Carnival of the Bipolars #1

Posted on February 3, 2006 in Bipolar Carnival

Ticket Booth

I am a confirmed navel-gazer. My output does not please journalists because I speak about trends inside of myself. But I feel that those of us who write about our emotions give more of value to the Web community than all the article clippers, pundits, two-sentence philosophers, and wannabes. We build authentic social networks as a recent University of Toronto study purports. For us bipolars, this is very important.

This first Carnival of the Bipolars is my take on the electronic ties that dissolve the isolation that many bipolars feel from spending their lives in their living rooms, terrified of going out while in episode, scared of the “normals” who mock them and make sport of their fast-talking, their racing thoughts, the shaking that ripples from the tops of their heads to the soles of their feet and back again. Inside this disease at its worst is a continual soliloquy. We damn ourselves with karma and divine retribution. The illness thumps like a wobbly generator, stretching the truth and ripping at it. We are bad. We are bad. We are bad because our minds tell us so.

Moods make cognition, as Bipolar Guy argued this past month. If conceptualizations do not come from the liquidy part of my brain which jumps and spits its own body, then they’re a peaked newspaper boat not adrift but wracked and thrown by those waters. In episode — depressive or manic — our little boat becomes wet, soggy, and unable to float. Look out into the gray-green darkness and you will see only the waves.

Most of the people who appear on this page suffer from my disorder. Others have similar problems for which my sympathy is deep. Of they live with someone like me. It’s hard enough being human. To have any disease or any order of pain, I think, is the profoundest expression of a large part of what our constantly growing and failing chemical reactions must be about. Choosing who to include and for what was hard. The arms of bipolar stardust stretch well beyond these representatives. I hope we’ll draw in more of our kind because no matter how distant we are, this Internet helps us to step out, to find others like us, and develop a new language that describes what our living is about.

Carousel

Witnessing abuse harms childrens’ mental health (1/4)
Early health problems predict later eating woes (1/11>
FAT Chance of becoming Manic-Depressive (1/13)
An Alternative to Jail (1/23)
Women do beat on men (1/23)
Finding Bipolar Disorder with MRI (1/24)
Moderate alcohol use may worsen bipolar illness (1/26)
Holding hands may calm loved ones (1/31)

The Roller Coaster

“I’d always read or been told that this illness is biochemical in nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know that. But now I get it. Once the chemical stuff straightened out, everything else fell into place. Dr Drugs likens it to static — that makes it hard to disentangle stimulus from surrounding noise; energy is misplaced, focusing on the static. With proper medication the outside static/noise is removed and your energy can focus on the stimulus itself. Everything just falls into place. Of course there are always issues to work through and skills to learn, but the things that were once so hard — understanding people, regulating emotions, self control — all come with ease.” Powerprof on Looking Back. (1/1) See also I Need to Learn to Trust My Instincts (1/10), Crisis & Tick Tock (1/31), and What is Work? (1/11)

“someone is shining a flashlight into my head. someone’s poking around with a long stick. it’s me, searching for the shadows and trying to poke them out, push them out of the insulated cave in which they reside, quite happily. it’s me, reaching in, pulling them out like the snarling moles they are.” Ombren on cells, roaming like feral raindrops (my nomination for the month’s best title) (1/7). See also take me for a ride in your car, car (1/14)

“I feel smarter without meds, I am more creative without meds, I feel more without meds, I felt more alive without meds….however, I was more depressed more often without them and I could border on out of control with cutting myself, I also could not be in groups of people, and I had uncontrollable shakes at times. Those are reasons why I take medication…not because anyone else wants me to be “controlled” but because I want to be.” Jil on Why Do We Take Meds (1/30). See also A really screwed Internet story (1/16)

“Empty landscapes. Odd corners. This is what I saw, then. This is what I chose to focus on at that moment. You look out through old eyes at an old landscape. The viewing moment may become charged with ancient and unwelcome emotions (or worse, you recognise the ancient emotions still pertain now) as you step into a version of yourself you had forgotten. ” Broke on Altered Images. (1/8)

“I think I may love people and that is incorrect…it shows me that I DO care about a lot of people and would do damn near anything for everyone. Remove the “love” label, be a friend, and I’ll be yours forever. And when those people leave me, well, that’s when I crash. When I even THINK that people are leaving me, I crash.” Maggs cries I am estatic! (1/7)

“I’ve had 3 “In-the-Pink” days in a row now and the world has started appearing very different. Everything suddenly looks so appealing and you catch yourself saying ” sheesh, I must do this sometime, sheesh I must do that.” “Shit man, where’ve I been these past few months that I couldn’t see all these wonderful things in the world?” So what does that say to me? It says that moods are at the root of cognition.” Bipolar Guy on Bipolar Cognitions. (1/22)

“as a favor for my friend Jim, i agreed to pick up his girlfriend one afternoon in downtown Houston, where she worked at the Enron Building on 1400 Smith. i was nervous because i didn’t know my way around the downtown area, it was rush hour, and i was completely baked. the sunshine reflected from the many glass buildings towering over me only added to my confusion.” barb tells a True Story. (1/12)

“Thoughts of death, dread, horror, cluttered thoughts. It’s Friday night & for some reason, I worry more about my kids on Friday-Sunday nights. Even though I know Carly isn’t out. But I think of their home & all those crackheads in the vicinity & she’s alone there ‘cuz Levi is out. I imagine him dead somewhere. Shot. Worse though, I imagine him so badly beaten & left on the side of the road, in an alley, the street, something like that. He’s so careless with life; he’ll be exceptionally lucky if he makes it to his sanity someday. Rays of hope can be so deceptive.” jane on My Son. (1/20)

“I am not a case worker but I can listen and relate to people. In less than 10 minutes she told me that she was a meth user. I asked her how long she had been off and she told me 9 months. In another 5 minutes she finally told me it had been two weeks. I probably spent an hour with her and listened to her story. She has three young boys and a husband she is separated from who is dealing with his own issues with alcohol and drug abuse. There is also a history of domestic violence. Now of course the question is would I give this woman a chance?” Steve in A story. (1/9)

“I miss sex I want some I can’t have any because recruiting a person would involve me having to do something with the bikini area, shaving my entire leg (not just bottom half once a week because it is poking through my tights), buying new underwear, scoping out some males, actually speaking to one in a manner that might convey I am interested in what they have to say, and thusly want to have sex with them, having to suffer though an evening of unimportance just because walking up to a
man and saying “Hi, we don’t know each other, but I think you are hot, or merely meeting minimum requirements in the appearance department. ” Manica in Why wasn’t I warned?. (1/27) See also Advice from a crazy woman. (1/20)

“‘Josh, what are you doing?!’ I said, frantically. ‘Don’t worry, Nad. It won’t hurt.’ This time I practically screamed. ‘Josh, I don’t want to do this!’ But it was too late. I tried to fight back my sobs as he entered me. And that is when the life I previously knew completely changed beyond all recognition. That is when my story begins.” nadia in something I’m working on. (1/27). See also The Second Installment, (1/28), Chapter 3, (1/30), Chapter 4, (1/30) and Chapter 5 (1/30).

“Yesterday Dr. C’s secretary left a message on my phone, to warn me that there was probably going to be a bed in the hospital for me today. So I cried. And then today I left my apartment at ten in the morning, somehow thinking that if I wasn’t home, they couldn’t find me, and then I wouldn’t have to go… But there was a new message when I came home this afternoon- there is in fact a bed on the psych ward with my name on it.” a on Hiding. (1/27).

“I love reading studies….that suggest that a shortage of a chemical called leptin which may help regulate fatty stores could potentially factor into the cause of depression. So hey, the same chemical shortage making me chubby is also making me depressed. How happy would that make me?” Becky in Fat, Depression, and Brain Chemicals. (1/21)

The Ferris Wheel

“Music Brother sees his medication as an important part of his daily life, and taking his meds is one of the few issues that he doesn’t argue with mom about. He says he can’t explain it, but he feels the difference in his mind from when he’s on meds and when he’s not. Mom can explain the difference – she knew that he was due for a med re-evaluation because he’s been acting out in ways that he hasn’t been acting for years. He lit his bedsheets on fire in November, “Because I can”, he said. ‘It won’t really hurt anything.’ m. luminous on Still life with brothers (1/3).

“He was quiet. He wrote poetry in secret that I never saw until after his death. I had the role in our family of the writer, the chronicler of teenage angst in mediocre poetry and he, I guess, allowed me to have that role without competition. I wish he had not made that final decision.” mileah in nobody, not even the rain has such small hands. (1/19)

“I did write the handbook, and it is puiblic information. Since I believe in making public information public I’ve uploaded the entire document, as a series of pdf files, onto my site.” Will on Patients’ Rights. (1/9)

“Things continue in this vein, until they pry a tortured statement from my lips: If conditions are truly as they’ve described them…then they each have an important message that deserves to be heard, and respected. Ah! The relief in the room! They’re beaming. The sandwiches are here; let’s eat!” shrinkette in Supreme Court upholds Oregon’s assisted suicide law. (1/17)

“If you decide to put Alex on Ritalin, turn to page 4. If you decide not to put Alex on Ritalin, turn to page 5.” flea on What to Do, What to Do. (1/30)

Balloon Lady

“It does not matter what the story is about, the core message is the same – make just a little more effort and you will be beautiful, popular and more successful than before. The same core message of the makeover shows and the magazines. Beauty and success is not measured in achievement, intelligence, skill or monetary worth but almost exclusively in the eyes of men, in women’s perceived attractiveness and ability to find a partner.” Travelling Punk in The myth of ‘just a little more effort’. (1/4).

Hurdy Gurdy Man

A Safe Place, Athletic Support Her, Bipolar 2, Bipolar Diary, Bipolar Princess, The Brink of Insanity, My Bipolar Life, Psychperson, Raine’s Days, Scenes from a Wasted Life, and Time for Your Meds.

Have we missed a bipolar blog? Leave the URL in a comment.

Shooting Gallery

We didn’t have anyone shooting bipolars on the runway. Tom Cruise kept his trap shut and aside from a few evangelical Scientologists defecating upon the blogs of the mentally ill and their therapists, that end of planetary existence stayed silent. I bequeath this month’s Hall of Shame on a late entry and frequent read of mine, Disgruntled Chemist who wrote:

Right now, I’m designing a website for a chemistry outreach program, and also writing a computer program to analyze my data from my experiment. Both of them kind of work, but have errors that are driving me to the brink of hooker-killing insanity.

Any unannounced trips to the desert outside Las Vegas should be understood in this light.

He was joined by Rob the Dirty Liberal and Shakespeare’s Sister (aka Somewaterytart) who contributed this line of “playful” banter a la Amos and Andy:

somewaterytart: Are you going to kill a hooker?

rob the dirty liberal: If you’re going to kill a hooker, I want in.

somewaterytart: Me, too.

What is this about serial killer wannabeism? I doubt any of these would actually go out and do the act, but their schizophreniform behavior deserves to be smitten where it hurts.

Exit

The Carnival of the Bipolars appears on the third of every month. It is hosted by different members of the bipolar and associated communities (i.e., caregivers, sufferers of other mental disorders with affinities towards our disease.) To host this review of bipolar blogging and information, contact gazissax at best dot com.

Information about this and related carnivals may be found at The Truth Laid Bear ÜberCarnival. Opinions expressed in this review do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or of any single bipolar except as attributed.

The Next Town

The March 3 Carnival of the Bipolars will be hosted by dan of Scenes from a Wasted Life. Wild Abandon’s Jil will host the April 3 Carnival. Look for their imprint.

Graphics: Copyright 2005 and 2006 by JIL.