You… you’ve got a lot going for you
You’re famous, you’re smart, and you’re powerful
but you are ugly.
You think we can’t see the evil under that gaudy, outdated sweater
but we can.
You think that fancy perfume you wear hides the scent of terror
but it doesn’t.
You think the makeup you put on daily covers the pure pain written on your face
but you are dead wrong
bipolar, you are hideous.
Sometimes, though, that’s easy to forget
when it feels like I can do anything
the world is my oyster. When I feel that ungodly fake happiness
that masquerades as wellness, when I’m with you
and I don’t want to leave.
That’s when you have me. Then you take the opportunity
to torment me.
The façade is gone, and it all comes rolling through the gates.
You scream a thousand voices into my head
you bind my body and I can feel your merciless crushing grasp
you convince me that everything is good, it’s not bad,
it’s bad, it’s not good,
this is good, that is bad, I need to say it over and over and over again
you take over, and I don’t stand a chance.
My peace of mind is gone, and my humanity is soon to follow
How did I let this happen to me? I’ll never know
but I’ve learned this:
You do take no for an answer
and I have a lot more control than I thought.
If I ask you to stay away, you’ll ask me why, and I’ll tell you
because I want to be better
and as long as I let you anywhere near me, I will always
be stuck here
on this nightmare of a rollercoaster.
So you accept that, thank God
thank you, bipolar, for setting me free,
at least once in a while.
I feel less alone without you because
I can love more fully, for longer, forever.
I can accept my imperfections rather
than suffer in the desire to be rid of them. to be rid of you.
I can be still and know
that it is ok.
I’m ok, you’re ok. and I intermittently have my **** together.
I’m sorry things are not working out between you and me,
bipolar disorder.
but I’m not sorry that without you,
my life is ******* beautiful.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 5:11 PM UTC
One great thing about social dancing is
you get to touch people.
Sounds weird
but it's actually the most beautiful thing in the world.
Ballroom dancing- waltz, rumba, swing
oh my words, it's such a beautiful thing!
I'm not that good, but I can follow
if you lead, if you take me along.
Give me your hands, we'll go for a walk
down the dance floor, around the many couples.
Quick, quick, slow
One, two, three
Triple step, triple step, rock step.
Beautiful.
Why do you dance? Perhaps for the same reason as me...
perhaps to find some purpose in your own infinity.
Perhaps we've both come here with pain in our hearts
let it out, let it get washed away by the joy in the room
that will not leave any time soon.
Get swept off your feet by someone you like
You'll learn to go with the flow like riding a bike.
Listen to the music from the 30s to the 80s
and lift your feet to the rhythm of the ballads.
Ask that person if you can have this dance,
don't let them get away before the night is over,
before the last song.
Touch them, they'll touch you.
It sounds weird, but it's so
so beautiful.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
I am overwhelmed by the beauty of your spirit,
your voice,
your emotion.
When I hear you sing as though no one else is around, I need
to catch my breath.
When your hands touch the keys of your little electric piano, I feel
more emotion than I thought was possible.
You are so beautiful
so close
yet so far away.
I know, that's cliche,
but how can I come up with the right words when my mind is
full of nonsense.
Because I am overwhelmed
by you.
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 1:26 PM UTC
Before we begin, I want you to think of the one thing you want to get out of our time. Come up with a mantra to come back to throughout your practice.
Come to peace
Find your center
Fight the disorder.
I challenge you to move with your own breath- don’t break your gentle gaze to synchronize with the others around you.
Bring your hands together at heart center
Inhale
Fold your body at the waist and let your fingers touch the earth
Exhale
Plant your palms, bend your knees and float to plank
Inhale
If you so choose, follow the Vinyasa flow
and exhale.
A borderline personality is full of panic and anger so much of the time. It is the opposite of peace and calm. It is the enemy of relationships and well-being. But don’t let the word within the word fool you into thinking it makes you a bad person. It is part, not all of you. It can be overcome.
Warrior one, come to peace
Tree pose, find your center
Shivasina, fight the disorder
Beauty is not conditional, you are beautiful because you are alive. Because you are human.
Breathe it in, breathe it out, love your body, soothe your mind.
Come to a comfortable seat, a lotus or cross-legged.
Have you reached your goal? Has this journey been fruitful?
Thank you for coming, thank you for teaching.
The light within me honors the light within you- Namaste.
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 5:11 PM UTC
She is not your ordinary girl, eighteen years and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. She’ll be flipping her rose-colored hair with every laugh and smile you give her. Every moment that makes the world what it is, she’ll be a co-creator.
There is nothing richer than the happiness she feels when you come to her. Nothing more sincere than her pride in you for reaching to her. Unlike the rest, she expects nothing, and sees the beauty in everything, no matter how small.
She’ll be with you when the walls fall down. The room is fragile, and when it starts to crumble, people run. It’s empty, as it should be. You can’t leave. She chooses not to. She stands there and holds you when the roof caves in. She keeps you warm when there’s nothing left.
She’s not here to rebuild anything, nor prevent the next catastrophe. She doesn’t move from beside you, despite everything inside you, she is your angel, with invisible wings and a halo of flowers.
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 4:58 PM UTC
The man in apartment seven
misspells his own last name
he eats onion bread with olive oil
and he doesn't mind the rain
The man in apartment seven
hears music constantly
he hums during conversations
and sings when his time is free
The man in apartment seven
is the truest man I know
his brown eyes tell a story
that few would ever show
The man in apartment seven
and I live with the same curse
where mania and sadness
both act as our traverse
But he has found a way, somehow
to love life, not just cope
his smile and understanding
daily, give me hope
When we walk home together
I wish we lived miles away
because there's no one else
who can make me feel this way
The man in apartment seven
is not just the boy next door
without a doubt, he is the one
I would do anything for.
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 1:31 AM UTC
We live in an ocean of agonizing existence
Some have found a boat and would take it for refuge, who wants to get one’s feet wet when emotion is too deep and cold? Some can manage the treading, their hearts light enough to float, and hands free to take in the water and the air at once. But yet there are some in the waters less calm, where the breeze turns to raspy tempest and the dance of the waves is no waltz. They sink constantly lower into an ocean as bottomless as their heart within, where nothing can touch the surface.
what hurts more than a heart that cannot feel? When the floaters and sailors take of you and your joys and tragedies and you cannot even tell them it hurts because you understand emotion too much to fall in love with it again. I was in love with a world that had lost all sight of me.
and so I ran.
For in the rush of a run in its humble exhilaration, there is new life.
When the ice in the air in the winter in the lungs is melted and evaporates. When the muscle in the leg in the body of the you is commanded, is tight, but defies and works and relaxes.
You have nowhere to go but you are going. and it is miraculous wonderful.
And stop. I spotted a playground, deserted for the frost had taken it captive, and a swing invited me in. I looked around… and the world stopped.
Silence. White cold and precious silence and nobody there to break it. Beauty. The one true, undeniable beauty of nature and serenity and life.
Now that was the moment.
I realized that there would be an infinity of these moments of wholeness and totality of love that would fall into my life and I will be a fool to give it up.
And I felt again.
The first emotion to come back to me was revelry.
It was dark at the bottom of the ocean and night’s about to fall on the surface as well but I cannot grasp the prospect of anyone ever being ****** down by that whirlpool again.
So I ask you my darling if you would get off your boat and take someone’s hand and squeeze it like you squeeze the sour sting from a lemon. And there will be sweetness. There will be a waltz, there will be windows in the sky and we will make an island of humanity. I don’t know what crazy song is singing to me now but there is hope that it will be righteous.
And for the first time, I can feel it.
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 12:12 AM UTC
Tuesdays are the worst.
I ******* hate Tuesdays.
Tuesdays make me want to demolish a building with my bare hands,
see, on Tuesday, I walked around with my bare feet.
I do that to feel better, but only when I feel like nothing will ever be good again.
I've been running towards recovery all summer, but I have fallen down on the Yellow Brick Road. The other me broke free from its cage, turned around, and started running towards the ruins.
When you collapse to the floor of your one-room apartment, and don't give a **** that screaming intermittently is socially unacceptable, and it feels like you are on a roller coaster that just won't stop, all the life force leaves your body, all the hope leaves your heart.
That's the one time you look at yourself and understand why they all see you as less than human.
A mess, a freak, irredeemable.
It's the reason why you haven't felt the warmth of another person's body in weeks. You've been keeping yourself sane with a checklist of expectations to meet. A calendar with no blank spaces. A radio that never turns off.
So when I walked around on Tuesday evening, unable to hold back all the tears, I left my flip-flops at home.
I came back to my roots and felt the grass between my toes. Let the concrete absorb the sadness, and I didn't feel so sick anymore. The earth reminds me that I belong here, and that even when I hit rock bottom again, at least I'll be walking on solid ground.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 12:16 AM UTC
My friends, old and new, dear and distant, I just want to say one thing to you today, and that is that I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for all the times I scared the ever-living **** out of you by dancing on ice or sitting on the edge of a cliff. Without you there to hold me up, I know I would have fallen. But when I took your hand, I could feel it shaking, your whole body tense, your face full of fear, and it was all because of me. I should have thought things through, I should have listened to you, but I couldn’t hear your warnings in the cacophony of my disaster. I apologize for the fear I instilled in you.
I’m sorry for all the times I broke your heart by speaking of death with such longing in my voice, as if I loved the idea of leaving more than I loved you. I wish I had not been so absorbed in my own darkness that I could not see your light. I wish I had realized sooner that I had to put up a fight. I wish I had taken up your offers to call you in the middle of the night, but I stayed silent. I married you all the moment we met, and yet I was lured into this scandalous affair with sadness. She wasn’t even that attractive, but she took me away from you, and I apologize for the heartbreak I caused.
I’m sorry for all the times I tried to thank you but utterly failed. How do you thank someone for keeping you alive? For holding you when you cry? For having faith when yours has run dry? You can’t. You just hope that your friends are getting something out of all of this and maybe it will be enough and maybe it won’t but by the way you all love me the way I never deserved it, it looks like it’s good enough for you. I just wish you knew that you are miracles to me. I apologize for the weakness of my gratitude.
I’m sorry for all the times when I broke, no, shattered, and you had to pick up the pieces.
I’m sorry for all the times I ****** thousand-pound weights into your arms without prior notice.
I’m sorry for apologizing.
But I have to, because depression never did.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 1:32 AM UTC
The first time we met, I was a ******* wreck. I wore lounge pants, a tie-dye shirt, and an old hoodie. I might have had tears in my eyes because I was so **** tired of carrying the weight of the world in every part of my being and letting it control me. That is why I came to you- so that you could be my sort of savior, you could lighten my load with the wisdom of your words, the strength of your soul, the kindness of your heart. You wore a pink shirt, and I thought you looked a bit fierce. But the moment your voice carried your name to my ears, I could feel the gentleness that hid beneath the surface.
That was the beginning of the hurricane that is my unending love for you.
For you this would be a learning experience, the practicum needed to get those three prestigious letters after your name. For me, this would be my only hope of recovery, a life-raft thrown into the dark and murky waters that were drowning me. I put all my faith in you, and for that I was foolish, but what else can you do when it feels like the rest of the world has turned its back on you, and yet here in this little office, I had your full attention. Daily, your thoughtful green eyes would fix upon me, though I had the hardest time meeting them with mine. I’m awkward like that, I told you once.
There were a few things that you would say time and time again…
“I appreciate that honesty.”
“I’m worried about you.”
and of course the cliché, “how does that make you feel?”
But there was another word, a mysterious one that you always said. “Beautiful”. To you, everything was beautiful. I told you my views about divinity and you said “that’s a beautiful way to look at it.” I wrote three pages worth of final words to you and you said “that’s a beautiful letter.” I asked you what you thought about me and you said “you have a beautiful soul.”
Every Friday at three o’clock, I could tell you without a doubt that our souls did a little dance together.
When I was with you, I could not help smiling. I would talk about the most painful things of my life, and my voice would rasp and break. But on my face there was always this smile as if you had cast a spell on me. You wanted me to show some emotion, but for you, I had built a wall. Like everyone else in my life, I had to protect you from myself.
The last time we had our little soul-dance was the first time you saw me cry. It was right after you confirmed to me that that was indeed the last time. It was right before I lost my mind and almost lost everything else. it was when I asked you for your hand, despite the red tape that forbade such a request to be granted. It was when the air in the room was thicker than bricks with pain and regret and above all, loss. It was a moment I wanted so badly to end, but one of many moments with you that I will remember forever.
The whole ten weeks I fell as hard as a meteor for you. The whole ten weeks, I was in the most ridiculous denial. As soon as I was able to say to myself, **** I love him,” my life was never the same.
I have never been so in love with someone as I am with you. But I have never been so angry with someone as I am with you. I think about it now, and I realize; we went on a journey for months- an emotional, difficult, and intimate journey. And now I feel like I have come to the end of our path and the only thing I have left is a broken heart. The whole time, you were getting too close. You and your ******* beautiful green eyes- oh and that word. Beautiful. I wonder why you said that to me so much. Were you trying to tell me something? Was it a slip of the mind? You told me once that you struggled with the boundaries. When I asked you why we were terminating you did one of those “and… yeah” things. The whole time, you kept talking about our relationship, but was it really the therapeutic alliance you were referring to? You twisted me through your fingers like play-dough and now I am here, a *** of a bunch of colors that don’t go together and it’s all because of you. How can I blame myself for this?
In the research, they call it ****** transference”. But is it fair to say that? Should we really just boil it all down to a science and just brush it off as a technicality? No. It’s not that simple, but it’s not that complex either- you have my heart, it is in pieces, and it will be that way for the rest of my life.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 12:04 AM UTC