A Christmas Poem With the Theme of Giving and Poverty

Sorry, no blog today, just a photo and a poem!

 

Poverty Poem

By: Leif Gregersen

December 29, 2018

 

I was maybe seventeen not too much more

I thought that being tough and cool meant you would score

Women wouldn’t ever bother with you if you were poor

It seemed I had to show off, get off, then show them the door

 

It was messed up for a teen, no one really wants things that way

One-night romances hurt everyone who goes along to play

Adolescence was a difficult time for me in so many ways

You didn’t have to add a girlfriend’s pregnancy or lover’s nasty disease

 

I tried to quit drinking in hopes of changing in time my teenage days

And it felt pretty good when people gave me encouragement and praise

But I secretly could only think of cold beer and going back to my old ways

 

I met my school angel years ago shopping; we needed the same thing

She looked like she also needed a friend, which made my heart sing

I looked deep in her eyes and just forgot about everything

 

Her hair was dark and short, and brought out her light white soft skin so well

I didn’t even consider the fact that I probably looked like hell

I just saw her soft, caring, lovely, dark brown eyes

She was not ashamed to need crutches, this woman wore no disguise

 

My heart sank down to my stomach because I realized it was true

This person was too lovely for me and there was nothing I could do

Then she looked right at me stopped, smiled and waved

It was like I could do no wrong, like my life and my soul had been saved

 

That moment of bliss later carried me though so many unhappy times

I think of my angel when problems large or small arrives

Knowing that writing poems doesn’t pay the bills

And I need to set down my pen, feed myself with my other skills

 

But still I want to immortalize these powerful feelings of love here on this page

Partly because when one is young poetry seems the perfect way

I’ll never forget that moment when I was truly in love at first sight

I still could never say if it would have gone right

 

We stayed close, then I was in a state of confusion and pain

I wanted to talk to someone from the past who still knew my name

But when you have a problem that drives family and friends away like mine

Sometimes even existing around others can be seen as a punishable crime

 

Years before, with my school girlfriend, things only lasted a short while

She changed me so much, until I could feel emotions, could even smile

I would still be smiling, even with my crooked teeth

I’m normally so happy at Christmas, like I have the world at my feet

 

It was Christmas at the mall when that disabled woman smiled and asked my name

Even when she looked at my messy hair and skinny body she still felt the same

That was the first time I truly felt no trepidation in looking someone in the eye

Nothing and no one in this vast world mattered to me except her and I

 

This brand-new angel was smiling at me, as though she liked my ways

Even just then I knew that look would be in my memory for the rest of my days

Later, we left the busy coffee shop together later but not to go home

Just to have a quiet coffee together and some time alone

 

It was all so magical, as we talked all through that night

The world truly is not a place where a real man needs to fight

When things are being built, many pretend to forget

When someone is disabled for any reason we owe them a special debt

 

I know it seems a little crazy to talk of both love and war

But I failed to mention when my angel got up to go to the door

It was easy to notice that she had no left leg

Survival to her was to go back to the streets, to sit and to beg

 

She had been an army surgeon in Afghanistan

Did more of a job in many ways than any man

I wanted to take her home just to look in her eyes

But like every soldier she had too much pride

 

As time went on I went to see her now and then a little more

I got her warm clothes while her caring changed my life like never before

Looking at this young woman left handicapped who had promised her life

To a country that treated her sacrifice like she was the twenty-third harem wife.

 

If I had a little more courage I think I could have accomplished the deed

Even with no leg this person had everything I would ever need

She had a beautiful soul I could see it in her eyes

Without being condescending she was so incredibly wise

 

But I didn’t propose, I left her there to survive on the street

Through frigid winter months and glaring summer heat

And for many years I have to just live without happiness

And think of the days when a proud woman soldier gave me true bliss

Mental Health Crisis and Severe Breakdown Advice

A nice frosty December photo from my trusty iPhone 7.

Well, the past couple of days have been extremely difficult ones, I have spent a lot of time hiding in my bed not wanting to face the world. One of the cool things that I did do was head out to North Edmonton to meet with a young woman who needed help with her writing. I know I am suited for the smaller creative writing classes I teach, but now that I am doing more mentoring I feel one day I may be able to take on a job like my good friend Richard Van Camp does often, which is being a writer in residence at a library or University. In a job like this, you spend half of your time working on your own project, and the other half helping the general public with writing they want help with.

So what I most wanted to do was to put into words what has been going through my head these past few days. I don’t know if many people understand totally what schizophrenia does to a person, but I will try and relate it. Usually when I have an episode, it means something has set it off. When I first got sick, there were many tests done to make sure there wasn’t other things happening to make my behaviour so extremely weird for lack of a better term. They took drug tests, thyroid tests, cat scans. When all came back negative they were ready to diagnose me but the odd thing was that they didn’t seem ready to tell me what this diagnosis was. I had a lot of problems, delusions being the worst of them. I was also experiencing the mania side of bipolar disorder, not eating, working out a mile a minute and staying up all night reading. It didn’t help that there was a lot of pressure at home and at school, as well as the night shift job I was working.

Slowly, over time, I slipped further and further away from reality. I began to think that if I just kept trying harder and harder at doing everything perfectly, things would go well. I took a trip to a mountain resort with family and friends and that perhaps was where everything was falling apart. It is hard to explain, but I was hugely taken advantage of by my sister’s boyfriend who used subtle and not so subtle persuasion to cause me to ruin the engine on my car, spend all the money I had on the trip and other things, and he had also filled me so far up with his garbage political ideas that he himself didn’t practise that I even saw my own father who put. a roof over my head as a terrible, messed up person. It really doesn’t help to blame anyone truthfully, but a lot of my confusion and utter inability to continue to work and function was due to this despicable character.

Somehow, it seemed to me as these things were happening, and I can’t blame them all on my sister’s boyfriend because they happened to other family members as well, that all the things that had been impressed on me about hard work and discipline gave way to me thinking I could get away with quitting my job (which I did by simply walking off in the middle of a shift) and taking my focus away from providing for needs such as money for an apartment so I could move out of the house. I began to believe strange things, like if I wanted something I could just go into a store and take it and not pay for it and that 99% of the rest of the population got through life this way. A whole new reality formed in my mind, new delusions coming by the second. One of them was that there was no such thing as marriage and commitment, that I could somehow sleep with any woman I wanted, I just had to go to a nightclub or dance and start a one-night-stand. This was another delusion that had roots in things my sister’s boyfriend had told me. Before this, I was a strong believer in no sex before marriage or outside of marriage and was pretty much dead set against abortions. I am so glad my sister eventually got free of this guy. He did have some positive qualities to him, he was funny and fun to be around, he also was influential in my sister eventually earning a master’s degree in education. But if she hadn’t left him and married I often wonder if my beautiful, wonderful niece would ever have been born.

So all of these delusions crept up on me. One of the more prominent ones was that police were some kind of different species of human being and that, along with some of my other warped beliefs that would get me into trouble with the law, that jail and getting arrested was considered almost heroic. It all boiled down to one morning when I went to gym class and just a few minutes into my class I picked a fight that I have regretted nearly every day of my life since. I left the ice rink with my teacher, went to the office and was arrested and taken away in front of all of my peers. This, which at the time seemed like it was a positive thing, was the most damaging walk of shame I have ever experienced.

I was taken at that point to the Psychiatric Hospital and though I have often talked about it being a dirty, violent and extremely disturbing place, the reality of it was that in a very short time this place got  me better, got my thoughts in order. It is so weird to think of all the delusions I had, from being ridiculously rich to having the prettiest girls in my school secretly in love with me back to seeing the world through totally rational eyes, then months later these delusions would slowly come back if I wasn’t still taking my medication. Until it happened a number of times, I didn’t realize how when I started to accumulate millions of dollars and the TV was talking to me directly that it wasn’t something the medication and the “evil” doctors were doing to me. When it actually occurred to me, during a time of clarity, that it was so much better to have sane thoughts despite the difficult side effects of psychiatric medication, which ranged from serious tiredness and grogginess to drooling and making my hands shake, my life truly began to turn around. 17 years hospital free!

I wanted to talk now a bit about the symptoms I have been experiencing in the past few days, but I don’t want to write a blog so long no one will read it. I will do my best to write about more up to date mental health issues in the blog to follow. Thanks Dear Readers, and Happy New Year!

Mental Illness Doesn’t Take a Holiday On Christmas Day

Scroll down past my special Christmas Poem for my Christmas Day Blog.

Christmas Poem December 25, 2018

By: Leif Gregersen

 

Christmas dinner for all is such a fantastic time

No matter your sins, your faults or your crimes

 

Mountains of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and yams

No one sees the stress and the effort only mothers understand

 

Even on our most precious holiday, we orbit the sun as we turn on our axis in place

Each split second, a smile for good or devious origins comes to another child’s face

 

In a country of opportunity, freedom, equal rights and democracy

To bullying children all that matters is the cash value under the tree

 

But the love that kids share with the family members who congregate

Can often be just enough to turn the tides of their fate

 

Show a child that by hard work and effort they will prosper and grow

That precious Christmas vacation will bless them more than you ever could know

 

My favourite Christmas happened somewhat like that

My Uncle Glen was alive and so was our Lilleven our wonderful cat

 

We feasted and laughed, even had a taste of rum and some wine

Uncle Glen got a bottle of liquor and it seemed the whole world was mine

 

I stayed up to watch Jimmy Stewart’s best character give all of himself

All his effort and hard work for others to end up being put on a shelf

 

The message that movie carried deep into my fifteen-year-old heart

Made me tear up, made me vow to make a new start

 

Care for your loved ones, show those struggling there is a much better way

What better time to start on the savior’s most magical day

 

No one will look back when you’re gone and think of your self-serving deeds

The best way to become immortal is to give toil and tears to those truly in need

END

 

Good day people of all faiths and nations. The clock has turned and as I write, (in Mountain Standard Time anyway) it is now Christmas Day. Yesterday I received an injection of Abilify, which comes to the clinic in powder form and then the nurse mixes it up and injects it into one of my shoulders. It is intended to replace a medication I was on earlier which had to be administered twice a month and was considered not as good as the new one. It is going to be difficult, but I want to try and stay with this new injection but there are some reasons why I am beginning to have my doubts. The biggest one is that I am starting to move into the borderline of hallucinating. I don’t see people or things that aren’t there, but, along with making me pretty tired, and often only out of the far range of my peripheral vision, things that can’t move (table, cutting board) seem to move all on their own. I have also been getting flashes of thinking people are behind me or in the room. Worst of all is that I have been getting pretty paranoid, though that situation is improving. One of the things I have been trying to do is ride the bus less, which can be pretty difficult when it is minus 12 to minus 15 Celsius outside and you have to get across the city by walking. Regardless, I have been doing it.

When I do get on the bus, I find myself deathly afraid that I am going to be mistaken for some kind of predator. A couple of times, there has been a female on the bus who goes out of their way to stand near the bus driver, ask for a special stop, then run as fast as possible when the bus stops. This I am sure isn’t always because of me, but once or twice I have been pretty certain. It doesn’t help that there is so much stigma out there regarding people with schizophrenia, and that a couple of years back I was given the gears by an ass of a police detective who got my name from my boss and seemed to suspect that because I was an (un-uniformed) security guard, I fit a description of a uniformed security guard in the area who had assaulted a woman.

The really good thing is that I found out that my new nurse (Best Wishes on your retirement Willie!) not only has a Registered Psychiatric Nursing Diploma/Degree, but also a degree in Psychology. The other cool thing is that she knows her comic books, so I think she may be a huge help to me as time unravels.

I didn’t want to stop the blog today before talking a bit about Christmas. It is the time of year when beds in psychiatric wards and hospitals fill to overflowing. Often this is from suicide attempts from people who are in a terrible state and the Christmas holiday reminds them of lost loved ones, estranged loved ones, and perhaps also their own isolation. These people need our time, our patience and our understanding, not our judgement. Sadly, as many do say, the worst thing you can do is give them money. It will go to addictions a lot of the time. If it doesn’t, say you try to do the right thing and buy them groceries, it is likely they will take their allotted grocery money to use on drugs or alcohol. I personally think the best thing a person can do to help people who have mental health, addiction or homelessness problems (often some have all three) it is best to try and put in some time at a social services agency (Edmonton: Mustard Seed, Bissell Centre, Hope Mission) another thing that can be done is to donate non-perishable food to these places, or even go to a local dollar store if you live in a cold climate and buy a bunch of gloves and hats for people. Giving donations directly to the charities can sound like the ideal thing, but I have been very wary of some charities. I gave more than I thought I could afford more than once to charities that spend upwards of 80 to 90 percent of their donations on raising more donations. This made me sick to my stomach. I would say if a person wanted to donate to a charity, especially a local homeless charity, go down and volunteer and find out what your money will be spent on. Just a suggestion. Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Leif Gregersen

viking3082000@yahoo.com

Poetry, Creative Writing, Wellness, and Mental Health Awareness Presenter and Facilitator.

 

Is It Insane to Think People Suspect You Are Some Evil Person When You Always Feared You Were One?

Well, a lot has gone on since I made my last post to this page. I wish I understood why, but there were a lot of things contributing to me almost having a meltdown so bad that I wanted to try and get admitted to a hospital. I have been doing a lot of little things, like teaching one hour classes way out of town at the Psychiatric Hospital to running all over the place trying to help my Dad and my brother. I have been pretty worried about my brother, he has had two surgeries on his back and now is going to need a procedure done on his kidneys. And every day it seems I think about two people: my departed mother and my niece living very far away with no Uncle to help her or even just be a small part of her life.

At first it started as anxiety, but soon it got worse and became paranoia. Anxiety is hard to explain, especially since until recently I had no idea I was diagnosed as having it. I was a very shy and nervous kid, almost to the point of being ashamed of everything. I have this vivid memory of taking a Toastmaster’s Public speaking course in Cadets and stammering my way through a short talk that seemed to get so little interest from any of my fellow Cadets that all they took from it was ammunition to later mock me with. I will never forget that nervous and shaking, unbearable few minutes. The funny thing is that now, after working in radio and doing possibly hundreds of presentations for the Schizophrenia Society, I have become pretty comfortable with crowds. But not recently. Recently I have been going through hell.

The hell I speak of is paranoia. Some people experience it when they smoke cannabis, I know I did. I was at a party where I didn’t really know anyone and I had a couple of tokes and slowly it started to seem like people were angry with me, saying things about me and it soon escalated to the point of me feeling I was in danger. I reacted by crawling down a third floor fire escape ladder and walking miles home because of the fear.

This has also been happening to me recently though I haven’t used any cannabis in more than 13 years. There is the off chance that now that cannabis is legal and you can smell it everywhere, I picked up some of it but the plain fact is I have been desperately on edge for some time now. Just to give a bit of back story, I was diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago and I have a suspicion that the medication I was given makes me jumpy and dizzy. The jumpy part is also what could have led to the paranoia, but until I become a full psychiatrist or pharmacologist, I will likely never know. What has been happening though is that any time I am in public and I hear people talking, I think they are talking about me. I spend extra time worrying about what others think and I have had to go way out of my way to not offend anyone or make eye contact. This gets extremely difficult on the bus. I have spent so much time in the past couple of weeks staring at the ground or floor that I am starting to have neck problems.

Today it was really disturbing. Some teenager trying to show off to his friends how street smart he was, declared clearly enough that I was sure I wasn’t delusional that he knew I was a cop. Even when I got off the bus, one of the teenagers went out of his way to call me a pig. I can’t even describe how disturbing this was.

There have been a few really good things happening lately though, one of them is that I ran into a young woman who I was in a class with and had a chance to catch up. She had an earlier stop than me and got off, but lately I have been worrying while on the bus that (once again, mind reading) women see me get off at the same stop as them and fear I will follow them to some alley and do some unthinkable thing to them. I have recently become so aware of this possibility that I will go far out of my way to avoid taking the same bus or even the same street as a woman walking alone. Then, the miracle happened.

Tuesday I had enough and I went in to see my psychiatrist. Not long ago I had been put on a much newer medication called Invega and was taken off another injectable drug in the anti-psychotic class of medications. My Doctor increased my dose by the teeniest, tiniest little pill and all of a sudden within a few minutes of taking the pill, my fear went away. Now two days after that dose, I feel so much better, though I have to admit that I am still very conscious of what others think and say, but the fear, the deep down danger warning indicator seems to be gone. Well, as it is late, I will leave things at that. I encourage any of you experiencing this sort of thing to talk to a medical doctor or psychiatrist as soon as you can. The way of dealing with it is very simple, but not always easy. You need to sit down and be honest, and trust your health care provider and before you know it, things will go back on track. Good day, dear readers!

Christmas Poem and Talk About Psychosis and Anti-Psychotic Medication

Please remember to scroll past today’s blog for a special Christmas Poem I Wrote For a Gathering.

Above is a photo of the church I went to for a long time before the well-known and greatly loved Priest, Father James Holland was retired. Behind is an incredible sunrise, something I had no idea could be so beautiful until I started getting up at 5:00 to take long walks to the grocery store or other places.

I have a lot on my mind right now. I think I am having a problem with a new medication, but it is hard to tell because I was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year and am now not only taking a different injection, but also Metformin and a pill for high cholesterol. I have been losing weight and in general feeling better, but I have a strange drowsiness and loss of balance. It really seems like such a trap for those who have a mental illness, the medication makes you hungry and want to eat more, then the illness makes you unable to work and so the end result is you are in a major risk category for diabetes and heart disease and other disorders. I thought I was safe. I was overweight, but a lot of the weight on me was muscle and I was swimming nearly every day, going for walks. I was even careful about how much sugar I took in. Sadly it was not enough.

A lot of people think diabetes is not a big deal, but the fact is that you can lose limbs, go blind, you lose an average of 12 years off your life expectancy. The only really good thing about it is that having diabetes has made me pay a lot more attention to what I put into my body.

It’s funny though, a few years ago when I worked as a stage hand, I would burn myself out working with all that heavy stuff, then I would swim and lift weights and I would come home sore on every square inch of my body. But it was almost like a drug, it hurt, but it was a welcome change from day to day non-feeling. Now I am exercising my upper body a lot less, but doing a lot of walking and things seem to be much better. I do have back pain, especially when I sleep too much, but my arms and legs feel a lot better than when I was going overboard with exercise.

So, on to other things, I have been having problems with neighbours in my building. Actually, I honestly don’t know if a lot of it has to do with my own paranoia, and that I need my anti-psychotic medication increased or even changed. One of my neighbours came by a couple of months ago and went into a long tirade about people making noise. So at every chance I get, I try to do what I need to without making any unnecessary noise, but it doesn’t seem to satisfy anyone. This is where the paranoia comes in, when I make even a slight noise, any other noises sound to me like a retaliatory noise, and I really don’t want to start a war in a place I really like to live in.

It is more likely that the noise I make isn’t a big deal. The only really bad thing I do is to run the blender or the popcorn maker once a day at least, but I don’t seem to get any negative feedback.

The other thing about my paranoia is that I am finding it harder and harder to go out in public or ride a bus. If I can, I always like to sit near the back and to sit to one side rather than take up two seats. Of course there is almost always some loud, swearing jerk at the very back seat and as the ride moves on I always seem to think he/she is talking about me. It is really making it difficult for me to function. Other than that, things seem to be going so well I can hardly imagine my good fortune. I was asked to speak at a stigma stoppers symposium for some junior high kids, I was also asked to read some Christmas Poetry to 400 people at a Christmas Luncheon. I will put the Christmas poem below since I haven’t posted one in a while.

Funny enough, of all of the things in my life, it seems I am getting the most joy out of my new PS4 Pro system. I bought a game called Sniper 3 for it and it is so incredibly fun to attack bases and go on missions. One lone sniper against sometimes more enemies than you are given sniper rounds. I can’t even imagine how addicted I would be to this game if I were a young kid.

But, dear readers, I hope that has given you all some food for thought. If people do like this blog, or even if they don’t or want to see certain topics, the best way to make that happen is to leave me comments. Without them I am finding it hard to write on a regular basis. Please see below for poem, and Happy Holidays!

 

McCauley Christmas

By: Leif Gregersen

 

Sweet taste of milky chocolates

Candy canes to grab everywhere

 

Christmas dinner plates full of so many things

That even those on diets eat like they don’t care

 

Parents right there to make our lives so wonderful

Also Cousins, Aunts and Uncles all around

 

Hearing the church bells start to ring

Just after Santa brought our presents down

 

We truly had no idea at that time

There was want, disappointment or so much need

 

In fact, when we didn’t get just what we had wanted

We often displayed some very ugly greed

 

Christmas time came year upon year

Each time bringing much needed joy

 

So wonderful in my small home town

To be a youthful girl or boy

 

The time came eventually for my brother and sister and I

To grow past Christmas, and move out on our own

 

And suddenly for the very first time

We learned what it meant to be truly alone

 

But despite the trials each and every year

When there was time for us to return home

 

We happily reunited with our sweet kind family

And forgot we ever had been alone

 

Sadly, we never even realized

In the neighborhood in which we lived

 

Many of our close friends and neighbors were alone

Even though we ourselves had more than enough love to give

 

When everyone seems celebrates, look closely and carefully

Look at those with whom you share your special place

 

Don’t just smile at them while they die inside

Despite how they may put up a happy face

 

Help them through the hardest times

Those who came before we did and after

 

Share with them a special gift

Share joy and love and laughter

 

Show everyone you care about each of them

Everyone tossed around here on mother Earth

 

Please learn a lesson in this special time you will use all year

As we celebrate my savior’s birth

 

Are Those People Saying Horrible Things About Me Or Am I Paranoid?

Well, I have fallen into the good habit of trying to spend as much time outside as I can possibly manage. One of the benefits of this is that I see a lot of sunsets and sunrises, and to my great surprise after living in Edmonton most of my life is that they really are beautiful beyond measure. Look for more like this soon.

Last night, I had what bordered on a really good time but my mental health seemed to want to take any enjoyment of my company or the meal I ate away from me. I went to meet a friend at a coffee shop and it was a pretty busy place. I have to admit that I stand out possibly partly because I am tall and wear clothes more suited to the outdoors, but I am also bald as a cueball. As I sat working on a Christmas poem, I had the strongest feeling that people around were angry with me for some reason, it seemed I was overhearing comments about my hair or my sweater, judgemental comments. Then my friend arrived, and it only seemed to get worse. This has been going on a lot lately and I am pretty sure it is the part of me that suffers from schizophrenia making things worse on me.

I don’t really know a lot of easy solutions to problems like this, I am certainly not a doctor and can only give small suggestions of things that work for me and may not work for others. What was disturbing was that in my false thoughts, I often felt like I had been wronged. Tonight I thought back to my high school days, which were now 40 years ago and I started to figure something out with respects to a couple of young woman I once was a passing acquaintance to. These were over-achievers and I admired their hard work and dedication, but somewhere along the line, my mind convinced me they were working with me. Seemingly, now, having insight brought on by years of taking medications and Doctor’s advice, I have come to realize that they never were a part of my life. They were parts of things like toys and such that could truly help ease stress and better cope with life’s daily trials. Having this insight into my treatment goals is like gold to me as my delusions regarding these two young women were perhaps the most harmful. What must have been disturbing for me in early years was knowing they read letters I sent that made no sense, that came to no point. It is very common with people who suffer from schizophrenia to feel they are being persecuted. My delusional thinking was so intense that I thought there were billions of dollars that I had never touched, that I had won huge book awards and other things. Somehow, my brain in its diminished capacity thought that these two women mentioned above were somehow the key to all my my suffering and misunderstanding. I wish I could name them here, but I am hoping they know who they are.

What I have often found so amazing is that when I was sent to the Alberta Hospital there were psychiatrists and staff members who were vey well trained, and had the ability to get me functioning again in a short time. I almost can’t imagine the level of clarity that a person gets when the right medications are found. Suddenly there is room in life for so many beneficial things from reading to visiting arcades.

I truly hope that I won’t get sick again, but even now after a long period of sanity I can see the other part of me edging through to my conscious thoughts quite often. I have been avoiding going swimming and working on preparing for my job as a creative writing group facilitator, but swimming was one of the times when I most felt part of a community, where I had friends I could talk to, something I feel is so essential that some people could actually delay or even control their mental illnesses with by becoming aware of the power of social interaction and learning. Being a creative writing facilitator has been awesome, I feel very much more respected being able to teach others something they may use to benefit their wellbeing or even their recreation time, and it has gotten me through difficult times in an amazing way.

Happy Holidays!