Tag Archives: past

The Cost Of Terror

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in travel, writing

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This morning schizophrenia doesn’t seem like such a big topic. It doesn’t seem quite as pressing as usual. It certainly isn’t on the forefront of my mind.

I am thinking of Paris. I am thinking of all those innocent people who lost their lives and how their families are grieving and how the witnesses will probably suffer psychological disturbances for the rest of their lives.

I am thinking there was a time when I used to say, “Mom, I’m going to ride my bike,” and I would be outside until my mother blew a whistle to call all four of her children in.

I am thinking of a time when I went door to door by myself, in neighborhoods that were not my own, and sold Girl Scout Cookies.

I am thinking about a time when I walked to school and back home again, or walked several miles to a friend’s house.

I am thinking of a time when schools didn’t have metal detectors.

I am thinking of a time when flying on a plane was unusual, and most of the people I knew had never done it.

I am thinking about a time when going to another country was exotic not something people did for business or their annual vacation.

I am thinking of a time when I had never heard of the word terrorist.

I am thinking of a time when we were not at war.

I am thinking of a time when murder wasn’t on the nightly news.

I am thinking of a time when we owned bb guns and had never heard of an AK47.

I am thinking of a time when I was so excited to go to a baseball game or a move theater and my safety never occurred to me.

I am thinking of a time when the only monsters I knew of were under my bed or in my closet, but would disappear as soon as my parents or brothers turned on the lights.

I am thinking of the loss of innocence and how we never get it back again.

I am thinking of all the murders we have to try and live with on a daily basis. How much terror is too much terror? What will happen to us if as adults we can no longer grieve the sheer number of those murdered? Will it destroy our hearts?

How Far Have We Come, Inches Or Miles?

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in bipolar, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma

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“Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered “abnormal.” Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. “ (A link to quote source).

If you think that stigma doesn’t exist, and that mentally ill people and their advocates need to lighten up then please read the quote again.

“…the United States led the world in forced sterilizations.”

If you are thinking to yourself, ‘Well, that was in the past, that could never happen today.”

Liberal leaning California led the pack in sterilizations. The last one performed under the law was in 1963. So, until just over fifty years ago, sterilizing people with a mental illness was legal.

Consider the case of the woman identified as Mary Moe in 2012. Mary had been hospitalized several times for schizophrenia and when she turned up at an emergency room pregnant a judge ruled that she be forced to undergo an abortion and then sterilization. Fortunately, another judge stepped in and made a different decision. But this was only three short years ago.

I am constantly horrified by the treatment of the mentally ill, and I am using sterilization as just one part of how the mentally ill have been and still are treated in this country.  The United States has a very grim report card when it comes to caring for the mentally ill – asylums, lobotomies, electric shock, insulin shock, ice baths, jails, the streets, no treatment, etc.

Obviously sterilization is not a big problem to fight off today. There are still some people who probably believe that all people with a mental illness should be sterilized, but thankfully not too many of them are in a position to make this standard procedure or the law.

But the situations that lead to people implementing laws like sterilization are still present. In order for people to accept the sterilization of others, dehumanization has to take place. The terrible treatment of the mentally ill in this country is as old as racism. And just like racism, its roots are thick and deep and insipid – they don’t let go, or change easily. Many people see the mentally ill as “less than” and don’t care that they are left without treatment in the streets and in prisons, because after all, the mentally ill are not viewed as “fully human” and deserving of compassionate care. The statistics regarding the treatment of the mentally ill prove that dehumanization is still persistent in our culture.

It’s frightening to be mentally ill in America in 2015 – one psychotic episode which involves the police could result in your death, one psychotic episode where you are terrified and confused, could lead to jail time. The loss of income could mean the loss of insurance and treatment. Most of us realize we are only a few steps away from those people who make up the frightening statistics. And the fact that we have to hold on so tight to the way things are or we could watch our lives spiral out of control is dehumanizing – a lack of a safety or security.

Time Machine

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by in writing

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This is what my life looked like in 1966. Here I am with my three biological brothers, laughing. I had a big laugh, deep, and from the belly.

During this time, my dad worked on the railroad. In fact, he worked on the railroad from the time he was seventeen or eighteen until he retired some time in his sixties. When this picture was taken my mom didn’t work outside of the home, but in a few short years, she would work as a waitress, as a dispatcher at a police station, at a radio station, much later (when I was in high school) she worked at the American Embassy in Cairo. My mom had many jobs, and lived in many cities across the world, but my dad stayed with one job and still lives in the town I grew up in.

There is something comforting about visiting my dad’s house because time is so slow there, and there have been no big changes over the past fifty years.  I can walk by our old houses. I can walk by my old schools. My best friend from grade school still lives there, and we get together every time I go “home.”

3 People

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in bipolar, schizophrenia

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There are three people who I can’t find, but who I would like to see, and tell them how they changed the course of my life.

I would like to find the two men, whose names I do not know, that saved my life, back in 1997.  One man pulled me to safety as I was standing on the railing over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

On the same night, another man, pulled over to the side of I-5 and checked on me in my car.  I was barely conscious, as I had taken two bottles of pills.  He called 911 and stayed with me until help arrived.

I didn’t know then, but I was about to begin the best sixteen years of my life.  If those men hadn’t cared enough to stop and help a suicidal woman that was hearing voices, I would have missed all those amazing years of happiness.  I am forever grateful to them.

Angels exist.

The last person I would like to see is my last psychiatrist.  I had been seeing her for several years, and then one day, I received a letter in the mail, and the letter said, to choose a different doctor.  It seemed that no one knew why she left.

I asked my primary care physician, because the two of them used to work together, and she didn’t know what happened.  For nearly a year, I kept calling her office to see if she had completely terminated her employment or if she had made plans to return.

Eventually they told me she wasn’t coming back.

I still miss her, and I want to tell her something.

The last time I saw her, she told me, “As your homework, I want you to tell one person in your life that you have schizophrenia.”  You see, she knew that I was living in hiding for over twenty years, and she wanted me to learn, by slowing coming out, that the world was a safe place.

I took her seriously.

In her honor, I have come out to everyone in my life.  I am now living in the open.  I want to tell her the good and the bad.  How people have reacted.  I want to invite her to the performance of the monologue I wrote about living with schizophrenia that is coming out in May.  I want to tell her, that I made it.  I made it.  The world hasn’t completely accepted me, but many people have.

I want to talk to her one last time and say thank you.

Thank you for always telling me I wasn’t crazy.