Weekend Creation Blog Hop

This is my own picture so I am allowed to use it! Feel free to use it!

It is Plymouth, MA.

It's bitter cold.  Not the kind that makes you shiver, but the kind that makes you feel like tiny needles are poking into any exposed skin leaving marks where other needles will bite in deeper.  The water is blue and choppy, but I can't tell if its a pod of whales, right whales, or just fish.  Seagulls and seals brave what I'm sure is iceberg cold water.  It's cold enough to numb my toes in July, I can only imagine what it would do in March even with the bright sun.  Rocks litter the beach, white, gray, brown, red, pink, rust.  They make it hard to walk in my boots, but then I hadn't planned to come here to this empty parking lot, to this shuttered restaurant.  The jetty to my left is braved by a lone kite flyer.  The lime green breaks the watery blue of the sky, its brightness making up for the lack of color in that small part of the sky.  Giant mounds of rocks look like piles of shit left by some giant creature unknown to me.  Perhaps it is my life, representative of what I've amounted to, what I've accomplished.  They are too large to be washed away or even covered by high tide.  Even the fierce nor'easters won't wash those rocks away.  They are as permanent as the ocean behind them and as steadfast as the rocky beach before them.  I stumble back to my car.  No answers here.  Only freezing fingers and ears.  A wind whipped face and a pile of rocks.  Solid.  Unmoving.  Ugly.

Heather Town Neck Beach Sandwich

Monday Madness

Monday Madness is a meme started by Shah at Words in Sync to blather on about mental illness or provide useful information or share something with the rest of the group.  I tend to blather.  So, here's my blather:

I'm so tired of the cold of the aching loneliness.  Depression is a lonely disease.  No matter how many people support you, only you are in it and only you can get out of it.  Only you can see the darkness, get lost in it, lose your way to the light, can't find your way out.  Only you cry and wish for someone to hold you through the pain and loneliness.  Only you feel the pain.  Only you lose track of time as you sit in your darkness.  There is no reading, no writing, no talking , no smiles no socializing, no answering the phone, no Faith, no belief, no trust that this will ever end.  There is only time and darkness.  And I sleep waiting for the light to find me again.  Waiting without hope.  Because hope is light and I am completely black.  Drenched in it, encased in it, floating in it, weighed down by it, drowning in it.  But for two pin pricks of light, no bigger than the eye of a needle, I would end the blackness permanently.  But one pin prick is 11 and the other is 14 and they have a lifetime of fighting this blackness.  And if I take the coward's way out, if I don't fight for the light, then they might not either. So I suffer the blacknes because of them and hope they remember to fight.

Monday Madness Chocolate Ice Cream

This is a new meme started by Shah atWords in Sync.  For those of us that have a mental illness or our caretakers or partners or family members.

I thought I'd share a little humiliation I endured as a child and actually well into adulthood at the hands (not literally) of my uncle who suffers from Bipolar Disorder.  His way of feeling better was to put people down and I'm not sure why he chose me, perhaps I was the weakest link.  I was the most sensitive.  I swear I'd be richer than Bill Gates if I had even a penny for how many times I'd been told I was "too sensitive".  Anyone else?  Because I cried so easily.  No one knew how deeply depressed I was and how much I thought of checking out of this nightmare called life.  No one cared.  I was taught to put on a smile and keep all the rest inside.

So every birthday (there were at least eight a year) Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, Mother's Day, Father's Day, any excuse at least once a month and more if there was a birthday or holiday in it, I was subject to his belittling.  It always started with, "Did I ever tell you about the time when Heather got chocolate ice cream in her shoes?"  That was the whole story.  I was probably four at the time it happened.  I never defended myself by explaining how the ice cream melted and dripped down my arms and onto my legs then down them into my shoes.  I just crawled deeper into my shell and got embarrassed first at the attention and then at the imperfection that was me.  I was the only one that got chocolate ice cream in my shoes.  The thing was, that wasn't the only story like that.  There were were others and he told them every chance he got, in front of new people, in front of boyfriends, new friends any way to embarrass me.  And I don't know why.  I loved him better than my own father.  Yet he hurt and embarrassed me constantly.  He and I share the same disorder.  I've helped him with his medications when he's told me some symptoms he was having I suggested his medication might be doing it and he stopped it and it helped.

Now days, he's slowly sliding into dementia and the stories don't come up.  Now when I'm strong enough to say, "That's not how I remember it.  I remember licking a chocolate ice cream cone that melted down my arms and dripped on my knees.  And with gravity it naturally dripped from my knees down my legs into my shoes.  What did I care?  I was four.  I was just enjoying my chocolate ice cream.  What else did you want me to do?"  But now, I get trapped by him as he tells me I can use his property in Virginia anytime I want, that they built it for me and my sister too.  Not just for his son and daughter.  And he talks in fatalistic terms as if this will be the last time I see him.  And it takes his son in law and son to rescue me from his still firm grasp as I wipe my eyes and they explain to me how much vodka and wine he's had.

Once again, he makes me feel little and small and trapped.  He can throw me into depression faster than a bottle of wine and a migraine.  He breaks me down every time I see him.  So what does this have to do with mental illness?  To show you two different sides of it, the sufferer and the watcher.  I am both in this situation and both parts hurt.  I would take the belittling again not to see him not battered down by his disease.  Is that what I'll look like at his age?  Will my mind be so ravaged  by the medication that I'll have dementia?

I wish I was four with chocolate ice cream dripping down my arms and legs and running into my shoes and not a care in the world.

Dreams

I bet this little girl or is it a boy had dreams.  I wonder what they did to make, let's just say her, stand still long enough to get this picture?  How does the velvet feel under her tiny little fingers?  Is it bumpy where the designs are?  Is that why she seems to have moved her hand just above the swirl of the paisley so she's not touching it?  Is her collar starched so stiff that it makes her neck itch  and she's dying to rip it off?  What are they tempting her with?  Or are they threatening her?  That's not exactly an exuberant smile on her face.  It's more like a straight line curved neither up nor down.  Is she thinking about where she'd rather be right then?  Where?  Playing down the hall with her brothers?  Bouncing on the chair in her bare feet?  Or somewhere far away from the camera and the people trying to make her smile.  Somewhere that exists only in her mind.  Somewhere they cannot take from her.  Where her fingers do not rest on bumpy velvet.  Her starched collar does not itch and they do not threaten or cajole.  She is silent and alone and the smile she gives is to her self and it is genuine.  And she can dream.

Weekend Creation Blog Hop #3

Better late than never I always say!  So I'm not feeling sorry for myself any more and I am going to create a piece on another post.  Just wanted to say I'm joining in today!

H.

Buried Dreams

It's time to let go of a few things that I know will never happen in my life.  One, my lifetime dream, is that of being a published author.  My words are bland.  My phrases unoriginal.  Even I'm bored reading them.  My imagination has finally been eaten away.  The drugs have won.  I am no longer creative.  I can only read the products of other people's imagination.  So, I'm burying this dream before it eats away at my soul too.  I have lived with this dream since I was nine.  I have lived with this disease since I was nine.  The disease has won.  But not because it has reared its ugly head or controlled my life.  No, because in controlling it, I've lost the ability to dream.  I've lost my creativity.

I know.  I know.  Creativity and mental illness go hand and hand.  That's only if you aren't medicated to the point that you can't walk a straight line.  You can't get out of bed until after noon.  You can't hold a job.  It's enough to make me want to stop taking the damn pills, but I remember standing in Wal-Mart and not remembering what I was there for.  I remember filling a shopping cart full of shit we didn't need only to have my husband  return it all.  I remember buying expensive cameras and furniture and always, my husband would have to take it back.  I remember waking at 5 am because I'd just gone to sleep at 3 am and the baby needed to be fed and I was so angry at him for waking me up.  I remember keeping the shades closed tight and the doors locked to make sure we were safe.  I wanted to be the perfect mom, but I couldn't handle being a mom.  It pushed me over the edge when previously I'd just been looking over for a view of the abyss.  That crash made me a monster.  I see her in the mirror when I look and I still haven't stopped apologizing to my kids, making sure they know it was never about them and always about me.  But the pills, the drugs, they killed that monster.  She only shows shadows of her former self.  It's like a mirror image of herself.  Not the real thing where she stayed for days.  She makes a flash appearance and feels immediate remorse and is gone.  And that's because of the drugs.  So, for my family, for my sanity, for my life, I'm giving up my dream.  I'll never be a published writer.  The story in me.  It will have to come out in another lifetime.  Preferably one where I don't have to medicate myself.

I read a Q and A in the back of a book and the author was asked something to the effect if they had to choose their sanity and their creativity, which would they choose?  They chose creativity.  It's an obvious choice, if you haven't felt the insanity.  If you haven't functioned for five days without sleep because you can't.  Because you had to write this novel.  And you wouldn't choose it if you knew there was a big gaping black dark hole waiting to swallow you up for the next six months so that you did nothing but read the same novel over and over and didn't remember it.  That you only lived in a tiny corner of your room, your bed.  That you hated your family, but you really hated yourself more.  That ugly, dirty, hate, and other dark words like suicide and kill and overdose went through your head daily swirling like a whirlpool in your mind with the words of the novel you've read at least a hundred times.  And you don't remember anymore what's real and what isn't because you haven't slept for days or you've slept for weeks and cried so much that your eyes are swollen shut and your mother just doesn't understand what your crying about and you cry more because she doesn't understand, that's just it.  There is nothing to cry about and yet you can't stop.  You have everything you could possibly need, but you still cry.  And if you could stop crying, you would.  If you could fake smile like you have for the past thirty eight years you would, but once a name was put to it.  Once someone said "mental illness"  and gave validity to the feelings that everyone told you were normal that everyone felt, you had to let them out.  You weren't "too sensitive".  It wasn't that you couldn't feel happiness, you just didn't feel it as often as others because you were generally feeling depressed.  And all those unfinished projects....results of your mania, there would be more.  Except for the pills.

And so I let it go.  I will remove it from my profile.  I know how hard it is to become published, but when you've got so much working against you instead of for you, it just isn't going to happen.  When you can't even write a single original sentence, it's not gonna happen.  But I have my books.  They've always been my friends.  And it's why I don't let them go.  Why I hang onto the ones I love so much.  It helps my memory.  It's another thing the pills take away from me.  Memory, creativity, imagination, dreams.  I can have tangible dreams.  I won't be able to fly that plane.  I think I have to walk that straight line and not see double and triple.  I doubt I'll be able to ski or snowboard.  Again the balance thing.  I'm feeling the glass is half empty right now.  I'll look for the silver lining another day.  Let me have my pity party.  I've been picking fights on the blogosphere.  That isn't like me.  I stay away from confrontations.

I think as I've been reading this book I've been reading, it's been showing me  the reality of what I won't be able to do.  What I must accept if I am to continue to stay on my medication.  There will be no books.  No artwork.  Nothing creative.  Because yes, for some of the greatest intellectuals and artists ever known, they had mental illnesses, but somehow, they lived with theirs and were able to have their creativity.  I can't have both.  I choose to be sane, even if it means the end of all the things I've dreamed of being.  Even if it means proving my mother and my dead father right.  I lose either way.  And the disease wins either way.  I give.

H.

Out of The Corners of My Eyes

Often, as I sit reading or writing, I see things out of the corners of my eyes.  Most often it's people that aren't really there.  I don't know if I'm slowly going crazy or if I'm becoming a part of one of the many novels I'm writing or maybe I'm just a victim of my overactive imagination.  Or maybe there's more to it than that.  Maybe all the medication has taken over and I'm just a pawn in the side effects of their hands.  Today, Mr. T has decided to make it so I can't stand up straight and makes me walk like a drunk unless I hold onto a wall or a piece of furniture.  The combination of Mr. T., Ms. S, the two C's and not enough rest night before last ensure that I slept until noon today.  And the corners of my eyes see mice and dogs we don't own and I sink down in my bed. 

I haven't gotten used to this new house.  We aren't friends.  We are strangers still after a year and a half.  I don't respect it.  I cannot make it mine because it doesn't belong to me.  Therefore I don't know it's creaks and cracks.  The sounds of the heat coming on.  The sound of snow falling off in heaps like slabs of  concrete off the roof.  I don't understand the moths I think I see out of the corners of my eyes.  Sometimes they really are there.  But they aren't the scariest thing I've seen.  They aren't the scariest thing I've faced.

The worst is the one I face head on in the mirror every day.  That stranger that is me, but I don't know.  My hair is dark, with a few gray squiggles sticking up.  I have to wear glasses and the scars from the surgery are prominent still.  But that is not what bothers me.  It's the eyes.  They are the eyes of someone who has accepted defeat.  I am beaten.  Mr. and Ms. Side Effect have won.  They have drained the living out of my life.  I exist.  I take up space.  I see the world from the corners of my eyes.  And that's how I live it, from the corners.

H