Innocence

Innocence. What a perfectly blind thing. We were all children once. We all had that innocence in us, telling us that everything was going to be okay. That the world was a flawless place. You had no care in the world. You never fathomed that someone could be mean. No one could do any wrong. No one would get sick. Nothing would ever disfigure the world. No one would harm an animal. Mom was happy, and Dad would never leave. 
  
  Everything existed only for the good of the world. I remember being a young girl, and playing in the forest on the Washington Peninsula. My cousins and I would dress up in capes and run through the moss covered evergreens. Dodging branches and drinking in the feeling of the wind whipping our capes behind us. Our wide childlike eyes taking everything in without judgement. The air was brisk, but we were Washington raised. Our skin could take the cold. In fact we preferred it that way. It was on my cousins farm that we would roam the deep forest. We would catch frogs on the pond, and see how many we could keep in the boat at one time. We made hay forts in the loft of the barn so our parents couldn't find us. We stayed in those forts all day, telling ghost stories at night while braving the dark. Digging for clay in the rain. Riding horses on the rural backroads. Building teepees by the creek. Gathering berries and vegetables. Eating sour apples from their tree by the porch. Gathering eggs from the chicken coup. Sleeping outside in the back of my cousins old Ford Ranger. Cowboy boots. Muddy jeans. Berry stained fingers. Everything was perfect.

  And then we grew up. The forests where we once roamed, now empty of the sound of children's laughter. The pond still as glass. The hay unmoved, with no hidden caverns or tunnels. The apples unpicked. Capes unworn and collecting dust. Our fingers clean from blackberry stains. When was it that we stopped believing that the world was enchanting? At what point did we hang up our innocence? Now we are grown, and our minds are flooded with the troubles of the world. We see the bad. We feel the hurt. Life experience has left us untrusting and cautious. Childhood friends have moved on. Cousins have moved away. Animals have passed. Trees have fallen. Trucks have broken down and rusted. The sounds of bluegrass have faded. And Dad really did leave.         

Surrender

There are no limits as to what you can do with your life. Or at least I have been told. On the contrary others have told me to think realistically and be practical. To which do I listen? And for what reasoning? Every time I see someone succeed, I take a look at my life and the lack of what I am not doing with it, the things that I have not accomplished, and the direction that I feel that I am most definitely not going in. How can I not compare myself to others? How can I not feel bad about myself, when all I see is a life of hospital stays and an endless supply of pills. How do I feel good about that? Sure I've made it through some really tough shit, but a life that could have been so great in so many ways, has been suppressed and held back due to illness. How unfair I feel this to be. How frustrated I am that it has stopped me from being me. From doing the things that I used to think I was capable of doing. Illness has beaten me down, and I feel like I'm starting to surrender, something that I never wanted to do. 

Perspective

      The way I see things is of course, different from anyone else. Sometimes it scares me, sometimes I love it too much. There isn't much balance to the unending emotion and passion I experience. Sometimes its flatlined, without a feeling to be felt. The numbness overcomes me, keeping me slow and dull. On the contrary, others times I feel too much. I am overcome with great passion bursting from the seams. I can be so happy I cry, likewise when I'm perpetually down. If I am ever in the middle, I do not notice it, nor is it easy for me to identify. Since I was a very long girl, I can remember some of my first obsessions. I would love things so much, I had to express it to everyone. Lets take movies for example. I would love a movie so much I would want to live in the era. I wanted to live inside of the movie, and somehow I thought this was achievable. That I could somehow live like my favorite story characters. The stories would overtake my mind, flooding in like oil into the sea. It contaminated everything. I was always frustrated that I couldn't get enough of the non existent world in which I obsessed over. I never understood why I would love something so much more that the others around me. I thought that I was just extra passionate. Now I know that all of those obsessions, all of those strong overbearing emotions were my OCD. Its extremely frustrating at times. I will get obsessed with a TV show or movie, and then be told not to watch it anymore. Its like telling a child that they are not allowed to  play with their favorite toy. Its seems like a punishment. Its painful, when your mind wants so much of something, and you have to deny yourself of that very thing. Like an infant being denied comfort, I have to wait for the obsession to pass, not knowing if I will ever be able to introduce my interest back into my life. Being of the human race, we all go through phases in our lives. This is where its hard for me to tell if its just a phase, or  if I actually like something. To have others such as my family tell me its just a phase, angers me. Who's to know if it is or not. Unfortunately it usually is, even though at the time I am so consumed by this one thing. It feels real. Like you would swear someone in your life is a human being, and you would put money on it. You would put money on your belief that, the person in your life is indeed a living, breathing human being. And then all of the sudden they disappear. You could have sworn they were real. Its hard to know whats real in my mind. How much is too much, being the constant question. 
How far should I go? How far is safe enough? Do I have to live my life constantly question my interests? To see them as real or fake. I'm afraid that this is a burden that will never leave me. I will always have to steer clear of the things that I enjoy, and that seem to be consuming too much of my life. Weighing out whats worth it, and whats not. Staying in the the reality of the world is not something that people like to do, but for me it is one of the most important things to do. Stay grounded, and keep reality within reach. 

Into the New

     Sooner or later, we all come into the new. It sneaks up on us, branding us without choice, like animals. It begins to own us, and unfortunately some of us give up and accept our mark. The mark that society naturally curses us with. What we often don't come to realize is, we must de-brand ourselves; take out the slivers that sneak their way into the inner most being of our souls. If we don't, we are owned. We are owned by what society says we must be. Owned by the same old pattern of our cultures writings, as if they were written in stone; burnt directly into our skin. How do we escape these titles? How do you erase a scar? How do you un-write what has already been written? The answer to these questions? Write over them. The scars will always be there. You will always be put into a category. You will always feel the pain that comes with the hand you were dealt. We cannot change these things. We can not rewrite society. All we can do is, put our own stamp on what we know to be true. Like covering up a tattoo with another tattoo, the old markings leave lines underneath, but the new tattoo covers up enough for us to finally see what we truly are. What words we write for ourselves. I have a mental illness, this will never be erased from my story line. I will always be judged as a result. I will always have the scars that came from the darkest of my days. People will never fully understand. There will always be a blanket of stigma surrounding my existence. 

  Luckily, I can write over what is already there. I have the choice to go in another direction. I have a choice of what I need to do for myself. I can define my illness as something besides an illness. I can take out the hurtful words. I can take my story line, and veer off into another line. The whole thing is a tree. It starts at the roots, and follows into the solidity of the trunk. There are branches everywhere, go every way I can possibly imagine. I get to choose what each branch means. I get to carve into the wood. I can carve whatever I want into the branches of my life. The tree will keep growing tall, and out. Creating new branches on top of the others. Though some of these branches may have scars, the new ones are up to me. I have a choice. Will I stay under the dark in the roots, or will I travel upward, and grow higher and higher. Will I be the maker of my own fate? Whatever I want to be, now that my friends, is up to me.   

From the Dark to the Light

  It has been a year and five months since I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, and also since I started my wellness journey. I look back at pictures of myself when I was in the eye of the storm. I see how thin I got from medications, nausea, and not eating. I see the bags under my eyes from nights of hell, dreams of demons, and endless days in the psych ward. I see the girl who didn't even know what was coming, and the woman I am now wants to reach into those photos and comfort her, and warn her of what was to come. When one goes through such trauma, such suffering, one is bound to turn into someone else. I no longer feel like the girl in those photos. I have finally come into something new. Something with a positive and healthy future. I am starting to understand what I've gone through, and I am learning that I can, and have made it a positive thing. While we're hurting, we're growing, and we don't even know it. I didn't feel like I was growing at the time. I thought I was being destroyed, slowly withering away into the abyss of forgotten and tortured souls. And to tell the truth, I was. There was so much darkness, but somehow I came out onto the horizon and into the light. Some days I even thank God for my disease. It has grounded me, it has helped me come into a whole new world that I may not have gotten to experience, had life not brought such depths. I have learned how important it is to recognize the hardship of others. How important it is to help others. I can now better help those in need. I can even say that I completely understand some of them, since this disability is so common. I still have a ways to go. I will always be working on myself. I will always have this "mental difference". There are days that I'm not understood. There are days that I do not understand myself. Unfortunately, we cannot always spend our time in the light. There are times that we must also spend in the dark. But it is the light that I live for. It is the light that I thank God for. And it is the dark that I eventually come to appreciate. I will never stop learning on this journey. I will never stop growing, and I will never stop moving on. As long as I am moving forward, I know that life will provide me with what I need. I know that I have a future ahead, and whatever that may bring, who knows? That's the beauty of it, the beauty of suffering, the beauty of thriving, the beauty of all man kind. And so we go... 

 

Why I Love The Moon

    
    Recently, I have been taking a free class through NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness), and it is called Peer to Peer. So far I have been through two classes, and that has all I have needed to decide that I want to be an advocate and a public speaker for mental illness. I love the atmosphere so much, it empowers me to be around people my age, with brain illnesses just like mine, who have been through similar experiences. No one will ever know the power and feeling of ease that I felt tonight. I wish that they could. Because to explain something like that, is nearly impossible. Still, I try to explain these things for the benefit of others. I used to think that I had no future, nothing bright to look to. I suppose that's why I am so infatuated by the moon. Because it is bright, it is filled with wonder and possibility, and it is in the sky every night without fail. Something that I can always look to, no matter how dark my world may get. However, I am starting to find my own light. Something that gives me purpose, something that gives me something to look forward to. I used to think I was given this disease out of spite. But now I know, I was given this condition because God knew that I would recover, that I would see everything I've been through in the past year, and see it as an opportunity. This is my time to learn as much as I can learn. This is my time to prepare to educate the minds of others. Minds both young and old. The importance of talking about this issue is dire. And God knew that I could come through and educate as many minds as possible. I signed up tonight to speak at both schools, and large groups of adults. And one day I will be teaching the same class I am taking now. My whole life I have known that I have wanted to save lives, and telling my story, that is how I will save lives. I will raise and spread awareness, and help end the ongoing stigma. God knew; he knew that I was strong enough to live this life, and I feel so blessed that he chose me. I feel so blessed to be living this life.  

A Promise

     As time goes along, and as I continue to share my journey, one story at a time, I continue to get positive responses from friends, family, and then some people that I barely even know. I have even been thanked numerous times for being so open about my struggle. I wanted that encouragement and acknowledgment from people on the outside of it all. I wanted the recognition. I didn't get that at first, it has taken me a long time to get people to pay attention, and to respond. I can not say how wonderful it is to get a thank you from some random person, just for speaking up about something that needs to be spoken more often about. But I didn't just do this for me. I did it for the people who can't or do not want to speak up about their illness's. I feel it is my responsibility to educate as many people as possible, and to dissolve the stigma, one person at a time. This is my promise. I will never stop speaking up about mental illness. I will never stop baring my scars to the world, I will never feel ashamed for sharing too much. There will never be a time when I will not emotionally be there for the ones who suffer as I do, because I know the importance of awareness. Knowledge is power. We all have something to give to this world, mine is my promise. I promise to never stop speaking up, because I care about every single person on this planet with an illness. It doesn't matter if I don''t "know them" in person, because I know them in my heart. I know what they go through on a daily basis, how hard they work just to stay alive, or even just to function. But as always I must say, this life will not always be so hard. There will be the good years, there will be the bad years. That's the reality. But I will do my part, I feel an obligation to continue telling stories, explaining what it feels like, because those of you struggling with a mental illness, you are my brothers, and you are my sisters. We will prevail. We will continue to educate the ones who do not know. We will live lives worth living. We are beautiful, we are not an illness, we are human beings. Never stop telling your story, and never identify yourself as an illness. Keep talking. You never know who's life you will touch.