Run and Rant

Once again, I am waxing poetic over a song lyric.  What can I say, I am writing a dissertation, and while part of my active mind is diligently citing, referencing, and implementing APA format, the other part must have something else to play with to keep it busy.  Hence, music.

 

The flavor of the moment is Lady Antebellum “Run to You”.   “This world keeps spinning faster, to a new disaster.  So I run to you…”  The OTHER part of my brain has been contemplating what I run from and what I run to.  I confess, much to my husband’s dismay on many occasions, I am not really a runner.  I’m more of a battering ram with a neon sign that says, “Bring it on!”  I think that that is the quintessential part of my nature, but has also been nurtured in me through life adventures.  

Having said that, I can think of a few things that make me want to run, and as a fairly extreme introvert, I tend to run inward.  I have a very healthy and vivid inward life lacquered with colors and images.  I have comfort there, beauty , and so much that I have cultivated like potted plants to create a garden of eccentricity and eclectic sensory experiences.  

I run from stupidity.  I run from ugliness and violence.  I run from stigma.  I really run from stereotyping, and I run away from organizational answers to individual problems.   Much of this is not so much that I’m afraid but more that I don’t want to get any on me :)  “When lies become the truth…That’s when I run to you”.  I run to Abba when my frustration with such things pushes me into a flight mode.  I am conceited enough to think that running to other human beings doesn’t provide any more answers to such things than what I can provide.  So, I  go to a source greater than myself. 

There is an intersection of this song with the show “Perception” that has occurred to cause me to put technological pen to paper today.  If you have not seen the show, I think it is hands down the best example of life with mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, I have ever seen in any form of media.  Last night’s show was about a paranoid schizophrenic being blamed for a heinous crime.  Not an unusual scenario.  The main character, Daniel, is also schizophrenic, brilliant, a forerunner in neuroscience, and a university professor.  He also struggles to maintain stability with schizophrenia and the yen and yang of medication or no.  

Daniel works with the FBI as a psychological profiler type, and in this scenario, he vouches for the person with paranoid schizophrenic, saying there is no way he committed such a crime.  Evidence, however points to the contrary, and not only is the person with paranoid schizophrenia put on the chopping block, but so is Daniel, whose past stay in a mental hospital to get help with stabilizing is grabbed by the FBI and thrown up as a discrediting point.  And suddenly this brilliant neuroscientist is no longer even considered a viable, functioning human being, much less invaluable in his professional field.

So, several things greatly annoye d me when I watched this.  But the upshot was, once again, the stigma attached to mental illness.  Not every mentally ill person is dangerous, stupid, or worthless to society, but the perpetuation of input, not to mention our insatiable need as human being to put everything in categories and then make assumptions based on those categories, has made us profoundly stupid. 

BUT it is not just those who are ignorant about mental illness.  It is also organizations that work to help the mentally ill that perpetuate stigma.  Why?  Well, for one thing they support a “recovery” model.  Wanna really get me hot?  Tell me I’m going to “recover” from one or both of the mental illnesses I am currently sporting.  There is no such thing as recovery.  Recovery by definition, according to dictionary.com, is “A return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength”.  There is none of that with mental illness, and after 20 years of hammering mental illness down to size in my life, I can confidently say I will NEVER return to any of those things.  I have had to redefine each to accommodate a modified existence.  The ideology is crap, and it is not effectively working for the mentally ill population, because it purports a lofty goal that is unreachable and does not provide practical ways of managing that help the individual achieve their own magnificent potential outside of societal norms. 

Another contribution such organizations make to stigma is the hollering about what society does without embracing options provided within frameworks already in existence.  Here is an example:  I have worked with mentally ill individuals and their families for years, as well as organizations such as police departments and nonprofit organizations.  I have a unique position because I am mentally ill, open about it, and am highly educated, specifically in abnormal psychology.  Where I discover the most hoops to jump through in order to educate populous, is in these organizations…To the point where it is not worth my professional and personal time to try to do all their little classes and seminars just to share my story and ways to cope, even though I have a bachelor’s and master’s in abnormal psych, research, and public speaking and am about to have a doctorate in leadership psychology.

At what point does the mentally ill population get to say, “Hey this is what I need.”  Some of us can speak for ourselves, and we are a helluva lot more qualified than family, organizations, and societal perception.  So…

I run from much of what is stereotypical and stigmatizing, and I rant, occasionally :), at what is accepted.  I confess I am better at accepting ignorance in the populous than in organizations that purport knowing how to help.  There comes a point in the life of an individual dealing with mental illness when they see a way to survive.  Unfortunately, that perception is defined as becoming lost in the illness, and much of that is due to the catch 22 provided by our mental health care system.  I am thankful everyday that I am a battering ram and that my support system did not try to kill that in me, because that God-given aspect of my nature is what helped me fight my way through to shrugging off stereotype, acceptance and redefinition of all my limitations, and to expect redefinition not recovery for my future. 

Blessings,

L

Dissecting the Deep

I’m an Adele fan.  Who isn’t, right?  And while her song “Rolling in the Deep” has been played and covered to ad nauseum I keep coming back to “we could have had it all…Rolling in the deep.”  What does that mean anyway?  

I have mentioned before that I struggle with repetitive thoughts, again, to ad nauseum.  Well, this is one of the phrases that has been torturing me.  Over and over.  But I think that much of my issue with this one is that I want to define the phrase.  I wonder what she means, and all I can do is redefine it for myself.  So here goes…

Maybe this seems corny.  A song lyric…really?  But many times my inspiration for writing comes from such.  As a musician and a possessor of great ability to recall lyrics of pretty much any song, I find I am sensitive to such things.  “We could have had it all”.  I confess I have thought such things with failed relationships in the past.  But now that I am happily married I realize that having it all is relative to the dream that balloons out over the deficiencies in a relationship.  I think that I have often supplemented what was missing in the reality with what I wanted to exist in the dream.  

When I look at my husband and my relationship with him, I do not expect to have it all…That is an ambiguous phrase and does not apply to the real and meaningful exchange that we enjoy.  As a person who was single for nearly forty years, peppering life with difficult and impossible relationships, I have come to realize that what I thought I wanted was very different from what I truly desire now.  I think that when we compartmentalize, we tend to put book ends on the stories of our lives with others.  No matter the relationship, we cannot have it all, because there will always be something else.  Like the child wanting that one thing so desperately, only do to discover after receiving that one thing, the joy in having it is not nearly so strong as the desire to possess it.  On to the next thing… And so often this is what we do with the people in our lives.  

The American dream perpetuates discontent, because we are continually striving for more in that directive of “pursuing happiness”.   But when are we content with what we have?  When do we adopt the ideology to be “content in all things”?  I’m just wondering, because it seems to me that we set the bar so high for things and people that what we get can never possibly hope to meet the expectation we have applied.  Hmmm.

And what is “rolling in the deep”?  I confess to taking this out of the context of the song.  What is the deep?  Deep to me is the depth of human soul.  There is a depth to my nature, my character, that is tranquil and murky black.  Very few things of this world really touch it much less roll in it.  But there are moments when something touches and impacts me so magnificently that it stirs those deep waters and truly rolls through them like a tide.  When I look at my husband and consider a future without him, my love for him stirs me deeply.  When I consider the wealth of heritage I have in each my siblings and parents, not to mention unconditional love and support, I am stirred down deep.  Those waters roll with emotion so intense that I am often overwhelmed.  And when I experience loss, that deep devastating gouge that occurs when someone beloved leaves, the deep stirs in me, churning with incalculable longing, loneliness, and loss…An ache that cannot be soothed.

So, that is the meaning of “we could have had it all…rolling in the deep”. ..Delusion and depth.    I cannot embrace having it all because it is a surface phrase that cannot be defined no matter how I try to quantify.  It is shallow, naïve, and adolescent.  But rolling in the deep?  Well that is the part of me that houses the essence of who I am where all my emotion springs from. 

Maybe we should focus not so much on having it all but on rolling in the deep…Just a thought.

Blessings,

L

Shedding

Today I met with my Chair person, via phone, and we had a good conversation about how I need to adjust my Chapter One for my dissertation.  It is looking good, and I am hopeful I may be finished with the whole thing by December which would put me two months ahead.  I am so ready to get this done!

So after spending the day working on projects I had planned to complete earlier this summer and feeling guilty about not plunking away at the computer on my dissertation, I felt liberated by my conversation with my professor who encouraged me and patted me on the back whilst kicking me in the butt :)

I am thinking of my extended family today as they had a funeral for my uncle.  Life is so brutal, isn't it?  Every time I think I am used to the waves it hurls, another one sloshes in, and I find I'm breathing in when I should be holding my breath.  I am learning, the older I get, that it is not so much accepting (as I have heard so many say), at least not for me.  It's more about acknowledging that with the great comes the not so great, or the other way round.

In my youth I railed at injustices.  Now, I still rail, but I also think before I act, and I try very hard to look at all aspects before really asserting myself.  And to be honest, much of what I see that bothers me, I have to choose to let go of, because I don't have the energy to fight every little thing.  I also have much more at stake that may be impacted by my actions than I once did.

What I have been reminded of this week as I have pondered the fragility of the human existence, is that we were never meant to endure, at least not over a long period of time, and when I look at my own frailties, I can see that what I cannot change is often a part of my nature dying away or dying off.  I find I tend to grasp when I should be letting go.  And who's to say what we lose of ourselves is not replaced by something better...Like the snake shedding its skin to procure a better fit.

So, that's what I am looking at as I head further into my dissertation and all the things that come with all the different hats I wear.  I am looking at letting go of what is dying in me to make room from what may be emerging.

We shall see...

Blessings,
L

The 21st of August

Today is procrastination day...I guess.  I should be working on the rewrite of my Chapter One for my dissertation.  But, alas, I have been doing everything but for the past couple of hours.  I am awaiting clarification from my Chair on some comments he provided, but mostly I'm just not into it.

Today is the one year anniversary of the passing of one of my dearest friends in high school.  It seems surreal.  And coupled with the death of my uncle this past weekend, I find I am at emotional loose ends today.  So as I sit here staring out my living room window, I find I am longing for something...Something I cannot define.  And is it necessary to define every little thing?  I confess that as a psychologist, I study compulsions and behaviors in others and in me like one does to solve a great mystery.  But I think it is balancing to sometimes just accept I'm in a particular place, experiencing an emotion that I may be unable to define, and that it just is what it is...undefinable.

So I'm going to take a deep breath...Inhale and exhale...And I'm going to do this day in increments with as much grace towards myself and all I am in contact with as possible.  So, here I go...

L

Remember

I do not believe in coincidences.  As a result of that conviction, I cannot discount the intersection of a few things that have occurred recently.  They have culminated in a creative explosion for me, and as a writer, I must embrace the deluge, however painful.  

My uncle passed away this past weekend.  He was a good man, and in a world that struggles with the definition, it is significant that I am able to apply such a label to him.  I know that he no longer suffers, and I have prayed for the ending of his pain.  He leaves a large hole in the fabric of his family, even as he joins his maker and his beloved daughter.   Still, with the knowledge that he no longer suffers, I am saddened, and pain is ever more poignant with the one year anniversary of my school chum, Torrey’s, passing.  I am pushed to a place of reflection, nostalgia, and searing sadness. 

Oh, I know…There are so many blessings, and I will get to counting them, but it is valid to embrace sadness and loss too, for they are just as significant to the human journey as joy and hope, for how can we know one without the other?  So I am lamenting…and there is solace in that.

My baby brother called the other night.  He is a gem.  He has also lost an uncle and, recently, a friend he was in the Marines with.  We discussed loss and how it impacts us; the ashy trail it tends to leave behind.  But as with burn off in the wilderness, ashy remains are fodder for new growth, and painful or no, against our will and deepest desires, we grow through loss.  

Time is another agent in our life process.  So often time is the culprit of our losing memories and faces of who and what has been monumental in our lives.  I know that I have lost so much due to mental illness in terms of being able to recall moments in my past, and that is aside from aging and forgetting.  I have felt guilty for having so many significant relationships that have evaporated as time and geography have created spaces between them and me. 

I have been thinking of my brother’s expressed concerns about not remembering what is important, and I have decided that it is what is of value that should be remembered.  It is not the names, faces, places, and experiences that are of most value.  It is the knowing that there was someone who had a providential impact.  It is knowing that no matter how things are now there has been an imprint made, and I can only hope that my presence in someone else’s life does the same whether or not they remember my face or name.  

Maybe it is a sign of age to be settled more with what I cannot recall as much as with what I can.  I suppose this may not seem a big deal…until you lose someone.  Then you hope you have done them justice by remembering them well, by giving credit where it is due, and by truly acknowledging to self if to no one else we are an imperfect organism, falling short in so many areas that we really should not.

When I lived with my parents in Montana, I used to do a lot of gardening.  One day I happened to look up.  It was a perfectly calm day, but as I looked up I saw a piece of paper floating along.  It was the size of a piece of notebook paper, and it was floating, whirling, and flipping against a cloudless azure blue sky.  I stood there watching it for some time as it climbed higher and higher with seemingly no breeze at all to propel it, until it was so high I could no longer see it.  I’ve no idea how long I stood there watching it.  Where did it come from?  How could it be thrown about like being tossed on waves at sea, while everything else was so calm? (Yes, I do know the science behind such an experience, but to see such a thing was just odd). 

I was struck by the correlation between that piece of paper and the human condition.  So often we are in the “slough of despair”, being tossed about by the tragedies in life, while the rest of the world seems to be calm and resolute.  I have been that piece of paper so many times, wondering what direction I was headed and why I seemed to be the only one caught in the wind tunnel of diversity.  I have no answers that aren’t glib, but I do know that grace, hope, and faith have been both antecedent and succedent  to my ride on the wind.  Usually I don’t appreciate the trio and their impact on me, but I know that I have weathered every height and depth as a result of their presence.  Mostly I have learned not to rail but to accept.  My cynical perspective is softened.  

I cannot change what is, but I will endeavor to uphold the heritage that my uncle helped to create, and I will strive to be, in my own life, what Torrey was in hers.  I know my brother will uphold his heritage as he raises his baby daughter, stepping over his pride and personal desires to ensure what is best for his family, because that is the kind of man he is, and I know he will honor the faith his friend placed in him by putting forth his brave heart in everyday life, as he did when he was at war.

We will honor those we have lost by living better lives as is the benefit of the contribution they have made to us, because anything else would further cement the ideology that we truly do not remember them at all. 

Blessings,

L

Ah Mania!

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQQ0E_yRYqCZoeDO6LTbjVF5yfTd7oDRK7LsPeGi4rEmvI6v2aggwjKgK6z

Ah mania!  After so many years on medication, it is a shadow of its former self, the dregs of irascible and invasive behaviors resultant of repetitive thoughts and impulsivity.  I apply a steely grip in June and do not release until the reins disintegrate into the gray ashes of depression in September.  After years of being overmedicated with invasive and often physically damaging medications, I decided in year, oh I don’t know, 15 (?) that I was not going to spend my life suppressing every reaction.  Anxiety medication for agoraphobia, medication for panic attacks, antidepressants, and the ever necessary mood stabilizer.  I decided that with an IQ the north end of brilliant, the iron will that comes naturally from heredity, and the knowledge that if Abba is for me, nothing can ever truly defeat me, I was going to find another way.  

So I spent time simplifying my life, really tamping down on what I put into my mind, and I drew trenches around my life that would serve as protectors, and I slowly forced myself back out into the world, overriding the terrifying world distorted by severe agoraphobia.  I experimented with doses and eventually cut my lithium down by half.  I have now been on a third the dose of lithium I was on for four years now.  I rarely take meds for panic attacks, though I still have them.  And I fight the agoraphobia every day, especially after going somewhere new and spending a lot of time being social.  But the difference now is that I have given myself permission to malfunction for a time.  I go to spend time with family, I allow myself a few weeks of not leaving the house afterwards.  But then I make myself get back on the horse and go out the door.  The first steps to the driveway and into the car are the worst.  Breathing increases, I hear my blood in my ears, I begin to sweat, and my mouth is dry.  My stomach is a ball of acid my senses heighten to the point of combustion.

But then I get in the car, start it, and I remember, “I have conquered this so many times.  It’s just one more time.”  Slowly I work my way back.   And with mania there are the repetitive thoughts that are incessant 24/7.  There are thoughts of impulsivity that would propel me towards the destructive.  And always I am hanging on tightly, allowing the circus to play in the theater of my mind but willing it to stay there.  Sleep is essential, as I am not only controlling mental chaos, but I am functioning at an optimum intellectual level in working on my doctorate.  And there are relationships I have know for a lifetime that I have learned to trust in and just let live.  

As I get older, the two illnesses are like aching bones, acting up when the weather is inclement.  It is not every day, but when I feel them acting up, I look to my faith, because it is the rope that hauls me through everything.  I cherish the love of my family who are more precious to me now than ever before, and I revel in the fact that I have a man who loves me, believes in me, and is so there to catch me when I trip. 

What I have decided is that it’s not about how well I conquer but how gracefully I move with these things that are uninvited contributions to my life.  I have spent so much time fighting, being a warrior, and I still am, but these days I am more interested in wisdom in living with, loving through, and being who I am with all my flaws and idiosyncrasies.  The lesson here is to do the same for others as well, and that is the blessing in my life.  When I let go of what I think should be and just accept what is, I am so richly rewarded.  I love deeper, experience more, and appreciate better. 

Blessings,

L

Bucket of Paint and a Brush

Well the painting is done!  It looks better than I had anticipated.  I am in the process of putting things back together and have to get window treatments, but I'm actually okay with the color and I think Chris is too.  It goes well with our flooring and bedding, so I'm going with it for now.  It's just so nice to have it finished! 

I am looking into shelving.  Our house is small with not a lot of storage, so I am looking for a way to use the space up high where we don't put pictures.  I have a lot of dolls in storage I would like to get out and put on display.  So there is that part of the "project house" that I'm still pondering. 

I'm just amazed at what a bucket of paint and a brush can accomplish.  It makes everything feel fresh and new.  Too bad life isn't so much that way.  When things are stale or just plain a mess, there really is nothing to slap on it all to make it shiny new.  One really has to move through the process of decluttering and altering a life to make it better, and it's much more complicated than a bucket of paint and a brush! 

We are making plans for the future, wondering which road we will take in the next couple of years.  So many options, and contrary to what is often said, lots of options are sometimes as bad as no options, but we are in a place that is far enough back that we do not have to make immediate decisions, and it is nice to look at different possibilities for the future.  Lots of big things on the horizon, but for now I'm rejoicing in having finished my project with my bucket of paint and brush :)

L

A Tale of Three Terriers

This is Dexter.  As I have shared before he is a little westie doggie, and for once, in this picture, he is clean!

THIS little bundle of joy is Patch...See any similarities?  My folks got a little westie, so it is "show and tell time"...

This is little Patch all tuckered out...

And THIS is my little Dexter dog all tuckered out.  Hmmm.  Maybe it's a westie thing...?

This is Oliver keeping watch over Patch while he sleeps like a little bat...Ollie is a very special dog.  He is a Westcott or Scoland terrier, and when Mom, Dad, and I moved to Wyoming he saved our sanity.  I have shared this before but when we moved we had a little yorkie/shizu named Cooper.  Almost immediately after we moved in he was killed by the neighbors two dogs.  It was pretty horrible.  Worried that we would have such a terrible memory of our new house, I went on the hunt for a puppy-one that was different than Cooper so as not to try to replicate...And this is what I found.

I love Ollie...He saved us in many ways, and he is so smart, stubborn, and strong.  Mom and Dad added Patch as a little friend for Ollie, and they enjoy one another...

both playing...

AND napping!

As for little Dexter dog...Well...

He has this lovely lass, Dixie

...And when she's busy...

He has me.  :) 

The end :)

L