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.

FUCK Cancer! Fuck It In The EAR! I’m DONE Watching This Monster Hurt People I Love

Cancer is the one motherfucker that never clocks out. It doesn’t care how good you are, how careful you’ve been, how much you’ve already survived. It just shows up like a goddam wrecking ball and dares you to pretend this is normal. I’m fucking sick of it. I’m sick of watching people I love get blindsided by a piece of shit disease that feels like it’s everywhere, all the time, creeping into every family like some kind of outrageous cosmic joke.

We talk about cancer like it’s a statistic, like it’s a chart, like it’s a ribbon color. But when it hits your circle, it’s not a number, it’s a gut punch. It’s fear. It’s rage. It’s the helplessness of knowing that even with all our medical advances of the last motherfucking century, all our research, all our awareness campaigns, this thing still keeps taking swings at the people who deserve it the least.

And I’m tired. Tired of pretending to be calm. Tired of acting like this is just part of life. Tired of watching strong, brilliant, irreplaceable people get dragged into a fight they never fucking asked for...

Mogen David's for Donna Zentangle

 

Reblogging Marc-Anthony Macon, open letter to conservatives

 

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 3 OR SO CONSERVATIVES THAT STILL FOLLOW ME 

[TLDR: I am asking if you are lonely and if we can help you a bit with that.]...

Racism in EVERYONE (especially ourselves), must be stamped out.

I thought I had erased all vestiges of racial prejudice from my brain, but I was wrong. Boy howdy, was I wrong. Turns out that I still have some FILTHY spots in myself that need major scrubbing and purifying.

I was watching Midnight Oil's video for Beds Are Burning. Much of it takes place in a town out in the desert, where the people are out having a good time dancing to the band's music in the street.

And there are these two girls, maybe 16 or 17 years old, absolutely stunningly beautiful in an 80s kind of way, and I said to myself: "I did not know that Indigenous People in Oz could be so attractive."

And I immediately facepalmed in disgust. That came out of fucking NOWHERE and broadsided me.

We may think we are the wokest of the woke, but depending on the culture when we were coming up, we may be carrying some really REALLY deep prejudices that need to be eradicated.

Boy am I triggered

So the death of Dilbert creator and infamous racist pig, Scott Adams, from prostate cancer this week has poked some of my buttons.

My Dad was a good man, but he was a little too damn much of a hippie. When he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, his urologist told him that removal of his bladder would get it all, and he would live a long life. Then the urologist explained that the prostate goes out with the bladder, and that's the end of the sex life.

My father was 38 when he was diagnosed. He had an active social and dating and sex life. Losing the ability to have intercourse would have really been devastating to him. So he told the doctor, let's do mild chemo, and I'm gonna do laetrile and the nothing but wheat grass juice diet, and visualizing the cancer going away and all will be well.

But all was not well. After a couple of years, his cancer was down to a small spot of atypia, due, no doubt, to the mild chemotherapy. So very "intelligently" he stopped the chemo and continued with the quackery.

Seven months later, the cancer had run wild in his body. All of his organs, and his bones.

Scott Adams was told he had early state prostate cancer. He opted for, of all fucking things, ivermectin. He gambled and lost, just like my dad.

And I am reminded once again of how dangerous "alternative/holistic medicine" is.

Folks, laetrile is poison and does nothing. The baked potato diet will bore you to tears. The wheat grass juice only diet will turn you into a skeleton and weaken you so you die faster. Vizualization is soothing and helps the psyche, but it does not cure cancer. And if ANYBODY suggests bloodroot to you, kick them out of the house with prejudice.

And horse wormer will not cure cancer, either.

Got cancer? Go to a DOCTOR!

That closet has several thick oak doors, and it SUCKS!

 I wish my daughter felt safe to be herself, but outside the house, it's rural Texas out there, and it ain't safe. It ain't safe at all in this part of Texas to be visibly trans. If you don't "pass", you best stay presenting what your birth determination says you should dress like. And Lis does not pass. She's beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but even if she dressed as a girl usually dresses, they would spot her and make her life hell. Or make her life... NOT. Texas.

I wish she could afford to move to at least Austin, but on less than $800 a month income (disability) that ain't happening. At least there's liberals there. 😛 But ideally, I would see her in the San Francisco Bay Area, with her unusual sibling, my 34 year old estranged kid. However, I think those two would really be good for each other. And Lis would be a lot safer. Sadly, I can't say "safe". Nowhere seems to be all that safe for trans folks. Some places are better than others, but none of them are wondefully safe.

If you're trans, a lot of the world paints a target on your face and on your heart. And that just sucks so damn hard. If you don't feel safe, then do what you are able to do in order to stay safe. And safe also includes safe within yourself, not hurting yourself by staying hidden, if it's making you absolutely miserable.

It's making Lis miserable, and I want to help her and I don't know what the hell to do. I've told her that if she wants to dress pretty around the house, even if she doesn't want to dress that way in downtown Fort Worth, she is more than welcome to. I've offered to show her ways to braid her long hair. When she came out to me and Sam, I took her to get her ears pierced. I just don't know what the hell to do to be more supportive of her and help her be happier. It hurts, to see her moping and moping and rarely smiling. She was such a happy go lucky kid.

If wishes were fishes, then beggars would ride, as I always told the kids when they wanted the impossible to attain, like the latest most brand new gaming console that can't be had for love nor money, and even if you found one, it would be $750 and you can not spend that on games.

Reblogging Stacie Rose - It's about power

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about trans girls in girls’ sports.

Let’s stop pretending this is a good-faith debate.

The political right is openly demanding that two opposite things be true at the same time, and they don’t even care anymore if anyone notices.

Arachnophobia

I am a major arachnophobe. Show me a spider, I show you a woman having a panic attack, whimpering and staying in the center of the bed for safety from spider fangs. I am particularly terrified of tarantulas, the big hairy bastards.

Here in north Texas out in the boonies, we get one sneaking in the house occasionally. I generally freak out until my husband catches it and removes it from my house. But they're NOTHING compared to the opossum who somehow got in and spread our full trashcan all over the place. But the worst was that fucking giant white and yellow snake, about four feet long and rather girthy that it took two healthy teenage boys to lift from the top shelf of my pantry, and then carry out of the house.

I do not like living in a place where the wildlife just feels like it can come in and set up housekeeping. I fully expect to wake up one day and see a damn coyote curled up on the big dog bed. Or maybe a bobcat snoring on the couch.

Well, at least its not giant flying cockroaches, like in San Antonio.

Not a thankful day for First Nations peoples

I am observing a day of remembrance and mourning for our land's Native Americans. Her first stewards, who loved her, and the cultures we destroyed and women and children and innocents we slaughtered so we could steal their homes and colonize, pollute, and desecrate.

Never forget. It was theirs and we stole it. It belonged to the Choctaw and the Blackfoot and the Nez Perce and the Apache and the Mohican and the Aztec and Inca and Maya and the Inuit and the Miq Maq and so many beautiful civilized nations.

We should really clean it the fuck up and give it back.

"The time has come

To say fair's fair

To pay the rent

To pay our share

The time has come

A fact's a fact

It belongs to them

Let's give it back.."

-Midnight Oil, Beds Are Burning, about the destruction of Australian aboriginal cultures, but it suits our US and south and north of the the border massacres as well.

It is time to shout out the truth.

 

Thank you, Deb Colburn, owner of Nomad, Cambridge and pretentiousl;y fake 79 year old hipster with the screaming fire engine red hair, the stupid glasses, and the designer dogs, for showing me a complete tour of your naked vagina, clitoris included, when I was five and you were 21, and encouraging me to hold and rub your boyfriend's penis and testicles when I was seven and you were 23 or 24. For breaking wooden spoons on my ass. For telling everybody I was a crazy liar so that they didn't believe me when I told them what you were doing to me.

For driving a wedge between me and my sister, and my father. For driving my mother away, then abandoning us when you had your own kid.

I hope you die bleeding painfully from your asshole.

I think I'll send this letter to the Cambridge Chronicle, Boston Globe, and WBZ news.

Bet you voted for Trump, too. Cunt.

Shit is going to get real, Deb. I won't hurt you or encourage people to. I'll just drive you batshit crazy.

I got your name written here in a Rose Tattoo..

I wanted to get my husband's name tattooed on, but he was really against the idea. So I got a rose, to commemorate the day we fell in love, in the San Mateo Rose Garden in California, surrounded by what we call Fire Roses (red roses that changed in a gradient to yellow at the petal tips)...

Does it get any cuter?

 

NOPE! :)

War Crimes Against Children

 

A father carries the corpse of his 18 month old daughter - 18 months

My Jewish friends are going to block me, I'm sure.

What's going on over there is fucking awful. Yes, Hamas has committed atrocities. Yes, they took hostages. Yes, they have killed people.

Meanwhile, 6 Israeli children have died in this conflict, and that is fucking HORRIBLE! It is it's fucking horrible and horrifying and terrible and should have never happened. And there is NO excuse for the deaths of children in a conflict.

Meanwhile, we have this, from Save the Children (follow link):

Book Review: The Outsiders, by SE Hinton

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have you ever read a book that changed your life?

For me, it was this book, which I first read when I was fourteen years old, over forty years ago.

Ponyboy Curtis lives with his two brothers, Darry and Sodapop, in Oklahoma, on the wrong side of the tracks. Their parents died in a car accident some time prior to the events of the book, and Darry is struggling to hold what's left of the family together, while working as a roofer.

Not Bob Thinks Cubby Makes An Excellent Pillow!

 

SIgns of Romance Scammers

Disclaimer: A fair bit of this was written by Microsoft Copilot AI  (the warning signs), but the information is solid. A fair bit of it is also by me. It is a mixture, and it is worth reading if you have an online presence.

Romance scammers aren’t looking for love; they’re hunting for vulnerability wrapped in hope. These digital con artists craft fake personas, often charming, successful, and conveniently far away, and deploy them across dating apps, social media platforms, and even gaming communities. Their goal isn’t connection; it’s control. Once they’ve hooked a target emotionally, they pivot to manipulation, often spinning elaborate tales of emergency, tragedy, or opportunity that require urgent financial help.

Scammers profile potential victims with surgical precision. They look for signs of loneliness, recent loss, or emotional openness. Public posts, dating bios, and comment threads become reconnaissance zones. Widowed, divorced, or newly single individuals, especially those expressing a desire for companionship, are prime targets. The scammer’s playbook is adaptive: they mirror interests, mimic emotional cadence, and escalate intimacy fast, all while steering the conversation away from video calls or in-person meetings.

In this article, we discuss warning signs of romance scammers, and how to avoid them.

There are puns, and then there are bad puns.. but I repeat myself...

 

My mathematician husband just told me that I am his Abacus of Love... (look inside if you dare!)

Keoni's Mele

Uncle Jack and Auntie Cathe

I wrote this piece around 2K, about my Uncle Jack. He has been a huge influence in my life, and is one of the people I love most on this planet. He's a musician, philosopher, student of life, and he is my beloved uncle and Godfather...

Jericho - A Poem

 

This is a poem I wrote about 25 years ago, as I was making early breakthroughs in handling my life and my mental health...