Carpe Diem Love Month: The Day After Valentine's Day: Aftermath Most Despised

copyright Viktor Forbacs

on the day after

a terrible thing was born

broken from the start

it should have been tossed away

why was it allowed to stay

~cie~

notes

I was born the day after Valentine's Day 1965 at 6 of the morning in the middle of a raging blizzard. My life has never been easy and I can't ever remember a time when I didn't think I was bad or wrong. That is what this depressing Tanka is about.

It's kind of sad that I have to say this, but here are the kinds of comments that I don't want to receive for this poem.

"You should consider counseling."

Been there, done that. Some of them were kind of helpful, others were just pill-pushers. It took nearly 40 years for any of them to correctly diagnose my type 2 bipolar disorder. In fairness, type 2 bipolar disorder is a sneaky bitch because it presents with hypomania rather than full mania, so it can be difficult to spot. It's rather like a black and white horse hiding in a herd of zebras.

Also, back in the 1970s and 1980s when I was a troubled teenager, bipolar disorder was called manic depression, and it was considered a psychosis. As my high school psychology teacher said to me when I told her that I saw a lot of aspects of manic depression in myself:

"Honey, manic depression is a psychosis. You're not psychotic. You're just depressed and having a hard time being a teenager."

This well-meaning but ultimately incorrect lady probably just thought I was an angsty Goth girl who read too much Sylvia Plath and melodramatically attributed Sylvia's melancholy poetry to her own overdramatic teenage struggles. In fact, I did see a lot of myself in Sylvia Plath's poetry and I tend to get pissed off at people who chortle knowingly about silly drama queen girls relating to her poetry.

Sylvia Plath and I both had bipolar disorder, and perhaps if a teenage girl is relating to Sylvia Plath's poetry, maybe she's not just a wannabe Goth drama queen, maybe her life sucks and she's depressed or possibly has bipolar disorder. I would love it if society would stop writing off teenage girls' feelings as so much overdramatic frippery.

Also, disabled, on Medicaid, and live an average of 50 miles from the nearest city. I already have to go get P.T. once a week. Not interested in another weekly appointment.

"You should consider medications/get your medications adjusted."

I've been on this planet for 55 years. I've been dealing with mental (and physical) illness for most if not all of them. Do you really think I've never heard this before? Also, for some of us, the "cure" is worse than the problem. I can't tolerate most psych meds.

Further, I have complex PTSD from years of psychological (and sometimes physical and/or sexual) abuse by my peers and "well-meaning" people who wanted to "fix" me. Don't try to "fix" me. 

I already have a chemical cocktail that I have to down every day for all my physical problems, plus I have to poke myself with needles multiple times a day. For those who are wincing about the thought of poking themselves with needles, well, you're lucky if you don't have to, but this aspect of my disease is the least of my problems. I usually don't even feel the needle unless I come at myself from a bad angle. Even when that happens, it's a very minor pain. The needles aren't a big deal. The things the disease can do to my body if I don't use the needles are.

So, yeah. Don't talk to me about meds.

"Wow, this is really depressing. You should try to write about happier stuff."

I write three kinds of poetry: dark, silly, and snarky. Poetry is a way for me to express the deep, inner pain. I am under no obligation to pretty up my poetry because it might make some people uncomfortable.

"Trust that God has a plan for you."

I'm an agnostic. I respect your beliefs. Please respect my lack thereof.

I was a devout Catholic in my youth. However, because I was somewhat unorthodox in my beliefs and was tolerant of those who didn't believe and of homosexuals, I was ostracized and threatened with hell. Even at that, my fellow Catholics were nowhere near as dreadful as the town Fundies. Also, they weren't stupid enough to burn heavy metal records. When that just created a cloud of toxic smoke, I had to laugh. These idiots weren't being countered by any demon, they were just being confronted by their own stupidity.

I'm one of those people who believes that there is a higher power and maybe even personified higher powers. In the interest of brevity, I'll let someone far wiser say it for me.

"Life's hard for everyone. Quit whining about your problems and do something about it."

I do as much as I can every day that I can. I know that life is hard for other people. I'm not talking about other people. I'm only talking about me.

All in all, there is really just one thing to remember.

Carpe Diem #1779 Cliffs of Moher ... a tribute to Jane Reichhold (monody, Senryu)

Image source

in that last moment

I hope that you were at peace

may you now fly free

~Cie~

Notes:

I was previously unaware that Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) had committed suicide because the pain of her fibromyalgia had become unbearable. Please click the Fishy banner to find out more about Jane's story.

We will never learn how to reduce the rate of suicide if it is a stigmatized, taboo subject. If people are afraid or ashamed to discuss suicide ideation, then their struggles will remain internalized. The ways that suicide ideation and attempted suicide are currently handled are ineffective and the unthinking and unfeeling diatribe that the surviving family members of a person who committed suicide are subject to are simply shameful.

Any time a celebrity commits suicide, there's always someone sanctimoniously spouting about how "selfish" this person was, and I want to take them aside and shake them and shout: "Hello, you insensitive twit! Did it never occur to you in your moment of self-righteousness to realize that anyone listening to you could have a loved one who took their own life? How dare you be so thoughtless!"

When I was in high school, I had a friend whose brother had committed suicide when she was eight years old. She said that people would come up to her on the playground and tell her that her brother was in hell for what he'd done. I say there ought to be a special spit in hell reserved for mealy-mouthed marshmallows who make such unkind assertions.

I leave you now with this banner that I use as my Facebook avatar anytime a celebrity takes their own life because I just know that the ignorant spoutings are going to elevate at such times.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Shadow

Photographer unknown

I

blue autumn skies

folded into mountains

purple shadow

blue autumn skies

stretching endless before me

skies blue like your eyes

folded into mountains

a felled giant lies sleeping

dreaming of the past

purple shadow

falls over eyes which can't cry

I have seen too much

Jane & Cie

II

such a hot day

my shadow needs to cool down

under the willow

such a hot day

sun beats down unrelenting

upon troubled earth

my shadow needs to cool down

it steals away and leaves me

muscles wracked with pain

under the willow

I find trouble waiting there

in the form of thought

Kyoshi & Cie

Note:

The "sleigh" of the first Troiku was created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The "sleigh" of the second Troiku was created by Kyoshi Takahama (1874 - 1958). I wrangled all the horses.

I have chronic, widespread, low-grade pain from fibromyalgia and am constantly hot and easily fatigued due to my various endocrine problems. The summer is not my friend.

Grover and Clem aren't bothered by this weather, seeing as Grover is a ghost and Clem is a mutant Cactus Man, or maybe a Man Cactus.

Visit the Artist

Visit the Artist

Visit Grover and Clem and follow the Grover Hotel renovations at the Good Stuff from Grover blog!

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 16 + Poems in April 2019 Day 16 & 5: Poetry As the Place Where the Spirit Within Hemorrhages Truth

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

You return whenever I write poetry

Troublesome little ghost

Not sugar and spice and everything nice

You mournful, shadowed thing

Troublesome little ghost

Your nights filled with wanting and regret

You mournful, shadow thing

Needing to bleed out your words

Your nights filled with wanting and regret

I allow you to emerge from my cold shell

Needing to bleed out your words

"The poem is the way," I say

I allow you to emerge from my cold shell

Offering truth a way to be set free

"The poem is the way," I say

You need not put on false airs with poetry

Offering truth a way to be set free

Poetry, I think, is ultimate honesty

You need not put on false airs with poetry

Or so it is that I have always believed

Poetry, I think, is ultimate honestly

You need not pretend to be aught but what you are

Or so it is that I have always believed

But there are those who disagree on poetry

You need not pretend to be aught but what you are

You need not present as light when you are shadow

But there are those who disagree on poetry

Poetry, they say, is the domain of sugar and spice

You need not present as light when you are shadow

Sad little ghost, pay no mind to the Poetry Police

Poetry, they say, is the domain of sugar and spice

Bleed your truth as freely as you need

Sad little ghost, pay no mind to the Poetry Police

You mournful, shadowed thing

Poetry, they say, is the domain of sugar and spice

You return whenever I write poetry

~Cie~

Prompt #5

Prompt #16

Notes:

The poetic form is Pantoum. Fortunately, a Pantoum need not rhyme.

The Poems in April prompt #16 was to create a poem with a title starting with "Poetry As..."

The Poems in April prompt #5 was to describe a supernatural creature who is a troublesome housemate. I can think of no more troublesome a housemate than the child I once was who each day laments that the big dreams she had for her life slip further and further away from her grasp, fading into the impossible.

I think the NaPoWriMo prompt ended up eating the dust of the other two prompts.

A couple of years ago when I was doing OctPoWriMo, I almost ended up ceasing participation in poetry blog hops for good when I allowed the troubled spirit who will always be a part of me to express itself and was admonished that my poetry was "catharsis" and I would one day become "a beacon of light in the world" or some such thing.

To me, these well-meaning but inaccurate statements showed two things.

First, that people who are not happy by nature are unacceptable as they are and must become, or at least pretend to be, the sort of person who is "a light in the world." 

Second, that dark poetry (and depressive people) are not as valid or worthwhile as happy, well-adjusted people writing poems about the joys of life and how grateful they are to live under the rule of a benevolent deity in a happy and joyful world where there are no Debbie Downers or Negative Neds messing things up with their dark ickiness.

To me, poetry must remain the domain where you can TELL IT LIKE IT IS, not like other people think it's supposed to be.

Poetry must remain the place where one can hemorrhage one's soul all over the damn place and not have people constantly trying to slap smiley bandages on their spiritual wounds.

Poetry must be allowed to be dark and filled with pain.

During the final years of my nursing career, a statement had been popularized that "PAIN IS WHATEVER THE PATIENT SAYS IT IS." 

I greatly advocate for this belief. It is so much more helpful than awful epithets such as "drug-seeking behavior," which had previously been the dismissive go-to whenever a patient requested pain medication earlier than it was scheduled. 

People who experience high levels of chronic pain do not respond to pain medications the way people who do not experience chronic pain (or who experience chronic pain of lesser degrees) respond to pain medication. A person with high levels of chronic pain could ingest enough pain medication to knock out a large horse and be perfectly coherent, and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic.

FYI, low-grade chronic pain (such as I have) isn't a walk in the park either. I'm tired all the time and have a tendency to experience brain fog and disturbed sleep. My pain levels aren't such that I require narcotics, but NSAIDS don't really help. 

I experienced intense chronic pain for about six weeks when I initially injured the median nerve in my left arm. I couldn't sit up for more than about 45 minutes before I had to lie on the arm to try and numb it. Intense chronic pain is no joke, and anyone who says things like "people need to just push through the pain" or fail to understand why people become so desperate for relief that they obtain medications through illegal channels because the medications they've been prescribed legally aren't cutting the mustard need to get off their high horse. 

At this point, my left arm constantly tingles. I've gotten enough sensation back in my left hand that it no longer feels like a lump of clay, but I was damn grateful for "lump of clay" as opposed to constant searing pain up and down the arm. Physical therapy saved my life, literally. I would need more P.T. to get rid of the constant numbness and tingling, but Medicaid will only pay for 12 sessions per injury. Better than nothing, but ridiculous to put a limitation on the sort of thing which doesn't tend to behave in a predictable fashion.

In any case, just as pain is whatever the patient says it is, POETRY IS WHATEVER THE POET SAYS IT IS.

My poetry need not be "catharsis." It need not lead to me becoming "a beacon of light in the world" to be absolutely 100% valid. The wounded inner self is allowed to express its truth without expectation of transformation.

People with depressive personalities are valid as they are. They need not be drugged into compliance. For some of us, the drugs don't work anyway, or they make things worse. Drugs are not the answer to everything.

I don't need to be like you. 

I am valid just as I am.

Apologies for jumping on ye olde soapbox, but some things cannot be said enough.

Living Disabled: Fibromyalgia and Spiders on Drugs

Image by Baerenfein on Pixabay

I've had it suggested to me more than once that I should "just" take my clerical skills and get a nice, normal, forty-hour-a-week, nine-to-five job, and that the only reason I'm "just sitting home pretending to be a writer" is that I'm "just lazy."

Well...

I've talked about my mental health issues and many of my physical health issues. Let me talk about a certain component of my physical issues. That component is fibromyalgia.
Here is the Wikipedia entry describing fibromyalgia.

Here is a post about what fibromyalgia is not.

Here is my reply to that post.

I don't really mind when someone jokingly calls me crazy for not wearing more than a light jacket in cold weather. I do mind when people imply that I should "just get over" the issues I live with. Say, that's a great idea! Wish I'd thought of it!

I didn't know that fibromyalgia can cause temperature dysregulation. I've said before that I don't know if I have "true" fibromyalgia or if I simply have similar symptoms because of my endocrine problems. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia twice, but there are a few differences between what I experience and what a lot of fibromyalgia sufferers seem to experience. For one thing, I have never experienced extreme pain. I experience chronic low-grade widespread pain and have since I hit puberty. Also, when I do something which causes muscle fatigue, what takes a normal person a day or two to get over takes me about a week to recover from, and I feel like I've been beaten with a baseball bat the entire time.

As far as the temperature dysregulation, I overheat easily. This is why I don't wear long-sleeved shirts or turtlenecks or more than a light jacket even when it's extremely cold.

I've also always been scolded for being "spacey" and seeming disinterested when I have to sit in one place for long periods of time without doing anything, such as in class or a meeting. I had problems with falling asleep in such settings and was admonished that I needed to "just get more sleep" and that I would be fired/kicked out of school if such things happened again. Nobody bothered to try and find out if I had any sort of medical problem which might be causing my fatigue and tendency to fall asleep.

I also have trouble sleeping at night, which cuts out the possibility of doing most jobs traditionally done during daytime hours. I was always admonished to "just switch your sleep schedule around," but have never been able to do it. I literally become depressed to the point of non-functional working your traditional 40 hours a week day job. I can't work more than four days a week or I'm worthless (as far as society is concerned) within a couple of weeks. When I become depressed to that degree, it's hard to bounce back.

So, here I sit deluding myself that I have writing talent. Except I really am not telling myself that I am particularly talented. I know that I have certain abilities when it comes to working with words. I always tested higher than my grade level when it came to skills such as writing and reading comprehension. I was in the top tier with my SAT scores in English back in 1983. In other words, I may not be a genius, but I do have abilities in this area.

If my brain were a spider, it would be a spider on LSD or peyote. Just talking to me, I pass for normal. However, my thoughts do not process normally. Every story I write or collaborate on inevitably develops myriads of subplots, some of which end up branching off in entirely new directions.

I've noticed that most WAH bloggers are nice, normal people. I'm not normal. I'm a big, scary, tattooed lady with a spider-on-drugs brain and a shedful of psych issues. So, right away I'm on the outside looking in. 

I've tried all my life to do things the way the nice, normal, perfect and pretty people do them, and it's never worked. The only thing that I can do is to be true to myself and to tell my tale. Maybe I'll inspire a few people to open their minds and view society's rejects through more compassionate eyes. That would be a worthwhile accomplishment. I only wish it paid a little better.
The late David Bowie once inquired: "so where were the spiders?"
They're right here in my brain, dear David. Weaving webs.

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It: Poverty Kills

Believe it or not, people with psychiatric dysfunctions get angry and frustrated about situational stuff too. There is an actual person here behind the broken brain. I'm not just symptoms of my synapses. I may not be a genius, but I know when shit ain't right, and it hasn't been right for a long time.

People love to tell folks "Just" do this or "just" do that, and then it's on to blame the victim if the person can't "just" do what they suggested.

I've had bipolar disorder since I hit puberty, which was when I was nine years old. I can remember my feelings becoming really intense. I thought it happened to everybody. I remember hating what my body was becoming because unlike everyone said, I wasn't stupid. I knew the way guys were going to treat me just because I had visible breasts now, and I hated it so much.

I get angry with having to take medicine all the time, and I don't even have to take that much on the scale of things, but I have so much shit wrong with me. Most of it is chronic shit. Diabetes is serious, but mine is well-controlled. My family has cardiovascular problems out the wazoo. If I have a major stroke, I hope it kills me outright. I don't want to live for years with declining physical health and decreasing cognition the way my father did.

I feel like I'm being punished for my health problems, and it makes me furious. Nobody should be forced to live in poverty because they've lost their strength. I used to be very strong physically. I didn't know just how strong I was. I could carry cases of beer up three flights of stairs and only be minorly winded, rest for a moment, and go back for more. I was a beast!

I could work 16 hours caring for immobile and combative patients. 

Now I become fatigued and sometimes confused with minimal exertion.

It frustrates and upsets me greatly.

I was never able to work day jobs because of my screwed-up brain. I don't sleep well at night. I actually do like my delivery driver job well enough, but it isn't a stable income. Some nights its busy, other nights I'm making five bucks an hour. 

If it weren't for my son, I would quit taking all my medications including my insulin and be dead in a month. I'm not saying this to be extreme or to look for attention. I'm simply past the point where I can convince myself that "there's a better tomorrow around the corner." I don't think there is for me. I pretty much think the rest of my life is going to be more of the same. I'd like to enjoy life, but it's way too stressful. Some of us are not the "favorite children." I'm physically unattractive and not particularly charismatic. Nobody's going to come to my rescue.

I don't want people adulating me or fawning over me. Most of the time I kind of want to be left alone. I want to be treated with basic respect. I want a modest, comfortable place to live. I want to know I have enough food available. I want to be able to have a little enjoyment. I just want a chance.

Mental illness killed off a lot of my chances when I was younger. But it isn't mental illness that makes me consider suicide these days. It's circumstances. And if anyone thinks its okay for people to be wondering where their next meal is coming from or if they'll have a place to live or thinks that people who can no longer physically work hard jobs with long hours deserve to live in poverty, you need to check your shit.

I'm not an atheist. I believe there is a higher power. However, I'm a deist rather than a theist. I believe that higher power is a creator energy. I don't believe it (or they) are involved in the lives of us lowly hairless apes. We're kind of on our own. So, telling me to "trust in god" doesn't work. I tried that, and I was treated like crap by his followers because I had some questions and some ideas, and I liked hard rock and metal. Kind of put me off the whole "trust in god" bit when people were spreading rumors that I was a "devil worshiper", oddly enough.

If there is a deity who monitors our behavior, I believe I will be judged on my actions. I try to treat others with basic consideration. I'd like to do more, but right now there's nothing I really can do.

I don't believe that suicide is "a sin" and I wouldn't want anything to do with a deity who was so cruel that they condemned someone hurting enough to commit suicide to eternal torture. I don't think that suicide is "selfish" or "weak" or "cowardly." Suicide happens when a person is at the end of their rope and has no hope. Perhaps if people extended compassion instead of derision to their fellow human, including those fellow humans who aren't pretty or popular, some lives might be saved along the way.

That's my rant for today. I have a grain of salt for you to take it with.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~