there has been a request that I enumerate the depths of my lunacy and despair. it is turtles all the way down.
my first intimation that I would go crazy came to me in High School. I lived across the street from the mysterious state psychiatric center as a youth. my brother and I would dare eachother to enter, upping the ante - until I finally went in ... for a terrible second, the stairwells were swathed in netting to prevent desperate people from hurling themselves into the maw.
a member of my AP Latin class suddenly, inexplicably went missing from class. a mystery, until I saw him in a line-up from the psych center out for a supervised stroll. for some reason I fixated on pschyzophrenia, convinced that I too would go crazy. I would lay awake at night waiting for the voices to come, until they did - the voices of anxiety, not of a thought disorder. I was so shaken up I gave myself an ulcer at the age of 16.
fast forward to the University of Chicago - after two years I hit a brick wall. I told my brother who was so furious with me for taking the Coast Guard exam that he drove me all the way from Chicago to Milwaukee to tell me so that I felt like I had the affect of a cow. so to the Guard with a chip on my shoulder I went - my affective life perhaps permanently tweaked at this point. in my heart I knew this and hoped the sea would be a curative.
I proved to be a troublesome Coastie - too smart and wierd to pass muster
at some point that remains unclear I got switched on by the powers that be - powerful emotions of fear and rage took hold of my life in response. I became immersed in violence - physical & sexual. I saw it everywhere. It divided me from myself. my affective life spiralled out of control until I landed in a military psyche ward. different diagnoses were batted about - from sociopath to major depression to manic-depression. none of them fit.
thankfully after years of trial and error - years of strife - I hit upon a chemical balm that allowed me to be myself. better living through chemistry. psychopharmocology is gonna save your soul.
the current diagnosis is schyzoaffective - schyzo because I believe that I am switched on, that people are reading my mind. it seems to spread through my social circle like a virus, so I believe that most if not all of you reading this journal entry are reading my mind. if that makes me crazy - well then shake my hand I'm a crazyman.
affective because my emotional life is all shot to blazes
my first intimation that I would go crazy came to me in High School. I lived across the street from the mysterious state psychiatric center as a youth. my brother and I would dare eachother to enter, upping the ante - until I finally went in ... for a terrible second, the stairwells were swathed in netting to prevent desperate people from hurling themselves into the maw.
a member of my AP Latin class suddenly, inexplicably went missing from class. a mystery, until I saw him in a line-up from the psych center out for a supervised stroll. for some reason I fixated on pschyzophrenia, convinced that I too would go crazy. I would lay awake at night waiting for the voices to come, until they did - the voices of anxiety, not of a thought disorder. I was so shaken up I gave myself an ulcer at the age of 16.
fast forward to the University of Chicago - after two years I hit a brick wall. I told my brother who was so furious with me for taking the Coast Guard exam that he drove me all the way from Chicago to Milwaukee to tell me so that I felt like I had the affect of a cow. so to the Guard with a chip on my shoulder I went - my affective life perhaps permanently tweaked at this point. in my heart I knew this and hoped the sea would be a curative.
I proved to be a troublesome Coastie - too smart and wierd to pass muster
at some point that remains unclear I got switched on by the powers that be - powerful emotions of fear and rage took hold of my life in response. I became immersed in violence - physical & sexual. I saw it everywhere. It divided me from myself. my affective life spiralled out of control until I landed in a military psyche ward. different diagnoses were batted about - from sociopath to major depression to manic-depression. none of them fit.
thankfully after years of trial and error - years of strife - I hit upon a chemical balm that allowed me to be myself. better living through chemistry. psychopharmocology is gonna save your soul.
the current diagnosis is schyzoaffective - schyzo because I believe that I am switched on, that people are reading my mind. it seems to spread through my social circle like a virus, so I believe that most if not all of you reading this journal entry are reading my mind. if that makes me crazy - well then shake my hand I'm a crazyman.
affective because my emotional life is all shot to blazes
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Sunfeather does seem to cultivate misery to me, too. I hate to say that about him, and he would no doubt be mad about my saying so. He doesn't want advice or even reports of experience because it is as though I'm "managing" his depression, and he feels "beseiged" by my concerns. I have had mucho experience with alcoholics, including my own father, who drank himself to death by my age. Alcoholics have a personality set: charming but stubbornly refusing to solve their problems. They are like babies, wanting attention. I love Sunfeather to death, too--his charm is disarming--but he is lumped in my mind and almost heart with my inflated dope of a soul sucker ex bf.
Have you seen the old series Brideshead Revisted, by Evelyn Waugh. It is the damned truth about alcoholics. Right on. Worth renting if you do movies.
Be well.