so i posted a few times, replied a couple times.  and then i dropped off the face of the planet.  for a year.  let's start over.

so, start with events of the last year:

when i last posted on the boards, i was falling apart and didn't even recognize any of the symptoms.  apparently i've been undermedicated and secret borderline zombie for years; moving! to! NYC! to! become! a! famous! artist! merely made mania that much easier to attain.

the psychotic bits of the episode began to blossom on the floor at work, i was "given time off" then a week later "removed from the schedule" which was fine because i wasn't leaving my room anymore anyway.  not that i will miss that job. 

and no one told me anything about unemployment, or disability, so i was just getting by with help from mom.

so, fun with medication: up the stabilizer, then add antipsychotic 1:best i ever felt accompanied by allergic reaction.  antipsychotic 2: major vertigo, falling into furniture, nausea so bad that rolling over to try to calm the cramps would be enough motion to make me vomit.  fun let me tell you.  probably not unheard of in these parts, i reckon.

then thrown out of my apartment by my flatmate (i guess she wasn't one of my best friends after all).  (i wish i could say i wish her well.  i won't)

then back home (again), my dog dies a week before i get here, the economy tanks, uncle (substitute-dad) gets pancreatic cancer (wish i could say i didn't see it coming), mom cancels impending divorce of my father.  

in the last 6 months, my uncle's had surgery, done a round of chemo, a round of chemo-and-radiation, and the latest catscan shows him clean.  soo thankful.  he's still doing another round of chemo, just to be sure.

and so i continue living in the modest mansion in the fancy neighborhood we can't afford to live in, where we have become shut-ins as our world (and maybe the world at large) continues its merry march off the cliff or into the sea or wherever it is we're all going in this handbasket.

and i'm coming to the conclusion that i've just lost 5 years of my life, somehow.  i graduated from college and stepped into a undermedicated blackhole.

someday i will write a brilliant memoir about all this.

(random observation: so far the bipolar memoirs i've read were all by women.  wonder if there are any by guys.  or especially fags)

(have i offended?  don't be offended.  when asked in what might be considered an intrusive manner as to my own sexual proclivities, i am fond of answering "cocksucking faggot".  which i think sounds better.  a better collection of sylables than "gay".  related: recently i saw this picture on some website which said something like "not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you" with a picture of a woman smiling while pointing a gun.  made me laugh.)

so now i'm a week into the newest (for me) antipsychotic, feeling cautiously better.  worried about sexual side effects already.  have been reading askapatient boards about it and am nervous. 

quiting the meditation group i've been going to with the fam, which is oriented towards cancer patients and their families, because it feels like therapy.  writing a letter to my childhood self does me not an ounce of good thank you very much.  the questions meant to inspire reflection do not tell me anything i don't already know.  (but then, i've never responded well to therapy.  eventually it becomes a game i play.  i end up becoming bored with the therapist and start acting in ways that are countertherapeutic.)  i have less and less to say there, in part because the questions are leading in generic therapy group question sort of ways, and because everyone there has cancer or is related to someone with cancer and i feel like my problems aren't their problems (and also, with the exception of my brother, everyone there is old enough to be my parent)

so hoping to get back into the habit of meditation alone.  also, trying to make . . . energy psychology?  energy tapping?  that.  make that a regular routine.

what else?  trying to start painting again.  like, after i got back here, it took awhile to get over the fact that i was back here again, and then for awhile i started to be productive in the studio.  drawings, paintings.  a portrait of my uncle during his first batch of chemo looks kinda scary, and i don't know how to finish it yet because i know nothing about the painting style i'm using.  a stack of small drawings.  lots of various projects that don't really have any sort of unifying . . . anything other than that i made them.  not that that bothers me, i'm totally thrilled by it, but, it's hard to launch a career without some sort of "thesis" to your work.  so, trying for bodies of work.  projects.  make a lot and then assemble shows is the idea.  but mostly everything is just an idea that needs to click with another idea about an object so i can actually start making something.  jump through one hoop, find a bunch more. 

but only since i started this new drug have i felt the energy again to do anything.  what pisses me off most is i'm not sure if i was just coming up from the hole that 3 weeks of prescribed painkillers dug in my brain a few months ago, or whether the pills are actually helping. 

and i'm kind of isolated right now (unemployed, the job market here is a disaster, and all my friends live 10ish hours away and have jobs and lives), so maybe this is a good spot to sort of sound off and i'll start replying on the boards and being more of a being here.

did i forget to describe me?  probably.  that was kind of part of the point of this blogging into the ether, was to set down something, a foundation, an introduction.  a quick summary, in no particular order: vaguely gothic or punkish or raverish, socialist, pacifist, pantheist, quite-probably-polygamist, wannabe-activist, cocksucking-faggot artist intellectual.  that's a good abbreviation of me.

i feel accomplished.

maybe see you around.