Soap made of goat's milk doesn't lather

Grey days indeed

God, I'm exhausted tonight.  I had  a really down day yesterday, too.

I suppose I must expect them now and again as part of normal life.

But I want to know, is it the tiredness that makes me feel so depressed or the depression that makes me feel so tired?

It worries me

Today I actually called up my Dad and asked him if he thought I was maniac.

The thing is, I was happy today and I'd forgotten what that felt like. I'd forgotten that most people feel like this a lot of the time. But I haven't for a very long time and Idon't remember if its supposed to be like this.

I was smiling and smiling and smiling. I wanted to hug everybody I interacted with but I refrained. I did give them enthusiastic greetings and departures. I was asked out by four (count them: 4!) guys and I hadn't been flirting even the least little bit. I wish I'd known it was that easy back in my dating days.

One of them is a work colleague, one of them the guy next door. I haven't been flirting with them, either. They know that I am a taken woman and love the hell out of my guy. I talk about him all the time, to the extent of annoyingness. Yet, they've both said to me that they know I am not dating, that I have a boyfriend, but they still want to do date like stuff with me. Like catching a meal, a movie, that sort of things.

This could work for me. I like those things too and singlely they get avoided because I can't be bothered just for me. I need some socialisation and it just happens that the opportunity has arisen from men. I can't help feeling that its heading for trouble, though.

However, its very nice to be wanted and its especially nice to feel happy. I'm cautiously tiptoeing up to it, approaching it from a blind corner and hoping that I can sneak up  and amalgamate myself before fate notices.

But it sucks to think that it might just be a mental health issue.

It occurs to me that I haven't really described the ECT process

Look away now, if you are delicate.

There's fasting from midnight the night before and then my mum drives me to the hospital, about an hour away. I have my blood pressure, temp and pulse taken. I meet up with the other outpatients who are having the treatment, along with any patients who are residing in the mental health ward. We collect a couple of nurses and a wheelchair and walk as a group to the day surgery area.

They've laid out a number of beds for us and we have to put a surgical gown over our clothes, store our shoes under our bed and wear little showercappy thingies. They usually let me get down first because I come from the most distance.

I lay back onto my bed and they wheel me into the operating room. They stick all sorts of EKG leads all over me and start the relentless search for a vein. I am stuck a minimum of five times before they manage it, on average.

An oxygen mask is clamped onto my face and I have to breathe deeply to saturate myself. Then the icy sting of the anaesthetic drug sliding up my arm. I always try to fight it as long as I can because I kind of like that giddy rush as it carries me away.

Once I'm asleep, they slide a rubber gag into my mouth and then inject what seems today to NOT have been quite enough muscle relaxant.

Two electrodes are taped to my temples and they throw the switch, admiring the quality of the resulting seizure on the small unit next to the table. Apparently, I 'give' good seizure.

I am only unconscious for around five minutes. Then they wheel me back into the day surgery area and do regular observations until I am judged sufficently well recovered to be wheeled back down to the mental ward. There is a breakfast kept for me and another set of vital signs are taken afterwards and then I am allowed to be released onto an unsuspecting world.

Things look better in my future!

We've agreed on  July, for me to travel to the States. Ron and I will get married probably in LV.

It's a lovely thought to look forward to. The fact that this guy loves me so much brightens up my life. We talk most days on the phone and I am always thrilled to have him call me. He makes my life better, merely by being in it.

I'm stil having the ECT, perhaps for three more sessions, but the difference is noticeable to the Mental Health Ward team, who have started to joke that we outpatients are laughing too much these days. They are a fantastic staff and the atmosphere is friendly and fun. I intend to write a very complimentary letter at the conclusion of all this. I have been treated fabulously.

Running out of veins for the anaesthetic now, though. They even tried to go in through my foot yesterday! I have bruises all over me. It's totally worth it, though.

Round 3

As I have more sessions of ECT I'm noticing that my memory is getting a lot worse.

When I came around from the anaesthetic today I didn't have a clue where I was, what I was having done or even the day of the week.

My mum took me home and I've been asleep all afternoon. Now I'm awake but my head is still sore, my jaw still aches from the gag, and I've got quite a lot of bruises all over my hands from the needles. It is working but I notice that its a lot tougher on my body this time around. Last time I had it done, I don't recall sleeping afterwards at all. But I am a lot older now.

Bow down and worship me as a spiritually pure being (in a non-Tom Cruise sort of way), I demand!

For I am holy and one of the privileged few. I have been in contact with the Consecrated Crap of one of the Lord's own Holy handmaidens.

I didn't know that God had sent somebody to hang out in ward D20, specifically for the enlightenment of the deranged but I suppose it makes sense. After all, Heaven is probably run on egalitarian principles and a mental ward would be a good place to pick up the dregs after all the society people had been selected.

I slept in a four bed ward. I was the sanest one there by a degree of about  1000%. Two of the women there were for anorexia and had to have every particle of what went in and out measured. Disgusting. Next post, I promise.

For now, Pooh Lady.

She was about 50, dressed as an ageing hippy child and she believed that the whole world had been contaminated with evil, except for her. She alone had the power to make people and things sanctified in order that they could survive. Her body was a holy vessel, the Grail if you will.

Except I am not sure that Christ's version of the Grail envisaged one particular person being the most holy thing on the planet and nobody else having a skerrick of saintliness, unless it was bestowed upon them.

This woman believed that every part of her body, inside and out, was holy, and that the mere touch of her holiness was enough to restore spiritual righteousness upon everything she touched. Obviously, she wanted to save the world of its burden of sin and had to accomplish that by touching as many people and things as possible (secondary contact was also a sin healer).

So she set out to hug people she liked, because as she said 'I want to save my friends first'. Unfortunately, she took a liking to me because I was the only person in the ward who didn't mutter to others under their breath about her personal habits, including prodigious snoring and farting all night long. Me? Hell, I knew it would be awful in there so I could cope.

The first sign of her liking me manifested itself in her presenting me with an armful of clothes that she'd bought from the local thrift store. Apparently, a visual appraisal of my body leads to the conclusion that I should be wearing a size 20.

It really was very sweet of her to think of me and I thanked her nicely before taking the clothes home and using them as paint rags. I mean it: I felt very touched and I wouldn't have told her, for the world, that I hated the clothes or that they didn't fit. It is truly the thought that counts and I felt very special that she'd even thought of me.

Except she thought of me too much. Clothes, yes; joining her in cleansing the world, no. Looking at the clothes she had given me, following her crazy line of thought, and scrubbing my hands in bleach, yes.

Apparently. absolutely EVERYTHING was evil unless she had touched it and some things were more evil than others and needed additional consecration.

Oh, dear God. She thought she was holy, hence her shit and piss were holy too, and would do the same job as a laying onb of hands but quicker. Did I mention that she liked me?

I hadn't realised how much until I came back from macrame baking class to find my bedsheets befouled with wet and dry effluvium. She was good about it, noted my emotional upset, and helped me change the bed. All with a self satisified air of being in the right. At the end of the last double tuck hospital corner, she said with a resolute air, "Kitty, now you are safe to do whatever you want  to do in your life. Enjoy. Jesus says things will turn out right".

I'd love to think it was that easy. But maybe it can be, just by believing and daring to try.

In the meantime, I'm going to be bad. Jesus said so, and I obey by the power of the Holy Pooh vested in me.

Where I am at right now

On a mental ward. It took a lot of work to get in, I must say.

People have thought that I've been happier lately and I am doing better, theoretically, at least. 

 I have a place of my own, an income (welfare but still), access to my children, the love and support of my boyfriend and the possibility of a rewarding and happy life.

This is just to say I'm aware I'm repeating myself

I forgot, okay?

It's part of my illness that I forget things right now. When I discovered I'd written about something twice I then couldn't decide which entry to delete. Indecision is also part of my illness.

So you get it twice. Lucky you.

Pretty Kitty Nips

Before I get onto those (no, you perverts, they're not naked. The naked ones are reserved for one person at the moment), I just want to answer a question I received about a previous entry; specifically, how did I manage to set fire to my kitchen.

Easy. I was cooking a chicken breast in the oven and a cockroach ran across the floor. I pursued it with the can of insect killer, spraying liberally and with enthusiasm, as I am a firm believer in the over-kill philosophy. Unfortunately, the creature ran under the oven (which is gas) and suddenly the floor (and can) were alight. I think my gas stove must leak.

I have quite good reflexes so I shut off spraying imediately, threw the can in the sink and grabbed an open container of bicarb soda and doused the flames. The lino is a bit scorched and my heart was pumping but I wasn't even singed. Plus, the can didn't explode. And the little bastard got incinerated. A good result, I think.

Back to the nips. Some rather cute nipple barbells were in my post when I got out to check it today. They were sent from the States and ordered in my phase of trying to figure out if I had bi-polar disease or not, rather than just severe depression. You remember. It was me thinking that I was ripped off if I did have it because my highs were not actually noticeable and mania would have been a welcome relief. I mixed up cause and effect and thought that actually spending money like I was maniac might trigger the feeling.

So I got online and ordered a couple of hundred dollars worth of stripper shoes. Amongst other things.

Including these.

Sorry about the blurry.

Oh, and the mental illness?

Deep depression. Stay tuned for entries from a mental ward. Including, but not limited to, just why pooh is a holy substance.