Prince Henry woke purpleglitter and me up this morning with his best imitation of an alarm. The bedroom is the only room we have that is appropriate for quarantine, so I guess we have a new alarm clock. He's definitely louder than any of the other birds we've had, even Sir Dubbins.

He's gotten plenty of scritches so far today and while the cage he came in is far from toy deprived, we plan to give him a couple of the birdy booty toys from shadowrabbit. I'm sure he misses his old humans, but I think he'll come to like it here.

i told my therapist that somewhere along the line i must have decided i want to live
i'm not quite sure when it happened
i stopped bingeing and purging
i stopped cutting
i stopped my parasuicidal and suicidal behaviours
i haven't had a suicide attempt in 2 years
now, when i feel suicidal i go to the psych emergency room rather than act on it
and even that has been less
i was only hospitalized once this year
compared to 5 times in 2003 and 2002.
somewhere i must have decided i want to live
i don't know where or when that happened
no alarm went off
i didn't wake up and say "you know, i feel like living today"
i didn't feel a thing
but something did happen
something very important for me
and i'm different
and i have faith i'm going to keep getting better

looking the other way
sometimes i want to block some things out
so that i don't have to deal with them
i just block them out of my head
they don't exist
i make them go away
this isn't always successful
but the closer the thing is to the Evil Thing
the harder i push
i make sure things near the Evil Thing stay far away
my mind is a maze built to keep me from finding the way
i built this maze to stop me from finding the Evil Thing
now i'm looking for the Evil Thing
i seek out the Evil Thing
but the maze is built to make me question
whether i really want to see the Evil Thing
i designed myself to be afraid of the Evil Thing
why would i seek it out?
this is an important question
will i gain or lose if i find the Evil Thing?
or will i be the same?
no better off
no worse
what is hidden is hidden
i don't even know what the Evil Thing is
whenever i get close to what the Evil Thing is
alarms go off
i twitch
i cannot reach the questions about the Evil Thing
without triggering alarms
the Evil Thing is bad
bad place
i don't know what to do about seeking the Evil Thing

Shortly after purpleglitter called 911 a week ago Thursday, the house was swarmed by paramedics and firefighters. They brought me to Mount Auburn Hospital. At first, all they did at the hospital was observe me. When my resting heart rate went up to 130, they fed me a bunch of charcoal. I kept slipping in and out of consciousness as my heart rate climbed to 170 and set off the alarms. I remember brief glimpses of people visiting me during the night, though I can't place any of that in chronological order. The whole experience is too much of a blur.

Around 4:00am in the morning I met with the psychiatrist on call at Mount Auburn. He talked to me and said that he would be admitting me to a psychiatric unit.

At about 6:00am, he came back and told me that he was admitting me into a male room (with male roommates). I told him that I wasn't going to go, but he said I had no choice. I informed him that if he insisted I be in a male room, that was okay, I'd just go topless. I threatened "How comfortable do you think the staff will be with that? How about the other patients?". He relented and found me a private room at Pembroke Hospital.

7:00am, zarthon arrived just in time to hand me some clothes and toiletries before they put me in the ambulance bound for Pembroke Hospital. I remember watching the Zakim Bridge drift into the distance through ambulance windows as they took me away from Boston.

Last night I went to GenderPlay with Sara. Genderplay was very small this time. Only one other person showed up, Mandy. I was planning to bring Pass the Pigs, but I forgot it on my desk at home. So we had no games. We ended up playing Associations. In Associations one person starts with a word, then the next person says the word that comes first to their mind, then the person after that says what the second person's word made them think of. Simply do that going around and around in a circle. It's fun to see how far away from the original word you get.

We only stayed at the Diesel Café about an hour, then headed home. We had good conversations in the car on the ride back. Talking to quiteodd is always so freeing. I always feel happy and refreshed after spending time around her. Something about the energy she radiates.

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Went to bed around 1:30am last night. Woke up around 8:00am to make purpleglitter breakfast and coffee and pack her lunch. After purpleglitter left at 8:30am, I went back to bed. I was planning on sleeping only to 10:30am. But, when the alarm went off, I felt an incredible panic about getting out of bed. So, I hid under the covers and went back to sleep. I woke up at least once an hour, but each time was not able to get out of bed due to panic. Finally, at 2:30pm, I was able to get out of bed.

A few minutes after I got out of bed, the phone rang. It was Lahey Clinic. They were able to set me up with an appointment next Monday with my old pdoc there. I'm going to ask her about trying to find us a therapist that works well with multiples and will take MassHealth. Hopefully she'll be able to point us in the right direction.