New Year's Night, I spent in the mental health crisis unit. Raul and I had yet another fight, provoked of course by him... we had had a pleasant day, to my recollection, and then he has to be a complete butt head. My rage surfaced, and once again I found myself hearing the voices inside mocking me, telling me I would be better off dead. I came very close to acting on that. But for the first time I could remember, I started getting the impulse to really harm Raul.

Now, he probably deserves it. But it's wrong. It's wrong to harbor and savor the image of whackinghim over the head and crushing his skull. It's wrong to give in to the paranoid fantasies and accusations he has launched against me, that I would like to harm him, poison him and his girlfriend, etc. But I came very close to snapping that completely.

So I took a shower, got dressed, and left. It was a very scary journey -- the county hospital is, of course, in a rotten part of town. The quick, easy, and SAFEST public trans to the place shuts down early, plus it was a holiday (for everyone else but me), so I had to take the most tedious route, and walk for at least a couple of miles to get where I needed to be.

But they helped me, and they didn't try to make me stay overnight. I had two appointments elsewhere in the morning, so when they released me with a prescription for Celexa at around 1 am, I walked back the arduous treck to the basement pharmacy where I could get the scrip filled for free.

And then I took the pill, and wandered for 6 hours. Bench to bench, waiting area to waiting area. The security there has nothing better to do than to roust sick old ladies from comfy chairs in the surgical waiting area. No one else was there, no one needed the seat where I was sitting quietly, minding my own business, but I wasn't allowed to sit there. Fortunately, I had spent a couple of hours in the nearby chapel, arguing with God while the pill took its slight effect, and sleep deprivation took its extreme effect. I didn't resolve anything, but I felt a little better.

So now I am a little more advanced into the mental health care system. Once the rotten side effects of the Celexa wear off (nausea, extreme loss of appetite, slight but constant headache, explosive diarrhea), I think I can expect good things. I have a friend who's on the stuff, and she has had great success with it.

Meanwhile, the news from my soon-to-be ex husband keeps getting worse and worse. I will probably lose my internet access in about a month, because he and his girlfriend are probably moving out without me, despite their promises to the contrary. Raul is manufacturing reasons to justify his distate (dare I call it hate?) for me, while protesting all the while that he doesn't hate me, just doesn't trust me. The nicer I get, the more I give, the worse he gets.

Heaping burning coals upon his head, perhaps? Well, I feel that *I* am the one having to suffer the burning coals. I have no idea what to do next, no way to support myself yet, and I will be ardently searching for answers. Nomatter what, it's pretty clear that I'm going to have to give up almost everything I own, an my life will become even more meager and austere. Just when I think I have sacrificed enough, managed to do without everything superfluous, life forces me to live without something else.

I'm calmer, and I'm feeling a less intense level of emotional pain, but the storm is just below the surface. I feel I have an ocean of tears to shed.