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.
If you want to heal your soul
threaten the status quo
TW: I am a recovering catholic. I do not mince words when it comes to the harm that I feel the church inflicted upon me as a child with my parents as willing participants. If you have a love of the church I’d just avoid my blog.
I have come to forgive my parents and some of the people involved in the soul-crushing that occurred to me during my eight years of catholic school and the thousands of hours of guilt-laden, fear-driven, terror-inducing instruction and messages I received in that institution. I am always endeavoring to accept those that still have faith and still support the church, but it isn’t always easy. It’s like watching your friends forgive your abuser and it is not for the faint of heart. I think the church should pay for my therapy and medication that’s how culpable it is in the mental anguish I struggle with every day. I am just now beginning to unravel the damage and I hope someday to scream punk rock versions of my feels. My FAULTY EARTH SUITS band name is ready for the right people to make my punk dreams come true 😀
What a fucking Lie
The church, what a fucking joke the first in duplicity saying they are there to save our souls but their aim is to grind our bones into the paste of mediocrity into something safe for them and their mountains of fear
Don’t think that Don’t learn that Don’t feel that Kill the you that you know
The church, what a fucking hell the thing that birthed my anger that rages from the scars and terror the wounds of words at every turn the pain reborn the way they killed our joy beating us into the mediocrity of homogeny
Don’t think that Don’t ask that Don’t dream that Erase your individuality
The church what a fucking game a way to kill your spirit replace it with a god of lies the god of men’s control subjugated to their ways they’ll grind you down make you into a paste to mold into something knowable, controllable
Don’t think that Don’t want that Don’t look at that Destroy the light within
We’ll take your hopes and dreams and teach you that you’re wrong and then we will take your money and expect your worship in return God’s plan for you is dead we killed those parts of you so we could feel safe secure and unthreatened.
You traded our joy for your control and comfort
Don’t think that Don’t be that Don’t become more How dare you be yourself
If you want to heal your soul threaten the status quo
Bottom line? I was a grieving, masking, pretending, smiling, joking MESS. To say I was sensitive would be laughable in it’s understatement.
UGH. Just ugh. My therapist assures me that feeling these feelings is what I need, but dear lord it is painful and difficult. I feel like I’m crawling through mud. But let’s maybe do a quick and dirty run down.
After my suicide attempt (which I’ve come to learn was less about death and more about not having enough emotional coping mechanisms this is food for thought for everyone) I rallied like a proper bipolar, celebrating with some great unsupported, unexplained bouts of hypomania wherein I declared I was cured and took off to “Thunder on The Tundra”. A motorcycle rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin to “clear my head” and “get back to normal”. Now remember I was on a BRAND new prescription of Seroquel. But hey hypomania/mania is not know for its logic. That rally was where I got my lip pierced. Rode a three-wheeler for the first time. And continued the tradition of spreading Rob’s ashes at a new body of water on the 9th of every month. There was actually a beautiful moment where many of the other bikers rode in formation to a waterfall and were with me when I left a little Rob there. It was symbolically, for me, experiencing things with him that we would never get to do on this plane of existence. At one point I had the poem, picture, and place for each month of that first year burned into my memory, but even that has faded and now just a few of the more memorable ones remain. (hey would you just look at this, I started writing and it got easier.) The rally had it’s ups and downs, I was struggling to be “normal” and those times were filled with booze, the worst self medication tool I had. (I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been w/o alcohol or w/the same kind of access to cannabis as an alternative) Bottom line? I was a grieving, masking, pretending, smiling, joking MESS. To say I was sensitive would be laughable in it’s understatement. So at the end of the rally feeling keenly the loss of the distraction and having a group of people leave without me because I over slept sent me into a bit of tailspin. I dumped the rest of seroquel down the toilet and took off solo to “explore” (IE drive aimlessly and seek some questionable distractions until the money ran out) I came home and quit my job and decided to move and leave my kids. At this point I had decided that maybe me dying wasn’t great but certainly being in my children’s lives was not helping them so I arranged for the twins to go live with their dad and his new wife, and for Lyra to move with her dad as well. It seems when I need to get my life on track my first instinct is to slough off anyone or anything that relied on me. The truth is I felt unreliable. I often felt that people would be better off without me. I am sure it seemed selfish and narcissitic yet it came from more than any one single straighforward reason. In hindsight I see it for the Flight and Freeze response that it was. I have been overwhelmed so much of my life. I’m learning now about sensory issues, autism, HSP, c-ptsd and so many other ways of understanding how life can truly effect each of us so differently. But back then? I just panicked, I just reacted purely out of a survival mode coping mechanism. At this point in the story I think a lot of people felt the kids would be better off without me, again. So it seemed reasonable to move close to mom and “start over fresh” (what a ridiculously naive sentiment LOL) and so it was that I packed up my belongings for one of the many times I ran away in life, and took off on my motorcycle to move to Arizona. On the way I stopped to visit my younger brother, who was living in the Grand Canyon at the time, aka the island of the misfit toys, and there a whole new f*ed up chapter of my life could begin. The infamous brief “stopover” that would turn my life into a new brand of self destructive behavior. I think we’ll start there next time, because this is leaving me a bit depressed. To really and truly examine the drama created by self defeating behavior is not an easy pill to swallow.
I think it might be important to note that at this time I had gone on to get my teaching certification in several forms of yoga and had even briefly run my own studio, before I had my suicide attempt this will later matter to the whole picture of recovery. So when you hear me get super agro about the cult of positivity and the harm of repressed emotions you’ll understand the depth of my experience.
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.
This is the face of unresolved emotions. I know I want to talk about the time after Rob’s death. Need to even. It’s important in the evolution of how I arrived at this point of FINALLY dealing with me BEING bipolar. It was a time of yet another encounter with my bipolar diagnosis that I brushed off. It will be another decade of life that I pushed and pushed and felt my sanity and self-worth erode. Another terrible marriage/relationship choice. Another cycle of enthusiastically throwing myself into something and then running away. That chapter will give way to the early California years and the next diagnosis that came with the added – uhmm you are also like super ADHD and OCD. By the way you got some C-PTSD going on in there… Gurl you in danger.
I just create, destroy, and run. Wash – Rinse – Repeat. That my friends is a cycle of mental health, not a personality trait. (I mean who know what the actual personality is under all these masks)
And I can see with that perfect hindsight vision how close I’ve come to breaking the cycle and then the inciting incident or the complete overwhelm that happens and I slide backward.
Yet I think I can finally say that I know I’m not falling all the way back to the beginning. I can see the progress. The learning. And I suppose it’s why I’m finally here putting everything out there. Maybe I’ll tumble my way through all the malarkey flashback style for a few years and then put it together like a puzzle.
For now, I’m avoiding the grief post. I’m avoiding reliving what comes next and I can practically see my therapist’s raised eyebrow as she doesn’t have to say a word. She gets me, she knows I know. I know she knows I know…wait what was I talking about…. avoidance, oh yeah. I suppose the progress today is I am here writing even if it’s not 100% about what I want to talk about. Even if it IS dancing around the darkness I must traverse. The hurt, anger, and pain I feel somewhat obligated to carry. And good lord the truckload of regret for what I’ve done to my family and friends.
Instead since my grief post, I did this:
Instead of actually blogging/writing/processing I went on a clickup binge. LOL avoidance master!
At least it has the appearance of being productive. Even now I’m putting the pressure on myself to write every day – which of course I will struggle to maintain and then I’ll feel like a failure and then I’ll quit??? Well, that has been the past pattern. It’s hard to work through the hollow times. It’s hard to maintain hypo-mania levels of enthusiasm and it’s nearly impossible to slog through some of the deeper depressions and care about any of it. I’ve joked my whole life that “I am my own dichotomy” and “as with all things I swing both ways” — Hahahhahaaaaa… OH wait. #porquenolosdos ? Why not indeed. I’ve always known the truth. Here’s hoping embracing it will finally bring lasting, sustainable change that leads me to the life I dream of and a way to heal the generational trauma that I so graciously passed on to my children.
I am. I have. I will be. I was re-diagnosed as bipolar almost 30 years ago(back then we called it manic-depressive which admittedly is more descriptive but way less cool-sounding, I mean who doesn’t want to sound like they are the earth, or a magnet? right?). My youngest was a year old. I had been first diagnosed at 17 and that was changed a few years later when I went through a battery of psychological tests for a legal battle. (we’ll maybe talk about my Twins’ father abuse and how it change the trajectory of everything, you’ll get used to the digressions that say “for another time” because no one wants that book right now) Then at 25 it came back into my world and this time the diagnosis was withdrawn when it was discovered I had hypothyroidism and the psychiatrist felt that a lot of my symptoms could be confused with someone going through the death spiral of their pituitary/thyroid axis combined with postpartum depression. Looking back I was a child, now with a third child and soon a third husband (do I really have to mention that is also a WHOLE other Jerry Springer?) I didn’t have google (oddly enough it was being invented that very year) or a lot of resources. In my less than optimal state, I said COOL and I started on Synthroid and Prozac and went about my life depressed, stressed, and fighting my body. I didn’t even have memes to get me through – I KNOW RIGHT, terrible. The old days were lame.
Little did I know the cyclical nature of my brain. Little did I know how often I would blow up my life because I had no idea who or, more precisely, what I was dealing with. (I feel compelled to chronicle that it was a chiropractor that first identified my suspected thyroid disorder and sent me to the doctor for my first test, which my doctor almost didn’t do because “I had just had a child and needed to just exercise and I would feel better” I later found out that postpartum is a common time to develop it and had I listened to my doctor I would have gone longer undiagnosed-and thus began my long journey of medical harm and gaslighting) The primary care gaslighting YES obviously that is a whole other side quest – let’s just focus on the mental health aspect. It will be enough.
I would be re-diagnosed in my early 30’s by the rudest, gruffest, most condescending psychiatrist of the bunch (the bar was pretty high too) His misogyny was epic. We tried a few medications but I was never really prepared for their effect and almost always got incredibly worse right away – and I was always “over-reacting” and “being hysterical” – so after a year I rejected the diagnosis, the meds, and well, therapy in general for quite some time. This is just one of the times psychiatric care did more harm than good because I was never coached or supported through the process. SUUUREEE now I know that meds can make you worse at first, SUUUURREE NOW I know that bipolar can make you think you don’t need meds and more I know that AFABs can be continually misdiagnosed, SUUUUUUUUUUUURRRREEEE NOW I know a lot of things…but imagine if that doctor had explained that to me? Instead, I was labeled “non-compliant” “difficult” and “combative” … because I cried…a lot (anyone who knows me might laugh at that) and begged for different medications.
I was a single mom with three children and was made to feel that all of it was my weakness and lack of effort. Another nail in the gaslighting coffin as my confidence, joy, and belief in my own feelings eroded. Still, I persevered.
A few years pass without meds or therapy and I start my Master’s Studies, I get promoted and move up in my work, … I have hopes and dreams and I meet the love of my life. Sure I struggle but I believed that I had “overcome” my issues. I was responsible, I wasn’t doing all the manic things I had done in my 20s – so surely that was all youthful exuberance and not a mental health disorder. I drank too much. My newfound love is sick and struggling and I begin having my first panic attacks. But that’s normal right? things are hard so of course, I’m panicked. OH, there is too much, I will sum up… My husband’s health issues take over our lives and he eventually dies from an allergic reaction to MRI dye – It was on my 37th birthday. OOF still 16 years later it hits like a train wreck. My anger and sadness run so deep. I blamed myself. I blamed the medical system. I didn’t blame god because I don’t believe in them, but man that sure would have been a nice outlet. Again I digress – it’s sort of my MO 😛
Holy crap – this is a long story. Let’s leave it there on this uplifting moment of my dead 36-year-old husband because I need some space to let this wash over me. This is 10 years of my life. And looking back what a freaking intense 10 years. 10 years of not getting the help I truly needed. 10 years of self-medicating harm as I tried to just hang on to life by the tips of my fingers. During that time was also that first divorce with a costly custody battle. I bounced back with a new job, life, and love. And then love was torn from me. Every time I thought I had my proverbial shit together there was a blowup. sometimes caused by me, and sometimes caused by life that was then exacerbated by my mental health.
That’s 3 — THREE bipolar diagnoses received and rejected. 4 – FOUR marriages 3 – THREE children 10 – SIX different medications (approx. my memory is often shoddy at best) and a whole host of jobs and career changes and moves. My word did I move a lot. LOL
Until next time. I once again am facing the bipolar diagnosis. And I’m trying very hard to embrace and accept that. I might even finally be able to find some peace. Peace, Love, Punk, and Rainbows.
CobaltFae 