Bipolar – Please Believe in Me

/ Robin

I’m at the end of one phase of my life and am about to begin another.

I must seem as worried about a job and such as anyone else…

…but I’m not.

I have a mood disorder. If you understand the implications of that then when I tell you I’m not worried like others and that it’s worse, so crippling it destroys me from the inside out.

I cannot tell you about all the emotions that wait to catch me around the neck when I wake in the morning because then they might seize me because running away is not easily done with hysterical tears choking my vision.

I’m going to graduate. I’m 55 and I’m terrified.

My brain, in the past, has not been kind to me.

I wish I could tell you that all will be well, that the friends who snubbed me won’t matter because I will make many more who are mature, understand that life is most often not what it seems and that I will be financially successful and secure and able to help my kids.

I wish I could tell you those things will happen – and so I shall.

I’ve spontaneously been saying to this people when they ask how I am —

At this moment, at this precise second, at this exact instant in time I’m doing very well. In fact, I’m doing awesome!

Can you imagine it? A lone middle-aged woman with no job and not much chance of one, A graduate. A degree. Bonkers. Can you see me?

I’ve never had a job that lasted more than a year except for when I worked for myself. Imagine with me, that I have amassed all that is my life, both past and what is still to come…and now feel the certainty of the word “failure” burning across my forehead.

It isn’t the truth. It’s a screwed up bipolar lie. The intensity that is me is huge and is ready – no matter what may come, to really see who I am.

I have a really crappy mega mood disorder, but, but…

— at this exact moment in time I’m good, I’m really good.

How are you? Right now? Precisely at this instance?

Be well my friends,

Robin

— at this exact moment in time I’m good, I’m really good

.

Grass – A Very Short Story

/ Robin

Smoking CannibisThis is an assignment we had in class Tuesday.

WRITING PROMPT: Some people might think it strange that I like…..

Some people might think it strange that I like grass. Yep. That’s what I said.

Maya, a fellow student, said that this isn’t such surprising. After all, I was raised on a ranch. You know, we had horses. Horses love grass. So no. Not surprising that I like grass.

It was May 18, 1980, and I was a year away from graduating, from high school. Today it’s May 22, 2018, and I’m about to graduate again. This time it will be from the university.

You know what binds these two important events together? Grass. Green, green grass. I love grass… for the horses that is.

Grass was so illegal back then. Eighteen years ago the only news events that I recall were the local Carbone Family weed bust and mountain St. Helens here in Washington State blowing up.

Today I find I’m still involved with grass, again. Green, green grass. All grass starts out green, but eventually its able to be used.

Best conversation I ever had was with my son… and grass. Yep grass, green, green grass. He was so mellow. So honest and likable. I love grass.

Horses… kids… grass, green, green grass. Yes, starts out green, but when its ready it changes and it’s ready to give my son and I more chances to have honest, loving chats.

Some might think it strange, that I love grass, yep, I love me some green, green grass.

[This is from a prompt in my Advanced Fiction Writing class at UWT in the spring of 2018, my last quarter before graduating. Not a great bit of writing, but it was done in less than ten minutes and it got a lot of laughter and clapping.]

Bipolar – Letting Go. The Great Pause of a Moment in My Mind – Peace

/ Robin

www.youtube.com/watch {Please watch this short music video so you can get the gist of what I’m relating to you.}

Sometimes, I remember that moments of peace I experience are often when I’m outside of my head.

Perhaps you’ve never seen a video like this before. The first time through for me I just watched. Then I played it again and again. I closed my eyes and let go of all the thoughts that had been overwhelming me. I let the sounds that I heard, unfamiliar as they were, snuff out the ever present junk… that Bipolar junk.

Whether it is this video or some other, find one that you can abandon yourself in. Try something without lyrics. The words will only guide you and keep the constant brain usage, the chatter, at maximum, just like I always do.

I went outside without my phone, tablet, book, or laptop today. There was no human to talk to. It was just Bailey and I and a few flies. No one mowed, destroyed weeds with a buzz saw or played their bloody music at all.

It was amazing. Stunning. I stopped. Peace. This must be real peace.

Twice today I experienced genuine peace in my Bipolar, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety riddled mind and I fell in love with it.

No drugs or talk therapy. Simply stopping. Simply unplugging. Simply letting go.

Give it a try and see if you can touch your bit of peace. Try for it. As full of bananas as my brain is, I found it. I bet you can too. Now, stop everything from bugging you for five tiny minutes, and let the peace break in on the reliable back, of music.

Bipolar – Stoned Siblings

/ Robin

I just got off the phone with my youngest child and I’m heartbroken.

He says he tells people all the time what a badass I am. He’s a psych major and he now understands a tiny bit of what it must have taken for me to raise three kids with my illness. He tells people how I raised them sick and even had a knee replacement, twice. It’s a good story to tell people to get them to buck-up. He tells them to get over themselves. Look what my mom did.

He was telling how great it has been lately for him when he spends time with his brother. They’ve been bonding, getting stoned, hanging out. (We’re in WA and it’s legal here.)

I was crushed.

I’m a mom. A parent. I’m weird… but I’m a parent. I’ve always pushed myself to be the best parent I could be. Suddenly, again, I feel like I failed. It doesn’t make any sense I suppose. It doesn’t really have to because I know how I feel and I FEEL like I failed them.

I know I’m being emotional. I am emotion. Always emotion.

I feel like I failed my babies. Why? Things have been going pretty well. They’ve been bonding when they’re high. Okay. Okay. I feel, like I failed them because they have to be high to bond. To relax around each other they’ve got to be stoned. So what. So what?

I was just having a great conversation with him on the phone. The longer we talked the more I realized that he was being the most relaxed talking with me that he’s been in a long time. Awesome! Right? Right.

I’m a good parent. I know I am. But –

Why do my kids have to be stoned to be loving?

It isn’t a big deal. It’s legal.

But why do they have to be stoned? Why stoned? Why?

I’m going to bed. I’m too tired to handle this. I can’t do effective damage control in my brain trying not to blame myself when I’m tired. I am blaming myself. I don’t feel like I did a good job raising them if they have to be stoned to be good people to each other, to me.

Again, I feel like I failed.

Should I get stoned too?

No…. not more drugs. Not stoned. Not me. I just can’t do that.

Bipolar – You’re Freaking Insane!

/ Robin

Today, I’m not insane. I trust that since you’re reading this that you aren’t either.

There are people though – I just- I just have to reconsider what insanity is. I FEEL it in my ever so raw emotions, the there are way more nuts 🥜 around us than we realize.

I think, that when someone loses touch with reality they’re psychotic. Good nuff? That’s not being insane.

My phone ☎️ just told me that insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill. And Madness, is the state of being mentally ill, especially severely.

What was that?

Let’s break it down to today, and to one moment during this day. This might be a reach, but bear with me.

I believe, with my blessed bipolar and somewhat of an authority on mental illness brain, that there are a more ways one can be “insane” than by those ways we’ve been taught and told.

Example. Full disclosure-this Professor 🤓 in no way has my respect and I would love it if he hadn’t just made tenure.

Now, the example. I’ve never approved of his teaching methods. He lets the class of people who can’t write, critique each other’s stories. He sits there and says stuff that … blah blah blah. Okay. He read everyone’s first short story this term. Then he selected a book of short stories based on what he saw when he read those stories. So each student was assigned a collection to read, then do a presentation on, of the book he specially selected for us. He waited, until well after he read them to assign them. We were led to believe that our particular book was just for us and it would actually fill a void in our training,

Right. Nothing crazy, right?

I bought my book and have been trying to read it. . . . I don’t have any clue what is going on and frankly, I don’t care to know. It’s bonkers. I wrote him an email asking for guidance.

No reply. So today after we workshopped and he sat there reading email for the entire class, I asked him about my book. Does he know anything helpful about the book? Never heard of it. (Excuse me?) Do you know anything about the author? Nope. (Beg pardon?)

I have just spent three long, very difficult, mentally, and emotionally and stressfully and often painful years PAYING for this tenured Professor 👩‍🏫 to assign me something for my final senior project, something my dog could have done a better job picking.

Insanity? Robin, where’s the insanity? That’s just the way things are.

Yep. That’s right. I owe thousands upon thousands of dollars, to be unprepared to be employed.

That’s the way things just are. Forget about it. There isn’t anything you can do. You can’t change anything.

And that’s…… what’s insane.

Anyone expecting me to accept the illogical as what is normal I will tell tell them to their foolish face that they are insane – not me. Not you.

I believe, that expecting others to accept lies and the illogical as as truth are insane… damn bonkers.

I’m a lot of things and sometimes I’m not always kind or think before I speak, but I never tell people that things will never change, that they will never change, or that they will never change things.

This is possibly unfair of me, but I’m mad so I ask you to judge me kindly, I am calling this professor out. I believe he has behaved in an irrational and insane manner. I do not believes he has earned the job based on the three years I’ve had classes with him.

We can’t accept it when people tell us things like student loans are going to get us a job. We can’t accept it when professional teachers take our money then don’t train us.

Ok, so I’m mad. I’m even admittedly pissy. But I believe things can Change. I believe professors can really train us, teach us to be great at something.

I’m not insane today. Nor was I yesterday. Next week? Dunno. But by all the stars in the heavens above don’t ever, don’t never, tell me things can’t change. Or that I can’t change.

That’s insane. Just plain insane.

How do you feel about it? Is sanity something more than how our brain is behaving in a moment? Is it possibly claiming not to have a mental illness and yet purposely living one’s whole life in an illusion?

In any case, things can change, they always do. And we can change, and we always will.

Be well my friends

Robin