C'mon and drug me up

Well, I figure after such a depressing last blog, I should keep you updated as to the waning of the Snuff It's. I distracted myself in a stupid way last night (4 Quart pitchers are rather malevolent), and then I got a call from my sweet dear friend Maggie. We chatted and chatted and she cheered me up. She was shocked to hear both of our exes were in a photoshoot together for On Our Backs. I kinda liked the jocularity of it all. And she called me a beautiful butch which made me happy. Margaret has always made me feel better since our first days of art school. She had a unicycle but I never got to see her ride it. Sometimes when I had the snuffits she would let me sleep over and tell me all about her cat and how he looked like Barbra Striesand (He did too!). She has frigging amazing mental health bedside manner. It's really graceful and classy, and not many people can treat crazy people like that.

Anyway, another few reasons for getting over this strain of Snuff It's is that I'm just a really freakin' curious person. I want to know what the hell is going to happen. I feel like an ineffectual spectator to civilization's downfall. I feel sort of like a global rubbernecker. I think I'm so weird because I grew up right near the end of the Cold War. Maybe I would have survived it better if I hadn't snuck off with mum's copy of Where The Wind Blows and started anticipating imminent nuclear war.

I remember one time I wrote a letter to Reagan asking him for nuclear disarmament. I must have been six or seven. He sent me back a brochure about all the fascinating facts of the White House, including Abe Lincoln's ghost.

Thus began my fascination with ghosts.

Once in the psych ward an orderly asked me what my fascination with death was. He seemed to think it had to do with me being crazy. But it's just kinda . . . there. When I came back from France and Germany all my pictures were of concentration camps and graveyards. I'm just kinda weird. But then I've also been struggling with issues of death since my depressive episodes started when I was seven.

One of my meds is being increased, the one that could cause a fatal skin rash. It's also really good for depression, so hopefully that will improve life.

I saw my sister, which cheered me up. She kept sticking her finger up my nose and making me slap her thigh until I noticed a bruise. And she headbutted me several times. I think she pulled my hair a few times too. Sometimes I think I just became a butch so she couldn't yank my hair the way she used to.

I also think I'm just really sad about Christopher still. I had always wanted to be more involved in his life, he was such a goof and I always heard such funny stories about what he was up to. I think it's especially sad and humbling when someone younger dies. Death doesn't seem so removed anymore, it feels present everywhere.

I guess I would say I've also had some kind of spiritual intervention. It's a bit hard to describe though, sort of like feeling outside thoughts enter into your soul about what's going on. Not like hearing voices, or seeing The Virgin Mary (or even the Harlot Mary). Just these emotional messages that you can understand, and sometimes it translates into words and sometimes not at all.

I came upon an interesting fact recently, which in a really weird way cheered me up. It said that the most dangerous suicidal episodes when people actually complete the act are usually the first three suicidal episodes a person has in their life. Afterwards people begin to learn that these feelings are temporary. Even me, these ones have really scared me but the longest each episode lasts is three hours. I still feel sad, but I won't be in the danger zone until the next one. Like waves. I find depression really fluctates compared to mania. Mania increases to tremendous proportions, but when you're in a major episode it's pretty persistent and all consuming for days and days. I never noticed having three hours of feeling slightly normal before going up again. Maybe that's just me.

But anyway, I am WAY past my first experience with ideation, I must have gone through at least sixty of these episodes in my life. I do internet reading on suicide and try to grapple with it logically as a medical condition to keep from feeling too hopeless. And I'm really trying to shed my own stigma and recognize and honour this as a symptom of a lifelong disability and not a true judgement of who I really am. Sometimes I like to make myself feel better by imagining what social changes should take place to preserve the health and dignity of other people with mental health issues. Sometimes I imagine starting a terrorist organization made up of the mentally ill doing outrageous acts of . . . uh, activism. Like peeing on Ewan Cameron's grave.

Sometimes I just go to sleep and have strange dreams about beautiful women and political intrigue. Which I think I'm going to do right now.