Tears for Rachel; Paying for Knowledge

Today marks two weeks since I was started on the "magic bullet," Abilify. Since I flipped into euthymia Thursday, September 27, I have daily been grateful for a huge negative: NOT TO BE DEPRESSED. Those who have suffered clinical depression know whereof I speak. It brings up the old question, is the avoidance of pain superior to the enjoyment of pleasure? As a manic-depressive I say, yes indeed!

Today is the second day I've experienced a little morning anxiety and suffered some of the recurring thoughts about my future and my past, not to suggest they are of such a level as to be depressive obsessions. Still, it scares me; it's as if the ground beneath me has become a net rather than solid earth, that I see the open squares to the abyss and must tread carefully.

Sometimes I need to cry but am afraid to; this morning apparently not, as the tears have begun and I think, "poor Rachel!" My darling baby. My sweet freckled redheaded sunshine. That's what I called her as a small child, my "Sunshine." Because she could distract me from my melancholy in an instant; she was filled with so much wonder for life, her smile could illuminate my heart, he constant activity distract me; she could rescue me from the vision of the net beneath my feet. She was a tonic; she was my sunshine.

Oh, it's true as a teenager and adult she was often a huge pain in the ass, but I think what parents most remember is the unadulterated nature of a child, their essential goodness from birth--before it is spoiled by this world, by competition and the special cruelty of other children. (Children are often emotionallly brutal but at least they tend to be more honest than adults.)

So I grieve today; perhaps this was the source of my anxiety, that I still need to cry. Yes, I fear weeping may lead me back to depression, but I pray not. I'm seeing my shrink tomorrow so I can run these concerns by him.

Yesterday Kathleen scared me by asking, "You're not going to relapse, are you?" I said no, of course. But that she would pick up on a diminution of my cheerfulness is also anxiety-provoking. It wasn't like I was crying or bemoaning my state or anything.

I'm sure if warning signs continue, my doctor will bump up the Abilify. I am on the lowest dose, which, incidentally, is the most expensive--5 mg. How those drug companies know how to stick it to you! (To be fair, likely fewer are on such a small dose, why it costs more, supply and demand, etc.) Still a months supply of 5 mg.Abilify, even from Canada, is $418.

Ah Rachel. Your absence makes me weep. I know you exist, but I miss you in this world. And I wonder what effect this will have on Jacob, losing his mother at 5. But we can't take on the sadness of the world like a saddle for a pack horse. We can only adjudicate our own sorrows slowly. I don't know where people get the energy to grieve for Darfur or Burma; I have enough on my plate. Then many idealists have thrown themselves into good works because of trouble inside and at home. As has been well said, and it sounds like it should have been Shaw, "I love humanity in general but can't stand it in particular."

Today I shall return to my assault upon my revision of my tome on Four Quartets. Sometimes, in reading past prose, I get the distinct feeling I must have been smarter in the past. But I am wiser now and better able to corral my leaping thoughts into a readable order. In some further research on the Quartets, for the first time on the web I paid $14 for two-week access to "F. H. Bradley's Doctrine of Experience in T. S. Eiot's The Waste Land and Four Quartets" by Jewel Spears Brooker. Unfortunately it concentrated mainly on TWL when I bought it for 4Q, about which it had little to say, at least not much more than I knew.

Presumably there is a research library somewhere where the issue of this philology journal is available for free to an academic. But it's so much easier to just buy it; think of the transportation alone! The free access of scholarly information is not free on the Internet, a shame for any university, though they have us by the short hairs when it comes to convenience.

I have stopped crying. God bless you, Rachel, God bless you Jacob.


Kiloneutral,

Craig Erick

p.s. I have some two poems and a story out in in a new journal, sister to Shit Creek Review, called Chimeara . It's good to see some friends and acquaintances in there such as Janet Kenny, Rob Mackenzie, former nemesis Leo Yankevich, Kate Benedict, Jeffrey Calhoun, Salli Shepard and Rick Mullin.