S.M.R. Burton's Blog

This was not the post I planned to make today. But this is the one that needs to be written. The post that I am writing raw and in the moment.

I awoke this morning at 4:37am with a heaviness in my chest and dread in my mind. Fighting myself to go back to sleep. The counting and breathing exercises not doing much. I drifted off into a restless fit of lucid dreams until my alarm woke me at six.

I sat with my hand over my rapidly beating heart thumping like the beat of a tom drum. I hear the so...

Acrimonious sunlight pours like liquid fire through the dust covered blinds. It seeps slow like molten flames, oozing across the floor, climbing the bed, and bathing me with the full intensity of its fury. I brace for the searing of my skin, the charred smell of singed flesh to assault my senses. Instead, I am numb. I don’t feel pain, I don’t feel sadness, I don’t feel regret. I hear the creaking of the bed frame. The rhythmic motion, persistent. Unyielding. Slow and maddening, rivulets of salt ...

My therapist asked me at my last session… What was your biggest fear about being diagnosed as bipolar, what is your greatest fear about living with your diagnosis?

I shrugged my shoulders and bit the inside of my lip as the tears started to form in the corners of my eyes. Only one?

Why was I afraid to be diagnosed? In my younger years it was because there was a severely negative picture painted of people with bipolar disorder in media, in the world in general. You were told they’re irrationa...

Self-Discovery.

I thought I would know who I was before I hit my thirties. It’s that idealism of being in your mid-twenties. You’ve survived the high school years. You’ve surpassed the uncertainty of early adulthood. You feel mature, and yet you still have so much to learn. Immense amounts of growth, lessons to learn, a whole life to live.

At least I did.

I really thought I knew who I was.

Until this past year. When I started to write again. When long hidden away feelings, emotions, and ...

~ I am not a healthcare professional, this is a blog post about my personal experiences with managing Bipolar Disorder, Panic Attacks, and Depression~

Two months ago I started the upward climb into a hypomanic episode that lasted about a month. As the laws of physics tell us, what goes up, must come down. I plummeted into the lowest depressive low I have experienced in years, and I have been living there for weeks.

It's been terrifying. It left me hopeless at times, scared that it wasn't going...

Writers are also often very avid readers. We found inspiration in books, we planted seeds for big dreams to one day be like those authors that moved us to the point of laughter and tears. Well, what happens once you start writing and then go to read? You compare, you tear yourself down, and you doubt. You look at other’s strengths, and you say, “I can never be this good”. I wish I could say I don’t do it too, but I do. I am also here to say—Fuck. That. Noise.

I had an epiphany after having a ta...

This blog post isn’t like my others, at least not in the typical sense. It’s probably not going to be one that really gets read, but as I sat here this morning drinking my coffee and reading, my mind began to wander.

I took a slight break from Threads. It’s only been two days, and I will confess I haven’t been entirely silent. I snuck in and threw some glitter for my Thriends because so many of them are doing such amazing things. It’s their work that I am reading this morning, and I am blown...

Why do I continue to write these posts that rip me raw, expose my secrets, and leave me vulnerable?

Because they heal. Because they help me grow. Because it might be the thing someone else needs to read. The thing that lets someone else know they Are Not Alone.

Ever stop to think while hot tears stream down your cheeks and blur your eyes as you pull laundry from the washer to load into the dryer, Is this all I am?

Am I this housewife, am I this part-time WFH/SAHM. Am I this person with th...

**Trigger Warning: contains a very mild description of self harm, please read with caution**

I am no one you know.

Has anyone ever told you that you’re perfect? Perfect for them? They believe this to be a compliment when in fact it’s debilitating because now you have straddled me with the unending weight of your impossible expectations of me.

I am no one you know.

You do not know the darkest caverns of my mind, or the thoughts I have in the bedroom. You do not know what I yearn for but fe...