The Neighbor's. It's my last day of being 50. I haven't done anything special today, I even took a nap. Usually, I am very circumspect about my birthday and this year has been kind of a great year. I changed medication and got a new camera this year. Both of these events are actually kind of life changing. It's only a camera, I know everyone has one, but I didn't and I wanted one. And the medication change is really quite good. I don't know what will happen next. I get spoiled like that, I want to be on a roll, or for the roll to continue rolling. I think it's my leftover enthusiasm for my work. When I got sick, I was just starting to get that thing where one thing leads to another. It was nice. I expected my whole year to be happy back then. I credit the happiness of being with my ex-husband for this certainty I had. We worked together and we were very happy with each other generally. We didn't drop the ball. We always had plans and they were in the habit of working out. Now I can't really make plans anymore, I just make goals, which is nice, too. For example, now that it's not so hot outside, I would like to visit the stables on post for some photographs. I will just get in the car and drive there and see how it goes, without any expectations. I am getting to where I prefer this way of living anyway. It's slow and there is no pressure, no preconceived idea of how things should be or what should happen. I guess it's the way life is meant to be lived in an ideal world. Maybe I am finally just there. I buy lottery tickets, but I don't really want to change my life, I just want to be able to afford a new car when I am older. Just in case it doesn't work out, I have looked into bus routes and services for the disabled. I don't need much, just a weekly trip to the grocery store and occasional doctor appointments. Without a car, I would have to give up my daily trip to McDonald's for a Diet Dr Pepper, and my weekly trip around by where the farms are, and my trips to the gym, unless I get a social worker by then to help take me there. In any case, I am prepared. That is the kind of planning I do now, not mortgage, pension, career. I think those things are all kind of big and they weighed me down. I just was trying so hard to situate myself for children, which I never ended up having. My life is less complicated without children and, because of my schizophrenia, it's probably for the best. But I would have really loved being a parent, I think. I am at the age now where, if things had turned out differently, I could be waiting for grandchildren to visit. Or college graduation. Stuff like that. But even that has the aroma of planning about it. Who is to say that is the way it would have gone - university, grandchildren. I don't know who I would have brought into this world, or what their choices would be. With schizophrenia, I would not have been an ideal parent. I wouldn't have been able to make things at home steady and reliable. Which, I know, is not the only way to do it, but it's what I know. Maybe my children would have enjoyed more independence and adventure that comes with having to be grown up all along, with a disabled parent... One thing I am learning though is that caring for others generally is possible and important to do. I know I have been a good communicator for some of the people in the online community of schizophrenics. Most are younger than me and, it's not parenting, but it's nice to realise that I am old enough to give advice sometimes. My experience has some purpose. That I can help.
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Last Floral from Brandt Lane Garden. I am tired tonight. I guess it's finishing my Photoshop book and further study of it. I was hoping to finish out my fiftieth year with a boost of energy, but so far I'm low key. Being in my fifties has me rather thoughtful about the different stages of my life. I remember being young, but I look at my hands and my greying hair and I note my aching joints (Latuda) and I think, it's here, it's finally here. I am much more philosophical about my lost decade and I accept my status as retired. I am now old enough for that. When I was 34 and schizophrenia was just happening, I was not. I don't know how many years I have left and I am tentative about my ability to handle illnesses and so on that come with age. Hopefully, I will just continue on for a long time as I am, but I feel I must make a real effort to stop smoking. I don't enjoy it any more. It used to help with anxiety and breathing, but now that I don't have as much of that with Latuda, it's just not necessary any more. I don't smoke socially, though I have a miniscule and mostly barren social life. If it weren't so bad for me though, I would probably keep it up. I just feel I owe myself the healthiest future I can manage. Going to the gym, eating good food, and a happy attitude most days is what I am counting on to get me through. All of this is new. Until I started Latuda, I really could find no reason to keep living, except that it was preferable to ending it all, which would just be disturbing. Now I have more to live for, like seeing my friend from school, appreciating my Dad and his wife and the care that they provide, even this blog is something that I invest in. The camera has cheered me up and given me some focus, no pun intended. I am feeling a pleasing sense of mystery about the future - will I have more friends once children have left home and retirement comes? There are people I would like to spend time with here, but now their lives are just too busy for a me. I hope that I will be able to improve my health more. I have lost a bit of weight since switching medicines and I would like to encourage more of that. I would like to be able to do yoga again if I can just fight the stiffness from the Latuda. I wouldn't mind working up to jogging on the treadmill like I did when I was younger. I still am interested in cooking and food generally and look for new ideas in that area. So, fitness is my immediate strategy for my health as I age. I just have to negotiate with my mind and body on that. In any case, I am happier and more at ease with the world, so it has been an exciting year.
Lilies, Brandt Lane Garden. I am planning for my birthday celebration next weekend. It's nothing much, just looking forward to buying a bottle of Freixenet to open with my Dad and his wife. We'll have Chinese take out with it. This is the first champagne I have had since 2002, when I made Christmas dinner for my brother and father and myself. I was, at last, the creator of a Death By Chocolate dessert, a recipe for which had driven me to distraction in London. It was an American recipe and I only had British measuring equipment. I gave up after three tries. It took two days, but I finally made it here in the States. I needed better chocolate, but it did turn out ok. I don't cook like that anymore. Now I just buy couscous and pasta salads and have veggie hot dogs or a tomato sandwich. This has been my summer. It is easy to eat that way, little or no preparation, and enough energy for just sitting at my computer trying to learn Photoshop. It's a pretty big tool, and I only want it for modest processing, but it is a pleasure to learn it. It's much more complex than the version I learned in 1997. I am going to have to re-read the book to capture the sequences in my mind. Photoshop is really a designer's tool, but I would like to try split-tone at some point, once my photographs get a little more scope to them. I will be finished with the Brandt Lane flower portraits by next week or so, if you can bear with me on that. I just wanted to capture Summer, and now it's already heading for Fall. My last Brandt Lane photograph is a special one for me, it's a plaque for a planting that took place in 1988, called Wedding Day. I was married in 1988, and I will post the photograph on my 27th anniversary, September 3rd. I just like the coincidence of it. I still love my wedding day and I have special feelings every year for it. I start looking forward to it in the winter. It was just such a lovely day, and it's just a few days after my birthday. It has always been a happy time of year. I feel lucky, having lost everything, that I am still happy on this day and still count the years. If it wasn't for schizophrenia, I would be the mother of teenagers by now, I never forget this. I am happy now, with what I have, but it took a lot of disappointment and failure to temper me for life as it is. I can do all the things I used to do, I just do them alone, which is usually ok. I am without a network of friends and colleagues, so no spur of the moment trips to Death Valley or something like that, like I used to do in Los Angeles. And no more trips to Cornwall, south-west England, to see the in-laws, which I loved to do. I could go to the beach if my car wasn't so old. I prefer that in the off-season, when hotel rates are down and it's not crowded. My therapist has suggested I borrow a car from my Dad. I might do it. I am just not as adventurous as I was before meds. I am very sensible now in everything I do, so a trip alone to the beach is quite exotic now. Dangerous maybe. I do have a Safelink phone for emergencies, but it won't work long distance, so I can't call my Dad if something happens. Maybe sometime next year I can think of going, after I get more used to this new medication. Of course, my highschool friend, who visits me when he's in town to see his Mom, has suggested a day trip to the beach, but I might be out of town visiting my own Mom at that time. I just have to check the dates. It would be nice to go with a friend though, if it happens.
Brandt Lane Garden, July 2015. I am really feeling the onset of Autumn. It's cooler, rainy right now and there are some yellow leaves on the ground from our Dogwood tree. I am not ready. I just have had such a fun summer working on my photography and learning Photoshop. I hit a snag on Monday - my computer is not big enough to accommodate video, even though I have the right operating system. I can run Photoshop, I just can't do video in Photoshop. (Sad face.) I am not too upset though, I am not that much of a video fan, although it does look good online, better than on TV. I just have all I can do to find photographs to take. The only thing I think would be nice to use video for is a trip to the beach, everyone loves to see the waves do their thing I think. I am not pursuing extraordinary photography. I live in a military town, it's pretty conventional - mall, restaurants - and though I may improve my photography by looking at that, I just basically want to capture events in my immediate life. I am still a bit fragile, though the Latuda has given me more confidence. I kind of got knocked off my stride by the video problem though. I hate missing out. There it is though, no video. I can still, in theory, upload a vine or something, I just can't run it through Photoshop. My friend, who visits me occasionally when he is in town to look in on his Mom, has suggested a day trip to the beach this Autumn, and I am looking forward to it, if it happens. In October, I have been invited to my Mom's house, so I might not be able to go to the beach, which is a pity, because I haven't been in years and would like to go. There is a photograph though that I would like to get of my Mom, to replace one I destroyed in an episode. I think I mentioned it in earlier posts. It is ten years on from that time, but it is just a composition I like, it's just hands in monochrome. I think both adventures are worth having, but visiting Mom is the priority. I have kind of been off center since discovering I can't run video in Photoshop. I put off today's lesson twice now because of it, and I didn't go to the gym. I think I just needed a break, some thinking time. Hopefully tomorrow, I will be ready for the next lesson. I am close to finishing the book and maybe a bit distracted by that prospect. I have more lined up to do, which I like and look forward to starting. That's the great thing about this project, it just leads to more. I am a very fortunate person to have had the means suddenly to pursue photography a little. I count my blessings.
Brandt Lane Garden. I only have a few more Brandt Lane Garden photographs left. It was a month ago that I visited there, but already it seems ages. I just got home from splashing out on a Thai restaurant. Pad Thai noodles. It wasn't expensive, but it was good and plenty and I was glad of it. I was getting tired of my diet and needed to break free for a night. I am still pleased with the Latuda. I'm down to my last milligram of Haldol, which I drop completely at the end of this month. I have noticed that I have more self confidence, a bouncy motivation improvement and for the moment, fewer episodes. I had a couple of episodes last week, but nothing this week, which is nice. I appreciate it when it goes like this. I still have to avoid the cinema and much music and television, for fear of episodes, but at least I am old enough now to have age as an alternative excuse. Things have gone so well this week that I began to question my activities. Am I getting stuck in a rut, I ask myself. I am very proud of my routines, they are hard won and make me happy. For the time being, I am working on my Photoshop lessons, which I should finish next week, and my Monday - Friday gym schedule. A year ago, I was afraid to shower and had no books to read, or other activities, just a journal. I was in a pretty deep depression and I couldn't really see the point of living anymore. I can't say that I have discovered the point about living, but I am definitely having a better time. It has been a spectacular summer for me with my new equipment and the fact that my ex-husband broke the ice by calling me in the spring (I wasn't home to answer). I also met my niece and her family for the first time. It is all very encouraging. It has been about 14 years since I last enjoyed what I was doing (working for a photographer). Since then, I have been very low in spirit and in and out of psychosis. So this spring and summer are special to me - a rebirth of a sort. I am looking forward to playing around with Photoshop and taking more pictures, and also continuing my fitness activities at the gym. It is a light schedule, but it is what I can handle and I'm handling it so far. Actually, I find the weekends a little tough, too relaxed. I like having weekends off, it gives a torque to the week, but I took in a Photoshop lesson last Saturday, just to raise the energy level of the weekend a little. I sink pretty fast if left with nothing to engage with. There are improvements I need to make, like doing more laundry and dusting, but I think I am at capacity at the moment. I hope things will improve and that I take in the chores as well as the rest.
Brandt Lane Garden. I usually complain about the heat in summer, but I have been very scheduled this year, spending long summer days indoors, on the computer. It has been absolutely lovely. I am thrilled with my camera and computer purchases and have been busy studying photoshop every day, weekends off. It has been fun to create a schedule that mimics a working week. When I was younger and not schizophrenic I used to roam the week in rhythm and I loved my routines. By reducing the variables, I could see my progress. I was very ambitious. It was a lot of fun to set goals and achieve them. So much is available to the young and healthy. Opportunity is around every corner. Now, I have to make my luck, but the best I can manage is to make a working week, which is suiting me just fine. The only thing is, the time is flying by! For the last three days we have had October temperatures and though I love Fall, I'm not ready for it yet! I looked into timetables for trains to my Mom's house and there is not a direct route. It is four trains, with a 7-hour layover in the middle of it. So that's a no for a plan. Mom is making a golf trip up to the coast in October and has offered to swing by and pick me up if I can find a flight home, so I'm looking into that. I find it hard to spend the money, actually, but it would be nice to see everyone back home. Plus, there is a picture I want to get of my Mom. Ten years ago I took a picture of just her hands, in monochrome, and it turned out really nice. I framed it and gave it to her, and then had an episode and threw it in the trash can. So I want to try and get that picture again. I have an enormous printer that came with my camera deal, and it would be nice to try it with that photograph. I take far fewer photographs with a digital camera I have noticed, than I did with analog. I guess it comes from seeing immediate results. I miss my Nikon, but this Canon is giving nice, instant results. I don't know why, perhaps it's grief, but I always have to mention my former equipment. I loved those tools and I was really hurt when they were stolen, broken and thrown away. I have thought a lot about what I was trying to achieve with all that devastation and it was a feeling of detachment I think, so that I could have a fresh start. Medicine doesn't feel like a fresh start really, and I would just sit in my room surrounded by the evidence of my former life and feel dead to it. It was all really quite traumatic. I just remember feeling very strongly that I needed to get work and keep going, but I couldn't, in reality, do that. I did go back to school four times and managed to complete two courses in total. I had two jobs, each of which I had to quit a few months later, because of illness. I looked for a job around here for eight years and found nothing. Aside from my exotic qualifications and interrupted work experience, I think I was just too old. At Vocational Rehabilitation I was told that my resumé was not competitive enough, that it lacked "certificates". I was just an oddity, a "does not compute". This is when I appreciate having a network, which I don't have here. After my first psychosis, I just sank, like a stone, and have not really ever surfaced again from it. But occasionally I get the urge to get out my resumé to remind myself that I did actually use my short time of sanity effectively. At least I reached some goals. Now it's just the camera and this blog, which is nice, and about all I can handle. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it.
Weatherford Road. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday. I had been kind of off-center ever since Friday but today, with a full day of activity, I feel better. I started to realise that happiness is not necessarily tied to circumstance and that comparing my life now to the past was kind of not fair to the present. I do that sometimes though, just to remember what it was like to be normal, it helps me evaluate the medicine. I can remember years ago being on medicine that was easier to take, less full-on in effect. I was working in a photography studio and loving it and was fresh out of the hospital, like two weeks out. I worked there the summer and was not having trouble with any symptoms at all. I was feeling really good, but not kind of fabulous, like with Latuda. Just good and open to new experience. I am not sure I like feeling fabulous, it's kind of weird, a little tiring. Anyway, I can't remember the name of the former medication, but I want to guess it was Geodon. I am just not sure and there is no way to find out. The clinic that dispensed it is no longer in business, so I have no way of tracing the records. It's still early days with Latuda, and last weekend was my second slump so far. It wasn't as bad as a slump really, just feeling anxious and a little down. I think I won't be able to judge it very well unless I try it for like two years, plenty of time to weather ups and downs. I am glad to be thinking of it though, after resting on Haldol for nearly six years and taking a chance for change, I feel more proactive about my treatment. It is just that changing medications is hard and takes a few months. I am not fresh as a daisy like I was after that hospital stay that spring. It's kind of hard to judge these things. Back then, I didn't have episodes at all, but I did quit taking any medication after about three months, which eventually put me back in the hospital. Here I go again, combing the past for clues. One thing that made me happy was that I loved working in the photography studio and my mind was clear, so I learned really fast and was a good employee, who liked her boss very much. I had to open and lock up, develop all the film and print, manage the appointment calendar, conduct the sales transactions and sometimes I got to take the Hasselblads out on assignment. I loved it and the people I worked with were especially nice. No one ever knew that I had been in the hospital at all. Now, there is just me. I have a camera and a computer and a car and that's it. It's enough, but I have to warm up a little. My imagination is a little frozen and there are considerations like my car - it's too old to take it out of town at all. My therapist suggested that I borrow one of my Dad's cars for excursions, which is a fine idea. I just have to open up my mind and think of what is around. Actually around the house and around town is enough for me right now, it is setting an easy pace. I have time to research what's around while I work close to home. I shouldn't say "work" - it kind of comes with pressure - for now it's just easy pictures for this blog, for my own pleasure. I would love to photograph weddings and debutantes and events like I did at the studio, or music again - local. But it has been about fourteen years since I picked up a camera, I am still catching up with all the changes - a digital camera, new and improved Photoshop, OSX. I am not looking to go back to work at all, I just used to love my work and I am up for that as an activity again, a goal. I can't make enough money, though, to go professional again, and anyway, my medical expenses are too high. Latuda is about $800 a month without a co-pay, and I need the therapy sessions, another expense, not generally covered by insurance. I looked for a job for about 8 years in this area and came up with nothing. I left no stone unturned. I plundered my resume for ideas and although I had some interviews, nothing panned out. I suspect it's my age. Plus, the question on employers minds is always, "why are you here with a resume like that?" (My partner and I won an MTV award, but schizophrenia started hitting hard about six months later.) I tried the newspaper several times, photography studios, simple retail jobs like bookstores and office supply stores, art and framing stores, visual display for department stores - all stuff I had experience with. I just wasn't hired. Toward the end of my search, I was starting to hallucinate during interviews and just decided to call it quits. So, here I am, kicking around for something to do while I investigate recovery.
. Lilies, Brandt Lane Garden. I have been going through my Photoshop lessons and I have noticed that when I am working with my photographs, I no longer feel "schizophrenic". I know I still have the disease and must take my medicine and all that, but I don't notice myself as much. I like it a lot. I have really improved since April, when I first started the Latuda. The medicine has been good. I am down to 1mg of Haldol a day, my last of that this month. I thought things were going so well that I could risk going to the cinema as an experiment. I went to see Mr. Holmes. The episode I had on leaving the theater is the worst of it's kind I have had. It was very strong and went on for hours. Ian McKellan was 'talking' to me about death. It was really tiring. But this type of episode happens with any film I see, and with some television shows too, not all. I seem to be able to watch The Middle or Golden Girls with no trouble. I have episodes anyway, even without a movie, so even with Latuda, I am still struggling a bit. It's just that when I am not having the episodes, I feel a lot better and am happier than I was. I'm more motivated (the photography, gym) and I am more well balanced generally. I brush my teeth every day and shower once a week, all of which is an improvement from the way I was living on Haldol alone. I was pretty depressed, too, though I fought it as hard as I could. So, things are generally going well. I would like to lose more weight, work out a little harder, take more photographs, but I am pushing the limit now as it is, I don't need to pressure myself. I am definitely older and less able - the Haldol causes stiff muscles and so I can't move generally as well as I could years ago, it's not just age. The Haldol was good at first, too, so I am trying not to get my hopes up too high for the Latuda. I have been fluctuating a lot in mood over the medicated years. My friend Sophie thinks that it is more natural to have some change in the mental "weather" and that helps me take a more lengthy evaluation of my life on medication. There have been sacrifices. I can't cry, for instance, unless I am moved by something in the media, never for personal release. I have fewer thoughts on the mental highway, I never have that nice sensation of "falling" asleep, I just hit the pillow and wait. I am more under control, which is welcome after the hellish chaos of unbridled schizophrenia. Mental illness was never on my radar before I fell ill, though, looking back, I can see some foreshadowing. I was really devastated by the symptoms which have whittled away at my self confidence. But I have had a lot of time to think, and I am much more generally sane than I was, and part of this change is age - growing up and moving on, which mental illness or no, had to happen. Thank God it did. I shudder to recall some of the things I did and said without medicine, even before the schizophrenia happened. My situation is a nightmare to my formerly normal mind. I try to compare, so that I don't just succomb to this wretched illness. The most important thing I did was give up hope. The constant disappointment of trying to construct a working, viable life, and failing, was interfering with my general treatment and any possible recovery. My only concern at the moment is that, as I have noted in my journal, everything, even the improvements, feel like second-best. I don't know that I will ever be thrilled again with life. I am just in the process of tying up loose ends before I die. I am not suicidal or anything, but I think my life is generally over as far as joy, love, surprise. I am just marking time until I die. That is the feeling generated by these medicines, even when they work well.
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