a woman's perogative

This blog was intended to focus on the experience of having bipolar disorder during the month of May. May is over, and I have chased a few rabbits here and there. However, as I see it, that is the bipolar experience...the experience of being human, of changing one's mind, of being more than a diagnosis or the sum of one's successes or failures. The "bipolar experience" is really just the human experience. Good days and bad, pleasant memories and unpleasant memories, decisions and directions. So for today I will simply share a poem.

What do I remember…
Eating my first sausage ball the day after a New Year’s party
Trying to decide between my dog and my brother
The strange Tony the Tiger dream I had when I was three
Caroline getting nosebleeds ALL THE TIME when we were in kindergarten
Winning 2nd place in a swimming race
Watching a scary movie that my parents told me not to watch and regretting it for weeks
Being the first one to hold Jon at the adoption agency
Being on Mickey’s beat-up list in 2nd grade
Being afraid of sunflowers
Spending summers hiking around the neighborhood with Bill
Having a crush on Brent
Foam rollers
Getting bitten by my own dog
Writing in that cool notebook with the different colored pages
Mr. Gardener
Piano lessons with a metronome – thank you Mr. Thomas
Wanting to be a brownie
Going to the Anchor Club sleepover when my mom was the sponsor and playing Old Maid with the high school girls
Typing stories at my dad’s office and being allowed to use the mimeograph machine to copy them
Starting my own magazine to send around the neighborhood
Being afraid of dogs and bees
Making homemade peanut butter and picking okra
How tall a horse seems in the second grade
Watching a dog break my brother’s arm by running into it
Not eating for two days because I was afraid to pull my tooth
Thinking my third cousin was cute and then feeling really bad about it
Getting hit in the head with my brother’s cast and pretending I was dead
David making me a Barbie Doll bed for Christmas in the third grade
“Publishing” a book of poetry instead of doing math in the 5th grade – boy was Mom mad at the teacher!
Kickball – God how I wish I could forget
Playing the part of a nurse in our 1976 bicentennial play
Allergy shots
Getting lost in a mall because I was looking for some puppies we had seen
Fire ants
Yarn hair bows
Metallic drinking glasses
Yellow
Falling asleep with a book in my hand and my glasses on
And dreams