For me falling in love is like taking that one last tequila shot at 3 AM. All your friends are doing it and it seems like a really good idea at the time but when it’s over you spend the next 12 hours crying and puking and swearing you’ll never do that again.
I had a few other coping skills at the time that were less innocuous than painting. Even though I was on meds, I was not consistently stable. Self-indulgence was not a new concept for me. I self-soothed with things like food, shopping, and sex. That immediate gratification was comforting. It was like the high I… Read More Slippery Rocks
Once I was fired from my job in Raleigh in 2004 and was in the height of mania, I had an unusual reaction. All I wanted to do was paint. It wasn’t merely a therapeutic exercise or escape, it was a visceral need to purge what was crying to get out. I think I completed… Read More Paint the Pain Away
The whole thing about being manic is that it’s fun, until it isn’t. The strength and speed of the outward spiral feeds on itself until the tether to reality is severed. The worst manic years are still a blur, and what I do remember I don’t always trust. However, I think the slow train wreck… Read More What, Me Fired?
My living room window was cracked just a little at first and I found the freezing air oddly soothing. In the winter of 2006 that’s where I stood, nineteen stories up with nowhere to go but down. It would have been so easy, too. I told myself it wouldn’t hurt, that it would be like… Read More Gone to the Dogs
Grace, Under Fire 