Tag Archives: prose poem

Shutting Down the Screen

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in poems I wrote, Uncategorized

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Sitting in Starbucks, I look out the window at all the people walking down the street. Going where? Places. Faces. Moving. The world is traveling faster than I am. Millions of songs I have never heard. Hundreds of millions of books I have never read. So many countries and cities I have never seen. I can’t keep up. Social media travels so quickly. Food I have never eaten pictured on my newsfeed, along with what is considered “in” regarding popular culture. Trends. Fashion. Politically correct language and scenarios. I am going to slow down, step back and synthesize all that I have learned about people, places, art, changes in our language, our speech, our culture. I can’t incorporate all the information as quickly as it passes by me. I have enough new information to chew on for many years. Enough to help me grow, develop, change. But without a break from the lightning fast speed of all that information I can’t use what I’ve learned. Ideas need to germinate like seeds. I need water and the sun and space and time to breathe. I’ll miss the updates, but I am certain my roots will grow deeper, and my branches will become heavy with fruit from stepping away from the screens and learning to live life without the constant ding of a notification.

Schizophrenia: My Brain

15 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

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My brain. Much of who I am and how I see the world involves my brain. I love the way it puts words together that represent my experiences and my feelings and figures out a way to share those words –blogging, magazine articles, and journals- with the world. I thank my brain. I reveal in the beautiful thoughts it can tell me about people, trees, and the color of your dress- yellow with tiny white daisies. My brain helps me sort through feelings of deep love like I feel for my husband, or grief when I lose someone, or that uplift in spirit when I witness an act of great kindness like someone helping a vulnerable person to find a bus, or get a meal, or pay the extra money they owe but don’t have at the check-out counter in the grocery store. My brain. It is a love and hate relationship. It can trick me with delusions and hallucinations – voices only I can hear. Schizophrenia. I battle with it every day. Everything beautiful can turn ugly in an instant. My thoughts of altruism and joy can turn to thoughts of paranoia, anxiety and fear. I read that schizophrenia decreases your gray matter over time, and so does taking anti-psychotics. That means I may not always be able to put complex ideas together. I may forget more than just the name of a television show I watched last week. I may forget what I did yesterday, or the day before, or important dates, or people’s names. I don’t get to choose how my brain will deteriorate but it is almost certain that it will at least in some capacity. How to love and hate a brain at the same time? How to thank it for the happiness and curse it for the psychosis? How to celebrate and use it to its full capacity while it is still strong? I need to document. I need to research. I need to read. I need to work my brain and show what it is capable of so that when I lose a piece or a part of it, I have proof for myself that it once a sharp organ with great flexibility that gave me endless hours of pleasure. To say good-bye to a piece of yourself that you may not even be able to realize is gone but others will is to swim in a sea of deep water where you can’t even see to your feet.

I Am Invisible

03 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

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I am invisible. Our eyes don’t connect in a crowded room. You refuse to see me, because to see me might mean you have to acknowledge my existence, or worse yet, I might approach you and say, “Hello.” That would be threatening and uncomfortable wouldn’t it? Who wants to talk to the woman with schizophrenia? What can she possibly have to say that would benefit you? And it is all about benefits isn’t it? What can we get from one another? And you think I have nothing to offer, that I am a hole that will require you to throw something in, but not be able to take something out, and what you throw in will clamor and bang along the sides until it hits bottom with a thud. I am nothing to you. I am invisible. Less than a ghost, because even with a ghost you believe, you listen for the knock on the wall, or look for the flicker of a light. With me, there is nothing. To be invisible is to be without value, and to be without voice. I have cried into the stillness of night about how your language, the words you use, are like pins being stuck deep into my skin, not like acupuncture needles that don’t hurt, yours hurt, they wound, and I bleed. But my blood is like a drop of rain in Seattle, not noticeable, noteworthy, or cause for alarm. There will be no ambulance, no medics, no help is on the way, because I am invisible and there is nothing I can do to make you see me. I stand waving in the yard outside the windows of your house, but it is no use. I am invisible to you and you will never set your eyes on me until you change your mind and let loose a piece of  your heart.