"and there are stars, shining stars that light up the sky above our heads somewhere I do not remember ever returning to or leaving from." -A.W. Braunwin
love, jessieh12.30.2007
12.29.2007
One of the most beautiful girls in the world (see left)
"and down by the river the fisherman try and weep for the women, as stones, thrown like ships into the sea."-A.W. Braunwin
love, jessieh 12.27.2007
Goodnight Jenny and Finding Angela Shelton
A poem by Grace Paley
I needed to talk to my sister...
~
I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts
I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death
---
love, we
----
PS: Visit www.findingangelashelton.com .
I needed to talk to my sister...
~
I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts
I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death
---
love, we
----
PS: Visit www.findingangelashelton.com .
12.23.2007
46 things to be said. (Focus. Non-Sense.)
The Good and Bad
1. Jesus loves everyone.
2. I am in Columbia now. Away from school and while the break is refreshing, I see time as a big thing that frightens me. I don't know what to do with myself. I am still so tired and I find it hard to sit still.
3. I miss my roommate, Sam.
4. Patrick is coming to visit the family January 3-5. Granny is going to make him chicken and cheese croissants with cream and chicken soup. He will enjoy it, I'm sure.
5. Tonight, we are attending a Christmas festivity at my uncles house.
6. I wish I could attend church tonight with the twins but my guilt over not being at my uncle's house and the attitudes of accusing selfishness would be too bothersome. I surrender.
7. I spent last night with my twins and it was incredible. The eyes were holding tears back. I will spend Christmas day with them which is exciting.
8. Anxiety plagues me.
9. Star Dust is a fun movie.
10. I'd like to sleep for a long long long long time but feel unable.
11. Christmas hurts.
12. Jenny, I love you.
13. I am so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.
14. Lucy, oh Lucy? Where art thou angel of Chicora Lucy?
15. My stomach hurts and I feel fat. Obese, really.
16. There is a sadness here, in this list.
17. I'd like to burn the fiberoptic Christmas Tree in my grandmother's living room.
18. She has wooden floors now.
19. We draw a lot.
20. Evaluations went well at school. They didn't make me cry until the very end and the tears were happy tears.
21. The combination of relatively high-IQ, high levels of emotional sensitivity, being aware, and a history of chronic sexual abuse, rape = a young woman in need of a low quantity of Prozac and some sleeping pills.
22. Reading the book, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I've been crying since page seven.
23. I have yet to purchase Christmas gifts for anyone other than my Acting Instructors.
24. Someone said a broken heart would sting at first then make you stronger- whoever said that, they lied. It isn't the brokenness that makes you strong, it is the sting.
25. You need to visit Dooce.com.
26. Sharon Olds' poetry soothes the heart and reassures the brain.
27. My grandfather hasn't spoken to me in two weeks.
28. Thank you Vivian, Diane, S., Jenny, Angela, Brenda, K.F. and Amy. I love you.
29. Thank you Taylor, Savannah, Jordan, and Jordan. I love you.
30. Thank you Mere and Sigmund. I love you.
31. "Live or die but don't ruin everything." -Anne Sexton
32. I wish you well on the way to the wishing well.
33. The stomach hurts.
34. Never refuse homemade lemonade.
35. Donate a coat this season.
36. If you need a calender, please purchase this one: The Artconstellation Calendar
37. "May you dream you are dreaming in a warm soft bed, and may the voices inside you that fill you with dread make the sound of thousands of angels instead, tonight where you might be laying your head..." -Patty Griffin
38. We are tired. The image at the top of the page is a Mark Manders drawing and at the bottom a photograph by Chpaquette.
39. I have 9 missed calls on my cell phone.
40. Ms. Hepburn, we love you.
41. Yard Guy called yesterday and asked if I would spend time with him today, I said yes. He said he would call. He never did. I have been stood-up for the past 13 years of my life. That's disgusting.
42. I want to attend Julliard or Wellesley College.
43. I have yet to take the SAT.
44. The events from that night have no chronological order.
45. Merry Christmas.
46. Happy Holidays.
love, jessieh12.21.2007
From Heather B. Armstrong: Because I couldn't say it on the phone.
The following was written by Heather B. Armstrong at her wonderful website: http://www.dooce.com/. I have much respect for Heather and her website makes me smile everyday with her posts, her uploaded photos of her dog and every month with her happy-#month-old-letter to her daughter, Leta (pronounced "Lita" as in "Rita):
----
"I was recently at lunch with a few friends, one who had just been diagnosed with OCD that manifests itself in a need to straighten up everything around her, and I was all really? That's considered OCD? Because I thought that was just considered BEING ALIVE. And because she hasn't ever read this website she asked if I had ever been treated for a diagnosis abbreviated with capital letters. I looked across the table at my other friend, someone who is very familiar with what I have written here, and she almost gagged on an ice cube. I nodded and then explained that I'm in ongoing therapy for what's called C-R-A-Z-Y.
I feel like I need to say something today, right now, about my feelings toward therapy and medication, because in the last couple of months I've watched several people around me suffer needlessly because they were either too afraid or too arrogant to take care of their mental health. And I guess I'm trying to understand why anyone would resist trying to work through an issue that is making their life miserable, and that maybe if I came out and talked about what I have been through and how I feel about what I've been through, that someone may feel a little less embarrassed about getting help.
I suffer from chronic anxiety and depression, and I believe it started manifesting itself when I was in high school, maybe earlier. I didn't seek treatment, however, until my sophomore year in college when I was on the brink of dropping out, when I finally called my father and exposed a very dark side of me, explained that I did not have the ability to cope no matter how hard I prayed or tried to get over it. My mother had always sensed this about me, had watched bi-polar disorder wreck the lives of several of her brothers and sisters, and she had to convince my father to take this seriously. A week later I saw a therapist who prescribed Zoloft. That medication changed my life, lifted a dark cloud that had been tormenting me for years, and I stayed on that drug, healthy and happy and able to cope, up until Jon and I decided that we should try to get pregnant.
I never should have gone off that drug. I know this now, having suffered terrible postpartum depression that could have been avoided had I seen the red flags in my third trimester, had I taken early steps to deal with the symptoms. But three months after Leta's birth I was an inconsolable, suicidal mess. I was beyond repair, and all the drugs I tried in the following months would only make things worse: Risperdal, Ativan, Trazadone, Lamictal, Effexor, Abilify, Strattera, Klonopin, Seroquel. I couldn't sleep, couldn't unclench my jaw or hands, couldn't imagine how I would get through another ten minutes. After weeks of threatening to leave Jon if he had me committed to a hospital, I finally gave in and committed myself.
Because I was under constant supervision, my doctor in the hospital was able to give me therapeutic quantities of drugs immediately: 40mg of Prozac, 10mg of Valium, 2400mg of Neurontin. It was a combination he had given to countless women who had suffered postpartum depression, one that had worked time and time again. I felt a difference within two hours, and if you ask Jon he will tell you that when he brought Leta up to the hospital that afternoon to have lunch, he saw Heather for the first time in seven months, not that awful woman who liked to throw keys at his head. I truly believe that my doctor in the hospital saved my life. I owe that man my life.
In the years since my hospital stay I have tapered off Valium completely and now only take 300mg Neurontin at night. I still take 40mg Prozac every day, and here's where I cannot be emphatic enough, I will continue to take it or something like it for the rest of my life. I will not ever be off medication. I continue to see my therapist, not every week or even every month, but whenever I hit a road block and need someone to help me talk my way through it. Sometimes I have bad days, sometimes bad weeks, but the medication enables me to cope, to see a way out and over those times. I am not ashamed of any of this.
I think many people are afraid that if they take medication or even agree to see a therapist that they are in some way admitting failure or defeat. Or they have been told by their boyfriend or their mother or their best friend that they should buck up and get over it, and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Well then, let me be weak. Let me be a failure. Because being over here on this side, where I see and think clearly, where I'm happy to greet my child in the morning, where I can logically maneuver my way over tiny obstacles that would have previously been the end of the world, over here being a failure is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than the constant misery of suffering alone.
Yesterday I wanted to say this to someone but didn't because I'm afraid she will stop talking to me about certain things because I'm not telling her what she wants to hear. She wants me to tell her that she is right and that if she ignores a certain very large problem it will go away. But I don't understand why being right is more important that being happy, why someone would go on living with a sick, nauseating swarm of junk in her stomach rather than trying to figure out how to fix it, because the act of even admitting that she feels this way is somehow a character flaw.
All of this is to say that I am a success story. I am a victory for the mental health profession. And if you're even the tiniest bit on the fence about therapy or medication or herbs or acupuncture or prayer or meditation, whatever it is that you would turn to to try and pull your way out of sadness but are afraid to because of all that it would mean, here is this crazy woman in the Utah desert who admitted and accepted all of those horrible things about herself and in doing so found a better life."
I feel like I need to say something today, right now, about my feelings toward therapy and medication, because in the last couple of months I've watched several people around me suffer needlessly because they were either too afraid or too arrogant to take care of their mental health. And I guess I'm trying to understand why anyone would resist trying to work through an issue that is making their life miserable, and that maybe if I came out and talked about what I have been through and how I feel about what I've been through, that someone may feel a little less embarrassed about getting help.
I suffer from chronic anxiety and depression, and I believe it started manifesting itself when I was in high school, maybe earlier. I didn't seek treatment, however, until my sophomore year in college when I was on the brink of dropping out, when I finally called my father and exposed a very dark side of me, explained that I did not have the ability to cope no matter how hard I prayed or tried to get over it. My mother had always sensed this about me, had watched bi-polar disorder wreck the lives of several of her brothers and sisters, and she had to convince my father to take this seriously. A week later I saw a therapist who prescribed Zoloft. That medication changed my life, lifted a dark cloud that had been tormenting me for years, and I stayed on that drug, healthy and happy and able to cope, up until Jon and I decided that we should try to get pregnant.
I never should have gone off that drug. I know this now, having suffered terrible postpartum depression that could have been avoided had I seen the red flags in my third trimester, had I taken early steps to deal with the symptoms. But three months after Leta's birth I was an inconsolable, suicidal mess. I was beyond repair, and all the drugs I tried in the following months would only make things worse: Risperdal, Ativan, Trazadone, Lamictal, Effexor, Abilify, Strattera, Klonopin, Seroquel. I couldn't sleep, couldn't unclench my jaw or hands, couldn't imagine how I would get through another ten minutes. After weeks of threatening to leave Jon if he had me committed to a hospital, I finally gave in and committed myself.
Because I was under constant supervision, my doctor in the hospital was able to give me therapeutic quantities of drugs immediately: 40mg of Prozac, 10mg of Valium, 2400mg of Neurontin. It was a combination he had given to countless women who had suffered postpartum depression, one that had worked time and time again. I felt a difference within two hours, and if you ask Jon he will tell you that when he brought Leta up to the hospital that afternoon to have lunch, he saw Heather for the first time in seven months, not that awful woman who liked to throw keys at his head. I truly believe that my doctor in the hospital saved my life. I owe that man my life.
In the years since my hospital stay I have tapered off Valium completely and now only take 300mg Neurontin at night. I still take 40mg Prozac every day, and here's where I cannot be emphatic enough, I will continue to take it or something like it for the rest of my life. I will not ever be off medication. I continue to see my therapist, not every week or even every month, but whenever I hit a road block and need someone to help me talk my way through it. Sometimes I have bad days, sometimes bad weeks, but the medication enables me to cope, to see a way out and over those times. I am not ashamed of any of this.
I think many people are afraid that if they take medication or even agree to see a therapist that they are in some way admitting failure or defeat. Or they have been told by their boyfriend or their mother or their best friend that they should buck up and get over it, and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Well then, let me be weak. Let me be a failure. Because being over here on this side, where I see and think clearly, where I'm happy to greet my child in the morning, where I can logically maneuver my way over tiny obstacles that would have previously been the end of the world, over here being a failure is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than the constant misery of suffering alone.
Yesterday I wanted to say this to someone but didn't because I'm afraid she will stop talking to me about certain things because I'm not telling her what she wants to hear. She wants me to tell her that she is right and that if she ignores a certain very large problem it will go away. But I don't understand why being right is more important that being happy, why someone would go on living with a sick, nauseating swarm of junk in her stomach rather than trying to figure out how to fix it, because the act of even admitting that she feels this way is somehow a character flaw.
All of this is to say that I am a success story. I am a victory for the mental health profession. And if you're even the tiniest bit on the fence about therapy or medication or herbs or acupuncture or prayer or meditation, whatever it is that you would turn to to try and pull your way out of sadness but are afraid to because of all that it would mean, here is this crazy woman in the Utah desert who admitted and accepted all of those horrible things about herself and in doing so found a better life."
-------
love, jessieh
12.17.2007
Nerving the stomach.
Today marks the beginning of exam day. I have a French exam that I have not prepared for in appoximately one hour. I am not going to prepare for it. I spent nine hours yesterday in English-exam limbo. I took the English exam this morning and did well. I am a nervous wreck. For gentle and not so gentle reasons.
The gentle reasons:
I have exams all week. French is going to be disgustingly terrible. I looked at the study guide and my brain said, "Qu'est-ce what?" I gave up.
Tonight Studio III performs our scene showcase. I am so scared. I am terrified. And excited. Terribly excited about this. I know that we will feel so good as soon as it is over. As bad as it may go, I mean, worst possible outcome, it will still be much better than it would have been three months ago and this shows growth.
The not-so-gentle reasons
It is less than ten days until Christmas.
I leave for Columbia on Thursday. I am nervous about going home.
I feel disconnected, completely disconnected from the world around me right now.
The Good:
Jesus loves everyone.
Mere and the twins and a very special lady are coming to see the showcase tonight. It will be nice to see them all.
I was able to reconnect with someone who I have been trying to communicate with for nearly six years. The reconnection was a God-ordained one.
The Bad:
I am not hungry ever.
I am not studying for the French Exam. It scares me to much.
love, jessieh
12.09.2007
An update from the speakers after all this time.
An update from the speakers:
It has been quite some time since I have actually taken the time to write. Now it seems as though I haven't any idea what to write. Life has been incredibly busy. I am in a scene from James McLure's Laundry and Bourbon, Ms. Hepburn in one of my scene partners, which is exciting. We do not feel that we have really been able to perform the escence of the scene yet and this is disapointing. I dissapoint myself often. The self-esteem is at an alltime low. Thankfully, after over a year of psychotherapy I am able to cope with this more effectively. I can't imagine how many scars there would be on the stomach this year, or how many operations I would have had performed on the esophagus. Self-mutilation and purging are not two examples of healthy coping skills. Every day, I want to throw up my food. By Grace, we do not. School is going by very very fast. really starting to enjoy the modern dance class, pulled the chemistry grade up, failed the last english test, learning to take more and more risks in acting, I am started to feel things, in life and onstage and this excites me. I want more than anything to be able to connect with people and ideas in a way that I haven't been able to before. I also hope to continue organizing things in a way that will allow me to learn so much about the world around me.
This holiday season has been incredibly painful. Most days I spend talking to myself and reminded myself of who I am, and where I am, and what is going on around me. I lose time alot. I forget things often. I spend time in another world, a better place many days and I don't know what happens when I am away there. This is part of living during Christmas. I am fearful that I will not get to spend time with the people I love this year for some horrific reason, yet the logical, the most logical part of my mind that exists tells me that I will.
I am grateful for the love in my life. I am thankful for the life I have and I am sad, very sad everyday.
love, jessieh
"We are the green leaves on December trees."
-Ms.Hepburn, Jessieh, Mary, and Ana
12.03.2007
A beautiful woman named Lucy
Tonight, while I was at dinner, I met this incredible woman. Her name is Lucy. She is beautiful. I will write more about her once I am given permission to do so.
Love, jessieh
PS: and we were having one of the worst days of our lives until she showed up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)