My journey into the hellish nightmare-scape that is my world without meds

I get the best drugs.
    Well, in my opinion anyway. I take a tiny pill that makes me smaller (or maybe it makes my worry smaller). The tiny little pill is so good at it's job that i don't notice that I need it. I take it once every morning. Why? because I do, and that is where I get into trouble. I have issues with faith. I have a need to test.
    So months and months and months go by with me taking my little pill and being sane. Take the pill-- be sane, take the pill-- be sane. After so many months of sanity (which is remarkably unobtrusive) one begins to feel as though one might in fact be sane. So, being the adventuresome soul that I am I unobtrusively let myself run out of little pills.
    The first time I ran out of pills was after I lost my job at the humane society. Lost my job, lost my heath insurance, and little pills are really expensive. At that point in time I had no delusions of sanity. My mother was dying, I was accused of  gross insubordination at work, but I couldn't care less. My mother was dying. The withdrawal from the little pills was not something that even registered for me above the pain of loosing my mother. I shattered teeth in the night. I wept uncontrollably. I held my self together because to fall apart would only hurt my mother more, she was already in enough pain.
    I might have decided to go back to school to give my mother something to be pleased about, but it turned out to be one of the most correct decisions of my life. Above and beyond the chance to complete my education was the health insurance. I could have my little pills again, huzzah! With school came a sanity that I had not know for years, possibly ever, and (in so far as my mental health is concerned, complacency)
    Would you ever like to be really aware that you have a finger or a hand, then injure it. Pain is a constant reminder, comfort is an anesthetic. I guess maybe I thought I was crazy because of all the things that were happening in my life. I guess I figured I have always had a reason to fear the world, and that mybe I had outpaced all the bad luck and poor hands delt and maybe I could take a few steps on my own, without the crutch. I was really really really wrong.
    At first I didn't notice anything. Maybe a little light headedness, maybe my imagination. For two or three days nothing really happens, but while I'm not paying attention: don't the corner get darker, and isn't there just this air before the storm quality about the world? Then it starts. I am watching a t.v. and suddenly I am crying. Was it the show? Was it the commercial? I can't tell you, but I am weeping. O.K. that's o.k. Mom used to cry at "Little House on the Prairie". We are an emotional family. It's o.k.
    Then the dreams start. They are horrible dreams I can't completely remember, but in them people die. People I love die. people I love die and there is nothing I can do about it. People I love die, there is nothing I can do about it, and it is most likely my fault. People I love die there is nothing I can do about it and I killed them and I have to find some where to hide the body. I need my little pills.
    The feelings in these dreams ( even though I can't really remember them) follow me through the day. There are tears in the corners of my eyes constantly because in the back of my mind I am just waiting for the first ones to die. Every breath is terror. Every night I don't want to go to sleep because the dreams (even though I don't remember them are so terrifying that I am sore and trembling when I wake up in the morning. Nightmare clouds, nightmare sky, nightmare voices and halls and questions I can't answer and no way to avoid the feeling that I am a rolling calamity that brings hurt and harm in her wake. useless... useless... it becomes a prayer. If I could only be useless. If all I was, was useless instead of harmful. I cry and it hurts to cry. Tears spray with force from my eyes.

   Oh, you say my insurance year has not turned over yet, and my prescription will cost me $70.00 for 10 pills. Your right, I need to switch to something cheaper,  your right. And Yes, I still want them, you see, I need them.

Butt Dialed by the Bogey Man

    Yes, it happened. It's scarey, but really the scariest thing about it is that the bogey man has your number, and that means someday he is going to use it.
    You maybe thinking that I'm speaking in hyperbole or symbolically, but because nobody really knows who or what the bogey man is, in fact, I could be telling the truth, literally.
    The facts behind the poetry are this: there is a man and he made sure the very mention of his name would cause people to cringe with discomfort, the chance that he would appear would make people change their plans, his existence in the world is an implied threat. What more do you want the bogey man to be? ...and we used to be friends. That is how the bogey man got my number.
    When my phone rang I was doing my recent favorite self identifying activity: school work in the library. I had forgot to silence my phone, so the fact that it went off was already embarrassing. When I saw the bogey man's name come up my heart banged in my chest (just once or twice) and a vague feeling of nausea rose in my throat. Yes, o.k. I have the bogey man's phone number in my phone. How else am I gonna not answer when he calls.
    I immediately hit "ignore", not only do I not want to talk to the bogey man, but I am certainly not going to let him interrupt my studies. When the message alarm beeped, I turned off the phone. He left a message. crap. Even if I hit "7" immediately to erase the call I will have to hear at least a few syllables of his voice. I could get a rash from less.
    The message haunted me until I left the library, and sitting in my car I played the message. I winced as I dialed my voice mail and held my finger poised over the "7" key ready to erase if things got unpleasant.

   Textured silence, distant voices, rumbling, maybe a restaurant, maybe a city street, after 30 seconds or so I hung up.

    So I didn't have to hear a rant, and I just left wondering does he know the feelings he elicits? Is the bogey man sad? What made him so unpleasant? and how do I get him to lose my number?

LEGOS... apparently...

I recently devised and executed a class room lesson for my non-fiction essay class. (hello, non-fiction essay class...hi! They are going to be reading this, as you know, if you are in the class... but if you are not then that is what this particular blog is about and what it is.)
     Anyway, I thought the exercise went rather well. I asked questions about toys that lead to a writing prompt. I think the exercise was effective because it taped into a emotional root that everyone has. When we were children we wanted things. We were not yet jaded by disappointment. We hopefully cared about our world and readily felt an emotional loss when things didn't go our way. It sounds selfish, but I believe that without that root of selfish need there is not the emotional energy to strive for anything. As children it is wild and unschooled; hopefully as adults it is tempered and focused, but if we care for nothing as children we will care for less as adults. My class mares didn't let me down.
     The answers, the discussion, and the shorts that were produced by this exercise were full of real emotion and introspection. The discussion was animated and if people didn't come out of the exercise with an idea for an essay they might at least have realized they are not alone in their love of Legos.

Vampires and Zombies and Werewolves, oh, my. workshop post.

We all, when we were growing up, had our favorite toys, the ones we cherished, the ones we played with every day, the ones we coveted because our friends had them and we wanted one too. My favorite toys were always Breyer model horses. I have loved horses ever since I discovered I would never have a brontosaurus to ride to school. I understand my love for horses. I understand how for a child the thought of a large powerful friend to take you away from feeling powerless and vulnerable is very appealing. I understand my love of horses they are beautiful, powerful, awe inspiring animals that are the next best thing to a brontosaurus.

What I don't understand is my youthful affection for Aurora Monster models. Aurora made lots of different hobby models and I liked to assemble models when I was young, but there were none that I had a more complicated relationship with than my monster models.


I had Frankenstein's monster, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dracula, and the Wolfman; all of them in glow in the dark plastic. A simple fascination with movie monsters I could understand, but my fascination was anything but simple.I was obsessed. I would look at them, think about them, dream about them, until I couldn't have them in my room at night because my mother was tired of waking up to soothe my nightmares. To see them dully glowing as I went to sleep guaranteed I would wake crying at a most inconvenient hour of the night. Still, there was something about them that I loved.

I remember the ambivalence that I felt when the monster models were moved into the bookshelves in the living room. They were my models I wanted them in my room, yet at the same time I was relieved. Who knows what they did when their green glow faded and I could no longer see them in the dark?

I still have an affection for being scared. I love a good horror movie especially one with zombies, but I still don't clearly understand why. What attracts me to the "safe" peril of a scarey movie is something I have not analyzed; maybe looking too closely into that shadow would ruin the fun.