A Break From The Usual

           Sketching and writing. That's what I've been up to this week. I ordered some painting supplies and a new journal. I can't wait to get started.
           I'm finding social media to be an anxiety minefield at the moment. The world is on fire, and I feel ill equipped to help put it out. So, instead, here is a list of  organisations you can donate to.

George Floyd Memorial Fund

Minnesota Freedom Fund

Reclaim The Block

National Bailout

Black Lives Matter

Bail Project

Black Visions Collective

Campaign Zero

National Bail Fund Network

The Innocent Project

Run With Maud

Justice For Breonna

Northstar Health Collective

           Here is a YouTube video you can watch (with ads, please) if you haven't got money to donate. It's filled with music and art and all the AdSense revenue from it is being donated, so watch it, share it, and watch it again. There are even links in the description to petitions to sign.

           To everyone out there protesting, stay safe. The world needs you.

The Quickening Continued, Continued

       I'm not good at titles, okay?

      Pittsburgh was an absolute shit show. My fiance grew a goatee while he was away and I took one look at him and wanted to go home. But, just like with everything else, I kept this to myself. My mom and stepdad unloaded my things and headed back. I was out on my "own" for the first time. For the purpose of the story, we will call my fiance Rat. It'll make things easier and believe me, he'll live up to the moniker.

      Anyway, Rat was in school full time, and had a job working in a hotel restaurant. He was out of the apartment a lot, so I had a lot of time on my own to deteriorate. I wandered from room to room, seeing signs in the woodwork and shadow people in the windows. I washed laundry in the tub and would wind up arguing with it, the voices emanating from the folds of wet clothes. I would light a cigarette and then forget to move until it burned down to my fingers and the heat woke me out of my catatonia. I would try to drown out the voices with music, but the hidden messages in the songs would drive me to tears. I was well and truly fucked and I knew it.

     There were hallucinations and delusions that stood out. The time Rat had a friend over and I locked myself in the bedroom and there were glowing blue penises all up the walls and on the ceiling. Or the local newscaster speaking directly to me, telling me how the signs I was seeing were important, if I could only crack the code. Or the time the voices demanded I throw up my dinner. But mostly it was just a bunch of noise and nonsense. The worst thing was never the hallucinations, or even the delusions. It was how my thoughts didn't quite match up, I couldn't think. Like a circle track with a link missing, my thoughts just couldn't complete themselves.

      One evening I was sobbing uncontrollably. I'm not sure what in particular set me off, but let's be honest, I had plenty to cry about. This was probably about 5 or 6 months into being in Pittsburgh. Rat started yelling at me. "Why are you crying?" I don't know how many times he asked, but I was sobbing so hard I couldn't have answered him even if I wanted to. Suddenly I was prone on the floor with his hands around my neck. "WHY ARE YOU CRYING?" I remember my entire body feeling like pins and needles. Then he was up and out of the room. 

      By this point Rat was blowing off classes. A few months later his father informed him he wouldn't be paying his tuition any longer, so we made plans to move back home. I was secretly relieved to be going. Surely something would change. 

      The night we arrived home friends were waiting for us. We partied, as was the custom. I completely lost touch with reality, and by the time my parents arrived the next day to help us unpack, there was no hiding the fact that I was absolutely off my head. My mother drove me to the ER and begged me to sign myself in. A nurse tried to speak with me, but I couldn't hear her. They begged Rat to tell them what I'd taken, but he wouldn't. One of his friends told the doctors that he thought I'd taken some acid (I had). A few hours passed and I could hear people talking to me again. I signed myself into a 72 hour voluntary hold. They found a bed for me at a hospital and off I went.

      They put me on antipsychotics the next day, and things started to even out. I spoke with the psychiatrist daily, told him my whole story as best as I could at the time. That's when I got my diagnosis, paranoid schizophrenia. I hear they don't type any longer, it's just schizophrenia or it isn't. But this was something like 25 years ago, so there you go. Anyway, dear reader, that's the story of how I got my diagnosis.

      

The Quickening Continued

      Sixteen was a crazy year. I met and started dating my ex-husband. I started smoking pot regularly, almost daily.  I tried (and loved) acid. I stopped seeing my councillor at some point, I don't really remember why. Life was one big party. I don't know if the numbness went away, but it was certainly drowned out by all the beer and bong rips. I had a circle of new friends and acquaintances and I was sure everything was going great. For awhile.

       One night we were up to our usual. Pot, beer, and mescaline. I had my first bad trip. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, we were watching movies and I doubt that anyone noticed. It was my first time locked in my head, but it wouldn't be my last. It was the precursor. I was terrified that I would never come down. I know that's a common worry with bad trips, but the thing is, I didn't. Not completely. In the weeks that followed, the paranoia seeped back in. Not that it had ever really gone, but it had only bothered me when I was alone. The fear was back, and I couldn't shake it.

      Seventeen came along, we had a big party and got engaged. But I was acutely aware I was standing at the edge of a precipice. The delusions crept in slowly. My neighbour was a psychic vampire. I was broadcasting my thoughts and everyone around me could feel the waves of paranoia radiating from me. I could hear other people's thoughts. They were judging me, or plotting against me. I kept this all to myself, obviously. I couldn't trust anyone. 

      My now fiance left to go to college, 800 miles away in Pittsburgh. I was sad, everyone knew I was sad, and I guess that's why my pulling away went unnoticed. The voices had started by this point. Mostly just when I was in my room alone at night. Sometimes they came from the Mia Wallace poster on my wall, sometimes they came from everywhere and nowhere. They were incessant, keeping me up at night. We got a letter from my psychiatrist (who knew nothing about the voices or delusions) and I went on a home schooling scheme where I had classes with one other girl at a teacher's house every week. Or maybe it was twice a week. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep my grades up high enough to graduate. My every waking moment was spent just trying to appear normal. I couldn't let on what was going on inside my head. 

      Graduation came, the very same day that O.J. Simpson led the cops on a car chase in his white Bronco. My graduation party consisted of my family sat glued to the telly while my best friend and I sat in my room with a bottle of Jack Daniels she'd secreted in. She was the last person I felt somewhat normal around, and it was a good day. I was finally free of school and the next day we'd pack up my belongings and drive out to Pittsburgh where my fiance was waiting for me.

The Quickening

      When I was young, I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of falling asleep, not only because of my reoccurring nightmares, but because I was paranoid something was waiting for me to close my eyes. Something unnameable and indefinable, but something that was surely waiting just out of my eye line. I was afraid of bathroom mirrors because I'd heard about Bloody Mary. I was afraid of monsters coming out of the toilet. 

      At some point, this paranoia culminated in what I was sure was an old woman. I mean ancient. There was a hag, following me. She would watch me run down the stairs (I always ran, if I walked the fear would consume me) from the upstairs hallway, willing me to turn around and see her. She would hide in the alcove by the front door waiting for me to get to the bottom step. I have no idea how she could be both places at once, but she always was. She would hover in the doorway of my bedroom waiting for me to close my eyes. She would watch me in the kitchen, from behind the doors that hid the water heater, biding her time, waiting for my guard to slip. She was everywhere, and I was terrified of her.

     I never saw her, but I felt her eyes on me, hateful and patient, always watching. I never looked when I knew she was there, I couldn't bear to see her. I never told anyone she existed. Speaking of her would only make her more real, give her more power. I could not afford to acknowledge her presence, she was too powerful already. This probably lasted 4 or 5 years, until junior high school gave me real life problems and fears. I still ran down the steps overcome with fear, but now the fear was faceless. At least most of the time.

     The apathy and flatness and negative symptoms all came along when I was 15. I felt numb inside, like an arm that's fallen asleep. They diagnosed me with depression when it was discovered I'd been self harming. They gave me Prozac, which made no difference at all. I took it sporadically after the first few weeks. It didn't touch the numbness. I began drinking and smoking pot occasionally. I had friends. I had boyfriends. I had a counsellor I saw every Friday. I went through the motions wondering what exactly was wrong with me.

     I turned 16 and we moved, from NJ to Pennsylvania. I was looking forward to a fresh start. Maybe a new life would make me feel new things. Make me feel anything. It was quiet and different, there was a lake a short walk from my front door, no street lamps, a sky full of stars at night. I slowly made friends and started to feel a bit of hope. And that's where I'll end this post, on a hopeful note. The rest of the story coming soon.

A long Absence

      So it's been a few years. I haven't been very good about keeping up with the blog (obviously) and I'm not entirely sure what to do with it now. Scrap the whole thing? Start a new one? Try to resurrect this? I'm at a bit of a loss.
      Updates! I'm on meds, but I am forever non-compliant. Stopping and starting, adjusting my own dosage. It's not ideal but it's there when things get bad. I always wind up back on them. I've got this idea that things will be back to "normal" when I can get off them again for good. It's hard to get rid of that idea when I had 18 good years without them. But maybe I need to adjust my idea of "normal". I guess time will tell. 

      Last week was Mental Health Awareness week. I made some social media posts and one of them had a good turn out. I really wasn't expecting that, but it felt good to see so many people relate. This week I did the Interview With A Schizophrenic podcast. I was really nervous and I don't know if I said everything I meant to say, but it was an overall good experience. It's available on Apple podcasts and Spotify if anyone wants to give it a listen. Episode 9. I found all the episodes worth a listen.

      I think I want to get into mental health advocacy, but I'm not exactly sure where or how to begin. It's definitely something to think more about though. If anyone has an clue where I should begin, give me a shout in the comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Isolation

       I would like to write again but I'm so incredibly devoid of inspiration. Guess this is me setting the intention and broadcasting it out there into the ether. 

11/10, Please don't ever do that again.

So I've had this realization recently that people can tell me things, (friends, doctors, cab drivers) and it's absolutely meaningless. I mean, it's all just words and I can nod along and smile and say "Yes, that makes sense", but it's all nothing to me until I come to it in my own time. I have these massive epiphanies where it seems like the heavens open up and a choir of fucking angels herald this amazing new insight into my very nature and that of the universe itself, and it's actually the most basic and simple piece of information that has been set before me about a million times before, but my mind just slid past it, wrapped securely in its cuddly warm blanket composed of nothing but pure blind spot.

Case in point, I've been told countless times when seeking help that it is extremely normal to feel as though mental health professionals will think you're putting it on when you show up and start listing your symptoms. They won't, but they know you're probably worrying about it. It's also quite normal to question it yourself. Am I making this up? Have I convinced myself that this is all much worse than it is? Did I decide to be like this? Did I make myself this way? Is this ALL MY FAULT? Again, the actual really real answer is, emphatically, "NO". But it's totally normal to blame yourself and think that it is.

And I've always nodded along, and thought, yeah sure, okay. That's probably very normal. But I don't REALLY think that. I don't REALLY believe that. And then one morning you find yourself  waking at 4 a.m. unable to get back to sleep because of the relentless noise of your brain digging through its own detritus with a goddamned microscope. A silent argument of epic proportions ensues, and suddenly it's almost 3 hours later and you're sobbing on the couch shocked at the realization that you've ALWAYS blamed yourself. You always thought you were SO damned special and different, and that nobody understood you, not really, so of course you grew up and CHOSE to be a bloody schizophrenic, you egotistical fuck, and now you can't even understand yourself, and doesn't that just make you pleased as punch, you absolute fucking wank stain?

Of course, the rest of the day is spent drinking far too many cups of tea, quietly apologizing to myself and promising to up my self care game to levels that it has never actually reached, let alone maintained, whilst having a rousing game of blast-all-my-most-emo-playlists-and-sing-along. I mean, I'm awarding my brain an 11/10 on the fuckery scale. Cheers for that, from one wank stain to another. Let's never do that again. Except I'm sure we will, because if there's one thing I have learned, it's that no matter how many epic epiphanies I have, the amount of actual, useful information I retain is negligible, at best.

So, yes, welcome to 2017. It's going to be a year.