Fat Friday: Standing My Ground

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Nothing is wrong with your big body.

The way people with big bodies are abused, bullied, and devalued is wrong.

So, I told myself that I was doing all right, but I was actually starting to spiral. It all came crashing down after I ended up making a casserole that was a culinary disaster and then reading a post on a medical site by a dietitian looking for a punching bag so she turned to fat people, but of course. The sharticle in question used terms like "glorifying obesity." 

After leaving this unoriginal twatwaffle a scathing reply pointing out that there is no "glorifying obesity", there are merely people daring to exist in public while fat and it offends her delicate sensibilities, I deflated like a balloon that had been poked with a pin. I crawled under the covers and went to bed without dinner, falling asleep while watching Clone Wars and wishing I was dead.

People do not take care of things that they hate, and that includes our bodies.

Assholes like this dietitian who rail against fat people like we were the fucking second coming of the black death end up pushing fat people away from seeking help for whatever may be ailing them rather than engaging in preventative or maintenance care. Fat people tend to only go to the doctor when things become critical because of the way we are treated by the medical establishment. This goes a long way towards explaining why doctors only see unhealthy fat people. Who the hell wants to go to a place where they know they are going to be bullied?

This is why size shaming and diet culture don't work. Health at Every Size works.

I'm fat, not stupid. I know when I'm being othered and scapegoated. It's a bullshit approach, and if you use it, I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself. 

Believe it or not, I used to be a really nice, sweet person. Being bullied and made to feel ashamed of myself at every turn beat that right the fuck out of me.

Right now, t 'is the season for "so, how's your New Years Resolutions (translate: diet culture adherence and burst of orthorexia) going?" posts.

I ditched diet culture ten years ago after 33 years of yo-yo dieting and trying to hate myself thin. I don't do new year's resolutions. If I'm going to exercise, I'm going to exercise. It's hard to do much at this point with my disabilities, but I do try to get in a walk every day. 

I absolutely do not diet. Dieting destroys a person's metabolism. I was a serial dieter and every time I dieted, the weight I lost came back with friends. 

Yes, I'm fat, and if people are going to be jerks about it, they are not people I want around me anyway.

“Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.”

― J.K. Rowling

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

"Fat isn't the problem. Dieting is the problem."
--Dr. Linda Bacon

Wordy Thursday: New Mindest, New Results

Genre:

Business

Rating:

Four out of Four Stars for Online Book Club

Disclosure:

I received an advance copy of this book for review purposes.

This post contains affiliate links. If readers purchase a copy of the book through the above link, I will receive a small commission from Amazon.

Please read my exclusive Online Book Club review of this book here.

This is a brief, encouraging book geared towards small business owners who have employees. It can also be utilized by solo entrepreneurs and by managers in a larger business or corporate setting. The author writes in a friendly, personable tone. He addresses issues such as communicating with one's staff in an encouraging and forthright manner as well as personal perseverance. 

When employees feel as though they are a valued part of a business, they will be engaged and involved in its growth. I wish that some of my past employers had a book like this at their disposal. They might have enjoyed increased staff retention and performance if they had treated their employees as assets rather than disposable components.

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

How did I Love?

Image by Ajay kumar Singh from Pixabay

A response to this post.

Oh gosh, I don't know if this will go through and I don't know if it is even welcome, but here it is.

How did I love?

With much reservation, fear, and sorrow.

I used to have such a strong need to connect with someone that I let a lot of the wrong ones in, and they did me a lot of damage.

Romantically, my theme song is Love Stinks, and I do not want anyone telling me that I need to "try again." No, I do not, and I don't want to.

Even with friendship, my theme song is Love Hurts. Most people who have said they wanted to be friends really just wanted something from me. Money or connections, when I had those. Now that I don't have much of anything, these "friends" are long gone.

I can't really relate to other people with bipolar disorder because although some of them understand the bipolar part, they don't understand the ADD, OCD, and PTSD that is also part of the package.

A lot of people get help from medications, but I can't take anything except a low dose of Lithium. I have type 2 bipolar disorder, so I normally do not get full-on manias and I normally do not experience psychosis. When I take SSRIs, I experience both. I've learned a lot of coping skills, but it's a real balancing act. If I let someone in and they betray me, I could end up in the ER with blood running down my arms from slashing my wrists. It's happened before. I do not want it to happen again. 

I've had love to give in the past. I give it only to a select few and with a lot of reservations. Some people think this means that I'm cold and standoffish. However, I've found that people who demand love tend to be people that will only misuse it.

I didn't say this in my comment on the post, but, for real, other people with mood disorders have been some of the most narrow-minded and least understanding. When they have said that I need to have my doctor adjust my meds if I mention going through a severe depression, and I respond that I can't take the meds because they make me manic and psychotic, these people will suddenly become cold and judgmental. "Well, if you're that depressed, you need to be on meds." 

Well, if you're that much of an asshole, you need to fuck off.

I wish I had known then what I know now. Some people are miserable fuckers who want to rub their miserable fuckery all over others. I never said you were a bad person for taking meds, you defensive douche canoe. Why am I a bad person for opting not to take them when they send me straight off the rails?

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery and Neurodivergent

Reminder: $10 off Yearly Watkins Consultant Fee until January 31

Disclosure: 

I am an independent consultant for Watkins.

This offer is only available to residents of Canada and the United States.

Folks, I may be THE Ornery Old Lady and proud of it, but I would never want to be known as The Pushy Old Lady. This is why I was never successful with MLM. I sucked at hawking Herbalife, and I was my own best customer with Avon. Most home-based marketing programs have monthly quotas and you end up with people pretending they're not home when they see you coming up the walk because they don't want to hear you begging them to please, for the love of all that's holy, buy something from you so you can make your quota.

Watkins isn't like that. In fact, I only joined Watkins to order their products for myself. From the fine quality extracts and organic spices to the Been Green Since Before Green was Cool cleaning products, I get a discount on everything I order. It only costs me $29.95 per year for access to the Timeless Integrity consultant website with all the promotional materials plus my own two websites that I don't have to do a thing to maintain. Trust me, I suck at building web pages. They usually end up looking like a kid's art project with a bunch of stickers and cardboard cutouts slapped haphazardly onto a piece of construction paper.

You can check out my websites here:

This website is strictly for selling products. The site is live, and if you see something you like but aren't interested in becoming a consultant yourself, you can order from me here.

This is the website that I usually send folks to. There is a link to the Watkins order page in the right-hand corner. The rest of the site explains about the Watkins home business. If you decide you only want to become a consultant to purchase your own products at a discount, that's perfectly okay too. That's why I joined, but I discovered that this business is so simple and so low-risk that I want everyone to know about it.

Plus, until the end of January, becoming a Watkins consultant is only $19.95. 

To become a consultant for most home-based business programs of this caliber, you end up spending hundreds of dollars. With Watkins, the amount of time and money you put into it is up to you. At worst, you'll be out twenty bucks. At best, if you're really motivated and/or are the kind of person who has charm to spare, you could end up quitting your day job for real and making your living selling products you can feel great about and helping other folks get in the game too.

If you're a resident of the U.S. or Canada, I urge you to check this out. The monetary risk is negligible, and you'll end up benefiting even if you only purchase products for your household.

Watkins has the Ornery Seal of Approval.

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Owl

Sharing with these folks:

Wordy Thursday: On Writing by Stephen King

Genre:
Nonfiction, Autobiography, Instructional, Writing

Rating:
Five out of Five Stars

The following is a duplicate of my review on Goodreads for this book.

If readers purchase the book through the above preview link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.

I have been a fan of Stephen King for many years. I read this book when it first came out and enjoyed reading it again. Of course, I am very glad that he survived his terrible accident and is now doing better.

I would not thrive writing the way Mr. King recommends: by shutting myself in a room for two hours with everything tuned out. I would start to feel as if I was in a dungeon fairly quickly. I am based in my living room where I can look out the window. I don't know if he would like my writing. I enjoy some of the elements that he recommends eliminating. However, I did learn two things from him a long time ago: mind the adverbs, and watch out for overly long and descriptive sentences.

I am glad to have this book in my library again.

Questions from the Insecure Writers' Support Group Book Club:

1. Stephen King says, “You can read anywhere, almost, but when it comes to writing, library carrels, park benches, and rented flats should be courts of last resort."
I reckon you've gotta write where you've gotta write. However, I doubt I'd get much writing done on a park bench. Probably nothing more than a bit of note-taking would transpire there.

QUESTIONS: Where do you like to write? Have you written in the places King says should be last resorts and found them to work better for you?
I usually write in the living room with my butt parked on the dilapidated couch that doubles as my bed. I don't write much of anywhere else at this juncture.

2. QUESTION: King states that story comes first, never theme. I disagree. Do you think a theme only develops after the story has come together or can a good story be developed from a theme?

I usually don't think much about the theme beyond it planting a seed in my disheveled brain. I probably have a theme in mind when I start.

3. QUESTIONS: What "tools" do you find most indispensable when you write? Are there any you would add to King's toolbox (which includes grammar, vocabulary, elements of style and form, character development, descriptions, dialogue, tools for revision help)?
Coffee.

4. QUESTIONS: King believes that stories are "found things, like fossils in the ground." Let’s discuss King's extended metaphor of "writing as excavation." Do you agree with this theory? How would you describe writing if different from his point-of-view?
Sometimes my story ideas come sailing through the air and smack me on the head.

5. QUESTIONS: Was this your first time reading a book by Stephen King or were you a fan before? Either way, what did you think of his book On Writing?

I've been a big fan since I was about fourteen years old. Stephen King is one of those people that I'd love to meet except for the fact that he'd probably think I was the biggest loser to ever be plopped down on this lousy planet, so I imagine I'd slink off into the shadows if the opportunity to meet him ever arose.

I think that On Writing has many excellent suggestions. Not all of them work for me.

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Aunt Cie's Attic

Good Stuff from Grover

Ornery Book Emporium

Ornery Literary Services

Naughty Netherworld Press

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Wednesday: Such a Cold Night

Image by Robson Machado from Pixabay

lying down

with quilts over the head

such a cold night

I spent many nights like this

in a trailer with no heat

~cie~

notes

The Hokku stanza was written by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). The Ageku stanza was written by me. It is autobiographical.

Boycott Aaron Carter: Art Thief and Asshole

So, dumpster fire and talentless hack Aaron Carter is ripping off the work of an actual artist to promote his shitty merchandise.

Here is the location of the tweet in case you’d like to respond to Aaron’s entitled temper tantrum. https://t.co/MG78rgCwZr

Here is the article on Forbes where I first learned of this incident. It includes a picture of Jonas’ art.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadjasayej/2020/01/18/berlin-artist-jonas-jdicke-speaks-up-about-aaron-carter-art-fiasco/#6fe442482b6f

I added the following sentiment to my retweet of Aaron’s cosmically shitty response to Jonas Jodicke’s classy request that Aaron stop using his art without his permission.

It's probably too much to ask for @aaroncarter to not behave like a complete trash fire for once in his arrogant, entitled life. Aaron is ripping off @JoJoesArt because he doesn't have an original bone in his entire body. Don't buy his overpriced merch, he doesn't deserve a cent.

I wouldn’t wipe my ass with Aaron’s overpriced clothes. Please share this so everyone knows what a colossal douchebag Aaron the Art Thief is.

Come as you Are Party: The Harms of Organized Religion

heringstuff

 youknowyoureanexchristianwhen

“I wonder if this is what binds many of us who de-converted, across denominations, across varying beliefs; what it is that allows us to easily understand each other’s experiences — we were given an understanding of the ourselves that said that we did not belong to ourselves, that to live rightly we should relinquish any sense of our autonomy, any idea that we could judge our own beliefs for ourselves. We sacrificed our internal understanding for an external belief system on the sole grounds that we were told that this was the truth of existence. Which means that the very act of de-converting is done with an understanding that we are seen as betrayers, as committing the ultimate rebellion: a rebellion against God himself. A rebellion against truth, reality, reason, morality, and goodness.”

— When You’re Taught Autonomy is a Lie, on somaticstrength (via speakingwhentheworldsleeps)

 exchristianheart

The entire article is worth reading.

 fierceawakening

Reblogging again to quote:

While the modern world celebrates and elevates autonomy, biblical Christianity points to individualism as the seat of all human evil.

I don’t know if people outside of controlling religious environments realize that this was a foundational message for many of us. That when we talk about the messages our faith gave us, we’re not just talking about things some fellow Christian told us, but rather the very beliefs that we were given — the things we were told was the absolute truth about ourselves, and about the world.

I was taught that I did not belong to myself. I belonged to God, and I should give up any sense that I had autonomy, or a right to my own opinions or perspective. “The world” was sinful because it believed in such concepts as “self identity” as “personal rights” as “the ability to determine what works for you based on yourself and your own experiences.”

This is EXACTLY why I left, not only religious communities but also… I don’t want to say “radical feminist” circles, but circles influenced enough by them to assert that what matters is your social group (MAN vs WOMAN) and not yourself, and used “choice feminist” as an insult.

I do want choices.
Because I belong to ME.

 callioscope

radical feminism criticizes our society for forcing men and women into different heirarchical roles, with women at the bottom. This doesn’t mean feminists are trying to take your choice away and tell you the only thing you can care about is whether you’re a man or a woman.

It’s good to be able to distinguish a movement’s critiques of the current state of things from the goal the movement is working toward. (similar to “but how can you be against racism if you keep claiming being black makes someone oppressed??” The answer is “to fight for a better situation you have to be able to explain what’s wrong with the current situation”)

 shed1nja

Radical feminism and Atheism go hand in hand for me. Radical feminists also recognize the dangers of eschewing individualism. They’re gender critical because, like religion, gender has been used as a groupthink brainwashing tool, to segregate society for no good reason. “Female brains only do this, male brains only do this,” as if you can assume that about billions of people planetwide.

Radfems disagree with “choice feminism” not because we think we can control every woman’s choices. That’s not the goal. There is just such a thing as too much individualism. Power in this world is set up to benefit the few and screw the many, and if you’re one of the many, the unfair systems in place to keep the powerful powerful affect you, whether you want to believe it or not.

Sex-based oppression still exists, and unfortunately, most women can’t make decisions in this world without living their lives around that.

 slysfreespeechspace

I am an agnostic who was raised Catholic and left the church when I was eighteen. I got involved with New Age thinking for many years and discovered that New Agers and many people who call themselves Pagan are just as rigid and judgmental as Christians. Now I keep my spiritual beliefs pretty close to the chest and see organized religion as far more harmful than helpful.

Blow Your Stack Saturday: Borderline Personality Disorder and Misogyny

heringstuff

 tervbangs

love how bpd is the new trendy hysteria diagnosis so instead of teaching traumatized young women how to heal themselves, we slap on a relatively meaningless diagnosis until they fully internalize that their issues (i.e. not responding to trauma appropriately in a quiet, subdued, “female” way) are  ingrained flaws they can absolutely never overcome 

 intothelesbiverse

It’s an actual mental illness tho

 tervbangs

it’s a response to trauma. i think it’s more helpful to look at it through that angle (as ptsd or c-ptsd) because healing from that trauma is at the forefront of treatment, as opposed to a bpd diagnosis where a personality disorder is by definition inflexible and unchanging and the focus of treatment is to just treat the side-effects or harmful behavior patterns

 feministvenus

As someone who is studying and working in the field of mental health, I have a few thoughts about this.

First, the DSM-5 is not gospel. Criteria is always changing and some mental illnesses have been removed completely. All a diagnostic label does is describe a set of symptoms.

An overwhelming majority of people diagnosed with BPD are women. As @tervbangs mentioned, many of them have suffered trauma (unfortunately, child sex abuse is a common history among people diagnosed with BPD). Men and women respond to trauma differently. If a man experiences trauma, his set of symptoms is often more in line with a PTSD diagnoses and he is more likely to receive treatment for his trauma. However, since women respond to trauma differently, this trauma is often missed completely and they are diagnosed with BPD instead.

BPD diagnoses often don’t help women. Again I’m echoing @tervbangs, but people can recover from trauma with treatment, but personality disorders are seen as a life-sentence and untreatable. There is an enormous amount of stigma surrounding BPD and many mental health professionals avoid women diagnosed with BPD entirely. Slapping a woman with a BPD diagnoses often results in a game of “hot potato” where the client is bounced from professional to professional. Many people in the field believe that a) women with BPD can’t be helped or b) they’re manipulative, vindictive individuals and are some how responsible for their symptoms.

With proper treatment of trauma, many women initially diagnosed with BPD will no longer meet the criteria. However, the diagnostic label will follow them for the rest of their lives even when it doesn’t apply anymore.

I have had the pleasure of working under counsellors who argue that the BPD diagnoses should be eliminated entirely and instead a sub-category of PTSD should be instated. I 100% agree and believe this would lead to a better outcome for women living with trauma.

 ragingvulvasaur

Someone give me a real scientific study on the links between the trauma of growing up female, the inherent sexism of psychiatry, and the use of BPD Dxs against women!!!!!! It absolutely is sexism against traumatized women and girls. How dare we be emotional, and lash out in response to trauma instesd of being good quiet girls? Boys with the same “symptoms” arent Dxd with a personality disorder. Theyre shrugged off because boys are supposed to lash out, be moody, and fuck everyone in sight.

 irate-badfem-harpy

They’ll tell you reassuringly “bpd is the only personality disorder that you aren’t born with” but can’t put together that maybe it’s because we’ve been traumatized that we act the way we do, that maybe our self destructive behavior is a result of being made powerless, that our impulsivity is a result of being conditioned to expect small erratic bursts of chaos and pain for seemingly no reason at all, that we don’t have a definite sense of self because we haven’t been able to be anything but surviving for a decade or more, that we can’t visualize a future because we were too busy just trying to visualize the day when you escape.

I don’t yet know how to properly articulate or substantiate this but I’m firmly of the opinion that men recover from PTSD more quickly than women because their traumas are different. They drive too fast down main street because they’re still driving like a pipe bomb is gna flip their car if they dawdle for even a second; a thunderclap sends them rolling off their bed and scrambling for their body armor at three in the morning. But they can get past that. They learn that they’re no longer in danger.

What do women learn, when we come forward about our trauma?

“Are you sure it was…”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“You’re overreacting”

“I know him he wouldn’t do that”

“What did you say that made him so angry”

“No it didn’t”

“You’re lying”

“You must be imagining it”

“You’re trying to ruin his life”

“Attention whore”

We learn we can’t trust grown-ups. There are no good ones who will help us. We learn no one wants to help us. So we must deserve it then. So we just survive because if we kill ourselves we might fail and then we’ll get in even more trouble. So we endure. Kind of. And if we break, then we must have deserved that too.

 heringstuff

It’s totally the modern hysteria, which doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who really suffer from it.

Personal experience/rant…

Keep reading

 slysfreespeechspace

I have type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADD. Having a diagnosis helped me find ways to cope with the manifestations of these conditions, but health care professionals tend to be unwilling to research the why behind them. It’s easier to try and medicate a patient into a semblance of normalcy.

I feel like my borderline personality disorder manifested from feeling like I was unheard and unloved in my childhood. At this point in my life, I tend to only form very superficial relationships with people for fear that they will abandon me and I tend not to trust people’s motivations.

I agree with feministvenus that the BPD diagnosis should be eradicated and BPD should instead be made a subtype of PTSD because that's what it is.

Making BPD a subtype of PTSD would also remove it from the "personality disorder" stigma. There are people who claim that BPD is "the little sister of antisocial personality disorder," which it isn't. People with BPD generally know that something's wrong with their behaviors. People with antisocial personality disorder do not.

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: Reincarnation Wave

shrouded memories

wash to the shore like a wave

lives unremembered

shrouded memories

creeping up from the dark past

preying on my mind

wash to the shore like a wave

I wish I could float away

forgetting this strife

lives unremembered

hiding in my troubled mind

preparing to spring

~cie~

notes

We were given two Haiku by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) with which to create a "fusion-ku," and from there, to create a Troiku. Here are Jane's Haiku. My "sleigh" is a Senryu rather than a Haiku, but so it goes.

a huge wave

thundering across the beach

my birthday

sky-clad

the new-born comes wrapped

in previous lives

Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Sly and Snarky

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

FOAD Thursday: Jillian Michaels Can FOAD Forever

A response to this post.

You know, it's hard enough having to deal with diabetes without having it made into a character flaw by sanctimonious assholes. I'm glad that Kai Hibbard came at Jillian Michaels full force. 

I give no quarter to those who say things like being fat causes diabetes. I would hazard a guess that in the case of people like me there is a genetic factor that both caused my train wreck of an endocrine system and promotes a heavy body type. But many people who are built like me (myself included) are actually very good at restricting food. Yo-yo dieting has also been implicated in causing the problems that being fat gets blamed for, because, you know, starving yourself isn't good for a body.

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Fat. And ornery.

Tanka Splendor: Vernal Equinox

Image Source

vernal equinox

fifty-fifth year of my life

will I find some peace

or will the dark curtain fall

as it tends to do in spring?

~cie~

notes

I created the Tanka Splendor badge with a free to use stock image on Pixlr. Please feel free to use it on your own blog. No credit is necessary.

I was not correctly diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder until I was nearly 40 years old. I was diagnosed with "depression and anxiety." I have both of those, but I have bipolar disorder rather than unipolar depression as my son has. My restlessness was sometimes blamed on ADD, which I have as well, but the restlessness becomes magnified in a hypomanic state.

My baseline mood is moderately depressed. Some of my depression is situational. Living in poverty is very stressful. I try to ameliorate the way I feel about it by the fact that I keep trying, but sometimes I feel like all my trying adds up to one big ole heapin' helpin' of horse manure and I become despondent. 

I live with suicide ideation. I think about offing myself a lot. Ideation is not the same as planning. My planning levels tend to be low regardless of how strong the ideation levels are. Generally speaking, I'm probably too much of an asshole to commit suicide because then I wouldn't be able to piss people off by existing in a corporeal fashion in their presence. But sometimes not having to struggle sure sounds like a winner.

I have experienced spring depression almost every year of my life since I hit puberty. My puberty was somewhat precocious and started coming on when I was nine years old. Thinking back on things, the first time I can remember seeing a strong manifestation that could have been identified as bipolar 2 was on my tenth birthday. 

Bipolar 2 can be sneaky since it presents with hypomania rather than full mania. Hypomania is like "mania lite." However, it can be just as destructive. I've learned to recognize the magical thinking that comes with the condition and to try not to act on my impulses during periods of hypomania. By magical thinking, I don't mean believing in fairies or even believing something potentially fatal like thinking I could get up on a roof and float down. Hypomania does not create that sort of delusion. (The delusion that jumping off a roof is a good idea. I like to hope that believing in fairies is not a delusion.) It does create the sort of delusion that I should buy into an MLM program for a thousand dollars and will make a butt-ton of money and be able to live happily ever after. I don't have the focus to be successful at such a thing, even if it is one of the few programs that is legit.

By the way, Watkins is not that sort of program. It is legit, and the "buy-in" for a year is only $30. I'm only saying this because the -666 of you who follow my blogs might be saying "oh, Cie, have you done this again with this Watkins thing?" No, I actually only signed up for Watkins to get discounts on my own merchandise but after reviewing the material felt good about recommending it to others.

I am trying to learn to forgive myself for sometimes really awful and personally destructive past decisions and to stop belittling myself for having a brain that works differently than the brains of the sort of people who tend to be held up as examples. Nobody will ever say: "why can't you be more like that ornery old hag cie? I mean, she's simply all over the place, and she's easily distracted except when she's laser-focused on one of her ruinous plans? Now there's someone you can look up to!"

I will be fifty-five in a month and a day from this writing unless I go tits up in the meantime. I have no hope that "this will be my year" as I always told myself on birthdays in the past and was inevitably disappointed. This will be a year. There will be no significant shifts. I will remain me and the world will wag on.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #111 Troiku ... New Beginnings ... Lotus starts to bloom

image source

in deep prayer

eyes closed in devotion -

Lotus starts to bloom

in deep prayer

I can't trust what my mind says

it plays tricks on me

eyes closed in devotion -

trying to change my focus

away from my pain

lotus starts to bloom

is the lotus in my mind

real or illusion?

~truth seeker~

notes

The sleigh of the Troiku was created By Chèvrefeuille. The horses were gingerly handled by someone.

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: Senryu: Rainbow

Image Source

it's long overdue

I've been waiting since my birth

where is my rainbow

~nobody~

Carpe Diem Haiku: Senryu: Lost at Birth

Image by Michael Gaida from Pixabay

born to a hard life

a world of trouble and strife

you deserved better

~nobody~

notes from nobody

Written for my son. I was not able to give him the childhood he deserved because of my mental health issues. Now we live together in poverty trying to support each other as best we can. If there are angels, I believe he is one.

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Wednesday on the Following Monday Because I Suck: Another Morning

Image by Hasty Words from Pixabay

New Year's morning

the first day begins

in the same dream

or perhaps the same nightmare

when your mind has been broken

~nobody~

notes from nobody

The Hokku stanza was written by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The Ageku stanza was written by nobody.

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: First Day of Spring Depression

Image by Claudia Peters from Pixabay

before the first bud

emerging from the cold ground

spring depression creeps

foolish butterfly flitting

in the garden of the damned

~nobody~

notes from a damned soul

I could not be more rubbish if I tried. I missed this prompt too. Again, not like anyone would miss me, so I don't know why I should care.