i kept my doctor appointments.  twice.  i went to the new psychiatrist two times.  i had called for an appointment at this practice a few years ago, but the wait was too long.  next time i called, they were not taking new patients.  this round, i made an appointment for three months out and finally started seeing a doctor who may [or may not] be the right fit for me.  
    he's kicking my ass emotionally both by challenging me and agreeing with me.  he laughs at my dissertations on the madness within because i seem to know all the things needed to move forward in a normal - but i am compelled to challenge my own thinking and push the limits of my own mind and spirit causing this cycle of undisciplined chaos.  
he gave me some homework round one.  easy enough.  buy a book and read it.  an unquiet mind.  i have one.  no problem.  every experience this woman had i could relate to.  i got the final chapters where she is accepting of her mental illness and trudges through knowing she has to follow the medical advice to keep the chemicals in her brain balanced while fitting in with her lifestyle.  
     i could have written a two hundred page book in the time it took me to read this.  i say that to illustrate this:  i'm a total chaos junkie.  i heard this expression on a tv show and felt like those words describe me without judgement.  [i'm talking about my own brain judging myself for a few reasons too complex to put into comprehensive sentences here.]  and i'm sharing this struggle i had with reading the book really to get to the core of this matter.  this doctor, through a smirk, asked how i felt while reading the author's words.  i told him i'm not ready to tell him how i feel, but i told him what i thought of the experiences she shared.  and when i explained that i thought many of her experiences were parallel to my own, i realized that there is the possibility of similarities in all unquiet minds.  he explained she became successful after regimenting her medication.  i pointed out that she appeared to be successful in her professional world, met someone who was willing to walk beside her in the noise, and when she was alone, she agonized over the chaos within her.  the outward action remained unlike her inward spirit.  
the doctor laughed aloud at my summation and when i asked him why he explained he had never heard an interpretation of the author's apparent success with such pessimism and cynicism.  i intuit as he has never seen. 
     so he gave me another bit of homework.  a list of 4 things this week.  [3 of which i already failed].  the book this week is called a first rate madness.  i have that too.  he's picking titles that appeal to my sense of humor at least.  [there is comedy in the tragic crazy i possess.] 
     so i sigh heavily, not having purchased this book yet, although i have a commitment to at least read the homework.  [with lethargy, i persist in trying.] 
   but this heavy sigh i have.  the one that comes in response to someone asking the question, 'how are you?' - this heavy sigh is a filter for my words so that i don't reveal the fear i have deep inside.  the feeling part that people are asking.  [the part i don't want to share because i want to singe-handedly change the priority of concern from heart to head.]  honestly, and without mincing words, i am afraid.  i'm scared that balancing the imbalance will not make me normal, but crash me directly into boring.  if there is one thing i don't want to be, it's boring.  and i don't give a fuck what others think of me.  i don't want to bore myself.  i'm terrified of the physical side effects of experimenting with meds.  i'm prescribed a low dose of something that finally works both in my brain and in my life, and i don't even take it on a regular basis because of the fear.  reading the account of the gold standard in meds sent me into panic and i had to close the book until i forgot what i was reading and had to read-over some pages to keep on with it.  
     i'm tired of being sick, but i've spent so long accommodating the aches and pains of both body and mind, i'm afraid of being well.  i'm afraid that i'm going to long for the chaos - i'm afraid i'm going to peel the skin off my body for exposure to try to feel when this shroud of sanity protects my actions from my thoughts.  i'm fear being well.  
     the author expressed the very same fear.  she was afraid of being uninteresting.  she used that word - uninteresting.  one of my favorite people says, 'normal is boring'. [along with a few other things he equates to boring.]  i feel like i will never be normal.  and i'm accepting of that.  but to be well-  to not have the chaos- let's forget the thoughts, because even on regimented meds, i have the bad dreams and chaos in my thoughts.  to control my actions, the outward man - i fear the boredom.  
     there is the reasoning that fixing the mind will fix that craving for madness.  but at this point, if i'm honest, i'm already thinking about ducking out on my next appointment with the good doctor [which will ban me from the practice for 2 years] because i'm not ready to let go of the crazy yet.  i don't know who i am without it.        

​I just forgot something.  As quickly as the thought formed in my head, it ran off without an opportunity for me to exchange it for an idea I'd much rather forget.  
I could be bound in a nutshell and think myself king of infinite space, were it not for the bad dreams.  --So said Prince Hamlet through the bard's pen.  
And so too, I feel in this most disheartening manner.  I no longer seem myself; neither the inward man nor outward. And then I am left to consider that what remains has always been; and therefore should cause no alarm to those with differing expectations - including myself. 
To sum up - I am broken.  I am the kintsugi of Edward reconstructed and all the pieces swept away is what those who hold a disdain for my spirit continue in their search 
I dreamed one of those bad dreams last night - maybe just the end that woke me in a start with an unease leaving behind a shroud of malcontent, weighing me down but too important to leave behind. It's the smell today that makes my stomach churn.  The smells from the dream.  The smell of metal and blood.  It's as strong and rank as rotting flesh and burning hair - it's getting in my mouth and I'm gagging on the metallic sting of a towel rack and the slip of blood into the back of my throat.  My skin is burning with a need to scratch the healing abrasions through the salty dust under my fingernails.  
The dreams have a way of rooting themselves and blossoming into uncontrolled life I'm not prepared to prune.  I know the parts that stem from my own thoughts and the parts reviving memories.  I recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the characters my head puts before in the paralysis of a dream. 
Yesterday evening I was asked about scars on my face and with a knee jerk reaction, I explained from whom and how they formed.  They are part of me.  They are lined with gold and make me - interesting - they are part of my story my very un-normal and not-boring story. Sum of my parts and all that.  
I forget that the scars are ugly and make others cringe.  I forget that I am hard to look at and makes folks have to imagine I am different than the skewed interpretation they have of my whole.  I forget not everyone is privy to my parts.   But I am - all of the pieces of my inward man and outward self.  I am the pieces I leave behind and those that I carry with me.  

     I have the habit of using the word WE when making absurd declarations.  Perhaps it is nothing more than hyperbole and perhaps it is a little more.  Perhaps, I consider, that it is a need I have within me to normalize the routine feelings of inadequacy and insanity (which i tell myself is really just an inadequate brain) seeping from my thoughts into my words.  
     Recently I used the word WE to make a declaration, including the word ALL, which I fundamentally know to be inaccurate.  I detest those who speak with absolute statements and writhe in self-loathing when i find, on rare occasion I've done the same.  I said, WE ALL... and then covered my faux pas with an indication I was speaking of a small familial group instead of including my companion as she was aghast with offense.  To my very grim and tearful surprise, within the hour and without my notice, my companion ducked out on me and left me alone at an event I would not have attended without her invitation.  
     WE.  It's an easy enough concept.  
     My life has turned gradually and painfully from WE to ME regardless how I contort myself into the confines of tolerance.  
   I encountered the word WE in my bipolar homework.  Kay Redfield Jamison wrote, WE all move uneasily within our restraints.  I wondered who is her WE?  Without defining her intention, I feel as though I am a part of this restrained grouping to which she refers.  I feel stifled and strangled and continue to struggle with.... everything. 
     In doing this homework, which is little more than preparing myself to be receptive to mental healing by reading experiences of bipolar disorder, I continue to encounter these moments of clarity within the fog.  It's a strange thing to read of my experiences with alternate details - like an odd dream with the head of one friend on the body of another.  But it reminds me that I am part of a WE.  And with an illness leaving me and my thoughts alone so frequently, it's somewhat comforting to know that there are others out there.  
     In my life, I've surrounded myself with others who have similar distaste for everything with similar cynicism or pessimism (depending on their labeling).  Birds of a feather and all that....   It's the WE to which I belong. 
  We all move uneasily within our own restraints.   My life seems a series of undisciplined intemperance and immodesty.  However, living in and out of my head, I assure you it is quite like being trammeled in bindings.  Between retreating when others are ready for me or intruding when they are not ..... i'm immobile.  
     And in looking for the right words to describe how I feel about this WE I read this morning, I return to being stuck in immobility - within my own restraints.  Or the chaos of my thoughts.   

     It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.  -Kay Redfield Jamison

     I still don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I have a mood disorder or a chemical imbalance, perhaps both, for which I need medication, because my lifestyle certainly doesn’t support a sanity to which I could glom onto with a hope to assimilate.  
I am crazy.  I said these words when asked by another doctor why I was in his office.  What was the intention of my visit?  What was my expectation for him while I admit and understand that I’ve been undisciplined and unable to contribute in the past to my own mental health well-being?
     I am unwell.  I am the oddball, the weird one, the peculiar and the strange. 
I have homework.  I’ve been given the task of reading another’s account of their bipolar disorder.  I made it through seven pages.  The introductory paragraphs, I can tell, have the intent to shock.  But, it’s just regular to me.  I live this.  I lived the exact same experience, save the PhD.  
    I just want to be better.  I like who I am and I have a small circle of folks, who I believe, like the way I am.  But I’m so tired of the crazy.  And if I can be a hundred percent honest, being alone with it has me terrified - although I’m getting more comfortable with this aspect. 
     I guess I should warn readers right now- trigger warning or whatever the kool kids are saying.  I’m going to open up about thoughts of suicide here.  Please don’t call the authorities or my mom.  It is because I’m getting through the murky abyss that I can talk about it.  And I don’t know how this is going to go. 
I’m exhausted.  Physically I have a thing. Pancreatitis - I of course get struck with a thing that food doesn’t cure.  So I’ve changed my eating and drinking habits and instead of merriment I have a general feeling of ennui. I am probably an alcoholic functioning less as the days pass with recommendations to cease and decease all operations of imbibing.  
Here’s the thing with the alcohol.  1- I like the way alcohol tastes.   I’m a whiskey on the rocks and a skunky beer kind of girl.  2- On the tv show Shameless, Lip says, ‘-it lowers the volume.’ - It definitely is a buffer from the noise - inside and out.  SO, just as I have become an unintentional vegan, I have also become an infrequent drinker.  That being said, given the choice between a cheeseburger and veggie burger, I will choose the veggie burger provided there is no avocado.  However, if I’m hungry or sitting with friends and my choice is only cheeseburger with potato salad, please fill my plate.  Alcohol has taken me longer to change, but I feel like I’m having drinks once or twice a week instead of daily and also drinking one or two an outing, as opposed to seven of nine.  I’d like to report that I don’t drink alone anymore, but this week past I did.  And it was delicious. 
At any rate, I have this physical thing that, as I type, my belly appears as though I’m smuggling a basketball with the swelling and I’m in a little bit of pain.  The only thing to fix this is fasting.  Fasting.  No food or drink.  I’m already not absorbing nutrients from the food I’m eating.  
     Bottom line, I’m constantly hungry, hurty, and on edge.
    Okay, so that’s physical.  Emotional, I’m not ready to talk about. But mental - I’m ready to try to sort through it.  (Perhaps?)
     I am bipolar.  I have a mood disorder.  That’s what it is.  A disorder.  There is no order in my mood.  My mood is out of order.  
     I looked up the words mood and disorder.  The word mood is defined as the state of ones emotions.  The word disorder is a lack of regularity.  So my emotions are not regular.  And I pause for a moment to make a joke that it’s regular for me.  And I pause in annoyance because I think this bipolar disorder has little to do with emotions and more to do with chemistry.
     But I digress to the commitment I made to myself when reading Redfield Jamison’s words.  I’m going to share these things that have consumed me.  
     I’ve stepped away from a lot of people, but a few have seen my face in the past few weeks.  I have gone to work most days.  I’ve purchased dog food and cleaning products.  I’ve continued to walk around my days, doing the things that need to be done.  I’ve cried behind my sunglasses, on the train, and at my father’s gravestone.  I keep the words, I’m fine, on the ready.  And in every step, I’m ready to break. 
     My sister died.  It’s hit me hard.  She always took care of everyone, in the ways she knew how, and spoke of all the things she wanted to do.  And now she’s dead.  Dead.  My mom wouldn’t let me attend my grandmother’s funeral because I upset everyone who is around me.  I was 38 years old when she died.  I could have crashed the funeral.  But I took in the instruction, do not come, and the reasoning, because i have a way of upsetting people.  And now my sister is dead.  I am 44.  I was here this time.  Barely.  I suppose that’s a different story.  Or maybe the same one?  I don’t really know. 
     Focus on me.  I can’t see what the purpose is to hang on.  I sleepwalk around and do the mechanical, only to feel exhaustion and crash into sleep when I have a minute to stop moving.  If writing, I reason, was the intention… If the thing I’m contributing to society is my writing, and I no longer have it in me to string words together, then I’m done.  And there doesn’t remain a purpose for me to be alive any longer.  Someone can sort through my scrawlings when they go through my pants for loose change to make sense of it.  Or an art show.  Or fill a garbage bag.  For all the Dorothy Parkers, there is a nobody whose name I don’t know to put here for comparison.  I’m one of the nobodies anyway. 
     I’m not the suicide case who wants a bit of kindness on his way to the bridge as an ultimatum to life.  I’m not someone who is at a cross roads with kids moving out and a terrifying prospective of being alone.  I am this--
     Physically I am sick.  If I hang on for ten minutes, ten years, or ten thousand, what am I, if only awake, commute, work, asleep.  I contribute nothing.  Emotionally I am too much, living in a hyperbolic state of immobility.  And mentally, I am broken.  
Eight years ago when I was hospitalized for bipolar disorder, I was asked what I needed or wanted from the stay.  I replied I needed the coping skills to remain alive.  I knew I was crazy.  I had long given up thoughts of being — whatever not crazy is.  I just need to fit in.  I have a friend (who I quote frequently), note that I say things as if they are normal when they never are.  I corrected him, what they are is regular - never normal.  I think that hospital stay was helpful.  But still, I don’t fit in with the normal.  And now I don’t even have regular anymore.  I have swirling chaos.  I’m constantly in a game of survival with life instead of - whatever it is that normal is. 
     My sister - the dead one - was envious of me.  I hope that she came to terms with that before she died.  I have nothing for which to be envious.  I don’t understand envy for anything - especially for me?  My sister struggled.  And she fought.  I’m not saying she had it better than I, because I know that she did not.  But she did have it different.  Her own brand of mental illness.  Her own coping mechanisms.  Her own physical health problems.  And yes, suicidal thoughts and declarations.  Knowing my brain and actions, I can assume the internal pain she was in by the time the words came from her mouth.  I guess if anyone who knew her reads this, I should apologize for causing upset.  I should stick with my own head. 
     My head.  My brain.  My - me.
   There are some things broken that cannot be made right.  I’m entering into this relationship with a new doctor with those words as the foundation of treatment.  And a better woman may view it like I can put the past behind me and start again here.  (and I do excel at starting over!)  But I saw these words this morning, configured on the page as they were and it was confirmation of the destruction I create just by being as I am.  I have no contribution to further the human race.  And I’ve broken enough of it.  If I am dead, there may be emotion about it, but not very much reason.  
     My sister was as sick as she could be and fought hard until the end.  I feel like I’m as sick as I can stand.  I don’t know how much fight I have left in me.  And I can’t figure out why I’m fighting anyway.

​     Nickels & A Dime.  I may have written on the coins before.  It’s a subject that is always on my mind. My Dad used to advise that my purse should contain a dime to always have a way home.  
     “If you have a dime,” he would say, “you always have a way home.” 
    I know that he meant that I could call him for a rescue - should the night get out of hand with me.  And of course it did a couple times.  And he always answered the call.  A phone call cost ten cents at the time he started saying it.  They cost a quarter by the time I needed the advice.  If I held steadfast to his words, I would have fallen short.  Maybe he still meant a dime and I had to be strong enough to carry more than half of the rescue myself? 
     I’m far overdue to a visit with him now.  We had coffee together many mornings with endless words and he is probably the only person who never tired of my voice. 
     He was loud and abusive and mad - both angry and crazy - but for all his twists and turns - both through word and action - I understood him.  
     There was a quality of reason in the absurdity of the life given to me at birth.  As an infant, born under the name of Einstein, [Personified] Madness came with an agglomeration of illogic, with a whisper in my ear and a hush to my lips to make sense of it all.  My hearing is strained listening for that voice from long ago and the depression over my top lip mocks my reflection as I long every day to return.  I am not the girl who can provide reason to the masses.  I may even have an affinity for the madness?
     Lucy Van Pelt pretended to be a psychiatrist and charged a nickel for help.  Kids play and pretend, so it should be no more or less absurd that she chose to play doctor in this manner than any other field of specialty.  It gave a vehicle to Schultz.  And it gave a quantifiable amount to reason and sanity.  Five cents.  So the dime in my pocket became two consults - One for now & one for later.  Get through now and then get through later.  The dime was still present.  The numbers added up.  I still had  a way home.    
     And it occurs to me that I never asked my dad to explain his dime advice.  Perhaps he referred to the abstract too?
     I’m going through some heavy stuff in my life.  Internal, external, stuff over which I have control and other that I’m just a spectator and sidekick.  And in the past few weeks, my brain is telling me that it is time to go.  It is time to be neither a part of the literal or figurative.  Even the person who convinced me for a greater legacy than _Table for One_ has retreated.  I’m out of logic.  I’m out of reason.  Maybe this journey is one I have to do alone?  
     I’m taking my nickels and dimes to visit my dad.  I’ll see what he has to say on the matter.  I’m sure it’s madness.  Maybe I can sort through it?