Mood:  d'oh

I'm listening to the sound of two dogs simultanously chewing bones in two different rooms.  Their saliva driven jaws are very loud, crunching and slurping.  Already this morning I have taken a shower, gone to Walmart to get dog bones, gone to the Dollar Store (more dog bones!), Grocery Store and Blockbuster Movies. 

Yesterday the big puppy Cerberus pulled a plant off a windowsill, dug out the plant and ate it, and started chewing on the plant container.  When London came home from work and school there was a big pile of dirt for her to clean up.  Tears followed shortly after.  Why hadn't Mike and I noticed what Cerberus was doing?  We were both home when it happened.  The truth is, since London was away, the grown-ups were playing captured slave and mean, wicked master.  Gasp!  We could leave our bedroom door open and make noise! 

The hard part of the evening wasn't the loss of my plant, it was a rather pitiful specimin that had seen better days, no, the hard part was finding what to say to help London to feel better.  At first Mike did a no-no, closing the bedroom door with him and London secluded inside and me on the outside.  Before London came to live with us he and I had discussed just such an event occuring, and why it needed to be avoided.  I don't mind Mike and London having private conversations, it is a natural thing for the two of them to do given their long history of being close pals.  But I had requested that if a private conversation is to occure it needs to happen outside of the house, out on a drive or walk or in a coffee shop.  What I was afraid of was hearing whispering voices behind my back or, as happened yesterday, walking though our tiny apartment with the knowledge plain as day that I am physically and symbolically shut out of a portion of my home as well as their relationship. 

The rule of the house is that London is free to shut her door anytime and I never enter her room without asking first.  But the balance of emotions between the three of us drastically changes when someone shuts themselves up in the room with her, excluding the other.  Mike and I didn't want either of our relationship with London eclipsing the relationship that Mike and I have with each other.  I can't allow myself to have secrete confidings with London about my feelings about her father, and he knows that he can't do too much about bringing his troubles with me to burdan her either.  Heaping the secrets of either adult on London may feel like an honor and endear emotional closeness but it is an unfair burdan as well.  Simply put, people in this little household cannot be pitted two against one.  The one unfair but necessary exclusion is when Mike and I come to a joint decision and tell London want we want or how we feel.  In an email to London before she came to Vermont, her Dad made me wince when he said so bluntly - "We are the alpha's and you are the beta."

I don't completely understand why London was so unhappy but I can understand that being in a new state without any friends is hard.  She just started school and a job and I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will meet kids her age that way.  I also wonder if Mike and I seeming like such a unified front isn't a bit lonely and intimidating.  There was good three year span in her teenage years when the two of them lived in a house alone together and did everything together.  Now the Dad of old days has changed.  Mike decided that the closeness they shared then, at this point in her adult life (and with me in the picture) would be, as he put it, "unhealthy".

One night the three of us were in bed together watching the excellent Russian supernatural thriller "Night Watch" when I glanced over and saw London curled up against her father like a little girl.  I remarked to Mike that it felt a little uncomfortable having another woman so intimate - even in a childlike way - with him in our bed.  The next day at work Mike emailed me.  He had been thinking, what if the shoe were on the other foot?  What if, we were watching a movie in bed, and I had my 21 year old son curled up at my side?  Mike then wrote, "Ehwwwwwwwwww!"  He was really distrubed at that picture.

The three people in a bed thing can't be avoided since our television screen is located on a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed.  We are a houshold with two bedrooms, a jam-packed library (over 4,000 books) and a kitchen.  No living room or family room!  We have managed to fit three very comfortable chairs into the library and there is a sofa in the kitchen so each room has a comfortable place to hang out in.  Talking about the situation kinda diffused it for me, and now I have made peace with how we watch movies together.

The flurry of activity this morning was to make sure that London had her favorite food for breakfast, a bone for her dog, and to surprise her with the new Colin Ferrel movie love story that she has been dying to see, "A Brave New World".  It would be nice if the three of us could take karate lessons together, we all have Tuesday nights free.  However, as Queen of the Budget, I want to wait until after the winter and after our next tax return to see how much money is safely in our savings account.  Right now the account is depleated because of the trip to San Fransico.   So, instead of karate, Tuesday night is going to be Family Night with an emphasis on honoring London's place in the family.  What we cook that night for dinner will be decided by London.  Then, London and her Dad can go together to Blockbuster Movies and rent whatever movie London wants for all three of us to watch together.

Posted by dignifyme at 11:43 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 1 September 2006 9:23 AM EDT

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Mood:  happy

The title of this painting is "The Lady and Jumper".  The Lady is a mystical being who is responsible for fruitfulness and healing, (she has visited me several times in dreams) while the deer beast man is the representation of my beloved stuffed toy donkey, Jumper. The colors aren't quite right because I took the photograph while the artwork was hanging on the wall, drying.  Usually I use the natural light of outdoors.  Because I used indoor light there was some glare from my overhead work lights, despite the fact that I turned off the flash on my camera.  The last color to be applied was white, and it is one of the slowest colors to dry.  So it isn't safe to take the painting off the easel for a proper picture for about two weeks.  Also the picture is a little blurred, usually I use a tripod.  But you get the idea that I am working now more two dimentional and, perhaps, with more mystical subject matter.  This is the first painting that is pure Geodone influenced.

Posted by dignifyme at 3:00 PM EDT

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Mood:  spacey

Since I already have the cover image for the science magazine "Schizophrenia Bullitain", these past few days I have been working hard to create an essay for publication, hopefully in the same issue.  It is a "first person account" of my illness.  The writing is for scientists and laypeople who don't know much about what living with the illness is like.

The rules for the essay is that it must be between 1,000 and 2,500 words long.  So far I've written 1991 words and am trying to tie things up in a concluding paragraph.  I'm pushing myself to finish quick because who knows, they may have a lot of submissions and they plan the magazine far in advance and I don't want anyone else to get the May 2007 issue that has my cover picture.  Do they pay for writing?  I have no idea.  But the honor would be enormus and it would put my in that catagory of "published author".  Regardless of wether or not the magazine accepts my entry I believe that the essay is very good, very informative, original, and I can publish it on my website or submit it to other psychiatric journals.

Fifteen years ago I was a kid trying hard to recover use of my mind.  I had dropped out of college (because it was too hard, I kept on getting sick in class) and would go instead to the library every day.  For half an hour or fourty-five minutes I would write and re-write the same sentences in one paragraph.  Then, my mind spent, I would try to read an article in a high class literary journal like "The Yale Review" or "Granta".  I was reading the people who I longed to one day be like.  They forged the best language in the world, they were smooth writers, and powerful writers.  I didn't feel I could do what these published people could do without a lot more practice.  But in me I felt possibility.  I believed that I could twist words into sentences with explosive energy.  One of the magazines I discovered in that library was "Schizophrenia Bullitain" with it's cover art and every issue, that single first person account.  I was amazed at the bravery and talent of the sick people.  I was amazed at what they could write and also how far they could recover.  And many of them were people with families - a great accomplishment from my single, lonely point of view.  Who would ever want to marry a sick girl?

If I can write a good enough essay to be published in "Schizophrenia Bullitain" I will have come full circle in my life.  I will stand and look back at the girl who dreamed, knowing, that many of my dreams came true.

Today at the museum I asked a staff person named Teta if she would edit my final draft.  She said yes, and more, that she was uniquely qualified for this task.  For many years she worked as an assistant for a woman who had recovered from a mental illness and wrote self help books!  Teta personally edited three of her books!  Giving the manuscript to Teta will be exposing myself unnaturally to the people at the museum.  They don't need to know what goes on at home behind closed doors.  But hey.  Public about myself in one spot, public in another spot, what is the difference?  I am after all trying to give the world a gift of honesty, a gift of education about the schizophrenic illness.  For better or worse this illness is a big part of my identity.  It would be nice if things were different.  But then, I wouldn't be writing such an essay if theings were different.  I would be content to simply paint pictures.

Oh, tomorrow I put the final touches on a painting!  I have to put little ruffled lace bits with transparent white on the two sleeves of a dress, and scrub a thin bit of purple paint over light blue to darken the color area.  In several days when it is dry I can photograph it and post it on my blog.

Posted by dignifyme at 10:54 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 28 August 2006 11:17 PM EDT

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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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