OctPoWriMo Day 13: Reaching

Today's alternate prompt was to "write about mental health or mental illness."

This is something that I do all the time. Yet when I sat down and tried to write a poem about it, I ended up with a stream of consciousness in disarray; free-form poetry of the rawest order, words that just spilled out of me when I tried to put my own struggle with Bipolar 1, OCD and PTSD into words today.

This poem focuses on the Bipolar, the unpredictability of it even taking the best of medications that are available, and how I struggle on, even though I'm 'doing better' right now than I have been in a very very long time.

So here it is, it is what it is...

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Reaching by February Grace

lonely
inside my own head
though the music that I hear
never stops

No one
understands the sound
and trying to explain
makes it worse

lost
tossed about on 
restless seas
adrift, alone, and

lonely
though I'm not on my own
getting better
a little every day

medication
the devil that you know
or angels' saving grace
who knows

"Recovery"
is judged in tiny steps
on the 'good' days
I try not to forget

Better
and trying to hang on
to improvements
no matter how small

confusion
when the compass spins 
and I'm left
to pick up the pieces again

mixed-state
mania or lows
so far down you touch
the bottom of the ocean

different
every single day
no knowing where
my mind will go today

resolution
may ever just 
exceed my grasp
still I keep reaching.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~