Tag: mental illness
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Writing Against the Taboos
I’m supposed to stay away from the taboos. This is both what my doctor and Michelle recommend. This is a time of rest, they say. They remind me that the tender weeks after a mental collapse need to be calm, with near-zero stress. I don’t disagree. Asylum means sanctuary, refuge, protection. True asylum is a…
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The Sudden, Psychotic Need for Jazz
About a week after the breakdown on Christmas day, in a moment of relative calm, I was sitting outside in my pajamas, staring at the property fence, and two things happened: I said, “Fuck this shit,” and I rearranged my room. The Fuck this shit wasn’t about my room—the room where I spend most of…
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Marriage, Madness, and War
I fell in love because Michelle was gorgeous. I fell in love because we held long, intense conversations together. I fell in love because she was the most stable person I had ever met. I know that now. Back then, I was simply focused on her foxy-ness, and didn’t realize there was a subconscious voice…
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Psychotic Attack? Bring on the Healing
I’ve written enough, for now, about the past and its specific pains. These two weeks of blog posts have been grueling, but important, because this is the first time I’ve ever written about the toughest subjects in my life: child abuse and manic depression. Friends and family know. But I’ve never recorded, publicly, what it’s…
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My Demons Scream For Nutella
I got a little too close to the core yesterday, when I wrote here on The Writing Bull. The image of the little nude boy in a tight cage did it. I know I got too close, because I went on a mini-binge. Suddenly, my body craved, not carrots or apples, but peanut butter, which…