Why do I say inappropriate? Because I know first hand how physicians can mismanage patients on SSRIs. 

My GP prescribed Prozac for me. Worst drug liek, evar, when it came to my system. It took months to start working. Three or four, if I remember correctly. And then, it worked terribly when it worked at all. The brain fog, the fatigue, the listlessness, the non-existant sex drive. Oh yes, I got a slew of really bad side effects, which only increased when they decided to up my dose from 10 mg to 20.

Seriously, the conversations I'd have with my physician went like this;

"So, how are you doing with the Prozac?"

"Okay."

"Great!"

No, sorry. You do fucking NOT do that with a depressed, shy girl of 19 who is on medication for the first time. Ask her questions, for gods sake. Therapy was an absolute joke, too. Not just the borderline diagnosis, but a whole bunch of other things. The whole experience (including coming off my meds with no one following up with me, because I'd had enough with the side effects) soured me on getting any form of professional help for five years, during which time the anxiety, depression and PTSD were allowed free reign, making my college career about 80000 times more difficult than it needed to be, and my grades worse than they could have been.

The only thing, as cheezy as it sounds, that convinced me to go back was my girlfriend. She loved me enough and had enough good sense to tell me that not all therapists were morons, and that the way my meds had been handled was ridiculous. It's thanks to her that I'm not only healthier, but typing this entry today.

So, what did I learn from all of this? I learned that depressed people need to be their own advocates, and if they aren't in a place where doing that works, then they need to find someone who will fill that role. This is a tall order for many depressives, as we tend to be not only poor, but often isolated from friends and family because of the nature of our illness. This is why it's not only important for any culture that proports to be pro-life to recognize depression as a disability, to enforce laws protecting depressives from being arbitrarily fired and harrassed, and, above all, to act as friends and allies of depressed people, particularly when we aren't in our right minds.

As for personal coping skills? Well, I'm still learning those. But i've discovered that talking about depression is the first step. My father died largely because he wasnt' able to fully reach out and accept help from those who loved him most (I only learned, for example, that he was sick after his suicide. He never told me anything. And I would have helped, too.) Lifting the shame and silence around depression and suicide is the first step to learning how to cope with it.

Well, that's it for us, folks. It's 7 a.m. here, or close to it, and time for us to sleep. Good night, good luck, and God love you.

If you still want to sponsor us, you can do so until ... Monday, I think? ... at this url: http://www.blogathon.org/login.php?action=pledging&blogid=272.

Thanks! It's been fun! And now my hands ache lol.

and, of course, Kim and Oscar are cuddled up in bed. Hypocrites :3. Hehe.

Seriously, I can't believe that it's almost over, and that I managed to successfully do Blogathon for two years now. I have every reason to believe that I'll be back in 2008 (hopefully with Kim if she'll do it again!). This is not only a fun event, it's also an endurance test - non-geeks who may read this, blogging for 24 hours is much harder than it looks -- especially if you've been crafting necklaces and poetry all day. 

Unfortunately, poems for August through December are going to have to wait for the chap book (though I will post them here too, of course). I'm dreadfully sorry; sometimes you just don't get everything written and beaded that you wanted to get written and beaded in 24 hours. It sorta sucks, but there it is. It also doesn't help that I think I've found a structure to the chap book's flow and content that I didn't see before - a structure that will take a little time and research to create and execute successfully. I mean, you just can't go wrong with a book about golems and magic, can you? 

Ehehe. Trust me. It makes sense to me, and I suspect it will after sleep too. 

But hey. Thirteen necklaces and six poems in twenty-four hours isn't bad, yeah? Yeah.

I thought I'd close out the day by talking a bit about my own depression, and things that have been helpful coping mechanisms. We only have two posts left, so I promise to make them count. :3

- Jo  upstart_crow

Heh. Knew I'd get back on track eventually.

July

She does not cry at parties, even when

The punch bowl is her only conversation

                        And the moon hangs higher than a Chinese lantern

                        Forlorn as last year’s animal.

She does not cry at parties, even if her tear ducts

Split her like a trowel-tossed night crawler.

and night tatters like a worn-out scarf.

She does not cry.

They want to see that more

than they want the earth to touch their feet.

More than they want heaven.

Their tongues click interest against their teeth

Staccato, slightly out of tune.

Ants and woodlice surely taught them speech.

The cancer moon hesitates upon their eyes.

Not finding depth, her blue hand trembles on the curtains,

A ghost breath scared to stir.

She does not cry at parties.

This is why she pursues the moon into the corner

Where drafts blow low and guest will never sit.

Hand and hand, woman and orb spy from shadows,

Gossips and assassins.

She does not cry, she tells the moon.

They want to see her vomit on the floor.

And paper in her throat bearing God’s glyph

Is hard enough to keep down on good days.

At first, I thought the worst had happened - Oscar had died in our driveway. But when I called his name, he looked up slowly. His face was swollen and his left eye was bloody. As soon as he saw me, he began bawling and insisted on being taken into the house. Here, he hid behind my mother's WurliTzer piano and refused to come out. I didn't want to leave him alone, but I had little choice. I locked the house up and set about trying to find his people. While almost everyone in the neighborhood knew what cat I meant when I described the big orange tabby cowering and crying in my basement, none of them had any idea where he lived. After several fun close calls including a little boy who told me, "That cat sometimes comes in and tries to eat the dog's food," to a young couple who came to the house to look at him, to a door-to-door canvas, I eventually gave up. I called my mother and told her we needed to take him to the vet, and could she come home from work to help me (I forgot to mention I was unemployed at the time, thank God. No one would have been home to find Oscar otherwise). My grandmother showed up to help shortly after and wrapped the kitty in a towel. He didn't even bawl on the car trip over.

June

This is a sun day,

Sweat, vines and strawberries.

Shadows scarcely

Climb beyond their bases.

Beyond each weathered fence shorn grass pouts

Toddler-tired, aching to reach

Sunflower height.

Yellow dress and straw hat she digs

Sharp fingers mulchward:

Clod burst, pebble bump, wood louse-slick

Salt upon her lips like wine;

She drinks in grunts,

Bangs on,

dirt elbow-high.

Lemonade is now,

Ice-cubes, tea spoons. Dark berries insist on root-tapping heat

To ripeness, premature yet succulent.

Work is now;

too hot for furrowed brows, for words

web-tangled between silences and questions.

Too hot for brain-banging, for that thought

Looped through her like the knothole on the January birch:

If all must be blood, salt, silences

And dirt,

No matter what strange flowers bloom,

What purpose life,

What purpose, then, the paper pushed inside soft earth

Wound up so tight it spins restless decades.

Her fingers birth a new worm. Both ends writhe

Death in beginning.

She thinks she sees a way.

--- 

I fear I'm getting too sleepy for witty and/or intersting comments. ;_; <- emotear.

Poem coming in a minute.

Scary!

May

Knives

Always find their way into wild flowers,

those bending under dew and those offered

loving kind and innocently cruel. 

Lilac, daisy, iris, cala lily --

Thorny, inexplicable as weeds

Or snow so late.

When they pass these blooms and other weapons,

Her family and witch-smile friends alike,

It is the ritual of cheering-up,

It has the sacredness of prayers scrolled

And scribbled as beeswax dwindles into night. 

Their concern seems made to hurt, to jar

The paper rolled beneath her tongue

So she will vomit Life.

She wonders why they make it difficult.

Care is fanged,

Concern hangs curtain-heavy,

But these petals

                        scalloped, smoothed, Fibonacci-perfect

These mean love,

So they show cruelty

Equal to Spring’s, who pushed them through wet earth

Equal to God’s who molded, breathed

And watched.

Knives

Always find their way into wild flowers

Just as paper

Finds its way to clay.

By night, she returns their brightness to the earth,

Into the mud to which she longs to fall.

'cuz I need a shower, like, ten hours ago :x.

Poem soon!

This post is lame, mods. I'm so sorry.

April

Pain is an egg gulped

too fast and stuck inside a throat

clay-parched, despite these late grey rains.

She does not want to feel

that pull and choke, and so she tries

to drink it down with weak chamomile, hard liquor, soda pop

communion wine

Muscat-sour despite Divinity.

Beneath cathedral vaults, saints’ convex cheek bones, she

Feels the wafter catch upon her tongue,

The wine burn on her palate like a temple scourged.

Resurrection,

Swears the priest,

An iris blossom in his violet cassock.

She swallows hard:

Her chest heavy with a darkness,

A tomb, perhaps, still full.

Pain is an egg pressed

In her trachea, paper-edged,

Sharp as the word Emet.

As she rolls the chicken eggs through dye,

Sulphurous yellow, pale pink, an obscene green

She steps inside it, eyes pilgrim-wide

And finds it empty

As a balmy day.