I’m hijacking our journal, which is getting off to a slow start anyway. Maybe this will rev the engines.
My personal online diary was infiltrated by a “troll,” somebody using a bogus e-mail address who has nothing better to do with their time than to comment on a bazillion old entries. I’m not sure what that was about, but it felt suspicious. I took my blog down for now.
Which means I need another writing outlet!! So here I am. Writing to you.
Though now that I’m here, I’m not sure what to say except that I, indeed, exist. And that’s a big thing, considering last month I didn’t know how I was going to make it from one day to the next. I was living moment by moment, literally encouraging myself to do do things: take a shower, dry your body, put on your clothes, brush your teeth. Every little activity felt like a momentous achievement.
I’m back to feeling nearly to normal. I’m feeling normal, knowing that my life is quite abnormal and imbalanced, but also knowing that one day it won’t feel like this. One day I’ll be back to feeling all-around happy and balanced, if only due to sheer will. I can will that kind of thing, right?
Today I found out that someone in my extended family has paranoid schizophrenia. All these years that person’s illness has been hidden from me. In fact, that person has only existed to me by name. I have never met that person face-to-face. Probably because that person has paranoid schizophrenia. Can you imagine that? A person related to me by blood has this devastating illness, and it has been hidden because I guess it’s embarrassing for everybody else. Obviously I’m not going into detail as to who this person is or even which side of the family they’re on. I guess generations have really changed over the years. In the case of my family member, so much was done to hide the condition; and in the case of my own child, I’m blogging about psychosis nearly all the time.
My in-laws were in town this weekend. I spoke separately to them both about E-Niner’s psychotic episodes. I think they get a lot of their information about E-Niner filtered through Joe, who hasn’t processed what’s happening to the depth I have. It’s hard to have come to this place of acceptance before Joe has, and talking about it with his parents made me feel the distance that he has yet to come. My parents — and father in particular — sees E-Niner’s condition for what it is. He has witnessed the psychotic breaks for what they are, and has encouraged us to get the help we need. In telling some anecdotes to Joe’s parents, their very minute facial reactions made me wonder how much they actually really know about what goes on in our house. I’m not sure what, if anything, Joe relays to them at all. I suppose I could also talk with them about it more, but it’s not an easy conversation: “Hey, by the way, do you want to hear about E-Niner’s psychotic breaks this week?” I mean, really. Who wants to talk about that.
And then I realized that I rarely talk about E-Niner’s psychosis with people outside of my immediate circle of friends. I write about it all the time, but rarely do I mention it to family…
…Maybe I’m not that far off from the previous generations after all.
:)cs
Katrina and Christina 