Just drink the coffee.
My brain had a panic attack — the Send ALL the Adrenaline kind — while I slept last night. It woke me. Right around 1:30 in the morning, I woke up gripped with the fear/certainty that I was literally dying. When I was 19, I liked eating acid in the middle of the night when … Continue reading Captain’s Log: Stardate 08192019
Tribe, it's August. Depending on where you live, your school-age children are either just starting their new academic year or anticipating this year's First Day. I'm going to let you in on something: a lot of depressed, bipolar, anxiety-punched people have no fucking idea where the social security cards are. The amount of paperwork, appointment-making … Continue reading School Daze:
Today I cleaned off my desk. Yes, I shifted some of the junk—the loose change, un-cased DVDs, bracelets, mystery toothbrush—to my bed , but I have a space to sit down and write again, and that's more important than presenting a non-eyebrow-raising sleeping place right now. I've been on sabbatical, off in the world doing … Continue reading Up For Air
Some days, all I have for the world is, Well, I'm not going to commit suicide today. That's what I can do. And then I treat myself like I'm very incompetent and get through the day. Welcome to today, tribal loves. My head is a jumble, a mean mine field detonating in chorus. In an … Continue reading To the Grind
Friends who call out your bullshit while it falls off your lips are the only kind I can have right now. The delivery can vary—one can listen until you're done then break it down, another might chant oxymoron while you keep verbally angling around your self-destructive plans—but they are treasured the same and what I need. … Continue reading Therapy Thursday
I have this new thing I've been doing with my kids where when they're totally acting like shits and digging their heels in out of pure stubborness and my genes and their fathers' in them, I give them a chance to have a do-over. "Do-over" means the four days of no screens, whole week of … Continue reading Wanna Try a Do-over?
Sometimes I tell people that if I was left to my own devices and had no other living things depending on me to not be horrible, I would live naked on a room-sized pile of dirty laundry. I would weave weed-stems and bones into my hair, paint stripes on my cheeks with cigarette ashes while … Continue reading I Made Myself Go To Therapy Again
I took this photo from a bridge over the Chicago River last January. I'd had a stairs-induced panic attack in the Art Institute that ended in me pouring sweat and crying. I was on a date. Winter and I have a history of not getting along well. But I've been embracing it this year. Walking … Continue reading 01/22/2019
I found this meme on Instagram today that said something like: Mental wellness is not Fight Club. We can talk about it. (I don't remember the precise words, and I couldn't find it again because I'm still pretty lost on that platform. Signed, I'm 43) It made me think of this album of selfies I … Continue reading Mission 1.0
For three days after I turned into a Prozac Dragon, I didn't take my medicine. Prozac Dragon is the fun name I made up for when my antidepressant capsule got hung up somewhere in my esophagus last week (December 12, 2018, to be exact--a Wednesday. I was supposed to work at the bar, and when … Continue reading Right Now, I Need My Meds
