My Turning Point

I think this new medication is starting to help me. I am more sociable and outgoing. Take yesterday for instance. I got out and spent all day with a family member. I usually sit in this house alone and am perfectly content with it. I wanted to get out and be with someone else yesterday (other than the groupies) and that is odd for me. So far, no manic episodes, but sometimes I can’t tell when that happens.

It is also novel that I am actually taking a medication in pill form. I am horrible at taking pills. I just don’t remember to do so. Before I started getting risperdal in an injection form, I would miss a few days and it was like a snowball rolling down hill. My life would degrade. I would stop taking showers or shaves. I would go for days without eating. I would be obsessed with weird ideas and things such as God sending me messages through the local newscasts on the television. My father always called it my “Wildman syndrome.” I would get completely nuts. My then wife wouldn’t know what to do with me and would call my father. It usually ended up with a hospital mental ward visit.

For the first time in my life, I feel a little peace finally. I lived in turmoil for so long I became accustomed to it. It seemed I was always in trouble or the shit was about to hit the fan. Money problems plagued me; relationship ones as well. It seems my whole life was always fucked up and it is nice to have some peace and quiet for a change. I revel in the boringness of my life. I had far too much excitement (of the bad kind) for too many years.

My homeless months taught me some very important things. I was at my lowest and I could go no lower. I lost everything and had nothing left to lose. Nothing really mattered any more other than my base instincts of trying to eat and stay warm. My only companion was that twenty four pack of ice beer and I drowned my sorrows many a day in it. Time slowed down and I lived in the woods by the cycles of nature. When it got dark and cold, I went to sleep in my warm sleeping bag. When the sun rose and my stomach grumbled, I would awake and fix something to eat and build a fire. I was in complete isolation. It was the most simple of existences and maybe it taught me a lesson. I think it taught me that life is too short to live in turmoil all the time. It also reinforced the importance of taking my medications.

You know what I appreciate the most in life these days? Warmth and warm feet. That numbing cold during my homeless days was hardest thing to endure. I enjoy the fact that

Now, I try to take it one day at time. Some days I falter. Other days I excel. I live for those excellent days and hope I have many more left. I still have to hike the Pinhoti trail someday which is my dream and a goal I long for. Maybe some day that dream will come true.