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A Journey With You

Tag Archives: creative nonfiction

Piece By Piece Make Your Dreams Come True

05 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Art, bipolar, creative, creative nonfiction, creativity, dream, essays, future, hope, inspiration, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, psychology, schizophrenia], writer, writing

Last night I opened my Facebook page, and I saw three posts on my timeline. One was from my stepbrother’s wife about a fire that had killed her friend’s young nephews. Another post was from a woman waiting to go to the hospital for a liver biopsy, and her only prayer was that the cancer hadn’t metastasized. The last one was from a man that is battling another form of cancer.

I saw many other tragic stories yesterday on social media. My conclusion? People are struggling and life is unpredictable and often short.

My husband and I are fifty and we both have serious health issues, and we frequently say to each other that our dream is to make it a few years into his retirement so we can spend our days together. He will retire in twelve years. It isn’t a given that both of us will make it to our golden years or fulfill our dream.

We need to find a way now, today, this moment to start living a piece of that dream every day. We can’t afford to wait twelve years for a future and dream that may never arrive.

At dinner every night we share the two best things that happened to us during the day. And this is a wonderful practice for looking over even a difficult day and finding something to be thankful for and pleased about. We need to find more practices like that. We need to find ways to carve out time together.

I am home every day. I can easily walk down to my husband’s office and have lunch with him a couple of times a week. I can also walk down a few evenings a week and pick him up so that we can spend the time riding the bus or walking home together.

I am going to think of other ways for us to spend time together and share conversations and bits and pieces of our lives.

If you are waiting for some time in the future to do the things you want to do, my suggestion is to find ways to incorporate your desires into your life right now. You may not be able to do all that you dream at once, but you can start in small ways, with small steps and small chunks of time. If you want to travel, but don’t have any vacation time and little money plan some weekend road trips. If you want to paint or draw or write more, spend less time on social media or less time watching Netflix and create the thing you long to create.

I once won an honorable mention in a short letter writing contest by sending in this, “When it is time to take my final breath, I want the words, thank you, to be on my lips.”

You don’t need to go far to realize that today may be the only day you have. It doesn’t matter if you have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or any other illness or disability – get the most out of life that you can. Grab the opportunities. Follow the rainbow. Don’t let dreams gather dust. I believe we only get one chance, and I intend to make the most of it. Hop on my caravan and seize the day!

Color: A Memoir

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in Uncategorized, writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

color, creative nonfiction, creative writing, essay, history, memoir, writer, writing

My skin has a pink tone and I get red before brown in the sun that kids always draw as a big yellow orb in the sky surrounded by blue space and white clouds for art projects in elementary school where the playground has both green (healthy and new) and brown (dried and dead) grass growing and there is often a hill that children love to roll down with their arms stretched out and toes pointed inside neon orange sneakers some with flashing pink lights as they walk across the black asphalt parking lot to their parent’s silver SUV.  School is out for the day and it is time to go home driving by the pink, white, blue, tan, red brick houses until making it to their own home which has purple violets growing in dark soil that have been fertilized with manure that floats through the air and if the smell of manure had a color it would be greenish brown. At home, there are bright blueberry popsicles as a snack before dinner. Dinner is a green salad with red tomatoes and two tone green cucumbers with olive oil, pink Himalaya salt, squeezed lemon and white chunks of fresh feta cheese along with macaroni and cheese that is almost the color of a light pumpkin and hot dogs not because they are nutritious but because mothers and fathers get tired of struggling with kids about what they will and won’t eat, the salad is for the adults, most adults like salad but not all of them and kids grow to be adults and join the ranks of the responsible, those of us who have to wear sunscreen because we have been told that burning your skin puts you at risk for cancer like everything else these days like dyes that are put in food, everything is suspect, it is all about health and staying young which none of us do as our hair turns silver and falls out. When I worked for an architecture firm the colors for walls, for carpets, for tile, for trim had names like split pea, showtime, chambourd, canvas, interlude and it reminded me of a box of Crayola Crayons but more difficult to imagine which color the words described. Magenta was my favorite color crayon along with midnight blue.  I used those two crayons so much that they were stubs while other colors like burnt orange barely had a dent in its tip. In the days before diversity, there was a crayon called flesh that was related to the color peach. When I paint, I make people’s skin green because it looks better that way and then no one knows about such things as white, black or brown. Green, like an apple before it is ripe or a Granny Smith that never turns red, skin that is forever green, green like a monster is how they describe jealousy an emotion I rarely feel at my age but like everyone I have had my experiences with it and I think it should be red. Red is the color of a rose (and white, and orange, and pink) and love and passion and rage. All of my emotions are sitting in a box of color crayons just waiting to be assigned a color. There are jacarandas trees lining my street and at a certain time of year all the petals fall it is like purple snow piled across the sidewalks and there are white flowers in the bushes so fragrant they are jasmine and their smell which lingers for at least a block brings me back to Cairo Egypt where young men often sold necklaces strung with jasmine to the passing cars they would put their arm covered by the necklaces of white flowers inside the car window and the car that was usually black and smelled of cigarettes would be floral, an instant floral shop on wheels.  The whole thing makes me feel exactly like I did when I was seventeen and had a full head of red hair that was bleached in streaks by the desert sun that was so bright it burned my eyes.  I don’t want to be friends with people from high school where they proudly promote that we were/are Eagles brown and white soaring through the sky. Sore is right like a festering blister that has been on my peach/pink/pale skin for over thirty years. High school is like an infection that oozes red bloody white puss on the present day. I am drawn back in by social media. The status updates are always purple, pink glitter happy rainbow unicorns and my life is good too, but they manage to make me feel outside and less always. Always like the color of the sand on the beach, tan. I have seen white sandy beaches and rain that falls from the sky so hard in minutes you are soaked and your blue jeans become almost black with the fullness of the liquid they retain. Dark day yesterday, storm clouds of deep gray in my mind as my therapist wouldn’t easily let me go as a client. Guilt is the color of the night sky in an open space. Slimy like the deep dark green kale on the ocean’s floor that washes onto the beach and often has a balloon-like head to it that if you step on it pops like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. Red little stars, blue little stars,  white little stars and everything is patriotic all day and flags are waving, and people might mention Betsy Ross if they have any memory at all as to who she was and why she mattered. We forget our history like white slate or a blackboard wiped clean by a green erasure that a teacher threw across the room to get the boy who talks all the time to shut up. I love school and reading and educating myself about many topics brown paper bags serve as a book cover you got instructions on how to make the first day of class. I don’t know my husband’s favorite color he wears casual slacks that are tan, green, brown and black. On the weekends, he wears a burnt orange shirt that my mom bought him nine years ago or a yellow and green Sprite shirt that I won in a contest. I have been in a white limousine with flashing little lights once in my life the interior was crushed blue velvet, and I know it sounds like I am lying, but I try not to lie. Lies are a shade of blue. I occasionally tell a blue shade of a lie when people put me on the spot, and I either don’t want to hurt their feelings liking to keep things upbeat and on a yellow spectrum than, to be honest which can be more like a splatter of red paint or a spill of red wine on a llama hide carpet. The thought of a llama hide carpet made me think of food. I rarely eat meat red, white, brown, pink – most of it, no. I occasionally have some crispy brown bacon with black edges, and once in a while, I will eat pink smoked salmon or reddish pink salami.  When I was a kid my mom made meats that were all gray, and only one of my brothers grew up eating the stuff. The rest of us shy (pink as in blushing) away from it as much as possible.  My first car was a Plymouth, and it was a peachy color.  My second car was a white Subaru that I drove through the front of a 7-11 one night when I was stressed out (fire engine red), and I was so lucky no one was hurt because there were people standing in line who had to run from the nose of my car and all of that glass the whole store front fell like little shiny crystals all over the tan tile and the grey cement. The cop didn’t flash the red lights, but he was mean to me at first. I was wearing a purple shirt black pants and black pointed leather shoes. The second officer was nice and asked why I didn’t roll down my window and say that I thought it was a drive-thru. I didn’t receive a pink ticket or anything, and it was ruled an accident. A colorful accident to be sure the color of scared (definitely bright orange, probably with a neon glow) the color of people’s clothes, the color of the officer’s uniforms which were the deepest darkest blue, the color of the cop cars which were, white with a dark writing, the color of all those products lined on the shelves of a convenience store, a rainbow. Gay pride in action and that is why I ran my car through the 7-11. It was the early 90’s, and my brother’s partner had just died of AIDS, it hit the gay community the hardest (a Jackson Pollock painting) purple lesions and less than eighty pounds, a thick mixture of orange – urine and blood in a sack at the bottom of the bed.  Every week it seemed someone else we knew died of that plague. Ring around the rosy pocketful of posies ashes ashes we all fall down. Back to the grass and how it is green when it is young and watered and alive and how it is brown when it is shriveled and dry and how kids like to paint pictures of things like their families and how psychologist always attribute so much meaning to those drawings. I wonder what they think of that big yellow orb in the blue sky with the white clouds. I like to think it is picture perfect even if they colored outside of the lines because life is like that color here –color there- color everywhere.

Your Blog: Using Your Words To Change The World

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

activist, advocacy, anxiety, blog, Blogging, community, creative nonfiction, hope, inspirational, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia, Voice, writers, writing

Success and rewards is the only way I can describe what I feel after attending the last day of the conference. My husband and I came up with a plan after two days of debilitating anxiety, and the plan worked. What does this mean? It means I can sign up for other conferences in the future and continue to network with writers and learn from their experience – something I feel I really need while I am just starting to develop a career in writing.

What does this mean in even bigger terms? Schizophrenia didn’t get the best of me. Yes, I have limits, yes, I have set backs and bad days and experiences, but as long as I keep pushing and keep going forward and refuse to give up, the game is not over for me. Life is still there for me to live and to get the most out of it that I can. Not every little thing is good. Not every little thing is easy, but life is still beautiful and I am still on my feet and walking even if all those around me are running. I’ll get there. I may be slow, but there can be growth and contemplation in time spent moving slowly. Not everything has to be face paced.

If I wouldn’t have tried that one last time, I would have missed a talk that was so inspirational. The panelists talked about making our writing personal while also writing about things that concern the larger community. This is something that many of us do on our blogs. We write about our own lives while intersecting with issues that are important to society. For instance, I write about my own experience with a mental illness but I often write about a lack of treatment for people, the history of care of the mentally ill in this country, stigma and discrimination.

These issues are not just about my personal life, they intersect with the whole mental health community and society as a whole. And to make it all more fascinating, everything I write also intersects with the experience of being a woman. I also frequently tie the experience of one minority group (the mentally ill) with that of other minority groups (people of color).  This gives my writing layers that are not only interesting to read, but the writing becomes part of all of our experience. Of course, many bloggers are doing the same thing with their writing and blogs.

In other words, you bloggers rock the Internet world! I have often said that artists (writers included) are the culture changers. It is our ideas, and our images, photographs, graphic, paintings, words, movies, television shows etc. that influence the rest of society.

At the conference I learned there is a great responsibility to inhabiting that role in society. Not only can you educate, inform, generate conversation, expand minds, and interpret events, you can influence people in the choices they make, the way they see the world, the way they treat others, and the way they live their lives. That is a huge responsibility full of possibility.

We have all been given this incredible platform for using our voice, and with that comes an incredible responsibility – I was able to hear people talk about the importance of that today and it changed my outlook about my writing and your writing. If you have five readers or you have five thousand readers, your voice is having an impact on the larger world – something important to think about before hitting send.

If You Were To Make Me A Character In Your Writing, What Would You Say?

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

author, college, creative nonfiction, delusions, disability, mental illness, mentally ill, paranoia, psychiatry, psychology, reality, schizophrenia, symptoms, writer, writing

I am taking a creative nonfiction class online from UCLA. One of the students in the class wrote an essay about himself and a relative or friend of his, whose name is, Richard. I loved the way the author of the story described Richard – wearing a helmet, slapping his hands to his head, wringing his hands, excited hoots and hollers. By the way that the author described Richard it was obvious to the reader that Richard had a disability of some kind, but the author never labels Richard, and he never discloses the disability. Richard is just a person with unique characteristics.

This made me think about my illness. How would another writer describe me, letting the reader know that I have a disability, but never naming the disability? What would be written? What could a writer say about my behavior that might help a reader guess that I have schizophrenia without spelling it out?

Of course, the writer could make it easy, and say that I was talking to voices that no one else could see, but that wouldn’t be an accurate portrayal of my everyday life.

The writer could also tell the readers that I believe some elaborate conspiracy theory about aliens, or a secret government agency, but again, that wouldn’t be an accurate portrayal of my everyday life.

In order to be true to my real experience. The author would have to know me very well, or be a very keen observer, in order to detect my symptoms and describe them accurately to a reader.

This imaginary writer, who is writing about me, without labeling me, but wanting the reader to know I have a disability, would probably start out by having me eating a meal. S/he could say that I thought my food tasted funny and have me end up either pushing my food around my plate pretending to eat a little bit of it, or changing my plate of food for whatever my husband may have ordered.

The writer could have my husband and I traveling on an airplane. I might be visibly agitated. My husband trying to do everything to distract and comfort me. I may end up taking a pill and later calming down enough to play hangman with my husband or read an article.

The writer might have me at a conference, or with a group of people and then follow me home, where I can’t get comfortable. I walk between my bedroom and my living room. I curl up on my bed for a few minutes and then get up and go to the computer to check my e-mail. Nothing I do seems to make me happy. I am agitated. I may end up taking a pill and going to sleep for half of an hour. I wake up and I no longer need to move from room to room.

No matter how the writer described me, if s/he was true to my daily experiences, then it is doubtful that the reader would guess that my  disability is schizophrenia.

I find both joy and sorrow in this reality. I find joy knowing that my illness isn’t easily identifiable, I find sorrow knowing that the stereotypes are so ingrained in our culture that few if any could recognize a severe mental illness if they had a description of symptoms described to them.

Like Richard, I am just a unique character, that needs no label. I hope a writer would handle me with so much affection, compassion, and care.

Working Toward Working

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in writing

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

creative nonfiction, dreams, hope, programs, school, training, ucla, work, writer, writing

I am trying to get back to work. I can’t go back to an office, because of my paranoia, my anxiety, and my lack of motivation in terms of social interactions, but I could, if I try hard enough, work from home. That is why I am taking the creative nonfiction (CNF) certificate program at UCLA.

I can do the certificate all online and I should finish the program with the basics I need for pitching magazines about stories and actually getting hired to write essays and articles.

Being a writer is the only dream I have ever had. When I had my first episode of psychosis in my twenties, I tucked that dream away, because I could no longer focus enough to read or write.

I am fifty now and I am coming to this field very late (I see twenty-somethings and thirty-year-olds publishing constantly), but hopefully I can continue to carve out a place for my voice.

I want to be a busy writer, and today, that wish has come true. I have an essay due for school tomorrow, a Psych Central blog that needs to be written, a blog post for this blog that needs to be written, and an artist’s bio/portrait page that needs to be submitted for two essays that were accepted into a book (that will come out in March).

For me, this is a lot of work to get done in one day, because I don’t have a very long attention span, and ideas take days to percolate in my brain.  I am more of a day dreamer (searching for ideas) than I am a person who gets a lot of words on the page.

Here’s hoping today is a productive one, so that when our heads hit the pillows tonight, we know not a single moment was wasted.

Can You Be Trusted Even When You Risk Ridicule?

28 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

breakfast, creative nonfiction, dedicated, employee, essays, peer pressure, story, trust, writing

There are times when we are trusted to take care of other people’s property or interests. We are trusted to do the right thing for that person in their absence. That is what a good employee does, that is what a good friend does, and that is what a good spouse does. Not everyone can be trusted in that way though, and some people, despite peer pressure will do the right thing even if they are criticized. I’d like to think I would stand up and do the right thing and risk ridicule from others. I think I’m more willing to now than ever, but I don’t think that was always true in the past.

My husband and I like to get up early on the weekend to go to breakfast. In the city where we live brunch is a very popular thing for people to do on Saturdays and Sundays (in fact we schedule brunch with a group of friends one to two times a month). So restaurants can be very busy on the weekends if you go any time after eight-thirty, but if you are early risers like my husband and I, you can visit some of the most popular restaurants without a wait.

Saturday we woke up shortly after five and there are only a few restaurants that are open that early and one of them had just been renovated so we decided to check it out. We drove to the center of the city, parked the car in front of a brightly lit building and heard the music playing loudly before we even arrived at the door.

There was one table of about six to eight young people, but other than that, we were the only people in the restaurant. It was still before six in the morning. A server came to our table and brought us menus, and asked us what we would like to drink. I said, “Water and coffee, please.” My husband just wanted coffee.

Most of the staff members working in the restaurant were all congregated near the back of the bar talking, laughing and joking. The music seemed to get even louder, and when the server came, I noticed that our table had a basket full of empty creamers. I asked for some cream. He went to get it.

A different young man who was busy cleaning tables (the only one separated from the group of employees near the back) came to our table. My husband told me he had been motioning to the group in the back to turn down the music but they ignored him. He was the only one who was busying himself by cleaning each table and prepping for what was sure to be a morning crowd.

By this time my husband and I had decided to leave. It was obvious the kitchen crew and everyone but the young man were not interested in our comfort as customers.

I told the young man cleaning that the music was too loud for us, and the coffee was cold and bitter as if it had been out all night. He apologized, and said he would make a fresh pot. We told him not to bother, we just wanted our check. He said, “Forget it.”

“Then we will just leave a tip and go.” I said.

“That’s alright. I’m sorry.” He said.

We put a five dollar bill on the table and left. My husband and I drove to a neighborhood up North that is a beach community. My husband had found a little restaurant that opened at six that he wanted to try. There was a very faint music playing when we arrived. The place looked like a small diner out of the 50’s. Everyone said good morning and smiled. The server told me her favorite meal was the oatmeal pancakes which I ordered.

In the first restaurant there was only one person who could be trusted with someone else’s business interests, but he did so at the risk of being ignored and criticized by all the other employees. But the fact that there was one person among a crowd of many who knew what was right and wasn’t afraid to do it, gave me hope. Sometimes all it takes is one person doing the right thing to change the world.

I won’t go back to the first restaurant but every time I think of it, I will think of that young man, his trustworthiness, his integrity, his courage. The music was loud and the coffee was cold but there was a young man of character there, and his character was the golden kind – the kind you can trust with your business and the kind that will stand up for you even when it means he isn’t accepted by his peers. I want to be like that person to those who trust me.

The Helpers Don’t Always Help

25 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, writing

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

bipolar, creative nonfiction, depression, discrimination, essays, helpers, helping professions, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia, social work, social workers, stigma, writing

I don’t know if it was being the youngest and only girl in a family of boys and men, or if it was growing up poor in a small town in Eastern Washington, or if it was spending my high school years seeing and living with the truly poor of Egypt, or if it was the liberal arts school I attended, any, or all, of those things could have instilled in me a desire for social justice, equality, compassion and empathy. It may have been all those things combined along with many experiences I had with people being outsiders, bullied, and discriminated against. Whatever the reasons were, I became a social worker after college and I like most social workers, I had a true desire to help people.

After several years as a social worker, I developed what those of us in my office called, “social worker humor and sensibilities.” Roughly translated that means I laughed and joked about situations that no one outside of my office would have found humor in because the stories were tragic and painful. In other words, my compassion and empathy developed callouses, because of the horrific stories I heard daily about child abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism, prostitution, and many other human tragedies that are a part of people’s lives.

So, when I say I have been humiliated and silenced by social workers, and medical professionals, I can honestly say, I have done their job, and I have participated in their “humor” and degrading remarks. It is very different when you cross the line from helper to client and back again.

What I learned as a client after my initial hospitalization was that the tough stuff people are going through is never funny and the degrading language that is used to describe people with personality disorders or a mental illness lessens your impact as a social worker. You can’t be giving your client the best services when you refer to that client as “wacko” “crazy” or “psycho” to your fellow co-workers or behind that client’s back.

For me, the big change in how I spoke about clients came for me when I was hospitalized for my mental illness and heard the nurses in the hallway talking.

“Did you see what she does for a living?  She works for Child Protective Services. She is a social worker. I wonder if we are going to end up like her?”

Those nurses’ comments were a defining moment in my career just as my own diagnosis was. I spent the rest of my time as a social worker listening to some colleagues call their clients, “crazy” “wacko” “nuts” etc. and what they didn’t realize was that I had paranoid schizophrenia and listening to them use disparaging language about their difficult or mentally ill clients made it impossible for me to find the courage to share with them my diagnosis, and it made me feel shame about an illness that is no more shameful than cancer or diabetes.

Although I kept my boundaries, I spent many years identifying with clients more than I identified with many of my fellow coworkers.

Of course not all mental health workers talk badly about their clients. I have worked with some professionals who understood and practiced complete advocacy on the part of their clients and never wavered from that advocacy even behind their client’s backs.

Personally, I didn’t realize that a life time of building up empathy, compassion, and a desire for social justice could get clouded by the way I chose to refer to other people and their circumstances. I didn’t realize it until their circumstances became my circumstances.

As someone with paranoid schizophrenia I am an insider in terms of mental illness, as a former social worker, I am an insider in the helping profession. I’ve been on both sides of the desk and in order to do the best for your clients you occasionally need to step out from behind the desk and sit in the other chair, if only for a moment, and if only to see the work you do more clearly.

Tough Stuff

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in articles I wrote, caregivers, mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

anxiety, article, breast cancer, cancer, caregivers, creative nonfiction, death, essays, fears, life, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia, writing

This is the blog of a caregiver whose twenty-one year old son has schizophrenia. I love following this blog because the woman who writes it, writes well, posts some interesting research on schizophrenia, and has a very different perspective than my own.

Her post yesterday (the one I linked to above) made me feel a wide range of emotions. I felt angry at her for suggesting her son’s life wasn’t of value without her there to make sure he was okay (I know she is worried that her son will not be understood, cared for, and that life might be cruel to him without her, but as someone who also lives with the disease her son does, this was a difficult read).

Then I thought about myself. How many nights, with my head resting on my husband’s chest, have I whispered, “Please tell me that I will die before you. I just want to go before you.”  My husband’s response is always the same when I say this, “You are so selfish. Why do you think I would do better than you, if I were left alone?”  Usually, I give him the reasons I think he would do better, but to be honest, if I knew I was dying a couple years in advance, I would spend the time I had left trying to find him a partner. I really don’t want either one of us to be left alone. It would be hard to lose your best friend, especially a best friend you spend every day with and curl up with at night.

I frequently think and talk about death. Here is an article I wrote (under my maiden name) about my second experience with a breast cancer scare (to my friends who have actually had breast cancer, I hope you will forgive me for writing about how freaked out I get just thinking I have it).

I don’t know what life would be like for that blogger’s son if she dies before him. I don’t know what life would be like for me if my husband passes before me. I know I want to believe that in both situations everything, given enough time, would somehow, and in some way, be okay.

It is a difficult situation to try and grapple with. The thing about having a mental illness is you can’t always choose what you’ll spend your time thinking about. It’s not just me though I bet every caregiver has run similar scenarios through their mind.

There is tough stuff and there is really tough stuff. This whole topic is the latter. Having the thought that your loved one might be better off to die before you, is probably a common and guilt inducing thought for many caregivers. Just know you can say it out loud in certain places no matter how terrible it sounds. I have schizophrenia and I am capable of being honest about what life would look like without my muscle man, my Hercules, my Superman, my love. I’m not sure I’d be able to do it.

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Schizophrenia Doesn’t Come with a Manual

16 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

creative nonfiction, essays, hope, inspiration, love, marriage, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, psychiatry, psychology, relationships, schizophrenia, writing

If you are planning to have a baby there are thousands of books you can buy to help guide you through the process, or at least to help you understand what to expect. The same is true of relationships there are endless streams of books proclaiming how to better your sex life, to how to communicate for intimacy, to how to combine household resources. The angles and titles are endless, but there is no book “What to Expect When Your Partner has Schizophrenia.” I actually just went to Google and searched that title and several articles came up, but I can assure you even if there are a dozen articles (as opposed to thousands upon thousands) they never would have prepared my husband and me for a marriage where schizophrenia plays a role in our lives.

My husband and I are going on two decades of marriage and everything we have learned and managed to overcome has been by trial and error.

The single most important thing we learned early in our relationship is that for someone with paranoid schizophrenia trust can be a literal life saver. When I am psychotic I don’t always trust my husband, in fact, there are times when I fear him, but I have always had moments of clarity in the midst of the storm and during those moments I have been able to ask for the appropriate help.

However, it has not been an easy or bump-free ride for him or for me. No one prepared my husband for the time that his bride, who was psychotic, would insist upon splitting up all the financial assets because she wanted a divorce. No one told my husband there were times that he would need to seal up his heart in a box and just take care of the crisis (my illness) at hand. Of course it wasn’t possible to really seal up his heart, and those incidents caused him wounds that are still painful to remember.

Separating the person you love from their illness is not an easy job. It is messy. Things get confusing, and sloppy. “Did she say that because she is psychotic, or does she really not love me?” Words strung together like that and said either casually or with venom can fillet the heart, drop it on the floor, and then fling it into the fire. When the psychosis is gone, and the person you married is staring at you again, those words still linger. Your grilled heart blackened.

During times when I am experiencing paranoia, delusions, or hearing voices, my husband has never said to me, “That isn’t real. You are imagining that. It is all in your head.” Because I trust my husband, and he has never responded with anger towards me when I am ill, there are times when he can use a gentle reasoning that can often bring me back from an episode of paranoia – not always, but enough times that it is one of the best tools (besides medication) in our tool bag.

I always encourage people with schizophrenia to try for a normal life and that means having a long term intimate relationship if they want one. We didn’t know that I had paranoid schizophrenia when we got married (I was diagnosed for over ten years with bipolar disorder). If we had known the real source of my problems, we may have been able to seek out some answers or guide posts. Although we had no map we have managed the darkest terrain I know with courage, compassion, empathy, and humor. It is true we have been injured along the way, but so far the injuries have been treatable with grief, understanding, and love.

If we can navigate this unknown territory, others can too, and my husband and I will do our best to leave a few crumbs so others can stay on the path and experience one of life’s greatest gifts – a partner to love.

Lessons From Baseball

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in relationships, writing

≈ 2 Comments

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baseball, beauty, creative nonfiction, envy, essays, grateful, hope, inspiration, life, social media, sports, writing

Yesterday at the baseball game, it was the bottom of the ninth and the score was five to one. There was really no chance for the home team but they were up to bat, and they had two outs – they needed a miracle. When the batter got up to the plate, his first swing was a strike, and then he hit a fly ball, and then another strike. Many people in the audience started cheering for him to strike out. The crowd was loud, and they were cheering for him to fail.

Later that night, my husband, and me, my brother, and his friend were all talking about how hard it would be to be doing the thing you love the most, and that you are one of the best at, and have people yelling at you and hoping you do poorly. That is how it is in sports – there is always a group of people hoping you mess up, don’t play your best, or essentially lose to the other player or team.

Then we thought about our own lives. All of us had at least one person we could name in our lives that hoped we failed, or that treated us poorly when we succeeded, or acted like they were in competition with us. My brother’s attitude was that most people really are not happy to see you do well. My brother’s friend, Sam, said that one of her best friends recently wrote her a letter stating that she no longer wanted to be friends because she was so envious, and couldn’t be happy for the changes in Sam’s life (Sam recently fell in love, got a new job and moved to a great new area).  Her friend preferred to end their longtime friendship rather than hear about Sam’s happiness and new adventures.

Sam also said that she thought there was always someone in all of our lives (she thought usually a sister) who we were generally happy for when they took a great vacation, or bought a new house, or got a dream job, but underneath we felt envy.

For me personally, I can’t think of someone specific that I am envious of, but occasionally I will meet someone who I think has suffered little hardship and I will think, “Why does everything always go right for you?” With people like that I feel a twinge of envy.

I think social media is used and in a way to try to make everyone feel envy – people only post their best pictures and often they are taken with a filter or Photoshopped. People take pictures of their drinks and their food, making it look like they are always having a party. People take pictures of every event they go to making it look like they are always having fun, and of course people take pictures of every vacation. Most of social media is an illusion, an image that people are trying to create and maintain. I don’t feel envious of people on social media, because I know most people are not authentic or real on social media – they don’t post the mundane, or sprinkle the good with the bad.  Studies have shown that many people do feel badly about social media – it contributes to negative feelings about their own lives.

I struggle in other ways, but overcome it daily. I see writers every day that are writing for the magazines I want to write for, or I read their work and I know it is so much better than mine. When that happens, I tell myself, “You need to read more, and write more. You need more practice.” I tell myself to keep going. In other words, there may be some initial envy, but the other writer’s success usually pushes me to try harder. I think that is a good way to overcome envy, by bettering myself.

If you are the kind of person that is envious of beauty, or body shape, you can’t just try harder to make your hair thicker, or your cheekbones higher, or wish your wrinkles away. In those situations, you have to practice a form of acceptance. Somehow you have to know that you are good enough, beautiful enough, worthy enough, and I know it sounds cliché but it honestly helps to think of all you are grateful for.

I want to be the kind of person that is happy when others succeed. I want to believe that there is enough goodness, and good fortune for all of us, and that having someone be happy, or get their dream job, is a great thing, not something that hurts my chances of landing my dream job.

I don’t want to be the person in the crowd yelling for someone to fail, I want to be the one who acknowledges a good play when I see it even if it comes from someone on the opposing team – really, there are no opposing teams, just us, trying to live together- let’s cheer loud and hard for one another. The worst that will happen is we will all have a sore throat from cheering, and that hurts much less than envy.

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