i fell off the rocky mountain high

by jen kiley

vincent van gogh -"starry night" - (lived his art & his suicide with manic depression)

s. told me it was bound to happen “that’s why they call it manic depression,” she said. i fell off the rocky mountain high and keep falling deeper and deeper into the depths of depression and death. it started wednesday night and i just keep losing gravity underneath me. thinking about it and listening to music and videos of james dean and river phoenix. if you go to that blog post link i wrote on “i feel i think about suicide too often you will find that i added videos to the post. here is a quote at the beginning of one of the videos that lives inside of my head: “if i had one day when i didn’t have to be all confused and i didn’t have to feel i was ashamed of everything. if i felt that i belonged someplace.” these words spoken by james dean were then followed by the song “forever young”…”do you really want to live forever? i want to be forever young.”

today is s.’s birthday. i designed a beautiful birthday card for her and earlier this evening i put the finishing touches on an artistic project i’ve been working on for many months as one of the birthday presents i am giving her tonight. and a few hours ago it was the anniversary of t.’s death in a car crash; she drove, i navigated. (the woman i dedicate the song “almost lover” to.)

almost lover – a fine frenzy

her family hated that i survived. they said it should have been me who died and t. should have lived. i felt that way myself too. why didn’t i die? she was only in her 20s. we were a year apart in age. (there were thoughts that black arts were involved in causing the car to crash. a certain person wanted me dead. this may sound crazy but there were rituals practiced on both of us weeks before the crash.) like james dean who was driving a sports car and driving too fast so were we and before the crash we spiritually left the car; an astral projection experience. it was too late when we both realized where we were and what we were doing. the car smashed into a guard rail on the thruway, we were driving more than 75 mph and rolled at least 7 times over a distance of at least a hundred yards. everything went black and all i heard were smashing sounds that went on forever. i thought i had died and left my body. when i got my bearings i literally kicked my way out of the womb of the car. there was broken glass everywhere; the roof of my sports car crushed down on t.’s neck. i felt for her lungs to feel if she was still breathing. it felt as though she was but when we were taken separately to the hospital while i was being examined the doctor callously answered my question, “How is t.? Where is t.?” by saying: “She’s not here.” I was puzzled. I told him the ambulance people said they were bringing her to the same hospital. He bluntly said: “She’s dead.” Point blank like i’d been shot in the heart. within moments, less than a second, i began screaming. i wouldn’t stop. no one could get me to stop. a priest came in to try to get me to settle down. i was screaming that the woman i loved was dead. he told me to stop saying that. “what would people think?” if i hadn’t been so devastated beyond words i would have told him to go fuck himself. i cried and i screamed, that was all i could do. they finally asked if they could call someone. in between sobs i said to contact my closest friend (the first woman i ever made love to while we were in college.) before she came with her mom and dad, they had adopted me (not literally), the police came in to question me. i was half mad with grief and probably not making much sense to them but i told them that t. had been murdered, that the brakes had been tampered with on the car. there were some people who did not want me to be near t. and they would go to any lengths to pull the two of us apart, including murdering me. i was the intended victim. we weren’t suppose to be together that evening or going in the direction we were heading. also, weeks before i had the same dream t. had about her death. anyway, before that night some very negative people did some strange rituals on the two of us. i later found out after t.’s death that the rituals were those of the black arts. what one would call “bad” magic. the woman who wanted this ritual performed was the woman that t. broke up with after she started getting closer to me. she told me she didn’t trust anyone but me that everyone else wanted something from her but me. i believe that our lives crossed so that i could be her spirit guide to the other side. the very first thing she told me when we first met alone in a secluded location away from everyone was that she had a dream that she described to me in detail of how she was going to die and she also felt that it would be soon and that i was the one she needed to be there with her. she wanted me to explain her dream to her. i tried to be reassuring but i felt such a strong sense about the danger of the dream. the dream was exactly in minute detail to the events of her untimely death. all the moments that lead up to that late night were predestined. our meeting was part of the plan for me to guide her. our relationship was extremely intense and on a higher spiritual plane. there was an intense physical attraction but that was secondary. i’ve never felt kisses like hers but that wasn’t what our relationship was about; it was always meant to be spiritual. after her death, i read out loud to her from the Tibetan Book of the Dead so she would know what she should expect as she journeyed through to her destination. i feel i failed her. i had nightmares and visual images of the passages i had read from the book. i did not feel successful as her guide but then i was visited in a dream by t. who didn’t understand what had happened to her. she wondered where she was. i explained to her that she had died. the place was dark but i could see t. clearly. i think that she understood what i was telling her. she visited several times. it has been extremely difficult to let her go. i felt her presence frequently over the years and recently a strong feeling of her has come to me. i am sometimes like the film ‘the sixth sense’ “I see dead people,” but they visit me in my dreams, if you could call them that. i think they are spirits who feel safe in my company. i am not a threat but a believer. maybe it is part of my journey to meet people who are going to die young. it has happened so frequently in my life.

i haven’t written this down before now. it may all sound like i am mad as the hatter in “alice in wonderland” but this all happened as i have told it. the police investigated the brakes. the black arts people waited outside the funeral home during the wake trying to look their scary selves but i was absorbed in t.’s death and i kept breaking down crying uncontrollably. my evil wicked mother even started popping valium down my throat and purchased an once of marijuana for me. she couldn’t stand the tears or emotions even under those circumstances, she wanted me sedated. and my father was acting like his usual perverted self through it all and being cruel and crude with his insensitivity and rude, perverse comments. unfortunately i was forced to stay with them for a few months after t. died but i got out as quickly as i was able.

now back to what i was writing about before i got sidetracked, evidently t., a, or someone else from the other side is paying attention to what i have been doing lately and the way i have been feeling. my guardian angels just trying to watch out for me. my grandmother probably the top guide. she always watched out for me when she was alive and the only person who loved me. she is the only reason i survived my childhood.

Now about river phoenix who died suddenly at the age of 23 from a cocaine overdose outside of “the viper club” in california. everyone was shocked by the news of his death. it happened in 1993 and i still feel his loss to this day. he would be 40 years old now. i was so shocked. his death did not exist in anyone’s mind at the time. he would be so great today. and his younger brother joaquin, i cannot imagine what he thinks about everyday when the memories of river come into his mind.

my recent emotional explosion coming out of a zombie like state that had lasted for several years after a mental and emotional breakdown and working with a therapist who was such an idiot who should be sued for what he put me through (his psychological neglect and emotional torture) has really affected me and i feel more going on inside me this year then i have in such a long time. i feel death is too close by though. i’m not feeling so great about the state of my mind either right now. am i safe? if i write about what is going on inside my head then it doesn’t stay contained in an implosive environment. i will send a copy of this post to my current therapist second after the male torturer. just knowing she will have a chance to read this and that i have two appointments scheduled for next week will be reassuring. after i sleep tonight i wake up to s.’s birthday and the multiple choice feast that will be prepared and the fun of giving my presents to her and to see how surprised she will be by what they are. i believe she will enjoy them. i just want to see her smile.

now the question is…i am new to understanding the manic depression. no one told me until a few weeks ago that among other diagnoses i was bipolar. when in fact i actually have had it since i was a rebellious teenager and a different personality then who enjoyed drinking and drugs and everyone who was active inside of us indulged in the overuse of self medicating until many years past our teens when we found a therapist who was able to bring us to understand who we were: that we had multiple personality disorder and buried memories and a great need to talk about and reveal what was leading us through our divine madness. we wrote profusely then in letters and were working on a novel which we finished. every free moment went into that endeavor. the rest goes on from there where one of our psychiatrists diagonosed us as having manic depression but no one ever notified us of this diagnosis until my present therapist followed a request i had several weeks back to find out what were the diagnoses on my psych chart. revelations: to my therapist and to my great surprise: we were bipolar. i prefer manic depression or as someone i have made a recent acquaintance with: “a bipolar brilliant mind where i do not like the term mental illness but prefer to be referred to as mentally interesting.” (i credit this to manicmuses) for the rest of the diagnoses see secret keeper above to find out all about us.

one last thing i want to write is that creating these posts has an eventually calming affect on all of us. it helps to work out the feelings that are building up unbearable pressure inside me that feels very destructive. it is a catharsis to express in this way. i may not have been released from my depression but i’m not sure ever what causes that to happen. depression has been with me most of my life and i never knew what road it traveled on and what map it uses and what its purpose or destination. i try to stay away from the danger but the force is strong. pardon the “star wars” reference. still always have the touch of our sense of humor. i don’t want to be depressed for s.’s birthday but she would rather i not be manic if there is really a choice. my mania drives her crazy and she’s pretty bloody sane after living with me all this time. well sleep is calling me. i need to do some work in my notebooks for my manuscript or maybe work on writing a poem then some reading on manic depression or from the book “the war on art.” it is 41 degrees out @5:55am. chilly but i’m under a blanket and a heating pad and wearing a hoodie with hood down. still sleep will follow all after i retire to the upstairs and eventually my head will hit the pillow. ~jen~ ps. happy birthday s.; she just got up and has the most awful sounding cold. bummer for her birthday. one should always feel healthy on such days.

" safe place m. took me in my mind"