(Source: fakescience, via poetdreamer)

When you start diagnosing yourself with severe mental illnesses on Wikipedia.  You know the kind I’m talking about: schizophrenia, bipolarity, depression.  The kinds of conditions that if you really did have them you’d have a snowball’s chance of actually diagnosing yourself.  The kinds that are serious enough that you should be ashamed for dabbling in self-diagnosis out of respect for those who truly suffer. 

Schizoaffective disorder … characterized by recurring episodes of elevated or depressed mood.

But I can’t help myself.  It all starts innocently enough.  I pull out the laptop to get some work done.  Flip on the TV.  Don’t have cable, so whatever Hulu or Netflix or random crappy network site is willing to feed me (aside from Once, which is awful) I’m basically willing to watch.  So tonight it’s Alphas.

(Which, by the way, I love.  And not just because David Strathairn is in it.  I actually like Ryan Cartwright the most.  But I’m not sure Alphas has a big enough cult following yet for me to admit this in public.  So I feign ignorance.  ”Oh, well, what’s that new superhero show called?  Betas, Gammas, something like that,” all the while snapping my fingers like I’m chasing a stray memory.)

Bipolar disorder … defined by the presence … of abnormally elevated energy levels … with or without one or more depressive episodes.

Cartwright plays a teenager who suffers from autism and does, by all accounts, a brilliant job.  And there’s this one scene where he’s faking an emotion and I think, “I’ve totally been there.”  Which of course everyone has, it’s natural to fake emotions, though in Cartwright’s character’s case it’s a bit more serious than that.  

But that doesn’t stop me from starting on my crazy Wikipedia self-diagnosis track.

Major depressive disorder … is characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem.

It’s a weird and not very rational journey that has little to do with self-discovery and more to do with fatigue, poor decision making, and wallowing in hollow self pity.  The whole time I know I should stop.  From technical articles about symptoms and causes, to quick bios of famous people who have suffered, to overviews of the various drug regimens patients must follow, and their resultant consequences.

It’s like eating ice cream straight from the container.  If it’s just a few bites, it makes sense.  Why waste a bowl?  But the deeper you go, the more ashamed you feel of yourself. 

Until eventually you just give in and finish the whole cursed container.  Or, in my case, run out of plausible mental illnesses.  (There may also have been ice cream involved as well.  These sorts of weird self-indulgences tend to run together.)

At some point I shut laptop and went back to watching Alphas.  Did I feel like I learned something.  No.  Well, nothing useful.  Did I feel different about myself?  Yes, and not in a good way.  I mean, I can function, right, and I should be grateful for that?

Of course I am laying on the couch watching Alphas, so “functioning” is all relative.

Iknow I’m late to the party here, but I just barely read this book this last weekend.  I was actually over at a friend’s house, keeping an eye on their kids, and the book was on their shelf.  (I’d say I was babysitting but that would imply a much more active role than I was fulfilling.)  I got about 2/3 of the way through it, then headed back home and was so wrapped up in it that I had to buy it at an exorbitant price from Amazon.  I’ll spare you the panic I felt when my Kindle couldn’t connect to the Internet and I had to read it hunched over my laptop.

The book was amazing.  It’s the second McCarthy book I’ve read (the first was The Road) and it left me feeling very similarly: wrung out.  I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the prototypical hero to emerge: Moss, then Bell, even Wells.  But no.  Anton Chigurh (“Sugar”) walks off.  There is no justice.

I loved so much about the book, including the dialogue, especially when it was Moss.  And Bell’s introspection and reflection on his fears was powerful and very real — sometimes we don’t live up to our parents.

But there is also something about the book that bothers me.  Is Anton some sort of superhero or demigod?  In his violent and lawless world, Anton will eventually receive what he has been visiting upon others — it may mean less, in a cosmic sense, than the punishment he has meted out to others, but I’m dissatisfied with Anton’s escape.  I feel like there should be a grisly end for him too, even if it’s not in the form of justice.

In my memory the red flag is enormous. It’s at least ten feet, twenty feet high. When it snaps in the wind, it sends a crack through the air that can be heard up on the roof of the hotel. The pole is so large it’s sagging in its hole in the sand and in desperate need of a cement base.

But in reality the flag was a modest thing. Barely waist high, limp as a ragdoll. Just big enough to call your attention to the sign next to it warning of undertow and riptide. And just small enough to forget you ever saw the sign.

I think I remember it being so big because I think if it had been, I wouldn’t have gone out in the water. Or maybe I just feel so stupid about ignoring any red flag, no matter the size, that in my memory it looms over me and snaps at me in anger.

But the red flag couldn’t compete with allure of the water. The beach was not deep, but it was as wide as the horizon. It curved away gently from me in both directions, giving me the illusion that I was standing, barefoot in the soft sand of a peninsula that could be glimpse on a map with very, very powerful magnifying glass.

The tide rolled in and out, in and out, and every time it drained away it took a little piece of me with it. But it also brought a little piece of me back each time. And a promise. A promise that if I didn’t run out there, if I didn’t throw myself into the white-tipped waves, that I would forever regret it. That this would be a moment that I would look back on later in life as a moment when my best self had failed.

And so I was off. I leapt into the water, laughed as the waves sprayed my face. Grimaced as the sand changed to rock. Gasped as the ground fell away from feet and I plunged in completely before regaining my footing.

There I stayed for minutes, or hours, or days. I jumped with the waves, I let them drag me closer to shore, but then also pull me back out. Each time I took a few steps back, each time feeling a little bit more alive.

Until the water turned against me. Looking back, I realize that the water had only been biding its time. That the soft caresses against my ankles were promises of something more. But at the time the violent jerk pulling me out, farther, much farther than I wanted to go, felt like a violent betrayal.

I screamed as a I lost my balance and plunged beneath the water. I windmilled my arms under water, unsure which way lie safety. When I finally came to the surface again, I was so far from shore that the other people were barely dots, little specks in the distance with knobby arms and legs.

I fought the waves with all I had, kicking and battling, but it was never enough. I felt alive, but knew it was a fleeting feeling. Finally, exhausted, I turned onto my back and surrendered to the waves.

Apparently the sea didn’t want anyone that wouldn’t put up a fight. Slowly, ever so slowly, with my legs out from the undertow, the waves pushed me back toward shore.

In my memory, I drifted for an eternity and more before my shoulders bumped into the small, gritty rocks of the lower beach and I crawled back to safety. Memory is funny like that. It plays tricks with you, makes you remember things like the red flag that were so insignificant at the time. And makes your forget other things that were so, so important.

Like that I didn’t go into the waves alone, but that is how I returned.