Transfer #21

Subject: been a while Posted Date: Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 1:40 AM

Sure, its been a while.

There have been good days and bad. For those of you left caring, or checking, or bored. Saturday night was disastrous. That day, as soon as I got out of bed, I felt it. A dull flatness that expanded during the next hours. It was like walking Ian fog, I could not put ideas together. It was like constantly waking up with no context to tell you what is going on. I lost ideas, words, sentences. I got confused. I thought it would get better, but it got worse. I went to a dinner part, and had hoped to make a much anticipated dance performance, but I had to get up and go home. I was humiliated.

If I had gone, there is no way I could have understood what I was seeing. It was like the bad old days in many ways. I gave away my ticket hoping someone could use it. I felt like a waste. I walked home, while everyone else went to the theater. I lay on the couch fully dressed watching another Saturday night drift away. So many nights, so many evenings, so many days lost and gone forever. That's how it feels, like you are there, and not there. Its worse than being out of it. I recall being at law school and talking to a good friend and not being able to understand anything he was saing and smiling and nodding and feeling dead.

W came back from the dance. I was torn. I wanted her to come back, I didn't want to be alone, but I also did not want to drag her down into my well of self pity. I hate being alone, but more than that I hate burdening people with my illness. I feel, often, like a burden. I feel like I bring people down. I see them stare at me, and sit in the uncomfortable pauses left when my mind if, again, on the blink. I hate it all. So, generally, I stay alone.

People tell me that I can only be myself and let others decide if they want to be with me. But still, I feel like some of those people are there out of guilt or pity and some are there for old times sake, and others still are not understanding my limitations. It is rare I feel like someone really is just enjoying what little I can really give them.

Sunday was better. The evening even great. I had a surf, and a dinner partty and talked and enjoyed myself. That night, I was high from caffeine and could not sleep, so I slept on the floor as not to wake W. Monday was weird. I felt odd. Everything was moving around. That evening it cleared up, and Tuesday was fine and yesterday was one of the best days I have ver had. Weird like that.

So Tuesday and Wednesday I felt almost like my old self, except distrustful of my wellness. I felt like leaving the office and never coming back. I felt like starting over, and just walking off. I was sick and tired of ebing sick and tired, and I felt hopeful---except that I have learned not to be hopeful. So I enjoyed what I had there, let my mind wander into fresh green Fields and pretend that none of this has ever happened.

A clean healthy mind is an amazing thing. It is like glasses, but better. I can think broadly and on the outskirts of my mind I can feel a future. But I am unschooled in using that mind, and have learned to be cautious about expecting it will be there.

I am traveling to CA. I am afraid. I am afraid that it will all come crashing down. Again. I am afraid I will fell that subtle twinge of failure, of a life wasted. I am afraid that it will feel like home, and I will feel lost. More than antigen, I just want this to be over. I have never accepted being ill, and because of that I have found help and healing, but I am uncomfortable accepting any limitation.

And my god am I burnt out. I have been talking to friends and I have noticed, east coasters get burnt out and change jobs, west coasters get burnded out and pull up stakes and just travel for a while. There is a difference between the coasts. I think westerners think of themselves in a natural state as unemployed free agents, who then accept work restraints for the beenifts of a paycheck, and easterners think of their natural state as employed, with vacations and sabaticals.

Well, nothing particularly interesting there. I have a doctor's appointment tommorow. I will see if this woman is going to be a good fit with my treatment team. I will keep you posted.

M.

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Subject: energy Posted Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - 7:36 AM

Energy amblifies all the body processes. This was a major tenet of my recovery. Energy improves your intellect, your sexuality, your consciousness, your creativity, your physical strength, your mood, your spirit and, most importantly, your capacity to heal yourself. To heal myself I sought to increase the amount of energy available. I did this in many ways.

1) I changed my workouts. I used to labor in the gym and sweat out long swims in the pool, relying on endurance activity. When you are exhausted internally, it does not take much to notice that these are draining on your energy reserves. The stress is too gradual to force your body to adapt much, and instead it consumes itself slightly. I chose intead brief and intense excersize to encourage my body and mind to remodel themselves. I told them they needed to be strong, fit and rested.

2) AT. I picked up alexander techinique which teaches that emotional and physicall stresses are stored as body tension. the AT idea is not to drive them out, but to learn to work in a centered natural state with no excess enrgy being used. To find and preserve balance. I used to get winded just walking. I drove myself forward. After AT I learned to use my body and not work against it. Strangely, I discovered also that to relax a painful knot in the body usually relaxed the corresponding knot that was formed in the mind. An emotional expreince I assure you.

3) meditation. I began 3 years ago now. It was not easy for one in my condition, but I kept at it. It is its own reward. I approached it as a method to dissipate tension by lwering brian activity to the Alpha range and dissapating stress at a rate vastly greater than the rate at which I was storing it. Along the way, I learned to shit off my mind, and to listen to my body. It gave me a great internal compass.

4) Fun. I recalled how to have fun. Fun is the practice of moving with energy, of channeling it. It is a skill. You can loose it.

5) Diet. I went through some freakish diets, but at last hit upon an approach that required little energy to digest, and gave a lot of clean energy. sugar wiped me out. It caused my body great distress. Today, I can hardly feel it, but I assure you, when your adrenal glands are on their last legs, youappreciate what a rain it is on your body. I chose to view food as more than fuel, but as the raw components of my newly constucted body. Food replacing amino acids in cell walls, and fats to lips structures and hormones.

thats about all I have for now. I am still at the office and the sun is setting. I will go now, but have a thought about this. 6 years granted me some good lessons. and this is one of them. Energy is something that needs to be thought about. LAter, I will talk about what happens when it has nowhere to go. But for now, enjoy your sermon dear readers.

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Subject: preparation Posted Date: Thursday, April 13, 2006 - 11:59 PM

If you want to help people, you need to prepare yourself. You need to take seriously your mental, physical, and spiritual training to give you the leverage to move things. I was preparing myself when I got sick, and the discordance between the path I was trying to walk, and the path I was forced to walk was tough.

That was a strange thing. I never gave up my training. I tried to move forward in the areas I still could. But what now? The common approach when one has been through a formative crisis is to apply oneself in that feild. But I do not know taht this is what i want to do. I dont know that I feel moved to help other schizophrenics. Is that cruel of me, or does that merely reflect the fact that I am no so far removed from the crisis period to feel like I want to come into contact with it. In my life, I feel like I have been good at putting things down when I no longer need them.

Now it is time to again reassess how I will be useful and what impact I will make. I need to harden myself in places, and make myself supple in others. I think I need to focus mind and body a bit, but this will be a work in progress. I like the feeling that I am picking up the pieces.

It is not a decision for today. I am hardly more than improved myself, and still a long way from recovered, so perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

This entry sucks, but it has been here all day, so I will share it anyway. I hope you did not waste your time with it.

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Subject: sing with us Posted Date: Monday, April 17, 2006 - 10:38 AM

I've got to admit it's getting better, better
A little better all the time, it can't get no worse
I have to admit it's getting better, better
It's getting better since you've been mine

Its true. Its a d*mn good day not to be crazy anymore. Best day that I have had yet. It is strange that I was down so long that I forgot what up looked like. Sincerely, and without being trite, by suffering from the dispercetptions for so long, I actually got a bit disoriented and forgot what it felt like to have a nromally functioning head. At first I could not place it, but healthy is such an undeniable attractor.

Regrettably I spent the whole of the best day in 8 years in my office, watching the boston marathon from a distance, and wondering what the sun feels like today. I am cleaning up my boss' mess, and I dont think he even knew today was a holiday. Am I bitter? not, not really, I am pleased to be normal, and normal p*ssed, and go home to eat and be normal again.

Just that.

Of course, I have never been normal, but that is a thing for another day. I suppose one interesting observation is that I think when one hits upon sustainable health, one can tell that it is steady. There is no tiny tremor of fear for relapse hiding underneath. or perhaps I am just being hopeful. I hope not. Hope was something I think best left to the carebears. It sets you up for failure, and takes the wind out of success. I dont hope, but somehow still, I believe.

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Subject: No names Posted Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - 5:01 AM

Today I was intoruced, in a way, to another soul on the same miserable path as I. Of course, he is still quite far down still. They estimate that schizos make up less than .5% of the world population. Through in suicide and the number of adult schizos is truly small, 100 million in the US. Still, with that few ScZ in the world today, I have run into a lot of them as soon as I started being open about my condition.

So I got a letter, and it took me back. It took me back to the begginig and the fear and loneliness. I wept when I read the letter, short as it was. I dont reall know a thing about him, and if I did, I would not share that here- it has been my, involuntary, decision to go public with this but I respect the privacy of others. So all that you, dear readers, get to know, is that he exists and how I feel about that.

1) I feel sympathy. That's important. I have one friend, and you know who you are, who is going through the same recovery, and she can sympathize where others can only empathize. Her eyes look different. There is less pity, and more concern. There is fear in her eyes, and there is shared pain. It is different. It bonds us together, and I never need to tell her I am sorry for being crazy. I appreciate every concern, but sympathy is a rare commodity in this situation, and it makes all the differnce. I know how he feels.

2) I empathize. He is in a place I never want to be in again. He is in darker places. I dont know those walls. I dont know what the air smells like there. I fear it though, and I offer him my empathy.

3) Hope? I never tell someone they will get well. this kid though, it sounds like if there is a way, he will find it. He has a supportive family, and he has found people who are less worried about publishing, or even understanding the process of mental illness, than they are about curing people. I respect both sides, but I am not an exhibit, not an attraction, or a study. Heal me. Now. I cannot wait.

4) company? I think this kid has the same symptoms I do. It makes me feel less crazy when I hear that someone esle has them. It makes me blame myself less for letting it happen, for being weak enough to fall prey. It makes me feel normal in a way.

5) resusitated. Yeah, I cant spell. If it took you untl this entry to figure that out, nor can you. I feel like the last 8 years are slightly redeeemed. Not a waste. It happens. It happens to people, good people, young people, healthy people, strong people, people with futures, and they all deal with it. And how they deal with it is as mucha part of thier life as the time before the curtain fell.

6)--- I am out of things. I hope he joins us here. I hope he finds this blog one day. I hope it gives him hope, or at least a goal.

Say hi if you can people. We all need a little company.