WARNING THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF SQUIRRELS

PSA – SQUIRRELS is a slang term used for the anti-psychotic medication called Seroquel used in the treatment of Bi-Polar disorder. Ash stop laughing at the warning and do some work.

Not too long ago an idea was formed, an idea to write a blog of my personal experiences and how they co related to mental health and suicide in the hopes of giving hope to just one person. To even reach that one person and give them sense of comradery with me and to know they aren’t alone in what they are going through and to inspire them to live on. While this idea was being spoken about another idea formed…a collaborative one I can’t take all the credit, but if anyone asks its all me. This goal, this idea, this fucking pipe dream throw away idea that was talked about between my carer and myself was beautiful but felt like a dead end…… ”the system is broken the shit is just floating” … and who are we to do a damn thing about it anyway?………

“Just write the blog” I would tell myself, procrastinating it……I’m not a real writer unless I say I have writers block right? So yeah just write the blog and get it up and let people see it and connect with it, show them it is OK to not be OK! To normalise mental health and suicide issues so many of us face. So, I did, building the blog website…NOT TOO FUCKING SHABBY AY. I am no web designer but I done alright ay…excuse me my north Queensland is showing “AY”….ahem…..and the more I showed people and talked about it they asked why and the story would come out and the long term goal of creating an organisation that would provide services in the gaps we had identified was at the end and was was the cherry on top…..

The response was and is still over whelming, out of curiosity I put all the ideas we had into the website and designed a logo sitting on the couch one night…. chucked it all together and……

Woah…. What have I done…. the response was so good, it quite literally had given me Goosebumps a few times while simultaneously shitting my god damn pants. so I made a go fund me which turned into a little bit of a social media frenzy that turned into my ugly mug on a half-page newspaper article in the sunshine coast daily. No autographs till the end please.

Written by:

Ben Russoniello | ©benrussoniello 2019

Who am I ? And why should you read my stories and rantings? well, I am a no one, I am a dad, I am a husband…..well kind of, separations a bitch. I’m a friend, I’m a brother, I’m a son,…most importantly. I am Bi-Polar….and I am just like you.

Chances are if you’re reading this you either are a head case like me…oh heyyy…. or you are a family member, carer or friend of someone who is, other wise you wouldn’t have given a toss about a mental health blog.

So why should you read my stories and rants? well honestly I don’t care if you do or you don’t. But if you do you hopefully you will realise you are not alone you are not going through this shit by your self. you are not the only one. I hope to help show those of you who feel this way that you are not alone. That although we all manifest slightly different we all go through the highs and the lows, the manic episodes with the shitty hypersexual behaviour that caused us to cheat on our partner, the irritability over nothing that caused us to scream at our kids and the euphoric highs that crash down to earth into a depressive heap in our beds and the bursting into tears for absolutely no reason at all.

Also for you family members and friends, there will be things written just for you, by people just like you. My family members, my friends will contribute about how they deal with me and my messy fucking life.

I want to show you mental illness from both sides, the raw uncut un-clinical mess that is our lives. To show you family members that you all go through this the same as my family members and every other mentally ill persons family members. To show you that you guys are fuckin special to put up with our shit and are most definitely not the only people in the world to experience the wonderful times and the very dark times that come along with a mentally ill person.

Hi I’m Ben and I’m Bipolar, come along for the ride, or not (pussy) but if you do you’ll get some laughs maybe some tears but hopefully some sense of not being alone in the dark scary world of mental illness….

  Deep inside where nothing is fine, I have lost my mind……unknown

Written by:

Ben Russoniello | ©benrussoniello 2019

I met sally a few weeks ago through a friend, I was doing some password and account recovery ( I am a geek in my day job). Sally has just through a pretty epic domestic violence situation so you could imagine was a bit of a mess, no problem I’ve been around plenty of people going through hell and helped them through their shit.

Anyway – when being introduced to sally by her family member Kate, who don’t get me wrong is an absolutely beautiful person who would have no ill intent towards anyone, I was told something along the lines of “don’t mind her, she is Bi-Polar….” I remember thinking “who give a shit? so do I.” but brushed it of and went about doing the job for sally. nice girl, definitely Bi-Polar though haha..

As Bi-polar people do when we find out someone else we have met is bi-polar we start to compare stories of how our illness effects us in our daily lives. Now I’ve been diagnosed a decade this year, so I’ve had a good long time to learn to stand up for myself when people stick their noses into my diagnoses….but for sally, 21, barely diagnosed and still finding her way, still coming to terms that she now has this thing, this beast with a label. Having a constant intrusion of although well meaning family and friends tell her that they think she Jus has anxiety or just depression, oooh my personal fucking favourite! “you have ADD” can be detrimental and often be a trigger to some epic mood shifts. And really people the anxiety, the depression the ADD like behaviour haha all these things are either part of the illness or looks damn sure like a hyper manic person haha ADD.

shit….. oh right… My point is we struggle enough, we doubt ourselves more then any other person with a healthy mind and this CONSTANT barrage of BULLSHIT , DR GOOGLE Uneducated no fucking idea about mental illness home diagnoses cos you think you know something about something is just counter productive. SO JUST SHUT UP!

Having Bi-Polar, OCD, schizophrenia, depression or any other mental illness isn’t just a GP saying “hey you have this, have these pills now off you pop to live your life.” NO we have doctors, case managers, psychologist, psych nurses and psychiatrists….a whole team of Professionals who help to manage our diagnosed illness, which by the way cant be done by anyone but a psychiatrist. so please just shut , because although all these professionals have told us what we have, we still trust our friends and family more. we will question everything told to us if our loved ones tell us they think we aren’t what we have been told we are.

So what can you do that’s productive?

Just be there, listen when we talk and try you best not to judge some of the outrages shit we will do lol. But what need is simple, be with us be our family, be our friends. Treat us like you would any other friend or family member. We have the clinical support networks, what we need is to be treated as normal as possible by our family and friends.

Ahh normal if only…….haha

But seriously just shut up and leave the diagnosing for professionals and I don’t mean bloody GPs either but that’s another rant for another day .

Written by:

Ben Russoniello | ©benrussoniello 2019