Category Archives: friends

Today is February 19, 2018. I am alive and okay.

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I try to put my heart on paper.  –Osama Alomar

I’m actually a little depressed today. No reason…unless it’s because I’ve been silent and absent in my writing. I haven’t blogged for a couple of months. The young adult novel I’ve been working on has been quiet for a month. I miss my characters but not enough to really visit with them.

A friend asked me why I write. I had to think about it for awhile. While thinking, I thought of socks in the winter and flip flops in the summer. Writing is the best meditation and link to God that I know of. I think most people have entered the zone at some point in their lives. It’s a place of complete freedom from self. There is no depression. There is no schizophrenia. There’s a feeling of floating on my back in water during the night, the stars ablaze, the moon, large in its friendliness.

Granted, when I’m in the zone there is no human contact. After coming out of it though I am a better friend. Both my parents are dead so I’m no longer a better daughter. Why am I better in my relationships? I think it’s because my soul has rested. I’ve been imbued with God.

Writing is like having all the cherries line up on the slot machine. It’s like using a hand to lift a fork and feed myself chocolate cake with an outlandish fudge frosting. Writing is scribbling on paper writing in joy even when creating an evil character.

As I’m certain someone has already said, I live to write and I write to live. Without a pen, without paper, I flutter in the wind never landing squarely on my feet.

This blog has fueled me. My depression is a little less. I’m reminded that I don’t have to be silent. I don’t have to be absent. I wink with my friends in mind and am offered peace.

 

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Today is December 22, 2017. I am alive and well.

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My short memoir piece installed over 4 blogs. Hospital Visit Number 19, final blog.

 

It is cool in the hospital. I am glad for my thermal shirt, jeans, and thick socks.

Bobby approaches me and says hi. I say hi back.

“Wow,” he says, “You can speak.”

I give him a smile.

“And Smile.”

“Don’t get too use to it,” I say with a grin the size of the Chesire Cat’s in Alice’s Wonderland.

Dr. Purewal arrives at noon. We meet for twenty minutes in which time he determines I am good to go home.

I am on the patio of the hospital. The Phoenix sun is strong, wood thrown onto an already burning fire. The heat reaches my bones. I will be released in an hour. John will go over my medications and aftercare plan.

My mind is a slow hum. The sound is soft like a T-shirt dropped on a tile floor. Today, my mind is my friend. My mind is something to pay attention too. It is a waterfall. Thoughts dropped entering into a pool of calm water, the ripples smoothing out and again returning the pool to calm.

I will go home today and feed my cats. I will sit in a straight backed chair at the kitchen table with my grandmother and eat soup with rye bread. My depression has lifted. I am able to wash the dishes in the sink, dry them, and place them in the cupboard. Exhaustion has lifted. I’m no longer surrounded by dust. Life is clean again, not just a mirage in the desert. I press my hand to my chest. My heart beats strong again. I will protect it, but not to the point of eliminating all relationships. I can be strong and vulnerable at the same time.

I am happy to have my psychosis end. It’s not me that is horribly affected by my loss of reality. It’s the people around me. I am oblivious. I am lost. Those outside myself are well aware. Are present. I am glad to hold hands with my loved ones again. We wish on the stars together and delight in the moon. My wish is simple, stay home and love.

Today is December 18, 2017. I am alive and well.

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My short memoir piece. Hospital Visit Number 19. Installment 3 of 4.

The hospital staff and Guy remind me that I have schizophrenia. It is something that does not go away. Not like the pain of a pulled rotten tooth. I cannot pull this from my mind. I am wired, attached to hallucinations. Why do they feel so real? I am the extension of the antennae on an old fashioned television set. Aluminum foil. Yes, it is rigged. I am rigged. Through medication and support of people, they are trying to make the rigged part go away. They are trying to help me stand even when I sense that I am falling. Not falling into sickness, but falling into a different me, one I can only understand with the help of medication and clean people.

I will fall asleep in the hospital once again. I wake for medication and meals and the occasional conversation with the doctor and staff. I wake for my boyfriend. Sadly, I wake to the voices, too. They are with me like loose sleeves on a jacket that is too tight across my chest. Occasionally, they drop through the wrists of the jacket. It is in these moments that I exalt. I can count ten fingers and ten toes. I can make peace with my God. And most importantly, I can feel the love from those who touch me, warm like a wet washcloth used to remove the dust from my cheek. I am loved and I do love. This slides into my thinking like a person sliding into home plate, scoring the winning run, beating out the baseball sent from the outfield.

My mind slowly gets better. A cake bakes at 400 degrees for twenty minutes. Eventually, the toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Eventually, my mind comes out clean. I am able to communicate in simple sentences not requiring a great deal of thought from the listener. My silence is no longer the result of a sickened mind hiding from the florescent bulbs of the hospital.

It is breakfast time. All of us gather in the main area and receive a tray. I am able to enter the rec room and claim a seat at one of the round tables. French toast and sausage. Cereal and a carton of milk. The voices are soft. Thy no longer berate me. Pick up the fork, they say. Eat, they say. It tastes good, they say. I’m okay with them repeating what it is I’m doing. It is much better than being told to die or told to call the fat man obese and the skinny girl anorexic. My voices can be cruel, can ask me to do cruel things.

After eating, I return the tray to the cart. John, the psych nurse, approaches me, clipboard in hand, like he does every morning.

“Good morning, Kristina.”

“Morning.”

“Are you feeling suicidal today?”

Only in a psych hospital would a person start the conversation with this question.

“No,” I respond.

“And the voices?”

“Still there, but not bad.”

“How was breakfast?”

“Good. I’ll be going home soon, I think.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe so. Maybe so. The doctor should be in soon.”

John leaves me with this parting thought. It is up to the doctor as to whether or not I go home. Dr. Purewal really listens to me. When I am able to hold a conversation with him and let him know I’m ready to go home, he usually agrees. He knows me well. He has been my doctor in the hospital for years.

 

Today is November 27, 2017. I am alive and well.

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Like usual, I have no idea what I’m going to write on this blog. Of course, I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. I love the holidays and don’t experience them as stressful. But then I don’t cook and the only gift I buy is for my roommate.

I have thought much about my sister who’s a crystal meth addict and homeless. I actually dreamt of her last night. In the dream she was showing me her teeth, of which she only had a few, and the sores on the inside of her cheek. She told me that the infection from her sores would ultimately spread to her jaw and then follow her bone to her ear, making her deaf in that one ear. I asked my sister what meth did for her. Her response, “I’m rocketed to a new dimension, much like what happens to people of faith visiting with God. It is thrilling. My trip is thrilling.” That was the end of the dream.

I haven’t given up on my sister. I know the truth currently is that my sister has no desire to give up meth. I found a place where she could live for free for a year and they would provide for her all her meals. All she has to do is give up the drugs and get sober. She said no. She is three years younger than I am, 50-years-old, and I would guess that she has been using drugs for over 25 years.

With sobriety, I am safe. I am a sober drunk, 24 years sober,  with a healthy fear of drugs. My drug use amounts to me trying marijuana once. It left me paranoid and rocking in the corner of a room. Thirty years ago, this same sister told me I just smoked it wrong. Ha. How does a person smoke it right or wrong?

I am completely aware of the fact that I could be her. I don’t know why I was led to sobriety and she wasn’t. Out of desperation, I latched on to a program of recovery. I’m certain my sister has felt desperation at some point. I’m certain she suffers. Neither of these two things have brought her to her knees.

I will be warm this holiday season. I will eat good food. I will be physically clean. I will surround myself with people I love and who love me. Life is good.

Today is November 13, 2017. I am alive and well.

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…aren’t we more like pack mules/than gods most days, picking our way/across the desert or up a mountain path with avalanches/and the heaviest of loads are our grudges and fears/while poetry and beauty rest on our shoulders like fairy wings/or one of those pastries in a shop in Paris,/almost too beautiful to eat, but eat them we do/with their frosting of butter and sugar and eggs.   Barbara Hamby

The truth of our pain is all we have, it is the key to who we are.    James Baldwin

An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.  Francis Bacon

I love quotes and thought these all related nicely. I write “the truth of my pain.” Maybe it’s true that “it’s the key to who I am.” I also believe my passions are the key to who I am.

My pain is deep and not preventable. Because it’s deep it rarely shows up unless I let it. It can storm and I won’t get wet because of my umbrella. Discard the umbrella, and I get soaked. It takes awhile to dry off. Living with pain with no barrier to disguise it can lead me to tears. It also leads me to people who share my same experience. They have made it through and I can too. I watch as a raccoon puts his paw in a jar to fish out a coin. With his paw clenched in a fist, he cannot pull himself from the jar. He has to let go of the coin in order to free his paw.

I have let go of the coin. I write about having schizophrenia. I write about multiple suicide attempts, I write about being alcoholic. Pain can attach itself to all three of these things. But I don’t stay there. I let go of the coin. I step out of the mud. Sometimes I get help cleaning myself off. Help is always there and it’s okay to accept it.

My God takes care of me. My God always has my back. The right people are placed in my life at the right time. My friends nourish me. I am passionate about loving them. I also hope I nourish them. It’s beautiful to watch my cats bathe each other. They are always clean, but they don’t go outside.

I go outside. I live a good life despite occasional falls. I also write about great things, not just painful things. My car still runs after 256,000 miles. I have the money to get my teeth cleaned. I fill the grocery cart with fabulous foods. I loved the same man for fourteen years without straying. Although we’re apart, I still do love him. I am comfortable in my own skin. I am passionate about flowers bought on Friday, about words falling in line with each other to make a sentence, a paragraph, a page. Life is here. Life is staying.

Today is October 27, 2017. I am alive and well.

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My blog is delayed. I actually wrote a blog on Monday to post but decided it wasn’t appropriate. It was about my friend who lost her 93-year-old mom and my relative who attempted suicide by trying to slit an artery in her leg. Her attempt was fueled by alcohol.

I love these two people. It’s not always easy to know what to say. The best I can do is to say I love you. Which I’ve done.

We leave this world in all different ways. Death greets us fiercely. Except for near death experiences, death is blind; we don’t know what’s beyond it.

Some doctors feel like we’re not honoring death because we’re treating it like a disease. Doctors try to cure it no matter what. Keep the patient alive no matter what. Sometimes I believe we simply, or not so simply, need to let the person go so the suffering ends. As hard as that may be it can be the kind thing to do.

Sadly, my grandmother ended up feeling bad and responsible for my grandfather’s death. My grandfather broke his neck. He couldn’t swallow with the halo, so then they gave him a feeding tube. Then he got pneumonia. It was one thing after another. When they took off the halo, they discovered the bones had not fused together because of osteoporosis. By then he was too fragile for surgery. My grandmother decided to put him in hospice. The hospital had a floor for hospice patients. His room was nice. Warm. Even cozy. There was no medical equipment and he was in a regular bed, dressed in his own pajamas with a quilt as a cover.

My grandmother didn’t realize that they weren’t going to feed him. I do believe he died from starvation. He went peacefully. My grandmother was with him when he took his last breath.

My grandfather always raked the leaves that had fallen from the trees in the front yard. The morning after his death, I raked these leaves. Raking them allowed me to feel the presence of him.

Today I have a healthy fear of death. That was not always the case. I have many times sought death to no avail. It hasn’t been my time to go.

My last suicide attempt has been at least nineteen years ago. Since then, I have lived much life. My relationships with friends have deepened. I had a fourteen year relationship with one man who I loved with the whole of me. I completed an MFA and had a book published. A short memoir piece of mine is being published in the Delmarva Review out in November and currently on-line.

I have breathed life. My breath is steady like the clip clop of a horse in cantor. The raven soars with ease. I soar while having my boots keep me heavy to the earth.

Today is October 9, 2017. I am alive and well.

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Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world.      Pearl S. Buck

There are three things I learned from someone to never talk about amongst people I don’t know. They are religion, politics, and sex. I am a spiritual being. I am a political being. And I am a sexual being. Yet, I don’t really address these things in my blog. Why not? I ask myself that often. Is it because I’m afraid of losing followers of my blog? Maybe. Is it because these things are deeply personal? Maybe, even though I write about things that are deeply personal like suicide, mental illness, and alcoholism.

My first time practicing exclusion happened when I was 18-years-old. I attempted to harm everyone close to me so that I had no one who loved me. I wanted to be free to die. Somehow, in my mind, I couldn’t take my own life if people were loving me.

I did reach the point of not feeling responsible to anyone. I did attempt to take my own life. I ended up in an intensive care unit. Upon awakening in ICU, there stood my grandmother and grandfather beside my bed. I will always remember my grandmother’s face. In that moment, it was one of absolute love. I had not been condemned by my decision to die.

Present day, I still exclude others from my life. I don’t mingle with people that hate. I don’t want to expose myself to that soul depleting practice.

Can I love these people from afar knowing we are all of this world? We all struggle. We all experience pain. We all dream. We all have people we care about or have cared about.

Can I love the man who just murdered 53 people, injuring 500 more in Las Vegas? No. I judge him. I am horrified by him. Can I forgive the likes of him? Big question. Answer, I don’t know. Although, I do know forgiveness is in my best interest. I don’t want my heart to harden.

I hope Democrats and Republicans and people of neither party can hold each other in loving thought and with respect while still believing vehemently in what they believe. I hope that all people are touched by a bit of the divine. Even petting a dog or loving a cat is simply divine. Certainly, praying to a deity who is not understood and cannot be defined is divine.

As far as sex, well, I’ll just say have fun, feel deep, and don’t get pregnant unless you want to. This includes everyone from heterosexuals to the LGBT community. We can all have some part in pregnancy.

Today is September 25, 2017. I am alive and well.

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I committed blog suicide with my last blog. I painted myself as a selfish, self-centered woman with no time for personal relationships. I was brutally honest, yet I’m not all of that person. What did I intend to say? I have no idea.

There are two things I value most:  love and truth.

I am loved beyond the edge of language and I love beyond the edge of language. I have a large family mostly made of friends with a few blood relations added to the mix. God and my family provide me with the oxygen to get through a day. God in the abstract. My family in the non-abstract.

I love God like I do the rising sun or the humming moon. Like I do the energy passed between me and another. I love God like I do electricity or running water; all things beyond my understanding. I am a light in a lit world. Seemingly my own, yet belonging to something large, something brighter.

People are bowls of fruit, oven baked bread, the proud sunflower. They are radios, televisions, and cell phones. People are smiles, frowns, and hard stares. Reaching arms and planted feet.

I love people like I do warm towels, down pillows, two scoops of chocolate ice cream. I love people with an intensity that matches the acceleration of a Lamborghini.

Keats wrote “truth is beauty and beauty is truth.” Truth/beauty are necessary to my life. I once had a friend tell me I shared too much. She was trying to protect me from adverse reactions to what I said. I talk freely about mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide. These things I have come to terms with. They currently don’t keep me from an amazing life. I told my roommate last night that there is freedom in having as long a piece of dental floss as I want. In the psych hospital floss is limited. I have not been to a psych hospital for eight years.

Telling the truth is not hard for me. Nor is accepting the truth of others. I am taught how to be in this world gracefully by others who have grace. I know when I do wrong and am able to right it most of the time. Life is sensational and intriguing. Thank God for standing in green grass.

Today is September 18, 2017. I am alive and well.

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Mortal love is but the licking of honey from thorns.   Anonymous

Does that quote mean that my basic being and your basic being is created with thorns and then covered with honey? I don’t feel thorny, nor do my friends. When meeting someone for the first time I don’t feel that I might get pricked when the honey of their being melts away. I believe in the kindness and goodness of people.

Does the quote speak to the presence of my character defects? I do have character defects. People love me despite them. I will write that my worst one is selfishness. I am extremely selfish with my time. I crave time not spent with others, but rather time with myself. Worry is another character defect. I can worry about everything. Worry is a flower I plant knowing that it’s going to die and leave me petals. Worry is a baked cake that falls in the middle but still tastes great. It just doesn’t look like how I thought it ought. In other words, many of my worries are legitimate and do happen but I’m always left with something good that comes from mess.

This past week my garbage disposal stopped working and my truck wouldn’t start.

My garbage disposal was doing nothing. I worried that the sink was going to clog and spill over. Guy told me about a restart button. It was there! I pressed it and now all is fine.

I dreamt my truck wouldn’t start and come morning, my truck didn’t start. I was worried I’d have to spend most of my time waiting for buses, riding buses. It turns out that I simply needed a new battery. My dead battery was under warranty. I paid nothing!

So, I speak to having faith that all will work out. It curbs my worrying.

My love for others goes deeper than honey and I am not pricked by and do not worry about thorns. If a person’s short comings are too much for me, I step away with love. If a person doesn’t like me, I think “good.” I all ready don’t have enough time for those I love. Having one less person to pay attention to is a blessing.

On another note, I celebrated 24 years of sobriety yesterday. Coming from the daily drunk that I was, this is a miracle. God has blessed me in many ways. Sobriety is just one of them.

Today is September 11, 2017. I am alive and well.

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Please take a moment to think of those who died today and their survivors.

I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.    Anne Sexton

Yes! So true. My house is full of people and yet I still have room to move. And these people don’t need my attention until I flip open a book and there they are, caught in the pages. My time is selectively interrupted.

Not to say that I mind being interrupted by actual oxygen breathing people. Typically, I don’t. But there is something to be said about having quiet conversations from which I can leave to get a cup of coffee without being rude. All characters in books ask of me is that I follow them faithfully. They do not take me hostage. I can swiftly leave them to feed my cats and then return to them right where I left off.

I’m a book lover who works in a library. The combination can be problematic like a diabetic working in a pastry shop. I can check out 35 books at a time for three weeks. How in the world do I read 35 books in three weeks? The three weeks is long enough for them to gather dust. In these dust bound books are people whom I will never meet. I will leave the book like I would a rental property that is too far away from a gas station. My tank remains empty until the next set of 35 books attract me.

Walking away from an oxygen breathing person is not as easy as closing the cover of a book. There’s goodbyes to be said, hugs to be given, and promises to meet at some future date. I don’t have to plan in advance to read a book. I can reach for a character at midnight or 1 a.m. The character will not have done things without my knowing and she will be in the same red pajamas I left her in. These are people who never leave. As a result, I am never alone. There is comfort in this.

I must say, though, that oxygen breathing people are necessary, are absolutely desirable. I am alive because of those who love me and those I love. And because of a God who I can treat as a non-fictional character; a character who has no physical being in this world but who is always around. God is not a person. God is God, books are books, and oxygen breathing people are oxygen breathing people. I am blessed to know all three. I am blessed to have all three in my life.