At a certain point, after feeling bad much of the time, you start thinking you ARE bad. Don’t ask me how this happens. It just does. When you feel you ARE bad, you live with shame and remorse.

In reality, you probably have no reason to feel ashamed or remorseful. But that doesn’t stop you. You’re bad and you are bad at everything you do – no matter how well you do it.

It is like having anorexia — you look in the mirror and you see fat. There is no fat. There are bones sticking through skin. But you see fat — it’s like hallucinating. I know, I have been there.

In your endless quest to feel good, you convince yourself that quantity matters. You have failed miserably at quality, so why not try quantity? You take on a gazillion tasks and responsibilities. The more you take on, the more you silently smack yourself upside the head with a Homer “D’oh.” Still, you do it and do it and do it.

I am back – in more ways than one.

For the last few weeks I have been on assignment, covering the oil spill. I work for a newspaper in South Florida and I am the environmental reporter. I have been in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Florida Keys. I also snuck in a trip to Boston to visit McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard.

I would love to sit here and tell you about my mental health in the last month. I can’t. Earlier today I was threatened with a lawsuit. This has happened to me before. Every journalist gets this threat at some time during her career.  Usually nothing comes of it.

But when you have a mental illness and you are open about your mental illness, the threat of a lawsuit – no matter how seemingly frivolous – is a very serious matter.

I am a bubble off plumb.

There is too much good stuff going on in my life. My amazing daughter — my only child –  is graduating from high school. She leaves for college next month. I spent five days in Louisiana covering the oil spill and  then two days in Boston interviewing doctors at McLean Hospital and meeting Glenn Close and her sister. My calendar is booked with speaking gigs, dinner parties and lunches. I won a prestigious writing award. My daughter won a scholarship. I got a raise. My orchids are blooming. I lost a couple of pounds. My dog stopped drinking from the toilet.

Life is good. Too good. I am diggin’ this. Wow. Pinch me. I want to wring every drop of excitement out of all this good fortune. I want to wring it so hard that there is nothing left. Bone dry. I am not used to this much good stuff in my life at one time. I have a lot more experience dealing with a lot of bad stuff happening all at once. Trust me, I am not complaining but the mania triggered by a cascade of good fortune is much more fun than the mania of  misfortune.

Where the heck was Dr. Marisa M. Silveri when I was 14 years old and I needed someone to smack me upside the head with a really good reason not to drink and smoke pot?

(Wait a minute. I just did the math. Dr. Silveri hadn’t even been born when I was 14 years old! Forget I asked that question.)

I spent last Thursday afternoon with Dr. Silveri at the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital, just outside of Boston. Dr. Silveri teaches at Harvard Medical School, like most of the doctors at McLean. She is brilliant, like most of the other doctors at McLean. And she is completely, thoroughly and totally into her research: The adolescent brain.

If there is one thing you can say about actress Glenn Close, it’s that she has a very cool sister. And her sister, Jessie Close, has a couple of great kids and laid-back service pup named Snitz.

The Close family wants everyone to know that mental illness is a family disease. It can destroy, bankrupt and embarrass families. Or — as in the case with the Close family — it can bring them together to fight the illness and the stigma, which can cause as much suffering as the illness.

So, there they were last Friday night on a stage in Boston – Glenn, Jessie, Jessie’s daughter, Mattie Close-Davis, Jessie’s son, Calen Pick and  and Snitz, being honored  by the prestigious McLean Hospital — a Harvard affiliate chock-full of renown psychiatrists, therapists and researchers. They looked like any happy family — except Glenn is a movie star, Jessie is an alcoholic with bipolar, her son has schizo-affective disorder and her daughter is a healthy young lady who thoroughly supports her family.

I am back.

For the last five days I have been in bayous of Louisiana covering the oil spill for the newspaper. We drove to the southern tip of Plaquemines Parish to a town called Venice – which has nothing but water in common with its with its Italian counterpart.

Venice is ground zero for the millions of gallons of oil that have spilled thirty miles offshore. If the winds keep blowing hard out of the southwest Venice is doomed. Venice is 80 miles from the nearest Walmart. There are no grocery stores in Venice. No mall. No movie theatre.  No stop lights. No wifi. No Dunkin’ Donuts. No downtown. Two sit-down restaurants. One road in and out of town.

That’s it. The town’s only motel was full of Coast Guard officials.