Unmedicated unstructured life…

Normally I am up at 7.  My usual self is most productive in the early morning and able to accomplish much when I jump right in and do it.  Showering is always easiest when I first jump out of bed and I can have a full days work done before noon, before any meals or even coffee when I just get to it.  No one here is on that type of schedule.

Till this last week I was still up by 7 but would be as quiet as possible till others are awake and moving around.  Now I sleep till noon and if I am up before that it’s for 20 minutes or so and then exhausted I head back to bed.  I barely function.  It is 9 pm and I have been awake only a few hours all day and its been only for an hour or so at a time.

I made an appointment at CNS healthcare for Monday.  I need help.  This isn’t getting better and without medication I am barely functioning.  I have yet to make a single phone call to my family.  I have a very nice list though.  Don’t know why it is so hard to just do it.  Several of them really need me to reach out to them and I just can’t right now.  I am just a waste of space and air and resources.

(Insert sound effect of needle being drug over a record here.  Does anyone on here even remember what it sounded like if you didn’t pick the needle up all the way when you removed your records?)

6:48am I slept all night.  I went to bed at 8:43 thinking I will get up again in 2 hours and try to write and slept all night!  I hadn’t gotten the trash out so I had to jump right in and get that done…then I turned on the dryer and cleared the kitchen table.  I did a sink load of dishes and then folded and put away the clothes that were washed 3 days ago.

By the time I got back to the dishes barely a half hour after I started and things were so much more open and less cluttered.  I actually feel better.  Much better.  Now for those phone calls…

They say that Valium are very addicting

and before the fog lifted upon waking the first thought is that I need one so today I decide it is time to stop.  No more “mothers little helpers”.   Instead I reach for the Hersey’s and take a long swig straight from the bottle.  Liquid happy, but very short lived.

The tired weighs down on me.  It becomes hard to function for long.  I am stirring pots of angry with people I come in contact with and these are just deeper and deeper messes that I will have to clean up later.  Sleep beacons and again and again throughout the day; I gratefully except.

I helped dye my nieces hair and in the process combed a few streaks through my own, then got on the computer.  I read and wrote for a few hours, slept for a bit till the words came and I had to return to the keyboard; it’s dryed on my hair.  I should wash it out.  The next time I wake up I will;  It’s easier to jump into the shower when I first awaken.

I fear checking my mail as I have waited and waited for someone to write and the longer its gone on the more demanding I have gotten.  Yea that works… NOT!   Think I will try another swig of Hersey’s and go back to bed now.

Cage me…I am whacked today!!!

Someone posted that they thought they would be more comfortable if the mentally ill could be forced into mental hospitals and locked away where no one had to see them.  It’s all that I can do to keep from posting on HER site that the world be a more beautiful place if we could take everyone that made us uncomfortable and lock them all away!

Yes, do lock up all those with a disability!  Better yet lets add those with diseases that make them not pretty, the ones with pock-marked skin, or those who can’t control their limbs, and how about the fat ones!!!  By the way, we already shame all of them into hiding in their homes by not treating them like human beings!!!

Why not just stare at him with disgust when you see him and talk about him to others so that he can hear and be hurt by what you say; that is much cheaper on society as a whole!   I have been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment and I can tell you it is extremely effective.  Just make it more obvious that your elitist club isn’t for HIS kind, that it is for those that are Better off then him… that don’t need the HELP that you offer as bad.  Those that wouldn’t need half the understanding or resources, because you just can’t help HIS kind.

THIS is personal and she didn’t mean it personally.  I too have wandered the streets dirty and mumbling to myself.  I have been so out of it that the fear she speaks of the neighbors having of him was meant for me as well.  People are afraid of the mentally ill and every time it comes up in the media they play on that fear!  It sickens me and I take that very fucking personally!

It scares me because I know that when I seem to take every thing in the worst possible way, there is something different in my thinking.  I begin to want to scream at everyone that I come in contact with!   I only see wrong wrong wrong!!!   This is hard emotionally and harder because I know this means I am going to need medication if I don’t get past it soon.

I seem to spiral downward the longer I am in this space.  At this point I seem in it and out of it at the same time.  I don’t know if that makes any sense at all really but I am still able to see my thinking as irrational.

I had to stop answering letters and posts because I can be hurtful from this space.  I’m angry and the world is wrong and I too am scared!

In memory of…

When we got married, Mom stocked our house with things that Bob had collected over the years. When he went “canning” he had often brought back treasures he had found that were too good to throw away. She washed them all up and stored them a way for a day when he would move out on his own and need them.

At 41 he finally did. She was beyond supportive and loving. She was the Mom I measure myself against and I am afraid I will always come up short.

She raised a man who did more with the 85 IQ points God gave him then most of the men I know with far more.  He thought that he had value and worth and was competent and as deserving of the good things that life offered as any born on this planet.  She always put HER children first in her life, right up to the end and sacrificed her own happiness for theirs gladly.

I was blessed for a time to share my life with hers. We all moved on before she did, but now she has.   The last few times I visited it seemed like it took a very long time before she acknowledged my presents.

It was like she was deep inside herself and it took a lot of effort to come out and speak with me.  She raised 6 wonderful children, Cindy, Sue, Debby, Carol, Billy and my husband Bob. I am sure that where ever she was she was enjoying all the best of the times they had together.

She was sweet, nurturing, and unselfish. The best qualities a Mom can have and the world is better for the gift of her in it.

This space was supposed to be funny!

When I started this blog space my sister-in-law was dealing well with her cancer.  Our needs were met.  Everyone I knew was basically doing as good as ever and my mental space was the best it’s ever been.  I wanted to have a place to share that joy of living that was spilling over.  This woman is laugh out loud funny.  I wanted to capture that.   Share it with others.

Where we are now sucks!   Don’t you think when you have a really hard thing going on that God ought to clear your plate of all the trivial crap, and just let you deal with that?  Why does it seem to RAIN SHIT!  We try like hell to screen what we let in but it’s a full-out battle.

I have had to put my focus on other things just to keep the discipline of writing.  I don’t want a diary of this.  I don’t want to live it the first time!

People that we love are dying and for me that is a natural process but the way they have left us, has left us with guilt that makes the grief hard to bear, or even claim.  So what you’re getting now is me on here everyday, no matter what; trying to post something…anything, just for the discipline of doing it.  Yesterday all I could do was read others posts and stare at the screen.

Several times during the day, I felt so weighed down that I went back to bed; but I kept coming back here and still I wrote nothing.  Not one word.  I am so full of grief that I can feel myself shutting down.  I have been here before.  I know how to work it through.  I can’t just let it happen this time.   It’s not the grief that’s doing this.  It’s the guilt.  I have opened up that file and the emotions are overwhelming me.

So I pick it apart.  I have been so involved in the day-to-day of living that I have neglected the needs of those I love.  This weighs heavy on my heart.  I tend to keep in touch with those on Facebook and to neglect everyone else as if this is the extent of my reach.  I only do what it easy.   Normally I would show up at their door or make family time.  Now they are so many miles away and it’s no longer possible to do that.

Years ago they invented a phone so that people could keep in touch with the one’s they love.  I have a strong aversion to using it.  I hate it ringing, interrupting what ever I am doing, for what is often only aggravation.  I don’t want to call out either.   Years of expectation that I should call and keep in touch with the ones I love, that I need to be the one to do so has made it a chore that I resist doing.

So today I make a list of calls to make.  To keep this from being a problem again in the future I make up a calendar with an appointment schedule for calling those that I love.   When the calls are done I will again see how I feel and if it’s not enough look for something else that will take the guilt off my table.

I think also that I need to spend some time praying for their needs to be met.  I am not religious but I do believe in the power of prayer.  The tool of prayer makes me feel less helpless in the face of all the things that I can’t control.  It is easy for me to give Thanks.  I often find myself doing that; so much harder to ask for anything, even when it’s for someone I love.  Practice;  I will do it because I need the practice, until it gets easy and natural for me to do.

Then I can return to trying to pick out the roses, and sharing the beauty I see.

Thank you Ariel Gore…

Because of you today I branded myself.  “She spent her life not able to hang on to anything until the day she got it all!”

It kind of gives me something to hang on to that looks a little like hope, or promise of some kind of future different then the life I have known.  One where I won’t push everyone I love away feeling like I’m poison.  A future where I don’t need to sleep on the floor or to discard everything I love to make sure that I never get comfortable, never trust.

If you have read any of my other posts you know I am 3000 miles from my kids, cat computer, lover, paintings and the few possessions that I had managed to hang on to over the years.

I never seem to keep more then what will fit in a mid-sized car, and it alarms me now to count how many times I have found myself exactly where I am with nothing but a few clothes and a toothbrush over a thousand miles from anything that meant home to me.

I think, “well things don’t really mean anything to me” but that would mean I wouldn’t miss them and for the most part I don’t … but parts of me do, and they bleed for paintings that they can’t ever finish.  Or the book that took them years to write, that is lost.  The cat that was the only animal in 50 years that I have ever had that I attached to.  The grandchild that month after month calls someone else Grandma and has forgotten that I exist.  The stuffed animal my daughter had given me, that my step daughter hugged in my favorite picture of her just before the state stepped in to take her away.

(It was the death of my second marriage that my husband signed his rights away; as I too grew up in foster care.)

I know what it is, to know as a small child that you owe a debt to people who abuse you, “for the food in your mouth and the shoes on your feet”.  I knew that anything could be taken from me without warning or even a nod to the fact that I might have a need or want that it should be different; as an Adult I do it to myself, again and again.

“Velcro not strings” is the handle I chose because I have spent probably too much time on dating sites and there are so many ads for relationships with no strings attached.  At times I think that is the Only type of relationship I should be in.  I get that it is hard for people to deal with all the changes with me, but the one that I want is that heart to heart forever love that’s unbreakable and endures beyond the simple trappings of the life we share here.

I am in a funny sort of long distance, on again off again, relationship with someone and as with every relationship I have ever been in I keep hoping that it’s the last relationship I will have.  That this will be my “till death do us part”.  I feel for him though.  

This isn’t the first time I am made aware that to be in my life is to be damaged by me.  Not because I am abusive or intentionally harm others but because the changeable nature of who I am makes it impossible to depend on me.  I make plans for the future and forget them when in their mind those plans were solid and real.  I start things that never get finished.  Treat you like your gold one day and like I don’t know who you are the next.

In spite of all these things, to my total dismay that lover/boyfriend refuses to let me go, my family embraces me like I am precious to them, my grandchildren call in the middle of the night to say how much they miss me, and my friends have always stayed true friends to me.  They all tolerate my coming and going, intensity and abandonment over and over again and still have kind things to say to me.  They put out a welcome mat and still wish me to darken their doorway.

My dream is of a day: when I will have a place to really call my home; a huge communal space filled with children, art and music and vibrant with activity, containing everyone I love who wishes to be there; when with or without a marriage license I will find that love that want’s my energy and their’s to vibrate as one for all time and eternity; and when I won’t use strings to bind me to all that I love, but crazy glue!

I was thinking that we would do better.

By now everyone has seen what Mc Donalds believes your low-income wage should be able to cover.  They want you to maintain 2 jobs, find health insurance for only $20 a month (Wait!!! I had horrible insurance that paid nothing and still cost us over $200), and not pay for heat!

To keep things simple they didn’t break down a lot of items.  After all when you have to buy all your personal items, keep your clothing clean, maintain and fuel your car and eat for less than $30.  a day, it looks pretty bad to knock off that first $10 for fuel alone.  Oh and I forgot to mention that this is only after you get your second job!

The fact that so many employers don’t want to pay a full living wage isn’t the whole picture.  People who are in a position to debate these things don’t even start to address the ways that low-income people are kept in their place.

How about the pressure to do way more than possible in the time allowed so that you’re “voluntarily” working off the clock to get it all done.  You will if you want to keep the job, because employers know that there are at least two dozen people standing in line for it if you don’t.

How about the fact that they keep changing your days and hours every week and then only give you schedules two days in advance.  That way they keep you from being able to find second jobs that would work anywhere close to your normal waking work hours.

Then if you choose that second job, besides working over 60 hours a week, your hours are spread so that you are lucky to get 4 hours of sleep a night to maintain it!  It’s ok you will get a nap in your car right after you drive though Wendy’s and eat off their dollar menu.

Waaaa Waaaa Waaaa.   Aren’t the majority of us sick of hearing about the few people stupid enough and lazy enough not to get a “decent” job?

Rusty Harris@Chad Hill  got 36 likes for his comment…” Why should I “share” what I have earned, with you? Did you help me in MY JOB, to say I should “share”?  Get up off your lazy butt, like I did from the time I was 14, AND WORK!  I had 2-3 jobs until I was out of college.  I have been gainfully employed in my chosen field for over 32 years!

Go Rusty!   I bet every last one of those likes are from healthy white males over 40.   Not one of them have listened to anything but Fox News for at least the last 20!   They don’t even want to realize that in the last 20 years most good paying jobs have been squeezed out by corporations that moved jobs over sea’s to fatten profits.

They don’t want to wake up and take an honest look at what younger people are facing.  It should make you a bit worried.  After all you’re in your 50’s and there are all those really way over educated young people coming up behind you, who are much more aware of what the markets needs are now.

Like Christopher Engleby ·of Penn State… ” the biggest problem facing our generation today is the refusal to admit its your own fault and get out their and change it.. start your own business .. for some reason we think we should be entertained and party 24/7 and still be paid like the people out their creating jobs and opportunities. sad”

He see’s the big picture but at 20 Christopher still thinks he has all the answers.   We will forgive you for not realizing that starting your own business may not be the perfect answer to paying off those school loans you’re adding up.

What kind of business will you start?  Failure rates in the first 5 years are high.  To help you out a bit here, in order from highest to lowest are the five year survival rates for new businesses.

• mining (51.3 percent)
• manufacturing (48.4 percent)
• services (47.6 percent)
• wholesaling and agriculture (47.4 percent)
• retailing (41.1 percent)
• finance, insurance, and real estate (39.6 percent)
• transportation, communications and utilities (39.4 percent)
• construction (36.4 percent)

You have no way to know how complicated starting a new business is or how hard it will be to compete with companies who produce products outside the US.  Of course you can start a business that out-sources all it’s work to China so that you can compete with Walmart’s prices.  Then at least you can afford to pay YOU.

If you don’t then you will be happy to know that about 25% of all workers have been willing to make less then $10. per hour and I’m sure it won’t bother you that most of those are adults that will have no retirement to look forward to.   If you succeed you will be happy that there are at least 25  job seekers for every job opening in the US.

If you don’t maybe being one of them will take just a bit of the bravado out of you.  Odds are that your both healthy white males.  Most of the cuts in employment clearly don’t seem to effect you.

Well, maybe you would have been more worried when they cut all those teaching jobs, if you had to think about having kids in school.

Nursing jobs?  Look for a nurse next time you need hospital care.  They have cut staffing to the bone!   People hire me to sit with family members in the hospital so they can get the care they need when the family isn’t around to give it.

Those people went to school and worked hard to get those $40,000 a year jobs.  Where do they work now?  Did you hear that they are letting go huge numbers of firemen, policemen, and government workers? Ouch!  Those people also make $35,000 -$60,000 a year.

All those incomes would have helped to support some of those new businesses you think everyone should get off their lazy butts and start.  Who will you sell to and serve?  As the number of empty store fronts in our town will attest to, just having a business doesn’t mean that you will make a living.

Where are these people going?  Are these people not worth counting as well?  Are they not worthy of caring about?  Wait who is going to keep us safe?   Who is going to take my complaint when they couldn’t send me my Birth-certificate for 7 months that I needed to renew my license because we are not willing to pay for those workers either?

If your part of the middle class that they are cutting you should be more worried then the rest of us really… because had you been out here having to find a job lately you would know, most employers don’t want to hire people way under the pay scale they are used to.

This is smart really.  They figure that your needs are not going to be met by the job and you won’t stay with it or be happy with what they offer long term.  Why hire you when there are so many already used to what they are willing to pay?

Well Rusty, you are looking at retirement but you haven’t looked up to notice that retirement is something that is slated to go!   Even if yours looks sewn up, tons of corporations have found ways to ditch their retirement responsibilities during bankruptcy proceedings and then open back up with a clean slate and even more profits.  You can always hope that the company you work for isn’t next in that line because Social security is not so secure anymore!

Good news is they are building more Walmart’s!   When you too find yourself unemployed by trickle down economics that long ago stopped trickling, you can always work there.  You see Walmart is used to moving into towns and hiring the people who made a living wage before they shut down all the places they used to work for.

They are willing to let you work for so little that you also qualify for food-stamps and medical!   Just kidding.  You see most states are shunning “Obama care” and making it impossible to get state medical and they just gutted the food stamp program.

Practicing living Singleton

I have D.I.D. or what used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder.  D.I.D. is considered a mental disorder that’s existence is much debated, and frequently diagnosed in the same people as bipolar disorder or like me Post-Traumatic Stress Disordered.

I would very much like to change something about the way people view mental illness in general and the way D.I.D. disordered people see themselves.  It seems like standard form even in the language to see mental illness as a character flaw.  When we view mental illness as a weakness it becomes something that works against progress and personal growth.  See it for what it is and it is just one more challenge to over come.

Trauma damages the brain.   It’s actually the loss the ability to access that damaged area of the brain that everyone sees with a stroke victim.  If you apply what they know about brain injury to trauma its easy to see what is going on with DID.

They have done brain scans of trauma victims and can see on the scan the noticeable “Dying back” effect on the brain.  I have experienced it again and again from the inside.  Just like with a stroke, you lose functioning.

The brain is a storage and processing system.  If a processing center has been injured the brains own capability to rewire itself will happen in a short time you will begin to function again by its using another part of the brain that wasn’t effected by the damage, to do that job.

When it’s the storage system (Memory) that has been damage all the new information begins to be stored in a new undamaged area.  Personality is really just a pattern of behavior, and dependent on memory.  A pattern has to start somewhere.  The basic structure of our nature, or how we respond to stimuli is ours at birth but each new decision that we make after that sets up that pattern.

What makes us like or dislike something?  How we experience it.  It’s a flash decision based on a huge intake of information,  and once we make that decision we normally wouldn’t make it again.  Do you like peas?  Well once you know that you don’t, unless your forced, you don’t eat them again.  Each new decision that we make will be based in part on the ones made in the past.

If you take away all the past information, we get to make those decisions again based on totally new intake of information.   We know tastes change and so do experiences; Each new area of the brain that stores memory will have a totally different pattern of making decisions, OR PERSONALITY.

Healing can occur if the damage wasn’t too severe, and when you get older you form an outer web of connections that make your brain more accessible and then you have my problem.  The brain can access all those separate files containing personality at random.  Wahoooo now were cooking!

If you are interested in the subject I would love to kick it around with you some more, but my point is with DID you are accessing separate files of the same human being subjected to different experiences.  DID is  a brain injury that makes behaving as a singleton extremely challenging and at times not even possible, but while some part of the brain function may be mentally ill, over all DID itself shouldn’t even be classified as a mental illness any more then a stroke or brain injury would.