yin and yang

Well.. I wrote Sat about my wonderful time Friday night..I was excited and distracted and spent all day yesterday recuperating because Sunday I was rearranging so many things to get a room ready for Isabelle to work in more regularly. So! now here's the downer... In every happy hookers life some rain must fall... A friend of mine was killed last week.. Sledgehammer aka Marland Anderson. I waited a week to write about it because this really hurt. It hurt because he was one of the sweetest, kindest, gentlest giants I'd ever met.. and I find a lot of big guys who at first glance might seem intimidating are actually just giant teddy bears. I knew he struggled with depression.. He was actually very shy. When I rented a room from him my last month in LA we spent time together at the beach and out clubbing. He was encouraged by me to get out more and socialize... after all.. I do like to socialize. BUT I was concerned about how much dope he was smoking... self medicating it seemed to me. That was April of 2008... I met him in LA when I did my first LA based porn. I knew from the girl I was staying with (I was living with Porno Dan and his wife Kira Silver for my first few weeks there) that he would be gentle with me. I mean he had a super giant cock to go along with his big giant body! Kira was much tinier than I am so I figured if she can take it.. I could too. So that happened last week.. I have had more than my share of people in my life who suffer from mental illness. One who walked off a cliff when I was young while being a resident at a psychiatric facility.. a sibling who has been in and out of psych wards, jail and what not.. a grandparent who long suffered from schizophrenia.. and now recently another colleague is spinning out of control and I'm not close enough to intervene but also can't. I'm a recovering codependent. I can only direct others closer to her how to deal with her. It's tricky.. because in order to get a person to the psych ward you either need their consent which is almost impossible to get because they are not in their right mind.. either they are paranoid that people are trying to poison them (in the case of Sledge and my grandfather/cliff-walker) or they are enjoying the 'high' too much... whether it be from the drugs/alcohol or the manic phase which makes them feel invincible. They don't want help because they don't want that feeling to stop. So you have to wait til they prove to be a harm to themselves or someone else. In Marland's case.. he had done that.. A knife was involved and a suicide attempt. The first bit of news made the cops look like they were responsible.. over-tasing him to death.. But then the news was altered. They only tased him twice.. he had broken the handcuffs/railing in the ambulance. REALLY? sorry but something doesn't add up here. If the ambulance is that fragile.. why was he handcuffed there and not more appropriately in a squad car with the ambulance following? anyway.. I'm sure more details will come out but there definitely needs to be more education about psychosis.. not only with the cops/health care but with our own society. Yes.. it's scary.. we're afraid it's contagious. And in a way it is.. because dealing with a mentally ill psychotic person can stress you out so much that you too can become unhinged. There's also the manipulation. A good Manic episode will have you convinced after you've been manipulated enough that you are the crazy one. I have on more than once occasion had to pull the wool out of the health care professionals eyes where my sibling was concerned and do their job for them. You learn alot over the years on this side of the fence. Anyway.. It sucks.. but it's something I'm sure many of you have either personally experienced yourself or with friends/family members or know ones who have. It's not an easy thing to deal with. Next...stay tuned for an idiot rant. Then I promise we're back onto to hot sex topics :)