A long awaited thought!

First, I want to apologize for how long it’s taken me to update my blog. I don’t have many followers, but you are all faithful so please forgive me.

What happened?
By Amanda Robin

One day I was on top
Of the world
I was a promising,
Young,
Genetics major
With
A scholarship,
A loving boyfriend,
Fifty sisters to call my own!

Then I was in a place
That a judge
Decided
I was to stay for
72 hours.
I had lost my
Freedom,
Hope,
Love.

Now I live everyday
With a illness that
Limits me
In society
Life,
Career.

However, I have
My Freedom
Like never before
Knowing my limits
Hope
Knowing
One day there will
Be a cure.
Love of a group
Of people with
My illness
That know no bounds

Of understanding

Rewinding to the Past

I know that I have been writing what is going on right now. However, for the sake of my blog buddies I am going to back it up a little. Also I guess because this is so close to when it all happened. You see on November sixth it will be ten years since I knew that I had a mental illness. On November sixth of 1999 was the day that will live in infamy for me. It’s the day I was truly convinced I was going to take my own life! Yes, it’s true that since then I have had suicidal thoughts and I was even hospitalized in 2006 for that, but this was the only time I was ACTUALLY toying with the notion I would. It’s like the other times I didn’t want to, but I had the thought. This very first time, I was seeing myself DEAD.

Anyway, that night my R.A. took me to the hospital after I called the crisis line. They gave me two choices, I could either sign myself into the mental health unit or I could get court ordered. Well, I made a big show of things and finally I was escorted by four uniform police officers to the mental health unit. Now I knew there was something wrong before that, for about two months, I wasn’t eating, sleeping, or bathing. My friends on campus tried to help me. Then my mind started playing tricks on me.

Now, what this is really about. After my parents took me back home to Chicago from the recovery house two weeks later, I still didn’t know up from down. I would say I lived in a fog for the next five years. They had no idea what medicine to give me and they weren’t even sure of my diagnosis. I would have frequent panic attacks and had no skills to combat them. Sometimes they would get so bad, it felt like the whole world knew. What I mean is I remember one time I got a panic attack in the church my family belong to in Chicago and I walked out. However, when I was outside, I presided to talk to myself out loud, wiggle my hands like crazy, and pace up and down. Our deacon found me and took me to the rectory to calm me down. The usher, who didn’t know my illness, quickly told my parents that I was in the rectory and they needed to come quick. That was just one incident of many.

Well, what change all that? My parents and I moved here to New York. You can go on the NAMI page, New York scores higher than Illinois in mental health care. Actually, though for the first two years I lived here, I was still in that fog. My panic attacks had gotten so bad, that I would literally lie on the floor and pull my hair out. Sometimes they would set off schizophrenic episodes. In December of 2003 was when I first starting hearing voices. Before that all my hallucinations where visual, when they became audio, it scared the shit out of me. Then I decided to do something about it. I signed up to be admitted in a day program for mentally ill people. In the spring of 2004, I started at a program in Saratoga Springs called Friendship House and I learned a whole new way of thinking. A lot of times what I compare it to is that a mentally ill person needs to learn their manners again. It’s like when I was getting nervous before the whole world had to know it, thus scaring the ushers and later pulling my hair out. Now I take nice even breathes and do the trauma sequence of touch field therapy.

Yes, there is life after a mental illness, but it takes time. I will also point out that I wasn’t placed on a medicine that would really help me until 2001 and was off of it for six months prior to hearing the voices. I was trying a different medicine with the doctor’s care so I could lose weight! I guess that’s one of the reasons it’s scary for me right now, going on a new medicine. There is no blood test for a mental illness that they can give you and can say this is going to work for you! If you’re or someone you love is still in the fog remember, first the medicine, then the therapy, and then a new life!

Getting Personal

I have just realized that I usually talk in a general format and not about my personal life. Tonight I want to talk about what’s going on in my life. Particularly my new medicine change, I been on one medicine for my schizophrenia for three years now. It has made me gain so much weight! I have literally doubled in size. At first, I thought changing meds when it was first brought up to me, would be a vain thing. However, I change in front of the mirror in my bedroom and I think of what I used to look like. I’ve also decided that not wanting to reach three hundred pounds is not vain, it’s a health issue.

Since gaining all this weight, health problems have arisen. I have high blood pressure, pre – diabetes, and a worse injury to my knee (yes, Amber if I was only half my size and fell down your stairs, I probably wouldn’t still be in physical therapy). Now the high blood pressure and the diabetes runs in my family, but ALL of those in my family that have that got it at a much older age. Also my digestive system is pretty whacked out. Now I don’t think that it’s directly caused from my weight, but the medicine I am on makes me hungry. Now I do take responsibility here and say that I control what goes in my mouth. However, when you get hunger pains and want something your not suppose to have it’s hard.

I am a little scared trying this new medicine. My regular psychiatrist, the female Dr. L,. is out on maternity leave, but she has been encouraging me to try a new medicine for quite some time now. I trust her. She said before she went on maternity leave, when she assigned me to see another doctor in her place, that if I wanted to try the new medicine while she was away it was o.k. My temporary psychiatrist the male Dr. L. (their not related or married;) was very open to the idea of trying a new medicine. He just wanted to tell me the two medicines that are known for not gaining weight only have a twenty to a fifty percent success rate among schizophrenics. However, I still wanted to try it. The male Dr. L. told me that some of the older medicine is not known for gaining weight, but I said that I would rather stick to the newer generation of schizophrenic medicines.

Tomorrow will be my first day on the new medicine. You probably want to know what it is, but this is a public blog and I don’t advertise for drug companies. The important thing is I am living a fearless life and trying something new. I hope that you all will keep me in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks for reading!

Life goes on
By Amanda Robin

Mom gets her knee sliced open
Like a cantaloupe
And Dad still has to pay
The bills that come
Like a wave.

I fall down stairs
But you know what?
Before I did
I did something wonderful
Something that would
Change the way people
Think.

People die
Dogs are put to sleep
Hurricanes destroy houses
But life goes on!

Sex! Again?

First, I want to ask the forgiveness of all my blog followers for not posting for two weeks. Sorry, I have been physically sick. Now on to the interesting topic of sex! What does it mean to us? There are some mentally ill people that have an addiction to it. Some may know that there is a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. And some of us just don’t have the desire for sex anymore. One of my friends in group doesn’t feel like making love to her husband anymore because of side effects of her meds! I know when I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia my Mom said, right to me, that she read either people with schizophrenia are very interested in sex or they don’t want anything to do with it!

Well, I really am fascinated with sex. However, I wouldn’t call myself a sex and love addicted. I am going to tell you a secret. Well, I tell this to everyone so it’s not that much of a secret. I am going to be thirty years old in January and I have never slept with a man! I was raped by a woman in Oct. of 1999 and I don’t remember everything happened to well because I was going through a schizophrenic break! About two weeks ago I was finally brave enough to ask my OBGYN if I still had a hymen and she looked and said I don’t. My GYN told me that it could not be from the rape it could be from riding a horse or something unrelated to the rape. Blah! Blah! Blah! Anyway, I am virtually a virgin without a hymen. Now people I know this might be too much information, but if you don’t want to read it then don’t.

Anyway, my point is that society makes us believe certain things. For example, the Roman Catholic Church (all of it because I discussed this in New York, Chicago, and Cali) believes that masturbation is wrong. However, in therapy we learn that it is normal and healthy. Also when Governor Palin was running for vice president everyone made a big deal because her daughter was pregnant. Is that really that usual of thing? I know when I went to high school at least one girl in each class would be pregnant. I remember what the rector of the Episcopal church which I attended told me something I will never forget. He said, “Sexuality is a gift.” So why do we trash the gift by making everything taboo? Now I do admit there are people that really are Sex and Love Addicts. However, I am just saying we shouldn’t be embarrassed by sex. I think that as long as we aren’t hurting some else it is a gift between you and God perhaps another person.

An Invisible Disablity

I have written a lot what it is like living with an invisible disability, but I haven’t explained what an invisible disability is. There are a lot of people with lost limbs, blindness, and even mental development problems. However, what about people with mental illness? Can you tell the difference? I am sure the check out lady at Price Chopper where I get my grocery doesn’t know I have a mental illness. I am sure the man that usually sits across from me at church on Sunday doesn’t know I have mental illness. I am sure the family that lives across the street from me, that the only contact I have with is a simple wave, doesn’t know that I have a mental illness.

I think that’s why it’s so hard to get out of bed in the morning. We, mentally ill, don’t know if we are going to do something like lay on floor in church and cry (like I did) to let our invisible disability away. We don’t know if we go on a date with someone and things get serious when the right time to tell that special someone is. We don’t know if we will do well at work. As long as we stay in that bed, then no one has to know. I know I didn’t go to my high school reunion because as far as those people know I am still only 135lbs and have a degree from the college I originally got my scholarship to.

Maybe it would be easier for us if people could see? I mean then we wouldn’t have to explain why it took eight years to get a degree, or why we don’t know about having kids, or why we need more time at work. I mean maybe if people could see then we wouldn’t hide in the shadows. I remember my first inpatient visit to the unit, when I was first diagnosed, they told me not to tell anyone I didn’t want too. I felt like I should keep it a big ugly secret.

Well people I write this because mental illness, while an invisible disability, shouldn’t be in the shadows. It’s shouldn’t be a big ugly secret! If we all wake up to that fact, then we might realize that the lady in church, or the man next door, or the people in the grocery store have a mental illness too! It could even be that dream guy we met across the room at a party. Everybody lets stand up and say it may not be something you can see, but I do have a disability that I can overcome, and you can learn about!

A poem for breaking false images

Isolated
By Amanda Robin

I see you through the fog
Of my life,
Standing there with your friends.

I think to myself,
Should I go over there
And introduce myself?

My throat feels like
Pine needles stuck in it.
My eyes feel focused
Like a hawk.
My lungs are tightened
Like a crushed can.
My palms are as wet
With sweat as
Niagara Falls.
My heart is in
My stomach.

And you know what?
They want me to find
My soul mate!
I can’t even talk
To you my friend!