncing its way round my intestines like its own little pinball machine and I actually smiled!

I hurridly busied myself with tidying up her bedside table, straightening her nightstand, making the bed and throwing out some old cups, but I actually had to cough to keep from busting out laughing! Thankfully the treatment team came round to see her and I was able to leave her in the hands of professional people who would not laugh in the face of her pain.

Sometimes it is the way someone says something, not what they've said, that will get me going. Still, I think it might be Samantha and the unrelated but equally funny "wild monkey sex" term that was used this past weekend that kept me slightly off balance nearly all day. I'm just now getting my bearings...but thankful nevertheless that I have today off. Now if I could just wipe the grin off my face and get some sleep, all would be well.

"I Have A Dream"
By Martin Luther King, Jr

What a holiday is this! What a glorious and amazing holiday this is! I am filled up to the brim with celebration and appreciation for this day. But seriously, have you ever heard anyone say, "Hey, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day"? No? Well, here it is. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day! I hope you did something that celebrated your freedom today.

One night years and years ago I found myself in a dark pool hall with what would be my last boyfriend and some of his friends. Having no desire to drink beer or shoot pool, I stood with a fist-full of quarters before a jukebox with hundreds of selections of the same two artists: Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Jr. Incredibly, and what must have been some kind of a joke on the part of the owners of the establishment (like "Let's see how long we'll go before someone picks this song"), was a selection on the very last turnstile: At Last, by Etta James. I played it about sixty times. A black man at the bar passed me on his way to the bathroom and stopped only long enough to wink and say, "You've got soul, girl."

That song always spoke to me. Not the words. But her. The singer. Her soul. Her passion. Her fire. Her suffering. I do not know what it means to be black. I do not know what it means to be discriminated against because of the color of my skin. But I do know what it means to be enslaved. I do know what it means to be a slave. I know what it means to be silenced. I know what it means to be scared of dying because of what you believe, because of what you love, or what you hate, or what you want. I know what it means to be trapped and oppressed. I know what it means to be held down and held under. I know what it means to be shut in. I know how easy it is to get used to being a second class citizen, to becoming accustomed to being nothing, to being less-than, unworthy. And I know how hard it is to break free of those chains. After a while, being enslaved is the only freedom you know. Enslavement is freedom. Ask any prisoner about institutionalization if you think I've lost my mind. He'll tell you all about how being imprisoned has become the only freedom he's ever known.

Martin Luther King, Jr talks about freedom as a people, freedom that African Americans have yet to attain...freedom that any people have yet to attain. I don't consider it unrealistic to think in such terms, that we could reach the zenith of understanding and empathy across the nations of all people, where race and religion and gender could blend together to the highest quintessential ideals. I think if we lose hope of this, we lose hope of the world itself ever surviving. But, I think it has to start with one of us at a time...each of us, one at a time...individually...we have to free ourselves first, from whatever bondage that holds us down, holds us back, makes us afraid.

Today, I did it by making one small simple statement, in my backyard, walking through the grass with the dog, and looking up at the sky, just as dusk fell. For MLK, for this day, for myself, and for the dog, I said only, "I belong to myself." Trivial, yes...it might sound like that. But not for a captive. Not for a slave. I belong to myself. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

I am a thousand feet above the earth, flying higher than I have in such a long time. I am seeing things as clearly as I ever have before and feeling my place in the world more soundly, more solidly, than I have ever known. There has been no earth-shattering epiphany. There has been no spiritual awakening. There have only been days upon days, one upon the other, unfolding slowly and casually to reveal the beauty of every day in all its commonplace glory.

Spencer and I spent a quiet Christmas at home with Kim, enjoying the holidays at leisure. We all met Deb finally and had a great time. She was absolutely charming and engaging with a great laugh and we had a blast. We met at a sports bar and I wanted to show her my trick shot on the pool table but I missed it by one shot. (Sorry to disappoint you, Deb.)

Kim and I spent the New Year at my friend Kelly's. I totally pooped out by 10:30 and had to come home. Both Kelly and I had to work the next day and God, I don't know how Kelly made it in, but she did. The next day I started to get sick and for the next three days after that, I was laid up on the couch, unable to swallow and barking like a seal. Kim did take good care of me (as usual...I'm telling you, she missed her calling).

Today we've been lazing around. Spencer and I went for a bike ride and then jumped around on his trampoline. It was my first time and I swear, I had no idea what a work-out it would be. I could barely catch my breath after five friggin' minutes. But we had a blast. And it was all part of our New Year's Plan. Spencer and I have decided that this year we will spend more time in action, more time outside, more time moving around, seeing things, exploring the world, meeting people, and expanding the parameters of our once very small, encapsulated world. We're joining the YMCA this week and are ready to get back to the racquetball courts, take some spinning classes, put our bodies in motion and reach beyond what we've been accustomed to, what we're comfortable with.

I'm ready to explore. There are paths I've never even glanced down before. The Lioness gave me a card at work yesterday with this written in bold black letters: FEAR Future Events Appearing Real. How does she know me so well? How does she see so deep into my center? I struggle with so many things. I fight a fire-breathing dragon which very few people know about, but those that do know about it know that only I can fight it. I know they get frustrated when they see me give into it. I know they want to give up on me. I know they want to shake their heads and walk away and be done with me. I know the Lioness wants to slap me and scream at me and make me look at the logic, make me see what is so fucking clear, what is so real, what is so obvious before me...but she doesn't. The funny thing is, I'm trying to protect her from it. I don't want her to get burned.

So here we are....2006. My focus right now is on something I can control. I am going to open the world for Spencer and me and he and I are going to unzip the bubble and step out into the big wide open. It began today with one simple little bike ride around the block, both of us muffled up to our eyes with hand-made knitted scarves and caps...and it culminated with a contest to see who could bounce the other on the trampoline high enough to see over the neighbor's fence...high enough to see the park beyond...high enough to see the hospital where I work just blocks away...higher still to see the edges of the little neighborhood where we live...higher beyond that, which has so far been way too far for us to venture past...

Today I am writing just to be writing, for no other reason but to string some words together, and to write about nothing at all but these small, insignificant things that have been happening in my life. Well, maybe not insignificant, as I may soon be out of a job, but daily, blah, tiresome things nevertheless.

I hate that song Life is a Highway. I don't know who sings it. I don't know all the words. When I hear it on the radio, I turn the station. I think the person who wrote the lyrics was extremely short-sighted in his prose. He could've expounded to infinity and beyond, but all you really get is "....life is a highway, I wanna drive it all night long...life is a highway, I wanna drive it all night long..." over and over and over again.