God has been trying to get me to figure out what I've been calling him.
That's the code.
Father.
Blasphemy.
Name him and you'll "hear" him. Feel him.
know.
and it's impossible to believe.
can i live forever?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Writing this means trusting someone else?
It has to do with God's experience of himself.
As a parent.
Where people are.
I'm listening to God.
I'm just the only one that can understand what he's saying.
But when I'm listening to it.
It sounds like he's talking to me.
The relationship you have with your parents.
And that's where Aaron comes in.
Aaron is silent. Listening.
I am silent. Not listening. Listening to myself. Talk to God.
Inference.
Being a point. That hears.
And you guys are all out there.
Except the writer.
As a parent.
Where people are.
I'm listening to God.
I'm just the only one that can understand what he's saying.
But when I'm listening to it.
It sounds like he's talking to me.
The relationship you have with your parents.
And that's where Aaron comes in.
Aaron is silent. Listening.
I am silent. Not listening. Listening to myself. Talk to God.
Inference.
Being a point. That hears.
And you guys are all out there.
Except the writer.
Atheists
The people that I hang out with and can get close to
are
atheists
that are just fine with that.
or completely pretend to be...
and i can feel their conversation with God.
I'M THEIR MESSENGER.
are
atheists
that are just fine with that.
or completely pretend to be...
and i can feel their conversation with God.
I'M THEIR MESSENGER.
a lonely place...
but a place where you're not alone.
where there's familiar sounds and familiar heartbeats and amounts of tension in your jaw and falls in the rhythm of your breathing. Finding a comfort in your own skin.
No not a comfort.
There's no comfortable option.
You're at work.
For as long as you put up with this.
The sooner you accept it the less hell it'll be.
Punishment for being yourself. Just for being alive.
Parents.
Taking the job would be hell too.
Why?
Cause I would have to believe that I hear your voice all the time. That even though I'm completely "paranoid".
It's not paranoid.
It's completely self obsessed.
You're trying to speak
...you're own story.
There are creatives.
Some sell-outs, all well-dressed.
Musicians. etc.
There are addicts.
Whose devotion to God is equal only to their feelings of total unworthiness.
And there are schizophrenics.
Whose narcissism is paralleled only by the extremely successful.
And whose failure is only determined by their feelings of complete worthlessness.
If you fall, then you're fucked.
If you're wrong. If you listen. There's some sort of hell waiting for you.
where there's familiar sounds and familiar heartbeats and amounts of tension in your jaw and falls in the rhythm of your breathing. Finding a comfort in your own skin.
No not a comfort.
There's no comfortable option.
You're at work.
For as long as you put up with this.
The sooner you accept it the less hell it'll be.
Punishment for being yourself. Just for being alive.
Parents.
Taking the job would be hell too.
Why?
Cause I would have to believe that I hear your voice all the time. That even though I'm completely "paranoid".
It's not paranoid.
It's completely self obsessed.
You're trying to speak
...you're own story.
There are creatives.
Some sell-outs, all well-dressed.
Musicians. etc.
There are addicts.
Whose devotion to God is equal only to their feelings of total unworthiness.
And there are schizophrenics.
Whose narcissism is paralleled only by the extremely successful.
And whose failure is only determined by their feelings of complete worthlessness.
If you fall, then you're fucked.
If you're wrong. If you listen. There's some sort of hell waiting for you.
There's a place where we meet...
Right here right now.
Where we're trapped.
There's just choice a now.
and choice a later.
and in the meantime could be hell.
but we would get a lot of pleasure for our punishment together in the meantime.
But that's the point between now
and whenever we finally "go to work"
and in the meantime we're gonna be kids in trouble
anyway, when the work is over
we'll be off the hook
cause god is our parents
and our children
i never thought of that
i don't get it.
anyway,
as you can see the conversation with God is still going on...
and it's driving me crazy.
save me.
but to save me you'd have to trust me.
cause i have to do this.
i only want this.
it's this now or
it's this later.
and for me it'll be hell in the meantime.
i don't fit
you don't fit.
let's find a place we can meet in the meantime.
you remember when i was drunk
the other night?
and i said that God was saying that you have to be okay with me not being around?
I didn't know what that meant because at the time I was "not at work" and was "letting off steam" and i had no idea what God was talking about. It didn't even occur to me that I was supposed to be listening. That's the drug talking. The drug affecting what comes out of the mouth of a girl that never speaks her own words. Just babbles alone with the millions of "voices in her head"
her own voices on steroids
it's a different kind of sense
and it's what you're paying attention to
it's the places that you meet
Where we're trapped.
There's just choice a now.
and choice a later.
and in the meantime could be hell.
but we would get a lot of pleasure for our punishment together in the meantime.
But that's the point between now
and whenever we finally "go to work"
and in the meantime we're gonna be kids in trouble
anyway, when the work is over
we'll be off the hook
cause god is our parents
and our children
i never thought of that
i don't get it.
anyway,
as you can see the conversation with God is still going on...
and it's driving me crazy.
save me.
but to save me you'd have to trust me.
cause i have to do this.
i only want this.
it's this now or
it's this later.
and for me it'll be hell in the meantime.
i don't fit
you don't fit.
let's find a place we can meet in the meantime.
you remember when i was drunk
the other night?
and i said that God was saying that you have to be okay with me not being around?
I didn't know what that meant because at the time I was "not at work" and was "letting off steam" and i had no idea what God was talking about. It didn't even occur to me that I was supposed to be listening. That's the drug talking. The drug affecting what comes out of the mouth of a girl that never speaks her own words. Just babbles alone with the millions of "voices in her head"
her own voices on steroids
it's a different kind of sense
and it's what you're paying attention to
it's the places that you meet
I'm not a writer.
I'm a prophet.
And there are millions of others.
It's loud in here.
I can hear their conversation with God.
But only because of the way that it plays into mine.
Cause I'm really self-centered.
I'm just gonna keep writing.
Because I have no one else to write this with. Accept Aaron. And I can't ask of him the same thing you can't ask of me.
But we both talk to you constantly anyway.
So we'll connect just fine.
But I just don't want to do that to someone. I feel like I can't be in the same place with anyone at the same time.
I'd have to ask you to pay attention to me like all the time.
It's expensive.
I'm just a child.
Right your parents.
I can hear them.
I know that this is your job too.
Not job.
Work is where you go to punish yourself for not following your dream.
It's my dream to be a prophet or messenger or whatever and it's your dream to be a writer.
Say your parents.
And that you are perfect.
And that with me you are home
and that you are loved and that you're welcome
and you just called me again
And there are millions of others.
It's loud in here.
I can hear their conversation with God.
But only because of the way that it plays into mine.
Cause I'm really self-centered.
I'm just gonna keep writing.
Because I have no one else to write this with. Accept Aaron. And I can't ask of him the same thing you can't ask of me.
But we both talk to you constantly anyway.
So we'll connect just fine.
But I just don't want to do that to someone. I feel like I can't be in the same place with anyone at the same time.
I'd have to ask you to pay attention to me like all the time.
It's expensive.
I'm just a child.
Right your parents.
I can hear them.
I know that this is your job too.
Not job.
Work is where you go to punish yourself for not following your dream.
It's my dream to be a prophet or messenger or whatever and it's your dream to be a writer.
Say your parents.
And that you are perfect.
And that with me you are home
and that you are loved and that you're welcome
and you just called me again
Heresy at the Church Pinic
I have had trouble accepting that I was a writer ever since the moment I was born.
Even though, just as strongly, I always knew that I wanted to be.
I've wanted to be a lot of other things just as badly.
Since I've first convinced myself I'd never be a writer.
The thing that I convince myself that I can do keeps becoming more and more...
embarrassing...
IN FUCKING SANE.
Even though, just as strongly, I always knew that I wanted to be.
I've wanted to be a lot of other things just as badly.
Since I've first convinced myself I'd never be a writer.
The thing that I convince myself that I can do keeps becoming more and more...
embarrassing...
IN FUCKING SANE.
which drugs to take
I took a 200 mg carbamazepine this morning, but I forgot to take it last night.
I've actually only taken half my prescription this month.
So any mood stability that I have had has all been me.
Line cook. Keep pushing. Going back to the beginning over and over again. I got a better job offer.
Than citizen schools.
And it's been impossible to get to work ever since.
I've actually only taken half my prescription this month.
So any mood stability that I have had has all been me.
Line cook. Keep pushing. Going back to the beginning over and over again. I got a better job offer.
Than citizen schools.
And it's been impossible to get to work ever since.
Life is work.
That's assignment.
I haven't been coming to work on time
because Charlie can see this blog.
I didn't know if he was looking at it or not.
Now that I know that he has seen it...
I can at least decide...
you know what's the most exciting revelation!
accepting this would be enormously difficult.
i hear the 11
when i get embarrassed for talking to god.
when i get to the
"you know what would be the most exciting revelation?!?" part
i already here it in this sick mocking tone.
and i feel like a fucking psychotic narcissist.
just like my mother said
but it's like they say about god.
you can chose option a now
or option a later
and the meantime is just gonna be hell
the women next to me are splitting their check
and for all i know they've been making fun of me the whole time they've been here.
I haven't been coming to work on time
because Charlie can see this blog.
I didn't know if he was looking at it or not.
Now that I know that he has seen it...
I can at least decide...
you know what's the most exciting revelation!
accepting this would be enormously difficult.
i hear the 11
when i get embarrassed for talking to god.
when i get to the
"you know what would be the most exciting revelation?!?" part
i already here it in this sick mocking tone.
and i feel like a fucking psychotic narcissist.
just like my mother said
but it's like they say about god.
you can chose option a now
or option a later
and the meantime is just gonna be hell
the women next to me are splitting their check
and for all i know they've been making fun of me the whole time they've been here.
I'm a writer?
This is some sort of letter to Aaron
even though I'm publishing it on the internet.
It's hard to be out in the open.
It's hard to be yourself.
When you don't know who that is.
I talk to God all the time.
Whether I like it or not.
It's my heaven and it's my hell.
Right here right now.
Where I'm trapped.
When to listen to God could mean believing in him.
And believing in God means doing what he says.
That means being with someone else?
Work is the places that you go to when you want to punish yourself for not following your dream.
even though I'm publishing it on the internet.
It's hard to be out in the open.
It's hard to be yourself.
When you don't know who that is.
I talk to God all the time.
Whether I like it or not.
It's my heaven and it's my hell.
Right here right now.
Where I'm trapped.
When to listen to God could mean believing in him.
And believing in God means doing what he says.
That means being with someone else?
Work is the places that you go to when you want to punish yourself for not following your dream.
An embarrassing story
I can't just sit here and write what the 11 talk about. Why would they admit that they were real. And I'm not quite getting my point across?
The marines are here.
This is the fucking joke.
That they were watching.
I'm a racist and an asshole. I judge people based on who they are. And what?
It sounds like English all the time.
I'm crazy.
I am crazy.
not medical...
well neurology...
being a patient. you study them?
diet?
i know.
so you guys are the 11.
i made it up.
when i was perfectly sane.
but that's not kat and hans.
how the fuck do you guys know kat and hans?
you're like that too.
immersion?
what the fuck are you talking
patients
parents
i'm listening.
why did i have to do this
cause that's the only waythat you're gonnaa
slow down
talking to me
older people think that there's a miracle drug
because in our culture
what fucking culture?
i sit there for the dialysis
assignments
which
in the hospital
they're all like my aunts and uncles
invite me over for dinner
enraoches upon the whole client medical interpreter thing
different people that we know
i don't know if it's the same person
name's based on when you were born
shut the fuck up
yeah cultures fucking weird
so i am a messenger or i'm not
siblings
right
gives me a chance to actually speak
me
self-centric
parents
am i paying attention to you?
The marines are here.
This is the fucking joke.
That they were watching.
I'm a racist and an asshole. I judge people based on who they are. And what?
It sounds like English all the time.
I'm crazy.
I am crazy.
not medical...
well neurology...
being a patient. you study them?
diet?
i know.
so you guys are the 11.
i made it up.
when i was perfectly sane.
but that's not kat and hans.
how the fuck do you guys know kat and hans?
you're like that too.
immersion?
what the fuck are you talking
patients
parents
i'm listening.
why did i have to do this
cause that's the only waythat you're gonnaa
slow down
talking to me
older people think that there's a miracle drug
because in our culture
what fucking culture?
i sit there for the dialysis
assignments
which
in the hospital
they're all like my aunts and uncles
invite me over for dinner
enraoches upon the whole client medical interpreter thing
different people that we know
i don't know if it's the same person
name's based on when you were born
shut the fuck up
yeah cultures fucking weird
so i am a messenger or i'm not
siblings
right
gives me a chance to actually speak
me
self-centric
parents
am i paying attention to you?
Friday, January 16, 2009
Carbamazepine Dream
I can't fight this insomnia anymore. Fine, I won't sleep. I'll be brilliant by night and dull by day until eventually I don't believe that the sun is real anymore. That's what people don't get about schizophrenics. The trouble is not: can they tell what's real and what's imaginary? It's can they tell when what's real feels imaginary and what's imaginary feels real. People that haven't experienced it don't know what they're talking about. It feels the same at some point. Both sides beg you to come back, to stay. You have to choose. Red pill? Blue pill?
I choose the carbamazepine dream.
But the ancient, brain-stem dream has its fingers around me, too.
Here's this for anyone who wants it:
http://www.playlist.com/overflowingcoffers
Some of my favorite songs.
I tell everyone this story. If you've known me a month, I've told you this story, about how when I'm depressed or anxious, I fall into some catatonic state on the couch in front of the television and watch hour after hour of syndicated reruns on TBS or WB or whatever. Anyway, one night I was watching a rerun of Becker, which was by the way, the most endearing character Ted Danson ever played, and, for those who are not familiar: Ted Danson plays Dr. Becker. He has his own practice in Brooklyn or somewhere and he's a crank but he's thorough. Anyway, Steven Wright guest stars on one episode and he plays a schizophrenic who talks to God, whom he calls Larry. This infuriates Dr. Becker and he goes on one of his signature tirades. He says he doesn't really talk to God, it's just the dopamine receptors in his brain, blah, blah, blah. (Like I know. I should know, but I don't.) And his receptionist, the capable and wise sidekick, the voice in his head, says, and this I can quote, "Well, how do you know that when God wants to talk to someone, that's not how he does it?"
That was a poignant moment for me, sadly. I truly thought that right then God was trying to talk to me... through the television.
I was talking to my therapist, who by the way is nothing like the therapist stereotype you've conjured in your brain. Alright, he's the prototype really, the subdued, active listener who everytime you ask a tough question, articulate some crisis point, he breathes hard out his nose and stretches his mouth, looking perplexed, and says, "Yeah, what about that?" But you have to know a lot about therapists to get how transcendent and effective and even refreshing that is. Believe me, there are many other, far more irritating, techniques.
Anyway, I told him all about how it's so heartbreaking that there are no such thing as soulmates. How my feelings for this guy will just fade and later I'll meet someone new and have all those same feelings again, but for him (or, admittedly, in the opposite order). How nothing has any meaning, save that which you give it. And he, my therapist, replied...
He didn't say, "Yeah, what about that?" He was personally chagrined and I saw it. He faced the same dilemma once and he decided and he hasn't looked back. For the first time ever, he had an opinion about my opinion. He tackled the issue, made me draw all the logical conclusions that follow from that being true: You can give anything any meaning you want. You control, decide your experience of things. You decide if you participate. You can withdraw. These facts can be something sad. They can be something joyous. All that can be something really beautiful if you can see it.
And all the sudden I was in the place where you would withdraw to. And I understood what wasn't working about my schizophrenia all these years.
Most people have two competing strategies for avoiding the present moment. They either dwell on the past or fantasize about the future. Either way is a mind-made illusion. Neither exist. Fantasy. When a person is in a bad mood they dwell on the past. When a person is in a good mood they fantasize about the future. Conversely, the mind can create a mood with images. The mind can create the experience.
Some minds are skilled at this, creating experiences too intense to bear. The mind immediately goes to work constructing an experience that the body can bear, that reconciles contradictions, that anthropomorphizes ambivalences and makes them foes, one the hero, the other the villian. This is called delusion. The next stage of fantasy.
This is a place of Truth. But it's expressed in myth and riddle. It's written in the language our ancestors have handed down Truth to us.
For a long time, I wanted to be left alone in the delusion. When I was younger I was a character in the fantasy at the mercy of the forces of will and chance that governed that universe. A couple of years ago, I reemerged in the story as myself, normal, human, mortal Sarah, but acted as God of this fantasy world. From then on things happened on my terms and had to explain themselves. Legends and natural laws and characters were all stripped to basic, concrete forms, to the things they referenced in my experienced environment. Sometimes characters represented feelings I couldn't acknowledge and natural laws represented people whose behavior and treatment I had come to calculate and anticipate.
I thought that if I could just get inside it, I could dismantle it from the inside out. Disembowl it.
My whole life I was hypnotized by voices that danced me around. I did their bidding. The only things I paid attention to in real life were the things that they told me to. I would suddenly get the command, "Look." "Listen." And I would until they drew me back in. Those moments I spent aware of what you all would call real were what the voices called clues.
If there were clues, then there was a mystery. If there was a mystery, there was a solution.
It's when I realized that they wanted to die as badly as I did, that I realized we were one and the same.
One of the clues they gave me was a story from a comic book I heard, a little bit of demon mythology. According to this bit of real world legend, the only way to control a demon was to figure out its true name. Call it by its true name and it will do your bidding.
Then I knew that while the voices were me, the same voices everyone has in their head, except mine were on steroids, the part of me that recognized that was much more.
I learned a lot about myself by going into that nightmare realm and putting cracks in it. I lost and hurt a lot of people in the process, and I'm sorry, but I wouldn't trade it. What I figured out, no book or teacher or therapist has ever told me. And nothing that any book or teacher or therapist has ever told me helped me figure it out.
But the thing that surprised me was that going in didn't kill it. There's simply the aware me, present in the reality, and the unconscious me lost in this fantasy. And it's just a switch, that's all there is to it. A shot of Prolixin D killed the demons, but the fantasy-thinking remained, now it was just about "real" stuff, my real past, a realistic projection of the future. But where I spent my time, in fantasy or in reality, that's just a decision. Carbamazepine makes the decision a lot easier to make.
But it's a muscle, too, a strength. They say with the brain, "what fires together, wires together" and "if you don't use it, you lose it." Our brains like paths of least resistance. That's why we end up doing the same useless, detrimental stuff forever and ever. But you can literally rewire the brain, but the best, least toxic way is simply to do different stuff.
Anyway, that conversation with my therapist about meaning brought me deeper into that aware state that I'm always trying to get in and stay in. And it was there that I had true clarity and insight. I learned a lot about a lot of perfectly disposable stuff when I was in the delusion, but it's only helpful if you're going to try to mitigate the pain and damage caused by the unconscious state. What you learn from a place of deep awareness, that... is transcendence. It's not even learning, it's remembering, re-cognizing.
Knowing this pissed me off at first. It was so easy, so simple. I could've spared so many relationships, the one relationship that meant more to me than anything else, if I had just...
what? Figured it out sooner. Maybe I could've but I didn't. Maybe I'm not meant (heavy, contentious way of putting it) to have that love of my life. Maybe it's my purpose to bring light to the darkness that still shrouds so much of mental illness. Maybe it's my gift to give language to things that... most of their messengers speak in tongues, just glimpses of such leave people speechless... people who observe can only describe consequences.
At any rate, that was certainly my choice. And that's the bitter irony.
When I was a little girl in church, whenever someone said the word prophet, the voice said, "That's you." "Perk up, girl, you're being called on." "Pay attention, this concerns you." And I was so pissed scared that I never learned a damn thing about any of the prophets. I would yell back to the voice that I didn't want it, I didn't chose that life. I didn't want martyrdom or exile or God's eternal disappointment. And the voice always taunted me, you will, when the time comes and you know what you're supposed to say, you will and you will forsake everything else to do it, and it will be your glory.
And everytime, when push comes to shove, I do. I should be asleep now but the words are there. Hanging there for me to pick out of the void and put here.
Now what I'm afraid of is that I will be misunderstood. That I won't speak when I should. That no one will heed what I say.
Such was the madness of the prophets. All that time that I spent not learning about the prophets from the pastor and I would come to understand them better than anyone in that church could ever hope to.
I choose the carbamazepine dream.
But the ancient, brain-stem dream has its fingers around me, too.
Here's this for anyone who wants it:
http://www.playlist.com/overflowingcoffers
Some of my favorite songs.
I tell everyone this story. If you've known me a month, I've told you this story, about how when I'm depressed or anxious, I fall into some catatonic state on the couch in front of the television and watch hour after hour of syndicated reruns on TBS or WB or whatever. Anyway, one night I was watching a rerun of Becker, which was by the way, the most endearing character Ted Danson ever played, and, for those who are not familiar: Ted Danson plays Dr. Becker. He has his own practice in Brooklyn or somewhere and he's a crank but he's thorough. Anyway, Steven Wright guest stars on one episode and he plays a schizophrenic who talks to God, whom he calls Larry. This infuriates Dr. Becker and he goes on one of his signature tirades. He says he doesn't really talk to God, it's just the dopamine receptors in his brain, blah, blah, blah. (Like I know. I should know, but I don't.) And his receptionist, the capable and wise sidekick, the voice in his head, says, and this I can quote, "Well, how do you know that when God wants to talk to someone, that's not how he does it?"
That was a poignant moment for me, sadly. I truly thought that right then God was trying to talk to me... through the television.
I was talking to my therapist, who by the way is nothing like the therapist stereotype you've conjured in your brain. Alright, he's the prototype really, the subdued, active listener who everytime you ask a tough question, articulate some crisis point, he breathes hard out his nose and stretches his mouth, looking perplexed, and says, "Yeah, what about that?" But you have to know a lot about therapists to get how transcendent and effective and even refreshing that is. Believe me, there are many other, far more irritating, techniques.
Anyway, I told him all about how it's so heartbreaking that there are no such thing as soulmates. How my feelings for this guy will just fade and later I'll meet someone new and have all those same feelings again, but for him (or, admittedly, in the opposite order). How nothing has any meaning, save that which you give it. And he, my therapist, replied...
He didn't say, "Yeah, what about that?" He was personally chagrined and I saw it. He faced the same dilemma once and he decided and he hasn't looked back. For the first time ever, he had an opinion about my opinion. He tackled the issue, made me draw all the logical conclusions that follow from that being true: You can give anything any meaning you want. You control, decide your experience of things. You decide if you participate. You can withdraw. These facts can be something sad. They can be something joyous. All that can be something really beautiful if you can see it.
And all the sudden I was in the place where you would withdraw to. And I understood what wasn't working about my schizophrenia all these years.
Most people have two competing strategies for avoiding the present moment. They either dwell on the past or fantasize about the future. Either way is a mind-made illusion. Neither exist. Fantasy. When a person is in a bad mood they dwell on the past. When a person is in a good mood they fantasize about the future. Conversely, the mind can create a mood with images. The mind can create the experience.
Some minds are skilled at this, creating experiences too intense to bear. The mind immediately goes to work constructing an experience that the body can bear, that reconciles contradictions, that anthropomorphizes ambivalences and makes them foes, one the hero, the other the villian. This is called delusion. The next stage of fantasy.
This is a place of Truth. But it's expressed in myth and riddle. It's written in the language our ancestors have handed down Truth to us.
For a long time, I wanted to be left alone in the delusion. When I was younger I was a character in the fantasy at the mercy of the forces of will and chance that governed that universe. A couple of years ago, I reemerged in the story as myself, normal, human, mortal Sarah, but acted as God of this fantasy world. From then on things happened on my terms and had to explain themselves. Legends and natural laws and characters were all stripped to basic, concrete forms, to the things they referenced in my experienced environment. Sometimes characters represented feelings I couldn't acknowledge and natural laws represented people whose behavior and treatment I had come to calculate and anticipate.
I thought that if I could just get inside it, I could dismantle it from the inside out. Disembowl it.
My whole life I was hypnotized by voices that danced me around. I did their bidding. The only things I paid attention to in real life were the things that they told me to. I would suddenly get the command, "Look." "Listen." And I would until they drew me back in. Those moments I spent aware of what you all would call real were what the voices called clues.
If there were clues, then there was a mystery. If there was a mystery, there was a solution.
It's when I realized that they wanted to die as badly as I did, that I realized we were one and the same.
One of the clues they gave me was a story from a comic book I heard, a little bit of demon mythology. According to this bit of real world legend, the only way to control a demon was to figure out its true name. Call it by its true name and it will do your bidding.
Then I knew that while the voices were me, the same voices everyone has in their head, except mine were on steroids, the part of me that recognized that was much more.
I learned a lot about myself by going into that nightmare realm and putting cracks in it. I lost and hurt a lot of people in the process, and I'm sorry, but I wouldn't trade it. What I figured out, no book or teacher or therapist has ever told me. And nothing that any book or teacher or therapist has ever told me helped me figure it out.
But the thing that surprised me was that going in didn't kill it. There's simply the aware me, present in the reality, and the unconscious me lost in this fantasy. And it's just a switch, that's all there is to it. A shot of Prolixin D killed the demons, but the fantasy-thinking remained, now it was just about "real" stuff, my real past, a realistic projection of the future. But where I spent my time, in fantasy or in reality, that's just a decision. Carbamazepine makes the decision a lot easier to make.
But it's a muscle, too, a strength. They say with the brain, "what fires together, wires together" and "if you don't use it, you lose it." Our brains like paths of least resistance. That's why we end up doing the same useless, detrimental stuff forever and ever. But you can literally rewire the brain, but the best, least toxic way is simply to do different stuff.
Anyway, that conversation with my therapist about meaning brought me deeper into that aware state that I'm always trying to get in and stay in. And it was there that I had true clarity and insight. I learned a lot about a lot of perfectly disposable stuff when I was in the delusion, but it's only helpful if you're going to try to mitigate the pain and damage caused by the unconscious state. What you learn from a place of deep awareness, that... is transcendence. It's not even learning, it's remembering, re-cognizing.
Knowing this pissed me off at first. It was so easy, so simple. I could've spared so many relationships, the one relationship that meant more to me than anything else, if I had just...
what? Figured it out sooner. Maybe I could've but I didn't. Maybe I'm not meant (heavy, contentious way of putting it) to have that love of my life. Maybe it's my purpose to bring light to the darkness that still shrouds so much of mental illness. Maybe it's my gift to give language to things that... most of their messengers speak in tongues, just glimpses of such leave people speechless... people who observe can only describe consequences.
At any rate, that was certainly my choice. And that's the bitter irony.
When I was a little girl in church, whenever someone said the word prophet, the voice said, "That's you." "Perk up, girl, you're being called on." "Pay attention, this concerns you." And I was so pissed scared that I never learned a damn thing about any of the prophets. I would yell back to the voice that I didn't want it, I didn't chose that life. I didn't want martyrdom or exile or God's eternal disappointment. And the voice always taunted me, you will, when the time comes and you know what you're supposed to say, you will and you will forsake everything else to do it, and it will be your glory.
And everytime, when push comes to shove, I do. I should be asleep now but the words are there. Hanging there for me to pick out of the void and put here.
Now what I'm afraid of is that I will be misunderstood. That I won't speak when I should. That no one will heed what I say.
Such was the madness of the prophets. All that time that I spent not learning about the prophets from the pastor and I would come to understand them better than anyone in that church could ever hope to.
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