Hello. It’s me- Elektra Flora. I’m back… back to writing.
I miss so many things right now- EDCLV, my apartment, && my livestream show. I miss being in a relationship and sharing life with someone. I miss living near a beach.
I’ll be honest, all areas of my life (love/home/career) are in shambles. I’m in the middle of a divorce, all of my things are now packed up in storage, and I’m unemployed. I let everything go that wasn’t authentic to myself. Overall I do feel positive about my future and I understand that I’m going through major life transitions that are temporary, but that hasn’t stopped the tears. To be honest, I’ve been crying for almost 3 hours straight just today. Been crying for days. Weeks. Crying for this long can be annoying, but it’s natural to me. It’s the only way my body knows how to process intense emotion. There’s been times in the past where I got mad at myself for crying because all I wanted to do was stop, but I couldn’t. I would get dissociative.
That was when I realized I needed help. My emotions were all over the place. I’d be crying but saying I was happy and then at other times when I was supposed to feel happy I felt melancholy. It did not make sense. So in 2015 I started going to a professional psychologist for talk therapy and roughly 3 months in I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type-1.
I don’t want to get into details of my diagnosis at this time, but today is the day I rip off the Band-aid and “come out” as someone with a mental health disorder. Fuck it… while we’re at it AND since it’s pride month… might as well admit that yes I’m attracted to both men and women.
Welp. There it is. I knew I eventually wanted to talk about mental health in my blog, I just didn’t know how I would bring it up or when would be a good time, but I feel like now is a good time. It’s an appropriate time because I’m emotional and I don’t know how to deal with these overwhelming feelings. Listening to music and writing have always been my escapism ever since I was a young child. In my teens and 20’s it turned into sex, drugs, and alcohol. Now I’m in my mid 30’s and hoping to pour my emotions and energy into something more constructive and less destructive. I’ve already wasted spans of my life in deep depression where I couldn’t function enough to get out of bed to even eat or shower. I don’t want to succumb to that type of life again and that’s why my blog is so important for me to continue. Writing helps me get out of bed. Writing helps me process my thoughts. Writing helps me live.
You have to understand that I’ve created several blogs since I was a teen. I’ve created them then scrapped them. I don’t want to do that anymore. “SouthernMissE” (2011-2014) was more of a diary. Posts were extremely short and had nothing of sustenance. I would post collages made with Polyvore, photos, or recipes. It was a space online for me to express myself and be creative. Another blog “Green Gold Peace Project” (2016-2018) is forever lost and I’m sad that I have nothing to show for it anymore. That blog was created in the midst of a very intense 7 month long manic episode where I had big dreams of my blog morphing into a non-profit. The blog was very similar to my current one (Chic, Unique, && Petite) but it wasn’t spiritual nor did it have a fashion element. Its pillars were: Green representing the environment, Gold representing higher learning, and Peace as in world peace. Green Gold Peace Project had a very strong foundation in STEM where I was writing posts that were fun to read while educational. I remember one piece was about physics and tumbling. I had sketched out some diagrams and had videos of me trying to explain the physics behind a standing tuck. I was also writing about music festivals but more from a travel perspective.
The main reason I scrapped “Green Gold Peace Project” was because I had to maintain a professional image as an engineer. My career and music festival lifestyles had to be separate. I couldn’t fully express myself in my writing or through my fashion because I had to have a filter. I wouldn’t dare wear pasties or have my ass hanging out in a picture. I would be mortified if a co-worker saw me in a rave outfit.
Here I am today with nothing to hide anymore. I don’t care what people think of me in my outfits at a rave, that I write poems, livestream DJ on Twitch, or that I enjoy going on dates with couples as their third… I’ve entered my “Give Zero Fucks” era. This is me. Take it or leave it.
I feel like this blog post is a hot mess because I’m having a difficult time trying to even gather my thoughts. I have so many things on my mind and to come full circle… I leave for my next music festival in approximately 3 days. This is a music festival lifestyle blog remember? Have I fully unpacked or finished my laundry from my last fest AKA EDCLV? Nope. Did I even write a blog post on EDCLV? Nope. Did I even take any good pics at EDCLV in consideration for Instagram or my blog? Nope. Was I insecure at times too embarrassed to ask anyone to take a picture of me because I was by myself? Yes. Did I cry at EDCLV because I was lonely? Yes.
This is where I feel the tension in my life. Just like my orbit. Spinning and pulling. Tighter and faster. In and out. Here I am on one side of the spectrum where I want to put myself out there as a writer. I’m up. I feel confident. I create. I’m fashionable. I’m gregarious. I have tons of energy. Then the opposite side of the spectrum. I’m down. I’m insecure. I’m incognito. I don’t want to be noticed. I engage in risky behavior. I sleep or exercise excessively. I cycle between binge eating or not eating. I’m quiet.
This is what life with bipolar is like and it never ends. A rollercoaster of emotions. Up and down to the extreme. I’ll never forget when I was diagnosed and the doctor asked if I even knew about bipolar disorder. I had said no. She pulled out a paper to draw on a line graph with some bell curves for me saying that “People’s emotions are supposed to stay within a normal range. Your emotions are so strong that they go outside normal boundaries and you experience them more deeply.”
The biology behind emotions being felt deeply isn’t the issue, it's that they can affect daily living and cloud ability to make coherent decisions so a person can function. It can be seen on either side of the up/down spectrum.
Where am I going with all this?
It’s that I’m being hard on myself for missing so many livestream episodes and not writing enough on my blog. It’s not an excuse, but the reason I haven’t been showing up for my own creative work is because of my disorder. I feel like I drifted off and was trying to hide. I got shy. I got anxious. I got depressed. These are the reasons why I wasn’t showing up and it is the truth. It was bothering me because I genuinely wanted to be here. This is my art and my way of expressing myself.
Moving forward with my writing I want readers to understand that my creative process ebbs and flows in a cycle that is in sync with a mood disorder. We live in an age where social media is more of a mask, only showing the “good stuff” and the “happy stuff.” What about the other sides of life? I know the “sad stuff” isn’t what people want to see, but isn’t that half of the package? Spirituality taught me that life doesn’t have to entail suffering. Therapy taught me that happiness is only validated by sadness. I was told a person can only truly understand a feeling when it is balanced by its polar opposite. You can’t feel heartbreak if you’ve never been in love.
I think I’ve done a great job showing my happy side. I hope the not-so-happy stuff portrays that I’m a human with a very wide range of emotions. Emotions that are so wide and deeply felt it is considered a medical condition and called “bipolar disorder.”
Going going back back to writing writing has helped me cope with this depressive episode I’ve been experiencing for months now. It’s time to get my ass out of bed and engage with life. I leave for Bonnaroo b2b Electric Forest in 3 days and I need to finish packing. I’m super excited for my 16 day adventure! This is my 4th time doing Bonnaroo b2b Electric Forest, but the first time I’m not coming home in between fests. I’ve always come back so I could do laundry and relax for a day, but that requires an additional 12 hours of driving just to be home for roughly 24 hours. Since I have the time off and have been working on myself I figured just staying on the road was a better option this time around.
I’m hoping to write another piece before my trip because this was extremely cathartic, but don't hold me to it as I've already communicated I'm overwhelmed. I am extremely grateful to have this online space for me to process my thoughts. Thank you for being here and reading my writing. I appreciate you and it means a lot to me.
Always stay true to yourself.
Xo,
E
NGL word on the street is I am gangsta...
I also signed a NDA so sorry you can't get the full story of how I earned that reputation. ;)
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