GLORY OF THE LORD
St. Luke 2:9 KJV
The Writings of a Schizo-Affective Individual
Summarizing a Life of Personal Trauma and Faith,
Surrounding Four Mental and Emotional Psychotic Breakdowns
To the man God had brought me to,
I dedicate this book to My Beloved Husband,
for all the times he has loved me without walking away.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One Making the Right Choice
Chapter Two The Wrong Direction
Chapter Three My Inner World
Chapter Four Lost Journey
Chapter Five ‘A’ Ward
Chapter Six Back to Jesus
Epilogue: Keeping My Eyes on Him
REFLECTING ON THE PAST
Poems
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Introduction
The first ten years of my life I was a spirit-filled youth, following the Lord with all my heart. After my parents’ separation at the age of ten, I gradually pulled away from God, and went on my own path calling out to Him whenever there was a need. For 25 years I did all the so-called right things as an unfulfilled individual and as someone truly looking out for herself. For those 25 years I thought God had always taken a dominant role in my life, within my thoughts and within my actions. Looking back, it was a most confusing and blind-sighted time that I do not wish to repeat. But over fifteen years ago, Jesus Christ has brought me back to my God and is The Saviour of my heart. So this is my story, this is my song. My greatest gift to honor Him………………………………….
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Chapter 1
Making the Right Choice
I have been diagnosed with paranoia schizophrenia. A schizophrenic is not someone who has a split personality, which a split personality is caused by years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse. A schizophrenic person is one who has a chemical imbalance in the brain, where they hear voices in or outside their head from sources other than their own, get messages from the radio within talk and music, messages from the television within talk and movement, and also perceiving messages from other peoples’ words, expressions, and actions. Being delusional plays a big part in being a schizophrenic also. Now just add paranoia to this list and you get the common generalization of a paranoid schizophrenic. What is rare is being affected at the age of 30 and being affected within the five senses of touch, taste, audio, visual, and smell. I also function on a low level of being autistic. All of this is me.
A couple of my psychotic episodes occurred when I was very small. I remember having a mental battle with “thee” devil at the age of two and it was very frightening to me. It left me confused and exhausted both mentally and physically. I felt the weight of the world on my little shoulders and whatever I said in my mind and babbled out loud to this fallen angel, had an everlasting effect for the future of the world. I stood there mumbling my responses to him and when Satan lost this battle, he left my mind as he screamed and writhed in agony as he vowed that he would be back to destroy me.
Another time I thought my sister, who is two years older than I, was the devil himself. I was so very frightened of her. It was terrifying to see my sister smiling at me, and acting like nothing was happening while she, (or was this psychosis?), was hitting me about the head and face. I also would often see a human skull appear on the turned-off television screen. Sometimes this skull would move its lower jaw and sometimes it wouldn’t. When the jaw wouldn’t move, I would hear my mother’s voice outside my thoughts speaking to me and calling out to me.
Then at the age of thirteen, I was watching cartoons and a commercial came on and the expressions of that person’s face talked to me in my mind. When I saw that happening, I couldn’t believe such a thing would be able to occur. I didn’t relate that experience with anything from my past. I knew what just had happened wasn’t a good thing and that I shouldn’t, and I didn’t, encourage it. From then until the age of 30, I had always felt an underlying mental and emotional strain from within, being stretched and ready to snap at any second.
At the age of 30, in 1987, I had my first psychotic breakdown. Within three years I had a total of four psychotic breakdowns. Each time I shattered was intense, and worse than the previous time. Within the Grace of God and the love and support of my husband, I was encouraged, after my last psychotic breakdown in 1990, to stay on my medicine. Being on my anti-psychotic medicine always made me feel really bad mentally and physically, I never wanted to take my pills because I felt abnormal. That is why I never stayed on my medicine and hence, four really terrible psychotic breakdowns.
I always believed I could do it on my own, and I didn’t need doctors, and I didn’t want God’s help. I was very prideful and confused about my illness, because I just didn’t understand the problem. Like the other psychotic breakdowns, I was so far gone I was never in touch with what I was doing. I always felt right during my psychotic episodes, I knew I was always in the right and everyone was wrong, and I believed I was doing everything for God.
At the age of 30, I was going through the worst of a mothers’ tribulation and heartbreak, one of my children had been sexually molested. I was also going through a difficult relationship that was suffering further because of this event, which was caused by someone outside of our family.
One of my two daughters’ was only four years old when her playgroup teacher molested her, but she was old enough to talk and tell me about it. When my daughter told me what had happened to her, my three children and I were in the car, going home from her class. I immediately felt like turning the vehicle around and going up to my daughter’s abuser and grabbing her by the hair and tossing her around. (I felt betrayed; I had enrolled my daughter in this class to teach her to have a positive interaction with other children her age, and to develop skills to improve her learning abilities.)
I didn’t act on my mixed feelings; instead I drove around for fifteen minutes and then went home and called the police and reported the occurrence.
The police dispatcher told me to go to the county hospital to get an exam for my daughter and a doctor’s report and then call them back. At this time my four-year-old daughter needed help with her clothes and shoes. When I was helping her in the bathroom, I noticed her shoes were on the wrong feet and single knotted, and her Barbie underpants were inside out and on backwards, also her pink pants were backwards. (Since I always helped her get dressed in the morning and made sure her shoes were on the correct feet, double-knotted as it was my custom to do, and all her clothes were on correctly.)
It took three very long hours in a very small waiting room at the hospital, with my three children, waiting for the doctor. The exam took a very brief time, and the doctor found an abrasion between my daughters’ legs. Discussing my concerns with this very nice female doctor was also short. The doctor told me that the abrasion probably was caused by my daughter operating a tricycle. I told her that my daughter didn’t have enough motor skills to operate anything and then told of my conversation with my daughter in the car. I also told her of my discovery that my daughter’s clothes and shoes had been changed and incorrect. I believed that the doctor didn’t want to be involved in a bunch of documentation.
When we returned home I called the police and an officer came over within the hour to take the report. His presence alone in his uniform made my daughter very distressed and less talkative. (The officer was very sympathetic and kind throughout this whole ordeal and seemed very understanding.) My husband came home early and was present when the officer took the report. I had to tell my husband what had happened and his reaction was anger and denial. He denied that this horrible incident occurred at all and my daughter was too young for this to be believable.
After the officer left, I called the number on the business card he provided with a male and female police detective team. I made an appointment to bring my daughter for an interview with the detectives. I took my daughter to the police station the next morning. I sat outside in the sunny March morning air for about four hours. When I was finally called in to speak to them they confirmed that my daughter had been molested, also that the abusive woman had spanked her. They said the District Attorney should have a decision on what will happen next by 4:00 pm that afternoon. When I called the D.A., he told me that the accused had passed the polygraph test and that he would not pursue this case.
My daughter’s real father and his family were in the same denial and apparently believed that I had made up this story. My daughter’s father and her aunt questioned my son, “Were you there when this happened?” and, “Did you see what had happened?” My son said, “No” to each question compelling my daughter’s father to tell me that our six-year-old son said, “It didn’t happen!” This all occurred on the weekend following the report.
Many thoughts went through my mind, heart, and soul. Not once did I doubt my daughter, and, I believed that the case was dropped because the city was in charge of arranging the playgroup. This was yet another unresolved issue that I had to let go!
I began taking my daughter to counseling once a week; this lasted two months during the duration of this allotted time the therapist would see my daughter. When my daughter told me she needed to go back to therapy, which she did, at the age of ten, she returned to therapy with a local therapist, and also attended group therapy with girls her own age. I had doubts the therapy helped her at all. But when she reached adolescence, it then was clear that the interventions had helped her. I also went to a therapist who limited my treatment to once a week for a month due to funding. My husband objected to my therapy and stated, “You’re wasting your time, don’t go, it didn’t happen, she was making it up!” So I stopped my therapy and tried to forget. I truly felt all alone when the therapy ended. One of my sisters had offered some counsel, but even my own mother had difficulty understanding my dilemma. I felt all alone, abandoned, and so did my daughter.
So, I turned to God, and clung to Him, when I spiraled downward into the abyss of despair. I reached out to my God through my poetry which unfolded throughout my psychotic episodes and afterwards as my own version of therapy. Whenever I thought of God I felt that He was above me looking down disapprovingly or in front of me with His Back to me. Each time I mentally lost it it was so gradual and normal feeling. I believed everything I was doing was God’s Work, and it was all for God, and I alone was able to do what needed to be done. I would do anything to please God, and believed He would show mercy and compassion on me. Finally all the turmoil and upset I was going through that year, I snapped mentally, and I was at the peak of my breakdown on October 31st, 1987. I remember this date because it was Halloween, and because it was such a traumatic experience.
Three of my psychotic breakdowns peaked on October 31st and one was at its peak on July 4th, always occurred at the highest point of some sort of personal trauma in my life. All of my breakdowns started with a major withdrawal from everyone in my life. I was also searching for a relationship with anyone outside the people already in my life. I didn’t feel loved or understood by my husband and he didn’t seem to know what I was going through, I felt alone and lost! I had no real friends and no support from my church. I remember calling my mother many, many times but that never seemed to be enough. I felt that no one cared and no one seemed willing to reach out to me or guide me. I would withdraw, and at one time I moved myself to another bedroom of our house, where I was more isolated, but in my mind, justified in what I was doing. The loneliness I felt within myself and with this disease, overpowered me and that I couldn’t control what was happening within myself or within my everyday decisions that affected my life.
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Chapter 2
The Wrong Direction
I had an antique furniture refinishing and repair business that I conducted out of my home during the year of 1987. I enjoyed that business immensely and it got me out of the house to meet people. I was able to take my children on furniture pickups and also when I went out to homes to give estimates. Everyone in my family thought my psychotic breakdowns were caused by my inhalation of chemicals from this business. My family was uniformly in denial during that time.
My father had the same paranoid-schizophrenia and the chance of his children getting it was heightened by him and my mother who had seven children. Little was known about this heredity type disease and how to help it through family support and medical knowledge before the 1950’s and, even now. People still think a schizophrenic means someone who thinks and acts like another person separate from themselves.
I know I am ‘specil’, and God has a plan for me, but on the day of October 31st, 1987, I lost it. I remember taking our youngest girl out for trick-or-treating and the night was bitter cold and windy. I remember coming home and finding the house dark and the image of Satan ominously sitting on our house’s rooftop. We entered the cold dark house, and I called my mom and babbled something indiscernible about the devil being present in the house and hung up.
A few days later, with country music blasting in the background and leading me to leave, I called my mother and told her I was coming to live at her house. I buckled up my three children in the back seat of my car, put our cat in its carrier in the front seat, and tied our Christmas tree into the trunk. I stopped at the gas station and put five dollars of fuel in an empty tank and headed onto the interstate. Two miles out on the freeway I pulled over and got out and ran down the embankment with my children trailing behind me. I turned around and went back up the steep hill collecting my children and started walking south. A trucker stopped on the shoulder of the highway, about 300 yards in front of me, and was waiting for us. I got scared and turned back towards my car and put my children back into their seats. I started the car and drove off the next exit to another gas station where I had no money to buy my children any food or get gas. I called my mom collect and told her where we were and to come and pick us up, which she agreed to do. I pulled out of the gas station right away and went back home as the country music continued to play and give me instructions. On the way, we were stopped at a railroad crossing and I got scared and went around the crossing arm, the train just barely missed the car. I went to this woman’s house that I knew, and she fed my children and gave me some religious tracts to read and said she would pray for me. When I left her home, I went to church, as the country music gave me instruction, and sat in the pew with my children while some musical rehearsal was coming to a conclusion. I walked up the middle aisle to the front of our churches alter and collapsed. Everyone helped me up and sat me down in the front pew. Two priests came and, one took my children away to the front of the church. After the other one talked to me for a while, he led me to where my children were and at the same time Officer Jeff arrived. He was the same police officer who talked to my four-year-old daughter when she was molested, and he tried to reason with me to go home. I got up to leave to walk my children home as the gas gauge was below empty, then officer Jeff said he would take us home. By that time a few more police officers had shown up in front of the church telling me it was too cold and dark for me and my children to walk the three miles home.
We were then taken to the police station where my husband was called, and, within a short time he showed up at the station. I then told the police officer I was unwilling to go home with him. The police officer then threatened to take my children away from me and send them to a local children's shelter and send me to a local women’s shelter. So I had no choice but to leave with my husband, who told the police officer he would be responsible for me and my children.
When we came home, my husband pointed out that he had cleaned up the front room from all the crepe paper and party favors that the children had gotten into that afternoon and he had done the dishes. He told me that when he came home the country music was playing a song, singing how his woman was gone and not coming back. (In the meantime, my mother and stepfather were on their way, making the 500-mile journey from Los Angeles to our home.)
My parents’ stay at our house was a good thing. They watched the children (when I was off driving around doing ‘God’s Work’), they worked on the furniture for my business, and kept the house clean, and did the laundry, and cooked the meals for everyone. My parents hired an attorney to try to end my relationship with my husband, because they blamed him for the way I was acting and thinking. They believed he was the cause for everything, for that is what I had told them. (It didn’t seem to connect with my mother that I was acting and behaving like my biological father had when they were together.)
One point during my parents’ stay I had a police escort to the mental hospital. My parents had tried to drag me into the house early one morning, while I was kicking and screaming. I became scared of them and wanted to take my children and leave. The police officer took me handcuffed in the front seat of his patrol car, because I acted berserk in the back seat because of my claustrophobia. Once at the hospital, I talked to some man and was released. The hospital had no reason for me to be kept there. Another time my parents took me to the mental hospital to get me on some kind of medicine. Like the previous time, I talked to some man and I told him I didn’t need medicine and that my mother did and if given medicine, I wouldn’t take it. I was then allowed to go home with my parents. I remember being out of it both times but I was able to say things that apparently made sense and I wasn’t a threat to anyone, so they let me go. Then, my husband took me to the mental hospital. I became aggressive during that session and was committed and prescribed an anti-psychotic called Haldol.
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Chapter 3
My Inner World
There was a moment, before the first time I was committed to the mental health hospital, when I had to fight an overpowering desire to kill my mother. This was when the pizza was out of the oven and on the counter and our pizza cutter was nowhere to be found. So my mom suggested I use a sharp knife while she went out in the garage to put some clothes into the dryer. She soon came back, while I was trying to cut the pizza, and in her hand was my ruined driver’s license. (After I had come home from the hospital and I was able to drive again, that same license was not ruined at all.) “I found this in the washer.” She said as she showed it to me as it was resting in her open right hand. As I looked at the license, all these verbal negative thoughts came into my mind as if she were saying them out loud to me in actual words. Loud thoughts like, “You are so stupid, and you are so dumb, what’s wrong with you, your license is ruined and you can never use it now.” I had to shut her up! I felt so belittled and betrayed by her. I overcame the strong urge to plunge the knife into her, over and over again and again. But instead, I calmly and quietly put the knife down and walked away out of the kitchen and down the hall and into my bedroom. With tears streaming down my face, I gently closed the bedroom door, knelt down in front of my crucifix and began to pray. My husband walked into the room and asked why I had slammed the door? I briefly explained what had happened and that I hadn’t slammed the door. So then he turned around and walked out and closed the door behind him. I then immediately stood up and went out myself and looked for him but couldn’t find him. (I believed he would show up from time to time in my mind and then leave as anyone else would who was actually physically there.)
Another time, within each of my first three psychotic episodes, I thought my husband was Satan. I watched him once in the bathroom mirror, as his features changed from normal and then looking like a devil-type human. I stood there in total terror from the bathroom door, watching this transformation take place. I knew not to turn and run because if I did, I would be chased, and in my mind I would be caught and destroyed. (The strangest thing would occur; the smell of sulphur would be very strong whenever I would come around him or whenever he would leave a room.) So, with my Christian upbringing, it was something to exorcise and pray for and also to fear. And when I did get the courage to exorcise him, many times, in fact, I believe it brought many unclean spirits into me and into my home. Now with my fourth psychotic episode I thought this man was God Himself and therefore he was saved, that meant he was all right and my job for God was done.
I remember with all my psychotic breakdowns only certain things that happened, and my perceptions of each psychotic episode. All of these episodes were like stories in my mind that would get carried away as they were acted out in my mind and then a reaction by me. Like one time our two dogs that we owned had spoken Spanish to me. They did not move their mouth or their lips but their facial expressions and eyes would move and I would hear them speaking in my mind and as audible words – and it would be in Spanish. I would hear them saying the Spanish sentences and it would be expressed in their eye movements. Then I would translate the Spanish automatically into an understanding from my mind. In fact, I almost had my husband convinced that these dogs were indeed ‘talking’ in Spanish. At the time all of this made sense to me. But I don’t remember enough Spanish to hold a conversation with anyone! These conversations that I had with our dogs made me feel in control and important. My self-esteem was boosted with every interpretation. No one else could understand them but me and that internally was euphoric.
There was a graveyard less than a block over from our home. I started walking over there once in a while during the early afternoons looking for Harry Houdini’s mother’s gravesite. A feeling had come over me that she was buried there. One day, the caretaker was in his office and I asked him about it. He had said the name sounded familiar and he looked it up on the registrar. There was nothing listed and he said anything pre-1950’s was in the basement. I didn’t pursue it and thanked him and looked around a little more overviewing some more of the headstones and then walked home. Not too long after that, I gradually became obsessed with thinking about the place and always walking over there every afternoon.
One day, leading up to my first breakdown, I was racing around town, following the words of the country music station on the truck radio. I then drove through that graveyard and in my mind all these evil spirits jumped in the back of the truck. I went straight home bringing them with me and into the house as I went through the front door. I continued to race through each room of the empty house and then went immediately outside to the front yard. I grabbed the garden hose, turned on the water, and started to water down all four sides of the house, saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over and out loud while I was Blessing the house. When I finished, I ran back into the house and at full speed went through the rooms again. Reaching my bedroom, I found my husband, sitting up on the bed, and smiling at me like the Cheshire cat, like I had saved his soul. I turned around and ran out to the truck, jumped in and took off for the highway. I went north going 90 miles per hour for twenty minutes, exited, and went over the overpass and merged back onto the freeway because the music said, “My Love”, was at home waiting for me. I continued to go 90 miles per hour headed south. A van was behind me, tailing me, and they suddenly went around me and cut in front of my truck. I sped up even faster to follow and all of a sudden they put on their right turn signal. I turned right off the expressway that second and they went straight. At that moment, the music sang, “My Love” was at the local bar and I headed to the town’s favorite watering hole, going the 25 miles per hour speed limit. I went into the bar and looked around, the music on the jukebox played a song that my “My Love” was home waiting for me with open arms. Running out to my truck, I jumped in and went home doing the speed limit. When I came home my husband was there and when he asked me where I had gone. I responded, “Out” and went into my bedroom and slammed the door, showing him my disappointment that God’s Work wasn’t done because “My Love” wasn’t at home waiting for me.
On a hot July day, right before my second psychotic breakdown, I looked out my kitchen window and I saw the sun pulsating. As it wavered in the evening sky, I realized the sun was going nova! I had to do something fast and in my mind, I was the only one who was capable of saving the world from a horrific ending. Frightened out of my wits and my heart pounding, I ran outside with no regard for my safety and grabbed the end of our green garden hose, and started feeding the hose hand over hand toward the sun and up toward the open sky. As I did this, I am saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud as I kept looking to my left watching the flickering sun, and continued to feed the hose up toward the sky with utmost urgency. Vehicles would pass by and the drivers wouldn’t look at me because if they did God would destroy the planet, because everyone knew, I was the only one in favor with God, and only I could please Him. One white truck that did pass by had a male passenger who looked directly at me. His expression read to my mind that he was the guilty one and the reason for God’s Wrath and the reason for all the hard work that I had to do to save the world. I gave him a look that said, “See what I am doing because of you.” Then the hose was out of my hands and I then ran into the house hoping God would be appeased. Looking out the kitchen window again, I then saw the sun set and continued saying the Lord’s Prayer as I whispered it over and over until it was dark outside.
One afternoon my husband and I picked up our daughter at her preschool. This was a time before my third psychotic breakdown. We arrived together after he had picked me up from work. As he signed her out of their logbook, I went inside to get her. My daughter and I came out to the lobby and I went up to the logbook and printed the word ‘HELP!!’ above his name and gave the girl behind the counter a terrified look. I believed that this man was Satan himself and I feared for my life and I was letting him around me for the simple reason I had to save my daughter. When we left the preschool, the girl apparently called the police and by the time we were home, I instantly took off in the truck by myself and went to do God’s Work to save my daughter. As I drove around going 35 miles per hour within a 25 miles per hour zone, I would pass certain people that I recognized and honk my horn. I was getting out the message ‘Follow Me’ like Jesus did with His Disciples. The more people I recognized the more I honked. I even honked at every police car I came across that was around our area, which was about five or so. After doing God’s Work I went home and my husband said the police showed up looking for me and that they had rushed in like they were looking for a dead body. Since the police didn’t find me at home, they left, and they subsequently had been looking for me all over town that whole afternoon to no avail.
When I exorcised my three young children, in my daughters’ back bedroom, it was an intensely fearful moment for me. My children weren’t possessed but everyone else in the house was certainly possessed. By exorcising my children, I believed in turn, the house, my parents, and my husband, would be cleansed. I remember gathering all of my children to me and hurrying down the hall with them. I was so fearful of the consequences that if I was stopped before accomplishing the exorcism. Total extinction of the world would be the result if it wasn’t done. Once in the bedroom, I single-handedly kept three grown adults out of an unlocked room. I even pushed a heavy dresser over a shag carpet to keep them out. All was not lost in my mind, when I asked each child if they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, and they all said, “Yes”. After the dresser was pushed back into place, and I opened the door to let them in, I couldn’t understand their commotion, because everyone was saved. With the uproar from them, came the doubt from within me that the exorcism hadn’t worked, and all was lost for them once more. God’s work was not done, I had failed.
During all of these psychotic breakdowns, I remember gazing up at our tree leaves and having the control to make them move when there was no wind. I would feel pressure on my face whenever I had a prediction to utter from within my mind that coincided with anything said on the radio or television or anyone I was listening to, and being so out of it, I was desensitized of re-piercing both my ears multiple times by just using the stud of the back of my earring. Also, within the height of each psychotic episode, I was unable to taste the flavor of any food. The no sense of taste within my mouth, lead me to believe that I was being poisoned with tainted food from the local supermarket, so, I wouldn’t eat. Our chlorinated water would have no taste either, leading me to believe the city was poisoning our house only. I also remember slapping and hitting my oldest daughter on the back because I thought she was talking to me without using her mouth, just her expressions on her face. With that happening a couple of other times with her later, I knew enough then to force myself to turn and walk away from her because I thought she was possessed and I wanted nothing to do with her. In my mind the exorcism I had performed in her and her sister’s bedroom, had truly not worked on her. This created a conflict in my mind because the exorcism was for my husband and my parents. So when I walked away from her, I said a prayer, and left her to God. At the time when I had hit her, thinking back on it, I know I hurt her, but not at the actual moment I did it. It was like I had no apathy for her and no control over myself when it happened. To this day, I thank God that was the worse I ever had gotten with any of my children.
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Chapter 4
Lost Journey
My parents left in January, 1988, with a van full of old and new toys and many housewares. My way of thanking them for their time with us and giving them something to sell at their weekly flea market excursions by supplementing their fire extinguisher and parking meter lamp business. Not too long after they had left, I stopped taking the Haldol that the mental hospital had prescribed. I remember not being able to function properly, mentally and physically, and to still be able to rear three small children. I couldn’t coordinate my thoughts and simple reactions to everyday life.
By June of that year, I had gradually gone into my own world again. By July 4th, I had peaked into my second psychotic breakdown. This psychotic episode, led me on that windy evening, trying to light a multitude of fireworks unsuccessfully, even though our other neighbors were having no problems. I threw all the fireworks into the garbage can and went in the house thinking I had displeased God. I then bundled up our three-year-old daughter in her blanket and took her out into the windy and warm night. I had to run with her in my arms, barefooted, down the avenue and around the park that was two short blocks away. My daughter loved it and laughed the whole time. It was what I had to do to make amends with God. Once back home, my daughter wanted to do that again for the next night. I just looked at her thinking, and not knowing what she was talking about to me.
Afterwards, with my children in bed, and knowing I hadn’t pleased God, I took our scissors and started to hack at my hair. That wasn’t enough to please Him, so I picked up my personal telephone book and started to call my brothers and sisters and my mother to tell them to, “Wake up and smell the coffee”, due to their evil and sinful ways. One sister I couldn’t get a hold of and her phone just rang and rang. I became really scared when she didn’t answer and hung up. I called my mother again and harassed her until she admitted (falsely) that my sister was there with her. Thinking my sister was on her way to come and get me, there was suddenly a knocking on my front door. I got up from the front room floor and looked out the small rectangular-shaped window, and with the porch light already on, I saw the top of some short blonde wavy hair. Knowing it was my sister, I ran in the front room and huddled on the floor and prayed fearing that she might get into the house to yell at me. The knocking grew louder and more persistent each second and I am hearing my sister’s voice yelling out my name. Then I am hearing her calling me, “Witch”, three times within three-second intervals. Then all was quiet. I called my mother again and told her what had happened and that I had survived my sister Jo Anne’s visit.
The next morning, it was a very hot July day; I am walking around in my blue-flowered flannel nightgown and flat white sandals, and not looking into mirrors because they were evil and would be possessing my soul if I looked into them. I then wanted to take my seven-year-old son outside in front of our home and under our huge Elm tree and hold him in my arms like Mary held Jesus after he was taken down from the cross. My husband was home that morning and stopped us from going outside. I had wanted to show everyone who drove by that my son was like Jesus. At that moment, my husband knew that I needed to go to the mental hospital. So, he put us all into the car, and drove to the mental hospital, and I was committed again, for a weekend.
Back from the hospital and on Haldol, I was not doing well. Keeping in close contact with my mother, I convinced my parents to come and collect me and the children. When they showed up at our home, my husband walked me to the park, and there he asked me not to go. I told him then that I needed his support and help with our children and with our home. I don’t remember him telling me he would change, so me, and my children, left with my parents for Los Angeles. Once in Los Angeles, I remember sitting on my parent’s bed in their trailer, and cutting up my driver’s license, credit cards, and library card. I was starting a new life, my mother said, and didn’t need any reminders of my past. When she asked me if I had cut up all my cards, I lied and said, “Yes”. I had kept one credit card thinking I may have need of it.
Leaving L.A. in a van with three children and two other adults, well for me, was extremely difficult. We broke down once and used my AAA card for towing. My children were well behaved but everything I did was a struggle and hard for me to coordinating the simplest of tasks. Everything was a complication in my mind from making sure my children had a proper breakfast, to giving them daily vitamins, and laying them down for a nap. (I missed my husband, but I felt he wouldn’t change, so I couldn’t go back.)
Once at my sister’s house, all I did was lay in bed, hardly able to get up and focus my thoughts. My step-father would be the only one coming in to check on me, my mom probably would ask him to do this to give him something to do, which I did greatly appreciate. My stepfather would hold my hand and pat it and sometimes we would talk on how awful I felt, while he sat there smoking a cigarette and drinking his coffee. When I did get up, my nephew and nieces, would take turns walking me around the block – doing that and laying down would be the only way I could deal with the side effects of the anti-psychotic drug I was prescribed. My sister Jo Anne flew in, and with her children, my children, and another child, was enough children to make major noise throughout the house, and in the basement, and outside. I would listen to them in the room I was in and keep track of all of them that way, as I was lying down. Everyone would be laughing and talking loud and not paying any attention to these children playing and the only supervision they had was me paying attention in my room. I had gone up to my mom around noon time the first day we had arrived and said to her, “It is time for the kids to lie down and take their naps.” She just looked condescendingly into my eyes and said, “Don’t you worry about your kids, we’ll take care of them, you go back to bed.” And I turned around and sadly went back to my lonely room.
After dinner was picked up, and everyone just left and had gone out without telling me, I came out to get some food and all of it was gone and there was nothing ordered or saved for me. That was then I realized I had made a mistake in going to Michigan.
One night, I was awakened by one of my sisters in the bathroom. Five minutes later, I went out into the kitchen and I passed out full force onto the kitchen floor. I woke up within seconds and my sister Ilene or my sister Jo Ann did not get up to help me, or call out to see if I was all right. My children were soundly sleeping in the front room also and it didn’t disturb them. I had checked on them, after five minutes of maintaining my balance, and then carefully went back to bed.
Eventually I and the children were moved into a vacant house that belonged to one of my sisters and her husband. The oven didn’t work and there was a trick to the washing machine, but I was able to figure it out. Every time I went to do the laundry, I cried like a baby, it was that upsetting for me. My mother sent Penny money to fix these things but I apparently staying three months there wasn’t long enough to benefit from them being fixed so my sister pocketed the money.
With my parents gone and just me, my sisters Ilene, and Penny, well, it still wasn’t easy for me. My sister Penny would be very supportive and helpful whenever I would be with her or talk to her over the phone. Ilene would tell me Penny couldn’t handle any of this and not to bother her with anything. At the time Ilene told me this I didn’t believe her, looking back, I believe Ilene now though. I remember Penny’s body language whenever she was around me. Penny would react to me, like when she was around our dad, and then, to have me being the same as our father, well, I know now it was too much for her. (Jo Anne’s body language was the same whenever she was around me also. The only time she talked to me was to tell me that just my three children had nits. Which she showed me and all I saw was residue of sand granules that Ilene’s daughter Sadie had dumped in their hair. So we went out and bought bottles of Rid, which I pretended to do their hair according to the label instructions. When Jo Anne looked again after the first of two washings the ‘nits’ were all gone.) Also I knew Ilene was stealing my mail, paying too close attention on how I was rearing my children, (which was my business) and making it so it was impossible to talk to her about anything. I even tried to get a close verbal relationship as being on a friendship type basis, with Ilene, but she took it wrong and told me later that her therapist thought there was something wrong with me.
The children’s real father flew in with his brother at one time and stayed a week at a motel. It was a very nice visit for all of us. (It just made me miss my husband all the more.) We had a very nice time, doing things like miniature golf, go-carts, and restaurants. I kept my ex-husband at a distance. I still remembered him and how he was when we were married and how he allowed his family to get between us. Ilene did not welcome them much and was all worked up when my ex-husband’s brother, who wanted to stop off at the toy store and buy presents for my children before they left for the airport to go home.
I remember seeing my own biological father, who would sometimes acknowledge me. When my sister Jo Anne went to talk to him one day during her visit, I had asked her not to tell him why I was there in Michigan. Well, she did tell him, and from that moment on he wouldn’t look at me, or talk to me and snubbed me whenever I came around. I would show up at my sister Penny’s house and as soon as he saw me, he would leave the front porch, go into the house and down into Penny’s basement where he stayed and wouldn’t come up until after I would leave.
My grandfather would help out with financing my doctor’s visits. In turn for his financial help he expected my sister Ilene to go grocery shopping for him once a week. We would go over his house and pick up a list and the money with the coupons and then do his shopping. Every time we came back from shopping he would give us a lot of the extra food. The whole ordeal would be voiced out as resentment from my sister. In fact, she voiced her resentment as to how I reared my children, how they ate in restaurants (which they were always well-behaved), how they played at the playground because they made too much noise, the clothes that I wore, and down to my purse that my children had picked out for me as a Mother’s Day gift. (During the rare moments, Ilene and I had great fun, we enjoyed each others’ company tremendously but the weight of my illness was too much for her the majority of the time, which highlighted the strain between us.)
Throughout this ordeal, I am struggling with another psychotic breakdown, and with missing my husband, and no support from my main caregiver, I heard an audible voice talking to me to, “Go back, go back and make it work.” That’s when I realized God didn’t want me there. I started to call my husband, and he had said he loved me, and missed me, and for me to come home and that he would do his best to be more supportive. I knew, it wasn’t going to be easy for either one of us, when I came back, after three months of being gone. But I waited till after school, with bags packed, we made our escape with my lone credit card and the money my children had saved in their piggy banks. We took a taxi to a hotel in downtown Detroit, spent the night, and early next morning took a cab to Amtrak. Before we left, I stopped taking my medicine, again. (Let’s face it; none of my sisters knew what they were getting themselves into with me and maintaining someone with my disease. (Jo Anne just didn’t care and Penny was going through her own set of problems at the time) So, much of Ilene’s care with me, and with my children, was not handled well by her. Looking back, Ilene did her best I feel, because she loved and cared for us and she thought she would be able to do a better job than my husband. Even though Penny had assured her she would help her out, but didn’t, thus creating the full burden of my care onto Ilene’s shoulders. God just didn’t want us there and all the good intentions just didn’t work out.)
The Amtrak ride was long and tedious, with a twelve-hour delay in Chicago. With well-behaved children and my passive attitude toward the whole trip, we all made it and had fun too. My parents met me in Sparks, Nevada to make sure I was all right. Our money had run out by then and I asked my mother if she would give me twenty dollars for food for all of us, which she did right away. I also said to my mother no matter what happened again for her not to come over and stay with us or come and collect us from my husband. I was going back to stay and make it work with my husband. My mother agreed and promised to stay away.
My ex-husband met us in Oakland, and drove us the rest of the 70 miles to my house. Once home I sorted through my children’s clothes and gave my two oldest children hugs and kisses and an “I love you”, and with a heaviness in my heart and soul watched them leave with their father. In my mind, this was the only way to concentrate on my life and make it work with my husband. I then organized the house and immediately started looking for a job. I found a job almost right away as a security guard, working all shifts without complaining, and working any time they called. I eventually made it to sergeant and in charge of my own post. Working this job brought in much-needed income and being separated from my two oldest children put a huge strain on me also.
I remember on Mother’s Day of 1989, my ex-husband bringing my three children to come and see me at my post. It was heart-wrenching to see them leave but I knew giving up my oldest two to their dad, would help the relationship I was trying to build with my husband. With the separation of my two children from me, maintaining a job all the time, being away from my youngest while I worked, keeping up with the responsibilities of our home and being totally unhappy with my husband, I peaked with my third psychotic breakdown on October 31st, 1989.
Many days prior to that psychotic breakdown, our four-year-old daughter and I would walk to our spot. (It was a really nice pine tree we would sit under, sometimes with her brother and sister when they would visit, and have a picnic or just sit and talk.) I gradually became obsessed going there and eventually country music would send me there to get instructions from God. Then I would ‘be sent’ to church, which always would be closed, but the door to the sanctuary would be open and we would go into there instead. I also would ‘be sent’ to church via the television. I would be getting verbal as well as visual signs and instructions from commercials and other programs to go to church to get married or ‘our spot’ to meet the love of my life, with country music blasting on the truck or car radio guiding the way. Sometimes I would leave our daughter with my husband and just take off on foot or vehicle, with instruction from people I passed on the street as far as the way they looked at me or what they did physically, or things that they said. (Of course all of this was happening in my mind and not reality.)
On this particular day, after walking to our spot and getting instruction from God, our four-year-old daughter and I walked to this lady’s apartment that I knew. The lady wasn’t at home but her roommate was there. She was an older woman in her 50s who had led a hard life and who would recover ever so often from drugs and alcohol. This woman was recovering, and didn’t know what to do with me or my daughter. I had told her I wasn’t going home because I was unhappy and also because I missed my children. She made a few phone calls, and right in front of me, put me down to her friends. I suggested she take me to the mental hospital. I had no place else to go and I knew I was losing it. She drove us, in her rickety old truck, the 30 miles to the hospital, I committed myself and before I was led quietly away, I checked on my daughter and saw that she was fast asleep on the admitting room couch. Apparently, my husband was called and he came and picked her up and took her home.
I then walked into C-Ward, sat down, looked around, and feeling completely out of it and my mind gone into la-la-land; I stood up and went over to the Dutch doors and reached over the lower level of the closed door, and silently opened it. I walked past all the workers doing their afternoon reports and walked past B-Ward and into A-Ward and sat down. I stayed a week at that mental hospital and I remember my sister Ilene, my mother, and my husband calling me on the payphone in A-Ward. When my mother talked to me, she said the workers couldn’t find me anywhere and they didn’t think I was there. I didn’t want to say anything to her for I knew these payphones were bugged by the hospital's operators. I didn’t want to go back to C-Ward and start over and work my way through all the wards so I kept my mouth shut.
I did feel pressure to come back home though, I had wanted to stay in the mental hospital, and to be taken care of, with no worries and none of the hassles of my everyday life. But I missed having all my children together with me, so instead of staying at the hospital for a longer time, I said all the right things to get out, and once again I am on Haldol, and released.
I suffered on that Haldol for about six months and then stopped taking it again in May 1990, a month before my children came back home to be with me. (During those six months, I would tell all the variety of doctors that I saw how I didn’t feel well on this Haldol and all the other times being on it before then, and why I took myself off of it. I would be told, ‘It just takes time to get used to it.’ No one took the few moments needed to explain to me what I had and how important it was to stay on this drug. It took my husband taking a trip to the library and him bringing back all types of books on this disease, and his research and study from all these medical books, for him to understand it for himself. I remember him telling me about my psychosis and how I needed to stay on my medicine. But I was in denial and still thought I could do the recovery on my own. (As far as I was concerned I was not like my father.) My husband said I wasn’t ready to have my children back as of yet. I didn’t listen, and made arrangements with the children’s father for him to bring home my children.
Being off my medicine, and with the pressure of being a full time mother, again, I spiraled downward. I was doing bizarre things, like going to my church as instructed by God, (my five-year-old daughter and I sat in the back pew during a wedding that we weren’t invited to) I went to my children’s school and walked lone children to their classes because they needed to be shown ‘The Way of God’, (because that is what they do in Michigan) and me telling my seven year-old-daughter’s teacher that “I know what you do”. (Her teacher hadn’t a clue as to what I was talking about.)
In October, 1990, when my children were at school, their Halloween parade over that I missed, and me sitting on the step leading down into our front room, country music blaring, a police officer came into our house with my husband and escorted me to our car. From there we go to the corner fast food place, where my husband tells my ex-husband he has to keep his children again. I am sitting in the passenger seat of the car with these too big sun glasses, and in my mind conducting the flow of everything that is going on outside of the vehicle, with the movement of my head.
Once at the hospital and in one of their many waiting rooms, I am sitting with the sun glasses still on, nodding and moving my head around as people come and go and saying things out loud every so often to guide and instruct the flow of people. Eventually they call my name and I get committed again and I am in C-Ward starting all over again.
I made it to A-Ward in a very short amount of time and they allowed me to go home for a brief lunchtime visit. Once home I didn’t want to leave and over the phone one of the female workers threatens me with sending the police over to get me. I finally leave home with my husband to go back to the hospital and once we arrive there, he leaves the truck to go get a worker to come and get me, and then I tie my hands to the steering wheel to show the workers that God didn’t want me to go back to their hospital. I was put back into C-Ward and started over again.
With this particular commitment, I become a ward of the state of California; I remember claiming that I wasn’t being treated well by some of the workers. I also remember being in a room with a long table in it, with record folders stacked in piles on this table, and barely enough room to get into my chair. All these men were there, and, my state appointed attorney, who agreed with everyone that I was incompetent and wasn’t responsible for myself, and that I had relinquished all my rights. (No one asked about how I had been treated during all my stays at this hospital). One man asked me if I agreed to what my attorney had said and I said, “No”, and he then told me if I didn’t say “Yes” everyone would agree to keep me in here as a permanent ward of the state. He asked me then if I understood that and I said “yes”, and then he said I was committed at the mental hospital for no less than one week and no more than six months. (I felt like I had just been raped by all these men, including my attorney.)
So when the psychiatrist and college students would come around, the doctor would ask me if I was ready to go home and I would give him ‘thee look’ and tell him a firm “No” thinking he would let me go. Then when he would ask me a couple of days later, I started to say, “Well, that’s the bottom line.” This doctor would always say to me, “It looks like you need to stay here longer.” One morning, my husband told me that I needed to come home, that my children were counting on me to get out of the hospital and that our daughter needed her mother. I finally, hesitantly, because I wasn’t ready to leave, said to the doctor when he asked me if I was ready to go home, I replied, “That’s what I am hoping for”, and I smiled at him. I was released that day.
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Chapter 5
‘A’ Ward
In my eyes and within my thoughts these are some of the happenings of my four stays in the mental hospital. To my recollection, the first time I was committed lasted two weeks, the second time a weekend, the third time a week, and then the last time two weeks again. The first time I was committed, I remember talking aggressively with some man in an office and I finally kicked his file cabinet. He was asking me all kinds of questions about my name and my address. It angered me he would ask me because he already knew who I was and I knew him. (Which we didn’t know each other at all.) I was then escorted out to an area outside his office where there were a few people standing and I started to argue with them. Then, from behind, three or four men grabbed me and dragged me to a small room where there was a cot centered in the room. When the man to my right was behind me, he grabbed my right wrist, when I brought my hand down to brace myself because of the force of all of them being behind me all at once, his grip prevented me from putting my hand down, and my hand shot up and grazed the right side of his face. I was then forced face down and restrained to this cot with leather strapping around my wrists and ankles. I remember hearing the rustle of paper wrapping and a sort of pressure in my left arm but no sharp pain of a needle. The whole time this was going on I was saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud. They closed the door when they left and hours later a man around my age came in and asked me if I knew why I was in this room strapped to a bed. I told him I didn’t know. Then he said he would come back later and he got up from off his haunches and left. Hours later he came back and asked me the same question, which I still didn’t know. He said that I had hit one of the workers. I knew I hadn’t, I was standing there arguing, and then I was jumped from behind with my whole body held. When the man said this to me, I knew who the bosses were in here; it was the workers, and whatever was said by them was gospel. They considered themselves gods and they had the power and the control and he said to me he would let me up if I didn’t hit him, I knew better than to argue with him and defend myself as far as to what really happened, and I told him that I wouldn’t hit him. All day and most of the night, I knew not to start throwing rocks.
Another time I was strapped face down one of the male workers got behind me right before I was thrown down on the cot and felt me up. My body went numb at that point and as I started to say the Lord’s Prayer when that had happened, he said, ‘Don’t be saying that again’ So, I knew who was in charge and I shut up and said the prayer in my mind. What was the reason for being strapped down this time? One of the patients was sad and I squatted down and put my hand on her arm for comfort and I didn’t get up and away fast enough when told to get away from her. It was hours before they came and got me.
The third time I was strapped down it was when I was committed the second time for a two-day weekend. I was wearing my blue flannel nightgown and these flat white sandals and I was in the mental hospital’s waiting room completely out of it. My husband was there with my three children. I remember wandering around the room and then all of a sudden, seeing bees swarming around my son. I started to swat my son about his head and body trying to get rid of the bees. Then somehow I wound up on the floor in that waiting room and it took four workers holding my wrists and ankles to pick me up and take me to that cot where I was strapped down on my back. This time they left the door open while I moaned unintelligible words. Finally, when I had some reasoning about me, I called out to the workers and told them I was ready to come out. No one did anything for an hour while I called out intermittently until I had said I had to go to the bathroom – which I didn’t need to. But it got them moving almost right away and they finally let me get up.
With all the four times I was committed, I couldn’t figure out why I was there. And I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do to get out. It was very confusing. I was not in control and my thoughts were spinning and slipping inside my head when I tried to figure it out. So you learn what you need to say each time to get out of C-Ward to B-Ward to finally A-Ward then to be released. So when the triage of doctors and medical students came by before or after lunch, you learn what to say to get yourself out of each ward. Each time I was released from the hospital I wasn’t ready to go, but I knew eventually what to say and how to say it, to get out.
Many people that were committed with me were very interesting. There was such a variety and the ages varied. The youngest was ten with his sixteen-year-old sister. Everyone believed their father put them there because he wanted to be with his girlfriend for the weekend and didn’t know what else to do with them. They just showed up in A-Ward through one of the many locked doors, the one that visitors come through, and stayed from Friday afternoon through Monday morning. Then they were gone. Everyone knew there was nothing wrong with them. They weren’t even called for morning or evening medications. Even the triage of psychiatrists never talked to them. Once, their own doctor showed up, and the girl chewed him out telling him that their father had also put them in there because her and her brother didn’t like their father’s girlfriend.
There was one worker who was extra nice to me. When I cut my hair for God, during my second breakdown, and did quite a hatchet job on it, she offered to style it and trim it up a bit. I could tell she use to cut hair at one time and she affirmed it. Her doing this for me had made me feel ‘specil’. I saw her during the third time I was committed and she cut my hair again when I had asked her to when I was committed the fourth time. When asked by another patient if she would cut their hair, she politely told her no. She was acting a bit strange the last time I had seen her and after she had cut my hair. When I asked Rosetta, who was in charge of sixteen-year-old Jennifer, who was depressed and suicidal, and she had said it was maybe my friend knew that I shouldn’t be here. That I didn’t belong in this hospital and it was making her feel bad to keep seeing me here. Right then, that got me to thinking but I didn’t know what else to do, and how to stay out of this mental hospital.
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Chapter 6
Back to Jesus
The first two years of staying on my medicine and of being literally ‘on the couch’, I would pray, to God, to materialize a gun so I could kill myself. No matter how hard I would pray – it never happened. That ordeal on the couch was a very difficult time in my life. I was trying to rear three small children to have the proper morals, values, and principles that children needed from a stable environment. I felt mentally, of an overall badness that was like a heavyweight in my brain. I was suffering from the side effects of the anti-psychotic drug which was making me suicidal and very depressed. I did a lot of praying and crying on that couch.
Then in August of 1992, I was reading the Book of St. Mark, chapter seven, and when I came to the verses 20 through 23, of which it states all that is in a list, that defiles a man from within. I took all that Jesus’ said, into my heart, as my own guilt and shame, even those I did not do. And in so upon finishing those verses in my thoughts, a bright light shone over me, warming me within my body and soul. I had to keep my eyes down upon my Bible and close my eyes three separate times, for the light was so strong and long- lasting. When at last, I opened my eyes, the light was gone and I looked up. Immediately the morning sun came out and filled the room with a golden hue for three minutes. After which the whole day was overcast. Everyone in the house was asleep. Being silently brought back to Jesus Christ was a deep transformation from within. It felt like an awakening in my mind, body, and soul. Newness in my heart that is with me when I wake up and stays with me throughout the day, and at night when I get to sleep. The forever joy, that enveloped me, has continually gotten me through the very toughest of times. God’s Grace is perfect and I am born again. So with this warmness of the white light and the affirmation of the sun, from all that time to now, has left me with a spiritual oneness of Jesus Christ. In which all has changed my life instantly and forever, Amen.*
Still feeling bad, I was then so desperate one day I cried out to my God for help. Soon following, in November, of 1992, three months after Jesus came back into my life, I was put on a different medicine that took me off that awful couch. But I was still feeling really, really bad mentally and physically. Then the following March, I was given anti-depressants and the overall feeling of badness gradually went away. For ten years I stayed on the same combination of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs. Looking back on it now with a new combination of drugs, I wasn’t really well then, and was still struggling with day-to-day life with depression caused by even this anti-psychotic drug. Apparently though, it was better than what I was going through from the beginning with being on the Haldol.
*St. John 21:6, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.” KJV
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Epilogue:
Keeping My Eyes on Him
In all honesty, looking back and remembering all my stays at the mental hospital, it wasn’t that bad for me. Except when that male worker lied about me hitting him and the same male worker when he was sexually inappropriate. With just a small few of the workers, there is an air of god-like control and those small few abuse that power, hence, the bad and unfair treatment of the patients. Some workers, the staff for the recreational activities, and the college students are very compassionate, while the rest are just there for the paycheck. I have forgiven and moved on.
All these happenings were just the tip of what I went through. Without the Grace of God, my personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, the support of a loving husband, and our local mental health facility here in town, I don’t know how I would of survived. Like my husband said in November, 1990, after my last psychotic breakdown, “Jan, you need to stay on your medicine. You are breaking up this family; you have to stay on it no matter what, no matter how bad it makes you feel.” So I have now, for over twelve years.
Our children came back in June of 1992, and now have grown and moved out and my husband and I enjoy a loving relationship after 40 years of hard work and compromising. My ex-husband and I still talk once every two or three weeks keeping each other up to date on our children. (Both of these men still don’t believe the molestation of my daughter ever occurred and my ex-husband still believes I coerced it from her when I hit my daughter in November of 1987, when I was going through my psychosis during that time.)
As of now, I seem to be doing well as far as not having severe depression and suicidal thoughts. I try and rest frequently throughout the day; when I don’t, my mind feels like it is spinning and a bad overall awfulness envelopes me even though I drink plenty of water. I tire very easily and my coping skills vary from day to day depending on what’s happening. My attention span is twenty minutes or so and I easily get disorientated if I push myself. I have to exercise extreme caution if I drive, the anti-depressant and anti-psychotic I am on has caused a double vision in my left eye, that hasn’t cleared up as of yet. I feel I am much worse off now than before. The only difference is now I am sane and not suffering from extreme side effects from the anti-psychotic alone. I have come close a few times of psychotic breakdowns even on my medicine. As of this date my medicines have been reduced due to the reduction in paranoia (after continuous praying from my mom, kids, and myself for six months) I must always be careful with this chronic disease; I listen to my husband (who always seems to be sensitive and in touch with how I am feeling), my psychiatrist and therapist with reports to the mental health nurse when I am not doing too well.
St. Luke 8:8 “And other (seed) fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.” KJV
St. Luke 8:15 “But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience.” KJV
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REFLECTING ON THE PAST
THE KNOWLEDGE OF AN AFTERTHOUGHT
In June/July of 1987 when my discontentment within my lifestyle was at its peak, I started a platonic relationship with a man that bilked me out of $1,500.00 so he could purchase a car phone, so he said, “So I can talk to you anytime I am out on the road.” Which he only talked to me once and when I questioned him about it he had said, “Whenever I try calling you I am always out of range.”
Talking about this man whom he called himself but when I checked his car plates it was registered to a man named in southern California, dredges up memories I would sooner like to forget – but our Lord has guided me to write about this, on this beautiful Mother’s Day in 2008, on May 11th during our one hour ride to Lovelock, Nevada.
The man was fun to talk to and he seemed like a good listener. When my husband had to go on an overnight stay concerning his job, I asked him to come over after the kids were in bed.
We sat on the floor in front of the television in the step-down living room. The movie that was on was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. He started the conversation by asking me questions about my mom and dad. I told him about my dad and his mental illness and how my mom eventually left him due to his confessed infidelity and how that had disrupted the whole family. He asked me if I had ever been hypnotized before and I said, happily, “Yes I have, and it was fun.” And then he started to talk to me in a monotone, he mentioned the movie we were watching and how people like him and them, “When we meet anywhere – we know who each of us are.” As he talked in his monotone my head dropped down to the carpet, I was laying on my side. As he continued to talk I heard from him, “You will be spun around as many times as it takes.” I heard myself say, “Three times.” And then he repeated what he previously had said to me and continued on by saying, “Until everything takes place and was meant to be.” He also said, “You will do things that will be guided by what is meant to be done by you and who you are.” Then he said, “And you will be okay.” Then he said out of his monotone, “Wake up!” And I awoke out of his hypnotic trance. Then Hank finally said, “It is time for me to go now. Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” I said, “No, I’m tired.” The next morning I felt refreshed and thought of Hank all the time. I was experiencing a mad-driven desire to be with him. (Which this was also added during his monotone along with that I would remember this night and would be unable to do anything about it)
Throughout all my psychotic breaks I was searching for the one that would make me complete and I didn’t stop spinning around in my mind until I met my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But this man, the devil’s advocate, damage was done and the only one who can help me now is Jesus my Lord with His healing touch to make me whole and as one with Him.
St. Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” (Jesus talking to the father about his faith concerning his lunatick son)
One day, when Jesus returns, we will get our miracle.
St. Mark 10:27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”
I have forgiven this man and have moved on.
YOU AS ONE
SONG OF GOD
WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST PSYCHOTIC BREAKDOWN
You have captured me,
My mind, my spirit,
I am one with You,
No more searching thru the shadows of my heart,
For I have found what I have been looking for,
My light is knowing You,
Being with You, sharing ourselves,
One union of the hearts,
One binding of the souls,
I have known no one as You,
My heart is for You,
My love is for the taking,
I give all myself to You,
Look no further, I am the one.
Be still with your questioning thoughts and doubting hearts,
For I am the one.
So I love You with a passion,
And with an unrestrained longing to be with You as One.
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A Rose is a Rose
These silent buds,
Sleeping when they must,
Wake to the gentle music,
During the Spring’s awakening chorus,
Many a time I smile,
Knowing the true heart-call,
That is in my soul,
Of the Spring’s sensational union,
For always are the true days,
Hearing for all eternity,
Your rose to cherish thru the new morning,
An Autograph Signed and Blessed By God.
Your Glory
John 12:36-43 ESV
"While you have the light, believe in the light,
that you may become sons of light."
So reads from John...
{The Unbelief of the People}
Then as it goes...
Your Glory is revealed through understanding And through wisdom - All of which is You Forever And Ever, Amen. My worth is Your Glory - my mental health reveals You as positive and along of You! O my Abba You are so Sovereign, You are a Gracious God, You Consume my whole being - May I Forever do Your Will as my mental health reflects You And Your Goodness And Your Glory unto all who need Your Assurance that all is well! You have *chosen me And For You, I Praise And Glorify You! Give You All the recognition that I have been thru reflects Your Glory, Your Grace, Your Mercy, Your Kindness - Your Love - I do my best for You. In Yeshua's Name, Amen.
*John 15:16,17
Positive Spirit
Winnemucca, Nv.