Shout Out @ Politrixters

Look Politrixters I know you're there sneak reading all my secrets and I'm feeling some kind of way right now so I'm saying...like, LEAVE A LIKE OR A COMMENT!!

Now see I hate chastising the lot of you but I can SEE that you're there because I stay checking my Stats!! *side-eye*

But never a LIKE, never a Comment. Look I only bite if you ask me.
Talk to me, politrixiters. It gets lonely.

But if not I'm perfectly capable of talking to myself...

It would be nice is all....

UnTitled

Loneliness is an echo chamber playing the voices of fear, the enemy of one's self, the battles whose guns ricochet within the soft palate of the mind, binding insecurity to the ever present need for companionship, betrayed ~
it is the place where need is manipulated by despair and hope betrays solitude inside the soft bounderies of the mind where damage manifests as bruises, soft fruit with prints matching abuser's. 

and inside the storm is the eye of the warrior entrapped in the winds of time and turbulence
and the cyclone is the laugh of madness, murder in the warrior's mind where the turmoil saturates what was once peace sensory bliss. in the storm you fight and learn to spit upon base cowardice.

I do not fear, I do not quiver in the storm. Lonesomeness girds me tight on its harness, sound regrets among the fallen. Notes captured by me which now I own for my cause - I cannot be destroyed I live inside my Self - I own these grand reverberations ~ I am chaos embedded within the storm, a careless power from the void emerged, and born flinty like glint of iron ore junked in the veins beneath the skin only so much restless dust
In my mind I roam meander wander in uncharted territory ever forbidden to the Others who cannot cross past the revolutions of pressure as I do

This is chaos the enemy artificial order where others sit gluttonous
Saturated in promises, slick from regret
while I dance and roar and make a friend of the rain

Living in Low Lighting/Thoughts of Home(lessness)

Living In Low Lighting: Thoughts of Home(lessness)

I cracked a tooth last year. I cracked it and it’s just gone. I couldn’t get it fixed,  because…I couldn’t make it out of the house (but insurance would have damn sure been an incentive). I just…couldn’t make myself leave. And now, living in a homeless shelter away from those people and places that make Home I spend a lot of time looking at myself, but only in low and dusky lighting where the image myself is softer with three weeks from my 39^th birthday things are less stark in the dusk, dimmer than pain and devoid of the cruelty of the sun’s truth which in its truth  deplores dishonesty. The low lighting is in my mind because now I must leave home because it’s where I live, homeless and among strangers.

Winter is no longer coming; it is here at my not home where time is passing slowly and in a place I hope for the light to end sooner since that means I am closer to sleep when I don’t have to see my broken tooth and I don’t feel its bite. When you find yourself washed into the rapids, cold and alone there’s first the belief that someone beloved, some friend or even an interested compassionate stranger will soon fish you out. But something prevents this from happening as I’ve seen. 

This isn’t only my story but the story of so many other  women I’ve met in this six months of dizzy hell.

My first shock was that I wasn’t surrounded by dirty women in black trashbags who screamed incoherently and darkly within their own cautiously lit private abodes of the mind: in fact, probably 90% of the women with whom I’ve shared this homeless space are middle class. Suburban housewives, former soccer moms, women who work jobs, often two or more but still unable to afford housing. There are plenty of women who are down and out drug addicted and alcoholic or who suffer from some form of debilitating mental illness that is a familiar codependent in their solitary drifting lives. But it’s these forgotten women who make up the working poor, not layabouts, just women trying to make it and failing because the system is rigged against them.

I’m here because I suffered a nervous breakdown, a bipolar episode that sent me reeling from depression and manias stealing my ability to work, to pay bills, to care for myself sending me down the rapids of waste and want to eviction and to…this place.

 The dark place that is always poorly lit because no one cares enough to light the dark.

Of course the low lighting is merely nature because even God’s winter sky hides the sun 

It’s like waking up to graded homework with an F but every single day. Every day. The truth that no one will tell you is that if you feel alone it is because you are alone.

The truth casts a certain beautyl in its frightfulness. And it is invisible to all those who are not stripped down to the very aloneness made by God himself. You are naked and alone, a pavement dweller with only your own self for company: this is the truth that all you are is contained within flesh and viscera and to utilize its possibilities one has to come to the understanding of that Self: you are nothing except that which you were made, a soul.

Nighttimes are long. You spend the day waiting for night and quiet and at the end of the day there is no sleep.

Into this life we come alone

to be fed upon myth of kin and kith and hearth and home

tis naught but a tale grown folk ought be too canny than belief

for still art thou alone comest daytime's eve

tis no riddle

nor glass darkly

if you would but see

the 

heart

doth

beat

that 

you 

may

bleed

i

- See more at: http://politrixie.blogspot.com/2015/04/hallway-echoes-at-roadway-inn-easter.html#sthash.CTqOdkfl.dpuf

Oh Yes He Is!

Correction: Robert Downey Jr is bipolar.

Tell me, I don't know how to call 'em. I totally always wanted to be his best friend.

Call me, Robert. The wife never has to know.

Stigma Stigmata

It's interesting the reactions I get when telling people that I am bipolar - from friends, family and strangers. Typically the first response I'm given is "No you're not: there's no such thing!" However, since I have been through many, many assessments at this point, and since I'm the one on the wild waves of manic and depressive episodes I know this to be false. I go through the meaning of the mood disorder that I'm still learning about only to get stern faces and furious headshakes. "That's something the doctors invented to excuse people's bad behavior. There's no such thing really. I don't believe in it." Generally I let the doubters alone because frankly who gives a shit, they're not paying my psychiatrist after all.

But the stigma is real and powerful. Everyone automatically assumes you must be Robert Downey Jr. in your madness. (Note: I have no evidence that Robert Downey Jr. is bipolar. I'm just saying that if you want to stereotype a self-medicating, uncontrollable bipolar individual a la Richard Gere's performance in Mr. Jones then RDJ's former antics also make a good stereotype even without RDJ being a true bipolar. Get it? Anyway.) You couldn't actually find a more seemingly together, cautious, level headed personality than me. You could but just allow me my exaggerations for the moment. I'm talking about stigma here and the judgments made by bystanders are simply rife. It's like the worst diagnosis that others can think of for a loved one - "You cant be one of those." If I said I was gay people would be shocked but they'd be less nasty to my face I think. And there's nothing wrong with gay but in our society mental illness is viewed as one of the great taboos.. No one wants to talk about it, no one wants to know about it; type that equal to or double for being gay.

It's in the way people look at you. Literally. That searching look people give me as consideration of every crazy thing I've ever hinted. "Well she's a creative type and you know about those. I don't think she's gay. But she could be just crazy." Because gay is crazy these days, you know. Still. Who has mental illness pride though? I don't. I'm still trying to figure it all out but I've got plenty of genetic predisposition. I was initially type as a major depressive, a huge mistake since all the antidepressants they shoved down my throat caused the undiagnosed bipolar disorder to become worse and spiral out of control in an ever increasing manner from breakdowns occurring more frequently and more severely to making symptoms more noticeable finally resulting in a near complete withdrawl from the world.

 I haven't been able to work in years, I went from being an ambitious woman marked for the higher echelons of academia - or whatever I wanted to be frankly - to sitting in dark rooms permanently. And no one knew. No one knew I'd broken that completely. People suspected but no one could know entirely because I didn't let them. From not working and sitting in quiet dark rooms I soon couldn't get out of bed. But talking to friends and loved ones on the phone or through Facebook can't reveal the horrors holding a person to an invisible prison and damned if I'd let anyone know. My mother knew but she had so much to do to keep me alive and in that bed that without insurance she was lucky to keep me alive.

So slowly and surely I lost friends who couldnt seem to make me focus on the worldly and fun elements of life. Family members avoided the weird vibe I kept exerting.

And the loneliness was fine with me - quiet was essential. Bipolar disorder won.

I've never been so far away from home or so helpless in my personal security but falling out of my home, my security got me help. So the stigma, the strange looks I ignore. I'm alive. I survived. I was bleeding out, sometimes in plain sight and I should by all rights be dead. I'm still bleeding but there's a tourniquet now. That's all.

When The Doubters Come Be Gone...Stay Free

(Don't Let Others Rule Your Life with Doubts about Your Truth.)

Because When  They Come For Me I'll Be Gone...

Stop Talking and Try to Catch Up Muthafuckas

Call My Lovers By Their Names

 Fuck you I love Duran Duran forever. Also this song is simply aural sex.

#ShotgunShine....It Feels A Little Like This...

...Just can't help yourself....

Im gonna take you down

Deep down to the front lines

You woke up this morning

Got yourself a gun,

Mama always said you'd be

The Chosen One.

She said: You're one in a million

You've got to burn to shine,

But you were born under a bad sign

With a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning

All that love had gone

Your Papa never told you

About right and wrong

But you're looking good, baby

I believe you're feeling fine,(shame about it)

Born under a bad sign

With a blue moon in your eyes

(Chorus)

You woke up this morning

Got a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning

Got a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning

The world turned upside down

Lord above, thing's ain't been the same

Since the blues walked into town

But you're one in a million

You've got that shotgun shine (shame about it)

Born under a bad sign

With a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning

Got a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning

Got a blue moon in your eyes

When you woke up this morning everything was gone

By half past ten your head was going ding-dong

Ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes

Like a voice trying to tell you there's something you should know

Last night you were flying but today you're so low

Ain't it times like these that make you wonder if

You'll ever know the meaning of things as they appear to the others;

Wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers

Don't you wish you didn't function, don't you wish you

Didn't think beyond the next paycheck and the next little drink?

Well you do so make up your mind to go on, �?�¢??cos

When you woke up this morning everything you had was gone

Woke up this morning

Woke up this morning

Woke up this morning

You want to be the Chosen One

Woke up this morning

Woke up this morning

Woke up this morning

You got yourself a gun

The Truth About Nervous Breakdown/ Feel Even When It's All You Can Do

No one really uses the term anymore, it's not exactly a technical medical diagnosis after all. But if it's happened to you then you know exactly what it means, and its effect upon your mind and soul. I'll write more about this experience as I begin to feel stronger and clearer in spirit.

At the time I wrote of my eviction crisis I was so deeply in the grip of rapid cycling episodes of deep despair and wild unstable elation which  shifted literally each minute to the next without warning, instigation, purpose or what others call sense. At the beginning I had no idea what was happening to me but I was deeply aware that something was very wrong. However I knew that I was not well, and as a result my normal ability to make magic  solutions even in the midst of danger situations was now a chaotic mess of random decisions that never seemed to save me.

The fault wasn't found in my intellect or reason - I know that now. It's important to understand that there are circumstances in life that can drive anyone to the edge. A breakdown doesn't have to be the result of any latent mental disease, it's more rooted in the fact that the verge is far closer to each of us that anyone wishes to admit.

The power of the unknown hides and lurks within darker elements  inside of each of us. For me, personally, I was in the storm of circumstances that were determinably outside my control. For others watching me fall there was little compassion, I still feel, from my present observation, even now as I heal.

Many people I contacted in desperation just never replied. I was begging for help to avoid homelessness and what felt like a tornado of evil sweeping me into oblivion. Others casually dismissed my distress by assuring me that I was a brilliant lady quite capable of saving myself. A mentor loaned me one hundred dollars and told me with a somewhat coolness that he might even be moved enough to pray for me. A girlfriend of twenty years and many adventures IMed me to say that my crisis of incumbent indigency was familiar to her and that though she wished me well $65 was something she just couldn't condone in helping me, not after a one hundred dollar loan.

Somehow, through this vortex of down, down, down-ness I could not communicate to others what was happening to me.   It was taken for granted that my tears were the result of my poor management and fear at suffering the consequences. No one grasped that my behavior was largely wrong; I was by no means behaving or talking or acting within my normal character. Even now as I consider how alone I still feel I wonder how sincere my so-called friendships truly are. As I fell out of contact - no internet,  no Twitter, no Facebook - only two or three true, deep and close friends ever bothered to look for me, contact me, find out if I was alright, dead or alive.

In the time I was in deep-freeze fear and danger I was diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder. It was not exactly news - a doctor in 2012, while I spent a full week in the hospital, felt certain that my illness at the time was rooted in bipolar disorder. It's strange about the disease, because one's mood, activity levels, depressions and manias can over-rule entirely one's normal true character. Oftentimes those watching may have seen these abnormalities before and chalked them up to personal quirks or just general weirdness. As I said this is not the first breakdown, there have been four major ones not counting the many, many mini-breakdowns. I wonder if those in my friendship circle were simply bored with the changes that I simply couldn't control. "Oh here she goes again" was the general sigh. I can't get over the fact that in this nightmare no one, beyond my mother who has never ever abandoned or dismissed me, beyond very few deeply precious friends, there was only the support of these two or three beloved people - because of course I needed a support network.

 In truth my life itself was in danger and had it not been for the powerful love and commitment of my dear mother I can't be sure that in the mood of desperation, of mania and depression, that the wildness and  absence of stability might not have moved me to hurting myself for a quite permanent result.

So, this is me writing in a mood of bitterness and deep sadness wondering how the hell I could have displayed such serious instability, such dangerous depression and unpredictable behavior entirely antithetical to my true self when well, and still be un-noticed? How can such an ambitious, bright woman earmarked for greatness have a complete major break in an Ivy League Ph.D program and not be spotted as suffering for what I now know is a textbook case of bipolar disorder. After all, what is more cliche than breaking down in grad school? Really?? I was a living cliche.  How could I have flown so below the radar that no one added up the clues? How could I have not added up the clues.

In truth I had added the clues and sought help. I had a psychiatrist and psychotherapist on retainer and I worked hard with them to help keep me on even keel while I foundered. The trick of this mystery lies in misdiagnosis. From the time I was 14 years old I was diagnosed as suffering from major depression as my mother does. It made sense in its way; the genetic predisposition, the drops from the verge, the clear disorder: except that the conclusion made by doctors, loved ones, friends and myself was entirely wrong. I know this now because under medication and the compassionate embrace of my wonderful psychiatrist my body, my brain are now behaving in a way that feels...I hate using the word...but by God I feel normal, I feel more like me.

I suffer from bipolar disorder and sometimes I haven't always been well. In the unwellness I've often felt very alone, very insignificant so I can't be sure how correct my analysis of others' support or lack of support is. I know how I feel. I know that I've survived a deeply serious trial. I know that it's a blessing and I am deeply grateful to be alive.

The only thing I can say to you Politrixters right now is that I'm happy to be alive. In the midst of another's unpredictable chaos there is a fear and avoidance that others often display, a kind of hands off evasion that people feel necessary to maintain in order to keep their own balance and distance from the edge. I can't be mad at self preservation. I only seek now to find my own balance, to overcome my very serious social anxieties in order to re-connect to that natural human tendency toward needing the company and trust and presence of others, of those loves that lie in the realm of support.

I had a nervous breakdown, and while my intellect survives -with some damage to my memory, my ability to access that near perfect recall which I always took for granted, flaunted and which made me feel so special to myself - my confidence has taken a deeply disastrous hit. I have been stabilized to an extent by  I'm still trying to back away, back away from the darkness that precedes the event horizon. Sometimes I am enveloped in self recrimination other times I am gripped by rage at others. I suffer from a disease that is tricky and disloyal and destructive but I do have the love and support of a few stalwart hearts and I am grateful - more so that any of them can ever understand.

I've written this freestyle and you can't imagine, perhaps, how difficult it has been just to share this missive, to commit to taxing my brain to produce what has always been first, second, and third nature that is my writing.

 I hope I'll be in contact more often as I heal. Just be patient with me, remember that I share when I can because survival takes time and commitment and true force of will. I'm doing my best and after six months of hell my best is quite a bit more extraordinary and beautiful than my worst.

I'm still all about that life of making little men dance. I'm just practicing the moves right now: I'll get it right before long. Be kind, be gentle to those who are hurting. You can never know what's in another heart, another's mind. And the truth is dark: it can happen to anyone at all, it just depends on how close you are to the edge. If you have the strength and inclination gather together a net of love and support and do your best to catch the falling wo/man. Just try, is all. We all need one another. If you help others stand straight it keeps us all from falling. Mountain climbers call it the Belay - tying one climber to the other, and God knows we need all need ropes of stability.

PS: I'm not checking this little letter. It's easier now if I vent. It's part of my healing. Forgive the raw nature of this missive. It's the truth as I know it to be, at this moment in time. I'm feeling some Survivor's Remorse these days.

All my love,
Politrixie

#Sunday

Tell Me This Song Is Not About BiPolar Disorder! Ah You Can't. I'm So Right - You're So Wrong

I can't stop listening to this song! The whole album Native by One Republic is shockingly good for one of those top 40 radio play bands. And I liked the album before I got diagnosed as bipolar. But now listening to the song Counting Stars I will swear on all that is holy that this song is about bipolar disorder.  This man is describing a manic-episode in textbook quality terms. Listen!! Listen, my bipolar friends, and see if it isn't true! I'm telling you....

And I feel something so right by doing the wrong thing

And I  feel something so wrong by doing the right thing

I could lie, could deny, couldn't I?

Every thing that kills me makes me feel alive.

[Chorus:]

Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep

Dreaming about the things that we could be

I feel her love

And I feel it burn down this river every time

Hope is our four-letter word, make that money watch it burn

Old but, I'm not that old

Young, but I'm not that bold

And I don't think the world is sold

I'm just doing what we're told

And I feel something so wrong by doing the right thing

I could lie, couldn't I?

Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly

I'm talking about mania, bitches. Tell me it ain't so.

Ahhh see you can't say no.

I know what's up, people 

*looks around, totally paranoid, while tapping foot and drinking five Frappacinos*

Gotta go run a marathon, write a bestselling novel on the level of Moby Dick before 9pm, do some laundry, cry for about ten minutes, then take Mom to the library. 

In the meantime -- Anyone got any Xanax? Oh shit you do?!

Gimme another coffee.... 

*pops the Xanax - counting stars....*

Oh, take that money watch it burn,
Sink in the river the lessons I learned
Take that money watch it burn,
Sink in the river the lessons I learned
Everything that kills me makes me feel alive

Until Next Time Politrixters

I will rise

I will return

The phoenix from the flame

I have learned

I will rise

You'll see me return

Being what I am 

There is no other Troy

For me to burn

Me, Too

In this state I find myself by the red dotted coordinates upon the map of my life.

I see a dress and I think "That is me."

I hear the lyrics and of some song, I feel, and say "That is me."

I know her. I remember me. There is no losing; there is only recognition even when there are lengthy moments of study and consideration 

I remember and recover myself every bit such as one does to locate a lost file within the labyrinth of one's computer.

What the hell does it mean when people are "finding" themselves?

What the hell.

But, in this state, I re-arrange and redecorate  the items that are part and parcel my own Mind Palace.

I am locating the items that exist; I replace them in new configurations upon the map of me

I feel about and remember "That is me".

I restore. I recognize. I relocate and redecorate according to that which is me, 

and that which I shall become as I grow

 As I mature

There is no virtual me

This place inside, the place I feel when my consciousness drops down down into the heart, tells me who and where and what.

Even when I don't understand "Why?"  

When it too difficult to express, as many days are, I luxuriate in silence

because even that is me.

I know myself as I gently feel about, and delicately grasp hold in blindness.

There are many different methods of seeing: I've always known this.

 Often there is fear in this darkness where so much within my own Mind Palace has been damaged.

Those pieces, too, are me.

I put them together, all those puzzle pieces; I know the portrait upon the canvas because it is the likeness of my self

This is what we do.

With patience I 

Restore

Relocate

Redecorate

I must love the darkness and the light,

the reparable brokenness.

Believe and understand:there are elements inside that cannot break

Perhaps I am battered, bruised in places 

But I am UnBroken as well

Me, My Self, I cherish

Every piece is precious - there is no losing, 

 I only identify the coordinates upon the map

and I say,

"I know her. She is Me."

Listen Without Prejudice/ Trixie's Bi-Polar Stay Sane Mix

A Lyrical Ballad: Journey and Endurance/ THE BI-POLAR INTERPRETATION

A Lyrical Ballad: Journey and Endurance

I cannot go on, she says

in the night

it hurts,

I'm afraid,

and I'm too tired to fight

I have been cut by the dull edge of the blade

Wounded by the quiet rip of the knife

Inside I am alive

but the fear is so bright

that I stumble

in spite of the mourning star's light

I fall and I rise

I am a daughter of Night

Covered in the dust of the trek

the dew washes my wretchedness

So I stand bare before my love:

I am betrothed to Kismet

Walk with me,

mine lover

We shall cut the morrow

like a veil

to protect us

from dispossession

despair and

travail

Then I shall be free

to repent and atone

the nights I nearly gave

my life too wantonly

from fear of being alone

Because I nearly succumbed

to that serpent

the King of Loneliness,

the Prince of Despair.

From the likes of the sorrowful

he hears each and every anti-prayer

but the night I cried

without understanding

still, I was guided away

And I tell you, the Heart-Riven,

that moonlight is enough

to guide even tear-blinded strays

thru stones of turmoil

thru the thorns and the dust

Forever UnBroken

Your Self

Can Break Apart

Yet Still Be UnBroken

And that's a BiPolar Secret.

Back Soon.

Til Then I'm Doing My Best to Be THIS.

Just ME.

In Any Other World...

Some days it's going to feel like this...

....Say Goodbye to the World You Thought You Lived In...
In Any Other World You Could Tell the Difference...

(Watch til the end when Mika goes off. Sorry to be mawkish but my blog, I can be mawkish when I want to!)

A break in time

In the mind

Doesn't mean you're broken

forever. 

Just pause.

And see yourself.

Love the breaks.

All you have to do is heal

MAJOR BREAK #3

 And OccasionallyThings fall apart.

Hurts

Politrixters,

I'm submerged in a bipolar break at the moment.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

As soon as I heal.

God Bless.

Smithereens

THE MAJOR BREAK #1

The Major Break

Yes I Sat Up In the Public Library and Made This Thranduil Gif Story...And It Made Me Happy

                   Because sometimes when folks don't feel me I'm like.

And then I stop to consider because is it just me or what?

And haterz be like

And then I get my groove back because...

And finally I just have to remind myself about what's real...about the things that truly matter...

Because I am

Hallway Echoes at the Roadway Inn (*Easter 2015)

 into this life we come alone

to be fed upon myth of kin and kith and hearth and home

tis naught but a tale grown folk ought be too canny than believe

for still alone art thou comest daytime's eve

 tis no riddle 
nor glass darkly 
if you would but see:

the 

heart 

doth 

beat

that

 you 

may 

bleed

I Cannot Overstress the Importance of This Point

Keep Calm and Keep Herb In Your System

The Complexities of a Simple Life

Life will get complex as hell without your permission so keep to the basics of your personal integrity and well-being. Be flexible and allow change when appropriate. Laugh. Ask for help when you need: people may refuse you but all they can do is say no: they can't eat you (depends on what you asked for of course...)

Observations of Life Inside a Parallel Domicile Adjacent to Rock Bottom

Observations of Life Inside a Parallel Domicile Adjacent to Rock Bottom

1. Having a bad run of luck, fate, finances, health, depression etc doesn't mean you can't have a perfectly good day in an almost perfectly good mood

2. The people who help you when you are down and out are usually the people who can't afford to yet help support you anyway

3. Poor people share, rich people... not so much

4. Sometimes change that appears to be irreversibly destructive can be a blessing in disguise (Note: I have heard this nugget of optimism for years, though I always suspected it to be a foul rumour of little truth and great malice, but despite my hostility to it I now have the possession of some suggestive evidence in favor of  this hypothesis. Prior to this experience however I might have clawed someone's eyes out for suggesting such a foolish-sounding thing while  I wallowed in a rut of ill-fate, stress and deprivation. But now I declare there may be useful truth to this riddle.)

5. Blood family are not always the family members who will be around to catch you when you fall but family forged from choice and affinity tend to be there with fortitude everytime

6. When you are at rock bottom never turn down weed. 
Never ever ever ever refuse weed whilst enduring crisis at Rock Bottom

7. Find something to laugh about everyday. Even if you have to spend all your patience and a goodlyl amount of effort look for the funny things in life. A good laugh is worth as much as an earth-shattering orgasm and maybe more...

8. Just because bad shit is happening in your life it does not mean that you are a bad person who should feel bad forevermore: fight hard against any instinct to condemn yourself: you have to stay out of the rut of self-condemnation because a) it's wasteful of your precious store of energy b)entirely un-useful c) it will only perpetuate ripples of emotion that are full of self-recrimination, paranoia, and these are dangerous flirtations.

9. Like the first day of kindergarten you can make true friends at Rock Bottom. But at the same time remember that not everyone who helps you is your friend; not everyone who shits on you is your enemy; and if you are warm and happy in the shit keep your mouth shut and roll with it.

10. Do whatever you have to do, be it in the most selfish, self-protective manner but take care of your mind, energy-store, keep yourself as calm and comfortable as possible while in crisis. Don't let others force you into positions of further suffering or feelings of guilt, shame, or humiliation for practicing self-preservation/self-survival. Take care of yourself with every bit of love and devotion as a mother caring for a child: be your own love and your own lover. Protect YOU.

by Clarina Hernandez