There’s a tingling on my back that comes and goes; sometimes it moves to the right side of my head. My mind tells me it is a giant spider, but I just laugh and assume it is a side effect of my medication.

I’ve been making a lot of art; I have three pieces in different stages of completion, but none of them are hitting a nerve the way I want them to. They haven’t pulled me in and yanked me through the ringer, which is the process that makes me feel most alive. It’s all experimentation, and one day something will arise that makes me bond with it, be despondent because of it, or fall in love with it’s imagery. I just have to show up and do the work, and it will eventually find it’s way to me.

I don’t feel I’ve reached the finish line of my bipolar mixed state -I am at the tail end of it though, I can see that. Intrusive thoughts are almost gone. But it’s difficult. A card catalogue of thoughts present themselves to my mind. My response either gives them power or weakens their resolve. But they stay. The images and thoughts live on, and I know from past experience that time is what it takes. Eventually they don’t have power over me. People say I can replace each negative image with a more positive one. It works sometimes, I just have to remind myself to do it.

People are disappearing. I make an effort to feel more connected to those that are still here. I want to be emersed in the love that is here for me now. I have learned that it is okay to teeter between the dead and the living. I don’t need permission to miss someone who is gone, I just have to feel the loss as it presents itself in the moment, and know that I am processing what that feels like. How deep it runs, and how grateful I can feel to have an experience in which someone touched me so deeply. It’s okay to mourn, and cry, and express my love through creativity. I am astonished to know that I ever felt I needed permission. Just take it, I think. Take the love, the loss, the living, and carry them with me on the journey to getting well. I am recovering, and it takes energy, dedication, persistence, and reaching out to others. It’s not a solitary process, so reach out, I tell myself. I am so fortunate to have people that reach back.