Moonbeams and Unicorns Out My Butt

Maybe it's time to take a creative break. The numbers that tell me that people read me are down. It's depressing, although it happens to all of us.

The thing is: We don't get a break from being bipolar, borderline, or an alcoholic. Or whatever your flavor in life is: fibro, MS, asthma, cancer, etc. We all have to work through our shit everyday. If we're lucky, we all have to wake up in the morning and be conscious of the aches and pains of that particular day. So I write, and comfort myself with the thought that I wrote for several years with no one who read me, and I was happy as hell, just writing.

So I write, and those of you who love me read me. Or maybe you hate me and you can't stay away. So those in both categories can find out that I binged last night, on some delicious lemon cake, but I didn't wake until 4 AM. Which is my kind of miracle.

I don't feel like cutting, or drinking, although I have heard 'shrooms (hallucinogenic mushrooms) are good for trauma; and thought about seeing if that's true for about 5 minutes...I never liked 'shrooms in the first place...

So I write, and those of you tuned in, turned on can find out that my paranoia increases everyday. I know. Maybe time to up the anti-Evil pills. After I talk to my shrink. My sponsor wasn't hooked up last night, so I talked to my girl, Dark Star, and her husband, Schrodinger.

And I write to free myself, and maybe you too, a little. And even though the blog says fictionalized, because I don't want to get sued, everything in it that happens to me is real. I want you to know that. I don't lie to my readers, cause my life has been too weird to have to make anything up. And I would love to write to you about my ongoing challenge with another alkie, who doesn't want to quit, but he is the one who threatens to sue me, even though he is dying and doesn't have time for that.

So I write while my phone rings from yet another alcoholic, and he is dying, too. He thinks he is in love with me, but he only wants someone to keep him from dying. And he had 16, count 'em, 16 years of sobriety, before he started to drink again. Now he can't stop, and goes to jail and the hospital on a regular basis. I can hear death in his voice. On some level, he knows he is dying, and he is a drowning person, trying to latch onto someone to save himself, only I can't be that one. I want to live.

So I write about him and wish I could give you the close-up experience of watching 2 alcoholics die; although maybe you have had that happen to you. When the liver gets so hard it no longer works, that person will cough, and blood pours out of their mouths, along with what's left of the liver. They don't take baths, cause they don't smell anything but the clean on the outside world, and they don't know that their sweat and skin is saturated with the stink of booze. Their hair smells like vodka, no matter what they drink, and their breath smells like human excrement, cause they don't eat.

So I write, and sometimes, after thoughts about you and me meeting here, sometimes, my day sucks and sometimes it doesn't. If I think I can communicate what I want to, then my day, generally, goes well. And all the descriptions of my apartment and 'my things' and all the descriptions of the field and the forest and the Old House, and Eddie and Fudge: these are all things that are metaphors that I am trying to get across to you. As in dreams, you have to interpret. There is a lot of love and longing in my writing, it is something I grew up with.

So I write, and I feel better and less paranoid. Cause I do know you are out there...

So I write because I want to meet Alan Rickman and Severus Snape, and one day I will. There are a lot of answers in death, in my belief. I write because African American youth and African American men are being killed, and it's not trivial...but when I write about Kate and William's baby instead, it's because that is all I can handle at that moment. Mental health diagnoses, sometimes, is all I can handle.

So I write about mental health diagnoses, and disabilities, and illnesses, and warts and all, because that's what I have to give to you. It's what I have brought to the table with me. It's what I wake up with everyday. And while there is plenty to be anguished over, in America, mental disabilities transcend borders and time and love.

So I write because African Americans don't cut their loved ones off, because they are born a person of color. And women don't cut off their families because they happen to be other women. And families don't desert their members that end up in wheelchairs...But a family can and sure as hell will, cut someone off if that family member has been diagnosed with a mental illness. And society cuts us off, as well, regulating us to a darkened hallway, where we have lived for centuries.

So I write this morning, to let you know my head hurts, and I binged, but didn't cut or eat or cry. I write to let you know that I fight depression and guilt, and horror at the outside world. Because sometimes, I wonder why I am considered ill. And not Them.

And I write to escape, but not into denial, just as far as the edge of the forest. I want to write travel journals, and have someone pay me to travel and write about it. If anyone out there knows who can give me that job, please let them know I am interested...

So I write back to this moment in time, with the sound of the clock on the dresser, and the curled up cat at my feet. The dog snores, steadily. And the maritime quilt is on the bed. I write about what comforts me, at times, and since it's dark and it's not time for the forest, I write about the kitty figures on the tv, and the old picture of the woman on horseback on the dresser, alongside a bottle of Chanel No. 5. I write about my cup of coffee, and how good it tastes this morning. I got fresh water from the tap this morning, and I have ice cubes to go in it, just like my Mother did.

I write because I have running water and a toilet and a shower, with plenty of toilet paper and soap. I write because when I woke from the darkness, Dark Star was there, and she taught me to talk again. She taught me how to WANT to communicate. She taught me how to be willing. And she is a real person, too. I write because I didn't go to an AA meeting that I was supposed to go to last night, and I can't get in touch with my sponsor, and I hope the two have nothing in common.

I write because my Dad's mother learned to paint El Paso, from a paint-by-numbers set. She ended up doing some beautiful pictures and they hang on my walls. I have letters she wrote, back in the day, and I read them for the fun of it. She was that good a conversationalist and writer.

I write because this is my song, and it's all I have. And lately the song is trouble-filled, but that will pass. Just like the happy song that follows it will pass. And the unicorn meat eating cats will pass, and the dog will pass, and my brother will pass, and even Dark Star, one day. But time will not pass for a very long time.

So I write because we still have this time together, and there is hope for us, isolated or joined. And I write because you have a forest, and a field as well, you just might not know it. And I write because you feel beautiful, too. 

I will meet you again, tomorrow.