This Really Happened

…and this is what bipolar cycling is like…

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I have a confession, I’m messed up to the nth at the moment and I am refusing to contact my psychiatrist to adjust my meds. That means I’m hurting myself. I’m not doing it in a way people will see, I just get to own this as a fact.

A large part of me wants to keep doing it because meds suck ass. The side effects are gnarly and most of the time it’s trading one feeling for another. Example: mania/hypomania is treated with a mood stabilizer that usually makes me feel tired all the freaking time. I like being able to commit to something and function well enough to do it. When I’m tired and I feel like my life is being sucked out of me by the universe; I loathe the idea of being drugged lazy.
My present solution to this quagmire is to be an obstinate cow and choose to cycle rather than get level and deal.

What the hell is cycling?Continue reading →

Sharing is Caring

Boy with Asperger’s Syndrome illustrates Autism with poem

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BenjaminI proudly wave my flag in support for mental health awareness. I just found this beautiful post that exemplifies how beautiful mental impairment and brain trauma can be. How it can make others realize the ‘abnormal’ aren’t so different than ‘normal’. Gorgeous souls like this one make the bad times just as promising as the good times.

10-year-old Benjamin Giroux, a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome, was asked to write a poem with the prompt “I Am” for National Poetry Month. The fifth grade student from Cumberland Head Elementary, in New York state, penned a touching piece that went wildfire on the webs becoming a viral hit.

The poem is both heartbreaking and full of hope. The unique perspective of this young boy has struck a chord in many who weren’t aware that the struggles and feelings of someone with autism could be so very common and mirror their own sense of free falling through life. He’s seemingly bridged people from all backgrounds, with a handful of sentences that tear into the body of isolation the stigma of mental illness carries.

Asperger’s Syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

His letter was shared by The National Autism Association on their Facebook page and received more than 30k shares.

This is what he wrote…

I am odd, I am new
I wonder if you are too
I hear voices in the air
I see you don’t, and that’s not fair
I want to not feel blue
I am odd, I am new
I pretend that you are too
I feel like a boy in outerspace
I touch the stars and feel out of place
I worry what others might think
I cry when people laugh, it makes me shrink
I am odd, I am new
I understand now that so are you
I say I, “feel like a castaway”
I dream of a day that’s okay
I try to fit in
I hope that someday I do
I am odd, I am new.

~Benjamin Giroux

 

This Really Happened

Pain is powerful

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A few years ago I began developing a lot of crappy symptoms that snowballed into inflammation issues: fibromyalgia (I call it miscellaneous drawer illness), chronic fatigue syndrome (non-tse tse fly sleeping sickness), arthritis (old before I’m old bone disorder), and migraines (no shitter headaches). I have immunity issues that predate the pain party but this is straight-out-stupid-ridiculous body aches, swelling and discomfort and the general description of “chronic pain” is an understatement.

Pain is powerful.Continue reading →

This Really Happened

Late to a Funeral

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I have a lot of baggage.

Yeah I know, I shouldn’t brag about all the crap that has made me this awesome, but it’s all truth; I’ve enjoyed a lot of life’s scars. For the most part I’ve made peace with my past, or just got so removed from it in the telling and retelling from doctor to doctor that I’ve began to feel very detached to my own life story. It’s surreal to talk about things that have happened to me when they don’t feel like they are mine; many times it feels like something I’ve read in books or movies I’ve seen. I don’t even feel familiar with the person I was enough to write about my past.Continue reading →

This Really Happened

What’s My Name?

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I grew up an angry, broken girl who hated herself and everyone else. After many years of horror and heartbreak, I lost it all. Rather, I gave it all in. I entered Cedar-Sinai Thalians Psych Center in September 2010 but the same person did not come out. As time went by all remnants that connected me to the broken girl who’d been before began to untether; each knot freeing me to have a life the person I was born and raised to be never could have. Five years later I don’t ever feel like I remember who she was. I don’t remember what it felt like to be Christal. She feels like someone I vaguely once knew, but I have sharper memories of acquaintances I met in passing.Continue reading →

Challenge Accepted

Senior Citizen Discount

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I have a goal, really more of a challenge for this month: have a conversation with a stranger.

I’m sure that sounds like cake to many but I have social anxiety, and leaving the house is often a cause of a case of the fits. I have been known to sit in my car outside a store, arguing with myself about what door to enter before deciding it’s too stressful and going back home. This might sound ridiculous, but trust me, everyone has some strange situational weakness that causes a weird repeat reaction.

It’s called a coping mechanism, and it’s only funny when it’s not you.

Today is a crap day for me, and I can’t back out of it; I have a cat scan due for my throat. I’ll be in a new place; strangers will touch my body. None of that makes me feel comfortable, but it’s a must-be-done.Continue reading →

Ms Ali Cat Says

If Lost Please Return to 2016.

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I am a big planner.

By planner I mean that I micromanage all things in my life and it often means that at the end of the year my resolutions are all focused on the year before. And there is almost always more than half dozen in number. They are like laws I make based upon my previous misbehaviour and their restrictions are an albatross around my neck. This year I decided to pick one damn thing that was doable and wouldn’t break my soul were I to wander off path at times.

Less a resolution, and more of a reminder.

This year I would do one thing a week that matters to me and makes me feel good about myself.

Seems simple enough. When all that mental crap grows and makes my days a trial; being sick and in pain, comes down around me; remembering that I have the chance, the choice if you will, to do something that matters is hard. Being chronically ill often feels dark and I need a tap on the shoulder reminding me that I can feel better with small things that I control.

2016, I’m happy to meet you. You don’t seem so bad, and if I lose my way please gently guide me back from 2015. There is no good reliving my woe and freedom is ahead.