another "bipolar" blog

A Letter to A Professor: On Foucault and Mental Health: A Personal Experience

2011-09-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Professor,
When I received my acceptance letter for a masters program in a prestigious ivy-league university, thoughts raced through my head. I knew that having this opportunity to study at one of the world’s renowned environmental studies institutions would no-doubt advance my ideas and career. Little did I know that it would also give me the tools I needed to examine a very painful period from my past. As soon as I arrived I immediately took advantage of the school’s mental health unit. As helpful as this was, I gained the most profound insight into my past from the class: “Advanced Readings in the Social Sciences: Governmentality, Power and Capitalism” that was theoretically immersed in Foucault and Foucaudian analysis.
It might be strange at first to see the connection between a class and the mental heath issues that had haunted my past. From 1999 to 2001, those who had the power granted to them by their psychiatric knowledge effectively converted me from the person I had always known into a bipolar subject, which later evolved due to misdiagnosis and medication induced psychosis into a schizophrenic subject. I was no longer “me”, I was bipolar or I was schizophrenic. I did not have the knowledge or power to become any other subject, this privilege was held by the mental health experts who proceeded to conduct my conduct, through psychoanalysis, restrictions on my lifestyle and medication. By 2001 I had to drop out of university because I was so heavily medicated that I could not function. I walked around, at the very best a drooling zombie, and the mental health experts considered my progress a success. My family and therapists’ panopticon reached to the deepest recesses of my psyche, watching over my every thought, action and chemical constituents of my mind, responding expertly to any signs of elation, paranoia or depression. I had become regulated, by altering my neurotransmitters my thoughts and emotions had become governed and my mental deviance became governable. So why was I not feeling happy, weren’t I finally regulated, hadn’t this team of experts finally managed to govern my ungovernable mind? Why was I feeling alienated from my own mind and body? Why was I feeling powerless?
In 2001, I finally rebelled against their expert authority and concern, and went through the hazardous journey of navigating through intense mood swings, withdrawal from psychiatric medication and assistance. I improved tremendously after this period, but till the spring of 2010 I felt something had been taken away from me, and for years I did not know what this something was. Whenever I looked back at these two years and I would feel a heavy sensation that would overwhelm me. I could not put my finger on it till I was introduced to Foucault’s writings.
Professor, I am sure you often wondered during our Thursday morning classes why I was so engaged, why I hung onto every word and why my passion would veer on rage. I do not know if you ever noticed the times my when eyes would well up with tears or when my face would flush because your lectures made my heart race. During our Spring 2010 class I not only was able to understand what had happened to me, but I was able to reclaim power that had been violently stripped away from me at my very first visit to a psychiatrist’s clinic in 1999. Two years of my life had been taken away from me, for my own wellbeing, yet not for a minute did I feel well during this dark period of my life. How could I have felt well when I was rendered so powerless?
My words will never convey the amount of gratitude I have for your class and instruction. The class not only changed my theoretical inclinations I left it feeling more whole than I had ever felt in my life. I’ve expressed to you my gratitude for what it brought to me academically, but I had never told you the complete story to what your class and lectures have meant to me. I was finally able to understand what it was that was taken away from me, the actors who took it away from me, and the mechanism in which my power was wrenched from my being. Through your teachings I was able to reclaim a power lost, for that I am eternally grateful.

Governmentality Meets Bipolar

2010-11-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

I love the autumn and I especially love my walk to school every morning. It’s my time for myself. Its that time of day where I feel that everything I see was given to me. The leaves change their colors just for me, just so I can see them and enjoy them. The light trickling through the branches is mine, the shadows flitting across the floor, yes, that is also for me. The grey rocks arranged along the path were just what I needed. I and nothing else exists, I barely notice the joggers with the black LCD screens strapped to their arms, measuring their heart rates, or the teenagers with their acne cutting school and making out. It’s a good time for me to connect with how I feel and what I want to get away from. It’s a time where I know I can get away from everything and yet that I cannot get away from myself and I am forced to look at this disobedient defiant self, who refuses to be regulated, who refuses to be governed.

I’ve come to know that if I want to keep people around me, if I want to be respected and if I want one less reason to feel self loathing, one less reason to give other people the right to make choices for me, to tell me what can and cannot go into my body, to become medically regulated, to become socially regulated, then I need regulate myself and my bipolar. It must not be displayed, I walk around imploding, and I feel rage of unknown origins. I draw it in, tightly sealing and containing it, it simmers as I conduct its conduct and it conducts mine.

Restitution

2010-10-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

It’s the fourth night that I haven’t been able to sleep. I lie in bed and I try to be aroused. I try and feel something, something to remind me of a connection we had. I stay up to masturbate so it helps me sleep, but then it just keeps me awake. It takes so long to be aroused, different memories, from long ago. Memories of a time when it was passionate when I would just look at you and my vagina would clench, arousal that was painful, that consumed me. Just standing next to you close enough I could smell you, your smell would make me dizzy, it would be difficult to breathe. I would hold my breath just to keep your smell inside of me. Just as I grasp a memory and just as I start to feel aroused, a memory of you digging your nails into my back as you orgasm and it makes me orgasm, reality is quick to snatch it from me, with images of the repetitiveness of sex that I would rather be flossing or clipping my toe nails than having. I lose the memory and I lose the arousal. Minutes tick away and I can’t fall asleep because I need to masturbate to fall asleep, which means I need to be aroused to masturbate. I try quickly to conjure another memory of a time where I enjoyed it with you. Do I really have to think this hard and think this far back? Maybe this was the inevitable that such a powerful passion would burn itself out, maybe I didn’t try hard enough to keep it going or maybe I tried too hard? My thoughts keep me awake, and I try again to find restitution. I hear your voice in my head telling me, “Everything is fine, you just like having drama, because you’re pmsing”. Another memory, another moment lost to a past that’s irretrievable. I remember my hands used to tremble before I would touch you, and when my fingers would find your skin they would burn and that burning would consume me. It’s so far away, so long ago that it feels like it was someone else. A someone that is not this cold clammy body that I find myself touching and not feeling anything. I forget about you, which isn’t hard since you are sleeping in the guest bedroom. Tonight is because I said I needed the bed to spread out in, but really it was because I wanted to masturbate, other nights were because I snored, because I moved, or because the cats were making too much noise. I wanted to masturbate and I wanted to be aroused and the only thing that arouses me is our past. Its hard remembering a past when the present is right there next to me reminding how far away I’ve gotten from this past. I finally find a memory that I can hold onto, I deny the present and detach myself from it completely, and I can finally orgasm. Before my orgasm is over waves of sadness run through me. I find myself crying quietly, my chest painfully tight. I’ve disconnected myself from the present and put myself in a past that doesn’t exist anymore, and when it starts to fade away, I do not know where I am.

You Take My Breath Away

2010-03-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

You take my breath away. I say this and I sigh. I say this and I fill my lungs with air. I exhale loudly. Freely. I feel my chest expand, my spine curve, my diaphragm reach its utmost extent and quiver, tremble, almost a yawn, almost a sigh and almost an orgasm. I exhale loudly as loudly, as I need to. As loudly I can now that you are watching me. I left the room to breathe freely. I left the room to explore my breath and how I have been holding it. I left the room to try and understand what it means to say you take my breath away. You are here now. I’m not sure why. You are not the faceless, nameless intangible protagonist, subject, object that I hide in my words, you are real and you are in my life. You are ***. I have named you. Now you’ve came out of the room to sit with me and I cannot breathe as loudly as I want or as freely as I want. I censor, I censor my breath and I’ve censored my words. I censor my words and I breathe at about 10% of my previous capacity. My diaphragm does not expand to its utmost extent. I breathe silently. You’ve taken my breath away.
I will not end this piece of writing here, hide the ugliness of myself, or hide the ugliness of you through literary dramatization and mystification. I will say this. You take my breath away. I hold it. I regulate it and I make it as quite and subtle as I can. I flare my nostrils, pull back my soft palate and slow it down. It’s my trade-off, so I can be near you. To breathe freely and fully means that you will be irritated, to curl up to you and let my breath come as it wants to, as loudly as erratically as it needs to, means that you will not want to be curled up next to me. That is the trade-off. We all come with our baggage and mine is that my desire to be near you takes precedence over my breath. In that way, you take my breath away.

Writing Block

2010-03-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

It’s been so long since I wrote. I write and it’s clunky. I write and it’s contrived, its forced. I try to let the words flow; I’m scared that they are pretentious. How did I string the words together before into sentences that were not derivatives, plagiarisms of someone else’s expression?
I look back and think it must have been someone else’s writing. I read things I wrote and I’m so impressed, maybe I am stupid to be impressed, maybe they are just as bad as this clunky clumsiness, but they freed me and this doesn’t.
The words flowed. It was always about flowing, flowing not like water, but like air, flowing effortless frictionless.
I write and reread and its clunky, clumsy, word after word. Hesitant.
Pause, is this pretentious? Or is this lame? Is this pretentious so it’s lame? Or is it lame that it becomes pretentious. I have to laugh at myself because once I’ve asked that question in that way in this prose then that it was it has become, pretentiously lame and worst of all uninspired.
There is no rhythm for my words to dance to. I would have liked to use reverberate because that is the word that sounds right, not dance, but reverberate does not have the right meaning.
How many times have my words, my heart, my chest “danced” how many times have situations, thoughts, desires “sung”?
A few words strung here and there used, reused till they have lost all rhythm, all element of surprise and inspiration. Uninspired. The same worn pack of cards, you know what’s coming next, you know every bend and fold and which card it corresponds to, there is no more game to play, it is predictable, the excitement contrived, the excitement forced. My words are words, my emotions are not expressed in words, and they become contrived by my words. Clunky, silent and clumsy, awkward post-modern and pretentious. My expression not just my words are predictable. If I say it’s contrived, I know it will be followed by me saying, thinking or writing forced. I try to edit myself, to sound a bit more original to myself, but then it feels contrived, it feels forced.
I talk about you, again and again, always you, you the faceless, the nameless, the abstract, the hidden masked love. You change outside my words, but in my words you remain as you, eternally, unchanging, you. You were the transient, the fleeting. Once again predictable words strung together. If I say transient, then it will be followed by fleeting. You were the transient, the ethereal, the fleeting, but today you become the stagnant and the stagnation. You remain hidden in my words, but if I must write then you must become something other than you. Something unhidden and unmasked. You must become un-air-brushed, your ugliness exposed, your abstractness denied. You will be made tangible. My heart must not “sing” or “dance” or “quiver” with its love for you, but rebel, scream and free itself with its hatred towards you. My words must expose your ugliness not just mine.

Depersonalization

2008-06-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

You call it:

Depersonalization,

Dissociation,

Detachment,

Disconnection,

Or a Dream-like state

A Diagnostic criteria for the DSM-IV to the define the disorders of the undeselfed self

You describe the causation:

Deep trauma that results in a deselfing of the undeselfed self

Damage to neurons from drug use

I have lost connection with my self. I have no connection with my past experiences. I have no connection to the people in my past.

My past is every second which is not now

Your face is new,

It does not evoke an emotional reaction

It does not evoke a visual familiarity

You are not part of the deselfed self, you do not constitute a part of my deselfed self.

What we have shared does not constitute a part of my deselfed self

Then what does?

My memories are there, flitting across my mind’s eye like faces of strangers in the windows as I stand on the side of the Metro tracks

Inconsequential

This is not amnesia, I remember

Why does it scare me?

Why does it trigger paranoid ideations that I am another being in this body that does not belong to me?

In this life that does not belong to me?

What if I wasn’t scared?

Can I accept that this deselfed self is another fleeting manifestation of transience?

That what You tell you me the undeselfed is, is not?

Is not, that is why it doesn’t constitute my deselfed self?

If I know that I am deselfing Your construction of what my undeselfed is and not my self,

Then What am I scared of?

Rabid Special ver2.4

2008-05-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

I did think I was a better and more evolved version of bipolar, the new and improved bipolar 2.4, a rare edition of the self aware non medicated calm maniac.

I thought it was one of those sometimes I’m not bipolar phases.

I thought I was better, because I knew my psyche and because I knew what the signs were.

I really did think I was better than the rest

Because I am not on medication,

Because I can articulate this obscure fluctuation

Because I can accept my loss of control without losing it

I thought I had beaten it, I thought I wasn’t another bipolar

I wasn’t another psycho freak

I thought I was special

I still thought I was special the limited edition version 2.4 as I gnawed through my arm like a hungry rabid dog

I thought I was special because I currently am going through a depressive episode and I am totally aware of it, I am working out my issues, I’m not just another bipolar, I am an enlightened bipolar.

I thought I was special because I understood that the rabid dog had to feed and I could control it with applied behavioural motivational therapy, no no no not control train through a series of positive reinforcements. I accepted my rabid dog and I respected my rabid dog.

And it respected me.

I thought I was special because I thought I was better

Better than you, better than every bipolar, better than you nonbipolars because I have the bipolar edge

When I cannot control my voice

When I cannot control my actions

When I cannot control my tears

When I cannot control my drama queen

When I cannot explain it anymore

When I am humiliated by a self that I do not know

I know I am not in control

When I am no longer there, but I am

When I cannot accept this part of me, but it is

When the rabid dog wants to feed and I do not want to give it an arm

When I want to put it down

I am not better

I am not special

I am another A bipolar

I am another A bipolar who cannot accept it because I think I am better

Because I think I am special but I am another A bipolar who isn’t better and who isn’t special but thinks there are, who cannot accept it they are A bipolar because they think they are special and that they are better,

when they are just another A bipolar who isn’t better and who isn’t special

(wow, I just realized how I have been using my "illness" to feed my ego, wow aren't I special, aren't I better?)

Contemplate Driving

2007-06-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

You drive and you drive and you drive.

You see the shapes flitting across your windows.

You don’t feel your body but it moves in perfect coordination.

Foot, brake, hand gear, foot accelerator, eyes, rear view, foot clutch. You glide through the traffic jam.

Foot, brake, hand, foot, eyes, arms, steering whee.l

You glide.

Shapes flitting across your windows.

Your heart breaks inside of you, shatters in ways more dramatic than two long lost brothers in a bollywood movie who find out they love the same woman, who ends up being lesbian and hooking up with their long lost sister.
Contracts within your chest, tightening around itself, trying to make its self smaller.

You don’t like the drama, but what the hell are you supposed to do, you’re a superstar right now. You are evanescence in all her tragic glory.

Contemplate the physical sensations of emotional pain.

Contemplate driving off the bridge.

Contemplate driving into another car.

Contemplate driving off into oblivion.

Contemplate the transience of your neurotransmitter levels.

Contemplate your carbon emissions because that is way more long term than your little mood swings.

Round the Corner

2007-06-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm driving too fast
I know its round the next bend
I want to park here
But I can't
There are no parking spots

Cheese from the heart

2007-05-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

I am silently screaming to you
Please love me indefinitely
Despite fears of looming inevitable endings
I will presist to love you
Like the fruit flies in my kitchen
From the hole made by my cats in the screen
It feels bipolar in its fluctations
and dramatic determinations
to endlessly challenge me
Indefinitely
(both the love and the fruit flies)

Define: "Body Issues"

2007-05-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

My stomach tightens, I am a flower that sings and dances circles around Snow White. I wanted to be a dwarf, I wanted to be Dopey, but I got stuck being a flower. Pink paper petals surround my face. My mother on the side watching our Kindgergarten Snow White performance. I watch the witch’s mother, skinny, in tight clothes. Snow White’s mother in a short white skirt, skinny as well. I look at the mothers, all are skinny with one chin. My mother the size of two or three of them and has two or three chins. My stomach tightens. I can hear their thoughts when they look at her, “The elephant lady”, I’m telepathic, my grandmother taught me. She’s there too. She’s overweight, but that’s okay, because she’s a granny. She’s (my mother) in turquoise with golden sequins and turquoise eye makeup. Telling everyone look at me I am a circus elephant. I do not want to talk to her when the play is over. I am hoping no one will know she is my mother. She is an elephant. Age 4

My third hot dog dripping with mayo and ketchup. My stomach hurts I cannot eat anymore. I look at the two hot dogs left on my plate. I stuff the third one in my mouth and swallow. I shovel the other two faster than my stomach can tell my brain that it will burst

H shows me where he will build the glass elevator in our garden. He is white, like a moving piece of lard. He eats meat for breakfast, rare and loves the fat. His skin smells like uncooked meat. He shows me the wall where the glass elevator will be. He grabs my bony wrists and pins me up against the wall. Pressing his mouth on mine, his cheeks cover blocking my nostrils when I try to inhale. He lifts my shirt and traces my jutting ribs with his tongue. His hair smells like fat. My ribs remember. Age 7

Holed up in our darkness, we quarrel. She leaves for class. I call Pizza Hut, they will not deliver till another hour. I order a New Yorker with extra cheese. I finish it in 6 minutes. I lie down feling the energy pulsatting in my stomach, radiating all over my body. She comes back to our darkness, she touches my breasts. We quarrel, she leaves. I order another New Yorker with extra cheese. I lie down by the door next to two empty boxes of pizza. I touch my stomach. I touch my breasts, I close my eyes and I rest

I am the daughter of a red indian. Like the chief from Peter Pan. I have a long headdress with red feathers going down my back. I am wearing a leather vest opened. My chest exposed but its okay because I don’t have breasts yet. I am tied up, wrists behind my back to the bed post. H is a cowboy he has a beard painted on his face. His hands touching me all over feel like they don’t have bones just flesh that smells of fat. Age 8

She ties the strings of her leapord print corset, tightening them around my waist. She traces her fingers across my clavicle. My pussy dries and her’s drips I held my breath and her’s got heavier. “You look so sexy”she looks at me, I look away. The door is locked so her father doesn’t come in, I can’t get out.

Pink with golden glitter and a frill around the waist, the swimsuit around my body. French cut. I feel my like everytime I walk I’m going to get a wedgy. My uncle in a black tight swimsuit is on the chaise long. He has boobs that he doesn’t cover. I have boobs too. He has three stomaches when he sits down, I have only one. My boobs are the size of pingpong balls half embedded into my chest. I cover them. “You look so sexy”.

“What’s sexy?”

“It means people want you”

“What does people want me mean?” Age 11

A boiled gray chicken infront of my mother at the dinner table, my father and brother’s plates overflowing. Everyone has breasts and their bellies are hanging. A napkin is laid out on my lap, I secretly drop the food on it. I have no belly and I have no breasts.

I wore my mom’s bikini from the 70s, its cool. It has these funky circles and its yellow, green, purple and orange. Its not much just a few strings tied together around my body. My breasts fill the cups. The bottoms are a little bit loose. I wander as I always do, my diary and a pencil. I am trying to find a special place. Somewhere no one has seen. Somewhere I can record something profound and significant. I find a pool and next to it a big net. The kind you can fish things out with. He comes up from behind me. I don’t know him. I feel his arms around my waist I look down his hands are dark and his knuckles are chaffed. The synthetic material of his shorts makes the skin on my back itch, but his belly cushions my back. One hand cups my breast the other one slides into my bottoms. In broken English he says “You are so sexy”. I don’t record this in my diary, but I never wear a bikini again. Age 14

Not a paperclip

2007-05-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

This is not a paper clip

It’s a plate

With white rice, ensheathed with oil

Catching

A reflection of light, but nothing

Else

Compacted grains

I take a forkful then

Push

The

Grains

Back

Maintain

The shape

This time I don’t watch my hands

Because this is not a paper clip

It’s a 4 fingered metal extension of my hand.

It has a pattern

It’s made in Japan

And it doesn’t have scars laced with memories

Its pretty dumb this whole utensil thing, except right now it’s saving me from having to wash my hands.

A cafeteria means:

Someone cooks and someone cleans

And that someone is not me

I just have to stand behind the counter load my tray and pay

Find a table

On any other day I would have probably ranted about our alienation from our food, today, I’m just fucking happy that I don’t have to do jackshit

Lessons of Impermanence

2007-05-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

If anything, the greatest lesson learnt was from my bipolar disorder/order. Everything was fleeting, changeable, always impermanent. First manifested in my moods then spilling over to every other aspect of my life: My emotions, my desires, my thoughts, my perceptions, my beliefs, my relationships. At first it was hard; trying to maintain some kind of consistency and stability in my mood, my search for neurotransmitter permanence, resist the constant influx of mood changes. Failed attempts at mood stability, spilling over and allowing an acceptance of the transience of everything else: My emotions, my desires, my thoughts, my perceptions, my beliefs, my relationships. The ephemerality bred my “grain of salt” mentality. I have ceased to take anything seriously, my militant opinions, my dreams, my revelations, my realizations, my oh so intense emotions. Impermanent. I wait for my feelings towards you to fleet, I wait, I wait, and I wait. I’m still waiting. This scares me, I’m still waiting. When I woke up today, I realized they just got too damn serious and I couldn’t take them with a grain salt anymore. It’s been a long wait for how I feel about you to fleet. I’m still waiting.

Abandonment Angst

2007-04-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my friend today, I was feeling very distant from myself.

So we reviewed my mood chart. The online daily record of my mood

Mildly elevated

Moderately elevated

Severely elevated

Baseline

Mildly depressed

Moderately depressed

Severely depressed

Mild anxiety

Moderate anxiety

Severe anxiety

Mild irritability

Moderate irritability

Severe irritability

Menstruating

Medication taken

Additional comments

Three weeks of my emotions recorded on the world wide web @ moodtracker.com right under

Learn More

Roll over this ad to find a checklist that helps

Identify common symptoms so you talk to your Doctor

Cymbalta

I was dis@&#@*co n@&#@nected. My friend who is psychic tuned into me. I was hiding in someone’s heart, she said. I said there was something under the surface, tickling, like scraping nails against a board, the inside of my chest. While I studied the cartilage and muscle of dog’s larynx. Every so often, the nails tickle my chest cavity, get my attention and then scrape. The noise is heard by every part of my body.

It’s 30 C^ooutside, I’m lying on my couch, my books surrounding me, a water bottle next to me, in front of my heater, wrapped in a blanket.

Phoenix my cat, climbs over me, like I’m not there. I watch a movie on my computer. The doorbell rings a few times. I do not get up.

I finish the movie, and in my chest her nails are scraping (I know anatomically the sensation cannot exist, but right now my consciousness perceives my chest as a hollow space with no organs). Her nails tickle the walls, moving against these tiny bumps, vibrating them, making them resonate in my chest in unison.

I vibrate internally

No thoughts

No feeling, only sensations

Physical

Simple

Panic triggered, I recall:

My best friend from high school.

Phoenix jumps up, someone is outside the apartment. The bell rings again. Her nails dig deeply into the walls of my chest.

I do not open, I recall:

“I can’t handle this, I can’t watch you doing this to yourself”

Moving on and away from me

My parents, their shields coming up holding me back at a safe distance

Mary (ex-partner who cheated on me) hiding deeper into her own misery to escape mine.

Resilient friends, who would pull away and return once the cloud of teenage morbid gloom lifts away.

I panic, because my current girlfriend (long distance), I’m not sure what else to call her despite the fact that that label throws me in a state of panic, is frowning at me.

Arms crossed, teeth clenched.

Well in my head she is at least, whether I’m projecting or not.

Lying pathetically on my side, not getting up. I feel this sense of failure overwhelm me. I can her in my head to the rhythm of the scarping lady’s nails, not blaming me with her words but the nails dig deeper and tear,

She says,

I really love you

I love you so much

I love you very much

I love you a lot

But

I can’t handle you when you get like this, I’m sorry I can’t be with you anymore

Not an irrational fear based on past experiences with humans in close emotional proximity

I want to COMMUNICATE,

but the scraping lady’s nails plucked my recurrent laryngeal nerve and I

~~whimper~~

Manic Connections

2007-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Pages turning, pencils scratching on paper, I was sitting at the side of the lab on a stool, my back resting against a bench. I was watching my breathing, I was watching the students. Counting my breath to entertain myself while they took their anatomy exam. I was making sure no one cheated. Not like I would be able to figure out what to do if I caught someone cheating.

I was lying on the beach huddled up to the American Jew because it was cold and the car wouldn’t start. The (ig)noble savage who sings Dylan songs better than Dylan was on the American Jew’s other side. All of us huddled up together trying to stay warm. Both me and the (ig)noble savage hoping to get lucky with the American Jew. I fell asleep, my snoring kept them both awake.

I rubbed the American Jew’s shoulders. she was laying between my legs. The water rose and I saw a man walking on the water between the mangroves. The beer I had been drinking didn’t get me drunk, it just relaxed my constructs of reality.

I’m in my room in my parents’ house. Now once again my house, I’m listening to the same music I used to listen to when I was 16 and angry. Its loud. I’m screaming along. The door is closed and no one is allowed to come in. I have my Seroquel to bring me down from my mania and my Lustral to bring me up from my depression. Not sure which to take. I’m manically depressed right now. Morbidity vs. this word which means life that I can’t figure out what it is. My therapist labeled it.

These three students try to cheat. I panic, I don’t know what to do. I sort of glimpsed them, I don’t have any hard evidence. I feel everything dissolves around me the three students. Mary, Marwa and May. Cheating cheaters. I want to confront them but I can’t.

I wake up on the beach next to the American Jew. I don’t know if its Mary the cheater or Mona my friend who I am involved with.

I put the music down my cat is in the room, I don’t want to scare him.

I sober up on a bus making its way to Cairo, 11 hour bus ride. I have two hours to see Mona. The Egyptian intelligence is after me because I was hitchhiking with the American Jew and The Indian girl. We were trying to find a sea turtle nesting beach. The Indian girl’s last name means betrayed. The American Jew is a CIA agent. I have to see Mona. Nothing feels safe. Mary cheated, my co-worker is CIA and everyone is trying to fuck with my head. I know safety in Mona’s arms.

I left Mary, a million months later I discovered she cheated on me. I’m whiny and I’m not getting over it. Every story I write is about her. I want to curl up into her arms and to cry and for her to comfort me. I just want to curl up in her arms, feel her stroking my face. Kissing me telling me she’s sorry. I want to forgive her for cheating on me. I want to still be with her.

The antagonist in all my stories is called Marwa, this is my name for Mary in all my stories. She started cheating on me in May. I didn’t leave her because I didn’t have any hard evidence.

Between the mangroves the dugong lies being pecked by the Flamingo as the moon rises. My best friend isn’t speaking to me anymore. I fucked her sister, I feel everything I want to feel towards Mona as I rub the American Jews shoulders.

9 meters under the sea, it wets me with its tears. Another hotel up on the coast. Some Italian tourists are sun bathing on the first sea turtle nest of the season. 12 dugongs left in the Red Sea. One is hiding in the mangroves being pecked by that flamingo. The (ig)noble savage who sings Dylan better than Dylan sings:

“Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
Come in, she said,
I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Pink

2007-04-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

Pink,
cotton candy
sweet, melting
in my mouth
sugar sweet
in my blood
sugar high
hyper manic, tingles down my arm
salmon pink
seroquel
in
my
mouth
pink
tranquil
pink cotton candy in my mouth
dissolving
sugar in my blood
sweet
tingling arms
twitching legs
shaking hands
caffiene and nicotine cravings
smoke shroud
smoke stink
emanating, with
your
every
move
cotton candy
cotton buds
between your toes
pink, painting with your pink
nailpolish on your toes
your cigarette butt
stained
pink
cotton candy pink
melting
in
my
mouth,
sweet
sugar in my blood
sugar high
salmon pink
seroquel
in my mouth
tranquil
pink lipstick
pink lips
pink handprint on my cheek
pulsatting pink
pink nails
cigarette stained
pink
cotton candy pink
pink dress
i
won't
wear
pink handprint
on my arm
cotton candy
in
my mouth
melting
pink
scars on my arms
pink nails glimpsed
when your hand
pinkens
my cheek
between the smoke
your pink
nails
shine
the smoke rises
from your
pink lips
cotton candy pink
pinkening
pink
pink
pink
cotton candy
nails
cheeks
salmon pink
seroquel

psuedo-post-expressionist bored in class psuedo-art piece

2007-04-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

Paper Clips

2007-04-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

Have you ever straightened a colored paper clip? Have you ever made little bends and twists in it? Have you ever rotated it slowly between your thumb and forefinger? Have you ever watched the shapes, the angles and length change as you rotated it? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched the tracers? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched what was under the tracers stain with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever changed the bends and twists and then rotated it between your thumb and forefinger? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched the tracers? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched what was under the tracers stain with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever looked at your hands while you were spinning between your thumb and forefinger a straightened colored paper clip with twists and bends whose tracers stained what was under them with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever had your hands be so far away? Have you ever had your hands numb and senseless? Have you ever had your hands look like they weren’t yours? Have you ever had your hands with all the scars that you carved into it look like they were someone else’s? Have you ever sat there staring at your hand as you spun a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger as the tracers stained whatever was under it with the color of the paper clip not knowing when all this happened to you? Have you ever sat there and had your body feel like it was not yours? Have you ever sat there and had your body feel numb and senseless? Have you ever sat there knowing that this body you have loathed was not yours? Have you ever sat there knowing that all the memories that you regretted are not yours? Have you ever sat there knowing that this life that you have hated was not yours? Have you ever sat there with a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger spinning mourning a hated life not lived? Have you ever felt a huge wave of sadness suffocate you? Have you ever felt the huge wave of sadness engulf you and drown you into apathy? Have you ever been so apathetic that the energy for suicide was not there and you sat there with a straightened paper clip between your thumb and forefinger spinning? Have you ever watched the apathy sever the ties that may feed a desire for life? Have you ever sat there loving and hating, hating and loving, spinning a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger? Have you sat there with a straightened paper clip between your thumb and forefinger with all its twists and bends hating your pathetic existence? Have you ever wanted to die so much that it had already started to happen? Have you ever wanted to die so much that you sat there with a straightened colored paper clip with bends and twists between your thumb and forefinger spinning with the tracers staining what’s beneath with its color?

Parturition

2007-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

The first time I did it I was 12. Prep 2, Home Economics. I don’t know what did it. Maybe it was being forced to be in the kitchen, cooking, more like over-cooking a pasty pasta. Maybe it was the smell of oil. My incompetence as a female to enjoy, the sounds of a scraping knife against a cutting board, or the sizzling of the oil, or the fact that I always felt I carried a deep dark secret that weighed on me through every moment of my day. They can see it in my eyes, everyone knows. I avoided him at school, wondered if his fingerprints would always be imprinted on my body. If I died, in the autopsy would they be able to tell where his hands went from lifting up the fingerprints. Home Economics, I had to be something I didn’t want to be. Don’t know what it is, but it was stifling. Just as stifling as wearing a skirt was. Every skirt was an invasion that cut straight to my center. Shook me and left me humiliated. I might as well be naked and for everyone to touch me. My hairless peepee, my completely undeveloped boobees. The skirt exposed them, the kitchen exposed them. The emptiness sliced through my gut. My head felt light and I felt I was passing out. I was passing the kitchen knife to one of the students. I wanted to help, but every time I tried, waves of shame would just take me under. I snuck the knife, outside the kitchen in my pocket. I took it to the bathroom. Locked the door. I sat on the toilet seat and stared at my feet. I was wearing different a shoe on each foot, a green shoe and a red shoe. I stared at my wrists, the knife, my feet. I pressed the knife to my wrist gently; as I pressed harder some invisible hand guided my hand to my palm. I cut deeply across my lifeline. It took a few seconds before the blood appeared. Shyly through the opening. Peeping, then a torrent. I breathed. I have connected with myself. I wiped the blood off my hand, wrapped my hand with toilet paper, and stuck it deep into my pocket. I returned the knife with out cleaning it. I watched with satisfaction, almost a euphoria as they struggled through their tears and runny noses to cut the onions with the knife that had cleansed me.

I had a new secret now, one that set me apart from everyone else. One that no one could know about. One that made headaches go away, loneliness go away, that crazy feeling that my chest was going to explode and splatter all over the walls, go away. One that no one must know about ever. I either hid it well, or no one cared, but no one knew. After knives, came sharp pointed object, from cutting to scraping away, repeatedly. From dead skin flaking off in a powder, to epidermis that would gather at the sides of the cut, to dermis searing hot collected around the tip of metal. To blood, to breathing, to pride, pride that this was mine, pride that I didn’t need anyone, pride that my secret was mine, it wasn’t a secret shared by two people. It was just for me. To burning, to blisters, to punching, to whipping, to biting.

When I look at my hands now, 13 years later, I feel proud of the scars, when I get close to someone I share the story behind each scar with them. It brings me closer to people, to share something that was so painful. I don’t share new wounds, I hide them. I will not be reprimanded. I will not give explanations. I will not be labeled. I can see you look at my hands, I can see you acknowledge them. Acknowledging my desperation, not judging me, Thank you for not judging, fuck you if you are. It has to be my hands, I have to feel it with every action, I have to conceal them. It sets me apart now from people, with shame that 13 years later I’m still 12 years old, that probably in another 13 years I’ll still be 12. It has to be my hands, because it’s the only part in my body that I can comfortably put into my mouth. Bite through, continuously, taste the skin and blood, gnaw and tear with my teeth. I feel better, but I probably will not share this with you, because I don’t want to see you look at me in disgust, to think I’m a freak, to look at me with pity, try to help me, I feel the rift between us because I will not share. I will hide it, make up stories about it, state it matter of factly devoid of emotion, allude to it, but this is mine and only mine and no matter how much you think that I'm sharing. I will not share it.

Destiny

2007-03-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

The professor lectures, the body’s mechanisms to control blood loss. My eyes fill up with tears. An intricate, flawless divine design. I’m not in awe of the mechanism; I’m in awe of my superior ability to understand it, to appreciate it. Tears run down my face.

I wake up, I not only understand the workings of body’s mechanism to control blood loss, I understand the secrets of the cosmos. Seriously, I’m not joking. It’s not an understanding I can really share verbally, but I know everything. I have clarity no one else has. I have been giving divine wisdom to help everyone with it. I should have followers, people who walk around me, writing my words of wisdom, recording them. At the very least a fan club. I am special, gifted with the ability to see through everything and everyone. I know your thoughts, I know your feelings, I know your shadows. I am here to help you; I am here for you to follow me.

I get everything I want, and I can give you anything you want. All I have to do is will and things will be as I want them.

This isn’t magical thinking, this is magic.

This isn’t delusions of grandeur, this is destiny.

Banana Omelet

2007-03-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

After a series of trails, with a lot of spontaneous generation errors, this is my optimal, nonnutritive for kitchen microorganism proliferation grocery list:

1. Bananas (still green)

2. Eggs

3. Garlic powder

4. General dried spices

5. Oil

6. Honey

There are days when I can’t get out of bed and I drag myself out onto my couch, and then I have to rest for a few minutes before I make it to the bathroom, which afterwards I need at least an hour to recover. Nothing sucks more than having no desire to live, dwelling in self pity, entertaining suicide fantasies and post suicide events and being so hungry, that hydrochloric acid is burning holes into my stomach. The items on this list provide me with a quick fix. They also provide me with the option of using my frying pan over and over again without going through having to wash it. Especially when there are days where I just simply can’t eat, based solely on how overwhelming the task of washing my dishes seems to be. I mean I will be hungry, starving practically and every time I’ll make it to the kitchen to finally make food. I’ll catch my breath and look at my frying pan and I just cannot do it. So I return to the couch and rest for a few more hours.

Sometimes, I’m just not hungry for days, and then I start noticing my cats chasing invisible things in the air. A closer look reveals them to be fruit flies. I’ve grown some pretty interesting mould. Lemons make a great medium for cultivation. They also seriously metamorphose. Pasta grows this neon orange fuzz around it.

The items on my list need to be easy to prepare, have relatively enough nutrients so I don’t collapse from malnutrition, can be cooked in a variety of ways and allow me some time before they start growing things on them.

Bananas I would consider the foundation food. It doesn’t require washing, and I don’t need to have a dish to eat out of. The peels are easy to discard. I can eat it raw or I can cook it. I can eat it raw with honey, or I can fry it and eat it with honey.

Eggs require that I have a bit more energy, but basically can I can pull off a pretty decent omelet or scrabbled eggs in less than 5 minutes. If I’m feeling really drained I go for the scrambled because I don’t have to premix it in a bowl, which means one less dish to wash. I just crack open the eggs straight into the frying pan, add the spices and mix, mix, mix as fast I can. If I mix really well and really fast, the frying pan stays clean enough to be used again without having to wash it for my next meal.

On a manic day my creativity kicked in, and since this is all I had at home, I made myself a banana omelet. I was a bit worried at first, but it turned out pretty good.

Recipe for Banana Omelet

(Gluten and casein free, for more information on bipolar nutrition visit nutrition links)

Number of dishes that will have to be washed:

2 bowls (one for mixing and one for eating)

1 frying pan

1 spatula

2 forks (one for mixing and one for eating, or you can use one fork for mixing and just give it a quick rinse)

Preparation time:

2 minutes

Cooking time:

5 minutes

Ingredients:

4 eggs

2 bananas (diced)

2 tbs of garlic powder

4 tbs Thai chili and garlic sauce

4 tbs ground cumin

1 tbs ground black pepper

½ tbs salt

Preparation:

Break open the eggs and add all spices to the bowl

Beat till homogenous

Add bananas

Mix

Heat oil in frying pan

Pour contents of the bowl

After 3 minutes use spatula and flip omelet on other side

Recall: Emptiness

2007-03-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

“Where did this emptiness come from?” I ask myself, playing the role of the therapist. I’ve been to so many, I’m at number 12 and still counting, I have the jargon down, the intonations, the gestures and the facial expressions. I smile at myself compassionately.

“Well, I guess it’s because I wasn’t nurtured by mother” I state matter-of-factly, devoid of quivering lips and tearful eyes. Well I must have said this a million times. To at least 12 different therapists, constantly repeating the exact session with a different therapist

Sometimes it would be repeated with the same therapist. I guess, sometimes they run out of paper, or pencils and don’t take notes and just don’t remember

I raise one eyebrow in response, “What about your lovers? Don’t they nurture you?”

“Well, yes they do”

“So?”

I reflect on nurture. I hate nurture. I crave nurture. I hate it because I crave it, I resent you when you give it to me, because I want it. I don’t want to want it and most of all I don’t want you to give it to me.

“What do you mean by nurture?”

“I don’t know?”

“What does nurture feel like?”

“Warm”

I recall nurture, radiating warmth. Abstract, far, different in every context. Different from one person to the other. In a sense it is not there, cannot be boxed. Fills up and assuages chronic feelings of emptiness. Recall, reminding my cells how it feels to be in contact with your cells. You being, the last 3 people I thought I was in love with. Allowed our cells to communicate. I recall and the screaming emptiness is pacified. Temporarily. Appetizers, leaving me somewhat satisfied, but craving, more, cellular communication, cellular warmth.

“Is there a way to completely fill that emptiness?”

I go back into my memory, my grandmother nurtured me. My father nurtured me. I feel grateful, but I am looking for something else. My mother, a mixture of holding me close and pushing me away. Cliché? Maybe. I feel insecurity. I remember insecurity is not a feeling. I feel insecure and helpless. I feel warm, then I feel empty. I feel compassionate. Something happened, I want before that time, before the ambivalence. Before she would love me and then push me away. I feel it, fleeting an instant. Recall, the instant where the infinite regression halts. Where I am no longer searching, I hold onto it. My mother, no cigarette between her lips, fresh soapy smell. No smoke hanging around us. She can love me because I just am. She can love me because the fucking therapists can’t label me. She can’t label me, she can’t judge me, because I just am. I am filled.

Infinitely regressing. I let go of this fulfillment, I want to go deeper, I am curious about my birth. The glaring lights. The latex gloves. My mother holds me, takes me in her arms, exhausted. My father holds me up. My memories are tainted by cognitive biases induced by captured Kodak moments. I remember the pictures, the one where they handed me to my mother, the one my father holds me, and the one my father passes me to my grandmother. I cannot recall, but I can pretend I do. Somehow it seems important to remember the moment I came into the world. To recall, why it was I made this decision to come here, that there was some life affirming drive. That I wanted to beat all odds to come out of my mother and live. There had to be a choice to live, and I had to have taken it. I need to recall that choice, affirmation to live. A deterrent to recurrent suicidal ideation.

The contractions in her womb scared me, every contraction reminded me of the choice, I can choose to stay or I can choose to leave and live. Every contraction I had to decide. Every moment of indecisiveness led to a surge of oxytocin and another contraction prompting me to make my choice. My mother said I slipped right out, her contractions were short I came out with ease. In the last minute I try and stop coming out. I wrap the chord around my neck. Her vagina opens easily, like the trapdoor on a hangman, the chord tightens around my neck as I slip out from between her legs. Till this day I can’t bear to have anything around my neck. I can debate whether it is because this is a constant reminder of my utter failure at my first suicide attempt, or a life affirmative survival instinct.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant till the sixth month, when I was going to lose you” Many times my mother has told me how she didn’t know I was there till she nearly lost me, many times I’ve told this story to people. Hoping someone would find some significant hidden meaning. I hid in her womb for 6 months. Recall, warm, encompassing, private. A secret sexually transmitted parasite. The panic is unleashed, not mine, hers, her adrenaline passing through me, widening my vessels and pushing my thimble sized heart to pump faster. She was losing me, she didn’t know she had me, but wanted me when she was going to lose me. I wasn’t scared.

I was being private, curled up secretly in my mother’s uterus, another survival tactic, maybe. I was being secretive when my fat ugly maid Rabha, which means breadwinner, would pull me by my ankles, the fat rippling on her arms, her breasts sagging down lower than her waist. She would pull me by the ankles off the bed. I would hit my head. She always smelt of a mixture stagnating sweat trapped under synthetic material, Samna baladi and Lemon fragranced Prill. She takes me into her arms, she’s sitting cross legged. It felt good her body soft and squishy. Arms enclosing me, layers of flesh covering me like blankets. No matter where I would lay my head, it felt like a soft breast. Recall, warmth, nurture, a spoon between my legs, arms enclosing, warmth, my glow in the dark plastic sword pressed on my clit, rubbing, raw. Recall…

Infinitely regressing, my undeveloped neurons do not fire to the external stimulus. I don’t feel the warmth, I do not feel. Recall, I am aware of my physical body, tiny floating in her sac. Aware but cannot feel, no decisions about living, just hanging there.

I wait for the split in my consciousness. The zygote regressing to an egg and a sperm, to an “n” and an “n”. My consciousness splitting into an “n” and an “n”. My consciousness remains intact, perception, sensation and awareness of the physical do not exist. My consciousness does, remains, as is. No more infinite regression. No more regression, no more progression. Just my consciousness. Recall, infinite chronic feelings of emptiness.

BP rage

2007-03-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to hear how we all have our bad moods. I don’t want to hear you to tell me that you think you are bipolar too, because you occasionally feel emotions. You get happy and you get sad. So do I, that's not what I am talking about when I say I’m bipolar. I don’t need to hear you tell me I am melodramatic and emotionally indulgent because I answer you honestly when you ask me how I feel. What would you rather hear? I’m great, except right now my mind is racing so fast I can’t keep track of my thoughts, your voice sounds tinny and far away, I see you through a tunnel of light, and my skin feels like a million bugs are crawling on it. I’m fine. Don’t ask if you don’t want to really know. I never asked you to ask and I never asked you to pretend you care.

How about this, did you know that when I’m hysterical I want to be dramatic, that I do this for the attention it brings. I mean doesn’t everyone loves labels and loves being ostracized.

When I am lying in bed and I can’t get up it’s because I don’t appreciate what I have.

When my dad cheats on my mom, has depression and goes through his midlife crisis, it’s because of what I put them all through.

I am just angry, and it’s not the kind of anger that you can put a tick next to it on your DSM IV checklist. It’s the “normal” non-psychopath anger you all experience when your needs are not being satisfied.

I’m fed up of studying really hard and getting manic right before my exams and not being able to answer the questions I know so well because my mind is in a state of utter confusion. I’m always going to fall short of my expectations.

I don’t need to hear you telling me how I’m bipolar and I can’t handle living a totally normal life.

I’m angry that when I tell my mother I’m in a bit of a bad mood, and I can hear her heart skip a beat scared that I’m going to kill myself or cut myself, or do something really stupid.

I’m angry that you can’t see that other than the episodes, my emotions are as normal and justified as yours.

I’m angry when you don’t acknowledge my condition

I’m angry when I have to acknowledge it.

I’m angry that there is a checklist and label for who I am and that label strips my sense identity. Down to it I’m just angry because I don’t know where I start and where the bipolar ends.

Bp stands for bipolar not for British Petroleum, but that doesn’t mean that I have no rage against BP and what it’s doing environmentally and otherwise. For more information: http://www.resist.org.uk/reports/archive/bp_russia/index.php

??impulsivity??

2007-03-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

Impulsivity is when you act without thinking. It usually implies some kind negative or self destructive behavior. I’ve never really heard anyone talk about impulsivity in a good way. He was so impulsive yesterday; he cleaned his house, did all his work, and wrote his thesis. Action without thought can be counter productive. He was impulsive so he got a promotion. He was impulsive, he got the noble prize. It seems to me that the emphasis here is on the value of thought. It implies that when we use the term impulsivity then we must understand what action is and what thought means. When the DSM defines Borderline and uses impulsivity, I’m going to assume that whoever wrote it, whoever uses it, understands what thinking means and what thought is. After subjecting a friend to a few days of melodrama and making her watch me cut myself with a “sterile surgical blade” I decided to take sometime to reflect on my actions. The act: cutaneous superficial incisions using a “sterile surgical blade” while simultaneously asking a friend to watch (her uncle by the way won a noble peace prize, so you can always ask him about impulsivity and productivity), in an attempt to avert real or imagined fears of abandonment. In attempt to avert escalating suicidal ideation.

Thought

Yes, my actions were preceded by thought. My definition of thought would be a mind dialogue that I am conscious of having with myself. Potentially my definition can be slightly problematic because of the issue of “myself”, I could start looking into what is “I” who is “me” and never get to the point of what I want to say. So I’ll let go of some of my anal retentiveness and let this one slide. So here is an abridged version of my thought process (you should be thankful it’s abridged, you can also listen to it on audio playback).

Wow, this feeling really sucks. Hmmmm, wow, there’s no point in anything. Wow, this blows. Hmmmmmmm, I wish it would all end. No no no no, stop being so dramatic. Reach out to people they can help. Help with what? My peter pan adolescence that will not end. This sucks. Okay, how am I feeling? I am feeling like there is a heavy sticky thing inside my thorax. But it’s not really my thoracic cavity really, because it’s permeating through every part, the space, the tissue and fluids. I still haven’t studied the blood supply of thorax. I just know that the there’s a subclavian something or the other. Shit, this sucks. I feel like crap. I want to kill myself. Killmyself killmyself. Hmmm wow, I want to cut myself. How girl interrupted of me. God, oh wow. I feel suffocated, hmmmm, maybe I will slit my wrists. Everything is so dark. Okay, I have an idea, I’ll cut myself instead of kill myself. Killmyself. Hmmm I’ll use a sterile surgical blade. I will have eliminated the risk of infection, and minimize the presence of scarring. Fantastic. Oh I’ll cut myself on my craniomedial proximal antebrachium so that I minimize the risk of people finding out. I feel there’s so much inside of me that I can’t find words to express. I want to share with someone, my inner pain and suffering. I’ll ask yasmin to watch me, because she will not judge me. Hmmm, well I guess this has worked before that I’ve cut myself and didn’t kill myself, killmyself. I obviously see the logical flaw here, just because I’ve cut myself an haven’t killed myself killmyself it doesn’t mean that they there is a causation, it might only be a correlation. Especially since I haven’t not cut myself and still didn’t kill myself, killmyself. I feel so lost and uprooted, well okay, I’ll cut myself it seems like the best way to: 1) release very negative emotions, 2) express myself

I didn’t say it wasn’t lame, but it is still thought. My actions although stemming from lame pain were accompanied by a thought process and some kind of reasoning. Regardless whether it is flawed or not. Is this impulsive?

So I cut myself, my friend watched live on webcam. I didn’t feel better. So since my dissection kit was out. I also decided to give myself a haircut. I’ve been watching the L-word and am completely obsessed with Shane’s (Katherine Moennig) hair . So in front of my only not even glass mirror, using the scissors of my dissecting kit, while my cat and dog were running between my feet, I sort of gave myself a nonsymmetrical artistic haircut. I realized that actors have hairdressers, these hairdressers have a lot of experience and training, they also have a lot of tools and resources, and rarely do they cut and style their own hair, even if they are ambidextrous and double jointed they will have someone helping.

Do you think I’m impulsive?

Define: Self Harm

2007-03-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Writing in a post drunken stupor. Slightly cringing about the things said and done. Not cringing too much because been there done that a million times since I can remember, the embarassment gets old.
The question of medication comes into mind, would all of this have been avoided had I been on medication?
Too much energy in me, I felt like a nuclear reactor ready to burst onto my white walls. Bubbling under my skin, ready to fizz over the rims of my head if I could just let out some air. The pressure inside me would have eased a bit.
The most constructive handling of this is using hash. An illegal substance (ha ha ha). I can't seem to get myself any for the last month. So a good strong dose of beer, vodka, wine and major social embarassment was the substitute.
I've been on seroquel. It might cause diabetes. I've been on Lustral, Stablon, Zyprexa, Effexor, Tegretol, Risperidal, Depreban, Lithium, Oh sweet lithium, My head turned into a bumpy cube. Something I wish I had taken pictures of.
I woke up remembering the night before, an instant cerebral label kept resounding in my head, "self harm". I got up to brush my teeth and in my head the neon flashing words "self harm". I showered and could hear my therapist's voice resonating, "self harm, self harm, self harm, self harm, self harm"
When I open a bag of chips, I don't think of the triglycerides and artificial additives and think "self harm". When I sit and smoke my shisha, there is no booming voice of wisdom commentating on my actions, "self harm, self harm, self harm". I think "self harm", when I get wasted or when I cut myself. I didn't think "self harm" when I stayed in a badly ventilated lab and got intoxicated from formaldhyde fumes. I didn't think "self harm" when I drove my car and watched the fumes fusing with those of other cars. I didn't think "self harm" when I breathed these fumes. You don't think "self harm, self harm" when you have another cigarette, drink your morning coffee, pop some candy into your mouth. You think "self harm" when you see the scars on my arms, when you watch me drink till I fall flat onto my face, but you don't think it when I take my seroquel and have my morning coffee, and smile at you and life goes on, uninterrupted, quietly and complacently going on with my business. Smile, pain does not exist not even under the surface. There is no surface, there is no under. Another latte'? Another frappe' with extra cream?

I believe in DSM

2007-03-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I would want to blog about my bipolar, but I guess I need to start this blog with some kind of first post.

I want to throw my emotions out at everyone, I already do that with people I know and people I just meet, and there is a certain excitement in being able to do that with even more people. My emotions have been the source of so much drama in my life and so that might be a good explanation for my indulgence. Its not much of an explanation for my exhibitionism, but when I think about it. Growing up, so much of who I am, what happened to me and things I believed in had to be hidden. Society loves the secrets, so people can get their little thrills with their expose' of other people and can feel a bit better about their own secrets. I hate the silence and I hate the shame. Exhibitionism is my big FUCK YOU to everyone and everything that has every made me feel ashamed of any part of who I am.

Maintaining this blog is going to be very inconsistent. I expect that there will be days where I might post a thousand million times and othertimewhere I just won't for months.

Depending on whether or not I'm having a day where I'm a DSM believer or not, whether or not I acknowledge the existence of bipolar. If I believe in the DSM then I believe I'm bipolar.

This is how I feel* about being bipolar:
1. Isolated (from the people I care about)
2. Alienated (from general society)
3. Flawed (unable to perform academically)
4. Angry (I don't know where to start or where to end with that one)
5. "Poor me" (Not too hard to figure that one out)
6. Desperate
8. Frustrated
9. Fed up (that this is something I'm stuck with)
10. Confused (about what it means to acknowledge that I am bipolar)
11. Scared (that another episode is just around the corner)
12. Optimistic (that some manic high will enlighten me)

(I love parathensis, the content becomes optional. One can read it or skip over it. Its an after thought, a clarification, but best of all it's optional)

*Please note that the use of the word feelings to describe the list of words is incorrect word choice. Some of the words listed below are not feelings. For an inventory on words that fall under the category of feelings go to http://www.cnvc.org/feelings.htm.