March 2, 2003

• I just lost my whole web log, so I am going to have to start again. UGH!
  
  Oh well, it really is cathartic for me to blog here instead of writing in my notebook here at home so that I can get feedback and to let you, the reader, the precious reader who may feel totally alone and scared that they are all alone in this horrid disorder that you are NOT alone. There are THOUSANDS of us out here in the world suffering from this damned disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and it sucks and it bites and we are all wishing, hoping and praying that they will, eventually, find a cure for it.
  
  I do invite you to join the best online community that I have ever found that LITERALLY saved my life though. The people there on the forum boards are so loving, understand, have walked in our shoes, supportive, full of knowledge, ect. and then the articles on the site are wonderful about medications and far more then I can list here are wonderful and very educational. You can find this absolutly utopia for Bipolar Disorder and the people that love them at:
  
  http://bipolar.about.com/index.htm?terms=bipolar+disorder
  
  Sorry, it looks like you will have to copy and paste. Xanga is not allowing me to make it a link for some reason. You can register at the site for free and join the forum boards and you will find all kinds of topics there and all kinds of loving and supportive people that are more then happy to listen to your story and answer your questions.
  
  Moving on from that. My uncle died on the 23rd of last month. I've been having mixed emotions about and trying to deal with all that shit. One one hand I'm sorry a family member passed on, but on the other hand, and it feels like a dark, black, wrong hand, I'm cheering that he is gone because of all the abuse that I suffered at the hands of that man.
  
  My pdoc talked with me about it and told me he could understand the mixed feelings and that it was normal.
  
  I don't feel that it is normal, I don't feel that any part of me should feel happy about it and I told him so. He asked me why and I told him because society rules that you are not to be happy when someone dies. He told me, "I'm part of society and I don't see anything wrong with it." Well, that sort of threw me for a loop because he was, of course, correct. So I sat there for a minute and got flustered and blurted out, "Well, I wasn't raised that way." He gave me his all knowing head nod that I have come to know and love so well.
  
  But still, I'm having issues with it. The voices are yelling at me about it and just absolutely refuse to shut the hell up about the whole ordeal and I'm just so fucking tired of hearing them. Sometimes I just want to twist my head off and roll it down a long, steep hill somewhere, but let's face it, I live in Indiana, north central Indiana and we get excited if we find a bump in the ground. This is the flatlands.
  
  I did write something about my uncle's death though....
  
  Tribute to Uncle Carl (Died on 02/23/03)
  ©Stormy Stevens 2003
  
  
  I looked at him
  so still in death
  
  Casket open
  no life left
  
  I greeted family
  not seen in years
  
  All gathered together
  Each sharing tears
  
  After paying respects
  came reunions and such
  
  No one paid much attention to the dead,
  seemed he didn’t matter much
  
  We looked at pictures
  of times gone past
  
  Reliving memories
  I suppose will always last
  
  So we say goodbye
  to another family member
  
  Each of us entitled
  of how to remember.
  
  So I have to wonder how other family members will remember him because I know that I am not the only family member that was abused by him.
  
  During the funeral the minister said, "I went to see Carl in the hospital and he said to me, "There's no use praying over me, I already KNOW I'm going to hell." When the minister said that, my mind stuch on that statement. I can't tell you what was said during the rest of the service. I cried continousley throughout the rest of the service without realizing it, my husband at my side, handing me tissues.
  
  What was on my mind was, "Did he KNOW he was going to hell because of all the abuse he reeked on me, his sons, his daughter, his wife, and my cousins and only Gods know who else? How many of my cousins sitting here today were thinking the same thing?" That is all I could think of. I didn't come out of those thoughts until the funeral director touched my shoulder to tell my row that we could exit to our cars and when he touched me I about jumped out of my skin!
  
  I chose not to go to the graveside services. I couldn't handle it. Oh, and did I mention that my uncle looked exactly like my dad who died on Dec. 23, 1985 when I first approched the coffin? For about five minutes, I was looking at my dad again and crying, reliving that moment all over again, but then I looked away and looked back and it was my uncle. My cousin Sandy, uncle's daughter, came and stood beside me and we hugged, the kind of hug that only close cousins can hug, the mental connection that we have and we cried together. She whispered in my ear, "It was an entire replay of what happened to Uncle Bill." Bill was my dad. The she said, He looks like Uncle Bill, doesn't he. I agreed, even though now all I could see what the man that abused me, the man that I disgusted and just wanted, even in his death, to claw his eyes out and his skin off.
  
  When he died, we had a level three snow energency going on, which means that nothing was allowed on the road except emergency personal. Coroners are not emergency personal.
  
  So I thought about him, laying in a dark, locked drawer in the hospital's morgue and I was convinced that the Powers that be hadn't allowed him to leave his earthly body yet so he could see how it felt to be locked up, in the cold and dark with no way out. He knows what that feels like now.
  
  When I was little and had to live with them because daddy was again in detox and mom was off in some other state partying with her current boyfriend, too busy to worry about me, my uncle, as punishment, often locked me in the basement. No light and it was cold and damp. Nothing to sleep on except the concrete floor and nothing to cover up with. No toliet. Nothing. One meal a day and only if I didn't climg the stairs before I heard the click of the lock. If I started up the stairs before then, he would open the door and take my food away and I wouldn't get to eat that day. Sometimes, late at night, after he went to bed, his daughter, my cousin, would slip out of bed and slip me some food. She really put herself in jeprody doing this. If she'd ever been caught, she and I both knew she would have been beat with the razor strap within an inch of her life.
  
  So yeah, I was asking him, "Uncle, how does it feel to be locked up in the cold, clammy dark with no power to get out?" I think he deserved that. But he only had to deal with it for 48 hours. I had to deal with weeks at a time with it for punishment of something small such as accidently dropping a piece of silverware on the floor at dinnertime.
  
  Okay, enough about all that. I wrote another poem recently too since the voices refuse to SHUT UP since his death. They've been really loud and obnoxious because I'm trying to deal with my mixed emotions on this. Here's the poem and then I am going to sign off for now.
  
  The Voices
  ©Stormy Stevens
  
  Voices in my head
  telling me I should be dead
  
  that I don't deserve to live
  and that I have nothing to give
  
  They yell at me I'm worthless
  and the day I was born is cursed
  
  I was a mistake and
  I'm something to hate
  
  They scream at me to do this
  They scream at me to do that
  And when I refuse to listen
  My head feels like it's going to crack
  
  There's voices of both genders
  of all ages and of backgrounds
  I try to stay busy in order
  not to make a sound
  
  As long as they are
  in control there's nothing
  I can do.
  
  --Listen up honey, we're ALWAYS
  in control of you!

  • 1:17 pm
  • 4 Comments