Getting Your Arm Gnawed Off by a Shark

Back in 2007-2009 ish, I kept a blog, The Oxygen Chronicles. The Oxygen Chronicles was about breathing in all forms -- physically, psychologically, philosophically...on and on. It talked a lot about American Idol, too; this one won't.

At essence, it was about how we all are just trying to breathe. As it says in the header, I popped into the world back in 1971. I came out backwards, and no doctor had prepared my mother for a breech birth.

Right away I was a pain in the ass, but you really can't blame me:

First, imagine coming feet first out of a scary 1970's vagina. Secondly, I was like a plane on a clogged runway, waiting for permission to lift off and head for... Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester aside, being stuck must have been horrible, plus no one dropped an oxygen mask.

I got back at all of them by being dead silent and the color of a plum. Then, I disappeared.

My mother cried, and cried. My father paced and fumed. My mother thought I was deformed. That was her worst-case scenario - not that my organs were rotting away in my mucus clogged chicken body, but that I was a cyclops or elf-eared.

Eventually, a nurse strolled into the hospital room, cradling my lilac-hued self and presented me to my mother. I was starry-eyed and gurgling with reflux. Same as today.

Then, I coded, but at least I had a nose.

Breathing has never been intuitive to me. Aside from a lifetime of asthma, when I become anxious, I hold my breath and stiffen my muscles.  I stop myself from breathing. (Do you do that, too? Next time you feel anxious, check your breathing. Exhale for a little relief.)

But, so many of us are struggling to breathe. We don't want to get out of bed; not only that, but we wonder how anyone else does. Who are these alien life forms - these people who actually want to pull from bed, put their corny feet on the floor and get out of their fuzzy pj pants?

On my worst days, during the most challenging periods in my life, I view people through my high school eyes. I see human beings as happy or miserable. Winners or losers. Popular or unwanted.

But, when I'm feeling more rational or challenge my thinking, I know that's not true.

My unhealthy self sees a fixed caste.  Some folks are just perfect. Their lives are a song. When I measure myself with that kind of yardstick, of course I feel like a failure. There is no grey area. But, being static is not a natural state for anything. There's the old adage that "The only constant is change." Something like that. But, it's true.

People's lives exist on a continuum. There are wonderful years when their marriages are working well, life is prosperous, jobs are well-paid -- all is doing well. But, all it takes is a minute, or an event and everything changes.

As a teenager, I listened to America's Top Forty with Dick Clark every Sunday. One Sunday, Whitesnake was sailing high at #1 with "Here I Go Again." Weeks flew by at number one, and Tawny Kitaen kept twerking on Jaguars. One day, she fell off the hood. Then, she noticed David Coverdale's acne pits. She realized they both had severely damaged hair.

If that song didn't stay at number one, what chance do you and I have?

If we want to stay fixed, we'll live fixed. But, we're not meant to. Change is our true nature.


I'm sure you can come up with incredible boundaries that get pushed every day. Animals that transcend abuse to ride on Zoombas. People whose arms are bitten off by a shark, yet they still find a way to surf. Two months later, they either win the world surfing championship or are carried away like a hoagie into the deep sea.


**The documentary about the blond chick who got her arm bitten off my a tiger shark was on today, so I had a healthy shift in my thinking. Tomorrow, my back pain will be raging or my hormones will be swinging, and I'll see myself as a forever loser living in a cruel, brutal world.

Stay tuned.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: CALL

1-800-273-8255

1-800-273-TALK

A handful of years ago I was in a critical place.

I was 39 years old, and safe to say things hadn't turned out the way quite the way I'd planned. I hadn't been able to have children. I'd lost my first and only house to foreclosure. My then-husband had been fired the year before for sexual harassment. On top of that, he'd been lying and cheating for at least a year, all piggybacked by a (his) porn addiction that blew up a good desktop. I'd become isolated from old friends and family. I was humiliated.

Mental and physical health problems had conspired until I was a hideous mill churning out weakness. I watched my friends from college buy beautiful houses, gather more degrees, get higher paying, increasingly impressive jobs and have more beautiful children.

I felt worthless.

My life circumstances had eroded my dignity so badly I barely existed anyhow. My career had gone kerplunk. I was in relentless physical and emotional pain.

I was a clown-car of insults, worries, pain, and problems.

The only image I can offer is this:

After so many years of hard work, I held nothing in my hands but a square of antique lace. No matter how I tried to keep it, no matter how I gripped it, it was disappearing thread by thread.

I watched it disintegrate until it disappeared. Everything felt weightless in my hands.


In terms of a moving-on strategy, I had none.  Money, car, credit, a place to live? Nah. Why breach to the surface after a ten year marriage with anything to show for it?

Oh, and there's that self-respect thing.  That was all gone too.


I was just a shred of the lace myself. I had no hope.


It was all so unfair, I thought. I had spent a lifetime kicking through endless problems like a bunch of dried-out leaves; I felt I had clearing paths that just got cluttered again.


Before I knew it, I was in an unfamiliar state, surrounded by unfamiliar people. I was more alone than ever.

I had no one to listen to me.

I was actively suicidal. No one knew how severely fucked up I was. I tried to keep a good face on, but I knew I couldn't.

I called these guys.  They were awesome.

You will not be judged. Your particular story will be valued.



These are people who will hear you, not just listen.

They also referred me to a great counselor in my area.

Please call.

Please.

The world needs you. You are here for a reason. Please just hand on long enough to start finding what that is.


Get help --- YOU CAN FEEL BETTER!


If you need more info, email me at hinsleyspsyched@gmail.com.






24/7 Suicide Prevention Hotline: Make the Call



"No matter what problems you are dealing with, we want to help you find a reason to keep living. By calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255) you’ll be connected to a skilled, trained counselor at a crisis center in your area, anytime 24/7."


Answers to Your Questions About the Lifeline

Merry- Thinking and Happy Yanking.

Next year if I am still alive (questionable -- serious asthma, often exercised induced, and I'm in training as a Willy-legged Mountaineering Water Bottle Cyclist, the fiercest athlete there is), I will make a really great wish and yank the merrythought.


Today, I came across a new word. Merrythought. Yes, it's antiquated. It's British: It's the furcula of a fowl.

It's the wishbone.

The whole wishbone deal is pretty gross if you think about it. Like a lot of Thanksgiving-celebrating kids, I'd stalk the kitchen windowsill for days, waiting for that nasty bone to dry and get all brittle so I could snap the bigger piece, pack my bags and head for Disney, leaving my sister heartbroken with the tinier shard just a splinter in her palm.

I took the wishbone thing seriously. Very seriously.

It was a symbol of hope, a sign of thanksgiving, not the actual meal or day, but the wonder of opening your home and hearth to others and nourishing souls.

But, it was also a power-struggle. Struggling over that jagged grey bird bone is a primal contest, something I could see Dwight Shrute and Cousin Mose fighting over to the very end, marking the days of harvest at Shrute Beet Farms.

And I get that. On a day meant to cherish your beloveds, I'd be up in my bedroom running in place doing thigh slaps getting ready to watch my  sister's dreams plummet like dying stars.

The wishbone-breaking game has been around since the days of Plymouth Rock. Birds were believed to carry the gift of foresight under their wings. Modernfarmer.com says, "Whenever the Etruscans slaughtered a chicken, they would harvest its wishbone and set it out in the sun to dry (in hopes of preserving the chicken’s divine powers). Passerby would then pick up the bone in order to hold it in their hands and softly stroke it while making wishes upon it. This is where the wishbone gets its modern-day name."

(No matter how many times I read that passage, I can't get past "softly stroke." Beautifully lliterative, and so grossly perverse. Nice work.)

Anyhow, the wishbone...it's such a homely little tool -- hideous, unstable, and rotting with mystery.

Does it have a rival? Does it have an ugly-twin - like a tossup between Kristen Bell's sloth-cry, Farrah Abraham's everything about being an ungrateful teenage slut-cry, and Kim K.'s painful looking attempt at emotion?

Perhaps a turkey's talon found underfoot in a dark, moss-covered forest, then left in someone's pocket for a week until it's put through the washer and dryer, on the hottest cycle, then had a string attached and hung on the Christmas Tree

Anyway, Thanksgiving, or any other holiday, doesn't have to suck. Just find the madness in it.



Yank that bone!

Moving When You're a Hot Mess of Disorganization, Asthma & Depression

Everything feels impossible to understand these days -- from how a reality TV star Donald Trump has ascended this far in the GOP polls, to how the term "affluenza" has become part of our vernacular...

What I do understand is that I am moving at the end of the month and I am terrified.

I'm pretty stumped about how I'm going to execute the move. For anyone who has issues with disorganization (something that is characteristic of  people with mood disorders/depression/chronic illness), a move is exceptionally terrifying.

A hot mess of an apartment becomes an even a bigger hot mess while in transit and upon arrival it expands like a sea monkey.


I dread all of it. If you're broke as a joke, the fear quadruples because you feel so vulnerable.

 If you have an animal(s), you dread if for them. I have one 17 pound orange tabby cat named He Who Will Not Be Named. This time, I have had him for 13 years. Altogether, we have spent three lifetimes together, soaring hand and paw through ice-covered sparkly tunnels while eating powdered donuts.

He has never had a urinary or fecal oops -- unless we move. As soon as the poor guy is loaded in the car he pees everywhere. Yes, I bring towels, but it's a pain in the ass because I then have to pull over to clean the the carrier, and of course his paws and belly are all pee-soaked, and he's anxious and wide-eyed and desperate to escape. Of course, he has no idea that escaping the warm jalopy would be a poor choice when it's 8 degrees outside and coyotes like cats.

Once his bladder empties, the horrible howling echos through the car. He sounds like a cat who is in her first heat, and happens to still live right up the road from her perverted father and brother, both who like her, like her. I don't know if the familial bond made the lovemaking worse for this particular female cat (this story is obviously from personal experience), but seeing the coitus certainly screwed with my head for a few days. Slipping on an icy driveway wearing a nightgown and slippers, I attempted a fierce tug of war, but learned that cat penis is a mighty opponent.

So, she was knocked up and on the run. I felt like shit about the whole escapade, so took her home and named her Bertha. This story has a great ending. Bertha had two adorable kittens in a box in my living room. They both have heads and legs. I wasn't sure if the kittens would be properly assembled, but cuteness transcended incest and wah lah...two adorable babies.

All three have good homes and none are sluts.

So, I'm procrastinating about the move, which stems from fear, which makes everything worse.

Currently, my life is as scary as one of those dungeons where witches were kept during the Salem Witch Trials, and are now used as museums and scary, expensive haunted venues. This is also from personal experience. It was Halloween. I have no idea how I ended up in a freaking witch museum by myself. I froze and cried. They had to turn on the emergency lights (which ruined things for everyone), then backed me up like a bus  - beeeep, beeeep, beeeep.

Everyone behind me was pissed or laughing. I mean, little kids were skipping through the thing like it was Disney's Clubhouse and I was pissing myself.

I am similarly anxious about this move. I'm really scared and stumped, which just edges out being a scared stump.

IN ADDITION, I've had lifelong cold-induced asthma and am not supposed to do anything in sub-30 degree weather but walk from warm building to warm building with a scarf wrapped around my mouth to keep my respiratory system all moist (I HATE THAT WORD!). Since steroid and rescue inhalers don't help enough to keep me from dying in 3 minutes or less, I have to now buy a 100.00 portable nebulizer so I'm not found face down in yellow snow, which would just be my luck.

Even better, I'll be face first in a pile of snow and no one will notice except for the neighbor's dog who will trot over and lift his leg over my head.

This all just sucks and I'm freaking myself out writing this, so me and my frog pjs will go collapse in a ball of horror.

Kim Kardashian's 2016 Resolutions, I Mean Small Goals

Last summer, I started Skrapping Kim. I'm new to the scrapbook world, but went to Michael's and found the most plastic, blank book I could find and a whole lot of Rub Ons.

And, what great timing: the announcement of her 2nd pregnancy came along like a blast of shit from a cow's behind.

No one thought a second child would happen.  Months before Kim had shared, "The doctors said he thinks I'm having sex too much. He said one time is more powerful…so we've tried everything."

And, Lord she struggled.

She complained, "I'm really not complaining, I'm just being honest about [it]. I hate it...I'm not going to sit here and lie and act like it's the most blissful experience. It's awful..."It [Pregnancy] is the worst experience of my life."

It blows because these comments must sting a lot of people. Kim, a woman who has had to mount Kanye West 15 times a day, looking at his misery face while matching her rhythm to the slap of his chest medallions, should understand the agony of women who would do anything to have a child --  women who pee on sticks until dehydration in hope of pregnancy.

Due to exhaustion, she is setting small goals, though she concedes that "Long-term goals (like saving money or learning a new language) are important, too."

Most of her followers can't find the time to learn Igbo, though I call BS anyway. Can you see Kim ordering Rosetta Stone off late night TV?

And we poor slobs saving money? Ha. My sister can't even patch the hole in the roof so her kids stop tripping over buckets.


Here are Kim's officially released "small goals":

1. Dumping the weight that Saint "caused" (and Saint on the ugliest, fattest nanny she could find) is the "number one thing [she] wants to accomplish!"

2.  At some point it will be time for Kim to take on her 20 million dollar mansion.  Designers will bust ass to make it homey and less like a factory full of tuning forks.

3.  "I'd like to do some really cool photo shoots for my Web site."  I just can't.

4. She wants "a few more fun weekend trips" with her followers. Shit. Now I have to decide between fun weekend trips with Kim and fixing my kid's cleft palate.

5.  "I also want to plan a West family vacation—it’s a project in itself to find the time!"

*That ass mounting a jet ski? I have a fat ass, but as least I would't submerge my craft under a blast of silicone.

6. Lastly, she wants to learn "how to do the splits!"  My brain's clogged with comments, so I'm just gonna wrap up this post.


She's an overachiever and I now feel like a loser.

Not really, though. While I do have goals, my mental and physical issues keep me living one day at a time. I find when I make goals, or promise family or friends that I'll attend a party or meet them at the gross Olive Garden, I take the chance of letting them down. Then, I feel really guilty. If it's a holiday celebration, and for whatever reason I just don't feel that I can handle the day, I'm leaving myself open to a day alone - especially while knowing others are together, laughing, being "normal," and having fun -- and that may make me feel worse.

Then, I feel emptier, more alone, and like I will never fit. I consider what they think of me, and why I rarely attend events. Maybe they think I'm Rudolph and have a bulbous red nose, so logically, they think I'm at an AA meeting. "Wow," they raise their glasses, "she's really making healthy choices!"


By the way, I don't drink..but, I do like Captain Crunch with Berries and I'm 44 years old.



H.




*we all know that twat was repaired before she even saw the kid

A True Introduction: And My Story Begins...(with a shark pillow named Junior)

Mental health diagnoses are funny. I don't mean funny ha-ha, I mean tricky; these disorders are so difficult to identify, diagnose and treat.


I am not a doctor or mental health counselor. I am just a 44 year old woman in pajamas covered with little foxes who is writing to you on my newish laptop that I sat on a few months back, breaking the touch screen. And, I had wanted a touch screen so badly! Well, I do have one. It just doesn't work.

But, given the fact that I'm a plump kind of chick, I'm lucky the outcome wasn't worse. Seriously. I'm a couple Ding Dongs short of a motherboard fire.

The Universe gave me a gift that day -- a bitchy reminder to watch what I'm doing ( I have a hard time staying in the moment and not being distracted. Look! There's a squirrel!), but not a full admonishment in the form of breaking it completely. So, I have to keep reminding myself to pay attention. Forty-four years of that message, and I'm still busting things with my ass.

So, that's me. I will unfurl the flag that is my unusual life as we go along in my new blog.


I opened Making Love in the Psych Ward as a New Year's offering. I don't want to make resolutions this year. I always break them, probably because anything I have been wanting to do better at I am either already doing better, or else have failed, failed again and have recently failed, but much worse, sooooo I will get back to it when I freaking want to. A date on a calendar will not make one toss the Friendly's Jubilee Roll that's still in one's freezer (plus the one in the back), or to remind one to get one's fat ass in bed at 11:00 and not 3AM.

Obviously, I am the one.


ANYWAY -- back to what I came here to write:

As I assemble this blog (as you can tell it's quite new), I will provide information in an informal, conversational way. I will openly discuss my experiences, both horrible and good - though you'll see the one that starts with "h" more frequently.

My road has been long and it might as well be yellow, because yellow is a bright, cheery color, and why not be bright and cheery tonight?

(Because my life has really sucked for the last few weeks with no end in sight - but, one thing I can promise you when you're coping with a mental illness, or your loved one has a mental illness and you're totally lost and scared, you gotta try to find something good, or funny, or heartwarming to get through the experience or day or hospital stay or whatever -- some kind of thread that winds through your life and experiences that you can touch/hold to/reach for when you're having a hard time.

I am 44 and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in my teens, and bipolar disorder when I was 19. At the age of 26, I was "labeled" in my medical file as schizo-affective, which is not the case. Imagine when surprise when I saw it.

But, that was before I had done much swimming in the murky swamp of coding and insurance billing. The "steeper" the diagnosis, the better the rate. Garden variety depressives aren't even a blip on the screen anymore.

Or something like that.


Everything in this blog is based on my own opinions and experiences, unless something is based on other's opinions and experiences.

I am not a doctor or therapist or even someone who sells them their coffee in the morning I don't want any lawsuits. Not that you will get anything good, though I might still have a few nuts left over from Thanksgiving.

I will also provide more formal information such as statistics, historical information about mental health, media issues - that will be fun! - doing the best I can to make it
interesting and readable.

We don't want a bunch of TL;DRs on here, but this post is already super long, so I'm sure a few of you have dropped off along the way. Those who have hung in there, awesome.

Though, that's assuming that anyone is here at all and by the looks of my stats, I am talking to my cat.



OK, I'm gonna go watch the Travel Channel and snuggle with my great white shark pillow. His name is Junior, but you have to pronounce it JUNE-YA!

I have no idea why, but that's the rule for tonight.

My Life is a Yardsale and Everything Must Go: 2:00 AM Randoms

Some Thoughts as We Begins Our Travels

• I hate the word slacks
• The word pud is funny.
• I have never worn jorts.

• Psychiatric treatment floors or facilities are usually filled with coloring books and containers of broken crayons, word search books, puzzles of all kinds, Popsicles and pudding cups, suicide blankets, too many pills, asshole doctors, and nurses, some wonderful, whose shifts seem to rotate at all points of the sun. The "counselors" (floor staff) are really just babysitters. They usually sit behind the front desk, gossip, shop online and make fun of the crazies. I hate them.

• When I was 5 years old, I had my first ballet and tap recital.  In the class were twin boys who wore matching black leotards without tights. Their thighs were white and meaty. One of them was my recital partner. He peed all over me, then ran off the stage crying. It was my big break so I kept dancing until the teacher came out with paper towels to wipe the pee off the stage.  A few parents clapped. It was really awkward, and It was my last recital.

• I wish that I had lost my virginity in the back of a steamy stagecoach with a wimpy dude in suspenders and a bowl cut. I honestly don't remember exactly where I lost mine, but it definitely wasn't as sexy.

• Ever have Bok Choy hanging off the end of your nose at an office function, and no one cares to tell you?

• When I was really little, I saw two lizards having sex on a crowded mini-golf course. I pointed and yelled to my Dad, "Look! He's giving the other one a piggy back ride!" He didn't correct me, which is too bad. I believe in teaching sexuality in a healthy, open manner - like doing it behind dumpsters in the psych ward and filming it for documentary purposes.

• I was 8 when the bumper of my mother’s Camaro fell off when we hit a pothole on I-95. I cried non-stop for two days.  It was a tragedy of immense proportions and almost inconceivable that something so horrible could happen. I have always had emotional responses disproportionate to the original incident. I drove my parents crazy. And, myself, though someone had already given me a ride there. Who? Why?

• If you fold a Land O' Lakes butter carton just right it looks like the Native American lady has rosy nipples. I swear it was done on purpose.

• The first year I taught 7th grade we had a particularly horrid student named JR. He mooned me daily. One afternoon I sent him to the office for throwing a desk at a girl. He was super pissed at me because it was his last strike before suspension. Running from the room, he called back over his shoulder "Go fornicate yourself!" It was his greatest insult. I don't miss JR.

• When my mania was untreated, I'd travel night after night on dark highways to meet people I'd spoken to online for an hour or less. Along the way, I'd buy bottles of cheap-ass vodka, cigarettes, condoms -  self destruction kits. I am lucky to be alive.

• I believe in body memories. Or soul memories. Something like that.

• I used to play Marco Polo by myself in the pool. "Marco!" I'd yell, then swim to the other side of the pool. "Polo!" I'd answer. Does it get more embarrassing? (Also, does that mean I played with myself in the pool?)

• My then 70 year old mother sold her 1978 metal single wide trailer because she couldn't swing the small mortgage, lot rent, transportation, medical care, utilities and food on $750.00 a month in social security. When I hear "trailer trash," I think about all of the people who'd lop off an arm to even get into a trailer.

• I was less than a hair width's close to having 6 weeks of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) when I was 25 years old. The drug Lamictal saved me from the brain fry. I remember waking up one morning after being on Lamictal for a week. I felt like a deaf person hearing sound for the first time.

• When I was a kid, I loved riding around with my Dad on Saturday mornings. He was gone all week working, so this was my only hang out time with him. In summer, he'd put the top down on the convertible and I remember looking up at the green canopy. Butterflies flew around us like confetti. Since this was the 70s, everyone pretty much drove around drinking. My dad always had a can of Bud stationed between his legs. I loved when he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to "Help me, Rhonda.” I miss feeling that carefree. I can't remember the last time I felt anything close to those mornings.

• Hair clippings can be used to deter snails from your favorite gardener's prize-winning zucchinis or a healthy green lawn. Once I donated my hair to a garden that was struggling to survive against ravenous snails. It didn't work. What a waste of good herr.

• A few years ago I passed out in Borders. The contents of my totebag spilled everywhere, and since I'd just returned from a weekend "away" it was filled with an array of items including a pair of Hello Kitty underwear, a forgotten about half-full carton of McDonald's fries, several medication bottles, dirty socks and a bunch of tampons and maxi pads, one of which somehow lodged itself between the boots of a life-sized, cardboard display of Annie Lennox. You should have seen the manager trying to wrangle the pad before other shoppers came upon the spectacle.

• I almost dropped out of college to become a police officer...and a hairdresser. Both would have cool, but I wonder which would one have been part time? A Policing Hairdresser or a Hairdressing Officer?

• I live a few minutes from Steven King's house. The gates are really cool. I wish talent ran in the water. Money would be better though so I don't have to do the work. 

• When I adopted my now 12 year old cat, Mikey Likes It, he was just a baby. I came upon him in a pawn shop where he was sleeping in a gigantic gold birdcage. Talk about a role reversal. And, how completely odd come to think that he was in a bird cage. In a pawn shop. And why was I in the pawnshop? When did I ever have anything to pawn except for my VHS Richard Simmons Dancing to the Oldies collection? OK, it's my neighbors, but she won't notice. I borrowed them last year and I'm still massive so she's probably like "Oh, the poor dear..."

• I live in Maine and despise all sea food, especially lobster. I just don't get it, but really wish I did. I will never sit at the cool kids' table as long as I live in this state.

• In my opinion, the best poem I have ever written was inspired by Rob Thomas' neck.

• Finally, these lyrics from the 1977 hit, "Never Been to Me..."

• I have been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me...I did, however, move like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed ‘em what I’ve got..."

• What exactly does it really mean to show 'em what you got? Got how? In the mail? With an STD?