Writing As A Form Of Therapy

[Silenus]

This is an excerpt from the latest book I am working on...

"Never assume that you know what another person is going through... do not presume to feel that you know what another person is feeling... perish the thought that you know what another person is thinking...
"You will never know these things, so why presume to..? It is an insanity, and it needs to be calmly questioned...
"Insight will show the way to the pathless land of Truth...
"So... can I, knowing all there is to know about myself (and always learning more)... can I, self aware and still learning the incredible complexity of thoughts, feelings, emotions, moods, memories, dreams, and words that lie within my mind... can I possibly hope to guess right at the infinitely complex and individual things going on in another person's mind..?
"No... I cannot... you cannot... we cannot...
"We project our presumptions and our biases and our beliefs and our prejudices and our hopes and our dreams onto the blank canvas that is another person...
"We each play out the movie of our lives, and we are the star... projecting bits of ourselves onto the silver screen of the Really Real...
"To truly see the reality underneath the projections, we need to realise that we are the projectionist, and we can teach ourselves how to turn the projector off...
"Then... then we can see reality as it really is... the Really Real...
"Then... then we can deal with the reality of the Really Real without our projections of self leading us destructively astray...
"This is what I say, and what I say is my way... other peeps... you gotta find your own way...
"The wheel of the Self Evolution Revolution turns Eternally...
"Insight is the inner light that shows the way to Truth...
"Become a light-bearing seeker of Truth in the Darkness with me..."

[Silenus]

Another excerpt from the trilogy I am working on...

THE STAND

"What is the human race..? A vast thousands-year long social experiment...
"Could the human race be the ones that survived against the odds of billions-year long evolution..? Survived the twists and turns of infinitely mutating DNA to finally arrive at the present day..?
"To stand as a biped mammal on a planet they themselves call Earth... (in all manner of different babblings of mere thought-bound words in all the languages)...
"This spinning blue marble in the vastness of space... this home planet of ours... it has no name... its plenty is not for us primitive humans to claim... but that is an aside... back to the narrative... (fourth wall break... giggle...)
"Fourth wall, third wall, second wall, first... entertainment slakes a mighty thirst... of questing humans getting to know their own brain... caught halway between enlightened and insane...
"Again I digress... back to the narrative...
"To stand as self-aware, intelligent beings, capable of reason, even capable of abstract concepts such as emotions...
"This is a gift beyond imagining... humans would do well to stand calmly, in gentle contemplation of the majesty inherent in the fact that we are alive and here at all...
"Kabooooom!!! Head shot...
"But alas, humans stand in the grey light just before dawn... they have not yet awakened... their enlightenment, so attainable and within their grasp... it is to be found on the other side of night...
"When this grey light gives way to the break of dawn...
"When the light brings its enlightenment a human can truly see for the first time all of reality in all of its radiant majesty... in all of its connectedness...
"The world right now..? It is filled with sleepwalkers, sleeptalkers, sleepfighters, sleephaters, sleepeaters, sleepf**kers, sleepstanders... somnambulists all...
"Just look at how they stand...
"To stand with a daft conceptualisation of time, bound by its ridiculously narrow perspective and 'logic'...
"To stand with the burden that is the collection of memories of the past, along with the dreams or nightmares of the future, that clutter the reality of our moment right here, right now...
"To stand in the grey light of the pre-dawn day... realising as they should that they themselves have the power to awaken and bring on the dawn...
"To stand apart... always apart and in conflict... in conflict with each other, and in conflict within...
"The world upon which we stand does not care what we think or feel... it does, however, care what we do...
"The world upon which we stand will respond to how we choose to stand upon it...
"Another aside... a break from the narrative...
"The turning of the planet upon which we stand will not bring the dawn of personal enlightenment... it brings the majesty of the Really Real wonder of light in the physical sphere of existence...
"The mundane reality, precious gift that it is, it cannot bring to you the dawning of your own Enlightenment... look not to the world of the Really Real except for purposes of survival...
"How you stand... that defines you... that you choose to stand at all is a ceaselessly worrisome thing... the time for sleepstanding is done...
"It is past time for standing... now it is time for each human being to stand no longer...
"It is time for humans to walk into the light of dawn, out of their eternal ephemeral grey pre-dawn stand...
"Human... I say this to you... evolve your self...
"The wheel of the Self Evolution Revolution turns Eternally...
"And what did the imagined God say to His imagined masses..?
"The ones who are doing all the damage..? Humans... simple humans, being simple...
"Stop what you are doing human... evolve your self... move beyond simply being simple, and for God's sake evolve... I've got a hundred bucks riding on this bet... this planet... engaged in this social experiment... asking the simplest of questions...
"Do they have what it takes to survive simply being human..?
"Do they have what it takes to evolve..?"

[Former-Member]

You know what @Silenus, yesterday I think I learned that it is fear that stops us from evolving and taking the risk to see everyone's 'humanness'. I was sitting on a bus and there was a woman on there across from me who was... I think delusional would be the word. At that point I wondered about talking to her but it was fear of the unknown that stopped me. The What Ifs all jumped up and barked at me. The desire to connect was there but the fear stopped me. In the end I smiled at her and then the seat was taken and I felt a little relief but at the same time felt terrible. During my latest episode I came to realise how much my fear immobilises me. My therapist pointed in out. So today I connect the dots and realise that it is probably the experience of many that fear stops us from connecting as humans. Just sharing my thoughts  Sending hugs

[BlueBay]

Choices need to be made
I feel I'm in a cage
Closed up with bears
And no one cares

All closed up laying here
I don't know what's there
To think of anymore
Feel helpless hopeless
And I don't care

I'm couped up in here
My back is sore
My cough is loud
Another med pls

I just wish I could die
And be at peace
For no more tears I would have
I hate today

[Silenus]

Gentle hugs to you all, my lovelies...

[Silenus]

My latest poem...


To Fight, To Find
----------------------------

To fight the rope
To fight without hope
To find ways to cope

To fight to continue to be
To fight just to be free
To find ways to see

[Silenus]

Hahaha... time to be a little bit OCD...

I've written a grand total of 565 poems to date, from my first one in 1989 to my most recent one today...

I have collected all of these poems in my first book and in an upcoming follow-up book of poetry...

So, I thought to myself... I have poems... I have the dates they were written... every one of them...

I thought I would do a statistical analysis of my poetry writing across the space of 27 years of my life...

I dusted off my copy of Excel... it was spreadsheet time..!

What I found was quite interesting... and totally what I expected...

I expected to have written most of my stuff in springtime... that's when I am most hypo in the natural annual seasonal cycle that my bipolar self seems to respond to...

Interesting...

Seasonal Analysis:
Months	Season	Number of Poems Written	Percentage
Dec-Jan-Feb	Summer	110	19%
Mar-Apr-May	Autumn	128	23%
Jun-Jul-Aug	Winter	107	19%
Sep-Oct-Nov	Spring	220	39%
Total		565

Even more interesting... hahaha... my poetry writing seems to have spiked in the last few years... as shown by this year-by-year statistical analysis...

Year by Year Analysis:
	Year	Number of Poems Written	Percentage
	1989	4	0.7%
	1990	6	1.1%
	1991	7	1.2%
	1992	1	0.2%
	1993	4	0.7%
	1994	1	0.2%
	1995	19	3.4%
	1996	2	0.4%
	1997	19	3.4%
	1998	6	1.1%
	1999	0	0.0%
	2000	2	0.4%
	2001	0	0.0%
	2002	0	0.0%
	2003	0	0.0%
	2004	0	0.0%
	2005	0	0.0%
	2006	1	0.2%
	2007	2	0.4%
	2008	0	0.0%
	2009	0	0.0%
	2010	0	0.0%
	2011	4	0.7%
	2012	16	2.8%
	2013	50	8.8%
	2014	82	14.5%
	2015	146	25.8%
	2016	193	34.2%

Worsening bipolar... the major trigger of my wife leaving me in 2011 (2011 was the start of the writing spike, but I was so destroyed that I wasn't really writing too much poetry that year or the next)... I was too busy coming to terms firstly with a depression diagnosis and then a bipolar diagnosis...

It was a steep learning curve in 2011-2012... the now defunct BlueBoard forum was an integral part of that... I may not have been writing a lot of poems in 2011-12, but I was writing thousands of pages of posts on BlueBoard as I struggled to come to grips with my issues...

It helped me a lot... I like to think that it helped other people in the process too...

My mother dying in 2014 was a major trigger of the wild ride the past 3 years have been...

Interesting to note that 86% of my poetry has been written in the last 5 years...

I've got more data to add and analyse...

In the spreadsheet, I've got a Topic column and a Trigger column for each poem...

As I fill those out, I will be able to analyse what I write about, and what triggered it...

This is a valuable tool of self analysis...

Self diagnostic analysis with reliable time-stamped long-term data...

The scientist in me has wood... hahaha...

A mood diary spanning 3 decades...

Now that's writing as a form of therapy...

It lets me see where I have come from and why... it lets me see long-term patterns in my bipolar condition... it arms me with the knowledge that I need to proceed with my life as best as possible given the disorders that I have been blessed-cursed with...

Hugs and happy vibes beaming to you all... 🙂

[Shimmer]

Wow @Silenus, a mood diary spanning 3 decades, that is very impressive! Sounds like you are doing a detailed and rich analysis. How do you feel looking back on your writing over the years?

[BlueBay]

In hospital feeling sorry for myself. Emotional depressed and tired. I don't know what to write but here is a piece I've just thought of.
I'm so tired I can't think.

Life is tough
And so rough
I hate it right now
I can't stand the pow

I cry every night
I knew I wasn't right
I am sleepy
Wish they would keep me

I just want to run
And never come back
I thought I was slack
Now it's no fun

Feeling sick sucks
It just rips you apart
From here to there
And nowhere

The sun is going down
And so is my friown
Nothing is making sense
I just it wasn't me

[Zoe7]

@BlueBay

Didn't do too bad for someone who can't think!!!!!

Sending hugs and good thoughts your way. Sleep if you need to