Sweetest

I cut my hair and love it. Confession: this is how I look at 7 in the morning after having five hours of sleep so don't judge the mascara/raccoon eyes or I will have to assassinate you.

Ron skipped his cereal this morning just so I could have the last of the milk. Even when he has to work on Saturday for fifteen hours he thinks first of his little wife who will be home all day having a weekend. That is something I never asked for because I didn't think it was possible, now it's all I can ask for. The most encompassing all I've ever had.

I woke at three in the morning and grabbed my darling legal pad where I wrote a whole page of things that make little sense right now. This whole thing is really weird, I may be the most productive thoughtful sick person on earth. Not thoughtful in a sweet way, thoughtful in the lot's of thoughts way. They race by me, ideas of us moving, I started job hunting online at 6 am. I don't know how to describe it, I think faster than I can think and process, I am jittery, my heart races but there is no happiness, no orgasmic euphoria like webmd says there can be. Damn, I miss out on even the perks of an illness. Back to another pill to settle me down enough so I can function like a human rather than a robot in a marathon. I can't stop. That's the main thing, not even for sleep, not even when I'm exhausted beyond words. I am the non-stop, I don't need to eat even, I just have to keep doing, doing anything, just moving to stop the beating in my head of thoughts like a clanging bell. And this is called a "manic episode" and yet I feel remarkably normal. That word alone "manic" means rubber rooms just because of all the movies I've seen. Now to getting up and vacuuming for I think the third time this week because I have to do something to expel this restless spasmodic energy. Oh Lord, to the dream of feeling better. 

 

"Every time you're leaving I don't know what to say"

The world is cold flutter-trembling like a dance under the sheets, but this is just a storm. A rounded mass of white I watch in the weather reports, curling into town like an invisible wandering hand. Curious like all of us wondering how things feel and taste. 

I have been diagnosed, over the phone because I was a little too smart for my own good and did my own soul-searching mathematics. I figured it out and asked my Doctor if he has too, and yes, he has but he was waiting until I had some more sleep to break the news. Well, I know now and I don't know how to react. There is no reaction, because it has been there anyway, like a nameless black shape, but still this does something to me. It changes me, how I see myself. Maybe it shouldn't, maybe it should, but I am here in this pink old skinned soul and dealing with it. There is no formula of how one is supposed to respond to illness, if there was it would be a lot easier. All I know is, I'm here, I'm sick, I'm dealing with it and going to get better, but now I'm horribly shocked and sad about it.  There is something everyone says about boot straps, but the only people I have seen say that are the onlookers.

Now onto the storm cloud hole punched day. I'm getting my haircut short short and am nervous but excited, but nervous about it. I go back and back and forth. I wish for Ron, he has already worked sixty hours this week and I miss his sweet face and words horribly. I decorated the apartment with little vintage hearts for Valentine's but without my valentine it's pretty but worthless, like so many empty bottles. 

tingle

All I can say is I slept last night. I'm still in bed rubbing my eyes and thinking, thinking, wrapped in our wine colored blanket. I'm crashing from being off the saviour medicine. I have to start over with basically everything. Even my sleeping pills don't work, I only slept last night because I had been up since 5:30 the day before. Somehow this turns into a sick story blog, like I have cancer. But it's there, in the corners, haunting like an etch-a-sketch. I will be patient because I have to be patient. I will start from square one because I have to start from square one, there is no other option, I live and seep amongst all this like a dirty fish tank. 

But to move today. I have a new painting of the beach and hate it because it isn't like the one in the lesson, but like it because I made it, I'm in a seashell conundrum about it. But now I have two paintings and now to set up my art room for my birthday, fingers crossed for money. Today to move around a bit and rescue my poor car that is far away from me with the keys stuck in it's belly button, poor car, now named George. Tragedy brings us together even when he rumble tumbles with noise and tired muscles each time I drive him, and he smells like smoke, and is always generally moody.

He is my heart felt and taking me to Vegas for my day. Not my car, my Ron. We read together every night and live amidst a survival tunnel, but it works and he is my sweet wonderful, and reason.

"when you feel so tired but you can't sleep"

I've been up since seven and then up since four and et cetera, et cetera, I can't sleep. Isabelle is laying on Ron's bed pillow half under the covers thinking she looks like him when she does this, but I know all her tricks. She snores quietly thinking she is a wonderful actor.

I have been having all the songs from Sweeney Todd in my head this week. We went and saw it by ourselves late but we ended up falling asleep and each missing little bits, then to go with Josh and Shawna on Monday and it was so much better the second time. The music and colors and blood are awesome, I can't wait to get the soundtrack and Ron and I keep talking about all the interesting nuances of the story.

My Journals of Sylvia Plath; my sacred, sweet book that I am on my third or fourth time reading has broke in half today. Perhaps it's a sign from the Lord, the tearing of the life-shattered royal curtain. Oh the destruction of my apartment kingdom. Regardless I have to buy another soon, reading half a book doesn't work so well as I tried that all last year. Putting half-read books back on the shelf because I took too much time between reading is damn depressing, partly because I know I will rarely go back and start it over which promises that the story is over. The girl in Daniel Deronda is forever in her river-soaked dress in the living room drinking tea, The Brother's Karamazov are still in there own philosophical gospel and I will never know what happens. The books are locked and frozen shut. 

And now to today. To my second day of no more soul-stitching feel better medicine. I had a reaction and am still slurring my speech a bit and having my teeth chatter quickly and uncontrollably. The sad thing is that was the first medicine I have responded to in six months of being on medication (with every two weeks changing the dose or the medicine itself), that is a lot of drugs but now that I have had this reaction I can't try anymore of this class of medication because I will have the same reaction to all of them. So now the search continues. 

newlywed

I have decided to chop all my hair off like this picture. I need a change from these eel-black twists and purges of long hair. When I look in the mirror I see the soul sunk girl I have been and I want to see something different, not remember the horror of all the things I've done, thought of, in my worst heart pierced moments, but instead see something hopeful and slightly forgetful of this recent past. A pure slate of a Catherine, with little short simple hair so all I have to do is put on bright pink lipstick, or red and some pearl earrings and be free and easy new and content. Hopefully I will get it cut this week and find some money in a mailbox to pay for it...

I'm here in my pajamas with the morning mist sparkle hardly escaping the moss covered clouds. Isabelle is sleeping beside me, very exhausted from her supposed night shift of work (which if this happens, she has yet to receive a pay check).  She is always so determined, serious, even in things as simple as sleeping-- she sighs constantly as if it requires much focus and effort. Of course it does, she is a puppy damn it and that is hard and she has a green bow in her hair which she thinks is just awful.

Jittery lumberjack

It's one thing to call your doctor and answer his question by saying: "It's not that I have to keep moving my legs, I can sit down." It's another thing to do this in Wal-Mart. I felt horrible, like I finally fit in with the overweight grey hairy moled, spandex and polyester clad poor boy groupie women while I stood in the pillow isle trying to answer the awkward questions. But I'm home now and my dreamed up, hammered out idea of coolness is returning, slowly.

Tonight Ron and I are going to have a communion dinner. This will consist of club sandwiches on sourdough bread, soda, beer, and candles on the coffee table. Music and Ron and I talking about life and Jeezer. I'm looking forward to it, we are a little simple and unrefined about it, but I think that is the way it should be, because that's real. That's really who we are. Simple unrefined club sandwich kids...sweet.

incantation

It's morning again, again. Mornings tromp by when I have trouble sleeping, I've finally gotten there with puffy grey bags under my eyes. But today I will be off to painting with my most creative Lori. I am not such a realist about it but abstract and easy and that's fine with me for now. It's more a study in color and crooked lines, but from far away I am surprised because it starts to look like something: a tree, a face, a doppelganger. 

Darling, you're lucky

My face is swollen and bruising from passing out last night. Sadly, I can't say it was from alcohol...At least if I have to pass out I'd want it to be blamed on something fun gone wrong. Instead I have to say it was from medicine and bad mexican food.

The New Hampshire primaries are tonight and I'm horribly curious. I predict Obama and John McCain will take it down this round. I guess I believe the polls this time around. I think Hillary winning tonight is a long shot and who else is there on the Democratic side that matters, Edwards only matters as an abstract phantom candidate to a few people...maybe he could be a running mate (sorry buddy). 

Ron and I are trying to get more informed for this election. He is actually reading their foreign policy statements. You really have to sneak around all the smooth-furry talk to get to what they supposedly really think about things. I want to pull out their records and see what they have done. 

It's morning but I am going to say goodnight for no real reason other than I want to.

Goodnight. 

Jelly

Goodmorning you me and the in between. I'm awake again and still in my skin and next to my soul like a shy stranger. Sleep was again full of awkward creep-flash dreams and interrupted at four a.m. for no reason in particular other than that even sleeping can be difficult at times like tackling an albatross. My dear albatross, how I love you. Oh the tongue in the cheek. 

The last two days have been (I hate to say it) miraculous. But that is the only word to explain how relieving it is to have a few days reprieve from the evil incandescent and invisible monster, my monster- depression. After nine months a day or two is a miracle. We've gone on a date, finished reading a book together, I have been cooking again (haven't done that in a year), and I set up the dining room as a writing space.  Maybe it's all because of the catholic candles on the coffee table with the manufactured prayer on the sticker, it's easier to reason the change to anything other than Viagra shaped pills.

Isabelle is the black dolly puppy and very busy today. Focusing on things like finding the best toys from the bedroom and bringing them out to the living room including a santa hat that is somehow still out and a pair of my panties, she acts serious and silly, all floppy-mop topped. So easy difficult to be a dog. 

Now to the day that is so sharp and pungent like a flower so far. Hopefully it stays this way...