My locker at the gym today. My workouts are going well or maybe just ok, I'm learning about it. I mean, I have smoked for years and had little to no exercise during those years, and of course, weight gain. I have lost quite a bit, but I think my workouts will only improve with more weight loss. I need that lift, because today, and I check it every day, I'm just not bouncy yet, even though I have lost weight which I can see and feel and am happy about.
I want to start running, and right now, I don't know if it's the weights or the weight, but i'm just not springy enough to do it. i don't know, I have not had this feeling before. But I have been playing around with my workouts and today I added some start jumps, 25, to try and address my problem. I remember in my youth responding quite well to this. When I did them today though, I was like, wow yeah i'm just really kind of as without shock absorbers or something like that, if one was a car or a mountain bike. So I will do these every day. And I think, as I have added a very few reps to most of my sets, that I will leave it here for some time, because I just want to not be so leaden in my motions and ability. I think weights can do that if you don't cross train somehow, so I'm just going to try this. I also added some floor exercises today because I don't want to do the hip abductors every day though I absolutely love them. I think on balance, I'm not going to push the weights as hard as the yoga because I really need a deep stretch and yoga builds strength too. I'm just going on and on about this because it's part of my new idea to try and ... get well... or whatever is possible in that way. Weight loss, fitness, mind training, I really like this as a way of dealing with schizophrenia. I'm also looking at my diet, since weight loss is on my mind. I eat Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisines every day, and sometimes some Amy's Vegetarian thrown in. It's more expensive, like twice as expensive, but it is just really good food. Anyway, I checked the fat grams and I'm on about 900 calories a day and I'm only having 7 grams of fat today, according to the nutrition panel. So I don't have to change what I'm doing, but I am interested in pushing myself to try more of a variety of things, as a mental and creative exercise. I'm doing smoothies in the morning, at least today I did, and it has 0 fat. And on other days I have had avocado on toast, which is tons of fat, but apparently it's the "good kind", whatever that is all about. And i'm going to try some Ayervedic things from my reading next week. I am happy to be doing all of this because really, I have been so entrenched in cigarettes, tea or coffee, two frozens a day instead of just one as I'm doing now. I was such a creature of habit and really I did it so that I would have more of a chance to stay out of the hospital. If I had a kind of strict habit or routine, it would give some focus when I have episodes. But really, I think trying new things is even better as an idea, and it's less about maintenance and more about healing that way. I know so many people who can't deal with the word healing, but really I just you know, embrace it I mean I want out, you know?
0 Comments
Favorites from The Surfer's Journal, October/November 2016. I don't really know why I love these magazines, Transworld, all those guys, I just know that i do. Twenty years ago I moved to Los Angeles, from London and I wanted to think about something new and so I started looking at these publications and then I found The Search for Tom Curren in a surf shop and I just always have an eye for these things. I guess it reminds me of my childhood, and of being American, which that, and a car, I was ready for.
Well, I had written quite a lot about some things I have been pursuing today and lately and in life generally, but somehow I lost them. It happens to me sometimes here. Mainly, I was talking about my enthusiasm for yoga and meditation as way of treating mental illness, that it can be pursued on one's own, independently but with meds and other treatments. It's just usually these treatments don't investigate the underlying causes of what for me is schizophrenia. I mean, I believe it is a mental illness, possibly chemical in nature at some undeterminable breaking point, but that maybe it's root cause is in trauma and the unconscious eruption - the shadow self, and so on. I feel these issues should be considered and addressed, having been so many years without even talk therapy, and also given that my med of choice doesn't really work. To that end, I have been looking today at a yoga book I bought years ago in LA, called Yoga For Stress Relief, by Swami Shivapremananda. It is beautifully written and organised with a well considered discourse on stress and its medical and psychological effects. He says the word meditation comes from the Latin, mederi, to heal. It means to heal a mental affliction cause by psychological stress, firstly by achieving inner calm and then in a peaceful state of mind, contemplating the problem, it's cause, and how to resolve it. He states that we have three needs which are deep rooted. The need to love and be loved by a few people with whom we can identify, the need to be fulfilled by work or activities we find enjoyable and rewarding, and the need to strive toward achieving our goals. I really liked revisiting this book because of that. I feel very inspired by the recent events and choices in my life that I have made and that it sums up with those three points why I'm so happy these days. So I reread it today and started on the program because it includes some twists for the spine, which I need having taken on a weight training program at the gym recently. I stayed home today to do yoga and read, because I really tore up my muscles yesterday with an enthusiastic workout. It feels great. I also read an interview with Mallika Chopra, Deepak Chopra's daughter. She was talking about intention, which is an interest of mine. She says goals are created in the brain, and intentions in the soul. She says further that intentions help you live the life you really want to live, and that they are thus the expression of our heartfelt desires, who we really want to be. She emphasized love, connection, health, inspiration and meaning. I thought it was helpful to find thoughts on intention, which people kind of mention but don't really expound upon, such that you might know what intention is. It does focus the mind though, it guides and informs actions. I am happy that I found her thoughts on it. She was interviewed for the Dutch magazine, Happinez, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. There were other interviews and one I liked was of Lynn Zebeda, who runs a non-profit to do with global business and philosophies. She says, "I see dots being connected, between the movements that strive for ecological, economic and social change. This is about a shift from me to we, to sharing and uniting. To create a world with new rules to play by, where profits are meant to be shared and we learn to think from abundance and longterm solutions." I just thought it was nice, and encouraging, as someone who really wanted to vote for Bernie lol. I really like the projects she is involved with, she travels internationally and puts together programs as diverse as bringing water to the dispossessed and making awareness about breastfeeding and all that to real world economic solutions and proposals. I just thought it was nice that someone with some insight is seeing a real change. She says, "it's easy to work on a global scale. There is a wave of awesomeness totally coming our way." I mention all of this here today because as a schizophrenic, I would emphasize the importance of exercise (yoga) and an influx of ideas, as a road to well being, beyond the prescription of medicine. And emotion, especially since most meds dull that faculty to the point of catatonia nearly. I think that schizophrenia is a chemical imbalance which occurs at some undeterminable breaking point, but also that it's root cause is possibly trauma, and reactions to that, the eruption of the unconscious and the emergence of the shadow self. I know that if i had not spent some time looking for answers, I would still be completely unresolved about the meaning of life and any other importance to the business of living generally, as a mentally disabled person with no real direction in life beyond basic existence. My talk therapy is still fairly new on my horizon, and most of the real work I have to do on my own, and also, most recently, with the unbelievable dedication and help of a friend who knows. I had the idea to read, but I didn't know what to read or where to find it. My therapist doesn't test or educate generally, and there are things I really needed to know or be exposed to, and it's just occurring to me recently that healing is possible, maybe, these days, and that one has to find it. After so many days of acceptance, which lead to years and decades, one has to break the chain. I just really recommend that to any other sufferers and their therapists and doctors. I said years ago that schizophrenia was a spiritual crisis, and I am finding real help with that by investigating yoga and yogic philosophies and also exercise daily generally, I have joined a gym that I can afford on Disability, Planet Fitness it is called, and I also believe that one needs really, like I don't know, hope and stimulation and encouragement and all of that, too. I just mean that meds and even talk therapy if you are in a position to get it are, for me, not really enough and that doing more with my life, while I can credit meds for motivation and weight loss (Latuda) too, is crucial to survival. It's just that as any schizo knows years go on and on and living at the level of existence alone is like what, kind of deadly, actually. Even statistics show that schizophrenics die on average 25 years earlier than others who are healthy. So, look into all kinds of ideas and thoughts for activity and education for yourself or your potential patients, I know some of you are students. It is really really important and goes untreated usually. I just have the great fortune of a friend who cares, or I would be smoking and drinking coffee to my early grave. Look into it. Glass and wood installation, Museum of Art. I started today reading some more of my book I ordered earlier this year, entitled Open to Desire. It is kind of a difficult book. He emphasizes disappointment, whereas I should think desire is a positive emotion with a positive outcome. He cites a lot of cases from his practice, and these are people with pathologies, deep ones, and so they are not even knowing what is desire, in my opinion.
I have been studying Buddhism for about 20 years in earnest, and desire is certainly criticized a lot in that discipline. Wanting what you can't have or don't have isn't necessarily desire though. In this sense it is also not the root of suffering, as has been suggested everywhere. Desire is more positive and forthcoming if you let it be. I have kind of had enough of the mantra of suffering is unavoidable. It's not necessarily suffering then. For me, being open to desire has had me join a gym, which has me spending some of my money which I otherwise don't even enjoy, and enjoyment is unavoidable if you pursue it. I know I know, it's that I really did suffer for a lot of years, and accepting it was a first step but then you have to step out of it, if you possibly can. Zen and other disciplines emphasize the small pleasures and appreciations in life and how is this not even a result of desire. The perfect blackberry. A new shampoo. So it is not the root of all suffering, it is the way out of suffering in my opinion, and when I think of Dr Epstein's patients, I just think they are truly suffering because they don't even know what they want or desire, so they binge eat or engage in sadomasochism or whatever, I haven't finished the book. The guy who was indulging in S and M was a married lawyer who was frustrated with his wife and under pressure from work, at which he excelled. He quit Dr Epstein's practice and some months later found a guru, who told him to stop buying sex altogether and so he did. There is no word on whether he was able to reestablish a communication with his wife. It wasn't desire, it was indulgence, which is not the same thing at all, his desire was a spiritual awakening, I would say. So, I will finish this book because I find some clarity in doing that, but I don't recommend this book, it's dull and fails to illuminate. After reading I went to Barnes and Noble to look at magazines and I found a really really good surf one, called The Surfer's Journal. It is a really beautifully produced publication and I enjoyed reading it cover to cover. The subscription price is $66 a year, so I don't know which surfers will read it at that price, but I just bought one and it is really great. It had an afterward even by Jack Kerouac, ok ok I know but I do love his work. It was from a book of his I hadn't heard of and I want to look it up. It is called The Town and the City, 1950. "Day after day they sailed further north, past the coasts of Maine, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Newfoundland, through the fogs, over the ghostly Grand Banks, out into the ocean-spaces The air grew colder and the winds stronger, something hoary and gray came into the sea and the sunsets lowered fabulously in icy fiery colors. It was the immense, lovely, cloud-sashed Arctic sunset at midnight, the icebergs as big as hills a mile off, with waters crashing slowly and ponderously upon them, the porpoises with their Mona Lisa smiles, disporting and diving in formations and bitter cold, and North Pole grayness ahead. It was the fantastic North of men's souls, the place of Thor and the Ice Kings and monarchial coasts, the place of whales and polar birds, of craggy rocks washed by forlorn waters thousands of miles from man, the last place." Kerouac had been a merchant marine for a while. The photo editor of this magazine is called Jeff Divine, lol. Surely. I also loved the page about the contributors and learning about them, it was engaging and well written. One of them is a young man from Australia who now lives in Japan... I just like things like that. My workouts are going well and every day I can see and feel a difference. i have increased my reps and sets a little, and I have, like today, started to add machines that I really like to other days. I was able to walk today, but foot still a little upset so I cannot run yet. Maybe in a week. I also went to Walgreens and bought some nail polish and some lipstick and some hair ornaments, since I have lost the one I have worn since I was forty-five, lol. I am really like, overdue for some improvements, so yeah, I'm doing things like that. I also found a Dutch magazine called Happinez, which had an interview with my favorite Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. I was going to say she is my favorite writer, Buddhist writer, but really I also love Thich Naht Hanh, and I think he is very good at people who are more in the general way of things, whereas Pema really works with people who have catastrophic events going on. Each one is a treasure. Anyway, it is a good looking magazine and it had some yoga and Ayerveda, which i like, but I got kind of overexposed to the richness that goes along with the business of this kind of lifestyle interest - precious jewelry, precious art, precious materials of every kind, a really really precious altar, and I just am like, you know, maybe not that much of a consumer, though I have had my souvenirs from some travel and I even had what might be termed an altar, or a display for a while. But my problem was that I would stare at it, and I just didn't want to be transfixed. i wanted to let go and have more motion and activity, mental and physical, in my life. It's an interesting magazine though and it profiles some interesting people, lots of martial artists, for example. I bought it, it's fine, it's just you know, kind of overloaded with, uh, richness. The kind of thing I usually avoid, but the interviews and even the recipes looked good. Like, the recipes you can actually come up with something like that in your house and it would be really nice. I look at this carefully, because I have had some culinary disasters in my life from being attracted to recipes in magazines, which often don't even have a test kitchen. Anyway, I can do this and I will, I have been looking for some new ideas, and the thing I also like is, I can eat the recipes that are not for my type and still have a great time lol. I like this. So this is my life, this is my Saturday, and not once have I mentioned my diagnosis or my meds, until just now. Things are going well. x Josef Albers at the Museum of Art. It was really nice to see these paintings in real life. I had cut pictures of his paintings out of a magazine decades ago and put them in some long lost journal. I never thought I would try and paint something in the same general area of expression as this, but I started to do that last year. I was inspired by late, fellow schizophrenic Agnes Martin, I have mentioned her here before. I like the formality of the composition and the colors are great to me. I wanted something very somber and easy to paint, as I had kind of lost my feeling for the brush after years on medicines and I wanted to depart from the bright, kind of citrusy palette I had used in university and after that.
I finished my Introvert Power book this afternoon. It was kind of dense and energetic and very informative with lots of references to other specialists and authors, which i always enjoy. I thought that this sort of information should be taught in school, like it's just so incredibly good to know because, according to Laurie Helgoe, the author of the book, more than half - just slightly more than half - of the population is introverted. She describes the qualities of an introvert and the varieties and combinations in quite good detail, and, in short, introverts listen, observe, analyse and collect impressions. They are a yin energy, dark and cool. Of course, there is a spectrum, and she explains that introverts may act like extroverts occasionally and vice versa. She refers to Jung a lot, and she explains the shadow self, and I was so glad because in the last couple of years I had been looking for a good explanation of what that is. She says, "All of the parts of ourselves that we reject go into the unconscious in the form of the shadow archetype. The parts we approve of become the persona." She also writes, "... every mental disorder is only an extreme of the human condition." Maybe that was a quote of a quote, I think it was, sorry my notes are sloppy there. Anyway, it was all very interesting and she even quoted Vincent Van Gogh, whose letters i really love, in describing the loneliness of the introvert. "One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it." It makes me appreciate my life and she does talk about the importance of the internet to an introvert. It's just my friends are mostly online and really, it's so nice to have that. I don't know or remember life before the net anymore. But it is a way to experience an intimacy in conversation and to write, an art form she describes as kind of essential to the introvert type, as I have mentioned. Certainly I would not have been granted Disability if I had not been able to write down my experiences as evidence, instead of when I had sat down with a medical judge and my lawyer, I just couldn't talk and so the appeal with the written application was a life saver. One of the reasons I wanted to read this book is that I had randomly opened it in the store and she talked a little about her experience as an introvert, with children. She grew up as one of 10 children in Minnesota, and she had to have therapy because she only wanted two children herself and it made her feel guilty. I just found it interesting and went back later to pick up the book. It's not the theme of the book, but i like what she said. She wrote that babies remind you of what comes of receiving, waiting and trusting. Having lost one quite early in the pregnancy, I certainly had some of those emotions and I was just glad to read anything of this nature because people just kind of go about having children and they never really discuss what it is like emotionally or mentally generally. In fact, I am surprised at the way people just kind of expect children and babies to be around, as if it wasn't an event in which the mother is 7 times more likely to die, for instance, lol. People are so brave. I mean, you know, it's nice to read that people have to think about this kind of thing too. Just an aside. She talks about the importance of writing for an introvert too, and really she just kind of trips off all kinds of facts at great speed. It was interesting and I'm glad I read it. She wrote, "the road to healthy psychology is to get an identity and then lose it." I watched a film called Carol last night, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Cate Blanchett, who I kind of really look out for I think she's great. It was a really beautiful romance between two women and I thought it was a good film. It reminded me of the only time I have ever been attracted to a woman in my life, I am generally very very heterosexual and really, I didn't even remember this crush until I saw the film. The object of my affection was a blues singer in Nashville and it's just really unlikely this attraction but it was very strong for a few months and quite magnetic. I think it was a prelude to my breakdown a couple of years later. She had a boyfriend who burned her with cigarettes, and I didn't see the burns until what was to be the last day of filming. I was operating the camera and we were in front of her house and her sister came outside with her son, and I was kneeling down and the boy came right to the lens and put his eye there, he was touching the camera with his face. I started to stand again and I noticed that he had cigarette burns in a circle around both wrists and both ankles, and that the singer I was so taken with had an enormous one on her ankle, a burn. I started to kind of lose it and I asked my partner, who was my husband to take me home, immediately. I was not able to calm down and so he took me on a drive for a few days through Mississippi. I cried like the whole time. So anyway, that was my brush with that kind of experience. I remember she visited London, where we lived, for part of the filming project, and we were invited to the country house of an American chicken billionaire, who was a fan and a kind of sponsor of her. As we sat down to dinner I just remember that sitting next to her was like a magnet, very strong, and I even wondered if it was some kind of sound equipment thing, lol. But, yeah, for a few weeks leading into a couple of months I would sing to myself and think of her. Anyway, Haynes' film is lovely. Museum of Art. I missed my psychiatrist's appointment for the second time in a row today. Both appointments were for the afternoon and my mind is on other things then. I have rescheduled for a 9am. The thing is, it's not even seeing a psychiatrist anymore, it's just a nurse who renews your prescription. I hope it goes well, this new substition. I 'm used to a Doctor, and last time I saw the nurse I had to tell her what to do. Not great.
I took a picture of this statue for inspiration. I have joined a gym, which I have mentioned and I am doing quite well with it, having overcome an ankle sprain today, just today, and I have lost some weight, too. I also feel really great because of the exercises I have been given to do. The weight machines are very good. I have never been one to be at one with myself physically, I am always either in shape or out of shape. One or the other. But, after my first psychosis in Los Angeles I lost a lot of weight and kept it off for about 7 years. I was really happy with that, but the thing was the smoking. i have quit smoking recently and it is really good and I'm not gaining weight because of that, either. I changed my title of my blog here from tea and cigarettes, life with schizophrenia, to just "a journal" to denote the changes I have made to my day and to my mind, in that I am no longer really using the word schizophrenic to describe myself. I am not in denial, it's just that it is very nice to have a mental break from the diagnosis and what it means to me. I have been reading a very interesting book called. Introvert Power, by Laurie Helgoe Phd. I have taken some notes, and I have also found a reference to a Jung book, many actually, she mentions him a lot, called Memories, Dreams and Reflections. I ordered it from Amazon. The introvert book is vivid and very informative and descriptive generally, and I am learning a lot about introvert styles, including one of my types, which is an introvert who seems like an extrovert... In fact, I thought I was an extrovert, or becoming one anyway, but this is the second book on the subject that I have been reading and I definitely fit the introvert profile. I am really appreciative of this kind of information. My therapist does not have a style which would include testing or educating me about, well, anything. She is just strictly talk therapy, which is fine, but I really needed information like I am now getting, thanks to my internet partner and friend, who cues up great reading generally. I am enjoying learning about these things. That half of society is introverted is encouraging and it explains my delight at the never ending discovery of the wealth of intelligence and creativity I encounter as I venture outside of myself and outside of my home. The gym for instance, is totally fascinating. I really love the people there, all ages and abilities, and mostly younger than me but some as old and older too. It is just so nice to be around other people with the interest of health and I see so many things I haven't seen before, like today one young girl, who really my god, has such a wonderful physique, I mean I was like totally inspired, though I suspect it's largely genetics for her, she was anyway, shaking two enormous long ropes for exercise, just shaking them across the room. I have not seen that before and it was interesting. These ropes were something like you would find on an ocean liner or someplace like that. Anyway, I have finished my given exercises, each of ten days, and so tomorrow it is back to the start, which is legs, which I really love so much that I do them every day anyway. I have killed myself on the ab circuit lol, and am in too much pain to work there for a few days. I still notice it with my yoga. I hurt so bad I can't get out of bed without a cry lol. It feels good though. So, I have quit smoking, joined a gym, I'm learning French and I am starting a photography class next Tuesday night. I am very excited about these changes and for anyone with a mental illness I would encourage the use of the mind and body like this. It is helpful I think. After a horrible start to the year, I have been really quite clear since I ditched my diagnosis (but NOT the meds) and since I started with these other engagements. I didn't even think I could do these things with my condition. It took the eye of someone on the outside who has really helped me with fantastic suggestions. It has been like water for the desert, very nice indeed. Cast glass, Museum of Art. Next Tuesday, I start a Creative Photography class at the community college and I'm excited about this. One main exciting thing is that I'm taking it at all. Usually I look at the catalogue and I'm like, seriously, looking at what, accounting, microsoft certificate, or whatever, because I didn't think photography would be a good investment or whatever. So, I'm signed up! I'm really excited. Learning about my camera, or any camera, has been a real struggle for me all of my life. I have only a very little advice for myself to go on, so I have usually just shot blind with film, or put the camera on automatic. I'm hoping I will at least learn something in this class, where Photography for Dummies didn't really sink in. It is just such a release for my mind to do this. The last class I took there was in 2011, and it was medical billing and encoding lol. I was like, too blind to see and so I picked up some reading glasses and then I couldn't drive home because my eyes would not adjust back. Anyway, it is really simple to do this encoding, it's like learning to use a phone book. I got bored and quit the class, but my Dad actually got me a job offer for this miserable skill lol. I didn't finish the course though, and you do have to have a certificate for this kind of work. It said you could earn 40k a year but I was thinking, you know, they will develop software for this before I get a job anyway. But so yeah, photography. I'm very excited and I have actually made some money from photography in my life, which is to say only that it is a real interest. I'm not thinking of money for this, I just want to learn. But sure, I mean, I will pursue it and maybe I will be able to do something with it. Certainly I can post some pictures here and on my other blog on wordpress and I can also upload to gmail. Just that is actually enough for me. But all of this is kind of wonderful and new, to actually do what I like to do with my life and my day specifically. I love my gym and I'm still doing my French lessons too. I'm having a really nice time and I don't feel kind of so anchored mentally. But really doing this class is the first thing I have ever done exactly because I want to. All of my other studies in my life were compromises, like my painting degree was just because my parents wouldn't let me go to art school in new york, where I would have pursued illustration and photography and film. It's just only that they have to have enough students for the class or they will have to drop it. So, let's hope.
I love the Italian paintings at the Museum of Art. I have been very thoughtful lately of children. I somehow have reached the age of 52 without having had any, but having lost one, and I thought about my divorce, and I realized that among the reasons I left was that I didn't feel that having more children than that lost one would be kind of acceptable. Like, I still think of that first one, the idea of that child is alive for me still, and so, as I started to embark on life on my own, I kind of carry the thought of him or her with me. Every year I think how old now, and I wonder whether they would have chosen school or the university of Life, things like that. It is nice to wonder, I mean, it is a kind of faith in the spirit of this child and I don't feel the loss so much as the presence. I don't think it's unhealthy or anything, it's just that I realised that if I had been able to have one or even two more, I might have found it hard to pay them the attention they deserve. I'm like this with all losses, they are marked on my heart and I kind of carry on with their imagined afterlife.
I mean, my life is very beautiful presently and I am also reminded today that my maternal grandmother, who died just before I left my husband in 1998, actually came to the house some years ago. I was trying to quit smoking and was having a kind of episode, these two distractions all morning. I decided to go into the garage to do some painting. A voice came from behind me, I had had the door to the garage open as it was Spring, and the voice said, "Would you like to take care of a baby?" I turned very quickly and was annoyed and alarmed and said, "No". And there she was, she was so real I could have hugged her. She looked some years younger than she did when she died, and she was wearing the clothes my Aunt had made for her, I remember them, a brown pantsuit. She had her same purse and shoes. She said nothing more and turned to walk down the driveway. I didn't stay to watch her go, I was preoccupied with my mental difficulties and upset that she had said "baby", but I think she meant herself, as a baby, as in reborn or at least alive and anew. It was some days before I was able to process the incident. I have hallucinations all the time and that was not what this was. For weeks I phoned area hotels and visited area assisted living spaces and residences for the aged wondering where she was, and how even was she travelling. And another kind of miracle thing or whatever you want to call it, a phenomenon, happened this summer. Years ago, I was in the way of trashing everything I owned. every single thing. And one day I threw away a Mini DV camera and the custom made cable that I used to download into my computer for editing. I was alone when i did this, and no one saw me and I didn't tell anyone. Well, this summer , my Dad decided to buy himself a car like mine, a new Patriot. He came over and he said I found this in the trunk of the car this morning, you can have it. It was the camera! It was dirty and sticky from the trash and the electronics didn't work, so I set it on the floor in the livingroom. A few days later, I tried the battery charger again and the light came on. It worked. I am just kind of dull witted about both of these incidents but really, I think that as much as I have criticised and complained and blamed God, or whatever, for my problems and visions and voices, that somehow, God is not letting go of me. It's really strange and it makes me happy these events, but I'm like, what would happen if I actually believe? I don't know. But even when I don't, things like this happen and I think, really, life is just so interesting and so beautiful and I don't feel as if I have been dropped or thrown in the bin. I don't know. It has been a very difficult year in terms of mental disturbances, but this Autumn has been kind of miraculous for me as well. Someone who had totally dropped me and had moved on and was totally not speaking to me, contacted me and we have been corresponding via the internet for a month and he has totally rehabilitated my mind and my focus, which is now on health and progress, you could call it transformative, I just kind of buckle under pressure of anything that reminds me of transformation, because I have spend too much time studying the occult and I just want to keep my mind on the island. But yes, transformation. I have never been happier in my life and I'm feeling great and losing weight and I'm thinking properly and I'm learning French again. I just really never expected to hear from this person again and I always hold him in such high regard. He was a pivotal person in my life and things he said and did had affected my thinking and decisions deeply. So I'm very surprised and very happy and excited. I don't know who the author of my life is, I thought I was acting alone in life. This morning I finally conceded that in some way perhaps I am as an actor. I actually said actor. I mean I have felt I was at the mercy of some gods for many years now, which is typically schizophrenic, but I'm kind of finally settling down about it and maybe now I expect to have a good day every day because I am thinking and acting proactively and I'm not saying to myself all day the word schizophrenia, which I had been doing for many years as a kind of saning exercise. To make myself accept reality. But really it feels like reality is accepting me after many years of mental torture. I don't want to know why things happened the way they did, unless I already know or suspect and I accept it. I think of my Buddhist readings and it is that one learns to withstand the waves, and that losing balance is more normal than maintaining balance, as in, everything changes. I don't know. Just saying. It's all really beautiful and I'm very happy. And if I were listening to myself with my younger mind, I would dismiss it all as fantasy or illusion. But really, I am having no choice but to believe my experiences and i have to say, it's much nicer than having to believe my voices and visions. Yay! At the Museum of Art, West Building. I have been going to the new gym for just more than a week now, and I feel great. One of the trainers designed a workout program for me and it's going well, but I am going to start increasing some sets and also to mix in just lightly a few more leg weights even on days in which it is not on the list. Just a little. I'm in love with the hip abductor machines, just the feeling they create is really lovely.
I'm also diving into my French lessons. My cds arrived, and I am happy that my terrible accent will improve slightly, by listening to them. The speakers in my car are good and so I can hear the voices very well. They speak so fast! But it is helpful to just try to do the same a few times, then you will just have the words falling out of your mouth instead of climbing over all the syllables. Yesterday was my shopping day and I was happy to find a little extra money in my account so I went to Barnes and Noble and found some exercise books for language, and they come with a website, with electronic flash cards. I'm glad to be able to learn from different sources because it shapes up the lessons in my mind and I can learn precise spelling and accents and stuff like that, and increase my vocabulary. If I don't seize up, I can write a tiny bit of French from memory, but I would like to be able to understand French spoken by the French, I listen very carefully and it's all so contextual and so it will be something to look forward to. As for speaking it, vowels and r's are the hardest for me, and I'm generally muffled, I have to learn to kind of sing it, in a way, to get the right sounds. So, much listening to do. One thing I did was talk myself out of a conversation book, which I will go back and get, I mean, duh, it would be a good place to start. I think I just remember school where we just totally conjugated verbs all day and all year, and I'm not thinking beyond that. Since I remember a little, I think it would be good to expose myself to conversation, just to make it well, pleasant and fluid to learn. I second-guessed myself, which I have been doing this year, and I think it's because I have been kind of opening up my mind, cognitively, which is great but I have also been kind of looking at the past and issues and incidents and I am trying to adjust my perception of what is real. So I'm a little tentative sometimes and it's irritating. But, I get there eventually. Ever since I kind of reached the end of illusion, I have been more engaged in the present and I am working out as I mentioned and it's been having a nice effect. I am hallucinating hardly ever now, I take showers every day now instead of once a week, because of the exercise and because it just feels nice to do that. I'm not so shell-shocked about my mental illness and by life generally. I have voices just three or four times a day and they are unobtrusive and polite and offer a kind commentary on my day, they are encouraging me to be more confident and they report my lapses in confidence to me so that they are not forming pools underground. I'm so surprised to be living like this, to have things to do which are entirely about my mental and physical well-being in a proactive way, and not just living wrapped in cotton wool, as I have for years. I just didn't know I could do this, and I am deeply thankful for this turnaround in my life which is to credit someone very dear to me who took the time to listen and to educate and to inspire. I'm humbled and I also kind of am fully engaged in pursuing "growth" and "transformation", goals and concepts that I had previously considered too advanced and confusing. I needed a very advanced and evolved cybernaut partner and to him, my deepest thanks and love. A view from a window, at the Museum of Art. Today I started to learn French in earnest, by writing down some verbs from a language site on the web. I only translated the present indicative, and I have discovered in later doing some tests that some of my high school French is retrievable. I basically a beginner though, with some reading comprehension. My language cds arrive on Monday, and I will listen to them when I am walking in the gym for thirty minutes each day.
I have taken some notes and really I wasn't that bad at some translation but my pronunciation is abysmal lol. I am hoping that by hearing the cds that I will develop an ear for it and open my mouth properly for vowels. I remember in school I would translate exactly, and the authors of the lessons I looked at are looser in their translations and it is not as helpful getting the grammar and syntax. I also ordered a dictionary, because I can't really find so far a great one online, and also some pamphlets on grammar and so on. So anyway, when I get bored or at a learning place of rest with one set of lessons, I can change to another set of lessons online or listen to the cds. Next week, the curriculum for the local community college is announced, and they might have a French course I can take. I am excited to do this, it's something that I have wanted to do for a long time and really, even in London, many years ago, when a friend of mine was trying for a French language certificate. I started at about 5 in the morning, and went to the gym for 10am - abs, arms and shoulders and cardio. I had a class to show me the machines in advance. It's going well, and today I dropped my beloved cinnamon melt for a smoothie made with fresh fruit. It was nice actually, because I didn't have a kind of energy crash in the late morning as I do with the melts. Next week I will be changing from Lean Cuisines and Weight Watchers to a more precise order of sushi from the Fresh Market. I'm trying to improve my health and my mind and generally it's going really well. I love the machines at the gym, really they are super well directed at specific muscle groups and I have not had a better workout. Planet Fitness. $10 a month. Go. "Live less out of habit and more out of intent". I joined a gym. I am doing yoga a couple of times a day. I'm going to change from cinnamon melts to smoothies with fresh fruit in them. I don't know. Life just got really beautiful and i just want to rise to the occasion.
My body has responded really well to the exercise so far. I am glad that I had switched medication from Haldol to Latuda, so that I could enjoy a range of movement and flexibility that is out of the question with Haldol. Latuda is not any good with positive symptoms of schizophrenia, hallucinations, voices, that, but I'm doing quite well with simply a change in attitude and reframing my view on life generally. My life before was impossibly timid. I just really was, as far back as I can remember, always full of some unrealised idea or some reservoir of emotion that was never emptied. It was like, really hard to actually feel anything emotionally when with other people because I was always wondering when i could go home and think about things other than what I was dealing with, which was people. I just you know have spent the past 18 years virtually on my own and I did think about everything finally and I just want to live and be involved now, in the sense that I am fully expressing myself and by some grace of God I am welcome to do so. I cannot believe it but earlier I thought you know, blaine, start believing it. It really is the only way forward the only answer. If I don't do this, I will be absolutely bound to a worst sort of failure. I just think you know, that if I move forward with belief that things are really what they are and further that life is worth living, I well i just really feel that after so many years of reflection that life is unfolding another beautiful option and that I won't have to just measure out my life in coffee spoons. I really really love someone and he has so far accepted this. I am just everything at once and entirely as such released from my reticence and my self imposed exile. It is just the best surprise. My therapist has said to me more than once that the best is yet to come and I was so convinced that the best was been and gone and it wasn't even that great lol. But really it is the best best and I am really happy about it. |
Archives
June 2017
|