Of Intrusive Thoughts and John Green

I guarantee that your family member's suicide was caused by either a panic attack or an intrusive thoughts. What are intrusive thoughts? Unwanted thoughts that can enter our minds at any time and without warning. When I first read John Green's Turtles All The Way Down, it meant little to me. I gave the book to a friend because I didn't have space for a book I wasn't going to read again. In 2019, I roasted my parents in a stand up comedy routine outside my house. The police carted me off to the mental hospital. I discovered a large print of Turtles on my first day at Waukesha Memorial Mental Hospital. I tried to read it, but I’m not much of a visual learner (despite my visual art gifts). The next year, I returned to this hospital, and got a little further. It was like an old friend waiting for me. I understood the power of the book this time. This was because as my schizoaffective disorder progressed, so did the intrusive thoughts. I always tell the voices that this is the mind they’ve left me with. When I was a kid, I had OCD symptoms, but nothing like what I’m now experiencing. I’d say what kind of intrusive thoughts I have, but I don’t want them to become your intrusive thoughts. Also, you might hate me. I’ve come to call them untrue-sive thoughts. The reason I know they’d become your intrusive thoughts, is because of the brave Maria Bramford. She is one of my favorite comedians. She was interviewed on Netflix’s The Mind Unleashed. 1) When she had scissors, she thought she was going to kill her parents.Number 2) She said, "Normal people say ‘that’s a sexy dog’ and move on. Initially, this made me feel better about my brain. The only thing is the next time they gave me scissors at Trempleau Mental Hospital, I was paranoid about it. There were also a lot of dogs on campus- the staff’s. I began to wonder why these supposed people thought the dog was sexy. I hated myself. I kept trying to explain it. Is that "sexy" because they stretch like somebody doing yoga? But hold on, is it really sexy to do yoga? As John Green says in his book, the spiral tightened. My  theory is that some people are simpler than others. We were watching Talk TV in the small lounge at Trempealeau. I’m not sure the show. The hosts had a picture of a dog in a woman’s slinky dress. One of the hosts said, "That’s a sexy dog." Or something along the lines. And they laughed. Before meeting my treatment therapist, I would be suicidal over saying something like this in my head. Daisy, a character created by John Green, exemplifies the whole simple-minded thing. She’s a teenage girl, who like all teenage girls, is on Tumblr writing fan fiction. Unlike most teenage girls, it’s about Star Wars. I just never got into Star Wars. What makes Daisy so simple? She’s writing about a relationship between Chewbaca and Ray. Ray is a woman. A human woman. People accuse her of writing about something gross between animals and humans. Beastiality. Even Aza, the main character, agrees that it’s kind of weird. Daisy, on the other hand, sticks by her work. Aza also says Daisy’s future boyfriend looks like a giant baby. For an intrusive thinker, this would ruin the relationship. They’d get in their heads about it. Daisy did not.  One day at Trempealeau, we were watching Shameless. We were always watching Shameless. I did not like this. There is so much sex, and half of the people on Trempealeau's Excel unit were elderly and suffering from Alzheimer's. We were watching the first season, and a nurse walked by and said, "You heard it here first: Lip is the hottest!" Yes, I know he’s older and playing younger, but he was playing a high schooler.. I called a very important person to me and told her. She said it’s normal to say a teenager is hot. I told my therapist, and she agreed. I thought it was weird to even say  handsome about teenage boys. I still remain determined never to call a teenager hot. And so this is much of what I work on in therapy. I think too much still, but people listen. We need more therapists, so don’t be afraid to open up. I went ten months without a therapist this year. Don’t waste their time. Get the darkest shit out first. Life will get better. And if you catch yourself thinking something bad, just say the word, "Stop." And move, move, move right along.

Escaping a Fire With My Mom

I picked up a book from a bookstore and this book was the craziest book. Crazy like this blog will surely be. This book was called Fire Burn. A witch book. Mehawhaw. I’m a witch! Or am I? I was. I’m not now. Witchy. That’s what I thought caused my schizoaffective disorder. Schizophrenia and bipolar combined. Not so much my own witchcraft. Many of my friends love witchy-bitchy-oh-look-at-me vibrations. Hoodoo-voodoo-oh-my-God-none-of-it-is-real. I really thought that my friends were cursing me. This was based on the Instagram profiles. But witchcraft isn't real. What is real? God. God is, but I thought I was Venus incarnate back in the winter of 2019. This was before I was diagnosed later in the year.. The bad voices sang. “Surrender murder of Venus hold her down, like I’m giving lessons in physics.” Parody of Iggy Azaela’s Hhit Song. Or misheard lyrics. Why doesn’t anybody like Iggy? I love getting jiggy with Iggy. I don't know if she is a shit person. I only like her songs. Itt’s was 8 O’clock in the morning on October 6, 1993. Three earlier, my older sister almost strangled herself with her umbilical cord during birth. That was the only thing she ever messed up on in her whole life. Emergency c-section. And so I just had to copy her, as I did most of my childhood. What was playing that had everybody in the room laughing? The song. It was "Devil in Disguise" by Elvis Presley. The doctor said, “She’s going to be a handful.” Yes. I am. And I wish this song never happened as they took me out of good ole Ma. My main schizo voice says, “God must not love you. You must be evil.” No. I’m not devil sent. I just don’t like Emily Jacobs dissing me. Why she picked this name? I don’t know. It is a boring name for the archvillains. That’s why I’m medicated. I was at an eating disorder facility at the end of 2019. I wrote with my characters in a hammock. We called it the Hammock Hangout. All of my characters loved me, except for one. That gosh darn Emily Jacobs. She called herself Victrola sometimes. Her pop star name. She was a ghost I met at Timberline Knolls. This was a shitty residential mental hospital for all women. This was a third of the way through 2019. She liked my celebrity crush. Uh oh. I was talking to this celebrity in my head. Emily introduced herself and never left. She told me she was my dreamweaver- her ghost job. She wouldn’t put me to sleep, and when she did, it was nightmares. During the hammock days, all the ghosts became characters. I would run around saying, "My characters and I are writing the best superhero book. We’re the new Marvel.” Long story short, you shouldn’t talk to your characters in your head. My mom does not hear voices, but she is an exquisite storyteller. One of her favorite stories happened when she was lying down in her hospital room after birthing me. It was fire prevention week. An alarm went off. She thought the place was on fire. She grabbed me and tried jumping out a window. A nurse told her to go back to bed. She called my uncle and said, “Maggie and Mike are in the elevator and there’s a fire.” Maggie: sister. Mike: dad. Tall tales. When my schizoaffective turned me against my family 25 years later, I kept saying that my mom was Big Fish without a happy ending. Big Fish is a Ewen MAcgregor flick where the father tells tales. *SPOILER ALERT* *I MEAN IT* *GO* At the end of the movie, he meets all the characters from his dad’s stories. I want to die before her, because I cannot imagine life without her. If I have to be at her funeral, I hope I’ll meet people who confirm her stories. We’re now as good as the day she called my uncle in a burning hospital. A little chaotic but partners in crime. My uncle showed up. My mom figured out by then that it was an alarm. She was eating tapioca pudding. “Sorry,” she said to him. And so it’s been Fire Burn from the beginning. Fire burn in my legs. My long legs with my pants ripped off. Broken. All because I was hit by a train 11 days after my 27th birthday. Fire burn, fire burn. This is my life now. With voices. It is a positive fire inside me that doesn't stop burning. God has made this so. I'm a miracle. Therefore, I will tell my story for Him. Stay tuned. I post every Thursday.