new year's resolutions, new news and new episode!

hello all, so much for blogging more frequently. i've stopped using my mac almost completely as it's not hooked up to the internet and in a bad place for watching baby girl at same time. i think i'll start calling her lola just so she has a name here but it's not her real name. i don't want to regret writing about her in this context and as my name in here is fake anyway, as is denzel's and elvis' hers needs to be too.

anyway i will try to hook up my scanner and start doing comix again. i really strayed from the whole point of my "notes from underground" which was to post comix frequently about my bipolar adventures, as practice for the graphic novel i've been blocked about doing for about 9 years now. i'm on page 26 or so. today i'm going to a fun party where i will find some great old comic books and get reinspired. my friend whose party it is, a great friend of denzel and an "uncle" (not biological but more of an uncle than her "real" ones) to lola, set aside a bunch of wonder woman and other related comics by and about women.

anyway i will try to figure out a way back to comix. i haven't come up with the right drawing of myself but i have been doing some drawings that i think will help get to it.

this post should probably be divided into several posts. january news was that i got very depressed and then started a new medication towards end of jan.
abilify!!!
i had talked to the doc about changing to something more as the seroquel was not enough to manage my episodes or at least to prevent frequent severe ones. at beg. of jan. as you see from last posts i was kind of in a mixed state. the angry depression at end of january lasted only a few days. as soon as i started a low dose of abilify it went bye bye.
i know abilify can stimulate in low doses when it is helping your antidepressent work better. i think it did cause some hypomania...

anyway more about abilify. where have you been all my life? all those years of depakote, feeling sluggish and needing about 9 hours sleep a day at least, unable to wake up early etc etc. it did not affect my creativity though, so depakote takers out there, if it works for you, great! i also did not keep up with getting my blood checked and hate needles so abilify is great for that. no need for the blood levels i had to do for about 10 years of lithium followed by years of depakote.

more in next post.

the magic box

feeling a little better today:
an actual positive hopeful post to balance out last night's...
i have a special box that i put some special little objects in and then write down goals, wishes, hopes and fold the paper and date it and put it in the box. it's called a goddess box.
i also put in goals and hopes of a few friends. they write what they want to manifest and i stick it in the box without reading it. every couple of months or so, i open up my papers and check to see if i have accomplished or gotten what i wished for. most of the time the goals get put back in, not yet accomplished, but once in a while they actually get done or happen and i throw out the paper and write new ones...
i just opened the box after over six months and saw some that had wonderfully come true, like getting pregnant and a few other things.
some of them i put back, like the ones related to elvis being healthy, to continue his good health.
so tonight i wrote a bunch more of them and dated them and put them in the box. i was amazed also to see i had so many "wishes" written by about four different friends, so those went back in too.
most of the goals and wishes are selfish ones like to have a good birthday with peace of mind, improved relationships with certain people, and certain career goals. but then there are ones for denzel and elvis and the baby i added, as i had not checked the box in over a year.
and some very ambitious ones for the world, like peace in iraq and things like that...
so the box is filled up again with hopes, dreams and good things to ask for the universe to manifest.
if anyone wants me to put something in there for them, let me know and i'll write it in for you...
i believe the things i put in for myself are strengthened by sharing the magic of the box with others...
i forgot to put one in about taxes and finding a good accountant. my finances are a mess... woops i'm ending on a bad note.
patience... that's in the box too as is "faith"...

self hatred

happy new year. i felt nothing hopeful about the year changing. this is the first year that i have ignored three holidays in a row, thanksgiving, chanuka/xmas, and new years eve. i did not even have a glss of wine on new year's eve. my bday's coming up, forty. i am not going to do anything for that either. my parents are forcing me and denzel to go out to dinner for both of our birthdays which are around the same time. i'd like to cancel the dinner but my parents would be too hurt. i'm not even feeling close to them anymore. ive never felt so isolated from everyone in my family.
i am really hating myself. i just took out my contact lenses and rubbed my eyes because they were bothering me. then i continued to rub them hard and now they are all red. i imagined sticking a knife in my eye. i dont do any kinds of self mutilation and i never would but i sometimes fantasize about doing things to myself out of self hatred.
i wish i could go somewhere and be completely anonymous and start a fake life and just have no friends and be alone and away from everybody in my life.
i know all this is just bad stuff in my head. it will go away. the people in my life who are not talking to me have told me i am self absorbed, imature, selfish, self involved and not a grown up. they are probably right. i dont think of them as models of the kind of people i want to be even the ones in my family who think this of me. i'm sick of everything about myself. if i didn't have denzel and a baby and a dog i probably would just go disappear.
i had always imagined i would have some big party that was really special when i turned forty. i used to enjoy my birthdays. if i could go away and not be around that's what i would do.
i thought i'd feel good about myself at forty. having the psychotic episode and being distant from everyone in my family and not talking to one of them and another person because of the episode makes me feel like a failure at relating well with people i'm close to. and being in debt and not making enough money to support myself, that was not soemthing i'd envisioned about being forty. not being in any way what i had hoped. i wonder how bad fifty will be. i guess i'm done with birthdays. now the only birthday worth celebrating will be my daughter's.
if i could go back in time and change one thing in my life i would do soemthing so i could erase the psychotic episode of two months ago. so many things in my life would be different. i would not be posting a negative depressive post like this if not for the episode, nor would i hate myself so much and have ruined relationships and fights that occured after the episode. i waste time fantasizing about going back to the birth of the baby and starting that over so i woldnt have to go back on meds and so i wouldnt feel so distant from my family and others. i could even change the bad stuff that happened in the hospital when i had the baby. if only i could go back, not even really far back. i'm sure if i went back to age 20 i could change all the things that led up to today that were shit. but life can only lived forward.

happy new year, hello 2007!

hi. i am posting 2 comix today despite feeling depressed and tired and unmotivated!

the daily catastrophe
first comic strip of 2007
jan. 1, 2007

frame 1:
marlena: hi all! happy new year! this year i have made no resolutions.
elvis; she drew me too fat and misshapen here.

frame 2:
marlena (off frame): by makig no resolutions i avoid disappointing myself and wallowing in self-criticism
elvis: better. captures my puppylike good looks.

second comic strip of 2007!
jan. 1, 2007

frame 1:
ok. the suspense is over! announcing our first official competition...
elvis: a few posts ago, mo suggested a competition to come up with a porn name for me, elvis!
great idea, mo, though i will not do a film!
below frame:
elvis: as you know, a porn star name should capture my adorable super canine sex appeal...

frame 2:
marlena: as you know marlena rivers is knd of like a porn name though it is not my middle name followed by the st. i grew up on... (the usual formula for figuring out your porn star name, fyi or you can use the name of your first pet as the last name)
anyway, write in your ideas, in 'comments' and we'll decide on a winner!