My psychiatrist is officially gone.

Practice closed.

I call the new doctor I was referred to. He is booked until 2008. Great. Nothing like a nice dose of rejection to get the heart pumping. I know he isn't rejecting me personally. I am not that sort of paranoid. I just don't like the idea that my doc is referring me to other doctors that are unattainable. I feel a certain emptiness knowing that I have to recreate my entire medical history with a new physician. It's hard to trust someone with your life to begin with. To have to spew it all over again for a stranger just drains me emotionally. I have three months worth of medications from my primary care doctor. That's not the problem.

I feel like I am whining sometimes. I know there are people in the world so far worse off than I am. It just feels, when it is dark, that there is nary a light to be found anywhere. It's a cold and isolated feeling. As I am getting older, it is easier to fall into deeper depressions. My husband is away. My kids are at the ages where they don't need mommy near as much. It allows me to fall into bed and just sob unrelentlessly if I want to. I can pull the covers over my head and pray for darkness outside to match what I am feeling within myself.

I start a new job next week and I am terrified. Not scared of the job. I am scared of my track record of absenteeism. It always makes me get fired. I don't care about going to work sometimes. I lay in bed, falsifying ailments and stories that will allow me to stay home and coddle myself. I never know when it is going to hit or for how long it will stay. For the first time, someone will say, "poor baby is under the weather." By the fifth time I do it, I will have concocted a death in my family. To date, I have had 7 grandmothers die. In actuality, only one is dead...the other might as well be. She lives my dream life...just laying there in her bed watching the breeze blow in the trees outside her window. Nothing else to do but think...and watch the wind blow by. Nothing affects her any longer. None of it matters. Her kids or grandkids come and it is a blessing for the day. If not, no big deal. There is still the wind to watch. There is still my nightly meal to look forward to. I am dressed, bathed and put to bed.

It is a depressed persons dream come true.

She is leaving.
She's leaving home
after living alone for so
many years.

My grandmother owns a condo in Miami. After my last visit there, I realized that it would probably be my last. My mother is selling the place. If I had the money to do it, I would buy it in a heartbeat. $3000 a month plus $400 in maintainence fees. Can you imagine? But to me, the place is sanctuary. It is dusty. It is completely retro...hasn't been changed in decor since the late 70's. There are old pictures and old books. Everything there is old, torn or used...except in the living room where everything is just so. No dust. No smears. Nothing out of place. It looks like a show palace. I won't be going back there ever again. It makes my heart break. Grandmother is in a nursing home because she went partially blind and she is 90. She couldn't take care of herself anymore.

I am afraid that if I don't get it together soon, I will be 90 before I know it, alone and living the depressive dream. My ass getting wiped for me. Someone dressing me. Feeding me. Just doing the basics for my survival. Nothing more.

I have no idea where I am going with this. I suppose I am just having a bad day. Feeling like I am going to fall over the edge. I can usually tell when its coming on. I have to drag myself into the shower...if I shower at all. I don't bother with my hair or makeup. I throw on any old thing without caring if things coordinate or not, something I am normally very fussy about.

I guess the point I was trying to make without easily transitioning from A to B is that I am horrified that I am going to lose this job. I have changed jobs so many times, on a whim. Others, I've been let go from. I can't keep a job with any consistancy at all. I can't. It's hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. It's hard for me to get ready to be somewhere...anywhere. I am perpetually drained.

This is what I miss most about my mania. I had the ability to kick the worlds ass at least two weeks out of every month. Now the world is kicking my ass on a daily basis. I know what the price of mania is. I am willing to risk it. I am willing to go back to the firecracker that I was before I swallow a handful of pills everynight at bedtime. Yes, I know the depressions will come harder, but at least there are those few amazing weeks where I am on top of the world.

I miss the view from up there.