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~ surviving schizophrenia

A Journey With You

Tag Archives: creative writing

The Miracle of a Day

25 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by A Journey With You in Uncategorized

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creative writing, gratitude, hope, joy, love, mental health, miracles, poetry, prose, writing

All-day, it continues. Little blessings like a cool breeze coming through the open window. The light as it shines and brightens the whole room. I enjoy the fresh banana and nonfat yogurt with a cup of tea. The guided journals are encouraging gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. I receive a kiss from my husband, a soft word, some days a love note placed in the red mailbox we bought in the dollar section at Target.

All-day, it continues. A phone call to my parents still alive and doing well even with chronic conditions like Parkinson’s and leukemia. A snack of hummus and pita bread or Ritz crackers out of the box.

All-day, it continues an e-mail from a student saying, “Thank you.” A paycheck from a class I taught arrives in the mail. A text from one of my brothers or a friend. Plans to share a brunch date over Zoom to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

All-day, it continues. The smell of a tree with white flowers blooming just outside my window. A swarm of bees pollinating the plants. A dog barking as its owner plays fetch with it on the grass patch across the street.

All-day, it continues. My favorite pair of sweatpants and a worn-out t-shirt with soft cotton plush socks. A poem that I think is profound or beautiful or both. A photograph on Instagram of trees turning orange, red, yellow. The air pollution calculator is on green indicating the quality is good today.

All-day, it continues. Something sweet like oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies or a piece of dark chocolate with mint. My husband’s and my guilty pleasure of Red Vines while watching our favorite comedy series.

All-day, it continues. These little blessings. One pound less on the scale, making my BMI in the normal category. The sight of my toenails painted pink. My husband puts my hair up in rag curls. I finish a workout on the stationary bike. I stretch my body for thirty minutes easing some of the aches and pains.

All-day, it continues. I smell bread baking or the scent of a vanilla candle. I feel fabrics so soft on my skin or the touch of my husband. I see the bay out of the dining room window. I hear music from Pandora or YouTube. I taste fresh food like watermelon, apples, or beets.

All-day, it continues these little blessings that spring up everywhere along with each breath making me want to reach up and grab ahold of the sky.

Let’s Not Forget

12 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by A Journey With You in Uncategorized

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americans, Art, creative writing, hope, mental health, poetry, prose poem, schizophrenia, writing

Let’s not forget that, along with a year that many call a dumpster fire, there is still the ocean. Sharks and whales and orcas. I heard that a white orca was off the coast of Alaska. Remember, the orca that carried her dead calf around for two weeks or more? That orca has a new calf. I try to imagine her grief not entirely lifted, but the joy of swimming in the pod with her new baby very much in need of her, and very much alive.

Let’s not forget that chocolate is still delicious or vanilla if you prefer that. Last night we froze pumpkin pie to take out slice by slice whenever we need the comfort of the taste of Fall.

Let’s not forget that we have people who care about our well-being and if we are okay. I’m not doing okay each moment, but I still see each morning I open my eyes as a miracle, a wonder, a gift. How did I make it to fifty-five? That young girl who once smoked a pack of cigarettes a day skipped school, got called into the principal’s office. Teachers were so frustrated they lost their composure and yelled at me in class because they knew I was ditching, and I forgot a pencil or pen to a shorthand class. “Who does that?” My mother-in-law would say. I do. I did. I was.

Let’s not forget that people still say I love you and mean it. People even buy each other coffee or pay for a stranger’s meal.

Let’s not forget that most Americans are kind hearted people who would stop and help someone struggling. Maybe they would assist the elderly with their groceries or help a lost child find their parent.

Let’s not forget we are a people who smile when walking past people on the street, a practice my in-laws from France think is foreign.

Let’s not forget all of this because it adds up, and it’s not nothing.

Out Of The Closet For A Year

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

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

≈ 19 Comments

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activist, Advocate, blog posts, Blogging, books, classes, creative writing, essay, hope, inspiration, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, People magazine, psychiatry, psychology, schizophrenia], writer, writing

Yesterday marked my one year anniversary of coming out of the mental health closet. Many of my family and friends found out by reading a Facebook post that I have schizophrenia. You can find that post here. 

I started this blog about living with schizophrenia on March 19th, 2015. I have written hundreds of short essays and posted over 370 times.  I missed posting 25 days in the last year (that means I posted on over 300 days).

I have a blog on Psych Central that receives way more traffic than this blog. I have posted over 30 articles on that site. You can find that blog here. 

I have written 13 articles that are posted on The Mighty.You can find them all here.

On Christmas Eve 2015, I was featured on the People website. The article was shared over 2000 times.  You can read the article here.  

I had a short book of poetry and prose published. You can purchase it as Amazon (it is currently selling for a fraction of the publishing price – last time I checked you could buy it for $1.62). Pick one up here. 

I have been interviewed by several websites, magazines and had my book reviewed by Wordgathering. You can find that review here. 

I also took several creative writing classes.

I didn’t accomplish all that I wanted to, but I do hope that some people understand schizophrenia a little better and that in some way, I have made life easier for people with a severe mental illness.

Incredible ride. Incredible year.

 

 

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.

Psychosis Is Like Death

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

creative writing, essay, mental health, mental illness, psychosis, psychotic, schizophrenia], school, writer, writer's program, writing

I am working on a collection of essays for a school project. This is last week’s homework. The teacher suggested a few things to make it better. What do you think?

Death is Like Psychosis

I am lying on the couch staring out the window at the branches of a tree. The branches turn into Clifford the dog, a character from a book I loved as a child. I wonder to myself what message is God sending me through Clifford? I decide God is trying to entertain me.

Days before, my husband and I are at a coffee shop near the beach in San Diego. I am agitated. My head hurts but not in the traditional sense. The thoughts in my head hurt. The thoughts are circular. I become more and more uncomfortable. I feel trapped inside of my mind. My thoughts are looping, repeating, making me feel as if there is no way out. I decide that this is hell, and I have been sent here to live for eternity.

I can’t imagine an escape. I feel as if another hour of this and I will run in front of traffic or jump off a bridge (both things I have tried before).  But then I realize it is hell, and there is no escape because I am already dead. Tears don’t come. Hell? I made it to hell. These thoughts that lead nowhere and loop back around onto each other like pathways to visions that end in confusion. I’m not going to make it long here. I must deserve this punishment. No chance to live my life over again. I fucked up too badly. I can’t even remember my worst sins, although I know they are grave because of these thoughts – nonlinear, backward, forward, and then all over again.

In a flash of clarity, I realize my only hope is a doctor. I ask my husband to call a doctor. I can’t sit still. I am pacing. I am going back and forth on an escalator. There is no comfort. My husband tries to get me to the car. I am both reluctant and eager. My husband calls the doctor who prescribes medication. If I can stay safe until the medication works, if I can stand these torturous thoughts, life may return to normal.

Within a couple of days, the medication kills the terror, but the doctors don’t know that the dosage is not high enough, and I am unable to tell them, trapped as I am inside my head. I am still psychotic although there is no terror. I believe I am Jesus. I believe I was sent to save the world. I spend days talking to God; we play video games. He is better than me at the games. He tells me jokes like this, “When the first person saw the golden calf that the Israelites crafted in the desert, the person screamed, “Holy Cow!” I find this joke hilarious. I laugh. God knows I will laugh. God knows everything.

I learn the voice of Jesus. I learn the voice of God, and I learn the voice of the Holy Spirit. The voice of Jesus is kind, clear, and very distinct. The voice of the Holy Spirit is the most innocent voice I have ever heard like a grown up child.

During this time, the voices in my head are all consuming. I can’t hear or respond to other people. I do not talk to my husband. I am in a world of madness. The woman he married is dead, and he doesn’t know if she will ever come back to life.

After six months on a tightrope between one life and another, I am convinced I need to kill myself. The voices tell me, “Do it! Do it!” One whole day the voices hound me. Just when I am about to go to Rite-Aid and buy some over the counter pills to overdose on, the voice of Jesus breaks into my populated head, “I am never scary,” he says. Something inside of me snaps, and I believe it was Jesus breaking through my madness.  I call my husband, “Please come home. I need to go to the hospital. I need to see a doctor.”

The doctor at the emergency room increases my medication. Within two days I am like Lazarus. I walk out of the tomb of death, and I begin to piece together what my life looks like and what happened to me.

Recovery is slow. I have been in the grave – both heaven and hell for a very long time. There is still an echo of voices in my head like a wave. But there are moments of silence. It feels strange to experience silence again. The moments of nothingness get longer and longer, and I adjust to a less crowded mind.

I have memories of my psychosis. I am ashamed that I thought I was Jesus. I am confused that I spent months talking to God. I watch Christian television and try to bring my faith back into a normal realm. After having God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as my companions for months, it is hard to organize my thoughts about what Christianity is, what I was raised to believe. What is fact, and what is fiction? Of course, there are those who think all religion is fiction, but I am not one of those people. I can’t live without my faith.

I spent six months in another world. Possibly it is the world where spirits get trapped, a middle world between heaven and earth or hell and earth. The doctors play the role of the key holder. It is as if they go into the world with medication, give it to you, and then grab your hand and pull you back. The entry into reality is abrupt. Now rescued,  I am left feeling confused, frightened, ashamed, and disoriented.

Well-meaning people tell me that if I pray harder, healing will come. They tell me that demons possess me. In my vulnerable state with the memory of psychosis being so fresh in my mind, it is not a stretch to think that I am demon possessed. The thought terrifies me. Will the spirits come back to get me?

There is fear, a fear of going back, or being lost forever, of being stuck between this world and another, or possibly experiencing a death of self. I am afraid psychosis will arrive on my doorstep again.

I have not gotten used to my husband’s loving voice, and outstretched arms. He knows that I am home now. He welcomes me. I do not want to be lost to him forever. He knows what it is like to see me die in front of his eyes. He knows what it is like to sleep next to a woman who doesn’t know about all the years you have been married, or that you knew one another in high school. He knows what it is like to have the love of your life turn against you like a stranger in the street.

My husband has experienced a six-month death of his wife. I was there physically, and he could recognize the shape of my nose and the color of my eyes, but there was no emotional connection. The body existed but the heart, the spirit, the mind did not.

Today after making love, I kiss my husband’s bearded cheek. We are listening to love songs. A song by Snow Patrol comes on Pandora, “If I lay here. If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”

I look at my husband and ask, “Can you imagine if I slipped into madness but didn’t come back?”

“No,” he says. “I can’t imagine that.”

“It would be sad for you to see me, but not be able to reach me. To know that somewhere trapped inside was my laughter, my love, our memories. It would be awful. I would be trapped and terrified. I would be in the land of the unreachable. It is a death. To be certain, it is a death of sorts. Please help me not to get buried there again.”

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