I come from a line of strong women and I need to be strong now. Grannies (and consequently my parents who are first-born– and have a few siblings each) had to raise a brood on their own because their husbands died early. My father is still alive but he’s always been into “escaping” because his father “escaped.” My parents are similar to martyrs. They had to step up and parent in the place of their dead fathers. What does it mean to be an “anti-martyr”? Someone who doesn’t sacrifice his/her own happiness to “save the family.”
I have to rise up against a tide of opinions and surf a wave of understanding because I have been mistreated and misdiagnosed. I need to be brave and I need to stay calm in the face of ignorance and misunderstanding.
I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve been watching shows for most of my life. I was raised in front of a television and now the Internet. I’ve seen so many model arcs that I’ve started to create my own.
I’ve had so many boyfriends because I love the act of “killing” them. It’s not a real death, just a relative death. I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was doing it until lately when I’ve decided to open my psychological black box.
My new favorite thing is to “re-break” up with my current significant other. I broke up with him when I was watching Breaking Bad. I changed after that show. It moved me. I couldn’t be with the “same” person after I was “different.” That’s the thing about reincarnation that I find appealing. The ability to try something else.
With this blog, I realized that I couldn’t clean house, but I could document change. I recently experienced a millienial celebration– I became old, ancient. I realized that I am definitely not the little sprout who said “Hello World” in 2009. And, I’m happy for that. I’ve been pushing people’s limits most of my adult life because I love watching people change. Because I love watching myself change. I thought it was easy for other people, too. For some it is.
Negotiation is in my blood. My parents are lawyers– they fight for change on a daily basis. I am the most radical person I know because I know what change looks like because I know what same looks like.
I grew up in Hawaii. The weather is mostly the same and it’s equatorial, so its seasons swing the least. That means that the environment doesn’t change all that much, but I did. I watched myself emerge as a faceted being and I loved it. When I was 11 (a formative time) I moved to Virginia (culture shock) and then again to Bremerton (culture shock) and then to High School (culture shock) and then to community college (culture shock) and then to University in Seattle (culture shock).
And since then, I’ve had numerous jobs and a variety of phases and I am still in love with Culture Shock, so much to the point that I’ve taken to improv like a duck to water. I enjoy the flamboyant and the meek and I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar recently int the Psych Ward. We are trained to see a AB dichotomy, but I believe in an ABC-pick 2, kind of system. I’ve always had choices in my life. My brain is good at making quick decisions.
At the Psych Ward, I was able to map out my personality and I discovered I liked the label “tripolar.” I can be beautiful, terrifying or just calm. Calm is ideal but to never see the sunrise or sunset of the personality, that seems like no life at all (for me and for my friends, I love watching the shift).
The blue triangles in the diagram represent affinity. I think that it’s a coincidence that works that they are associated in tri-fectas that seem fitting but it’s just the brain assigning patterns where there could be like a lucid dream. Life has been producing some really great living dreams for me lately and I can’t help but feel like I’m on a lucky streak. Must continue on.
I’m sorry for all the people who watched my merry-go-round in disbelief or worse, experienced the whiplash of my personality shifts (they are occasionally violent because I couldn’t control them, didn’t know them).
This is where medicine comes into play. Why train the horse when you can just sedate it? I believe that brain chemistry is the most curious because it self-medicates. That means that it produces it’s own cure and particularly prescription drugs on a regular basis would ruin the process that is adaptation.
I made a rational decision (based off of science I learned about in Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) – IMDb— info here: Lorenzo’s Oil – The Oil) to go off my medication after reading the Medication Guide. It was not helpful or informative on the level that I am used to having for my personal edification. It was the first time being of “sound” mind that I realized that I was signing up for a lifetime addiction because of a psychiatric experiment that I did not consent to.
Consent is a tricky thing when you are emotionally/rationally impaired. That’s why consent is one of the hardest things to ascertain because even the “awake” can be deemed “incapable.” These criteria are outdated. They do not account for radical acceptance (or the idea that a consentable mind can be radically different than the accepted norm).
This is my current state of affairs and like a good rational computer, I think more data is needed. But as a good rational human, I know that this is the system that works best for me, so far and I am willing to go the distance to express my transmania, rationally and thoughtfully until I find a better diagnosis.
Thank you for reading. It’s been a wild ride finding out about how I work/how I’d like to work. It’s through empathy and information giving that I hope to create awareness of this new possible world in which those who suffer, who have tried to “normalize” through conventional means and failed, can see a dawn of a new age.
Kismet Arts Tangent 