Amazing Speech by an Amazing Friend

Hi all,
So, I have this amazing friend named Brandalyn. She's been a constant support and is an amazing mentor. I admire her with everything I have. Well, today she shared a speech with me that she gave to the rotary club. I share it here, with her permission of course. Please let me know what you think. I think we can use parts of it for the SNP CC mission statement.

Changing Minds Changing Lives

Brandalyn

In our society, we do not punish people with cancer. We do not tell paraplegics that they could walk if they really wanted to. We don’t humiliate people with heart disease or disparage those who suffer from other types physical maladies. We have laws to protect people from being discriminated against on the basis of race, creed, religion,  sexual orientation, physical disability, age, and gender yet in our society there remains a pervasive form of discrimination; the stigmatization of mental illness.

            Popular culture depicts those who live with mental illness as: ignorant, lazy, immoral, or dangerous individuals. In our colloquial language we use disparaging terms such as psycho, nut case, whack job and many other inappropriate labels. The black heart of any form of discrimination is fear and ignorance. These assumptions overlook an important reality.  According the American Psychiatric Associate, in any one year period, as many as one in four or 50 million Americans have a clearly diagnosable mental illness.  With appropriate treatment, as many as 8 in 10 psychiatric patients recover and enjoy the return of  mental health.

            Why is mental illness so prevalent?  Certain individuals are born with a chemical or biological predisposition to certain types of psychiatric disorders. However, a biological predisposition alone does not guarantee that the individual will develop a psychiatric illness.  Intervening environmental factors may preclude the development.  Other individuals are born with no innate predisposition will develop a mental illness regardless of biological factors. Why?

            We live in a world where one in every four girls are sexually abused before the age of fourteen and one in six boys are abused before the age of sixteen. One in every six women are the victims of attempted or completed rape.  Domestic abuse exists in 30% of American households and 5.2 million people a year suffer or witness a trauma so severe that they experience symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (APA)   These events may be the impetus for mental illness in individuals where no chemical or biological predisposition exists. The greatest tragedy brought on by the stigma of mental illness is that only one in five of these individuals seek treatment. 

            I have been a consumer of mental health services at GLCMH for two years now and I am, with the support of my therapist, my psychiatrist, and the various educational opportunities I have been involved with, working toward my recovery.

            I was diagnosed in 2000 with mental illness and it has drastically changed my life. At that time,  I was employed by a local engineering firm, where I held a position of responsibility. I was recently married and my husband, my two sons and I enjoyed a rather privileged lifestyle. My husband, although he was not employed, came from a propionate local family and we enjoyed many advantages.  All of that changed when I fell ill.

            I found very little support even less compassion. The people who I loved and those I called friends attempted to shame and humiliate me out of my illness.  They considered the symptoms inappropriate behavior rather than an illness.

            I have endured what I never could have imagined myself surviving, but I have.  I have also come to believe that my mental illness itself is a gift. It has taught me to identify the people who truly love and support me.  It has taught me to prioritize what is  valuable and throughout this journey of self discovery I have learned that I am not alone, even when I feel lonely.  There are many people with whom share the experience of living with mental illness and we are doing so with dignity and pride.

            People who live with mental illness are extraordinary people with extraordinary challenges and yet, we are so much more than that.  I am amazed by the many intelligent, articulate, talented individuals I have met, who share similar stories.  As I mentioned, I consider my illness, itself, a gift because of the insight I have gained through the intense, extreme and sometimes painful introspection that comes with living with a psychological disability.

   

               

    For now I’m just being told to embrace the paradox… What makes sense is embracing what doesn’t make sense. I hate to love what I do to myself and yet I love it, anyway. Part of why I cut is because I don’t have the words to give it a voice. If I had the right words or thoughts, I wouldn’t have the need. I don’t cut because I want to-- but because I have to….  My scars are never going to get any better and they’re never going to go away. I just wear my scars on the outside. And I’ve made peace with that. People will either accept me or they won’t… My mettle has been tested by one of the most difficult challenges of the human experience.  It has shown me, as Hemingway says, how to grow strong at the broken places.

The Storm

I got to see him, the son I lost in the storm and the son I never had in the  morning dew. His eyes were still serious dark brown, with a unyielding sparkle of humor. His porcelain skin was still sprinkled with summer freckles. And he embraced me in the rays of the sunshine as if we had never been separated. It was as if he was never violently whipped from my arms by the winds of a hurricane and made invisible by side way sheets of rain and opaque clouds. Our short reunion brought out the sun and restored power to a devastated town because for a moment we were in the calm eye of the storm. We were safe for a moment from flying debris threatening to knock us off our feet. I knew he couldn't stay stay with me so I could protect him from the dangers the winds swept our way but it was still a lightening shock to separate from him again as the eye of the storm passed us by. As the hurricane returned I had rain in my eyes.

I wanna thank my friend Sarah for being with him through that wonderful bittersweet ten minutes and to my husband for making it happen.

Raw

Hi friends,
If any of you have been following the Mags Sharp art page on facebook you'll know that I'm experimenting with raw art journals. Check out the page to see it. But I was sitting here thinking about the way I feel right now, trying to come up with a term for it and I guess that "raw" is really the best word for it. I feel raw, as if I've been rubbed down to nothing. I am not very good at being busy and having a lot of things on  my mind. I like to be productive but I'm being weighed down by a lot of things. First of all is my stepson. I got to see him on Friday and it was a very beautiful thing. He is still a little angel, and he's as gorgeous as ever. But I only had ten minutes with him and saying goodbye was rather painful. And many of you know that my husband and I have been trying to have a baby for years. But it doesn't look like it will happen so we decided to adopt. We are saving the money and waiting, but the waiting seems interminable and the unknowns of what I am going to be in three years or so are driving me crazy.
And with my mental health record, will I be able to adopt? And if I can't, where will I go from there?
It's just the usual things, but with winter coming and not feeling good they are hitting me hard. But we have the sticky note project coming up, and I  need to put myself into that.
My anniversary is next week, four years! Four amazing wonderful years and my stepdaughter helped me pick out a dress for it. She actually is not a bad shopper. She talked me out of this particularly heinous dress into one of that was actually quite nice. Not bad for a six year old.
Well, Going back to feeling raw, after this I am going to post the words to an art piece I did after seeing my stepson. It was an experiment for the raw art and the pictures are posted on facebook but you can't read it fully.

Thanks friends for listening. It's 2am so I hope you're all sleeping, safe and sound.
 

Me against the world

Okay, so I know that the world is not against me but sometimes it feels like it. I am not going to go into detail but most of you know what happened with my stepson. Well, I am still dealing with that and with my in-laws over the same issue. I have tried to do everything right and it turns out wrong.


And then someone in my own family used this very blog against me. All the things I post on here are the truth and most of it is of an artistic nature. I put my papers from my writing class on her, as a sharing tool. But someone found one of the papers and turned it around to make me seem like an uppity judgmental bitch. Which, I haven't judged anyone. The paper was the one about my grandmother, Sydney who was a woman who loved art and was liberal, someone like me. But my search to find out more about her, since she died when my dad was six was turned into something foul, and into untrue rumors.

I am saying this now. This blog is for those who are passionate about art as a healing tool. It is so I can document the journey I am on and share it with people who want to learn. I want it to open up a community like the Sticky Note project is doing. I want it to set an example to those interested in the sticky note project so they can see what it's all about, and what I am all about. If you do not want to use my blog in this way than don't read it. It isn't for you if that's what you want from it.  It's not weapon against me. This person who I am sure is reading this, took something personal and turned it into something shallow.

I am angry, and I feel like I am all alone. I know I am not. I have some wonderful friends out there, amazing ones. And my husband and stepdaughter. And my wonderful mother, who knows me better than anyone in the world and believes in me no matter what I say. I know she won't read this blog but she deserves recognition of being a great listener and a wonderful supporter, along with her twin sister. Thank you to all those who believe in what I am trying to do. Please share this blog sight with your friends and family and link it to your facebook. That way we can all share what needs to be shared.

Loves,
Mags

UPDATES-Please Read

Hey Friends,
I have been out for awhile but one of the reasons is my writing class. It has been very therapeutic and good for me to write some of this stuff, in a different way than before. Please read these and comment as you see fit.

I have changed names, including mine in some of these papers, to protect people and myself.

These papers do have some poetic license. They are true but may be up for discussion. They are my perceptions of the truth. I don't want anyone to feel offended by these papers or what is said. Nothing is aimed at anyone. Some of them may be triggering so please be careful.

Thanks and loves,
Mags

Story of Anorexia-Writing paper

 
Names including my own have been switched in these stories.

Litany of the Starving

            Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five.  A hundred and five.  Too much.

            Sitting in Arabic, my focus again had waned from the list of foreign wiggles on the board to my usual invocation.  Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five. A hundred and five. Too much. It repeated in my head, the thoughts unwanted but wanted at the same time. They were the only thoughts I had; the only thoughts I needed.

            “Megan?” Madj, my Palestinian Arabic teacher, grabbed my attention. My litany was interrupted at Splenda.  He had his finger pointed at a sentence on the board. I glanced at it, scrambling to translate it in my head. A hundred and five. Too much. No, Megan. Read the wiggles. I looked again, confused and looked back at Madj. 

            “How do you make this sentence feminine?” he asked.

            I could feel the eyes of the class on me. We were a tight knit group in the Middle Eastern Studies department, and I could see my friend Jessica mouthing the answer to me. I looked back up at Madj. “Add a tammarbuta?”  It was the little sign that made an “a” sound to signify that a woman was speaking.

            “Right,” he confirmed. “Read the sentence now and translate.”

            My head started to ache and the wiggles were blurring in front of my eyes. “Ana joanna?” Madj nodded. “I am hungry.”

            I am hungry. That’s what I translated. I am hungry. But I wasn’t hungry. I had a diet coke, two appetite reducers and I was half way through my cup of coffee. A sudden grumble in my stomach almost gave me away to my peers and myself but I shifted my desk at the same time to disguise the noise.  Jessica was scribbling at her desk a seat away as Madj’s voice once again fell into the back ground. A hundred and five. Too much. Diet Coke. Zero.  Jessica slipped me the piece of paper she had been scribbling on. I am sure Madj knew we passed notes but chose to ignore it. We had been his students for two years now, since he was one of the few professors in the department.  He went on the MES field trips with us so he knew us personally. He knew I had gone from his best student to struggling. He knew I wasn’t paying attention and he knew Jessica was worried.  I didn’t know it that day but in the next couple of months he would stay after and help me catch up on the work I missed while I was in the hospital.

            Jessica had been taking notes in a pink pen and her writing was immaculate, like her. Unlike me.  “Wanna get dinner after class? I am starving.”

            I cast her a dirty look, making sure she wasn’t looking. It was Wednesday. I didn’t eat on Wednesdays. I had to wait until tomorrow for my granola bar. Forty-five.  I went through it again. Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two.  Coffee, two cups. Four. A hundred and five. Too much. I picked up my pen. It seemed heavy. Had my hand been shaking all through class? “Sociology study group at nine,” I wrote back. I hoped she could read it. It was shaky and squiggly. It took me a second to make sure I had written in English instead of copying the Arabic from the board. I handed it back.

            I scooted as quickly as I could out of the class room once we were dismissed and ran into the cold October air. I ditched my coffee in the nearest garbage; the bitter liquid had turned cold.  I needed warmth as a thin layer of goose bumps had settled on my skin. My classmates had worn sweatshirts now the weather had gotten chilly; I wore a thermal shirt under my sweat shirt, plus my favorite jean jacket. The layers had two purposes. They kept me warm and they hid what just a sweatshirt couldn’t.  I scaled around the building, to the opposite entrance than the rest of the class would be coming out of and hid in the corner of the building, where it met up with the social sciences building. I slid down the wall, using it as support. I took a deep breath, feeling the ground beneath me. It was there, I was stable on it for now.  I had to get across the campus, a good half mile of side walk framing tall institutional looking buildings with a few abstract structures adding the “university” feel to the campus. Then I had to go through the rows of identical looking town houses. Five in a row, facing the next five, brushing up against the five next to it. It took Jessica ten minutes to walk it. Jessica and I lived near each other in the upperclassmen dorms, which were narrow two story town houses made to house four students a piece.  We usually walked together after Arabic, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But tonight I knew I probably wouldn’t make it, and with her invitation for dinner I couldn’t avoid an awkward moment explaining that I once again wasn’t hungry.

            I sat back, with my head against the cold brick. I breathed in the cool evening air, feeling it in my lungs, hoping it would fill me enough to give me the strength to get to my dorm. There I could get in my second cup of coffee and head to bed. Thursdays were my slow day. I could wake up, have a granola bar and rest until my four-thirty class. I just had to get back to my dorm or I would spend my slow Thursday here, huddled between the science and language buildings.  I tried to stand, but my knees shook and everything turned. I sat back down, really in a pickle. There was nothing in a pickle. No calories. “Okay, Megan,” I told myself. “Focus. Don’t think about pickles.” Even the simplest thoughts had turned to food and calories, and I had no control over them.  I put my head on my knees, pulling my sweatshirt hood over my head. Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five.  A hundred and five.  Too much.  The words were comforting. It was what I had to eat that day, and their calories. The last number was my weight, the last I knew. My roommate had thrown out the scale two weeks ago in a fit of anger, saying I spent too much time on the thing. I had tried to find it, but it was gone.  

            I didn’t remember getting to this point, where I had to sit outside of the school building wondering how I would make the ten minute walk across campus. I didn’t know when thoughts went from rational, educated to short, choppy sentences and obsessive redundancies.  It must have been slow. At one point I knew that I had eaten like the others. I would do my homework at my computer, a pizza slice next to me. I didn’t know how long it had been since I did that, my memory was foggy.  But now, it was just this. There was nothing but the food and their calories. But I didn’t care. This was the way it had to be now.

            It didn’t take long for the hard concrete to get uncomfortable. Campus was pretty much empty now so I felt isolated and cold. I checked the time on my older model cell phone and threw it back into my bag.  It was nine thirty; all classes ended at nine. All the students had gone either to one of the several cafeterias, or home to study.  I knew that it wasn’t the safest spot to be in, being defenseless and alone in the dark. I was facing the parking lot, which was always well lit. I would be able to see a potential mugger or attacker from the front at least.  I was aware for the first time the seriousness of my predicament; that I was stuck on the side of a building, staring at the parking lot. I couldn’t get home; I was just too weak, too tired.

 Suddenly, I saw headlights slow down on the street in front of me. They didn’t turn into the parking lot, but stopped. I could feel the engine rumbling through the cold hard ground. It was a clunker, but being on a college campus all the cars were clunkers. The door opened and someone got out. I could see its silhouette coming at me and I felt a rush of panic. Diet Coke…. No. That wouldn’t help me now. I ruffled through my bag, which was full of books and papers and pens. Where was my phone? I ruffled through it quickly as the dark figure came closer.

            “Come on,” the figure said, reaching its hand towards me. I looked up. I hadn’t noticed the outline of the curly hair in my panic. It was Jessica. “You don’t have sociology this semester. I went to get the car for you.”

            I didn’t have sociology? My mind was so starved that I couldn’t even remember what classes I was taking. She reached down, picking me up. “I’m too heavy for you,” I argued. She said nothing, but half carried me to her car. I knew she was angry as she drove to her apartment silently but I didn’t understand why. She didn’t say a word but helped me into her dorm. “My roommates aren’t here,” she said. She locked the door behind us. “Into the bathroom.”

            “I don’t have to go,” I said, without enthusiasm. I knew where this was going. It had gone there with my mom when I had gone home for the weekend. It had gone there with my boyfriend just the week before. If I argued with her she’d eventually force me in there anyway. I had no more fight in me.

            She pointed empathically towards the bathroom, a quiet order that gave me no more thinking room. Jessica was a force to reckon with. The daughter of a staunch catholic mother and a devout Jewish father, she knew how deal with difficult people. She was very gentle and loving but could be hard and unforgiving if the situation called for it. So, I had no choice. I followed her into the bathroom.  She eyed me under the harsh bright light. It hurt my eyes. “Jacket.” It was a one word order that I immediately got the point of. I took off my jean jacket. “Sweatshirt.” I took off the sweatshirt, stumbling a little as I pulled it over my head. She sighed. “Thermal shirt, t-shirt, undershirt.” I stripped down to my bra, pulling my arms around my shivering skeleton. We had been friends for two years and often shared dressing rooms in stores, though not lately. I wasn’t embarrassed that she was seeing me half dressed, but I was nervous. No one liked my new body. It always made people yell at me. My mind preemptively blocked out what was coming. Diet coke. Zero. Dexatrim.

            “Megan!” she hollered, her manicured pale hands over her mouth. “I knew it was bad, but not like this.”

            “What’s bad?” It was better to play dumb. She turned me to the mirror. I already knew what I would see and feel. I saw it every day when I got ready for class and I felt pride and terror at the same time.  My cheeks were sunken in, my head looked like it was huge compared to my neck. My collar bones jutted out violently and my rubs were countable. My belly was sunken in like my cheeks and there was a one inch space between my skin and the band of my size 0 jeans. If I turned to look at my back, there was a line of bruises down my spine. I had to lay flat on my back to sleep and the bones rubbed against my skin.

            “Stand on the scale,” she ordered. Usually this scenario caused a ferocious reaction in me. I would fight and yell and accuse, tired at people begging me to eat and calling me boney. I had gotten it from all angles lately it seemed, from everyone I knew. It was tiring to fight and lie all the time.  But tonight, I was just too tired. I stepped on the scale, causing another horrified scream from Jessica. It had two, red digital numbers flashing back at me. 87.  I had done it. I had lost the extra weight I had carried around since middle school. It was all gone. I felt triumphant, I felt full. My energy surged slightly at the news of my weight plummeting even further and I dumbly looked at the scale. It had worked! I had done what I had wanted to do. I turned to talk to Jessica, to lie. I was going to tell her that I was sorry, that I would eat. It was stupid to get this skinny. I’d tell her I was just losing weight because of my stressful class load.  It would be better after Thanksgiving break. But I was alone. It was just me in the brightly lit bathroom. And the scale. I walked out, using the faux marble bathroom counter for support. Jessica was curled into a ball on the cream standard issue couch; she had her arms tightly hugged around her legs. Her face covered by her unruly red hair, looking like a wine stain on the pale scratchy couch.  

            “You’re going to die,” she sobbed into her arms.

            I sat down next to her, resting my head on her legs, next to her head. I felt helpless, guilty. Unlike the others, my family, roommates, other friends, she wasn’t yelling at me. She wasn’t rummaging through her kitchen, forcing food down my throat. She was crying. I had caused this, had caused the friend who would rescue me after class, the friend who would stand up for me when my boyfriend would be a jerk to cry. We stayed in that position until I had finally fallen asleep on her couch, still in my light fabric bra.

Light filtering in through the kitchen woke me up in the morning. Jessica had covered me with a fleece blanket and the comforter from her bed. I could smell apples and cinnamon, wafting at me from the small kitchen. There was a buzzing noise but it ended with a ding seconds later. Jessica, already dressed in her jeans and a white blouse, was at the small wooden table eating out of a bowl and looking at her biology book. She smiled at me and handed me a long sleeved t-shirt. I pulled it on as she set a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of orange juice in front of me.

“Jessica….” I started, cautious. I couldn’t eat this. There were just too many calories. I wanted a diet coke. Diet coke. Zero. My mind had started already, two minutes after I had woken up. I shook my head as if to shake the thoughts out of my head. Today my litany would be different though, when they finally pushed through into my thoughts. It would be Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five.  Eighty Seven. Makes Jessica cry.

            I only managed two spoonfuls of the oatmeal that morning and half the orange juice; it was more than I had eaten in a long time. But the thoughts had been interrupted. They weren’t about just numbers and food anymore; they were proof that I wasn’t only hurting myself.

            It would take three more years to recover. It was my stepdaughter that had cinched the true recovery. She depended on me and needed me to be healthy for her. I couldn’t truly care for this little girl, if I couldn’t truly care for myself.   And I knew that I couldn’t cause my little girl pain as I had caused Jessica pain that night in 2005, a night that ultimately ended our friendship. It was too painful for her to watch someone she loved hurt herself like that. My thoughts have changed from an obsessive litany to a constant song of praise that I am alive to witness my stepdaughter growing up, healthy and confident.   

           

The abuse story-writing paper

Names including my own have been switched in these stories.A Routine Morning that Changed Everything

            It was a Monday morning in late September. I dozed peacefully and unexpectedly, never knowing that this particular morning’s routine would change everything. My stepchildren, John age five and Jenny age three, were with their mother’s, K.C. that weekend. So, with great effort, I pushed away my nagging worries about K.C.’s new husband, Rodney, out of my mind. Jenny had been acting strange around him and throwing fits inappropriate to her age and circumstances. But there was nothing I could do, so I ignored that badgering disquiet.

            My best friend, Sarah, from my far away dorm life had come up for the weekend. Since I had been back to my small hometown from the hustle and bustle of university life and married a man with two children, I yearned for intelligent adult conversations. Not that I didn’t love trying to decipher three year old begging at the refrigerator. (There are a million ways to ask for strawberries in three year old lingo.) And I had spent two whole weeks at this point trying to figure out what a Bakugan Ball was from five year old John. So a weekend with an actual adult had been refreshing.  We had spent all of Sunday night and most of the early morning discussing the Republican influence on the Michigan mental health system and reminiscing about drunken Saturday nights dodging campus police, who were always ready to hand out an MIP.

            So, my husband B.J.’s alarm went off at nine Monday morning as usual.  Its doorbell chime woke me enough to roll over pulling my 800 thread count, overly flowered sheets over my head.  Blocking out the trickle of rare September sunshine that was fluttering through my cat-clawed ripped shades, I fell quickly back to sleep.

            I had been married long enough to block out the noises of my husband getting ready for work. He flitted in and out of the room.  Sarah was sleeping on our old battered pull out couch in the living room. So, the news remained off and he tiptoed, trying to be respectful of the sleeping night owls. 

            Even in my semi-conscious slumber, I was expecting the bedroom door to creak open one more time and to smell the thick hospital antiseptic that permeated his light blue hospital scrubs, no matter the amount of Tide I attacked them with.  That last creak and whiff of antiseptic meant that he was going to gently remove the sheets from my head, kiss me gently on the forehead and return to the sheets to their original position. Then for the next 16 hours, I would be husbandless as he helped the unfortunates of Northern Michigan who were unlucky enough to spend the day in the ER. I always muttered thanks when he left that he worked there, as if his job somehow protected us from our own emergencies.

            That morning, I heard the door creak, smelled the antiseptic and had my kiss. I settled back in completely, shifting Eleanor, my gray and orange cat off my chest so I could roll to my other side.  

            But several minutes later the door creaked one more time. I automatically turned over, sending Eleanor flying.  I was suddenly and totally awake, as if I had been shocked from the inside out. He was standing at the foot of our wooden four poster bed, one hand gripped tightly on the decorative wooden ball.  His already blond complexion was white, except a pink flush to his high cheeks. His full lips were plumped out, like they always were when he was serious. Usually, I found his lip-plumping enduring and lovingly teased him about them, but not this time. I found it terrifying.

            He took a shaky breath and said, “K.C. just called….” Immediately, I covered my ears, knowing that any news from the kids’ mother wasn’t good. B.J. made no move towards me but said in the same, over calculated voice, “Rodney beat Jenny.”

            Then there was nothing. No cat begging to be pet after forced exodus from my bed, no sunshine, just an annoying high pitched wail coming from inside my head. Suddenly, my hands were pulled from my ears. Tears already flowing, like I had been crying for hours not seconds, I looked up at B.J. I didn’t have to say “really?” or “what?” We had been expecting the news for a long time, trying to prove it ourselves with doctors and therapists to no avail. B.J. looked back at me helpless, silent. “She’s a baby.” They were the only words I could think of to say. But those three little words were just a small burp before constant, irrational regurgitations of “I knew it!”’s and “Who could hit a baby?”’s.

            Sarah was there immediately, shocked out of her own heavy sleep. She leaned against the wooden door frame of my room, just looking. B.J. had moved to the side of the bed, gripping my head hard into his chest. He sat down and moved me so he could look directly into my eyes. His blue eyes were stoic, strong but liars. They were trying to hide his own terror for my protection. He took another breath, his hands in my own shaky hands, pulling gently so I remained in a sitting. He started to say something but I interrupted. I was hit by an overwhelming need to hold the tiny hazel eyed, bright smiled child I had been raising for the past two years as my own. “Go get her and bring her to me!” I commanded through gritted teeth.

            “I will,” he promised. “She’s not hurt badly. K.C. just got the police report and is picking her up from preschool. I am going to meet them in the E.R..”

            “GO!” I yelled suddenly, surprised at my own voice that had been almost incapacitated by screams and sobs. I didn’t want him with me until he had Jenny and John with him. B.J. looked over at Sarah, silently. They seamlessly switched places, turning me from one pair of comforting arms to the other.  Sarah, after several minutes of just holding me, letting me sob into her Joan Jett t-shirt, pulled me to my feet. My devastation was already creating images of my sweet little girl cowering as a big faceless man swung at her petite body. I could see John’s huge brown eyes watching the situation, unmoving in terror as his sister was being hit.  He was so protective of her; I couldn’t imagine his own helplessness.

            Sarah guided me to the front door. I couldn’t find my own way; I was blinded by the horrible but true fantasies my mind was showing me, prematurely, void of any tangible details. She opened the door and sat me on the cheap black computer chair, now grayish with its thick layer of cat hair. Dubbed the smoking chair, it was what we used on cold days to sit by the window to smoke through the storm door’s screen.  She took one of her cigarettes, lit it herself and handed it to me. She knew that there was nothing to say or do besides the simple act of lighting the cigarette for me.  As I sat there, sucking in the cool menthol smoke as if it was air rather than carcinogens, the sun poured down on me as if nothing had happened. In its ignorant bliss, it made the day look cheerful despite the black cloud suddenly hanging over me.

            I could vaguely sense Sarah rummaging through my war zone of a back hall closet. I wanted to tell her that finding anything was futile but my lips were paralyzed against anything but sobs. But by the time the orange ember had almost burned out on my Camel, she came back triumphant. She handed me two small white tablets, and brought my hand to my mouth. She handed me her own newly opened Diet Mt. Dew, the sweet liquid went down hard but the pills were swallowed. “Ativan,” she explained, but I didn’t care. They wouldn’t make my baby unbeaten, wouldn’t make my little boy un-horrified. But it was the only calm I would have until B.J. made good on his promise and brought my children back to me. Battered but safe in my arms.

Feeling Different-Writing paper

Names including my own have been switched in these stories.

            I have always felt different than my family and my friends. I grew up in Traverse City, Michigan. My mother was from Traverse City, so her family was physically close to us. My father was from Akron, Ohio so my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were not close and I never knew them very well.

            My mom’s family had grown up poor in Traverse City. Her mother, Mary Jane had raised six kids, while working as a nurse. Nursing was the family career. All my aunts and uncles, including my mom worked at Munson hospital. She had three other sisters, all within three years of age. Each one of her sisters had two daughters. They had married men from Michigan, who were not college educated, barely high school educated. I was the youngest of the cousins, except for my brother. Our mothers were often together, bringing us cousins together to play. We’d go out to Long Lake as our mother’s would spend the day covered in baby oil in their low sitting chairs, their feet never touching the water, the rest of us kids would swim in the water. We’d make up stories of mermaids, and sea serpents. It was our summer routine.

As I reach elementary school I started to realize that I was different. The other kids seemed shallow and mean. I would sit in class, watching the younger children play outside. I would eye on the lone first grader on the swings. I would feel bad and make sure that first grader got on the bus okay. I cared and I didn’t understand why others didn’t.

In the 2^nd grade, I wrote a letter to Bill Clinton (who I still have of poster of in my house like most preteens have posters of boy bands). I wanted him to fix the problems at my school. The sad kids, the kids were beat up every day for being different (myself included.)

On summer days we weren’t at Duck Lake I would sit in the house reading stories about the holocaust or Martin Luther King Jr.. I was fascinated by the stories of the leader as a kid as he tried to right wrongs. My father often got annoyed with me curled up on the couch on a 75 degree day and would order me outside to play. Later he would find that I had stolen the key to my mom’s car, got her beach chair out of the trunk and sat in the middle of the yard with my book.

            My cousins read books about boys and teenager romances, and my friends weren’t much different.  I wanted to discuss the “I Have A Dream” speech or why Hitler was bad. One time when I was eight, I had saw a St. Jude’s hospital fundraiser on T.V.. I told my mom the next day that I was going to be a pediatric oncologist. Later, seeing Free Willy, I would dream to become a marine biologist and save the whales. I rarely had anyone to talk to and would retreat into my books.

            As I got into high school, I had found a group of friends in  my new high school, the private catholic high school in town. I was relieved to be away from the public schools and the people there. I was fed up completely with the shallowness. My friends at St. Francis didn’t get me either and I was often called eccentric. Eccentric was used instead of weird after I had thrown several fits about the term. 

            I knew that I was different. I believed there was something deep in me, internally in me that made me different from my family and my friends. I had wondered if I was adopted at times (though obviously I wasn’t) because I just wasn’t like anyone else around me.

            By this time my father’s father and step-mother had moved to Chicago. He was excited to get my brother and me to see them as often as possible. My grandfather was college educated, an engineer from Mack Truck and Good Year. He had traveled all over the world, was a US patent holder.  I had never known much about how my father had grown up, as he was an emotionally quiet man. So, these trips to Chicago were eye opening. My grandparents lived with my dad’s stepbrother, who was a world renowned rheumatologist. They had a huge house in the suburbs that was built by an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright.

            My grandfather would regal us with stories about his life in Brooklyn, or his stories about college. He loved to tell the story of their trip through Africa. My step grandmother, Marion was a retired English teacher, and demanded the upmost of class from her grandchildren. We demonstrated perfect behavior, crossed our legs at the ankle and never used incorrect grammar. (Hopefully, her lessons are apparent in my papers.) Suddenly, this new closeness with my father’s family changed my view on things. There was a world beyond Traverse City, I had just never known how to find it.

            On our trips to Chicago, we would go to the museums and aquariums. I felt like every moment in Chicago was a learning experience and would hate to leave my grandparents for the humdrum life in Traverse City. No matter how much I enjoyed this new view I was getting, I still didn’t see myself completely in them. My grandfather was smart, but he would good at building, good at making things. I didn’t have that.

            After Marion died my grandfather moved back down to Florida. My parents bought the house he lived in so he could stay there to finish out his days.  I was in college by now and had alienated myself from my mom’s family. I was constantly made fun of for my views, not  so lovingly nicknamed Sally University and considered a self-righteous, bra burning democrat who’s dreams would lead to the dreaded black  boyfriend and get me kidnapped by Arabs in the Middle East along with said boyfriend. Well, they weren’t far off from all that.  I did live through a brush with Saudi Arabian border guards and I had a pagan boyfriend with pentagram tattoos. Unlike my family I didn’t think my life was something to look down on, but something to be enjoyed.

            So, on breaks and holidays from college instead of going home to Traverse City, I would hop on a plane to Ft. Myers, Florida and spend time with my grandfather. Since Marion had died he was telling us more and more about his first wife and the mother of his children, Sydney.  Sydney was an artist who envisioned art in everything she saw. Even though her and my grandfather were wealthy she could be made happy with a set of paints and a blank canvas.

            Sydney was a humanitarian. In 1952 they had moved to Mason, MI. Mason in the fifties was a wonderful village for the wealthy and well to do. But Sydney had heard about a small Mexican community in the area that was underprivileged, poor and riddle with crime.  Sydney took action soon after she heard about this minority in her town. Within weeks the Mexican enclave had  “transformed from a ramshackle cluster of small, old houses into a nice area” my grandfather had written in his own memoirs. My mother had laughed reading that in the memoirs saying, “It’s kinda like you, when you went out to the Mexican workers camp in Grand Rapids and boycotted Taco Bell for not paying their workers enough.”

            My mother was right. I was like her.  Since, my grandfather and my major source of information about Sydney died in 2008 I have done everything I can to be like Sydney and it hasn’t been hard. I have loved my children fiercely, have gotten into art. I have admired my image of her, but I have yearned to feel her, to be where she was.

            So, when my husband and I went with his friends from work to Cedar Point in Ohio I asked him to go by the house in Mason. I couldn’t wait until we left the amusement park, everyone was tired of hearing me complain about cold steel capitalism and how the money that amusement park made in a day could feed Ethiopia for a year. So, we headed out from Sandusky and headed up through Lansing towards Mason. I knew the house wouldn’t be hard to find. It is now a Michigan Landmark called the John Raynor house. Raynor was one the founders of the Mason Village and there is a tall green powder coded sign on the big green lawn with the history of the house.

            We found the house easily, it set back from the road. It was brick framed by huge walnut trees. My grandfather had told me it was a Western Reserve, whatever that means.  It was right in the village, on a block that was surrounded by other houses built in the 1880s. I slowly observed the house, and walked up to the sign. I snapped several pictures of the outside. There were two cars in the driveway so I snuck around the back of the house to carriage house, it was my grandfather’s workshop. He had made my father’s bed out there, amoung other things. Sydney had bought him a circular saw as a house warming gift when they bought the house in ’52.  Suddenly the side door at the back of the house creaked open and an older couple came out, curious about my husband and I tramping through their yard. When I explained that my grandfather had lived in this house they let me in for a tour.

            It was filled with antiques, with a huge living area with a stalactite ceiling. The stairs were walnut, winding up to the bedrooms upstairs. In the smallest bedroom, the one they use for their granddaughters there was a French style day bed, built into wall, with cabinets under for storage. An exact replica of the bed my grandfather made me in the Florida house. The bed I was looking at was the bed my father slept in as a toddler. 

            I have always believed that houses hold the spirits that lived there before. Seeing where Sydney lived was like seeing Sydney. I could feel her painting in the back room, gently scolding the boys to take their shoes off in the mudroom. I could feel her finding the lump under arm that ultimately killed her three years later. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel that I was different, or foreign from my family. I could her, could feel that I was a part of her, and I took after her.

A lot going on

Hi. I know it's been awhile since I've really posted. Okay, so I'm not gonna post a lot tonight either. I am tired and achy but I took a friends advice and just did art this weekend.  Nothing amazing or anything but it felt good. Okay, mentally it felt. Physically I got so stiff sitting on the floor that I still can't move well.

I am taking a writing class this fall. It's a "life stories" non credit class that I found. So, for this writing assignment I had this weekend I wrote about the moment my husband told me that my stepdaughter was beaten. It was really cathartic for me to write about every of that five minute period between when he told and when he went to meet my stepdaughter in the hospital. It felt like art in itself, but in your face, blunt art. It was hard. But good.

Well, now that I'm on the mends I'm gonna try catching up on my blogs. Keep creating!

Sick

Hey friends,
Sorry I haven't been posting. I have been sick the past week or so, in and out of the ER...my new special place...errrrrrr.......... So, art news and stuff is minimal. I am still invested in this and am still going to work hard. Just a little frustrated trying to get healthy.

I start my writing class on Wednesday so please cross your fingers that I am not in searing pain by then! I've also missed two Arabic classes. It is really frustrating and disheartening to be so motivated to do something and then have to miss out because of my own bodily limitations. I missed a lot of work and don't have enough money to pay my car payment, or to buy to my Arabic book. I'm am angry and not happy with myself at the moment.

I feel like I finally got healthy mentally enough to get on track, to do what I couldn't do for so long and then my body fights me. It's always fought me but I thought I could push through it. But I can't. It sucks.

Not coming through

So, my friend Sarah is up this weekend. Since I also had my stepdaughter we decided to do art with her on Sunday. My stepdaughter loved it and painted and almost  ran me out of canvases but my own art seemed stunted, as did Sarah's. We couldn't get ours right.

We were both tired and hadn't slept. But I produced art that I didn't feel. And in thinking about I realized the past week or so I am not feeling. I am going through a daze through the motions, exhausted. My passion at the moment seems dwindled and I am hoping that it is not the start of a relapse of anything. I feel like I'm teetering on the brink (of what I don't know) and not feeling art at the moment is scary.

What is that though? The brink? Why did these art pieces represent a brink and teetering on it? I feel discombobulated and tired right now. It's late and I"m getting very little sleep.

But I finished three pieces, which I will post on facebook. I will fill you in more laters.

Energy Art

So, I thought about doing art, just out of anxiety. So, this new profile pic is what I came up just by feeling instead of thinking.  Once I looked it kind of said a lot. It was really how I felt. I wanted out of all this pain, and feeling. I wanted out of this situation with my stepson. I want out....

I don't want you to think my life is sucky or I am whiny. I just get in these moods that I want out of.  So I took my sketch pad. I got my bad energy out without hurting myself. I felt tired but relieved afterward. It was all out of my system and I was able to just go to bed comfortably.

I want you all to know that this art is not about being "good" or trained or making things people like. It's about yourself (or myself). It's not a gift to society, but to yourself. Just let your art be, which is what I did last night. It was a mad, concentrated dash...but it helped me get over the hump of what I was feeling last night.

Cutting

So, I have a hard time admitting this publicly and in the moment but I do self injure. It has been a lot better lately, and a lot less frequent than it has been in the past.  Someday I will share the first time I started but that's not for today.
So last night I self injured.  Since I moved around my stepson's room, his absence has been stronger than ever. I feel him here, and I feel awkward without him here. I also started a new babysitting job, helping a friend out. The little boy I'll be watching is my stepson's age and he reminds me of him. Both boys have the vibrant, over energetic air about them which is what made me fall in love with my step son. I feel like he's(my stepson)  still part of me and the cutting was trying to get him out of me.....to stop his absence from hurting. 

DISCLAIMER-Just so you know, I am under the care of a therapist and I see her today and will let her know. I am not seriously injured....if you do self injure, get help. It is  not safe and it's a symptom of something else going on. DISCLAIMER

I am going to share with you my journal entry from last night here, after I cut. It's not poetry or anything but it's just what I was feeling...

Journal Entry, 9/13/2011
If you were the reason I woke up in the morning what are you now? The reason I can't wake up?
If you were the reason I was healed, are you now the reason I am sick?
What are you now little one? You were the gravitational force that held me to earth, so what's keeping me standing now?
What are you little one? A ghost is a shadow of what once was alive-but you? You are just gone. I don't even have ghosts.
What are you little one? You were the reason I rose at night, to open your door a crack and make sure you were safe; to hear your soft mutterings in sleep and I was always amazed that dreams were happening in front of me. Now, when I hear those soft beautiful mutterings I know I am the one who is dreaming.
When do you stop being mine? How will I know the moment when you stop being apart of me and just become a faded memory?
When will you get out of me? You are in me but it hurts when you're not with me. Can I bleed you out of me but what I am when the last of you is gone?

Thanks for reading folks. Love your children and hug your children. There's nothing more special than loving a child. I am lucky, I know the child I raised and love is alive and thriving.

I had a hard time waking up this morning, I am tired. But I have to get to work and to my therapists today. I don't have time to grieve right now. Thanks again for reading.

Sticky Note TC update

Today I had a meeting about bring the Sticky Note Project to my area. If you don't know what the The Sticky Note Project is yet, read through my posts or go to www.thestickynoteproject.com.  I met with the local Women's Resource Center and we had a lot of ideas to get the project going here. I think we can make it a real presence in my area and we need that.

I need it most of all. I've been living my life the last couple years only focused on how sick I was, what was going on with my stepchildren. I felt purposeless and loosing my stepson recently made it a lot worse. I had made so much of what I wanted to do part of them. But now I know to be healthy I need to do something bigger with my life than focus on myself and the fact that I have no control over whether my step children are safe or not. This is really really important we need this in TC!

I have to thank my friend Mary for this. It is her project and she has given me the motivation again to get on board and be proactive. All my love to her too!

Exhausted and sad

Due to a lot of drama in the past six or seven months, I lost my step son. His biological mother took him away after he told me of abuse going on his house and I took action. Since he wasn't my husbands biological son, we had no control.

So, today I cleaned out his room. Got rid of stuff that we'd never use again, his clothes. I kept up all the stuff he had on his walls, it still feels like his. I put my art stuff in his room, trying to make it into something positive but it just hurts. I got it all done in a quick hurried frenzy but now I just feel so so sad.  Nothing's going to make up for space that's gone in my house. I raised him for from the time he was three till he was eight. He had so much light and he's gone and I don't know how to express that, express how much it hurts.

My house feels like he was here yesterday. He asked to talk to his cat the other day when I was talking to his sister on the phone, but his mom pulled the phone from her hands so he couldn't even be connected. He's gone and my art supplies and drawers and canvases doesn't fill it like a little boy can. Is that what I am doing with my art, replacing him? What replaces a child you loose?

Art is Art, right Meggie?

So I had been promising my stepdaughter all weekend that we would do art.  Well, we had been busy every day and weren't able to do anything. So, yesterday we went to my husband's friend's  bbq....(something I didn't wanna be at anyway) and my step daughter came over and told me she was in pain.... The next second she was doubled over with stomach pain. We rushed her to the emergency room, with her screaming and crying the whole way. She is six.  I was scared there was something really wrong. It ended up being something simple but I was so worried.

So today I told her we could be creative and do whatever we wanted  So, we got out paint, and canvases and different types of brushes. I told her she could use whatever she wanted and as much as she wanted. We had a great time. She kept on asking if she could use something. When I told her she could use whatever she wanted she'd say, Art is Art, right Meggie? So sweet.

It felt wonderful knowing she was not in the hospital, her pain was gone and I could something I promised with her.

Another weekend.....

So, I feel like I'm on the verge of a mental health relapse. I am trying really hard not to. But I haven't been sleeping well, and I am having nightmares. I am also struggling with eating. I had been anorexic years ago but I have been heavy for awhile. It feels refreshing not to be able to eat much, but  I've been binging at night. I gotta find a way to even out. I've signed up for classes and am working.  I worked yesterday even. I'm exhausted and I'm worried about my husband....he working all the time. He's tired all the time too.

I feel like right now things could either go really really right, or really really wrong and I am teetering. Thank God I have art, something to get it out of me.  I've been trying since Friday to do some but between school shopping, and work I haven't  had the time. I plan to stay home tomorrow and do some with my step daughter.


I hope I stay stable. This blog has helped, giving me something to work on.....

A story of stigma and it's power

So, I know that this blog has only one follower but I think it's important I keep it up for me so here goes. I haven't been able to sleep as I said before. But it went from motivation to pure exhaustion. My body doesn't want to sleep, so instead I'm dwelling.

I recently lost my step son, who I will call John (name is changed)  well starting in April but it feels recent. My step-son is not my husband's biological son, but he came along with his sister, Jane (my husband's daughter and John's half sister). They have a history of being abused by their mother's boyfriends. So when I heard some claims from John I called child protection services. We'll their mother, who I'll call the Witch was angry and decided to punish my husband and me took John away from us.

CPS told me that the claims were not serious enough to investigate (though there was holes punched in my Jane's wall in her room). They blew me off. 

Later during a whole bunch of details that I don't have time to write,  my husband let it slip that I have a personality disorder. So, the Witch had her ammo. She called CPS on me, told them I was unstable and had a mental illness. So, a social worker shows up at my door, investigating me. When I asked him why, he said, "Cuz you're mentally ill."

I have no history of hurting the kids, I go to school conferences and doctor's appts. I love both the kids like they are my own. The word mental illness came out and suddenly I was viewed as a dangerous parent.

Well, now that school is about to start I'm starting to realize how much I miss. My mom and I are taking Jane shopping on Friday for back to school. Usually my mom and I take John one weekend and Jane the next and have a special day with them. I can't do that this year. I can't take pictures of John when he goes into the building. It's hard and it's sad. And I've been thinking about it a lot. It's what I think about while I'm trying to sleep. I am scared that with school starting I'm going to start getting depressed and  missing the kids more and more. I'm already exhausted and weepy.

I have wanted to put my missing John into an art piece but I don't know how yet. I have to figure out what to do to get this out of me. It's eating me. 
It's making me exhausted.

Too Lazy

So, the weekends are always a lazy time for me. I've been so tired this weekend.  I am still really motivated from my trip but I am just too tired to do much. I really want to start learning how to draw and to paint, and I need to practice.  It's hard not being able to have the energy to do what I love to do. I barely have the energy to do what I need to do. Sigh. But I'm going to try after I clean my house to do something. It's only six o'clock.

Drained and Muted

So, I am so tired.  I haven't been sleeping and I'm in the sort of numb daze. So I saw my therapist today and she said, "you had so much energy last week after your trip, the spark is gone this week isn't it?" And I was thinking about it and she's right. The Sticky Note Project and being around all these artists and musicians was completely amazing. It was so energizing.  I had all these crazy ideas in my head, all these art supplies from this really cool art shop in Montpelier. And I come home to this....This meaning all the trouble with loosing my step-son, work. My husband is very left brained and has no art sense at all about him. My best friend is far away in Detroit. I want to be able to share what happened and feel the same enthusiasm coming from someone else. I understand that my husband doesn't get art.
So I have all these ideas and plans about this blog, about different mediums I want to try about taking a creative writing class, and there's no one to bounce them off of.  I guess the biggest thing is I'm going to have to ask for that attention.
It can be so frustrating to be different. I need to do art like I need my antidepressants and my therapist. It's part of my health, but I'm in a community where I have to do my art alone. It makes me feel alone.
Okay, so this is a whiny post but it is what it is.

Day off Art

Yay! Tomorrow's my day which means I get to stay home (minus a bunch of errands). It's my time to do art without interruption. I like having day to what I need to to be creative. It's frustrating because by Wednesday I am literally exhausted and overwhelmed. It's hard only being able to work 2 days at a time. But spending the day focused on art, by myself really helps.  My advice to any mental health sufferers or any artist is to take a break so you can focus on you. I picked Wednesday's because my husband works that day and I have the whole day to create by myself. It's a perfect refresher.

Still reeling from last week

So, I decided to start a blog (something I swore I would never ever do by the way) after last week. My friend from high school was putting on an event called the Sticky Note Project (find it on Facebook). It was an art and music event to raise awareness for mental illness as part of the Vermont Festival of Art. It was an amazing location with amazing people there.  The point of the events was to start erasing the stigmas around mental illness. My friend and her band held a concert while art was on display. There were also speakers and stories. 

I was really honored that I was able to show my own art at the show.  I was also one of the speakers and I shared journal entries and poetry. It was really eye opening to see people come together like they did, to discuss mental illness and art.

It really got me motivated. I have always been an activist but as of late between work and family I haven't been as active as I would like to be. So I decided to start a blog, to start recording how and what I am doing artistically and health wise.
I hope that something I say or post will help someone with their own journey.