Hope

That is the title of this blog that I am writing about. We all need hope. I know I do at different times in my life.  The biggest time in my life was when I was going to court and facing twenty four years. The time came in the trial that it looked not very well for me. The court was on a break for lunch and I knew things did not look well for me. I was so thinking of the trial when I went to buy lunch. There was a girl there that I had knew from earlier in my life but my mind was in a fog and I could not remember her until I went back to the car then I did.
Well I was acquitted of one charge and had a great chance on appeal for the second as the judge denied me the law. It would come out to be a misdemeanor. I kept hope alive and it worked out that time. I still have had bad luck at times in my life although I always keep hope alive that things will turn out for the best and they usually do.  Sometimes it takes time. When we are looking for a quick fix. Although for me hoping for a good turn out for what is bothering me always works out. Always hope for the best.
 I am still walking and do not know if I am losing weight. When I went to the pdoc and they weighed me I had lost a pound. I need to lose more than that. I really do not eat that much so I do not know why I weigh so much. I just have a sandwich for lunch and dinner. It has to be the meds. The only thing I do know is I have to keep up my walking or my weight will return. The grandkids are getting older and I wish I had started my education a lot earlier then I did.  The time I lost getting my education cost me eight years.
I wish I could have been working if I had received my degree in my twenties. I just want to make sure my grandkids do not make the mistakes I did in life.  Even though things are alright I made some bad choices in this life.  Some I would change others I would leave the same.  Throughout a persons life they have to keep hope that things will turn out for the best.  It usually does.

Hope

It is what I need at this moment in time.  Here at work and cannot work because my access is not working right.  I want to work because next week I am going to be gone all week.  I want to finish my work so I do not have to think about it next week all though lately something always goes wrong.  That is the same with life just when you think you are turning the corner and everything will work out and then life throws you a curve ball.  How am I going to handle this, then you think of all the times the lord has helped you before and you say no matter how hard this is I will get through this also.

I will get through this life and things eventually will change for the best.  So I will keep plugging along and wait for the good times again.  The hardest thing to overcome is this mental illness.  It really through me for a loop when I found out that I had schizophrenia and to top it off I was in the state hospital and did not know how long I would be there.  You really look at your life and say I have to change or this is how my life will be always locked up.  It does not matter if it is the state hospital or jail or prison it is taking away a person’s freedom.
I made a change that I am glad I made.  I have not been locked back up since 1994 and I would not even know how many years if I did not think back and count the years.  I have been able to see all my grandchildren born and be part of their lives.  I have never been stopped by the police in all these years and that is by someone who they would stop and stop my friends because we had the same hairdo. I have to have hope because there is nothing else but to give up and I will never do that.
I think the hardest thing that ever happen to me was when I faced twenty four years in prison.  I had to fight that charge I could not have faced all those years and as you all know I had my breakdown in prison.  If I would have not had my appeal it would have been disastrous.  It would have been the hardest time I ever did.  As it turned out being at the state hospital was the hardest time I ever did.  You wore street clothes and they had a restaurant there that is what made it so hard.  I always thought of the streets and how I just wanted a chance to make it. Nothing I ever face again in life will be that tough it just seems that way sometimes.
I always know I will be free again and no problems seem that big just frustrating.  I just have to remember this to will pass.  My oldest granddaughter is sixteen already where have the years gone.  I was in school for a lot of those years even though it did not seem that way they did go fast.  That is how long since I smoked also.  I quit when she was born.  I do not miss it and I was a heavy smoker. I see others light up and I do not miss it. Just have to keep up hope and I will get through today also.

Hope & Recovery

I am writing about hope and recovery again it has been awhile since I addressed this subject.  I hardly get down in the dumps.  I will for a while then I realize that things will always get better that you just have to keep trudging along.  You have to help things move along in the right way also you cannot just sit back and think things are go to get better on their own.  I have a hard habit since I was young of forcing things to work.  Sometimes they do not like my ex-mother in law said you cannot force things.  She was right about my marriage.  Although I still keep trying and if I did not when I was in the state hospital, I might still be there.
When I received a pass to visit my family I not only visited them but I also registered for college hoping I would go and change my life.  I was released two months before college started to a boarding home for dual diagnosis.  Life has a funny way of happening.  I have faced a lot of obstacles in my life where the worse could have happened and I would not be here writing this if it all happened.  Sometimes you just have to believe no matter how bad things seem to be that it will get better and it always does.  I once face twenty four years and did not make a deal and if the judge would have gave me the law the way it was written I would only been found guilty of a misdemeanor.  Instead of doing two years until my appeal was approved.

I knew I would get out.  It keeps getting better as time goes along.  That is the same with recovery.  You just have to keep pushing forward.  There are going to be relapses along the way although you find out what is going wrong and you fix it.  Just like when they first put me on Geodon it kept making my fall asleep during the day until I switched it to night time.  I take it when I want to fall asleep now.  My life I believe is going on the greatest time it ever has. I write it in hopes it will rub off on other people.  I do get down but not overnight or anything.  I usually just get angry that things are not going right.  Although even if I do not wish things to get better they do.I believe it is rubbing off on my daughter usually when things go wrong she will be upset I noticed this last time she did not.  She weathered the storm and now things are a little bit better for her.  I only hope that my grandkids see things as I usually do not preach to them but show them through my actions.  They would not understand now anyway that life is a trip.  Things are not perfect but I cannot complain.  I am free and that is what I wanted most of my life as I was always locked up. Just keep pushing forward and know that hope & recovery can and will happen.

Conflicting Public Attitudes to Schizophrenia

That is the title of this article.  Although before I go into this in my last blog about hope a couple of weeks ago I wrote how it was hard on my daughter and she just had to keep up the hope.  Well in the last week she had two good things happen to her and she is not stressed and I do not have to be a sounding board and not be able to help.  She was really stressed at time wanting to just give up but she has three kids and could not.  I am really happy that she is not stressed no more and that she quit one job and has weekends off finally.

Now we just have to keep hoping that the stigma gets better.  That is what this article talks about conflicting attitudes towards schizophrenia. “People are becoming more ready to accept a biologic explanation for schizophrenia, shows a German study spanning 21 years.  On the other hand, the study participants became less comfortable with patients who have the condition, with more people interviewed in 2011 wishing to keep a social distance than in 1990.”  We are ready to accept that it is biological although keep away from me.  This study was finished three years ago.  I thought some things would have changed by now.
This is the hardest part of the study as people with schizophrenia need jobs also to make it in this world. “For example, the proportion of people who would not recommend a schizophrenia patient for a job rose from 44% to  63% (the largest increase) and the proportion who would not allow a schizophrenia patient to look after their children rose from 67% to 79% (the highest rate).” The last one would not let a schizophrenic look after their children.  It is not passed on like a cold.  Stigma has a long way to go yet.
There looks like there is some good news with this study: “However, participants were markedly more ready to recommend professional mental health services to people with any of the conditions.  There were large, significant increases in the proportion of participants who would encourage patients to see a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist, and who would recommend psychotropic medication and psychotherapy.  Seemingly, the changes that have taken place in psychiatry over the past decades have benefited the image of psychiatry, but have failed to improve the image of patients. Say the researchers.  Further efforts are necessary to combat the stigmatization and discrimination of people with mental illness.” I read some of the sites of people with schizophrenia that they even talk what is recovery?  I heard about but have not met no one that is recovered.  I feel I know for a fact that I am not alone in being recovered.
I remember in college a professor telling me her cousin was a lawyer and they had a magazine of people that were successful that had a mental illness. Unless we tell they will never know that we have a mental illness.  Because I look just like anybody and you would not know it. Here is a link to an article on IQ it might be interesting.

Hope

We all need it.  I always come back to writing about hope because people sometimes forget that things can and will get better.  When you are down it does not seem so.  I remember being at the State hospital.  I was confused when the medication started working.  I had been to prison before but this place was totally different.  The people were my age and like me.  Although they were different that the people in prison.  They played games and were not as serious as in prison.  There you played games you better hope you did not to someone who could kill you.

When I started asking how long a person would be there.  I heard from people that had been there for years.  Then they told me it would be almost five years before I would get out.  I also found out I was sentenced to one day to life in their so if I did not straighten up I could be there for a long time.  When after trials with the medication and they found one that worked for me.  I started just thinking about getting out of there.  They told me everybody gets one chance to get out.  I started thinking this is my chance to change my life.  I still had a friend that would not stop smoking that weed no matter how much I talked to him.
It was more important to me to have my freedom and be back with my family. I started going to school there and learning typing from zero to 40 words per minute.  I started changing my whole life.  I went to a drug and alcohol facility there in Pueblo.  I walked in a blizzard to an A.A. meeting because I wanted out.  I always had hope that I would get out and stay out.  I have been out of their now for twenty years and I do not want to go back.  I hate that place worse than jail.  Too many games are played there.
Just have to remember no matter how down it looks there is always hope. I never give up no matter what because there is always hope.  I just hope that I can instill that into my grandchildren.  My daughter gets discouraged but she keeps hope she has to because she has three children to take care of.  Things will always get better.

American Giving Awards

This show was on air Saturday night.  Glenn Close received a special recognition award. Her organization is called Bring change 2 mind.  Her organization tries to change the stigma surrounding mental illness.  Glenn’s sister is bipolar and her nephew is schizoaffective.  Her nephew was diagnosed first.  Her family before this happened had never brought up the word or had knowledge of mental illness.  She received her award and talked as did her sister.  It was not discussed in my family either.  She also appeared on the Today show.  I have felt the stigma regarding my illness.  I do not like it when people will stop talking to me because I have a mental illness.

We do need more people like Glenn Close to fight the stigma.  If I did not hate it when I am mentally ill, I would say this illness has changed me for the better.  When I won my appeal and was released from prison.  I wanted to stop drinking and did not drink with my friends and found out we had nothing in common but our drinking.  I could not do it on my own and within two weeks I was drinking again.  This illness gave me a second chance at changing my life. They gave out award to quite a few charity organizations.  One thing I was impressed with was when they talked about hope.  You just put one foot in front of the other and keeping going forward that is what they said.It reminded me of when I had to go to an AA meeting when I was at the state hospital.  The meeting was a mile away and I had to walk and this night there was a bad snow storm.  When I finally made it back to the state hospital I was frozen my mustache was ice.  Although I did it when I crawled into bed, I had proved I would do anything to get out of that place.  You might wonder why I hate the state hospital so much.  It is because of all the freedom there you can wear street clothes; you can meet girls on the grounds and talk to them.  You can go to the cafeteria and buy a hamburger or any meal you would like.  You carried money and with passes could go out to eat or a store.  What kind of lock up is that if I did not hate it?  I would have been there for ten year or longer if I liked the place.
Hope is never giving up just keep pushing forward something has to change or break.  You have to hold on to that dream and not let anything stop you from reaching it.  It took me a long time in college, although I knew one day I would graduate.  Then something that was not planned was getting my Master’s.  It happened a lot faster in getting that.  That is good because it was time to go to work.  We need more shows that show people succeeding when they have a mental illness. I know there is a lot of success out there.  Recovery and success can happen.  American giving awards was a good show to watch.  To see all the organizations that try at help bring change to so many lives.

Why Have Hope?

BEFORE I GET INTO The BLOG, I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT The RECOVERY BLOG IS MOVING TO A NEW LOCATION: OUR BLOG WILL CONTINUE FROM OUR NEW HOME:  http://www.mhcd.org/blog A person should have hope. Why because things usually work out ok. I know there have been many times in the past when all I had was hope. One time I had two six month sentences at the county jail. I was told I would have to finish one at a time. Since I was going to be on probation when I finished the sentences, I was told that I would have to do the whole six months without good time. Well things were looking bad about five months at the county jail. I was working in the kitchen and was getting ready to feed the guys in the hole, when I was told to wrap it up. They told me I did not even have to start feeding just get out of there, my appeal bond had come through. That is one reason to have hope.

I believe without hope I would not be at the place I am at now. I will tell another story of the last time I was in prison and had my breakdown. I was sentenced to nine years in prison. The case if the judge would have allowed me the law the case would have been a misdemeanor. She would not even give me an appeal bond. I might have told this story in an earlier blog. I was angry, I was gambling in prison. They found me guilty of gambling and sent me to the hole for I think three days. I do not remember much of being in the hole. I know I went in angry. I woke on another tier that I had never been to before.
I was mentally ill now although I did not know at the time. They sent me to their hospital and I ended up staying behind the walls. My counselor told me I was a danger. She also told me that she was going to fight my parole. She did not explain that I had a mental illness. I knew I could not do the whole nine years. Just doing these two years so far was killing me because I did not know that I had a mental illness. Something had happened to me and I was different. My only hope was my appeal and when it came through I thought I was going to change my life. I made a deal that if they just let me go without probation or anything I would forget the two years.
I did not know my going to a fast paced computer course would bring on my mental illness and I would end up in the State Hospital. That is one place I hated more than any jail or prison. Although it allowed me the steps I needed to change my life and do it slowly so the changes would stick. I believe hope and never ever forgetting the streets helped me make through the State Hospital. All of these times I kept hope alive even when things would look bad. One friend told me I always came out good. It never seemed like it at the time. Although if you just keep your head high and remember something good will come soon enough. A person can remain optimistic and it works. There have been so many times that all I had was hope and things always would work out.

JUST A REMINDER THAT THE RECOVERY BLOG IS MOVING TO A NEW ADDRESS: OUR NEW HOME IS: http://mhcd.org/blog

Goals

Well thanksgiving is over and it was a nice one. I was able to see family I only see on holidays. Now it is time to think about Christmas and another new year. It should turn out to be a good year I hope. I will continue exercising and doing things the same way I have started in the last six months. Also to have hope it will turn out even better or the same as this year. I believe hope is needed every new year.
If you are struggling with something this year you can only hope it will be get better this New Year. You might have to take small steps to achieve something that you would like to change and have the hope to. Just set goals that you can achieve. That way you do not give up or lose focus or hope. When you achieve those small goals it feels great and you have even more hope that your long term goal will be easy to achieve.
That is the focus I have on losing weight. I know every time I go to a doctor I get weighed and I just want it to show less weight than I had the last time I weighed. So far it has worked out and I have lost enough to show what I am doing this time is finally working. Now when I look in the mirror I see myself slowly changing. I have come to enjoy my walks and exercising.
When I was younger, I would walk across town and only take the bus on the way back home. That is the shape I set my long term goal to be. I hope to do the same amount of walking as I did then. The weather has been great so far this time of year to walk in. I hope the holidays and the New Year will be great for everyone.

When to have Hope

Hope is something you need if you want to recover. It is hope that that situation will get better. How do you have it when you have been in prison for thirty years? That just happen in the news yesterday and I heard this morning he said what kept him going was hope. Hope has always been around and will continue to be. It can start with hoping you will recover from mental distress. You start by setting goals. The first can be stabilizing with consistency. Then you can decide what you would like to do with your life. It might be school or work. Some people can start full-time and others may have to go part time. Others may not want the challenge at all. That is O.K whatever hope brings will be for the best. I like doing something every day it helps me stay recovered. I do not have to think about my mental distress all the time. There are other things to think about. By exercising, music and reading as well as work help my mind in a lot of ways. Also I like watching comedy shows that make me laugh and release stress. I do my best to eat healthy and exercising has really helped. When I am done exercising if the mail is there, I take a walk around the pond in my apartment to pick it up. All of what I have today though started with a lot of hope. I can remember being at the State Hospital and wondering if I would ever get out of there. I can relate to the guy who just did thirty years, because without hope he would have told them what they wanted to hear just to get out of prison. Nobody would have then believed he was innocent. There were a lot of obstacles along the way. He could not get paroled until he went through a sex offender program and admitted he was a sex offender. I can relate I remember one counselor at the State Hospital that kept trying to make me say that I was a danger to myself and others. If I did not say those words, he said he would keep me there until I did. If I was still insane at the time I would have but I was not. I never said it and tried going to court instead. I lost in court really because I never even seen the judge. Although when I came back to the State Hospital they told me the ward was closing and I would be the first to move and have a new counselor. So sometimes you just have to hope when things look like they will not change they will. I think it is sad it takes so long sometimes.

Hope

Hope is something you need if you want to recover. It is hope that that situation will get better. Even prisoners or people in the state hospital need hope that they can win their case. Or even get out someday and have a better life. Hope has always been around and will continue to. It can start with hoping you will recover from mental distress. You start by setting goals. The first can be stabilizing with consistency. Then you can decide what you would like to do with your life. It might be school or work. Some people can start full-time and others may have to go part time. For myself doing something everyday helps me stay recovered. I do not have to think about my mental distress all the time. There are other things to think about. By exercising, music and reading as well as work help my mind in a lot of ways. Also I like watching comedy shows that make me laugh and release stress. I do my best to eat healthy and exercising has really helped. When I am done exercising if the mail is there, I take a walk around the pond in my apartment to pick it up. All of what I have today though started with a lot of hopes. There were a lot of obstacles along the way. There will probably be more in the future, although I can get through them and continue to hope and be happy.