Jim Stitzel
Jack-of-All-Trades, Master of WordsExcerpts from Life
To Those Left Behind After a Suicide
To Those Left Behind After a Suicide, First, please allow me to offer my sincerest condolences. It’s never easy to lose a loved one, whether it be illness or accident. It’s harder still to lose someone when it is a result of their own personal choice. That choice,...
The Next Stage of Treating My Anxiety
It's been about six weeks now since my latest adjustment in the treatment of my mental health. I started seeing a new psychiatrist, who actually took the time to spent just over an hour with me at our first appointment. That's already a significant improvement over my...
The Experience of Derealization
There's this strange artifact that occurs with anxiety. It also occurs with people who have been through trauma, suffer from PTSD, stress, or depression or anxiety. It's a condition called derealization, and it takes two forms. One is when you feel like an observer...
Fiction
Thief
Shadows. Little threads of nightmare silk play against the wall of the nursery before they coalesce into fine, delicate fingers not unlike a Black Widow's legs. These threads, these fingers are chased by thin arms, equally delicate, equally long. Then the shadows loom...
The Little Witch
The little witch, for she was, indeed, very wee, chased after the chipmunk across the forest floor. “Why did you steal from me?” she asked the chipmunk, once she caught up to it burrowing into its den at the base of a massive oak tree. “I didn’t mean to,” it mumbled,...
Hallucinations
Angel wings play across my ceiling while I lie in bed trying to fall asleep. Shadowy, feathery figures that flit and float across the surface, as if moved by an unseen breeze. They sway, back and forth, and I am mesmerized. They speak to me, low whispers of angelic...