A Half-Way House Out of Horror

Posted on March 16, 2007 in Reflections

You cannot harm me
You cannot harm me
You cannot harm one who has dreamed a dream like mine.
Lakota War Chant

The last few months have been hard and I haven’t been able to speak forthrightly about who did what. Despite this, I have been able to distill a few lessons for future reference.

• Don’t let someone’s admiration of you push you into ethical gray areas. When things get rough, they will turn on you and blame the whole thing on you. (See [[borderline personality]].)
• Those who have no vision will identify everything you do as a symptom of mental illness.
• Don’t trust those men who have been through mania without any history of abuse by others. They will have no clue when battles start to rage.
• Don’t trust people who say that everyone is mentally ill. They are inclined to think that they are not responsible for their actions and not required to act civilly.
• Use your lawyer. You have a right to her services.
• Just because people hold positions of authority does not mean that they possess competent knowledge of human behavior. Apply the [[Peter Principle]].
• Expect that most people will not help you when an organized effort to defame you is launched.
• Expect that most people will want you to heal overnight even when this is not possible.
• Expect that people will avoid you even if they feel that you have been wronged.
• You can survive a pit.
• Hold your ground when your place in a community of love is threatened.
• Remember again that people have many faces. Those who are nasty to you may be loved by others. People are not round balls, their surface identical throughout the whole. Others do not see it like this and think you must be hallucinating even if the nastiness happened right in front of them.
• Watch for men who have stopped drinking but have not left the bar room.
• “I did my best” is a copout when the best spawns disaster. If you screwed up, you screwed up. Learn to do better when you screw up. Shun people who cannot make amends.
• Talk about things when you are damned good ready to do so. Don’t let anyone — your spouse, your friends, your therapist, etc. — rush you into doing otherwise.
• Like who you like, distrust who you must distrust. Don’t let others make these decisions for you.
• They can harm people who dream. Vision needs that from time to time so that it stays grounded.

[tags]Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Disorder[/tags]