A North West View

So how do you get to the point where the wheels are flying off the your manic high, especially when you are supposedly supposed to be educated on your disorder.  For me that is at once a complicated and in ways a simple question.  It is complicated because there are so many warning signs to be missed or to be shoved under the rug, and yet so simple because it is rooted in the fact that your brain is saying that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about, when in fact if you value your mental stability and balance, like I do, there is very much to be worried about.  This is not just so abstract question that I ponder in my mind like an artifact displayed in a case at a museum, it is something that is a very real part of my life and something that I am living through at this very moment. 

As someone with a mental illness that is various levels of out, depending on the platform and situation.  for example on This blog, YouTube, and Tumblr I am fully out about my bipolar. On Google+ and Twitter I am sorta out, as I will post articles and things about it.  Then we come to Facebook, work and most of my social life where I am not out about it at all.  In those realms people have a general idea that I have some sort of mental issue simply because they know me and have seen some examples of it, but don't know what it is, or how serious it is.  In a lot of those areas of my life there are people that say things that really annoy the heck out of me as someone that has a mental illness, then there are things that just the general public say too. So in this blog post I thought that I would share some of those things.

I know it has been a while since my last post, I have been doing OK, in a bit of a rut but not bad. So once again I have really been struggling lately with taking my medications, (how ever I have been strictly adhering to them) and wanting to be off of them for a number of reasons. I have once again had somethings come across my desk so to speak that have again stocked my mistrust of medication and psychiatry at large

As if there where not enough reasons to dislike and not trust Fox New with their lies and sensationalism, here is another glaring example, and this one dose not involve politics, or anything about a person that is something that they have made a choice about.  No this one is about something that people have no say in whether it exist as part of them selves or not, it is about mental illness, and like is typical of Fox News it is shoddy "commentating" that fails to get all the facts behind it, in order to paint a sensationalist even fear inducing talking point.  In this case it falsely reinforces many stigmas that people with mental illness have to deal with in daily life and that keep meany from seeking the help that they need, or when they get it disbelieving that the problem is real.  They are lies that make people that already have a challenging road to walk feel all that much more ashamed, isolated and like social outcast and pariahs.  To be fair this is some...

Time ticks by slowly inevitably moving closer and closer to the time of death. As clouds build up in the sky, first on the horizon then encroaching ever closer and closer, until all of the heavens are blotted out behind their threatening dark masses, waiting to open up and flood the earth below. Until everything that is and everything that was is washed away and all the is left is nothingness.

I am getting sick and tired of having to tire myself to the tether of pills, to have to take pills every day, pills that deaden my emotions.  That take some of the vividness out of the world and the power of my emotions away. Even if the vividness might be on the darker side, anything is better then feeling numb and lifeless inside.  To feel like you have been mummified and are just making the motions to move through the day, to be like a spectator to your own life. Instead I have been recently left with the desire to brake those bonds to no longer have to be tethered to such things, to instead be normal, to no longer have to take pills. To no longer have to deal with side affects like feeling sort of sedated to have my mind and my thoughts slowed down to no longer have to feel slow and dimwitted. To not have to deal with my mind freezing up at times and being left looking like a fool as you stand there in the middle of ex...

I would like to start off by saying that I know with every fiber of my being that God is a part of my life and that he has never left my side and that he never will, of that I have no doubt. I however wonder though what I have done to diserve to be made to be be gay, and that no amount of praying has or ever will change that.  Leaving me to admit deffet and giving up on that change.  A song played over the radio at work the other day, that reminded me of the time in my life when I finaly had to admit failure on my part on being able to change that part of me.  To have to admit that I was not good enough to change that part of me.  That no matter how much I tired and I prayed that I was just not good enogh to be able to change that.  I often wounder what I did and what I have done to doserve to be made gay. Then there is being made to be bipolar, what did I do to deserve this? To diserve to have a surious mental ilness that requires me to take medication for th...

As some of you may or may not know May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as such I thought I would write a blog post to try and help do my part to help raise awareness, and end the stigma of mental illness.  I also hope to show provide some hope in the process.  As many of you already know I have a mental illness, and that is Bipolar Disorder, which I was diagnosed with only relatively recently, about a year ago, although I have had it for a nice chunk of my life.  It is something that while I am still just in the beginning stages of starting to understand and control, I don't feel that it is something that I should have to be ashamed of or have to worry about others finding out about it.  unfortunately though there is quite a large amount of stigma that surrounds mental illness especially "serious mental illness", which they are for those that suffer from them (and those close to them as well)  unfortunately  though it also makes it sound scarier t...

So there was a new story that involved a school disciplined a child, but that is not what the point of the post it, it is about one statement that has been bugging me in the back of my mind for two days. And has me wanting to write a post to get my opinion in when ti comes to mental illness/health,  it is the fact that the mother instead of trying to turn the moment and the assumption it brought her son too, she decided to hold a press conference about it. During which she said"had been traumatized" ...  "being a impressionable kid who watches TV he sees padded rooms thinks crazy people go in padded room so when you place him in a padded room you think he is crazy"   What got under my skin is for one thing is did not even try to work with her child to turn it into a teachable moment that "Crazy" people do not need to be put into padded rooms,

I want to share with you one of the things that has the power to make my bouts of depression even worse, which would seem funny as being depressed is not very fun at all as it is.  Now I am not trying to say that I'm horribly depressed right now but I am seeing the clear signs that what has been just a low mode is starting to pick up speed and head down the familiar slope of slipping into a depression.  Now the speed with which

I have been wondering lately about what increasing seems to be an intertwined relationship between so many of the issues that I have and the things that cause me to have such a hatred towards my self, that I now wounder if they might has some intertwined and related cause/root that lies beneath them.  I am beginning to wounder if I might not have uncovered a clue to them in the combination of my different blog post and even more so in the recent journaling that I have taken up doing, especially considering that I conjunction with that I have been starting to allow my self to actually feel and experience my emotions and at the same time start to question why it is that I am experiencing them, and quite often it seems to be surfacing that like I have been away in the past the ways that I feel towards my self are not necessarily on the logical side, especially when compared to the way that I feel towards others for the same things. Yet I am not at all sure if this theory is ...

This is going to just a quickie blog, and I'm going to start it off with a question I have been toying with the idea of doing a blog entry every day for a month, possibly next month, and would like to know what you my readers think. Would you like to see me post something every day weather it be a long blog or a short little reflection?

As has been floating around the blogosphere (more in depth here and here ) and news yet another gay teen has tragically taken their own life.  One could easily spend pages and pages condemning those who bullied and ostracized him, the teachers, principals and school that did nothing to stop it, the pollutions and social opinion makers who spew such toxic anti gay filth from their mouths on an almost daily basses, and how they have the blood of his death and deaths of many more before on their hands.  Yet no matter how true that is those that are easiest to blame and those that hold so much responsibility are also the ones that don't give a damn ether, yes they may fain dismay, shock or regret for a few moments but then before one can even blink their eyes they will be back to their despicable ways.  Yet this tragic loss also brings to light so much more nastiness, nastiness that is if not even more despicable at least as despicable as that which lead up to this...

So I'm being faced with the fact and starting to be forced with trying to truly change the fact that in my life and my view of my self I have many many ideas and ideals about how I should be that totally conflict with the reality of what I am how I am, and what actually makes me happy.  One of the biggest ones that also seems to be particularly hard to deal with is my negative views of my self when it comes to my sexuality, the way that I can and my natural manorisms. It is something that almost totally conflicts and is something that seems to be so deeply ingrained and no matter how much when it is looked at in a logical way somehow the assumptions and unattainable ideals still seem so right and like to see things other wise is some how simply just wrong. Then add to the fact that I don't understand why I feel this way and see things in this way which should not matter when it comes to the fact that t...

 Health and being healthy is not always as simple as it would seem and is not always something that you can see and tell simply by looking at some one else, their is one big aspect of health that often can't easily be seen just by looking at some one and that the only way to actually know about is for them to open up to you and tell you how they are doing, and honestly tell you if anything is wrong.  That is mental health, a subject that even though much effort has been put into trying to destigmatize and is something that still has very negative stigmas attached to much of it and that it is still often quite culturally acceptable to portray in very negative lights and stereotypes.   It is the kind of health that can and is often struggle with in the dark, and where having an issue or even an "disorder" is something that still carries a heavy negative weight with it our culture.  It is also something that even if one is willing to admit that their might be somet...

I know that one way to define crazy is to do the same things over and over again and expect a different out come, and I also know that to an extent that is exactly what I am contemplating as an option when it comes to how to deal with, handling my disorder.  I know that not taking medications leads me to keep on cycling and that doing so could very well possibly land me ether back in a hospital or worse dead from my own doing.  Yet I am still wondering if I should do medications or if I should forgo them against what seems to be a face of most recommended medical advice, and research for that matter.

Like I said I was probably going to do I am going to be spending some time doing, I am going to be talking more about the recent events in my personal life as well as some other issues that I am facing and choices and all that other good stuff that I am going to be having to make and things that I am going to actually have to come to terms with.  To save some time and to avoid needlessly repairing things I will simply drop a link to the last pos t so that those who have missed it can get caught up, and so that I can pick up right where I want to start anyway, I would also like to direct you to a post from Bryan at Gay Family Values  which after reading his brilliantly written post has inspired me to open up some more and to share more as well. 

I have come to the realization is that I have to come clean not only with my self, but with others, and that I let this out into the open.  I need to do this, not only so that it is not hanging over my head, even in an outlet where I have been the most able to freely talk about all aspects of my life, but so that I can start to remove some of the shame from the other more closed off areas of my public life.  Hopefully by doing so this should allow me to take some of the fear that this will be discovered which has also been keeping me from finding out more about what this really means and how to make things better for my self.

It has been a while since I have posted a blog, and there are several things that I would like to talk about in today's blog. Recently there has been this issue of "straight pride" T Shirts which I think Bryan did a great job writing on in his blog Gay Family Values , and I recommend that every one go read his post, as I'm going to be straight on quite a tangent that it and the comments got going in my head.   That tangent has to do with the roll that relationships play in our lives. (any one's lives)

Again just letting you all know that I have not disappeared, but things for me are not going well right now. I am basically going from one emotional extreme to the other very rapidly lately especially even more so over the last couple of days including today.  The last few hours have been the worst as I have been stuck in one of my oh so FUN FUN mixed happy depressed states.  I don't know when I will be posting anything of substance, but I will try to keep you informed. But at the moment all I want is to actually be a normal functional person, but unfortunately that seems to much to ask of the powers that be, as they seem to want me to curse me with an being in an emotional out of control state where I go crashing from moment to moment at the drop of a hat form one extreme to another with good amounts of rage thrown in for good measure.