Blog entries

Our Finest Hour

Michael Schofield — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:56:33 +0100

For a long time, we fought against Jani’s schizophrenia without knowing what it was. By the time we knew what it was, by the time we got a diagnosis, it felt like it was almost too late. No matter what medication we threw at it, it kept advancing on her, taking her mind. The spring and summer of 2009 was our desperate attempt to check its advance.

It was probably June of 2009 where we started to turn the corner. Getting the two apartments allowed us to protect BodhiRead more

Sleeping Giants & Lying Dogs

Michael Schofield — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:13:40 +0100

In the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, during the final scene, Japanese Naval Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the primary planner of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, says, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” The “sleeping giant” is, of course, the United States which Japan has just attacked. The line has become part of American popular culture, probably an attempt to make us as Americans feel that our victory over ImRead more

75 Cents (Lies)

Michael Schofield — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:56:14 +0100

It is hard to type right now. It is difficult to make my fingers work on the keyboard. I keep hitting the wrong keys. I want to hit a particular key, my mind wants to hit a particular key, perhaps the “a” key far to the left. But I find that my left hand hovers, as if the message from my brain to my left hand fingers is not getting through. Instead, the right hand will take over, hitting keys to the right side of the keyboard that I don’t really want to hit, as if it is confRead more

Never Be What is In Your Heart (You and Me Got Plenty of Time)

Michael Schofield — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:27:15 +0100

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I had an interesting dream last night. I don’t often dream anymore, in more ways than one. Human sleep patterns are interesting. There are five stages of human sleep: one, two, three, four, and REM sleep. One and two are light sleep stages. Three and four are deeper, with four being the deepest. At stage four, the heart rate slows dramatically. The alpha brain wave, the wave most active when we are awake, essentially flatlines. MoRead more

Plumbers & Carpenters & Fighters

Michael Schofield — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 07:17:15 +0100

It’s here again.

What I call my “black depression.”

I do not wish for death. The black depression is not a suicidal depression. It annoys me when I hear someone say of a suicide victim, “They took the easy way out.” Interestingly enough, the phrase does acknowledge the difficulty of life. If we are all prisoners in Plato’s cave, chained to the wall so that our heads cannot turn, we all suffer the various tortures thRead more

Got to Believe It's Getting Better (Doing the Best I Can)

Michael Schofield — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 06:51:05 +0100

As I write this, it is 10:50pm August 7th, 2010. Eight years, two hours, and six minutes ago, Jani came into the world. Tomorrow is her eighth birthday.

We have made it eight years overall, five since Jani became anti-social and preferred the company of what we then thought were her imaginary friends, three years since Jani became violent and her first hospitalization, two years since her diagnosis and the eight hospitalizations of 2009, and one year since we divided the Read more

Everybody Wants to Rule the World (But I Need to)

Michael Schofield — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:41:13 +0100

If I could control the universe, Jani would be fine.

Why would I want to control the universe? Come on. Everybody wishes they could control the universe. We all want to control the universe because if we controlled the universe and its variables we could prevent ourselves and those we love from getting hurt.

If we could control the universe, we would have nothing to fear.

Calalini is back again. Our world, my world, Susan’s Read more

Live Your Life (The Feel Good Drag)

Michael Schofield — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:55:21 +0100

How does divorce happen? It’s not a straightforward question. I am not actually asking for your answer. However, it is not a rhetorical question, either. I don’t have a ready answer for you, despite the fact that I have been to brink of it myself. The end of a marriage is I think one of those amorphous places. You don’t realize you are going there when you are, when you are there you don’t quite know how you got there, and when (or if) you manage to come back youRead more

Baby, It's a Violent World

Michael Schofield — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:38:32 +0100

I always feel like I lose myself a little bit when Jani goes into the hospital. It is like life stops, which is the opposite of how I would feel about this situation if I wasn’t living it. I would think that the “break” must be welcome, but it isn’t. I feel incomplete at best, lost at worst. I suppose that is one of the reasons why I don’t send Jani to residential care. When Jani is gone, it doesn’t feel like life can begin again. Rather, it feels like it hRead more

Silent Lucidity

Michael Schofield — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:05:06 +0100

Tonight, Jani is back inpatient at UCLA.

How many blogs have I written now that start that way? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

She is back at UCLA tonight because I couldn’t get up fast enough this morning. I am the last line of defense against Jani’s psychosis. Unless Jani is asleep, I have to be there. If I am not, Jani’s descent into psychosis will increase. I can’t stop it but I can slow it down. I doRead more

This is My Message to You: Ni dyar'izuba, Rizagaruga, Hejuru yadju, Nduzaricyeza ricyeza

Michael Schofield — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:13:59 +0100

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Blog title is Kinyarwandan. It means "When will the sun rise again? Who will reveal it [to] us again?"

In the late summer of 2000, Ottawa police were called to a local park, where they discovered a disheveled man on one of the park benches. He had been drinking and was slipping into a coma.

He looked like a homeless man who had had one too many, except for the empty bottle of anti-depressanRead more

Won't Stop to Surrender

Michael Schofield — Fri, 14 May 2010 06:46:32 +0100

First let me say that I have received hundreds of emails since “Born Schizophrenic” aired last week on Discovery Health as part of “Psych Week.” Several emails refer to me or my family in the third person, probably because the writer assumes that given the media contacts at the bottom of my website page that I have somebody vetting my email. I don’t. It all comes straight to me. I read every single email I get, but due to time constraints I can only respond to thRead more

The Fog of War

Michael Schofield — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:50:42 +0100

It’s hard to protest against a war when you are in it.

My last blog, The Safety "Dance", produced I think an interesting and valid debate over the stigma of mental illness. The blog was written in response to how I have seen people react to the violence that can sometimes be a part of psychosis. It basically a statement to the general public that until you’ve seen it, you will never understand it. And when you do see it, you learn, no matter weRead more

The Safety "Dance"

Michael Schofield — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:38:05 +0100

There are a few songs that when I hear them on the radio I can’t help but crank up the volume because the song is so infectious. And example is one of the more famous “one-hit wonder” songs of the 1980s, Canadian New Wave band Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance.” The song’s melody is bouncy, but its lyrical content and Ivan Doroschuk’s deep baritone make it also somewhat threatening at the same time. The emotional response the song produces in Read more

One Giant Leap/Leaving Broken Hearts Behind

Michael Schofield — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:52:15 +0100

Every time Jani is released from UCLA, within a day or two my cell phone rings. I recognize the number immediately. Unlike bill collectors, particularly credit card companies, who have a system which can route calls through a number of calling centers so that the same number doesn’t always show up on your caller ID, insurance companies, having no need to conceal their identity, always show up as the same number. This number, which has a San Diego area code, belongs to Blue Shield’Read more

Run Like Hell

Michael Schofield — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:34:28 +0100

“What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.” – “The Captain” Cool Hand Luke 1967

The first line of the monologue above is one of the more famous movie lines ever uttered. In the scene in which appears, Luke has been returned to the chain gang after a brief but futRead more

Another Brick in the Wall

Michael Schofield — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:59:01 +0100

This is the last night before Jani comes home from UCLA. I should be in Bodhi's apartment, lying in bed next to my wife, because I will not get a chance to this again anytime soon if not ever again.

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…where we came in?

“So ya

Thought ya

Might like to go to the show

To feel the warm thrill of confusion and

Minutes to Midnight

Michael Schofield — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:34:01 +0100

When Jani last left UCLA on Wednesday, March 24th, she confidently told the staff she wouldn’t see them again until Christmas. This was the first time Jani had ever projected a date for her return. On the one hand, this was depressing, for it now means that when she leaves UCLA, she knows she will eventually come back. She doesn’t leave with the blind optimism we once had, the second time she left UCLA, after we had gotten the two apartments and beginning our new lives living withRead more

What is Your Major Malfunction?/Who is Going to Hold You When You Break?

Michael Schofield — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:25:47 +0100

I don’t know how soldiers deal with the death of a fellow soldier. And I am not talking about the war movie cliché where one second your buddy is next to you and the next his face is a pile of goo. War movies are, in essence, “buddy films,” and so they tend to focus on the relationship between one soldier and another, just as this blog often focuses on the relationship between me and Jani. Jani is, in some ways, “Private Pyle” Full Metal Jacket aRead more

Coming Down is the Hardest Thing

Michael Schofield — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:46:48 +0100

I never read my blog entries. I don’t even read them through before I post them. I write and I post, so when there are mechanical mistakes or missing words in my blogs, that’s why. Partly this is because I am forced to write them in the middle of the night, when whatever child I happen to be on duty with that night is asleep, and partly it is because my blogs are more like radio transmissions and the battery on my radio is running out. I only have time to say what I need to say beRead more