Mood:  sharp

"Everyone knows that Karen is the head of the household." - London

I got two comments from the last post about having a gun in the house.  The first was an email sent by a worried family member who pointed out that right now I have been having increased depression and I have a history of one suicide attempt.

The second comment you can read, it is by JSR, and I have to say, I'm really honored that he is reading my blog.  My webite and this blog might not exist except for several internet pioneers who had a schizophrenic illness and put up websites all on their own.  JSR is one of the few who first self-published information on the internet that was honest and helpful to people with the disease, their families, and psychiatric workers.

Recently we have been taking unusual precautions with the gun.  It is stored empty and locked in a large, strong, wooden box.  The ammunition is stored separately in our barn in a smaller but also locked box.  After we got the first email we had a serious family discussion here in Vermont with London, Mike and myself. 

It isn't so easy to simply get rid of the gun.  It originally belonged to Mike when he was a policeman many years ago.  Thus, he has sentimental attachment to it.  It was promised to pass to London on her 21st brithday, which, just this July she celebrated here.  She is living with us for the next several years while she finishes college.  Then she is planning to become a private detective and I believe that she wishes to carry the gun her father once carried.  There are my needs to be concidered, but there are also the needs of the two other family members that I live with.  That gun represents a father-daughter legacy.

Currently, the large box that the gun has been locked in is being used as a coffee table.  We decided to lock it in another location which isn't so obvious to me.  Then, London put the key on a necklace on her neck.  Only a 21 year old foxy blond who works in a grocery store and goes to college could get aways with such a fashion statement.  She is a little punk, wearing a dog chain along with two watch bands buckled together as a choker all the time, even when she showers.  So for her, perhaps a key around her neck is no sacrifice.  For me it is very sweet, it seems like she is ready and willing to stand guard over my life.

Then London and Mike went into our large, junk stuffed barn and hid the ammunition box Lord knows where.  I personally voted to pass the gun off to another family relative but we would have to carry it in the car and pass through different states with different laws about carrying a gun in the car.  At times moving the gun would not be legal.

All my life history with guns are mostly stories of watching drunk mischeif and near misses.

I lived with a boyfriend in my late 20's who was a rifle marksman.  He also collected antique WWll japanese rifles.  He had started out squirril hunting in Georgia with a gun and a dog as a boy.  I remember watching him early one morning stealthly opening the back window of the bedroom.  He stood totally naked with a rifle in his hand.  In the garden was a wild rabbit eating his lettuce.  Carefully he aimed, shot, and killed the animal clean with a single head wound.  There were trophies that he had won in marksmanship competition displayed on a shelf in the kitchen.

People with guns usually want a hand gun in a drawer right next to their bed, loaded, where it is instantly available if a night intruder should enter the house.  My boyfriend lived that way and so did my husband for a long time.

One evening my boyfriend and I were having an argument.  He had been drinking whiskey and was pretty drunk and depressed.  He went into the bedroom and told me he was going to shoot himself in the head.  I stood in the hallway talking to him because I didn't want to enter the room and perhaps have to witness a suicide.  Eventually I heard some clicking with the gun.  Not knowing anything about guns or the gun culture, I assumed the clicking was him loading the gun with ammunition.  I steadied myself and got ready to hear a shot.  What my boyfriend was in fact doing was unloading the gun.  But it certainly was a terrifying moment. 

What JSR intimated about alcohol and guns being a dangerous mix is very, very true.

My husband's second wife was an alcoholic.  One day his brother came over to visit.  My husband opened the front door, admitting his brother, and then his very drunk wife appeared at the top of the staircase, angry, waving a loaded gun at both men.  They felt like they were bargaining for their lives, convincing her to relinquish the weapon.  That same loaded gun was also "played" with by his young daughter when no one was home and she accidently shot a chest of drawers with it.

I have, unfortunately, one gun story about myself.

While I was living with my gun collecting boyfriend I did overdose on Klonopin, a tranquilizer, and whiskey.  I called 911 after ingesting quite a bit and they took me to the hospital and pumped my stomach. 

A little while after I got out of the hospital I wanted to try again but this time with a gun.  I had this strong idea that I should drive my car down a country road, pull over, and shoot myself in the heart.  The same place Van Gogh shot himself.  This thought was repetative.  One quiet evening I was alone in the house and I felt like I was being tortured.  I really didn't want to die, so I put the loaded gun from our bedroom in a knapsack and rang the doorbell of the nice old couple who lived across the street.  The man had once said if I ever felt blue I could come over and have a cup of tea.  He was alone too that evening and my intention was to give him the knapsack.  We sat down for tea and he begain talking to me about how tough life can be sometimes.  He had years of experience of surviving life, like I think all elderly people do.  The gun sat in the knapsack on the table next to his wife's homemade blueberry crumb cake.  Eventually I realized, as I sat there, that if I told him what was inside the knapsack, it would come as a great shock to him.  He was unprepared for the bizarre thought problem I was having.  I wasn't hearing voices but I did "see" the image of myself shooting myself over and over again and it was very compelling.  It then felt so wrong to burdan this ordinary man with my mental illness and possibly frighten him badly.  What if he initially thought I wanted to shoot him?  He opened his house to me and I walked in with a loaded gun - that was something he might get mad about.  Eventually I thanked him for his stories and tea because they had truly made me feel better.  I took my knapsack back home.  Probably the next day I went into the hospital again.  I was in and out of the hospital frequently with that particular boyfriend.  No amount of medication could counter the fact that we were both people with a dark view of the world, and our darkness each enhanced what was in the other.  When we finally broke up and I left his house, that was only when the frequent trips to the hospital finally ended.

Posted by dignifyme at 11:43 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 8 September 2006 1:12 PM EDT

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Mood:  lucky

I'm in love with my husband.  Yesterday he woke me before work so that I could go and climb a mountain.  I climb up with the dog as far as I can then turn around and come back.  The path is steep and sometimes very rocky.  My heart thuds in my chest and I breath loudly.  As I go the mountain feels like a symbol.  And if I can conquere the mountain just a little bit then the rest of the day can be conquered too.

Before Mike left for work he said seriously, "Would you feel safer if you were packing?"

"A gun?"

"Yes.  I have a case for you to transport it in your car."

"Oh.  In case Plum doesn't bite who she is suposed to bite and instead runs away.  Mike, would you feel safer if I were packing while I was hiking?"

"Yes."

All the times I've gone walking through the woods I've never imagined carrying a gun.  Too bad my husband wasn't born a cowboy.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:31 AM EDT

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Mood:  cool

The morning seems to be the only time of the day when I'm free from the depression and can write.

My hope is that it won't come back and hit me like it did yesterday.  No tears that time, just a complete lack of energy and will.  Sometimes I didn't even have anything in me to speak.  Normally I paint standing up, but, yesterday my body was like lead so I pulled a chair up to the wall and painted while sitting down.  The paint session didn't last long.  Too tired to move the brush.  I also lacked interest, or mental ability, to watch a movie. 

I know what depression is because I've had it before.  When I was 19 through 21 with the onset of schizophrenia I was very depressed, and in fact the doctor thought my trouble was only depression, an atypical depression with psychotic features.  It seems that when you feel really, really low your grasp on reality can get loose, same way that when you get really high and manic you can float off into psychosis.

I didn't mean to, but by "fixing" my painting yesterday I think I ruined it.  I don't want to waste anymore paint on it.  But all will not be lost because now I have a wonderful theme to work with, a volcanic eruption with people and animals trying to run away.  I guess I could start a new painting, but, my mind is so weak right now that I want to retreat to the artistic medium that I know the best and that I have the richest history with; oil pastel drawing.

If this depression is going to persist, even with medication, I'm going to need a reason to get out of the house and be with people.  I think I'm going to request that scholorship from the River Gallery Art School again.  They simply never answered me last time.  I think this time, instead of requesting a scholorship by email, I'll write a letter and hand deliver it.  I also need to ask in a nice way if they should reject me to please tell me. 

Today's activity is going to be writing that letter, and the plan is to deliver it tomorrow.  Right now though, since my mind is clear and my body has energy in it (yesterday I stayed curled in bed for many hours), I'm going to go for a walk in the woods with my dog Plum Pudding and my husband.  Oh, how that husband has suffered!  Need to spend quality time with him while I am able.

Mike thinks that once I get my period I will feel better.  I am going to hope so too, but, the depression was so bad that I'm taking it as a warning.  I need to pick up my life here in Brattleboro with people and try to make it as healthy as possible to ward off depression.  Depression is a lurking danger that I had forgotten about, being free of it for so many, many years.

Posted by dignifyme at 8:31 AM EDT

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Mood:  cool

Have had a rough couple of days.

Friday I saw my therapist and mentioned to her that I've been feeling depressed.  I told her that the move to Brattleboro still is a problem, that I have no friends and haven't yet settled into the Community.  I'm afraid to walk down the street, it is a quiet, low grade fear, and some days it stops me and some days it doesn't.  This place, even after a year, still isn't familiar and "safe".

Then Friday evening the tears started comming and they kept on comming through Saturday.  Mike said, "I wish you could take a small canvass and just paint your feelings out."  I had to tell him that the depression was an emptiness, a lack of completion.  It seems when I am depressed that I don't like myself and I don't like my life.  I feel like a waste.  A schizophrenic waste of a human being.

A number of things could have triggered the depression.  The stressful trip to San Francisco.  Seeing the life of my sister there or the pictures of the wedding afterwords.  She is thin and pretty (and happy) and I look fat.  There is the change of the season with the days getting shorting and darkness creeping forward.  I just submitted an article for "Schizophrenia Bullitain" and while that should make me feel happy all it does is make me feel anxitious about it being accepted and horribly exposed for the world to see how defective I am.  Money is a worry, I wish my husband were more ambitious or at least practical.  We have nothing for retirement and he isn't trying to get the book he's written published or write a new one.  If we have any safe financial future the weight is all on me to make it happen.  I have to write a book or break into a new style that will sell paintings.

At last there is the strange case of the painting I am currently working on.  It is wrong and it is hopefull all at once.  I've wanted to take a knife and slash it.  It is large, 36" x 48".  And it is pure Geodone style.  A new style going back to the eirie primitive style of Risperdal.  I take risks that leave me very frightened.  It is more impule driven, painted on the fly.  I'm going to finish it even though I fear it is a waste of paint because there is so much experimentation going on that I can't waste this novel experience of using paint differently.  My husband is enthusiatic.  My normal process of painting involves a lot of planning and slow use of tiny brushes.  Now I use large brushes and like in jazz music, I make it up as I go along.  The name of the painting is "The Last Day of Pompeii".  You know, when the volcanoe blew up and killed a lot of people in Roman times.

I've increased my Prozac from 20mg to 40mg in the morning.  Have to call my therapist on Tuesday and o.k. the switch.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:32 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 3 September 2006 11:00 AM EDT

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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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