The second year of Salted Lithium ends today. I doubt very much I would have continued blogging beyond November 17, 2006 if it hadn’t been for people reading and commenting.

So once again I thank each and every person who commented. By participating, by asking questions and leaving answers, by encouraging me, you’ve helped fix some things which were very wrong. And you’ve helped me walk through some of the worst moments by proving to me there are people who care, and showing me examples of people who have walked where I have walked and come out the other side better for it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been publishing posts representing what I think are the central themes I’ve been writing about: the relationship I’ve had with my father; my fight against manic depression, and; the moments of my life I’ve shared with friends and family. A little further down you’ll find quotes from, and links to, some of those posts.

In between here and there are the photos of the people who have allowed me to put their images in my sidebar over the past two years. Each photo is a link to their blog. I highly recommend subscribing to each of them… even to the few who have stopped blogging. Maybe we can get them going again.

…I’d also like to thank bromac and dumbwaiter, neither of whom have blogs, but both really should start so I can put them in my blogroll beside the other people who have helped keep me walking.

Specifically, though, I need to thank Clare for being here since the beginning…

“I’m glad you said it, and you say it well.
I’m new to wordpress (about two days into it) and I too am bipolar and a writer. In the 90s I was hospitalized 6 times. My last hospitalization was in 1998.
Everyday I claw more life out of life.
I’ve had some success in publishing since I have been stable, and now I am a co-editor of a lit mag.
You’re welcome to read my blog “Orphans of dark and rain” I added your blog to my links.
Keep clawing and keep writing.”

Clare; Nov 18, 2006, 5:21am
First Comment Left On Salted Lithium

The Themes…

Being abandoned by my father…

A Lying Maoist Revolutionary Con Artist Stole My Family
June 25, 2007

I lived with my father for eight years, but I have no memories of him. I’ve only ever seen two photos of us together, and they were taken within moments of each other. I was eight when my mother left him and took my little brother and I away. The next time I saw him was when I was fifteen, I took a train to the city where I grew up. When I got to the station I walked right past him because I had no idea what he looked like. As far as I know — after I turned around and walked back to him — that was the first time I shook my fathers hand.

When I was a child my father believed he was a great man who was in the middle of a great revolution, and things get sacrificed during revolutions. Like family. Or maybe — as he tells the story now — he was just a magazine publisher who had unwittingly acquired a loyal and slightly depraved following of Marxist rebels intent on taking over… something. Whatever. The truth is pretty simple, however, my father told lies that corrupted and nearly killed the people who trusted him..

Fighting manic depression…

There Are Moments Of Lucidity In Our Lives
November 28, 2006

This disease is will actually convince you, its host, that it makes you more creative, or more deep, or more self-aware, or more capable than anyone else. Our disease will even make you proud to host it. After all, didn’t ninety percent of the geniuses who ever put pen to paper have Manic Depression? You have the disease that turned Kurt Cobain into a legend. You suffer from the affliction that put Ernest Hemingway’s brains on the ceiling. It’s incredible of what this disease can convince you. Not only will it take away any community capable of protecting you, then it makes you proud to have it and prohibits you from seeking treatment, then… and this is sick, then it kills you by convincing you everything it has done has been your fault.

My friends and family.

Fred Nietzsche Was My 240lb Solvent-Huffing Ex-Nazi Rooming-House Neighbour And Friend
July 4, 2007

The first time I met “Wild Bill” was when he woke me up to tell me our front porch was on fire. It wasn’t, yet, but would have been if he hadn’t discovered the smoke. I had been asleep in my room, which faced the street in front. My room, when Bill* woke me up by banging on my door, had been full of smoke. None of the three fire extinguishers on our floor worked, so we doused the smoke and embers using cups and pots. Someone had stuffed a lit cigarette into the rotting wood.

“The next time I met Bill was when he knocked on my door and politely asked if I had any bug spray so he could “kill some flies”. When I said no he said my can of air freshener would do. For some reason that’s pretty much how William “Wild Bill” Fred Nietzsche – a 5′10″, 240lb, 50-year old, balding, heavily tattooed, ex-Nazi White Supremacist, former Hell’s Angel associate, solvent huffing, recovering alcoholic — and I became friends.”

Two Years Of Headers…

…and YouTubes…

“south be-ach!” ‘highonsugar25′
This is still my favourite YouTube…
Let me know if it’s not available.

…thank you for being a piece of my recovery.

.