On the Use of Restraints by EMTs & My Complaint to Gov.

I have written about my abuse in mental health services before. I have finally complained to the office of Civil Rights about my experiences in restraints. No, I never threatened to hit, spit, or escape. The EMT men just didn’t like the wild look in my eyes and my constant fidgeting and looking around so they tied me up and ignored my pleas for mercy. The following is a brief description of what I am referring to about abuse of restraints and I will link to the webpage of the Civil rights office complaint form. Also, Elyn R. Saks has done numerous studies and written academic articles on the unconstitutionality of forcible restraints on non-violent mental patients. Here is that book by Dr. Saks, called Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill.

http://www.amazon.com/Refusing-Care-Forced-Treatment-Mentally/dp/0226733971/ref=la_B001IXMIUS_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429795283&sr=1-2


*triggering descriptions of mental health service experiences below*
I have had to complain about the misuse of restraints years, years after it happened because I have panic attacks and migraines whenever I even think about it, let alone try to take action against it.
I was consistently restrained on every ambulance ride despite my complete lack of violent tendencies, lack of history of violence, no physical or verbal threats to the police or EMTs, and being as calm as one can be while thinking that shady agencies are coming to kill me and my family. Every time I cannot help but beg them to not restrain me, or at the very least, put me in hand-cuffs and take me to the emergency room in the back of a police car, where the ankle and waist leather restraints would not be used. EMT’s refused, they put their hands on my chest, pushed me flat against the stretcher, and began the restraining process. What could I do? Fight? They outweighed me, they outnumbered me, they were normal, respectful citizens and I was just a schizophrenic. So I just pleaded. They shook their heads, no. What are EMTs thinking, I wondered? Am I not a human being, do they think of me as a felon? I have no history of criminal activity, why are they putting me in leather restraints? I was just going to sit on the stretcher and play with the hem of my skirt, now I am scared and traumatized, what if there is an accident and I need to get out? Panic attacks are common while being restrained. There is no sense of safety, there is only imminent death, a helpless victim strapped down, disrespected, dehumanized, shed of all constitutional rights….
I suffered nightmares, flashblacks, panic attacks, and well, weird sexual fetishes due to being forcibly restrained for long periods of travel by male EMT’s, and by that I mean I now own a pair of fabric restraints to try to “own” the experience of being splayed out and restrained on a stretcher by a group of grown men. Imagine 50 shades of gray, but the real thing, not some suburban mistress dreaming of romanticized abuse: real, genuine bondage, non-consensual, a group of men standing around as you test how much mobility you have (none except fingers and head), observing you as a thing, perhaps not a vapid sexual object like in 50 shades, but definitely like a shell of a human, no mind, just a body that gets to be touched, pushed, poked, pulled, at the will of whoever is nearby. If that sounds revolting, that is how it felt and still feels.                                                                                                    

My body became an object, an abnormal and unwanted object, same as my mind, that the EMT’s could posture, poke, and tie up however they wanted to. This is the human face of the body restrained to that stretcher. Yeah, I was crazy. Yeah, I heard voices and I giggled to myself in between moments of shaking with fear; my behavior made no sense to outsiders, but I was still conscious, still a citizen of the United States. I am now really, really afraid of EMT’s, ambulances, ambulance sirens, any period of longer than one hour of sitting motionless in front of a computer screen (reminds me of being stuck in the same place in restraints). The end point is that I just sat there, innocent. The EMT’s used force against a passive patient. Then, oh then, to make things burn---American Ambulance (the ambulance company who was responsible for tying me up every time I got 5150’d) charged me 1200 dollars MORE for “emergency” rides, which is a quaint euphemism for “use of restraints.” The normal cost of an ambulance ride without restraints is around 487 dollars, which is what I got charged a year after the 1600 dollar ambulance ride. So, ride #1, restrained against the will of the constitution: 1600 dollars, due now. Ride #2, not restrained: 487 dollars. Is it just me or is that the most perverted thing ever? I contacted my city's American Ambulance via telephone and email and they said, indeed, one ride had "emergency services" the other did not. I also had proof of this price gauging because of the fact that American Ambulance is trying to get 2000 dollars out of me through collections for outdated debts on medical expenses I was too poor to pay for at the time (it's about 6 years later but that is never too late to go collect debts! *also not too late to report your unlawful use of restraints*

Here is that government agency in charge of civil rights:

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/office/

I will write again once I get a response.

Now that I am stronger and more healthy, I will come back for all those who injure and abuse my kind (schizophrenics/bipolars) and I will do my best to put them on trial or put them out of business. Have a nice day.

Viktoria Modesta's Prototype & My 1st Cannabis Arrest

I am inserting a hyperlink to Viktoria Modesta's new music video, Protoype. The words that appear at the beginning are "forget what you know about disability." Startling, moving, transcendent, victorious, those are adjectives that describe this music video and the meaning behind it.

I am not physically disabled, just cognitively disabled, but this music video really resonated with me. It made me think of my own schizo-affective disorder and how I am perceived as broken, incomplete, genetically defective, or worse. How I question the System for the way myself and my kind are treated, both how humanely we are treated and also how our illnesses are treated in terms of medicines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA8inmHhx8c
***********************************************************************

On My New Cannabis Charge

I still struggle with paranoia, but I am turning it into something that is not based in fear. My paranoia has begun to turn into a hyper-awareness of my status in society. Would you not be paranoid for yourself if you wrote a blog describing cover-ups of sexual and physical abuse in the psych facilities throughout the past decade, that you personally experienced? Would you not be afraid that county police are monitoring your statements online? I don't change my IP address, so it is pretty easy for authorities to track me down (which might explain why my pc internet connection is so slow on the only computer I use to access this blog). I am no longer paranoid about being killed. I am paranoid about my constitutional rights being continuously stripped away until there is nothing left, just a detainment center they refer to as a 'hospice' for mental patients.

Matters do not help that motorcycle officers keep pulling me over for infractions these past two months (2 fix-it tickets, 1 speeding ticket, and I am currently under investigation for driving while having cannabis and prozac in my system). Yes, I did get a DUI, my first ever. I feel like a criminal for taking my effing medications. I live in California where it IS legal for me drive so long as I had not smoked and then immediately driven away (I played pool for a long time, ate, etc...cop didn't care that I had an ear infection that messed up my balance, said it was cannabis and prozac from the several hours before--8 hours for the Prozac, actually). If this sounds like bunk, it is likely because my city has decided that marijuana is a Latino gang thing that must be eradicated, and to hell with all the medical patients standing in their way. The local newspaper had an article entitled "Sheriff !@&# declares war on pot." This is my home town. I have nowhere else to go until I get some money saved up and my Master's diploma. There is a whole lot more to the pot arrest, but I will save that for the NORML laywer I contacted. Just to be safe, though, if you are a mental patient, be leery of telling police officers what the medicines are actually used to treat. I don't know about the legality of this situation (HIPPA laws v. police) but I do know that once I said the words "mood stabilizer" my chances of him letting me go where all but nil. On the plus side, he did not shoot me over a dozen times like with that poor bipolar suburban teenage girl in the news recently.

Well, if anything goes worse from here, at least you, the reader, will know that for my first 31 years of my life I never was charged or accused of any crimes. The past two months have been pretty harsh, to be honest.

Well, no matter, what, they cannot take what I already achieved away from me. And, if worse comes to worse, there's always a one way trip to Venezuela.

All of us just prototypes for something better, no?

Skizzie Lizzie Applies For Graduation

I was released from the psych ward in 2009. Since then, I have been through "outpatient services" which are a quaint euphemism for total behavioral modification group therapy sessions with an emphasis on potent, Western psychotropic medications (don't get me wrong, I believe in these medicines. I take these medicines. I advocate for others to take their medicines, but man, these drugs have major side effects. Can you, Eli Lilly, stop counting your billions of dollars and please spend a little on some chemists to work on more advanced medicine that does not cause massive weight gain, zombification, diabetes, tremors....and other maladies caused specifically by the drugs?).

I regained a semblance of normalcy back in 2010, when I learned from the sociopaths in group therapy that it was not a requirement to be honest with others in society (again, don't get me wrong. I don't approve of sociopaths, but to be fair, when they were not preying on me and the other deteriorated mental patients, they told good stories). I remember in particular one doctor's visit to an outpatient clinic. The clinic was for felons. Why I went there I have no idea, I assume somebody was funneling money to themselves by adding me to the little circus. No, I am not a felon, nor have I been convicted of a crime, ever. Still, this is how your mental health system is, America, you sent me to a mental health rehabilitation facility for ex-felons with mental health disorders (ranging from bipolar to violent, sociopathic behavior), me, a 160 pound 26 year old woman. AND IT MADE ME STRONGER AND A BETTER LIAR SO THANK YOU!

Let me explain.

Before, if people asked why I missed class, or why I took a pill, I would squirm and feel conflicted about how to tell the truth. Enter the sociopath from the rehabilitation center which I will refer to as T.P. This guy, "Sam," was my age and when we talked about employment experiences in group therapy he said he could never get a job because every time he went in the boss would ask him to explain his felony. His answer? "Which one?" Possibly not the most ideal role model for societal behavior but you'd be surprised what I learned from him. He kindly explained to me while waiting in the doctor's office, that I should just lie my ass off because I can pass.

"How are they gonna treat you, anyways? You like the way they treat you?"

"It's discrimination and I hate it," I told him, honestly.

"Then stop telling 'em. Don't worry, just lie."

Later I learned he went back to jail for punching his girlfriend in the face. That was just my life back then, it didn't seem abnormal or frightening at all. I just felt lucky that I wasn't his girlfriend and I hoped his girlfriend was okay, but the commonality of violence at T.P. was so rampant that I became jaded (and I still am, sadly).

I mulled. Did I really want to take the advice of a woman-punching scumbag? I turned on the television. Some crap about creating a database of mental patients that could be accessed by anyone (this story is from around 2011). I tilted my head and stared at the tv. Is this what I am to them? A violent thing, not a human? So be it. If you treat a human like an animal long enough, they'll start to bark. I swear to god, they bark. And after my neglect, sexual assaults, abuse, and other unethical practices inside the psychiatric facilities all throughout my twenties, I was all "ruff ruff."

So, I quit telling the truth.

In 2011 I transferred to a 4 year university, having secretly applied without telling anybody. I entered and graduated a year later with my Bachelors. Everyone at T.P. was so amazed. I was such a success story! I was an incredible inspiration to all! Truth? The sociopath taught me how to lie and that is apparently what is required to be treated like a human being with full civil rights when one is bipolar or schizophrenic. You want to know how to avoid cognitive bigotry (my new term for someone who hates and persecutes people with a cognitive/neurochemical disorder)? Just don't tell them the truth. And when they blurt out their prejudices, take the time to inform them of scientific fact, from an outsider's perspective. Teach them humanity, but never, never forget that they do not recognize your own humanity if you have a diagnosis.

In 2012 I graduated and entered graduate school.

In 2015 I belatedly applied for graduation. I will have my Master's degree from a University (no, it's not one of those bogus online campuses, either).

Now that I am preparing to graduate in May, I realize that this blog is actually important to me and maybe even to one of you out there. I have tried to avoid this blog because it reminds me of where I came from, who I am, what I live with, and what you think of me. I miss this blog, though. So much so, I came back.

With good news. I am graduating. Skizzie Lizzie is graduating in May with her Master's degree.

Fair Trials Not Executions

Dear reader,

I apologize. My PC got a virus, I believe. I only use one of my computers to access this blog because, as you may know, I am a paranoid schizophrenic who still cannot quite fathom that shady organizations or legitimate government organizations are NOT monitoring this blog and my IP addresses...which makes this computer the only trusted computer to blog from (sometimes I just follow paranoid practices because it is almost instinctual, I could be wrong but frankly I don't intend to check this time).

Perhaps you have forgotten about me, that strange paranoid schizophrenic woman who claims to be a law-abiding graduate student determined to end discrimination against the mentally ill. I never forgot about this blog, I just could not access the internet until today. During this time, I have been successfully continuing my studies in the Master's program (well, except for data structures, a computer science class, which I am most assuredly failing going into finals), posting updates all over facebook, and reading the news.

The country is experiencing social upheaval.

There has also been a lot of media around social justice issues lately (i.e. Garner/Ferguson). I will take this time to express my solidarity for ending police brutality against Blacks and Latinos. My city (where I was born and raised) has a high population of poor Blacks and Latinos (and I grew up on welfare to an unmarried Latina mother--yeah, I am that baby all grown up). I sympathize with the protesters and my city has a long list of slaughtered drug dealers and alleged gang members who never got to a fair trial, they just got 'smoked' (as the newspaper quoted one of the living witnesses as hearing a police officer talk about how he smoked the guy).

"You give us the cards to play with and then bust us for gambling." ---Malcolm X

Society, rich people, housing zoning committees, whoever decides where people get to live, tend to approve of minorities living beside other minorities--and not by them. I grew up across the street from million dollar homes owned primarily by Anglo-Americans with white-collar jobs. Across the street from this ideal, police-patrolled neighborhood was a big street upon which dozens and dozens of cheap and ill-maintained apartments were crammed beside each other.There, the front lawn of the nice house across the street was larger than the inside of the entire apartment for three (though, if there were three rooms, there were most likely six or more people living there because the only other place would be the homeless shelter). I grew up down a tiny side street, an alley, really, where cops didn't go patrol unless they got multiple calls insisting they come arrest somebody for domestic violence, assault, child abuse, whatever. This was in the 1980's- 1990's when my city still had not created a special police tactical unit for hunting down alleged gang members (who may or may not be actively committing crimes), holding them up to search them and their families' houses, and to arrest them and anyone present.

Now there is a tactical unit for patrolling the high crime areas in my city, but they still don't go into my old neighborhood street. I know because I obsessively return to see if anything has changed. It has not. I drive in my 2000 shiny black sedan into streets where few drive due to high rates of poverty and DUI charges and watch as the neighborhood people watch me as I drive past. They don't go to college. They have criminal records. They are on social aid programs. I know this because the cul-de-sac was so jam-packed with apartments that everything that happened next door, or downstairs, or in the next apartment, was fully audible to me from my bedroom. This was the one place where landlords would accept tenants with criminal records, evictions, and terrible credit. Not all poor people are criminals, but those who are hold the rest of us hostage and the police just spend their time patrolling the nice neighborhoods to protect the rich from my neighbors, while pretending like there was no need to secure safety for those of us in the bad neighborhoods. Everything is a mess. One of my psychiatrists once asked me if I really thought I was being paranoid or realistic in my neighborhood when I thought someone gave me a weird look or they were about to lose their temper. "Is that really your sickness or is it just the situation," he asked. I shrugged. I always associate schizophrenia with the feelings I got living in that crappy neighborhood. I spent a lot of time indoors (i.e. all of it from age 5 to age 15) to avoid the pull of gangs and crime and just general shadiness. That is a lot of time to spend feeling fear and thinking obsessively about death and crime.

There is some evidence that schizophrenia is genetic but that there can be environmental stress triggers that increase or spur on mild or latent symptoms. I highly believe that. My brain is naturally suited to believe that you are thinking about robbing and assaulting me as I walk to my apartment because of its schizophrenia. Add to that the daily crime rate in that tiny block-sized cul-de-sac of crap apartments, and you can see how my brain wound up getting totally fried by paranoia and fear. Despite this, I really do attribute my ability to escape that neighborhood mostly to my paranoia about keeping six feet away from anyone, even as we pass on the side walk. My paranoia came in handy in that environment. My crazy also worked to keep an air of "keep away from that crazy b&^%$" around me at all times so that my neighbors did not ever EVER ever rob me or jump me or assault me or anything except on bad days when they mocked me for carrying books or dressing all in black like a little poor, Mexican-American goth.

I got out. I have a Bachelor's degree from the University. I am a graduate student. I own two cars, both post-year 2000. My credit score is 640, not too shabby considering the person who I was raised by had a credit score below 350. I am out. but the issues are not over. Should I just go mingle at the cocktail parties with the surburbanites? Is that not the American Dream? I would love to. I really would love to just mindlessly drink cocktails and chat about the stock market. My heart, my soul, my paranoia, they are all still in that crap neighborhood where I spent ten years hiding indoors to avoid crime. I do not want that for the kids there. I see them on my weekly (sometimes nightly) drives into the cul-de-sac to revisit my childhood home. They stand in the doorway behind screen gates, sometimes they even wander around in what would be adorable little packs if it were not for the knowledge that they are likely being apprenticed in crime by someone older. The men stand around in the shadows wearing baggy pants and gang colors. They drink forties and smoke blunts. They stare as I drive by slowly. I always have my marijuana pipe handy for that trip because it makes me look like I just pulled into the neighborhood to smoke discretely. This might sound horrible, but it is for my safety, so I am allowed to drive through the neighborhood and out of the neighborhood without anyone approaching or yelling something at me. It works. There is some code, or social etiquette, that I am familiar with which allows me to enter the neighborhood without being seen with distrust (i.e. a snitch, a lost driver). Yes, it is shady, it is a criminal hang-out, why would I go back? It is home. The crime in the air is as much a part of my childhood as McDonalds or Barbie. If you don't understand that, you will never understand the protests for Garner, Ferguson, Rice, etc....society has allowed for class and racial segregation in housing, not only that but they have crammed these segregated communities into cheap apartment complexes which the police sporadically patrol (unless the cop is out for action, in which he WILL drive down the little alley street into our neighborhood). Seriously, 'Merica, what did you expect? Crime is bad. Executions are also Bad. Fair Trials are good. I say YES TO FAIR TRIALS!


I will write again tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to pop in to say that I am here, alive, going into finals in my graduate program, and I still have immense gratitude and utter curiosity for those who venture into this blog to read, I know this ain't no Sunday morning reading! :)

#FergusonSolidarity
#FairTrialsNotExecutions

Schizophrenia and the Next Generation of Skitzes

I am troubled by the state of mental health care in America. Most of this blog comments on my personal experiences in mental health facilities, but I often include links to news articles about mental health issues that I found on yahoo or msn.

Today I found an article that made me feel hopeful for the next generation of schizophrenics. According to the Washington Post, there are new early-intervention programs geared at teenagers and young adults whose pre-psychotic symptoms have already begun to spring up. Pre-psychotic symptoms can include a lot of the negative symptoms such as lack of motivation, loss of affect, and social withdrawal. The social withdrawal part is a huge issue that needs dealing with. For people whose lines between reality and unreality blur, often times a neutral third party can provide a much needed balance in perspective. Personally, I know that my cousins and close family members were the only thing that kept me from talking out loud to myself or shutting out the external world entirely. They provided a non-psychotic mentality to combat my psychotic mentality. Of course, Abilify, the anti-psychotic drug, is what finally eliminated the positive symptoms (i.e.  hallucinations, voices, feelings of persecution, paranoia), but I would not have been able to complete college without the support of a social network.

Unlike most schizophrenics, I finished college after I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The majority of my 20's were spent being sent repeatedly to mental institutions. I call that time the "Lost Decade" because I could only focus on keeping my head above water. Sure, I worked part-time at multiple jobs and attended a community college part-time, but I was never able to maintain my normalcy until about 2010. Enter a rehabilitation program designed to retrain severely mentally ill people to reintegrate into society. After the intensive 6 month, out-patient program, I was released into the care of another mental health care provider where I consistently met with my doctor and a counselor. The toll of being mentally ill had drained me psychologically and I needed someone to talk to about the repercussions of my psychotic episodes (I often experienced "flash backs" of my psychotic episodes and the time in the hospitals. The scent and taste of orange juice is repellent to me because it reminds me of being ordered to drink my orange juice and milk inside a mental health hospital every day by one of the mental health techs. Also, anything that has to do with lack of privacy (aka the Snowden Affair) triggers moments of abject fear of persecution and mind control). The therapy allowed me to bridge the gap between my internal world and the external world through the guidance of a counselor. I do not, of course, believe therapy is the "solution" to schizophrenia, but it is an important addition to the treatment plan.

Since 2011, I have been a return University student living a double life. One life involves attending classes, making social connections, getting good grades, and entering the Master's program right after I received my Bachelor's degree from a California State University. The other life involved constant monitoring by a team of health care professionals who often called me unexpectedly to have me tell them about my day to day life and what my major sources of stress were. This might sound extreme, but it worked. The program managed to re-install the social functions that I lost during my psychotic episodes. I cannot detail the many ways that treating the negative (aka social) symptoms associated with schizophrenia can help the person reintegrate into society without freaking everybody out (not that your freaking out is our problem, that is society's stigmatization problem, but it is true that our spontaneous fits of unprovoked laughter can unnerve you Normals).

This new consideration of treating the negative symptoms is truly a benefit to schizophrenics and to society in general. This Washington Post link details a new, social reintegration approach to dealing with negative symptoms before they morph into full blown positive symptoms (i.e. voices, visual hallucinations). The best part is that it is aimed at young adults who are at a perceived risk of developing the disease (who defines what constitutes "risk" in an alleged pre-schizophrenic is a topic for another blog post, but I should note that there is the potential of misdiagnosing people). The article goes on to say that the state of Maine has seen hospitalizations for newly psychotic patients has dropped by over 30% (as cited in the Washington Post, edit: July 16th, 2014 by the journalist S. Shomashekhar).

As a thirty-one year old with schizophrenia, this is wonderful news, if not for me, then for the next generation of schizophrenics who are growing up in the wake of the recent mass murders committed by alleged---I repeat---alleged---shooters with mental illness. Being raised in a society where one is perceived as a threat to the community despite one's obedience of the law is unjust. I cannot stand by quietly and allow this mass hysteria to ruin the lives of my fellow skitzes. This article shows that there is no need for society to alienate us (we do this fairly well on our own, anyway) and that intervention by society can spawn a generation of schizophrenics who can fully re-enter society.

Thank you, Washington Post and the state of Maine, for not seeing us as disposable creatures meant to be warehoused in a cold and often neglectful mental institution! You have made my day by sharing this story of hope for the next generation. It might be too late for me to recover from the emotional scars of the mental hospital, but it is not too late for the next generation of skitzes.

To you, generation of new skitzes, I advise you to take advantage of these opportunities and to take comfort in knowing that your generation will not experience the mental asylums the way I did. There is hope in little things. Hope in a smile of a stranger, hope in that moment of silence when the voices stop, hope in a healing society!

Here is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/promising-new-approach-helps-curb-early-schizophrenia-in-teens-young-adults/2014/08/06/82609e74-fd77-11e3-b1f4-8e77c632c07b_story.html

Summer Update: No Work and Sexting

I suddenly have free time due to the fact that nobody hired me for summer work. I have decided to take this as a positive in that I can study for my intermediate computer programming class I am enrolled in for fall, my last semester at the University.

I am about to complete my Master's degree in my field, after two years. I started this blog as a returning adult student attempting to complete my Bachelor's degree. I just needed a safe place to ramble on about my mental illness and the loss of my loved ones, this blog became it. I had no idea that I would keep blogging off and on throughout the following years. Over time, I have built a sense of purpose: I must advocate for the rights of the mentally ill and prove, through my own actions, that a mental patient can be fully reintegrated into society and be productive and live a fulfilled life. Most recently though, I have found myself ranting against the social stigma and posting links to online articles about mental patients who became successful in life despite their illness.

Sometimes my purpose is too strong and I feel that I might be alienating some people. Other times, I feel that I must speak out, even write all in CAPS, to express the deep-seated fear that has been instilled in me by the mental asylums.

But everyone needs a breather now and then....

I promised this guy I would not tell a soul. I made him swear not to tell anybody either. We've been webcamming. Yes, webcamming. I invented a new verb and it is a sexy verb. Basically, we just take turns in front of the camera for hours at a time, trying to please each other visually. He made me swear not to tell, for some reasons which I cannot deny: a) I am overweight and he is fantastically fit and ripped everywhere....and hung. He could do better than me and we both know it, b) he is about ten years younger than me (21 to my 31) and that in itself is kind of taboo, and c) He is auditioning for movies and getting call-backs, which means he has to be on his best behavior and only date the "right type of woman." So, due to a, b, and c, I can not tell a soul. Except maybe you, reader, who are privy to practically everything that goes on in my private life. Also, I might be bragging right now, just a little bit. Sorry.

My therapist told me I had issues with intimacy. Not sexual intimacy but at the crossroads where sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy meet. I usually have a sexual partner for my sexual needs and a male friend for my emotional needs. I am seriously not selfish, I just can't wrap my mind around how to get one male into both of these roles. My therapist told me that it sounds like I need emotional distance from sexual partners and physical distance from my non-sexual friends. I hate this, but I think he is right. I blame my natural skittishness and a series of unfortunate encounters for my ambivalence towards relationships.

I like webcamming with this particular guy because he provides both sexual and emotional support for me---from a distance, a distance larger than the length of the Pacific Ocean (he lives overseas). This means that I can feel incredibly close to him and know that I might never actually meet him in person, ever. Rather than take this as an experiment in soul-crushing heart-ache, I am rather fond of this arrangement....and I really feel weird about being fond of this arrangement. To make matters more complicated, my male friend (platonic friend only) invited me over to his apartment to hang out. I went over there, honestly, wanting to sleep with the guy, but I couldn't work up the courage to seduce him so instead we talked for four hours straight. Then I went home and sexted with the guy overseas. Did I feel guilty? Yes and no. My local friend is also younger and I don't want him to get enmeshed with an older woman who has relationship issues (me), but I adore him and he makes me laugh. I always feel warm and cuddled after we hang out together. I do not think he would mind at all if I mentioned that I was webcamming with some guy, but I would rather keep that to myself, especially because I secretly have a crush on my local friend. Webcamming guy, on the other hand, would definitely not approve of me hanging out alone with my local friend. I don't tell him anything. I do not want to lose what we have, but I do not want to lose what I have with my local friend. The solution I have stumbled on is to just keep my private life private even from those within my private life. Does that make sense?

Most women I meet are socialized to want to marry one man, to love one man, and to sleep with one man. I am not like these women. I am fiercely loyal, but my idea of loyalty is slightly different. Flings mean little to me, they are like annoying mosquito bites that I have to scratch, illicit trysts that do not reflect my true feelings, just pure sensation. Yet I love the sensation of a tryst! There is nothing so fleetingly magical, so ephemerally fantastic, as a one-night stand. Yes, I am like other women in that I get angry if the guy doesn't call back (although for me, a call-back might be a month down the line, which is fine for me), and I get jealous if I see my fling flirting with other women, but overall I do not share the same singular passion that other women have. This would be why I still live at home, have never married or had children, and is the reason why my "relationships" last a total of 5 months per man.

I sigh as I sit here, wondering if I suffer from some horrible cougar-esque Peter Pan complex or if these guys themselves have some mommy complex that dooms me to immature and unbalanced relationships. Whatever it is, I love them in my strange ways, deeply and intensely.

This summer I have done nothing except practice programming, look for work (to no avail), and gotten myself mired into bizarre pseudo-relationships to the point where my shrink needs a diagram to sort through the male characters in my life. Don't cry for me, Argentina. I might wail about my confusing private life, but in the end, I love it, I love them. In a way, I love you, too, just for reading through this post.

My last post was a little bleak. I blame the hot weather in my city, and my ever changing internal moods for that.

I discussed the abuse at the hospitals with my therapist. Well, I didn't so much discuss things as I ranted and raved for a good hour about the injustices in the American mental health care system. Finally, he stitched me back together in about five minutes of behavioral modification (or cognitive behavioral therapy, whichever term you prefer), altered my perspective, and sent me home feeling like a little embarrassed for losing my patience.

I have this love hate relationship with the county mental health system. They were both the people who hurt me and the people who saved me and helped me to recover. Sometimes, the same person is in both categories.

I have been a ward of the county's mental health program since the age of 22-23 (previous to that I was enrolled in private insurance under my mother which warehoused me in the hospital that was actually pretty fancy back in the day, with lavish cakes for dessert and non-stop art therapy). For the bulk of the time I was with the county I felt ignored, belittled, maligned, and neglected. At one county center my doctor was a new person every three months, the previous doctor having quit or gotten fired, and it was a stressful relaying all the painful bits of my life to a new doctor every three months.

Then again, the county provided free medicine so long as I entered a rehabilitation program, but that was years later, in approximately 2008-2009. The county both provided for me and left me to my madness with no concern for my well being. It was a confusing time, my enemies were my carers and my carers weren't caring....but they could care at random and unexpected moments. If this sounds confusing, that is exactly what I felt. Confused. Alone. Tormented by internal voices and treated as a leper by the external world. But there were moments of refuge. I found refuge with other schizophrenics and bipolar people. I made unlikely friends: from different social classes, of different races, and different religions. The only thing that bonded us was our shared experience of forced hospitalization. Despite what we were (or had been) on the outside, once inside we became blank, generic mental patients; interchangeable cogs in a machine we had no control over.

I cannot relay just how startling it can be to have staff not speak to you when they approach you to take your blood pressure. It is a silent act between a nurse and whatever that person saw me as: a sick person, maybe, or maybe they saw me as a sick thing, a thing that was more like an animal than like them. It is when you have been dehumanized to this point that something kicks in: a final coping mechanism. A last ditch effort to find human decency where there is none. Every smile becomes a source of fuel, more powerful than the watered down decaf coffee they serve on the wards. A smile could make the boredom tolerable, could make the interactions with the volatile patients tolerable, make being in captivity while the world moves around without you---tolerable. The bonds I made with the other schizophrenics are deep. I still run into someone from the hospital from time to time (in the county behavioral center, on the bus, etc...) they have always cracked a wide grin, approached me, sometimes hugged me, always asked how I was and if I remembered this group or that hospital from the past. I will not lie, I both cringe and breathe a sigh of relief whenever I run into another former patient. I cringe because I am almost done with my Master's degree now (I am going to be in my final semester this fall), I  have been passably healthy and out of the hospital for 5-6 years now, I have new hobbies, new friends, a new life---I pretend like I was not that sick person banging on the bullet-proof window rambling about suicide and CIA agents; I cringe because it hurts to remember the damage. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can finally smile my real smile at somebody who knew the "real me." There is a kinship between us former mental patients based on the mutual experience of being dehumanized, marginalized, imprisoned, all for our own good.We are what society mocks, at least when they are not busy building up hysteria around us because of some sociopath who may or may not have also had the label of schizophrenic, bipolar, or autistic at some point in their pasts. I strongly disagree with the idea that schizophrenia, bipolar, or autism disorder is the root (or even tangential) cause of mass murders. I have known many great men and women who were totally insane. One of the kindest woman on the wards was a middle-aged African-American lady who said she heard non-stop golden oldies playing like a radio in her head to the point where she could hear and do nothing else (except sing along, which, to my great amusement, she did frequently). I must remember this woman and the others whenever I get angry about the hospitals. There was cruelty, yes, but there was also random acts of love and compassion that I have never found on the Outside.

I will always love those that I met on the inside: who found a way to keep their souls through everything. They are like me. I am like them. This reminds me of a book by Philip K. Dick called "Clans of the Alphane Moon," a science fiction tale about a future where the mentally ill were rocketed en mass into outer-space, to colonize their own planet without infringing on the realities of the Normals. It is a great book! I  highly recommend it due to its unique insight into the quirks of those with mental illnesses and its laugh out loud style humor. On this random note, I bid you adieu.