#Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself

[its3-15am]

To be honest everything hurts again. Maybe it's because I haven't taken my meds yet or I haven't opened my curtains. The windows stay nailed shut here and the curtains I've sewn together. The outside world can never see my like this. I have to be perfect.

To be honest I'm tired of the meds. I'm tired of the treatment. I've told my doctor the anxiety has gotten better but the scabs on my face and head beg otherwise. I've told the therapist the burdens on my shoulders have lightened but the ache in my feet and knees still hasn't gone away.

To be honest it's tiring being sick all the time. Having to know this Is how it is for you. This is the final remainder of life for you and it will never change. There is no cure for this sickness inside my mind. Only treatment to cope. Eternally I will be like this. I will have to watch my children grow into this as well. Determining their fate the moment they are born. That is saying that i am able to birth a child.

To be honest the world feels so heavy again. My breathes are getting shorter and I'm losing my mind a little more each day. Being back in my home town has once again started to eat me alive. I am rotting from the inside out and there is no medicine that can fix that.

In all honesty the ache in my bones is getting harder and harder to deal with. I carry the Dead child of my past self inside my heart and she cries when she remembers this place. She weeps for hours on end till I can barely feel my own heartbeat anymore.

Maybe I should open a window. Maybe I should open my curtains. I haven't taken my meds yet. To be honest everything hurts again.

[heartlessqueen]

from the poem “bipolar is bored and renames itself” from jacqui germain 's collection when the ghosts come ashore

[devilsskettle]

[apoemaday]

Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself

by Jacqui Germain

I have recently come to the realization that I will be writing “the bipolar disorder poem” for the rest of my life.                                 There are hundreds of ways to say I am wrapped in my own bees nest. or My body is a haunted house that I am lost in.          There are no doors but there are knives and a hundred windows. or My body has apologized to my body.         My body is not sure if it accepts. or I am a river with a dam at its neck         that has begun to drown its own fish. or I am a field setting itself on fire          just to become the sun. or I am a newborn so obsessed with the birth,          I throttle my own throat and hope for a repeat. or I am a ball of melted wax burying my own wick. or I am the flame melting my body down into a hard mess. or My eyes have learned not to believe themselves. or My eyes have learned the sky will be          a red sea of winged teeth if you believe it to be so. or I am trapped behind eyes          that recognize the demon in everything. or There is a demon in everything; I know this. or My brain is my own cracked windshield,         my own bug-splattered glass mirror         and I am driving towards the sunrise. or I am still driving towards the sunrise.

[naranzarian]

My body is a haunted house that I am lost in. There are no doors, but there are knives and a hundred windows.

– Jacqui Germain, "Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself"

[lifeinpoetry]

I am a field setting itself on fire           just to become the sun.

— Jacqui Germain, from “Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself,” When the Ghosts Come Ashore

[godsopenwound]

— Jacqui Germain, “Bipolar Is Bored and Renames Itself” from When the Ghosts Come Ashore

[heavensghost]

Jacqui Germain, from Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself; When the Ghosts Come Ashore, 2016

[megairea]

My body is a haunted house that I am lost in. There are no doors but there are knives and a hundred windows.

Jacqui Germain, from Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself; When the Ghosts Come Ashore, 2016

[its3-15am]

The wounds on my heart are deeper than any of my scars. My bleeding heart aches and aches, and years have gone by. My bandages have fallen off and left my heart exposed to the elements. It follows me with its feelings and heartache and leaves me no escape. My leaking, bleeding heart sits as a broken faucet in my body, and I find no way to escape it.

-room of 1000 cuts, people with my state rarely live past 27.

[buttonpoetry]

Read the full version of this phenomenal poem "Bipolar Is Bored and Renames Itself" by Jacqui Germain from her book, When The Ghosts Come Ashore.

[lifeinpoetry]

My body is a haunted             house that I am lost in.             There are no doors but there are knives             and a hundred windows.

— Jacqui Germain, from “Bipolar is Bored and Renames Itself,” When the Ghosts Come Ashore

[godsopenwound]

— Jacqui Germain, “Bipolar Is Bored and Renames Itself” from When the Ghosts Come Ashore

[its3-15am]

"My whole life has been spent trying to escape a house on fire and it seems that every door I go to is still can't find an exit"

"My father is my immediate reflection. Our mental states feed off of each other like parasites and he can't seem to realize his faults."

"How can I learn to live in the existence of myself? I can always survive alone with my sorrows but the agonizing weight of happiness is too much to bear alone"

-I suffocate with these weights on my back. I can no longer breathe and my father is pushing me further and further beneath the water screaming at me to swim. My mother is terrified and my sister turns the other way. I'm tired and my bed has become my grave that I rot in each night trying to escape from the past that haunts me. Trauma that taunts me. And the illness that never seems to stop agonizing me. Prozac. Lexapro. Lithium. Depakote. Zyprexa. Nothing works. Nothing fixes. Three doctors. Two shrinks and a morgue that plagues My head with dead bodies and corpses.

[its3-15am]

I often think about all the things that the world can take from me. It can take My dignity, my smile, my heart, my entire life if it wanted to. But the one thing that the world and its people can never take from me is my scars. The hell I've been thru written on my skin. My arms; My legs; My back; The bruises on the bottom of my feet. It can never take my pain. It can take My happiness of course. It's the one thing that the world and its people can always take. But I ripped the wings off my back to give to the world and it can never take that damn strength from me.

-the world can take everything from me, but it can never take the hell I've been thru.

[its3-15am]

"he's just trying to protect you Aisha. He's your father of course he loves you!"

It's all the time. Always. He's always just trying to protect me isn't he? Everyone thinks they know how it is. They think they know what happened. They think they know what happened in that house.

Your father is still your father. They all wanna say.

Nobody grew up in that house except for me and my mother; day and night it was me and her dealing with the constant screaming. The constant anger.

I wanted to wear my favorite blue shirt to school when I was 5 and he didn't like it so he beat the living hell out of me. I wasn't allowed outside. I wasn't allowed to speak. It was speak only when spoken to.

Everyone claims he's just my father but none of them sat at that lonely dinner table every night while my mother sobbed waiting on him to come home.

Everyone claims he's just my father but none of them were there when my mother couldn't even get out of bed she was so depressed. For two years leading up to the divorce I watched her decay and rot in her bedroom while my father was out with his friends.

Everyone claims he's just my father but nobody sat and watched as my mother starved herself just so she could meet his standards.

Everyone claims he's just my father but they don't know about the bamboo cane he hung in the open closet so Everytime I stepped out of line I would see it and remember what he was capable of.

Everyone claims he's just my father but nobody was there the few weeks after my sister came from the hospital and he threw her across the room. My mother shrieked and I still remember the aching in her voice.

Everyone claims he's just my father. And he is. But he's a lot of other things as well; I grew up seeing him as a monster. I grew up seeing the real him.

Everyone claims he's just my father till he's not.

-im just his daughter; he was never my father.