Origins Unkept

AIDS activized me in the late 80s.  A columnist in my town's newspaper wrote a commentary blaming AIDS on promiscuity, & less obviously, on gay men.  I wrote a letter to the editor rebutting it, believing it would not be published.  It was, & after a follow-up conversation with the owner/editor, I was invited to write an article about AIDS, its causes, & its toll on society.

My best friend wasn't interested in AIDS she said, so she didn't want to read the article.  She did, however, months later, want me to go with her for her HIV test results.  Negative.  The only time I ever got pissed at Gay Men's Health Crisis was when they ran:  Don't Take the Test.  It's Bad News. ads.  I still hate that(long-defunct) campaign.

I was a little surprised when the church secretary at my father's place of employ made a point of commenting on my letter to the editor so positively.  Years later, she & her husband, the deacon, raised their grandchildren after their daughter succumbed to AIDS.  She'd been exposed to it from a man she met at church.

When I first started reading blogs,  I blog-met two HIV+  bloggers, Nelishia & Mark, whom I grew to like & admire,

This post was going somewhere else entirely a few minutes ago.  The second word of the post keeps tapping me on the shoulder.  3 charities are in my will, but the force has seeped away.

Nothing activizes me anymore, & I'd not fully realized that until now.  I could write that I don't have the mental strength for it - which sometimes is true- but really I no longer have the heart or the proper sustainable mind-set for it.  

Each time I've read  My disability does not define me  I've pushed down envy.  Perhaps I have not yet learned the proper way to calculate mine, because it seems to permeate me.  I'm going to try to recalculate.

I wrote that a few days ago.  I'm in a slightly better place now.  I've been pushing myself -sometimes gently, sometimes not-- to do rather than to think about what I can no longer do.  

Gorillas Are Dangerous and Should Not Be Closely Approached

A sign in Uganda by a  sanctuary in the 1960s.  Judging by all the gorillas that were captured or poached there, the sign should have read: People Are Dangerous.  Run Like Hell When They Approach.

I'm of the mind that the average gorilla has a much better handle on her life than the average human does on hers.  If I had a gorilla helping me, I might be able to deal with the behind-the-scenes working of a simple blog, but alas, I do not.

Thank you so much for all of your comments.  I have not really missed Internet access, but I have missed many bloggers.

As I've mentioned,  I am doing this at the library, with a limited time frame - which is all I can handle now anyway. Never a computer whiz, I've become alarmingly techno-backward since my disorder.

If I comment on your blogs & you reply to the comment, could you please email me with the reply if it is not a bother? Except for Mark's, I am not receiving comments on my blog or follow-up comments on anyone else's(when I check Notify Me) in my gmail.

 If I haven't visited you I can assure you it is because I can't find your blog.  Please either leave a link or email it to marydegliesposti@gmail.com.  I do seem to be receiving emails if they are not part of a blog, but some are winding up in spam.  Got all that?  Sorry.

I just know that if I was a gorilla, I'd be napping right now....

Life as a Shirley Jackson Story

I moved to a new town July 1.  Was it convenience or denial that kept me from noticing questions pertaining to a mental disorder when I last did a change of address at the DMV in 2010?  My little life-ruining (that may be too dramatic, but I'm keeping it for now) mechanism has been called:
1)Schizophrenia with paranoid features
2)Schizophrenia, depressive type  or
3)Schizoaffective disorder ... all at different times & stages.
I decided on schizoaffective disorder as the most innocuous sounding answer(snort)for the DMV form.

I purchased a new car a year ago; for that & all sorts of other reasons, I'd like to keep my license. Schizophrenia with paranoid features sounds like the answer to:  What does really crazy look like?

While trying not to look really crazy on the DMV line, a man pushed past me, saying:  Move.  What are you, Stupid?

"Yes, I'm stupid, MF-er," shot right out of my mouth.

Though many times I've been a mouthy smart-ass in my life, I assure you I never ended any sentence with a MF-er chaser before schizophrenia.  Line waiting, I'd felt like various people were targeting & mocking me, way before Mr. Move.

The paranoid features of my disorder intermittently convince me that I've been especially picked out of your crowd of "betters" to be subjected to ingenious methods of dehumanization.  The scapegoat in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.
I am sharing this in a This Is Me Now way, not in a negative way.  I remain thankful this isn't always me.  I'd rather have Robin Williams authoring my life though; but I guess, inside, he was a lot worse off than I am.

Who is scripting your life?  I hope it is mostly you.

Her Again?

I've not blogged in quite some time.  I'm a late-onset schizophrenic.  I get paranoid at times.  I no longer keep Internet access in my home; I swore off the blog world while I felt cornered & abused.

I've found I miss some of the bloggers, so I started reading again.  I believe I need a little more interaction with people & ideas.  Maybe not ~ time will tell.  Time tells me all sorts of things. Sometimes I listen & sometimes I try like hell not to.


 I'm sticking a small, hopefully not subconsciously paranoid toe into the blog waters.  I don't even remember the ins & outs of using blogger, so bear with me.  Interact with me, or not.  Some days I want the former & some days the latter.

So tell me your last mistake.  Hopefully, this isn't mine.