7--Barnes Bridge

I had moved from my apartment to a small gray brick 3/2 with a nice yard. For the next few months, I spent with my cat and a blonde Lab that I named "Big Bad John." The dog and cat got along fine. I spent the rest of the year as a housewife. There was no husband, but the house kept me busy. I was having bipolar problems and back problems. and I didn't move as fast as I had previously.

There was a middle school aged boy that walked by my house every day after school. One day I asked him if he wanted to make some money running my vacuum cleaner over the carpets for me. Chris was my regular carpet sweeper every week.

I had left my name and number at the local community college as a tutor. I got a call from the mother of a ninth-grade student. He thought he already knew everything he needed to know. He wasn't interested in the rules of spelling or grammar because the computer would correct his mistakes. He said by the time he got a job; a computer would be able to correct everything. I didn't believe him, but he was right. Twenty years later the Word program on the computer does fix the errors.

David had to read "The Catcher in the Rye" for school. I couldn't get him to even pick up the book. His parents were recently divorced, and David stayed with his mother, but he wanted to be with his father. His mother couldn't make David do anything, which was why she wanted a tutor. I decided to read the book to him. I was very frustrated. When his mother figured out she could read the book to him, my tutoring job played out.

I was stressed from teaching one kid who didn't want to learn. My body broke out in shingles due to my anxiety. I went to the emergency room with what I thought was a migraine headache. I still had the headache on Thursday and I went back to the ER. On the fourth day the rash and the bumps broke out on the right side of my body. The rash showed up on the right side of my forehead and all the way down the right side of my body. Shingles rash itches and burns terribly. I spent over a month in bed, wearing as few clothes as possible. Shingles has to run its course. It did and i was glad when it had finally gone.

We sold the gray house to the woman we had bought it from in the beginning. I was going to MHMR every week, and I moved back into my mother's house. I was taking medication that made me sleepy and zonked me out. I couldn't do anything. I watched TV and took care of the dog and cat.

I went through several private psychiatrists. Dallas is a big place, and I saw doctors all over town. In 1999 I checked in to a psych hospital. When I came out of the hospital, I became a patient of the doctor who had cared for me in the hospital. He was right on at prescribing medicine to fix specific problems. I stayed with this doctor through 2009, when I went to the psych hospital again. For a bipolar to only have to go to the hospital every ten years is good. Other bipolars go more often due to being psychotic. One stays in the hospital only long enough to get their meds regulated.

Michael Jackson died in 2009. I felt guilty that I hadn't given him the respect that he deserved. This fired my bipolar psychosis. I got into my head that Michael was still alive. I was sure he was coming to my house to take me away with him. When you believe in things that aren't real. the problem can be bipolar psychosis.

I spent the night at my mother's house, which was down the street from my house. I had been hearing voices, or actually I thought it was a choir singing Christmas and Beatle songs. I told my mother the next morning and she called for an ambulance without telling me. I was in the backyard with the dogs, drinking a cup of morning coffee when the ambulance arrived. The gates were locked, and she had locked the back door so that I couldn't get away. I'd gone out in my night shirt without a robe, and the November morning was cold.

I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. My Michael Jackson fantasy was part of the hospital discussion, and I had two boyfriends because of it. One was in a wheelchair, and he rolled by my room singing, "You Got to be Starting Something." He was bipolar and was in a wheelchair from MS. He wanted me to come to his sister's house for Thanksgiving where he intended to announce our pending marriage. I didn't go to his sister's, and I didn't see him any more after that.

The other boyfriend was named Timothy. In the hospital he told everyone that he spoke nine languages. This was because another patient spoke seven languages and Timothy had to better him. Actually, he only spoke English. Don't believe anything you're told in a psych hospital.

He had long dreads that were twisted. He showed me how he would twist his hair as it grew longer. He rode his bicycle everywhere because it was his only means of transportation besides the bus and the DART train. He carried it on the DART train to come to my house.

Things were great at first. We had sex and we had sex and I was pleased with the result. I had a prescription for the date rape drug, zyrem, to help me sleep. On the third day of his visit, I told him I needed to sleep because I hadn't since he had been there. He did me while I was sleeping. After that I wanted him out of my house, but he wouldn't leave.

He spent his time braiding electric cords. He braided every cord in the house. When the cords were braided they would be about six inches short of being able to plug in. And somehow, my refrigerator stopped working during his visit.

Timothy offered me his prescription for schizophrenia. He didn't want to take his medication, and I wanted him gone. Finally, many days later, he went out the front door and I locked it behind him. I was finally the only human with my dogs and cats. I was content taking my medication and being by myself.

My mother arranged for me to live in a red brick 3/2 house down the street from her. We went out to eat on a regular basis. She tried to understand my bipolar disorder, but she didn't. I could tell that she was bipolar too. I had inherited it from her side of the family, but she never would accept my diagnosis for her. She died at the age of 92. I had no brothers or sisters. I was alone with my pets, and i was and content taking my medication.

My Mother arranged for me to live in a red brick 3/2 house down the street from her. We went out to eat on a regular basis. Mom struggled to accept my bipolar diagnosis, but she didn't understand it. She had it too. I had inherited my bipolar disorder from her side of the family. She died at the age of 92 with complications of congestive heart failure. I had no brothers or sisters. I was alone in the world with my pets.

I moved from the red brick house on Mother's street because my next-door neighbor was persecuting me. My dog, "Shadow," the German Shepherd, would go to the front gate and bark at the people and noises on the street. Two little boys slept in the bedroom next to my front gate where "Shadow" would regularly bark. The neighbor was irate and took his vendetta out on me by contacting the city about the condition of my yard. I don't know how he knew I hadn't been picking up the feces because there was an eight-foot wooden fence between the properties. He continued to harass me until I finally decided to move. I left a paid for house, but I couldn't stay with the aggravation he caused me. I was on the verge of another psychotic episode from his behaviour towards me.

I moved to another 3/2, a wooden frame and nicely painted white house that was located next to the DART train tracks. I didn't realize there would be train noise, but I heard every passing train. One night very late when I was sleeping, the train whistle blew because of a coyote on the tracks. The noise was so loud and so abrupt that I jumped out of my bed.

I had asked for an 18-month lease, which the landlord agreed to, but the lease I signed was only for eight months. I didn't read the fine print. When the lease expired, he filed eviction papers because he thought he could get more rent for the house than I was paying.

I found a nice. big, white brick, 3/2 with 1600 square feet. There was a nice yard with a big 40-year-old tree in the back yard. The house had a fireplace and a sunroom. I brought my mom over to see it, and she rolled through the house in her wheelchair. She liked the house and was pleased I was living in a house as nice as the houses I had grown up in.

Two young black men moved my possessions. There were a lot of boxes, and a lot of furniture. The number of packed boxes that I had filled up the garage space. My back gave me problems, but I finally got settled into my new home.

I had friends over. Lisa and Jennifer had been my running buddies for a while. They were not as educated or upright as I. Jennifer got pregnant. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she went back to her parents in Battle Creek, Michigan to have the baby under the care of her grandmother. She had a little girl who she named Alejandra. She was as happy as she could be playing mommy, but it didn't last. She was living with a man who was not the father of her child, but he could have been. Both he and Jennifer had doubts about that. He resented the baby, but never confronted Jennifer about it. He would come home after work, and Jennifer would walk to the grocery store to buy groceries for dinner.

He abused the child when Jennifer wasn't home. This had been going on for quite some time unbeknownst to Jennifer.

They brought the baby to my house for a visit, and Manuel played the doting father.

One day when Jennifer got home from the store the baby was unconscious. Manuel took Jennifer and the baby to the emergency room, and he took off for parts unknown. The baby was unconscious, and had a concussion, broken ribs, and other broken bones. Manuel had been beating the baby every time Jennifer went to the store. As a first-time mother, she didn't realize anything was wrong.

Jennifer was the one arrested for child abuse. The baby, Alejandra, was put on life support. Several months later life support was disconnected. Jennifer's little Ali was gone. Jennifer was confined to prison for a couple of years. I lost touch with her when she was sent to jail. I never knew when she got out. She was talking like the baby was still alive when she was confined. I never knew when she got out. She had fallen into mental problems.

Jennifer had stayed with our friend, Lisa, during the end of her pregnancy. When her boyfriend took off for California, she took up residence at a freeway underpass. She had been there for a week when Lisa took pity on her and let her move in. Lisa had two kids as well as Jennifer in the house. Guerro, Lisa's son, who was 12 years old, had been molested when he was seven, and he was confused about his sexual identity. He liked to dress as a girl, with a wig and dresses. He did poorly in school, and he couldn't read very well. I worked with library books for him, but there was a lot he couldn't read. I realized how sad his situation truly was. Lisa accepted her lot in life and always managed to have a live-in boyfriend to help pay her bills.

I never got the whole story of why Lisa went to jail. A liquor store was robbed. Guerro had on a wig and a dress, and he was an attractive female. Lisa was waiting in the car. The first story that I got was that Lisa's boyfriend had gone into the liquor store, and Lisa was waiting in the car. Lisa said she had robbed the liquor store to save Guero from going to jail. When she got out of jail, she came by my house. We were still friends, but I held her jail time against her. She was locked up for about 18 months. While she was there, she ran into her sister, Rosemary. This was a sad family. I needed to get away frrom her influence. She was an easwy connection to crack.

"8--A Chance to Start Over"