Musiccosmos

“How’s your family doing?” a well-meaning acquaintance asks. “Are you excited to return home to Des Moines to see them?” I grit my teeth, pushing out a brusque, “They are fine. Maybe I’ll see them; I am not really sure” before quickly changing the subject. Since my mother’s passing, my relationship with my immediate family has been strained. Irregular communication — interspersed with icy recriminations about some past misdeed — is the norm. Exacerbating the familial strife, my father and brothers sued me over a real estate issue that, I believe, could have been resolved with conversation, compromise, and (a little) compassion. Instead, a 2+ year lawsuit ensued — one that fractured any pretense of a familial relationship. Despite relenting to my family’s legal demands, I have not heard anything from my father or brothers (still debating whether a “happy birthday” text satisfies the definition of familial communication — please note my dry humor). As life has taught me, families ...

August is a popular time for many of us to take vacations. That’s what summer is all about, right? Many of us look forward to this summer vacation time all year. But what if you have obsessive-compulsive disorder ( OCD )? How does going on vacation, planning a vacation, or even thinking about a vacation, affect you and those around you? When my son Dan’s OCD was severe, he could barely move, let alone go on a vacation. But when his obsessive-compulsive disorder improved to a moderate level, he planned a trip to Canada with a friend for his winter break. He was excited about going, and from all accounts had a great time exploring and trying out exciting new activities such as dog sledding. He wasn’t able to leave his OCD behind completely on this trip, but still managed to enjoy himself most of the time. I, on the other hand, was worried the whole time he was gone. I was concerned about the stress of him traveling (he flew), the change in environment and routine, the absence of the...

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” –  Isaac Newton Schizophrenia is madness in motion. When I am psychotic — when I see and hear things others do not — it seems as though the buzz of atoms, the molecular bonds that hold things together, reveal themselves as tiny humming grains beneath the appearance of my surroundings. It took me a while to learn my illness isn’t like other ways of being sick: it knows everything I know. It uses my brain against me and the more active and operational one’s brain, the more powerful the disease: the more tools it has at its disposal. When I learn new coping methods so does the disease, which in turn seeks to undermine them. As I say, it knows everything I know. That is why a lot of the time I choose to blunt my brain: with drugs, with alcohol, with sleep . For a long time I existed in a dysfunctional zombie-like haze before I learned to manage a rough, teetering balance between sedation and awaren...