06/06/2026
6 / 10, gloomy
Lexapro 20mg
Adderall 10mg (1/2)
Coffee (1)
Vape (CBD indica, CBD hybrid-sativa dominant, and THC indica)
today I made a
"Berta Scale", it is for my
stupid bipolar.
I’ve been using one for a few years now, but I’ve never laid it out on paper. So today, for many more reasons than one, that changes.
Unlike past versions of myself, I am making sure to create a digital (verifiable) footprint for the majority of my future journals. Don’t get too excited, though, energy mosquitoes. I won’t be giving y’all my entire recipe. But I definitely will give y’all a little somethin’ somethin’ for the sake of my lasting prayer that y’all stop acting like I’m some crazed individual.
That is why I made the Berta Scale. Not because I don’t understand my mind, but because I do. After nearly a decade of living with this illness, I’ve learned that self-awareness isn’t the problem. Being believed is. Please stop acting like I am a stranger to my own mind. Through experience, I’ve learned to trust my own judgment by constantly studying and surviving myself.
Have I not proved myself resilient?
Even as a teenager, I was willing to work relentlessly for what I believed in. I was the seventeen-year-old who convinced her mother to sign the paperwork granting me entry into this nation’s strong Army. I had to beg her tirelessly, though, as she’s always had an overbearing desire to control a majority of the aspects of her children’s lives. It was not easy. I worked my body day after day, eating everything I could to make the minimum weight requirement to enlist—a crushing 95 pounds. I started at 89.
I am the twenty-two-year-old college junior who embarked on a kinship foster placement journey while actively working to become a commissioned officer and double-majoring in biomedical services and psychology. I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I thought I could make a difference. Truthfully, I wanted to “fix” my sister, as she suffers from severe mental illness (SMI). Back then, I thought that enough love, enough education, enough effort, and enough knowledge could save someone. I conducted research in search of the “magic” code that would somehow decipher her at-times violent mind. Life taught me otherwise. In my quest to understand my sister, I was forced to understand myself.
I am the same woman who was handed all the short ends of the sticks, but somehow leveled up and started a whole damn forest fire with all this heat I radiate. So yes, I am standing up. And no, I don’t apologize for how loud this bounce back is going to be. I am a grown-ass woman with an enormous newfound responsibility on her hands: I am raising a beautiful, special little girl. One day, it will be my job to teach her how to conduct herself as a woman.
So no, I won’t lie down and accept mistreatment quietly anymore.
I refuse to be looked down upon any further.
Like, how you gon’ tell the nigga who’s been dealing with this stupid fucking illness for close to a decade what she should and should not be doing?
I. KNOW.
Y’all have got to learn to trust me when I tell you this, especially when it comes to the day-to-day reality of living with this stupid fucking illness. Sure, if I were new to this, I’d display a lot more humility and be far more open to suggestions. But I’ve been dealing with highs and lows for as long as I can remember. I know how to cope.
It might not look ideal to you.
It likely won’t make sense.
But what’s the harm in letting me do me?
But anyway, let me slow down. I have a good thirty-seven continuous run-on sentences happening right now, and I think it’s time to wrap this thing up before I wander too far off course.
The scale, Alberta.
The scale.
1 / 10 = life feels impossible right now.
2 / 10 = barely carrying my own weight.
3 / 10 = everything feels harder than usual (med mgmt).
4 / 10 = present, but definitely struggling today.
5 / 10 = not myself, still moving forward.
6 / 10 = steady feet, finding my rhythym.
7 / 10 = curious, grounded, and fully present.
8 / 10 = ideas multiplying, proceed with caution.
9 / 10 = everything feels urgent and exciting (med mgmt).
10 / 10 = brain failing, safety plan NOW!
– allie the thinker