inspiredodyssey Life

Lemons into Lemonade

I am a rampant procrastinator. I have watched this whole day go by without accomplishing the things I set out to do today. I believe there us only one cure for this: self strength.

Self strength is a new concept I’ve thought about as being better than self reliance or self will, but more like something that’s got to come from within myself to win this battle over my laziness and procrastination. The truth of the matter is all I want to do is sleep, and that funk I’m in has become a daily thing. How do I get out of it? Self strength. Basically pulling myself up by my own hair and forcing me to get up and out of bed and do what I’m supposed to do.

Self strength will be my new mantra and how I can turn these lemons in my life to lemonade.

How do you find your self strength? I would love to know.

Stay tuned.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Reading a Damn Good Book While The Rain Falls…..

What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

One of the things I have missed out on the past twenty years is reading, I mean really reading, like a novel. Paperback. Hard Cover. Eff this staring at a tablet or screen nonsense! I mean actually smelling the pages. Turning the pages and savoring every moment.

Out of all the things I am grateful for that happened while being jailed for 10 months, was the opportunity to read a total of 43 books. I read almost a book every few days and I loved every minute of it. Being in this rehab afforded me that luxury too. Since we weren’t allowed phones or the internet, I got to read even more books; getting to know authors like Nora Roberts and Lee Child. These opportunities brought me peace and excitement I hadn’t had in a long time – and even now that I have my phone again and television, I find myself resorting back to the paperback books that are at my disposal.

But the best? The ABSOLUTE BEST is reading during a thunderstorm. I have found so much peace listening to the rainfall and engrossing myself in a good book. It is my favorite pastime so far.

Do you like to read during a good rainstorm too?

I would love to know.

Stay tuned.

inspiredodyssey bipolar

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

inspiredodyssey Life

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.

inspiredodyssey Life

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.

inspiredodyssey Uncategorized

Jail, Institutions and Death

To the Future

So, to anyone in recovery, we know those terms. I am in a rehab now, and on the rare opportunity that I have a chance to sit at a computer and write down my feelings, I’m going to take it. I’ve just been in jail, now I’m in another institution, I’ve been in so many mental hospitals, when does it end?

I had a good career, I have a husband, I relocated from New York to North Carolina during the pandemic; I thought this was it, my big break – but no, it was my downfall instead.

I am in this rehab, and everyday I want to leave. My sentence is 9 more months in this place and I want to die. I thought I would be able to make it here, but it’s hard. I want to go home. You guys don’t know how lucky you are to be able to blog and share – this was my outlet for so long, and now I have nothing to help me, really, through my struggles.

AA is helpful though. At first, the meetings were hard to stomach, a lot of sharing on topics that bored me; so much so that I would snore at meetings, (nice people tap me on my knee or shoulder to wake me up), but I think I am coming around to the whole idea of it. Will I attend meetings after I leave here? I honestly don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know how I am going to make it through my 4th step that I am working on with my sponsor.

Where do I go from here? Everyday is a girt I just want to regift back to God, I swear it’s true even though that may sound terrible. I am miserable in my skin. I didn’t want my life to turn out like this. My husband is in a mental hospital straight out of jail, I am in this rehab straight out of jail and it seems God deems to separate us for going on two years now. Hoe is this possible? I am grateful that I get to talk to him on the phone, and my parents did take me to visit him so I got a kiss. (YAY), but other than that, husband and wife are doomed apart for at least another year.

Jail, institutions and death – how close I have come to that last one this go around. I have always been on the outskirts – my crazy bipolar takes me just so far, but the crack and cocaine took me to jail. I am lucky to be alive after all that happened, all the poisons I put in my body, but I know for a fact that God has a purpose for me. What it is, and what it will be is hidden to me for now, but just for now. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Stay tuned.

inspiredodyssey Uncategorized

The Turning Point – Recovery, Rehab, Choices, Mind Blowing Sex,Turmoil, and A Fresh New Start in a New State

pink hear

What a title, right? To call the last two months, a lifetime of drama is an understatement. My relationship has been explosive, lustful, passionate, exquisitely painful, and mind-numbingly fluid in ways that have left every previous relationship a pile of dust in the wind. This man is a broken version of me from years ago, and all the worst parts that I see of myself. His addiction got him mandated into rehab, which I think is the best course of action for now. But there are elements to it that I am just not comfortable with.

He’s walked alone for a long time – alone in the streets, knee-deep in poverty, desperately hoping someone would love him. Then I came along, meeting him in the worst place you could possibly meet someone – the psych ward. Now, I know what you’re thinking, how could I make a relationship out of such chaos and dysfunction? Well, to be honest, my madness knows his madness like the man we all know who walked on water 2,000 years ago. I bring up that analogy because we both have a deep faith, we both have a strong passion and we both are exactly one year apart in age, (and one week apart in birthdays, how cool is it to find someone who is your zodiac sign?) This man knows the way my mind works, he once told me he loves the way my hip moves when I walk, the crookedness of my smile when I am sexy, the way my eyes widen when he fucks me, the way I sing my heart out at the same songs he knows – we are a match made in the stars, and I would be a fool to say I am going to walk away because he doesn’t his shit together yet – I frickin don’t have my shit together yet.

So would the analogy be my madness knows his madness, or does my failures know his failures, or do my inadequacies know his so well make sense? The last thing couples want to do is to relate to each other by their horrible qualities, but I think that kind of struggle and realness is necessary for the longevity of true love. I saw the rawness of him, and he saw the rawness of me from day one – we saw in each other all the things that people hide from each other in relationships, times ten.

Our relationship has been explosive. We have had painful fights and disappointments that would break up most couples. The fact is, though, we NEED each other. That kind of desperation is far from healthy, but that’s what we are. All of his dysfunction comes from his environment and his family, and since mine is moving down south, I think I am going to follow them and take him with me. I LOVE New York – I love everything about this city, and never in a million years would I have considered moving – but for him? I will drop everything and be gone tomorrow. I believe in this so much, I believe in him so much, that I can honestly say I can leave my whole world behind to start anew. A fresh start is what we both need badly because I think “people places and things” can also make or break a relationship.

And the sex is well – too good to even describe. I have heard stories about women who couldn’t orgasm from penetration, I was one of them – but with him – it’s earth-shattering orgasms with whatever he does. I never met a man who electrified my lust like him – and I have never had 4 or 5 orgasms in one night like it is with him. Is it true that crazy sex is the best sex on the planet? I am starting to think there is really something to that.

In all, I think the best thing for his recovery is a new environment – a new place where we can start over and build a life. I never thought I would ever leave New York – but to ensure my happiness with the man that I love? I am all for it.

Stay tuned.