BAH!

You know what sucks? Not even having time for a proper mental breakdown.

It's not that my life is oh-so-busy, but my schedule has been so choppy this week. I have had PT on M-W-F in the middle of my workday, so I have to make up time before and after my scheduled shifts, so I have been at work 9-10-11 hours every day I have PT. I am progressing pretty well. My mobility is up to what Vicki (the sassy Aussie) compared to that of a "60 year old man in very good health". GREAT! lol

I have moved from the flexibility work onto strengthening. It's going pretty well, but I learned that 'flexibility' is code for 'massage' and 'strengthening' is code for 'torture'. I still get to use the Magic Tingle Machine...and Vicki has seen plenty of my ass by now. (The wonders of having a lower lumbar strain.) She came in to take off the electrodes today and actually slapped my ass...ooh, mommy. She's like that.

Wedesday night I forgot my bag at work with all my medicine in it. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, cause I had begun to wonder if it was the meds making my back feel better, or maybe it was actually just getting better. Well, Thursday morning came around and HOLY EFFIN CRAP. I need my meds :(

I was not in a great mood yesterday at all, but about halfway through the day I drug my friend Holly outside for a cigarette. I was in some sort of funk...I was either going to burst into tears or vomit on myself and I didn't wanna be on the floor when it happened. Unfortunately when we got outside, Holly told me she was having problems with her boyfriend, so I listened to her instead of venting. Either way it helped and I only dropped a couple tears and I don't think she noticed. I spent the rest of the day in this wild sort of frustration. Ever since Lynn and I were in Chicago a couple weeks ago I feel as though I should be doing something. Something else. Different job, different city, different person. Ahh, the joys of manic depression. (and my stubborn ass for not wanting to take meds for it anymore.)

Usually I am a very cause-effect kind of guy with my emotions. Someone fucks with me, I am pissed. Dog dies-sad. Letter in the mail-Happy. You get the idea. Anyway, when I feel these sort of irrational emotions, I can usually talk myself through them. "Come on, Matty McMattMatt, this is just a swing...the bottom of a bad mood swing. This is not what you are really feeling. Don't take any drastic action...it will all feel different in an hour (or less)." Yesterday, though, not even that was helping. I am feeling better about it, now, though...so, I guess all's well that ends well.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I broke out Angels in America, Disc 1. I have never seen the whole thing through...but mostly because I love the dream/hallucination sequence between the pill popping Morman wife and the guy that has just discovered he has HIV so much that I usually watch it 4-5 times. (I am watching it right now.) I am transcribing the scene here...mostly for myself...[him in italics]

• I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille. One wants to move through life with elegance and grace. Blossoming infrequently, but with EXquisite taste and perfect timing. Like a rare bloom. A zebra orchid. One wants...but one so seldom gets what one wants, does one? No, one does not. One gets FUCKED! Over. One dies at thirty, robbed of decades of majesty. Fuck this shit. Fuckthisshit. I look like a corpse...a corpsette. OOOOH, my queen. You know you've hit rock bottom when even drag is a drag.
  
• Are - Who are you?
• Who are you?
• What are you doing in my hallucination?
• I'm not in your hallucination, you're in my dream.
• You're wearing make-up.
• So are you.
• But, you're a man.
• *SCREAMS* The hands and feet give it away.
• There must be some mistake here, I don't - I don't recognize you. Are you my - some sort of imaginary friend?
• NO. Aren't you too old to have imaginary friends?
• I have emotional problems; I took too many pills. Why are you wearing make-up
• I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better. I swiped the new fall colors at the Clinique counter at Macy's.
  
• You stole these?
• I was outta cash. It was an emotional emergency.
• ahh. Joe will be so angry, I promised him no more pills.
• These pills you keep alluding to...
• Valium I take Valium lots of Valium.
• And you're dancing as fast as you can.
• I'm NOT addicted. I don't believe in addiction and I nev - well I - never drink and I never take drugs.
• Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
• Except Valium...
• Except Valium in wee fistfuls.
• It's terrible, Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I'm a Morman.
• I'm a homosexual.
• oh. In my church we don't believe in homosexuals.
• In my church we don't believe in Mormans.
• What church do -- *laugh* I get it. I don't understand this. If I didn't ever see you before, and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here - in this hallucination, because in my experience, the mind (which is where hallucinations come from) shouldn't be able to make up anything that wasn't there to start with - that didn't enter it from experience from the real world. Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?
• Given the circumstances, yes.
• So, when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and -well- untruthfullness of our lives it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing?
• The limitations of the imagination?
• Yes.
• It's something you learn after your second theme party. It's all been done before.
  
• The world: finite. Terribly, terribly - ugh, this is the most depressing hallucination I ever had.
  
• Apologies, I do try to be amusing.
  
• Well, don't apologize. Can't expect someone who's really sick to entertain me.
  
• How on earth did you know?
  
• Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation, sometimes. You can see things. How sick you are...Do you see anything about me?
• ...Yes
• WHAT?
• You are amazingly unhappy.
• Oh, big deal. You meet a valium addict and figure out she's unhappy, that doesn't count. Of course...something ELSE? something SURPRISING.
• Something surprising?
• Yes.
• You're husband's a homo.
• How ridiculous. - Really?
• Threshold of revelation.
  
• Well, I don't like your revelations; I don't think you intuit well, at all. Joe's a very normal man. oh god oh god Do homos take, like, lots of long walks?
• Yes, we do. In stretch pants with lavender coifs. I just looked at you and there was -
• this sort of blue streak of recognition -
• yes
• like you knew me incredibly well.
• yes
• yes, I have to go now, get back. Something just - fell apart. ohgod I feel so sad.
  
• I - I'm sorry. I usually say, "Fuck the truth", but mostly the truth fucks you.
  
• I see something else about you.
• oh
• Deep inside you, there's a part of you, the most inner part, entirely free of disease. I can see that.
• Is that - That isn't true.
• Threshold of revelation.
• People come and go so strangely here... I don't think there's any uninfected part of me. My heart is pumping polluted blood. I feel dirty.
  

AND...SCENE.


It's not the most uplifting scene...but the play between the characters (who don't know each other) is absolutely amazing. And my favorite line EVER: 'Well, smell you, Nancy Drew'.