The Georgie Gust Exhibit

I Have Schizophrenia, But Schizophrenia Does Not Have Me by Jonathan Harnisch

My name is Jonathan Harnisch. I have schizophrenia with psychotic features, but schizophrenia and psychosis do not have me. I cannot distinguish what is real and what is not real. My thoughts, mood and behavior are altered, and they change frequently. Sometimes I believe that I live in a psychiatric hospital and that my experience is worse than a hellish nightmare. At other times, I don't believe that I am in such a hospital. I see and interact with people who aren’t there, and I battle through countless other extremely uncomfortable symptoms. I believe that my medical team is currently taking me off all my medication. My overall goal online is to continue to inspire hope and resilience as a survivor of severe trauma that has led to dissociative disorders and schizophrenia. However, I struggle, not suffer. I post and publish what I want and what I feel, no matter what mood or state of mind I am in, but I always do my best to keep things positive. I admire people who keep as positive an attitude as they can. Even though we all have our battles and bad days, this simply does not mean that we have a bad life. A negative mind will never give you a positive life. The world suffers greatly due to the silence of good people. Keep going! Keep hope and faith alive! Living with schizophrenia and, therefore, with a brain that from time to time doesn't work means that my life can become difficult. However, I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life. Given that I’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, brain injury, Tourette’s syndrome, diabetes, anxiety, depression, a rare blood disease, dyslexia, and cancer, I am doing okay. At the end of the storm there is always a golden sky. Writing in general—and writing this piece in particular—helps me by enabling me to stay in the moment and to share my experiences publicly.I have recently had several days completely to myself, which provided me, at first, with certain feelings of abandonment and more solitude than I would otherwise have wanted, alongside moments of agitation, frustration, and anxiety. These feelings have fluctuated with familiar and welcoming times with myself and with my two cats in my home in the guest house of my family’s large property in a small village in New Mexico. I would like to take a moment to mention that prior to 2010 I was always an extremely wealthy and successful person, which made my precise diagnoses with mental illnesses difficult, as I used to be able to pay for the things I needed and wanted. This difficulty was increased because of my natural abilities, as I have always been known to be very smart and I have always taken some pride in being so. I have been able to write volumes about my past, but my goal now is to stay as grounded in the present as I am able to be. This is because a change has occurred in me, something perhaps bordering on the profound. Yesterday, I watched a documentary film called ‘A Sister's Call’ about a man with schizophrenia, and by the end I felt a change in myself. During my overall decline, I lost a great deal of what I had, much like the schizophrenic man portrayed in the movie—until he got better and better over the years. I was able to relate in some ways, although I think that the change in me began years ago, as a boy, when I would often read about schizophrenia and related conditions, as well as self-help material. I have come to realize what I had, what I have, and what I want so far as this pertains to my health, as well as, perhaps, to my lifestyle and, yes, to my life. Independence. I have been and still am dependent on people, as well as tobacco and medication. I have lost a great deal of my cognitive abilities over the past few years—and a great deal more since earlier this year. I continue my journaling as usual, but I feel different, maybe better, maybe not. There is no cure for schizophrenia. I have read about living independently. However, I have overlooked the benefits of being able to take care of myself as far as possible—even this possibility never crossed my mind. Maybe I just had to see this, in the movie, and at this time. I am glad for once. I know what I want and perhaps what I might even need. Independence. I already have a job and a loving wife and people to help me. I began to think about how financially lucky I had once been and how, when losing that, I let my condition get the best of me. I think my illnesses and their unbelievably complex symptoms have caused me blame and denial. Rather than just shifting around my thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs, they have shifted in me, as I now see it. Yesterday I started to plan as efficiently and as realistically as possible, given my limitations, fears, and emotional dysregulation. All in all, I’ll see how it goes. Some bumps have come up already, which is natural, and I’m just giving this independence thing a shot. However, I do have hope. Nothing unrealistic. I have felt a delicate—and relative—equilibrium over the past 24 hours. That is rare. We’ll see how it goes. One day at a time and one step at a time. Easy does it. Once again, I try to make a good day out of what's been, but I end up hidden inside the fog of schizophrenia and asociality. Asociality refers to the lack of motivation to engage in social interaction, or a preference for solitary activities. Poor social and vocational outcomes have long been observed in schizophrenia.I do not like interpersonal relationships or schizophrenia. I prefer to be asocial. I know many people miss me. Everybody does. I often miss myself. I sit and I conclude this, right now, completely alone, alone in the dark.Please help me raise mental health awareness to put an end to the stigma and maltreatment that occur so often regarding those with mental illness and physical disabilities. I continue to keep hope and faith alive. I will move on. I will move on! Thank you for blessing me with your prayers and well-wishes. I sincerely appreciate you, God, and life in general. Keep fighting! Let us who suffer from or struggle with chronic mental health conditions remember that we might have schizophrenia or a mental illness, but it doesn’t have us. We cannot allow it to have us. 

Getting Through an Episode by Jonathan Harnisch

The curtain opens. I am Jonathan.I have schizophrenia.I don’t want to make a big introduction. Perhaps some of you have read my work before. For me, schizophrenia is similar to what I have read. In the early material, from such turn-of-the-century psychiatrists as Kraepelin and Bleuler, there seems to be plenty of subgenres or comorbidities with this condition, which I have had since I was a boy. I believe my traumatic upbringing—at least for me, though not my sister, who was brought up in the same environment—likely set off my illness. A series of other, seemingly ongoing traumatic events in my adult life have created complications, as my doctor would call them. I experience manifestations of other mental health conditions from autism to borderline personality disorder, and my case, for lack of a better word, involves many symptomatic days and times, which often cycle rapidly. For example, my moods can fluctuate up to 30 times per day, with concomitant autistic experiences, and muscular manifestations and malfunctions. A significant number of the comorbidities of which I suffer, not only just happen and I deal with them, but rather they create reactions to even the simplest things.I battle through daily life. I experience confusion with electronic devices, which is likely and appropriately a common symptom of schizophrenia itself. I may need to reply to an email and I forget how to, or I go to turn on my computer and I forget how to find, much less press, the power button. At the opposite end, on another day, or even another hour, I am capable of solving advanced logic and mathematical problems. While I often forget the simplest things, I have a photographic memory.Let me back up for a moment… I left off my last essay, mentioning that I would be back writing during my next episode.And I am having an episode right now.Schizophrenia might be considered an umbrella disorder, though I am not a doctor of any kind. I consider myself an unemployed artist with a botched trust fund and a life that, in terms of conventional reality, doesn’t actually exist, so I create delusions, or in a way a double self—not a multiple personality, which is one of the myths of schizophrenia; this double reality, despite all the chaotically misfiring neurons in my brain, helps me to have experiences that replace the uncomfortable truths or situations that I prefer not to have. To exist. To be not myself, though loved ones have told me that there is a core, an “oversoul,” that is intact throughout my schizophrenic life.My thought has trailed off slightly while I was about to write one last bit on my episode, primarily consisting of paranoid thinking that I should keep on writing through my now former episode until I could break through it. That is what I do. I archive my writing. Often, and only when I am feeling symptomatic, I go back to the categorized collected written words that I have been documenting since I was a boy so that I can see what happened through my point of view and so learn how to cope better the next time. I take my writing to my therapist, explaining what happened. I often bring up with him that my life is incredibly synchronistic with my books, which consist of a series of 36 alibis of what makes me who I am so that I can know. So that I can understand and so that I can keep going and move the hell onward as I always do.I always come back.My intention for this essay was perhaps that it would be another inserted chapter in my literature, my books, my documentaries, my life, my art, and my reason. But that thought has now trailed off as well… and I had only begun what I referred to as what was not my beginning, or my introduction to this piece.What I would like to do now is simple: take a ten-minute break.Time goes on, with people coming in and out of my office and interacting with me, communicating. My goal now is to return to my laptop and recall the 5 minutes after my last break; I mean my cigarette break when I wrote the initial thought that trailed off. Things change. Holy cow, things change.I am back.But I can’t stop now without completing this piece, my three-act play, my opera, where I am not the conductor but feel I should be, naturally, if I did not have schizophrenia. I was the violin section. I was beating the melodic tom-tom drum. I was the full orchestra performing live, both alone and with an audience. Together, all the musical instruments communicating with each other, creating a rusty fragmentation, if you will, communicating with me, at my core.I’ll take a break now, and I will recap how I got through this one, this brief setback, and the five minutes that changed everything.I know I can recall what happened. And I will. I never intentionally abandon what I am doing at any moment. Again, I always move ahead. There is at least some sun after the storm. If I can stay on track, or if not, while I still play this out live, some might be able to see the stream of thought that is my specialty, where I present a typical day living with schizophrenia. And I’ll call it a good day at this point. I can’t lose what I already have. If I do, I will grab something else and run with that.In summary, if I am able (for thoughts still bombard my psyche, overlapping and wild) I will, and if not, I will just move the hell on. And let this go. I should have better things to do than to examine my day-to-day experiences with schizophrenia.And you know what? Maybe I will.However, I can’t leave anyone hanging. The show is not over yet. The chips are not down. I will simply do my best to finish on the stage, close the curtain, and become the director, the switchboard operator in my head. I have nothing to lose now. I am at war. Just not in combat; I am now in reserve. So let’s get to some meat, the heart of this, and some completion.Something.Anything.It is all so confusing and stressful.Stressful?Damn right. But it fuels me. It fuels everything.No matter what those 5 minutes involved, from overlapping tears and a hardcore crying spell, followed by re-centering a crooked picture on the wall, to having a can of soda and a smoke, a cigarette smoke mind you. Nothing more. I can laugh now. Maybe it doesn’t matter. My brain chemistry changed, all on its own.I am back again. I have returned another time from within the hallways of going deep into Wonderland, and back and forth. That is something I am used to. The sun is now out, at last and at least for now. Until, well, we’ll just see what comes next.Roll credits. Insert title card:The End.Fade Out.**Amendment: There is no end. I walk off stage. The seats are empty. I am back in real life. Well, sort of. The story of my life with schizophrenia continues. The curtain draws shut. 

Addiction and Schizophrenia by Jonathan Harnisch

My name is Jonathan, and I am a tobacco addict. Life goes on without smoking, but for now I fight for life. I don't write off a thing. It feels like hell, but I know it is peace—and strength. Overall, the symptoms are temporary, so far. I am nowhere near the end of the addiction, but I am on my way. I think: Help! I am kicking the habit. They are not going away, these withdrawals. The nicotine and the smoke itself. The real hardcore heavy chain smoker and tobacco fiend. A friend of the enemy. I befriend my fear. My fear of not knocking this off my bucket list before the bucket has its first and perhaps last heart attack. Cancer, COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The severity of depression. Jumbled thoughts. Life goes on. I need this. I need my life. I crave life. No false hopes. The real deal. Quit. Win. Stay in the now. Stay alive. Mental illness aside, physical disabilities too, my body. I forgot about my body. For decades. It finally hit me. Something more profound than life itself. No assumptions. No projections. I am still figuring it out. Some are the smoke. The habit. The destructive behavior and serious issues of smoke. It might now take away my other issues. Just no more puffs. Slow and long steps to this slow and legal suicide. I am stronger than my mind. I can deal with life. I just need to preserve it as lovingly as I can. If I had resolved this earlier, sure, different story. I didn't, but I am now. I have been offline and on my way, in combat with my mind, my schizophrenia, but now also with my body, sensations, my second nature, smoke. Heavy smoke. Smoking is easy. Death is inevitable. But smoke. It is all I have needed to feel its effects. 100 clouds of smoke and puffs per day. 100 cigarettes. I can deal with schizophrenia and with mental illness. I am ready to quit the smoke soon and to live with life. Life is hard enough. I had an epiphany. I couldn't even walk 100 steps to smoke without being out of breath. For 10 minutes. Years of lies I told myself. It was my second nature. I needed to smoke and d¬¬rink caffeine. Smoking, quitting smoking, rather—this is a battlefield I must fight peacefully. I am a warrior. A survivor. A realist. I am still wrapped up in the ringer, but I am doing it, I am quitting. I have been quitting. I have been offline and in detox. A slow detox mixed with the detox of yesterday's psychotic episode from schizophrenia and the crazy mess I left behind yesterday. That was a symptom of life. I let it go. Just quit. Just do it. Commit to something not by doing but by not doing. These heavyweight headaches, all of it. And I haven't even kicked the habit 100%. Not yet. I am, however, on my way. Well on my way. Five packs of the six per day. I tossed them. I gave them to my medical team to dispense for me, one a day, and with a plan. I have quit, of course, 30 times, honestly quit. But I never had a plan. I never outline. I just do what I do, and I still smoke. 80 cigarettes less now. 20 to go—day by day. I am stronger than my mind. I am stronger than my depression, my anger, my withdrawal symptoms due to letting go of four-fifths of my everyday life. Of my addiction to death by smoke. How do I sound? Raspy. How does this writing therapy session help? Who cares? It helps, that is all, it helps. I have help from others, and I use electronic cigarettes and lozenges. Thoughts bombard my head, my psyche, my mind. They erase and delete. They change. They return. They are just there. Time to live life is available. It's been waiting for me. Time hones in, creeping closer to death. I knock out another puff. Lord help me. I can almost hear Him saying. I have been here all this time. I was waiting for you. Flight of ideas, racing thoughts, then they slow down. But they won't stop. There is no easy way for anything, anything worthwhile maybe. It sounds easy to quit. Just don't do anything. Smoke? Then don't smoke. Sounds good. Easier said than done. I would light a cigarette now because I wouldn't care. So I choose to take a breath, not to take away ten breaths—because I care. Nicotine replacement. Every ache and pain that exists. I fight a private war. A common war. It doesn't feel common. It is worse than kicking crack cocaine. A war of fear. The thing I fear will soon vanish because I now know that I am stronger than my mind. I can and I will defeat this. You are stronger than you think, and the strongest people are not those who show strength in front of the world but those who battle and win the battles that others do not know anything about. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I rid my body of fear, of addiction, of hatred, because that hatred is fear. I battle fear. I recently wrote about how the world suffers greatly because of the silence of good people. I have been silent because I fight a private war, a war of fear, of addiction, and of life. This thing I fear will soon leave because I now know that I am stronger than my mind. I can and I will defeat this. As the fear lifts, a freedom I never knew will mesmerize me. I can see it now; I can see it already. I am ready. I am ready now. Can you see my face, with my eyes that speak, that drip tears and sweat, draining out the chaos of phlegm, of disgust, screaming with pure energy? They circle around. They see, sort of, dyslexic, legally blind, bestselling author bull. No. I can't either. Cancer eats at me. I take the Dallas Buyer's Club route. I take in and absorb my religion, my creed. Readjusting to a new and improved lifestyle that will benefit me medically and emotionally. Have I quit the smoking habit? No. I have not. On Thursday, no. Tuesday, no, I can't remember. Blame schizophrenia, blame confusion, blame nothing, and not myself. Creativity keeps me alive. Music, too. I kicked the crack cocaine, PCP, and hard liquor kick a dozen years ago. That is mine. It's easy. I am aware of how it will be. I used to be a non-smoker, a person who didn't reap his body, and the people around him, nor his health, I mean, his life. 25 years ago? I couldn't fathom the thought of smoke. Schizophrenia and smoke, comfortable with schizophrenia and cigarettes—they often go hand in hand. I used that excuse. I heard quitting tobacco can be harder than kicking heroin, I was on everything, and I would eat drugs out of the toilet. That was how stinging and demanding that fear embraced me. It overcame me; rather, I let it. Five packs per day, five tins of smokeless tobacco. Something like that. I'd just use and abuse, abuse myself, my mind, my body, my spirit, my world, myself, my self-esteem. My pride. I didn't know. I carried a case of bottled water, cases of caffeine, to my office just to get through 6:00 in the morning. "I'm an artist, a bohemian, I am allowed to smoke.” Old Hollywood is now long gone when smoking was glamorous. It was cool, to me. Now, looking back? Guess what. And it’s astounding now. Excuses. One case of bottled water, walking with it for 20 yards, on the flat flagstone. 5 minutes pass. The phone rang. It was important. I.D. theft or something. Stupid stuff. I was out of breath. The case of water, and the 20 years, not on my mind. "Hi, I just came back from a rigorous run, you know, a quickie 5-mile jog…." Former New England Champion, 1993. Semi-Pro in ’94. Graduation day. High school. I am cool. I lit my first, just celebrating with the others. I just graduated from the best school in the country. Easy. One hour later, one pack, addictive personality. I was an adult. An adult! Big time baby! Smacked with suicide, a failure, hospitalized, music saved me. I called 911. That was mental illness, depression, that was 1995. That was LSD. The next day ecstasy, PCP, junk, booze, malt liquor, fake I.D. Liar, liar, a friend of mine, where has he gone? I loved me. Next up at bat. Hospital. "You have schizophrenia. Here is your script.” The head doc meant my script for medication, not life. I was set. I was rich. I paid for friends. I paid for everything with Ben Franklins to spare. $25,000 per day, nothing illegal, no criminal record, no STDs, just some guys' stuff, some promiscuity, some garbage. Some things burying in me, my body bearing the burden. Smoke. Caffeine, too, and smokeless tobacco, dip. I knew how to pack that. To be cool. I didn't say it, I just rolled with it. I knew cancer, death—all that comes later. I remain in the moment. I was sick. Bottomed out. Quit everything. Square one. Just cigarettes. Let me stay sober for a year and then I'll just knock out the smoke. Dip? My teeth are fine, for now, I am a good kisser. The best. Big, sweet, sick, pure ego. No. I mean fear. Literary word jumble. To cope. On Day 3 or 4. Something like that. No, I didn't quit. Here it comes. I am doing it right. Right now. Getting help. More help. As much as I can get. I want to live and not die. Much less to die a painful death. Leaving others behind. Not many but maybe many more than I think. I have a plan. Have I a plan? Is this a joke? Tapering off. Starting with knocking out 5 of the 6 packs instantly. Is it hard? I'll write 1,000 pages next time to explain how hard. One pack left. Caffeine? My last two vices? That's all. Wait is that all? Yes. And I am already on my way. It is either swiping the smoke or letting my life go. Choice point. Keep going. I am stronger than my mind. To be continued through Christmas at least, maybe not on paper but for the documentary I have been making to capture these times of change. It's nothing. Something just hit me. Maybe it was—what's it called? God? I can work with that. Stay in the now, just for today, stay in the now. Let this sink in. Stay aware. Scan the body, in the name of God, and for the life of me, the life that awaits, the freedom, for crying out loud, my body wailing just relax. Just relax. Just relax. What lies ahead—it is miraculous. Freedom. I can choose. I can. I can. I can. I am still on board. Turbulence expected. I'll get there. I turn 40 soon. I need this. I have this. Just for today. Just for right this bloody second. I march on. Always, continuing to surprise myself every day. I am my hero sometimes. Often. Quitting smoke is my war, my body, my mind, my fear, my fuel, my life, and ultimately my death. But I am still around. Being silent doesn't necessarily mean being forgotten. Thank you for your support—Jonathan Harnisch.

Second Alibi: The Banality of Life by Jonathan Harnisch

Second Alibi: The Banality of Life is the sensational prequel to the groundbreaking work, Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography. Harnisch's The Banality of Life handles the backstory of Georgie, Ben, and Claudia, further incorporating the invisible studio audience introduced in Alibiography. Ben's confessions flourish, written once more in his noteworthy and imaginative style. Harnisch seduces the reader by presenting a genuine, eerie sense of dissociation from the story, and once again conveys the feeling of what it is truly like to be mentally ill. There's an edge to Second Alibi that is beautifully countered by the author's personal story of how his writing helps him to rise above his own disorder, while allowing the rest of the world to understand what it is like to be mentally ill and how people with schizophrenia think and see their world.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book Six: Of Crime and Passion

Book Six of the groundbreaking bestseller Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Of Crime and Passion, explores romantic love through the story of John Marshal, who is taught by a prostitute that one can get everything one wants through seduction. John wants glory and personal prestige and vows to get it by obtaining lowly positions in upper-class homes, and then seducing the one woman in the household who has the most influence. He begins with Maribelle Roman and ends with Claudia Sinclair. He discovers that seduction is indeed very powerful, but you must never actually fall in love.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book Five: Glad You’re Not Me

Book Five of the groundbreaking bestseller Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Glad You're Not Me, takes the act of transgression to another level. Harnisch, the author himself, discovers he has been fictionalized as a character in an old friend's chapbook, and decides to come out of the woodwork as a real person, The Mentally Ill Artist, in this explicit transgressive reaction chapbook.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book Four: The Oxygen Tank

Book Four of the groundbreaking bestseller Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, The Oxygen Tank, shows Georgie back in his morning routine of breaking coffee cups, falling in the shower, and of course, meeting Claudia for the first time. Georgie's house grows in size and grandeur with every dream. Claudia has an affair with Sir Tony Halldale and is caught by Georgie. Claudia is hit by a car and paralyzed. She then drowns when Georgie takes her boogie boarding on his boat. Georgie tries to kill himself. Ben is realizing that everyone is crazy in some way, not just him.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book Three: Porcelain Utopia

Book Three of the groundbreaking bestseller Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Porcelain Utopia, explores Dr C's interactions with Georgie and Ben. She thinks that dredging up Ben's past will somehow fix his present. Ben describes what went down at the holdup with the cell phone "bomb." He describes being booked into the psychiatric ward. Ben develops a strong obsession with Claudia/Heidi. Ben describes his first sexual encounters at age 10, in the Boy Scout treehouse. Ben describes some of his mother's abuse and neglect of him as a child. Dr C points out that Georgie looks more like Ben's mother than Ben does. Ben is haunted by a demon that resembles his mother. He remembers being sexually assaulted by his mother at age 11.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book Two: Freak

Book Two of the groundbreaking bestseller Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Freak, explores Ben's days at Wakefield. School is too traumatic, so Ben lets Georgie attend and take the abuse. The book explores Georgie's relationship with the original Claudia Nesbitt, the girlfriend of the jock Ozer, who tormented Georgie mercilessly. Claudia befriends Georgie and loves him for who he is. The other good part of Wakefield is Heidi Berillo's philosophy class, in which Georgie excels. Heidi encourages him to write an essay for the prestigious Winterbourne Scholarship. Georgie discovers alcohol and is constantly hung over. He is arrested for drunkenness and bailed out by Heidi, who keeps encouraging him. Georgie wins the Winterbourne prize but loses Claudia to suicide.

Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography | Book One: Lover In the Nobody

A young man battling extreme mental illness brings his sadomasochistic fantasies to life in Harnisch's (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) latest novel.As this riveting story opens, Georgie Gust, a suicidal Tourette's syndrome patient, tells his doctor he wants to leave the mental institution where he's been committed. When the doctor puts him off, Gust finds himself buffeted by violent fantasies of escape, and he even prepares to hang himself. The novel plunges readers into the mind of a man at war with his own urges, memories, and sexual obsessions. After a scene shift, Gust's chauffeur, Ben, delivers him to his empty home, where Margaret, his only friend, visits to check on him. However, she annoys him because "she seems to care." Later, Gust, a foot fetishist, gives a pedicure to his sexy neighbor, Claudia, in a scene lit with unexpected poetry and poignancy. As the narrative viewpoint flickers among Gust, Ben, and a quasi-omniscient third-person perspective, Gust's voracious appetite for pain prompts him to hire Claudia to torment him. (He has wealthy parents, so he spends cash liberally.) When Claudia's house goes up in flames, she moves in with him, and their sadomasochistic bond descends into extraordinary, hallucinatory violence. In Claudia's hands, Gust discovers new depths of masochism, and she finds joy in tormenting him. Despite the garishness, brutality, and squalor of many passages (which are not for the squeamish), more sophisticated readers will appreciate the extraordinary feat Harnisch has accomplished. He lucidly, poignantly conveys a mind rivenwith what are, after all, human vulnerabilities: mental pathologies, shameful fantasies, anguished doubts about the natures of reality, love, and memory. In the hands of a lesser writer, these themes would splinter the narrative. Fortunately, the author masters his material; readers will believe the voices that vivify it and compassionately wish them to find the healing that eludes them.An extraordinary, harrowing odyssey into an embattled self, full of humor, compassion, and a rare understanding of mental illness.--Kirkuk Reviews