manicpixieirl

[manicpixieirl]

november 2, 2023

The day I had my first seizure was the scariest day of my life. I don’t even remember it. I remember waking up in a hospital bed in Greenwich, Connecticut. The sheets were scratchy and I had an IV, heart monitor, and leftover wires stuck to my head from the EEG they performed while I was in a mini-coma.

I slept for two days, I was in the hospital for five. They didn’t let me shower, I forgot how to read. I made a nurse cry when I threw a copy of a book I could not read at the wall of my hospital room and begged for her to let me take a shower. I could feel her empathy radiate towards me when she picked up the book I had just thrown and set it at the end of my bed. She was crying for me when she had to deny my fifth request for a shower -

I was so desperate to be clean of this event, I even told her I would shower with the door open and she could pop in to make sure I didn’t suffer any more mysterious convulsions. Her name was Sarah, and I could tell she felt for me when she had to tell me no, I could not wash myself clean of this. I never could.

I did not remember the battle, the seizure itself, but I had the scars - most of them on my chest, a result derived from the moment I stopped breathing altogether and the EMTs had to do that thing where they rub two shock-ya-back-to-life-thingies together and yell “CLEAR!”

That’s the scariest part of it, not remembering. Not remembering the migraine I had for two days leading up to my seizure, not remembering grabbing lunch with a friend the week before, not remembering saying goodbye to my family when they moved to Texas a month earlier. A month of memories, ash. I lost a lot, mostly memories and people. My partner at the time, who found me asphyxiating on my own vomit mid-event, broke up with me a few weeks later.

“I just… didn’t sign up to date someone who has all of this going on.”

Okay, fair. I did have a lot going on, but I am a person, and people typically have a lot going on. Especially people who had recently flatlined twice in Greenwich Fucking Connecticut. All I had to hold onto when I was in the hospital was him, and hold onto him I did. Probably a little too tightly.

While I was in my mini-coma, he was responsible for filling out my intake forms. He knew I was bipolar, yet when the form required him to check yes or no as to whether or not the patient suffers from a mental-illness, he chose to check no. I guess the town was too small and the stigma too large.

I didn’t find out that seizures and bipolar disorder were related until I had dinner with my ex-almost-girlfriend (don’t ask, that’s for another day) about a month later.

“Okay but how do you know it had to do with my bipolar disorder?”

“Quincy, I work for the state psych-ward. When we admit patients with bipolar disorder, we don’t ask them if they’ve ever had a seizure, we ask them when their last seizure was.”

Yes, chef.

I spent months thinking that my body could betray me at any moment, that I could just fall over and seize and die with no rhyme or reason. All of this because someone checked no on an intake form when they should have checked yes.

Thanks, asshole.

It knocked the breath out of me to feel someone’s shame surrounding my mood disorder, so in that moment, I promised I would never deny it myself.

So here it is; 2020 I had a life-threatening seizure that was triggered by a manic-high. As a result, I will be on anticonvulsants for the rest of my life. I have a whole lot of this going on, but it’s who I am. To deny my illness is to deny myself, and I will not move through life in denial, but in radical acceptance of who I am.

My pill container is full. Two blue pills a day, one yellow, one white, one orange and two chewy adult-vitamins; I like tasting fruit-medley in the morning when I sit with a cocktail of medications in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. It’s been three and a half years since my last seizure, my meds are working, and I have a partner who will not hesitate to check yes on an intake form if and when I have another epileptic event (it’s inevitable). I am sitting here with a thankful heart, hoping that both Sarah The Nurse and my ex-almost-girlfriend are doing well.

I haven’t had a seizure since my first, but it was bad enough to warrant my being mediated for epilepsy for the rest of my life. Every few years, I have to up my dosage and make sure they keep working the way they are supposed to. Every time I up the dosage, I experience a pretty dramatic shift in my mood. I become paranoid, irritable, and reactive. This is the first time I have upped my anticonvulsants since I sought out a separate prescription to help with my mania, and it sucks. Sometimes, I just have to admit - this shit sucks.

I started this blog to document my success story with Abilify, but I feel like as soon as I started to adjust to that, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Then, when I was just starting to get used to my ADHD meds, I was asked to readjust to a new anticonvulsant dosage. I feel like the entire time I have been blogging, I have simultaneously been adjusting - but maybe that’s just life, having a whole lot of this going on, but adjusting anyways. Maybe this isn’t a blog about med-changes after all,

maybe it’s just a blog about me.

[manicpixieirl]

october 19, 2023

One thing that most writers can agree on is that sometimes, writing hurts. Especially if you are a writer who finds yourself navigating mental illness.

Writing opens up wounds that I wish didn’t exist, and for the past month or so, I have felt so full of wounds that I couldn’t bear to open any old ones. Sometimes it’s important to take a break, especially when my definition of art also means pain. No matter how cathartic revisiting and writing about a tough moment might be, sometimes I just can’t.

I took a much-needed break and I think I am ready to revisit those old wounds, explore them, and stitch them back together - maybe they’ll heal entirely, maybe they’ll leave scars,

but scars are just stories on skin.

When I first went to visit my psychiatrist, he prescribed me Abilify to address my bipolar symptoms. I mentioned earlier that it’s been helping with my manic episodes, I wish I could say the same for depressive episodes. They seem to be a little more frequent, and it’s hard to differentiate what is situational and what is chemical.

I have experienced two profound losses in the past two months; I lost a former student to a tragic car accident, I lost my family dog to cancer. And it hurts. Writing about it hurts. But I am here and I am feeling and I am so lucky to be feeling in this world when so many people are numb.

I have been focusing more on the art of feeling than the art of writing; setting the joint down when I am experiencing an intense emotion, taking the time to work through panic attacks rather than smoke them away.

As I write this, I am on my way home from a week-long vacation and it’s the longest I’ve gone without smoking in about six months. I feel great, and although I experienced a day of very intense emotion on my final day, I navigated it sober. I learned how to let people into my pain, I finally realized that I don't have to do it alone. Wounds aren’t meant to be bandaged in singularity, we are meant to heal with our communities- not in numb isolation.

I’ve been focusing more on my emotional recovery, especially navigating a healthy relationship with substances, more than I have been focusing on writing. It was important to take a break and focus on bringing myself back into balance. Given my diagnosis, I will likely take many breaks, my survival as an artist and a human depends on it.

As I write this, I have been sober from my drug of choice, alcohol, for five days, five months, and five days. 555 in numerology means change. I have changed and I am ready to make another. Although I haven’t completely quit smoking weed, I have noticed that the moments where I would pick up the lighter are the same moments that I would pick up the bottle. The only difference is that instead of blacking out and being a literal menace to society, I am either eating or sleeping. Either way, I am numb and not experiencing life. I am not quite sure whether or not I want to quit, but I do know that I want to quit using it as an escape. This week has shown me that feeling is worth it, that I’m not only able to feel, I am able to feel and survive the intensity of it.

I spent twenty-six years terrified of my own emotional reactions to my feelings. I remember openly weeping in an Applebees when I was fourteen, unable to still my sobs over strawberry lemonade because I had done something to let my parents down. I remember screaming at my mom when I was in seventh grade, I don’t remember what about but I do remember that she was pregnant and I wouldn’t stop screaming until I lost my voice. All I can remember about my childhood is being happy or sad, intensely, and never both at the same time. I was teeter- tottering on one side or the other. Always. I feel so much empathy for my parents, it couldn’t have been easy to raise an undiagnosed, emotional-tornado.

I had my first drink when I was fourteen, I was also fourteen the first time I smoked. I remember feeling normal when I drank. Less heightened, less myself. So whenever I felt scared of myself and had access to alcohol, a blunt, or even an excess of food, I would use it as a way to disconnect from myself. And here I am, twenty-seven, and I feel like I don’t know myself at all now that the impulsivity and emotional reactions have lulled into manageable feelings.

I may not know this new version of myself yet, but I sure am excited to put in the work to meet myself exactly where I am. I don’t think “here” is such a terrible place to be.

[manicpixieirl]

october 15, 2023

I haven’t written in a few weeks, I think it’s because I’m afraid of what will come up if I open myself up to it. I’ve been good about consistently posting up until now. Part of my pause was purely ego, I didn’t know if something was worth writing if I wasn’t posting it. I didn’t write, I’ve been afraid to admit that I don’t think I’ve been taking as good of care of myself as I know I could be. I don’t say this in judgment, I say it in observation of myself- I know I could be doing better. I’ve been wondering what the point is.

I track my moods every day, on a scale of negative two to positive two. Negative two: “I really do not want to exist right now.” Positive two: “Nothing can fucking stand in my way.” I journal about the feelings associated with each number I give myself, lately my journal has been full of negative-one reflections. I was hoping that when I started this blog, it would reflect my progress. I was equating meditation with progression. This was intended to be a reflection of how well I was doing, instead it is a reflection of how hard this is. I wish I had positive news to share, it’s discouraging to share that this is a LOT harder than I thought it would be.

If anything, I owe myself honesty and consistency. I owe it to myself to admit that med-management isn’t perfect and being bipolar is fucking hard. I just need to say it; this is hard. I feel like there was a part of me that thought that taking meds would cure it, take away the negative-one days altogether, but after a few weeks of depression, isolation, and reflection, I don’t think that’s the point at all.

I think the point is to be aware of the days and to acknowledge that they will pass. The point is that I am eventually going to feel my feelings whether I like it or not, so I might as well write. I think the point is awareness.

I am thankful for this awareness, it will guide me to my next day. No matter where my mood falls on the scale, I can handle it, I can write about it, I can share it. That is the whole point.

[manicpixieirl]

[manicpixieirl]

september 30, 2023

What to do when your therapist cancels on you at a time where you really needed her:

Cry

Hope your therapist is okay because they haven’t canceled once in 3 and a half years

Send a voice message to your friend about how disappointed you are that they had to cancel (be excruciatingly honest about how disappointed you are, it will help)

Watch Teen Mom to remind you that things could be worse

Eat a full meal, especially if you typically forget to eat when you are overwhelmed

Read a book to put your brain in a different universe

Do not smoke weed to deal with your disappointment

In that order.

My therapist and I have been working together for almost four years. I started having massive panic attacks at the start of COVID due to the amount of time I had to spend alone, that’s why I started seeing her. I didn’t tell her I had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder until our third or fourth session, to which she answered, “Oh honey, I know.” I wanted to learn how to cope with feelings of loneliness and isolation, but throughout our time together I have learned how to cope with my symptoms of bipolar, as well. We used to meet once a week; now we meet monthly.

I care for her deeply and I like to think she cares for me, too. She’s never canceled a session before and today I am worried for her. I am also worried because I really needed today’s session and now I don’t know what to do.

So I cried, wished her well, sent a voice message to my best friend, watched the Teen Mom season 7 reunion, ate a good meal, and put my nose in a book, and intentionally didn’t smoke away my feelings. I feel better, but there are still some things I wish I could have talked to her about today. Instead I am stuck with myself and I don’t have a PHD. Although I have a lot of empathy for others, I have very little for myself.

I don’t know what is going on or why, but I have been pretty low for the past couple of weeks. I am feeling disenchanted again. I have been white-knuckling it through the past 15 days, waiting patiently for this appointment.

When she called me to cancel, I felt deflated, and I spiraled. I don’t want to have to white-knuckle life until she can reschedule.

When I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building after listening to her voicemail letting me know she needed to cancel, I noticed a notification from CO-STAR on my phone.

“It’s okay to not be okay.”

I called my partner and when he asked if I was okay, I lied to him through my tears. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, smiling and crying at the same time.

He took a deep breath and said, “You know, it is okay to not be okay right now.” He was on a work trip and I didn’t want him to worry, but I think he worries more when he knows that I’m lying.

So instead I said, “I’m okay with not being okay.”

I think maybe I needed her to cancel today. Maybe I needed to learn how to navigate these feelings of discomfort on my own. Maybe I needed to learn that it’s okay to feel lonely sometimes.

This afternoon I felt lonely. Tonight I feel less lonely. Maybe being stuck with myself isn’t such a bad place to be.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my therapist. I have a dedicated team of professionals that help me navigate my co-occurring Bipolar and Seizure Disorders. I have a great neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist; but my psychologist is my favorite. Once a month, she holds up a mirror and allows me to see who I am, both in good and in bad light.

This afternoon, I had to hold up that mirror on my own.

Here’s what I saw:

I was able to navigate a change in routine.

I was able to articulate my disappointment and move forward from that place.

I was able to admit to myself that it is okay to not be okay.

This afternoon, I was not okay. After taking some time to myself, I held up the mirror and realized that although I was not okay in the moment, I would be okay eventually.

I feel better now that I took the time I needed to read and be and cope with this feeling of isolation, but now my empathy is taking over and I really hope that she is okay. And if she isn’t okay, I hope she knows that it’s okay to not be okay.

[manicpixieirl]

september 30, 2023

I’ve been walking a lot. I have no clear destination in mind, I just wake up and go. One mile becomes two, two becomes three, and before I know it I’ve walked four miles and I’m back home. I feel clear and present. I am engaged in my relationship, I am engaged in work, and I finally have enough energy to get up and walk. I didn’t know that consistent morning walks could indicate so much progress.

I am worried about what is going to happen when it gets too cold and dark to walk. Winter is always the hardest. In Maine, it gets cold in October and in November, the sun can set as early as 3:45. I am scared, but I will walk while I can. For as long as I can. With every walk, I return to myself.

Last week my therapist had to cancel on me and I didn’t know what to do so I walked. Work got overwhelming, so I walked.

I got anxious about whether or not my depression impacts my partner, so I walked.

What will I do when I can’t walk? What will I do when the sun disappears behind the clouds for months?

Maybe I will write. Writing feels like walking for my brain. It feels like letting out everything that’s been trapped inside. I am thankful for walks, but I am also thankful for the page, for my keyboard, for my brain that contains so much that I can place the overflow on a word document.

The next time my therapist has to cancel, I will write.

The next time work gets overwhelming, I will write.

The next time my anxious attachment style shows itself, I’ll write through it.

I have had increased motivation to walk, my sleep is better, and my lows are more manageable, but there are some side effects popping up from my medication.

I've been on Abilify for bipolar disorder for a few months now; long enough to feel balanced in moments of complete imbalance, long enough to develop a response time rather than have an immediate reaction when presented with a difficult or challenging situation. All this progress aside, I have to admit, it’s been months since I’ve experienced mania and sometimes I miss it.

Mania is a symptom of bipolar disorder that makes you feel like you’ve been touched by God. It's a high like no other. One of the most common questions on any intake forms that I have to fill out before I see a new specialist is how often I feel like I have a God Complex. My God Complex is gone and I'm forced to look for genuine self esteem, I can’t rely on my mania to provide that for me.

Another side effect that I noticed was that my ability to focus had gone completely down the drain. Deadlines used to be mania-inducing; manic-fixations on projects used to help me complete them. Now, deadlines are just dates on a calendar. I used to confidently enter a state of fixation that would push me towards the finish line of projects, deadlines, and even finishing chores.

I’ve figured out that mania isn’t always risky behavior and over-confidence, sometimes it’s hyperfixation. Sometimes it’s that heightened call to action that comes after the pressure of having put a few things off for a couple of weeks.

I can’t do that anymore. I have to learn new ways to manage my time and manage my deadlines, but it’s so hard when my attention seems to be in a million different places rather than where it should be. After talking with my psychiatrist about it, we came to the conclusion that I have another diagnoses - My mania helped me with my ADHD symptoms, it helped my ADHD so much that I went undiagnosed until my last Psychiatric appointment.

ADHD. That’s right, my mania was helpful. Now that the mania is lessening, we are discussing medication for ADHD. Another pill to help with another symptom.

I will accept all of the help I can. It feels good to be open to help after a decade of refusal. I just hope that help comes before the snow does.

[manicpixieirl]

september 17, 2023

I was a teacher for four years before I decided to switch careers. The empathy of it all was too much for me.

If you really want to know how much some children go through, teach middle school in a small town. I’ve been called away from weekend bar-be-ques because a student of mine overdosed. I’ve lost sleep over the families who cannot afford heat during a Maine winter, so they risk heating their home with space heaters; the families who wonder how they will pay their electric bill and where their next meal will come from.

I had to quit teaching because of that; because of the empathy and grief I felt for children who were not permanent fixtures in my life, but passersby. It began to suffocate me. I was pouring into children that did not belong to me, I was pouring into everything except for myself. I was twenty-five when I quit.

After I quit teaching, I thought I was finished feeling too much for people- I thought I was feeling just the right amount, but no one tells you how much your body feels when an old student dies.

In Education 101, my professor warned my class about becoming too involved in a student’s life. What they didn’t tell me is that throughout the course of my career, whether I retire as a teacher or quit after four years, I would have a student die. And no one taught me how to navigate this specific grief, the grief of losing someone I haven’t seen in a year, yet I know I felt love for them and that they looked up to me.

No one told me how I would feel when I remembered that I still have the craft they made for me in eighth grade art class in 2019, but now they are dead and their art feels dead in my hands when I hold it.

Now they’re gone, and I’m a wreck but I don’t know if I have the right to be, because I haven’t seen them in a year.

I lost my first student to a tragic car accident last weekend. There is nothing insightful about this post, I have no wisdom to offer - just grief. Immense, indescribable grief for a person who I know had a mark to leave on this world bigger than the tire tracks on route two, the vehicle braking too hard in their last seconds.

I am having a hard time driving, I think about the life lost every time that I have gotten behind the wheel since I heard she died…

.. Since I heard she died.

I heard she died.

She died.

The empathy of this all is too much.

[manicpixieirl]

august 21, 2023

I’ve been thinking a lot about positivity- how in moments of crisis, it can do more harm than good. I’ve been thinking about how when someone is drowning, positivity can sound a lot like, “Things could get better… if you only knew how to swim.”

Sometimes I just can’t bring myself to swim, and in those moments, positivity feels like I’m breathing in toxic fumes.

One thing I believe that most people who struggle with mental illness can agree upon is that being told to swim when you don’t know how isn’t helpful; positivity can be more cruel than kind. Radical acceptance is a more appropriate thing to embrace in these moments.

I am positive I am drowning. I am positive that I don’t know how to swim. I radically accept that I need help.

My drowning days are the days that I need to accept that I cannot swim and acknowledge that it's okay to not be okay. If I stop trying to swim, if I stop thrashing and fighting with the water, I will float. If I stop fighting and start floating, I can ask for help, and sometimes asking for help feels even harder than learning how to swim.

I have had a couple of drowning days lately, but I am re-learning how to ask for help.

Why is it so hard to ask for help? It makes me feel small, codependent, and weak. I don’t know where I got those beliefs from, but I know that reaching outside of myself feels like outsourcing my independence and I hate it. Just because I hate it doesn’t mean I don’t need it.

It took me a long time to realize that asking for help on the days where I need it the most doesn’t make me weak, it makes me human. Everybody needs help, and the times I have asked for help when I was feeling depressed, manic, or a combination of the two has probably saved my life ten times over.

The other day I needed help. Over the course of the past 4 or 5 years, I have hand selected the people I know will help me.

They don’t say, “Just swim.”

Instead they say, “I will help you float.”

Last Saturday I was struggling with an existential, overwhelming feeling of loneliness. I felt the water in my lungs. My family had just left after an incredible visit and for the first time in days I wasn’t going to be laughing at dinner with my family, going home with a full belly and a happy heart.

I grieve my family every time they go back to Texas. I miss them so much when they are gone and on the days following their departure, I always feel lonely. Loneliness and drowning go hand in hand.

They went home to Texas, and I was in Maine screaming, “Help me!”

One of my people heard me calling.

I am fortunate enough to have a partner who can see how lonely I am feeling even though he is right beside me. He knew it was a loneliness that he couldn’t fix with positivity or presence, my post- family-visit-melancholy, but he was able to take a few moments of his afternoon to help me find radical acceptance in my loneliness.

We walked a mile. Just he and I, in near- silence. It made me feel less lonely to acknowledge my loneliness alongside someone. It made me feel like I was floating, resting in my emotions. I was acknowledging my emotions rather than fighting them like someone who is drowning fights with the undertow.

That silent-mile helped me to sit with my feelings rather than dismiss them. It showed me how not alone I really am and that when I feel like I’m about to go under, it does more to accept my feelings than deny them.

Toxic-positivity is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Some days I need to acknowledge I’m not looking for the sheep at all, I am the lamb and I am looking for a shepherd. To all those reading, I hope you are lucky enough to have someone tell you you don’t have to swim all of the time, I hope you find someone who reminds you to float.

[manicpixieirl]

august 15, 2023

Today was a hard day. It didn’t start out that way, but it ended up veering off course, deviating from the plan.

Now that I’m at the day’s tail end, I can see that it was just a hard day, not very, very hard. I think I made it a little harder than it needed to be.

I had a plan, I had a plan, I had a plan. Life had another plan.

This morning, I ran over a rock, popped my back-right tire on my way out of town, and have essentially been crying since 9:30 in the morning. As I type this, it’s 8pm and I’ve finally settled down.

The aforementioned tire is not a metaphorical tire on the car of life- I deadass popped a tire on my ‘09 accord and it sent me into a spiral that has had me looking for reasons to cry all day long.

All day my brain has felt like a toilet bowl and my thoughts kept circling the drain of this shit morning -

Why me?

Why now?

Of course this would happen.

How could I have avoided that?

While I was busy beating myself up, my mom was in the other room, trying to help me come up with solutions when she could have been enjoying her vacation.

My mom, dad, and youngest brother came to visit for the week and I should have been happy to get a few more hours in with them while we waited on AAA. Instead, I was in the kitchen, beating myself up and feeling useless.

I kept telling her I was sorry for crying and freaking out, that I didn’t know what was wrong or why I was so upset. I had handled so many car breakdowns on my own before this.

How am I 27 and crying to mommy over a flat tire? Why am I upset about needing to spend money I know I have? Why am I giving a rock - a fucking rock (a thing that neither lives nor breathes) - this type of control over my day?

That’s because it wasn’t about the tire. It wasn’t about the rock.

I had felt a depressive low creeping in the night before; I went to bed at 8:30, that’s how I can normally predict the downshift in my mood from balanced to depressed.

I was so tired, then I woke up tired, and then I hit a rock.

I could feel this small deviation from my expectations of the day making me sink even lower, further within myself and away from the person who was trying to help me. I’m sorry, mom.

I kept telling myself I was

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

I’m so stupid.

When I should have been saying

Sad.

Sad.

Sad.

I’m so sad.

It’s hard to write right now, I want to be in bed, I want to be asleep, but I also owe it to myself to write about my day rather than forget it. I owe it to the people who are reading this blog. This is what a low day looks like; confusing stupid for sad.

How can I learn from it? I don’t know if I can. I think there will always be days where I feel stupid when I am really just sad. That’s a part of being me, being able to look back at my day and say “Man, I think that blown-out tire was harder to handle today because I am feeling low.”

Tomorrow is a new day, and I might pop another tire, and it might make me sad, but it’s okay to be sad.

I can’t just say, “that was hard, I was low,” and move on.

Instead I’ll say,

“That was hard,

I was low,

I forgive myself for being sad, sad, so sad,

and thank you mom for finding solutions when I couldn’t see past my tears.”

[manicpixieirl]

august 7, 2023

I met my partner before we were ready for each other. Our lives weaved in and out of each other's for six years before we would get to know each other well enough for each of us to decide to be the other's person.

Sometimes God knows what we need when we don’t. The Universe also knows we need time to grow into ourselves before we can access what is destined for us. Lord knows, I needed tons of time (six years, approximately). I needed time to level out, and I needed a gut-punch (or three) before I would grow to love myself enough to let someone else love me.

The first time I met Kyle I was nineteen, living out of state and visiting my family for Christmas. In regards to where I was at in terms of my mental illness, I was an undiagnosed, drunken, mess simultaneously numbing and destroying everything in my path.

I met him on a weeknight during Christmas break of 2015. Not many people were drinking but I was already drunk, and in a very serious relationship with a guy from back home. A friend who is no longer a friend walked into his house with me. I would eventually move down the street from that house, into my first studio apartment, after running away from the relationship I was in, almost three years later.

I was drunk and lonely at some random frat house on a random Tuesday night and I had no idea that the love of my life was upstairs playing video games, completely oblivious to the fact that the love of his life, drunk off her ass, had just walked in the door. Neither of us knew what we would grow to mean to each other, and on that night he was just a boy and I was out of my mind.

I quit drinking a little over five years ago, when I totaled my car after tripling the legal limit and side-swiping a cop car in the process. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m better for it now. I wouldn’t be sober without that event, it helped me to put down the bottle and pick myself up for a change. I would mark wandering into a random frat house on a Tuesday night, drunk off my ass, as the second best thing that happened to me. It gave me a starting point, an embarrassing, yet beautiful narrative of how Kyle and I met, and how long it took us to meet again and understand why we needed to.

In my drunken daze, I had become bored with whatever was going on downstairs and wanted to sleep. I found Kyle in his room playing video games, his room was so clean. A frat boy who cleans his room? Yippee.

I will be very honest when I say I do not remember what happened next. It’s been told to me several times and none of this is a firsthand account of events, more like a collection of every vantage point people saw me from on a night where I couldn’t see myself.

Unfortunately, nights where I could not see myself were common. I think that’s why I blacked out so much, drank to the point of no return, because deep down I knew I could never outrun what existed within, I could only color over the memories with whatever was in the nearest keg. Why bother dealing with yourself when you can just make her go away?

I blacked out the first night I met Kyle. I don’t have the beauty of knowing how I first felt when I saw him. If I knew that six years later he would be mine and eight years he still would be, would I have drank any less than that night? No. Because I was not ready for him.

I don’t remember meeting Kyle and that is reason enough to hate alcohol. But I do remember meeting him the second time, and the third, and I remember how it felt when he kissed me for the first time after driving all night in a snowstorm, so I’ll take what I do remember and leave what I don’t.

Kyle, I know you’re reading this. I am sorry I don’t remember meeting you, but I remember every way you’ve made me feel since. I remember every laugh and tear and I remember how frustrated I was the first time you taught me how to play Rummy and wouldn’t let me win. I remember meeting your parents for the first time and driving home on Christmas. I remember so much of you that you will be with me forever. And that is enough.

I stumbled into Kyle’s room, slurred “Caaaan I watch-ch youuu play-ye video gamezzz?”

“Sure,” he was, and still is, too nice to say no sometimes.

I layed on his bed and passed out. He called his girlfriend to let her know that some random teenager crawled into his bed and had fallen asleep. He promised her that nothing sketchy was going on, some girl from out of state just showed up and before he knew it, she was napping in his bed.

Kyle must have always been the most loyal, loving and trustworthy dude, because his girlfriend believed him; it was a nonissue. They both let me sleep and asked my friend who is no longer my friend to drive me home. I threw up spaghetti in her car on the way home.

I was not ready for him. He could not handle me; I had to learn how to handle myself.

We’d both undergo love, loss, heartache and regrowth before I could sleep in his bed without being an invasive species that just crawled in from Kentucky.

I wasn’t ready for Kyle the second time I met him, or the third, but by the fourth time our paths crossed, it felt less like falling in love and more like falling into something that has always been waiting for me.

I just had to take the time to get, and practice, being better first.

Sometimes what we need already exists in the periphery of our own world. We just have to put down the bottle (whatever our bottles might contain) and open our eyes. Allow the possibility of growth to bring you closer to the person that took care of you when you just wanted a place to sleep, on a dark Tuesday night.

[manicpixieirl]

august 1, 2023

Today I am angry.

Today was a beautiful day. I went to the beach, I swam with my friends and I let the waves rock and cradle me. Today was the perfect day and this evening has been less than. I am letting the anger of the past few minutes bleed into the rest of my day; contaminating it like red ink on a perfect essay; undoing the good like a loose thread on my favorite sweater.

I don’t feel anger as often as I feel my other emotions. I am sad more than I am angry, I also feel happiness more often than I feel anger. But when I’m angry, it lasts longer than any other emotion.

Anger grows in the pit of my stomach and eats at my body from the inside out. I fixate on it, my anger becomes manic and my mania makes me feel like anger is driving and I’m in the passenger seat, watching as anger destroys everything in my path.

Anger will put me in the backseat, bypassing an invitation to view things through the windshield.

I am the oldest of four kids. My siblings, who have seen more of my outbursts and blackouts than any other trinity, used to call the third row of a car the “very, very back.” Today, I feel myself withdrawing into the “very, very back” of my mind. As I write this, I feel extremely grateful to those three, whom I know have been impacted by growing up with an older sister that suffers from bipolar disorder. C, S, and B, I love you. Thank you for loving me even on the days where I am in the very, very backseat of myself.

Right now, I am still driving but I can hear the whisper of anger. I can feel its attempts to coerce me into giving up the driver’s seat.

Anger and I are on a drive, I pull over and it says, “Let me drive, you’ll be safer in the back.”

Too many times I have believed anger, and just as many times I have lost myself in the backseat while I let anger take the wheel. I thought medication would make me numb, it’s moments like these that remind me that my feelings are still intact and some most of them are more amplified than others.

I’ve felt anger to the point of dissociation a handful of times; blacking out because I felt out of control in a situation that no one would let me control. I’ve had knuckles bloodied by broken glass windows and one time I accidentally slammed someone’s hand in a door because I was too afraid to watch them leave.

What is it they say about anger being a secondary emotion? Is it really an emotion that follows another, or is it an emotion all on its own?

Whoever said anger is a secondary emotion was full of shit.

I’ve never blacked out from being too happy or too depressed. I have blacked out in a rage. When it comes to being bipolar, the rage is the most embarrassing thing to navigate. I’ve lost hours of my life to complete darkness because I got so mad that someone wouldn’t turn the car radio down. I am embarrassed of my ability to snap in two within seconds, one half of myself so withdrawn that I can’t even see.

I end up being overcome by an inability to access the light that burned so brightly not even an hour beforehand.

This post isn’t about excusing my anger and it’s not an excuse for all the times I’ve blacked out in a rage; it’s about how important it is to prevent myself from getting there in the first place. At the end of the day, I am responsible for my behavior whether I remember what I did or not.

I am responsible for every time I yelled at my siblings until they cried, I am responsible for slamming another person’s hand in a door, I am responsible for every bloody knuckle and broken windowpane. I am sorry to those I have hurt in my angry moments, and I extend an apology to my younger self, for not knowing how to protect myself from myself.

Today, instead of splitting in two, I sat and I wrote. By writing this, I have maintained my position in the driver’s seat. I am able to remember the morning I spent on the beach, free of ink stains and loose threads. Today, I prevented myself from getting there; my knuckles are unbloodied and no one’s hand is stuck in a door hinge. Life goes on and anger fades,

I just have to take the time to make sure I take my anger and buckle it’s ass in the “very, very back.”

[manicpixieirl]

If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad. 

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ⁠— July 1950 - July 1953

[manicpixieirl]

[manicpixieirl]

july 24, 2023

A month ago, I walked into my psychiatrist's office and left with a bottle of tiny blue pills. So much of my energy has been spent on catering to mania and depression that I forgot those aren’t the only two feelings that are a part of the human condition.

While I spent years of my life alternating between trying to bring my mood up when I was low and trying to bring myself back down when I was high, I never fully figured out how to bring myself back to center when I was anxious.

In this season of life, I am learning how to ground myself, trying to endure and ride the waves that anxiety has crashing on my shoreline.

The mania and depression have leveled out, gone back to their hiding spots until the next time they are supposed to sneak out and make themselves known. In leaving, they forgot to take anxiety with them, and now I am cycling between trying to control the future and being stuck in complete fear of it.

Manic highs and depressive lows are mountains and valleys I can navigate well. Anxiety is unfamiliar terrain, it feels like a tsunami, a giant wave I can’t climb or navigate, it just comes for me, heightening as the tide pulls in and swallowing me whole when the wave crashes. My anxiety typically manifests as a need to control the wave rather than ride it.

The waves feel like I am the new kid in school every day, overthinking things from my outfits, to my relationship, to whether or not I should have hugged a friend of a friend goodbye at a get-together we had last Sunday. Things that I normally wouldn’t have second guessed are now taking up entire bookshelves of my brain and I don’t know how to stop it.

Do I just accept this new symptom as a third party? My mountains are hills now and my valleys aren’t as low, so is this okay? Not if the anxiety is deafening. Not if I’m being crushed by the wave, only to drown in anxiety and fear of the future. What is all this for if I’m still lost in thought, trying to control tomorrow instead of living in the present?

There are days where it feels less like a tsunami and more like a riptide. I think that’s because now I know where it is coming from, but I don’t appreciate having panic attacks over whether or not I believe I can pull off overalls.

When I was in seventh grade, I went away to one of those week-long-youth-overnight-Christian-camps. I hated going, but something must have stuck since I still have my Faith and remember one sermon about tsunamis and fear of the future.

In 2004, there was a man who stood on the Sumatran Coast with his three sons. All he had with him were his children and a small boat. Suddenly, he felt the earth shake and watched all of the water in the ocean recede from the shoreline, collecting into one giant ball of potential energy at the end of the horizon. The man was paralyzed by his anxiety; he knew what was coming.

“Get in the boat.”

The man didn’t even look for the source of the sentence, at that moment, his flight response was activated. He had faith enough in the feeling to find his children, get in the boat, and paddle straight into the ocean, riding the wave and surviving the tsunami that his wife at home would fall victim to. He had faith, he got in the boat, he rode the wave.

Whether you take this as fact or as a parable, it is a beautiful story of perseverance and loss. May we all have enough faith in ourselves to ride the waves that come our way rather than try and control them. May we all acknowledge the things we lose in the tsunamis and the things we keep by maintaining our faith in ourselves, or in God, or in tiny blue pills.

A month ago, I walked into my psychiatrist's office and left with a bottle of tiny blue pills. So much of my energy has been spent on catering to mania and depression that I forgot those aren’t the only two feelings that are a part of the human condition.

While I spent years of my life alternating between trying to bring my mood up when I was low and trying to bring myself back down when I was high, I never fully figured out how to bring myself back to center when I was anxious.

In this season of life, I am learning how to ground myself, trying to endure and ride the waves that anxiety has crashing on my shoreline.

The mania and depression have leveled out, gone back to their hiding spots until the next time they are supposed to sneak out and make themselves known. In leaving, they forgot to take anxiety with them, and now I am cycling between trying to control the future and being stuck in complete fear of it.

Manic highs and depressive lows are mountains and valleys I can navigate well. Anxiety is unfamiliar terrain, it feels like a tsunami, a giant wave I can’t climb or navigate, it just comes for me, heightening as the tide pulls in and swallowing me whole when the wave crashes. My anxiety typically manifests as a need to control the wave rather than ride it.

The waves feel like I am the new kid in school every day, overthinking things from my outfits, to my relationship, to whether or not I should have hugged a friend of a friend goodbye at a get-together we had last Sunday. Things that I normally wouldn’t have second guessed are now taking up entire bookshelves of my brain and I don’t know how to stop it.

Do I just accept this new symptom as a third party? My mountains are hills now and my valleys aren’t as low, so is this okay? Not if the anxiety is deafening. Not if I’m being crushed by the wave, only to drown in anxiety and fear of the future. What is all this for if I’m still lost in thought, trying to control tomorrow instead of living in the present?

There are days where it feels less like a tsunami and more like a riptide. I think that’s because now I know where it is coming from, but I don’t appreciate having panic attacks over whether or not I believe I can pull off overalls.

When I was in seventh grade, I went away to one of those week-long-youth-overnight-Christian-camps. I hated going, but something must have stuck since I still have my Faith and remember one sermon about tsunamis and fear of the future.

In 2004, there was a man who stood on the Sumatran Coast with his three sons. All he had with him were his children and a small boat. Suddenly, he felt the earth shake and watched all of the water in the ocean recede from the shoreline, collecting into one giant ball of potential energy at the end of the horizon. The man was paralyzed by his anxiety; he knew what was coming.

“Get in the boat.”

The man didn’t even look for the source of the sentence, at that moment, his flight response was activated. He had faith enough in the feeling to find his children, get in the boat, and paddle straight into the ocean, riding the wave and surviving the tsunami that his wife at home would fall victim to. He had faith, he got in the boat, he rode the wave.

Whether you take this as fact or as a parable, it is a beautiful story of perseverance and loss. May we all have enough faith in ourselves to ride the waves that come our way rather than try and control them. May we all acknowledge the things we lose in the tsunamis and the things we keep by maintaining our faith in ourselves, or in God, or in tiny blue pills.

[manicpixieirl]

july 11, 2023

I’ve been diagnosed for five and a half years.

I was diagnosed three separate times because I didn’t believe my first two doctors.

Scenes from Girl Interrupted, The Bell Jar, and Mickey from Shameless flashed through my head. Couldn’t be me.

I always knew my moods swung like a swing on a set, but when I stopped drinking and kept swinging I started to believe it actually could be me.

Maybe I am bipolar.

I’ve believed in my diagnosis for four years, but spent the same amount of time trying to undo it. It feels as present as a broken bone.

I broke my collarbone when I was two and a half. I don’t remember it happening, but the way my mom tells it I was tired and couldn’t sleep, so I decided to jump on my bed until I fell off. I walked into my mom and dad’s room screaming at two AM, my left collarbone cracked in two.

I could have just gone into my mom’s room when I couldn’t sleep, asked her to rock me or hold me until I was calm enough to rest. Instead, I jumped. I’m not quite sure why. Sometimes I’ll joke around and say it was my first manic high, breaking my collarbone.

Bipolar disorder is a broken bone that never heals, but it does get a little easier to remind myself to ask for help instead of jumping on beds.

If you’re here because you have a diagnosis, I am so sorry to tell you; you can’t undo it. I thought that maybe, with enough journaling, meditation, and self-help books I could rewrite my story into one that was less manic and more poetic. A story where I was the first person to make it go away.

It will never go away.

I can’t rewrite my story. The only story I have to tell is one of acceptance.

Three full journals, eight go-to YouTube meditation videos, and a stack of books later; I am still bipolar.

What does it mean, bipolar? When you strip away the Hollywood-studded tales of bipolar characters who rob banks or hit their children all in the name of an illness?

What does it mean?

It means that I am capable of possessing a duality of feelings from day to day. More often than not, I feel them at full volume. I’m not skilled enough to stick it to capitalism and rob a bank; and if you think that just because someone playing a bipolar character on TV hit their child means that I will, you don’t belong in my life. Just because seagulls talk in the Little Mermaid doesn’t make it true.

I see the world through a very emotional lense. I’ll have big ideas, racing thoughts, and fixate on a single topic one day, and the next day I will crash like a wave on the shore, unable to focus on anything- pulling myself back together one microscopic cell of myself at a time.

I didn’t choose to be bipolar. I didn’t wake up one day when I was fourteen and decide to feel every emotion as if it were a second self- I was just born and it was, the same way I was born with my mom’s eyes.

I wish some people knew that. I wish the people that hear bipolar and think “crazy” knew that. Even better, I wish the people that hear bipolar and think, “I can fix her” knew that.

I am a little low today. On my low days, I wish to be fixed.

But I’m not a car that needs an oil change, I am a woman who needs grace and understanding and love. I am a woman who does not need to be fixed or tweaked or rearranged.

It has been hard, I have spent the past few days feeling like I need to hide myself from others because I have been burned before for letting people know who I am. It’s a lot easier to publish a blog about my journey than it is to confront someone who thinks my diagnosis could be the undoing of someone they love.

The truth is, I could never fully love myself until I learned to love the duality that exists within. I could never fully love myself until I rode every wave and crashed with it. I could never fully love myself until I accepted that I suffer from a very extreme mental illness, yet I choose to love myself anyways-

Because I deserve it.

The people in my life have a choice as to whether or not they want to choose me, accept me, and love me - diagnosis and all. If you love me, you have to love all of me; you have to love me on the nights where I cannot sleep because my mania has me hyper fixated beyond midnight. You have to love me on the days where I cry and the tears don’t stop because I felt a little too much. You have to love me on the days where I can’t get out of bed or on the days where I can’t comb my hair, and on the days where I impulsively dye it bright pink.

You have to love me on the days where I don’t love myself at all.

If you choose me, remember, every feeling I have for you is amplified.

Especially love.

[manicpixieirl]

[manicpixieirl]

july 8, 2023

I walked 5 miles yesterday- west to east and back again with the sunset. The thing about walking around a tourist town in the summertime is that you notice how everybody's sense of urgency has melted off of them, like the ice melts with the returning summer. All of my footsteps are planned and deliberate to a fault; a tourist looks at more than their shoes and cobblestone.

Everybody gets pissed at tourists, but maybe we are just jealous of the way they notice things we walk past every day- the way the clouds separate from each other as the day goes on, or how the ocean gets as high as the walking path at 5:55, jealous of the way they notice the names and dates on headstones that pop up on the West End, or how they count the different colors of doors they see lining the ocean-view houses until they lose track, lost in a rainbow-

-jealous of the way they take in something I walk by every day.

I feel like my brain is in a place where I can start noticing things again. I notice how a Portland summer smells like stale cigarettes, ocean, and pine. I certainly notice how going for a walk in a tourist town makes you notice how NOT alone you really are.

I’m thinking of how many people I pass every day. They’re experiencing a spectrum of feelings - grief, anxiety, mania, depression, loneliness, hopelessness, hopefulness.

We pass by spectrums of feelings all the time, yet they go as unnoticed as a name on a headstone in the West End.

I think it’s important to notice something today. I enjoy being present enough to notice the bright doors on beach houses