RealMental

People call me/I call myself friend, daughter, love, and “Mindy.”

I see myself as a very fortunate survivor of cancer, chronic illness, severe depression, and two suicide attempts.

If I thought you cared and you were listening, I would tell you that there is truly a reason for everything and all that is meant to happen will come to pass when the timing is right… so cliche I know, but true.

I am struggling with my boyfriend’s bipolar disorder and how it affects him and us. I am recovering from a major surgery and struggle with the physical scars my illnesses have left on my body. I also struggle with shame and guilt over my past.

Something I have been keeping a secret is I am a victim of incest, hence the shame and guilt.

I am trying to think positive and something I’m good at is helping other people believe they have a purpose.

I love me (I try to anyway), my boyfriend, family, and friends.

I want people to know that life can seem terribly dark at times but the sun continues to rise each day whether you get out of bed or not. If you don’t get up and get going you just may miss something wonderful and regret the lapse in resilience.

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People call me/I call myself The Zombie.

I see myself as I don’t see myself when I look in the mirror, I see what I’m supposed to be.

If I thought you cared and you were listening, I would tell you Death is easy, Life is hard, don’t waste a second and DON’T TAKE THE COWARDS WAY OUT!

I am struggling with My progressing Bipolar disorder is destroying my relationship with my friends, girlfriend, & my own family.

I don’t understand what it is like to be happy anymore.

I feel unworthy of love, friendship, and everything else that I am so blessed to have.

Something I have been keeping a secret is I often fantasize about killing myself and how much better off everyone would be without me.

I am trying to think positive and something I’m good at is I am good at making other people happy. I thrive on the fact that if I can’t be happy someone else can.

I love Almost nothing anymore.

I want people to know I do not know you, I have never met you, yet I wish you the best in this crazy endeavorer called life.The

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My anxiety levels peaked about an hour before the time to be there and I panicked as I searched for something to wear, making myself late as usual.

Walking into the church late, you were already in the process of getting married.

I began to cry watching you up there exchanging your vows,  looking so beautiful.  Soon I noticed that you were trembling severely.  I recalled my wedding day and how nervous I was, crying through the whole ceremony.

Your entire body was rocking like you were being electrocuted, and I felt scared for you wondering what could be wrong.

As you walked down the aisle, as a newly married woman you said “don’t hug me, my ribs are broken”.  I knew as soon as you said that, why your ribs were broken.  Your engagement party was the weekend before.  You got drunk and you fell down.  Then I noticed the huge bruise on your forearm that you’d tried to cover up with makeup concealer.

I wasn’t there, I didn’t have to be.  As quickly as you told me, I knew.  My heart fell, knowing that nothing has changed and you are still looking for the answer in a bottle of vodka and drowning.  Trying to kill yourself quietly so you aren’t a burden on anyone.

It seems like a lifetime ago when I was the one drowning.  You took care of me, helped me when I couldn’t walk and talk.  You risked your life being a passenger in my car, driving with a person drunk and stoned out of her mind.

We’re sisters, you and I.  Only eight days apart in age, we’ve grown up together.  Our bond is one that will never be broken, no matter our physical distance.

Watching you in so much pain was unbearable for me knowing that I could do nothing to ease it for you, the day of your wedding.

You’d waited an entire week to go to a Doctor because you didn’t think insurance would cover it.  You’ve held pain in for you whole life.  Stubborn, strong willed, never living for yourself, never honoring your true spirit.

We’ve grown apart, mainly due to life events on both of our parts.  I miss you, and I know you are hiding from me.  Knowing that I will see the truth and feel your discontent.  My concern is almost unbearable for you to see.

You are slipping through my hands, and all I can do is love you as I watch you go.  Watch you dig in deeper to the life you know isn’t yours.  I’ll always be here, you can count on that.

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People call me/I call myself Noreen.

I see myself as a mom, first and foremost. But I feel like an impostor in someone else’s life. I know I am not a hypocrite at heart, but I can put on a smile all day long, be pleasant and agreeable with strangers and friends alike. But inside I feel inadequate, and like if someone finds out what I am “really” like they are in for a big surprise. I appear perfect and confident, when actually, I get angry and judgmental like everyone else. I am so sad about things from my childhood I can never let go of. The depression and anxiety is still seen by society as “mental illness” that’s taboo…she must be crazy.

If I thought you cared and you were listening, I would tell you I cannot and don’t think I want to ever get over the loss of my mother to suicide when I was 16 yrs old. She was 41. She was so beautiful as a person and I am sure I never really knew her. She was too detached to ever even talk to me. I believe losing her at that age is what more or less defines me as a person. I want to learn more and more about what her life must have been like.

I am struggling with I am selfish in one area that is difficult for many people to understand. You see I attended a walk a year & a half ago for “Out of the Darkness” for survivors of suicide. I understand the concept is so important that society needs to bring mental illness out of the closet. But when I wanted to get involved with support groups, everyone is hell bent on “prevention of suicide”. I have no energy for that. I am interested in “survivors groups.” I want to talk with others like me, that have been “left behind”. When I lost my mother, I lost my father too, so to speak. He went on with his life. Then the crazy games just kept on rolling in. The wicked stepmother, the family that wants to act like she never lived. The siblings that can’t understand why I cant just get over it. I figured out somehow how to be a good mother to my daughters. They love me and we are very close and functional despite all odds. One just graduated college and the other is finishing her freshman year. I have an empty nest, and of course here comes menopause. I’m a mess. I wish I could trust a therapist, it just seems so sad to me to have to pay someone to listen to me. And to put all this burden on a friend, who the few friends I have, have very busy lives. I feel like I am a whiner, and should just shake it off.

Something I have been keeping a secret is too many things, I am afraid to write them. Just suffice it to say my coping skills could be better.

Also, my daughter thinks I am still going to Mass every Sunday, although I cannot bear to go alone. And I can’t stand the priest. And I think many of the parishioners are phonies.

I am trying to think positive and something I’m good at is looking for answers, always trying to find ways to put things in perspective. And hanging on to the concept that everyday we really do get a brand new start. And bad moods really do go away. Even actual depression can be treated with proper care and I am living proof.

I love peace and quiet. My home in the country, feeding and watching the birds. My husband and daughters. Looking through old photo albums, and trunks of memorabilia, (going down memory lane), candles burning, fire in the fireplace, cheesecake.

I want people to know I am still learning my way around the computer, blogs etc..so if you are kind enough to respond to me, do it in a way that’s a no brainer for me. I visit this site often, and love to read what other people write. It helps me not to feel so alone. I know my life isn’t a mess now, its the very old stuff buried way down that has decided not to stay put.

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In the first apartment building that the Palinode and I lived in after we were married, there were many adventures. The building manager was of excellent character, most of the other tenants seemed nice enough, and although the rent was low, the building was gorgeously maintained, but it seemed to be cursed with a series of misfortunes that eventually pushed us to seek our home-making elsewhere.

There was the man who took off everything but his tightie-whities in the building’s entrance and tried to molest me in this weirdly romantic way when I set off for work one morning. There was the accidental flooding of our bathroom by an upstairs neighbour which resulted in part of our bathroom ceiling being pulled down, the tub being chipped out of the stone floor, and our inability to bathe at home properly for two weeks. There was the night that I pulled a young woman into our apartment after she’d spent a couple of minutes yelling for her life and banging on doors because the tenant she was visiting had threatened to forcibly restrain and abuse her. Then, there was that rash of fires that had us repeatedly expelled from our apartments in the wee morning hours. The alarms happened so often that we eventually gave up on panic and instead took to deserting the situation altogether and heading out for coffee, where I would inevitably remember that I left our birds to die again and had, instead, saved my favourite sweater.

The one incident that would not leave me, though, happened early on a Sunday morning while I sipped coffee at the kitchen table. It was a cool spring morning, and I liked to look out at the darkness of the wet bark against the greening grass. Two people were chatting outside, one on the lawn and one on the sidewalk, and I had just begun to think that an early morning walk might be nice when I saw that the men were having less of a chat and more of a negotiation, one that was being guided by the point of a large knife in the hand of the man on the sidewalk.

I remember thinking, “Seriously? Now someone’s going to get knifed on our front lawn on a Sunday morning? Fuck me.”

Then, I opened the window, because I’m a looky-loo who likes to hear what people in potentially deadly situations are talking about. In hindsight, calling the cops might have been a better reaction, but bizarre situations often inspire bizarre responses, and some part of my brain was not willing to accept that this was really happening right in front of me.

“I want the money,” came out of Knife Boy’s mouth.

“I don’t have it. I have a baby on the way,” said Lawn Man.

“Go get it,” Knife Boy said. “Now.” He made a small jabbing motion with the blade.

“I don’t do coke anymore. I’m going to be a father,” Lawn Man said.

“I don’t care. Just get me the money!”

“The mother of my child is sleeping inside. Can’t we just forget it?”

“DO I HAVE TO CALL THE COPS?!” I yelled out my window when I saw that pleas for human decency weren’t going to have much of an effect on Knife Boy.

Both of their heads swivelled around to figure out which window my voice was came from. I ducked my head away from the screen.

That last piece I contributed to their conversation surprised me as much as it did them, but I guess I felt for the ex-cokehead, baby-daddy-to-be who was trying to go straight even at the end of a pointed knife. Police intervention wouldn’t save the kid from getting knifed in the future by the next goon in line, but it sure could land his butt into a tidy jail cell, depending on how things went down, so I gave them the option to break it up. I’m nice like that.

“I’ll be back,” Knife Boy muttered as he turned and shuffled away down the sidewalk.

With the knife put away, they both turned back into near-children who looked like they should be wearing warmer coats, and it was then that it struck me that I was nearly witness to a stabbing on my front lawn. I went into a mild shock that gathered ice around my bones. I couldn’t get warm, and I would never feel safe on my front step again.

I was thinking about this incident this morning after reading Heather’s post that mentioned drug dealers in her old neighbourhood, and while I mulled over what made me react the way I did when faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, I realized something about my life: I walk around like there’s a guy with a knife on my lawn ALL THE TIME.

The memory of this incident has become an overly detailed metaphor for a fear that I live with every day. There is a wolf at my door, barbarians at my gates, monsters under my bed, and I keep every aspect of myself reigned in like children I’m trying to defend against an angry father. I was bullied in elementary school, I have been bullied at work, there are a couple of incidents in which I was bullied within my own family, and I think I have been unwittingly living under the assumption (yes, that does make an ass out of the ump and tion) that the next stab to my heart is just around every corner. If I do this, go here, feel that, I feel as though I am putting my own well-being into danger, because that’s what experience has taught me, or, rather, that is what I have thought my experience was teaching me. I am beginning to think, though, that these lessons from experience have suffered from poor interpretation. I’ve made the stories too simple. I’ve distilled out the parts that speak to my own power, strength, and wisdom and allowed the people who caused the hurt to be larger than life. The people who caused me to doubt myself and my abilities and my worthiness are all still standing around on my lawn brandishing knives.

It makes me wonder why I haven’t threatened to call the cops yet.

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Over the years I have gotten a great deal from attendace at CoDA meetings. I think one of my favorite aspects of that have been the affirmations.

I’ve put together a page on realmental, realmental.org/affirmations site to provide you with random affirmations that may be of use. Click to view another affirmations. I hope you will get as much value from them as I have.

Thank you for reading.

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self port bipolar, originally uploaded by grubby mittz art co.

Yes I’m bipolar but I’m friendly. Usually.

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