Blog For Mental Health 2015 Launch!

Due to my health, I will no longer be able to curate this site. If Blog For Mental Health has served its true purpose, you don’t need me here anymore anyway. The 2015 Blogroll is up-to-date as of this writing, and you can use the wonderful community of bloggers listed there to make connections, and to find kindred spirits dealing with similar challenges. That’s always been the most important role of Blog For Mental Health, to connect individuals in a positive way to support one another.

That’s right, it’s finally on! Blog For Mental Health 2015 is here!

Advertisement

Two Hundred Fifty-Nine

That’s how many days are left in the year 2014.  We’ve gone through 106 so far, which is a whole lot, but it isn’t the whole lot.  It isn’t even one-third of the year!

Why this sudden obsession with the days?  I’m so glad that you asked!

In my continuing capacity as your Official Blog For Mental Health conduit and project coordinator, I seem to be getting a lot of questions, comments, and concerns, and most all of them having the same basic theme:

Am I too late to participate in Blog For Mental Health 2014?  What’s the deadline for submitting posts?

(If you’ve already pledged or aren’t so interested in BFMH, please do keep reading just the same.  I need your help, all of you wonderful Canvas readers, and more details will be forthcoming momentarily.)

EVER the Twain Shall Meet

For a long time, it was as if I lived two lives.

Parallel, and at times, intersecting, but to all those save a close few – totally distinct.  One hidden from the other; one nonexistent except for the shadow it cast on my life.

When I could get out from under it, it was much easier for even me to pretend that shadow life didn’t exist. I wasn’t suffering.  I wasn’t having trouble coping.  I didn’t need help.  Certainly, no one needed to know about it.

Blog For Mental Health 2014: The Prologue

It’s official, loves.  2013 is over, 2014 is here.  We’ve all survived one more trip around the sun on this wild, spinning ball we call a planet.  It was a rough year for many of us, but it was a great year for a lot of us, too.  Whether you feel you had the former or the latter (or maybe a bit of each), you should be very proud of yourself, because you did make it through, and that’s not always as easy an accomplishment as one might think.

In any case, I’m proud of you, and I’m grateful for you, too.

You Are Not Alone

Warning:  This post discusses suicide.  Not graphically, and not in detail, but if the topic is triggering to you, you may want to choose not to read it.

Today is 10 September 2013, a day that has been designated World Suicide Prevention Day.  I know that this is a very frightening subject for so many people, with or without mental illness, to talk about.  But do you know what I think is even more frightening than discussing suicide?  Not discussing suicide.

Ruby Buys A Vowel

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, loves of my heart. . .

Last week I was going through my old Canvas posts, looking for one in particular that I needed to give me a frame of for reference on something.  And I found the particular post, and I said to myself, ‘Damn, I wrote some pretty good stuff here.’  I did, too, and I am not the only one, not even close.

Lines and Colours

In my mind, I am normal. This is because I live with me twenty-four seven (OK, not always twenty-four seven because some of those hours I am asleep).

I have BPD. In the past, I never realised that I feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do. I thought the intensity of my emotions was normal. Turns out, it’s not. I read somewhere that in non-BPD people an emotion typically fires for 12 seconds. In BPD’ers it can last up to 20 percent longer. BPD’ers emotions also repeatedly re-fire, or re-live, or recur, however you want to say it, so emotional reactions occur for even longer. I do. I go over and over and over the emotions, pinging from one to another like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

Hair Cuts and Detachment

I know I have depression. I know I am introverted. I know I have generalized anxiety with a good dose of SAD. I know these well at certain times. One of those times is when I get my hair cut. Here is an account of my latest visit to “Aldos”.