Over the past several days, I discovered that the Fox Theater in Atlanta had the dates available for September 10 and 11 of this year. I’m sure other dates are available there also and that other places are available for those dates. I really wanted to introduce my work to the public right now and to use that opportunity at the Fox Theater to share my ideas about Patriotism from the way I know it. I called some businesses today for possible sponsors to secure the theater, but I’m not an organization, nor a business, nor a non-profit. I’m just a person.
It seemed to me as things have transpired lately in our country, that maybe the time had come for me to bring my work to America so it could be of some help. I’ve waited a very long time for it to be “okay” with my family to bring it to you. Daddy told me that it was time to do what I could do to help. I guess that is not what he meant. It is a shame really, because he know I can do these things and pretends like it is not so when Mom says I’m just crazy.
But, I can’t. The freedom that I thought I finally had available to me to be myself and do what I know how to do is actually not available. If I pursue any more steps forward to create the show at the Fox Theater, to play my music there, to share my Got No Money Guide, how-to can-do kind of thinking and the other inventions and equations I’ve created over the years to do market projections and alternative energy stuff (and other things), then my family will simply have me put in the mental hospital again.
Personally, I’m tired of having my home turned out into the street and being forced into a small room with no tv, no pencil or paper, no bathroom, no phone and no contact with anyone for four days, while some doctor decides to rubber stamp the probate judge’s order that my parents had done.
After that, I don’t want to sit for the ride handcuffed in the back of a police car or sheriff’s high-security claustrophobic vehicle like prisoners are taken to maximum security prisons to be forced to go to the mental hospital in Rome, Ga. or Decatur, Ga. – never near my home and friends, but far up into another county – not even in the same calling zone. I don’t want to have their drugs forced on me against my will and I don’t want to sit in their small room waiting 8 – 12 hours for them to process my paperwork, with no food, nothing to drink and cotton-mouth, nausea and double vision from their drugs.
And, I don’t want to watch my life’s work again thrown into the street or into the trash bin. My parents have helped me so much more than enough to stop doing what I’m pursuing right now. I’m tired of hearing my mother tell me that I must be in a manic schizophrenic phasing because I have things to say and she doesn’t agree with them. She doesn’t know why I should believe I have a right to interact with news stations, or our government people that she doesn’t agree with particularly anyone that isn’t a Democrat.
Yes, I’m 49 years old. I live in an America very different than yours and it is why I know that freedom is so dear – because it is something I’ve been denied my entire adult life. I wasn’t allowed to raise my children, I’m not allowed to work or have any business that isn’t painting little pictures.
It doesn’t matter that these paintings aren’t selling well – or at all right now, which I really don’t enjoy doing – my parents are still insisting that this painting as a business is what I have to do. – but it isn’t selling. How does that make sense?
I’ve always loved doing math and science and research stuff and have continued doing it as a hobby for all of these years, but all it does is sit in the closet because it gets real different with my parents when I bring it out to the public in any way. They don’t understand what gives me the right to even look at that stuff. I don’t understand . . .
My mother told me tonight, for the umpteenth time that I’m needing something because I’m manic. There has been no one in the people at the grocery today or at the MicroCenter that acted that way to me, just Mom. But they don’t know that I’m trying to get my work into the public. My mother has been saying I’m having a manic phase since about October of last year every time we are on the phone together – she has something to say about it. She was that way at Christmas, too, even while I was at their house for a week helping take out an old toilet, help fix the floor and help with the new toilet in January or whenever we redid it. She was still saying I needed to be “out of the action” – “getting some rest” – “not trying to get gifts for my children for Christmas.”
But tonight, she said that she thinks I’m going to go a few more days into this project and they will have to put me into the mental hospital to get some help for me. She says that since I won’t listen to them and stop writing to people that I don’t know and insist on thinking I’m able to do this economic stuff and science stuff / inventing stuff that I’m off the deep end. And certainly, she said and believes I have no right to put together a show about Patriotism at any venue, let alone the Fox Theater in the fancy downtown area. Why shouldn’t I – there are many other places and things and events I’ve accomplished quietly, why not?
And, I have the research I’ve done over many years – not just this week. The equations are right and they did project the current economic situation for our country and the world more accurately than the ones in use by paid professionals and consultants. Why shouldn’t I get to bring these to the public marketplace to be of help and offer greater accuracy in this arena? I’ve only worked on them for 32 years – I mean, durn!
My family doesn’t want anyone told that we are in any way related. Instead of being proud of my efforts, they want me to just stop and not do these things anymore. Most of the research groups have such narrowly focused areas supported by their grants, that I can’t give what I’ve found to even one of them and there is no mechanism for me to really interact with anyone about them, except maybe the government folks on committees or in agencies in Washington, D.C. or at college research groups.
The worst thing, I think – is that after all these years, my parents, for all their hoo-hah about democracy and freedom, only believe it is deserved by them, but not for me, not for my children and not for anyone like us. If we have contributions to make, they are to be shelved, stuck away in a pile on the floor and never used to profit nor to provide for ourselves, because we are not middle class like them, Christian like them, deserving like them and haven’t earned the right to the intelligence we hold.
You know, I was really looking forward to bring the music I’ve played since I started studying piano and violin at the age of four years old, out to the world. It was only a couple years ago, that I could play it loud enough to be heard in my apartment because my parents said it would disturb my neighbors and the government would take away the subsidy that helps me pay my rent.
Then, they said, I would be homeless again with nowhere to live because I’m sure not allowed to live with them. Now, I know I have not always made good decisions, I’ve had wild rides in my life – some of which I chose but this is ridiculous. Why should I have had to hide my ability to play music even in my own home for all they years? What kind of freedom is that? What kind of America is that?
Why is it that the things I can write can’t be allowed into the public without my family having me put into a mental hospital and drugged with enough nasty things that sometimes it has been years before I could even see to write my name? What have I done that is so bad to deserve this?
By Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 2008
I think this is why socialism is so bad – it is what I’ve been living since I was around 25 years old, and it has to be wrong that each day I must tell my parents what I’ve eaten, how much I’ve slept, what I’m writing, who I’m talking to, and that once a month a government worker takes a look over my home and is required to get my disability check to disburse.
I’m not a drunk, my head injury from 1984 does not completely incapacitate me, I buy my own groceries and I can drive a car but I can’t afford one. I help people and create actions that other people seem to struggle to coordinate, but it isn’t once in a while during a “manic episode” – it is all the time, everyday. What kind of cycle is that?
I’m not sure what to do – but I’m stacking my work that I had out for it to be put into the computer and sent to places to be of help – back into the closet (on the shelves literally.) Tomorrow, maybe I can find some other people that will put together the America the Beautiful show at the Fox Theater or somewhere so it can happen. It won’t happen as I would do it but it will still be a pretty show if someone does it and it does need to be done.
Then, I suppose maybe – I’ll just putter about and wait for Mom to realize I’ve stopped pursuing these things. Either I’ll be put away somewhere or I won’t, but maybe I’ll get to ride my new bike a couple times before they screw up my balance and my eyesight again with those psycho drugs Mom and Dad demand I be put on. . .
