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I had a ticket for a trip around the world

I had a ticket when I was 21 for around the world
It wasn’t that hard to get
I worked a second job at night
My girlfriends and I stopped in Thailand
“The Land of Smiles”
We fell in love with the place and its people
Things were so good
there was absolutely no need to take drugs
With too much youth on my side
On a faithful night
I let magic mushrooms touch my lips
That’s when I became crazy
When they found me lost to the world
they took me away from beautiful Thailand
And flew me home to a High security mental hospital
In and out of mental hospitals I stayed for the next sixteen years
Bi-polar is what I have…and is what I will keep
for the rest of my life
All because things were so good
I didn’t get to see the world but the few months I spent in Asia
changed my life forever
Suffering a mental illness has taken me to many places
a girl like me wouldn’t normally get to be
I have seen things a girl like me only gets to see in the movies
I have seen the world from the upside down
I have shot thought the atmosphere
And I have sunken beneath the earth
I’ve socialized with the rich and stiff
I’ve worked up a merry racket with the down and out
I’ve befriended criminals and people you never work out
My mind when its High
has taken me on the most astonishing journeys
and allowed me to be there completely confidant and at ease
My mind when it dies has taken me places so painful and lonely
that my constant begging is suicide
When you have been to these extremes
the people you can relate to are are just as extreme
I can say bi-polar changed my life in so many ways
But I will not say it was all bad
On the contrary
It has given me endless opportunities to have
a greater understanding of
The world
Its people
And myself
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy
but then again I wouldn’t change a thing

Bi-Polar

They give us all one drug
Nurses have tampered with our bodies
we are controlled by a painful rhythm
that never breaks down
When we sit we kick
in rows of pendulums
we are synchronized clowns
When that becomes a burning pain
we stand and sway from side to side
two feet never on the ground
We don’t walk
we shuffle
arms paralysed by our side
We are puffy and fat
upside-down smiles slapped on all of us
We stutter and slur
are rarely understood
Clones in every way
Shuffle and sway
sit and kick
we put on quite a show
It’s clear they have us all on the same drug
It brands us loonies
obscure looking loonies
Maybe that’s OK in here
But what’s to await us
on that long awaited day out there
Maree Cowan 1988

THE GARDEN

Courage gave me wisdom
We the mentally ill
are given endless opportunities
To conquer fear with courage
and become so brave.
Maree Cowan 2002

What’s it Like
What’s it like to wake up in your own skin
make all your choices
from your very own consciousness within
With these daemons inside
I’m thrashed up high and heaved back down
so the sky and the ground
feel the same thud
I can’t remember yesterday
I know tomorrow will have
more patches of black and more of ecstasy
I can’t change that
How many walls of exhaustion have I hit?
How many more before I crash?
Maree Cowan 1992

The final crash always came when I was committed to a high security mental hospital and that stopped me in my tracks. In these mental hospitals I was drugged so severely I would stumble around in circles then pass out on the ground. My body had an uncontrollable tremor so I shook constantly. No-one could understand my slurred speech and I couldn’t recognize my fat body or my deformed face. I refer to that experience as having “my garden burnt to the ground.” When that happens I have no idea how I could ever become normal again. All I know is I’m wasting away and the world going ahead without me. I desperately want to live but have no idea how I to find my life. My ordeal back into life is always terrifying and humiliating. People are terrifying and the way they treat me is humiliating.

They Unbolted the Door
Drugged to the brim
they unbolted the green door and released me
At home
I wasn’t the same
People strolled in and around
Never daring to recognise me
The deranged looking girl who termored constantly
I was grateful to hide in exile
My breathing came easy when they left
Where’s Maree?
Oh God
I just wish I could find Maree.
Maree Cowan 1988

“I’m told I am a survivor but I believe I have had a far richer experience than just surviving.”
When a mental illness has stolen everything
and there is nothing left that resembles me
Nothing I can recognise
no feelings
no thoughts
no personality
It feels like a fire has gone through my garden and I’m burnt it to the ground.
When I find the courage to challenge life again I’m alone and terrified. As I take tiny steps into the world I start to grow and heal, then one by one I can conquer my fears. As my life unravels I see a unique opportunity lies before me. When my life is burnt to the ground for everyone to see I hold no expectations. When no-one including myself expects anything of me, that allows me to be free of the obstacles, most human beings have in there way. When I have nothing I also have the space to create anything.

I can grow to be a different person by planting the colours and shapes in my garden that I’ve always loved and admired. I can nip weeds in the bud and I make my own patterns in the ground. It is as complex as life, as weeds grow and plants die and everything imaginable in-between. Every year when this mental illness burns my garden to the ground the shift from insanity to sane always feels beyond my reach. When I finally have the courage to face the terrifying ordeal to enter my life again, the gift that beholds me, is that I evolve to be a braver stronger person with many insecurities and resentments left behind.

The pain is having your garden burnt
The glory is growing it back with your own colours

As time passes and my nightmare closes I become completely absorbed in my own garden. After dying to myself I am so passionate about my life that I value every second of my existence. I’m overwhelmed by my happiness then my happiness takes over and I become ecstatic.

That’s sure to spoil everything
A cue for mania to kick in
When I’m oblivious to life’s limitations
Having far more fun than everyone
Entirely on what I generate inside
They track me down and dull my mind
When all my colours are gone
“No longer a danger to myself or others”

They place me back in my garden
Sad thing is its burnt to the ground.
Maree Cowan 2000

Should wisdom be this painful?

Contrasts

See-Saw
Manic-Depression
is as exciting as it is boring
The manic magic
is quickly replaced
by mind deadening drugs
and the bleakness of depression
Our life is a sharp contrast
of a brighter sunrise
and a blacker night
with a few days in-between

Colours turn to terror
I cast my brightly coloured mania
a canopy falls
mesmerising us all
Very loudly
and very off key
I sing
The crowd smiles back at me
laughter fills the air
I take the spotlight
and the applaud
Excitement is everywhere
Dance gypsy queen
A film crew should be here
I feel exquisite
like a I’m goddess
Gifts so precious and rare
last for only a moment
Without warning
I fall to the depths of madness
My colours now ablaze of crazy
Everyone is struck
They all turn
and run
Abandonment leaves me terrified
alone in a battlefield of insanity
They will lock me up soon
put with the loony’s that I don’t scare
By now I know you can’t go around frightening

"The Good Citizens of this Earth"
just because you have demons in your head.
Maree Cowan 1989 "

"They all turn and run

except for one

My Mum"

Forever

Mania isn’t any better
Than an empty feel good drug
High then low
High then low again
We don’t seek it
Its ours for free
Still it ruins our life just the same

I refuse to walk this planet without leaving my trace
I will waste no more time
caged in your prison like hospitals
restrained in a medicated straight jacket
When I’m shinning bright
you smother my colours with medication
take away all my rays of light
After all these lost years
my spirit manic or deadened
longs to roam free
So to everyone from this moment on
I demand my human rights
to find “Maree” and have her back in my life
I won’t be controlled or dominated
even if I become a little “elevated“
Light and heavy without your anchors and restraints
I look mad and out of my depth
I beg you don’t panic
I just need some time to adjust my step
To learn what its like
to have my real person inside
The day I find myself gliding
with artists poets and others of my kind
I will be at peace
my journey begun
So to everyone from this moment on
I demand my human rights
to find “Maree” and have her back in my life
For I refuse to walk this planet without leaving my trace
Maree Cowan 2004

Stigma

Imagine if we were able to judge a person by their heart instead of their social

standing.

Nothing personal

It’s nothing personal
Just a

dark bottomless pit anyyone can fall into

It's nothing perosnal

Even "normal" people get mental illnesses

It would only be personal if

it happened to you

I stepped on a mine and it exploded into a mental illness. Before that I was an ordinary person. When I was admitted to my first mental hospital psychiatrists asked my family what I was like before this psychosis made me crazy. They described me as easy going, friendly, life loving and effervescent. Now I am an outsider, on the fringe and I have been here so long that I don’t belong anywhere. I suppose I am a misfit.
If an ordinary middle class person like me can develop a mental illness and belong on the fringe of society. I believe it can happen to anyone. And of course the occasional celebrity in a romantic kind of way.

Are we always ourselves
I think not
when you’re manic or depressed
you’re not yourself
That’s why they call it a mental illness

When someone is suffering a mental illness they frighten and embarrass people in the community. No-one wants to be with someone that is socially inappropriate. People are terrified of being embarrassed and to protect themselves from anti-social behavior they stigmatise the person who is mentally ill. When I say stigma I’m not simply referring to looking away from someone that seems strange. No I’m talking about the full definition of stigma and its presence in in every social thread of society. The mentally ill behave very differently to the norm . We humans interact within the boundaries of social norms and if someone steps out side that it threatens the individual and society.
The end result is always at the expense of the sufferer, by making them feel ashamed and small, embarrassed, stupid, unwanted and pitiful. The list goes on and on. The overpowering feeling for the sufferer is always that of being ashamed. Stigma can range from subtle to abrupt but what ever form it comes in it makes it near impossible for someone with an obvious and long term mental illness to re-enter and be a part of mainstream society. So how does someone who is on the fringe learn social graces? 1989

I feel it worse
I feel it worse
You turn away when I come near
Talk to each other as if I’m not there
Like I’m an empty shell
No feelings just vacant air
Surprise!
I feel everything

I feel it worse
For the monster is in my skin
The freak won’t go away
Maree Cowan 1988

Stigma
A cloud descends with particles designed
so no-one can feel them but you
Tiny splinters like ice spike your pride
shatter your credibility
To make you feel small
make you feel ashamed
When you should be free to
be proud of who you are and
what you have achieved
This cloud doesn’t appear from nowhere
Fellow humans make it and
hold it strong in the air
with ignorance and fear
How to fight a cloud invisible and everywhere?

Maree Cowan 2008

Kill Mania With Your Love

Kill Mania with your Love

Mania is inside

It’s tampering with my mind telling me to fight

It’s aim is to tear us apart

Don’t listen to the mania

Or look into my eyes

Find a memory of me and hold it lustfully

No matter how nasty it gets

How many triggers it ignites

Don’t feed the mania

Close your eyes to the moment

Recite yesterday's poetry

Let my memory fill your heart

Speak to my memory

Cherish my memory

For now that’s the only place will find me

Hold me tight and kill mania with your love

Don’t entertain it

Answer it or

Listen to it

Then I will come home

We can be everything we were before

Me adoring you ever so more

The man strong enough to kill mania with his love.
Maree Cowan 2006

Spring

The World always changes in Spring

I saw the first wattle today

shrieks of excitement
visions of being immersed in colour

Naivety & Stupidity

wrapped around a fantasy

“That the world wouldn’t change this Spring”

Before the day was through my mind was rambling
Preparing for a bombardment of delusions and crazy notions
Another psychedelic episode that always ends in tragedy
All I could do was sit and cry

tears burning my cheeks
High pitched squeals smothered
Dare not make a sound
I must hold my secret for as long as I can
When they know and it becomes reality
I will precede to walk the lonely corridors of madness
Every door rammed closed except those that lead back to madness
I stop my tears and cry internally

so they won't see
More naivety & stupidity

They recognize the streaks tattooed on my face
As I walk the lonely corridors

sheds of me slip away
Are replaced with that crazy girl I hate

Maree Cowan 2008

Mania greets me
Mania greets me in Spring lasts a moment
Then darkness steals the rest of the season away
I dig my way out in summer
I will have the sun soak through my skin
It will heal eveything I've been
So I ignore the obesity I so quickly gained
Close all the mirrors pretend my face hasn't changed
In big flowing dresses
I dance in summer sun
Get soaking wet in the summer rain
Let the crowd walk away
They are not the essence of my act
Nature and I can play
Maree Cowan 2000

Who Is The Real Crazy.

When I tell you I’m Bipolar
you say “everyone is crazy”
maybe that’s true
However...
To be certified
or classified
You must fit perfectly into a script
Then you can be labeled
Then you be stigmatized
Are you more crazy than that?
Who is the real crazy?

The Fun park
I’m a little manic
I’m scared its going to get a lot worse
I didn’t by the ticket it bought me
I won’t be free to choose the rides they will choose me
This time please
Don’t spin me too fast so I loose may senses completely
Don’t let my inhibitions fly
So I tell people exactly how I feel and make friends into enemies
Don’t put me on rides that change my life forever
for that’s outrageously unfair
Don’t put my heart on my sleeve so l expose
secrets meant only for me
Spare me from falling in love that will always leave me empty
When the fun park turns into a prison
rides that went up become rides that go down
This time please let me make believe
That one day I will find my soul intact
Even if its a fantasy
Maree Cowan 2008