Monthly Archives May 2011

I sat in the doctor’s office earlier this week and lied to him. I didn’t mean to lie to him, but it had become so rote to say some of the things I’ve had to say to doctors recently that I didn’t even consider that things might have changed for me. When I first starting seeking help from doctors about how I felt physically, they would turn around and ask me how I felt emotionally, several of them offering antidepressants, like the only reason I wasn’t feeling well was because I was depressed. I wasn’t depressed, at least, not in the traditional sense.

DEPRESSION – UGH

Those who know me know that I am prone to depression–not sadness or sorrow, but real, honest-to-goodness clinical depression, which is a medical condition that has to do with the way the brain deals with certain hormones and chemicals. Read more about this that I wrote here. There ARE different types of depression and they have different causes. Some you can ‘snap out of’ and others you cannot, at least, not without help–I don’t care what Tom Cruise says.When one type of depression lingers too long, it can turn into the other type of depression. It’s unfortunate we use ‘depressed’ as a ‘mood’ too, so that so many people get confused about what depression really is.

Anyway, my point is, doctors would see me and take my vague complaints: tired, fatigue, exhaustion, a...

I remember a little poem from when I was a kid.

John Godfrey Saxe’s ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend,
“It was si...

So…

Do you hear voices in your head? Well, I do. But the thing is, I always have, and usually those voices are telling me to write their stories for them, and they go into novels, short stories, and we all function well together within the confines of my brain.

Today, the voices aren’t wanting me to write!

Okay, so I’m being a bit dramatic, and ya’ll are probably going to think I’m crazy, and that would actually be true right now.

As many of you know from my o...

Lady Gaga, singing Speechless

When I was a kid, as I said in my blog yesterday Frozen in Time, I was big-time into music. I played piano, was in the school band, fiddled around with a garage band in high school and would hang out with the audio visual guys at the college radio station when I went to Odessa College. AV geeks are awesome, and in the radio studio, several of them were very cute too. Trust me, geeks are good.

I don’t mean to pull an “I’m-older-than-dirt-and-everything-was-better-in-my-day” type of commentary here today, but… well, it was better, or worse, or at least different. Hell, I’m only 40-mumble… (actually, I AM 40). Shoot, seems like just last year I was 30-mumble.

So I’ve been reading commentary about how controversial Lady Gaga is, how cutting edge, how in-your-face, and how she flies in the face of establishment!

Are you freaking kidding me? Lady Gaga IS the establishment.

You have Lady Gaga today. WE had Ozzy Osbourne...

Why do we label people?

It seems we are always looking for some way to call someone a ‘thing’. Neat little labels, categorizing human beings into little boxes.

And yes, this time, it was about homosexuality and heterosexuality. When did homosexual stop being an adjective and start being a noun?

Used to, it was a homosexual person, but now, people are just a homosexual. One of them describes the person in some way while the other seems to define the person, as though their homosexuality is all there is to them.

I mean, if I drive a truck, does that make me a truck?

No, it does...

When I was a kid, I was a good kid, quiet, a little shy, cute, intellectual–I’d rather read a book than go to a party–but I liked music, a lot. I grew up in a small town in West Texas, with a club there called The Stardust. Back then, a lot of country artists that are very popular right now got their humble beginnings touring through these sawdust dance clubs. My parents were competition ballroom dancers. Does that make my family sound eclectic? We weren’t. We were just strange.

Anyway, they sometimes would take us to these clubs. Then later, when I was older, I sort of messed around with a garage band. In fact, Ryan and I both did, the same band. I played piano as a kid, was pretty good at it, and clarinet, dabbled with flute and oboe and saxophone, most of the reeded instruments, harmonica, pipes, and keyboards. There really hasn’t been many instruments I couldn’t pick up and play if I wanted to. There’s something about the connection between creating with my hands and brain like that, the same connection that lets me type well over 100 word per minute mostly accurately, at least on days I’m not on mind-altering medication (of the legal variety).

I’ve met Kenny Rogers in person, as well as Reb...

In my life, I’ve felt a lot of things. I’ve gone through every emotion, both expected and inappropriate. I’ve flown high and I’ve crashed and burned, and I’ve ridden on lows that lingered for months, years…

As with most people, though, I tend to stay somewhere in the middle, where I bounce around in how I feel. I have good days; I have bad days; I have in between days. I think I’m pretty normal in that. For the most part, I have always been an optimistic pessimist. Or rather, a realist.

But there’s something really screwed up with the universe when I find myself ecstatic to be told I have a debilitating and sometimes difficult to treat illness. The universe wore me down, repeatedly, and changed me. Ten years ago, a diagnosis of primary adrenal insufficiency with hypopituitarism would have devastated me. Last week, the same diagnosis had me crying tears of joy. That’s so screwed up. I should NOT be happy about being sick. Yet, I am.

I hate the way the world wears people down like that. As Diane said to me, “It’s not supposed to be this hard!” Referring to getting a diagnosis. It’s not supposed to be this hard.

My life has changed...