Jessica MacIntyre's Blog, page 6

The Vampires of Soldiers Cove – Book 2- One Crow Sorrow

Here is the cover to the next book in my vampire series. Due out in the next few days!

Why I don’t care if you don’t like my books!

So I’ve been a published writer for almost six months now and I’ve learned a lot. Not just about writing and promoting but about myself as a person. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that while I’m not Shakespeare (I never thought I was) I’m a pretty good writer. Does it come across as arrogant to say that? Perhaps. Writers aren’t supposed to express any confidence in their abilities for some reason. It’s like an unwritten rule we all have to follow. I think it’s stupid.

I’m always open to learning and getting better. It doesn’t insult me when people point out typos or mistakes (all books have them, even the ones put out by big name publishers) and it doesn’t make me feel bad if you think what I’ve published is tripe. I don’t care.

I’ve published a full length novel and two novellas in the last six months and I’ve had enough positive feedback, from people who don’t know me and have no reason to be nice, that it affirms my decision to keep publishing and moving forward.

Reviews fluctuate from one star to five stars. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Well, everyone is. You didn’t like my character development? Oh well. Thought my ending was bad? That’s unfortunate. Didn’t enjoy the type of sex I portrayed in my erotica books? Well, we all like something different sexually so too bad, so sad.

People love to ‘Monday morning quarterback’ you. But where is their book? Most doing it don’t have one, and if they do, you could stake your life on the fact that it’s not perfect, not in the least.  I’ve had a couple of writers who’ve given me ‘constructive criticism’ which made me shake my head. Then I’ve gone and read their books and realized that any advice they’d give me is probably best ignored!

I know a few people who are very critical and consider themselves writers but have yet to even put one book up for sale. They say they want it to be ‘perfect’ before they put it up and nobody has any business putting a book up for sale that is less than perfect. Ha! You know when your book will be perfect enough to put up for sale? NEVER! Although perhaps perfection is not really what’s holding you back…maybe it’s balls!

Sorry to be blunt here, but perhaps what you lack is not literary skills, perhaps what you lack is the balls to just put it out there. It takes huge gonads to let your work go out into the world. People WILL rip it apart and it WILL hurt you, but never mind that. What do YOU think of it? When you put your head on the pillow at night do YOU feel you’ve told the story you want to tell? If the answer is a yes then that’s good enough.

Now, it’s time to move on. As the Foo Fighters say, “Done! Done! On to the next one!”  Go write the next story. The process will be the same. Some will love it, some will hate it. Do YOU like it? Dave Grohl once said, “The next time somebody tells you that you can’t sing say, fuck you!”  This applies to writing as much as it does to music.

Be different, be ballsy, be yourself! Say what you want in the way you want to say it. Today you are one day closer to your death bed. When you are lying there, starting at the ceiling as the light goes out in your eyes, what will you want to say to yourself? Personally I know I’ll want to say, “I had the balls to do the things I desired to do and I didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

How about you?

WARNING! There’s No Warning!

So I’ve been seeing this argument on quite a few groups lately and I thought I’d jump in and give my 2 cents worth. The question of whether or not there should be a warning on books with strong language, sex and violence.  I don’t know if people have noticed but this particular argument lately is mostly aimed at indie writers. I don’t hear people hollering and complaining that there are no warnings on Stephen King, or George R.R. Martin books. God knows, they run on sex and violence and there is nary a warning to be found. So why the double standard for indie writers?

Look folks, if you’re an adult and you are browsing the section of the bookstore or website with books written by adults for other adults you need to be prepared to have any type of language or situation pop up in the books you read. Yes I can hear some people now saying, “Well I appreciate a warning because I don’t like those things.”  Fair enough if you don’t like that type of thing, but honestly, when was the last time you opened a book by a big name author that had any kind of warning at all? I mean for god sake, the entire plot for the Game of Thrones books is based on incest, and the language used by the characters is true to their nature, and in a lot of cases, that means swearing.

There are many things you can do if you want to avoid strong language, sex and violence in a book.

Read the first few pages. Usually this will give you an idea of what the story is about, especially on Amazon where they have the whole, ‘look inside’ feature. I know for my eBook, The Vampires of Soldiers Cove, you can read right up to chapter 4 if you click on that feature. There’s been adult content up to that point and if you don’t like it don’t read it.
Read the reviews. Chances are if there is adult content and the book has a decent amount of reviews someone has mentioned it.
Look at the genre! I can’t stress this one enough. If sex and violence really make you that uncomfortable you are probably better off sticking to the YA section of the bookstore or website. I know lots of adults who read YA exclusively. That would never be me because in most YA books things are sanitized and it annoys me. It annoys me in the same way sex and violence annoy some others, so guess what? I DON’T USUALLY READ THEM!  I’ve seen some reviews recently on erotica books that rated them low because there was ‘too much sex’. Seriously?? The darn thing has EROTICA stamped on the genre!! Erotica = sex. Don’t like sex? Don’t read erotica!

 

So I have to say that even though my books contain sex, violence, and strong language you will NEVER see a warning on them. Not unless they come up with a book rating system similar to that which is used to judge movies that would be legally enforced. Why?  Because I’m an adult, writing about adults, for other adults. If you get that bent out of shape over certain situations, perhaps reading is the wrong hobby for you all together. God forbid you be offended! May I suggest pottery or knitting?  I have never done either but they seem like G rated activities and won’t get your blood pressure all sky high.

Life After Discharge

I was finally discharged from the hospital today after three long weeks. You would think I’d be feeling glad about that but I’m not. Something that is very common, but not often talked about, is how difficult life is after being discharged. It’s a rough time for most people, and I’m no exception.

Right now I’m sitting here watching the kids play the Wii U and writing this You would think that would make me feel all warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t. As my grandmother used to say, “I feel like ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag”. And yes, she really did used to say that.

They never keep you until you are well, they keep you until they figure you can go home and continue to recover on your own. Can I continue to recover on my own? God, I hope so. I don’t want to end up back in the hospital, but if I’m being brutally honest, it wouldn’t surprise me. The adjustment is always hard, but it’s especially hard this time because of the nature of what happened. I feel kind of like I am being expected to run a marathon on two legs that only just now had the casts removed. Does that make sense? The things that happened this time have never happened to me before and I’m still trying to process it all.

All I know is I am off to Cape Breton for a book signing. We are leaving tomorrow but the signing is not until Monday, so I’ll have the weekend to kind of see people and maybe relax a little. That will be nice.

I have to say that I absolutely hate the fact that my illness has progressed and it makes me very scared. I’ve never really been unaware about what was going on around me until this last go round with this pain in the ass called, Psychotic Depression. So now I feel like I could drift off into that other world again. Quickly and without warning. I don’t like this, not one little bit.

I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say here, perhaps I just felt the need to vent a little about my fear of the future.

Take care minions! And to those of you coming to the book signing, I’ll see you soon!

The Slave Knight by Jessica MacIntyre Review

The Slave Knight by Jessica MacIntyre Review.

Tales From The Psych Ward

 

So it’s occurred to me that perhaps a lot of people who follow this blog (and the numbers are growing, a big thank you if you’re following me here!) may not have any idea what life is like for a psychiatric patient in the hospital. Most people when they think of a hospital stay think of the traditional kind. You have a room with a bed, and that’s pretty much all you see. Nurses come in, take care of your needs, make your bed, fetch you things etc. You have a TV (if you’re willing to pay for one) and your own phone (again if you can pay) and your food is brought to you on a tray, which you eat in your bed on one of those little tables that the wheels fit nicely under.

Now, not to say that nurses won’t do a lot of that for a psychiatric patient, because they certainly will if the situation calls for it. About ten days ago when I was so sick I couldn’t leave my room they did some of those things for me, but here in this post I’m going to share with you what life is like on the psych unit.

I’ve been in a few and they are pretty much all run the same way. Let’s start with the device we all know and love so well, TV. Do we have TV? Yes! Do we get TV in our rooms? NOPE!  There is ONE TV for all of us, and on this unit I think there are about 25 beds.  How about the telephone. Do we have a telephone in our room? NO! We have ONE telephone for all 25 of us. Good luck getting hold of your loved one if they don’t have a cell phone in here because the patient phone can ring and ring and ring, and nobody bats an eye or lifts a finger to answer it. Answering it means you will have to run around the entire ward looking for that person. Most of us are too out of it, or too tired to do this.  And good luck making your outgoing calls. There have been times I have waited upwards of three hours to get use of the phone, and as soon as you get on, someone else is there to stare you down so they can have it.

How about music? This ward is unique in that there is an actual music room, which is nice, however the stereo is from the early 90s I would say. It’s a dual cassette/CD player combo. The cassette doors are broken and although I haven’t tried to play a CD another patient tells me it’s broken. There is a small collection of cassettes, most are country, and there are at least 10 Foster and Allen cassettes. Right now you’re laughing because you think I’m joking….I’m not! It’s Foster and Allen-a-palooza up in here!

We do have a ping pong table which is pretty cool. A psych ward I was on in Sydney had one and if you can find someone sane enough and coordinated enough (and good luck, a lot of us are a little loopy from the drugs) it can be great fun. Hell it can be fun even when you are super drugged, more fun even.

What about meal times? Well as opposed to eating in your room like you do with a regular hospitalization you are expected to eat in the dining room. It’s a nice dining room here, with a few large wooden tables and a nice bright window with lots of plants and paintings. A good setup. The one drawback is that there are not enough chairs for everyone, so get there early. Tonight at supper I slacked and ended up eating over on the couch, which kinda sucked.

For fun we also have board games. On a psych unit you are expected to socialize whenever possible since people with mental illness have a tendency to isolate themselves. We have crib, battleship, and lots of others I don’t have a clue as to what they are. A few nights ago myself and three guys decided to play monopoly, only we don’t have actual monopoly, we have “Catopoly”.  This led to an evening of bad cat puns. It was a cat-tastrophe. Haha!  It was good for a few laughs.

There is a room upstairs where you can go if you have passes and they will let you borrow movies. If you don’t have a laptop, you can borrow a personal DVD player too. You can sign one out along with 2 movies. This is unique to this place and I have to say I like it. A lot of people take advantage of it, and unlike the cassette collection, the movie collection looks pretty good.

Also unlike a regular hospitalization you are encouraged to leave and get outside for a while. Depending on your condition there are different types of passes. Some are 15mins, some are up to an hour, or four hours. They may be escorted passes or unescorted passes. I now have 4 hour unescorted passes, but last week I only had escorted ones when I wasn’t doing so well. Some people have NO passes at all.

I took one of my 4 hour passes yesterday and went to Starbucks for a couple of hours, then I sat in the Halifax Public Gardens for half an hour or so before heading back. I didn’t use the entire 4 hours, but I could have. Right about now I can hear some of you saying, “They let you people leave? That’s not right!”

Hey! Lookit! If that’s what you’re thinking you have seen way too many movies, or watched too much news. Yes there are people who are dangerous and should not be let out at all. And yes sometimes things go wrong when doctors or caretakers fail to realize that someone is an actual threat. But honestly folks, mentally ill people are much more likely to be the victim of a crime than to commit one. If I had not been taken here last week, because I just so happened to have an appointment with my psychiatrist, anything could have happened to me. I’d never hurt anyone, but there are predators everywhere and when they spot someone who’s not all there it’s like a shark smelling blood in the water. I could tell you many horror stories about people who were victims of crimes due to their mental illness.

Having said that, there are two rooms toward the back of the unit that look like prison cells. They have large steel doors and only a small window to look inside. They are empty at the moment, but I’m sure they’ve had to be used a number of times.

We also have a washer and dryer, which is nice. It saves you from having to beg your family to bring you clean clothes. A good thing to have because as I said in a previous post, visitors are a rare sight here. Along with that we have a shower room, and a tub room. You get your own towels and you remake your own bed with linens from the cart in the hallway. We also have a small kitchenette with a little fridge full of all the orange and apple juice you can drink. Yay! I love orange juice.

In the evening we get snacks brought up from the kitchen. Cookies, crackers, cheese, peanut butter and fruit. Again, get there early if you want something! It runs out quick!

Anyhooo, that’s life here in a nutshell. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I’ll answer you back down below. I have to go stake out my spot for dinner. Chow for now!

Teaser Time Again

Ok, you guys were promised a teaser from One Crow Sorrow at the 900 like mark. Here it is!

 

Holly turned out to be quite a good cook for someone who ate so infrequently.  She piled an enormous amount of food onto Alexander’s plate, and mine as well, because I was the youngest.  I ate to be polite.

 

“There’s lots left over if anybody wants seconds,” she said “Honey, did you say you wanted some dessert?”  Daniel simply shook his head, ‘no’. There was an obvious tension in the air between them as they interacted that evening, barely making eye contact. We all felt the strain and were doing our best to dance around it.  Alexander, the only one who didn’t notice, ate with a gusto I both remembered and envied.  Once you’ve had blood, food holds very little interest, and having to eat is more nuisance than enjoyment.  By and large this was one bunch that wouldn’t be having seconds.  Her parents hardly touched their plates, and Gavin, who sat in subdued silence most of the night, didn’t seem to be himself anyway.

 

After much coaxing for all of us to eat more Holly finally gave up and started clearing the plates.  As she did a knife fell from her hands and clanged onto the floor.  Her mother bent down and handed it back to her.

 

“Falls to the floor, comes to the door,” she said.

 

“Oh Ma, do you still say that?” It was funny to hear Holly accuse her mother of being old fashioned seeing as how they were both so ancient.

 

“It’ll be a man,” her father said.  “Better watch out Daniel, he might be more handsome than you.” 

 

“That’s impossible,” Daniel said trying to feign sincerity.  Everyone laughed and for a moment it seemed that the heaviness in the air had lifted.

 

I felt a strange presence just then about half a second before anyone else realized he was in the room.  A very handsome man of about thirty with a very pale completion, cropped black hair and remarkable brown eyes was standing in the kitchen with us.

 

 “Room for one more?” he said. The plates Holly had been clearing fell from her hands and the sound of breaking glass filled the room.

 

“Ian!” Gavin jumped up and hugged him so hard that it almost knocked the man to the floor. I hadn’t witnessed Gavin smile this wide since seeing the young woman’s picture the night before.  All at once the burden of that event seemed to be forgotten and he was totally wrapped up in the joy of seeing this man, whoever he was. His parents were smiling too; Holly and Daniel however, were not. Daniel had retrieved the broom and dustpan from a closet and was busy cleaning up the plates, but Holly just stood there, frozen.

 

“Rachel,” Gavin said taking Ian around to my side of the table, “this is my brother Ian.”

 

“Nice to meet you,” I said extending my hand and forcing my biggest smile.  I could tell Holly was uncomfortable and I didn’t want to let her know that I had noticed.

 

“Well brother, nice to see you’ve done well for yourself.  We were all worried about you for a while.”  He shook my hand.  Both his parents greeted him warmly and then he slowly made his way to his sister and brother-in-law.  “It’s nice to see you Holly,” he kissed her on the cheek.

Into The Mist…

Where to begin this blog post….

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Things that I’m going to share with you might be hard for some people to understand, but I feel the need to do it anyway. Like I’ve said before, I have decided to use this blog not just to promote my books, but also to spread awareness about mental illness. I’m writing this post in a word document because I am in a psych unit and have no access to the internet at the moment.

I was brought here after my regularly scheduled appointment with my psychiatrist about a week ago. As you know if you’ve been following me here, I have an illness called Psychotic Depression. Up until now the major symptom of that illness for me has been voices. I hear voices and can live with them to some degree, but I’ve never had any type of false belief, except for once many years ago, but that didn’t last and was blamed on a particular drug a bad psychiatrist has prescribed for me. It didn’t happen again, until now.

About two weeks ago everything started looking very strange from time to time. Things would get washed out and the world seemed to slow down. And then a thought popped into my head.

Food is illegal, it said.

Food is illegal? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, I said to myself. But from then on whenever I ate something I felt horribly guilty. If you knew me at all you’d know that I’m not somebody who breaks the rules. I don’t even so much as jaywalk, I just don’t. It doesn’t make me better than anyone else, but that’s just the way I am, and so doing something that’s against the law would make me very anxious.

I knew this thought was irrational, but I couldn’t stop myself from acting on it.  This is the point when I should have reached out for help. I should have told my husband or called my psychiatrist or even gone to the ER. I should have done something, anything, to prevent this from getting out of hand, but I didn’t. I told myself that it would go away, and that mentioning these thoughts to anyone would be much to embarrassing and I didn’t know if I could live with the judgement of saying something so ridiculous out loud. I was afraid and ashamed.

Consequently things got worse and at some point the thought ceased to simply be a thought. In my mind that thought was now a FACT! Food WAS illegal and I knew that with everything I had in me. I knew it the way you know the grass is green, and the sky is blue, and a red traffic light means stop. I knew it, and nobody would have been able to talk me out of it. 

I stopped eating.

Again, if you knew me at all you’d know just how out of character that is. I’m a big girl and I like to eat. I don’t miss meals. But this delusion was so strong that I was convinced if I was caught eating I’d be going to jail. I have things to do and people I take care of and jail was not something I was willing to risk. My rationality and insight, which I have had throughout most of my illness, was just…gone. I should mention that food was only illegal for certain people. I was the only one in my house but there were others. Others like me who weren’t worthy of food and we had to forgo it in exchange for our freedom.

When I went to see my psychiatrist she noticed I was acting funny. By the time I saw her that Friday morning talking and thinking were extremely difficult. I could only use half sentences and I told her about how food was illegal. It was at that point she said, “How would you feel about coming into the hospital for a few days?”

I love my psychiatrist. She’s a sweet foreign lady. I’m not sure where she’s from but she has a rich and beautiful accent and a last name that encompasses most of the alphabet. I’ve had a lot of psychiatrists over the last 20 years but I can honestly say she is the best one I’ve ever had. When I told her I didn’t think that was necessary, she just very gently said, “I’m very worried about you. I think you are getting sick and I am going to find you a bed someplace until we can sort this out. Ok?”  

Finding a psych bed in Halifax (or anywhere I would imagine) is no small task. She had to make multiple phone calls, which I’m sure is a pain in the ass, and have another psychiatrist interview me so that I could be taken straight to the hospital unit without having to go through emergency (which is always at least an 8 hour ordeal in Halifax. Not easy when you are sick) She did all of that and then had a patient transfer unit scoop me up at her office and take me to the hospital so I wouldn’t have to go on my own. She was scared I’d wander off, and in the state I was in, I probably would have and god knows what would have happened from there.

I live in Halifax’s sister city, Dartmouth. In order to go to Halifax you have to cross a large bridge and somewhere in between Dartmouth and Halifax, I believe it was on the McDonald Bridge, I got the idea that everything was being swallowed up by ‘the mist’. That’s a Stephen King movie for anyone who doesn’t know. It was a particularly foggy day and I was sitting up in the seat of the patient transfer unit watching the tail lights on the cars in front of us disappear into the thick fog that had settled over the harbour that day. In my mind everyone was disappearing.

My husband came to visit me and I was sobbing, telling him not to let the kids go outside and to be careful. I was convinced the mist was going to swallow up everyone and everything that I loved, and that I’d spend eternity alone in a curtain of white fog, never seeing or talking to anyone again. I was scared.

The next few days passed in a blur of hallucinations and delusions. I didn’t come out of my room at the short stay unit hardly at all, and had to have a nurse convince me to eat every single time food was brought to me. Lots of things happened between Friday and Tuesday and I only remember bits and pieces of it all.

I was feeling much better by Wednesday, however, and was convinced that they’d let me go home and continue to recover on my own. No dice. On Thursday I was admitted to a different unit in the same hospital and this is where I sit as we speak. The words, “Your illness has progressed” are not words anyone wants to hear, but I’m afraid I had to hear them in the last few days. That’s been hard. I’ve cried a lot. Drugs that were once only used as a fix when something goes wrong will now have to be a part of my life every day and that will be hard. Antipsychotic medication can be hard to function on.

I drift back into the fog when something upsets me or stresses me out. I can’t be outside of this environment for too long without seeing the world in its ‘washed out’ state. I know some of you are wondering how I am posting on Facebook and going to Starbucks.

Being on a psych unit is not the same as being in a regular hospital. As long as you are lucid you can pretty much come and go. I have passes and I take advantage of them when I need to. It’s good to get away, but it’s necessary to come back. I’m not stranger to these places. Unfortunately I have had so many psychiatric hospitalizations that I’ve lost count. When I was a teenager some people accused me of getting admitted for attention. Trust me, there are easier ways to get attention. I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for this, and I’d get rid of it if I could. Mental illness is not something that goes away though, at least not in my case. It’s something you manage and live with. I knew my illness very well, but now it’s like I have to get to know it, and myself, all over again.  It’s a pain in the ass I tell you! It’s disrupting my life. I have a lot of great stuff going on and I’d like to be able to give it my full attention, but right now that’s impossible.

Anyway, that’s where we are right now. I’ve felt pretty good most of today and for that I’m grateful. It will be a challenge but I’ll recover. Coming into a place like this makes me realize just how lucky I am actually. I am seeing people in here who are much worse off than I am, and who may never recover. Yes, my illness sucks the big one, but there are some who are dealing with much worse. I’ll get well and go home. Some of these people will never get well. Some of these people really have no home. They are society’s throwaways.

Visitors are a rare sight here. There are no flowers, no get well cards, no phone calls of concern or support. They sit, they wait, they languish. It’s extremely depressing. I’ve met some very interesting and beautiful people here who have no family or friends left to support them. Granted some of them may have alienated friends and family with their behavior, but still, it doesn’t feel fair. We’re all just looking for a little understanding.

Nobody wants or asks for this. I’ve heard the phrase uttered in here, “You are more than your diagnosis”, and it’s true. But to some our diagnosis is ALL that we are and all they will ever see. If you think like that it’s a shame. Every life matters and we all have something, big or small, to offer the world. Many people in here have attempted suicide and not always as a result of their illness, but as a result of the rejection that came along with it. Would you ask your loved one with cancer to go home and recover without any help or support? Probably not. But we ask this of the mentally ill all the time and when they can’t do it we punish them…and then we lose them.

We lose them to shame.  We lose them to embarrassment. And we lose them to the word that gets thrown out time and again…stigma. Some people just find it too hard to live with the label.

Stigma kills.

A Lack of Compassion

So I’ve decided to use this blog not just to promote my work, but also to perhaps raise awareness about mental illness, especially Psychotic Depression. It’s not one of the mental illnesses you hear very much about but it’s out there, and since it’s more easily hidden by the sufferers the numbers for stats are low. I suspect it’s much higher, and there’s not even a lot of good information out there on what it is and how it is treated. In fact, most people have never heard of it.

On another post I will go into specifics and statistics. Treatments and musings. I want to draw attention to this because I know there are people out there suffering with it who are afraid to speak out. This is not that post however, because today something else is bothering me.

There’s this actress who I’m not going to name, not that she’s ever going to read this, who has had a complete turnaround in her personality just within the last year or so. Up until recently she was a normal young woman with a great career who seemed to be thriving. Recently however it’s been reported that she’s been behaving erratically and getting in trouble with the law. There have also been reports of her muttering to herself while walking around town, and if you follow her in twitter at all, you’ll see that she periodically posts about how people are reading her thoughts.

All of this is just speculation however, I don’t know the woman and god knows what is going on, but if I had to guess I’d say she’s suffering from a pretty bad mental illness. Let’s just say for a moment that this is the problem. All of the behavioral issues she’s experiencing are the result of the fact that her brain has gone rogue on her. We’re all at the mercy of our brains and it seems that this person is having difficulty with hers.

In watching the reaction on social media one notices a disturbing trend. There is almost ZERO compassion. It’s 99% vitriol. Either people are very bad at spotting the signs of someone suffering with a mental illness, or they just plain don’t care. They would rather make fun and waggle their finger at the sick person than attempt to show them any understanding.  I know she is behaving badly and hurting people’s feelings in the process, but I suspect she has little to no control over that right now.

If indeed this whole thing is mental illness like I suspect it is, she can get better and make amends. If someone in her life will step up and get her to a good psychiatrist she can even thrive again, but here’s the thing: she may never really live it down.

She could get well and go on to do great things, but now that this has happened, to some people she will always be a crazy loser.  Being sick is hard, but getting well and discovering that everyone hates you or has abandoned you for something you couldn’t help is worse!

The first year or so after you recover from a major mental illness is very hard. The guilt and shame are isolating and the loneliness you feel can be crushing.  I wasn’t someone who did anything illegal when I was sick, I didn’t insult anyone as far as I know. The biggest thing I did was sit in my room and refuse to go to school. I’m sure I said and did things that didn’t make sense. Portions of it are a blur quite honestly. But I woke up from the nightmare that those years were to very few friends and a family, who although they loved me, didn’t quite understand what had happened and didn’t know what to do with me, and didn’t want to talk about it.

So please, if you know someone who is suffering or who is just beginning to recover, be there for them and show them some compassion. They are especially vulnerable when they’re beginning to get better. You’d think it would be a great time, but honestly, it’s not. You can carry the guilt with you forever.

It only makes sense if you think about it. When someone we love has cancer we don’t leave them alone and we don’t punish them or demand they do penance for their illness. I see no reason why it should be any different for someone who has a sick brain as opposed to a bad heart. We don’t make them beg for forgiveness for the rest of their lives or hold it against them. When they get better we celebrate. We’re happy and consider ourselves lucky that they are still around.

People with mental illness don’t get that reaction from loved ones a whole lot. They get ignored and in some cases looked down on or made the ‘black sheep’ of the family. They can be the subjects of gossip and ridicule from the people who should love and support them most. I see this time and again and it never fails to break my heart.

I don’t know this actress, but my heart absolutely breaks for her too. I hope she can get well. I hope she has good family and friends to support her and I hope when she does get well that people will not judge her based on an illness that she couldn’t control.

A Day With Psychosis

I would like to take you back in time with me. We’re not going too far. It was perhaps last April or May, I can’t remember, but it was a day I’d like to share with you. It wasn’t a typical day, but yet it was. This is a day that can happen, and did happen to me. This is a day in the life of someone with Psychotic Depression. Bear in mind that this doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough. This was a moderate to bad day and it went like this.

7:45 – I wake up. Before I even open my eyes I can feel it. Something is there, like a pressure in my head, there seems to be something extra in my brain. It feels like extra air. My head feels heavier somehow. This is bad. When I wake up feeling like this sometimes I just stay that way, but sometimes it progresses into something more.

I realize I don’t have time to ponder what it means and what might happen later on because it’s a school day and I forgot to make my son’s lunch before I went to sleep last night. I jump up, wake my husband who begins getting ready to take our little boy to school. I make his lunch, get him dressed and at 8:20 they are out the door.

I ask my little boy for a hug, he gives me one, and my skin crawls. My husband kisses me goodbye and my skin crawls. My daughter heads out and hugs me too, and my skin crawls. I don’t want to be touched today, but I never let them know that when I feel this way. I don’t ever want them to think twice about touching me or hugging me because most of the time I love it. But this is one of my symptoms, and today it’s rearing its ugly head.

Another one of the symptoms of this illness is excessive guilt. I begin to feel guilty. Guilt and I are old friends. I’m convinced there is only a certain amount of guilt in the world and I am not only carrying mine, but I’m carrying around someone else’s who’s incapable of feeling it. I don’t just feel guilty because my skin crawled just now when everyone hugged me and told me they loved me, but I feel guilty for existing. I feel guilty for being alive. Then I begin to feel depressed because I know the guilt will be with me all day today. It sucks.

A few minutes later my grandfather gets up. I make his breakfast this day. I normally don’t but he’s been falling a lot recently, he’s getting to that wobbly age and so I get him to sit at the table while I make his oatmeal. He makes small talk with me about the weather and how he slept. I talk back for five minutes or so, probably not even. I can’t give him the attention he deserves this morning. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I just want to be left alone because I’m afraid of what’s coming.

I decide I’m going to the gym today. I’ve gotten into a regular routine of going and as much as I want to stay home, crawl into bed and stay there I force myself to go into the bathroom and get ready.  As I am looking in the mirror and washing my face it starts. I am hearing voices. There they are. They’re back and they’re not friendly.

Some people’s auditory hallucinations are heard inside their mind. That’s when you hear people talk about voices ‘in their head’. Mine are not like that. Mine are heard from outside. It’s like having two invisible assholes following you around and talking about you, and that’s what they are, assholes! I hear them with my ears and the sound of their voices are as real to me as my voice would be to you if we were having a face to face conversation.

They don’t address me directly, but they have conversations with each other about me.  Either that or they fight with each other. Today they are getting along because they are agreeing on how gross I look and talking about what a bad mother I am because I forgot to make lunch the night before.

She makes everyone so unhappy, the woman says what a fucking waste she is.

I know, the man agrees with her. What the fuck is wrong with her?  She just fucks up all over the place.

It’s at this point I have a decision to make. Sitting in my cupboard is an ‘emergency dose’ of Seroquel.  That’s an antipsychotic drug. I could take it. Right about now if you’ve never had a psychiatric illness you’re wondering why I’m debating it.

Taking that drug is not like taking a Tylenol for a headache. Antipsychotics are basically very heavy tranquilizers and if I take one I’ll be out for the rest of the day and most of tomorrow, plus I’ll be groggy for two days following that. Just that one dose will cause me to lose four days. I don’t want to lose four days. I have things to do.  So my choice is either take the drug and lose the days, or suffer through today in hopes that it will get better. I decide to go about my business today, but if they’re still around tomorrow I’ll take it. Hopefully they won’t be.

I grab my stuff and head out for the gym. Hubby hugs me goodbye, my skin crawls again, the guilt washes over me again and I leave. The first thing I do when I get out in the hallway is stick the iPod in my ears and turn it up as loud as it can go. It’s not loud enough to really drown them out but it helps. I turn it down as I get on and off busses because I hate to disturb other people. I know it’s annoying to hear someone’s music through their earphones and I try to be respectful of other people, but when I get to the terminal to switch busses I forget to turn it down as I’m getting on, and as I sit down I notice the driver is yelling.

She’s not just turned around to request that whoever has their music up please turn it down, she is actually yelling! 

“Whoever has that on turn it the hell down or get the hell off my bus!”  Wow, she’s really angry. I discretely reach in my pocket and turn the volume down. She realizes it’s me and gives me a dirty look. “I’m sick of rude ass people,” she says, turning around to start the bus.

At this point the whole incident would be over for most people, but she continues to go on about it. She talks to herself and to some of the people sitting close to the front about how much it irritates her when people do that, all the while giving glances back in my direction once in a while. As my music is no longer on to drown out my imaginary assholes they chime in and start agreeing with her.

Of course she’s pissed off at her. Everyone fucking hates her. Look what she did. This is what happens when she leaves the house. They have to put up with her and look at her too. Yuck. She’s ruining everyone’s day.

It’s a ten minute hellish bus ride to the gym and my stop is coming up. I’m nervous now because I know I have to walk past the driver to get out and I just know she’s going to say something to me, I can just freakin’ feel it. It’s been ten minutes and she’s still seething. The bus stops, I get up and as I walk past her, sure enough she says, “the next time you do that I will kick you right off the bus. I’m so sick of rude ass people.”  I know she’s sick of rude ass people because she’s said it at least five times by now.

Now I know some of you are sitting there saying you would have told her off or what not, but what can you say? “I’m sorry, I just have it up so loud because I’m experiencing a bit of psychosis today. I’m hearing voices and sometimes loud music helps drown it out.”

Ha! No, you do NOT ever say that! I simply tell her I’m sorry.

I am sorry. I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s day or be rude, I’m just trying to get through mine.

Finally I’m at the gym. I swipe my key barcode thingy and go inside. The voices have a lot to say in here.  They hurl quite a few insults at me during the short walk from the door to the change room. When I get in the change room I go for the bathroom stall right away. I don’t have to use it, but I do have to cry.

She’s so pathetic, they say. I feel pathetic now. I’m 38 years old and hiding in a bathroom stall crying. It’s like elementary school all over again.

After ten minutes I pull myself together and head out onto the floor. I can play the iPod as loud as I want in here because everyone else is doing the same. Nobody gives a shit because they’d never hear your music over their own.

I blast the Foo Fighters for a solid hour. Dave Grohl is a great singer, but he’s also a great screamer and I’ve found their heavier stuff to be perfect for days like today.  I put, “White Limo” on repeat and on blast and work out for a solid hour. The assholes barely say anything. Either they figure it’s futile to try and be heard above the noise or they’re Foo Fighters fans too.

The moment I get off the machine and shut the iPod down they are back. I have a headache and I’m exhausted. I have to pick up some things at the grocery store though and luckily it’s in the same building as the gym. I head in and grab a little cart.

I go as quickly as I can because any time someone makes eye contact with me the assholes tell me it’s because they are disgusted to have to look at me. Apparently I’m so ugly I should just stay in the house forever. Oh, and I ruined everyone’s life by being born. I should not have been born because I upset the balance of things…they like that particular insult. They say it a LOT!

By the time I get to the counter and to the head of the line I am beginning to double over. The guilt is awful now. I swear to god I could not feel more guilt if I had murdered someone.  I feel like I am being eaten alive at this point.  The very nice lady at Sobeys asks me if I’m ok. I think that’s sweet. It’s rare to run into someone who would ask. I tell her I’m fine, I just came from the gym and probably pulled a muscle or something. I grab my bag and haul ass out of there. There’s a bus that will take me straight home if I can catch it and it’s coming in five minutes.

I just barely make it, thank god, because I don’t want to take a chance on going back to the terminal and running into that other bus driver. I keep the iPod off just to be safe. I don’t want to have any more encounters with strangers today. I’ve had enough.

I get home, put the groceries away and lie down. I should take a shower but I’m too exhausted. The assholes tell me what a horrible human being I am while I lay there, and then all of a sudden they shut up. They’re gone just as suddenly as they appeared this morning. It’s 1pm and I fall asleep.

At 2:30pm my son arrives home from school. He bounces on me, happy to see me after being in school all day. He asks for snacks, drinks. I’m too exhausted. Plus the second I opened my eyes, guess what?  If you’re still reading I don’t have to tell you who’s back. I tell him to go ask Daddy for his snack and I will see him at supper time.

My daughter comes home at 3pm. Tells me a few things about her day. She’s excited about something. She’s a great kid. I want to listen to her and hear what she has to say, but the assholes have just become too loud now. I tell her I love her and ask her to come wake me up at 4:30 so I can make supper. She agrees.

At 4:30 she wakes me again. I get up and make supper. Everyone asks, “What’s for supper?” I tell them. I don’t remember what it was but nobody seems happy with it. I feel guilty. I double over alone in the kitchen when nobody is looking with guilt. I feel so remorseful it’s almost crushing me now.

I feed everyone. After supper I sit in the living room. This would be a great time for most people, but not for me, not today.  The TV is on and those people are talking, the computer is going and someone is watching YouTube, my Dad’s TV is going and my daughter’s TV is on in the distance.  My assholes are still talking too.

It’s at this point I seriously rethink the Seroquel. At least if I can’t stop the noise in my house I can be unconscious. I decide against that and go hide in the bathroom. I sit there for ten minutes listening to the assholes criticize me. They’ve started with the name calling now which is always super awesome. The “C” word is thrown around liberally.  I realize I haven’t had a shower yet.

I grab some clothes and a towel and stay in there as long as I can. The shower helps a bit. The assholes don’t exactly go away but they’re a bit quieter.

It’s about 6pm now. I ask my daughter if I can have her room for a little bit. She agrees, although she is slightly annoyed. We live in a two bedroom apartment and I have no room of my own to get away. I lay down.

Everyone can see I’m not having a great day at this point. They know something is wrong but they don’t know what. I’m left alone for about two hours, until it’s time to put my son to bed. I give him a snack and send him in. Then I put the iPod back in my ears, more Foo Fighters, and do the dishes.

At 9:30 pm is when my Dad heads to bed. I say goodnight to him. It’s really only the second time I’ve talked to him today. More guilt. The TV is on and it’s loud. I ask my husband to turn it down, he gets annoyed but does it anyway. I don’t blame him, it wasn’t that loud but between that and the assholes I just want a little more quiet. The TV stays on until 11:30 and by that time I’m shaking.

Finally it’s dark, it’s quiet and the assholes seem to be petering out a bit. This is my time to write. I open my latest thing I’m working on. It’s a dystopian future tale that I’m really loving. I was having fun writing it last night and I knew when I stopped exactly where I’d pick it up this night. My goal is 1000 words a day.

 I sit.

 I get about 150 words. I should be impressed that I got anything at all, but still, it feels like a failure. I shut the whole thing down hoping tomorrow will be better.

I lay down on the couch. They’re not talking too much now. Still definitely there but not enough to keep me awake, thankfully. Sometimes they do that. I’m totally exhausted and I fall asleep hoping tomorrow will be better.

Luckily…it is.