Some: Times

Navigating life through coffee, volunteering & laughter.

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  • beingPresent

    being present has been one of the hardest things in my life. what does it mean, that i feel whatever is going on & either find a solution or figure out if i am triggered. triggers can come from random behavior, thinking too much about a topic/situation rather than letting it play out making my decision after the fact. this is my third time writing this entry, the first to felt to personal & too deep. since, i have been diagnosed my life has changed. living with a mental illness is hard, each day is a new learning curve.i feel like i am in driving school & re-learning how to drive, some turns come on suddenly & i have to react quickly to what is going on. other days i feel like i am still driving down routeOne where i grew up, cruising @ 35miles per hour. today is a good day.

    i feel clear, my thoughts aren’t interrupted by triggers or random thoughts that don’t make sense. making sense of my situation is much like a jigsaw puzzle& i don’t know where the pieces are going to land. last summer i wrote a few entries using the words undercover singleton. looking back i wasn’t undercover but in my brain. i managed a few entries before i was hospitalized & looking back i wasn’t fully functioning i was spiraling.

    my view was lopsided on an axis; common for people with my mental illness. i developed fear& began manufacturing my life based on my phone. i was in my own world, literally. situation that i didn’t understand i made into something else, that was not real. i walked for several hours with no destination& i didn’t know where to go or Why i was walking. i spiraled sober; in the end i ended up on a friends porch where i continued to spiral- extending into the next day; when the police where called. i was brutally mishandled by local police department who apparently view the mental ill as people they can mistreat& dump in the hospital i ended up in.

    i was held in the hospital & injected with gawd knows what drugs that did me very little. when i finally got the court ordered hospital i was in for 3 weeks-i had barely eaten for 2 days. i continued to get shots of drugs till i began taking them an attending the mandatory groups that also allowed me to get the right to be outside& to check my email. i didn’t have a pillow, the institution treated pillows as if they where made of gold & wasn’t in there long enough to get one. instead i got blankets. i was camping for 3weeks. it’s a hospital that the city uses to dump the mentally ill till they feel like dealing with them. the conditions where one of the worst i have ever seen.

    i was Lucky that i stabilized in 3weeks, rather than being held for 90days. Lucky. Lucky. the day i left i was given tokens of encouragement from staff. within a week i was in a homeless shelter where i spent 6weeks last summer. i hit bottomHowever, i was able to find a solution & found a transitionalHousing. my new goal is to Never end up where i was last summer for the rest of my life. being Present has its moments;looking @ myself climbing a mountain that is my mental illness. some days the slope is too steep & i have to take a break look around& seeing how far i have come. be Present with myself no matter how hard it may Be. life always throws curve balls; it’s all in how you angle the bat.

    —–>support local coffee. friends don’t let friends drink the mermaid.

  • 3paces…

    since last summer i have been bothered by how in our everyday language we have begun using psychiatric terminology to describe everything from someone that did something unexpected. the word Crazy & schitzo are used without much thought. first of all most people don’t suffer from these ailments they may have done something out of the Norm. whatever the Norm is@ the time it was said. being diagnosed with a disease that require that i take medication everyday & to

    clarify i amNot on a cocktail of meds to Regulate my brain. last summer i was medicated to kingdom come, using heavy drug cocktails is the new straightJacket hospitals use to stabilize patients. i was on several overly prescribed drugs last summer, in the end was pulled. my doctor found a substitution that worked & didn’t cause mental disruption. what i mean by mental disruption was in my case the ability to remember 4digit numbers from everything from my food stamps to using my debit card & my voicemail on my cell.

    i developed a odd posture as my medication caused my shoulders to shrug& was uncomfortable power walking, being someone that is Very active i was sedated. my awesome physicians pulled the entire regiment that i was on.since i have been slowly become the old me without episodicFreak outs. i no longer have auditory hallucinations, i can read & function in public without getting irritated & have begun a 300 page book 6 months ago i couldn’t even imagine reading. hence, what i am currently on his working to the point that i can sing to my zune; when i feel like it. knowing that i am singing and Not having a conversation with it.

    being diagnosed with 2 different disorders have made me aware of what triggers me as i also have PTSD that is now in complete remission & is very rarely triggered. in the past 6 months i have begun figuring out what upsets & triggers me. it can be anything from seeing a police cruiser to hearing someone fighting. however, i have managed to isolate & begun analyzing what may have triggered. that can be annoying when i am having a good day & disruptive when i have bad days. having both disorders is re-arranging a jigsaw puzzle, some days the pieces fit neatly in place on other days i take a step back when my world goes on an axis.

    schizophrenia is disease that most people don’t understand or have any knowledge about hence below i have included the general DSM IV view of the illness. i have an Affect of the disorder, but i am high functioning meaning that i can get dressed, laugh @ jokes & very rarely have hallucinations. they are mostly auditory. being stressed raises a signal to my brain& i either hear something derogatory about myself that is not true. i also tell my friends or anyone who is near by what i may or may not be hearing. it’s not so much the talking about it but being able to say something when my day isn’t going right.

    Schizophrenia, from the Greek roots schizein (σχίζειν, “to split”) and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-, “mind“), is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction. Onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood,[1] with approximately 0.4–0.6%[2][3] of the population affected. Diagnosis is based on the patient’s self-reported experiences and observed behavior. No laboratory test for schizophrenia exists.[4]

    Studies suggest that genetics, early environment, neurobiology and psychological and social processes are important contributory factors. Current psychiatric research is focused on the role of neurobiology, but a clear organic cause has not been found. Due to the many possible combinations of symptoms, there is debate about whether the diagnosis represents a single disorder or a number of discrete syndromes. For this reason, Eugen Bleuler termed the disease the schizophrenias (plural) when he coined the name. Despite its etymology, schizophrenia is not synonymous with dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder or split personality; in popular culture the two are often confused.

    Increased dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic pathway of the brain is a consistent finding. The mainstay of treatment is pharmacotherapy with antipsychotic medications; these primarily work by suppressing dopamine activity. Dosages of antipsychotics are generally lower than in the early decades of their use. Psychotherapy, vocational and social rehabilitation are also important. In more serious cases—where there is risk to self and others—involuntary hospitalization may be necessary, though hospital stays are less frequent and for shorter periods than they were in previous years.[5]

    The disorder is primarily thought to affect cognition, but it also usually contributes to chronic problems with behavioremotion. People diagnosed with schizophrenia are likely to be diagnosed with comorbid conditions, including clinical depression and anxiety disorders; the lifetime prevalence of substance abuse is typically around 40%. Social problems, such as long-term unemployment, poverty and homelessness, are common and life expectancy is decreased; the average life expectancy of people with the disorder is 10 to 12 years less than those without, owing to increased physical health problems and a high suicide rate.

    does the label of having a mental illness bother me–there are days that i feel like it is tattooed across my forehead, plastered& i become upset. when i began to spiral last summer i knew something wasn’t Right-although i was unable to see the auditory hallucinations. that in the end caused my hospitalization, 3 weeks on the side of the fence i didn’t like being on. i witnessed acute mental illness in patients that could not get stabilized in the facility and continually spiraled, when i had stopped. something that made me sad& was even harder to watch.

    i take each day as it comes, when things are off i don’t fight what i am dealing with instead i try rectify why my day may not be a rosy as i would like. being able to write out Loud helps. i have been developing with my photography &poetry. when the flash of inspiration comes i take it. i am lucky to be able to have healthy outlets & a love for walking instead of taking the bus. last summer i spent a good portion of my days when i spiraled walking from oneEnd of the city to the other in crappy flipflops. i am not planning any outrages walkabouts. i prefer waiting for the bus & enjoy the people watching something that is always interesting when riding metro and taking each day like a piece of the puzzle that i have to figure out.

    don’t support the mermaid, drink local coffee.

    ——->sourced quote from Wikipedia.com

  • six shots later….

    of espresso i have found a topic @ bottom of my cup. i woke up this morning feel Very fatigued, having fibromyalgia for the past six years have taught me that there are days like this. this morning i had a previous engagement i ended up having to re-schedule, & taking a mini nap to get me going. since fibromyalgia has been diagnosed as a real disease i no longer get weird looks when i tell people i feel sluggish & my feet are dragging. just within the last year the medical community came out and stated what we all know that FMS is real. there are snappy commercials geared towards young, still functioning people like me.

    having FMS is annoying because it can become disruptive & debilitating. when i was diagnosed after my heart was shredded a few years i began reading all the books i could find on the subject. of course most of them where the Worst case scenarios-my roommate at the time was blatant he told me to focus back on myself instead of all these books, i did. i also began cross training on a weekly basis & got in really good shape, the best shape i have ever been in. i still miss this small, dangerous staircase i ran up, at one point i was averaging nearly 24miles a week.

    now, i am back at square one with my shoulder being sensitive after a deliberate assault from 2 years ago, i was told in physical therapy that i would never be able to run again as it’s too much jolting for my nerve in my left shoulder. i can manage and lift when i need to-and i attempted the gym a few weeks back & leaving my shoulder sore & painful. i miss the days when i would go running in the rain, and the park i walked through would be empty. i miss feeling the adrenalin rush that i had when i was done! i have tried pilates & really like how you gently ease into a adrenalin rush, &

    work muscles i forgot i had. i also Have Time to write, even work on my poetry portfolio that i am trying to piece together for a stack of rejection letters. i was told in college that if i wanted to be a write/poet criticism is part of the job. i recently submitted to one of the top 5 printed poetry magazines in the nation & was told that they “considered” my entry. Not bad. it’s the tip of the snow, the avalanche point of submissions. hence, i will brace myself for what response i get on my new work when i finally put it all together in time for summer.

    ban flat lattes go to the little guys!