Crazy Week Is Crazy

I guess it’s time for another “how the hell is Craiggers doing” post.

It’s been a pretty awful week. My transmission blew on Saturday. I found out the cost on Tuesday. Since last Thursday I’ve been dealing with pains in my stomach. I’m not sure if they’re anxiety or what. I’ve been in a pretty bad depressive cycle since January, to the point where I can hardly write. It’s a circle of suck: when I can’t write, I get depressed, and when I get depressed, I can’t write.

What’s concerning is that the depressive cycle began perhaps a week after a manic cycle. This has never happened before. Usually there are many months between cycles. While I am a rapid cycler (I think more than four a year is considered rapid cycling, and that’s where I usually am), they never happen one after the other like this. Even as I write this, I’m having an anxiety attack, the second today. I suppose this is more of a mixed state cycle then.

I have heard that bipolar syndrome gets worse as you get older. I’ve seen the old men and women in the group homes and treatment housing. I see how badly they’re treated–worse than you imagine–and they don’t even realize the abuse. I’m terrified that their present is my future. It’s not an irrational fear. I’m already in the system, and when I cease to be able to care for myself, that’s where they will stick me.

I couldn’t bear to be surrounded by so many people. It’s hard to be in the room with anyone at times. I need quiet, and I need focus.

Ok, this anxiety attack is growing into a full-sized panic attack. I think I might go sit in a corner now and pretend that it’s ok.

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Miles To Go Before I Sleep

I turned 37 (in a row!? nsfw)  on the 13th, but I feel like 50.  Medical bills are adding up, and my body is subtracting.  It doesn’t seem to matter how much weight I lose (70 pounds since February), my body still rebels against me.

I know that I shouldn’t kvetch, but I’m a Jew and that’s my birthright.

To summarize: my ins is refusing to cover 2 meds that they used to, without which I will die.  My endocrine system is fucked. I have a toothache, and I can’t find a dentist that takes my ins.  I injured my knee swimming in November and was misdiagnosed.  Now I have to go in for an MRI to search for ligament damage.  I’m severely bipolar, with anxiety and panic attacks that induce vomiting. I have asthma. I have sleep apnea, but the cpap machine causes panic attacks (having to rip off the mask to throw up is not pleasant. I have the beginnings of Barret’s esophagus (which will eventually cause esophageal cancer, one of the most lethal cancers).  My left foot sometimes goes numb, and I have a B12 deficiency.

Many of these things I’ve lived with all my life, and I have come to terms with.  I was diagnosed with Bipolar syndrome by age 14.  They put me on Lithium, which I think damaged my endocrine system.  I always had asthma.  Everything else is a brand new fucking experience.

This is why I throw myself into my writing.  This is why I aim for a book a year.  I want to leave something behind when I die, something that people can enjoy, that will live on beyond me.  But one book isn’t enough.  Ten might not be enough.  I will never be satisfied with what I’ve done, and I feel like I have a short while to do it.

Valerie died when she was 35.  She was a brilliant writer, with who knows how many great stories still left inside of her.  She was working on her 3rd novel when she died, and it will remain unfinished.  I keep putting off publishing her anthology because I am selfish and driven.  I keep saying “when I finish this chapter, or this book, or whatever.”  One day I am going to die and I hope that it’s not before I get her shit together.  Her work means more to me than my own, so why do I keep putting it off?

No matter how much I may want to, I am not ready to join her yet.  I have miles to go before I sleep.