When I awake, I am still with thee

My body begins to ready itself. I stop the gagging reflexes. I grab the pills, count out three. I swallow them at once. My body instantly begins to gag and I hold my stomach in an attempt to keep them down. A minute passes and I know it’ll be okay.

After moments like these I wonder why me? For the rest of my life? And I’ll still have mood shifts? I may need more meds? I ask again, why me?

I’m 22 years old and I have the rest of my life to choke down these pills. It is not a choice I have anymore, but a necessity to living. I must also deal with the side effects of these pills, other than my body attempting to reject them. I once wrote with ease, poems could freely flow and I always had the right words. Now I go days vainly trying to write how I feel and nothing sounds right. Lithium has taken the edge off my creativity and I can no longer write in the way I’m used to. Writing used to be a coping mechanism and now it’s lost, so again my coping mechanisms must grow and change.

For the first time in my life, I’m seeing what a mood change is like when I’m healthy. I’ve graduated from therapy and moved on with my life. The abuse of my past no longer haunts me, at least not to the degree that I need therapy every week. I am considered well by friends, mentors and mental health professionals. And yet, I sit here on a Monday night, upping my dose of Seroquel even further so that I may sleep more than a few hours, and perhaps the nightmares will cease. I sit here knowing I’m depressed. But this time I know it’s not because of the abuse of the past and having to combat against that. Instead, I’m faced with immense stress and for once I see how manic depression intensifies everything. I don’t just get a little stressed and feel a little “blah,” but I get a lot stressed and feel actually depressed. Just like two months ago- I didn’t get a little high and excited, but I got a lot excited and faced consequences. Now I feel like I've emerged from a fog, and I'm trying to figure out what is around me and what is real or an illusion. Where's that damn maglite?

I may not be in the crisis mode that I once lived my life in, but I still fall prey to this mood madness. The twisted and sick joke of my abused life is that I couldn’t just heal from that and be fine, but I have manic depression so I will never be fine in the sense that a non-afflicted person would be fine. When I’m done healing from abuse, I have to begin to keep my bipolar in check. And know that when I’m stressed- it means so much more than when a non-afflicted person gets stressed. I need to doubly take care of myself and remember to find relaxing things to do.

The abuse was something external that happened to me- though I internalized much of what happened…it was still something external. This manic depression…that’s internal. It’s IN me. And I always wonder how you fight something that is coming from within you.

I know I will be having this battle more in the future and I have to make sure that I don’t see it as never-ending. Because the fact remains that I will get just a little better each time, and maybe at some point the battle will be hardly any work- I’ll win easily. I can still have a happy and healthy life. I just have to fight a little harder to attain that.

I want to give in, and I want to stay on a level playing field- but sadly that is not in the cards. And that is why I look at those bottles of pills and take the doses. It’s why I prepare my body to not reject the pills and stop the gag reflex after I swallow the pills. I won’t let bipolar take me- a happy and healthy life will be mine, even if that means I have to work harder, be more vigilant and just generally have to do more than someone who is not afflicted. In the end, I know it will be worth it…and because I experience life so much more intensely, my life will be far more richer.

You also have trouble sleeping wtih manic depression, so you take your sleep med before you begin to write, and the next thing you know, the words won't come and you can't type the words you are thinking of. This being said, now, I’m done because my sleep medication has kicked in.

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can't take the trouble to speak; someone
who can't sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can't read, or call
for an appointment for help.

There is nothing I can do
against your coming.

When I awake, I am still with thee.
Credo- Jane Kenyon

Mood Madness

Am I mad for wanting to believe that in my life, joy and despair must co-exist? That I am not me with either one of them gone? Sometimes I wonder if I was sentenced to this mood madness the day I was given my first breath. Then, as a child trying to survive in a world filled with so much pain. Perhaps then is when I should have known what was to come. Even when I was being abused in my darkest moments, I was still this vivacious child, always so curious and ready to try something new. I was the girl that would climb the highest treetop, race first down the steepest hill, ask for the merry go round to be spun faster and claim to beat up anyone who stood in my way. I was the first one done with my class work, and the last child to leave the school, staying late to work on some project. I proclaimed to love my family more than anything to anyone who had a word to say about my family…and cowered in a corner when a parent drew near. I was the epitome of exuberance, or perhaps of sanguine temperament, “It reacts quickly and in lively fashion to every kind of influence, it lights up immediately but excitement dies down equally fast. The individual leads a restless life, and likes extremes. We get a picture of vivacious exuberance or of an irritable, troubled hastiness.”

I am always reminded of a few sentences from A Shining Affliction, when thinking about the complexities of my personality: “I push aside too the impression that although many people feel close to me, no one has a whole picture of me, and this is bound to catch up with me sooner or later.” It took me a long time to realize just exactly who I was, and so I realized, how could anyone ever really get the whole picture…I first had to become whole myself. “Will she ever exist beyond arms reach,” always gets me thinking. I felt like this with so many people…that I was “here” but always just beyond their reach. That no one could ever get to know the real me because I was too ugly and broken inside. Bobb was the first person to teach me otherwise…the first person to reach deep inside my soul and beg for me to show her more. She found the passion I had for life that I had long since hidden in my childhood. I look back at that little girl and often wonder where she went. But I know it was the pain of living a double life that ultimately killed her. Still, I catch glimpses now and then, of riding a big wheel in the courtyard or jumping of cliffs into the sea. The memories play like an old slide show that my grandparents had. I see this smiling, happy, vivacious child…and yet somehow she is not me. But I know now that it isn’t that it’s not me in those memories, it’s that the child itself was killed- forced into an adulthood and responsibility that I should have never been given.

So now I wonder if leading that double life, having the death of my childhood at such an early age…if all of that was the precursor to my struggle with mood and madness. And if I am now mad for considering the possibility that I am a better person for it. I almost always find my answer in the eyes of a little child named Julia. Because I know it is my passion and creativity that has fueled her own healing and that my sleepless nights lamenting upon her progress and my on the spot ideas have spurred her on. I think on a different level when I am with children like Julia and part of me knows this could not happen if I was not so deeply and profoundly affected myself. I have a passion for life that is incredible, and without that, I don’t think I could or would want to live my life in a lesser fashion.

That is just the exuberant part of my life, there also dwells within me this deep sadness and despair. I seldom return to this area of my soul, but I know it is forever there. But because it resides within me, I appreciate every sun rise and sun set that much more. I appreciate the ability to love and be loved on a different level…and I see the beauty in every rain fall. All because there was a time when I thought I’d never experience the beauty in each of those things again. I spent more of my time dying than living, and now that I have chosen life, everything seems so much more intense than it did before. I love more, laugh more, smile more, smirk more, listen more, talk more, and cry more. Everything is more to me, because I have knocked upon deaths door and been denied and instead willed to live. And so I live with ever fiber of my being. Because Bobb is the one that slammed the door and left it up to me to decide to fight to die, or surrender to living. I surrendered with all of my heart and she has taught me how life is sweet and I’ve learned it is so much more than that.

Would I want to live a life without this mood madness? No, and I say that with a hint of uneasiness, but with a strong voice. I have come to love who I am and the passion that I hold for this life…and I know in my heart of hearts that the passion comes from the existence of both great sorrow in my heart and great joy. I have worked extraordinarily hard to harness the power of both and I am successful more days than not…but each second I experience pure happiness is worth all the years of sorrow I faced and will face. I survived my life and the death of the child within, and I realize and acknowledge the fact that I made it. As a result, I will live my life to the fullest and cherish each moment I can stand in the sun or dance in the rain. Life is sweet…and so much more.

Identity

Back to blogging again after another sabatical...this time I will try and stick with it :-)

I think so many of us struggle with the question of identity- who we are inside. People tell us to just be ourselves- but which self do they want? Do they want the college student, the therapist, the patient, the depressed girl, the daughter…or the victim. I think before I began the healing process I fell into the category of victim. Once therapy began, I clung to the identity of survivor. The word survivor emitted a sense of strength to me and hope that I could rise above my past. And so I went from victim to survivor and was all the more strong for it. Then came the time when I ended therapy, when I finally healed and suddenly I became at a loss for an identity again. I was a victim, I was a survivor, but I was so much more than that now. So I settled for woman- strong woman.

As much as I am a survivor, the term itself is confining, because it would be a constant reminder of my past and in a sense meant that I would always be searching for a way to rise above it all. But in reality- I had gotten to the point where my past was just that- my past. My life was now centered on the present and future and I no longer suffer through the negative consequences of where I came from. So when someone asks me who I am…I just want to say I’m a woman, a strong woman. Victim, survivor, strong woman. Now that is the transformation of identity that I like to see.

Technology...for good or evil?

Okay, so that was quite a discussion in class tody about technology and how we use it. I think I have rather strong stances on everything...and I'm not saying I'm right, but this is how I feel. First, shutting the door to technology is never the solution, for the bad use of technology does fall on the user. Just because something can be used for bad things, doesn't mean you have to. That is freedom of choice. But what individuals have to understand is the consequences of those choices.

For example, given my extensive knowledge of computers, there is a lot of bad I know I could be doing- I could hack...hell I could go home and install spyware on my parents computer without them ever knowing and track them...but do I? No...because I do have a moral compass and that is wrong. And I know I would not want that to be done to me, so why would I inflict that onto another person. I understand the choice before me and the consequences of each.

I have to return to the subject of tracking offenders, more specifically sex offenders. I suppose my view will always be slanted because I am a victim of sexual abuse/assault. I feel safer in this world now that we can register sex offenders and I know where they live. I would be living in fear and probably go crazy if I didn't at least have some measure of safety like that. Can I be fully protected? No, and I know this because I wasn't protected earlier in my life. But at least it is better than before.

Do I wish we could track other such offenders? Yes...such as murderers- you bet. Drunk drivers? You know I probably would. For me- I have never even had a drop of alcohol and I am over 21. I don't like it when people get drunk- beacuse its like, what is the point? Why drink so much alcohol that you can't make sound decisions. Decisions are hard enough without being influnced by outside influces. I think too, I have Manic Depression...and thus without medication I would go a little nuts and have decisions made that are not so good, due to Mania...so why then, when I am healthy would I willingly choose to lose my power of control over my actions. It doesn't make sense to me and it never will.

But is registering sex offenders a violation of their privacy? Yes, but you know what...the day they touched a child, or assualted another human being sexually...they gave up their right to privacy...because they took the very soul of another human being. I became a different person because of my circumstances, because of what someone did. I even almost lost my life. And I lived my life in fear, I still do to some degree...but I feel a hell of a lot safer knowing that I at least know where convicted sex offenders are...that I have a cell phone with one touch dialing to 911 and a computer to look up where the offenders reside. They tooky my privacy, my soul...my innocense, my life. And I will do what it takes to make sure not only I am protected, but so are others.

Which brings me to "the system." It is corrupted and messed up, in my opinion. Now, I suppose my slant on all of this is heavily skewed...being a survivor of sexual abuse/assault but also of some terrible child abuse. Being such a survivor, I have seen the uglines of the world. I have seen what no parenting/bad parenting can do. And I think not enough emphasis is given to parenting and what should be expected of the parents. To instill in children not only freedom of choice...but the consequences of their choices. That while technology can be a great thing, you must also awknowledge the dangers and appreciate the destructive powers. And teach the children about the dangers and then instill in them a sense of moral duty and right and wrongness. And about trust. I think part of the reason we turn to technology for surveilence is trust...or lack thereof.

I know I have always lived my life in fear. We talk about how technology has made us fearful...but is that accurate? I feel safer in my life now than I did when I was younger- because I have technology at my finger tips. I guess perhaps I made myself into a computer whiz is so I could feel safe. Because without it, I felt vulnerable and alone. With it, I feel armed at least, with some measure of safety. Maybe ignorance and naivety is the biggest fear maker. That can be taken two ways- one, for people who think that nothing bad could happen to them and then those that believe technology is out to violate trust.

This is not a perfect world, and it never will be. But why do we insist on offering up patchwork for the human condition and instead begin at the root of much of this- from children on. But then again, my sense of right and wrong can be very different from anothers- so where is this sameness of right and wrong? Maybe that is the question we should be asking. And always...there will be people doing bad or evil things. Part of the imperfection of an imperfect world and imperfect human race. CanI accept that bad things will happen? Yes. But do I accept that I can't do anything about it? No. You would think that I would just see this world as one big fearful planet, that everyone is bad and I should trust no one. But surviving everything that I have...I learned to have trust and faith in people, in human kind. And to feel sorry for those that do so many horrendous things. And yes, I am hyper vigilant- I have to be, but at the same time, I know if I put a little trust into the ring, then others will too. A give and take. And without that, who will we trust?

Technology...for good or evil? I think it is for good, it has done so many wonderful things. But human kind being imperfect and filled with good and evil...it can inevitably be used for evil. But technology in itself is not evil, but rather the person choosing to wield its destructive power.

For me...it is good, and I choose to use it as such...and too feel safer, because at least now I have protective measures against all the evil in this world. I think of a favorite line of a song,

"It's not a release, not a reward, it's the blessings,
It's the gift of what you notice more."

Erin

Sometime in winter
Some things got broken
Some mighty branches under the weight
But I saw the truth coming
Up in the garden
After the snow melted away

Life goes on, life goes on
The sweetest flower waits all winter long
After all that has gone wrong
Life goes on

I've seen the angels crying rivers
Over what man will do to man
And I have seen vengeance celebrated
Like they just don't understand

Life goes on, life goes on
The angry-hearted only pass it on
After all that has gone wrong
Life goes on

And in all your time here
What will you put into the ground
Are you sowing seeds of love or hatred
Cause it's all gonna come around

The sweetest flower waits all winter long
Life goes on
And the sweetest justice, how will it be won
Not by killing
Killing even one
'Cause life goes on
Life goes on
Life goes on

Discussion from Class

Because I am a dork, I am going to comment on the class discussion today. The question about whether we can create a robot equal to a human is an interesting one. I stand by my thought that they will never equal us. I keep thinking about intuition- how would you program a computer to have an intuition? That some of my decisions are based on feelings- not logic. How a human can know all the consequences of a choice, and yet somehow decide another course of action- and that turns out to be the correct one.

And what about experiences shaping who we are? Something a computer wouldn't necessarily get. For instance- what about people that face overwhelming tradegy...or have a disability? How would a robot learn about hope or resiliency? For instance- I have manic-depression, and I know without a doubt that it has changed my life and impacts me on some level every day. Having such a disibility did teach me a lot about hope and human nature...and many times that is not something you can teach, but only feel...and just "know."

I am a therapist for kids with autism...and I would dare to venture to say that a robot could not do what I do. First...the kids respond to human contact...but overwhelmingly...many of my kids get cues from my facial expressions or body language. But most of all, what is the most interesting to me, is that I connect on a level with these kids that can't be explained. Parents and other therapist have told me over and over again that I bond with them on a different level. Perhaps it is because I too have an incurable disorder...or really...who knows. Again- something you cannot program. It just is. How I can know something about the kids with just one look...or the child know if they are right or wrong with a facial expression.

Just as there is no gene for the human spirit...there is no computer program that can capture human spirit- it cannot be programmed...only felt and just known. Will computers and robotics reach a human level? No...because empathy and human compassion and the overall human spirit is not something that can be programmed. And those were my basic thoughts on that!

Blogging again

So...I created this blog in like a weekend...and then never returned to it. But I felt obligated to post again and send it out...since everyone else posted. So...this was my blog over the summer. I don't particularly like blogs...don't read them. I have my own journal on my website that I run, and that seems to work...didn't really need an outside one. It's about 11:00...I haven't read the article...so I think I will get to that now.

I've read a couple things on robotics...yes I am a computer geek as well as psychology geek...so I'm interested in this article. Then again, it is late, so I could just fall asleep reading it. Guess we'll see.

See you all in class.

Healing

"Healing means having faith and committing to getting better. Healing means not giving up- having so much hope." - Me

Manic- Depression...and me

"I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated... I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and have been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters... Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But normal or manic I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know."
-- Kay Redfield Jamison

And so this quote often comes to mind at certain times. Especially if I feel things get out of hand, and sometimes I wonder if I was cursed or blessed. I think both. People often ask me if I regret everything that has happened- the hospital visits, the overdoses, the scars, and the general craziness I found myself in at times. And most often, you will find me saying no, I don't regret it.

At the end of the day, everything that has happened, all those times, both good and bad- they have all served to bring me where I am today. And I look around and realize that it's not such a bad place after all. Yeah, I have my fair share of scars, one look at my arm and you know I've been through a war. And the emotional ones I think run deeper. But without those experiences, I wouldn't be half the person I am today.

Somehow...through Hell, I forged a self, a being...that was the complete opposite of what I was being taught. I fought the abuse, the hurt, the manipulations...and came out a stronger, kinder, more understanding person. And the things I have done to combat both my past and my illness will stand the test of time and really mean something.

I have an incredible website that has found it's own identity and own little hole of fame and a message board that has found a support group like none other. I am so proud of how far the site has come and how many lost souls have found their way just a little brighter, perhaps because they found my site along the way.

And my work- therapist for children with autism. Everyday, I have the chance to change a child's world. I'm bringing children from the darkness to the light. Not just being a voice to convey their thoughts, but helping them find their own voice in which to speak those thoughts. Working with these kids and seeing how far they can go has been amazing.

And I'm around to be part of the process, amazing. But as Dr. Jamison stated in her quote...Lithium is a large part of how I have become me. Having been through a few different meds and no meds at all, I've gotten a handle on how I function. And part of the reason why I am so good with the kids is my creative power, the sparks of insight I can pull from the air in the middle of a two hour session- it's that which really moves us along. And I remember being on meds that made the sparks go away and I just felt like any old therapist who could follow a program book...but not expand upon anything. Losing that creative insight hurt so much, I felt like it was a piece of me gone.

So med playing came...and I played with the meds to almost deadly results. I'm just lucky I had a therapist that knows me through and through and knew when I had decided my time was up.And she saved me...again. But this was a different kind of save. It was a save me from ending my life, but not a save from wanting to die- only I could come up with that. After six or seven hospitalizations, it was time for me to decide. Was I going to fight this illness tooth and nail? Or let it take me?

Apparently I'm too stubborn to leave this world so silently. So I had some renewed hope, in both therapy and my new meds, which includes Lithium.

And the differences have been incredible. It's like Lithium keeps me from living in fast forward or a slow rewind...but right about where it should be...but the tracking needs adjusting- and in comes talk therapy. And my creativity is there. I've still got it with'my kids.' My work with them has not been impacted. It only gets impacted when it' hospital time again.

But I'm through with that. I am becoming who I want to become...I am liking who I am becoming...I'm done with surviving through life, and I'm ready to begin living life!