Just what I needed tonight, a phone call with more bad news. Not really sure why but there seems to be a bit of trash talk going on behind the scenes. Not trash talk per se, just reality. In this tiny world of rescue, those that look like friends are really enemies. They seem quite harmless, but truly await kicking you when you are down. From what I know right now some very inside information about our farm, our business and our problems have been made very public. Seems this cruelty complaint case I worked the past week involves a lot of people pulling strings behind the scenes. I was used, clearly. But beyond that we are now getting some serious play in the gossip circles. It is just disgusting, all of it. Why is it that people find such joy in sensing some blood in the water. I don’t think guns are what is wrong in this world, people are what is wrong with this world. This senseless part of human nature, the innate ability for cruelty. I never wanted to be the one on everyone’s lips, or the butt of every joke. We don’t deserve this treatment. I have a very good sense of where this started, and she should be happy this isn’t a couple weeks back. Fucking piece of shit cunt. I can only have faith that what goes around does truly come back around. She has it coming, and she sure can’t out run the amount of karmic shitstorms she has caused. I’m too fucking sick to be pissed anymore. I don’t have the energy. Maybe tomorrow.

I can’t get much of a handle on my mood in the midst of this flu. Between the teeth chattering chills, soaking wet sheets, headaches, nausea and the coughing I’m not even sure where my head is at. I’ve spent the majority of the day in bed either sleeping or shivering. My sense is that I am in a better state then a few days ago, least I’m more connected (even if via a virus). Last thing I wanted for Christmas was the flu, but guess that is what I’ve got. If there is any benefit I’ve started losing the weight the increased seroquel gave me. There is a bright side to everything I guess. I just hope my partner doesn’t catch this. I’ve taken to wiping down everything with clorox wipes. I haven’t left the farm since the session with Beatrice, so hopefully I haven’t shared this with too many.
I’m glad my mood seems to have steadied. The deep disconnect abated. I wonder if some of it wasn’t from the exhaustion I was feeling in the couple days before these symptoms started. I remember sitting in my recliner just wiped out and wondering why I was so tired. I didn’t even want to get up to go to the bathroom. It was just too much effort. I think that may have been playing into how disconnected I felt. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow, that will be day 5 of this. Off to grab another shot of cold medicine.

Keep looking for him, just not the same now. this came across my FB this morning and seemed so fitting. I still sense him here, he’s not gone yet. The night we put him down the other three pulled his bed to the middle of the living room while we were gone. They have never done that. It will take time to adjust to his absence, both for them and for us. It has only been a week.

I started this blog journey 200+ entries ago. It wasn’t for a single specific reason. I wasn’t asked to do it, I just started writing. It has been an interesting path. Though on the whole I feel this blog has given me a space to explore all of these various bits of information, events, or emotions in a way that is safe for me. Nobody watching me, just me and the computer. I was never a journal writer, though there have been periods where I kept one briefly. I don’t consider myself a writer and I never really thought I’d still be here blogging after more then 6 months. Like most, I lose interest once the shine wears off. I feel a little different about this. I think I will keep at it for a bit. I can’t say how long, because there is only so much I can write. In yesterday’s anger all I thought to myself was the fucking blog, it all comes down to the blog. That sentiment did not hold. They may well gain a lot of information from reading this, but I won’t stop writing over anger. When I started this page I let whoever wandered onto thebipolarfarmer.com have a front row seat to the daily goings on in my head, or the events of past. Those who read include the people who hold the tide and make sure I continue moving forward, not back, and definitely not ceasing all together. But there is a vulnerability involved here that none of us have spoken about. If I write the way I do, deeply and honestly from my heart, it is all out there. I do it for the sense of calm it gives me. However, in doing this I give a daily recording of my state of mind. Those treating me, don’t only see this as writing, they see this as a place to take my “psychiatric” pulse. My rambling sentences and outpouring of emotion viewed from a clinical standpoint. I had not really thought much about that until yesterday. Sure, I knew they had the ability to see where I was at from reading this daily, but I never truly got it. I do now. It changes nothing. I may well have been angry yesterday, and the knee jerk reaction was to stop writing. that would harm nobody but myself. I’ll keep writing. I promised when I wrote the first entry this would be honest and straight from my heart/head. That will not change. This blog is for me. If others chose to read it that is fine. But at the end of the day it is about me. I want to look back at this blog years from now and see what it was like to find my way back. To watch the process unfold, and to see my growth, or free fall (or anything in between). It will all be here. Not to be taken the wrong way, but I also wanted a place where my words were saved should one day I not make it thru. I know there is always that risk. Just because I try, and stay committed to treatment does not mean I won’t slip one day and leave this life I have slogged through. That is just being honest. There have been enough times I came a hair’s breath from that cold dark hereafter. I could just as easily die as people do each day from accident or illness. But I will have left this behind- me uncut, and raw. Everything that ever happened, and all I fought to come back from. This blog is me. I want it all there, no holds barred, no person defended or shielded. This is not about protecting my family, or the people who have failed me and those who abused me. It is what it is. I will continue to write here. My life in words forever.

Guess the Mayan’s were full of shit, apparently the world has not in fact ended. Good because I’m not sure I could have dealt with that.

Well I can honestly say that the start to my day was not a good one. sure I could chalk it up to the fever, chills, sweats and general miserable couple hours of sleep, but no. When I finally found myself drifting off into some semblance of sleep my cell phone rings. Most people do not call me before 8, unless some shit has hit the fan, or something has died. In fact, I am very programmed to actually wake up if my phone rings figuring there is some issue. I did not however find myself all that alert as I listened to Beatrice. I know she was talking about the hospital. It was not a question, it was a very direct you need to go and it really isn’t up for discussion. I was so fucking exhausted I could not quite grasp what she was saying. I knew I was seeing her in a couple of hours, and left it at that. But it was done. I was awake, shivering and trying to piece together the previous evening. I remembered being extremely disconnected, and I knew I was standing in my kitchen at 2AM having a glass of wine. I could not recall any suicidal thoughts. what the fuck. I got out of bed and headed down for a much-needed cup of coffee to clear my head. Unfortunately, I was raging by the time I could pour a cup. So there I stood in my kitchen ranting in non stop fiery sentences at my poor perplexed partner. “I’m not Fucking going, there is no fucking way they are getting me to agree to this. they can’t make me.” and on and on and on. This went on for quite a while, in fact I was still bitching when I was dumping feed for the horses. My partner wasn’t even in the barn and I am carrying on to the wheelbarrow and pitchfork. Seriously, bitching at inanimate objects. I was watching the minutes tick off the clock. By the time I got to session I was bordering on enraged. Some sensible part of my brain told me to check it, or it would only give them ammo to send me back. Yelling incoherently at Beatrice was probably not the best plan, though that is all I wanted to do. I didn’t care if I made any sense. I just wanted to make myself heard. I just wasn’t really sure where to go from there. Her door was open, and I had to go in. Instead of having an all out fit, I settled into this cold distant place. I was not disconnected, yet I was trying to figure out where I was. I reeled myself back in a bit and focused back on the anger. I really couldn’t tell you what I said or didn’t say, though I do remember showing a degree of anger I don’t think I have ever showed her. I kept feeling like it was some ploy to get me to react, to get me retethered to the here and now with that anger. But she assured me it wasn’t it. I let it go, but quickly sensed this trap. But I couldn’t reconcile that with these people I knew. My mind was just playing tricks on me. But I just couldn’t get past that. I had this sense that it didn’t matter what I said, that they’d lock me up anyway. I was feeling trapped and cornered. Beatrice was texting to Virgil. My gaze found some spot far off, I felt the stillness. I was leaving, my mind finding its safe place. I let it go, but knew it wasn’t okay. I could not leave, not with her sitting there. I pulled back my gaze to the window panes. Tracing each rectangle with the raised trim pieces brought be closer. By the time she cleared her throat I was back to angry and present. I could not let it be without her knowing I would not be forced. I knew I had to commit, and I even though I was angry I was understanding the only way to walk out her door was to agree. I was fine with that because I knew I was not a threat. Not to her and not to myself. I know that. Even if I am angry or disconnected, I know that. But the question remained what would Virgil say, was she really going to try to commit me without my consent. My mind was caught in this furious hot place. I left Beatrice. I sent a text to Virgil letting her know a piece of my mind. As I drove home I sensed a more connected calm shift. Sure, I was still angry, but I had left that searing hateful place I had been not ten minutes earlier. Virgil called. I don’t know if it is all the years, or if it is her, or what, but she has this way of making herself quite clear. Not in an abrupt harsh way, but not in a warm fuzzy way either. But it is a way I know, and it makes sense to me. My head just focuses when she gets that tone to her voice. It’ll sound like a terribly analogy, but it is quite like when training a dog. Yelling doesn’t work, and eventually they just tune you out. But speaking too softly may not get heard. Every one has a tone of voice they immediately respond to. Clearly I am not a dog, but it is the only analogy I can attempt to make sense of it. It is so odd but it is like I can’t help but pay complete attention, but it goes beyond that, I trust her. So today I found myself stopped in a parking lot listening carefully. Very carefully. This woman who not 15 minutes earlier I was convinced was going to coerce me, was now talking to me. and I knew without a doubt she was not going to ever coerce me, harm me, force me ever. She did not even have to say that, so why than had I been so convinced? How could my faith have wavered so? What the fuck is going on in my head? She wouldn’t hurt me, nor would Beatrice. So why than was I so convinced? so enraged? so quick to dismiss all I knew? I don’t understand that. I heard her voice and it instantly shifted all that nonsense racing in my mind. That quick. I felt bad for being so easily lead astray. If there is one thing I know in this chaotic world it is Virgil. I sat there and listened. I knew she was right, she of all people knows me so well. I was lost until she shed light on where I was at.
I’m just not sure why I am so out of sorts. So quickly shifted from one place to another, alternating with this disconnected state. None of it makes any sense to me. How can my thoughts be so disorganized, and way off base? I’m just confused. I just can’t find my footing. But I’m not trying to be difficult, or nasty. I’m just not quite sure why I reacted that way, or why I had such doubt. I’m left shaking my head.

Where are you sleep? I have so much to do tomorrow…It just isn’t here tonight. I’m exhausted, but sleep is elusive. Gone to wherever the rest of me has gone.

Where am I? there is just nothing. no feelings, no nothing. I’m not even sure I could feel physical pain at this point. I’m just gone. I just went thru the motions today. Had a major meeting with a potential donor, acted the part, but felt as if I were watching myself from afar. I can’t remember feeling quite like this. There is always some emotion, some reaction. Frustration or anger. Something. This is a void. Polo, my weekly fun and adrenaline rush felt like nothing at all, didn’t matter if it was a good play, or not. I just could not find any tether. I don’t know what is the matter with me. I just want to find my way home, but even that I wonder. If I could just stay lost here nothing would frustrate and anger me. Is lost good? I don’t think so, since it feels a bit dark and sinister, or maybe eerie is a better word. It isn’t a happy lost.

I just don’t understand.

What do you think of when someone asks do you feel safe? Do you think about the locks on your doors? or the neighborhood you reside in? maybe the course of your life and its trajectory? or it may speak to your mindset? is your mind shrouded in dark violent thoughts? All of these things do alter your sense of safety. A nice house in a gated community might give you a strong sense of security. Those locks on your doors, do they bar entry to those not welcome? But what of your life and its trajectory? Has it been interrupted by violence? maybe more than once. What then? Do those locks on your doors mean much? Maybe not, probably not. To those of us that have learned such a cruel and violent lesson, one thing stands out- nowhere is safe. Not a single place on god’s green earth is safe. Not behind bars, or locks, or in the wilderness. Violence and pain is just a blink away. We can delude ourselves into thinking not us, not here, not now, but someday it will come calling and the delusions washed away with blood. Your blood. Your foolish naive blood. What is left is just a shell of who you were. That confidence and faith in life, well it just evaporates into thin air. What happens when you are just a child, full of joy and optimism? The world stretching out before you, a wonderous tableau. Suddenly gone. No wonder, only shadows and fears. Behind every corner there might be disaster, or there might be nothing. You question everything. Nothing seems real. Only the terror. That is all to real. It devours you from the inside out. Gnawing away, day after month after year. You finally suppress it enough to try to live a normal life, and WHAM you missed the threat. Didn’t see it coming. Stupid, so damn stupid. Why didn’t you see it? How could you be so fucking stupid? Retreat. Again life becomes about obsessive wariness, and endless fear. A smell, or a sound sends your heart racing beyond its capacity. Surely your chest will explode. It can’t possibly go on like that. But it does, along with it the icy sweat and chills. Eyes scanning constantly looking for the threat that is coming. But it doesn’t come. Your heart slowly settles back into your chest, and the sweat dries. The searing pain in your head from such acute vigilance takes a bit longer to subside, but eventually it does. Night becomes endless and horrific. There is no sleep. There is no way to keep watch, no sleep. must watch always. Every creak, every sound a possible threat. Exhaustion tugs hard and lulls you into submission only to be thrown back by fear and vigilance. must watch always. no sleep. only waiting and watching. Finally dawn comes silently painting the corners of the still black window panes. Light is coming, sleep is okay. But is it? There is no peace in that restless nightmare filled sleep. Just violence and fear. running and running. The world coming undone dropping to pieces as small as pixels. disintegration. Complete destruction, not even a soul left. Night after night. It never gets better. The days grow worse, as the exhaustion starts warping the mind. Are those people in the windows? was that sidewalk shimmering like the ocean shore. The tired mind coming apart, but desperately fighting to stay alert. Sadly it never holds up. It just can’t remain in that endless loop. Gradually life starts to come together. Nights are filled with sleep. You stop looking at every person carefully checking their body language and affect. Trying hard to profile before they ever have a chance to get too close. Holding life and people at arm’s length. Somehow you always fall back. Get complacent. Get sloppy. Stop looking around quite so hard. I never saw it coming. I didn’t sense the danger. Maybe my mind was so exhausted after years of vigilance. Had it just plain given up? Or had my brain finally decided I was just another piece of shit discarded, to be used as anyone pleased.
Sitting in session today my mind played back over all those endless nights, and the fear. The terror of bending beneath someone else’s desire. That moment when the reality of having no control whatsoever. The only option left was to hold still and pray it ended. How many countless times in my life have I been in that position. trying so hard to stay still, not even breathing. Hoping it would be over soon, that the pain just would not last, but knowing in my heart that it would go on for far longer than it took that night. Knowing it would fire up that dizzying loop of vigilance and fear. To have to live that marrow leaching existence. You wonder why I am who I am, or why my sorrow runs so deep? Live it. Not once, but the countless times in this almost 40 years of life. Guess it might be easy to sit back and say it is hopeless. Believe me, I often do. Is there a way to mend a spirit so throughly shredded and left to shrivel. Are the brief glimpses of promise and hope enough to sustain the doubt and fear? You asked me why the gun, and that it wasn’t understandable. Try to recreate the years I have lived thru, the so-called trauma timeline. It was a sad task. To start at just past toddler age, just beginning to seek out the world outside myself. Only to grow up in a house torn by a war between two people I loved. To try to make sense of what was happening and why my world was coming apart, and why so much hate. I never had the chance to make sense of it. That plane carrying my father fell from the sky that late summer day. Destroying anything familiar I knew and loved. A monster stood in the place once occupied by my father. How can an 8 year old mind make sense of that? It doesn’t. Long months passed before he left the hospital and I was once again reunited with him, though now I had to watch the looks of horror and the whispers and stares that followed him wherever he went. His disfigurement so severe children would run in fear and hide behind their parents. that was what I learned to ignore. Overnight I lost my mother, she took flight, unable to cope with the injuries and the anger with my father. I was left in the care of whichever nurse, or caretaker was with my father. He left over and over to have surgeries, I never knew if he would return, or if I would be left alone. I was alone anyhow. He was in pain, lost and medicated. Often enraged. Our lives were in shambles. A good thing happened in my finding horses, but it came with a cost. I didn’t know of sex, or of predators. I didn’t sense the danger. I was just a lost kid, desperate for affection from anyone. Learned quick that affection came with pain as he bent me over that mattress to sodomize me. I should have learned a lesson, but I was fine with the pain as long as someone payed attention. Anyone. It was okay to sacrifice my little body, if only someone came close and wanted me. I can’t remember who , but in that same time period there was continued sexual encounters, either with that same guy, or another, but I can’t put a face to him. Only the sensations and the pain, but the closeness. Wasn’t long before my brother raped me that lonely night in the empty farmhouse. I walked away from that fearful and damaged. Years passed until I got to high school and a pair of handcuffs taught me a brutal lesson in what happens when you underestimate and let a man get the wrong idea. But by then I had found a way to disappear. It still hurt, my body felt every moment, every movement of him over me, but my brain had learned to disconnected, as it had all those years before. I left for school and found the depths of despair, and the heights of true love. Despair won out. I grew to know a mind that only wanted me dead. Lost myself in a strange haze of self destruction. Consumed only with the goal of ending my life. I learned they could and would tie you down and drug you only to be left alone with only the smell of your own urine and the terror of the powerlessness. I knew what alone felt like, but I had never had someone tie me down and lock the door. They said I was a lost cause, and to throw away the key. I learned that I was crazy like all these other lost souls surrounding me on the locked unit. A change of hospital and a piece of paper explaining what I was. I raged. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t like all these other people. I wanted out. I tried to fit in, but I couldn’t read these people. I didn’t understand the unpredictability. I didn’t understand the little handful of pills they kept asking me to take. I didn’t read the threat. But there he was in the dark. This large black man in my room. His rank breath on me, and his rough violent fingers in me. I never had a chance. I was locked it. There was no escape. There was nothing safe about being behind locked doors, or being watched by staff. It did not matter. There was no safe. I was second guessed and misunderstood. Months went by behind those high brick walls and stately grounds. I had only one option, lay prostrate at their demands or I would waste away there. I had hardly found myself settled in life outside. My life had started to normalize when I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. A rapist waited just beyond my garden fence. The terror returned to my life. That powerless sick feeling when stillness overtakes your panicked mind because there was no hope. I lay beneath that drunk as he pinned me to my bed. I inhaled his stench. I was there again, at the mercy of another person. But it wasn’t the worst part, the trial that happened was far worse. The questioning of my veracity, of my sanity or my value as a witness. How could I, a mental patient, a nut case, possibly be of any value. He walked with a slap on the wrist, only to go on to rape other women. Maybe if I’d been a better witness he might never of had that chance. Life went on, until we got up here. It all changed. My life shifted like tectonic plates. Moods shifting rapidly, depression deepening into a dark abyss over and over. Hospital visits repeated, drugs and more drugs. My life lost purpose. It was only about treatment and finding a way to subdue the shitstorm in my brain. more drugs and more hospital visits, each carving away a little piece of what was left of my damaged self. The repeated powerless state, being treated like a child not to be trusted with the cookie jar, only it wasn’t a cookie jar- it was my life. a life I could care less about. Laying on their tables while they drugged me and ran electricity thru my skull obliterating memories I may have wanted to keep, if only I knew what they were. reducing me to a child. Finding my way back toward some sense of power and control. Some mastery as I charged around that muddy course in October. This blog allowing me a place to explore the recesses in my mind untouched for years. I thought I might have a chance. Beatrice gave me hope. I worked each week. I started, slowly, but surely to find my footing. But I was a fool to believe it. Not even a month ago, I found crazy. I found a disconnect with the here and now and I found a gun, my gun. that precious powerful piece of steel. I lost it and put her to my skull. In that moment I was so far from rational, so out of control with no sense of how I got there. I am so sorry for all I have done, and all I have experienced. I have been used, abused, harmed and decimated. But I have also harmed and caused great pain. I lost my only hope of protecting myself because of my god damn useless mind. She was here to help me, not harm me. How fucking hard is that. But I lost that, she is gone now. I am so lost. I feel as broken now as I ever have. It wasn’t some frustrated teenager tearing apart my tiny body this time, instead it was my own head rendering me powerless. It may not have left me raped, but it left me feeling alone and shaken. Vigilant and rocked by violent dreams all the same.
So there it is, the trauma timeline. I am sure there are others left out, lost in the mayhem of all the others. The little things that got lost amongst the massive ones that rocked my world. I doubt I will ever overcome all of that. It just seems so insurmountable, so very horrible. I don’t want pity, or a head shake of I can’t imagine, or you are so strong for having made it thru all that. No, I don’t want that. I just want to be left alone to drift in my own little hell. There is no safe. Not here on this earth, not in this life. Life is just a waiting game. Waiting for the next horror and the next moment when it becomes all to real just how powerless we all are. There is no heaven and hell in the afterlife. There might be a heaven, but hell exists right here all around us, every fucking day of our lives.

There he stood humble and clearly uncomfortable. He was here to apologize. My partner and I stood before him searching for the words to make this situation slightly more comfortable for all of us. I didn’t know what to say and neither did she. We stood listening. I don’t really know if it could have been more uncomfortable. Is there a way words can ever possibly be enough? I guess they are a place to start. I’m left restless and adrift. Finding solid ground this week seems pretty impossible. It is as if the universe has sent all these roadblocks to create and incredibly difficult time. Not sure what I did to deserve this one. There are no answers, just these blockades to find a way around or over. I don’t know how I feel right now. The disconnect is immense. Strangely I dreamt of the man who assaulted me last night, it is like my brain his grabbing ahold of ever trauma, I’m not sure why. What do they have to do with anything now? The only connection I can make would be the gun episode is triggering off some of that long-buried ptsd. my brain is making connections out of thin air, often at night in my dreams. It takes some real effort to draw the lines but I guess the gun- the hospital- watching the patients around me get ECT- the big guy having a meltdown and needing to be held down and drugged- all the memories it unleashed the 20 year old completely out of control and suicidal, impulsive beyond measure- the bloodshed in my dreams-the return home-losing the dog-the school shooting-owning the same exact gun-it is just a strange wandering road in my mind But it is still finding a way. Why this week, of all weeks my brother chooses to apologize is just beyond me. This all just borders on bizarre. I understand how each of these experiences is lighting up the neural pathways long left sleeping in my head. The flight response makes sense, not that it is unsafe here in my house, but unsafe in my head as it processes all this input. It is never an easy road, and there are always reminders of long hidden skeletons. They never ever remain hidden. There is always a chance of some reminder. I know now looking back over the weeks what some of them are, I just can’t seem to stop the landmines I keep walking into.

I’ll go play some polo and hope to get my feet back on the ground.