I have come to the realization I am using this blog as a fancy way to simply talk to myself. I guess I get points for being creative.

I feel bad. I've had the flu the past few days and as a consequence haven't held down all my meds. I'm holding down the ones I took tonight ok, but this has led to a horrible bout of depression, right here at 1:27 am CT. I was laying here trying to get some sleep and began thinking about the movie What Dreams May Come. Now, if you haven't ever seen this, it's about a couple who loose their kids in a car accident, she goes nuts, they manage to stay together, then he dies in a car wreck and she ends up killing herself. Now this is where it begins to get really interesting. He goes to try to rescue her from hell. No, I'm not kidding. I have loved a few people in my life that much, that I would try to rescue them from hell. But I don't really feel that anybody has ever loved me that much. Now I know I'm bipolar, have anxiety issues, insomnia, and can end up wallowing in self pity. I know all this. I can't help any of it tho. Try as I might, I can't stop it. I end up feeling as if I'm a big pile of dog doo and not worth the space I take up. With this being the holiday season, that just makes it that much worse. I hate myself that I can't give people the things I want to. I feel like I am such a waste of every one's time and why do people even talk to me much less want to be around me? I know this is all classic bipolar but I can't, on an emotional level, feel that it's not actually true. What's even worse is that I know Nina is going thru this too. Her two best friends basically told her that they would rather be friends with her ex-boyfriend (who is online and they don't even know in real life) than her. And she doesn't understand how they could stab her in the back like this. I don't know either since that is something I've never understood about people is how they can deliberately hurt you in such a way. It's why I like animals more than people. If an animal hurts you it's because you did something wrong by hurting or scaring them. If a person does it, 9 times out of 10 it's deliberate and they meant it. And all this has made her feel the same way I'm feeling right now. I hate it. I wish I could take that away from her. I took her to our family doc and he refused to put her on meds cause she's only 12. He's an idiot. But I've said that before, right? What's real sad is he used to belong to the same Mensa group I did. :P

Wow. I've been watching the first and second parts in a 10 part series about Soviet Russia. It basically begins right as Lenin dies. I always knew Stalin was a butcher but I didn't know how genuinely insane and deeply evil the man really was. It's amazing that anybody survived to keep the nation populated. My great grandfather came to the United States from Ukraine. The town he left either doesn't exist anymore or has been renamed. My uncle who keeps the family records and tree cannot get any information about this town where my great grandfather was born. We have a copy of his birth certificate which is in Russian and German because his parents were from Germany and had relocated to Ukraine, but that's it. After watching this documentary, I can't blame people there for not wanting to give any information out. Between Stalin and Hitler with the religious, political and racial purges in that area, it's amazing people still live in the area and didn't flee for their lives long ago.

Yes, I know, I'm inputting a lot tonight. I just finished the second half of the show about manic depression (bipolar disorder). I already knew quite a bit about it since I suffer from a variety of it. With bipolar II you don't get the wild highs like with regular bipolar. My highs are what most people would consider "normal" and my lows are very low. Which sucks cause I know if I could get a good manic high for a couple of days I could get all the work on my camper done, hehehe. Anyway, in this show Stephen Fry (British actor) talks to other bipolar people to see how they cope, what their symptoms are, etc. He also asks them if they could press a button and all their bipolar symptoms would disappear, would they do it? Most of them said no, they would not. Which to "normal" people might sound incredibly odd. It makes perfect sense to me tho. I've suffered with this illness since I was about 10 years old. It's at that age where I first wanted to kill myself or just lay down and die, whichever came first. There were so many years where all I could see was the inky blackness of the tunnel and didn't even realize there was an end to it. A severely stressful job and a marriage made in hell pushed me over the edge a few years ago and it was worse than it ever had been. Thinking back, I spent most of the time from age 10 to around age 25 trying to be "normal". I wanted to fit in. I didn't want to hear my own voice in the back of my mind telling me I was worthless, fat, ugly and stupid. I couldn't make it shut up tho. I didn't want offhand comments made by others to wound me to the point where i could bleed to death. Sounds weird, but I don't actually know what it's like to be "normal". I haven't been anywhere close to "normal" for most of my life. Even before the depression I was an exceptionally bright kid and very shy. Any time you are very smart your life just isn't "normal". I tried and tried and tried to be like everyone else. Thank god I didn't succeed. I think I am a much more interesting person than anybody who is "normal" could be. I fight with my condition every day and still sometimes experience horribly low lows, but they aren't as bad or as often as they used to be. I feel that I am holding my own and getting my life back. Now, without my ex-husband around I can try to begin to believe that I'm not a bad person, that not everything is my fault, and that only a******s don't pay their child support. Plus, for someone with bipolar, not being bipolar is a scary thing. Just like "normal" people don't understand what it's like to be bipolar, we bipolars don't understand what "normal" is. We feel that we are normal until we decide we might be a messenger from god or maybe even the reincarnation of Napoleon or something. We fear a big change like that as you would fear becoming suddenly bipolar. If you see what I mean.

I've been kind of looking for a guy I used to know. His name is Raja Kalidas and he attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He wrote a paper called "Deposition and Characterization of Thin Films of Metals and Compounds," in 1986 towards his Masters Degree. (I found that tidbit of info on the school's website.) Searching the web, the only other vague lead I have is a site citing a paper called "Field Performance of Hybrid Power Systems" and it brought up this info with the listing: Raja Kalidas. David Corbus. charles_newcomb@nrel.gov. Raja_Kalidas@nrel.gov. david_corbus@nrel.gov. So, i tried to pull up the page and it gives me the cover of said paper but won't go beyond that. Weird. Then I tried opening up the homepage of the place, www.nrel.gov. I got that fine but when I did a search of employees, no Raja Kalidas. I befriended him while he was at SIUC in the 80s. We used to drink and talk about the possibilities of other dimensions and stuff. The last I heard of him, he was going to ride his bicycle to California. I don't know if he did but I suspect he might have. He was wanting to develop more efficient solar panels when I knew him, but I suspect he's probably branched out by now. If anybody out there might know a guy who fits this description, have him come take a look at this blog. I'd love to at least be able to e-mail with him, see how his life has been. I haven't seen him since the late 80s. I know this is a shot in the dark, but I haven't got anything to loose.

I heard a really excellent album today. It's by Philip Glass and entitled Solo Piano. I have been following Battlestar Galactica (the new series, not the old one, lol) and in season 2 there was an episode where Starbuck went back to Caprica, met up with Helo and they ended up at Starbuck's apartment. She had the place rigged with battery power cause she didn't pay her bills (so she said) and she turned on some music. It was a piano piece and I fell in love with it. So I tracked down what piece of music it was. It was called Metamorphosis One and it's the first track off the Solo Piano album. If you aren't into piano music, don't even bother looking it up. This has a classical feel to it with some very complex emotions floating in the music. After listening to it off and on all day, I was watching a tv show called Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and it had another of the tracks off the album in it. Not sure if it was track 3, 4 or 5 but it was DEFINITELY off that album. Odd, eh?

This is one of the pictures I took of Nina before the dance. She felt she didn't look good but we all thought she was gorgeous. Hair, nails, dress, makeup, jewelry were all perfect. And she was in good spirits too. Of course she came home after an hour and a half crying cause her friends were snubbing her... It's my personal opinion that they were jealous cause she looked so good. And yes, she really is just 12. Not even 13 till May.

Today has royally sucked. I am not a happy camper. At all. It all kind of began Friday. Nina came home from school mad at her friend Katie because they were supposed to try out for the talent show after school Friday and Katie backed out. So Nina was really pissed off. Plus Nina's online boyfriend dumped her. Gave her some real bulls**t reasons for it then almost immediately began dating a girl where he lives and sent Nina a picture of them kissing. GRRR Ok, then there was the Winter Dance. Nina had gotten a gorgeous red dress for the event and we had her hair and nails done (Thanks to Jeff and Michael!!!) and she was drop dead gorgeous. And yes, she is 12. But she was drop dead gorgeous. Well, ends up her friends pretty much snubbed her at the dance. Then today she was trying talk to them (Katie and Johnica) online and they basically began saying really hateful stuff to her about how she's selfish and hateful, etc. We thought at first it was Katie's little brother who was doing it on Johnica's msn account but Nina later called to talk to Katie and Katie yelled at her about how she hated Nina and then hung up on her. And of course, we have no idea why this all came about. I am betting Johnica has something to do with it but I can't prove that. The sad thing is that I had promised Johnica that if I ever got the spare parts, I'd build her a computer of her own cause she always has to use her aunt's. I guess I will find another kid to give it to. I just don't understand why people have to be hateful like that. And I'm pretty sure Nina didn't do anything to deserve this. She was hysterically upset. I told her she didn't have to go to school tomorrow. Now some people would not agree with that, but they aren't in my shoes. I suffer from bipolar II and I'm pretty sure Nina's got it too. I see a lot of the same behavioural patterns in her that I had when I was her age. But the reason for it is because she needs a day to cool off and to not have to see these people. She's sad and angry and hurt all at the same time, to the point where she's making herself physically ill with it and even though she will have to see them Tuesday, I feel that a day off from having to see them will help keep things from erupting into violence when she does. I know if I had to see them tomorrow I would be sorely tempted to strangle them.