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.