" Easy to Hate Not Easy To Love 28 Years of Being Nuts Around People"

When I was 16 I was finally diagnosed Bipolar, and by all accounts and familial witness statements it was about time. My crazy coming out was not some cryptic Zapruder film like moment replayed over and over again by my loved ones and family. It was a wildly known fact.

   I was and still am not easy to Love for most and I am still easy to hate for some but not all. I am sure a lot of people can say that, hell no one is perfect or everyones friend, that is just too creepy to imagine just look and Tony Robbins and you will understand. But I come with a list of optional emotional accessories that would put a new car dealer to shame. Piggybacking on my illness are a whole host of psycho-social issues that makes being close to me at times difficult. I am also very outspoken a gift I received at age 17 from my grandfather once I found my voice and my shyness ebbed away.

 By behavior has left a wake of emotional detritus behind me and I have burned bridges, almost exclusively personal bridges, maybe because my profession tended to attract folks like me and they can tolerate a lot of shit. I am not mean, despite the tenor of my posts, tweets and conversations. I get that a lot and I can be very polarizing, which I am very aware of and a lot of you know. But I am actually sweet, for those who get to know me. But there is the rub, I do not let many people in, I let you in the yard, on the porch but in the house that I am not so good at (See Fear of Abandonment).

  So who the fuck likes me? I was lucky to be married to a wonderful woman over a decade. She hated me too at first when she did not know me and only agreed to a date to get me out of her hair. She was an amazing woman, with a huge capacity to Love, Forgive, Tolerate and most of all a sense of humor. She let me love her first, that was one of the keys, because only then did I open my front door and let her off the porch. I am good at relationships not starting them for that very reason. I am emotionally guarded, it comes from my illness, mixed with social developmental speed bumps etc but what really matters is that I keep people away. Mrs Badger would not take that crap and firmly yet patiently coaxed me open. I did some really fucked uop shit when she was alive and she still Loved me warts and all. I always wondered how anyone could love me, I am a fucked up mess. She did, in some way I gave her something that no one else did, and all my crap was worth it, I was never abusive, I did not yell, and I still do not. I always respected her and laughed at her bad jokes. Still it was not easy, when you are away on a biz trip and you come home to find out that your husband sold all the furniture and then bought all new stuff in a manic Martha Stewart moment you have to take a second to question your relationship decisions. Still she and others stood by me and still do. I am lucky to have some long standing friendships because I am not a easy friend.

    Today in some kind of way I protect others and myself by not letting them off the porch it is by no means altruistic. I dont do anything really stupid and you are my friend my porch friend. All this changed when Mrs. Badger died. My porch got smaller my yard larger and weirder. \

 For almost 6 years now I have been in a self induced emotional exile, fearful that no one would love me, or want to be around me for more than a short while. This has added to my aura of polarization. And it is not easy to change. I am working on this very hard. it is not easy or right now natural for me, but I am working on it. My yard is getting smaller, cleared of debris and some of you are coming inside already.

 I am making new friends and this is trust me on this scary as shit, scarier than anything I have ever done before and I have done and been some scary ass places the least of which is in my own head. So to the people getting to know me and who want to get to know me better. Be patient, gentle, have a sense of humor, and I hope that you will find in me as a friend what others who have known me for years have found. I am not sure what that is, but it works for my wife and others and maybe I can add something to your lives that makes it a little better.

 loving someone is never blind, it is just love. loving someone living with a mental illness is not easy but for some worth the trip. It may not be me, but it could be someone else. This post was one of the hardest I have written as to admit you are easy to like sucks. But the time was right. I hope you all can open your doors and let those screaming people off your porch the noise is driving me nuts.......................

"CRaZy EYeS or How I use My Illness to Keep a Distance"

  Crazy Eyes... or actions. I have discovered one way that I use my being "Out" as crazy as a tool to in my social life. There are many ways we build walls around us, some of us act like assholes as a way of not letting people get close to us then sit alone and wonder why we have no social life. Others still will find the slightest personal defect and magnify it so it becomes a screen keeping someone away to protect our hearts.

 Me I use my Crazy, and it can be both a passive and active interpersonal denial system. A tool that I have honed over the years as my moat that surrounds my heart. Myself like so many others have been hurt by the actions of people who in some cases were just mean and in others were just being a product of whatever life had conditioned them to be. In my case I have been abandoned.

 I have abandonment issues, they are not as bad as they were in the past but the way they manifest themselves is slicker, more polished now. I have been ill since my teens and in my teens the reaction to my mental illness by my peers was usually through bullying, being excluded, and just plain ignored, or when I did make friends left for the socal dead.

 In some cases this.. well alot of cases this happened due to my behavior and actions when I was manic. Which when I was younger was quite often. It was hard to be friends with me. I was unpredictable, irresponsible, angry and just plain odd. My fault or not it hurt, and the pain went deep. I lost friends and family, I was forgotten or just plain mocked.

 As I got older and wiser maturing into my crazy I learned that I could protect myself with it when I needed to. I used my illness to self destruct good relationships out of fear that they would abandon me first. This pattern went on for years and in some degree still does.

 Today I am out and I tell everyone and anyone that I am Bipolar. I use this in two ways, in a altruistic way in order to break down stigma and educate people. I also use it to weed out folks who may break my heart later or are unable to be friends with someone like me. Better I scare you away then I let you in to hurt me.

 I still fear being alone but I no longer dislike being alone. The people who know me, love me and except me warts and all I have no fear or insecurity about them leaving my life. But I am still cautious of new people, i still push even people who care about me away out of my own fear that "I" will fuck things up like I did so much in the past.

  I call myself a "Asshole" a lot when I am getting to know people like some crazy person fog horn warning them to stay clear of my bat shit rocks. I know I do it and it is a personality flaw that I hate about myself. I hope that by writing this and exposing it that it will become harder and harder for me to do.

 I want to fill my moat in and let people dance on my lawn...........................