Mood:  not sure

Sometimes I go really slow and careful through the day.  I have to do whatever I can to push myself forward and not give in to despair.

Yesterday I walked to the library and did some writing there.  Then I started to have anxiety and came home.  After Mike came home from work I asked him if we could go for a walk before it got dark.  We strolled through the town and Mike got a little money out at the bank for milk.  He intended to buy us coffee too at Mocca Joe's, a funky little coffee house.  But I didn't want us to spend the money on something so frivilous.  Mike said that we have to live like ordinary people and treat ourselves.  But I'm starting to remember more and more the days when I lived on disability, and remember how careful I was for many years.  For our family to live safe and sound we have to be very, very careful how we spend our money.  Mike said that he is going to work an extra half an hour every day and several hours on Saturday so that our monthly earning will be greater.  We have to do that because soon we are going to be paying for propaine heating gas and extra electricity to drive the fans on the heater.

I need a new pair of pants.  But I don't want to spend any money for a new pair of pants.  If I can lose weight then I have a bunch of clothing that I can fit into.  So I have to lose weight, and fast.  I've never lost weight because I was running out of clothing to wear before.  There are two pairs of jeans that both have big holes in them.  I'm going to cut up one pair to patch the other pair.

My show at the library starts in October.  It is a pain in my ass.  But, I guess it is something to focus on.  There is artwork that needs to be put into frames and I have to hand print a banner with the words, "Schizophrenia, Art & Recovery."  One thing Mike and I talked about on our walk yesterday was wether or not to frame my latest artwork, "The Lady and Jumper".  It requires a thick, sturdy frame, something Mike can't make himself with wood from Home Depot.  I hate to bring the painting to a professional framer, but the picture is really quite good and would look great in the show.  It becomes a point of pride to have it hang.  It was the decision to frame the piece that prompted Mike to offer to work over-time every day.  I made the commitment to this show back at the end of last summer when I was still not yet married and was still receiving alimoney.  Now that that money has stopped I am completely dependent on Mike.  The way I feel now, I wouldn't commit his money to putting on a show for myself.  But, who knows, maybe I can sell an artwork or two and get back the money spent on the show.

Part of my trouble is that I am in-between projects.  When I was 23 years old and trying to finish college my best friend said to me, "Karen, I hate it when school breaks for vacation.  You don't do well when you are on vacation."

On September 22nd I start an art class at River Gallery Art School.  I won a scholorship for the fall semester.  It will be 15 weeks of classes, and the class I picked meets for two hours on Friday.   Last time I asked for a scholorship I emailed them a letter and I think the request was lost or forgotten because after a short return email promising that a commitee would review my request "asap" I heard nothing.  So this time I wrote a letter and printed it out.  Then I printed out three pictures.  I showed them what I did last spring semester (The Orange Tree Grove), my latest piece, and the work "Cinderella" that I wrote in the margin I needed help with.  I hand delivered the packet and heard about my scholorship grant the next day.  Here is Cinderella but she is not yet finished, the flesh tones are too pale and some of the objects in the room are not properly subdued.  You can't have too many bright objects shouting in a picture, "here I am!".  But the fireplace looks great.  You only get a fireplace that that by painting thin layer after layer of color.

Posted by dignifyme at 10:00 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 13 September 2006 10:46 AM EDT

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Mood:  quizzical

Yes, the idea of having London cart the dog around with her has been bothering me too.  I'm new at being a parent and making up rules.

What went through my head today way, "What if London goes out to a club dancing in a city and someone steals her dog?"  Or, "What if the temperature in the car is freezing and the dog gets cold?"  What Mike and I want is for London to take responsiblity and keep her promises.  When she arrived to live with us she arrived with a puppy who she claimed was "her best friend" and who she would take everywhere with her and for whom we would never have to be responsible. (As I write this Cerberus is lying at my feet.  London is in school.  We take care of the dog a lot.) 

My husband has never had a dog, the dog he carted around when he was homeless was London's dog named Coco.  Eventually Coco found a new home with a recently divorced Dad who was missing both his kids and the dogs who now lived with his former wife.  When a child has a dog you can expect the parent to end up taking a lot of responsibility for the animal.  But London is 21 and she felt it necessary to get a dog at this time even though her life was very unstable.  Now that she has the dog, if Mike and I always end up taking care of it she basically ditches the consequences and responsibility of her decision in our lap. 

I am having a change of heart about the dog, though.  My mind really was shocked when I came home today from my Museum volunteer job and saw that London had done the dishes.  She didn't have to, I think it was my turn.  It was a very "family" sort of thing to do.  Taking care of the house without being asked.

From my view point London has been searching for safe, secure family her entire life.  It is like a core theme of her life, not of her own creation, but from the situations that have been imposed on her by the adults around her.  What Mike and I are offering her here now in Vermont is very stable, and growing more family orientated.  We three ARE growing into a family.  So then, doesn't family take care of the pets together?

Telling London that she needs to tote Cerberus around with her, I think, was a ploy to stop the integration of the family.  It was a sign saying "Don't take advantage of us!" and "Our lives are separate from yours!"  "Remember, your living here is only temporary!"  But the more I think about it, the more I want to encourage emotional reliance and bonding.  There is that old image of the mama bird pushing the baby bird out of the nest, forcing it to fly.  Mike and I have felt that that that was our job with London.  And yet, the lure of family life is strong.  Tomorrow night is "London night" where we cook what she wants for dinner and watch togther whatever movie she choses.  Tomorrow we will probably eat steak for dinner and watch the Walt Disney animated movie "Pocohantus".

One night recently l said to London, "Let me tell you a secret.  If I let myself care for you, and you reject me, I will be devistated.  It takes a long time for me to make a friend and I don't trust easily."

London had tears in her eyes and she said, "I don't trust easily either."

I've been thinking about the strengths of family, and I think that family always gives you a second chance.  They let you make mistakes.  That is where the permenence lies.  You don't have to be perfect, just as good as you can be at the time.  My family never, ever gave up on me.  Maybe Mike and I should focus more on giving London a family here instead of temporary shelter as she tries to get her college degree.

Posted by dignifyme at 6:27 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 11 September 2006 6:41 PM EDT

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Mood:  hug me

I think I messed up my medication this morning.  I think I took too much Geodone and not enough Prozac.  One of the two has double pills and I think that I doubled the wrong one.  Took an extra Prozac because I despirately need the effects of that drug, even if it is a little too much for the day.

Mike and I climbed the mountain again.  Again, we failed to reach the top.  Everyone we passed had been to the top or clearly was going there.  We shake our heads in wonder at the fit Vermonters.

Mike and I had a difficult decision to make last night.  We are asking London to take her dog with her when she goes out to socialize.  Last night she went bowling after work and we would have liked to have had her take her dog and leave him in her car.

It seems a bit extreme given that the dog is very easy to take care of.  The problem is that Mike and I were promised a dog that would be totally London's responsiblity and who would be going everywhere that London went.  The point isn't wether or not we want to take care of the dog, we are perfectly willing to do so while London is at work or at school.  This we are doing already.  It is just that this dog is a big responsibility and one that London willingly took on.  He changed her life, narrowing the possible places where she could live that eventually brought her to Vermont, and Mike and I see that the dog will continue to influence her life to a large degree - just as if he were a human child.  There are many young adult women who hand over their child to the grandparents so that they can go out and play. 

Probably Mike and I are hard when it comes to personal ability and responsibility because we have both been homeless in our lives.  Mike lost his house and lived in a tent in the woods.  I was kicked out of an apartment that I shared with a roommate and went to live in a women's shelter run by the YWCA.  I actually ended up homeless using the facility twice.  What happens is that you get a sense that you can make it on your own without any help.  It is a hard lesson but ultimately empowering.  Mike had London's dog with him after he lost the house and he took that dog everywhere with him.  At first the dog had anxiety about being left in the car and he chewed all the seat buckles off and tore at the seat cushions.  Mike didn't get rid of the dog because he didn't want to disappoint London.  Owning the dog and being homeless was a really, really, hard thing but he managed to do it.  I guess this situation with the daughter parallels the earlier situation with the father.

Posted by dignifyme at 10:13 AM EDT

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Mood:  irritated

I've just been asked by a family member to deleat a blog entry.   If you read what I wrote, and you now see it missing -  well, you can guess why.  I know that at least you read it Pam. 

It is too bad that criminals get the kind of protection that they get. 

Sometimes it is important, when trama has impacted on your life or the life of a loved one, to talk about the reality of the crime and the consequences that it has had for the victim and the victim's family.

I'm afraid, at this point, the criminal has too much power over this family of mine. 

Stories of fear and horror need to be voiced, not silenced.  How else are we to understand the kind of world that we live in?

Posted by dignifyme at 10:38 PM EDT

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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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