Here is a video from this morning.

Dan and his friends left about 45 minutes ago. Tamara and Tori are sleeping, so I have the house to myself - woohoo, time to write.

I decided to start nosing around in my blog. I read some posts that made me start LMAO. Sometimes, looking over past entries is embarrassing as hell. I can’t believe how direct I am (especially in the sexcapades section.)

Oh well, that’s just me, and I don’t want to change that quality.

There is so much to write about, but I have so many thoughts going through my head that it’s hard for me to concentrate on just one.

I guess I’ll start with what is happening between Erick and me. We’ve been texting quite a bit lately. The subject has changed to him coming down to visit. He put in a vacation request for the 2nd week of August. It’s coincidental that that was the same time we met the very first time.

Tamara and I made up Friday evening. Later on that night, we drove 191 miles to see her estranged husband at Fort Sill. Tamara was texting him from my phone. He thought I was alone and that I was going to have sex with him. It was the only way she could see him because he refused to see her. It was an awkward meeting. I resented being put in that position, but she is a friend and she wants to try to work things out with Kevin so I went through with it.

They ended up having sex and he said he would think about working things out with her. Tamara and I hung out the next day for a little while after we got home. He hasn’t taken her calls or texts since then. She’s pissed off because she thinks he was just using her as a piece of ass. This time, I’m trying to keep them from dragging me into it. I got my own drama.

Anyways, we hung out yesterday and tonight too (I know it’s very early morning, but I haven’t been to bed yet, so it’s still my night.) Dan and three of his friends also stopped by my house. We had a good time.

Recovery is hard for me right now because I don’t have a support system. My family doesn’t encourage me at all. In fact, they try to make me feel guilty for putting my mental health first. They expect me to keep on keeping on as I have done for the past 25 years - like they have done. Several of them have a mental illness as well, but they don’t do anything to make try to make themselves better. They just scrape by… like I did for so long. I’m sick of that. I’m trying to build a new life for myself and I wish they would at least try to understand me and why I have to do this.

I haven’t been feeling quite myself the past few weeks. I don’t know if these things are symptoms or side effects, but I wish they would go away. A few of these things are definite pluses¹ but most of them are bothersome.

Restlessness and Boredom.
I’ve been getting a lot done² because I’ve been unbelievably bored and restless. I have to be doing something constantly and I’m running out of things to do. I rearranged and reorganized the entire house. I even started exercising. *gasp*

Impulsivity.
I had to fight the urge to hop in my car and drive to Kansas City or Dallas because I was bored one night. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the lack of gas money. *grumble… stupid oil-man turned President… grumble*

I was going through my music folder earlier because I wanted to listen to some songs I haven’t heard in awhile. I came across a CD that Derek made himself. He was really into Techno, Trance, and Electronica. He titled the CD “A New Way” under the name “Matubrembrem.”

I knew it would sting, but I listened to his songs. He loved to write¹; act; sing; play music; edit films and videos; and so much more. He was so damned creative and talented and now he’s just dead. What a waste. I know he wasn’t trying to be selfish when he killed himself, but it was a very selfish act and I’m angry with him for going through with it.

There has to be an upside to this illness, right?

1. Creativity.
Visual arts, performance, writing, music; in all the arts bipolar talent is common and sometimes exceptional. Patty Duke, Ernest Hemingway, Trent Reznor, Sylvia Plath, many more. The link between bipolar disorder and creativity is well-established, though further study is needed. One research finding: as many as 60% of people with bipolar disorders are writers.

2. Energy.
Not sleeping for two or three days without feeling effects is even better than modafanil (Provigil). People take all sorts of stimulants attempting to experience similar energy; if you could bottle this symptom of mania and hypomania, you’d make a mint.

3. Exuberance.
Kay Redfield Jamison, prominent psychiatrist who studies and has bipolar, wrote the book Exuberance: The Passion For Life in celebration of the passion and joy in mania and hypomania. “Exuberance,” Jamison says, “is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion.” And it’s contagious. Bipolar disorder spreads happiness; think Mary Poppins.

4. Great Sex.
Unlike Mary (well, we don’t know for sure), lust a.k.a. “hypersexuality” is also a prominent feature of hypomania. People with bipolar disorders tend to be dazzling, passionate and adventurous lovers.

I had a great time today.

I was babysitting McKayla, my niece, and I wanted to take her out somewhere. It was too late for the Zoo or Aquarium so I decided to take her to Incredible Pizza.

I didn’t want to go by ourselves so I invited my cousin’s kids, Jacob and Taylor, to come along. Jacob and Taylor are my second cousins, but they know me as their auntie. They are 11 and 9, respectively and McKayla is almost 21 months.

None of us had ever been to Incredible Pizza before, but we enjoyed ourselves. Jacob and Taylor rode the bumper cars and go karts. We played miniature golf, bowling, and tons of games. McKayla rode a mechanical horse, carousel, train, and I held her in my lap while we were playing a racing game. I let her steer.

We stayed at Incredible Pizza for over four hours. Afterwards, we went to the pet store and got some food for my snakes and gecko. The kids were excited about getting to feed my animals. They loved it.

It was good for me to get out of the house. I needed it and spending it with some of my favorite kids made a huge difference. It made me feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. They haven’t been able to spend much time with me the past several months because I was too depressed to leave the house the majority of the time or I was too irritable to let them come over to hang out.

I don’t think I can have children of my own¹ but having them in my life takes some of the sting out of it. I love being an aunt and I’m good at it.

My mother is the reigning queen of self-destruction and bad luck. Unfortunately, for her the shit is about to hit the fan. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to her but I can’t be her mother anymore. It is time for her to just fucking grow up now.

I’ve been her protector for as far back as I can remember. Hell, one of my very first memories is of me helping her stash her drug paraphernalia from my grandpa.

I also have several memories of going to the bar with her while she was on the prowl for her next boyfriend. I was about four years old then because she had just left her husband, Dennis, for beating me black and blue from shoulders to knees.¹

One of the nights she took me with her to the bar we were playing pool with some guy. I was too short to see over the pool table, so he held me while I leaned over it. Mom was aiming and somehow mistook my eye for a pocket or something because the ball slammed right into my brow bone. I had a black eye for about 3 weeks.

Shortly after my eye healed from the billiard incident my mom and some guy were drunk off Harvey Wallbangers² and she was playing a pocket knife game with me. The object of the game was for me to close my eyes as tight as I could and she would ‘act’ like she was going to cut my eye out.³ Well, her drunk ass must have forgotten that it was a game because she stabbed my eyelid; blood in the eye burns like hell.

I keep thinking about Derek. The disbelief is starting to dissipate and regret is flooding my heart. I regret that I shut him out of my life, but I know why I did it: we had a special connection which scared me¹; I was still hung up on my past relationship with Erick; and I knew my family would not accept him and would judge me harshly for dating a man who was part black.²

Derek and I could have been happy together if I hadn’t been so hung up on those things. They all seem so meaningless now. Rejecting him is one of my worst mistakes and I will probably always regret my foolishness.

There are so many things I wish I told him.