Big Under Dog

Sense of Surreality

2016-09-10T08:50:00.002-07:00

It seems to me the great debate is between a sense of entitlement versus a right to life. As if to say, it's okay to treat people like a slave as long as they don't know it. I had this epiphany while on yet another mini vacay. Which makes how many this year? Something important is changing in my life and my choices lie between mid-life crisis and crisis of faith. The only thing I can say for sure is that I am in crisis and have been for the last 365 days as far as I can tell. Not to harp on psyche doctors again, but I'm sick and tired of being put in a box, labeled bipolar and then told that only this medicine will work because they're the doctor and I'm the patient.

Being a mental patient has a lot of harsh half truths surrounding it. It's a business filled with making assumptions based on patient history. Apparently there's no proper way to study a brain while it is in use except going back to the basics. If you want to know someone's thoughts ask them. The problem I have with the way the system currently works is that it seems the right hand has no idea what the left hand is up to let alone doing. For example, Certified Nursing Assistants and Nurses have a better idea of what is going on with the patients instead of the Doctors. In modern times the contact ratio is left on the shoulders of if I'm being honest about the position, glorified janitors.

I'm of the school 'thank your nurses' when you're hospitalized because they tend to know way more than your doctors about how you're doing day to day. Your doctor has lots of patients and may not have the time to get to know you while at the same time he/she is trying to heal you. My problem is being pushed to take medicines that I know I've had a bad reaction with in the past. What pisses me off is when a doctor refuses to listen to me that a medicine doesn't really work for me. This can happen for a few reasons and the number one being bad information from my family or friends.

Not to just continue the previous post by harping on the medical industry again, but it's a business where you can feel like a slave instead of a human being. When I hate my job or let my hatred of I don't know, but let my actions be dictated until that's what I do and say then I'm miserable. In my humble opinion this is the nature of my mental illness. The things I hate become the Hater Hates in my head instead of the that which I love. They tend to extend the hatred into other areas of my life and they're a persistent buzz day to day.

I try to compartmentalize, shift things around and focus my energy on better endeavors. I try to ignore the negative voices that get so loud all I can do is scream and sing along with Heavy Metal lyrics that I know by heart. When I'm full blown manic I can't communicate on the most basic level human being to human being. IE I find it hard to open my mouth and just admit how I feel. What's going on? I don't always know. I get trapped inside my head with no way out except the life saving medications that I trust to unlock my mental prison. By the time I realize I'm in a hospital I'm usually able to help again, but it seems to me that the previous miscommunications keep the doctor at bay with the bad information.

Once I'm able to help in my treatment my mask is gone. All that I do to fit in, to consider myself sane I'm told was for not. I'm lost on the end of the sidewalk with a long walk back through the insanity. No matter how many times I call foul I'm still stuck in the molasses with no kayak and no paddle. I guess that's why there's the saying the proof is in the pudding. Well honey I feel stuck in the Jello Pudding pop and I'm pretty sure that's not a stick up my ass either.

Locked In To Keep Them Locked Out...

2016-08-18T16:44:00.001-07:00

I don't know what a ministry of sound means to you. For me it is the subtle difference between being guided by sound versus light speed. Since being diagnosed bipolar I've learned that my eyes sometimes play tricks on me, but so do my ears. Have you ever felt like every pop song on the radio is suddenly speaking to you? I have and I'm grateful to my Higher Power for it. Music provides a direction, leading me with beats and lyrics. The curse is the reality but it is also a blessing in disguise.

I was in a unique position to be able to write a blog post while locked inside a mental hospital. I tried with beautiful failure to take advantage of the rare opportunity. The main things frowned upon while I'm living in a mental hospital are displays of anger, verbal & physical abuse, and sometimes just bouts of depression in general. I am encouraged to act normally and usually I have very little contact with the outside world so that I can focus on my health. Clearly in modern times these antiquated philosophies are falling away as new thought and new techniques are used when dealing with mental health. In other words as the human race evolves so does the approach to healing.

I grew up with Western medicine, doctors who think they're gods, especially psychiatrist and therapist. The thing that irritated me to no end is that the first portion of my hospitalization I was under the care of a man who refused to hear my voice and opinion no matter how loud I expressed myself. He declared my anger to be unfounded and a symptom that I was sick and only used the word of my now ex-roommate to determine that I needed to be civilly committed to the hospital. Another way of putting it, yet another asshole bent on dominating his patients instead of listening to them. Again no bedside manners but in addition to that he exhibited the worst kind of Dom behavior to and including forcing medication into my system that left me vulnerable to attack at night.

For me my creative, my Muse got locked up again while trying to have a little fun and help me and Simone out. I recognize now that I sometimes make a mountain out of a mole hill. I see the bigger picture with my tiny one story to tell side of the conversation. So here goes the reality check of living in a mental hospital for about 3 months. First my charges received at the end of 2015 are now working their way out. I've served 90 days of suspended driver's license and served 21 days in jail. I have new misdemeanor charges. Boo! I've returned to the status of homeless. Boo! I was living at the state hospital so I had a cot and 3 squares. It is what it is...

No I would not of picked a hospital to live in if I had a choice about where to house me. I feel like I've watched the world and decided it makes me cry. Like the Charm Farm song, 'the whole world is sick'. I think this is what Dave Chappelle meant when he ran away to Africa instead of signing a deal with Comedy Central for his show. I get some things, hate others and if I had a choice I wouldn't want to be in such a vulnerable position again.

I mean what is wrong with me? What did I do to earn this hell? The part that breaks my heart is to think that I'm alone in how I feel about my life. Every story I've ever heard that I took to heart and felt blessed about it not being my torment feels like a lie. It is almost impossible to face a new day with that as an option in my head. How do I wake up in such circumstances? Out of my hands for one. Divine path two. And something greater than little chicken me works even when I can't fathom how to be a part of it.

Now with the bulk of these issues in my rear view mirror I'm finally out of the hospital and getting back on my feet. I guess when I say I've been in the hospital some people think of mental hospitals as different from other types of hospital. Being sick is being sick and a lot of times I feel that some people just don't understand that feeling sick in the head can be just as bad if not more than being physically ill. Illness is illness and yes when I go on a mini vacay inside a hospital I'm trying to heal that which is considered broken not only by me but society. The only thing is, I disagree with the labels placed on me. I choose to view it as a time to get healthy, but if my doctor isn't working with me then how am I supposed to heal?

I've mentioned before that I really dislike psychiatrist who won't bother to listen to me about my experience with my mental condition. They pop me into a bipolar box and put me on the medicine they think will get me back to 'normal'. It is frustrating especially when I already know I didn't have success with a particular medicine, the opposite in fact. Then as was the case with one of the doctors I faced on this trip inside yet another hospital this year, he simply couldn't figure out why I was so resistant to the medicines even though my blood work told him I was at therapeutic levels.

I've learned to live slightly above what he considers normal. He decided not to hear me. He also choose to listen to other people tell him who I was instead of letting me do it. I'm an authority on Stephanie Monique only. I can't say what it is like to be diagnosed bipolar for anyone else. If they find my story similar to their own journey with it, then yeah, this blog is doing it's job. Not to dismiss my doctor's education as a whole but I'm the one who has lived in my skin and adjusted to how my mind works over the last 19 years. I'm sad to say he was nothing more than an annoying man in my path to healing. I hate that what I've learned this year is that my none medicine way of viewing my health is coming to an end. I see the benefits outweigh the struggle of doing it on my own. It's help that my body is now shouting please and thank you for it.

What pisses me off most is that despite my resolve to take my medicine as prescribed I've taken numerous trips into the hospital this year. In other words bipolar has been kicking my ass instead of me controlling my condition. I opened the door to my spiritual side and found myself having not only a mid-life crisis but a crisis of faith as well. Trusting my Higher Power is a given, but what I hated learning more was that I have miscommunication issues with my Higher Power. It has humbled me to the point where I'm learning the hard-headed way to ask for more help, swallow my pride and accept help when offered as well.

DOD: Dear Old Dad/Date Of Death

2016-02-27T13:22:00.001-08:00

***This is the journaling I did when my bio-dad died...These writings were during the month of December 2011. At the time I barely had a job, I was in the aftermath of a failed bankruptcy, days away from foreclosure on my townhouse and living with a God blessing of a friend in her spare bedroom.

“I'm water I will flow. This is the way I will go. When you do it you will know that I am water I will flow.”

~Stephanie Monique

I've been basically saying that since I arrived in Michigan at 11:35 pm November 30th, 2011. I received a phone call from my stepmother, earlier one evening. She told me that my father was in the hospital. That he was bleeding from his colon (she used greater detail but that's the gist of what she had to say to me) and then she asked me what I thought, or to say something and the only thing I could do and the only thing I had to say was I cried and then asked her if she would send me the money to get up to Michigan.

For pretty much the week prior to this phone call I'd been processing forgiving my father. I thought the time had come to do so. To the best of my knowledge he'd quit drinking, and I'd started to open the lines of communication between us. See, when I had my last full blown manic episode or rather right before it, I finally got to a point where I had an understanding that I could no longer carry on conversations with my father while he was drinking.

Our relationship was toxic. Each conversation turned into an epic battle, and the wounds on my psyche were too great to continue. He felt like I was doing it because I was trying to punish him in some way. But for me, it was healthier. I carried a lot of anger about his drinking into that manic episode and it manifested into a full blown wish for him to die.

I said it and I wrote it in an email to my boss. And I was embarrassed and basically humiliated by how much I exposed and spilled that anger out through action and words during that manic episode. Part of the reason I continued my decision to stop talking to my father after my episode had passed was that embarrassment, but mostly because our conversations were so fucking dysfunctional while he was drinking and my action during mania made me realize that it was just painful to continue.

So over the last 4 years our conversations have been 3rd party. And that worked for me. I was able to get to a place where I understood I loved him, but I just really didn't like him very much especially when he was drinking.

When he had surgery earlier this year in February he called me, at the time I was still firm in my decision. We spoke. He wasn't drinking according to the rules I'd set out for our relationship. We talked until I could no longer agree to disagree with him. It became painful once again. He'd always credited me with being his Superior daughter, while calling himself my inferior dad. I felt inferior anyway. He reminded me of the time we spoke where I'd told him, he was the most functional alcoholic I knew. I've come to realize now this was not true for me, my mother's way was less harmful to others. He took it as a compliment. I'd called him an alcoholic.

So In August of this year just before my cousin got married he called me. I was firm once again about my decision and had to hang up on him when he told me he'd been drinking. He said he quit shortly after that conversation, and so by the time he came for the wedding I agreed to go to dinner. Some things were said during dinner, I can't be specific, and I took a mature approach and let the comments pass. I've had a few conversations and what not, over the last few months. And that brings us up to date.

So yesterday we had a conversation about forgiveness. And that was a very good thing. And tonight he passed away. Now, how do I feel? I am numb. I need to let go of my anger. I need to be water and flow. And go and this is what I know.I don't know...we've got lots of ice cream and junk food so comfort food is here...but I'm nausea and not crying...and bouncing between being very angry and a need to let it go...I got to have a forgiveness conversation with him the day before so that's a good thing...but mostly and honestly, we had a dysfunctional relationship...He was an alcoholic, and his drinking killed him...How am I supposed to feel?

Does anybody need a 5 day long funeral? Grrrr...These things are not me...I am not these things...Oh well...I wanna write...Need to write...Wish I had something more to say than more of the same old same old small amounts of dribble, droplets of water falling from my mind...

I don't feel inspired like my head being dunked in the undertow of life...Then again, I'm just doing and being me...Oh well...Beginning, Middle...End...Circle, around and round...Over, under, up, down, side to side... Burning pain, released and flowing in and out of my thoughts like the path of a river, moving forward, moving down, my life is utter chaos and calm...Is it bad that I felt the need to sing the 'Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye' song at my father's grave?

5 days. I remained calm. I took every compliment with gracious passive calm. I did not contradict one person when they said something glowing in reference to this man. I was Gandhi like in my lack of anger, and so fucking calm. But I am churning waters today.That was the calm before the storm. And the storm has started to rage. The sky has darken to the point of midnight black, when it should have been clear and sunny outside.

I'm a tornado building to the point of destruction, and unfortunately, the place where this anger should go, what deserves the brunt of it, is either me or him. And he's dead so what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Painful...Toxic...Emotional battlefield...From my cradle to his grave he hurt me more than any other person who has ever walked the earth. Why? Because I did love him. You can only hurt people you love If you didn't love them why bother right? He was a shitty father. Sperm donor. If I'd cut off the emotional part of me, if I'd been able to cut him out of my life, which I did to some degree, he wouldn't be able to hurt me anymore. That was the theory anyway. I thought I had. I really believed that, because I wasn't grieving the loss of him in my life. I swore I wouldn't. Although my stepmother was nothing more than the knife he used, he managed to cut me from the grave.

He wrote me out of his will. It's not the fact that he left me nothing. It's that he once promised me he never would. He said that he'd always love me. To a man who truly believed money was everything, and a way to show his love of a person, well it's tantamount to tipping a waitress a penny. I'm the waitress in the metaphor I thought he would change his will so that what he would leave me would be distributed by my Step-Mother to me as needed, but that he would provide for me. And that is basically what she said she would do in a round about non-compassionate way. Because of that promise he made to me though, even while we were fighting at the time, his breaking that promise is what hurt the most.

It basically was another way of his saying to me, "I don't love you. I never did. I don't care what happens to you after I'm dead. "I've been asked to remember the good times/memories of this man. Our relationship was filled with so much pain, and anger, I still haven't come up with one example of a really good memory of the man. Tonight I thought of one. The first time I was arrested after being diagnosed bipolar, I sat in jail for less than 2 hours and then bailed myself out cuz I had my debit card on me, and $100.00 in my account, which is what I needed to post my bail.

My father after I'd been in a mental hospital handed me a check for $100.00 and told me he'd made the situation go away. I owed a thank you to the judge a friend or golfing buddy of his, as he was known to say from time to time, it's all about who you know and he knew lots of important people.

There's one extremely good thing about him not leaving me a penny, I still have no assets. I can now file chapter 7, and afford to do so, and start to rebuild my credit in 7 years or so. All of my financial nightmare up to this point will be wiped clean. In a round about way, it's much better that he didn't leave me anything.

It's the good of this, as painful as it was to hear and process. It was even a smart thing to do on his end, because I was in a major ass hole. Whether he realized this or not, it was fated. Divine design. And I can breathe and flow once again like the water running down the river. Only took 24 hours to get there, not bad. I have a chance to start over, finally.

*****

Today, over 4 years later: Okay so this is something I wrote when my bio dad died. I suppose each manic episode revisits some portion of my life which is basically my head trying to make sense of an event. I think my most recent episode covered them all. It started over the summer last year and after a hospital visit I just let myself continue through the mania, while my body-sharing twin finished writing Forced to Change. I needed the mania or whatever it is that allows me to tap into my creative side, I guess I would label that my higher power these days.

It's scary if I'm not in a safe place and for the first time in a long time I felt safe enough to explore it all. The good the bad, I made connections throughout my life that only being bipolar could show me. It's the way my mind works. Am I grateful for this gift/curse? Some days. That is until I'm sitting in a jail cell trying to figure out, not where I went wrong, but what is wrong. I did that from 11/21 until 12/15 ish of last year. Now for the new stuff.

I time traveled. Through my entire life. It took years. That's the way my brain processed the events. I was in jail for not 3 weeks, but years, eons. Everyone I knew was a fiction. The people who approached me in jail, pieces of the puzzle. The cosmic puzzle. The grand design.

Goddess once again, made me significant and nothing more than another prong in the grand plan. But that's my divine path. I needed to process the world once again. Only problem is, I'm one person. This is my perspective. There's nothing I can do about it. I cannot change the facts of me. So once I realized all this, even the events that lead up to my being arrested and housed in a jail cell for 3 weeks made sense, and not booked but actually lost in the Lane County system, well there was nothing else to do but wait.

The problem? My brain didn't shut down. It continued to process until the only option I wanted was death. Stay awake for over a week and let me know how you feel. The advantage to being in jail, I couldn't commit suicide. So I accepted this fate in which I processed not only my own timeline but the timelines of every story I'd ever heard about another human being.

I had eons to get it done and my mind traveled back to the beginning of time. It traveled forward in time but I really couldn't see that for what it was, like it was at the edge of my vision and if I caught sight of that particular truth I would die. So I turned a blind eye to what was really there.

All of the time travel perspective was reality for me, but a doctor would label it a visual and auditory hallucinations. Delusional thinking. Fiction. So Simone took control. She outlined a few books and was child-like in voice. It could take the rest of my life to write, edit, rewrite and publish the stories she told me while I sat in the in-between of my own life and death. I had nothing else to do but think. My mind the only thing not sitting in a prison. A real one for once. So it traveled and decided that I’m a storyteller, a bipolar human being, a smoker, a food lover, a roommate, a friend, a single black woman and on and on and on.

Dreams vs. Reality vs. Fantasy: Defining My Boundary Lines

2016-01-07T08:20:00.001-08:00

I was listening to The Eminem Show when this blog post’s inspiration hit me. So if you’re a fan of Mr. Marshall Mathers you are aware that his body of artwork is extensive and includes songs like Stan, The Way I Am, Square Dance, and at the time of this writing I was enjoying Superman. His music is go-to tickle juice for my Muse and for my writing. This post is going to speak to how I use music to write and give a glimpse inside my art making process.

First, I have a lot of tools in my writing toolbox. My favorite is what society defines as a Bipolar mindset. The problems with this way of thinking are that Bipolar Condition (Mental Illness) can either be considered a blessing or a punishment/curse from my Higher Power. I also have the bad habit of smoking, cigarettes for the most part and marijuana. Weed and my psych meds disagree, so at the moment no green smoky treats for moi. I use other fiction writing authors and self-help books on obtaining better mental health as the majority of my current reading materials. And of course there is Coffee & Music, the other addictions I claim.

What my latest manic episode has taught me is that I have to do some pre-planning to tap into the gift from the universe that being bipolar allows for my life. If not, I get off schedule, out of sync with the world as a whole. Time becomes a fictional concept in my world. I believe anyone can do this just lose track of a clock. Unplug the ones in your room. Want to travel back in time? Remember any event from your past. Want to connect with Father Time again? Check the current time/date. There you go, how I mentally time travel. Most people I know just go to sleep to dream or label this daydreaming/fantasizing.

If you’ll remember from the following post I once upon a time in my life met with the band Type-O-Negative. Reality says, they have met a lot of fans over the years and couldn't possibly keep track of them all. In my mind they remember meeting me. It was that special of an event to me that if they don’t recall our real world encounter, well, my ego would hurt a bit. It is a great story that I still share today (tweaked as needed for the audience).

That’s thing about meeting a bonafide celebrity face to face. I’m a long time fangirl and I’m shy when these chance meetings occur. I can claim a semi-famous woman as a long time fellow artist. We were roommates in my late 20s and speak via the phone regularly. So I pimp, er, yeah PIMP my buddies as part of the ‘good to know ya package’ that comes with our friendship. Check her out, Jennie Breeden, creator of the webcomic The Devil’s Panties. I also know Mr. Jaz McKay, the long time power voice of 1560am KNZR. As my personal Howard Stern to my Robin Quivers, our viewpoints often agree to disagree which is what I admire most about him.

That brings me back to listening to Slim Shady. I’ve never actually met Eminem other than listening to his music. For me listening to someone I admire as much as I do, well, I hear something personal in their lyrics. The song Stan suggests for Eminem having and interacting with fans can be hard and taken personally. I hear a love letter meant for me when listening to most of his music. I feel special, connected, can relate, despite the fact that the real world has proven Marshall Mathers creates his art about the people in his life. Reality: he has no idea who I am; he’s never heard of Stephanie Monique, I’m “not even on his radar”. That is the beauty of great artwork for me. I can find something in it to inspire me. It speaks to me on a soul level. The song becomes a serenade of Goddess’s will working in my life.

This is what I love about letting that which I treasure be my religion. I gain something unique and meant for me by listening to music, watching TV, reading books, enjoying the artwork of others. I imagine that this is something everyone else could experience as well. When pain is something I need to tap into to create, my musical playlist changes. Personally, it is my challenge to remember to do as Depeche Mode suggests and take a walk in someone else’s shoes. Doing this helps to ignite my creative, setting my imagination on fire. Then I work to channel that into my own artwork which I share with the world in blog form at the moment. One day soon I hope to share with an actual physical product, um, er, uh like a published book or two...

In the meantime I use writing as therapy and a way to help me do that tough, often daunting self-work necessary to keep it moving forward. I check the clock and connect back into this big beautiful world around me. I share my writing with the hopes that anyone dealing with directly and/or indirectly with the same and/or similar issues gains some insight that helps them to deal with their own challenges.

This is not to say that I am perfect, I freely admit I make mistakes. I also prefer to say I have no regrets. Uh, you went to jail for 3 weeks last year isn’t that a regret? Nope, mistakes I made played out in yet another weird way for my life. I’m not a celebrity yet, so I don’t have to worry about the whole planet knowing what I do. I do care about what the people in my life circle, my friends, family and community, think about my actions. I can say this because I trust that the reason for my recent incarceration was necessary for my life.

Through a belief in a Higher Power, I’ve gained this knowledge by living each day. Also I have a willingness to face the next one. There is a life lesson to be learned in how these events will play out. At this time, I’m cursing my Goddess out and doing a lot of self-care while I wait and see the results. I’m once again turning this Bipolar Experience into a blessing instead of letting it be a punishment for the crimes I committed. I'm facing a judge without the aid of a Johnnie Cochran. Remember my black ass is broke, poor, so I've got to leave my fate in the hands of a public defender. My lawyer is doing her best which is all I can ask of her. I thank Goddess daily that I’ve learned to take something potentially painful in my life and remove the power it has over me.

When Conversations With Tweety Bird Become Too Real

2015-12-31T12:55:00.003-08:00

Differences make me well different, unique. A quick and easy explanation of this fact of my reality is I live with a white male who happens to claim being a republican. I myself cannot hide the fact that I am a black, female (most days bitchy), and bipolar. I can hide but choose not to hide the fact that I am a bastard (my parents never married). A lot of my personal labels happen to start with the letter ‘B’. This is significant to me because duality plays a powerful role in my life and the letter ‘B’ is the second letter of the alphabet.

Things associated with being black are poverty, the ‘N’ word, slavery, chicken, spicy foods, well this list is long. Most are just stereotypes that I personally try to disprove as a personal challenge. For the sake of my household and this blog I’ll do my comparison of American culture between myself and my roommate. Basically my roommate and I get along for the same reason my mother and I got along. We debate instead of fight for the most part.

Normally this is great for me and works for him, until Bipolar took over my life for the last six months or so. I spent some of this time in a mental hospital by choice as I realized I was approaching mania (an episode). I truly believed that I could prevent a full blown manic episode. As usual, that was not reality for myself or the people in my life circle.

My current living situation made this particular manic episode unique and better for the most part though. Once again I got a lot of insight into who Stephanie Monique is as a person, a good person for the most part. Though as having manic episodes proved once again, there was another step to learn. I’m not always as honest with myself as I’d like to be.

The dividing line between reality, my thinking, and the way I interpreted the events are my own perspective. When I let myself compare reality with the other people in my life like my roommate, I’m disappointed to learn I did not practice the actions I truly believed I was performing at that time. I’m surprised at their answers to my questions of what did I do? What did I say? I’m humiliated and left feeling exposed and vulnerable by their responses to what I believe happened. It is always different from what I thought.

My most recent full blown manic episode didn’t end until I’d spent 3 weeks in jail, November 21, 2015 until December 10, 2015. A question was posed by what I consider to be a very good friend. “Could she have done anything to prevent me from going to jail?” I’m sitting on this question for the moment, but I’ll revisit it during this writing session. As I said the episode started about six months ago.

At the start of this particular episode I finally addressed some of my bigger issues that I’d been ignoring like finishing the rewrites for Forced to Change. My fiction writer is Simone Lisbon. So I’ll shove off the creative writer aspect of my personality to Simone. She has a few blog posts to write and books to work on. For me, Stephanie Monique the biggest advantage gained by accepting my diagnosis of bipolar is when my brain does tap into the creative, my Muse is unlocked and I find myself productive with writing in general. Simone is fueled with her endeavors to write and receives a great deal of inspiration. I’ve spent the time trying to separate these two thinking patterns of my brain as they relate to me.

The mental condition of bipolar (another duality in my life) is documented among creative types of personalities. Jim Carey, Robin Williams, Carrie Fisher, Linda Hamilton, Edgar Allen Poe, Patty Duke, etc. I personally write from two different directions. I use the phrase ‘creative editing’ to explain away basically what I consider lying, so that Stephanie Monique explains my non-fiction side while Simone Lisbon tells the fictional version. I use both blogs to tell as much of the life side (my real life as I remember it) versions of my personal truth.

Armed with what I learned about myself and how bipolar plays a role in my life, I have to answer ‘No’ to my friend’s question. There was nothing she could have done to prevent my incarceration in the Lane County Jail system. It was meant to be. I trust my faith in my Higher Power that I experience what I do for a reason. I just don’t always get to know why Goddess thinks it is necessary at the time.

This is not a self-defeating behavior I can control. It’s the part of ‘mania’ that I did everything in my power to control and failed. My roommate did everything in his power to help me and he also failed. I was destine to go to jail. I passed go at over 100 miles an hour, I did not collect 200 dollars but instead incurred over 2,000 dollars worth of charges along with the status of felon on my record.

So despite my higher education at Michigan State University or the myriad of jobs that makes for a stellar work history I am once again, a bad applicant when it comes to traditional job hunting. No one or thing could have prevented it. The irony is that I learned two minutes made all the difference according to my roommate. He’d set in motion the events that would have landed my sweet black ass back in a mental hospital instead of a jail cell, but because I drove away from the house two minutes prior to his help arriving at our home I went to jail instead.

These events have yet to finish playing out. I have new charges to face, the state of Oregon has a record of my actions, and there is a judge in my future who will determine the results. My diagnosis is Bipolar and yes, I took my medication as prescribed, but because I eventually stopped sleeping and was unable to express the problem, I drove away from the house where I was living two minutes before I could be taken into custody by mental health providers.

I can say what happened next except my lawyer suggests that I don’t for the moment as she works on providing my mental illness condition as a line of defense in my pending case. It doesn’t really matter what I have to say now. My brain was thinking one thing while my body was doing another. Am I responsible for what happened next? Sure. I can say with hindsight what two minutes could have done to change what happened next. The problem is none of it matters right now. Hopefully it will matter tomorrow or at least by the time I’m headed into court to face it in my current reality.

I'm Mentally Unstable, How Are You?

2015-10-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

I’m fine is the biggest lie told over a million times a day. We all say it, and it’s so natural as it rolls off the tongue and past the lips. Occasionally it’s even true. But most of the time there’s no truth to the phrase “I’m fine.” My mother used to say and I often answer when asked “How are you?” instead of the standard perfunctory answer of “I’m fine” I state, “If I get any better I won’t be able to stand myself.”

I wish and hope for that answer to be true when I give it, but if I’m truly honest with myself it’s no truer than “I’m fine.” People often laugh when I say it and it makes me feel better to bring a smile to someone’s face. For one moment I feel a small bit of pride at the accomplishment of inducing an unexpected smile on the lips of another person. A person I will probably never see again in life, but it’s the small moment of connection that lets me know I’ve caught their attention even as short lived as the exchange may be.

I think that what really creates the smile or laugh is the fact that the person is taken aback for a moment. Their realizing that what they expected to hear and what they heard from my mouth was something completely unique. Their brain processes it as unknown and the words have yet to sink in. Maybe it’s nervous laughter that escapes on the edge of their fear of the unknown. Either way I’m usually satisfied and it often turns the moment into minutes as we discuss my response.

I’ve said it many ways, sometimes with a smile on my face but most of the time I deliver the line with as blank an expression as my expressive face can manage. My every emotion has always been delivered across my face so I say the line with what I’m feeling right behind it and often that emotion is depression. Sad down cast eyes, tight lipped mouth, and furrowed brows. And then the person laughs and I noticeably brighten at their response.

Hearing another person laugh is like a verbal hug that melts away my depression. Maybe I say the line when I need to hear laughter just to get the giggle that perks up my day and spirits. So maybe I say it for purely selfish reasons.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what would happen in a world devoid of the phrase “I’m fine?” I mean honestly, is anyone actually fine when they say it? Really? I wonder if more people answered the question honestly what their answers would be. Or is that more than I really want to know about a person at any given time?

A Step In The Write Direction

2015-10-25T13:24:00.001-07:00

An ARMY working toward World Peace exists. Right now, right here on planet Earth. It has plenty of soldiers. Specifically, musicians. Wally Pleasant, Eminem, Missy Elliot, Beyonce, Ani Difranco, Janet Jackson. The Peace Army also has the dead. Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Kobain. There are generals, captains, project leaders. P.O.D., Mudvanye, Type-O-Negative, Garbage, Hollywood Undead, No Doubt, Skunk Anasie, Pudd of Mudd. These individuals and groups have been working for a Higher Power their whole lives. They’re recognized as qualified for the roles of leadership because they are all on my playlist. Feel free to form your own army & playlists.

On days when generals are on television, in movies, mine are Oprah, Lee Daniels, John Singleton, Spike Lee, Steven Speilberg, Penny Marshall. When generals are in books, mine are Stephen King, Laurell K. Hamilton, Anne Bishop, Lilith Saintcrow, Jackie Collins, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, Mary Higgins Clarke, VC Andrews, Stephen Hawking. The soldiers are Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen Degenres, Kerry Washington, Andrew Lincoln, Terrance Howard, Melissa McCarthy, Keenan Ivory Waynes, Roseanne, Johnny Depp, Sylvester Stallone, just to name a few. You may be wondering how Sylvester Stallone made it onto my list. Have you every heard his viewpoints on gun control and violence? I have.

Celebrities have a huge responsibility placed upon their high profile heads. They are human beings who are elevated to a higher status in the public’s eyes, yet, they are still just people. They can and do make mistakes because they are human beings. The public can and does judge these mistakes, sometimes too harshly in my opinion. When you love what they do, their art, it is easier to forgive them their mistakes. The problem I find is society then says the art no longer has value because it’s creator made a mistake.

I feel the success of ‘black’ish’ is because the American public felt the void left in its television programming by pulling the reruns of Bill Cosby’s art off the air. Do I condon the actions Mr. Bill Cosby is accused of doing? No. Do I recognize he is an individual who has had a mistake he probably made multiple times publicized? Yes. Do I know his guilt or innocent in the case? No. I have no proof either way. I was not a victim of the crime he is accused of committing. I do empathize with the victims of such a crime. As a person who was molested as a child I can relate to their experience of being forced into a sexual act that they did not want to happen to them.

As to Bill Cosby, the comedian, the artist. My favorite joke growing up came from this man’s mouth to my ears in a comedy special. Then he did something for this black child that I’d never seen done before, he turned the black family into a respectable group, one to be immulated and admired for a half hour every single week on my television. At one time it was for an entire hour while ‘A Different World’ followed ‘The Cosby Show’ on the NBC’s Thursday night line up.

I laughed and learned that it was possible for me to attend college. I learned that I was not financially rich if my parent(s) were and that I would have to earn my own money if I wanted to be financially rich. Thanks to those shows and a contract my mother made me sign at eight years of age, I did attend college. Michigan State University. Go Green! Go White! Go Spartans! Also Lansing Community College when MSU proved too expensive to attend. Not only that, I graduated from both of these institutions of higher education.

In my younger days I believed obtaining a piece of paper with some letters on it was the best way for me to achieve financial freedom. Do I value my education? Yes. Did having a degree lead to a pocket full of money for me? Well, yeah. Having a college education allowed me to apply for and achieve a lot of higher paying jobs after college. Were they jobs I loved? No, they were stupid day jobs even though I tried to love them despite this fact. They were the jobs I took while trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life to earn a living. They are what I did until my mental illness and my Higher Power pointed me in the WRITE direction.

My art form is writing. I’m trying to earn a living with it. My body-sharing twin, Simone Lisbon, wrote a book, Forced to Change. The rewrites are almost finished. When that’s done, I’m going to publish my art for profit with the hopes of it being a New York Times Best Seller. I hope people will buy it. I want people to love it. I hope that it will earn me a living.

If not, oh well, it wasn’t meant to be, yet. I’ll continue writing. Why? I love it and it is possible to earn a living from writing. So I fantasize about being the next Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephen King while I am Stephanie Monique, that’s an excellent person to be in my opinion. One day I hope someone will aspire to be like me...

The Kate & Allie Without Chip Living Situation

2015-10-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

When I was ten my mother moved us back to Michigan because she received a promotion at work that took her out of state, at least that’s what she said at the time. I believe she jumped at this opportunity to put some distance between herself and her abusive ex-husband. My wicked stepfather was attempting to use my love of him to get back into her life. My mother was no fool, so she solved that issue by moving us a state away from the problem.

With her temper, my mother didn’t trust herself not to end his life if he weaseled his way back in. He’d beaten her black and blue one night. When I saw her, I crawled next to her and comforted her. It was the only time I’d ever seen my mother holding a gun. I asked about his gun. She told me she used it to get him to leave. She informed him if he ever touched her again, he wouldn’t know when, but he’d know why he was going to die by her hand. She told me that my wicked stepfather was out of the house and not coming back except to get his shit.

Before he could officially move his things out of our house, I ran around with a pair of scissors and destroyed every VHS tape in the place. They all belonged to him. He’d bought a VCR with what little money he earned, so it was something I knew he enjoyed. The only thing that saved his life that night, my mother wasn’t willing to put me in the system by going to prison. This is also the reason despite all his wickedness, he is not listed as one of my abusers. Again, my mother would have MURDERED A MAN in her bed that tried to pull me into it too. She trusted me to tell her if he ever did.

The first thing my mother discovered in Michigan was that she couldn’t afford a private education for me any longer. So she decided to move us to the suburbs rather than back to Detroit for the sake of my education. She had a co-worker friend who was struggling at the time and wanted to get her daughter out of the Detroit school system, she was having some financial trouble too. So both my mother and her mother decided to pull a Kate & Allie w/o Chip living situation. Wondering why our mothers didn't want to raise their daughters in Detroit? I think Eminem explains this best.

Warning: Explicit lyrics, duh, it's Eminem

Kate & Allie was a sitcom on television where two women decided to live together and help each other raise their kids, two girls and a boy named Chip. Basically the show was the closest thing television had to a lesbian living situation in the ‘80s. It seemed like a better way to live. By combining households my single mother and the other single mother were able to combine resources for the betterment of all involved. So what if they were approaching 40 years of age and thought they’d be married and have men helping them raise their children. When my mother saw a better option than struggling, she adjusted. Hence living with Kate (the other mom) and Ally (the other daughter).

Financial failure was a major concern for my mother. She sacrificed a lot to raise me in a safe environment. Did she make mistakes, of course. But the thing I loved most about my mother was her ability to keep an open mind about everything. Most of the time, especially after she had therapy for her abusive actions toward me (see earlier post) we debated instead of fighting.

When we fought, we used top volume (people in other countries could hear us yelling), rolling eyes and necks. She threatened physical violence, like hair pulling or slapping the black off of me, but as she never hit me in an anger again, I could forgive her this sin. I’d also learned my own lesson that physical violence was no way to solve my problems. I learned this lesson when a little white girl half my size successfully defended herself from my attempt to hit her in my sophomore year of high school. I considered taking self-defense courses, but decided to verbally try to end my conflicts. If that couldn’t be done, I still had yet to learn to walk away from a fight. That would come from working stupid day jobs a term I snatched from Mr. Wally Pleasant.

My mother was willing to learn a new, a better way to handle any situation. She rarely maintained a grudge and she got herself away from people who worked her last nerve until she could cool off. If they really disrespected her, they couldn’t return to her life. Yet she spent a lot of time drinking and isolating from the world. By the time I realized my mother needed a best friend, she already had one in me.

She shared a lot of information most people are told not to share with their child. Then she did one better for me. My mother didn’t need me to make the choices she would make with that information, she only wanted me to do better than her. She allowed me the freedom to choose my own path. Once abuse as a punishment was removed from our situation, I accepted any punishment she was willing to give for my crimes.

So I committed what I believed were crimes. I respected authority-figures like the police. See, I read that motto on the side of every police car I’ve ever seen. Police men and women were supposed to “Protect & Serve”. I asked my mother who they were protecting and serving, she said their communities. Cool. Her bottom line? She refused to bail my stupid black ass out of jail. Oh yes, I would be considered stupid for getting caught in her eyes. Enter the title I believe my Goddess has given me, 'favorite sneaky little bitch'. Until I started having full-blown manic episodes, I’d never had a problem with the police. I could get away with any crime I was willing to commit, the caveat, the addendum, ‘Don’t Get Caught!’

I lived in a death penalty state, so no murder for me. I knew people could be raped in prison and after being molested, I had no desire to be raped. I was under the impression that if I went to jail or prison it could happen to me. So that limited the crimes I committed. With those as my choices, armed with the knowledge I’d already signed a contract with my mother that I was going to college, getting a job and paying rent, or getting the hell out of her house, I lived my life.

Ally stole an idea from me once while we were still in that living situation. I’d seen an outfit that I thought was extremely nice. I wanted it. I pictured myself in it and told Ally I wanted it. We were out shopping with her mother, Kate. It was my first interest in fashion. Ally decided to try it on, then her mother purchased the outfit for her. I still wanted the outfit. When I asked my mother for it when we got home she told me she couldn’t afford it. I was eleven years old at the time. Ally didn’t realize at the time that she’d stolen my outfit idea, because she was twelve years old.

Her mother bought her things she wanted. In my eyes EVERYTHING she wanted. My mother was frugal as hell, she didn’t want to pay that much for it. See what I didn’t realize at the time was my mother always used, 'she couldn’t afford it' any time I asked for something and filed it away as a possible gift idea for me. Since I didn’t realize this, I stole Ally’s allowance as a result. My mother up until that point didn't give me nearly as much money for an allowance as Kate gave to Ally.

Kate was really pissed and asked that I be punished, once I finally confessed to my crime that is. Oopsie! Look, I’m a writer for a reason. Lying was a life skill I used to get me out of punishments from my mother. I felt bad about it until I snatched 'creative editing' from the universe in college. Up until that point I couldn’t lie without giving it away. The very first time my mother caught me in a lie when I was four, she told me she was hurt by it. She’d hoped I’d never lie to her. Which is why I only used it if I feared the consequence, IE, no television, being ground, my freedom revoked at my mother’s discretion.

So, as to the Kate & Ally Fashion Debacle, well, Kate felt my punishment was too light. My mother raised my allowance to that of Ally’s weekly payment. My mother had been trying to teach me how to make due with whatever I had, but realized that she could afford to give me a better allowance than she’d given me. I was only learning to steal what I couldn’t afford.

I’d already had my first and forth stupid day jobs. A paper route and babysitting gigs. Ally stole one of my babysitting jobs once. She claimed she didn’t know it was already my family to babysit. I didn’t believe her at the time. I lied about stuff, I knew she lied about stuff, so yup, didn’t believe her. I felt she’d done it to hurt me. I was twelve at the time. We stopped living together soon after that incident.

So who was right in our situations? All of us. Who was wrong in our situations? All of us. We each learned to take responsibility for our own actions. If my mother were still alive today all four of us would still be friends/Family. Currently, Ally is just another SFAM (sista from another mother) and Kate is another strong black woman I can turn to when I need it.

No One Deserves To Die For My Belief System

2015-10-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christ already died for it. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. already died for it. Treyvon Martin Already died for it. And as of today, McKayla Dyer, 8 years old died for my belief system. They all gave their lives and reinforced the need for me to change my thinking towards a world of Peace.

I’ve been working on this problem my entire life. How do I, one little person bring about WORLD PEACE in my lifetime? First, I accepted that I am considered crazy for wanting this as my overall life goal. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1996. Why? Because I believe this is a possible goal. I believe with my whole heart that WORLD PEACE can and should BE achieved in MY lifetime.

When I first said it, I was told it was impossible to do. I keep being told it is an impossible job, in the meantime I continue working on the problem. I accept that most people believe it’s a crazy idea. What I discovered is I’m not the only one who gets to believe it is possible. Why? As far as I know, 18.2% of the US population is considered mental ill too. That’s nearly one in five Americans. I’ve had plenty of conversations with other mentally ill individuals and we’re all saying the same thing, just in our own unique ways.

The biggest problem I’ve had up until this point is one of greed. It’s the sin I kept committing in relation to this idea. I kept trying to figure out a way to make money off of it. As long as I do that I won’t be able to make my idea come true. So, steal this idea. Please, I’m begging you. Make it your own. Then tell it to the next person and let them steal this idea from you. Or borrow the concept of WORLD PEACE in YOUR lifetime and then share it with the next person.

This idea was a gift from my Goddess to me. It is the same gift every soul on the planet is given the day they were born. It’s why I believe you were born to change the world too. This idea won’t be accomplished by one little person. It will take the entire World Population believing it is possible to pull off for it to happen.

It starts with one person. Some people believe that person was JESUS CHRIST. For me it starts with the person who is willing to live with their sins and the sins of others. For my belief system it starts with the person who will sacrifice their body, mind, and soul to prove their love of everyone by living, instead of dying. That person I’m labeling the ANTI-CHRIST. I’ve survived every person’s sin forced on me. I’m a person who is willing to keep living my life this way. I’m an ANTI-CHRIST. Are you one too?

The Government Killed The Puppy...

2015-10-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

Has it been your personal experience that the younger you are the less likely you are to pay an appropriate consequence for your actions? Or was that just my sweet black ass? The problem in America as I see it is the message a lot of children are getting today is violence is the best answer for conflict resolution. They get this message in video games. On their television and in their movies. From other children, adults and even their parent(s). When a child is caught using violence in their life if they are punished for it, is the problem the punishment is too light? Too harsh? Too old way of thinking instead of forward thinking? I believe it’s the last one.

What adults, parents and the US government have failed to do today is teach the next generation a better solution for conflict resolution in my opinion. At 57% the US government continues to fund the Military as it’s number one priority. At the same time only 5% of their budgeted spending goes to Veteran Benefits? What history has taught me is that War is an economic solution. For me I’ve seen this backwards thinking solution time and time again. The time has come to get moving forward in our thinking and our actions.

From Walking Upright Citzen's Brigade Article

Why I’m a Trekkie instead of a Star Wars fan is simply the difference. I’m a Next Generation fan-girl over original. When it came down to conflict resolution on both original and Next Generation, diplomacy was used more often than not. Picard used communication better in my opinion. Kirk used sex and love. I believe the reason Earth can’t get out into the Universe and mix among other beings, why Star Trek isn’t reality for the human race is we are not ready to meet alien races, yet.

Until this backwards thinking of conflict resolution through violence is removed from our actions, we won’t be ready to explore the Universe and meet other conscious beings. Personally, I prefer the President of the United States of America to be a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Twice. I heard President Barrack Obama is nominated to receive the prize for the second time this year. I see this as proof and I appreciate the fact that the consciousness in America is moving forward.

I had a friend whose puppy was killed. The dog was thrown into a wall by a six year old child. I was at home at the time. I lived two miles away. My friend, J, called me up and told me the dog was injured and begged could I take her to the emergency vet room. I put on my shoes, grabbed my wallet, keys and coat while I instructed J to print out the directions. I was on my way, she knew it, we didn’t even discuss it.

I arrived at her door, she raced to my truck cradling the small bundle of pale doggy in her arms. I asked for the directions, she shoved them in my hands. I started driving out of the complex, eyes on the information and the road, until I figured out where I was going. The radio was off but there was no silence in the cab of my truck. The dog was wheezing and whining, J was crying and talking on the phone. The puppy did not respond to J, no matter what she said or did.

I asked what happened when she ended the call. J told me her daughters were playing in their room with some friends and the new puppy. J’s family had gotten the puppy the day before. It was my first time seeing him. The children were saying the dog fell off the bed. J called her home and spoke to the mother she’d left in charge of the four children responsible. The other mother had two boys, same ages as J’s girls, six and four years old.

I had a few concerns about J’s six year old. This was the second time inside the month this child had exhibited a poor choice of action in my eyes. She’d shoplifted a few weeks prior. The same day of the shoplifting incident I’d informed J's daughter I was upset with her while we were riding around in her mother's car. J's daughter asked why and I said it was wrong to steal. She told me she wanted the candy and so she took it. I told her there were plenty of things I wanted, but I mostly purchased the things I needed. Her mother agreed she did the same.

J’s daughter asked me why and I explained that I was poor, broke. Her mother was in the same boat. Neither one of us had much money. At the time I still had excellent credit, J did not. J’s daughter said I drove a nice truck. I told her I’d bought my truck when I had a good paying job. When I purchased Dante 2, I needed a vehicle and it was one I could afford. I still own the same truck today though this happened over six years ago. J's daughter said oh and agreed to only purchase what her mother could afford going forward until she got a job and could buy what she wanted.

As to the puppy, the other mother said the children had changed their story by the time J and I arrived at the vet. The children were tossing the puppy back and forth. J’s youngest daughter is disabled, so I knew she didn’t have the dexterity to throw the dog. By the time the puppy was being taken care of, J's oldest daughter said she'd thrown the dog into a wall. I stayed with J at the vet while we were informed the best course of action was to put the puppy down by the vet.

When we returned to the apartment complex J begged me to come with her while she disciplined her daughter. She feared she’d be too angry to do it properly. I went into that room to support my friend, with hopes that we could get across the seriousness of the situation. At first her daughter felt no remorse for what she’d done. We explained that the puppy was gone, this being the first experience with death for all the children involved.

J asked me to encourage her daughter to see the err of what she’d done. J liked the help I’d given her on the shoplifting issue, and she knew I cared about her daughters as if they were my own. I compared the puppy to a baby and reminded her six year old that she would not allow anyone to throw her baby sister into a wall. Then I asked her why she'd thrown the newest member, the baby of their family into one? The other mother felt I was being too harsh. J asked her friend to head into the living room with her boys while J and I finished speaking with her girls.

J helped me to breakdown my words into kid language as we continued our conversation with them. By the time we’d finished talking to them J’s six year old daughter was in tears and remorseful. I feared the person who needed to hear what was said was a child in the living room. I didn’t know the other mother, nor was my help desired by this woman. My offer to stick around while her children discussed the incident, was declined. Armed with my thoughts on the situation, that her daughter was not the person who threw the dog, J had that conversation without me and decided to end the friendship with the other mother.

Within the same year J and I ended our friendship. I won’t go into details. For me it had become an unhealthy relationship and once I realized this fact, I had to cut J out of my life. I miss her daughters and her and hope that they are happy, safe, and healthy. I imagine they are but I don’t get to know for sure. It’s the price I paid, the consequence I received for ending the friendship.

My Relationship With Goddess, Feel Free To Form Your Own

2015-09-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

What I’ve realize recently is this, I have a very personal, deep rooted relationship with God. I’ve had it all my life. This is not unique to me. It is true of every single being in the universe. What I know is not everyone calls this God. Some just consider it Self, some say Budda, Allah, the dog next door, the thing they’re addicted to, whatever a person calls It, It is real.

The first time another person forced their will on me, my connection to Goddess was inprisoned. It was locked behind a mental block, a wall was erected in my mind and God hung out beyond me, locked away inside that mental jail. As I grew up, made mistakes, was tested and had failures in my life, experienced pain, the bars, locks, and walls got stronger, bigger, overwhelming.

Reinforced cycles of abuse from my parents kept placing fear blocks on my mind. My mother’s fears of rape and pregnancy were transferred to me. I managed to avoid both. My bio dad’s fear of the white man, was not. I saw his fear and decided to figure out what it was he found so damn threating about them. I dated a white cop in college to punch that one home for myself. Good guy, turns out he’s bipolar too. We’re still friends today.

The mind is the only true domain of every being on this planet. Despite some people’s belief that they can read another person’s mind, it has yet to be proven to me. I find it interesting that the man considered the smartest on the planet is basically only a brain in a broken body. Stephen Hawking’s ability to think is charted as exceptional. He can be quoted as saying, “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”

For me having a manic episode is like breaking through a lot of the blocks and locks on my mind. I have a deep understanding of myself, that I can only explain as God’s will working in my life. The problem is when my thinking hits the magical possibility level and basic laws of many human experiences disappear. Also add to that, I feel so wonderful I want to share with everyone around me. In my younger days I tried to force my perspective on others. In other words, I was doing to another person exactly what was done to me to put me in my mental prison in the first place.

What I know today is that my bipolar diagnosis was a major lock on my mind. For the first time in my life I didn’t trust my brain. I was told it was broken, sick. I was told by people I loved and who loved me not to trust myself. I was informed by people with a piece of paper and some letters on it received after an education that they knew better than I did about how my brain worked. I was told to trust doctors in general, and here stood a group of them telling me I was mentally ill.

What I believe to be true today is when I was first diagnosed, I had no understanding of what was happening to me. What I learned by having full blown manic episodes every once in a while over the last 19 years is that they are spiritual in nature for me. What I believe to be true about having them is that it was the only way for me to learn how to trust myself and my connection to God. I had a full blown manic episode last month and I checked myself into the hospital for the third time. I feel this was my last full blown manic episode, because I believe I finally have the answer to why I was having them in the first place.

Each fear I developed fell away and I saw the person I could be without misinformation and mistrust of myself. I see the divine plan of my life as put forth for me by my God. I once joked about a resident I had in my personal care home days that had every meal with her Jesus Christ. Not my or your JC, her son of God. What is funny about that now to me is she was correct. It was her relationship with what she called God. Just as this is my relationship with what I call Goddess most days.

My post mostly written while manic ‘How To Be A Better You’ was my way of saying that I believe you’d be a lot happier with yourself if you could trust your own relationship with your own Higher Power. I mention in the post that you were born to change the world. I believe we were all born to change the world and that we forget this fact through living. Yet, I know I can't say what is right for you, only you can do that.

I am a spiritual being having a human experience so I’m bound to make mistakes. For me, I feel part of my journey is trying to explain this in a way that makes sense to others. But as I’ve said from my very first manic episode, “When I stop making sense, please let me know.”

September 11th, 2001 - For Me...

2015-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 14^th anniversary of September 11^th, 2001. A day most people alive and self-aware remember with intense clarity. The media described it as, “An Attack On America”, The Twin Towers Fell (The World Trade Center Towers in New York City, NY), The Pentagon was targeted and hit. The weapon? Airplanes, an invention I’d seen as meant to carry beings from one place to another safely, long distances traversed in a timely manner. The weapon, was one I’d always seen and used as a tool. An Airplane was used for a common good, bringing people together, connecting with one another, traveling for vacation and/or business. On 9/11/01 an airplane was identified in my eyes as a powerful weapon of mass destruction.

Just shy of 9:00am EST I sat at my desk in the Meijer Warehouse in Lansing, MI eagerly waiting my first break of the day. I was a smoker back then as well as today. I finished a phone call with a truck dispatcher, at the time I was a Junior Logistics Analyst, and I headed into the break room to find other smokers to chat with for my 15 minute break. The women who usually joined me at the same time were finishing their own projects and would be along shortly. A dock worker who made the most amazing breakfasts for the workforce when it was required to work over the weekend, was watching TV and I stopped next to him to check out the television as well.

A finger of ice raced up and down my spine, something didn’t quite make sense on the television screen. One of the towers, (TWC) in New York City was on fire. A plane had flown into it. I stared at the screen as the dock worker made an off-handed comment, “I guess the Empire State Building wanted to be the tallest building in New York City again.” I looked at him, started to laugh and stopped, because no, that was not what I was watching unfold on the TV screen. We watched LIVE as the second plane flew into the second tower.

My stomach plummeted. The world was wrong, something was wrong, WRONG, WRONG. Very wrong, soul-crushing wrong. A panic sent my feet along with the rest of me to the corporate office pocket at the back of the warehouse where I worked at the time to try to explain to my co-workers what I was seeing on the television. All I could say was they had to come see the TV. They had to see what I was seeing and it seemed for a moment, no one could hear my plea and I had no idea if I’d been able to voice it. I rushed back and dropped into a chair in the break room and watched things unfold. The reports. The theories. The planes, weapons, destroying pieces of America, my country. Panic and fear and my mind screamed WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!

After a cigarette or two, maybe five I can’t remember I found myself at my desk. I was on the phone with one of my favorite dispatchers. He wanted to know if I knew what was going on, I didn’t, but I understood something major, so I admitted my awareness of the planes, the grounding of flights, and he told me his trucks, were all stopped. Stuck. Not only that, all the transportation of Meijer products, via trains, whatever the vehicle, my logistics job, was in stop mode. I couldn’t do my job, because planes were being used as a weapon of mass destruction.

My boss told me to go home about two hours later. I went to the Meijer store around the corner from my house. Patriotic music played as I shopped for food. I called my grandmother, I called my sperm donor and my step-mother. I called a friend’s mother I knew was living in New York at the time. Her mother had no news. I watched television as banners crossed the bottom of my TV screen, ‘Attack On America’. ‘United Flight 93’. I’d watched the Tower fall in real time, but the video was on repeat across my screen and no amount of blankets blocked the cold, crushing me as I huddled on my couch and cried.

I forgot about the concert ticket in my wallet for the band, A Perfect Circle scheduled that evening. It didn’t matter, the concert was rescheduled. The entire world was on pause, stuck in tragedy and pain. A pain vibrated across the United States of America and I’m positive I’m not the only who at that time didn’t understand the biggest question of all. WHY?

So yes, I remember. I REMEMBER what happened. I will always REMEMBER what happened 14 years ago today. Today, I know for me personally, I have to forgive to heal from major pain. Recently I had to forgive my sperm donor (bio-dad) for telling me he wished I’d been an abortion when I was 12 years old. I had to forgive him for being addicted to alcohol. I had to forgive him for loving alcohol more than he loved me. I’ve done that, I said it right before he died, but recently I finally accepted it and forgave him. I dropped that BONE, never to be picked up again and scratch at the wounds he left on me with his careless words.

As to the events of this day, 14 years ago, I’m going to continue the practice that makes it easier for me to look forward to a brighter future. I want to see a world of endless possibilities and wonders. I can’t wait for my planet to venture further into the universe and discover the other beings out there. I highly doubt the human race is the only conscious beings in the Universe, it’s too vast and unmapped for that to be true.

So I choose to #AlwaysForgive and to Remember the painful life lesson I learned 14 years ago today. Many lives paid for this lesson, so I will remember that human beings need to communicate better with one another. I learned that war and destruction is a very old BONE way of dealing with conflict, and personally, I’ve dropped the old Bones, never to be chewed on again in my life. These bones are dead and devoid of marrow, they have no value in my life. I won’t gnaw on a bone that can only feed my phantom soul pain. There is no nutritional value in that for me.

Music is My Substitute MUSe!!!

2015-08-29T14:01:00.003-07:00

Type-O-Negative knows this particular truth best, they were what I needed to SURVIVE MY MOTHER'S DEATH. I didn't want to face the world anymore. I was going, I gave up, I needed STRENGTH for just one more DAY. I listen to music constantly and as I continued my education at MSU, new music helped me face the next day, barely. A video production class was a solid goal, creating and working through a concept to a visual product's end. But until World Coming Down and the songs, Everyone I Love Is Dead and Everything Dies I wasn't able to hear my pain and grief clearly enough to start the healing process for my mom.

Those silly vampire wanna-bes, or maybe they are real vampires, I have no idea. The band found out from my co-workers at the time that I was crediting them with saving my life. I was working as a Music Director Assistant, living in London in 1999 and still feeling the loss of my mother from my life as hardcore as a person could. God called my mother, Laura Ann, home, May 5th, 1997 with Pancreatic Cancer. I was so depressed, but not medicated, at the time. Medication always pulled me too far down the depression highway. Suicide seemed like the best option while I was taking it, at the time I was only 3 years into being labelled Bipolar.

I saw it in their faces, Type-O-Negative couldn't believe it when they met me. They wanted to meet me too, only I didn't know it when I met with them. Too shy to ask for what I wanted, I only ask for what I NEEDED. I asked that the late great Peter Steele sign the fold out poster from my personal copy of World Coming Down, the CD they were touring at the time. If you know a member of that particular band, they'll explain what happened until you wet your damn pants. I fangirl-ed so hard I raced off to do the interview of my life but I'd left my notes back at the radio station. Peter Steele, patted me on the head and told me to sit and calm down. I flipped out that he'd touched me with the magical hands that created amazing music.

I was given the opportunity to interview any member of the band I wanted to after seeing all three shows while they were in London at the end of my abroad internship. Of course, I would have loved to ask Peter Steele all my questions. I ended up interviewing Kenny Hickey, I found him the least intimidating of the band. I admired them all, but Peter Steele was a Demi-God in my head. I couldn't speak to the man, for thinking him too beautiful to look at, words would not form on my tongue good enough to grace his perfect ears. I liked that Kenny was about my height and seemed most approachable, he was sitting closest to me after Peter made me sit down.

Kenny and I moved into the sunroom of the hotel and had coffee. I turned on my recording device and asked the questions my boss had faxed over that I'd created in preparation for the interview. Kenny and I went through my questions twice. I asked inspired in the moment questions not on my pages. I obtained a station ID for MSU's station and one for SBN, Ltd. Sound bites by artists, the stations could use as ID drops, a requirement for radio stations. We shook hands and I headed back to the office, found a studio, and listened to the interview over and over again. I moved back to Michigan two days later.

I found out from my boss that the band had been looking forward to meeting me just before I sat back and listened to the interview over and over again. When he asked how it went, I'd explained that I'd fan-girled and blew it. My boss smiled and told me what had been a secret up until that point. So I listened with new eyes, my mind officially blown that the band I was so impressed with enjoyed meeting me too. It was a special something extra to the experience that if I'd known in advance, I'm not sure what would have happened. I would like to think knowing would have changed nothing. A small part of me thinks knowing would have made me brave enough to interview Peter Steele...

How To Be A Better YOU…

2015-08-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

When I first moved to Atlanta, GA on the one year anniversary of 9/11 I had a lot doubts about my decision to move. I was afraid and brave and a myriad of different emotions. Hotlanta, Georgia called to my soul the last time I’d been there for a visit, so I had to move away from my home state, Michigan. I unpacked my stuff, helped my cousin unpack his stuff too and we were living together in a nice apartment just right for 2. What if it didn’t work out? Heart pounding out of my chest, I fixed up my resume and began searching for work via the internet.

At the time I still played the bass guitar. It was a gift from Goddess that I had no natural talent to play, or maybe I did according to the best drummer I’ve met in person, Chud. Watching him play drums is a joy, I could do it all day and be satisfied with that choice that I made. It was humbling to my soul that if I wanted to play the bass to get to a level of good, I’d actually have to work at it. Dammit...Most things came naturally to me and work is work. I was only leery of work because what is labelled as work and what work a person is meant to do are different things. At the time, I didn’t know the difference.

Once upon a time I owned a Crate amp, and an EXtreme effects pedal (something you plug in between your amp and guitar to make different noise with your instrument). When I setup my stuff, whenever I tried to use the effects pedal, no sound would come out of the amp. I plug the guitar directly into the amp, no problems. If I wanted to distort the sound with the pedal, no sound. Frustrated I took my broken pedal into Dirt Cheap Music and asked if they could fix it. They said they would try.

I continued looking for work and two weeks later someone called me from Dirt Cheap and said, “Lady,I’ve been over it backwards and forward. I’ve taken it apart looking for a problem, there isn’t one.”

Confused, I answered,“But it doesn’t work for me.”

I could hear the frustration in his voice as he said, “I’m telling you, it works just fine. I know how to do my job. I’ve cleaned the parts, the pedal works just fine. I’m tearing my hair out. Please tell me why you brought me something that’s not broken to fix?”

I said, “I understand what you’re saying. When I plug it in I don’t get sound. The guitar and amp work perfectly for me. So the problem has to be the pedal, doesn’t it?”

The poor guy sighed and said, “I think I figured out your problem. When you plug the pedal in which power supply cord do you plug into the pedal, AC or DC?”

I looked at the power supply cords and read off the one I was using, he told me to use the other one.Just that simple, the problem was fixed. It cost me $15.00 for that priceless life lesson. In other words, when my Power Source is the wrong One, stuff doesn’t work for me. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut when I trust, believe in my Power Source, my Goddess, The Biggest Baddest Bitch in the Universe, the True ONE and ONLY Supreme Being, The Deity, oh my, well, my life works so well, I can do nothing else but share the joy.

Taking the leap to surrender to IT, is hard. And the confusion is in how you are filtering the message. So many people walking the planet have no idea how blocked up their filter is and how to clean it and hear what has been told to you your entire life. What I mean is, we don't all hear the message in the same language, so the message gets a little messy when you're listening to IT. For example, I barely speak English, though I am fluent in Flirt and Ebonics. I'm having a little trouble with the language of the Youth of America, I guess Will Smith was correct, Parents just don't understand.

So let me tell you the number one fact you need to know for your life. You want the secret, hear it is(yes, I used hear instead of here on purpose). I’ve accepted as part of my mission to Earth is that I’m supposed to translate this simple message to you in terms that you can understand. Ready? Do you want to hear it? Want me to tell you how other people do what they do? What they understand that you don’t seem to get? Here it is, in the simplest terms I can say it in. Please don't be offend that I'm explaining it to you like you're a four year old because I really pray that I can help you understand it. YOU, yes I’m talking to YOU. (don’t say not me,) Neverending Story-style, YOU!

YOU WERE BORN TO CHANGE THE WORLD!

The moment you know IT, believe IT, accept IT, surrendered to IT, you’ll get what other people you admire, idolize already know. You'll understand why some people seem to live a charmed and exceptional lottery ticket winning-esque kind of life and how you can have IT too. That’s the big damn secret. You were born to change the world. They accepted that fact. You haven’t yet.

I'm willing to bet you’re calling bullshit. You ARE sitting there telling me, Bitch you’re lying. You can’t PROVE that. I really hope that’s what your ass is sayin'. How do I know? Silly Rabbit, Trix's are for kids, I mean, Goddess told me that’s what you were going to say. She said to me, okay fine sneaky little bitch prove it to them. Redman-style “Get ‘Em” … You want some proof, okay fine, here’s your damn PROOF that what I call SHE EXISTS...

Might I suggest you turn on the radio. Turn on your television. Go explore the damn internet. Though you could just walk around the world from the safety of your computer, tablet, instrument of choice to connect to the world, I really hope you're brave enough to go out into your community.

Find something that resonates inside you and enjoy it and get connected to the world. Storytellers are all around you, all you have to do is listen to what they are saying to you...Yes you, I do me YOU...Because believe it or not, they are telling you the exact same thing I'm telling you too. Why you may ask? They figured out that they were born to change the world and when told that, believed it. That's the only difference. The dividing line between you and me...Only they may not believe they were born to change the world, instead they believe they were born to save a life, or to create unicorns, I don't know. I just haven't asked enough people why they were born yet.

Not ready for that step? It's a biggy, I know, it's where you see what I'm saying in other people. But you only need to pick up a book and read it. Any book, doesn’t matter the words. If you are brave enough to go out into that big bad scary world, say you decide to head to a coffee shop and have a conversation with the person sitting in the chair next to you, you'll get it a lot faster. If not, listen to some music, watch a video on youtube.

Might I suggest you go do that right now for about an hour...Let what you love be your religion. Believe in what you say, own it. Have faith that God is always on your side. That can't be true. I don't agree with what so and so said. So how could that be true if I don't agree with someone else? What I realized is, I'm different from other people, an individual. I'm Stephanie Monique, run it backwards, you get a Unique Step. I'm the only person walking the planet that is me. The same is true of you. Yes, you. YOU. I don't have to agree with you, but I respect the fact that God loves us the same. In which case, I agree to disagree with your point of view.

So, there's your assignment, now please go do it. Pretty please with sugar on top and chocolate kisses, I swear you won't be disappointed. Really, it’s that easy. What if I want to worship Satan? You're still worshiping the same God I do, only you're calling IT Satan. Seriously, I’m not lying to you. I swear, I promise, nothing bad will happen to you. Once seen, it can’t be unseen.

When I realized how easy it was to do, I shook my damn head. It blew up and evolve my locked up mind. Personally, I'm going to let Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliot tell me about IT again while drinking the sweet nectar of a cup of coffee...

You Were Born To Change The World!!! Seriously. It’s True…

2015-08-26T15:46:00.002-07:00

Being diagnosed in 1996 as bipolar has felt like a noose around my neck, yet another bad label. I’m black, I’m a female, a survivor of molestation and the tip of the iceberg mentally ill too? Goddess, what the fuck were you thinking dealing me this shitty ass hand of cards of life and telling me I was going to make rum and Cherry Coke (good drink)? I swear to you I turned to my Higher Power and cursed that Big Bad Bitch out. No lie, I had no problem at the time because I barely believed She was real. Then Goddess showed me what the world could be if I was willing to accept the responsibility. I whispered sorry, tucked tail and got on with living a new miserable level of life.

Today, I think Can’t is a four letter word. There is no impossible, only possible. When you break down that sentence you get told twice there are only possibilities. Some things just have yet to be dreamed up or at the time when they come from the mind, the technology didn’t exist. How else do you explain the similarities between Star Trek’s universe and now? Cell phones, communicators, even the damn tablets the doctors on the show used. Higher Power, Universe, Goddess, God, Allah, Budda. They don’t care what you call It, but you know what It is.

It’s that friend that calls you on the phone when you’re feeling blue. It’s the twenty bucks forgotten that you find in the coat pocket. It’s a child’s laugh. It’s the sunrise, the bird songs. The music, the dance, the writing, basically whatever in your mind that is generally labelled GOOD. You know how I know? All you have to do is drop an ‘O’ out of the word to see GOD. Or maybe you label it EVIL, ever spell it backwards and read LIVE? I've got my condo in Hell all picked out. I know I'm going there, besides, it's where I want to go. Heaven sounds boring to me.

It’s living that’s so damn hard that makes a person forget that they were born to change the world. They were born to make the world a better place. Each and every soul on the planet can and should make that statement and know it to be true. A person should be able to say it into a mirror out loud until they believe it to be true again. You’ll feel better about yourself, I promise once you know It to be true.

Children do it easier than adults. When you have a conversation about a child and talk about that kid’s potential, you’re talking about Higher Power, Lower Power, Sideways Power, Upside, side-step, do the hustle OH, no, I mean yes, accept no substitutions POWER. It’s so much easier to see It in children, because they’ve been hanging out with the Almighty recently. But what people seem to forget so easily is, that we are all Children of Goddess, Mother Earth, God, Buddha, Allah, Universe, Whomever, Whatever, your Deity is, and trust me when I say, SHE loves us all the same, no matter our beliefs, even Atheist. In other words, the One True Power believes in you even when you don't believe in Them.

Know and claim your soul brother, JC (Jesus Christ, Mahammad, Buddha whatever you call the part of Higher Power who made the sacrifice for your sins). Ever not had enough money in your pocket to buy food? No, well consider yourself lucky. Yes, did you go hungry or get fed? Wow, you mean our Higher Power never asked you to starve to death? Sounds like a blessing for you.

The Almighty didn’t put on your shoulders to be killed in a concentration camp, gunned down by a cop because of the color of your skin? Sounds like an amazing life to me. Weren't you asked to fight a War for resources that reside in someone else's territory because your leader wants them, even if your leader doesn't need them? Now wait just a minute, you mean to tell me you are not living in a country where getting an education is close to impossible and you are oppressed because of your gender? And you are not living in a country where being gay is a death sentence? I’m so shaking my damn head.

Did you know the computer was invented by a gay man? Where the hell would I write if he’d never lived up to his potential? Those that die brutally, violently, in horrific, macabre ways, are your soul siblings in my opinion. They are JC (Jesus Christ in your own bible of a story). Goddess’s Children die every single day, wishing it could have been from old age instead of someone else’s sin.

And another thing, did the struggles in your life include being molested as a child? That one She placed on me. I told the Bitch I didn’t like it because she made me deal with it more than once. By the time I was seven, I’d learned to play hide-and-seek like no one else I knew. I was so good at it, I was never molested again.

Most people tell me that wasn't my fault, it was the sickos who decided it was a good idea to do. True and False. We share the blame. I was too small, uninformed to do anything about it at the time, but how I dealt with what happened, how I processed it falls back on me. Unfortunately, some people think it makes it okay to do it to some one else because it happened to them. I chose not to continue the abuse, it's why I'm not a mother of a human child. I was too afraid to have one for fear that I would hurt them. I am a mother of a sweet faced cat named Nike. She owns me heart and soul.

Forgive your sins. They’re mistakes, then forgive yourself for making them. You’ve always heard, nobody’s perfect, wrong, everyone is perfect. You are exactly the way your Creator made you. I’m not leaving this world with regrets, I just hope more people feel the same way.

May I suggest you start learning from the experience when you fail, err, make a mistake, that way you’ll do better next time. If it happens again and you don’t do better, you’ll face it again. Then again. Again. Again. That’s your Higher Power’s way of teaching you.

I find the easiest way for me to learn from a mistake is to look in the mirror first. I’m the only common denominator in any situation. If my life is stuck on repeat, I must be missing what I need to do. So I check myself. It was my mistake to make again because I didn’t learn the lesson the first time. If I want it to stop happening, I have to make a change, no one else can.

For example, I’ve been an ear that’s received a lot of complaints about relationships. The number one being, well, he cheated on me. Next year, same girlfriend/guy friend, he cheated on me. Two years later, but he cheated on me. Like a broken record, the broken party is them, but they can’t hear that when they're feeling betrayed. So I bring the cherry amaretto ice cream and gently suggest maybe they're dating the wrong kind of men for them.

I know what kind of person I want, but I also know what kind of person I need to be to attract the kind of person I want. What kind of person, you may ask? Well, duh, exactly who I am, me. Such a silly question. There are plenty of imitators but there can be only one me. I’m good with that.

So many people are looking around envious, instead of looking at themselves to get what they want. They think they have to steal it, take it, yet they dislike it when someone tries to take things from them. That’s mine, this land, this money, this car, this person. Sounds like Children whining to me. But that person drives a nicer car than I do; I want to drive a nice car. It’s fine to want, but dammit, chill out, smoke a joint, er, I meant if you’ve got one, I mean cigarette, I swear, relax and cover your own needs first. When you pray, chat up Goddess, dream, whatever it is you do to talk to your Higher Power, They always respond to the request. Without fail. No exceptions.

Is the real problem when you got enough money to buy food, instead you bought alcohol, or drugs? That label is addiction. I have quite a few myself. I’m a smoker, er, um, tobacco-only and coffee drinker and food. Both of my parents were alcoholics. I think addiction comes from trying to see your Higher Power in yourself and just not being able to see it. So you take drugs, you drink, you masturbate, I had full blown manic episodes. I don’t know what you do, but you know. It’s your choice to make, but be prepared for the consequences Higher Power is going to give you for not choosing the path They laid out for your Divine life.

I think, well, okay I know that Mother Nature is screaming at me to wake up. Question for you, would you shit or piss in the middle of the floor at your house? Then why are you doing it to your Home Planet? A lot of places on the internet I'm listed as being located from Earth. Since I can't go backwards in time yet, I imagine one day that will be a necessity in a person's profile, I hope sooner rather than later. I want bragging rights dammit, I'm from EARTH. Not, I'm from that rock we no longer live on because we killed it. That's if we get to live through Earth's demise. Then again, there could always be a Zombie Apocalypse. Double tap to the head, Bitches! The new reality.

As of today, watching the upcoming Presidential Elections, if I had to vote, I’d write-in Oprah. I’m a strong black woman, why the hell wouldn’t I want one in the Black House, er, White House? I even know a Republican who agrees with me Oprah before Donald Chump for President. I don't think he's qualified to run the country. He still has a lot of growing up to do. Sounds to much like a whining Child of God to me. I do agree with him on the ‘All Lives Matter’ thingy he said.

It tickles me occasionally how afraid Americans are of whoever is going to go into that supposed seat of power next year. Fear has always been False Evidence Appearing Real. It isn’t real. That’s just you not believing in yourself. Doesn’t matter who wins the damn election. My Goddess taught me how to survive who ever sits on that fake ass throne. I answer to her, the One True Power.

As for me, well, Goddess once told me while I was sitting in a mental hospital (great place for a mini vacay, not as good as Hawaii though) that I was Her favorite sneaky little bitch on the planet, Her playground for Her Children. I love the title, but I didn’t feel like going outside to play. Oh yeah and I couldn’t because they locked my ass up for having 100%, no doubt about it conviction, belief, faith in my Goddess. I’ve thought about it, and dreamed about it, seen it while hallucinating the way it could be if everyone else could just remember that they are here to CHANGE THE WORLD too…

Treat Me Like A Step-Child?!?

2015-08-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I’m a Step-Daughter. I’m the Step-Daughter of one Wicked Step-Mother and the opposite of that, whatever it may be. Virtuous. maybe? My Current Step-Mother is one of the strongest black women I know, and has a streak of Wickedness that could cut anyone down who she feels has wronged her or a member of her family. She considers me family, so you’ve been warned. She is my Current Step-Mother and though it goes without saying, I love her.

She came into my life on the heels of my Wicked step-mother. I must explain the reasons that at first, I was very leery of who she was and what she wanted to be to me. My father married two women after my Mother had me, the first one was my Wicked step-mother. The reason I call her Wicked without fail is her own fault. That woman was jealous of me and poisoned my relationship with my father before he divorced her. She spent a lot of time feeling insecure around me and she let me know when I was too young to understand it, that she didn’t like me.

She never said it as direct as that, it was always action, never words, but I understood it on a soul-level and couldn’t understand it on a conscious one. She even died not knowing why by the end of her life, I regarded her with cool indifference and only bit my tongue around her out of respect for my Aunt who called her friend. Speaking of my Aunt, she is the number one reason why the comment, “Treat me like a step-child” is a compliment in my family.

My aunt is Step-Mother to two women I call cousins. One I formed a relationship with immediately upon meeting, the other struck me as, well, if you know me, you know what I think of my other cousin. I had the illusion broken when I spent a week with her and got to see under the surface during New Year’s 2000, which up until then was all I’d ever seen of her since her father became my Uncle. I also got my tongue pierced during that visit and she did her nose. I met her husband-to-be, a die-hard black republican atheist who grew up in Germany and I could not reconcile the conflict with those labels. It confused me on an instinctual level, still does if I’m being honest. Today they are happily married and living the dream. Who am I to question?

I’d started letting the term ‘treat me like a step-child’ slip from my lips with frequency by the time I was in college. It was something I’d heard, liked, snatched from the universe and repeated. While walking with my Aunt, Step-Mother to my cousins, she pushed me about the fact that I was a smoker and out popped the phrase from my lips.

If you’ve heard the term before, you know it is meant to reference most likely the story of Cinderella. It’s supposed to be an insult, but in my mind and because of the examples my Aunt and current Step-Mother set, it never seemed like one to me. It did to my Aunt and I didn’t understand the hurt on her face when I said it. I explained to my Aunt, that I was happy to be a Step-Child. I loved it in fact, because it meant something special and lucky to me.

My current Step-Mother made a few mistakes when we first met and because of my previous Wicked step-mother I was cautious. I would not tolerate another woman disrespecting my Mother in my eyes. While shopping one day, my current Step-Mother introduced me as her daughter and I corrected her in front of the person with a quickness. I had a Mother, she was and would always be my Step-Mother. Period. I said it, meant it, and did it in front of a stranger. She flushed, apologized and read it as a hard dividing line of how much of a relationship she would be able to have with me. If she’d known then that being a Step-Mother was a good thing, she might of been okay with it, but at the time, she though Step-Mother was only Wicked too.

A taboo in my family is to discuss personal/family business publicly. I have a long list of reasons why there is something I find brave about the current generation being socially transparent and so open on the internet. From blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. if you want to learn information about another person, it’s there. It’s out there for the entire world to see. My Aunt’s generation and the ones before don’t seem to understand it, but it took me a while to get it and once I did, it made me look at the Wicked side of step-whatever with new eyes.

In a previous post, I’ve talked about the abuses of my Wicked step-father, but what I failed to mention was there was a lot of Wicked on his side of the family. Every single molester I faced as a child save one came from his blood. Not only that, it was considered personal/family business, therefore it was not to be discussed publicly. One time my mother had to make the hardest choice I believe a mother ever made. She had to decide between keeping her job or knowingly leaving me in the hands of a child molester. She chose her job instead of me.

She did arm me with a plan to keep me out of his Wicked hands. She told me to play hide-n-seek. While he was counting I was instructed to leave the house and hide out across the street at a friend's house. I took it to the next level. While he was counting I opened the garage door and unlocked the back door of the house. They were directly across from each other. When he finished counting, I ran around to the back door and watched him enter the garage searching for me. I popped in the back door and locked him out of the house entirely. I was seven at the time, unable to cook, but at least we had potato chips on hand or I would have starved to death until my mother returned from work.

I didn't know how to apply my experience to other people in my life back then. Give me a break, I was only seven years old at the time. So as the females on that side of my relatives were molested and raped by the males, we were told and believe we could NOT get help from outside what was supposed to be our ‘family’. The problem with that was there was no family to turn to, just relatives. The distinction being, Family will protect, cherish and love you unconditionally for who you are. relatives are related to you by blood or marriage.

My dear sweet Cousin Tracy who committed suicide at fourteen because she was afraid she was pregnant and afraid to tell her mother would have made different choices today, if she’d lived to do so. But because she was surrounded by relatives instead of Family she took her own life. If only she’d realized she always had the help she needed with being a young mother. Planned Parenthood, some teachers, a trusted friend or even a reality show on MTV. The possibilities of where she could have turned are endless.

Unfortunately for my Current Step-Mother this event coincided with the next major event in my life. It was the catalyst to the conversation that scarred my relationship with my father for the rest of his life. While on the visit where I first met my Current Step-Mother, I had the conversation over Pro-Choice/Pro-Life that ended with my being told by my father, who immediately became my sperm donor for the rest of his life, “I wish you had been an abortion,” when I was 12 years old.

That one comment tainted how I would feel about him, even love him for the rest of his life. He dropped to relative in my eyes and never rose again until after his death. He’d said it in anger and because he was an alcoholic, had no idea the significance of it. It took me a long time to actually forgive him even though I said the words before he died. Something I knew I was going to be thankful I did even if I didn’t know why at the time.

One good thing that came from that comment is it’s the number one reason I will NEVER commit suicide. Well being bipolar I'm supposed to be suicidal, so I'm a smoker. I won’t give my bio dad more than being a pot smoker. Suicide is deciding to abort yourself from the world. I’m never going to grant more than choosing to toke a joint for him. I live in Oregon, it's legal where I live. Personally, I think my father might of lived longer if his drug of choice were weed instead of alcohol.

What About New Year's Resolutions?

2014-12-31T17:45:00.001-08:00

New Year's Eve is like the universal code for what changes would I like to make in my life this year? As long as there isn't literally a gun pointed at my head to make a change in my life, I'm not going to change. Comfort is comfortable. Sure it is. Why wouldn't it be? As I look back over the last year something I don't want to admit is that I've been lazy about my life instead of proactive. I got comfortable. Too comfortable.

When I'm in this situation it's hard to press the play button on my life and move forward. I've been on pause. Waiting. Waiting for what? I have no idea. Maybe it's to feel better. Or something about being trapped in the 'Pleasantville' portion is easier. It's like waiting for inspiration instead of doing the kinds of things I know bring about inspiration. Reading. Reading for pleasure or research either way is a way to find inspiration. Listening to music instead of letting the TV watch me. Or even working out.

The reason I keep failing to make major changes in my life is a multi-layered clusterfuck. One part, the biggest part of it is I keep looking at the whole. I've tried to trick myself a bunch of different ways to break it down into pieces, but the whole problem pops up like a blinking light I get focused on and can only see that problem. The whole is huge. Billboard sign big. And it's flashing with each heartbeat seeming like a lit up monsterous robot that can't be attacked or killed. It's fear of failure and fear of success. The easiest thing to do is not try, so I don't try. I don't even try to try.

So on January 1st, 2015 I promise to take it chapter by chapter. One chapter at a time. And to be accountable to myself if I don't. No rewards. No chocolate bars. No games. No sex or sexual release. And adding in punishments. Change starts with a tiny little small baby step. Just one little step in the right direction. One day, sometimes one hour at a time to fix the bigger issues. So I commit to change. Not because I don't know how to change, because I do.

I've always known how to change. It's a baby step by baby step process. It's my favorite take away from the movie What About Bob?. It really is that easy to change my life. I just have to be willing to take that first baby step to my goal. I only have to promise myself to eat a single piece of broccoli. Wash one cup. Walk up one flight of stairs. Write 100 words. The smallest, even the minimal is all I have to commit. One minute at a time to reach the end.

Easy. Really just that easy. And I promise to do it today, tomorrow and the next day and keep doing it. I won't just start it January 1st either. I promise to start making changes now. That way it'll be easier to start again tomorrow. So I commit to start at least one baby step today. Like this post is easily 100 words. See I started my goals. And yes I realize that means I have to start with a baby step tomorrow, but after a week those baby steps are going to start to add up. So even though it seems like I'm starting over every day, I'm really adding on.

There is a gun to my head if I didn't start. In the long term there is always a gun pointed at my head. The reality is there is a gun pointed at my head ready to blow my brains away and end my life. The health issues are that chambered bullet waiting to go off if I keep doing what I've always done. So I may not be able to see the gun pointed at my head, but it's still there waiting to pull the trigger if I don't make these changes. So here's me committing to at least one baby step away from the gun pointed at my head.

At least that's the take away I got from reading this article for the 3rd time since I found it last year.

Why I Dropped Off The Map?...

2014-06-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've had a few people ask me 'Where the hell did you go?' 'Are you still alive?' 'When's the book coming out?'

Oregon...I moved to Oregon last November and a lot of things around me changed. I’m no longer allowed to pump my own gas. Yeah, partial service at the gas station. Woo Hoo! I also have to remember to bring a bag with me when I head to the grocery store. Woo Hoo! I feel so green and environmentally conscious.

Yup...Writing a blog post right now, proof that I’m still around… My silence has been me not handling the depression side of my illness well.

If I ever finish the rewrites a few months after that...I was all set to publish, keeping up with blog posts on my twin's side. I settled into the new situation and then I got comfortable and decided I was going to rewrite the ending to my novel. Something didn't feel right about it and it didn't really leave itself open to a second story in the series.

I went through a bought of depression and I hit a few meetings and started seeing a new therapist. I’m a bit leery of trying a new anti-depressant to fix the depression side. It has been my experience that anti-depressants cause me to swing too high, and it’s harder to hold mania at bay. It’s a more challenging route to go with treatment, but I’d rather be low than high.

I attack my mental illness that way deliberately. As low as the depression gets me, it will never cause me to take my own life. As I’ve mentioned before, suicide is one of my options. But I know that whenever I get to the other side of depression and as hard as it is to be constantly depressed, I still have faith, hope that I will have another joyous moment. Something is going to be good enough to make all the suffering worth it.

Maybe it’s the masochist in me that makes dealing with the painful side of depression bearable, I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that Robin Williams lost his battle with depression recently. When I was first diagnosed bipolar he was one of the first celebrities that I learned was bipolar. The list is long and sometimes surprising. I’d hear a crazy story about someone famous with mental illness and think, well, yeah I know what that’s like.

I wasn’t surprised when I heard Robin Williams took his life. Disappointed, sad. I mean, why couldn’t one of the funniest men in the world seek help to face one more day? Was he like Hunter S. Thompson who just picked a day to die, told no one, got up and decided today’s the day?

I don’t know about others but I decided a while ago to choose life. I’d rather live to see another day. If I do find myself thinking of taking the option of suicide, I have an amazing support system of friends and family to turn to, just a phone call away.

Currently, my addiction to television and entertainment in general is enough for me. I’ll hear a great song tomorrow. Maybe, I’ll see the new doctor on Doctor Who save the world. Will Penny and Leonard ever get married? How will the last movie in the Hunger Games end? Will Anita Blake become a monster in her own right? Who’s going to win Face/Off this season?

In the meantime I have my own characters to put through their paces and find their own stories to tell. So yup, I’m choosing life for one more day. I have things I want to do and see. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that let me choose life, but hey, for me, that’s better than the alternative.

Pro-CHOICE IS The KEY To FREEdumb-Ass

2013-10-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

Am I a Meat Eater? Yes...Why? I will REMEMBER to pray before each meal. To thank the soul that was sacrificed to feed me. Why? Every living thing on this planet has a soul. Even the plants. But Meat is Murder? Which is why I think the animals that don’t want to be eaten, fight back. The animals that don’t want to be abused, let me know. But as far as I know, a woman with a brain disorder figured out a humane way to kill a cow. So bring me the cow, bloody and still moo-ing, please & thank you. Cruel, but tasty. The punishment/blessing from GODDESS, my weight went up for my choice to eat meat. So what about the bugs. They’re just smaller souls in my opinion.

This is just a theory, but if the cute of WEEDS is connected to my DRUG of CHOICE then it's a blessing that it became legal in Oregon on the 1st of October. I consider the other free to me by being Diagnosed BI-Polar? Duality has always played a significant role in my life. How I picked my #+1 guy? It’s a funny story, but I’ll just say this much about him. He is a white male, his last name begins with the letter B and his back had acne when I met him. I once had a female UNITY Minister tell me the secret to beating acne was FORGIVENESS.

I was disappointed when I developed it. I started wearing make up, before then I’d never needed it. I thought acne was ugly. Why? Another Stephanie, only a white girl told me how much she hated hers. I felt blessed that I didn’t have a problem with it before then. The moment it developed on my skin, I knew it was a punishment/blessing from GODDESS. It coincided with my first being DIAGNOSED BI-Polar, Manic-Depressive. I stopped letting people take my picture as often. Today I'm not nearly as vain as I was in my younger years. I find beauty in my own scars as well as the scars I see on others.

I've only recently become open to the idea of having a human child in my life. Currently cats make better children for me. They can't speak human as far as I know. But I feel my baby, Nike, speaks to me in her own way all the time. She's loving and protective. She's spoiled and funny. She sits on my legs and refuses to let me move an inch when she thinks I need sleep. I understand the risk of having sex without a condom each time I do so. The message I get from my actions is to become a parent when I feel I am ready. But if I happen to get pregnant, Goddess thinks I can handle the job.

Personally, I’m a fan of PAIN for Pleasure, not to suffer. Before now, I think I would of been a bad mother if I'd gotten pregnant when I didn't really want to. Also, I know I'm Pro-Choice, I'm also Pro-Life. So I'd keep a baby no matter what my circumstances. It's why I used birth control through college and after consistently. I didn't want to have to make a decision that would have weighed on my soul. I didn't want to blame a child for anything that was my choice to make. Bringing a child into this world that I would have felt forced to do so because of my beliefs was not something I was willing to do to myself or another soul. Today, I go back and forth. I'm with someone who wants the responsibility which helps me to feel secure about my own fears.

You’ve Been Diagnosed Bipolar...Now What?

2013-08-29T09:44:00.002-07:00

I always wanted a mental illness, I just didn't get the one I wanted. Why I say that? Sybil (published 1973 ), the mostly true story of what is called today Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but at the time I heard about it, Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) written about Shirley Mason. There was a movie, but since I read the book I remember being very envious of her illness only because I read it at such a young age.

I found I identified with her story because I too had experience sexual abuse. I liked the idea of blocking out my history and it would be something my mind handled with a different persona entirely. One of her personalities was the smart one, handling the school work. Her only problem was, what if that personality didn't show up to take the test? I liked that her mind automatically shoved off into different areas her problems and presented what was needed in a particular moment to take care of any situation. Or at least that was what I read in her story. I saw it as a very helpful life tool, one I wanted.

In high school my principal would pass me in the hallway overrun with 1,800+ students and she tried her best but often called me 'Stacy' instead of 'Stephanie'. Even though I did big things in high school like running for freshman student council president and won that election and also was one of the 2% black population of my high school, this woman consistently continued the mistake for months. One day when she did it, I responded, "I'm not Stacy today. I'm feeling angry, so call me Stephanie."

The statement took her by surprise, but she smiled, corrected herself and thus my own brand of DID was born. Stacy got to be the 'nice' personality and as I struggled with anger, temper issues at an early age, Stephanie took the 'bad' personality traits. It caught on at school and home and was an easy way to check my mood on any given day. In college I called the second personality 'Toni' and now my alter ego is 'Simone Lisbon'. My body sharing twin wrote a book by the way, title, Forced to Change.

Back during the time when Toni was still my alt personality, I was first diagnosed Bipolar disorder. I went through all the stages of grief over it a few times and tried everything to avoid accepting the diagnosis. I also did a ton of research and made a lot of mistakes. I tried everything I could think of, while hiding my bipolar from people who didn't know.

I gained employment, but because I failed to disclose my illness, when I had a full blown manic episode I found myself unemployed and too embarrassed to return to the previous job. Since 1996 I've being institutionalized 9 times (2 I checked myself in) and arrested 4 times. It wasn't until I spent 3 weeks in jail for a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass of a convenience store (yup, that was actually the charge) that I paid the one consequence too high for me to continue to let my bipolar continue to manage me.

Before the last arrest I'd always been able to get the charges removed because of my bipolar diagnosis. I'm grateful I hired a lazy overpriced lawyer who couldn't make that charge go away, otherwise I wouldn't have stopped letting the mania get the best of me. So I swore no more full blown manic episodes for me.

I treated it like an addiction. I hit support groups when I found myself approaching and identified by looking back over all the common symptoms of every episode exactly when I stopped being able to help myself and would need to ask for help. I also surrendered to the fact that I could NOT pull myself out of mania without psych meds.

That sound and sane decision made, I continued to try to live, still hiding my illness from potential employers. What I reluctantly discovered was I couldn't find the kind of work I was used to doing because I had a criminal record. A background check revealed the 'non-contested' charge and my length of stay in jail. Most of the work I was used to doing, I needed to be bonded or was working with sensitive enough information that despite my stellar resume and college degree I was closed out of my field of work.

I had other avenues of employment, for example a bartender's license, but since the charge happened at the beginning of 2008 I soon discovered most 'real' jobs were gone. I tried again to gain employment by adding another skill to my list, I got certified as a Nursing Assistant (CNA) and began another hunt for work. Still a background check quickly threw my resume to the bottom of the pile. Thus I spiraled into depression and when I'm depressed, I write. My third and current alter ego was born, Simone Lisbon.

I let the depression take me lower and lower over a three year period, but when life depressors started happening I failed to be able to help myself. I missed one house payment, my first in 5 years of perfect payment history and found my home in foreclosure within sixty days of that first missed payment. The only upside, I self-checked myself into a mental hospital for the first time because I was suicidal off meds. I got medicated and was able to be more proactive about my situation, all good things. (I also wrote a book while inside the hospital that will be the majority content of this blog.)

By some luck and the third missed house payment a woman whose job description was to go around to check occupancy on houses in foreclosure for the banks knocked on my door. She hooked me up with the same job and I filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy in an attempt to save my home two days before it's foreclosure sale date. Filing bankruptcy left me feeling as low as possible and if not for the medication, I would have ended my life at that point.

My credit cards cut off and over their limits, I had to live off the income from this new job where a background check was unnecessary to work it. Gas money was a huge part of it and I found that despite the bankruptcy filing I could no longer handle my bills, IE, pay my utilities or mortgage. I moved in with a God given blessing of a friend, KD, and slowly started to move my possessions out of my house, trying to save it as if it weren't already gone. I should have switched to a Chapter 7 filing, but I was so deep in depression I could do nothing to help myself and hindsight is always 20/20.

I had to stop the life saving medication because for the first time since diagnosis I found myself unable to pay out of pocket for it. My medication ran somewhere between $1500-$2000/month and I was uninsured. At the end of that year, my alcoholic father died. Within a month of his death I was illegally evicted from home and I was officially homeless, broke, and desperate to find a way to put a roof over my head.

I searched the internet for a living arrangement I could afford and discovered Personal Care Homes (PCH's). Half my possession's gone to the illegal eviction, KD pulled some male friends together and went to my ex-house. She and her posse moved everything that could be salvaged into storage for me, including the refrigerator and ceiling fans (which I'd loved to sell, if you're interested in purchasing).

This particular PCH I worked for was run by a woman who I felt was a money grubbing, worse boss ever type, but I was in no position to argue with her. I ate my hatred of this bitch in mostly silence and fell in love with all six (sometime eight and for 2 weeks it was nine) residents under my care. PCH's are not allowed to go over their max capacity, it's illegal but she ran two PCH properties and listed her personal residence as a third collecting and pocketing the residents' social security checks directly.

My favorite resident of the entire experience was the late great, eighty-pounds of pure spitfire, Ms. Della Bowers. Della moved in because she was in a PCH that was shut down by the illegal activity that my boss exhibited. We quickly became smoking buddies and planned our escape (said just like Dory from Finding Nemo read it). We had long discussions about it. Della loved to eye candy watch from the back porch even at 87 years of age. She was a joy to know and I will always miss and love her beautiful soul.

After a lot of hurt feelings, like justifiably being written out of my father's will (I'd cut off all contact with him because of his alcoholism) and hitting my breaking point with the nightmare of my PCH, God intervened in my life and yanked some witnessed and filed insurance paperwork out of the world and I inherited enough money that if I was willing to sacrifice, like Ramen noodles for most meals, I could safely pursue my writing career for a couple of years. I quit the PCH and quietly reported my ex-boss and her activities after settling myself on a friend's couch.

So that's my story. As I like to mention, Simone Lisbon is planning to self-publisher and has a book coming out, titled Forced to Change. It was a lot of hard work and the success and overwhelming work load sent me spiraling toward mania a few years ago. I self-checked myself into a mental hospital for the second time seeking medication. When I was released, I started this blog.

Today I'm happily medicated, living in Eugene, OR and working from my front porch office view. My journey with bipolar was necessary and improved my writing talent enough that I should be able to obtain my second biggest dream of all time. I pray daily I'll be able to make it come true. I dream I'll write a best selling novel one day.

I hope Forced to Change is it, but if not, I know it's in me. There's always Changed by Time, the follow-up & origin story to FTC. Although, recently there has been a follow-up book to Sybil, Sybil Exposed I think the original one has helped my life enough that I don't care to read it because I learned by believing the lie as I did with Go Ask Alice...

Because, I AM GOD!

2013-08-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

One of the side effects of having a manic episode is grandiose feelings, etc. A great deal of bipolar persons that I’ve had full in-depth conversations with report that in addition to the high, too high self-esteem that yes, it feels very spiritual, religious to be in mania. I have some thoughts on this that I’d like to share.

Why things end up feeling soooooooooooooo very awesome, God-like for me is because I’m rapidly processing myself and having epiphanies right and left. I see very clearly who I am, why I do the things I do, where I picked up my habits and behaviors and how to change the things that need changing in my life. I feel right, sane, intelligent. Except for the ‘sane’ part all of that is true for me.

While manic I get excited by the ideas, new goals, all the ways I can improve myself, the only problem is I want everyone around me to feel the same way. When I can and now do remember that I’m making choices for myself only, IE, I’m the only person who can and needs to change, NOT everyone else in the world. It would be nice, which is why I have that big, big, big, dream of world peace in my lifetime, but as Ghandi is often quoted as saying, I can only, “Be the change I want to see in the world.”

I find I’m kinder, more generous, and charitable close to a manic episode. I also can be angry, volatile, and a complete and utter bitch. I take the time to identify people in my life who are helping or hurting me. I usually cut the latter from my circle quickly after any hospital stay/manic episode.

I’ve come to see having a manic episode as walking, living in a lucid dream. I view mania as my subconscious on display without filter for everyone I come in contact with to judge and see. It was after a hospital visit from my following actions during mania that I identified the dysfunction in my relationship with my alcoholic father and decided to cut off all communication with him when he was drinking. I sent this email to the CEO of the company I was working for at the time and copied my father:

Subject: Dad You Better Run

Body:

Dad,

Mr. CEO I did see in the fact that you enjoy big game hunting that you were maybe curious about hunting down a man and killing him. Maybe you would find that fun? I would total understand if you had a chance to do it you might take it. Um, if you could take care of a problem for me and not get caught doing it, I'd like you to meet my dad. If I can get away with one more day I would like to return to Company on Thursday January 17th.

Now Mr. CEO this is a one time only pass at this, I wouldn't say a thing if you got it done. The mere fact that I asked is enough to know, enough knowledge of both of us to have in each other's hands.

Um, Dad this is the very reason ignorance is bliss, BTW the moment you die everything you slaved for your entire life is coming to me.

Love you Daddi-o,

Steph

PS. As you did not attend my mother's funeral, I won't be attending yours. Thanks for the gift of my life. I just wanted you to have a heads up, because it's going to be quick.

Peace

That is the creatively edited email copied from my sent items box. I edited out the name of my boss and the company. At the time I wrote the email I felt it was the right thing to do. It was even a completely 'sane' thing to do in my mind. I couldn’t see how manic I was and I couldn’t help myself at that point at all. Instead of controlling my mania, I let that job take the priority. Although I saw a therapist a few months prior, I worked instead of going to her recommended psychiatrist so I could get back on medication.

It was in the aftermath of all this that I realized I could not pull myself out of a full blown mania without psych medication. I don’t even let myself get close enough to it anymore. Once I know that it is coming, I immediately surrender the power of my decision making over to a trusted family member, my aunt, my father’s sister. At that point, she makes all decisions for me and I accept them quickly without complaint now.

So, cutting my father out of my life was very simple for me and at the time easy to do. I would have spoken with him at any time as long as he hadn’t been drinking, not even a single glass to take the edge off. He was very aware of the new rules pertaining to our relationship.

When he went into the hospital in February of 2011, he and I spoke for a bit, because his hospital visit was life threatening. Also, he wasn’t drinking at the time, so per our agreement we could and did talk. His doctor told him if he quit drinking immediately, he’d live. His liver would and could repair the lifetime of drinking damage, only he needed to change/drop his habit immediately. As we spoke he reminded me of something I’d told him shortly after I graduated from college. I’d said, “You know, Daddi-o, you’re the most functional alcoholic I know.”

It was an insult intended to make him think about his choice to drink. The problem was as I later learned he’d taken it as a compliment and used my words to justify continuing to drink. He often credited me with being smarter than him, calling me his 'Superior Daughter' and himself my 'inferior father'. During the February 2011 conversations I clarified my meaning, but he’d already set it in his head despite his recent DUI arrest that it was still and always would be a compliment.

As far as I could tell, my father, Wilson Henry, Jr., was unable to quit drinking or seek help from his alcoholism for the remaining time he had left above the ground. He lost his battle with alcoholism December 10, 2011. At the moment of his last breath, which, unfortunately for me I watched thanks to my stepmother, I had an overwhelming sense of relief. When his life journey ended I bounced between anger and then quickly hit acceptance of his death. We had our forgiveness talk 24 hours before he died. I had a lot of things that although I thought I’d forgiven them, I really had not, until that moment when I gave up my right to be right.

So as he lay dying saying things such as, “When I get out of here water is going to be my main drink,” and I heard him pleading to still be allowed to drink alcohol in the statement, it was then I finally forgave him for telling me he wished I’d been an abortion during a heated conversation over pro-choice/pro-life. At the time he didn’t realize or care to know my viewpoint stemmed from my cousin’s successful suicide earlier that year because she thought she was pregnant. It was only after his death I gained a new bone to chew on with my father when I learned he’d written me out of his Will. It took less than 24 hours for me to hit acceptance of this when I decided to attempt another bankruptcy filing.

It took a lot longer for me to understand that his action was justifiable. As I’ve mentioned before, despite his witnessed and filed paperwork, divine intervention allowed me to inherit even though I’d been written out of his Will. It wasn’t much, but I cleaned up a bit of my debt and am bankrolling myself without second job as I pursue my writing career. There are many sacrifices I make to use this money to explore my creative endeavor.

I sometimes feel as if my father got to where he was going for his afterlife and decided to finally forgive me for some awful stuff I’d said and written to him while manic, IE, he gave up his right to be right, too. When the Will issue was discussed with my friends and family members, I had a family member who knew what I didn’t at the time, that I was out and he thought I needed to play nice with my stepmother, they agreed at the time it was wrong of my father to write me out. So I like to think as a last act, he got to make that one right.

I’d always thought my stepmother and our relationship was solid. So even though she had the Will, I was secure in the knowledge she wouldn’t do me wrong. Before my father died she’d been quietly sending me money behind his back while trying to encourage me to communicate with him each time she did it. What I didn’t know and only discovered through most conversations with her when she would visit me and after his death is that he’d laid a lot of misinformation on her, well his perspective on things, mine were often opposing.

It was after one such conversation with my stepmother after she’d discovered after his death what I knew from finding wine and beer still in their home, that although my father had sworn he’d quit drinking in September of 2011, he in fact had not. When he’d called me up to tell that he was quitting, he was still drinking at the time and his words were often slightly slurred during each conversation after that until he died. So, I knew what other members of my family could not see.

My father and stepmother came to visit me about two months before he died. He was a skeleton of the man I’d known all my life, yet in his head he was in control, powerful, full of high self-esteem and thought himself a god among the living. I found his appearance scary and I pitied him. For the second and last time in my life I sensed the Grim Reaper circling my last living parent, just as I did the summer before my mother died.

Suicide Is Hilarious, No Seriously It IS

2013-08-19T16:50:00.005-07:00

Suicide is and isn’t a funny subject matter. To me, the idea of taking my own life, not going to happen for quite a few reasons which I will explain in a moment. But I like to say, “Of course I’m suicidal. Why do you think I smoke?”

Although it is not the popular opinion, death is an option for me daily. I find almost all bipolars have these thoughts too. While spending time inside a mental hospital you get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again but the one the doctors ask most is, “Are you having any suicidal ideations today?” Do you want to die? Would you like to kill yourself?

How you answer that question and others like it determines how long you spend inside. From jump street I know to answer ‘no’ to this question if escape (pronounced just as Dory said it when reading it) is in my game plan. If I want to stay longer, at no charge, I answer yes to it. It is illegal for them to kick you out of the hospital if you are a danger to yourself or others. It becomes a situation of they are aware of your intention and should you take your life or go homicidal and they released you, malpractice & criminal charges up the wazoo.

Anyway, back to why I wake up and choose life off the life or death menu. Music. Great things like going to Europe for the first time six months after my first suicide attempt. I got to meet Type-O-Negative in 1999 while living in London, UK. My mother said that if her autopsy reported her as a suicide, I was supposed to start the manhunt for her killer. And Tracy, my cousin through marriage, who successfully committed suicide when I was twelve years old with her mother’s gun. Tracy thought she was pregnant, she was fourteen at the time. Today, she would have had a show on MTV.

As I just said, I wake up and choose to keep on living every single day. On the days when it’s a hard choice or when I give up entirely I rage and rant at my Higher Power, Goddess, and tell her I give up. I’m ending my life. I’m going to do it for sure, only I’ll wait until tomorrow to end my life, just in case. I’ll sleep on it, but if tomorrow isn’t any better I’m meeting my maker, then promptly heading downstairs to the condo I purchased in hell, cuz, er suicide. Usually I discover something that keeps me living, like a new to me song the following morning. Imagine Dragon’s Radioactive (video below) is one such song.

Yes, I make light of suicide as it plays a role in my life, but a lot of bipolars and/or depressed people just can’t do that. Trust that whatever you are going through today will not be true next week, or tomorrow, or six months from now. If you think back on your life, you know I’m right. So give it until tomorrow, and your Power Source (whether you believe in one or not) will send you what you need to face another day.

BDSM Has No Place In Mental Health Therapy

2013-08-19T16:49:00.002-07:00

With the popularity of books like the ones I shall not name, the fiddy different hues, etc, most people are opening their minds to the idea of a little more, um, kink in the bedroom, kitchen, backseat of their car. This is fine, excellent in fact. Actually my twin, Simone Lisbon book coming out, loves to discuss this very topic. She writes porn so it's going to come up for her a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. Anyway, one place that you shouldn't be open to exploring this concept is in your mental health (therapy) care. If you find you are experiencing it there, it isn't BDSM, it's abuse. Find a new therapist with the quickness.

I have a I-don't-like-you and you-don't-like-me relationship with my psychiatrist. The guy is brilliant with medication and a neurologist. I'm also frugal (cheap) and haven't paid him yet. I said yet. Anyway, I went into the hospital without insurance, so I was stuck with the same guy I had on my last mental vaca and I find that although he is wonderful at what he does, he has no bedside manner what-so-ever. Last time I saw him I had insurance so I let him get away with it. This time I verbally took his head off. People seven miles away heard me yelling at this arrogant jerk.

See, he's a numbers guy. He makes his money by taking on a lot (too many in my opinion) patients so that he can make the money by head count. Don't get me wrong, he's good at what he does, but although I checked myself into the hospital my last two visits, on the last visit he ran out my insurance until they booted me just so he could collect every single cent. Again, money really needs to drop out of our conversations.

He took advantage of me (in my mind) and like I said, I took his head off verbally for it. I knew there would be a consequence for that action and so to get back at me he kept me on 'precautions' (watched like a hawk watches a field mouse) for four days. He was justified by the fact that my yelling top volume appeared quite manic. Oh, yeah, and I was very manic at the time of the incident.

He also ended up ordering a chemical restraint (Lithium/Ativan cocktail) for me. I needed it, but at the time I was just upset that once again this was the guy that was controlling my life. I teased him on my way out the door that I may or may not make good on my bill. I also made sure I didn't sign anything that said I'd pay on my way in, and I spent the last seven days in a mental hospital for free at this point.

Yes, I'm going to pay the bill, but I do like to make this guy sweat it. Unfortunately for him my yelling in his face wasn't just about him. I identified him as an abuser and since my childhood abusers are out of my life, he got the verbal lashing for all of them. I felt better and even accepted my lock down with grace. Well, the chemical restraint made me sleep like a baby for 24 hours and was much needed. I was fighting off a full blown manic episode at the time.

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about abuse among the mental health care system. For example, we started calling a CA (counselor assistant) who was on a 24 hour shift (very common practice) 'Richard'. There were a couple of CAs named Richard, however, I was told I wasn't allowed to shorten their names to 'Dick'.

The guy we started calling 'Richard' at one point told me to shut up. I'm a blabber mouth, but yeah, very wrong way for him to handle that situation. He also told me I'd been manic on a day I was positive I wasn't, or at least for me it was a controlled manic, not the way he intended. He said it two days after the chemical restraint. Every other staff member knew I was back in control and that I wasn't 'manic' as he meant it anymore. See yelling incident above.

Anyway our nicknamed 'Richard' was either having a bad day, or as is often the case, hates his job. That's fine and all, but not really great for my mental health or for me to encounter when I'm trying to get my mind straight. He tried to bait me a lot and reminded me of a Lit troll actually, so I avoided him as much as possible and ran my complaints up the flag pole to his boss, his boss' boss, etc.

A different patient he had conflict with as well took her complaints to our patient advocate at the same time I was tattle-telling to his boss. Miracle of miracle our 'Richard' lost his attitude with a quickness. So there is something that can be done when you come in contact with these people in hospital. I said, "I'm doing me, you do you." a lot on this particular trip. Like I said, I believe our 'Richard' needs to find another line of work.

Basically if you find something douchy going on in or with your therapist you have options, for example, find a new psychiatrist/therapist. If they aren't listening to you, that's a problem. You live in your skin/head 24/7 all your life. You know yourself better than anyone else in the world possibly could. Remember that in your approach to seeking help for mental illness.

If the person you're seeing isn't helping, go else where. This is why I attend support meetings, it's a quick and easy way to find out someone else's opinion on available therapists/psychiatrists. Also I believe the DBSA site has a patient review section too. Check the site out, I'm sure you can find local help although the link is to the national page.