Easy Crafts for the Insane

 Easy Crafts for the Insane: The Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things by Kelly Williams Brown
2021
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Method of Disposal: Giving Away on with a Buy Nothing Group

This book left me with an uneasy feeling for days and was, ultimately, "the straw that broke the camel's back" for me.  I have been battling depression unsuccessfully for quite some time now.  I do not want to ruin the book for you if you have not read it.  So, stop reading here now if you want--how odd to think about "ruining the story" when you are talking about someone's life.

In this book, the author talks about her own struggle with depression and the impacts it had on her relationships with her friends, self, boyfriend, and family.  She also describes her near death experience with suicide.  The way she described it haunted me in that she did not think of herself as someone who would die that way and then found herself just minutes away from death.  Her boyfriend could not recover from it and was deeply wounded.  They ultimately broke up.  I did not think I would go that far either, but there were many times I scared myself with how deeply I was sinking anyway.  Especially right before, during, and after my period.  I could not live like that--feeling like I could not control my own actions for half the month each month.  The author wrote about her brain being unhealthy in the same way other parts of her body could become unhealthy.  She would not think twice about taking medication to help other parts of her body.  She described how it felt after she took medication for her mental health.  

I wanted to be a better wife and partner.  I started looking into psychiatrists and finally decided to talk to one and started to take Prozac.  It was not easy.  Over a decade ago, I had a negative experience with a psychiatrist and therapist that left me unwilling to seek help for my mental health since.   I got desperate enough.  That is where I am at.  The edge has been taken off, and I am trying to figure it all out with a little less drama.  I am grateful to the author for the insight.

All My Puny Sorrows

 All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

2019

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal: Donating

I had heard amazing things about this book, and I understand why.  I found it to be challenging and difficult, like dealing with mental illness is.  It was not unskilled, and the author had clearly put her heart into it.  It is a book about a sister who spends her life trying to stop her own successful sister's death by suicide.  It was heavy, dark, and frustrating.  I cannot say I enjoyed it as much as others did, but I see the value in it.  

I am glad there was no reason given for the sister's desire to die, though I see that many reviewers craved that.  But, that is the problem with mental illness, isn't it?  There is not always a reason or a clear reason other than it is something that resides inside a person and takes over their life.  It IS frustrating.  There is no easy fix.  If there was, so many people could be saved and this book would not likely exist.

Find Me

 Find Me by Rosie O'Donnell
2002
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I do not know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but it was not this.  Not even a little.  Generally, with famous folks writing books, you get a memoir, but not always.  I guess, in some ways, this was part memoir, though mostly focused on one part of one year of Rosie's life where she gets overly involved with a pregnant child and rape survivor who ends up not being that at all.  I feel like you get a real insight into Rosie's mind, at least in that year, and she tries to let you see the good, bad, and the ugly.  She seems like she is being vulnerable.

I am healing from surgery and am about to go to work, light duty.  I have been working from home, on pain medication, feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and mentally unsound myself.  I have been reading book after book, when I can squeeze them in, and I feel like I have been existing on some third dimension where there is no safety net, and you just keep falling.  All of this is, who am I to make commentary on anyone's mental state or book right now?  I am just glad to have so many books from so many years to read when I cannot be in my own mind anymore.

Dog Medicine

Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself by Julie Barton
2016
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library at Shelter

I struggled to know how to write about this one.  Maybe I should not read books about dogs anymore.  I cringed each time the author's dog's legs went out, he screamed in pain, and she did not take him to the vet.  It was obvious she loved him more than anything and still it was painful to read those moments.  I wondered about the dog that went back to the shelter in NY and the rabbit that lived in the apartment. 

I appreciated the author's honesty and that she wrote about her depression in a way that felt authentic.  It was challenging to get through.  I had trouble hearing about her parent's struggle to help her save herself.  I wished there was a book by her mom, her dad, and even her brother. 

I do not know why I was so resistant to her story.  Clearly. so many people love it and relate to it.  Maybe it was our differences in how we approach dogs or maybe I really struggle to read about someone else dealing with depression.  I don't know why.  I fight with it too, and I know that there are a lot of people out there dealing with depression silently who need to know that other people are dealing with it too and that it happens to all sorts of people for a variety of reasons, some of them unknown.  Still, there is a part of me that rears up when I see someone lashing out at people trying to care for them, turning their back on the responsibilities of work, and of pets.  I cannot explain it.  I should be more understanding.  I guess that might be how people close to me look at me.  I don't know.

Office Doodle Notebook: Sketch, Scribble, and Monkey Around WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT

Office Doodle Notebook: Sketch, Scribble, and Monkey Around WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT Written and Illustrated by: Susan McBride
2006
Weight: Gifting it to someone

Depression is draining.  How can one be so empty and yet so heavy all at once?  Waking up and living each day feels like a massive burden.  It is impossible to communicate with all the people I felt like I knew so well just weeks ago.  I am ashamed and unable to look them in the eyes.  I need help, but I resent it.  There is nothing more irritating than being misunderstood, but why?  Aren't we all misunderstood to some degree every single day?

I know what it is like to distrust all the strangers.  To see them as possible pain points instead of people.  It seems it would only take a less stellar background or genetic flaw to make the leap and be someone much more sinister.  I can understand that now, but that just makes me feel more hopeless and more unable to "be the change I wish to see in the world."  That gives me no hope that any of those raging psychos emulating the president can or will change.  That he can or will change.  This just makes me more likely to stay in bed.

I am so irritable.  I feel like I have no control over myself.  I am just watching.  When I can put in the energy to do anything, I feel like the puppet master.  I made that happen, with my hands, but I am emotionless.  I cannot feel what the puppet can.  I think of those classic biographies where the author is sent away on doctor's orders to get some sunshine and overcome.  Who has that life?  Unlike the folks in those books, I think that would help me.  This is what depression looks like for the working class.  Struggle to get up for work, struggle through work, work overtime unpaid and be disappointed in your work, go home, struggle to stay awake, go to sleep dreading work.  Repeat.  Maybe throw in the stress of bills here and there.

Move on dark cloud.  Life was hard without you, but it is impossible with you.

Volume 17, Number 4

Tin House: Summer 2016
Weight: 1 lb
Method of Disposal: Donating

Have you ever experienced night paralysis?  There is this moment of awareness before the visions start.  You feel that your body is heavy and unmovable, and there is this dread that overcomes you.  Will you be able to wake yourself up in time or is it too late?  If you give in completely you will be overcome by horror and completely incapable of escaping it.

That is the gloom I have been living in since November 8th.  Some days I wake up and can almost forget that we are on the verge of collapse--that my whole life could possibly change.  That a lot of lives could change in ways most Americans would struggle to imagine.  I don't think this is dramatic.  My worst nightmare is the collective leadership of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Ben Carson, Mike Pence, Rudolph Giuliani, and now Steve Bannon.  It is like a really bad SNL skit and my deepest darkest nightmare combined.  It is so impossible I do not know how to wrap my brain around the fact that it IS possible.

What will happen to us?

Mythology The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling

Mythology The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling C. Scott Littleton
2002
Weight: 6.1 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

Life is a lot like this hefty, over-sized guide to mythology.  It seems like a good idea, it is made up of a lot of interesting stuff, depending on how you are feeling it can look nice or just flat out overwhelming.  The more time you spend with it the more it just feels like a burden and the less interested you are in flipping through the pages, collecting new experiences.  At some point you realize you are going to forget everything anyway and, in the meantime, it just collects dust and weighs an awful lot.  Nothing ever changes.  It is the same old story with the same old binding and no matter how much you want to make it something else you cannot.  And, in the end, it is not worth anything to anyone, including you.

Hunt For Hector

Hunt For Hector by Tony Tallarico
1990
Weight: 9. 6 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving Somewhere in Decatur, GA

First things first.  There is a search for a hero dog in the Atlanta area...a pit bull mix, of course.  See below:
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/search-continues-for-hero-dogbaby-girl-remains-foc/nc4NJ/

Now, Onward.  I have been depressed as of late.  It is ridiculous.  The people I love are going through a lot right now but I, personally, am not.  I believe it is tied to the Chantix I have been taking to quit smoking.  I have sad dreams, wake up and am irritable all day at work, come home and am so miserable to be so far away from my fiancée that I end up getting snippy on Skype.  It makes no sense at all.  It is only a 3 month treatment, and I am 20 days in.  I know I can make it, damn it, but I hope she can.  I have been a nonsmoker for the last thirteen days and am hoping I smell better :)

Any who, tonight is the first night all week where I felt okay.  I went to work this morning, but I mostly drove to various places.  I did a home inspection and went to talk to the owner of a local doggy daycare.  By the time I got back to work there was only one employee left since the snow had scared the rest off.  We closed up the shelter and rescued a freezing kitty.  Really, it was a very successful, beautiful, and productive day.

I loved listening to music too loud while watching the snow fall, and I loved running around the yard snapping pictures of my dogs.  I also had a great time on Skype--playing games, answering riddles, reminiscing, and saying all that stuff that would make other people nauseated if they had to overhear it.  Now, I am up and reading, relaxing, and planning my weekend.


The only problem is that I really need to get to sleep.  I am seeing all the Facebook posts about all the people stranded in the snow around Georgia, and I am quickly realizing that I will, in fact, be working tomorrow.  There is no way there is going to be enough staff at the shelter tomorrow.  Friends are stuck at 24 hour businesses, their mothers are stuck in their cars on icy roads, children are stuck on buses or in nearby buildings away from their families, there have been over 600 accidents.  For some reason, I really did not expect all this.  I know a lot of people are making fun of the South right now, and I get it, but there are still people out there in serious need of help so let's hold back for a little bit and hope that everyone is going to be okay overnight.  And wish me luck getting to work tomorrow morning because their are some pups in serious need of a good pee and some breakfast! 

Noel the Coward

Noel the Coward by Raboert Krauss Illustrated by Jose Aruego amd Ariane Dewey
1988
Weight: 1 lb
Method of Disposal: Leaving at Kroger off North Decatur Rd

 

I chose this book because I feel that this illustration captures exactly how I have felt upon waking the last two days.  I am not sure if it is the Chantix, living so far way from my fiancée, the way my new job overwhelms me, the stuff going on around me, the hormones, or if it is just a normal sadness that will soon pass.  I slept in until 11am, trying to hide today.  I try not to waste me weekends like that, but we cannot change the past.  We can only move forward, and there is SO MUCH TO DO TODAY.  Waaaaaahhhhhhhh.

 

I think the pictures in this story are superior to the actual words.  It is about a little coward and his cowardly father.  The little coward gets picked on all the time so him and his father take a self-defense class.  He learns how to avoid a fight and does not have to fight because he knows he could and so do the bullies.  Mama is so proud of him and dad.

 

Why can't life be so simple?

Human Anatomy and Physiology

Human Anatomy and Physiology 4th Ed by John W. Hole, Jr. Prepared by Nancy A Sickles Corbett
1987
Weight: 1.1 lb
Method of Disposal: Donating

Five more days/Four more nights that I must make it through before I see my Beloved again.  I am so excited that I sleep all day and stay up all night, apparently.  There is so much to do to prepare for her arrival.  The house is a true disaster zone with boxes pilled up everywhere and random odds and ends left unboxed in piles here and there.  I have not figured out the bills or the method I will use to move.  I am busy all the time and the one day I had time to do something, I crashed.  Hard.  Sleepiness, depression, missed plans.  The full nine yards.

And yet, somehow I am convinced, that once I can hold her body close to me again everything will fall into place and it will all make sense.  We will get through it together.  Is that true?

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath
2000
Weight: 8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving in a book box in East Atlanta or Oakhurst

It is a dull, dreary, rainy, sleepy day and thus, probably a good day to get rid of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.  I first read this book in high school and then, as a junior, I reread it and attempted to write my first serious literary comparison.  I had a vivid memory of it several weeks ago but now I cannot remember what the topic actually was.   I know that I read a lot of books and did so much work to get that paper done.  I was only suppose to write a short paper on one book, but I got special permission from my English teacher to take on a much larger project.  I got so caught up in reading every Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Wurtzel book I could find that I became overwhelmed with information and turned in a terrible paper.  I believe I got a very disappointing "B."  I deserved lower, if you just looked at quality, but I worked so hard.  It was so worth it though.  Little did I realize that the next year I would write an even more daunting paper on "The Sexual Connotations of Little Red Riding Hood" and then after that would attend a private college where you would be assigned a ten page paper in a math class and a 20-30 page paper in an English class and so on and so forth until you got to your thesis work, which was particularly big if you double majored, like me.  I needed that failing paper to get it out of my system, learn how to organize, and move on.

The Bell Jar.  It appealed to me because of the strong-minded woman narrating it.  I underlined, "And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat(85)."  I related to her desolation and her disillusionment with the world and the people that inhabited it.  "The figures around me weren't people, but shop dummies, painted to resemble people and propped up in attitudes counterfeiting life (142)."  I understood the pain behind people's throw away comments.  The ones about your own reality that people make when they try to care but cannot wrap their head or heart around what you are showing them. 
                    My mother smiled. "I knew my baby wasn't like that."
                    I looked at her.  "Like what?"
                    "Like those awful people.  Those awful dead people at that hospital." She paused.  "I
                    knew you'd decide to be alright again (145-146)."

I am somewhere else in life now.  Far, far away from the experiences of Esther Greenwood/Sylvia Plath.  I still have dreary, dim, daunting, alliterative days and sometimes I even fall into depression but never with the same gusto and, if I do, it is only with the help of some sort of hormonal medication that throws everything out of whack but that I can recognize, gather support for, and move on from.

Today, I am just slightly sad and slightly sleepy.  Goodbye, Bell Jar, go spread your word.

Endometriosis/PCOS

Endometriosis: The Complete Reference for Taking Charge of Your Health

by Mary Lou Ballweg and the Endometriosis Association

2003

Weight: 2 lbs

Method of Disposal: Putting in a Better World Books bin

That last blog post took a lot more out of me than I intended or even realized until the next day.  It seemed so simple and obvious.  I like the post but, if I could go back in time, I would not have written it.  My body and what we so often refer to as “heart” are reeling.  I feel unstable.  I do not know where I begin and how this ends.  I am not sure what happened because of what I wrote and what happened for other reasons.  

I am on progesterone for my PCOS.  I know now that I go into severe depressions when I am about to start my period, but I did not know that for years because I never had regular periods and had no way to make the connection.  I am hoping that this will end in 4 days.  That is when I can stop taking the pills for this month.  I take them the first ten days of every month so that they will control the cysts on my ovaries.  I am learning to keep myself in check, remind myself that I don’t always feel this way, remember that it will end again, and that if I just endure it life gets so much better.  SO MUCH better.  How can I swing from being afraid of death to not caring about any kind of self-preservation every single month?  It happens so fast and is so strange to me.

I have been on so many forms of birth control for so many years.  I liked the patch because I felt like I was advertising and validating taking control of my sexuality, despite the fact that I was a lesbian using it to control my body.  I liked the Nuva Ring because it was so easy, and I did not experience a lot of obvious negative side effects.  I hated Depro Provera because it changed everything and wrecked my body.  I had trouble taking the pills (several different brands)at the right times and consistently so ran into all sorts of problems.  It has been an adventure, but I was ready to try something other than birth control.  I was always taken off the bc for some reason or another, usually depression.  I had a terrible gynecologist who once told me to suck it up, life was hard, deal with the depression.  At the time, I was severely suicidal.  I was going through a bad break up and recovering from rape.  I was more afraid of myself than the cancer I might get if I was not on hormones.  Now, I am in a different place, and I do think it might be time to suck it up and deal.  If it really only lasts a few days or a week.  It is too soon to know, but I am hopeful that this is the case.

I do know one thing now.  I know that I do not have Endometriosis, something that was suggested by a gynecologist when I was 16.  That is why I have this book, which I bought years later when I was in college.  I am sure there is someone else out there that can use it more than me.  I am not sure how to get it to them, but I am sure Better World will find someone on the interwebs who wants it.

**In other news, the lumps I was concerned about are going away and the doctor thinks there is nothing to worry about.  Holler**