elevated,

You actually come across as being the most well-adjusted person posting here. Yet looking at that list of past meds, it's obvious that you've had some problems. No, I'm not going to revisit that website. I'm spending too much time crying, without knowing why, as it is.

I'm fond of my brain, sometimes; an intellectual-wannabe. Wanted-to-be. I can't even read a book now. Not too happy about the way it's misfiring lately.

I actually don't have any method of coping. When I couldn't control the hypergraphia, when I had the two manic episodes, it all felt so good.
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I'm back. I had a number of days in which I was afraid to shower unless my caregiver was in the apt with me. Now I'm showering 3-4 daily. So I went for a shower. But I did something quite strange. I looked in the mirror and saw how grotesque I looked with the 7 month beard so I shaved it off. Using shears and then shaving. The last time that I was clean shaven was 1999. I had forgotten how handsome that I am. Am now. My face. Below the neck I'm scarred and have lost all muscle tone. Nothing handsome below the neck.
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Coping. I don't. Past four days I've come here, cried, thought of those that I loved, listened to music, cried some more. Had some angry times, been confused, and decided that I'm going to actually agree to ECT again, as I should have done last year.

Listening to music is a trigger. I finished listening to Velvet Undergroud's first album before showering. It's so beautiful. Do you know it? Cry, cry, cry. Too many songs that make me think of love and lovers. Mawkish. Follows you forever. Van Morrison. Yes, I have a word fetish. And a music fetish, so mix the two and think of her and it's maddening.

Before I started my first year of ECT sessions, I had a guardian who actually signed the waiver (or whatever) but the staff still went over the side effects and I was able to understand the potential for memory loss. But I was still in my strange world and I went through a long period thinking that I could select the memories to lose. When I was able to understand that wasn't how it worked, it made me sadder.

I'm thinking about coping.

It took time but I used visualization to pack the memories away, pack the 6 people away, very, very safely, wrapped in hundreds of layers of tissue paper, each in their own box, and I put the boxes in a dark, unused part of my brain and gradually they faded. I thought of each person as a 12" figurine made of Belleek porcelain. That's how I coped for 12 years.

Then in November of 2014, there was a brainquake and the boxes moved and split open and the figurines are, I realized, living. Except my father. With varied degrees of success, I had contacted all of the women. In three cases, I had left. My wife, though, divorced me and in doing so I lost my son.

None of these relationships ended well. I didn't cheat or anything that crass, but I – I haven't tried to explain this to myself – I think that maybe I exaggerated a fault? Close enough. I exaggerated a fault, decided that I couldn't be in a long-term relationship with them and pretty abruptly turned from loving suitor to disinterested (my first love used the best word) "cad." I honestly loved each one. It's only been in the past four years that I've understood how much I hurt each one.

Even the first, happily married to a great guy and three wonderful kids, won't accept any sort of apology; won't even acknowledge an apology. She, well, she rubs it in; a kind of "look what you could have had and, poor you, look where you are."

Anyway. I was a selfish jerk all my life and I took joy and happiness in full measure but returned it by half, I suppose, and that's why I deserve every misery that comes from being unloved by anyone.

I used to be told that I placed to much importance on sex, but that's not true at all. My most physically compatible lover wasn't smart enough for me.

I wish that I could find a way to cope. But forgive myself? The evil that I've done will live after me. Sins are forgivable. Evil, not so much. I completely destroyed one life – that of my physically compatible lover. She never married, never had the children that she wanted. She tried to stop my marriage 3 days before it was time to walk down the aisle. She made such a great case for herself by giving me the most intense sexual experience of my lifetime before I drove away.

Guilt and misery at the altar. And so well deserved.

With such slimy treatment of women, you'd have thought that I would have been one to hang out at strip clubs with a horde of equally lowlife male friends. Or been a porn addict. But most of my friends were women. I didn't trust men. My confidants were women, with one exception. I've wondered during the past year why they never called me out. I asked the one that I talk to on occasion. She replied in January but the one sentence answer is baffling. I think my question was "Why didn't you ever tell me that I was acting like such a jerk?" Her reply; "You didn't know how much they were out to get you."

Out to get me? Out to get me? That's no answer. I don't know if she's trying to make me feel less creepy or if I didn't explain myself well. The pursuit was certainly always mutual.

I'm tired, stopped crying and wonder why I can't stop. Oh, VU. Thinking of those girls. Quotation: Candy Says:

Candy says I've come to hate my body
and all that it requires in this world
Candy says I'd like to know completely
what others so discretely talk about

Candy says I hate the quiet places
that cause the smallest taste of what will be
Candy says I hate the big decisions
that cause endless revisions in my mind

I'm gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder
I'm gonna watch them pass me by
Maybe when I'm older
What do you think I'd see
If I could walk away from me