When the Future Doesn’t Look as Bad as I Thought

Have you ever felt that you’ve been working so hard, and you aren’t getting anywhere? That life in this day and age is at a standstill? Eggs are $8.00. Bread is $6.00. I mean I never thought I would see this day.

It’s been 2 years since I have been free. Freedom is something we take for granted. I used to live in an internet world, typing my life away and living behind a screen. Then I was thrusted into real life. Falling headfirst into booze and drugs, I found myself facing the things that addicts and alcoholics face: jails, institutions and death. Even though I have cheated death so many times, I have faced jails and institutions the past two years and honestly, it feels good to taste freedom again.

I have watched my life in mirrors of destitution when it came to my parents. My dad’s anger and alcoholism led to heart attacks and diabetes. My mom’s negligence of her health led to cancer. And now for the first time in my life my parents are making plans for when they pass away.

It may seem like a sad and dismal prospect. But in my eyes, I see hope. My dad told me today that he wants to take my husband under his wing and teach him his construction business. He wants my husband to have a future which begins with him leaving him behind his leaving behind his legacy. This will give my husband the purpose he needs and the father figure which he has been desperately craving all his life. Most of all, it may well keep him out of trouble and focused.

I will soon have a place to live after my court case is over. I have support I never thought I had before. Two years ago, I was on the floor of a county jail thinking that my life was over. God showed up in a way that I wasn’t able to see at first. The miracle is about to happen and I’m ready.

Scratch that, every day is a miracle.

Be grateful, that’s my new mantra.

It’s something to prepare me for a life of humilty.

Keep coming back, it works if you work it.

Stay tuned.

Miracles in the Abyss – What Life is Like Now

Two years ago, I sat on the floor of a jail cell, crying, because my life was over. Or so I thought. When was your life-changing moment? Did it define your future? That floor defined me. I sat there and asked God to hold me in His arms and see me through, and He did. I am in this rehab now about to face the next chapter of my life, and I am excited and scared at the same time.

Romantically, I am worried. My husband talks about smoking weed, but I know that will probably lead back to a cocaine and crack habit. I am hoping with all my heart it won’t lead down that road. I am also online chatting with a lot of different guys and learning about how much I actually love my husband. I have waited all my life to be in love – I remember reading my old blogs and seeing how far this quest for love has taken me. I used to obsess about so many things. My weight is one of them. I thought that if I just waited to lose weight and find a guy then I would be able to go back to work and get my life in order. These were unrealistic expectations and unrealistic goals. I think most of my life is based on unrealistic goals, compared to where I am at now.

Where I am now, life is a lot clearer. I know that I want a career doing something meaningful. Since I have a record now, (well at least an arrest record), I can kiss my career in Human Resources and Finance goodbye. I am looking into Peer Support or something I can do to supplement my disability income.

Life has new roads ahead for me now. I am no longer hiding in my parents’ house, searching online for Mr. Right to find me and sweep me off my feet. I have a real relationship now with a man that loves me completely, and a future that is bright and hopeful.

I hope wherever you are and things are bleak in your eyes you hear this message that it will get better. God only gives you things that you can handle. No more, no less.

Stay Tuned.

Love. The Battle. The Dagger. The Perseverance.

I was reading one of my other blogs from a few years ago, and couldn’t help but feel sorry for the person I used to be. Love finally made it into my life, and even though it is at a great cost, years ago I would have killed to just have had the opportunity to experience it. There was a post of mine called “The Dagger” in which I glorified what it would have been like to kill myself with a knife – needless to say it was a very dark time in my life.

The Dagger

Posted on February 10, 2015 by unchainedsoul

Plunging in my heart.   I am here again.  Loving so hard and so fast that I want to die. Bipolar.  Pills.  Do I go to my psychiatrist and tell him to give me something else?  Or do I fight through this?  Feel it.  All of it.  I want to be taken.  Off this Earth.  It’s the same old story.  So much pain.  What is this?  Why does it hurt so bad?  Feel it.  Feel all of it.  Let it kill me.  Let it consume me.  Feel it.  Like a dagger.  Like a dagger.

Want to be better.  Don’t want this.  I am envious of people that don’t feel.  Live life through their texting, Facebook, and laughter.  Marriage, children, and careers, and I am left behind.  Can I have all those things?  Where am I in this life?  35 years, 10 years in total darkness.  Sex, alcohol.  Drowning in pills.  Like a dagger.  Time, sneaking up on me.  Like a predator stalking me.  Why does he have teeth?  Why is he biting down upon me?  Take me from this life.  This hell.  Do I find Jesus? Will he be my salvation if I turn to him?  I am too far gone into my hell to find him.  Like a dagger.  Take me, aliens.  Take me up, change my brain.  Show me what I am capable of.  Make me an artist.  Make me something more than myself.  I feel like nothing.  Drowning.  More pills.  Bipolar.  Fuck.  Just take me and kill me.

Pretty deep huh?

Even though I have been feeling down in the dumps lately, my life is so much brighter today. I battle with my bipolar disorder and the highs and lows that come with it, but my medication is on point and my CPAP machine helps me with restful sleep. I do feel tired though, and I chalk it up to just being sick the past week. I am noticing that I am dramatizing my life a lot more than it is or it should be. Not everything is a meltdown, and not everything is a travesty.

Perseverance comes through the strength of the spirit, and I have just been spiritually sick these days. My trust in God has wavered, and I feel like I have been losing my way. I have to be vigilant in my fight against the Devil – he’s telling me that I am going to fail, he’s telling me I am ugly, and he’s telling me I will never see my husband again. My fault is I have been listening to these horrible thoughts in my head. We know we shouldn’t listen to that “voice,” but we do every time.

I am coming home to the realization that I am going to be okay. I may not have a high-powered career like I used to, and make all kinds of money like I did in New York, but maybe being a Peer Support Specialist won’t be a bad alternative. I go to this place called NC Works tomorrow to talk about what options I would have for a career since my mugshot is plastered all over the internet and no employer will ever hire me. There I go again, thinking extreme.

It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it? How on Earth do we break it?

Faith. Perseverance. Strength. Hope.

Love for myself.

Stay Tuned

The End Goal is Near And I am Self-Sabotaging

Did you almost complete something? Have you always started things and never finished them? Have you always quit before seeing it through? This is me, and where I am at today. I was in jail for 10 months in 2021, and I remember the staff telling me, “well you need to go to a program for another 12-15 months.” My world imploded because I thought I could get out on probation.

Well, it’s 12 months later and I haven’t learned anything. I still feel my old self coming through with the same old negative behaviors. I put up a good front, as if I got it and I have it all together, but inside I am dying. I am screaming at the top of my lungs inside my heart and no one can hear me. I am almost at the end of this program and I feel like I am going to screw up and throw it all away.

I am suffering. I miss my husband dearly. We are separated by the system right now where he is in a hospital and I am in this rehab. On Sunday, when I visited him they wouldn’t let me kiss or hold him, and I wanted to die. This is so hard. I keep asking God why this happened to us – and then I realize we did it to ourselves. We drugged, we partied, we thought we were above the law, and now the consequences are so severe we may never recover.

I can’t go on like this. I feel completely ungrateful. I am underserving of all the good that has come out of this program as I am rebuilding my life. Why am I so unhappy? I know why. Because my whole life all I have ever wanted was to be in love. And now, it comes with a terrible price. I am so upset in my heart, I feel like I don’t want to go on even though things are moving in the direction that they should. I keep hearing that “it’s all in His Timing,” but I am tired of being miserable. What’s worse is I can’t even pray anymore because I don’t even believe.

I am trying my best, but I feel lost. I am almost through with this program and I feel like I have a high school senior’s sickness. I am ready to run out the door and go back to jail – why would I even do such a stupid thing? Because I’m bipolar and my highs and lows are so severe I can’t make heads or tails out of it.

If there is a God, please see me through this month, please.

Or at least hold my hand till the end of the day. Please.

Just please someone help me.

Stay tuned.

What It’s Like Being a Model Citizen to Jails and Institutions

This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I played it straight and arrow for 40 years. Then a man came into my life with promises of adventure, love, and mayhem that was too good to pass up. Sometimes I wonder why I did what I did or why I just went along for the ride.

I’ve looked at some of my other posts from earlier years and seen what a good writer I used to be. The zeal for being creative and original isn’t as appealing as it used to be. I’ve lost my streak and my muse, much like how I lost my soul on the floor of that jail cell last year. Never had I imagined the horrors that I’ve gone through or the pain I put my family through – because it all was, in essence, for Love.

I’ve loved before in my life, but never like this. I watched myself become a drug addict and a convict overnight all because I followed someone down this path. But it was my choice too, I am not going to dodge the responsibility, it’s the least I could do for myself. I feel like a sorry individual who is just scraping by. I am in a homeless shelter now, which feels like the worst of the worst, and I can’t wait to be out of here. I have been here for almost a year, and in jail for almost a year. All these institutions are driving me crazy – I used to be an executive in New York for Christ’s sake – how did it ever get to this.

I am spinning down this crucible, and it feels like it is never-ending. The bottom is bottomless, and the sky is hard to see. My sanity is barely holding on because I think another bipolar meltdown coming on any day now. I have been sick lately too which doesn’t help, but I think it’s mostly me being sick and tired of being sick and tired.

God help me through this. I have had enough of these places, these rules, and these stipulations. I just want to be free.

I just want to be free,

Stay Tuned.

Focused Despite a Pandemic, Bipolar, Addiction, Relationships, and Uncertainty

steps Those are the concrete steps I fell in a freefall backward, in which I could have died by breaking my neck. How I survived that fall with just some stitches on my head and a broken wrist, I shall never know. Of course, we all know the culprit – alcohol, which is ridiculously accessible during these times – even delivered to your door via the Drizzly app. An interesting thing isn’t it – that such a deadly substance is obtained so easily now, and many, many people are drowning their sorrows in it, especially for those of us losing certain unemployment benefits as of this week.

But that’s not the reason for my post today.

I was supposed to get married a week before that fall down those steps, and my parents and my fiance’s parents being what they are, canceled our wedding in some sort of punishment as if we are both teenagers recklessly in love. There is some truth to the reckless love part – we have almost nothing in common, except of course music – which unites us in a way 90’s R&B and rap songs usually do – it brings us back to a time in our life when things were simpler, more comfortable and just made sense.

I have spent a good portion of my life looking for true love. There were times in my life I thought I have felt it, but this man, the one I am going to marry, makes me feel the love so deeply that it moves me to tears even as I type. Our primary common bond is, of course, mental illness, in which certain parts of it come out of both of us, bad and good.

He hears voices and conversations and has delusions I try and cope with and understand, while he deals with my constant yelling and flip-flop moods of this horrible bipolar. We are hardly the perfect match, but the abundance of love that comes from the both of us to each other is undeniable – oh and as a bonus, two people who have incredibly vibrant mental illness issues have, without a doubt, the best sex life on the planet, at least for me it is.

But besides the sex, which is explosive and out of this world, on top of all things, I picked up a drug habit that I share with him now. I explained a little bit about this in my last post, and, ironically, I spent my entire life avoiding hard drugs and now I am a full-blown addict on top of my bipolar disorder. I have kept it quiet, of course, not broadcasting it on social media or even to any of my friends, but I know this drug addiction is killing our relationship. All of our fights, and I do mean all of them, have been around this habit – either fighting about money to get it, or the fact that he sits there and watches hours of porn in front of me as we do it together, (I won’t even go into how many fights there were about that one), it’s just the fact that I don’t want to do the drug anymore.

There is something to be said about incarceration or, in my case, 10 months in a psychiatric hospital. I spent most of 2018 and 2019 in a hospital (this happened twice), and honestly, I believe it cured me of any addiction I have ever had. I had a bad alcohol addiction most of my life – mostly, which I blame my violent, drunk father for (like father like daughter apparently), but I was really cured of it before I met my fiance.

Experimenting with cocaine has been an invigorating experience, and when I got the chance to mix it with both Vicodin and alcohol, suffice to say, I was hooked. That freefall came from a night of coke and alcohol, both of which the Emergency Room found in my blood, but luckily my landlord only knew about the drinking when he called my parents – (oh yeah, the cops were called, and they thought my fiance pushed me down the stairs, and my landlord threatened to kick us out).

After that incident, I haven’t touched an ounce of liquor, but I have been drowning more and more down the cocaine drain. And when we do it together, we’re okay for a while, then the worst comes out in both of us when we want more, and we just don’t have the money for it. I am currently negative $377.00 in my account due to the last binge, with rent due in a week or so. My fiance is working delivering pizzas with my car, which I can’t afford the payments on either, and we plan on getting high tonight, or at least he wants to, and I feel almost forced because I need some sort of pick-me-up.

This vicious cycle goes on and on, with every binge we break each other’s hearts, and I don’t know if it’s the fact that he has nowhere to go and I have nowhere to go that we stay together. We are so co-dependent; and we are both abusive – me calling him a worthless piece of shit and a loser, and telling him that I hate his guts – to him calling me an ugly whore and on and on. I have never been in such a volatile relationship, but we hang on to each other tightly because we know each other’s “crazy” really well. I once told him, “my crazy knows your crazy” because it really does.

I don’t know what will come of this – all I know is we hide this from everyone, employers, parents, friends, family, and landlord – and when we do it, we always want more, it’s never ever enough.

All I know is I’m trapped, and I am screaming on the inside every day. The cocaine brings me high and makes me incredibly focused, something I think rich people get off on; that’s why they are so successful, I mean stockbrokers are cranking in billions a year. But I know it’s my downfall and either my fiance or I am going to get really hurt – I mean I almost died down those steps so what’s next?

Probably death or jail.

Stay tuned

How the Mighty Have Fallen

anguish-d-rogale

I never wanted to date a drug addict – now I am marrying one in less than a month. I didn’t think things could get this bad, but if there is Hell on Earth, this is what it would be like. I’ve wanted 4 things all my life – and I wanted them so badly before I turned 40. I wanted a fantastic job, a brand new car, a lovely apartment, and a man who loved and adored me the way I wanted to be loved. What I realized was, God, gave me all these things before I turned 40, but with a “punishment clause.” God said, Lynn, I am going to provide you with your happiness and everything you dreamed about – but it will cost you your heart, your sanity, and your sobriety.

I am bipolar, and I am an alcoholic. Now, I am a crack and cocaine addict, thanks to my fiance. I tried it with him because I grew tired of fighting with him so much, crying every night, and watching my bank account shrink to almost nothing. After all, he was bullying me for money. So, I tried it. Now I want more. He is out there, driving around in my brand new car with the phone I gave him (that is currently turned off so I can’t call him). He is using me, he doesn’t respect me, and I don’t respect myself. I am drowning so far down that even when he hit me because I refused to give him money, I turned around and picked him up off the ground and gave him his money after someone hit him for hitting me. I never thought in a million years my life could be this bad – this horrible, where my insides burn in pain. We have everything – we have each other, now the drugs are in both our lives and I feel sick all the time.

Dear God, help me. I am not going to make it.

I honestly don’t want to leave him – what I really want to do is die. I don’t want to live no more really, because I have suffered so much in my life with men using me and this bipolar bullshit I just don’t want to do it anymore.

As the tears fall from my face as I type this, I will pray for this simple truth – in the world we live in today with all this disease and activism and death, could Jesus really hear us if we call out to him? Can he really save my wretched soul? I have so much talent and skill, my fiance is so smart and funny, why is it that there has to be so much suffering.

I don’t want to not wake up anymore – I don’t want to face tomorrow anymore. I don’t want to fight anymore. God gave me everything I ever wanted but ripped it all away at the same time. Who would want to live if that happened? If God gave you everything you ever dreamed of, that you prayed for years for through all your pain and misery – if he gave you all that you wished for when you were left for dead at the floor of a psych ward time and time again would you really want to live if he took it all away?

Wherever you are, God, I ask, I pray that you find me now before I take my life.

Stay tuned.

In Crisis – I Can’t Walk Away Because No One Else Ever Wanted Me.

Homeless adult male sitting in subway tunnel, hands on head

My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I have waited and dated miserably for over a decade for a man to come into my life who loves me completely – the only problem is he can’t beat his drug addiction.

I never wanted to date an addict – never – only because I know how hard that road is.  I had left my fiance when I was 19 due to his addiction and selling drugs, and I don’t know, it seemed easier to start over then. Everything seemed easier when I was younger. Now that I’m approaching 40, I have to say that dating had gotten so excruciatingly painful,  I honestly thought I would be spending the rest of my life alone. I don’t want to date, I don’t want to try, I don’t want to do anything anymore.

I really think I am falling into a depression. I am no prize either, I mean with my mental illness and my fat and ugly, pot-hole face and body, who the hell would want me? Am I going to stay in this relationship because I simply think I can’t get anybody else? I am so scared to be alone again that I am risking my overall mental health to be with this person. He can’t stop the drugs, I can’t stop loving him – two sides of this toxic coin that won’t stop spinning on the edge.

I feel like the whole world is rooting against me, I feel that God is punishing me for moving on from that ex-fiance whose heart I broke into a million pieces after he had gotten clean. What if I am not giving my current boyfriend the same chance I should have given that ex-fiance all those years ago? Is this a pattern that seems to have come full circle in my life?

I have been dying for love. My whole, damn life. I have never been loved like this before. Maybe it’s cause he’s an addict and is so desperate for love, that I find his desperation appealing. Maybe I am so damn desperate too, that I would believe anything he says.

I would love to walk away, say fuck it and let him deal with his own issues. But I can’t. I know things could be a whole lot worse because he could be an abuser, cheater or just downright misogynistic, but he’s not. He’s warm, loving, funny, and the man I want to marry, and who wants to marry me. But he can’t beat his addiction and my love isn’t enough. He just got out of rehab and hasn’t given himself a chance to be clean yet – they say it’s all about people, places and things, and I know his environment and the friends he hangs out with contributes to his weak resistance to his addiction.  I want to help him, I want to love him, but I feel so powerless that I can’t do anything for him.

Worst of all, I know everybody reading this will say, “just leave him,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s easy for ya’ll to judge me when you haven’t been in my shoes. I feel weak, pathetic and unworthy of a good man. I have been waiting my whole life to be loved the way he loves me, but unfortunately, he comes with his drug baggage that has destroyed my inner light inside.

I wish I could die.

This life is just too fucking hard.

Stay tuned.

Nerves, Symptoms, & New Beginnings, Bipolar Doesn’t Have to Conquer You, You Can Conquer it.

me

It’s Sunday, and I still haven’t done my school assignments. Procrastination much? My boyfriend comes out of rehab Tuesday, and I am scared, excited, and nervous about that 3-hour drive upstate to get him. We’ve been through a lot in a short time, his extreme behavior battles with my extreme behavior both negatively and positively – and where most people would scoff and say our relationship is doomed – I am absolutely optimistic and know in my heart without a doubt that he is the man for me.

I’ve been doing well. After that last hospitalization (as traumatic as it was) was what I needed to jumpstart my life again after being dead and dormant for so many long miserable years. I’ve looked back on past blogs, and boy, was I fucked up. I spent nearly two decades drowning in alcohol, men online, dead-end jobs, and overall misery. Bipolar conquered me, the same way it defeats most people today. It’s the depression, it’s the mania, it’s the hopelessness that kills us every time – and when we finally are doing well, something Holy Unbelievable happens to destroy all the progress we’ve made. It’s this kind of destructive cycle that I had been faced with for all those years, and I think I have finally broken through all that horror.

Firstly, the key to my success is the right medication combination. I have admitted to myself that this combination of Respirdone, Lithium, and Seroquel will probably murder my organs by the time I reach 60, but there is really nothing I can do about it. I would rather have a full life in the next 20 years than live in misery and being symptomatic. This look at my ultimate mortality is what propels me even further, and makes me fully aware that because I have been taking these medications for so long, and my soon-to-be-husband is on just as much, we are probably both not going to live long. My goal is to enjoy every damn moment of life right frickin’ now.

I’ve also started working full-time and looking at a side business. I want to live comfortably, and I want to be happy, and I want my marriage with my man to reflect all that happiness in the short time that I have. I realize I may be overreacting and could very well live till 100, but I think the fact that I feel my life is limited, makes me appreciate every moment so much more.

Bipolar doesn’t have to conquer you – you can take that beauty, the thoughts and dreams you have in mania, and write it all down. Make art out it, create what the bipolar gift has given you, and enjoy your self-expression in new and exciting ways. I call it a bipolar gift because that’s precisely what it is – we see things others don’t, we experience realities differently than others, the rush and the excitement that we feel can’t compare to the most potent street drug and that high that people all over the world search for so much, we feel naturally because it is part of who we are.

Conquer the bipolar – go get that job, rip yourself from underneath the covers and sing, dance, or paint away all the pain.

My 40th birthday is coming in six months – I was just 24 when I was first diagnosed, and I lost 16 years in complete stupidness. Not anymore.

Stay tuned.

Approaching 40….WTF??!! Wasn’t I JUST in High School Screwing Around??

Kissing+30s+Goodbye

Yup. It’s EXACTLY how it sounds. I honestly don’t know where 22 years just evaporated into nowhere. However, turning 40 isn’t as scary as it was turning 30. What is it about the Big Three-O that’s got everyone so shaken? Everyone, as in women, in particular.

I think for me, it was the fact that I was leaving my 20s behind, and there was just so much that I wanted to accomplish by the time I was 30 that I didn’t. You know, graduating college, meeting the love of my life, getting married, moving out, and so on and so on. The fact of the matter is due to this bipolar curse that was thrust upon me; instead of looking towards the future to acquiring all those things, I was continually being pushed back and back and back, with constant hospitalizations and traumatizations. Honestly? My 20s were a fuckin’ nightmare, and it lasted well into my 30s. I mean it wasn’t like I was poverty-stricken or anything, I was just in mental anguish all the damn time, and I wanted someone desperately to love me. Desperately, I say again, DESPERATELY.

Love was the only thing I ever wanted, and I would have sold my soul for it, sometimes I think that I had with all the creeps I had been dealing with, and The Devil was having his fun collecting his due. But that’s for another time. The volumes of my hypersexuality can wait till I am ready to talk about them – “bipolar slut ” is putting it mildly.

In this attempt to find love, I was doing basically what everyone is doing now – except without the swiping and the apps. I was on dating websites, filling out questionnaires, trying to make the perfect profile, spending hours perfecting the most flattering selfies to post on them, and trying to make myself stand out among all the other relationship-seekers on these sites. Now, we all know that girls get more messages than guys, but what is in abundance of quantity, is severely lacking in quality – much so as it is today. In my case, though, (and I don’t know if you guys are guilty of this too), I never went past the messaging phase, ie. I sat on my computer all day talking to guys and never meeting them. Ugh, no wonder I was miserable.

Why am I talking about this? Well, the sad, sad reality is, that the 22 years between my high school days, and my present college days, (getting my degree now, woohoo!), is that a whole lot of nothing happened. Okay, the drama with the hospitals, manias, car accidents, hearing Jesus and Aliens, and all that good shit aside, (I promise I will let you guys in on some of that insanity), but after all that had settled down and I was HEAVILY medicated, so I came back down to reality – it became quiet…..too quiet. I basically spent a bulk of those years drinking very heavily and screwing around online talking to thousands of guys, in which half of them were probably in relationships or married.

What kind of life is that?

This last hospitalization in 2019 taught me one thing – this shit has GOT TO STOP. Like seriously, I can’t be like a revolving door in a psych ward, come on already! When I got discharged, my mom came to pick me up, and on the drive home, she told me something that has stood with me and has been my driving force to do all the things I’m doing today.  She said, “you messed up the first 40 years, make the next 40 count.” And that’s EXACTLY what I’m doing. I happen to have met the love of my life in there this time around, (go figure), and he has a whole host of problems that I don’t even know how I am gonna handle all his shit, my shit, money shit, job shit, apartment shit, and dammit, grown-up shit! And how am I gonna handle being someone’s wife???!!! ARGHHHHHH!!!!

40 seems scary as hell now.

But it also seems very promising as well.

Stay tuned.