Tag Archives: Mind WIthout a Home

Today is August 17, 2014. I am alive and fairly well.

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I had to inch my way out of bed this morning. I don’t know if I’m depressed or just exhausted. It is hot in Scottsdale, Arizona. The weather can’t catch me. I’m almost always in doors or in my nicely air conditioned Forerunner.

I had no idea that kittens’ tongues are like sand paper. Grams has taken it upon herself to wash my face in the middle of the night. This cute behavior I no longer care for. Placing my hand over my face does not deter her. Eventually, I fall back asleep…

I am out of bed like a bubble escaping its wand. Only I don’t pop; rather, I fall onto the couch, gracefully of course, robe wrapped awkwardly around me and hair wild with night, to watch SuperSoul Sunday on the Oprah Network. It amazes me the amount of money her guests make with God loving them. I do respect the guests’ charisma for lighting up a room and offering people the opportunity to welcome in light.

Have I welcomed light today? I believe so. It’s simple; I smile at Grams and Annie and smooth their hair. My body is moving by feet, not inches. God has blessed me with another day of sobriety. I look forward to eating my bagel with butter and orange marmalade. Today, I will tell at least two people that I love them. And I will bury the plant that I killed. Compost for the earth. I promise God I will not bring home another plant.

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Today is June 26, 2014. Despite things, I am alive and well.

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I have a broken heart. I don’t know how to write about it, but thought I would try. I don’t want to come off sounding like a victim, or as someone filled with self pity. Guy has been gone two months for work. He told me a couple of days ago that he wanted to start over in California with a new job and a new woman. He told me was never coming back to Arizona.

It’s amazing to me that he doesn’t want his stuff, to include all his clothes. He said he doesn’t have the courage to face me. Yes, he broke up with me over the telephone. We had been together for thirteen years, not counting the other two times he left me for another woman. You would think I would have learned.

I loved him with all of me. He has taught me that I am very capable of loving another human being. All this sounds trite, but I really do mean it. I think love is as powerful as grief. I have many people in my life to love. I am capable of experiencing grief and not getting mentally sick over it. This will be my first time I have suffered grief and not wound up in a psychiatric hospital.

Air is a thing of beauty. I breathe deeply. The sun is not blinding; I can see quite clearly. The day will bot be lost to me crying in a corner of my condo. I will be joyous today. Unlike years ago, I am addicted to life. I want to show up for what happens next. Give me a dollar and I’ll hand you a hundred pennies. Each penny is someone I love or someone I haven’t met yet to love. The weight of them is magnificent. Tiny pebbles are easily found in the landscape outside my door. I feel the weight of them also. It is good to have both feet on the ground heading north toward my car in which I will drive to work, grateful to have a job that I love and colleagues who radiate.

Today is June 21, 2014. I am alive and well.

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What if reality is an illusion and we are really walking around in a dream? It seems to me if this were true, we wouldn’t age. There would be no time. There are many books, though, that spend hundreds of pages making a case for reality as an illusion.

What would we gain if moving in a dream? As far as my brain can think this morning, I say nothing. Not only would we not age, but there would be no health issues. And we know that we do age and there are many health issues. Maybe if in a dream, we would be able to relax more. Feel the warmth of the shower beating on our back anytime we need to. Smell the soap. Revel in the steam.

Is God true reality or a part of the dream? I believe God to be true reality. I know this seems paradoxical. I have never physically touched God. God has never physically touched me. But I know God to be there just as I know my little dogs love me. God exists in the unconscious and conscious mind. I can sense something beyond thought.

Consider love. Isn’t love beyond thought? My niece and two nephews visited me at the library, my place of work, yesterday. Before I could think, I was enveloped in love. Adrenalin pumped through me and the feeling left me floating as if in a dream. Dream meets reality and the reality is love. I believe God to be love.

I think I have challenged my brain enough this morning. It is the weekend. I hope you all have a wonderful couple of days.

Today is June 18, 2014. I am alive and well.

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I have been spending a great deal of time organizing my second book. In reading it through again, I came across Hunter, my youngest sister by three years. Her name has been changed to give her a bit of anonymity. Hunter is a paper bag which has been ripped open from the weight of her own misgivings. I spent years trying to be helpful to Hunter, all for not.

Recently, I learned that Hunter had been labeled an extreme overdose after showing up in a hospital emergency room in Pennsylvania. How she got there, I have no idea. Got to Pennsylvania, not the emergency room. The emergency room makes sense as she has been an extreme drug addict for a long time, tearing through all the lives of those who once loved her.

After my niece told me about her admission to the hospital, I text back that I love Hunter because she is a creature of this earth, but I don’t like her. I have finally forgiven her for all the grief she’s caused me and the family. But I want nothing to do with her. Harsh, I know. And whose to say that if she showed up at my doorstep, sober, that I wouldn’t reach out to her.

She won’t find me. I am lost to her in all the ways a person can be lost to another. I pray for her peace of mind. I pray for her hoping it is not too late.

Today is June 15, 2014. I am alive and well.

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I am a women whose outline is continually traced by a black pen. Letters flow from the pen in quick succession, creating a quick glimpse of me:  tall, long dark hair, black clothing, Converse sneakers or black boots, slender, ten fingers, ten toes, two arms,two legs, and a hunger that pushes me forward from where I stand.

I haven’t always had the hunger. I was thinking today how good life is and how far I have come from being a woman obsessed with death, believing suicide may be the answer, to the usually joyful person I now am. I have peace. Sometimes my black outline gets smudged and I need to move in a different direction than where I was originally headed. But, move I do. The strength of the outline returns.

I have a friend who has stage 3 cancer. Her cancer has led me to reflect on my own life and inevitable death. I realized today that I actually fear death now. I definitely don’t want to die anytime soon, and not by my own hand. I can’t express in words the miracle that this is. Life is more than possible. Life leaves me ecstatic, wanting to become the person God intended me to be. I grow in the light and dark. The balance of the two I have come to rely on. Step in mud and track it into the house; then gratefully clean it up. 

Today is June 11, 2014. I am alive and well.

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I am loved beyond the edge of language–this is a line I wrote when talking about my friends in my second book. And it is true.

My first suicide attempt was at the age of eighteen. I remember having to tell myself over and over that no one cared for me, no one loved me. In doing this, I was attempting to rid myself of any responsibilities I had in regards to my family and friends. I did not want to think that maybe, just maybe, I was letting someone down by taking my own life. Ha. Letting someone down…people would have been devastated!

Today, when I have rough days (the days are not nearly as rough as they were in my late teens and twenties) I think about the people I am responsible to. That thinking pulls me through. I don’t know how healthy a psychologist would say this is, but if I can’t do it for myself, I can do it for them. This is why living with someone is such a big deal. I am responsible to Guy.

With Guy gone these last six weeks, I have fared much better than I thought I would. There are nights when I feel like I’m losing my mind, or that I’m having a melt down. I tell myself I’m just tired, I need rest, and it wil all look different in the morning. And by God, it does. I wake up with that new lease on life. I would have said “leash” on life but I don’t feel that much in control of things, which is good because often I don’t know what the best thing for me is and I don’t need to know. Intuitively, I take that next step forward and am slowly lead to where I need to be. Things in a day miraculously unfold. Things in a day have been beautifully good.

I am loved beyond the edge of language.

Today is June 7, 2014. I am alive and well.

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My eyes are in my hands as I reach into my purse, shuffling through items, trying to find the protein bar that will stave off my hunger. Rarely, does it occur to me to open the bag and simply look through the items, visually noting that I am carrying too much stuff. This purse, my favorite of all time purses, holds more that I originally thought it could. I actually downsized from the previous purse.

I don’t understand how men get by with no purse. They put everything into a wallet, but then what, what do they do with the wallet? Men, what do you do? Do you make certain that your pants have a pocket or that there is an inside pocket in your jacket. I”m in Phoenix, Arizona and I can tell you, no man is wearing a jacket at the height of summer, unless of course your name is Frosty and you need to shave off a bit of weight before heading back to the cooler you came from.

I dump my purse, curious as to what I have in there. It’s been ages since I actually looked. A wallet, bits of paper with all the passwords to all the various functions my computers at home and work are capable of doing, an extra protein bar, Ativan, much change, mostly pennies as I use the quarters for laundry, a little black book that I’m suppose to write in but never have, pens, work badge, the list is fairly dull. There is no rat or wilted flowers. The rat would chew its way through my protein bar, and the flowers would smell bad once they started rotting. Rotting things are rarely beautiful, ultimately reminding us of death. The body will rot without cremation. It will be rotting six feet under. (Note to self, I just referred to the body as an “it”) In my mind, we lose our names to “it.”

As for the soul, it leaves. I do believe it leaves. We are much more than our carcass. I would love to write what it is that we are after our carcass, but currently that is too complicated for my brain. I’m really not certain what I believe and am very willing to take suggestions. Part of the theme of my next book is discovering what it is I believe happens after death. I would love to hear from anyone who has already answered this question for themselves. Be well my friends. 

 

Today is June 1, 2014. I am alive and well despite myself.

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I have no shortage of time today. I find myself rally resistant to sitting down and writing. I allows myself only one hour of my addiction to Property Brothers. And I spent a couple of hours watching Super Soul Sunday on Oprah’s Network. I hadn’t realized that Maya Angelou had died. I usually don’t listen to people that are popular enough to earn a living writing. I get it in my mind that they are simply repeating over and over what has already been said and what has worked. I suppose that’s snobbery on my part.

Maya Angelou was fabulous. I really enjoyed her commitment to truth telling and her love of God. She radiated through the television and onto my couch. I felt touched by a being who truly loves.

Now, my resistance. Is it fear of not having anything to say? Is it fear of telling the truth? Is it fear of being boring? One of my professors said, “write anything, just don’t be boring.” I did take that to heart.

The only thing I can think of that I find really boring is brushing and flossing my teeth. Twice a day is almost beyond me. I do do it dutifully, though. The coffee stains are permanent and my teeth are crooked, but I’ve only had one cavity in my 50 years, and no other procedures.

The house is quiet. Guy is still out of town with the little dogs. It has been five weeks. My mind is treating me well; dust stops at my ears. I am moving like a swan in sneakers with no webbed feet.

Today is May 28, 2014. I am alive and well.

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I am working on a second memoir. I am working on it even if publishing it may not happen. My editor told me things with memoirs were slow, unless you’re a celebrity. I do understand that celebrity memoirs are dominating the genre. I keep writing regardless.

I like what Pearl S. Buck had to say about the writing process. She writes, “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has to get down to work.” Writing is like going to the gym today. I don’t want to do it, would rather be sleeping, but know it is good to forge on. So, I walked on the treadmill this morning and am now sitting in the favorite room in my house, the study, surrounded by deep blue walls, willing to be present enough to give writing my all.

I conjure up gardenias in my mind and breath them in. The smell is like a bite out of my favorite vanilla bar. I imagine my grandmother sitting beside me, silent, and am hoping to catch her voice. A picture of her pinned to my bulletin board, she in half shadow, looks imperial to me. I remember that writing about a grandmother is not cool. Too sentimental. My grandmother is no longer sitting beside me. Ha.

I will venture out into the world today. I look forward to being a worker among workers. I will glow in the presence of my colleagues at the library because they are good people. Tonight, I will retire knowing that I am loved and I do love. The mind is a wonderful place to visit. Forge on.

Today is May 25, 2014. I am alive and well.

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Michael Greenberg writes in Hurry Down Sunshine “It’s a terrible paradox–the mind falls in love with psychosis.” When I’m psychotic, I don’t understand that I’m psychotic. My psychosis doesn’t bother me. It is the people around me who are alarmed. I sometimes think I am a better writer when psychotic. My spiritual mentor has to remind me that I don’t write things that are lucid when psychotic. I have my own special language. I am paranoid that my medication robs me of some of my creative instinct, but then again without medication my mind does get sick. My prescribing physicians have done their best to not numb my mind, burying it in a haze of pills. Burying me in a cocktail so powerful that the best I can do is stare at the television with no sight, drooling. Seriously, I have been over medicated at times, unable to bend my arm and turn right. I may have to struggle a bit more on some days to stay in the common reality, but stay I do. Most of the time.