The Political Mistress: August 2015

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

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

#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

Sunday, August 9, 2015

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

Saturday, August 8, 2015

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