Sense of Surreality

It seems to me the great debate is between a sense of entitlement versus a right to life. As if to say, it's okay to treat people like a slave as long as they don't know it. I had this epiphany while on yet another mini vacay. Which makes how many this year? Something important is changing in my life and my choices lie between mid-life crisis and crisis of faith. The only thing I can say for sure is that I am in crisis and have been for the last 365 days as far as I can tell. Not to harp on psyche doctors again, but I'm sick and tired of being put in a box, labeled bipolar and then told that only this medicine will work because they're the doctor and I'm the patient.

Being a mental patient has a lot of harsh half truths surrounding it. It's a business filled with making assumptions based on patient history. Apparently there's no proper way to study a brain while it is in use except going back to the basics. If you want to know someone's thoughts ask them. The problem I have with the way the system currently works is that it seems the right hand has no idea what the left hand is up to let alone doing. For example, Certified Nursing Assistants and Nurses have a better idea of what is going on with the patients instead of the Doctors. In modern times the contact ratio is left on the shoulders of if I'm being honest about the position, glorified janitors.

I'm of the school 'thank your nurses' when you're hospitalized because they tend to know way more than your doctors about how you're doing day to day. Your doctor has lots of patients and may not have the time to get to know you while at the same time he/she is trying to heal you. My problem is being pushed to take medicines that I know I've had a bad reaction with in the past. What pisses me off is when a doctor refuses to listen to me that a medicine doesn't really work for me. This can happen for a few reasons and the number one being bad information from my family or friends.

Not to just continue the previous post by harping on the medical industry again, but it's a business where you can feel like a slave instead of a human being. When I hate my job or let my hatred of I don't know, but let my actions be dictated until that's what I do and say then I'm miserable. In my humble opinion this is the nature of my mental illness. The things I hate become the Hater Hates in my head instead of the that which I love. They tend to extend the hatred into other areas of my life and they're a persistent buzz day to day.

I try to compartmentalize, shift things around and focus my energy on better endeavors. I try to ignore the negative voices that get so loud all I can do is scream and sing along with Heavy Metal lyrics that I know by heart. When I'm full blown manic I can't communicate on the most basic level human being to human being. IE I find it hard to open my mouth and just admit how I feel. What's going on? I don't always know. I get trapped inside my head with no way out except the life saving medications that I trust to unlock my mental prison. By the time I realize I'm in a hospital I'm usually able to help again, but it seems to me that the previous miscommunications keep the doctor at bay with the bad information.

Once I'm able to help in my treatment my mask is gone. All that I do to fit in, to consider myself sane I'm told was for not. I'm lost on the end of the sidewalk with a long walk back through the insanity. No matter how many times I call foul I'm still stuck in the molasses with no kayak and no paddle. I guess that's why there's the saying the proof is in the pudding. Well honey I feel stuck in the Jello Pudding pop and I'm pretty sure that's not a stick up my ass either.

Locked In To Keep Them Locked Out...

I don't know what a ministry of sound means to you. For me it is the subtle difference between being guided by sound versus light speed. Since being diagnosed bipolar I've learned that my eyes sometimes play tricks on me, but so do my ears. Have you ever felt like every pop song on the radio is suddenly speaking to you? I have and I'm grateful to my Higher Power for it. Music provides a direction, leading me with beats and lyrics. The curse is the reality but it is also a blessing in disguise.

I was in a unique position to be able to write a blog post while locked inside a mental hospital. I tried with beautiful failure to take advantage of the rare opportunity. The main things frowned upon while I'm living in a mental hospital are displays of anger, verbal & physical abuse, and sometimes just bouts of depression in general. I am encouraged to act normally and usually I have very little contact with the outside world so that I can focus on my health. Clearly in modern times these antiquated philosophies are falling away as new thought and new techniques are used when dealing with mental health. In other words as the human race evolves so does the approach to healing.

I grew up with Western medicine, doctors who think they're gods, especially psychiatrist and therapist. The thing that irritated me to no end is that the first portion of my hospitalization I was under the care of a man who refused to hear my voice and opinion no matter how loud I expressed myself. He declared my anger to be unfounded and a symptom that I was sick and only used the word of my now ex-roommate to determine that I needed to be civilly committed to the hospital. Another way of putting it, yet another asshole bent on dominating his patients instead of listening to them. Again no bedside manners but in addition to that he exhibited the worst kind of Dom behavior to and including forcing medication into my system that left me vulnerable to attack at night.

For me my creative, my Muse got locked up again while trying to have a little fun and help me and Simone out. I recognize now that I sometimes make a mountain out of a mole hill. I see the bigger picture with my tiny one story to tell side of the conversation. So here goes the reality check of living in a mental hospital for about 3 months. First my charges received at the end of 2015 are now working their way out. I've served 90 days of suspended driver's license and served 21 days in jail. I have new misdemeanor charges. Boo! I've returned to the status of homeless. Boo! I was living at the state hospital so I had a cot and 3 squares. It is what it is...

No I would not of picked a hospital to live in if I had a choice about where to house me. I feel like I've watched the world and decided it makes me cry. Like the Charm Farm song, 'the whole world is sick'. I think this is what Dave Chappelle meant when he ran away to Africa instead of signing a deal with Comedy Central for his show. I get some things, hate others and if I had a choice I wouldn't want to be in such a vulnerable position again.

I mean what is wrong with me? What did I do to earn this hell? The part that breaks my heart is to think that I'm alone in how I feel about my life. Every story I've ever heard that I took to heart and felt blessed about it not being my torment feels like a lie. It is almost impossible to face a new day with that as an option in my head. How do I wake up in such circumstances? Out of my hands for one. Divine path two. And something greater than little chicken me works even when I can't fathom how to be a part of it.

Now with the bulk of these issues in my rear view mirror I'm finally out of the hospital and getting back on my feet. I guess when I say I've been in the hospital some people think of mental hospitals as different from other types of hospital. Being sick is being sick and a lot of times I feel that some people just don't understand that feeling sick in the head can be just as bad if not more than being physically ill. Illness is illness and yes when I go on a mini vacay inside a hospital I'm trying to heal that which is considered broken not only by me but society. The only thing is, I disagree with the labels placed on me. I choose to view it as a time to get healthy, but if my doctor isn't working with me then how am I supposed to heal?

I've mentioned before that I really dislike psychiatrist who won't bother to listen to me about my experience with my mental condition. They pop me into a bipolar box and put me on the medicine they think will get me back to 'normal'. It is frustrating especially when I already know I didn't have success with a particular medicine, the opposite in fact. Then as was the case with one of the doctors I faced on this trip inside yet another hospital this year, he simply couldn't figure out why I was so resistant to the medicines even though my blood work told him I was at therapeutic levels.

I've learned to live slightly above what he considers normal. He decided not to hear me. He also choose to listen to other people tell him who I was instead of letting me do it. I'm an authority on Stephanie Monique only. I can't say what it is like to be diagnosed bipolar for anyone else. If they find my story similar to their own journey with it, then yeah, this blog is doing it's job. Not to dismiss my doctor's education as a whole but I'm the one who has lived in my skin and adjusted to how my mind works over the last 19 years. I'm sad to say he was nothing more than an annoying man in my path to healing. I hate that what I've learned this year is that my none medicine way of viewing my health is coming to an end. I see the benefits outweigh the struggle of doing it on my own. It's help that my body is now shouting please and thank you for it.

What pisses me off most is that despite my resolve to take my medicine as prescribed I've taken numerous trips into the hospital this year. In other words bipolar has been kicking my ass instead of me controlling my condition. I opened the door to my spiritual side and found myself having not only a mid-life crisis but a crisis of faith as well. Trusting my Higher Power is a given, but what I hated learning more was that I have miscommunication issues with my Higher Power. It has humbled me to the point where I'm learning the hard-headed way to ask for more help, swallow my pride and accept help when offered as well.

DOD: Dear Old Dad/Date Of Death

 ***This is the journaling I did when my bio-dad died...These writings were during the month of December 2011. At the time I barely had a job, I was in the aftermath of a failed bankruptcy, days away from foreclosure on my townhouse and living with a God blessing of a friend in her spare bedroom.

 

“I'm water I will flow. This is the way I will go. When you do it you will know that I am water I will flow.”

~Stephanie Monique

I've been basically saying that since I arrived in Michigan at 11:35 pm November 30th, 2011. I received a phone call from my stepmother, earlier one evening. She told me that my father was in the hospital. That he was bleeding from his colon (she used greater detail but that's the gist of what she had to say to me) and then she asked me what I thought, or to say something and the only thing I could do and the only thing I had to say was I cried and then asked her if she would send me the money to get up to Michigan. 

For pretty much the week prior to this phone call I'd been processing forgiving my father. I thought the time had come to do so. To the best of my knowledge he'd quit drinking, and I'd started to open the lines of communication between us. See, when I had my last full blown manic episode or rather right before it, I finally got to a point where I had an understanding that I could no longer carry on conversations with my father while he was drinking.

Our relationship was toxic. Each conversation turned into an epic battle, and the wounds on my psyche were too great to continue. He felt like I was doing it because I was trying to punish him in some way. But for me, it was healthier. I carried a lot of anger about his drinking into that manic episode and it manifested into a full blown wish for him to die. 

I said it and I wrote it in an email to my boss. And I was embarrassed and basically humiliated by how much I exposed and spilled that anger out through action and words during that manic episode. Part of the reason I continued my decision to stop talking to my father after my episode had passed was that embarrassment, but mostly because our conversations were so fucking dysfunctional while he was drinking and my action during mania made me realize that it was just painful to continue.

So over the last 4 years our conversations have been 3rd party. And that worked for me. I was able to get to a place where I understood I loved him, but I just really didn't like him very much especially when he was drinking. 

When he had surgery earlier this year in February he called me, at the time I was still firm in my decision. We spoke. He wasn't drinking according to the rules I'd set out for our relationship. We talked until I could no longer agree to disagree with him. It became painful once again. He'd always credited me with being his Superior daughter, while calling himself my inferior dad. I felt inferior anyway. He reminded me of the time we spoke where I'd told him, he was the most functional alcoholic I knew. I've come to realize now this was not true for me, my mother's way was less harmful to others. He took it as a compliment. I'd called him an alcoholic.

So In August of this year just before my cousin got married he called me. I was firm once again about my decision and had to hang up on him when he told me he'd been drinking. He said he quit shortly after that conversation, and so by the time he came for the wedding I agreed to go to dinner. Some things were said during dinner, I can't be specific, and I took a mature approach and let the comments pass. I've had a few conversations and what not, over the last few months. And that brings us up to date. 

So yesterday we had a conversation about forgiveness. And that was a very good thing. And tonight he passed away. Now, how do I feel? I am numb. I need to let go of my anger. I need to be water and flow. And go and this is what I know.I don't know...we've got lots of ice cream and junk food so comfort food is here...but I'm nausea and not crying...and bouncing between being very angry and a need to let it go...I got to have a forgiveness conversation with him the day before so that's a good thing...but mostly and honestly, we had a dysfunctional relationship...He was an alcoholic, and his drinking killed him...How am I supposed to feel?

Does anybody need a 5 day long funeral? Grrrr...These things are not me...I am not these things...Oh well...I wanna write...Need to write...Wish I had something more to say than more of the same old same old small amounts of dribble, droplets of water falling from my mind...

I don't feel inspired like my head being dunked in the undertow of life...Then again, I'm just doing and being me...Oh well...Beginning, Middle...End...Circle, around and round...Over, under, up, down, side to side... Burning pain, released and flowing in and out of my thoughts like the path of a river, moving forward, moving down, my life is utter chaos and calm...Is it bad that I felt the need to sing the 'Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye' song at my father's grave?

 5 days. I remained calm. I took every compliment with gracious passive calm. I did not contradict one person when they said something glowing in reference to this man. I was Gandhi like in my lack of anger, and so fucking calm. But I am churning waters today.That was the calm before the storm. And the storm has started to rage. The sky has darken to the point of midnight black, when it should have been clear and sunny outside.

I'm a tornado building to the point of destruction, and unfortunately, the place where this anger should go, what deserves the brunt of it, is either me or him. And he's dead so what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Painful...Toxic...Emotional battlefield...From my cradle to his grave he hurt me more than any other person who has ever walked the earth. Why? Because I did love him. You can only hurt people you love If you didn't love them why bother right? He was a shitty father. Sperm donor. If I'd cut off the emotional part of me, if I'd been able to cut him out of my life, which I did to some degree, he wouldn't be able to hurt me anymore. That was the theory anyway. I thought I had. I really believed that, because I wasn't grieving the loss of him in my life. I swore I wouldn't. Although my stepmother was nothing more than the knife he used, he managed to cut me from the grave.

He wrote me out of his will. It's not the fact that he left me nothing. It's that he once promised me he never would. He said that he'd always love me. To a man who truly believed money was everything, and a way to show his love of a person, well it's tantamount to tipping a waitress a penny. I'm the waitress in the metaphor I thought he would change his will so that what he would leave me would be distributed by my Step-Mother to me as needed, but that he would provide for me. And that is basically what she said she would do in a round about non-compassionate way. Because of that promise he made to me though, even while we were fighting at the time, his breaking that promise is what hurt the most. 

It basically was another way of his saying to me, "I don't love you. I never did. I don't care what happens to you after I'm dead. "I've been asked to remember the good times/memories of this man. Our relationship was filled with so much pain, and anger, I still haven't come up with one example of a really good memory of the man. Tonight I thought of one. The first time I was arrested after being diagnosed bipolar, I sat in jail for less than 2 hours and then bailed myself out cuz I had my debit card on me, and $100.00 in my account, which is what I needed to post my bail.

My father after I'd been in a mental hospital handed me a check for $100.00 and told me he'd made the situation go away. I owed a thank you to the judge a friend or golfing buddy of his, as he was known to say from time to time, it's all about who you know and he knew lots of important people.

There's one extremely good thing about him not leaving me a penny, I still have no assets. I can now file chapter 7, and afford to do so, and start to rebuild my credit in 7 years or so. All of my financial nightmare up to this point will be wiped clean. In a round about way, it's much better that he didn't leave me anything.

It's the good of this, as painful as it was to hear and process. It was even a smart thing to do on his end, because I was in a major ass hole. Whether he realized this or not, it was fated. Divine design. And I can breathe and flow once again like the water running down the river. Only took 24 hours to get there, not bad. I have a chance to start over, finally.

*****

Today, over 4 years later: Okay so this is something I wrote when my bio dad died. I suppose each manic episode revisits some portion of my life which is basically my head trying to make sense of an event. I think my most recent episode covered them all. It started over the summer last year and after a hospital visit I just let myself continue through the mania, while my body-sharing twin finished writing Forced to Change. I needed the mania or whatever it is that allows me to tap into my creative side, I guess I would label that my higher power these days. 

It's scary if I'm not in a safe place and for the first time in a long time I felt safe enough to explore it all. The good the bad, I made connections throughout my life that only being bipolar could show me. It's the way my mind works. Am I grateful for this gift/curse? Some days. That is until I'm sitting in a jail cell trying to figure out, not where I went wrong, but what is wrong. I did that from 11/21 until 12/15 ish of last year. Now for the new stuff.

I time traveled. Through my entire life. It took years. That's the way my brain processed the events. I was in jail for not 3 weeks, but years, eons. Everyone I knew was a fiction. The people who approached me in jail, pieces of the puzzle. The cosmic puzzle. The grand design. 

Goddess once again, made me significant and nothing more than another prong in the grand plan. But that's my divine path. I needed to process the world once again. Only problem is, I'm one person. This is my perspective. There's nothing I can do about it. I cannot change the facts of me. So once I realized all this, even the events that lead up to my being arrested and housed in a jail cell for 3 weeks made sense, and not booked but actually lost in the Lane County system, well there was nothing else to do but wait. 

The problem? My brain didn't shut down. It continued to process until the only option I wanted was death. Stay awake for over a week and let me know how you feel. The advantage to being in jail, I couldn't commit suicide. So I accepted this fate in which I processed not only my own timeline but the timelines of every story I'd ever heard about another human being. 

I had eons to get it done and my mind traveled back to the beginning of time. It traveled forward in time but I really couldn't see that for what it was, like it was at the edge of my vision and if I caught sight of that particular truth I would die. So I turned a blind eye to what was really there. 

All of the time travel perspective was reality for me, but a doctor would label it a visual and auditory hallucinations. Delusional thinking. Fiction. So Simone took control. She outlined a few books and was child-like in voice. It could take the rest of my life to write, edit, rewrite and publish the stories she told me while I sat in the in-between of my own life and death. I had nothing else to do but think. My mind the only thing not sitting in a prison. A real one for once. So it traveled and decided that I’m a storyteller, a bipolar human being, a smoker, a food lover, a roommate, a friend, a single black woman and on and on and on.
 

Dreams vs. Reality vs. Fantasy: Defining My Boundary Lines

I was listening to The Eminem Show when this blog post’s inspiration hit me. So if you’re a fan of Mr. Marshall Mathers you are aware that his body of artwork is extensive and includes songs like Stan, The Way I Am, Square Dance, and at the time of this writing I was enjoying Superman. His music is go-to tickle juice for my Muse and for my writing. This post is going to speak to how I use music to write and  give a glimpse inside my art making  process.

First, I have a lot of tools in my writing toolbox. My favorite is what society defines as a Bipolar mindset. The problems with this way of thinking are that Bipolar Condition (Mental Illness) can either be considered a blessing or a punishment/curse from my Higher Power. I also have the bad habit of smoking, cigarettes for the most part and marijuana. Weed and my psych meds disagree, so at the moment no green smoky treats for moi. I use other fiction writing authors and self-help books on obtaining better mental health as the majority of my current reading materials. And of course there is Coffee & Music, the other addictions I claim.

What my latest manic episode has taught me is that I have to do some pre-planning to tap into the gift from the universe that being bipolar allows for my life. If not, I get off schedule, out of sync with the world as a whole. Time becomes a fictional concept in my world. I believe anyone can do this just lose track of a clock. Unplug the ones in your room. Want to travel back in time? Remember any event from your past. Want to connect with Father Time again? Check the current time/date. There you go, how I mentally time travel. Most people I know just go to sleep to dream or label this daydreaming/fantasizing.

If you’ll remember from the following post I once upon a time in my life met with the band Type-O-Negative. Reality says, they have met a lot of fans over the years and couldn't possibly keep track of them all. In my mind they remember meeting me. It was that special of an event to me that if they don’t recall our real world encounter, well, my ego would hurt a bit. It is a great story that I still share today (tweaked as needed for the audience).

That’s thing about meeting a bonafide celebrity face to face. I’m a long time fangirl and I’m shy when these chance meetings occur. I can claim a semi-famous woman as a long time fellow artist. We were roommates in my late 20s and speak via the phone regularly. So I pimp, er, yeah PIMP my buddies as part of the ‘good to know ya package’ that comes with our friendship. Check her out, Jennie Breeden, creator of the webcomic The Devil’s Panties. I also know Mr. Jaz McKay, the long time power voice of 1560am KNZR. As my personal Howard Stern to my Robin Quivers, our viewpoints often agree to disagree which is what I admire most about him.

That brings me back to listening to Slim Shady. I’ve never actually met Eminem other than listening to his music. For me listening to someone I admire as much as I do, well, I hear something personal in their lyrics. The song Stan suggests for Eminem having and interacting with fans can be hard and taken personally. I hear a love letter meant for me when listening to most of his music. I feel special, connected, can relate, despite the fact that the real world has proven Marshall Mathers creates his art about the people in his life. Reality: he has no idea who I am; he’s never heard of Stephanie Monique, I’m “not even on his radar”. That is the beauty of great artwork for me. I can find something in it to inspire me. It speaks to me on a soul level. The song becomes a serenade of Goddess’s will working in my life.

This is what I love about letting that which I treasure be my religion. I gain something unique and meant for me by listening to music, watching TV, reading books, enjoying the artwork of others. I imagine that this is something everyone else could experience as well. When pain is something I need to tap into to create, my musical playlist changes. Personally, it is my challenge to remember to do as Depeche Mode suggests and take a walk in someone else’s shoes. Doing this helps to ignite my creative, setting my imagination on fire. Then I work to channel that into my own  artwork which I share with the world in blog form at the moment. One day soon I hope to share with an actual physical product, um, er, uh like a published book or two...

In the meantime I use writing as therapy and a way to help me do that tough, often daunting self-work necessary to keep it moving forward. I check the clock and connect back into this big beautiful world around me. I share my writing with the hopes that anyone dealing with directly and/or indirectly with the same and/or similar issues gains some insight that helps them to deal with their own challenges.

This is not to say that I am perfect, I freely admit I make mistakes. I also prefer to say I have no regrets. Uh, you went to jail for 3 weeks last year isn’t that a regret? Nope, mistakes I made played out in yet another weird way for my life. I’m not a celebrity yet, so I don’t have to worry about the whole planet knowing what I do. I do care about what the people in my life circle, my friends, family and community, think about my actions. I can say this because I trust that the reason for my recent incarceration was necessary for my life.

Through a belief in a Higher Power, I’ve gained this knowledge by living each day. Also I have a willingness to face the next one. There is a life lesson to be learned in how these events will play out. At this time, I’m cursing my Goddess out and doing a lot of self-care while I wait and see the results. I’m once again turning this Bipolar Experience into a blessing instead of letting it be a punishment for the crimes I committed. I'm facing a judge without the aid of a Johnnie Cochran. Remember my black ass is broke, poor, so I've got to leave my fate in the hands of a public defender. My lawyer is doing her best which is all I can ask of her. I thank Goddess daily that I’ve learned to take something potentially painful in my life and remove the power it has over me.

When Conversations With Tweety Bird Become Too Real

Differences make me well different, unique. A quick and easy explanation of this fact of my reality is I live with a white male who happens to claim being a republican. I myself cannot hide the fact that I am a black, female (most days bitchy), and bipolar. I can hide but choose not to hide the fact that I am a bastard (my parents never married). A lot of my personal labels happen to start with the letter ‘B’. This is significant to me because duality plays a powerful role in my life and the letter ‘B’ is the second letter of the alphabet.

Things associated with being black are poverty, the ‘N’ word, slavery, chicken, spicy foods, well this list is long. Most are just stereotypes that I personally try to disprove as a personal challenge. For the sake of my household and this blog I’ll do my comparison of American culture between myself and my roommate. Basically my roommate and I get along for the same reason my mother and I got along. We debate instead of fight for the most part.

Normally this is great for me and works for him, until Bipolar took over my life for the last six months or so. I spent some of this time in a mental hospital by choice as I realized I was approaching mania (an episode). I truly believed that I could prevent a full blown manic episode. As usual, that was not reality for myself or the people in my life circle.

My current living situation made this particular manic episode unique and better for the most part though. Once again I got a lot of insight into who Stephanie Monique is as a person, a good person for the most part. Though as having manic episodes proved once again, there was another step to learn. I’m not always as honest with myself as I’d like to be.

The dividing line between reality, my thinking, and the way I interpreted the events are my own perspective. When I let myself compare reality with the other people in my life like my roommate, I’m disappointed to learn I did not practice the actions I truly believed I was performing at that time. I’m surprised at their answers to my questions of what did I do? What did I say? I’m humiliated and left feeling exposed and vulnerable by their responses to what I believe happened. It is always different from what I thought.

My most recent full blown manic episode didn’t end until I’d spent 3 weeks in jail, November 21, 2015 until December 10, 2015. A question was posed by what I consider to be a very good friend. “Could she have done anything to prevent me from going to jail?” I’m sitting on this question for the moment, but I’ll revisit it during this writing session. As I said the episode started about six months ago.

At the start of this particular episode I finally addressed some of my bigger issues that I’d been ignoring like finishing the rewrites for Forced to Change. My fiction writer is Simone Lisbon. So I’ll shove off the creative writer aspect of my personality to Simone. She has a few blog posts to write and books to work on. For me, Stephanie Monique the biggest advantage gained by accepting my diagnosis of bipolar is when my brain does tap into the creative, my Muse is unlocked and I find myself productive with writing in general. Simone is fueled with her endeavors to write and receives a great deal of inspiration. I’ve spent the time trying to separate these two thinking patterns of my brain as they relate to me.

The mental condition of bipolar (another duality in my life) is documented among creative types of personalities. Jim Carey, Robin Williams, Carrie Fisher, Linda Hamilton, Edgar Allen Poe, Patty Duke, etc. I personally write from two different directions. I use the phrase ‘creative editing’ to explain away basically what I consider lying, so that Stephanie Monique explains my non-fiction side while Simone Lisbon tells the fictional version. I use both blogs to tell as much of the life side (my real life as I remember it) versions of my personal truth.

Armed with what I learned about myself and how bipolar plays a role in my life, I have to answer ‘No’ to my friend’s question. There was nothing she could have done to prevent my incarceration in the Lane County Jail system. It was meant to be. I trust my faith in my Higher Power that I experience what I do for a reason. I just don’t always get to know why Goddess thinks it is necessary at the time.

This is not a self-defeating behavior I can control. It’s the part of ‘mania’ that I did everything in my power to control and failed. My roommate did everything in his power to help me and he also failed. I was destine to go to jail. I passed go at over 100 miles an hour, I did not collect 200 dollars but instead incurred over 2,000 dollars worth of charges along with the status of felon on my record.

So despite my higher education at Michigan State University or the myriad of jobs that makes for a stellar work history I am once again, a bad applicant when it comes to traditional job hunting. No one or thing could have prevented it. The irony is that I learned two minutes made all the difference according to my roommate. He’d set in motion the events that would have landed my sweet black ass back in a mental hospital instead of a jail cell, but because I drove away from the house two minutes prior to his help arriving at our home I went to jail instead.

These events have yet to finish playing out. I have new charges to face, the state of Oregon has a record of my actions, and there is a judge in my future who will determine the results. My diagnosis is Bipolar and yes, I took my medication as prescribed, but because I eventually stopped sleeping and was unable to express the problem, I drove away from the house where I was living two minutes before I could be taken into custody by mental health providers.

I can say what happened next except my lawyer suggests that I don’t for the moment as she works on providing my mental illness condition as a line of defense in my pending case. It doesn’t really matter what I have to say now. My brain was thinking one thing while my body was doing another. Am I responsible for what happened next? Sure. I can say with hindsight what two minutes could have done to change what happened next. The problem is none of it matters right now. Hopefully it will matter tomorrow or at least by the time I’m headed into court to face it in my current reality.