“60 DAYS: In the life of a Teenager with Bipolar” Day 5: The Battle of Sleep

Day 5
Mood 6

Dear Blog,
I lay awake. My mind races. Thoughts speeding fast like a race track. My heart beats. Beats. Beats. Faster. Faster. My mind scurries. I try to rest but my body goes at a million miles an hour. My limbs are sore. My mind is not. I lay, body paralyzed mind fully active.
There are many nights in my life. Either paralyzed from fear or classic insomnia.
The feeling is often frustrating. I’ve watched countless DVDs over and over again that have to real significance to me other than to pass the time.
The battle for control over the mind is the worst. You have your own mind fighting against itself trying to find stability and salvation. In my mental illness this is the greatest struggle. Battling your own mind.
Until tomorrow,
amberroseleigh

“60 DAYS: In the Life of a Teenager with Bipolar” #4 The strange familiarity with death

Day 4
Mood 5-3

Death is something we all experience in a variety of different ways. Today I experienced death in a loss. This lead my mind to trail off in an array of thoughts surrounding the topic. The person who passed away this morning was someone who through out my life reflected positive thoughts. In thinking of this images ran through my mind reflecting the summer visits where each time he would remember my favorite fruit, strawberrys. Strawberries through out my life have been connected to this memory. A positive connection to summer that I usually struggle with. Alongside loss during death always comes these memories and appreciation for people. However, another experience with death is quite the opposite. Throughout my life I’ve always been quite fascinated with death and have had many depressive episodes that lead me to be suicidal. These experiences and associations with the idea of death have a ever lasting effect on myself. There were times where death consumed my mind. Taking over many hours of thought. Through my anxiety and depression this came relatively frequently. I struggle to explain this relationship because I don’t quite know why. I don’t know why I had this fascination with the workings of death and at some points I had no clue in reality why I wanted to end my own life. Suicide for those who have those thoughts can be a very intimate thought process in it’s contemplation. In a way you don’t experience a sense of lose of losing anything. Nor do positive memories of yourself and your life. It’s quite the opposite to the experience of losing one to death. I feel a fascination with death is something people who have deep depressive episodes may have in common. I feel there’s more to it in my mind hidden somewhere. There’s a lot buried deep down. We all have our demons. It’s finding them that’s the problem.
Until tomorrow,
amberroseleigh

“60 DAYS: In the Life of a Teenager with Bipolar” #3: Exhausted

Day 3
Mood: 4

Dear Blog,
I’m forcing myself to do this today. I’m exhausted. I’m always f**king exhausted. Sometimes I feel like my brain just won’t stop. When it does this my heart speeds up and I begin to freak out. Sometimes this lasts for hours or all day and I end up exhausted. I end up feeling like I can’t keep my body moving despite my head running at full speed.
I feel this will be hard for me to push myself each day to write. I just want to finish something and feel that feeling of being accomplished.
I have a fear of doing new things. I create fears before I have a reason to. I remember being 8 and still not able to ride a bike with out training wheels. I was soon to learn fear hinders success. I learnt this when my dad pretended to hold the back of the two wheeled bike as I rode off. Minutes in I turned around and saw him standing in the distance, his hands free of the bike. Now, I look back at this moment and see an example of how, even at a young age, I let fears of all sizes control me. Stump me. Hinder me. Rip me of my ability to see clearly and to try new things. Now that I can see this. I can see that i need to free myself from it’s control. And I will.
Until tomorrow,
amberroseleigh

“60 DAYS: In the Life of a Teenager with Bipolar” #2 Fear of People

Day 2
Mood: 4

Dear Blog,

Sometimes I travel past people sitting happily in a restaurant or a cafe of some sort and I wonder how they do that. In most if not all public situations I feel very nervous. I don’t know why and I don’t understand where this problem came from. Public situations particularly restaurant ones have always made me nervous. So when I drive or walk past these places I often wonder what it’s like to be able to freely interact with others without a care in the world or without having to psyche yourself out first. This is a problem I’ve always dealt with and is something that is worse on bad days. Dealing with it can be a struggle because this unreasonable fear of people happens to control the important processes of life and growing up. I acknowledge I’m not the only person like this and despite many days of wanting to hide away from all human civilization I have to find ways around this problem. In an earlier blog I talked about saying yes and encouraging yourself to start living positively. That is the main way for me to fight this. I have to push myself out from this dark cave I hide in and interact and be aware I will not perish from the face of the earth if I do so. I don’t know where this fear has come from or why I allow it to rule my life. However I do believe it’s linked to my feeling of feeling disconnected and un-relatable to people. A goal of mine is to be more confident in interactions with people and to be able to regain the sociability I had more of when I was younger. In doing that however I have to push myself and not allow myself to succumb to the notions of irrationality in my mind. That’s the true task.

Until tomorrow,
amberroseleigh

“60 DAYS: In the Life of a Teenager with Bipolar” #1 Introductions

If you’re a current follower of this blog you may already know the basics about me. I am Amber. I’m 18 and I have mental illness. In order for me to learn to deal with certain aspects of my mental illness at such a young age, whilst still raising a form of awareness, I decided to start a project. In this project I will, for 60 consecutive days, write honest and open insights into my day to day life. Some days are going to be wonderful and some will be horrible. In each day I will start with a mood number indicating my average mood for that day. 0 being low and 10 being the highest. My goal from this aside from personal goals is that people will gain an understanding surrounding the mental illness and what it’s like to live with mental illness. I myself have diagnosed Bipolar, ADHD and Anxiety. I also have a history of self harm. I’m going to be honest, this experience will be hard for me and worries me that I’m going to be honest online to strangers and to myself about what goes on in my head so here goes…

Who is Andrew Little?

As of today, November 18 2014, Andrew Little is the leader of The New Zealand Labour Party. However, despite Labours election styled appointment of the leader many people are asking the question, who is Andrew Little?
Despite having a short career in the Labour Party Little previously spent 11 years as the head of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union. After being raised in New Plymouth Little studied law at Wellington’s Victoria University where his association with unions began when he became the student union president and then president of the NZUSA. After graduation from Victoria University he became a solicitor working on employment law and ACC problems for the EPMU. It then comes at no surprise that Little then proceeded to work his way up the union ranks becoming national secretary.
In Andrew Little’s political career in 2008 he became the president of the New Zealand Labour Party and was then was elected as a list mp in 2011 after losing his electorate seat. In the 2013 Labour caucus changes Little then took on both the justice and labour portfolios. Later one Little was also moved a further 6 places into 11 on the Labour list. The then leader of the party David Cunliffe said this was due to Little’s “heavy lifting” in his portfolios. Despite losing is electorate of New Plymouth in this year’s election after being confirmed his list placement he placed his name forward for the leadership.
Amongst all of this Little has proven to cause some noise in parliament especially when he imitated the Gangnam Style dance to create a point around Nationals decision making.
During his campaign for leader Little talked about unifying caucus and promised reviews on capital gains tax and raising the retirement age.

The question now is what the future holds for the Labour Party under a Andrew Little leadership. With an extensive knowledge in unions and labour we can only envision foundations of which the Labour Party was built on. However with Little only gaining 16% of the caucus vote with Grant Robertson at 44% in the first round there is room for problems to occur. As we have seen with the leadership of David Cunliffe having the backing of caucus is vitally important in retaining a strong leadership. What will actually happen and what changes will be made to the Labour caucus only time can tell.

New Zealand General Election 2014 : Labour’s Loss of Faith

As most of you should know yesterday was election day. Despite essentially the most unusual, dirtiest and weirdest campaign in New Zealand the results become almost a reflection of polls months before all the scandal. National won 61 seats, Labour couldn’t even hit 25% of the party votes, Greens hoped and failed to meet their goal of 15% and overall the results of the election didn’t change much from the current situation. The biggest part of the evening however was the change in the Maori Electorate Te Tai Tokerau. Hone Harawira lead a close race for most of the night but however was beaten by Labour’s Kelvin Davis. Harawira therefore lost his seat and his party essentially did not make it into the seats of parliament. However, the most interesting part of the night went to the strange scatter of party votes labour electorate voters sent out.

Early on in the night it was easily seen that labour would not make it’s way out out of the 20s in percent of the party vote. However, a trend started to occur within labour electorates. They simply were not turning out party votes in favour of Labour. This occured frequently through out many electorates. Labour was just not pulling out party votes in their own electorates. I’ve seen and read a vast amount of different opinions around this, some saying it was down to leadership and the lack of from David Cunliffe. I don’t believe this is entirely so. David Cunliffe still held his electorate. Also what has to be taken into consideration is that Cunliffe has only been leading for around a year, he’s still new. However that is also part of the issue, Labour isn’t a solid stable party this election. David Cunliffe did do the best with what he had and campaign better than expected in this election. As the votes say though is that they still held a strong loss in faith of Labour as a party not simply David Cunliffe as a leader. This was not a leader problem but more so a party problem. Labour voters were happy to vote for an MP they know and they trust but they were not happy to vote for a party they still felt uneasy with and who holds a relatively new leader. Many of Labour voters then typically went for Greens or National. National has constantly appeared strong and a collective who overall supports one another despite all the drama which could be the factor as to why these voters moved to National.
In total, the voting trend around Labour was incredibly strange but has clearly highlighted to the party that they are doing something incredibly wrong. After this election the party will now have to sit down and find a way to reinvent themselves, come together as a collective strong party and win back their voters.

Studio 31: Preview

Studio 31 is a thriller story of which I’ll post up in various different parts.
The story is currently going through a makeover as I rewrite a large percentage of what was written and I’m really excited to get it to a high standard. However, I have finished the first part though what I’m giving you here is not the full first part just a preview. I can’t wait to share more with you and feel free to comment your thoughts.
Welcome to Studio 31

Cats and Concrete: A photographic experiment with felines and texture.

Over the course of the past year I’ve gathered numerous photos of my feline friends in concrete settings. I love these images and the variety of textures they carry. The black and white creates more detail and brings out the textures in the concrete and the animals. Each image is different and unique in its own way and each image is nowhere near perfect but that’s just another reason why I love them. I really want to start taking more images out and about and hopefully I will share those with you all soon.

Above & Below: Roberta (Bob) 

Below: Salem (Lali)
Below: Bella (3 Months Old)

Three Below: Siva (Diva)



Three Below: Salem (Lali)



Five Below: Bella (10 Months)

All images are property of the owner of this blog, myself, Amber Rose Stewart.

Four Summers

This is beautiful

On The Heath

we attach significance to particular dates
and so we feel those days mean more than others

although we understand that a moment past
cannot be recreated by calendar celebration or remembrance

often we forget or fall under the illusion

just as we sometimes try to rediscover a love lost
through memory or story

© Heath Muchena, 2014

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