Secret Sexuality : Bi but Closeted

I am a lot of things: schizo-affective, a graduate student, a minority female....and I'm bisexual. But not out. Instead, I exist in sexuality limbo, floating half way between the Straight world and the Gay world, a ghost, an apparition, there but invisible.

Today, I watched an adult video with a large breasted woman and a man. It was not the man that had me going into conniptions---it was the woman. It has always been this way...since I was in high school. The man is my boyfriend, the woman in the film is the one who gets me to climax. I am not ashamed at all, just afraid to tell anyone. I am afraid my female friends will become concerned that I want them. I am more afraid that one particular friend will realize that I really honestly do want her, that it may be a sort of love in fact, but I don't have to worry about that since I intend to keep my mouth shut.

I am bi but at the moment live a Straight life. No woman has taken me in her arms yet. I guess I didn't really choose a Straight life, I am just defaulted to a Straight life because women haven't asked me out (well, except one, but she is kind of not my type). I have always lived a Straight life---at least in terms of who I sleep with. However, when I am alone in my bedroom, the adult video comes out and it is the only breath of sweet release I get---the sight of the voluptuous female body thrills me, makes me yearn for a Gay life I have never known, and finally, induces the throes of pleasure that momentarily put my yearning to rest.

I have a boyfriend, a religious conservative man who prays every day and comes from a country where Gay is a Western "invention," something that is prohibited, allegedly non-existant, and totally taboo. I really do not know what has kept us together these last three months. It might be his kindness or the fact that he is such a good cook. I like that I am not expected to wash dishes or cook his meals. I like that the only place I have to play a female role is in the bedroom. I always thought this was a bit ironic, since in his country of origin, the female is always washing dishes, cooking, raising children, etc....

I like the freedom he gives me. Except of course, the freedom to be with a woman. I don't know what I expect---I want to be courted by a woman but I don't frequent any gay clubs or attend gay community events. I guess I have the faulty belief that a woman can see past my lipstick-colored lips, my exaggerated femininity, and my hand which holds a man's hand, and see the bisexual inside that desires a woman with thick hips to hold and an intelligent mind to hold my interest.

Ah well, I'll keep looking for signs, like a neon shirt that says "GAY" on a female co-ed on campus. Until then, I'll stick to my movies. *Confused sigh...

Society's Lowest Caste: the Mentally Ill

The following is a true story, one of many, about how the mental health care system ignores, rejects, and hates the mentally ill. I am schizo-affective, a member of the lowest caste in society; the Untouchable. The following story takes place in a city in California about 4 years ago. I have no criminal record. I don't even have a speeding ticket. And no, I would never hurt anyone who isn't physically in the process of beating me up or assaulting me. I am well-behaved. I am schizo-affective. I am an Untouchable of this society.

4 years ago------

"I need medicine," I told the woman behind the plate glass barrier.

"Talk to your doctor," she said, turning away.

"I missed my last doctor's appointment and they used that excuse to kick me out of the county program."

"Talk to your case worker," she said.

"I have no case worker. I have no doctor. I have no money because nobody will hire me. I am too manic to work, been manic for a while, no sleep the whole week. Please let me in, this is the only way I can get medicine," I pleaded.

"There's no room," she said.

Mind you, she is behind a plate glass barrier in a psychiatric triage room. I am on the Outside, two feet away from the door to a barren world that despises me and makes me feel that my persecution delusions are not delusions at all but reality. 

Behind her, a male nurse shook his head. 

"I know her. She just needs her doctor. She's fine," he said. Turning to me he said, "GO TAKE YOUR MEDS."

"What meds? I haven't had meds in months. They won't see me, they won't give me treatment and the pharmacy won't give me the pills either because I have no insurance and doctors always prescribe the 700 dollars a month anti-psychotics," I told him. I then began to jabber on about what the voices were telling me. I told them all the horrible names they called me, the fact that I believed I was going to be renditioned, tortured, killed, brought back to life, tortured, killed, my whole family would be tortured and killed, the entire constitution had been overwritten, there was a mass conspiracy to psychically drive me into committing hara kiri....I told them that I was going to kill myself by slitting my wrist with a knife I bought for the purpose of slitting my wrist.

"Jesus Christ just TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR," the male nurse shouted. I walked out into the World, unmedicated, floridly psychotic, suicidal, and abandoned by the medical system and by doctors and nurses who vowed to uphold the Hippocratic oath. 

Later that week, I was still psychotic. I went to the outpatient treatment center that had previously been treating me. They sent me to a county mental health crisis center. The mental health crisis center was humorously located behind a "WALK INS ONLY" sign. I walked in. 

"We don't take walk ins."

"How do you get an appointment," I asked, apparently an idiot, as the women behind the counter were rolling their eyes.

"You walk in," she said. I was starting to feel like I was in backwards land.

"Okay. I'm a walk-in. I need to see a doctor."

"We can't take walk ins now." I was biting my lip. I was dealing with voices, visual hallucinations, thugs on the streets who were very aware that I was vulnerable and probably wouldn't be believed by cops if they robbed or assaulted me....here I was, I could see that jerk doctor in his room, shuffling papers, his Rx pad only feet away....these women were part of the Evil System. I began to realize that the only people getting treatment were the ones who walked outside naked to get their coffee from the corner store. Seeing as how I preferred to get my coffee fully clothed, I chose the next best option. I went back to the outpatient center.

At the outpatient center they attempted to turn me away, again. I decided to die. In fact, while I was killing myself, why not do it like that Buddhist monk who set himself ablaze in front of cameras as a form of protest to an unjust system?

"I am going to kill myself if you do not put me on anti-psychotics right now," I said. The woman grimaced, shut the little window, reopened the little window, and said, "You have to go through the county crisis center."

"Okay, I just wanted you to know that I am going to be slitting my wrist right here now." I was in an empty waiting room. The nurses were all behind glass barricades and doors with alarms. I didn't want to hurt anybody except myself because I was tired of the Catch-22 that is the Evil System. So I started to slit my wrist. My intent was to get to the bone and be done with this life, with this hateful Evil System...with everything. I just wanted the staff (SAFE behind the barricades, mind you) to remember the day they turned away that schizo patient who then lopped off her hand right in front of them and died a terrible death. It would be my hara kiri. My way of setting myself ablaze. I had actually thought of self-immolation but I was afraid the fire might get out of control and damage the building. So, I opted for wrist slitting.

They watched. They finally called an ambulance once the blood started to appear. I put the little cutting utensil through the slot below the window and watched it slide into the staff's side. Most times, a pen or a paper is slipped below the window. Today  it was my life.

The ambulance guys then came, tied me up to the gurney, and complained that REAL sick people had to go to the hospital and that all I needed was to see the DOCTOR who was right in that same building. They looked at me with scorn, derision, and barely concealed hatred. Whatever, I thought. I am Untouchable. I am a disgrace. I am a sore on society. So be it. As they drove me to the psychiatric facility, still talking about what a waste of an ambulance trip it had been, I started giggling. They shook their heads with unspeakable disgust.

"WHAT?"

"You wouldn't understand," I said, trying really hard not to laugh hysterically. To this day, I will not say what made me laugh. 

Believe me, reader, if I could go to the moon and start a colony with my schizophrenic and bipolar brethren, I would. I do not like being an unnecessary burden to you or the rest of society. I did not go into my own DNA strand as a fetus and make my own DNA defective, nor did I commit any felonies. I was just born with DNA that causes my brain to perceive what is not there for the rest of you.

I suggest that society either make jobs for the nutcases so they can afford their pills or craft a gigantic spaceship to send us all into outerspace so we can start a planet of our own, because obviously affordable health care will never be a reality, at least not in the next 75 years. No, euthanasia is not an option.

******************************************************************

4 years after the previous story:

I get medicine

I get therapy

I complete my Bachelor's degree

I volunteer places

I get a little book of erotica published

I get a boyfriend

I get a 3.6 my first semester in my Master's program

I get ready to move to Sweden as an emigre if worse comes to worse. Why Sweden? They seem sensible, which ironically, the current state does not appear to be.

I get a little blog up and running where I can leave my cyber footprint for everyone to see. This is my biography. This is my graffiti markings. This is my ultimate retribution---I can be disgraced but my soul is intact. Plus, I have a plasma TV. That is more than a lot of people have. I earned my plasma TV by studying so hard I was honored with merit-based financial aid. 

Now if you will excuse me, I will now watch PBS on my Plasma TV and devise strategies to make a living and donate half my earnings to NAMI. Tata.

Holiday Blues

It is a little hard to write when my personal life (being a former mental patient) bleeds over into the national political hot zones. Bear with me, I'll try to keep it on point.

Christmas is very difficult for me. I think I have emotional issues from my childhood that never quite went away. I struggle with depression during this time of year. I feel so dumb, being 29 years old and still feeling like bursting into tears whenever a Christmas carol plays on the radio, but what can I do? My therapist is away on her holiday vacation.



The thing that sort of fills the void is online shopping. I shop like a new book is the thing that will keep me whole, keep me centered, keep me sane. I must be the only one who thinks that a book on multi-variable calculus is a life-raft.

Two of my five classes have posted grades officially. I have an A and a B. I already know I got 2 more A's that still have to officially post, and the fifth class is a toss up between an A and a B. I didn't fail miserably. I did not have a nervous breakdown. I did not wind up in the hospital corridors, cowering in the corner, mumbling about telepathy and thought projection. Instead, I am a little blue, but sane, nonetheless, sitting in my grandmother's room watching a guy talk about blueberries on PBS.

Blueberries.

Secret Shame

I go to class and I'm the good student. I turn my work in on time, orderly papers that do not reveal the hidden shame I am burdened with; mental illness. My thoughts are linear and clear in my term papers, in real life they unravel like so much yarn in a kitten's paws.

I was reading that the nra wants to create a database that lists (for the public) the names of people with a mental illness. PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, autism, seasonal affective disorder, borderline personality disorder, and the gamut of eating disorders----all of these people will be branded, labeled, posted for the public to see, and stigmatized worse than ever before.

As I said in a previous post, the last time I was floridly psychotic I believed that society was going to round up everyone with "defective DNA" and put them in camps. I am starting to realize that paranoia is just an extreme extension of ideas within the realm of possibility.

Backing anybody into a corner is obviously never a good solution. Turning into lynch mobs and threatening the Constitutional rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens is worse than this---it is traitorous.

Respectfully,
an A-student with a clean record who takes Pride in the US Constitution
~Antigone

http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=148650

20 mg of Abilify later....

I feel much more at ease with society. I took my medicine last night (having accidentally skipped it for the previous two nights), slept until far too late, and woke up feeling refreshed and at peace.

I got a decent grade in my toughest class. I got a B+, which is not an A, but it's close enough to where I can feel proud about it. I got an A in an undergrad class, a prerequisite for my major, and I am still waiting on grades for the other three classes.

My medicine makes me sooooo groggy, but I guess the pay off is that I remain stable and functional. 

Returning to Life

I'm done with term papers. Now I have nothing to do but exercise and sit at my computer reading through the comments on news websites. They really, really depress me, those comments. Whatever.

My mother told me stop reading the comments. I really cannot help it; I need to know the level of ignorance my fellow skitzes and I face. Believe me, the comments are not pretty.

I was going to quit blogging but I thought better of it. I've been blogging about my life and struggles with schizo-affective disorder for about a year now. I feel that I will be more productive to society if I prove that not all skitzes are sadists. Plus, if there is some skitz who is sitting at home, contemplating  suicide because of what society is telling him about himself and his medical condition, I want him to know that there is a path towards hope, healing and regeneration.

I was 19 when I had my first psychotic episode. It was my first year in college. I am 29 years old now. I still have the condition but it is in remission and has been for the past 3 years. I have my bachelor's degree, as of this spring. No, it's not from some shady online course. It's one of the Cal States. I worked periodically through the past ten years---no real careers, just cashier, pizza thrower, that sort of thing, but I held on to my jobs for years at a time. I have had a variety of romances, maybe one too many. I've also lost 25 pounds since last year, and I'm 158-160 right now. I am not defined by my mental illness. I am a graduate student, a laborer, an artist, a loyal daughter, and a supportive friend.

If you feel like you are having trouble with positive self-identity, please take the time to do what I just did: list all the positive things about yourself then write your name above the list. That list is you.

Good luck.

Unspeakable Tragedy in our nation this week. I haven't blogged at all lately because of what happened. I think everyone across the country is in a state of shock.

*******************************************************************************

When my cousin committed suicide last July I did all my homework as a means to cope. Rather than dwell on the pain, I read British literature and wrote expository essays. The pain never went away, but I managed to cope. I think that is what I am doing right now by blogging: coping with something horrible that never should have happened.



Just to put something in perspective---  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and every other person responsible for atrocities and genocides, were not afflicted with genetic mental illness; they were sociopaths.

I read on a yahoo comment board that "all it takes is one psycho so we should.....to all the crazy...." (he was referring to mental patients and the mentally ill). I am afraid that is your train of thought as well, reader. I once told my psychiatrist that people were conspiring to put me in a death camp because of my defective DNA. Allegedly, I was floridly psychotic at the time.

After 9/11 there was a lot of pain too. There was a lot of blame aimed at people of Middle Eastern origin, regardless of innocence. In these volatile times it is easy to punish 1.5 million innocent people than 1 dead, guilty person, but it doesn't make it right.

I obey the constitution and I hope you will as well.
~Antigone

Stress=light mania

I keep waking up at three in the morning. I wake up alert, refreshed, and unable to go back to sleep. It might be the end of the semester or my natural bipolar cycles. Whatever it is, I have been more productive because I am awake for longer periods of time and I use this time to work on my graduate term papers or to exercise. This productivity is both a good thing and a sign of bad things to come. Increased productivity and less sleep is an early warning sign of impending mania. I must make sure to get at least 6.5 hours of sleep, as opposed to the 4 hours I got tonight. The normal sleep period is 8 hours, but that is unusual for any full-time graduate student, let alone a bipolar graduate student.

While I was up I watched a documentary about Bellevue psychiatric hospital. I found it to be totally triggering. It reminded me too much of my own experiences and the sight of a woman being strapped to a gurney was especially hard for me. Oh, the injustice of my misunderstood existence....but enough whining.

I often worry about how I come across to others. Do I seem bizarre and freakish? Do I stand out? Do people hate the sight of me? Do I come across as weird, troubled, bossy, eerie? I will never know for sure. The only thing I can do is to monitor my behavior, obey social etiquette, and smile.

Anyways, back to working on my term papers.

Grad School : 5 Hours of Sleep, 5 Hours of Study

I had an interesting chat with my psychiatrist last month. I relayed my level of stress as a first-semester graduate student to her and she placed me on an additional mood stabilizer. The mood stabilizer acts on a different set of neuro-transmitters (brain chemicals that regulate mood). This new drug is supposed to moderate my level of depression. So, far it has worked. But anyways, back to our conversation.

"Oh, you are in grad school now," she asked.
"Yes, it's really different. There's a lot of journals to read and they're all really technical," I said.
"How are you doing so far?"
"I'm doing good, but I sometimes don't study for as long as I would like to because I get sleepy around ten o'clock, right after I take my medicine," I said.
"Oh, yes, it is better to stay up and study. Less stress in the long run. You should stay up and study as long as you can," she said.

I am taking her advice to heart. I scored high on my tests after our conversation. I did indeed stay up late, by drinking two cups of strong coffee around ten o'clock. I also tend to do work in the grad study room on campus after my evening class. I get home around 10. I either spend some time with my boyfriend afterwards or else I go home and pass out, exhausted, but ahead of the game.

I still have to write two term papers before the semester is over. Three of my classes are easy for me. Two require analyzing raw acoustic data, translating it into plain English, making graphs that show the results, and applying the appropriate theories to the data. I feel overwhelmed, but I am confident that I can type out some reasonable analyses in time for the deadline. I am less confident about getting an A on these papers, but I will try my best.

Sigh. I fear that if I don't perform well I will have no chance of entering a PhD program. I really want to earn a doctorate in my field. It is the pinnacle of education. I am willing to work hard, do research, work at a real job on the side, and stay in school an additional 5-6 years in order to earn a PhD.

Part of me is motivated because I have a severe mental illness that hindered my progress for so long. I was too busy curled up in bed, experiencing troubling symptoms, to study or to go to class. Now, I have medicine, a therapist, and a chance at a decent future. I want to prove society wrong about mentally ill people, not by surrendering to a fate of disability checks, but by improving my status in society and being a mentor to the mentally ill people who are talented but too insecure or troubled to reach for their goals.

Here are some tricks I learned that helped me earn my belated B.A. despite suffering from a mental illness:
1) Wake up early, take a walk, come home, and write out the main objectives for the day. For example, item 1: complete homework assignment before 10 a.m. item 2 : eat lunch, less than 400 calories. item 3 : go to campus early. item 4 : work on lit review for term paper (at least one hour)....and so on.

2) participate at least one time during class. Participate less than 4 times during class, just in case I am manic and too talkative.

3) When in doubt about participation, doodle on notes. Doodling makes it look like I are totally bored and uninterested but at least nobody will know that I am socially awkward at that moment.

4) engage in 1 minute, trivial chit chat with classmate after class, just to practice social skills and to connect momentarily with another human being. Avoid long periods of eye contact, when person physically steps away, cut the conversation short and excuse yourself politely.

5) Drink coffee.

6) Keep a diary to vent personal self-doubt, campus gossip, and general fear of society. Don't share it with anyone except therapist.

This last point should be crucial for me, but here I am; divulging my personal struggles, dark secrets, and horribly out-of-reach ambitions to total strangers. Well, that's the internet for you. :)

Race, Class, and Academia

I just finished reading a little Yahoo! article on a White sorority that took time out of their busy schedule to dress up in Mexican-themed ponchos, sombreros, and took photos holding signs that said "will mow lawn for weed." I am guessing these girls are from upper-class and upper middle-class homes that have never had to actually work at menial labor jobs for a living. More likely, they probably feel superior to the Hispanics at their school, and in society at large.

It is classist to belittle the hard work of the struggling masses. Especially since, being pretty and socially groomed for success, these sorority girls will either find cushy jobs thrust at them or will marry into wealth and security. Not so for the people they emulated for a laugh.

It is racist to assume that all Mexicans cut grass, smoke grass, and are "fair game" to belittle and humiliate.

What really stung though was the comments people made about it being a) funny and b) "ridiculously PC." At one time, saying that racial slurs is "too PC" was common as well. Civility can be a bitch, can't it, elitists?

Here's the link, please read the comments by users and see the number of "thumbs up" that anonymous people gave them. It is just a small splash in what has become common place derogatory perceptions of the underclass.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/racist-sorority-party-photo-stirs-outrage-181258221.html