A long recovery to today

Well as you can see I am writing sensibly again, which isn’t as much fun as the 200 hypergraphia entries, but oh well. I still find some of the things I thought about when crazy somewhat seductive, but there isn’t much I can do with seductive thoughts besides make art.
My most recent work of art is a video I am currently editing which I got a grant to make about my family’s home lands. Do not ask me how it is going, I don’t want to say. And don’t ask me what position I am taking because I don’t really know much besides I have three hours of footage and need to condense it into a short snappy half hour of family history. Right now it’s 45 minutes long, too LONG! Fifteen minutes I don’t need.
I have been single for the last two years as well, no intriguing ladies milling about in my life. Well, that’s kind of a slam against all the women I know, let’s just say no romantic intrigue. When I think about it seriously I don’t think I was ready to have a relationship, I needed to do a lot of healing about a lot of different things and I think I would have relied too much on a woman to keep me together. As it is now I am pretty together. I’ve been dutifully taking my medication (but forgetting the morning meds now and again) and I have even been working besides the year I got to just be a famous artist. Well, I was working then too, but not at a job. It seems that every so often I get the opportunity to be a full time artist, and then work can go stuff itself. I like working for myself.
The screenplay is finished, although I am open to rewrites if I find a producer who thinks that would be a good idea. I’ve realized that I am not the self producing type, at least, not with features. Too much work and I need to concentrate on the creative stuff.
I currently have an interesting part time job I like, which is good. I’ve been working for the telephone company and I like it much better than call centres, although in a way it is a glorified call centre. But inbound, no more calling people at home and bothering them.
Call centres have been my bread and butter for most of my twenties.
Now I am in my early thirties. It’s nice so far, I feel more confident about myself and I don’t feel self conscious about dorky things having to do with me, like listening to Roxette, which I used to be closeted about, and also thinking Louis Riel was the messiah. Well that’s not really dorky, just kind of interesting. He did say he was the prophet of the new world. He was also highly manic depressive, and I’m surprised no one ever thought to point out that the government executed a mentally ill person.
I don’t mind being called mentally ill, although I notice none of the professionals working with me use that term. It’s always Bipolar diSordeR, which isn’t as much fun to say as Manic Depression.
I currently have a very good female psychiatrist who has gone above and beyond what psychiatric care I have recieved in the past. She’s sent me to light therapy groups, she’s told me to try vitamin d and omega 3s, she sent me to a dietitian, and she even reduced my meds this year when I told her the Seroquel was making me too sleepy to get up in time for work and the antidepressant was killing my sex drive. I did gain some weight, I’d gone down fifty pounds with all the walking I did while I was manic, but I have gained that ALL back plus about ten pounds. The manic exercise and diet routine does not have long term benefits.
I also have a good psych nurse at the community clinic. And my gp, who is on maternity leave now, visited me in the hospital several times to check on how I was doing.

So I have much better psych care than before, no diss to my gp but a psychiatrist has specialised training in matters of the brain and the chemicals that get it to work properly.
It’s funny having one such TERRIBLE experience with psychiatry, like being restrained and shot in the ass with Thorazine in Montreal for trying to make a phone call during nap time, compared to when I ran away from Hantelman and when I came back they just asked me to pee in a cup. They didn’t even scold me!
It’s funny that I’ve had some of the bleakest depressions but what makes me end up in the hospital is always the manias. Some of my depressions probably could have done better with psych care in a ward, but I never went. Thought I could be stronger.
The summer I was in the home my friend Jasmine Turner killed herself. She had scars on her arms from when she’d tried the first time as a teenager. And then she just did it one day. I guess there was a note, but I didn’t read it or hear what it said. I felt bad, like if only I had done something differently she would still be alive. It was a sad funeral, her son was just this little boy and he was still helping fill in her grave. Now he’s in foster care, so sad. So are her other children.
I don’t know if I was suicidal when I got out of the hospital, I sure was depressed though, as anyone would be when their seratonin’s been used up. It felt bleak, like there would never be a time when I’d just be living independently again working on art and making a mess. But it happened. I used to visualize myself standing just below the summit of a mountain, unable to see beyond the mountain but knowing there was some great vista on the other side.
I got a dragon tattooed on my arm, for a few reasons. It’s on my right arm, the Manic side, and is on one hand a reminder that mania can be destructive, and on the other hand is a memorial to my cousin Christopher. He had an obsession with corn snakes so it is made to look like a corn snake.
I am getting another tattoo this fall (I try not to get tattooed in the summers because that’s swimming time and you can’t swim for a month with a healing tattoo) of Cherry Blossoms on my left arm, the depression side, because when I would get suicidal in Vancouver I would promise not to do anything until the cherry blossoms came out in spring, and by then I was usually okay. When I think about it, god, it must have been the winters! I would always get depressed from the grey sleet, and here in Saskatoon, winters, while chilly, are still sunny.
I’ve been trying to improve myself this year. So far I’ve only managed ONE goal, to stop smoking. I really want to exercise and walk my dog more. But I’m not very motivated, I have to admit.
And now for Some Penguins! I taped these Gentoos and King Penguins in Scotland while I was there. I also got footage of a Rhino giving another Rhino a blow job (REALLY!) but Youtube took that video down because it was rude.