but am I?

I had a lovely summer. I learned to be happy, I pushed my limits, I made new friends. I was more than just my sickness; I was someone you'd want to be around. People started asking me for advice: how do I quit smoking, what vitamins should I take, how should I change my diet, can you cure my cold.

we're well into autumn, with just over a month left before the shortest day of the year. as the light begins to decline the respites from pain grow few and far between. I'm trying to come up with better coping mechanisms for Incipient Winter Doom. I got a light therapy box, a shit-ton of vitamin D, and I've been ingesting a ridiculous amount of anti-anxiety/depression/pain herbs, both Chinese and European.

I have a tendency to let myself slip too far down into the Black Dog hole. I have a tendency to let the physical anxiety from consistent high pain levels create mental obsessions over things that are out of my control. I confuse a desire to hurt less with a death wish. I forget how much better things are when it's warm outside.

Pain is a time warp. It's long-term memory damage. It's being forever stuck in the present. If I were more than just a lazy Buddhist, I'd be ok with it. instead I think maybe there's such a thing as too much mindfulness. sometimes I hurt so much that it gets hard to breathe.

Pain is an endless rick-rolling and I can't Force Quit.

Until April or May, then, the best I can do is turn on my light-box, take my vitamins, drink my potions, hope that Corydalis yanhusuo doesn't tolerate too rapidly, and try to fill my life with as many distractions as possible.

Until April or May, I'll dig my toes into the clay and keep pushing this heavy, heavy rock uphill.

(and keep watching House.)


It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

I've never gone this long without having any kind of job, and I'm simultaneously terrified, resentful, and exhilarated at the thought of finding work.

I'm afraid that I don't have the damn HP to stay on track for 6-8 hours. let alone dexterity or constitution. It's hard for me to sit still and focus on something mind-numbingly boring when my bones feel like they are made of lava. that, and I'm running out of marketable skills: I'm too sick to cook and I can't clean houses like I used to, not without spending the entire next day in bed recuperating.

I'm hoping to get in at a doula service, because there doesn't really seem to be much out there for semi-cripples like me. my dear old dad is covering my rent next month, so I have a few

I've got three days left of 30 mg Cymbalta capsules, and after that I'll be pharma-free. so far I'm doing fairly well, although the brain zaps just kicked in an hour ago despite the buffer I'd been hoping the weeks of major Omega3/6/9ing would provide. not as bad as I thought, though, and I did have a great acupuncture session yesterday that gave me lovely lovely sleep last night. albeit bizarre dreams featuring Bette Midler.

the nets are in an uproar over that British study on anti-deps' efficacy. I've even seen (hopefully sarcastic) comments calling it a Scientology plant.

I've spent the past 15 years metronoming between "I'm getting MEDS/LIFE tattooed on my knuckles" and "EFF big pharma." I tend to think that meds are only useful in the most extreme of cases and that proper diet, exercise, and supplementation combined with talk therapy or mindfulness training can fix most problems. I'm disgusted that I can obtain 6 weeks of samples (FOR OFF LABEL USE!!!!1!) for ten bucks while the same amount of money will only get me about 2 meals' worth of organic produce, or 5 meals' worth of conventional produce, which may contribute to long term systemic damage. for the typical poverty-limit and under mental patient like myself, our finances just don't allow for the diet required to heal our bodies.

while the idea of national healthcare is so appealing, I'd sure rather see an increase in food stamps. Last time I was on them, I got ten bucks a month, and that was when I made about 750 a month.

my fridge is full now, but after the end of the week it's back to rice and beans until I can find work. I imagine I will end up making some flyers for eco-friendly housekeeping, but it's such painful work I don't know how much I'll actually be able to handle, and then it's back to square one.

I hope once my brain quits churning my posts become more articulate.

sunday morning is every day for all I care

I cut the Lyrica down to 100 mg a day from 300 and I am already sleeping less. Just a normal 10 hours or so instead of 14 and waking exhausted and groggy. I can almost literally see my body deflating back to the size I am supposed to be. Hi, hipbones!!

the only real benefit I can see Lyrica having is that it does cut down a lot of the static in my nerves- the itching and hypersensitivity. So does megadoses of Omega-3/6, though, and I have high hopes for the acupuncture getting this body back in line.

GOOD day yesterday. Therapy, a good 25 miles of riding, an art show, and a party. just mild panic attackiness at the art show, mostly from the noise. it tends to short everything else else, loudness, making me twitchy like a bunny, and as prone to needing to sit in a corner.



also, I was the only girl at this party with short hair. wtf, midwestern girls. sorority time is over.

maybe this will come true

2007 was a hard year. I came squinting and groaning into it, ashtray and whiskey-breathed and in bed with Someone Who Was Not My Boyfriend. Granted, the Boyfriend had gone AWOL and I'd basically had to break up with his voicemail after 2 weeks.

Things had gone badly between soon after he'd sold his house and moved here. His dog was ill a lot and had gone off the meds that had made him pack up and move 800 miles. He hadn't found a job that he liked and was just sitting around drinking beer and growing more and more barrel-chested and cranky. He had wild facial hair and a handsomely craggy face and tattoos like a sailor. I loved to lie on his bed in my underwear and watch him take things apart and put them together, but I needed to be petted just about as much as he needed to be alone. Crazy plus crazy just can't equal anything lasting.

That was the thing that made me craziest, I think.

Once I get boyfriended I start to get used to constant attention. Every damn time I let myself slip and I start needing him and then I quit paying the right kind of attention to myself. I am terrified of being alone. I guess that's why towards the end of last year I imposed some pretty serious solitude on myself. It got bad enough last year to where I was having trouble leaving the house. Not agoraphobia, just this tedious hesitancy. Now I spend a good amount of time glued to the nets or reading.

I took a vow of chastity on New Year's. I got so tired of fucking guys and falling in love with them at the drop of a hat, belly-up like a puppy, yipping and wriggling for their hands on me.


Fibro has fucked with my head an awful lot this past year. I just started a course of weekly acupuncture treatments and talk therapy sessions. I am going to cut my meds, force myself to exercise and meditate. It will really fucking hurt, but I can't sit in bed and obsess over dying alone anymore. I left the house so little in December, and I am damned if I am going to let this shit win anymore. I am so tired of being depressed and in pain

please don't take my picture

The year has begun its final tumble toward the exit.
So many things have added their weight to the push that first started its stumbling.

I walked out of a fulltime job, a "green collar" job running an environmentally friendly cleaning service, at the end of the summer. I couldn't keep my mind focused, I was stressed out all the time, and when the owner and I came to anger and yelling I just walked out.

I'd started performing for some femdom pr0n out in the suburbs, and would make as much money in six hours as I did in two weeks at my "real job." It was a bizarre feeling, but it was just like the acting I did in High School, in the long run.

Despite biking twelve miles a day, the new medication I'd started taking for fibro was making me bloat and gain weight. I look at pictures of myself at that time and I cringe. I was pasty and puffy and I weighed almost thirty pounds more than I did ten years ago.

I spend almost all my time now in bed or tucked up in the sunroom.



It's so hard to walk or stand. The ground slips and stutters under me. I panic at bars, need to sit with my back to a wall and drink fast, drink til the leg cramps stop. Smile and talk loud about my cat, about Memphis, but always always I end up talking about being Sick.

It's becoming all I am.

the sads (how to fight loneliness)

After the equinox I have to take special care not to plunge into the depths of the black dog; doing this while detoxing from Lyrica is particularly obnoxious. I have to force myself to listen to the Arcade Fire instead of Otis Redding, I have to bore myself into cleaning my room, and I have to keep all the lights on full-blast as soon as dusk even hints at erasing shadows.

and then there's the weed maintenance program. Zak used to joke about it back when I was on Depakote and Risperdal and Effexor and all that other ridiculous shit.

-All you need is meditation and marijuana. And Doral menthol lights.

When he broke up with me, I burned myself numb for months. And then I started smoking pot again and things got a little bit easier to handle. He died three years ago right when I lost my shit. Sometimes I envy him. I'd never leave a mess for someone else to clean up like that, at least I'd like to think I wouldn't. I fantasize about just disappearing off to Canada to sit on a cushion and hum, but when the black dog starts howling I've started to look down at my arms and think about blistering heat and knife blades. I am only lucky not to be back home with the drinking and the pills.

Until things get better, or until they get worse, I'm going to only do things that make me feel better. I have to. this masochism is killing me.

I have a winter full of stoned evenings lying in bed listening to a blissed-out shoegazer mix ahead of me. That or red nights prodding at old scars.

too heavy

I'd love to detox off Lyrica. I can't tell if it's helping or not anymore. the weight gain has been around 10-15 lbs, just enough to make me hate my body palpably, bulimically, once again. at this point I'm not sure which is worse, the all-invading ache or the head-bashing mirror hatred. but when I read about cerebral edema and hallucinations it just makes me feel that much more helpless.

the worst part about being chronically ill is the complete disenfranchisement. i have no say in this. I am lucky if I can sucker my np for some codeine sizzurp when I am coughing up green shit. part of me thinks it's cos of the tattoos and the yard-long medical record with the state hospitalization and the crazy meds. I'm still in pain, y'know.

i mean, I stopped driving after I totalled my car stone sober in the middle of the day. I just didn't care how fast I was going or what I hit anymore. that sort of recklessness means I am either a total asshole or on the verge of suicidal, right?

i bought a whole bunch of fancy chinese diet tea. gonna try to eat nothing but brown rice and kimchi for a few days. meanwhile the hunger is as bad as it was with Effexor. i have to get off this shit. i dont care at this point if it helps or not. i have found that fibro pain plus self hatred are unbeatable. i give in.

my third rail.

working title

this body is all i have.

you do not understand this.
you can escape yours easily.
in sports. in sex. in sleep.

we have to walk slowly
when we drag this old thing around.


it is as heavy as grandmothers
heavy as heartbreak
as could have been
as midnight
& as luggage.

actually I am scared shitless

I was more than a little perturbed by the results of the study
published in April in the Journal of Neuroscience.

As a young woman (27) who has fibro, the next study I would like to
see would compare the brains of a group of fibro patients in their 30s
with the brains of normal people in their 70s. I am active, in good
shape, quite intelligent, take excellent care of my body and yet I
despair of living through another decade of this. What can I expect?
Are there any preventative measures I can take (for example,
Alzheimer's medication- would it help with the "fibro fog"?) or should
I start saving to go live in a retirement home when I'm 40? Why do I
know more about my disorder than the rheumatologist public health care
sends me to? Why are fibro patients sent to rheumatologists anyways,
when we clearly have a nerve/brain malady, rather than one of bone or
connective tissue?

No one is answering my questions.

not quite Kevorkian...

Having fibromyalgia makes us reckless in ways that definitely seem to make clear the major diagnostic points of our particular neurosis. People with fibro tend to self-medicate.

When shopping at my new favorite, or my old neighborhood store I throw down a good chunk of change on supplements. I was at Sunflower a couple days ago and I noticed the Tyrosine and seeing as the label said it a nerve strengthener I bought some. Yesterday I woke up covered with a weird rash. Sure enough Tyrosine can cause hives and rashes. So I'm in to Howard Brown to get a cortisone shot and a scolding.