A part of it all – apart from it all.
Strolling along the border of land, sea and sky
with one bare foot on solid ground,
one foot in the water
and my head in the clouds
while watching
Shiny Happy People
holding hands
Shiny Happy People
laughing.
Or is it just an R.E.M. cycle?
It sucks to realize that the fun always positive personality that people love isn’t your personality
and it sucks when people see your seclusion as you being a selfish bitch
in reality you’re just doing the best you can to keep getting up and going to work everyday
sometimes everything else is too much
how can I even tell what my true personality is
when I am constantly being pulled between
one exhausting pole and the other exhausting pole?
I’m the little flag tied in the middle of the Tug O’ War rope
I really just want to stay in the middle but
sometimes I’m closer to Manic Light Laser Show
and sometimes I’m closer to Deep Dark Tar Pit
it seems as if I have absolutely zero control of it
what is the suicidal equivalent of mouth watering?
escape so close I can taste it
the many methods of release playing so vividly in my mind
like a delicious smorgasbord before a starving man
I feel like this time it is closer than it’s ever been
lately, I have even been avoiding situations that would easily facilitate the final act
but
you know the moment when you know something can’t be avoided?
like the certainty that puking is inevitable
when you wake up queasy with that pre-puke saliva
already pooling in the bottom of your mouth?
is it just a matter of time?
should it not be fought?
usually you feel better if you just go ahead and puke
you know when you have the urge to say something that you shouldn’t
it’s on the tip of your tongue
you just have to keep saying to yourself
“don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it”
until you get past it
but sometimes you blurt it out anyway?
that’s where I am at
for no reason at all
other than that’s where I am
it’s on the tip of my tongue
I can taste it
I can feel myself opening my mouth
to say it
but keep repeating in my head
“don’t do it don’t do it.”
I am waiting it out
until I feel happy to be alive and excited again
the happiness and excitement will return on their own
for the exact reason that I am struggling with the darkness now
and it ISN’T about red or blue or the flu
last month I was thrilled at every little breeze and cloud and raindrop
now I just can’t wait to get into bed
no reason
which is the worst!
there is no reasoning with no reason
but I always manage to wait it out
that’s what is expected of me
so that’s what I am trying to do
again
it feels like I am breathing through a dirty pillowcase
I don’t want to talk about it
people don’t want to hear it
so I lie when I manage to pick up the phone
they ask how I’m doing and I’m always “GREAT!”
faking it till I’m making it is easier on the phone
sounding okay from the depths is hard
impossible if someone is truly listening
probably because of the echoes
trying to sound cheerful or normal while trapped
under a dark evil anvil makes me sound irritated or impatient
so avoidance really is easier on everyone
left to my own devices and vices…
unsupervised & working it out on my own
behaving recklessly while hyper is quite different than reckless behavior when I am low
behaving erratically with a feeling of excitement and joy is exhilarating
behaving erratically with a sense of hopeless “fuck everything” feels angry
then sad
one is certainly more fun than the other but they are equally dangerous
jumping off of a cliff with a goofy grin on my face to prove that I can fly
versus
driving straight into a wall with clenched teeth to prove I don’t give a fuck
come to the same conclusion
the end
~Kiddṏ
In my head I’m always writing things to you that I will never
send and then also in my head explaining to you what I
wrote but didn’t send.
Like writing :
“Let’s just say that between the two of you
I would have more fun watching paint dry
with one than getting naked at the
beach and slippery in the surf and then eating insanely delicious
tacos at that Taco Spot on the beach then taking
A1A up the entire south east coast of the state through
all the little beach access towns and ocean avenues
with the other of you.”
Then explaining (also in my head):
“Yeah. I’d trade the day I had today for watching paint dry.
I really would, even though there was a blue storm
a few miles inland while I was naked in the water
with rumbling thunder and distant lightning. Plus, the tacos
were ridiculously delicious at the beach side restaurant.
Also, there are a LOT of magnificent trees, fountains
and ocean views along the scenic route we took back home.
The day was sofa king gorgeous. I wish you could have felt it.
Especially the cool sea breeze from the open windows
with the truck AC blasting on sun warmed skin.”
I’ll leave it up to you to decide who’s who.
So yeah, I’d rather spend time with you than to have sex
and I REALLY enjoy sex. In fact I think it’s one of the top three
reasons to be alive. The other two reasons are, of course,
eating and the one hundred percent innocent non carnal
pure joy I feel from seeing Luna in all of her fullness just
above the horizon or a big bunch of darkening cumulus
clouds or watching a thunderstorm churning the waters at
the inlet or experiencing a meteor streak across the sky so
close I feel like I can reach up and grab it.
I feel guilty for feeling so strongly even though it ISN’T a
bad thing. I can’t help how I feel but I can keep it to myself
by keeping these conversations with you in my head.
My feelings are not your problem.
Don’t even get me started on your dream visitations.
I’m pretty sure you are fully aware of what you are doing there.
~Kiddṏ
Laying on my bed watching the delicious heavy rain’s got me thinking about how the 1st thing you do when you snuggle up against them is kiss the back of their neck
you just do
if there’s long wavy hair in the way you bury your face into the lightly scented depths until your lips meet their nape
then you apply one firm smooch to the base
then a very gentle light-as-a-breath one a little higher up
as you firmly but fleetingly press your pelvis forward into the ripeness of their warm cheeks
and you tighten then slightly release your arms
Unless you’re snuggling a friend
(Which means that you refrain from pressing your pelvis into their cheeks after the neck kisses of course)
then you just lay there snuggled up and experience the rain together
~KiDDṏ
So many delicious days & nights of perfect snuggle weather.
“And if you can’t be with the one you love honey
snug the one you’re with, snug the one you’re with,
snug the one you’re with, snug the one you’re with.”
~ Kiddo
Life is beautiful…unless you’re this discarded half applicated tampon surrounded by cig butts never getting to serve your purpose…
But wait: If your purpose were the same as a tampon then I think being discarded in a parking lot is BETTER…at least the view is better and there’s fresh air. PERSPECTIVE!
~ Kiddo
Overheard in a bar:
” There was a time, in about my mid-thirties when I thought ‘God damn when are these manic phases gonna just stop so that I can live a consistent grown up life?’ That shit is exhausting and disruptive. Now in my mid-forties there are still shorter manic-like times but more times when I am barely able to get up everyday and I have to force myself to participate in life. I put other people before me and that at least gives me some purpose and some motivation. I don’t like to disappoint people in my life so I do make that effort for everything to remain normal for them. Putting other people first really does help but sometimes the only thing keeping me going is the thought that a manic spike will eventually come my way. As I watch my waistline soften and my arms and face get that slightly plump look to them I long for the return of burning 1200 calories a day in the gym because that’s so much better then barely burning 1200 calories a week at the gym. When I’m depressed and getting pudgy I look in the mirror and I don’t see me. I see someone that looks similar to me. It looks like someone related to me but I don’t see me in my body and I don’t see me when I’m looking into my eyes. When I am in my manic phase I look in the mirror and it’s all me. I like what I see which is nice. As I get older I’m having shorter less intense manic phases like I was told would happen but when I’m having a depressed phase I can have manic spikes. It’s like I’ll have a trigger and feel like my normal excited self again. Not actually manic but happy and motivated. Really good sex can sometimes keep me on a high for 2 days and that’s the real me. That’s when I feel like I’m me.
All of these ups and downs are hormonally influenced. If my hormones could just stay balanced I think I would stay balanced. But would I be in a low spot or a high spot? Could I luck out and stay on a nice even keel in a happy motivated place that has me doing the proper amount of exercise and proper amount of eating and drinking and sex? These manic spikes during my depression are new. Maybe they are a part of perimenopause like hot flashes and being sentimental. Sometimes a manic spikes lasts 2 hours. Sometimes a spike lasts 2 days and then I am back in my rut. I used to think I was so weak for not being able to just pull myself out of my funk but now I know I can just keep trying and doing what I can while I wait for my mojo to return. When I’m depressed my motivational playlist does the opposite of what is intended. Even though it contains the music that I really love and that I normally love to listen to when I run and when I’m driving all of a sudden I realize every single song on the playlist is pissing me off. The music is not making me feel motivated it’s making me mad. It is so stupid to feel this way.
So stupid and I tell myself this is all just chemicals and that my body is great and it really is a beautiful day and the songs really are amazing and I really am awesome and life is WONDERFUL…but I don’t feel it and I don’t believe myself. It’s times like this that I really wish I had a significant other and at the same time I am SO THANKFUL that I don’t have a significant other to deal with and no one that has to try to deal with my mess.
It seems stupid but it also seems kind of magic because I’ll be depressed and depressed and depressed for days and everything seems to go slower and I cannot make myself get up in the morning to go workout so I just get up in time to go to work and then try to hit the gym after work but am easily persuaded to skip it. I do less but I am tired more. Soooo tired. I get to the point where I am pudgy and I don’t see myself in me anymore and then I’ll just get to the place where I start spiraling in my mind. My thoughts get random and disconnected like when I am in an actual full fledged manic phase BUT they aren’t happy excited thoughts. I am spiraling DOWN in my mind. Then I start writing or posting or talking like stupid crazy stuff and somehow that spiraling down ends up sucking me back up. I get bottomed out and then the spiraling flings me out and up. Sometimes I try to hold on and ride out the spin like I am on a Tilt a Whirl with the safety bar broken off of my seat. You know how a tornado or vortex grabs things that are down and sends them flying out of control? That’s how this downward spiral is. It will eventually sling me back up again and then I’ll feel kind of dizzy and then I will start feeling like me again. Instead of sleeping all the way until I have to get up in the morning I’ll be waking up again at 4 a.m. with no alarm and jumping out of bed, putting my sneakers on and going for a 5 mile run on the elliptical in the morning and another 5 mile run in the evening and just be so jazzed on life.
At least when I’m depressed and slightly pudgy I don’t have sharp shooting bunion pains because I haven’t been running as much and my knees will feel better, my back feels a little better and my hemorrhoids don’t bother me as much because I’m not punishing my body burning 1200 calories a day. Then again when I am burning 1200 calories a day and my bunion hurts and my knee is hurting and my back hurts I don’t really care as much because I feel amazing inside. I feel pumped. I feel excited and I feel like me because I’m a naturally excited naturally uptimistic, naturally energetic person who loves life. So I feel like me even with the aches and pains. Of course in this stage in life with titanium screws in my spine and myriad physical limitations I never completely get rid of the aches and pains and self-medicating fluctuates with my phase. When I’m depressed do I want to drink and eat fattening foods? Yes I do! Alcohol and easy delicious foods comfort me and I don’t have to expend much energy to consume them. When I am excited and manic do I drink and eat delicious foods? Yes I do because life is wonderful and everything tastes delicious. I spend a lot of time on food prep and healthy meals when I am feeling more motivated. Currently, I have been eating easier meals and haven’t been burning off those easy calories so right now I feel kind of like I am preparing for my winter hibernation. Being middle-aged and bipolar is not for pussies. I get my hot flashes and sentimental moments from my perimenopause and also have my downward spirals that turn into tornadoes that launch me into who knows what but life is always an adventure on the Bi-Polar Express.”
#bipolarexpress #olderpolar #overheardinabar #seemslikeeveryoneisbipolarthesedays
I have been feeling ranty lately. I swear if you talk to me for more than 10mins on any subject I am going to go off on a related rant. Possibly even an unrelated one. I DON”T LIKE THAT. I don’t want to be a ranter. I like being the joker, the problem solver, the nurturer, the encourager. I am the one that points out the POSITIVE!! I am about to go off on a rant about what’s wrong with ME! no, I will spare you. I have just been feeling frustrated and tired from trying to figure everything out on my own for lo, these many years and my list of things that need replacing in my household or on my car keeps getting longer. I even need a few things fixed on my body!! I guess ranting is more acceptable than weeping these days. I’m a natural frustrated weeper but that is more annoying to others than ranting. I am trying to catch myself pre-rant. Do yourself a favor and just don’t get me started.
Good talk ~Kiddo
When I was a child my ears stuck through my hair and so I was made fun of for looking like a Mon chi chi. I thought Mon chi chi were adorable so I had one….but I thought I was ugly. I began to wear a cloth headband wide enough to cover my ears. I wore a giant rubber band at night to keep my ears flat while I slept hoping they would just stay flat. I had my mom buy freckle eraser from Avon and prayed and really believed it would work. I still have freckles to this day. When I was 14 I was permitted to get a haircut that allowed my hair to be feathered over my ears. I look back at photos I hated my entire childhood and realize that I believed what people told me rather than believing what I saw with my own eyes. When I looked in the mirror I did not see this adorable face. It is so hard for me to believe that these are the same photos I have known my entire life. I recognize the pictures but they never looked cute to me before. I was always self conscious of my looks because I never saw the truth. I walked around FEELING GROTESQUE like I should be hiding somewhere. That feeling persisted for much of my adulthood. I look back at photos from the last 45 years and can’t find an ugly one in the pile. I was 35 years old before I actually felt like I wasn’t disgusting to look at. I will be 45 years old in 1 week and sometimes wish that I could go back and live a life feeling like I wasn’t horrible to look at BUT I compensated for my looks by being clever, funny, and athletic and who knows what kind of personality I would have if I had always thought I was as adorable as I see that little girl now.
If I honestly believed that one day I would meet someone that I could honestly believe in then I would save myself. I wouldn’t be buzzing around like the only bee around to fertilize the entire field of wild flowers. I would let the wind pollinate the field so that when I finally met the flower that accepted me the way that I accept all of the plants in the meadow it would be more amazing than anything has ever been. I would spend this time preserving myself for the future that I had faith in.
If I thought it was possible to somehow interact from the very 1st meeting without any of my defense mechanisms automatically popping up it might make it easier to accept that I could be known and believed in and accepted forever. But I would have to be asleep or in a coma and I couldn’t even introduce myself.
Since I don’t believe that there is anyone out there that would cherish the comatose me I will continue to connect in the only way that I’m not concerned about rejection. Even if it doesn’t fill me with joy it distracts me from my loss of faith for a fairy tale happy ending.
I’ll just have to live with physical “happy endings” and hope that I don’t meet that unimaginably amazing person after I’m all used up and have a busted ass liver. The person that is too good to be true would love me anyway, no matter what and then I would feel just awful for ruining myself before they could know me. Welcome to Conundrum City. ~ Kiddo 9-15-2013
I’ve lost every passion I’ve ever had and I’d still fuck you better than fate.
I’m like an actor on a cheap home shopping channel airing at 1am….you can tell the smile is forced and that I don’t fully believe in what I’m selling…and that I’m exhausted from trying to believe that this is temporary: I’m living someone else’s shitty life.
In this novel I’ve been reading the main character is bipolar but apparently a long cycle manic depressive because she doesn’t have real episodes for years and usually triggered by something specifically but builds…Anyway it is interesting to read the description of the gradual increase in energy and thought clarity and how reality starts to seem so surreal with colors bright, sounds defined and how she uses her peak time when she feels like her true self for clarity because she knows it’s definitely going to change into a muddled mess and eventually some wild fiction. The wild fiction that seems more real than reality and how she just can’t tell the difference at times and she knows that she’ll inevitably break and then have to hopefully recover. Once she knows how the progression works she can learn how to sort of slow the progression and eventual break. She even describes how it is after recovering to become quiet and more solitary and behind the scenes so that she can just stay stable. Rocking the boat at all when one is newly recovered could begin a quick spiral out of control.
During the rest phase bipolar people know that the funny, life of the party, take life by the balls version of themselves is alone in a room somewhere inside of them just waiting for stage directions so that they can take the stage and make life energetic and interesting again.
I think either the author of this book is manic/depressive or someone very close to them is.
Just realized that I can totally relate to Kermit when I heard him say “You know, when Piggy and I were a couple, I found her unpredictable and spontaneous and quirky, you know? It was kind of sexy. But if you take dating out of the equation, she’s just a lunatic.”
I really want someone to know me completely and yet love me so wholeheartedly that even though they don’t love every little thing about me they still choose me over and over again.
I love the sound of the rain outside my window. It’s soothing music to sleep to even though tonight it makes my aloneness under the covers more real. There’s something about listening to the rain with someone that makes it sound different than when listening alone. It’s beautiful either way.
All I can say about today is “UGH” and “I’M UP TO THE CHALLENGE!!” Sometimes ppl will accuse me of being a pessimist (usually when I point out something to do with my looks or position in life) and sometimes people’ll accuse me of being an optimist but in both cases I respond the same way: I’m a realist…I see the truth and I’m not afraid of it. Life is beautiful. Life is discouraging and ugly but NOTHING can take away from the fact that despite the beauty and the ugliness we can CHOOSE to enjoy it and wring every bit of pleasure from it….and in that way even the ugliest circumstance becomes immeasurably gorgeous. …so beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes….I have THOUSANDS of photos of beautiful sunrises,sunsets, storms and rainbows. ..they’re all spectacular and worth living to see the next one. The greatest wonders in life are free and just accessible to the pauper as the prince…priceless in their originality just as much as in their promise to come again in a slightly different incarnation. Life is a series of cycles. Tiny little cycles too small to notice and enormous cycles so big we could NEVER comprehend them and no matter if time is linear or deviant we can experience it only one moment at a time….each moment to be appreciated or ignored. If we fully experienced each moment we would be useless….so we are open to distraction and interpretation which actually preserves us but the truth remains and our lives are the results of our random as well as meaningful choices. We are all but pixels in the bigger picture. The smaller we make our universe the more significance we play in it and the grander we make existence the less influence we have on it. Some people say look at the bigger picture without realizing that the enormity of the actual BIGGER picture is that we have absolutely no influence on the cosmos as individuals….so I choose to live the not so big picture and actually make a postive difference in the lives of my loved ones and my community. If everyone chose to do so the world would be infinitely better and the universe and the multiverse as well…but science decrees that a positive can’t exist without a negative which is great because I love lightning and magnets and equal and opposite reactions and sometimes the best thing to accept is that I only have so much power and therefore a limited responsibility even though the potential is available if we ALLL worked together. The chance that all creatures will work together for the greater good is slim to none which basically means that the pressure is off. Enjoy your little slice of life. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces and let the chips fall as they may. It’s all good. Inhale love exhale love…not one breathe wasted 🙂
So many situations we find ourselves in these days wouldn’t have been possible not too long ago. Thanks to modern gizmos ‘n’ gadgets I found myself in a pretty surreal situation today. Apparently my phone screen is more difficult to replace than any phone screen in the history of the universe so nearly a month after I paid for my replacement screen I found myself BACK at the Mr. Phone Fixit shop for the third time. Anticipating that I might have to leave my cracked phone at the shop I had brought along my older phone to be used if necessary. After having participated in cheerful chit chat with the other anxious parents in the waiting area I powered on my old device. Even in a waiting area in a phone repair shop it seems odd to just continue to sit in such close proximity to other weird wired people without my electronic sheild in hand. I noticed straight away that I was getting a ton of notifications and that many of them were voicemails that hadn’t been listened to. That wasn’t a big surprise because I very rarely listen to messages. I have fewer unlistened to messages on my new phone because people finally stopped recording them. So without even a premonitory pause I decided to listen for a bit to pass the time. BIG MISTAKE. A deliciously happy, excited loving voicemail from a year ago changed me from being a cheerful stranger in a hopeful waiting area to a shattered person sitting perfectly still so that my pieces wouldn’t scatter all over the place while trying to force my lungs to function. It was very surreal. Sounds around me were muted and it felt like someone had stabbed a GIGANTIC ice sword through my gut. My vision was fading around the edges and I felt like everyone in the room were awaiting my reaction so I had none. I kept all of my reacting on the inside where it belongs.
~Kiddo
seeking solace in the horizon of life and beyond
Updates on current Projects at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy. For more info visit our website www.sienaart.org
Poetry and words
Doing What Makes My Soul Shine
writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime
in search of a better us
Fighting Depression, Anxiety, and Self-Harm
Subtitles: Kiddo's Korner, Spinach in Your Mamma's Smile, Mutterings of a Mad Woman, Don't Mention It, Never Argue with an Idiot , Lord Beer Me Strength, Random Thoughts, You Don't Have To Thank Me (It's What I Do) and UNNECESSARY CAPITALIZATION.
MY TAKE ON LIFE.
Mind • Body • Life
A collection of nonsensical words thrown together
adventures of sadie and momma
A "How to Thrive" Guide After Divorce
A Hopefully Formerly Depressed Human Vows To Practice Self-Approval
Not That Anyone Asked Me... 