It was my desire to reduce the fear and sense of isolation associated with diagnosis, increase awareness and reduce stigma sur

Kiri Dickens Story
A couple of months ago I confided in a friend and told him I had anxiety. It was a Saturday and he asked me what I had been up to the night before. I said I went to a bowling bar. This was not untrue. But he knows me and knows I don’t like bowling bars. So I told him I had had a panic attack. I had felt I could not possibly gone up another elevator to the movies, and went to what seemed like a safe place, which happened to be the bowling bar, where I stayed for three hours.
‘I have an anxiety disorder,’ I mumbled, as thought it were an afterthought. There, I’d said it.
He raised an eyebrow and then said, ‘What are you anxious about?’
How many times have I been asked that? What answer could I possibly give?
‘Nothing in particular… I just have anxiety,’ I said, wishing I hadn’t told him.
He tried a different tack. ‘What is anxiety to you?’ he asked.
All my life, no one has ever asked me that. I froze. Not a word came out.
‘Everything is normal,’ he said, with an urging gesture, ‘and then what happens?’
Is anything ever normal for me? It’s not only when I have the attacks, the process is going on all the time. I stumbled over explaining some of the symptoms, but felt that I would never be able to explain it. Soon I had lost him; perhaps he saw that I looked uncomfortable, and changed the subject.
The truth was, my husband and I had gone to see a movie upstairs at Melbourne Central, and I had had a panic attack. It was worse than I’d had in a while. We were on the third floor; the movies is up yet another elevator. I was acutely aware of being on the third floor, and even though the railing was three metres away, it seemed far too close and I felt as though I was being sucked towards it where I would fall over. I felt completely out of control. I held onto the walls, anything I could hold on to, with my back to the railing, and felt as though I could not move. It was so unbearable I felt I couldn’t be where I was any longer. The closest place was a bowling bar. It was so tacky and awful but I felt I had no choice.
I drank three glasses of wine and waited for the feelings to pass, and felt comforted by the fact I could see the lift and the lift went straight down to the ground floor. There would be no more elevators. I would not look at the railing.
Anxiety. It’s a word that’s often used to describe something perfectly normal: being nervous before going to the dentist. Not something that can take over your whole life. No wonder it’s hard for me to describe a panic attack to someone who hasn’t had one, and the psychological processes that are always ticking along. Do I go? Do I do it anyway? What will my plan B be? What are my strategies? Do I know where the exits are? And, the absolute killer, ‘Will it happen?’ or, ‘What if it happens?’
Unfortunately I have learnt that this internal question is the very thing that brings on this intense experience. This question is almost always followed with, ‘Oh my God, it is going to happen!’
It begins with an enormous buildup of pressure behind my eyes. I feel dizzy and weak and disorientated, unsteady on my feet. I don’t know what to focus my eyes on and I want to close them. I find it very difficult to take in any sensory information.
Often if I can just be with these early symptoms, the feelings pass. But if I allow my mind to ask the ultimate question again and again, to which there is no right answer, then my anxiety reaches a new stage and becomes panic.
At this stage I find it even more difficult to take in sensory information. I am completely and utterly overwhelmed. A crowded shopping mall is torture. Any artificial light feels as though it’s burning into my brain and I shield my face. I feel my whole body shutting down, as though I could be carried anywhere and I no longer have any control over my physical being. A range of terrifying things seem possible. At this stage it is still possible for me to engage the strategy I have learnt of trying to allow the sensations to pass, knowing nothing bad will actually happen, it is an illusion, and it’s the inner struggle that causes the attacks to build. This is more difficult than at the early stages.
But if I allow my terror to build, the attack reaches a final stage, and this is the most terrifying you could ever experience. I know it is happening when my whole body feels suddenly very, very hot, a stab of electricity which is adrenaline releasing. The dizziness mounts, everything mounts, there is no turning back now. Often at this stage I will shake, sometimes violently, and often I will feel no connection to my physical body; it will be like I am watching myself shaking, in disbelief at what I am seeing. Everything around me has a terrifying feeling of unreality. I often cry or want to.
The only way for that friend to see and understand what that meant would be to be inside my head. Sometimes during an attack I take out a pad and pen and write whatever comes to mind. Perhaps I should have answered with presenting him my scribblings. I’m going to give you an example.
Three days ago I caught a train at Melbourne Central Station, which often triggers at least the beginning of a panic attack; the extent to which it builds varies. That day I didn’t manage as well. But I got angry and decided to write this, which I have copied exactly as it is, the missing words and all:
As I write this I am on the bottom platform of Melbourne Central Station and I am having a panic attack. I will not let the monster win. I feel like crying but I will not. This is me uncensored. I am a very literate person however as I write these words I become almost dyslexic, writing words before others, getting letters the wrong way round.
It’s not the platform itself, I know this, it’s something it triggers in me. A wave of sickening fear. There is always a moment that goes, ‘So you thought you cope did you? Well you were wrong’ and it starts to rise. It’s the worst feeling in the world for me. But even as it almost takes me over completely, a voice inside me says, ‘No you f*cking don’t.’
You see I am angry at this thing called panic, for how it has taken over my life in many ways. I refuse to be weak any longer.
I wonder if anyone is looking at me. I don’t really care, they’ll probably look at me like my family look at me - “Drama queen” – as I hold – I have this involuntary gesture. I hold my temples between thumb and forefinger.
My handwriting here is wonky and huge, almost illegible, whereas most of the time it is very neat. That day I had been very busy getting things done and had not taken any time out. I have learnt to look after myself better, but sometimes I still resist staying still for a while. ‘Nervous energy’ is exactly what it is. I want to take on the world and am impatient as hell. And the pressure of my thoughts and my frantic activity build and sometimes I don’t even realise until later.
I am now twenty-seven years old. At nineteen I was diagnosed with depression, but I had been depressed through my teens. I don’t think there was any beginning for me; it was always there in some form.

My first full blown panic attack happened when I was 20. I was in the New Zealand National Youth Choir and we were about to go on stage. What I knew as normal performance anxiety suddenly became so much more. The problem with being a performer was everyone just thought it was performance anxiety and told me to persevere. But it wasn’t. My intense fear (which I know as phobia) of being watched on stage transferred itself to other situations in which I may have always felt a little uncomfortable, such as wide open spaces or flying. It had begun to take over my life gradually. I did persevere with performing, though I wasn’t at all happy, and my condition got more pronounced, until I finally quit three years later. I tried to explain that I had panic disorder, but no one seemed to understand, and they were disappointed.

For a long time I had trouble with thinking I was weak for quitting. I’ve always prided myself on taking on challenges. Now I know it was what I had to do at the time, and further, that I wasn’t happy with the situation I was in anyway. Since then I’ve been learning more and more about who I am. My (now) husband saw that I was creative but I never realised. I started writing and singing – for myself, not an institution – and never looked back. Institutions had ruined my relationship with art and I am finally starting to reclaim it for myself, which is great. And through my art I have been able to face some of the pain I was avoiding, which I believe are related to my anxiety.
I have always been extremely sensitive, open to suggestion and with a very vivid imagination. I have always had thoughts that to other people seem very dramatic, intense and extreme. To some extent these are things associated with children. But I did not outgrow these qualities. They are in part related to my being a writer, musician and a deep thinker, and here they have a place. Nothing wrong with those things. But as a result of these same qualities, among other factors, I can see that fear had played far more of a role in my life than it ever deserved. I can see threads, or seeds, in my childhood of what manifested itself as depression and then panic disorder.
I was the eldest of four children, with the stigma of the ‘the difficult child.’ This frustrated me as I didn’t know how I earned it. I was often unhappy. Nothing I did seemed to go right, especially in interacting. I was both furious with, and terrified of, my father, who was quite physical and rough with me. I often preferred to live in a fantasy world. But this fantasy was also just as often invaded by my fears. I had nightmares I never forgot, even to this day. I’d learn about something like tidal waves and have the most terrifying dreams of watching a tidal wave come! But a recurring theme was being sucked away by a force beyond my control (this is the exact same feeling I get today when I panic).
In essence, I haven’t changed. I have changed a lot in how I deal with these tendencies. Some days I do better than others. I still don’t give up. Fortunately I can be really pigheaded as well.
Panic attacks have been the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with and manage in my entire life, more so than depression for me. My whole life changed after my first panic attack. Everything became about my panic attacks, how to avoid them, how to deal with them. I think about it less now, but a lot of my decisions are undoubtedly affected by this fear.
I’ve been told that at a party alcoholics always know where the alcohol is, how much there is, and when they’re going to get their next drink and what it’s going to be. Well, in a phobic situation I always know how much medication I have with me, where the exits are, exactly how far and how to get away. Which on a plane you can’t do, or in a performance. This is very tricky. Planes are possibly the strongest of my phobias, alongside performing. I have three, sometimes four, Xanax, which I’m not really supposed to do. And then a couple of glasses of wine which you’re also not meant to do! It’s something I haven’t quite tackled yet. It’s like an ongoing journey;

I’m pretty encouraged by the fact I’m so much better than I used to be four and five years ago. I was barely leaving the house, and I had a panic attack at least every day, and the rest of the time it was like I was right on the edge of one. It was before I went on medication. That helped a lot, but my goal is still to one day not need them. I figure I’m only going to get better so long as I work out my issues. I try to do things that keep me well. I have a list of them. It’s like a maintenance thing. I meditate, do yoga, improvise on the piano and with my voice, I keep myself interacting and busy. Maybe one day I’ll go on a plane without even thinking about taking my pills, who knows? And look out the window at the thick powdery clouds. And smile.

Anonymous Story

Hi. I am a 37 yr old woman who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder since I was 16. I have had several hospitalisations but thankfully none in the last 9 years. Historically my main problem has been mania more than depression. Most of my hospitalisations have been for mania. In this story I will share with you some information about my illness as well as my life. I believe that the illness is really a small part of who I am.

My illness started with what I believe was a depression at the age of 15. I stopped talking to my friends and became quite withdrawn and my school work began to suffer. I was attending a selective high school, which had its own pressures. I don’t really know what it was that triggered off my illness. At the time counselors said I was just suffering from stress at school and didn’t give me a formal diagnosis or medication.
Early the next year, when I was 16 I had what was diagnosed as my first manic episode. It really all started on a school excursion to the Adelaide music festival, which involved a 24 hr train trip. I was hardly sleeping at all while I was in Adelaide. I was talking non stop. I was over-excited. I started laughing inappropriately at concerts and I spent all the money I had with me.
When I returned home I was still not well and trips to the GP soon lead to trips to a psychiatrist and my first diagnosis. I tried to keep going to school but I found it very hard. I soon became psychotic which led to some very embarrassing things that I did at school and at school music concerts. I then stopped going to school. I was looked after by my grandmother at home while my mother worked. I was started on several medications.
About the middle of that year I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time. It was a private hospital and there were other girls my age, who mostly had eating disorders. I had a fit while I was at the hospital and I was transferred to another hospital for some tests. It was concluded that I didn’t have epilepsy and the fit was medication related. I ended up staying at this hospital for some time, and had treatments including medication and Electroconvulsive treatment (ECT). Later in the year I was transferred to an adolescent unit.
At the adolescent unit I stayed during the week and went home on weekends. It was sort of a good transition from hospital to going back home and back to school. I have read some of my old diaries from around this time and I was really a bit of a mess. However, the adolescent unit did help me recover and get back to school.
I returned to school and repeated year 11 and then did year 12 and my HSC. After my HSC I worked for a year as a sales assistant at a book shop before going to university the following year to study Bachelor of Science (Human Movement Science).
I moved out of home and lived in a University Campus Accommodation for the first year I was studying. I was pretty well during this time. I was taking Lithium to stabilise my mood. I also enjoyed triathlon training and competing.
During my second year of university it was decided by my psychiatrist and myself that I had been well for so long that it was worth a trial off the Lithium. I was pleased as the side effects were I bit hard to handle. I felt it slowed my thinking, and effected my exams and also it caused weight gain, which wasn’t too much of a problem as I was training so much. Anyway, after two or three weeks of being off Lithium I relapsed into what was diagnosed as another manic episode.
Although I was back on medications, I had several relapses after this time, several of them needing hospitalisation. However, none needed as much hospitalisation as I had when I was 16 and 17. So over the years up until I was about 30 I experienced treatment in several public and private hospitals. I had treatment from psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, support groups and GPs while I was out of hospital.
I tried very hard to get on with my life in between episodes. Some times the episodes would last only a couple of weeks and other times it might be 3 months. I did well at University despite my illness. I completed a Bachelor of Science (Human Movement Science) with first class honours. The university was very supportive when I got sick in my honours year and gave me a 6 month extension to make up for the 6 months I was off sick. I represented Australia twice in my age group for triathlon and duathlon.
After, my honours year I started a Masters which I later upgraded to a PhD. I didn’t end up completing this. My bipolar disorder, the medications, and also chronic fatigue syndrome, which I was diagnosed with in my mid twenties all contributed to me changing first to part time study, then missing uni with time off being sick and finally pulling out. There were other, non-medical issues also which greatly influenced my decision to quit after about four years of part-time study.
As I said in my introduction I have been out of hospital now for about 9 years. I still have minor fluctuations in mood and energy and motivation and times when my sleep is affected. I am also affected by anxiety. I take a bucket load of pills: Tegretol (Carbamazepine), Zyprexa (Olanzapine); Zoloft (Sertraline); Norimin-1 28day (without the sugar tablets); Vesicare; and Atacand (candesartan cilexetil). I see a psychiatrist, psychologist and GP for issues to do with my mental health.
I have found I cannot work full time at the moment. Since my mid-twenties I have either been working or studying part time, with some short periods of unemployment. I have worked as a communications officer for a mental health organisation and as a swimming teacher.
Most recently, probably the best thing I have done for my self is to join a Masters Swimming Club. I train three times a week and compete regularly. My times are improving and I have used the carnivals as opportunities to travel. For example, I went to Darwin and Kakadu. I have met a great bunch of people.
I believe I have been relatively lucky to find a combination of medications that seems to keep me relatively stable now. My health professionals also help me greatly. Sometimes I wish there was just one tablet to take to fix everything with no side-effects, and one professional to see, when I needed to. However, I think that is unlikely in the near future.
I have also been lucky to have supportive family and friends, including friends with and without mental illness.
Paul’s ECT Diary
18/2/2004
Well, ok, no more real excuses left I suppose I had better write at least something or later rue that I did not.

I have just had my first treatment of ECT - electro-shock therapy. I had it at around 7.30 and it is now 9.

I am wearing purple underwear and multi-coloured socks that do not match and I am typing at my desk in a room at the Perth Clinic.

I feel ok, no worse than usual and better than most as I am not in the depths of the deep blue as I often am. I have a headache and I neglected to mention two of the things I am wearing - a hospital wrist-cuff and some kind of electrically sensitive sticker on my chest.

I was not afraid in the morning that led with stalking inevitability to the procedure (by the way there is a doctor here called "Dr Assumption" - what's the prognosis Dr assumption? Looking GOOD huh? Is this arm broken? Are you SURE? Are you really really SURE?). I have done my f*cking research like I always do and not only that but so have my father, my sister, and my mother read a BOOK about it. And they all agree that the unusual and devastating diagnosis appended to my usual manic-depressive diagnosis seems to leave little choice (an underlying and time deep despair; a manifest and pervading depression.) Shock treatment is the best path, rutted with reasonable fear and speculation though it is.
The staff keep trying to explain to me what it does. Sure, they understand it better than I do, but the truth is that I have read experts from on high depict the brain as the final frontier and something about which we know practically nothing. And it has to be thus. If it were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too stupid to understand it… ah, a catch 22, there are so many in life are there not??? I was struggling with a nasty pointy one yesterday myself - you see I could find no reliable account of the memory loss involved in having ECT because the people who have had ECT have got memory loss. So how would they know?

But my fears were assuaged to an extent by the Doctors that I saw subsequently, though I didn't trust the guy with the Monet tie - passionless limp artist he is. I know why I was not afraid, I suppose. My primary fear was that I would lose the depth of my long term memory - what I have worked so hard to remember over so many many years ("our memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind." Guillard Appollinaire. Hah. I guess the quotation facility is intact.) Once I had learned that this was immensely unlikely and all I was going to lose were these moments themselves - around the time of the procedures, the truth came out vomited in my mind that ok f*ck it I do NOT care.

Though memory loss in itself is a very odd thing. The memories are masqued and yet YOU appear in them. And… "Who WAS that masked man?" I am kind of cool with it since I have drunk so much in my life. Not that I wish for it to continue, but hey I mean if it works, if it actually really in real reality works, I will have traded two weeks of a hazy existence for really what amounts to… well perhaps that in itself requires some serious prose.
My head is ok… the headache has abated somewhat and all I have to remind me is the memory and the knowledge that it did in fact happen, since I was under a sense-occluding anesthetic - the two pieces of time before and after I went under. I remember up to the point where the nursey said now you will feel a sharp pain and then a cold sensation up your arm.

I don't remember where I woke up - I infer that it was in my bed though I am certain that I do not know. Now. Hmm. I DID do that a great deal when I was drinking though it was more of a surprise where I went to sleep. Other ends of the loop, catch a timeline by the TALE!!!!

I require nicotine. I must make my way hence.  ACH.  I have at least begun.

Eek.

Hm. Later it is - the evening of the above day. Wednesday.
For a time I felt quite high and otters commented on the change - I seemed as well as felt brighter on the morn of my carapace's electrocution. Now I do not.
I feel lazy over-full with my own idiocy and BLEH Christ I carry on and on - out out suffering I say and clutch it to my breast like an over-sized cartoon character to an evil little child (or the reverse.)

One of the known and I believe the most typical side effects of ECT is tired-ness…, And I feel tired early in a sick kind of tired a sweaty-sheeted tired a moving through mud and honey though not that sticky sort of tired.

I do tend to manage to put a tick next to every possible common side effect if I take drugs and why should this be any different? Maybe I should attempt to write something interesting instead of this drawing out; this cigarette's call - this hunt for subject just describe how you feel Paul.

Put those metaphors down. You might need them later.

So
And we were…? Was I at the end? I owe you one linear time point.

Feel crappy grr. My room-mate is watching the gnus (news) on TV. F*ck. Hm I am having trouble with my eyelid dropping forth closing considering flicking such a soft so fundamentally soft a thing.

Ok f*ck you conscience-guy I am going to bed and I didn't do ANY f*cking painting today!

MORNING, Thursday, 19/2/2004

The morning was excellent, exquisite and resolute in deep passion and ocean blue. I swam with Lisa under the blooming sky - we swam and sank and I lifted her in the surf, her weight and warmth devastatingly real. I was immersed, hah! A baptism in life.
I said to her that I had found a new goal, I told her that I now sought "Clarity" that all of my thought was going to be tried and tied by its loop.

She said she lived. And I laughed and f*cking laughed because of course that was so much more clear than the seeking of clarity could be, than any of my forms and expressions and bullsh*t lines of thought! Why is it that in seeking the value - in askance of value, I miss and preclude the value itself? Ah but not for these moments.

I held her and held her and told her of the things such things that I have seen and know, her eyes a flaming version of the ocean's aquamarine. I believe there were few wants this morning. Few, yes. A beautiful woman a flawless ocean; the right temperature of day and water, timed by degree.  The beach a strip of pure white wire in my mind. What more?
I out-stayed the two hours outside the ward I had been prescribed by Dr Orr by an hour, and no-one had noticed, about which I am perhaps more apathetic than they were.
I am shaky and agitated and I do not really know why at the moment - it is not even the turning of my thoughts I do not think, just some state, some slackening of reins somewhere inside me. My hands are quick over the keys with sudden hesitations and corrections. The words are everywhere, laid open like a messy room or wound.
I feel a little more calm - that may be due to the absorption of my missed morning meds. I hate this; all, hate it so much it makes me feel like I have grown not at all from the vicious teenager with the wounded eyes that I used to be; used to inhabit. I do not care to be in this place any longer. I have too much I need to do. I…
Foolish to go on in that vein. I am here for the next few weeks, however many thousand seconds that may be.

Staying. I have to stay here. It will keep me alive. How strange to even consider that as truth.

Thursday night before Friday's morning treatment.
I wrote half of a song this night. Oddly and alternately elated and tired.
Tiredness is a kind of madness so Dostoevsky says and am I to argue?
The man with whom I share a room at night is watching sport television and hiccupping. He must be killed.

20th/2/2004, morning after the second treatment.

I did not sleep last night, though that in itself is not particularly surprising in consideration of the solid sleep I ascertained the night before and not unlike me or even possibly unlike others if the stress were shared out. The details of the lead up to the general anesthetic are very clear to me, as are the details of the one previous. Perhaps I will be further affected after more treatments, I really don't know.

I feel fried. It is a sensation that I think may well be outside my previous experience. It is not completely unpleasant, though mostly so. Certainly it is preferable to many of the states and sensations that the illness (the f*cking curse) of bipolar subjects me to with pendulous swinging clubbing force.

I have a headache I suppose and my usual restless wandering prickling and speeding thoughts, made worse by the headache and the lack of my music to listen to. I HATE going without a sound track. I suppose I should begin counting down the days.

I know I will be having six treatments, one every two days. So it should take twelve days as the lunatic flies, but may not as the specialists involved seem unlikely to work weekends. This would be the third day. Fu-uck. And I hate this place so well already.

That would leave me here for another 9 days. My teeth hurt from being clenched so hard so desperately life-bleedingly hard in seizure. I can not of course remember it but it is akin to waking from a drinking binge to find that I had been in a fight. I feel a similar kind of shame.

21/2/2004

I managed to leave my keyboard and mouse at home and could not get them till this evening - this being an ancient piece of crap laptop I have only begun to write and it is

7.35 in the evening.

No memory loss that I can (can I? would I even know? How can anyone ask themselves questions like this?) perceive. I seem to be able to see through my mind like a piece of plate glass being made on boiling tin. I feel… I feel a deep, a bone deep despair.
I am constantly hyper-conscious of my actions; of my words. I cannot imagine being otherwise. It is unpleasant and the way I have felt in my lifetime's gathered sense. Arc them and reel them in under a long deep grass scythe and that is with f*cking brutal clarity the answer that I get.
I suspect that I feel things in some star-bright way… no wait, ill chosen metaphor.

I suspect that I feel things raw; as if the skin had been taken from my eyes, my hands, my ears, mouth and throat. Each sense, I believe, is tuned in some way to over-provide me with stimuli and I have too much. Too much! My hands are f*cking full it runs out between my fingers too f*cking much.

I have felt this day little different than I have felt on any other day. I feel tired, I want to go to sleep, I want it all to stop hurting me just for a little while. Am I working myself up to this? Is this what I do? OK few alternatives no recourse to escape never ever, I think I will go and get some more meds and have a cigarette.

Find me something else, ever. ….I dare you.

Hm well I have done those two things and I think I do feel slightly better, strange (so close that word, to strangle!) as it is for me to admit. I also had tea. A nice hot cup of tea, some godamned biscuits and some psychiatric medication and we have A NEW PAUL.

22/2/2004

KEENING IN THE NAME OF…
Hm. It seems I have got NPD as a diagnosis appendable to bipolar affective disorder. I passed a pregnant woman in the coffee room who had lizards' eyes, untouched by her polite smile. Of course, I believe she was here to see her husband. No wonder he cannot cope or hope at home. I think I saw straight through to her soul and it was very cold there.
NPD translates to narcissistic personality disorder. More homework - I have to find out exactly what that means. I don't qualify for many parts of it as I am not actively malicious, and will not sabotage anyone but myself (with deliberation that is). It is the attention that I crave. F*cking footlights that I crave. Even in writing this I am writing to a vast silent audience, even an older version of myself. Not so I can record my thoughts and later pore over them and what they might mean - fresh from the mental ward - no; more so I can read later and be reassured after sudden chill of reality that I am still something unusual even in here amidst the lunatics and Nietzsche's abortive saints. And of course, I am. Though if this is an advantage to me I do not know.

I am restless today as ever. I have already worked for hours this day and paced the beautifully carpeted halls, smoked my strong cigarettes and cleaned and reloaded my memory. I am a little better than I was though. The intensity of BEING seems to have abated to the point where I only have to squint and not close my eyes and cut. I am on very light meds. Who knows if it is them or the 2 sessions of electro-convulsion that I have experienced that have improved my existence. Or if it is just me and I turn slightly away from my own searing light, from my own blistering, inward, f*cked up, sun. I need more cigarettes, must smoke I need to hold my head in my hands since there are no other hands to hold it for me.

It IS better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
I have done pushups sit ups and dips, lots of each. I am trying pretty hard not to let the medication make me fat this time. It is so strange to have all these people on the inside of these walls - and they do seem more sane than the generic freaks that I may meet were I to paint in public for a few hours.

I miss my car. I feel so trapped here. I won't go ANYWHERE normally without an easy escape in case I am anxious and feel trapped, not even for a few hours. And this is for weeks. WEEKS! Argh!

I have at least another week and a half TO GO. F*ck THAT. Man… I mean… sure I have a lot of my stuff here and can still work but not as much as I could were I at home and I don't have my computer, I miss my friends and I need sex pretty bad. I miss my cat also. I wonder if they have a policy on that. I am sure they have planned for such contingencies with a hearty rejection.

No Paul you cannot have sex or bring your cat or even your computer with you. This is a hospital after all. Perhaps I could charm an administrator into it but I would have to find the RIGHT administrator to charm, ok giving up on that whole train of thought; derailed now.

It would probably be the pregnant woman with the lizard eyes or someone like her. It seems that she is here visiting her mother. I imagine that seeing those flat grey lifeless eyes peering over the edge of a bassinet, cot or nipple would be enough to drive most women insane.

There must be some kind of ratio between those of us who are artists and those who can wander around appreciating art and telling the artists that they are cool. I wonder what it is and how it grew, skewed amidst our bizarre archeology; skewed even then. What else have we to describe but ourselves; what better describes us? I suppose this is the point.

Though I hardly paint anything in my life that I can actually SEE ALREADY.
Some other thing, some other truth maybe.

I know that it correlates with something others see out there in the wind in the night. If they cannot see any of what I saw in my work I don't think they would buy it: It is not just the buying there must be some special thing about owning original art some different kind of appreciation, some once-ness. I just know that I have no choice and must MUST keep going.

Lots of credit in the real world gets you HIGH.

And the sky was made of amethyst.

I am restless tonight, my god the understatement say is the universe big?  Shall I eat? Shall I spend a great deal of time ruminating on eating and even f*cking WRITE ABOUT IT???

Ach, yes, hey what the f*ck? Did I get electricity passed through my BRAIN (or as I like to sometimes call it my Brian) this very morning? I believe that I did. There are many things that indicate that I did…

This morning Lisa came to visit me ("come up and see me, make me smi-ile") and we walked under thick green leaves and talked softly. We soak each other up, I feed from her her eyes and skin water for my soul.

This morning… deep rapturous moments, long languorous and full - wandering around in her eyes, her eyes oh.

I have to learn from her. I think I learn from her. She is so alive - she does not even attempt the things that I do to assure her that she is alive that she is real. That the things that she sees, that touch her, that move her soft pretty heart are verifiable in all of our senses. She does not to do this. She does not need to; it is my trap and if I can pry it from her sweet fingers then I will, I might. I wonder…

We walked together and kissed on the grass in the bright summer sunlight. I cannot let go of her she holds my attention better than I do. I hold her body, her hands. I take her radial pulse, her carotids, once, twice. I am in the sweet scented pollen of her, on the grass stretched and ragged against her. Ah… something there, something lifelong, unfoolish and like a splinter of life.

I had more ECT this very morn. I felt, in an analogy deeply inconsistent for me - a SPORTS analogy, like I had been belted, hard, with a cricket bat.

There is some kind of time dilation there also. The morning seems in hindsight to be split more than in two by one event. The pain is real, and consistent, but hardly unbearable. I will bear it - I will bear that the least of my considerations the f*cking LEAST and LAST the pain??? F*ck the pain I know pain and this is just a physical pain not a soul pain! I am losing time away from my work, this causes me to suffer, yes, trade it, time you must f*cking trade it there is always some kind of f*cking deal to be had.

And this is it people... often i was too tired to stand up so i lay down a great deal. OF course now it is 6 am and I have insomnia, the reverse but still hardly pleasant. i feel ashamed that i did not write more whilst hospitalized. I did not sleep with anyone THE WHOLE TIME i was in hospital, though this was certainly not from lack of opportunity. How unusually responsible of me.

My neck heals. I have always healed very quickly I am a little like wolverine in that regard - also I am short. I believe the similarities end there - I cannot even grow proper sideburns.

There were many so many swiftly powerful moments in there - so much human truth and suffering... even mine. Dawn draws its fingers across the room so slowly it seems that it could never be bright here.

I have wounded my arm by doing heavy weights too soon after my atrophied stay. I am terrified of gaining weight from new meds - neulactil anyone?

It is a treatment antipsychotic in nature and design used for schizophrenia to stop voices i admit I have sometimes heard. It frightens me. Much frightens me.

I did some work of a new ilk during my stay but I cannot post it on my webpage because I loaned my camera to someone... I shall soon.

My typing seems so slow and my touch so sensitive on these keys - I hear them so loudly in the morning CHILL. In the morning SILENCE re-sounding in my head.

This is not enough when is there ever enough for me? How much must I paint and write to not feel like the fool that I know I am in my heart? Even this question is laced with heaviness for me because so many others have asked before in all that I have read, sure, yes, trapped in the human experience that cannot be undone cannot ever be original because of the billions who have died before me and the billions, the BILLIONS who yet live.

Narcissist, me? And WHY THE F*CK NOT? How else to live? How else to ever consider self and seething mind and bullsh*t? Yes I am in the prime of my life and yes I am beautiful to my own eyes and yes I have a soft kind touch and yes oh yes I have a mind that would be considered genius in any society and yes I overdosed and cut my own throat not five weeks burned into the past because none of these things has ever been enough for me! AM I MANIC? Is this f*cking classifiable insanity? What else in existence could I want?

How much will I hate when my body breaks beneath age when my sharp eyes dull and my hands fail me?

I despise rhetoric I slip in it like sh*t there is such passion in me such raging life and of course this is insane anyone under such a sun must burn my own hypocrisy hurts me and I hate myself for having the courage to ask the questions that hurt me so much for feeling the impossibility of answers so bloody and keen.

At least I have the courage to ask and live and cut.

To ask, most of ALL, that is the key, stabbed into my eyes.