Testing out mobile posting. First twitter; now this. A girl could get used to this for sure.

finally! a NEW horsey!

Provided everything checks out with the medication assistance program through SCAMH I will be off the Lithium and on to Lamictal. FINALLY. Now to wish/hope/pray that I don't get The Rash with the Lamictal and that it will actually help curb my mood swings without making my personality completely flat. Plus, Lamictal has been dubbed "weight neutral" so hopefully weight loss will start coming a little easier when I stop the Lithium. Hopefully.

Mostly I'm just thrilled to be trying something new and different. Because with new and different comes the hope that this med cocktail might actually work and keep my mood swings at bay.

We shall see.

10 is a nice even number anyhow

So after "invading" my sister's space (read: living in her actual house) for the past 10 days, we (my sister, Tony, and I) buckled down this afternoon and got the garage all put back together. There's something to be said about a bit of real spring cleaning. The garage isn't lit particularly well so it was a bit of a shock to see just how many cobwebs we'd grown in the past [almost] year. Yikes! Thankfully, we purchased R2D2's look-alike in shop-vac form when it flooded and we were able to use it to suck up all the big bits of ceiling panel and all the cobwebs and various other yuk that has escaped out attention due to the profuse lack of light. (The garage has two windows but Tony and I keep them curtained most of the time. The extra lighting came from opening one of the two garage doors, which were caulked tightly shut, to allow the standing water a means of escape.)

It took us about four hours to get everything finished. Our sofa is particularly heavy because it is a double reclining sofa and I managed to pull something while helping my sister move the damn thing. Now my lower back KILLS. I'll be a Flexeril poppin' fool for the next few days, I'm sure.

At any rate it was completely worth it. We are now comfortable, once again, comfortable in our own personal space. Tony won't have to sleep on an air mattress anymore and I can go back to sleeping on my couch. :P Also I am back on my computer and my TV. And the cats are no longer able to bully my sister's dog. Plus it's nice to have reorganized everything and vacuumed every square inch of this small living space. Oh! Plus! I put up all the new ceiling panels that we bought a month ago so no more gaping holes in the drop ceiling. Hooray!

So now I'm going to go stretch out my aching lower back, pop a muscle relaxer, and munch on a bit of my Crème Brûlée chocolate bar and hopefully pass out rather quickly from sheer exhaustion.

More later this week on therapy and meds and other things pertaining to my mental health. And also our weekend excursion to the movie theater with my niece and nephew and my niece's friend to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D.

who. are. you?

but I think I must have been changed several times since then...

All the raw, semi-foreign feelings of a fresh depressive cycle. I never really know how to act. I'm staring off into space a lot. I can't articulate what I want to say. Do I even want to say it? And yet...

I'm maintaining this outward appearance of being functional. Smiling at appropriate intervals. Talking. Laughing. Eating. Acting human despite feeling very much inhuman. Alien. Foreign. Strange.

Internally I am screaming. Writhing in agonizing emotional turmoil.

More and more often I think about - dream about - an out. Someway, somehow... just try to be different. If I could only have a fresh start; a mulligan; a do-over. CTRL-Z.

Who am I? What am I??

WHY can't I answer these questions rationally?

I am Alice and I am falling down the rabbit hole once again.

bored by the chore (what's the use anymore?)

Empty.

There is nothing left inside of me.

No hope. No determination. No resolve.

Nothing, nothing, nothing...

Nothing on the inside of me for the outside of me to bring back to life.

Empty.

I've done all I can do,

It's just not enough.

(Never enough.)

my BFF is amazing

In 2001, while in the throes of untreated mental illness, a friend guided me to a website called Kip's Garage that she was a member of. It was a site specifically created for teens and young adults that suffered from mental illness. This website served as a safe haven. A place we could all go and not feel alienated because we weren't the societal norm; a place we could go and commiserate with others like us; a place for advice, comfort, caring. I think any teen with mental illness will tell you that's really all they want. It's all we ever wanted.

I was barely a member of this website when I ran into a girl that, for some reason or another, liked to keep the same hours as me despite being nine hours behind time-wise. She lived in California, I lived in southeastern Germany.

Really, we couldn't possibly be more different. Our tastes in music, food, clothing, hobbies... the list is endless... are complete polar opposites. The only thing that we knew for sure was that we made awesome friends. We shared some commonalities that we helped one another through. In October of 2001 during our usual daily AIM chat session she invited me to fly out to California for Thanksgiving. Hesitant to fly across the globe to not only meet someone I'd never met but to stay with her for two weeks, I looked for reasons why I couldn't (shouldn't?) go. I came up empty handed. I had the vacation time. I had the money. I was single and all my bills were probably paid. (Probably.) So I priced airline tickets. When they turned out to be dirt-stinkin-cheap, I bought them and told her that I'd be arriving on November 17th, I'd be arriving at SFO and that I would be there to pester her for two whole weeks.

Best. Vacation. EVER.

She showed me every inch of Sacramento and every inch of San Francisco that time allowed. We spent hours in her mom's car zooming up and down I5 singing bad girl rock music at the tops of our lungs. The world was ours and that was the way it was supposed to be. Except I had to go back home [to Germany] and get back to reality. A part of me wishes that I'd just stayed; wonders how different my life would be if I'd never gotten on that return flight "home".

Unfortunately our lives don't "cross paths" much these days. I haven't seen her since her visit in June of 2005. I'm trying to gather resources to make a trip out to San Diego to see her this summer. Hoping that it will come to pass.

But I digress. The title of this post is "My BFF is Amazing" because, well, she really is. She moved to San Diego six months ago and immediately through her mind, heart, and soul into the fight against Prop 8 in California. She's led countless [peaceful] protests since then. I can Google her name and she comes up in the news. Amazing. I always knew that she was meant to change the world. That she was meant for something more, something bigger than a life of domesticus and book keeping. And she is doing her part to make big changes in this world of ours.

And I just think she's great. A fan-fucking-tastic person that I just can't imagine my life without.

no, really.

I want a bottle of wine. Or a six pack of something strong. Just not sure where I could/would/should go to drink it.