Mood:  incredulous

Today I emailed a short statement about myself for Schizophrenia Bullitain to use in their journal along with the picture "Karen With Pineapple".  This is what I wrote.

Every time I thought about doing a self portrait I imagined myself with a pineapple sitting on my head.  My husband says that when I walk through the fruit section of a grocery store my aura flairs off my head in waves of purple light, so, perhaps I love fruit. Besides being a wife and schizophrenic I am a mystic and can predict the future with a tarot deck.  More of my artwork can be seen on my website www.schizophreniaandart.com.  My goal in life is to one day have a painting in a museum and to fit into a Prada dress.

I did exaggerate.  That aura thing only happened once.   And truth is, what I can do with the tarot anyone I think with an instruction manual (because I use the instruction manual every time!) can read the future with tarot.  If not to give an accurate picture of the past, present & future, what is the tarot for?  So, not only can anyone who wishes read the tarot (if they have a good instruction manual), but, I don't do the tarot much because I happen to believe that the future is none of my business.  And most certainly, other people's futures are none of my business to peep into.  I learned that lesson the hard way.

Here is the beginning of a first person account of what it is like to live with a schizophrenic illness.  A first draft of an essay to be submitted to Schizophrenia Bullitain to see if they will publish it, perhaps, in the same issue that has my cover.

It is difficult to explain to people how my schizophrenic illness makes me disabled.  I am an artist, a nice thing to lable myself because it implies a lifestyle of indeterminate work hours and indeterminate income.  In short, no one can tell just by looking how success or unsuccessful an artist is.  And since artists are steroetyped as being a bit odd and fey, the eccentrities of schizophrenia personality are attributed to having a creative mind.  If a stranger is good hearted then they imagine the best and are comfortable in conversation, treating me as an equal.  Few try assertain my productivity by asking "how many paintings do you make a year?" The answer is 4 or 5.  Once a business man asked me "how much money do you make in a year?" My answer to this question is next to nothing.  Usually I lose money spent on paint, brushes, canvass, frames and publicity.  The needeling questions about who I am are usually passed by for more exciting topics such as "What do you paint?"

The hard fact about being an artist with a significant psychiatric disability is that talent needs to be worked hard for it to advance.  A person can be born creative, but without hours of practice and hard work that creativity will most likely not become significant.  The artist will not stand apart and above the crowd.  If a mental disability limits the hours of mental concentration every day then the creative talent advances slowly.  Usually too slowly for the person to become commercially competitive with non-disabled artists.

Once, a small gallery owner and I struck up an aquaintence that lasted several years.  He professionally framed several of my canvasses himself.  When I visited him in his shop I was always at my most attractive.  Showered, rested, and a paying customer.  The new car I parked in his lot had been bought for me by my husband.  This man couldn't "see" anything wrong with me.  My creeping rate of artistic production baffled him.  So he once said to me, "You have a nice personality.  Why can't you get a job at the kennel down the road?" Meaning that I couldn't be so disabled that I couldn't clean excrement off cement floors.  Perhaps this is true.  For several hours every day perhaps I could use my best hours of clear thought and concentration in such a task. 

What the frame shop owner wanted was to prove my status of being disabled wrong.  His theory that I could become a contributing member of society, earning a wage, was intended as a compliment.  It did not matter if I wanted to clean up after caged animals.  What was important was the proof that a meanial job required no education and minimal mental skills was available to me.  If I declined then the fault was with me and my personal values, and not my illness.   

Posted by dignifyme at 11:02 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 24 August 2006 9:29 PM EDT

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Mood:  spacey

Brought the dog home today from her kennel at the vetrinarian.  We borded her originally for a rabies quarenteen because she nipped a kid at a park.  After ten days we could take her home but by then my husband and I had flown to San Francisco to attend my sister's wedding. 

Plum Pudding has lost a lot of weight.  I can't imagine she was very happy at the vetrinarian, especially given our emotional state of my huband and I when we manditorily handed her over.  She has borded before, althought never this long, and never has there been visible weight loss.  Now her head looks too big for her body and her hip bones are prominant.  Happily she has already eaten two small meals at home.

Posted by dignifyme at 7:57 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 23 August 2006 10:39 PM EDT

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Mood:  down

Woke up this morning and had a hard time focusing my eyes.  I don't think that my eyeballs were synchronated.  Or the lenses in them weren't dialating right.  Neither could I tolerate bright light very well.  Probably it is because I became over-medicated yesterday flying home from San Francisco.  I needed to keep on popping pills.  We arrived at the airport by Taxi in California at 11am and finally left the airport in Connecticut with our car at 12:30am, arriving in Vermont a little after 2am.  I drove part way home with clear vision.  It was only when the adrenelin and anxiety ended and after a long night's sleep that the extra medication in my system started giving me side effects.

The Geodone isn't working well.  I get these moody spells where I feel dark about myself and the world.  Something in my chest feels constricted and I have anxiety about nothing in particular.  I can feel it right now, that there are things wrong with the world and that my future is grim.

Upon arriving home and reading my email I discovered that my artwork, "Karen With Pineapple" on the May 2007 cover of the psychiatric journal "Schizophrenia Bullitain".  I'm going to get a copy and have the cover framed.  Ha, if I were on better medication I would be happy about this honor all day long.

I just spent $100 ordering a 3 month's supply of Geodone so I'm going to take the drug until my supply runs out.  It isn't like I have any heavy responsibilities.  No children or normal job so I don't have to be in peak form.  I am giving a lecture on October 25th at the town library on "Schizophrenia, Art & Recovery" which still needs to be written and get promoted.  All I really want to do is paint but I suppose that tomorrow I will go to the town library to work on my script (of which several drafts already exist).  When I was a kid I'd start working on my Halloween costume in September, and the old habits stick.  I start early working on the things that really matter to me.

Posted by dignifyme at 8:38 PM EDT

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Mood:  lazy

Today my husband and I start a project to chart my progress on Geodone.  We will use a diary and then transfer the information to a spreadsheet for analysis. 

Yesterday was a big work day, I spent many hours painting and then had a normal evening.  The need to chart when I take my medication and how much is now pressing because we don't understand the correlation between good mood and good cognition, the good days, and the schizophrenic symptoms - of which I am having unusually short, strong episodes.  We treat the illness as fast as we can with medication, but, when the symptoms strike we are still slow to recognize them for what they are.  It is hard to differentiate general tiredness from a downward schizophrenic cycle. 

We will chart when I take the Geodone, how much, periods of high stress and/or work, energy levels, and symptoms of the illness.  Here is a sample of today's diary entry:

7am- woke with a clear mind. At 9am ate breakfast and took 20mgG(odone).  Quiet activity, level mood.  Beaded a necklace.

11am-2pm Worked at the Museum.  Dynamic and talkative, social and interactive, responsible for visitor's admissions and sales from the gift shop.  Medium/high stress.

3pm obviously tired. 40mgG

schizophrenic symptoms start at 5pm, treated with medication at 7pm.  Take my normal evening dose of 60mgG with 1/2 tablet of a klonopin narcotic to calm me.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with #10 being the worst, my husband rated me a #9.  Lost ability to speak.  No eye contact and repetative motion, clawing at the wall.  Scratched self a bit.  Needed to be restrained by husband so not to damage the wall. 

8pm regain sense of humor and start teasing my husband, suggesting that he is having homosexual fantasies.  We watch a movie together.  I enjoy the movie.

10pm wide awake.  Tiny echo of schizophrenic emptiness.  Loss of meaning, ie. all activities are similarly futile.  Have energy but difficult to focus and find a direction.  Blog and return to beading project.  Maybe read before bed.

Posted by dignifyme at 10:15 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 14 August 2006 10:49 PM EDT

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Mood:  d'oh

Had a tough day today and increased the dose of Geodone I take.  Since it is the weekend I made the decision myself and will try to talk to my therapist on Monday.  I can't see any objection to my taking more medication.  They only worry when you decide to take less.

Two nights ago I fell down a hole in my mind, quite like Alice sliding down the rabbit hole.  It started with my being hurt that my husband stayed late at work to read a book (odd behavior - why not come home and read the bood?) and ended with me curled on our bed in a fetal position unable to speak or move.  I couldn't stop the fall.  During dinner I was silent, focused on my dinner plate, the food and utensils and unable to make eye contact with my husband and his daughter.  I listened to their light banter and understood that it was very normal, but, I had no way of emotionally connecting to anything that they said.  I experienced no humor and no curiosity.  To them it simply appeared that I was in a bad mood.  But they didn't know how far away I was in my mind, they did not know the true alien that I had become.

After dinner I retreated to the bedroom.  When my husband came to check on me I said, "five".  And then repeated "five".  My voice was firm.  Adament.  The next word I was able to push out was "blue".  My husband said, "Karen you are breaking down."  And it was true.  The Karen that he knew ceased to function as she normally does.  When I am in despirate need I will say one word that makes no sense - it is a clear sign of distress.  Since I can't make sense, to say something logical, I say something random because that my mind can manage to do.  I suppose an alternative would be a hand signal, meaning, "I am sick and in trouble."

 My husband asked me if I wanted medication and I nodded my head.  It was hard for me to open my eyes to look at the pills - I felt about in the medicine box for different shaped bottles.  Lucky for me the thought process of which pills to take was very clear.  Oh, I could think whole sentences in my head, I could explain everything that was happening to me, but the explainations stayed locked up in my head.  Thinking a word is an entirely different thing from saying a word.  Usually two processes work in perfect union, except, when you have a disease like schizophrenia which separates thought from action and spirit from emotion.

My medication brought me back nicely.  Later that night my husand and I had sex.  My life is a very strange adventure.  My husband must be rather special himself to be able to join me on it.  His adaptablility to changing circumstance (my changing consciousness) is extraordinary.

Today I circled that dark hole but I did not fall down it.  My emotions puzzled me.  I thought to myself that I have everything that a person with schizophrenia could ever want or need.  A safe place to live, a husband who provides for me and loves me and has nice sex with me, a dog, and painting artwork to keep me busy with dreaming of fame and fortune.  I have the things that ten years ago were just a dream, and yet, after acheiving it all, it all felt like nothing.  So yes, I was puzzled today.  Intellectually I know that I am blessed.  But my emotions were so barren, I had a waste land inside of me.  I tried to meditate in the morning and then once more in the afternoon.  Focus on breathing.  Stay in the moment and observe the moment.  It was a short help.  But in the end, in late afternoon I took extra Geodone, and it was Geodone that has returned me to normal.

I'm going to stop writing and go hug and kiss my husband.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:57 PM EDT

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Mood:  blue

I couldn't write here in my blog about what happened until several days had passed. 

My dog is safe, but she is in manditory rabies quarenteen at a local vet for ten days.  It is an expensive slap on the wrist and I'm sure a comfort to the parents of the little girl that she nipped at the playground.  My husband brought the dog there and then let it off leash.  Something he knew I would have never, ever allowed.  In our town it is not legal for dogs to be off leash.  And our dog in particular has lost all training when she is with my husband.  He is incapable of being a doggie authority figure for her and she knows it. 

This post is so painful to write.  I feel shame, guilt, fear, anger and worry.  The bite was to the eight year old's back and while Plum Pudding broke the skin the bite did not require stitches or a doctor's attention.  Thank goodness.  One hour after the incident the little girl was back at the park riding her bicycle on the sidewalk.  My dog was trying to herd the moving target - without training her herding instinctinks take over and bicylcles and cars and joggers are all targets for little nips.  It isn't aggression but it is a dominence gesture. 

About a month ago I forbid my husband to take Plum to the park on a fifteen foot training leash.  I had talked to a neighborhood parent who expressed fear about a lunging german shepherd and I got a good image of how wild Plum must be behaving when my husband takes her out.  With me she heels right by my side.  My husband she pulls.  I told my husband that now he was only allowed to walk her on a conventional short leash - a better means of controlling her.  Apparently my husband walked her on the leash to the park and then let her off the leash.  After the bite he mumbled something about hoping to give her practice in  "learning how to socialize" but it was laziness and daydreaming to think that giving a dog more freedom results in better behavior.  My husband let her off the leash becasue is gave him the chance to relax and smoke a cigarret or read a book free of responsibility.

When Plum comes home my husband is not allowed to ever walk or take care of her again.  He failed her and he failed me.  I'm scared becasue if Plum bites again there can be a police hearing to determine whether or not to put her to sleep.  Now her life is in my hands.  I wish we lived out in the country near woods with a couple of acres of land but we don't.  We live in a small town near the center of town where the buildings butt walls five feet apart.  Plum has to exist with people and I have to make certain that she is domesticated in any situation.  It will be more work for me, but I do look forward to having a closer relationship with my dog. 

Posted by dignifyme at 6:03 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 11 August 2006 7:50 PM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

Just finished painting for today.  Already thinking about the next painting.  It's size, colors, and subject matter.  Tomorrow when I go to the museum for my volunteer job I'm bringing a sketch book.

Been working hard at painting.  Every day.  Last night I had a dream where I had an extra eye on top of my right eyelid.  It had no pupil but it was certainly a third eye on my face.  Mike said I ought to dream it again and move it to the proper place in the center of my forehead but I said, nah, it was where it was supposed to be. 

Last month I posted about a religious experience.  One thing that I didn't mention was that my spiritual friend told me that on Geodone I would be able to have better communication with the Other World.  I think that my dream of an eye over an eye has to do with my picture making ability or strength of imagination.

I'm going to making paintings that will make people want to possess them.  They will see it hanging in a gallery and think to themself "I want that in my home so that I can look at it every day.  I must have it, it must be mine."  I get that way about art in galleries, but, it is a rare painting that can do it.  In museums I used to play a game with myself.  I'd say to myself, "If I could take only one painting home with me, which painting would that be?"  Sometimes I'll be in an art gallery and I'll get really mad and frustrated because there isn't a picture in the place that I would want to take home.  I wonder if people have gone crazy, making boring trivial stuff, what is wrong with them?  I want to shake them and shout at them, "Put long hours and hard work into your art! Take risks!  Astonish me, make me envious!"

Oh, how I love to be beat.  I love to gaze upon strong, visionary talent.  I love to be outdone.

Posted by dignifyme at 8:53 PM EDT

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Mood:  not sure

Arrived home late last night.  Wednesday I drove down to Connecticut to help my Mom find a dress to wear to my sister's wedding in two weeks.  We found the perfect dress.  Mom looked like a royal queen.  But she can't eat any sugar right now - the dress fits on her body very snug.  I got a dress too, but mine is light and airy.  My underware cost more than the dress, but Mom kindly paid for it.  Without me she would have had a very hard time finding something so nice.  I ran around the stores picking out and holding all the dresses, checked their sizes, getting a new size if required, and putting them back on hangers. 

I don't know how to feel about my life.  Having a sister who is getting married in a church in a lavish dress with a tiny waist to a man who's career is skyrocketing and pals around with multimillionairs makes one reflect on one's own circumstances.  I'll be very lucky if I get to keep all my teeth in these next ten years.  Shopping in Connecticut reminded me of the best benefit of money; you can pay to be around people.  Shopping malls, bookstores, and resturants are all places I used to go to in my first marriage to be around people.  My depression is very old fashioned - I'm lonely.  I've got a great husband and I love my dog and his daughter.  I love my art, making it and planing it and dreaming of a future where I get recognition.  So why the empty hole in the middle of my body?  I am baffled.

Posted by dignifyme at 8:53 AM EDT

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Mood:  spacey

Now I know how the museum survives.  The entire year's budget is supplied by a nuclear power plant!  Money, power, and charity are a very old triad.  Sometimes I've worried a little about the dangerous monster sitting on the side of the river five miles away.  Now my feelings are stirred.  I love the museum and have always wanted the best for it while I have always viewed the nuclear power plant as a blight upon the soil.  Now I understand that the existence of both are inter-related.

My three hours at the museum yesterday went very well.  A new retrospective exhibit by the artist Wolf Kahn opened and we are getting a sharp rise in attendence.  I'm excited because there is a lot I can learn from looking at this artist.  He will be speaking at the museum about his art on August 10th and I'm going to take a tranquilizer and go hear him talk.  The drug will be for mild anxiety.  From experience I've learned that people at these popular lectures get sandwiched in together uncomfortatbly close.  Too many human bodies makes me self conscious and my guts begin to rumble.

A good tactic for work days at the museum is to arrive having done little else in the morning.  It is a mistake to exhaust my reserves of energy before work.  Yesterday I wanted to paint really bad but instead I put a muzzle on Plum and brushed her.  A very basic, repetative activity requiring no sophistication of thought.

Wolf Kahn spends half his year living on a property in West Brattleboro.  He likes to paint his barn and other Vermont barns quite a bit.  I didn't know it but for the last 10 years every time I've visited my psychiatrist the enormus red barn art print she has framed opposite the therapy couch is a Wolf Kahn barn.  The original is in the show, and my, doesn't it look better than the print.

I've been thinking what to ask for Christmas - because confused parents sometimes are greatful for a little help.  I want big, fat art books with lots of pictures on artists who have now grabbed my attention.  They are artists who I want to steal technique from.  I need

El Grecco

Gaugain

Francis Bacon

I'm starting to think more than ever about color and how the paint lies on the canvass.  Clumps, dashes, raked bits or flat.  I need to look at original artwork by the masters and try to ask of it new questions.  Like, under the yellow, was there blue painted first and does it peek out from under the yellow? 

Posted by dignifyme at 7:36 AM EDT

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