No chickens crossing the street...

It's early in the morning and any time now the sun is going to come up. It will not be the spectacular sight I make it out to be. It will slowly get light and there will not be musical accompaniment as there would be in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough. It will be a very understated event. An every day occurrence.

On top of that, it is foggy now and it will be cloudy later, so you can well imagine that it will not look like I am on the Serengeti Plains. Today will be just a bad weather day in the Netherlands in July. We're stuck under a low pressure system. 

It would be nice if life were accompanied by a permanent appropriate soundtrack, but there is no such thing, although I guess people with iPods would disagree with that. Maybe it would become somewhat nerve wrecking after a while if every experience were set to music, even if it was the music of your choice. 

I would need a lot of Baroque, for instance. Lots of Bach. That would fit my life best. For me no highly dramatic, sweeping movements by Mahler. That would be way too emotional. I would only go as far as Vivaldi for the bigger events. 

Let's face it, though. There are no really big events in my life anymore. They're all well behind me. All I have left now is the preciseness of every day predictability and the false sense of control that I try to keep over it. 

I say it is a false sense because you rarely can control all the events in your life. You are always left vulnerable because you're a human being and part of a whole. You'd have to be a recluse not to be exposed to that. 

***

I watched a fun thriller last night. It was called 'Sherlock' and yes, there was a Dr Watson, but it played in the present time and there was no question of time travel. There had never been another Sherlock Holmes. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a brilliant episode and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope there's another episode on soon because I'll be watching it with pleasure. 

***

Yesterday was a shitty day. I was in a state of depression practically all day. It didn't lift until the evening, like it usually does when the day is over. I don't know what to make of it and I don't know what the cause of it is. I'll blame it on the weather for lack of a better reason. 

I do so intensely dislike my moods and the eternal shifts in them that I find unpredictable. I always try to find the reason, but it is not always obvious and when I think I have found it, it very often doesn't turn out to be the right one. 

All I can hope for is a shift toward a better mood and that this doesn't take too long. I do feel like a puppet on a string. 

***

I must go back to bed. I've got some sleeping left to do. Today should be a quite ordinary day without surprises in it. I've got to do some chores, but nothing spectacular. There is going to be rain and it should be a good day to read. 

Have a good day, all of you.

Ciao,

Nora

Completely...

It's in the middle of the night and I'm completely wide awake, smoking the last of my cigarettes until I go to the pharmacy first thing in the morning to pick up my nicotine patches. When I first got up I was miserable and grumpy and out of sorts and chain smoking, until I had my cup of coffee and then I was okay and a more reasonable human being. Coffee does set me to rights and I can never do without it. It's like a medicine to me. I sorts out my brain. I'm convinced of the healing powers of caffeine in my case. I don't know what it does for you, but for me it is a very positive experience.

I read blogs, which I was behind on, and left comments on most of them. Some of them I had not read in three days, so I was shamefully behind. I had not been in the proper mood and could not bring myself to read them, let alone comment on them. I am caught up now and can relax again. I feel I've had my enjoyment and done my duty. I read some blogs that I hardly ever comment on, because I feel a little bit like a stranger there, but I'm a faithful follower. I hope the fact that I show up counts for enough.

I had not planned to stay up, but now that I am, I am going to make the most of it and enjoy myself. I'm in such a good mood now that I want to take advantage of that and let the situation last as long as possible. I'm not going to spoil it by going to bed. There's not a hair on my head that's thinking about it anyway. I'm too excited to go to bed just now.

I do have very interesting dreams when I sleep and I wonder how much they are influenced by what I hear on the radio while I'm asleep. I have elements in my dreams that were not there before, so I'm sure they are coming from outside, but I give my own twist to them and incorporate them into my own fantasies. Music is part of it and I do dream about that regularly, but have people play it whom I know very well. Or have them sing songs. Still, although I listen to a Dutch radio station, all my dreams take place in the English language, of that I'm sure, and I find that interesting. My dreams are all very dramatic and look like large screen movie productions with special effects and a music score and everything. Like a filmed opera, I suppose. There's wailing going on too, sometimes. Lord only knows what I listen to at night.

I talked to my sister yesterday and she told me that her party went on until 2:30 in the morning. Can you imagine lasting that long? I would have called it quits by midnight. I'm so obviously not a party animal and my sister so obviously is. She always has a lot of fun in a crowd of people. I do better in small intimate groups. She's a very outgoing person, a real extrovert and shares herself with anyone and everybody. I'm more introverted and private and share myself sparingly. Except on my blog, that's the exception. I share myself here because I can be contemplative and choose my words carefully and show what I want to show, although I'm not that secretive about myself. For the most part, I'm pretty open and tell it like it is in a mostly rational way.

For the past few days I've felt a bit down and I thought that maybe I was getting depressed, but it seems to have lifted now and I feel better. I suppose those are just the natural cycles that people go through that I have to get used to. Not every mood has to have a significant meaning, except for the last one I had, which was distinctly hypomanic and could have gotten me into a lot of trouble. As it is, the damage was relatively small and I didn't do anything too crazy, except for buying a new sofa and coffee table and area rug. That's still within reason, just about. I'm going to pay them off with the money I save on the tobacco I won't be buying anymore. That adds up to a large amount of money.

I'm afraid of the black dog that's always stalking me in the background, but maybe he will stay in the background this season. I've had years when he didn't appear at all, and maybe this will be one of them. I'm as prepared as I can be and have all systems in place. I know I can count on the light therapy lamp to elevate my mood, there's no doubt about that. It's a shame that I had lost faith in it and didn't use it last year. It would have saved me a lot of bother.

Yesterday afternoon I didn't have an Internet connection. I reset the modem four times, unsuccessfully. I finally called the help desk and they talked me through the procedure and it turned out in the end that the cable in the hard drive wasn't plugged in properly. Duh! I think Tyke must have pulled it loose when he went to retrieve his ball. It sure puzzled me and I hadn't thought of that solution, but I will from now on. It will be the first place I look if and when it happens again. You learn a new lesson every day. It makes you appear a little dumb, but I don't care about that. Let them think what they want, as long as I have my connection back.

Well, I'm going to enjoy the last hours of my smoking life. I have to stock up on some air freshener and Febrèze. I'm going to treat the whole apartment and do lots of laundry. I will have the place smelling good in no time.

Have a good day!

Ciao,
Nora

Rest...

I want to stop being in this drama now. I realize I created it myself, but I did not do it on purpose; it was not my choice. I want it to end and for things to get back to normal, as far as that is possible in my life. I'm aware of the fact that I will never know a "normal" life by regular standards, but I can act as close to it as possible. Or at least try to. I have to give myself a chance to get back on the rails and that includes not rehashing everything every time I turn around. I am wounded, but I'm still alive and I need the opportunity to carry on with things. So, I'm going to ignore emails now that deal with this past weekend and not answer them anymore, because it's just like raking up the coals and starting the fire all over again and very exhausting.

I also want to point out that I have two diagnoses: manic depression and borderline personality disorder, and sometimes it's hard to tell where one ends and the other one begins. Sometimes I don't know if I'm undergoing the rapid cycling of the manic depression or the quick mood changes that belong to the borderline personality disorder. The latter has a lot of drama in her and an overdose of emotions that comes pouring out of her as if her whole house is being flooded. That person is very unstable and things are not good when she has the upper hand. I think she had the upper hand this weekend. That's also the person who self damages as I did this weekend. I cut my wrists, but the knife was dull and I did limited damage.

I talked to my psychiatrist yesterday over the phone. He had gotten the report of the crisis hot line and knew what had happened, but had me tell it in my own words anyway. He agreed on the increase in medication, but said it would take a few days before I would really notice a difference. That's what I thought too. It wouldn't be so that I would take one pill extra and that would be it. He made an appointment to see me next week Monday and I thought that was an awfully long time from now, but I guess it can't be helped. I'm seeing my SPN the day after, because she will be back from her holiday by then.

This is the only time I'm going to talk about the weekend anymore and the aftermath. I went to my GP in the afternoon to have my wrists looked at and they were disinfected and had some strips put on them and they were re-bandaged. They have to stay that way for a week. They are sore.

It's early in the morning and I'm drinking my second cup of coffee. I've had one glass of juice, because despite the fact that I think it makes me sad, I want to get my vitamins in. It's the fresh multivitamin fruit juice that I like so much. The coffee tastes awfully strong this morning. It packs a real punch. I think that's one of the reasons I'm only going to have two cups.

I'm sitting here yawning and I'm really ready to go back to sleep. I will in awhile, after I've taken my medicines. I'm reading a good book called The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. I've only just started it and I'm already hooked. She has such an engaging way of writing. That's what I'll read this morning before I fall asleep again.

Right, off I go. Have a good morning when you get up.

Ciao,

Nora

.

A long nap.

I suddenly had to stop writing my last post, because I was overcome with sleep and had to go take a nap in my bed under the duvet. I slept for nearly 3 hours and felt better when I woke up. All day long, though, I have been trying to get rid of a sad feeling that is at the root of everything I do and say. There is a distinguished lack of happiness and courage to the point that I have to force myself to act like I felt two days ago, so that nobody will notice the difference and think that my medicine isn't working, while in fact that is probably just the case.

I think I'm not functioning well on just one tablet of the Welbutrin and that I miss the second tablet very much. I've always reacted immediately to the tablets from the first moment I took them and I think not taking the second one is draining me. I noticed it again tonight when I took my other medication at 6 o'clock. I sat here all worn out and unenthused and unhappy and I just could not get excited about what I was doing. At 7:30 I made a decision and took a second tablet and I'm now waiting for it to start working.

I'm turning things back to the original scenario and will have to inform my SPN tomorrow. I am going to see what I can do about influencing my moods myself by going to bed on time and getting enough sleep and not letting myself get pulled along by the drama of the events. I have to try and stay calm and in control at all costs and I know that I can do that. My psychiatrist and my SPN made their decisions based on my interpretation of the event and that influenced their reaction to it and it may have been totally overdone.

Anyway, here I am sitting writing another post again and eating Brie, which is very good, but I can only have a little bit of it. I bought some expensive decaf and I'm now going to taste it. Well, it's not bad as decafs go. I can live with it.

Outside the weather has changed. It's a lot cooler and it's raining. I just had to let Tyke out back, but I was cold standing there with my bare arms. I'm wearing a short sleeved top now and my green scarf wrapped around my neck, which provides a lot of warmth. It's the best invention since the wheel.

As is usual, I'm wasting a lot of time writing this and it will be bedtime when I'm done. That's okay, I'm ready to go to sleep, I think. I'm looking forward to crawling under the covers and sleeping. I'm a little bit worried about taking the antipsychotic, but I'm going to take it at the normal amount, so it should be okay. I'd like to take even less than what I take now, but that's something for the near future to be decided upon.

I'm boring and I'm going to quit writing,

Have a good night, everyone.

Ciao,
Nora

Neither here nor there...

An infinitesimal amount of people visited my blog today. I will not for one minute worry about being well known enough and start thinking of marketing strategies or popularity campaigns, though I'm sure that all such schemes exist. I've noticed that the most simple and insignificant blogs pull in the most followers and that long winded ramblers like me seldom get high up there in the ratings. There's too much to read and people just want something quick and not a treatise on life at my house. However, I always have much to say, and since it's my blog and I will keep saying it, I won't start worrying until the numbers start to really dwindle. Until I'm a lone voice in the desert.

I know that when I write a post about suicide attempts, or self harm, or a total nervous breakdown, with all the drama and tears to go with it, my readership suddenly goes up and I don't know why that is. So, I'm thinking that I must start making things up and have one of those events happen regularly and have lots of drama happen in my life, just as things are slowing down to a dull roar.

I also should post lots of pictures, because people seem to like them, so I'll have to start taking lot's of photographs of Tyke and the cats, which reminds me that I have to put batteries in my camera.

There, I took a bunch of pictures and then had to edit or delete them and locate them on the computer and stick them in a map where I could find them and it was all a little bit tiresome on a new computer. It didn't quite work the same way it did on my old computer, so I had to cheat a bit. A lot of my photographs are stored in Documents, because I could not get them into Images, and I had to store these in Documents also.

I just had to take my medicines and make myself a cup of coffee, because I had a complete sinking in moment. Suddenly life didn't seem all that wonderful and I hope to get over it quickly as soon as I've had my cup of coffee. I know, they are only fleeting feelings.

I bought a cigarette holder today that had a sticker on it that said, "Push here to open," and of course the first thing I did was remove the sticker, so now nobody will know how to open it but me. I also found an old watch with an adjustable metal band in my jewelry box and managed to get it off and attach it to the watch that was still working, but had a broken band. So, I solved that problem. Now the Exfactor doesn't need to go get a new battery for the other watch that stil has a band. The watch I have on is prettier and I bought it myself. It was one of my first purchases as a single woman.


I´m done writing this post now. I´m not all that satisfied with it, but I´m going to publish it anyway. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don´t. think I started out feeling like a nut when I first began this one. You know what you do when you write an unsatisfactory post, don´t you? You immediately start writing another one. I have the feeling that I´m staying up late tonight. It is Saturday after all and I must have my wild night too.

Have a good evening.

Ciao,
Nora

Compulsion.

Feeling constantly driven to write, I have to do it now again, although I wrote a post during the night that no one has responded to yet. It doesn't matter, I write for myself at this point. It's an exercise in being alive and aware and letting my brain work around the details of my life, small and insignificant as they are. Let's face it, I certainly don't live a life of high drama and adventure. I only have high drama when things don't go well and I hit one of my low points and extensively write about it. Adventure never happens in my life anymore, that's a thing of the past, when I was younger and more daring and didn't give a hoot about the consequences. The most adventurous thing I do nowadays is cross four lanes of busy traffic on my bicycle, or ride over cobblestoned streets at high speed because I just came off the incline of the bridge, Yes, I do have to squeeze the hand brakes a little bit then to not hit those absentminded pedestrians that wander into the street.

So anyway, high adventure there is not, but I can write about anything under the sun and make a story out of it. I can dramatize the lives of my dog and cats, if I want. I just took the dog out and I noticed that he is actually a bit of a shy dog, because he saw a window washer and watched him from afar and gave him a wide berth. I don't know how much the glaucoma is influencing his vision, and what he actually sees, but he doesn't like to be surprised and shies away from people who suddenly show up in his immediate surroundings. Of course, he doesn't hear them, which is something people don't understand, and they can make the nicest sounds in the world, but he doesn't know what in the world they are talking about and can only tell by body language what their intentions are. He's not much interested in other people or dogs when we are outside. He really doesn't care very much. It's different if they come into the apartment. He likes visitors and will make sure he gets a lot of attention, and so do the cats, so anybody who comes here has to like animals very much.They will be besieged by them.

Gandhi just escaped into the stairwell and went for a roam around to the very top. I left the front door open on a crack, because rather than chase her, I've found out that she comes back of her own accord and it really doesn't take her that long, because she is afraid that she will miss out on something here. Like when the dog will get his food. I just have to make sure that Toby also doesn't disappear in the meantime, but he will come back too, only he hasn't figured out how to push open the door to come back in and sits there on the doormat meowing mournfully. Sometimes they escape through the outside door, but they know how to make their way around the block into the little patio and back into the apartment through the cat flap. They do it in no time at all. Cats actually are pretty smart animals and have a great homing instinct.

Well, that's what I've got too. You should see me on the way back home from downtown. It's like I'm pulled by magnetic forces toward the apartment. I peddle that bike so quickly, even though I go slightly uphill the whole way. All I can think about is to be home again with Jesker and the cats and to be in my own cozy surroundings where I can do what I will and sit and smoke and drink coffee and be absolutely decadent and anti social, Not that I don't enjoy it to be in good company, but I always look forward to my alone time. I'm just the lonesome cowboy type. Yes, me and a campfire and a pot of coffee, I can picture it now. And my horse Trigger tied up to a tree.

I've got to go to the tobacconist. I'm down to my last crumbs of tobacco. I very rarely let my supply dwindle that low. I suppose I like to live dangerously every once in a while. I'm smoking my second to last cigarette and then all the tobacco will be gone. It takes me three minutes to ride my bike over to the tobacco shop and I have to remember to buy stamps as well, because I have to mail a birthday card to my daughter.

I'm off then. I'm going to ride my bike into the crispy afternoon in which the sun is shining. Have your selfs a nice day and I will do the same.

Ciao,
Nora

A new look...

Yes, you will think you have arrived on someone else's page, but you really are in the right place. I was tired of my old look and wanted something radically different and chose this, because I liked the font and the plainness of the page. Right now I like having no picture and just the title and the simple dots. Sometimes I want change, because I get tired of what I always look at and I need something new to invigorate me. Blogger doesn't have many templates to choose from and this is the best one I could come up with. I think it will do nicely.

I have been up most of the night. I woke up very early and had no sleep left in me. There was no sense in staying in bed, because all I would do is lay there and think about stuff that would bother me, such as my past sins and other evils. No, I'm joking, but only partly so. I don't know what would happen if I laid awake in bed at night, because I never do. I avoid that at all costs. In the past I used to think about very sad things, but I haven't given myself the opportunity to do that in a long time, because I get up the minute I wake up and I don't go back to bed until I'm literally keeling over from sleep.

Past sins are the thoughts that come and haunt you in the middle of the night when your defenses are down and when you are at your most helpless and not able to fight a good fight and resist the harshness of your most cruel memories. And everything you think is tainted by the deepest color black and honed to the sharpest cut to make the deepest wounds. It's an onslaught of negative memories that make you cower under the covers and want to hide your whole being in shame.

The worst thing you can do is lay there like a helpless victim and let it wash all over you. My tactic is to get up and escape the darkness and the thoughts and to find the light and some distraction for my mind. Now I've gotten to the point where the negative thoughts don't even have a chance to enter my head, but I open my eyes and am beside my bed and the next second I am in the living room with the lights on and then in the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee and to light a cigarette. Immediately my thoughts turn to the upcoming day and the things I will do in it and how exciting those will be, no matter how small and simple, and I don't spend a moment pondering over my past and the "evil" deeds I've committed in it.

You can either forgive yourself or put your deeds in the context of the time and place and circumstances in which they happened and learn to live with them and I think I have done the latter. It was not so much a question of forgiveness as of understanding. The understanding it takes to only take your share of the responsibility and not a portion more than that. To leave the rest for the other people involved, whether they accept it or not. You can't make people accept their responsibility, you can only take on that bit of it that is your own and learn to live with that.

It can be infuriating to see how people avoid taking the blame in a drama in which they played a major role and in which they had many of the most important scenes, even after you left and they continued to star in their version of the story. In the end, you can only feel pity for them, because as you grow and gain understanding and insight and wisdom, they stagnate and flounder in their repetitive motions and scripts and scenarios, bound to make the same mistakes over and over again. Not that you are suddenly faultless, but at least you try to improve and discover somebody else than who you were when it wasn't working.

Life seems to be a long journey leading up to graduate school. I am now studying for my master's degree in living well. Which is the best revenge, isn't it? Living well is the best revenge.

Now, I'm not claiming that I'm living the optimal life, far from it. I have a way to go yet. There are many things I'm not doing yet, adventures I'm not having, chances I'm not taking, places I'm not visiting. journeys I'm not making. But it will all come in its own sweet time. I'm playing it safe right now. Exploring minimal ground, just base camp and its immediate surroundings. I'm not going anywhere where I can't retreat quickly inside the walls of my apartment. Even more so now that I'm single and this place is so dear to me.

I should add, for all clarity, that what I talked about here is not my second marriage, but my life in the States that lasted 22 years and that was a very important time during which I had two children, a house, 2 cars, a dog, a cat, many friends, a husband, and a heartache. I have divorced that husband, remarried, left the States, lost my son, and gotten divorced again. Now I am single like I ought to be. Finally, I'm on my own. A single, solitary human being. Autonomous and independent and not yet lonely.

Ciao,
Nora

Today...

I saw my psychiatrist this afternoon. Every time I see him, he teaches me something about myself in a parable. He tells it in such a way, that it is completely understandable to me and that makes it really sink in and leaves me wiser when I walk out the door. He is like a wise guru and I am his student and every time I see him, I have to learn a lesson.

It was very fortunate that I had an appointment with him today, because today of all days I needed it very much. I started off my day with a huge panic attack that would not end and I thought it was going to drive me around the bend and I feared for my sanity.

The reason for my panic attack was that I had received two big bills from two different companies that I was in dispute over and I had to make some phone calls about them and I knew I was not going to be treated nicely and that I was not going to have the winning hand, and the more I thought about it, the more precarious my situation seemed to me.

I tried to call my SPN, but could not get a hold of her, and as a matter of fact, she did not call me back until just now, when the whole thing is behind me. I took an extra tranquilizer on top of the ones I normally take, but nothing seemed to be able to calm me down, until I finally sought my refuge in self damage and that worked, and after I had taken care of the wound and dressed it, I was able to make the phone calls with no good results for me. All I got was a stay of execution to try and get the money together.

They are playing an unfair game and I am the victim of it, but they've got me by the balls and are threatening with fines and collection agencies, and I can't prove my right, no matter what I say.

Anyway. What I had was a nervous breakdown and at one point I was crying and the dog was so confused and didn't know what to do. It was all just awful, but now it is all behind me and I have done what I could and I got to discuss my reaction and my behavior with my psychiatrist.

I don't know where I was on the crazy scale. I think way off the top, probably.

I'm not happy discussing this with you, but I feel it must be said. The fact is, I'm just an unhappy camper right now and I guess that's not so strange after today. I have to live with the results of it.

It is so hot in here and I finally got smart enough to open both the kitchen window and the back door and now I've got a decent draft going that's very refreshing. I've got the blinds closed of the living room windows, so the sun won't shine in them so much. It does make me feel cooped up, but it's worth it.

Jesker is eating his evening meal after barking very loudly to let us all know that it was time for it and nobody better touch it. Now he is doing his after dinner exercises, which means rolling on the ground and rubbing his nose on the area carpet. Gandhi is very disappointed, because there were no leftovers. She is laying on the ground like the Queen of Sheba, being very regal and aloof and oh, so untouchable. She knows she's very pretty. Toby is outside in the flowerbed under the winter blooming jasmine. He's decided that's his place to observe things and be king of the mountain off.

I'm the Queen of the dramas and the ever changing moods. Don't throw anything complicated my way, please. I'll make a bet with you that I can't handle it gracefully, though I am supposed to learn. See what a difference there is between me yesterday and today. Tomorrow morning I'm seeing my SPN and I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about. The bandage is very hot around my arm and the wound hurts, I think I'll take some paracetamol.

That's all I have to share with you today. A lot of confusion. It's tough being a grown up. I think sometimes I'm not quite ready for it.

Ciao...