Category: Our Words, Our Lives
-
To My Fellow Bipolar Bloggers
I’ve been reading the blogs of other folks who suffer from bipolar, which is very helpful, because I see that I’m not alone with this buggering illness. We share many of the same symptoms: constant anxiety, chronic dread, delusions, insomnia, paranoia, suicidal tendencies, amazing spurts of creativity, the ability to feel life much more deeply […]
-
Bipolar Cocktails
I’m on three medications for bipolar now, let’s call them Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They’ve worked for a few years, but I’ve been going through some rough times, so it’s time to change the cocktail. Unlike your plain old, garden-variety, soul-crushing depression, in which you usually can take one pill a day, and use that […]
-
Mamá Prays for My Mind
My wife Michelle and I became my mother’s caretaker last year. It’s gone relatively well. Mamá’s going on 91, her mind is sharp, she eats like a horse. She scoots through the house with her walker. She’s a fairly pleasant elderly who helps out where she can, washing clothes, picking up dishes, threatening the cat […]
-
Find Your Homeland
The Spanish word terruño has captured my imagination as of late. It means “homeland,” which, in both languages, has a loving tone to it: one’s native land, the first soil, the place where we began. Of course, if your first soil was pock-marked with cruelty, abuse, neglect, drunkenness, violent parents and predatory uncles, the word […]
-
As a Professor, Sometimes I’m Pretty Stupid…
I was worried the past few days. I was getting sick–again. The manic depression that had hurled me into a psychotic attack in December nearly did me in. My family and I got through it, but it was a dangerous time. Bipolar is a progressive, organic brain disease. And it’s a killer. The brain deteriorates […]