Hole in the Head

Jailbird Sister

2007-03-31T09:44:00.000-04:00

My baby sister is in jail and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I have written about her and her crack addiction in the
past and although much of what I have written may sound harsh to someone that has never had to deal with a crack addict, I hope that it is a bit understandable.

Last year when she got arrested she asked me to go before the judge and tell them that I was bringing her straight to rehab so that she could be released to me. I did it because the thought of my little sister in jail scared me and because I thought that I was telling the truth. I did bring her to a rehab in the snow and sat in the car while she went inside. She came out a half an hour later claiming that they wouldn't have a bed available until the next day.

I knew she was lying. I told her that she could stay with me over night and I would give her a ride there the next day. She asked me to give her a ride to go see her boyfriend (a fellow crackhead) and I refused. I begged her to stay with me. I told her that I knew that she was going to go get high and she would end up blowing off rehab and she refused. I drove her to my house and cried and begged her to just stay here and she walked out, still claiming that she wasn't going to get high. I knew she was lying, and I didn't here from her for months.

This time when I found out she was in jail I was relieved. Finally, confirmation that she was alive, not living on the streets, and at least temporarily unable to smoke crack. She has written to just about every member of our family asking us to go before a judge so that she can be released early. So far, we have all refused.

If I were to go pick her up she would be on the streets within minutes and I have no doubt of that. At least by our refusal we are keeping her alive (although locked up) for one more month; and sadly it feels as if her life expectancy does seem to be at the point that it can be measured in months. I told her that if she wants to end up back on the streets killing herself I can not be the one that gives her a ride there.

I tried to explain it all in my letter to her and to tell her how much I love her but all she seemed to see was my "no". I wish I had some magic words that would make her understand how much I love her and to make her change her life, but instead all I have the ability to do is to help keep her locked up for a little while and hope like hell that someday she understands.

Obsession, Phones and A-1 Sauce

2007-02-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

I hadn't realized that it had been so long since I had not only blogged but even read anyone else's until today. The problem is that my obsession for blogging has taken a bit of a backseat to my new obsession of making jewelry.

It's horrible how completely consumed I can become with my obsession of the moment. For a while if I wasn't blogging I was usually thinking about what I would write next. Now, if I am not making jewelry I am either thinking about how I could make a new design idea work or thinking about how I can sell the stuff. The funniest part is that I first started making jewelry so that maybe I could sell it and now I am hoping to sell some so that I can afford to keep making it.

I really think that I need to get a more healthy balance so I am going to force myself to update my blog more regularly again (besides I am currently out of wire.) I tend to get so wrapped up in something that I can barely think about anything else. I am sure there is some sort of psychological term for it that no doubt contains the words obsessive or compulsive but I refuse to diagnosis it and instead just work on rounding out my activities a bit more. Now, I am going to go off on a couple of minor little rants in an attempt to prove that I have more on my mind than the creation of incredibly beautiful jewelry...

Anyone that is thinking about switching over to Sunrocket phone service....DON'T!! It's pretty bad when you lose phone service twice in the first 24 hours and when you call to complain the supervisor actually tells you that if the power goes out anywhere on the East coast you may have to reboot the system. Of course the only way you would realize that your phone is out is if you obsessively check for a dial tone throughout the day (which I have been while I am waiting for my old service to be reinstalled). Of course this same supervisor also told me "perhaps if you are looking for a reliable phone service, and I'm not saying that Sunrocket isn't, but if you are looking for a reliable phone service perhaps Sunrocket isn't for you."

I can't imagine that I am alone in my desire to have people be able to reach me on my phone. I guess I am just one of those picky people that expects to have a dial tone and not have service suddenly get cut off without warning.

Now, besides Sunrocket I am going to express one more peeve of mine...A-1 sauce. I love the stuff but their packaging bother's the living crap out of me. The thick dark brown bottle seems designed to hide how much sauce is left. What's the big secret darn it?! If you want me to buy more A-1 you've got to meet me half way and allow me to be able to tell that I am all out before I attempt to pour it over my steak and find out that the heavy bottle that I thought was half full is just heavy because it is made out of glass similar to what they use in the shark exhibit at the aquarium and it only appeared to be half full because as I was twisting it in the light desperately trying to see through the dark glass a shadow fell across the bottle, coupled with my deep unconscious desire to not have to go to the store, tricked me into believing that there was plenty left. I am going to leave that run on sentence completely untouched because it actually illustrated quite clearly how just thinking about Sunrocket and A-1 sauce can leave me incoherent.

Now I am going to end this here, try to find my happy place (it involves a television and a remote control) eat something that requires no condiments and wait for the happy time when the phone guy shows up to return my old (more expensive but reliable) service.

Just a Rough Taste

2007-02-04T00:55:00.000-05:00

I have debated whether to post this for quite a while but I have decided that in order for me to write more that I have to have to courage to at least put this little bit of my "book" up for public consumption. I will save my neurotic debates with myself for another post and just let you get on with reading this one...

Before I even opened my eyes I could feel the tight canvas around my wrists and ankles. There was no gradual awakening and realization to where I was and what was happening. Even in sleep there was no escaping the reality of those restraints. I kept my eyes closed not to delay the inevitable sight of the hospital around me but because I didn't want them to know I was awake; and I knew that someone was watching, there was always someone watching.

I was surrounded by the hushed voices of nurses going about their work late at night, only interupted by the occasional squeak of practical shoes on sanitary floors. It didn't take me long to realize that two of the voices were discussing me. "She looks like an angel sleeping there. You wouldn't know that she was the same girl they brought in last night." Soon their voices faded into the background as my curiosity began to take hold.

On either side of my bed were curtains so close I could almost touch them despite the restraints. I felt closed in, trapped, and yet I sensed that there were people on the other side of those curtains that I would rather not see, and rather not have see me. Strange to feel both protected and trapped by mere cloth.

The foot of the bed was left open and I could just make out the nurses station that I had known would be there. "Excuse me." I had thought that my words would be harsh in the silence but they were barely a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again, "Excuse me". I saw one nurse glance over. She made eye contact only briefly before returning to her hushed conversation with her coworkers. I was trying to get up the energy and the courage to make a third plea for attention when she broke away from her pack and quietly came over.

"It's late, why don't you try to go back to sleep now." Strangely enough I was struck by how she managed to invoke both a condescending concern and a no-nonsense authority in just those few words.

I knew it was pointless and didn't matter anymore but I had to know something anyway. "What time is it?" She quickly whispered that it was after midnight, go back to sleep and patted my hand briskly as she shuffled away. Stupidly, I began to cry. I had missed my show. It was too late, I had missed the show I had been waiting all week to watch. I focused on that one disapointment as I fell back asleep. Somehow, it made it all just a little easier to bear.

The next time I woke up it was to the sound of arguing. There was a man shouting and a woman telling him to calm down and she threatened to call security if he didn't. She told him to let the others sleep and warned him that he is frightening the girl in the next bed. They are so close. How can there be a man kept in the same room? How can he be so close, and so angry? I lay there trying to ignore the voices and try to silently will the man to calm down. Doesn't he know that they will tie him down? Doesn't he know that they will win?

The curtains moved violently as the man struggled and although it still blocked my view I could see it all in my head. I wanted to hide from it all, or move further away, but I was helpless to do anything to protect myself from what was happening. I stared at the ceiling and tried to concentrate on not letting my imagination tighten my own restraints as the violence only a couple of feet away from me played itself out to it's inevitable conclusion. The man was subdued and the sounds of struggle ceased.

One security guard stayed behind. I knew that the guard was black because of the things the man said to him and I know that the man was a bigot for the same reason. Such hatred was coming from this man's mouth and all I could think was that he shouldn't be using those words. I had been listening to this man shouting and fighting for what had seemed like forever but his quiet racist taunts of the guard scared me even more than his previous violence had.

Suddenly the guard's voice was very close and I realized that he had moved closer to the man so that he could speak quietly. "I hope that some day when you are out of these restraints I meet you in a dark alley. You won't dare talk this crap to me then. You should be glad that you are tied up or I would beat the shit out of you." He laughed and walked away as the man on the other side of the curtain shouted one last ineffectual insult at him. I started to shake.

I was trying to get my breathing back under control when I heard a whisper. "Hey little girl, are you awake?" It didn't even occur to me to object with typical teenage outrage to his words, perhaps because in my fear and helplessness I had never felt more like a little girl in my life. I tried to pretend that I hadn't heard him but after his second attempt to get my attention I couldn't ignore the lifetime of training that told me it was rude to ignore an adult when he was talking to you.

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"Hey, could you help me out?" I could see the thin barrier of the curtain moving inches from my hand as he tried to get closer. "Could you untie me please?" My mouth dried up and I wanted to call for help but I just wanted to be left alone, by him, and by the staff.

"I can't. I'm tied up too."

"Oh man, that sucks. I can't believe those bastards would tie up a little girl." His voice eventually drifted off as his interest in me waned with the realization that I wouldn't be able to help him. I fell back into the refuge of sleep.

Over the next two days I had very little time in which I was alert enough for any sort of serious reflection on my situation. I was moved to a private room but the relief I should have felt barely registered. Things passed in a blur with only the arrival of meals and the pills they used to keep me sedated to mark the passing of time. My head would fill with questions that I was too drugged to ask out loud so the only answers came from inside. I played over and over in my mind the mistakes I had made to put myself in this position. In my sleep, I would sit quietly as they wheeled me down the hall. In my dreams I didn't panic at the thought of being locked up again and my impulse to suddenly run was stifled by the common sense that hindsight had afforded me. The wish to rewind those few minutes before I was quickly subdued and restrained became such a powerful one that I almost felt as if I could make it happen by sheer force of will. The brief pain of the disapointment I felt each time my eyes opened was almost unbearable. However the same pills that made my dreams so vivid, blurred the edges of my reality; until it became easier each time to allow myself the safety of sleep and avoid the bite of reality.

I Love You Too

2007-01-28T23:12:00.000-05:00

All weekend my son has been begging me to play one of his new video games with him. I kept putting him off because I was kind of tired, and really just didn't feel like learning how to play a new video game.

I finally was forced to play with him tonight because I had promised him that I would play with him before the weekend was over. I don't know how I could have forgotten how fun it is to spend time with my son.

He is so patient with me, even though he sometimes has to explain something a few times before I get what he is saying. He actually is sympathetic at the same time that he is laughing at me for losing to him so badly.

He also is the easiest person in the world to get to laugh. There is nothing that can compare to the joy that I feel when my 12 (almost 13) year old son is bent over double in his chair begging me to "stop, you are going to make me pee." Of course, then I explain to him that I will love him even if he does pee his pants and he laughs even harder.

Why do I keep forgetting how much fun it is to spend time with him? I can't believe that I had to be emotionally blackmailed to spend time with him and I ended up feeling like he was the one that had done me the favor. I think sometimes I just let myself get too caught up in the worry of being a parent and occasionally have to be reminded just why it is all worth it.

Just now I passed through his room and decided to give him a little kiss on his cheek before he completely fell asleep. I didn't say a word but he smiled and said "I love you too." God! I love the heck out of that boy!

Mom: The Informant

2007-01-25T18:22:00.000-05:00

I just got back from bringing my son to the doctor. His doctor was very good at taking the time to listen to my concerns about my son's difficulties in school (which may explain why he was running late). He even took the time to answer my son's questions and did it without talking down to him.

The doctor seems to think that it is a real possibility that my son does have ADD. I just have to fill out a few forms and bring some to the school for them to fill out. The forms are the typical "on a scale of 1-5 how often does the child do this?" It is the title on the forms that got my attention however. The forms are labled "parent informant" and "teacher informant."

Now, being a "survivor" of adolescent psychiatric care in which I often felt abandoned and betrayed by the adults in my life, the fact that I am now preparing to get my son help by filling out a form in which I am identified as an "informant" is a bit disturbing to me.

I realize that it is just the term they are using for "the parent providing the information on this form" but it set me back a few steps nonetheless.

I would like to suggest a few things they could put in place of the title "informant" that would perhaps be more appropriate to the situation.

1. Concerned parent

2. Parent with no agenda other than taking care of offspring

3. Parent filling out the form

4. Literate parent

5. Parent taking time out of day to spend time reflecting on child's needs

6. Parent with a pen

I would basicly accept any term that doesn't sound as if I am turning my son in to the police or the Gestapo. Maybe I should just cross it out on the form and write in my own term. At least then I would leave little doubt that my son may have a genetic predisposition to mental illness.

Lack of Focus

2007-01-22T22:52:00.000-05:00

I can't seem to focus at the moment. Nothing is wrong, I just have so many things that I want to talk about that I can't bring any of them into enough detail in my mind to really write about any of them. Here are a few of the things that I started to write about but erased after just a few sentences...

1. My husband's aggravating habit of constantly worrying about what we don't have and never focusing on what we do have

2. My aggravating habit of never worrying about what we should be working towards instead of just living for the moment

3. Further reflections on bullying

4. How much our childhoods effect how we view the world

5.Worries that some day my children will be blaming their failures in life on my parenting and the childhood I provided for them

I guess I will just save all of those things for another post on another day and instead mention something that has been on my mind all day (ever since watching Elizabeth Taylor in "Cleopatra" this morning). I was shocked to realize that when writing this entry that I had completely forgotten one of my "some day when I am skinny" dreams. Amongst all of the talk about belly button rings, scars, and harem costumes I completely forgot that I have always wanted to start wearing those bracelets that go around the biceps. I am not sure what they are called (arm bracelets) but any time Cleopatra is depicted she always seems to have one on. I think they are sexy and unusual. I can't figure out why you don't see people wearing them more often.

The best news is that I don't seem to have any scars that would interfere with proudly showing off a (soon to be) finely toned upper arm so no flesh colored body suits would be required.

That is all...good night.

Bullies Suck

2007-01-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I really hate kids. Of course I don't mean my children I mean other people's kids.

My 12 year old has come home sobbing hysterically for the past two days because of getting teased on the bus. He has a long history of getting picked on and I have spent countless hours trying to explain to him that there have been bullies since the beginning of time and the fault lies with them, not with him. He has tried ignoring them and has even taken to bringing a portable CD player with him so that he can turn up the music on his headphones and try to drown them out..but he says that now they just shout their taunts.

They call him "gay" and a cry baby. They make fun of him because he lives in an apartment and claim that he is poor (oh how well I remember childhood when being called poor was one of the worst insults).

Although this situation has existed for quite a while and has made me cry more than once that isn't what I want to talk about right now. Right now I want to take a moment to just be pissed off.

Who the hell do these kids think they are? Why does it make them feel good to pick on a kid that is trying to just ride the bus home? Where are their parents that they don't realize that they are raising evil little monsters? Why does the school hang up posters all over the school about bullying and yet never seem to follow through unless someone throws a punch?

There are times that I want to follow him onto the bus and threaten every single one of those future convicts (or politicians) with severe bodily harm if they don't stop picking on my wonderful boy. I want to call up all of their parents and threaten them with some sort of divine retribution if they don't start paying attention to the kind of children that they are raising.

I want to walk into the school and shove those "anti-bullying" feel good posters up the staff butts and see if that gets their attention.

Of course, I will do none of these things. I will probably make a call to the school in which I very meekly express my concerns, I will receive useless platitudes in return, and I will start giving my son rides to school so that he doesn't have to ride the bus with the bullies.

Still, a girl can dream can't she?

P.S. Please keep in mind that I am letting off a bit of steam. No children, parents, or teachers were harmed during the writing of this post and such actions are in no way condoned by the author of this blog. I am now going to go check out this site and see if that helps. It couldn't hurt I guess, at least not as much as my idea about where to put the posters.

Lost and Found

2007-01-17T23:11:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I fell behind in my payments on a storage area. Inside of this storage area I was keeping every photo I had of my son, the blanket that my mother had crocheted for me before she died, a bunch of pictures that my son had drawn in school, a desk that was hand made by my son's great-grandfather and various other items that were irreplaceable. My storage area was apparently auctioned off when I didn't pay the bill and everything was sold.

I was left without a single memento. The knowledge that I had actually reached a point in which I allowed my memories, and my son's, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder was one of the true low points in my life. The worst part was knowing that whoever had bought the items in my storage area probably felt that they had made a bad deal with all the crap they had ended up buying sight unseen. The fact that most of it would get thrown away left me so angry at myself that what little ability I had to function at that point completely disappeared if I allowed myself to think about it for even a second.

It was the ultimate example of how easy it was for me to allow myself to put off dealing with the every day crap that needed to be done, because the simplest tasks were so overwhelming to me. I didn't know how I was ever going to be able to face the fact that it was all gone, let alone be able to someday explain to my son how I had allowed it to happen.

Of course I knew that it was just stuff. Over and over I kept telling myself that I still had the memories even without the mementos but how often does the brain actually win that kind of fight?

As tragic as the loss of those things were to me, it is strange how little it takes to remind you of what you still have. Two years ago my aunt gave us her old Christmas tree and ornaments. It was when I was looking through the ornaments to find out what we had that I came across a little brown rocking horse. I couldn't believe it...amongst the precious mementos that I had lost had been my son's "baby's first Christmas" ornament that had been a white rocking horse exactly like this one, except for the color. Just as I felt myself starting to cry I noticed that there was a year printed on it, and the tears fell unchecked. "1994" was printed on the bottom of the ornament exactly where "Baby's first Christmas-1994" had been printed on the one that was lost. Out of the entire box of ornaments it was the only one with a date on it, and the chances of that particular ornament with that particular date showing up in a box full of old decorations seemed to be too incredible to be coincidence.

The next Christmas my other aunt framed a needlepoint that my mother had made for me with my name on it. I had thought that the needlepoint that I had remembered had been in the storage area when it was sold...but here it was. Not only was it not lost but it was now saved from falling apart further by the beautiful framing.

About a year ago I was trying to clean out my closets and found a bag full of pictures that my brother in law left behind. An entire bag of pictures that was almost exclusively of my son as a baby. I had thought that I had lost every single baby picture taken of my son and here was an entire bag full of them.

Just as I couldn't adequately describe the devestation I felt at the loss of my mementos, I don't think I can even begin to describe the sense of awe I felt at each one of these miracle discoveries.

I felt as if I were being given a second chance. Although intellectually I still know that the material things themselves aren't what is important, it really helps to know that I was able to regain just a bit of those memories so I can better pass them on to my son. As much as it felt like I was being punished with my original loss, it felt like I was being rewarded a bit for getting beyond the loss. I think it felt a bit like...hope.

Professional Patient

2007-01-13T11:23:00.000-05:00

When I was thirteen and still fairly new to the round of hospitalizations I had a staff member try to convince me to participate in class at school. I remember him because he didn't try to talk down to me or threaten me with consequences (believe me, a rarity). Instead, he was taking the time to talk to me as if I had choices.

During the course of this particular conversation he asked me a question, "Is this what you want? Do you want to become a professional patient?" His question took me by surprise and even momentarily snapped me out of my stubborn stupor for a minute while I thought about it. I am not sure what I answered but no doubt it was something snotty and self deprecating.

Although he didn't manage to talk me out of my stubborn stance his question stuck with me for years. Every time I tried to make a go of it I would remember his question to me and try to make my choices based on the answer I wish I had given him that day....No.

Unfortunately I had been a patient for too long. Even though it was not something I enjoyed, there was a certain comfort in it. I found myself as an adult checking myself into hospitals when things were particularly rough although I hated them with a fiery passion.

In the movie "Shawshank Redemption" there is a scene in which Brooks is getting released but doesn't want to. Red tries to explain the reason that Brooks wouldn't want to leave prison after having spent such a large part of his life behind bars. He says that Brooks has become "institutionalized". He was an important, educated man in the prison and it had become so familiar to him that the outside world scared him. That scene always got to me because I knew the feeling exactly. Granted, no matter how bad my hospitalization experiences were I was never subjected to anything as bad as Shawshank Prison, but I knew how scary the outside world could be, even after just a couple of years "on the inside".

It began to feel as if it was all I knew how to be. The lack of control that had so scared me as a teenager became something I craved as an adult. With lack of power over my own life also seemed to come lack of responsibility. I would sometimes crave the absence of both.

I am not so sure that I have completely managed to get over my inability to take control and responsibility for my own life. Although I am happy, and no longer feel the need to run to the emergency room, in a way I have given that power to my husband. I am not claiming that he is in any way controlling but not only does he make all of the financial decisions (in part because he is the one that has a job) but anything resembling making a choice between what I want to do and what I should do, I leave up to him; and I like it that way.

I guess I never looked at it this way before. Heck, I didn't even know that I was going to go there when I started this post. I guess I still have quite a few issues to work out after all. Maybe the professional patient didn't find a new career path after all, I just got a promotion.

Kiss My Diagnosis

2007-01-12T08:17:00.000-05:00

I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder when I was still a teenager. I believe I have only mentioned this fact once (and then only in passing) in all of my posts on this blog and I would like to explain why.

It is not because I am ashamed of being Bi-polar. I don't talk about it because for years the diagnosis has followed me from placement to placement and from psychiatrist to psychiatrist. It has been used to define me, (or excuse me) for so long that for me to volunteer the information feels like a step backward for some reason.

At first I fought the label because it was the same diagnosis that my stepmother had been given before she killed herself with the medication they were treating her with. Then I embraced it because it made me feel as if I had something that could be treated. For a while it was the first thing I told a new doctor or revealed in therapy.

The problem I have with it is this...it was a diagnosis given to me by a psychiatrist when I was still a child, dealing with the death of two mothers within a four year span and was in hospital feeling scared, abandoned, angry and confused on a daily basis. I have often wondered how many "sane" people would not receive a similar diagnosis if they were under those circumstances? I also have wondered how "sane" it would have been to not have had those circumstances effect me? How can you accurately assess someone when their current situation is anything but normal?

"Feeling screwed up at a screwed up time, in a screwed up place does not make you necessarily screwed up, if you catch my drift." That is a quote from the movie "Pump Up The Volume" starring Christian Slater. I loved that movie but every time I have seen it that is the line that rings with truth to me, which is why I chose to put it under my blog title.

It is not that I don't believe that I am bi-polar, it is that I am not entirely sure that being given such a label at so young an age hasn't negatively impacted not only how other's see me but how I see myself. If I am feeling good about life I am in my "manic phase" and if I am having a bad day it's the depression. It limited my ability to see anything I did or feel without looking through glasses tinted by a diagnosis.

I wonder if there is anyone alive that wouldn't fit into some sort of psychiatric category if their personalities were to be analyzed under a microscope? I also wonder if I were to see a psychiatrist today and they were forced to evaluate me without any sort of clue as to what was diagnosed years ago if they would come up with the same conclusion.

The Truth Isn't Always True

2007-01-09T00:03:00.000-05:00

When I was about 20 I had a therapist that requested my permission to contact some of the places I was hospitalized to get access to my charts. At first I refused because I didn't want her to be somehow influenced against me because of what had been written about me when I was a teenager. Since my treatment in those facilities had seemed harsh I figured what they had to say about me would have been harsh as well.

She only got me to agree to sign the paperwork by telling me that she would let me see them as well. After growing up feeling that I was being criticised and judged behind my back, how could I possibly pass up the chance to finally read some of it?

I have never been more curious or scared to read something in my entire life. I felt like I was eavesdropping on conversations that I was not meant to hear. Unlike eavesdropping however, in which the danger lies in overhearing something being said about you, there was no question that I would find out what people thought of me when they didn't have to worry about how I would take it.

She pretended to busy herself for a bit while I sat there reading. I couldn't help it, I started to cry. She wanted to know why I was crying and it took me a while to figure it out myself.

The thing is this...it wasn't a harsh commentary on an out of control teenager. It was written with compassion, and seeming sincerity, about a scared, confused teenager that was having a difficult time. I had been prepared to defend myself against the allegations I was sure I would read and explain to her why they had it all wrong. Instead, I was faced with something I hadn't expected, a fair analysis of my behaviors. How could I explain to her, or even to myself why I found that so upsetting? It's only recently, when I was thinking back on the incident that I think I may have gained some insight to my reaction.

When I was in the hospitals I felt like I was treated unfairly and figured that the reason for that was because they just didn't understand me. I told myself over and over that if they could just see that my anger was to cover my fear, or that I wasn't as rotten as I sometimes seem that they would treat me differently. Then, I was confronted with the evidence that this wasn't the case.

They didn't restrain me because they thought I was evil. They didn't talk down to me because they thought I was stupid, or keep me locked up because they thought I deserved it. The disparity between how they treated me and what was writen on my charts seemed more unfair than the false judgements I had always assumed had been written about me.

It all made it seem as if my behavior was that much more unreasonable. As if because there was compassion shown in writing on reports and charts that anyone involved in my care could read, that my personal recollections of those times were that much more unreasonable.

Although what had been written was the truth, it didn't really reflect the truth accurately. I think I would have been happier if there had been something written about me for me to defend, instead I ended up feeling like I looked like a liar. After all, how could I expect anyone to believe that people that could write with such understanding, and sincerity could possibly have had anything but my best interests in mind?

I realize that the charts were written by just a couple of staff members in a couple of facilities. I realize that of course they aren't going to write "acted like a spoiled brat" or "today we twisted her arm behind her back to make her walk into a padded room, put her in a straight jacket, and left her there for a couple of hours because she wanted to be left alone to sleep." Despite knowing the fact that because these were official charts that they weren't going to write about petty grievances with me or put themselves in a bad light, I guess I still expected something more.

Although I do understand why that therapist wanted to see my past records I never again gave my permission to anyone for those old records. I figured if they wanted to know the truth about me, they should figure it out themselves...or just ask.

Excuse Our Mess

2007-01-08T00:53:00.000-05:00

Apparently with the new blogger features I can change colors, and fonts, and layouts with such ease that I am afraid I may be getting a bit carried away. I kind of like the colors I've got now but I am not sure if they look blurry to me because it is so late or because they are too bright.

Feel free to critique my color scheme at will, as I am sure I will be changing it frequently for a while until (like any child with a new toy) I get bored with it.

I am just a little worried that I may be going overboard after being stuck with the brown legal document colors for so long.

I think I should head to bed now because I actually thought for a moment that it might be a good idea to change the colors of my blog according to my moods on any given day. If that isn't a sign of needing sleep then I don't know what is!

Good night.

I Dream (Revised Dreams) of Jeanie

2007-01-05T12:12:00.000-05:00

I have been overweight for most of my life. About a year and a half ago however I managed to lose 80 lbs. (everybody: YEAH!!!) and then I gained back 50 lbs. (everybody: pretend you didn't notice). Luckily my sister gave me back a bit of my confidence when she lovingly pointed out that by her calculations that means that I have still lost 30 lbs. (everybody: show love to the Amy!)

Now with the new year I am beginning to get back my confidence and I know that I have the skills to lose the weight again since I did it before. I even think that it is possible that I can lose the 50 lbs. after that as well (for those keeping track that means I have to lose another 100 lbs in addition to the 30 that I managed not to gain back for a grand total of 130 lbs; and you will be tested). Yes, I have a confidence surplus right now. I think I will put some in savings for now, don't want to spend it all in one place. I had considered giving some of it away to the needy...but charity starts at home.

My sister gave me the "I Dream of Jeanie; complete second season" DVD for Christmas and watching it brought back all sort of memories for me. I looove that show and I have always wanted to own a harem costume like Jeanie wore. I know, strange. When I was a kid I wanted to wear it for Halloween, but now as an adult although the Halloween thing still sounds fun I think I could find several uses for it. For twenty years I have dreamed about some day owning one. I also want to get my belly button pierced when I lose the weight but that is a dream that has only cropped up in the past ten years or so.

Unfortunately when I was pulling up my shirt and sucking in my gut after a particularly strenuous exercise session; trying to picture the flat belly that I will some day have, I was suddenly confronted by the scars of my gall bladder surgery. Sure, it had occurred to me that between my three C-sections, my stretch marks, my frog tatoo, and the surgery scars, that police should have no trouble identifying my dismembered torso if the occasion should arise (once again, too many crime shows) but it never occurred to me that it could tarnish my dreams.

The C-section scars are low enough that they wouldn't show in the harem outfit. The stretch marks are kind of faint and low so they didn't concern me too much. The frog tatoo (lower back) is kind of cute so it feels like a bonus. It took the surgery scars though to make me have to rethink the dream.

One scar is just below my belly button and although I could go with the harem outfit that sticks to the traditional Barbara Eden "no belly button showing" style it does kind of put a damper on the belly button ring. The other scar is just below my rib cage. If anyone ever needs to give me the Heimlich maneuver they basicly have a marker on where to press. Now, in trying to determine how I would have to adjust the dream to only expose parts of my midriff that are scar free I discovered that I have about a 2 inch section around my middle that may be safe.

I think I will still get the belly button ring and never show it to anyone but close friends. I also think that there is no way that I am giving up my Jeanie dreams. I have had them for to long to give up now.

I think it is important to never give up your dreams. Sometimes you have to revise, improvise, compromise, and if all that fails....throw a flesh colored body suit over them and fake it.

P.S. Anyone that may have found my over use of parentheses in this post annoying I assure you that it is much worse when talking to me. When I am in a good (translation: babbling) mood you can practically visualize all the ( ) floating in the air as I go off on various tangents.

Ex-Patient

2007-01-04T13:51:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager I had a friend tell me about her aunt that had been in a psychiatric facility as a child as well. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to be an adult after having been institutionalized. I couldn't imagine a future in which I would always be an "ex-patient" no matter what else happened.

It wasn't that I hadn't known before that I would some day be an adult. It wasn't until she told me about her aunt however that I realized for the first time that I would never be normal. I would always have my past as a psychiatric patient and there was no getting over it.

I would imagine a future in which I was a witness to some crime and the defense attorneys brought up my mental instability in an attempt to discredit me (yes I know, too many crime shows on t.v.)

When I first went home after two and a half years in facilities that feeling of not ever being able to fit in stuck with me. I went "home" to a house that I had only visited a couple of times. My bedroom was the one left over after my brothers and sisters had chosen theirs. I hadn't even seen the house until about a year after they moved in. My bedroom had a sink in it since it was the old kitchen before they converted it back to a one family house. Even once they removed the sink and threw an old scrap of carpet over the linoleum floor I was always aware that I didn't belong.

My times in the institutions were incredibly difficult for me, but relatively that time spanned a very short period of my life. The really difficult years lay ahead of me after my release when I struggled to figure out where I belonged. The isolation, anger, resentment, fear, as well as the past all served to weigh me down.

It often felt like everyone expected me to just get over it. If I tried to talk about it I was seen as manipulative and trying to get attention. Of course to never refer to the hospitalizations at all would seem strange as well considering that I had spent so much time there. I would sometimes try to tell funny stories about things that happened in the hospitals as a sort of compromise. Apparently, when I felt short on material I even exaggerated a bit (sorry Amy).

The problem was, that no one seemed to find my institutionalization as something to be considered traumatic. I had spent years in therapy in which they encouraged me to talk about every feeling I ever had, and yet no one ever seemed to want to hear about how I felt about the hospitals themselves.

Now, I could write stories all day long about how horribly demeaning the hospitalizations were; but I am not sure that I will be able to ever adequately describe how difficult it was to leave them.

I have now decided to incorporate the aftermath in my book, but it is a bit harder than I anticipated. The people that hurt me afterwards were people that I love and the hurt I caused in my lashing out were those same people. I don't think that I ever really gave enough thought to the fact that it has been far easier for me to concentrate on the sadness and anger that I felt was inflicted upon me in the institutions; than it has been for me to think about the anger I feel at myself for my actions afterwards.

Strangely enough, it is now the support of a couple of those that I hurt the most that are giving me the courage to finally forgive myself and write about it.

2006~The Year of Complacency

2007-01-03T10:32:00.000-05:00

When I look back at 2006 I am shocked to see how incredibly uneventful it was for me. 2006 was a year that I achieved nothing, and did nothing. I had no breakdowns, I had practically no stress, and I drifted along a sea of complacency. Although I have no real regrets (except for some weight gain) I also realized that the year's non-events left me feeling....unfulfilled.

When I tried to come up with New Year's resolutions I tried to keep in mind all that I wanted to accomplish. My original list was as long as my arm and included things like, weight loss goals, parenting goals, housekeeping goals, exercise, and working on my book. I felt a bit overwhelmed when I thought about just how much I wanted to accomplish and how daunting the tasks were that I was setting for myself.

Instead, I scrapped my entire list when I tried to figure out why these were goals that I was not able to accomplish last year, despite repeated half hearted attempts. The common factor in my failure in all of these areas was simple...me.

I have been living a life for the past year based on decisions made according to what would take the least amount of effort on my part. Every choice I made started with subconsciously asking myself what would be easiest, or take the least amount of time. I have decided that 2007 will be the year in which I attempt to scrap this way of thinking and instead think about the goals, rather than the moment.

So now I have only one New Year's resolution. No more will I settle for the path of least resistance. I figure if I can just keep that one resolution in mind then all my other goals should fall into place.

Maybe I should have picked an easier resolution.

Survivor

2006-12-27T22:45:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a writer. There were many times in which the only thing that kept me from completely losing my mind was by reminding myself that most people tell you that you have to write what you know. You draw on your own experiences when writing a book so it makes it seem more real to the reader. I told myself repeatedly that I was gaining a wealth of experience to some day draw on when I finally wrote about it.

I never wrote anything down because I had learned that written things end up in someone's file to be pulled out later to use against you. Instead, I would compose little inspirational book jacket blurbs.

My first kiss (given to me by a boy that was hospitalized for molesting his little sister) inspired the rather corny blurb "Two troubled teens find love despite living in a world of padded walls and plastic windows." I would sometimes mentally recite these blurbs to myself as almost a kind of mantra.

The problem is that I only liked books with happy endings. Every time I imagined the book I would write I would imagine some glorious triumph over adversity in which the heroine (me) would prove to herself and to those that doubted her that her spirit had not been broken. But in many ways my spirit felt broken and real life never seemed to live up to the optimism of my blurbs.

When I actually began to try to write I would always get stuck because I didn't know where I was headed. I couldn't figure out where my happy ending was going to come from. It made it impossible for me to write more than a page or two before I would trash what I had written because I felt that it was either too depressing if I stuck with the truth, or too naive if I tried to imagine a good outcome.

Now, I have begun to write again. I found my happy ending, although it took me over twenty years. It's made it possible for me to reexamine periods of my life that I had avoided thinking about for a long time, because I now know that it isn't impossible for me to be happy despite it all.

I had been called a survivor in the past and I always resented it. I would get kind of angry at people for the term because as far as I could see being a "survivor" just meant that you hadn't died yet; and I knew there had to be more to surviving than not being dead.

Now, I am happy. Now, I am dealing with my past without either burying it, or let it bury me. Now, I am a survivor. Now, I can write.

My Beautiful Plastic Tree

2006-12-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

I love my artificial Christmas tree. Every year, it is one less thing to have to work into the budget. It saves me from the hassle of having to go pick one out, haul it across town, drag it up the stairs, struggle to get it to sit straight, keep it watered and clean up all the pine needles off of the floor. It also saves me from that rather depressing post Christmas ritual of hauling the tree out to the curb only to watch it lose all semblance of cheer in a rather quick decay before someone comes to haul it away.

I much prefer the stress free artificial tree. I set it up the day after Thanksgiving and never have to clean up after it, or worry that it won't last till Christmas. Even the ritual of putting the tree back in it's box is somehow exciting for me because it almost celebrates the fact that I will have need of it again next year rather than mourning the passing of this year. It feels a bit like hope.

My sister has teased me about having a fake tree for years, and even that ritual has become something to look forward to. I was raised to believe as she does that an artificial tree is tacky, or even perhaps shows a lack of true Christmas spirit. I obviously changed my mind.

I have learned that the only way I can have any sort of happy holiday is by keeping the stress down to a minimum. I wrap my gifts as soon as I get them, I prepare any cookies the night before, and I even try to load up the car with anything that I can before the morning of having to go somewhere. It is not because I am some sort of ultra organized person, but in fact because of the opposite. I am so disorganized that I know there will be a million and one last minute details that I will have forgotten and the only way to leave time for those screw ups is to have as much already done as possible.

My husband and I used to have a huge fight on the way to any family functions because of the chaos of getting us all out the door. Since I have been trying to reduce the stress in little ways I have been able to enjoy my holidays a lot more.

So to those of you that would scoff at me and my plastic tree I leave that stress to those of you that think it is worth it. As for me, I will be laughing all the way to the closet where my fake tree will be safely stored until next year.

Happy Holidays!

Thank You

2006-12-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

How easy it is to fall into the routines of a job and forget why you chose that job in the first place. How hard it must be to realize that when you started all you wanted was to help people and that now you just hope to make it through the end of the day so you can go home and get away from those people you wanted to help.

I understand how hard it is to have to fight the need to stop and talk to someone that just wants to hold your hand because you have so much to get done by the end of your shift. To feel proud of your choice to work in a profession of caring only to realize that actual caring is not in your job description.

There are so many good, noble mental health care professionals out there, and so many more that used to be. I wish I had a way to take them aside and remind them of why their jobs are important. I wish I had a way to show them that they matter and it doesn't have to seem like such a thankless job.

When I was a CNA we had to frequently take little refresher courses to maintain our certification. Mostly these courses were about infection control, and range of movement excercise. I never once attended a meeting in which we were reminded of the really important lessons. The lessons about allowing those under our care to maintain their dignity. The little things, like not calling a resident by their first name unless we were invited to, to never call them "honey" or "sweetie". To warn them before turning on a light, and pull a curtain during rounds. I found it incredible how easy it was to allow myself to start to forget those simple lessons when the demands of the job became overwhelming.

I think that it doesn't hurt to every once in a while remind people in health care about the most important aspect of their jobs...the patients. Overworked, underpaid, and often unthanked. If you begin with dehumanizing your staff, is it any wonder that some of that slides down to those under their care?

So, to all of those nurses, and aides, psychiatrists, mental health workers, and volunteers (and anyone that I am forgetting) that have somehow managed to treat me as someone worthy of respect, despite sometimes compelling evidence to the contrary, I want to thank you.

To those that have failed, I understand....and one day I hope to be able to forgive.

Dr. Strong

2006-12-19T00:54:00.000-05:00

About a week and a half after my first admission to a psychiatric hospital I was informed that I would not be going home for my thirteenth birthday despite having been lead to believe that I would be released by then. Needless to say, I became upset. I yelled at the staff members and was crying. I was told to calm down and escorted into the time out room.

The "time out" room was a room with padded walls. There was just a small window in the door so that staff could keep an eye on me. I was hysterically crying and pacing the floor. I would occasionally see a staff member peek through the window at me. I just couldn't understand why I wasn't being allowed to go home. I had done what they had asked, tried to follow their rules, and when I had been admitted I had been told that I would probably be home in time for my birthday.

I started to feel like the staff members walking by were making fun of me. At first I would shout at them that I wanted to go home but started to feel embarassed by my display. I was angry and punched the padded walls in frustration. In my inexperience I thought that was acceptable and even expected. The walls seemed almost designed for the purpose. I had even had psychiatrists suggest punching a pillow to relieve my anger and the walls seemed like a fine substitute to me. When one of the staff members spotted me punching the walls I found out that I was mistaken.

The staff member that came in to talk to me was one that I had never liked. He seemed arrogant to me, and he almost seemed to smile when he told you what to do. In all fairness, I don't know for sure if he was creepy, but I certainly felt that way. I always felt like he was secretly laughing when I cried.

He told me that I had to calm down or they would be forced to restrain me. I called him names and told him to leave me alone. I screamed orders for him to get out, but of course that didn't work. Another staff member joined him and they began to restrain me.

On the surface of it restraint sounds like such a passive response to a situation. I felt like I was under attack. I hadn't hit anyone, or threatened anyone, or hurt myself. I was only ranting and crying and chances are if they hadn't decided to physically restrain me that it would have ended like any other adolescent temper tantrum with me getting exhausted and falling asleep. Instead, I had two grown men pulling me to the floor and calling for back up because I resisted.

I honestly can't figure out how they expected me to react to being physically attacked. A million ways that they could have stopped the situation from escalating but because they didn't like how I was talking to them they decided to restrain me.

I heard the call over the intercom for "Dr. Strong" (the code for extra help in a restraint) and I knew that meant that there would be staff from every unit in the facility responding. I had heard horror stories about "Dr. Strong" restraints and I couldn't control my terror. The harder they held me the harder I fought. Staff members began crowding into the time out room, a veritable standing room only crowd. By that point I was beyond reasoning and all I could see were adults all around me and not one of them was responding to me with anything I would recognize as compassion. I was face down on the floor with my arms and legs being held down. At one point there was a knee in my back but when I started to complain that I couldn't breathe the knee generously moved away.

It was at this point that a nurse walked into the room holding a plastic cup with what looked like juice in it. She called my name to get my attention and I managed to lift my head up high enough to look up at her. She told me to drink what she was holding. I couldn't believe that she was serious. I was face down on the floor kicking and fighting and she wanted me to take a drink? How would I even have managed to drink it from that position if I had wanted to? I yelled my refusal at her.

Her response to me was "Fine, then I'll go get the needle". Before she had even turned around to leave the room I started begging her to drink it. "No, it's too late. You made your choice." I hadn't known that it was a choice. I hadn't been told that I had a chance to drink or get stuck with a needle. I hadn't even been told why she had wanted me to drink it. She still had the cup in her hand when I realized that the other option was the needle; and yet she refused to give it to me.

I can't even describe how desperately I started crying and begging for the cup to drink. When the nurse came back in the room she continued to ignore my pleas and refused to even answer me. Her only words were instructions to the staff that were restraining me, to pull down my pants. God, the moment I realized that my pants were going to be pulled down to expose my naked backside in a room full of hostile people, I think something inside of me broke. When I managed to twist my head around enough to catch a glimpse of the smug creepy guy being one of the ones helping to get my pants down, all hope left me, and only instinctual primal fear remained.

I no longer felt like there was a chance that they would see how unfair this was. I no longer felt like there was a misunderstanding or wondered how they could do this. The only explaination seemed to be that they were monsters and there was no hope of my being saved. Even now, twenty years later, it is difficult for me to see their actions that day with any sort of objectivity.

Whatever drug they injected me with did not have the effect they intended. I fought harder than ever, only my screams no longer formed words. I remember being put into the "full restraint safety coat" (their term, the patients called them "body bags"). It is like a sleeping bag with your feet left exposed and with metal bars running the length of it. It seemed as if every time that I thought it couldn't get worse, it did. The feeling of utter helplessness overwhelmed me to the point that I didn't feel as if I was connected to anything around me anymore. There was no way that I could have imagined something like this happening and even knowing what I know now, it's still hard for me to believe.

That day I learned that I was alone. I learned that safety was a relative expression, and I knew that no one would ever understand what it was like unless they had been through it themselves. My most important lesson however was that I had no control. I learned that as a child, and as a psychiatric patient that I didn't have the right to refuse anything. If someone tells you to drink then you should drink, or face the consequences. I learned that it didn't matter how wrong it was, they were the ones with the power, and fighting it only made things worse.

You would think that this would have taught me to toe the line since I knew what would happen if I didn't. Instead it almost filled me with a sense of the inevitable, as if it didn't matter what I did, I was going to lose, so I might as well go down fighting. If I slipped and talked back to an adult, I could almost see the nurse walking away with the juice cup...my decision to be defiant too late to take back.

About eight years ago, and about twelve years after my stay at that particular facility, an eleven year old boy died there. He was being held face down, just as I had been. He had been restrained because he talked back to a staff member after he had already been put into the padded room. I felt lucky that I hadn't been killed myself; but what I didn't feel at the news, was surprise.

Power Play

2006-12-18T00:24:00.000-05:00

I know how easy it is to allow yourself to become involved in a play for power. I have spent a lot of time and energy on both sides of the power play and it never ends well.

When I was an adult and got my first job as a cashier I sometimes had to force myself not to count every customers order to be sure they didn't try to sneak in a thirteenth item into the express lane. Sometimes, if I was having a particularly bad day, I didn't fight the instinct.

When I became a parent, I had to constantly weigh the answers I gave my child to determine whether it was important enough to take a stand on a "no" answer. Sometimes, if I was having a particularly bad day, I would actually stoop to the "because I said so" style of parenting.

When I became a CNA, however I learned the true allure of the power play...when you are the one with the "power". You work long hard hours, and the residents can be demanding. I had deep compassion and respect for the residents when my brain was functioning properly. Sometimes however after the fifth request for a glass of water, the sixth request for an adjustment to their bed, and the fourth fluffing of the pillow call all before your first break it became much harder to dredge up the same compassion that you started with.

I got all kinds of advice from veteran CNAs about how to handle these demanding residents. Most of it centered around ways of letting them know who was boss. Turn off their bell from the desk if they keep ringing. Tell them that they are disturbing other residents and they will have to wait; then ignore them. Make it clear to them that they are interupting your work; then ignore them. Needless to say, I didn't really feel comfortable with this advice.

I have to admit, that a few times I felt myself walking a bit more slowly to answer certain bells than I would others, but I always managed to not ignore them. I wish I could say that it was because I always kept in mind that they were sick, helpless, and this was their home, but the truth was that I learned that those tactics accomplished nothing.

They didn't stop being difficult or demanding if I ignored them, and I didn't feel any better for shoving the fact that they needed my help in their faces. I learned that I accomplished much more by not allowing myself to become involved in the power play. Instead, I accepted from the beginning that they had the power.

I was at the convalescent center for eight hours a day, five times a week. They lived there. I got hired to take care of them. They paid me. I could get up and walk away from there, they couldn't. I had choices about where I wanted to go, they were stuck there.

I saw so many CNAs burn themselves out over these power plays until they got to the point that they almost dehumanized the people they were caring for. They began to see them not as people deserving of compassion and respect but as irritants to be dealt with. Instead of allowing myself to fall down that same hole, I learned my own methods of dealing with the "difficult ones".

At the beginning of my shift I would make a point to stop in with them and see how they were doing. I would ask if they needed anything, and let them know that I might be busy and for what specific times so if they had to wait a minute it wasn't because I had forgotten them. If they rang for the hundredth time, I would stop in quickly and ask them if they would mind waiting for just a few minutes while I finished up my rounds. If I had a few spare minutes I would stop in even if they hadn't rung to see if there was anything I could get them. If I was about to start some work that I knew would take a while I would check in with them quickly first to see if they needed anything before I got started. Basicly, I let them know that they were in charge, that I hadn't forgotten them, and that I was going to do everything I could to make sure that they were taken care of.

Most of the time this meant that the residents that everyone else deemed "difficult" were often much less demanding with me. I would get teased for "letting them run me ragged", and was even told a couple of times that the reason they were more demanding with others was because I spoiled them. In time, I learned how to deal with the comments from my co-workers as well...by ignoring them.

I knew what it was like to be on the other side of the coin. I knew what it was like to be the one under the care of burnt out staff members. I grew up on the losing end of power plays won by those that were charged with my care. I realized that if I ever got to the point where it was more important for me to show my patients who was boss than it was for me to take care of them, that I would be going against everything that made me want to become a CNA in the first place.

Since this post ended up being longer than I thought, I think I will leave the story about the power plays I lost as a child for a separate post tomorrow.

Cliff Notes Beginning

2006-12-15T11:32:00.000-05:00

I've decided to give a brief background about how I ended up in my first psychiatric facility. I want to write a bit about some of my experiences in restraints but I think that I have to explain where I was coming from a bit in order to give a more complete picture behind my responses to the hospitalizations.

When I was eight years old my mother died of "unknown causes." She was only twenty seven years old and the autopsy was inconclusive. In addition to me she also left behind my equally young father, and my two sisters that were six and four.

Three months after her death my father remarried to a woman that had a four year old son. When I was ten, my stepmother gave birth to my little brother. My stepmother ruled with fear. Although my siblings managed to avoid the physical aspect of her punishments, my inability to keep quiet for the sake of self preservation did not allow me to avoid it.

My reaction to fear can only be compared to a cornered animals. The more scared I was the more I fought back. For years I tried to convince myself that it was some sort of display of bravery, or the refusal to go down without a fight. The truth was however that it was a pure reaction to adrenaline and nothing but an instinctual response that was almost impossible to control. It was not an instinct that served me well, either with my stepmother or in the psychiatric facilities.

When I was twelve my stepmothers abuse finally got called to the attention of my father in a way that he could no longer ignore. He filed for divorce and shortly afterwards my stepmother killed herself with the medication she had been prescribed for her manic depression. In her suicide note she left a piece of jewlery to each of my siblings and didn't mention me at all. I had hated her, and she was dead. I blamed myself.

I became depressed and couldn't get up the energy to go to school. About two months after my stepmother's suicide and only two weeks before my thirteenth birthday my father brought me to see a psychiatrist. After one meeting the psychiatrist decided I should be hospitalized for a week or two and my father brought me straight from the meeting to my first facility.

To tell you the truth, I was kind of excited about it all, like it was going to be some sort of adventure. My father stopped at a Burger King on the way and the chance to not only get to spend a little time alone with my father but have the treat of fastfood made it all feel a little fun.

I had no clue.

I Peeked at My Demons

2006-12-08T23:35:00.000-05:00

In April I wrote this entry about my son's difficulties in school and the issues it brought up for me when trying to decide whether to get him into counseling. Although I had drawn the conclusion that I could indeed get past my own demons to get him some help I am ashamed to say that it took me eight months to finally do anything about it.

He comes home crying at least once or twice a week and every time it gets more difficult for me to get him to talk to me about it. He is teased a lot in school and his coping mechanisms aren't the best. He is the dream target for bullies because he either cries or gets angry (or both) when teased and it is making him miserable in school.

Two days ago he came off the bus crying and refused to talk to me about it. He went in his room for a while and then came out and sat on the couch. He still refused to tell me what happened to make him so upset (other than to say "the usual") but I was prepared to wait him out.

When he finally talked it was to tell me "I bet no one would care if I died." My heart just about dropped out of my chest. I spent some time trying to reassure him that there were lots of people that would care if he died but he was too upset to really hear me. He went into his room for a while and when he came back out he seemed like his old self. I tried to get him to talk about it more but he just assured me that he knows he is loved but he didn't want to talk about it any more.

There is nothing worse than to see your child go through pain and not be able to just kiss it and make it better. He is only a couple of months away from his thirteenth birthday, the same age I was when I entered my first psychiatric hospital.

It was only the realization that I didn't want to be so busy trying not to make my parents mistakes that I make an even bigger one myself that got me to start making the phone calls the next morning. An appointment was set up for a counselor to come to our house on Friday (today).

I can't even describe how nervous I was. I spent all day cleaning and changed my shirt about three times. I was scared that I had invited trouble to come into my home. I kept trying to tell myself that they weren't going to take my son away because my daughter's toys were on the floor, or because I was wearing the wrong color shirt but I picked up the toys and changed the shirt anyway. Logically, I knew they weren't going to force me to admit my son to a hospital because he cried after getting teased, but I was scared nonetheless.

The woman they sent was very nice. She asked him the usual first visit questions like "do you feel like hurting yourself?" I felt like cheering every time my son gave a "sane" answer. It almost killed me to sit still.

It wasn't until she asked him "do you ever feel like hurting anyone else?" that I realized just how crazy this was all making me. I wanted to elbow him in the side and warn him that it was a trap. I even had the weirdest idea that I should have prepped him beforehand like they do witnesses on the stand. Fortunately his answer didn't send her scurrying for the phone to call the men with the white coats.

She had us each fill out a little checklist with things like "feel sad" and you checked how often. They were identical except that mine specified that it was about the child. I have always hated filling out little psych quizzes but for once I didn't really mind. We compared our answers afterwards (although we weren't told to we just did). It was actually interesting to find that our answers matched pretty darn closely. It gave me hope that maybe I do know my child after all.

After she left the strangest thing happened. I realized that I felt better. I felt comforted by the fact that I know my son better than I thought. I felt relieved that I hadn't grabbed him and started yelling "You can't have him!" I felt proud that I had put aside my personal demons to do what I had to for him. I also felt confident that I was doing the right thing and that no one was going to try to lock my child up.

Here's hoping that my son will get as much benefit out of his therapy as I have, that is after all supposed to be the point.

Happiness is...

2006-11-21T01:39:00.000-05:00

They cancelled the OJ interview and book. I am happy about this....really. I am trying to think along the lines of "Lead Me Not into Temptation."

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=242559&GT1=7703

In unrelated news, the desk chair that my sister brought over is an incredibly beautiful thing. Padded armrests, it doesn't squeek, I can raise and lower it and the front of it doesn't slope downwards due to a broken piece.

I think happiness is a comfortable chair.

"If" I Did It

2006-11-14T22:50:00.000-05:00

OJ Simpson is publishing a book! http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1690232006

I saw the ad on t.v. for the upcoming interview and had to get online to confirm it. I had to reread the article a couple of times to actually get it to sink in that not only is he writing a book about the murders but his working title is "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

How incredibly disgusting is that?! Is there anyone that can honestly say that they still think that this man is innocent after hearing about this? Isn't it bad enough that he got away with murder? Now he gets to get away with writing a book that will doubtless make him millions while still trying to avoid taking responsibility for killing two people?

Disgusting!! Disgusting!! Disgusting!!

Do you want to know what is really disgusting though? I'm actually debating the advisability of adding it to my Amazon wishlist. I feel the sudden need for a shower.

Whoo hoo!!

2006-11-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

These are exciting times we live in.

Democrats took control of the Senate and the Congress. For the first time in the history of the United States we have a female Speaker of the House; mere steps away from the Presidency. Rumsfeld resigned, and I decided to go back to bangs.

I can almost smell the change in the air!

Leaving Marks

2006-10-31T22:44:00.000-05:00

When I was about sixteen my father told me that he had once been asked by one of my psychiatrists if I had ever been sexually molested. My father told me that he hesitated for a moment before telling them honestly that he didn't know, all he knew for sure was that he hadn't touched me.

I took his statement as a way of asking me if I had been molested, without having to say the words. I also thought that it might have been his way of saying that he was sorry for the fact that he knew so little about what may or may not have occured to me while I was in the various psychiatric placements that he was responsible for me being in.

This wasn't an easy question for me to answer. I knew enough about sexual abuse to know that the one incident that had happened to me could hardly be considered life altering. I had been raised by a stepmother that made me ashamed of being abused because she convinced me that the minor physical punishments she meted out could not compare to true abuse. She told me stories of young children that had cigarettes put out on them, and forks stuck into their noses to convince me that I was being childish for even putting myself in a category that would include true victims. I have gotten sick however of excusing other's behavior towards me just because they were somehow noble enough to not leave any marks.

When I was about fourteen I was put into a temporary foster home (in between hospitals) while they tried to decide what to do with me. The wife was away on a business trip but they decided to place me in the home anyway since it was an emergency placement (shelter kicked me out, psychiatrists didn't think I needed to be hospitalized, parents wouldn't take me back).

One morning, only a few days after being there I was woken up by my foster father. He was standing in my bedroom doorway in a bathrobe and he told me that he was done in the shower and that I had to get up and take my shower. Not being a morning person I told him to give me a few more minutes and I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.

He tried to tease me into getting out of bed but I was cranky. I tried to ignore him and was only sucessful until I felt him climb into the bed behind me. He curled up around me, continuing his fatherly type of teasing but I was beginning to get scared. I told him to just leave me alone, but he wasn't taking the hint. He put his arm around me and was whispering in my ear. I was frozen with fear but kept trying to pretend that I wasn't bothered by this. I didn't want to look like a jerk by showing that I was uncomfortable with a little affection.

When he stuck his tongue in my ear I knew that this wasn't right. I started to yell at him. I pretended to be outraged that he wouldn't let me sleep and I pretended not to have found anything unusual in having a grown man stick his tongue in my ear. I didn't want him to think that I was going to report him, but I needed him to get away from me.

I jumped out of the bed and started demanding to call my social worker. He seemed genuinely confused and hurt by my reaction and I started to feel like a fool. I couldn't admit that I thought that he had molested me to anyone. I had probably just read it wrong, after all, he hadn't touched any inappropriate body parts and maybe what he had done was not considered unusual to some people.

Only after continuing to scream and cry about stupid things like not wanting to take a shower did he finally leave the room to call my social worker. I knew that no one would believe me, I had been told how many foster children they had had and what wonderful people they were before my placement, but I knew that I couldn't stay there.

When I spoke to my social worker I demanded to be moved but she wanted to know why. I couldn't tell her the truth, I was worried about being labled childish or worse, a liar. I told her that she had to move me or I would kill myself. It was the only thing I could think of to say that I knew would guarantee that they would put me back into the hospital. I was moved that same day.

No one ever asked me what had caused me to want to leave, and it was years before I ever told anyone. To tell you the truth, it still is difficult for me to talk about even twenty years later because I know that it was so minor compared to the sexual abuse that other's have suffered. I do know for sure however, that there is no innocent reason that a grown man would stick their tongue in a teenage girl's ear.

Before this incident I had finally been managing to convince the psychiatrists that I didn't need to be in hospitals, even if I hadn't managed to convince my parents to take me home. Due to my threats to kill myself, my seemingly unreasonable fit, and to my emergency return to a psychiatric placement it was another year before I was able to convince anyone that I could be safe in "the real world". He had managed to make me feel even more isolated than I had felt before. He made me feel vulnerable, and ashamed. He made me blame myself because if I had just gotten out of bed when he told me then it never would have happened. Now, there is no doubt to me that if I hadn't gotten myself taken out of there when I had, that far worse would have happened eventually. Minor incident true...but it had long reaching effects.

What I told my father in response to his unspoken question was "No, I was never molested. My foster father stuck his tongue in my ear once but I don't think that counts." My father smoothly changed the subject and it was never mentioned again. I think that I was hoping that he would see through my brave facade and ask me to elaborate; but realistically by that point, I wasn't really expecting it.

Bored

2006-10-30T23:22:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I am so bored that I think I will lose my mind. Sometimes nothing interests me, and for no reason at all I am tired all of the time. I'm not complaining exactly, because this used to be the times I would call depression...now I just call it BOOOOOOORING. I will get over it eventually, I always do.

That is all.

Honesty of Anger

2006-10-23T00:37:00.000-04:00

In the psychiatric hospitals I learned that it is more socially acceptable to get angry than it is to be sad. I am aware that most people don't agree with me on this point, but it was a lesson that I learned no matter how false it may seem to some.

For a long time I thought that I had learned this lesson from the reaction of my peers. Many of my fellow patients were tough kids after all; and nothing broke up a boring day of sharing your feelings and making keychains like seeing someone "go off". Bragging about the number of staff it took to restrain you and any particularly vulgar remarks you may have made were par for the course on the day after being restrained. Although crying did not get you teased (it was a psych hospital after all) it wouldn't exactly make you one of the cool kids either.

I now believe however that although peer pressure may have helped to form my opinion on anger vs. crying I think that it was something that was subconsciously taught to me from many different sources.

When I cried with my father (usually begging to come home) I was called manipulative despite the fact that I was genuinely hurt and scared. I learned that crying as a reflection of sadness was often viewed with either discomfort, or mistrust.

When I got angry I gave him something to react to. He could get angry back, or act hurt, and he could even eventually forgive me and never once have to feel guilty. He never thought I was lying to him about being angry. Why would he after all? You don't start yelling at someone if your intention is to manipulate. I learned that anger was seen as a more honest emotion.

I don't think however that this is a lesson limited to those with bad parenting or that have been locked up. Most people feel uncomfortable around sad people, myself included. It is hard to know what to say. Do you hug them? Do you give them space? What do you say? Will they find my concern condescending or will they be comforted?

Anger, however, can be invigorating as well as entertaining. I am not talking about the anger that ends up in violence of course (although perhaps Jerry Springer fan's would disagree) but in the kind of anger that gets your blood boiling and the adrenaline flowing. There is nothing like righteous anger to bring people together.

I suddenly realize that I don't really have a point to make but since I just spent all of this time to write this out I am going to just say "Screw it!" and post it anyway. Maybe I'll just buy the world a coke and call it a night.

Better to Have Loved and Lost

2006-09-29T08:19:00.000-04:00

We have all heard the expression "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," but how many of us believe it? That expression has always seemed ridiculous to me. For most of my life I have guarded against happiness because I know how fragile and fleeting it is. The crash is always that much harder when you have allowed yourself hope.

My husband has given me something that I never thought it was possible for me to have. He has given me a feeling of safety, of security, and love. I don't know how else to describe what he has given me except to say that he has given me a very real taste of what it feels like to be sane.

Sometimes I worry that I am only doing so well because my life has become more stress free. I know that it is only a matter of time before that feeling of sanity is threatened by some major stress or tragedy; but isn't that true of everyone? Maybe sanity isn't a matter of how we deal with life's tragedys, but in how we deal with being happy.

I worried when I got married two years ago that I was setting up both me and my son for a fall if the marriage didn't work out. I worried about how I would ever be able to cope with the fallout but I did it anyway. My lifelong fear of being happy was something that I had to struggle to get past.

Now, I don't worry as much. I know that it could all end tomorrow but now I feel as if it would all be worth it. For a while I have known what it is like to feel normal. I know what life could be like if I had been able to allow myself to be happy and it is something that I can't imagine myself regretting, no matter what the future holds.

It may seem to some people that this is easy to say now, when things are going so well, but it is something that I have never said until now. I now believe that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, because I now know what hope feels like. No matter what may happen in the future I now know that I am capable of having hope; and that is no small thing.

Visit from a crackhead

2006-08-18T08:03:00.000-04:00

When I told my son thatI was going to be picking up his aunt for a visit, his initial exclamation of excitement was almost immediately followed by a question. "Why do you look so sad? Aren't you glad that she is coming over?" I tried to explain why I wasn't thrilled to be seeing the little sister that I hadn't seen in months but I am afraid that I didn't do a very good job.

There was a time, not that long ago that getting a chance to spend time with my sister would have given me the same excitement that it gave my son. Although she has been smoking crack for years she had somehow managed to maintain an outward appearance and demeanor that enabled you to forget for stretches of time that she was a crackhead. That is no longer the case.

When she called me she immediately told me that she was calling from Amy's cell phone. By making sure that I knew that she was using Amy's phone to make the call she was implying Amy's tacit approval of the contents of her call. I am sure that some people would think that I was being paranoid to think that she was being manipulative by merely mentioning whose phone she was on, but those people don't know my sister.

I didn't want to say yes. Even as I was making arrangements to come pick her up I wanted to kick myself in the ass. Months earlier I had refused to give her a ride to Easter and told her that I couldn't see her anymore until she had gotten some help. The problem is, for Easter I knew she was going to be calling and had prepared myself to be strong. This time, I was blindsided.

Even though Amy had warned me that she looked like hell, I wasn't truly prepared for the sight of her. Not only was she unbelievably skinny (which I had been prepared for) her skin looked orange, like she had used a bad self tanning product. Her teeth were yellow and stained back in spots, and her hair...I guess what I am trying to say is that her appearance screamed "homeless crack addict." I picked her up from in front of the soup kitchen where she was huddled sitting on the narrow window sill. I can't describe how much it broke my heart to know that if she hadn't been my sister I would have just avoided eye contact and clutched my purse a little tighter as I walked by. Instead, I avoided eye contact while letting her in my car, and clutched my purse a lot tighter.

I tried so hard to talk normally to her but she doesn't seem to be on the same reality plane as I am anymore. In her reality the only thing that has changed about her is her address (or lack thereof). Almost all of my attempts to tell her about things that had been happening to us was met with her getting upset that we hadn't invited her. I had to keep changing the subject rather than rehashing the times she had stolen money out of family member's purses at gatherings to explain why she hadn't been invited. It was when I briefly mentioned having gone to my cousins wedding that her reaction literally left me speechless.

"Why wasn't I invited? Amy knows where to find me."

I wouldn't be surprised if my mouth had actually gaped open in shock. I glanced at my husband who had been walking through the room at the time and he just shook his head and walked out. Did she really expect us to bring her to a wedding? Everything she owns is in a backpack that she carries around with her. Even if she had been (by some miracle) able to find something to wear and showered, and even did her hair up, she would still look like walking death. The cards of cash that are typical wedding gifts would have to be guarded and every moment I would feel as if I had to babysit her since she would have been my responsibility for having brought her.

As selfish as this may sound to some people, and as heart breaking as it is for me to say it...I don't want my little sister at happy family functions. Her behavior, her appearance, and her history of theft, all make her the anti-party girl. She seems to expect us to keep on pretending that there is nothing wrong. She expects everyone to be happy to see her even though she is killing herself. How do you hug a skeleton and not have images of her death haunt you?

When she did her enforced stint at rehab before, the family was happy for her. Despite hectic schedules and long commutes many of them made time to come to her meetings and to give her support. To allow her to act as if things are okay, even for one day, would not be giving her support. Why can't she see that?

After fixing herself something to eat, and playing with my children for about a half an hour, she proceeded to fall asleep on my couch for six hours. She woke up just long enough to call her scuzzy sugar daddy to bring her some more food but that was the most I saw of her. She woke up, hugged me goodbye and left with Mr. OldnGross.

I can't do it again....I won't do it again. I can't wait for her to sleep off her crash on my couch, while I scan the apartment for any valuables I may have forgottent to hide before she got here. I can't go through another bout of senseless babble while I try to get up the courage to confront her only to have her pass out before I get the chance.

I miss her so much it hurts, but that crackhead that passed out on my couch was not my sister. If she wants to pretend that is everything is normal that is her business, but I can't keep helping her do it.

Why I boompse* (and encourage it in my children)

2006-08-10T23:14:00.000-04:00

When I was eight my mother died and a lot of things changed for me and my sisters and they changed very quickly. My father remarried three months after her death and my stepmother was very forceful in her belief that not only had we been raised up to that point completely wrong, but that she was just the person to finally set us straight.

The first time I heard my stepbrother use the word "fart" I was shocked. I felt like he had said something dirty. My stepmother set me straight however by explaining that the "f" word (I'm sorry, I can't get myself to type it twice) was actually the correct way of referring to flatulence and that my mother had allowed us to use the word "boompse" for much too long. It was during this conversation that I got my first glimpse of how completely my life was going to change, and how much I wasn't going to like it.

She tried to teach me a lot of things but I could never say that horrible word without blushing I tried to stick to my far less vulgar sounding "boompse" but that didn't work out too well. I couldn't bear to hear my stepmother criticize that word because it was like she was criticizing my mother and I couldn't take that. I wanted to cling to the few things that I could remember that made her different and special, and my stepmother's goals seemed to differ. Slowly she stripped away everything that made me my mother's daughter and sometimes I still wonder what I would have been like if I could have kept boompsing.

My stepmother forced me to eat vegetables, write thank-you notes, and call her "Mom". After she died I stopped doing everything that she ever taught me. Her suicide robbed me of any hope of some day being able to make her see what a rotten mother she was. Her death released me from the fear, and bound me in guilt. I hated her for living, but I hated her more for dying. I hated her for making it impossible to ever again enjoy hating her. The only revenge left to me was to reject everything she taught me and if that meant that I never cleaned another bathroom, ate another vegetable, or parted my hair straight again that was how it was going to be.

So many things she taught me could have been useful, if they had been taught with love rather than with the need to control. I have been screwing myself out of the good I could have gotten from her just to feel free from the bad, but I have become more aware of it. I can use the lessons she taught me, even if I didn't always like her teaching methods.

I will however continue to boompse no matter how childish it sounds. After all, if I am in company in which I feel comfortable mentioning flatulence at all then I hardly think that they would be the type to care if I sould childish clinging to my mother's memory in the little things. My children will grow up using the word boompse and they will pass it on to their children. My mother's influence will be felt (however unknowingly) generations from now every time my descendants feel a little gassy. I think my mother would be proud.

Actually, now that I think about it....maybe I just like how the word sounds.

*unable to verify correct spelling, but I always pictured it with an "e" on the end. I doubt anyone will be able to prove otherwise.

Living on Borrowed Karma

2006-07-08T08:45:00.000-04:00

I have been questioning my good fortune a lot lately. In the past couple of years my life has become pretty darn good. I married the man I love, have my son living with me full time, and now have a beautiful baby girl. My sister (the other one) and I are closer than we have ever been in our lives and I have a stable place to live and I even have furniture that matches. I have been pretty happy without getting too manic, and I haven't had a signifigant bout of depression in a couple of years. Basicly, things seem to finally be going well for me.

The problem is this, I did nothing to deserve this reversal in fortune. I didn't suddenly buckle down and work on my issues. I didn't work hard to save up money to get a place to live, and I didn't finally come to my happiness through years of soul searching efforts to change. I have gotten praise for how much I have changed, but I don't think that I have changed all that much. I think that all that changed is that I am living in a stable enviroment, surrounded by love, and virtually all of my main stressors have been eliminated. I don't deserve this. I can't really express how much that fact has been nagging at me lately.

I understand that good things don't happen in life only to those that are somehow worthy, but it still felt wrong after all of the years of hell that I put people through. I also know that I didn't deserve to have my mother die either, or my stepmother, or the couple of years of hospitalizations as a child. I did however cause much of my own suffering as an adult. I was self-destructive and self-centered in ways that even at my worst I was unable to successfully blame on a distant father and rough childhood.

It was as I was thinking about how I didn't deserve it because of all that I put my family through that I realized that maybe my karma wasn't the reason for my changed circumstances. Maybe my family were the ones that deserved for me to be happy. Maybe my sister needed to have one less sister to worry about; maybe my aunt deserved to see me happy; and my grandparents, and especially my son. Maybe he deserved to have a mother that could take care of him, and actually be around to tell him herself that she loves him.

I don't live in a vacuum, and just as my being miserable affected those in my life, so does my being happy. If my youngest sister (the crackhead, not the other one) were to suddenly wake up drug free, living with a good man that loved her in a decent apartment and was starting a family, would I worry that she didn't deserve it or would I be happy for her? Would I be happier just knowing that I didn't have to worry about her (or at least not as much) as I did before? Of course I would be thrilled, both for her and for myself. So did my loved ones deserve to have me be so unhappy for so long? Or do they deserve my happiness even more than I do?

If karma does exist, and we earn the things that happen to us, then I think I should just be grateful that so many people that love me have such good karma. Now, I have to concentrate on continuing to build up my own karma so that I can add to the pool of it that is being sent my sister, because I think I deserve to see her happy.

I Have Issues

2006-06-30T22:49:00.000-04:00

Anyone that has read any of my blog can not fail to notice that I have been trying to come to terms with my youth (and much of my adulthood) as a psychiatric patient. I have been doing a lot of thinking about my hospitalizations and those of my childhood in particular, because I honestly believe that in order for me to fully understand myself that I have to examine it more thoroughly. I think that the long term effects of raising children as psychiatric patients is not really understood.

Between the ages of 13 and almost 16 I was raised in hospitals. There were a couple of short stints home in that time but not for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I was not given therapy, I lived it.

Imagine an adolescence in which your every misdeed is written down and studied. My bad moods were not "growing pains", they were "episodes." I wasn't allowed to have the occasional typical rebelliousness, instead I had "issues." I did not have parenting as much as I had "care plans" and if I ever wanted to just be left alone to sulk for a while I would end up being dragged out of my room, restrained and drugged while a note was put in my chart somewhere about my uncooperative behavior that was some sort of indication of how I needed to be kept locked up for my own good.

Imagine if you found out that your neighbor routinely tied their teenage daughter to the bed if she refused to take a shower? Imagine the outcry if you discovered that if she refused to get out of the bed in the morning that several grown adults would drag her out of bed, twist her arm behind her back, (called "pain compliance") until she agreed to walk down the hall to a padded windowless room and left her there for hours? Now, imagine that this treatment went on for years and everyone in a position of authority that she tried to tell told her that it was for her own good and that she had to learn to control herself? Do you think for one moment that it wouldn't be considered abuse if the same discipline that is used in psychiatric hospitals were found to be used by parents?

I believe that there is no time in your life that is harder than being a teenager (even a "normal" one). I think that it is a time of your life that you begin to learn who you are and what you want to be. Much of how we ultimately define ourselves is through the horrific struggle towards independence referred to as adolescence.

The problem is, I never learned to define myself. Instead of guidance I was given a diagnosis. I was diagnosed as manic-depressive (or bipolar) when I was thirteen. It was a change from my original diagnosis of "severe depression". After a while I began to define myself by the label they had given me. One of the first things any staff members learned about me upon my admission to a new placement was that I was bipolar. I began to feel that I couldn't be happy. What I thought were times of happiness I was told were actually manic episodes. Instead of hope, I was given complete confusion as to what exactly I was supposed to aim for.

My first couple of months of hospitalizations were filled with prescription drugs. I was given pills to calm me down, and pills to perk me up at the same time. I was once given a drug that made it impossible for me to straighten my neck and I had to walk around for a couple of days with my ear stuck to my shoulder before they gave me another drug to counteract the side effects of the first one. Then I was given an eeg (tests brain waves) and was put on a medication that is generally given to epileptics despite my having never had a single seizure or symptom in my life. Apparently they had discovered an abnormal brain wave. I suppose that it never occured to them to look at my abusive stepmother's recent suicide, or my father's abandonment, or the fact that I was then locked up as any possible reason for my depression. Much easier to start throwing pills at it I guess. Luckily, my father eventually put an end to drug parade after I begged him to. It is the only time that I remember my father putting his foot down in regards to my treatment, or even taking into consideration anything that I said to him during that time.

Of course, I was not alone in those hospitals. There were plenty of children in there with me. Until I became a patient I had no idea that I could be teased for being a virgin at 13, or that the way to being popular could be learning how to come up with the raunchiest swears and being able to boast about how many people it took to restrain you. I learned to fit in, but I had to fake it. I ended up faking it so well that when I was eventually released I had no idea who I really was anymore. Living in an enviroment for so long in which anger was a response that was not only socially acceptable, but even admired, it was very difficult to adjust to a regular school setting.

I guess with all of this I am just trying to explain part of why I get my panties in a bunch over the psychiatric system. I could write a book about all of the things that I experienced (ha ha) and I still might not be able to fully convey what I feel about it. I don't think that enough people take into account the negative impact that the wrong kind of "help" can do to a person let alone a scared teenager.

I guess that I am also sick of hearing excuses (and even making up a few of my own) about how understaffed these places are, or how I don't know what restrictions they face, or how most people get into the field because they want to do good. I think there is too much almost willfull blindness about what can happen to people in psychiatric care and even those that mean well have learned to go with the flow.

Sometimes I feel like I want to shake those in charge (whoever they may be) and make them wake up to what is going on. Sometimes, I want to scream from the rooftops until someone finally takes action. Often, I wish that I had some way to get through to people about what a serious problem this is and force them to see me and my fellow psych patients as people deserving of some basic respect.

And sometimes, especially late at night......sometimes, I just want an apology.

The right wrist restraint was a bit tight

2006-06-21T00:54:00.000-04:00

While I was doing a blog search using the word "restraint" I came across this blog entry. The blog is by a female psychiatric doctor and in that particular post she is describing a time that she performed an experiment of sorts in which she asked some of the nursing staff to restrain her.

When I first started reading I was kind of excited, because I have stated before that I think that anyone that uses restraints should be required to spend some time in them. However, the further I got into her post the less it sounded like a true attempt to understand what it is like to be put into restraints than it was an attempt to soothe any lingering guilt she may feel about any role she has in authorizing the use of them.

She states her reason for the experiment as " in order to better understand what the (terrifying? offensive? degrading? amusing? ineffective?) experience is like for my patients—those people for whom I sign my name to keep them in restraints—I wanted to know."

On the surface that sounds like a rather noble reason for her actions but I had to read that sentence a couple of times before I could get myself to believe that she had actually listed "amusing" as one of the possible ways that her patients may find the experience of being restrained. Does it really take a doctor to guess that a patient would not find the experience amusing? I'm also not sure why she would put "ineffective" on the list but I can let that one go.

"It’s embarrassing, no doubt—no one likes to feel a complete lack of control in a situation. But I had thought that it was also a physically painful procedure as well, primarily because many people—particularly women—are usually screaming when they are being put into restraints"

Of course I don't suppose that it would occur to her that there are all kinds of pain and not all of them are physical? There are also plenty of reasons to scream besides pain, such as extreme fear, or anger, desperation....etc. Of course some physical pain is also involved but honestly, of all of the times that I have been restrained, the physical pain was irrelevant.

"And yeah, maybe they were more gentle with me because we are colleagues (although I certainly wasn’t being gentle with them in my efforts to get away)."

Maybe? She tosses this line out at the end of her post as if it is not that important. There is no doubt that they were more gently with her than they would be with some random psych patient from off the street. I guarantee that they have never been more gentle with anyone in their lives. They weren't just her "colleagues" as she states, they were also nurses and she is a doctor. She is basicly their boss and if she reported that their technique was lacking people would believe her. Who believes the psychiatric patient that would dare to complain?

"But I wasn’t sore, I wasn’t in significant pain, and, if this makes any sense at all, I didn’t feel shamed."

Wow, she wasn't shamed. I find that hard to believe considering that she admitted that she got all "sweaty and gross."

Honestly, why would she feel shame? She hadn't just been restrained by a bunch of strangers against her will, forcibly put into a hospital gown, injected with drugs and then left tied to the bed for hours while you occasionally got up the energy to ask how much longer you will have to be tied up and given answers that would put politicians to shame.

If she wanted to get the true experience of what it is like to be restrained she should have just gone to a hospital in which she is not known, tell the admission staff that she had a long history of depression, get them to restrain you (trust me it's not hard as soon as they have you charted as "psych") and then wait and see what happens. Let's see if she agrees that she is not shamed when she is not in control of what happens to her. Let's see if she doesn't get scared and scream a bit herself when she realizes that the strangers restraining her not only have no reason to treat you special but also no reason to think that anyone will believe you if you do complain.

Her little experiment was dangerous because she now thinks that she has the answers. Any reluctance she might have had in the past to sign the orders for restraints will now be erased because she honestly seems to think that she knows what it is really like. While I admire her attempt, I think that it is far worse to do an experiment like that half assed than to not do it at all. She didn't want to find out that she was inflicting any sort of torture on those under her care so her conclusions were colored by her desire for an outcome favorable to what she wanted to believe anyway.

If she really wanted to know what it is like being restrained maybe she should have arranged the circumstances so that she wasn't a doctor being restrained by nurses but so that she had as little control as the average patient. Or...and here is a radical idea...perhaps she could have just asked the patients themselves.

Thank you Portia

2006-06-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

When I was 13 years old and in the second of what was to become a long list of hospitals I met an incredible woman named Portia. She was assigned to me as a "one on one" which basicly meant that it was her job to sit by my bedside and keep an eye on me. It was a medical hospital as opposed to a psychiatric one so this was standard practice.

During this time I was feeling incredibly abandoned and alone. I was in this hospital for a little over two weeks awaiting a placement in a psychiatric hospital and I did not have one visitor during that entire time. I was allowed to call my father once a day and only then if I agreed not to ask him for the millionth time to go home.

Most of the time I ignored the strangers in my room and just stared at the television but Portia was impossible to ignore. She was very kind and never let a hint of condescension enter her voice even when I was in restraints. Believe me, as a teenager I was hypersensitive to those that thought that I was to be pitied and she never did that.

She talked to me as if I was an adult and she made me feel as if I was worthy of someone's concern and care despite the fact that I felt thrown away by those in my family. When it came time for me to be transferred to the longer term psychiatric hospital she knew how scared I was and told me that she would be there to see me off. She stayed in the room over night with me and stood by making me smile as I paced back and forth in front of the window looking for the ambulance that would be transporting me. The transportation had ended up being delayed and it took much longer than we expected it to but she never even hinted that she had better places to be. By the time I was finally moved she had spent over twenty four hours with me in the hospital and she made sure that I knew how much she cared about me before I was taken away.

There were many times when I would question my worth and doubt that I was loveable and whenever I did I would try to remember her. Long after I had grown cynical of the motives of others from a couple of years in psychiatric care I never once doubted that she was genuine. She was my lifeline, long after the last time I ever saw her.

The sad part is....I never really thanked her. I never got the chance to tell her how much I loved her and continue to love her to this day. I could write another ten pages about how much she meant to me and it would still be impossible for me to overstate how I feel about her.

If you are out there Portia, I hope that you know how special you are. I hope that you have spent the past 20 years surrounded by love and by people that appreciate the wonderful person that you are. I wish I knew where you are so I could tell you all of this in person. I don't know if you remember me, but I will always remember you.

Not bored yet

2006-05-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

I haven't written anything for a while and I have actually been spending more time lately trying to figure out why I haven't written anything than I have about what I should write. I think I have it figured out.

I secretly fear that I am boring. I have a rather boring life now, but I'm not usually bored. I am comfortable in my routines, and greatly enjoy being the little wife and mother. Now, since my life is extremely boring, but I myself am not bored then the only conclusion I can seem to reach is that I am boring.

This is not a pity party, because like I said, I am actually pretty satisfied with my life. I just have to learn to move on from this stupid, self defeating fear and jump right back in. This blog post is actually just an attempt to just start writing again even though I don't have much to say. Next time, I might actually say something.

My adult filter

2006-04-20T09:12:00.000-04:00

I tried to write more of my book last night and I hit yet another snag in my writing. Now, I know what I want to write but I am scared to. I have spent years trying to reconcile my father's actions with the love I know he has for me and it hasn't been easy. The problem is that the justification and excuses that I have developed for him over the years only became possible once I was an adult, and a parent myself.

I look back on events at the time and with my "adult filter" I would describe things differently now then they appeared to me at the time. I see my father as a human being now and therefore prone to mistakes as we all are. As a teenager I saw him as my father and therefore someone that should have been above such human foibles so his actions affected me in ways that it is impossible to fully portray unless I take off the filter again and write as the teenager I was.

I can't describe how hard it is for me to do this, or how important that filter has become to my ability to relate to my father today. I am afraid that my judgements will seem harsh to those reading it but I don't want to just write a book about a teenager in a psychiatric hospital. I want to be able to convey what it was like to be a teenager in a psychiatric hospital, and I can't accurately capture that if I start smoothing out the edges of my memory as I have been.

I was thinking about the "Diary of Anne Frank" (not comparing my circumstances to hers I assure you!) and I was realizing that part of what made her story so real was the fact that she hadn't yet made excuses for the adults around her. Her judgements of people would seem harsh to an adult sometimes and if she had been given the chance to grow up and write her story from the perspective of adulthood (and not in a diary that she thought was private) I have no doubt that it would have changed. She would have worried about hurting people's feelings, or seen things more fairly, but it wouldn't have been as accurate.

Teenagers don't see things as adults do so how can I possibly hope to explain what it is like without stripping away the defenses that have made it possible for me to come to terms with what happened? The answer is, I can't. All I can hope is that those whose feelings I may hurt will understand.

History doesn't always repeat itself

2006-04-10T11:13:00.000-04:00

My son has been having behavior problems at school and his grades have been falling dramatically. Most of his misbehaviors are minor events, but they have been escalating. I have spent too long hiding my head in the sand and to much energy trying to convince myself that it is just a phase. I have been trying to figure out what I am doing wrong and how I can fix it and I am starting to run out of ideas.

I have tried punishing him for not doing his homework, or when the teachers call to tell me that he acted up again. I have tried talking to him and getting him to tell me what is wrong. I have tried to closely monitor his homework and tried to give him advice on how to deal with his peers. I think that my problem is one that I find almost unthinkable....perhaps it isn't something that I am doing wrong. Maybe there is something going on with him that isn't my fault. Having suffered from the belief that everything is about me for most of my life it is hard to come to this conclusion.

My own experiences with psychiatrists and the mental health system in general may be effecting how I deal with my son. I am reluctant to seek any sort of professional help or advice because I don't want my son to suffer as I did. The fear that they will treat him as I was treated almost cripples me as a parent.

The thing I have to accept is that my son is not me, and I am not my father. My son is not a deeply disturbed child that lashes out at everyone around him. He is not the same child I was and what was good for me will not necessarily be what is best for him. By the same token I will try not to make the same mistakes that my parents made. I will not pass off the "problem" of my son off to strangers. I will not allow him to be dismissed and forgotten as I felt I was.

I have to try to come to terms with the fact that seeking the advice of a professional for him is not some sort of betrayal. Talking to a psychiatrist or a doctor does not mean that I am beginning a process of psychiatric institutes. I have to not let my fears keep me from seeking every possible means of help for him.

Most of all, I have to come to terms with the fact that not everything is about me. I am not always to blame, and I am not always able to fix it either. At least if I am willing to seek help for him I can try to find out if there is anything different I can do. I can finally explore my options rather than just banging my head against the same wall.

It isn't easy to accept that I may actually be hurting my son because I am trying to protect him. Maybe I will find out that it is just a phase. Maybe I will find out that he has ADD or some other treatable condition. I don't know what I will find out but I do know that no matter what I find out, it will be better than just hoping it will go away.

Gratitude is humiliating

2006-03-27T20:43:00.000-05:00

I have always had a hard time saying "thank you". A large part of that is because it always sounds trite to me. I have needed help so often in my life and have had so many people give me so much that "thank you" doesn't cover it. It is only recently as I have been beginning to write my book that I have come to another realization as to why I may have trouble with it. Not so much with the words but with the emotion of gratitude itself.

I learned at a young age how humiliating gratitude can be. When you have a stepmother that alternately abuses and ignores you, the gratitude felt for a kind word or action can almost choke you in it's intensity. When you are tied to a bed in a hospital for a couple of days it is amazing how grateful you can feel when they allow you to have one hand untied to feed yourself. The gratitude can be overwhelming when those same people let you have one arm and one leg untied so that you can roll over onto your side to sleep for the first time in over twenty four hours.

To be grateful for every small crumb of kindness can warp how you begin to see people around you. Gratitude becomes mixed with resentment and humiliation until it becomes hard to seperate them. Those with the power to give you something that you want or need are the ones that you feel grateful to. If all you want or need is simple kindness even the most genuine overture of that kindness is seen with suspicion. Those with the power get the gratitude so if they are doing something it is because they want my gratitude and therefore the power.

I would become involoved in a power play that only I was even remotely aware of, or interested in. It's a twisted way of thinking and I can't believe how much of my life I has been tainted by it. Funny how you can have reactions to things your whole life and never realize why.

So, thank you to anyone that has ever shown me a kindness. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think I can handle sounding trite, sure beats the alternative.

Restraining Dignity

2006-03-25T10:12:00.000-05:00

When I first became a CNA (certified nursing assitant) I was taught about the strict guidelines regarding the use of restraints. First was the definition of restraint: anything that the resident can not undo themselves. This means if they are incapable of figuring out how to undo the seatbelt on their wheelchair it is a restraint, even if it is just velcro and used to keep them from sliding to the floor. Putting up a siderail on their bed would also fall under the definition of restraint.

Next we were taught that the use of any sort of restraint was to be used only under a doctor's orders and then a strict protocol of when, for what reason, and for how long had to be written down and placed in their chart. Restraints were also to never be used as punishment and threats of restraints in order to gain compliance was also not allowed. Any deviation from the restrictions was considered either abuse or neglect. I applauded the rules and naively figured that these were new guidelines consistent throughout healthcare that had been implimented in the years following my youth in the psychiatric hospitals. I was wrong.

A couple of years ago I overdosed on tylenol. The reasons behind it are not important to what I am discussing now so I won't go into that. When I was admitted to the emergency room I was calm, able to walk in on my own, and completely compliant. As I was being admitted I was told to sit on a stretcher and without further ado they began to place me in four point restraints. Still not arguing, I asked them if it was necessary because I was cooperating and hadn't needed to be forced to come either into the ambulance or into the er. I was told that it was policy and it was temporary, just until they got some bloodwork back.

In order to understand how hard it was for me to just sit back and allow them to restrain me I have to explain a few things. During my two and a half years in psychiatric hospitals as a teenager I developed an extreme fear of being restrained. I can't go into all of the details right now because it will take a book to explain it all. Suffice it to say that this was not a blind phobia, this was an extreme fear based on several experiences with it. The worst part was, this was the exact same hospital that had taught me as a teenager my hardest lessons about restraints and those with the power to use them. For me to agree to be restrained (as if I had a choice) demonstrates how desperate I was at the time to cooperate. I did explain my extreme fear briefly and requested that they try to make my time in them as short as possible. I was assured once again that it was temporary and told to try to relax.

Four point restraints means that you lie on your back and each limb (all four of them) are tied to the sides of the bed. Of course this means that you are completely helpless to even so much as scratch your nose and at the time I was vomiting, a lot. I asked nicely several times over the next couple of hours if the bloodwork had come back yet because of the difficulty of vomiting while lying down. Instead of removing the restraints they rolled the head of the bed up and placed a basin in my lap. Of course since I couldn't even bend my knees the basin kept slipping and I was terrified that I was going to add the humiliation of vomiting on myself to the humiliation of being tied up while people walked by. They couldn't pull a curtain because they needed to keep an eye on me so this resulted in every visitor walking through getting an eyeful of a helpless tied up me.

I begged, I pleaded, I asked nicely repeatedly and I kept getting put off. After a few hours I was having more and more difficulty keeping it together. I had been told it was temporary. I had been told that it wouldn't be much longer and it was longer. I kept checking the clock and telling myself to hold it together just a while longer. I finally lost it. I lost it big time. I started screaming and jerking around on the bed trying desperately to get out of the restraints despite knowing it was hopeless from long experience. I was unable to be rational anymore and I couldn't handle it. All I had asked of anyone was to be untied and I was treated as if I was harassing them for some petty complaint.

They put a sort of cloth hood over my head when I used my teeth to pull my IV out. I chewed through the hood and continued to act like a crazed animal. I am not proud of how I acted, but to tell you the truth the fact that it took me over three hours before I completely lost it did make me a little proud. In an effort to force me to calm down they pulled the hood tight around my neck to force my head down while they wheeled me outside into the freezing cold. They then stood around making nasty comments to each other about me that I was clearly meant to hear. Humiliation is part and parcel of the restraint package.

There is much more to that story but I started to realize that I was losing my original point of this post in all of the residual anger over the incident. Why does a set of rules designed to protect the safety and dignity of elderly not apply to those with psychiatric disorders? Why is my dignity less important than someone with a medical problem? Why should I have been restrained because of some policy about psychiatric patients started by some moron that has never met me or knows anything about my history? I repeatedly asked to speak with a psychiatrist before my flip out hoping that I could explain my fear of restraints and be given a chance to explain not only why they were not necessary but actually harmful. I kept being told that I could see a psychiatrist after the bloodwork was back. In truth, I doubted it would do any good to have spoken to a shrink anyway, they are often even more condescending of psychiatric patients than the average layman.

There is very little attempt to deal with psychiatric patients with respect. It is pretty much universally understood that many psychiatric disorders are physically related and can be controlled by medication and yet the patients are still treated as if they asked for this. As if just being a psychiatric patient makes you dangerous and in need of restraints without bothering to find out anything else. It is acceptable to taunt and tease a psychiatric patient that is out of control because after all, they brought it on themselves. This is how mentally ill people are treated by trained professionals that should know better, that scares me more than any restraint ever will.

I think that anyone trained and authorized in the use of restraints should be required to spend time in them. They should be forced to feel the helplessness and the humiliation that goes along with them. Maybe then they wouldn't resort to using them so quickly and would instead use them as the last resort that they were meant to be rather than as a preventive measure. I honestly think that any otherwise sane person would go a little nuts after a few hours in those things and yet they use them as a matter of policy on people that don't need the limits of their sanity tested in such a way. Don't make me beg for my dignity.

I'm talking to you

2006-03-24T23:29:00.000-05:00

I want to be more like you. Not because you are smarter, thinner, more talented, or more beautiful although all of those things may be true. I want your courage. I want your conviction. I want to be the strong woman that you are.

I want my daughter to grow up to be like you. I look at her sometimes and I see you. I see the girl you were and the woman you are and I want to protect her and love her all the more because of it. I want her to learn the lessons you have learned without having to take those particular classes.

I have always been proud of you, even when I didn't like you I was proud. I don't envy you, I admire you. I just thought that you should know.

Face Value

2006-03-18T09:36:00.000-05:00

"He isn't prejudiced, he's black." This is a sentiment that is expressed repeatedly when race relations is discussed. It isn't usually stated so bluntly but the implication is there and I believe that it is one of the biggest barriers to honest communication about racism.

I have been watching the show "Black. White." (a reality show about two families, one black and one white trading races) and I have never enjoyed something and yet have it make me feel more uncomfortable in my life. I was raised in a very liberal household where anything that even smelled of racism or bigotry was addressed immediately yet never really examined. It was "don't say that because it is wrong to judge other's based on a stereotype." It was never "let's examine why that stereotype is generally believed and figure out what we can do to change our perception of it." Stereotypes were a lie and therefore didn't need to be discussed further once it was established as a stereotype. If someone was prejudiced they were a bad person and to be either avoided or confronted. Only recently have I understood that way of thinking is a little too black and white (so to speak).

I don't think that race relations will ever improve until open communication can be established. I don't think any open, honest conversation has ever started with "you should watch, examine, and apologize for every word you are about to say because you are wrong and we are here to show you that."

The thing that makes me most uncomfortable about the show is the fact that the most obviously "racist" character, Bruno, sometimes makes some very good points. How can someone that is so prejudiced so often make me feel as if he has said something that resonates with me? Does this mean that I am in denial about my prejudice and have only learned how to better suppress it due to my liberal upbringing? I honestly don't think so. Is it more likely that Bruno isn't the evil bigot of my childhood nightmares and is instead someone that hasn't had much experience with racism? I think that may be possible and it shakes the very foundation of my belief system. If prejudiced comments do not automatically make someone bad then by what gauge am I the wonderfully good liberal? Bruno is at least willing to put himself out there. He knows that he is likely to be judged negatively simply by being the white guy on the show and yet he still expresses his beliefs that, although often wrong, are at least honest. At least he is making an attempt instead of avoiding the issue altogether because it might be uncomfortable.

I am going to follow Bruno's brave example and make a statement right now that I have never admitted to anyone before. I am uncomfortable around black people. There, I said it. I am uncomfortable around them because I feel as if I have to watch my every word. I feel as if they have the advantage over me before I ever open my mouth. If I am the only white person in a room I feel as if I should either start apologizing for every injustice they have ever encountered or prove how I am not like other white people by talking to them as normally as possible. The problem is that I can't talk to a group of black people normally because I feel as if I have to watch every word and hope that something I say isn't unintentionally offensive. As a person that usually speaks her mind this has the effect of making me tongue tied. So instead I just sit there and hope no one notices me. Of course then I worry that I look as if I think I am too good to talk to them and I start babbling, then I shut up again because I am babbling. I manage to do all of this to myself without anyone having done anything to make me uncomfortable other than having a different color of skin. A person that isn't as self aware as I am may subconsciously put the blame for that discomfort on the shoulders of those they feel uncomfortable with.

Oh shoot. All of this self examination has left me with even more thoughts and now I think that I will never be able to express them all. I just came up with an angle to the show that I hadn't thought of before. For those that haven't watched the previously mentioned "Black. White." there is a white girl named Rose. She is by far the most likeable person to me because she seems to really embrace the whole experience and really wants to learn from it. During the first two episodes she dresses as a black girl and participates in a black poetry writing group. She becomes friends with them and then feels as if she can't lie to them anymore so she tells them the truth, that she is really white. Although she is ultimately forgiven and accepted by the group I am now wondering if I accepted the exchange too much on face value.

My question is....Was her skin color really a deception? She didn't lie about her name, or where she was from. She wrote all the poetry that she read and wrote it from her heart. I think it may have been more deceptive of her to have gone into that group as a white girl to begin with. Now, hear me out. She wouldn't have felt as comfortable putting her thoughts out there. She would have been the same open hearted and wonderful person she is, but would she have felt as comfortable expressing that? Would she have hesitated to join in because she felt that she needed to earn their trust and respect first? Would she have felt as comfortable in her own skin if she had been in her own skin? I think the only way to answer that question would be to have the same girl also join a different black poetry group only without the makeup.

My husband called me from work while I was writing this and asked "What are you doing?" I told him that I am writing down my perceptions of race relations and posting it on my blog. He said "That show is going to start a war." Of course he is not speaking literally but he hates the show. He hates it for the same reason I like it, it makes him uncomfortable. He has already told me about conversations that he has had to avoid at work about the show and how people were arguing about it. I don't blame him for not wanting to deal with the issue and just being a good man that doesn't discriminate against others works for him. I however feel like I need to think about it. Right now however I need to take a break. Too much social injustice in my diet makes me cranky.

Too much to say

2006-03-15T08:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't written anything in a couple of years and now that I finally started there is so much I want to say that I can't seem to say anything. I will give an example of all the posts that I have started to type and then changed my mind after a few sentences for various reasons.

1. By "invisible" and "voiceless" in my first post I did not mean "blends into the background" or "shy and quiet".

2. I want to finally rant about my father in a forum where I don't have to worry about losing his love or defending him.

3. I want to make excuses for myself. I want to list all the reasons why I have been a screwed up person and maybe start to forgive myself a little bit. I want to do it without guilt, shame or cutting myself off mid pity party. I think we all need a pity party every once in a while.

4. I want to complain about the pretentious looking template I chose for my blog and express my envy of those that seem to know how to change these things and make blogs that don't look like a legal document.

5. I want to talk about how much I love my life now and how I am happy for the first time I can ever remember. I want to just positively gush about the love I have for my family and the contentment that I feel. I haven't cried myself to sleep in over a year (believe me a record) and I want to annoy people with my love of life.

6. I want to complain just a little about how much I am sometimes bored with my wonderful life.

7. I still want to expose the dark underbelly of the mental health profession but in a fun way.

Actually I think what I want most of all is to just write again. I want to write for the sake of writing. I want to write even though I will never be as witty as my sister (not the crackhead, the other one) and I want to write even though even I am annoyed by what I have to say sometimes.

I want to write my thoughts and not once use the expression "little poopy girl" and try to remember the somewhat interesting person I used to be before I became a content bore....without actually becoming the angry depressed person again.

I know.....I want, I want, I want. For now, you will have to excuse me because I smell something ripe that is clinging to my leg. I believe I have a little poopy girl on my hands and I have to go take care of it. Isn't life great?!

Quit Whining

2006-03-14T18:26:00.000-05:00

I once had a psychiatrist tell me about how far mental health had come from the days when they used to chain people in damp dark cells. I didn't find it very comforting. In fact I found it kind of insulting. The implication was that I shouldn't complain about my treatment because I had it easy. I think that sometimes "having perspective" is a tool that those in power use to convince those without it that they shouldn't rock the boat.

Be happy death row inmate, they have much more humane ways of killing you than they used to. Don't complain black man, now you can use the same water fountain as the whites. Stop your whining gay man, burning you at the stake is now frowned upon.

When I was a teenager I was determined that when I became an adult that I would make them listen to me. I would convince people of the injustices committed every day in the mental health system. I would be a crusader for the truth and know that what I had endured wasn't without a purpose. I had been chosen to expose the wicked underbelly of the beast. A shining knight holding the torch of justice.....well, you get the idea. I was a bit dramatic and I told myself whatever I needed to in order to make things seem bearable. Then, I grew up.

I discovered that no one wanted to hear about those times. It was either too painful for them or anything I tried to express was seen as manipulative. It was impossible for me to talk about it without looking as if I was assigning blame. I guess at that time I still was.

I blamed my father for turning a blind eye to my pleas to go home. I resented my sisters for getting to live "normal" lives and I blamed myself for continuing to push when I would have been better off if I had just learn to control my temper and toe the line. Then when I became an adult I stopped blaming them (although I still haven't let myself off the hook) and started to blame the system that allowed it all to happen. As an adult I was just as powerless to do anything. As an adolescent I was invisible because of my youth and as an adult I became invisible because it was all I knew.

I have screamed, blamed, cried, and failed. Until recently I have seen myself as a victim. Now, I have been happy for a couple of years. I am married to a wonderful man, I have two beautiful children, and a stable home. I have a relationship with my family for probably the first time ever and I have been content.

I think that I have finally come to a place that I may be able to write a book about my experiences without the anger that has always cloaked my every thought about the subject. The problem is that I can't write the truth without revisiting the anger and isolation that I used to feel and it is difficult to voluntarily revisit that time in my life.

So why not let sleeping dogs lie? I think I have an obligation not to. I think that I have an obligation to not let myself become just another adult that abandoned the teenager that I was. Not only do I feel that obligation for myself, I feel it for all those invisible voiceless children going through it at this very minute. I have to begin to try because those that are in charge of the mental health care system have come to believe that things aren't that bad. They see clean sheets where there used to be louse infested blankets on concrete floors. They see padded restraints where their predecessors saw metal chains. In short, they see how far we have come instead of wondering what else can be done.

I think I will write it all some day. This is my starting place. This is where I will begin to explore what I feel so that maybe someday I will be able to make sense enough of it all enough to write my story.

Although I hope if I am forgiven if occasionally I just write about the argument I had with my husband about whose turn it is to do the dishes or how cute my daughter is. After all, I have a life now too. It's bound to interfere with all the depressing crap sometimes.