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When Bipolar Disorder Takes Another Life, The Stigma Should Be What Dies Next

 

Image courtesy Unsplash.Com - work of Paolo Nicolello

Robert Carradine died by suicide today after a long fight with bipolar disorder. The news hit me harder than I expected. Not because I knew him personally, but because I know the illness that took him. I know what it feels like when your own brain turns into a battlefield. I know what it feels like to lose the fight for a moment and still be here to talk about it. I have been there. I have survived it. And I am tired of pretending that bipolar disorder is anything other than a medical condition that deserves compassion and treatment.

Every time someone with bipolar disorder or another mental illness dies, the world reacts with shock. People ask how it could happen. People whisper. People speculate. But very few people talk about the truth. Bipolar disorder is not a character flaw. It is not a weakness. It is not a failure of willpower. It is a brain chemistry disorder that can be brutal, unpredictable, and exhausting. It deserves the same seriousness and empathy we give to heart disease or cancer or any other life threatening condition.

But that is not how society treats it.

Instead, people with bipolar disorder get labeled as unstable or dramatic or dangerous. We get jokes made at our expense. We get told to calm down or get over it. We get treated like our illness is a personality problem instead of a medical one. And when someone dies, the stigma gets louder instead of quieter.

The truth is simple. People do not die from bipolar disorder because they are weak. They die because the illness is strong. They die because the stigma keeps people silent. They die because too many people are afraid to ask for help or afraid they will be judged if they do. They die because society still treats mental illness like a moral issue instead of a medical one.

I am bipolar. I have attempted suicide in the past. I am not ashamed of that. I am not hiding it. I am not pretending it did not happen. I survived because I got support, treatment, and time. I survived because people showed me empathy instead of fear. I survived because I was lucky. Not everyone gets that chance.

If we want fewer deaths, the stigma has to go. The shame has to go. The silence has to go. We need to talk about bipolar disorder the same way we talk about any other chronic illness. We need to stop treating people like they are broken or dangerous. We need to stop acting like mental illness is a moral failing.

Robert Carradine deserved better. Everyone fighting this illness deserves better. And the only way we get there is by telling the truth. Bipolar disorder is real. It is medical. It is treatable. And the people who live with it deserve compassion, not judgment.

The stigma should be what dies next.

SCOTUS Overturns Trump’s Tariffs and Trump Loses His Mind About It

SCOTUS finally did what everyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew was coming. They looked at Trump’s tariff stunt, checked it against the Constitution, and said no. Not maybe. Not sort of. Not later. Just fucking NO!

According to the reporting, the ruling was simple. A president does not get to rewrite trade law because he feels like playing Tough Motherfucker. Congress did not authorize the kind of free for all Trump tried to pull. The Court reminded everyone that presidential power has fucking limits. That is their goddam job. That is the whole point of the fucking judiciary.

And Trump reacted exactly how he always reacts when someone refuses to kiss the friggin' ring...

Spammers should have to shampoo my crotch

Fee fie foe fammer, boy I hate a spammer!

The other day I put a contact form on the blog. Thought it might be a good idea, ya know?

Tonight, I got about a dozen emails that were clearly from spambots.

Fucking hell. Assholes wreck everything.

Who has time to be bored? Not me!

Today was not really an art day. I diddled around with the Gimp for about an hour, then my writing muse slapped me upside my head. I have written six articles for my blog today about all kinds of things:

• Impeaching Trump 
• Chicago and Music being in my bones
• A bit about a portmanteued proverb I love 
• One about nicotine addiction
• One about god, or the idea of god, or whatever
• And this one, which only kind of counts

It was a productive day.

I really am an eclectic freak. Playing uke and recorder, doing digital art and zentangle and making jewelry, and writing from my gut. Between all that, I talk to people, make new friends, share a gazillion memes, play computer games, and more. And when I go to bed, I read for at least an hour before turning out the light.

I don't have time to be bored. Considering that I'm basically housebound and can't really leave my bedroom due to the difficulty involved in hauling my carcass from room to room, my life is incredibly rich and full.

I am a very fortunate old crone.

If There Is a God, Explain This

I have started to wonder if maybe I believe in something bigger than me. Not in the churchy, hymn and halo way, but in the quiet, exhausted way you reach for a blanket when the world feels too sharp. Sometimes the idea of a god is comforting. Not because I am convinced, but because the alternative is feeling like I am free falling through a universe that does not care if I land...

The Cravings Never Really End

Nicotine Is Insidious.

I just spent five stupid minutes going full tornado, ripping through my desk like I was searching for state secrets. Lifting papers, opening drawers, rifling like a woman possessed.

Looking for my fucking cigarettes.

My cigarettes.

I quit smoking two years and five weeks ago.  

There is no nicotine in this house.  

There has not been for a long damn time.

And yet my brain still tried to run the old script:  

"Quick! Check under that pile of junk mail! Maybe Past You stashed a pack for Future You, like some deranged nicotine Easter Bunny!"

D'OH.

Nicotine is a sneaky little bastard. It shows up at the weirdest moments, taps you on the shoulder, and whispers, "Hey... remember how good we were together?" 

And I swear, for about ten seconds, or ten minutes depending on how stressed I am, I would absolutely throw hands for a smoke.

But here is the thing:  

I am not losing this fight.  

Not today, not ever.
Never fucking EVER!

Cigarettes are banned from this house like cursed artifacts. My brother, who still smokes, has to keep his pack in the car and trek a hundred feet to the designated exile chair. That is the rule. That is the boundary. That is how I keep myself safe.

I am stealing a line from my friend and webqueen, Maggie:  

I am not an ex smoker.  

I am a smoker in recovery.

And recovery is a permanent condition, but so is my stubbornness.

Nicotine can try me, but it is not getting back in. Fuck that.

Proverbs and Portmanteaus

 

Years ago, I intentionally combined two sayings into one portmanteau proverb:

If wishes were fishes, then beggars would ride.

A combo of "If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets", and "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride".

I say it a lot, so much so that my kids use it frequently.

Chicago: Where the Music Took Hold - TWICE

I am willing to bet good money that the first music I ever heard was my mother singing to me in Chicago, the city where I was born and where I lived for the first three months of my life before we moved to Boston. 

The year I was eleven, life went pretty cattywumpus. I'd been living with my mother for the previous year, and that pretty much imploded due to my special needs as an undiagnosed bipolar person. I returned to my father's home, and since he was in the middle of relocating across town and setting up housekeeping, he asked his mom, my Gramma Mary, if I could come to Chicago and stay with her for a month or two. Gramma said yes...

Impeach and CONVICT Trump NOW!

 

There is a point where a country either wakes up or sleepwalks straight off a cliff. People keep acting like this is just another news cycle, another round of political noise,or another thing to scroll past on the way to cat videos and dinner plans. But this isn't background static. This is the fire alarm blaring at full volume while half the country pretends it's a ringtone. We're living inside an emergency, and the refusal to name it is part of the emergency.

Because this is not about one moment, one headline, or one outrageous quote. It's an accumulation, a pattern, the relentless grinding erosion of guardrails and basic expectations of leadership. Every time something crosses a line, the line gets redrawn a little further out, and people shrug a little harder, and the whole thing becomes a little more normal and accepted...