Review of Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things: Learning to Love as a Bipolar Aspie
Kitt O’Malley over at Kittomalley.com, so generously reviewed my book on being Bipolar and Aspie and the fight for sanity and love, in a post on her blog. Kitt, a psychotherapist and mother and wife, writes about vital and informative topics pertaining to mental health, ranging from being a Bipolar parent to a relationship with God. She can also be found at @kittomalley on Twitter. A big THANK YOU to Kitt for posting this review.
Rural Reflections
Something poignant about a lone gas station out in the middle of nowhere.
Edward Hopper caught the feeling in a painting of a gas station surrounded by trees on countryside road.
The reflections of the trees in the windows is a view of another world when set against the background of colorful signage, notices, and advertisements.
Fears
In tears fighting fears, I prayed to God to speak to me and he did, moments later, through the beautiful words of Dennis Ference, at Merging Traffic…
battered and bullied
by fears that rage and roar
let us trust that we are
bigger than our fears
let us know that we are
so much more
Murdered, why?
Our beloved Gopher Tortoise Harriet, on her way back to her tunnel after eating.
Yesterday our local news, as usual, found a heinous, outrageous story about an animal that had been tortured and killed.
It had been murdered.
The animal at the center of this media firestorm, was an Endangered Gopher Tortoise.
As it was airing yesterday, I looked out the kitchen window at our beloved Harriet who was sitting under the tree, munching quietly on a tiny plant.
She looked so peaceful, so happy.
She does not know that she is one of the lucky ones.
Many in this state are not, they do not have a safe place to live where they are not disturbed.
Gopher Tortoises here are continuously being uprooted at the whim and pleasure of greedy developers who want to build new Condos, new Shopping Centers, new anything, new everything.
Just build baby!
And get ” those damn turtles out of their way, they have things to build! “
Because…
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“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief…”
“…that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”[1] In recovery meetings they say that a person who thinks they are different suffers from “terminal uniqueness.” We also like to see people like this as narcissistic. This to me is a perfect expression of the tension of the opposites in our culture. On the one hand, as James Hillman said, we are put here as “acorns,” to grow into the Oak tree that only we can be. No one can be like us.
But one of the things we are taught in therapy and other places is that we are not any different than anyone else. Where do these messages come from and what are the ramifications of them both?
The thought that comes to mind is the the concept of form and its opposite, no form.
When I want to say I am like others I…
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Starlight, Starbright
Starlight through the skylight
Moonlight just above the roof
Fireflies flickering flames
Random to our eyes
In a dizzying mercurial display
Flitting to the tune
Of trilling frogs
And the flutter of batwings
I see goblins in the windows
Alone would be terrified
With you here beatified
By the beauty of the silence
Punctuated by the frogs
Spotlighted by the moon
And the sparkling stars
Whose dust makes up
These rented bodies we carry
While inside heartbeats
Tick away our lives
To the beat of a flashing firefly
Or a flickering star.
Chi flows, Wind Blows
Wind blows
through tree tops
bird song
wafts in breeze
flying
dead branches
fine perches
dragonfly on leg
don’t move
admire
just be
like tree
see chi
in air
spark-like
specks
tiny lights
Chi flows
wind blows
The Cycle of Life
Youth unfolding
in the bright sunlight
blossoming in shade
‘tainted’ by age
becoming fragile
the delicacy of death
From an old Dahlia series, attempting to show the robust beauty of new life as it grows older, finally reaching the unsung beauty of death.
Afraid of Love
Bipolar 1, OCD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. These were the labels awarded me when a major breakdown at age 28 literally catapulted me into therapy. Later came yet another label, Asperger’s Syndrome. In crisis, I was given a choice: medication or a mental hospital. I chose medication.
At this point my life began. Having left behind a trail of failed relationships, I started my quest for love, this time by journeying within. For many years, I lived in a world of delusion and psychosis. Somehow I managed to keep working my job in a university library.
All along the motivation to get well arose from a partly delusional, somewhat complex, unrequited love for a woman at work. Heretofore, heterosexual I learned that I was bisexual. A surprise. Much more importantly, I learned that I had severe problems with my own identity. I was very split by Bipolar Disorder. So split I felt like two different people. Before loving anyone, I had to overcome major problems with closeness due to Asperger’s Syndrome.
I thought I had found someone to love but love was not to come until I struggled through 7 years of hard therapeutic work. I had to start from scratch. When love came, it came in the form of a man. He became my husband of 25 years, Thomas.
My book, “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things“, chronicles the journey just pre-breakdown through psychosis, towards some semblance of sanity. It closes with my finally finding love. And though it starts off with insanity, it addresses the very human problems of intimacy and fear of closeness. Meant to give hope to the mentally ill and help enlighten their therapists, my saga may help those of the sane world who have issues with love and intimacy, not just the mentally ill.
Available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, iBooks, and Smashwords, for $2.99, my book explains what it feels like to be Bipolar and on the Autism spectrum and explores the phantasmagorical mystery of love.
One review on Amazon.com by a psychologist:
Starburst
“Dear ones, the light of God is moving through me this day… I am in His sea of Light, in that eternal land. Wherever I am, in this life or beyond, I am always roaming in that eternity. I want you to come there also, for you are my brothers an sisters and I cannot bear to see you left in delusion.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Secret Spaces
The cool of green shade
steps to a secret place
locked doors of a shed
the innocence of childhood lost
in a matter of minutes
and no one knew
for years and years and years
dare break the silence even now
Grandpa did a naughty
and it remained
forgotten for years
until you shared your story
of what happened to you
there were other times
of lesser evil
but sketched in memory
enough to sting
even now
so many decades later
I have forgiven
but no longer forgotten
from so early in life
I adored him
the trust
etched deep wounds
though the misdemeanors minor
by most standards
just enough to give pause
if I see a secret place
all too inviting
for the sins
of
a forbidden intimacy
just enough to
add guilt and shame and fear
where they do not belong
inside me
in stillness
in the shade
Bee in Dahlia
Click on link below for short article on the ongoing bee disaster…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/13/honeybee-problem-critical-point
Monsanto, the Mega Monster
Important information about the food you eat and the insecticides being used on it and the fatalities of animals and humans from Round-Up!
Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant
Picture credit: Janine Moraes http://www.agenciabrasil.gov.br
As promised, Monsanto will be the first Corporation to be addressed here.
How do we begin to list all of the irreparable harm, the ” without warrant “ danger, the insidious pain, that this ” biggest bully on the block, “ Company has inflicted on millions all over the Globe?
Monsanto produces herbicides/pesticides, countless varieties of seeds, and oh yes, GMO’s enough to feed the entire world.
By the way, their CEO Hugh Grant, not the actor,
has been quoted as saying that he eats ONLY Organic food~
That should speak volumes!
My personally most despised product of theirs, is the herbicide/pesticide Roundup, which I consider to be the singular most dangerous home/lawn product used in this Country.
It is applied liberally, to the eventual demise of all, including it is suggested, even the user, to yards and lawns everywhere in America.
It…
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Beyond the Stars
Sitting in the sun, acclimating to the gentle June heat, swatting away an annoysome fly who keeps returning over and over, I know this swatting is definitely wrong—a stirring of the killer instinct. I remember naturalist artist and writer and turtle man, David M. Carroll, keeping his hand steady, while being bitten by hordes of mosquitoes, so as not to scare away the turtles as he paints them . Clearly he is a superior soul in his patient endurance of being bitten and as his, almost spiritual, beautifully poetic, writings and drawings reveal. I remember, too, the words of Pema Chodron, Buddhist teacher and nun, who teaches and preaches practicing compassion on little things, learning not to “bite the hook” of anger.
So I let the fly alight on my ankle and he seemingly happily stays on my leg and does not bite. I begin to try to image feeling kinship with this fly who likes my leg, fighting the idea that he is laying eggs in my skin. Pema Chodron has clearly inspired a city girl, afeared of bugs, to make friends with a fly as I watch the universe of insects beneath my feet. A Daddy Long legs crawls on my camera bag, hitches a ride to our bed when I go inside the house. I bring him back to his home outside.
This compassion things feels right, start small and grow big. As if to reinforce this point a butterfly lands on my chest when I return to my contemplation spot in our back yard. But all is not sweetness and light. Later the same fly (I swear it is) who landed on my leg now activates karma for my earlier murderous impulses towards him. He lands on my toe and bites me. A cautionary tale against getting too carried away with being virtuous. Still worse, later as I walk in the coolness of early evening, a bug lands on my arm and attempts a vigorous bite. In an instant, a reflexive smack smooches him dead.
So it would seem I have to start even smaller with my acts of compassion. How much smaller can one start? I wonder with daunting discouragement about the many, many more lives I will have to live to learn lessons of compassion and no anger. I contemplate the prospect of how many, many more films I will have to view in this movie house of Maya we call life. When, oh when, will I learn all my lessons? When, oh, when, will the sun set for good for me on this circle of life so I can exit the orbit and rest beyond the stars??
The Horrors of Horse Racing
All that you see on this video is true. This is just the tip of the iceberg. My brother worked on many racetracks, including Belmont, and he told us stories that were heartbreaking. He finally got out of the race track business because he loved horses but could not abide the cruelty of how horses were treated. The video explains…
seeing you in others…
Look at Little Black and Little White, How strong is their brotherhood! May you give unconditional love to all living beings!
Do you spend time to chat with your parent?
If you are working and stay with your parent, most probably you might see them in the morning and evening.
If you are working and not to stay with your parent, most probably you can see your parent during weekend or long holiday.
Imagine, how lonely they are.
Every night, I’ll do my best to spend time to talk to my parent.
We are glad to have our 2 little Bodhisattva cats at home to accompany our parent while we are working.
Little black, the little kitten brought back by Little White, he is with us since young, we train him to be indoor cat.
Everyday, when we are home, mum will definitely share with us on what is happening…
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Exchange Hotel, Saugerties, NY
The Exchange Hotel in 1905
The Exchange Hotel in 2014
The Ritz it ain’t, but it is a 3-star hotel with a bar and grill.
10 Things to Say to a Mother With Mental Illness (The Scarlet “M”), by Doreen Bench
They really are 10 great things to say to anyone with a mental illness. I would add my husband’s statement to me: “That must be very hard for you.”
Windows into Worlds: Bike Culture Up Close
A closer look into the biker shop window in Saugerties, NY
MOONSIDE 
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