Introduction Laugh or Die

Sometimes You Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Die
Madness as a companion along life’s path.

I was 19 before I was diagnosed with mental illness. First I was said to be schizophrenic but over time and changing research into the illusive qualities of mental illness I would find myself having a new diagnosis du jour. As I write this story some of it will be real as far the truth as recorded but other parts are actually my memories which are not always clear of my life’s journey. What is true is the emotions that I share as a mentally disabled person. Don’t you love that label: A mentally disabled person. Over the more than forty years that I have carried this label I have found other labels more fun: Mad. Crazy. Wacko. I like other labels because I don’t like to think of myself as disabled. I think perhaps the kindest label of all is mentally ill. But then again I don’t feel ill. Sometimes I feel perfectly normal – or at least normal for how I perceive the world. Other times, I feel alienated and unable to comprehend the others around me.


I start my journey at 19 because when I was that age my family committed me to a mental hospital where I received extensive shock treatments to the extent that I was confined in a padded cell and the only way I remember anything before that time is through little bits and pieces that I have used to reconstruct my life before that time usually based on the stories that others have told me. Whether they are true or not I don’t know.. I will often joke and say that I was rewired at 19. That is where the humor comes in that has kept me trudging through life when times became unbearable. There have been times when I was unable to find the cosmic joke and I truly desired to die. In fact, as you will learn many times when faced with the option to laugh or die, I would try to die. Apparently I was not very good at suicide because I am still here after multiple attempts.


Some of my story is humorous and some is sad and even decadent by many peoples standards. However, it is my life as I recall it sometimes based on truth, sometimes based on memory, sometimes based perhaps on wishes and dreams. My life as I remember it has been filled with many times of chaos created by a shattered mind and then learning to draw the pieces back in a new recreation that allows me to continue to survive and hopefully thrive. I have also had to carry the burden that my children inherited my disease and watching their pain has seared my soul at times but it has also allowed me to grant me compassion for my apparently mad or bizarre behaviors.


I invite you to walk with me along the path that has been filled with many dark nights of the soul and also many epiphanies about the seed of hope that keeps those trapped by a mental illness to survive and perhaps for those of you who have had family members who did not survive you may gain some insights into the mind when death seems to be the only option.
If at times I appear detached it is because that detachment has become my greatest armament to grant me surivival.