There is survivor's guilt

Another nor'easter. It's April 15 already. Just like life. Another storm on it's way, inevitably.

There is survivor's guilt.

I always had the luck of having someone that has taken care of business if I got real sick. Cover the rent and some bills a few times while you get back on your feet again. Year, after year, after year. Not that you get so sick every year. Or that you lose your job either because your are sick or have some other major life stressor happen that triggers an episode of the illness, catch-22. I always crash and burn off the hypo- or full blown mania. Hypo mania was never anything I could ride for long with any lasting success, as some do.

I'd be homeless if I hadn't had people that could help me. Parents, or husbands, or whatever help that might float the boat when I went down. So what makes me so f******g special. I have a home. I have pets. Why do I deserve to have a roof over my head, to eat and be warm head every day. And what for? What did I ever do to help anyone else? Besides my ill-fated attempt at being a stepmother? Why do I deserve to still be surviving and to even have a place, never mind a place at all, to live? I question deserving this privilege. I feel like someone else could have helped the world much more than I have and they should have had this help to keep the homelessness at bay and be kept off the streets. It would have been better for the greater good.

And I'm so stubborn. I'll keep keeping on until the last possible day that I could live. I'll never, ever take my own life, I'll only struggle to live and be as healthy as possible. I confirmed that vow when my late father-in-law died. I'd never do to anyone what suicide does to the people in that person's life. It took years for the conviction to really set in that what killed him likely was not self-imposed suicide.

Just like I vowed never to bear children after I was ms. diagnosed with BP at 17. There were times when I was young that I might have, if I had a husband that worked a job.  Better that I ended up never bringing a child into this world with this gene pool. I wouldn't do that to anyone, much less a child. So I'd adopt, which I sort of did by becoming a step-parent. And so stupid was I when I did that, thinking that I could help a child no matter how messed up they were by their own family / genetic problems. Too bad it took me so long to realize that I was my own problem, and had not overcome.

No redemption here, just the only purpose to survive because I have family and my rare, yet steadfast, friends, and just to fight back against evil. Take Great Aunt 'Althea'.  Roses to her.