Coming out of Hibernation--A Few Facts

This little blog has been in hibernation. A curtain drawn over the chronicle of a time of confusion, frustration, attempts at remaking in a different image.

Now, in full-blown summer, with several eagerly anticipated events duly missed, and just two weeks until the MFA program residency: just two more weeks of foie gras farm, being stuffed and engorged, this blog is sniffing the air, peeking its head out of the burrow, pondering how to exist in the virtual world given all these changes.


After several weeks inpatient in Arizona, the Elamonster is now in a partial hospitalization program (PHP) in Bellevue, WA, perfectly poised for the much anticipated residency in Tacoma, just an hour or so away. After five weeks without any internet or computer whatsoever, finding the right balance and comfort level with computer time is a challenge, especially with all the internal changes being processed, and with the long, tiring days at the clinic.


So, let's keep this first post out of hibernation short. Here are a few points of information:

• If your laptop is going to be put away for five or six weeks, disconnect the battery! This netbook's battery was completely dead when it came back from lockdown
• Whole Foods is nicknamed "Whole Paycheck" for good reasons. But if you come from Alaska, you get sticker shock from Whole Foods in the other direction--"Wow! Everything's so much cheaper here!"
• Hospitals and clinics dealing with these kinds of disorders have many rules, for good reasons, that can seem ridiculous at times; the enforcers of these rules can appear to treat patients as if they are elementary school children
• The Elamonster doesn't stand for this very well, and is often to be found in the role of McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• If the Elamonster is McMurphy, then McMurphy was pretty genuinely crazy and generally disruptive quite often also
• Attempts to remake the Elamonster in a different image lead resistance
• Items considered contraband when inpatient: dental floss, Q-tips, pantyliners, make-up, curling and straightening hair stuff, other cosmetic stuff, anything in a glass container, plastic knives; many more
• Anti-anxiety medications: the minimum dose of the 'mildest' one sent Ela to sleep and then gave her hallucinations. The minimum dose of a relatively mild benzo made her pass out. The minimum dose of xanax, which is supposed to stay in the system the least amount of time, knocked her out and then left her drunk and seeing double for the best part of two days. Half of that minimum dose just sent her to sleep for two hours. What a productive week of groups and therapy with all that passing out!
• Biting the bullet and going on Lithium does not seem to have had terribly destructive effects on creativity. Its effects overall are still to be figured out
• Typing is somewhat like riding a bicycle: a five-plus week enforced break from typing has not caused fingers to forget how

The Elamonster? A snake that has grown legs, remembrance of the oceanic origin, looking forward to the terran convenience of legs.
To be continued soon.