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Pain is my comfort zone, destruction my one phone call. 

I learned to live with my Bi-Polar for 15 or so years by finding comfort in fear which helped me internalize all of my anxieties and fears. I won’t claim to know how every Bi-Polar mind works, but remember that one saying, “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever I say bounces off me and sticks to you?” It’s funny because it’s not just what people say that sticks, everything sticks. All the things that you need to do, the lists, the fears, the things you did and didn’t do, your fears and anxieties, your wildest dreams. It’s all there - and of course it builds up over time. 

When I was 14 I was in a bad car accident so when I started driving I had incredibly high anxiety when it came to driving on highways. I was researching and researching trying to find others who were struggling like me, and this became a tool for me throughout my whole life. I remember during this time watching a video from none other than Will Smith who said the greatest thing is on the other side of fear. So what did I do with that? I ran with it. I would force myself to drive long distances. I flew across the country from NY to CA and drove along highway one along a cliff side. I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. I drove over the most difficult roads so I could once and for all conquer my anxiety of driving and it worked. I now can drive long distances, and when anxiety crept up I would tell myself, “You drove Big Sur, you can do hard things, what’s on the other side of fear”.

Onto the next anxiety, public speaking. I remember someone once telling me that more people were afraid to speak at a funeral that dying. Well, that sparked the anxiety of public speaking. In college, I was shy and would turn red in the face whenever I would have to public speak. I would purposely choose jobs at my company that I wouldn’t have to speak in front of large groups of people, but it bothered me. I didn’t want anything at all in this world holding me back. I had a background in competitive dancing, so I got a certificate to teach Zumba to start boosting my confidence again with getting up in front of crowds. I taught Zumba classes and eventually taught before large events such as the color run and the walk for breast cancer research. Surely, if I could dance in front of crowds of 3,000 people then I could speak in front of crowds of 100 with no problem. I went from an analyst at my company to a supervisor and ahd to get comfortable having difficult conversations constantly. I even had to give a few speeches in rooms full of leaders and speaking into a microphone. I was able to get so confident that I was willing to keep going. I had shattered my self-confidence and fear of public speaking, which had been a life long fear, and now I thought I could do anything. So when a Sales Manager recruited me to “go to the dark side” I thought I had truly made it. I was willing to keep pushing until my brain said no more.

I was in the Sales Manager job for just over a year before my mental breakdown which led to my recent 10 days of hospitalization that got me the diagnosis of Bi-Polar I. I believe that if it weren’t for a death of a close family member, a friend taking advantage of me, me having full responsibility of my son with no help from his father at the time, and COVID and the toll it had been taking not just on me but everyone around me, along with the stress of a Sales Manager job, I would still be going in this position and I would likely be putting myself in an early grave. I had latched onto finding what was on the other side of fear for the past 15 or so years as a defense mechanism to mask my mental illness, and I thought that was just how I had to live to fight away the anxiety I felt inside. I didn’t want to take out my anxiety on anyone around me and I didn’t want to feel anxiety anymore so I wanted to go through it. Looking back - this was a very interesting method to try to fight off the mental illness that was so clearly there all these years. And quite frankly, it was pretty exhausting. I’m so happy that now I have the answers I have been looking for all along. 

Fear is a funny thing after all. 

Ok, so I’m not claiming to have all the answers, and I’m sure as hell not claiming that I am a psychic or an intuitive, but I do know that I am an overthinker. I pick up on everything that someone does or doesn’t do and then can make an educated guess based on the things that I know about a situation. This got me thinking about my diagnosis of Bi-Polar I and my prior research on empathic and psychic abilities. Really, I believe they are all one in the same. Heres an example for you, one that relates to some small mundane task that I need to get done because really my life has become one small mundane task after another with being on leave for the next month. It is really boring let me tell you! Anyways, I need my therapist to fax over notes to my disability specialist. I emailed her the other day and a normal person would be able to leave it at that and wait until the appointment on Friday to confirm that the information was faxed over, right? Wel not me! My brain thinks and thinks, I even wrote it on my whiteboard calendar as my one task to take care of today since my list of to-do’s keeps getting shorter by the day (which is killing me I might add). So this got me thinking, I had also emailed her last week to confirm two appointments and she responded back to me with a voicemail the following business day with the answers I was looking for so I know that she received the email and she took action that I had requested. I also know that the disability specialist has since stopped emailing me her requests for more information since I sent this email which leads me to believe she had received the information she was looking for. Now, I didn’t receive the confirmation from my therapist but because my brain couldn’t stop thinking about this scenario I was able to put tiny little dots together to come up with a likely solution to keep me from having to call today to again verify that this was being taken care of. Still not convinced? I know, it seems trivial, but there are countless small scenarios that I play over and over in my head where I pick up on tiny little dots to be able to make educated guesses on likely outcomes of scenarios and how they will play out because, well, that’s just how my brain works.

Now I’m not saying that I am a psychic or an intuitive, but I am saying that I pick up on everything in every scenario and the things that people do or don’t do that I know needs to be done for me to be able to let go of a situation. This puts me in a position to be able to predict whether or not I need to take further action in a scenario before I know how a scenario plays out. The good news is, if everyone pays attention to these small details they too can become intuitive and they can know whether or not they need to take further action in a scenario that could better a situation for themselves! 

Just wanted to give a little insight into the mind of a Bi-Polar girl for the day - I may not be a psychic, but I am a professional overthinker, and sometimes I think it is one in the same.

Impatience is not a virtue, but it’s just how my brain works. Sometimes my brain just keeps going and going and I want immediate results for things that don’t have immediate answers. This is living with Bi-polar. It can be extremely frustrating. I have to learn to be patient, not just learn to be patient but every time there is something that I want then and there I have to tell myself over and over again to wait. I have to distract myself from thinking about it obsessively. My brain can take me so far that I can be successful with something that I haven’t even started yet. I can already see myself doing a job that I haven’t even interviewed for, or see myself living in a house that I haven’t even looked for yet. This can come in handy when it comes to getting things done, but in the grand scheme of things I can make rash decisions that sometimes can have harsh outcomes later on that I may not be so happy with. I need to learn to have an idea about something and then be able to think about the pros and cons and learn to wait it out and trust that the best outcome will happen for me - I don’t have to force the outcome to happen, the right one will come along.

Through some of my research lately, I’ve discovered that I’ve been doing this in my personal relationships as well. I get into a relationship and all of a sudden I am in a fairytale, we are going to live happily ever after, and before long we crash and burn and I’m left to pick up the pieces wondering why I can never find someone to spend the rest of my life with. It’s not almost comforting to know that this wasn’t my fault, or their fault, but it was my brain’s way of thinking that got me into these messes over and over again. Now, I am going to be able to start a relationship in the right way, get to know someone slowly, and slowly build that relationship with someone before my heart is fully immersed in the idea of a happily ever after with that person. 

Then I got to thinking about my career. I have worked at a company for the past 13 years that allows for internal growth through different job opportunities. From an outsider’s perspective, my job path is so unique that I must be some sort of idiot savant, but in all reality I am just Bi-polar and my job track shows how Bi-polar I really am. I went from spending three years as an analyst, to a supervisor in an operational role to a sales manager. Three completely different job roles, three extremely stressful job roles. All within 5 years. I learned them and executed them all extremely well, and then I had a complete mental breakdown. If someone looked at my full history they could see that I was just bored, and my brain was constantly looking for the next thing to keep me satisfied. During this time, I was also teaching several fitness classes and I was a single mother seemingly able to handle it all on my own with no help from the outside world. I would constantly have people tell me “I don’t know how you do it”. Hell, even I didn’t know how I did it - but it didn’t even seem hard to me. I had so much energy, and then it got to the point where I started not having so much energy, and boy I did not like that. I started doing everything in my power to get my energy back, healthy or unhealthy. 

The point of all this is to say if someone is constantly doing things that causes you to say, “Wow, I don’t know how they are handling all of that” - check on them. Like me, they probably aren’t just handling it, they probably don’t know how to go through life without handling chaos. It’s really interesting to now look back and see all the things that I was able to accomplish because of the illness that I have. I guess Bi-polar really is good for something, and I wouldn’t change who I am for anything, but that doesn’t mean that this end point isn’t difficult. I now have to rebuild who I am. I now have to take the pieces of the rubble of my shattered life and decide what goes with me into the next chapter. It’s difficult, it’s embarrassing, it’s scary, it’s unsettling. I wish I would’ve known years ago what I was dealing with - it may have made my life much easier. So if you find yourself rushing from one thing to the next thing, and doing incredibly difficult things always on your own, yes you may be superwoman, but you also may be Bi-Polar I just like me. And guess what? That’s ok, because we are pretty damn cool.

The dark clouds have lifted, and I now can live in a sea of normality for awhile until the grey fog returns again. 

I am still learning about Bi-polar I. I was diagnosed about a month ago after a manic episode, and let me tell you - I was pretty happy during the manic episode. I was non-stop creating, writing, making jewelry. I thought that a prince charming was going to swoop in and save me from all my problems. I was on top of the world, until I wasn’t. I was hospitalized for 10 days, and in those ten days I slowly parachuted back down to reality. What I didn’t know was that I was still in a hypomanic state even while being hospitalized. When I came home, I felt myself slowly but surely come down, down, down and land my feet on the ground. But then I went into the sea of depression and I started treading water. I stayed there for two weeks. 

The “good” thing about Bi-polar I, from what I’ve read, is that the depressive states are as severe as Bi-polar II, but the manic states are what you have to watch out for. In my depressive states, I still feel hopeless and ask things like, “What’s the point of life”, and “Will I ever be able to create again”, but I never feel suicidal, and for that I am grateful. I felt as though I was treading water and fighting off grey clouds for about two weeks after my first severe manic episode and it was the most severe depressive episode I had ever experienced. And for the past few days, I could feel myself fighting off the last of the grey clouds. The funny thing about my depressive states is that my brain tries frantically to fight them off. I worked out every day, I tried to create every day (although nothing I created came out very good and I told myself all of my creativity was gone forever), I tried to frantically find a new job because I couldn’t bear the thought of facing the job I was currently on leave from, etc. Even in my most depressive state I still have to constantly do something. My most depressive state is also the most restless, and for me that is a dangerous combination. That is where i make equally dangerous decisions. Although, I would argue in a manic state I make pretty kick-ass decisions, but my friends and family would beg to differ there - ha! 

The point is - I need to strive for a “normal” state, and that’s why I am grateful to have a diagnosis finally after all these years of self-medicating and having different ways of coping. I would over spend, over workout, over-do just about everything. I am looking forward to seeing if the over-doing is over. I know now that this was a symptom of a disease I didn’t even know existed in my brain, something that I couldn’t help myself from doing even if I wanted to. There is some level of relief that comes with knowing that I was out of control and I did my best to control myself in the ways I knew how. I was able to get myself through life and manage the best way I could for as long as I could, and now I have help when the disease took over. When so much had happened in my work and personal life that my brain said - nope, this is too much and now I’m taking over! I will get into more on what I believe caused my severe manic episode in another post, but from my research there is only so much stress, both work and personal, that a person’s brain living with Bi-Polar can take before it goes into an episode like I experienced. 

I am so relieved to finally have answers, but trust me it’s exhausting going into the bright clouds, parachuting down into the sea of grey and fighting them off. It is really nice to be able to swim in the sea of normality for awhile after the storm has lifted

Humans are never satisfied, we want what we can’t have

We cry when we want to laugh

We work and we say we need a rest

We get to rest and we can’t wait to get to life’s next test

This is at least how I feel living with Bi-polar. Never satisfied. Always looking for that next thing to keep me satisfied. It’s exhausting. I tend to be more up than down, which I am grateful for, but the restlessness is so difficult now that I am out of work for the next month after my first full blown manic episode that finally got me the diagnosis that I’ve been looking for for years. I had been struggling with physical symptoms for the past couple years, and now that has all gone away. So what does my brain do? Create problems where there aren’t problems. Yay! Yesterday I haphazardly refinanced my car loan (which was not a better deal I might add) so tomorrow I need to call to make sure I can cancel what I did during a time when my brain wouldn’t shut off during a spin out about my finances being out of control. People tell me to just stop thinking, to just relax. To just enjoy the time I have off and watch TV. This is the thing about having Bi-polar I - I can’t just turn it off, I have to keep going. During the two months leading up to my ten days in the hospital, I started making jewelry. It started out innocently, and I was making jewelry after work just as my Grandpa used to do in his spare time. I loved it, It’s something I always wanted to do. What did my brain do? It started thinking of all the possibilities. It started buying way too many supplies. It started going out of control. I now have a whole room dedicated to making jewelry, and while I do love it, I have enough jewelry to sell at multiple festivals this summer already - I’d say I have about 200-250 pieces that I have already made during the 2 month manic episode that ensued after I started making the jewelry. 

I also started writing. But not just casually writing, I filled up 3 notebooks of poems. I have about 100 poems (some of them are actually pretty good I might add). I am now editing them and eventually would love to publish them, but it shows how much the Bi-polar can get out of control with just an idea or just something that you may like to do. Everything is in an extreme way. So now, with me healing and with so much time on my hands, it seems difficult to fill the days. I went from everything being amazing and thinking I would become a published author and famous jeweler to thinking I wouldn’t be able to pay my car payment and refinancing my car loan on a whim and now having to hope thatI I can un-do what I did because my brain sometimes is working faster than my logic is working. It can be exhausting living like this.

Coming out of such an extreme manic phase has probably been one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. It’s been about a month now and I am just starting to shake off the depression I felt every day. I am just starting to feel normal again and wanting to do the things I would normally do. Luckily, I personally don’t go into deep, deep depression like some people that are living with this disease but I will say the depression is still extremely difficult to live with and I so badly miss my mania like I have heard so many others say. But mania isn’t reality. Being “normal” is what I should strive for, and that’s what I am feeling today so I should be grateful for. I am grateful for a place to write this out, for being able to have outlets to be creative, for a supportive family, and for a weird brain that might be able to help someone reading this post.

My body was on fire, and no one could tell me what was wrong. I went to the doctor and she told me I was perfectly healthy - I begged her for a full body MRI which I got (not without a pretty out of pocket penny). I had an MRI of the brain, upper back, lower back and both hips. The only common denominator was inflammation everywhere. I was convinced that I had MS, but no doctor would give me a diagnosis. I had succumbed to using a massager every single day and was taking hot baths every night after work. I was using pain patches regularly, and had migraines that would have me leave work unexpectedly and have me writhing in pain in bed for days. I was convinced that I had an auto-immune disorder and from my research, it seemed that it took doctors years to diagnose. I knew something was wrong and I felt incredibly alone. I stopped searching for answers when I saw my medical bills climb up and learned to live with the pain that I was experiencing, I was now 33 years old, and I guessed that this was just what life  was like with getting older. I was absolutely miserable. No one looked deeper into the inflammation for me, but I knew that there were answers in the inflammation that I hadn’t found, I was just too exhausted to look. After all, I wasn’t a doctor. 

About a year and a half after living with this daily pain I had my first full blown manic episode. I am bi-polar I. These symptoms I was experiencing were all indications that I needed to start medication, and the doctor was not able to put 2 and 2 together because I was going to my general practitioner with physical symptoms at this point. Sure, I had previously gone to the doctor with anxiety and trouble focusing, but they were not looking at the full picture of my medical records and neither was I. I had no clue that a mental illness could bring about physical symptoms. Well, now I do. My physical symptoms have now mostly vanished now that I am on medication, and it seems to me like a medical miracle after all that I’ve been through. I just wish that I had someone stop and tell me - hey, after looking at all the symptoms you’ve had over the years have you ever thought about seeing a psychiatrist? I’m not saying that I would’ve been completely open to it - no one likes to be called crazy, but at that point with as much pain as I was in, I would like to think I would’ve been open to anything. 

I wanted to post this in the hopes that if anyone out there in the world is in pain this may help them in some small way. Physical pain can sometimes be related to mental health so make sure to check on both if you are experiencing physical symptoms that have no rhyme or reason - it could all be a part of something much bigger. I am now healing and have a lot of medical bills and my pride to fix after a manic episode, so if I could prevent that for someone else it would all be worth it. 

Just be true to who you are. It’s ok not to be ok. This song’s played twice in the very little time I’ve played music the past two days. There was a period of time recently where I couldn’t stop playing music. In fact, I thought I was going to be a famous singer even though I’ve never been able to sing in my life - I mean, It’s something I’ve always dreamed of being able to do after all, my wildest dream. So why not? It would be something that would be in my fairy tale, and a fairy tale I was living in. And each day, for about the past week or two - I am slowly and steadily getting back to my grey reality. I am alone. My baby, who now is a 14 year old with an attitude and who is not doing his high school homework, is no longer my baby, and I am out of work because I had a complete mental breakdown. I am swimming in the credit card debt that I racked up, and the thought of going back to my intense sales manager job at a big corporate company sends chills up my spine. My life is in shambles. So what do I do? I make a shit ton of jewelry. I write poetry. I listen to music, buy a recording device, and pretend that I will become the next famous musician because it is part of my wildest fantasy. I mean, why not, right? It’s better than living in this crummy reality where I have no idea where my life is headed and it seems that life keeps throwing me one awful blow after another. I also live in a place that doesn’t see natural sunlight for the better part of the year and right now it has been weeks since seeing the glorious sunlight so I have settled on the UV rays that are likely causing skin cancer to form under my skin. The worries are back and I’m not happy - I miss my little fantasy land. The land of no worries. But I’ve parachuted back down to reality, and now all I have left are a little bit of will to write and a small part of my dignity hiding away with the people who know something happened but aren’t quite sure what to make of my full-blown mental breakdown yet. They just don’t have the details. 

“Each day like the last 

Over and over - I try to keep going

Stay up and not look to the past

I miss the high of living in a fantasy

And the world seems so grey right now, but at least I’m able to sleep

I miss the thoughts that someone was going to rush in and save me

I always said I hated fairy tales, but I guess I just wished it was me

I want to be rescued from reality and maybe catch a break

It seems everything is so difficult and my sanity is at stake

I just want a good life with the people that I love

And I really don’t think that’s too much to ask for 

So I guess I’ll just keep praying to God above

I gotta take it step by step and one day at a time

I gotta keep lookin’ ahead while I’m livin’ this little life of mine”

“Sometimes I wish I was a bird

Or maybe something a little more beautiful

A peacock with beautiful feathers - like the

Sunset; gold mixed with pinks and blues

That way I could gaze at the animals and

Watch them in their glory

I could rally with the lions, and mock the careless humans

I could race the eagles, and swim with the whales

Glide with the seagulls with the wind in my sails

But I’m just little old me stuck in this room

With the same old problems, thinking like I always do

And while these problems seem old to me, somehow

When I re-tell them they seem shiny and new

And now I wish I could type them and give them away

Gift wrap them to get ones that are used but new to me

Thinking that then maybe just maybe if I

Tried on equally painful wings as new they

Wouldn’t hurt as deeply but would feel painfully new

I would be curious about the why’s and the who’s

Instead of the same old characters in my same old sad game of Clue

Please, oh please God, give me new feathers

So I can fly away from here and turn into someone new”

Behind “Brutus”....

“You’ve been masking the things you do good as being on my side

Thinking I’d never realize ur lies

Using my trust, thinking I’d stay blind

It’s all right, I already forgive your betrayal

But our paths have been crossed forever, and now it’s OVER

I’ll never forget your sweet little lies, your bad intentions I can see through

Fuckin’ Brutus man, Just call me Julius Ceasar 

I’m the Stigmata, my giving hands bleed because of you

Well so long, hope you’re well

Hope you find that soul of yours before you go to hell”

Xo

A couple months ago I started the full blown journey into a complete mental breakdown. My world was crumbling around me, like so many others I know, and it felt like I was bracing for one blow after another. I had narcissistic friends true colors come to the surface, I had an abusive boss at an abusive company try to steal my soul, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, a leech friend I let stay with me started squatting rent-free in my house, and then the final blow - my best friend’s mom died suddenly at 53 years old from a heart attack. My heart just couldn’t take it. I went into a fantasy world that my mind created - a love story. Except my love story was more of a Romeo and Juliet meets Cinderella and my inspiration for a lot of the art I created, and the perfect soulmate that I so badly wanted to come and rescue me? Mac Miller. He was the perfect mixture of hard and soft, he too was taken advantage of by narcissistic assholes - and every single thing I had read about him said nothing but how nice he was to everyone around him. My brain wanted so badly for my story to end well after all of the hardship I had been through. I started the creative process by making jewelry, and well - I couldn’t stop. And then I would make stories through music playlists, and then - the poetry. I wrote over 100 poems in 6 weeks. I now have the ability to write a rough draft, type and print out a poem all in under 10 minutes based on an emotion I’m feeling. It’s such a therapeutic and amazing process, and if it weren’t for my “breakdown” I wouldn’t have had my “breakthrough” - see, everything really does happen for a reason!

I wanted to create this blog to give some insight behind the mind of the poet - to understand my process a bit, and what I was thinking when I was writing the poem to help potential future poets find their process as well. One of the most important things about writing poetry in my opinion is to pull from anything that strikes an emotion inside of you - poetry is emotion. Poetry is pain, happiness, sadness, joy. You will see all of these emotions in the different poems that I share and then give an insider’s look behind the poem.

I am currently editing my first Poetry book - Tales From A Firefly, and will post more information on the book as I have a date of when this will be available for purchase. I will also post some information on my jewelry line - it is currently available on Etsy - the shop name is Westsiders Creative - you can go directly to the shop through Etsy.com/shop/westsiderscreative

“We are all just as needy as fireflies in the sky