I have been suffering from self inflicted emotional burdens this summer, but I think I am turning this ship around right now. I have been so afraid that I am not a good person, that I have drained the energy I might have used to ensure that I am a good person. In some respect, this burden has spanned the summer, but in other regards it's lasted a lifetime. So am I getting better emotionally, or am I getting worse? Good question!

Reading The Sorrows of Young Werther by John Wolfgang von Goethe I feel such kinship with the narrator, a lustful man of sentiment who ends up committing suicide. Don't worry so much about my life though, I don't think he is like me in the ending one's own life way, I think he is like me in the self pittying depressed sort of way. At the end of the day, I think about Werther and know that I am not alone. There is a history of Literature by sentimental and emotional people who suffer in ways similar to me. Wow! I so often feel so alone, I know it can come accross as self centeredness on my part. In fact, I often measure the statistics of my differences (my INFJ personality type, my bipolar diagnosis, the strange mix of identity traits that I own). All of these things seem to accumulate in a way that makes me feel like an island, but I am not alone in this. So many in Literature share these sorrows, this loneliness, our daily misery, our ups and downs, our mistakes and regrets.

I woke up in the night, yes it is 2:40 as I write this. I sat up in bed reflecting on something I have heard my family say to me, that my identity is so different from that which it was when I was, shall we say, unaware of my bipolar disorder, or unbipolar depending on your mental health philosphy. I woke up worrying that the child in me, the sweet voice inside of me might be nearly faded.

Before bed last night I tried my hand at fiction writing a story that was entirely autobiographical. I had a big idea for the story, to write about a seventeen year old woman whose Werther like infatuation with her father's twenty three year old employee is wasted on a mentally ill break down. But I will leave autobiographical fiction to the experts.

There is a part of me that fears I missed a very important boat. At seventeen, I withdrew from college to enter a psychiatric ward of a hospital for a week and then to recover. I have pressed hard to graduate from college, but today, eleven years after high school, I have no degree. I have little to show for myself, sometimes it seems. I am unmarried, I have no children, my birth family doesn't seem proud of me at all. They say I am happy when I am at Berea, which I find humorous because I think of quitting on a weekly basis, sometimes daily even, when there.

I care a terrible lot about what others think of me. I felt heartbroken when a psychiatrist dropped me as a client after I thought he was no good and who I stupidly told him he was no good. I went home and hulled up like a turtle in her shell. I don't want to be a disappointment, but I just told my sweet Asheville housesitting employer that I am to emotionally messed up to help her this time. She is one of those totally understanding people, but even she reacted in a "terse" way.

I don't want to be a disappointment. I don't want people to cross the street when they see me coming. I recenlty spent 12 straight hours with a couple friends, mostly in a car, and I left the experience hoping that I did not piss them off. I have a spotted history of being in vehicles with people who find me a bad navigator and a pain in the ass, (hi Joey). But my friends who accompanied me to Nashville and straight back were kind. They did not seem to be bothered my me. One of them even called me my worst critic.

The funny thing is, that explanation may not be too far removed from the truth. Part of me thinks that my sorrows are not my own fault. I am sad because the neurotransmitters in my brain are not working right, because my happy brain chemicals are being overpowered by the sad chemicals. But am I powerless over my physical brain? I think not. My best Berea friend, Jamie, said she was pretty sure she had bipolar disorder too in high school, but she overcame the depression and the mania.

That is hard for me to digest. How can someone who loves me tell me that she could defeat her illness? My mental health advocate inside of me gets so confused about that. My life is a long struggle against psychosis and mania, against depression and anxiety, and recently a terrible lot of anger.

But Jamie never said I am to blame for my illness, she said she figured out how not to take drugs for her symptoms. I love my medicine. I feel terrified without the meds, actually. But lets assume that the meds for me are a requirement. Jamie is still telling me the truth when she speaks this story of her life.

First of all I have a symptom called psychosis. Psychosis is powerful and needs real antipsychotic medication. Therapy can help stop psychosis, but as far as I know people with psychosis do better with medicine. The brain is like any other organ, and medicine helps.

But what about moods? I am keeping on my medicine, but what if I could fill in the gaps that my meds make with positive thoughts, with exercise, a better diet, and more therapy? I am already doing that to an extent, but there cannot be too much positive thought.

I am not seventeen, and fortunatley I don't want to be. I was not good when I was 17. I kept my body healthy, except for that part of the whole being that is the mental emotional person. I actually did not have any real friends then. Actually that is probably the biggest thing I have gained through the dark times. Friends. Friends who care. Friends who understand and friends who try but don't have the life experiences to truely know where I am at.

My family is made up of very good people too. Some of them don't seem to have compassion for me, but it is hard for my family to watch me suffer.

My voice can sound horrific. My therapist said that I am not a bad person but that I can be a fireball when I get a thought in my head and I feel I am not being heard. She hit the nail on the head with that one. I am partially a pitiful person, like a ferral kitten whose only hope is to bond with some philanthropic Fur Person. On the other hand, I am a ferral kitten. I have a wild side. I can be scary. I can scratch and bite. I used to do that physically as a child.

My life is a work of Classic Literature. The great part is, I am a protagonist with a pact with Life. I am not 100% Werther. I am a scary person because I am clearly hurting inside and because I do lash out at others, spreading pain. But I am not alone in my imperfections, and I am ready to transform these flaws into love.

Dear friends and family. Thank you for recycling this love, for taking a chance with me.