Grad School---coffee, zoloft, & Monster energy drinks

The one thing I have noticed is that I tend to gravitate towards liquid caffeine whenever I am feeling nervous. Isn't that reversed? Shouldn't I drink green, decaffeinated tea and listen to mellow sitar music? Instead, I play industrial electronica music, pop my zoloft (all 200 mg), and run out to get myself the following: a grande Starbucks iced coffee with a shot of espresso and creamer, followed shortly by a Monster lo-cal energy drink, followed by perhaps another large regular coffee, all the while walking around listening to hard-core, heart-pumping industrial beats. That's graduate school for you, I guess.

Barrista: "Hi what can I get for you today?"
Me: "A grande iced coffee with cream and a shot, please."
Barrista: "How many shots in that?"
Me: "What's the maximum number of shots allowed?"

Thanks for reading! More to come! :)

I Passed the Qualifying Exam

I studied with my friend twice a week for a month in order to prepare for a qualifying exam. The qualifying exam is required to continue in the program as an official graduate student in the Master's program. I took it. I passed it. My friend did not. I am depressed for her, and for me.

I am depressed because I have so many 5250's on my record that I might never be a community college teacher, or have a career at all. I have been "out" for three years without incident. By "out" I mean socially re-integrated and normal enough to avoid the psychiatric in-patient facilities. I can never erase those 5250's though. They appear on my background check. I have NEVER been charged with a crime, yet I feel like a criminal for being schizo-affective. It is not fair that 5250's appear like a felony would on a background check. They should prevent this because 1) being sick is not a crime, and 2) it violates the medical privacy policies that the U.S. has in place.

If I had spare time I would rally the NAMI supporters and propose a law that states that a doctor's note can over-ride an employment disqualification due to 5250's. But I am a graduate student taking 5 classes. I have no time. I  have no life. I might not even have prospects.

It is moments like these when I close my eyes and seek a higher force. Nothing comes. I open my eyes. Tears come to my eyes, not a benevolent, omnipotent being. I feel empty and hopeless. Stigma has killed my joy. Just earlier today I was enthusiastically blathering on about my studies. Now, I feel that I have made a horrible mistake. I shouldn't bother with graduate school since nobody will hire me because they don't want mental patients working. They want us in bed, laying prone for days on end, growing plump like veal, spending our meager disability check on little art supplies so we can create art that nobody will buy.

I write. I write and apparently somebody stops by to read. Why? Who am I? What am I worth in this society? Why do I keep living when others do not?

This was supposed to be a happy post---I passed a difficult exam with flying colors. I am fully admitted to the University. I have already begun research for my term papers. Yet I am filled with ambivalence and sadness. My friend is normal, no 5150's on her record, nothing on her record. Yet she failed and I passed.

Don't worry, I do not have any plans to stop attending school or to slip further into this depression. I just needed to vent. I must accept that this is a risk I am taking---to pay a lot of money for diplomas that I might never use. Fancy, fancy diplomas. An Associate's Degree diploma. A Bachelor's Degree diploma. Soon, perhaps a Master's degree diploma will join the others on top of my tall bookcase, collecting dust, something to show off to the few friends I may have down the road.....

Or maybe I will just run away to Amsterdam and live in the Red Light district, smoking in the cafes, wandering the streets looking for menial jobs, and writing terrible poetry in the back alleys of potshops. 

From Binge Eating to Binge Shopping

I cannot tell my mother this or she will bow her head in shame. I spent all my financial aid money and now I have barely enough left to pay the registration and insurance fees for a used car I bought. Where will I get gas money? Coffee money? Money to pay my smartphone bill? Lol, get the irony of that, the cell is smart--I'm not, or I wouldn't be in this predicament.

I used to weigh 180 pounds and most of it was due to medications, but the part of it was me emotionally over-eating whenever those medication-induced hunger pangs started. Now, I'm 30 pounds lighter. I no longer emotionally over-eat. Instead, I seem to have found a novel approach to self-destruction--- binge shopping. By binge shopping I mean spending hundreds of dollars with a couple of clicks on amazon dot com (in a day).

I try to control myself. Like all my previous self-destructive behaviors (cutting, binge eating, starvation dieting, promiscuous sex, pot smoking), this one overtakes me. I literally feel that the only way to fill the psychological gap left by my chaotic past is to buy something that promises to make me happy.

Not to mention this week is Suicide Awareness week. My cousin died from suicide last year during July. His birthday would have been around this time. So, I am going into my binge shopping feeling depressed, lonely, abandoned, uncertain, and mournful. Suddenly, that 200 dollar smart phone seemed like a good idea; as did the fancy car stereo for the car that I cannot drive until I get the registration paid and the smog inspection cleared. I guess I can always just sit in the garage in my car and listen to my fancy, pointless radio.

This is getting depressing. Okay, here is what I am going to do: make money. How? If I knew that I'd be rich. I honestly don't know. I'll sell artwork, I'll sell my IPOD, I'll sell sell sell. Or maybe I'll just go take out an emergency loan (gasps of horror from the readers---yes, I said a loan). My ex-boyfriend wants me to move out to Las Vegas and become a stripper. He keeps pestering me about it, saying I'm just as cute as the strippers. He often tells me all my money woes will be solved if I just move out there and learn to scale a pole. If this Master's program doesn't go as planned I just might start to consider that (I can hear my mother's shrieks of flabbergasted disapproval now).

See, I often define myself as a schizo-affective mental patient, despite the fact that I haven't had symptoms in over 3 years. What am I then, if not a paranoid schizo-affective mental patient? Apparently, I am a compulsive shopper. I am emotionally fragile. I am broke. Now, if you will pardon me, I am going to surf the internet for jobs on my brand new Samsung galaxy tab 2, 7.0 which turned out not to play amazon instant videos, a main justification for buying it.

Gah....at least this insures that I will not have any choice but to succeed at graduate school so that I can get more money next semester and learn not to throw it at random items like 5 pairs of 50 dollar bras, sized 34F and 34FF. Ah well, the bras fit nice.

I am watching a documentary called "Jonas." The brother of a schizophrenic made a documentary about his brother's struggles with the illness. It is available on amazon dot com's instant video collection.

I recommend it not just because it is about a schizophrenic, but because it is an honest portrait of a human being struggling to overcome a major obstacle. I also liked the rhyming children's book idea that the title character, Jonas, wrote. He recites it at the beginning of the documentary.

Being a female paranoid schizo-affective myself, it is healing to see someone who is like me in some ways. His struggles were mine as well.

I am doing alright in graduate school. Nobody knows I have schizo-affective disorder. They think I am just a wild one; tattooed and a little eccentric. No, I don't resemble Lisbeth Salander. As much as I love her black Cyber-goth outfits I try not to stand out in a crowd. I do have tattoos, but I usually wear boring khakis and GAP shirts so I blend in with the campus crowds. People do not suspect I am a mental patient.

 I have been out of the hospital for 3 years now. For the last 3 years I have not heard voices, seen hallucinations, had major delusions, insomnia, or feelings of persecution. I have mostly stayed on my medication. I say mostly because here and there I would go a week without them for one reason or another (e.g. I couldn't get refills, or I forgot to take them). For the most part, I stick to my treatment plan. I check in with the psychiatrist, the social worker, and the therapist. I feel kind of like an adult ward of the state. My life is filled with people who tell me what to do---down to not spending money excessively (as I tend to do), not smoke marijuana, and they have even suggested to stop dating a guy on the basis that he didn't want to be in a committed relationship. I obey. I mean, look how far I got making crappy decisions on my own: not far. Look how far I got accepting advice and treatment from professionals: far.

I encourage people with mental health disorders to be open to others. Unless they want to cuff you to a bed---then I say call a lawyer. But if they seem to truly want you to function in society, listen to them. :)

Thanks for reading! More to come for this little public diary of mine.

Adjusting to Grad School

If you had asked me at age 18 where would I be in 4 years I would have answered: I will be a college graduate and I will be securely employed.

Well, I am 29 years old and that little bubble of hope kind of popped around the time I had my first schizo-affective episode at the age of 19. Since that time, I have ridden the turbulent waves of mental illness. I have succeeded and failed at community college, barely managing to transfer with an Associate's degree, almost a decade later. Now, I have a Bachelor's degree. It's officially on my transcripts: Bachelor's degree conferred August, 2012. Some might call me a total failure. A dreg, a former pothead, socially unproductive. Some might call me a tough cookie for managing a severe mental illness while working, going to college, and attending to my family. I call myself a masochist, in a way, for putting up with the tightening deadlines, the boss with the anger management issues, professors with attitude problems, eating myself into a size 16 pant size, dieting myself down to a size 14 (I am still considered overweight by the BMI chart but nowhere near where I used to be), making friends with sleazy womanizers, and juggling all this with the incessant stream of homework, papers, family obligations, financial strains, and (of course) periodic flare-ups of my mental illness. Yes, that little masochist in me wants to feel the pain of juggling life roles, of near epic failures, and deepening despairs concerning my future.

Yet, if it were not for the masochist I would have chosen a fairly easier route: graduate, go to a career placement service, get a job, work below my full capabilities, buy an Ipad. End of life. Despite the urge to be stable financially and professionally, I couldn't let go of the field I am studying. It intrigues me. The promised future paycheck also calls out to me like a siren in a Greek tragedy. So I applied to the same Cal State campus as a graduate student, got accepted, and now I am on a kayak heading down rapids. I do not know how I well fare in graduate school. It is something I want to do, something I am driven to do. I want to be educated. I want to be specialized. I want to feel intelligent.

This last decade I have felt dumb. I heard things that nobody else did while schizo-affective. I saw things. I believed wild delusions that anyone with normal brain chemistry could clearly see was not real. I have struggled with not trusting my mind at all and now my mind is the only thing I have to keep me afloat for the next two years while I complete my Master's degree.

I just know I want to be like Elyn R. Saks in "The Center Cannot Hold." Psychotic? Yes. Smart? Yes. Educated? Yes. Successful? Yes. She is my role model. Thank you, Elyn R. Saks, for writing your story. A year after I found out about your story I am still inspired to persevere in my life, to prove you right!

So....here I go. I am going to work on a presentation I have to prepare for a class.

Thanks for reading!