REally?

The voices keep telling me that my IQ is 165.

I am a little vain.

That Special Thing

"How long was I supposed to wait for you?"

--email for Morpheus called "On Cheating"

I only wanted to live until thirty--I've had that plan since I was a kid--figuring that was enough time to do all there is to do (besides raise a family, which I was never very interested in)--if live is a buffet, then you can sample it all by thirty.

The voices say I won't live to be twenty-nine.

I'm twenty-eight, and I've found that time has gone by quickly doing things that I wasn't particularly interested in, and I'm not referring to the time I spent dancing.

Illness has derailed me in so many ways--financially and socially. I've lost months, and this is time that cannot be returned to me.

I know with some certainty that there will be another psychotic episode knocking on my door in the future. The severity will depend on the medications I'm on and how well prepared I am. I've been through various forms of hell--depressions--manias--but nothing is like being psychotic. A few nights ago, I was asleep, all I could see is black, and next I heard was, "Lace, you are dead." I jumped awake. The voices are daily now. I cannot imagine passing that down with bringing a child into the world. The saddest aspect of being psychotic is, of course, losing friends, pushing them away either by the delusions or because they try to help and you refuse to take that help.


I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do... ---Virginia Woolf


I know that pain.

Sometimes I find myself talking to the voices, and I try to stop--because they're like animals. You can't encourage them. I tell them to "shut up," but of course it doesn't work.

"We're just a part of you, Lace," one of them says.


When I was a teenager, I couldn't image having a psychotic disorder. I know I was depressed, but never this. I don't know what special thing is going to make me different and allow me to succeed when so many others with this disorder do not.

"We'll Ride Them Someday"

Here I am, sitting in STarbucks, crying to "Wild Horses" by the Rolling STones.

I miss you, and everything you broke and stole and ignored.

Number Three

I need and deserve to be important to someone.

--email called "On Cheating" sent to MOrpheus

I wanted a baby, damn you.

But you took that away from me too.

dW

Every day whenever I take a shower, I'm highly irritated by staring at the initials "dW" that are drawn into the wall opposite the water facet. I wonder who put them in there, and why since nothing in the house was stolen whenever he/she broke in. I feel like it's a message that I never decoded.

My parents, of course, are oblivious to the fact that someone broke into our home at least once. My concerns about it are blamed on my "paranoia," which of course only makes me more suspicious.

The initials mean nothing to me, and the handwriting does not look familiar.

It's just there. A giant fuck you, Lace. Since no one else can sense the danger.

Without the Voices

"But things just get so crazy, living life gets hard to do  
And I would gladly hit the road, get up and go if I knew
  That someday it would lead me back to you"

--"Sunday mOrning" by Maroon 5

I've been trying to figure out if there is a way to control the voices somehow since there's connection between them and pre-cog's. All of Beck's work was about controlling the thought before the thought; surely there's a method to dispelling auditory hallucinations or at least changing their subject matter. 

I dislike the notion that I will be living with auditory hallucinations my whole life when for the past twenty-eight years I lived without them. 

 

The Bad, The Obsessive

"The truth is, Billy is never far from my thoughts..."

--Hades, entry: The Truth

I have a bad, obsessive habit of checking out every black Denali SUV (there are a lot of them in town), and truck because MOrpheus owns one of both.

I was walking out of the local Costco, and off in to the side in parked in the loading zone was a black Denali GMC SUV. I checked the rims, which I didn't recognize, but I did remember the tires from the last time I got close to MOrpheus's vehicle, and the tread looked the same. 

I kept walking, and tried to make eye contact with whoever was inside, but he wouldn't look at me.

From the side of his face, it looked like Morpheus.

I stopped at one point, and waved, but he ignored me.

Truisms

"You need to find a good ol' boy who loves his momma," my psychiatrist says smiling. "Some of those truism hold. YOu know, women grow up to marry their fathers, and men grow up to marry their fathers."

Almost Normal

I'm doing rather well. ON the Beck inventory, my scale this week was only a thirteen. This is down from last week, which was a nineteen.

As you can see, I'm almost "normal," which would been a ten or less.

I'm dealing mostly with fatigue, and problems still with my creativity. I can't write like I use to when I was in a normal mood or even psychotic. I wait for the day when the tides turn, and I can write pages upon pages.

I wish when I woke up in the morning, I woke up next to you.

"See that twitch? Those are the twitches of death," says one of the voices.

What To Do

What would I do with my life if I could do anything?

I want be self-employed, and run my own business. I haven't decided what business plan to develop yet mostly because I'm still trying to find myself in school.

I want to own and operate an equine rescue in Santa Ynez, and live there. The house will either be small or I will stay in an apartment in the barn.

I do hope someday to publish a book.

NOne of these plans include marriage or children. It's hard to think of falling in love with someone else--especially at that level, and I know I won't have any kids (because of my illness).

It ONce Seemed Easy

"So, what do you want to do, in your heart of hearts?" The psychiatrist asked, another question I couldn't answer.

I had so many dreams that my illness killed off--I was afraid to plan anymore.

"If you want to get into science, I encourage you," he later said.

Plans Of Marriage

"Do you plan to marry?" The psychiatrist asks.

I wait before answering. Does it help that while psychotic I asked Morpheus to marry me? I shake my head. "I don't know."

"MOst people pair up," he replies.

Schizoaffective vs Bipolar I

We were at the end of my session with my psychiatrist when he handed me a slip for getting my lithium levels checked.

I noticed the DSM code at the bottom of the piece of paper. "What diagnosis is that?"

"Bipolar," he responded.

"Do you think I'm bipolar?" I asked.

"No. I think what we're dealing with here is schizoaffective disorder, and someday I'll get around to changing it there."

My heart sank. I never identified myself with that diagnosis. I was hoping in the long run he would disagree even though STanford was certain that I was in fact schizoaffective.

All I Hear

"And I'll never give myself to another
The way I gave it to you"

--"Rehab" by Rihanna

The voices keep saying over and over again, "Promise me you won't hurt yourself."

They also talk about Morpheus.

"We want to keep you from harm," one of them says, the height of irony.

"[Morpheus] is coming back," another comments.

That's all I hear. Chatter.

More On Letters, Part II

After we broke up, the Writer Ex-boyfriend said that he would write a letter explaining what happened on his side and an apology.

We were use to conversing through emails because that's how we met and communicated for years before I moved to New Jersey so we could be physically together.

He never wrote it.

I wondered around that time what would have happened if he did.

More on Letters

I wrote Dante two letters, to which he responded to both with a phone call the following morning. He would never say if he loved me or not (which was at least half of the purpose of the letters).

He remains to be one of the best friends I've ever had.

Losing Hope, Lesson 1

After Lucky dumped me, I tried getting him back by writing a love letter.

He told me months and months later, "I already knew everything in it."

We never did become boyfriend and girlfriend again although we would see each other on and off again until I realized that wouldn't bring us together romantically.

The Chill

I haven't had sex since January 17th when I was with Morpheus. I think about how much this illness has changed me, how much telling his wife has changed me, and how much I'm sheltering myself from the rest of the world.

I don't even remember kissing the District Training Manager or Chase.

I have closed myself off from any kind of romantic attachment. I write my letters to Morpheus saying I'm in "search for closure," but the search seems far from being over. I hate being touched--I shutter to it--there's a chill that comes as a wave over my body.

Out of the Dream WE Wake

I gave up my dreams about us. 

--email called "On Cheating" sent to MOrpheus


I walked out on the life that could have been us, and closed the door.

The Ike

Ike, the Quarter Horse gelding, is now seventeen years old, well past his prime for being a cutter. I've been riding him on a regular basis. He stands 15'1" with sorrel coloring with a long face and big, bright eyes. We don't do anything special, but just trot and lope around in circles in the bottom, round pen. I get tired easily, so we aren't out there for very long. He doesn't mind because he hasn't been a show horse in years--or conditioned for competitive sport in years.

Love mOre Than ONce

Perhaps the problem is we do love more than once--and those loves bump up against each other like atoms in the air, spinning in tragedy.

I Was In Love ONce

I cried writing the last email I sent to Morpheus--the first time I've cried in months.

I tell myself that this is making me closer to healing--closer to closure. Someday, I'll wake up and I won't miss him or love him anymore. I won't have any letters in me to write because I would have said all there is to say. This day will be gentle and sweet, and if you ask me how I am on that day, I'll say, "Great."

Later on, I'll find a nice guy who loves me softly and soothing, and maybe I will find it in my soul to give back to him something I can't even imagine now. He will be patient because it's in his nature. He will wait for my broken heart to come around to him.

Maybe in time, I will learn to say, "No" to the past, and "yes" to renewal.

I won't tell him that I once believed in loves of your life. That you loved only once, and then something inside of yourself could only be given away a single time. A piece of you died that day. You float on light, and die too--for love. I won't tell him these things because he is the reasonable man who is caught up in reasonable things living in a reasonable house with a reasonable job.

"Of course you can love more than once," he would say, sitting at the table, licking the spoon of ice cream. It's diet, frozen yogurt.

He takes the pressure off of mania by watching at late hours, picking you up at the bars--messy hair, messy mood. His patience is then only irritating. You only want to throw up in peace.

I was in love once.

Acceptance

It's called acceptance.

I'm coming to grips to the fact that the man I'm in love with is never leaving his wife.

I can choose to be The Other Woman or I can choose to move on.

STood Up

The Penn Kid stood me up.

Around four pm yesterday, I TXT-ed him, "ARe you cancelling?"

HE said, "Ive been sleeping. I have to work tonight"

I answered back, "Are we going to hang out or no?"

"Nope. I cant."

I was furious. He asked me several times if I wanted to go out with him on Saturday. AT first, I didn't know how to respond, but finally, I went with:

"Notice would have been kind and proper in this case."

I never heard from him again.

Hit Me

LOVE is a punching bag.

We All

"No one really wants to die.

We all talk about it, like we all talk about sex, but few of us actually do it [commit suicide]."

--private journal entry from April 19, 2011

The Penn Kid REturns

"I love you," she says to me earnestly into her phone her words crossing the miles between us.

--Hades

I forgot that it was that time again for scheduled repairs on the nuclear reactors here locally, and that the Penn Kid and his crew would return to perform the maintenance. When the Penn Kid text-messaged me, I was taken by surprise by how long it had been since we last spoke--almost a full year.

WE decided to meet up at my favorite bar--a hotel bar. I was ready first, so I waited for him. I couldn't drink. I order a Grey Goose and orange juice on the rocks and watched it melt while I emailed back and forth with Rosa. I was too drowsy from the pain meds I've been taking because I've gone back to riding, and I'm body sore. I knew that if I drank it, I wouldn't be able to drive.

He finally arrived and we only talked for about an hour because I was too tired to do much of anything. I had to go home anyway and take my meds for the night.

The Penn Kid seemed to understand my lack of energy, and walked me to my car. HE gave me a hug, and said that we would see each other on Saturday.

Heart of Hate

"I’ve never hated other people so much in my entire life, and my earlier years weren’t too kind to me either. Can you hate people for being ignorant themselves? If these people are so smart, they’re pretty fucking dumb about me. Still. Despite having every advantage in the world, having access to almost every thought inside my head because most of which I write down!"

--April 19, 2011 private journal--in the middle of the psychosis

My therapist commented that I had a "fixed delusion" about MOrpheus.

When she said that, I walked out. "I don't have a fucking delusion, I'm in love," was my response.

I plan to never go back to her.

"Lace, I love you...don't do that to yourself." --the MOrpheus auditory hallucination

The voices are back--starting with yesterday, periodically telling me I'm going to die.

I find this to be discouraging considering the aggressive medications I'm on. I'm tired of being ill.

"You are dying, you stupid bitch!" They say.

Morpheus wrote an email saying that he's moving in two weeks.

The next day I wrote to him that I want to see him to say goodbye.

I have not received an answer. IN the email I sent him:

I could say, I wish you happiness--but I selfishly wish you were with me.

Goodbye for now, my friend.

We went through this once before back in 2008. He confessed to me one night that he might move, he had a job interview. We got into a fight over something else. I left the house mad, the next day, I told him I didn't want to see him anymore. TEn days later, I attempted suicide--an attempt so close to death that I felt life leaving me. It was months before I found out that he never left town.

I cannot cry. I feel the pain and sadness deep in me, I feel it come forth, but it never turns to tears.

I've been hearing auditory hallucinations lately. One of which is Morpheus's.

"I'm coming back," he'll say.

More processes of a grieving brain? Or just a biological misfire?

I've fallen into some dark place, and I don't know how to climb out.

Letters pass between us.

There are countless ways to say goodbye, and I can come up with none.

WRite in Chains

I feel like I'm drowning in my own words sometimes. They're up in my throat, strangling me--I choke out a sentence or a phrase.

Death of creativity only paragraphs away--up from my gut.

Free me, o' muse, free me.

NO Good Answer

Now I doubt the wisdom in telling the Wife about the affair because I am wondering about my own motivations. Was I pure in my intentions? Or was I angry?

It's been over a year since I told her, and yet the decision still follows me around. Did I make a decision for two people when I had no place?

IF I was in her position, I would want to know.

I received two stray phone calls, one on FRiday (collect call), and one on Saturday (from a pay phone), both at night, after eight pm. Did I just cause the affair to dive farther underground?

What's perhaps most important: did I do what was best for me?

I have no answer to that.

ABuse? Neglect?

The psychiatrist and the therapist keep searching for a cause of all this--sexual abuse? physical abuse? emotional/psychological abuse?

The psychiatrist keeps bringing up the diagnosis "DiD."

He pressed upon the therapist to go back into my childhood, and find out what happened to me. 9.

The therapist is guessing I am a child of neglect more than anything.

"I asked STanford if they were going to keep the Schizoaffective diagnosis. I was hoping they were going to change to some form of major depressive," my therapist says during our session. "No, they are sticking to it. They think you are going to deal with these voices the rest of your life."

I asked my therapist how ill I was comparatively. She gave me a convoluted answer, one of which I didn't understand.

"Your depression is pretty intractable," she remarks.

There's an unique celebration to Easter every year. Back in 2009, on this day, I quit taking my morphine, and went through withdrawals.

I think about suicide too.

Out of all the ways to leave this god-forsaken planet--paint thinner would not be my choice.

There's a train that runs through the back of the ranch every afternoon. You just have to wait for it.

I imagine a clumsy mix of the pills would probably eventually kill you if there's no medical intervention.

YOu can always jump.

"Any thoughts of harming yourself?" I was asked over and over while at the hospital. I always answered "no" out of fear of being transferred back to H2 ward. Self-destruction is so ingrained in me that I no longer find it threatening. It is.

WE wrestle. WE dance. WE wage war upon ourselves.

"He sounds needy," my grandmother says after I hang up with Travis.

I don't comment.

Travis

During my stay at STanford University HOspital I made a friend who we shall call Travis, who was discharged before me. I found out later that he is chronically suicidal.

He has a form of autism called asperger syndrome. His language is awkward but polite.

ON the third of April, he disclosed to me his plan for suicide, which was to ingest paint thinner on Saturday, so he could "join [his] grandparents and uncle in heaven." Sometimes I would try to talk the person out of suicide on my own, but I do not know him very well or how serious and solid his plans were to die. I didn't bother. I made a threat instead. I told him if he did not go to the ER again (he went a few days before, and they kicked him out without a 5150), I would call 911 on him.

Travis made it easy for me. He went to Stanford ER instead.

Last I heard from him was on Thursday and, he was transferred to another hospital on a hold.

In the hospital, the team and I never discussed why I was there--or the possible causes of my depression--the social aspects or the interpersonal. There was not the time nor the staffing available.

There was the impersonal feel that went with the treatment, akin to hooking my brain up to a car battery, and hoping that it worked.

No one on the team ever heard of Morpheus or of our relationship. They didn't care to know because ECT was the cure-all. I was sold, sucked in on the propaganda.

In the end, it remained a mystery why I was even there. Depression, yes, but we all waited for it to lift.

It didn't.

The REst of Your Life, Part II

"Don't get into a relationship for a while," my psychiatrist says.

That will be easy. I haven't had sex since Jan 17th of 2011. I feel broke up into pieces that will never be whole again. How long can one person mourn?

"You need a good circle of friends," he continues.

Most of my friends live far away. Developing friendships that are distant is how I balance the intimacy and make it comfortable for myself.

The REst of Your Life

"What are you going to do?" My psychiatrist asks.

"With what?" I reply.

"The rest of your life."

"Well, I've applied to [community college], and registration is on May 10th. I'm planning on taking pre-calculus algebra."

He makes a comment about how difficult the class will be.

"I've already taken it," I say. I have no idea what to do with myself. I returned from the hospital with no drive, no motivation, with no particular interest. DEath frightens me, but I entertain suicidal thoughts/ideations. I have no wants, only needs. I'm only taking the class so I can immediately tackle calculus again.

"You don't want the FBI living inside your head."

--a fellow bipolar talks about psychosis in the hospital during a NAMI meeting

I'm trying to forget you.

I was discharged from the hospital yesterday.

I left because there was a problem with setting an IV and with inducing a complete seizure with the bilateral ECT.

The small improvements made was not worth the side effects of going under anaesthesia or the ECT itself.

Home?

In the beginning of ECT, they were doing unilateral treatments, and then they switched to bilateral.

The new doctor (they change at the beginning of every month) told me today that two of the bilateral treatments were unsuccessful (were not complete seizures), and I've had only one bilateral ECT.

I've been in the hospital now for over five weeks. NOthing much has changed for me mood-wise. I feel a little bit better.

I am ready to go home.