World Bipolar Day, 2022

 World Bipolar Day 2022: “The deeper your scars, the more room there is to fill them up with love. Don't hate your scars, appreciate their depth."

It's been 13 years now since I was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder after decades of psychiatrists, psychologists, PCP's, bartenders, spouses, families, psych wards, and dozens of other people who just "said I was depressed."

Mental illness packs a harsh reaction among anybody. As an expert cog in the public health system myself, bipolar on your rap sheet stops people in their tracks. “She has a history of chronic anemia…oh and SHE IS BIPOLAR.” “Ooooh…”

OK..yes, but then why the high high highs and low low lows? I KNEW something was gravely wrong--it was just getting someone to actually hear me out. I might not have taken so many narcotics or too much to drink if my illness wasn't met with such vitriol and shaming. I hated my first outpatient shrink, but he hit the nail on the head after a few months.

Can I just say that being on psychotropic medications, and knowing I have to take these medications for the rest of my life sucks?

It's very interesting to note that the vast majority of people with bipolar disorder (I or 2) actually wouldn't trade our lives or press a button and turn off the illness. We are different. We are fascinating & smart & brave.

I love what I HATE is happening to me most. Now, coming to terms with the shock to the system and trying to suss out if there's a healthy outlet can be really difficult, considering. In lieu of carrying around an immensely heavy bag of burning hot coals, while walking on black ice, hogtied, God blessed, I have been gifted as a drummer & a writer.

My moods flow from bad to better to stable. And the reverse. And then again. And again. I am not crazy. I am not bipolar. I have bipolar disorder.

Coming Soon: The Return of the Offbeat Drummer

As I have always said...it's all UPHILL from here!

I had taken another long sabbatical from the blog & had another self-changing, situation-altering monkey wrench whack me beside the head. BBIAB for more fun, providing more awareness and education about mental illness, health, awareness and advocacy...relationships, religion, moaning and whaling. You know, fresh batches of "Rhythm" with ribbons and balloons. And Moscato.

Finders Keepers

Are Facebook memories sometimes better left in the mind's own memory bank, or do we need a nudge once in a while? Is the nudge a healthy idea? Remains to be seen. This was just a note I wrote after a therapy session (and I had to stretch to figure out WHICH therapist this might have been, but I nailed her down to the idiot at (now closed) Maine Center, between 2012-2014: 

"Friday, I'm arguing with my counselor, telling her I didn't think cognitive behavioral therapy would be effective in tackling and resolving my issues at present, and she wants to try dialectical behavioral therapy, which I naturally poo poo, because it's not like I'm repudiating cooperation in session, I mean, what the fuck? Plus, there's the whole "I'm-going-to-get-in-trouble-again-because-we-touch-on-Buddhism" factor, which makes me feel guilty at church. (Guilty Protestants aren't as guilty as guilty Catholics, inasmuch as at least we still sleep around.)

She had arrived at the session 15 minutes late, at 9:15. I'd been waiting since 9:00. Common courtesy, at least as I'm being trained, is to grant the client the duration of the 50-60 min session regardless if it fucks up the rest of the therapist's schedule because arriving late was her own damn fault. What's worse? SHE had clinical paperwork to do about me. As I'm also being trained, the counselor does the paperwork either before or after the session, not WHILE the client is sitting there, thumb-twiddling, sipping water and reminding her to put her letterhead in the printer side-up this time, because she's a little computer-challenged. 

After the DBT smashup, I decided I want to engage the next several sessions in more existential discourse. That's when SHE poo pooed & crabbed that it was too intellectual and off-path for the decision makers within Medicaid to approve as a treatment plan, and asked me what life & death and the here & now had to do with anything related to my stressors. (It seemed too snippy to say, "I'm trying, right now, sitting here, to not die.") I was promptly shooed out at 10:00 am, her clinical paperwork still incomplete, after she twiddled through her calendar in order to make my next appointment, which isn't until the day after I turn 41 years old, which brings the whole thing back to existentialism, which probably confused her further.

Had I known TOC was planning on coming to me via text to pout about how everyone at work hates him, and achieve reassurance that I didn't hate him on Friday, I would've made a bigger deal in the therapeutic plan under "work on personal relationships," which ended up taking a back seat to "keep criminal record clean." He's preening his peacock feathers over a gushy missive I wrote, claiming to be undeserving. Sneaked into some overt video clips he watched at my suggestion (which he "enjoyed," when their purpose was to "tear his heart out and shove it down his throat," were some subliminally included clips from "Annie Hall." 

Recalling in hindsight that we share a huge love for all things Woody Allen, he happened upon a clip in which Allen's character pouted a bit more fondly that he and Annie had broken up. Utterly unplanned by me, the universe in the here and now, as fragile as humanity can crinkle, planted Indelible Imprint #5,684 in TOC's mind that will remind me of me, which is always a good thing."

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Free-Writing Thought Exercises From the Mid-90's. Yeah, Before I Was Diagnosed as Clinically Insane & Aced My Writing Major

Free-Writing Exercise

Based on "Intelligence Test" by Alberta Turner

By: Andrea Miklasz, 1993

Preface, 2016

In my undergraduate program at Knox College in English-Writing, we'd do mind-sparking exercises upon which to build lines/phrases just from our minds (no books allowed, e.g. thesaurus). I came upon this scrappy paper leftover of thought whilst cleaning my room, looking for a tax return statement. Poems were supposed to come out of these random-mind-statements or visualizations.There is other free-writing in the folder I found, and some of it did generate very good poetry. But this batch--come to your own conclusions. 

Which begs the question...Obviously, I was clinically insane in college--why'd it take until my 30's for someone to freakin' diagnose me in a mental hospital? To preempt your question, no...I was not on any drugs when I wrote this stuff, street or Rx'd. Read these, enjoy, but if you steal any of them, I'll have you hunted down by a very hungry grizzly bear (read: my brutish son).

Ideas from 1993:

1. Catching butterflies on my tongue

2. Rub my hair with wet oatmeal

3. Advise a balloon

4. Sell a hen a lottery ticket

5. If I could lay an egg!

6. Eat pasta with an ax

7. Small silver bells in a giant berry basket

8. Eating bullets

9. Breathe milk

10. Molesting screwdriver

11. If I shrank to the size of a pea, I'd eat myself.

12. If I had a tail I'd use it as a (paper ripped, line unfinished, God only knows)

13. I offer him his money back if he can tell me what my first name is

14. His hands are bulky, wrinkled as his memory

15. Crank bugs

16. And Harry slid under the table

17. And a table of woe

18. Playing Vatican Roulette 

19. With me as the booby prize

20. Stop scratching them

Untitled

Wooden monkey doll

Reflection in the lamp

Fishless fishbowl hammer sticking out of it

Skeleton is someone's wife waiting for him

A card game

The window sill needs paint

Lou Reed - "PERFECT DAY" - Music Video Directed by Luke Bechtel

Why Do Defensive, Ann Coulter?

I didn't say you were transgender, but even if you were, why would you be so defensive and testy about it? What's the big shame issue? No one's accusing; they're just speculating. It's human nature. Perhaps concentrating on your being one of the world's meanest, crappiest quasi-journalists would be a better use of your time, instead of threatening lawsuits against EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY website that might imply that you may possibly be transgender. If you're 100% chick, rock it out, sister. Frankly, I don't care about your gender issues...I just think you're a bitch.

I will say, however, that your Adam's apple is INDEED impressive.

[Hiding under a bush]