Tag: Mental Illness

Swimming Without Shores

I don’t watch movies. They bore me. I rarely watch TV. It irritates me. I can’t be scared anymore. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach or feel ignorantly hopeful about anything. I make no assumptions that my time on Earth will be OK. I’m never surprised when things go poorly. I assume the worst of strangers, the best of no one and consider all of my words will be used against me. I clean when I’m anxious, cry when I’m out of ideas and when I’m both, I sit very quietly and allow it to crush me from all sides. I pray and then pray that I will know what to pray, the perfect sequence to unlock the will of God. Friends are few and at a distance, family is inside but not beyond my guard tower. Everyone is subject to removal. They call this Fear.

I read books. They fuel me. I write stories. They cleanse me. I am amazed by the power of my own mind and the places it takes me. I am electrified by the formation of a thought I’ve never had before and giddy when it flows effortlessly like warm butter. I am always surprised when people prove me wrong. I forgive the worst of strangers, expect the best of no one but myself and consider that if I am willing to say it, I better be willing to stand by it. I sleep when I’m content, share with everyone when I’m creative and the two make a magical pairing. I forget God in the midst of my mess and kick myself for relying on my own understanding. The friends who remain love me more than I deserve, family, beyond all cause, and only because they choose. Everyone is necessary. They call this Love.

falling image

I had more ‘friends’ in addiction than I do today. Indiscriminate, I had a home in my sick heart for all. Today, I live in world, I’ve found, that very few may enter. It’s healthy, it’s lonely and it’s what I must do to survive.

There’s a kind of shock that comes when you wake up from a nightmare. When you wake up and realize that, beyond all belief, the nightmare was real, the shock settles in for good and becomes a part of your arsenal. Christ tells me to fight this fear with faith, experience tells me to respect it by instinct. The two war daily within me. I am forgiving and condemning. I am love and hate. I am surrendered, I am my own God. I am patient, I am incensed. I am given over to emotion and a controlled demolition. Every day I put my feet on the floor, fail, cry and take a step.

Tonight I saw an acquaintance in line at the grocer. I don’t know which I bowed to in that moment, Christ, fear or both in concession. He was/is in very poor condition with tremendously swollen legs and cracked soles and no, I don’t know the exact cause. Were I to give an educated guess, I would say a heart infection brought on by drug abuse. I may be off base. Either way, I turned and left without speaking to him, leaving him to walk home on his injury. I don’t feel bad and I would hope that my relationship with God is so that I would know unequivocally if I had erred. I am a brother in Christ but also a mother in Christ and thus I feel a responsibility to stay far removed from people in these situations. This is the tightrope I walk between love and safety.

I will pray for him and truthfully, there I am most powerful. I don’t know how to function well between these two places without erring. It may be impossible. I am only sure that it isn’t my job to save, only to obey. I’ll leave the saving to Christ, he’s far better at it than I.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

In Every Stock Photo Lies a Killer

If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship.

Look at this ridiculous stock photo. The photographer never thought “This will be the photo that makes National Geographic!” No, he thought, “This new iPhone is amazing! I can zoom so far I see my career!” I like it though, because somewhere far below the range of the shot there is a hidden culture of creatures, diverse and distinct, devouring each other, fighting for space, food and survival. Our world is just like this. We wear pants and keep our elbows below the table but behind all of the pretense, we are no different. If you have ever spent time in a Walmart parking lot, you’ve witnessed this reality.

Ocean Stock Photo

I used to believe that some people had it all figured out. They wore watches with fancy little numbers and dials, changed their oil on the recommended date, avoided nitrates and instilled a love for the classic writers in the hearts of orphans. Only someone on dope could believe such nonsense. All it took was a few weeks of sobriety for me to realize that everyone is fucked up in their own unique way. Some people smell bad and that way is never going to land on my list of acceptable oddities. Others hide their issues behind iron gates and decorative corbels —equally offensive. Some of us play our sickness out in a parking lot or jail cell. Pick your poison, you’re spilled milk like the rest of us and I love you for it.

I’ve always preferred those who offer up their demons like business cards. If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship. If you say you’ve just been released from the mental institution and you are selling hand-carved soap to support your dope habit, I’ll happily give your eulogy. Most people in society look down on these folks, but they are far more respectable than your garden variety politician or housewife. You don’t have to worry whether they will betray you. Of course they will! And doesn’t it feel good to know where you stand?

Three of the best weeks of my life were spent in a psychiatric facility. During that time, I met a respectable housewife who suddenly believed she was talking to God. I also met a respectable furniture craftsman who thought he WAS God. They had been placed in the ER together, divided only by a curtain and their families were lucky enough to hear them talk to one another, God and his child. Both had experienced some sort of mental breakdown which resulted in unmatched comedy. After they both exited their delirium, we found out they worked across the street from each other but had never met! I felt like the luckiest witness on the planet. What kind of good dope junkie must I have been to have stepped into this mess? I will never forget them and the hope they gave me. Anyone can be bat-shit crazy—-anyone. There was hope for me yet.

I feel sure that both of them went back to their suburban lives without testimony to others. They returned to their dinner parties, business meetings, manicured lawns and never spoke a word of it, not even to their most liberal friends. Maybe they saw someone slipping, maybe they saw an acquaintance with that look, the look that begs for help but holds the mouth hostage, but the impulse for honesty was buried deep. They are you and I and everyone in-between. But I know, and now you do too.

None of us are exempt. I’m a mother of two with a felony drug conviction and a vault of stories that would make most men cringe. I’m not dumb, I’m human, we all are, and for that I am forever thankful. Without mistakes, this life would be bland, boring and utterly devoid of killer stock photos.