I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord. It’s building up again, but there’s remarkable differences, despite the fact that it’s almost the exact same point of time on the calendar. I haven’t taken to ordering and devouring of family-sized meals and desserts on a nightly basis from the pizza place down the street – after eating an entire cheesecake. I’m medicated. I’m not sleeping in until way past the time when Zoë wanted to be up and outside, remaining in my pajamas for most of the day, under the guise of ‘cleaning’. There was no precursory guilt-inducing sex act… oh, wait, scratch that part.

What’s the same is that I do consider devouring those meals, and have instead poured my appetital energy into root beer and all of the foods that Zoë can now eat, when I’m not fighting with that anorexic motherfucker that woke up in my brain last month. What’s the same is that I largely feel like throwing away any semblance of health right now because it feels so not worth it. What’s the same is that I’m back to feeling overwhelmed, not good enough, a failure, and any other thing that could probably be pinned upon volatile relationships and Daddy Issues.

What’s different is that instead of accepting this, I’m fucking pissed off.

***

Part of my anger is stemming from the fact that I feel so damned helpless and sorry for myself. I detest sorry-for-myself. Prior to downswings and medication, my life was carefully crafted, so as to control every single mechanism within it. So if something ‘went wrong’ it was my own fault, I could kick my ass a bit and move on. This is completely, I now see, out of my control.

I did everything right. I took the medication. When it started to work, I enjoyed it. I slept responsibly, I ate healthfully, I gained karma by yelling less at my child and not at all at my ex. I stopped smoking as much, I quit drinking for a large chunk of time. I simply started to enjoy life, and being alive, and even awake, and hell, even got what the definition of happy meant.

Now, that’s ebbing away and I can’t do a damn thing about it. And that makes me want to cry more than the specific mood swing does.

I know what I’m losing. For the first time, ever.

***

I have things I want to do. Important things. Like bake, and freeze batches of meatballs and tomato sauce. Hang curtains. Write letters. Tweeze my eyebrows. Work. Work more. Save money. Understand how other single, full-time-working moms do it. Read. Dance. Write for the hell of it. Write for the profit of it. Sew. Crochet. Strip my cupboards of their horrible shelf liner.

But no. I can barely type out a blog post, if it’s not fuelled by self-piteous rage. All of my efforts are going into doing the bare minimum right now and I want to be better than that.

***

I don’t like the idea of living on the system. My area of the world is extremely giving to single parents. I qualify for a number of programs, and I won’t lie, I receive a few of them. I have a basic moral qualification for this: without them, Zoë and I might live further away from our major supports, her babysitter, her father, in a more stressful, less safe environment. Rent is extremely expensive in this city, and until a week ago, so were our grocery bills.

So, I’ve applied for and accepted assistance for my rent – it’s more expensive than some of your mortgages. And I receive benefits on her behalf – always with the intention of putting them away for her, and never quite finding the money left over to do so. There’s other programs I could apply for, like subsidized housing, that I haven’t. Or welfare. Or the food bank.

I don’t like living within the system, and I think there are people who need and deserve it far more than I do. So I set a goal, to work X amount of hours per week, to bring my income up about 300%. To stop collect low-income, single parent aide.

I can’t do it. I couldn’t do it a month ago, when everything seemed fine (in my brain). I can’t make it much more past 10 hours a week, before I feel like I’m going to explode.

I used to work over 70. How did I fall so far?

***

Here’s the thing about all of these financial aide programs: some of them don’t play well with others. So, say, if I were to apply for disability – which I qualify for, and would be approved for, after a long and entirely-too-bureaucratic process – just so that I had a fall-back during those hard-to-keep-my-head-on-straight moments, I would be disqualified from receiving the rent assistance. Sounds fair to me, except that rent assistance is a static amount, and disability would fluctuate, based on my earnings – for the first year, at least, they’d deduct, dollar for dollar, what I made.

Have a good month and make $1 over disability benefits? I get nothing.

If there’s anything you need to know about me, it’s that regardless of how all-over-the-place I am, I need stability in relation to my home and money. More than food, smokes, sex, shirtless Jason Mraz, that scene from 8 mile when Eminen and Brittany Murphy get it on in the factory, ooh, or the coffeeshop bathroom in Unfaithful.

I think I got distracted, there.

***

Okay, distraction. There’s another thing that makes me mad. Apparently, when we have the precisely perfect (I know that was redundant, thanks) medication levels going in my brain, my attention span will just, like, poof, be normal.

It hasn’t been normal EVER, but okay. I’ll go with this theory.

But then why, for the love of melted chocolate (on Ryan Reynold’s abs) (okay, on Scarlett, too), is this focus shit getting harder? Why do I have to stare at a single thing or person, most of the time, to just finish thoughts? Why can Zoë not be in the same room as me while I’m on the phone now, without the conversation on the other end being muted, however temporarily?

And when I have my attention span back (poof!), will I stop feeling so fucking stupid? Because I may never have thought I was much more than a 6, but I alway knew I was smart. Now, I feel Ketamined-out (aka dum) (b).

***

Like I said, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Like I said, I’m angry. Worse, I’m back at the “this isn’t working. FUCK IT. I’m not going to take this shit anymore. I’m done!” place I last was in, in 2005.

Absolute fucking worst: I realized yesterday that this is, officially, the rest of my life.

I’m so tired, already.

***

It’s harder now. Harder to stay awake at some points; harder to go to sleep. I’m back to that mambo with insomnia and over-tiredness that leaves me feeling suspended in hyper-zombified gas. There’s no up or down, but there’s also no middle. Right now, I’m just waiting to find out the next step, because this one isn’t working as well as the one that could have killed my organs.

***

Yesterday, I bought Italian bread. Glorious, white, barely nutritious at all, thick-sliced Italian bread. I also bought yogurt and cheddar cheese. Last week, Zoë ate chicken fingers from a restaurant kids menu. A bagel. A hot dog at Ikea. Fruit Loops. All of this junk she’s been barred from for years. My baby’s grown out of her gluten allergy.

It’s like Christmas. I see dollar bills. I see time. I see not having to scrupulously examine every ingredient, deciding it would just be safer to prepare everything from scratch. I was a good cook and baker before the allergies popped up, but afterwards, the need to save pennies instead of buying the certified gluten- and dairy-free prepared foods made me a great one. I see a freezer full of regular baked goods, that no one turns their nose up at.

And she might start growing again. In an obvious way. It’s a little frightening, really, when all of your friends’ kids go through growth spurts and yours is still wearing the hand-me downs she got two and a half years ago. Because she can.

***

Home schooling has been tossed off the agenda. Instead, she’ll go to the school up the street, and barring my success at saving, I’ll go to the school at the end of the bus route. After each of us get let out, she’ll have extra stuff to do – a fraction of home schooling, if you will – and I’ll have homework. I think it can be alright. I think that maybe she’ll be okay with having to sit and not speak out of turn. I think she’ll learn to go to the bathroom after she’s asked to.

It hasn’t killed my basic assumption that she shouldn’t have to learn any of those things. That she should be allowed to chatter all damn day, like she does now – sometimes for 12 hours straight, I swear. It hasn’t murdered my concern that she will be bored, doing the same work, under the teacher’s schedule and direction – but that’s why she’ll have extra stuff to do at home, so she doesn’t lose any sense of wonder about learning. It doesn’t feel right, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a better option, either.

She’s too smart for me to handle. There, I said it. And I don’t mean handle as in control. I think that if I tried to home school her – besides the obvious financial implications of me not being able to work, and the joyless implications of me not being able to go to school myself – it would be disastrous because of two reasons: I would fail to provide her with enough stimulation; and, she doesn’t want to be taught.

If you’ve ever tried to teach a child who does not want to be taught, you know where I’m coming from. Everything about Zoë and her intelligence and the lessons she’s chosen to absorb have been about her deciding she wanted to learn, in her own time.

Case in point: she refused to learn the alphabet until she was ready, half-way through preschool last year. Now, she can read early reader books. But not if I push her to do it – only when it’s her idea.

Two weeks ago, she started learning Grade 1 math. Because it was her idea. Also, she wants the certificate at the end of the workbook.

She is her mother’s daughter. And that’s fucking frightening, when I remember how much I sat in the classroom, waiting for more.

***

I’m going to study interior design. I don’t know that a degree or certificate will particularly get me anywhere in Vancouver – it’s an incredible over-saturated industry here – but it’s as close to a passion as I have. It’s something that makes me pet and talk to structures covered in silk fabrics, envisioning an 18th-century salon, complete with glod-flecked garden tables. It’s something that hums a little inside of me, so I’m going to study interior design. I hope that I can couple writing with it, as well as my sewing knowledge and who knows. Worst (or best) case, a friend mentioned that I could end up working on set design – staging some of the shows that Vancouver is host to filming.

***

It amazes me that I still haven’t pulled out of my enough money is good enough mentality. I would have thought it would have grown off of me, moulted. But no, I’m still here, living cheque-to-cheque (with the intention of savings, really), and rarely feeling as if I want or need more. Could I be one of those rare people, content to have a few months’ worth of bills in the bank, just in case, with a $25K annual income? Probably. As long as I can afford rent, food and tea, I’m happy.

It seems like a clear delineation from how I grew up, and it seems that I should be the opposite because of how I grew up. Living on welfare and from the food bank, shopping for school clothes at the Salvation Army and Value Village… Rarely having a car, or birthdays, or really Christmas outside of my Grandparents’… why don’t I seek a lot more? Why aren’t I money crazy? Why don’t I have the need to make more more MORE, just so that a sense of panic in my belly is satiated? Where is that panic, period?

Why am I so different?

***

I took a big step two days ago. I went to a different hair dresser. My passive-aggressive people-pleasing ability was annihilated when I sat in the chair and complained about my last few times in the other person’s chair. I love what I got in return, and the new place is much more my vibe, but I couldn’t help but worry that if I saw my old person, he might be hurt, or think I was a bitch for abandoning him.

Yes, I am that self-important.

***

I want so very much to scrub my apartment, from top to bottom. But I just don’t. I don’t know why. I want to create a curtained off area in my living room for my bed, but I haven’t. I wanted to build Zoë a loft bed with built-in storage, but she’s adamantly decided that an out-of-the-box Ikea bed is the one for her. I wanted to bake five loaves of banana bread this weekend, some with blueberries, some chocolate chips, some juice-soaked apricots, filling my freezer with foil-wrapped deliciousness. But I didn’t. All I did was read a book and accidentally watch a Roman Polanski film, which has left me feeling as though I should put in 100 hours at the rape relief centre in penance for.

***

You know what makes me smile, lately? Couples, walking down the street, holding hands. Kissing goodbye at the bus stop. Smiling in that ear-to-ear way at each other. I love seeing love.

***

As for me, I’m still firmly off the market. Despite the fact that I’m not receiving any lack of male (or female) attention – including the four five guys with girlfriends who’ve hit on me in the past month – I’m just not into it. Dating. Getting to know someone in a getting-to-know-you atmosphere. Surprisingly, I’m also not much into the opposite, getting-to-know-you-nakedly sense.

It’s all just too much work that I’m not cut out of right now, and I have other things on my mind and in my heart. Plus, I’d probably have to commit to shaving my legs a lot more often.

Fuck that.

I guess the best way to say it is this: Lithium sucks.

A truer way to say it is this: Lithium is saving my life, it seems.

But, I’ve already gotten ahead of myself. The new dose. It’s fucking fabulous, except for all of the damn side effects. The facial tics have thankfully disappeared. The all-day nausea is almost gone, too – the nausea that caused me to lose over ten pounds in a month because I could only stomach about half a meal a day, which caused me to feel weak all the time and have to not only quit running, but also severely limit my activity because it was causing dizzy spells. The headaches are pretty much done, as long as I have at least 10 glasses of water a day and limit anything dehydrating.

Unfortunately, the tremors aren’t gone and have actually spread and increased. So I have good moments, and mostly bad ones, where all of my extremities are shaking and I look like I must be freezing. I’m not cold.

Things that are hard to do with tremors: ice cupcakes, shave your legs, light a cigarette, type on a keyboard, drink hot tea, remove piping hot pizza from the oven.

The typing part is one of the more effecting symptoms, because I only have so much good time during the day that my hands will cooperate – so I’ve been using those good times for the stuff that will pay the bills, work. And I haven’t been emailing or on Twitter much because of it.

But there’s an underlying side effect that no one every mentions: Lithium causes whateveritis.

No, that’s too blasé.And not very eloquent.

What I mean to say is that it makes you not give a flying fuck about anything that you don’t have to.

Case in point: I haven’t mopped my floors in almost two weeks. If you know me, you know that might actually be insane. I haven’t taken a toothbrush out to anything in weeks. I haven’t fanatically checked my email, leaving it open all day and wiggling my mouse with every walk-past, in forever. I barely even remember to check my personal email. I don’t check Twitter, I have to remind myself to check my reader, Facebook really doesn’t exist anymore. Something in the back of my head told me to post this, but I don’t really give a shit about this blog.

I could quit the Internet and be okay with it.

Instead, I do care about spending time with friends, laughing in that way that makes me throw back my head, speaking in a calm and gentle tone with Zoë, baking and cooking with her or alone, consciously and unselfishly co-parenting, creating a once-again-maybe friendship with The Ex, reading with Zoë, doing work that challenges me, witnessing my internal back-off alarm when I’m too stressed or anxious, fabulous shoes, building a dress collection to die for, faking confidence until I feel it (it’s coming quicker and better, lately), planning my next few years’ finances so that I can completely pay off my student loan debts, considering buying a condo once my debts are paid off, sitting in the sunshine, reading interior design and architecture case studies, making people happy if it doesn’t make me unhappy, daydreaming of the fall.

Here’s the major change, in a nutshell: before, I was compulsive about nearly everything, and that made me anxious, I’d get quickly over-stressed and often take that out on Zoë, while I flaked out on my responsibilities because I couldn’t handle the stress-load. Then I’d both withdraw (from real life) and become increasingly social (online).

And I can tell you exactly why. Because no matter how many of you I’ve hugged, or spoken to, or eaten with or said “of course online friends are real friends” to, you people were safe. I’ve had this long life with really shitty lead characters in it, and it basically, repeatedly rammed in the notion that friends will fuck you over, or hurt you, or leave you once you become too X for them. Every single person I’ve ever met, I’ve assumed, at some point, was my friend out of convenience and that they’d eventually cut and run when a valid excuse popped up. S’why I’ve always been a people-pleaser, often creating huge costs to myself.

And online friends, even if we’re real-life friends… you’re not real. You’re words on a screen. You could bail and I might not notice, or I’d be able to chalk it up to my blog not being entertaining enough, or that I didn’t @ you enough. It was safe-feeling, because I never really depended on anyone, from my personal life or my online life, and proven, it seems because it was only when some body made the leap from Inet to Real that something would happen.

So, before, I was compulsive about maintaining my (old) blog, because without those readers, I might have no validation of my existence – because eventually all of my real life friends would leave, right? I was compulsive about Twitter because I needed the support, just in case I didn’t have them in my personal life, and because I needed the distraction when stress was too much. I was compulsive about cleaning because… it just meant the world was right and I wasn’t a failure. I can’t explain that further.

And now, I’m not any of those things. I have friends I laugh with every single day. I have a daughter who is just as much she-devil as not, but I’m finally able to be proud of her and see the good in her always. For the first time in my life, love is not conditional – I love Zoë even if she’s being a bitch to me – and I don’t cut it or affection off. For the first time, I’ve realized that I love a man. But I’m not going to do a damn thing about it, because to do so, to tell him, would be for my own selfish needs and would most likely cause him harm. I’m not taking on too much work, like I used to do because I thought that clients wouldn’t be happy with me if I didn’t. I’m not staying awake past 1am, feverishly working or reading or planning.

Now, I’m me, calmer, happy, level. I’m living.

So, Internet, I’m not quitting you, but I won’t be around much. But trust in this: it’s not you, it’s me.

And I’m fucking delighted by it.

* Can you name the movie the title’s quote is from?

I was frustrated and it was about then that I first began to feel like a failure of a mother.

You were so atypical – you still are. You lost too much weight, you came out so tiny, you took to the breast like a natural but lulled immediately to sleep upon the first few draws. You were born on your due date. You were our miracle baby – the child that I was never supposed to be able to have. You were our demon baby – conceived on Halloween, born with reddish hair and weighing in at six pounds, six point six ounces.

The first year of your life was such a challenge, as we negotiated early walking, early first words and late everything else. You went from pureed baby food to lasagna and butter chicken within weeks. You had no idea what television was, until you did and then your first word came out just after you turned six months and said hi to the narrator in The Secret of NIMH.

Since, it seems like so much has changed about you, but that’s not entirely true. More so, so much has changed about me, and our life, and my perspective. So it seems like you changed, too. But you’re still that little person, wearing two sizes smaller than her peers, precocious and making her presence known nearly always. You love the spotlight, and you’re a natural leader; your mind is made up easily, and then you will tell anyone and everyone your opinion on a matter, or a story, or a fantasy, without question of whether they’re interested.

Your confidence is staggering and oh my god, I hope I don’t do anything to fuck that up. You’re not always self-assured, especially when trying something new for the first time, but when you’ve been successful at something, you think nothing of attempting it, bigger and better.

For your birthday, you asked for a bike, motorcycle, skateboard, scooter and hang glider. When I said don’t you want any, like, normal kid presents? Some clothes or books, or toys? You adamantly refused, but added that you did want helmets to match your modes of transportation. I joked for weeks that you were just looking for a way to get out of here. I pretended I joked, anyway, but I was secretly nervous that you really did feel the call of travel, or the push of my constant nagging.

Last week, you announced for not-the-first-time that when you grow up, you’re going to marry a girl. The first time you said it, I smirked, thinking you had over-absorbed something I’d intoned too many times: We’re lucky. You can marry whoever you want to, or no one at all. It just matters that you’re happy and not hurting anyone intentionally. Since the first time you said it, you’ve thrown it out a half dozen others, so now I’ve started half-joking/half-seriously asking friends when I should take you seriously.

And if I do take you seriously, what does that even mean? It’s not as if your apparent early-lesbian daydreams change anything about you. I wouldn’t have to buy you more plaid, or something. Yet still, it feels awkward because I just want you to be capable of love in a romantic sense, no matter who with… one day. Now seems too young to be thinking of it.

Mind you, that’s you. An old soul. You seem to just know things.

For example, it’s happened a couple of times that I’ve been silently emailing with Mr. Lady while you’re in your bedroom, and you’ll ask when we can go on a plane to visit 3 of 3 and 2 of 3 (PS. Why do you always leave out 1 of 3?) from your bedroom without prior knowledge of what I was doing. Or sometimes, you know who’s on the phone when it rings, before you get near it but just after I’ve looked at the call display. Occasionally, I’ll be thinking about what to make for dinner as you’re eating your cereal, and you’ll ask for pasta or pancakes or hummus and veggies, knowing full-well that dinner isn’t until right before bed and you just woke up.

That spooks me sometimes, I admit. Because when I’m mellow, you often seem so very in tune with me. It makes it doubly important that I don’t tell you lies, because I have no doubt that if this keeps up, one day you’d be able to call me on them.

I feel like I’m hard on you a lot. Like I don’t really give you room to be a kid, because I’m so focused on you staying a good kid. Because I’m so confident that if I’m not vigilant, I’ll probably totally fuck you up. Plus there’s the awesome mental health genes you’ve been dealt. Sorry about that, miracle girl.

But really, I feel like I expect a lot out of you – not because I’m a crazed army drill sargent kind of parent – because I know that you’re capable of some pretty astronomical shit. From telling two shirtless, sweaty, douchey guys not to use the F word (the one that ends with a T); to basically teaching yourself to read; to still not being able to handle safety scissors well, but being able to slice a cucumber with a paring knife, keeping the tip of the knife on the cutting board.

Point being, you astound me and if there’s a universal lesson in life it’s that when you do well, or amazing, people come to expect that. So sometimes, my best friend has to reign me in when I see her daughter drawing rainbows and writing notes with dictated spelling and wonder when you’ll catch up – she has to remind me: Zoë’s a year younger.

And then, it hits me.

You’re four now. You have another year of preschool, before regular or alternative school. You have a year to learn to write and match the pictures in your mind with the thing your hand creates. I will not always get the same drawings, and you will not always have a panic attack when asked to do something that you have no self-assuredness in.

And then, something else hits me.

Your panic attacks are just like mine used to be like, when it felt like the world was rushing it at me, and there was no way that I could meet the expectations. I would strangle in the pressure of the moment, even if it was just a large stack of filing that was driving it or too many choices of soup flavours. I would become paralyzed, and my phrase of the moment was just I can’t.

Sometimes you do that when it’s time to leave our best friends’ house. You freak out and say you can’t put on your slip-on shoes, and I lose my patience with you, knowing that of course you can, you’ve been putting on your slip on shoes for nearly two years.

But it’s not about the shoes. It’s about the pressure.

So I worry that I put too much pressure on you. Because yes, you do walk into the kitchen and ask how do you spell otter? And I will tersely (interestedly) say sound it out. What do you think? And you will get to the E and maybe the R too, all on your own. But then, you do throw your favourite workbooks across the living room while I’m doing dishes, simply because your lines aren’t straight enough for your liking.

But here’s what I know for sure: you have a lot of love and adoration, you’re pretty damn intelligent, you like to learn about almost anything with help (but to be left alone once you’ve got it), you got more from me than just eyes and hair, your interests are so varied and delightful, you love preparing food and baking and drinking chai tea with soy milk, you wish your dad lived with us, you don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling anyone where we’re going, you wave at any child under the age of nine (usually strangers) and never understand if they don’t reciprocate, you love animals, you’re fairly easy-going, a lot of people think you’re beautiful but you don’t want to be defined that way, you call me by my first name simply because it’s my name (not out of defiance or snark), and you’ve got wicked balance.

Too bad your dad and I couldn’t find a skateboard small enough for you. At least you love the bike.

I love you so much my heart hurts.

Mama.

The thing with Lithium is that in order to assure everyone that it’s really functioning at its prime capacity, the serum levels in your blood should be measured – at first, after a month, and then every six months after the appropriate serum levels are reached. Also, they have to check to make sure your kidneys aren’t failing. You know, cuz they can.

The thing with my new doctor is that he actually cares about this stuff. No one’s ever measured my serum levels before, no matter what dose of what I’ve been put on.

So when I got the call back after my blood tests were received, I hopped into the doctor’s office. That’s where he explained that ideally, someone not on Lithium would have a serum level between .6 and .8. And that ideally, someone on Lithium would have a serum level between .8 and 1.2. Mine was .3.

He doubled my dose.

Even before that, I’d started to get these horrible headaches. We’re talking black and white 16mm Pi headaches. We’re talking multiple doses of OTC painkillers, even though I’m really not okay with taking those for more than an emergency. We’re talking days off of work, social media, friendships. We’re talking an average of one every two days, if not more frequent; and 8 on the headache pain scale.

Basically, I was having fun.

Then the dose doubled and on the morning of my third day without a headache, I proclaimed myself healed. Which is probably why at the end of the third day, I got the worst headache I’ve ever had that wasn’t accompanied by an aura or vomiting. And it continued for two days straight. And it hurt so badly, I wanted to throw up.

Back to the doctor’s office I marched, and I couldn’t take my sunglasses off while I explained to him what was going on. But I had more than that to complain about. I’d also started to have tremors in my hands, and a tic below my left eye and on my right temple. They’re subtle, all of these vibrations, but they’re there.

He shrugged off the tics and the tremors, and he made me an appointment for a neurologist for the headaches. He told me to drink more water, too, so from that point on, I’ve been chugging it back and only allowing myself a cup of tea a day.

Do you know how unsatisfying one cup of tea a day is? Fun.

Then, on this last Sunday, the nausea kicked in and hasn’t let up, but for short periods of time. I haven’t been able to stomach more than half a meal of solid food a day – and eating makes me nauseas. I’ve lost five pounds this week, alone, in addition to the weight I’d lost in the past few weeks.

This medication was supposed to make me fat, and instead, I’m below my last-summer weight. Now, 115 pounds is a far-away again goal, and there’s seemingly no damn way I’m ever going to make it there. I’ve even had to temporarily stop running, due to the nausea, weakness and weight loss.

And then today, I found a hard lump in my neck. My lymph node is complaining about this shit, loud and clear. On the side of my fucking neck.

I was resolute by about 6pm tonight that I’d go off of this medication. That I couldn’t handle, stomach or mentally process the side effects. That if my hip bones were going to come back into stabbing mode, it wasn’t worth attempting to be saner. If I couldn’t make the decision myself about whether to eat or restrict, it wasn’t worth it. If paralyzing headaches would suppress my social life, appetite and parenting ability, then I would go with mental imbalance, instead.

Then it occurred to me. I’ve been sleeping by or before 1am for weeks. I’ve been waking at regular morning hours, before Zoë. I’ve been using, for the most part, my calm-mom voice. I’ve taken on another client and even worked for nearly 20 hours last week. I’ve cooked, baked, cleaned, laundered, bathed, read, conversed, spent, planned, thought and fantasized, for the most part, as a normal person would.

The fucking pills are working.

I guess this means I’m going to have wicked abs soon, whether I wanted them like this or not.

The good thing about my life is that I don’t own or have to rely on a car, and our proximity to downtown Vancouver and all of the amenities that we need is likethis. I don’t have to pay for transportation, hardly ever, because we don’t have much need to leave the 20-block radius we walk around day-to-day, so I don’t need to worry about something breaking down, or fuel costs or looming insurance payments.

The good thing about our life is that we live in a small apartment, which requires minimal energy to light and heat – and we’re the type to turn lights off when we’re not in one of our four rooms.

The good thing about our life is that free entertainment surrounds us – we have parks and friends on the street, the beach and libraries. We live in a mecca of free-ness, so that if belts are really tightened, we can go without spending on anything but food and not be unhappy.

I take that back. I’d really miss Starbucks and cigarettes and my time on the treadmill. But otherwise, we’d be good.

We’re lucky to be where we are, with a love of books and the links necessary on the Internet to bring the entertainment outside and printed words don’t provide.

But, the day may come when I won’t have a couple hundred bucks in the bank, nor rent, and our cupboards might be bare. The day may come that I have to visit the food bank, like a friend of mine just did, and make the tough decision between feeding my child nothing, or feeding her food with known allergens in it. The day may come when I concede that I can’t afford to pay $995 a month on rent, purely to live in this glorious neighbourhood, with all of its freedoms, tolerance and amenities.

The day may come when I need some help. Hopefully, I won’t be concerned about asking for it from the people and services meant to provide it, and hopefully, it won’t be such a shock to my pride that I will hide that I’ve done so – for worry that people might see it as a plea or because I, frankly, don’t want to be anyone’s charity.

I’m a stubborn fucker, after all.

Hopefully… no, not hopefully, I know this about me… I will not resist doing whatever it is that has to be done to ensure that my daughter and I have a roof and food and clothes – even if that means selling everything, even every book I own, individually and painstakingly on Craigslist. Nothing is more important to me – not even pride – than for Zoë to not go without anything she needs, including joy.

But hopefully, even if I was too shy to ask you for help, even if I emphatically said I wasn’t asking for it, even if I painted a picture much more impressive than the current one (wherein I’m wondering whether I will be able to buy Zoë a birthday present, nevermind hold a party for her in less than four weeks, and so I’ve hidden two books that I actually bought her months ago, just in case.), you would offer. You would ask for my Paypal information. You would send gift cards or something.

I’m not asking for that. Because right now, I don’t need that. Right now, it looks like every thing’s going to be okay, because I’m lucky enough to have an ex that considers his support non-negotiable, even if it wounds him to pay it. I know that as soon as he does get paid from this new job, he’ll be paying me. I’m thankful for that.

But someone else isn’t that lucky. And someone else has a car that might kick it. And someone else also cares about her daughter’s birthday and her daughter’s joy, and someone else has a job – works more than me, in fact – and she’s still fighting to come up for air. Someone else needs help. If you would give it to me, please consider giving it to her, instead.

Even me, happy to know the confines and the label, so I could know what the fuck was going on with my head, and how to work with it, and how to break the mold, I didn’t see this coming. I got rediagnosed less than two months ago and it screwed with my head.

Suddenly, I went from over-dramatic and a little quirky to lifelong disorder. The thought of not being on medication has been erased from my brain, because now, officially, I have a bad thing that doesn’t go away and it’s not curable. The daydream of finding the magical pill that would make me all better is now known to be just that – a daydream.

And I mourned a little, at first. I even cried a bit.

I went from being self-destructively marred – but still bandaidable – to being what I am now: someone who should, for her own health and safety, remain on medication for life, so as not to further complicate things.

See, before, I was all “yeah, I’ve got ADD, OCD and a really mild form of bipolar called Cyclothymia” and that was a little funny. Like, pin the diagnosis on the skinny chick. And on some level, because those all had the word mild attached to them, I didn’t take it seriously. When my sister got rediagnosed – her being so very very much like me – it terrified me. It scared the shit out of me because they slapped those labels on her once upon a time, too, and then there she was, in a place where they don’t allow cell phones and you have to attend group therapy, and she had attempted something horrible involving her throat and something sharp, and then they erased the mild and replaced it with fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t.

Because she is so very very much like me, just when she was spinning down the drain, I was too – psychological sister connection, if you will – and I nearly immediately sought a doctor’s help. Because I didn’t want to end up where she was, because it seemed written in my blood. Because I have a daughter who is so very very much like me, because the fucked up gene in this family is ridiculously strong.

Seriously. Everyone’s been diagnosed with something and we’ve all taken the same medications and we’re all still floundering.

I don’t want that for Zoë. So badly that it hurts. So, it’s even more important to me to find out what’s what, take care of it, and be the best mom I can be, so that just in case the genes have passed into her realm, I’m there to catch her when she starts to fall.

I went to someone qualified, competent, and completely lacking-dick-headishness. And he produced a three-page report, breaking down my illnesses and his recommendation for treatment. He said ADD and Obsessive and Bipolar. But he also said that Cyclothymia is an extreme under-diagnosis. He said that I may have been, but symptoms’ve likely been compounded by pregnancy, stress, PPD and under-medicating. He said that if I’m not treated chemically, it could get worse. And now officially, I’m Bipolar Type 1.

Now, I take two pills a day and in a few weeks, more will be added. Now, I walk around with a dry mouth and a water bottle. Now, I’ll have to be careful how I eat and the amount of exercise I get, for this medication is known to cause weight gain, and being dehydrated or consuming too much salt will negatively affect the levels of medication in my blood stream. Now, I’ll have to go for regular blood tests to check those levels, as well as make sure that neither my liver or kidneys are thinking of kicking it. Now, I have to be aware of and report any hand tremors. Now, my moods are more even, but they still keep cycling.

Why? Because even though I have these medications coursing through my veins, they’re not a cure. They’re merely a buffer. Something to take the edge off.

And it is, sort of. Instead of being awake for two days straight, I’ve only managed one; instead of drinking my face off, I drank, seeking the at-my-limit indicator, and never reached it; instead of becoming a compulsive whore, I’m still annoyingly chaste.

But I’m still having temper tantrums, and I’m still mentally sweating a lot, and I forget shit all the fucking time, and oh my god, I can’t handle this back and forth between how much I will accomplish and how I can’t do much more than blink. Several times a day.

It’s exhausting. It feels like a weird combination of failure, acceptance, and self-congratulations.

Like today, I felt really good about taking my kid out to a movie. That was participating. And I got my dishes done. And a load of laundry. And Zoë splashed around in the bath while I cleaned the bathroom. And I even boiled some pasta for her and mixed it up with some sauce for dinner. An hour ago, that seemed like I’d done so very much; right now, it looks like I did nothing and I’m a terrible excuse for a mom; later, I’ll probably feel like I did as well as I could, and that because Zoë was entertained and happy and fed healthy food, it was good enough.

And I’m supposed to start working more to make up for the support funds that I won’t be getting from her dad? I just… maybe it’s panic, but I’m in mental lock-down mode, here. I’m quivering inside. This is my brain: where am I supposed to get this ability to work twice as much (at least) as I do now? What if I can’t do it? What will I feed her, if I only have a couple hundred dollars to last all month? Oh my god, this is going to ruin her birthday!

It hits me, when I get into this rapid cycling mode: the consistently overwhelmed feeling. The last two days have been spend worrying about everything there is to worry about, daydreaming about everything to daydream about, and planning any possible potential plan. My brain is fucking fried.

And I have a tough decision to make. Maybe I have to accept that I’m just not going to be able to work more – it says in that damned three-page report not advised to seek employment. Maybe I have to swallow my pride and accept that I have more than one major psychological illness that is incurable, requires medication to control it, and can disable me from certain life events, like becoming a practising Scientologist or working full-time without blowing my stack, spontaneously, one day. Maybe I just have to admit it to myself, and quit trying to be better than this diagnosis, out of spite. Maybe it’s okay to accept the help that is out there, that other people with less issues receive.

Maybe that won’t mean I’m a failure.

I’m still kind of stuck in stage four.

Again.

But this time it’s different.

This time, I’m not feeling sorry for myself and assessing which bills I can put off paying, just in case. This time, I’m not mentally clocking myself one, because of my lack of proactivity. This time, I’m not saying, I will get more work, until I have enough that it won’t matter whether he’s got a job or not.

Except, I kind of am, I guess.

But this time it’s different.

This time, I’m on Lithium, and I actually intend to sleep so that I can get work done that’s due, and look for more. This time, I have a plan on the brain, for how to get that portfolio aesthetic demon off my back, so I’m no longer too ashamed to send it out to would-be clients. This time, I’m changed.

Before, I didn’t want to be reliant on his money, but I was grateful for it, and it led me to a life of sloth. I wrote and designed only as much as I needed to, for clients that came to me, when I felt like it. If there was tv to be had, or an evening with a book, I’d choose it over the pay, because I could. Because his money would be there. Because we had a few sheets of paper signed and sealed in court, saying he owed it to me.

That’s not his truth, and it shouldn’t be mine.

His is this: he hates me. He’s jobless. He’s recently sober. He’s portraying a life of greatness, without me, my support or the crutch he’s relied upon for 16 years. He might have become someone different over night, and that portrayal would certainly indicate it to anyone who doesn’t know him, but I don’t buy it. I’ve never met a person so resistant to change in my life. Even change that he wants and needs. In fact, it wasn’t until me that he found the courage to not work jobs he wasn’t happy in. Unfortunately, he might have learned that lesson too well.

Here’s mine: I have no ill will toward him, and I think that if he can be a parent – even if that means being a radically different kind from the one I am – then he should be. I think his daughter should be at his side as much as possible, if it’s healthy for the two of them. I have entered another place, entirely different from the high and low I’ve always danced with him. I just want everyone to be happy. I want everything to be fair. I want him to remain sober, even if the cost of that is his constant hatred for me and that we can never be friends again.

Some prices are worth it, for the reward.

I joked today with my best friend: he’s confused by my lack of anger. He doesn’t get why I’m not yelling or cursing, or calling him on his dick moments. I would have, months ago. She laughed, proclaiming it a great strategy, and I laughed as well. But really, why aren’t I?

Why am I not raging against the rudeness, controlling her time with him, telling him every idiom of wrong-doing he is doing? Why am I so lax?

Temperamental peace. I have it, now.

That, and he got sober, despite it being the one thing he said he never wanted, or intended to do. He chose Zoë, for the first time in her life. I think that was all I ever wanted or needed from him – for him to choose her, instead of himself.

Even if it meant he’d never choose me, again.

So here I am, and this time, it’s different.

This time, I will not rely upon him, because I’m going to rely on myself. This time, I will not be waiting and hoping for the time to come when things seem amicable. This time, I will not play emotional pong, taking my moods from his, cuing up fights in my head the moment he walks in the door and refuses to look at me.

This time, I will move on and write my way into economic peace, too.

***

To drop five pounds, it takes a week of skipping the gym; of days with a single meal, the rest forgotten; of less than five hours of eyes-shut a night. It takes months to gain it back. It takes $30 to buy a pair of size 25 jeans that confirm 0 is anything but nothingness.

***

Two nights of freedom and 203 days down the toilet. But not with a heave, not with regret. Guilt, yes, because, well, isn’t this nothing but another commitment I’ve bailed on? But more so, confusion, because, shouldn’t I have been out of control? Shouldn’t the thirst have overwhelmed me? Why am I sober now, when I gave myself permission not to be. It seems indicative of my extremism, not alcoholism; my need to give things up and label me broken, instead of rock from one end of the spectrum to the other. Maybe my thirst was common and my habits in my younger years were indicative of youth. Possibly, I don’t have a problem, except with admitting that for once, I don’t have a problem.

***

Have you ever sat in the presence of someone with whom you felt such tension, you couldn’t not stare at their lips when they spoke? It’s luxurious, seeing and not having. Picturing, but not realizing. Empowering, really, knowing that if you just… maybe you would… but you don’t, because it’s delicious to not and mentally breathe as if you had. It takes you back to the days before sweaty kisses always led to more.

***

Another experiment, another success. Heels, dress, bed-head. A movie watched alone in the theatre, laughing out loud, despite being surrounded by those with their friends and lovers. I didn’t feel lonely at all. I sauntered home with purpose and light feet, even when I passed by a skunk that could be the omen to brand it all heinous.

***

Before this weekend, I’d only been awake with a boy once when the sun was rising. It was on the top of a mountain and we lay in the back of his hatchback, talking about his travels and my lack thereof. After the sun was up, he kissed me, hours after  him wanting to shone in his eyes. He asked my permission and I aloofly affirmed. Sweet, his lips tasted of cherry chap stick.

***

The walk of shame is usually prefaced by drunken nakedness, coexists with a stumble, and is followed by a crash into bed. Instead, after the movie had been over for a while and I’d critiqued everything about it, I walked, sober, determined, in two inch heels, as clean as I went out, ate a banana and considered not sleeping. I slept, and when I woke, I saw Casablanca for the first time.

***

Sometimes, I’m questioned about where this is all going. Wouldn’t I want some fame from writing? Or to have a regular column in a highly-read publication? How popular do I aim to be? The answer always shocks – I just want to be good enough. To have enough, to seek and find, to not go without, but not live with a hunger for more. I don’t want notoriety, I just want my bills paid and to get to do what I’m apparently made to: to slide words on to a screen, from my brain, through my fingertips. The thought of a book contract without a manuscript frightens me; a weekly requirement for a high-flying magazine is torture. I honestly want to keep being unknown. There’s safety in the shadows and no one expects much more than what you give them.

***

Zoë keeps asking me to sing Pokerface to her, in the oddest of places. Not the usual version, but from Glee. We sing it at home, cuddled up together on my office chair, gazing at YouTube, and we belt it out, avoiding the highest notes and workin’ the Marvelous. But in public, my lack of spontaneity and need to not stand out… it doesn’t go so well with Zoë’s whims.  On the bus, I once acquiesced and she reprimanded me for my quiet rendition. In Sears today, amongst the puzzles and family bonding time games, she demanded that I sing the chorus, coaching me into it with her own canreemah canreemah no he canreemah pokahfae. She’s gonna be a star some day, and I will die of embarrassment along the way.

***

Today, we both wore summer dresses, sandals and clips in our bangs, and we sashayed down streets, occasionally spinning and skipping. The sun beat down on us, until it didn’t and the rain came, but that didn’t change the fact that Vitamin D in this city is like Ecstasy – it makes you fall in love with everything and everyone.