Musings, Personal, poetry

I didn’t know it

They were like wolves. No, hyenas. Ripping and tearing, feasting on my most intimate frailty. I tried to fight, to make my worth known. I wasn’t very convincing. God, I couldn’t convince myself. I just didn’t know that. They could smell it. The fear. The insecurity. They loved it. They hunted it, gorged on it. Before I knew what happened they had all had a piece. Bellies full, my self shredded and torn, they relished. I was good for them. Their egos. I was their bond. I just didn’t know it. 

Bipolar, Mental Health, Musings, Personal, Stories, Video

This Is All I Got For Now








The struggle of mental health | Playlist |

The struggle of mental health | Playlist |


Beautiful Ugly


Beautiful isn’t pretty.











The Song


Soon things started to change before my eyes.



Bipolar, Musings, Personal, Stories

My Bittersweet Bipolar

It is difficult to live with Bipolar Disorder. It has taken many years since my diagnosis to find the proper medical care, treatment and medication to finally get a handle on it. At least I can now recognize and manage what I see happening, unlike never knowing what is going on with me, living an unmedicated nightmare. However, I have come to see Bipolar as an opportunity to gain wisdom and perspective. This, at a cost of course.

images (73)While Bipolar Disorder presents unique challenges and difficulties because of the extremes of emotions experienced. On the other hand, by allowing us to experience extreme depth and hight of human emotion with an intensity that, if one can make it through and learn to embrace the ride, provides us with a unique and profound perspective. I don’t say “if one can make it through and learn to embrace the ride” lightly. Many make it through, but get stuck in an incessant loop of hopeless depression to frantic mania never seeming to find that middle ground for long. Never stopping to look around, look from where they’ve come and appreciate the shift, to contemplate and use the experience.

57568dec938a7c6e68298dc179c543e8I believe that this thing, brain disorder, mental illness, whatever it will be called, is not for the faint of heart. It is a bitter-sweet gift. It is a tragic path to wisdom if we keep our eyes open and our heads up (when we can). Through understanding there is nobody that we can’t help through a difficult time, because we have been to the depths. While mania is considered to be a negative symptom, we experience feelings and emotions, even ecstasy that we could never otherwise have experienced. I understand that these “gifts” come at a cost; Wisdom is gained through suffering…perspective through experience. If we keep our eyes open we will recognise how profound what we have just suffered while in a depression was, and be grateful for the shift. When we are feeling good, or great, or on that fine line between happy and hypo-manic, we should open our eyes and be grateful for what our suffering has led us to understand. With experience we will learn to recognize the fine lines between tired and depressed, happy and hypo, sad and sick…

It is the fine line between happiness and illness that I have found to be one of the most difficult challenges. It can seem to ruin happiness. Never being sure if it is true happiness or the illness. Having to monitor yourself once you feel good in case you start to feel too good and then have to adjust medication to take away your long lost joy. With experience, though, true joy and happiness become more apparent, and it will not be so difficult to decipher what side of that fine line we are on. As I get older and the longer I have
this illness the more clearly I understand what true happiness feels like, and the larger the distinction between healthy happiness and illness has become.

downloadHappiness is pure. It is contentment itself, depending on nothing for its existence. Happiness is calm. Feeling happy does not have to equal (and usually doesn’t) fast, frantic and energetic all the time. Happiness is peace with just being. That is how I know the true happy moments. When happy, I do not have the urge or feel a pressure to do anything in particular. I just am. When I can feel well while simply being, then I know that I am on that beautiful side of the fine line.

The longer I have this illness, the more I feel a sort of deranged gratitude for the experiences that have allowed me to gain a unique perspective. I have experienced human emotion above and below what seemed survivable. There is a beauty and a wisdom that comes from surviving anguish and pain. Wisdom is a gift. I greatly value what I have learned and how living with Bipolar has shaped me. At times I might have said otherwise, but when I am healthy, I would never give up what I have gained through living with Bipolar, it is worth it.  Would you?


Awareness, Bipolar, Shared, Social Media, Stigma, Stories

Fox Business Commentator Tells Caller That Her Bipolar Disorder Is Imaginary

This is an example of blatant and condescending stigmatization of mental illness.

Fox business commentator tells caller that her bipolar disorder is imaginary.

Click here to listen.
Click here to listen.

It is the most ignorant, uneducated, condescending I’ve actually heard. This guy’s arguments are so flawed that I can’t even…ahhh! Please, you have to listen to this!

Bipolar, Shared, Stories

Why I Sometimes, Rarely, Never Tell People I Have Bipolar Disorder

This is a great post by Dori Owen from “The Lithium Chronicles” about how stigma silences and isolates those with mental illness. It has some great descriptions of what people know, or think they know about the illness; and thinking they know means dialogue shuts down. It’s worth a read!

Why I Sometimes, Rarely, Never Tell People I Have Bipolar Disorder.

“Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?”―Ruby Wax

Subtitle: It would be so much easier to disclose I have a blood disorder. Which I actually do. But unlike a bipolar disorder it’s not so much of a conversation stopper. Most people have never heard of it so a lengthy explanation on the blood disorder follows. They then become well-educated on what the it is and how it affects me.