RIP Robin Williams

More words will come, but I'm so utterly devastated right now that all I can say is - dear Robin, you contributed so many verses to the powerful play. I will always be thankful for the time you gave us all on earth. I hope you finally find peace wherever you are.

If you or someone you know is facing the big D and feels like the only way to find peace is through death, please please first call 1-800-273-8255. You are important. You are cared about. You may not be a movie star, but you also are contributing your verse right now. Don't cut it short.

Happy Valentine's Day! love, your psycho daughter

Well, this is embarrassing.

I'm going to start this by saying I forgot my anti-anxiety meds for two days in a row (Tuesday and Wednesday evenings). That's incredibly unlike me. I'm usually QUITE good (for a spazz), missing only a day or two over the course of a month. But between a very late night return to DC from some gorgeous south Florida weather, and then snow mucking up ALL semblances of a routine, I found myself late last night 300mg behind schedule. I was surprised - usually it only takes about 12 hours for me to start feeling "off" and overly concerned about strangers, and that's when I usually catch up. But - I thought, foolishly - no harm done! Take the pill and go to bed.

So I did.

This morning, however, I was surprisingly jazzed when I got to work. I was dancing all over the office, just SO happy to see everyone (and considering that I really wanted today to be another snow day, that was weird). I even attempted to "twerk" (I am an old lady) in my fave coworker and close friend's office (we will call her CH, because her name is quite unique). CH was like whoaaaa I have not seen you like this... ever? Which is strange because we have known each other for nearly 4 years.

Brief pause for alarm at passage of time.

But who cared? I was in a GREAT mood. Bouncy bouncy bouncy fun fun fun fun fun FUN! Which, when I sat down in my chair after the twerking attempt, finally began to seem odd. WHY was I so up up UP. Sure, it's a Friday, and yes, I had had caffeine, but I don't have off Monday, there is a ridiculous amount of ice on the streets and it's not socially acceptable to drink champagne in the office. I mean, this literally happened:

Becky:  awwwww

miss you!

me:  i miss you too

mostly because i could smother you in my bosom right now

SMOTHERSMOTHER

Becky:  HAHAHAHAA

This was around the point when I realized that, oh right, after 72 hours of completely uninhibited serontonin uptake (I think that's right), my brain was re/overadjusting to the normal state of things, which is to say, normalcy aided and abetted by Zoloft.

That was fine. Who hates the coworker who is HAPPY TO SEE YOU? No one. No one hates that person. They think that person is funny and want to have dance parties with them and maybe order lunch because of the ice on the road. Yay.

However.

People, even super wonderful parents who have raised you and love you no matter what you do unless, probably, you kill them but even then it's only because they're dead because they are your parents and lovelovelove you regardless, are NOT particularly fond of being called 14 times on their cellphone (and probably around the same amount on their house line) because their eldest child is in a neurochemically induced PANIC that her mother's not picking up the phone means she clearly slipped in the shower/on an icy patch/across newly cleaned floors. Those people might be even LESS fond of said child calling their other parent, and weaving him into their web 'o crazy such that he decides to take a long lunch to drive the 30+ minutes home to make sure she's ok. Especially when said people just forgot to take their cellphone with them to the mall and to the nail salon because aforementioned mothers may have decided to take advantage of their snow day and much-more-cleared-than-DC roads.

Hypothetically speaking.

After I apologized profusely to my mom, and slightly less profusely to my dad and then left them to have (Valentine's! Aw sweet, in the end?) lunch together, I was talking to Becky who, it should be said, recognized this for what it was IMMEDIATELY:

me:  ok my mom isn't picking up and it is stressing me out

she's prob fine, right?

Becky:  wow, just 2 days of anti sads later?

yes, she's fine

promise

 

I realized that, despite still feeling incredibly shameful about my over-freak-out, the really nice thing is: this used to be a regular occurrence. An opposite-of-sporadic, at least WEEKLY, occurrence.

I'm thinking of the time I was up until 3am freaking out that there was a robber/murderer/rapist/ghost in my house because my TV turned itself off and I told my friend Lauren that she would be really upset when I was robbed/murdered/raped/... passed through? because she didn't believe me. Or the time(s) I've called/texted Becky and others (will not name you all here but you know who you are) because the toilet upstairs flushed too loudly or something I leaned up against the wall fell down or because I had a vague sense of foreboding.

Or the time I wouldn't go buy a sandwich and instead sat in panicked hunger because I was sure that THIS TIME when I crossed the street I would be killed by a car. Or all the many many nights I spent driving fruitlessly around my parents' neighborhood because I was so concerned that someone had turned in behind me and so clearly they were going to rob/murder/rape/pass through me so I had to lose them in the cul-de-sacs of northern NJ. Not to mention the times I've rechecked locks 17 times, or woken up my sister just to have someone else be freaked out about X with me, and all the other examples (if you know me IRL and think it fun, feel free to share in the comments) that I can't even think about because they were so. Damn. Ordinary.

My point is this: this was a bad day, triggered by lack of meds and other anxiety-inducing factors like not having brought my lunch. But it's been SO LONG since I've had a bad day that this shamed me, rather than making me feel righteously misunderstood - "it may not be the ghost this time, but if it had been you would have felt TERRIBLE at my funeral." That's pretty awesome. Almost as awesome as SSRIs and Pete's Apizza delivery.

I mean, not quite. But almost.

A (temporary?) return People Who Rock, People Who Suck

With this third restart of THIS blog, I thought I'd probably avoid doing PWR, PWS (a staple feature of earlier iterations and my original, now archived, blog). Here's how I described it then (and yes, I am about to block quote myself. In fact, I'm about to AGAIN):

... back in the day of AIM, my profile was like a pre-blog. I kept up "confidential" messages to friends, posted links I thought people might find interesting, and most importantly, constantly updated two lists that I called (everybody together now) "People Who Rock" and "People Who Suck".

I was super creative.

But teenager (and early 20s) angst and anger aside, it was pretty cathartic. I mean, George Bush was a mainstay of course (on the People Who Suck list, duh. If you need to ask, please step away from the blog), but when I was REALLY pissed off I could CAPITALIZE his name or add LOTS!!!!!! of exclamation points.Also.

People Who Rock was nice, because when someone did something I really liked (like give me presents) they could be recognized! And recognition is always good, right? Even if the present is like, a fruit roll up?

Yum. The thing, it's sort of harder and harder as a less angsty 30 year old to keep up the grievances (and, to be a little sadder, the elated kudos). So few things change week to week that having a PWR, PWS list on Fridays would just be a reblog over and over again. PWR: my friend Rachel and her boyfriend for making sure my packages don't get stolen. PWS: that dude who stole a cab from me two weeks ago. Still fuming.

My point is this: it would be boring, I thought, to keep posting the same list over and over. I had even started to give in to the inanity a few years ago, probably around the time when the governor of my beloved state (NJ, duh) was elected. He got a spot as the number 5 person on the people who suck list, and it read, "Chris Christie. Either until he stops hating on cops and teachers (the very people who you know, MAKE SOCIETY RUN IN A CIVIL WAY), he is number five on the people who suck list. Because he sucks, times five" for about three years before you know, I sort of stopped blogging.

Then yesterday?

The same Governor Christie made. my. day. By being the hypocritical jackass we all know and hate. What a jerk. What a sexist bully. What an idiot for exposing what those of us who have loathed him since his first disgusting shouting down of a TEACHER who he represents AT A TOWN HALL have known, so sillily. So foolishly. So, as Jon Stewart and the Onion said, amateurly. Frankly, it has made my week (though it doesn't hurt that professionally it's been a pretty good week as well).

And so I HAD to bring PWR/PWS back, amiright?!!?!?!?

People Who Rock:

1. Casablanca for giving all of us the ability to say "I'm shocked, shocked! that there is gambling going on here";
2. Rachel Maddow for doing some research into #bridgegate that I think is fascinating and should be investigated further;
3. Jon Stewart for "Lee? Our good friend Lee? Yeah he's gonna be constipated for a long time" and "CorrupTIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON corruption!" and "there is LITERALLY a severed horse's head on our state flag";
4. Switching lanes slightly (which you wouldn't have been able to do on the GWB earlier this year), Amiri Baraka. You will be sorely missed;
5. The Homeless Children's Playtime Project and the Hypothermia Hotline. Thanks for doing what you guys do, even amidst polar vortexes. Vortei? Vortices!;
6. Alaska Airlines. Tillamook cheddar and more leg room? Yes please; and
7. You guys. Pretty glad to be back. Missed you.

People Who Suck:

1. David Wildstein. Pleading the fifth? Gross, and good luck with that;
2. Bridget Anne Kelly. For a few totally petty reasons in addition to the main one, the best of which (of the petty) is that her name has BRIDGE it in. Hilarious, doofus;
3. People who make cheap NJ jokes without the actual experience behind it. Get funnier, dumbasses;
4. Jon Corzine. I'm sorry, but without you we would have maybe never been subjected to this crap;
5. Chris Christie. Either until he stops hating on cops and teachers (the very people who you know, MAKE SOCIETY RUN IN A CIVIL WAY), he is number five on the people who suck list. Because he sucks, times five;
6. Chris Christie again for his "something's going down tonight but it ain't jobs sweetheart" line from the NH convention; and
7. Chris Christie once more for being an unsavvy political hack who doesn't deserve to represent the GREATEST of the FIFTY NIFTY UNITED STATES from 13 ORIGINAL colooooooooooooonies (New Jersey, der).

Happy weekend everyone. Happy gleeful, proven-right, NJ ROX weekend.

Happy new year?

This morning for the first time in 17 years of wearing contacts, I switched eyes (accidentally of course). 2014: the year I lose the ability to tell left from right. Awesome sauce.

So imagine Eeyore and Tigger had a kid

The fruit of their (probably nonexistent) loins would be, well, me. Without a tail. Even one that is taped on. Poor me! My point is this: I am an ostentatiously ebullient person (I believe at least one of my college essays was a fake dictionary entry for “loquacious”). So much so that people less enthused than I am – hipsters, potheads, some Big Ten cheerleaders – love to disdain my bubbly personality (god. You’re so… perky. Ugh).

If only they knew.

That underneath the super duper UBER cheery outside, there is a pit of despair so deep… no, just kidding. Mostly that there’s a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes it very very difficult sometimes to deal with tragic events (9/11), terrible circumstances (homelessness), normal hygiene (brushing my teeth at night) and basic life actions (getting out of bed).

Lucky for me there are MEDS!!!!!!

I (currently) take 150mg a day of the generic form of Zoloft, which is a SSRI type of antidepressant (SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and I majored in poli sci and have a masters in public policy, so ima just leave that here). It has been a game changer. I’m not going to go through my whole sorry tale because:

1. It’s not that sorry 
2. It’s really not that interesting 
3. I’ll nevertheless almost DEFINITELY tell it at some point later 

but for now let’s just say I started taking it in June 2010 and never looked back. Seriously. I know lots of people who have real doubts about taking a pill every day for the rest of their lives (including some of my favoritest people in the whole wide world) but for me, it’s necessary. I know this because if I miss a dose by more than 12 hours, I start to withdraw from myself. I get irrationally upset about, well, anything. I start trying to feed every shabbily dressed person on the street.

And worse – I become less and less likely to catch up on my meds.

Luckily! This doesn’t happen often because I have an amazing therapist, an even BETTER support group who has been there for me since before this all began, and somehow sticks around despite the fits of hopelessness, the why me?!s, the occasional (or not so occasional) burst of tears, the self-loathing, and worse – the self-not-giving-a-shit.

But.

I can happily say that while each day isn’t better than the last, on the whole I am more BUBBLY than TRAGIC these days. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be both at the same time – in fact, I’m almost always a little of both. I plan a happy hour at work with lots of exclamation points in the invite, then go sit in the bathroom in the dark for 5 minutes cause I need some alone time. In short, I’m bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy fun fun fun fun anguished. But the most wonderful thing is?

I’m definitely not the only one.

If this sounds at all familiar, guess what, you're not alone! And if it doesn't, that's fine too. I'm pretty sure that in this third time I'm "kicking off" the blog (the charming one?!) we won't discuss the big D too too much. Humanity, yes. Pizzerias, probably. But no matter what, I promise to be entertaining occasionally, and honest almost always.