It’s good to be able to agree with you once in awhile.
I’ve known one bona fide manic depressive in my life: when my mom split up with my dad, he was my mom’s best friend for awhile (I’m not sure whether they were ever lovers; if they weren’t, I think he had a big crush on her). He was an extremely smart guy who’d studied music at some famous European conservatory, wrote wonderful music, could wax poetic about the great philosophers. And when he took his lithium, his hands shook so badly that he couldn’t play the cello, and he had trouble focusing his eyes, and he spoke at about a quarter the speed of anyone else, and said nothing interesting.
So he would periodically go off of his lithium. I remember one night waking up to discover that he’d shown up at my father’s house at two in the morning. I lay in bed, terrified. The next morning I learned that he’d offered to pay my dad $10,000 to leave town forever, and told my dad that if he didn’t take the offer, he’d be very sorry.
Eventually, he went off his lithium for the last time, and very methodically took his own life.
I can’t say I blame him. His medication, man. It was horrific what it did to him, perhaps worse than what the disease did to him.
Oh fuck, I simulposted and didn’t realize IT had responded to this accusation. That’s the last time I take an OP as gospel! Sorry about that, Idle Thoughts.
Y’know, after ten hours of corporate serfdom, stuck in a shitty call center fielding hysterical screeds from guttermouthed mongloid hausfraus seething with apoplectic fury over 50p interest charges on their bank statements, deciphering the alien babble of customers who - despite possessing no facility with the English language whatsoever - have somehow acquired a credit card, and patiently explaining over and over and over again the fundamental difference between debit and credit to endearingly sweet but helplessly befuddled pensioners, I didn’t think I could get any more pissed off.
Then I made the mistake of clicking on this thread.
I admit, the title intrigued me. Idle Thoughts is everything that is wrong with America? “Wow” my inner monologue urged “This dude must be fucked up. Whatever could he be? Crazy fascist? Serial animal abuser? Mutant? Pederast? Mutant pederast? A cross burning, kitty grilling mutant pederast who’s rude about fat people? Holy shit! I bet this thread’s smoking like a George Bush campaign bus in the Gaza Strip. Let’s check it out!*”
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Idle Thoughts only crimes were (a) claiming state benefit, (b) being politically apathetic, (c) not being a hit with the ladies, and (d) being a bit annoying.
Underwhelmed, I was. Distinctly underwhelmed. And then angry. And then increasingly angry as it became ever more clear just how much bullshit your OP was.
Let’s tackle the offences individually. To the best of my knowledge no-one on this board has the slightest idea how much money Idle thoughts is claiming in state benefits, so accusations that he spends his days frolicking about in a pool of other people’s money like Scrooge McDuck’s evil twin are sorely misplaced, to say the least. Secondly, as a couple of other posters have pointed out, neither you, nore any of the armchair Freud’s in this thread have any basis whatsoever for claiming that Idle Thoughts bipolar disorder is anything less than the Real McCoy. He has, as he’s said above, been clinically diagnosed. Whether your father, davenportavenger can hold down a full time job while suffering from bipolar disorder has absolutely no bearing whatsofuckingever on whether Idle Thoughts can.
I have OCD, and sometimes it’s a real bitch. I’m lucky enough to be able to hold down a full time job but, during the seemingly endless cavalcade of support group meetings and interminable ‘heart to hearts’ my shrink insisted were essential to expedite my recovery, I met several other people whose OCD has rendered them virtually housebound. Unsurprisingly, these people are also on state benefits. Now, I’m no shrink. Even after having met those people I don’t consider myself in a position to be able to comment in any way upon the validity of their suffering (as if such a thing were objectively verifiable anyway) and I certainly don’t have the almost egomaniacal brass balled tenacity to judge them. But then, I don’t possess your penetrating insight, an intuition so powerful that the barriers of this paltry digital medium are no hindrance to your ability to take a few words of someone else’s text and use them as a window onto their fucking soul. In short, trying to second guess someone’s mental state based on a few sentences on a fucking message board is the act of a judgemental tool. Unless you have direct evidence to refute Idle Thoughts claims they stand, at least in my eyes, for no better reason than he is Idle Thoughts and you are not.
His political apathy, too, is far from sufficient warrant to slam him such a shitty, sleazy, below the belt manner. Man, being multifaceted, is more than the sum of his opinions on whatever fleeting absurdities happen to be passing for political discourse today. Some of the very best people I’ve ever met in my life have never taken more than a passing interest in politics. They divert their focus instead on their families, jobs, and their friends, forging the bonds of trust and loyalty which sustain us far more than the inane prattlings of the seemingly infinite cavalcade of processed, ideologized-to-order, perfectly coiffed, perfectly empty talking heads posing as political commentators, and the mendacious whores in office. Perhaps, just perhaps, Idle Thoughts is one of those people. People with other priorities. Now, it’s no-one’s fault but his own that he didn’t read the memo informing all us peons that anyone whose prerogatives don’t match yours are wrong by default, but don’t you think, in your capacity as a know nothing idiot on the other side of the internet, you could cut him a little slack?
So he doesn’t vote? So he doesn’t take much of an interest in politics? So he doesn’t see why that’s such a bad thing? This makes him ‘Everything that’s wrong with America?’ Fuck, seeing from abroad the dismal and depressing hystrionics which passes for American political discourse nowadays it seems that if Americans as a nation became any more shrill your entire nation might implode. Maybe people like Idle Thoughts serve a purpose as an antidote to all the partisan hysteria polluting American politics to the point where nobody can call a turd a turd until it’s been made explicitely clear on which side of the political spectrum said turd is situated.
His third ‘offence’, and the one for which you offer the skimpiest evidence of all in the form of what appears, at least to me, to be a joke MPSIMS thread, is that he’s a bit pathetic when it comes to the ladies. How this meager failing (which, by the way, he shares with a significant proportion of his gender) gives you the authority to slag him as an example of ‘Everything that’s wrong with America’ is beyond me and, frankly, doesn’t warrent retorting comment.
And as for (d)? Well, he may be a bit annoying, but so what? You’re really fucking annoying.
At times like this, reading digital abortions like this thread, some words from the perennially wise Cervaise spring to mind.
What, precisely, did you think you were adding when you posted this thread? And how did you think your offerings would affect Idle Thought’s* mental state?
As for you? Well, as I said above I possess barely a fraction of your telepathic powers, but I’ll tell you what I think your OP says about you anyway. It tells me that you’re a spiteful, self-important bitch lashing out at a weak target. Congratulations. You’ve proven yourself just as capable of spewing venomous invective as any other keyboard warrior. I’d tell you to fuck the horse you rode in on but, frankly, I’d credit it with more taste.
Before I answer Idle Thoughts’ statements, I just want to say that I never said he was a self-diagnoser. Rather, he seems to reject the diagnosis he was given. Kind of a difference.
You need a better doctor. People who really have bipolar disorder don’t taper off their medication. The vast majority are on it for life. Any doctor who would take you off meds when you start to feel good is a quack, and if you don’t respond to the tapering off by totally flipping out, then you’re not bipolar. The goal is not to cure the disease (because there is no cure yet), it’s to calculate the right dosages to keep you at that even, non-depressed non-manic level. And I can’t think of any legitimate doctor who, once s/he found the right dosage, would pull that dosage away and risk a slide into mania or depression. (Yeah, I DO know a lot about this for a layperson.)
Oh, and meds for bipolar are better now. Not as many side effects, especially with non-lithium based mood stabilizers.
Welcome to the real world, sucker! Do you think that nobody else has been pushed to the brink working a job? When I worked for Wal-Mart, I usually came home crying every day because my sleep schedule was all fucked up and the company I worked for was all fucked up and I felt really fucked up. I would have nightmares about Wal-Mart, would break out in sweat whenever it was time to leave. BUT I STILL WENT. Because that’s what you do. And I’d like to say that it got better, but it really didn’t. But still, going to work is just what you DO, whether you love it or hate it or are neutral. Who are you to say that your nervous breakdowns trump someone else’s nervous breakdowns?
My dad makes more than $570 a month, but I know people on SSI who make close to $1500, which is just a little less than what he makes. I guess it varies from state to state. I don’t mean to pry, but how do you live on just $570 a month? I used to live in a town with 2000 people, and my rent was still $200 a month not including electric. Homer wins again!
<Frank Grimes>Except hard-working Americans, like me!</Frank Grimes>
It’s not just the voting. You said you didn’t know the difference between the major political parties. You said you didn’t care who the president was. That’s a lot more disturbing than not voting. What do you “love” about America, anyway? Our history? American history IS American politics. Someone who doesn’t even know the difference between a liberal and a conservative can never grasp the depth of American history, or the complexity of American ideals. Right now you’re living in a pretty volatile period of American history, and I think it behooves all of us to learn more about current events, so we can take a more active part in living history. I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about giving a shit.
Or maybe you don’t care about history either, and all you like about America is like, the trees and shit. What do I know?
And I do. Tell me this, Idle… if you don’t think you’re bipolar, why do you accept money for it? That’s hypocrisy. It would be like me accepting a job with the Christian Coalition, or accepting a contracting job for a new Scientologist temple. How do you look yourself in the mirror, knowing you’re taking money for a condition you don’t believe you have?
Yeah, you can say that. Or maybe that he takes the easy way out, instead of fighting for a normal life. Because a normal life, to me, means having a job (and before any SAHMs get on my case, yes that counts). It means taking responsibility. It means being informed about your world. It means not whining about your lack of romantic opportunity when you haven’t even explored why it might exist. Honestly, I think Idle lives in a state of prolonged adolescence, which sadly, many others members of my generation have also fallen prey to. When I think of all the people I know who moved back home after college, or lived off a trust fund, it makes me really sad. What is happening to my generation? One of the guys I work with calls his mother every day at work, sometimes twice. He’s thirty. I know someone who’s twenty-nine and lives in their parents’ basement. I feel a real gap between me and people my own age, and I think a lot of it has to do with their not caring about the world and expecting everything to be handed to them on a silver platter by mommy. Okay so this is kind of off-topic, but hell, it’s my thread.
Maybe I’m a little jealous too. I sure would love some extra hours to write and read and make art! And it’s not like my mental health is tops either. But I have these pesky things like “pride” and “being an adult” riding my ass, and damn if I know how to get rid of them.
Wow. Idle Thoughts, this is the first thread I’ve seen you in. You’ve acquitted yourself quite well. Davenport is being a jerk, as she seems to be doing a lot lately.
In’case’n you didn’t read the second link I posted, I didn’t use my penetrating insight to smell something rotten in Idle’s diagnosis of bipolar. He said himself that he doesn’t have it and doesn’t take meds for it (at least that was true then, at any rate). I assume that all of the people in that support group didn’t deny they had OCD, took the meds they needed to function, etc. That is far, far different from what it seems Idle is doing, which is (1) not caring for his illness in the way medical science says it should be cared for and (2) not making any attempt to get off the dole, i.e. to recover and live a normal adult life.
Did they claim to love America at the same time? That’s what the question is, whether you can love America and not know anything about politics. And I for one don’t believe it can be done. Mindless jingoism is not love.
I didn’t care about how my offerings would affect his mental state. I cared about releasing my anger in a visible way so I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown at work. Then again, it doesn’t matter whether I have a nervous breakdown at work or not. Did he think about what it would do to me, someone with a bipolar parent who suffers at their job to put bread on the table, to state proudly that he accepts government money for a disease he doesn’t believe he has? But no, I’m just a bitch and a jerk, I’m not a real person like him.
Point 1 – I agree. There is no known permanent cure for Bipolar. For many people it’s a life of constant medicine adjustments and readjustments in a sometimes futile search for that combination that works.
Point 2 – The non-lithium meds don’t work for some people. And the lithium shakes are a constant reminder of the disease and are extremely frustrating. The example of the musician who couldn’t play his instrument is incredibly sad. Others find themselves affected in less obvious ways – women who cannot apply makeup or nailpolish, knitters and other crafts enthusiasts who cannot avail themselves of this comforting pasttime, for example.
Point 3 – Did you notice that IT said he got anxious even on jobs he liked? Just plain anxiety disorder, without the mania OR the depression, is awful. You feel constantly afraid, ready to puke or cry or both, for no reason at all.
I wish that IT could become more knowledgeable and interested in politics. He has chosen not to. Fine. IMHO in that case, he should NOT vote. Too many ignorant people vote already.
Oh, right. And you think Idle Thoughts is what’s wrong with America?
Must be a regional thing. Out here we call it “self-righteous prickery”.
I am a little bummed out that IT doesn’t follow politics, but let’s be honest with ourselves… Most of America doesn’t follow politics. Oh sure, they get their fill of Fox News Editorial Reports, but I’d hardly consider that being informed.
I would bet you there are ALOT of Americans who vote without ever researching a candidate or party. At least IT has the good sense realize that he’s uninformed and not to cast a ballot just for shits and giggles. If more of America felt this way, we might not be quite so fucked right now.
If I knew for a fact that Idle Thoughts was milking his condition to get out of being grown-up responsibilities, I would join you, davenportavenger. I find such behavior despicable.
But I don’t know for sure if Idle is a slacker. So therefore I can’t join the pile-on. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to illness, because I hate when people tell me “It’s not that bad”. Well, sometimes it is.
The resentment you feel may very well be justified, but you’re coming across a bit like a matyr in your posts. I know a guy, someone I work with, who plays the matyr bit sometimes and it’s pathetic (as well as annoying). He loves to talk about how many long hours he’s slaved away, how many weekends he’s worked, how he’s never taken a sick day. Heaven forbid if someone feels compelled to take a sick day or decides to work nine hours instead of twelve, then he has to roll his eyes and talk about how lazy people are. But no one ever told him he had to be Mr. Work-a-Holic to be a good, admirable person. Being a work-a-holic was never a part of the job description. He’s the way he is not because he has to be, but because he wants to be. So he shouldn’t complain about how hard it is or expect others to be like him.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s great you have given it your all and never wussed out, but we all have our own standards for how life should be lived. And everything has its trade-offs. You’ve busted your ass and now have (hopefully) some rewards for it. Rewards that Idle does not have and probably won’t ever have unless he changes some things.
As for you, Idle, I hope you don’t give up looking for a job and striving towards self-sufficiency. There’s always part-time work, sheltered workshops, and special programs. There’s also self-employment in the form of odd jobs, which is just volunteering taken to the next level.
That’s true, you never said that. It was somebody else. I quoted them even in my last post.
I guess it can be seen as rejecting it a bit. But me, I just don’t like to think I have it, I guess. As for whether I REALLY do have it or not, who’s to say? Doctors? More than one has diagnosed me with it. I certainly wouldn’t want to claim I have it, cause who likes admitting they have mental instablities? But I won’t lie about it if it comes up. Me, I just like to think that maybe there is a chance I don’t have it…after all, who who is insane actually thinks they’re insane?
And, like you point out, there seem to be a lot of signs pointing to the fact that I don’t have it anyway. After all, I don’t “flip out” when my doctor tapers my meds off. I actually have gotten off well without meds for as long as 4 months before,…however I DO think they’re varying degrees of BP and other SMIs. I know that my feelings of deep depression always do seem to come back over time, and yes, there are times when I don’t notice myself, but other people tell me I’m acting overly hyper and I have all this energy and no sleep and it lasts for weeks or months at a time too. It’s during those times I simply tell my current doc about it and he puts me back on medication.
I’m fine with it. He always asks me what I feel or think about it too, instead of just saying he’s tapering or stopping it. I find that the meds, when I’m on them, also give me a lot of side effects that I don’t really enjoy. I even talk about them (along with my medication) in this post. That sexual side effect is actually the least of the side effects I get. And this is even after my doc has tried to find a right dosage, and tried me on almost every med for depression/Bi Polar there is: Zoloft, Celexa, Depakote, Wellbutrin, and even the already mentioned and horrific Lithium. Man, I REFUSE to ever go back on that one. It made me feel and act even worse off than I was.
We finally settled on a combo of Wellbutrin and Depakote, cause they gave me the least amount of side effects…however he does, if I’m having a long “run” of feeling “normal”, like I said, taper it off bit by bit…if only to save me from having to puke every so often.
And off of it, I don’t flip out at all, so I dunno. I actually know some other’s who have BP who don’t flip out either if they go a day or even a week without their meds. I think it just depends on the person and the degree they may have it.
Nobody. I’m nobody to say that. I’m only someone to say what effects me and to what degree.
I don’t think that I have it worse off than anyone. I don’t think that I have it better than anyone. I don’t even want to live that/this way. The last time I had a job, about 3 years ago, I broke down crying while on the job, not even after I got home. Out of frustration and just outright hopelessness at it all at the time, I sent a rack of dill pickles flying to the floor. And not even out of anger…I was just, like, in another place. I really don’t handle stress well at all. It’s why on here and in most places I go, I’m so laidback. I don’t let a lot of things get to me because if I do, then where would I be?
Most of the high levels of stress I had in the past just resulted in work envoirment issues.
Well, I wasn’t just saying that in the first linked thread. I really AM content with, well, the barest minimum. Half of that check goes to rent and bills. The other half goes to food and hygiene products (and the occational, but rare entertainment or fun venue).
But you know, I actually am satisfied with my life. I like it. I’m happy. Overall, I mean. It doesn’t really take much to appease me… It’s like movies and books and such. I watch movies and then I see people critiquing them, and saying all they hated about it, and so forth, and so on…and me…I don’t get it. I watch a movie just to watch it. Just for entertainment value. I don’t usually read all into the plot or what mistakes were made, etc.
I am aware of what sucks and what doesn’t…but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the movie overall. I find most movies enjoyable, cause I think my level of contentment “tolerance” is just very low…and this view kinda goes hand in hand with voting. I don’t care who is president because I’m fine with anyone, really, in office. I don’t think it’s OVERLY apathetic…and I don’t think that saying I don’t care for my country or people in general is true. I just am content mostly with the barest minimum.
Ohhh, okay.
I thought you meant I would “leech” off whatever girlfriend I had at the time and that’s why I was single. You meant parasite in the regard that I was on disablity and you don’t think I should be. I’m sorry (for misunderstanding the post).
As for being a parasite for being on disablity, well…I’m not proud of it. But I don’t flaunt it. I merely pointed it out in your second linked topic and a couple of other places on here because it was needed for a full opinion at the time.
And you know what? You’re completly right about this. It IS willful ignorance and yeah, I should know more about it at the very least, even if I don’t vote. That’s on me.
Historywise, I know a lot…I did graduate from High School, after all. :p;) But yeah, the parties and stuff, I don’t…and I probably should. What can I say?
Or maybe you don’t care about history either, and all you like about America is like, the trees and shit. What do I know?
Well, it’s the only way I can survive. I can’t hold a job…so what am I going to do? Turn it down and make it harder for myself? Seems that if I can’t hold a job or work because…whatever is messed up in my head, and the program is divised for people who are just that…then why not?
I know this was to Miller, but I’d like to address it anyway, since it was regarding me:
You think I haven’t done that before or tried that or even am still trying? You don’t know me at all.
I wasn’t whining when I was single. That topic wasn’t whining. Maybe you saw it that way, but I didn’t mean to come off that way.
And currently, I actually have a girl who knows all about my situation yet still wants to be with me.
I’m twenty-five.
I’m sorry that I seem to be making you angry. I don’t mean to.
Especially after reading Idle Thought’s response, he seems far from being everything, or even much of anything, that’s seriously wrong with America. There’s probably a few things he could handle better, but I’ve yet to meet the person that could not be said about. (except for myself. I handle everything with aplomb and elegance.)
I do however suggest that the pitter and pittee don’t consider dating each other though.
