Author Archives: alifeofmentalillness

January 16, 2019

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Haven’t gotten out much lately besides running errands.  I feel quite stable over even if I am content to just stay home and socialize with only old friends, family, and neighbors.  I still go to bed around ten p.m., sleep until 4 a.m, and am ready to go for the day.  I still nap for an hour or so during the middle afternoons.  As it is I still socialize even if I don’t get out of my complex much besides running needed errands.  I have become a homebody I suppose.  It’s quite a change from when I was growing up and I rarely wanted to be home, preferring to be with friends, at the library, or attending school activities.

I’ve been very stable lately.  Besides a bad but short lived break down in November, I haven’t had any true problems for over a year.  Maybe I am learning how to deal with the illness quite well.  Or maybe I just have discovered a routine that negates the worst parts of the illness.  Regardless, I’m doing well.  I want to keep this winning streak going.

Winter Stability With Mental Illness

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Been rather uneventful the last several days.  I’ve been stable overall and staying sane.  I keep in contact with friends and family on a daily basis, even on the days I don’t leave my apartment complex.  I think I’m continuing to lose weight as my stamina is slowly increasing, my aches and pains are taking less time to overcome, and I don’t sleep twelve hours a day anymore.  I now usually sleep eight.  Most nights I go to bed around nine or ten p.m and wake up around four or five a.m.  I usually wake up once in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom.  I also sometimes nap for an hour or two in the afternoons.

I recently hired a cleaning person.  She arrives once a week to help me keep the place up and cleaned.  I get along with her fine.  I hope I can keep her for a long time.  I lost my last cleaner after she had heart problems and had to retire.

Winter is treating me alright.  Fortunately January hasn’t been as bitterly cold as December, at least not yet.  We had a big snow right after Christmas but most of that has melted by now.  I can get out and about in my car, but some days I’m just content to stay at home.  I stay in contact with family and friends, often online.  Reminds me of the comic where the mother is telling her son to get outside and spend time with friends.  And the boy says “But mom, I am spending time with my friends.  We are all online.”

I find myself eating less this winter than previously.  I still eat two protein rich meals per day, but the portions are getting smaller and I feel less hungry between meals.  I also cut out most sugar and grains.  Now I love foods like fried rice, spaghetti, etc.  But they do make me feel sluggish and slow if I eat too many.  I just feel better on days I don’t eat many carbs as opposed to days I do.  It does mean spending more on groceries because I do better with proteins and fresh vegetables, but feeling better with fewer aches and pains is worth the cutbacks I have made in other parts of my life.

Bought myself a few new computer games with the Christmas money my parents gave me.  Been experimenting with those.  Also, got my PS3 straightened out so it rarely runs slow now.  It was a pain to be playing Skyrim or college football only to have the game run slow or even completely freeze up in the middle of the action.  One of the games I bought for my computer is called ‘Stellarius’.  It’s kind of a futuristic Civilization type game where you can go colonize other star systems, mine astroids and gas giants, and contact other intelligent species.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  It’s one of the most complex and nuanced games I ever saw.  It’ll take awhile for me to figure it out.

I’m doing well on my new psych medications.  Things have seemed to settle down.  I’m glad for it.  I’m looking forward to the rest of winter.

Making a Bachelor Pad a True Home with Mental Illness

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I admit to having been quite lax about taking care of my living quarters during the previous year or so.  Mentally I was stable, but that was mainly because I didn’t leave my apartment much.  I would stay home, read books, read online articles, watch science lectures and videos on youtube and curiosity stream, and ride my exercise bike a few times a week.  Yet I wasn’t taking care of my place like I should have been.  I used the excuse that I didn’t have guests very often and didn’t even really want guests.  But, there are going to be times when people have to visit us even unannounced.

But now that I’m gaining an even stronger sense of stability with my schizophrenia, I’m taking steps to remedy these problems.  I recently hired a cleaning person.  She’s been to my place a few times.  I think it’s going to work out well.  I had gotten lazy about keeping on top of the place, especially after my back went bad several months ago.  But I have lost some weight since the autumn and got some maintenance issues cleared up.  I was lazy about clutter and while I could find anything I needed in my place, no one else could.  In my occasionally paranoid state, I thought that by rarely leaving my apartment for any true length of time, I could make the problems manage themselves.  Well, that wasn’t happening.  Problems never take care of themselves.

I’m better able to stay on top of things because I asked for help.  Breaking down and admitting when I need outside assistance is one of the toughest things for me to do.  I imagine part of this is my natural paranoia (I was kind of paranoid even before I developed full schizophrenia), my illness itself, being still relatively young, and being a bachelor man.  Some men are notorious about not asking for outside help until a crisis develops and I am definitely no exception.

My place is feeling more like a true home rather than a mad monk’s chamber in a medieval monastery.  I received frames for the art work I had bought from an old friend for Christmas.  Got those hanged on my walls.  Now the place looks more cheerful and less dreary.  I had forgotten how good wall decorations could make a place look.  For the first several years out of college, I hung posters and pennants of my favorite rock stars, sports teams, and snarky but comical quotes on my walls.  It looked like a frat house except no girly pics or deer antlers wearing hats and Mardi Gras beads. My first bachelor pads out of school had the antlers but my girlfriends probably wouldn’t have liked the girly pictures.

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As far as decorations go, I have some nature artwork done by one of my old high school friends, a painting of an alien landscape inspired by science fiction literature done by an artist acquaintance (sadly lost contact with him when I withdrew from the local arts scene), and a world map with push pins in the countries where I had visitors to this blog from.  The list of my countries I have not had visitors from is now quite short after almost six years of regular blogging.  Even though the place is more decorated now than even this time a year ago, I’m still thinking about adding to my wall art collection.  And yes, I am far beyond the age where things like stolen road signs, snarky posters, and alcohol advertisements are appealing.

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Friends

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I must confess that I never was Mr. Popularity, not as a kid or an adult.   I may have not had legions of acquaintances I considered friends, but I am fortunate to have had a few I felt I could tell anything and not be condemned for my confessions or thoughts.  It was tough for me to make friends as a kid because I had different interests than most people in my town.  I loved reading about science, history, and foreign cultures even as a little child.  This didn’t endear me to the neighbor kids much as I didn’t really like tossing around the football, playing basketball, or any other games grade school kids are supposed to like.  I was usually one of the slowest runners and least coordinated children in my grade school.  Of course this singled me out for some ridicule from school mates.  Being the really smart kid who wasn’t going to hide his smarts didn’t help my social life either.

As a result of not having much for friends as a child in a town that was lacking for choices of friends compared to most places, I spent a lot of time alone.  I would often wander in the back yard or the allies and make up stories in my head.  I often continued these stories and characters for weeks and even months at a time.  I wish I would have written some of these down.  But I was afraid I’d be ridiculed for being creative by my school mates and family members.  Every time I brought home a piece of work from my art class I was proud of, my older brother and even some of my cousins would critique it and tell me how awful it was.  I kept a diary one summer in junior high but my brother found it.  After that I kept my creative streaks to myself.

My saving grace came from two really cool friends I met as a pre teen.  One was an artistic guy who introduced me to some really cool music like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica, AC/DC, etc. that I still listen to occasionally even twenty five years later.  He also introduced me to cool artwork.  We admired everything from the Renaissance masters to Andy Warhol.  He taught himself how to play guitar just by listening to rock albums.  He became quite good and even played in a band for awhile.  Like myself, he too had problems fitting in during our school years.  When we were in sixth grade in 1992, he and I would be talking about the news from the presidential election.  While many of our classmates were discussing the latest Denver Broncos game or Michael Jordan commercials, he and I would be critiquing old Ross Perot’s latest television specials with his graphs and pie charts.  Naturally, our school mates thought us kind of odd.

The other really cool friend I had growing up was another artist type.  She and I thought alike.  We liked each other right away.  As she was home schooled until high school, we didn’t have the shared misery that was middle school.  Like myself and my other close friend, she wasn’t really interested in sports or popular culture.  Even in our early teens we spent time discussing art, philosophy, politics, literature, and science.  Her family and mine were among the first to get in home internet back in the mid 1990s.  She also taught me how to get free songs online.  I never did this because the internet was very slow and costly in those years.  And since it was old dial up, it tied up the house phone line whenever I wanted to go online.  Kind of tough to download the latest Green Day or Ice Cube songs when dad was telling me to get off the computer because he was expecting business calls.

I also had some other cool friends in my church youth group.  But since most of them lived in different towns and went to different schools, I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked.  We did spend time together at summer camp for a couple weeks every summer.  But it just wasn’t the same as seeing them everyday in the halls of school.

After I graduated from high school I moved onto college.  Even though I have more friends from college I stay in contact with than high school, the friendships just aren’t quite the same as the ones I managed to save from my middle and high school years.  I loved college.  Even though I was going through the trials of adapting to life with a mental illness, I had some amazing times.  Dated some more in college than I did high school.  But, looking back on high school, I think that my best friend being a girl was what killed my dating life more than anything.  Yet, I wouldn’t trade those experiences at all.  Besides, high school dating is pointless nonsense and too much drama anyway.

My social life dried up once I got into the adult world and many of my friends moved away and got married and had families of their own.  Fortunately, thanks to facebook and easy communications, I can keep in contact with my college friends and high school acquaintances pretty easily.  Even though I wasn’t Mr. Social Life in high school, I made an honest attempt to be polite and considerate to my classmates.  Sure I butted heads with a few kids in my school, but what teenagers don’t experience social drama and strife?  It’s all part of learning how to socialize and be an honorable human being.  And, unfortunately, the only way to learn this is to go through the trials yourself.  It’s not like you can have that knowledge uploaded to your mind, like in The Matrix movies.

Even though I don’t socialize much in person anymore, I still occasionally make new acquaintances online.  Most of these people have similar interests and participate in the same online forums and discussion groups.  Once I figured out how to sort through the various trolls and trouble makers, socializing and making friendships online became a pleasant experience.  Granted, it’s not the same as making friends in middle school, high school, or college.  But, seriously, how many people make their best friends when they are adults?  My biggest regret about my friendships is that I haven’t heard from one of my two best friends (the guitar playing guy) since 2005.  And, sadly, he’s not the type of man to spend time on facebook or going to class reunions.  Haven’t seen him in years but I still miss our conversations.  I don’t know if anyone makes the same kind of friends as adults that they made as teenagers.

Thoughts on January 1, 2019

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New Year’s Day 2019.  Feels kind of strange to say it’s 2019 already.  It’s been 19 years since the “Y2K” fears didn’t materialize, 18 years since 9/11, 11 years since the Great Recession came close to becoming Great Depression part II,  7 years since the Mayan Apocalypse came and went, etc.  Yet, for me it sometimes doesn’t seem that long ago any of these things happened.  But, when I look at people in my niece and nephew’s generation, they weren’t even born when Y2K or 9/11 or the Great Recession took place or at least not able to remember these events.  Makes me wonder for these youngsters what events will be taking place in their adolescence and early adulthood they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.  I was born in 1980, so too late have living memories of Vietnam or Watergate or the Apollo programs but early enough I can remember first hand stories of the Dust Bowl, World War II, and the Civil Rights movements from my grandparents and their friends.  One thing I have learned from surviving my home world making almost 40 laps around the mother star is that the only real constant in our lives is change.

I am 38 years old. As far as life expectancy is concerned, barring any major medical breakthroughs coming, my life as a human is statistically half over.  Having a mental illness, I’m probably closer to the grave than even that.  I can tell there are some changes happening in myself already.  Physically I am beginning to slow down and get unexplainable aches and pains that don’t always clear up as fast as they did even three years ago.  Being overweight makes this only worse, no doubt.  But, as far as signs that I am in middle age, my physical strength gets sapped faster than previously, I no longer have much of an interest in sex, I don’t feel much of a need to compete against anything beyond my personal bests, have come to accept and appreciate who and what I am, etc.

As it is, I am glad to have been able to experience and witness the changes my civilization and my personal self have gone through.  Makes me wonder what changes the next 38 years will bring.  If I’m still around and blogging is still a thing in the 2050s, I hope to be able to write about even these changes.

Hosting Christmas and Weathering Blizzards

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Hosted Christmas for myself and my parents again this year.  Even though they live out of state now, they had to be back in Nebraska for a couple days to close up some business issues and visit some family.  I did get to face time with my nephews and niece, granted it was on my dad’s smart phone and not my computer.  I do miss those kids.  Makes me hope that I can spend Christmas 2019 at their place.

Right now I am house bound for the next couple days at least.  We had massive amounts of rain before changing over to snow.  I don’t know how much snow we have as my windows are so iced over I can’t see out.  Our city did declare a snow emergency and told everyone besides critical workers to stay home today.  Fortunately I have enough groceries I can stay home for a long time if need be, and I even have a lot of non perishables that don’t need to be cooked or refrigerated.  I haven’t gone as far and picked up any of those Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) popularized by the military and back woods campers.  But I should be alright.  I keep everything charged in case we do lose power.  With as much ice and wind and snow as we have, that is a possibility.

I got some picture frames for Christmas.  I bought several prints of art work done by a long time friend of mine.  I finally got some frames to go with them.  My apartment doesn’t look so much like a monk’s chamber now.  I guess I don’t mind the kind of starkness of white walls with few decorations.  But some paintings on the walls do make the place seem warmer and less sterile.

Been going to bed around 9pm and waking up for good around 5am lately.  I feel more stable now that I have a regular sleep pattern.  I still sometimes nap in the afternoons for an hour or two at a time.  I sleep much deeper than usual now.  But I’m getting better sleep too.  I think that only helps with my issues of paranoia and delusions.  I tend to be less distressed after a few days of good sleep.  I also get deeper sleep on days I don’t have as much caffeine.  Feel less irritable on those days too.

Been feeling pretty good the last few days.  I enjoyed Christmas with my parents.  And now I am ready to face the rest of the winter.

Christmas Thoughts and Support of Family and Close Friends

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Been feeling more irritable and short tempered the last few days.  Not sure what to make of it.  Hopefully it is just the stress of being so close to end of year holidays.  I won’t be going anywhere for Christmas this year.  My parents are returning to Nebraska for a couple days and will be spending Christmas with a few of my aunts.  If I’m up for guests I might have them over for a few hours myself.

But, as it’s been, I just really haven’t wanted to see anyone lately.  Kind of depressing in that I was doing so well for a long time.  Had a short but tough break down a couple weeks ago.  Fortunately it wasn’t as vicious as many as I’ve had in years past but it was still unpleasant and painful anyway.  I hate that I vent my problems on family when I have breakdowns.  I’m sure it has caused them much grief and fear over the years.

I would love to alter my personality to the point that I would just break down and sob rather than be angry and take my problems out on others.  I don’t know how much of that is the way I was raised in my culture and how much of it is being a man.  But I have never been good at suffering distress by taking it out on myself.  I don’t raise my voice as much as I used to during breakdowns.  Hopefully I’m better at coping with the distress of these flare ups.  After nearly twenty years of mental health problems, I should hope so.  I hope at this point I’ve moved far beyond even the acceptance phase and into the advocacy for those who aren’t as experienced with these problems as I.

The weather has been quite decent, by December standards, for the last ten days in my home state.  It still gets below freezing at night so we still have a few patches of ice.  But the roads are clear and it’s pretty easy to drive around town when I need to.  My family and I recently hired a cleaning person who works with a few elderly people in my complex.  I like her work.  Hopefully I can hold onto her services for a while.  I had a really good cleaner a few years ago who cleaned twice a month, at least until she had heart problems and had to take retirement.  I liked her.

I’ve seen my psych doctor a couple of times in the last few weeks.  I’m on a newer anti psych medication that’s supposed to help reduce compulsive behavior and serve as kind of a stimulant.  Most of the psych medications I’ve been on have promoted drowsiness.  I’m still getting used to the fact I don’t need as much sleep as I’ve had in past months.  I usually sleep only six to seven hours a night now, with a couple exceptions when I’m feeling really distressed.  I think sleep is one of the ways my mind works against mental health problems.  But I suppose there are worse ways of dealing with mental distress than sleeping ten to twelve hours a day.

I am looking forward to Christmas.  While I don’t have much planned, I should call friends and family and see if I can set up Skype with them.  I have the programs on my computer, I just don’t use them very often so I’m rusty with them.  I have learned over the years, the real value of the holiday seasons is spending time with family and friends. I don’t really remember much of the gifts I got as a child.  I don’t even really remember when I quit believing in Santa Claus and magic elves.  But I do remember the time I spent with friends and family, especially my grandparents and a couple of my uncles who have now passed away.  Those times aren’t coming back.

I’m glad I had a family that, even in our disagreements, we didn’t cut each other out or bring up our grievances during holidays or weddings or funerals.  I didn’t realize how rare that was until I went to a Christian college and found out from friends and classmates that, in some cases, even devoutly religious families can have serious issues.  I’m glad I dodged those bullets.  I never realized how cool my family was growing up.  Like many teenagers, I thought my family was kind of embarrassing and didn’t know what was what.  But now that I’m of the age when most of my friends have children of their own, my family knew their stuff far better than I realized all along.  My parents are now more like good friends and wise confidants than the authority figures I respected and sometimes feared as a child and teenager.

I’m glad I got to this point in my relationship with my family before they went into declining health or died.  I’m glad for all of it, even the discipline and nagging I couldn’t stand as a ten year old child.  But it served it’s purpose.  I may not have a successful career and well adjusted children like my brother and most of my cousins, but  I am managing an otherwise crippling mental illness pretty decent.  From what I have seen when I was inpatient hospitalization and from what I’ve heard from my readers, this thing could be much tougher to manage.

December 19, 2018

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Haven’t really been much of anywhere lately.  I don’t really feel the need to go out and about as much as I have previously.  I guess I’m waiting for some of the crowds from the holidays to go down.  I’m pretty well content to stay home, chat with friends over the phone or social media, and read online articles to keep my mind sharp.  I still don’t watch much tv.  I do sometimes nap in the afternoons.  I am usually awake by sunrise most days now.  And I usually go to bed around nine or ten p.m.  I haven’t pulled an all nighter in weeks.  I guess my routines are changing with the change in seasons.

December 14, 2018

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Another week has come and gone.  Besides seeing my psych doctor I haven’t been out too much.  But it looks like our cold spell is over and it’s supposed to more bearable for the next several days.  Our snow and is ice is melted.  So getting around town is easier now.  I spent an entire week without driving because of the snow and ice early this month.  I was starting to feel kind of confined and needing to get out.  Even I have times I just need to leave my fortress.

Been chatting with friends over facebook more lately.  Made some new friends in my techie groups and kept in contact with friends and family.  For awhile I was getting discouraged that I wasn’t hearing from my friends and family as often as I would like.  But then, I wasn’t posting on my personal site much besides promoting my blog.  Socializing is much like investing; no deposits, no returns.

Haven’t been reading much besides online articles and blogs lately.  The thing is I read as much, or even more, than I have in years past.  But I don’t read much for hardback print books.  The things I enjoy reading about now are science, tech, geopolitical, and medical news articles and essays.  Haven’t even listened to long audio books for weeks.

Sleep patterns have changed too, this time for the better.  Most nights I go to sleep around nine or ten pm and wake up for good at four or five am.  I still get my handful of quiet hours, I just get them in the early morning rather than the middle of the night.  Been this way for a few weeks now.  And it seems it takes more to make me irritable and paranoid ever since my sleep patterns changed.

Still haven’t made any concrete plans for Christmas.  I may go to my parents’ new house in Oklahoma.  But weather can be so unpredictable and dangerous for travel this time of year in my part of the country.  I guess I don’t have any gift wishes this year.  The PlayStation 5 won’t come out until next year at the earliest.  I would like a new gaming console as the one I have is several years old and showing it’s age.  One of my nephews recently bought a VR headset after saving his chore and odd job money for months.  Personally, I’m waiting a few years until the quality improves and the prices drop at least 50 percent from what they are now.  One thing about information and computer tech, the first versions are usually expensive and clunky (think cell phones from the 1980s or televisions from the 1950s), and after a few revisions they become inexpensive and every one has them.  My cell phone is a $99 Wal Mart special smart phone.  Yet, as far as computing power goes, it’s far better than the $2000 desk top computer I got for college back in 1999.  Too bad the costs for things like housing, automobiles, and education didn’t drop with time like computer tech.

As it is, I’m enjoying this holiday season.  The college bowl games start tomorrow, so there will be games on almost every day until New Year’s.  That’s what I’ll be doing for awhile.

December 11, 2018

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Saw my psych doctor this morning.  Today was one of those days I really didn’t want to leave my apartment, but I’m glad that I forced myself out.  Been on my new routine for about three weeks.  I’ve lost a few pounds since then.  Been lazy about exercise for a long time, too long.  But I guess I’ve been paranoid enough that I sometimes went entire days without leaving my apartment for a long time.  Of course, my physical health suffered as did my social life.  I’m beginning to pick up the pieces and start over.