My Bipolar Journal - Episode 25

It's just amazing to me how I've really had a lot to say this month, just no time to say it. Maybe it explains my current mood.

I miss my crazy friend and his ability to keep up with my crazies. There's just no one to be that completely honest with anymore. He stopped being able to handle my crazies as soon as he started dating a girl who was actually crazier than me. Plus, now he's far away and his phone is turned off. I miss it so much it's painful. He's the only one I met in life where I can say, "Yeah, so I had this dream that came true and it was awful" or "I'm pissed off to the point of killing" and he didn't look at me like I had three heads. In fact, he's probably have a story to relate.

Don't get me wrong, I have great friends besides him. Friends that I wouldn't trade for all the french fries they could fit in the Pacific Ocean, but there's always that one that you wish you had back. I'm bursting with crazies to share with someone and there's just no one to share them with and it's a little tiny speck of lonely in my heart. People say they can handle it. In fact, some of them are insulted that I won't share some of those things with them, but I know. I've been there. They can't actually handle it. They may make good face for the conversation at hand, but as soon as you walk away their eyes pop out of their head and they think, "That chick's got a few screws loose."

News flash. I'm okay with having a few screws loose. I'm okay with the screws you have loose. How come when other people know that they're about to lose their mind or have something ridiculous to vent or complain about or have a nervous breakdown, they know they can come to me, but I can't find one damned person to take on me. The second I do, they up and leave for another state and don't pay their phone bill and start fucking sociopaths?

I'm so tired of tip-toeing and worrying about boys feelings and if they'll take me too seriously. I'm so bored with guys and their fucking attitude like all girls worship them and can't wait to get in their pants. Especially with me. I guess they think I can't get anyone else, so I must be inclined to obsess over them and them alone. I guess I'm the pot possibly calling the kettle black though. It's funny how many guys I tend to be attracted to that I seriously think no other girl would be. Come to find out, a lot of girls are. I always think I'm picking the underdog, the one that would be lucky to have me fool around with them and hang out with them, but I always seem to be wrong. I guess we all have a little bit of cock ass in us.

What really upsets me right now is the fact that I like someone. I am not to be liking people. This is the second person I've liked since Chris and it's starting to piss me off. I don't want a relationship and I certainly don't want to ruin friendships. Just like with Christian, just when I finally gave myself up to liking him he turned into an ass. An honest to God ass, not just the asses that you read to much into everything they do and make them into an ass, but an ass! He actually called me a shithead last night, so I pretty much went off and made it clear that he is to not speak to me again. I am so killing his character off in my book. Do I want that to happen again? Hell no. And what happens when you like a guy more than just the standard physical attraction that makes you want to grope them? They turn into asses. Maybe they turn into asses because we care too much. Maybe we turn into asses making them in turn, turn into the ass. I feel like I just wrote some horrible Dr. Suess book about asses.

You know what though? Fuck that! Why do I always try to look at myself and see what I could make better about myself? Why can't I just take a guy for the jackass he is and move on. Do I have to convince myself he's an ass to get over it? No. I was over Christian long before this shit even happened. After our little fight, I worked on getting over it and just being his friends with a "come what may" attitude. Fuck that! He's an ass. It's not my fault he's an ass and I'll be damned if I'm not going to be okay with that.

The real question is, why do we torture ourselves? Why are we so inclined to snatch up the first person who shows a mutual interest, buy them a ring and pull them into our deluded lair?

Let's say for instance, the boy I like did like me back and we found some sort of harmonious bliss for a few short moments and decided we shouldn't see other people. That was our new way of things. How unfair is that of me? Making him believe that this was forever because of the way his brain would interpret such things. I will not get married. I am not interested in long term. Even if I could date him for, let's say three months (perish the thought), I would want to move on making him believe I have wasted some portion of his life, in turn upsetting him, something I would never want to make a friend feel. Not for my sake. If I can get over myself, I will be a great friend and outlast his first divorce because friends are better! Friends are always better! Who wants a girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife when you can have the bliss of friendship? Why does my deluded mind still cling to false hope that I really don't even desire? Damn the conditioning!

Then there's this whole thing about people with day jobs. I stand on the elevator every morning listening to people gripe about why they are here and how they all wish they could be home. The thing is, of course I do to, but I have no intentions of staying here. These people do! They're content in their misery so that they can keep paying for the lives they probably didn't really want in the first place, so they can retire and grow old with people they really didn't intend on spending the rest of their lives with. Who can afford that? I am every day getting just a little bit closer to having the life that I want. The one that I deserve. A happy one where I will not give into the grind of everyday life doing things I have no intention of ever enjoying. Every morning and evening that I hear the conversations of the elevator I know that I am the luckiest girl in that damned elevator because one day I won't be there to listen to it.

Another thing is, why am I so pissed off at all truly? I have the best friends a person could ask for. The best relationships. The best life. Working on the best career for my means and my enjoyment in the rest of whatever it is I will be blessed with, but I'm overcome with this rage. I guess it's just people. People ruin my mojo. People ruin everyone's mojo. People are upset that people want to be happy, that they want to be happy and it just upsets me. They say things like, "That project at work is keeping me awake at night" and they don't mean it in a good way. It's work. The only reason work should keep you up at night is if it's because you love it so much that you don't mind that it's a part of your every day life.

My Bipolar Jounral - Episode 24

So, I guess I'm not being used as an example in my dad's class of being completely insensitive. In a way, I find it funny and in a way I find it insulting. My parents have had this habit of letting me know information in a matter-of-fact way for some time now. The thing is, I don't have a problem with it in the literal sense, but the reason they do it, or the reason I presume they do it, sucks.

I guess this is the way my dad's lecture goes, "There are all types of personalities, take my kids for instance. My father-in-law is in a nursing home and my son is nearly in tears and my daughter says, 'Well, he's old.'" The audience roars. I'm the punchline, not the crying boy, me, the realist. What? Did I actually expect he'd live forever? Does it mean I won't be sad he's not around? He's had a full life and, from what I can tell a pretty good one. He's 83, going to be 84 on December 22.

In a conversation I had with my mother where she told me this story I was telling her how glad I was that Papaw and Nana were getting cremated. I think funerals are seriously just about the most disrespectful thing you can have for a Human. Let me rephrase that. I think viewings are the most disrespectful thing you can have for a Human. Maybe one day I'll change my mind. She said, "Yeah, will it's kind of hard for us because I can't imagine his body being burned. Like, I know Cathy (my aunt) always thinks of his hands." I said, "Well, take a picture." I mean would you rather have your daddy's hands burned up or rotting for all of eternity to be eaten by bugs? As if urban sprawling isn't enough, now we have to waste a bunch of land burying bodies that in several hundred years will be ignored, tombstones forgotten? The irony of it all is that I love graveyards. I don't want someone to go to a graveyard to remember me though. I want them to go to a rock show, the Grand Canyon, Austin, anywhere and pay homage there if you feel the need to do so at all. I don't want one image of rememberance to be of me lying in a casket.

Okay, so I guess maybe I am a little bit cruel, but I get so tired of this whole image that death is so morbid. That morbid is some sort of synonym for death. As if married and having babies is a synonym for happiness. I'm kind of happy for my Papaw because it's just not about me. It's not about if I'm comfortable or not all the time. I can't imagine laying up in a nursing home, blind as a bat, barely aware of what's going on most of the time is fun and exciting. Who knows though? Maybe it is. Just put me straight into the dementia ward. Those guys can get away with anything.

And my mom just keeps talking about it like we're all supposed to cry and be upset all the time. It's not like I'm not upset! It's not like I won't miss him, but I've seen these things happen before. My Aunt (mind you, my crazy aunt) told my mom that she had a dream and God told her that Papaw would live until his next birthday (you know, the one that is just a little over a month away). Well, hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he lasted out a few more birthdays. How soon is motherfucking now?

My mom keeps saying, "I don't think he's cried about going blind once." Well, maybe he doesn't want to? Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it's kind of like a game. "Guess who's in the room now and where they're standing". Are we so vain that we think we know what everyone else is thinking all the time? That they have to mourn every little thing that we consider wrong with them?

I don't know. I'm sure some of you, maybe most of you are utterly appalled by my disertation of death. Good for you, you're not like me. You're hopefully an individual with your own line of thinking.

I had a few things happen to me in my late teenage years that helped put these things into perspective for me and still have things happen to me every day that make me wonder about people and their lives and the lies we tell ourselves every day.

First of all, being diagnosed with bipolar over and over and over again. Now, I've been manic-depressive my entire life, but I didn't start trying drugs for them until I was 17. I didn't have any proof or talk about it before then. Of course, talking to a bunch of 17 year olds about your mental problems, does not help your mental problems in the least bit, but chalk it up to a lesson learned. That I had to relearn when I was 19. Oh, the illusion that college kids are so much more mature than high school kids. If nothing, it's mostly likely worse because you think of yourself as more mature somehow.

Second of all, having a tumor the size of a softball. It wasn't that big of a deal when you look back on it, but the deal my family made out of it was much bigger. I went through being told that I was having a hysterectomy, to being told I would be paralyzed in my left leg, to being told I had a 30% chance of having cancer, to having my mother write my obituary and have it read to the entire church.

Third of all, I met a guy in college that ended up with a brain tumor. He was told that he had basically a 10% chance to live. I knew the guy, we talked, but we didn't hang out, but I remember it really upsetting me. I remember crying and praying for him and suddenly it just came to me like a bolt of lightening. Who do these motherfucking doctors think they are? God? No one can give percentages. Everything is 50/50. Miracles happen all the time and we discount them for science and numbers and for what purpose. To scare the bejeezus out of people? That's mature. I stopped crying immediately at that realization.

Point being, why worry about something that we can't determine. Why worry about things that haven't happened yet? If we did that, there wouldn't be time for the great things. Our friends, going to the park, a good photo shoot, relaxing with a fan-fucking-tastic book, hitting the road and just going until you run out of gas, running like Phoebe!

So, I will not be bitter and morbid about this, no matter how much I am being pushed to try to be. I may have to go to a funeral (although the point of buying a casket when you're being cremated is beyond me), because God forbid I don't. But, what if I don't cry? I'm uncomfortable with other people crying, especially my family because I have trouble buying it. Then again, I'd be a hypocrite if I pretended that it was about my comfortability.

Okay, I'm not done yet. I guess I've been saving up these past two weeks or so.

My Bipolar Journal - Episode 23

I think I was actually shocked into silence today. I don't recall another moment in my life where I have been shocked silent. I know though that I truly wasn't, it was just the circumstances in which I was in, not having the ability to stand up and scream is so deafening.