The Practice Of Writing

I began writing in a journal when I was 13 in 8th grade.  What motivated me to buy a spiral notebook and begin to write?  I was going to a public junior high school in Brooklyn, a school that harbored small gangs of young preteen and teen kids who bullied other less tough kids.  That was the background of my stay at the school, but in the foreground were my immediate peers, the boys and girls in my class, many of whom I had grown up with.  In 7th grade I had been popular with a small group of boys and with my circle of friends, but that popularity fizzled out when I ceased to pursue a particular boy that I liked, one who seemed to like me for a time.  In 8th grade my focus returned to my girl friends.  

There were about seven of us and we were a nicely mixed group: Jewish, Catholic, Agnostic/Protestant, Afro American, Chinese American, Italian American, Puerto Rican and Irish American.  A few of us were relatively poor, some middle class and others upper middle class.  And we were all bright, going to the top "Advanced Enrichment" classes at school.  I was very happy to have these particular friends; I loved our diversity, our intelligence and our humor.  But we were not happy.  The more desirable boys were busy with school studies and sports, mostly focusing on basketball and we turned our attentions more and more on each other.  We functioned as a group but we also paired up and sometimes we talked about each other behind each other's backs.  Most of our complaints were petty, but still they struck a chord.  

I think I turned to a journal because I wanted to see my life as something important enough to write about.  Unfortunately, I was an immature 13 and instead of being thoughtful, I was critical of different friends and superficial and still thinking of "the boys" with frustration.  My writing skill was minimal and yet I took pleasure in writing some of my thoughts and reactions down in one place.  Soon, I was bringing my journal to school.  My friends became curious about it and started asking if they could read it.  I began letting some of my friends read it and not others, which caused tensions.  The chain reaction was that most of my friends began writing in journals too, doing the same thing.  Everyone began getting pissed at everyone else.  So I asked my friends to come over to my house and do what I thought would be a consciousness raising group (it was 1975-6).  You know, air our complaints, but also resolve them and become better friends.  All but one of the group condemned me and rightfully so, though I was too self-centered to see it at the time.  I was very hurt by their reaction, but I couldn't really argue because their complaints made sense. 

But something had happened to me between beginning my journal and sitting through that group meeting; I didn't stop writing in my journal.  If anything I turned more decidedly towards it.  It was becoming a part of my solace.  The next year I was off to a new school and the decision to continue writing stuck with me all through high school and beyond.  This had to do in part with my new isolation.  In grade school and junior high I had this circle of friends, but in high school I did not.  For a lot of that time I was alone, which would become more of a pattern with me into my adulthood.  So in high school I turned into a writer, mostly in my journal, but a  few short stories too.  From then till when I moved away from New York City I felt very close to myself when I wrote.  My journal writing gave my life some much needed meaning.  I cultivated my introspection and I turned into an introvert.  

I know the writing process was therapeutic for me.  I needed to be heard most especially by myself.  My mother or my two friends or later my boyfriend could dismiss my ideas, but I wouldn't.  I needed to witness myself.  And I did.  This was especially true during high school when much of life was in high relief and dramatic.  There were things that I could only express in my journal and not to a friend.  There was almost a surrealistic quality to my life and to my writing.  But I'll never know for sure because I threw away almost all my journals (save one small one) after I left the City.  Threw them away after a domestic violence episode and in a fit of self-hatred.  So passionate and so foolish!  

Throwing those journals away created a break in continuity in my life.  There was the time before I threw away my journals, before I moved so far away, before I got involved with a mentally ill and addicted boy/man and there was all the rest of my life after that.  I still wrote in a journal, often secretly, but the magic had gone out of it.  Instead the magic got redirected into songmaking, but when I became psychotically ill even that means of expression was shut down.  So again, I returned to journal writing.  I wrote out my insanity until I survived the breaking point and then wrote some more.  Little pieces of magic are returning, many here in this blog.  It's been almost 22 years since I threw away the journals of my youth and young adulthood and now I'm forming a new continuity for the second half of my life.  It's not as bright and youthful as it was then, but just as vital.  

I'm writing about writing because I haven't been doing a lot of it this past month and I miss it.  Sam let me read one of her journals from 8 years ago.  I was surprised and pleased that she trusted me with something so personal.  She's also left her acoustic guitar and electric bass over here at my house, another sign of trust.  Reading her journal made me re-read a few of my more recent journals.  Our styles are different, but we are both bright, articulate and creative.  The difference between us is that she is a more disciplined writer.  She writes daily.  There's no doubt in my mind that Sam is a bona fide writer.  I am a writer too, even with my lapses.  This I need to remind myself.  I have a history of writing behind me.  

Writing is important and not just for me, but for you.  If you aren't writing already either in a journal or in an online blog, consider it.  We need to tell our stories to ourselves first and then to others. Email exchanges and letters are great, too.  It's interesting, I have both a written journal and an audio journal and the two are quite different, though both are valuable.  The written journal requires more of me and yet it's worth the extra effort.  Either way, written or verbal, it takes courage to be honest enough to face yourself and tell it like it is.  

Portrait of "Sam"

Magical Thinking

Magical thinking can be found in most religions; it can also be found in psychotic disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).  There are various definitions of what magical thinking means, but it can swing from "normal" even positive to abnormal and possibly harmful.  I suffer from a mild case of OCD and I've had some of it since I was a young woman; it might have begun when I started to hear voices.  What I do obsessively/compulsively are minor things -- tearing toilet  tissue on the perforated line and not raggedly ripping it, when I microwave something often I make the time add up to the number 7 which I see as a lucky number, making sure my paper money is not in the reversed position in my wallet, making sure the tag on my comforter is down by my feet instead of up by my head, reciting a prayer not to hurt myself or any living thing when I drive my car.  That's all I can think of right now, but you can see that none of my OCD symptoms really incapacitate me, but I do notice them and they do disturb me.  Well, reciting the prayer mostly releases some of my anxiety and gives me the confidence to drive, but there are times when I think that I am not hitting any animals mainly because I am sending out a thoughtful prayer not to.  I do believe some of that, that turning your will towards lovingkindness, not just in your actions but in your deepest thoughts and feelings, can be both self and other protective.  Good will engenders good will in others and allows serendipity to occur.  

Pema Chodron has talked and written a great deal about a Buddhist meditation practice called tonglen.   The meditation goes through four stages.  First you imagine a wide, open space such as the sky or the sea, then you imagine breathing in the dark, warm, heavy, negative and breathing out the light, cool, refreshing and healing.  In the third stage you think of either your own pain or the pain of someone you care about; you breath that in as completely as possible and breath out anything you can imagine to release the pain into healing.  Pema Chodron has called this "changing the atmosphere" from dark to light, from painfully obstructed to liberated.  In the final stage you universalize it by realizing that other people suffer just like this and then wishing for all beings to free of this suffering.  To be free of suffering is to be in Nirvana or heaven.  I think that this is training in magical thinking/feeling because in essence the practice is about believing in the power of meditation to change the quality of life for yourself and then using that to extend the benefits out towards other people.  It's a magical thought that you as an individual can transform the negative into the positive merely through breathing and training your mind to harness the imagination.  But just because it is magical thinking should it be discounted the way we discount a delusion or can we remain openminded?  

Many religious people believe in praying, same for some non religious people who consider themselves spiritual nonetheless.  To an atheist, praying is magical thinking and for them praying is a waste of time and certainly has no effect on other people or situations.  Praying is just meant to comfort oneself during stressful times.  I believe there's truth in that, but I don't think that that's all there is to it.  So far, there is no good scientific test for the benefits of prayer, but there are more and more studies proving the benefits of meditation.  The latest Shambhala Sun, a Buddhist magazine, dedicates a whole issue to it.  On page 47 there's a chart that says on top, "Scientific Minds Want to Know".  The chart is divided into "The Question", "The Study" and "The Results".  Here are the questions:  "Is meditation effective for pain control?", "Can long-term meditation practice reduce brain atrophy and help prevent dementia?",  "Can Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) help prevent relapses of depression?",  "Does mindfulness benefit cancer patients?", "How does yoga compare with conventional treatment of lower back pain?", ""Does meditation help women cope with menopausal symptoms?" and "Does meditation affect brain structure?"  The results, to varying degrees, confirm that meditation/mindfulness/yoga are beneficial to human health, even brain structure is changed with an increase of "gray-matter density in the hippocampus, important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection."  They also found a decrease of "gray-matter density in the amygdala, which plays a role in anxiety and stress."  The decrease meant a reduction in stress levels.  

Prayer and meditation are related, but not the same.  Prayer involves magical thinking, either a belief in a higher power or spirit world.  You formulate a prayer and send it out.  Out into what?  Some primordial spiritual space where mere thoughts can travel across space and time and reach some unknown destination where it is heard and possibly acted upon.  The act of praying is not mysterious, but where our thoughts go when we pray is mysterious.  Western philosophy asserts that we are individuals, separate and solid, and that there is no primordial spiritual space where we can interact with either higher powers or each other.  Buddhists say that the idea that we are separate and solid is an illusion, a trick of our ego orientation.  Meditation is a method for them to uncover this trick in order to begin to free themselves from their dependence on their egos.  Our egos work through thoughts, speech and actions especially when we assert that this monolithic "I" is the center of the universe, that we are a big deal and that is also magical thinking.  Mindfulness meditation is applied to ego inflamed thoughts, speech and actions as a balm.  Through practice ego becomes more subdued, while awareness of the present moment increases.  I only think of mindfulness meditation as magical in that valuing the present moment in doing or being mode does make for heightened awareness and clear seeing.  What makes mindfulness practice accessible to nearly everyone is that it does not rely on the magical thinking of religions.  You don't have to believe in anything but the value of your present moment. 

In a meandering way, my point is that magical thinking can be either useful or harmful depending on how it's used.  Sending out a prayer for good health to a friend who is sick can be useful even if it has no effect on one's friend's health.  It can relieve stress and deepen compassion; it is not hurtful to yourself or anyone else.  And ultimately, we don't know what prayer might or might not do.  The point is, our intentions are good.  We desire to help and heal if only in our thoughts.  But the magical thinking involved in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can lock you into excessive behaviors that are harmful to yourself and possibly towards others.  And maybe you could even say that schizophrenia is an excessive form of OCD.  Delusions start out obsessive and then as they are accepted become compulsive.  To a paranoid person often their first thoughts are that someone is trying to persecute them, even when nothing is happening and no one is around.  I know the medications helped me to break out of my delusions and paranoia, but I had also gotten so low that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I knew my main priority had to be taking care of myself on very basic levels:  taking the medications, getting enough sleep, talking to my therapist, staying creative, writing in my journal etc...  I believed that doing these basic things would help me stay on the right, sane track.  For me it's not the OCD that really bothers me, but my dips into depression and anxiety, though OCD certainly has to do with anxiety, but it's attached to a specific action rather than being a generalized feeling of threat that can last for hours.  

One thing I'm pretty sure of and that is that most mental illnesses are related to each other.  People get misdiagnosed all the time because the doctors aren't quite sure.  Schizophrenia, Schizo-Affective Disorder, BiPolar Disorder, Major Depression are all in the same genetic soup.  Some of us started out with some magical thinking that de-evolved into delusional thinking/feeling.  Magic is borderline, but delusions are over the line and into insanity.  Magic can charm and delight and surprise, delusions can do some of that too, but the outcome is mostly negative.  But magic still relies on unseen forces and this belief in the unseen can pull you from a tentative balance into delusional distortions...or it can raise you up to a greater faith in the goodness of a higher power which can restore your sense of balance.  The mind at its best is flexible and allows room for the unknown; the mind at its worst is inflexible and shuts out fertile possibilities.  When I was delusional, I thought I knew The Truth and now that I'm in recovery I know I don't know The Truth, only little facets of it.  But I still believe in Magic.  The sanest amongst us must admit that appearances can be deceptive and the truth elusive.  We live with not knowing all the time, we live with life in flux all the time.  Magical thinking can help us come to terms with some of that.  

The Value Of Talking Aloud

Still working with some depression.  I say "working with" instead of "struggling with" on purpose.  Struggling just worsens the depression.  When I struggle I think negatively, but when I work on a problem, I get into a meditative state.  And so the last few days I've been drawing and the drawing takes my mind off negativity and onto the problem at hand.  I've been using the Pitt markers that I bought this past Fall.  I draw a square or a rectangle to frame my work.  Then I face the empty space inside the frame.  I use one marker that is not a Pitt marker; it's two sided, one side chiseled to make thick and thinner lines and one side with more of a medium sized pointed tip.  Today I did a small sketch before I started the more committed work, so that I could get a sense of the design and structure of the work to come.  It also takes some of the pressure off facing the empty space inside the main frame.  It allows you to visually ruminate and try different approaches out to see which one might be a successful skeleton, the basis on which to add new and colorful elements.

So I've been drawing because I don't want to give up on on art, just as I don't want to give up on writing or making up songs.  Though I turn 50 this year, that doesn't mean that I have to give up on continuing to try to do artistic work each day.  I have heard of many cases of people turning into artists as they get older.  Maybe I'll be one of those people.  I was talking to Sam about how I see myself as artistic and multi-talented, but not as an artist because I get serious for several months and then switch to some other creative endeavor.  She said I was a "binge artist".  I thought that was funny and true, too.  I could also be called a "binge writer" and a "binge songwriter".  And they're all different languages though related.  But I don't like thinking of artistic creativity as an addiction because it really isn't.  If anything, self expression is a treatment for mental illness.

Last night I was watching a DVD my brother made up for me in 2008 called "Out of the Shadows", a documentary on Depression aired on PBS about that time.  At one point in the film certain experts were saying that medication combined with talk therapy was 70% to 80% effective in treating depression in many people.  They also said that there have been studies proving that talking affects the brain and brain chemistry for the better by reducing stress.  I know this for a fact because I've been talking into my audio journal since the end of 2006 around the time I began this blog and it does reduce anxiety, but you've got to be very honest with yourself and you've got to treat yourself lovingly.  It's also good practice for talking/writing to others with honesty.  Most human beings respond positively to upfront, honest individuals because they have a certain balance between presenting their strengths and their weaknesses.  They are interested in peaceful communication and not in preserving a false image of themselves.

The first thing an addict has to do in order to survive is to get honest.  That's also true for those of us who have fallen into severe mental illness.  When I became delusional and paranoid in the Spring of 1998 I was not being honest with myself.  I took reality for granted and didn't stop to reality check.  I made huge assumptions.  Worse, I was not appreciating the reality I was living in.  I wanted to be somewhere else, in another life.  I had delusions of grandeur.  The reality is that most people work to find success, but I was still working with the "lucky break" attitude.  I was being a gambler.  I was relying on magical thinking.  Very dangerous to an already isolated person with self-esteem issues and a past history of being abused.  I sank into delusions and paranoia as if I were sinking into quicksand with seemingly no branch to reach for to help pull me out of the pit.  But all the while I was seeing myself as a victim too and a kind of anti-heroine, an underdog figure.  I knew "The Truth" and some group was trying to suppress the truth, but I firmly believed that "The Truth" would prevail and I would be vindicated and consequently elevated to some higher status.  But the core of "The Truth" was the main delusion and I held onto it as if it could save my life, when it only pulled me down deeper.

I talked a lot out loud to myself and the voices during my three and a half unmedicated years of acute psychosis.  I really had to.  I was deluded and paranoid and I was in pain.  Talking aloud gave me back some control and released anxiety.  I also wrote in a journal, which again gave me a voice to vent my frustrations.  I thought I was being very honest when I talked or wrote, but the only real reality check I had was when I went to therapy each week.  I was too sick to give myself a reality check; I needed someone outside of myself to point out the flaws and inconsistencies of my basic delusory beliefs.  But first I needed to be in a safe position where I could confidently assert my delusion.  My therapist was not always challenging my beliefs.  She let me have my say and I needed some of that.  She gave me some room to move about.  And I imagine that a mental health support group could also provide that safe place to reveal one's illness to others and to listen to useful feedback through personal stories.  I didn't and don't have that yet and so I had to learn about being honest with another person mainly through my therapy sessions.  I think a support group could have helped me to come to recovery more quickly than I did without it.

It's ironic, but what I didn't like about the voices was that they could be manipulative, indirect and deceitful.  I thought that I was honest and upfront.  I wanted someone to literally knock on my front door in order to tell me the plain truth about what was going on, someone who knew these strange voices and had already been through their own trials and tribulations.  I searched and searched and waited and waited and no one came to enlighten me.  I remained in isolation, in delusion and paranoia.  In the interim, I had access to the internet and this helped to lessen some of the isolation though I also used the internet to try and confirm my delusions.  I wasn't yet taking responsibility for the fact that I was ill and needed help.  I wasn't awake enough to see that I was still lying to myself and still addicted to my delusions.  But during my last breakdown a little over ten years ago, I turned to the medications out of desperation and I followed the 12 step Al-Anon support literature to guide me back to partial balance.  I treated myself like the very sick woman that I was, with gentleness, compassion and tolerance for my slow progress out of acute psychosis.

So talking either from a delusional perspective or a "real" perspective is very important.  Talk to yourself, talk to a therapist, talk to your support group, talk to family members, talk to friends.  Don't be the strong, silent type.  Express yourself.  You can't move from a delusional world into the real world unless you do.

Marker Abstractions

Fight or Flight Versus Mindfulness

Most of the people I know are affected by depression on some level. This past week I've been struggling with it too.  For some people it is a chronic low grade depression called Dysthymia, for others it is a cycling between mania and depression also called Bipolar Disorder.  There are many types of depression to fit many types of people and situations.  Unlike my schizophrenia, my depression is not chronic; instead, it comes and goes.  This Sunday I was depressed, Monday I wasn't, but Tuesday I was again.  When I get depressed I sleep during the day and into the evening and don't get anything accomplished.  And when I am awake and depressed I feel guilt over not wanting to get anything accomplished.  It's a negative cycle between sleep and aversion to activity.

I haven't been practicing Buddhism lately and I think that contributes to my dip into depressions.  Buddhism is about being awake in the present moment in either a non doing state or in some activity, especially basic activities like cooking, cleaning, bathing.  When I'm depressed, I'm not so much awake as caught in a negative dreaming state and in that state I label myself as bad and show to myself the ways that I am bad or at least lacking in the good stuff.  It's a self centered state.  I then review the past, noting my mistakes or worry about the future, but I avoid being in the present; I avoid cultivating a non judgmental state to be in.  Buddhism is about the nonjudgmental cultivation of the present moment.

I've wondered many times, why do I run from the present moment?  It's as if it is hardwired into me to run away and maybe it is.  Our instincts are to fight or flee when danger arises.  That's the way it was for us when we were more primitive animals and it is still true.  All of us can be on extra alert when we smell smoke in our houses or hear an unusual sound outside at night or when we drive or take a walk.  The potential for accident or violence can seem close at hand.  In many places in the world torn by war, starvation, disease or natural catastrophe, living with threats is common place.  I'm blessed to live in a peaceful, relatively safe place, but I act as if I need to worry and run.  Apart from sleeping to rest the body and spirit, sleeping is another form of running away.

Meditation is about redirecting our instinctual response to imagined threat; it's about a retraining of ourselves to keep letting go the worrisome thoughts or desire filled thoughts in a non judgmental manner.  Being non judgmental is the key point.  It's what allows you to let go.  And once you give yourself permission to be that way, it is such a relief.  Remaining in that non judgmental state is spiritual practice.  It doesn't usually come easily and that's why it's called practice.  Letting go is not rejecting.  Letting go in its earliest stage is sitting with and accepting first.  You won't be able to let go unless you sit and accept first.  So meditation is not about eliminating thoughts.  Meditation is not about war, violence, territory, conflict or subduing.  Meditation is about peace, but that doesn't mean that it is peaceful.  A roomful of people meditating can look very peaceful, but what is going on in each individual's mind and spirit can be both active and complex.

To be in a peaceful state is wonderful, but that is not the real point of meditation.  The point is to accept what is, whatever that happens to be, without reacting in the typical, habitual pattern.  When I was very psychotic the voices instructed me to sit with the question, instead of jumping to find an answer.  Just sit with your discomfort.  The habitual response is to run from discomfort.  Addiction is about running from discomfort.  Using the drug or doing the activity masks the discomfort temporarily, but it always comes back and the negative cycle continues just the way the negative cycle of depression continues.  Every time you engage in addiction or a negative thought pattern, you reinforce the behavior and thoughts, making it stronger, harder to resist.  Meditation is a gentle way of saying NO to addiction and negativity, to this deep pattern we've been taught and have taught ourselves.

Artists and other very creative individuals know about meditation intimately, though many don't call it that.  Artists sit with the present moment and make something while they sit.  They are in love with the moment.  They suspend self-hatred and worry because if they don't it will rob them of their ability to create.  They get down to the business at hand--the words, the paper, the colors, the sounds, the shapes, the hidden and obvious meanings.  Being and doing melt into each other.  Meditation as non doing is very important.  It's important to stop for artists and for all of us, to regroup, to absorb, to intuit.  But when we go, meditation is also important.  It is doing meditation or mindfulness.  Mindfulness means putting your heart into your practice, be it sitting practice or doing practice.  When you sit, you sit and when you act, you act.  You need some discipline and dedication in order to be mindful.

When it comes to being honest with myself, I have some discipline and dedication.  I am mindful of the words that come out of me.  I don't write my blog entries casually and quickly.  I go slowly and it can take hours.  Generally, I'm not depressed when I write my blog entries.  I'm too busy paying attention to what I want to write.  It's that way when I draw or paint too.  Or lately, when I cook.  Or when I spend time with Sam, Rob or Richard.  Songwriting and singing are more problematical because I have to face my limitations in my ability to sing and play.  Sometimes I play and/or sing badly and I get discouraged and give up.  I've found that when I push past my discouragement and commit to the song I'm singing and experiment that I not only enjoy myself more, but I sound better.  It's common sense that insecurity leads to poor performance and confidence often to good or better performance.  And practice leads to mastery over time.

When I get hung up on my insecurity and my lack of mastery, I get depressed.  I've wanted to be an artist since I was young, but artists are artists because they practice their art.  Writers write, painters paint, musicians play, dancers dance, etcetera.  I am multi-talented, but not committed to one practice on a daily basis.  I keep switching activities, so I master none of them.  I am artistic, but not an artist.  I deeply value my creativity, it might have saved my life.  I strongly urge everyone to stay in touch with their creativity on a daily basis, especially when dealing with mental illness.  Generally, I do something creative every day.  I would say that I am in touch with the artist within me.  That's a good place to begin.  I believe if I were to cultivate the discipline and dedication to mindfulness, I would develop the confidence and mastery that I yearn for.  I would re-train myself away from the negative attitudes of depression and towards the positive and accepting attitudes of mindfulness.  Art is a good tool for practicing mindfulness, but the real gem is mindfulness itself.  Mindfulness is a way of being in harmony with self and others.  If everyone practiced mindfulness I truly believe there would be no war and not much depression.  Actions would not be done reactively and mindlessly, but slowly and consciously with discipline and care and love.

A Quick Portrait

Amy's Girls

The Value Of Reaching Out

I have been telling myself to write a blog for a couple of weeks now, but I just haven't felt like writing much, though I'm still talking into my tape recorder daily.  Anyone who reads this blog knows that I do this, make an enthusiastic start in one creative direction and then go in another direction.  Often I return to what I left off, but that can take weeks, months, even years.  When I do pick something creative up again, I'm in a stronger position most of the time, as if the inactive time was laying the foundation for another active time.  The learning process is always going on because changes, subtle and not so subtle, continue from birth to death.

Changes.  The change of the moment for me is a change of taking on more personal responsibility with the people in my life.  Sam had to give up her truck because she couldn't afford to fix it, so I am continuing to share my car with her, which means I see her once or twice a week.  Richard has been feeling ill and so I've asked him to come over to my house on Saturdays to have a home cooked meal and some Sangria with me.  My mother has been feeling uncomfortably dizzy of late and she experienced a sharp pain in her side one day a couple of weeks ago, so I've set up a day and a time each week to give her a call, something I was not doing.  My brother I see once a week, sometimes to go out to lunch, sometimes to shop for food and supplies.  My old friend Rita and I keep in touch by phone and email and my other old friend Amy (who I haven't written about yet) I write to (most of the time) on Friday evenings.

I continue to find that I must have time alone, but as long as I do, then I think I am up for cultivating relationships with the people I care about in this world.  I find that increasing some of my face to face contact with people, especially during the holidays, has meant that I have spent less time on the computer interacting with my online friends (especially Karen and Jen who I can count on to leave wonderful comments on my blog).  I think this is okay for now because I need to get used to being with others in person.  I've spent so much time online over the last 10 years, but not much time with offline friends because I didn't really have any other than my brother and sometimes Richard.

Ten years ago I had my last nervous breakdown; I mark my decision after that to commit to taking the anti-psychotic medications the beginning of my road to recovery.  A decade of recovery, a decade of being on rather high doses of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications, a decade of being obese, a decade of creative pursuits in art, music and writing.  Recovery is a mixed bag, then again, life for most of us is a mixed bag.  Now I have a couple of friends who have either stopped taking their medication or are gradually weaning themselves from them.  They are trying to redefine recovery or at least testing whether they can still be in recovery and not be on the medications.  I am not brave enough to do that.  I am in recovery, but I continue to feel the power of my illness on certain days.  Honestly, it scares me and I don't know if I could remain relatively balanced in the face of it without the help of the medications.  Also, I feel myself opening up to having connections with others.  For me that is a rare and precious thing that I couldn't do if I were mentally unbalanced and self-protective (i.e. withdrawn).

I've written about my self-imposed isolation and I've written about how I see schizophrenia as a form of ego imbalance.  Pema Chodron has said that we need people in our lives to point out where our blind spots are.  For someone with schizophrenia, blind spots are the heart of delusions and paranoia.  Other people can see more clearly than we can where our prejudices about ourselves and others lie.  Whether they succeed at showing us this depends on our willingness to search for the truth and our willingness to listen closely.  I think I've had the willingness to look for the truth but I haven't given others the opportunity, until recently, to share their versions of the truth, which is, in effect, not giving myself the opportunity to listen closely to others and to learn.

This tendency to strongly withdraw from others is typical for people with schizophrenia.  I used to think it was an instinct at both self-preservation and preservation of the species by not passing on the genetic information for developing schizophrenia through procreation.  The instinct for self-preservation is sparked by the traumatic injury of acute psychosis.  What do wounded animals do?  Withdraw until their wounds heal.  I've been sick with active schizophrenia for close to 14 years.  The first three years were the hardest:  three breakdowns, little use of anti-psychotic medications.  That was a traumatic time for me and though the voices directed me to be around people, I still couldn't confide in any of them what I was experiencing within my mind.  I put on a helpful persona around people and did help them, but at the same time I was in need of help myself and felt I had nowhere to turn except to my therapist.  She did help, but I needed more help than that.  I couldn't find that help in my community (no mental health support groups around here still) and so I decided to go back to art school.  I thought the art community around here would give me some pleasure and purpose, maybe even a sense of belonging.  Then I had my breakdown at the end of the first semester back.

Having a breakdown while at school made me come close to leaving school.  Then I started taking the anti-psychotic medications along with the Prozac I had been taking all along. The delusions and paranoia began to fade, but I fell into a suicidal depression, which lasted for months while my psychiatrist gradually increased my medication.  Again I came close to leaving school.  But I didn't.  I stayed and did some uneven, sometimes mediocre, work and I withdrew from most personal contact.  I did my work, but missed classes and eventually I graduated.  I didn't find the sense of community I was looking for there.  And I still felt wounded.  It's important to note that any traumatic event in a person's life can take years to heal.  Trauma is a deep wound.  There is no way to heal quickly.  This is a hard lesson to learn for the new initiate into severe mental illness.  First of all, you will feel intense personal pain (that's the trauma) and then you will have to fight to survive it (over 10 percent don't survive this acute stage of the illness).  If you do survive the psychotic breaks, you will have to endure a period of severe depression as you wake up to the fact that you've been living inside a delusion, possibly for years.  Even with medication, the depression can linger for years, varying in intensity.

The next place I turned to for a sense of community was the internet.  I spent hours reading and posting on message boards related to schizophrenia and started to make a few friends.  Then I began this blog in November of 2006 and discovered other blogs by mostly women with schizoaffective disorder.  These were a very smart and creative group of people and I felt as if I finally had found a place to belong.  I was inspired to start this blog in the first place because I had found Pamela Wagner's blog (WAGblog) around the time I read her and her sister's book Divided Minds.  I was impressed and charmed by Pam's fresh intelligence and her insight.  Even better than that she allowed me to write to her directly and for a while we had an email exchange going on.  Through Pam's blog I believe I discovered Christina Bruni, another powerfully creative person who has survived the worst of this illness and has gone on to be amazingly informative and useful to the schizophrenia community online. Her website is www.christinabruni.com  Her memoir of her experience with schizophrenia will be published next fall and is called Left Of The Dial which is also the name of her personal blog.

Then there is Jen "Daisybee" and her blog Suicidal No More: Choosing To Live With Schizoaffective Disorder which has become very popular and for good reason.  Again, another very intelligent, creative, dedicated person who despite severe mental and physical illnesses has gone on to work at a part time job and go to school part time to get her Bachelor's Degree in Social Work.  She's also a dedicated feminist and member of The National Organization for Women (NOW) and an advocate for the mentally ill through The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).  I found her blog when she was down in the dumps:  no job, no boyfriend, severe depression, physical ailments and elements of psychosis.  She was in a lot of pain then and negative, but her intelligence and sensitivity shone through her writing and I kept coming back to check on her and give her some encouragement.  It was a pleasure to see her pull through the worst of it.  And now she is having a measure of success.  I believe she will attain some of her goals, to become a social worker for mental health and to write at least one book.

More recently I met another exceptionally bright, talented and dedicated woman who also struggles with schizoaffective disorder.  People who follow this blog know her as Karen Sorensen.  Her blog is Schizophrenia And Art and her artist website is schizoaffectiveartist.com  What strikes me about Karen and all these women is that they are not only highly intelligent and talented, they are very, very honest and very giving of themselves.  Pamela and Karen are both fascinating visual artists, admirably dedicated to their art work.  I think I could go so far as to say that they live to be creative every day.  They are both mastering their art following the old fashioned technique of hard work.  At the same time they are writers.  Their blogs provide a window into the ups and downs of an intelligent artistic life that has been affected by schizophrenia.  I'm drawn to Karen's blog in particular because there's an honesty and intimacy to her writing, that and I love seeing and reading about her process as a visual artist because I, too, have some interest and skill in the visual arts.

There are other people who belong in this group, but I don't have the time or space to include them.  I've chosen these four women because I highly respect all of them and because they all have active blogs and I want to draw attention to them.

I don't think I could have gotten to this point of making a face to face friend with another woman in my community without the help of these women online and the help of my brother, Richard, Rita and Amy over the last two years.  So far I've stepped up to being responsible towards Sam and I'm hoping over time we become close friends who support each other and others in the small community that lives here in Western New York.

Preparing For A Northern Christmas

I've stayed home for Christmas several times before, mainly when I've had psychotic symptoms that I couldn't cope with when I travelled to visit my parents in Florida.  This is the first Christmas I will be staying home with my brother Rob.  He's been depressed lately and I'm pretty sure it has to do with not going to Florida.  He often stays for at least a month, whereas I only stay for a week because I have seven cats to look after.

Last week I got Rob an early Christmas present, a basic cell phone.  I upgraded to the family plan and got a new line for him.  He's been without long distance for a very long time now and this means he's out of touch with our parents.  Rob has always been  much better at staying in touch with them than I have been, but not this past year.  I also wanted him to have a cell phone because from time to time he walks home drunk from the local bars and has fallen several times.  I want him to be able to call for help if he needs it.  But Rob made it clear the other night that he does not like the phone I chose to give him.  He is the kind of person who does serious research before buying equipment whereas I am (I admit it) an impulse buyer.  He was pissed with me not doing the research.  Actually I did try, but there are so many cell phones out there that I got overwhelmed.  I'm hoping that he will get used to the phone and keep it.  He's got only about 10 days to decide, after that we can't return it.  There's also a $35 fee to return it.

Rob's response to my well-intentioned present has brought me down too.  I was tentatively supposed to go out to lunch with him today, but decided against it because neither of us feel good and I don't want to deal with him bitching at me.  He will come over to my house by the end of the week and stay for a few days till after Christmas.  He might cook something for Christmas day.  I've been making toll house cookies and plan to make cocoa banana nut bread, spinach lasagna and vegetable paella.  I got all the ingredients the other day.  I don't cook very often, but when I do cook, it usually comes out well.  It's easier to cook for others instead of just for myself.  That's one of the good things about the holiday so far.  That and not having to travel during the height of holiday season and not having to worry about my cats.  I'd like to try to make it a good time for Rob.  He'll have presents from me and my mother to open and the use of my high speed internet connection and my company.  I think it will be all right.

I talked with Sam tonight and invited her over to my house on Tuesday evening to have a meal and drink some wine and stay the night.  Luckily I have a guest bedroom downstairs which also acts as my computer room, so whoever sleeps in this room gets to also have access to a computer.  So anyway, she said yes.  Tomorrow she's having her truck worked on at the auto shop, but Tuesday night should be free for her.  I asked her to call me and let me know what happened with her truck and whether I should plan on picking her up or not.

I haven't had anyone but my brother stay the night in years, so this is a step forward for me.  I also don't      often get drunk.  I don't really want to get drunk.  I don't know if I want to go that far, so I'm going to make the spinach lasagna for us to eat first and try to drink slowly.  I'm debating about whether to bring the electric guitar and the amp out into the living room.  If I do get a buzz off the wine, I might be willing to sing a song or two and/or let Sam play for me.  I haven't heard her play yet.  All I know is she has practiced much more than I have on how to actually play the instrument.  So it will be a pleasure to hear her play.  I also might play a song on the piano.  It's a classical song by Bartok called Sorrow.  I loved it when I played it as a teenager.  I actually studied the piano all through high school and even got up to Bach's Two Part Inventions.  I was proud of that, but I never took it farther.  What  got me playing again was a film Sam lent me about a musical family.

I haven't asked Richard if he'd be willing to forgo his $500 yet to give to Sam.  I've decided that I'm going to offer her $250 regardless of whether Richard donates the money or not.  I got some extra money as a refund from my health insurance this fall and I still have some of it left, so I can afford to be a little generous.  I still don't know if Sam will accept it, but I hope she will.  I have to see Richard this week, before Christmas, in order to give him some cookies and gift cards for his children, maybe a little extra cash for them too.  I did get to see him and his son Aaron today, but they couldn't stay long.  Aaron, who is 20, seemed very grown up to me this time.  And Richard struck me as being particularly respectful towards his son.  It was good to see them together.

Not much else to say for now.  I'm wishing you all a safe and happy holiday!

Song: "The Insane"

The last few days I've been working on a song I've only just named "The Insane".  This song started out as another song and has gradually morphed into this one.  I wanted to write about psychosis.  That's what many of my unrecorded recent songs are about.  Reading the lyrics straight without the music can be problematical.  Songs are poetic, but not necessarily poetry.  The lyrics' success lies with the musical treatment of it, in the rhythm of the guitar and the voice and with the subtle tonal shifts, especially of the voice.  I can emphasize one word or a group of words all at once.  When I get into it, it can be a visceral experience.  Unfortunately because this song has been changing over time, I'm not ready to record it.  That might be an excuse.  I think I'm afraid to record it in case it doesn't come out, which is dumb.  How can I improve it unless I hear it?  I have a beautiful portable studio machine that I don't use.  I spend a lot of time just tinkering with the basic structure of the songs I write.  I just sit down with my electric guitar and my amplifier and fool around.  I've been noticing that I have been avoiding setting up the portastudio. Is it just that I'm afraid to sound like shit?  It's a dream of mine to make another CD with the songs I've been working on for the last five years, but first I've got to get over myself.  So here are the lyrics of "The Insane".

***********************************
The Insane


The pleasure and pain of the insane,
We walk on the line all of the time
Falling from side to side,
It's not like we haven't tried
To keep the balance in our heads,
To keep the sea from turning red
(Bloody red.)

Sometimes we look real normal,
Sometimes we don't.
Sometimes we're talking to thin air,
Sometimes we won't.

Meditation,
And take your medication.
Find a therapist
Who will make you care a bit
About you.

You've got to care about yourself now,
You've got to care about you.
If you don't care about yourself now
How are you gonna break on through
To the other side,
Where sanity is many miles wide
And you don't have to hide anymore.

**************************************

That's it.  I play around with the rhyme scheme.  As you can see it shifts a lot.  There are internal rhymes or rhymes that occur within one line and then alternating rhymes that occur at the end of a line.

I have a book of Joni Mitchell's lyrics and I was looking at a few songs last night.  She plays a lot with straight rhymes and unusual rhymes.  She's extremely skillful and talented.  Her rhymes are supremely intentional.  My rhymes often are accidental.  So it's long past due that I get more formal in my study of how to make a song.  I almost entirely create my lyrics while playing simple guitar, but I've been thinking lately that I should have a song workbook that I keep with me in the living room apart from my guitar.  I need to see what it's like to write first and then apply what I've written to music.

About the lyrics themselves, I'm hoping that they speak for themselves.  I did take the phrase from The Doors - "break on through to the other side". If you don't understand them, feel free to say so.  And thanks again Karen and my dear old friend for leaving comments.  I'm trying to make it a habit to print up my blog entries with the comments included so that I have a handy copy and can refer to it several times over the course of a week.

Wanting To Help

Richard is a good friend to me and my brother, but I have not been spending nearly any time with him for months now.   I gave him my heated garage space this year so that he can have a space to do his wood work.  Amongst many other things he is a carpenter.  Recently he made several bookcases and remodeled a room at my brother's house so that my brother Rob can use it as his office space.  Now the work on my brother's house is finished and Richard doesn't often stop by and when he does I don't like to disturb his work time.  Making things is how he unwinds after working as a nurse at the VA hospital.  He sees so much illness and dying each week, he needs to pull into himself and be creative without anyone hassling him.  I understand that from dealing with my own illness.  

The last time I saw Richard, after Thanksgiving, he told me he was taking these pills for some condition he has and that they made him feel ill.  He said that he had to take them for the next 6 months.  When I asked what was wrong with him physically, he wouldn't tell me.  I then asked him to please tell me if he ever did wind up being seriously ill because I would want to be there for him.  Later I thought that that was a silly statement; I should be there for him now before he falls into any serious condition.  Something stops me from getting close to him.  He had an affair for over four years until his lover called it quits.  While I know he had an affair because he was very miserable in his marriage, I still feel as if he may have done the wrong thing.  The affair is over now and he is back with his wife.  He stays with his wife because they have a grown daughter with something similar to Down's Syndrome.  She can't speak and  she isn't toilet trained and so she needs a lot of attention.  He loves his daughter so much and can't see not being around her in the mornings and evenings and on the week-ends.  

A year or two ago Richard had an operation done on one of his shoulders.  He asked me one evening if I would be willing to rub his back.  He was in pain and the massage seemed to really help him to feel better. I asked his why his wife wasn't massaging his back.  He had no easy answer to that.  His wife is not a physically demonstrative person...she's not affectionate and this has deeply bothered Richard from very early in their marriage.  This is why he went looking elsewhere for affection and fun.  I don't think the sex was the main focus for him.  The main  focus was companionship.  And this is what I felt with Richard too, a sense of companionship.  And so I started to rub his back from time to time.  

That lasted only several months; I haven't touched him, except for hugging, for over a year and in that  time his mistress left him and he returned to his wife and now he may have some serious illness.  So, once again, I have to get over my tendency to pull away from people.  I have to reach out to Richard. But I have a dilemma:  Each year at Christmas I give him $500 from my father to help out with his son's expenses.  His son is 20 years old, healthy, bright and "normal".  He's in college right now and it is very expensive.  Our contribution is mere pittance, but it must ease some of the financial pressure of the holiday season.  Well, I was thinking that Sam could use that $500 much more than Richard can use it.  Sam doesn't have running water, might not have enough wood for the winter season, her truck is on its last legs and she can't afford internet access.  Richard has all of that and much more.  Of course, he's also in a lot of debt, but for now he's holding his own.  My dilemma is should I ask Richard if he is willing to give this holiday money to Sam?  My feeling as of now is that I should at least give him the opportunity to be generous to Sam.  I would turn it over to Richard and if he decided to keep the money for himself and his family, I would abide by that.  

I'm thinking of inviting him over for a small meal and a little wine.  I rarely do this with Richard, which is a shame.  My thought is that I may not be able to help him financially, but I can certainly give him some of my time once every week or two.  Be a good friend that way.  My recent experience and success with Sam has given me some confidence that I can extend myself out ever further.  I can be responsible to others.  I can keep my focus for part of every week on my brother, Sam and Richard and their needs.  This makes me think of Tibetan Buddhism where the goal is increase compassionate thought and action towards others thereby reducing the effects of egotism.  It might be a good thing that we're going into the hardest season of the year.  Winter means struggle for most people around here, but where there's struggle there is also the opportunity to help others.  Maybe this winter I will be a lot less isolated than my previous winters.  Maybe this winter I'll take comfort in and give comfort to my friends and family.