John Lennon's Killer Denied Parole For The 7th Time

I feel honor bound to make note of the fact that Mark David Chapman, who has been incarcerated for almost 32 years for murdering John Lennon on December 8th, 1980, has been denied parole for the 7th time since the year 2000.  It is not surprising to me that he has been denied parole and I don't see him ever becoming a free man, unless they release him as a very old man.  Because he killed John Lennon, who was a beloved and iconic figure, and because so many people still revile Mr. Chapman for his violent act, he will be treated as a special case and be denied the opportunities that other men have been granted after spending over 20 years in prison because of having committed a murder.

The reason I feel honor bound is that I believe that Mr. Chapman suffers from elements of the same illness I have suffered from, namely schizophrenia and other related illnesses.  Though I am amongst the majority of the mentally ill who have not been violent towards others, under other circumstances it could have been me locked away in prison with little hope of getting out.  And for me it brings up the question:  how should mentally ill people who have been violent be treated?  Many say, keep them locked up for life and others say kill them, but I think that is an evasion.  I know from experience that one can become extremely deluded and paranoid and then come out of it and return to some form of recovery.  The difference between me and Mark Chapman is that he committed one act, the act of murder, that he can never take back.  But does he really deserve to be locked up in a 6' x 10' cell, mostly in isolation, for the rest of his days?

Many people say yes, including Yoko Ono, who fears that Mr. Chapman, if released, would go on to murder one or both of John Lennon's sons.  Truth is more likely that Mr. Chapman would be in more danger of being harmed than of doing the harm because, even over 30 years later, some people still want violent retribution for what he did.  What Mark Chapman did was the result of severe mental illness and easy access to a gun and to ammunition, but some elements of society that believe so firmly in retribution, are also mentally ill.  I've read numerous comments from people, including a 12 year old girl, wishing for Mark Chapman only torture and death.  Even if I weren't leaning very strongly towards Buddhism, I would still believe in the preciousness of compassion.  I have been influenced enough by Jesus' instruction to love one's enemies, forgoing judgment in favor of compassion, to know that I believe that hatred cannot conquer hatred, that only love has the power to deeply heal even the hardest of men and women.

From what I've read, Mark Chapman is neither hard hearted nor uncooperative.  There were a few instances of acting out during delusional episodes in the first decade or so, but there has been no record of misconduct from him since 1994.  He has been described as a "model prisoner".  He is kept from most other inmates because there is fear for his safety still.  He is a Christian, more specifically a Born Again Christian or at least he was at his last parole hearing two years ago.  I have no idea if he was or is being given therapy, but it appears he hasn't taken psychiatric drugs for many years.  Early on he said he disliked psychiatry and resisted being labelled a schizophrenia sufferer, but he did hear voices and was under the sway of delusional thinking off and on for years.  He chose to plead guilty to the charge of murdering John Lennon, instead of pleading innocent by reason of insanity, though many of the psychiatric doctors who tested and interviewed him asserted that he was definitely psychotic.  Regardless of this, he accepts the judgment handed down to him and knows he may never be free.  Part of what sustains him is his faith in a higher power.  Within the solitude of his life and in his heart, he believes that he has been forgiven.

What if Mark Chapman was your brother, son or husband?  How would you respond to him?  What kind of treatment would you want him to have?  There are millions of people with mental illness in the U.S. alone with a percentage that has fallen into violent attitudes and actions and there are millions of family members and friends who have been affected by the mentally ill.  This is true for those who are addicts as well.  The network of people affected by mental illness combined with those affected by addiction is vast, yet too many of us still remain silent.  There is too much stigma and shame attached to mental illness.  That's one reason why I write in this blog.  I refuse the stigma and I refuse the shame and I hope to encourage others to follow and share their stories.  Of course, we all have to work our process through gradually, but at some point I think we will be given the opportunity to be of help to others and to openly question the narrow-mindedness of stigma and the punishment that often follows.

Everyone of us has made serious mistakes in life, but when judging others who frighten and repel us, we often turn a blind eye to our own shortcomings.  And sometimes by doing that we transform into the very kind of being that we once condemned.  Judgmental, violent, mentally unstable, if not in action then in attitude and in intent.  In becoming hardliners we have to watch out about becoming hypocrites, too.  I know that I was at my sickest when I was full of resentment and judgment and that's what prevented me from starting to heal.  I was so involved in my own delusional story line that I wasn't able to see the bigger picture.  The bigger picture is so big because it includes everyone.  There really is room enough in all our hearts for everyone, but we have to turn our will towards it and cultivate it like we would cultivate a garden.

Change Of Diagnosis And A Response To Michael Moore's film "SICKO"

Several months ago at my psychiatrist's office they changed several things.  Now one must pay the copay upfront, prescriptions are no longer written out but called into one's pharmacy and each patient gets a print out that lists the diagnosis and current medications.  I noticed that my diagnosis was no longer schizophrenia, but schizo-affective disorder.  Just when my psychiatrist changed my diagnosis I do not know, but he never informed me of it and so far I haven't talked to him about it.  I've been so used to labeling myself a schizophrenia sufferer that it has taken me these several months to re-name my condition.  The truth is that schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder are all related, but for some reason doctors seem to need to separate us.  Just about all my online friends suffer from schizoaffective disorder and several of them said that they thought I might suffer from the same thing because I've struggled with a lot of depression.  It's not so clear to me.  Many schizophrenia sufferers also suffer from depression, so what is the big difference?  Many professionals are not so sure and often misdiagnose patients or, as is true in my case, see a change from one condition to another very related condition.

So what is the difference between schizophrenia, bipolar and schizoaffective disorders?  Schizophrenia is considered a thought disorder, bipolar is considered a mood disorder and schizoaffective is considered a combination of a thought disorder and a mood disorder.  I'm not sure if I've got my statistics exactly correct, but generally speaking bipolar disorder is the most prevalent disorder out of the three affecting perhaps 3% of the population; schizophrenia affects about 1% and schizoaffective about .5% of the population.  Despite people with schizoaffective suffering from the worst of both schizophrenia and bipolar, it also appears to have a better longterm prognosis.  Not sure why.  Maybe there is more of a chance for balance instead of being stuck in one camp or another.

I've also read that anxiety disorders are fairly common for people with schizoaffective disorder.  The irony for me is that my problems with anxiety seem to stem from my high dose of the anti-psychotic Abilify.  Did I become schizoaffective because I began ingesting this medication?  Do medications, depending on their dosages, actually cause mental illnesses instead of preventing them??  This is an issue that Karen has also been exploring as she lowers her medications because she's seen that she is much healthier and productive on a lower dose of the anti-psychotic.  And since I lowered my dose of Abilify, I have had similar results.  Sometimes I wonder about conspiracy theories about pharmaceutical companies misleading so-called "consumers", which by the way is a horrible word for people who suffer from mental illness I think.  But that's just how they must see us and so that is what they call us.  I often wonder too about the Republican orientation towards glorifying business and the potential riches that come to mere individuals from doing business.  Business at the expense of morality is not business, it is swindling.

My brother gave me the documentary by Michael Moore called SICKO.  I saw it several years ago when it came out and watched it last night again.  I'm thinking of lending it to my friend Richard, who dodges calling himself a Republican, but who, in his views, really is Republican.  I have some hopes that some of what's in this critical, but also funny, documentary might make him pause and reflect and perhaps change his opinion.  He is after all a rehabilitative VA nurse.  He knows up close about how people suffer and die.  We have agreed several times that euthanasia should be a legal choice for people who are slowly dying while in pain.  Of course, he can't say that openly, but to me he sees the compassion of an overdose of morphine in certain cases.  I want the right to end my life if I so choose if I come down with something incurable and if that is denied to me in the future, I will find a way on my own, but it would be nice to go with a certain amount of dignity and in the company of family and/or friends.

If you haven't seen SICKO, do try to see it.  Yes, Mr. Moore's point of view is definitely left of center, but he interviews real people both in this country and in Canada, England, France and Cuba, countries that have successful universal care, that is government run healthcare for all.  I know the United States is a much larger country in the literal expanse of the land and in population and that that may make the changeover to universal care more complicated, but I still believe in time that it can and will be successful and stop all the unnecessary deaths and illnesses and heartache of too many Americans.  I have health insurance (at over $1000 a month), but this film shows me that this does not mean that I have security if I come down with a more serious health condition.  Right now, I have access to my medications, as does my brother, who suffers from Type 2 diabetes, but I can't be sure that I will always be covered, unless the Affordable Care Act goes into effect in 2014.

Mr. Moore's film has its funny moments certainly, but underneath it all it is very serious.  I think the humor is the sugar that makes the medicine go down more easily.  Humor is a bridge between opposing camps, at least sometimes.  Mr. Moore does mock the idea that the right holds onto like a dog with a bone that socialism is the anathema of democracy and capitalism.  He points out that we already have socialized institutions in place with the fire department, libraries, the police department, the postal service, etc... and our country has not fallen apart because of these public services.  If anything, we are more likely to fall apart without them.  Does the government need to be held accountable for infractions?  Yes, definitely, but so do private citizens who abuse their business privileges.  Health care for all should be a right and not a privilege for all people and without moral judgment against those deemed somehow unworthy.  Fact:  we are all going to die, many of us from sicknesses if not accidents and we must be compassionate about our eventual destiny and treat each other with dignity.  And yes, this does mean that those who have a great deal must contribute to those who don't.  The idea that people are superior because they are rich is to my mind a sick perspective.  They are not superior, they are damned lucky, no matter how hard they have worked.  People work very hard all over and most don't get a fraction in comparison.  This is not justice for all.  This is justice for some and that just doesn't cut it.

One Englishman that Mr. Moore interviewed said that the difference between his country and ours is that the English government is afraid when people protest, which English people have done over time with a fair amount of success.  He says poor Americans are disillusioned and instead of fighting back they are rather cowed into submission.  Many, too many, refuse to vote (like my friend Richard) because they've concluded that all politicians and people in government are corrupt.  And a lot are.  But that is not a very good reason to give up.  Maybe, with the advent of the internet and social networking, that is changing.  I really hope so.  The American frontier and farmer mentality of being the self made American and doing it on your own is outdated at best.  At worst, it degenerates into the ugly American view that many other countries have of us.  We can't do it on our own.  We are interdependent and have to care for each other, especially if we've been fortunate financially or otherwise.  Greed is a very ugly trait to encourage and develop and extol.

A Visit From My Elderly Parents

My parents arrived at the Rochester NY airport 6 hours late due to bad weather at JFK in New York City.  The stress of traveling is hard on anyone, but especially on people who are in the 80s and so my parents were exhausted.  Of course, by the time they arrived it was nighttime and I had to drive them and my brother the hour and a half home back to our little college town.  I'm no longer very comfortable driving at night, but it had to be done and I did it.  We arrived at my parents hotel after midnight.  I left the Apple iPad with them and told them I would be over the following morning to give them some instructions on how to use it after they had had their breakfast.

I had done a lot of work beforehand scheduling daily activities for the week ahead.  I had also spent a lot of time learning to use the iPad because I really wanted my parents to get the most out of that device considering their home computer was practically defunct.  When I arrived at their room later that morning I was somewhat nervous about teaching them and curious about what their reactions would be.  I had planned to try and teach them for an hour and a half each morning and let them explore it on their own each evening.  My mother responded positively to the iPad, but my father was rather intimidated by all the information I was giving him about it.  He kept asking me how I managed to learn to use it and I kept telling him that I had had a month to learn it and that I learned it by exploring it, by making mistakes and trying again.  I told him that this is what he and my mother would have to do, too.

As the week progressed I saw that they were having trouble with the most basic things such as turning it on and off, adjusting the volume (my mother is hard of hearing) and charging it.  One thing I did try a couple of times was using something called FaceTime which is the Apple equivalent to Skype or video conferencing.  The FaceTime application came with their iPad and I downloaded the App to my Apple laptop.  Personally I found it very easy to use, but my parents struggled a bit.  They had to learn how to stand the iPad up in order to see the screen and to adjust the volume so that it was all the way up so that my mother could hear me.  Once we got it working, my mother was very pleased with it.  She does not really like using the telephone.  She likes to be able to see the person she's talking to and this program allowed her to do just that.  I told her that this would be great to use in the coming months instead of using the phone.  The only glitch in the whole thing is that the program takes WiFi and they do not have a WiFi hotspot in their apartment at home.  There are some WiFi hotspots in the elevator hallways and in the library at their retirement community, so they would have to bring the iPad there in order to make a connection with me until they got WiFi in their apartment.  I have my fingers crossed that they will go ahead and do that soon.

Otherwise, the week went quite well.  I took on most of the responsibility for taking care of my parents shielding my brother from some of the stress of it.  But I found that the stress was not so bad for me.  I attributed some of that to lowering my medications.  About three weeks ago I saw my psychiatrist and asked him if I could begin to lower the antipsychotic drug Abilify that I was taking at the highest dose, 60 mg.  He said yes and told me to halve it by taking one 30 mg tablet instead of two.  I was surprised by his readiness to reduce the amount by so much so quickly, but I was willing to give it a try.  One of the main reasons why I wanted to reduce the Abilify was that I had been having a lot of trouble with anxiety for several years since I had been taking the drug.  I found out that anxiety was one of the side effects of it.  I've come to conclude that this was the case because in the last three weeks my anxiety level has nearly disappeared to the point where I stopped taking the anti-anxiety medication Buspirone that I was supposed to be taking three times a day.  I didn't like that drug either, though it did help a bit, because one of its side effects is blurry vision and I noticed that that was happening to me after I took it.

What I'm finding, through trial and error as is the case for most of us taking prescribed medications, is that a higher dose of medication is not necessarily the best to reduce symptoms.  It is very hard to judge accurately because biochemistry varies from person to person.  The scientists/doctors do not know exactly how the anti-psychotic and anti-depression medications work, just that for some people they do work.  This is unsettling and means that each of us has to fool around with the guidance of our psychiatrists, trying different drugs at different doses.  Sometimes drugs that have worked well at reducing symptoms for years suddenly become ineffective forcing those affected to try different drugs.  And it all takes time, sometimes months to get to the right dose or combination.  On top of that again there is no guarantee that that will work for years at a time.  I am relieved that I can lower the Abilify, which has not only reduced anxiety but has reduced the frequency of the voices that I hear, because I was at the very highest dose with no leeway.

So at the lowered dose I was better able to handle the stress of going to the Grassroots music festival and of taking care of my parents while they visited.  This year has been one of the best years all around since I got so ill in the Spring of 1998.  I also attribute that to reconnecting with old friends online and to making a new in person friend (Sam) in my community.  For so many years I have lived in isolation, even before I became psychotic, and now I have rejoined the human race.  What a wonderful thing.  My circumstances have gone from truly desperate to very good, even joyful at times.  I am glad to be alive and glad to have the people I care about alive and well.

My parents had a good time.  We took about three road trips, one to a Subaru dealership in a suburb of Rochester.  My present car is about eleven years old and it is time to get a new one.  I found the car I wanted right away and will be getting it very soon.  I'm really looking forward to the peace of mind an all wheel drive car will give me during the hard winters we get here.  My mother said she was very happy and relieved that I would be getting this car because sometimes she worries about me.  A couple of days after we looked at the car at the dealership, my present car would start but not stay started and I had to have it towed to the shop I have gone to for several years.  Turns out there was nothing really wrong except there was water in the gas.  I didn't know this  but sometimes the gas you pump at the gas station has some water in it and causes this problem.  It's never happened to me before, but it firmed our resolve to go ahead and get the Subaru.

Because I wasn't exactly sure if my car was up to driving my parents to the airport, we asked our friend Richard to take us up.  Luckily it was a Sunday and he had the day off and could do it, so we all went up to Rochester.  We stopped off at a very good Thai restaurant and treated him to a good meal and gave him some extra cash for his trouble.  A couple of hours after I got home I got a call from my father saying that they were still at the airport because JFK was closed due again to bad weather.  I told him I would reserve a room for them at a nearby (within walking distance) hotel until they could leave the following day.  Normally I have a strong aversion to using phones; I get very anxious, but this whole trip I was able to use the phone to call my parents and make reservations.  I've been getting better and better about using phones especially since I started talking on the phone to my childhood friend Rita every week or so.  Thank you Rita!  Anyway, my parents did get back to their home in Florida the next day, thank goodness.

It was great to spend time with my parents.  Though they tire much more easily now, they looked great and I'm hoping they live in good health for a while longer.  My father has a rare, but treatable, form of leukemia.  Five years ago he went through chemotherapy.  The doctors said that he would have to be retreated in five years, so that what he did before he came to visit.  He responded to the treatment though he continues to bruise easily.  If all goes well and he survives, he will be treated again in five years.  Till then I'm hoping to stay in closer touch with both my parents using FaceTime once or twice a week.  That's another change for me because when I was sicker I was not good about keeping in touch, but since I started sharing my car with Sam, seeing her each week, I also started to call my parents faithfully on Wednesday evenings.

One last thing:  I found out last week that a couple who I met three years ago, who suffer from mental illness but are in a firm recovery, went through the NAMI (National Alliance On Mental Illness) training to start a mental health support group nearby.  It is scheduled to start hopefully in September.  I am excited about it and very grateful to them for having the stamina and dedication to do this for our community.  A month ago I was seriously considering yet again starting a support group in my town, but now I think I will dedicate myself to this new group.  Not only will I start to get the support I need, but I think I can do some good for others directly.  If after six months the group goes well and I learn the pattern and organization of a NAMI group, perhaps I will go through the training myself with someone I meet in the group and eventually start a group in my town.  We shall see.

Holmes Is Not Faking It

I just watched several news clips about the young man, James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 more in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado this past Thursday.  Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the newscasters wound up insinuating that Mr. Holmes might be faking being psychotic.  It is a big story after all and they were trying to make it juicier.  They made a big deal of the fact that Mr. Holmes hair was dyed orange and that he made disjointed faces during the first court proceeding.  To my mind, a mind that has been through the intensity and disorientation of insanity, his behavior was normal for someone who has just gone through a peak experience of a psychotic break and is very definitely psychotic in one way or another.  That people should question whether he is presently insane after he went on a killing spree, that to me is insane.  Of course he's extremely ill.  And it is not unusual that the before picture of him as a very bright and motivated person should quickly turn into the after picture of him as someone in the grips of psychotic delusions.  On some level he might have seen it coming as I did and, as I did, he probably stayed stuck in denial until his first break with reality.  

When that first break hits, it is externally subtle, but internally dramatic.  There is so much going on inside oneself, a total mixing of fantasy and fact.  It is extremely unfortunate for James Holmes that his deluded fixations latched onto the fictional characters of Batman and The Joker.  It is quite possible that he at first identified with Batman as a hero character, a defender of the innocent, and then swung in the opposite direction as his illness progressed to see himself as the villan.  This is fairly typical of schizophrenia and related illnesses.  Several months into my psychotic transformation I swung from the temptation of being a holy person to being the Antichrist and finally to being a sort of combination of the two.  Lucky for me I didn't stay in the Antichrist role, but leaned more heavily towards the Jesus role, which led me back to the study of Buddhism.

My fixation was not a fictional character, but a real famous person, who, in my mind, transformed into a serial killer.  The pain of this was that I was mentally joined to this delusion.  Before I became psychotic, I had been abused by my boyfriend, but after I became psychotic, my abuser lived inside of my mind.  I had to train myself to cultivate compassion for that sick side while at the same time separating my core self as best I could.  My therapist, who I started seeing less than 6 months after my first psychotic break, taught me and guided me to value the good within me.  How important was that? Important enough to let me survive two more breaks and the ensuing suicidal depression of my very, very early recovery.  It led me towards recovery.  It led me to counter the poor self esteem of my young adulthood and the eventual self hating residue of having lived through an abusive relationship.  

Most people wouldn't want to say that they identify with a mass murderer, but I do.  I identify with his illness and yes, I feel a lot of sympathy for my fellow man, who has, through this illness, condemned himself for the rest of his life.  Somewhere along the line, he didn't get the help that I reached out for early on and, at least partially, took.  Most likely he was left alone with his heroes and demons.  But really with a story like Batman and The Joker the line between hero and villan is pretty damn slim.  Both are manipulative, violent and disguised.  Why this obsession with action heroes and villans?  Why is there this almost innocent glorification of violence?  Good guys/bad guys really devolve into a sick bunch of characters each of whom utilize and perfect violence as a means to an end.  But the end doesn't come; it just keeps bouncing back and forth.  There's always another sequel.

Even children know that there is so much more to life than black and white thinking.  At their best they can easily sniff out hypocrisy.  A lot of heroes are hypocrites.  They say one thing and do another.  They make exceptions for themselves especially in the area of the tit for tat cycle of abuse and violence.  This tit for tat mentality can be seen in love relationships, friendships, in our schools, in the work environment, in our government and in our entertainment.  Slights, power plays, competition and brewing resentments that just keep getting fed.  Many of us in a hostile situation want the last word.  And the last word invariably goes -- me = good and you = bad.  Is it true?  Hell no.  All of us are a composite of all the dualities: good/bad, positive/negative, strong/weak, honorable/dishonorable, etcetera, etcetera.  All of us have done things that we are proud of and things that we are ashamed of.  That's a big part of being human; it's in the flux between polarities and in our self consciousness.

In our essence we are not either good or bad, but for at least this lifetime, we are forever working through our own ambivalence, sometimes feeling/thinking/being "good" and sometimes feeling/thinking/being "bad".  Maybe that's why so many people invest a lot in their personas as a form of denial and defense.  Mr. Holmes took that as a basis to build his elaborate delusions which has put him at the outer limits, beyond an understanding of reality.  Of course some filters in because it has to or he wouldn't be able to function, but the big picture is obscured by the delusional one.

So I say, James Holmes is not faking being seriously ill.  People who kill other people are not faking it, just as people who commit suicide are not faking it.  I believe violence is a form of mental illness, but in our culture it is almost taboo to say so because so many people justify it as a right.  The right to bear arms for private individuals, for the police force and for the military translates into men, women and children becoming the victims of that right.  We can't have it both ways with some violence good and necessary and other violence bad and tragic, but that's what we do over and over again.  Instead of suppressing violence, we lift it up and even make it mainstream entertainment in films and television.  We give a deeply mixed message first to children and then to young adults, particularly young men.  When tragedy does occur, as in this case with people being seriously injured and killed, we respond with surprise.  What's surprising is that we turn a blind eye to all the violence that goes on in our country each and every day and to all the violence in action/adventure flicks that we're practically spoon feeding to children and young adults.  Bottom line, guns and entertainment of this sort are BIG business and there's a lot of clout in trying to protect these businesses.

The urge of the media in insinuating that Mr. Holmes is faking being psychotic is the age old desire to find a scapegoat for the serious societal problems of mental illness and violence.  Every time an insane young man goes on a shooting spree in this country, and this seems to be more prevalent in the last decade, it offers a window of opportunity for change.  Community action, mental health services and gun control need to become top priority.  If that doesn't happen, don't be surprised if yet another mentally ill person repeats the same pattern that James Holmes got pulled into.  The problem won't just go away.  Scapegoats can take the blame temporarily, but in the long run we all have to take on our own share of it.  We can point fingers all we want, but what we really should be doing is examining ourselves.  Real change can only happen individual by individual.

Grassroots Festival 2012

I got back from the Grassroots Music Festival yesterday afternoon after going for three days with my brother.  I took these photos on Saturday in the late afternoon when the weather was good because it hadn't been good the first day and part of the second day.  I took a bunch of photographs, most of which did not come out, but I thought these were pretty good and could give a feel for the festival and some of the types of people there.  I especially loved watching and photographing the children, most of whom were at a gleeful high energy stage at that time of the day, running around, playing frisbee and soccer and tag.

Rob and I have been going to this festival every summer for many years.  This year's festival was good, but not great.  No real headliners, some bad weather yet still enjoyable.  The festival has gotten progressively larger over the years while the music has gotten less challenging.  There's been some infusion of traditional and pop country that doesn't stir me up.  In past years we've gotten to see some great performances by Los Lobos, Lucinda Williams, The Avett Brothers, Eilen Jewell and several excellent African and Latin bands.  My brother is a music junky and a master at making up original music mixes of his favorite artists and he relies on going to this festival each year to get his dose of live music.  Truth is we don't get to see a lot of live music around here in part because I'm not too keen on driving at night time.  There is some live music at the local bars and the main coffee house mainly during the school season.  Rob stays in touch with the rest of the world by buying CDs that have come out recently and staying in touch with a Facebook group of a radio station called The Loft on satellite radio, one of the few DJ controlled, free form radio station out there.

Except for getting anxious as we headed out to the festival, which is about an hour and forty minutes away, I was mostly relaxed.  I even talked with a few people for a little bit, which is something I wouldn't have been able to do comfortably several years ago.  I enjoyed being outside, listening to music, eating some good food from the vendors and watching the continual parade of people of all ages (though mostly caucasian and middle class).  I also love my brother very much and enjoy his company. He is really mensa bright and knowledgeable and has a good sense of humor too.  We get along.  I'm very grateful to have him in my life; he's provided me with comfort and refuge when I've needed it.

So I've successfully gotten through the festival and am now in the process of preparing for my elderly parents' visit in five days.  Because they live so far away and also because I have seven cats to take care of, I only see them twice a year for about eight days each time.  That means that the time I do spend with them has to be quality time.  I love that they are still alive and in relatively good health.  They are good people, smart, sensitive, caring and very generous.  They taught my brother and me to be good people, too.  I know I need to prepare for the day when they won't be here, but for now I'll just stay grateful and attentive.

Summertime Gratitude

I'm sitting at my dining room table with my now wireless laptop enjoying the breeze created by my three fans.  We finally got some rain today after having drought conditions for a while.  My friend Sam stayed over last night; we had our first drinking night together in several months.  We drank her favorite -- rum with cranberry juice and ice and we both got moderately drunk.  It was an excellent night.  We talked, listened to music, did a little musical jamming, me on her sweet acoustic guitar and her on her electric bass, and watched a movie by the director Mel Brooks called "Young Frankenstein" that came out in 1974 in black and white, a very funny movie.  Earlier that day I did a lot of house cleaning and cooked up some red beans and rice with chicken for our dinner.  I felt proud of myself and content with her.  Several years ago I wouldn't have been able to pull if off, but yesterday it was a piece of cake.  And so I feel as if I am really moving in the right direction in my life with my recovery.

It's taken a while to come to this place, a place that many people come to naturally, but I have to say that it's been worth the wait.  Now I have friends whereas before I really just had my brother.  I'm finding that having friends makes all the difference.  Sam in particular is a great friend because I can see her face to face and I get to hug her and talk to her directly.  She's gotten me to get outside for short walks and to sit in nature's glory especially at her place which has some lovely property complete with a large pond and a full food garden and a campfire spot.  She's said to me that ever since she was little she's felt more comfortable outside than inside.  But then she grew up out here in the beautiful countryside, whereas I was mostly in the City, except for my summer's at my parents' beach house on Long Island.  I think my summer's were particularly pleasant precisely because I lived in the City.  I had the best of both worlds back then.  Now I'm a confirmed country dweller and have been for over 20 years.  I'm used to looking out my window at the wildlife and greenery and flowers.  I'm used to the slow pace, the privacy and the beauty.  I feel very fortunate.

The last couple of months I put myself back on a diet and plan to continue with it as a lifestyle change in order to get back to a more normal weight.  Really my self-consciousness at being obese has stopped me from returning to NYC to visit with my old friends.  My therapist says that shouldn't stop me, but it does.  I don't mind that much my somewhat sagging neck and my gray hairs.  I have come to accept that I've made it past the middle age mark, but the weight I can't seem to accept.  As it stands I plan on seeing my friends next summer.  Lately I've been getting some new clothes to fit me for now.  They are comfortable and attractive and not very expensive either.  This is a big change for me.  Normally, I live in sweatpants and t-shirts.  I really didn't think it was possible to look good again, but then I didn't try very hard either.  Now because of the clothes and my improved ability to take care of my home and having some friends, I feel a part of the human race again.  It's a great feeling.

A really pleasant surprise happend to me a couple of days ago:  I got an email from my old friend Colette, a very warm and supportive email.  Turns out she's been busy, but right now she is vacationing with her family and she had enough time to write to me.  When I contacted her, she was just about to do her oral presentation to get her doctorate degree, well, she only just got confirmation that she passed her tests and she is now officially has her Phd.  I respect her for going so far in her education.  She's a real success story.  It means so much to me that she decided to get in touch with me.  I was afraid that I would never hear from her again, though I was planning on sending her an audio tape of me talking to her in the Fall, but now maybe I can do that for her (if she has a tape player) earlier.  I've successfully sent tapes to my two other old friends, Rita and Amy and gotten a few tapes from them as well.  Emails are great too, but to hear an old friend's voice and inflections is even better.  Plus now I have years of practice doing it for just myself.

I'm back to wanting to start a support group in my town.  I've been wanting to do this for about five years, made a couple of tentative approaches, but never pulled it off.  I wasn't quite ready to try to do this on my own, but maybe, just maybe, I can do this by the end of the summer.  I wrote a Support Group Proposal to give to my therapist and my psychiatrist, which I did last week.  I asked them if they'd be willing to back me up by letting me include their contact information on the proposal that I plan to give to the county clerk's office in town.  My therapist is willing, but my psychiatrist would prefer that I work with the counseling center in a nearby town.  He worries that some people in the acute stages of mental illness might act out and cause me a lot of grief, so he wants there to be more support.  I suggested asking to have the meeting at the court house which is right above the police station, that way I could call for help if I needed it.  My psychiatrist seemed to approve of that idea.  Honestly I think most people who choose to go to a support group meeting do not act out, but it is good to prepare for the possibility.

It still amazes me that there are no mental health support groups in this  county.  My psychiatrist hesitation appears to be part of the reason why:  the people in the local communities around here don't trust that mentally ill people getting together will behave properly.  Most of that is I think due to ignorance and some stigma, though there is always an element of truth there too.  It's hard to know where people are at in their illness or in the various stages of recovery from serious mental illnesses.  I've never been a group facilitator before, but I'm sure I can learn.  I just wish there was a good daily reader for mental health groups.  When I went to Al-Anon they had excellent readers which I relied on when I was in the acute stage of my illness; it wasn't quite appropriate, but it was better than nothing.  Having a daily reader gives a good focus to a group, a basis to start a discussion and to share personal experiences and offer support.  But before I can get to the stage of getting a group going, I have to convince the townspeople of the need for a local group.  This will take courage and persistence on my part and a willingness to share my story, to become more visible in my community.

Mostly I've kept a very low profile, though early on in my illness I did tell my brother, who is sometimes a bit of a barfly socializing with students and the locals, that he could tell people about me and my diagnosis.  I didn't want him, or myself for that matter, to be ashamed of my illness and I wanted my neighbors to know why I have been so reclusive all these years.  Also, for the most part, I have not acted out publicly or gotten in trouble with the police.  Basically, I pay my taxes, shop at some of the local stores and businesses and keep to myself and that seems good enough for most people around here.  Also people know my brother, who is a great talker, and that helps as well.

So, so far, this has been one of the better summers I've had around here.  Even the hot weather hasn't been bothering me much.  My brother and I go off to a 4 day music festival this Thursday and then 5 days after that my parents, who are both now in their mid 80s, will arrive and visit for 8 days.  I am really looking forward to giving them the iPad and teaching them how to use it.  Even my friend Richard has been helping me out by doing some small, but necessary, jobs around my house and then staying to have a glass or two of Sangria with me.  Before Sam left today, we both agreed that in a world where so many things could go wrong for everyone every day, that, for the most part, things work out.  Of course, there are low points in everyone's lives, but if you can endure through them, you can see that there is light at the end of the tunnel and then move out into it.

Bringing My Parents Into The 21st Century

My brother and I just bought an Apple iPad2 with WiFi and 3G cellular service for my parents using some money we got as a refund for years of overcharging from our health insurance company.  Their Apple desktop computer crashed last winter and was just barely fixed for minimal use, but my father didn't want to spend the money to buy a new one and so I pretty much decided to get an iPad for him and my mother even before we got our checks.  I had it sent to me so that I could set it up for them and give it to them when they come for an 8 day visit at the end of July.  I will spend a little time each day with them teaching them how to use it.

But first I have to teach myself.  The device is very user friendly but still there are a lot of programs on it and more that I downloaded in the App store.  Most of the apps I've gotten are free, but I did pay for a wordprocessing app called Pages so that my mother can continue with her writing.  I also purchased a wireless keyboard to temporarily replace the on screen keyboard because it will make it more comfortable to use the wordprocessing program.  In effect, I'm attempting to turn the iPad2 with an external keyboard into a less expensive alternative to an Apple laptop.  Because my mother is an amateur writer (she's written book reviews for her retirement community's paper amongst other small achievements), I want to make it as easy for her to use this great device as possible.  For her pleasure, I've also added The New York Times crossword puzzles (because she loves doing crosswords) and a solitaire game.  I'm hoping this will stimulate her curiosity and get her hooked.

My father, who is a news hound, will be able to watch tons of videos which is something his old computer does not have the capacity to do.  My brother and I are also getting him a 6 month subscription to the New York Times.  My father is addicted to the New York Times.  When I was growing up every morning he would be reading it and he never stopped, only now, in order to save money, he reads it in their retirement community's library, though he still buys the Sunday paper.  Soon, with a digital subscription, he'll be able to read the entire paper and in addition to that have access to slide shows and videos.  So far I've downloaded several news apps including NPR (National Public Radio) and BBC news.

I got the iPad2 with 3G capability mainly because my parents don't have WiFi set up in their apartment, though there are WiFi hotspots in several places in their retirement community and others in the local libraries, Starbucks and several shopping centers and cafes.  3G allows them access to the internet via cell phone technology.  I chose Verizon because they have a Verizon cell phone and I've heard that AT&T is not as good. Supposedly 3G is not as clear a signal and it's more expensive to use.  You pay a monthly fee for 1 GB to 5GB storage space.  I'm not sure what that means, but when I've used the 3G I notice that it uses up the 1 GB I bought for the month pretty quickly.  I think instead of paying more for more space from them, my parents should upgrade to WiFi in their apartment, but I'll have to talk my father into that.

I just upgraded to wireless in my home for an extra 7 dollars a month.  Finally I am using my Apple laptop as it was intended to be used, that is, wherever I feel like sitting in my house.  Before this it was tethered to the modem.  So today, I am writing from my dining room table instead from my downstairs bedroom.  This is more comfortable for me as I spend most of my time in the living room/dining room area.  So, officially, this is the first blog I've written on my laptop wirelessly.  I will not only be bringing my parents into the 21st century, but myself as well.  So, for the last couple of weeks I've been immersed in studying both the iPad2 and my MacBook Pro.  Generally speaking, I am rather computer illiterate, but now maybe there will be a switch into really studying the new technology and learning it.

My mother said to me this week on the phone that the iPad sounded like something out of science fiction.  I have thought that many times before about all kinds of technology in the last twenty years or so.  I'm really taken with the iPad, so much so that I would love to have one for myself.  It's so portable.    Compared to a desktop or laptop computer, it is stripped down to more of the essentials, but that just makes it simpler to use, especially for people who are not doing elaborate computer art or photography or music, who either don't have the time to learn a full computer or don't have the inclination.  The iPad, or any tablet, is good for children and seniors because of this.  I think it will take the place of the laptop for many people in the near future.  I just read somewhere that Apple is going to be putting out a smaller version of the iPad, maybe to compete with the Kindle Fire.  The Kindle Fire costs about $200 and has many of the features of a tablet.  The goal I guess is to get everyone in the whole world to own at least one computer device, preferably multiple devices.  If they can make it cheap enough and efficient enough, I think they can make that close to the reality.  When that happens, it will be only the most rugged individuals who remain unconnected.

My friend Sam has a laptop to write with, but no internet service.  It's too expensive right now.  But I bet that even she, who is a rugged individual (she lives without running water), will find a way to get one of these cool gadgets.  If I had a little more money, I would get her something.  One of the features of Apple computers and devices is that you can video conference with an app called Facetime between Mac computers.  The app comes already installed on the iPad2 and I paid a dollar to have it installed on my laptop.  One thing, you have to have WiFi to use it.  Anyway, I'm going to test it out with my parents when they get here and I'd love someday to do the same with Jude, if she gets an iPad.  I know Skype has been out for a while, but I've never used it.  So a video conference with my folks will be a new experience.  It makes me think of the Stanley Kubrick film, "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was made in the late 1960s.  In one scene a main character is in a space station calling home to earth and he talks with his young daughter via a video conference.  We're not hanging out in space yet, but you never know what could be in store for the future of this world, if we get that lucky.

The Supreme Court Decision, 5-4 In Favor Of Universal Healthcare

Thursday June 28th 2012 was a historic day because the Supreme Court ruled in favor of The Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare" in a 5-4 decision with the more conservative justice, John Roberts, acting as the swing vote.  Thank you Justice Roberts!  What this will translate into is that at least 30 million uninsured people will now have access to health insurance coverage in 2014.  30 Million!!  For my brother and me this means that our health insurance costs will drop dramatically because our income level is very low.  Right now we're paying over half of our income each year on health care coverage and we need that coverage because my brother has diabetes and I suffer from schizophrenia and we need our medications each month.  So far we have been able to pay a great deal to be covered, but in the long run without Universal Healthcare we might not have been able to afford to do that and pay for daily expenses and taxes.  So this decision was a very important one for us.  And so, too, is it so important for the now uninsured.  If people have access to health insurance, it means that they will have access to preventative medicine, which hopefully will translate into a reduced need for emergency care.  As it stands, emergency rooms across the country are overburdened with uninsured people and emergency care is expensive.

Universal health care will require those who can afford health insurance to get it regardless of whether they are sick or not.  If we didn't have this requirement we couldn't afford to have Universal health care.  Those that can, will be required to help those that can't.  In my mind, this is a matter of human decency, but many of those who will be required to pay into the system deeply resent it.  I talked briefly with my friend Richard about the Supreme Court's decision.  He doesn't admit to being affiliated with either party, but many of his attitudes are distinctly Republican.  His stance is he doesn't want to have to pay for some welfare mothers who choose to have 4 or 5 children to have healthcare for themselves and their large families.  In his view, they have acted irresponsibly and, in effect, should be punished for that.  In my view, the children especially are blameless and should be covered, but then I also believe that ALL people in this country should have access to healthcare regardless of their life choices.  It should be a right and not a privilege as it is in most industrialized modern countries in the world.  It's shameful how we have lagged behind them, which is why this Supreme Court decision has made me proud to be American.  That Justice Roberts could cross the divide and vote in opposition to the other conservative justices is what this country is all about, checks and balances.  As it stands if things go too far left, the right will enter into the picture and pull things back to the middle and if things go too far right, the left will do the same.  It's the moderate position that allows for differing viewpoints, but in the long run serves the majority of American citizens, that creates a balanced view of justice.

I also talked briefly with my friend Sam about the healthcare decision.  She is definitely poor and just recently, at age 59, applied for Medicaid.  Her response was cautious.  She was afraid that she might be required to pay for health insurance if her Medicaid application gets rejected.  She was also saying that there has to be an infrastructure to switch from the old system to the new system and if that isn't in place by 2014, people such as herself could suffer.  I told her that I believe that her income is low enough that she wouldn't be one of the ones required to pay very much.  As to the infrastructure, I believe that since the Obama administration's health care bill was passed that there has been a move in the states towards building an infrastructure for the change over to occur.  And now there is the full go ahead for the next year and a half and I'm hopeful that a lot can be done in that time to allow for a successful crossover.  Still, I thought Sam's response was interesting because that is what a lot of people are probably asking right now--how much will we who can afford healthcare be required to pay each year?  I can't answer that question because there is such a wide range of incomes in this country, but I know it will mean that the wealthy will have to pay their fair share whether they like it or not.  One thing Sam did say and that was that she didn't feel sorry for "those poor, poor rich people" and, honestly, neither do I.

The strange thing to me is that it's not just many rich Republicans who are vehemently against this health care law, but many poor, rural Republicans, too.  They don't like our present president, some for the bogus reason that he is an African American, and others because they don't like big government overseeing their lives.  I guess some of them have that old fashioned self-reliant frontiersman attitude and look with horror at taking public assistance.  I know Sam has some of that spirit in herself and will only take so much and only because she absolutely has to.  There was a time during the Great Depression of the 1930s that to be poor and to ask for help from the country was not a shameful thing, but now it appears that it's back to having a kind of shameful attitude about the needy, even coming from the needy themselves.  Maybe that will change when universal healthcare coverage goes into effect in 2014.

I know from having a serious mental illness that it is quite important to reach out for help when you need it and not try to deal with it all alone, but, I, too resisted.  Maybe it's human nature to try and cope alone and not be a burden to others.  If it hadn't been for my voices nearly forcing me to get individual therapy and go to what support groups were available in the area, forcing me to check myself into a local hospital over night in order to get a diagnoses by a psychiatrist and access to (incredibly expensive!) medication, I don't know if I would have survived the acute stage of this illness.  In addition to that, my family totally supported me financially so that I had a home and money to pay my monthly bills and taxes, which is something that most people don't get from their families to the point where mentally ill family members become homeless (and often dually addicted to boot) and without access to the medications that some of them really need.

The healthcare system that we have right now is not adequate and so health care reform is a necessity.  Let's see how successful this new system is in the early years from 2014 onward.  If it is not successful, it might be the right's turn to offer an alternative.  In any case, something must be done and will be done thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling.

Lack Of Mental Health Services In Rural America

Approximately 70% of New York State is rural and I live in one of the poorest rural counties of the state.  I grew up in New York City where there is a plethora of services and resources for people who suffer from mental illnesses.  Unfortunately I left the big city and moved far out into the country to another world.  It was here in the country that I encountered the legacy of child abuse, addiction, domestic violence, homophobia and racism.  I don't mean to imply that these things don't exist in big cities, they certainly do, but in the country the sense of isolation and shame along with the extreme lack of resources create a much deeper and more resistant problem.  The key culprit is poverty and a lack of community organization.  Money provides incentives to overcome problems.  Without the money people have to rely on their own inner resources and in doing that they pull into themselves and away from the help they need.  On top of that the general poverty means lots of low income families, lack of employment opportunities, single parents, a lack of health insurance, a prevalence of alcohol and drug addiction among other things.

Life is hard, but it is harder in the country.  The ethic out here is rugged individualism and self-reliance, especially amongst farming communities.  Unfortunately, self-reliance is not all that is needed when it comes to mental health.  What is needed is community support and action.  In my county there is not one mental health support group for people with serious mental illness and there are only a small handful of psychiatrists and psychotherapists to cover several counties.  Most people don't have health insurance and rely on social services and the emergency room to help them get through crisis situations.    Even if one does have health insurance and the ability to pay for services, there are very few options.
I'm in the minority in that I have health insurance, though that insurance does not cover the cost of therapy.  My health insurance covers most of the cost of my visits to my psychiatrist every three months and the cost of my medications, but that's it, the bare minimum.  Because I am not eligible for social services I have no community support.

One in four adults in the US, over 57 million people, will have mental health problems in any given year.  One in seventeen will have major psychotic disorders.  A distinguishing feature of mental illness is a pervasive feeling of isolation from others.  This sense of isolation is multiplied in rural areas where there are fewer people living at greater distances from each other.  Without solid community support people get pulled again and again into cycles of mental illness, abuse and addiction.  The burden gets shifted onto the families themselves who are ill equipped to handle these problems alone.  There is some community support for addicts and their families mostly due to 12 step support groups, but only for those who are motivated to go to them.  The stigma of mental illness and addiction is greater in the country because small town life means people are into each others business.  The foundation of many support groups is anonymity, but in small towns there is no guarantee that you won't run into someone you know and this prevents many people from getting help.

The problem remains, mental illness is rampant in poor, rural communities.  Those who are court ordered to go to the minimal support groups and rehabs available, sometimes in place of going to prison, at least have some chance, but many people fall through the cracks in the system.  Social services are overburdened and community action virtually nonexistent.  What's needed are thriving community centers where various kinds of support groups can meet and take on some of the burden of caring for those who need help.  What's needed are community organizers.  Some mentally ill and/or addicted individuals have the strength to start support groups, but most do not.  Because of this there is a need for people who are not afflicted but are dedicated to helping those less fortunate to come forward and set up groups.  The few psychiatrists and therapists that are available are flooded with clients and have no time or energy to set up groups.  Those that remain who aren't suffering from mental illness are busy trying to make a living in an area where there is a lot of competition for even minimum wage jobs.

I think it's fair to say that there aren't many community organizers interested in moving to very poor, rural areas that have very few resources.  Truth is you probably can't make a living at it here, let alone raise a family of your own.  There's just not enough incentive.  Occasionally there is a charismatic, civic minded person willing to make a difference in the community, but even those people eventually burn out when others don't join in to take on some of the responsibility.  Maybe there could be people hired to act as a community organizers that temporarily come into a community and live there for a month or two while training volunteers to facilitate support groups.  I tend to harp of the importance of support groups because I don't have one, but I have seen from going to some 12 step groups that they are effective and low cost.  I do think that bringing small groups of people together can create not only an atmosphere of support, but some motivational magic to combat and lessen the grip of mental illnesses.

People with serious mental illness sometimes act out, but more often than not they pull into themselves, isolate themselves because they don't quite fit into society.  Support groups organized by confident, healthy individuals who have the training to pass on the rules and structure necessary to sustain a group could change the lives of many by teaching those with mental illness how to take better care of themselves and each other.  The people who commit to a support group find through their commitment that they can gradually take on more responsibility within the group.  Before that can happen there must be a catalyst to get the ball rolling.  When I was in early recovery I found one of the greatest obstacles to my happiness was a strong lack of motivation.  I needed someone else to appreciate me and encourage me to reach outside of myself.  I didn't find that in my community, except with my therapist. My main support all these years has been online on support forums and in this blog community.  That has helped a great deal, but it can't take the place of belonging to a local community, taking on more responsibility and directly helping those in need.

I've wanted to be that charismatic community organizer, but the pull to withdraw and avoid responsibility is part of my illness.  Like so many people in my community, I need the extra help to get things started.  But if we had that extra help in our rural communities, there's no telling how far we could go with it.

Memory Is Not Truth

"You never have a truly complete memory of an experience because it would take as long as the experience itself.  Most of our memories are like still photos or a series of photos highlighting something that was important or stood out about an experience.  They are whittled-down, highly edited versions of what happened.  Like an amateur movie they are jumbled and patched together, often without even a thread to the story line."   Nirmala   "Nothing Personal"  p. 3

There are some truthful things in our memories, but memory is not the truth.  At best it is a close approximation and at worst it is a fabrication.  Despite this we organize our lives based on short and long term memories.  Some of this is very necessary as in remembering where you put your keys and wallet or remembering to turn off the stove.  We need our memories in order to function, but how much faith do we put in memories?  After rereading the beginning of Nirmala's "Nothing Personal" I've been trying to look at my memories, but it is hard.  I find that many of my memories are slight impressions instead of being a clear and detailed image or scene.  Perhaps that why much of human culture attaches so strongly to photographs and videos -- they jog the memory and make it more vivid, more real.  But though they are artifacts that reflect a past reality in the present, they are not in themselves present reality and are not real.  They are fixed echoes.

We take our use of memory for granted and we assume that our memories are true.  In the course of a day, we make so many assumptions.  Memories and assumptions are like the glue that hold our fragile sense of self together.  Buddhists assert that this sense of self that we hold onto so tightly is an illusion.  And if the sense of self is an illusion, then much of memory is an illusion, too, which is why spiritual teachers regularly compare life to a dream.  I don't really want to believe that and yet for most of the day I am caught up in thoughts which necessarily include memories.  During those times I am not grounded and connected to the visceral present moment.  I exist in space and time and yet I'm not quite here now.  I'm very attached to my thoughts and feelings.  I even think that I'm doing some good for myself in thinking things through and sometimes I am, but I'm also living in ignorance and denial mainly because I'm not awake enough to be aware.

Nirmala writes about how thoughts are not real.  Because we over rely on our thoughts in the same way as we over rely on our sense of sight as opposed to the other senses, we miss out on training ourselves to be aware.  We follow our habitual patterns; we react to life instead of respond to it.  It's not fun for me to see how on automatic pilot I am.  And I'm confused.  I've convinced myself that I need my thoughts and that the key to happiness is inside of them.  If thoughts and memories are not real then the happiness I am weaving out of them is not real either.  And the self that I worry over is also insubstantial.  And yet this is not an existential conflict because the moments I have without thoughts are not barren and empty, but full and rich.  My awareness is much greater than my narrow thoughts.  When there is a gap, some silence in my mind, I am still flooded with sensory input and in this way still connected intimately to my surroundings.  Much of this input I ignore unless I'm being mindful.  Mindfulness is particularly effective when I am doing a simple physical task like washing the dishes or cooking dinner or practicing yoga stretches.  Mindfulness heightens the experience, makes the experience a felt experience instead of the disembodied experience of being lost in thought.

There are times when I really enjoy being lost in thought.  It's like reading an excellent book and stopping every page or so to reflect.  I think there is an illusory sense of safety in it.  I believe I learn important lessons from ruminating.  Getting into writing is similar.  I'm using the thoughts and feelings in my mind to deepen my understanding and to come to a conclusion of one sort or another.  For me, this is important work, but eventually I have to return to the simplicity of the present moment.  That simplicity is the foundation for my life, despite how I often ignore it to attach to thoughts.  What I'm waking up to is that in not taking time to just exist I have become unbalanced, a lopsided version of myself.  I read somewhere that the difference between a delusion and an illusion is that a delusion is one person's misapprehension, whereas an illusion is something that groups of people can come to believe in like watching a movie.  I know about delusions, but what I'm experiencing when I'm lost in thoughts and memories is a common illusion that we are what we think when we're not.

It's not that thoughts and memories are totally useless, no at points they are very necessary, but we over emphasize their importance and rely on them to make important decisions.  I guess it's like this, reading the instructions on how to put something together cannot take the place of actually putting something together.  The real importance and joy comes from the doing more than the thinking about doing.  My father, who is someone who lives inside his thoughts a lot, loves to study maps, but is at a loss at finding landmarks to make his way around an unfamiliar place.  As long as he has the map, he can manage, but without the map he is a babe in the woods.  Our thoughts are like that map, a virtual reality, but not the thing itself.  That goes for writing as well; it's something that points back to reality through the imagination, but it can't take the place of real time experience.  Fantasies give temporary respite to painful existence, but ultimately they are empty.  It's like eating a bunch of candy instead of having a good meal.

While I'm saying this with some conviction, I am resisting it as well.  I was taught as a very young child that language is a way of expressing thoughts and getting needs met.  I learned language through a great deal of repetition.  I labelled objects and people with words.  I let the word take the place of the thing.  I became enamored of the power of words.  The power lay in my ability to use my imagination and at times my imagination seemed able to move mountains.  I spent many hours lost in dreaming, especially when I couldn't relate to my family members.  Dreaming and playing are essential to learning a language and kids do it a lot of the time.  Of course some of that is healthy and necessary, but it also teaches children to get caught up in their fantasies to the point where they are not engaged in the world itself, are not mindful.  Children (and adults) hold onto memories especially of those wrongs done to them.  In that way memory gets transformed into fact, when it is still just an approximation of the lived experience.

I resist writing that memory is not truth because I use memory as a major building block to decide what is and isn't true.  If my memories are suspect, this illusory construction of my past leaves me open and vulnerable in my present moment.  And yet really all there ever is is the present moment.  That's where reality and truth reside, in the living, not in the imagining.  This is why there's so much emphasis on the importance of meditation because it breaks through over and over the trance of thinking we get hooked into and it places value and importance on the gaps between thoughts.  In those gaps is the heart of mindfulness which can be brought into daily activities once off the meditation cushion or chair.  Instead of imagining what might be true and what might not be true, we can experience truth directly in the gaps and in our daily life's activities.   

For Those Whose Voices Remain

It's a fact that some people have voices in their minds from an early age until they die.  I think I might be one of those people.  I take my medications because they reduce the intensity of the voices.  This gives me room to do some of my own thinking and feeling.  Without this cushion life would be much harder.  It also makes it easier to work with the voices instead of judging them or trying to block them out.  I've noticed that a lot of my peers, who take the medications but still hear voices, try various ways to keep the voices at bay such as, listening to music, watching television and movies, playing video games, doing craft work and art work.  Ultimately none of these things entirely remove the voices, but they do give much needed pleasure and in some cases allow for creative self-expression.  My worry is that too many people are overlooking the benefits of working with the voices and co-existing with them.

My impression of the people I've met online who suffer from schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder is that they mostly view the voices as negative, something to run away from or block out.  That's a natural pattern, run away from pain and grasp on to pleasure, but it is a pattern that causes a lot of suffering.  Studying Buddhism, especially from the Tibetan perspective, has shown me that this pervasive pattern needs to be reversed; people need to move closer to pain in order to understand and accept it as a part of life experience and people need to let go of clinging to pleasant experiences and even offer them up to the benefit of others.  I know a lot about avoidance and running away from pain, but it doesn't work.  Eventually I return to my starting point, back to pain and the voices and to a lack of resolution.

I don't believe that my experience is unique.  I can't be the only one to have noticed that the voices are a mixture of positive and negative even during the most acute stage of the illness.  When things are painful, it is too easy to generalize one's experience and the voices as being entirely negative.  When we do that we place the blame on them and avoid self-responsibility; we breed resentment and we stay stuck and so we run away again and again.  Perhaps we convince ourselves that these voices are the result of having a biochemical glitch in our brains and that our only responsibility is to take the medications to try and correct that glitch.  I think biochemistry is definitely a factor, but it is not the whole picture.  Taking the medications is a good start for many who have chronic psychosis, but there remains much more to be done and experienced and reflected upon.

If you decide to try and work and co-exist with your voices, the first thing you've got to do is to acknowledge that they are real for you, that they exist in your life and that sometimes you have no choice but to interact with them or be influenced by them.  You grant them the dignity and responsibility of existing.  Telling yourself that they are not real and trying to block them out when you can leaves you in a cycle of avoidance and denial.  It doesn't solve the root problem.  After acknowledging that they are real, you can begin to move closer to them so that you can study them.  See and experience both their strengths and their weaknesses.  If you dwell upon their negativity, you distort the truth and lose your balance.  Conversely, if you train yourself to see the positive in them, you begin to move back towards balance.  It's just common sense.

Voices in order to be voices have to have some inherently good traits.  They have mastered language and are intelligent, they are creative because language demands that you be creative in order to express your intent.  There are also several voices coming from different places and perspectives.  This means that they are versatile and can take multiple points of view and so they are expressive.  They are capable of strong emotion, making them more like us than different from us.  And so, at the bare minimum they are intelligent, creative, versatile, expressive and have the ability to feel.  They can also use all these gifts to behave abusively.  They can lie, manipulate, intimidate and go so far as to punish and yet the basis for this bad behavior is still good.  They couldn't lie unless they could identify the truth; they couldn't manipulate unless they first knew how to be creative, versatile and expressive.  The good stuff comes first for them and for us.

I'm not denying, especially during acute psychosis, that the bad stuff is really bad.  There's no doubt about it, it's there and in your face sometimes 24/7, awake or asleep.  Of course I can see why people get into the habit of generalizing their experience with the voices as just bad, but that feeds back into   delusional thinking, because it is just not the whole truth, it's not reality.  What's worse is if you believe the Judeo-Christian idea that we are essentially sinful, you can easily get pulled deeper and deeper into delusional/paranoid thoughts.  I was very fortunate in that I believed in my essential goodness even during the worst parts of my life and when I began studying Buddhism and came across the concept of Buddha Nature in everyone and everything, I felt some of the weight of my unresolved illness lift off of me.  As I learned more about the essential need for compassion for myself and others, I knew I had to extend that compassion to the voices that had hurt me so badly.  I had a lot of resentment to wade through to get to that point, but I kept my spirit open to the possibility that Buddha Nature and the practice of compassion were not just Buddhist concepts, but the basis of what we experience as reality.

So I am presupposing two things, that the voices are real and that the voices are essentially good and not evil.  That makes it sound very clear cut, but it is not.  When you work with the voices, you are working with not only their faults, but your own.  I want to stress that when the voices are behaving abusively, do not follow them.  One of the overriding lessons I've learned from them is that when people (or voices) act out, you must return the focus to yourself and do what you need to do to take care of yourself.  People have a lot of trouble with this because you have to love and care about yourself in order to take care of yourself.  The more ambivalence you feel towards yourself, or worse dislike, the more the voices will step up their attack.  Self-denigration for many Westerners is our Achilles heel.  In our culture there's a lot of emphasis on the power of romantic love to heal everything, but what really heals individuals is the extent of their love for themselves first and foremost.  Once you can establish love and trust within yourself, then you can extend it outward to other people.

I know I was feeling a kind of detached self-hatred after I left my abusive boyfriend and from that platform the voices took over my life and I entered into the world of acute psychosis.  So I wasn't sure if I liked myself and the voices took that weakness of mine and forced me to look at it.  They showed me that I had used fantasy like an addictive drug in order to avoid facing reality.  They showed me this by taking the germ of one of my fantasies and blowing it up into an elaborate delusion, a delusion that I blindly followed for a time.  Delusions hinge on the individual having an ego imbalance.  That is, delusional people see themselves as either more important than they actually are, sometimes vastly more important (delusions of grandeur) or drastically less important or inherently bad.  The voices took my tendency to either over or undervalue myself and let that fuel the delusion keeping it alive and me trapped inside of it.

People who love themselves have a realistic view of themselves; they accept who they are and their place in life.  They are protected by this from getting pulled into serious mental illness.  But people with low self esteems are very vulnerable to praise and/or criticism.  If you base your worth on something or someone outside of yourself, you are then subject to all kinds of fluctuations which leads to a lack of personal integrity and emotional/mental instability.  For several years I had an on again off again fantasy about a rock star.  I invested him with a lot of status.  I thought he was very talented and hard working and attractive.  In my mind then he was someone who had become successful.  After I fell into the delusion that he was following me and was attracted to me, I began to look at myself critically.  I wanted to be with the rock star, but I didn't feel worthy enough.  I swung from overestimating my power of attraction to underestimating my essential worth as a human being.  The voices took that polarity in me and blew it up hugely.  They shaped me into a version of Jesus and once that took hold, they took that away and told me I was the Anti-Christ.  Then they made a compromise; I became a composite of myself following Jesus and the rock star as an Anti-Christ like serial killer.  The rock star was not really me, but he existed in my mental space and I couldn't get away from him.

Trying to be like Jesus, I had to love the serial killer I believed was a part of my mind.  In a sense, it was as if Jesus was helping Lucifer to embrace recovery from his self hating and other hating addictions.  In trying to love someone who I was also deeply afraid of, I had to face my fears over and over again.  Without the benefit of medication, this led to repeated breakdowns.  Perhaps I had to go through this as a kind of catharsis for my failed relationship with an abusive addict.  I didn't heal the serial killer, but I did prove to myself that I had a good and trusting heart.  I had come to believe in the value of loving this enemy who really wasn't an enemy, but a lost, sick soul, the part of myself that I had been rejecting.  When I finally asked the voices after my final breakdown if I could let go of the rock star, they said it was about time.  That's when I committed to taking the medications.  That's when I started loving myself the right way.

If I learned this major lesson, why do I still have voices?  Why do I dip into delusional thoughts and paranoia sometimes?  And why does the thought of this famous man being a secret serial killer still haunt me?  I think because I haven't learned the lesson that I can't be a savior to another person.  In the beginning I tried to be that for my boyfriend and then I tried to be that for my primary delusion.  The only person I can save is myself.  Yes, I can be supportive but I cannot take on the responsibility for living someone else's life.  I still have the dregs of romance addiction in me, which is what got me into trouble in the first place.  Addiction is not love.  And in order to have a loving relationship with someone else, you have to love yourself and respect your loved ones boundaries.  People have to be free to make their own discoveries and their own mistakes.

When you become willing to love yourself and take care of yourself, you enter into recovery.  Part of loving myself has been learning to love and appreciate the voices.  They challenge and guide me while I continue to learn old and new lessons.  If you can change you attitude of them from negative to positive, you can change your whole world.  For those of you who have voices I'm here to encourage you to try.