[1:01 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Do you like goats, pigs, or bunnies better? [1:01 PM] Abstract Toast: Um, going to have to go with pigs, because pigs = bacon and bacon = tasty. [1:01 PM] Abstract Toast: YOU ARE NOT MAKING ME BUILD A FARM [1:02 PM] Abstract Toast: STOP. RED. PINEAPPLE. CEASE. HALT. DESIST. [1:03 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I won't. [1:03 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I won't even send you the cute little pink pig. [1:03 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: So cute. So little. So pink. [1:03 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: He finds truffles for you. [1:04 PM] Abstract Toast: You're guilting me right now, even if you don't mean to. [1:04 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Why would I do that? I know how much you hate farming. [1:04 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You are a smartiepants, I would never want to bring you down to the farmville level [1:04 PM] Abstract Toast: Okay, you're really guilting me right now. [1:04 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: [1:04 PM] Abstract Toast: [1:05 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I am totally joking, I swear [1:05 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: It is a coping mechanism for me. [1:05 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: It does not mean that you need a farm. [1:05 PM] Abstract Toast: Okay, I'll make a damned farm if you really want me to, but I reserve full artistic license to make it as unstructurally sound and thinly-veiled subliminal message-filled as possible. [1:06 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I don't "really want you to" [1:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: It's just funny how badly you don't want to so it's been fun to poke you about it in the same way that it's fun to sigh about the benefits of eloping with you around my mother [1:07 PM] Abstract Toast: Although honestly, the sight of happy little farm animals prancing about flowers meticulously planted to say "KILL YOUR PARENTS" or something is amusing. [1:08 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: hahahaha [1:08 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: okay [1:08 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I'mma send you a pig [1:09 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I will send you a present EVERY DAY [1:11 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I sent you a cute little pink pig
[1:25 PM] Abstract Toast: GOD AMANDA PALMER JUST SHUT UP ALREADY [1:25 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: ? [1:26 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: oh, you phone-subscribed to her didn't you [1:26 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: that is the quickest way to hate her, I tell you [1:26 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: She tweets WAY too much [1:27 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I phone-followed her for like two weeks and then had to stop because I started hating her, and then phone-followed her again when I was trying to get tickets for that show and was like UGH I DON'T EVEN WANT TO SEE YOU AMANDA PALMER YOU JUST TWEET TOO MUCH I HATE YOU [1:35 PM] Abstract Toast: I may reconsider. [1:38 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You probably should. [1:38 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Especially if she does another #lofnotc in the near future. [1:38 PM] Abstract Toast: What the hell is that? [1:39 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers [1:39 PM] Abstract Toast: In on that shit. [1:39 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Amanda Palmer fans get on twitter and talk using the #lofnotc hashtag [1:40 PM] Abstract Toast: I want to be called a faggot by her twice. Nobody except possibly anyone she went to high school with has earned that. [1:40 PM] Abstract Toast: And her gay friends. [1:40 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: when Amanda or Neil get involved, #lofnotc will go straight into trending topics. [1:41 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: When Amanda gets DRUNK and involved (like this last friday) I wake up on Saturday morning to like 200 tweets from Amanda alone where she's yelling about how CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME HAIL #LOFNOTC and #lofnotc is #3 in trending topics and she's tweeting nonsense over and over and over just to try to get it to #1 [1:42 PM] Abstract Toast: Oh dear. [1:42 PM] Abstract Toast: I'd ask you to warn me when that happens, but I'm not sure if I want to A: partake and see if I can drunkenly keep up with her or B: TURN IT OFF FOR MY SANITY
[1:50 PM] Abstract Toast: Also, BOOO MY HOPES OF MAKING A BIG SWASTIKA OF STRAWBERRIES HAS BEEN FOILED BY THE COST OF PLOWING [1:50 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: hahahahahahaha [1:51 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You have to get money by harvesting and shit [1:51 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You can help out on my farm and get twenty coins [1:51 PM] Abstract Toast: I refuse. [1:51 PM] Abstract Toast: DAS ICH DE UBERFARM. [1:52 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I just sent you a NEIGHBOR request [1:52 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I can tell you how to get the most easy money [1:52 PM] Abstract Toast: Wait, hang on. [1:52 PM] Abstract Toast: I can...harvest my pig? [1:53 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Not for a few days. [1:53 PM] Abstract Toast: What happens? [1:53 PM] Abstract Toast: Please tell me the pig lives. [1:53 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: A pink diamond will appear above his cute little head. [1:53 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Yes [1:53 PM] Abstract Toast: Otherwise my mind is going to go places I never would have imagined. [1:53 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: He will bring you truffles every...three days? [1:53 PM] Abstract Toast: Okay, bear in mind that I have half a swastika on my property that needs to be taken care of. [1:53 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I know, and you need money for that. [1:54 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I want to see this so bad, you HAVE to accept my neighbor request. [1:54 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Here's what you do. [1:55 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You know all those seriously irritating KIMMY GOT A RIBBON KIMMY MASTERED TOMATOES notifications you keep getting? [1:55 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: There's a reason I keep posting them [1:56 PM] Abstract Toast: oh snap an ugly duckling [1:56 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: SNAG IT [1:57 PM] Abstract Toast: SELLING IT TO FUND THE WEHRMACHT FARMS [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: NO NO NO [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: When it turns into a swan you harvest its feathers for 80coins [1:57 PM] Abstract Toast: LOOK AT IT [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Listen [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I KNOW THIS SHIT [1:57 PM] Abstract Toast: I DEMAND PURE BLOODED ARYAN ANIMALS [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: IT TURNS INTO A WHITE SWAN [1:57 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: THE SWAN IS GORGEOUS [1:58 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Go get all the bonuses from my ribbons [1:58 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Yellow = 50, white = 100, red = 250, blue = 500 [1:58 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I don't know how much you get from crops mastery but I've had like three of those in the past few days [1:59 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You should be able to get two bonuses from me just from visiting my profile page and then you don't have to sell your POTENTIAL ARYAN SWAN [1:59 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: DON'T SEND IT TO UGLY DUCKLING AUSCHWITZ [2:00 PM] Abstract Toast: HA HA. [2:00 PM] Abstract Toast: 100 coins. [2:02 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: because hello I am an awesome farmer [2:03 PM] Abstract Toast: Okay, fine. [2:03 PM] Abstract Toast: But one day, this farm will become a well-oiled machine of war. [2:03 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Have you accepted my NEIGHBOR REQUEST yet? [2:04 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I want to see your swastika [2:04 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: yay [2:05 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: ahahahahaha [2:06 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: I didn't see your pig [2:07 PM] Abstract Toast: I haven't put it out yet. [2:07 PM] Abstract Toast: It's still in indoctrination., [2:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: Oh I see [2:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: hahahahahaha [2:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You have the best farm ever [2:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: You should come visit mine so you can see how cutesy it is [2:07 PM] taylorbigbabyfan: although I wish my sunflowers were blooming [2:07 PM] Abstract Toast: It makes me sick. It is not DISCIPLINED.
In the next little bit, I'll be using this Xanga to chronicle the circle of Hell that the American healthcare system is for the uninsured. I'll try to break it up into a few entries so it's not some huge fifty-page unintelligible entry, but at some points you're just going to have to bear with me because I'm adjusting to being off one medication and onto a couple new ones and into and out of a residential treatment facility within the last week, I'm mood swinging like one of those carnival ships, and crying on a hair-trigger for absolutely no reason. My parents are thinking of committing me. I'm thinking it's not such a terrible idea. But if I'm committed to anything right now, I'm committed to the idea of talking about what's going on with me lately and how hard it's been.
First off, the rollercoaster that's been the last ten years for me. Hang onto your hat.
It started when I was like, nine. I hated myself. I have no idea why. I had a pretty normal childhood. But I have this horrible clear memory of being in my bedroom alone while my family watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I was making yarn dolls. They just didn't come out right. I felt like I deserved pain because I couldn't do anything right. I pounded my head into the wall until I saw stars. I don't know anyone who self-harmed at the age of nine.
thirteen. I had mono and pneumonia at the same time and spent basically a year in bed. By the time I was "over" my illness, most of my friends had completely given up on me, I was constantly fatigued and used to sleeping all day, and I was depressed as hell. Eventually my mom took me to the doctor and the doctor put me on medication #1: PAXIL.
Paxil made me completely manic, although we didn't know that word then. I remember being angry and frustrated all the time. My mom remembers "hating" me. I thought the world was against me. I thought the only one who understood me was my boyfriend. Eventually, nobody understood me. I don't remember when I went off Paxil.
The next thing that happened was going absolutely nuts after my seventeenth birthday. I was having crippling panic attacks, thinking the world was ending, hallucinating blood everywhere, hearing voices calling my name, delusions that I was a space alien -- there's fun hints about it in an older blog. First hospitalization was in January of that year.
It was a horrible experience. I was in the Adolescent Unit of Pine Rest in Grand Rapids. They put me on Abilify and Celexa and I was so miserable and doped up that I could hardly think. I remember some of the patients there. An eight-year-old girl who was so violent that they couldn't keep her in the children's unit. Matt, a 13-year-old drug addict who gave me a yellow band I wore around my wrist for a year afterwards to remind me to pray for him. My roommate, who never got visitors and was tremendously lonely and cried for hours when she got in trouble for asking me for a hug. A girl named Ruthie, whose arms were covered with cuts, bruises, and burns. When Ruthie was asked to make a list of reasons she had to live, she could only come up with one: "It snowed today." Ruthie gave me her address on the back of a Care Bears picture she had colored in. She wrote me a few letters afterwards. I didn't write her back. My parents thought it would be a bad idea.
After Pine Rest, the Celexa started to kick back in, and with the Celexa came the mania again. I started getting angry and violent, constantly frustrated, and when we went to talk to the doctor about it, they switched us to what I understood to be a different version of Celexa called Lexapro. I was still manic, to the point where one day I came downstairs to find my six-year-old sister sitting in a chair I'd just vacated, and it made me so angry that I picked her up and threw her at the concrete floor. I've never forgiven myself for doing that. Thinking about it brings tears to my eyes to this day. I don't know if she remembers it and I can't bear to ask her.
The Abilify completely ruined my balance for some reason. I had been in dance class and had quit dance the day before entering the hospital. I wouldn't have been able to continue anyway; after the Abilify kicked in, something went wrong with my central balance that I'm still unable to explain. I wasn't dizzy, but I was clumsy. I'd bump into things and I fell down the stairs sometimes multiple times a week. My friends thought it was funny. I didn't think it was funny at all, I found it completely humiliating.
I don't know if my parents still believe this, but at the time, they were convinced that all my mental problems had to do with demonic influences in my life (well then, why put me on so many medications?). They decided to remove anything that they determined could have such an influence; I was forbidden to see most of my closest friends, I was not allowed to listen to my favorite bands or read most books.
After the incident where I threw Aviva at the floor, I was terrified that I was a danger to my family and we knew that the meds were the problem. Trouble was, we didn't know enough to know which medication was the problem. I went out to Washington to stay with a family friend and weaned myself off both Lexapro and Abilify while I was out there and stayed unmedicated until the beginning of my senior year...but that's the beginning of a new chapter...
After all the emotional crap I've gone through recently, some of which I can't really detail here since there are people who follow this blog only because they like to shit all over me every time I'm happy (what the hell, get lives). But anyway, life's been pretty much awful for the past three weeks. Part of it was that I lost a lot of my emotional support lines -- one was overdoing the benzos, one got a new girlfriend, one just didn't have time, blah blah. Either way, I got to the lowest point I've been at in forever.
Brian and Geoff and Chrissie and Jake and Joe and Danielle all kinda disappeared and I felt like I couldn't really burden them with what was going on with me, so I internalized it all. Stress from trying to get into YWAM, the sudden lack of privacy, loneliness, having nearly no friends, and the emotional fallout after the you-know-what that I can't post here. Finally everything snapped. I stopped eating, stayed up until the sun rose. Could barely get out of bed in the morning. Everything sucked. I wanted to die, or to be someone else. Couple people were there for me but by that time I was so far gone that I didn't even know how to help myself.
Yesterday (it was yesterday, right?) I went over to a women's crisis center and talked to them about the you-know-what and told them I was a suicide risk. They said they could have someone call me in a few weeks. I called a suicide hotline that afternoon. They said I could be waitlisted until November or head into the ER. I have no money and no insurance. Trying to fix my life has left me completely broke. I ended up just having a beer with Anna instead and smoking a few cigarettes (I've been quitting out of necessity and it makes everything worse). Talked to Brian for a long time, maybe two or three hours. Fell asleep.
Today I wasn't even showered or dressed and my mom had suddenly found a doctor who would take me for an appointment RIGHT NOW GO GO GO. This guy turned out to be awesome. He really listened to me. I cried a lot. I talked about everything going on in my life (somehow!) and Dude just listened and really seemed to want to help. Sounds retarded, I know. But a lot of doctors I've seen are so jaded that they don't really listen at all, assume I'm making this stuff up, or give me a pat on the head and say "buck up, little trooper" and recommend exercise even though at my lowest point, I was hugely into dance and had a very active job.
So he prescribed Pristiq, which I'm nervous about -- I've never tried an SNRI, but SSRIs really mess me up; we'll give it a few weeks and see -- and Ativan, which holy crap, this is the best night I've had since I got back. Not gonna lie, after seeing someone just have Fun Adventures In Klonopinland, I was all excited and thinking WOO ALTERED STATE but god, this is so much better. I just feel normal. And it's awesome.
So yeah, thanks anyone who has been kinda there for me through all this crap, it really helped a lot and hopefully I'm on my way to Normaltown.
See, last night I learned to multitrack with Audacity, and my head just about a-splode with the options I have for songs. I have a mic that sounds decent enough, I guess, and no shortage of skills with what I want to do. My problem is that said mic is build into the computer that I use, and the processor on said computer is not sufficient to complete the tasks I want it to complete -- namely, being able to handle a song with five or six tracks.
I could cut it down to more like three tracks, but it would be difficult and the potential for mixing would be a lot less. Currently I'm working with a song that is very simple, and I have a piano track, three vocal tracks, and two guitar tracks. And when I went to record the newest guitar track (which is basically quarter notes like a bass line), Audacity kept lagging, so it's all out of sync.
I'm not complaining about Audacity, it's a very powerful tool. Last night I recorded what I thought would sound like a trainwreck. My mic had way too much boost, so the guitar and vocals were clipping, and the vocals weren't even all that great. I basically wanted to see what I could come up with if I tried to write and record a song in one evening. It sounded terrible through the first listen, and then Geoff moved the project file over to his computer (which has a much better processor, but the mic doesn't work correctly) and played with it for a couple hours, and by the end, holy cow, it was not just listenable, but quite good. I couldn't help but smile as I listened to the finished product. Of course it still wasn't great -- I could have tried much harder on the vocals. Some of the harmonies were not even good, and the timing was pretty bad in some places, but holy crap. I was so excited to hear that with a little effort I could turn out a decent product. If I can get a better mic and use it with Geoff's superior computer, I might just be able to make something sellable. eeee!
But for the moment, being stuck with "meh" gear is a little bit frustrating, because while I can hear the potential of what I could do, it's not there yet, and yikes.
Anyway, today's priorities are to do some cleaning, some music, and some BSG because I have a BSG craving and Geoff doesn't feel like watching the earlier parts of the series. Was it just me or was that last episode awesome? And I kind of want to learn "All Along The Watchtower" now.
