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.

Adjusting to Grad School

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading! 

Skizzie Lizzie Prepares for Grad Program

In between blogging, checking my emails, chatting via myspace and yahoo messenger, I am mentally preparing myself to go to graduate school at a state university. For most, this would be a task in and of itself, but for someone who has paranoid schizophrenia this can be quite a challenge on top of a challenge.

I have to make sure I comply with treatment. I have to let my case worker keep tabs on me by dropping by and chatting about my ups and downs and future goals. I have to make all my therapy appointments. I have to take all medications as prescribed and show up periodically to let the doctor poke at my mind for 20 minutes.

Sanity comes in three medications, refilled only three times before I have to return to the doctor. I feel like Cinderella: I must return before midnight or my ride turns into a pumpkin and my mind turns nuts. I must think of it as just a routine, like paying my cell phone bill or internet bill. Keeping up with treatment is just another obligation. Or so I would like to think.

While everyone else is preparing for qualifying exams and their thesis, I am preparing for random spurts of paranoid delusions spurred on by episodes of mania. So it goes...(as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the great modern American writer wrote...so it goes).

My therapist congratulated me for graduating from university. She said the percentage of people diagnosed with schizophrenia who go on to get a Bachelor's degree from an accredited university is rather meager. On the one hand, I know this, on the other hand, I want to be more normal than normal. I want to exude normalcy from my pores so that everyone thinks, "how can she be so composed and clear headed?" I want to achieve what a normal person achieves. I want education, I want employment, I want success, I want to change people's lives for the better!

I hope that one day there is a paranoid schizophrenic surfing the internet, debating whether s/he should even bother with enrolling at university---then accidentally clicks on this blog and reads this little entry. Then, s/he will say, "if this person can do it, of course I can do it, too!" That would make me thrilled! If you are that person, I wish you the best! Hang in there, little kitty!

Thank you for reading, and please be gentle with me! I am like a fragile dish that cannot be put in the dishwasher. :/

Sugar Cookie As Symbol of my Recovery

It was two years ago, maybe even longer. The staff on the psychiatric unit were doling out my favorite snack: two soft, sugar cookies with white frosting and little colored sprinkles on top. These cookies were treats on the psych ward. We got some only at intervals, sometimes at lunch time, sometimes at snack time, never on a regular basis.

I liked to wrap my cookies in a napkin and smuggle them out of the cafeteria for later consumption. Often, I would lie awake listening to the never-ending noise in my head and reach over for one of the little cookies which I stock-piled in the dresser beside my assigned bed. They were a comfort food on the ward--sugary, fattening, sweet.

Later on, I would abhor the sight of those cookies. Once I was outside and no longer an in-patient, I was vehemently opposed to eating that specific type of cookie. One time, my mother brought home those soft, sugar cookies from her workplace. I took one look at the two cookies she generously offered me and my stomach churned. It was THAT cookie---that exact brand of cookie. I shook my head and refused it. It was not because I was trying to lose weight and avoid sugar (which I was, but one cookie would have been okay). It was because that cookie represented confinement. It represented a locked ward and horrible memories. It represented my illness.

 For two years now, I have avoided those cookies. They seem to be everywhere, at Save Mart, Target, Food Co., they are stocked in every major grocery store! I would shop for food and sigh as I passed the bakery. There, amongst the brownies and tiramisu cakes, that specific type of sugar cookie with the white frosting and the sprinkles. Those cookies haunted me for two years. Like decaf coffee, they are two fixtures in the psychiatric hospital that I can depend on to be there each time I am involuntary hospitalized.

This last week I turned it all around. I was approved for graduation from my University on July 3rd. My degree will be posted on August 10th. My admission into the graduate program was cemented. It was a great feeling. After 1 year at the University I had achieved my goal of obtaining my Bachelor's degree from an accredited University. I had gone from being a chronic hospital basket-case, in and out of psychiatric facilities and community college classes, to a full-time University student with no major psychiatric relapses. I decided to celebrate....I bought the sugar cookies with the white frosting and the little sprinkles on top. I took them home. I sat them on the tabletop and opened up the little plastic container. My mother came in and I told her the story of the sugar cookies.
"So why did you buy them?"
"Because I want to taste them. They taste like victory now. I want to taste them as a graduate student not as a mental patient. From this point, the cookies are symbols of my recovery." She smiled, I chewed. The cookie tasted delicious. :)

Assured I am Graduating from University

I went back to see an academic adviser. He checked with three different University employees and assured me I had completed all the requirements. I sat there, clutching my Fossil handbag to my heart, and smiled at the adviser. I am done with my B.A.! Done! Belated, botched, and barely sane, but done nonetheless! It has been a difficult decade for me. In and out of school, in and out of the psychiatric hospitals, in and out of minimum wage jobs....until now, when my future actually seems promising.

I can still remember telling my psych ward psychiatrist that I wanted to go back to college and complete my Bachelor's degree.
"No, no, you can't take the stress. Schizophrenia is very serious! Just rest." That image, of myself lying a bed seven days a week, getting up only to eat and paint little pictures, was more stressful than the actual process of going back to college and achieving my B.A. in linguistics!

Now, I have been assured my degree will be granted, I can enter next semester as a graduate student in the field of linguistics, and my life will not be spent becoming a hermit with a little aluminum foil hat. My summer is open before me, free to paint, write, draw, read, watch movies, surf the internet, blog, and enjoy free time, temporarily of course, as I return to college in August.

With my new life as a graduate student, I suddenly feel like life has a purpose. The purpose is to gain knowledge, study, make contributions to the field, and succeed. I could not have done this without my out-patient services. Despite the view (as discussed in the previous blog entry) that out-patient services create government aid-dependent, docile, chronic mental patients, I have found that these out-patient services have been a vital part in my recovery.
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I tried re-reading "The Center Cannot Hold" but I found that the descriptions of hospitals, restraints, stigma, and suffering is very triggering for me. I love the book, but right now I cannot read it because I will end up blogging about how unfair the system is, how depressing and dehumanizing it is, and I am not in the mood for negativity right now.

Instead, I am reading a layman's book on game theory. As you may know, Game Theory was created centuries ago, but was fine-tuned and perfected by John Nash, the famous mathematician, paranoid schizophrenic, and Nobel Prize winner who I idolize. Game Theory is essentially the study of minimizing losses. Pardon me if I butcher the theory, but I only got through Trigonometry and I went insane while taking precalculus, got hospitalized, had my precal book confiscated by hospital staff as contraband, and never finished the class. So, I am not a mathematician and my writing on math will reflect that...but I still have an attraction to Probability, Game Theory, and computer programming that I intend to pursue this summer. So in case you stop by the blog one day and find a random entry on Game Theory, it is because I am trying to be productive with my free time.

It figures that a paranoid schizophrenic was the one who mastered the fine art of making paranoia a field of mathematics. The Prisoner's Dilemma is the most famous example. James and Janet committed a crime and they are being interrogated separately by police. The police need a confession from one or both of the criminals in order to lock them up. They are willing to plea bargain with whichever one confesses. Now James and Janet are paranoid that the other is going to confess. James and Janet do not want to go jail. What do James and Janet do and why?

I always wondered why there are not more paranoid schizophrenics in the field of Game Theory. It seems to be fine-tuned for their paranoid and suspicious nature. For example, while slightly paranoid, I devised an excellent method of home surveillance. My natural paranoid nature was perfect for thinking about all possible entries into the home. My method involved not one, but four cameras, each located at a different part of the home (one attached to the garage, one pointing across the front of the house, one perched hidden in a tree pointing at the front yard, and one guarding the side windows). Then, my plan included two motion-activated spotlights for flooding the premises with light when intruders walked onto the property. In the backyard, more motion-activated spotlights. Motion-activated alarms would be attached to all major windows, so that any attempt to lift the window would trigger an obnoxious alarm. I was very happy with my plan, but unfortunately my mother was not pleased and discouraged me from spending a ton of money to guard our cheap possessions. Still, it was a good application for my natural paranoid tendencies. If only I could somehow build a little moat with alligators to guard our house....