Last Thursday I got a short message from an old friend who has bipolar. It simply asked what I thought of her new blog and included the URL. That’s it. When I saw the Web address, I didn’t think it was right, so I checked it out and sure enough, this person started a blog called “Bipolar Bloggo,” which is the exact same title as the bipolar blog that I started years ago, whose posts are now incorporated into this blog (though mine, like bloggo chicago, has no caps). I was alarmed by the blog’s title, called my friend, explained that I once had a blog by the same name, and asked her to change both the title and the URL of her blog. She agreed, promised to do so later that night, and did.

There was only one post on this other blog that said the narrator had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and, as might be expected, was shocked and angry. Except that I’ve known this person for almost 10 years, which is why I used the word “narrator,” because as far as I knew, my friend also has bipolar or at least depression because of how we met.

My friend hasn’t lived in Chicago for years, and even while she was here, she and I lost touch. We’re both writers and when we were close she was always supportive of both my writing and my well-being. As you can imagine, I was concerned about her well-being considering what I’d read on the blog, and asked if she was OK, if she wanted to talk, and so on. I asked about her diagnosis and that’s when the conversation began to, well, get strange.

I continued to reach out to her by replying to her original message after she took down the blog. I’m not going to go into all of the details, but her story kept changing and contradicting itself, and more and more I felt like I was being lied to. I hadn’t heard from her in months, and then all of a sudden I received the initial message with no background context.

Although I don’t own the word “bloggo” the way George Lucas owns the rights to the word “droid” (seriously), I’d rather not have anything regarding bipolar disorder associated with “bloggo.” I don’t want my own thoughts and experiences on the subject to be confused with someone else’s, so I may write a disclaimer of some sort in the sidebar.

There are several issues going on here, and I’ve already hashed them out with Brian, a few friends, and my therapist several times over the past few days. Still, I feel confused as to why she contacted me out of the clear blue sky with that particular message, and then kept changing her story. I felt used, hurt, and angry. However, I’m through trying to figure it out because I refuse to obsess about it. As my friends pointed out to me, I have enough going on that I don’t need to worry about this, too. But I just had to get it out there.

Every day Hopper gets her mouse.

Every day Hopper gets bored with her mouse.

Hard to believe it, but Hopper turns 15 this month. (Pictures taken this morning, while she sunned herself under my light box.) Hopper is my first cat, my first companion animal. And to think I didn’t even used to like cats! She was only 6 months old when I adopted her and I wish I knew where her baby pictures are. Those were taken in the age of non-digital cameras and if some of my pics are blurry now, well, all of my pics were blurry then.

We’ve successfully managed Hopper’s heart disease since she was diagnosed about 2 years ago. They found it early, still in a mild condition and hasn’t progressed, thankfully. Her arthritis is another story and she refuses to take her pain killers. She has a slight limp that you can’t really see unless you know what to look for and she needs to jump on a few extra surfaces to reach her destinations, but she can still haul ass when Angelo or Hee Seop terrorize her. She’s thinner then we’d like, but I think it’s a part of her aging. Still, I forget how much more fragile she is because I still think of her as 5 years old. Her sassy attitude hasn’t changed, that’s for sure!

I’m no longer having thoughts of suicide/harming myself. I appreciate everyone’s comments and encouragement on the previous post — they mean a lot, sometimes more than Brian’s because he’s “in” this with me, if that makes sense; even though he has the capability of being objective, I don’t always have the ability to see his words and encouragement as just that — objective. Often, when I bring something up in therapy, my therapist will say exactly the same thing Brian said on the subject but for some reason, coming from her it sounds different. Maybe because she gets paid.

Speaking of therapy, I will most likely be going twice a week for a while, which I’ve done before. It’s certainly better than being hospitalized. The only problem is that since the cold and snow have set in, I’ve had trouble getting myself there. Fortunately, Brian has been able to work from home the last few weeks to drive me. But that can’t continue and I would consider it enabling if it does. Like, OK, to help me get started, that’s one thing, but I don’t want to depend on him to drive me places all the time. I’ve gotten myself where I need to be before; I can do it again.

My therapist also advised me to sign up for this 8-week fitness program at the gym. Basically it’s an intro to working out, the equipment, and the gym’s programs, but they cover nutrition and how to make working out a habit and goals. The class is an hour long and meets once a week; it’s 30 minutes lecture and 30 minutes exercise. This starts Thursday, and I’m terrified. I really shouldn’t worry about it today because it’s not for 2 more days and my anxiety gets all worked up. I’m keeping my strategy of getting to the gym that worked for me in the past: pack my bag with my gym clothes and street clothes the night before. But there’s the stupid IBS to deal with. I have to wait until I’ve used the bathroom before leaving the apartment so I’m not suddenly overcome with the urge to go while sitting in the car. Anyway, for now, I just need to be there once a week.

I haven’t called my pdoc to tell him what happened, mainly because I’m scared to death of being hospitalized, although when I met with my therapist last Wednesday, she didn’t feel that hospitalization was necessary. I gave my word that I wouldn’t harm myself, and I have not. Do I still feel miserable? Yes. But it’ll pass like it always does. I just have to be strong and ride it out and use the resources available to me. And be gentle with myself. I often forget that. Anyway, I see him next Tuesday so he’ll hear everything then.

In the meantime, I continue to sit in front of that bright-as-hell light box every morning and try to remember to take things one at a time.

Accept that your hope of being a tenured professor has reached a dead end. Overcome academe’s indoctrination process, which tells you that leaving academe means failure. There are other rewarding things you can do with your life, and you’ve got to get started somewhere. Don’t rush into another graduate program or law school. Let go of your desire for prestigious affiliations. Find a job and let the status come later. Better yet, start thinking like a free agent or an entrepreneur, since you can’t rely on any employer to survive long or to care about your prospects.

This paragraph is from the article, Dodging the Anvil in The Chronicle of Higher Education online, which basically states that humanities ABDs’ and PhDs’ (I’m assuming creative writing MFAs, since they would be applying to English departments are included) job prospects are even worse than before.

It was already bad when I graduated in 2002 and I was lucky to get the on-campus interview that I did. I think being a woman and an ethnic-American had a lot to do with it, but as the article says (and you don’t have to read it with regard to this post), I already had published work in an anthology, as well as a top-tier journal at that time so I had those going for me as well.

All this is a preface to the issue I’m dealing with right now. Some of you may or may not have noticed my sudden disappearance online, both from your blogs and on Twitter. I was blindsided Monday night by a severe depressive episode — more severe than the usual depression that’s always there, the one I struggle with day-to-day and from which I was improving. Monday night was different in that for the first time in 5 years, I had suicidal thoughts. I even considered writing a suicide note on my blog and set it to post in several days. How utterly egotistical, but in my mind, I felt it would bring closure to my blog. Um, yeah.

These were idle threats made to my husband, but the thoughts were real. My suicide attempts in the past consisted of swallowing a whole bunch of pills, except the first time, when I threatened to jump out of a second-story window. Lame. Like that would actually kill me.

Anyway, what always happens is that the ambulance comes to take me to the E.R. where I’m forced to drink activated charcoal. If you’ve ever had that experience, then you know it’s one of the most vile things you can ever consume. EVER. Silly as it may seem, that experience is what’s kept me from ODing these past 5 years, although whenever I’ve been hit with these depressive episodes, I honestly haven’t felt suicidal since 2005. I also felt like cutting, which I haven’t done in years, but as with swallowing pills, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But oh, I wanted to badly.

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by Joseph Conrad, ed. by Daniel R. Schwarz

Unless you’re a student of turn-of-the-century British literature and/or of Joseph Conrad, there is absolutely no reason to read this book. “The Secret Sharer” is actually a short story about a newly-appointed captain on a British merchant ship who harbors (no pun intended) a supposed fugitive from a different ship. This edition includes a basic introduction to literary criticism, including a short biography of Joseph Conrad and a bit of history that allows the reader to place the story in historical context.

Of course I didn’t read any of that because the only reason I even picked this up in the first place is because, while watching the season 2 DVDs of E.R., one episode was entitled “The Secret Sharer.” Several E.R. episode titles have literary allusions, most of which I’m familiar with, but not this one. Brian said we own the short story and suggested I read it, and I agreed. Well, I watched that episode in, oh, September? I started reading the book shortly thereafter and only decided the other day to give up on it.

One of the types of literary criticism the editor discusses is reader-response, which is fairly self-explanatory: it focuses on the reader’s experience of the text in question, in this case, Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer.” While I am not using reader-response theory to write this, let’s just say that my experience was arduous. I couldn’t get into the story, which isn’t all that long, and had to start over at least 3 times. For some reason, I couldn’t get past imagining the arrangement of the captain’s L-shaped cabin based on Conrad’s description. I kept wondering what happened that the captain suddenly was promoted and had a crew to whom he was a stranger. As I finally made my way through the story, I began to wonder if Leggatt, the alleged fugitive, was really only a figment of the captain’s imagination and thinking that if that were the case, I’d feel incredibly gypped for the time I spent reading the stupid thing. I swore to myself that I’d read the story only.

Imagine my surprise when, after finally finishing the story, I went back and read the biographical and historical intro, found it interesting, and proceeded to read the intro to various critical theories, each of which is demonstrated by an essay analyzing “The Secret Sharer” in each of the types of criticism mentioned. I even decided to watch that episode of E.R. again to compare what I had read about the story as well as the story itself, to the episode.

Then I came to my senses and realized that what I was doing was homework. And since I’m no longer a student and no longer teach, I decided that I was done with the book. But I discovered that the scholar in me, however infinitesimal that part of me might now be, still exists.