It all started…
When I was little girl I used to love to paint. Somewhere around my puberty years I've decided not to do it anymore, it was just too painful, and my self-esteem was so low that I stopped myself.
After my first hospitalization everything changed.
That was the first time in my life where I was forced to face myself, no distractions. As soon as I picked up that brush I felt love and compassion for myself, what and how it was to really be me and in peace.
This was the first drawing that I made, one of the three wise monkeys, the one that doesn't want to see no evil...just like was feeling.
I didn't understand what was going on with me, and was really scared. I could heard voices in my head, I thought that people were out to get me, and that psychosis made everything so real! Every sound, face, object, and setting...it was unreal!
That's when the second monkey came up: I didn't wanted to hear no evil.
I never made the third one (speak no evil), I don't know why...I'm guessing that it didn't represent me, I was already not talking!
Sometimes I get really emotional when I look at old stuff, but I'm glad that I can now look at it without feeling the amount of pain and loneliness that I felt at that time. It gives me another point of view on what I remember to be real and what really was.
Has any of you ever experienced something like that?
Think backwards to go forwards: The root of the problem, not the consequence.
I painted this painting while I was going through a very difficult period of my life: I had just had a manic psychosis, and I was diagnosed as bipolar type 1. I knew nothing about bipolar, if not that it was a bad thing, to be ashamed of, that would bring me difficulties and medication for the rest of my life.
This painting has all the answers for me: think back to all the things that I forgot and didn't know about myself and my family history. It runs in my blood, it was destined to be like that, I was just "the lucky chosen one".
Can you imagine the feeling of getting a disease or a side effect of a medication that only happens to the 0,01% of the population? Well, that's me, all the time.
I've learned to live with my psychosis and panic attacks, so much, that I made the part of my usual routine, it's like breathing to me. If I knew at a younger age; If I would have learned to talk about my feelings instead of eating them, or yelling them out...it's a pointless conversation, but I remember feeling always this way.
Now that I recognize it, maybe I can change it...maybe through therapy; maybe through talking about it, and I hope that my stories will live forever to help young people (and not) that struggle with this. It is a constant war inside myself and my head; a war that I'm preparing to fight and win. Every. Single. Day.
My mood swings change quite often, and it's really hard on the people that love me, I see and sense that; what saves me is that they don't make me feel bad about being how I am, and my communication got much better now that I'm understood.
That's why I go forwards. Being how I am isn't the problem, I didn't choose that. But the way how people react to it and make me feel allows me to grow daily as a person and as a human being. I'm blessed to have a great support system around me, my angels, ready to help and fight for me and with me at any time.
I forget most things while I'm psychotic, so they help me remember, add the missing pieces to my puzzle and yes, fight with me to make me take the medication that I so hate.
While being manic to me, at that moment, feels like the only option to be able to survive, even though I'm slowly killing myself at the same time (not eating and sleeping for example).
I had a recent crisis and I'll share the video with you, soon. I want people to not be afraid of someone struggling, because trust me, I didn't want to kill anyone but myself, in what I thought was "dying to save the world".
I realize that I can't talk for all the psychotic people outside there, but we all need two things: to be listened to and understood.
So please, think about that while you're reading/watching or listening to these type of things, because I've been giving you my realest, raw self, and that ain't easy. No one wants to be seen at their worse, or as the weirdo next door...
But if it makes a small difference towards a world without stigma, well...I can die happily (no, I'm good, it's a joke, I always make fun of myself and dark jokes...you'll get to know me better with time).
P.s. coming soon: - Video
- Podcast with my Angels