A living journal of becoming, unbecoming, and becoming again. Featuring: Misdiagnosis bingo, AuDHD revelations, gender euphoria (and dysphoria—hey, balance), fluidity on tap, nonbinary mischief, transmasc tenderness, big art dreams, grief spirals, improv brain, existential crises, and the stubborn refusal to quit.
Just some rambling thoughts as I navigate the ups and downs of treating my bipolar moods.
I have found myself feeling dried up again. Once again engaged in the never-ending battle of swell and recede. I’m like the tide. Endlessly waxing and waning – I guess that makes sense the tide and the moon being inexorably connected and they mirror my moods. Mercurial. Capricious. Inconstant. Why does nature get to ebb and flow and be called beautiful, powerful, mysterious…and I am fickle, a flibbertigibbet, a flake. Chasing my tail wanting nothing more than to find some consistency, some peace…yet my mind swings so intensely from one state of being to the next. It’s exhausting sleeping alone and still not knowing who you are going to wake up with. I have dredged up so many things and the emotions weigh me down. I feel stuck again. Chocked on the memories. I can feel the walls in my spirit slamming into place. And the same old fears start to rise up – there is no hope. You can’t be stable. You aren’t bipolar you just need to focus more, you just need to be more motivated…The voices of childhood haunt me, chasing me down not letting me feel hope, not letting me believe… I ride the waves that are my moods and never know where I will land. I’m trying to find the truth, the real me w/in the shifting tides. In the liminal spaces, I know the true me waits, hoping to be freed at last. I keep pressing forward. This note a testament to how my brain shifts and changes, how my whole way of being transforms. It’s like living with a stranger. Distracted. Dissociative. Divided.
And I was so enjoying the ability to write for a bit – it feels lost. But Julia Cameron tells me to “fill in the form” So I’m writing, not so it will be good, but so I can practice. I’m writing to create, not to impress, or to gain anything other than the practice. I’m writing because I need to write. My thoughts spilling out onto the page for no other purpose than to exist.
I fight the fears, the shame, the pesky perfectionist voice that says I’m embarrassing myself. Because shame is a prison. Fear a coping mechanism. I fight the urge to give up because I know the tide will come in again. The mood will change. I will wish I hadn’t given up when the brain shifte. Never give up, never surrender.
I’ll live to write more of the story another day. My bipolar warriors we can ride the waves, we can survive the full moons, we can keep going during the darkness. Life is an ebb and flow our work then is to learn to surf it better. We learn by practicing. Today I beat back the demons. No day but today.
I know I’ve been writing mostly back story, my origin story if you will. But I read this piece on The Mighty today that really reminded me of my experience and I feel compelled to write about the good that is happening for me in the here and now, and how much privilege is involved in being able to get the proper help and why we, as a society, are actually really really awful to anyone who isn’t “normal” enough. I mean we are terrible and awful. But I digress. Let’s start with me.
I am currently not working. Between my mental health, physical health, and taking on the caregiving of my mother with dementia it has been impossible. I’ve been unemployed for 3 years now. The first year was all about hospital visits and surgery recovery with my mom. I wasn’t even home but living with her and that whole saga is another post altogether LOL…but, after awhile, we moved her back to California and bought a house with her divorce settlement so we could have some security and I could take care of her properly. That was about 2 years ago. It took some time to settle in and I started to think about going back to work but needed something flexible, and at home so I started building my own Voice Over business. I found I have a talent for it, I love it, BUT sadly I did not have the stamina or stability to run my own business successfully. Sure I was making strides yet I could see how I would struggle to be available for sessions, I had to cancel so many things because sometimes even my voice will change depending on where I was physically. I simply wasn’t ready. Additionally having to be there for mom and her medical care was time-consuming. It was too much for me to handle. Yet I was determined. First, I thought it was just me being scared and lazy. So I started and ran sessions of The Artist’s Way for a year – which led me to even create my own process The Way of Your Inner Voice and that helped me move past a lot of mental/artistic blocks. I was opening up creatively, I was starting to feel again, I even started to have hope. But that’s when I hit wall after wall mentally and physically. So 9 months ago I made the decision to go all-in on making myself better. Facing my demons and my past and truly building a sustainable future. And 6 weeks ago it all finally came together where I could really dig in.
Here is where the privilege comes in. See, I live with my grown children and they help me. I have a support system. I live in California and I have Medi-Cal, Medicaid for indigent Californians. It has, quite simply, saved my life. It took nearly 16 months since getting on this insurance but I now have a TEAM of people that I am starting to trust. It was a process I started about the same time I started doing “The Artist’s Way”. At first, it was just all about my thyroid and fatigue etc, etc, but then I realized it was so much more (that was the 9 months ago mark when I knew I needed to face my mental health issues) It took months of PCP appointments, MONTHS of waiting for referrals, and then longer to get the appointments with specialists, and it took months of struggles on the phones and people driving me to said appointments. Hours in lines at pharmacies. It has taken a team, consistent insurance, and a lot of literal blood, sweat, and tears… And that was just to get started about 6 weeks ago to try out medication and start with my therapists (mental, physical, speech). None of that would have, nor has it ever been, possible to do while working full time. We expect too much of people already struggling. I think it’s why I’m so dedicated to working on myself right now. Because I absolutely understand and appreciate the mega shite tonne of luck and privilege I have right now to be able to do this work. I stopped everything else. I am dedicated to my morning pages. My meditation. My walks. but most importantly I am dedicated to riding out getting on medication and changing doses and all the side effects that process entails. Dedicated to fully communicating with my doctors and therapist about my progress. Faithful to my routines. Devoted to full honesty and transparency. And most importantly feeling all the feelings I haven’t had the time or energy to face before.
So yes there are sleepless nights, Yes we are poor AF as I have been denied disability and SSI several times (I don’t honestly understand) yes the medication has side effects and the therapy is painfully slow. But by hook or by crook I’m riding this particular wave to the end because it’s the best one I’ve seen in a long time. And although I won’t be able to cure anything or become a superhero, I know that this will set me up for success in a way that I have never had the chance to even hope for. I’ve been swimming against the tide and ignoring how the undertow has sucked me under time and time again so I’m learning to surf and building a better board (that metaphor took on a life of its own but I’ll allow it)
Because I’m done being ashamed of my struggles and I’m recognizing the absolute badassery of what I have managed with shackles and weights tied to my feet – imagine what I can do with just a little bit of support and time to recuperate. We all need time to heal. Hustle culture is deadly. Breathe deep. Find the spaces to heal. And if you see someone who can’t? express nothing but empathy. There are no damn bootstraps, hell there are barely boots for most people. Compassion begins with yourself.
The Stacks lay on nearly every surface of my room –
Here the stockpile of theatre-improv-acting books
There a pile of trauma-informed therapy
OH and here is the neurodivergent mountain
Over here? the pile of healing your relationship with money.
Don’t forget the pretty books, the spooky ones,
The Gold leafed Pooh collection nestled between Neil Gaiman Illustrated and Cthulian nightmares
Carefully planned, barely controlled, chaos
a whirlwind of ideas and dreams and wonders.
Overlapping, expanding, and shrinking with the swing of my moods and interests. Loved and hated in equal measure. Holding the possibility of knowledge, the siren song of research, the dopamine hit of something new and exciting. The dust collected on regrets forgotten passions. The shiny new, the possibility wearing off they become piles of admonition, guilt, and sometimes even shame Aminda 4/9/2022
In the halls of “things you can’t live with or without” my stacks of books are my one true nemesis that I also love beyond reason. They are so indicative of my bipolar brain and that makes them all the more beautiful and terrifying. This started out as a Hahaha look at all my books and really became something very helpful. That’s the power of writing y’all. #accidentaltherapysession
I chose pond because we are going to discuss Thoreau a bit today, as I discuss why I’m writing now. Why I have huge imposter syndrome in everything I do. Why imposter syndrome is so deadly and unnecessary, how it’s a form of perfectionism and comparison, and how both are the death of joy and progress. I might dally around the idea of creative writing, run-on sentences, eschewing grammar perfection, and my love of the humble ellipsis……and not caring how many periods I use in them. (OH MY JIBBERS CRABST NO THAT IS WAY TOO MUCH — so me LOL)
Anywho skipping stones… this actually came up with my Psychiatrist visit the other day. I told her how my life seems interesting and full from the outside and people often marvel at how many things I’ve done…but I realized not too long ago that it’s because I’ve been skimming the surface of life. Hopping, skipping, jumping from one thing to the next w/out ever really going very deep. OH sure at FIRST I’m going deep dive. Like that first stone that you try to skip hits the water and sinks…but after that initial dive? I’m off, it’s too much. Boredom sets in. Imposter syndrome sets (Yes it sets in before I even start it’s a whole thing, hey it’s why I’m in therapy LOL) She was already saying it before me – apparently, this is a whole bipolar AND ADHD thing. My whole life I’ve been called flaky, and a flibbertigibbet (OK admittedly I do talk A LOT) as I flit from one big thing to the next. I have a lack of sustainability. Little did I know that it was sort of baked into my brain chemistry. Generally, the pattern is GO ALL IN – realize MEH I don’t love it as much as I thought – Or more precisely -OH god this sucks or I’m not really that good at it or UGH you gotta be like 100% IN for this to be your thing… so I’m OUT. There’s more than bipolarness at work though. I also have a fear of intimacy and some serious issues about joining things. (My childhood in the catholic church made me feel like joining and believing things too deeply was SUSS as hell so I get itchy at any sign of over-identification with things) Heck, even things I love like SciFi I avoid going too deep lest it becomes an obsession. (what is that some sort of OCD reversal? def. something to ask the therapist about LOL)
So that is why I’m here writing. 1. because I’m trying to feel the feelings that my therapist says I’m avoiding. (it’s a skill to be this emotional and still not acknowledge about 80% of what’s really going on) 2. so I can actually go deeper. Having done “The Artist’s Way” a year ago and being on over 400 days of #morningpages I finally beleive I can go all in and not only not lose myself but find myself. 3. By giving up on perfectionism and comparison I am finally free to write and not care who reads it or what they think. I hope it reaches people and maybe even helps a few but it’s not why I write and that changes everything. 4. I used to not only correct but OBSESS about grammar and spelling…then I realized that is just ableism, classism, and honestly just judgy nonsense that keeps us from communicating freely. I know my writing is “terrible”, I don’t freaking care anymore my point is to share not be a great writer. And maybe by finally admitting that I might get better because now I’ll actually DO IT.
Be brave enough to suck at something forever and still do it is my new motto
Not going deep has made me feel perennially like an imposter, but I think it was really just my fear of not being good enough at anything and as always comparing myself to others. So here is where Thoreau comes in. I had recently joined the ranks of those who maligned him, sneering at his “roughing” it while his mom did his laundry and brought him sandwiches. But then I realized I was “throwing out the messages with the man” (it’s just as bad as the baby and the bathwater) I was angry because I had let his work make me feel bad… I had compared myself to him and found myself wanting. So when I found out it was partially a sham I was self-righteously angry. But as that cooled, I realized how freeing this is….everyone is a work in progress. And just as I’ve learned not to judge a message by its spelling or grammar I am learning not to judge a work on unrelated things. Thoreau never asked us to worship him, he simply made excellent observations and STRIVED to live as he wanted. He fell short but that still doesn’t negate some of his words and his wonderful writing. One can be inspired even if the author is imperfect. (OH lord there’s a whole thing there huh) Bottom line it wasn’t his fault I was using his work to belittle myself that was all on me…and I could instead learn from it.
Here is the FB post I wrote when I first learned about the problem with Thoreau :
In case you have imposter syndrome feelings. In case you worry that you aren’t “marching to your own drum” enough. Or that you need to sacrifice something.
Remember that the man we credit with some of these thoughts was basically an imposter, taking help from multiple people, including free labour from his mom….
No journey is done alone, and that’s FINE just remember that… and don’t be afraid to ask for support and help.
I guarantee you that ANYONE you admire or worship or aspire to be like was not fully the person you imagine, they were/are imperfect, and even if they had greatness they too had struggles.
Don’t just skip along afraid to go any deeper. Tell your story. I bet it’s at least as real and inspirational as this classic work. I won’t tear Thoreau down too much, because I think he was more like us than not. The key point is that even with all the not-so-great “truth” the book is still a wonderful and insightful read and much can be garnered from it. The same is true for the rest of us. How can we ever dare to greatness if we don’t start somewhere and stick with it?
The one where I describe the total cr*p fest that was the 18 months after my husband’s death.
TW: Suicide (I’m too worn out to make it pretty with memes and pics sorry for the wall of text)
After Rob’s death, I sunk down into a deeper depression than I had thought possible. The very act of living and feeling was like a knife in my brain. I didn’t want to feel or think about anything. I had a bit of luck in that my company underwent a merger and I was laid off – lucky because I surely would have lost my job anyway and at least this way I got a severance package. After the first month of binge drinking and living on anti-anxiety meds. I turned to yoga. When I say I “turned” to yoga, I mean like in a cultist way. That trajectory will be woven through some of this but it deserves it’s own examination so maybe one day I’ll do a series on how asana (yoga poses) saved me and then destroyed me. It’s a whole thing. But now it’s simply a thing I do to keep my hip from screaming and I believe meditation is one of the greatest gifts I took from being a yogi and a teacher. Again meditation deserves it’s own telling but that is for another time.
I get super into Core Power Yoga. I chose it randomly from an internet search because they had a location and schedule I could use. I went EVERY DAY, sometimes multiple times a day for months. Simultaneously I was living this duel life where I was partying with my motorcycle and Hashing groups. So I was living so bipolar it’s comical. I was split and needed constant distraction. But I thought I was “healed”. I was pretending. I got involved with a few different lovers very quickly as well… and that is where it got weird. I was playing in polyamorous couples, drinking, dabbling in drugs again (I had given them up after college) it was like I was at my worst manic stage from my 20s but coupled with a deep depression and accented with a lot dissociation and outbursts of anger.
I was still pretending that yoga had “cured” me of my grief. But I was secretly spiraling out of control. Then the money ran out and I had to go back to work. This was probably the beginning of the end for me because the stress of a new job, traveling, and trying to maintain my yoga practice (which might have been the only thing keeping me from joining the circus at this point) I was slowly unraveling. I looked like a super hero on the outside. But inside I was suppressing more and more. The yoga stopped being soothing and just became another place where I was pretending to be OK.
One of my relationships unravelled, it wasn’t shocking none of us had any business trying to be a thruple and I was ousted of the relationship. I was too vulnerable. Mind you this is less than a year from Rob’s death. I was in no way ready to move on but I felt I had to and I was DESPERATE to replace that love. DESPERATE. It was like I had a collapsing black hole inside me and I was trying to fill it with anything – wine, women, song! You name it I would have tried it. I travelled. I took Rob’s ashes to new places for that first year. I wrote a SHITE tonne of poetry. I pretended.
But when that tiny ray of light was doused when the third in my thruple said I had to go – I was crushed in a way that felt worse than the night robbed died. I just couldn’t stand to feel the things I was feeling. That black hole sucked me right in…After I was dumped. I, once again, pretended I was strong enough. I was fine. I went to a movie and dinner with my mom and assured her I was fine.
(Cue Morgan Freeman: She was, dear listener, not fine)
I went to bed with a glass of wine and lay down on Rob’s side of the bed. I saw his last crossword puzzle unfinished. I cleaned his glasses. I rummaged in the nightstand. And there they were. His pain meds – Oxycontin. I thought. Just one so I can sleep. I took one. Waited. I still felt. I still wanted to sleep. I didn’t want to die particularly, I just wanted things to stop for a bit. I wasn’t strong enough. I was failing. I was letting everyone down….I took another one. Then I thought – F*ck it…and took a handful. Mind you washed down with wine. Then the panic set in. What if it worked and I never saw my kids again. What if this was it. I was conflicted.
It is fuzzy from there- I know I talked to someone on the phone. The cops were called. I had a gun pulled on me when they asked what I took and I reached for the pills in the nights stand. I woke up in the hospital. I saw my mom’s face. I was transferred to the psych ward…Identified as BiPolar yet again…and that my friends is a story for another day. Because oof da. That’s a lot.
There is still so much shame. Sigh – but when I come back maybe we’ll talk about how sh*tty the psyche ward is and how we watched One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest when I got out.
Robert Gregory LaFavor-Courtwright went on life support just before my birthday 16 years ago. For a few days it was up in the air, then on my birthday, Oct 7th, 2005 we were told there was hope. So my sister-in-law, my birthday twin, and the rest of the family went out that night to celebrate our birthdays. I was turning 37. I got a tattoo. My mom got a tattoo. We were hopeful. I had faith. I believed he was too good and too loving and had too much to offer to be gone. He loved me. He loved me in a way that I didn’t think was possible. Then two days later, October 9th, 2005. I lay next to him on the bed as they turned off the machines and I felt his last breath leave his body. I cried the kind of keening cry the man-in-black cried in the “Princess Bride”, the sound of ultimate suffering. And in that very moment, the process of grief began and would be quickly stunted and would forever change how I showed up in the world. I would enter an extremely tumultuous decade where the rapid cycling of emotions would make me careen back into ways I thought I had “overcome” and left in my 2o’s. I would learn that grief makes others uncomfortable and that people are super judgy about how much hurt we are allowed to feel and express and for how long and where…the rules are endless, and honestly, cruel.
I already knew this actually but until this time I hadn’t realized just how much we squash emotions in others and how much that can truly harm someone.
There is so much to unpack – within the first moments of his passing I was IMMEDIATELY told I had to be quiet. Stop crying. That won’t bring him back. I physically collapsed (I was also exhausted) and was told to “stop being so dramatic”. I began the process of stuffing my feelings.
See it was always hard to explain to people that have friends and close relationships that work how devastating a loss can be when you have struggled with connection your whole life. I’ve always felt off, a little wrong, too emotional, too needy, and yet too independent. I never felt people got the whole of me. The dichotomy that I’m, so completely two (ok dozen but who is counting) things at all times. A manly girly girl. A rainbow goth. A sensitive biker b*tich. A punk rock ballerina. But Rob? OH he got it and relished in it… he could treat me like I was a lady and then ride on the back of my motorcycle celebrating my independence and power. Around him, I never had to choose which persona got to come out and play. He was there for all my sides. When you have been starved of that your whole life and finally FINALLY feel like a whole human just because someone says “Hey all of you is great” and then have it ripped from you? Well, it was devastating.
But I heard these things all in the first week -“you weren’t even together that long.” – “I mean he was sick right” -“it’s not like your life was so great” -“you weren’t even really married” (we were common law and we both recognized that and considered it “enough”, I had proposed a year earlier and we were putting off a ceremony because of his health) Within a month I was hearing -“try to think about the good memories” -“you need to be on anti-depressants this is taking too long”
And the ultimate shut down came that New Year’s Eve so less than 3 months later- which would have been Rob’s 37th birthday- I wanted to plan a smaller meal with some friends at a special place but it would have made someone else’s plans be delayed and while trying to say I didn’t want their plans to be overridden I just needed this – I was told “well it doesn’t matter you’ll just play the dead husband card and get your way” (I didn’t get my “way” I gave up and got about the business of acting ok) I think that was the single worst moment for me… it was when I felt even more keenly the loss of someone who cared enough about me to see my pain and not put qualifiers on it. It was all my fears about not having “real” friends laid bare. And in that moment I splintered.
I have been leading a duel life every since. One where I pretend I’m OK and make terrible decisions out of pain but act like it’s all normal. And one where there’s a ball of sadness locked away that bleeds out as anger and impatience. It leaks out as apathy. It oozes over things and makes even happy times duller. And all because I didn’t want to play the dead husband card. I didn’t want to make people feel inconvenienced or uncomfortable so I set about creating the biggest mask of all….one of the healed person. A mask I wore with limited success but a lot of fakery for nearly 10 years until my body and mind just couldn’t anymore.
I just can’t anymore. But that’s a good thing. Pretending to be ok is malarkey. That’s why I am here to embrace the full reality of me. And that includes being bipolar. (OH Yes you know what’s coming, here in 2026 reading this laughing a little at the next evolution… but wait there’s more) Maybe if I can get all these other layers out I can face down that struggle and fully understand it.
I got some big emotions. My feelings are BIG. (turns out sensory issues effect EVERYTHING — who knew? OH good psychologists knew? cool) Learning to feel them and not let them bang up everyone around me is a journey. So whatever you are going through don’t let anyone else tell you when you are “done” or “ready” or whatever unhelpful advice they might give – I guarantee you it’s more about them than you. Only you can know if you are still processing. Only you get to decide how much it hurts. No one is inside your heart but you. Feel your feels. Trust me on this – either you feel them on purpose or you and everyone will feel them anyway in a less helpful way.
CobaltFae 