An update

To begin, thank you to everyone for the past week. I can't really offer a proper dedication to all of you right now, but I hope to be able to soon. Just know that I am sincere and the sentiments & thoughts you expressed are much appreciated.

As episodes go, this one has peaked (I hope) at around a 7.5 on a scale of 10. I've had worse but there's a shaky truce in place right now. Some day when the synapses and serotonin in my brain are working well enough together I'll fill everyone in the best I am able. I don't mean to make light of the terrible circumstances that Inner Voices and others are battling with all the fires out here, but suffice it to say that same kind of turmoil was going on (and still is) inside my head. Fortunately, I've gained ground in my struggle and can write a few words. These words won't win any prizes and won't be humorous or enlightened, but they will be spelled correctly.

Sunday afternoon was interesting. When I am going through an episode, I punish myself in a variety of different ways. One of them is forcing myself to do things I don't want to do, like super clean the kitchen and bathroom. Not normal cleaning or even extra "mom's visiting" cleaning, it's more like "I want to get all of my security deposit back before leaving" cleaning. I finished this and the last task was to start the dishwasher (my nemesis). As I sat in the living room, I heard some loud noises coming from the kitchen. I suspected something wasn't loaded correctly in the dishwasher and was banging around. It happens on occasion so I didn't think much of it. The noise persisted and became annoying enough for me (already with a short fuse) to get up to reload the machine. I get to the kitchen and there are small explosions coming from the electric oven/range, which was not turned on, with sparks and smoke flying around inside it. The very strong smell an electrical fire puts off was starting to fill the kitchen. Surprisingly, even with my mental condition, my instincts and training took over. I ran to the circuit breaker and cut all power to the apartment, which would stop any further sparks. Back to the kitchen with the fire extinguisher, it looked like nothing inside was on fire. Not leaving the kitchen (in case an undetected fire flared up), I called building maintenance who arrived very quickly. Indeed, there was no fire.

After pulling the range apart, he found a circuit board that had totally fried. It was scorched darker than burnt toast, with one of the brass conductors completely melted and a diode blown off the board and laying inside the range. The best we could guess was that some of the soapy water from the cleaning seeped under one of range dials, hit the circuit board, and started the incident. He changed the board in less than 30 minutes and was out the door while I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about what would have happened had I left after cleaning and no one was home. The wayward electrical shocks bouncing around the oven seem to form an appropriate metaphor for what is going on in my head. If only it was as easy a fix as a simple circuit board.