🖤 Day 22🖤 10 favorite songs

This is a fun topic!! I love music so I may pick more than 10 because who only has 10 favorite songs? It definitely isn’t this girl!!!

🖤Hallelujah- If you’ve seen my tattoos you know I have part of the song tattooed on my arm in my handwriting. This song is my anxiety calm down song. I have almost every version of this song I can find on YouTube, Spotify, Facebook. Just where ever I can find it because I think every version is beautiful. Hallelujah holds a great power with me it has helped me put down pill bottles before. It helps with issues of disassociation….it is like medicine but better for you. I think we all have that one song that holds us together and this is my song.

🖤 Mariah Carey- I realize this isn’t a song but it is easier to just say her name then listing everyone of her songs. Mariah got me through my middle school years. I went through so many of her cd’s and tapes. I would listen to it every single day sometimes all day. It was definitely my favorite hiding place.

🖤 Boyz II Men- Do I need to say anything else? It’s fucking Boyz II Men and it can’t get any better than that. I bought II at least 10 times because I wore the CD out. It was perfect for any mood. It solved all of my teenage problems and I still have every single song on Spotify now. If you ever heard their version of “In my life” by The Beatles you would know that they do it better.

🖤 In my life and BlackBird- The Beatles. I don’t like ALL of their songs but these two are definitely my favorite. I used to sing BlackBird to my daughter….(one of the 5 memories I have.) when she was a baby. The Beatles definitely was a good baby soother.

🖤 Let Her Go- Passenger – I know she went from ionic music to this, but this song holds more sentimental value than anything else. This song first came on when I went to the hospital that ended up with the Ativan and started the mental health adventure. This song can go either way. It can help me but it can also be damaging depending on what kind of mood I am in.

🖤 Beautiful Birds- Passenger and Birdy- This is similar to Let Her Go it depends on the mood whether this is good or damaging. The first time I heard this song I was at the place and I spazzed out completely. I was disassociated from everything and they were scared for me to drive anywhere by myself luckily my husband was only a mile down the road so they called to let him know I was on my way to him and then let them know I made it okay. I listened to this song and fell asleep. It was in February so it was extremely cold and his truck didn’t have heat so I curled up in a ball and slept for at least 3 hours while he was working.

🖤 Waiting to Exhale soundtrack- This is just life. My entire middle school and half of my high school years can be summed up by the songs on this soundtrack. Mary J. Blige Not Gon’ Cry when a boy broke up with me I would go in my room put my headphones on and blast this song. This is also when I would start writing trying to let my anger out.

🖤 Whitney Houston- I don’t care what anyone has to say about her personal life which no one has the right to judge because you don’t know the shit she probably dealt with but she could sing. She was in the list of Mariah and Boyz II Men. The first time I heard this soundtrack I was in 6th grade because I remember my great aunt coming down and going to Helen with her, my mom and grandma listening to Count on Me on repeat. I imagined a friend and I singing this song at a talent show. I was just pretending that I knew how to sing.

🖤 Strawberry Wine-Deana Carter- 5th and 6th grade. We had a new girl at school who would end up being my best friend and our clique ran the school. I remember all the sleepovers we would have, hanging out in our friends attic (she had the biggest house out of all us.) We spent so many nights hanging out and talking in the attic. I think of all the fun we had it makes me smile and brings tears to my eyes. We had a group that went to “counseling” for some bullshit reason that we made up so we could skip class and hang out together, then she moved. My other close friend skipped a grade so she was at a new school. We listened to this song on repeat and every time I hear it I think about hanging up in the attic together talking about boys, and the future, whatever television show was popular. Those are priceless memories.

🖤 What a wonderful World- Louis Armstrong- I was 13 when I asked my mom for a Louis Armstrong cd. I pronounced his entire name by the way because I thought it sounded cool. I wanted it on vinyl because everything sounds better on Vinyl. I had great taste in music when I was younger. This was during my I take myself too seriously as a writer phase. I used it to help me write because you know I was destined for greatness at an early age.

🖤 Over the Rainbow- Israel Kamakawiwo’ole- I am almost positive at spelled his name right. This is the best version of this song every made!!! I sang this to my daughter too. I play it every year on her birthday, I can associate memories with music. I can remember things from when I was 5 years old if I hear a song. It is what is saving my brain.

🖤 Rent soundtrack- Rent is incredible the first time I saw it I was 7 month pregnant with my daughter and in a wheelchair because of my back. I was in awe the entire time. I just remember thinking what amazing talent someone had to write this. My dream is to see it on Broadway one day. We saw it last year in the same place and it was better than the first time.

🖤 Weekly Update 5 🖤

🖤 I really need to do these on Sundays like I keep saying I would.

🖤 I can’t believe we are already at 5!!!!

🖤 My subscriber list has increased greatly on my blog

🖤 My followers on Instagram grew over night

🖤 My Facebook page is slowly gaining some momentum. It is mostly my post from Instagram

🖤 Still no sodas. I am holding strong on that but caffeine and I struggling. I’ve latched onto coffee which isn’t as horrible as RedBulls but still not good.

🖤 I haven’t worked out since the first update. I don’t walk like I should and I stopped my squats when I go to the bathroom. I also stopped planking and drinking water like I should. I don’t eat much still all of these sleep issues mixed with anxiety keeps me from being super hungry.

🖤 I have decided to dive deep into my book again even though that is almost like jumping down a rabbit hole, but the more I talk about it I want to produce something so it isn’t just me hyping something up.

🖤 My days off I swear I am going to update my blog but I decide to be lazy instead and don’t get as much accomplished. I could write shitty small post but to write something I am proud of and want to be out there takes time. My grammar may not be great but the content is worth it. I have read more about different types of punctuation to get better at exactly where to put them.

🖤 The way that this is growing is amazing. I still get just as excited from one subscriber and for each one that adds on. I screen shot everyone and send it to my husband so keep subscribing so I can blow his phone up!!!

🖤 Post about the new meds I am on to help with the dreams (it is kind of working.) coming soon

This is it for week 5 can’t wait to see what the next week will bring. 🖤

🖤 Day 21 🖤 Something I miss (without making me cringe later)

I am going to try and keep this from something I will read later and cringe because I took myself too seriously. These are in no particular order:

🖤 Living in Athens- After my husband and I graduated high school we moved to Athens. Athens, Georgia is a big city compared to where we came from so moving there was awesome. I wish things didn’t happen the way they did, but we had some good times. Our first New Years Eve in Athens I “bought” some of this horrible cheap champagne at Kroger when I got off work. They marked it down and forgot to make sure when it rang up that it would prompt for your age. I have other memories from New Years Eve at Kroger but we won’t get into those. We tried to drink it but it was horrible. I miss being that close to everything and not having all the responsibilities we have now. We lived in an apartment complex and paid $420 a month for a one bedroom apartment with a balcony. The complex had 2 pools and all kinds of amenities even though the laundry situation wasn’t the greatest we loved it. That freedom and the amount of money we wasted.

🖤 Band- I was definitely a band geek and damn proud. I played most woodwind instruments, piano (self taught) and drum line for awhile. I always wanted to go to Juilliard but life had different plans. I wish I took it seriously because I was always told that I had natural talent. I plan on buying a keyboard one day and teaching my daughter how to play. Music has always relaxed me and with her anxiety I think learning to play would be good for her. I told her if she can type with two hands she can play piano. (Sometimes when I am typing I pretend like I am playing the keyboard. I know I am weird.)

🖤 Dead family members- I didn’t know a better way to say this but you know we always take our grandparents/ parents for granted. I wish I paid better attention to the stories they told, took more pictures, had more home movies. I was an 80’s baby so the video cameras then were as big as a laptop now. We have old movies from when I was younger and a good bit of pictures. My mom moved a lot when she was younger so they lost stuff and she didn’t have as many pictures from her childhood so her mission was to make sure we had pictures from everything. I do that for my daughter and my husband. His uncle was the only person in his family to really take any pictures of them but whenever my daughter is around her grandad. I make sure to get those pictures he is in his 70’s and while I hope for her he lives to be 100 he is almost a 2 pack a day guy. Those are pictures she will cherish one day because she loves her grandad more than anyone else in the family I think. I would go back in time and record some of those stories by the fire.

🖤 Friends- We grow up and out grow our friends it isn’t a negative thing it just happens that way sometimes not everyone is meant to be in our lives forever. I lost some friends because of my illness and I wish I could take it all back but I can’t and it makes me sad sometimes because I lost some very special people in my life and if they are reading this right now all I can say is it was my fault and I am sorry. I hope one day some of you come back in my life because you were extremely special to me to the others yeah… I don’t give a fuck and I’m glad you are gone.

🖤 My daughter- I don’t remember a lot about my daughter when she was a baby or a toddler. My illness and prescription problems kind of started around then. I can’t remember when she started walking or talking. I can’t remember much of it and I try to avoid when she asks me certain questions because I can’t remember and I am one of those parents who didn’t finish the baby book. My memory is getting worse so if something does pop up in my mind I make sure to write it down. I want her to have things to show her children one day if she has any or for her to keep.

This is as sappy as I want to get for now.

Anxiety Coloring

Props to the people who can actually keep their hands steady enough to color. I call bullshit on most of those anxiety coloring books. My anxiety looks like broken melted crayons soaked in sweat anger and tears. I don’t have a first thought of my anxiety bad so I’m just going to color.I just don’t think it is relaxing or feasible in a situation where your anxiety is peaking. I start to spazz out rather quickly so maybe it is just me with that problem. I tried one time to work on a coloring book and all I wanted to do was rip the pages out. This is kind of like those fidget spinners even though they were made with the best of intentions people have kind of gone overboard with them. They are for people who want to say “anxiety” or “ADD/ADHD” but they just wanted to be part of a fad.

#mentalhealth #bipolar #bipolaroutcasts #depressed #depression #manic #mentalhealthawareness #schizophrenia #moodswings #mentalhealthblogger #mentalhealthblogging #anxiety #semicolon #semicolonproject #smallvictories #hypomanic #rapidcycle #gettingoutbed #gettingoutbedvictory #myillnesswontwin #losethebattlewinthewar #fuckbipolar #blogger #blogging #suicide #suicideawareness #psychosis #foreverafighter #breathe

🖤Day 20🖤 Where will I be in 10 years?

I hope to have many accomplishments in the next 10 years my biggest thing is to still be alive. Surviving this illness is it’s own accomplishment so is being sober. I want to start there and from this point I want my blog to be an outlet to my book. I am hoping to finish the last of the series. It would be nice to have a good bit of money but beginning to leave my mark on the world is more important. I hope in 10 years to make an impact on the mental health community. I want to make a change for us and for the government and society to understand that we matter and our quality of life matters.

🖤Day 17🖤 Favorite Book

My favorite childhood book and still a favorite is “Bridge to Terabithia.” It later on in my life would serve a whole new meaning. I had comprehension issues when I was younger. I could read extremely fast I wasn’t able to comprehend things that were boring. My teacher called it selective comprehension. I just didn’t like books that were boring and wouldn’t read them. I like the books that I found interesting and that was it. Well in school that doesn’t work. I did my first book report on this book and I was so proud of myself. I cut a line out of the poster board for Jesse to run, got to use the hot glue gun to make a rope going across a river and a few other things. I was so proud of that poster and I think my teacher was just happy I didn’t make reading a book difficult. I have a copy and I gave it to my daughter to read. She said, “Mama I’ve seen the movie.” But the book is better. Usually the book is always better than the movie. This book would continue on to have a major impact in my life. I still read it from time to time and still get excited when Jesse races or sad at the end. It’s amazing how one little book could have such an impact on your life.

A crushed lemonade can to explain my day and an apology to my daughter for a disease I can’t always control.

Yesterday I didn’t post because my moods are to the extremes that cause damage. I was at home all day today waiting on my direct deposit to come in and I kept checking and it didn’t come through. I called and after an extended hold time I was told there was a problem in their system so the paychecks are backdated. This just escalated my mood. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. I paced around the house screaming there is a period I can’t remember but I started crushing cans with my hands to keep from trashing the rest of the house. I yelled at my daughter which is what I feel worst about. It wasn’t her fault that I didn’t have the money to buy cat food, dog food, or kitty litter. She was just asking if I bought any so she could clean it out. (This is part of chore list.) and I started screaming at her. I don’t know what I said to her but the damage was done so there is no point trying to remember. What I said was out of anger and moods I can’t control. She cried and all I could say was to suck it up and quit being a baby. I wasn’t a comforting or a good mother. She apologizes to me for making me upset and she was just trying to help. It didn’t matter I was so angry nothing would calm me down….except my husband and even that isn’t a guarantee. I called him and after much argument with him and me screaming he begins the process of stopping the progress of an escalation that would end up in me blacking out and running out of the house.

When he gets home we do our usual. I scream at him that I’m okay until he gets me to shut up turns the fan on in the bedroom and turns off the light and says, “You need to calm the fuck down now.” Which means it’s really bad and the black out moments have already started. I scream more before reluctantly agreeing. (He threatened to make me go stay with my mother again and (doing that once was more than enough for me.) I’m not myself, but I’m not giving you pills. (That is the next step me begging for medication.) We go through the are you high steps.

After awhile I calm down some and it is time for the apologies. (This is usually for what I can remember.) My sweet daughter had been crying the entire time, but when I apologize she hugs me crying and says, “Mama I love you and it’s okay I’m used to it.” Those words hurt…they hurt more than I could ever explain. She should never be used to it. I thought I got better and wasn’t like that as much, but I apparently not paying attention to how much damage I’ve caused or still causing. She also asked, “When I get older am I going to get mad like you do?” My heart hurts. I guess need to start saving up for therapy now because in her 11 years of life I’ve completely fucked up as a parent.

So I crushed lemonade cans to deal with my anger that I thought I was controlling but it escalated again and I’m sitting on the other side realizing the everlasting damage I’ve done.

Sometimes I think it’s easier to not be here and give her a chance to not be completely fucked by everything I’ve done to her.

🖤 Day 16 🖤 My dream job

If you haven’t kept up with anything to this point, my dream job is to be a writer. I wrote a story when I was 4 years old about why people shouldn’t do drugs. (I probably need to go back and read that again.) I wrote a lot of poetry over the years and long winded stories about some dramatic incident I made up in my head or something I was going through I needed to work on. There was always something to keep my interest. When I was 13 my mom bought a Brothers computer (Yeah how many people remember those.) It had no internet because there was none a few applications everything was in black and white, Tetris and a word processor. I had a stack of floppy disk with different color labels and secret word combinations so my mom wouldn’t know what was on them. I also password protected all of them and could still not tell you what the password was. This is where my dream of writing started. I would write a ton of different stories that I never finished, but I had a desk and computer in my room so officially I was a writer. I always wanted one of those lamps with the green glass on top of it like they had in movies for true professionals. I also had a three ring binder full of poems and stories along with an overflowing amount of notebooks.

When I was 13 or 14 I went to summer camp and brought my old worn out maroon five star binder full of cringeworthy teenage issue poems and one night two girls in my bunk got up and started reading them out loud as a joke. I cried. I took my work so seriously and that ripped my heart out. After that I became completely hidden in my work. I never let people read what I was writing for fear of that happening again. (I tell my daughter that girls are horrible people and it doesn’t get much better as they get older.)

So until now I’ve never really shared my writing. I am happy that I found a following and either you are enjoying it or finding amusement in my bad grammar and my odd content. When I was younger I always dreamed of being in Talk Shows going over the complex issues detailed in my book and I will but you will be the first with a signed copy.

🖤

🖤Day 15🖤 Timeline of my day

My schedule is crucial for me to stay on track. Everyday has some sort of schedule or plan to it. If I don’t have structure I have chaos and no one needs chaos. I absolutely hate structure and having little freedom but it works to keep me going so I do it.

-I am up by 6:00 am

-bathroom first- I check my money, my blog, and my Instagram (in that order)

-I brush my teeth and get dressed

-leave for where I need to go

-eat lunch around 12:30

-leave there at 3:00

-I get home change clothes

-talk to my husband and daughter

-wash my clothes

-take a shower

-watch TV

-medicine is at 7:30

-In bed by 9:30

This is almost everyday except on my days off. It looks like this
-I am up by 7:30

-bathroom first- I check my money, my blog, and my Instagram

-I brush my teeth

-Watch TV

-eat

-procrastinate

-check blogs and social media

-start post and never finish them

-pick my daughter

– watch TV

-procrastinate more

-talk to my husband and daughter

-watch TV

-medicine at 7:30

-bed by 9:30

Super exciting stuff right?!?! I have a better blog that describes my feelings about this coming soon.

My struggle with caffeine

I know in other posts I’ve talked about it briefly but I have bipolar 1 which means I am more prone to manic episodes/behavior so that means caffeine or any uppers are not my friend….. but I LOVE IT!!! People used to warn me that my heart would explode, it is killing my liver and kidneys….. you know the spill. Regardless of myths and popular beliefs you can actually drink 4 20 ounce Redbulls and your heart won’t explode. I did it for weeks and months at a time. I lived off of it which caused mood swings. I would go all day off of nothing but Redbull. There is something about the way it sounds when you cracked it open and the way it smelled. (I want one now) The more I drank the less I would sleep which caused hypomanic and manic phases. I lived off of caffeine for months at a time. For someone like me I walk a tightrope between chaos and brilliance. Feeding my caffeine habit is almost as bad as Xanax. Self medicating with caffeine is a dangerous game.