wings above, water below

"wings above, water below". it's the name of a geocache near here that i liked a lot.

back in the early days.

i'm still behind in my cache logs; i'm working my way through a day a couple of weeks ago when i was out with Flyingfisher.

i haven't had a lot to say lately. or rather, i have, but you can only say things in so many venues at a time.

i'm out of work for a while. having to come off of all my mood-stabilizing medication was tough. and now i'm taking a lot of a new and pretty strong anti-psychotic. it's very good at stabilizing my moods, but there's this one hitch, a small detail that i think is dangerous.

deadly dangerous.

before this drug when i was depressed and i felt like killing myself i had a huge sorrow at the center of me, a sadness on behalf of all the people who would miss me. and i was depressed a lot of the time.

a LOT of the time. i have attempted to describe here the great yammering maw of it where there was nothing to do but cry and keep on crying, tears and snot streaming down my face while i crawl across the room and try to reach up to get a kleenex.

now i'm not so depressed. the swings are easier. i'm writing music in a way i have not done since before i was properly medicated.

what could be wrong with that?

i'll tell you what's wrong with that. i'm not sleeping. not on my own, and not soundly. even with a large amount of sedatives i can't fall asleep well, and i don't sleep soundly, or at least i don't wake rested.

if i get to bed by ten i'll lay awake for a couple of hours and then sleep fitfully, maybe waking and walking out in the night, and having to drag myself out of bed if i need to get up anytime before ten.

on top of which, there's a lot going on in my head. i think i'm going to return to my work as a storyteller, only with all new material. and i'm writing a lot of music, thinking that this may or may not be my last opportunity.

i'd better get busy in case there are no more chances after this. i was brilliant once.

and then there's the really disturbing thing. although my moods are more stable, i'm at a greater risk for suicide. i think of it out of the blue, when things are going pretty well, and i have the feeling that i ought to get on with it while i have the energy.

the thought of suicide used to fill me up with sorrow of the first magnitude; sorrow for the survivors, sorrow for myself, sorrow born of compassion and strangely, of love.

but this new thing is colder. it's like a piece of me is missing, and the part that's left out is the part that cares.

better get on with it, then. not my problem.

if you ask me, that's a medication that while effective in some ways and makes me generally more comfortable, i can feel that something is very wrong. something dangerous.

it's hard to explain, but i care a lot less. i think i'd rather suffer.

to the good, i took membership this morning in the richmond congregational church. had my baptism affirmed.

it will go a long way toward healing, a long way toward simply enduring.

and after church i went geocaching with friends and then out to dinner at a fabulous restaurant. it was the kind of meal that you could live on for weeks.

you go there and you order and the food comes to the table a dish at a time while you sit and talk with your friends and you all just become suffused with warmth and light and you know there's just never any surplus of that.

they have a really good coconut creme brulee, but everything on the menu (as far as we can tell) is rich in flavor and texture and it is a very good place to go and just bask in the goodness of All That Is.