He had a secret (Peeps who move to Key West specifically to kill themselves)

He came here with a secret. I'd sensed it but that wasn't clear to me til after he died.

I mean, he had 2 reels in his head, one playing the suicide solution, one playing his version of IRL. Always a secret smile. Like a private dancer.

I knew he was a Robo-head. Takes one. Takes one.
22 years old.
Polite as hell even in death
He did not leave a mess.

If someone you love orders
a tank of helium
and they do not cater children's parties
CONFRONT.

Maybe he thought he'd confuse you with talk of compressors, needing helium to run them. I don't know. Likes to talk with funny voice.

No, it was no accident.
No, it was not that rock star that died with
a rope around his neck and a hand on his dick.

That would have been rude. And he was ever polite. Why why why why why?

A lot of this going around.

Hallmark of Bad therapy teaches bad patients how to use their sickness more effectively

That's why hollering doesn't work. Even MM figured that out. Holler at me and I squish like a marshmallow.

Didn't stop her from hollering. Only taught her how to use it more effectively.

Bad therapy teaches bad patients how to use their sickness more effectively. Hallmark.

this I so don't (son't--new word) want to talk about. marriage counseling with that dingbat from the VA. Hot flash just thinking about it.

reading soothes me. it's okay. it's excessive now cuz you're freaking

reading soothes me. it's okay. it's excessive now cuz you're freaking

it pulls me out of life. only I can't stay out of life 99% of the time

this is all prelude to actually writing.

I have to explain and explore and diddle and fiddle and justify like I'm on trial.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last week Annie (not her real name)  had me tape up  affirmations saying: I am not being judged. I have to change the error belief that I am being judged.

Q saw the notes and responded without reading: "oh, x used to do that."

 X being an old friend who turned out to be totally bonkers--Q has a lot of those.  Her way of saying how stupid taping up affirmations is without actually accusing me of being stupid or dorky or having more than a passing psychological resemblance to lunatic X.

writer's breakthrough

Had a writer's breakthrough. I'm only here to write. Not to write a novel or a play or a memoir or a poem whose essence is so clear, so powerful that it brings immediate peace on earth, even in translation.

"showing up at the page" I think I'm quoting The Writer's Way by that fucking guru that workbook bugs me they mostly do I HATE being told where to cross my i's and dot my t's.

Of course I'm merely jealous of her success...no, more complex, her ideas are so obvious but how does she get to get them onto the page...AHA...she's done something I have not done...publish a bestseller.
Worse, something I'd like to do: publish a bestseller that people find helpful in some way.

 But how does she know what it was she did that got her published? Maybe it was dumb luck, good timing, a memorably fine blow job, BUT she gets to write a book that lots of people buy and I'm sure a fair amount of those have gone on to publish something...

But was it because of the book?

Who cares, as long as it works. But of the billions of factors that went into the blockbustering of the Writer's Way, how does author or anyone know which ones were direct causes--which behaviors when repeated would yield the result of another blockbuster?

So you can never know. Even if you are, to the best of your knowledge, doing the exact right thing, everything can still go to fucking hell in a handbasket.

 I think they covered this is the movie version of the Orchid Thief, "Adaptation" which I'm sure I've mentioned  before...I have a simulaneous blog going with what I believe is fresh material but there really IS no fresh material, it all comes from sonething else so why on earth BOTHER?

I Need permission to write. It's my job. I should do more, not less. This feels so delicate. I do not like being delicate. I want to jump through flaming hoops.

I WANT TO BE A NARCISSIST
but I don't have the heart for it.

I'm sick of the smell of my own ass
but I need forceps to pull-
i was gonna say "pull myself out"

Yeah. Like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Try birthing yourself with your own forceps. More apt comparisson.

Someone said:
I wasn't lazy, I was terrified.

That's why hollering doesn't work. Even MM figured that out. Holler at me and I squish like a marshmallow. Didn't stop her from hollering. Only taught her how to use it more effectively.

Bad therapy teaches bad patients how to use their sickness more effectively. Hallmark.



So why all the fuss about god and turning it over? Like Goebbels said, we need something to clamp our hearts n minds to, irreversably, something we'd be willing to die for, something that is our life's blood yet is distant, unknowable

Putting Defects to Use

I think one reason it's harder for smart people to get the program is that we comprehend quicker and more thoroughly, per exam scores. So we are heels over heads gaga at the enormity of the changes involved in actually doing the program.

[Had a writer's breakthrough. I'm only here to write. Not to write a novel or a play or a memoir or a poem whose essence is so clear, so powerful that it brings immediate peace on earth, even in translation. Like that Coke song--I'd like to teach the world to sing...in perfect harmony. Mystical how a non-intoxicating beverage unites us in ways no rhetoric or war has been able to]

No-toes Tim shared his story at a meeting a couple days ago
[grumble in pit of stomach: I should be at a meeting...no missed nooner. Too soon for next. Buddha night.

Freeze-frame

It's at this point I gum up. Dive into a novel. Retreat retreat retreat.

Simplicity is not my natural state.
Simplicity feels dull. Feels like death.
Disdain one-note perfumes. Tea Rose. *sniffs disdainfully*
Produced by committee. Workshop.
Art needs one leader. One vision.
That doesn't mean everything does. Like nations, countries, families.

So am I writing or am I distracting myself from the fact that I messed up and missed a noon meeting cuz I didn't feel good enough to get out of bed. Except to do Sita's insulin. Walk Heff if I have to. But at what cost?

It's small stuff but for me it's hard.
Try praying.
Try letting go control.

All this whinging...it's all been said before. Call me Sysiphus. Waiting for Godot. And when Godot comes? He's gonna stomp on your head. Laugh. Say "I'll get back to you" and mosey on away.

So do you keep rolling that rock? Like a good girl and wait and wait and wait? Trudging through life?

If you do something to relieve the drudgery are you merely deluding yourself...creating yet another opiate, one more socially acceptable? From Opium to Oprah--the pleasurable haze of immersing yourself in another's life.

cuz isn't that all we are doing when we reach out to help someone? It says it flat out: we help others to save ourselves. It's a selfish program.

So how have we changed?

Is it a fucking farce, the whole fucking thing? But we DO change. I think.

Is it worth it? If I have to work at making it worth it, isn't that phoney? I'm back in charge.

There IS no higher power telling me what is right. The final choice, or the first choice--it's circular--it's all the same really

is MINE.

So Higher Power truly is NOT capable of being in control, of fixing me, of making things better.

Or he'd have DoNE iT by NOw motHERFUckER
an anti-2nd step

main flaw in play: char depressed

who wants to hang out with some depressed dude for 2 hours? Unless he's Willie Loman. or Hamlet.

hmmmm

my friends' lives are at least as interesting as any plotline

so why am i reading not thinking of the day,  Chick at 6 invited me to swim up the Keys at first I thought a tailgate at the swimming hole but no it was O and M and the chick formerly known as Asia. I think it was a party meant to be something else...it was odd but really it was terrific for me. Familiar. Had my own car. Got out of house before noon. Spend day with balanced friends. Fresh-caught lobster grilled and bisque (haven't had that since we were each of us still married and all of us alive)
It was a big deal. Don't blow it off.
Good talking...don't make mother angry.

Who was I afraid of making angry? It doesn't make sense. If you're born to a narcissist, that's one thing. If you subject yourself, even unknowingly, to a narcissist, that's another kettle of jumpin'-in-the-pan-fresh lobster altogether

NB: NO Animals were harmed in the writing of this blog. They were not thrown live into the fire. this is tails only--a reflex post-mortem--they'd been beheaded humanely --

Then to M and V's

Wanting to Care afraid to Stare

being rude. to one easily offended. I've lived through it. Walked on eggshells.

what fell?

a shoe?

Bless you.

[discourse re:ptsd and the other shoe)

ALL SHOES HAVE DROPPED
GODOT IS HERE

A Busy Day: I Venture Out with friends

I don't want to shower cuz I don't want to wash the ocean off of me. Yemaya. Hell, it's probably fecally contaminated and I'll be on IV antibiotics for my gut wonders bacterial infestation ewwww no, I cannot I WILL not include microbes in my prayers for all sentient beings.

Even a buddhist has to set healthy boundaries around compassion, right?

Would a pure vegan use anti-bacterial soap? I'm not being smarmy, I used to be a pure vegan. I respect the edge. I don't have the strength to live there anymore, but my heart is still with the lunatic fringe. Not to say being a vegan means you're a lunatic.( Though many Americans would contest that, but as I'm trying to figure out how America thinks and doesn't...

is that what I'm doing?
hold the presses.

How the American Mind (Doesn't) Think

I need that workshop on how to create a book without writing it.

That there's a great title.'I'd have to bullshit the neurophysics to some extent (why, Anna?) well, if I'm doing a quickie I won't have enough time to assimilate the concepts and be able to have characters talk about them cleverly enough to fool the average reader.

It would have to make a reasonable percentage of peeps feel good about what I tell them--it means they are exceptionally whatever--smart, intuitive--and are among an elite but a perfectly benevolent elite because we are all one and any one characteristic is just a facet of an enormous gem of character/soul so no one's moving up in any hierarchy.

There is no hierarchy to move up in. If there is one, it's bogus, just a tinker toy to appease those relatively aware but not quite there...it's so difficult we are trained to think in hierarchies. Hail our Ford.

you're mad. go to bed.

dumb junky thinking 101

you want to get high enough to get the courage or to get into the right space to do something...but when you finally get there, you're like, woah, I'm not losing this high to go out IRL and take care of task, pleasant. unpleasant. doesn't matter.

They all weigh on me like bricks made of the element that is densest and therefore heaviest but by the time I look it up, and even if I get it right, only one other person will get it and they will be geekier than moi. If such a thing is possible.

I'd think not, but I never say that because of the joke where the punchline is "'I think not.' he said.And vanished into a philosophical mist." and I'm supersitious I'll say that and end up screaming on the edge of nothingness....

Maybe you have Rabies

As a girl, I was brushing my teeth and it seemed to me there was an excessive amount of toothpaste foam in my mouth. I asked my mother about it. She dismissed it but added that maybe I had rabies.

I imagine my mother's sense of humor was similar to how mine is today: dry and morbid. Only my mother was not a bit mean, as I can be.

I'm saying she didn't intend to plant a ridiculous fear into her daughter, nor was she evilly mocking. I don't remember how old I was; the only clue is I took her rabies remark dead literal.

For the longest time after that day, if toothpaste foam ran down my chin, I got a chilling fear that I had rabies.

Being Spiritual means Being Less of an Asshole every day

yeah. fuck.
sorry.

my horror of life has cut me off from my fellow beings.

I don't know how to relate except in crisis, last minute, do it now or never

Like, if I make the decision it's a bad, wimpy decision. So why bother?

Ann Rule Takes Sides--Holds our Interest

But she's subtle about it. She uses words in a way that mask judgement. [there is a reason you inhale books -- you get to see the patterns emerge--- but you have to read A LOT for a LONG TIME to see them. Most people don't have that luxury.

Shame. But pointing out the obvious has always paid the bills. Comfort thoughts like comfort foods, filling, tasty, tempting, cunning, baffling, powerful...the Madeleine in the tea. I think it was tea. I've never read Proust. Well, I've tried, I've ploughed and trudged and ocassionally flew through pieces of the real thing but mostly I know Proust by heresay.

And what do we choose to read of the stuff that's been written by people who have actually read Proust--or claim to

flashpoint breakthrough for a moment
I know I have to move sometime.

Freezeframe: I am not a real person. EoM

AS LONG AS ELENA WAS ALIVE, HER relationship with the count remained platonic

An article about Elena Hoyos Mesa and Count Von Cossel... Undying Love

The quote struck me as particularly absurd and perverse

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1988-02-21/features/8801110837_1_duval-street-von-cosel-love-and-death

When Aphrodite on the half shell morphs into the Willdendorf Goddess and all hell breaks loose

I realize my mother was my only adult friend, only adult I had any sort of rapport with at all, at the time. I had no adult guidance after she died. I knew at 13 I'd been raised enough, so that was fine. I didn't need guidance.

Babci blocked other female relatives from stepping in? Seems to me no one tried. I was entirely tongue-tied. I have a few precious days in my entire childhood/youth when my tongue for whatever reason became untied and I was part of whatever was going on. Usually I was ignored.

 Peeps thought she took mother's place. How could they? Babci so depressed. So isolated. So non-intuitive. Absolute worst sort of person for me to be guided by at that point. Persued perceived problem, always way off base.

Like Michelle. Tell me what's wrong so I can fix you.

Only I can fix you. And if I can't it's your fault. Nothing else will fix you. Only I can fix you.

And their version of you fixed is warped by their Narcissist's bell jar...

I felt I was getting better.

She said I was getting worse. That my therapist was driving me to suicide.

Meaning, I was embarassing her somehow, slipping from the Narcissist's magic circle of acceptable people.

Our marriage couselor saw me alone after Michelle refused to continue because the problem was me. He was too subtle. once you're off a narcissist's list you don't get back on. What he should have said was: get the hell out of there while you still have half a brain (generous) intact.

It is like being in a cult. Is why I wrote Jonestown play. Understand on some levels. Naive/idealistic underclass peeps kept in states of confusion by someone with plausible superiority so partner/followers are malleable: New Clay. Predator/Prey. Stepford wifey.

And when Aphrodite on the half shell morphs into the Willdendorf Goddess and all hell breaks loose, it's a twister, Dorothy. You walk in the house and it spins out beyond the back of beyond, and you're in Munchkinland or Oz or down the rabbit hole and you never know what's going to greet you at the door. Well, not greet. Michelle never greeted me. More like: "juice!" "I never get dinner before midnight" "change my oxygen"

I ruined my health for her.
She sabotaged friendships I tried to make.
After she died I was told people wanted to get to know me but were scared off by Michelle.

Michelle's bitterness, her sarcastic tongue, her non sequiter harangues, her tactless statements, her rudeness ( she defended it as honesty)...I tried to soften it.

I'm a little rough around the edges. Not a softener. Not the right type to cater to a narcissist. Even F (blunt and fairly intuitive) said I wasn't codependent, I didn't talk codependent. I'm not the typical jealous/overzealous lover.

I stayed single til into my 30's, mostly by choice (though the choices were limited)
I was sober and just finishing RN. So I'd be independent. With a job skill I could do anywhere. there was Unity--positive thinking. A total revolution in thought. And Prozac, when it first came out. I'd been on all the old anti-depressants with minimal results and maximal gas attacks (as I recall);

I woke up one day, right on schedule, 4 weeks after starting Prozac, and I didn't want to die.
I hadn't realized I woke up wanting to die every day of my life until the day I woke up being okay with being alive.

I've been waking up lately not not wanting to die. Prozac doesn't seem to work anymore. None of the fuckers work anymore. Paxil did for a while, then stopped.

God, the meds I've been on. imiprimine, stelazine, (as a major tranquilizer, not an anti-psychotic, although I was having distortions in vision and hearing at the time), mellaril, lithium, prozac, seroquel, paxil, wellbutrin, benzodiazapines,

After my 2nd rehab, when I was living in State College, PA (home of Penn State University and The Meadows Dual-Diagnosed treatment center),  a psychiatrist suggested I try Ativan for my anxiety. Before I could think about it, I blurted out: "I can't take that! I'm in recovery."

"Oh, you are?"

I was healthier then. Now I'd dope-fiend my mind into condoning taking whatever the good doctor (who apparantly hadn't read my chart to the depth of finding out my primary diagnosis) prescribed.

Or maybe not.

I should get an Epstein Barr titer. Maybe I need to go back on an anti-viral.
I'm one of the lucky 1% who has recurring active Epstein Barr. So does my high school girlfriend. Cooincidence? She's been sick since she was a kid, however.

These diseases that are chronic, recurring, changeable hourly... people don't believe .... doctors don't believe... they exist. Except the doctors that have them.

Patients doubt themselves half the time...it's a big topic.  Got kicked out of an online group for being obnoxious, negative, and sarcastic. I hate sentimental shit. It makes me want to kick a kitten.

NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF THIS BLOGPOST