Secrets & Observations

"greater love has no one other than this, that they lay down their life for someone..." Lisa Backman

Lisa had been visiting the cabin secretly every day in the woods. Her husband noted her comings and goings with mild concern, but figured he’d let her be this time and that she needed her space. In her spare time she scribbled in notebooks, jotting down her dreams and hopes for her children. How she felt, hopelessly, day by day drawing ever to the truth of dawn’s light--wondering if she would ever be heard or understood as more than a woman caught between the polarities of time. The two partners had met in engineering at Cambridge, and bonded through their love of exploration and the unknown. Yet, there were forces at work that meant a bigger plan and in time they married and had two children, while Lisa began her quest for spiritual salvation and to understand the world in its grandest mysteries.

Her husband found her dead on the the day the two of them were scheduled with the therapist to discuss claiming custody over their children. He found her hanging by a noose in a tree way back in the forest on their land. The husband hadn’t known that she had been making the ladder, but heard the hammer pounding off in the distance thinking she was working on the cabin. The cops had been searching everywhere for her. The husband ran screaming from the body, as officers in full gear told him not to come near the body and yelled to go straight back to the house. It had been almost two months since his wife committed suicide, when he found the coin she had lost thousands of miles from their residence.

He told a girl about the angel coin that he found on the freshly swept wood floor. It had come over one thousand miles from where it had been lost, and it had belonged to his late wife.
The girl was having the hardest week of her life, everything just seemed to blur into one terrifying nightmare. For many weeks she struggled with the truth, that she could explain to no one what she saw and knew. She understood the darkness, but did they? It’s hard to explain how it feels when suddenly everyone turns against you, and there’s no way or reason to explain it. Not to mention this man in Missouri was sending her cryptic emails he received and top secret information about UFO's and mind control.

A bunch of school children walked up to where she sat on a bench drinking her coffee. Giggling and saying they were on a scavenger hunt for someone, they asked her what her name was. She refused to tell them, and she wondered if those kids had found her social security card and I.D. It had been missing since the night before when she filled up her gas tank. The paranoia hit her full force. She saw the room of students trying to raffle off her identity. She walked up to them and said, “I’m on a scavenger hunt as well.” She was all she had left, well that and the adderal someone had traded to her.

The weather had been changing rapidly for the past two and a half weeks. Everywhere she looked the sky would illuminate and streaks of lightning fall to the ground. She knew where the first bolt of lightning would strike, as she sat on the porch looking at the power lines against the clouds. It went straight down into the ground, and then rain poured so hard that she missed her concert. The girl was trying to stop being careless and childish, not to lash out at the strange coincidences and be brave enough to look for the real signs. To listen to her intuition, to her soul, and not get freaked out by cryptic emails or text messages from the grave.

The nightmares went away for at least one year after the man who resembled her attacker had gone away, or at least stopped existing in her eyes. It had all come together almost as if strung up on some horrid Shakespearean play. First, she picked up this winchester pocket-knife on the ground, and then she meets this tall man who admires it and the knife and him end up going missing. Then she gets a call that he's dead but she swears he’s back in town. The ominous drug lord or vampire take your pick. She had a dream about him, surrounding by lightning bolts. But everywhere she goes, the nightmare she had haunts her still. Normal people call this paranoia, but what about the dreams that came true?

She has struggled with premonitions, and they typically do not fail to underline the threats she has come head to head with often. The image of the man with the knife haunted her, as if some terrible curse was laid upon her.  The best way to defeat an enemy, is to believe he is your friend.

Everything has withered, dried up, & become a void of dispersion. The hatred, the anger, the force of his mind or the dark ink scribbles that I can't simply muster anymore. The beauty of the rain drops or the bitterest downpour, soaking me to the core with vapid discontent. No drug could satiate nor satisfy the barren volume which sits within me. My thoughts skim through fleeting moments of what was before and the urgent sense of sanity, which could never have claimed my mind. I feel broken like a violin; voicing her song to no one but the creaking floorboards. If I could only summon the Lords of the universe to sweep me away from the numbing chill of depression. If I could dip a brush into India Ink and smear my portrait across the infinite canvas that has become my life--to be born again in the wild thunderous storm of madness.

Instead, I remain listless as the fog mows over the evening sky, an intrepid traveler of clouds. Meaninglessly I conjure words to realms which are too far from this lake of disarray. The world spins and twists itself betwixt bands of oblivion, but we know better.
A blur of watercolors descends upon this oceanic view of the neither-nor woman. I see a bright room lit by an undesirable opaqueness, where the listless fallen are nursed back to life. I pray to Heaven and his convoy of immortals, though I never am sure if he has heard. The voices have all gone to sleep, have been banished to never-land. Once a child of innocent insanity, now slipping past the moon as the shadows dance upon her in a circle of understanding.

She watches clouds gathering droplets of rain from her eyes. She knows it is because there is something wrong with it. Unsure if she's angry or relieved, the woman goes and sits on the porch like she had for so long. Staring out into the beautiful green and blue, her sobs release as she pleads with the Lord for forgiveness from her ignorance. They buy Maggie flowers on Sunday, purple ones that look like daisies. That night their children dream of blood pouring from the sky. Angry voices leap at them from the shadows.

How can she begin again? Like before, after the cleansing had left her mind barren and her skin cold to the touch. Would it be wrong to suspect father's accusations? A lying, stealing sorrow forms like a dark cloud drifting across the horizon. Her mothers sobs are heard from the room below her; he's cursing Satan who dances around twisting anything he can touch. How strange that she had to lose touch with everything she once loved so dearly. Now the words mean nothing. A mother with secrets. Where was the shining spark that kept her alive whether it drove her to madness or not?

People are susceptible to lies because they cannot accept harsh truths, the same goes with lying. This is how a wealthy man becomes a poor man over night. When he looked out from his big house, did he ignore the flowers? When he thought to his two children and his crazy wife, did he feel loathing? Did he not feel any sense of pride or joy? It's not fair, said the daughter, to blame me for hating your life. Just because you hate your life, doesn't mean I have to destroy the life that is inside of me. You have everything in your hands because you own the land. The dollar bill is more cruel than a pill to wash away the memories.
It's not that she wanted the child, it was that she had no choice but to give her the world back.

"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.  For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."

It's autumn, and all the oranges and yellows of the sun have fallen. I hold your hand because I can't walk down the street. I am unable to move. Flashbacks permeate my brain; I fear that I'm going insane for good this time. I see memories, I relive a million of these theories. I wash down alcohol, pepsi, and story endings. I drift in and out of clothes and Zen. I am working up a tolerance to this world. I'm gaining influence over the matrix. I'm breaking down the walls of reality; and I am falling every time I find myself alone. When will love be centerfold?

I drum my hands upon the cage of resistance. If only it were true. I smashed one thousand theories over a broken piano, screaming, thinking about you. I washed her hair and she fell asleep in my eyes. I can't get him out of my mind. But he is only a lover of the things I hide. Inside of all these houses and rooms, they close in on each other. Every empty vein is begging for a mouth to feed. I begin to unveil the possibility that I do not crave what I need. I have fooled myself, how vain of me! I go into another realm, zone in zone out. I dream of escape, and unending insanity. Love made me insane. Does no one love me?

'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.” Lewis Carroll

Those voices beckoned her to shrill loudly, chaotically, beneath the evanescent sky. Voices, those terrifying taunting sounds, those identities and with her face came a new persona every day of the year. Her madness was unmatchable to the stars who poked their eyes lifelessly out every night, to see what the world was up to. Maybe Jesus Christ himself heard voices, or maybe he could heal her of them—someday, one day. He'd dip her into that holy water and absolve her of the sins that left her selfless, selfish, confusing. She'd crumble into his arms.

The man of the household kicked the dog, he has just been promoted and now goes to work three times a week instead of one. He had no time to address his cancer, or the dog, or the woman with the cast watching videotapes and dreaming of other lives. Now and then she would stop, and then she'd speak in hisses and whispers. This was not always my mother. Once, not that long ago, she fought against war and its assassins. She did her time in her jail cell, barred in between white walls and hell with nothing left to sell.
They taunted her, the guards, and shook her freedom away. She came home, glowing, but tired. She never protested war again. She felt it was useless, like she hadn't been heard. Now she speaks to ghosts who listen in third person to the woman she longed to become.

I have also heard voices, the voices of angels. And the first time, they were there screaming at the world to let me out from my confined state, where they sanitized me of sanity, and stripped me of my reason. When I was there had pushed the trap doors and told them all I was well. Dear Doctor, is this really psychosis? Have I remembered clearly your false prognosis? Am I that invisible to the mirrors the important doctors to see every broken lie.

Who would peer into my psyche, and justify this malady of panaceas which would never cure, only dull the senses. Perfect and justifiable behavior. And the doctor, who wouldn't cure your failing memories, only correct any errors in perception. But they haven't killed the memories, for I wrote the truth on the wall of justice. I am sane, after-all, only living in a deteriorating schizophrenic world. One of my own design, coerced to remake it mine. It's a world I can retreat to, now, that I am safe.

One where dreams are reality, but reality isn't really even there. One with cotton candy clouds and a premonitions that come true too often to keep dreaming.
White blood cells, anemia, dementia, lost dogs lost minds lost friends. A pattern in the sky. A voice whispering on the wind, a colorful picture book that is too bright to call anything. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. So I dull my hues to a perfect combination of blue and purple and yellow. I refrain from remembering, I stop myself from questioning, from asking anything. And I cry silently for the abused animal I have become.

When I was seventeen, my mom lied to get me sent to the psych ward. I remember the intake nurse who turned to mother and asked how my behavior was at home. My mother lied a little too easily, and I just stared wide-eyed in shock. I mean ever since I was old enough to conceptualize, I'd be worrying about whether mom was going to live or die because, this time she overdosed on her pills. I recall sitting at the dinner table and asking her where the marks on her wrists came from, and she gave me a dysphoric grin and said she crashed her bike into a window. Of course how would I know the difference between truth or lie.

I remember being eight, watching from across the room while my mom complained of being blackmailed by agents. She was shaking and looked as though she was going mad. "Just look! Look at the letters! Even the handwriting is different," she said in a frightful voice, because the other letter was written in cursive. Maybe there are more inconsistencies. It was either interrogation, willful protest, blackmail, madness, or something else. The day mom was put into the hospital, my grandfather called to tell Dad that he'd found her, and she had walked to a bus station. Now it's slashed wrists, not a bike accident, though I never saw mom attempt suicide.


Then as the dosage increased, so did her madness. Suddenly there was a secret history to everything. Suddenly she couldn't decide what was real, or wasn't, suddenly she lost her mind. I'd shake her gently but she refused to move from the queen sized bed. She's simply snore all day, her spark gone. She battled demons and madness, but I hate God for doing this. I hate God for allowing this. I kind of hate myself for loving her too. She broke down and there's no way I can bring her back to life. I can't wake her up she's still asleep. She never caught the bus at the bottom of the hill to our house, where her father found her. And I still have no proof of her claims about forced electroshock.

That's why I don't hate my mom for lying. I don't think she knows any better. I began having auditory hallucinations in the psych ward. I believe they were sent to get me out of there. My mind in its trapped inexpressible state. If, however, I tried to ever express myself I was degraded for my circular reasoning. I got brave one day and told everyone I was fine and that I didn't have schizophrenia. I got up and walked straight to the doors, "I'm leaving" and then bounced back as reality hit. The doors were locked obviously. I had no way to get out. One month before my eighteenth birthday.

Every time my parents would send me to the psych ward, they cleaned my bedroom. They never would do that when I was home. This is really funny too, the voices I heard whispered about domestication, white blood cells, anemia, dementia. I'd always have weird visions of messed up old people lost and shaking in this kind of place. That's how it made me feel. I still have premonitions. I still know.

You can either live with regret and pain from what happened to you, fully. Or you can buy the lie that you're broken. I reprogrammed myself to forget. Tranquilizers, seizure medications, anything to knock the pain out. I bought the lie that I was broken. I am like the million broken pieces of all the beautiful things I have thrown away. But the truth is, I didn't throw this world away it abandoned me and I destroyed myself. Well, I haven't died yet. I almost thought I was going to die last night when the navigator got me stranded on a mountain, and no one would give me directions. I followed my instincts and made it home.

I have good instincts, but I typically ignore them because I hate being a nun. I really don't know why so many bad things happened this week. It just seemed like the world was conspiring against me. What are the chances. The world is full of chance. I just hope I haven't missed my chance at existence because it often feels like I don't. If I was smart, I tell myself...my dad blames me for my bipolar schizophrenia. I blame him for putting me in that box in the first place, and he blames me.

Because Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear my mother screaming. I envision all these scary things, like a dimly lit room with a woman in restraints being zapped with electricity. She doesn't remember anything. Now that the once real smile on her face has melted like plastic and has been replaced with bleach, what does one do but cherish the memory of all the radical mothers in America. I remember her how she was once before this madness, she was full of bright-eyed sunlight and open to things that no one else was aware of. As a child I colored rainbows that laughed and together we vanished into the sunrise.
She hands me a tearful letter, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,”

I believed in her more than she realized, and her dreams were called borderline by the man in spectacles who wanted to believe in nothing. I turned eight when I heard them say she tried to catch a bus, but ended up with slashed wrists and a diagnosis of bipolar schizophrenia. No one ever told me she tried to run away. My memory, has it betrayed me? I have never forgotten that phone call, "she's at a bus station. We found her." I can believe in more than her suicide attempt. I don’t even know why I can’t forget her standing there in tears saying that she was afraid of the writing in the envelope and my father saying that she was being paranoid, practically begging her to calm down. She was sick. She was sick. She is sick. Please don't take my sunshine away.

So what happens when a rainbow turns upside down and the edges twist, and what happens when the flower in your hand turns into a dream that you misunderstand? What happens when it’s too much to be silent in prayer? I remember how much she believed in me, and how everything she believed in caved eventually. Maybe we are the same as them, but they just don't see. They don't know how to embrace the deepest recesses...what it means to be human and be free.

She had the passion to resist every bullet until the one that pierced right through to the core, this evil poison infecting her with disillusionment . She crossed the barred off line and got arrested for protesting a white man's war. They painted the padded walls off-white and we were screaming until you just stop caring. The doctor uses his syringe to steal every soul and cell as we dance with our demons. When all she wanted was to teach peace to the children across the world, who knew only a bloody war.

Sometimes I want to smash through that locked door of hers and tell her that I'm still here. can’t she love me too? Sometimes I just wish she understood what it means to know that you are loved. But it's not her fault, she never caught that bus to freedom and I was whisked into a dreamland. I will imagine she's still real, because she is here still. The mind never really goes anywhere—you can only hold your breath and count to ten. We can only close our eyes until they open again.


"They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards."

Dear Doctor, There should be no argument: it is essential to have an accurate diagnosis; after all without scrutiny and judgement you can't call diagnosing a science at all. My diagnosis should reflect my treatment in such a way that I am confident I have received factual and appropriate representation, and I don't think I have. It has gotten to the point where I dread coming into the office because nothing productive seems to come of it--I've begun to feel like I am the ultimate cadaver on display for dissection; & actually being heard would be a miracle.

Diagnoses are indeed generalizations which have been assigned to a particular set of symptoms for documentation purposes. So is it possible that in conversations I am being misunderstood and your judgements have been based solely upon those misunderstandings and poor value judgments? Since when did vocalizing my own conviction become a symptom of human broken-ness, mania, madness, or Lexapro? I would like to remind you that you do not have authority over my personal life, nor is it your place to assume that what I say is not true unless you have a reason to. What's this like disco for doctors?

Will it ever be possible to express how frustrating it is being labelled with such grossly inaccurate terms that have not applied to me, even by DSM standards? Is there any way I can show you that I have never identified with either Bipolar disorder OR Schizophrenia? That having the two seemingly magically stitched together was this cadaver's ultimate demise. Given the false representation I've encountered by those in the field of psychiatry, I'm at the point where I no longer see its point.

I have done plenty of the research that I need to arrive at my own conclusions on a diagnosis that would have fit my own description. I'm on the autism spectrum (my issues are attention and self-expression) and yes it does matter. However, I am frustrated by the lack of assessment and have grown so tired of being poked and prodded at. It's wasting my time (no amount of exaggeration on anyone's part can express that this has been my ultimate symptom).

If there was any clear resolution to this, it was totally lost in that stack of papers of yours; so while the ones I wrote myself are missing, only your incredible thoughts and meanderings made it on that paper. Psychiatry is not prophecy, so stop trying to divine meaning from bullshit please. Some lives are incredibly dull, but that's no excuse for throwing shit all over the wall and blaming me for it. BTW that was a generalization. You know what I mean?

PS. Well at least I have the integrity to speak my mind where others would fall silent. Maybe caring should have been my brain disease, after-all who really gives a damn about value or progress anymore to the point they'd actually be honest with themselves. So while one day it's crazy and one day it's moody most days it's you whose talking about issues. My issue is that I was taught these things were a good thing, and to glorify them to the betterment of society.
Sincerely,
Me.

Dan 2:22 (NIV) He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.
1 Cor 4:5b (Phi) He will bring into the light of day all that at present is hidden in darkness, and he will expose the secret motives of men's hearts.

Godless -
I've wondered at times what lord had freed me

who'd sheltered me in his paradoxical country

whilst love starved them of sanity
her sadness, now an eternal eulogy
I woke up Godless and cold

burnt of meaning, suffering story yet to be told

galloping from hell on a midnight stallion

when without understanding of the ones I left behind
I will not leave you in this war
, I'm no hero
I'll look terror in the eyes
 and never blink, never surrender
I will create a new world to remember

The Bible is to me a metaphor of evolution between mankind being a savage and warring to enlightened, as in peace-keeping. Enlightenment to me is simple: it is the epiphany or realization that as a species the only way we can survive is to work collectively and not murder, pillage, steal or engage in reckless behaviors. That to me is the message of the Bible I take as a Christian.

Now, prophecy to me...that's a difficult one. I would say it takes guts and bravery to remark that you are a prophet for believing that you should spread either the word of God or meaning to humanity in your own way. A prophet is someone who intercedes for humanity, whether through mysticism (receiving spiritual guidance how-ever you do) or even completely non-religious intentions that are separate from an established religion. There is nothing wrong with claiming yourself as a prophet who spreads a message.

What merits a prophet is how much humanity benefits from your "prophecy" which could mean an intuitive divine message or peace activism or simply civil disobedience to a force that is doing something corrupt and you know in your heart it is. If more people followed their hearts and not their egos or judgements, we'd be living in a more peaceful and progressive, as in progressing, world where our human achievements could also coincide with the natural world around us. We can't keep killing the earth and each other. We can't devour the rainforests, oil will not last forever, oceans will someday dry up if we keep polluting them, the ice caps will melt and it doesn't look like we can even stop that at this point.

I love the idea of someone standing up for themselves, and if it means calling themselves a prophet than that takes the courage of a prophet in the first place. But the true test of a prophet is that they are tested, and strengthened, hardened, and courageous enough to say no in the face of what is wrong. A true prophet doesn't need a voice in their head, they know without having to be told. As I see it, there is a difference between a premonition and simply knowing. I could choose to be a mystic but I'd rather live the righteous life where I follow the word of God. God is the knowable in all that is around us, and to me. Our creator was never gender specific.

God is a voice within and far reaching beyond people. Perhaps God knows us better than we do. After all, if there were a creator he must be the one who set the stage for our awakening, our ascension, our realization of the importance of the very simple thing we have discarded. ourselves. our planet. Perhaps God could be seen in a blade of grass? Perhaps God could be seen on a falling drop of rain? Perhaps the unknowable is not unreachable, and once you reach within to what you know--realizing that what you know is all you have, then you know true faith in a higher meaning to this planet.

Wonderment, imagination, creativity---are these hallmarks of madness or hallmarks of a world that is repressing the beautiful presence which once carried us through a harsh winter storm.
I believe to know the true prophet from the false, would be to understand the Bible and the meaning of many religious virtues across the world. They mean something.
Bipolar Disorder is just a facet of our cultural repression of the idea of swimming against the current. But I had to swim upstream one time when I was tossed from a raft along the river, trust me. Sometimes you just have to swim against the current or else you'll be carried downstream where you might drown. If we don't swim, believe, build, and grow up--we will drown one by one regardless of how screwed up the chemicals in our brains have become.

If you think Bipolar and Schizophrenia are just random, think again. I think mental disorders arise from an imbalance in the holistic nature of mankind. We are not robots, we are not machines meant to toil at sweatshops etc. Anyways, I've gone off on a tangent about too many things. I just wanted to say that this is very touching this woman stood up and said this. I wish I had been there. It's so rare or has been for awhile to see someone whose that brave. And lastly, true bravery is in doing what is right. Revenge has never set the world right, nor proven anything but misery. Like these kids who beat up a guy for ripping them off.
I was once thought to have schizophrenia, but through God I balanced myself. In fact, I do not mind the label of bipolar disorder because I do know my own struggles, but the truest and clearest perceptions don't even come from manic states. Truly religious experiences have to be felt and known from within and out. Mania only inspires us to leap outside the box and look around for answers.

Mat 10:26-27 (NIV) "There is nothing concealed that will not be
disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in
the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear,
proclaim from the housetops."

Dan 12:3 (NIV) Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the
heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars
forever and ever.

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders
across the stars.” Jack Kerouac