All the talking fools, what it means, last I've seen.

[erika]

1) How are you? No, really, how are you?
... phewwww. Uh.

Well. I've been better, I'm pretty sure. I am also very sure that I've been much worse.

The current thing that's really bothering me is that I wanted to go on lithium if the mood swings I've been having in the past 2 weeks continue, which they kind of have.

(Then again, Erika, maybe they wouldn't continue if you didn't continue doing stupid shit. Then again, Erika, is trying to start to date "doing stupid shit"? These are the questions I ask myself all the time.)

Anyway, so wanted: lithium. I could probably even get lithium, though not from my normal psychiatrist as he is out on sick leave. (He, in fact, has cancer. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but it really bothers me. His prognosis is apparently excellent but I'm quite worried about him nonetheless.)

The problem is that lithium has been known to cancel out the "stimulant and anorectic effects of amphetamines," as quoted from the literature. Basically meaning, I would be without the drug that has allowed me to actually get up in the mornings, leave the house, and do shit in general.

So: deal with mood swings and have enough energy to get out of bed? Or flatten out the emotional rollercoaster and in turn, flatten ME out? I don't know. Which would you choose?

That's not even considering if my Weird Body Symptom as mentioned in the last post is coming from my medication, then what do I do? Do I stop the medication? Since it's probably the Abilify, that means a return to 3 weeks ago with the major major MAJOR anxiety. Do I continue on and hope WBS doesn't get any worse?

Basically there are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers in my head. I question everything, all the time—it's very . . . very . . . exhausting.

2) How old are you? I have no idea. In my head, you're in your 20s, but this could be wildly incorrect.

I am in fact 24. And a half. (Interesting factoid about me: My father's birthday is my half-birthday.)

The fact that I don't mention my age very often is because, well, I started online journalling when I was 12 and nobody took me seriously once I revealed I was a 12 year old. (Well, be fair. Would you? Would I, even, today? Probably not.)

And now it's just habit. I don't even think I mention my age on my birthday generally.

(Hey, alchemi, check out the tags on this one. The cheese one is all for you, baby.)

3) What are the top ten things that make you smile?
In no particular order:

1. My dogs. Second to none.
2. A decent joke online. I rarely laugh out loud at anything I see online, but a good joke will make me smile.
3. People smiling at me. I'm polite like that, plus, I feel like they deserve it.
4. A happy ending in a movie or a book. I'm easy like that.
5. Vanilla Coke.
6. A phone call, a text, or even just the simple signing onto IM of someone I like (as a friend or other.)
7. Hugs.
(okay, it's starting to get hard here, so I'm stretching)
8. Compliments.
9. New magazines in the mail.
10. New personal emails / comments on my LJ (it's true).

4) Have you ever broken a bone, and if so, which one(s), and how?
I have actually never broken a bone! Very boring, I know. There have been numerous occasions on which I thought I'd broken something, only to find out nope, it actually wasn't.

I will take this time to tell the story of the facial-scar-that-barely-exists, AKA the time Erika BUST her entire chin OPEN and bit THROUGH the bottom of her lip, thus necessitating more than 80 stitches on the outside of my lip and chin, and something like 25 internal ones.

... wait, that's pretty much the story. Oh. How it happened? Well, I was 8, riding my bike with my dad, and we rode all the way up to the new park. I wanted to go down a grassy hill that led directly into the park, he said fine, and I did.

What I didn't know, what neither of us knew, was that the sidewalk had recently been laid and it had necessitated cutting into the hill to lay it flat, so... there was a gap |   | about 4 inches between the sidewalk and the hill, just the perfect size for my bike tire to get caught in and I flipped over (not wearing a helmet, BAD IDEA JUST IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING) and landed on my chin. The bike landed NEXT to me.

Yeah. I'm damn lucky the bike didn't land on my spine and I didn't become paralyzed.

Interesting side note: we went to the nearest house for help and the woman happened to actually be a doctor. So for some reason she had lots of gauze, and I remember asking her what kind of doctor she was, and she said a gynecologist. And uh, okay, but wtf are you doing with that much gauze? AT HOME?

5) What's the best book you've ever read?

Damn. That's a tough one. I'd have to say it may be a tie between Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams.

Some quotes, so that you can compare the two:

Snow Crash:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

Life, The Universe, and Everything:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

Here's my twist on the meme: If you want five questions from me, you must ask me at least 3 (three) questions.