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I believe that there is an angel who watches
over me from time
to time -- partly out of concern; partly out of curiosity.
Last updated: March 19th, 2008
While
this site is dedicated to my angel, Andrea, it’s really about more than that.
It’s also about me and my struggles since her passing. And it’s
about how I have applied what I learned about mental disorders and life from having known her to my life and my relationships
today. It’s about what I’ve learned, what has worked and what has
not in my interpersonal relationships to date. I hope that you find what I say
here interesting and useful in your own relationships. And please feel free to
write me to tell me what you think (whether good or bad) about this site. If
you need an ear, I’m here at jim_kendrick@hotmail.com. I may not have all the
answers, but I might know somewhere to look that might be helpful to you concerning BPD, bipolar disorder, living with people
with these disorders, and grief from loss. Feel free to write anytime.
Jim
Ascension
And
if I go,
while
you're still here...
Know
that I live on,
vibrating
to a different measure
--behind
a thin veil you cannot see through.
You
will not see me,
so
you must have faith.
I
wait for the time when we can soar together again,
--both
aware of each other.
Until
then, live your life to its fullest.
And
when you need me,
Just
whisper my name in your heart,
...I
will be there.
Used with Author’s Permission. Ascension ©1987 by Colleen Corah
Hitchcock
P. O. Box 390082, Edina, MN 55439 Web Site: http://www.colleenhitchcock.com
I would like to thank Collen Hitchcock for giving me permission to use her beautiful poem, which
came to me at a time when I was desperately missing my angel and in need of some emotional support. If you like this
poem check out her latest novel, "Rabbit Heart", below.
| Rabbit Heart |
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About Andrea,
This site is dedicated to my angel, Andrea. Andrea was a remarkable person who lost her life tragically
in a car accident two days before Christmas, December 23rd, 2003. What made Andrea's world so remarkable was the spirit
and drive with which she lived her life - a life that had so many ups and downs. You see, Andrea suffered for Bipolar
II, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Anxiety Disorder, yet despite this, she was an intelligent, compassionate, fun-loving,
talented, charming, religious person who wanted to be a child psychologist and do missionary work to help others in need.
She loved reading and learning and was always inquisitive. She loved to travel and see new things. She
wanted to write a book about her life and wrote voraciously in her journals. And she was driven to find God and bring
his word to others. She was beautiful and she was my best friend. I miss her dearly.
Her best friend always,
Jim
| Amsterdam |
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| Andrea loved flowers! |
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night.
But ah my foes,
and oh my friends --
It gives a lovely light
First Fig -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
March 19th, 2008
Recovering from Loss
Here's a link to an article on grief from loss recently posted at Yahoo from Psychology Today:
March 16th, 2008
How are Things Going Here and in My Life Today?
Just wanted to post a quick update on things. As far as April is concerned, I've pretty
much had to distance myself from her for a while. She doesn't seem to be getting anywhere with her life despite our
discusions about her wanting to change her life and do things differently. Although I don't doubt her sincerity when
she says it, I just don't see any real effort and without that effort I don't see any chance of our relationship going any
further.
In other news, though, I really want to applaud Rachel for her hard work trying to find
answers to her problems in her life. Rachel has contributed some wonderful poetry to this site. She's a talented
(albeit unusual) writer with a keen insight who I have grown very close to over the years.
Personally, I feel pretty good. I know my angel is watching over me. I feel
her presence in my life often and I know that she is there when I need her. But I also know that life goes on, although
that has been a very difficult lesson.
As far as the site is concerned, we're still going strong after more than four years with
about 2,800 page views a month. Not bad for a site that doesn't advertise. I recently received word from The Health on
the Net Foundation that my HONcode accreditation has been recertified for another year, so I'm happy for that as I always
want to be a site that provides credible information on the net. There are too many sites out there that don't.
December 7th,
2007
"God’s
Hand in Mine"
(based
on a previous article, rewritten and retitled for today)
I believe that as long as we have faith God never gives us
more than we can handle. That’s not to say that we will not have trials
and tribulations – that’s guaranteed to be a part of our lives as long as we walk this Earth. But God always gives us a way out if we seek His divine guidance.
As we grow older and experience life's sorrows
and joys we change. The Law of Entropy says that nothing can ever stay the same. It's
impossible. Everything must change all the time. We can't fight physics and we can't fight God's plan. How we change, for
better or worse, is the true test of our character.
When I first met Andrea I was so certain that it was part of God's
plan. I didn’t know then not to try and figure out what God was thinking. I know now that I’m not that smart. But at the time I thought that his plan
was for me to help this person to grow and mature into someone who was destined to change the world in some way. I was wrong
- sort of. That was just the beginning.
Here was this incredible person,
with more passion than anyone I had ever met. And dreams...oh, she had dreams. She dreamed of being a child of God, bringing
his word to the world, and helping young girls in pain. Andrea knew pain. She felt it every day of her life. She wanted to
teach others what she had learned about life and pain and finding a way out. The problem was that she hadn't reached her objective
yet. But she knew the azimuth and she was on pace despite the obstacles she had to steer around (or, more often, barrel straight
through) to get there.
When I first met Andrea she was lost; living on her own at seventeen in a foreign country, pretending
to be a grown and mature woman. She hung out at bars and drank and carried on her life as if she were an adult. But she was
still a child inside. And she was still seeking the answer to why she was the way she was - why one minute she could be totally
devoted to Christ and the next be carrying on in sin.
The duality of her existence was tearing her
up inside. And I knew she wasn't ready for a relationship, so we called off our short-lived engagement and became best friends.
And despite the occasional flare-up, we were comfortable with that. Considering that I didn't know she had BPD, didn't even
know what it was, and was only aware of her bipolar disorder we had a functioning relationship. But my initial love for her
never faded - and still hasn't.
A year later, after she moved in with me back in the States we went through a lot of
growing pains together. It was especially hard on Andrea as change means stress and stress and BPD don't mix well. She eventually
found herself back in the hospital after having been doing well in her recovery for several months. I thought she had been
on her way to a better life and the hard times were behind her, but recovery doesn't work like that. There is a steady pushing
forward with intermittent backwards leaps when it gets to be too much.
The
one thing I found necessary to accepting where she was at any given time in her growth was to always believe that at every
moment she was doing the best she could under the circumstances and never react to a setback with an I-knew-you-couldn't-do-it-all-along
attitude.
Andrea
had changed a lot over almost two years. She had matured and she was almost ready to face life. She was happy and content
and finally knew what she wanted. And she changed me. I would never be the same after meeting her.
It was difficult to say the least after she
passed away. Several times I was on the verge of suicide and was eventually diagnosed
with Major Depressive Disorder.
Then I met April and found (after a lot of
self-examination of my motives) that I could truly love someone again. Everything that I had experienced up to then had prepared
me to accept this woman into my life. Now, I've found a purpose again and, with
that, my faith has returned.
Many times I tried to walk away from that
relationship, but whenever I did I found that it was my own weaknesses and fears showing their ugly heads. And when I needed Him most, God took me by the hand and led me back to her, each time stronger and better
able to deal with the trials and tribulations I knew were coming with a relationship with her all along. And that’s okay, because she’s worth it.
At the moment that I am writing this I believe that we are the
closest we have ever been to finding acceptance with each other. I have to give
the credit to her for something said about a year ago, “We’ll find our happy medium some day.” Of course, that happy medium will always change as we change. The
important thing is that we are both willing to give the effort to make it work.
The article below was posted December 1st, 2007:
Self Image
According
to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_image) a person's self image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that
depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair color, sex, I.Q. score, is this person double-jointed, etc.), but also items
that have been learned by that person about himself or herself, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments
of others.
When answering a question
in a workbook about things she felt good about herself Andrea had written, “Pretty – sometimes”. To me Andrea was the most beautiful person I had ever met – morning, noon, or night. But for some reason she didn’t always see herself that way.
I never really understood why, as she grew up in a wonderful family, went to modeling school, and was extremely photogenic
with a natural ability to strike just the right pose for the camera.
I’ve come to realize
that when she didn’t think she looked pretty it wasn’t the outside she was seeing. It was the inside. Sometimes she didn’t like the person that she was looking at in the mirror. And when you don’t like someone it can be difficult to see them as they really
are on the outside. For me, the more I like someone on the inside, the more I
like them on the outside. Beauty is not skin deep. It penetrates all the way from the soul to the outer person.
About
a year ago I met a woman named April. The first time I saw April, I was stunned
and said out loud, “Holy f…k.” I was caught off guard because
I had just seen a ghost. It turned out that the girl I was with was a friend
of hers and she looked at me and said, “Well, I guess I’ll just go home” and introduced us.
April looked so much like Andrea that I just had to get to know
her, but it scared me to death. First, because I needed her so badly that I was
afraid it was all about Andrea and my loss. And second, because I was afraid
to fall in love again for fear of losing her, too. But, starting out, over the
first few months I kept those thoughts to myself and we dated casually and got along great.
But as I got to know her I saw so much more of Andrea that I loved
on the inside – the passion, the charm, the charisma, the caring for others, and the need to find God. But also, there was the self-centeredness at times, and later (when we became closer) the anger and rages
that Andrea was prone to having when she felt fear inside.
And one more thing that I began to realize was that April thought
she was ugly sometimes. She would look in the mirror for an hour at a time, trying
to make herself look beautiful but never being satisfied with the result. I came
to realize that it was because she was not seeing the outside but the inside and she didn’t like what she saw. And there was a lot of baggage there from her past and perceptions that others had
put into her head. I could see, though, that she recognized beauty in others.
So, I made a decision that could have turned out disasterously,
but it was one that I felt I needed to do. One day I picked out three of Andrea’s
modeling photo’s that I felt looked the most like April. Others who I showed
these photos to actually thought it was her in the photos. The next time we were
together went something like this:
Me: “April, do you remember the first time I saw you, how
my jaw dropped and what I said?”
April: “Yes, I remember.”
Me: “Well, this is what I saw.” And I handed her the
photos.
April: “I look like this?”
Me: “Yes, you look very much like that.”
April: “I didn’t know I was beautiful.”
She picked the one that looked most like her and put it up on the
mirror and over the next several hours she would constantly go back to the mirror and look at the picture and play with her
hair and try on different clothes and smiled at the results. It was a wonderful
experience for me seeing her happy with her self image.
Why did I do this? Because
I believe that before a person can find the strength to make an effort to change their self-destructive behaviors they have
to first believe that they are worth it. And for April, I felt that self image
was a start.
I'm speeding like a bullet
to drive through
your chest
I hope you're wearing
a bullet proof vest
Rachel
Trying to Find a Way to Carry On
Adia
I'm empty since you left me
Trying to find a way to carry on – Sarah McLachlan, Adia
Andrea's mother
sent me a cassette tape that Andrea made a few days before I met her. I got it in the mail the other day along with
a CD full of pictures of her ashes being spread in about two dozen countries across the world.
I had to work up the strength to listen to it. A package that traveled 5,000 miles to reach
me, the last 20 feet from my mailbox to my cassette player would be the most difficult. After a while, with mixed emotions
of desideration and diffidence, I put the cassette into my tape player.
She
was drunk and lonely and spoke with her characteristic passion of her life, her hopes, her dreams, her difficulties, and the
veneer of confidence and control she presented to the outside world that hid the lost child underneath. She hinted about the
man she saw coming into her life in the near future who would protect her from herself, yet then spoke bluntly of the certainty
of her coming death. It saddened her that her life would be a short one, and (she thought) insignificant. One
thing that will always be with me are the words she wrote in a book of Bible lessons -- words than I was drawn to once when
I was missing her -- “I don’t want to be forgotten.”
I
listened for half an hour to her voice. Well, really that’s not true. I could not listen to it all at one
time. I had to turn it off twice along the way to recover and prepare myself for more.
Her voice was exactly as I remember it; her enunciation so familiarly distinct, especially her
“t’s”. I’ve missed that voice and hearing her say things I had not heard her speak before. Her
words were imbued with insightfulness, openness, honesty, and prophetic visions of her future -- and sadness. It was difficult,
but I needed to listen. So I did.
One inexplicable result from
listening is that finally, after a year and a half, I can play our Sarah McLachlan CD again.
I pull you from your tower
I take away your
pain
And show you all the beauty you possess
If you'd only let yourself believe
She
wanted so badly to believe that she had value and a purpose. That was my initial goal when our lives first became enmeshed
and I knew I had met the person who would change my life forever; to show her that she did indeed have value and that God
had a purpose for her on this world and in His Kingdom. But she knew more about God than I did. And she worked
harder at that relationship than I ever could.
I wanted so much to
take away her pain. But just as you can never feel someone else’s pain, you also can’t take it away.
Would only I have had the power I would have laid my hands on her forehead and absorbed all the pain inside. I would
have gladly and willingly taken that pain as my own. I would have died to take that pain. I would have given my
life for her happiness, were that possible. Of course it was not.
“…by whose stripes ye were healed." -- 1 Peter
2:24
Andrea had this phrase from 1 Peter tattooed with a cross over
the dozens of scars across her left forearm – her stripes of pain. She understood that Christ died as our substitute
and that His stripes have healed ours. She knew where to look to take her pain away, but the dichotomy that is the borderline
mind fought her all the way. She wanted it both ways, but knew that was not possible. She was either to be all
God’s or all the Devil’s. She ultimately chose God. Were it not for that choice I could not have an
angel watching over me now, holding off that stiff breeze that threatens my house of cards with the consequences of sin. I
have needed that angel desperately at times since and I am so grateful that she is there for me when I need her most.
I often think about the many things that I wish I had done differently. I wish I had been more attentive to her needs and more validating of her hurts. I wish I had been more aware of what she was going through in her head near the end.
Adia I do believe I failed you
Adia I know I let you down
don't you know I tried so hard
to love you in my way
it's easy let it go...
But it isn’t.
I'm trying my best though.
“Always know in your heart that you are far bïgger than anything that can happen to you.”
– Dan Zadra
"I Miss You, Baby"
by Jim
Hello Andrea, how have you been
What's it like on the other end
What's
it like in heaven's hold
Is it just as we were told
The life you lived was filled with hurt
You felt ground into the dirt
But
you never gave up the fight
Til God reached out and took you that night
My Piglet, I miss you so much
I miss your lips, I miss your touch
I miss
your smile, I miss your charm
I pray that now you're free from harm
I know that you are in that place
I know that God left you a space
I know
that now your heart will heal
And he will take the pain you feel
So tell me Andrea, if you can
What's it like in God's land
What's it like
on the other end
And are you happy my special friend
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