Raw Writing for the Real World of Bipolar

Suicide is a truly personal page. I feel a little naked showing it. When I first found out I was bipolar I drew a page full of knives. These knives represented the knives I took out of the drawer when I was a kid so my mother wouldn't kill herself. I hid them all under my mattress. remember how frightened I was. After being suicidal and holding a knife to my own arm, I decided that I could never do that to my own children. I went back to my original picture and wrote things like L's Dreams, L's Trust, L's Love, etc. over each one of the knives in my picture. I decided to cut them out and add them here along with an old blog on why I can never commit suicide. My kids stop me from leaving them that way. They deserve better.

This one I'm most proud of. The great thing about gesso-ing is that after you've painted on top of it you can write in it with a metal or plastic instrument. This journal entry was about the shame I used to feel about having bipolar.


I completed my first journal entries and I thought I would share. Unfortunately, it's hard to see all the detail with a photo, but here they are. Signs of Bipolar took me the longest to complete. I tore strips of construction paper, painted with acrylics, added red strings and then covered it all with gel medium which makes it super shiny. Signs of Bipolar includes the printed out warning signs that I posted last week or the week before. I pasted them in a sundial around a small picture that represents me.