A Letter to The Mother Who Wasn't

Dear Cathy,

I'm not sure there is a point to writing to the dead, but I am going to do it anyhow. For me. Because I don't live in your shadow anymore. I do this right after taking a handful of medication, PRESCRIBED TO ME BY A DOCTOR, for all the messed up shit my genes carry. I still remember the day you cursed me, and how I shrugged it off as just another asshole thing you said while high...

"One day, you are going to hurt the way I do."

For once, you actually were telling the truth. Like you, I have mental illness. Like you, I have physical ones too. Ones I thought you were lying about, because more then half the time you DID lie about your problems. How many days did you sit my sister and I down on the end of your bed and tell us you were going to die? You had it all figured out too, like death was something you just circled on a questionnaire. Today I choose Death. Check mark. Simple as that.

I know better now. I know the horror and despair of death. I know the helplessness and the fear. I know all the terrible and even beautiful parts of death. I think about death and my relationship with it every time I process bones for art. I think about it every time I walk through a grave yard. I know how close it is. But I also know that choosing death isn't as simple as a check mark.

You just made it sound that way.

My pill jar isn't a 20 sided, spinning container of Russian roulette. It has my day and nighttime pills marked off, and that's it. I could barely handle looking at my pill jar when I first got it, because it reminded me of you. Watching you spin your pill jar until you got the section you wanted, and see you dump a pile of pills into your hand then into your mouth. Dry. Like a fucking pro. You did this several times a day. You were courting death, and it wasn't romantic. There was no beauty in what you did. And it was the same action you pulled when they took you to Niagara Falls. My sister and Grandmother didn't know you were done with life, and sadly, my Grandmother didn't care. You were done. You didn't want to try, didn't want a second chance, and sure as hell didn't want to ever give my sister or I the chance to be your family.

So now I have to carry around the shadows of all that transpired between us. All the things left unsaid. All the bullshit and lies, and all the abuse you refused to knowledge happening under your roof. I went fucking mad recently and no one really blamed me. Anyone close to me knows what I have endured. Knows about the "drug house" and the life you cultivated for my sister and I. How I protected her many times from predators. How I can't even sleep at night like a normal person because people raped and beat me when I was vulnerable at night. The beatings sometimes were from you. You were terrifying when high. You switched personalities, and the one I knew as my mother would be replaced by a vicious beast. The beast wasn't human. It lived on fear. It would punch me in the back, shake me awake and threaten me so I wouldn't want to fall asleep. And if you weren't beating me...I still get upset if someone walks past my bedroom door when I am in bed. I have a roommate who gets up at all hours, and he wakes me up constantly just by walking past my door. I can't seem to shut it off. Every time I freak out a little.

I am 34 years old, and I need pills to sleep. I need anti-psychotics, I need pain medication. I cannot function without these things. Because people touched me. People raped me. People beat the fuck out of me...in YOUR house. A child is supposed to be safe in their house. A child should be able to trust their mother.

I had no mother.

This only touches the surface of what I endured. And you are gone now, so nothing I say here will reach your ears. But I needed to write this. For me. For the child I was. Because little Kweeny was a creative, and beautiful soul. She grew up hard and fast, and never got to play, so damn it, I play now. She had to learn most things on her own. She made mistakes, because she was a tough little shit who didn't trust easily. She still doesn't. But she's better now. She is loved and has a huge pack of friends in her life, and she doesn't need you anymore. She's free now.

She can run with wolves now, not drug addicts.

And she won't check the death box.

~Kweeny Todd

On Swords in the Snow and Writing

I have many friends in Canada I still keep in contact with. Some friendships can survive distance, which I am grateful for. One such friendship is with my Big Sister Marcy. She is one of the few people I call Big Sister, because I tend to be the Older Sister. I'm an old soul, and I am in my mid 30's. So I tend to hang around a lot of young folk who look up to me.

I look up to Marcy though. She's a strong bitch who survived a lot of shit. We both came from hard backgrounds, we both got raised in the same city (and know what The Hammer means), and we even know some of the same folks from that place. But she's survived some really frightening things, like being in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina happened. She's a fucking bad ass, because she managed to live through it and come home to tell the tale.

We have started a new project together that I am stoked about. My first time co-writing with her! It's going to be awesome. I can't say much more as we are still in the brainstorming stage, but it is going to be awesome. I am glad to be doing some creative with my Big Sis!

She showed me some amazing pictures she did sitting in the snow with her blade. She looks like a warrior Queen. A true, fierce powerful force, cutting through the elements. She told me she had a mantra in her head as she did the photos, "Make pain bend." I found this extremely powerful. Make Pain Bend. You can't erase it. You can't go back in time to when it wasn't there. It is here, in the now, and you can live with it. Bend the pain. Not yourself. Yes.

This is the battle one has with Invisible Chronic Illness. The battle of making pain bend. Of being alive with the pain. It is a struggle. Every day the pain takes more and more of your time, your sense of self, your ability to get up and fight. Just bend it. As much as you can.

She told me she thought of me while sitting out in the snow, which was a great honor to me. She knows how hard things have been. That my Raynauds and Fibro are making life suck. I have to take meds just to be somewhat functional right now, and I couldn't sit out in the cold holding a blade which would feel like getting ice-burned if I touched it. The weather would literally suck the heat from my body and I would go into spasms. Her strength was inspiring. She once couldn't climb a wall because her Fibro was so bad, and I recently saw her do this. She climbed a mother fucking wall right to the top, like a true bad ass. This is strength to me. She makes the pain bend. She doesn't let it dictate her life.

Bad Ass!

I wrote to her today, "I keep trying though. I face what I am now with all the invisible BS people can't see. I face my Bipolar, my PTSD...all of it. I need to be on pills to be sane, and pain meds to sometimes just get out of bed. I stare at stacks of med bills, knowing if I was in Canada things would be different. Did I know one day I would move? Yes. When I fell for Bear I knew. I knew I wasn't wealthy enough to support him, and I had no family to turn to for sponsorship. I got chewed out for my choice to leave, without people truly understanding why.

I'd honestly be dead without my husband. When I had my mental breakdown I was a danger to myself. Three times I was wheeled out on a stretcher, for my safety. Bear saved me from myself as much as he could.
I feel a bit emotional seeing you in the snow like that. I think it is pretty bad ass too honestly. Squinting or not, you look fierce. Canadian girls kick ass!"

Battle On...

Thank you to all my Canadian friends who understand and still wish to keep me in your life. I love you all and miss home greatly.

The Ups/Downs of a Chronic Werewolf

My husband shared an interesting observation on what he thinks Bipolar might feel like in a depressive episode.

"Have you ever lost a loved one? You know that deep, devastating soul-crushing pain that comes with that? Imagine you have that for no reason, all the time."

Well fucking said.

We watched a documentary together called, "Up/Down" which is something people who live with Bipolar and people who want to understand the condition should watch. I have been diagnosed with Bipolar 1. I had severe mania, and I was hospitalized three times because I could not stop spiraling when the meds wore off. Drugs induced a very scary episode, but I was Bipolar for years before this. I just was trying to handle it myself, and after my mother killed herself, I don't think I had ever been the same. I think I should have gotten help then, but I refused, because I am a strong willed person. I didn't want to be like my mother. She was mentally ill, and self medicated with many drugs. She got worse and worse, and I had to run away from home for my own safety. Being in her house with her growing up was a horror show. If she wasn't beating the living crap out of me, I was being raped by strangers in her house. She sold drugs on the side, and while she made lots of money, it all went back into her drugs. I grew up surrounded by crazy, I figured I could handle my own shit better than that.

But I couldn't. For years I have been struggling with many ailments. I am in chronic pain, mentally and physically. My years of struggling with conditions I hadn't wanted to deal with has worn on me. People don't realize how hard it is to live with all these things. I was touched while I slept so for years I couldn't sleep with anyone, and that includes myself. When the mania hits I used it to create art and tried desperately to make it worth something.

But I can't do that anymore. I'm as stable as I have ever been in my life. I still get moments, and my chronic pain is still very strong. At least now I don't have too many paranoid moments, I don't live in fear of the world all the time, and I can even sleep most nights. And now I know the difference between having a manic moment and having a flare up from pain. Because in the past, my mania would trigger flare ups of pain that I honestly felt like I was dying it hurt so badly. I was hospitalized once because I wrote a note in fear of dying, and they thought it was a suicide note. But I have been suicidal in the past. Many times.

I think when people hear you have conditions like Bipolar, you find out who your real friends and loved ones are. Sometimes people who said they were pack and will love you forever, leave. They can't handle being around you. Because it is a hard condition to live with, for both the person afflicted and the people in their life. People can walk away from the person in the episode, but the bipolar person CAN'T. We have to endure it, and ride it out. It reveals some scary parts of the person afflicted, and I can't remember things, and what I do remember is horrible and nightmarish. But my Bipolar isn't ME. It is something I endure. Something that is added to the list of issues I have been carrying around my whole life. I do what I can to make my life better. I take responsibility for the actions I commit while having an episode, and I believe I am more than a list of ailments. When I was in therapy my therapist told me he knew I wanted better for myself. He saw it in how I described myself. I would tell people I was an artist, a writer, an aspiring filmmaker. I told people I painted bones and such, and would give them my business card and show them pictures. THEN I talked about my issues. It gave him hope, because he knew I wasn't letting myself be defined by my illnesses. I wasn't ignoring them, because that is not helpful either, but I refuse to be only Chronic Illness.

The Highs and Lows have prices, and I am not willing to pay them anymore.

If you are curious about the documentary that spurred this can be found here. I want people to learn what this condition is really about. There is a lack of understanding and fear of the unknown. I am lucky I have some supportive people, but I still have faced stigma.