I can’t believe it!  Here I am, after a small hiatus, writing again.  These last few months have been a trip.  In September I fell into a pretty deep writers block so posting was not an option, nor was writing just in my journal.  Looking back over those last few posts I realize that I really did need to take that time to get better, to work on just living instead of living and trying to document everything at the same time.  So I have returned really a very different person than I was in September and feeling like I can write and offer something thoughtful again, something not mired in sadness.

 

I am sitting at the coffeeshop right now and have my headphones in.  I usually can sit at the coffeeshop and write with the background noise, no problem.  But today mister throat clearer has returned.  This fucker drives me insane.  He sits and drinks his coffee staring straight ahead and just clears his throat about every ten seconds.  Its fucking ridiculous.  Even with my Itunes going I can still hear his damn throat clearing.  Ah.  I wonder if he even realizes that he’s doing it.  And I should mention that it is not just a throat clearing….it almost sounds like a kind of mix of moan and grunt one might hear in the throws of the night.  So gross.  I might actually need to step outside and smoke for a minute just to get away from this disgusting-ness.

 

I am killing time waiting to go into work in two hours.  Yes, I am still waiting tables at the same place and the situation has improved considerably basically because I have improved considerably!!  I now go to work and am not living everyday in fear that it will be my last.  I am getting along with my coworkers and actually doing a fairly good job everyday.  So far I have had really happy customers and a boss that leaves me the hell alone, which is nice.

 

Why this change? Excellent question.  About mid september I started seeing another therapist on top of my talk therapy.  Candy Smith is licensed in Somantic Experiencing.  It is a new therapy, developed about 13 years ago, that came about through a doctors study of animals in life threatening situations.  It is for victims of trauma, like me….thanks mom, who are not able to cope in their daily lives because they find their bodies constantly in a state of heightened arousal.  When in fight, flight or freeze in the limbic system your brain is not allowing regular processing to happen.  So a few months back I was very out of control, constantly on alert and unable to go along perform daily thinking tasks, like successfully waiting tables, because I always felt I was in danger.  The idea is through this therapy your body relearns how to react to stressors and how to calm itself down.  It is difficult to explain but it has been life changing.  After beginning the therapy in late September I am a completely different person.

 

I used to be so reactive to everything.  I used to get overwhelmed and let that affect how I interacted with friends and family and how I performed my job.  Candy has retrained my body, primarily my central nervous system, to no longer be in this state of heightened arousal.  I am a really calm person now, by comparison, and I no longer see threats looming around every corner.  It’s interesting that this therapy that I can scarcely articulate has helped me in innumerable ways.  I originally sought it out because I was so sick in September.  I was so agitated that I was literally unable to keep food down.  The longer this went on and the more my talk therapist and I examined it the more I came to realize that I needed to try anything to get out of that state and literally had nothing to lose.  I am so glad I made that choice.

 

Nowadays I am really chill.  I have the ups and downs of being me and having a harder than normal to regulate brain, but I make it through okay.  I haven’t been suicidal since October, I dropped a ton of my meds, and I am performing better at work and being better at my life.  Yeah, I still have problems, money, loneliness, a bad relationship with my mother, but these things don’t consume me and that’s the important thing.  I don’t feel like I am a failure at life anymore.  I feel really good.

 

I am going to drop this off for now, but I will be back, posting on a regular basis again, so I can fill the void in about my progress and struggles like I was doing before.  Feels good to be typing right now.  Feels great actually!

I get so wrapped up in myself and I hate it.  I get so mired down in my terrible emotions and in how I can cope or how I can find peace.  But then I think about my very good friend.  He is sick with Heart disease and is battling it everyday.  He has constant heart attacks and needs a heart transplant to survive and to live his life.  He is an amazing person and doesn’t deserve this hand his has been dealt.  He is only 38 and is battling this disease everyday.  Yet he comes out of it with hope and blessing for everyday he is given.  I envy that.

Everyday I feel like it’s a struggle just to survive.  I fight the urge to kill myself all the time.  But then I look at him and see the struggle that he goes through as well and it puts things in perspective.  My dad reminds me that to get through life you have to be positive and you have to be a fighter.  I wish that I had that strength.

I have been MIA for the last few weeks.  Depression has completely overtaken my life.  I am isolating and lethargic.  I am posting this now and it is taking all the energy I have to even type these words.  I hate depression.  I hate these feelings and I hate being sick.

It starts the way that it always starts.  For absolutely no reason at all.  One day you just wake up unable to get out of bed.  I have had this overwhelming fear that anything I do will cause harm to myself or my family or friends.  My dad went out of town and I was anxious the entire time that something would happen to him and I would never see him again.  The fear was debilitating.  I couldn’t shake the knot in my stomach.  So I began to self medicate.  I have drank this past month to try and quiet the feelings of fear and worthlessness.  That is the thing about depression, it is not triggered by bad events in life but if something out of the ordinary happens it only exacerbates the feelings.

I got my review at work.  It went terribly.  I was basically told that I was failing at my job and that I don’t have the respect of my peers.  I was told that if things don’t improve in the next few months we will be rethinking my employment.  He also told me that I lied during my interview.  That I portrayed myself as a person that I did not turn out to be.  Of course I am different!  When I interviewed and started the job I was manic.  Now I am depressed.  The sucky thing about Bipolar is that your personality changes along with your moods.  This is something that I cannot help.

Already in the grips of heart shattering depression I have been spiraling even further.  Now the depression is effecting my work because everyday I show up in fear of losing my job.  Dad told me I would just find another job but the stress is weighing on me like a rock I cannot carry.  I am anxious and sad and suicidal all the time.  I don’t think that I can go through with the suicide, I am too weak, but the feelings that you want to die make living next to impossible.

I have been hiding away in my house for days on end.  I leave to go to work but it is a struggle to even get up and take a shower.  My apartment is in complete disarray.  It smells like stale smoke and cat litter.  I am sure that if I had children in this environment they would be taken away by social services.  Luckily living in squalor is okay if you are single and living alone.  But I can’t even take out the trash.  The mess I am in, inside and out, is not affecting me.  I don’t care about anything anymore.

The depression is also causing physical symptoms.  I am literally in pain, headaches, body aches, pain constantly in my stomach.  I am having trouble keeping anything down.  I am puking all the time.  I have been sick for weeks and feel helpless and alone.  I am fighting crying typing this now.  I am lost again in a pit of despair.

I haven’t written in a while because getting these feelings out is a chore.  Getting myself up and on the computer takes all the effort I can muster and it is so much easier to hide away and lay in bed and cry and hold myself.  I have lost all good coping skills, I can’t go for walks, I can’t go to movies, I can’t socialize outside of a drinking situation.  I am falling apart.

I am going to my doctor tomorrow.  I have to reach out.  I haven’t seen her in two weeks because I keep missing appointments, it is impossible to get out of bed.  I am sleeping 12 hours at least everyday.  Gosh I am in it.  Fully in it.  I can’t find my peace again, medication is not helping, I am floating outside myself and cutting myself off from everyone.  I am lost, so lost and scared.

I don’t understand why the difficult part of life is not giving over to the easy solutions.  Everything seems to be a challenge and it’s the easiest thing to say “I don’t care, Fuck it”.  That is what I have been doing the past week, and perhaps, what I am going to continue to do indefinitely.

I go see my Dr. in a week because I desperately think I need a med change.  I have lost all joy in my life and I am drinking again and cutting again and have totally fallen down the rabbit hole, so to speak.  But as I type this reflection on my past behaviour I intend to finish typing and go and drink.  I just want to escape and that’s what it is.  A clear and easy escape.  The easy answer to the pain that I feel.

So you can probably discern that I am an alcoholic.  On top of everything else I also can’t hold my booze the way that a normal person can.  I cannot go out and have two drinks and go home.  I go out and have ten drinks and make out with some random dude and stumble home and eat a ton and stay up until 5 drinking until I pass out on my couch.  At least that’s what happened last night and believe me it is not the first time.

I reached out to a friend last week who is in AA and she said that when I am ready she will sponsor me.  This is a difficult query.  I am not ready, I am enjoying the easy answer to my life and am not prepared to continue down the difficult road to full health.  But as long as I am drinking my meds aren’t effective and the worse my life becomes.  As long as I drink I will never be whole and live a full life.  Yet here I sit with full intention of drinking today, alone, and pathetic.

I am not sure why I am being so candid yet I do feel like I have made a secret pact with you, dear reader, that I will always disclose my life in full detail.  I spoke of the comorbidity of alcohol and Bipolar and about my addictive personality.  I am a rare breed of sufferer that knows their limits and yet blatantly ignores everything.  I know that I am a problem drinker and that I need to get a handle on it.  I know what a life without alcohol looks like because I have lived it for the last 4 months.  But because I am tired of being sick, am full of disdain for my face and my body, and am intent on punishing myself I continue a path of destruction.  I am tearing myself up inside and for what?  For release and for peace.  Erasing the feelings is the easy road to take.  I am lazy and no longer in control of what I am doing.  I have given over control to the demons within me and don’t, at the moment, give a damn.  I don’t care if I live or die right now.  I don’t care if I drink myself to death.  Why am I so intent on harming myself?  What have I done that is so horrible I deserve the bad treatment that I inflict on myself everyday?  I should be worth more than that.

Yet I can’t rationalize myself out of this.  I need my crutch to start working better.  I need a med change and I need to start going to group again and I need to go to AA and I need to set a better path in therapy because right now my talk therapy is not working.  I don’t feel I have the tools to accomplish anything and I am letting my life play itself out instead of steering my own ship.  I am giving over total control to the feelings instead of mastering the demons in my brain.

So you might be curious how it feels when you lose control.  Maybe this is something that no one can relate to.  It rips you up.  You are lost and in a dank well of sadness and loneliness.  But alcohol doesn’t make you happy.  On the contrary everyone knows that it is a depressant.  It only compounds the bad feelings.  See!  See how AWARE I am about the negative side effects.  But I don’t care.  I have lost hope for anything and I don’t care.  I can’t even look at my face in the mirror right now without feeling complete disgust.  I hate myself right now.  I don’t know why, I am doing nothing to fix it.  I am just content to destroy myself from within.

I will leave you with this disclaimer.  I am not suicidal.  Granted, I don’t care if I die which in itself is intense and NOT NORMAL.  But I am not planning or thinking or scheming anything that will harm me, aside from the problem drinking.  I haven’t reached that black of a place, I am safe.   I just wanted to make that clear because I know the negativity might raise that question but I am fine and not going to really harm myself.

Okay.  Enough of this shit.  I am off to drink…..maybe in my next post I will be more upbeat.  Maybe in my next post I will have the answers to living a full life again.  But for now I am apart from all of that.  I am in hell.

Just thought I would check in on my life….or perhaps ask you to do that for me.

I am tired.  So tired.  I have been battling with these feelings for a few days, a week perhaps, and I am so very tired.  I can’t get off my couch.  I have been going to work but it is half hearted.  I am still doing my job, doing it well even, but I am not there.  Yesterday was terrible.  I couldn’t connect with any of my coworkers and had a placid look on my face.  Some people asked what was a matter, I just said I was feeling fine and mellow.

But I am not fine or mellow.  I am lost inside my head, I am stuck.  I haven’t been writing or reading, I am in a non enjoyment phase.  I am having difficulty writing this right now.

I just want to say that I am sick of having these feelings, I am sick of being sick.  I work hard everyday just to function and get out of bed, or off the couch.  I just text a friend to hopefully get out.  I have to make sure I take my pills, I have to make sure I am constantly using my coping skills and I am constantly working working working to get better.  But that is the thing that is bothering me right now.  I am never going to get better.  This is going to be a constant fight that I am never going to win.

I know that I will be well enough to make it through my life but I worry constantly that it is not going to be a fulfilled life.  I don’t think I will ever be able to have a relationship or have children or be in a financial place to buy a house or even buy a car.  I fear that I will always have a missing piece, a life half lived.

These are my concerns right now and they are driving me mad.  The more I worry the more I feel disdain for this disease and what it is doing for me and the more I throw myself a pity party.  I feel lost and worthless.  The better mind knows that is not true but sometimes it gets so tiring to listen to that voice.  It is easier to give over to my feelings than allow my rational mind to take hold.

I am in no immediate danger right now.  I am just feeling low and needed to express that.  I needed to make a connection with something outside of myself.

It seems that I am feeling fine.  I am not depressed, spending all day in bed and hiding from the world.  I am not manic, racing thoughts and uncontrollable impulses.  But something is off kilter.  Something is eating at me and I cannot seem to find the source.

I wrote the post about addiction for a reason.  I have that nagging feeling of escape that I cannot just pinpoint and medicate or reason away.  I feel like there’s nothing I can do, nothing to make this feeling, or lack of feeling, go away.  I am heading back into the dark, unarmed.  I am battling something right now with no guns or tanks on my side, I am just in the cross fire standing alone, waiting to be shot.  And the other night I succumbed to the feelings, I let the other side win.

I decided on Friday to test out a theory I had been toying with, that if I didn’t take my midday meds then I would be able to drink.  So I didn’t take them and had a Newcastle.  It went down smooth as I remember.  I sat on my couch enveloped in the ecstasy of this tasty beverage and the release that it gave me.  With the realization that I only had two Newcastles left and surely that wouldn’t be enough for my night of fun I headed to the local cheese shop that also sells wine.  I bought a bottle of Pinot and a wine key.  I bought the wine key because my others had been confiscated.  You see they have a sharp blade for cutting away the foil and I have been known to cut with that little blade in the past.  So all wine keys are out of my house and I needed a new one.  I went home over joyed and ready to drink the bottle.  I had one glass, then another.  Oh dear as the drunk set in I began to worry that one bottle and two Newcastles still weren’t going to be enough. With that I skipped out of my apartment, literally skipped and hummed a little tune of joy.  Back to the cheese shop, more wine for me.  This time, Malbec in my little hands I hummed my happy tune all the way back to my apartment to enjoy my new purchase and to relish a night of abandon.  A time out from the feelings that plague me, the bad feelings I can’t pinpoint.

One more glass of wine and I lost control.  Into the kitchen and the wine key was in hand.  I can’t cut my wrists like I prefer, it’s summertime and everyone will notice, so I delicately dipped the little blade into rubbing alcohol, I delicately lifted up my dress and dug it into my abdomen.  I traced little patterns in my flesh, I bit my lips as it pierced and pushed harder if I didn’t immediately see blood.  I cut for about 15 minutes and then felt truly at peace.  I returned to the couch and ran my hands along the fruits of my handicraft.  Barely any blood, damn blunt razor, but enough pain to release whatever it is that is within me.

So here I sit, writing these words and reflecting, trying to process exactly where it all went wrong.  I can’t, for anything, figure out what is going on within me.  Why am I acting out in this manner?  Why, after 4 months of treatment and counseling and right medications and talking and talking and talking did I throw the work away with a few glasses of wine?  Why does drinking take me to this place?  I can’t believe how easy it was to cut again.  As I type I think I am never going to do it again.  I know I can’t drink if it causes me to immediately reach for a knife.  That is not a place that I want to be in.

It is taking everything for me to share this now.  I am making this a real situation by opening it up to all of you.  I wish I had answers and positive notions and guidance for others who are sick.  I wish I could be an inspiration instead of a statistic.  Just another girl sick with Bipolar and not succeeding at life.  So, in this next week I will continue to process the why of all of this.  I will continue to think about where these feelings may be coming from.  I will also reach out.  I haven’t done that.  I failed on Saturday at lunch with my best friend. I told her about the drinking but not about the cutting.  I couldn’t bare the look of pity or perhaps judgement on her face.  I don’t want to think is she only wondering when the hell I will let this go and just get better.  Maybe it’s because this is the judgement that I have within myself.  I didn’t want to see that reflected in her eyes.  So tomorrow I will call my doctor and make an appointment to talk about my meds.  Maybe I am in a new place mentally and they aren’t effective anymore.  Maybe I need the dosage upped or tweaks made.  I need his guesswork to try and make me whole.  I am also seeing Dr. Laura this week and hopefully we can work through to find some answers.  That is the worst part.  Not understanding.

Where is the miracle pill we all are waiting for?  Will there come a time when Bipolar is so well understood that one pill can cure it?  Why is it not studied more?  Why does the brain have to be so damn complicated?  Why am I writing this now even though I am currently happy with my meds?  I will expand.

I have been reading more and more blog posts and to be perfectly honest they give me inspiration to write something I might not otherwise have thought of.  I am so appreciative of that and also that there are so many good writers out there that are so open and candid about their experiences.  Thanks to the internet for allowing so many people to find peace and understanding and support!

So a lot of people have been talking about meds.  I am lucky because all of my meds seem to be working at the moment and despite the dips in mood I have been experiencing I am fairly stable and flowing along with my little life the best I can.  But others out there are not so lucky.  A lot of being Bipolar is spending an inordinate amount of time worrying and working on your med routine.  I know this first hand.  And a lot of med routine is trial and error until they find the right combination for you.  It is sad but true that doctors are so ill equipped to have definitive answers to the med question.  And cap that off with everyone’s brain being different and we find so much of our time spent in doctor’s offices and so much of our energy given over to wondering or waiting or writing down our experiences as they come.

Some out there have wished for a miracle pill.  Some have even thought talk therapy can’t help and wish for a drug to cure.  Yes, it would be a wonderful thing for there to be a miracle pill to make Bipolar go away but it is not as much a science right now as it is a lot of guesswork and med combinations.  Combinations that help us to get through our wild emotions unscathed.

I am reading a book right now called “Unhinged:  The Truth with Psychiatry A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis” By Dr. Daniel Carlat.  I will review it as soon as I am done but I will leave you with this.  Unfortunately the profession is not making the strides we think that it is, more and more drugs are being subscribed and more and more there is not an easy answer or easy fix for this disease.  Medications are a crutch they are not the cure all.  I wish for a miracle pill too sometimes, especially when I am feeling down.  But it simply is not that simple.

The Bipolar brain is a beast in and of itself.  Doctors can’t trace the exact sources of the disease in the brain or pinpoint the exact genomes where Bipolar is thought to originate.  And so comes environmental factors.  Life experiences that make a brain more weak or prone to Bipolar.  I don’t know where I am on this debate and because I have both the genetic disposition and childhood trauma it is difficult for me to even propose a source within myself.  But let’s add something to the Bipolar equation.  Addiction.  Another beast of psychological understanding.  God I hate how little we know about the brain.  But what is known is that mental illness such as Bipolar and Addiction seem to play off one another.  It’s called comorbidity.  Battling a sick brain and stunted emotional growth leads a person to seek self soothing techniques such as addiction.  Naturally this is not always the case, but in this blog we find it and I still battle with it everyday.

I was asked in my last therapy session to make a list of all the addictions that I have had over time, since childhood.  Every little thing that became a habitual way to self soothe and to blot out the pain my brain was inflicting or the trauma I wanted to forget.  The reason for this is self reflection.  If I can begin to see patterns emerge then maybe I can find the key to fighting addiction off completely.  You see I engage in an activity called addiction transference.  When one loses its desired effect or when I am forced to quit then I change over to another self soothing behavior to block out the pain and to gain the same escape I got from the previous behavior.  This is common with patients with addictive personalities.  I believe the definition of addictive personality is the action of taking every normal thing to the extreme, not being able to engage in one behavior without it resulting in an upheaval in your life.

Let me rephrase and provide an example.  A regular person can drink a beer and go home and go to sleep.  An alcoholic can drink a beer and drink two and then can’t stop.  That is the difference between an addict and a regular person.  But let’s say that alcoholic gets clean and sober.  No more drinking!  That’s a good thing.  But just because they are now clean does not mean that the problem that lead them to drink is gone.  It also doesn’t mean that the compulsive behavior is gone.  The alcohol was just the mask of choice, one mask is then replaced with another.  Now a regular person can have a scoop of ice cream and go to bed.  The alcoholic eats the entire carton.  They have transferred the addiction to something else.  This does not always occur.  I am not sure if a study on transference has been done but I do know plenty of people in recovery that haven’t picked up a new addiction to fill the void.  For them the alcohol was the root of the problem and once under control they were able to lead a full life, alcohol free.  For more complex situations this is not the case.  Imagine peeling back the layers of an onion.  One layer leads to another to another.  Your brow is sweaty, your hands are stinky, tears are slowly squeezing out your eyes but you must continue to peel to get to the heart.  It is a difficult and uncomfortable job and the bigger the onion the longer it takes you.  A Bipolar brain is a rather large onion, especially when you throw in a little addiction.

So I was asked to examine my addictive history.  This was an uncomfortable assignment to undertake.  Imagine going back through your entire adolescence and early adult hood and examining all the stupid mistakes you made.  Imagine if these are rooted in a bigger problem and all pieces that demand to be put together to understand the person sitting in your skin right now.  Every action I have engaged in is a part of that puzzle, it’s a part of a mystery that I have to solve to get well.  So I wrote and wrote and wrote.  I took myself back to my teens when I began self harm.  I would lay in my bed and bang my head against the wall until I blacked out.  I would suffocate myself, I would pray for death.  This was the first of the self destructive behavior.  I engaged in this behavior until I found a suitable substitute, alcohol.  I have a rocky history with alcohol.  I still don’t consider myself an alcoholic, I never crossed the line into physical dependency, withdrawals, cravings, that sort of thing.  But I definitely was and still am, though I can’t drink now, a problem drinker.  I would binge and purge alcohol.  Drink as much as I could possibly imbibe and then throw it all up and come back and drink until black out.  This was something that I did from age 18 to now.  If I wasn’t on the medicine that prevents me from drinking I would probably still be doing it.  Granted I didn’t do this every time I drank but if I was out for the night, a party night, then I would engage in this behavior.  It is extremely self destructive.

I won’t continue to tell the whole story of my addictions.  But I just wanted to give an illustration of transference.  I stopped banging when I started drinking.  I slowed down the drinking and started cutting.  I quit cutting and started eating.  I now am battling having no addiction, aside from compulsive binge eating, I order Papa Johns and eat the entire thing.  I don’t have drinking or cutting to soothe me.   This is what I am using to soothe at the moment and I hate it because I am starting to put on weight.  So now I am searching for something new, toying with disaster. I don’t know where the drive to escape is coming from and yet it is there, eating away at me once more.  So, my therapist is examining the root of my addictive behavior and I have also been given a book that I have to read before next weeks session.  The book apparently helped Oprah and many others get over their self destructive addictive behavior.  It’s called “Healing the Shame that Binds You” by John Bradshaw.

On his website he proposes,

Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction, and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. It limits the development of self esteem and causes anxiety and depression, and limits our ability to be connected in relationships.  This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes, and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.

So here is a book that can help me to identify why I am an addict.  I already know that I have a lot of shame so hopefully this will be something I find worthwhile.  I have also decided that it will be the first of many self help books that I will review on this site.  I hope to be able to add a new dimension to the blog and also provide a resource for Bipolars looking for good or helpful books or knowing which books to avoid.  Obviously I am no expert in self help, not a trained professional, but I am a survivor and I can distinguish what might work and what is crap.  So, check back with me in a week and see how this book fairs.  Hopefully it can help me to find the root cause in my addictive personality and help me begin to heal whatever is down there.  I am ready to work my way down that road.

It’s already August!  I didn’t realize this until I sat down today to do my daily journaling and realized that the little date had ticked into a new little month.  Does anyone else out there feel like this last month gotten away from them?

And so I will assess July in all its short, time flying glory and as many of you might remember I set some little goals for myself and now it’s time to look back and see if those goals turned into achievements or if I let the month pass me by.  For those who are new to the site you can check out my goal setting post in the monthly archives.

I am surprised to say that I did meet some of my goals!  I paid all my bills on time, I went to work everyday, I rewarded myself with good behaviour, and reached out when I felt down.  I am entering August in a good mind set and feeling even better about the impending month because I can look back and see that I have a full month of mental stability under my belt.  This is the biggest achievement of all.  I made it through an entire 31 days without hurting myself and without engaging in destructive behaviour and without back tracking on my wellness plan.  There are a few goals that I let slip by.  I still haven’t created a tip calculator like my dad suggested and I haven’t stopped eating out and began to cook for myself.  I also haven’t lost 5 pounds but I am not concerned about that because I did achieve the goal of learning everyday to love myself, as I am, a little more.  So I am not “skinny girl”.  Instead I am smart girl, lovely girl, goal achieving girl.

So I am moving into August with a sense of pride and with some goals that I am carrying over and that hopefully I will achieve this month.  Sorry I am using the word achieve a lot, none issue, but maybe I should get a thesaurus.

My goal for this post, little goals are good, is to encourage everyone to set their own goals for the month.  Maybe post some here and we can help each other along.  I repeat in this month’s opening entry that goals are good and help make the future seem not only plausible but something that is not meant to be feared.  I am in a good state of mind right now and hope more positive posts will follow.  I flowed up and down last month, hopefully this month will be more stable.  I might even start delving into the past a bit, giving you some more insight into me and my background.  Feeling good enables self reflection and perhaps you can join me on that journey.

For now welcome August with open arms.

Black voids

Black voids are impossible to fill

Once so much pain endured

No goodness can possibly enter

To the brain, I ask, a new plan

Put the void away

Pack it up in brown leather suitcases

Alert the heart and stomach too

They might have something to add

Then send it down a long conveyor belt

encircling the spine

exiting the balls of your feet.

Black voids packed neatly on my bookshelf

White, welcoming light, unencumbered,

beckons me forward.