Pride week in Saskatoon

I haven’t gone to any Pride events yet. I figure I will blow my wad at the parade and the dance. I haven’t got anyone to go to the Dance with me yet, like a friend I mean. I will probably go with my cousin.
I went out to Diefenbaker Park last night with an old friend, where we drank hot chocolate and talked about old relationships and future relationships. Damn she has some intrigue in her life. I feel like I am not getting out there enough. I should advertise myself!
Never mind that, I’ve had several personal ads running here and there, and have only ever gotten a handful of responses that seemed remotely interesting in all those years of doing online ads. And I hate writing the about me sections. I always feel like I should mention the bipolar thing, but I don’t. Not that I wouldn’t, I’m pretty open about it.
It just seems like bipolar almost automatically adds a layer of drama to relationships. You know what I would like to read? A book about how to have a relationship written for people with bipolar. I don’t know if it would help. I used to spend my evenings sitting in the self help section of Chapters reading all their books. They didn’t care, and I did buy books enough for them to leave me alone. I just didn’t want to pay for self help books. I learned all about “I” statements there. Come to think of it, I think an ex read those same self help books because she used all that lingo.
I also used to read all their paranormal stuff.
I had a couple years there where paranormal stuff kept happening to me. That was weird.
It will happen again, I am sure.
I wonder when the world will acknowledge that we’ve been getting visited by aliens!? At Cranberry Flats?!?
I realize this entry is not much about Pride. I like Pride, it’s one of my favorite times of the year, mainly because there are so many hot cuties that come out of the woodwork. I’ve never had a girlfriend in the same city as me during Pride. Kinda sucks. and I’ve never gotten laid during Pride either. And yet every year there’s that feeling, maybe this will be the year me + some girl will collide during pride = sex. Even though the track record is going against me, I still clean up and try to be sexually presentable Just In Case.
Who knows, maybe this year if I recondition all my leather I will win a sweetie! I’ll put it on Facebook, just to make sure everyone knows I’m all ready for someone.
Well Mum will be here any minute to take me to see my dog, who’s just gotten shaved! Little Mister! He’s living with me now and it sure is good having a pet.

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.

After two years of being locked out of my old blog, I have finally cracked my password and am currently writing in it. I have written three entries. I am pretty happy! I also got to read old emails, including the first email I wrote after my cousin Christopher died.
If only I could fuse both email and blog accounts and have one blog and one email! Oh well.
My arm is itchy. I have gone down to Step 2 of the patch and haven’t noticed a big difference yet. I still have cravings to smoke SOMETHING, so I’ve been smoking some tobacco alternatives. No tobacco though. It’s been 23 days? 22 days? A long time anyway. I have no desire to start again, just this need to smoke something or another.
I went to a BDSM munch last night and had a good time, met a lot of new people and talked kinky stuff. It was fun, and I am going to go back for the mid month coffee I think.
I’m so messy! I think I am going to clean today. I know, I always say I am going to clean and then nothing happens. But I really DO want to clean today and I’m not working so far. Plus I am getting a new couch tomorrow, well, an old couch from my grandparents, but it’s new to me!
Well, I am going to go write in Fit Of Pique now, about I don’t know what.

The Home

Living in a psych home is the ultimate in tedium and I have to admit, I generally just spent time at my mother’s instead of trying to hang out there. I was living almost the whole time with women far far older than me, waiting for nursing homes at that point really, except for one other younger woman who moved in soon after me.
There just wasn’t much to do. we had television. Most of the residents stayed there and didn’t go out into the city. That was very depressing. And like I said, the rooms were shared so no rumpy pumpy even on your own. And I missed my dog especially, I went to Mum’s all the time to see him. I also stored my pot at my mum’s since I was in a sober living facility. There are only a couple homes in town that don’t care if you do alcohol and some other drugs. And they aren’t the kinds of homes you want to live in.
My roommate for most of the time was schizophrenic and we think had dementia. She was always talking about Indians or Cows in the backyard, and couldn’t wipe her bum properly. We shared a bathroom so I knew the truth!
Shit all over the towels.
At the time I was still thinking about transitioning, and it was weird being male identified and spending time in an all female group home. On the other hand, it would have been weirder to be with guys. Which made me realize how difficult it is to be trans and crazy. I made a packer that I wore outside of the house sometimes and it made me feel better.
Shit, this typing is driving me nuts and I don’t have much else to say about the home. Maybe tomorrow I will just skip ahead to today.

The Hospital

I’m guessing you will want to know what the Hospital was like for my last psych trip. Especially considering I wrote so much bad stuff about my first hospital experience as a nutter.
Well, it was okay! It was a nice big ward with an outdoor courtyard and you could go down to the river for a smoke. I started smoking again mostly to get out of the ward, and it was hard to quit again! I have quit now for three weeks.
There were a lot of movies to watch and groups to participate in. I don’t know if I learned anything in group, besides to keep specifics of my looneytuneness confidential, but you all know I’m not good at that. We went on walks every so often around the university grounds, which was nice because you could see all the bunnies. There were a LOT of bunnies that summer, and a fellow bipolar even got me to come outside to look at a baby bunny that was in the courtyard, it was so cute! Every time I went outside the ward it seemed like there was another brown bunny munching on dandelions.
I was there for six weeks, I came home and was still emailing all the time and got sent back, not quite sane yet. I made some friends in there, one I still talk to on facebook and a few I’ve seen elsewhere. Some dude spit on me and my book in the ward and then disappeared, I think he assaulted another patient and got sent to a higher security ward. It was pretty weird getting used to the relative safety of the ward, have an issue and just take it up at the nurses station. But then I was released and scared of everything, scared of the randomness of people, especially after my cousin Steven got assaulted in his own home by some gang thugs.
But there were no restraints in the psych ward, no shouting orderlies, no one telling me I was wasting hospital supplies. I even ran away twice, went back with no big fuss.
The one things I didn’t like was how I felt railroaded into going into a psych home after. I didn’t want to go, and it was hard. I didn’t have a room of my own for nearly six months, couldn’t even masturbate I was so stressed. I was sad and in shock, especially because of weird things I had said, most of which are chronicalled in this blog. And I missed my best friend, who didn’t seem to want to talk to me.
Although I found an email she sent to me after I lost my password, just checking in. And I missed it! Oh, so sad.
But in conclusion, the hospital was not so bad. The first one I was in my cousin showed up to and told me she’d been in five star hospitals and that the one we were in was a one star hospital. So I guess I was lucky enough to be in a four star hospital.
They’re building a bigger version of it now, and I hear people get to have their own rooms. I sure hope so because not being able to get off is a major problem. Everyone, even mental patients, should be afforded enough privacy to masturbate.

How many years has it been? Far too long. I lost my email and blogger password in a fit of pique during the manic episode that ended this unusual blog, at least, it SEEMED to. And I did start another blog called Bipolar and Disorderly, which I have kept up dutifully, all the while mourning the loss of my beautiful Fit of Pique blog, which had followed me all those years.
Well Bipolar and Disorderly is about two years old now, when I finally sat down and decided to try and crack my damn security question. It was Who was your first teacher? And I couldn’t remember until I finally did tonight.
This also means I finally have access to all my unusual emails to my then quasi girlfriend, who will remain unnamed, except as you can imagine in all the hulaballoo she disassociated herself from me.
I don’t really blame her, and I am not looking forward to reading all the weird shit I wrote to her, so maybe I won’t.
I haven’t decided what to do with Fit Of Pique yet. As in, should I do the post manic pruning that I normally do with a blog after I’ve gone crazy? Since it’s mostly the month of march and april that were crazy, I’ll let it stay. Maybe. I don’t know.
What I do know is that two years later I still have boobs and am planning to keep them. I do like being a boy, but I like being a girl too. I like being both, and for now playing with that is better for me with a butch female body.

Coming back here is almost like ressurrecting a carcass I thought was lost to the winds of mania. Mania can be such a destructive force. It destroyed one really good friendship and a whole lot of dignity. And it destroyed my memory. I was changing passwords during a bout of paranoia and that’s how I lost access to my email. And I was being all sly and clever and then couldn’t remember my settings. dammit!
That sums up the manic episode.
What I did for my banner relaxing summer apres les hopital was sit around watching American Movie Channel in a group home with some older women, as in seniors, and smoking kistemaw and listening to country. Ugh!
I went on a couple adventures that summer, like missing the last bus before curfew and having to call mum to drive me home from the racetrack, where I had gone to have just one beer and feel freedom. How depressing.
In fact it was a beautiful summer, but mostly depressing. I went to Banff and I was still over medicated and it was okay but not great.
Life after that got better, I moved into my own place, eventually moved into a place with my dog and cat, had a big grant, went to Scotland, America, a film festival here and there, worked in call centres again, and now I’m here, where I am, writing in a blog I thought I’d never get to write in again.
It’s kind of an emotional moment. I’ve MISSED this blog, and have wanted to come back and write about what it’s like to recover from my second manic episode.
I haven’t had an episode since, not even a depression after the sad summer was over. I’ve been good. Messy, but good.

I have approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes to work on my art practice, before work. Then I come home and work on it some more. I am trying to be more demanding and strict with myself, especially since I can hand in a rough cut to this festival in Toronto. Can I make it? I dunno.
It especially sucks because the festival in Toronto is SO GOOD and I want to premiere my little flick there. But I dunno if what I have is anywhere near good enough to get it into a festival as is. I don’t even have my narration on it.
I have a very unhappy kitten on my hands. Schrodinger has been wandering around crying where ever he goes, I am sending him to my mom’s to enjoy the outdoors, the big baby. I can’t tell if he wants food or to go out, or both. Who knows?
Pride is coming up here, which is exciting! There’s all kinds of events going on for the whole week, and if I get out and go to some I just might meet a cutie!
I’m still not smoking, in case you were wondering, but it’s getting hard to keep my resolve again. It just seems so easy to have One smoke, the mythical one smoke before going back to your quit. But as they say, cigarettes travel in packs! I’m finally not letting people smoke cigarettes in my apartment and that helps a lot, plus the apartment smells nicer. I’m all abut things smelling good now.
I’m also working on this Mars Screenplay, which is only a short video at the moment but if I like it and get more ideas I may make a feature out of it. What am I going to do with my video? Should I send a rough cut with no narration? It seems INSANE! The narration is what makes the video! dammit!

I do love being a video artist. My ex Velveeta, who works primarily with Super 8 (besides her Elvis performances) says video is ugly. Aw, don’t mock the video! Without it, how would teenage homos make their points? I think I might shoot my first feature on video. Hmm, it’s a lot cheaper than film that’s for sure, and it doesn’t take as much lighting.
Well, how do your force yourself to write? Write write write. Bleh! I should format my narration so far and find out for sure how many minutes I have.

Today marks the two week anniversary of quitting smoking. I am proud of myself! I think this is going to be the one. I have no desire to start up again either because I have gained valuable insight into what life is like to NOT smoke. The way my house smells nicer and all that. And then there is the expense. I saved $68.25. Well, not LITERALLY, I don’t have $68.25, but if I’d kept buying smokes that’s what I would have spent these last two weeks. Also according to my quit gadget, I have saved 1 day and 13 hours of my life by quitting.
Hey, my friend and cousin Deanna told me she read somewhere that there IS sex on the other side, but it’s 100 times better and way longer than sex on this side of whatever thing you cross when you die. And they consider it souls merging to become one on that side.
Which is kinda what I think it is on THIS side too.
I’m listening to Peaches new album I Feel Cream. It’s pretty good!
Fuck ya like a billionaire!
I’m doing pretty good. I was worried I would get depressed with my antidepressant going down, but I haven’t! And my sex drive is back even though I am still on my antidepressant. So THAT’s all good. I’m happy with that.
I have to do some writing for my video. I think I will do that today, it’s nearly 1pm and I haven’t been called in to work yet. It’s kinda nice just hanging out. But the whole point of being on call and working part time was so that I could work on my art practice more.
Which I’m NOT doing, I am so dicking around. I don’t know why, maybe I am waiting for inspiration to hit? That always happens to me. But I need to look over my footage again and really focus on it and turn it into something profoundly beautiful.
That’s hard to do when I am always on Facebook.
Today for the first time this summer I put on shorts. It felt so liberating when I found out I could still fit them.
Psych meds put on the pounds, I am telling you! And like, ALL of them do that. I think I was on one that didn’t and I went kind of crazy on it. I took two days of pills and then went cold turkey because it was too weird to be on. Wellbutrin. Also known as Zyban and used to quit smoking! It smells like rotting eggs. It’s disgusting stuff.
Anyway, I’m happy that I’m the same size as last summer, because I didn’t want to go out and buy all new shorts, like I’ve had to do for a few years now. It’s a little demoralizing.
I don’t mind being fat, but during the years I kept growing horizontally I just wanted it to quit already because of the clothing issues. Cute clothes one year wouldn’t fit the next, and so I learned to rely on t shirts a lot.
But t shirts are only cute for so long.
I am thinking of getting pierced again, but I have to save up money for it. I also have to save up money for a tattoo.
Two of my cousins are getting all tattooed up and it’s pretty cool to see. I think more of them have plans to get tattoos too.
Piercings and tattoos are so sexy. Except for sometimes. I mean, like some gory tattoo, that’s not very sexy to me.
My ex had tattoos of worms on her shoulder and they were all smudgy, I don’t think she liked them much. So far I don’t have tattoo regret. I need a couple touched up, but I wouldn’t change any of them.
My tattoo artist is working elsewhere, and I don’t know where she went. I am bereft. No Dr Saffy and no Rachel!

One time I was watching a newscast about pizza in Italy with my friend/babysitter Jasmine Turner. I remember a reporter asked this Italian kid who invented pizza. He said “the Americans!” and got the back of his head slapped by a passing lady. Jasmine cracked up, so did I, it was so funny.
Jasmine is dead now, she committed suicide almost two years ago. The last time I talked to her I was still coming down from the crazies. I miss her everyday. I think she is in a better place, away from users and abusers. But I still wish she was here, and I know her children who are in foster care have been cheated out of getting to know their mom as adults. That is really hard.
I am lucky to have survived suicidal nights. I remember a few nights when I came so close to doing it, so much emotional suffering and bleakness. It’s like you can’t see the future. It’s so rank.
I haven’t been depressed in a very long time now, almost two years. Although I have been a little sad lately.
I think I know why. I have quit smoking. It has been ten days since my last smoke and I’m doing well, doing the patch everyday and enjoying being able to smell the spring air and not smelling like a yuckster AND not tasting foulness. I can actually taste good food again! It’s been quite liberating, but I notice I still have morning cravings if I forget to put my patch on.
But I miss smoking, I miss how it was always there for me. This idea (which I know is wrong) that I can relax with a smoke. That I can start the day with a smoke. It’s so addictive, and they say it’s harder to quit than heroin or cocaine!
I’ve been getting some good support about quitting, but the sadness comes in waves, especially when I realize I can’t EVER smoke again, because I will just get hooked again.
Which makes me think about my old addiction to meth, a very very long time ago, and back to Jasmine, who was the one who told my mum about it and tried to get me to stop. That wasn’t what made me stop. I was talking about it with a friend I met on the beach in Vancouver. I had just come off a binge and was dumped by Ivana, my best girlfriend. I was depressed and in danger of becoming dependent on meth. My friend must have noticed this because he then told me ALL about his addiction to meth and how he beat it, all these things it did to his body. I will always remember that talk on the beach. I never smoked it again.
Life is strange, so many things come and go, and death is an ever present force. I have lately lost some faith in what happens after death. I used to be so certain of an afterlife, and now I am not so sure. I haven’t seen or heard from Jasmine again, except in a dream. I also dreamt of another friend who has died, Carla Marie Powers. I dreamt she had a girlfriend on the other side!
I often worry about whether or not there will be sex on the other side. I’ve heard various opinions, some people say it’s a physical thing and then other people say it’s a spiritual thing so who knows???
The one thing I am looking forward to because of quitting smoking is that my dating options will widen to people seeking a non smoker. Hurrah! I am now officially a nonsmoker!
Well enough silly rambling. I will write more when I have something else I am thinking of.
Oh, and by the way Dr Saffy had her baby, a girl!

My doctor has gone on Maternity Leave until September 2010. OH! So long without her! She’s my favorite doctor I have ever had and now she’s starting her family so no more feeling reassured by her bedside manner.
In fact, even though she is a GP she did come see me when I was in the hospital and stopped by my bed. It was hilarious because I was half asleep and still mildly delusional and started talking about the importance of the Paris Expo. And she wrote it down in my file!
She looks kind of like Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous, so my mom and I call her Dr. Saffy. She’s even super smart like Saffy.
It was really nice to see her at the hospital, she was one of the only GP’s to do rounds in the psych ward. And it’s so important to see people you know when you’re in a place like that. I have always enjoyed seeing the people who have come to visit me, even when I’m in a funny state like that. I’m sure I said some crazy things to all of them, but mostly I just appreciated not being left to rot. I felt bad for some of the patients, like some of the elderly ones, who never seemed to get visitors.
I also feel bad for patients who have to rely on Medi clinics. Not having that regular continuity of care sucks. Even though my doctor’s on leave, at least my file is still going to go to the next doctor and they’ll see years of notes.
Dr. Saffy is the one who got me into the psych ward the last time, my mum was making appointments for me with her and talking to her about what was going on and I was just out of it so I don’t really remember too much about my interactions with her. Just the appointment on the day of going in to the hospital and I was so sure I was dying because I felt weird and she said I was fine except she thought I needed to go to the hospital. And I trusted her so I went.
And it was fine.
She’s been there for all kinds of medical issues, from burning off warts to doing pap smears to testing me for whatever bizarre things I thought I had, and sometimes I was
right.
Even when I was considering transitioning she was being an excellent doctor and looking into what my medical needs would be.
I will miss her terribly and look forward to being in her care again.