Monthly Archives: April 2015

Two geese across a northern sky, skim of clouds and long horizons...

Anticipating Long green miles from the city Escape was well planned We even left home early But alas: road construction.Filed under: haiku, NaPoWriMo 2015, poems Tagged: NaPoWriMo, Tanka, travel

Sitting in my dining room, looking out of the picture windows. Everything is emerald green. I feel like I am sitting inside of a tropical rainforest. The verdant green, somehow so soothing and relaxing. So fresh, so young, so restful for my eyes. Today is a good day, a relaxed day, a “normal me” day. I’m always writing about all my anxiety, and bad feelings, so I really wanted to share today, a blissfully normal, calm, peaceful day. How many more of these are in store? Don’t know. In fact, today, I don’t care. I’ll just take this day and enjoy it. I have done nothing monumental or earth shattering, I have just sat here and enjoyed the view from my window, I have done laundry (haha) I have made lunch for myself, keeping in ming all my food allergies, I have fed my kitty Fluffin and given her her medicine. I’ve played Scrabble online, It isn’t important what I’ve done. What is important is that I have done it feeling calm, peaceful, and normal. Is there a lesson in this? Yes! It doesn’t matter what you do, it matters how you do it, that is to say in what state of mind you do it! Oh I really do hope this mood stays around for a while. I am going to do all in my power to make it stay. I really like it when I can smile, for no reason, just smile :-) And feel strong, and in control of my moods. Did this happen because of the meds? Because of the season? Because of some amazing insight I had? Maybe al little of all of the above. The perfect concoction, prescription, potion of all the ingredients, with a pinch of exercise thrown in. Yaaay! Today is my favorite day in all the days that have recently passed. Now I am getting ready for a cocktail party, and later going to Salsa dancing with my friend Cata! Bye, gtg and get ready! Love and hugs for you all.

Please note: This post is from the archives and does not necessarily reflect where my progress is today.

Well, I knew the ugly head of my illness would show up again, but I didn’t quite know it would be so fast.

I am having trouble with hearing voices again. This has gone on for a few days now. I finally gave up this morning and took a perphenazine which should help. I hate the perphenazine though…it makes my head feel full and sluggish.

I heard lots of noise outside my head last night. I am even getting some demons in there telling me I will go to HELL. The demons are just ridiculous. They sound like a parody of demons. It is even sort of hard to be frightened of them. I want to laugh and say “With you demons in my head, I feel like I am IN hell.” But I say nothing. I want to be polite.

Since I had the voices and took the perphenazine, I have a migraine. So I have more meds to take that away. My head is a mess. I feel high…but in a bad way.

I had so much planned today. I was going to give a presentation to some nursing students. I had my book club tonight. (I even read the book.) I had to cancel the presentation and boy did I ever feel guilty. Now the other guy who was going has to do it alone. He’s very articulate and I know he will do a good job, but I still feel bad. He is new…like I am…and it is tough to get out there alone. Not attending the book club is not such a big deal. There are about 12 people at it and one more or less doesn’t make a difference. But darn it, I read the book and liked it!

I checked my calendar tomorrow as I know I had better clear things for a couple of days. Yoga was tomorrow, but that doesn’t matter much. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist which I MUST go to. He’s got to hear about these voices and what they are telling me. I really don’t want to go into the hospital. I have a good friend I was going to go out with tomorrow night. I just called her and asked if she could come over to the house and have a little snack supper and chat. I can likely do that. Getting out is just the hard part. Saturday I have a friend coming in the morning to visit. She is bipolar also, so she doesn’t care how I look or feel. She will be there with me. And Saturday night I have my dreaded sister-in-law and her nice husband for dinner. I’ve got easy menu planned: grilled chicken, vegetables, potatoes from the slow cooker, rolls.

A lot of this is my fault. I was so happy at feeling better, that I overextended. But I just clutch at the straws of recovery because it is so nice. I’ve been down so long.

I’m wondering if I shouldn’t start making my calendar with every other day being a “free” day. Maybe Monday do stuff but Tuesday nothing. Build in some nothing time. The problem is these damned voices. You just never know when they are going to start up. I just CAN’T go on anything else for them. The perphenazine is just awful. I can’t drive on it and can barely think.

I know that recovery is two steps forward and one step back. Wait, let’s make that one step forward and two steps back. I don’t even know what to think any more. Will I ever get normal again for a period of time? Will it always be like this with the voices? I so desperately want to recover. I am doing all I know how to do. I feel sad and overwhelmed.

I have people I could reach out to, but I am ashamed. Afraid they will be disappointed in my voices again. And there is that fear that I will lose them as friends because they will have a fear of my craziness. Who wants to go to the movies with someone with voices? I haven’t even told my best friend about all this because I don’t want to burden her. I know she would listen, but she doesn’t need my troubles. The only people I totally can tell are the other mentally ill in my life. They get it. My husband doesn’t totally get it, but he is extremely supportive. He’s doing the best he can.

Is it wrong to wish that important people in your life could have voices and bipolar for one week? That they could walk in your shoes and know the fear and sadness? I want more than anything to be dependable and happy. I go back and back in my mind to the times I was happy. They are something to hold on to.

I’m not sure where I would be if it wasn’t for this blog. I love being able to talk in this anonymous world and let my feelings out. If you are reading this, know that you are helping me along. I feel your strength and weakness and know you are there.

Demons, be gone!

lily

My middle daughter has some big days coming–today’s her  sixteenth birthday, and she goes to take her driver’s test this morning to get her license.  She found out yesterday that she made a 31 on her ACT, so she feels good about her collegiate future.

It’s our second time through all these milestones, but they feel new just the same. Our middle one is a little different than our oldest one.  Both were very confident in themselves, but the middle one is  a little more self-motivated than her sister.  She keeps her grades high because it’s a matter of pride for her.  She’s excited to have made a 31, but now wants to try again to see if she can make a 33.  With all these brains comes a candy-store problem of what to do with them.  She is unsure what she wants to major in.  Our oldest knew from the time she was in ninth grade what she wanted to do.  So they are different in that aspect as well.

But our middle one has always been her own person, so we’ve never had to worry about negative peer pressure–she’s a leader rather than a follower.  She’s very special to us as are the other two.  So Happy Birthday, Little Bit.  Hope it’s a wonderful one.

The Department of Justice estimates that about 15 percent of state prisoners now “report symptoms that met the criteria for a psychotic disorder.”

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/29/8515489/clinton-mental-health-prisons

“Our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions,” Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton declared in a Wednesday speech on criminal justice reform.

Data on the incarceration of mentally ill Americans bears out Clinton’s point. In the past 50 years, there’s been a marked shift of mental health patients away from state-run institutions and to jails and prisons.

One recent report found that America’s jails and prisons now house 10 times as many mental health patients as state institutions.

This shift, as Clinton noted in her remarks, began with good intentions. In the 1960s and 1970s, mental health practitioners began to move patients out of long-stay psychiatric facilities — the type that came to be associated with abuse and neglect — and into more community-based treatment centers.

“You and I know that the promise of de-institutionalizing those in mental health facilities was supposed to be followed by the creation of community-based treatment centers,” Clinton said in her remarks. “Well, we got half of that equation — but not the other half.”

As the number of hospital beds at state psychiatric hospitals has shrunk, advocates have become concerned that patients lack access to adequate treatment, and that the prison and jail system has become a stand-in for the psychiatric hospitals that are disappearing.

“Looking back, it is possible to see the mistakes, and a primary problem was that mental health policy makers overlooked the difficulty of finding resources to meet the needs of a marginalized group of people living in scattered sites in the community,” Chris Koyanagi of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health concluded in his 2007 history of de-institutionalization.

The Department of Justice estimates that about 15 percent of state prisoners now “report symptoms that met the criteria for a psychotic disorder.” Inmates with mental health problems are more likely to be charged with violating the facility’s rules, with either physical fighting or verbal assaults. They are also more likely to have a history of substance abuse, be victims of physical or sexual abuse, and to have experienced homelessness in the year before their arrest.

Advocacy groups say prisons and jails are ill-equipped to provide mental health patients with the treatment they need. Inmates with serious mental health problems tend to have worse outcomes while incarcerated. Advocates cite previous studies showing that those with serious mental illness are disproportionately held in solitary confinement and frequently attempt suicide.