"I spoke up because I don’t want other people to experience what I had to" http://www.dailykos.com/... was my first diary, posted Friday, September 19. I wrote about speaking at a press conference, held by the Obama/Biden campaign, to share my personal story of how economic hardships have impacted Georgia residents, and its effects on the presidential race.
Speaking at the conference was incredibly hard, but I was compelled to do so in support of Barack Obama. I have faith that he’ll bring the humanity needed – and now so lacking – in the treatment of those applying for disability and healthcare in our country.
I spoke up that day, and I voted for Barack Obama, because I don’t want other people to experience what I did.
Many of you asked me to tell my whole story: how someone with a good education, rising career and financial stability – someone probably like you – became homeless. It’s taken some time because of the difficulty I have recalling, concentrating and writing, and I’ll have to tell it in installments.
This is my story.
I was born in New York City in 1957 and grew up in a small town, notable for its Village Green, parades on Christmas and Veterans’ Day (I marched as a Camp Fire Girl), and a stop on the Long Island Rail Road. It was a good school district and, aside from your typical coming-of-age-in-the-70s nonsense, I had a pretty normal childhood. [Although when I look back in retrospect, the signs were already there but went unnoticed.] I went to Washington University in St Louis, where I got a BFA.
My illness first really came out in 1981, when I was in graduate school. Although things in my life were going well, I was feeling overcome with sadness, to the point that I was having trouble doing what I needed to do. I began seeing a psychiatrist, and soon a pharmapsychiatrist as well, who prescribed Lithium.
Thus began my lifetime of medication and treatment for mental disease; I’ve been under the care of psychiatrists and taking medication pretty much my whole life. Although I was still having periodic episodes, things were working out well enough. I began my career working in galleries in New York (eventually becoming director of one), got married, had a daughter, bought a condo. I wore business suits with pumps, belonged to a gym, and was surrounded with intelligent, articulate and interesting friends. In the early 90s, we moved to Atlanta [for his job], where my career thrived: I gave lectures at museums, sat on grants panels, juried and curated exhibitions, and became editor in chief of an art magazine. I wrote articles for national journals. I’d worked with hundreds of artists across the country, from first-timers to Famous, and developed a good reputation and working relationship within the community.
Then it all fell apart.
It doesn’t seem sufficient to call it a breakdown, because it was more like a shutdown. I became incapacitated and was hospitalized for the first time in what would become a five-year cycle.
Apparently, at the time, I was completely unresponsive (think sitting in a hospital bed drooling). No amount of medication or intense psychiatric care was working, so it was decided that I should receive electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), aka "shock treatment."
I can already hear you asking, "Do they still do that?" Visions of "Cuckoo’s Nest," tied down and thrashing. Yes, they do, but it’s become much more controlled and precise in its application. I was always under anesthesia, and from videos I’ve seen, the only movement is some slight toe-curling. It was still hell.
At one point, probably at the urging of my doctors, I began a diary. I came across it years later and saw the last entry:
I’m reading things in here I don’t remember writing.