makeitmindful

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“Oh yeah I knew someone with schizophrenia!  Whenever they switched personalities I’d reintroduce myself.”

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the psychotic dilemma

psychotic hell brain: here’s a delusion me: ok. i believe it. rational mind: here’s the knowledge that it’s a delusion. me: ok. it is. rational mind: so now..do u believe the delusion me: yes rational mind: wh-

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The director of cybersecurity from the Electronic Freedom Foundation is offering to help women who have been threatened with compromise of their devices.

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Watch: Kristen Bell opens up about the mental health double standard and how she manages her own struggle.

Follow @this-is-life-actually

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Vale here.  I’ve been working on an illustration zine which explores the ways in which I try to heal and take care myself in the various facets of my mental illness.  Before starting this zine, I hadn’t been drawing on a regular basis for several years, and I was worried I’d lost my (meager, but still proud of it) self-taught skill.  But, I think I’m doing okay! 

Since I moved out of the family home and switched my primary job, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better about things!  But North America is a dumpster fire, and well, I always know that anxiety or depression could return in full force someday.

1) A reinterpretation of an old OC of mine.  I am trying to forgive myself and her for the flaws in my writing back then.

2) Dream state

3) Sparkle jar and my opinion on the mindfulness movement (disclaimer: I’m not super into it)

4) My old OC, reimagined grown up, because originally she didn’t survive the end of the story.

5) Exploring spirituality

6) The adventures of Harmony, The Calming Cat!  A little crocheted buddy given to me by my partner, who sits on my desk.

7) The bay in the moon

8) My attempts to ~*~be one with nature ~*~ usually fail because nature makes me very uncomfortable and I am a weenie

[makeitmindful]

“Guide to Life” (June 2018)

Vale here.  I was feeling angry about fascism and wrote an angsty teen poem about it, I guess?  Not to put down angtsy teen poetry, it’s just that I was thinking about my experiences growing up and comparing it to being a millenial now.

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We didn't ask for this! We read books and wanted to be heroes but if everyone is a hero, does that mean no one is? or does it just mean that everyone tries to be a decent person?

Trying, we played games and wanted to be sorcerers but magic isn't real, and if nothing we do really matters, is it better that we saw the player manual?

The guide to life that was spoken and written into us programmed and acted into us worked and worked and worked into us while we were just trying to be

Of course, I understand that they see us buried in our books and games and videos and message threads; They think, "So unprepared"

And yes, I understand that they find us in our circles casting spells, summoning, healing, banishing, and think, "So immature"

I do, I understand that they look at us with our garish lipstick, ten different teas, half-crushed flowers kept, crinkled stories; They think, "So vain"

No, we are just the vessels of the whole world screaming

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“dissociation free formation” (June 2018)

Vale here.  I tried to wright a poem to describe how I experience dissociation, which doesn’t happen often to me but when it does it’s weird as fuck!

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I am untethered my mind has shifted, slipped and now I float in the vertical sea it's harder to move my brain full of cotton my arms press through pillowy air my lips and teeth fumble around what I'm trying to say is this strangeness lonely? burning? soft suffocation? I can feel eyes on me but my own are everywhere I've dropped my hands and now they will not move

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“I can cook for you” (May 2018)

Vale here.  This is a poem I wrote for my new roomies.  That is, I wrote it thinking about my roomies and...never...showed it to them...>_>

I’m actually feeling pretty good about myself these days, but with all the fascist nonsense going on in the background it’s still kinda hard.

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Sometimes I can't believe you still want me around, like, I'm always on my phone because everything stresses me out, and the dishes still aren't done

And I'm always wearing the same outfit at home because I can spend half an hour picking out my work clothes, spiraling is what my mind does all the time and I know this isn't what you expected

I have four jobs and I don't do any of them well, because my brain quit me after high-school, y'see I really am just a mess

There are things I want to do all the time, like, I have ambitions, I do, really want to be there for people, but

all the things, all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the time, all the time!

You understand?

But I can cook for you. See, I just got a new casserole dish the other day; it's glass, so everything looks good in it.

I don't know which spices go together, but I know what I like to eat. I can cook that for you. It'll look great in the new dish.

We have tea, too, and whisky for later. I'll buy some flowers on my way home from work with money I shouldn't spend.

I can't tidy the living room before you get here, but I hope you smell what I'm cooking on your way down the hall, coming home.

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two poems

Vale here.  In prep for our (fingers crossed for proposal approval) May gallery show, I’m going over recent and older poems and tweaking them for nice and shiny presentation!

These two have similar themes, but were written years apart and have different vibes.

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untitled (May 2014)

To fold up my limbs

like petals,

and in the darkness

hide,

and forget.

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Nothing (Dec 2017)

I'll sit here and watch nothing unfold

Great chasms into which my worries are swallowed

Waves of silence breaking them down

into wonder, I lie

and I am nothing too

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“Sinful” (Dec 2017)

Vale here.  I was with Bipin and Blake at an open mic yesterday, sharing poetry, paintings, and stories about mental illness and mental health. Here is one of the prose poems (?) that I performed.  It was my first time doing “stand-up poetry”!

This poem was inspired by another one I wrote in 2012 during a Poem-A-Day challenge.  I was in a different place with my mental health then, not necessarily better, but focused on different things than I am now.  I hope that this piece shows how my thinking changed from teenage years/young adulthood to now, at 27.

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I was never religious, but growing up in a white-dominated society does strange things. As a teenager my mental battles were torn between what was right and what felt good, because those two things were always, always mutually exclusive.  It was bearable to be unhappy and righteous, I said to myself, and unforgiveable to be happy and sinful.

Naturally, ten years later I sin every fucking day.  I curse.  I shun the Church.  I kiss my girlfriend.  I wear men’s clothes.  Sometimes all in the same hour.

Every once in a while my brother and I talk about my gender, and his religious beliefs. He says he doesn’t support me as a trans person, but he still loves me.  I tell him: when it comes to queerness, that’s impossible.  I see how much I’ve hurt him but I can’t take those words back, because I feel deep in my gut that they’re true.  He talks about how he’s trying to be a good Christian, says he’s worried about my eternal life.  What he’s actually saying is that I’m going to hell.  I’m going to hell.  The devil put queerness in me and when I die I’m gonna stroll up to the fire, toast a marshmallow, and give him a high five.

Ten years later I’m actually fighting for myself.  My mental health has never been worse, but it has also never been better. Storms rage, summers get hotter, winters get colder, the sea rises, and I clink my tumbler of whisky against my friends’ glasses of beer and wine, and we open our god-forsaken millennial mouths wide and laugh and hold each other as the world ends.

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“I think it’s working” (written Dec 2017)

Vale here.  I was with Bipin and Blake at an open mic yesterday, sharing poetry, paintings, and stories about mental illness and mental health. Here is one of the prose poems (?) that I performed.  It was my first time doing “stand-up poetry”!

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I’m eloquent and sweet and all business and I think it’s working.

I hope it’s working.  I hope I’m fooling everyone and they can’t see how confused and scared I am all the time.

But some people find out.  My Grade 11 English teacher said she was worried about my stress levels because I looked so serious in class.  I was surprised, but I laughed it off and said I must be just focused and interested, guess my face is just like that.  And I meant it, except I had never hated myself more than in Grade 11.

A coworker during my gap year told me that she was unnerved by me because she got the sense all my emotional expressions were faked.  Surprised, again.  I apologized and leaned a bit into the truth, mentioned something about preferring to stay positive.  And I meant it, except most days I drove to that job with dread slowly filling my stomach, and talked to my boss while fighting back tears.  Except her observation terrified me, because either she was wrong and my façade wasn’t good enough, or she was right and I was the only one being fooled.

A couple of years ago I was arguing with my brother about something mundane, except even mundane incidents with my brother can fill me with such rage as I never feel with anyone else.  The more shame and self-loathing I felt, the cheerier my voice got.  And then my brother said, “Why are you being so facetious?”  He sighed in exasperation and turned away, and instead of responding I took that moment to Google

“facetious”,

and even as I wanted nothing more than to disappear, I chuckled to myself at the awkwardness of the moment.  I don’t even know how to pronounce “facetious”.  Always the delayed comeback.

Well, with my brother there is often no comeback, no reply at all, just silence and downcast eyes as he asks louder and louder if I’m listening to anything he says.  Facetiousness is better than silence, when I can’t think of anything to say that won’t bring about more derision and disappointment.  Facetiousness means I can pretend that everything he says doesn’t reek of condescension, I can pretend that 75% of the time he talks I don’t want to start throwing chairs and breaking plates and screaming, and screaming, and screaming.  

I make a lot of facial expressions, sometimes just because I find them or my predicament to be amusing.  Sometimes I play things up because I like the drama. But I’ve always considered these expressions to be an amplified version of myself, my reality.  

Since my coworker’s observation, I think I’m better at noticing the little lies.  A smile here, a cheerful word there, “No problem”, “No problem”,

“No problem.”  

When my brother speaks to me I want to throw chairs. When my boss calls me out I want to walk away and never be seen again.  When my parents ask me about my job search I want to die.  

Maybe it’s not just anxiety that I’m hiding.

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“Hypocrite” (written Dec 2017)

Vale here.  I was with Bipin and Blake at an open mic yesterday, sharing poetry, paintings, and stories about mental illness and mental health.  Here is one of the prose poems (?) that I performed.  It was my first time doing “stand-up poetry”!

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One day, all that I know of my childhood will be the things that I wrote and the mistakes that I made. And I will think that I truly was stupid.

When I was younger I thought I knew myself. But it was twisted: a reflection in a foggy mirror, in a mug of tea, in the grimy window of a bus flashing by.  I didn’t see the good in myself, or the real bad, so I assumed that other people didn’t see it either.  

And when they inevitably did, I shunned them, called them liars in my head.  Wrecked all manner of mental furniture.  That compliment: a veiled threat!  That call-out: utter nonsense!  They don’t see what’s really going on.  They don’t know me like I do

(I say to myself, all while proceeding to never tell anyone how I feel).  

When people saw me, I called them liars because I was afraid of not knowing myself.  Because I knew that I didn’t know.  

And on the rare occasions that I did, and what I saw was ugliness, it was so much easier to say it to myself than to hear someone say it to me.  I could call myself names for years and think about knives for hours, telling myself that I didn’t have to change because I was doing the work of beating myself up already.  But if someone so much as brushed up against my wounds, they blazed.  How dare you—only I can call me stupid.  Only I can call me insensitive.  Only I can tell me what I did wrong.

Turning endlessly in my own little hurricane.

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Rollercoaster (2018)

Hi everyone. It’s Bipin. I’m one of the members of Make It Mindful. Since 2017 I’ve been writing written pieces about my experiences about my mental health. This piece is titled “Rollercoaster”.

Does it scare you? Those high highs and those low lows. Never really time before you're running down the street and flying into space. The infinite expanses of your mind and the nothingness of everything else.The spreading of too little butter over too much bread.

What does that even mean? Panromantic demisexual, that barely counts as a sexuality. You're just saying words, they don't mean anything. You're just stuck with nothing but so paralyzed with choice that it makes you want to jump off a building.

I don't know how to answer you, nothing makes sense right now.

I think I saw magic the other day. This woman played a Hand Pan right before midnight. Have you ever heard a Hand Pan? It was like a lullaby in a movie. I think it's the closest I'll get to magic.

After that, I realized every high I feel is equal to every low that's there. I'm just lost in the middle of nowhere.

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Apollo Architect is working with Make It Mindful! They are putting out one single every month this year, with 50% of the proceeds from selling the singles going towards the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA).

In February they put out the second of the singles, Everlast and it premiered on Canadian Beats. Go check it out at .he link above!

Artwork by Bipin Kumar.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apolloarchitect/ Bandcamp: apolloarchitect.bandcamp.com/ Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/apolloarchitect

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Hi everyone! I’m Bipin Kumar, one of the members of Make It Mindful. Through my music project, Apollo Architect, I am putting out one single every month this year, with 50% of the proceeds from selling the singles going towards the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA).

The first of the singles is Arthouse and it premiered on Canadian Beats. Go check it out at the link above!

Artwork by Bipin Kumar.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apolloarchitect/ Bandcamp: apolloarchitect.bandcamp.com/ Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/apolloarchitect

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Vale poem #3 - Washing dishes in my house, alone

Vale here.  I didn’t complete my poem-a-day challenge, by I’m happy with what I did!  Here’s a poem about mindfulness.

—

In the afternoon when my eyelids are heavy

and the couch is warm

and my feet are bare

and I’ve just finished a solid cup of tea,

I drag myself to the sink

and do the dishes.

I’m always warmer after doing so.

The light, turning and sharpening,

glances from the snow-shaped edges of roofs

or through the gaps between the birch leaves and seed pouches

My hands too, turning and buffing plates, bowls,

my cup of tea

I breathe and I think

It’s not so bad.