Sweet Tomorrow

Hello:

Did I tell you I would have a juicy blog entry on New Year's Eve?

Hmm. I'm a dum-dum. I really am a dum-dum. It is hard for me to believe my good fortune. Why wouldn't someone like me? It seems unlikely to me however it is true.

One thing: I can make eye contact. I once went on a date with a guy whose head was turned sideways when he was talking to me and I couldn't see his eyes so that turned me off. Sorry. A friend suggested he was nervous however I couldn't get past his lack of eye contact. Was the wall more interesting than me?

It's 5:00 PM exactly according to my computer clock. I began this blog entry last night after an evening that was a smash success. You can just call me dum-dum. Like the song lyrics I'm not "the smartest tool in the shed."

The 24-tube lipstick tray has arrived and I organize the tubes tonight. A woman was amazed that I have 16 tubes of lipstick because she has only two. I wonder about this. I will declare a moratorium on buying lipstick. As tubes wear down I will not replace them.

The Clinique Pink Chocolate I will stop buying and instead try out NARS's Pigalle which is billed as a pink chocolate shade on the Sephora website. You see I play around: with lipstick, that is.

Well: I downloaded an extended natal chart last night and it is quite revealing. How true it is. Accurate to a T. I'm hoping to hear good news about the memoir. While I wait I work on the second book.

I like the red Calvin Klein coat I bought on Saturday. It keeps me warm. I close up the neck with a peppermint pink Sisley scarf that I bought years ago.

Today I wore my black wool bowler. I bought it in the Limited in 1995. It's a fun hat. I placed the four winter hats on the hat rack in the hall. My mother bought me a few years ago a red chenille hat however it doesn't match the Calvin Klein red which is a blue red; the hat is a true red. Oh, you see: I make these distinctions.

In a photo my cousin circulated I'm wearing a long sleeve tie-dye tee shirt and black jeans, circa 1985. The guys wear skinny black Knack "My Sharona" ties and white shirts. Everyone has some kind of unfathomable 1980s haircut. We were so young then. I suspect the picture was taken long before I went in the hospital at someone's engagement party.

That is how I can pinpoint the provenance of the photo: before I went in the hospital or after I went in the hospital. My life was changed forever by that event. In June 1987 I graduated college with a BA in English and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I only knew I didn't want to teach. The world awaited me. On one fateful night everthing changed. My Grandpa was in a coma hooked up to a respirator in the intensive care unit. That was my breaking point.

I don't wonder now what might have been: I'm a realist. I read somewhere that you have to give time time to work its wonders. You are as young as you feel.

I shudder to remember those outrageous outfits I wore that I show up in photos wearing. It took a decade to get to this point: the abandonment of midnight clothes. I can remember year-by-year the donations of clothes I made to the Salvation Army. Once I took photos of my rock band tee shirts because parting with them was such sweet sorrow.

That was then, this is now. I dream of a sweet tomorrow.

Again: you risk. There--I've told you this--you must risk change. Linda Ellerbee is quoted: "Change is one form of hope. To risk change is to believe in tomorrow."

Yet somehow I do wish I could go back in time and change what happened even with how things turned out. To know a different kind of life. That is why I will always remember the year I spent living on Bailey Avenue in that beautiful apartment when I was free.

Can I say it was better then? It was only different. Right now the truth does not upset me in the way it used to. You are diagnosed with schizophrenia and you deal with it. Life demands that of you. You move forward because standing still is not an option.

We talked for two hours in Starbucks. The interesting thing is that after the cognitive therapy ended I was able to see things differently. I can concede things are better now than when I was in my twenties. It was like the therapist hot-wired my perception.

So you risk change. I will always come back to this. Perfection is a myth because it implies there can be no growth. Hope is a coping skill. When we risk hoping for a better life we can risk changing and growing.

The only thing constant is change. That is the cycle of life. Rejuvenation and renewal. A woman I interviewed told me that after the diagnosis we can be a different kind of well. We might not be the same however we can be well in a different way.

Always maintain a positive spirit. To do so your life will be rich beyond measure.


It is now time for me to sign off: I feel I've been circling around this forever.

Cheers.