• That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World

    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.

  • Sometimes I Remember What Bending My Spine Feels Like

    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. 

  • On Forgiveness

    I had someone repeatedly beg me to “not be mad at me for the things I did,” his words, a while ago. 

    What exactly did he do? Which thing, of the several I’d accused in the past, was I accurate about? I knew what I was angry about, but without an actual confession, with a blanket appeal for forgiveness without the itemized list, what was I to not be mad about? 

    I will never know. 

    That was December of 2024. It took me to October of 2025 to tell him in writing, that, why no, forgiveness was permanently off the table. In the same note, I basically told that person that he would not be in the line of work he is in today had I acted within my rights decades ago, had I known better at the time. 

    I’m pretty sure that is the line that earned me permanent silence on his end. 

    The forever silence is new. For someone who likes to have the last word, I wonder exactly how hard it is for him to restrain himself. The thing is, when that person is silent, it’s not because he wants to be. It’s because he knows it’s in his best interest to be. 

    And, it took me until April of this year to decide that yes, I was ready to extend forgiveness. I told that individual he owes me nothing; there are no strings attached; I forgive him. 

    And what has morphed since then is a feeling of pity for the smallness that is his outlook on life and relationships. 

    Opportunists sell themselves short on what capacity for human connection they may be capable of in their lifetimes. I’ve known more than one in my lifetime. 

    And just because certain vocations reward opportunism and narcissistic traits, success in those fields does not mean those people have any greater happiness because of their success. 

    In this particular case, I’m pretty darn sure that this person goes around punishing himself on the regular. A universal truth is that professional success does not mirror life satisfaction. In fact, my theory is that it is possible to use professional endeavors to mete out self-flagellation in real-time in ways that only those who have known us — really known us — recognize immediately. 

    And so, I actually do stand by that decision to forgive. I am choosing to move on with life. There actually isn’t a lot that would make my already happy and full life much happier. His lost access to me has been a precious gift I didn’t realize I needed. 

    Writing is far more fulfilling, and I have three lifetimes’ worth of material. I’m only just getting started. 

    And in this case, I am the smarter person, I am the stronger person, and I get the better sleep at night, I am certain. 

  • Love is Not Enough

    Here is what I know:

    Love is not enough. Love is never enough.

    Love is not enough to make a relationship work. It’s just not.

    And I know, I know: the romantics out there would say to me: What in the world are you talking about? Love can only be enough.

    But…..this is what I know: Love is just not enough.

    I know this at a visceral, core-of-my-being. 

    Love is not enough. 

    You cannot love someone into living into their potential. You cannot love someone into actually trying. You cannot love someone into helping them to become a functional human being.

    Love is just not enough. At all. 

    I’ve written at length about one core traumatic relationship, and another I write about hardly at all.

    Why?

    Because it is that painful.

    Because that is the reason I know love is never enough.

    If love were enough, I would not spend my days these days knowing there is a high likelihood that someday, there is a very high likelihood that someone I loved once upon a time will end up in a pauper’s unmarked grave, with no one to claim a body. There will be no obituary; there will be no one who was once close to him to know he is gone. 

    I have spent thirty-one years mourning this person in slow-motion. I was fifteen years old when he old me that he was self-destructive; about his chosen method of ending things; and the only thing keeping him from acting on his urge was the idea of me standing over his coffin, crying. 

    Love is not enough.

    Fifteen year old me did not know that when people are self-destructive you don’t just listen; you actively seek assistance for that person. 

    I will not stand over that person’s coffin someday because I will not be notified.

    I worry a very realistic worry that no one will be notified. There may be no one to notify. 

    And yet, I’ve already done the mourning: I’ve mourned in real-time, in slow-motion, for thirty-one years now. 

    I’ve done the crying over his coffin, before it ever happens.

    Thirty-one years is a long time to feel responsible for someone else’s life.

    I was fifteen years old. Fifteen.

    I couldn’t drive by myself yet. 

    Love is not enough. 

    It should have struck me as odd when he chose to not go to school when he graduated. I was prepared to break up; I remember the morning I told him it was okay if we saw other people; shortly after he graduated.

    He didn’t go to school. He didn’t go to work.

    It was nearly a full year before he told me he was waiting on me to graduate so we could go to school together.

    Looking back, my response should have been, “You might have wanted to talk to me about that.” 

    I wish he had talked to me about that idea before he made that sort of decision. 

    It accomplished his aim; it’s how I ended up at Georgia State because he refused to entertain any other school ideas than the Art Institute of Atlanta. 

    I engineered my entire college choice around a guy. There was no choice. I applied nowhere else. I had options; I had no idea. 

    Love is not enough. If it were, then some level of appealing to his sense of ambition might have worked when both myself and his family attempted to convince him to avail himself of the tuition-free attendance that was available to him through his mother’s employment, to Emory. 

    I didn’t really realize I was in danger yet.

    I should have realized I was in danger.

    There were no hints of being afraid of him at all until I decided I wanted to be able to see other people.

    That happened the first week of classes my Freshman year.

    I went out for pizza with someone else and I remember being terrified to tell him. 

    There were hints, little warning signs I didn’t know to see at the time.

    For instance, we started dating in late January of my first year of high school and for Valentine’s Day that year, despite the fact that we were barely saying two words to each other on the phone yet, he showed up to school with a giant gift bag full of gifts for Valetine’s Day: love-bombing. 

    Sometime around Christmas the next year we skipped a Christmas party and I knew my parents were out at their own Christmas party, so I showed him where we lived. 

    A few weeks later a rose was left on my car. 

    It was a full three years after my graduation before the gravity of the danger I was in showed in full-force: he was prepared to use lethal force on anyone who encroached on me, his possession. And a week later, he proved that he was willing to use my own fears against me, to compel me into staying by force when he felt me finally slipping through his fingers forever.

    I firmly believe I would not be alive today had I stayed beyond that Spring of 2001. 

    The terror remains; the knowledge of his likely present circumstance is of little daily comfort. I have had two nightmares in the last week about this individual coming to hurt me. The knowledge that he likely doesn’t have the will or the means to come to my home are of little comfort. 

    I wake up in the night and exclaim, breathless, “JARED!” before I think about it, before I am awake even, to reach over to find my 2026 safe space exactly where he has been for the past twenty-one years. Jared, without fail, either reaches over for me or says, “I’m here,” without exhaustion for the repetition that doesn’t disappear year after year, seemingly decade after decade. He knows my ghost; he has met him face-to-face. Jared is unafraid. 

    And still, I am unsure which terror is stronger: the idea that this individual will potentially end up in a mass pauper’s grave someday, or the idea that he may show up to cause me or my family harm. Both are true: I am afraid of him, and I am afraid for him.

    And whatever the trauma-bond, I still say there was love.

    And, that is how I know: Love is never enough.