Saturation Point

WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE?

EVERYONE I know is talking suicide, and NONE of them appear to be joking. I fully realize how overwhelming things are, even right between your ears, even before you open the window and SMELL THE CHAOS. We're ALL going through it to some extent.

You can see the signs everywhere:

>> People losing or gaining weight -- and I mean quite a lot of weight -- without trying.

>> People who can't get out of bed or people who can't go to bed. The ones who can sleep at all, are having incredibly horrible dreams, like the one I had 2 nights ago. I was trying and trying and trying to kill my boss's boss, and she wouldn't die no matter what I did, and then she started turning into the first cat I ever had and I was reminding myself sternly that no, this is your ENEMY, not a fluffy kitten, and then I'd try eight more times...I woke up nauseated.

>> People racking up their 13th or 14th OUIL.

>> People who used to look and feel good, having their faces break out in insane zits or developing mysterious illnesses that shrink them down to what looks like a bundle of rags.

>> People who used to be calm, twisting at their hair until it comes out in handfuls.

>> People who never had a whiff of mental illness before in their lives, going totally psychotic. I don't mean that in the commonly-accepted sense of the term; I mean clinical psychosis. Like believing that the Pope is watching you from a hidden camera inside your toilet bowl and reporting back to God, known to unbelievers and infidels as the Face on Mars. That level of madness.

And, of course, people seriously planning suicides. One friend I talked to last night is giving away all her things, telling everyone she loves them "because you never know what might happen," and she's even set a firm date beyond which she is no longer willing to live. CAN YOU SAY "RED FLAG"?

This is one of just a dozen people I've heard about in the past few weeks.

The only correlation I can find is the RISE IN CHAOS. Nothing is holding still the way we like it to. There is no way out of any of the impasses we find ourselves in -- political, financial, ecological. I think of President Obama trying to negotiate with those Tea Party freaks and all I can do is groan helplessly. The entire East Coast is taking cover against a category-3 hurricane as I write this. They say it would be only a category 1 without our greenhouse gases. The Washington Monument was seen to wobble when an earthquake about half the size of the one in Miyagi Province hit Virginia. HOW SYMBOLIC IS THAT? Giant, mutated Jellyfish are taking the place of everything else in the oceans, and on one memorable day shorted out an entire city's electrical power by piling into the cooling system for the plant. London is in flames. All the Bats are dying of White Nose Disease, all the Bees are dying of Hive Collapse Syndrome, and the average human sperm count has dropped 50% in ten years. Joplin, Missouri is gone. GONE. The death toll in the drug war in Mexico is believed to exceed 40,000 people. Last year in the county where I live, 2010, there were 21 deaths due to opiate overdose. (One of them was a neighbor of mine.) This year, as of the first of June -- the exact halfway mark for the year -- there were already 22 such deaths. And there are only about 150,000 people in the whole freaking county.

My dear Cod, even Middle Eastern dictators are losing their jobs en masse.

So I see the pattern. I count myself lucky that I've only had disturbing kitty dreams. But the s-word has been sneaking through my thoughts as well. AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY.

Something in the water?