Category Archives: Spirituality

Today is August 2, 2014. I am alive and well.

I’m allowing grief to paralyze me. I am sleeping too much and writing too little. But I am not going to have a break down and wind up in the hospital, and I definitely am not going to drink over his leaving me. He has been gone for three and a half months; one and a half months of this time I have known he was never coming back. It still baffles me that he let his lack of courage influence his decisions. I mean, who leaves with just a back pack and nothing else? Who gives everything they’ve owned for years, to include socks and jock straps, to the Salvation Army? Thirteen plastic garbage bags later, and he did.

Life has changed radically since he told me he was never coming back. My friends and God have offered me the strength of their shoulders and the curve of their feet. I have not walked alone and I am not bent over with too much to bare. My health is better than it’s ever been.

I seek solace in God and am offered vastness. Grief is only a single stone on a sheet of water. My friend gave me a quartz which is heavy in my hand. Four pounds of crystal. I float on the sheet of water, the crystal on my belly and am lit be the sun, and later shadowed by the moon. My love for all is complete in this minute. No one has taken anything from me. I am simply offered myself, and myself is good, is strong, has vision that will outlive the sting of a failed relationship.

Today is June 29, 2013. I am alive and well.

“Words can create, quicken, heal; words can destroy, maim, kill.” “Words,” Kipling says, “are the most powerful drug used by mankind.” “Words have consequences; writing is a moral act.”

To reflect on all this I found interesting. Do I agree with the quotes? Is my own philosophy on writing to be found somewhere amongst these statements?

I do experience writing as a drug. There is no better zone in all the world than to be in the middle of a poem or a piece of prose that promises to reveal some truth, or simply something interesting.

I will have to ponder “writing as a moral act” and get back to you on this. But I most definitely believe words have consequences. And I try to use words the way I want them to be heard. I’m certain there has been times when I am misunderstood. I use to worry about this. Mostly, I don’t any longer. The people that are suppose to understand will understand; and the people that won’t, weren’t meant to. This is what I know tonight.

Today is June 20, 2013. I am alive and well.

So, a little bit about myself and why the blog. I am a 48-year-old woman who has alcoholism and schizophrenia; two diseases that tell me I don’t have a disease. Writing the blog reminds me of where I come from and hopefully dispels some of the myths that get attached to these two diseases.

I am in good health. It is possible to live well with these two diseases. It is not easy. In fact, it is quite difficult, but I am up for the challenge. And the pay off is tremendous!

I am a member of a twelve step program that assists me in taking care of my alcoholism. This year, God willing, I will be celebrating 20 years of sobriety.

This year, because of a good medication regimen that I take as prescribed every day, and a little bit of willingness to walk into the day, I will celebrate being hospital free from schizophrenia for six years.

I am a writer, and as such, I don’t usually write in simple black and white ways. I didn’t want my metaphors to cloud alcoholism and schizophrenia. But it is true my alcoholism is a patient dog who will, if not given clean water to drink regularly, drink from the sewer every time, making her quite sick. And my schizophrenia will place me on a runway with an oncoming plane. I will either step out of the way of the plane or jump onto one of the wings in flight to another reality other than the common one in which you and I eat dinner and watch the local news.

I invite you to take off your hat, stand in socks, and journey with me as I slide into truths. Alcoholics are not just men in sheets with bottles in paper bags. Schizophrenics are capable of joining others in the stream of stars that invite love and kindness and compassion. I welcome you. Ride with me. Suspend judgment. Reach out. The world is full of all of us and allows for unicorns. God bless.