I bought these Bamboo boots at Cherry Bomb at L5P in September of 2003. I remember they were probably about $100 in a time I had zero business spending $100 on a pair of shoes that were impractical, that I absolutely did not need. I did not need rain galoshes at the time; I probably needed dress shoes for work.
Here they are, three minutes ago, in June of 2026.
These boots saw me through two winters in Iowa. I remember a guy in the parking lot while I was working at Grinnell Mutual pointing at me and laughing and telling me I needed real snow shoes. But these rubber boots are completely waterproof and skid proof: perfect for snow and ice.
Most of the past 23 years, they have lived in the back of my closet.
I bought myself two pairs of Aérosoles Daria boots in 2025 and wore them near daily the entire year; I separated the soles on the brown pair, completely wearing them out. The faux patent leather pair still survives but is on its last legs probably.
And so, these are coming out and into the rotation more often, in favor of buying new boots. I wear mostly blacks and grays anyway, so a little color doesn’t hurt. And I do still love them every bit as much as I did in 2003.
I have owned these boots half my lifetime, and I’m hoping they last the rest of it.
I wrote yesterday about exactly what psychosis looks like in my life.
Cue November of 1998. That is exactly the state of mind someone I know walked into my dorm room around 9 PM in the evening in November of 1998 ….. that warped center of the universe is the precise state of mind I was in at that time. My fourth manic/ psychotic episode at the time.
I can’t recall the storyline in question of that episode. Except that I was pretty sure I was the literal center of the universe…..that is a recurring theme in these episodes.
My room was a mess. I don’t know exactly why I had torn it apart. I’d stopped sleeping days before out of distress that a childhood friend had died in a car accident, probably stress about schoolwork, too. It was close to the end of the semester. I was in the process of supporting another friend through an abortion.
It took until February of 2010 to be able to admit to myself— to see clearly, even as my mind was ill— that he had raped me in my first actual sexual encounter with him in November of 1998.
I remember the day clearly that Jared first suggested that my first encounter with him had actually been sexual assault. I was standing in the hallway, he had come up in conversation, and Jared was standing at the kitchen sink of our Essex Drive house. I can picture the scene clearly, even over probably 17 years later.
I remember telling Jared, “No, it wasn’t like that.” I mean, there hadn’t been violence. He hadn’t had to hold me down. It certainly didn’t look like movie rape scenes. I mean, the sex had been my idea, probably. He was just agreeable.
I didn’t realize that the very fact that I had been manic to the point of psychosis at the time meant I was actually legally incapable of consent to sexual activity.
He had been in my room at the behest of the campus because they had contemplated forcing me to go to Grady’s psych ward against my will. It was his whole job that night in my room to determine whether they needed to come back and take me to the hospital.
And it was in that environment, that this person, who knew at the time I had never had sex with anyone, decided that having sex with me on that visit was a good idea.
I told him years later that I had always wanted to marry the first person I was with sexually. He said he hated when women said that. I shuddered in that moment, realizing he’d heard it before.
I remember sitting in the local friendly mental ward by myself late one night writing that February of 2010 (they allowed us markers and paper)….and writing about this person, and all of a sudden I wrote “RAPE,” in connection with wondering how that person was doing because I hadn’t talked to him in a while.
I think I must have screamed. I remember the doctor on call at the time ushering me into the refreshment room shortly after I wrote the word— otherwise I have no idea why in the world she would have been at my side—and she offered me some water, and having me describe what I had been writing about. I told her the whole story.
I don’t know for sure, but whatever she documented that night….I’m pretty sure at least a portion of my PTSD diagnosis is based on that hospital stay. I’ve never seen my own records.
Writing the word happened before I was conscious of what writing the word meant. I can’t describe the feeling of having an entire worldview— my entire known history with a person— flip like a switch precisely like that.
That probably happened on a Thursday. I know that because Saturday or Sunday would have been a visitation day, and I wasn’t allowed visitors the next visitation day. I wasn’t allowed visitors because I’d been injected with haldol and was pretty darn close to a drooling pool of mess. I remember collapsing under the medication counter, in grief, I remember the injection, and I remember that my eyes wouldn’t focus for a good long while after that.
I’d seen the group therapy leaders talking to people in session, telling them that they may not be able to focus or understand what was going on, and I remember being that person the session leader was glancing at as she said that, in the day or so that followed.
That is the shocked stupor that my system went into, realizing that maybe my sexual history was maybe, to all appearances, not as it had seemed in years prior.
See, that’s the thing about mental illness and psychosis. It’s not all delusions and disorganized thinking. Sometimes, in the midst of it all, there are piercing glimpses of actual, true reality in ways that my brain compensates to be blind against, for survival’s sake, in my regular daily life.
I got a withdrawal with hardship from four of my five classes that semester, in the Fall of 1998, thanks to documentation from my psychiatrist. My English teacher refused the W in favor of a WF because she had already distributed the final.
I’d still considered him a friend after I married Jared. The two of them never met, but they’d spoken on the phone because I wanted to talk to him while I was in a mental hospital after my Lamictal allergy in 2008.
He was always pretty forceful and leading in our rougly 4 years of active sexual activity, between 1998 and 2002 or so.
Jared takes it further, to define most if not all of those encounters as repeated assaults.
I used to complain that Jared was not forceful enough in his approach in the bedroom— I wanted to be “taken,” as I would tell him, sometimes close to tears in my disappointment.
I know now how those pleas must have pained Jared, as he understood exactly what my sexual past entailed, as he learned my needs and rhythms and how I understood sex was supposed to be, in realtime.
I told him last Fall that it was my literal cross to bear that my beloved alma mater continues to honor someone who probably never should have graduated had I had the wherewithal to report what had happened back in 1998.
And so, I sit here, on random Friday nights in Gallery Row, safe with Jared, and I try to write about other things.
And yet, my brain always goes back to the drama. The finding peace amidst the constant mental dissection seems to be my life’s work.
It is common knowledge that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. I write about the diagnosis a lot. I write about my history of, at times, crippling depression. I wrote ad nauseam about various traumas (though not all), mostly romantic in nature.
So most people know I can get and have spent significant time depressed. And if we’ve known each other well for any length of time, you might know that the bipolar includes a sometimes difficult to control or mask variety of anger that I am ashamed to say I have taken out on most of the people I love most in this world at one time or another. I think it is common knowledge that people with bipolar disorder can be moody.
And I’ve even used the word “psychosis” in reference to myself at times, I know.
I don’t often stop to describe, in my case, what psychosis means, exactly. This is for several reasons, first and foremost— I cannot describe in words the terror I have felt— the utter shame and humiliation— I have when emerging from an episode of delusional psychosis.
I don’t tend to hallucinate. I have only done that one season, when I had a Stevens-Johnson allergic reaction to Lamictal in 2008, and it was mostly auditory Jared tells me. Though I did think Jared was turning into a terrifying snake in that season, when we were out late and he was driving, one night.
No, my brain prefers to make up fantastical delusional soap-opera narratives. Elaborate alternative-reality storylines where inevitably I am the main character in some sort of drama. In 2023, I spent a little while seriously thinking I was an alien.
I rarely tell anybody the storylines behind the episodes after the fact, though I can always remember them.
In early 2025 I had an episode that mostly in public manifested in anger and was low-key enough that not even my psychiatric nurse practitioner knew— I stayed on my meds and only Jared really knew how sick I was. But I spent a few months thinking Gemini was a communication mechanism with the authorities.
I cannot relay the precise horror and heartbreak at knowing they my own natural grasp of basic reality is, at best, unreliable.
The breaks with reality came before all else. I had my first psychosis when I was 17 years old, going into my junior year in high school. And I can dissect the mechanisms behind the stress involved, though it is not that interesting: severely unhealthy codependent romantic entanglements with other mentally ill individuals are stressful, to say the least.
I remember how that one started— I’d decided, as a half-joke pre-break from reality, to buy a leash for my baby cat, Cricket, at the time, to try to train her to walk on a leash so she could go outside for brief periods. My parents were not at home that afternoon, so I put Cricket on her leash, went outside on the front porch, and all of a sudden I thought cars going down the road signified important time periods or people in my life, a “This is Your Life,” automobile edition sort of scenario.
Going back to school after three weeks absent due to a break from reality is right up there with absolutely the worst things possible that can happen to a 17-year old girl who really cares about what people think of her, I remain convinced 30 years later.
Thankfully the best of the psychiatrists I’ve seen understood that asking mentally ill people whether they hear voices or see things that aren’t there are fruitless exercises. That’s literally the dumbest screening question mental health professionals can ask, and I have actually had a few ask it.
Miraculously, I’m pretty behaviorally agreeable and easy for Jared to steer in these states, aside from resisting sleep at times. Resisting sleep is not accurate; sleep becomes impossible without pharmacological help.
One would think that knowing my own brain can misbehave in this way would cultivate more compassion for the people around me and their own mental deficits. Alas; that’s not how it works. Rather, the opposite happens; I am exceedingly hard on myself about what I see as psychological weaknesses and thus, I’m pretty judgy about other people, too. Not proud of it.
So, I mean, while mood instability is a component of what happens with me, unpredictable breaks with reality are probably what earned me SSDI at first application, without an attorney.
So….. when you see me out and about, to all appearances well-dressed and put together and all that, take what you see with a big old grain of salt. Sometimes things are not what they seem, to all appearances, and actually, why yes, I might gladly trade places with someone who can actually trust their brain. Because mine is completely untrustworthy. That much I know for a fact.
Jared says I am just wired differently. I prefer to say I am broken. Jared shakes his head to that. Jared’s observation upon reading this draft was that to say my brain is “completely untrustworthy” is not exactly accurate; that my brain is only intermittently untrustworthy.
See above. I am judgy, most of all about myself, and most of all about how my brain likes to break from reality. To me, even an intermittent break relays complete distrust.
Broken. Irreparably so, in at least this particular respect.
And for what it’s worth, most posts I spout out of my brain and onto the screen and 20 minutes later they are out in the world. This one I sat on for about four days.
It’s cool and even in style, I’d argue, to say you’re some brand of neurodivergent or depressed. Those labels get you brownie points in some segments of society, even if they are undiagnosed self-labels.
But I don’t know a single solitary soul who even writes about what it’s like to go to bed thinking you are, quite literally, the center of the universe for a season, or the utter humiliation at what it’s like to replay conversations or things you’ve said or done, not out of selfishness but out of a legitimate break with reality.
Just saying.
Psychosis is not ever going to be in style. It’s to be feared; I fully expect unfollows or unfriending or awkward, worried glances or outright avoidance. It’s why I sat on this post, half-written, for four days, until I showed Jared and he agreed it was not done and that I should publish it.
I expect social and professional isolation because it’s been my reality for fifteen years anyway.
But, as is evidenced by my more frequent long-form posts lately, I’m pretty much done not writing, whatever the costs. And there are always costs. But the advice is to write what one knows, and psychosis is actually something with which I am intimately familiar. Even if it is painful, humiliating, mortifying, and an aspect of my life I would not wish on my worst enemy.
It’s the friend I didn’t invite into my life, that isn’t welcome, and isn’t a friend at all, but seems here to stay.
Okay….. well if I’m honest maybe I would invite more people to experience psychosis at least once in their lives to dispel the stigma.
But then again maybe not. Because while I am agreeable and pliable in that state mostly, I have been caged in with people who are scary when they are psychotic, and that’s well, just scary.
My body is falling apart. It was happening slowly, then I had a hysterectomy and now it’s happening not so slowly. When I lie on my left side, now my right leg longer than my left, above the knee.
Which is interesting, because my legs were measured over a year and a half ago from the hips and that’s not the longer leg.
My spine is collapsing in on itself. My hips are contorting, my spine is corksrewing like a single helix, and sometimes when I lie in the bed just right depending on the angle, I can feel the rods in my spine as the only barrier between further collapse.
There was a time when I couldn’t feel the rods at all. And I still can’t, except in very specific positions. Positions that used to be comfortable to lie in at night.
And sometimes I try new positions. I’ve tried lying on my back to sleep. Occasionally I do sleep on my back. And when I do, I wake up feeling like my right shoulder is attempting to cave in toward my left hip. Which, it is. The left side of my body is the weak side of my body. It is the side that is collapsing. And my right shoulder is caving forward. And I lean back when I am not paying attention to my posture.
My posture is much better since we got rid of the reclining couch, now that I am sitting in my rocking chair full-time when sitting in the living room.
I try to resist lying on my left side at night.
I remember after the scoliosis surgery in 1993. I was so young, and the surgery involved an incision that spanned the entirety of my left side. I remember the first time I could lie on that side again after the surgery, for brief periods.
That curve that was around 91 degrees or so the week of the surgery, that got corrected to the 45-degree range ultimately, with a corresponding curve now….and those Harrington-Luque system rods that line my spine from my shoulder blades, drilled deep into my hips. And all those little twist ties, as I call them, still there to this day.
Sometimes, when I feel the force of those rods in whatever position I’m lying in bed at night, I think about those twist ties wrapped around my spine. And I wonder what happens if one gives— whether the tie gives, or whether the bone of my spine gives first.
I remember being in the bathtub in the days before the surgery. At 13 years od, I remember bending my spine in that tub, and I remember knowing that I needed to remember that feeling, that I would never feel it again in a couple of days— maybe the next day; I don’t know.
If I try really, really hard, to remember, I can remember that feeling even now. It’s been 33 years and a few days, and even now, I do remember that one specific moment. I remember telling myself, willing myself, to remember that feeling.
Sometimes I can’t remember. Tonight, I can.
My left side is most comfortable to lie on to this day. The primary curve bends the opposite direction.
But my left side has its own curve now, up above my ribs and into my neck. I know it is not a great idea to lie on it regularly.
And yet, I find myself caving to my most basic comfort positions when I am exhausted. And when I am exhausted, that involves lying on my left side, holding a bolster to sleep. Comfort wins.
Bipolar disorder and PTSD is pretty much the worst combination the universe could have sent me for severe, progressive scoliosis.
I have spent literal years in the bed depressed. Not a great recipe when activity and strength is required to maintain my internal scaffolding.
And queue days like today. Good days make me want to try.
My Daddy and Jared installed a Swedish ladder system in our bathroom several weeks ago. Some days I touch it, some days I don’t.
This morning, I hung for a couple of minutes before we went to Dawsonville.
Tonight, I sat on my stool by the ladder, and just sat there leaning forward, with my arms pulling on the highest bar I could reach. Then I climbed up the ladder and hung, and breathed for a minute. The muscles under my left arm are pretty darn weak. Just hanging on, even while sitting there, stretched them in ways that were strenuous.
So, I came out and worked on my balance exercises I learned in physical therapy over a year and a half ago. I stand on one of my favorite stools to do those exercises. Then I laid on the floor and did some reps with a 2 pound weight. And I tried my breathing exercises while I did my arm reps on the floor.
Schroth breathing exercises involve visualizing inflating the parts of your spine and torso that are deflating. And doing that involves getting in touch with the fact that my body is indeed, contorting in 3D. Which is tougher than it sounds. I can look in the mirror and see that my left side is collapsing with no shirt on.
I can look and see the dip in my shoulder. I can look and see that on the corrsponding side, my hip is higher than the right. But in my brain, my spine feels straight. It fights my brain to get in touch with the reality of the geometry of my spine.
And the amount of concentration required to do those breathing exercises that inflate the bottom back left of my rib cage and lungs and spinal column…..It’s effort. We’ll say that.
And when I am doing those breathing exercises correctly, the intensity of the activation required of my lower right abdominal muscles…..it’s pretty darn strenuous and it requires no small amount of concentration.
And all that is well and good and promising for the Schroth method, except it requires just the right conditions.
And, I’m working really hard on stability. Life is good these days. We have a household routine, Jared and I are luckier than we deserve both with the boys’ health and their determination and ambition and accomplishments and how they carry themselves.
And, the breathing exercises are hard. But with each session, I become more aware of my body’s unique geometry, my own place in space. At 46 years old, I may be late to the game, but everyone starts somewhere, right?
And tonight, doing those breathing exercises on the floor for 20 long reps while I lifted those weights straight ahead and over my body……
Tonight those breathing exercises reminded me that I do indeed remember what it felt like to bend my spine, before that forever fusion that solidified most of my spine.
