Alice Kingsley: Do you think I've gone 'round the bend?

Charles Kingsleigh: I'm afraid so... you're mad. Bonkers. Off your head... but I'll tell you a secret... all of the best people are.

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Earlier today...

Today, I am wrestling with racing thoughts and a tinge of anxiety. My week promises to be full of things for me to do outside of writing and I'm stressing over it a little, but I want to keep my head up in the midst of my troubles and I thought of Alice in Wonderland. I love the quote above, it makes me feel a little better today.

Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite stories. Everything about this story speaks to the journey my life has taken. Depression is like that rabbit hole Alice fell down. Tossing and tumbling over and over into the darkness before you hit bottom. And Wonderland is like the world I wake up to every morning with Schizophrenia. Some things are recognizable and are even real and sometimes they aren't. It doesn't mean I'm never lucid, I am. But I sometimes see the world differently.

My vision of the here and now has never been clearer, despite the few apparitions of schizophrenia making an appearance, I am here and present. I've come across my Cheshire cat in the form of friends and my Absolem, in the form of my therapist (who is excellent by the way). My Tweedles are my children and my Jabberwocky is and has always been the reflection of myself in the mirror – the one I compete with every day and the one I got to battle with every day to keep the madness at bay.

For the most part, I fail and fail hard.

Like the Jabberwock on the other side of the looking glass, I sometimes see myself as a frightening creature. I've often felt, that, as much as I hate snakes, spiders and wasps...I am the worst thing walking about in my daily life. Remember what I said a ways back about monsters...they aren't born but they are created. And in my mind, I might be my own devil. What I mean by all of this, is this – I do more damage to myself than any person could have and it's all with the way I think about myself and how I treat myself. Sometimes, no other creature or person on earth is more frightening than the person I look at in the mirror every day. I recognize my reality in a very harsh way at times. . Every day I must contend with my hurtful thoughts and unpleasant behaviors. Every day I must reign myself in and make sure I am not forcibly harming another soul. This is something I have become mindful of. I wish no harm on anyone and mean them no harm.

Sometimes I think that if all the ugliness on the other side of the mirror were to just spill over on to this side, we might all be doomed. And these are the moments I reign myself in, reminding myself that there is no other side of the mirror, just me on this side fighting tooth and nail to be here. This is one of the lesser interesting things I do to myself. My imagination often gets the better of me, try as I might to reel it in, it gets away from me.

I once thought to write a fantasy based on all of things that happen to me. I thought about it hard too but never did it. The story just sits at the back of my mind waiting for the madness to clear enough for me to work it into something, as if it (the madness) were just a huge dark cloud hovering above me dropping poison into my mind. It's not. Nothing's there.

Today as it is Mental Health Monday for me, a day in which I will go and see my therapist and discuss what's going on. She listens as I talk about my life and the things I'm doing and why I think I am detrimental to my own health. While I strive to be a better person each day – there are still things I need to work on. I am not perfect nor will I ever be. I am a flawed individual that has found some comfort in being so but I, too, realize that I should not be too comfortable with my condition and must always be ready for healing.

I am healing. It's a slow process but I'm glad it's happening. If I were Alice, this would be the moment I'd begin to realize and recognize who I am and what I'm meant to be doing. My "muchness" is intact.

Later today...

I purposely wrote half of this early in the day and came back later to finish up. I thought that after my visit with my therapist, that I might have more insight to share on my journey through this life and I do. Nichelle and I talked about why I've been feeling the way that I do and what to do about it. We actually made a plan of attack for moments like these, for when I need something more than meds. It is both thorough and easy to remember. Act/Move/Speak/Seek.

Act – remove myself from the stressor

Move – use bi-lateral stimulation to calm myself (playing with a slinky because it uses right/left stimulus)

Speak – pray on the issue that has me upset

Seek – find a way to keep the calm and to readdress the issue when ready

I'm going to sum up what's going on like this – imagine you are a coffee maker. As that coffee maker you are set up to allow water to flow over the grounds to create all of the coffee you need – the drip remains open for the purposes of allowing the coffee to fall into the pot where it will brew. You are always open to receive the good things you need. This is beneficial but also a vulnerability because you assume that every good thing will flow through that drip. But something happens, little by little small increments of grounds (stuff that can ruin your coffee making experience) begin to fall into the pot. Little by little and over time that debris builds up in your pot because you are vulnerable to it.

So what would stop the grounds from slipping into the pot? A filter.

The filter acts like a shield to keep the grounds out of the coffee thus giving you the perfect cup. No debris, no grounds just pure liquid heaven. I am a coffee maker without a filter at the moment. I open and am receiving good things and bad things and I'm trying to process it altogether which is giving me a bitter product.

I am taking in everything around me, internalizing the hurt and pain and wrong doing that affects me directly and it's taking a toll. My filter is off. Where it was once on and was working perfectly well, I am without it now and I am trying to figure out why that is. My mental health is suffering a bit due to this and while I'm not lost in the deep dark forest of my mind, I stand at its entrance peering in wondering why I'm even there.

Mentally, I am weakened by the things that are going on within my life. I suspect that it is because I am not handling my stress as well as I used to. I think I got a little lax in my care of it but I think it happened because I wanted to rest. To know that I can just let go and not have to worry over every little detail of my life. That was killing me. And now I see that – maybe I let up too much or....maybe, I haven't loosened up that much at all??

I think over my life and assess the things that I believe in and the things that work for me. I believe that now is the time for an overhaul – this turn of the quarter thing that needs to happen in order for me to perform at my best. But how do you keep the world out when it's fighting so hard to get in and get at you? There is my problem. I feel as though it's all too much to deal with. I can't worry over this stuff yet that's what I'm doing. Wearing a path into the carpet of my bedroom, losing hair (because I keep cutting it) and wanting to bite my nails. I never ever, ever bite my nails. This madness that my life has become in the matter of a month is near crippling. Though I don't believe I am a lost cause...I am still here and still fighting, it just makes me wonder why I care about certain things so much.

Yet later still...

Writing this, has made me realize that maybe I do have a filter but maybe I've not sought after Him with all the areas of my life. Writing this has given me some clarity to my situation. I'm leaning more and more on my own power to get well and to do things when I should be leaning on my Lord and Savior. That's what he's there for and he wants to be able to help me in this way and I think I am denying him that. You know, I think what I've been doing is just applying my love of God to certain aspects of my life and not to all the aspects of my life. Certainly no harm can come from me doing this but I wonder why I do that.

And of course this leads to a slew of other personal questions that I have yet to answer...I swear my mind just takes things and run. Hmm...maybe I should really try to pen that story soon. It would have strong influences from Alice in Wonderland but in a very VERY different way. Maybe Wonderland could be the world through schizophrenic eyes.

Could be something there...maybe.

Guys, I'm going to do something I haven't done since I began this thing and that is.... ask for a prayer. A very specific prayer. I ask that you all pray for my sanity and for my heart as it is hurting kind of bad right now. I know you probably can't tell because while I always want to speak the truth, I also want to be light hearted at times and this was one of those times, I am in need of a prayer.

My mind...oh my mind is in need of peace and my heart in need of healing. If you have the time to spare, please say a prayer for me.

But in the meantime and in between time...I will continue to say my prayers for each of you.

I thank you for your time and for listening to me babble on. And as always, I thank you for reading.