Mental Health Support

... at least so far as my depression is under control. And even in my blackest un-medicated or mis-medicated depths, when I'm entirely dysfunctional, there's this autistic Mr. Magoo-like character inside me that keeps bumbling along. I can't see my obsessive-compulsive alter-ego when I'm away in the darkness, but he holds body and soul together until I return. He's a little bit more sophisticated than an auto-pilot, he does more than wash my hands and brush my teeth, but he's erratic as all hell. My major complaint is he forgets to eat and next thing you know I'm skeleton-man. He also got me kicked out of college. Twice. I graduated to spite him.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I came back from the darkness to find myself sliding down a street in Berkeley. Pain can wake a person up. (I imagine this is why some people cut... it brings them back.) My alter-ego had decided it was a good time to exit girlfriend's car, no matter it was moving. And it was probably a good decision too when I look back on it, sorry about the blood. She sent my stuff back to me in a box. No note, no nothing. Run, run away from crazy man who steps out of moving cars.

But it's funny, no really! I lived! I'm smiling as I write this.

And the story has a happy ending too. We went opposite directions, avoiding one another with EXTREME PREJUDICE, found our true loves, were fruitful and multiplied. Maybe someday she'll send me the money she owes me, leave me a house in La Jolla, Wall Street shares of absurd value, or something like that. But I hope she doesn't. Best leave the theater at the happily ever after.

Next story.

My grandma was insane and it was the mean kind of insanity. The last chapters of my grandma's life were a bloody horror show of the worst sort. Real blood, real horror. Imagine Alfred Hitchcock's birds flying out of grandma's mouth. Most of these birds with their razor beaks and talons tried to dismember my mom, but nobody was safe. It took the police and paramedics four hours to remove my grandma from her home. She bit, she cursed, she hit, she kicked, all her demons let loose.

My grandma's most minor demon was hoarding, and that's what got her out of the house. She'd become a physical danger to herself and others. She'd already maimed (and maybe even killed) a few people with her tongue, but the potential of burning real estate (and the people therein) attracts official notice.

A couple of years later my grandma was living in a nursing home, as nasty as ever (and occasionally as sweet) but slowed down by physical infirmity. She was a little old eighty pound lady in a wheelchair. She was still a hoarder too, there was at least a hundred pounds pounds of stuff tied to her wheelchair in plastic grocery bags. The nursing home demanded she keep the counter tops and floor and bed clear so she improvised... It was her wheelchair, and she could decorate it as she pleased. If she hadn't had money she'd have been a nasty old bag lady smoking butts she found in the gutter.

I was pushing her along in the nursing home yard and she handed me a plastic bag and asked me to pick up some pine cones. "The gardeners throw them away!" she said.

Knowing she'd turn into a demon if I refused, I picked up the pine cones, put them in the bag. She found a place on her wheelchair to tie them to.

That's funny.

If it's not, it's just another bloody tragedy.

I choose to think of this as a funny story.