doing all things with thanks to God in mind

The spiritual dimension of me is probably the main thing that has kept me through these years and even now. I was thinking today that everyday I wake up sane, or as old people used to say "clothed in my right mind", is a blessing from God. Everything else is gravy. It will be this way until I die. (I am not planning to get that sick again.)


Think about it. How many people are blessed enough to come out of and survive 25 years of psychosis, paranoia and delusion? I'm not bragging, I'm just saying, I lived in insanity. It was what it was. And now I give the thanks to whom it's due.


Now, it's so nice to just sit by myself in my apartment and listen to the quiet. My mind was never quiet for those years except in sleep. So, listening to the quiet is a real blessing.


To go to a job I like and believe in is a blessing. Imagine, I get to encourage and support fellow peers as they journey into wellness. And, the job is as good in theory as it is in actuality.


So, I thank God, from whom all blessings flow. And I trust in the Lord, leaning not to my own understanding. I acknowledge Him in every way and He directs my path. I cast my burdens on the Lord, and lose my care.


This is my personal truth.

person-centered care

I believe in person-centered care. You have to use everything you have within you to make it through this kind of illness. A person who is just reduced to a "pill-popper" will never be well in the long-run in my opinion. Take it from one who found herself at 45 in body and 21 in emotional and social arenas.


I have isolated myself since this illness started. It took everything I had to work, the times that I did. I never really had a therapist until i was about 37. Oh, I've had flashes in the pan, but no one you would go back to. Mainly, my treatment consisted of meds, hospital and psychiatrists visits. It's no wonder I've always felt so disconnected, even from myself. So, I found myself in my 40's feeling like I was in my 20s.


I feel very awkward because I'm just facing the world as a rational adult and yet I'm 49.


There was much work to do when I found myself free from the torture. I do want to live a whole life and not just go to work and do nothing else. I think I deserve much more than that. So, I devised a plan that has here-to-fore been successful.


First, since I had been in isolation for so long and I knew my social skills were "not," I joined a group at NAMI that goes to different events and once a month bowling and pizza. It's a great group. I knew I could go there because not only is it just for consumers but it is consumer run. You didn't have to feel like a sore thumb. However, at first I did. I went for a year until my job changed and interfered with the timing. But, it's great because you have many consumers at many levels and there's got to be someone you click with. I found a lot of people like this.


Second, I devised a plan to get me away from here. I need to start over and I need to be around family. So, I put myself on a timeline to move to Atlanta. I'm sure that if I pass their test for certification, I can easily find a peer support specialist job, which was my career goal. I have already accomplished the goal for working here as one and I get to work for the company I envisioned working for. I have 200 of the 500 hours it takes to get certified in this state and then I would just have to take the test in Georgia.


Third, I had to find a more comfortable church. I needed to start over. The church I went to, I was a member for 6 years and knew no one but the Seniors I worked with and later attended bible study with at their fellowship. The church has thousands of members, three services and its just unmanageable for me to navigate. What I needed was a smaller down-home type of church where everyone at least talked about being family with one another.


After a couple churches, I felt like Goldilocks. But, I finally got it right (I think, it's still very new for me). I feel the Spirit and I feel comfortable and the Pastor is a good preacher. I'm not intimidated by a sea of faces every Sunday morning and I like that. That's really all I need. So, I dubbed this one "just right."


I just received confirmation that I passed my medical for my Commercial Drivers License and now all I have to do is get myself finger printed. That, I won't worry about. I have had no major run-ins with the law. But, my medical was a nail-biter because I take so many medications. I'm sure I need them though (after all these years of being refractory, I would know). It would have been ironic that the very condition that most qualified me for the job, kept me from complying. Praise God.


After 35 years, I've quit smoking. I have been smoke free for 6 months and some change. Now, I need to concentrate on my diet, my health and my weight. No one told me that I would gain a lot of weight on these medications and at first I was too sick to really care. I wish that someone would have talked to me about nutrition and exercise when I was still a size 6 (smile).

share the wealth of information (everyone)

I'm in love with the commercial with Susan Taylor and Terrie Williams trying to entice the African-American Community into a dialogue about mental illness. This has been a long time coming. We judge so harshly sometimes. Even some of those within our own families. They say things like,"stop being lazy and get a job," when you're trying to work but can't hold one.

I think these women are very astute for bringing this to the forefront. The more people that are educated about this illness, I believe they will let the stigma go. I think the nation is due for this kind of conversation.

I saw and heard Terrie Williams at a women's retreat. She was very compelling in her call for "a healing" in the community. I hope this catches on and in my lifetime, I can talk about the brain disorder I have as if it were diabetes. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

you better work

All the entries I have made in this blog are my experiences with schizoaffective disorder. This is all I know. There is not a wealth of definitive information about schizophrenia and other forms. The brain is a complex organ. Psychiatrists only guess at what medication will work for any given person; it's a crap shoot at best, in my opinion.

I tried to find information on suicidal ideations and schizophrenia. I didn't find many conclusive answers or statistics. Again, all I know is what I've lived. No journal can tell me about my pain and neither can a psychiatrist unless they have the same brain disorder.

Every day was a trial. I just wanted to escape the emotional pain and character orchestration in my head. It got to the point that I didn't know which voice was mine. I was still trying to work, but I never could hold down a job for long period of time because of the voices. There was one exception where I worked for seven years. I'm a 49-year old woman and that's the longest time that I have worked with no interruption until the end when I had to go on FMLA.

I  have a B.A. in Journalism that I tried to use twice. Both jobs were excellent opportunities for me. One was at a newsletter publishing firm in Arlington, VA and the other was a newspaper reporter position for a small town in West Virginia. The Arlington job was great. I even got to cover a story at a congressional hearing. It made me feel like a journalist because I was just out of school. I lived with suicidal ideations all day long and I never told my family this. I told them that I wanted to leave because I couldn't find good medical  help... well, I couldn't. But I was more scared of trying to commit suicide and succeeding and that they would only discover my body when it started stinking in the hall.

The worse part is I loved this job. Whenever my symptoms got too much to manage, I would tell them I suffer from migraines and leave (more acceptable) and they were cool with that as long as I got my work done. There's a real difference in working with creative people versus a "normal" job. I loved that difference. Nevertheless, the ideations and voices kept on to the point that I knew I had to go home and refresh. I refused to give up.
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But, I should have. Two weeks into my new reporting job about six months after the newsletter firm, I tried to commit suicide.  I was on my way to the police station to discuss a molestation case. I had a panic attack, but at that time I didn't know what one was. I was crying like I was over one of my parent's grave. And I couldn't compose myself as I drove into the parking lot. I sat there a long time unable to compose myself.

I drove to my doctor's office. He wasn't there.  I went home. I called my dad. He wasn't in his office. I called friend. He wasn't there. That's when I looked at the bottle of Xanax  and decided to take them all.

I wanted my family to know that they could have done nothing. I just wanted to get rid of the drama that played out in my head every day. So, I left a note. I was blessed though; but, I didn't think so then.

In my haste to call someone, I left my apartment door unlocked. A friend from work, who was a quintessential reporter, came to investigate when I never returned from the police station. She brought police with her so that she could enter the apartment. They called an ambulance and saved my life.

The only reason I never attempted again is the look on my father's face the next day. He had driven from Pittsburgh to see about me. I didn't want to inflict pain on my parents or family, I just wanted mine to end. But, it didn't. So, as my poem in the first post said, I got a double dose.

I still tried to work, never finding a professional job. I worked a lot of minimum wage jobs. I couldn't hold one. This was rock bottom for me. I was 28 years old and I couldn't take care of myself. I felt so inadequate. This is about the time I was introduced to clozapine by my psychiatrist (an anti-psychotic) . It dulled the voices some so that I could crawl into a bank customer service phone job every day. But, I was proud of myself for working. There was a time when I was almost agorophobic, but my father scared me when he told me that I could sit here with him the rest of my life or push myself out the door everyday. Needless to say, visions of being an adult child in their home scared me.

I worked this job until my new psychiatrist (I had to change psychiatrists since I now worked, this messed my treatment up considerably) decided that he didn't know what to do with me after six years of treating me relatively well and reccomended FMLA. Well, that just gave me a vacation; it didn't improve my symptoms. When I came back things were very tense, but before they lowered the boom, I recieved a job offer from a company in Philadelphia I had applied to.

This company asked me to leave after two years. Of course, they persuaded me to resign. That brought me to New Jersey and my parent's home, again.

I have worked retail here. I was a security guard for three years. And, then I set my sites on a peer specialist position. I thank God for blessing me with such a position. I get to help people like me for a living.

Dreams deferred? I've had many. But I think that everything is in line right now. I know that whatever happens from now on, I'm going to be just fine. Even if I relapse or lose this job. I am very calm. And I feel relaxed. I know that He is in control.

risking feelings

Some people may think me strange to put it on the line with a subject like mental illness. I say we all need to have a serious discussion about the subject. Especially when the only time we hear about it is when someone has been murdered or shot. Nevertheless, I do it because I want to help and I think it needs to be done.

I first "disclosed" as part of a documentary, "Documenting our presence....", in 2007. I talked about my illness, treatment and life openly. I did it because I had just come out of 25 years of psychosis and I wanted to help.

After I saw the documentary for the first time, I thought, "Oh no...I've put myself out there for the world to see." But then, I thought that it was for the greater good. That is when I decided I wanted to be an active voice in the "trenches" of the war on stigma.

I work with NAMI-NJ (National Alliance on Mental Illness-New Jersey) as a volunteer. So, I then began to be a presenter in their program, "In Our Own Voice", where we speak to different groups in the community about our experiences living with a mental illness. Our main goal is to try to eliminate stigma through education and putting a "face" on the illness.

I have also done speaking engagements and I hope to do more. I maintain that if we would all speak out and stand up we could eradicate the stigma associated with brain disorders. I just want to do my part.

invisible and invincible

You may think of the two terms in the title as oxymoronic. They are. But they can still coexist. I was invisible for 25 years. I sat in public places alone, entertaining my voices (not out loud), laughing. Looking back, I know people looked; raised an eyebrow. But, I was oblivious. Because I felt invisible. I didn't care and couldn't imagine anyone caring about me or why they would. (illness will do this for you) Invisible.

Now, I am about 8 on the wellness scale. I still go out alone if I want to. I eat alone. I go to coffeehouses and write alone. I will go to the movies alone. Anything I want to do I do, if there's no one to come along or it's spontaneous. I go it alone, even though I now know I am not invisible. I don't care. Twenty-five years of psychosis trained me well. Although now, I feel I am invincible. I have come back to life. I have recovered.

I was reminded of this by a man I saw in Panera. I could tell right away he had problems. I saw myself.


we know us
(when we see us)

walkin around like a
ghost
in a public place
alone
can't sit still
outside/inside/outside/inside
putting little papers in the trash
intermittently
probably thinks he's invisible
'cause
he doesn't see us
i can look back
and see me
want to save someone
but don't want to scare them
telling them of
the road ahead
he was
refractory
or at the beginning
of a psychiatric journey

someone probably dropped
him off
thinking
it'll be good for him

but he doesn't mind
he's invisible

and i am
frequently alone in public places
doesn't bother me
psychosis and invisibility prepared me for it
now
i am invincible
i have recovered from a mental illness


By the way, I saw him later at the office where I see my therapist.

the things we leave behind

there are things we leave behind that we can never recover. i'm sure you can think of a few whether you have experienced a loss of your faculties or not. i was "struck down" at 20. i thought i was grown but i was still very much a child. i had no responsibilities but school and personal maintenance. suffice it to say, i was relatively carefree. i would have liked to progress from thos days gradually, naturally. i missed the natural progression of life at that stage into adulthood.

i would have liked to have been stable enough to meet someone and marry, have a family. i still don't think i am mature enough emotionally or financially to raise a child, especially on my own. sometimes, this saddens me. but, i know i couldn't have handled either in the state i was in.

i miss the friends i left behind because i was too paranoid to deal with them.

i miss the joy of meeting and knowing people because i was scared of them and thought they could read my mind.

i miss the many chances i had to make somewhat of the success of my life like the ongoing engineering internship, the newspaper job and the newsletter publishing job where i was a reporter. and even though i didn't particularly care for this job, the insurance job i got fired from (at least it was work).

i miss jacquese as i used to know her.

i missed a whole bunch of parties and clubs and foolishness. i used to love to trip with my friends.

i miss being the highly intelligent confident person i was and wonder if i would have maintained that had i progressed naturally.