seeking help December 22, 2008

Honestly, I have no idea how to begin this post. It is certainly the most difficult personal entry I have and will probably ever type here. And that is because I am asking for your help. Something I never thought I would have to do nor like to do in any circumstance with anyone. The economy is bad and I know so many of us are struggling. And in many ways I feel very fortunate. i have love. a family that loves me. clothes. a warm bed. a loving cat. a roof over my head. unfortunately the cost of that roof continues to rise to the tune of 925/month. At this point, we will not be able to pay our rent on January 1st.

Reality hit me this morning while I was at the grocery attempting to buy water, bread, milk and food for our cat. My debit card was declined. Luckily, I had twenty dollars in cash, paid, rushed home to check our bank balance. $9.00. I am currently on unemployment at 275/week but that does not cover everything. I will receive a check tomorrow and must pay our past due on the electric and phone bill. That will leave us with next to nothing. We only have one car that runs and so only one of us can work at a time. I have not had a job (outside of a low-pay one day commercial) since August. My swain worked on a reality show for several weeks in November and that is how we have survived until now, along with selling many things on eBay, etc. On top of everything, there is the threat of yet another strike in our line of work and it has crippled our industry. Things should be resolved (I hope) next month and work should pick up. As some of you know, I’ve been struggling the past few weeks. a deep depression. suicidal thoughts which led to me seeing a doctor, going back on medication (without insurance) and I’m feeling desperate and hopeless. The depression is not as dark, the suicidal thoughts are gone but the anxiety is high. It’s not easy for either of us to find a job in this economy especially when the past eleven years of experience might as well read in a foreign language on a resume. We have tried getting work at grocery stores, bookstores, babysitting jobs, cleaning jobs, data entry. no luck.

I realize I have nothing special or worthy of compensation to offer here at my website. I am not a whistleblower. I am not uncovering stories in the mental health field that are new. I am not a journalist. I am simply a girl who has been fighting to survive life with a mental illness. I am struggling right now and asking for help. I started this blog nearly three years ago as a form of therapy and continued simply to share my stories with others with my greatest hope being: helping someone else feel less alone in this big world.

I have added a Paypal donate button near the top right of my website. If you can, donate $1.00, $5.00 or $50.00. Whatever you can afford, if anything, it would be most gratefully appreciated. If you cannot, believe me, I completely understand. Also, if you would rather use snail mail, please contact me and I will email you my mailing address. I recently accomplished a major goal of mine (that took nearly 7 years) and as soon as our industry picks up, I don’t foresee ever being in this position again as this accomplishment will nearly triple my usual salary. And most importantly, once I make a certain amount a year, I will qualify for the best of health care and I will have a pension.

until then though….

desperation. desperation. guilt. shame. anxiety. all overwhelm me.
if you are able to donate, my sincere thanks in advance.
and happy holidays to all.

Celexa insomnia continues December 20, 2008

wow. The Celexa is really messing with my sleep schedule. Prior to the medication this was my average schedule when not working: to bed between midnight-3am and i would wake between 9am-noon.

and now, for example, this will give you an idea of my sleep schedule.
Thursday night, well Friday morning, rather…I went to bed at 7am and woke up at 9:30am to help a friend shop for her son’s Christmas toys. at least it got me out of the house. ran a few errands. came home, cleaned and then napped from 5ish-8pm. Went to bed at 3:30am and woke up this morning or actually bolted out of bed at 6:30am. I can’t go back to sleep although, physically my body is craving it, my eyelids are very heavy right now, can hardly keep them open to see the page. Mentally, I can’t. and so I made a pot of coffee, called my grandmother and parents. now, I’m wondering if this medication is worth the trouble. I did not call my doctor because I see her in 9 days and figured I’d talk about it then but the lack of sleep is really getting to me.

This reminds me of something a psychiatrist once told me: it is crucial to get outside at least 5 days a week and walk for 30 minutes. Make sure you get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep, preferably on the same schedule and take a strong multi-vitamin everyday.

unusually busy year July 20, 2008

I will not be posting over the next month as I’m out of town (again)

It’s been an unusually busy year and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. I am very thankful for this considering how many people in this country are currently unemployed or soon to be so.

It’s not very often that i work during the summer months because I can’t stand the heat!! However, it’s difficult to turn down the work and I love the script.

Be well everyone

i’m back May 14, 2008

finally, i’m back. after 50 plus days of non-stop work, new friends, stress that has left me physically and emotionally exhausted and….a new computer. a pretty macbook to replace my old ibook g4.

life is good.

heath ledger found dead January 22, 2008

Actor Heath Ledger, 28, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment earlier today. I was fortunate enough to meet this talented actor when he visited his girlfriend on a film I was working on. He seemed polite and quiet. Heath was most known for his Academy-nominated role in Brokeback Mountain. He was currently filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and recently finished production on the upcoming Batman film, The Dark Knight, playing the role of the Joker. There have been reports Heath was ill with pneumonia when he died. I’m terribly saddened and shocked. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

From the New York Times article:

The police said Mr. Ledger, 28, was found naked on the floor near the bed in an apartment in SoHo that he had been renting. The chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police did not suspect foul play.

“There was no indication of a disturbance,” he said, adding that there were no signs that Mr. Ledger had been drinking. Nor were any illegal drugs found in the loft, which takes up the entire fourth floor. Neighbors said Mr. Ledger had occupied it for several months.

Police officials said that a bottle of prescription sleeping pills was found on a nearby night table, but that they did not know whether the pills had anything to do with Mr. Ledger’s death. Officers who checked the apartment found other prescription medications in the bathroom. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office said an autopsy would be conducted on Wednesday.

Mr. Browne said no obvious indication of suicide, like a note, was found in the bedroom.

out of town October 29, 2007

if anyone is still checking in, i’ve been working on location and will be until mid-november. no time for anything after a 16-18 hour day at work.

hope everyone is good and happy fall!

i’ve been ready for this my whole life December 6, 2006

yesterday i read a post by a young girl struggling with her mental illness and those dreams that never seem to become a reality.

the problem of pain is this: it weighs us down. the things most people don’t think twice about doing, it may take someone with a mental illness days, weeks or years to do. and when we finally attempt to do it, we might fail. we might fall. and it’s not that the “other” people don’t fail or fall, they do. they just get up quicker. when we fail or fall, it may then take us days, weeks or years to try again. what we see as failure weighs us down.

right now the film rudy is on tv. as a small child rudy would watch the notre dame games on tv with his dad and his brothers. he dreamed of attending the university. after 3 rejections from notre dame, his dream finally came true. and then he went after his second dream, to play football on the notre dame team. rudy walked on the team under the coaching staff of ara parseghian in 1974. he played his guts out and treated every practice like it was a real game. rudy never quit and won the respect of his team mates. it was this enthusiasm that eventually got rudy in the game. the movie rudy is a true story. rudy’s dream was real, the tackle was real, the carry off the field was real. the struggle was real. rudy was 5′6″ and weighed 165 lbs. he played on the field once. and that was enough.

a friend of mine worked on the film in chicago. he told me stories that rudy was an asshole and i cringed. but this was coming from a man, bitter and miserable, working in the film industry. a few years later my friend quit the film business. he roamed about the country for a while and then went for his dream. he applied to over twenty law schools. he received several rejections. this year he packed up his amazing apartment in chicago and found a tiny studio apartment in a small town, just blocks from the law school he is attending. he’s in his mid-forties.

it’s now the scene when rudy shows his father the acceptance letter into notre dame. his father is yelling, “my son is going to notre dame!” rudy leaves the steel mill where his father worked. where he once worked.

eight years ago i was working for my father. he owned a foundry. they made grey and ductile iron castings. it was a dirty place and the work was hard. i was his office manager and i was miserable. i saw an ad in the local paper. a universal film was about to start shooting in my town. i sent my resume with no experience…not even a video or commercial. the casting office thought my father’s company was a film casting company. once in the interview, they realized i had no experience. i did not want to walk away without the job. i made that clear. i told them it was a dream, a life-long dream to work on a film. they hired me. i walked away from that foundry just like rudy walked away from that steel mill. my father’s heart broke just a bit, but he was happy, so happy for me. i cast my father, he worked as an extra in the movie. on set, my dream was suddenly a reality to him and he cried. the movie was october sky. another true story of a man, homer hickam, from a small coal mining town in west virginia who dreamed of going to space. he dreamed of building rockets. today, he works for NASA.

did rudy ever want to give up? absolutely. homer? yes. my friend? sure. did i ever want to give up? most definitely. but we didn’t. and two of the above have a mental illness. imagine the feeling rudy must have had running out onto that field. imagine the feeling homer must have had that first day he walked into his NASA office. imagine the feeling my friend had the first day of law school. and i can tell you what it was like my first day on set. looking around, the sets. the cameras. the actors. the first time i heard “roll camera!” my heart felt like it was going to explode. that’s what dreams are all about. but they can be realities. you just have to keep dreaming and keep trying. and you must continue to get up when you fall.

i have no idea how we’re going to pay our rent or my health insurance. but i’m still dreaming. my swain and i are writing a script. i’ll send it to anyone i think might be interested. and then i’ll send it to strangers. it might not sell, people might not like it but i’ll give it my best shot. sometimes a mental illness will keep you on the sidelines. and that is OK. but know in your heart someday you’ll be on that field. even if it’s only once. and i’ll be on that field again, because like rudy said, i’ve been ready for this my whole life.

down to you April 7, 2006

i will admit, i can be quite the name-dropper. it’s difficult not to be in the film business. you are working with people whose names are recognizable. if i worked in say, the insurance business, you would probably find me monday morning at the water cooler discussing sally and her latest auto claim. or, if i worked in the restaurant business, you might find me chatting with the bartender about lisa, the morning hostess, who was sleeping with john, the assistant manager. i work with stars. celebrities. overpaid and some underpaid actors. musicians.

yesterday during a break in filming, the director, a hairstylist and i were discussing our surreal moments in the business. we all have them. we all grew up watching/loving films. we associate a song or film with a time in our life. the hairstylist spoke of her first experience at the academy awards- bumping into george clooney-the one “star” she has always wanted to meet. the director told the story of a day in los angeles while shopping he heard a familiar voice. he looked up and it was ringo starr. he froze. inside he was screaming, “i can’t believe it’s ringo f*cking starr. i love you. i love your music. you rock!” but no words came out. i have worked with many actors and rarely have that moment of….oh my god…it’s so and so from that movie. i see them at their best and their worst. they are just like you and me. one exception:

when i moved to los angeles a few years ago, i was a small town girl who had never traveled west of kansas. i spent four days on the road. a day in texas. new mexico. arizona. my first visit to the grand canyon. i arrived late one evening in los angeles, discombobulated. the traffic. the interstates. too many cars. too many people. finally found sunset blvd and headed towards my destination. i would be living with a sister of a friend in beverly hills. i called and she opened the gate. i parked my toyota next to one of three mercedes. the next morning i explored the property. it was a beautiful place. a home once owned by lana turner, she planted the lemon trees. i enjoyed my first month there. so much to see and do. i quickly tired of it all. the bad outweighed the good. i was ready to leave. i decided to give it three months. maybe things would get better.

one night the woman i was living with intercoms my room and told me she was about to take her nightly bath- she added that her friend joni would be stopping by later, please let her in if she buzzed. ten minutes later, she buzzed. in my pajamas, i walked down the stairs and opened the door. her friend, joni, was joni mitchell. i can only imagine the look on my face. complete shock i am sure. i let her in and we sat waiting. within a few minutes she tells me i need to find my “center.” she got me. it was as if we had known each for years. we sipped tea and chain smoked. she sang a song in french. i do not speak french but it was the most beautiful song and it was the most beautiful voice. many cigarettes and many hours later, we were still talking. laughing. many stories that evening. many evenings and more stories followed.

three months later i decided to leave los angeles. i knew it was for the best and i have no regrets. but my surreal moment changed me. i will never forget that first evening with joni. she taught me so much about life and love in so little time. and when life and love do not make sense i think of her words and i smile. a wise woman who entered my life for a reason.