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.

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 Diagnosis: AKA Just to clarify I am not a sociopath

To recap my diagnosis: I am schizo-affective. I even have my own printed out copy of the main file of my on record with the county mental health office. I am not a sociopath. I have to say this with half a smile because I keep seeing "female sociopath" and "sociopathic women" in the stats area for this blog. I smile because of all the decades that mental health workers have cared for me, they have never ever said I have sociopathic tendencies. It is the one thing I am not (thankfully).
These are the things that I have been diagnosed with (soociopathy not being one of them):
bipolar
schizophrenic, paranoid sub-type
schizo-affective
dual diagnosis (diagnosis + cannabis abuse)
ptsd (don't ask me why)

Humorously, someone out in the web must have decided I was a sociopath and linked it to my blog, which is fair, I guess, except they got the diagnosis wrong. Arm chair psychiatrists, what can I say?

Anyways, thanks to those who read with an open mind. The world out there for people like me is very unkind and society is quick to label those of us with a mental health diagnosis as violent, or potentially violent.

I can assure you that I am indeed a graduate student who has no criminal record whatsoever (and I don't even cheat on taxes or speed while driving!). I am indeed disabled cognitively when having an episode. I am not a sociopath. It would offend me except that I recognize the deep-seated hostility and fear of those who would decide I qualify as a sociopath -- it is not sociopathy, it is a furious wrath that has built up over years of both abuse and negligence in the mental hospitals. If you were me, you would be pissed, too.

A Fresh Start in a New House

After being unceremoniously relocated to another house by our ex-landlord, I am now residing across town. Ex-Landlord wanted to sell the house my family and I were living in so I have spent the last few weeks transporting cargo to our new home.

Right now my old room looks like a tornado hit a stack of books and sent them flying all over a bare room. I still go to the old house to feed the cat, which we have to relocate over the weekend to our new house.

Standing over the literary debris of my old room makes me wonder just how much stuff I actually require for survival. Do I really need a USB powered musical keyboard? Do I really need the old orange folding table? I have a gnawing sensation that I do not need this things; that it is just my consumer mentality that keeps me clicking away on amazon.com, but for now I will just tow the keyboard and folding table across town and ask philosophical questions at a later time.

Right now, I have a new bedroom, a new house, a new neighborhood, and a new semester in the graduate program that is just beginning.

Dependent & 30 years old

Now that I am 30 years old I have my Bachelor's degree and by the end of 2014 I will have a Master's degree. Despite my newly found sanity, ambition, and successes, I lack independence.

Many schizophrenics live with their parents or in boarding houses. It is because schizophrenics tend to need a care-taker. No, we are not the sociopathic killers you see in the news. The majority of us are more similar to those socially awkward autistic adults who need someone hovering over them telling them what to do and what not to do.

Common orders include "wash your dishes," "brush your hair," "eat," and so on. If you want an idea about how schizophrenics tend to behave, watch "Asylum" by Laing, a documentary about severe mentally ill people living in a boarding house.

My diagnosis of having schizo-affective disorder has recently been challenged by my psychiatrist, and 2 therapists. Fine, whatever. I have agreed to be termed bipolar with psychosis instead. I really don't care about labels too much. Still, I have grown rather fond of the aloof, giggly, reclusive skitzes I  have come to befriend through various outpatient services and I consider myself closer to them than the other people with bipolar or unipolar depression I have met. Despite the loss of my severe label, "schizophrenic," I still have more in common with schizophrenics than with the Normal population.

I live with my parents. I obey their rules, their curfew, their anti-medicinal marijuana attitudes, everything I do, down to when I take a walk around the neighborhood, is monitored/controlled by them. I was attacked by a sexual predator last year as I walked along a street (in broad daylight as I tried to walk away quickly because I sensed danger), so now I am even more controlled at home because they are afraid something worse will happen to me.

I can't walk unless I inform someone, am not wearing a pair of shorts or a low-cut top, am not without my cell phone, and it is an "appropriate time of day." My limit is 50 minutes for a walk to the store and back or else I get a call on my cell phone to come home ASAP.

I cannot come home after 9 pm, ever. I drive, but I have a curfew about when I leave the house (8 pm is the latest) and when I come come back (9 pm). Sometimes I  have to sneak out to meet a lover.

I have never lived on my own. It is an experience I wish I had. I have always lived with family, even though at some points, I was a paying tenant in their homes.

One day next year I will secure steady, full-time employment and I will go look for an apartment of my own--no family, no roommate. The place will be mine. I will wash dishes at my whim, and come home at midnight if I am studying late into the night at a friend's house. :) I am looking forward to next year!

I Emailed a Topless Pic and Now I am Nervous

I have no idea what it is about summer time but whatever it is, I become a desperate, attention-craving man-hungry fiend. This summer some guy from myspace hunted me down on another social networking site, using my first name and searching through countless profiles. I was surprised that he found me and sadly, stupid enough to accept his friend request. I should have seen a bright red sign that said "stalker alert," but instead, feeling depressed about my classmate's death and unbearably lonely yet fertile, I chatted with him.

I like to take risque photos so that when I am 90 years old, I can say, hey, look when I was 30 my breasts were pretty nice. I sent him a pic after he sent me a few photos of his manhood. That turned out to be a mistake. While my face isn't visible, you can tell just by the shape of my boobs that it very well may be me. :0

Then he told me was married and even scarier, affiliated with some government forces. As a paranoid schizophrenic, I really freak out whenever someone with a close relationship to Uncle Sam wants to snuggle with me. It makes me think of male Mata Hari spies and honey traps. This is paradoxical because I am eternally indebted to said Uncle Sam for paying my way through college and taking a chance rehabilitating a broken down paranoid schizophrenic. Despite my utmost loyalty (and I am not just saying that because Uncle Sam is reading this), I fear their minions. Not as much as I fear hackers or hedge-fund managers, but pretty close. So I tried breaking it off. The more I tried to shoo him away, the more insistent he got that he chat with me during his work hours. Finally, I demanded his real phone number and then he finally left me alone.

Now I have no idea what he is going to do with my artsy nude photographs. Well, it could be worse, it could be a photograph of me doing drugs, that's illegal. So, at least I can say, "yes, I used poor taste, but no, it was not illegal."

Now I am a paranoid ball of anxiety.

I Have a New Therapist

Well, after my distressing couple of weeks dealing with a classmate/friend's suicide, I finally had a session with a new therapist. She is a PhD at the campus psych clinic. I opted to go to the campus psych clinic because the county's therapists are hard to get appointments with and they are more for crisis-riddled, 100% damaged people (like I used to be until I got adjusted to medication and my grad school life).

We talked about my classmate and how it brought back my memories from my cousin's suicide. I was close to my cousin and we lived in the same house for a few years. It all came rushing back, the closeness we had, the way his life crumbled in a matter of years, the sudden news of his suicide, the viewing, the sight of my dead cousin's brother sitting by himself in the corner of a park, strumming his guitar, while the rest of his family sat around sadly holding pictures of my lost cousin.

My therapist brought up the fact that it seemed like I was hiding from issues with suicide and self-harm in my life by ducking into my academics. I have to agree. What is worse is that failing classes makes me feel not only incompetent and dumb, but it hits harder because the only thing holding me together is my success in my college life.

I sometimes feel that I am also doomed to a life of self-harm, be it through cutting or drugs. I have to reframe my attitude. I have done not too bad the past 3 years. I got my Bachelor's degree in the arts/humanities, and got through my first year in a Master's program. Instead of thinking, "most people with schizo-affective disorder who come from a financially deprived past don't complete college but I did," I think "I don't have any practical work experience! I'm already 30! I'm doomed to poverty and poorly paying jobs!" That might be true, but I could at least focus on the positive parts of my life and personality.

Hopefully, I can work on these issues with my therapist. Also, she pointed out that it seems like I have issues holding a steady relationship and feeling like a complete person on my own. I agree. I think my insecurities are visible and that men with damaged egos seeking an easy lay prey on me, and I let them because I've never known anything else.

I have known that I have daddy issues, or rather never-had-a-daddy issues, but the fact that I feel like I am incomplete without a male sex partner is kind of news to me. I thought I was more whole than that. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. In the time since I started this blog, I have had 3 lovers and 1 one-night stand. I don't know how often other people change partners, but maybe 4 partners in 2-3 years is too much for someone who wants to settle down and be a good Catholic daughter.

My therapist said I was normal, in terms of my behavior, and this was mind-boggling to me. She said it seemed like I had a good handle on social skills except for when I analyze them for hours afterwards. I really want to be normal. I want to be confident, successful, a good role model, but I don't think I am and I have no idea how to be successful. Also, I have major issues with food and eating.

I have been binge eating as soon as the clock reads 5 pm. I have been exercising every other day for at least 30 minutes (either running or boxing), but I still feel like I am being lazy. If it wasn't nearly 100 degrees outside, I would probably spent the majority of my day walking off calories, running along the canal banks in my neighborhood, and doing burpees until I can't stand up.

Maybe one day I will have the ability to look at an ice cream come and not feel like I am about to have a panic attack, a flight or binge eat response, but for now I will settle for just avoiding ice cream cones completely. 

Pizza Binge, Nap, Feeling Calmer

Earlier today I posted a long-winded weeping, mournful wail of a blog entry. I assure you, I feel much better and I am not as emotionally unstable as I was when I wrote that.

Writing out my feelings to the cybersphere felt amazing and healing. Maybe it is the exhibitionist in me, but speaking out about suicide, mental health, and my personal life makes me feel like more than a speck in the world. I feel like a human. Not bad for a dead doll.

Oh my gosh! I am watching a National Geographic youtube video called "Forbidden Love" where a female therapist (therapist, mind you) has sex with male patients for money. Where is this woman and how far ahead must one make an appointment?! Sorry, that came out of nowhere, I happen to be multi-tasking, which makes me a little skitzy in my writing, ha ha.

I still deeply miss my friend and I still feel like curling up into a ball and hiding from the outside world for days and days, but I am not as hysterical as I was this afternoon. I always thought he might have considered me attractive, just because he would always approach me and he never approached other females. Also, he used to smoke his cigarettes, stare into my eyes with a tender look, and smile a crooked smile that was charming but indecipherable. I myself caught myself thinking about him romantically from time to time. One time, a bunch of us were sitting around the table talking. He only made eye contact with me, never my friend. He smiled, laughed a low chuckle, and gave me that askance look he always threw me.

I don't think I ever told him that I considered him a friend. Our graduate program is so tightly knit that I just assumed that he knew I thought of him as more than a classmate. I felt a bond with him not only because we spent so much time in the same circle, but also because he chose me to approach when he had a question. Now, I feel guilty about not seeking him out more when we were still in school. He was always so composed. I felt so scattered, like his opposite. After a teary nap, I woke up and felt a sense of longing and a tiny bit of acceptance. Wherever he is, I will see him on the other side. Then I will see that crooked smile and those tender eyes once again......

Grad School Finals Week and my 30th birthday

Dear public, online diary,

today I woke up and realized I am about to turn 30 this week. I woke up and thought, "why am I still in school? Why have I only had cashier and customer service jobs? Why am I still living with my family? Why aren't I married?" I guess I had an early mid-life crisis this morning.

Here is the answer to most of the questions above: I have a major mental illness and it is very difficult to get the medication to treat my symptoms. My mental illness froze my progress. I spent so many weeks lying in bed, in a catatonic depression. I spent more weeks huddled in the kitchen, in my "safe spot" by the fridge, hearing voices and trying to breathe through my fear.

I parted ways with my former outpatient treatment center. I am now back with the county's main outpatient center. My former treatment center released me because I have had no major symptoms the past 2-3 years and they are intended for people who are fairly non-functional. Now, I am with the more lax system that treats people who are not on the verge of total self-destruction. It is less "intensive" as my former therapist put it. Sadly, it is also more apathetic. If I miss an appointment I have to wait another 3 months to see a doctor, without medication. Thankfully, I have a cell phone app to remind me what my schedule is like.

Thirty years old and I still feel like that 18 year old girl starting college for the first time. One year later, at age 19, I became floridly psychotic, my life spiraled up and down, jobs came and went, I dropped out of school, then returned again, and now here I am, 30, with my head kind of screwed on straight and about 35 years left for working full-time.

It is finals week. For me, that means a last ditch effort to get a C in my math and programming classes. I started so promising, but then I slipped into a depression and started sleeping through the night and half the day, missing my classes and falling behind. Still, I have hope that I will not crumble into another depression. My new doctor at the county is putting me on Prozac and taking me off Zoloft. I told him I had totally built up a tolerance to the Zoloft the past half a decade and he agreed it had lost its efficacy. I am being weaned off Zoloft this week, taking half my dose with the other half being Prozac. I have felt a difference in that I am awake before noon. That is usually the sign that my depression is receding. Luckily, I saw my doctor before finals week, so I have been patched up the past few weeks and now I am prepared to study hard, study long, and write programs like my life depends on it.

My graduate program is going well and I'm 90% finished with my graduate class term papers. I just need to pass my elective classes, which have nothing to do with my field, but I am enrolled in them and the grades still count on my GPA. After next week, I will be done with finals. I will be thirty years old. I will be healthy for a solid 4 years.A toast to you, dear reader! A toast to you and to good mental health and a strong GPA!!

Psychiatric Facilities

I have never instigated any sort of violence. One time, a woman who looked high on hard drugs came up to me on the street and hit me in the chest as I was walking to Starbucks. I had to push her away several times as she continued to attempt to attack me. Eventually, she ran away. I reported her to the police, like a good citizen is supposed to. Other than that, I have never been in any kind of altercation.

I am a former mental patient, but I assure you that I have not and will not use any violence or weapons against a person in my life. In my times at the psychiatric facilities, I have been sexually victimized by other patients, mistreated by the staff who allowed male patients to roam into my room while I was sleeping, received numerous death threats from men, and I  had to resort to making phone calls to my patient's rights advocates and administration to report the ridiculous negligent attitudes of staff. Since I last was hospitalized about 3-4 years ago, the psychiatric facility has since been taken over by a private company, and many of the staff were replaced. Regardless, I have horrible memories of abuse and restraints, and I have no desire to ever be confined to a space where my safety rests in the hands of underpaid, unsympathetic staff.

The hospitals are a breeding ground for neglect. Unlike elderly homes, mental asylums are possibly more vulnerable to hidden abuse because it is expected that patients are delirious and imagining things that are not happening.

The psychological wounds I received from my schizo-affective disorder are nowhere near the sort of emotional injuries I received from the treatment of this illness. These are not hospitals but asylums and the patients are not patients so much as captives.

I usually get told my doctors that I am pretending to be better when in fact I am still too sick to leave the hospital. Of course I am!! Anywhere, ANYWHERE, is better than the hospital. One would expect constant monitoring of patient activity, but that is usually not the case except at medication dispensing time. Staff is fully aware that a 280 pound guy who wants into my room might be resistant to being told no, so they ignore him.

The safest I felt in the psychiatric hospital, to be totally frank, is when the murderers and rapists from the nearby prison were on our ward. Why?? Because the police came with them to make sure they didn't escape. There would be two guards sitting near their beds (which were always in the middle of the main TV room) at all times. During their stays, everybody else behaved, including the visiting criminals. Ironic, right?

A lot of times, some of the patients would be in the hospital because they made murder threats and were put on a "threat to others" hold. Between jail and the mental hospital, the volatile people feigned mental illness to avoid a cell. Other times, the patients would be in the hospital after mixing alcohol with meth or cocaine. These drugs can look like violent psychosis and the cops were just as likely to stick them in the wards with genuine mentally ill people than put them in jail or into rehab.

You know those stories about how prisons are the new mental hospital? I am not sure I believe that. Personality disordered people are quick to figure out who gets cool mind-altering drugs, time in co-ed hospitals versus jail cells, and a quick release. They fake illness. I know there are criminals who are genuinely mentally ill, but trust me, 90% of homeless people are genuinely mentally ill and at least 50% of criminally insane people are faking their insanity. If you really want to see a cluster of mentally ill people go to your local homeless shelter. That's where they are. Not in jail cells. People like John Hinkley are exceptions, not the rule. 

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.

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