Gimme Some Sugar! (The snuffle report)

ink doodle of Sugar, 2014

Sugar is my dog - a diamond with many facets of therapy all wrapped up in her furry ball-of-loveness. I adopted her in January this year, after the death of Darbyshmoo. She was all anyone could want in a dog: she's house trained, she's spayed, she's microchipped, she's heart worm negative, she fetches, she doesn't beg for food from my plate, she doesn't chew on anything I leave out that isn't hers. And she's soft and cuddly. What I didn't know at the time was this:

Somehow, somewhere, someone has trained her to give a special kind of therapy. She knows when someone is suffering.

When the Voices are screaming, when the Hands are groping, when the world is shit, she knows. She just knows, and I don't know how. Even the smallest, wee-hours whimpers of "leave me alone" I utter when the People are evil, abusive, and bad will elicit the BEST. RESPONSE. EVER.

Sugar's love radar picks up the smallest disturbance in my emotional state, and she SNUFFLES me.
Creeping over to me with gentle, slow movements, she lays her head on my chest and SNUFFLES into my neck. Then she'll lie on top of me (I am usually prostrate on the bed in my moments of crisis), and breathe into my face. She lets me embrace her. We snuggle like this. She reminds me what is real, and I am suddenly safe inside her particular, furry pocket of love until I fall asleep. It's an unexpected gift of unconditional support.

I've experimented with her responses. She won't do it if I am faking it in the slightest way. But she is consistently aware when I need her. She's ... tuned in.

When we are cut off, isolated and alone, we develop different coping strategies. Sometimes - let's be honest - sometimes, they fail. In those after-midnight hours of flashbacks and hell, I have an amazing ally. (If you own a dog, or have ever loved a dog, you know what I mean.) And I've come to understand that everybody needs this, in some form, in some way.

A few of you who may be reading this because you or someone you know is mentally ill, and you know how restorative an unconditional love can be. So I offer mine to you, even though I learned it in the most likely of places: my non-verbal dog. Without words, she exudes compassion. When you think about it, there's so much we don't say to one another in this world ... but we don't need to when we find the right peers or friends that we can count on as family.

And so LOVE to you for reading (and hopefully, understanding).
            COMPASSION to you, for whatever you might be struggling with.
            PEACE to you as well, for no extra cost, and
            SNUFFLES for everyone who needs a hug, but doesn't know how to ask.

(I know you're out there.)

Operation Black Ink

Hello, bloggy human friends!

Here's a quick note to let you know I am .... up to something!

The "up to something" face

This is me, looking very disconcerted that you *might* figure out what I'm thinking. So I'll just cut straight to the chase, and spill the beans.

I'm going to publish some poetry.

You heard me.

I'M GONNA PUBLISH SOME POETRY!
With sketches.
Maybe I'll add an audiobook-type CD of me reading some bonus material.

Well, that's what is in the works, anyway. I have a love affair with words ("big, fifteen dollar words," says my friend, Robert). And I want to share the love. I ask something in return, though ...

HELP.

I know there's got to be writer types out there who know something about publishing, be it online or no. Gimme advice. Please.

I also know there's a few mentally ill folks out there who might relate to the poems and whatnot. (Since it's a bit of a huge theme in my life, it will probably be a huge theme in the book.) Gimme advice. Please.  

Should I concentrate the theme on mental illness, or would you READER TYPES prefer I threw in other stuff? Gimme advice. Please*

Obviously, the book is in zygote stage at this point. I have the work, I just don't have an order or ANY EFFING CLUE what all you guys who faithfully trudge through my thoughts on this blog actually want to hear about, poetry wise.  

So send in your thoughts. Ask your friends. Have them send in their thoughts. Please keep the word going.

*If you are a writer AND a reader AND mentally ill .... I love you. Your help would mean the world.

FORM IS EMPTINESS

Goddess With A Seed Like A Wound 2014 (watercolour)

For the last few weeks, I’ve been confronted with the terrified face of Motherhood. Not in any traditional sense, though; I am not having a baby.

I had surgery this week: a permanent sterilization procedure. At first, I grieved and stewed and brooded over the “loss” of my choice … which, for me, is (of course) no choice at all. So, I wrote a letter to the world for the gift I gave to my never-to-be, imaginary children. It is at once the greatest gift, and the most terrible.

These nightmarish, cruel psychoses will not repeat in my bloodline!

Even still, the finality of the decision flattens me with its hardlines and certainty. I wrote a few angry poems to fold away in a secret capsule I could bury in my back yard, and at which I could go to cry it all out. My “children” – however spectral in their imagined presence – cannot be. There’s no way around it. And though they were never REAL, it is still a loss. This has been difficult for me, because I have no other conscientious, compassionate choice but to close down my body to the possibility of them. I have to let go of an idea and a fantasy I held onto for so long. My medications, my diagnosis, and my advancing age leave no other options.

Something inside me died with that surgery, but if it is a death I must deal with, then so be it. I thought that if I must trade a child’s nightmare life for my own emptiness, I accept it.

Then, after several, desperately inked poems about “emptiness”, I read a passage in a book called Living Zen, by a wonderful chap named Harvey Daiho Hilbert Roshi. (As an aside, this book is available on Amazon.) In it, he talks about all form being fundamentally emptiness. He writes about even the “dharma” (which is kind of the Buddhist word for “truth” or “reality”) being EMPTY. I’m paraphrasing here, but the idea is that this isn’t a taking-away. It is not a negative in connotation. It isn’t so much the absence of something, but the presence of open space where all things are possible. Emptiness is the space where the multitudinous unfolding of the cosmos continues into forever. And THAT is what I give to the world by not having children.

It isn’t the withdrawal of lives that could’ve been lived; it is a deposit of possibilities. I come away from this thinking of it as a positive – a gift to our world that invites others to play in the spaces I’ve opened. I am a Mother in that sense. I am a Mother of Possible Futures; a Mother of Gracious Space; a Mother of Compassionate Emptiness That Moves Through All.

I am a Goddess With A Seed Like A Wound.

"I've hit rock bottom ..." and here's the update

There was a teeny weeny baby lizard outside my door yesterday. In my attempts to shoo it away from the door (my dog eats lizards), it ran inside. It escaped from what seemed like a threat into a place where it would almost certainly be killed. We humans are like this with our own minds. Out of fear, we choose to “escape” into a place that serves us even less. Our coping skills for danger remain long after the threat is gone, whether they still work for us or not. We ingrain them as knee-jerk responses when we feel trapped or afraid. Those responses can be a detriment to our health, but endlessly we repeat them anyway. What is familiar is “safe” – even when it’s not. This idea sparks debates ranging from politics to morality, from warfare to mental illness.

But it’s true. It’s true, and you know it.

The problem is human: knowing it intellectually is not the same as the ability to avoid it. And so it has been with me in my dissociative, delusional, daydreamy mind. I still had the baby-killing/fantasy man movie playing inside my skull every night like a bad film noir. I snuggled against a pillow and tried to name the feelings. “This is grief,” I said. And at the same moment it passed my lips, I felt it disconnect. That wasn’t it. It wasn’t right.

I knew an EMDR session was due, and I came up with the negative cognition for the week: I am the dutiful daughter. I am afraid to grow up and embrace adulthood.

Lying on the therapy couch, my therapist instructed several deep breaths. As I relaxed, the secret came to me: there is a small, frightened, traumatized girl in my mind who needs to be taken care of. It’s NOT an actual child; it is myself as a child … who has been beaten, who has been raped … who has been through a hell too terrible to process all at once. She thinks she is dead, and I know she needs nurturing.

The entire EMDR session focused on this amazing little-girl-survivor and her role in my stunted emotional development. I was scared to grow up because I thought I would have nothing to nurture. In fact, I kept me small and powerless just so I had something to take care of.

And the metaphorical job of Fantasy Man? He is a reminder of a pattern I follow that no longer serves me (if it ever did). You see, I have a habit of picking the most wounded man on the planet and then call it “love”, in hopes I can save him. The ugly truth of the world is that I can’t save anyone but myself. My scared and scarred little Self. When I try (see posts about Bryan and the troubles therein), *I* don’t get nurtured. There ends up being no reciprocity in my relationships and that destroys them.

My therapist and I ended EMDR with the reinforced image of my Child Mind meeting my Adult Mind. Child Mind has the innocence and the opportunity to see “growing up” as an ADVENTURE. Adult Mind has the hands and the power to make that adventure REALITY.

We don’t have to be afraid. This song lyric doesn’t have to be true:

“Your refuge turns you captive all the same.” – Duran Duran

30 Days of Mental Illness Awareness Challenge: Day Eight

Question: At what age were you diagnosed? At what age do you think your symptoms began?

 

I’m going to answer this question backward (as is my inalienable right as a willing participant), because my brain is malfunctioning lately and these things seem to happen outside of chronological order for me when I write in this condition.

Like every kid, I had imaginary friends. The difference between my friends and I was that I would talk to these imaginary pals openly, in front of everyone, up until the age of … well, I guess I never stopped. That’s the chief difference: mine didn’t go away. When others’ imaginary friends “moved away” or “disappeared” or lost their “magic”, mine continued in intensity and frequency. (Except the ones who died. For example, I watched “Katy” burn to death when I was 4, and even my older sister couldn’t convince me it didn’t happen and wasn’t real. It was extremely graphic – especially for my age – and I was a bit emotionally scarred by it. But this is another story.)

I’ve been talking to The People in My Head since I began to talk. I have no idea when this all began. It’s always been a part of, a piece of who I am, like an arm or a freckle. Around the age of 12 or 13, I started to believe I could see ghosts. I was special because I could communicate with the dead. Even celebrities joined in the mix. By the time I was 14, I was totally lost and batshit off-the-wall delusional. Three sheets to the wind psychotic. I lost my “real” friends (the few I had), because there was just no relating to me and the nonsense babbling I did about the chaos of my mind. I spent 5 years in the hole of schizophrenia without a diagnosis. My parents searched the house frantically for any drugs I might be taking, but of course found none. (I was actually so clean it hurt. I never had a big attraction to drugs, though I did try pot a few times in high school. All it did was make me paranoid, and I couldn’t understand why people deliberately made themselves paranoid and delusional, so I left it as a novel footnote to my existence. I pursued drugs no farther than that. Just in case you were wondering.)

Just a few days shy of my 19^th birthday, my mother drew a proverbial “line of death” in the sand of our household. It was demanded I see a psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with “schizophreniform” almost immediately. He gave me an anti-psychotic. It made me tired, but

THE WORLD WENT QUIET.

The official diagnosis of full-on schizophrenia followed in 6 months.

PTSD took a little longer. I had no memories of what I had endured as a teen (either because I was so out of it with the Crazies, or because the truth of it was too terrible, or a combination of the two). When I finally found a therapist I could trust, I opened up. This was about 2 years ago now, and she told me I did indeed suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

GAH.

It’s so sad to me, because I was so smart! I could’ve done almost anything! I could’ve BEEN almost anything! So here’s a poem I wrote some time ago that sums up some of my despondency over What Might’ve Been:

"The Sense of Senselessness"

You had too many faces in the first place.

You moved too quickly.

You had me neatly packed into you.

Your calloused fingers were nastily possessive from the start.

I was tied too tightly to the ligature of your doubt

so no one could pull us apart.

Now without you, I splinter into anonymity,

as if someone spliced through my ocean

but the water of me is undeterred.

I belong to no one.

I am no longer cohesive,

my holy seal broken

as you seethe and break in tantrums and traumas.

You used to be the air all around me,

but now I am too big for toys.

Seeking out my center

I have given you away, removed you from my diameter.

But here is a turning point,

a twist in the plot:

however sleep comes,

we still glide together

where the ice in your iris contracts

where you make more black space for hatred.

Your light was ingratiating and I folded like ash beneath its boot.

You’ve never been fair.

Like me, you’ve grown beyond opposites.

I was two halves of a single snapshot, imposed

by your impartial retina.

I split in the center of your eye.

Your image is stenciled in the black of my typeface,

an optical illusion.

And if I thought the world was equally weighted,

I would have measured myself

by my name tag.

And if I paid deferment to a deity,

I may have hidden behind my incomes and outcomes.

But no one ever wins a war between two.

My god! You were always in me.

 

Falling Behind

I've been busy and I need to blog soon. I need to blog soon. I need to blog soon. I need to ...

30 Days of Mental Illness Awareness Challenge: Day 7

Question: Do you think there are any patterns or triggers to how your illness affects you?

YES … and there’s so much!

You know those “before and after” pictures make-over people get? If you want to think of my PTSD diagnosis and subsequent therapy as a bit of a mental health make-over, you’ll understand why I am going to bifurcate my answer into two, easy-to-swallow, dissolvable, before and after gel caps for ease of consumption.

BEFORE I ventured into the realm of truth telling in therapy, I assumed any kind of stress, including but not limited to being touched, loud noises, bright lights, and startling movements triggered my schizophrenia. With the smallest worry, I would launch into a black whirlpool of hallucinations of “People” trying to rape me, who told me lies, poisoned my food, and tried to trick me into killing myself. I couldn’t keep a schedule or routine because I couldn’t predict what might trigger me or toss me into a paranoia so profound I couldn’t leave the house. (This still happens, but less now.) The People kept me up at night until I would collapse completely after about 3 days of no sleep. My eyes would sometimes involuntarily roll back into my head and I would pass out into sleep for 4 hours, only to get up and do it again for another 3 days. Unfortunately, I had no accompanying mania. (Unfortunate, because there was no productive output, although I’ve heard mania can be pretty hellish, too.) I was the victim of complete a-volition. Agitated inertia and distress followed. Oh yeah, and don’t forget my total loss of touch with reality. It wasn’t until I spoke to an excellent group of folks online that I began to suspect my sense of being invaded and made powerless had something to do with trauma.

AFTER I recognized stressors related to trauma, I realized what could set off an already schizophrenic mind into a tailspin. Anything that surprises me and which I can’t prepare myself for triggers me – and no wonder! – into dissociation. I’ll have to retreat to home or a ‘safe place’ to clear my head. That is one pattern, and possibly the most common one.

Unwelcome touch, people sitting too close to me, and long periods of time in public, are all triggers. If I have to hold The People in for too long, I feel like I am going to explode and have to escape the scene.

I’m learning now about people in my past who were manipulative, which also triggers me so subtly I don’t always see it right away. This push-me-pull-you, passive aggressive waltz some people like to do is crazy making for me in the end. In therapy, I am also learning how to pay attention to my body. My stomach and bowels are the organs most affected by stress (except, of course, my brain). I’ve also noticed I react quite strongly to scenes of violence/rape/unfairness in movies, television, and even books. Either I cry endlessly over it, or I assimilate the characters into my delusions and try over and over to save them. This limits the amount of fun I can have, too: I miss out on all those science fiction mind-fucker movies I love. 

Patterns I recognize are that I am not usually able to follow through with plans or finish projects. And I am extremely codependent; I always assume the things that go wrong are my fault somehow. But I see boundaries now, and am learning to set them. With therapy I am learning the compassion embedded in the word NO.