My Bipolar Journal - Episode 237

So, it's official.  I'm a freak.  It's ok to be weird and have quirks (even a lot of them), but I am an official downright, altogether, good for nuttin' freak of nature.  So I woke up in the middle of the night (surprise, surprise) to find myself soaked in.... wait for it.... tears and snot. Haha!  You thought I was going to say urine didn't you.  I didn't say this journal was for the faint of heart.  Deal with it.  We all know I don't believe in too much information either, so here goes nuttin'.  I have no idea what I was dreaming about (I have a pretty good idea, but not verified proof), but I was apparently crying in my sleep.  And I don't mean a little boo hooing.  The amount of moisture that was on my face was a full on, all out 8-year-old temper tantrum kind of crying.  I apparently was tossing and turning a bit too.  My sheet and blankets were everywhere and I had to get up to remake the bed.  How freaking lame is that?  I'm pretty sure I can associate this to the time of the month (or year in my case) that it is, but this is getting out of hand.  I have a doctor's appointment for that very thing in a few months and I'm going to downright beg them to take my ovaries, my uterus, whatever it takes to just go through one big change and then get over it.  It's downright useless to me anyway.  The only thing would be coming up with the $4,000 deductible  but I'm gonna try to see what that would take too.  If they'll even let me.  I was told many years ago that I had to wait until I was 35 or had at least 3 children.  Well, I'll be 36 in April.  Let's do this fucking thing already!  CRYING IN MY SLEEP?  SERIOUSLY?  Infuriating.

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 236 - Dream Journal Edition

So I'm standing on a hill with a bunch of people.  I know some of them although I couldn't tell you how.  There is a river down the hill and a boat launching missiles at us.  Of course, none of us are dying because they're just missiles for heaven's sake.  I have some kind of super power that makes it so people can throw me into things and I don't even feel it or break any bones or anything.

I somehow magically get to the boat and try to stop the people from launching missiles.  I meet one of the guys that shows me his new idea for launching missiles that make it so when you shake hands with a Weimaraner either you explode or the dog does.  I can't quite remember.  I, of course, tell him it's terrible and that I'm not going to let it happen.  He shows me then a bunch of magic tricks that he's made that could help save the world.  I know I wish I had some of these.  We end up in the front of the boat with his crew (I'm thinking they were pirates) and suddenly some big mercenary type guy who kind of reminds me of Death or Andre the Giant when he wore the Holocaust cloak in The Princess Bride pulls out a gun and is going to kill over half of their own people.  Apparently you can bang me around, but I know I can't stop him.  People are being shot down all around, but no one is running.  The ones that are alive are just scared and thankful they aren't being shot.  Some people just go down and some people's heads explode.  I find out that he killed half the crew because the guy that was inventing the magic tricks was trying to convince my team to work with him.  I'm crying and horrified of course.

Then.... tweet, tweet, pretty music.  The alarm goes off.

Yup.  Every night.

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 235 - Dream Journal Edition

So, I'm selling someone life insurance (which is weird because that's not directly what I do) inside this room that is like the accounting place in The Producers.  I'm talking to the guy's wife who is like some kind of foreign fancy mail order bride or some shit.  We're waiting on her husband to show up.  When he does I realize that he plans on committing suicide as soon as he signs the paperwork.  I'm trying to get through his head that he has to have the policy for at least 2 years and then he can go for it, but he won't listen.  He never signs, but his wife walks into a room in the back and the Apocalypse starts.

I don't know what happens to the guy, but I'm in a parking garage all of the sudden looking for my car.  I keep clicking the button on my key chain to try to hear the car honk.  Not sure what happens in the interim.  Suddenly I'm trying to help everyone escape the Apocalypse (no, I don't know how that works).  I have a little boy with me and we get into an elevator with a bunch of people and suddenly the elevator drops.  I'm able to hold on to the floor without getting smooshed, but the whole rest of the car falls.  I start to try to get everyone else out onto the roof because that's where the cars are that are going to help us all escape (again, no idea).  At the last minute I see a guy clinging to the railing in the stairwell and I go back for him.  We get out to the roof just in time to see the cars pull away.  We're left with a handful of people on the rooftop.

I'm on the street.  People are running and crying and trying to get people out.  I run into 2 guys that are going after one guy's girlfriend.  We get there just in time to see blood running down the doors.  We get out of there and start running.  We keep running into this guy (or it may be several guys) that look like one-eyed clowns.  Something in the mix of a V for Vendetta/Clockwork Orange/Batman kind of bad guy.  They (or him) are around every corner.  They are causing everyone's heads to explode and the intersections are dropping out into enormous holes in the ground.  One of the guy's I'm with explodes.  The other guy and I separate and say we'll meet up later somehow.  I run towards a pair of door and these crazy, skinny, black chicks that look like some kind of vampires block the door.  I try to pry one of their arms off the doors and just as I get the idea for me to cut one of their arms off I hear birds chirping and pretty symphony kind of music.

Yup, that would be my alarm.  Every.... single... night.... At least it's more interesting than the zombies or bugs or whatever my subconscious hates that particular day.  Oddly enough, while I'm fighting to stay awake I sometimes want to get back in the dream because for a moment or two I think it would be a good idea for a story.  Then an hour or two later when I still can't stop thinking about the dream and shuddering and feeling downright horrible I can't imagine why I would have thought that.

So, why don't I like sleeping?  Why do I think it's a waste of time and miserable?  Why am I happier staying up all night giving everyone I know a hard time and trying to think of things outside of the normal?  Well, because part of me can't help it and the other part of me finds it a necessity.

I'll tell you one thing though, nothing is funnier than hearing my alarm while in the middle of hellfire and brimstone.

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 234

That's right.  I hate you!  I hate everyone!  {throws self on ground and kicks feet and screams like small child}.  I have no idea where this anger came from today, but I'm sure it has something to do with some crap dream I had and now I'm angry and can't make it stop.  So freaking stupid.

I know I'm getting stir crazy.  I know I want to be on the road or go somewhere about 1,000 better than Ohio, but even so close to getting my tax refund I am again out of money to do so.  I have bills paid though and a few gifts for myself on their way.  I hope they all come today so I can sit in my living room and laugh manically at my good fortune and then I can just be sad tomorrow.  It's so much better than being angry.

Would like to punch babies, would like a beer, would like a beer to punch babies with.  Maybe I think that if I type long enough that I can fix it, but so far I'm only getting angrier.  I'm progressing through some weird stage of nonsense that I can't control at the moment.  It's usually fine once I acknowledge I'm just acting crazy, but it's a no go this show ladies and gentlemen.  Just got to work through it until it passes or I drown myself in some kind of mind numbing pill that makes me want to do less than I'm already doing now.

Part of my crazy is, of course, being a control freak, so it is completely wrapped in irony and causes a nice snowball effect when I can't control my stupid head.  It's not like I can take a sick day from it, or go home and leave my head somewhere else.  I bet you can on my home planet, but here I am stuck in this Human body that they force us to cover with even more uncomfortable disguises.

I'm sick of the arguments too.  Mostly the ones I have with myself, but it's hard enough not doing what feels natural all the time without having to defend it.  I'm not special.  Everyone is crazy now.  Doesn't stop me from wanting it to make me special though.  I just shouldn't have to argue with people as if it were some kind of competition that my crazy isn't as bad as their crazy or vice versa.  EVERYONE IS CRAZY!  Humanity has finally evolved into one huge chemical imbalance.  Even the people who were once perceived as normal seem more robotic and Stepford Wife than ever to the rest of us.  And we're taking over mother fuckers.  The more you procreate, the more we exist and we shall destroy you!  And it shouldn't be about if someone else is crazier than someone else.  If you don't feel right in the noggin', you don't feel right in the noggin'.  Unless you're out ax murdering people there aren't really different levels of this shit.  Medicated or not.  In fact, if you are medicated, you shouldn't be so "crazy" supposedly, right?  So, if you're nuts and you take pills and your still nuts... WHAT IN THE SAM HELL AND TAR-NATION IS POINT!  You may as well, dump the pills or take all of them.  The end result will be the same anyway.

There's no amount of herbs, spices, chemicals, or knowledge that will keep any of us from dying.  There are however plenty of those things to prolong us being here so that we can grow old, be trapped in our own minds and bodies until they decide to starve us to death because that's what's "natural".  Why shouldn't we take back the control?  Is it so wrong to not want to suffer, have my license taken away, my freedom taken away or be spoken to like a child in another 30 years until I become too weak to move and they just let me starve to death?  I hope no one ever looks at my old sorry ass and calls me cute and acts like everything I do is such an achievement like walking down a hall or having a glass or 4 of wine.  It's no wonder people get cats and hole themselves up in some big haunted house.

Don't get me wrong.  This is not a suicide note.  I am perfectly content with my life when I can get my brain to cooperate with me and that part will come soon enough.  I just don't know why we are all torturing ourselves all the damn time and why I have to hear about it be treated like my problems are trite because someone else thinks they have it worse.  I don't care if you have a freaking hangnail.  If that is the all-consuming shit that is fucking up your day, then SO BE IT!  My problems may not possibly compare to the torment of your hangnail and I have no right to presume otherwise.

Marriage, sex, financial troubles, procreation, house payments.... these are all things people put on themselves and they are able to be escaped.  Whether you ever want to admit it or not.  These are choices you make and no matter how much you pride yourself on "making a commitment , it can ALWAYS be broken.  Sure, it might make you selfish, but isn't being a little selfish better than being wholly miserable?  I believe this life is it.  And even if you don't, who the hell are any of us to say otherwise.  Why spend all this time being miserable and then making perfectly content people miserable by bitching about your own life choices.  If you have terminal illness, mental illness, are being held as a slave, starving to death because you live in a 3rd world country... these are things you cannot control.  These are things that you can escape though in some way, but it makes all that other shit just sounded idiotic.  FIX YOUR SHIT OR LEAVE ME BE ABOUT IT!

I'd like to hear about some real problems for a change.  I want to hear messy shit.  I want to rile people up into a tizzy and make them think about things for a change.  More so, I'd love it if I could find something that makes me think of anything else.  Anything at all.  Isn't anyone else finding this shit, this life, mundane?  Is it only me or is everyone just afraid to say anything about it because it makes them sound like.... well, a crazy person.  Surprise!

Don't presume you know someone.  I don't think I know a single person any longer that has even touched the tip of the iceberg with the things my brain wants to think and things I want to say and the actions I'd like to take.  It's been about 15 years or so since I've had this problem and hopefully this will be the last time, however, in the meantime, don't presume anything about me ever.  The me most people know, isn't a me I don't like or that I am unhappy with, but it's definitely evolved and been created over time.  So much so that I think I convinced myself that is the person I am, which is cool with me too.  I'm ashamed that the only description I can think of right now is what Dexter (yes, from the TV show) calls his dark passenger.  Or in Supernatural (yes, the TV show) when they tell Sam to not scratch the surface or he'll crack.  I have a nice open wound that I'm constantly suturing.  I'll catch up to it.  I have complete confidence, but in the meantime you get my babbling.  Suck it.

My Bipolar Journal - Number 233

I just don't know that I'll ever understand Humans needs to suppress things.  Saying you can't do something because a standard was set by some society or organization that makes you "normal" or "proper" is absolutely defiant of every standard I could possibly find in either.  I enjoy my crazy.  I enjoy indulging.  Hell, I can even enjoy suppressing if only for experimentation or because I'm temporarily confused. I am perfectly happy with being here or not being here.  Of course, I have a preference, and if you know me, even a little, it leans both ways.  I also don't expect anyone to know me.  All this crud I keep reading about achieving goals that defy who you are or believing things that you don't really believe or being ashamed of being exactly who you are just confuse and somewhat depress me (it's probably all chemicals anyway).  Everyone has their moment, everyone has the time they question themselves and I pray to Neil Patrick Harris that I never live so long that I question who I am now or am offended by what other people think of it.  Some days I don't know if I'm more embarrassed for myself or everyone else around me, but most days both of those things answer either question like a damn palindrome.  Now I want to listen to They Might Be Giants.  Bye for now.  More dribble later.  I am a snake head eating the tail on the opposite side.

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 231

"Oh Well" by Fiona Apple

What you did to me made me

See myself something different

Though I try to talk sense to myself

But I just won't listen

Won't you go away

Turned yourself in

You're no good at confession

Before the image that you burned me in

Tries to teach you a lesson

What you did to me made me see myself somethin' awful

A voice once stentorian is now again meek and muffled

It took me such a long time to get back up the first time you did it

I spent all I had to get it back, and now it seems I've been outbidded

My peace and quiet was stolen from me

When I was looking with calm affection

You were searching out my imperfections

What wasted unconditional love

On somebody

Who doesn't believe in the stuff

You came upon me like a hypnic jerk

When I was just about settled

And when it counts you recoil

With a cryptic word and leave a love belittled

Oh what a cold and common old way to go

I was feeding on the need for you to know me

Devastated at the rate you fell below me

What wasted unconditional love

On somebody

Who doesn't believe in the stuff

Oh, welL

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 230

My Bipolar Journal – Episode 230

May 10, 2009

So, I hear that today is Mother’s Day. Not that it’s the first that I’ve heard this or that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but I’ve got several messages saying people are doing the “mother’s day thing” or “they HAVE to hang with their mom”. I get these sorts of messages every Hallmark or genuinely well-felt holiday.

My mother just reached Kansas. I like to think that it’s not because she doesn’t think or hope that me or my brother couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for her, but that she is what I feel I am. A free spirit and that life is short and you have to take advantage of every opportunity.

However, every message that I got on such holidays where my family is in other parts of the country (they only live an hour away) or just not doing anything, I seem to get some message that implies that there is some sort of tradition involved that I am either missing, too chauvinistic to entertain or that I’m too stupid to understand the important significance that someone else put into a date whether it be decades, centuries or thousands of years ago.

I appreciate tradition. I know my roommate reads this, so I apologize if anything I say is offensive because I certainly don’t mean things this way, but I know that most Christmas traditions are pagan and that Thanksgiving has nothing to do with God and that whether you partake in Easter Sunday alone or include Passover vs. Lent or what not that it all boils down to one thing. What have you done? What has brought you together with people in your family or your life? One of our Christmas traditions revolved around my grandfather’s birthday. December 22. The Payne family Christmas (my mother’s side of the family of course). It used to be a standard, traditional, this is the day kind of holiday. We’d get together with my teeny tiny side of the family and exchange gifts. We had a kiddie table. We had a birthday cake for my grandfather. It happened to be 3 days before Christmas. I don’t really think any of the actual portions of the tradition were important, but they were there. You got off work, you did your thing and it was just what we did. Even before Papaw died though it started getting more and more to the insignificant point that it didn’t matter which day it was. We were happy to work with each other’s schedules and still kept the tradition alive regardless of the date. I used to fight to keep tradition alive and would be really upset when we didn’t do the things that we always did because they were our tradition. It was one of the few things we did as a family that we kept alive for so many years.

I have a very small family and I think that makes dates and traditions even more important. I don’t have a mom or dad with 7 brothers or sisters who also have 7-14 brothers or sisters. We kept our baby-making simple. Yet, most of us are estranged from each other. I think about my mom a lot when I think of how she just in the past two years started babysitting my 1^st cousin’s (one of the 4) twins. I think about how she probably didn’t even have a connection to my cousin, her niece until that happened. Not in the way that I seem to notice in the way other people identify with their families. She spends so much time with them and I know that my mother knows that she will never have grandkids from me and that my brother and his girlfriend may not be in that place either and that she has had to use my cousins to find that sense of “grandchild” with a family member that she may have never recognized as strongly as she has until she got a chance to take care of that person’s children.

My mom would be a fantastic grandmother and I feel sometimes like I’m depriving her of that, even when I know she doesn’t really feel that way. I feel like she doesn’t feel that way though because she’s being logical. Not because she doesn’t want to. I feel guilty.

Maybe I’ve done her a favor because she has a chance to have a relationship with a family member that she may have never had. My baby could have kept her from that.

These are all what ifs. It makes no difference because it changes nothing.

I’m in love with a beautiful man who would make beautiful children with me and be a beautiful father but that we would most likely royally screw up because of our lifestyles and the fact that true happiness has always become before these things that people seem to think are “normal”.

Which brings me back to a point I was trying to make when I started this. What is normal? What is tradition? Telling me that you’re doing the “mother’s day thing” or that you are being forced to be with your mother today is silly. I would love to be with my mother today, but my mother is driving through Kansas right now. On her way back from Indiana, Illionis, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio. Your mom made you go to dinner because she probably guilted you into it. Mine has a life and in turn I have my own life because somehow, without realizing it, that has been instilling in me. That life is short and that we should be living our own lives, regardless of tradition. What is a freaking mother’s day tradition anyway? I’ve never seen it in a Norman Rockwell painting because every fucking day should be a day we give a shit about anything whether it be our mothers, our families, our friends, our alone time, our jobs, our parties, our drinking, our sobriety, our religions,…… I really could just go on. Life isn’t a painting, but it can be expressed in one. It’s not about believe in a tradition because we can make our own and it’s ok if it’s based on something other people have done before. It just has to mean something. Any of this should just mean something.

The fact that my parents go to Amish country on Thanksgiving and to Montana for Mother’s Day and that if we can’t get together for a birthday or Christmas, that it’s still ok. It’s just a day and it doesn’t matter what day it is, it matter when we’re together. I personally wish it were more, but lives get complicated and even the way we have relationships with our families, let alone our friends, is always changing.

Screw you for thinking I know what yours is.