MyFamilyArePsychiatricLemmings

Ok,I'm off to the motherland tomorrow for a wedding.
And after that it is time for the annual physical with my hopelessly young
primary care doctor. Every year we go through the same thing about the hormones I take (given by my older and wiser gyn guy). I know when I see her, she will once again ask me if I am aware of the risks, and once again I will reiterate that I come from a
long line of psychiatric lemmings and the hormones plus the anti-depressants keep me from jumping of a cliff. She just doesn't seem to get that. Though she is fascinated by the family history. I do hope I'm around when she goes through menopause.

Suicide in my family is an art form and hasn't skipped a generation is so many that I can't count that high. Great grandaddy hung himself, so my grandmother used to say we don't talk about rope in our family. Grandmother did a poor job of overdosing and took 4 days to die. See we're psychiatric lemmings and I used to be really embarrassed about it. Frankly I've been looking at cliffs since I was 11.

If you've ever seen the movie "Cookie's Fortune" you can meet my entire family and I mean the entire family. The reason they made that movie is because southerners definitely tend to have psychiatric lemmings in their family, we just lie about it. However our more quirky relatives who don't kill themselves we invite to family parties and talk about after they leave.

One of my male cousins definitely won the award for both steadfastness and creativity. He really won the Oscar for suicide. He tried first in college (he went to H----d which just goes to show you H------d educates but it doesn't cure). He was asked to leave that august institution. Then he went to another fine university, went to law school but was planning his out from the get go. So when he moved to NY city to pursue his career he moved to a high rise from which he flung himself out the window. Unfortunately he did it with such vigor and he only did it from the 3rd floor that the
other buildings broke his fall. After an excruciating recovery and a good deal of therapy he got back to work. Now it takes a lemming to know a lemming and I kept telling my family he would do it again, but it's that rope thing. So sure enough 5 years later, he got a much higher condo and finished the deed.

Now I am a recovering lemming. Don't get me wrong, I like looking over the side of the roof on my 6 story building when I get a little spunky, but I take this great medication that helps me back away from the ledge. So here's the real bind. Female lemmings do not like to be fat or even remotely overweight. Anti-depressants and being 60 tend to do that. (That itself is a hideously funny joke. Why would they create a drug that would help with depression but make you gain weight if you're a woman or lose your erection if you're a man? Aren't you depressed enough to be taking the medication that you don't need to add to your troubles? Another blog I promise) So this lemming had to make the decision: Cliff? Weight? Cliff? Weight? Cliff? Weight? ok so I went for the weight, but I swear if my primary care doc makes one mention of the 15 lbs I've gained this year, I'm gonna shove her off the cliff and make her an honorary lemming.

Well, gang I'm off to celebrate the wedding. The site is on a cliff, but I don't want to jump anymore.I'll just enjoy the view.