Viscous Lidocaine

tis the season

apparently my body is giving up the fight against the flu again.  i don't know what's worse, honestly, being so sick of the news or just being sick. 

while medicare part d(ick) gives me cheap meds, i still can't qualify for medical, which would pay for an MD to rx said meds.  i don't know any free mds at this point, so i'm sol on that one.  it would be nice not to have a migraine for, like, a day.

while we're spending billions a month on fighting an invisible war, i'd like to know why my own government can't afford me to see a doctor of any sort.  they're about to lose me to a very happy-to-serve-you UK.  or worse, somewhere in scandinavia where they give a ripe fuck about people.

can't sleep

i am not able to sleep.  therefore, i shall foist myself upon the web, though not ebay, because that's the devil.  syd barrett died today or yesterday or something recently of "undisclosed" cause. of course that went reported without noting his schizophrenia. 

tomorrow a.m. i have an interview, which i don't have very often, so i don't know i'm supposed to fake how great i am at anything.  i'm too fucking honest for my own good i think. 

i took out my earrings in prep for this thing.  i have a thick-banded watch and a bracelet to cover up any ink that might peek out on my wrists.  i think i usually wear 23 earrings.  that, of course, includes a ring in my tragus and a ring through my conch, not to mention an industrial in my left ear.   i feel a weird compulsion to pluck my eyebrows, though they don't need it.   

is there a coming race war? are neo nazis joining up for urban combat training?  if this is the case, then maybe just leave them over there.  what a shit thing to say, eh?  if you're so gung-ho to shoot at people- then fine, please don't return to my cities: primarily if you're a white supremacist.

obviously i just heard this on the news, something i haven't really noticed for about a month, probably closing in on 6 weeks.   

going to go find the bed.  maybe the otherh'll be near it, too.

happy valentines day no, really

remember when you were in grade school and you had to make those damned difficult valentines boxes for all yer classmates to "post" their teeny valentines in?  i remember one year i made one that actually looked like a post-box, i built a flap, and a post for it, so it was like 2ft tall.  i didn't decorate it in hearts and red construction paper, instead i pasted love notes and quotes and poems all over the outside.  i was in 4th grade, i'd typed all the notes myself.  my parents (well, the moth) didn't help with the thing, we didn't see each other very much because she worked a bizillion miles away from home, and my brother and i were left to our own devices for much of our after-school hours.  (we both were way too involved in music, i was a cellist with a Purpose, and practiced til i couldn't read the notes, even when i was tiny.) 
ok, so the valentines day box. 
i didn't make mine with the trappings anyone expected.  although it was the most imposing in Ms Kenner's class, and the way things were supposed to go, you didn't put your name on the boxes, it was an equal-opportunity card-getting for everyone.  in theory, this should've worked out well for my desperate 4th grade self: i wasn't the most adorable of children, however adorable i've become (ha), and i was a big loner based on, what i now believe, the fact i had a cello with me nearly always.  celli, when you're in 4th grade, are as big as another person.  it must've seemed like my best friend was always around. (i had named her (because that's what yo yo did! and he was amazing!) as much as i loved playing, playing took up most of my life. 
i didn't get any valentines in my un-pink-hearted-box.  despite the supposed anonymity involved, my oddity stood out like me wearing yellow shoes with black pants.  the bigger slam, really, was that i wasn't voted "most creatively decorated shoe box" or something like that. 

my security has quite multiplied since i was a bespectacled 4th grader with a shiny bit of cello for my best companion.  somewhere between then and now, i've embraced that valentine's day is pretty much the only manufactured holiday i can get into: christmas is a fake holiday anymore, fourth of july is quease making, thanksgiving (while i love eating) just makes no sense and has been xianised, but valentines day blows itself away by embracing consumerism.  (something i don't espouse, actually)  it has no compunction, in and of its specialness.  there is no shame to valentines day, because hallmark invented it, there's no reason for anyone to pretend it exists for any other reason than to enrich sellers.  really.  i'm not fucking off here: it's really a great Slut for Retail.  (i say this with all respect for sluts, btw). 
I send valentines day cards, both snail- and e-mail to a schlew of people.  most of whom don't expect it.  not the big fuzzy hearts and sparkles cards, but the little kid cards.  Last year it was dinosaur-themed.  this year it's rainbows.  the kind of left-out cards that were all that i could ask for as a kid, not having what one likes to call "money".  the ritual of mailing teeny cards to friends far-flung has become joyful.  i don't care about whether i *get* anything.  things aren't where it is on valentines day, for me.  it really is the thought that counts. and i want to think of as many people as i can. 

Apples v oranges, pending

not that i like moral high ground when i see it, but i seem to have run into it a lot in the past few days.
As mentioned on the Blog That Got Swallowed By A Mismanaged Site, i was diagnosed with bipolar disorder going on 900,000 years ago.  one of my coping mechanisms with a lot of things has been to seek those in similar situations and learn what i can from them.  i've been associated with a revolving-door-type group for a long time (maybe more than five years, but roughly that.)  i think one of the biggest weaknesses the community of mentally ill faces is the fact that it hates itself.   i'll get to that, but first let me elaborate on "community", which i don't entirely mean.  i mean "culture".  Because, frankly, if one is diagnosed with any Axis I mental illness, it's inherent in that body.  it doesn't get therapied out.  which isn't to say i only identify as someone with Bipolar Disorder (i.e. "i am bipolar"), but it is certainly one of the things i identify myself as *being*...a lot of people diagnosed this way will say "no, you aren't bipolar, you *have* bipolar," as a sort of soothing & clucking, but that's mostly shit.  and it's shit because it's A) wrong and B) borne out of judgment.  sadly enough it's  judgment of one's own being.  as if my grandfather would've ever said, "you aren't scots, you just have those roots."  nope.  but for whatever reason, people with bipolar want to deny it.  certainly the brunt of stigma comes from the Ill-Informed.  (please see: that fuckhole tomcruise, others).  i don't mean to write another post on that, one was plenty.  back to my group.

today in a discussion someone mentioned that she, even after having been told by her new boyfriend that he's the proud owner of hpv, was still too afraid to tell him she was bipolar.  and a chorus of "i don't tell anyone"s ensued.  and i, being astounded that an sti causing genital warts was in some way Less Frightening (more on that below) than a mental illness that can be treated and managed, couldn't stop myself from asking "why don't you tell anyone?"  the answers were even lamer than i could've dreamt.  a rainbow of fruit replies came back, from:  "they'd think i'm crazy."  to "i'm afraid he'll think i'm nutso and just out of the loonie bin."  no one gave their working definition for "crazy/nutso" etc. 
the logic blows my mind.  the only thing holding anyone back was fear of judgment.  so in order to remain unjudged, a bipolar must Not Tell.   there is a gripping fear that the Being/having of Bipolar will always be the straw that breaks whichever camel's back, be it new boyfriend, new job, new city.

i don't use my illness as an excuse for not thinking.  sometimes i do not think clearly, and i have people around who alert me to this if i'm in a mood state.  but i am educated, well read, inquisitive and intelligent, and those are as identifying to the people who know i am bipolar, whether or not i'm in a mood state.  i do not introduce myself with "Oh, nice to meet you too, i'm bipolar, would you like me to tell you about that?"  but i make an effort to inform people when it gets to be more or less clear that they'll be around for a spell that yes, i  walk in the ranks of the DSM-V.  every employer i've had since i was diagnosed knew, that's for damned sure. 
so, that bit about hpv revelation vs bipolar revelation: i was walking the dog and wondering if i bear a certain judgment against people who have stds.  and i convinced myself (it was a harrowing debate) that i didn't, which made me wonder why i was so appalled at the idea that for this couple in the throes of mating why was bipolar the worse of the two.  but they aren't two.  being "disease free" is a big deal in personals ads, no one says "please come sans your mental illness".   the stigma of sexually transmitted things is lessening with education and dissemination of the Tenets of Condom Usage, and i'm sure the commercials with The Beautiful People frolicking on the beach advertising herpes supression therapies don't hurt.  ("see, even that nice-looking girl could get it...it must not be so bad.")

for sheer comparision, in ontario in a year, for schizophrenia patients less than $5/ person is spent on research.  HIV/AIDS?  $187/person.  and no, i'm not saying rescind the funding for the HIV/AIDS research to fund the research benefitting the mentally ill: i'm saying the lobby is there for the HIV/AIDS patients, and it's a giant echo chamber for schizophrenics. 

if people from within the culture of the mentally ill work to rid the ever nasty stigma upon it, it will have to start there.  start by not brooking denial, by facing the facts.  the reversal of the judgment of a larger culture will not be automatic to that larger culture.  which is to say, the other world sees us hating ourselves, one and all, and does what it can to perpetuate that.