to do list – a poem

6:00 am – continue lying in bed awake from the previous night   7:00 – get up and smoke   7:05 – take two lithium pills, two antidepressants, one antipsychotic, and one pill for your stomach   7:06 – return to bed   7:07 – think of the next poem to write, don’t think too

please don’t tell me to be grateful – a poem

you tell me that i should be grateful  you have so much to be grateful for  you tell me i should be grateful  and i know somewhere in my heart that you are right  yet i bristle when you say those words  do you understand what you’re saying?  you are at once minimizing my current

quiz: how to tell if your hypomanic – a poem

1. is your heart beating fast, like, real fast? 2. do you have so much energy that you find it hard sitting still, standing still, standing? 3. do you find yourself hilarious, everything that you say, absolutely hilarious? 4. do you have racing thoughts, racing, a mile a minute racing? 5. are your muscles twitching,

Preparing for the Psych Ward

Preparing for a stay in a psychiatric hospital isn’t just like packing for a vacation. Preparing for the psych ward is more a mental than material procedure. One has to steel themselves for an extraordinary, as in abnormal, place. The ward can be a place of recovery and likewise a place of trauma. We have

Toxic Positivity

I’ve read a few good blog posts recently about the phenomenon of “toxic positivity,” so I figured I would weigh in on the subject. In essence this is a follow-up to a post I wrote awhile ago (see Mental Illness and Advice). I didn’t yet have the name for the kinds of mental health advice