Tag Archives: Mind WIthout a Home

Today is July 5, 2013. I am alive and well.

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Just off work from the library. I am tired, but I brought three books home about word press and blogging! I learned I have 34 books checked out. I have no idea where they all are. It will be a treasure hunt! Hope all enjoyed the 4th! Below is an excerpt from Mind Without a Home. It is kind of long. Hopefully it won’t bore you. Someone once told me that any writing was okay as long as it didn’t bore people!

Often I wake to a cluttered conversation carried on by people I can’t see. Guy has left for the morning, leaving his side of the bed in an open yawn. I look to the little dogs. Their bodies lay like thick socks at my feet. They don’t hear what I hear, or at least, they show no interest.

I can’t make sense of the air but rise away, my naked body a shimmer of life. The six feet that I am dresses in shorts, a T-shirt, and rubber flip-flops. It is the dogs that motivate my movement. They must be walked on leashes. This ritual spills me into the morning like the sun curling around dawn.

Today is June 26, 2013. I am alive and well.

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My blogs only color comes from the words posted on it. I don’t know how to add purples or blues or pictures of chipmunks eating bread at my feet. I am meeting with a friend on Friday to try and remedy some of this. Her blog is great, Emilyism.com. Her conversations with her audience are lively and she has pictures. So, please hang in there with me…I am working on making the blog more visually interesting. Below is another excerpt from my book, Mind Without a Home.

Three is not a good number; it is a chair missing a leg.

I’m too tired to think ink. To think word. To think of pen, scratching its way across freeways, between cars deadened to their role in pollution and war. So much depends upon concern for the squirrel who just got flattened on Route 10.

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

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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.

Today is June 16, 2013. I am alive and well.

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Another Sunday. Guy and I were going to see The Man of Steel but the show was sold out and we didn’t feel like standing in line for two hours to catch the next one. Two hours is a great deal of time to me. I savor time. Gertrude Stein said genius required a lot of time. Maybe one day I will establish genius! Would that mean I would be able to finish cross word puzzles and have a meaningful conversation with the professor of religious studies at the local university? Ha….and then I want to believe what Flannery O’Connor said, “Nothing you write will lack meaning because the meaning is in you.” Beautiful, isn’t it?

Excerpt from Mind WIthout a Home–

The line goes dead. It is three in the morning. I don’t know what to do. I softly return the phone to its cradle and turn on the television. Mom will be in a coma and placed on life support within the hour. Her liver quit working. Everything quit working.

Today is June 11, 2013. I am alive and well.

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I’m sitting in a Starbuck’s with a great cup of coffee, noise, and song. I like it here; the energy is vibrant. I stopped coming for awhile because I wanted to be available to my 95-year-old neighbor. Her daughter was paying me money to clean and keep an eye on her. Well, the neighbor fired me! She said I wasn’t worth $60 a week. I know her statement wasn’t meant to hurt. I know not to take it personal; it is just a matter of budget, which I understand. I am still available to her, just not all the time. The $60 was going to pay my Starbuck’s bill…oh well!!

I’m amazed at how often I mention birds in the manuscript.

Excerpt–

The sun has not dreamt itself awake yet. I cannot hear through the window the excited nature of birds announcing dawn.

The skull he becomes with the use of cocaine leaves him with no expression although inside he feels he is bursting and all drives are heightened. He wants to do things he is incapable of doing like jumping off the fifteen story high Bank of America, migrating with the birds heading north for a place of safety.

Gladys was thin and frail, swimming in a night coat the color of salmon with a voice as large as the Liberty Bell at noon on a clear morning of quiet birds.

Hunter lifts her head, slowly, its weight apparent. It is possible for a head to weigh more than a few pounds on a disenchanted day when even birds stay in the limbs and droop.

Today is June 11, 2013. I am alive and well.

 

Today is June 8th. I am alive and well.

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I’m entering a couple of excerpts from my book. If you want more excerpts please let me know, or less, let me know that too. Yes or no, it’s all good.

Excerpt–
It’s the nature of night to be dark, but then the moon gets thrown in to pull at our bellies, to pull us right out of our pants before we become lost like a black ant in the bottom of a black bowl.

As for mental illness, I struggled. The plague had yet to catch me completely. I thought of it as a Stephen King novel. I knew it was there, I knew something was happening, but in the first 150 pages of a 500 page book, it had yet to reveal itself. I still had time before my heart was cut out and my mind completely poisoned.

End Excerpt.

Today, I will go to the movies; something I couldn’t do when my mind was wrapped in sickness. It feels lovely. And I will of course be accompanied by the love of my life, Guy. We have been together for eleven years. Amazing. Thank all of you for being out there.

Today is June 8th. I am alive and well.

Today is June 5, 2013. I am alive and well.

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Why don’t we all have blogs? I think, why as drunks, do we not all get sober? How are the two related? Is it an issue of vulnerability? I just finished reading a magazine article that talked to the strength that comes with being vulnerable. I don’t know how vulnerable I am being in this blog–my shirt is not on backwards, the tag is not showing. When standing in line behind someone that has a tag showing I ask “may I put your tag down?” Some are put off by this, and some are actually grateful. Maybe the put off person thinks I am flirting, man or woman alike! I think there are better pick up lines….great hair, nice hands, I love your voice, do you have a dog?

As for getting sober, my mom did not make it. Her liver stopped working at the age of 58. Wednesday she’s walking around, Thursday she’s on life support. The life support is pulled and she dies. I am left to kiss her forehead one last time.

Today, I will hold my mom close, feel her breath as I imagine it on my cheek, feel her fingers trying to make sense of the knotted curls that is my hair, and I will work at the library, being the best employee I know how to be.

Today is June 5, 2013. I am alive and well.

Today is June 1, 2013. I am alive and well.

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My anxiety is a little mouse doing laps on his wheel, his reflection on the clear plastic of his cage multiplying the singular. I worry; I seek God before I worry. Sometimes seeking God is enough to wash away my worry. But not always. I don’t really know why I am stressed over my book being launched in August. I am both terrified and exhilarated at the same time. I must say, though, exhilaration wins out!

Today is June 1, 2013. I am alive and well.

Today is May 29, 2013. I’m alive and well.

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I have no idea how to begin a blog. Is hello necessary? Maybe. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening…any of it. Name. I’ll start with my name–Kristina Morgan. Middle name Marie if you would like to know. Just like putting butter on a warm roll. Kristina Marie Morgan. There, I’ve said it. I take full responsibility for all I write here. Hopefully, nothing offensive. Or is offensive a good thing? LIke having to open a glass jar with a rubber mat. It gets your full attention for 10 seconds, and then voila, there is release.

If you’ve gone to Amazon and looked up Mind WIthout a Home, you know that I am alcoholic and schizophrenic. My memoir includes details about both these things. Today, I believe I live life well. This has certainly not always been the case.

Pre-sobriety, I was a drunken shadow. I made myself as invisible as I could. Being six feet tall by the age of thirteen made this very difficult. In sobriety, I worked at a convenience food store. It was during the time that one could freely smoke in the store, even standing at the cash register. One night, a couple of police officers came into the store. One of them said to me “smoking will stunt your growth.” I said to him “thank God I started smoking! I don’t need to be any taller.”

Today is May 29, 2013. I’m alive and well.