Musings of a Megalomaniac

“Oh my God, what have I done? All I wanted was a little fun.”

~ Do It Again ~ The Chemical Brothers

Many years ago a friend of mine and I were canoeing along Florida’s Wekiva River and decided to take a detour down a dense tributary. We encountered a partially submerged log that blocked our path. My friend and I got out of the canoe and lifted it up to our chests as we stepped over the log. I examined the pattern in the log’s bark and admired how the two most prominent and regular features formed two lines down opposite sides of the log. It was this consistency in the features that prompted me into realizing that I was not looking at a log. I was looking at an alligator’s tail. The thickest portion at the water’s surface was about ten inches in diameter.

So what did I learn? If you’re going to venture off the beaten path, then pay attention.

It didn’t help that when I went on the canoe outing mentioned above that I was – how should I put this – let’s just say I was in an altered state. My friend and I thought it would make us more “aware” of our surroundings. That it obviously didn’t was completely lost on me at the time. The lesson from the alligator didn’t sink in until many years later.

For several years I did what a lot of people like me do: I self-medicated. I was misdiagnosed as a teenager and prescribed antidepressants and stimulants. For a while I tried to comply with the regimen, but it made me worse. My psychiatrist and therapist blamed my parents. This was in the eighties and I guess Freudian ideas still had influence. My parents were having a hard enough time accepting that their child was mentally ill and to be blamed for it was too much for them. They asked me what I was telling the doctor and therapist. I told them the truth: nothing.

I quit seeing the doctor and therapist. Almost as soon as I started drinking and smoking, it became a daily ritual. I began to experiment with everything I could get my hands on - except stimulants because I already knew I didn’t like them. I read a lot of what were called “zines” and one of them was an anti-psychiatry zine called, “Phoenix Rising.”(I still have them filed away.) I started dying clothes I bought at thrift stores in loud, clashing colors. I sewed plastic ants on my clothes. I believed I was an incarnation of the Dada movement’s Marcel Duchamp. The way I saw it, substances made me feel better and helped me fit in. I didn’t notice that the people I surrounded myself with grew more marginalized and violent. They didn’t care how I looked because they had other priorities.

I really thought I was completely original and had escaped the stifling existence as a corporate lackey that so many of my high school cohorts had embraced. I have since learned that people in a manic state will dress bizarrely and often have grandiose delusions (like believe they are an incarnation of someone famous or of historical significance).

Tomorrow I will reach fifteen years clean and sober. I still batik and dye clothing occasionally and while the results are still striking, they are harmonious. I use a technique that I discovered before I got sober so not everything from that difficult stretch was a loss.

http://forums.psychcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=7299

I know what you must be saying to yourselves,

If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?

Oh, no, not me. I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment,

For I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,

When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself

Is that all there is, is that all there is

If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball

If that’s all there is

Is That All There Is? Peggy Lee

I am a happily married perpetual student with Bipolar 1 disorder & PTSD. I chose my display name as vrba44070 because I am reading Nazi concentration camp survivor Rudi Vrba’s book “I escaped from
Auschwitz.” I can’t emphasize enough this man’s bravery or his stature in the history of the Holocaust. He escaped from
Auschwitz after being there for two years in order to keep Hungarian Jews from being slaughtered by the Nazis. I don’t know why his story hasn’t become a miniseries or movie. I’ve read a lot of concentration camp survivor literature. For some reason I am drawn to it. Another good read is the graphic novel MAUS which won the Pulitzer Prize. I also liked Primo Levi’s “The Periodic Table” and Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”

Presently I am working on a Master’s degree in Social Work. I have a 4.0 and belong to two honor societies. As an undergrad, I pursued computer science, but had to switch to Digital Media because of problems managing my illness. My undergrad is in digital media. I miss engineering. My husband is an aerospace engineer and I live vicariously thru him.

I volunteer for a drop-in center that serves the homeless mentally ill. I’m overhauling their website right now, planning mental health awareness week activities, and running a jewelry making group there. I see first hand the results of the state of
Florida’s lack of funding for services for the mentally ill. I plan on interviewing some of the people I’ve met over the years about the impact these policies have had on their lives. I will put the interviews on You Tube (I will let everyone know when this happens). I have to work out some logistics. I will have to either get them to sign a release or hide their identities.

I also volunteer as an advocate for an org that helps women with stage 4 breast cancer. It’s my internship.

I may go for a doctorate. I’m not sure yet. I like hiding out in academia. I’m good at it. I’ve never been able to make a decent living. I spent several years in retail, doing sales or low level management. I was miserable. I did like the merchadising part of it. That is what kept me going for so long at it.

Tonight I have my psychosocial pathology class. Everything in social work is “psychosocial.” I am the only one of my school cohorts who liked Research class. The others didn’t like the prospect of dealing with statistics. I like math so sometimes I feel displaced in the school of social work at the univesity I attend. When your feelings are chaotic, logic is reassuring. That is – if you are not so far gone that flight of ideas makes logic impossible. In my psychosocial pathology class last week, the girls next to me complained that the text was “science-y.” It is true that it goes into brain structure and neurochemistry, but when you have a brain disorder it is reassuring that your problems might have a physical cause.

I am aware that there is a psychiatric survivor movement that asserts that psychiatric illnesses have no biological basis and that these labels are punishment for not conforming to societal norms. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrists, and researchers seem to be inventing diagnosis for the least little problems. The most even-handed treatment of this whole debate is Charles Barber’s book, “Comfortably Numb.” Barber worked with the homeless mentally ill for over ten years. The second half of his book covers nonpharmaceutical treatments and exciting research about neural plasticity. Although his appraisal of psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies is scathing, he asserts that the seriously mentally ill definitely benefit from medication. I tend to agree with him.

I will try to post at least once a week. I have wanted to blog for several years, but fear of others discovering my mental illness stopped me. The need to share my observations with others has made me reconsider.