Ani Difranco was my Ceramic Arts Teacher

Only really in personality and style. Names and facial features are different, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they were best friends. Both passionate feminists, environmentalists, naturalists, artists, activists, and highly empathetic. As well as a teacher, she was a counselor to a myriad of students and wasn’t being paid for it like the other school counselors were. It was her nature.

Her classroom was right off the courtyard and when it was a bright, not too hot of a day and we weren’t working with the clay, she’d take us out to the courtyard to teach her lessons.

She was comfortable in her own skin and since I have been on this planet, I don’t know how people do it. I don’t fit into a type. I’m an in-between. As much as I protest on caring what other’s think, I think I care the most on what they think.

I was intelligent, but not so much to be accepted into the nerds and geeks group. I dressed gothic/punk for a stint in high school, but didn’t even fit in completely with the freaks. I had a best friend who was completely drenched with popularity, but I definitely did not go for that group. I was basically an outcast, but not even cool enough for that group. Because I was a social butterfly nobody thought I was welcome into their world. Yesterday she was hanging out with so-and-so, don’t talk to her.

Drama was my main elective all through school and not even then was I cool enough for them. I was at dress rehearsals to keep an eye on my teacher’s 8-year-old daughter. I hated high school. So I dropped out.

Once diagnosed with Bipolar, everyone I knew and kept in touch with as a young adult dropped out of my world without a second thought. I get online. I find a support group. I go to my first support group and I leave less than 20 minutes after it started. These people are weird. I research Bipolar and all that usually comes up is depressing, wretched shit. Relapses, medications, med changes, being on meds for all of your life, adhering to a schedule, changing your diet, going to bed early (I’m 27, not 77), disability, everyone thinking you’re fucking lazy for being on disability. All these famous people are bipolar! 95% killed themselves, but don’t you mind that! You cannot handle stress, only check out volunteer or part-time jobs.

Then you get the Shiny Happy People (holding hands) all fanciful and feeling like they are the living walks of famous literature. They may be, I am not saying that’s bad. It’s just different. Everything is so nonsensical that it must make perfect sense. I’m a fish, you’re a fish, too. No, no I am a fucking shark so watch out, little fishy.

Does that make sense?

Bipolars are more creative. Bipolars are more intelligent. Bipolar sounds better than manic-depressive so we’ll go with that even though to the ”not disordered” world the original made more sense and was easier to explain since it was so cut and dry. Manic is the opposite of Depression and the goal is to be in the middle of the two. Done. Bipolar? Well there is unipolar depression which has 1 pole where you are always down and sad and have horrible thoughts all day and then there is Bipolar which means we have 2 poles, north and south where south is depression and north is mania. With mania you feel larger than life, you have racing thoughts, you become very verbose and grandiose, you can be extremely volatile and easily agitated,  you can’t turn yourself off and you can literally go 8 days with only 4 hours of sleep total. Get it?

Think about how often you heard someone say, “Oh that bitch is so manic-depressive!” before psychology coined Bipolar. Never? Yeah, me, too. How often do you hear, “Oh that bitch is so Bipolar!”? All the time? Me, too. Bipolar has taken the place of crazy. So who started the stigma? Yep, psychology. I rest my case.

32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco

squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I’m beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you’re going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I’ve lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there’s many who’ve turned out their porch lights just
so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
’til I’d passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl
of course too pretty is also your doom
’cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back

I’m not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I’m not saying that I’m a saint
I just don’t want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I’m beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
’cause someday you might find you’re starving
and eating all of the words you said