The world is full of lovers and haters.  The lovers have your back when times are bad.  The haters will tell you that you can’t when times are good.

You can’t be a therapist.  You’re crazy.

You can’t have a baby.  You’re crazy.

You can’t have a normal life.  You’re crazy.

The sheer number of instances people have told me about their encounters with ( Read more... )

You will never know what you mean to us-those of us with a mental illness-that you support us.

Not financially, or physically, not all the time anyway.  But emotionally and spiritually.  That you can love us, through the very bad, through the very good, through the ups and downs and sideways, you still love us.

If you are reading this, and you are ( Read more... )

Note:  I’ve touched upon this briefly, but I wanted to cover it more in depth.

I can’t look back.

I am driving the car and I can’t look back.  Why?  You’re asking me this because you obviously haven’t thought it through.  I forgot to look in my backseat before I got in the car, and of course it always happens when you forget to look.  It just takes ( Read more... )

National Music Competition Now Open

for Those Living with Depression or Bipolar Disorder

Facing Us Music Contest Now Accepting Submissions

CHICAGO - The Facing Us Music Contest, a major national competition, will be launched by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) and Dave’s Spark on July 4. The Facing Us 2008 Music Contest ( Read more... )

“Here’s the thing,” Alice says to me.

We’re sitting outside a coffeeshop, she’s knitting something blue, I’m writing something blue, it all works, if you think about it.  “Yeah?” I I ask, pretty sure of what’s coming because we’ve talked about it before.

“The thing is I don’t know what to choose.  I can choose to be where I am, which is kinda ( Read more... )

This is my seventh and final (for now) delving into DIGFAST.  Next up, an announcement.

Thoughtlessness

Maybe it’s a part of grandiosity, maybe it’s the flight of ideas, they tell me these are all part of my disorder, but when I am on top of the world, thoughts racing a million miles a minute, lots of things seem like good ideas.

I have been known ( Read more... )

This is my sixth entry in the DIGFAST series.

Speech.  Or a lot of it.  Talkativeness if you will.

“You know?  You are talking really fast, I think you might be manic,” medlady Martha says to me.

“I’m not talking fast I always talk like this.  People always say that I talk fast, but I think that’s just because this is the south and I talk quickly ( Read more... )

This is the fifth in my entries about DIGFAST.

To do list when I am manic.

Today I will:

1. Clean out all the cupboards.

2. Reorganize my sock drawer.

3. Build a flower bed.

4. Install some shelving

5.  Write at least 6000 words.

6. Go to the grocery

7.  Go to the bead store

8.  Go home and make a necklace

9.  Knit a sweater

10. Repeat.

When I have ( Read more... )

This is my fourth entry in the DIGFAST series.

I never knew I could think so fast about so little.  There is an unfortunate trend that the flight of ideas-racing thoughts, to be more simple-often corresponds with distractibility.

So I can think really fast . . .

. . . about nothing in particular.

An example:

I wonder what it would feel like if I ( Read more... )

This is my third of the DIGFAST entries, Grandiosity.

So you say you’re the king of the world.  You say that, but you’d be surprised how untrue that is.  There’s one true monarch, baby, and it’s me.

Superpowers?  I’ve got em.  How about the power to rock your world?  What about that?  You think it’s not true, but you’re just too simple to know any ( Read more... )