stragglers

the family rules. she broke the ones predicated on that's just the way it is and always been. long after she left home she found the stragglers and scraped them off like barnacles. 

#katyamills

ph phrenia

i often saw sweet images 

as we pressed liquid into fabric

processing soy sauce for the restaurant

i kept this to myself for years 

until the voices began to speak to me 

you can't make me do anything I don't want to

i cut and stretched and framed the fabrics 

let me share with you

here. open your eyes

can you see?

#katyamills

heavy metals

dissociative

staring at the wall again

they turned up the volume

zero calorie heavy 

metals to defend against they

demons  

#katyamills

immersion

composing worlds in solitude

what a way of seeing something missing

bringing into being what

you seeing

they can go there 

all who belong

#katyamills

update

i got a promotion this week -- Clinical Director -- at tpcp.org... excited to make a greater impact for our community ... listening and speaking from the heart ... helping my team of outpatient case workers support our people out in South Natomas and North Highlands ... life is more and more challenging on the streets ... what with mental illness and socioeconomic challenges ... cultural/racial injustices. i ask myself every day: what more can i do to help? at least i have a small platform and some skills to offer. 8 years clean off the hard stuff. what with the poetry, the books, my friends, as a therapist, life keeps getting more and more exciting.

tricks are for kids

stepping across the honeycomb of the mind i found a little home what was windowpaned in amber, encased by five walls of durable paper, gone gray. words were written there. i tried to make them out. i saw by the script they were my words. now it became a message from my past self i had to decipher. ten years old i was mostly lucky, and happy. i learned ways to deceive myself when i was sad. now i would and could not. i have to be real. tricks are for kids.

dream #1234

So many dreams to go. This one is a waking dream of  acceptance, to see myself in the context of all my world and relationships and choices and demands, the push and pull, the ebb and flow, and wake up each day willing to embrace it. To fight for what I want and need, knowing full well the fight will never end for the challenge is the life.

theory.orientation

When asked what is my theoretical orientation, i have to consider the latest and greatest changes and developments both internal (to me) and external (around me). so my answer definitely changes from year to year... at the moment, in regards to conducting therapy, i would describe my orientation as so... i continue to try and meet people non-judgmentally with unconditional hope and regard. i consider them courageous for coming to therapy, and consider myself blessed to be brought into their world to travel alongside them for a while until their stated goals have been met. i do try and listen carefully so i can understand their challenges, and also to listen for nonverbal communications, and acknowledge what lies in the spaces between the words. i am process-oriented, and like to slow down the pace and leave room for affect and feelings. i want to see challenges from a holistic perspective, taking into account bio psychosocial and spiritual aspects. Therapeutic alliance is an important as a means for us to work in the moment on relationship, an opportunity, and I like to reflect back to a client what I am hearing as they share their story, so they can see how they come across. Finally, I like to encourage people to identify their personal talents and strengths, so that they can amplify these narratives to build self-esteem and see what they are capable of accomplishing in the world.

survive and cast shadow (white metal rabbit)

There's no world of all smiles, unless invented. In the real world we have rabbits we grab by the ears and make lucky feet for a keychain. We stuff them in hats and make them of chocolate. The white ones we want for a symbol of purity, and photograph them next to an egg.

Some of us tune our instruments to metal, find the harmonics, amplify them and get bent. I wanted to be one of those, but I didn't have an amplifier or an instrument or a room or a friend. I prayed to god for a fireplace where I could burn for you. I would. I had become inflexible like the white metal rabbits and within the realm of being bent out of shape.

I was far from worn thin with love. I followed ideas tangentially to distant and unrelated ends... my younger self had grown old and retired. Typically far from inspired. I must have committed some literary felony, for soon I could no longer read. I had a curious relationship with speed. It's a crime to torture a soul with words made from sounds of a cacophonous hole.

The ground I laid where I buried myself, the part of myself that was offensive. Myself who had been distasteful, rebellious, irreverent, and smart. My shadow now missing, a lack in the heart. The part that was human and fell down a lot. The part that refused to connect all the dots.

This is what i offer you, I told myself, dying. The black sheep's fleece. To warm you like Kentucky's finest. The past? no worries, shes fallen behind us. I urge you get waxy, let flow... the degenerate benevolence of liquid smooth language. One spirit, survived anguish so deep it near killed you.

I languished well near obscurity, until i found a little peace in letting go, to take with me down that long hall back home, the one without shadows or light. Water, laughter, a kind word, awaited me. Even prayer would be welcome there. These words ahead of me are here to be written. To describe all our likeness in ways and intangibles, to know with a knowing that cannot be described.

If you know what i mean, if you' re grateful like I am, if you've survived and cast shadow...then go ahead and read these words I have trained to be and be still. May they bring you all out like flowers by the sun. I need your devious smile, your shadow, your light. Before the rabbit turns metal, then white.    - KatYa, 2017

dream sequence. march nine

What if I cannot live with anyone, ever again, I thought to myself, before falling asleep. I have been tired since I asked him politely to leave. He did not take it very well, and I did not take his not taking it well, well. I was tired by trying to share my space, and by trying not to share my space, and fell fast asleep.

Up the stairs the atmosphere was boisterous, everyone seemed happy like evolved, and my mind kept turning us over and over, wondering why we were so quiet, down here, so reserved, like somebody had died. I was in the midstream (exactly halfway up a long and straight stairwell) when the matron of the house came about before bed asking around and offering her hand, to make the last hour a good one, keeping us safe and needless, tidying up.

Her daughter, my friend, had left a small book behind, with a cover splashed in pink, which stood up on the floor by the couch. What if she never returns, ever again? The book had small truths littered about its pages. I wanted to offer it to the contemplative boy across from me on a broken chair, but I could not move. I'm not much of a lucid dreamer.

She spoke to us kindly, my friend's mom, she made me feel I was helping her just by being there. She had always been the kind to illuminate your presence for you. When I awoke, I wondered would I see her, ever again? She died many years before.

hierarchy of need

librarian by day
book burner by
night


the transition 

was natural 

gotta keep warm
she says
you understand

did it have to be

my books?

snow me over a lather of denial

There is always me and my mindbodyspirit. The spirit cannot be touched nor seen, yet is the cornerstone of the experiment that is me... this truth left the subunified districting in the hands of the mindbody to battle it out for supremacy. The mindbody was not unlike (me) at all, and so much the same it made my mind a furious, raging llama, so furious I decided one day to call the stumbling, hulking mass of idiot flesh and networks of tubes full of bloody hell, something other than what it truly was. A vivid space I typed between the subunified essence of me, smiling when the typewriter rang its little bell. The angels are calling, the angels are calling! The message is here.

A pond of correction fluid grew larger as time (another construct of mind yet several epochs before, the mind says with conviction) went on. The result was the contemptuous subdistricting between which a fence then wall was constructed to keep the obviously related, deep-rooted elements, superficially apart. The divisions grew stronger and the roots were cut off, and soon the sea of humanity institutionalized the damn thing. Children like me were encouraged at a terribly young age (despite our knowing better) about the mind and the body, distinct from the spirit. Groupings of disparate parts could then be made possible for the sake of fun and games. Mindbody. Mind-body-spirit. Psychosocial. Bio-psycho-social-spiritual. Each part could be ritually washed and cleaned and manipulated per se.

My mind had me over the ropes, snowed over a lather of denial, in a plate glass window of time. It was truly obscene! Which I only realized when I finally woke up to the truth.

vote

ONE of them gets to feel loved by the entire country. one of them will feel loved by me and you. we can only hope that they didn't use all their life up to now, positioning themselves to be loved like this. i wanna choose the one who wakes up every morning and already feels loved. the one i cannot take that feeling away from, no matter

why
or when
or where
or how i cast my vote...

even if the only one they know who truly loves them
thick or thin
is themselves

murder by memory -iv

the murder by memory series. parts i-iii go way back.
i hesitate to proceed with it, as it moves into something more like philosophy than simple creative writing. more like activism.   -k

torture was clearly a primitive defense of any society, forcing noncompliants into submission to meet specific aims of a culture. less clear was how a supposedly highly evolved culture involved in numerous humanitarian causes could keep it insular and protect the rudimentary institution of torture. if culture was to evolve, torture would cease to make sense. if culture was to be evolved, it would shutter the chambers and send all devices and mechanisms to their proper places behind glass cases in the future museums devoted to the betterment of the lives of the victims of torture. yet culture, like its individual constituents, tends to return to the primitive defense mechanisms when under duress: repression, regression, projection, reaction formation, and sublimation. and then covers it up in denial... torture. what would it matter the criminal or the crime? the use of an instrument reflects back on the one using it. if i pick up a sword and run it through someone, i am now a murderer. even if i kill a murderer with their own very sword, i am -nevertheless- a murderer, too.

Review: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kay Jamison has spent most of her adult life studying mood disorders and living with bipolar illness. In this memoir, she faithfully shares her experience. She takes us inside a manic episode as she remembers it, and then the subsequent deep depression. Even breathing becomes a chore. She details the times she spun out and how the beauty of the world through fresh mania soon becomes lost in a whirlwind of racing thoughts and confusion. Anyone who has needed medication may relate to the resistance to taking it Kay describes so well, and the consequences of refusing meds when you need them. For years she started and stopped Lithium, and even when she knew she needed it, she would stop when either she fell dreamy in love with the memory of her mania, or the side effects became too much to bear. Turns out she was on a much higher dose than she needed. But the side effects of Lithium were nothing compared with the devastation which came of allowing her mania to resurface. Her marriage and friendships were poisoned. She maxed out her credit cards. Her professional life suffered. She wanted to end her life.

Miraculously, with the help of family and friends and therapy and meds, she was able to run a mood disorder clinic at UCLA, gain tenure, and today stands as a highly regarded clinician at Johns Hopkins. But most importantly she survived it all. Bipolar illness, aka manic-depression (although the latter usage has fallen out of fashion in diagnostic circles, she believes it sums up the experience), takes lives. People get attached to their mania, they dream of their mania, and some never come around to accepting they need meds. This book is a must read for anyone with bipolar illness.

View all my reviews

live a better life!

I made a video yesterday in which I talk in an optimistic way about one of my favorite topics, personal empowerment, including: how to locate your choices and make them, how to 'survive yourself', personal responsibility, 'Radical Acceptance' concept (a term i borrowed from my study of DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a modality developed by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline Personality Disorder), writing practice, socioeconomics, and mindfulness.

august walks with the memory of july

If I could only follow back along the crooked line of life, crickets keeping time, to see all the faces of the ones and when I loved them most, then stop upon a snapshot at the point where it was mutual. If I could I would deposit each Polaroid in my aching head and let the neurotrasmitters have at them, relocating the silver base beneath the image and then spreading like chain link jewels across the synaptic mind, so sparkling are the tears that fall in almond globes upon my clothes or to the ground without a sound, then break apart with me from my reality, back to better times between us. Those times are gone. Tonight with coffee cupped in my hands like a prayer, I can go back there and see us coupled out across the diverse cities of my life. Chicago. St Pete. Boston. Oakland. Evanston. San Francisco. I was younger then but in many ways I feel the same. A button. A shred of clothing. A letter. A wisp of hair. I wonder do you mostly feel the same also? It only takes one residual thought, a flash of silver and the faith, to move the holotropic mind along new pathways recreated of the fabric we once wore out together. Then we may have a chance tomorrow to walk with one another in our hearts and live again.

journal #07.17.15

I had a technology crisis no more, all the broken pieces lay before me on the floor. i picked up the space bar which was pinned under what remained of my hard drive, and cut myself on a shattered screen. held to the light, the space bar had lost all its power, a sad shell of black plastic. i must have counted a hundred geometric shapes before i realized what a great day had arrived; i was finally free of technology. i walked outside and wondered what to do? then i saw you know who, yapping away on her cell, ha, what a waste of time.

yes, i was gonna be lost and disconnected like never before.

i would not know the weather before it happened. neither would i know the political climate in the country, whether Greece was bailed out again, or the latest on the Kardashians or the royal family or Hollywood, or any one of the wars being fought here, there, and everywhere. i would no longer be able to shop from home, socialize from home, work from home. i would not be able to fight my battles by text, or hide behind emails and instant messages.

yes, i was gonna be lost and disconnected like never before.

and i could not wait. no more 3D printing how i feel, no more facsimile of life. i was gonna be the real me in the real life, circa 1979, i was gonna be a child again and see the world through fresh and open eyes, i was gonna talk to everyone out standing on our feet, fight my fights in person, give them a taste of Katya Mills, rolling up my sleeves and fearlessly flaunting my personality.

we are gonna have a great time, you and me, no longer stashed away behind our technology. i sure hope you get this message. i know it was past tense, but it's a prediction for the future. i know the future is not here yet, and i am behind this keyboard projecting. i could not find any emoticons to describe how i feel about it, so i wonder if you understand? how will you get back to me? feel free to tweet me. i plan to turn my phone on in about 6 hours after it's charged. presuming my alarm clock wakes me up. we can meet somewhere, okay. did you google that cafe i was talking about? the one behind that classic old theatre you know the one we read about on wikipedia, very cool, but...

ummm, i know this sounds stupid but do you think it's really real?

fractured

 I get fractured. I mean my personality. When I was younger and resilient, the tendency was like bruising, you know, out in the schoolyard it was no big deal to get rough in play and actually hit the ground and get dirty and bruised with the boys and the tomboys like myself, but when I say the tendency was bruising I mean the way that kids start forming alliances and sometimes shut you out, okay, now bruised, or if you got into it with one other kid and words exchanged and pushing and getting pushed around, but all the verbal lacerations, well, for me they just were bruises, because I could go home at night to a loving family, you see, so all was well with me back then. Today it's not the same, today I'm fractured. I don't have the loving family to come home to, anymore. I think subconsciously I choose to be alone. I need to be alone more and more each day, or so it seems, for when I go out there and things get rough with friends and personalities, well, I'm just not so resilient anymore.

The Crush -- Journal # 06.22.15

Culture can be honest in subtle ways. These days they tell you you are insignificant one moment, and then remind you how special you are the next. I am coming to terms with both. This is what they want from you, to come to terms with both. They want you to want it for yourself, and why? Not because some starched shirts sat around a table and decided. No this is different than any corporate takeover plan. This is the truth hammering down. Culture can be  honest. You could have an emergency and 99 of 100 witnesses to your emergency may have absolutely no interest. You could have a situation where you need help, and one in ten friends may not respond in time. I see it every day. Someone is harrassing someone, and people just watch. Someone is in a car accident, and people drive around. I confess there are times I have been the one watching. But I have also been the one who needed help. Help eventually arrives, but maybe not as quickly or exactly how you wanted it. Culture can be honest in obvious ways. This past weekend a friend of mine saw I needed help, when somebody was harrassing me in a public place. Someone who dislikes me tremendously because I showed no interest in The Crush. Sometimes you feel so insignificant, and then someone shows you how special you are. Your culture, wherever you may be, is a good place to set out to find the truth, or just stand there and let it find you. Culture does not lie.