Condition: Grave

"Grave," he said, his face attempting some semblance of empathy. He was my social worker who had been assigned to me during my stay in the psychiatric facility. He was in the process of telling me I had paranoid schizo-affective disorder and that I should go on disability. I remember slowly hunching over until my hair fell in front of my face, hiding my dazed expression. Grave. That was the only thing I could think: I have a Grave condition.


I wish I could say the schizophrenia miraculously went away, or that I Found Jesus Christ and learned to bear my burden---neither is the truth. Currently, I am not religious, nor am I completely sane. Too bad. Sanity and Jesus Christ seem to make life more bearable for the general population.
****************************************************************
I made friends with a grad student who I have in two classes. I just met her this month. She has a major disability in that she is blind. She asked to be my study buddy and I agreed. She does not know that I am also disabled; though in a different sense. I am cognitively disabled due to the schizophrenia. She does not know.

Today she mentioned she used to attend a private Christian college. I decided to steer the conversation away from religion but it was too late---she went off on how great a theocracy would be. Now I love the concept of Jesus very much, but I am not keen on any government that is religious. I like the separation between church and state. It is a brilliant idea; one that should be respected and maintained forever.

As a mentally disabled person, the United States constitution is the only thing that protects my rights and freedoms. It decrees I am your equal. I am writing this only because I don't know how to address my new friend. I like her, I just hold the idea of checks and balances and separation of church and state to be the core values of America. They are my core values, at least.

Then it kind of dawned on me that people with a mental handicap are either made to appear like evil wicked people or like "touched-by-God" people when in fact we are neither--we're just people. It has occurred to me that, due to ignorance, the majority of the population does not see disability as a genetic accident; they see it as some sort of God-inferred state, and this scares me because there is no science behind this.

Anyways, I just wanted to say that I am somebody who believes strongly in a scientific approach to understanding mental illness and disabilities in general.

On "Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women"

As a University student I have access to a plethora of books and media not available in any other library. I stumbled upon "Killing Us Softly", a lecture by Dr. Jean Kilbourne. Fascinated by the collage of female bodies on the cover, as well as the eerily poignant title, I checked it out and just now watched the film in its entirety.

Maybe you're visiting this little blog again, and if so, you probably know that I am overweight and plagued by insecurity, self-doubt, and shame. I struggle with my weight, am classified as overweight, I'm 28, and going to a University populated by 18 year olds who grew up with the new media technology of airbrushing the female body. Let's just say I don't fit in (not for lack of trying).

This lecture struck a raw nerve. Watching the slideshow presented by Dr. Kilbourne was shocking. One teenage girl after another was being shown in insinuating poses. What reads like dirt is in fact just your typical brand name clothing advertisement. Youth, exploited, held up as ideal, their immature brains unable to fathom what exploitation they are being sucked into.

This lecture made me pull back from the social conditioning that happens on campus. I could, for a moment, perceive something beyond that contemptuous glance I received today from a very skinny young co-ed who sneered at the sight of my thighs as I walked by. So her thighs are thinner than mine. That's fine! So long as she doesn't wreck the grade curve by earning the highest A in the class, I can live with being her sexual inferior. She can keep her thin thighs and I'll keep my fat ones.

This is sad. I don't know what to do about this. It appears to be some sort of divide and conquer strategy, but by whom? Men have the most to gain, true, but women often take matters into their own hands by alienating and belittling those less beautiful than they are. Indeed, I must look at my own actions, because I am probably helping to keep the status quo somehow, without even realizing it.


164 pounds seems too much for me to weigh. Yet, I am more than a number. I am more than a statistic of the American fat epidemic. I wrote many excellent term papers: don't they count for anything? What about the fact that I give up my seat on the bus to little old ladies?


Anyways, I think I'm rambling, so I'll end here with a book, "Deadly Persuasion" by Dr. Jean Kilbourne, that can be found on amazon dot com. Dr. Jean Kilbourne was the lecturer on the DVD I checked out from the campus library. Unfortunately, the DVD, "Killing Us Softly" is not available on amazon. I think it might be out of print, which is sad. :(   But here is a book that covers the same topic!

Book by Jean Kilbourne Because "Killing Us Softly" Is Not Available on amazon dot com

I haven't read it yet, but I will. I did watch the movie "Killing Us Softly" and Dr. Kilbourne has made some startling insights into advertising and women's roles in society. 

Body Issues: Breasts, Weight, and Dance Class

The guy on myspace wanted to know what size bra I wear. I have to laugh, that's the first thing guys ask. In fact, I'm so accustomed to that question I stopped thinking it was rude years ago. Now, it's just like they're asking how old I am. I answer this question due to some strange exhibitionist trait I have had since I was a teenager. As you can tell by the fact that I write my diary entries online for anybody to see---I am totally an exhibitionist.

So I responded to the guy via myspace messaging. 36FF. In UK sizes. That translates to 36H in US sizes. I always answer in UK sizes because all my bras are imports from the United Kingdom, where large breasts are everywhere and stores actually make bras for the large-breasted population. It's not like here in California where Target goes up to 36DD only. There are some big bras, but they're for big band sizes, like 40 or 42 band widths. Maybe you don't know this, but the larger the circumference of the torso below the breasts, the smaller the cup size will be listed as. So a 36DDD is only a 38DD. Larger band, smaller cup. Smaller band, larger cup. Bra mathematics can be confusing.

I ran into problems in my dance class last week with my body. I am enrolled in a general education level dance class which I must pass in order to obtain my B.A. this May. I am a senior in college, 28 years old, 163 pounds (at the moment), and about 5 feet 2 inches. So I'm fat. Overweight, chunky, thick, whatever. The students are mostly underweight and still in their teenage years. I have never felt so out of place in my life---not even when I accidentally attended a faculty-only potluck last semester (only to be rudely told to get out! I was invited via email from another faculty member, but I left regardless! I almost cried, I was so humiliated!)

They are so tiny, so flat-chested, so, well dancer-like, that I wanted to run out of the dance studio in tears. We stretched, then danced. The professor, a waif-like blonde trained in modern dance, told us to do a little prance across the studio, then crouch, lunge, and twirl around. All the girls did this and they looked like professional dancers. I wound up being last in line and I was super conscious of my large breasts jiggling all over the place with every prancing step I took. I did not make this look graceful at all! It looked vulgar. I sighed, kept my eyes down, pranced, crouched, lunged, twirled, and ran to the end of the line to hide.

In certain situations my body type (heavy on top, thick thighs, big butt) gets me noticed by men. In other situations, it makes me feel like the circus freak fat woman. Dance class is making me consider a more rigorous diet.

The only good thing that came out of the class (besides the fact that I can graduate when it's over) is that there is a cute, adorable freshman who smiles at me. He's one of only 2 or 3 guys in the class. We partnered up at one point, standing back to back, and melted in a heap together on the floor. It was strictly the class work assigned by the professor, this partner work, but I felt on top of the world as we slid into each other's arms! I can't possibly imagine him picking me over the slender, model-like dance students, but it was still nice to be curled up with him on the floor. :)

Link To A Great Examination Of SOPA and PIPA

Khan Academy Explains Creepy PIPA/SOPA

Where law becomes a pool of shady waters where alligators lurk.....

Check it out!!

Joining the Cult of Thinness

The Cult of Thinness is a book by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. Her credentials are top notch; she is both a professor of sociology at Boston College and a woman who was asked to investigate why so many college-aged females were brought in to the college health center for eating disorders. Through intense research, personal interviews, and her own brilliant insights, Professor Hesse-Biber wound up writing a series of books on women's weight issues, books which delve into deeper topics such as women's rights and roles in American society.

As a Chicana (Chicana=Mexican female born in the US), one might think I would have some insulation to the peer pressures to be thin that plagues so many Caucasian females. However, I was raised in California with copies of Cosmo, Vogue, and 17 magazine just like everyone else and the effects were on par as my Caucasian counter-parts. No, I couldn't ever be pale-skinned and blonde, but being thin was the one thing I could be. Wanting to fit in with my classmates, who were predominately Caucasian, I picked at my food, dieted whenever I didn't fit into size 5 anymore in order to get back to size 5, and I never went over 115 until my mid-20's

 I was thoughtlessly thin until around age 23 or 24 when Zyprexa, the anti-psychotic drug (I became schizo-affective in my 20's), cause me to gain upwards of 60-70 pounds. This isn't unheard of as one of my psychiatrists commented that he'd had a patient who'd rapidly gained 100 pounds as soon as he was put on Zyprexa. As soon as I was 25, when most people are graduating from college, getting real jobs, and maybe even getting married,  my life dissolved into one of regimented pill-taking, intense psychological scrutiny, the inability to complete college due to psychiatric disability, and the part I dreaded most: living as a fat person. If society had treated me differently I wouldn't have minded the fat as much as I did, but I was publicly ridiculed for being 180 pounds on a 5' 1" -5'2" build.

At age 26 (or 25, I forget) I fasted myself back to 135 pounds. Nowhere near my skinniest weight, I was miserably. Shortly thereafter, the effects of an untreated metal illness kicked in and I was soon being poked, prodded, and scrutinized inside a psychiatric hospital where the familiar faces of the mental health staff were shocked to see how much weight I'd lost. I couldn't understand why they were so adamant that I eat 3 meals a day: couldn't they see that the weight gain was worse than the mental illness? No, they did not see that the weight gain was worse and instead they dutifully forced me to drink milk and eat at least half of all my meals. Combined with my new medications and the accompanying side effects, I gained all the weight back, plus about 10 pounds.

Then, I yo-yo'd from a size 14 to a size 16, back to a size 14, and back to a size 16 before I got my life together and was admitted to the University.

Happy ending, right? Ex-EDNOS female now a size 14 (162-164 pounds), getting exercise, going to University, taking proper medication for mental illness, all goes well, right?

If that were true I probably wouldn't gravitate towards books on self-image. For that matter, I wouldn't be writing graphic tales of my mental illness and personal life experiences on the internet for anybody to read!

Reading The Cult of Thinness made me realize how zany it was to believe that being fat was worse than being insane. The sad thing is, according to the book, this belief is perfectly normal in our society. Dieting is like a rite of passage. Mexicans have quinceneras, where 15 year olds dress up like brides and take Catholic vows, Americans have weigh-ins, not to see if you're healthy or not, but to determine just how much weight you must lose to be acceptable to society.

I say all this like I'm going to jump off the band-wagon, but shirking this sort of social media brainwashing isn't that easy. If anything, I have to re-take my vow of dieting. I feel like I got married to this idea of thinness at age 13, cheated on Thin by getting fat in my mid-twenties, and am only now making amends by eating a zucchini for lunch. Just like in the Catholic faith, there is no divorce once you join the Cult of Thinness.

To those of you who are ready to get a divorce, read this book! It has amazing insights into how women focus on their appearance to avoid focusing on glass ceilings, wage discrimination, war, and other horrors of modern life.

The Cult of Thinness Book for sale on amazon dot com

Maybe it's the pot of coffee I just had but I feel happy.

I'm about to start a new semester at the University, this time taking Chinese 1B and Arabic 1B, several linguistics classes, and a dance class. I am looking forward to working on hitting my Mandarin tones properly.

I went by campus to pick up my textbooks. The department of rehabilitation is sponsoring me through my education now, so they paid for the cost of my books. DOR (department of rehab) works with disabled people in trying to get the physically and mentally disabled people into jobs. I actually just wanted a part-time job to help me get by as I went through my last year of college, but my DOR counselor said they could sponsor my time at the University and help me with work afterward. So now I don't work but I do carry a full load every semester in terms of units. I get a meager sum of grant money that I get to keep each semester, something I am still learning to budget in order to save money for the possibility of graduate school.

Without DOR I think I would feel less pressure to succeed in school. I need this pressure, as it helps me study harder and for longer periods of time. I feel like I need to prove my worth to the department, so I work harder. Despite the irritation I experience whenever I have to sit still for longer than 20 minutes, I enjoy studying. It makes me feel like I'm exercising my brain and that I'm being productive to society by learning new languages.

Despite a painful semester that included the death of my grandfather, the closest thing I've ever had to a father, I still got by my semester with a 3.0 GPA. While this was not my best semester, I passed and it's over with and I can focus on a new term. My cumulative GPA is still enough to get me into the graduate program at my University and I am looking forward to the challenge of graduate school.

What I'm not looking forward to is asking for letters of recommendation. For anybody, asking a professor for a letter of recommendation can be daunting. For myself, being the nervous, self-doubting schizo-affective person I am, this is proving to be a very high hurdle. I struggle with feeling equal to others. Though I have written extensively about how schizophrenics are equal to everybody else, in my daily life I am plagued by anxiety about how I am perceived by others. As I have had breaks from reality in the past, I have become habituated to using the reactions of people around me to judge how well I am doing in my cognition and behavior. I have become highly sensitive to the slightest upturned nose or the smallest frown because these have previously been signals I used to indicate that my own speech or facial expressions were causing discomfort in the people around me. What at one point was a means of self-monitoring is now a habit I have. I used to have to watch my speech for word salads (word salad = a nonsensical combination of words that schizophrenics tend to produce while floridly psychotic), inappropriate paranoid statements, and random giggling fits. Now, I watch my speech to make sure I conform to the social situation and to make sure I don't disclose to much about myself. I can be quite obsessive about self-monitoring.

While self-monitoring is a good way to ward off symptoms and to re-integrate myself back into society, it is also very easy to become highly self-critical. I always think I've said something horribly wrong or inappropriate when there's no reason to believe this. For example, sometimes I get excited about a subject and I go up to the professor after class to ask a question about a topic. Then, realizing I've just put myself on center stage with a highly intelligent expert in his field, I get nervous, start fiddling with my clothes, stuttering all the while, and I usually end up leaving feeling like a fool, or worse, like a charlatan pretending to be sane when everybody else knows I'm nuts. This is what is called transparency. I feel like I am transparent; that my entire identity is visible to others. It's common in schizophrenics. Even if a professor does suspect I'm mentally ill, the law states that s/he is not allowed to discriminate against me due to biological conditions. Still, this fact doesn't stop me from feeling like an idiot on occasion.

Being highly sensitive to my social and academic mistakes makes me wonder if anybody would vouch for me at all! Of course, linguistics isn't rocket science or brain surgery---nobody's life hangs in the balance, but I still doubt myself and my reputation in academia enough to make asking a professor for a letter of recommendation a looming tidal wave of dread and anxiety.

But it must be done. Wish me luck!
Thanks for reading.

At Times Obtuse At Times Hypersensitive

Like the title says, I am at times obtuse and at other times hypersensitive. Being schizophrenic is a cognitive disorder and it affects my social awareness. It is one of the embarrassing aspects of the disease, this social clumsiness I experience. There is fear, constant fear. There is panic on occasion. There is confusion a lot of the times, but often one part of my disease is inconsistant. My social awareness is skewed in one direction or the other, sometimes shifting in a single day.

At times I miss cues from other people signaling discomfort, annoyance, or even affection. At other times, I perceive emotions, be it hatred or attraction, that are not really there. I have learned to bite down on my instincts thanks to instances where I've had my first impression proved wrong. For example, I once thought my art professor hated me deeply. I avoided eye contact and any social interaction as I felt an imaginary loathing emanating from her. Instead, I poured my anxiety into my artwork. I desperately wanted my art professor's approval but I felt that she wanted me to drop her class and disappear from the face of the planet. One night, she passed my drawing of a flower and put a hand to her heart. I thought she was going to say it looked like a very evil flower. Instead she said, "That is incredible! Absolutely beautiful. It touches me." Stunned, I realized that she felt the exact opposite of what I thought she felt. The entire semester I thought she felt my artwork was an extension of myself---thus, she would naturally hate it. After that, I questioned my perceptions entirely. Shortly thereafter, I began to spiral downwards, believing that people thought I was an evil person, that they were going to frame me for horrible crimes, and I was brought to the ER psych unit by my worried mother. I was then diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder and the series of faulty perceptions made sense; my perceptions were skewed.

Rather than slip into a deep haze of self-hatred as some schizophrenics do (as society can abhor a schizophrenic), I began to study the disease by reading everything from the library. I learned to see it not in terms of bad luck but an unfortunate triggering of certain genetically inherited properties. It was not a curse from some cruel God, but a disease of science that is still in the process of being understood by scientists.

I learned about the dopamine hypothesis that states schizophrenia is a disease that results from an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine. What causes this excess may be genetic, or a combination of genetics and environment, but whatever it is, it is not the result of a wicked heart. Often, schizophrenics are misunderstood.

Just today I got an email from an ex-lover who said that he moved out because his roommate (who happened to be schizophrenic) got drunk, high, and threatened him with a knife. My ex-lover blamed this violent threat on the person's schizophrenia. I think this is ridiculous, as drunk and high people who are not schizophrenic often act out violently. Should I therefore assume that every alcoholic is on the verge of murdering me in cold blood because of his state of intoxication? Despite the fact that drunken rages of violence are super common, I would not. Why, then, would my ex-lover believe that violence is common among schizophrenics? It is this ignorance that is detrimental to all of us in the States. Ignorance means that there is a reluctance to admit to mental illness and this can leave a person incapacitated due to their untreated mental illness.

On one last note, all people are equal with equal rights and opportunities. Remember that next time you encounter somebody who admits to (or exhibits) a mental illness. It is an unfortunate truth that the majority of people who have been through treatment for mental illness have faced blatant discrimination, fear, hatred, blame, and the cruelty that can come from the very people who are employed to look after their well being; mental health practitioners.

I took a psychology of criminal behavior class at my University and the professor said something that resonated deeply with me: "There are two work places that attract highly controlling and domineering personality types seeking employment: prisons and mental hospitals." This was coming from a man who used to work in an asylum for the criminally insane!

In conclusion, please be kind and don't pour salt onto the psychic wounds of the mentally ill. We are all fighting our internal hell in order to smile or say hello. At some point, your life will hit an obstacle, perhaps due to a death in the family, and you will feel the same struggle we can feel on a daily basis.

Why Paranoia Makes Me Shop Online

I entered the store and a security guard greets me. Not quite a smile, his expression was more like civil, rigid, minimalist politeness. He eyes me up and down. I can feel his X-ray vision entering my purse, my pockets, and scrutinizing my empty hands. He reeks of paranoia, as do all the other store employees who walk down aisles checking in on customers with fake smiles.

Being a paranoid schizo-affective, I am hypersensitive to the paranoid states of others. It's like sensing a kindred spirit, call it Pare-dar. Like a paranoid radar, pare-dar allows me to detect paranoia, fear, and suspicion in others from a distance, without having to interact with them (though a brief interaction allows me to confirm my assertion). During holidays, stores get lots of shop-lifters so they alert their employees to be on the look out.

So I entered the store to find a fog of suspicion inside. My little paranoid antennae went up as well, as I respond to paranoia with paranoia. I grabbed a Diet Coke, a pair of earbuds for my IPOD, dropped these items onto the cashier's area, paid, and ran out the door.

Hence, why I shop online. No paranoid employees asking me how I'm doing while eyeing my purse. No little trail of employees following me down the make-up aisles like spooks from the Cold War era. Just a couple of clicks and a two-day wait, and poof---a package on my doorstep. When you're paranoid, avoiding other people's paranoia is a good way to keep healthy, so from now on I shop online for items like flash drives, books, appliances, and so on.

Just a side note, what's been bugging me lately is that a lot of people don't understand that schizophrenics aren't criminals. There are lots of schizophrenics out there and only some of them are CRIMINALLY insane while the vast majority are just nuts, with no criminal tendencies at all. That's why we have the words "asylum for the criminally insane" versus "psychiatric hospital". In theory, a psychiatric hospital is just that---a hospice (in reality it's like a little behavioral modification unit equipped with Middle Ages era restraints, sadistic employees who secretly detest their wards, and a model of bed rest and group therapy that is as outdated as the stacks of magazines in the group room).  The CRIMINALLY insane usually end up in jails or hard-core state facilities with even more Middle Ages era style techniques.

In case you're wondering, I am the plain version of schizophrenic, not the criminal variety. Still, due to my  delusions of impending torture by secret agents and my fear of assassins, the county workers (well, some of the poorly trained and unscrupulous ones) deemed me as a threat to self and others (code=5150). Does that mean I am a threat to others? No. What it meas is that there are rigid requirements for forced hospitalization and unfortunately, people are willing to lie on my charts in order to get me into a psych ward. No, I'm not being delusional. This has been my experience, the experience of others I was roomed with in psych wards, and it's even been the case for Elyn R. Saks, author and legal expert, who penned "The Center Cannot Hold."

I am now almost done reading Saks' book. I have postponed finishing it because it was so exciting for me to read about her academic successes that I dreaded not having to read the book anymore. Since I am a college student about to apply to my University's graduate programs, Elyn Saks' story means the world to me. She proves that we can achieve while psychotic. We can achieve while on medications. We can achieve, regardless of how disabled we are, and that is gold to me. 

Weight Woes

This April I was 181 pounds---and this was after I'd gone on a vegetarian diet to eliminate all the greasy, saturated meats in my diet. I was probably closer to 190 or 195 at my highest weight. At 5'1 or 5'2, this is not morbidly obese, but it is obese. In case you don't know, there's underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese, and morbidly obese. I knew something had to be done. I was having respiratory problems which made me short of breath while stationary. Walking I was fine but while sitting down I felt I couldn't breathe. This might have been my anxiety condition or it my weight problem, either way, I decided I would deal with the weight.

By July I was 171 pounds. No crash dieting (though I flirted with the idea at my lowest point), just large amounts of vegetables sauteed in olive oil and hot spices, no meat, and a cut back on sugar, pasta, and breads.

At my lowest weight I was 158 this November, down another 13 pounds. I managed this by purchasing a rowing machine with various levels of resistance with my financial aid money and using it as long as I could as often as I could....usually only 20 minutes 4 times a week...plus judo class for 50 minutes 2 times a week since the end of August.

I eat 3 meals a day, no skipping. It was simply that my portion size shrunk while the food I ate became healthier. I have my bad days, but usually I  have a routine where I prepare my vegetables in cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper, and turmeric spices with a regularity that is relaxing for me. As indulgence I will sprinkle some shredded cheese over a cup of vegetables and let it slowly melt into delicious cheesiness. Maybe I'll have a piece of Mexican sweet bread (pan dulce) as a late-night dessert, but for the most part I avoided desserts like some people avoid black widow spiders.

I have to make sure I eat 3 meals a day because I had a period where I did not eat 3 meals a day, I was on a starvation diet and I ate no breakfasts, a salad for lunch, and a measly dinner, drank my weight in sugary soda and sugary coffee to keep me alert at work, and then passed out at night, malnourished and steadily going insane. I lost almost all the weight I'd gained being on medications for schizophrenia, but in my stupid zeal I quit taking the medications and stopped eating the bare minimum requirement for health. When I was inevitably hospitalized for psychosis by my exhausted mother (this time it was secret assassins on television's Sesame Street threatening to kill my entire family), I was 131 pounds, not anywhere near the 112 pounds I was at age 21, but still, I was so damn close! Was it worth it? Hell no! I spent days in the psychiatric facility debating whether I should be thin and psychotic, locked up in psych wards with nobody around to admire my weight loss, or fat and sane, possibly even productive. Hence, why I now have to lose weight!

On the plus side, it was wonderful to give myself permission to eat and enjoy food, despite becoming obese in the process. Where once I had envied my boss's young wife for being rail thin (she worked all day as a waitress in her husband's restaurant and the only thing I ever saw her eat was a salad with cottage cheese on top---a bizarre concoction that I never could get the hang of), I now envy women who are successful in their jobs and happy about their contributions to society. This is an achievement I'm proud of, and though I have to continue to work my way into the normal weight range, I'm on medication, attending University with one semester left until I graduate with my B.A., managing my mental illness, living a life with friends and family, and being productive to society. I never could have accomplished this being unmedicated or starving.

I have a long way to go before I reach my ideal weight---these holidays set me back 5 pounds, back to 164, but I'm determined to accomplish my New Year's goals  of losing weight, exercising 5 times a week, graduating with a decent cumulative GPA in May, budgeting my grant money so I don't wind up penniless by summer time, and raising my self-confidence in my body and my mind. :)

Hopefully, with some patience and ambition, I can accomplish these goals this year.
2011 was a year of painful loss (my cousin by suicide and my grandfather by heart attack), one of scholastic achievement (Dean's List Spring semester), one of unemployment, but a year that I'll be proud of one day in the future as a period of transition from mental patient/pot head to University student.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!