So, what is it, my LJ icon, the pendant I’ve worn every day for so long?  It’s my personal symbol, a coiling winged serpent.  Why?  It began over five years ago:

 Excerpt from A Flight of Fancy on a Windswept Field: (June, 2005)

     One January night last year, after about a half hour of meditation, I pulled my deck out of the dusty cardboard box I currently used as an altar and did a reading for myself in the Influence of the Elements formation. The central, or Spirit, card was Death. I remember gasping as I turned over this, the first card, and then concentrating to fish up in my memory the meaning of this particular one. The card's illustration depicted a dragon shedding off a midnight coat to reveal a collection of sparkling pearl white scales hidden beneath as it roared triumphantly and the first rays of light peeked from behind voluminous black clouds and were cast upon its face. I was moved by what I saw there, the classical interpretation of rebirth and transformation was significant but not what touched me to the soul. Certainly, it seemed, my broken Spirit would be reborn and transformed from that of the hopeless girl who was sent to the mental institution two months prior, to one of a new and shining brilliance. But the look on that dragon's face, as it cried out against the powers that had been holding it back and declared its new self, truly resonated with me. I felt myself the dragon, hedged back for so long by the bonds of depression and now at last breaking free, just two days after my release from the hospital.

     Think what you want about Tarot, the card I drew in the center of that spread that night changed my way of thinking about myself forever.  For a long time, this dragon, this winged serpent that shed its skin of suffering and rose to face the day has represented my greatest strength: the ability to recover from great emotional pain, pick up the pieces of an old life and make something new.

     But in the years that have passed between now and that winter, I have slowly molded this very image to symbolize my greatest weakness as well.  And that is why today, I call it my personal symbol.

     In spring of 2007, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and since that time it has more than ever before defined my life, and how I identify myself.  The transformation of the winged serpent thus takes two forms, one a strength and the other a fatal flaw.  In one sense, it is resilient and triumphs over hardships, emerging all the better for them.  In the other, transitioning rapidly from the skies to the ground below leaves it crippled, rendering it helpless as it struggles against physical forces not altogether under its control.  The serpent is me: my greatest strength is also among my greatest weaknesses.  My ability to transform myself is incredible, but as they say there are two sides to every coin.

     If I were to write a memoir, I imagine the introduction would include something like this:

Serpent’s Flight

 

    I am a serpent.  As the cycle ebbs and draws to a close I slide, gleaming, from my decrepit old skin.  The sunlight shimmers on my fledgling scales.  Sensing the breath of the wind upon my back, I look and see that I have wings.  I spread them and take flight, a flight of ignorance and delight, of reckless ecstasy.  But the wind slows; there is a lull above the great expanse below.  High above the ground, for a moment I tremble in fear, then all too quickly the weight of my body comes crashing down.  The wind, my onetime savior, whips into a storm, tearing at my once pristine wings until I am nothing but a snake out of its element, borne on a hurricane breeze.  When at last I hit the ground, utterly defeated by nature’s wrath, I lie there and contemplate my fate.  It is then that I notice the force of the wind has rendered my skin dry and lifeless, and that it is time to begin again…

     I am a serpent.  And in a sense, we all are.  Most individuals have highs and lows in their emotional state, good times and bad times.  But none experience the cycling of moods quite so acutely as people like me, people society has termed bipolar.

Author's note:  This message of this piece, originally given the working title "Reflections" , was summarily disregarded the night the final revisions were made.  In the interim it and its corresponding playlist were renamed "Rejected Reflections."  Now that the dust concerning this whole matter has settled a bit, I bring you "Reflections Redux".

Am I gonna be lonely for the rest of my life?

 

It’s hard not to wonder.  With a mind like mine, will I ever settle down with a person with whom I can truly share my life?  Or will I merely jump from failed infatuation to failed infatuation?  Maybe I’m learning.  Maybe I’m not.

 

I thought you could help, just to feel my way, find my better self

 

Whoever you are, I’m missing you tonight.  It’s mighty lonely here, not knowing.  There’s a void in my life, not one that necessarily needs to be fixed, but one that exists nonetheless.  It seems I always find my better self when I’m with someone else.  Perhaps it’s time I learned how to find her by myself.

 

So glad to meet you, Angeles

 

It was lovely to meet you, to get to know you so well.  But in the end, what I thought was “enough” was what it was: somewhat lacking.  I’m looking for a little more, and I’ve come to terms with that at last.

 

Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry

 

In the end it was for the best.  But that didn’t mean I didn’t do everything in my power to induce a last minute resurrection.  Why?  It’s hard to stand on my own, hard to sleep alone, hard to fight off lecherous men.  I just wanted to go back to the start, when things were less rocky and the spark of new love put a gleam in my eye.

 

A blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest, the best parts of lonely

 

When I was little and I sobbed uncontrollably, I used to tell my mother my heart ached.  And she’d say “Right here?” indicating her chest and I’d nod.  Last night, my heart ached again.  It seems like many nights now I cry myself to sleep like I did when I was young.  Our reasons change, but that feeling of grief, that tightness in my chest, is a familiar one.

 

I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish and I’m sad

 

Christmastime.  Things always seem to come together and fall apart.  This year, it was me.  My too-late recognition of my motivations, the reasons I left.  Worse than ever before, I thought, I had done it.  In the end though, perhaps I’ve found strength tempered by the right thing for the wrong reasons.

 

It’s uncanny how you hover in the air of the wreckage that you left behind

 

It’s odd, having my bed all to myself for the first month in nearly five years.  What’s it like to not be sleeping with someone you ask?  Challenging, silly as it sounds, when he’s next door sleeping on my futon and using my pillow cases.  Challenging, when in my heart there’s a part of me that still loves him, while he goes from hour to hour seemingly unperturbed by the ghost that haunts me still, the ghost of what we shared.

 

I’m going to sleep with the next person I meet

 

Tried that tactic once before and it backfired rather unfortunately.  Pre-releasing this time just meant being a scrub.  It’s strange how I can barely stop myself from agreeing to everything others ask of me, in particular in the bizarre arena of relationships.  It’s something I have to learn to do, before past mistakes rear their ugly heads again.

 

You said you were in love with me.  Both of us know that that’s impossible.

 

It was said, and in a sense it was true.  Me, disturbingly I’m known to throw those words around.  But I meant it that time, and I believe so did you.  It lacked only one thing, a certain sense of commitment I associate with that utterance.  And that commitment is demonstrated through a desire to share more with someone than what the ticking of the clock and practical circumstances allow one to easily accomplish.

 

And I’ve got the scars to prove it

 

It seems like my life is an endless cycle of emotional wounds.  As one heals, a fresh one is opened.  Fade out the old, in with the new.  Even my oldest relationship scars still make me grimace when pressure is applied.  I wonder how long it will be that way.

 

To be alone with you

 

I always seem to have a particular person I want to be alone with.  I’m still working on the whole “alone with myself; i.e. really alone” bit.  Every day is a struggle to keep myself occupied, to keep myself from going insane with the sadness only idleness can bring.

 

To tell you the truth I’ve said it before tomorrow I start in a new direction

 

Truly, a new direction.  I’ve given up everything that’s been a constant in my life for several years and struck out on my own.  How am I doing?  Sure I am bouncy and cheerful on the outside, but sometimes I can’t get out of bed.  Sometimes I explode with emotional turmoil at awkward times.  But I trust that it’ll get better.  In fact, that’s what keeps me going.  It’s interesting; it used to be that people or things kept me going, me being a dependent in some way I suppose.  Now it’s just hope, plain and simple.

 

I would know love again if I had faith enough

 

Every time I jump into a relationship, I leave with a little less faith in, if not love in general, what love used to mean to me.  I won’t lie, love felt like a forever thing once.  Now, after what’s happened, I feel that sometimes the kind of love I’ve shared only required getting involved with a mildly compatible person at the right time, and ending it when that time has past.  There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, it’s just not what I originally envisioned.

 

Gray matter memory house, master of this trembling flesh

 

You never understood, and to some extent I don’t even understand why it takes me so long to forgive and move on.  As previously mentioned, my emotional wounds take years to heal, and perhaps it is this way with everyone.  I feel compelled to talk about old pains though, to rehash them as part of the grieving process.  Sometimes I wonder if you thought I was full of myself.  I suppose, as humans we are indeed trapped forever in the house of memories that is our own minds.

 

So this is the New Year, and I don’t feel any different

 

I didn’t.  It seemed like it was happening all over again, my old behavior patterns creeping up on me.  Everything was the same.  Or was it?  Single for the first time in forever, free of MMOs.  There may be something tangibly different about this year after all.

 

And while you wonder, “How’s this going to end?” I only wanted to begin.

 

I guess that was the fundamental difference between us, and put succinctly too.   I was always consumed with fear of the future, how things would end up, how it would be after.  Instead of dread you felt only excitement at new prospects in life, and that, I think was a part of what was irreconcilable between us.

 

 

 

 

 

You won’t find moments in a box.

 

Well, you won’t.  Everyone knows that.  Things commonly found in boxes include shoes and pencil sharpeners.  And you certainly couldn’t put that moment in a box.  In fact, among moments, I think that one is among the top ten least boxable ones.  Those two days marked the curtain falling on that era forever.  Two days I will always hold close to my heart.  Two days I will, for the foreseeable future, hang over my bed.

 

...and it makes me feel so fine I can’t control my brain

 

That’s the short, short version.  I felt so fine, controlling my brain was out of the question.  This one’s about the tropical seas.  My brain did what it wanted and rode the manic wave, while I sat in the corner.  Then came the inevitable crash, the endless cycle.  That island… that was the first day of many to come that I couldn’t control it.

 

…it was just that the time was wrong.

 

Romeo and Juliet, alas.  At first we thought we were different… everything was perfect.  Then we thought we were the same… a perfect tragedy.  But I gradually came to realize that we were different for a whole other reason.   It wasn’t just that the time was wrong.  One can’t help but notice I didn’t poison myself.  My brain headed to the beach with a surfboard and when a big wave mowed it over the decision was in favor of the highest bidder.  This was not a tragedy of lovers, who circumstances prevented from being together.  My chemical conditioning, however strange, however volatile is a part of me… which means… it was MUCH more than the time.   And no one knows that better than the spring prerelease.  That’s right, I’m talking about Dissension / Future Sight.

 

…Damn your mood swings, damn your mood swings.

 

Every Monday.  Every fucking Monday.  It was nigh on impossible to get out of bed.  Didn’t matter who I was involved with or what time of year.  It was like there was an angry cloud perpetually raining down on that blasted day of the week.  Monday is traditionally associated with the moon.  Admittedly, I am fond of the moon.  The only way to reconcile this is to make the new association Pale Moon.  Ha.  What a piece of crap.

 

 

…so glad to meet you Angeles.

 

What can be said for shared favorites?  A lot, in my humble opinion.  Whether dinosaurs or songs, it must mean something.  That day, was amazing.  Why?  Because, right then I knew that whatever we shared, it was awesome, and it was more than satisfactory for now.  That’s the thing.  For now.  It doesn’t have to be forever… it doesn’t have to have the epic nature of R & J -- split the DPS they need to go down together… (and so they did) -- or be a mindless sell-out to the highest bidder at a time of vulnerability.  It can just be… something.

 

‘Cause love’s such a joke, like a little jack-in-the-box you know.

 

I have certainly grown more cynical.  Love used to be the holy grail… then nothing, now… it’s somewhere in the middle.

 

Nothing fuels a good flirtation like need and anger and desperation.

 

It’s true.  I’ve seen it.  I was the one beating my wings violently, desperately near the flame.  I was all of the above… so I sold out.  Not once.  Twice.   Catalyzed by the same circumstances at the exact same time of year.  Two years in a row.  And you thought you were slow.

 

Get a little self control.

 

Haha, self control.  That’s hysterical.  Selling out to the highest bidder is my spring pastime of choice.  It’s spring again.  And all I can think of is… well, the past.   I try not to live there, I try not to drown in it.  But it’s so very hard.

 

I have to go, yes I know the feeling, know you’re leaving.

 

Well, I did have to go.  That was it, that was all.  I was done.  Well, in theory.  Theory doesn’t always hold in practice.  Like if an elephant wanders in the way.  The elephant was me, or some part of me.  And that elephant had a tendency to turn itself around and tread the exact same path as before in an endless cycle of self-inflicted elephant cruelty.

 

Maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain, waking up to shape the land.

 

There were no abortions here, and no crazed Christian pro-lifers.  But allow me to create an alternative scenario set in a parallel universe.  Carrie had been in love.  The pro-lifers, fighting not for doomed babies but for the continuation of the relationship, would ambush her at the break-up and say “Stop!  Look at the wonderful life ahead of you!”  And Carrie would say, “I’m afraid that that’s not what I want for my life.”  And she would have cut the bond.  The love had shaped her, but it was up to her to shape its end.

 

And there’s a heart that’s breaking down this long distance line tonight.

 

Ah, the pure stupidity surrounding that whole ordeal. 

You:  I like you. 

Me:  This sure hasn’t happened before, by all means, let’s go out! 

You: Yeah, about that. 

Me:  I see what you did there. 

I didn’t need to cry that time.  I saw it coming a mile away.   It still hurt though.  But I finally figured it out.

 

So yeah, as an aside.  When I was 12, I vowed to lose my virginity with a Magic player.  It wouldn’t surprise me if I was the first chick who swore that oath of sheer genius.  It wouldn’t surprise me if I wasn’t either.  But after playing that game a few times, I can tell all you other aspiring Magic-player-fucking 12 year olds, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  Or at least, it’s not key for a fulfilling sexual experience.  I swear.  I know.  You never would have guessed.

 

Wish I knew what you were looking for.  Might have known what you would find.

 

Those McDonalds lights, (now Qdoba) will forever remain burned into my mind.  Just lying there Tuesday/Thursday by myself.  I was closer to being the person I wanted to be than ever before.  Then came World of Warcraft and with the first UBRS patrol, came an endless train of drama of enormous proportions.  Drama that took me several years to sort out.  Until, now, I can finally say with some confidence that if one can avoid it, one should not sell out to the highest bidder.  Vulnerability does not equal weakness.  And 99.9% of psychiatrists agree that seasonal stupidity is treatable.  And not with Viagra.

 

A flight of fancy of a windswept field

 

Ah, the windswept field.  As places go, that one’s not bad.  Too bad we were assailed by an angry army of mosquitoes.  That whole period was our flight of fancy, our dreamtime, it has been said.  Everything was going to work out.  There were eclipses, and kids named after characters from literature and television.  (Thank you F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Oh and Chris Carter, obviously a writer of equal ability)  But alas, that sort of thing doesn’t always work out.  Especially when you’re planning on naming your kid after the Great Gatsby.  Talk about dooming things.

 

Author's  Note:  All credit for the one-hour-of-non-stop-music-inspired-writing concept goes to a friend.

In Memoriam:  A Flight of Fancy on a Windswept Field

 

It’s been four years now.  Four years since I left the hospital.  Four years since I moved to the city and began what I believed to be my new life of independence and self-discovery.

 

There are some events in life that will forever shape us.  Things that happen that will still evoke a smile or twinge of pain with a passing thought long after their time has passed.

 

Today I remember one of those things.  My flight of fancy on a windswept field.

 

I was 18.  Fresh out of the mental hospital, I was rebuilding the wreckage of a life that I had almost deserted.  I know why it was him.  He showed me he cared, and that was all the reason I needed.

 

It started simply.  Nonetheless, the moment possessed the cinematic quality that so frequently characterized those times.  An oddly appropriate song was playing – randomly selected by an all-knowing iPod – and I asked.  You said no, but as my fire rekindled you came around.

 

It shone so brightly back then.  Anyone who looks close enough can see that it flickers these days.

 

My naïveté was great.  When we held each other on that windswept field for the first time, I soared.  Taking off on a flight of fancy that would inevitably come to an end.  But I believed, was convinced, that it would last forever.

 

It did end.  I can honestly say now that a moment’s reflection on that time now draws only a smile.  Go any deeper though, and I sometimes shiver at the thought of things long gone.

 

It happens less and less nowadays.

 

But then again maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain, waking up to shape the land.

 

I feel as if that mountain has awakened.  Deep within the earth of my being it shifts. The groan of tectonic plates coming together with the healing of old wounds, making way for the unknown.  The landscape of my existence is being shaped, a transformation in which I play no small part.

 

I embrace this change.  You can draw upon the waters of the past, but to drown in them would be a tragedy.  In lieu of drowning, the mountain and I move ever forward, inch by inch towards the future.

 

I dedicate this moment to the past.  But with a confidence that comes only with time, I turn my thoughts to the days ahead.