Fair Trials Not Executions

Dear reader,

I apologize. My PC got a virus, I believe. I only use one of my computers to access this blog because, as you may know, I am a paranoid schizophrenic who still cannot quite fathom that shady organizations or legitimate government organizations are NOT monitoring this blog and my IP addresses...which makes this computer the only trusted computer to blog from (sometimes I just follow paranoid practices because it is almost instinctual, I could be wrong but frankly I don't intend to check this time).

Perhaps you have forgotten about me, that strange paranoid schizophrenic woman who claims to be a law-abiding graduate student determined to end discrimination against the mentally ill. I never forgot about this blog, I just could not access the internet until today. During this time, I have been successfully continuing my studies in the Master's program (well, except for data structures, a computer science class, which I am most assuredly failing going into finals), posting updates all over facebook, and reading the news.

The country is experiencing social upheaval.

There has also been a lot of media around social justice issues lately (i.e. Garner/Ferguson). I will take this time to express my solidarity for ending police brutality against Blacks and Latinos. My city (where I was born and raised) has a high population of poor Blacks and Latinos (and I grew up on welfare to an unmarried Latina mother--yeah, I am that baby all grown up). I sympathize with the protesters and my city has a long list of slaughtered drug dealers and alleged gang members who never got to a fair trial, they just got 'smoked' (as the newspaper quoted one of the living witnesses as hearing a police officer talk about how he smoked the guy).

"You give us the cards to play with and then bust us for gambling." ---Malcolm X

Society, rich people, housing zoning committees, whoever decides where people get to live, tend to approve of minorities living beside other minorities--and not by them. I grew up across the street from million dollar homes owned primarily by Anglo-Americans with white-collar jobs. Across the street from this ideal, police-patrolled neighborhood was a big street upon which dozens and dozens of cheap and ill-maintained apartments were crammed beside each other.There, the front lawn of the nice house across the street was larger than the inside of the entire apartment for three (though, if there were three rooms, there were most likely six or more people living there because the only other place would be the homeless shelter). I grew up down a tiny side street, an alley, really, where cops didn't go patrol unless they got multiple calls insisting they come arrest somebody for domestic violence, assault, child abuse, whatever. This was in the 1980's- 1990's when my city still had not created a special police tactical unit for hunting down alleged gang members (who may or may not be actively committing crimes), holding them up to search them and their families' houses, and to arrest them and anyone present.

Now there is a tactical unit for patrolling the high crime areas in my city, but they still don't go into my old neighborhood street. I know because I obsessively return to see if anything has changed. It has not. I drive in my 2000 shiny black sedan into streets where few drive due to high rates of poverty and DUI charges and watch as the neighborhood people watch me as I drive past. They don't go to college. They have criminal records. They are on social aid programs. I know this because the cul-de-sac was so jam-packed with apartments that everything that happened next door, or downstairs, or in the next apartment, was fully audible to me from my bedroom. This was the one place where landlords would accept tenants with criminal records, evictions, and terrible credit. Not all poor people are criminals, but those who are hold the rest of us hostage and the police just spend their time patrolling the nice neighborhoods to protect the rich from my neighbors, while pretending like there was no need to secure safety for those of us in the bad neighborhoods. Everything is a mess. One of my psychiatrists once asked me if I really thought I was being paranoid or realistic in my neighborhood when I thought someone gave me a weird look or they were about to lose their temper. "Is that really your sickness or is it just the situation," he asked. I shrugged. I always associate schizophrenia with the feelings I got living in that crappy neighborhood. I spent a lot of time indoors (i.e. all of it from age 5 to age 15) to avoid the pull of gangs and crime and just general shadiness. That is a lot of time to spend feeling fear and thinking obsessively about death and crime.

There is some evidence that schizophrenia is genetic but that there can be environmental stress triggers that increase or spur on mild or latent symptoms. I highly believe that. My brain is naturally suited to believe that you are thinking about robbing and assaulting me as I walk to my apartment because of its schizophrenia. Add to that the daily crime rate in that tiny block-sized cul-de-sac of crap apartments, and you can see how my brain wound up getting totally fried by paranoia and fear. Despite this, I really do attribute my ability to escape that neighborhood mostly to my paranoia about keeping six feet away from anyone, even as we pass on the side walk. My paranoia came in handy in that environment. My crazy also worked to keep an air of "keep away from that crazy b&^%$" around me at all times so that my neighbors did not ever EVER ever rob me or jump me or assault me or anything except on bad days when they mocked me for carrying books or dressing all in black like a little poor, Mexican-American goth.

I got out. I have a Bachelor's degree from the University. I am a graduate student. I own two cars, both post-year 2000. My credit score is 640, not too shabby considering the person who I was raised by had a credit score below 350. I am out. but the issues are not over. Should I just go mingle at the cocktail parties with the surburbanites? Is that not the American Dream? I would love to. I really would love to just mindlessly drink cocktails and chat about the stock market. My heart, my soul, my paranoia, they are all still in that crap neighborhood where I spent ten years hiding indoors to avoid crime. I do not want that for the kids there. I see them on my weekly (sometimes nightly) drives into the cul-de-sac to revisit my childhood home. They stand in the doorway behind screen gates, sometimes they even wander around in what would be adorable little packs if it were not for the knowledge that they are likely being apprenticed in crime by someone older. The men stand around in the shadows wearing baggy pants and gang colors. They drink forties and smoke blunts. They stare as I drive by slowly. I always have my marijuana pipe handy for that trip because it makes me look like I just pulled into the neighborhood to smoke discretely. This might sound horrible, but it is for my safety, so I am allowed to drive through the neighborhood and out of the neighborhood without anyone approaching or yelling something at me. It works. There is some code, or social etiquette, that I am familiar with which allows me to enter the neighborhood without being seen with distrust (i.e. a snitch, a lost driver). Yes, it is shady, it is a criminal hang-out, why would I go back? It is home. The crime in the air is as much a part of my childhood as McDonalds or Barbie. If you don't understand that, you will never understand the protests for Garner, Ferguson, Rice, etc....society has allowed for class and racial segregation in housing, not only that but they have crammed these segregated communities into cheap apartment complexes which the police sporadically patrol (unless the cop is out for action, in which he WILL drive down the little alley street into our neighborhood). Seriously, 'Merica, what did you expect? Crime is bad. Executions are also Bad. Fair Trials are good. I say YES TO FAIR TRIALS!


I will write again tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to pop in to say that I am here, alive, going into finals in my graduate program, and I still have immense gratitude and utter curiosity for those who venture into this blog to read, I know this ain't no Sunday morning reading! :)

#FergusonSolidarity
#FairTrialsNotExecutions

Lions, and Tigers, and Finals Week.

When the only thing that separates me from the other former mental patients is that I can perform well in school, finals week is a stressful, coffee-indulging, binge-eating festival of intellectual carnage.

I am schizo-affective. Most of my kindred schizophrenics are busy talking to pigeons in the downtown park, or rocking themselves in their drug-induced stupor. Some of us lead “normal lives,” though. I am apparently one of them. I work part-time and attend college as a Master’s program student full-time. Nobody knows what I am: a former mental patient who spent the ages of 19 – 25 in and out of mental hospitals before I finally stabilized on meds and took them consistently.

Now, I must study and prove that I am more than a delinquent set of brain chemicals called dopamine and serotonin. I am more than a mental patient. Or at least that is the way I must train myself to think or else I will plummet into a fit of self-destructiveness. My entire essence is wrapped up in how I can differentiate myself from society’s image of a schizophrenic: the bizarre, violent, freak of nature that needs to be detained indefinitely. I try to think of myself as a student, as a laborer, as a creative thinker, as a writer. Deep down, I will always be that girl locked in solitary confinement in the triage center of the hospital with three security guards monitoring every movement, but it’s worth a try to act like I have a chance at a happy life. I deserve that. On that nice thought, I will take my leave. Have a great day!

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!!

Finals Week on Campus or why I'm Glad I'm on anti-anxiety meds

It's that dreaded time. Students crowd and push inside the campus library, searching for a seat to hunch over their textbooks and cram. They all sit like sardines in a can, sipping on coffee, leafing through notes, and praying to the higher power that their professors will go easy on them.

I am one of them. Luckily, I am on anti-anxiety medication, which makes this time slightly more tolerable. I take anti-anxiety pills for my schizo-affective disorder and the residual stress it causes, but it does come in handy during finals week.

Study Group always cracks me up. It is the soothing ritual of the student. The cult of studiousness. "Join us for Study Group," says the student with the dazed, overwhelmed look in her eyes and a monotone voice. I imagine them all sitting around tables, pounding out answers to study guides and chanting little mantras of "We're gonna pass, we're gonna pass, we're gonna ace this final!" They remind me of academic cult members. They come to bring you into the fold of Study Group from 2 pm to midnight. They read the ancient script of a long-dead academic doctorate. Then suddenly, in the middle of question 9, they suddenly become very lost in the topic of the new Bourne Identity movie coming out in the summer. Then back to question 9.

I will miss this. This is my last month of college as an undergraduate. I have a couple of summer classes but once they end at the start of June, I am free. Free until August when I will (hopefully) be fully admitted to the graduate program.

So far, things are going according to my master plan. I got a high B on a term paper for a tough class that half a dozen students are failing (and those are just the ones who told me about their F's). I am a little concerned about my Chinese language class. I need a B for my linguistics major, but I might have lost my high B grade after a horrible exam score. Other than that, I'm doing well.

Anyways, just an update. Thanks for reading! Wish me luck! My last final is in one hour! I should've been writing study guide questions but I wrote this instead! ;) winky face.

Finals Week on Campus

Some people go to a confessional booth to see a priest. I am not that religious. Instead, I come to cyberspace to spit out my secrets, hoping somebody somewhere will absolve me.

My mother would be so ashamed of me, keeping my life open like some kind of tart.

I should really be studying for finals right now. I will, I'm not that lazy. I've just written about 30 pages of research for my undergrad classes and I feel like I should take a breather, just until 9 tonight.

I have nothing dramatic to say, I quit with the melodrama last summer when I broke up with an insensitive male lover. Instead, I am going to talk about my life goals. Why? I dunno. If you're looking for something more daring, please read "Confessions of a Closet Schizophrenic" or "Confessions of a Closet Bisexual" that I wrote a few months back.

I completed all but one of my lower and upper division general education classes already. Next semester I have 2 linguistics classes, 2 foreign language classes, and 1 theory of dance class that fulfills the last of my general education requirements. Then I graduate. What I do after I graduate is unknown, as the job prospects are limited for somebody who only has a B.A. This economy isn't ideal, to say the least.

Saturday I am going to the campus library to study for hours. My friend will hopefully join me so we can rent one of those rooms with a whiteboard. Sunday I am going to the library to study. Monday I am going early so I can go to the library and study. Then I take my phonology final. Then I go back to studying a foreign language, a class which was going well until my grandfather died right before Thanksgiving. I have to memorize 20 sentences worth of dialogue, including spelling, in a non-romance language. After this, I should only have my Chinese final to prepare for.


There's this yahoo gossip column about some female student who went berserk in the library at another CSU (or was it UC?). She snapped over the loudness of somebody's breathing and started hollering all over the place. Man, I am glad I tend to isolate when I get stressed out or there might be some kind of viral video of me curling up in fetal position under a desk  in the library, muttering poorly enunciated Chinese words to no one.

Finals week sucks.

One student in my French 2B class last semester told me she had a breakdown every semester. She showed up for our project red-eyed and still puffy from sobbing. "I've been on a crying jag for a few hours," she admitted. She was in the graduate program for music. I gently asked her if she might consider an anti-depressant but she laughed me off. She's out there somewhere, having another nervous breakdown. I guess this is me having my break down.

When I have breakdowns I stuff them down by eating too much. That's probably why I gained the weight back I lost taking that martial arts class. I was 159 about 3 weeks ago, and now I'm 161. I tend to be an anxiety-eater. You know the type, the type that tries to be really pleasant and helpful to everyone but eats in binges until the stressful event passes. That was me last week. I didn't have enough Zoloft, my grandpa had just died, my grades were falling from A's to low B's, and it was about to be finals week. So I ate. I ate a hamburger from McDonalds---and I'm a vegetarian! I ate 230 calories worth of salty french fries with that stupid hamburger. In the middle of the night I went foraging for rice cakes. Yes, those are only like 50 calories for 2, but I ate like 6 or 8!

Today I tried to control my caloric intake by avoiding eating with my family and instead munching on 3 pieces of sushi for lunch. Then I saw my therapist, who gently goaded me to accept my life as it is now. She said it's okay to overeat on occasion, so long as it's only during finals week. But last finals week I ballooned up to 190 pounds and it took me from April to September to climb down to 160 pounds.

I feel that food is like the only thing keeping me from curling into a ball in bed and refusing to take my finals. Well, that and coffee....lots and lots of coffee. Like 8 cups of coffee a day. Therapist also said to cut back on the coffee. If only I could! It tastes so good with splenda and some half and half. Yes, I know, half and half won't help me lose weight, but I need my caffeine fix so I just delete a snack for the day and pour in some creamer without remorse.

Tonight I am going to write a list of all the Chinese characters we have learned over the semester and begin to copy them over and over and over again. Plus, I will read through the chapters in my phonology book. Then I will take an anti-anxiety drug and go to sleep. Ah, the pleasure of psychotropic medications. It's funny, people who are medicated get this rap for being unstable, but if anything we are so medicated we're the most stable in the room! Where one person starts yelling about people breathing too loud, I just take my medication early and nap away the stress. Is that healthy? Oh who cares, this is a Prozac Nation anyways (read the book, too!).