Life

Last week I talked about staying positive with all the news.  I am going to talk about having hope all the time.  This came to me this week when talking to my daughter.  Life has a way of going up and down.  One week or day things might be going good.  Then the next week things might starting happening that bring you down and you just want to give up.  That is what my daughter told me.  You just have to try and stay positive all the time and know that time will pass.  It is the same as if you were locked up time will pass and you will get out.  That is so hard to do wait for time to pass until things get better.  I know I have been locked up and the worse was the state hospital.

I always tried to hurry things up.  In the state hospital I said now I am on this ward I want to go to the Circle program and learn about drug use.  I knew that was something I would have to face sooner or later. I thought if I face it now I can get out sooner.  It still took longer than I had wished.  Throughout all my time in the state hospital taking things slow did teach me a lot that you have to do the work to change yourself.  Why can they not have a speed course and just get through it and you are well.  I wished that many a time.  You just have to be patience and wait and things will change.  They always do nothing ever remains the same.  You have to keep hope that is for all things.
Even with all those years of hurry up and wait in jail or anyplace it still did not give me the patience I need.  It did give me hope that things will change for the better you just have to keep struggling along and you will see that things get better.  I know that people say I don’t have the time to wait for things to change.  I always say what else are going to do in that time might as well make it work or learn something in that time.  I once was facing twenty four years and I took the case to trial it all was going right in the trial until they told me just before lunch they were trying to bring in a witness from the past.
Well that had me worried all during lunch we went to a fast food restaurant and a person I knew from that past kept talking to me and I could not remember her and she came to my house almost every day.  Although my mind was not on lunch it was on the trial and did I make a mistake in going to trial?  When I received the food and went out to the car I remembered the girl and did not know how I forgot her.  Well after lunch my lawyers had been still working and they did not allow that witness in the trial although the judge took a law away from me after lunch that would be crucial to me winning this case.
I was found guilty of one case and acquitted of the other.  Although I would win on appeal because of the law the judge took away from me.  Although I would be in prison for two year until my appeal and would become mentally ill in prison.  I had hoped that I would soon get out and I did not and was not the same person who went in although I won my appeal.  That stress in prison or some stress sooner or later would have set off my mental illness.  If they would have taught me what a mental illness was maybe I would not have had to go to the state hospital and maybe I would have never went to college otherwise.  Through it all you have to have hope that sooner or later things will improve for the better.  Come this April which is also my not drinking anniversary also I will be out for twenty years since I last was locked up.  That came with hope and change of my life.

Thinking Positive

This is a follow up to Donald’s blog  Optimism we all need it.  I like to think I have it after reading positive books for quite a few years.  I bought and own at least thirty six positive books.  I know that things will always get better.  To me it is when will they  get better. I have a lot of things although one is not patience.  Or maybe I do because I remember telling a friend that was having problems that if she read positive books in years she would work out her problems.  She said “I do not have ten years” I thought well what else you would be doing in those ten years.
It is better to start and try and change things than to not and just hope things get better.  I know that work on themselves is not what a lot of people want to do and it is the same with me.  I remember the state hospital and all the work and time why could they just not let me go.  If they had I might have been one of those revolving people in and out never getting the message what real freedom is.  There are some things we can change and if it takes time is it not better to do something than nothing?  I do not get to feeling as down in the dumps these past years not as bad as I used to before I read positive books.
I really was a negative thinker and nothing could go right.  I wrote to the positive book magazine when I was in the state hospital and started getting the magazine and I shared them when I was done.  They had stories of people succeeding and that is what a person needs when you are locked up.   They helped the time go by and know that things would be better.  When I was released I started buying Norman Vincent Peale’s books.  When I start collecting I really collect.  I even mediated back then.  If you would have knew me I was always thinking that nothing could go right.  I was just a negative thinker.  The books really helped.
I did not become a millionaire and get everything I wanted.  Although if it worked that fast I would be bored.  I get by and know that I keep working on myself I will get better and things will always get better.  Like they say just take it a day at a time.  Know that things always do change for the better sooner or later.  Just think positive and keep pushing forward.  Right now I have everything I need.  My health is the most important thing with that I can get anything else I need.

Understanding Schizophrenia

The title of this article understanding Schizophrenia is the blog I am writing about today.  It talks about Toronto’s Lesley Skelly who is getting to know her son who is the age of twenty three.  For her he is not the same son she raised. “When he was diagnosed, at 19, with schizophrenia, it was like he died and our family went through the grieving process, Skelly says.  Now we are learning about our new son who is different from the child we once knew.” The illness changes you.  For me it changed me for the better I believe.  I am not the same person that I was in my teens and early twenties.   I had DUI’s and was in prison.  I do not hang around all my friends from that time.  They have left me their numbers if I ever change my mind and want to talk and be friends again.   I do think of them and sometimes I want to pick up the phone and call my old friend.  Although I am different and I do not get high no more and even though alcohol has not affected them.  They never were in trouble just me.
This illness changed me for the better, although it is not the same for everyone. “The shock of schizophrenia is that it manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood, and parents must accept that the child they have known and loved for more than a decade may be irrevocably lost, Andrew Solomon writes, even as that child looks much the same as ever.”  I am a paranoid schizophrenic and my illness did not come on till I was twenty eight.  I was in prison at the time and it did change me, I went from one prison when it happened to another.  It was not because my friends at the time changed I had changed. It is hard to describe.   I was already waiting on my appeal and knew that I no longer wanted to be locked up.  Although the illness changed something in my life where I wanted to different and was.
The media always portray people with mental illness as dangerous and going to hurt or kill you. “But people with schizophrenia are really at a higher risk of hurting themselves, Baruch says. They are individuals who have difficulties in their thinking, they hear voices, they see things, they don’t perceive reality the way others do; they are often suspicious and withdrawn.  We need to educate the public as to what this disorder actually is.”  I remember at the state hospital thinking the TV was talking to me.  I could not watch it and that is one time you do not want to be in your mind and wish you could listen to the radio or TV.  The radio also bugged me; I believed it was being broadcasted from prison.
The good thing about the state hospital is that they taught me how to take my medication and to do it at a set time.  That helps to always remember and become routine.  “The majority of individuals with schizophrenia do not take their medication, says Baruch, explaining non-compliance can mean anything from not taking meds at all to missing a day here and there.  Data shows that even if you miss 10 days on an annual basis, the chances of relapsing or rehospitalization is doubled.” I never want relapse.  I do not like being mental ill, so I always want to remember my medication.  I have grandkids that I love and do not want to miss a day without them or my daughter.  Life is hard enough but to add being mentally ill that is too hard.

News

What makes people feel good about hurting someone else? Especially if they have a mental illness, does the person they hurt feel less pain? Yesterday in the Denver Post there was a story about four State Hospital workers sent home because someone they put in restraints received a broken arm. He told them he was in pain. The question if you already put someone in restraints why hurt them more. I’ve been to the state hospital before and I was put in restraints after becoming ill there and not wanting to take medicine. They had a court order to give me medicine. I can understand that. What I did not understand was why so many had to take me down. I think it is harder when there are more staff all trying to do the same job. The Pueblo sheriff is investigating this recent episode at the state hospital. When you are in someone else care, you should not be hurt. I think people would be madder if it was a child in daycare and received a broken arm from somebody that works there. I do not understand why they would kick someone when they are already down. Does it make them feel like a better person then the mentally ill? I might be a little biased because I was at the state hospital and I do not think they are in the job of letting people recover. You just have to stay a certain number of years 'till you get out. It does not matter if you are recovered sooner or not. I saw a lot while I was there. It still comes back to me and I just have to wonder why people in authority have to act that way. Can you not treat all people the same and see some good in them?