She runs amok without restraint
In pursuit of the high,
The thrill of the chase.

She's up for a cigarette
And down several pounds.
You'll find her naked outside the house.

They can force medication
But can't treat denial.
The CPS case is going to trial.

Her bipolar diagnosis
Remains hard to accept,
But stability is better than manic distress.

She could lose it all quickly.
No time for delay
Lest she face an endless stream of regret.

I understand her pain,
For I've walked this road too,
But with the right help she can make it through.

I hope she'll make haste in  her recovery,
That she'll see on the other side
Is a taste of what it means to be alive.

Let's be clear,
Compassion is not a kind of currency.
****** favors are not a type of contract.
The pictures he received were not consent.
My outfit is not an open invitation,
And there's no justification for what he did.

My bipolar fantasy is that one day,
I’m going to come home and leave my bipolar at the door,
Scatter it along with muddy boots and raincoats and winter mittens
I have no use for currently,
That I’m going to take it off and enter my house unencumbered.
My bipolar dream is that I’m going to go to bed tonight
Without measuring my sleep,
Wondering if it’s an indication of mania or depression,
If it’s stress or I need medication to push me into a nocturnal daze,
The haze of which will bleed over into daytime.
My bipolar wish is that this illness
That I lug around like a suitcase made of brick
Might lighten in load or unpack itself once in a while,
That it will not brand me as a traveler on a road
Pockmarked with landmines and loneliness.
I wish that this suitcase did not bear the mark of mental illness.
My bipolar life is a story,
One laid out in the lines of swinging,
Of flying and then falling
Before realizing they are often too closely related to tell the difference.
My story is written in the narrow margins between creativity and hospitalization.
Sometimes the two occur together.
My life’s manuscript is forever alternating
Between the way the night sky speaks to me
Or the way the bathroom smells like my blood.
It is being abuzz with electricity and then short circuiting your battery
And not being able to move.
My bipolar song is a tune alternating between grandiosity,
All hail my intelligence and beauty (psych!)
Before falling into apathy and self-loathing.
Sometimes it’s not knowing what version of me I’m going to wake up to in the morning.
My bipolar hope is that the dizzying combo of diet, exercise, and daily medication
Will keep me out of that 1 in 5 number I’ve danced with so perilously,
Keep me off of those bridge ledges and out from empty pill bottles,
Keep me alive in my skin even in this painful reality.
My bipolar fear is that when mania and depression have a love child
And mixed mania runs amuck in its terrible two’s,
The anger will taint the feelings of loved ones.
I fear callous words uttered insouciantly in my own misery,
Slithering from my mouth agonizingly slowly yet too quickly to stop
Might wound those I care for when I do not mean it.
My distress and agitation sometimes equal cranky.
My bipolar prayer is that when energy plus impulsiveness plus danger is no longer
A concept I understand collaborate,
Those around me know this is not who I am.
My mood is a high-flyer, a free-faller, and an everywhere in between,
But that is not my personality.
I am an optimist, a free thinker, creator, compassion giver.
My story is broader than the confines of bipolar.
I am sometimes aflame and others underwater,
But I weather it all with a twisted sense of humor.
I am a person before I am bipolar.

He says, "When she's manic like this, I can't keep up with her!"
He is lost,
Lost in the endless sea of my energy,
In the tsunamis of syllables
And the way the sun touches my skin, flowing through me.
I am a force to be reckoned with,
Daughter of the sky,
Made from dust of the stars.
They beckon to me with their brilliance
And the gleam of secrets they will not share.
I want to know where the edges of their shine go,
Want them to swallow me into their vastness.
I am a thunderstorm,
The gale force winds that shake the very earth he walks on.
My synapses connect at light speeds,
Weaving the strands of the universe.
I am a power,
Muse of the way the leaves quake and change color,
Poet to Mother Nature.
Of course he cannot keep up.
It is hard to run in flip flops!

The electricity flows through my bones,
Making love through my synapses
As it courses through my system.
I am alive with the buzz,
The heat and cacophony.
I must share this with the world,
Charge the very air with my existence.
I could power the whole universe
If only some of it would leave my body.

The price of being alive
Is coping with the memories of what I nearly
Didn't survive.

I am a figment of your imagination,
A specter of the night,
The shadow passing as the sun rises.
My reality is intangible,
As fleeting as daylight hours.
Do not search for me in the dark hiding places.
You will only feel the breeze of my existence,
Fluttering by unnoticed.