Mental Health

My sister was 16 the first time I remember her going really over the edge. She didn't get out of bed for days and when she spoke, she demanded I make the person with the bells stop walking outside our (2nd floor) bedroom window. It was the 60s. I figured she was on something. We tried to hide it from our parents. She just really never came down.

She would go years without obvious bouts with whatever the diagnosis code was. Then, it just got worse. Alcohol didn't help and she could drink her weight, day in and day out, straight up, no chaser. She finally showed up on my doorstep (naked) with no where to go. I took her in. She's my sister. My other sister and mother were pretty pissed off and sick and tired of her shit, so I guessed it was my turn. I could do it. I'd find her help. yeah, right.

She didn't want therapy. She didn't like medication. She didn't like being schizophrenic. She wanted to be bipolar with psychotic episodes. Fine. Can we just call it whatever she likes and medicate however we can? The third time she totally pissed of a psychiatrist who started screaming angrily at me that my sister was 'JUST FUCKING CRAZY' I pretty much lost it. As if that fact absolved him of responsibility to help, to medicate, to be compassionate, to not blame her or me for her genetic brain chemistry. How did fault help? Even if we could point a finger and say "Yes, this did it", it still doesn't make "it" disappear.

She gave up. I didn't. If she didn't want therapy, if she wasn't crazy, then surely to God I was. I got therapy. I learned a lot. I was crazy. I grew up. I carried her when I could and when she became combative, I put her in the local mental health care unit for 3-14 days or however long I could convince them to keep her so I could get some sleep and peace and quiet. Then she would be let out, she would find a bottle, she would crawl into it and the cycle continued. Until I left.

She ain't heavy, she's my sister and I can carry her so long as she isn't fighting and kicking and biting and screaming every fucking inch of the way. Then I can't. I tried. Maybe she tried too. Maybe she gave up too. I did. It just reached the point where she was going to drag me down with her and I just wasn't going to go there. She did find some other help. She did straighten it out a little and for a while, but one medication would work for a few months and then it wouldn't and she was in no way able to figure that out. Eventually, a quart of alcohol a day took its toll and she is gone now.

Our mental health resources have improved dramatically in the twenty years that this went on. I would have a lot more resources now than I had then. She would no doubt have social security and back up and a safe place to live where she could have freedom and supervision. I know now what I would do differently. But absent patient, kind, compassionate people willing to take her mean blasts of shit repeatedly, she would get nowhere. I'm not so sure we have enough people who understand that about mental ill health. Mean is often just sick.

Palin Killed Them All (or was it AC/DC?)

By all accounts, Madge Oberholtzer committed suicide. She used her own hand to end her own life. D.C. Stephenson was the head of the KKK in Indiana in the twenties. Madge was an advocate for literacy. D.C. kidnapped her, forced her full of liquor, raped her and tortured her - she was so covered in bite marks that one witness said she appeared to have been chewed by a cannibal. Later, after she was freed, she never did recover emotionally from her injuries and ended her own life. Nonetheless, there is a very famous case supporting the conviction of D. C. Stephenson for murdering her - just as surely as if he had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. He didn't, but he killed her all the same.

I realize that case is way more extreme than the recent events in Arizona. Palin didn't literally bite anybody. Beck hasn't been kidnapping or raping anyone. Nonetheless, they have been really, really, really mean and snarky. Blood libel? Really? Come on, Sarah, that is really reaching. I know you didn't kidnap anybody and you didn't personally incite that kid to start shooting, but, you did incite shooting. Rush absolutely incited shooting. Rush's outright contempt for anyone who disagrees with him is chilling. To call his condemnation of his enemies cruel is a compliment and an understatement. Hell, Dick Cheney shot his friends in the face and accepted apologies from the friend for being in the way.

All of this discussion only highlights that there is a mood in this country and it isn't good. Those I hear on the right have one line and only one line and it is regurgitated perpetually over and over until I literally want to bash in their heads just to prove there are no brains in there. I get angry. It's not just that the statements are stupid and irrational. It's also that I fail to see all these people thinking for themselves. Any rational mind must conclude that all this snarky mean references to shooting and death lead troubled irrational people to do irrational things. It's frustrating. And I'm sure they feel exactly the same way about me.

The only difference between me and those with whom I disagree is that I walk away. I'm always the one to walk away. I'm not the only one to get angry, either. The vehemence is mutual. I unfriend you when I get so pissed off at your stupidity that I can't see my own reason anymore. Before I do that, I really do try to see some commonality, so basis of humanity and compassion. I just see anger and irrationality. So, I walk.

But I don't use guns. I don't use gun analogies. I don't advocate using guns. I don't hunt. I don't kill. I don't even spank my dog. I try, try, try to surround myself with beauty, compassion and kindness. I try to pass on laughter. But I look around at what's on TV and what's on radio and what's going around is a lot of immature, selfish, self-centered stupidity where the right BLAMES the left and the left BLAMES the right and the stupid BLAMES the smart and the smart shake their heads, crack a joke and go on trying to earn a decent living and live a decent life against all odds. And they really are odd.

The sad part is that I really do know the answer to this problem: Be nice. Hold hands when you cross the street. Share. Look out for one another. Get a good education. Work at something you love. Power and control are illusions. Love is real.

Revolution

People were shot today. A 9 year old boy and a federal judge went to heaven together, much to their own chagrin, I'm sure. I'm glad someone older and wiser was there with the boy, but that is only daunted my deep sorrow that either and both are now gone. Nothing will ever really explain why it happened. I'm sure the shooter had his reasons - a life of marginalization, recent economic dispair and disparity, misplaced righteousness, no friend to say "whoa, dude, don't". The facts will all come out and are still being sifted, but last I heard, six were dead. Many more were wounded.

Fifteen headless bodies were discovered in Mexico. Hundreds of red wing black birds fell dead from the sky in Arkansas and some number of other birds in Italy. The North Pole strayed so far that an airport runway had to be re-calibrated. After 50 years of war and revolution, southern Sudanese may vote for independence. But can they really?

Can we really be independent? If so, is that a good thing. In the case of the southern Sudanese it may well be the preferred 'state' of affairs, but as people, we need each other. That 9 year old in Arizona may have been destined to grow up and solve all manner of human problems. The judge might have achieved wisdom on par with Solomon. Red wing black birds brink joy and song - one may have eaten the mosquito that will now bite another human who will become ill.

Many people are angry - the ones on the right are angry at the left who are angry back at the right. I've been that angry. I've joked inappropriately that I had someone in my sights, as she did about Gabriel Giffords. But, she is not responsible for this, however glib and blithe she is at dismissing her opponents as unworthy heathen in God's judgment and hers. Feel free to dislike her, but hate is too strong - she doesn't need your love bent backwards on itself. She needs a good education and awareness that she is not alone, that she is no different than Gabriel Giffords. There but for the grace of God goes she. And we.

Screw Gratitude

I tried - died in the wooly snarkette that I am. I did. And don't think I'm not grateful because I really am. On the other hand (and there's always the other hand), I have 'struggled' as an artist for decades to write that book. I have started. I have finished. I have not yet completed my tome. I've painted masterpieces, written poetry and music, tap danced (badly), but I have not completed a novel. I've done law school, litigated civil and criminal trials, performed stunning closing arguments (really, stunning, breath taking, tear jerking), and have left it all behind to be a hippie in the mountains. I have not written a book.

Snookie has. Snookie wrote a fucking book. Snookie. Did she even GO to high school? Okay, I didn't either, so that's not really fair, but I did go to college and law school which makes me infinitely better educated and talented and all kinds of things superior to a short fat jersey girl. She's a yankee for crying out loud. I am fair, delicate (steel) flower of the glorious south! I have done it all - all things except written a book and all things but having a written a book published by Simon & Schuster. Oh, and a tv show. Probably a movie deal coming up.

You can rebut my self flagellation with the fact (?) that the book probably sucks big green donkey dongs. Reviews tend to agree with that assessments. But reviews have been, historically, cruel to even great literature. Will it sell? Do I care? I am hell bent in the throws of a new year snookie will NOT be better than me this year kind of resolution. I don't know what I have to do to be better than Snookie this year (breath? think? anything?) but I'm determined that even if I have no class, no talent, no brains, no anything, I will at least at the end of this year have a novel finished, completed, written, done, edited and ready for any good publisher to send out the rushes. No short fat yankee bitch is gonna outdo me.

New Year

I resolved to be openly grateful this year. I've also resolved to give back. Or forward. Either way. While I've been given much by many, it's still been a long time since I felt anything that remotely resembled abundance. I don't own a home, have a reliable income, or a 401K or much of a savings account. I also don't have debt, credit cards, unexpected home repairs (plumbing, heating, AC, etc., etc. ad nauseum). I have a car, tires, insurance, AAA, but God help me if anything breaks. God always does.

The amazing thing to me is that friends come up with the idea that they need some manner of work done that I can exactly do at just the very moment I need the work. Last month, when work kept popping up, even though money was regularly coming in, the work kept postponing until later. I was worried that January would be slow, but those old December jobs are rearing their pretty little heads again.

It's this all too reliable synchronicity of need and opportunity that belies atheism for me. There are many other reasons for my belief in something more, other, greater, bigger, wiser, but this is a constant. I read the bible once, in full, beginning with the Torah and progressing forward into Christian and Muslim sacred texts. The red words spoke deeply to me - those words in red that Jesus said, ignore the rest, for those are best - and I used to wonder what life would be like if I really did just give away absolutely everything I owned and walk away without a single idea what to do with my life.

Until I did. Well, I drove away, and I kept some clothes and momentoes, but I literally did give away quite a lot of stuff. Then, there was the offer of a place to live a while, then another, and some work, and a job, and not and this and that. Early on, a friend brought a box she'd found left behind among the stuff given away, that she saved for me, a box of oil paints, brushes, pastels, palette knives. It had been so long since I painted, I had forgotten I had them.

I supported myself with that box of paints for many years. In some ways, I still do, although it's been a rough two years. Things are picking up. I've sold some. I have two commissions. I still have three tubes of that old paint, not yet used up, still ready for some linseed oil to breath new life into it. So I start new works, painting first on one, then rest and dry and work the other. While doing so, I live in the basement of a house. Upstairs is the very best friend a person could ever hope to have. The home is on a quiet lake, no motor boats or screaming skiers, a sturdy dock, miles of decks, trees galore in the mountains. I do work that's needed to pay the rent. I have friends who have my back. No bills. I can't imagine why I would ever think life was anything but perfect.

Holiday Pack on the Pounds Cake

I was given a pound cake. It is a very large, very tasty, very, very heavy, large home made pound cake. Did I mention how large it is? I know why I was given the cake. Because I'm a very good friend. And . . . because my friend is in love and is trying hard to not pack on the pounds herself. Is that bitchy? Well, I really do like this friend, even if it is bitchy to give me a pound cake just because she doesn't want to be responsible for eating the whole thing. I hope she still likes me even if it is bitchy of me to think she had less than truly pure gifting intentions and to say so. Publicly.

I concede I could be wrong. Not about me being bitchy, that's a given, but about her intentions. I'm not wrong. But, I could be. Do you ever just know things? See straight through and know the truth? Ever been wrong about it? I have. So, I try to see through all the obvious whatevers and implications and just enjoy. I mean, it's a pound cake. What's not to like? It's got nuts, coconut, lemon, walnuts and something else I just can't yet identify. A pound of butter went into it. It's huge. It easily weighs way more than a pound. And it's delicious. The crust is just a tad crunchy and buttery. The inside is firm and soft all at the same time. The walnuts add a nice texture and truly ARE good for me.

AND I AM ON MY WAY INTO EATING THE WHOLE DAMN THING. Did I mention how big it is? I don't need to eat any of it, much less all of it. I could freeze it. I could take it to some senior center, to the physical therapy center, to church on Sunday (it's Wednesday and it and I will not last together until Sunday). There are a number of options. Top of my list is to go get some ice cream to go with it (because it just really doesn't taste good enough on its own??? NOT. but because I am indeed a HOGOHOLIC).

Webster has offered to take it off my hands, with rousing agreements by Savannah and Emmy to help. That's no solution. I could exert self restraint, freeze pieces, have some every now and then - but we all know how lame it is to try to thaw out a piece of pound cake in a hurry.

So, to make matters worse, my landlady/bff's cleaning lady (and fine friend herself) just brought me a present - home made cranberry relish. A HUGE container FULL of home made cranberry relish. It has orange, and nuts, and cranberries and I don't know what all. She's on a diet too. She made the relish and then met somebody and now she's trying not to pack on the holiday pounds. I am the beneficiary of the best made Christmas eating intentions gone awry. Guess I should have considered the gift receiving ramifications before publicly declaring myself a hogoholic.

Guess what? Cranberry relish on pound cake is really, really, really, really good. I bet that if I got some vanilla ice cream, put it on the pound cake, and warmed up the cranberry relish, then poured it over the top, it would take me six months to work off all the pounds, only if I never ate anything ever again.

Holder me Closer

"The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions [Wikileaks] that are, I believe, arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "We have a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature. I authorized just last week a number of things to be done so that we can hopefully get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable... as they should be."

Pay very close attention to Holder's words here: "ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature." He doesn't say this is an investigation into a crime. He says that this is an investigation that is, itself, criminal. Now, it may be that he didn't mean to say that. It may only mean that Holder was waxing eloquent and went with obvious intent rather than express meaning. But, itt may mean that his Freudian slip is showing.

Consider the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg risked prosecution for treason simply for exposing treasonous actions of former American presidents. With the help of Senator Mike Gravel, the report exposing crimes by Presidents, was revealed in a way that allowed for publicity and shielded criminal liability under the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution.

Assange, et al., could not rely on obtaining such protection. We the people can't either. The truth has been hijacked for political expediency and we are being fed a bill of goods intended to shred the bill of rights until it's unrecognizable. The wars we are mongering are not justified by our interests or our laws. The wars we are mongering are not going well for us. Our President is not telling us the truth.

That's information I want. I also want to know that our government officials are using this situation to bully corporations into shutting down his access to speech. The free speech rights in this country are based on the concept of the Lone Pamphleteer, that crusty old curmudgeon standing on the street corner handing out leaflets. If you deny Lone Pamphleteer either the paper, the ink or the street corner, you have wrongfully silenced the Lone Pamphleteer. It is illegal for government officials to wrongly deny a person his or her constitutional rights.

Since Assange is not a U.S. citizen,, does he have the same right? If he committed those acts while in the U.S., yes he would. Is there a magic American boundary where our responsibility to abide by our Constitutional laws and mandates ends? Good question.