Do diagnoses matter? Need I list my medications? Tell the number of years of confinement? Shall I share a photo of the scars of my nasty stigmata? Will this be viewed as a success story, a cautionary tale, a morality play, or Bedlam Ravings?

Bipolar, then, and what is now called borderline personality disorder. A dozen other labels, only found in the unabridged editions. Eighteen years of major depression with rare mania, nine years of institutionalisation, too many treatments to name, dear Esmeralda, too many to name. I came back from the dead to ring the bells.

Loss, grief, abandonment. Nightly dreams of those who abandoned, speaking with the dead whilst awake, and exacting punishment upon my hated self over He Who I Abandoned.

Platitudes repel me. I am offended by the banal. I was, or I became, resistant to treatment. I was saved, dear gawd, saved from that darkest deadest hell by a toggle-switch and that sweet, sweet, sweet Mania emerged, like a full-force-gale, and I was LIFTED UP AGAIN.

As GRANDIOSE GOD, I became angry at – aggressive towards – the sniveling sod that I saw.
One, two, three, four,
I became the needful *****.
Five, six, seven, eight
Pity those whom I hate.

BPD+BPD unleashed. Django Unchained. Looking down, deep and deeper and asking:

What SHAMES me greater? The sorrow or the anger?

Well, Jesus F. Christ, I was assailed by the sum of my symptoms, assaulted and assassinated: I suffered, died and was buried. I descended into Hell. Three months, I stayed in Hell and you can guess the rest?

I arose from the dead.

But I’m no god nor a symptom-cluster-****. I had to dig, in some cases re-dig, dozens of graves. Shed the shades-a-haunting. Cleave the heads off of the symptoms with a hatchet and, with daily diligence, keep them at bay-away.

I am, as described, a reanimated exquisite corpse. In mind and body I am, dear friends, a benevolent MONSTER. I am a Quixotic Wheelchair WARRIOR for TRUTH, JUSTICE and the AMERICAN WAY. I am only, as any reanimation, the sum of my PARTS. My unnamable PARTS. My unspeakable PARTS. A FREAK, a SIDESHOW ATTRACTION and you must pay to see me. A 112-pound weakling with no faith in any god or Charles Atlas.

My advice – my twisted support – is free. My words – my cryptic writings – are free. My crudeness, my crassness, my coarseness, my foul and filth – all free! Part of my THERAPY, dear ones.

You need only PAY for my the HORROR SHOW OF MY BODY and my POLITICS.

Meh. You don’t get the whole of the story for nothing, ya see. I’m no martyr or victim and I’ve found that I can be outraged and cruel and heartless and simple and kind and broken-hearted and still retain humble self-esteem. This. That. The ****in’ ‘humble self-esteem.’ I will not, I cannot, lie – this **** is new to me.

We are all actively engaged in the art of dying. Life ends. So it goes. Some people pursue a LEGACY in hopes of being, um, remembered. My experience has been that it is the INFAMOUS that we most often recall rather than the GOOD and NOBLE. “The good is oft interred with their bones.” So let it be. With me. With you and you and you. We don’t get to decide the GOODNESS of our deeds, nor is it left to some invisible mythical spirit or witches or titans to decide.

Sartre was such a disappointment to me. It’s oh-so-cute and memorable but hell isn’t other people (for Sartre I wish the hell of a Sisyphus egged on by a giggling Goering). Lars Von Trier’s Dogville is a MORALITY PLAY in which the morality of our wicked species is presented and (oh, so effing trite and I apologise in advance!) the axiom is reversed to read, “no bad deed goes unpunished.” This appears a queer conundrum, yes? Evil in both examples? Well, no. (Spoiler to follow.) In Dogville, Moses life is spared. Moses is the HOWLING DOG, the only innocent DOG in DOGVILLE.

Moses is innocent, yes, not complicit in the inhumanity visited upon the VICTIM and JUDGE but he’s just a ****ing dog. Moses LEGACY is his HOWL (Allen, baby). ‘I saw the best minds of my generation,’ ya know?

I lied. You, anyone, everyone, each of us are no more than a sum of our parts. We are all exquisite corpses. We may do good, do good so well as to be recognised (and, possibly, remembered for a few generations), we may do evil, evil so beastly as to be recognised (for thousands upon thousands of years) or we can walk a middle path, doing no good or evil.

Now, me. Were I some judge-god, I would ******* the two latter and cast a suspicious eye upon the first.

My point (lost in opaque translations) is that those of us who enjoy mental illnesses – those of us not gifted with insanity – participate with and within our symptoms. I believe that we have, however small, a degree of agency with and within our symptoms. Personally, I have been guilty of relieving myself of any willing participation with my well-being.

These forums. My final point. I was once active here. I enjoyed some praise and I enjoyed moderator damnation. I understand that we are here to discuss our illnesses and to offer support – and maybe advice without analysis – to one another. As a REAL LIFE EXAMPLE of crossing that boundary I will offer the case of a 17-year-old self-described horny male virgin who posted a message here asking if he might be bipolar because he found girls to be sexually attractive. He termed his obsession as ‘hypersexual.’ Unconscionably, supporters sought to convince him that he possibly needed to see a doctor of sorts and might need medication. The teen was brighter than his supporters and said his farewells and I took the thread off-topic and it was, thankfully, closed.

If I begin to visit here with any regularity I’m certain to go beyond the ‘go get ‘em, tiger,’ support phrases. If I see a kitten in any guise with a ‘Hang in There!’ motto I will attempt to make the poster regret his or her own birth. I enjoy a degree of control over my aggressive writings but I don’t play well with ignorance. I appreciate the fact that no one comes here to publish scholarly papers and that many, like myself, don’t give a dozen tinker’s damns about effing spelling or punctuation. I hate – I really do – the limitation on cursing because I have felt a new-found freedom in allowing my naughty-bits to fly high.

Bipolar Pride. Ours, yours and mine. #