Hi y'all! Yes, I still have somewhat of a "Southern drawl" even after being back in the Northeast for 10 months after only being in the South for a year and a half. Or maybe I just like saying "y'all" instead of saying "you", which in the English language means both singular and plural. Well that is enough English lessons for today.
How have y'all been? Thanks to all of those who have reached out to me in the past few months that this blog has stayed dormant. My sincere apologies, but I have not been in a state to share what has happened and I still may not be but that is not what this post is about. This post is about more than that, something deeper.
I will quickly explain, though, what has happened over the last few months and years. The brief explanation is that I was put on medications that caused me to have every single possible symptom of schizophrenia. I was put on medication after medication since October 2009 and never seemed to get better. In fact, it got to the point that I could not even leave my house. I would sit on a chair in my room and stare into space for hours, only to look at the clock and realize it was time to go to bed. I was too scared to go outside. I hallucinated cop cars and I thought I heard people when there was nobody even close to me. I heard noises in my head like sirens. I remember all of it. And these are just the past few months. I dealt with extreme paraoia in graduate school, to the point that I almost did not graduate but I did.
So where am I at now? Am I angry? Absolutely. Is it bad to be angry if you are a Christian, as I am? No. Everybody pictures the scene when Jesus got angry at the temple. It is human to be angry. But it goes deeper than that. I feel that there is a deeper meaning to why I dealt with schizophrenia when I did not even have it. I understand what it is like to have it because I experienced it. I lived it. It's not just a term in my psychology textbook. It has given me an empathetic attitude towards those who are in that darkness, the terror, the voices, the hallucinations.
I believe the way we look at things is based on how we choose which lens we want to look through. I could spend the rest of my life being miserable, feeling angry at the endless doctors and hospitals. Or I can thank God that I "only" have to deal with bipolar and PTSD. I say "only" because I find that people minimize their situations if they hear someone else's story that they assume is worse than theirs. Whatever situation you are going through that makes you feel down, upset or is just plain difficult, you are entitled to feel those feelings and express them (positively). You are entitled to have a voice. This life ain't easy. If it was, then what would be the point? Why would people go to churches, temples, and mosques? Why would they try searching for deeper meaning, something larger than themselves?
Well, that is what brings me to my fingernails. Yes, change in subject but bear with me. Below is a picture of how my fingernails currently look. I painted them yesterday.
I have had a rough few weeks. More flashbacks than usual, more than in a long time. But something that has given me hope lately is that my fingernails are growing, almost signifying the growth within my soul. I have chewed my nails all my life until a few months ago. I had an idea to start to use them to express myself.
The anger and frustration I have been feeling lately wanted me to buy black nail color. But in the past three days, I have felt something tell me not to. Well, not exactly. A quote that has gone through my head a lot lately is "light in the darkness." So I was going to paint my nails black and then have a flame of yellow on top, to signify the light. Except ShopRite didn't carry yellow, only orange. Oh well.
I got home and painted my nails, as you can see above. The circles of orange did not come out exactly as I wanted them to. I was frustrated at first but I said to myself, sometimes the light is faint. Sometimes it is blurry. Sometimes it is unclear. But within each of us, there is a flame that keeps us going. Not a flame of anger. But a flame of hope.
Always hang on to that flame. Always hope.
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