WHY I HAVEN"T BEEN AROUND.....(or CANCER SUCKS, DEATH SUCKS MORE)

Today I met the Caribbean Catholic for the first time just simply passing through the churchyard. First of all I must say you're pretty fly for a white guy.....LOL!! But on a more serious note, he gently chided me for not writing more on my blog. I have been awful at it but for a reason. February last year was around the time that my Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. By December 2,2010, he was no more. He died peacefully at Vitas House Hospice. (Shout out to Trinidad Cancer Society, they were fab!) My life was turned upside down for those ten months. My dad was in denial for a long time about the sysmptoms and continued to be in denial after he got diagnosed and bascially tried to live life at the same pace until he couldn't anymore. It was hard for my Mom and I to watch but even harder was the feeling of helplessness. One of the hardest lessons I learnt is that you can't save someone if they don't want to save themselves.

It may not be a Catholic thing to say but it's the truth - Cancer is a bitch. Watching your Dad go from a real healthy, intelligent active man (it seemed like he was in every association in Christendom) to seeing him lying on a bed wracked with pain and cancer-related pnuemonia and not in his right mind is something I would wish on no one. My comfort is that he died in beautiful surroundings with caring and competent staff and that my Mom and I spent hours with him the day before he passed. He had a nice funeral which packed out the Cathedral and then we went home.

 So I guess here I am 5 1/2 months later still trying to put the pieces of my life together and journeying with my Mom to do the same. It was always the three of us - Mom, Dad and me. And now it is just the two of us. We do feel the lack of a man in the house just for the man stuff. Because of our situation I think people can perceive us to be vulnerable (yes, we have gotten the requests for money) Each holiday that passes is tough.
But we are getting by. Surviving. Healing. Growing. We have reached the point where there are more good and okay days than bad days.But that doesn't mean we don't feel his loss everyday - as breadwinner, fixer upper, source of cynical humor, source of running commentary of the news of the day, put-the-garbage-outer, bill payer and eater of all food *grin* So I guess that is where we are. Just the two of us

30 THINGS ABOUT MY INVISIBLE ILLNESS/DISABILITY YOU MAY NOT KNOW

In the interests of being a good girl, I decided to post a series of notes that I had done about having bipolar disorder on Facebook. Enjoy!



1. The disability I live with is: Bipolar Disorder

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year:2001, age 22

3. But I had symptoms since: 17

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: Losing a lot of my carefree youth to bipolar disorder....no partying, being a young working girl, etc.......either fighting my way back or now on the hustle to make a career for myself

5. Most people assume: That I do not have a disability...much less one described as mental illness. I don't know if that is a credit or a disadvantage.....

6. The hardest part about mornings are: Waking up. I hate early mornings. Especially if the insomnia that comes with bipolar has occurred the night before.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: I don't watch them.Get my bipolar info from the Net.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: My baby, my computer....it functions as my music source, reading source when I have no books, educational and plain amusment when I am bored, link to friends etc

9. The hardest part about nights are: If I can't sleep. Bipolar brings sleep distubrances unfortunately.

10. Each day I take __ pills & vitamins. (No comments, please) 9, 3 of them actually for the bipolar though....rest are vitamins

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: Would like to implement some, just that they so damn expensive!!!And no, for me NOT taking meds is NOT an option...please respect that

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: Neither, each can be crappy in it own way at times.

13. Regarding working and career: My position as a person with a disability is if you can, do it. If you can't, I repsect you and live your best life!

14. People would be surprised to know: That I am very good at masking when my mood is down.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: The fact that there is a developmental lag......I am a full-time undergrad at 30 and will really be kicking off my career after.....something most people do in their 20's

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: Hmm, before UWI ( University of the West Indies), attend university. Now I am in UWI, I still wonder if marriage and babies are in the cards for me....

17. The commercials about my illness: Are Sucky. full stop.

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: Not having to take pills everyday. I hate it but I suck it up and do it anyway.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: Losing my career as a teacher to this illness.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: Oh gorm! Any body who knows me KNOWS that I am on the Net a lot!!

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: Hm...dunno....I think I have accepted this as it is...just determined to live my best life.

22. My illness has taught me: To accept that I am not a superwoman and that I don't have to overcompensate and be better than everybody else to prove a point.....just have to be the best me I can be whether I having a good day or not.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: When upon disclosure of my diagnosis, religious people feel that it is only a matter of lack of faith/prayer that I have not been healed yet.....Hell, the fact that I am living with this is miracle enough for me some days and trust me from where I came from when I was first diagnosed, I had to have faith in my God!

24. But I love it when people: Just see Nicole first and not the illness. The people who truly love me do that everyday and yet will still be supportive when I am fighting a depressive episode.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: When I stress out I often mock-threaten " I'ma kill somebody but it ain't gon be me cuz I am too cute too kill myself!"

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: That you can still live your best life, but it takes work and taking responsibility for managing your own care.And that your best life may NOT necessarily be the one you had before.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: Both how compassionate people can be and how utterly stupid and insensitve a dumb minority can be. Ignorance I don't mind but rudness and nastiness about mental illness AFTER some education...ARRRGH!!!

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Last year when I was fighting off a depressive episode and reached out on Facebook and a chick who didn't like me in high school was so supportive. Other than that my mom's support through this whole damn adventure!!

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because; People need to know that we exist, you don't necessarily have to be blind, in a wheelchair or deaf to have a disability.(Nuff respect to those folks! Boop! Boop!)

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Happy that you took a little time to read the 5 a.m. ramblings of a bipolar undergrad.

A NEW YEAR AND A NEW DAY - AND HOPEFULLY MORE POSTS!

OK. I am guilty.......of being seriously gone for a minute. I know, I am lacking and my writer's conscience has been biting me but I am going to get better. My problem is that I write on my desktop at home.By the time I get home most evenings I am one beat-up bipolar. Ain't no way I feel like writing. And so I don't.....but feel guilty for not doing so. (By now, my fairy blogfather, Max, has given up on asking when will he see a new post.) But I am going to be soon an owner of a laptop so I am going to appease my conscience (and my blogfather) by acting......and posting. So stay tuned, folks!

BOUGHETTO?

Here I am, sitting at my computer being disturbed by my neighbors' loud music. Today is pretty tame in terms of time it is being played…..it is about 1 in the afternoon. Normally they reserve that kinda loud music for between the hours of 12 midnight to 4a.m. Call the who? The poe-leece??? No, dear we are not in the suburbs. We in the ghetto. Well technically in the ghetto. We're in the part of the ghetto that just has individual houses instead of tenement apartments….Y'all know what I am talking about ……in the ghetto but just a step from where all the real grimy action goes on…..Don't worry - you can hear a coupla gunshots in the distance though… Anyway, ain't no police coming for noise in the ghetto. Doesn't happen. They come after the gunshots, if at all. I often tell my Mom that when I grow up I want to move out to an apartment on the hills with rich, white people and no noise. And I think that is the crux of my identity problem (or just complexity whichever way you want to look at it)…

You see, even though I live in the ghetto, with all the pre-requisite characteristics….the neighborhood weed man, the mini-mart in somebody's house selling soft drinks (soda to you Americans), the chicken and fries on a Friday night, the loud rap and dancehall music………I was different. I went to a prestigious school of mostly middle to upper class kids. I was the kid who didn't play outside. I was NOT allowed to have a boyfriend till I was 18 and left high school while there are people in my neighborhood who were moms at 14 and 15. While teens were playing R&B and dancehall, I was appreciating classical music and I LIVED in the library. In short I lived an existence considered by most of the denizens of my neighborhood as well, bougie.

As adult however, once I leave my home, I am really more or less in middle to upper class world. My close friends and acquaintances are mostly people with degrees, some of them multiple. Those that don't have, like me, are in the process of earning one. I remember one night, myself and a friend who attends university with me travelling home on public transportation and discussing some coursework we were doing and thinking, I wonder what the driver must be thinking? Of course, the driver was an obvious ghetto denizen. And of late, even though I don't want to because I am basically proud of where I come from and will defend it to the eyeteeth if anybody dares to say something negative about it in my presence, I find myself more and more irritated by what Chris Rock would call "niggas." I am wondering if three years in this university environment has gotten me too accustomed to what he calls "black folk" instead. And even as I feel irritated at the "niggas" who are playing loud, inane music right now, there are definitely things about ghetto life to be enjoyed. The realness and the simplicity can't be beat (and the Friday night fries are tha bomb! Better than KFC any day).

Despite cries for all black people to unite, there is difference in upper to middle and lower class blacks. I have felt it keenly at times as I switch fairly fluidly from world to the next. And despite being upwardly mobile, there is still that humble chick inside of me waiting to come out at moment's notice (especially when I see upper to middle class conspicuous consumption. I'm too cheap for that crap.) So I think I will coin a new phrase to describe a girl that is too ghetto to be completely bougie but too bougie to be completely ghetto – BOUGHETTO anyone?

THE ELEMENTS OF A SOUL OF A WRITER

There are writers all over the world. From those who write poems in their notebooks…..odes to love lost, love, desired, anguish and pain………..to those who slave away in front of the computer screen every day. There are columnists, novelists, poets, playwrights, humorists, satirists, journalist, bloggers, screenwriters, pulp fiction authors, professional authors and amateur hacks. There are those who stand the test of time and are called classics – Shakespeare, Dickens, Machiavelli, Aristotle and the modern classics….Toni Morrison, V.S. Naipaul, James Baldwin to name a few. There are the New York Times Bestsellers with hundreds of thousands, even millions of readers and those who labour in obscurity and just wish for a single reader. But essentially wiring is the written expression of what is in the human psyche and soul about the human experience. Thus I'd like to boldly venture that there are certain elements that form part of the soul of all writers.

This is my bold and forward listing of the elements of soul of a writer.

1. Love of language, in particular the written word. No matter what language, the writer writes in or how he does it, he must love language. For it is his tool and his craft at the same time to convey what he desires to be heard.
   
2. Passion about his subject matter. The true writer feels deeply about his subject matter and uses language to craft his ideology about it to display in his work to the world. Without it, a writer cannot endure to create words and images out of seeming nothingness.
   
3. The universal horror of tow things……the blank page and writer's block. Unfortunately the two are not mutually exclusive. A blank page is the canvas for a writer's art to flourish…however, a blank page that stay there too long is a sign of that horror of horror, dread of dread and fear of fears –WRITER'S BLOCK. When there is nothing so awful as when the writer desires to create and there is nothing that comes to mind to create. Writer's block is made especially worse when one is under a tight deadline…..
   
4. Experience. A writer must draw on some element of his own and other's experiences to create his material. A writer with NO experience whatsoever is one that is not human.
   
5. A desire to chronicle something of what he has seen, heard, felt or dreamt. Basically something to say.
   
6. A desire to have his work read, even if it is just by himself.
   
7. A love-hate relationship with editing. Whether he self-edits or somebody else does it for him, no writer is exactly thrilled to be edited. For a writer's creation is part of his soul and editing means somehow, squeezing, molding, cutting or chopping off a bit of it. However, a writer will appreciate and submit to good editing if the final product is better than he intended.
   
8. And finally, a simultaneous capacity for solitude and yet the need to be among people. Writing is done best in relative solitude…..but unfortunately(or fortunately depending on the mood said writer is in) , one needs other people to write……to edit his material, to read it, to give feedback, to draw on for experiences, to have something to say about..
   

So folks, there you have it so far. If my writer friends have anymore to add….feel free. This writer is done.

PRAYER FOR THOSE FACING DIFFICULT TIMES

I found this prayer online and I decided to pay it forward by sending it to my e-mail friends. Today, I found mysef looking feverishly for it because I needed it myself.........Here it is

Please

O my God,
I know that you love me.
And I know that you want me to be happy, safe and secure,
But sometimes it's so hard to find you in all my troubles.
I know that there are many people worse off than me,
But please help me with my problems.
I'm so worried, God.
Please help me find the support I need.
Please help me not to worry too much.
Please help me to be humble enough to accept help from others.
Please help me to stay away from the "what ifs" and the "if onlys."
Please help me to remember to help others, even when I still need help.
And please help me to trust in your loving kindness, your care and your grace.
Because I know that you love me, and you know that I love you.
And if all you want to give me right now is your love,
Please let that be enough for me.
Amen.

James Martin, SJ

HOW DO YOU LOVE YOURSELF?

As someone who has been through a LOT of negative things, I have been on a seemingly never ending quest to find healing and wholeness. One message that I have heard before but that the universe has been screaming of late is to love yourself, to respect yourself and other will respect you. This seems to especially apply in everyone's manuals about how to find that special someone. Love, yourself, have morals, standards, etc. Play by the rules and everything will go okay. You will attract what you are so be good to yourself and you will attract that.

My question then: Is simply this? What is the process of loving on oneself? How do you love yourself? is there a golden rule book or play book that says, do x, y and z and you will love yourself? Where are the step-by-step directions or the accounts of their inner journeys?

It is not that I don't agree, it is that I am genuinely asking for the people like me who have been hurt and abused so much at times that it is hard to even conceptualise it. For with every effort you do make you have to contend first off with yourself...with the voices saying in your head who do you think you are, the fear of what the other person will think of you, if and when you set boundaries, the fear of being alone.Then you have to contend with others as well..


It is something that is easy to say but long and arduous to do. If you have grown up in a great childhood and a decent adolescence then great, you have a foundation. What about those of us who haven't had it so great? What is a frame of reference to begin?And when do you know that you have arrived?

If all those people who advocate loving yourself or better yet if someone who has had a less than perfect start has completed the journey, can you give the rest of us a holler and some steps to follow instead of just saying to love yourself and looking down on us poor mortals who are struggling? Some tips anyone? And please...... no cliches......

MJ – King of Excellence in Creativity

We have for the past few weeks been awash in the media storm surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. Whether it is looking at (or not looking) at the latest controversial bit of news or indulging ourselves in a bit of Michael nostalgia by watching his videos, there is no doubt about the impact of the news of his death. However, after the first retrospective of the videos, we kind of got focused on the controversy. We stopped examining his art. For me, watching Michael's videos and seeing him talk about his creative process has been a revelation for me as a creative person who loves music, dance, art and writing.

The first lesson I learnt as a creative person was watching how Michael danced. We all know what a phenomenal dancer he was. But according to many people, Michael used to drive choreographers crazy at times. This is because he was a very good improv dancer and at times, I suspect, not always technically correct. Michael however, had an excellent sense of what his body can do. And was smart enough to know what his body can't. Michael's lines were always straight, clean and sharp. It seemed revolutionary at the time. He basically however, created the best line and form to suit his ectomorph body type. What was revolutionary for me was that he became the best at doing himself and THAT is what made him innovative. He felt the music and gave his body the form to suit that music. For me, this will always be immortalized in the "Another Part of Me" video when his dancing so mirrored the step-like progression of the rhythms and chord in the music. Michael had a dance studio in his house, where he worked on his craft at home, even when he did not have to. Now that is dedication.

As a music lover, I only had the most respect for Michael. However, it was not just because the music he created was great pop music. It was listening to snippets of interviews of him and others talking about his creative process that made me truly admire him. Michael did not just create music out of his head. He studied music, analyzed sound. I remember seeing a Rodney Jerkins interview where Rodney was saying that Michael encouraged him to go out into the "field" (as Michael called it) and study the sounds in the real world and use that to make music. I saw Michael talk about the process of creating "Billie Jean", saying that he first wanted to write a song with a strong bass line. And then describing how he created the bass line while riding along in the car and then the rest of the song. Michael was a student of music and sound. For me, my craft is writing and in order to shine with lasting excellence in the use of your creative talents, he taught me that you must not only perform constantly but study it analytically.

As for Michael as a songwriter, he is an interesting one to watch. Despite for all his altruistic, save the world lyrics, Michael was not a one dimensional song writer. In fact, some of his subject matter was kind of well, dark. The interesting thing about Michael though is that some of his darker songs were so artfully presented in the videos that unless you really took apart the lyrics, the impact would not hit you. The video for "Blood on the Dance Floor" just seems like an interesting salsa twist to Michael until you hear the lyrics. This is sample of the chorus:

Susie got your number
And Susie ain't your friend
Look who took you under
With seven inches in
Blood is on the dance floor
Blood is on the knife
Susie's got your number
And Susie's edge is right

That is not exactly the most light-filled lyric…..The lyrics to "Leave Me Alone" and "They Don't Really Care About us" shows that Michael is much more than heal-the-world (pardon the pun) and other feelgood type of songs. Here is man who really expressed himself succinctly and with depth in his lyrics. As writer, I have to respect that.

For all that I was a fan of Michael; I guess it is now, in death that I have truly learned about him. Michael, I not only love you as a fan but I respect you as a creative person. Long live not only the King of Pop but the King of Excellence in Creativity.

SUCK IT UP, LIFE IS TOUGH

People seems to think that discrimination against people with disabilities is confined to occupying a handicapped parking spot or saying something uncomplimentary bout a person's disability. But it is more than that. Sometimes the environment can be discriminatory too.

For all of us who are in tertiary institution, we have heard the heroic stories of what we have had to do to get a paper handed in on time. Deadlines are deadlines, no matter what, no excuses, right? And while I agree for the average student who is adequately able to cope and is not ill, this can be so. For a bipolar like me this can be a nightmare. Yes, I have pushed myself and that is university to an extent is, what is pushing yourself to the limit is about. But what if you have to chose between missing that all important deadline or your health because you are not completely well? Seems like a no brainer, right. You ideally should choose your health.

In a university setting though, the no-brainer is that you should choose getting the paper before deadline, even if you are dying. Because if you don't it means that you can't hack it. You may be an excellent learner but you can't hack it in the university environment. I once heard a lecturer say at the beginning of his class when give an assignment that if you get sick before you hand in his assignment, do the paper first and get sick after (needless to say I dropped the course). You are expected as student to be an automaton, a superhero. Another of my lecturers says no matter what life happens, so regardless you still have to complete the paper., Now while I am for respecting people's time and considering deadlines when you can make it, I think it is hard for a student with a disability and well nigh difficult to cope under this pressure. Even if you say Ok, Life is tough and suck it up ; It is still ultimately a choice between your health and meeting certain academic standards that really have nothing to do with the quality of work you produce or how well you learn what is in the course but how well you survive a pressure cooker.


Institutions should be about learning and assessing learning that but in truth the underlying thing is really is a test to see who is the fittest so that they can keep up standards.......sad. And at many times, I have chosen my academics over my health to try and be that Superwoman. It resulted in me having to take two leaves of absence of medical grounds. Now that I am in the situation again, I am going to make the right choice for me. I know that it is not that I cannot produce the best work (I got an academic prize for topping a course). It is that I am human. And if the system faults me for that so be it. I'd rather be seen as student who can't quite hack it than be sitting with out without my degree in a mental hospital.

HE WON'T FAIL

I been gone for a minute. I know. I've been going through a rough time lately. Struggling to settle back down into school and watching my money run low was occupying my mind.Then, things got better and I got a break so I can write for you all.........HELL NAW!!

In fact thing have gotten worse, at least on the outside. Broke up with a lovely man who informed me that he had no future plans/intentions for us. ( Trust me watching The Bachelor was deja vu all over again......especially the part where Melissa tells Jason off and walks off). In addition, a bad crunch time with two assignments within a week of each other has morphed into craziness with FOUR assignments- two papers, a project and a presentation within two weeks of each other.

I did the usual aaaaahh!! - stress out- bitch-and whine thing that I normally do. Wrote some bad sounding status updates on Facebook and generally was a mess. But now I have gotten out all my feelings, I think I am going to handle this crunch time a bit differently. I want to plan out what I am going to do when and try my darnedest to stick to it, to be gentle with myself when I see time passing, to make sure and budget time for laughter, music ; to sleep no matter what (bipolars need their sleep almost as much as they do their medication.......in fact more).

I have carved out at least a couple hours later this week to go to the gym and relieve the physical stress when it gets too much; and will grieve (when I have room) for my lost relationship. And from the depths of my heart rises the last refrain from Smokie Norful's song,"God is Able"..... " He won't fail / He won't fail....."

BECUASE I WANT TO AND I CAN

So here I am, having cut off all my dreadlocks and styling my hair short. I know I am going to provoke a lot of questions as to why I did it. Many people, especially Rastafarian people have deep religious reasons for growing their hair into dreadlocks. I DIDN'T.

For me it was simply a hairstyle choice. I liked my hair was already fairly long so I went to the hairdresser and locked it. But, as it grew, it became a monster. Unfortunately for me I am not the person with the kind of hair that can have neatly maintained dreadlocks with out mucho, mucho input from a hairdresser. As in every week. As I do NOT have time or the money for such an indulgence (being a financially challenged undergrad), I decided to go the DIY route. Big mistake. It ended up looking more untidy and being so. And worse, it began to consume huge amounts of money in the never-ending quest for the perfect product to maintain on my hair at home.

I admit I tried to attach some significance to my dreads. Tried to say to my self "Look, Nikki, have patience". I mean I even subscribed to those natural hair sites that extolled the virutes of locks and said it was a better, more healthy choice than chemically processing your hair. But patience is not cheap and I was beginning not to like what I saw in the mirror. It was beginning to affect my self-image, man. I tried the last ditch effort to find the perfect hairdresser, (cheap and good) where the women there regaled me with horror stories of what happened when they cut off their locks. It was a spiritual thing, they said, You should not cut it because you will lose your power.


Eventually the most spiritual thing for me though, was to CUT THEM OFF. I also chemically processed my hair to be a bit softer. I liked what I saw in the mirror. And more importantly, I had evolved from the girl who started to grow the locks a year ago. So - New Year,
New Me.

However, as I go out in public I know I am going to be faced with shocked looks and the inevitable question of why I did it. Instead of telling them the long sordid, tale; I am going to answer,"Because I wanted to and I can"

I KNOW I AM A DELINQUENT

Sorry people, I know I am really delinquent as my fellow blogger, Angela Braden has pointed out. Since beginning to come out of the dark, it seems that my life has turned into another direction. I am now busy as hell. I turned that corner when I went to my ministry's last weekend retreat for the year. I am involved in a Ministry called YOUTH 2000, which basically is a weekend to introduce young people to the richness of their Catholic faith and allow them to have a deep, personal experience with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The weekend was small in terms of attendance but awesome. The best part of the weekend was seeing for the first time, that there were more young men therethan young women. It was very rewarding even though this time I went as a participant and not as a team member. I also was deeply touched by Jesus' healing presence in the Eucharist as He dealtwith some deep issues in my life. Then in between a whirlwind of Christmas preparations (which I am still in the middle of), I went to another weekend.......to experience the Theology of the Body conference hosted by my archdiocese. We had the distinct pleasure of being ministered to by Christopher West himself for the entire weekend. It was an intense wekeend in which we laughed, cried and really got to know the depths of our meaning and that as human beings, we were built for love. There were many aha!!moments too, some of which I plan to share at a future date. So I have been busy guys, please forgive me. The Christmas bug has hit in full swing along with my re-entry into the land of the living......Hallelujah!!

HOW DOES IT FEEL....... TODAY

Today has been one of the better days I have had in a while. The fighting spirit is beginning to come back. I am still sleeping a lot but not as much as before and I managed to clean up parts of my room. (Considering that it looks less like Armageddon and more just like World War II, this is an accomplishment). I supposed this is partially because of increase in Prozac kicked in.

Another part of it is something that I am continually amazed at each time it happens, Somehow, when my back is against a wall something inside me just says "NOOOO!!" and begins to put up a fight. This is what I guess I call a finely honed survival instinct. It has served me so well before through so many traumatic stuff.................through hospitalization, through that week on the streets, through the date-rape and the gang-rapes and through so may other smaller mishaps, disappointments, delays and defeats. I think it is a miracle that it is still there and no, I don't think I am better than anyone else because of it. It surprises me just as much as anyone else when it kicks in.

I told my mother about my surprise and she with her ever-sensible self is like "Why are you surprised? That is the way it is supposed to be." I guess somehow I seem to get the art of surviving. It doesn't mean that I am outta the woods yet. I still have a way to go. I still have along way towards putting practices in my life other than medication that are going to help me to maintain my health but for now it is enough.

HOW DOES IT FEEL.........

Today I am going to give you a taste of my experience of the depressive side of bipolar......This is a note that I wore on my Facebook page a couple of days ago.


I guess it is a fact that people who don't have bipolar disorder really know how it feels like and even I don't always have the vocab to explain what it feels like to be in a mood swing....But I am going to attempt to do it now so that people kinda get what I go through at times and am currently going through. For me, even though as much as I try to control my mood swings through medication and for the most part, I do succeed, there comes a time like now, where for whatever reason, whether it is an excess of stress or just the fact that my body has become used to the dosage of meds or just the plain simple fact that this disorder changes throughout my life, when I begin to have regular mood swings again.

For me(though not for everybody), I tend to go more on the depressive side than on the manic side and then veer back to normal.It is not a nice experience to go through as you can well imagine.For me it manifests itself as exhaustion. I feel tired and lethargic...... don't want to do much. Yes, there are a lot of negative thoughts about myself when the depressive mood swings roll in.I don't like myself much and don't see the dreams I have for myself coming true.it is also very difficult for me to read, process the written word and concentrate. For a voracious reader like me, it is very frustrating and doubly so because I gotta study. I also don't enjoy music as much and if I am really bad not all. Thankfully so far,this time, the enjoyment has lessened but not completely gone.My relationship with God has taken a blow as well because I do have a lot of guilt at time for not being more positive.

I guess the one of hardest thing to deal with in this phase is my reaction to people around me. I need people around me more than ever at this time but I also know how hard it can be sometimes for people to be around someone who is depressed and not happy or worse yet, someone who seems ok one minute and then very needy or very quiet the next.That is why in many cases, if I am going through a downward mood swing , I may conceal it and force myself to appear normal if I don't have to be around the people for too long or just stay quiet.If it gets REALLLY BAD, I go my bed and just lie down and turn my back to the world. This time I have made a concerted effort to reach out to people when I am in my normal mood as opposed to just isolating myself completely.And I get smart, I spread the interaction around. And don't depend on any one person. Someone is always going to be having a bad day and not be willing to deal with me. That is life. I am learning not to internalize this and just move onto other friends.But it is still not quite nice when it does happen.

Still the hardest thing about this illness is that you don't quite know when things are going to go wrong, you can try to control it and try to do everything you can to do( doctor, medication, prayer,etc so but ultimately there is going to come times when it is out of your hands and it affect your energy level and productivity.For me, the driven type, it is frustrating as hell but I gotta learn to live with it .So there is an insight into what goes on. Don't feel though that any good thoughts or reaching out is in vain though. It is very much appreciated.

REALITY SHOWS

OK people. Whether it is America's Next Top Model, Dancing with the Stars, The Chef Jeff Project to Life in the Fab Lane and (dare I admit it) Flava of Love, I have yet to meet one person who has not been bitten by the reality show bug.......and judging from the variety of reality shows, it seems like everyone has a favorite. But why do we (or more namely I) like reality shows so much? I think it is, first of all because, everyone likes a human train wreck. Let's face it.........often times reality shows are a study in what human beings can and will do placed in bad or stressful situations. It is like a free psych lab. We also love suspense........ the thrill of finding out who won, who got kicked out and how they reacted.But even worse and I dare to admit it, in a world where information and stress is coming at you constantly, the reality shows sometimes give you what you want when you are tired and don't want to think. A quick cheap thrill.

I only realized this when I began timing reality shows to start watching them about 7 minutes before they are done just to see the train wreck and not the story.This especially happens with reality shows on VH1 and MTV. I don't know if it is because I am just a thrill seeker or maybe it is because the concept of shows on those channels are tending to become repetitive but that is what I am doing. I am beginning to go for reality shows with a bit more of a storyline like The Chef Jeff Project or Ace of Cakes.

So what am I going to do about my addiction to reality shows? Will I improve my low-brow TV viewing habits?I'll tell you later after I watch the episode of Dancing with the Stars that I missed.

TA- Daaa!!

Here it is folks. It's been a long time coming but today is my official introduction into the world of blogging. I am hopeful that I will be able to take you along on an interesting ride and offer my unique perspective on life to the blogosphere. My hope is just to take you along on my ride as I make my unique journey as a woman, Catholic, daughter, friend, person with an invisible disability, student and every other facet of my life. So sit back and relax and take it in. I promise you that it will be like life with me.......fun, interesting, mundane, hilarious, exasperating, honest, real, raw, in your face but NEVER EVER BORING!!!