Today I decided to use Effy’s *nudge* to get going with a blog post because I’m all nerves and anxious and more than a little scared today. Her September Blogging Challenge With Effy is saving me right now because it is keeping me going when I am having a terrible time keeping focus, having any sense of purpose, and am worried about everything. These are rough bipolar days. But she gave us this exercise to do today and I think it might just help me. She says, “Dump Your Mental & Emotional Purse all over the table that is your blog. Don’t sort it. Don’t apologize for any of it. Just take an inventory, in list form, and let the old tissues & twenty year old mints fall where they may.” And further she writes, “A Purse Dump is a list form blog that lets you just get all the crap that’s in your head out on the page.” This is a perfect exercise for me today, you might try it too, just every once in awhile, to do a “brain dump” and get all those thoughts that are weighing you down out of your head and onto the page. It really does help. Here goes… (And my apologies in advance even though Effy said not to apologize. Once I got going I just kind of went on! But it was good for me, and truly, surprised me no end. Of course I’ve always carried big purses!)

• I am scared today. I have this terrible toothache that makes my whole jaw hurt and the dentist is getting me in at 4 and I don’t know what in the world they will be doing. In December 2014, not long after I moved back into the house after it was rebuilt after the fire and I had to live elsewhere for 8 months, I got a bad toothache. It was the back molar on the bottom right side. They could have done a root canal which both terrified me and which I couldn’t afford but the dentist even said that the tooth was so bad it could be iffy anyway. I had it pulled rather than do extensive, expensive dental work that might not really do well in the long run anyway. It seems that the tooth that is the problem now is the one that is currently the remaining back molar on the right bottom side which was right next to the molar that was removed. I did okay last time after it healed although for a long time it felt as though it had left a space the size of the Grand Canyon and it healed well but felt very funny for a long time. My tongue still goes back there to just to check things out and it seems strange to have such a space back there but the gum healed so well you can’t even tell a tooth was ever back there. But what if they have to take this tooth out too? I will have a large gaping hole on that side in the back. Will I be destined for a lifetime of mashed potatoes and smoothies? I’m 63 and my teeth were filled back in the day when they made holes so big you barely had any tooth left and then filled it with a massive silver (what do they call that stuff?) filling. I’m grateful that I still have all my own teeth (except that one that got pulled in 2014), they’ve held up for decades, and I try to take good care of them but I think things don’t bode well for this tooth, and I mean it’s not just the tooth that hurts, it has hurt all the way from under my lip, through my jaw, up into my ear. That doesn’t sound good to me. So anyway I go to the dentist at 4 and I am shaking like a leaf!
• Take a breath Maitri, go on…
• I feel sad because I kind of felt maybe this mental illness business would have run it’s course by now. The nuns had my mother take me to a psychiatrist at 10 years old, knowing that something was very wrong with me but they didn’t know what. My mother didn’t want to but did and the psychaitrist (I mean, it was 1964, sexual abuse was not on the table then in therapeutic circles) had me do a bunch of tests like ink blot tests and such and just told my mother I was a very sensitive child and I would grow out of it. She took me home, the abuse continued, but it wasn’t until I was 18 and had my first nervous breakdown that I was put into therapy. I had dissociated through most of the abuse so that my memories were sketchy, I didn’t remember much, and we didn’t really talk about it. It wasn’t until I was 22 and had another breakdown after attempting suicide that I spent a month in the hospital and there saw my psychotherapist and a psychiatrist every day and under daily hypnosis memories of the abuse came pouring out. The unfortunate thing was that after I left the hospital on tranquilizers, antidepressants, and sleeping pills I found out that I was pregnant, had to go off of all the medication cold turkey, and was watched very closely by my worried doctors throughout my pregnancy with therapy 3x a week. At 63 I have been more in therapy than out, given several mental health diagnoses — they just kept adding up over the years — and balancing my medications has been like the guy who used to come on the late night talk shows when I was growing up who would spin white plates on top of poles. He’d get one going, go start another one, come back and put more spin on the first one, the second one, start a third one and so on until he had a whole host of white plates spinning. Sometimes a plate dropped. Some of them would slow down and eventually peter out. You get the idea. Well that’s like med management for the mentally ill. Start one drug, add another, raise the dose on the first one, add a third, raise the dose on the second one, discontinue the first, and so on. And it never ends. In the last six months I have been doing really poorly save a couple of weeks somewhere in the middle when a new antidepressant seemed to be working and my mood lifted considerably for a couple of weeks but then I plummeted, down worse than I can remember since having to be hospitalized, and the meds were changed again along with all kinds of other intervention and help. The point that I’m making is I think I’ve paid my dues, seriously, shouldn’t this all have run its course by now? And the thing is that finally, at 63, I realize that it is not miraculously going to go away. Being abused from 4-18 left a mark, a big one, and as I spiralled downward through the years seeing all manner of therapists and collecting all sorts of diagnoses things got worse rather than better. And when I found my biological mother when I was 26 and she threatened to kill me — I am dead serious about this — I found out that she was also suicidal and mentally ill. At the time my husband said, “My God, that woman could have raised you!!!” The thing is in the realm of the nature vs. nurture thing I got screwed on both sides. Oh my, I have gone on! I’m sorry about that. This *purse dump* business might undo you.
• I think I should go with something lighter!
• Let me ask you all about this because it is one of the things I am most curious about in the world. You know how lipstick comes kind of slanted at the top, or comes to a peak? Well, I used to be amazed that my mother’s lipstick always wore absolutely flat at the top all the way down to the bottom of the tube? How do you do that? I wear no makeup most of the time but on the rare occasions when I go out I will use a little translucent powder and lipstick. My lipstick always wears down in such a way that one side is tall and almost not there anymore and the rest has disappeared. It kind of has the appearance of a ski slope. Until the tall skinny side just breaks off. It always eventually just breaks off. And then it looks kind of flattish and I get encouraged that now my lipstick might stay flat like my mom’s did but eventually it just wears back down to a ski slope. I think my lips must be deformed. If any of you have lipsticks with a flat top I would really appreciate you leaving a note in the comments about how you get it that way. It might not work, as I said my lips might be — well yes they certainly are because I had Bell’s Palsy that never went away and so my face and especially my mouth are crookedy —  deformed, but it is on my Bucket List — which I prefer to call my Life List — to be able to have my lipsticks wear down flat on the top.  I’d really appreciate any help or advice you can give me!
• My God I can’t even write about lipstick without going on!

I’m going to spare you. I won’t go on any further. Because I’ve barely got anything dumped out of my purse and if you’ve read this far you are probably nodding off by now. Please forgive me, come back tomorrow and I’ll try not to prattle on so. But could you send me a few prayers? It’s time to get ready to go to the dentist…