i ride polar bears?

i have been very very sick with a pneumonia that had me hospitalized for 4 days.

blahhhh ~ i am sooooo tired, and weak.

ahhhh ~ but i am slowly on the mend. missing you all and thinking of you.

Manic Mondays # 1 :: Suicide and Stigma

Manic Mondays, my attempt to devise a vehicle for myself through which I can write focussed posts on what it feels like, looks like, tastes like, smells like to live with mental illness.  First and second experience will inspire these posts. I want to make these posts deeply personal, rather than clinical or medical.

A good friend of mine who was bipolar recently hung himself. He had struggled for awhile, following the holiday season. I think he reached that point that some of us reach, where we know we need something ... some sort of relief. But ... something keeps us from reaching out and grabbing it. Fear, perhaps, of the exhausting stigma and judgmental attitude one faces, when one seeks the so-called help the mental health system offers its victims. We get tired of hanging on to the rocky cliff. And we let go. And they blame us ... for feeling the feelings, for having the thoughts, for seeking relief. Its almost as though, because we cannot see the wounds of those afflicted with mental illness, we blame them for their illness. Like, c'mon, snap out of it, stop being depressed! How many have heard that one before?

Do we, as a society, think and believe we're doing all we can to stop this from happening? When did we last hear about a revolutionary breakthrough in psychiatric treatment? How much of society's resources goes toward R&D of mental illness and psychiatric treatment? Not enough, I fear, particularly when one considers the invisible virulence and life-threatening nature of diseases such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

can we play something else?

I don't know why you did what you did

does it hurt for you, still

like it hurts for us

left to mourn

and grieve

and wail

and scream?

or ...

in several instances of

carefully planning your death

did you cast out your pain

onto the living?

i don't know

why you did what you did.

distance provides me reprieve

alienated. by the dysfunctional dynamic that threatened to shatter my sanity into one million little pieces. the revolving door of hospital admission continues for my dad. i really think my mum needs placement. if she does not get placed, my father will die in her service.

Some Things on My Mind

What is religion? Is it really the only conduit to God and his light? What is prayer? Is it really an event? An activity? Or is it a state of mind? A way of being? Contemplation? Why do so many think of prayer as a call-in show with God, where He's at the other end, listening, taking notes, and moving the pieces on his giant chess board appropriately? From where does suffering emanate? How can we blame God for the state of things when we have this thing called free will? How can we surrender the surrender of forgiveness?


What we need is to love without exhausting ourselves. How does a lamp burn? By the consumption of steadily dripping drops of oil. What are the drops of oil in our own lamps? The little things in daily life: faithfulness, a friendly word, a kind thought for others . . . Do not search for Jesus far from you. He is not somewhere else. He is in you. Keep your lamp burning and you will recognize Him.

~Mother Teresa, No Greater Love


Love is the eye with which we see God; love itself is understanding. But love is not to be confused with mere feelings. Feelings burn out too easily; they can be manipulated or seduced. The love by which we see God must be an act of the will rather than a passing affection of the heart.

~William of St. Thierry


"I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand."

~Mother Theresa


The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.


When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.


You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me.


Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.


If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

~Mother Theresa

back in the hospital

He finds it disorienting. He forgets he is in the hospital. He wanders the halls, sometimes, looking for me. It breaks my heart to leave him. I want to remain by his side ... for all time. Living just gets in the way ... of duty.