The Secret of Life

Hello.

It is possible I have discovered the secret of life and I want to share it with you.

I decided to write this blog entry to tell you one thing: it is imperative to not accept trash in your life. You don't need it and you don't need other people talking down to you. You can do better and must strive to find people who get this.

I was inspired to write this because The 10th Anniversary issue of O magazine featured a column titled "10 Rules I've Unlearned" by Martha Beck. Number 6 was: It matters what people think of me.

She realized her anguish came from her hypothesis that other people's hypothetical hypotheses about her mattered. This insight paralleled a shift away from my own painful imagined fears that carried me through the years.

Happy Birthday, O!

I had this conversation with a woman who talked to me about control freaks.

I realized that we could stay in control when we recognize that it's our right and duty to brook no nonsense and not accept junk attitudes from people.

This has been easier for me to do all along as regards stigma.

Now I can hold this ethic dear with anyone I meet or come in contact with.

The amazing discovery was that I didn't have to forgive myself I had to pull no punches and decide not to co-opt other people's craziness. Their bull crap is not mine or yours to swallow.

It was crystal-clear to me all of a sudden that we cannot be passive recipients of stigma or violence or hate of any kind or rudeness or nonsense.

I understood this when the woman told me I was able to take on the schizophrenia as another thing to fight because I had survived bullying in middle school.

It's true: I fought the hardest battle of my life getting in the ring against the SZ. Anyone who doesn't give us credit for doing this I would strike out of my life.

So I dedicate this blog entry to all you scrappy little fighters out there.

The key to taking control is to get other people on board without their realizing they've done what you want them to. You seduce them instead of berating them and they will come around. I'm not talking about sex: I'm talking a different kind of union where others can't help but view you in a positive light because you've made yourself irresistible.

You don't need people telling you you're trash. God doesn't make junk. You're not that kind of pot or kettle: if they want to project their insecurities on you that's only a reflection of them not you.

This truly amazing discovery has carried me through the past couple of days as I walked about interacting with people.

The woman told me this process of changing would be a life-long one for me.

I have said it before that you should give yourself the gift of a lifetime in which to recover. Recovery is a journey not an endpoint although it is possible to consider yourself recovered from the schizophrenia.

So I urge you to strive to always keep growing as a person.

What can we do?

Give stigma the boot.

Give racism the boot.

Boot out of our lives any fear of what people think of us.

We can do this instead:

Decide to love.


Keep cool.

Strutting

The oil spill from BP that has slicked wildlife and polluted water is unforgivable.

Long ago I decided I didn't want to own a car because I didn't want to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil or for that matter any oil source.

The economic hardship and mental health stress on the people like fishermen who depend on the water for their income are hazardous side effects as well.

You ought to read Terry Tempest Williams book Finding Beauty in a Broken World where she talks about the utter disregard of the natural world and the genocide in Rwanda. From out of human annihilation she worked on an art project to help the people in Africa heal.

Today I was reminded of the peril of steamrolling over the natural world.

The book The Long Emergency is the most dire account of the coming end of the world as we know it that started when farmland was paved over to create shopping malls and industrial parks.

One place in the natural world that still exists is Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton New Jersey where I and the other women in my writing workshop read our work at an outdoor poetry reading. I read the Italy scene that is linked to on my author web site via an audio file. So if you click on the link you can hear me reading what I read today at the Poets Invitational.

One of the poets read about nature and he came up to us in the Peacock Cafe after the reading to tell us he liked our writing. We also praised him and started talking about the need to be in nature.

The peacocks strutted freely outside in the park. So beautiful. I marveled at how their strutting reminded me of the Nelson Mandela quote about letting our own light shine and in turn giving other people permission to shine.

The sole role of a peacock is to strut and I felt that it is often hard for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses to strut their stuff in a world where their very existence is discounted. Long ago I rebelled the role of mental patient however traditionally that was the occupation prescribed to us.

We were told to silently pop pills and not make waves and collect a government disability check and exit the psychiatrist's office quickly so he could be done with us.

Ah: the proud peacock. We should all be so proud to strut our stuff without fear.

Did I nail this with my philosophy recorded here awhile ago: "here's the playing field. please join in."

It is why as I continue to add scenes to my memoir and revise the scenes I"m writing that I realize what I did was ultimately not about me: it was about shining my light so that others could feel they had the right to shine a light on themselves.

Hope is a competency. Hope can also be a kind of therapy that sustains us on the long road to recovery. By bringing my story to light I wanted to give others the hope that they too could have a life worth living.

So this is how my book differs: I don't have a Yale law degree. I'm just an ordinary person who did something she's convinced a lot of people diagnosed with schizophrenia could do too:

We can live a life of our own choosing. We can live life on our own terms.

That is how I defined the kind of recovery I wanted to have: to be able to do the things I want to do and to afford to live in my own apartment by working at a job or jobs I loved. Hey: to be able to buy a new Sade CD without going broke.

As soon as you start out on this road I suggest you define what your ideal recovery would be like and take steps to reach it knowing that in the future your definition will most likely change the farther along you reach.

I wrote in a recent Bruni in the City column for New York City Voices that the reason I succeeded in getting what I wanted is that I always had higher expectations for myself. Did I tell you in here to shoot for the stars because you could settle for the moon?

Set modest and realistic goals just starting out and as you achieve these goals begin to set goals that are just slightly beyond your reach.

I have been criticized by a peer who told me I was just a yuppie who got fumbled out by a waiter in a restaurant so popped into a program because it was the trendy thing to do. His self-stigma was something I could not forget and his comment stayed with me all these years.

Another guy who was a peer sent me an e-mail on a dating website when he had no intention of dating me. He wrote: I see your profile and wonder if you're all that. Who do you think you are? This was because I wrote that I liked yoga, walking, dinner parties, interior decorating and browsing museums. In my honesty I wrote that I was looking for a guy who was healthy and committed to his recovery.

Do you think I felt threatened or intimidated by these insecure guys? Heck no. I'm not going to date someone who continually screws up by not taking his medication or doing things counterproductive to his own recovery.

Apparently that was too much to ask.

I can pretty much shine a light on other people because that is my ethic. I see how it is in that when you or I let our own light shine we open ourselves to criticism.

Ah: the peacock.

He's going to strut his stuff and give everyone a glorious show.

We should all take a page from his book.

Enough said.

Good night.

Diamond Life

The Sade CD Diamond Life has the song "Smooth Operator" on it. The Patti Smith CD features all covers including "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The Pearl Jam CD Backspacer has the song "Just Breathe" that is so beautiful.

Now I have new music to listen to while I work at the computer on my second job. This will carry me through the day.

Always: music and light and going out. I would urge anyone in recovery to go to the edge of their comfort zone to grow as a person. Standing still is not an option. Move to the beat of life. Take one risk every day.

Life is good. I always hold out the hope that there can be joy. We have the right to feel good and to enjoy life.

You don't recover by lying on the couch watching TV all day. I recommend a person do volunteer work if she can't work at paid employment. One summer I volunteered my time at the Forget-Me-Not thrift shop for the Alzheimer's Association. I had gotten involved with them because my Grandma had this illness. I would sort the new arrivals, arrange the clothes on the racks and ring up the orders. I felt it was something I had to do that summer.

It was the in-between time when I was living in limbo drifting through time. I would tell anyone that this happens: a plateau or a wandering not knowing where you'll be next. Like a nomad I traveled from place to place.

You will not want to hear that it can take a long time to reach the goals you have for yourself. Yet that is how recovery is: it is not quick and it is not easy and I have said this before. It took me three years from the time I was diagnosed to the time I obtained my first job and a year later I moved into my own apartment.

Here's the deal: I don't measure success by outward signs that a person has arrived in the world. I keep time in my recovery to subtle signals: a day that I can go to the poetry reading or a day that is free. Paula Cole wrote about this in her song "The Road to Me" about how the car and the house are not who she is they are only steps along the way.

Everyone living in recovery has the capacity to live a good life. My definition of recovery is the ability to live life on my own terms. To not settle for less.

It's why I'll take one good day over 50 not-so-good days as the barometer of success.

Do you see how it is?

I will always refer in here to the idea that we have only one day.

My goal is to chip away at the marble to reveal some kind of insight to offer hope to others and to inspire readers.

So that one day a light bulb will click and someone will say: "I want to recover and I'm going to take steps to make that happen."

The first step is to take the medication although popping pills is not the sole measure of our success. Going out the front door and entering life is the next step.

Now you see.

Enjoy your day.

The Long Road

Loot:

3 CDs: Patti Smith Pearl Jam Sade. A silver ring with a purple stone that the street fair vendor claimed was .925. The poetry book The Brother Inside Me.

Enough.

I read a short scene from Left of the Dial at the poetry reading. The women in the audience loved what I read. Even among the Italians I feel like an outsider.

Eddie and I ducked into the Spanish restaurant afterward for dinner. We gave each other the high five before parting ways.

What do I know? You live with this. You live through it. You reconcile your checkbook in your head so you'll be able to buy the CDs. You remember the leap you took 20 years ago that enabled you to buy CDs every so often. It is the Twentieth Anniversary of Your First Job so you have been employed two decades.

That is my life: the life I chose in August 1990 when I went down this lonely road. Now I'm a voyager traveling with kindred spirits. I don't go by age or race or ethnicity. One of my best friends was once a woman who collected a disability check and watched WWF every Saturday. A friend once told me I embrace other people's differences.

Would I go as far as to say that? I would not want to puff myself up that way. It comes down to this: I have no expectations that people be other than who they are. A person who likes herself will be able to accept people without trying to change them.

So the short of it is that life can be painful living with the SZ and you know that life isn't perfect and neither are you.

I wrote in my notebook that God is my lantern on this long road.

It comes down to fifty extra dollars to buy the CDs and a royal obscene tip that Eddie and I give the waiter in the restaurant.

Your sorrow is real and so is your joy.

Tomorrow I will listen to the Pearl Jam CD before I head out.

I cannot tell you that it gets easier although in most ways it does.

You cherish your friends and your loved ones because they have traveled with you down this road.

Life is good. I would tell you that life is always good.

Be brave and live your life with passion.

It is not that I don't suffer. It is that I see no reason in dwelling on the pain.

I would not judge someone else unless I had walked in their moccasins along this road.

Do not be fooled: we have the choice: to do what life demands of us or to live in fear.

I suggest we take action to live true and to accept that this is not something we asked for or deserved or wanted yet we can make of it something positive.

In the end:

You have one day in time like a snowflake to treasure and catch before it slips by.

A day unlike any other to rejoice in because God made this day just for you.

In some ways it gets easier. In some ways it is always a challenge.

Listen to the music. Dance as if no one is watching you. Live true.

Goodnight.

Faithful

This morning I listened to the Corinne Bailey Rae CD The Sea on my iPod dock. She has a gorgeous voice and I would like to buy her other album.

Today I realized the new salon has yellow walls which pleased me because it is a joyous color. My haircut is new: a riff on Isabella Rossellini's and I bought the pomade to style it. Sophie told me I don't need a hair dryer to recreate the cut every day.

Tomorrow I will wash and set the hair in the new cut and wear my contact lenses to meet O. Miraculously I woke at 7:30 am and so had time to listen to the CD.

Last night I went to a new support group for the first time. I recommend peer support as an option for living a good life. You might have to search around to find one that is to your liking however I recommend you make the effort.

Sometimes it is too much to hear other people's woe so that is why you must have other outlets that give you joy. Like a beauty salon. A manicure. Treating yourself to a new CD. Next up I buy Pearl Jam's Backspacer with the song "Just Breathe" that is so beautiful. Shortly before my second two-week hospital stay I saw Pearl Jam at the Limelight. This concert scene made its way into my memoir too.

The psychic I went to early this year told me she saw Left of the Dial being published. I take this on faith even though it's hard for me to believe in anything that doesn't carry scientific proof. The word I would rather use to describe my hard work in writing the memoir is devotion: my unwavering commitment to doing what it takes to sell tons of copies of my book.

Devotion I can understand because it involves free will. With true faith you have to suspend your doubt and it's hard for me to do that. I prefer to see things in black-and-white and signed and sealed and written in stone and delivered on a tablet.

You've got to have faith even if it is as irrational as hope sometimes. I have faith that my memoir will be published because the woman who gave me the reading said it would be. So the next step is doing the hard work to revise and add scenes to the manuscript.

Did I have faith just starting out in my recovery that I would recover? In some ways my denial about the truth of having schizophrenia propelled me to take those early risks to live independently and get my first job. It was a coping mechanism because surely if I believed there was no hope for someone who had schizophrenia I would've been defeated.

The element of living in hiding was one I turned inside-out in order to succeed. Interesting: I don't consciously recognize that I keep the faith or have the hope that I can do other things in the future. Stepping out and doing those things is like drinking a glass of water. You drink a glass of water without realizing that water=life. It's just something you do to be healthy.

One thing I recommend you do is keep a grateful journal to record your tiny victories every day. I have recently begun writing them down in my Life's Little Reminders journal I bought in Starbuck's last year.

That is how you keep the faith: you boost your spirits by re-reading the things that cheer you about yourself and your life. It can be a beautiful life if you see the positive around you.

How you keep positive is to seek other people who willingly reinforce that you are a good person and can recover. A woman had this conversation with me: how I believed I would publish Left of the Dial because the psychic told me I would.

This is why an oncologist should not tell a patient she only has six months to live: it becomes a self-fulfilling outcome. Plenty of cancer patients live 12 years or more when given the option that this is possible.

So as I've said before I consider it unethical to tell someone diagnosed with schizophrenia that she can't recover and her prospects are limited because she will be bleached of hope.

It comes down to the Nelson Mandela quote I quote often in here:
"As we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

The way to do this is to lead by example.

My own quote is equally as inclusive:
"Here's the playing field. Please join in."

Today I hope you are having a good day. I hope this blog entry cheers you. I will go sign off now as I want to listen to some music.

Enjoy.