a new day

my sitting and pining seems to spark mainly a flame in my soul which yearns, with each open breath to speak to you and tell you all that I've discovered in just a few days of looking. Looking where? Into my own thoughts, and beliefs, and motives, and behaviors, to see why my life has fallen short of what I want it to be; why I am so hurt, so scared, so lonely, and so confused. Because I pray and I ask to be shown what I can actually do here, right now, to make any sort of anything better. Don't we all come to that moment at times? That moment when I know I have no idea which way to turn, but I know I gotta turn some way, and it feels like the scene of an old movie as i sit at the fork of a dusty dirt road.

my relationship with God has been my only ever peace and resolution in times of absolute doubt. and yet, over and over again I find that it is so hard to trust God. Perhaps about as hard as trusting anyone here as well. But I fight and I cry and I whine when my life doesn't work out the way I want it to... all the while forgetting that I believe in a world where God always provides. I just forget to ask. often.

but, i believe in this world where happiness is a perception deal, and my faith can change my world because it has been my experience in life. i have seen miraculous things I could seldom admit in front of a croud of people, and it is not my place to debate the origin of such miracles. I know it in my heart.
but what's most amazing is that every single time I can turn my heart and my thoughts and my attention to what I can give and do and be - rather than what I need, or did, or can't have - then I am on my way to freedom.

cause i'm starting to realize that my un-checked selfish desires (ooohhh, banan splits, fancy clothes, and love!) might be the biggest reason why I begin to think that my life has fallen short of what I wanted...
which happens sometimes, you know?

there is no need for me to complain. i have everything i need, and whole ton of stuff I want. i am loved and taken care of in every way by myself and my loved ones. no matter what today brings, i hope i can remember just how very grateful i am for every person, every moment, and for the chance to start over at any time of my day or night, to say a quiet prayer and let my mind change.

Almost a month

It's been almost a month since I've set my intentions on writing here, in this digital space where maybe 10-50 people will hear my words spoken within the reiteration of their own mind's reading. Subject to interpretation, of course. But one month, almost, it has been, and today I remembered that I want to write here everyday most importantly for the reason that the release keeps me sane. In this last month, as like always, I have tempered my moods, calming and heightening my affect to suit the likes of the people around me. But for some reason, today, I am more resolved in my heart, and quick in my middle-finger muscle memory. I want to write because I want to live, and that desire doesn't always come so easliy or genuinely to a bipolar chic like me. But today?

Today I am sitting in the midst of my own broken heart. A dream I had just yesterday seems suddenly to be unreal. The person for whom my heart yearns decided to walk away, and I am still here. Living today despite the horrible possibility that the only script I'd ever written concerning love, is turning in to a bigger flop than any J Lo theatrical disaster. So I sit, and I cry, and I cry, and I cry, and I tell myself one hundred thousand times to stop thinking whatever it is I happen to be thinking at that moment which is most abundantly along the lines of self-hating, pessimistic, hateful, pitiful, and martyrdom. That's just how I roll.

See, the deal with being bipolar is that most often my thoughts and my emotions are guided by forces and chemicals outside of my control, and often outside of my awareness. I do not know that I am abnormal; frequently the only barometer for my whackyness will be the looks and attitudes of the people around me as I blow through conversations like a hurricane, or melt into emotional mush on their feet. In fact, not until I have begun to silently implode on my bathroom floor in a pool of my own thoughts and fears do I start to catch the idea that I'm suffering from something that I just don't understand.

Maybe this is why my heart is broken.

.perception.

Relief comes in moments, on days, not always,
when the world's overcompensating pain seems dull and relentless...ly, I see
that the moments of ease came sparing and clean
with the staff-driven truth and the long white hair
always there
but only then that I felt, in repose, I suppose,
an ounce of relief.
But when my id, my ego, my self upon self says, to me, in a heated, heartfelt stutter:

"I ddiiddiiiddn't know....."

Then I know.

I know that this hole in my heart and this part in my soul
seem to be all I remember in the heat of my throws.
Times of peace or ease that sate
are those times of grit and grimace, and faith.
Much of the rest sits massively in wait
like a tumor webbed through synapse
...or a dog. at the gate.

-On 27-

This is that place you may have passed one time at 45MPH...

 

 

You know how when your family has that place out of town that you travel to frequently and you feel like you know the trip so well you could see it driving with your eyes closed? That's how I feel about Hwy 27. I've headed either North or South on 27 most everyday of my life, I guess. And this little spot is so amazingly cool, you know, if you're in to delapidated structures and all. (Which I am, so... YAY.) This building sits at the junction of 27 and 19, the Florida-Georgia Parkway. I love flashing through those blinking caution lights all the way down the state wondering, "Do people really live here in... Two Egg!?" Well, I'm sure they do. But I digress.

 

And so stands, wearily, on the edge of rememberance, this old store-front. I stopped here with my love while passing through recently to snoop for secrets, and wonder what happened, and wander the scene. There were bluberry bushes around back...

 

I like the way my belly feels when I peer into windows not knowing what I might find. 'Cause, really, how often do you find underbrush growing within a building? I like the way my mind and my eyes search every old shelf, dusty corner, for some sign of previous life. All the while I remember my previous life, and that not-so-old house that was left much in the same way this one must have looked when I fled those years ago. Sometimes the darkness in others and within ourselves is more subtle than dusk falling second by second. Sometimes the best thing to do is run...



 

Standing in this time warp, I contemplated what seemed like my entire existence in a matter of 3 minutes. I see metaphors in most everything, and this building was no exception. What ever destroyed it is gone now, and the new growth within its unnatural walls tout a feral conformity to new laws of life. It is like me. Those who have done their part to belittle and invalidate me are no longer around, and the new life I've been given resembles my old purpose but a little. I have been formed and reformed by the elements surrounding me, and the most basic and truest form of myself is still here.....life has just peeled back a few layers to give me a better view of the sky ;)

I prefer to 'endure' rather than to 'suffer'

This shiii is crazy. Or maybe I am?

Perhaps I could tell you that I am a recovering alcoholic of the manic depressive type with a ton on my mind and a laptop at my fingers. There exists a medical chart roughly 52mm thick in some office somewhere that probably paints a pretty rough picture of my personality...though I think enough is quite evident already in my daily behavior and jaunts into 'civilian' society to clearly define my issues: Bipolar, PTSD, ADHD......whatever. My diseases and disorders, while opressive and foreboding, do not necessarily define me. I am a woman. I am a woman old enough to do whatever I wish, and still young enough to jump in feet first. I am a mother. I am a mother who had to learn what it meant to love my child as she grew, because it didn't happen in my heart simply by rite of her birth. I am a student. This Fall semester will see the conclusion of my undergraduate work after so many years of setbacks and hard work. I am a partner and friend. I give my love to a man whom I'm pretty sure was given directly to me by God, and all the rest of what I have is spread like joy to my friends, without whom I would not be alive. And I write.....

I write and I snap photos and I will share this journey as I go. THIS is an amazing life far beyond my wildest dreams, and it's time to start documenting the dang thing!