Sometimes You Can Do All the Right Things ...

It probably hit me yesterday when I was watching President Obama address reporters after the bill for strengthening background checks and closing loopholes failed in the Senate. All the sad, familiar faces behind him -- either victims of gun violence or had lost a loved one to it, coupled with the round-the-clock, often incorrect reporting coming out of the Boston Marathon bombing. 

It hit me how even after I turned the TV off and went to do something, anything else, the feeling still lingered. It was there when I went to the gym to work out. When I ate my oatmeal in the morning. When I combed my hair. Even when I spent time with others I should have been enjoying.

I was depressed. And I didn't know why. After all, I was doing all the right things.

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In Celebration of Someone Who Saved My Life

In honor of Women's History Month I'm dedicating various posts to the ten different women who I've called my "best friend" at different times in my life, as well as the dozens of other women who are my close friends as well. Who've been there for me. Who have even saved my life. This one goes out to two women and an entire town that for some reason decided I was one life worth saving:

Anyone who is close to me, truly close to me, knows that I have a morbid streak. Some of it is due to my humor. The rest is due to the fact that I'm a long-time sufferer of depression and Bipolar Disorder. Although I've been relatively healthy and stable since 2009, I went through a dangerous eight year period where the next day wasn't necessarily guaranteed. 

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Where In America Was The Snob This February?

A round-up of what I've did, what I'm doing and where I've been this month so far! (Image via CCTV)

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The Root: On Jesse Jackson, Jr., Bipolar and Money

Jesse Jackson Jr. (Official portrait from Congress)In a post for The Root, I write about former House Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. and how being bipolar both does and doesn't play a role in the kind of decision making that lead to Jackson's downfall. In it, I also write about my own failures in judgment, also often related to money when it comes to the disease. We don't choose this disease, it chooses us. Ultimately, the only thing we have any control over is if this pain will be self-inflicted or if we'll wear out our welcome in the world, putting it on others.

This story is about when we take it out on others, or in this case, our wallets.

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Watch The Snob Talk Mental Illness On Melissa Harris-Perry's Show (Video)

Sunday I was part of the latter segments of Melissa Harris-Perry's show on MSNBC, discussing living with Bipolar Disorder. I'm really grateful to Melissa for giving me the opportunity to share my story, as I really hope it helps someone. I know it would have helped me if I'd seen someone like me talking about Bipolar when I was in the hospital back in 2006. 

Check out the videos after the jump.

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The Snob To Talk Mental Illness on MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry" Sunday

Melissa Harris-PerryFirst week at BET's Don't Sleep (hosted by my Arkansas play cousin T. J. Holmes) is down and the second is almost through. I've been a wee bit busy, naturally. But even in all that, I've still got time for the occasional media pit stop! This time it's on MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry's eponymously named show. I'll be on this Sunday, Oct. 14 at 11:30 a.m. EST, talking about mental health issues. As long-time readers know, I've been open about my diagnosis with Bipolar Disorder since 2009. I've written about it here on this blog, spoken about it on Michel Martin's NPR show, and wrote stories about my experiences for Essence Magazine earlier this year in January and BP Magazine in 2011.

Hilarious side note: My friend Dr. Jason Johnson is ALSO going to be on MPH's show this Sunday! It's a black political nerd convention going on! All we need now is TheRoot.com's Keli Goff and The Onion's Baratunde Thurston and there will be enough of us there to form Black Nerd Voltron or something.

Three Weeks Down, Still Haven't Run From NYC Screaming

Photo Credit, Danielle Belton, Manhattan 2009

"New York seemed to always trigger the worst of my illness due to the overwhelmingness of the EVERYTHING that makes New York... New York. The noise. Tons of people living on top of each other. The crowds. The subway. The ten-thousand year old, now blackened chewing gum on the sidewalk. How every day seemed like garbage pick up day from the amount of black bags piled on the street corners. The lights. The colors. The concrete. I couldn't turn it off. My OCD is the least strongest feature in my illness, but it comes full force in New York. And because I have the least practical exprience with my OCD, it's the one I handle the worst. It's the sort of thing that makes me fly into a rage because no matter how much you clean you can't get rid of dirt older than you on a NYC pre-war apartment floor short of blowing it all up and starting all over again. It's the sort of thing where I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that if my friends -- first Hopi and later, Jada -- can't come get me I just devolve into tears and dysfunction."

Read the full story after the jump.

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Life's Interruptions

Back in 2007, I was trying to learn how to give up on my life-long dreams and accept a life of folding sweaters at Macy's and waiting to die. I was pretty non-functional in every way that someone with a mental illness -- in my case -- bipolar disorder, could be dysfunctional. But in the fall of 2007 I started this blog and went about the long, exhausting path of getting back into the world. Starting the blog, which seemed like a lark I would maybe update for a month, then never look at again, eventually saved my life, along with several other people, places and things that all came into motion the next two years until I got to a point where I could leave St. Louis and get back out into the Big Wide World and resume my quest for whatever this life is.

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BP Blog: When the Rush Is Gone

In this week's post for BP Magazine's Bipolar Blog, I write about how hard it was for me to learn how to do things without waiting for my hypomania to return. Workouts became burdensome slogs. Household chores went undone. Without that little boost, everything became drudgery: "For years, I have to admit, I threw a bit of a tantrum. I found I couldn't write. I couldn't take care of myself. I couldn't clean. I couldn't exercise. Everything seemed so hard without that little extra "oomph." That little reward of a rush for finally getting a job done. I had to learn how to make schedules and follow-through and not wait for the "urge" to take over. A muse was great for writing. It didn't make much sense to wait for a "muse" to make me clean my room or balance my checkbook."

Read the full post at BP Hope here.