Untitled

I know it's not museum quality masterpiece, and snobs won't like it, but I finished this painting I started in 1996 just this morning and I feel very peaceful with the finishing touch.

Importance of famille

Throughout my life journey, family has been integral.  We may not get along all the time, nor are we always effectively communicative.  When grief strikes and one of our leaders of the family moves on, emotional turmoil can wreak havoc.  Our structure crumbles somewhat, and sometimes the silliest fights become grudges.  Therapy sure would help a lot of people process things healthily rather than turn things into repressed emotion and anger.  But most are against therapy.  Sometimes I think it's because people might be afraid to get honest with one another.  None of us are perfect, so why must we live like we expect perfection from everyone?  We are humans.  Embrace our flaws.

When I finally had the chance to go to Europe and meet relatives for the first time, my whole world view changed.  Among all the new sites and discoveries I was exploring during that summer in the late nineties, I also learned of UNCONDITIONAL love from ma famille en France.  They were so honored that I saved up all the money myself because I wanted to know them.  It was incredible discovery that still warms my heart.  Despite our distances, family is in our hearts forever.

And I do believe they continue to guide us.  This I know is true.

PSA Número Dos

So I was at my local grocery store the other day and I hear a woman yank her daughter away and pull her to say, 'C'mon, we gotta get out of here.'  Was she implying that my presence wasn't good?

Rumors are NASTY things.  I don't know WHAT you've heard, or why you judge, or why you laugh, or why you smile, or why you choose to sit down next to me or why you steer clear.  Look at a person for the person they are, regardless of religious affiliation, ethnicity, political beliefs or lack thereof.  When people start judging another over RELIGION we will only encounter dilemma after dilemma.  As the old song goes,

Let It Be.

I'm also the type of person to try and walk in another's shoes when I can.  Our lives we lead are always going to vary from one to the next.  You have no idea what kind of pain or grief the person next to you may be enduring.  Be the Light for others, not the Darkness.  And if you engage in bullying, stalking, or, YES, JUDGING, you are contributing to the darkness of the world.

We don't need anymore darkness!  Snap out if it!  Coexist!  All of it!

Signed,

Your Exhausted Friend

Public Service Announcement

Stalking and following a person is really kind of insane.  Kind of?  No.  Truly a strange behavior.  Cuckoo cuckoo, one might say.

Stop the bullying, stop the games, concentrate on your own life and your own problems while I sort through mine with MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS.  

Stop the judging.

Stop it.

Therapy can benefit everyone at some point in their life.  It allows for INTROSPECTION to learn about your behaviors as you face the world each day.

Judge not, before you judge yourself.  Is that so cuckoo?

Meditation

I am looking for ways to meditate.  Sometimes life stressors can become quite difficult and it's pretty safe to say that with technology and the pace at which many live life, everything is quite amplified.  There is a delicate balance, and I am working professionally with my doctors, friends and some family to ensure that I can practice daily mindfulness.

When *triggers* occur, I have to step away.  I have a few personal practices that help me cope with the effects of trauma, and when I feel the overwhelming sounds invading my sense of peace I am learning ways in which to redirect my focus.  Sadly, I know of many who have also dealt with some difficulties in life and I will forever be protective of those sensitive beings.  I'm not a therapist, but I know what it's like to feel alone, to have tread some rough waters, and to have grieved like so many others.

Life can be really difficult, despite great peaks of joy.  I pray, and meditate, for a little more sensitivity each day.

A little sap

Sometimes a little sap is good.  It's calming and stilling and peace-provoking.  But not too much of it for this girl!  I have to be TUFF after all.

There are so many things from childhood that were so very difficult.  I escaped through gymnastics, tv and movies, and my Fisher-Price record player.

Sound of Music was always one of my favorites.



I had a terrible dream last night and my husband was trying to get me to talk about it and he got frustrated when I said I wouldn't.  It was scary, like a PTSD revelatory dream.  Like a detective dreams out solutions in their dreams, I know.  And only you and you and you know.  I used to get scared when my grandmere would get them in the night after enduring her traumatic teenage years under the occupation.  So I know what a nightmare really can be.

I know I'm not alone in this world when I say that our relationships with our fathers can be full of complexities.  Physical abuse and violence and rage is something pretty characteristic I've heard in handfuls of group therapies with others.  But when my dad helped me through the darkest moment of my life, I learned about the power of forgiveness via a certain Someone.  I don't like to go around evangelizing because I think every person's path is different and sometimes people use religion for strange reasons I still don't fully comprehend.

Friends in Need

I've been having a rough few days with the illness.  My husband is learning about it and I'm able to express myself in a safe place with him.  He's able to help me.  He is trying so hard to be my biggest support and I love him for that.  It's one thing to have people who 'care about you' but it's another thing to be supportive.

I have met many friends in need over these years.  I will never forget how I felt in that ER years upon years ago and how I was lifted.  It gave me hope.  I want to help my friends in need if they ever hit that point.  But I am small and there's not much I can do.  All I can do is be there.  All I can do is be a friend.

As I'm moving forward learning who my real friends are, I have such profound appreciation for those who love me when they know I have this stupid awful illness.  Moving forward, I am only going to surround myself with friends.



Friends.  Can I say it one more time?  Haha.

On Maturity

I take many things in life seriously.  I take my work seriously.  I take mental health seriously.  I take other people's troubled times seriously.

But it's hard.  The Pippi Longstocking in me wants to retreat back to lifting up horses with one hand and doing kartwheels in the backyard.





People often mistake 'kind' people as naive.  I've seen some stuff.  Oh Lord, have I seen some stuff.  I find kindness is a more calm way of handling some of life's difficulties.  A little rebellion and no-nonsense assertiveness comes in handy at times, but I will still remain gentle.  You can't battle violence with more violence.  Games with more games.  Loving kindness seems much more mature than all that other B.S. that's out there.

It feels so good to be getting things off my chest.

I love her songs.



I hope Mr. Morrissey feels better soon.

Academia

I got a letter in the mail stating my student loan is PAID OFF.  Yooooowwww!  I think I'll frame it.

I cannot lie, I really struggled in school. I was dedicated to my French courses and really tried my hardest is Scientific Reasoning, twice!  I had a terrible time with Finite Mathematics and philosophical logic problems.  Languages were my thing.  Had I had the psychiatric medications in college perhaps I would have been able to cope better.  And I would have done even better had i met with a regular therapist to learn ways to handle a full-time management job while juggling courses.  I started to panic about accruing debt and eventually walked away from academia with an Associates Degree to join the work force full time.  Plus I didn't know what I wanted to do.  All I knew is I wanted to speak French well enough to get myself over to France.

And by golly I did just that.

After some soul searching, I reached out to an old professor about returning to school.  I asked him for advice and he told me honestly and bravely that academia isn't all that it's cracked up to be.  I don't know if I entirely agree with that, but I do know how uh, snobby or self-righteous certain highly-educated people can act.

I have learned a lot in life, often in a pragmatic fashion.  Experience can be just as an effective learning method as textbook knowledge sometimes.  Knowledge is power and obviously learning from the masters is essential.  But I do feel strong evidence of what unique experiences have taught me about sociology, the arts, and especially the ethics of psychology and psychiatry.

I'm still learning, and I will never stop wanting to learn more.  I may not have dedicated my life to university academics, but I'd be open to take a few courses here or there and incorporate life lessons with new studies.  I can't afford to not work full time to dedicate my time to a full-fledged return, but if I could manage it somehow, I would.  

If I don't get there, I've learned how to see the positives in any situation.  I appreciate my current position and the space I've been given to create a unique experience to share with others.  It's a lesson in building something good, becoming anchored with community, and while I may have to deal with an occasional judgmental personality (which is HER or HIS problem not mine), a majority of the people are kind, friendly and really lovely to speak with regularly.  I'm grateful for those people.  

Great article to share

I connected with this piece on so many levels:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5393259?utm_hp_ref=tw

I hope that link still works.

Do I have to be extraordinary to be bipolar?  The media is saturated with mental health topics right now and those who live with mental illness are either deemed a criminal or a genius.  As the writer mentions, this is a terrible illness to live with and I absolutely hate it.  Thank you for stating this.

I am not a genius.  I am not extraordinary, other than the fact that I'm working very hard to be aware every single day of how I treat others.  I am working very hard to understand the perspective of where another person may be coming from.  I am working hard as I face SOCIETY each day to recognize where people tend to unleash their own viewpoints and project them onto others.  We become conditioned by so many things in life and it takes enormous courage to face and talk about them.

When people talk about bipolar as genius, they are only talking about a small percentage, and with tv shows like Black Box and Homeland they further exaggerate the depths of this illness.  It is not wonderful and many of us are not in high paying important positions like they are.  Many don't work because the implications of this illness are dreadful at times.  Let's get serious about it.

The number one healthy endeavor for dealing with my bipolar disorder is remaining grounded.  I have had some unique experiences, but I am, like the article says, not as extraordinary as people hope for me to be.  Please get the conversation going about how serious this illness is....not the uh, entertainment value of it.

Tears for the past, hope for the future

I have been in tears at points today listening and reading the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of D-Day today.  My grandpa landed in Normandy and fought his way to find the woman he was going to marry at a victory ball in a church in her hometown. My grandma went through her adolescence living under the occupation and while she could never have told me everything, I feel an enormous profundity when I think of her strength and resilience and sweetness as she built a new life in the U.S.  There's so much to say but all I can do is look at this picture taken before their wedding in Normandy several years after D-Day.

Uplift

Yesterday morning, a customer whom I learned is a writer stepped into my store and was overjoyed and anxious.  I had to help her find something to wear for a tv interview.  She was still working out the details but we found a few pieces she felt happy with and was overwhelmed saying, 'This kind of stuff doesn't happen to writers!'  I was so genuinely happy for her.  I don't think I could handle something on such a grand scale like that!  At least not at this point in my recovery and rehabilitation.

As I plan for my twenty year high school reunion next month, I find myself very reflective.  I'm always thinking, obviously, but many things have been weighing very, very heavy on my mind.  Some rumors have circulated regarding my high school boyfriend.  We had a very turbulent relationship, filled with physical and sexual violence, rage and mania and depression.  I was too young to process everything that went down, but it has remained with me for so many years later.  I'm using different therapies to resolve the inner turmoil, but if the rumor is indeed true, I want to build a bridge to connect and forgive.  It would heal me to face him and sit together and sing Redemption Song together.

On the notion of gossip, which I have brought up in the past, i understand that I have shared quite a bit in this blog and therefore it's subject to scrutiny.  Here's the thing:  I write because I need to.  When I write, I explore.  I discover.  I reflect.  I learn.  I am by far not a perfect person and I'm going to make mistakes.  But writing my way through the complications, traumas, misunderstandings and mysteries of my life has helped me.  I'm a communicator first and foremost.  Have I been too open?  Perhaps.  But it is one of the loveliest parts of being human, in my mind, to share our experiences with one another.

Digital Bohemian

In the small talk at work, our relation to social media is apparent in our daily conversations.  I am not Facebook friends with my staff for professional purposes, except to like their creative pages.  I was finally urged to join Pinterest and ohmygoodness, it's silly fun.  I haven't really gotten too involved just yet, but one of my coworkers told me I'm a DIgital Bohemian and it made me giggle.  

In the past, I've participated in forums where people weren't exactly too kind, but sometimes an interesting conversation would pop up.  In my first foray into the internet, I befriended a group of gals on a musician's message board and who would have thunk we'd be in touch all these years later?  It's really quite remarkable that I've felt more bonded to strangers on the internet at times than I have with real life folks.  Perhaps it's the old fashioned written word that I love so well.  In college I had a group of really funny guy friends who were all talented writers and we used to write each other letters pretending we were living in the Civil War era.  We were all so funny and imaginative back then...I miss those friends.

So, having said that, I know I have a few readers here.  Why not comment every so often?  Why so voyeuristic?  I appreciate sincere human interaction, you know.  I wonder sometimes....

Endeavors

I beat myself up over not following through on all the endeavors I have going on.  Sorry if I've disappointed people with my lack of genius masterpiece submissions.  But not everyone's got it, n'est-ce pas?  Not everyone can create a masterpiece.  Some people just create as an outlet during mania and depression, but we aren't talking about mental illness in June, right?  Right.  Moving on.

As an admirer of arts of all kinds, I never feel alone when I can connect to something that finds its way into my life, either audibly or visually.  I love finding obscure foreign and old movies at the library.  I just watched a riveting, harrowing tale called The Patience Stone, where a young Afghani woman turns to her comatose husband with a bullet in his neck to reveal all of her secrets.  Wow, what an ending.  I'll have to find the book and see how it compares.

Still, I'm seeking that community again.  I'm slowly building.  I'm slowly reaching out again after years of solitude.  I've got some friends on the dance floor.  That's a start.  I've got some new neighbors to meet.  Is there that same sense of community online as well?  There can be, in the right place.  I still find the written word to be wonderfully old-fashioned.  If I set some sort of thematic goal in this blog perhaps I could participate in the blogosphere.  But it is exactly what it is.  J'y pense et puis j'oublie.  Literally, I think about it then I forget.  This strange little portal to my thoughts is something that helps me organize my thinking.  I have loads of journals written of this crap.    It's a bit more fun to put one out here instead.  Who would have thunk blogging would be a thing?

June is bustin out all over.

Its a beautiful sunny Sunday morning here and summer is almost here.  Now that May Mental Health Awareness Month is over, it's time to move forward.  Of course I may bring a certain aspect up in the future, but it's important not to dwell.

As I've said numerous times before, many times when I begin a serious writing project, it ends in melancholia.  I know positive thinking goes a long way, but somehow past pains creep in and seem to grab hold.  I hate that.  I've been reaching out to the support group realm and the longstanding depression seems to take hold of so many others.  I really feel for the people whose depression has crippled them with suicidal thoughts.  It's no laughing matter.  I have not been that low for awhile, but I have reached that crucial point of despair in the past.  Perhaps by continuing my participation in these support groups I can lend my compassion and patience.  Sometimes all a person needs is a stranger to say, hey, I've been there, I get it.  Obviously it's more complicated than that but baby steps are key when someone has reached that depth...

I don't know what my calling in life is.  I feel like I got caught up in a lot of bs early on and I had to backtrack to be able to survive from day to day.  I'm surviving, but I'm not fulfilled.  I thought parenthood might bring me the fulfillment that I craved, but that's not going to happen.  I felt like marriage would suit me well, but the mister is suffering depression, too.  My job?  Eh, sometimes.  I have to deal with a lot of bratty, self-centered behavior but I try and make the best of it.

Hopefully by reaching out to others I can gain a better perspective on what I'm meant to be doing to feel that fleeing thought of fulfillment.

Here's to new beginnings...