Based on the true story

...of the events that transpired in the 36 hours that fell between last Thursday morning and Friday night. Also, it's not so much "based" on truth as it is entirely factual.

Thursday 8am

Guys...guys... I thought I was passed these mini little break-ups. I thought I had changed and would do better this time and become a man and not run away from love or my commitments or any of the other werewolves that are chasing me. But there’s been some runnin’ and some hidin’ from this blog going on. And more than even that, there’s been some straight-up not carin’, which is much more worrisome.

Let me clarify: It’s not that I don’t care ABOUT YOU GUYS---I like you all very much and, as always, am so grateful that you have been here to snuggle up with through all of this. But there’s an apathy sitting in my chest right now and it is weightless and it is dangerous. Although I joke about my “writer’s disposition,” there’s a difference between resting your body during times of stress and saying, “Fuck it. Looks like I’m riding this life out from bed.” And I’ve been a little too close to “It’s just you and me now, MTV” than I am comfortable with.

I am desperately reaching for my health in all the natural ways---rest, movement, flax seed---both ground and oil, Oprah---both TV and magazine. Since returning from Miami I’ve given up gluten, given up drinking(!), started walking again, and still I’ve been battling deep despair. One of the lowest point occurred at a movie theater when Dan and I were seeing Friends With Kids---a fine movie, though not so much a tearjerker. I sat in the darkness crying through the whole film, submerged in sorrow and anxiety and worry that had nothing to do with the movie. At home afterwards I had the deepest, longest, breathless, moaning, keening cry that I’ve had in months and Dan just lay beside me on the bed, handing me fresh tissues and tucking my hair behind my ear like my mom used to do. (He knows she used to do that. He is a love.)

I’ve even taken to praying.

Though I’ve dabbled in God for most of my 30 years, we never hang out as much as I’d like. I recently read that writer Anne Lamott says she uses three main prayers:

Help me.

Thank you.

Wow.

Cutting through all the pretext with that kind of naked sincerity make me feel like I have the best shot at getting through, so I’m going with it. And God doesn’t seem mad that I only call at night when I’m alone and can’t sleep. She’s cool with being my Booty Call. (God is my Booty Call. There’s a bumper sticker.) (Though it does sound kind of churchy and anti-boomboom, doesn’t it?)

The situation has gotten rough and it feels good to hand some of it off, but I’m not going all “Found the Lord” on you so don’t go Googling “money shots” just to get the Jesus off; this is not going to be a blog entry about how I prayed the depression away.

I’ve started messing with my meds too. Well, my therapist and I have. (My therapist needs a blog handle. Should we call her the Spew Tamer? Thoughts?) I try not to mess around with medication on my own because I like my brain and hope it will someday like me back (in the form of performing at its maximum ability and not being such a douche). Although I’ve come a long way in therapy---I swear to Booty Call that I have---we’ve never been able to touch my depression in any consistent way. I want some of these “happy pills” I keep hearing about. All the meds I’ve tried---years’ worth of trying---I’ve never found anything that makes me feel all that much better, let alone happy. There’s gotta be something out there that I’ve missed. I’ll take whatever all the overmedicated kids are getting. Cut me in, School Nurse!

I’m envious of others’ successes with medication. Remember how I was talking the other day about Alice Bradley ---that writer whom I sort of adore and wish I could chat with over falafel? Well, there I was loving her and then I read this about her first experience taking anti-depressants:

“A few days after I began the Prozac, I woke up one morning, and I felt fine.

Here's the thing: up until that day, I had never felt fine. Not ever. I didn't know what ‘fine’ was. I thought I did; I thought there were periods when I thought I was doing quite well. I thought the Prozac was treating a relatively recent development in my emotional state. And then I woke up that day, and I realized that this was normal, and this was how I was supposed to feel all the time.”

I cannot begin to express the longing and frustration that came over me when I read this except to say: TANTRUM! MOTHER FUCKING TANTRUM!

I want to feel fine.

I waaaaaant to feel fine.

The first (and second and third and fourth through tenth) time I tried a new med it went like this:

I’m not sure if this drug is doing anything.
I did go on a walk the other day, so maybe it’s working!
But I didn’t leave the house for three days in a row, so maybe it’s not.
I did get ten pages written, so maybe it’s working!
But I did screen out every single phone call last week, so maybe it’s not.

Never did I wake up fine. I’ve woken up feeling like I was going to faint. I’ve woken up drenched in my own sweat. I’ve woken up completely incapable of urinating because my brain couldn’t communicate effectively with my hooty-hoo.

But never fine.

And I understand that I am not currently living in an environment that is any way hospitable to fine. I know that trying to lift my depression in the midst of this brutal one-two parent-cancer death punch, is like trying to light a match while under water. But I don’t expect for it to be lifted entirely. What I want is someone in the boat to strike the match, light up a spliff and, as I fight to swim toward the sun, to hold the joint to my little surface-breaking lips.

I can take the grief. I can do the sadness. But it’s the tiredness that kills me. The inability to focus. The feeling that I can’t get anything done. I need to feel better so I can do better even just for a little bit. Or maybe it’s that I need to do better so that I can feel better. I just need to know that I still have it in me---that I can write and finish a few pieces and just gather up my self worth again into a little ember that I can hold in my palm for later on.

“But, Lola,” you might say to yourself. “You just wrote quite a bit---quite a bit!---telling us how you are too miserable to write.”

And you’d be right. And I will now tell you how I did this.

I’m high as a fucking kite.

How’s that for payoff? I bet you’re glad you stuck with me through the Lola for the Lord chapter. God found me a drug. God is My Dealer. (That’s a much better bumper sticker.) I’m jacked way the hell up and now I got some ‘splaining to do.

I had a therapy session the other day where I delivered some version of what I’ve just written here. I used the word desperate, which I’ve never used before because I’ve never felt it. Not like this.

And the Spew Tamer heard me.

We decided to try one last thing in combination with my current med---we decided to add a little Kahlua to my milk. (For the record, I had already tried getting off my current med since it seemed to not be serving me, but as soon I started weaning down I realized that there is a lower to this low so I quickly crept back up to my usual dose.) Now, normally I leave the names of medications out of my entries because I just think every brain is different and I can’t go trumpeting my prescription drug successes (or lack thereof) like some endorsement for a cleaning product that you really must try! (Also, I feel strangely private about it.) But I think omitting the name of the drug at this point---when it’s clearly a main character---would just detract from the story. Plus, I may sound a little loopty loo right now so this might not be an endorsement as much as it is a buyer beware.

Adderall. I’m trying a smidge of Adderall. While it’s not an anti-depressant and is usually prescribed to people with ADHD, it is also used for treatment-resistant depression, which is what we’re doing here.

One other thing. Adderall is kind of, well, speed. The chemicals are a little different---the potency is a lot different (speed being the big guns)---but they work the same way. I’m taking a drug that has street value.

AND IT’S FABULOUS!

I wish you could see me typing. I’m like a crazed typing phenom! I am Lola, Queen of the Keyboard. Dan and I just spoke on the phone and he told me to take a breath. High, high, high. Not stoned. High.

You have to understand where I started this day. Where I started this blog entry. My head was on the laptop. I titled this document “Apathy Blog.” How’s that for flavor? The plan today was to write a few quick sentences explaining why I’ve been gone and that was going to be it. But I can’t stop typing and I can’t take my eyes off the screen because I am Super Lola, an extraordinarily capable version of the Spew’s bungling birthmother! I started this day as a pile of bathrobe and now I feel drag-queen fabulous! This whole entry is born of manic typing that has grown steadily faster since about a half hour after I swallowed down my first pill.

I had to share this news.

Thursday 11:30am

To: Dan
From: Lola

This medicine is awesome so far.  I have been writing all morning and staying on task and I feel like a real human. Actually, I feel like Superman! Did I tell you that this drug is essentially speed?  Whatever...it's helping.

Thursday 11:31am

To: Dan
From: Lola

I'm trying to keep up with myself.  I don't want to waste it!  I'm so scared it's going to run out and I'm going to be me again.  I feel like I have Star Power from Super Mario Brothers.

[Note: “I’m so scared it’s going to run out and I’m going to be me again.” That’s sad, isn’t it? I deserve this, don’t I?]

Then I sent Dan this link.

And he sent me this.

He’s been checking in all day to make sure my heart hasn’t exploded. Isn’t that sweet? He doesn’t want to come home to find me drowned in the tub. Such a lover! Wait ‘til I tell him that one of the side effects is increased arousal. He’ll be all, “You know the heart is a very resilient organ.”

He really is thrilled that I feel so good. He said he couldn’t believe that the person sending him these e-mails was the same sad mess he left this morning. (He didn’t say “sad mess” because he likes being married as opposed to, say, being stabbed 76 times in the chest.) He and I sat on the bed before he left for work today discussing this new drug because I was worried about how I would feel and just wasn’t sure what to expect.

You have to understand that I was raised by my doctor father and nurse mother to be extremely averse to all medication. When I was a kid I used to joke with my mom that I could bring any ailment to her---”I could be telling you I have cancer, Ma,”---and she’d tell me to take a dip in the river because the salt water was good for it. As a result, Dan will often take Tylenol and put it in my hand after listening to me complain about a headache because he knows I’ll never reach for it myself. So I’ve always been deeply ambivalent about taking medication and this morning I was also filled with the requisite shame that comes with taking “mood-altering” meds as well two nagging fears.

1)That it wouldn’t work.
2)That it would.

If it didn’t work it would be just another win for depression and another failure to add to the pile of futile efforts I’ve made to stave it off. But if it did work, I knew I would be saddled with a new set of dilemmas. Am I really going to officially be on another medication? For how long? To what end?

But let’s not talk about any of that now because I’m hiiiiiiiigh! I’m hiiiiigh! Don’t be such a downer, yo! It’s working! Probably a bit better than it was supposed to, but it’s working! This is all very fun! Am I using a lot of exclamation points? I am! I totally am! I’ve not felt remotely exclamation pointy lately so this is fun! I’ve been way too heavy on the forlorn and drifting ellipses...NOT TODAY!

My hands are trying to keep up with my brain. Usually my brain is the slacker and my hands have to pretend to look busy---typing my name over and over again---to cover my dopey brain’s ass. I’m too focused to even take a bathroom break where as normally I‘m waiting for the faintest urge to urinate solely to have a reason to get out of my chair. This is true for most writers, by the way, not just the ones dealing with depression or ADD or any of the others on the list of maladies that could thwart someone’s motivation or concentration (like, say, the internet). “Butt in chair”---the writer’s credo. When asked to offer guidance about how to succeed as a writer, almost every author I’ve ever heard offers some version of “Butt in chair.”

My point? I think I’m juicing. Will there be an asterisk next to my name on my first book cover?

Thursday 7pm

“I get it, I so get it!” I keep saying to Dan, whose home from work now, about writers and cocaine binges.

I’m still sitting here typing away. Did I tell you Adderall is in the Urban Dictionary? They call it Addie. Addie! It sounds like someone’s beautiful, doe-eyed freshman girlfriend.

I mean, ahem, it sounds like a highly addictive medication that needs to be handled with serious care.

I totally don’t have a drug problem. No, really! The reason this is so funny---and this is SO FUNNY! Dan’s laughing now too!---is because I don’t do drugs. I’ve never done anything other than smoke pot and, you know, cuddle with my wine bottle. Okay, I tried shrooms twice in my late teens but that’s it! No cocaine, no acid, no ecstasy, no anything else. You see, that’s why it’s a little bit funny that I’ve been speedballing alone in my apartment all day. Because I’ve never felt like this before and I’m such a dorky straight-edge that even my attempt to look cooler by throwing the word speedball in there---which has nothing to do with Adderall ---reveals my squareness.

So, since it’s a fluke thing, I get to just enjoy it. Tonight when I go to bed I will be saying the prayer of thank you. Thank you and good night to my sweet, sweet Addie.

That is, if I ever go to bed.


Friday 3:30am

I never went to bed.

After two PBS documentaries---one on Fenway Park, the other on Steve Jobs---an episode of the Colbert Report and an article about “fullness” from my Oprah mag, I am now mesmerized by a show about whales.

Did you know that right whales have nine-foot weenies? Can’t call that a weenie now can you? It’s a thick, albino flagellum of a thing. Just sort of swings in the tide. Nine feet. Picture it. It’s taller than you, this dick. Also, their testicles are twenty times that of blue whales despite the fact that blue whales are twice their size. Apparently, blue whales are the Irishmen of the sea. Scientists wonder if the reason right whales are such sexually active animals is because of their gigantic balls. Their nads weigh a ton! Literally! But the ladies are no slouches either. These gals take multiple partners, one after another---the whole football team, even. I guess nine-feet of whale cock will do that to a girl. They also mate belly-to-belly; they must be into eye contact.

It is 3:30am and I am watching whale porn.

Friday 8am

I cobbled together 22 minutes of sleep last night and have been writing for hours! When Dan woke up this morning I gave him all my whale facts. I retained all of it!

“Look how smart Addie makes me!” I told him. “I think it’s still working!”

“You think?” he said, noting how quickly I was speaking.

Needless to say, I did not take another dose this morning as was planned. Maybe I did need to say that; I do seem to be enjoying myself, don’t I? I also left a message for the Spew Tamer first thing this morning to let her know how this has all gone. I really am quite responsible. (She had me check in with her yesterday too. She’s also quite responsible.)

“Did you know that right whales have nine-foot schlongs?” I said to her voicemail. Of course I didn’t say that, but I did say that I’ve been up for 24 hours and loving it and that I know all sorts of new things about whales and that I wrote all day yesterday and I feel like it’s magic and do you think I should take another one today?

Friday 11am

The Spew Tamer called back.

“I don’t think is the drug for you,” she said.

I gasped. “It’s not?”

She actually laughed at me. She said she’s never seen---never even read about---someone having this kind of reaction to such a low dose. See, you guys, Addie and I have something special.

“Well, what about half? Can I take half? What about as needed? Can I just take it as needed?”

“Laura, you’re begging.”

She really said that.

I really was.

She asked about my heart. Fine, fine, fine. She told me to drink a lot of water. She said something else but now I can’t remember what it was. My genius for retention is failing! Quick, ask me a whale fact!

One theory on how right whales got their name is that their slowness and thick blubber---which makes them float---made them an easy catch and thus the “right whale” to hunt.

Phew! As long as I’ve got my whale facts I’ll know this whole thing really happened.


Friday 1pm

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! I’m crashing, folks! I’m crashing hard! I’m becoming a robe monster again. I’m melting...I’m melting...


Friday 1:10pm

To: Dan
From: Lola

I am out of star power. And I am sad.


Friday 4pm

It’s dark in this bedroom. Thank God.


Friday 8pm

It’s me again, guys. Super Lola is dead, I haven’t napped, and there are pages and pages here that I’m not quite certain can really be called a piece of writing. The whale hours were weird, right? I really went on about that dong. It was like a separate animal. Like a freakishly long and discolored tongue. Make it stop. Please make it stop...

Oh no, ellipses.

Those swampy, ambivalent ellipses. I can’t even end a sentence definitively in this state.

But I was in there. For a minute---for those hours---I reached in and grabbed myself. It may have been an enhanced superhero version, but I taught her all her tricks. (Note: I really do know I am one person; this is not drug-induced psychosis.)

All I wanted was to care about writing again. So even if it was all whale dicks and exclamation points (a duo whose pairing is really akin to peanut butter and jelly's) at least I was putting my mind to something. It’s truly a relief just knowing I can do that.

P.S. The Spew Tamer did say that tomorrow I could try a quarter of the dose I originally took to see how I do. I wouldn’t say that I’m looking forward to it per se, but I do want to point out that tomorrow morning is only 12 hours away.