The Fibromyalgia Autobiography: We Are the Brave

I don’t know what to do or even how to write. The pain is so bad that it permeates every second of every day; I get no respite. If I thoroughly distract myself with something consuming, such as drawing every fibre and curve of the poinsettia plant on the table, I can sometimes, most fleetingly, eliminate the pain from my top-of-mind consciousness. Even then, I know it’s there. I know it’s glowering at me, demanding that attention must be paid. How dare I presume to ignore it. It should know that I’m most decidedly its prisoner, and ignoring it is impossible. I’ve merely placed it in the second shelf of things I cannot forget.

Imagine internally repeating a word or a string of digits, something you know intimately well, over and over and over. Your name. The numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42. It would seem like madness. So does the word I repeat, but it is more of a tome than a word, a dull and singular autobiography that tells but one incessant story. I repeat it while making coffee, while reading Prince Caspian to my eight-year-old son, while hugging my 11-year-old son goodnight, while I’m making a joke to my 13-year-old son about the “sentient basketball” his kindly and generous godfather gifted him for Christmas. 


(STOP. Okay, the sentient basketball is this basketball that links with an app on your smartphone and it tracks all the shots you take and calculates the trajectory of the ball and it’s seriously smarter than all of you. I have suggested that it may devolve and start shouting things at my son such as “Missed the hoop AGAIN. Sad! Loser!” by which point it will have detained our entire family in a special “camp” while it bounces recklessly across a keyboard linked to its Twitter feed. But I digress.)

The story in my head has the word “pain” is embedded in the title of every chapter, in every monotonous sentence, and in the cliffhanger at chapter’s end. Synonyms for “pain” could of course be employed here: ache, agony, spasm, torment, misery, distress. I’m afraid that, while in pain, I’m not even clever enough to call upon any of these vocabulary words. It’s all simply pain. It makes for extremely dull reading: “This book sucks. One star, but I’d give it a zero if I could! Sad! Loser!”

(But if I were to be imaged and mapped as an electrical grid, I would be very exciting indeed. I would tell a strange story. Spasms, and flares along the knots and hubs, and bright loci, all firing, firing, firing, until the world’s end.)

Even as a prisoner of the very boring and pedestrian pain, I sometimes still think: I wonder if I made this all up. Because if I did, I can fix it. I know I can. Many doctors said it was all in my head before I was diagnosed. They could be right! I will fight like a wounded dog in a ditch to fix this. Because I have beautiful people in my life who love me, and they are counting on me to be brave and beautiful and to ignore the pain. (Sometimes, when I pass a mirror, I think the expression I wear resembles that of a hurt animal that cannot speak and dumbly wishes to be put out of its misery. My friend, the veterinary surgeon, sees this look all the time, before she expires the animal. And then I tend to think that I’m really quite good-looking. And someone this ridiculously good-looking cannot possibly be sick, right? I also have great legs and really decent biceps and fine, upstanding boobs. But I digress.)

If this is all in my head, then all I need to do is relax. Breathe more. Take some Aleve. Do yoga. Stop worrying. Swim when I can. Hot water. Pay attention to my posture. Take supplements. Use the Miracle Balls. Ahem, this is really a thing—“miracle balls” do help.) This was honestly supposed to be part of a different post, the post that listed “All the Things That Help Me With My Fibromyalgia.” I don’t want to suggest that these things don’t help! In fact, they certainly have. The problem is that they are temporary. Maybe I just need to use these remedies more. 

But just when I’m exulting in the moment of finally selecting a new “inner dialogue” volume from my shelves—perhaps its “Just Keep Moving! You Are Fantastic!” or “Bonus Energy Surprise! You Won the Fucking Lottery Today!”—I reach out and pluck out that sad, dog-eared volume on pain whose author looks like she got whacked with a cudgel studded with stabby Christmas ornaments. Whacked hard in the knees, ribs, shoulders, back, elbows, ankles, fingers, collarbones. Still smiling, wanly. Her author photo tells the whole story. She’s an absolute expert on her subject. Not many people can see her pain, because she’s smiling well enough. But I do.

It’s so very hard to choose another book.

But I will. I must.

How do we go on? People who have Fibromyalgia are in constant, sometimes unimaginable pain. Some are in worse pain than I am, which I cannot imagine. How do we even face the day? How do we read a book, or hug our children, or cook dinner, or fold the laundry? How do we commit to jobs that require us to smile at people? How do we shop for groceries and actually return our carts to the cart corrals (please tell me you do; Fibromyalgia is no excuse here.) How do we continue to stand out in the cold wind and gas up the car? How do we limp down the driveway to collect the mail? How do we sit in a chair, as I do, and type out blog posts that will garner us no favors or fame or money?

Because we are the brave. No matter how bleak it seems, we will never just read one simple story. We can acknowledge that we have read, and will read again, that dreadful autobiography: The one that I call Pain. It will always and always sit on our shelves. But it isn’t who we are. We are a great  library of poetry and truth and submarines and whelks and tangerines and fireworks and ocelots and 17th-century history and rockets to the moon. We are here for a reason, and we will be called upon when it counts. Because we already know what heartbreak feels like and we have been brave and strong for so very long. We will never give up, never stand down, never falter.  

If there is to be a resistance, I will be at the forefront. I am not scared. Why would I be? I am well-versed in pain. Maybe I could finally place that awful, boring volume called Pain way down to the fifth or sixth shelf, well below the volumes of Dignity and Honor.

Postscript: Please. Return your carts to the cart corral. Or even to the very door of the store. We aren't the kind of people who leave our carts parked upon the curb, even when we are bone-tired. The carts do tend to get away and cause mayhem.

The Fox and the Rabbit: What Does Fibromyalgia Feel Like?

What does having Fibromyalgia feel like? I've read numerous descriptions and, although there are definite themes shared among us, every person's experience is unique. I tried to find a blog post that captured all of my particular symptoms with perfect eloquence. I couldn't. What I found is that, even though I think I'm suffering like a Christian martyr trudging up a slope strewn with shards of ice, rusty screw guns, and carnivorous sticky buns, there is always someone whose pain is worse. Sometimes much worse. That doesn't offer me much solace. It just makes me sad.

Haven't a clue what I'm talking about? Learn more about Fibromyalgia here or here.

But I do want to explain how Fibromyalgia makes me feel. It might help when a friend or loved one doesn't understand why I keep grimacing during, say, a board game. Maybe after reading this post they will say: "Ah! You feel as if someone has turned your sinews and muscles into sharp metal strands, and is now braiding them quite viciously," or "Well, NO one cares for nails made of hot gravel being pounded into their joints! I'd grimace, too. Carry on, it's your turn." Or even "Malevolent sticky bun latched on to your brainstem again, what? No wonder you're so sluggish and foggy-headed!"

Here's a simple experiment. It may seem unseemly and unpleasant. First clench one hand tight into a fist. Now choose a part of that fist and bite it, for as long as you can tolerate. Your curled fingers will do. Give it a fair amount of pressure. Give it five minutes, if you possibly can. Notice what happens.

The immediate "victim" of the bite, your clenched fist, will begin to protest. It's already remorselessly tight, and now something is biting it? Seriously?! Not good. But, there's more! Soon, your jaw may become tense and tight, even sore. The exertion of holding the fist, along with the bite, will begin to seem intolerable. All you have to do to release the pain is to open your mouth, open your hand. Why are you doing something so ridiculous as biting your fist, just because I suggested it? Please do not do this in public.

If you have Fibromyalgia, you probably know where I'm going with this analogy. If you know a loved one who has Fibromyalgia, you might have your whole fist stuffed in your cakehole at the moment, and are feeling surly, and I appreciate that.

Fibromyalgia feels as if your body is gnawing on itself, every minute of every day. (Even on the "good days," when it's just gnawing with less fervor. On the best days, it still nibbles, like an itch that can never be scratched or eliminated.) As I've suggested, your body itself is already intolerably "tight." It has become a fist that never opens. Then, you visit it with numerous indignities, and they are certainly not confined to the hand—you sink pain into the neck, into the knees, into the edge of the jaw itself. Note that I do not use the passive voice in the sentence above, because you sense that your own body is conducting this cruelty.

I am hideously aware of the pain in my own jaws and also of my victim's pain.
It's not cool.

You become intolerably aware of the pain. You are the jaws of the predator, and there is no pleasure in being the predator. You will never kill your victim. You are a fox worrying the rabbit to death, over and over and over. Unlike an actual fox, you feel the rabbit's pain. You aren't even hungry. You feel remorse for the rabbit. The rabbit and the fox, the jaws and the flesh and the pain and the grief, are bound together forever in a singular dance.

If you are still biting your fist, stop, you fool. You probably look like an idiot, with tears springing to your eyes on the Metro North. You probably look like a woman who wants to scream because she is so heartbreakingly frustrated and is biting her fist to prevent herself from doing so.

Thank you for trying, if you did, but no one should suffer for very long. Where does that leave me? Some mornings, when I wake up to another day of stiffness and aching and mind-numbing pain, the phrase "What did I do to deserve this?" sometimes springs into my head.  I really thought that today might be different. I limp my way down the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister. My entire frame feels off-balance and wobbly. Trembling hot shards of pain fire through my shoulders, knees, elbows. My upper back and neck burn as if I've been beaten heavily with a cudgel, scalded, racked, and seized. I think that maybe the nasty local gang, the "Sharpened Hot Sporks Laced-With-Acid Boys," took me down last night, unawares.

I had a haircut last Friday. My first in many weeks. A woman was washing my hair and massaging my head and I relaxed a little bit and had this random thought: "Hey, I wonder where I would get heroin in this town, if I truly wanted heroin? Because I heard it's a real suburban problem, but I'll bet it would take my pain away. For sure it would. But, goddamnit, it's heroin. I probably should never try heroin, right? I think barfing is involved. OK, forget it. How does one get one's hands on medicinal marijuana? Would I qualify? I don't want the kind of stuff that makes me mistake a can of Mandarin Oranges for a can of Marinara Sauce and serve a very wrong and disgusting meal. I just want the pain to go away."

Not very tasty atop pasta. Oops?

Then there is the horrible malaise and fatigue. Making even the simplest breakfast for my sons feels exhausting. Bending down to pick up a bowl from the cupboard, walking it to the breakfast table, removing a carton of milk from the fridge, returning to retrieve a spoon from the cutlery drawer, extracting a box of cereal from the cupboard, setting it on the table—a series of small steps that is, somehow, torture. Every move hurts, in varying degrees, and depending on the day.

My sons are perfectly capable of all these tasks, of course. But if I were to languidly dictate orders from my fainting chair, I fear I would become the cover girl for Bad Parenting magazine. As I write this, I realize that delegating every single task in the house would be the best thing for my sons. It wouldn't hurt them one single tiny bit, and they have energy to spare. It's just my guilt that keeps me on my feet, thinking "I should be a better parent. I should have more energy. I shouldn't hurt."

I have never been a person to collapse on the couch, except when I've come to the very end of my rope. I have to keep going all the time. I can't sit still. My mother, in her late 80s, is the very same way. She will insist on painfully ascending the stairs to the second floor just to ensure the pillows on the guest bed are fluffed, no matter how many protestations we utter. She will wander around endlessly, buffing the counters, long after she should be in bed. I've despaired of her perseverance, yet I am proud of it in a way I can't explain. Well, yes, I can. I explain it this way: We are not lazy people.

So I don't stop, ever. A day without exercise is wrong. My overactive mind will punish me for it. My body will feel restless and unfulfilled if I didn't swim or bike or walk or run, even if it is simultaneously crying out in agony. I can be utterly exhausted, defeated, and in agonizing pain—in a place where I have no business anywhere but in bed or on the couch—and I still insist on exercising, hauling firewood, dragging around set pieces for the middle-school musical, playing piano, toting groceries.

Being Strong and Tireless is part of who I am. A me that isn't "strong and tireless" isn't someone whom I would recognize or even care to know. I'm the person who can pick up the 80-lb canoe solo, if asked. I'm the mom who can swim a mile and then spend another hour playing "pull-up" with the kids (a vicious form of Sharks and Minnows in which you literally have to dive down deep to capture your minnow and drag him/her to the surface). Why, just two days ago I was hauling a huge and recalcitrant fake Christmas tree, part of the decor for the middle-school musical, out of the school foyer. The damned tree was collapsing on my head, barfing out ornaments and tinsel. I was sweating and grunting. A man paused and asked if I needed help. "Oh, no thank you, I got it," was all I said. Then I went and got another tree, and dragged that one out, too.

I felt good dragging those trees. I felt like the warrior I know myself to be. I didn't hurt a bit while I was dragging those trees. I would have dragged a thousand trees. I don't know if this is true of anyone else with Fibromyalgia, but sometimes the harder things are the easier things. They make you completely forget that you are all torn up inside, because, after all, every day and every moment you are all torn up inside. Lifting rocks and bricks and boards makes the "torn up inside" feeling make sense. Of course it should hurt to drag that heavy load. It would make any healthy person hurt. Therefore, I am healthy. Or just very stupid, because I probably pay for my exertions later. Plus, I won't take a moment to rest.

It's the little things that hurt, the small and ordinary offices of life. Putting away laundry is just dreadful, and that's probably true for people who don't have Fibromyalgia, too. When I hear "I need help turning on the water for my tub!" from up the stairs, my mind bends and wavers. It's a weary climb up one short flight, a cranking of handles. Why does something this small have to be so painful? When I pass the pile of papers and school photos that should be trimmed and filed and put away, I always think: "I'll do that tomorrow. I'm far too tired today."

It all feels rather hopeless, sometimes, because even watching television is painful. How could watching a television be painful? As I sit there, trying to focus on the plot and to lose myself in the story, I am bitterly aware of my muscles spasming, of my utter failure to relax, of the tight hold the invisible, gnawing thing has on my neck and shoulders. Sometimes I stretch, and my tight joints protest. At other times I try a little self-Reiki, palms to jean-clad thighs, and I wish the pain away.

I have been successful on a few occasions. Sometimes it recedes, and I am able to forget (for 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes?) who I am. This happened two days ago while I was drawing this grasshopper. I used the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and I drew this grasshopper upside down, in an attempt to shut down my anxious time-clock left brain and activate my right brain.

My sketch of a grasshopper. It will probably be devoured by a hungry predator within minutes, its short and fleeting life meaning nothing. 

Guess what, little grasshopper? My pain went away, while I was drawing you. Now that I'm writing this, it's back in full force. It eats away at the base of my skull, and at my shoulder blades, and inside the architecture of my knees, and it burns along my back, and here I am staring at this grasshopper and I know that while I drew it the pain was still there, somewhere waiting on the sidelines. But it didn't matter. Because I wasn't trapped in my body. I was calculating the precise distance between wing and leg, and dreaming of hauling big loads.

I don't have any real wisdom to give. The only things I have ever figured out are to stay busy, to not be lazy, and to keep on, and on. Never give up. Keep doing. I'm still in pain. Sometimes it's bad. Some days, really bad. 

The fox is still dancing with the rabbit. The rabbit gives itself wholly, unwillingly—taut as a wire. The fox digs in with claws and teeth, but it has no love of the conquest. I watch their exertions with my clenched fist held between my teeth, praying for absolution. Praying that I can hold on long enough to be a proper poet for the fox, the rabbit, and the breaking day. Give me enough time. 

Deep Dive: Underwater Therapy for Fibromyalgia

If you have Fibromyalgia, you've probably been told that swimming is one of the best forms of physical therapy to relieve the pain. It's absolutely true. Per my doctor's recommendation, I try to swim laps for 40 minutes first thing in the morning, whenever possible.


She also told me I should do yoga, but I loathe yoga. All those hideous bare feet and tooting noises! All those smug skinny people with their sticky mats and expensive unitards and other sorts of leggings and tards and snoods and things.

Listen, I know that yoga would be good for me if I just had the patience, but my mind operates much like an army of frantic little gerbils galloping away on spinning wheels, all wearing spectacles cut to the wrong prescription and listening to competing radio stations that fluctuate on a spectrum between "BBC Unsettling and Depressing World News" and Top 40 songs with inane lyrics like "Now that I'm without your kisses/I'll be needing stitches." (The logic of such a statement causes me significant pain, wholly unrelated to Fibromyalgia.)

This is exactly why yoga would be good for a person like me.

But when one has only a bare 40 minutes, perhaps, to get in essential exercise that will save one's body and soul, I would choose many other activities, such as:

• Kicking the hoo-ha out of something inanimate
• Digging a ditch
• Climbing a hill
• Moving slabs of concrete from one location to another, for no real purpose
• Swimming!

It is the latter that brings me the most peace. It's a form of moving meditation. I've always been a strong swimmer, so I don't flounder or flail. I just move forward; I'm unstoppable. I never get tired. I prefer lakes and large bodies of water where I can just head to the horizon and go on until I meet the far shore. But I can put up with chlorinated pools when that's all that is available.

(For the record, I have spotted some weird and unpalatable people in pools as well as in yoga studios, displaying their awful naked feet and such.)

It was in such a pool that I recently—and accidentally—discovered an amazing thing about Fibromyalgia and water that dramatically reduced my pain. Here's how it happened.

In preparation for volunteering some of my vacation time at my children's camp, I signed up for Lifeguarding Certification at my local Y. The course takes five full weekend days. I expected that this would involve a great deal of swimming, but it actually involves a fair amount of "sitting in a room and watching videos."

Also there are some exciting scenarios during which one has to revive gravely-injured and non-responsive victims, who happened to be made of a rubbery substance that made me sneeze explosively for five minutes.

Do NOT swim here. For any reason.

The other participants in the course are two 15-year-old girls and two 18-year-old boys. They are amusing to watch during the boring "sit and watch videos" part of the course because they get all itchy-fingered for their cell phones. One of them fell asleep for a few seconds the other day. And one became so bored that he started aimlessly drawing with a pen on his own palm and gazing obsessively at his artwork.

Plus, they have some pimples. Other than that I am jealous of them, except for the fact that lifeguards—who guard your fucking lives, people, and the lives of your children—can expect to make about $10-12/hour max. After five full days of reviving rubbery half-people and listening to lessons that include "Fecal Incident Response Recommendations!" They ought to make more money.



[Aside: I was faster than all of them in the swim test except for one of the 15-year-olds who happens to be on the swim team.]

So, to even qualify for Lifeguarding you have to do three things:

1. Swim 12 laps (6 breaststroke, 6 freestyle)

2. Jump into the water, swim out and dive straight down to 13 feet to retrieve a 10 lb brick, swim up with it and get it back to the wall and yourself out of water within a time limit.
3. Tread water for 2 minutes with your hands out of the water.

I was feeling pretty warmed up and happy after task 1. But, as I stood shivering on the pool deck and watching the nervous teenagers in line ahead of me complete task 2, I got a mite anxious. What if I failed the test and sank like a stone? What if I couldn't find the brick while peering through the shitty, smeary-assed goggles I'd grabbed from the Lost & Found since I'd misplaced my own?

When it was my turn I struck out, sighted the brick, and made the dive. All the way down to 13 feet. I grabbed it, and kicked myself to the surface. It wasn't that hard, but it wasn't particularly fun. I swam to safety with my precious brick and that was that. I got out.

As we did the third task, I noticed something strange. I felt lighter. Better. The persistent ache that I'd felt even after swimming the 12 laps (admittedly not a long distance) was entirely, completely gone.

The synchronized swim team was practicing at the same time, to a bouncy little jazz number. Boy, were they amazing! In perfect unison, they rose out of the water like dolphins and flexed their arms and kicked and then vanished beneath the surface. The timer started, and I pulled my hands out of the water and did a little jazz hands number to accompany my water-treading, just because I felt like it.



The whole rest of the day I felt better than I had in weeks. Now I make a point to swim underwater and I feel a big difference when I do. I go as deep as I can. Something happens down there, under the pressure of pure water.

I think there is some science behind this, according to my sister-in-law, who is a natural healer. Water somehow helps equalize the pressure in the body and helps lymph nodes drain properly and some other stuff I haven't fully explored yet. Google hasn't been very verbose on the subject. Maybe this will work for some, and maybe not for others. I'd be curious to hear your comments, and any research you come across.

All I know is that when I dove deep, it righted something in me; it equalized my hurting self with the world. I was finally a real thing in the world. I didn't need to fight the hurt anymore. At least for that day, and that was enough.

I tried the antidepressant Mirtazapine and was soon trapped in a relentless dream about the Smurfs.

Dear FDA,

The loony psychiatrist gave me a drug to sample that he said, if taken even in a small dose, would take care of my occasional insomnia and also perk up my spirits a bit. It is called Mirtazipine  Mirtazipone Mirtazapine (aka Remeron), and it messed my head up so badly I can no longer spell and now write love sonnets to Gargamel, the evil wizard from the Smurfs, in my spare time.

Write down "Mirtazapine" so that you NEVER TAKE IT, FDA officer! Is your name Gladys, or Bob? I would like to make this as personal as possible.

This drug is the most vile and evil poison since the invention of "roofies," "mickeys," and other potions favored by date rapists. I took 1/4 of a 15 mg pill Thursday night before bed. Within minutes, I was out colder than a whacked haddock and had started to dream about the fucking Smurfs. I was hanging out with Gargamel and his horrible cat Azriel. I wasn't even on the side of good! Gargamel's eyebrows sit on top of his misshapen skull like two fat black caterpillars. His hair is extremely oily.

Do you think I liked looking at this, Bob? Gladys? No! I did not.

"Jazz hands" would have looked a little less sinister, Gargamel. Just sayin'.

Note I say 1/4 of one pill. If I had taken the whole pill, I would probably have been swept into the Smurf Vortex FOREVER and Smurfette would be my best pal, and we would be texting each other some shit all the time, like about this Smurf and that Smurf, and how—oh God, this is all really horrible to contemplate.

I warn you, FDA officer, that this drug is bad news. At one point I woke up because one of my sons was crying, right in my ear. He was crying so hard he was blowing bubbles of snot. He gets growing pains in his legs and sometimes, at night, he wants them rubbed. I heard my husband groan: "Not again! I was up with him an hour ago."

I couldn't remember how to sit up. When I finally figured it out, I couldn't remember how to stand up. My legs looked like stuffed scarecrow legs, and I stared down at them stupidly. I tried to speak but all that came out was "wuh-no-no-no-no." I slumped back into the bed.

This time I had dreams in which I read entire books of 17th-century poetry, ate buttered toast from a giant toasting rack, and was allowed to visit the Smurf village and consort merrily with the Smurfs in fields of daisies. They seemed to accept me and forgave the fact I had so recently spent time with the wicked Gargamel (whom I missed, as he had been something of a father figure to me).

After sleeping and sleeping like the dead through noises of all kinds, and perhaps even a fire (who knows?), I finally awoke to a blistering headache and a hideous hungover feeling, as if I'd been up all night doing shots of Jagermeister. I spent all day feeling like hot, groggy poo, and nearly walking into walls. Plus I feel like the Smurfs may have stolen some of my IQ and are using it to brew new potions to tempt unwary depressives and anxiety sufferers.

I hate medications. 

Into the garbage with ye, Mirtazapine! Badbadbad poison. Smurf go 'way. Make a note of it, Gladys!

Apples! Apples! Eat them night and day!

I have had a couple of phone calls lately from those of you who read the non-comedic horrors of Document 12 and are worried I am lying out on the cold ice like a haddock, gazing sightlessly at the forbidding sky. Nay, friends, I am alive!

In fact, the revelation that I am about to share with you is that I feel weird almost ALL THE TIME. At least during the month of February. I just don't talk about it much. So you needn't worry; I'm just as mentally savaged by the cruelties of waking life as I ever was. I still want to be in the Little Crawl Hole under the basement stairs, stroking the last remnants of fur off Fuzzy Bunny. Yet you see me walking about, wearing this nice frock and with my hair all brushed and such. (Well, since I had that Brazilian Blowout treatment it seems like I brushed it, even though I sat and stared listlessly into the mirror, the brush lying in my slack hand.)

I even eat food and go about my business and have conference calls with important people. I still know how to tie my shoes. I can uncork a bottle of wine with all the pep and verve of a mentally well individual! And when I play Checkers or Chess with my seven-year-old, I scheme endlessly as to how I will defeat the evil child at his own game. So do not worry a lick about me.

I recently had a talk with a nice and marvelous doctor who explained that my dizziness and shakiness were caused by some problems with blood sugar, and a few simple imbalances that can be corrected by supplements...and the right foods.

"What kind of foods?" says I. "I need more pork products, perhaps?"

"No, vegetable products."

"Not bacon? I do not feel I get enough bacon, and I might be suffering as a result."

"I mean Swiss Chard, Kale, those kind of things. Veggies that are dark and rich in color."

And then he told me to eat a lot of apples. Apples! Those damned things are supposed to keep the doctor away! Or so I have been informed over the years.

Document 12

I’m calling this Document 12.

Document 12 is being written in a Word document, because my Internet connection is poor and creaky. It’s the 12^th document I appear to have opened within a certain period of time. It named itself, kind of like it has its own soul. I merely accepted. I said: “Yes, you may take the name of Document 12.”

Can a document have a soul? And what happens when I copy paste it into the InterWebs? Does a little of its soul leach away? Is it a clone, an ember, a scrap of white glare that says writeonmewriteonme you poor wretched wannabe something or other that you are not…yet.

See, the winter isn’t doing me so well. I think I’m going mad. I really do. I try to be funny because it’s the only way I can keep going, I think. It’s February 1, 2011. I will make it to March. I always have.

I haven’t been using my new SAD lightbox properly, even though bug-eyed bunnies with garlands of daisies fairly leapt out of it the first time I tried it. I don’t have time to sit in front of it. I’m supposed to sit there for half an hour, with a book or whatever, while it glares its shiny happy light of wonder at my stricken face, and heals me.

Could it heal me?

What about a vitamin, or a special pill that rattles in my purse like manna, knowing it will pull myself in tight, like a cloak? My legs and arms will be safe by my sides. The world will not devour me, at least not whole.

I sometimes walk along the street and think: I am going to fall, and no one will catch me. I don’t mean a clumsy-footed fall on the ice, while pedestrians laugh and throw eggs and offal at me. I mean, perhaps, that I will stay below, and the world will rise above like a balloon growing distant, with all its warm laughter and colors. So my falling will be more like being left behind.

Or maybe I will forget how to find myself, and where I am, and when I take my glasses off I will not see. Nothing belongs to me; my rings and necklaces are borrowed from the living. Someone might decide to turn off the lights. Someone else might simply close Document 12, and be done with it. Document 12 wants to live, though. It has a beating heart around its edges. Its borders are like the lake I once swam, where I thought I might drown when I had eaten too light a lunch and exercised too fiercely. Keep to the edges, and you will be safe.

I said to myself that day: “You must not panic here. You must put your head down into the water, and make it to the other side.” I put my head down, and I did. I was alone. I kept going.

I feel the flickerings of this sort of fear in the winter. The walls seem too far away, or too close. The ceiling seems lower than it usually does. Did it always meet the edge of the wall, just like that? One misstep and I could knock into a wall, or miss the doorframe. I never do. I never do, and I am strong. But I am also dizzy and weary and confused. I want to know what is wrong with me. Maybe what is wrong with me is also what is right with me. I have been dizzy since the age of three. I can no longer drive on the highway. I will win over this; I will not die.

Everything recedes away. I was talking to a friend the other day at the gym and the world lurched away from me until the edge of the weight machine seemed leagues distant and I felt faint, and I looked at his kind face, and I said: “I think I don’t feel so well.” So he walked me carefully over to the machine that dispenses the Powerade and other drinks, and I bought a Powerade with quarters and drank it.

“How will I get home?” I thought, sitting in a chair with my soft mittens pressed on my forehead. “I might as well be on the Moon.” I couldn’t see how my legs would move to get me there. I couldn’t see it at all. I could place a call, and ask for a ride. How weak would that seem!

But finally I got up, and walked, roughly, over the slurred ice and past the hulking snowdrifts and I don’t how I got there. I don’t know how, but I got home. Keep going.

My Magical Sea Turtle

On a recent visit to a friend's house I needed something to read, so I scanned her bookshelf for approachable titles. The books were all along the lines of Feeding the Self: Spiritual Healing Through Legumes, Daily Affirmations for Mastering Untenable Rage, and Feng-Shui'ing Those Grotesque Tubs of Legos.

I didn't want to read any of these titles. I thought about going down the hall to her daughter's room to borrow Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison (absolutely brill!) but then I spied it: THE SECRET. I had never read The Secret, but everyone else I know has and they are all now the richest people in America and the known world. Well, I would read it.

I won't share The Secret with you, because the author worked damned hard to cook it up, and she deserves her due. Here she is. She is wise. She is your guru. She will control your life better than Carvel's Cookie Puss Ice Cream cake ever did, and Cookie Puss is pretty much omnipotent.

Could she not have controlled the stray bits of hair with proper positive thoughts?

I stole the book and spirited it right out of the house. Aw, hell, since I stole it, you may as well steal, too. The Secret is thus:

1. Don't think about spilling shrimp gumbaloo down the front of your dress, because that is the exact next thing that will happen! As soon as you think of it, you will keep spilling crap down the front of your dress for eternity because you are drawing that kind of badass energy to you!

2. People die because they want to.

3. If you think really really hard that a Barbie doll dressed in dominatrix clothing will drop out of the sky onto your table where you are having drinks with friends in the East Village, it will happen. (Note: This actually happened to me, at Three of Cups. But I didn't necessarily want it to.)

4. If you go out to your mailbox expecting a check, it will be there. If you go out expecting a knife to swing out of the mailbox on an animatronic arm and gut you, that, too, will happen.

5. Depression hurts. What hurts even worse is the fact that your negative attitude is going to bring piles of hot doody to your doorstep. Stop thinking bad thoughts! Stop it. You depressed and worthless fool. do you want to bring shit on your family as well as yourself?

I took this book to heart and decided that I want a magical sea turtle to swim up to my window, with a check in its mouth (beak?) and fly away with me to the Caribbean. I am very anxious for my sea turtle to arrive. I will call him William, or maybe David, because the idea of a sea turtle named either of those names makes me smile very slightly and makes me forget about the toothed lemmings I called forth during that bout of insomnia. Which are going to heap a heaping ass of motherfucking horror on my family, per THE SECRET.

Man, if anyone Googles "toothed lemmings" + "rhonda byrne + sea turtle" they are gonna get LUCKY. Bring it on!

I Was Deeply Depressed Until I Found This Magical Light

I get really depressed in the winter. The lack of light makes me freaked out and breathless, and I start forgetting things like where my feet are and how they are attached to my body. If I had to find and grab them for any reason, would I be able to? If I take my glasses off, will my eyeballs fall clean out of my head? What if I open my mouth and my teeth fall out? These weird things could happen.

I might have to go into a corner and lie down and curl up into a tiny, little ball. I really don't feel very happy at all. Maybe you should go away and stop looking at me like that. I want your approval and it is not forthcoming.

I was driving on the highway yesterday and had an awful panic attack. I saw a sign that read "Exit 19: 1 1/2 miles," except what I thought it said was "Ragnarok (aka Gotterdammerung): 1 1/2 miles." I had to put on the hazard lights and move into the breakdown lane. Weird spots of light were dancing in front of my eyes. I went into a cold sweat, and had to gnaw on the steering wheel through sheer anxiety.

At the gym I was instructed to hoist some 10-pound weights in the air. I did so listlessly, and then I imagined that the weights were really the icy-cold femurs of a deceased demigod that was going to haunt me by rising up from my bathtub. Except that I don't take baths, especially in the winter. It's far too scary, because all sorts of things might be floating beneath the surface: eyeballs, sentient sweet potatoes, snapping turtles.

What if I were walking along the street and my kneecaps fell off? It could happen. There's nothing really keeping them attached to my legs. Good God, the world is filled with terrors. I could fall into a hole inhabited by spiders.

Crickets live in my basement in the winter months and they could bite me.

The NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp.
Bunnies will leap from it and embrace you with their warm and carefree fuzziness.

Because of all the awful things that might happen, like my teeth falling out unexpectedly into my soup, I have purchased one of those lights that sad, depressed people use in the wintertime. I turned it on today and it was like I was out on a warm, sunny summer day! The NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp has changed my life in just one hour! The ions were refreshing and reminded me that life could once again be joyous and carefree. 

Now, instead of seeing drooling, headless corpses lurching toward me through a miasma of gloom and self-criticism, I see bunnies wearing jerkins in festive Lilly Pulitzer patterns, such as "Green monkeys holding champagne glasses with shrimps poking out of the top" and "Pink alligators holding cocktail shakers in their jaws while being ridden to the circus by adorable kittens." 

There are daisies raining out of the sky! Thank you, NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp!