Deafening Defeat…

My anger quelled today. I realized a number of things that were flawed in my thought process about my aunt dying at the hands of the pandemic.

The magic that I believed in was tested and I feel like I partially failed at that test. Here’s what I learned.

Anger is Part of the Normal Grieving Process

My anger was bad, but it was part of my personal grieving process. Had I acknowledged that fact, I would have come out of it a lot faster.

When you lose someone you deem special, and they go so fast that you feel like you barely even had a moment to digest what was happening before the outcome, it is frustrating. I will always miss her laughter as well as the fun conversations we would have. This is hard to accept because I really enjoy her jovial personality and all the amazing times I have had with her. Knowing it won’t happen again, gives me a loss of control which is frustrating and enraging to me.

You Can Have Trust or Control…

I did a bible study a few weeks ago that had never left me. The Bible study devotional said:

“Nothing is going to happen without me being forewarned and prepared to face it.

The problem, however, is that trust and control do not coexist. You can have control or you can have trust, but you can’t have both.”

YouVersion Bible App

Reading this really opened my eyes to some truth I never realized. I have spent my life thinking I was trusting when truly I was forcing myself to be controlling of each situation in hopes I could navigate the outcome somehow. I am now making a conscious effort to be more trusting.

I have to tell you, choosing to trust is a more beautiful way to live. Living with trust over control is also one of the most challenging things I have ever had to do. I didn’t realize how much effort it is to change an adherent quality of myself until I started making an effort.

With all that being said, by honoring my journey to choosing trust over control, I have quelled the anger of my aunts passing by remembering that I have to trust that this was meant to happen.

Additionally, a conversation with my aunt B. opened my eyes to how being inquisitiveness doesn’t always serve us. Sometimes you have to accept the intricacies of human existence as it is because you cannot change the past. Why question what happened when it all worked out as it should? (But I suck at this because I need answers when frankly there aren’t always answers readily available.)

Love is The Beginning & Love is the End

The last thing that helped stop the angry and frustrated thinking was remembering that I loved aunt Joanne. I loved her like a mother figure, like someone who believed in me with fierce loyalty no matter what I did. I never felt as if I deserved that level of faith, but if she was capable of that for me, don’t I owe her my loving support in her departure?

Love begot the world, and love will be there in the end. She was loved and maybe she didn’t hear it enough, but at the end, we made sure she knew how loved she truly was. We comforted her with our voices while she laid in a coma, telling her how much she meant to us. I will never be able to thank God enough for that.

The pandemic is terrible. Many people are dying alone. It’s enraging and devastating, but please try to take a moment to pray that God is opening his gates to all these souls, even if they haven’t had the chance to come to Him before dying.

I could never believe anyone is unworthy of the love of our Lord, no matter what the Bible or religious leaders teach. The Jesus I have come to know is so full of love that there is no way he would leave even the worst of us to burn in some hell fire. That love from Jesus makes the anger within me feel less severe.

I didn’t intend on turning this post into a religious one, but when death, grief and loss are involved, it’s hard not to share faith and belief.

Today I am grateful I found a way to let go of my pain and anger. The feelings are still raw and the wounds deep, but I know that I can’t be angry forever. Thank you all for not judging me as I ranted about my disgust and rage yesterday. I am only imperfectly human and the shock crippled me.

Rest In Peace my sweet Aunt Joanne. You are loved everywhere you go and missed deeply. Your loss is not what I would have ever wanted, but I’m eternally grateful to have had you in my life, to have had your love, and your faith in me. Rest easy my angel. 🙏

Strength is a Curse

Where do the Strong People Go to Fall Apart? Where do I lean when my whole entire life is ripping at the seams? Where do I cry? How do I cry? How do I feel joy? Where is the joy in the world when everyone leans on you?

I’m falling down, but no one sees me, no one notices it. They all believe my strength will save me. This time I don’t know what to do, who to turn to, who to talk to, what to feel or even what to think. My insides are hurting, my whole body is drained from fighting off the anger, the pain and the stress of everyone else around me. I’m so tired.

Being strong is a curse. It’s a curse because you know you have to be the leader, the one who has to break themselves in half to help the people who can’t see that you are doing them a favor.

Being strong means you have to be capable of handling heartache and sadness in a raw and miserable way. You have to hear how you are an asshole for hurting someone when you are trying to help someone be the best version of themselves while also trying to give them the best version of you.

Being strong means you have to be comfortable being alone in your pain because no one will be able to handle the pain you carry. Even if you just lean on them slightly, you will crush a person who isn’t meant to carry the load you are meant to carry.

Being strong means you have to shovel shit, while shoveling more shit and then keep shoveling even when your arms are begging for a break.

Being strong means you have to cry to yourself because your break down is more comparable to an atomic bomb exploding and wrecking everything in its path.

Being strong means giving others your positive energy even when you need it. This is because just some of your strength can move mountains for those with less strength.

Being strong means you will attract people who are weaker because they need you and believe in you.

Being strong is a curse. It’s a curse I would gladly walk away from and happily find a strong person to lean on.

I’m exhausted, bleeding inside, breaking at the seams and ready to escape this hell or being a strong person. I don’t want this curse, I don’t want to break my own heart to feel like I’m doing the right thing.

The worst part is that the strongest people I know die young. They die from trying to be too strong for too long. I have to hope for a different outcome. I hope my Lord is watching my back as I struggle to find good in a world that has crushed me and devastated me over and over and over again.

It Takes me Under Fast…

Some part of me is losing control. The balance is off so badly that I don’t know what to feel.

I feel insecurity. I feel distant. I feel messy. I feel chaotic.

Why?

This is so out of left field, it’s so frustrating!

I know bipolar is not curable. I know I have to learn to deal with that fact, but there are times when I want to run away and never look back. Today is one of those days.

My anxiety is overwhelming, I want to cry and I want to scream in frustration. I want to be angry with my Lord, and the people around me who are thriving while I’m barely maintaining.

No one fully understands the feeling of being tossed and turned on mister toads wild ride like a bipolar patient. It’s miserable to be so completely fucked in the head. You don’t know when the silent threat will strike or if you are even prepared to fight for your life in an exhausting battle against a part of yourself you don’t know.

People go from loving you to thinking your crazy. People go from looking up to you, to wondering how they could have ever thought you knew shit about shit. That is demoralizing and painfully fucking depressing. You can be educated and know what you’re saying is true, but you’re crazy so they don’t hear you anymore.

I watched a good friend fall victim to this condition just the other night. Watching her cry in frustration for the life we are stuck living, is a sad reminder of the waves of hell coming back and devastating the forward progress I have earned.

Brain disorders, which now includes bipolar disorder, affects the brain. Some doctors say:

Medication is the only way to live a normal life.

Others in the field say:

It’s going to take a lot of work. It will never stop being work, but if you do the work, you have a chance at a normal life and a more balanced life.

What about the moments when you stare at yourself in the mirror and think:

Is it worth it? Am I worth all this pain? And how much pain can I take before I end the pain?

Sometimes, I contemplate what true peace is. Like what is it like for someone who doesn’t have bipolar? Are they able to be happy for healthy reasons? Are they more secure in knowing who and what they are? Do they know what it feels like to be lost in their minds pleading with the Lord to help them find strength to survive another demonic attack from within?

I’m exhausted when the depression hits. I feel depleted and lost when the waves of bipolar depression start ripping my mind into shreds and I’m begging for mercy to no end.

To me, it feels like a my brain senses a bad cell that is misfiring and passively bumping into the healthy parts of my brain causing chaos and mayhem. It’s like playing hot potato until the bad cell decides to die off and leave the healthy parts alone. Before it dies, it temporarily kills my joy, my energy, my personality, my stable mood, my beliefs, my values, and all the other things that make me who I am. It’s like watching a horror film where the killer is inside you looking for a chance to attack you when you’re vulnerable and happy.

I love the life I have now, but I feel like I know it won’t last. I know this because I am incapable (despite my truly powerful efforts) to stay balanced with my illness. This illness will be always be my till death do us part unwanted partner. If I neglect it, I suffer. If I focus on it, I suffer. If I beg for help, I suffer. If I fight for my life, I suffer.

Why does this have to happen to me? To all of us suffering (some in silence, some out loud)? Why can’t someone care enough to find a treatment that works all the time? Why can’t I experience joy and happiness without wondering when it will end and I will be lost in the abyss? Someone, Please tell me why I feel the urge to give up? And why tomorrow I can’t sleep for weeks or talk without speaking too fast that I seem neurotic? Someone please tell me why I sometimes can’t feel a thing? And other times I can’t stop feeling all things (good or bad)?

Remember that I am fighting a threat you can’t see or hear, but it is a living hell for me and I’m fighting to remind myself everyday that I am worthy of goodness. I fight every single fucking day till I’m bleeding and begging for a break that never comes. Remember that I survived before but it only gets harder until it ends.

If you care about me, remember that I am partially broken, but my heart is good, my intentions are pure, my shortness or nastiness isn’t from me, it’s from my careful care of my debilitating illness that affects my brain. I suffer and struggle to hold it together but I will not give up if I keep fighting with my whole heart and soul, and sometimes I might look lost and in need of support. Just remember that you don’t have to be stuck in my hell with me, I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice, and I would never want anyone to feel struck by my hell.

Just choose where you want to be and don’t love me at all if you can’t love the parts of me that are broken, because they will never be perfect and I will never be able to apologize for all the pain I can inflict on myself and unintentionally on those that love me.

I’m sorry if you love me, I know I’m hard to love. 😢

You Hurt Me

The following poem was written around the year 2000. This poem was about a time in my life where I was molested and scared that I may be raped by someone. It took a long time to get passed the painful experience. I learned, in that moment, that as a young girl, he took my innocence from me. It was a reality I couldn’t escape and I was worried I never would. This happened when I was about 16 and it hurt me deeply in so many ways. I wish I would have never let the things he did hurt me for as long as it did.

Here’s what happened.  I was with a friend and her mom in Miami visiting the mom’s boyfriend.  We all hung out in the pool enjoying a hot summer day in South Florida.  My friend and I got out of the pool and decided to lay down and take a nap since it was blazing hot outside.  After lying down and closing my eyes.  I drifted off only to wake up to the mom’s boyfriend pushing his fingers into you know where and I could feel him on my legs.  I was paralyzed with fear and he pulled his fingers out and started grabbing my legs to pull them apart, using pressure because I was trying to keep him away from me. He grabbed so tight that I had bruises for about a week after the incident.

When I woke up completely, he whispered in my ear that he was going to “Fuck me” and if I screamed he would choke me to death.  My adrenaline started pumping and I kicked him in the balls and he fell off of me so I began to run away.  I ran down the road in a terrible neighborhood with my clothes, purse, and shoes in my hand.  I called my friend to come and get me and I headed home.  I never spoke to the girl or her mother because I was so scared of the boyfriend who threatened to kill me.  I never wanted my parents to know either because my uncle molested me when I was 14 or 15 and they didn’t seem to believe me so I kept it to myself and I wrote this poem.    Hope you all enjoy it.

You took me
you urged me
into a daze,
you pulsated my blood
into a craze.

But all of a sudden
you thought you were right,
that even if I tried
you would put up a fight.

Suddenly I knew
I was lost and confused,
You made me feel broken
just scared and used.

When you took something
you knew you could not,
you stepped on my heart
and hurt me a lot.

I know I should say this
only in my head,
But you left discomfort
on the sheets of this bed.

The bruises and hand marks
you left on my thighs,
are proof that will show
through your bullshit and lies.

You will be sorry
for the pain that you start,
I don’t have much proof
but I’ll know in my heart.

I’m still a young girl
you’re a stupid old guy,
You said you saw innocents
in the soul of my eyes.

You’re pitied and ugly
but you’ll know why,
I’ll hurt and I’ll wonder
but you’ll never see me cry.

-Niki Maria

I do not know what my life would have been like had I not had to experience being molested and almost raped.  I wonder sometimes if I would have been stronger, more cautious, been a doctor, a happier person, never experienced a panic attack or anxiety attack?  I will never know.  When someone takes away that innocence without your consent, it destroys the way you start to look at life. I never felt the same after being molested.  It happened twice to me.  I don’t know how I could have avoided it, but the first time it happened, it was my uncle.  The second time, which is written about in this poem, I couldn’t have avoided it.  I am making life the best I can now, but these traumas come back to haunt me regularly.  I just hope that I have gotten passed them now and I can live a happy life.