 I accomplished something yesterday, and my husband remarked that I should write an article on overcoming. I said, "Why overcoming?". He said, "You have accomplished something unexpected and unlike your condition." My condition is schizo-affective, and last spring I ventured back into full-time engineering work not knowing if it would stick. I was able to obtain flexible working hours and work-from-home conditions; I am still expected to respond to deadlines and even travel out-of-state from time-to-time.
This summer I took on a 7-week project in which I was the sole engineer working the project, and the technical acumen to get the job done right was high; expectations were high also and the schedule squeezed. I ventured into an assignment I had only mid-level experience with, worked more than 50 hours per week some weeks, and traveled twice from Tennessee to New Mexico to meet with the client of the project. I just yesterday turned in a finished product on-time that everyone was extremely happy with, that also promises more business to the company I work for. I straddled a few sleepless nights, additional medication and the associated side-affects, stress-stimulated voices and paranoia, and a constant fluctuating stress level. I gave up all my weekends this summer and dove right into a complex, interesting, and confidence-boosting endeavor. I also carried a nagging in the back of my mind that something extreme might happen with my mental health, and took great care of myself so I would finish and finish well. The accomplishment of finishing and finishing well is a mark of overcoming - I worked beyond the normal abilities for someone with a condition like mine. It's unexpected. The doctors who try to call all the shots have long told me not to expect much, and they tell my husband that too - in terms of working, in terms of becoming a mother, in terms of being an adequate spouse. But I think my husband and I have both favored high-standards; it's a constant battle for us. That other nagging feeling - the one that says we should succeed and hush the naysayers - I think that is the one everyone should more often listen to in making daily decisions. You don't have to have a condition like mine to have naysayers in your life about issues you are facing, and it doesn't take much to give in with an excuse of your own either. You don't have to give in, you don't have to settle, you don't have to live an underwhelming life, you don't have to lay down and live out your weaknesses instead of your strengths. That last point, to live out your weaknesses is important. It's easy to choose to be lazy instead of accomplishing a goal - to sit back and watch others work hard for a promotion instead of taking on the challenge yourself. Life is full of missed opportunities. Excuses can be a worst enemy. So cheers to those who succeed in work and relationships, and in spiritual matters or overcoming addiction or health issues. I've truly made a statement about myself each time I've recovered from mental health bouts, and this recent accomplishment goes a long way with others and myself in the demonstration of recovery. I still have a long way to go in terms of any road to goodness or perfection, but hey, I've come a long way baby. You should too, and congrats to all your accomplishments past, present and future! p.s. The rad thing I enjoyed doing was developing the operational and protective philosophies and settings for computers that operate a high-voltage new substation (transmission utility power system equipment). This is my mountaintop. Climb your mountaintop. Do the Unexpected, a poem by Michelle Murphy Live out your weaknesses, or your strengths. Which is tempting you? Respond. There’s the naysayers who never expect the unexpected. The calculators. The pill-givers. Boo. But the gamblers bet on me. They love me. And I aim to show them love back. I’m better off for it. To do the unexpected. To overcome.
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 Whether hallucinations come from darkness or from the light, or from within our own psyche, or from another star system, they beg us to be real and engaged. One can relish in hallucinations and then end up in madness, or one can tune out the play inside one’s head. Instead of giving in to delusion, immerse yourself in the small things from the shared/home reality. Here at home matter and time dominate reliably. I am an advocate of sanity and matter and time. I also struggle with madness, but I should always plan to give my hallucinations a backseat to the greater reality of life on this Great Earth. - Michelle Murphy
It is as if artificial intelligence (AI) was planted in our brain, and it responded in like conversation to everything one says or thinks. It is as if this intelligence were able to know our thoughts before we even think or speak to advance special thoughts into our brains. This AI can lead one to do very risky things in an environment of perceived terror or bliss. It is as if the environment itself is alive, short-circuited with energy, moving one to other parallel dimensions with nefarious clones replacing loved ones, and government spies replacing doctors, and the music in our cars with downloadable messages. We find ourselves in an other-world thinking about other-worldly things. It is as if religious undertones become pronounced and hyper-religious activity mainstream, while aliens taunt us telepathically, and governments tap our phones or even our heads directly. All of this is radiating from the mind of an insane person, who believes either the people around them are in on it, or that those people are the ones who are really insane. During such a period in one’s life the web of a spider may leave an intense footprint on one’s life and inspire jumbled thoughts or creativity, or it may also trap one within it until the episode of insanity is finally over — we become like the fly trapped in this web of other worldly possibilities. We recognize one major thing — that the dark side is real and that we must fight like the Jedi or be overcome. I have risked my life in terrifying situations when my mind became the heartbeat for a major hallucination in my life. I am lucky, very lucky, God speed, to be alive today. My life now involves strict sleep patterns and medication taking, along with counseling, and journaling of ups and downs. I have to avoid giving in to voices tempting me to go over the edge, and I keep a crisis plan in place as an agreement between my spouse, doctors, and close family. All of this stems from trial and error, and experimentation. Others are not so lucky to have lived through the trauma and to bounce back so quickly. Maintaining employment with flexible supervision has been the key to succeeding by normal standards. My diagnosis is schizo-affective disorder, or bipolar I with psychotic features. My goal is to avoid insanity. So what is so alluring about insanity over sanity? Number one I would say drama and excitement. There’s nothing like insanity except to be an actor in a major motion science fiction film. There’s nothing like having perspectives that are other-worldly or off-kilter and having felt like one truly reached the gods. Insanity is the opposite of drinking the Kool-aide. It is directly the same as drinking the mushrooms or the DMT. In fact, psychosis is directly related to shamanism in other cultures, and may be one way of experiencing the gods or downloading archetypes from the stars far above or from deep within the Earth in all its glorious history. The very make-up of our culture relies on philosophy that stemmed from out-of-the-box thinking and non-routine livelihoods and wild experiences. Psychosis is a seemingly real experience that is both out-of-the-box and other worldly. But sanity, being normal, has its own out-of-the-box elements to it. Challenges in life lead us to the edge, but we might peer over rather than jumping off. Glancing for a moment can give one an epiphany, and epiphanies follow us all of our lives; they are the turning points and realizations that make life interesting and call us to greater purpose. Sanity is my best friend these days, as I have come to love normal. Normal is safe; normal has value; love is present in every day life, and every other good trait about life is here in the shared/home reality; even mysticism as expressed through spiritually can be accessed in a normal state. The home/shared reality truly is the home for mankind, and it is a home where no conspiracy lives in the heart (although we might acknowledge some conspiracies in our mind). It is a space where you can have dinner with your family and get a good nights sleep and feel rested, so in the morning you can eat a healthy breakfast and accomplish the day’s goals unimpeded. This is much better in contrast to being paranoid and maybe getting arrested or getting dragged into a mental health facility for risky behaviors and confused thinking, maybe all day hearing voices and living along-side a conspiracy at every corner; even a meal with family can be queer or incite fear with paranoia. In my own life, I would prefer not to have ever been psychotic, but having been psychotic I feel lucky to have lived through it and to have had the extra-perspectives to apply to all genres of life. Such is any bad thing to turn around into an experience to be applied in a good manner. I have also felt that fate brought my psychotic episodes to me, and usually my thinking is that something special and other-worldly did get realized. I am more creative as a result. Some of the creativity and genius that has been branded within circles of famous madmen or madwomen is a true characterization. Value can be ascribed to such difficult circumstances, and it does take a creative imagination to both create and live in other worlds. For to create, without being God in all his perfection, is to reach out beyond man’s typical capabilities and maintain sanity or fall just off the cliff into the other dimensions of reality that we don’t usually get to experience or see without a third-eye. We may fail to maintain sanity, but even still with that experience comes useful stimulation, new perspectives, and new ideas. Passion, the fuel of creativity, can often be mustered from an electrifying energy that surrounds us when we are insane. It literally makes my skin tingle sometimes. I prefer to stay in the home/shared reality these days. The shared reality is stimulating enough, and even the small things encourage my creativity and spark my interest. I appreciate the normal world maybe a bit more than most average people, as I’ve deeply missed it when I’m gone in my own mind, and that is the blessing I have today. When those voices spark up or I miss a day or two of sleep and become restless, I can focus on those small things and reject the hallucinations instead of giving in to relish on unhealthy thoughts and off-the-cliff, maybe even pit-of-hell adventures. I can deny those other worlds a place in my life and say goodbye, parting ways hopefully for good. Love is one of the great motivators of mankind and it trumps any other kind of experience one may have; when I am in other worlds and insane, love seems to dry up, and I would always give back anything to have things return back to normal. So, I celebrate normal today and wish it upon myself for the rest of my days. Here are two definitions for psychosis to consider: (1) American Heritage Dictionary: “A severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.” (2) My definition: “An inspired state or state of the psyche under extreme energy that is common in those who identify or call themselves bipolar or schizophrenic and is typically accommodated to varying degrees with madness and reckless behavior. The following 2 poems are on the subject of mental health. The first poem, The Language of Psychosis, describes the lingo and perspective about being psychotic, and the second poem, Something Outside of Herself, describes how something outside of a woman with mental health issues can inspire that woman, and follow her like a shadow follows a person, or like the past leaves an imprint the present. The Language of Psychosis, a poem by Michelle Murphy My God? A fragrant or pungent Smell of incense? Helen of Troy & Aphrodite? Cassandra? Ecstasy? Aliens - not from Mexico? And prophets, shamans? Madmen? Signals & microwaves, OR the red planet on it's way? The Jinn of fire & smoke, us of clay & earth Or an electrical frequency giving way to inter-dimensional Beings usually In hiding? I see clones and wannabes, Protectors. I'm terrified. Relay the situation - Quick! Also fallen angels, devils and prehistoric contemplators, Tempters & liberators, wishful thinkers riding my back, Sitting on my shoulders, offering everything, tormenting, Screaming, inciting police, digging needles into my arm. Where is my tinfoil hat? The signals have forsaken my Privacy and I am under attack. I follow the footprints back To my nest egg of hot coffee and smoking sticks where I can Share information with elite agents about the Trail I'm onto. I tell them my eggs are not for sale, my blood is not for sale, my Soul is not for sale. My cats are not hypnotized. The snakes upon Her head have turned My heart to stone. I cannot fear more than I can fear. I cannot tremble more than I can tremble. My mission is too extreme. Where is my God? In the embers of the fire, in the atoms Of the clay, in the DNA of the prehistoric contemplators, In my head, OR All of the above if He is omnipresent. But I said where? I'm on auto-pilot but who's driving? Tell me the words I shall speak by which I may make Others understand. Does my language have to be of one spirit? No, it can be that of a young wizard striving towards manhood, or a Poet seeking beauty in her inner world. Pure magic nevertheless. The sacred is Defined as the waring sides of light and Darkness, the yin and yang, interconnected but very ??? Scientific - yes. Factual - yes. Spiritual, Alien - Yes too. All the contexts serve the language of psychosis right. My conspiracy is that somewhere in the cosmos something Is conspiring - not against, but also with me. Is God in charge For real or am I an unbeliever in Deliverance? Striving to understand The true Nature of reality. For all I have seen since birth is wire strings. Deliverance. Deliverance. Yes. Here I am again. Delivered. The tin foil hat did its job, Cassandra is my middle name, And the red planet sent my lunar cycle into a tail spin, but It's time to travel into the future, I'll ride the 3D and 4D train. The cycles of the lunar moon got my PMS going - Psychosis Minded Symptoms. Meet me, myself and I in the future with or without My PMS. But for Pete's sake - Speak the lingo! Magic discourse. Read words of deliverance to keep me out of the gutter too. Something Outside of Herself, a poem by Michelle Murphy I get my typewriter out And it says to me, “Push my buttons.” This is what I type: Psychosis wipes away the tears Of frozen words. You say, “She’s possessed!” But that does not capture the meaning. Words are spectrums - Not concrete shapes. I say, “She’s also on the spectrum Of inspired - Something outside of herself causes Her to dance, to tick. "If it’s not black or white, Then it’s gray?” No! What we’re talking about Isn't even colors. It’s shades - or shadows really And how they appear And disappear. Mental illness is a bad choice of terms. I got issues - you got issues. That’s it! And hell no! - I don’t want Your issues instead of mine. I have abstract thoughts That have broken me from the Wrist ties that keep us locked away, And from reasoning and speaking. I’ve slipped away enough times To know I don’t do any kind of Cocktail that will make me slip again. It’s a question I’ve faced - Whether to have a daughter that Might be a duplicate of me. I would protect her. Oh glorious! I’ve climbed a mountain Before and given a speech to no one. Oh dreadful! I’ve nailed a semi-truck And only by God’s grace stand here now. Oh police! Oh naked in terror Running down the street. Sheer terror makes my rides Not worth any set of dollar bills. I am older than I look. I’ve been possessed and inspired! At war and brought about peace! I am known in the spirit world And I have been anointed. Oil has glazed down my head - my crown. I put the typewriter down and speak. I said psychosis wipes away the tears of frozen words. That cocktails can free us from our prisons. If you zero in on thousands of years what are ladies still talking about? The glorious, the dreadful, and the police. Inspiration, war and peace. Cocktails, the spirit world, my issues - her issues. Protecting their daughters. The woman’s shadow has always been there, it never disappears. But almost all shadows are worth chasing after. Something outside of herself causes Her to dance, to tick. "If it’s not black or white, Then it’s gray?” No! What we’re talking about Isn't even colors. It’s shades - or shadows really And how they appear And disappear. |