I’m fucking miserable right now because I missed my Risperdal dose last night. I put off filling the prescription until the last minute, relying on my brother to get it for me, but since he had just been to the pharmacy the day before he didn’t want to go again yesterday. So now I’m sitting here with insomnia and a buzzing head.
I guess I should go ahead and do the Life Update I’ve been promising for a few entries. The move to Lexington went off without a hitch and I’ve been up here since August of last year. My Brother sold me his Bedroom Suit, which greatly improves my situation over having a mere mattress on the
floor, so my sleep has become a bit better. Normally I still wake up every two hours, but some nights I can get in an uninterrupted stretch of three or four.
I have a new Therapist, a Social Worker, and a Medication Manager who is an ARNP. When I first told the ARNP that I was on Risperdal and Wellbutrin, she was quite shocked, informing me that these medications actually have opposite effects to one another. (I guess my previous ARNP was as incompetent as I expected.) So she kept me on the Risperdal and switched me to Lamictal away from the Wellbutrin.
I have to say the Lamictal is possibly the best medication I’ve ever taken, antidepressant wise. My mood has been extremely stable compared to the past and I find myself dwelling on negative circumstances a lot less. However, it seems every couple of months or so that I develop a tolerance to it and my depressive episodes come back with increasing frequency. So, she is continually increasing the dosage. (Unfortunately for the readers of this journal, most of the time when I’m feeling bad or depressed I want to write about it.)
However, despite this positive development, my personal situation has actually deteriorated from when I lived in [REDACTED]. I have ceased attempting to do anything worthwhile with the massive amount of time I have on my hands and focused entirely on amusement. I think what kicked it off was my difficulty with Spanish; I had been taking lessons via Rosetta Stone (a highly acclaimed program, according to the ads) and thought I was doing well. However, when I went back to review some older lessons after several months, I found that I couldn’t remember the most basic words I thought I had down. Clearly, in order to learn a language, I need to be immersed in it — either via a Classroom environment or speaking with Natives on a regular basis. I don’t think any computer-based teaching assistance program can replicate this.
Once I realized that my major project was untenable, I sort of let everything else pass by the wayside. I never seriously attempted to improve my physical condition at all. I haven’t attempted to develop even a meager ability at cooking, so I typically order in or get fast food. I still eat one high calorie meal a day and nap afterward. My metabolism is at a crawl. I still chain smoke, at least two packs a day, and I drink a pot of coffee each morning. I’m a health disaster waiting to happen.
I take care to clean up after myself whenever I make a mess in my Brother’s Townhouse, but my room and bathroom are typically a shambles. I have a huge garbage bag filled to the top with wet cigarette butts on the rear deck where I empty my ash bowl every couple of days. Likewise, my appearance is
typically disheveled.
I haven’t been able to get to the library to continue reading the list of books I wrote down. In fact, I haven’t picked up a book in months. I haven’t tried to improve my ability with website design or image editing or any of the other things I wanted to do. I actually don’t get out as much as when I lived in
[REDACTED] because my Brother is loath to go anywhere (he’s a homebody) and my other friends have lives and families. Occasionally I will go out to a restaurant or a coffee shop or something, but it’s once every two weeks at most.
My sessions with my Therapist have centered on me getting a job. Every time I meet with her, she tells me that I’m too young and intelligent to give up on life and that I should get out into the world and start working. But, I haven’t worked in over 5 years. I never did get a degree. My credit is terrible. I have pot smoking on my record. I don’t know who would hire me except for the most menial of positions, and I can’t imagine my life being improved by suffering through drudgery 8 hours a day. Sure, I could possibly meet and interact with a wider variety of people, but I think most people want me to get a job because they don’t like the idea of someone who doesn’t have to work one. The people I would meet (minimum wage slaves) would probably hate me anyway.
My personal life is still nonexistent. I don’t feel as though I would be very desirable to anyone but the most desperate, and while I don’t mind the idea of someone like that, I have such crippling flaws that I think I would have to reach into the absolute dregs of society to find a mate. I have no desire to pursue such a relationship. In fact, since I view my mental condition as partly genetic, I think it would a disservice to any potential offspring to curse them with such a brain.
I don’t even really get lonely and my sex drive is low, about the only negative I experience from not being involved with someone is the idea that everyone else around me will eventually get married and have children, thereby leaving me with nowhere to go but a Section 8 apartment to live by myself.
On a positive note, my surroundings here in Lexington are much more pleasant. My brother has a pretty nice Townhouse that he keeps up, and whenever there is a cleaning chore that needs to be done he will frequently order me to take care of it. I seem to need such browbeating in order to accomplish anything. I have a spacious wooden deck to smoke on, with a good view of a tree line that borders the rear of our property. My brother has an HDTV with an XBOX 360 hooked up to it, and I recently got myself a new computer.
I have a plethora of sources of entertainment, but as with most things, when you have plenty of something, you take it for granted, so I don’t take advantage of them as much as I should. I would say the most time consuming thing I do is browse the Internet.
It’s a definite improvement over the concrete box I used to live in. That place was cold in the winter, hot in the summer, shabby in appearance, and located several miles outside of town. I had to spend six months there by myself and was frequently miserable without anyone to talk to. In addition I let the place fall to ruination while I lived in it. I certainly don’t miss it, and the time I lived there will probably be one of the few periods I don’t reminisce about.
Currently I spend time with only four people. Of course I live with my Brother, but we live mostly separate lives. He has a girlfriend whom he is with every day. She is either over here or he is at her place. He works an 8-to-4 job, works another job on the side, goes to the gym 3 times per week, takes
mixed martial arts lessons once a week, and is really only here for a handful of hours in the evening. When he is here I don’t speak to him much because he is usually watching television or playing XBOX. We really don’t have that much in common anymore except for our shared pasts and a pervasive sense of insecurity about ourselves. (He has done something to alleviate it, though.)
He doesn’t mind my presence, in fact I think he even enjoys it to a degree since we’re Brothers, but I can foresee a time when my presence becomes an irritant (say, when he eventually gets married). I have apologized for living with him several times, but each time he reassures me that he doesn’t mind living with me, and reminds me that he in fact invited me to come here.
The person I spend the most time with aside from my brother is Erin. She’s reasonably well off (probably makes close to the national average income, which would make her middle class) and has a nice house out in an expensive suburb. She somehow makes money by negotiating contracts between Physicians and Healthcare Providers, and uses an extensive network of contacts she has made working for various healthcare companies in order to arrange them.
She is the opposite of me in many ways as well, I think the only reason we spend time together is because I can discuss subjects most of her other friends can’t (or won’t), because we both came from extremely religious families, and because she views me as a charity case. She’s always driving me to appointments I need to go to, inviting me on vacation, or coming up with ways to get me out of the house.
She doesn’t work a regular job so we frequently hang out during weekdays and converse over instant message. I used to consider her a big, smooth-talking jerk, but since she started smoking weed and her consulting business completely failed, she has gained quite a bit of humility. She has recently purchased a couple of coffee kiosks at a hospital, so my time with her has started to dwindle.
Another old friend of mine is Bill. He is a Kentucky boy through and through, with a love for firearms, hunting, and an extremely thick, rural accent. Strangely enough, he also loves role-playing games, both electronic and paper. We used to play BattleTech, Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons
for hours on end, and he has recently wanted to start getting back into it, feeling a fondness for those times.
Videogame wise he is working on Fallout 3. He has his own dorky side, I guess. Despite his demeanor and first impression, he’s a pretty sharp dude, although he has distaste for talking about deeper subjects, saying they’re a “waste of time.” We get together on Mondays, since he works a four-day week and is off on that day, and sometimes he stops by after work during the week. His weekends are usually full, because he visits his family in [REDACTED] and has a girlfriend whom he lives with. He is in bad physical shape like myself (both of them are) and probably eats only marginally better than I do. Very often when I talk to him, he is angry about something (most recently it is the shitty car he bought).
My other friend is Al DeLarge, who is married with a child. I don’t get to see him very often, maybe once every two weeks or so. We usually go over to Erin’s so they can get high together. He is an ardently liberal atheist with an outspoken hatred for Republicans and all subjects religious. He has
become less intense the more time away from his Fundamentalist upbringing and the more effort he has to expend on his family. His two favorite things are slow, impenetrable foreign films and videogames. He has an extreme social anxiety around strangers which he alleviates with marijuana. Sometimes he takes medication for it, although he distrusts the large Pharmaceutical Companies so he avoids it whenever possible. He fully admits he is happier and more engaging while on the drugs.
That’s pretty much it for my friendships. Delbert is still in [REDACTED], and I have written about him in previous entries. I talk with him on the phone almost every day, since he is more willing to listen to my ramblings than anyone else. Even if all I do is bitch about my life, he listens patiently. I’m also
one of the few people he can talk extensively about World of Warcraft with. He loves that game and has dragged me into it with him, although we are still casual players in the technical sense, since neither of us has reached the level cap or joined a raiding guild. I don’t think either of us wants to.
He has a drinking problem which he constantly combats as it is starting to drastically affect his health. He’s on a good stretch right now, having gone without a drink for almost two months.
Well, that’s pretty much it for my current situation. I have every reason in the world to be depressed constantly, but my medication keeps me from thinking about (or addressing) my problems. My living environment has improved over [REDACTED]. I have more friends to spend time with. I go to a wider variety of places when I do get out. I have to say I’m much happier than last year, but much more disappointed in myself at the same time.