Tenacity of Life

I love the question Kate posed to me in her comment; What would you say to someone who was schizoaffective, manic-depressive or schizophrenic if they were suicidal? In my last post I seemed to be on the verge of saying; watch out, it is only going to get worse. Catastrophic advice.

I wrote my post in a moment of weakness and I'm afraid that what I had to say was not life affirming. I talked about the horror stories I knew. They were all true, I didn't make anything up. I was in a state of horror myself, thus the choice of topic.

To someone who was suicidal I would have to say, choose life. Even if that life is one with a diagnosis of mental illness. Even if you must live a life that is outside of the norm, where you have a life that is full of pain, still, I would say, bear the pain and choose life. Because pain is transitional, it happens only in the moment and then it lifts. Because there are little things in life, like the warmth of the sun shine, or the feel of your body as you walk and tire it, that feed and nourish the soul.

Most of all I would say choose life because you are stepping through the fire of mental illness (the pain is transformative) and you are being purged, you are being cleansed, and you are being made anew into someone that God smiles upon. You will be the weak, the disenfranchised, the struggling, the imperfect, but most of all, - most beautiful of all is what the fire of the mind does to you; it makes you authentic.

The highest compliment I've ever received was from my sister. She said, "You are the most human person I know." She could not have said that about the person I was before the mental illness. No, that person she was a little afraid of and would probably have been called a bitch. It was what the mental illness did to me, fifteen years later, that made her think about the compliment. The mental illness changed the life path I was on, and as a result of this, I became a better person. I'll take being human as a high compliment.

I don't hear lies and falsity in the voice of most of the mentally ill I have known. I hear ringing clear and delightfully as the sound of a bell is a voice that tells it as it is. The mentally ill usually don't have the energy to construct elaborate masks and they can't play games with you. They are direct, they are candid, and they are refreshing. The one game I know that is played the most by the mentally ill is; hide. I see mentally ill people withdraw. Sometimes the illness brings a type of shyness. But mostly, instead of shyness, I would call it humility. Rarely have I met a mentally ill person puffed up with pride. The authentic person I can imagine would have humility instead of pride.

I am not a good one to council the suicidal. But I know enough to know that suicide is a mistake. Me, I cling to routine and to work to stay alive. I cling to the happy emotions of my husband. I cling to a type of searching that I find myself doing with books and with going to Church and with conversations with my husband- trying to find religion, trying to believe in a God that loves me and walks by my side. I do believe my mind is known, first to me, but maybe, first and foremost to a higher power.

There was a woman who existed before the mental illness and she was often dissatisfied with herself. I am so grateful that I've put some of her behind me; the second guessing what I say, the painful remembering of conversations where I wish I said something better, the bruising I gave myself for not being more socially popular.

But that woman was driven, and so am I. That women wished to excell, not for fame or money, but for the feeling of power given to ones who try their best and always work themselves to the bone. Both my parents work themselves to the bone. As I was growing up it my father who kept up a grueling schedule as a doctor, now it is my mother who in her later years hasn't a moment to spare because of her three businesses, one of which is a bed and breakfast. I've inherited a whip at my back that drives me. Oh yeah, I'll be the first to admit that I spend a lot of time in bed staring off into space. My life from the outside looks simple and carefree, except of course, for those two to three hours every morning when I write. But the reading of books, the watching of movies, the taking of long walks - it seems like I've got it good and easy.

I suppose there are times when I'm contemplative and rest and times when I'm on and creative. Because of the illness the times when I create are limited; I don't have the brain power that I used to have before the illness. But what power I have isn't wasted. It is all used to produce - creative product. I love my mind. Sometimes I hate my mind for its moments of mental weakness, but fess up, I love the power of the mind. I love that the power can take meaningless pieces; tubes of paint, or a cacophony of words - and create paintings or essays and books. I've got a paranoid schizophrenic friend who takes her mind, and a base guitar, and makes music. It is as close as taking nothing and making something when you are dealing with products of pure mind. The times I've faced a blank page and drawn a picture. The times I've faced a blank computer screen and found voices for my characters to say shocking things. I summon up from deep within me creative product and the result is contentment. On rare occasions joy. Using the power of pure mind you can go from being a penniless pauper to king. This is the journey of the artist.

I know a paranoid schizophrenic who loves playing ping pong. His face lights up when he talks about his games, keeping score, and analyzing how his opponent plays. He isn't an artist like me, but his life really does revolve around playing ping pong. And I've known him long enough to realize that he has a zest for life. He has heard me talk about suicide, and this was his response (in an astonished voice) - "Why would you want to kill yourself, life is fun!" He is one of the great success stories of mental illness. Not because he went back to work and got off social security. He has tried to work and found that he cannot do it. He is a success story because from his point of view, and I'm taking his words here, every day he wakes up, and he wonders with joy, "how will I spend my day?" His days are precious to him. His life is precious to him. By the strict view of society he is mostly dropped out of it, but he has just enough money to keep from being a homeless man, and he has the social skills to find people, and places, in which to play ping pong.

This particular man is conscientious, caring, and honest. Morally he is the tops. When his dying mother, who he had taken care of for many years, wished to leave her house and all her money to him he declined, and said that the inheritance should be split equally with his two brothers. He is a reformed alcoholic and besides ping pong, he life revolves around attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Externally the illness has left a mark on him. His face and demeanor is not normal. One Sunday he attended my church and I know that he did not blend into the congregation. He would be marked by the people in the congregation as perhaps a homeless man and someone to be afraid of. The illness has made him seem "other". He can't pretend to be a man with a lifestyle or mind like the majority of the population. He doesn't blend. But he seems utterly unconcerned with that fact. He isn't trying to be someone who he is not. He is perfectly authentic - happy with who he is. By society's standards he is a tiny fish swimming in a tiny pond. But I think he is buried gold.

This year I got his address and sent him a Christmas card. I see him every week Wednesday night. After I sent out my cards I asked him if he had received his in the mail. He said yes, but that he hadn't opened it. Why not? I asked. "Because I want something special to do on Christmas Day" he said to me. So he was saving my card for Christmas Day. Like it was a present. Which I guess it was. But how many people understand a Christmas card as being a present? It is taking what is small, and ordinary, and naming it large and precious. It is like a magician taking a lifeless white scarf and turning it into a flying dove. My friend transforms his simple days of ping pong and Alcoholics Anonymous and finds life affirming, deeply felt satisfaction in them. And his abilitiy to do this, in the face of having the worst type of mental illness named, that is I think the greatest success story I know of.

Feeling Weak

I'm feeling weak but I don't want to rest my head and sleep or read. The impulse to write drives me. I tell myself, "watch a movie" but instead I wish to do something constructive. If I watched a movie I would feel guilty.

Two days in a row I woke panicked. During the day my husband and I have been planning a very small business. It would require two employees besides ourselves and commit every penny of our savings. I would be in charge of the payroll for the employees, having to learn all the paper trail and tax needs that a small business generates. I would be essential to the business, and perhaps this point panicked me. I don't want to be essential. I don't know if I can be essential. I don't know if I can handle the stress of the responsibility.

To handle more stress, to become a more solid person, probably I would have to go on more medication. I could change my anti-psychotics from Geodone to Seroquil and add the mood stabilizer Lamictal. This would cause me to gain weight. It is a struggle right now, being under stress, to just keep my weight even.

My husband knew a beautiful Chinese woman named Chang. Chang had a husband who was embarrassed by the fact that his mentally ill wife did not work. So to satisfy her husband Change got a small job working at Burger King. This job was stressful enough that she needed extra medication to continue working. She got the extra medication and then developed a permanent side effect. She developed tartivdiskinesia, a type of re-occurring muscle spasm in the face. A permanent tick. Chang would I think, roll her tongue and smack her lips. It was freakish and changing medications would not change it.

One night I said to my husband "I was planning to use my best hours tomorrow to write. I should instead use my best hours to study my book on business accounting and make phone calls and emails to research the business needs. I created a little to do list. It all seemed so reasonable. Intellectually I am smart enough to do it.

But then in the morning I woke with a mighty fear about what might happen should an expensive machine the business would depend upon break down, and we have employees that need to work and get paid. And then I thought about how I had turned down my writing to work on the business, and I thought, "I am raping my mind. Causing it to act in a way that it doesn't want to act in". And I began crying.

I can't plan the business with passion and excitement, it only causes me to break down further. This bodes ill for when the business is up and working. Either I adjust or I break and require more medication and maybe a hospitalization.

Oh I know about recovery. I'll tell you about recovery. You don't get better and better and more competent and your brain heals from the illness. This maybe happens to some people. Other people get worse. I've seen it happen. Usually a stress comes along and re-wrecks your mind. You have a second breakdown. New hospitalization. Sometimes, a new and worse diagnosis. From mild manic-depression to schizophrenia in a woman who used crack cocaine. From schizoaffective to paranoid schizophrenic in a woman whose best friend committed suicide and she had to be re-hospitalized because of the trauma. From paranoid schizophrenic to suicide in a man who had successfully gotten off social security and worked full time. I've seen all this happen to people.

In myself I am less than I was three years ago because I'm using a weaker anti-psychotic and weaker anti-depressant. The anti-psychotic was changed because of the side effect of weight gain, the anti-depressant I had been using gradually lost its effectiveness. Now I need to see a therapist where as three years ago I was feeling well enough, happy and confident, that I did not need to see a therapist. Now seeing a therapist literally helps keep me alive. I rely on him that much.

Recovery? With mental illness the circumstances of your life could change or drugs could stop working. I've seen a stable woman who worked as a truck driver loose her job and become an emotional mess because her lithium stopped working. I've seen a nice, mild mannered schizophrenic have a nervous breakdown after working too many hours in a hospital laundry and have a marked personality change that ruined relations with his family. He acted out with anger, and his family feared for the safety of young children. Children that formerly he had been a happy uncle to, now there were no more visits. His family withdrew its support, having been frightened, and he withdrew socially from the world - his life pattern completely disrupted after his second, late, work-induced breakdown.

The horror stories about how mental illness gets worse, and the medications get increased, the body becomes obese and has medical problems, and the personalities change and the diagnosis changes - these horrors never get reported. The people who get lost in the system the system never keeps track of. There are no statistics about failure, only about success.

The failures can't speak for themselves. Illness mutes the voice, only when there is a success will you hear a voice. And that voice, being a success, usually says, "you can do it!"

I'm going to go read about the poet Emily Dickinson. The book is due back at the library in three days.

Victory

Tried writing from a different point of view today. It was like doorways were opening up in my mind. The writing was fresh, took the story in a new direction. What I'm doing is all re-write, but to my amazement, there was so much new content pouring out of me. Don't really know what I've written until I review it again after some time has passed, but the feeling is like standing on the crest of a wave. I'm high above ground and moving with a brutal natural force beneath my feet.

For the first time I left the reality of my main character, Rachael, and added fiction. She was my look-alike, a personal twin, but now I've got freedom to make happen to her things that never happened to me. I'm not stepping out outrageously, there is still so much based on actual events.

I had Rachael write a suicide note. I've written a suicide note. Rachael's suicide note was not like mine. In spirit similar, but in the novel it is much more interesting. I had to substitute the word "ridiculous" for "psychotic". The note is borderline psychotic, how do you show such a thing but not use the technical word? Technical words are the death of writing. In my life, I cringe whenever my husband uses a word that I don't understand. Not that I'm insecure about my vocabulary, I've got a good vocabulary. But I hate the impulse not to be pure and simple in communication. Using big vocabulary gives one a sense of power; "oh look at me, I know something that you don't know". Spare me your delight. In my writing I am trying to be simple. I will go back and replace complexity, which seems to come naturally to me, with something more simple.

I had a college professor once give me a high mark on some homework. We were writing an interpretive essay of someone else's writing. It may have been Emily Dickinson poetry. I used big vocabulary and long sentences. He said he did not understand exactly what I was saying, but that it sounded good, and thus, the high mark. Although I benefited, I do not believe I deserved to do so. The college professor was wrong.

I think of the simple vocabulary of Susan Clark's novel "Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" (just finished reading) and the simple vocabulary of Dostoevsky's classic "The Brother's Karamazov". I tell myself "use small words" and I hope this works. It boggles my mind that so much complexity can be conveyed using small words. If the revelation is true (in my case usually revealing interior memory and perception) then it can be said simply. Its when you are uncertain for what to say that you stretch and find big words to cover for your inadequacy of meaning.

Didn't write yesterday and tomorrow is Church, so don't plan to write tomorrow. Had some emotional difficulty yesterday, just felt low spirited. I fixed myself with sweets. Bought chocolate and a cheese danish. The sugar made me feel tired, stupid, and compliant with life. I wanted to live but it was a doped feeling. Felt secure. Felt safe. Felt comforted.

Had a session with Jim yesterday and it only seemed to make matters worse. He said to me "my homework for you is to have fun. Watch Comedy Central". I told him that the last fun thing I had done was to go bowling. He said, go bowling more often. I also reminded him that I don't have television, although I do have access to a lot of comedy movies. The reading of my Emily Dickinson biography is dull, the author is currently going through all of Emily's teachers and posing what effects they might have had on the girl. Inter-spaced are snippets of her writing at ages 11 and 12, that to the author's mind, show great promise and are impossible for most 11 and 12 years old to write. Me, being me, thought "goodness, I don't write prose like that, never have, never will - I am so dull compared to Emily Dickinson!" It is sometimes hard for me to read genius because I compare myself to it and come up short.

I sometimes wish dearly that I was genius. Plain different. On a whole different level. Obviously talented. Personally, I rate myself mediocre. I'm in the middle of a huge crowd of writers. I imagine that people read my blog and then break off and never read it again because I've failed to be interesting. Even people who love me, my brother and sister, I suspect fail to read my blog because it is boring. Can I manage to capture the human condition? Or will I write merely to exercise personal demons. My novel won't speak to anyone else but me. This is my fear.

Ah, I've titled this entry "Victory". How soon I experience defeat. And all at my own hand. There is no one who can injure me and reduce me to the smallest person other than myself. I started this writing with glee, and now and hour later I belittle myself. There is something wrong with me.

Yesterday Jim said, "The people who anger those who work in the hospital the most are the borderlines." I had just told him that my therapist in the Institute was exasperated and perplexed and yes, angry, that I wasn't getting better faster. Now, next week, I have to go back to Jim and ask him "Were you suggesting that I've got a borderline personality?" Perhaps I need him to explain to me what he thinks one is, but if he thinks I've got one, I'll be pissed off. I suffer from depression, not a personality disorder. I'm so violently against this diagnosis that I may wish to stop working with Jim if he thinks this is what is wrong with me. Oh I won't leave him, not really, I've got no place to go, but I will have to hold back from insulting his person. "Incompetent noodlehead" is the phrase that I imagine spitting out. And I will offer a letter from my past psychiatrist, seen for 12 years, denying this diagnosis. I will write to her.

In the meantime, I may do some research on the internet to determine that I don't suffer from a borderline personality disorder. I can diagnose myself perfectly well. Always have been able to, always will be able to.

My explanation for why my therapist at the Institute was pissed at me? She was evil. She was blaming the victim. I had no emotional rapport with her what-so-ever except for me to be a good patient and to answer any question she posed for me. I laid myself bare for her and I got thinly veiled impatience for an answer.

I will be standing in the middle of a cross-road if Jim gives me a diagnosis of borderline. I will be at a loss of how to work with him.

Plum Pudding

Just finished a chapter of my book. It is the scene where everyone participates in group therapy in the hospital. 51 pages of group therapy. Now I go back and re-write it changing the point of view from first person (my heroine Rachael) to third person omniscient. That is what my dream told me to do. I have never done this type of exercise before and I have no idea how difficult it may be. Once the chapter has been re-written I will show it to my husband to read. That is the real test I'm curious about; will the chapter sustain his interest or will it bore him? Don't want to think about the horror of boring him. It is the same as crashing failure. So far I've managed not to do this, even though, I'm writing the type of literature that my husband never reads. Oh once he characterized my writing as something like a book you get assigned to in school. It was both a compliment (good literature) and a complaint (boring literature).

We've been having snow, that at the current moment, has turned into rain. It is predicted more snow tomorrow. The dog is having problem with snow falling off the roof. I assume that from the dog's point of view it is like the sky is falling. She shakes, she whines, and she tries to get up into the bed with us sleeping in it.

It is of utmost importance that my husband every night get his 7 hours of sleep. He earns the paycheck that we both survive on. I have a memory that one night when he did not get enough sleep he called in sick to work. So lesson learned. I don't want him to lose pay - sick days are days of no pay. I try, in my wifely way, to give my husband no excuse not to go to work. And I honestly think that my husband's days of tireless energy are gone, both as a result of his mental breakdown eight years ago and simple old age. He is not the man he used to be. He has his limits, and sleep apparently, keeps him feeling sane.

So when the dog acts up I turn on the heat in the rest of the apartment and take the dog with me to sleep on the couch in the kitchen. Last time we did this I had to put a chair in front of the bedroom door. The dog was determined to get back into the bedroom where my husband was sleeping and get into bed with him or perhaps, crawl under the bed. The dog obsessively worked at tipping the chair over and getting at the bedroom door. When the chair tipped (this happened twice, and a dog never forgets when it has succeeded at something) I had to wake up (the chair would bang when it fell over) and pull the dog away from the door and put the chair back. That night I got 4 hours of sleep.

The next day, after my husband had left for work, I tried to go back to sleep to make up for what I had missed. This time I slept in the bed and let the dog hide under the bed. Eventually she heard some snow fall off the roof and woke me trying to get up on the bed. This time I let her. She would curl herself near my head, some part of her trembling, panting, body touching mine. It was too foreign a sensation, I couldn't sleep again. But I existed in near sleep, and I find, that there is something very romantic about having a big furry body so close. While sleep eluded me, I felt very tenderly toward my poor dog. Apparently I, and the bed, is a source of comfort in her mind.

Tomorrow night, while we are expecting a storm, we will try a new tactic. We will move Plum's kennel (a large wire cage) from the mud room which is unheated into the kitchen and cover it with blankets. We will create a large, snug cave for the dog and lock her in it. My husband reminded me that we have tried this before with success - it allowed me to sleep through the night on the sofa. Hopefully Plum slept in the kennel. That I am on the kitchen sofa and not in the bedroom with my husband is for the comfort of the dog, to give her some creature company.

I am currently reading a biography of the poet Emily Dickinson. I was pleased to read in the introduction, that the man writing the biography, finds some of her poems incomprehensible. So do I. But I had always assumed that this was simply because I was not smart enough to figure them out. The biographer seems to believe that she really did write for herself, a diary of her interior experience, and that incomprehensibility is a result of trying to record a subjective and very personal view point.

It further amazes me that incomprehensibility does not turn me off. I am intrigued by what I don't understand instead of bored. Some of Dickinson's poems are tantalizing, they are like the soft focus of an impressionist painting. I am content with half understanding. I am content with mystery. I can love a poem even not knowing exactly what it is about. This gives me a further hope - a long shot - that I may become a more spiritual person in the future.

The two most spiritual people I know, my mother and my husband, both possess a degree of certainty that I don't have. They simply know that there is a God and they feel the presence of God in their lives every day. From my perspective they are beyond having faith. They don't question, they don't seek, they don't fumble very much. They feel guided. They feel accompanied. They feel a whole range of emotions, and they do have their difficult times, but religion is not something that is on the table to be messed with. Other issues perplex them - not religion. To me this is like having a safety net. You can walk on the high wire of life and know that if you fall something will catch you. How much anxiety this would take away from me!

I am an avid collector of other people's religious experiences. I wonder at stories of wonder. I love near death stories, and psychic stories. I love what some would dismiss as the wanderings of an unconscious mind. I want to believe beyond Freud and beyond modern science. I want to break from the traditional narrow minded teachings of my doctor father and become a daughter who has moved into uncharted territory. I wish to leave childhood I was raised in behind and find a childhood of new thought to play in. I was once a believer, than an angry atheist, and now, am I a believer again? If I could be a believer I think I would not struggle so with painful thoughts of suicide. All clues point toward a relationship with God having as part of it a zest for life. I wish to choose life and choose God. It would be so much more easy for me if God came nearer to me and showed a little more of Himself to me. But until then (an it may never happen) I have to be satisfied with seeing God through the lens of others who He is immediate to.

Emily Dickinson was a very religious person. I hope her biographer goes into this part of her personality. So many of her poems are about life after death and celebrating life in Nature. Nature really tickled her fancy. I think Dickinson was primarily a positive person.

I believe that I have come to a position in life where I am surrounded by positive people. Many of these people come through church, although, some are in the sub-world of the mentally ill.

The most positive of them all though is my husband. It shows you how stubborn depression is when it is so difficult for his cheer to rub off on me. Although usually, eventually, it does. He does have the knack of eventually making me smile. Every day I am so eager for him to come home from work. When he comes home from work he breezes into my life and lifts me up with joy. Oh, how I watch the clock right before he comes home. Even as I write, I'm doing it right now. Calculating the time before I see him again!

Saints and the Thrift Store

Wrote for a good three hours today. Surprised I have any energy left to write this blog. But have been having the most peculiar sleeping patterns. I take my medication each night at 6 or 7pm. Yet last night feel asleep at 7:30pm, the night before at 3:30am. Needless to say, after falling asleep in the wee hours of morning I skipped church because it meant that I would have to get up at 9am, and on less then six hours of sleep, I would be very dopey. So instead of church I slept until almost 1pm. I loath being out in public and having an altered consciousness. Sick or sleepy or medicated I prefer all to endure in private. But this means two weeks in a row I have gone without attending church.

I have very mixed feelings about what I am writing about. I am literally making up a definition of what makes a Saint a Saint. I've finished writing about the types that make it into a mental institution. Point was to detail all the different kinds of people you can find, and yet, you won't find a saint in a mental institution. Will eventually have to go back and add quite a bit to the type that I belong to, namely, the broken, neglected and abused. I haven't been broken, neglected or abused in about 10 to 20 years, so it is a category that I fit into long, long ago. The problem with my description is that it is too short and it is too fantastical. The two paranoid schizophrenics I know both talk sense. They are both kind, dignified people. But perhaps when they were in the hospital they talked nonsense. The recovery that people can make after a hospitalization is enormous. Not in terms of regaining their former place in society though. Only in terms of living a happy life. Usually it has to be a widely simplified life from what they knew before.

I don't think Jim the therapist is going to like my definition of a Saint. He sees everything in terms of the unconscious mind. I say, what happens to a Saint occurs with outside intercession. It isn't the God within appearing, it is the God without conferring. I'm not saying that they (the Saints) are more human, I'm saying that they are less human, and that it is a good thing to be less human, because humans are, as a whole, a nasty and selfish lot. I believe I view myself as a nasty and selfish person. Oh, how I think about the crystal Swarovski brooch I bought for myself for a birthday gift in January, and how it cost, too much money - especially for something so rarely worn. I was selfish, pure and simple. My husband does not see me this way, but oh, I know myself and I am.

Money and how it is spent is on my mind lately because my husband's laptop computer seems to be broken. The screen died. My husband claims the computer itself is working perfectly, all we need do is buy a monitor. I'm thinking, just bite the bullet and buy a whole new thing instead of paying out piece by piece as they die off and need to be replaced. He's been telling me that the hard-drive has been making noise and might go any time. So after the monitor, is this the next thing that will need to be bought?

I think we need to buy him a new computer. We just calculated our tax return and it is twice what my husband estimated the first time he (incorrectly) filled out this year's taxes. Last night we both sat down at the table and I went over every single one of his numbers. I'm proud we could do the taxes ourselves, but let me tell you, it was a joint effort. He managed to get the right numbers in the end, but between, he was lousy. Used a lot of white out.

Thank goodness for the money that is coming in. My computer is working perfectly but then, how long do laptops usually last? I've had this one for three years. How long before I need a new laptop? Laptops are essential in this household, they get used every day. We do the creative work that best defines our very selves on laptops. I'm hoping that because I only use mine to surf the internet and do word processing that somehow I'm not stressing it like my husband stresses his doing visual work.

In the back of our mind we are always asking ourselves the question; are we saving up for a new car? Our car only has 52,000 miles on it, and we don't drive it much, but still, when we need to buy a new car, can we afford one? We aren't making the gains in our savings that we once predicted we would make. And this is mostly because of small spending. Myself, I need to switch to buying thrift store clothing again. I've gotten the worst habit of loving Banana Republic and Nordstrom clothing.

Yesterday I told my husband that all our car worries would be over if I could just sell a book. Estimates on how long its going to take to finish this book? Three years at a steady pace. Maybe five years to make it really excellent. And yet, in my heart, although I know it can get finished, I have no way of knowing if it is brilliant or trash. I've read my husband's great, 6 year novel and I pronounce that it is both brilliant and trash and unpublishable. So I know extremes of talent can be found within one book. And I know that you can write your heart out and still not get published.

Yesterday I despaired and said maybe I should stop church activities and instead concentrate on writing the book. My husband thought that doing this would mean a return of a wife that contemplated suicide too much. It is hard to know what supports one's existence or what gets in one's way. Funny that the two seem so similar. I needed church once, and now that I feel I no longer need it, is this because its working and that is why I feel so free to drop it? Do you start hunting around for a different husband just as soon as you are certain that you love and can't live without the one you have? In me is a struggle to preserve the preciousness of that I have become accustomed to. It seems that for me familiarity breeds contempt. For instance, lately we have been taking the dog on long walks. Do I need a second dog, as I dream of, (but know we can't afford) or do I just need to take better care of the one dog I have and brush her long coat before it snarls? In some ways I'm thankful that I'm a slave to this book, I definitely need to be subjugated and slowed down, walked all over, and thoroughly confounded. I know the truth of the matter in my heart. Nothing in my life need be changed. I just need to do everything with a grain more passion. Love my husband more. Love my dog more. Love my book more. Love my church more. And consume less. Return to the thrift store.

Follow the Leader

Yesterday was difficult. I was reading a lot of on line stories about Alexander McQueen and people who were interviewed talking about. This is what one socialite and writer said about him;

"I don't think success was easy for him," friend Plum Sykes wrote in the Sunday Telegraph this week. "He told me he was driven by his insecurities, and he believed that all successful people were."

There were details in the news articles that McQueen hung himself in a wardrobe and left a suicide note. It boggles my mind that someone so accomplished should throw life away. So it helped, a little, to hear someone speak of him as being insecure. My instinct tells me that he made a mistake. Suicide is a mistake. If he could have made it through his mother's funeral, cried himself into incoherence, then he would have lived and continued with his work.

One article mentioned the fashionista Isabella Blow and that she had been a friend of McQueen's and had committed suicide three years earlier. So I looked up Blow and read about her life and death.

Then it came time to take my morning medication. My pills are arranged in a little plastic box according to day. I can tell at a glance if I've taken my morning dose or forgotten it. I refill the box once a week. Last week I ran out of my narcotic Klonopin and had to order more from the pharmacy. I order a three month supply. That's 360 pills. I opened the new bottle yesterday, looked at what it contained, and immediately thought that it was enough to kill myself with. I couldn't shake the fantasy throughout the rest of the day. It became an obsession.

I thought, since McQueen killed himself, I should kill myself too. It felt like playing follow the leader. I was not particularly sad or depressed, at least, not more than usual. It just felt right that you should follow the example that someone you admires sets. I told my husband that it felt like McQueen was somehow closer to God than me. My husband pointed out that if you commit suicide you are probably feeling cut off from God.

In my work on the book I'm at a particularly difficult point. It is fun but it is very challenging. I'm trying to describe all the different types of people you find in a mental hospital. So far I've got the broken, the neglected, and the abused. I've got the posers and the pretenders. And I've got the petty criminals and the self-proclaimed victims. I'm naming the types because I'm trying to prove a thesis statement; that you don't find saints in a mental hospital. Haven't yet written about saints. These thoughts about who you might find in a mental hospital are all in the mind of a social worker who is incapable (she knows it) of loving strangers. Her eyes are judgmental and not kind.

I'm really lucky that the Catholic Church has never proclaimed a saint who spent time in a mental institution. Saints are definitely weird people, not like the rest of us. But because they aren't like the rest of us, they don't suffer craziness like the rest of us. They may be eccentric, and they may be protected by the Church, but they are more likely to be killed then to be medically treated.

I guess, while I was thinking about following McQueen, life felt unreal. I simply did not feel connected to the people in my life, like my husband and family, or the friends at the Church and peer support. I did feel connected to my writing, but the enormity of the project - that it will take several years, that it can be so difficult, - made me weary. I get world weary. I go through the motions of staying busy and try to keep my mind occupied. If my mind is occupied then I don't think about suicide. It is a life built around trying to stay alive and not think about suicide.

The night when thoughts of McQueen got really bad I put a movie on and watched it. Since his death I haven't been able to get on the tread mill. So this movie was watched in bed. It had no sex, no violence, and no special effects in it. It was "Pride and Prejudice" - a love story based on the book by Jane Austin. Oh, there was a final kissing scene at the very end, presumably after the heroes have gotten married. That is the final point to all her novels, getting married.

The movie helped me. It soothed me. It said, "Life is so you can have these little sweet experiences". McQueen is currently unable to. Every little sweet earthly experience is lost to McQueen forever. Even the tiniest.

This morning I brought my dog inside from her morning bathroom break outside. As I closed the outside door, the inner door opened, and for a brief moment both doors were open. The kitchen curtain fluttered. In my mind I imagined that the movement of the kitchen curtain was our gray cat sneaking outside. I did not, in that moment, know what was real or what was not. The cat should not be outside in the cold and snow. Once the cat left us for five weeks. The cat is not allowed anymore outside, but I know, she would like to go outside. I was relieved when, after taking off my coat and heating up a cup of coffee, I looked at the closed bedroom door and saw the cat and the dog sitting outside of it waiting to get inside. The bedroom is where we have an electric heater going all the time. The animals know that is where it is warm and on a winter day, we will, two cats, a dog and myself, all four of us, be inside enjoying the heat. The joy of our gathering is small. But it is real.

Choose life.

Valentine's Day

Last night went bowling. Hadn't been bowling since I was a young girl. I believe we went duck pin bowling for a birthday party when I was about 10 years old. Last night I most certainly made everything up as I went along. Didn't have a single notion as to what was proper to do with my body as I bowled. Had to be instructed how to fit my fingers in the bowling ball holes.

My husband said that I was throwing the ball and that someone was going to come and tell me to stop, I might ruin the wood on the bowling lane. But then the loud music started, and the lights dimmed, and the colored lights started spinning, and the bowling ally filled with laughing people, and he must have thought, "no one cares that Karen is throwing the ball".

I actually beat one of my husband's scores. That was when I bowled two strikes. My husband learned how to bowl in school. The kids got on the school bus and were bussed to a bowling lane for physical education. It was very amusing to watch him be so serious about his bowling form. Usually at the last minute, he put so much push on the ball, that his feet slipped from under him and he nearly toppled over. It happened again and again. He complained the lane was slippery.

I looked at his back, standing so still, considering the lane in front of him, all focus, and for once I saw him in a serious mood. It is not so often that I see my husband in a serious mood. He is very attractive when he is serious. He bowled about one game seriously trying to win, and then, he bought a beer. After the beer, when he stood and held his bowling ball and considered the lane in front of him his hips wiggled a little in time with the music and he danced while he bowled. Dancing was disastrous for his score. When he danced, and ignored the bowling form that he had learned in school as a child, he rolled gutter balls.

I said to my husband, "Don't dance when you bowl" but the woman we were there with (another couple) said, "he's having fun". And of course she was right. I was so mixed up as to whether or not to compete or to have fun that I prayed to God to just let me hit the pins and not throw gutter balls. I must have a competitive personality. Out of the four of us I didn't want to be the low score. I wanted the woman from the other couple to bowl the low score. And rotten me, when she bowled well, I was disappointed. I tried hard not to wish her ill luck. But there was a little devil in me speaking.

The bowling was one price for 9pm until 12am. The other couple we bowled with met us at a Friendly's restaurant at 8pm and we all had ice cream and coffee before we bowled.

I did not get to sleep until a little after 2am. But while my husband was snoring, I left the bedroom and set up on his computer his valentine gifts. There was the Tibetan prayer rug with two fishes which was the big surprise. It is small and there is a specific place for it. It fits on top of his pine witch box underneath his computer. I draped the prayer rug over the top of his computer so he would see it when he wakes. Then there was a heart shaped red candy box with a green dinosaur with googly eyes that moved that says "Valentine, you're Dino-mite!", a bag of Werther's candy that he likes to suck on, and a card. This year I went not for the big message card, but for the card with the best picture on it. It had a picture of two puppies asleep with their heads next to one another. Inside I wrote "You're my best buddy" and "Love you forever".

I received a stuffed toy puppy dog, very cute, and chocolates. A whole mess of different kinds of chocolates in a festive bag with pink tissue paper. I am currently, after one day of eating chocolates, dreaming of biting into an apple. A fresh, crisp, apple. And maybe eating a little bit of grilled chicken. There is such a thing as eating too much chocolate where you begin to dream of other foods.

About three weeks ago my husband and I bought a silver necklace in an antique store. This purchase was understood to be an early Valentine's Day gift. The necklace has spokes that fan out like rays of the sun. It is very substantial, a lot of silver, and I feel like Cleopatra when I wear it.

In honor of the holiday I changed the table cloth on the kitchen table to from one that is green to one that is red. On top is a fancy strip of embroidered black cloth, and on top of the cloth there is a fat red candle in a glass hurricane shaped container. Today I dashed to the grocery store to buy several red carnations to put in the small Waterford crystal rose bowl that my husband and I received from my father as a wedding gift. There were tons of flowers at the grocery store, but the prices they were charging! One carnation was $1.50 and one red rose was $3.99. Never mind how much a bouquet of flowers cost. I suppose for the man who wants to impress his woman price does not matter. On Valentine's Day the man is a little desperate. You are under the gun to prove your love. I really wanted flowers on my beautiful table so I bit the bullet and bought four carnations, all different shades of red. A carnation is a flower that lasts a long time.

When I was bowling I looked around at all the happy people and I thought to myself "I have a schizophrenic illness, but look, I am enjoying myself out in public! No one could ever guess at the secret I contain." And I felt pretty. I wore a designer cream cashmere sweater that I bought long ago when I had money from Neiman Marcus and light blue torn jeans. On the drive home my husband said to me that I looked like I was in my early thirties, tops. Truth is, I'm 42. But all of the dieting I have been doing paid off last night. I was not the thinnest girl there, but I had a normal figure. And when you have felt overweight for so long, being normal, feels like the sweetest high. My hair was long and fluffy because I had taken a shower just several hours before we left the house.

I think that I shall ask my husband to take all the left over chocolate with him tomorrow to work and distribute it to his co-workers, or save it for himself as a snack. I want to continue my diet tomorrow. The gift of candy was appreciated, as a gesture, but I really don't want to eat it all. My husband sought to overwhelm me, and this he did. From an economic point of view my husband may find it frustrating that all the candy is returned to him - he will feel like he wasted money - but my eye is on a prize.

I have a goal to fit into the next smaller size jeans by Easter. Easter will be celebrated by visiting with family, and I would like to show off a smaller size to them. I also will change the kitchen table again at Easter, putting on what type of table cloth I do not know yet. But there will most certainly be a new candle holder or stick that co-ordinates with the table cloth. I can always use something I already have, don't have to buy anything new. But I think I will look and plan.

I love having a pretty, decorated house. I would be devastated if my dwelling were destroyed by fire. The objects I own come from decades of patient collection. I think that I refused to try to sell the last two paintings I painted because I wanted them to decorate the kitchen walls. They mean more to me than money. A colorful, decorated living space is a joy to live in. I'm definitely not a minimalist. I would prefer to have someone else's beautiful paintings rather than my own hanging in my house. There is such a thing as being too surrounded by one's own ego. Seeing myself reflected back at myself is not my idea of comfort. I like other people's vision besides my own. But I like quality. I like to be impressed. And quality costs money. So until I can afford the quality of what I paint myself, I have to be satisfied with only myself.