The girl with the black veil-

Yes she will smile and,
Yes she’ll say thank you;
But only when needed,
And that’s all she uttered.

Yes she would walk and,
Go into classrooms;
But thats all she went to,
And only when needed,

She walked with her head high,
Her blue eyes looked downcast;
A black veil her trademark,
We named her dark widow.

But no one, yes no one
Even once tried to get her,
To open the world, we all
Knew she held within her.

Her frail body floated,
Under layers of clothing,
The nickname travelled fast
But she walked on unbothered,

Until the day she didn’t,
The girl with the black veil,
The news came as a shock,
Our dark widow had passed on.

We found out the reason,
She hid behind a black veil,
Leukaemia- they called it,
Her cells were killing her.

We prayed for Azmeena,
We wept for her departure,
She fought all alone,
And we did nothing to help her.

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This is something I wrote as a free-write literally now, Just to keep the muse going. If you are not a fan of rhyming, feel free to ignore this. 🙂

the above image Is courtesy of  Emaho magazine.com

Mental Health Friday #16

Today’s MHF is a continuation of Trae’s journey with Bipolar disorder. Up until now, we’ve seen her deal with her mother passing away, the negative effects of anti-psychotics and her relapse with addiction. We ended last time with Trae getting back her life with her decision to break away from abuse and her then husband.

When I came home from spending the night at my friend’s house the day after I had fought with my then-husband on the phone, it must have been late afternoon, because I sat on the couch and my now ex-husband said I needed my medication. He seemed concerned as though I had been through something although I saw no reason for him to feel that way. It was as though he saw this as solving the problem. He gave me my medication and I took them, not thinking that the dose he was giving me was what was directed on the bottle. One of those medications was Seroquel and he had given me 1200 mg of that along with my other medications. I was only taking 800 a day. My doctor had originally written the prescription out wrong, but I was never to take 1200 mg a day.

I don’t remember much after that. The next day, I woke up and as I sat on the couch trying to focus because I was so groggy, my now ex-husband was pacing back and forth in front of me, screaming obscenities and accusations at me in front of my sons. I could not respond. This was on June 15th of 2012. I don’t remember much of what went on in the house for the next three weeks, possibly due to being overmedicated and the stress level in the house was extremely high.

At some point, I went to my friend who I will call Kay. At the time, she lived in an apartment for sober women. She gave me the number to call and apply for a room of my own in the apartment, which I did. I was accepted, but my room would not be available until July 2nd.

Over the next couple of weeks, I believe my husband continued to give me my medications, but I can not say for sure. If he was, it would explain my foggy memory.

On June 30th 2012, two days before my room would be available, my husband told me he wanted me to leave now. I immediately called my Godmother and went to her house for the night. I spent the next night at another friend’s house and was in my room at the sober women apartment the next day. I did not feel as though I had left a home, I felt free.

It was a very small room, furnished with a bed, a coffee table and a chair. Kay was now my roommate and I confided my feelings about my life to her. She was a good friend.

At this point, I continued to have coffee with John, the man I originally had coffee with on June 13, 2012 and talk to him for hours. He listened without judgment and never offered any opinion on what I told him. He listened, never pushing me in any direction with my thoughts. I told him my entire life story, over and over until I began to hear the words I was saying and realized so much more about the situation I was in. It is true that you never really see how bad things are until you are outside of the situation.

When I moved into my new room at the sober women’s house on July 2, 2012, I was mandated to attend thirty A.A. meetings in thirty days, without exception. It had already begun that people in the program were treating me differently although I did not know why at the time. I felt uncomfortable going to the meetings, in addition to the fact that being forced to go made it difficult with my defiance issues. I have never been in a detox or other facility where I was told what to do. John went to the meetings with me and I now found it very difficult to sit through the hour meeting now that it was mandated as opposed to being my own choice. To be continued

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Guest Writer: Trae from (TripleClicka.com). I’m honored to have Trae participate, help spread mental health awareness and blur out stigma by sharing her story, here on Mental Health Friday. She’d be back in two weeks with a continuation.

If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. You can contact me on My email address is: mykahani@yahoo.com . Image credit: HealthyPlace.com

Mental Health Friday #9

Shortly after I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder in 2001, my life changed and I crashed. My husband at the time had been complaining quite a bit about the behavior of my son, who had also been recently diagnosed. My husband was also looking at me differently. He became quite controlling as though I were a child and everything I wanted to do became something he doubted I could do. Life went on this way for a year and a few months and then, life changed.

The above is an excerpt from my last post here where I mentioned, it was July of 2003 that my husband and I bought a house. He had started his own business and our life was quiet. What you don’t know is that my husband had three sons from a previous marriage. He had signed open adoption papers before I met him and we visited with them every six months. The two oldest, twins, came into our lives on a more constant basis in 2004 after they had turned 18 that summer. I couldn’t have been happier to have them there.

One evening a few months later, my husband and I sat at the kitchen table. He cried that evening as he told me how sorry he was. He said the way that I treated his sons as though they were my own made him feel terrible for the way he had acted with my son. He promised to talk to my son and to make a change. He did. His relationship with my son became something I never thought I would see. Still though, I found him being partial to his own sons in ways. Christmas shopping for example. I had to fight with him to put each present in the cart for my son. I believe my husband continued to work on that and did make progress. His relationship with my son grew. Ours did not.

In March of 2005 my mother sold her house and moved in with us. Another big adjustment. At that time I experienced a relationship with my mother that I had never had before. I am grateful for that.

In July of 2005 I suddenly became sick. I had foot drop in my right foot, I couldn’t stand on my right leg at all due to weakness. There was pain in my legs and feet that I couldn’t explain and I started to fall a lot. There was a feeling of nausea that ran through my entire body. It was debilitating and I was scared. It took months of going to doctors and finally a Neurologist to find out that I had peripheral neuropathy with no known cause.

For myself I look to see a cause. Was it years of stress. Was it the large amounts of Ritalin I was prescribed for ADHD. Was it the long period of time when I became so defiant that I refused anything for myself that I could. The period of time when I refused to eat. I will never know. What I do know is that my body was failing me. I was scared and my husband was scared, he shut me out again.

In December of 2005 my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer. She stayed at home with us until she passed away March 24, 2006. Cancer is a disease that you can see. You can see it in the faces of terminal patients, I know this. My husband could see and he helped me to take care of her. I was amazed at how good he was with her.

Seeing my husband handle himself so well with my mother leads me to believe that maybe if he had more understanding of my illness, my invisible illness, he would have reacted differently to me.

To be continued…

Guest Writer: Trae from (TripleClicka.com). I’m honored to have Trae participate and help spread mental health awareness and blur out stigma by sharing her story, here on Mental Health Friday. She’d be back in two weeks. Here are here previous entries: part 1, part 2, part 3
P.S, her blog link is above, let’s spread some love :).  IMAGE CREDIT: HealthyPlace.com

If you’d love to contribute on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. My email address is: mykahani@yahoo.com . For more information, visit this post.

AGOS: Summer’s home coming

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all-“

This was the quote that greeted me on a brown rustic wooden board that stood beside Sam’s door. Stepping out of the car, I stood for a moment, inhaling the jolly sweet rusty smell of after-rain which evaporated from the sand In the mini gardens. The sky was mostly cloudless with only a few light clumps of clouds here and there, and even those were shady. The unwelcoming rays of the sun penetrated through my skin, a hot 35 degrees; I was home. It had rained the previous day, no wonder the weather was so hot.

“Need any help?” George’s voice snapped me out of my daydream.

He stood a little behind me, grinning as I turned to face him. He knew pretty well I hadn’t even started offloading yet, I was lost in thoughts.

“Hey, don’t mock the cancer girl, doc. I’m hurting enough already you know.” I replied back, gently grasping at the upper part of my blouse where I knew my heart was.

He laughed, “Oh, so you’re playing the cancer card now huh, good thing I’m immune.” We both laughed.

Dr George Sandow’s an old friend of mine. He was the one who diagnosed me with my Meningioma and helped me through the first few months of coming to terms with having a tumor growing in my brain. Ever since then, we became tight friends even with an age gap of about 12 years. I remember when I was leaving town, he told me
“This is your home Summer, and when your home comes calling, you know where to find me.”

When I called him the other day that I had decided to come back, his voice rose to a high pitch as he exclaimed,
“I’m glad you took it literally Summer.”
Perks of living in a small town, everybody knew everybody and everybody got emotionally invested in everybody’s business.