How is your Inner Child?

As the earth turns

This year has been… interesting. That’s the understatement of the decade.

See, the problem is that I am a person that feels deeply. There are many terms for the kind of person I am, depending on the field. You know, burden bearer, empath, things like that.

I am a scientist. Okay, was a scientist. But my mind still thinks like one. So, as some of you know, I am not given to esoteric, mumbo- jumbo explanations. If anything, I am an skeptic of sorts. But the fact is that I – indeed, feel deeply, even beyond what one would consider normal.

This Is My Brain On Pain

As you likely know if you read my posts here regularly, I am no longer taking any real mood-stabilizers for my bipolar disorder.  It isn’t an anti-medication stance, it’s actually just a place I ultimately came to through very little choice of my own (you can read a bit more about it here).

Now, being Bipolar I with psychotic features, unmedicated is a pretty daunting place to be, and I’m learning all the angles I need to cover.  Some I already knew and had accounted for: exercise, sleep, stress, and situations I knew were very high on the potential trigger list.  Others I knew, but didn’t really think about planning for, because they just didn’t come to mind when thinking of the day-to-day and what I needed to be vigilant about.

Goals Are For Losers

Time flies, fun or not. A week, a month, a year simply…vanishes. I graduated a year ago, and it has taken most of that year to recover enough to think about next steps. Another job search, and probably moving. Continuing efforts to improve my health. Things like that.

But then my therapist (a.k.a. Hippie Dude) started asking about long-term goals, after discussing the issue of career choices for ages and getting nowhere. So goals might help, right? I gave it a try despite my doubts and made lists of “goals” for various part of my life.

The desert of my soul

Stripped of all flesh and bare to the bone.

– alone in the tundra,

gelid winds cut like a sharpened stone.

Oh, the unbearable pain of the exposed, tortured soul.

I am a Human Being

I am just a human being.  I make mistakes like every other human being, and like any other human being, I’m capable of great things.

I’m as perfect and as flawed as any regular human being.

No, scratch that. I am more flawed that your regular human being.

Just like that

Here I am, making breakfast, kitties around me, listening to the chirping of the birds and feeling content.

As I get the sliced bread out the bag to put it in the toaster, I think that I should put a slice on the balcony for the birds like I used to do in Colombia. I think of the last place I lived in my home town   All the birds that came to feed and take a bath in the early morning and that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I see the birds with the eyes of my mind, their beautiful colours, their lovely chirping and that makes me smile.

Flaked

Like a leaf that’s been blown,

I’m all alone.

Drifting in the wind,

Have lost all hope.