The start of my book: Transcribed Por Vous (whoever you may be)

Here it is:


Prologue



"I'm goint to sit down, and I'm going to do this. Slow and fast, over and over I'll write the letters down and make sense out of my life.
Tomorrow I'll be at the Rainbow Center. It's not as happy as it sounds. It's dank, depressing and filled with restless, outcast spirits; tortured souls. But they belong here--they make themselves belong. They're not here. They arrived and have the kindness to make the fringes feel useful.
I'm a fringe, though, too. And I'm being useful as well. I'm to transpose these people onto to paper--give them the dignity they deserve. I'll have to betray them along the way--be true to myself, as Ziggy Marley would say. It won't be entirely of them--let's get that clear right now-- a lot will be of me. How else could it be? The people that have walked in and out of my life--and on the outskirts, too.
I'll have to be selfish, and I'm sorry. Mine is a small world, as is all of ours--we see eachother through our own lenses. We see eachother through the context of ourselves. It can't be any other way.
My family will loom large in these pictures--and the anger and pain and loyalty and love will loom, too. It's all one with them.
How to start? Mybe never--maybe I'll never wake again to a day--a tomorrow--where I'll sit in the back room, belonging to the unbelonging...
Maybe I'll never sleep in order to wake. It's 2am or therabouts, after all... and then I'll be re-initiated into the world of the unbelonged.
Have I left?



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See, I'm what you'd call "bipolar". Ugly word, ugly meaning, ugly life. If you look it up, it's a riot (if it doesn't explain you). Manic-depression--delusions of grandeur, flights of fancy, unpredictable behavior, uncontrollable mood. Sounds like a bird at first--soaring, soaring, explorring--until it crashes into a building going 80 miles an hours and falls bloody and wounded, pathetic, unmoving 100 stories down on the pavement, being walked on, gawked at and abhored. Ah! The joy of it! (Sike).
Strange, strange to be one of these creatures. One minute flying to uncharted territory--and then being put on the rack for it--and that's before you're really strapped down. All in your head--your strange, strange head. And you pay for that ecstasy--you pay twice--once to yourself--your depression--then again in the "hospital". Not at all "hospitable". Well, maybe the spit in the word is right. "A" for effort goes to the world. Yea, for it.
Can you sense the hosility yet? I can. And that's part of why I'm writing this book. I got to get to the nitty-gritty. (Before it gets to me). What's bothering me? Besides my parents' tragic death, my brother's unsolved demise, my second "mother"'s influence, blah, blah, blah... See, why even bother telling you a hint now? You already should have known. My whole life was screaming it at you, big bad world!
First, you need some context. And where to start, other than the here-and-now? Here's a tid-bit--a scene--a setting:
Bellingham, Washington, USA. (Corner left of the map of the world--ha!) Apartment, ground floor--3 bedrooms. I'm in the livingroom--at a computer desk--writing on computer paper (the actual computer is turned off.) Left--a door to a bedroom alsmost bare, except for 4 animals-- 2 rabbits, a bird and a rat. All in stacked cages, except the bird gets to roam free (kinda sorta, her wings were clipped...and no, fucker, I didn't do it). Before you jump to conclusions, let me be clear--all of them get to be out of their cages during the day, to run around the house, as they so chose. So there.
To my left, around two corners--through the kitchen, past the bathroom, through the hall--door ahead, my son's. Age 11. But not there. He's at his dad's, where he usually is, aside from school. (How come the school didn't have to go to court, too?). His room remains unused and empty 5 days out of 7. Directly to the left of his door--our bedroom. My boyfriend's and mine. He's in there, lying alone on a soft mattress, trying to get some sleep. And he is probably sleeping, but whether it's restful or not, I've no idea.
Time for a cigarette. I can tell the truth is rustling under the covers, dying to get out, and it's making me nervous. What have I agreed to do?



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How do you end up crazy? If this book does anything at all useful, if you can see past the obvious self-absorption of it all--maybe it will teach a few people how to avoid the pitfall of being dehumanized, catorgorized and condescended to by a litany of well-meaning professionals who got their start by relieving the boredom of their own lives by picking apart the psyches of "others." --I truly believe that. That mental health practioners were so entralled by their own thinking being akin to others--but got lost in the world of separation. Does that make any sense? Somewhere in there I know the sense is glaring. Somewhere, somewhere.
Or maybe I'm taling about myself. Couldn't I be classified as a "mental health professional"--oh, wait--oh, yeah, (I'm sure they'll remind me) I'm a mental illness professional. Not at all similar. Is it? Hmmm... It takes two to tango comes to mind...




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Another tragedy in the life of Ann. I was just having fun in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, ignoring the fat arms & grotesque belly--instead, moving, dancing, inspecting my clear forehead, my bright eyes, my pretty (though feigned grin) when I turned, and saw...birdshit. Thanks, Sesame. You're a doll.




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Chapter One



"When anyone dies, we're all implicated."

Ann E. Merchant
March 5, 2006
3:44 am



I'm going to transcribe this onto my blog...along with this paragraph I'm writing now. And to all you dabbling in the sordid world of plagairism--well--I got the original! Muuwaahhh!