I’ll stand by you…

For the record, this is not the first email I’ve received that starts like this:

Can I ask you a very personal question? It’s personal for me, I mean. Not something to freak out over, just not something I would talk to just anyone about.

I get messages like that on Facebook, via email, and even tumblr, all the time.

I’ve saved lives, and I’ve saved marriages.

I feel like a super hero…

BIPOLAR WOMAN!

I want a fan club, an action figure (complete with ginormous boobs, please), and a movie written by Kevin Smith, starring Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Martin Freeman, directed by Joss Whedon, and produced by Eric Kripke. ALL the actors, of course, would be my love interests. (Can you say ‘explicit love scenes’ boys and girls? I knew you could! Mmmm… what a perfect example of the recklessness of the mania!!!) However, Tennant MUST use his real accent, because Scottish accents top English accents anytime. Except for Steven Moffat’s Scottish accent, because… well… he’s MOFFAT. He’s DEFINITELY not allowed anywhere near my blockbuster. Unless he’s my arch enemy. OOH! He could be The Evil… something.

Fangirling over my movie aside, it blows my mind that nine times out of the ten I get approached it’s because I’m so open about the bipolar.

I wish I had the answers every one looks for. I wish I held the cure.

All I can do is talk about why I don’t get suicidal (any more), how I get when I get manic (rather dangerous to others), and how I get when I’m depressed (also rather dangerous, but to myself).

I told a person once that I’m not a shrink, but I’ve been shrunk.

Maybe I’ll just write a memoir or something… get what I can out there and maybe help a broader audience.

Or maybe I’ll write that script for my superhero movie instead.

Shit’s about to get real, yo.

dipping back into the well, i ‘spose.

So… In the past two days, I posted about trying to see the depression through someone else’s eyes and coming out of the bipolar closet, and then this happened:

But, the point here is I’m absolutely stunned at what’s out there, the shaming of it all. I’ve been always up front about my melancholic nature because I don’t think it’s helpful living “in a closet” about any big aspect of your life - and it helps people understand that it’s not their fault, nor mine, though I make every attempt to keep the depression hounds out of the lives of others.

and this:

A friend of mine suggested that I write something from my point of view because, surprisingly, I manage to give an outwards impression of having my shit together. I was shocked to hear this. And I find this comical, but I see her point. I’m functioning. I’ve adapted. I’m surprisingly okay. I think the medical term is “resilient”.

and this:

The thing is, we never speak up around this kind of foolishness, we never talk back to the Naturally Happy people who keep telling us what to do and how to be. And I’ve made some promises to some people to find the words to retort this endless and unhelpful cycle of feeling worse because we can’t just adopt better habits.

Damn.

Should I revisit the depression? The crushing soul sucking depression that being unemployed brought on? Should I talk about the nonstop crying?

Yes.

I’m always going to discuss it. I’m always going to link to things that sum up the depression in ways I can’t.

Why?

Because it needs to be said. Because we need to remove the stigma.

Because depression lies.

Because none of us are alone.

(I guess this means I’m coming out of the closet when someone asks about Katniss on Monday.)

 

As if I needed another reason…

221 days until “Catching Fire”, but who’s counting?

“I’m so sick of saying the words gay and lesbian. Can we just — people. I’m so tired of that. One day I want my son to come home from school and be like, I found this guy and I love him. And I’m gonna be like yes, you do, and that’s okay.”

(I thought I’d break up the BBC spam with some JHutch. He’s cute and smart.)

I brought all my toys to work yesterday and finally set up my desk. It felt weird to bring my red dress picture and my Katniss action figure if only because now I have to explain the story behind them. I’m not ready to come out of the closet yet. Yeah, I’m afraid to come out of the closet.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

So… now I’m featuring Peeta on my blog to compliment the importance of Katniss in my life.

Makes sense.

The Mystery of the Hedgehog and the Silk Shirt

Nope. Not a post about Martin Freeman, although I do have to start with Sherlock. (It’s FOUR sentences. Deal with it.)

I watched “The Reichenbach Fall” again. I spent the entire hour and a half watching it from Sherlock’s perspective.It was probably more heartbreaking than watching it from John’s perspective. You finally realize how much John has changed Sherlock, and how much their friendship means to the man that doesn’t have friends.

For whatever reason, that made me think of someone: The Man with the Silk Shirt. (If you’re reading this, yeah, it’s YOU!)

Recently, an old friend decided to read all six years of crap that I’ve written here. Miraculously, he survived. Even more miraculously, he’s still speaking to me. I suppose that’s because he’s only mentioned once, and it was a nice thing.

Seriously, I wrote all this shit - I LIVED all this shit -and I still don’t want to go back and revisit half of it. I couldn’t imagine reading it without know what was going on at that point in time… some of these entries really need some context. This isn’t a blog full of stories that you could just breeze through. This is, and has always been, a cheese sandwich blog. I’m a cheese sandwich blogger. I was one long before the phrase was ever coined.

I went through the archives recently, just because. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that reading this blog, man, is HARD WORK. And I applaud him, that crazy psycho.

So anyhoo… my point was…

He said that my entires about depression were very enlightening. That the blog itself explained a lot.

He and I. We have history. Our relationship was good. It was bad. It was terrible. It was awesome. And then it was gone. I wrote about him on That Other Blog. While I’m glad that he’ll probably never know what I talked about, or how openly it was discussed, I do want to drive the point home that even though he could have shattered me into a million pieces, he never did. No matter how bad it got, I never got mad at him… and I hoped that I never hurt him. I knew at one point that I was out of control. I just didn’t know why.

Back then, it was easy to make excuses. We had our thing when my mom died, so there was a lot of Ick going on. It was easy to blame her.

Little did I know that HE was responsible for planting the seeds of what would eventually become the overwhelming self-awareness I have developed since my official diagnosis.  Little did I know that a chance encounter with him would make me undescribably happy. I don’t want to/can’t/shouldn’t go into all the details… those are better shared in person, over burgers or something… but he made more of a difference than I thought he did. Than he’ll ever know he did.

(I had to confirm this by going through the paper journals I used to keep back them. I thought that over time, I had smoothed off all the rough edges, inflated the importance of blah, blah, blah, blahbiddity, blah, blah, blah. Nope.)

It was weird to look back on those depression entries today and try to read them through his eyes.

I have no idea what he saw in them.

I know what I see in them… but I have context.

He doesn’t.