just went out tonight…got half drunk and did stupid stuff. i’m really sorry though cause i said a lot of bad stuff and messed up everything. i just push everything too far..why do i do that?? and fuuuck i’m not even that drunk. i’m just so sorry for all the stupid things i do and say while i pretend i’m drunk. i am fucked up and honestly i think..it just be like prozac nation if no one would control me.. i don’t know why i’m..so bitchy..?? help meee…i fuckin’ need help.. don’t wanna be like this no more..don’t wanna offend my friends no more : ((…why am i so f’ed up??

November 15, 2009

Such a great weekend.  Lisa’s party was so lovely.  Her book is beautiful, the hardback and the paperback with its French flaps.  Her poetry is lyrical and imaginative.  The chocolate room was as romantic as a weekend in Paris.  It was delicate and eggs with chocolate, truffles and cupcakes.  It was the like the inside of the kind of room you wanted to go into as a child but you weren’t allowed.  But here, you were.  Allowed.  In.  Invited.  A room you could walk into like entering a perfect egg. I loved this party.  It was amazing. 

 Today I recovered a bit and spent time with my daughter who was visiting with her girlfriend.  They were painting a room green.  We don’t have a style or a reason for anything in our house, but there was a paint sale on green and it matched the green scarf I often wear when I go by that room.  I feel pretty good about that room being green.  We maybe will put a green candle in there.  Hopefully there will be a sale on green candles.  Problem is we have two writers staying with us and that room is not ready, so one will stay in my writing room and one in the sun room.  Awkward.  On the couch.  We’ll apologize. 

 We’re thinking about prescription drug use and its overuse because we’re watching this movie Prozac Nation about these kids at Harvard.  Harvard, how does anyone get privileged enough to go there?  I don’t even know.  Great Lou Reed music and Christina Ricci and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are so beautiful and ardent. 

 It’s very hard for me to understand depression.  Elizabeth Wurtzell went to Harvard Sylvia Plath to Smith.  They were very fortunate in many ways, yet they were clinically depressed.  Being depressed doesn’t have a lot to do with how lucky you’ve been, it has to do with how you feel.  Elizabeth Wurtzell was fired for plagiarism from the Dallas Morning News and she failed the bar exam, that’s the bad thing about being famous, all this stuff is on the internet. I like that Wikipedia says that she had a history of therapy and suicide attempts.  I like how those two got wrapped up together. 

 A lot of people that I know are in therapy.  My mother-in-law told me once when I had tried therapy for a few short weeks, not to tell anyone.  Then I quit that therapy.  It was a short lived thing, but as I said I’ve only been in therapy maybe 6 weeks of my whole life, but most people I know have been in therapy for years and years.  They aren’t well even now, but they continue.  Here is the thing with long term therapy.  Like plastic surgery, if I saw someone with plastic surgery who looked 40 but was actually 70, I would think, sure, I’ll try it.  But that hasn’t happened. 

 My friends in years of therapy don’t seem any healthier than I do.  Well, that isn’t really saying much.  This is such a sad movie.  It’s a movie about a very mean person, it makes me want to read the book.  In the movie, the narrator seems completely cruel to her friends, to her mother, to her boyfriend; she is so horribly self absorbed that you cannot like anything about her, you cannot feel sorry for her.  The narrator takes Prozac, although it hasn’t been clearly determined to the audience that she is really depressed.  She just seems like  a person with no conscience; she’s just mean.  I know people like this, there’s someone at my work like that.  I assume most people have someone at their work who is mean for no reason.

 In 2005 27 million Americans were using antidepressants according to USA Today.  The idea according to the movie is that the Prozac covers up your problems so that you don’t have to deal with them.  What exactly do Americans have to be so depressed about, you might ask?  We are the richest nation on earth, and yet, we take the most anti-depressants.  I wouldn’t want to be a therapist, or a psychiatrist and decide if people should be taking drugs or not.  Some people need antidepressants.  Absolutely.  But as a nation, do 27 million of us need them?  I don’t know.  Hard to say.  This was one slow movie, like watching a caterpillar become a butterfly.  It felt like it took all summer, but in the end there really wasn’t a butterfly.  Our narrator was still mean, but she was a mean writer.  And, in my particular profession as an editor, it isn’t like I’ve never had a chance to meet one of them.  But, at least she’s honest.

 Tomorrow our event at the Geffen Playhouse.  It’s going to be great.  I look forward to seeing you there.   Marc Acito, Annie La Ganga and Lionel Rolfe reading and discussing their work in one of the most beautiful spaces in Los Angeles.

It was 1973 and there is an American social psychologist David Rosenhan who was confident that he could have “sane” people go into a mental health facility by fabricating symptoms of a mental disorder and get a common diagnosis. They went to the hospitals crisis center and claimed that they were hearing voices.  When asked what the voices were saying they responded “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud” (Rosenhan, 1973).  There were five men and three women who were pseudo patients. All eight were admitted to twelve different hospitals over a period of time. Upon admission on to the unit all of the pseudo patients stopped the fabrication of any symptoms. Seven of the pseudo patients were admitted to the mental health facility with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. One was diagnosed with Major Depression. However, all pseudo patients were discharged from the mental health facility with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia in remission.

During their hospitalization they took notes of everything; their surrounds, other patients’ reaction to them, and hospital staff. None of the hospital staff realized that they did not have any form of mental illness. All of the pseudo patients were prescribed medication to help with their “voices”, but none of them actually took it. They would “cheek their meds”. They would pretend to take it and then return to their rooms and flush it down the toilet. The pseudo patients soon realized everyone was “cheeking their meds”; as they would find other patients medications also being flushed down the toilet. Real patients were starting to notice that the pseudo patient did not have mental disorder. Nevertheless, they reassured the patients that “they were sick before” but improved during their hospital stay (Rosenhan, 1973). Even Rosenhan participated in his own study; he had an hour and a half conversation with the psychiatrist about something only mental health professionals would know, after getting the records of his hospital stay, the psychiatrist said that he had “delusions of grandeur”.

There were two parts to Rosenhan’s study the first part was to show how easy it was to get a diagnosis, the second part was to see how much hospital staff interacted with patients. Also they were to observe; if they maintained eye contact while asked a question and what kind of answer they received. Pseudo patients were to ask staff:”Pardon me, Mr. [or Dr. or Mrs.] X, could you tell me when I will be eligible for grounds privileges?” (or “… when I will be presented at the staff meeting?” or “… when I am likely to be discharged?”) (Rosenhan, 1973)  Most of the time pseudo patients got a one sentence answer when asking a nurse and usually had a very hard time even finding a psychiatrist to speak to; only one time did a pseudo patient have a full conversation with a nurse. Pseudo patient also noticed how much patient-staff segregation there was in four public hospitals; pseudo patient called the glassed areas “the cage” (Rosenhan, 1973). Pseudo patients saw that hospital staff rarely came out of the “cage”; they interpreted that as hospital staff was feeling as if they would catch their mental disorders.  Staff occasionally came out to “mingle” with patients while they were in the watching television. But only in one hospital did one staff member play cards with a patient. Hospital Staff usually only interacted with patients while doing the mandatory tasks such as running groups and giving out meds.

Patients often felt they were invisible to staff, they felt totally powerless and felt as if there was some major depersonalization going on. Patients were “shorn of credibility by virtue of his psychiatric label” (Rosenhan, 1973). Patients felt that their label of mental illness made them powerless in the eyes of the hospital staff. They had no privacy at all; the staff was not understanding at all with patients and would look at everything the patients did as pathological. Participants in the study knew they did belong in this sort of institution but they did succumb to some aspects of depersonalization, “a graduate student in psychology who was a participant, asked his wife to bring his textbooks to the hospital so he could catch up on his homework” (Rosenhan, 1973). The length of the pseudo patients’ hospitalizations ranged from seven to fifty-two days, with an average stay lasting nineteen days (Hansell and Damour, 2007). After Rosenhan disclosed that he sent pseudo patients into numerous mental health facilities, he said that one of more pseudo patients would be admitted in the next three months. Staff were to rate all new admissions on a ten point scale, one meant that the patient was a pseudo patient. “Over three months one hundred and ninety three patients were admitted but none of them were pseudo patients but forty-one patients were said to be fake by one staff member. Twenty-three were suspected by a psychiatrist and nineteen were suspected by a psychiatrist and a staff member” (Rosenhan, 1973).

A View from Being on the Inside

Being admitted into a mental health facility is a very scary thing. The whole process is very degrading, the body search, and staff going through ones belongings. Meeting with a psychiatrist for a maximum of ten minutes, who decides the fate of your mental status and changes one’s life as they know it because you now have a diagnosis. As in the Rosenhan study there were type-two errors happening; diagnosing one with a mental disorder/illness when they did not have one at all, as they were just pseudo patients in Rosenhan’s study. This is cause for great discomfort in one’s life as it changes everything; one now has a label that is put on them with their diagnosis, possibly not even being the correct one. One already has a label before the diagnosis as one being admitted to a mental health facility makes them “crazy”. Mental health has such a stigma attached to it, but with medical issues such as cancer there is not that stigma to stay away from one who has it. One having a mental disorder may have this illness as a pre existing condition, something that just happens beyond one’s control. It may be a chemical imbalance in ones brain, or an adaptation that had to happen in order for one to stay alive. Mental health should not have the kind of stigma that it has had since the ancient Greeks and Romans, it is 2009 and times are changing, technology is increasing. But yet there are still things scientists still do not know about it, “more people suffer from depression than heart disease, cancer and AIDS combined” (Skodol, 2007). One who suffers from a mental illness most likely always has an option to be on some type of medication; while medication can help some it may hinder others. Most hospital facilities tend to medicate for everything slowly adding to the idea of a “Prozac Nation”. It is fascinating that mental health facilities do not check their patients’ mouth to make sure they have taken their proper medication. In mental health facilities in 2009, they usually check ones mouth to make sure that medication is properly swallowed.

 There could be a correlation with Rosenhan’s study and the length of stay with patients in nineteen seventy-three. If patients were not taking their medication and disposing of it in the toilet as patients and pseudo patients did in the study they would not be able to receive the benefits of the medication. Medication can have great benefits for some patients especially patients with chemical imbalances within their brain. In 2009 in some mental health facilities the staff interacts with patients quite often, a lot more than in the Rosenhan study. Staff interaction can be a key component in maintaining calm, quiet within their unit. If staff does not interact with patients then they will not know if there is a patient having a difficult time. Also a psychiatrist should always observe a patients behavior because it could be different then what is exhibited within their consultations. Psychiatrists, nurses, and therapists should always be willing to answer ones questions when it concerns appropriate matters. As in Rosenhan’s study the patients of 2009 also feel as they have no privacy within a mental health facility mostly because of shared rooms. A lot of the common comforts of one’s home do not exist within a mental health facility; such as food choices and comfortable beds. But also patients have to realize that for some mental health facilities are not a choice, it is not a vacation destination. Mental health facilities do have their flaws but they do help one stay safe from danger.

Conclusion

David Rosenhan’s study showed the United States a lot about mental health and its practices. It also showed the stigma of mental health that still exists today. Pseudo patients got to experience what it is like to be in a mental health facility in the United States. Pseudo patients may still exist today within mental health facilities. Many aspects of the mental system got light shed on them, possibly changing the practices within them. Possibly having a smaller ratio between staff and patient, maybe more time out of “the cage”? Consequently, a change in medication procedures, limiting the amount of patients “cheeking” their meds by checking their mouths before they leave the medication window changes the effect of medication on a patient.  What has not changed from 1973 is the stigma of one’s mental illness. There is still a great deal of repercussion in relation to the type-two errors occurring in psychiatry. Misdiagnosis is prevalent among a percentage who claims to have a mental disorder. Just as in Rosenhan’s study with type-one errors there are professionals in mental health facilities today that feel some patients to be pseudo patients, in some cases it could be a manifestation of one’s symptoms, but no one really knows, not even scientists. When psychology students read of Rosenhan’s study they get to see the advancements in mental health and things that have remained the same. It is all in perspective.

As it is in fortune cookies, so it is in women’s lives and the choices they face… which is to say that, while the greatest measurable strides we’ve made have been in the realm of work–even, perhaps, as a result of those strides–we’ve found ourselves stumped when it comes to the choices we face over personal stuff, too.

And I’m talking beyond the question of whether to be a stay at home mom or a working mom: I’m talking about whether to have kids at all, and love, and sex, and marriage, and divorce. And what women who’ve been there have been willing to say about it. And what women who haven’t been there yet think about the women who have been there–and what they say about it.

There was Lori Gottlieb’s widely publicized and ballyhooed essay in The Atlantic, entitled “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” in which a life spent holding out for something–or someone–that would meet her great expectations is told from the perspective of the now 40-something, single mother Gottlieb. (The baby daddy? A test tube.) She writes that, as she ages, she finds herself much more willing to settle for something less than fabulous–and advises younger women that the really smart thing to do is to just settle for the balding dude with dragon breath.

Take the date I went on last night. The guy was substantially older. He had a long history of major depression and said, in reference to the movies he was writing, “I’m fascinated by comas” and “I have a strong interest in terrorists.” He’d never been married. He was rude to the waiter. But he very much wanted a family, and he was successful, handsome, and smart. As I looked at him from across the table, I thought, Yeah, I’ll see him again. Maybe I can settle for that. But my very next thought was, Maybe I can settle for better. It’s like musical chairs–when do you take a seat, any seat, just so you’re not left standing alone?

Then, on precisely the other end of the spectrum, there was Sandra Tsing Loh’s shockingly honest account of the end of her marriage, which included an offhand mention of the affair she had that precipitated it. She suggests that love has an expiration date, and that, in the face of having it all, the drudgery of reigniting that old, familiar flame seemed but a futile task on her already too-long list of To-Dos:

Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.

She introduces us to her friend Rachel, married to the seemingly perfect man (who hasn’t touched Rachel in over two years). One night over martinis, Rachel announces she, too, has been thinking divorce:

Rachel sees herself as a failed mother, and is depressed and chronically overworked at her $120,000-a-year job (which she must cling to for the benefits because Ian freelances). At night, horny and sleepless, she paces the exquisite kitchen, gobbling mini Dove bars. The main breadwinner, Rachel is really the Traditional Dad, but instead of being handed her pipe and slippers at six, she appears to be marooned in a sexless remodeling project with a passive-aggressive Competitive Wife.

…In any case, here’s my final piece of advice: avoid marriage–or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.

Whew. Between she and Gottleib, it certainly seems that we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

And then there was Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, who, at the wise old age of 42, recently lamented the loss of her looks, her loneliness, and the years she spent fleeing commitment, sabotaging stability, believing she’d always have options (and a wrinkle-free face). In the piece for Elle, a longer version of which will soon arrive at bookstores near you, Wurtzel writes:

The idea of forever with any single person, even someone great whom I loved so much like Gregg, really did seem like what death actually is: a permanent stop. Love did not open up the world like a generous door, as it should to anyone getting married; instead it was the steel clamp of the iron maiden, shutting me behind its front metal hinge to asphyxiate slowly, and then suddenly. Every day would be the same forever: The body, the conversation, it would never change–isn’t that the rhythm of prison?

Reader, she cheated on him.

(Primetime television’s answer to the mature modern woman’s romantic conundrum? Cougar Town.)

I remember reading each of these women’s stories, and bring them up because they were recently culled together into a piece by 25 year-old Irina Aleksander in the New York Observer, entitled “The Cautionary Matrons.” In it, Aleksander writes:

Our mothers and grandmothers seemed to have sound instructions. But now–now that the generation of women ahead of us has begun to sound regretful, shouting at us, “Don’t end up like me!”–what we have instead are Cautionary Matrons, issuing what feel like incessant warnings.

Single 40-something women warn us about being too career-oriented and forgetting to factor in children; married women warn us that marriage is a union in which sex and fidelity are optional; and divorced women warn us to keep our weight down, our breasts up and our skin looking like Saran Wrap unless we want our husbands to later leave us for 23 year-olds.

While her take is entertaining, the quotes she includes are downright spooky: though our own context might not be the same, the sentiments are quite possibly universal. Too many choices–and opportunity cost, when picking one means you necessarily can’t have the others.

From Gottlieb, to Aleksander:

The article was like I was someone’s big sister and I was saying here’s my experience and all of the misconceptions I had… I think you guys are actually lucky because you’ll get a more mixed set of messages. When I was in my 20s, women were all about having it all and ‘a guy is great but he is not the main course.’ We got a single message and it was all, me, me, me, me, me. ‘You go girl!’ And now those of us that grew up with these messages are finally admitting that those messages of empowerment may actually conflict with what we want.

And leave it to Tsing Loh to be so candid it will make you cringe, cry, and chuckle:

[Tsing Loh] speculated about the reason for this apparent surge in matronly warnings: ‘I think because we’re really surprised!’ she screamed into the receiver. ‘In our 20s, the world was totally our oyster. All those fights had been fought. We weren’t going to be ’50s housewives, we were in college, we could pick and choose from a menu of careers, and there were all these interesting guys out there not like our dads. We were smart women who had a lot of options and made intelligent choices and that’s why we’re writing these pieces. We’re shocked!’

‘It must be very confusing,’ she said sympathetically. ‘We were the proteges of old-guard feminists: ‘Don’t have a baby, or if you must, have one, wait till your 40s.’ We were sold more of a mission plan and now you guys… Well, sadly, it all seems like kind of a mess. There is no mission. Even stay-at-home moms feel unsuccessful unless they’re canning their own marmalade and selling it on the Internet. You just have a bunch of drunk, depressed, 45-year-old ladies going, ‘A-BLAH-BLAH-BLAH.’

Again, whew.

Aleksander goes on, recounting a conversation she had with a friend about the subject:

‘They are the first generation of women who were presented with choices,’ she said. ‘I think they are in the process of reflecting on a half-century of existence and are realizing that ‘having it all’ was really a lie. Sometimes I think the idea of ‘having it all’ can almost be more disempowering than ‘having it all’ because one is never allowed enough time or energy to excel in one area of their life.’

Choices. Uncharted territory. It looks to me like yet another mirror of our whole thesis: with so many options, is it ever possible not to second-guess ourselves? to wonder about the road not traveled? to worry that the grass is greener? to find yourself paralyzed in the face of all that analysis? When do you just take a seat, any seat? And, with all the seats out there, is it ever possible to be content with the seat we’ve chosen?

I don’t know, but I’m hopeful that one day, we’ll find the answer.

In bed.

I’ve just added a new page that features the Official Daronline Book list, and I was thinking that you might be interested in it. So Click the Daronline Booklist Page to read it

Joseph LeDoux’s book, “Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are” opens with his recounting of an incidental glance at a t-shirt, “I don’t know, so maybe I’m not” (a play on Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum“) that prompted him to explore how our brain encodes memory and how that leads to our sense of self.  More vividly, Elizabeth Wurtzel, in “Prozac Nation” recounts, “Nothing in my life ever seemed to fade away or take its rightful place among the pantheon of experiences that constituted my eighteen years. It was all still with me, the storage space in my brain crammed with vivid memories, packed and piled like photographs and old dresses in my grandmother’s bureau. I wasn’t just the madwoman in the attic — I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.” Both authors, like many others, have shared their personal reflections on the fact that – to put it far less eloquently than LeDoux and Wurtzl – “we” or “you” are encoded in your memories, which are “saved” in the form of synaptic connections that strengthen and weaken and morph through age and experience.  Furthermore, such synaptic connections and the myriad biochemical machinery that constitute them, are forever modulated by mood, motivation and your pharmacological concoction du jour.

Well, given that my “self” or “who I think of as myself” or ” who I’m aware of at the moment writing this blog post” … you get the neuro-philosophical dilemma here … hangs ever so tenuously on the biochemical function of a bunch of tiny little proteins that make up my synaptic connections – perhaps I should get to know these little buggers a bit better.

OK, how about a gene known as kalirin – which is named after the multiple-handed Hindu goddess Kali whose name, coincidentally, means “force of time (kala)” and is today considered the goddess of time and change (whoa, very fitting for a memory gene huh?).  The imaginative biochemists who dubbed kalirin recognized that the protein was multi-handed and able to interact with lots of other proteins.  In biochemical terms, kalirin is known as a “guanine nucleotide exchange factor” – basically, just a helper protein who helps to activate someone known as a Rho GTPase (by helping to exchange the spent GDP for a new, energy-laden GTP) who can then use the GTP to induce changes in neuronal shape through effects on the actin cytoskeleton.  Thus, kalirin, by performing its GDP-GTP exchange function, helps the actin cytoskeleton to grow.  The video below, shows how the actin cytoskeleton grows and contracts – very dynamically – in dendrites that carry synaptic spines – whose connectivity is the very essence of “self”.  Indeed, there is a lot of continuing action at the level of the synapse and its connection to other synapses, and kalirin is just one of many proteins that work in this dynamic, ever-changing biochemical reaction that makes up our synaptic connections.

In their paper”Kalirin regulates cortical spine morphogenesis and disease-related behavioral phenotypes” [doi: 10.1073/pnas.0904636106] Michael Cahill and colleagues put this biochemical model of kalirin to the test, by examining a mouse whose version of kalirin has been inactivated.  Although the mice born with this inactivated form are able to live, eat and breed, they do have significantly less dense patterns of dendritic spines in layer V of the frontal cortex (not in the hippocampus however, even though kalirin is expressed there).  Amazingly, the deficits in spine density could be rescued by subsequent over-expression of kalirin!  Hmm, perhaps a kalirin medication in the future? Further behavior analyses revealed deficits in memory that are dependent on the frontal cortex (working memory) but not hippocampus (reference memory) which seems consistent with the synaptic spine density findings.

Lastly, the authors point out that human kalirin gene expression and variation has been associated with several neuro-psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, ADHD and Alzheimer’s Disease.   All of these disorders are particularly cruel in the way they can deprive a person of their own self-perception, self-identity and dignity.  It seems that kalirin is a goddess I plan on getting to know better.  I hope she treats “me” well in the years to come.

Two films… two stories… two worlds.

CASHBACK (2006)

After a painful break up with his first girlfriend Suzy, Ben, an aspiring artist, develops insomnia. To take his mind off his problem he spends his nights working at a local supermarket, where he meets colorful characters.

imdb

This movie is a real jewel. I ran into it for chance because it’s not so famous and it was a good discover. It has an innovative perspective and a good introspection. It’s worth it!

PROZAC NATION (2001)

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wurtzel is a teenager accepted into Harvard with a scholarship in journalism. She has been raised by her divorced mother Mrs. Wurtzel since she was two years old, but she misses her father and feels needy and depressive.

imdb

Another movie not so known. On the whole I liked the movie, but sometimes some scenes are too long… in my opinion. It’s a good portrait of a strange feeling/condition… depression. Christina Ricci is an amazing actress..

Have you watched these movies yet?

XOXO MARYG90

I Accidentally Wrote This for You, Elizabeth Wurtzel

 by Cody Peters

Let me tell you about right now.

I am probably going to die, as my blood is full of Ritalin, Vicodin, Testosterone

Should I do a beer? If you say “yes” then that means you want me to die!

People should think a little bit about certain things.

The way I see it right now, they feel when should think

and think when they should feel.

Right now is a 2:34 AM nightmare and sleep is not even close to maybe

So the iron horse has tempted death the day after Michael Jackson died.

I can’t be without drugs and the shift from the real.

They can’t be with me without drugs and the shift from the real,

I am a monster and I have so much pain.

I just couldn’t think of trying to conquer any more.

Am I wrong to realize when I am beaten?

I am so sick, the heart in my chest is no longer my own.

Why it keeps beating is a God secret I hope he never learns.

Or payback will be a baddie.  God is a little flighty, but stern.

Right now I am afraid to sleep.  I fear the loneliness of the pillow.

This life has been so to burn the life away.  My dreams are dead and I am alive.

My heroes had it the other way around.  I am an extraordinary spirit in a mundane life.

Stuck without the will to weather any pain.  So no suicide!

My mind is not going to stop.  I am not in control.

I only know how to dodge, not endure (any more)

I am so battered from my life that the sadness is too overwhelming.

I wish I fell in love.  I did, but each time it was ripped as a piece of my heart.

Perhaps it tempered it so it can endure my need for anything to shift my real.

I know I will not heal.  I love and believe, but I just got a bad hand.

I play this game with the best cards in my hand that do not connect to make me a winner.

I look great losing though, I am Elizabeth Wurtzel without the Ivy.

I am Layne Staley without the magic.

I am Michael Jackson when it comes to being slain by the world you wish would love you.

Mostly, after reading all of the books on Amazon about drug addiction and depression

I realized that no one really understands me.  Awwww.  These days, nobody cares.

I wait for an email, a call, a visit, a drug, a change in my brain that will stop the heavy

That keeps me driven to escape so far and endanger my self.

For all who don’t have their own times, you have it all wrong.

Drugs don’t make a junkhead high, they are like this:

Our Elite Race of stoners, junkies, and freaks live in a constant rainstorm

We look at the boring normal people and see that they all have umbrellas

We were never given one, so we are getting cold, shivering, and soaked.

Drugs are our umbrella.  So we can be more like you.

Sure it’s like the five-dollar one you buy on the street, but most of the rain is blocked.

That is, until the umbrella starts to fade like Cinderella.

Then the cold comes again and we get sick.

We go seeking another umbrella, ironically for our own health.

Then this hunt consumes.  We are a closed cycle of umbrella patrons.

Well, since umbrellas equal drugs in this ditty, we are the famed “drug-seekers”

It’s really just a rain thing, don’t sweat it.

But I can suffer deep pain from somewhere. A broken life perhaps?

Or I can finally give up at 30 and try to avoid the hurt.

Right now I’m coated in chemicals and in love with the idea of dating Elizabeth Wurtzel

She would love me.  She’ll never see me because of her status.  Bad for us.

We would take it by the core and she’d foil my baddies so we could start better trouble.

Elizabeth, you were me and I will be you.  If this is true then I would call a big fan like me

Don’t you want to at least write to me and tell me some good books to read?

Or NYC hangouts?  Share stories of your societe, miss cocktail party.

I’ll give you back some years and you boost me a few.  We’re of a mind that is mystery.

I am amazed by my stanza to EW.  I’ll send her this.  If she doesn’t respond

Then I know she’s not nearly like me at all. 

Aren’t you at least curious?

Right now I am looking for what I need.

I always do and am fooled or am lost.

How low do you go before impact?

I must be so damn close

Here comes a crash.

Do you think it will hurt? 

Slipping into eternity with a Ritalin pupil dilated so

I don’t miss a thing.

Ich denke ich bin mal wieder einen längeren Artikel schuldig. Das klingt, als würde ich das hier nicht freiwillig machen, es ist nur so, dass ich alles immer möglichst gut machen will und dann wird es leicht anstrengend…

Da ist dieser Satz in Prozac Nation von Elizabeth Wurtzel… „All I ever wanted was to be good.“ Es klingt wahnsinnig blöd, aber ich habe mal ernsthaft versucht, das erste Kapitel dieses Buches auswendig zu lernen, einfach damit mir nie wieder die Worte fehlen wenn mich jemand fragt, wie es mir geht, oder wie es sich anfühlt… auseinander zu fallen. Ich fand, dieses Buch trifft es einfach perfekt, Wort für Wort. Ich hab die Idee aber verworfen, vor allem deshalb, weil ich nur die englische Ausgabe hatte und irgendjemanden mit diesem Monolog auch noch auf Englisch zu überrollen hätte die Sache einen Tick zu theatralisch gemacht. Sogar für mich.

Aber es stimmt, ich wollte immer ‚gut‘ sein… das ist wahrscheinlich der Grund warum ich nicht weiß, was ich sagen soll, wenn mich jemand fragt, wie es mir geht. Und ich meine jetzt nicht das rhetorische „Alles OK?“… selbst wenn mich mein (neuer, wieder mal) Psychiater reinruft setze ich vorher ein Lächeln auf. Und deshalb bin ich selbst schuld, dass ich niemals adäquate Behandlung bekommen werde, denn alles was Ärzte oder Therapeuten tun, wenn man sagt, es gehe einem gut, oder es gehe einem OK, oder selbst wenn man vorsichtig bemerkt, man hätte einen schlechten Tag… was sie tun ist, sie freuen sich über einen weiteren glücklichen Patienten, schütteln einem die Hand und sagen man soll in 4 Wochen wieder kommen.

Und dabei ist dieser Typ zurzeit wahrscheinlich der einzige Mensch, bei dem ich mich nicht zurückhalten sollte. Ich sollte ihn überschütten. Ich sollte ihm unmissverständlich sagen, dass es nicht mehr Ok ist, dass ich dieses Leben so nicht mehr will, dass ich emotional kaputt bin, und mir wünsche wenigstens innerlich tot zu sein, damit ich einfach als Leblose Hülle, der es egal ist, dass die Welt die Hölle ist, mein Leben zu Ende leben kann, ohne weiterhin fühlen zu müssen. Ich sollte in Tränen ausbrechen und es ihm so lange erklären, bis er es versteht.
Denn bevor man nicht mit einem abgerissenen Strick um den Hals reinkommt kapieren sie’s nicht.

Vielleicht wirke ich mittlerweile auch zu zahm, weil Selbstmord keine Option mehr ist. Nicht solange einige meiner engsten Verwandten noch leben. Diese Erkenntnis hat sich mir eingebrannt, als ich in die Psychiatrie eingewiesen wurde und gesehen habe, was das schon mit ihnen gemacht hat. Es ist verdammt hart, wenn lange gehütete Kartenhäuser des Schweigens zum Einsturz gebracht werden. Zumindest jetzt empfinde ich so. Vielleicht lässt es nach, wenn die Erfahrung verblasst, aber bis dahin brauchen die Leute die gehofft haben, ich würde mir irgendwann vor laufender Web-Cam den Rest geben, erstmal nicht mehr mitlesen.

Es kommt mir einfach nicht über die Lippen, wie so vieles Andere. Ich bin eine Niete, was Kommunikation angeht, ich ersticke an den Worten, die ich sagen müsste, um meine Beziehungen zu retten, meine Bekannten/Freunde zu behalten, um überhaupt irgendjemanden so nahe heranzulassen, dass sich eine Beziehung, egal ob intim oder freundschaftlich, ‚echt‘ anfühlen könnte. Der wahre Grund, warum ich allein bin, bin ich.

Eine weitere Lektion in Sachen Selbstsabotage gefällig? Ok, ich werde demnächst wieder in Therapie sein. Das ging so plötzlich, weil ich herausgefunden habe, dass die Uni tatsächlich eine Beratungsstelle hat, die richtige Psychotherapie anbietet. Da gibt es eine offene Sprechstunde, die quasi als Vorgespräch zu einer längeren Therapie dient, sollte es als dienlich befunden werden. Das lustige ist, dass es mir an diesem Tag nicht besonders gut ging, ich mir eine Lorazepam eingeworfen habe, und dann in eine dieser galgenhumorigen Stimmungen geraten bin. Ich hab mich also relativ schick gemacht und gehofft, ich würde an eine TherapeutIN geraten (ist das chauvinistisch?). Dazu muss man sagen, dass es Tage gibt, an denen ich mich selbst für übermäßig gut aussehend halte, zumindest wenn ich mich aufraffen kann mir die Haare zu waschen.
Nach einer Ewigkeit im Wartezimmer, das mit Sesseln ausgestattet war, die bequem sein sollen, in denen man aber so tief einsinkt, dass man mit dem Kopf auf den Knien liegt (das muss die 70er Jahre Vorstellung von bequem gewesen sein), wurden meine Hoffnungen in unerwartetem Maß erfüllt – eine Therapeutin schüttelte mir die Hand. Aber was noch viel besser war, und womit ich nicht in meinen Therapie-(Alp)träumen gerechnet hätte – sie fragte mich gleich, ob ich wohl etwas dagegen hätte, wenn eine Psychologiestudentin mit anwesend wäre. Meine Antwort ist klar – NEIN. Ich wurde in den Therapie-Raum geführt und fand besagte Studentin als sehr hübsch und ausgesprochen Sympathisch vor. Um dem Impuls zu wiederstehen, mich rückwärts aus dem Fenster fallen zu lassen, setzte ich mich.
Auf jeden Fall kann man sich wohl vorstellen, wie dieses ‚Vorgespräch‘ abgelaufen ist. Ich – so kokett, witzig, charmant wie ich nur sein kann – Die Frage nach der Krankengeschichte – meine Antwort: in Behandlung wegen ‚Borderline‘ – Sitzung gelaufen.
Was ich noch mitbekomme, als ich rausrenne, um mich vor ein  Auto zu werfen: ich soll in drei Wochen zu meiner ersten regulären Sitzung kommen; die Studentin fragt, ob sie wieder dabei sein dürfe; ich sage Ja.

Die Frage, die bleibt: wie kann man nur so blöd sein?
Diese Therapie war schon zum scheitern verurteilt, als ich meine Wohnung verlassen habe. Und dann bediene ich im Gespräch jedes erdenkliche Klischee, das über Menschen wie mich existiert, sage auch noch meine Diagnose und alles woran ich dabei denke, ist wie ich mich möglichst interessant und sympathisch präsentiere, nur weil mir da eine Frau gegenüber sitz, von der ich insgeheim hoffe, dass sie mit mir ausgehen und sich in mich verlieben wird. Egal, wie eloquent ich es ausdrücke, so einfach laufen meine innersten Antriebsmechanismen ab.

Aber ich denke, interessant zu wirken war nicht schwer, denn die Wahrheit ist doch, die unbedarfte Öffentlichkeit liebt Borderline-Persönlichkeiten. Auf unerfahrene Therapeuten trifft das wahrscheinlich auch zu. Jeder Träumt davon, mal etwas extremes oder übertriebenes oder unangebrachtes zu tun – und wir tun es. Mit uns wird es nie langweilig, wir geben interessante Geschichten her, es ist ein Leben voller Schlagzeilen. Wir sind jung und klug und hübsch, müssen wir ja sein, sonst würden wir es nicht schaffen so schwierig zu sein und trotzdem, wenn uns danach ist, die Nähe zu bekommen, ohne die wir ja eingehen.

Alle wollen uns – solange sie nur nicht mit uns leben müssen. Von außen betrachtet mögen wir manchmal wie die Rockstars des Alltags wirken, aber eine oberflächliche Betrachtung zeigt nicht, was alles auf der Strecke bleibt. Man muss hinter die Klischees sehen, dann offenbart sich das Nachspiel, die Konsequenzen, wie wir verzweifelt versuchen eine Ausbildung oder einen Job zu behalten, und wie so viele dabei scheitern. Wenn man mit uns leben muss, sieht man, wo diese Krankheit hinführt – in Kliniken und Psychiatrien, in Studienabbrecherquoten und unterbezahlte, trostlose Tätigkeiten, in die Abhängigkeit von Sozialhilfe und Frührenten, zur Verschwendung jedweden eventuell einmal vorhandenen gewesenen Potentials, in die totale Vereinsamung und vielleicht in ein frühes Grab. Mit Anderen Worten: zum Scheitern von gesamten Existenzen. Daran ist nichts hübsch. Es ist eine Krankheit, die starke persönliche Einschränkungen mit sich bringt, und es sehr schwer oder fast unmöglich macht ein erfolgreiches, befriedigendes Leben zu führen.
Jeder wünscht sich, mal über die Stränge zu schlagen. Aber wenn man nicht damit aufhören kann, wird es lästig.

Die Wahrheit ist, ich weiß nicht, wie ich so weiterhin leben soll. Ich glaube, ein paar gute Monate gehabt zu haben, macht die Sache gerade so schrecklich. Es ist der Beweis für mich und alle Anderen, dass ich doch niemals frei sein werde. Mein Umfeld war dabei, sich daran zu gewöhnen, dass das Leben mit mir leichter geworden ist, und ich war es auch. Und jetzt zu sehen, dass das alles nur ein Aufschub war, wirkt wie ein grausamer Trick, es macht mich so abstoßend. Und die Wahrheit ist – ich fühle mich einsamer denn je. Ich kann mir selbst weniger in die Augen sehen denn je. Ich sehe nur noch einen elenden, selbstmitleidigen Versager. Und es ekelt mich.

One of my favourite authors when I was a teenager (and probably still now if I read it) was Elizabeth Wurtzel. She’s the clever and acid-tongued wordsmith who penned Prozac Nation for which she received international acclaim (and criticism).

I think I read three of her four books in the same summer – once I had a taste of one, I lapped up the next (More, Now, Again) and then another (Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women [and my god, was I ever a difficult teenager; nay, I'm still difficult]). I read The Secret of Life: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women some years later and it made less of an impression on me than did its predecessors.

In all likelihood I was so touched by Wurtzel’s words then because I felt, probably like any other teenaged girl, misunderstood, full of some inexplicable angst, and somehow stifled by my all too familiar surroundings. I did not know then that the key to what I thought was me being so complicated was held by any female who had lived beyond adolescence and realised the error of their ways.

It was a bit like stepping back into this memory lane when I learned that she had written an article for Elle magazine, which fortunately was published in its entirety online. Its most Wurtzelian title is, of course, Beauty Fades, Loneliness is Forever. Instead of viewing her as a peer, this time round I’m taking in what she says as wisdom I have yet to acquire (the trials and tribulations of my future should teach me well).

She has not lost that trademark inherent bitterness, but even she is not immune to hindsight being something closer to 20/20 than some glossed-over glaucoma (doubtless because her past is not so sweet).

“…Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you’ve got all this great wisdom, you don’t get to be young anymore. And in this world, that’s just about the worst thing that can happen—especially to a woman. Whoever said youth is wasted on the young actually got it wrong; it’s more that maturity is wasted on the old. I was both emotionally unkempt and mentally unhinged—deeply depressed, drugged, sensitive, and nasty all at once—during the years I was supposed to be spousing up. My judgment was so lousy, I probably deserve plentiful wedding gifts—Tiffany silverware to serve several dozen—for all the people I didn’t marry, because the men I dated were awfully bad choices, and I was not such a good bet myself.

These days, I am a stable adult professional—a practicing attorney, capable of common sense—but I still know how to live life on the edge. I was a terrifically brooding and mature teenager, then a whiny and puerile adult, and now I may finally approximate the grace of a person who has come of age. But it took a very long time—probably far too long. Now that I am a woman whom some man might actually like to be with, might actually not want to punch in the face—or, at least, now that I don’t like guys who want to do that to me—I am sadly 41. I am past my perfect years…”

Read it. She’s flawed but I still admire her.

Copyright © 2009 WrappedUpInBooksBlog. All rights reserved.

"Cliche" should be a symbol - like the Hammer & Sickle - of the populace

So, recently I’ve been thinking a bit about the usefulness/practicality of Cliches (such as the quintessential ice-breaker employed at the beginning of this sentence, “so”).  My typically cynical response to the ultraoverused words/phrases has been softened by a book, “Prozac Nation.”  This book is not only full of pop-culture cliches, but is, in fact a Cliche (proper Noun) in & of itself.  In spite of this (or maybe because of it), I have found its message to be disconcertingly helpful and therapeutic.

The author’s “everyone has problems, but mine are a bit more complicated” approach is simultaneously annoying and…correct.  Cliches are functional because they are Accurate, not because they’re well-crafted.  Cliches are language-made-populist.  Kind of like a less-bullshit Warhol. They are Pop-Art for Grammar.

We interviewed Elizabeth Wurtzel in my reporting class. Here’s what I have to say about it:

She’s got a best-selling book in her repertoire, 1994’s “Prozac Nation,” also the impetus to a film adaptation starring acclaimed actress Christina Ricci, a spot in one of New York’s top law firms, but author-turned-attorney Elizabeth Wurtzel is still depressed.

 

“I have always and probably will always, in some way, struggle with depression,” said Wurtzel in a recent interview.

 

She wears her infamy about as comfortably as the massive fur coat draped about her shoulders, which she is quick to justify as PETA-friendly; “I promise it’s vintage,” said Wurtzel, an unprompted response to a room of New York University journalism students.

 

And it’s hard to blame her. Do a Google search for “Elizabeth Wurtzel” and a number of juicy tidbits avail themselves. First, that she’s authored three books and appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone. Next, that media gossip site Gawker has a thing to say about her controversial love life; the third result on the search page is a post titled “On Knowing Elizabeth Wurtzel Screwed David Foster Wallace.” And finally, that an unfiltered image search will produce a topless shot on the second page.

 

To say Wurtzel’s been in the limelight, not always on her own terms, may be something of an understatement. But what has fame brought her?

 

“It doesn’t solve anything,” said Wurtzel. “When you’re depressed, you’re depressed.” And despite the widespread attention both she and her seminal tome “Prozac Nation” have earned, she suggests that she doesn’t quite separate herself from jes plain folks.

 

“You have literary success or whatever, but you’re still taking the garbage out,” she said of life after “Prozac Nation.” But most don’t come in from the dumpster to gaze upon degrees from Harvard College and Yale Law School, a coffee table full of magazines they’ve been published in.

 

Still, chatting with CNN producer Phil Rosenbaum’s reporting class, even breaking for pizza with students and offering her email address to interested parties after the interview, Wurtzel was admittedly at ease, her rapport spanning topics from celebrity gossip to television dramas.

 

“I watch Law & Order re-runs…  I actually just watched the E! True Hollywood Story on the Kardashians… they seem like a nice family, in a weird way,” said Wurtzel.

 

She struggles with the bar examination, a requisite for those who want to practice law, criticizes the popularization of Brooklyn as a hip spot for married couples (“It’s Kabul, Afghanistan before it’s Cobble Hill; I can’t hear one more time that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan”), enthusiastically talks about her dog, and ponders the effect the internet has on blind dating.

 

You wouldn’t think so leafing through her books, trolling internet blogs, or maybe even at first glance, but Elizabeth Wurtzel is almost painstakingly normal; melancholic, occasionally depressive, prone to romantic foibles, self-involved and concerned about little more than the nebulous “world around her.”

 

She’s a best-selling author, yes, a big-time attorney, and indeed, still depressed.

 

Who wouldn’t be?

The average human beings pay for drugs or happy pills to get themselves out of this world while some intellectuals rely on medicated drugs to live in the reality of this world.

LIfe is full of twisted irony…

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel