I’m having a rough day. There’s no particular reason for it; it’s just part of being bipolar. I have limited energy, but I seem to be manic. Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to make sense, but I have to live with bipolar disorder. Meds help dull the extremes, but they don’t cure bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is always with me. Sometimes just under the surface. Sometimes exploding through the surface.
Brady, the Australian labradoodle puppy I have, did something remarkable today. She could smell my distress and instinctively leaned up against me – something psychiatric service dogs are trained to do. Of course a couple hours later, she decorated the kitchen floor with poop and pee. It’s not easy being a puppy. Not easy being the puppy’s human, either.
Good thing Brady didn’t like the doggy wading pool Jim found in the garbage. The pool grew legs the other day. Now, there’s a security camera covering the back of the house.
The sciatica is still hanging around. I’m able to walk farther, but farther is a relative term. It means I can walk out the back door with Brady, so 10 feet to her potty spot, and then come back in the house. I need to exercise. Brady gets separation anxiety whenever I leave the kitchen. She’s not ready yet to have the run of the house so I have to keep her in the kitchen. I’m sure the healing process has stretched out because of how inactive I’ve been.
We seem to be surrounded by randy quail. So far, I’ve counted four batches of day-old baby quail. When I shoot quail, I have to do it through the sliding glass door. As long as the quail aren’t aware of me, they don’t run off. While I would have liked to have my 150-600mm lens on the camera, what was on the camera was my 18-400mm lens. Taking the time to change lenses would have meant missing the shots. I played around with cropping the shot when I was editing. The John Prine fuzz on the baby quail’s head cracks me up.
The original shot. While this is the quail version of Where’s Waldo, it’s easy to see how tiny day-old quail are.
The first crop. Quail are easier to find, but they look bigger than they are in real life.
The second crop. Almost there. There’s more detail, but the edit didn’t seem right.
The third crop.
My Spoonflower order is now about 40 miles away and I likely won’t get my package until Monday. Sigh. I really want to start making undies although my time in the sewing room is limited to when Jim is home. There are too many places in the sewing room where Brady can get into trouble. I’d go into the sewing room, which is off the kitchen, and close the door, but Brady has severe separation anxiety. I’m trying to help her with that, but I don’t seem to have made much progress.
Brady likes to hide out in the pet carrier in the kitchen. I think it’s because it’s dark inside the carrier and she feels safe in her den. She’s not fond of the crate we have for her. I decided to make the crate more den like. I took a sheet, crudely attached the sheet to the crate, and created a darkened den. I put Brady’s toys in her new den. She refuses to go inside the den.
I’ve been playing around with designs that might make interesting fabric. Here’s the latest:
On March 13, 2020, I got an email telling me the university would shut down at noon. Noon was when my geology lab ended. A few days later, the state shut down.
As difficult as this pandemic has been for mentally healthy people, it has been far worse for people who have a mental illness. Pre pandemic, approximately 20% of the adult population of the United States had a diagnosed mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health). Two months into the pandemic, nearly half of Americans report their mental health is deteriorating (Washington Post, May 4, 2020).
I am bipolar.
Before the pandemic, I was well medicated and about as stable as I could manage to be. Each morning, I traded a portion of my brain for the incomplete promise of getting through the day without screaming.
Once the state shut down, my mental health immediately deteriorated and continues to deteriorate.
I don’t mind describing what happens in my brain, but you need to understand that there are no metaphors here. Here is reality as I perceive it.
I’ve had chronic insomnia since last March. I average 4-5 hours sleep a night. Every couple months, I crash and sleep for 8 hours. I have a prescription for sleeping pills, but I don’t like taking them. I get so little sleep that I’m groggy when I wake up if I take a sleeping pill. I want to go to sleep early, but I don’t get tired. Then I get anxious because I’m not getting tired. Then I don’t get tired, and the cycle repeats itself at least until 3 AM.
Before this past November, I had been on the lowest dose of klonopin since August 2007. I took klonopin when I needed it, and didn’t bother when I didn’t need it. In November, I asked my doctor to raise the dose. My current dose is twice what I had been taking. Sometimes, klonopin helps. Frequently, it doesn’t help enough. I have music that’s supposed to trigger specific brain waves. I’ve no idea if any brain waves are triggered, but the music does help me calm down when the anxiety is severe enough that I can’t calm down otherwise.
My temple has services via zoom. While I appreciate that, there’s no real interaction with others. The High Holy Days services were unsatisfying. I was alone. The rabbi was alone. Everyone who attended the services was alone. I’ll skip the Passover Seder via zoom.
My human contact is with my husband and in classes via zoom. I appreciate classes via zoom, but I miss being with other students. I’m nearly 50 years older than traditional students, so there isn’t much to talk about. I miss those tiny conversations. One way for me to combat anxiety is to bake. Baking is fun when I can bring cookies or other goodies to class. I miss the cookie experiments and seeing other students enjoy my baking.
Frequently, I don’t understand what I’m feeling until the feelings come out of my hand. I’m a multi-media artist. Quilts and clay are how my feelings are expressed. Frequently, my emotional art is dark. It’s art no one in her/his right mind (as opposed to left mind) would want to own. It’s art I have to make the same as I have to breathe.
It isn’t easy to have a mental illness. Mental illness hurts, and it hurts worse than any physical illness I’ve had.
When I made this quilt, I was thinking about a man I knew who killed himself and how he is gone from my life forever. When I look at the quilt now, I think about my loss of contact with others. Zoom is better than nothing, but it’s not a substitute for human contact.
Isolation.
I try to climb out of the box, but I’m not successful and there’s nothing outside of the box, so there’s no reason for climbing out of the box. I still try. I still fail. I’m still isolated.
Because of my age, I’m high risk. My risky behavior consists of: standing in line for more than an hour in order to vote, grocery shopping once, eating in a restaurant with friends and discovering a few days later that one friend and her husband had Covid-19 although both were asymptomatic when we met for lunch. I’ve had my hair cut twice by a hairdresser. Now, I cut my bangs and my husband cuts the hair in back so it’s not hanging down my neck. Now, my excursions consist of doctor visits and going to Starbucks, buying a drink, and immediately leaving the store. Although I want to eat in a restaurant, it’s too dangerous so I eat at home. I want to have a hairdresser cut my hair, but it’s too dangerous. I want to go to Barnes & Nobel, but it’s too dangerous.
Leap by leap, I became more depressed. At first, adding an extra half pill of my antidepressant when necessary was enough to get me out of a depressive episode. My doctor knows I tinker with my dose. She also knows why I won’t agree to a permanent increase in dosage.
Most of the time, art heals. Maybe making art is helping me, but I can’t know for sure. I think it would be dangerous if I stopped making art now. I’d have no way to express what’s inside of me. There’s no one to talk to, so I speak in fabric.
I worked on art because maybe it helps. I worked on art because I had to – the same as I have to breathe and eat. I do photography. I edit the photos and manipulate them. I make quilts. I am still depressed.
This is the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. It once contained the best treatment of mental illness. It eventually contained the worst treatment of mental health. Now it contains a defunct hotel and dust bunnies. I could have been a prisoner there.
Sometimes, I manage to make pretty art. I thought if I worked on some pretty art, I would feel better. This is a manipulated photo that I had printed on fabric and then quilted the fabric.
When I figure out how I want to bind the edges, I’ll finish the quilt.
I tried working on another manipulated photo that I had printed on fabric.
I need to finish quilting this one. It’s a manipulated photo from a happy day. A day when we could go to Bosque del Apache and I could photograph sandhill cranes.
Making quilts helped, but not enough.
I photographed whatever looked interesting in my yard.
Photography helped, but not enough.
I still got depressed. I still had to take an extra half pill of my antidepressant sometimes. That helped, but not enough.
This is what depression feels like. I think that maybe the depression is finite, but I can’t find my way out of the dark space.
The depression worsened until I had a mental health crisis. I had a massive, major, all-encompassing depressive episode. I couldn’t stop crying. Oddly, I wasn’t suicidal.
I considered going to Memorial Medical Center, the only hospital in this area with a psychiatric ward. I’m a criminal defense attorney. So many of my clients have mental illnesses. My clients tell me stories of how they were mistreated in hospitals. Similar stories from a multitude of clients about mental hell facilities across the state. Forced medication. Barring visits from family members. Being drugged into oblivion because that made it easier to control the patients. People obviously needing help, but were considered too unpredictable so they were dumped out of a facility. All of it illegal. All of it happening every day.
I was desperate to the point where I was willing to enter the mental hell system.
I discarded the idea of inpatient treatment when I discovered what my insurance, Presbyterian, and Medicare won’t cover. Presbyterian requires prior authorization for inpatient treatment and inpatient treatment must be approached via the emergency room. Apparently, I need to know about six weeks in advance when I’m going to have a mental health crisis.Otherwise, my insurance covers nothing. Because of the pandemic and because I wasn’t suicidal, I doubted I would have been admitted to the psychiatric ward. Even if I were admitted, I wouldn’t be there long. I’m an attorney. You’ve heard of a jailhouse lawyer? I would have been a psych ward lawyer.
Because I couldn’t go to the hospital, I increased the dose of my antidepressant to two pills. That worked. Sort of. After three days, I turned into a zombie. The Zombie Apocalypse is over rated. I tried to find a schedule that would allow me to stop crying but not turn me into a zombie. I took two antidepressants on one day, and then two days with my usual dose, then back to two antidepressants. Repeat until oblivion. I wasn’t a zombie, I was more or less functioning, and I was still severely depressed. Rather than a more or less steady state of mood, I had wild mood swings between all-encompassing depression where I could minimally function and severedepression.
I was in such a deep mental health crisis that I considered electric shock treatment even though I know better than to agree to electric shock treatment. Electric shock is barbaric. The victim is given a sedative so the psychiatrist doesn’t have to hear the victim screaming in pain while the psychiatrist fries the victim’s brain. The victim is given a muscle relaxant so the psychiatrist doesn’t have to watch the victim have a grand mal seizure. The theory is the brain frying must continue until the victim has a seizure for electric shock treatment to be fruitful.Electric shock causes memory loss. Sometimes, the memory loss is permanent. I know of one victim who forgot he was married. I have an Advance Psychiatric Directive. One paragraph states I absolutely do not agree to electric shock treatment.
I watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I almost felt better.
I considered and researched transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s effective for depression and migraine relief. Because it can also cause worsening of symptoms for people who are bipolar, I rejected that idea.
I considered ketamine infusion. In desperation, I made an appointment to discuss ketamine. I also did research on ketamine infusion. Ketamine blocks the NMDA receptors which, in theory, should reduce brain activity. In real life, ketamine does block NMDA receptors, but it also causes new neural connections to form and increases glutamate. Ketamine is a hallucinogenic and highly addictive. I was warned that the hallucinations might not be pleasant.I’ve had hallucinations during withdrawal from an antidepressant. I learned that if I let myself look at the hallucinations, and recognize the hallucinations weren’t reality, the hallucinationswere enjoyable. Until I kept trying to kill an imaginary spider that was crawling up the bathroom wall. That wasn’t enjoyable.
I agreed to try ketamine.
I watched Easy Rider.
During the infusion I had hallucinations. I saw colors and shapes although the colors and shapes had nothing to do with one another. I heard sounds that no one else could hear. I watched a long, stringy, multi-colored blob come down from the ceiling then recede and melt into the ceiling. I felt that I was turning my head left and right although my husband, who stayed in the room with me, told me I didn’t move my head. When I thought I was looking to my right, the colors were brighter. When I thought I was looking to my left, the colors were darker. The hallucinations were neither pleasant nor unpleasant. They were just interesting. I kept waiting to see purple because when I see purple, I know that healing is happening. I waited to see the brilliant, golden white that I interpret as the presence of the divine. I saw fleeting bits of purple. I didn’t see the brilliant, golden white.
After the infusion, my brain felt full and I could feel something that was almost a buzzing sensation in my brain. I felt almost happy. I also felt a craving for more ketamine. I’ve been through withdrawal from psych meds several times. I’ve had to do a step down to get off some antidepressants. That involved cutting pills into halves or quarters and relieved most of the withdrawal. I had never before experienced a craving. Ketamine works, but it terrifies me.
That’s about how my brain felt. I haven’t had a chance to have this printed on fabric. If I can figure out how to quilt it, I’ll have it printed on fabric. I’m thinking quilting with holographic thread might show what I felt.
The customary protocol for ketamine infusion is two infusions per week for three weeks. I know I cannot tolerate ketamine that often. My brain would explode.
A week after the infusion, the depression is still almost gone, although I can feel the effects of ketamine dissipating. I fear the return of the massive, all consuming depression. I’m considering having an infusion once every two to three weeks.
Right now, people know what it’s like to be depressed. People know what it’s like to have anxiety. People know what isolation feels like. Right now, it’s okay to be depressed, anxious and isolated. Eventually, life will return to what it was before. People will go back to being normal. I will still be bipolar. There will again be people who think they are better than me for no reason other than unlike me, they don’t have a DSM-5 label.
I will remain screaming in silence. My screams cause the air to vibrate, but the vibrations never reach ears.
March 13, 2021. Exactly one year ago today, I got an email telling me the university would shut down at noon. My geology lab conveniently ended at noon. Four days later, New Mexico shut down. Since then, I’ve had chronic insomnia, extreme anxiety, depression so bad I couldn’t stop crying, and I’ve gained weight. I got my first covid vaccine shot on March 7, and the second shot will be March 28. I miss eating a meal in a restaurant, but it’s too dangerous to do so. There’s outdoor dining, but that’s also dangerous. It’s spring, and we’re having WIND. The kind of WIND that picks up dust, sand, pollen, small children left unattended, and blows them around and causes an allergic reaction in my nose. Today, the high temperature will be 52 degrees. Not picnic weather.
Being in the midst of a massive, severe depressive episode and being desperate, I had a ketamine infusion. It was interesting. After a half liter of saline mixed with ketamine finished dripping into my hand, my brain felt full. It felt like a lot was going on in my brain. I felt almost happy. Four days later, I still feel the effects, but I also feel myself sliding back into severe anxiety and depression. The customary protocol is two ketamine sessions a week for three weeks. There’s no way I could have ketamine that often. My brain might explode. I’m considering having an infusion every couple weeks until I finish six infusions.
I’ve tried again to take decent photos of the socks I’ve made. I’m getting closer, but still not completely happy with my shots.
I like the composition of this one, but I didn’t pay enough attention to where the edges of the felt were. I couldn’t crop out all the cardboard without cutting off part of the socks.
Finally, there are signs of life in my yard. The buds on the claret cup cactus should open in a few days.
The buds on the claret cup cactus should start opening within the next week.
I finally figured out how to do free motion quilting without the thread breaking. I used the FMQ foot that came with my machine, Pfaff Quilt Expressions 4.2. Thread broke. I change to a 90/14 topstitch needle which Superior Thread recommends to use with King Tut thread. Thread broke. I cleaned the machine. I rethreaded the machine. I tried a Superior Thread titanium coated 90/14 needle. Thread broke. Having run out of ideas, I tried the spring loaded FMQ foot that’s made by Pfaff, but didn’t come with my machine. Finally, no thread breaking! It shouldn’t have been that hard to find a solution.
I need to come up with something spectacular for an assignment in my neurobiology class. I’ve decided to quilt my mental health as it deteriorated in the past year.
Isolation. I finished the quilting and the basting stitches have been removed. I had problems with the binding and needed to rip out part of the stitching. Except I can no longer see that well up close. I plan on cutting off the binding and putting different binding on the quilt.
Depression. This one gets quilted after I finish the quilting on the crane quilt.
I had something different in mind when I made this quilt, but now I think it works for the isolation I’ve felt.
I had a massive depressive episode on 2/19/21. I had to go up on my med dosages in order to be able to stop crying. After three days, I had to return to my usual dosages because I was becoming a zombie. That led to another massive depressive episode on Thursday. After making sure Jim could drive me to my appointments on Friday, I went back up on the dosages. Friday morning, I had to force myself to take my meds. I knew I was over medicated, but I thought if I didn’t continue on the higher dosage, I wouldn’t be able to stop crying. I was incapable of driving. I couldn’t understand the instructions for filling out the forms for sending something certified mail, return receipt requested. I tried to read about the latest upgrade to Affinity Photo, but I couldn’t understand anything that I read. My brain did not work. Frustrating and terrifying.
On Friday, I met with the anesthesiologist at a local pain clinic that uses ketamine. I can’t live like a zombie. I need my brain. I can’t function if I can’t stop crying. I went back to my usual dosages today. My appointment for using ketamine is in two weeks. I may have to spend the next two weeks crying. Already, and it has been less than 12 hours, I’m irritable and unable to control myself.
I wanted to try working on a quilt today. The theory was I’d feel better if I made some art. Except I couldn’t. I was measuring different widths for a border. I think I found a width that works, but I don’t trust myself to be able to cut strips the right length and width. So much for working on a quilt.
I tried to do a little photography thinking that would cheer me up. It probably would have if Affinity weren’t the absolute worst photo editing program. Turns out a whole lot of people are having the problem I’m having with this latest upgrade – I can’t save a photo to the desktop or anywhere else and I can’t export a photo to the desktop or anywhere else. I sent an email to “customer service” but I don’t expect an answer back from them in less than a month. I tried looking for YouTube videos to explain how to save and export in the latest version. No luck. The Affinity videos are confusing and overly complicated. Just tell me how I can export the photos to my desktop like I’ve been doing for the last several years. There are lots of questions about this lack of ability to export or save on the forum, but no answers. Any company that offers real customer service, with people whose native language is English, who don’t try to hide the fact that I’m calling someplace in India, is going to be wildly successful and profitable. Apparently customer service is now on part with quality control. Not much of either.
I tried doing a bit of experimenting with deliberate motion.
This week wasn’t easy for anyone watching news out of Washington DC. It’s less easy for someone with bipolar disorder.
On Tuesday, I was severely depressed. I know why, but it’s not something I’m comfortable writing about. I took an extra antidepressant. My doctor knows I do this when the depression gets severe and I get close to being suicidal.
On Wednesday, I made the mistake of watching some of the news about a mob storming the Capitol Building. Seeing the horror triggered severe mania and severe anxiety. Working on a quilt helped a bit. I considered taking an extra mood stabilizer but wasn’t sure if that would help.
On Thursday, I was severely depressed after being rejected by a someone who breeds labradoodles. The breeder refuses to sell a puppy to someone who has never had a puppy. That’s like saying you can’t eat green beans because you’ve never eaten green beans. The plan was, work with a trainer on puppy training – don’t pee on the rug, don’t eat the furniture, the cats aren’t chew toys, how to walk on a leash – and when the dog is 18-24 months old, work with the trainer to train the dog to be a psychiatric service dog for me. I have adult cats and they’re not going to accept an adult dog. I think it would be far easier for them to accept a puppy – especially after learning the puppy won’t eat cat food.
Today, I feel….kind of neutral. I don’t feel at center, but I also don’t feel manic or depressed. More like feeling subdued or like being a muted color. I don’t feel energy flows although I know energy flows exist. I see energy flows as colors. Today, muted colors.
Rapid cycling is defined as four or more episodes within a year. I had three major episodes in three days. Maybe my energy is a muted color because I’ve had the emotional equivalent of running a three-day marathon.
I’m at another stopping point with the isolation quilt. I figured out I wanted to do wavy lines that echoed one another. Now, I’m left with bits of unquilted space. I was going to do meandering free motion quilting, but I forgot how to attach that foot to my machine. When frustration, mania, and anxiety reach terminal velocity, it’s time for me to take a break and do something else. I’m considering leaving the empty spaces empty.
My brain isn’t working well today. I’m having significantly more anxiety than usual and a I’m having peripheral neuropathy pain. I’ve combined an anti-anxiety med, the medical marijuana and three hours’ sleep. I don’t recommend it.
I have nearly all of the 167 new fabrics in my Spoonflower shop. Because of the insomnia, anxiety and meds, I’m having serious problems coming up with key words for each fabric. At the moment, 142 new designs are in my Spoonflower shop and you can find them here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
There are two single yard pieces that I plan on quilting. One is a photo that I manipulated using the geometrics part of PhotoScape X. I like that it looks like a modern version of a traditional quilt. Yes, there will be photos.
There’s a reason it’s called art therapy and I’ve been playing with photography.
I photographed the desert coming alive in the spring and summer. Now, I’m photographing the desert going dormant. What strikes me is how determined plants are to keep blooming. Here are the remnants of a recent bloom surrounded by dead blooms and dead leaves.
Yucca pods that have opened to release seeds.
Every photographer, including me, has an assortment of full moon photos. I’ve been deliberately looking for opportunities to photograph a less than full moon.
It was a nice night, so I decided to play around a bit. I experimented using a flashlight to light up different parts of the yard. I was hoping for something a bit different, but what I got is intriguingly eerie.
One of my recent manipulated photos. Here’s the original photo.
Today, I started with a photo of bare branches and played a bit. Here’s the final manipulation.
For some reason, the original shot won’t load.
I can get nearly instant gratification with photography and I find I am suddenly calm when I start to make art.
I’ve got nearly all of the isolation quilt basted and can start quilting it tomorrow. I’ve a pretty good idea of how I want to quilt it. I need to work on the human physiology quilt.
Don’t want to risk shopping at the few stores still open? One safe option is to support an artist. Many artists have on-line stores offering one of a kind treasures. Mine, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com
After a week of touring Dallas and Ft. Worth, my roasting pan finally arrived. A week after Bed, Bath & Beyond said it would be delivered. I’m not interested in making a roast; I’m interested in making creme caramel and I needed a pan deep enough that I could have hot water 3/4 of the way up the side of the custard cups. And so I set out to make creme caramel. I gave myself a second-degree burn working with the caramel – which I burnt. My copay for a visit to the emergency room is $275. I can think of a whole lot of other things I’d rather spend $275 on than sitting around an emergency room waiting for someone to tell me what I already know. Instead, I put lidocaine on the burn and put a bandage over it. It’s an interesting experience trying to temper eggs when working with only one and a half hands. The custard part of the creme caramel came out really nice. The caramel part taught me I need to use a candy thermometer rather than try to guess when the caramel is just right.
This damn pandemic better end soon. The insomnia is killing me. I will fall asleep at a more or less reasonable hour two nights in a row, then the insomnia is back and I’m up until 4:00 AM. Bleah. This has been going on long enough for the extreme anxiety to feel normal.
I need a haircut, but that’s not going to happen for a few months. New Mexico is now a hotspot and the county I live is is one of the hottest spots in the state. We’re setting records for new covid-19 infections at least once a week. It’s terrifying. So I will live with shaggy hair for several weeks. Or longer.
The air quality here has been terrible for weeks. All the particulates from the wildfires are blowing through and causing me to have an allergic reaction. Finally, in desperation, I went outside yesterday to do some photography. Fortunately, the air quality was better than it had been. I started the pandemic photographing spring in the desert. That morphed into photographing the desert in the summer. Now, I’m working on photographing the desert as it dies back to be dormant for the next six months.
The few flowers on the desert sage bushes are tiny. The leaves are turning yellow.
Some of the desert plants don’t seem to understand what time of year it is. This is a blossom on a red yucca that should have stopped blooming four months ago.
Last night, for the first time in weeks, we had a colorful sunset and I went out to photograph it. I got distracted by the cottontail that was willing to hold still long enough for me to get a few decent bunny shots.
After the bunny left, I documented the sunset.
One of the editing programs I use is Photoscape X. Much of the program is free, and $40 unlocks all the bells and whistles. The other day, Photoscape issued an update. Wow! Do I have bells and whistles!
Here’s the original shot of a seed pod on a red yucca.
Cohen holding still long enough for me to get a more or less decent shot of her. Usually The Deranged Ones hide when I grab the camera.
I’ve been working with some of the beads I bought last month when we took a tiny trip to Albuquerque and I’ve been putting necklaces into my store, Deb Thuman Art, here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com
I’ve had extreme anxiety for so long that extreme anxiety feels normal. I don’t notice it until I have a small frustration, then the bipolar nuclear warhead explodes. I’ve no idea how to lower the anxiety. I have a prescription for Klonopin, but Klonopin isn’t helping as much as I need it to help. I’ve been on the lowest dose since 2007. I take it when I need it, and don’t bother when I don’t need it. That has kept me from becoming addicted. Having gone through psych med withdrawal five times, I can say with great authority that coming off heroin is easier than coming off a psych med. With heroin, you puke and poop for three days and you’re done. With psych meds, withdrawal lasts at least three months. I’m careful with Klonopin. I’ve had extreme anxiety for five months, and that’s more than long enough to become addicted to Klonopin. I haven’t yet, and have no plans to ask my doctor for a prescription for a larger dose. As bad as the extreme, unending anxiety is, withdrawal is worse.
I listen to relaxation music. I meditate. It doesn’t help. It may keep me from screaming for a few minutes, but that’s the best I can expect. I think of the high stress events in my life – law school, taking a bar exam, a trial where I was in the courtroom when I grabbed my stomach and doubled over in pain, having a supervisor scream at me, having a stalker terrorize me, suing the New Mexico Public Defender Department….none of that compares to the anxiety I’ve felt for the past five months. None of that prepared me for the anxiety I’ve felt for the past five months.
I’ve been in an extended manic episode for the last five months. Something about a killer virus and a pandemic. Once the frustration arrives, the vitriol ensues. It’s not nice. For me or anyone around me. During this manic episode, I’ve had severe depressive episodes. The last one was scary because I felt dangerously close to suicidal. The suicide rate for people who are bipolar is 20 times that of the rest of the population.
My physiology class started on Thursday. The class is via zoom complete with technical glitches, internet disturbances, and a significantly lower risk of becoming infected with covid-19. I did not handle the glitches well. It took me a half hour to get into my class, and I don’t remember how I accomplished that. I had tried so many things, I have no idea what actually worked. I’m supposed to fill out a covid form and take the covid quiz that’s online, except it isn’t on line. Or if it is online, it’s in a super-secret location. I don’t see the point of this quiz. Dona Ana County and specifically Las Cruces where I live is a major hotspot in New Mexico. New Mexico State University has classes via zoom and on campus. I had predicted that the university would have to shut down by Halloween due to rampant infection. I’ve revised that. I predict the university will shut down by Labor Day. The university has had five months to figure out how to sanitize classrooms and restrooms with a janitorial staff that has been decimated due to budget cuts. Plans have yet to be finalized. The campus police apparently have no intention of enforcing state, county and local laws mandating wearing face masks in public. Jim is on campus daily and he has yet to see a student wearing a mask in public.
I spent this morning terrorizing the university administration. In my defense, the administration deserved it. There is a survey students are asked to take regarding a monument in the middle of a traffic circle. Some engineer who may have been on acid at the time, decided it would be a good idea to remove traffic lights, and have a traffic circle with exits and entrances to I-25 as well as exits and entrances to major roads and the university. I suggested rather than the three boring ideas proposed that a caduceus be erected as a monument to all the injuries caused by collisions that will happen in the traffic circle. Next, I took a survey for theater arts majors. Although I’m not working towards another degree, I declared a theater arts major as a matter of convenience. Jim works in the theater arts department and I needed a clearance in lieu of mandatory academic advisement each semester. It was easier for Jim to handle the paperwork if I were a theater arts major. The survey contained questions about upcoming plays – none of which are going to be produced because by state law there won’t be an audience because only 48 people can be seated in the theater. Every year, the theater arts department, in clear violation of the First Amendment, puts on a Christmas production. I suggested they have plays for Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Pesach. Not that anyone in administration will know that Pesach is the Hebrew word for Passover. I then asked if the department was going to continue to cram Christianity down everyone’s throat. I used to be on the board for American Southwest Theater Company – the organization that financially supports the theater productions put on by the theater arts department. I resigned in the middle of a meeting when it became clear that not only was ASTC and the theater arts department going to continue to crap on the First Amendment, but ASTC didn’t carry insurance to protect me in the event someone woke up and sued the university. New Mexico is a community property state. Being on the board meant risking I would be sued, I’d be forced to sell the house, and we’d only be able to keep half the proceeds from the sale.
Then, I finished breakfast.
My broken tooth won’t be fixed until August 28 and my birthday is August 22. There will be a subdued celebration. I can only eat on one side of my mouth so my food choices are limited. Restaurants in New Mexico are limited to patio seating and take out only. I’d like to spend part of the weekend in Albuquerque but hotels are restricted to 25% occupancy and Albuquerque is a hot spot. The fanciest I can do for a celebration is to make Welsh Rarebit.
I’ve been doing photography, but that’s not helping as much as I would like. I calm down a bit, but the calm doesn’t last.
I’ve been working on manipulating photos to use for fabric designs which will be sold at Spoonflower. You can find my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
Deb's Art 