*Warning Triggering* Poetry Piece #2

It's not easy coming off meds.  What I had to write last night, under the watchful eyes of a close friend.

Mrs. Knife

A knife so pristine
The blade intricate
It’s shape seductive
Razor sharp curves
A nice straight back
Baby you are glorious
I grab your handle
So smooth and so cool
You can’t escape
My grip so tight
A swipe through space
A slash left to right
You split the air
It sighs from your beauty
I press you against my chest
And you feel so cold
Let me warm you up
With the juice of my soul
Flipping you on edge
I feel a slight tingle
You’re so sharp baby
So firmly I sway you
Back and forth and back
If only you could feel
What I feel towards you
The way you penetrate my flesh
You split my atoms
I love the pain
Crave the excitement
I need you deeper
Grabbing you so hard
Pushing you so close
The blood starts to bubble
You make my heart race baby
Feel my blood drip
It covers your body
Now you’re so warm
So a part of me
I just need you a little deeper
Just to feel alive
For I’m a lonely soul
With a heart of stone
It’s shattered into pieces
With a lack of love tonight
But I always have you baby
Together as one
We defeat the pain
It’s as simple as replacing
My bad thoughts
With your steel touch
So thank you Mrs. Knife
For all that you do
You make me feel alive baby
When I’m anything but
I cherish your presence
Forever and always



Going off the Grid

Falls Apart

 

 

One of the cornerstones of my personality is the epic crash and burn.  There is no denying it.  I sometimes move along at a breakneck pace the likes of which no normal mind can possibly comprehend.  I have so many racing thoughts and ideas that it's a veritable cornucopia of thoughts permeating my mental sphere.

 

There is a problem with that as awesome as I may make it sound.  I can only keep it up for so long then I crash and burn.  Right now is one of those times.  It's been a hectic 6 months for me with a few things happening.  I went back to school earlier this year and it was an eye opening experience.  At my age, 31, I was thrust into the clique structure of what is basically a para-high school experience.  It's above high school, but in many ways there are still the same systems in place.  I am ill-equipped to deal with them.

 

My social anxieties get the best of me on the best of days.  My untold secret, that is untold no more, is that I have agoraphobia.  The crowds of the college scene absolutely decimate my nerves.  Just walking through a simple atrium stacked with people can cause me great panic.  So it was a lot to endure over the course of several months.  Now it is over and I am crashing.

 

Yea, the above is me.  A multi-ton locomotive barreling down the tracks uncontrollable, literally smashing any obstacles in my way into shattered debris.  So what is the crash, the falls, the depression like?

It's is terrifying in many senses.  There is no escaping the lethargy.  It grips like you the stranglehold of a callous killer about to cause your soul's departure.  it's literally impossible to get up the energy to do day to day activities, let alone fundamentally healthy actions like exercise.  It makes even keeping up your hygiene an act of great effort. 

Then there is the infinite melancholy residing in your mind like the stars reside in the cold black sky.  It engulfs you and leaves you cold, shaking and definitely not stirred.  It's the sadness that is essential to shaping a worldview such as mine.

So what is the worst part?  Fighting it.  Fighting it can become like a heavyweight boxing match where you happen to be the much slower middle-weight.  You are out-classed.  You can't give up however, you have to move on.  You have find a purpose to continue.  You simply cannot be defeated because you are the master.  The guy who just last week was on top of the world and unstoppable in all his glory.  Nothing and that is repeatable.  Nothing can withstand your might.  You must keep your head above the waves and remember one thing.  You have hope.

Hope is what I have. 

Thanks for reading again and as always, enjoy life and live happy!



December 21st, 2012 and Paranoia

Well it is almost that time again, time for the world to end!  It happens often, I guess because people have a death wish.  Perhaps they get disillusioned with reality, deciding things would be better if it all just ended.  I can relate with being out of touch with reality.  My reality exist of nothing but smiles, frowns, video games and cute kittens.  I don't want to acknowledge anything else, not even my ineptitude at life where I can't hold down a job.  Or a relationship........... or single sane thought. 

However, I don't wish for things to end. I enjoy life and all that it entails.  To the emblazoning sunshiny days that make me manic to the cold enveloping darkness of a rainy day that calms me down to a point of "I don't care you are on fire, let me roast marshmallows!"  So why do so many wish the end of all things upon us?  I'm not going to lie, it makes me paranoid as can be that we are possibly in the last week of our existence. 

 

Think about that for a second.  No more existence. What unimaginable amount of power would it take to render existence null?  Can even such a power exist?  Even in the aftermath of nuclear fallout, we know there well, is an aftermath.  So let's for a second entertain the idea that something does happen on Dec. 21st.  It's likely there will be pain, suffering, and untold tragedy.  Enough to strike fear into any one's heart.  However, the part that makes me the most paranoid is the aftermath. 

 

Make no mistake, regardless of what happens there will be something left afterwards and people will most likely still exist in some capacity.  There may not be law and order however.  We may revert back to our primal survival instincts and if so, are any of us really prepared for such a life?  Many of us are soft in today's modern world.  It's going to be a scary time SHOULD something actually happen. 

 

So the coming week will see me as paranoid as crackhead who accidentally walked into the policeman's ball.  That is going to suck so badly, paranoid states of mind is when I have the most hallucinations and other mood swings.  It's going to be a rough week that hopefully ends on a happy note.  Anyways, enjoy life and live happy!

 

James

Violent Shootings and the Mentally Ill

There has been something bothering me since the Connecticut shootings of recent.  It seems as if every time I turn on the news there is someone talking about mental illness automatically.  It's assumed the killer had a mental disease and that is the only reason he could have committed such a heinous tragic crime. 

Well people need to wake up.  There are many many people out there with some form of MI and if the mentally ill were prone to do these crimes there would be way more committed.  Not every person suffering from MI has malcious intents towards others.  Towards themselves in some instances perhaps but not others. 

As I have discussed in previous blog posts, I suffer MI.  Yet I have a spotless criminal record.  There is much to be said about nature vs. nature with this argument but I feel it's too deep to go into in environment like a simple blog.  I will say this much though, it's tragic that the mental ill get singled out and stigmatized every time something like this happens. 

Other people with MI need to speak out about this too.  Just so people know we won't be stigmatized.  This is first and foremost about the victims.  They and they alone should be getting national attention and not gun laws, what to do with the mentally ill and so forth.  The only, only person responsible is the man the who shot the gun.  No one else.



My Diagnosis and Treatment

All my life I have felt like I was an outsider and someone who was much different than everyone else.  I could never put my finger on the how and why however.  It was always a matter of feeling I had to keep my distance because I was never compatible with people.  However, I never had what I'd called symptoms of BP until I was into my 20s.  I was maybe 24 or so when I started to noticed the symptoms I mention in my introduction to BP blog post, post number 1.  It however never dawned on my it was anything but normal until the end of 2010.

We had a most terrible winter at the end of 2010.  There was a major snow storm that basically trapped everyone in their homes without power and way to escape for almost a month.  This was a most stressful occasion on me for one reason.  I have agoraphobia.  The minute this happened I started to go into intense panic attacks, as many as 3 a day that ended up with me having to be hospitalized.  This was when I began to believe things were way more out of hand than they appeared to be. 

Fast forward to 2011 and I was working a most stressful job in a local hospital and times where rough in the work environment in my department.  I was one guy doing an extreme amount of work and bearing some what I consider great responsibility.  It finally made me hit the ultimate breaking point and I crashed hardcore.  I ended up over the course of that winter being hospitalized twice, to go along with what happened the winter before.  I knew then something was wrong. 


As I analyzed myself, I noticed I was having memory issues, so extreme that I couldn't remember I had bottles of water that were never drank stacked up around the house, and I would go get another bottle despite having several sitting around.  Most strange behavior that I tried to ignore until this point.  I went to work only I went on a day I was supposed to be off from work and I was dressed in nothing but my pajamas.  It was at this point I realized I had no concept of time and that is something that I still struggle with.



So from there, I went to see a psychiatrist and a therapist.  Very quickly they acknowledged something wrong with me and had me scheduled for biweekly visits.  Come 2012, I was diagnosed with having rapid cycle bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features and agoraphobia.  That was shocking to me and to be honest it felt so great to have some answers.  I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off of my shoulders and there was a rhyme and reason to everything going on.  It was a time of revelation for me littered with come to grips and understanding with my more peculiar behavior over my life.  It was a great time.

Moving on however, treatment is an ongoing process. There are meds involved, therapy sessions and social support groups.  I find the support groups help the best  The meds don't really take away the psychotic symptoms that well but they do stabilize my moods which makes the psychosis happen a lot less.  Which for that I am thankful.  I only hope this helps anyone else out there who is having some of the same scenarios play out for them make a decision to cause some change in their lives.  If you feel peculiar, if you notice things happening to you that feel out of the ordinary, you and they probably are.  Seek out information and find out if what you experience is worth seeking help over.  There is no shame in getting help, you may need it.  I hope anyone reading this found it inspiring.  Enjoy life and live happy!

James

Current musical obsession

I find that I have a curious habit when it comes to music.  I often listen to the same song on endless loop for sometimes days at a time.  Right now my current obsession is Velvet Revolver's Falls to Pieces.  The lyrics have a special meaning to me as there have been many times in my life things just fall apart. There is no stopping it from happening either.  There is just the highs where great things happen and the lows where they all fall apart.  A standard rock video and song by most standards, when you listen to from the mindset of bipolar disorder the song takes on a whole other level of meaning.  I own no rights to this of course, I am just posting this as it seems to fit within the bipolar spectrum and I happen to have listened to it about 200 times in the last couple days.  Here are the lyrics.

It's been a long year
Since you've been gone
I've been alone here
I've grown old
I fall to pieces, I'm falling
Fell to pieces and I'm still falling

Every time I'm falling down
All alone I fall to pieces

I keep a journal of memories
I'm feeling lonely, I can't breathe
I fall to pieces, I'm falling
Fell to pieces and I'm still falling

All the years I've tried
With more to go
Will the memories die
I'm waiting
Will I find you
Can I find you
We're falling down
I'm falling

Every time I’m falling down
All alone I fall to pieces
Every time I’m falling down
All alone I fall to pieces
Every time I’m falling down
All alone I fall to pieces
Every time I’m falling down
All alone I fall to pieces

 

 

An interesting song from my perspective that seems to show how the mania kicks in when love is in your life and how the depression soon takes over as things begin to fall apart at the seems.