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I didn’t mean this to sound so sad. I’m attempting to do my taxes for the first time totally by myself. They’re complicated. My damn accountant was angry at me last year for sending him my audit during tax season. Well duh that’s when I got it and it was due 30 days later. He let it sit for months. The tax thing is complicating everything in my life right now. My Dad was a CPA who would have never been angry at a client for….My dad died suddenly at the end of this month 19 years ago. These couple of weeks always make me sad and trying to do taxes, uh!!!!!
I fear that someday, not soon I hope, I will die and not leave a legacy; no permanent marker, except for a headstone in Mount Hebron Cemetery that reminds the world I was here once.
People will argue that is selfish to want to be remembered. That if I wanted to be remembered I should have had children for parents did something important. But not all children are worthy of being remembered by their parents and parents, sometimes, very sadly, outlive children.
Then of course there’s the career legacy. As somebody who has had three and a half careers, a bunch of newspaper articles published and a five and a half year old blog, I can be remembered for knowing that one career wasn’t enough for a lifetime long before that was fashionable to think. But many other people can lay claim to that thought also.
They can’t all lay claim to saying some of the things I have said in this blog at the time I did, and I made sure to put in original thoughts. In the 70’s and 80’s before the era of instant communication and social networking, my sister claimed a New York Times reporter was following me around recording my every thought. For I would say something and a month or three later an article would be in The Times with the very same thought and/or lines.
I had no faith in myself then. No belief that I could write for such a newspaper or write an entire book.
Now I’m not sure I can market myself properly. Just writing this seems so egotistical. Yet what are most bloggers, Facebookers, and Twitterers doing but trying to make a mark on the world so that they will leave a legacy? A lot of money is good too.
I have friends who will be remembered for their careers. Their writing. Their wit. Their skill and talents in other areas. And their spouses, kids, grandkids and I’m beginning to feel very small in statute. I want what they have. I can’t have the kids and grandkids, that’s impossible and probably not the adoring spouse, but the career….Of course I’m convinced I’m becoming demented so I probably have about two good writing months left…..
For awhile I think I thought I could leave a legacy as a blogger. It was different three, four years ago. When you were known, many bloggers knew you. There weren’t thousands of different groups all competing for bloggers and fame. There was competitiveness, of course, everything is. But we knew we were in the earlier days of something bigger then ourselves something that could change communication. Then came Twitter. It’s all too much for me.
Friends are having grandchildren. I’m glad for them, so excited sometimes you have no idea, but a bit sad for me as I will never know that feeling.
My book is that most egotistical of genres, a memoir, but I do think I have a more interesting than most story to tell. One I won’t go into here as everybody who reads this blog knows it. If you know me through Facebook you don’t really know it.
You don’t know that I’m much more than a collection of symptoms. Hey, I met John Gotti and lived to talk about it. That will always be one of my favorite stories sick as it is and it’s very sick. It’s me, girl who couldn’t keep her Marilyn dress from doing a Marilyn. In my memories I have short blond hair, and big red lips. In reality I had long red hair done 40’s style or maybe I had cut it recently to just shoulder length with volume but not big–it was the last year of the 80’s. My lips might have been red but they were never big.
That’s not one of my best stories just one of my favorites. I don’t know what my best stories are. I have no way of judging my own work. I no longer have any semblance of a site meter so I have no way of gauging what pages are peoples favorites.
I did that on purpose. The whole get-to-love-me-through-social-media frenzy sickened me. I had come early to the party. Too early as I didn’t realize I was supposed to have a plan, enough energy to spend the hours I wasn’t exercising or writing on social media activities. I had done that with blogging solely because I’m obsessive and I was burnt out as I burn out of everything.
I’m vain. Oh so vain I think the story of not knowing I had non verbal learning disorder and living anyway is a good story. I spent my late teen, 20’s and 30’s being adorable, looking like a generic soap star, and I worked hard. I confused my bosses who couldn’t understand that the spacey klutzy but adorable girl did such complex excellent work.
Then I broke down. Though I did brilliantly in social work school I don’t think my work ever equaled the work I did in my 20’s to 37. Maybe it was the medication. More likely it was still not knowing what was wrong with me and being more aware since I broke down, had the testing, and found out I was supposed to be incapable of just about everything. I had always believed in myself before underneath it all. Always believed that tomorrow I would understand more. Tomorrow there would be magical answers.
The answers weren’t magical. There was some relief in knowing at first but then there was anger. I’m still working it out. And that’s the problem. A book needs a happy or tragic ending and I don’t plan on giving it a tragic ending. I want the happy one.
My life is good. Very good. But is buying, all on my own without help from one person, a house, and almost gut renovating it a good enough ending? Even if girl has problems that should preclude her from being proud of this?
Is girl coming to a city where she knew almost anybody at a stage in life when almot nobody moves except unhappily for a job or for grandchildren, and forging a life for herself, a happy ending?
Actually now that I read the above two paragraphs I realize that it’s just as happy an ending as girl meets boy. This hasn’t been Ozzie & Harriet’s world for sometime.
Or maybe I’m being defensive. And what I think are accomplishments are nothing important really.
I recognize and accept that somethings in my life will always be impossible for me to do. I understand I will have to spend the rest of my life explaining why I don’t drive; that hardware and learning things such as HTML might as well be advanced physics and calculus.
But damn when I pay for things I want them to work. I don’t want to spend a year staring at an incredibly beautiful shower that cost thousands of dollars plus I bought a new water heater for more pressure when the pressure is abysmal. I use the upstairs shower I spent nothing on. Then the plumber caused floods after he told me I had pin hole floods. The floods were a few days later and he didn’t return my calls for days. Said he didn’t have my numbers. I know I left them but maybe he didn’t get them.
I want the netflick DVD player to work–after two tech calls that did cost me money. I don’t want the cable company to constantly tell me “it’s your TV” when I had the Geek Squad come and check it out.
Getting things done properly costs money and I’m willing to spend the money but only if everything works when finished or after the service call.
I guess it’s time to face facts. Do the techs really work or decide that I’m a ditz and therefore…? Does the plumber feel no responsibility for causing floods, that cost me almost a thousand to fix? I’m not even talking about the pressure because I’m a single woman who has non verbal learning disabilities (NLD)? It might be an invisible disability but sometimes I feel that I wear a sign around my head “ditz,” “idiot,” “don’t take her seriously.”
Not having the social problems that so many people with NLD have might make it worse because I don’t expect to be treated poorly. And, honestly, lately I can’t tell if I’m experiencing a series of stupid problems that anybody would experience–and be bitchier than I am being, threaten to sue–maybe even go through with the law suit. Or are these problems specific to me?
I can watch the movies on my computer but why did I buy a TV and DVD player then? Am I wrong for caring? And damn I want that shower working properly. It’s Eldon’s responsibility and I told him I don’t want to involve him in a law suit but he didn’t spend the money nor does he spend a half hour a day staring at a thing of beauty that just can’t get itself it together.
In 91 my father went to the big poker game in the sky. In 01 my mother went somewhere not here.
You hope they reunited but your mother wasn’t betting on it. You think they had some kind of Houdini signal he was supposed to send her if there was something up there and some way of communicating. Houdini and his wife made up a signal. If there was an afterlife she would know because she would receive his signal. It never happened. You don’t know the signal but you know the story because your father was into levitating tables and Ouija boards and more. Your mother made him stop. Still you think she wanted the signal more than anything in later life.
You don’t want to say you have a fear of years ending in “1″ because that sounds so wimpy. And people will assume you’re scared of another 9/11. You’re more scared of the idiots who blamed Obama for the last miss. Big difference between 8/06/01 memo sitting on Bush’s desk and officials who did screw up but weren’t in the Oval Office. Not that you think Obama’s perfect but Bush didn’t inherit two wars, “the worst recession since….,” and all the fallout. He helped cause all that.
You don’t want to say you’re confused about the past decade; it had certain incredible highs and lows like you have never experienced and hope never to experience again.
You hate the way people waffle around 9/11 or make it Todd Beamer Appreciation Day. Most of it happened in New York and that should be always acknowledged. Not that you’re not appreciative of Todd Beamer. But that day really did change your life because your mother became so addled, yet not addled enough to require emergency measures. The day she fell and died not just added to your guilt meter but made it run so fast the guilt company couldn’t keep with it and therefore demanded their overdue payment much later in the decade.
How can you complain when there are so many people with less than nothing? You don’t want to say that your addiction to HGTV has made you cynical. Sometimes people put down substantial down payments but other times they put down five percent or work out arrangements so that the mortgage and/or second mortgage covers 100%. How can they call themselves homeowners? They’re renting from the bank. You couldn’t understand this in the 90’s; you find it unbelievable today.
You’re far from perfect. You have an unnatural fear that the above belief will cause you to lose everything you have. Bad Karma. And Karma is everything to you.
You did big things last year–well beginning in 07. You sold an apartment and bought and renovated a house. It is a big deal and yet you say “piece of cake.” “If I could do this anybody could.”
But not everybody has a disability that causes many people to give up completely, live off other people, work in sheltered workshops despite having multiple degrees. Of course you’re on the highest end of this spectrum. Sort of like having a “bit of Asperger’s.”
Still you never knew. You worked and worked your tush off in your 20’s and 30’s while living in an apartment that was totally unrenovated and required constant care. Your neighborhood was store unfriendly. One of the happiest days of your life was the day a Duane Reade opened five blocks from your apartment. You would get there at eight on Saturday mornings–the only time it wasn’t packed and buy cleaning supplies and much more.
You’re obsessively clean now because you couldn’t be then. You thought it was a combination of laziness and living in an old old apartment that was party central.
Your father thought you could be the neatest person in the world if you only tried. Your father was always yelling. Always telling you how great you could be if only….He didn’t know and by the time he realized (after the damn testing) he only had a few years left. Your father was your greatest admirer and your greatest foe. You should probably be in therapy for life just to understand that relationship.
A friend was just saying he found Elizabeth Gilbert’s story banal because he knows you and you went to Europe by yourself many times and have overcome much greater odds than Gilbert will ever know. He actually called you a “hero.” That was so sweet. Actually he said “you’re much more of a hero than she is.” But…
And so a new year begins. You never make resolutions. You have accomplishments you want to make happen. You’ll work your tush off to make them happen. But if they don’t…..You do have one resolution. Stop using the word “actually” constantly.
Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Long Island Press’s award winning series: Our Children’s Brains. Of everything I did this past decade this article was personally the most meaningful. If I increased awareness of non verbal learning disorder (NLD) just a bit then I did a lot.
I meant to end the year decade with a salute to bloggers because I think we’re at the forefront of a major revolution in communication. Without blogging there really couldn’t have been Facebook. Without Facebook there couldn’t have been Twitter. I don’t know whether I fear or look forward to what comes next.
I began this decade, and I believe decades truly begin when something significant happens, in deep agony. True the Trade Center had imploded and my mother died suddenly the next month but it was more than that. I felt as if I were losing my grip on sanity. I didn’t know about NLD then. Had I known when I was a decade younger, ha, the worlds I might have conquered.
But I have to remember that I put this blog together and if I have been harping on its former glory lately it’s because it opened doors I never knew existed.
I became friendly with Bone over four years ago. His writing amazed me and still does. He keeps getting better. But it was Bone the person who helped change me. When we became friendly I realized that I didn’t have to fear the South.
My first three days visiting here I was more than a bit scared. Actually it rained the first two days and I was glad I could bring my incredible rain making skills to a then drought stricken area. (Not glad I have that talent now as this is shaping up to be the rainiest December on record.)
The third day I ventured out and nobody bit me. North Myrtle, so familiar now, seemed like another country. I knew the New York metro area, South Florida, parts of New England and California.
This is a new world. My world now and I go into a new decade knowing I can face whatever comes. I might be a decade older and one of the oldest known bloggers but that never stopped me….
I thank you all who have taken this journey or parts of it with me.
I wrote a truly long post because I began as a long winded self-absorbed blogger. I’m going through the blog one post at a time. Not a fun project, but I must do it. Again I thank Cooper the magnificent.
Courting’s undergone and still undergoing major retuning.
Last week I watched Julie and Julia. I’ve never been a Meryl person. I have always appreciated her brilliance but many of her performances have left me feeling nothing. I watched Mama Mia with eyes and mouth wide open amazed that she would subject herself to that role when I seriously doubt she needs money and her kids aren’t in the pivotal ten to fourteen year old range that would love the movie. Abba is a band that has always reminded me of the worst of pop. No it’s not even pop.
Her performance was a revelation. She not just captured Julia Child but made me love her. Stanley Tucci! Wow. He made a little, ugly to be honest, man into one of the sexiest men I have ever seen. I was captivated.
I have read a lot about how Julie’s (Amy Adams) story was horrible but I’m a blogger and in some ways it could have been my story. These are the exceptions: Amanda Hesser of The Times went to her house for dinner. The book taken from the blog turned into a best seller. The subsequent movie was one of the top movies of the year. And she wrote a new memoir about the affairs she was having during that time that did almost ruin the movie for me as she and her husband seemed so solidly together.
Oh yes we have so much in common.
When I began Courting I didn’t realize people read blogs. She knew more, and knew enough to have a theme but at first didn’t know if anybody was reading. When her husband read that she was the third most read blog at Salon, they called the people “fans.” When I became the most read blog at that place we don’t talk about it I called the people who read “readers.”
She felt obligated to post everyday. My readers know my verbal diarrhea though it has tapered off. Somebody from The Christian Science Monitor called her. Somebody called me. You can see we have a tremendous amount in common. She was coming up to her 30’s. I was in that place called “used to be 30something when it was on.”
It’s not that I’m ashamed of my age. I’m just so darn immature that I have a hard time believing I’m going to be 60. Therefore all my friends have been on notice for months they better come up with one giant celebration because it is an age to celebrate.
Julie got nasty comments. Blogs were begun just to diss me. But hey any publicity….Not frigging true.
Unlike Julie I didn’t get a book contract. But my life changed as dramatically. As much as I talked about moving from New York I was scared. I know New York. New York knows me. We went together like seltzer and vanilla syrup in egg creams which contain no eggs, but seltzer, syrup and milk. I have an incredible support system in New York. Yes I had been living the life so many dream of down to the luxe doorman building in the heart of the Upper West Side.
But my dreams had changed. I knew to continue living the life I lived I needed more space in a way less pricey place. I didn’t count on a house. That never entered my radar until I found North Myrtle Beach and realized I was capable of buying, renovating (not with my own hands) and maintaining a house. My house isn’t architecturally significant. I could get a lot more house that has higher ceilings, is fancier, and has more room for much less money just across 17 but it wouldn’t be a five minute walk to the beach or a two minute walk to the center of town. My house has decks, lots of decks and I love decks. It thrills me to sit outside in the middle of the night looking at stars. It thrills me to be able to run to the beach for just a few minutes whenever.
I haven’t been a “good” blogger these past three years and I’m not just talking quality. Too much was happening in my “real” life to seek out new blogs, to make new blogging friends. Julie didn’t have to comment, email, chat up people. I’m not saying that all that is bad. It was difficult for reasons my readers are all too aware of. The problems I had were all interrelated (something I had intuitively known) had a name, and I operated at a level where I had compensated for almost everything.
Blogging brought the problems back. I couldn’t master the computer language of blogging, HTML. I couldn’t blog socialize as much as many people wanted yet I couldn’t set limits. I political blogged long after I knew it wasn’t healthy for me. When I found out about NLD I began to take charge of my life. Yet I had never felt “disabled” before.
Damn I was smart. I had been eligible to skip grades but my parents didn’t believe in that. People always took me for bright. Yes I had gone through this before but blogging once so great for me began to make me feel like a collection of symptoms. It’s not OK to have a space to pour your heart out into, unedited. Since I generally wouldn’t talk about my friends in the present, blogging about NLD filled up space and let me vent. Something I probably needed to do. But will never know if the venting led to feeling worse. I very much believe in the power of positive thinking, and not dwelling on problems, yet….Did it have to be so public? I love having less Google entries.
So I lost readers, didn’t court new ones, and do you know how many blogs have begun in the past three years? Many millions. When I was “on top,” I think there grew to be sixty million. I alone had five.
Yet it was the greatest feeling in the world in the beginning. People read me! People who weren’t classmates or relatives. An illustrator/cartoonist said to me: “you have the feedback I have always craved.” I was shocked as I’ve known him all my life and thought he was a person who shunned the spotlight. And he makes mucho money. But I knew what he meant. There’s nothing like that first feeling of wonder; of going to a from “blogger to writer” seminar knowing I had a higher Technorati rating than the speakers. Yes of course I looked. I was hung up on stats then. I have always resented that title. I was a writer a long time before I was a blogger.
I didn’t know how to handle that recognition. It came out of nowhere and at times, many times, felt undeserved. At times it made me want to jump up and down with joy. Other times I wanted to ask people if they knew who I was. Like they cared. I lived in New York where everybody really does have their fifteen minutes or their best friend did. Everybody was famous for something real. Not having a money losing blog. Everybody was younger and better looking than me. I take that last one back. But I had begun to feel that I was living in a theme park and I just ain’t a Disney or Rouse production person.
My life was unsettled. Maybe I will never have that recognition again but hey, I’m prepared for anythng. I’m settled now. Everything I have done in the past three years has been to improve my life.
So Julie went onto fame and fortune and I went on to home ownership. OK she’s lived my dream. My dream didn’t die. It went on hiatus. The long drawn out saga is over, and the fun’s about to begin. Stay tuned.
My next posts will be at the max half this length. As usual I reserve the right to change my mind.
This article’s on the death of old media as exemplified by a party Tina Brown gave. Now she has The Daily Beast which I read.
A lot of bloggers went to its launch party. Not this one. I don’t feel very blogger like. Nor do I feel very writer like.
I’m coming face to face with who I am. Smashing head first into the giant thunder cloud she was lost for two decades. Or so some think. Not really. This blog will be five years old next week which isn’t really an achievement but I gave up being a multi award nominated reporter for it.
Not really again. I couldn’t go any further at that particular paper for the most personal of reasons and being me didn’t apply anywhere else–or send in clippings. I have two books and should scan them in but first I have to set up my whole office so that my life can easily be found and one of the bad side affects of going off this med is that I’m ADD’d to the max. No frigging patience for anything boring and most of life is. Though I can clean….and water plants if it ever stops raining.
Tomorrow there is only a 20% chance of rain and I’m going to the beach–the four blocks I live from it? It’s four long blocks when you take a chair and something to drink, maybe something to eat, and a book–hard covered or trade paper, of course.
I’m not doing well if I’m trying to prepare for a lifetime of poverty, but I’m betting on me, to come through for me, as if I don’t who will?
There are many times I wonder why I have a blog; it often feels so 2004. For the past two years I have been going through the motions, yet my blog has become my place to talk out certain things in my life.
Find out what my disability is, check. Blog about it, check.
Prepare to sell apartment, check……
Spend six months selling apartment, check…..
Buy house, check…..
Renovate house, check….
Decide my birthday present to myself will be ending an addiction, check……
I didn’t know if I was going to blog about this. I know it seems as if I let everything out but I have an entire life never mentioned here and I thought this would be another thing not for public consumption.
I’m glad I did though I obsessively edited it after it was posted as I have a wont to do. Obsessively edited the words but I, Ms Fact Checker made a totally retarded mistake that I freaked about as it was further proof of me losing my mind. I knew Grace Slick wrote “White Rabbit.” I know what she wrote; I know the difference between her and Joplin as well as I know pretty much anything, but in two places in the Internet I found lyrics that said Joplin wrote it. I thought it strange but didn’t think to look further.
I’m kind of upset about that as I’m sort of an expert, in my own mind, on that time and music.
I used to have many readers and when I look at the stats every several months in my CPanel am shocked that people still reading Courting as I do nothing to pimp her.
Courting will be five in August and I was a slave to her the first several years. A blog, unless it’s bringing incredible self satisfaction and/or much money should be the blogger’s slave. It took me awhile to understand that.
I thank you, everybody who commented the other day. It wasn’t easy for me to post and I know it wasn’t easy to comment to. I seem to love to make things difficult.
I’m trying to simplify my life. It wasn’t fun to sell an apartment or to buy a house in 08. The world was going crazy. Blogs and all media had gone from a “I have so much and let me show you how financially successful I am” mode to “I am a great American and won’t spend a dime more than necessary” mode.
I always say I put my apartment on the market just as Bear Stearns imploded and closed just after the fall of Lehman Brothers. I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t sure buying a house while the stock market went back to free falling was a good move.
I no longer trusted my judgment. I looked at everything I had done in the past 20 years under a much more critical spectre. I knew I was lucky in many ways; I was financially secure (or thought I was:) Have amazing friends, of many decades, who tell me when they think I’m off kilter.
My closest friend sent me an email yesterday; subject line: how is my crazy friend? I deserved that. The day before was spent on the phone with her–me convinced I was going to go into convulsions at any second though I had no symptoms. Well my muscles did feel as if they were contracting….
Then there are the bloggers. All I can say is thank you. Writing about my addiction and my attempt to get off the pills hasn’t made it more real but putting it down in black & white and having your support is an incredible blessing.
This blog will be continued. As I’m no longer its slave most of my screen time will be spent writing for publication. No excuses.
I didn’t mean for this to be horribly depressing. My life has been good, often great and gets better all the time.
I was just such a presence. Then I wasn’t. Then I was again.
Finding out I had nonverbal learning disorder gave me the strength to change my life completely. This blog has helped immensely. I have great friends and family. I’m truly blessed and would never think otherwise–except when my mood swings were pounding upon my head like the largest waves swelling into breakers.
Thanks Thom for the words.
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
The first time I was addicted to drugs I was almost seventeen and formed a fast furious alliance with speed:
tiene usted Dexedrena? do you have Dexedrine? available at any farmacia.
The addiction scared me though wow did I love it. I was so fast; so accurate; didn’t care what people thought; my writing was so dense and filled with acute observations. If only I had been able to understand my handwriting. The entire addiction and withdrawal lasted three weeks. I knew it was bad for me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to easily find Dexedrine or its more mild spin-off Dexemil in New York. I was a suburban high school student…..
The second time? That was legal.
A prescription handed to me rather easily by a doctor when I was suffering and truly needed medication.
Who the hell would have expected me 21 years later trying harder than I have ever tried anything to get off it. I’m not known for being lazy. Slow at times. Balance and walk off kilter, always.
The medication that once relaxed me now leaves my foggy. My “memory of an elephant” as it’s called by several generation of New Yorkers seems to be deserting me. Sometimes I think I have become sort of stupid and much less insightful.
I had never been depressed before I began this med for anxiety. Sometimes it is like entering the darkness. Other times, I have mood swings that I watch and think “this is frigging absurd” and am able to control.
This med isn’t known for weight gain but I gained a bit after going on it–I was very skinny so it didn’t really matter.
About nine years after first going on the med I found myself gaining real weight. My metabolism, once fast and hyper, had slowed down. I was sluggish and always tired so I drank mega doses of caffeine. At first and for a long time I put this down to “normal aging.” In my heart I knew it wasn’t.
I could control the depression and mood swings through changing my thought patterns–I excel at practicing cognitive therapy on myself. I practiced cognitive therapy constantly and began to think that I shouldn’t spend so much time pumping myself up.
I would become agitated–that I couldn’t control. Nor could I control the middle of the night panic attacks that felt as if my heart was attacking my chest. It wasn’t. I did have that checked.
Yes a med prescribed for panic attacks was giving me them. But it took me a long time to understand that.
Most of my normal panic attacks now happen when I’m in a stadium and have to go up the bleachers or in a very large group of people such as the picnickers at the symphony in Central Park two weeks ago. They’re easy to control now that others understand that I can’t measure space well. I always knew that but doctors laughed at me.
Slowly I realized I was on a med for panic attacks and anxiety when my problems had become all about the meds. The only thing I truly became anxious over was getting Klonopin.
A doctor I used to see called me, rather dramatically: “a legal drug addict.” The dosage prescribed only kept the addiction from becoming a horror withdrawal story and this drug has many horror withdrawal stories. To feel the physical calmness I would have to take more pills.
I went off it too quickly–but in the two weeks since lowering the dose I have felt calm. Real calm not a physical drug calm. I have had no mood swings. I have had an ongoing stomach ache which I liked at first as I was losing weight rather rapidly. I have never had hot flashes or night sweats. The past week I have woken myself up sweating. I like that as I think it’s getting the toxins out and really I shouldn’t be using a winter comforter and chenille blanket during the summer.
I have never been on a large dosage. Still it’s harder than hell to get off. I plan to be off it or on a very small dose within the next three months.The drug store I patronize has upped the price considerably. The generic has never worked for me. Usually generics are just as good or better but Klonopin’s different. It’s out of line pricey everywhere. Even if I wanted to continue with Klonopin I couldn’t afford it I’m not insured for anxiety or any similar problem.
I want to live a long and happy life with a good mind and body. Already my memory is coming back. I don’t stumble over myself trying to remember words. My mind has been feeling lighter and free from problems. I’m a bit hyper, but it’s the good kind of hyper. Productive hyper that doesn’t scare me.
Supposedly you’re supposed to become more anxious and have more of any problem Klonopin once controlled while in withdrawal.
I’m afraid I lowered the dose too much as yesterday I began to not like the way my body feels. I don’t want the worst side effects. That was two days ago. My muscles no longer feel as if they’re contracting. (That might have been in my head as it stopped when I would do things.) The worst might be over. I don’t know. I’m trying not to up the dosage as I do feel good, but scared. Not of the drug addiction but of my future. I began this med when in my 30’s and in someways feel I’ve never grown past the age I was when I began it. I wonder how many things I screwed up because my mind was foggy? Did it exacerbate instead of help my nonverbal learning disorder? (NLD; my NLD is mostly of the motor skills kind)
And yes I’m afraid that at any moment I will have convulsions and seizures as they’re so often mentioned as side affects. Do I have any symptoms of that? No, but you never know…..
This is the first post in what I hope will be a success story. I won’t let myself weaken.
I feel absurd posting this but that’s never usually stopped me 
If it’s scattered I apologize. Next July I turn 60. Hard for me to believe but. (Seeing this in print panics me, but not in a need med kind of way.) I want my 7th decade to be as prescription drug free as possible.
Please understand I desperately need medication when I began and wasn’t using this as a crutch.
I can’t go back to a larger dosage. I’m beginning to feel free. As in free at last….
I don’t understand why categories show when I haven’t clicked them. “Impeach Bush’s” a bit old. “Impeach Cheney for occupying space” would make sense. I don’t mean this post to be a poor me one. My life is great. I would like it to be the best it could be. I do feel I deprived myself of much pleasure but my life has been sybaritic enough. I have excelled in the family, friends, actually be at work areas. Sometimes i was great at job hunting. Sometimes I was horrible at it.
I know what it’s like to be in love and I know what it’s like to crave solitude. I regret not staying in one relationship never written about here–never talked about, I never gave him a name on these pages but I didn’t stay. I wish I could turn back the clock and be turning 40. I wish my father hadn’t died eight months later. I wish my mother hadn’t become blind and our once simple relationship became difficult. That’s an awful lot to wish for.
Truly I wish my life remains on the sometimes even wonderful keel I seem to have been getting to.
*I believe that’s from Rhoda–Mary Richard’s (Mary Tyler Moore) Bff. Of course she meant that as in “look out, I’m taking over.” I mean it in “get out your HAZAMAT suits.”
I will be back in a week having seen family, friends and the friends of the Miracle of Facebook or childhood friends I still think about and remember with love. § Read the rest of this entry…
Alphabet Kidsis the first book to discuss every known, at this time, developmental, neurobiological, and psychological disorder.
It’s both easy to read and very informative. The introduction more than hooked me. It’s a wonderful read that stresses the parents journey as he attempts to learn about the spectrum.
Alphabet Kids are like snowflakes: It seems that no two are alike.
Thank you Robbie for acknowledging that.
The book covers “problems” in alphabetical order, and is an OCD’s delight, she says knowingly. The chapter begins with “terms used“, second is “sound familiar? or an individual story. (The one on page 299 is mandatory reading. Third is Did you know? Or great facts. Signs and Sypmptoms, cause, diagnosis,, treatment,prognosis, and finally sources and resources. Each section is informative and I believe very helpful.
Damn do I wish books like this had been around when I was younger. Or that any book on “problems” was written with the empathy and clarity Robbie Woliver does.
People are so damn quick to judge. Somebody said most parents will read this book simply because of ADD and ADHD. They are but two of many many disorders in the spectrum
I know parents–some incredible bloggers who are desperately searching for answers
href=”http://www.amazon.com/Alphabet-Kids-Developmental-Neurobiological-Psychological/dp/1843108801/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229465147&sr=1-1″>Alphabet Kidsis the first book to discuss every known, at this time, developmental, neurobiological, and psychological disorder.
It’s both easy to read and very informative. The introduction more than hooked me. It’s a wonderful read that stresses the parents journey as he attempts to learn about the spectrum.
Alphabet Kids are like snowflakes: It seems that no two are alike.
Thank you Robbie for acknowledging that.
The book covers “problems” in alphabetical order, and is an OCD’s delight, she says knowingly. The chapter begins with “terms used“, second is “sound familiar? or an individual story. (The one on page 299 is mandatory reading. Third is Did you know? Or great facts. Signs and Sypmptoms, cause, diagnosis,, treatment,prognosis, and finally sources and resources. Each section is informative and I believe very helpful.
******
The story on page 299 wasn’t written by a sixteen year blogger who “got” NLD wrong. I’m not usually hurt when people get my wrong or are critical of my writing. In this case I should feel flattered as I channeled my inner sixteen year old to write that. Nowhere does it say that I’m sixteen. It says that I’m successful (yes) and a popular blogger–I would have disagreed with that but I looked at my stats for the first time since July and uh….I no longer live in New York.
Until two years ago I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Knowledge is power. It took several months to adjust and then I began trying to sell my apartment. Sometimes I think I sold the last one bedroom in Manhattan for a half decent price–maybe the last apartment. I moved to a new city by the ocean where it was in the 70’s today. I’m meeting with the contractor who is renovating my new house tomorrow and this isn’t going to be a horror story.
I try not to focus on what I could have been had I known earlier and to focus on the present. 95% of the time that works.
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