More than random particles in an infinite universe.

In the moments when I am not quite here, I realize that inside me dwells a being that is foreign to this place. It is hard to explain these feelings of alienation but it is like that I am from truly an alien nation and I am living inside a body that isn't mine. I share a brain that is filled with random memories that I don't recognize as mine and I don't feel attached to in any way. It is like my soul came from a place far away where I long to return yet don't know how to find the door that leads home. I don't even know if I would recognize that door unless it is death and that will come in its own sweet time.


I am not sure when this sense of not being part of this reality began but it seems to have been with me for as long as I can remember clearly. I look at family photo albums and I am looking at strangers. Except for my youngest son, I feel no sense of identification with the people who are a part of my past growing up years. I have learned to identify lately with some but that is because they have become more like friends than family. Oh sure I can sometimes recall the memories of the person that seemed to live in this body before but it is more like looking up data on the internet rather than some thought that is integrally mine. Even when I cared for the mother of this body, I did not feel like I was with my mother. It is like I learned to live a story and play a role but it is not me. How does one explain this madness to another? Because what my confessions sounds like is madness.


The early psychologist called themselves alienist and considered their work to be help people feel more integrated and not alienated from their world. Perhaps they were closer to the truth than even they realized. When this sense of detachment from the reality that others profess to experience becomes to strong I withdraw into me and feel a flatness that I cannot control. It is like all the buttons that switch on joy and creativity have been turned to the off position. I wonder is this real or is it just a thought pattern caught in a pulse of electrons.


I wander about this mind looking for answers because I know there are no answers out there. There are only animals masquerading as people trying to believe that their god is real or that their check will come in time to pay for the bills. Once in a while I meet a person and there is something about them that reminds me of who I am as if meeting another American at Walmart in Beijing. I am not aware of a purpose or destiny but I seem to do things that point to some knowing of this in a part of my mind or soul that I cannot quite connect with or recognize. Strange things happen to me that bring me to one event or person that leads to other events or people in what in retrospect appears almost to be planned. I live a life filled with apparent miracles and yet I can't remember praying for them.


While I have true fun doing writing and creative things I don't consider them to be important or earth shaking. I see people obsessed by a point of view, a belief, or a dream and I wonder what is their problem. I am kind to people because it seems like right action for me. In fact, I find it almost incomprehensible why others are not kind or helpful or willing to extend their hearts and their hands to others. Judgments about another person's being less or more as a recognition of value seems to be so pointless.


I am as interested in the empty space that surrounds thought as the thought itself. I consider the idea that the void is black to allow the light to be seen. I think of infinite space which is primarily void. I think of the composition of the body which is primarily void with the same particles dancing in it as dance randomly through the universe. Within this body which holds my random particles is an infinite universe. Out side this body are unlimited particles in an infinite universe. Perhaps that is why I chose to be in this body so that my random thoughts, ideas and energy would be contained and thus become more than the void that allows me to wander aimlessly among a myriad of stars and universes.


Yet today, I feel drawn to once again wander aimlessly among the myriad of stars and universes and perhaps find my way back home.

Emotionally Challenged

Madness is not always Schizophrenia. It is sometimes just total discomfort and feeling emotionally challenged. We all have moments of madness when the stress in life can turn a rationale individual into a state of total confusion.


Mental illness is not always madness although it can seem that way.


Mental illness is a bio-chemical imbalance in the brain. Temporary madness can be caused when events such as stress change the molecular balance in the brain. When trauma hits our lives we become vulnerable to all the issues that someone who is clinically mentally ill experiences.

More later on madness, the mind and balance. In the meantime remember, it is all mind over matter: If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

A Companion to Madness

You always expect telephone calls bringing horrible news to come in the middle of the night jolting you out of your sleep. So when the telephone rang midmorning on a lovely spring day, I expected at the worse a telemarketer and at the best a call from a good friend for a chat over a cup of coffee.



Mom, I am loosing it.


I could hear the desperate sound of my son’s voice on the other end reaching out to me for safety from 500 miles away. My heart started to race harder as I listened to him.
I watched JFK last night and I haven’t been able to sleep. Mom they are after me. I can see the cars surrounding the house. Mom, he pleaded, is this real? I have to go out and check.
I asked if he wanted me to stay on the phone while he went to check. He said no, that he would dial the phone when he was ready to step out the door.


I waited. Fifteen minutes passed and the telephone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it said unknown caller. I was sure it was him as he has his number blocked because of his paranoia.
This is a courtesy call from Blockbuster. This is a reminder that you have a DVD that is past due.



I slammed down the telephone and I could feel my blood pressure rising.



I finally dialed his number and the phone rang and rang and rang. I was starting to panic. Was he just hiding in a locked room terrified by fear or was he really in danger. I tried to divert my attention by going and playing a game on my computer but I could only maintain my mindless concentration for a few moments.



I could feel me being drawn into the drama that is the constant companion in a family where mental illness is diagnosis de jour. I begin to imagine that demons were trying to draw my son back into their dark talons. I begin to imagine that he is on drugs and the police really are surrounding him. I begin to loose it myself.



Madness is never convenient. It sometimes has a pattern of exacerbation and remission but it is always waiting to walk in and spoil an hour, a day, a week or months. And today was no exception. When I received the call I was preparing to go and visit my sister for the Mother’s day weekend. I had plans. I was resentful that my son took this time to go crazy. How was I going to detach?



I feel powerless because I am powerless. The only thing that I can do is to be here ready to talk if he needed me to help calm down and focus on reality. But when he was in the clutches of delusional behavior I have no power. In fact, I know by experience there is no one that I can call. He is not presenting a danger to himself or to another person. He is just flat out in numbing fear and was scurrying around like a rat trying to escape a giant predator called mental illness.



The time is passing and I haven’t packed yet. I am becoming obsessed right now with worrying about something I cannot control. Yet, how do I as a mother detach? I have trained myself for years in the art of detachment and self-calming. I try breathing in more deeply. Yet I catch myself holding my breath waiting to for the phone to ring or my mind to become clearer. I am not going through a new experience. This experience has repeated itself in one form or another for years. Not only with Donald but with my son Jimmy who is also mentally ill. Both have taken the road of self-medication through drugs and alcohol. And, so have I. Somehow, it becomes a bit more comforting to numb the pain. It doesn’t make it go away. It makes it a little less intense.
When one is in a manic state which can be anger, fear and anxiety, or just plain hooting-it-up fun, alcohol helps depress the system and one is a bit more stable. Of course, taking it to the extreme it makes the madness more intense.



When I can’t help, I hope. Being mentally ill myself and older, I know that in time with education and therapy it is possible to find stability and even enjoy the quirks and perks of madness. I focus my imagination into creative outlets. I like getting older because the only difference between being crazy and being eccentric is either age or money. We are people with an edge. We interest and entice people, but we also can create a sense of fear. We are an unpredictable lot and that is the greatest fear that others have in any relationship.



So I wait. And I hope this fugue will pass quickly and my son and I will be stabilized again and moving in a less chaotic world. And I hope that the next time will take longer to appear and will be less intense. And I hope that this is the last episode. I, too, have my delusions.