One Small Fly

There's a fly on my computer.

One small fly.  It's even small by fly standards.

Why I see the images I see in my mind....  I see the fly flying into my mouth.  Not that I have to open my mouth wide to let it in.  Not that I even try to close my mouth to keep it out.  Not that I gulp it down or spit it out with a grimace.

The fly just flew in and out of my mouth just the same as if it were flying in and out of the house, through the sliding glass door in the dining room.  It was no big deal to the fly and it was no big deal to me.  I just kept on -- talking maybe -- like nothing was going on.

Of course, others would be disgusted by this.  But not me.

I was not talking.  Somehow, my hands were still working at the keyboard, typing the experience as it happened.  But my head was dead.  My mouth hung open and did not move - rigor mortise and all.  Somehow my eyes could still see.

So, my head was dead.  My face was dead.  My eyes could still see.  My mind could still think.  My hands could still type.  But the fly went in and out of the mouth on my dead face.  Landing on one corner of my mouth and walking around a bit.  Inside my lips.  Outside my lips.  Then buzzing around my dead mouth again.

No big deal to the fly.  No big deal to me.

Dreaming

Previous scene: "All Moved In"


The morning sun shining through the wood blinds, sliced the room into pieces.  Arms behind her head, Eva lay in the quiet, watching the dust float in the beams of light.  Breathing.  The dreams of the previous night swam in her head.  She couldn’t remember much.  A purple person who wasn't a person.  It was like a person but it was also like a liquid, a highly viscous liquid.  Eva was herself in her dream, looking through her own eyes at the being while the being looked at her.  That's all she remembered.

Through the door, Eva heard the familiar ting-ting of coffee cups jostling again each other.  The cupboard clapped shut.  The shhhh of water streaming from the faucet.  Lynn is a coffee junky and attends to that craving each morning before she does anything else.  Eva stayed in bed.  The gurgle of the coffee pot as it finished brewing.  Eva waited to hear Lynn pour her first cup of coffee.  Then, and only then, would Eva venture out to say good morning to her friend.  Greeting Lynn before said cup of coffee would only elicit a growl and a sharp remark.

Ah, there's it is.  The knock on the wooden table indicating that Lynn had her coffee and the coast was clear for Eva to go and enjoy a cup of coffee herself. She flipped the comforter off her bare legs and walked barefoot from the bedroom to the kitchen. Sophia padded quietly behind her, the jingle of tiny bells on her collar the only clue that the fat cat was following Eva through the house.

"Morning.”

"Morning." Lynn responded with the standard sleepy statement.

"How'd you sleep?" Eva asked the typical first thing in the morning question.

"OK, I guess.  I kept dreaming."

"Me, too," Eva said.  "What did you dream about?"

"I'm not sure.  I don't remember much.” Lynn sipped her coffee.  “There was an almost human-looking figure hovering in front of me.  It was dark, so I couldn't make out any features.  It seemed to be looking at me, though.  It made me nervous.  I asked it what its name was and it said 'Amethyst'."

"Lynn, I dreamed that something was looking at me, too." In a taut voice, Eva described her own dream.

Lynn sang, "Do-do-do-do, Do-do-do-do" in the creepiest voice she could manage.  "I love coincidences like that!"

"Coincidences like what?" Natalie walked into the kitchen.  She lived down the street, but dropped in to have coffee with Eva and Lynn each day after her morning jog.

"Oh, nothing really." Lynn waved her hand dismissing the question as nothing significant.  "We were just sharing our dreams."

"Interesting," Natalie drew the word out slowly as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She settled into a chair at the table.  "You know, I had an odd dream last night myself.  I was alone in a dark void expect for one other thing.  The thing was some kind of entity, but I don’t mean like an alien.  It wasn't saying anything, but it was looking at me.  What a creepy feeling! That someone is watching you, you know.  So, I told it, 'I can see you.’  It splashed into lots of droplets in the air and a sweet female voice said 'And now you can't.'  Then the droplets fell to the floor and disappeared. It was gone."

Eva and Lynn sat in stunned silence at the table, staring wide-eyed at each other.

“There’s no way,” Eva said.

“Coincidence?” Lynn offered.

“No, no, no. No way Lynn.” She shook her head.

"What?" Natalie asked. “No way what?”

"Natalie, umm, how to tell you this…." Eva started.

Lynn finished the thought, "We all had the same dream last night."

All Moved In

Previous scene: "Where It Starts"


"One more."  Lynn carried the last box into the house from the one-car garage. Eva scooped Sophia, their overweight orange tabby cat, out of Lynn’s path.

"Finally," Eva sighed.  Lynn dropped the box onto the kitchen table and Eva set Sophia gently on the floor.

"We've been here a year," Lynn said shaking her head, "and we've only just now gotten to this last box."

Eva pointed at the calendar hanging over the microwave. “No, yesterday was our own-our-own-home one-year anniversary.” Eva poured herself and Lynn a second cup of coffee each.

“A year and a day.” Lynn slurped her coffee.  "Oh!  Oh!."  She breathed across the hot liquid in her mouth and fanned her mouth as if that would help it cool down faster.  "That's gotta cool down."  <Lynn's not one to sit around and wait.  She'd rather be doing something than nothing.>  She set her coffee on the counter nearby and picked at the packing tape holding the box closed.

"Wait!" Eva popped, "Natalie will be here soon.” She glanced at the clock on the wall above the door. “Thirty minutes. Let's wait 'till she arrives to open it."

"Ugh.” Lynn plopped into the kitchen chair and hung her head over the back of it.  “Why?  Don't you want to be done with this?"  <Lynn was eager to fold up that last cardboard box and leave it in the recycle.>

"Come on. Natalie has been helping us get moved in this whole time. This is a mile-stone moment and she’s earned the right to part of it. Besides, she’s my best friend."  Eva pleaded with puppy dog eyes and pouting lips that made Lynn smile.

"Ok. ok.  You win.  I can't resist that face.  I’ve waited this long.  I guess can wait another thirty minutes."

A cup of coffee later, Natalie walked through the front door.

"Hey, Nettie!  We were just talking about you."  Eva announced.

"Good things I hope."

"Of course," Eva spoke in her most innocent sounding voice.

"Seriously," Lynn broke in, "You see this box?" pointing at the obvious box resting on the kitchen table.  "This, my friend, is the last box before Eva and I are officially moved it."

"Nice," Natalie replied.  "Let's see what's in it."

Lynn grabbed the kitchen shears from the butcher block on the counter.

“Want to do the honors?” She offered the shears to Eva who sliced through the old tape holding the box shut.  She pulled the halves of the lid open.  The crumpled newspaper protecting the box’s precious contents held its shape.

Eva, Lynn, and Natalie each grabbed at the wads of newspaper, carefully unwrapping the treasures hidden within them.  Trinkets, ribbons won at competition, a mishmash of mementoes from more childish days.  Peeking through the newspaper, Natalie spied the cassette-tape case turned planchette she and Eva made back when they were in high school.  She gasped as she pulled it from the box.

Eva’s eyes grew wide. "I forgot I put that in here,” she said as she dug deeper through the newspaper to fish the homemade Ouija board off the bottom of the box.

"I kinda figured it got thrown into a fire someplace," Natalie said.

"So," Lynn drew the word out slowly, "What's the story?"


Next scene: "Dreaming"

Where It Starts

"Nope.  She won't take us to the store to get one."  The back door closed with a thud behind Eva as she walked through the small dining room and into the living room.  She stopped with her hands on her hips near her friend Natalie who was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Ugh.  My parents aren't going to help either."  Natalie was frustrated.

"Why not?" Eva asked, "Have you asked them?" 

"Seriously?"  Natalie asked sarcastically.  "She thinks they’re evil - like having the devil on speed dial."

Eva rolled her eyes, like only teenagers can do.

"I have an idea!"  Eva sprang to her feet and started rummaging through drawers and cabinets.  "We'll just have to make one."  She pulled a pen from a drawer and held it up triumphantly.  "Now I need paper."

Natalie grabbed her backpack and tore a sheet of loose leaf paper from her binder.

"Uh, no."  Eva grimaced.  "Pull a paper from my sketchbook.  It's nicer.  Heavier."

Natalie obliged her and handed her the nicer paper.

As Natalie described the phrases, letters, and symbols, Eva created a homemade Ouija board.  The letters of the alphabet, in a gentle arc centered on the page, spanned the entire width of the page.  "Yes" went into one corner and "No" into the opposite.  "Hello" and "Goodbye" occupied the remaining corners and the numbers 0 to 9 were spaced evenly across the bottom of the make-shift Ouija board.

"Hey, that doesn't look half bad," Eva remarked on her handiwork.  "It's not as nice as the kind you can buy from one of those big-box toy stores, but this will definitely do."

"It looks great, Eva," Natalie smirked.  "We need a pointer thingy still."

"A planchette?"  Eva asked the rhetorical question.

"Yeah," Natalie laughed at her own ignorance, a little embarrassed.  "whatever you call those things that usually look kinda like arrow heads with windows cut through the middle of them."

Eva scratched her head and looked slowly around the room.  After a moment, she leaned over and pulled open one of several junk drawers in the house.  She fished around in the back of the drawer before pulling out an old, empty cassette tape case.  Grabbing another sheet of sketchpad paper, Eva swiftly measured the case and cut the paper just right to neatly fit inside the cassette case.  Satisfied with the fit, she cut, in the middle of the paper, a hole that was just the right size to read the letters through.

"Viola!"  Eva placed the homemade planchette onto the homemade Ouija board.


Next scene: "All Moved In"

Is My SO Cursed Tarot Reading

After doing a reading to see if I am cursed I decided I should do one to see if my significant other (SO) is cursed. Looking into this is important to me because my reading on myself turned up a big "maybe" and pointed to people I can't identify. I thought maybe we would have some cards in common and that would help me identify who is involved.

My SO's reading looks like this:

If you read my post about whether I am cursed then you already know a little about how to read this spread. Of not, you can go read the the first part of it for a quick explanation of go to the Hoodoo sight for the original instructions.

This particular reading short and sweet, though, and you can get away with knowing one simple aspect of how to read this spread. All you need is how to determine if you are, are not, or might be cursed. The answer to that question hinges on where XV The Devil falls when you lay out the cards.If it falls in the top three cards, then yes you are cursed. If it falls in the bottom three cards then no you are not cursed. If It's one of the two cards across the middle of the spread then you may or may not be cursed. 

Notice that XV The Devil is one of the bottom three cards. Thus, my SO is not cursed. It's a bitter-sweet conclusion. I'm glad no curse has settled on my SO. I'm glad that we do not each have a curse acting in our lives and combining to become some more dreadful. I am sad that any curse that impacts our lives comes specifically from me.

Am I Cursed Tarot Reading

I am desperate. I need to figure out this curse that I swear keeps influencing my life. If I was all alone, a hermit, I might throw my hands up and say screw it. I'm not alone, though. I can't go live under a bridge because I refuse to drag my family and friends there. I've pulled enough people through more than enough of the mud and muck that fills so much of my life.

I explained how I feel and presented the evidence that I am cursed to a friend recently. She suggested a little divination. She offered to do a reading for me but I feel like I need to do a reading for myself. My friend loves me very much and I am concerned that she might pull some punches and not share the intensity of some of what she sees. Also, I can consider the cards at a level of intimacy that she is incapable of simply because she cannot crawl inside my brain and heart. Of course, that provides her with an objectivity that I am incapable of achieving because I cannot crawl out of my head and heart. I might still take her up on her offer to read for me for that reason.

I did a little research and found a spread that looks like it will be helpful. The original spread and full instructions are at the Texas Hoodoo website (http://texas-hoodoo.com/divination/jinxed-curse-hexed-spread).

Basic Layout

  

Position 1 is the far left, XV The Devil in my spread.

Position 8 is the far right, the Knight of Wands.

Positions 2, 3, and 4 wrap clockwise over the top of the spread - the Page of Swords, the Knight of Pentacles, and the King of Swords.

Positions 5, 6, and 7 wrap counter clockwise across the bottom three cards - III The Empress, the Queen of Swords, and IV The Emperor.

Yes, No, Maybe

According to the directions, where XV The Devil lands in the spread determines whether I am cursed, I might be cursed, or I'm not cursed. Finding XV The Devil among the top three cards indicates a "yes, you're definitely cursed." If XV The Devil is one of the bottom three cards it indicates "no, you're definitely not cursed." When in the far left or far right position, the indication is "maybe you are and maybe you aren't."

Unfortunately for me, my reading fails to provide a clear yes or no answer. The spread tells me "maybe." My situation is more complicated than a simple yes or no can provide. This tells me that a dreadful force is acting in my life but so is a force acting to my benefit, which sounds about right for someone living with bipolar disorder. After all, the cycles of up and down bring cycles of creativity and destruction with them.

Who

The spread also provides a little information about who is working against me and who is working for me. The top of the spread is the "yes" side so the people suggested in those cards are the ones working against me, possibly the person who initiated the curse. The bottom cards provide information about who is working with me and in opposition to the curse.

Specifically, positions 2 and 3, the Page of Swords and the Knight of Pentacle, reveal who is working with the curse while positions 6 and 7, the Queen of Swords and IV The Emperor, reveal who is working against it. I just have no idea at the moment who these cards represent.

Interesting Observations

III The Empress and IV The Emperor sit opposite one another, symetrically positioned across the bottom of the spread in the set of cards that represents the people helping me. According to the spread's instructions, III The Empress does not represent someone that's helping me but she is looking out at me. She sees me and knows my plight. IV The Emperor appears initially to be looking forward, at me or at his subjects, but he's actually looking out of the corners of his eyes at III The Empress. He's looking to her for guidance. He cannot do his job alone. Considering these things and the closeness of their relationship, I would say that IV The Emperor is helping me with careful attention to the guidance and advice of III The Empress.  I have one final observation about III The Empress and IV The Emperor. Aside from XV The Devil who represents the curse itself, they are the only Major Arcana cards in the spread. They are the heavy hitters and, fortunately, they are on my side.

The location of all the Sword cards is notable, too. They create a "V" through the middle of the spread.

The women in the spread appear only in the bottom. The Page may be a boy or a girl but will be a youth either way and can not be a mature woman.

No cards from the suite of Cups are present.

Back to Who

Intuition plays a role in reading tarot cards and it led me to impression that IV The Emperor represents a Greek God. Which one, though? These cards are not created around the Greek pantheon so I went in search of a deck that is. I found The Mythic Tarot. Matching my cards to the corresponding card in the Mythic Tarot deck indicated that IV The Emperor represents Zeus and III The Empress represents Demeter, both of whom I have strong connections to. The correlations rang true. I am certain that they are on my side in this.

The remaining cards, being Court cards and not Major Arcana cards, leads me to the conclusion that they represent regular people. Other than that, who they represent still eludes me.

Feeling Cursed

The human brain tends to remember the negative experiences of life. I'm pretty sure it's an evolutionary trait that helped us survive by reminding us of things, places, activities, etc that put us in unhealthy or dangerous situations. It's a good idea that, at least in my case, has gone awry. It acts with an intensity that can be paralyzing.

The negatives cling to me like parasites and leave little to no room for positives. I have a terrible time finding the positives and, when I do, keeping the positives in mind is just as hard. It adds up to feeling like I'm cursed. The extent of that cursed feeling waxes and wanes with my moods. Recognizing that correlation to my mood has been helpful in the sense that I'm better equipped to wait out the feeling but it does nothing the reduce the pain, anxiety, and sense of helplessness that comes along with it. Family and friends criticize me for being pessimistic or defeatist. Saying things like, "It could be worse," is not helpful. I continue to feel what I feel and a certain guilt for feeling that way is added to the emotional burden I already carry.

The other day, a valuable lesson I learned in a class I took a million years ago popped into my head. The context of the original lesson was completely different from my current situation so I never thought to use it in my battle against my curse before. The mind is resilient but that characteristic must be nurtured, it must be fed. Feeding it a diet primarily consisting of negatives kills it. It must be given plenty of positives. One positive for each negative is insufficient, though. It makes for a malnourished resiliency, one that's sick and leaves a person at risk of giving up. Because of this and the fact that critiquing each other was a significant part of the class, the teacher established an important rule. Before someone could offer up a criticism, they had to provide three compliments.

This provided me with a technique, a new weapon to wield against the darkness. I am forcing myself to find at least two positives that are directly related to the negative situation feeding the cursed feeling. A recent example is when the transmission went out on my vehicle. Positive 1) The vehicle rolled to a stop in a location safe from traffic and from being impounded. Positive 2) Someone near and dear to me was willing and able to tow it to the shop for me.

My curse is a little more intense than that. It involves a large number of things going wrong all in a small window of time. The transmission was just one of them. Looking at each problem, each thing that's gone wrong, and finding a couple of elements in each situation that worked to my advantage is time consuming. Hopefully it will be worth time.

Checking on my Comfort Zone

Recently, a friend introduced me to a site called Superbetter. It's all about making yourself better - more resilient, more optimistic, more motivated. It's filled with games but not like flash games or xbox games. These are quests and you face challenges, gain allies, learn skills, and fight off bad guys. It intrigued me and, since my friend signed up for it, I figured I would sign up, too. I don't play everyday. Honestly, I haven't been to the website in weeks.

While working through my quest I got stuck. It's my own fault, too. I was faced with a challenge and didn't do it. I haven't done it yet. I started to but it was uncomfortable so I set it aside with the intention of returning to it the next day. I did return to it but I didn't do anything about it beyond rereading the description of what I was supposed to do. What did I get stuck on, you ask? It's silly, really. All I needed to do was write a journal entry answering this question:

What is your current relationship with your comfort zone?

Fortressed within it?

Always busting through it?

See what I mean? It's simple. Yet, it's so complex. Formulating a reply has been troublesome and it's been weighing on me.

Source: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

My comfort zone is always changing. It varies with my mood - how manic or depressed I am or if I'm neither. My level of anxiety plays a big role in defining what I enjoy doing or what I'm willing to try. Likewise it determines what completely freaks me out, it draws that proverbial line in the sand which I cannot cross. What feels impossible for me one week is second nature the next and vice versa.

Source: Clinical Junior.com

My healthy self, if I know my healthy self - which is dubious, is bound to be somewhere in the middle between manic and depressed. That's only logical. She must be more cautious than the manic version of me and must also be more relaxed than the anxious version of me. Surely she is, or at least believes herself to be, more capable than the depressed version of me.

So, today? At this moment? I feel good about myself. I believe I'm good at my job and I enjoy it. I feel good about my relationships with family and friends. Calling my best friend is not a stretch today even though the same activity yesterday was distressing and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I feel like I have something worth sharing on my blog and I'm able to adequately answer the Superbetter question.

Will I feel the same tomorrow? Who knows.

If you're curious, here's a little about Superbetter from TED Talks.

Fearless

My heart beat in slow motion - one Mississippi, two Mississippi – and I swear I saw the molecules of air in front of my little sister's face fly away in chaotic, swirling tornadoes when she screamed my name.

The car in front of us drove it's front left wheel up the guardrail, grinding along the metal boundary between interstate overpass and old county road below and, with the other three wheels still on the surface of the highway, the body of the car gauged a long, terrible arc into the asphalt before stopping.

I pulled onto the shoulder of I-10 only yards from the steep concrete retainer wall which stretched beneath the overpass and my younger sister, a nurse, burst from my little Jetta and scrambled through traffic to the unfolding tragedy where she knelt close to the person who lay motionless on the ground.

The echo off the concrete of the underpass doubled the roar of the cars and the rumble of semi engines yet I still heard my sister yell adamantly at the person beside her, “Stay with me damn you! Look at me! Don't you dare close your eyes!”

I called 911 while she did the miraculous thing that I could not and in those terrible moments she evolved in my mind from little sister to woman and hero.

This weeks prompts are the word "fearless" and this image.

For more information about Five Sentence Fiction check out Lillie McFerrin Writes.

Illusions in the Rain

Visual prompt for this weeks FSF Challenge.

The rain poured thick and loud, obscuring the buildings that lined the street and roaring over our voices no matter how loud we tried to talk or how hard we tried to listen.

Seizing the hand of my long-time friend, who rather like Big Bird's Mr. Snuffleupagus existed only in my imagination, I pulled him eagerly down the middle of the narrow street slowly filling with water.

I laughed, sang, and twirled in his arms to music that existed only in my mind as we approached the arched tunnel through a stone pedestrian bridge which stretched across the road we sloshed along.

When we stepped into cover of the small underpass I pointed to the curtain of water hanging over it's opposite end and announced, “Leaving through that side, in a magical moment, will take me to another point in my life," and then I snarled, "it might even be a time when my mind is not lost and you don't exist.”

I saw bewilderment on his face and a touch of fear in his eyes as I loosed my fingers from around his hand and shoved him back into the downpour we just left and then I rushed through the enchanted veil of rain which promised to free me from my madness.

Don't Judge Me (POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING)

NOTICE: This post may be a trigger for you.

I think I manage the anxiety I experience rather well. Most days I can keep my darker emotions from ganging up on me and I've done a great job of successfully beating them off. There is a certain threshold, though. Somber turns to despair and I feel defeated, crushed beneath the weight of my own sick brain. Grumpy morphs into a full blown rage and the catalyst will be something ridiculous. Discomfort becomes humiliation and shame as my brain brings to the forefront of my conscious mind everything it believes I've ever done wrong. What happens beyond the threshold is not anything I'm proud of.

I scratch and cut myself. It makes sense to me in the moment. I've done it enough throughout my life that I no longer carry sharp things with me when I feel the stable ground beneath me tremble, a sign that a terrible fissure threatens to open under my feet. Leaving the pocket knife at home interferes with my attempts to cut myself. Most of the time, the appeal of cutting fades away before I can gain possession of an object capable of drawing blood. Sometimes cutting is so terribly seductive that, unable to access anything sharper, I resort to using my fingernails. They don't cut per se; they scratch well, though. They become claws that scrape at the skin of my thighs in moments of desperation.

I don't know if it's seeing the stripes or feeling the sting that helps me keep my demons at bay. I guess it's both. I make more cuts and scratches when my distress is more intense. The more my efforts fail to ease my anguish, the more ferocious my actions become. The physical pain is probably the larger part of it although the blushing lines swelling on my skin do create an odd feeling of satisfaction - gratification blended with disgrace.

Don't judge me for this behavior. I know it's messed up. I don't need to be reminded. I don't even want to talk about it most of the time because the people I confide in almost always focus on the action and make me feel even more ashamed which isn't helpful. The problem isn't the cutting or the scratching. They are symptoms, physical manifestations of the dark hurt and anxiety that have escalated beyond my ability to fend off in a manner deemed healthy by the normal people of the world. Let's deal with the emotions I can't handle and the scratching will go away.

Don't judge me for this behavior. Other peoples' actions are mesed up, too. Making an 11:00pm run to the stop-and-rob for a cheap six-pack of beer because you can't slow down your mind enough to go to sleep is damaging to the body, too. It's just not exposed. Is harming your liver somehow more nobel than injuring your skin? I'm not even referring to alcoholism, just the occassional "had a rough day" gin and tonic. What about smoking when stressed? Over-eating? Going on spending sprees? All of these have consequences.

Don't judge me for this behavior. We all have our coping methods and mine usually heal within a few days.

A Little Gratitude Please

What are you grateful for?

The usual answers include:

• My family
• My friends
• My health

Other common answers are:

• A good home
• Healthy food
• My pets

The answers are all legitimate and I'm sure most people are being truthful in giving them. They aren't unique, though. They are so common as to be cliche and, like any old adage, the words fall out of our mouths without a moment of consideration. The thoughtlessness of it all only registers when the words land with a heavy thunk across the top of one's left foot. Saying "I'm grateful for my family" has become an antiphone that doesn't require the least bit of contemplation. "I'm grateful for my friends" is an automatic reply, a reflex similar to the startle response we have when someone sneaks up behind us. It just happens.

"For my dog" or "for my health" are comfortable replies when playing the I'm Thankful For game round-robin style with people we might call friends but we're not particularly close to. They are safe, true statements and, most importantly, they don't even hint at the intimate matters living closer to our hearts. I get it. Don't get me wrong. I use those standard answers, too. I think I've even gotten pretty good at the Sincere Smile which dresses up the shallowness of my randomly chosen, standard answer with the guise of heartfelt earnestness.

All of this begs the question, what are you grateful for? Peak into all the little crevices in your brain to find something particular to you and your life. When you're being candid with your real self, who and what rise to the top of your Grateful List.

Me?

I'm grateful that a certain someone picked me up after work one day, like always, and took me directly to my doctor. We did not pass go or collect $200. This person told me s/he was scared for me, told me I was sick and I needed to get help. This person got me the help I was incapable of getting for myself and promised to stand strong for me until I was able to stand for myself again. That event took one hour out of one day and changed the course of my life.

Silence

A few years ago I attended a women's retreat. I shared a little of that experience with you not too long ago. One of the "rules" (really more of a recommendation) was to spend a certain amount of time each day in silence. Attaining that goal meant more than not talking. That was the easy part. It required being alone and away from a million little things. Phone, TV, music, the obvious stuff. Once I eliminated those things I realized that my surroundings were far from silent. The ceiling fan and fridge whirred and, without other noises to conceal it, they seemed loud. I left my room expecting to find a quieter space outside, perhaps on one of the gentle trails or on a bench beneath the sprawling branches of an old tree. I had to share the trail with other people and, although they were quiet in the normal sense of the word, they still made noise that filled my ears. Even when I was alone on the trail, the gravel beneath my feet crunched with every single step I took. Silence, true silence, was eluding me. Eventually, I returned to my room and decided it was quiet enough. I was able to exist with my thoughts, my journal, and my pen.

Several years before that, I went on a spiritual journey of sorts. This was long before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I was desperately grasping for something, anything, that would give me some peace. Upon arriving at the spiritual retreat center the first evening, I was instructed to be silent until a specified time the following morning. No talking and no turning anything on to listen to. Being alone with myself like that was unnerving. I didn't much like myself at the time and I definitely did not respect myself. I was trapped in an illness I did not know I had and the silence outside my body made the noise inside by body seem that much louder. My thoughts jumped from one traumatic experience to another while my inner critic picked apart every little decision I had made, proving to me how bad my choices were and how terrible a person I was. My skin crawled with tension and my stomach hurt. I did the only thing I could think to do. I wrote. I had no watch or clock so I have no idea how long I scribbled in my journal. I continued until all the jumbled mess in my head was transferred to paper and until I had described all my emotions and body sensations as well as I could. Finally satisfied, I carefully closed my journal. I felt lighter. I still needed to deal with the awful things I had written but, for the night at least, they lived in the journal and not in me.

1000 Paper Cranes

Legend says if you make 1000 paper cranes then you can make a wish and it will come true.

A much more recent story, one about a little girl growing up in the toxic world created by the Hiroshima bombing, is attached to the paper crane legend. The little girl's name was Sadako Sasaki and she developed Lukemia when she was a child. She started folding origami cranes with the goal of being able to make a wish. Some stories say her wish was to be well again while others say it was for world peace. Some versions say she finished 1000 cranes before she passed away at 12 years old. Other versions say she didn't and that her friends and family finished them for her. You can read one version of Sadako's story at 1000cranes.com.

I suspect the little girl was originally wishing to be well and that the wish morphed into one of world peace as she succumbed to the illness. I'm a grown woman and I would wish to be healthy again. Forget world peace; I want to live. Maybe I'm just selfish. Of course, maybe she really was a child of the light, mature beyond her years, and destined to help usher in a change in this world.

Would I wish to be free of my illness?

Bipolar Disorder comes with a lot of ugly characteristics. If I were to make a chart listing the pros and cons of living a life with Bipolar Disorder, I suspect the cons would far out number the pros. The pros, however, include some amazingly positive things.

• increased confidence
• increased creativity
• more outgoing
• higher goals
• increased intelligence
• better performance

If you live with Bipolar Disorder, though, then you know those things are not permanent. It's a terrible truth and it often feels like a curse. I can taste success and then the mania wisks me away in an updraft, a tell-tale sign of an impending storm. How high I go reveals the strength of the storm and the level of destruction it will do.

What if the legend is true? Just pretend for a moment and believe with 100% certainty that making 1000 origami cranes would allow for the granting of one wish.

Here is paper crane #1.

Reflecting on a Post about "The Monster"

I read a blog post the other day criticizing a couple of musicians and the lyrics of a song they perform together. It struck a chord in me. Maybe it was a nerve that got hit. Either way, her post has been rolling around in my head for a few days. It's called "Don't Sing About Mental Illness" and it was written by a blogger named Maddy. The entire blog post can be found at http://chattymaddyhealth.blogspot.com/2014/06/dont-sing-about-mental-illness.html. She focuses specifically on "The Monster" rapped/sung by Eminem and Rihanna.

If you've never heard it, here's a link to the video. Warning: he uses some foul language.

This next video shows the lyrics as the song is being performed. It only shows lyrics and the explicit language is still there.

One part of Maddy's post discusses the chorus.

I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed

Get along with the voices inside of my head

You're trying to save me, stop holding your breath

And you think I'm crazy, yeah, you think I'm crazy
That's nothing

She writes,

First of all, "voices inside of your head" is a sign of psychosis, which is associated with schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder. As someone who has experienced voices in her head and knows how terrifying it is, I can assure you, you don't want to be "friends" with them. It's an experience that will leave you shaken and confused. 

I appreciate what Maddy is saying here and Maddy, if you're reading this, thank you for being so honest and sharing this part of your experience. She's right. Auditory and visual hallucinations are not necessarily the greatest experiences in the world and they are certainly symptoms of a number of serious mental disorders that need to be addressed. I've flown from my own dark bedroom to a fully lit kitchen or living room more than once because of such experiences. They are just part of my condition, my illness, and I've had no choice but to accept them into my life. They are a few of the many monsters, demons, issues, problems, beasts, symptoms, creatures, whatever you want to call them that hide in my surroundings. None of them are friends in the sense of "Hey, wanna go to a movie? We can share a popcorn." They are, however, friends in the sarcastic sense of being an undesired familiar thing like the heartache that comes to visit after a relationship ends. Saying two people are friends also means they accept each other and they've established a relationship that allows them to move on with some grace and dignity - most of the time at least. The beasts that wander through my life fall into that category. We are companions but not buddies. I'm not always thrilled that they travel with me but I've had to make friends with them in so far as being able to play nicely together.

She goes on to say,

Some people say the line isn't literal, but instead referring to self talk. I still have a problem with this because those aren't voices in your head. That's YOU speaking to YOURSELF. You shouldn't try to refer to a mental illness to describe something that is in fact NOT a mental illness.

That's an important distinction to make and most people don't (in my experience anyway). Lumping auditory hallucinations and self talk together undermines the significance of having hallucinations. I can't help but wonder how many people, trying to deny that they are sick, have avoided getting help by calling the voices self talk.

Regarding the line "And you think I'm crazy, yeah you think I'm crazy, that's nothing" she writes,

People are desperately trying to remove the stigma that surrounds mental illness. One of the most painful words you can say to someone who is struggling with one of these disorders is that they are "crazy". It's hurtful. Period. And again, since Eminem and Rihanna are both people who have experienced this, they should understand more than most of the population that this word can cut deep. So why are they referring to themselves as this?

I've already expressed my feelings on the use of the word "crazy" in a previous post: Go Ahead. Call Me Crazy.

When it comes to the last two words in the chorus, "is nothing," the blogger says,

They are implying that "crazy" doesn't even begin to cover what kind of emotional state they are in. Again, why? They are further stigmatizing mental disorders and painting us in a horrible light.

I don't understand this critique. I don't see how this final piece of the chorus is stigmatizing. Why would it be wrong for me to tell someone they have no clue how I feel? I don't see that as stigmatizing but rather revealing, almost educating. Conveying intensity of feelings opens people's eyes to the broad spectrum of human emotion and human beings are capable of higher highs and lower lows than most people will ever experience first hand. That's important to understand. That's why "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" is sufficient advice for some and impossible for others. I need to be able to tell someone that how they are describing my emotional state is correct but woefully inadequate. It's the difference between bumping your head against the back of the sofa when you plop down too hard and getting a concussion after falling down the stairs.

One final quote from Maddy,

Music is powerful. It should be a tool that is used to help those who suffer from mental illness. ...[W]e need to spread awareness that Eminem and Rihanna's song "The Monster" is NOT okay.

I agree 100% that music is powerful and it can be used to help people deal with their mental illness. It's a valuable strategy to consider including in our individual mental illness toolboxes. Should all music help people who have mental illnesses? Absolutely not. Creating music isn't about helping others, it's about expressing ourselves. It's a form of sharing and it helps us when it resonates with our own lived experiences. "The Monster" resonated with me. It's not a pretty picture but I connected with it. 

A couple final notes.

While reflecting on Maddy's post and the song, I came across a website that I found to be interesting and informative. You might like it. When you click a line in the song, a short commentary about that line shows up in the panel to the right.

and

I've never been a fan of rap music. It's not my thing. Grappling with this song, though, I must admit that it is poetry - something I never thought I would say.