A Moment in Time...

I stare at my face in the mirror. A week's old beard greets me in it's carrot red fashion. "I wish I could grow a beard without looking like a homeless Carrot Top!" I muse to myself as I let out a weak chuckle. Lunch was a supreme pizza prepared just like I like it. I cut it into slices, and then placed them in plastic bags to steam and for the crust to get soft and pliable again. It takes a gargantuan effort just to complete this step in my life. I can go days without eating when I get to feeling like this.

I walk by my bedroom on the way back to my computer room, and the bed looks so inviting. I wish I had a magical pill that would allow me to sleep on a whim. To sleep away my life when I get to feeling like this would be the perfect blessing.

I then sit down to write. I want to pour my heart out, but I can't. Too many people would get on to me and use my weakness as an excuse to write nasty comments. The below post pours out onto my blog anyway. For a fleeting moment, I just feel better and some of the gloom has lifted. Just by reaching out and sharing the less pleasant aspects of my schizophrenia, It makes them not so much a burden to bear.

Maggie is on the bed sleeping. It is drab and overcast -- a perfect day for a snooze in. I took the last two of my Benadryl hoping for the calm it induces. And it does. My arms feel lighter. The constant butterflies in my stomach go away. "You can't take anything addictive, though," my father yells at me in my mind as those pills take effect. "I will only give you four a day." And the pills are doled out to me in piecemeal fashion. Never enough for me, and one too many for my father's comfort.

What happened to when I could no longer make these choices for myself? It crept in insidiously. First, I was given $85 dollars a week. That was then taken away. Second, no more shopping at my father's drug store. "It is embarrassing," he told me one day when I was getting sodas. It was my only avenue for shopping without any money. I could charge what I bought down there. Next, came the medications at night. Despite doing well for months, my father decided I should be given my medications with them forced upon me. Threats are made if I don't take them. Terrible threats. Threats of starvation and cold. I couldn't take a chance. I can't live without the Internet and with the constant turmoil. Little by little my freedoms were whittled away to almost nothing.

I wrote a friend yesterday that I often dream of running away like some petulant teenager. I would give up everything to have a little freedom back in my life -- to live homeless in Nashville with what I have learned reading The Homeless Guy. He has a place to sleep, food to eat, and a laptop to blog in coffee shops. That is all I really need. They would hunt me down like a pack of hounds, though. My father would mobilize his great political clout to have me brought home. More freedoms would be taken away as more control and medications were exerted. "Only a crazy person would want to live homeless," my father has told me many times during our discussions. It would be the perfect excuse to dope me up even more.

I finally find my groove while writing. Chapter 12 of my memoirs has begun to be fleshed out. I can hear my radio playing softly as a cigarette dangles from my lips. Down the street, walks a neighbor seen outside this window as I peck busily away at this keyboard. I come alive in moments such as this. I call it a writer's frenzy -- ever spurring me on to loftier heights and perches on the writing plateau. That is one freedom that can't be taken away -- the gift of what is left of my mind and its yearning desire to express itself. My imaginations. My loves. My thoughts. And my desires. They can be squelched, but they are mine, and mine alone, swimming around in the tangled synapses of my brain. I may be crazy, but I have the freedom of thought and dreams -- freedoms no mortal man could take away from me forcefully or willfully. Dreams to strike out on my own, disowning my family to live life by my wits. And far off into the distance, the fat lady sings and she serenades me this last act in this play called Andrew's life. Let the next performers join the stage.

Positive things to be done Monday to take back control...

• Pester Social Security relentlessly about getting my disability put in my name. They will need a letter from my doctor I found out today. I wonder if he will do this? Could it be so simple?
• Get all household bills put in my name. Everything is in my father's name as it stands. No more threats of cutting off my electricity and the Internet!
• Get my car title. I know my father has it.
• Get my car insurance put in my name.
• Change doctors ASAP.
• Get a third party pharmacist.
• Simplify and reduce my medications to a more reasonable level to where I don't feel blah and drugged all the time.

This is going to take a gargantuan effort by me. I just wish I had some help and didn't have to go this alone -- a mentor or something. A confidant that would go with me and hold my hand in support. I am scared of causing trouble and creating waves. I am scared of the anxiety attacks that will result when dealing with Dad. Wish me luck. I am trying to seek out positives instead of becoming mired in the negatives!