Some of my most meaningful religious experiences happened while I was manic. Or otherwise impaired. Perhaps I was PMSing. Perhaps I'd just given birth. Perhaps I hadn't eaten for a whole day. Perhaps I was deliriously depressed. Regardless, I can't remember one religious experience where I was wholly sane, not under stress, fully in control of my wits and emotionally sober (so to speak).

Which begs the question: were my religious experiences the Holy Spirit or just misfiring neurotransmitters?  

In other words, were those experiences real?

I don’t know the answer to that question.

Most of the time I’m OK with not knowing whether my religious experiences were real. They were real enough that I experienced something beautiful and larger than myself, something comforting and life-affirming. They were real enough that I was able to have faith in God. My experience of the divine doesn’t become less real just because it may have been brought on by, say, an overdose of serotonin.

Still, there’s a part of me that really wants to know if what I experienced was real. Objectively real. Empirically real. Because if it wasn’t real, then I’m afraid it’s not true, that I’m simply believing in something conjured up by my feelings and mood.

This is why I’m suspicious of worship services that are geared toward evoking emotional responses. The more smoke-machines and emotionally-fraught music, the more wary I am. The more deeply emotional the experience, the more uncomfortable I am. Not because I don’t find it beautiful. But because I’m worried that a purely emotional response does not accurately reflect reality.

I can feel all kinds of emotions but that does not mean that what I’m feeling accurately reflects what is true.

This is why I’m wary of an experience-based faith. In our faith sub-culture, we place a lot of value on personal experience. We have a whole discipline of “personal testimony” where we bear witness to what God has done in our lives. We share these testimonies with others. And we'd never dare question these testimonies because doing so is almost like questioning God.

In a broader sense, Americans don’t question others’ experiences because that’s a form of “erasure.”

We don’t question our own experiences because we’ve been conditioned to view our own personal experiences as an ultimate form of truth.

“I experienced x, y and z, therefore my conclusions about it represent the truth.”

We even allow eye witness experience in a court of law although scientific experiments have shown just how unreliable eye witness accounts can be.

Personal experience isn’t the whole story. It's one part. I'm worried that to pedestal personal experience is to deny the fact of human limitation. There is so much we don’t know and can’t see. There is so much of the human experience and ultimate reality which we can never know simply because we are not omniscient. We are bound by time and space.

We can only base our beliefs upon fragments. T.S. Eliot once wrote: “These fragments I have shored against my ruin.”

Are these fragments of personal experience enough to shore us against the pounding surf of entropy? Are my personal experiences of God—whether they happened during moments of mania or  not—enough to give me an objective understanding of the Divine?

In the end, fragments are all I have. I suppose faith is the cobbling together of these fragments and believing that they somehow represent the whole, that they are capable of pointing us toward Ultimate Truth.

These fragments are all I have. I can only hope they are enough.

I’m always a nihilist at 2am. Then again, it’s 2am. Here's a handy little life-hack: don't try to solve all the world’s problems at 2am. Or when you're tired. Or when your chronic illness flares up.

I’m always a nihilist when my mental illness flares up. It's hard to stay cheery about life when all I can see is unending struggle.

Both of the following statements are true:

1. God is good.
2. Chronic illness sucks.

I have to remind myself that one truth does not cancel out the other.

When my illness is flaring, it’s easy to see everything that’s wrong with my life. I have no friends, my oven is broken, I’m overweight and I keep forgetting to pay my credit card bill. It’s at these moments when I need to just calm down and give myself a break.

I shouldn't task my brain with the impossible task of fixing everything all at once.

On my Facebook page, a reader named Sandra noted that those who suffer from chronic illnesses are more prone to a nihilistic outlook on life. This resonated with me. Nihilism suggests there is no ultimate meaning to life; that the rules, mores and morals governing our lives are arbitrary, the conventions of whatever dominant system is in power. The lack of meaning is what resonates with me.

When you're in constant pain or dealing with a never ending, chronic illness—it’s really hard to believe God has some grand purpose for your life.

Chronic mental illness has also forced me to re-examine the very premise of that idea. Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, I always heard that God had a grand purpose for my life, that God’s plans for my life could be found in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”(Jeremiah 29:11)

But how does this verse apply when faced with the reality of constant, daily battle with chronic illness? When I look back through my life—and especially when I consult my gratitude journal—I can see the fingerprints of God throughout my days. I can see the blessings and the gifts bestowed upon me. But the grand purpose? Participating in the great work of God in my generation? No, I don't see that. Maybe it's not there. Or maybe God's definition of "plans to prosper" me are much smaller than I imagined. And maybe that's OK.

I suppose learning to find the blessings in my life may mean learning to grapple with the constraints of my chronic illness. The poet does not give up hope when confronted by the constraints of a sonnet. Rather, perhaps, the rules and limitations of a sonnet provide a fine chisel to refine the poet’s choice of words. Could it be the same be said for me?

Could my life's purpose find its fulfillment under the refining chisel of mental illness?

Maybe what I don’t like is the fact that this requires discipline. Finding life's purpose and meaning doesn’t just happen by itself. I have to work at it. I have to struggle, even.

I have to remember that I was made for the struggle. Perhaps the struggle itself is the meaning I’ve been searching for because in the struggle I find strength I didn’t know I had, I find courage in the face of fear, I find love in the midst of pain. I wouldn’t have found these things if I didn’t have to struggle.

Perhaps the illness isn't a curse after all. Perhaps it is a gift.

Here's a handy guide for surviving a manic episode:

1. Temporary tattoos. I repeat. TEMPORARY tattoos. You do not need to come out of a manic episode and discover you’ve had PEACE LOVE DONUTS permanently tattoo’d across your chest.
2. Same goes for body piercing. You don’t need to discover, post-mania, that you’re now the proud owner of a septum ring. Faux nose rings are your friend.
3. Hide the credit cards. Better yet, have your spouse/significant other/best friend keep them for you until the mania passes. I know you feel really strongly that you just MUST HAVE that $2,300 Vitamix blender. I know you truly and fully believe it will change your life forever and that you must have it NOW so you can start whipping up all those kale smoothies but wait. Borrow your friend’s Vitamix. And remember this: you don’t like kale.
4. No, you don’t need a brand new RV. I know you really, really think you've become an outdoorsy person. But that's just the mania talking. How do I know this? Because you hate camping, that’s why. You’re an indoors kind of girl. You like fuzzy socks and indoor plumbing. You like books and crocheting by the (indoor) fire.
5. I know! I know! You’re gonna become a real adventurer! You’re gonna sell everything and live out of a van like all those sexy hipsters on Instagram.
6. But no, you’re not.
7. Because you’re 40 now and maybe living out of a van was cool and hip and amazing when you were in your early twenties, but now you have children and animals and a mortgage.
8. Also, you are a person who requires Netflix, a full-size bathtub and a toilet at 2am every night. Camping is not your dealy-o. Just say no to #vanlife.
9. Get off of Craig’s List. You don’t need to come out of this episode to discover a beatup 1959 Shasta camper parked in your driveway. Because, no, you’re not gonna restore this camper from the moldly floorboards up. These things require experience. Experience which you do not have.
10. I know you think your husband is ruining all your fun but believe me, you’ll thank him when this is over. (Thanks, Matt).

MEET MY THREE BEST FRIENDS

Meet my three best friends: Lofty, Booty and Billy. These are my nicknames for Zoloft, Wellbutrin and Abilify. Together, these friends of mine work hard to keep my brain from careening off a cliff. They are basically the guardrails of my mind. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes my mind is driving so fast that even the highest guardrail is no match. When I’m manic, almost nothing can stop me. My brain is like a car going downhill without brakes. It’s exciting and utterly terrifying. Mania would be awesome if it weren’t followed so hard by crushing, black-out depression.

Hence, the meds.

Wellbutrin keeps me from getting too depressed, Zoloft prevents me from getting too anxious and Abilify gives me the ability of maintaining a steady mood all day.

At this point in my life, I believe it's my moral obligation to take my meds. 

HELLO INSOMNIA, MY OLD FRIEND

One of the side effects of my medication is that I have trouble sleeping. As someone who used to sleep deeply and well for most of her life, this is extremely irritating. Well, it was irritating until I began to learn how to use those quiet, insomniac hours for something good. Like writing. Which is what I’m doing right now at 3:01am.

    There was a time when I would have viewed insomnia as more than enough reason to quit my meds. Sleeplessness was not a sacrifice I wanted to make. Insomnia felt wasteful. It made me anxious about how tired I would feel the next day. I’m not saying I’ve gotten to the point where I enjoy being awake when everyone else is sleeping, but my perspective has shifted.

    For one thing, now that I view taking my medication as my personal moral responsibility to myself and those around me, quitting my medication is not an option. This means that insomnia is an unpleasant side effect but it is still better than being wildly manic or crushingly depressed. This is the price I pay. And for the sake of my family, I pay it gladly.

While nothing seems to help my insomnia, what has helped is viewing these wakeful hours from the ancient Christian perspective. Christians have a longstanding tradition of praying through the night. Monks and religious pray the liturgy of the hours and rising at 3 or 4am is not uncommon. Their schedules and timetables are determined by a summons to prayer.

I, too, am finding that these quiet, early morning hours can be redeemed through prayer. They do not have to be wasted. They can be shaped for the glory of God. Through prayer and meditation, I find a freeing self-forgetfulness.

To be clear, self-forgetfulness is not self-erasure. It is not destroying the self God created for me, as me.

It is the ancient Christian understanding that I am created for a purpose—to bring God glory with my life. It is a grateful acknowledgment that I am free from the entanglements of my feelings, my character flaws, even my mental illness. In Christ, I am a new creation. 

Self-forgetfulness is not self-loathing or self-hatred. Rather, it is loving the sacred self God made in me which bears the image of His own self. The beauty of my self is owed to the One whom it reflects: God. Just as the beautifully sculpted marble reflects the skill of the sculptor, so, too, our selves reflect His skill and limitless glory. We do not look at a statue and think: wow, this statue really did a great job sculpting itself! We look at a statue and think: whoa, what amazing artist created this sculpture?

The saints held everything loosely, including their own lives. The only thing to which they clung was God’s will. And even doing God’s will was not something they believed they could accomplish in and of themselves but only through the power of the Holy Spirit. Clinging without grasping. Holding fast without needy desperation. Saying with Queen Esther, “If I perish, I perish.” Understanding and fully accepting that their lives were not about them. But about God and the work God was doing through them.

When I look at these insomniac hours, I begin to feel comforted: that my suffering is not meaningless.

My suffering can be offered up for the benefit of others through prayer; my obedience to treatment and taking my medication provides the opportunity of these hours to cooperate with God’s work; and that, most poignantly, by using these hours to pray I can, perhaps, in some measure, relieve the pain my dearest friend Katherine felt on the night she took her life. These were the hours of her death. These have become the hours of my new life in Christ.

I don’t have a cute little mental illness (if there is such a thing). I have Bipolar II with Mixed Features. Which is just a short way of saying, Significantly Impaired with a lot of different symptoms mixed in. Mood swings. Paranoia. Mania. Depression. Psychosis. Panic. You know, all the really fun stuff. All the stuff that makes my kids super excited about having their friends over.

It’s humbling to admit I have this illness. I would prefer to tell you that I’m actually a really super spiritual person; that my bouts of mania mean I’m a mystic. A saint like St. Thérèse of Lisieux: all emotional and capable of deep love for God. But then I’d be lying. I’m no saint. I’m just your average, garden-variety sinner with delusions of grandeur.

These posts are about untreated mental illness and also, my journey toward a proper diagnosis and medical intervention. It’s about highly effective, medically prescribed drugs which keep me from wanting to claw my skin off my face (fun visual, amen?) and it’s also about learning how to live as a normal, sane person—because when you’ve lived with illness for most of your life, being healthy feels really, really weird. It takes some getting used to.

These posts are also a love story. They're about my husband, Matt, a fine Scotsman who—despite being a mere human like everyone else—has miraculously loved and lived with someone as mentally ill as myself. Basically, he’s Braveheart without the warpaint. Welcome to our odd little love story.

The End of My Rope

The day I go mad dawns blazing hot. 

The heat makes everything worse—like the fact that government agents are spying on me. They're watching me through my computer and tracking my movements through my iPhone. I know this like I know the sky is blue. It's just an irrefutable fact.

The thing is, I don’t know why they’re spying on me. I don't know what I've done wrong. All I know is that I AM NOT HERE FOR THIS. This is extra basic and not on fleek right now.

What do you do when the CIA is spying on you? Well, you throw an old sock over the built-in camera on your computer, shut off location services on your phone and keep the bedroom blinds tightly closed (in case of spying drones, duh). Take that, ye servants of Satan.

From what I am later told, this episode is brought on by too much Zoloft in my system. Apparently, the Zoloft triggered my underlying illness: bipolar. At the time, though, I don't know that I'm bipolar, only that I've been undergoing various treatments for four years for a variety of increasingly severe symptoms: mostly anxiety and depression.

By midday, I am gnawing on my nails and scribbling in my journal. I’m trying to make a list of things I know to be true. It goes something like this:

1. I know it is Friday.
2. I know The State is spying on me.
3. I know I haven’t done anything wrong. (Have I?)
4. I know I’m a mom who works part-time as a server in a Greek restaurant—OH WAIT! OMG, that’s it. The State suspects I haven’t properly reported my cash tips. 
5. Dear IRS, mea maxima culpa. I get it. I know. I’m a horrible person. I’m sorry. I have five kids. They need things like food (not that I cook) but they need things. Like Netflix. And tacos.
6. I know I’ve been having nightmares—especially that recurring one where I’m arrested and placed in solitary confinement for some crime I don’t remember committing. And nobody will tell me.
7. I know my family thinks I’m going crazy. Well, THEY are the crazy ones. THEY are the unwell ones. Not me. Nope. And anyway, aren’t we all kind of mentally ill? Aren’t we all a bit touched in the head?
8. I know that I grew up in a cult. Such a beautiful childhood. So healthy. So happy. Har-har.
9. I know that I might need help. But I don’t know if I can get it because stupid health insurance companies are stupid about behavioral health. They keep it all hidden and hard to access. They like to give you things you don’t need: like high deductibles. Insurance companies are like Aunt LaBelle who used to hide her cigarettes in the cookie jar and when you went to her house she was like: “Me? Smoke? Never. Here, have an antihistimine”—because you were wheezing asthmatically from all the cigarette smoke that permeated every corner of her house. The point is, insurance companies keep high deductibles in cookie jars.
10. I know that eight is my favorite number. Eight years old was my favorite age. It was the last time I remember being happy. That was the year I climbed the tallest pine tree in my yard and was able to see the Matterhorn mountain ride several miles away at Disneyland. And that made me impossibly happy. I had only been to Disneyland once and it was addicting. I was like Edmund in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe tasting Turkish Delight for the first time. Yep, I would totally hand over my family to the White Witch for just one more taste of Mickey Mouse. I could eat that Mouse all day. Ew. But alas, I wasn’t in Disneyland, I was in a cult. Thanks for that tiny glimpse of happiness, age eight. Thanks for showing me what was possible and then yanking it away. I won’t see happiness again for another gajillion years. Cue sobs.

Somehow I have enough presence of mind to ask my neighbor to drive me to the hospital...

The young, fresh-faced volunteer at the ER intake desk looks up at me and says: “Just sign here.”

    “I can’t,” I say.

    He looks baffled. “You can’t sign?”

    I lean forward and whisper, “I’m not ok, ok? I’m not ok, ok? I’m not ok—”

    He sees my shaking hands and a light seems to go off in his head—

Suddenly I am being hustled to a chair, papers are given to my neighbor and I’m told just to wait for a moment. I don’t know what is happening. I just sit when they tell me to sit. I just stand when they tell me to stand. Why is that young lady staring at me? Why are the lights so bright? Why are the sounds so loud?

    “Can you hold me down in my seat?” I say to my neighbor. “I feel like I might float away if I’m not pinned down.”

    She presses a reassuring arm on my shoulder.

    Someone is calling my name.

    OH, NO. THEY FOUND ME.

    I look up to see someone all dressed up in a nurse’s uniform holding a clipboard. NICE COSTUME, FELLAS. I know who you are! You can’t trick me!

    “Elizabeth, they just want to check you in,” says my neighbor.

“I just want to die,” I say.

Her eyes grow wide.

She helps me up and I hobble over to the intake desk again. Apparently, the gig is up. I’m caught. Oh, well. Solitary confinement here I come. Beam me up, Scotty.

I don’t remember much of what happens next except that I am asked a lot of questions, taken to a room with a bed and told to undress, told to swallow a pill, poked with needles and, several hours later, sent home with a prescription for Zyprexa and strict orders to call my psychiatrist the following Monday.

When I ask the psychiatric nurse to let me stay, she says: “I’d rather send you home because I think being around other really mentally ill people will make you worse.”

Apparently, I’m not going to prison, after all. Apparently, I have to keep on living. UGH.

Ever since my best friend died by suicide, I can’t seem to get a grip on this new, horrible reality without her.

Katherine is the reason why I used to laugh and now she’s the reason why I cry.     

I really thought I had a handle on this stupid grief thing. Instead, things got worse (witness: the spying drones, witness the CIA tracking my iPhone).

    I thought I was getting better.

    I thought I was moving on.

    You know, MOVING ON. That’s the thing people say to grieving people. They say: “You’ll always cherish the special memories but now it’s time to move on.”

    I wish people would stop saying that.

Because the thing is, after losing Katherine, I didn’t get better. I got worse. I moved deeper into grief, deeper into a dark hole that spilled itself like black ink all over my mind. Losing Katherine triggered all the underlying symptoms of Bipolar II and it came roaring to life like a beast released from its cage.

Katherine, ever since you died:

I can't figure out what to do with all these things I need to tell you.

I can't seem to remember who I am or why I’m here.

I keep calling your cell phone just to hear your voice.

I can't concentrate.

I forget everything.

I imagine your voice in my dreams.

I wish I would have done more to help you.

I tell you everyday how much I love you, how much I miss you, how much I hope you're OK.

Katherine, why did you have to go?

 

Zyprexa zombie

Zyprexa is not my friend. I learn this after the ER doctors prescribe Zyprexa and it wallops me upside the head and knocks me out for sixteen hours straight. When I wake up, I don’t wake up. I mean, technically. I’m awake. But my eyelids won’t open. My eyelids are all: We hate you right now so we are going on strike. Your eyelids will be closed until further notice. Signed, The Management.

This is perplexing. Also, highly inconvenient. Maybe I should just prop open my eyelids with Q-tips. That’ll work. That won’t be weird at all. My kids won’t mind if I drop them off at school with Q-tips taped to my eyeballs.

This could be a new look for me. Zyprexa Zombie Mom. Somebody get me a TV show, stat. AMC, I have a new show for you: The Walking Q-Tip Head. You’re welcome.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Zyprexa Zombie. Let’s discuss how fun it is to show up at your kids’ school in 3 day old pajamas and matted hair. Let’s discuss how many awesome invitations you’ll get to playdates and Moms' Nights Out. Exactly zero.

This is the first thing you need to know about severe mental illness: it is lonely.

    You don’t get invited to things.

    And if you do, the host regrets it.

I mean, there was a time when you got invited to things. But on the day of the party, you were burrowed under your covers convinced the CIA was spying on you through your computer so you didn’t show up for the party. In fact, you completely forgot about it. Throwing the CIA off your tracks was more important. But three days later—in a blind panic—you suddenly remembered: THE PARTY.

You frantically text your friend: Hi, Kate. I’m so so so so so so so so so so sorry I missed the Moms Night Out. I was sick in bed with bipolar 2. It’s a severe mental illness. Have you heard of it? It used to be called manic depression. I can send you some articles if you’d like to read up about it!

    And then you wonder why you never hear from Kate again.

Here’s the second big lesson of mental illness: I am not my feelings.

    Oh, boy. I’m in trouble now.

 Mental illness has taught me that my feelings are not the be-all, end-all of the entire world. The Earth does not spin on its axis because of my feelings. The sun does not rise because I felt like it should. Everything goes on with or without my feelings which is why I need to learn to how to detach.

Detach is a terrible word and I hate it very much. But that’s mostly because I am way too attached to my feelings. I am way too attached to my way of seeing the world. Did you know that the medieval definition of attached was NAILED TO? Yeah. That’s me, alright. I am nailed to my feelings. I can’t go anywhere or do anything because I am nailed to how my feelings feel about where I go or what I do. I am the handmaiden of my feelings. I serve my feelings with gladness and thanksgiving because my feelings are….uh-oh. My feelings are beginning to sound a lot like God.

    Ay, there’s the rub, Hamlet.

 I feel so many things and they feel so very real and yet, those feelings are not me. I am the one having the feelings but I am not the feelings themselves. This is good news because it means I can detach from your feelings. I have the power to change my feelings. Except when I don’t. Except when my neurotransmitters have gone horribly awry and my brain is lacking dopamine and then I'm like: AAAUGH.

 But the point is, once my neurotransmitters are stabilized, it’s actually possible to get a handle on my feelings. This is not to say I don’t feel your feelings. It’s just to say that I don’t let your feelings boss you around. My feelings are not the boss of me. I am the boss of me and if my feelings are getting too out of control, I have every right to put my hands on my hips and say: “GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN!”

TO BE CONTINUED..... 

A humid summer night and I can't fall sleep. But it's not the heat keeping me awake. It's my restless heart. Ever since Katherine took her life back in January, I've been in a death match with my faith. This isn't new, exactly. Seems like I've always struggled with my faith. It has never come easily for me (growing up in a fundamentalist cult probably didn't help). Faith—and especially a belief in a loving, truly good God— is something I have to fight for, something I have to CHOOSE each day.

What was new after Katherine's death was indifference.

I've never experienced that. Whether I'm losing faith or finding it, I've always had strong feelings about my relationship with God. I thought about God all the time. But that all changed after Katherine died. For the first time in my life I was indifferent toward Him.  

In n the days following her death and heartbreaking funeral, I felt numb. I don't think it was a conscious choice, really, to turn away from God. I just kind of shut down and shut Him out.

Here's what I learned (again): life without God is hard. It's harder than it's meant to be. Trying to live my life without a trusting faith in a loving God is riddled with anxiety. It's easier to let the lies in: 

I'm not good enough

I don't belong here

I'm not lovable

Incidentally, these are some of the same things Katherine believed about herself. In her goodbye letter to me, she wrote that she always felt like she didn't belong. I can't tell you how many times I've wept over that line.

It shattered my heart because she did belong. She really, really did. She was so loved. She was a good, good person. A truly kind, gentle, sensitive soul.

Months later, those same lies were creeping into my thoughts.

The good thing is, I knew they were lies. Sometimes I struggle with believing I'm ok, that I belong, that I'm deeply loved. This time around, though, I began to see that the reason I was struggling so hard with these lies was because I wasn't asking for help.

I'd tried my best to do life by myself, without God. And this is where my best efforts had landed me: unable to sleep at night, restless, despairing.

That night, lying in bed, I felt a gentle whisper: How about you just talk to Me about it? I'm here for you.

Jesus is so gentle with us, isn't He? It's how I know it's Him.

It was a simple, quiet invitation. It was the invitation to rest, to lean against the everlasting arms and talk about what was bothering my heart.

I got out of bed and got on my knees. It's been a very long time since I did that. My knees were out of practice. My knees weren't super thrilled to find themselves on the floor at one in the morning. 

But somehow, I knew I needed to kneel. The physical posture of kneeling is important for me. It connects my body to my spirit. For me, kneeling is the quickest way to get honest about reality; mainly, who God is and who I am. Kneeling helps me get honest about what I've done and what I have failed to do. The longer I stay away from God—the longer I don't spend time on my knees— the more dishonest I become about myself. It's not even intentional. It's just a casual slide into unawareness. Kneeling is a way of saying with my body: God, I know I'm not God.

Kneeling is a simple beginning. 

There on my knees, I began with confession. First, I admitted I needed help. Second, I repented of trying to heal from this grief all on my own. My confession wasn't dramatic. It was simple. God already knew. It was just time for me to acknowledge it that I need Jesus just like everyone else.

When it was over I stood up and got back in bed. I could feel the tiniest crack of light enter my soul, the tiniest beam of hope....the Lord my God will illuminate my darkness (Psalm 18:28).

I still miss my beloved friend. I still struggle with unbelief and trusting that God is good and that I can trust Him. But I'm no longer struggling alone. I'm grieving with Jesus by my side. He has become such a good friend to me. A friend that sticks closer than a brother....

"But those who HOPE in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:31

When I'm depressed and anxious, I curl up on my couch and watch "Barefoot Contessa." Look, I don't know what a contessa is or why, exactly, she's barefoot but all that really matters is that Barefoot Contessa is Ina Garten and she's better than Xanax. I'd even watch her show with my eyes closed because listening to her talk about "really good olive oil" somehow gives me hope.

Admittedly, I don't know what she means by "really good" olive oil but I'm pretty sure it's not the plebian, regular olive oil I buy at Trader Joe's. Pretentious foodies usually annoy me but when Ina Garten insists on only using "really good" ingredients, I just love her all the more.

This is about as fancy as i get around here: baked potato with fixings.

I love imagining her breezing down the scenic roads of East Hampton in her Mercedes-Benz convertible, rolling up to a quaint farmers' market where she finds her locally sourced, single-origin, extra-virgin, cold-pressed olive oil harvested from trees in a local farm-to-table backyard.

"How bad could that be?" she'll ask with a smile. Not bad at all, I'll say. Not bad at all.

Yes, I imagine myself in one of her episodes.

In the opening shots, you'll see us standing in her immaculately organized, luxuriously stocked pantry where she'll introduce the "back to basics" recipe she's cooking that day. I'll be humming along to the Barefoot Contessa theme music that I've memorized and she won't think that's weird at all.

Before we start cooking I'll ask her for a hug because her hugs feel like easing up against a pillow made of marshmallows ("really good marshmallows") and also, hugging makes me less anxious. She understands that.

Next, she'll invite me to sit at her kitchen counter and watch her prepare lobster mac n' cheese.

"I mean, what could be easier?" she'll say.

Well, technically Kraft mac n' cheese is easier, I'll think. But I would never say this out loud because I don't want Ina thinking I eat Depressed People food.

"You know I like taking classic recipes and adding a twist," she'll say, smiling conspiratorially. This makes me giggle with excitement because yes! I do know! And adding a twist to mac n' cheese? O, what could it be???

The twist, it turns out, is "sharp and nutty" gruyere and "really good" sharp cheddar.

REALLY GOOD cheese, you guys. That's the twist. Oh, Ina. You sly little fox, you.

She'll let me press the button on her Cuisinart so I can experience grating the cheese to the perfect grate-y-ness.

"I know you don't go in for fancy kitchen tools," I'll say. "But who can live without their Cuisinart, am I right?"

She'll laugh and it makes me so happy to make her laugh that I suddenly know what I want in my obituary: "Elizabeth Esther made Ina Garten laugh." Wait. Why am I thinking about my obituary at a time like this? STOP INTRUDING ON MY FANTASY COOKING SHOW, STUPID DEPRESSION.

"Cuisinarts are nice," Ina is saying, "but the only tools you really need are two clean hands."

She'll hold up her freshly washed hands and I'll hold up my hands, too, and then we'll burst into laughter.

"Now, I know a pound and a half of lobster is luxurious these days," she'll say.

I'll nod wistfully, remembering those bygone days when lobster WASN'T luxurious, when I'd look at my mac n' cheese and think: "Should I add lobster or bologna? Ah, well. Same-same."

"But it serves eight!" she'll say. "How fabulous is that?"

"So fabulous!" I'll cheer.

She'll spoon our lobster mac n' cheese into adorable, individual-sized servings bowls and while she sprinkles lightly browned breadcrumbs on top (for a "little crunch") I'll ask:

"So, when will Jeffrey be home?"

I don't really need to ask this because we both know Jeffrey always arrives at exactly the right moment. But it's fun to pretend we'll be surprised.

This is why Ina helps my depression: because in her life a "twist" is really good cheese and a "surprise" is Jeffrey walking in the door just when you expect him to. Plus, he'll probably be carrying flowers and compliments.

I mean, how bad could that be?

And up next, Company Pot Roast. We know it won't be easy finding organic, sundried tomatoes soaked in "really good olive oil." But it will be worth it. More worth it than Xanax.