Not A Banner Year...

I’ve had better years.  Yesterday, I ran into a former student at the Sheriff’s Work Program.  For those of you who are productive members of society and have not committed many felonies, the Sheriff’s Work Program is a clever government ploy whereby citizens pay to work – and  stay out of jail.  This year, after having received a review from my principal stating that I should be a Mentor Teacher - -that I had a tremendous rapport with my high school students and that I was a gifted teacher - - I did some time.  I then decided I didn’t feel like doing any more so I paid to work.  It’s a special privilege. 

This year, I also lost one of my favorite people in the world.  I went to Los Altos High School and UCLA with him.  He committed suicide and I was too suicidal to attend his Memorial Service.  Our favorite saying was “[c]onsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”   He’d definitely approve of my inconsistent behavior… (Does that mean I have a large mind?) I was planning on attending the Police concert with him.  He had really expensive box seats at Shoreline Amphitheatre right by my place.  We saw the Ghost in the Machine Tour in the eighties; the Police was our favorite band. 

I love Scottie.  He was hilarious and irreverent and brilliant and creative and gifted at so many things.  He was an insane drummer.  Oh, we have lost such an angel.

Doctors' Poison

I wandered the halls of Saint Francis Memorial Psychiatric Hospital to see what the drugs were doing to me.  They kept testing different ones on me and I’d been here for three months now.  It’s April 2005.  Some would give me convulsions.  Some would give me lockjaw.  Some gave me ticks.  Some would make me walk with my feet really far apart and some made me walk without moving my arms at all.  Some made me drool.  The doctors didn’t know that I knew.  They just figured I was another Schizo-Affective Disorder walking the halls and I would end up on SSI … another victim - my assets drained by the county.  Another statistic.

They didn’t know I knew.

But I know the drill.  I know it’s Doctor’s Poison and I know that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.  It’s an inexact science and they don’t know.  Psychiatry and psychology are such bullshit that I had to teach it one time in high school and I remember just dreading it – thinking, I’m so sorry, you guys,  just do the best you can, because this is all bullshit.  And my diagnosis keeps changing.  In 1987 it was schizophrenia; then it was schizoaffective disorder; then manic-depressive disorder, then bi-polar disorder, now it’s back to schizo-affective disorder.  I told my friend I was schizophrenic again and she said, “I’m proud of ya’!” We’re friends largely because of our similar twisted sense of humor.

Diary of A Bag Lady: Diary of A Bag Lady

Diary of A Bag Lady: Diary of A Bag Lady