Trading Lives for $1000, Alex

I’m just beginning to kick a paranoid episode’s ass.  Psychoses is NOT fun, I tell you.  

The title?  Oh, that. 

I can’t count the number of times someone has said to me, "Boy, I wish I could get paid to sit on my ass instead of work."  Because I’m on SSI for being Bipolar I with psychotic features.

Ok, let’s trade lives, BUT….you get the Bipolar, too, not just the "early retirement". 

Do you know what it’s like not being able to trust ANYONE, including YOURSELF?!  Do you know what it’s like that things that SHOULD and usually WOULD make you happy are things you don’t want around you, and you consider DYING because you feel unworthy of it?  Or that you no longer care what you may teach your grandchildren by committing suicide, because it would be their responsibility to learn the right lesson?  

This is NOT what my life is supposed to be like.  Who says?  I DO!  I do, damnit!

And as for the "getting paid to sit on my ass"….first of all, I don’t sit on my ass all the time.  Lately, there’s more of that, because I’ve been in such a funk, mostly, for the last four months.  But even so, how far do you think $524 per month is going to stretch?  I have a $600 house payment, not to mention regular utilities!  Even with my wife’s check of the same amount, it’s hard, if not impossible, to make it stretch far enough.

So yeah, you take the self-hatred, depression the likes of which I don’t know if you’ve ever CONCEIVED, and the psychoses that make it impossible to love anyone while they’re happening.  You take that, and I’ll take your job and the regular stress that goes with it.

I don’t really know what else to say.  My anti-psychotic will be kicking in within the hour, and then I should be friendlier.  Sleepier than hell, but friendlier.  More rational.  More loving.

And it takes a goddamned pill.