My Christmas "miracles"

Two things.

One...

A good friend at work fixed this tablet up for me and gave it to me for Christmas. It's a decent little machine. 2 ghz core 2 duo, 1 GB RAM, 75 GB hard drive, wifi, bluetooth, card reader, and of course the fact that it's a tablet. I managed to find a battery for it in the back room that lasts 34 minutes. All in all...I think I can live with this as a primary computer even by comparison to the MacBooks I used to use. I turned in my loaner today, by the way. I'm posting from said tablet, which needs a name. The 1024x768 resolution and 12-inch screen make me feel claustrophobic, and I'm not used to Windows at all anymore. I'm missing several of my favorite apps, most especially Adium. But you know what? I can live with that. I've taken to this computer some already.

Two...

It turns out my parents had some flex spending thingy on their insurance that needed to get used up by the end of the year. And they were kind enough to use it to purchase a 60-day supply of Nuvigil for me. If the appeal's going to work, it will be done long before the 60 days run out.

Now it's up to me. Up to me to step up to the task and get a job and make money and do okay.

Well this is just dandy

[Posted to Xanga 12/10/10]

Freed-Hardeman's iKnow system requires that every one of its students (except this year's seniors, who came along before the program) own a school MacBook.

However, mine was stolen. So now I don't own a school MacBook. As a result, the school is assigning me another one...

...and making me pay the first $595 of it. Did I mention that I'm leaving after next week? For good?

Well, it doesn't make a difference. Freed is still making me pay the first $595 of it and they won't take no for an answer.

However, the buyout amount is still the same as it was before my other one was stolen: $1190. And because they charged me $595, I no longer have enough to buy out the new MacBook. (I had almost exactly enough to buy out both MacBook and iPod Touch.)

So here I am with an iPod Touch and $634.90. I'm computer-shopping, because I don't have a computer anymore and I need one.

Also, the insurance denied my Nuvigil. What am I going to do now? God only knows. I can't see myself holding down a proper job without it.

Freed's policy on stolen laptops

[Posted to Xanga 11/30/10]

"I understand that any incidents of loss, theft or accidental damage must be reported to the University  IKnow Help Desk as soon as possible, but no later than 48 hours after the incident, or the incident may not be covered by insurance. All repairs must be authorized and/or performed by the University iKnow Help Desk. In the event of accidental damage to the iKnow System, I acknowledge that I am responsible for the cost of needed repairs not covered by warranty or insurance up to $250. In the case of theft, I acknowledge that I will be responsible for the first $550 ($875 MacBook Pro) of the replacement cost of a new iKnow System (a copy of the police report must be provided within 1 week of the theft). I acknowledge that in the case of a lost or destroyed iKnow System, I will be assessed a fee equivalent to the full cost of a new iKnow System. If a theft is reported to the University iKnow Help Desk but a police report is not provided within 1 week of the theft then it will be considered a lost system."

Dear whoever stole my bag,

 [Posted to Xanga 11/30/10]

If you were trying to feed or shelter yourself or your family, I forgive you.

But you took from me the material possession most important to me.

That's the MOST detached way I can state it.

Let me put it like this.

You took from me a very dear friend. You took from me my constant companion, the one who's always by my side, the one who can always listen to everything I have to say, the one that keeps me connected to the outside world, keeps me from feeling completely alone. The one that lets me talk to my friends, the one that represents everything my parents ever took from me when I lived at home. You took from me the purest symbol of my freedom. You took from me a component of my very self, because that was what Calliope was to me.

Not only that, but you took my teddy bear, which was given to me by a dear friend of mine.

If you didn't truly NEED my laptop for the money, and if you don't truly spend the money in a necessary way, then I sincerely hope that you will suffer until you feel pain equal to the pain I'm feeling right now.

I'm in mourning.

Not only did I lose my laptop, my friend, my companion, but I also lost music. I lost journal entries. A month of journal entries that can never, ever be replaced. I lost chat logs. I lost stories. I lost my NaNoWriMo novel, which I had never backed up, except for the first two chapters, which I sent to my aunt a while back. I lost thousands and thousands of pictures. I lost videos.

I will never see those things again. I will never see my Calliope again. Calliope, I'm sorry. I love you.

Home, / let me come home, / home is wherever I'm with you. / Oh, home, / let me come ho-o-ome, / home is where I'm alone with you...

Guess what?

[Posted to Xanga 11/26/10]

 After two weeks of Nuvigil...I want to revise a previous statement.

It actually IS a miraculous change.

I just thought it would feel different or something. Like I'd suddenly feel like Superman, like I'd suddenly have the awareness that I could do anything I set my mind to.

I don't really feel any different inside my head. But there's been a huge difference in my actions. Suddenly, my work is getting done. For the first time all semester last week I was DONE with schoolwork instead of procrastinating schoolwork or skipping schoolwork. And I don't understand why it should be different, why I should suddenly be able to concentrate and apply effort the way I have been, but there's been a dramatic difference in what's gotten done. It's amazing.

For instance, while taking Nuvigil, I constructed most of this website for my Web Design project, writing it from scratch in HTML and CSS to look like the mockups my partner created in Photoshop: http://webdesign.fhu.edu/~mmcclish/project2/index.html

The last two links in the navigation bar won't work, but that's only because I haven't been given the mockups for those pages yet. I completed each page except the first one on the day it was given to me. The first one took me a couple of days, because developing the default CSS for the site takes longer than making things after that, and because my CSS has gotten better during the course of this project.

But my point is, this is unheard of for me. Getting something done that fast. And truly done, not just sort-of done.

Today I'm out of Nuvigil. It's been two weeks. My mom said she would get me a ninety-day supply if my psych nurse approved, and she approves as far as I can tell. I can only hope it pans out and I get some more. Because this is wonderful.

A Belated Birthday Entry

[Posted to Xanga 11/21/10]

Eighteen years old.
I can’t believe it. I feel…shock. Numbness. Confusion. It’s surreal to me, almost illogical. I’ve been waiting eighteen years…and now there isn’t the waiting anymore, there’s something else and it’s confusing, it’s strange to me. Maybe because my life was more or less centered on the waiting. Because it was a crucial part of my identity. And now…
Now the waiting is over.

Dear friends,
You have kept me alive and fighting in spite of severe clinical depression, lots of family drama, and a good bit of growing up. You helped teach me what love is. You accepted me when my folks cast me out. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Love,
Mel

Dear family,
Lyrics for you.

Tell my mother
Tell my father
I’ve done the best I can
To make them realize
This is my life
I hope they understand
I’m not angry,
I’m just saying
Sometimes goodbye is a second chance

Love,
Melissa

Nuvigil.

[Posted to Xanga 11/17/10]

It's my new med. I got it on Saturday and waited a few days to assess the effects before blogging about it.

Nuvigil is armodafinil. This means that it's a part of Provigil, modafinil. Modafinil is a eugeroic, a wakefulness-promoting agent.

So far, it and Provigil are given for narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder, depression, and ADHD. I was given it for depression.

I feel...sharper. I notice colors more. Sometimes sounds are clearer. And I've done more things in the past few days than I usually do. Nuvigil and Provigil are said to enhance memory and improve concentration. I can believe it. It's not a miraculous change, to my eye, but I like it, it makes me feel better.

It's a shame it's expensive and I only have two weeks of it.

I'm still frustrated with this place, still feel like there's nothing to do in the evenings, still lonely. But the Nuvigil helps.

Three days until I turn eighteen.

Some more singing

I still don't know how to embed audio in Blogger, so you can listen to this audio here on my Xanga.

I thought one of the songs in chapel today sounded pretty good, so I'm posting it. For context please see this post.

This song is called In Christ Alone. It was the theme for Horizons (Freed-Hardeman's Christian summer camp, which I attended for six years) at some point in recent history. It's one of the newer songs. I'm not sure if we were singing to music or just words, but we wouldn't have needed the music.

I left Facebook temporarily...

[Posted to Xanga 10/31/10]

...so don't freak out about it if you see that I'm not on your friends list right now.

I'm waiting until Firesheep has blown over to come back. I will not have any drama start because someone got into my Facebook.

Happy unHalloween!

[Posted to Xanga 10/28/10]

Xanga loads again!

I was a dryad for Freed Halloween.

At about 2 PM I decided I needed a Halloween costume. I started hunting for clothes. First I found black ones, then green ones. With the green ones came the idea of being a dryad, a wood nymph. So I started drawing vines on my left arm with a green rollerball pen, a sleeve of vines. With the same pen I drew three leaves on my right cheek and drew green lines on my forehead and smudged them with moisture until they were a solid-ish pale green. Gave myself green eye shadow—basically I had a half-masque of green rollerball ink. Some of it was a little shoddy but if I messed up my hair you couldn’t tell from outside of kissing distance. I got Misty to help me with ideas; ended up wearing green pants with embroidered flowers on the left leg, my green owl tank top, and a green gradient shirt, which I gave slitted sleeves with a pair of scissors. Then I went to Dollar General and bought myself a cheap wreath of fake ivy to put on my head. And painted my nails sparkly green.

And it worked.

Sweet. Adaptability and luck work out where planning fails, sometimes. 

 Owl City is like ear candy. No nutritional (lyrical) value, but it sure is tasty.

No.

[Posted on Xanga 10/27/10]

Either Freed blocked Xanga, or something somewhere in the DNS settings is wrong.

Either way, I am angry. I love Xanga. Xanga is part of me. I will not stand for having it taken from me.

Having to go through a proxy makes this much more difficult, which means my posts will be more readily seen on http://hmmcclish.blogspot.com. I will attempt to post them on Xanga too, but instead of that site mirroring this one, it will be the other way around until this can be worked out.

Apologies.

Dear Freedies:

"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

P.S. Firesheep is scary as heck, everybody get Force-TLS! Also, please come back up, Xanga. 

Even more meds!

[Posted to Xanga 10/25/10]


Klonopin.
My psych nurse says I have anxiety. I told her I'm not accustomed to thinking of myself as having anxiety. She told me I internalize it. I guess it's true enough. I do have a lot of things to worry about.
She also says it might be the cause of my inability to eat properly and that the Klonopin will help me sleep. Sure hope it does. I see no reason why it wouldn't. Strong stuff, Klonopin.
Oh, she also said that the cardiologist didn't do the tests that she wanted done on me. An echo, a stress test, an exercise test, none of those things. So she still won't give me ADHD meds.

Dear Xanga software,

[Posted to Xanga 10/23/10]
Lay off with the "Discretion advised" content rating that prevents me from seeing people's blogs for another month. Can't you just put a disclaimer or an I'm Over 18 button like everybody else? Not that I'm over 18, but I think I have the right to judge my own maturity with relation to mature content, especially with less than a month before I turn 18. Kthx.

Sincerely, Mel.

A little more news

[Posted to Xanga 10/19/10]


So I went to the cardiologist and he said my EKG was normal and I appear to be okay. Said my metoprolol could be doubled if necessary.


I'm lucky other people are looking out for me, because if I'd had to do this appointment by myself I would have failed pretty hard. First of all I don't have my own ride, but my friend Amy was nice enough to give me one. Second of all I forgot my government ID and my insurance card. And my Holter monitor results from the Henderson clinic. They had to look up my insurance stuff on the website and use my school ID. I'm lucky they had my Holter results already somehow.


My own failures aside, this is what I expected to happen, and I'm glad it did. They're still not going to put me on ADHD meds, I'm betting. Sigh.


Oh, and it appears that we finally have better wifi in the cafeteria! Wjoo! But still not in the auditorium.

Guess what?

[Posted to Xanga 10/11/10]


More meds.

I went to the clinic today. The doctor was like "You're only seventeen? And your parents live in Atlanta?" And I was like "I'm a college junior." And he was like "Well, I'm not used to having these conversations with seventeen-year-olds, but I'm used to having them with college juniors, so..."

Anyway, what he told me was that my heart rate is too high. Despite the fact that my psych nurse said the mirtazapine could still be affecting me, the doctor decided I needed to go to a cardiologist in Jackson and promptly put me on metoprolol. A beta-blocker. We'll see what that does.

Another one of Freed-Hardeman's oddities...

[Posted to Xanga 10-7-10]


...is room inspection. Every week on Tuesday at 2:00 PM our dorm mom, Mama Ashley, checks our rooms to ensure that they're clean. If you didn't take out the trash, even if it is confined neatly in a trash can--you fail. If you didn't make your bed--you fail. Et cetera. One of the other dorm moms once told me that she didn't know how regular schools managed to keep proper hygiene in their dorms if they never did room inspection.

Anyway, if you fail, you get this lovely slip of paper (you can click on it to make it more legible):

Three fails and you're out. (I intentionally took a fail this time because I wasn't feeling well. I left Mama Ashley a note to tell her I'd take a fail; that's why she didn't check any of the boxes.) At least Mama Ashley was nice and left me candy anyway (she leaves everybody a little piece of candy and a note when she does room inspection). I'm inclined to say she's a bit more lenient than one would think from all those checkboxes.

Ridiculous

[Posted to Xanga 9/29/10]


So I was reading an article posted on Facebook by a CoC friend today...

"The former category finds expression in the following statement found in Humanist Manifestos I & II:

[W]e affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction (1973, 17).

The foregoing declaration is wholly void of reason. If man is “autonomous,” i.e., he is a self-governing creature, there could never be a situation in which he could do wrong! It is an exercise in futility to attempt to construct any sort of ethical system apart from the concept that man has a soul that ultimately will be accountable to God in eternity, that Heaven has revealed that concept, and regulated human activity, through the Scriptures."

Excuse me, but that's just...retarded. Mr. Author, are you seriously claiming that if human beings decide right and wrong for themselves, they'll never decide anything they do is wrong? If you didn't have a god looking over your shoulder would you happily go about killing babies and raping puppies and whatnot? Well let me tell you, I for one don't believe in some absolute theological moral code and I'm well aware that I do the wrong thing more than I would like. I have a conscience. If you and your ilk would decide anything you had an impulse to do was right without your religion, I want nothing to do with any of you.

For Pete's sake. So ARROGANT.

(You can read the rest of the article, which is typical of the CoC, here: http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/55-a-critical-look-at-situation-ethics)

Some of our singing

[Posted to Xanga 9/21/10]

[NOTE: You can listen to this audio at hmmcclish's Xanga - Some of our singing. I'm sorry, but I don't know how to put audio directly into this blog.]

Today I recorded chapel. It was a singing day, which means we didn’t have a devo and two or three songs like usual, we just sang the whole time--half an hour. I know I’ll want this recording years down the road.
But I also kind of wanted to put up a fraction of the recording, on a whim. I don’t think most people have any idea what we sound like, and it’s surprisingly beautiful.
I’ll try to make sure we’re on the same page here.
This is a song from a session of chapel at Freed-Hardeman University, Tuesday 9/21/10. It is a cappella, as always (without instruments); the church of Christ is of the opinion that it's a sin to use instruments in worship (they say there's no New Testament scriptural precedent and it isn't a matter of expedience). The recording quality is not wonderful; sorry, I don’t have anything at my disposal but my MacBook’s built-in mic, and I believe the school’s professional recordings are made from the stage mics, which pretty much only pick up the song leader, which is no fun. I think you can still grasp the salient qualities despite the recording quality. There are a little under two thousand of us (some of us would have used a chapel absence today, of which we have twelve each, but probably not more than 100 people); chapel is required-attendance, and usually even those of us who don’t want to be here sing along to the best of our ability, just out of habit and for something to do. I am sitting on the far left-hand side of the auditorium; I made sure there was nobody sitting on either side of me. There are people in front of and behind me, but as far as I can tell they weren’t singing loudly enough to disrupt the recording. We did get a little off from the song leader sometimes tempo-wise; either he made a mistake or he tried to get us to ritardando and we were like "kthx no." I think a good contingent of us just sing along with the majority instead of paying any attention at all to the song leader. Oh, and I'm sorry about the volume doing weird things. I tried to smooth it out. Some of it is intentional, though, especially on the last verse, which is traditionally sung louder than the rest.
The song we are singing is a very old and well-known song (at least in the church of Christ) called “It Is Well (With My Soul).” It is common and old enough that you could reasonably expect any member or former member of the church of Christ to know at least one verse (probably two) of it by heart. The people in this school are, with a few exceptions, church of Christ members in good standing, college-age. The vast majority of us have been singing these songs and songs like them every Sunday and Wednesday of our lives. Most of the male students have probably had some degree of formal training in the area of song leading, but not necessarily music in general; we probably have a slightly unusual degree of tendency towards musicality simply because many people come to Freed in part for the singing (and you can probably hear why) and because we’ve been singing four-part harmony since we were little. Our songbooks have shape notes in them, which I can’t read but many others can. I don’t think we have an above-average degree of musical talent necessarily.
The four-part harmony, by the way, is also completely normal and expected. If a song doesn’t have built-in four-part harmony, we (almost without exception) make it up. Or at least two or three parts. I am not singing along because I knew it would be too loud. The distinctly louder voice you hear is the song leader; he is the only one with a microphone and is up on the stage. He is conducting, singing the main melody, and signaling which verse we’re on with his fingers; this is standard practice in the CoC, although in smaller congregations there’s no microphone. We are singing from a PowerPoint presentation on the stage that has words on it but no music whatsoever (so you can tell we know this song very well).
This happens to be one of my favorite songs, and I think one of my parents told me once that it was one of Mama’s favorites. I know it's made me cry at some point in the past.
And by the way, we do a LOT of singing. Chapel every day, devo every week sometimes more than once, et cetera. And in any given group of church of Christ kids, you can expect some church songs to be sung informally at random points in time. As college students we have a tendency toward some newer songs that the older members might not know, but I purposely picked a very traditional song.
Any Freedies, feel free to correct me on my circumstantial details; anyone else, feel free to ask questions.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

[Refrain]

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

[Refrain]

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

[Refrain]

Today I learned

[Posted to Xanga 9/9/10]

that at least one student who participated in Freed's iKnow program paid off their MacBook and iPod upon leaving, and then chose to come back to Freed and was forced to pay for ANOTHER MacBook and iPod. I am not joking.

When you have a monopoly you can get away with anything, I guess.

I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough...

[posted to Xanga 9/7/10]

...or, Why Freed-Hardeman's iKnow Program is Crap part 2.

In a nutshell? We have the worst internet connection EVER.
Around half the people in our dorm, Bradfield, regularly get only two or three bars of wifi, if they're lucky. The rest are apparently positioned closer to a router/bridge. I'm told that it is much the same in the other dorms. Even in Bradfield's lobby the wifi is terrible. The wifi in the cafeteria is even worse. I have to toggle my AirPort card on and off every few minutes to get internet in here. The student center under the cafeteria is similarly bad. Yes, I've tried sitting all over the rooms to see if there are any better spots, and there aren't. We get varying degrees of wifi in classrooms; you have roughly a 50-50 chance that you'll get decent wifi when you go to class. Maybe higher in Brown-Kopel, because that's where the IT department is located, and it's the only place in the school that I can think of right now with consistently decent wifi.
And that's not the half of it.
I'm one of few students in the school in possession of an ethernet cable and the requisite knowledge to use it. (I think one other person on my hall has ethernet, unless she moved out.) Every time I go to my room, I plug in. I'm in one of the rooms that usually has fairly decent wifi in terms of bars, but even so, when Skype lags and gets pixelly and slow and awful, it inevitably improves the moment I plug in the ethernet (even if it's only a little). The fastest I've ever seen anything download on campus over an http/ftp connection is 1 mbps, and I've done my fair share of downloading huge files, as it is rather necessary to do so when trying out new VirtualBox virtual machines.
It gets worse.
Every day, the internet goes down at least once. Completely down. Generally the network goes down with it, but not always. During the worst episodes, I can't even get an IP from the server--"self-assigned IP" is something I'm very used to seeing in my Network Settings. What's worse, generally these outages are not in the middle of the night, as you might think maintenance outages would be, but during waking hours, during the afternoon and evening. Most days it goes down multiple times.
Freed, this is unacceptable. We pay you a steep technology fee every single semester. You are a college; by ANY standards you should have decent internet access. And what's more, you give us homework on Blackboard. Not every class does, but quite a few of them do, and if it's not Blackboard it's internet-requiring research. And the much-vaunted iKnow program, one of the main tools Freed uses to market itself, is all about CONNECTIVITY.
Oh, and when we do have internet it's filtered and controlled. Not that I'd expect aught else from Freed.
Just another reason I'll be glad to turn my back on this place.

Why Freed-Hardeman's iKnow program is crap

[Posted to Xanga 9/2/10]


I started working for the IT helpdesk when this semester started. I'm taking Web Design, Programming II, Visual Application Design, and Statistics. But I like the helpdesk better than any of my classes. I like my job. I work from 8-9:30 and 1:30-3 MWF, and then I stay behind till 5 on most days because I've nothing better to do and we're understaffed for the beginning of the year. All of the freshmen are coming in telling us their iPods and iPhones won't sync because they apparently don't know how to run Software Update. So we run it for them and send them away happy.

I like working with MacBooks. They're well-made and they're pretty. But...

It has come to my attention that whether or not I think they're pretty, the iKnow program is a Bad Thing. Did you know that starting next year, everyone at Freed is REQUIRED (you cannot opt out, ever; I work for IT and I know) to receive a MacBook and an iPod Touch or iPhone from the school? And of course you have to pay for it. And you have to either pay it off fully when you leave or give it back and receive no refund for it. (This year, everyone except seniors is required to participate. Yesterday afternoon a transfer student came in and wanted to opt out because she didn't think she'd be here longer than a couple of semesters. They made her get a MacBook along with the rest of us.)

Yes, Apple is pretty, but why should an entire college campus be required to use their computers or required to pay extra to get one even if they don't use it? Apple is probably the most expensive choice they could have made. And I would have zero objection if it weren't mandatory, but it is. Half the people I know had a computer sufficient for college purposes when they left Walton. I certainly did, although it was a desktop.

The iPod thing is worse. Almost everyone I know had an mp3 player already when they came into college, generally one that was either on a par or almost on a par with the iPod Touch. I had a 30 GB Zune when I came in. That's TWICE as big as the iPods. Oh, and you know how your MacBook and iPod will inevitably depreciate as college goes on? Freed's still going to make you keep paying the full purchase price and more.

The worst is that they insist we need the iPod or iPhone in class to participate. And we don't. I have never seen a teacher, to this day, use the system we have on our iPods in class. I've been taught about it in University Foundations, but there's been no mention of it since.

So, you force us to buy expensive products from you (you can't even buy it straight from Apple yourself, you have to go through Freed, and it remains their property until you pay it off) and then you don't even use the system you set in place, thereby making the iPods and iPhones totally unnecessary?

Not cool.

Also, my opinion on Apple stuff has been gradually developing over the past few months. I've come to the conclusion that while I like their products, while I find them aesthetically gorgeous and very usable, while their operating system has been unrelentingly stable for me, I hate their company. They charge through the nose for their stuff, and they try to entrap their users (I'm talking to you, App Store). Since I have no choice but to receive a MacBook and an iPod, I might as well enjoy them and admire the aesthetic that went into making them. But because I won't stand for the company's nonsense...I have jailbroken my iPod (it's legal now, wooo, I can admit it without caring if Freed notices!) and my MacBook dualboots Ubuntu. Take that, Freed and Apple. Those of you who have a particular dislike of Apple might be amused that they and Freed-Hardeman are in league to squeeze money out of a bunch of college students. Control freaks teaming up with control freaks, right?

In other news, at work yesterday, I was called out to an office to fix a computer that wasn't turning on. The computer in question belonged to a grad teacher (she taught education I think) who had left the office. Her colleague took me to the machine. I brought a loaner with me and began to swap out the hard drives, but the screws on the teacher's computer were being ornery, so I held down the power button as a form of diagnosis, trying to figure out whether it was a video problem only or whether it couldn't get power at all. Guess what? The MacBook booted normally. I told the colleague to tell the grad teacher to hold the button down until the chime. So much fail.

I'm not alone 'cause the TV's on, yeah...

[Posted to Xanga 8/8/10]


I’m not crazy cause I take the right pills…

So Laura finally gave me something to make me gain weight and sleep that is not trazodone. It’s mirtazapine (Remeron), another antidepressant prescribed for its helpful side effects. I haven’t felt any hungrier than I usually do, nor any more inclined to eat, but it sure as heck knocked me out. About an hour after taking it I was dying for some sleep. I don’t remember what happened after my head hit the pillow. Nothing else that I can remember has knocked me out that thoroughly except for anaesthesia.

I didn’t have a hangover in the morning, but I was miserable for no discernable reason and cried and sat on the floor and was pathetic. It gradually went away as the day went on. It was moving day, and the crying really didn’t help the moving at all. I managed to be packed by 3 PM and started moving stuff over after dinner. Unfortunately, the heat index gets up over 100 most days here in August. I started being thirsty in a way that water wasn’t fixing. So I dragged myself to the grocery store, grabbed a bunch of Powerade bottles, and dragged myself back to my room. Slept for about four hours. When I woke up it was past curfew and I wasn't even half done with the moving. So now I’m finishing my moving, long after the deadline. No one’s moving into my old room and I have the key to the new one, so I don’t think I much care if they complain about me being late. This is what happens when a weak ADHD 17-year-old girl has to move by herself in 100-degree weather, and they can deal with it.

On the other hand…duct tape has proved very, very helpful.

(The above is my dorm card, taped to my hand. There are doors between me and the room I'm moving into that have to be opened with a card.)

Screw you, Strattera.

So a few weeks back...I forget how many...I started Strattera again. Instead of fighting my ADHD, it made me feel disembodied/dissociated. Okay, no big deal, I can handle that. Especially because it goes away or gets less noticeable after a few days of taking Strattera. Then the dosage went up. Bam. Whatever part of my brain thinks about sex was suddenly broken. Truth be told, it's one of my favorite things to think about; I think about it a good deal of the time and enjoy doing so. But on 18 mg of Strattera, it doesn't cross my mind unless somebody mentions it or I force myself to think about it, and either way it isn't as appealing as it was before. I consider that a fundamental change in the structure of my thoughts, and not a pleasant one. It unnerves me that 18 mg of a chemical can take that away from me. But for the sake of waiting it out and getting some stimulants I put up with it. Only three more weeks of this and I'd be off Strattera. Worth it, right? So I waited.

Then the dosage went up again to 25 mg. And what happened? It gave me depression. I took my first raised dose at night before I went to bed. The next day I woke up feeling like I did before they put me on Wellbutrin. Less severe, but unmistakable. I didn't feel like doing anything. I wasn't hungry (had to force myself to eat) or thirsty. I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. Heck, I didn't even really feel like being IN bed. I felt no emotion about the things in my life that tend to make me feel strongly. Towards the end of the day, when it would have been time to take another dose, it started wearing off and I started feeling normal again. I did NOT take the next dose. I'll put up with disembodiment, I'll put up with it screwing with my thoughts, but depression is not something I'll put up with. So I was off Strattera for the next three or four days until my psych appointment. I didn't feel depressed and thinking about sex was the same as it had always been. It was a relief.

And what did my psych do? She put me back on it. Not the 25 mg dose that gave me temporary depression, but the 18 mg dose. She explained that since both the Wellbutrin and the Strattera affect norepinephrine, the raised dosage of Strattera had been enough to more or less edge the Wellbutrin out of the way and take up the receptors. (So I guess we know what would happen if I ever went off my Wellbutrin. Thank God I have it.) And she gave me 28 days' worth of Strattera 18 mg capsules. I went home and later e-mailed her to ask if she still planned to put me on the stimulants if this didn't work. Her response:

"Plan to eval response with 18mg as adjunct with wellbutrin. Plan to do more formal eval for attention/focus at that time. Still doubtful about stimulants because of health, nutrition & mood concerns."

...

You said stimulants were the next course of action...are you going to renege on your word? Part of me wishes I'd just not said anything about it making me depressed and waited it out. As it is, I'm back on it and not only has it made me stop thinking about sex again, it's also more or less screwed up the corresponding physical functions. Remember what I was originally given the Wellbutrin for? The unfortunate side effect of the Zoloft? Well, it's that all over again.

Strattera isn't helping me--it never has. And I seriously doubt it's going to over the next month. I told Laura what it was doing but her response wasn't a very helpful one. I am only putting up with this in the hope that she'll do what she said she would do and use stimulants on me as the next course of action. I see Laura again in early July.

As far as I'm concerned her "mood concerns" are fairly baseless...I think my mood is at a much, much higher risk if she leaves me in this desperate state where I'm angering the people around me and increasingly hating myself for these problems. Yes, okay, whatever, the stimulants aren't some magic cure-all. But they have a very good success rate, and I need SOMETHING to work, and soon.

Her nutrition concerns...are probably fairly sensible. I'm aware that I don't weigh much. Last weighing I was 121 including clothes, cell phone, and iPod, so that probably puts me at about 118 pounds. But dammit, if I have to eat a box of donuts every day for the week before I see her next to bring my weight up, I will do that. I really don't have that much of an appetite and I'm in weight training now so I'm actually using up energy. So I suppose it makes sense that she wants me to eat more. But stress has a tendency to make me eat less. Meh.

...and her health concerns, those I can't argue with, and that's what scares me. Yes, my heart rate went up on Zoloft. Yes, I had tachycardia for a while. Yes, my heart is sensitive to some medicines. But I've never been on stimulants (other than caffeine, and that doesn't count), and statistically, very very few people without preexisting heart conditions have a bad cardiac response to these meds (and the clinic VERIFIED that I don't have an actual problem with my heart; it was just the meds that I was taking at the time). Surely the risk is not too great for her to put me on the lowest possible dose for one day and then take me off of it if my heart does something bad. I don't actually know what the risk is, I just know that I'm scared and I really really need something to work.

...sigh.

I'm just see-through, faded, super-jaded, out of my mind

So my psych has got me on Strattera, the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, again. For a month. If it doesn't work, she said the next course of action would be stimulants.

This comes as a relief.

That's an understatement.

Anyway, I'm on the Strattera right now--10 mg for the past five days, and tomorrow I go up to 18. Five days later I'll go up to 25, and then five days after that I'll go up to 40 for the remainder of the month. As I did last time I was on Strattera, I'm having a feeling of detachment, dissociation, disembodiment. Even on 10 mg. I feel like my body is...not quite mine. I look at my arms and they look far away. Sometimes everything in the room looks far away. I feel somewhat cut off from my emotions some of the time too. Which is not to say I cease having emotions, but they feel...I don't know, detached from me. I'm at a distance from them.

It's more weird than anything else. It doesn't upset me, thus far (when I went off the Strattera last time, it went away). I don't have a clue what's going to happen when my dose goes up, if even 10 mg can do this to me. Maybe I'll have an out-of-body experience? That would be fascinating.

Whatever the case may be, canoeing is over, so now I have...a week and a day of summer vacation before I go back to class until Thanksgiving break.

Edit: In doing some research, I found this:

"A high variety of factors have been implicated in the emergence of depersonalisation and derealisation episodes, including different drugs. A case abruptly induced by two applications of reboxetine, a selective and specific norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, is reported occurring in a 50-year-old woman treated for a major depressive episode. The episode rapidly remitted after discontinuation of reboxetine. Previous data having indicated a role of the serotonin system in the pathophysiology of the phenomenon, a noradrenaline induced serotonin liberation of Raphe neurons is suggested as possible underlying mechanism."

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12947529)

So maybe this is something akin to that? I don't know. Depersonalization is reported as an occasional side effect of all of the meds that affect norepinephrine reuptake, as far as I can tell. Is this related? Will it become more related as my dose goes up? Who knows.

Here, have some music.

(You need to be viewing this in an RSS reader, like Google Reader or something, to be able to stream the audio. Sorry, but I don't know any other way to do this in Blogger yet. Or you can just go listen to it on http://hmmcclish.xanga.com.)

So a while back I took some songs that I strongly identified with and stuck them together in Audacity into one song to describe myself. It's been over a year since I did that, so I decided to make a new one. It doesn't quite describe the present--it describes the time period I just went through, namely, clinical depression and the trip to the hospital. Usually it's the lyrics; sometimes it's also the tone. 


These are the songs, in order (and sometimes the rest of the song besides the bit I pulled out has no relevance):


"It's All Your Fault" - Pink
"Bring Me to Life" - Evanescence
"Hospital" - The Used
"Fscene8" - The Medic Droid
"Wind Up Toy" - Alice Cooper
"Hospital" - The Used (again! It just happens to coincide well with this period of my life in more than one section)
"A Perfect Sonnet" - Bright Eyes
"Wave Motion Gun" - Marcy Playground (oh so much.)
"The Bird and the Worm" - The Used (they're just a good band for this kind of mood)
"Soldier Side" - System of a Down

Several of these helped me get through this time in my life...so thank you to the people who gave them to me. Namely...Vivian, Crow, Sarah, Rachel, and Henry. And my own searching.

Will probably get around to making one for my present state eventually.

Things that made me feel a little better #2

Yup! I got a job. Freed-Hardeman's iKnow program is the program that gives us MacBooks and iPods/iPhones (and, of course, charges us for them). Basically? I get to work for the IT department.

Things that made me feel a little better #1

Seen on the envelope of a card my Aunt Bron mailed me. (Also seen on the envelope: "Dull women have ordinary envelopes".)

[posted on Xanga 5/8/10]

...they won't give me the meds.

My counselor said this (and Laura is my nurse with prescribing privileges, but I generally refer to her as "psychiatrist"):

"I spoke with Laura and she is really apprehensive about putting you on a stimulant. She just doesn’t think your body will tolerate it and she cannot risk putting you on a medication that would physically harm you."

I...don't even have any words, or at least any that aren't swear words.

Wait, no, I do have some words.

DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO GO ANOTHER DAY FEELING LIKE THIS NOW THAT I ACTUALLY KNOW THAT IT'S NOT MY FAULT AND IS MEDICALLY FIXABLE?!

DO YOU REALLY AND SERIOUSLY MEAN THAT AFTER AT LEAST SEVEN YEARS OF DEALING WITH THIS AND HATING MYSELF FOR IT, AND AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS OF DEALING WITH CLASSMATES, PARENTS, AND EVEN FRIENDS TRYING TO TELL ME THAT I'M MAKING THINGS UP OR MAKING EXCUSES, THAT I JUST WANT TO BE LAZY WITHOUT IT BEING MY FAULT, AFTER I'VE GIVEN UP ANY HOPE OF HAVING THEM UNDERSTAND WITHOUT ACTUALLY HAVING THE MEDS AND BEING ABLE TO PROVE THEM WRONG, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HELP ME? YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GIVE ME THE ABILITY TO PROVE THEM WRONG?

And it wouldn't be nearly that big of a deal if some part of me didn't still believe them. But that part of me does. That's one of the worst insecurities I've ever had. I didn't know how I was going to manage to survive before I knew this was the problem. I didn't know how I would ever be able to do the things that are necessary to be independent. And I thought it was all my fault. And now? Now, even though I know there's a legitimate problem here, I'm still scared to death! You know why? IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE SOMETHING ISN'T YOUR FAULT WHEN YOU'VE BEEN TOLD IT IS FOR YOUR WHOLE LIFE. The medicine would have proved not only everybody else wrong but also that little voice inside my head that takes me apart every time I screw up.

But no. You won't give me them. And you won't give me them anytime soon. I am scared. I've been scared for a while but now I am openly scared, now I'm scared and I'll admit it to the rest of you: I. Don't. Know. How. I. Am. Going. To. Survive.

To anyone who would like to tell me I'm being melodramatic: this is me letting out emotion that I don't want to direct at the innocent people around me. If you don't like it you can go and have a cookie and think about flowers and sunshine.

To anyone who thinks I am making too much of the meds or too much of the disorder or making excuses: ...no. Just no. I've had this argument too many times. I'm not going to have it again.

To my counselor and my psych: I know this is not your fault. I know you're doing what is medically necessary and responsible. I'm not angry with you. But that doesn't make it any less a) terrifying or b) painful.

To those of you who have been sympathetic: ...thanks.

And to my mother: This does not mean you're right. Just because I'm not able to obtain the resource that would prove you wrong does not mean I forfeit. DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THIS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

To everyone:

I'm sorry.
I'm in a terrible mood.
I probably will be for a while.
If I'm yelling at you it's not because I'm laboring under the delusion that it's your fault.
If I'm yelling at you I apologize.
It's more fear than anger. A lot more fear than anger.
I don't know what's going to happen to me. I'm not planning on anything different than I was before. But I've been dreading failure for a long time and not having something this important to success is really not making the dread go away.
There's not really anything you can say, no.
...I'm sorry.

Ugh...

[posted on Xanga 4/19/10]

I feel like crap.

Last time I went to see my psychiatrist (she's actually a nurse with prescribing privileges but it's a moot point), I asked her to put me on ADHD meds. She expressed concern over my heart rate briefly being high three weeks ago (it's done nothing abnormal since). When that happened, three weeks ago, she lowered my Zoloft dosage and the heart rate thing went away.

So I told her to take me off the Zoloft altogether and just give me some damned ADHD meds.

She said she'd taper me off of it, and then she'd have to talk to a doctor, and then MAYBE she'd give me ADHD meds.

It's impossible to know whether taking me off the Zoloft but not the Wellbutrin will make my depression come back. Lowering the Zoloft dosage in the past had no harmful effects, but you never know with psychiatric meds. So effectively I'm gambling my will to live for MAYBE getting some ADHD meds.

It makes me furious that such a gamble should be necessary. I understand full well that stimulants are contraindicated for those with heart problems. I understand full well that my psychiatrist is doing the cautious thing (and probably the right thing) by not letting me have meds yet. And I understand there's nothing else she can responsibly do. But I feel helpless and I need to pass my classes and it's the last minute and I JUST WANT NOT TO HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THE ADHD, FOR ONCE, PLEASE.

...I started going off Zoloft a week ago. Took half-dose for four days and then took nothing. This is my third day on nothing. The discontinuation syndrome is kicking in. Nausea, headache, occasional chills, moodiness (today, anyway). The weirdest symptom is brain zaps. I felt them when I took my dose late while I was still on Zoloft, but now I have them all the time. They're not all that unpleasant for me by themselves, but they really suck combined with nausea and headache. For those of you who have never heard of brain zaps:

"“Brain zaps” are said to defy description for whomever has not experienced them, but the most common themes are of a sudden “jolt,” likened to an electric shock, apparently occurring or originating within the brain itself, with associated disorientation for a few seconds. The phenomenon is most often reported as a brief, wave-like electrical pulse that quickly travels across the surface of (or through) the brain. Some people experience these “waves”through the rest of their body, but the sensation dissipates quickly. They are sometimes accompanied by brief tinnitus and vertigo like feelings. Immediately following this shock is a light-headedness that may last for up to ten seconds. The sensation has also be described by many as a flashbulb going off inside the head or brain. Moving one’s eyes from side to side quickly while open has also been known to trigger these zaps and sometimes causing them to come in rapid succession. It is thought to be a form of neuro-epileptiform activity."

I couldn't really describe them better. No other medicine causes that, to the best of my knowledge.
Bluh.

Edit: Said psychiatrist gave a talk in chapel this morning. Went and talked to her after and she was sympathetic. Made me feel a little bit better. Also, I'm getting moodiness. Snapping about things for no reason. I should go to bed for everyone else's benefit...

Hey guess what!

I got a haircut, and I like it very much.

If something's hurting you then you have to know what it is to make it go away. If you're running away from something it's not going to stop chasing you until you turn around and face it. If you're afraid and alone and angry and ashamed and you want to be needed and you need to be needed and you're searching for something that everyone else already has, you have to know WHY you feel that way--you have to know why you need to be needed more than those around you. And if it hurts every time you try to face it, that just means you need even more to face it, before it can tear you apart inside even more than it already has, before you can get any more desperate, before you can feel any more lost. If you're afraid it will destroy you inside, if you are afraid you will have no reason to live or it'll take you apart, imagine running away from it for the rest of your life, feeling like that for the rest of your life. If you face it, if you endure it (and you can), if you weather the storm, you will feel better, you will feel alive, or at the very least purified, purged. And if you've buried it deeply enough that you don't even have an idea of what you're running from, you have to dig through your emotions and your past to find it to be able to make it go away.

Being needed by another person or having another person to need is not going to fix it for you. That's a coverup. That's something that keeps you from thinking about what you're hiding from yourself. That's escapism. No matter how much you smoke or snort or drink or cut or obsess or any other action like that, no matter how far you go, you can never run far away enough from something that is inside your own self. The more you try, the deeper a hole you dig for yourself. The more you try, the more days or weeks or months or years you've used up running away instead of being able to live your life without being afraid in your own mind.

Your best friend can't fix it for you. Your family can't fix it for you. The love of your life can't fix it for you. A psychiatrist can't fix it for you. They can help but nobody can fix it but you. Nobody can face it but you. I have done this. I've been through hell and back. I can tell you that it's worth it. Don't let your fear get the best of you. Don't let your fear condemn you to a life of running and hiding. Don't think it's not worth it.

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/hmmcclish

WOO.

I just tested out of my business class. It was a class for basic Microsoft Office skills. I started learning Access two days before the test. I'd never touched or seen Access 2007 before; I'd tinkered with Access 97 at age eleven. In fact, I'd never touched or seen Access 2007 until I actually started taking the test. And yet I passed it. The only bits that the teacher corrected me on were formatting things. Like the spacing of a business letter.

I feel awesome.

This means I have eighteen hours this semester but am only carrying twelve. (Three for Speech/Communications, my short course, in which I made an A. Three for BUS253.) Maybe this won't be so bad, huh?

I'm working on the getting a job thing. Might even get this settled today, if I'm lucky. I'm hoping so. The trouble is over how I will get paid. I don't think I have access to a bank account that is both A) not accessible to my parents and B) capable of being used for direct deposit by Freed-Hardeman, because I'm a minor. I could get one, I am told, if I went to BoA in Jackson. But if they can just give me paper checks, it will be easier...

I've decided to leave my Nintendo 64 and its games in the lobby of my dorm for the duration of the semester. I took it down there to play with a friend before the semester started and left it for other people to play, and now every time I come down to the lobby I see a different group of people I don't know playing it. Even boys come over to our lobby to play. It is awesome. And I want to be a part of it, after I get all this stuff straightened out.

Still need to find out the balance on my MacBook and iPod, but the IT lady is sick. I'll ask next week...

...I feel pretty good. I'll feel better if I get this job worked out.

Also...have some gratuitous music recommendations from me. In the form of a shameless Amazon widget. *points to right-hand side of page*

Ad time?

So I just learned how to put ads on my page. I'm going to limit them to things that I actually like and would want to buy, so hopefully they won't be too annoying. I just think I might be able to get a little bit of money. It can go towards my meager college fund. :] They'll show up whenever I get approved.

I know I've been gone for a while.

Posted on Xanga

Sorry. A lot of things have been happening, and also I'm lazy and was absorbed in doing other things, like grabbing desktop wallpapers, making my N64 emulator work, getting Wine running so I can run Windows apps semi-natively on my MacBook, waiting through Winter Break, and trying to help a friend of mine who's in a bad situation. I would tell you more about said friend, but if I did it might endanger him further, so I won't. Suffice it to say he's going to end up isolated for a very long time, and I'm afraid he'll end up suicidal like I was, and I want to find some way for him to contact the outside world. But it's damn hard.

I think I've largely recovered from my depression, and the recovery has lasted a few months, so I trust it more than the last time. I'm beginning to realize that I don't actually know my true potential for happiness. And I'm beginning to realize that I can indeed have a purpose in life. I want to fight for kids who are stuck like my friend and I are. I want to help get my friend to a counselor without giving things away to the people who are doing this to him, and I think it's doable, but I'll have to let him know first so that he won't think I betrayed him, because I'm the only one he really trusts right now and if that trust breaks he'll be in a lot worse of a situation than he is right now. And I want to fight for LGBT kids stuck in similar situations. I know how it is.

I have purpose. I've never had purpose like this before. I ended up crying about it yesterday because I got worked up about it, xD. Furthermore my boyfriend is coming to visit me in a week and a day, which is extremely exciting, because it'll probably be the happiest I've ever been in my life. And something else wonderful happened too. I just need to fill out my college apps, get organized, and start deciding what to take with me and what to leave behind. Then I'll be just fine. I feel strong. I feel alive. I'm still unsure about some things. But because I have friends who have faith in me I'll last until I can have my own confidence. Already have some.

I would not wish my past on anyone, but I wouldn't take it back for the world.

So I'm making this blog because I have friends on here, I believe.

My primary blog is on Xanga, but I intend to copy Xanga posts to here. New ones, that is. The old ones will remain, but feel free to view them.

At any rate, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Melissa. I'm young and stubborn and weird as all hell, and I like it. Just got out of six months of clinical depression and I'm feeling a lot better. Life is okay. I'm trying my utmost to transfer out of this church of Christ school that my parents made me go to. Hopefully I can transfer next semester. I need to get working on that...