Category: Mental Health

Empty Heart

LGBTQ, Mental Health, Musings, Poetry, Social Media, Thoughts

My heart is empty

At the sickening news

Why can’t I feel

As others do

Why don’t I cry

Why don’t I weep

Why don’t I care

How can I sleep

And dream and live

As though nothing’s wrong

While others bleed

I sing along

As playlist finds

A happy tune

On this melancholy

Month of June

Dozens dead

And millions mourn

So why don’t I

Feel as forlorn

I know it’s sad

I know it’s wrong

So why can’t I

Grieve for the loss

Perhaps I’m cold

Perhaps a cynic

Is there perhaps

A caring clinic

A place to go

A place to learn

How I can care

And feel concern

I don’t know what

Is wrong with me

I cannot care

‘Bout pain I see

Why Can’t I Feel

Celebrity, Mental Health, Musings, Poetry

Time stops for them
They’ve lost a friend
Never will they see again

Though never in the past have met
Inside they feel an emptiness
As favored star is laid to rest

So bright he shone
So swiftly gone
Never more to sing his song

So sad they seem
The pain cuts deep
In their hearts they swear to keep

As I sit and watch the pain
I wonder should I try to feign
To make myself seem more humane

But tears don’t fall
I’ve none at all
Emotionally I’ve hit a wall

I cannot feel
It seems unreal
No wounds have I that need to heal

Someone’s dead, someone’s gone
Ne’er again to sing their song
I’ve tried and tried, all day long

I cannot hide
How dead inside
Why can’t I feel when someone dies?

OCD or Mania?

Health, Mental Health, Thoughts

So I’ve been organizing my closet for much of the morning, something I normally don’t do. Part of it stems from my husband insisting that I get my junk cleaned out.

Part of it, though, either comes from OCD–the obsessive-compulsive desire to straighten and organize things–and part of it may or may not come from mania. Am I manic, or am I just normal me getting things cleaned up?

It’s hard for me to tell. The depressive episodes are usually pretty clear cut. I can tell when they’re coming on. The manic ones? Oftentimes I have no clue until I’m well into one. I guess that’s the trouble with manic episodes. The euphoria and energy that come along with that feel so good sometimes that you don’t realize something’s wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes–note I say sometimes–it can be a good thing. I get things done that have been tossed to the side for months. But the “I can do anything” part of mania is rarely a good thing. Reckless driving, risky sexual behavior (thankfully I’m married and don’t need to worry about that part anymore), etc. For every good, there’s a bad.

Now that I’ve started typing this, I think that I’m just being OCD. Maybe not even that. Maybe *gasp* normal. I finally let the piles of crap get to the point where it bugged me enough to take action. I want to get things into their rightful places. It’s not a massive desire to go through every single thing I own (which is evident by my husband doing the folding of sheets and blankets right now, something I hate to do and would surely have done had I been manic). And I’m not really cleaning, per say. Just organizing. Sorting.

Sometimes I guess it takes a little outside introspection to figure things out.

When Fans Go Too Far

Celebrity, Fandom, Mental Health, Social Media

It’s great when you find something that you love enough to become a fan of–a movie, TV show, book, band, etc. You can meet others who share your love of it, you can interact with actors, writers, artists, musicians … But is there such a thing as loving something too much?

When it comes to fandom, the answer is yes. The members of fandoms in today’s pop culture are becoming increasingly unstable and aggressive. If anything happens to the fans’ obsession that doesn’t fit with their ideal view of how that obsession should play out, the claws come out and the taunts, slurs, and threats begin. It’s a scary thing to view, and sadly it shows no sign of slowing.

Take, for example, TV shows. Seasons are reaching their end, so of course showrunners and writers are trying to amp up the drama. Favorite characters are dying, and fans are in an uproar. Producers and writers are receiving vile messages and death threats on social media. Even the actors whose characters get killed off (often because the actor has chosen to leave the show for a different opportunity) have been targets of the rabid fans.

Is this what we’ve come to? Fans throwing nasty hissy fits every time things don’t go their way? Crying, screaming, typing hate messages and Tweets? What in the Sam Hell made fandoms go so wrong?

Now, I’m a fan of several TV shows and movie franchises. Do I flip out when they kill a character? No. Death is a part of life, and unless you’re going to write a TV series where no one ever dies then characters are going to die. It happens. I don’t take it as a personal affront when a show kills off a character that I like. I may gripe if the way it was written or directed or acted was terrible, but I certainly don’t go into full-on Exorcist mode, becoming possessed by hate for the thing they once loved.

I just don’t see how someone can rationalize that kind of behavior. Is it just that social media makes us feel invincible, or is there a more disturbing reason for the downhill slide of fandom’s mental stability as a whole? I mean, how could a mentally stable person send death threats to a writer or producer or actor for just doing their job?

Fandoms need to take a serious look inside themselves and straighten out their priorities. Is it worth it blowing up Twitter and Facebook with nasty comments? Are death threats really necessary?

Wake up, fandoms. Life doesn’t always go your way, and characters die. It happens. Actors may grow tired of their current role or they may get a new, exciting opportunity to move to another show or movie franchise. Things are going to happen that you don’t like. Just chill the fuck out and get used to it now. It’s not going to stop just because you want things to stay status quo.

When your dreams betray you

Depression, Health, Mental Health

Dreams are great, for the most part. You can meet celebrities, travel wherever you want to go, be another person … fuck, if you want to you can fly.

Then come those dreams that aren’t so great. I had one of those just now.

Before I write about that, a little backstory for you:

I’m bipolar. It’s under control for the most part, but it’s there. It might even run in the family; I’m no doctor, so I can’t say 100% for sure. Nature versus nurture and all that. But I have family was has been committed and I’m a direct descendant of a man who died in an institution. The cause of death? “Exhaustion in the progression of psychosis.” Now, I don’t think about this much and haven’t in a long time, but at times it does come to the forefront and it troubles me.

This morning it more than troubled me. It terrified me.

The dream started innocently enough. I was at work, and I was about to check the blood sugar of a patient who was getting very lightheaded and becoming incoherent.

Then the shit it the proverbial fan. I got in trouble for not using the right sterile technique (even though I ended up not doing the blood sugar check–the patient’s friend did) and then my boss started yelling at me for a multitude of things I had done wrong, including not decorating one of the rooms in the office properly (hey, it was a dream, okay?) and boring everyone with little factoids I kept talking about.

Then she had me committed.

It was terrifying. I could only see my husband for a short while, during visiting hours, and I couldn’t see my family at all. The kitchen fucked up my dinner–they didn’t tell me my food was ready and the macaroni and cheese got cold to the point where it was inedible. So there I was, all alone except for the other patients (who wouldn’t talk to me), and all I could think was I wasn’t allowed to see my husband and my family and how devastatingly sad I was that all of my coworkers thought the things I said were boring. It may not sound that bad, but remember, in dreams things can seem more real than reality.

That’s when I woke up sobbing uncontrollably, and my husband woke up for a moment to find out what was wrong.

I’m still crying a little bit, more than half an hour later.

This dream just hit me like a freight train. I haven’t thought about the familial mental health issues in what seems like forever, and work has been going pretty well. The last couple of days (when I was in charge because my boss was on vacation) went fine. So why did my subconscious betray me?

It’s hard to say. Sometimes dreams just pull stuff from the deepest part of your mind and bombard you with ghosts that you thought you had exorcised.

I’ve stopped crying now, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to sleep. I don’t want to end up on that little cot in the asylum again anytime soon.

Lazy Thursday Morning…for now

Health, Mental Health, Musings, Thoughts

It’s morningtime before work, and usually I’m trying to be somewhat productive: writing, drawing, cosplay work, something. Today? Today I’m kind of just messing around on the Internet.

Sure, I have a news post to type up, but that won’t take me long. It’s just so nice to sit here, warm with my blankets and sweatshirt, and just be.

Do you ever take the time to just be? To forget that the world is spinning out of control and just be content in who you are and what you’re doing with your life? It’s surprisingly tough. We live in a society where not doing something is considered lazy, but it’s very important to take the time to focus on you every so often.

I’ve got some music to listen to, but otherwise I’m just existing. (Okay, so I’m typing up this post at the same time–hard to write about just existing while just existing.)

Of course, for some people just existing isn’t quite enough. Some people thrive on constant movement, constant activity, constant action. Me? I can handle it, but every once in a while I need to just be.

Take the time this weekend to just exist for a while. Zone out. Zen out. Whatever you have to do to connect with who you are. You’ll thank me for it later.

Throwback Thursday: Hostage in My Head

Mental Health, Poetry, Self Publishing, Writing

I don’t always post a Throwback Thursday, but when I do it’s usually art or poetry. Today, I’ve chosen one of my favorites out of the poems that I’ve written. It, along with other poems of mine, can be found in Kamikaze Butterflies on Amazon Kindle and in paperback on Amazon or Createspace. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PRGB1IM?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Trapped alone

Awash in a sea of terror

No escape from my own deranged thoughts

Impossible futures scroll through my mind

Over and over on a continuous loop

My mental movie screen glows

As the macabre fantasy plays unbidden

Death and disaster overtake reality

Can’t focus on the here and now

When the “might be” looms on the horizon

Against my will my death plays out again

For the hundredth time this hour

I watch my lifeless form slide to the ground

Shot in the convenience store

Pulled from the mangled wreck

Coded mysteriously at work

At the sight of my imagined death

My heart rate soars and pounds

There’s nothing beautiful and delicate

About the kamikaze butterflies in my chest

Every single nerve

Teeters on the edge of a precipitous drop

With a nightmare at the bottom

Just one nudge

One little push

And everything will come crashing down

I tiptoe on the inside

Walking the fine line between sanity and oblivion

Pacing the padded room within my skull

Inside I scream for a reprieve, for escape

Even for sweet, sweet nothingness

But my calls go unheeded

The nightmare begins anew

I am my own personal terrorist

And I am the hostage

 

Just breathe

Art, Christmas, Cosplay, Crafting, Depression, Holiday, Mental Health, Sewing, Work

Finally!

Work week is done, and I have three and a half days off until it’s back to the grind. Yesterday afternoon and this morning weren’t too bad, so I feel more relaxed already. I know come Monday it will be almost back to “normal” (translation: hectic as all get-out), but I’ve been looking forward to this unwinding weekend.

Not that I don’t have stuff to do. Interviews/reviews for Talk Nerdy With Us, cosplay stuff, art project…It’s not going to be a completely work-free weekend, but it’s still a relief.

I have to finish the pants on my husband’s cosplay (and hopefully start on the tunic), write interview questions, read a comic or two, and draw like my life depended on it. Still, it all sounds pretty relaxing compared to the day job.

Sometimes you gotta take some time to yourself just to get away from the norm and recharge. I love my jobs–all of them–but the constant pace gets to me every so often.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!