To Smoke or not to smoke...

So, I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired--like one of Ozzie's lyrics, and I decided to go to Venice Beach to see if I could get ok'd for a medical marijuana card. I hadn't smoked in months, and I was missing the relaxing effects it has on my nervous system. I've been miserable since the holidays, dying from loneliness, and going slightly mad every night. Staying up all night and playing on the computer, rather than trying to sleep. My hours are all bass-ackwards these days. Hell, I've always been a night owl. I was born at 6pm, and haven't gotten past that yet. So, here it is, 4 am, jotting down some thoughts.

I took myself off Cymbalta last week without seeing my psychiatrist. I haven't seen him since early December, cuz he was out of town and still is. I won't be able to see him until the 20th this month--I'm supposed to see him every 4 weeks, and if I'm going through a crisis, more often. I had to take myself off that crap-it was killing me with dehydration. My skin burned and itched, and I was feeling ill. Dying of thirst constantly. I've noticed that my allergies have gotten worse too. Every time the Santa Ana winds blow hard and hot from the Mojave Desert, my allergies blow just as hard. I was feeling particulary bad from my dried up sinuses. Had two humidifiers going 24/7. Not much relief. Too bad, cuz at the very first, I was feeling a bit better on Cymbalta. I've been put on Cymbalta 3 different times since almost 2 years ago. Wow, I can't believe it's been that long! Year before last, in June or July, I was put on it. That made me totally manic, combined with Wellbutrin, and I went on my space oddyssey around LA . Keep reading below, and you'll come to that. Wrote a 37 page essay about it one night, on one of my creative bursts.

I'm trying in my hopeless way of setting up going to the beach for the card...bear with me. I haven't slept in 2 days. I have moments of creativity, but getting it out of me is hard, cuz my body can't keep up. Writing is hard to do, feeling like this. I have the look and feel of a run-over Barbie doll. Maybe have a skid mark or two--I see one on my forehead...

I've had some side effects going off Cymbalta, but not as bad as other drugs I've gone off. Particuarly Zoloft. I do have the weird eye movements and a little vertigo, but not to the degree of Zoloft. But going off Cymbalta takes me off the pain killer aspect of Cymbalta. It's mild effect on the pain neuro pathways, but not enough to warrant the thirst. That, and me looking like an Egyptian mummy. Sorry about the miss spellings here, but I have a hard time visualiizng words and how they're spelt when I feel gross like this. It's hard to keep my thought together to get anywhere. My mind wanders like the absent minded professor.. Oh yeah, this is what I was trying to come up with--I read on the net the other day that depression settles into your nervous system, and that people with bipolar depression or other mental illness are apt to die up to 25 years earlier than so called normals. I can see that. I certainly feel it. I was telling my mother the other day that I have no desire to get to be her age. She's 80. She says she never thinks about it. Her attitude has always been sunnier than me than a mile. I told her that the thought of living with depression and immobility and in pain for the next 30 years was not a good prospect for me. Check please! I also eye myself as the character that Edward G Robinson played in Soylent Green--just going to the local euthanasia center when it's time. It was a very nice experience. They played soothing music and put on beautiful videos of the mother earth on a big screen as they pumped the toxins in. If those places were legal, they'd have such business these days! I was quite upset to read that depression just settles into your nervous system. I mean, to take all these drugs over the years to correct my brain chemistry, and now knowing that it's in every nerve of my being---how the hell can it ever be cured?? I feel it in every cell-every blood vessel. I write this blog to get someone to read it, and maybe one day there will be not so much the stigma of mental illness. But then, I ramble... I'm going to have to come back later to finish this post. It's very tiring to write--I can't sleep. Been manic, trying to be creative. I feel god awful. B bak ltr..

Christ the Redeemer

I'm been down, so I went to one of my playlists. Christ's music, I call it. I listen to love and inspiration that Christ has instilled in these people that sing his praise, and I feel better. Like I'm not alone. It hurts being me, and I get too angry at the world and at God, and I turn away from Him. Stop going to church. Hating God. Wondering why I suffer when everyone else has a life. Nice homes, children. Then I realize that there are lots of people out there that are a lot worse off than I am. At times of pain, I have to listen to my worship songs and praise His Name. Thank you Jesus, for dying for me. I love you.

Dreamin of honey, Eating shit...

I've been pretty ill for weeks now. Can't get myself to do much, beyond chatting with acquaintances on myspace. Feel very introverted and reclusive. Don't have much to do with my friends when I get like this. They know to stay away when I go into my seclusion. I eventually come around and resurface to say hi.

Been very down about having no money, and practically starving. I've been going hungry a lot, and rue the day I was born. I try to go out on dates sometimes from men I meet on Match.com, for the free dinners. I feel grateful for the delicious food and wine. The service. The "I'm actually communicating in this world" feeling. I so often feel like a stranger in a strange land. An alien from another universe. Just living inside a human skin. Reptilian, ridiculous and anthopomorphic that I am.

I've learned to not mention the fact that I'm looking for a job (yeah, right) or above all, that I'm bipolar. They run a mile when they hear that. I have to pretend that I'm normal. It's hard work. To pretend you're upbeat and happy, and feel like death on the inside. Skull and crossbones seething within. Wondering how long I can keep it up, and if they can see it leaking out my ears, like a vicious black oily smoke. I don't want to poison them with my atmosphere. Harm them with my melancholia. Rot their brains with my disease. So, I pretend I'm interested in what they have to say, chuckle, agree and nod sagely at their ruminations of modern life in the big LA. Lost Angelenos. That's me a Lost Angel. Caught between heaven and hell--leaning towards the later. God, I hate me.

I had a new suicidal thought come to me the other day. Using zip ties to throtle myself. Pulling them tight fast, and know instant oblivion. Like erotic aphyxiation. Though I wouldn't go there--just the death part. Once you pull those tight, you can't get them off unless you cut them off. My scissors would be elsewhere. I imagine that I'd panic and struggle and call out to God a bit, then, it's over. I can see maudlin and morbid Edgar Allen Poe peeping over my shoulder at this. His 200th birthday was a couple of weeks ago. He is one of my bipolar heroes. Deep, dark thoughts. Death creeping in his wake. An old buddy, him.

It's amusing and sad and ironic to me that I have a talent for writing, drawing, dancing and remembering historical facts. I know in my heart that I have something to offer somewhere, somehow, but I'm convinced that I'm useless in so many ways. I beg God to ease my depression and let me get on with life. DO Something with my life. Stop being inert and miserable. I feel guilt that I squander my worth, and I drown in my despair and pray to die in my sleep. My cats keep me from jumping. I have no escape in my dreams, even though I fall into these coma sleeps at a drop of a hat. I have vivid nightmares that make me awaken with pain in my heart, and a sluggard in my movements.

I have taken myself off Cymbalta. It makes me unbearably thirsty at all times. I ever dream I'm pouring gallons of water in down my throat to try and quench the unquenchable. My skin is in pain most time from the dryness, and itches. I slather on lotions and cremes and vasoline even. Nothing seems to help. I feel like a living mummy. Dry and dead for centuries. Shrunken and putrid. And so I sit at my computer and chat. Drink thirstily and endlessly. Bewailing my lot in life. Wondering how I got to this point in time. Blase and bored. Blah, blank, bleah.

I just wanted to add that I feel suicidal right now. I think a lot about cutting my wrists or throat, or hanging myself. Taking pills. No one should have to feel this way on the holidays. I pray to God every night to just let me die in my sleep. Depression crushes the life out of me. It's 8pm, and I'm going to bed, because I can't stand being alone all of the time. It's brutal.

Happy New Year! 2009

I'm sitting here, wondering if I'll make it through alive this coming year. I feel very isolated and alone. Holidays are awful for me. I live alone, and have no significant other. I'm wondering if I can keep up this joke of trying to function. I've been looking for a job half-heartedly, not knowing if I'm capable of going out into the world full time. It creates a lot of anxiety in me. I play on myspace a lot, to take my mind off of my dire financial situation, and to ease my loneliness a little. I've gone back to smoking pot sometimes to help ease the pain, and drinking wine. They're depressants both, and I get agitated on pot, then go into a little bit of paranoia. I feel very much alone in the world. Sandi vs the world. I feel godawful on the holidays. My family is all back south, and my friends go out of town.

Back for the holidays!

Hello my friends! I'm sorry I stay away for so long, but I like to avoid thinking about my disease as much as pos. I thought that when I began this blog oh so many months ago, I'd get many people to read it, and I could bring the light on the hard situations people like me have to go through when they have to deal with this unending hell called bipolar disorder.

I've tried to move on, and I've joined all of these social networks, and had fun creating my pages and making friends on them. It gives me something to do. I've been going out and looking for a job, and have pretty much failed at that. I have a 6 year gap on my resume, and I don't get hired. I do get call backs, and I do go in for interviews, but I feel like I have to compete with 20 year old girls.

I have no money to live on per se, as I'm on a fixed income from Social Security, and it only goes so far. I'm quite down about it. The concept of living on no money whatsoever after I've paid most of my bills makes me depressed each month. My money usually runs out by the 10th of each month, and the stress to come up with money to feed myself and my cats, buy gas for my car, and anything else I need, puts me over the edge more often than not. I've been needing to get my back tooth crowned for a year now, and it's on the verge of disintegrating. I've been saying for months that I have to get my radiator repaired on my car, because it has a leak in it, but I have no money to even think about it. I just have to keep putting water in it. During the summer, it ran hot all of the time, and I'd have to drive around in the blazing heat with my heater on, so my engine wouldn't explode. My ex boyfriend told me to turn my heater on when my car ran hot, and it brings the temperature down for some reason.

I sit here now, sad and alone, looking at spending the holidays by myself, with my cats as my only companions. I had a horrible birthday in August, and now here I am, dreading Christmas. The holidays bring me down in a big way every year. I contemplate suicide a lot. Wonder why I have to suffer like this. Think of myself as a loser. Someone that's not worth loving.

I joined match.com because I'm sick of being alone, and it was fun at first, because I have a lot of hits on my site, but after a few dates, I feel bored by it all. I can't muster up the interest in meeting anyone. Or I inadvertently chase them off with my negativity. I harp on about my beauty flaws, or think that they just can't be interested in anything I have to say. I hate myself. I want to die. I've got to get through the holidays somehow without being sent to the psych ward. I wish I were dead.