I've come a long way in keeping my temper in check from the days of my youth, but there are a few things that make me really hot under the collar, and then I overreact just a teeny tiny little bit and hit the red button with the nearest sledgehammer, sending the verbal nukes a-flyin'.
One thing that sets me off like nobody's business is the implication that I'm a liar or one of those self-important twits who would create a puff piece minimizing the struggles of a person with a cognitive, physical, or psychological impairment to prove how Deep and Poetical (TM) I am. I have ripped shit more than once on the kind of people who say things like "he's so autistic" or "she's so bipolar" when what they mean is "he's withdrawn and not socially adept" and "she's mercurial." Do NOT use people's health conditions as adjectives. It's really fucking rude. Recently, I fired a real estate agent who believed that questioning my credibility would inspire me to "move quickly." Say whaaaaaat???? In what Universe does that even make sense? I remarked that this guy must have watched American Psycho and thought that it was a business training video. The lack of logic in this line of thinking is astounding.
Having my credibility questioned is a real sore point for me. All my life I've had people imply that I was "just looking for attention" or "being dramatic" or straight-up lying about my symptoms. I have a lot of physical issues that have never been resolved, and the scars on my arms are not the result of "seeking attention," fuck you very much. They are the result of having been in one whole fuckload of psychological pain and feeling like no-one was on my side.
Point of trivia: my ex-husband has Asperger's syndrome and I have bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. This combination proved to be oil and water. He is one of my great friends in this life and I have been very worried about him as he is having some serious health issues. But a marriage between such polar opposites in the neurodivergent spectrum proved to be a volatile combination and not sustainable.
Our son is autistic and has ADHD. He's strikingly intelligent, but his way of thinking and problem solving does not jibe with the modern education system. He learns by doing and is incapable of learning by reading textbooks. Yes, he can read. He is a prolific reader of the likes of Roger Zelazny (whose works I sometimes have trouble wrapping my brain around), Fred Saberhagen, Kurt Vonnegut, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He simply is unable to conform to the textbook-and-lecture style of learning.
I feel like the world is missing out on a lot of great talent by insisting that everybody look alike and dress alike and think alike and talk alike. The Stepford Wives was not an instruction manual.
One of the things that I loved about AC/DC, outside of their badass marriage of the blues to garage rock, was the fact that these cheeky-ass working-class bastards gave the middle finger to propriety at every turn. This doesn't mean they believed in being mean and stomping on other people. They themselves had been bullied and belittled and had quite enough of it. They were speaking up for the "mongrels", for the "ugly" people, for the people who had been told that they would never amount to anything because they were weird and different and not conventionally attractive.
They were not a band for the ever upper-class high society. They were a band for the outcasts, like me. So, when I stood up for them when people started accusing them of "devil worship," I got pigeonholed as a devil worshiper too. It was pretty funny in retrospect. I went around throwing devil horns and evil grins at the idiots spreading the rumors. I was probably the biggest excitement they had in their narrow-minded lives.
Fun's fun, but the reality is that I always felt bad for these guys who really weren't doing anything wrong. I had a particular affinity for Malcolm Young, because he was painfully shy (like I am by nature), because he tended to be depressive (gee, I wouldn't know anything about that, I'm just your dyed-in-the-wool ray of fucking sunshine), and because I could see that he was actually a lot more sensitive than he let on.
I have to confess that I was a bit jealous of the powerful bond of friendship that Malcolm had with Angus. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the other half of their soul born in the same lifetime. Forget having the other half of your soul be your guardian angel. Having them be your best bud is the way to roll!
In truth, most soul mate relationships I've observed have been platonic rather than romantic. Too much is made of the romantic soul mate bond.
In fairness, I think that (romantic) love stinks, so take my previous statement however you wish. Take it with a couple of grains of sea salt. I use sea salt in my cooking. I recommend it.
All this is leading up to something. Bear with me.
I honestly think that there is a degree of elitism in the insistence on rigidly adhering to certain concepts. People who do not have access to higher education don't get to learn the niceties of iambic pentameter (I didn't even know what the hell that was until I was in my 50's) or what the hell ever.
I didn't know the difference between a Haiku and a Senryu until I was in my 50's. I just liked the 5-7-5 pattern that I learned in the third grade or thereabouts and I enjoyed using it to express my dumb and worthless thoughts.
There's a lot of shit that I still don't know. It doesn't mean that I don't have the right to express my shit.
Similarly, there are a lot of musicians who are self-taught, who didn't have access to higher musical education, and, frankly, a lot of the time I like their work better than the works of those who have been properly trained. For instance, Chris Isaak (who, by the way, is an incredibly cool person) can't read music. He couldn't tell you what a pentatonic scale looks like, but if you were to play one for him, he would play it right back at you, embellish on it, and turn it into a really amazing song.
The slaves who sang the heart-rending spirituals on which the blues (a.k.a. the backbone of modern music) is based certainly did not have access to higher education about music or poetry. They sang to comfort themselves and their fellow slaves. They sang to convey messages. They did not express themselves in a "proper" fashion, but they damn well expressed themselves. They told their truth. They told their stories. And they had every right in the Universe to do both, propriety be damned!
As well, the idea that using profanity shows a lack of intelligence is elitist fuckery, and I don't have a whole lot to say to anyone who adheres to that foolish line of thinking.
I think I would have thrown myself from a precipice long ago if it weren't for the rule-breakers and "mongrels" of this world. I couldn't bear the idea of being shut in a room with a bunch of hoi-polloi. Pair me with the proletariat any day.
I do like to share my work, and for a while, it seems to go well enough. But I invariably learn the lesson that my truth is not pretty or polished enough and I am not sweet and sunny enough, and I end up saying "fuck it" and oozing back down the back alley from whence I crawled forth in the first place.
I will never be acceptable. For the most part, I think that's a good thing. But it does get kind of lonely, so now and then I go against my own rule about not engaging and I engage. This is generally a mistake.
Live and learn. Again and again and again.
Now I have to unruffle my feathers so I can prepare the latest Carnal Invasion manuscript for publication via my seedy little company, Naughty Netherworld Press, purveyors of high-quality Kindle smut. These are supposed to be gleeful romps featuring a group of randy, shapeshifting aliens having a go with elementals, humans, vampires, werewolves and such, not a heaping helping of angry argleblargh by a pissed-off editor. I need to switch gears toot sweet.
~Cie~
Cracks me up every time. I did see an interview later where Malcolm revealed that the director for this set of videos behaved like a drill sergeant and they couldn't wait to get away from him. Angus spent the entire interview doubled over with laughter. Reporters had a tendency to interview the brothers separately because when they were together they tended to start smirking and chortling about some joke that only they were in on, and one couldn't get much useful information out of them.
Pardon my brutal honesty, but my endocrine system is a fucking trash fire. My thyroid decided to immolate itself when I was sixteen. My ovaries became cystic, shitty little bastards. My periods were from hell. I developed endometriosis. I don't know when I started developing fibroids, but I have a uterus full of the damn things, and it's coming out at the end of the year.
At least with the thyroid, I just have to take pills, although sometimes the dose has to be adjusted down because they can jack up my blood pressure and pulse rate. My thyroid may still have some of its own function, but it's completely abnormal.
Then there's my pancreas.
My pancreas waited until I was 49 to decide to fuck me over.
At first, I took pills, but then they stopped working sufficiently. Besides, I don't like having to carry around a spare pair of pants, and the less said about that, the better.
Then I had to start injecting long-acting insulin (Levemir).
Now I inject the long-acting insulin at noon and midnight and the rapid-acting insulin before meals.
"It's soooo much fun having a zombie pancreas," declared the queen of sarcasm.
By the way, diabetes cannot be cured, so don't tell me about how if I just drink a gallon of vinegar at every full moon while pouring ice cubes down my pants and sprinkling pepper in my hair I will be cured of diabetes.
In rare cases, type 2 diabetes goes into remission. This is not the same thing as being cured. Like cancer, a person with diabetes in remission is always more vulnerable to a recurrence of the disease than a person who has never had diabetes.
Further, I would like to see the word "diabetes" stricken from the medical lexicon and replaced with "hypopancreatism," which is a much more accurate term.
Diabetes is an ancient Greek term which translates loosely to "evil pissing" because of the increased urination that is part and parcel of the hell that is this stupid disease. Besides, it's a loaded term. People love to say it with a sneer as if those who end up with it "brought it on themselves" by "eating too much sugar.'
The cause of hypopancreatism is having a genetic trigger for the disease. A person who does not have the genetic trigger will never get the disease no matter how much sugar they consume.
People living with food insecurity are more vulnerable to activating the genetic trigger for the disease than people who have a reliable supply of nutritious food. However, the disease can strike anyone with the genetic trigger, regardless of their physique or social standing. Age increases the likelihood of developing type 2 hypopancreatism.
So, I am not calling the disease by its ancient Greek name anymore, although I do think that "evil pissing" is a pretty cool term. I would like to see the stigma attached to the condition eradicated.
And now, I need to go inject my wonderful basal insulin.
People who don't have the condition think that having to poke oneself with needles is the worst part of the disease. It really isn't. Often I don't even feel the needle. If I hit a tender spot, I experience minor pain. No big whoop.
What I hate the most is the way the disease curtails my independence.
And that is why I leave this with a big FUCK YOU to my zombie pancreas and my crap endocrine system as a whole. I sometimes wonder what my life could have been like if I hadn't been easily fatigued and depressed for most of it and accused of being lazy every step of the way.
Original background image copyright Devesh V. Tripathi
Verse and text manipulation by The Real Cie
Thoughts:
The image and the prompt made me think of all the things I planned to do in life, most of which fell through due to fighting with a very misunderstood disease, the prescription for which was pills that made me feel even worse and the edict that I should "just stop that stinkin' thinkin' and be happy for what I have."
While western society has a somewhat better understanding of mental illness than it did when I was younger, the treatment of both mental and physical illnesses in many countries, including first world countries such as the United States is out of reach for many citizens.
I do not respond well to medications or to this particular aspect of me being treated in a completely clinical fashion. I have often felt that I, as a person, have been ignored in favor of seeking textbook symptoms and outcomes. One of my son's EMS instructors wisely said: "treat the patient, not the chart." This is something that practitioners treating both body and mind all too often fail to do.
I would have done well to learn skills to cope with my particular mental presentation, rather than having wrestled for so many years with failed attempts to turn me into something I am not: a happy robot, gleeful to take my Soma and take on my prescribed role as a cog in the machine.
At this point in my life, I am no longer devastated by not being famous or adored, but I am awfully tired and a bit sad at the way some things have turned out. I try not to feel like a failure. I deliver groceries rather than speeches on the Red Carpet (or what have you) as I accept an award for my wonderful performance or book.
Delivering groceries while clad in modest attire does not make me any less worthwhile than those delivering acceptance speeches for their grand performances while clad in glamorous gowns or sleek suits. However, I am tired and I ache and I am sad to see so many people I have known both in real life and through their work which inspired me becoming ill and dying. I would like to stop working for a living and start simply living.
This isn't likely to happen anytime soon, and I fear that what happened to my father will happen to me. Less than a week after taking full retirement, my father had a hemorrhagic stroke which forever altered his life and the lives of his immediate family. He went through six years of decline, including more strokes and congestive heart failure. In the end, he was like a frightened child trapped in an adult body.
I don't want that to be my fate. But I fear a similar fate awaits the majority of us who live in a society which sees people as flesh androids rather than souls operating through corporeal vehicles.
The most humble of us and zir dreams is equal in importance to the most celebrated among us. Perhaps it is time to celebrate the most humble members of society and give weight to their hopes and dreams.
As someone who has lived with mental illness all my life, including suicide ideation and self-injury, I get tired of the kinds of people who say that those with issues like mine are "just looking for attention" or "just want to be special."
"Just change the way you think!" they say. "You can do anything if you put your mind to it!"
"Just travel my road," they say.
Others say I am "brave" to be so "unique and original". I march to the beat of my own drum. I travel my own road.
It's the only beat I can feel, and it's the only road I can travel.
I'm not brave. I'm just surviving as best I can, which sometimes isn't easy in a world that treats people like me with disdain and/or pity.
My yearning for you was like an all-consuming hunger
It wasn't some sort of perverse lust
Which always seems to be postulated by those suffering from such boredom
That their only ambition is to cause pain
To those already struggling with self-doubt about their feelings
I tried to satiate my hunger by pursuing those I was told I was supposed to
But in the end, it only left me hollow
My soul scooped out like the belly of a man starving in an endless desert
Only you ever brought me joy
Only you ever filled my cold heart with warmth
Only you can dry my tears
With you by my side
With you in my arms
With you safe in my heart
My hunger is satiated at last
How can this be wrong
When it is my salvation?
~Thalia~
Word Prompts:
sadness
joy
ambition
lust
yearning
self doubt
boredom
Thalia's Notes:
I wrote this from the perspective of two male characters that the team works with on our story blogs. They have struggled with forbidden feelings for each other for many years, having one disastrous relationship after another with women, until they finally had to admit that the only relationship that ever really worked was the bond they have with each other.
I'm a lesbian. I've known I was different from "normal" girls since I was nine years old in the third grade and developed a very strong crush on my beautiful and kind-hearted teacher. I would daydream of being the avenging heroine, rescuing her from all sorts of danger. I was extremely ashamed of what I now realize were very harmless fantasies.
I fought my attraction to other girls for a long time. When I was seventeen, I got involved in a behind closed doors relationship with a girl from another school. It didn't end well. Our fear of being found out caused us to treat each other poorly. Plus, I was very jealous and she wasn't particularly monogamous.
Unfortunately, I never found the right one. I'm not actively seeking right now, but I'm still open to the possibility that one day my princess will come.
The Mask Every day I try to put on the mask And try to pass for normal Sometimes it makes me sad Sometimes it makes me angry It always makes me tired Pretending is tiring Trying to pretend I'm like those who call themselves normal When I'm not and never will be But it's easier than always, always always Trying to explain, explain, explain Sometimes I just want to be I just want to express what's inside of me It isn't as scary as most of you might think I generally don't harbor homicidal fantasies I certainly don't plan to kill anybody However, when people hear the term "mentally ill" They immediately think "dangerous" Although statistics confirm the fact That most persons with mental illness are not dangerous We are in fact More likely to be the victim of than the perpetrator Of violence We suffer in silence I'm loud on the page I'm not loud in person I'm not very outspoken in every day life I do my job I come home alone My children are grown, and I'm nobody's wife It's not that I'm ashamed of the term bipolar I'll say it all day long BIPOLAR, BIPOLAR, BIPOLAR There, you read it Are you afraid you'll catch my cooties now? You'll be happy to know that yes, I've "taken my meds" How people love to bandy about that term Isn't it fucking hilarious? Helena takes lithium Isn't that a hoot? Next, let's laugh at the diabetic taking insulin Or the cancer patient using chemo Now that's really a great joke! I'm not out of touch with everyday reality I do not have hallucinations, although some folks do Here's the shocking truth That does not make them lesser people There are even people with perception disorders Who recognize their hallucinations Who make peace with them Other folks aren't able to discern between illusion and reality They need someplace safe where they can have caring guidance Most of these folks aren't violent either Most violent criminals aren't "schizophrenic" Most aren't "bipolar" Many are sociopathic or antisocial Not all socipaths kill either Though I really can't get along with them, as they overall lack empathy (This is a clinical truism, not my assertion) And I'm nothing if not compassionate Being angry doesn't preclude that I don't harm small animals I keep them as companions I have a few, I don't hoard them Although I do have a bit of trouble getting rid of objects that others would probably discard freely Let me tell you something about people who hoard They aren't lazy They also aren't there to be a spectacle for the modern freak show Stop gawping at Hoarders Stop thinking you're so superior to them You just have a cleaner house People with mental illness Sometimes have trouble holding jobs Often don't have access to proper medical care Or dental care Let alone psychiatric care I've worked all my life I can That doesn't make me superior It doesn't make those who can't work lazy You wonder why I'm angry You'd be angry too if all your life people made assumptions about you Treated you like you were stupid Treated you as if your problems were the butt of a joke Used the name of your condition as a slur Treated you as if you were less than human Minimized your thoughts Your feelings Your soul Stop. Just stop. I may overthink things I'm asking the rest of you To think about something Besides yourself For once in your life To imagine how you would feel if you were always condescended to For being you And being told that You shouldn't be You Stop Just stop And think ~Helena~
Rulebreaker Helena did not end up using any of the suggested words, although she intended to. She just forgot about them. She has the memory of a leaky sieve.
Helena free-versed for fifteen minutes, because she is nothing if not an over-achiever...when it suits her to be one.
Helena lives with type 2 bipolar disorder. She's actually more okay with this than one might think, and navigates life pretty well. However, she is indeed angry, and she reserves the right to remain angry until people with mental illness are treated like people and not pariahs.
Helena also does not think that every last single neuro-normative person is a selfish prat, as may have been implied in the final lines of her poem. It is simply that she encounters the unthinking, uncaring attitude all too often: the attitude of "if it's not me, it's okay to treat it poorly and make it the butt of my jokes." Actually, that is not okay, and any person who does such things is, to put it mildly, an ass.
It's a difficult thing to feel free to truly express oneself, even among those calling themselves "creative spirits." When I first started blogging, I was ever so sure that I would find a vast community of free thinkers, especially among the bleeding hearts and artists. Overall, I've found quite the opposite to be true. Artistic types and so-called liberal thinkers are just as likely to pick apart and criticize those who don't fit the mold as the "normal" person.
Often my only port in the storm of navigating life while mentally ill has been the venues for expression provided by Team Netherworld. I would just like to take this moment to thank our founder, Cie Cheesemeister, for opening this space to freaks like me.
