Awry

I am still recovering from Pride! I stayed up until 3:30 am last night, I am so tired!
I can’t party like that again for a while. I am going to have to take a break, maybe just do some fun summer activities like go to the beach or sit in the park by the river. Eat ice cream.
I need to expand my repetoire of fun things to do without getting crunk. I feel like I’m just a one note girl.
I’m getting tired. I was going to write something glorious that came out of my bum, but I’ve realized I can’t do it. And I have to get up early and go to the doctor’s to get my ingrown toenail cut. Apparently the only bad thing is when the needle goes in. I hate needles and yet am intrigued by them. Not in a heroin way, or in a medical way, more in a play situation. But I am not looking forward to this visit at all, I am terrified.
This is not the only medical visit I have to take this week. I have to go to my psychiatrist’s, and get an ultrasound looking for gallstones!
It’s pretty crappy. I’m 31 and feeling it! My body is now a mess of different things going awry.
I’m wanting some romance this summer. Someone who doesn’t mind that my body is going to hell and I might need to get surgery. My first surgery! Oh woe is me.
I also have work tomorrow, and I worked a full shift on Saturday right between the parade and the dance. I’m so tired now. Dammit, I was going to write something better. Oh well, I will be home tomorrow afternoon to show off my toe!

Bad Habits, And I Don’t Mean Naughty Nuns

I recently, like, this morning, bought a pack of cigarettes. I have started smoking again, and I’m going to quit again. But I feel dumb, I hate my addictions and bad habits. They are starting to catch up with me and cause problems in my life. Smoking itself is one big problem, namely the health concerns, and then the no girlfriend concerns. But here I am, poisoning myself again just because I can’t handle the OTHER issue, which is cutting back or cutting out my pot use. I’ve been trying to cut back since January, and it’s difficult. I’ve achieved some long stretches of no use, but still go back to pothead tendencies.
I have some other bad habits, like getting a messy apartment and not cleaning until I could call those How Clean Is Your House ladies to come over and scold me while showing me how to use biological powder to clean nearly everything.
I’m a mess still. Not emotionally, but I have some bad crutches I have grown used to over the years. Maybe I am a mess emotionally and am covering it up with some bad habits.
Either way, at the beginning of this year I was going to try and make some major changes, and I am still working on them. It’s a long slow process, and not the instant prestochango I was hoping for. I was hoping I would just magically be a better person by January 2nd, smoke free, drug free, exercising and cleaning. And it didn’t happen! I think the process of change is very slow.
I remember when I was a kid the beginning of the school year at a new school always felt like an opportunity to be a new person, smarter, cooler, hipper. So cool nobody would think I was cool. Instead the same old shy person trotted out.
I wonder if personality is genetic.
My father also has one of my aforementioned bad habits, and I won’t mention which one, but I remember it from when I was a baby and I always associated it with nice feelings of being a baby. And now I do it! A lot! Is it genetics, or is it just me?
I wish I was talking about Naughty Nuns instead of Bad Habits.
Which reminds me, my Nun Satan porn got legs and walked out of my mum’s basement and vanished. I suspect a rogue cousin stole it. But I can’t prove anything, besides what other perv would take my smuggled porn?? I had to go to GERMANY to get that comic!
This means I have to go back to Berlin and find that comic.
Or look on Ebay, but I would prefer it NEW! Secondhand porn is gross, and I’m still shocked anyone would want MY secondhand porn.
I do not consider porn a bad habit. I really don’t have much porn. I don’t rush out and buy every new issue of Club or anything.
I’m depressed, and I think it’s about my bad habits. I feel again like I would be a bad girlfriend, just based on my bad habits. Dammit! And I don’t want to twelve step or even two step, I just want to knock it off. Stop acting like a bad teenager. Or twenty something. Or whatever I’m not supposed to be anymore that I’m 31.
Yes, I am 31 now. I actually was in the hospital on my 29th birthday. The hospital, where I painted all the blocks. I still have them, some of them are very pretty.
I have an appointment with my psychiatrist next week, so maybe I can talk about some of this stuff.
I don’t know how much of it relates to my mental illness. I know a lot of crazy people who are messy and smokers of tobacco and pot, who barely exercise and stuff. But is it just bad habits or indicative of something more?
They say substance use is high with persons with mental illness, and then they try to say it causes mental illness, but I think we just like the altered state, especially if the present state is not agreeable.
But I can be feeling fine and still want to get blotto.
I just want to feel like a grown up. Someone who takes care of themselves and doesn’t waste money by smoking it. At least I still have the desire to change.
In other news, a friend I thought I had lost for good during my manic episode has agreed we can send emails. Which is really nice because she writes great emails, and because I have missed her everyday since I went crazy.

Life With Mister

I didn’t know what else to write about, besides maybe talk about my dog, Mister.
He’s laying beside me right now chewing on a rawhide bone. Earlier in the day he decided he wanted love right in the middle of my Tarot reading. And when I woke up this morning, he was patiently waiting by the bed. Whenever I come into the apartment, he does his crazy kissy dance routine all over me. He’s pretty sweet.
He is a wiener dog, and he was supposed to be my psychiatric service dog. Life had other plans. I did come into contact with a woman who taught psychiatric service dogs, but while he’s good with depression, he is NOT good with mania. I was just moving around too much, and he’s a little guy so he got freaked out and spent time under the couch. He slept with my mom instead of me, and I barely slept.
But we’re fine again now. But no, he cannot be a service dog. On the other hand, he is a good companion and therapy animal. He likes being held and he’s very engaging, he keeps me from being stuck in my own head.
He is marching in the parade with me this year. Although I am worried about him getting stepped on. But he’s done it two years in a row. I keep talking with my mum about organizing a wiener walk, but so far it has never happened. Mum just got a dachshund herself, a smooth coated black and tan girl named Hermione. She’s super cute. This is her birthday month. When mum first got her it was so cold and we cut up one of my wool socks and made a sweater for her. She was THAT tiny.
Even though the psych service dog thing didn’t pan out, I still am pretty happy with Mister. He makes me smile. Whenever he’s away from the apartment it feels lonely. I like living with animals.
Here is a wiener dog from the Ministry of Funny Walks!

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.