Letter to my Future Child(ren)

Dearest future son and/or daughter,

I have heard that being a mother is one of the most difficult but most rewarding “jobs” in the world. But you see, I do not think of it as a job. I see it as a beautiful and wonderful part of life for a woman. I am extremely excited about you coming into my life.

I cannot wait to hold you in my arms and I promise that I will take care of you more than I have ever cared for someone or something before.

I promise that though I am bound to make mistakes, I will learn from them and that I will love you unconditionally, even on the hardest days.

If you are LGBT, I promise that I will love you until my last day here on earth. I will remind you how much courage God has given you to face the challenges of being different. I will remind you that you are always loved by me. I will not judge you. Instead, I will be proud of you. You will always be my wonderful child. I know that nothing about you is an accident and that you are an amazing part of my life,

If you are adopted by me, I will love you as if you are my birth child. I will not look at you differently. I will help you grow and help you create the life you want to have. I will love you unconditionally and I will learn how to be the best mother I can be for you. I will be there for you if and when you find yourself wondering about your birth parents.

If you are disabled, I will tell you that I am disabled as well and that I will help you through daily life meeting the tough times. I will look beyond your disability and help you achieve any goals or dreams you have.  I will teach you that the impossible can be possible. I will not look at you differently. You see, I have worked with hundreds of children and adults with special needs and I will be proud to be your mother. I will guide you through challenging days. I will help you to know your capabilities and not to focus on what you cannot do. Because this world needs you. I need you.

If you are different in any other way, I will embrace your differences and never stop loving you. After all, our differences are what make our lives exciting, not dull.

Now a few things you should know about me is that I struggle daily with Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar 1 type, and PTSD. I daily struggle with hallucinations, paranoia, flashbacks, psychosis, mania and depression. But that does not stop me from loving you or making your life worth living. I face my own challenges and want to help you do the same.

I believe in God. I feel God’s presence when I am running or walking through nature. God is not a distant God. He helps me get through each day and I know He will help me to raise you in the best possible way I can. I learned unconditional love through God’s love towards me. I know that we are all special and loved by Him, no matter if He feels distant or not.

I love to run. Currently, I am training for a Half Marathon. I want to run in the NYC Marathon within the next 5 years. Running the marathon is a dream of mine and I will teach you as you grow up to reach for your dreams. Follow your dreams. They are what make this life so beautiful.  When I run, I raise money for charities. I want to show you how to make a difference in the lives of many and that caring for others Is an important part of life.

I will undoubtedly not be a perfect mother or even the best mother in the world but I promise I will aim to be the best mother I can be for you.

Dearest son and/or daughter, I cannot wait until you enter into this world. I know that you are going to make a difference in all of the lives of the people around you, especially mine. I cannot wait to hold you and hug you. I cannot wait to make you giggle. I cannot wait to let you know that you are beautiful and that you are loved, no matter what. I cannot wait to help you dream and then follow your dreams. I cannot wait to watch you grow.

 

Where I Find God

I started this blog/website a few years ago to help others know what life is like when faced with severe illness, mental specifically. I wanted to let people in on my life as I deal with schizoaffective disorder and PTSD.,

To tell you the truth, somedays are really hard. I graduated with my Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering, despite my illnesses getting worse and worse. However, I have not worked in a little less than 2 years. I cannot even go to work without having paranoid symptoms. Sometimes I find myself even having trouble going to the grocery store.

Along with struggling with parnoia, I have daily struggles with hallucinations (visual and audio), mania, depression, psychosis and intense flashbacks.

Yes, I daily struggle, but to be completely honest, I love the life I have, despite the countless struggles I have faced and face daily.

Everyone on this earth has something that they struggle with. I believe we are called to make the most of the short life we are given.

I do not watch TV. I do not own a TV. I dont want to own a TV, Even still, I hear a lot of news on Facebook. I heard about the recent riots, That deeply saddens me that there is not more peace around the world. Why can't we just love others?

For me, recemtly, I feel that I am called to fulfill my dream to run in the NYC marathon. Running is an escape for me. I love running with Christin music blasting through my ear. There is nothing so powerful. Every time I run or walk I am able to raise money for charities.

As a little child, growing up in a toxic childhood, I quickly gravitated to the woods behind my house. That was where I first encountered God, even despite surviving severe abuse. I feel Gods presence when I run, surrounded by the creations of God. There is something very motivating and inspiring about feeling God''s presence. I can't really put it into words.

I have not felt God's presence in a few months. But when I ran down a triail close to my new home a few days ago, I felt Him in a way that I have not in a long time. Nature is magical like that. It is where I go to meet God. It is where I am remindeed how truly beautiful this life really is.  Nature is where I feel peace within...

Free and Strong

A day in October not long ago could have been a different day. By nearly missing an injury to my spinal cord, I instead had burst fractures in my lower vertebrae. The first night in the ER after falling 30-40 feet/a 4 story building the doctors did not know if I'd ever walk again. After doing multiple scans and tests, they found that I would not even need surgery and I had to wear a back brace for 3 months.

Fast forward a few years when I started running.

Someone asked me this past week how it feels to run.

Every time I run, I feel strong and free. There just are no words to do justice to talk about the great feelings that coarse through my veins as I run. Nothing can stop me. My paranoia and anxiety go away when I run. I love how the wind whips through my hair.

I am training for a Half Marathon sometime this year. I have already begun my search for smaller races (5K/10K).

Meanwhile, I have been running 2-5 milses a day...Running and sprinting. Running a mile takes me about 6:30-7:30 minutes. Sprintig a mile currently takes me 2:30 minutes., although I usually break the mile into pieces.

Free
and
Strong.

Onward I fight my mental illnesses through exercise. Nothing else like it.

Coming to Terms

So how long have I been apart from this blog? Enough to notice that there are more than 40,000 views. I started this blog a few years ago in graduate school paranoid as anything. I remember how hard it was to even get out of my apartment.

Since graduating with my Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering, my life has continued to pile on more difficulties, to the point that I have not been able to work..

But I am still here.
That is not a small feat.

I am on a journey now in taking time for myself to come to terms with my mental illnesses, learning steps to deal with my illnesses..

It's not that easy.

I am on a good medication regimen (11-13 pills a day) and I have to stay on these medications every single day. If I don't I decompensate in a matter of hours to the most crazy, terrifying psychotic/paranoid shutdown.

I haven't had many shutdowns lately, but I have to admit that I had a serious breakdown at the grocery store a couple weeks ago. Same old, same old paranoia and psychosis. No matter if it is the same symptoms. It was terrifying. The FBI. The government. They can read my mind, because I hear their voices responding to my thoughts. I see people staring at me. They all are talking about me, watching my every move. What's wrong with me?

Won't this ever stop?
I don't know but I feel good where I am. I get better each and every day.

Coming to terms with life. Coming to terms with my illnesses.

Not easy but doable.

No matter how bad my condition, I hope I never lose the fighter within me.. Because I am giving this life all I got. Setbacks may be hard sometimes but what matters most is to take it day by day. Life is worth it.

THe Paranoid World

I do not think that most people understand what paranoia is. I have been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia and bipolar I) and PTSD.

I am currently on 5 medications and  take 11 pills each day to stay somewhat normalized. I say "somewhat" because there are points in which they do not stop my paranoia., The only way I have found to getting rid of the paranoia (if not severe) is to do rrality checks, although people do not really enjoy me aksing all these questions just to gain back my sanity. For most, they just say "think positively," "get over it", or "thats nothing." Some even laugh at me or get angry at me.

Let me allow you into the world of a parnanoid person.

I walk around campus in graduate school. I have only been living here for a few months. I'm on the phone with my brother saying I think it is time to go back to the hospital. So I go. I am met with a ton of people starying at me in the hospital entrance. Do they know what I'm going through? How do they know about me? Can they see my illness? At this point, the whole university knows.The government is still after me.

Another hospitalization, I thought I was in the Holocaust ansd that the doctors were killing al of the patients. I was running around trying to save evefybody, trying to figure out the puzzle of freeing everyone.

During one of my other hospital visits during my graduate school career, I saw a list of things ona table and I thought the list that I found was a list to free me from an FBI interrogation (I still have paraonoia about the government but not as severe). I kept tying to figure out this list and I finally got to the bottom of the list and I don't remember why, but I kept taking my hospial gown off., They yelled to the other patients to go in their room.

At another hospital, I became entirely catatonic and I did not tak, eat or slep for 3 days. That was in the midst of one of the most terrifying parnoia/psychoti period. Tehy finally gave me a strong medication and it lessened. But I still remember all of what happened.

The littlest thing can set me off on a crazy rant or adventure.

I was hospitalized 3 times in gtaduate school and I sitll received my Masters degreee.

Now my parania is not as bad as it's been while in the hospital. THe majority of my paranoia/anciety is contained by the endless sea of medications that have been prescribed to me. Some may believe that watching people go through psychosis and paranoia, but it's not funny at all. It is one of the most terrifying things I go through. Sometimes I still believe that I am still being watched by the FBI, which are inproportioate to my reason why they would be after me. I have learned that it is possible to overcome the paranoia by talking to myself about the relaity of what's going on.

The Frustration of Mental Illness(es)

Every day, I deal with my mental illnesses, currently diagnosed as having schizoaffective, bipolar type and PTSD, Some days are brilliant. Others I just wish I could be free not to interact with anyone.

This past year, I was in the hospital 3 times. During the times when I was out, I was in treatment programs.

Among side effects of medications is movement disorders, dry mouth, blurred vision, acne, and most catastrophically, memory loss.

When I am off the meds, I have "limited" clear thinking and photographic, or eidetic, memory. That's how I did so well in school. However, I have to take the meds or else I end up back in the hospital., I have been known to decompensate in one day if I do not take the meds. When I decompensate, that means that I have full-blown paranoia and psychosis. I lose touch with all reality. As a PhD student, I ran around the hospital unit naked. My life feels like almost two different lives.

I want to focus on the life on meds, even though my creativity, artistic ablities and eidetic-like memory goes away with the meds. It's a loss worth taking, because I highly like being stable.

It sucks that I lose my memory because I cannot remember everything that I did in college and graduate school. I do not know if I am able to function with a 40-60 hour work week in the field of biomedical engineering., That is hard for me to comprehend but to be all-realisstic, I have to take my meds and my illnesses have gotten much worse over the years as the schizophrenia part of my brain has gone haywire,

As a highly functioning person who has schizophrenia, biipolar and PTSD as well as haivng studied neuroscience/neural engineering amd neurology, I find my life as being something very interesting.

I think I will always remember the moments in my life when I could function while being manic. Nowadays, my mania is maked with severe paranoia and psychosis. Terrifying psychosis. So, I continue to take my meds.

Lessons I have learned in therapy

I have been in and out of therapy since the age of seven. It hasn't always been easy but I've learned a lot from my therapists and counselors. I have been in and out of hospitals 12 times in the past 10 years.  I have also been in 4 outpatient programs. The following is a list of things that I have learned in therapy.

1. I cannot be held responsible for any other people's behaviors except for my own. We can only control ourselves. This has been an important concept for me to understand because I tend to want to change others but the only person I can change is myself.

2. Breathing in and out and meditation work. I was reluctant to start doing it but it helps a lot. In the past two weeks I've been using meditation a lot more  and I've been more calm without taking anti anxiety medications. A therapist once told me the medications are only a small part of  what aleviates the illnesses I am dealing with. Recently I have been figuring out how to feel better. I tend to meditate multiple times a day, something that I never thought would happen.  The first time I ever tried meditating I thought it was a joke.  My mind would always wander. But now since I've been using it for years it is much easier to focus on one word or a number or anything pertaining to the medication. It's not a joke to me anymore. It is something that I use every day.

3. There are some good therapists and there are some bad therapists. Fortunately for me I had more good than bad. But I did have one therapist who basically charged me to hear her talk about her own issues. Needless to say she didn't help me a lot. So I changed therapists and forgot about her.

4. There are good people out there who really care about me. Not just about money. Or a paycheck. I have felt cared about by many therapists.

5. Getting better takes time and a lot of patience. I sure wish that I didn't have to go to therapist for the rest of my life but I have a feeling I will be in and out of therapy for the rest of my life. I wish I could feel better at a snap of a finger but life isn't like that. Being in therapy is not a weakness. This life is a journey. There are usually not easy simple solutions to mental illness. Take your time to feel better.