When you manage mental illness, you have to learn to separate the emotions of the illness from who you truly are. The sadness isn’t you, the chaos isn’t you, it’s all symptomatic if the illness. You have no choice but to experience it, but you can block it off. Compartmentalization is your friend. You have…
Author: timpangburn
I have mental Illinois
Remember that time I decided I’d post a blog every Saturday? That was two Saturdays ago and I already missed the second one. I guess that’s just life with ADHD, right? Or bipolar disorder. Sometimes symptoms overlap so much I can’t tell the difference. What I do know is that both of them provide me…
Return of the Mack
My blog turned into shit. I used to use it, but man it is nothing now. Being bipolar sucks. See, I used to be relatively consistent. I use the word “relatively” pretty loosely. I wrote, I aimed for self improvement, I tried my best to inspire others to the same. Problem is, my life fell…
Am I the tree or the building?
I’ve been learning a lot lately about what it means to be bipolar. There’s a lot of character traits I possess that I never realized were symptoms. There’s also a lot of symptoms I didn’t realize I possessed as character traits. For example, when hypomanic, bipolar people tend to have increased confidence, often to the…
Getting lost in losing time
The sounds ringing through my head are only echoes now. Echoes of something foreign. A role I played, in some fever dream. Warhorses on the ashes of enemies, crushing bones beneath hooves. Flayed alive in all the splendor of hell. Even seeing days beyond that is a gift. I could at any time fall to…
Toxic positivity in motivational speaking
Coming out of such a long running episode has been incredibly strange. The more time that passes, the more I realize just how long this was going on. My attitude has slowly been reverting back to how I was in 2018. Motivated, positive, driven. There’s something different about it, though. I’m not the same. I’ve…
An old man bitching about tattooing
I’m going to ruffle so many feathers tonight. And bunch all the panties up. Why you ask? How? Because I’m pissed at tattooing again and I’m constantly begging to be at war with someone. So what is it I’m bitching about? Strap in and get ready for a ride, because I’m coming organized. Ignorant style:…
I barely function
I haven’t written a blog post worth writing in nine months, and almost every single one starts out with a similar sentence about how I haven’t written any blog posts. So I guess this one isn’t that different, except MAYBE I’ll hit that publish button. The reason I’m writing tonight is because there’s been a…
I’m not my mental illness, my mental illness is me
I know I’m fucked up. I know I do things that are hurtful, and that I change my mind often and drastically. I know my moods shift rapidly and unpredictably. My mental illness isn’t a separate entity, it is a defining factor in my personality. There is no depressed Tim, manic Tim, and normal Tim….
Will you cast the first stone?
In the Bible, in the gospel of John, the Pharisees brought a woman charged with adultery to Jesus as an attempt to discredit him. They asked him to be the judge, and under Mosaic law, her punishment was stoning. In a crazy twist, Jesus said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”…