I knew the teeth would have to come out; all of my friends had theirs cut out already. I think wisdom teeth extraction has become this generation’s tonsillectomy. But, without dental insurance, I was going to have to pay out-of-pocket and since my pockets were already turned inside out, the teeth stayed in. My mom eventually called around and found a dentist up in Missouri who would get the suckers out for the lowest cost. 

Tucker and his mom drove me up to the dentist’s office. I was nervous since I had wanted to be totally knocked out so everything could be done at once but apparently that costs a whole heck of a lot and thus wasn’t gonna happen. Up until that point, I had only been seen by a pediatric dentist who always used nitrous and I liked going to the dentist. 

So we get there and I’m sure I filled out paperwork or something and a tech took me back. During our polite conversation chat I asked about anesthesia other than just getting a shot and was told I would have to come back to watch a video or something if I wanted to go that route.  Since the office was over an hour away and I had class and work to worry about, there went that idea.

The tech took purty pictures of my teeth with one of those cool standup x-ray machine jobbers and I met the dentist. Who looked like he was about fall over dead from old age. And according to him, was retiring at the end of the week. Closing up shop. Getting the hell outta Dodge.

The tech leaned me back in the chair, the dentist popped on the Super Special Dentist Light and reached for a metal syringe.

It’s at that point I started to wonder if nitrous was included in the grouping of “extras” with the video and all that. Surely not. Nitrous wasn’t that big of a deal to need its own VIDEO the day before the actual appointment, right? 

RIGHT?!

I had just started planning out my escape route when the dentist must have caught on to my brilliant plan since more techs materialized and then held me down. The dentist did his shots in my jaw thing, yanked out two wisdom teeth, screwed up an adjacent tooth I later had to have root canalled and capped and sent me on my merry way.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when Tucker forced me to go to a new dentist. A new dentist who discovered the broken molar I had been ignoring for three years. What? It didn’t hurt! You see where I’m going with this, right? Yup. #15 had to leave the party. 

Fast forward some more to Monday. I had to get a couple of fillings repaired. New Dentist’s people gave me nitrous, I freaked out very little and life went on.

Yay, life!

Today? Not so much. 

On went the nitrous and I was left for a few so the gas could start going to my head. Dentist came back, did the topical crap that ALWAYS makes your tongue go numb and then eventually shot me up. He fixed a discolored filling and then shot me with SOME MORE stuff in my jaw. 

I had jokingly told the dentist and tech, “This is what some folks might consider a trigger moment.” OK. I wasn’t really joking.

Once he left again to check on some other patients whilst the left side of my head went numb, I texted Tucker. 

I had been scared. I did the whole silent cry thing but I couldn’t really move since the nitrous mask basically held my head to the chair so I had to wipe the tears out of my ears. Odd feeling, that. 

I got my shit back together before they came in to yank out the tooth and I felt bad for having texted Tucker. There wasn’t anything he could have done; he had to be home to keep the kids from eating each other. I guess I feel bad for making him feel bad. But I’m glad he felt bad cause that means he cares. Or something. Make sense? 

The whole oral situation?

So, Tucker?

At first we assumed it had something to do with her reflux but as the pain persisted with no obvious trigger, we started to suspect her pain had less to do with a physical issue and more to do with an emotional issue: stress/anxiety. 

There are few things more annoying and upsetting than 1. your kid being in obvious pain and not being able to help and 2. trying to explain to a seven year old that all of her worrying is making her hurt. 

I had considered writing a post about “gifted” kids and how we’ve been talking about maybe petitioning (if you will) to have both kids put into the school’s G/T (Gifted/Talented) program–they call it SPACE (Special Programs for Academic and Creative Excellence) here. That’s one hell of a complicated topic that would result in a post of epic proportion and I’m not going to do that to you.

This is going to be long enough as it is. If you want to just jump right to the list, click here. 

You’re welcome. 

I guess we’ll just consider this #1 in a series of posts…which probably won’t ever be finished. I have a habit of not finishing series of posts. Can anyone say Word of the Day? 

I tested into G/T right out of kindergarten and continued in gifted/advanced/honors/AP classes up until I dropped out of college. Tucker was also in his district’s gifted program (He has a SLIGHTLY higher IQ than me…not that I’m bitter or anything.).

Mom tells the story of going to pick me up from grade school and not being able to find me. She eventually discovered me in a corner crying because I had gotten a B. I don’t remember this. She might be lying. Who knows? 

I’m joking about the lying part, Mom. 

The point, I suppose, is I had a perfectionist streak. 

I worried a lot more than I probably should have. I took criticism way too personally and hard. My need for approval was probably one of the most important things to me (I try not to be like that so much now. Really.) and was crushed and felt slighted if I felt someone was disappointed in me. And Grandpa routinely called me “Drama Queen.” Now that I’ve listed all this out, I’m starting to think I must have been an overly dramatic and neurotic child. 

Those poor, poor people who had to put up with me…

And Cara? She’s just like I was. 

Her Those poor, poor parents people who have to put up with her…

Yesterday Cara brought home her quarterly and weekly progress reports and one of the scores on her weekly report was a 1 (4 is the highest possible with a 1 essentially meaning F.). The girl was hysterical and the complaints of stomach pain started. 

She had made a stupid mistake on a logic/problem solving math question so she had earned the score she got and once I helped her calm down, we went over the problem. During the course of all that craziness, this list got started. 

My hope was that if I listed off things she knew, things that were constant and would never change, Cara would have less to worry about. I wrote 1-9 with her next to me giving me suggestions and then reading them off, one-by-one. 

She cried a lot. My eyes might have teared up once or twice. Allegedly.

OK.

So the list might have hit a bit too close to home for all involved. 

After I sent Cara off to do her homework, I continued with the list but switched to what I know. The 20 things, a few are especially targeted at “gifted” kids/adults but the vast majority will apply to everyone. I’m sure I missed something; feel free to add your own to the comments section below. 

Let the list begin!

20 Things Every Gifted Child Needs To Know…and Probably Everyone Else, Too

1. My parents/family will always love me. 
2. I will always have somewhere to live.
3. I will always have food to eat. 
4. I will always have clothes and shoes to wear. 
5. I will always make mistakes but I will be loved anyway. 
6. Perfection is a goal and not a destination. 
7. Someone will always be smarter than me and that’s OK and sometimes I will be someone else’s someone. 
8. I will never be good at everything and that’s OK, no one else will be either. 
9. It’s not my job to solve everything. 
10. There are mean people in the world. You will get your feelings hurt by those people and by people who don’t even know they hurt you. 
11. There are times when you will be one of those mean people. You will hurt people’s feelings even if you don’t know it. All you can do is try, everyday, to be kinder.
12. You may never know what you want to be when you grow up and that’s OK. I know more adults who DON’T know than do and most adults only ask you because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. 
13. If you’ve done it, thought it, said it and/or written it down, someone else has, too. You’re not alone. You’re not as strange as you think you are. 
14. You will like people who don’t reciprocate. There will be people you don’t like. 1/2 the time it has nothing to do with the other person. All you can do is focus on the people who are your friends and the people who want to be your friends. Try not to spend too much time worrying about it but don’t beat yourself up too much when you sometimes fail at that last part. 
15. If it’s living, it will die and that sucks and there’s nothing you can do and that sucks, too. You’re going to feel a lot of different things and that’s normal. 
16. People are good at different things. You can not be good at everything and that will probably bug you; it bugs a lot of other people, too.
17. You will make good grades. You will make bad grades. Good ones don’t mean you have nothing left to learn. Bad ones don’t mean you’re a failure. 
18. You won’t always get your way and you will never have everything you want. Sometimes you won’t even get everything you think you need. 
19. People think about things in different ways. People believe different things. You will never agree with everyone about everything. All you can do is try to find common ground and that won’t always happen either. 
20. Oxford commas are evil.

If you have your own “knows” I’ve left out, add them down in the comments. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

On the one hand, I count my damn blessings I’m not Bipolar I or II; I cycle too quickly to meet the criteria for either.

On the other hand/edge/whatever, I’m still left with murmurs of the aforementioned disorders and they still dick with my life and the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to consider me worthy of their time.

I’m not being maudlin here; I’m just stating a fact.

Yes, I’m medicated but I suspect I need my dosage upped. Even if my level of meds was hunky-dory, the medicine I’m on–Lamictal–treats the “low” spots and not so much the high spots, A.K.A, the mania. All things considered, I’m awesome with that.

Seeing as I’ve broken from my nighttime routine of reading a book on my phone to write this and the post prior to this I started in my notebook, I know the mania is coming. In fact, it’s probably already here.

Sounds sinister, doesn’t it?

But unlike Bipolar I or II, I don’t go out and have promiscuous sex or take crazy risks or spend us into the poor house. Instead, I’m more productive (though also more fragmented) and feel better about myself.

My special flavor of mania is the ambrosia you read about when you studied Greek mythology–not at all like the stuff you’ll find at a southern dinner.

It’s empowering. It’s seductive. It makes you better, stronger…more, somehow. It’s the rainy season coming to the desert after months of drought. (Glad I’m writing this down since I’m sure my psychologist will find this all quite interesting…though she doesn’t think I’m “crazy.” But that’s a post for another day, kiddies.)

The other place, the depression, leaves me drained. Leaves me tired. Leaves me apathetic and without a drive to do just about anything other than what is necessary for my family to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

I remember finally having to confess to my editor/boss at b5media that I had been recently diagnosed as “bipolar lite.”

I was like, am still like, the ant in the fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper where the ant is the dude preparing, like a demon, for winter and the grasshopper is being a douche. I had to make sure I had enough content cued up to last me through the “winter.”

This is where I break a blogging rule and acknowledge the fact I haven’t posted in a coon’s age. You’re not supposed to do that, just so you know.

I have pictures edited for a garden update.

Pictures edited for a few recipes and then some pictures where I seemed to fail, repeatedly, at all things cooking and managed to create my first “HOLY SHIT THE OIL IN THIS PAN IS ON FIRE OMG FUCK FUCK FUCK” fire.

I have a post written, long hand, on The Stages of Grief and blogging, which I think is dynamite, as well as a rough draft about how it’s OK to fire your mental health provider and the different reasons why people don’t.

I have this idea, which started as a new Twitter background I was going to do but grew to epic proportions, for a Pinterest-worthy book and gaming quotes series thing. I have the quotes, now I just have to make the images and since I ended up with over 100 quotes, this will be a very long series…assuming I follow through with it. Since I’ve yet to finish my Word of the Day series, the outlook on this series ain’t too grand.

I have drafts of posts, which are written out in my notebook, with titles like: “When Will Your Children Stop Being Assholes? Never,” “I Look Like a Fat Meth Head” and “Man, This Day Kind of Really Blows.”

I have a Candy Crush cheat post in my head waiting to be written (I’ve already made the gif.) for Frontburnr as well as a post about a simple game helping a psychologist discover a new type of brain cell–also made an awesome gif for that.

The thing I was writing in my notebook, right before I started on this, is about This American Life and has a list of the shows you just gotta listen to even if you despise the liberal media and all it’s socialist proclivities.

That was a joke, people. Chill the hell out.

So, for right now, I’m welcoming the mania. I actually want to have sex. I actually want to write. I actually want to talk with people and interact like a relatively normal human.

Cross your fingers I can channel the ant long enough to last me through the winter.

When I’ve told my therapist about this crushing–Yeah. I know. Dramatic much?–tiredness, she’s brushed it off and mentioned how she gets tired just thinking about cleaning out her basement. OK. So me thinks she might not be picking up what I’m putting down. 

I genuinely love her and she’s a rock star therapist but she just didn’t “get it.”

I’m not talking: “Fuck. There’s so much to do and it’s gong to be a huge pain in the ass and I’m gonna get all sweaty and I’d much rather be playing video games or removing my left eye with a grapefruit spoon than lifting one finger to clean the basement.”

I’m more like this: “Fuck. I know the kitchen looks like hammered ass and I haven’t showered in a week–though I’m not going to think too hard on that one–but just the inkling of thought about doing anything with the kitchen wears me out. Makes my arms heavy.

Overwhelms me to the point I don’t know where to start so I just don’t.”

The differences are there and they’re subtle but they are there. Or I might be just using this as a bullshit excuse to be a lazy ass who doesn’t pull her weight around the house.

I mean, I AM a bit of a lazy ass.

Maybe this is an excuse? These are the things that go around in my head incessantly until “Call Me Maybe” infiltrates and nothing can stand against that crap.

The Adderall I’ve been on for a few months now has done wonders and helped quite a bit with the unmotivatedness [I made that up. Feel free to use it. No credit needed.] but the bitch of it is I have to be motivated enough to take the pill.

How’s THAT for a catch 22?

Running also helps.

Who in the history of the world would have thought:

1. I’d ever run when it didn’t involve fleeing from some potentially deadly creature and/or event.
2. I would enjoy the act of running for running’s sake?

 
Like the Adderall, running has such a positive impact on my mood that it’s embarrassing I wasted so much of my life without either. I mentioned this to my shrink after a month of taking the Adderall.

Shrink: “How’s the Adderall working for you?”

Me: “It has literally revolutionized my life! I’ve started running and I actually finish things. I’ve managed to keep the kitchen picked up for two straight weeks. That’s huge for me! It makes me sad to think how different my life might be if I had discovered both of these fifteen or twenty years ago.”

Shrink: “But then you might not have turned out the way you turned out.”

That last statement is a bit of a double-edged sword, isn’t it?

I’m not in a particularly awesomesauce place right now and go from WOOOOHOO FUCK YEAH to meh routinely. I convinced myself in 2012 that my meds weren’t doing any good, that they would never do any good and continuing the dosage was dumb and all of it was a waste of money.

The thing that particularly blows about titrating meds–especially when you’re [I’m] not in a consistent mental state–is there is no definitive test to know if the meds are working. It’s not like my shrink can order a blood test and know for sure I’m where I need to be; it’s subjective and I fucking abhor subjective, especially when it comes to something like this.

There’s also the little issue of not all shrinks knowing what the hell they’re doing and, like with everything, you have to be willing to advocate for yourself and that tends to be hard as hell when you’re not feeling particularly assertive and would rather just go along with what the pro says.

In my case, my friend Jennifer was right and the Straterra wasn’t playing so nice with the Lamictal and was bitch slapping the Lamictal into a “I ain’t gonna work no matter what you say!” kind of thing.

The good thing about my brand of crazy is I haven’t had a suicidal thought since I was about 17 and don’t plan on being that selfish; I have way too many people who depend on me to do that to them. That and even when things suck major ass, they’re still better than a pine box under around six feet of hard, red, Alabama clay.

I’m rambling.

I apologize.

I had a minor epiphany a week or so ago that I’ve been playing it safe and I’ve been trying to be someone else or maybe trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be and let me tell ya, that shit is exhausting.

This is one of my most favorite quotes from Erika Napoletano‘s TEDxBoulder 2012 video: Rethinking Unpopular and it kind of slapped me upside the head like a five day old carp:

Give them tools to help them know whether or not they should love us, and give it early and give it often. Because that’s when we stop wasting time, both ours and everyone else’s.

Fairly simple, right?

And kind of scary but I suspect it will greatly assist me in the venture of saving a modicum of sanity. If nothing else, I’ll hopefully be less mentally exhausted since I won’t be worrying about self-censoring. Love me. Hate me. I’m too damn tired of working so hard to please everyone.  

This post contains spoilers, quotes from The Silver Linings Playbook book and I discuss the movie in detail.

If you haven’t read the book and/or seen the movie and you don’t want to know what’s gonna happen, I suggest you go read other awesome things I’ve written.

For instance, you might check out “My Favorites” where you can find at least 12 posts for each year this site has been around and kicking.

Consider yourself warned.

I read The Silver Linings Playbook a couple of months after the movie was released.

I have this rule where I read the book first. Maybe it’s an underlying hipster compulsion I’m not quite willing to acknowledge.

The book was very…raw.

And honest.

I hate those two words in reference to a book. They sound pretentious much like when a writer calls himself a “storyteller.”

Unfortunately, for me, those aforementioned adjectives fit The Silver Linings Playbook perfectly.

Two very broken people who broke their families and who manage to be less broken together.

If the movie had been as raw as the book, would it have received as many awards? I would like to think so but I suspect I’m being a bit too hopeful.

I wish I could go to some parallel place where I could have read the book and have seen the movie and simultaneously have no knowledge the other existed.

My Gripes About the Differences Between The Silver Linings Playbook Book and Movie

1. Drastically shortening Pat’s stay in the mental hospital.

Reducing Pat’s stay in the “neurology hospital” from four years to eight months minimized not only the severity of Pat’s sickness and the amount of damage he inflicted on Nicki’s lover but also took away Pat having to deal with the fact he spent four years in his head and hardly knew who he was anymore.

2. Letting Pat know why he was hospitalized from the very beginning.

I think the first mention of why Pat was committed happens in like the first ten minutes or something of the movie. Want to know how long it is before Pat knows why he was institutionalized? Almost the entire book.

Cliff grabs his chin, which lets me know he is going to say something my mother has told him. “Pat, I know how you lost your memory. Everyone does.” He pauses here, gauging my reaction. “And I
think you remember too. Do you?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to tell you how you
lost your memory?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I don’t say anything.

“I know Dr. Timbers used to tell you the story every day as part of your therapy. That’s why I never brought it up. I thought maybe you would talk about it when you were ready, but it’s been almost five months[…]”

For almost the entire book, Pat doesn’t know he’s no longer married and hasn’t been since soon after his institutionalization. He doesn’t remember what he did to cause him to be committed.  Maybe David O. Russell didn’t feel he could fit all of that into a movie and still have a likable character you want to root for?

3. Changing Pat and his father’s relationship.

Turning Pat and his father’s relationship around and making Pat’s father the pursuer in the relationship was wrong. For me, one of the integral struggles in the book was Pat’s desire for his father’s approval.

I enjoyed seeing the father’s character fleshed out but an essential part of the character was changed in the process. I say to the detriment to the story. Yes, there was still an element of shame in their interactions and you can’t deal with mental illness without touching on the shame issue, [I have a post coming up about that soon.] but Pat’s father didn’t spend the movie ignoring Pat like the father in the book did for quite a while. This movie dad begged to spend time with Pat. Brought it up multiple times. Made excuses to spend time with Pat.

Then again, the movie dad was highly superstitious and a bookie and thought Pat was good luck. That might have factored in a bit.

4.I very much dislike the changes made to the dance practice and the dance competition.

Throughout the book, Tiffany is strong and deeply flawed but she’s also driven and this “dance thing” is HER thing. Heck, she uses the “Nikki” letters to blackmail Pat into being her partner.

Turning the competition into a professional level competition when, in the book, it was the Dance Away Depression showcase full of little kids and teens changed the entire feel of what Tiffany was doing. In a way, the Dance Away Depression competition was another way for Tiffany to express her inappropriateness: a woman hell-bent on decimating little depressed children.

With the movie competition having pro competitors, Pat and Tiffany look like fools…like crazy people since they’re going to be going up against people who dance for a living and you know they don’t stand a chance.

The dance practice section of the book showcased Tiffany at her most bossy best and her most dishonest worst.

She choreographed the routine. She figured out the costumes. She manhandled Pat into a dancer. She didn’t need any help. Tiffany wasn’t a bumbling novice who didn’t know where she was going. You don’t see a lot of that in the movie.

You see Pat’s friend, Danny, coaching Pat and Tiffany on how to make their dance better since they have nothing. It was funny and the movie did a good job with it but I hated seeing some of the wind taken out of Book Tiffany’s sails.

5. Making Pat OK with Tiffany writing “Nikki’s” letter. <–Watch out! This is a biggie!

Let’s just get this straight right now. Pat did not appreciate Tiffany writing him letters as Nikki. Not even close. It absolutely crushed Pat on many levels.

This is from near the end of the book:

I sit down under a huge tree—on a dry spot of grass—and wait.

Rain clouds swallowed the sun a long time ago, but when I look at my watch, the numbers officially make it dusk.
My chest starts to feel tight; I notice that I am shaking and breathing heavily. I hold my hand out to see how bad the shakes are, and my hand is flapping like the wing of a bird, or maybe it is as if I am hot and trying to fan myself with my fingers. I try to make it stop, and when I can’t, I shove both hands into my father’s overcoat pockets, hoping Nikki will not notice my nervousness when she shows up.

I smell a woman’s perfume.

I recognize the scent.

I breathe in deeply to ready myself.

I open my eyes.

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?” she says, but it’s not Nikki. “I never thought it would lead to this. So I’m just going to be honest now. My therapist thought you were stuck in a constant state of denial because  you were never afforded closure, and I thought I might afford you closure by pretending to be Nikki. So I made up the whole liaison thing in an effort to provide you closure, hoping you would snap out of your funk and would be able to move on with your life once you understood that being reunited with your ex-wife was an impossibility. I wrote all the letters myself.
Okay? I never even contacted Nikki. She doesn’t even know you’re sitting here. Maybe she doesn’t even know you are out of the neural health facility. She’s not coming, Pat. I’m sorry.”

My eyes burn. My face flushes. Suddenly I realize that for the past two months I have been completely delusional, that Nikki is never coming back and apart time is going to last forever.

Nikki.

Is.

Never.

Coming.

Back.

Never.

I want to hit Tiffany.

I want to pound her face with my knuckles until the bones in my hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable, until she no longer has a face from which she can spew lies.

See what I mean?

Why the hell would he be happy to find out the woman who he has obsessed over for years is never coming back to him? Why would he be happy to be forced to confront his delusions head-on? Even the sanest person has moments when they just want to believe something is possible and Nikki was Pat’s something. Hence a lot of his issues with her since she became a “something” instead of a “someone” but that’s not really the point here. Not only all of that, but Pat was betrayed by one of the very few friends he had and the only woman he’d been attracted to since his wife.

The parts I quoted above are the start of Pat dealing with one of his biggest demons and these moments don’t exist in the movie…not really. Pat’s getting close to his “excelsior” moment and you can feel it in the book. There’s this tension that is almost palpable; you know something big is about to happen. I never got that feeling with the movie.

Pat viewed his entire life as a movie and held the delusional belief if he tried hard enough and cared enough, he would get his “happy ending.” While the book–and the movie–has dark moments, Pat’s optimism–however misplaced–is the thing which holds him together and that’s ripped out from under him when Tiffany finally comes clean.

The only conversation, in the movie, Pat and Tiffany have about the letter [In the book, there are many letters with each one getting more hurtful for Pat.] is at the very end when he gives Tiffany a letter he wrote confessing his love. The only clue you have that Pat knows Tiffany wrote the letter is when she says “reading the signs” and Pat remembers it from “Nikki’s” letter.

BUT, instead of having the compulsion to “pound her face with [his] knuckles until the bones in [his] hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable […],” Movie Pat looks back at his parents’ house with a look of awe and wonder like he’s grateful the girl who is supposed to be his friend, impersonated his wife and used the letter as a form a blackmail to get him to dance in her competition.

6. Pat never talks to Nikki. Not one single time. Never.

Near the end of the book, Pat had his brother drive past Pat’s old house and saw Nikki with her new family. This is Pat recounting it to Tiffany right before the end of the book:

“And I squinted hard trying to see Nikki’s face, and even from a block away I could tell she was smiling the whole time and was so very happy, and somehow that was enough for me to officially end apart time and roll the credits of my movie without even confronting Nikki, so I just asked Jake to drive me back to New Jersey, which he did, because he is probably the best brother in the entire
world. So I guess I just want Nikki to be happy, even if her happy life doesn’t include me, because I had my chance and I wasn’t a very good husband and Nikki was a great wife, and …”

In the movie, Nikki decides to come watch the competition and maybe give Pat a second chance. Pat whispers something in Nikki’s ear and chooses Tiffany. Book Pat’s way seems more him. NikkI doesn’t even have to know he’s seen her. He just wants her to be happy even if it’s not with him.

7. They made the ending too sugary sweet.

The ending of the movie bugged me. They changed it into the perfect guy-runs-after-girl-and-professes-his-love scene from many romance movies. The book wasn’t a romance for me; it was journey Pat had to take and Tiffany helped him make that trip. I won’t go so far as to say they “cheapened” it because it was a perfectly GOOD ending but it wasn’t what I was expecting and wasn’t what I wanted.

Last scene of the movie before the epilogue scene [Pat is reciting the letter he just gave to Tiffany.]:

Ending of the book:

She says, “I need you, Pat Peoples; I need you so fucking bad,” and then she begins to cry hot tears onto my skin as she kisses my neck softly and sniffles.

It is a strange thing for her to say, so far removed from a regular woman’s “I love you,” and yet probably more true. It feels good to hold Tiffany close to me, and I remember what my mother said back when I tried to get rid of my friend by asking her to go to the diner with me. Mom said, “You need friends, Pat. Everybody does.”

I also remember that Tiffany lied to me for many weeks; I remember the awful story Ronnie told me about Tiffany’s dismissal from work and what she admitted to in her most recent letter; I remember just how bizarre my friendship with Tiffany has been—but then I remember that no one else but Tiffany could really even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever.

I remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful.
In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher’s Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There’s something honest about all of this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me—in the middle of a snowstorm even —impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.

Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day.

So I pull Tiffany a little closer, kiss the hard spot between her perfectly plucked eyebrows, and after a deep breath, I say, “I think I need you too.”

Definitely not as much of splash as in the movie ending but it’s still hopeful. Pat’s making strong progress. He’s not delusional about Nikki; he’s let her go. He acknowledges what Tiffany did to him, but he also makes the conscious choice to move forward with her and a new life. I much prefer this ending. Like lots.

A random rip on the book because this has bothered me since as soon as I read this part: The book does this deus ex machina thing where Pat magically ends up beaten and bloody in front of Danny’s Aunt Jasmine’s house. Pat didn’t know where Aunt Jasmine lived other than North Philly. Never felt good about Quick pulling that fast one.

The movie had several laugh out loud moments where I was very glad it was just me and two other people in the theater. The way Russel managed to take a book which had a whole heck of a lot of internal stuff going on and make a movie that made sense–and won a lot of awards–and was enjoyable is definitely an accomplishment. Especially when you consider the two main characters are crazy.

Even with all of my complaints, I still enjoyed the movie. And that goes back to my original statement way up at the top, “I wish I could go to some parallel place where I could have read the book and have seen the movie and simultaneously have no knowledge the other existed.”

Thoughts?

Called and got the shrink rescheduled for a later time. Told the receptionist she was a “life saver.”

Me: “Wait! I don’t mean like LITERALLY a life saver! Don’t tell him I said that! I just mean you really helped me out!”

Her–sounding rather annoyed: “I know what you mean.” And then she sighed really big.

People who deal with crazy people need to have more of a sense of humor. Right? Or maybe she used to have a sense of humor and then it was all crazied out of her?

2012 has come to a close and now we’re on to 2013. I can vividly remember it being 1990. I feel quite old all of a sudden. We’ve been in the house a year now. Cara started school. Tucker’s almost done with his. I got offered a job. I found my biological mother and siblings. I got almost 30k words into a book and had no idea where I was going with it. It has been a heck of a year and here are the 12 posts I liked best. My Favorite Posts on Taste Like Crazy from 2012

1. Do You Embrace New Tech At the Expense of Old?–Do you get rid of your old stuff when something better comes out or do you hang onto stuff for sentimental reasons?
2. I Was Scared of My Three Year Old Today–Ollie at three really, really sucked. A lot.
3. Garden Redux, Yo–Pretty pictures of garden stuff. You know…after I killed the first wave of plants.
4. Doctor Who and Donna Complete with Gifs–Donna, I love you. That is all.
5. Game of Thrones Game Review Gif Heavy YAY!–The review is fun to read. Too bad the game sucked so hard.
6. They Didn’t Pick Up Their Toys So I Confiscated Them–They pushed me too far.
7. Mango Tomato Pico de Gallo Recipe–So yummy the recipe made it on this list. That means it’s pretty awesome. Just so you know.
8. My Life In Bullet Points–This was, by far, one of the most painful things I’ve ever written. Damn hard to just lay yourself out there and wait for rejection.
9. Notarized Field Trip Slip?–I’m not especially proud of this post but it got some really good comments which I appreciate a whole bunch.
10. I Killed My Fifth Black Widow Spider Yesterday–If you have a problem with spiders then I would suggest you read this.
11. Crappy Coffee and Shooting–The month of November wasn’t a good month for me.
12. I’m Depressed Maybe Possibly Or Not–Explains the lack of posts for November and December. And there are gifs! Yay for gifs!

I’m depressed. [I got distracted after I wrote that and wandered around the internet before remembering I was supposed to be writing something over here. Oops.]

Remember when I wrote that one thing about going off my meds? Well, I did and things were pretty much the way they had been and so whatever, right? Then I started damn NaNoWriMo and felt no urge to write anything over here…which you might have noticed.

That’s actually probably when things started to go downhill. Tons of self-doubt. Family things.

I watched a hell of a lot of Netflix–White Collar–and had numerous inappropriate thoughts about Matt Bomer [I have no regrets.] and read a lot of books.

A lot. Of books.

Bunches.

• Dark Storm
• Dark Nights
• Spell of the Highlander
• Into the Dreaming
• Gabriel’s Inferno
• Gabriel’s Rapture
• Beautiful Disaster
• Providence
• Requiem (The Providence Series #2)
• Eden (The Providence series #3)
• Faking It
• Getting Rid Of Bradley
• Anyone But You -currently reading

What’s funny is I enjoyed all that stuff.

A lot.

The internet and writing and all the drama and bullshit didn’t interest me at all. Does that make me depressed? I still enjoyed something, right? If I’m depressed then I wouldn’t enjoy anything, right? I’m confusing myself.

Then again…

I guess it’s time to make an appointment with my psychologist, huh? Heather isn’t going to leave me alone until I do.

Before anyone asks and for the record and all that, I’m not suicidal. I’m not going to off myself. I’m not even going to run away.

I’m just

You’re not the only one who is feeling like this and even though you don’t believe me, there are people who really do care if you die. There are people you will hurt. People you will decimate. People who want to support you. People who want to see you better.

The hardest thing you can do right now is ignore what your broken brain is telling you and chose to live.

Hell, it’s probably going to be the hardest thing for a while.

It gets easier.

You will get better.

Life will go on because you’re worth fighting for.

You think you’re weak but you’ve fought this long and you’ve fought so hard so you might as well keep on fighting.

I know what you’re going through. I’ve written about “the fight” before. If you doubt me, read it: The Fight You Must Fight.

There are people who want nothing more than to listen to what you have to say and to help you.

Go find your cell phone and call them.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number – 1.800.273.TALK (8255)

So apparently there are a million-billion crazy people in Huntsville because I’ve gone through 200 providers and have found very few folks who are taking new patients. OK. That’s not completely true. There’s a whole cadre of docs I’m excluding due to where they work.

The first group works where my old shrink works. That office owes us almost $150. They’ve owed us almost $150 for the past seven months. Not dealing with them again. Ever.

Buttholes.

Then there’s this other big group at the county mental health clinic.

Not.

Going.

There.

When I was in college and was first diagnosed with ADD, I went to the county heath crazy clinic. Holy fucking shit if that wasn’t scary.  [Why I Will Never Go To Another Public Mental Health Clinic] So, you see, I’ve cut the pool of shrinks down by 2/3 but a crazy girl has to have standards, people!

After all this trouble finding someone who can prescribe more medication, I’ve finally just decided to stop.

Not cold turkey or any of that nonsense.

Especially since one of the things I take is an anticonvulsant and stopping the medication too quickly could throw me into seizures–even though I have no history of seizures. I have a sneaking suspicion they’re not nearly as much fun as they sound.

The Strattera–for the ADD–doesn’t seem to be helping and it seems pointless to keep upping the dosage. Will it help if we bump it up more? Would another drug work better? I lived 20-something years and took nothing. I didn’t suck too bad before Strattera. I don’t think.

If I did suck, no one tell me, OK?

The Lamictal–for the Cyclothymia–is probably the best thing for me to take and though it’s prescribed off-label, Lamictal has a fantabulous track record in treating Bipolar II and Cyclothymia. But I’m still cycling. Even increasing the dosage isn’t helping. So I’m back to the questions I have with Strattera.

How much do I need to increase this before it works?

What if it doesn’t?

See, the difference between some other crazy person and me is I realize I’m not cured. I realize this isn’t something I’m going to get better from. While I’m not making it up, this is literally in my head so I’m stuck with it. I suppose the long and short of it is I know quitting ain’t going to change anything.

Yeah. Quitting meds. Still crazy. This should be all kinds of fun.