Hah!

When You Do Something That Everyone Absolutely Everyone In The World Would Disapprove Of

Do you think that if you do something that absolute everyone in the entire world would disapprove of you are pretty much guaranteed that you are doing THE WRONG THING?

I am taking the world's most ill-deserved and foolhardy vacation on earth. Of which all reasonable people on earth would disapprove. Except my husband. He is both reasonable and not disapproving. The reason he doesn't disapprove (I think) is that he knew I was crazy when he married me and he's generally tolerant. Maybe I have browbeaten him over the years into going along with all my crazy plans. Like those times I made him take walks in sub-zero weather in the snow at 2 a.m. because I could not sleep without walks, etc. A terrible breaking in period and yet one which benefits me at the moment. He was crazy then too, I must say in my defense but not in a way that leads to frostbite.

Or maybe he simply hides his disapproval.

But what the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?

I am completely insolvent, ready to declare bankruptcy practically and I get this largish tax refund. So I'm like: WOOOOH...VACATION. YEAH!

Now, I'm planning to use the tax refund to pay down my debt. I have to do this crazy thing where I don't pay my credit cards and then I tell them that they should have me pay less than I owe because otherwise I am going to declare bankruptcy.

So that's like: The height of financial desperation, no?

But in general I'm feeling insane and desperate. It's different than other times. Not like I've never felt desperate like this. But it's like this...I cannot describe. Imagine if you could never relax, ever. You know that feeling when you are about to speak in public or about to take a test or you just got in trouble at work or something? Well, then think about having that feeling all the time. While your brain is also scanning the world for imminent threats. In addition, you are being frequently confronted with the fact that you are an awful, terrible person in hundreds of different ways. But you feel completely isolated from every other human being. All your life, your parents and siblings were sort of bound to you (in a complex way but with love) and you expected to see them. Next, imagine you had this feeling that you never cared if you ever saw them again. Or anyone. Except for perhaps your child.

That's kind of what happened to me. It's actually not the worst experience I've ever had, in terms of insanity. But it feels like one for which there is a cure. I don't have the energy at this point to seek a cure. So I went out of town for two days. And the feeling lifted slightly.

That's when the idea of taking a vacation I can't afford started to gel. In fact, I started to realize that when people talk about needing vacations this might not be just some dumbass thing. People might actually really and truly need vacations. Not time off work. I actually got time off work. But time away from where they normally live and struggle. To sort of remember who they are, outside all the fear and guilt that daily life brings by the handful.

I had these strange shocks over the last few years.  Those shocks when people die. Those shocks when you find out what you thought was a baby is not going to be a live person after all. Those shocks of having that happen again, and the blood and gore. Those shocks when it looks like you are going to lose your job. Those shocks when it looks like your husband is going to lose his job. Those shocks when you find out some people you love are hellbent on their own destruction and there's nothing you can do to stop them. So it's going to hurt like hell when the terrible thing does happen but all you can do is wait. Those shocks when you find out you can't pay your bills.

I tried to take two vacations in the last 3 years. During each, I found out that someone I loved was about to die.

When I write this, I realize it is normal life. The only annoying thing is that we are supposed to pretend to be normal all the time in normal life. How is that even possible?

I think that's what I hate the most: The pretending to be normal. It does so much damage. I go to buy black pants because I can't miss work and I need some thick material to hide all the mess from a miscarriage. But I have to act like a completely normal person while all this is happening. That did something to me, something very bizarre that I can't quite describe.

Anyway, unaffordable vacation. I thought about killing myself or going into a mental hospital or some sort of reset. I've been so horribly, horribly afraid these last few years. What the hell else is going to happen. It could be simply an ordinary person's life but I simply don't take bad news very well.

But NOTHING BAD IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. I am desperate to find a way to get this information into my brain so that I can enjoy my life, see its beauty. Everything is OK but I cannot get the message. I cannot explain this. I really tried hard to think of a way to get the message that everything is OK and may remain OK for some indefinite period. So, a vacation. In an unfamiliar place, a very unfamiliar place. For only 5 days, to avoid any missing of school.

It started when I found out the doctor's office had no record of a physical for my daughter, the Spring vacation camp therefore wouldn't take her and my doctor and every doctor absolutely refused to give her a physical in the next two weeks so she could be in camp. So I have to take the week off to care for her. I know it sounds crazy but the next thing I know, I am making plans to go to the Caribbean.

So What Is It?

So what is it?

I've spent years resisting the mental illness label.

I've given myself exactly 12 minutes to compose this post so forgive me for not listing all the reasons.

Among them are that I'm not sure what constitutes 'mental health' for anyone. 

I've never quite put my finger on what I 'have.'  I've been told I might have OCD, bipolar disorder, depression, dysthemia, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, and PTSD.

In some ways, PTSD makes sense to me. Well, it's the one where I read the list of symptoms and think 'yes, I have all those.' But I think there is more to PTSD than can be plumbed in the DSM or whatever it's called. DSM X? What number are they on?

Please understand I'm really talking about myself here. I don't have strong views about other people but I am curious and wonder whether I'm the only one.

It's just sort of hard to say to myself: "Well, I'm mentally ill" without having any illness I can really put my finger on. Rather than doubting myself, I really wonder if psychology and psychiatry are not at the current time very blunt instruments. 

In fact, they are. To my knowledge, there is little that is understood about the actual physiology and causes of these illnesses, except in rare cases. There are some speculative views and some more settled views on the underlying biology/neurophysiology. Maybe progress is being made but there is a vast, vast area of ignorance. Notice that there is no medical test for a mental illness, but only a test via symptoms. What is going on at the biological level when someone has one of these illnesses?  They know something (cortisol with PTSD eats away the amygdala, etc.) but there is a lot they do not know.

Another reason I am curious about how much mental illness as a model fits my life is that I have tried the cures this medical field offers and they have not done all that much for me. A tiny offset or mitigation was all I really got. There are little bits of relief here and there but also many unpleasant health effects here and there. Anyway, I've written about that before. 

No one in my family--which is chock full of such people--has been helped in any way by any doctor. 

I think what is more curious is that there is such an extreme amount of suffering that accompanies...whatever this is...mental suffering. If you added it all up, from the day I was born, I really question whether it was a good thing that I was born. And I do not say that to be dramatic. Of course, I am a kind of negative person. Not just kind of. 

So that is also the curious thing in my life. I am walking around with this incredible invisible helmet on my head, a hairshirt and leg irons and yet I am striving each moment to pretend that I am fine. I pretend that I am happy. I probably don't fool *everyone* but I fool enough people. I think. Difficult to say.

And I've honestly and with a hopeful heart sought out absolutely everything medical science has to offer for people like me, and alternative medicine and pretty much anything else. I think--but I'm not sure--that I've had some luck. I do have some periods where things are fine. So maybe that's what you get. That's the best there is.

I wish I could relate, in a concise form, the amazing stigma I am aware of when it comes to mental illness. 

--It casts doubt on your reliability, your very credibility as a person--on your word, on yourself as a witness to your own life. This is probably the stigma I'm the most hypersensitive to. I need my thoughts and ideas to be taken seriously. I have a horror of not being given credibility. 

--You are seen as a burden on other people, a drag, a possible danger. Part of this is due to the fact that many people have latent struggles with this and don't want to be reminded of it themselves. 

Oh, shit. TIME'S UP! 

Anyway, I'd like to think of a new euphemism for the person like me...What might it be???

Kind of like 'Friend of Dorothy' but for a crazy person. But you know, a nice crazy. Not a Dick Cheney kind of crazy. (That's another problem, too.)

Not My Only Reason For Wishing I Could Go To Blogher

It is interesting what blogging reveals. I think I could edit out all the self-absorption and pettiness, if I had time to edit.

I would say that of all the most unsavory aspects to my blog, the self-pity is clearly the the most glaring. I can explain that, later.
 

Some of the blogs I read but don't link to inadvertently reveal pettiness, peevishness, snobbery of various types, various things on the self-absorption to narcissist spectrum that I also dance upon. The only irksome thing is something that reminds me of real life parents who scare me is the oppressive bourgeois parental judginess thing.

I currently have a crazy person at work driving me crazy. But it's not her craziness but her malevolence that makes my blood pressure rise. But, overall, my view is that the nuttiness and flaws of people are the most interesting parts of them.

If you don't believe me, read Russian literature. Of course, this might be why I love Russian literature so much.

I might be freaking you out with this comment but I should add that I am not sure what people write is entirely revealing of their deepest self but might simply be channeling one kind of isolated and insignificant part of themselves, some part that wants to speak but might not be key to their flesh and blood selves, their daily life.

Also, virtually everyone has an admixture of unsavory parts and human weaknesses and I don't condemn people for these necessarily. Unless they act like assholes. And even then, I don't condemn, but avoid.

My point here: I WON'T KNOW UNLESS I GO TO BLOG HER. And the most pathological and fascinating bloggers are not bloggers I get to talk to I shall never know how prevalent their narcissism really is.

I am curious about the revelatory aspects of writing. If I just had the time to become enlightened. Because this blog makes me see my ego--and I don't mean conceit by that, but just sort of the intense selfness of the self--as a giant huge Macy's balloon of poofy and unwieldy size. How do I get it down to size. How do I become the serene balanced enlightened creature I am light years from being? Meditation? Seriously. I haven't a clue but I want to turn that enormous, overinflated and distorting self into a serene placid pond of utter serenity with a lotus in the middle.