1.5 Years Ago:

Every day at 8 in the morning, the white van pulled up into my drive way and honked three times. That was my cue to run out and get in the van. Inside, was at least one other nutcase. Then the van ran around town collecting more mentally ill people and transporting them to an outpatient service center. Group therapy, individual therapy, cognitive behavioral technique group therapy, rehab training, even lunch, were provided. They told us how to stay sober (smell flowers or read a book), they told us how to think (do not have a self-defeating attitude), they told us about our illnesses (schizophrenia is caused by a brain chemical imbalance), and then they let us paint on cheap paper. These six months are a time that I will never disclose to anybody except those who somehow found out accidentally about my illness. People do not understand that a mentally ill person can be rehabilitated. They do not care. After you utter the word, “mental” they tune you out and start tiptoeing out the back door.

However, on paper, people are fascinated. They do want to read about this process, now that I am a safe distance away. Now that I cannot make them feel uncomfortable with my horror stories of how the inside of a mental asylum is like. I am Asylum Girl. Skizzie Lizzie. Admit it, you're a little curious.

Coming soon: More Normal Than the Normals: Lessons of the Asylum Girl

Diary Entry: An April Fool

Today is April Fool's day and I can tell you I feel like one.

Diaries are usually private. Mine is not. Mine is so open and leaves me so exposed that I have to hide under an alias; a fake persona. Why? I live as a schizo-affective in secret. Only my shrink, family, and my ex-boyfriends know. I make them all pinky swear not to tell anybody else. I know one day my secret might come out to my casual friends and professors. I brace myself for the moment that happens. I will try my best not to run into the distance, towards the safety of my warm bed, to hide under my covers and cower.

My last entry made me a little sad when I reread it today. The article I read on the NY Times blog was so positive and hopeful, but I let all those nasty comments at the end get under my skin. I made a pact with myself not to delete any entries I make, even if I am totally upset at the time, because that would be like artistic dishonesty. Instead, I will just post and let it stand as a moment that I cannot take back. Despite wanting to go back and delete the part when I get all agitated over the article's comments, I won't delete the last blog entry. You are free to judge me based on what my fingers type at any given moment. Just don't send me any hate mail, I am too sensitive and your words will sting deeply.

This entry is just a moment of ephemeral vulnerability. As soon as I finish posting this I will go take a walk along the canal banks and listen to industrial music. I will dream of being able to state my mental disability without fear of scorn. I will daydream about going to graduate school and doing research papers that will get high grades. Some people daydream about winning the lottery---I daydream about writing an amazing paper on linguistics. Funny, huh?

Thank you for reading! :)

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!!

Confession on Confessional Writing

You don't know me. You are probably very bored of me just from these two sentences. So why do you keep reading the next sentence?

The problem with confessional writing is also the main reason why people are willing to read confessional writing. It is deeply personal. It is like eating dinner at a restaurant naked. Everybody around you wants to know why you're naked at the dinner table. Meanwhile, you pick at the lasagna.

Writing, to some, is an act of vanity. It is a way of marking your name on the internet like so much graffiti on a train car. I do not disagree with this. However, I feel that the real answer is a lot more complex and perplexing. I write confessional posts about my sordid life because I have an uncontrollable urge to create a narrative of my life. I have to write, it hurts when I do not write. I have to be honest because I am compelled to write the truth. Sometimes I may write little book critiques or diatribes against discrimination, but the common denominator is that I write what I'm thinking at that moment. Freckles, warts, and all, you see me as I am inside.

The one thing that I worry about is posting something in anger and then regretting it later. When I type, I type at least 35 words per minute, faster if I have had coffee, and it goes without saying that I'm not always consciously thinking about what comes next. What comes next is my thought....whatever that thought may be. I wish I could control my thoughts better. I wish I could have a brain that only thought about adorable cats, weight loss, sugar plums, and the like, but I don't. I get mad when I see youtube comments that are explicitly hate-filled. I come back here and I try to create a space where I feel that cyberspace is negated.

That is the whole goal of my blog. To create a cyberspace where people feel a little more at ease with what society labels as flaws. I tried looking on the internet for warm communities of people with mental illnesses. I found some sites but nothing that was geared to a high-functioning person. I looked for sites that were for overweight people trying to juggle losing weight with the knowledge that you can be fat and still be a good person. I really couldn't find anything like that. So I thought, well, I have an art blog where I post my drawings, why not create a blog where I just write honestly about my struggles and my discoveries of good books?

I'll try to steer clear of politics.....that is a sticky subject for any writer. Besides, all you need to know is that Noam Chomsky is my idea of a great role model. Enough said!