Whatever Happened To The Good Old Fashioned Nervous Breakdown?!

Let me start by saying: If there is anyone who deserves a nervous breakdown moment, it's me!

Whatever happened to the bygone age when women were delicate little flowers to be nurtured and pampered because too much stress might put us into the throws of a good old fashioned nervous breakdown?
Seriously! You did not arrive in society - you were a nobody - unless you'd done at least a week's time in your bed overwrought with nerves.

The list of famous people from the '40's - '70's that suffered from nervous breakdowns reads like a who's who list of legends. Marilyn Monroe. Judy Garland. Lana Turner. Vivien Leigh. Agatha Christie.


I remember spending summers with my grandmother as a child. It was a rainy day. My brother and I had spent the afternoon cooped up in the "den" watching TV and bickering. When the bickering reached a particularly fevered pitch (and after several warnings), my grandmother appeared at the doorway looking harried and a bit wild with a glass of water in one hand and several little pills in the other. She wailed in a shaky, shrill voice, "Now look at what you kids made me do! You've made me have to take a nerve pill!!"
I was in awe. There was actually a pill that you could take to give you NERVE! Courage! Wow! If the Cowardly Lion had known about this magic pill, he NEVER would have had to make that terrible long journey to the Emerald City to visit The Wizard for courage - noive, as he called it.
I couldn't wait to tell my mother when she came to get us. We had to GET some of these Nerve Pills!
Strangely, after taking the Nerve Pills my grandmother spent the remainder of the afternoon napping in bed. When I told my mother about it, she said: "Yeah...she had to take nerve pills pretty much on a daily basis when we were kids. I think she got them when she dragged Uncle David behind the car that one time. Or maybe she drug him behind the car BECAUSE she had taken the nerve pills. I don't really remember. Anyway, it's no matter. She's been taking them for years."


So what I really want to know is: Where did I go wrong?! Or better yet, where did my mother go wrong?! (Always blame the mother, don't you know?!) Where did I get this steel magnolia resolve that is so anti-feminine in nature?

I deserve a fucking nervous breakdown, dammit!!!!!!! I've earned it!
Not a full-on complete and total committable breakdown, mind you. Just enough to earn me a little extra vacation time where everyone will leave me the hell alone. Actually, in retrospect, the committable nervous breakdown doesn't sound so bad.... Some mind altering drugs. A little reading time in bed. No responsibilities. Pajama day EVERY DAY!!
Hell, combined with my 3 weeks paid vacation, I could be on to something here.

Over and out for now.

<3,
Your irritatingly sane, but evil genius ~ Jane