Scrambled eggs for a brain.
Voices faint and out of my head.
Flat affect.
Hiding in the house.
Laying on the couch, under a blanket, clutching a pillow to my chest.
Finished watching "The Return of the King."
Decide to get up to see if that helps.
Complete some household chores.
Start a pot of chili for a friend.
Bring out a piece of a tree to personalize.
Cook thin pork chops for protein.
Lay back down, under a blanket, clutching a pillow to my chest.
Start watching Law & Order Season 7.
Look at cat tree with strings hanging.
Get scissors and waste basket and start trimming.
Episode is a young guy with schizophrenia.
As episode is playing and I am trimming, I start talking.
I am talking back to the episode.
I am interjecting my thoughts, my warnings, my experience.
I am sharing this with a tv character.
I am fervent in what I am saying.
I become more vocal.
My voice becomes loud.
My front door is shut and I am glad because no one can hear me.
My voices are participating.
They have joined in to help educate this young man just like they helped me.
That's why they mustn't leave.
My voices are safe.
They've helped me survive horrific abuse just like my
Split off personality, Erik, when I was 8.
How do I keep them and live with them?
I hid in my house.
Then I went into my shed.
It needed to be organized side to side so that's what I did.
It took a long time to think through what to do first then next and so on.
My scrambled eggs brain couldn't concentrate.
But eventually, I accomplished what I set out to do.
Schizophrenia and Split Personality.
Just two of the many forms of mental illness I deal with.
When the medications can't manage the neurotransmitters right,
CRASH!
And that's what's been slowly happening until yesterday when my head hit the pavement (a metaphor) and my serotonin and other neurotransmitters scattered onto the little dirt road that people seldom travel.
That little dirt road is located inside my brain.
Few people are invited in and even then, fewer stay.
I am prayerfully selective on who is extended an invitation.
It's my home, my safe place, a familiar place, God's provision.
It has everything I need to sustain the life God wants me to have.
But every now and then, it needs a tune-up.
And that's when I see my psychiatrist.
Especially when I've crashed.
It would be ideal if it was before and I did see him before.
It's just that the new medication didn't work and perhaps made it worse.
He doesn't like the voices because they distract me.
At least I wasn't suicidal.
