The Chemical Chronicles: Kill Pills.

After two panic attacks, a night in an ER and reaction of “sucks for you” from my first shrink, a new pill and doctor were in order. I had no idea where to begin. There is no shrink directory to turn to, no compilation of personalities or styles, only a Google bar blinking at me with a dumbfounded look.

“Austin psychiatrists,” I type.

Names upon names meaning nothing appear. I scroll deliriously until it hits me – Yelp. I cross-reference Dr. Patel’s and Dr. Stein’s against reviews only to find that people who need shrinks don’t write reviews to inspire confidence.

“DO NO GO TO THIS CRAZY LADY! Put me on meds that increased voices! Saw lights every time I went! UNCOOL.”

By the time I finish browsing I’m certain of two things:

1.     There are out people out there much more bat shit crazy than I.

2.     Those people hate doctors.

What I needed was a referral and there was only one other person I knew in this city with a shrink.

“Do you have anyone you could recommend?”

My manager looks at me heavily. It’s an uncomfortable question but I figure once I’ve had a panic attack in the office we don’t have many more boundaries to blur.

“I do. He’s nice. Low key. He’s not a pill factory so he’ll take time to get to know you can. I’ll text you the number later.”

“Thank you… did we just bond?”

He rolls his eyes at me.

My phone chimes later and I find the name of my next lifeline – Dr. M. I wonder after him. What will he be like? Will he be dry and humorous? Will we form a bond and star in a light-hearted yet profound indie movie together? The only clue to him is the image attached to his contact information – a cartoon bunny, skipping through a field. What a happy, fuzzy man.

I arrive at the office (which, to my despair, was not in a sunlit field dappled with woodland creatures) and wait until they call my name. I shuffle into yet another room with yet another couch and begin to tell the same tale. I take a survey and complete a list telling me to check things like “I sometimes become easily agitated” and “I often cry for no reason” if they apply.

“Is it possible I just feel really deeply?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“This is the accepted checklist for bipolar disorder in the psychiatric community,” he says, holding up the piece of paper for me to see. “Look at how many things you marked.”

The checks smirk and I swear one sticks out a tongue.

“We’re going to give you medicine we’ve had a lot of success with. There are very little side effects but there is one concern. It can, in cases, cause a life threatening rash.”

I swallow hard.

“Uh… what?”

“A rash. Some people get it and treat it with Benadryl and are just fine. But if you contract one you need to stop the medication immediately because it can cause permanent damage or death.”

“Oh. Only death?” He was so cavalier. “But I’ve already had a rare reaction… my body clearly isn’t equipped for this so is it smart to put me on one with… that?”

“It’s in a completely different drug family. Just because you react one way to one doesn’t mean you’ll react the same to the other.”

“How many of the rash people die?”

“About 30… 40… 50 percent.”

I leave the office in a daze with images of me hooked to a ventilator, covered in mortifying pustules as I explain I should have just stayed crazy. I take the first dose convinced I’ll wake up a red scab and even after several days of clear skin the information is still tacked in my mind.

“Oh my god!” I yell from the bathroom after five days of treatment. “I think I have a rash! Jess! Come here! Does this look like a rash?!”

My roommate comes and observes the patch of cracked, puffy skin on my jaw line. After squinting for a minute she replies.

“…. Yeah. It does.”

“No! No. No. No. I am not fucking going through this again! I just need to go back to normal I am not fucking going through another pill!” I’m in full freak out and tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I frantically text Sam.

“I have a fucking rash. It’s faint and small but it is a fucking rash.”

He’s out drinking. He doesn’t answer for a while.

“What?” is his delayed response.

“What is unclear about that?”

“How do you know?”

“Because it looks and feels like a rash! I’m freaking out. I can’t fucking do this again.”

He comes over an hour later and finds me in a fetal, apathetic ball. He’s clearly annoyed I threw this screw into his evening and there’s barely sympathy in his voice.

“Get up. Let me see it,” he commands. I sit up and don’t even have a moment before he grabs my chin and turns my face up. He studies it for a minute.

“Where is the pill bottle?” he asks.

“I… I’m not sure…”

“Carly. Where the fuck is the pill bottle? I’m here to help you so let me fucking help you.”

“My purse?” He huffs out of the room after it, reappearing with the novel of possible side effects. He squints at my face, down at the paper, up to my face again.

“What do I do?” I whimper. I don’t know why I ask. He couldn’t possibly answer such a thing.

“It looks like dry skin.”

I walk up to my mirror and examine it, running my fingers over my pending demise, which, now that I thought about it looked an awful lot like dry skin.

“Jesus Christ,” I say, beginning to cry again. “I’m losing my mind.”

Sam pulls me into him and we sit wrapped in each other.

“It’s okay. You’re just scared. That’s all.”

Scared. I never knew what it meant to feel it truly. I always thought of myself as fearless; an independent who did things like move across country to a city she didn’t know and people she never met. I was experiencing fear over a square of white smaller than my pinky nail when Texas is bigger than France and filled with Republicans and shotguns.

Then again, guns don’t kill people. Pills do.   

The Chemical Chronicles: Mania Written.

We interrupt your normal scheduling to bring you a manic episode.

——-

“Sammy. Sammy. Sammy!” I’m shaking my boyfriend awake. “I’m gonna go home. I’ll be back.”

“Okay,” he grumbles, half asleep. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Love is why I leave. I’ve woken up in a state of mania and if he so much as turns over the wrong way I am going to unscrew his head, mount it on a spike and use it to stir the boiling water I’ll dispose his body in.

Avoiding this option, I emerge from his house in an oversized t-shirt and baggy shorts. I’m carrying my heels and last nights outfit is bundled under my arm. An old couple on a morning walk gives me a sideways glance.

“It’s my boyfriends house. I’m allowed to do this, okay?!”

I drive too fast on the way home and smoke a cigarette down to the filter. My hands are jittery on the steering wheel and sitting down is a curse. I need to move. There’s too much coursing through my body. I need to slide out of my skin, maim several small children, kick my way through eleven brick walls and run, run, run until my body crumbles.

I can’t turn it off. I can’t stop it.

I get home and immediately grab the notebook I’ve been logging episodes into.

5/26: Well this is a pleasant surprise – woke up manic instead of depressed today! About to pop. Maybe pace and smoke? Yeah. Pace and smoke. Oh fuck.

Despite how it sounds, I never experience a full manic state. I reach a place they dub “hypomania”. This means I’m only a clu-fuck instead of a full cluster-fuck when manic. Full manic’s are completely irrational and deluded by a state of such severe euphoria they empty credit cards at strip clubs, go on week long benders and begin business ventures that will end in a week. Me? I clean. And write. And smoke. And pace. And garden. And cook. And write. And run. And drive. And talk. And smoke. And pace. And write.

I am the lamest manic ever.

“Are you okay?” My roommate knocks on the door of the bathroom my computer and I are locked into.

“Yup! Just feelin’ a little manic. And trying to manage it.”

My skin wants to crawl off, my hands are jittery and my brain feels like I just snorted 600 mg of Adderall. Thoughts are running a train on my neurons. I’m having thoughts coupled on other thoughts who are fucking other thoughts who get bored and decide to find more thoughts they can bring to the orgy of thoughts brought on by just one thought.

It’s too much.

I want to whimper, curl into a fetal position and claw the words coming 10,000 miles an hour straight from my head. I want to hide from myself, but this is my reality and the only choice is to stand and face it.

“Fuck you, chemicals,” I think. “I am your master. You will NOT control me.”

I write until my eyes blur then pull on my workout clothes. I leave the house in a flurry and immediately begin to run. There’s no time to stretch, no time to warm into it; it’s a sprint the moment my foot hits the bottom doorstep and no matter how fast I go, it’s not enough. My veins are adrenaline.

Eventually I wear myself down. My legs begin to walk but my mind continues to run. I put my hands on my head and close my eyes, walking in a trance for minutes and that’s when it happens – the mania falls off in one solid slip. Within a moment my body feels released from a suffocated vault and the hurricane subsides.

It feels as bizarre as it sounds.

Before it had a name, I used to take these instances in stride. I’d accept the day and ride it out in a state of erratic misery. Now… now it has a face, an identity. It isn’t simply a state of being anymore but a bizarre, painted foe I must fight. Each time I lace up, there’s no motivational roar in my mind or feeling of pending triumph. Only a question –

When will it end?

———

This episode has been brought to you by Carly Yansak, aspiring sane person and pending champion of instability.

 

The Chemical Chronicles.

I’m spinning in a chair across from him, listening to everything he says with what feels like a blank expression although I know it’s dripping with my insides. There’s a diagram in front of me and he’s pointing to a place in-between the words “manic” and “depressive”.

“When you fall here in the arc… well it means you’re not always high, you’re not always low… but you hit those points in, lets say, a different fashion than most.”

“So you’re thinking I’m bipolar,” I say. Cut the shit, doc.

“Yes. You’re bipolar.” Does this mean I’m sick? I don’t feel sick…

“Well, what exactly is ‘bi’ about it?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“When you use the word ‘bi’, you’re implying two right? Like bi-sexual people? ‘Cause I’m telling you right now, there are not just two fuckin’ emotions I go through.”

“It’s just the term. We know there’s a spectrum.”

“It’s a little outdated,” I tell him. “Just sayin’. Maybe you should revolutionize it. Call it like… tri-di-sexa-centi-quadringenti-polar.”

He sighs as he beings to write out a prescription and ask if I have any questions. I go through the important – will I gain weight? Can I drink? Will it kill my sex drive? Can I sell them? – then ask the question haunting me most.

“I won’t become a shell, will I?”

“What, like a zombie? Oh. Yes.” I raise an eyebrow at him.

“Zombies are what we strive for,” he continues. “I like zombies. They do my bidding when I ask, file my paperwork. It’s really quite convenient.”

Is he serious? The secretary did look a little out of it…

“Um,” I don’t know how to respond.

“I’m joking. You won’t be a shell. It’ll just help keep you level.”

“Okay. Level… level sounds nice.”

“So what’s your next move?” he asks.

“Honestly? I’ll probably milk the shit out of this. Go off on people for no reason then say ‘sorry – just had an episode!’ Or when people start to piss me off, lean in real close and whisper… ‘you don’t want to do that. You don’t know what I’m capable of.’”

“Um,” he doesn’t know how to respond.

“I’m joking. C’mon doc – you taught me how to do that.”

I leave the office to find my boyfriend waiting in the car, like he’s been doing for the past two hours.

“So, how’d it go? Did you get some meds?” he asks.

He thinks I might be clinically depressed because this is what I had thought. He handled the news of having a sad-sap for a girlfriend well… but this was different. I was now a sad-sap-happy-yap-all-over-the-map kind of gal.  I look over at him almost in pain, wishing there was anything I could tell him besides what I was going to.

“Yeah… but they aren’t anti-depressants.”

“Okay…”

Jesus I’m about to get dumped…

“I have mood stabilizers… I’m… fuck. I’m bipolar.” Does this mean I’m sick? I don’t feel sick…

Nothing changes on his face.

“Sam, your girlfriend is bipolar. Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“I’m Mexican. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

He says this like they’re lunch buddies, like culture and disease can sit in the same waiting room. They may both manifest from genetics, but to my knowledge no one has to be medicated because they’re Mexican. At least not while Obama is in office.

“It’s not the same,” I say. “Doesn’t everyone just automatically associate ‘bipolar’ with ‘crazy’?”

“Who cares about everyone? You’re too concerned with being ‘normal’, Carly. Like what is ‘normal’? Who decides that?”

I know he’s right. ‘Normal’ is one of those terms none of us can define although we all strive to achieve it. There’s no Old Testament scripture, no laboratory test, no infallible equation to map this idea. It’s a concept we define ourselves, leaving us to strive and meet our own standards (or as I like to call them – the hardest, harshest, most impossible standards to meet).

My standard never included a daily mood stabilizer. But now here I am. A twenty-three year old chemical reaction.


“You know what’s cool?” I ask him.

“What?”

“I can totally milk the shit out of this.”

“…How?”

I smirk. Devilishly. The way a child sociopath smirks right before he blows up a frog.

“With fear,” I reply. He widens his eyes and gives me a sideways whatthefuck.

“You… what… how the fuck are people going to fear you?”

“Oh. Just you wait, honey. Just you wait.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeahh… I feel like that name will come up a lot when people deal with me from here on out. They’ll go – ‘Jesus Christ, woman! Are you insane?!’ And I’ll get to look them dead in the eye and say – ‘funny you should mention that…’” 

The Writing Mistress.

I haven’t been exercising my writing muscle lately. I’ve been letting it sit flaccid and withering to the point where anything I type makes me want to rip my hands off. 

It’s days like this I wish I were more simple - days like this I wish I had no drive towards a keyboard. 

But the longer those letters sit, unused, the more I ache and feel taken apart. Without words to feel proud of, I’ve got nothing. Of course there are tangibles, the everyday surrounding me, but what good is that if I can’t describe it to someone who can’t see?  What’s the point of feeling the wind if I can’t retell it later? It’s a madness, I tell you. A madness of might, doubt and imagination. It’s overwrought and furious, all consuming and frustrating. It’s the worst mistress anyone could ask for. 

But it is mine - now how to handle it properly is the question. 

Write something everyday - the words of an old professor ring through me, bringing new ones to mind, ones that tell me to get the fuck over the fear. Fear of what? Fear of failure? Fear of scorn? Fear of not being good enough? Those things will come if I don’t sit down and try. By fearing them, I would create them. Manifest them in a flurry of trepidation and watch them grow the more I dwelt - and those monsters are not easily slain if they grow too large. 

A Thank You.

There have been times I feel like I’m writing simply to make my own fingers ache. I wonder, is this just me unwinding? Does anybody give a fucking shit? How in the hell am I supposed to be a ‘writer’ if all I’m doing is blogging? I roll my eyes at people who blog - now I’m one of them? 

But, keeping this blog has proved to be the best thing I’ve ever done. For one, it keeps me writing. And in this game, writing and writing and writing until your blind is what will make you better. It also brought me to something I can be proud of, something that made me feel I have a right to call myself “writer” - Dangatorium. Suddenly my writing had a purpose and I found something I was desperately floundering for: guidance. I found a mentor in my brilliant editor. Someone who wasn’t some old creative writing class buddy, but an actual seasoned professional who can ask me “what the fuck are you doing?” and “why the fuck are you putting that colon there?”  to make me wrack my brain for the answer. It helps me learn. Helps me grow. And without Dangatorium, I would have never met Roxy. 

Roxy is the creator of an arts e-zine called BOHEMIANFOX. She is someone who wrote words about me I would have never conceived. She called me inspirational, said she admired me. She praised me and I just thought, “me? The girl who has done so many things that make me shake my head in embarassment? I’m inspirational?” 

It made me want to keep going. It makes me think if I just don’t quit, maybe I’ll reach someone else out there. And really, that’s all I want. I want to make people realize their flaws or situations are universal, and no matter how hopeless or weird or dumb they may feel the only thing they need to realize is - this is normal. 

So thank you. Not only to Dangatorium (here’s lookin’ at you, Bill Dixon) and BOHEMIAMFOX (Ms. Roxy), but to all of you who follow me. People who trust me to bring them words that could mean something to someone, somewhere. Without you all… who knows where I’d be. 

————————————————————- 

You can follow both Dangatorium and BOHEMIAMFOX on Tumblr, too! Have a laugh, find some inspiration and enjoy thoroughly.   

Colors and Lines.

Colors and lines

and lines and colors

blurring and blurring and blurring together. 

This corner here,

that corner there

wrapped around

in brilliant despair. 

Grab a pen  

and get it then 

cause the glimpse is fleeting

and the feeling gone

before you can shout - 

this adjectives wrong! 

It was different than that! 

I swear I swear! 

Oh if you had only been there. 

You’d of seen it gleam, 

and sparkle and shine! 

And understood

that it’s feeling was mine. 

But take this sentence, 

whatever it’s worth, 

and try to see 

my beautiful earth. 

Instead, I feel.

If I could explain how I feel, I would. 

But I can’t. 

My thoughts are pounding the doors and beating my tongue but they stay exactly where they are while I watch you drown in words and twirl in verbs and writhe in so much prose that I envy the mirror of your pen. 

Instead I feel. 

I feel and watch lines on shapes come alive and jump out in brilliant definition, 

a definition I can’t explain or capture but if I were to touch would feel electric and crawl underneath my flesh and light my blood up like a neon who had no constriction. I’ll walk the city streets and listen to the music of 1,000 reactions and watch the night turn into a masquerade I’ll never attend. I’ll see my adjectives and pronouns walking along side of me, always trying to grab my hand but never quite reaching. They’ll spin around me and dangle off rooftops

and sit in windows

and curl around corners

and burn in lights

and follow the music

and live in the moment. 

I’ll feel them. 

I’ll feel every syllable and every tone and every sound in the tempo of my thoughts and I’ll be alive alive and humming like a beacon of manic power no one can harness -

including myself. 

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