I'm off for Maui. Please leave me lots of happy comments to read when I get back that distract me from the current destruction of my life (ha melodramatic... it's not quite that bad) and the real political and militaristic destruction of the world (not melodramatic at all).
I can use the distraction. :-)
I can't pack though. It's 6:21, we leave at 7 am, and I haven't even started. I have some sort of genetic mutation, some sort of congenital aversion to packing. I can only pack at the very last minute, and only when I force myself... I'm amazed I end up with a suitcase at all with my track record.
Right now I'm talking to Brittany on IM, writing this, and waiting for my mom (who is upstairs on the phone) or my dad (who is doing something brutal to the local vegetation involving a blade) to come down and ask me if I'm packed and then force me to pack while they stand at the door.
I'll miss you all.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
this is how the world REALLY goes down...
Stupid news people. Some part of them must get excited when crap like this happens. It's not their fault of course... It's just so parasitic.
It would make sense for the world to start at a point, at every individual's point (in the subjective reality, not the objective one I'm obsessing over), and radiate outward. That's how this poet looked at time... I can't remember his name. But time until Christ spiraled in, getting more compact and full of compassion, and time after Christ spiraled out, losing His qualities, losing consistancy, repeating itself in so many ellipses.
We must be getting to one of the further spirals. Maybe we're spiralling down into the catacombs of Dante's hell.
It would make sense that everything, as those individual spirals of life (not time now) got larger, they would be less focused, less clear, less important. I guess that's how individual life works. I sit here complaining about the boy I love and the horrible situation that we're in while people so far away die, and this love crisis is more real to me. But that must prove an objective world... a place where nothing is spiralled, a globe where what is important is what is on everyone's mind...
I don't know. I'm so disappointed in the world. And in myself, for caring so much about something so small, when something so huge and so far away is marking the destruction of everything.
Do you know what war is? War is selfish, religiously-corrupted iconic idols (Voldemort was a great man... evil, yes, but great... Hitler was a great man...) moving about pawns without covering their back... Their citizens are just pawns in the chess game. They don't really matter, in the end, no matter how stacked up they are. All that matters is whose king is dead.
It would make sense for the world to start at a point, at every individual's point (in the subjective reality, not the objective one I'm obsessing over), and radiate outward. That's how this poet looked at time... I can't remember his name. But time until Christ spiraled in, getting more compact and full of compassion, and time after Christ spiraled out, losing His qualities, losing consistancy, repeating itself in so many ellipses.
We must be getting to one of the further spirals. Maybe we're spiralling down into the catacombs of Dante's hell.
It would make sense that everything, as those individual spirals of life (not time now) got larger, they would be less focused, less clear, less important. I guess that's how individual life works. I sit here complaining about the boy I love and the horrible situation that we're in while people so far away die, and this love crisis is more real to me. But that must prove an objective world... a place where nothing is spiralled, a globe where what is important is what is on everyone's mind...
I don't know. I'm so disappointed in the world. And in myself, for caring so much about something so small, when something so huge and so far away is marking the destruction of everything.
Do you know what war is? War is selfish, religiously-corrupted iconic idols (Voldemort was a great man... evil, yes, but great... Hitler was a great man...) moving about pawns without covering their back... Their citizens are just pawns in the chess game. They don't really matter, in the end, no matter how stacked up they are. All that matters is whose king is dead.
watch the pretty world fly by as it journeys to hell
Well I'm in a load of crap. My mom is actually gone right now. She ran away. That hasn't happened in several years. Probably because I lost my patience when they were saying I should talk to them instead of my therapist and yelled that they (my parents) were the reason I'd erected the walls in the first place. Then she got upset and said I never listen to her or honor her, which was stupid considering the situation. Anyway, these are the emails they read while I was not there that lead to this dramatic conclusion:
[TO JOSH from ME]
Hi. I doubt you are reading your email right now, so I will probably have to call you and tell you to read this, or I will have to call you and read it to you. I told you I can't verbally articulate. I require the writing medium.That's why I'm writing this to you instead of saying it. It's not cowardice, it's just lack of inflection acuity.
I am very angry with you. Rylee told me that you kissed her and that she kissed you back. I am of course a bit upset with her, but in this letter I want to address you.
The thing is is that kissing for you and kissing for me mean two very different things. I know that I kissed Charlie this year, but it wasn't because of an emotional attachment to Charlie. If anything, I was using him, and he was using me. I enjoyed being with him, but mostly I was experimenting, trying to work towards a healthy perception of kissing. But for you kissing means you care. It means a romantic relationship. You get involved in kissing. I still don't. For you, kissing is intimate. I'm working on that.
The point is I think there is a very big difference between you kissing Rylee and me kissing Charlie (whom I haven't kissed since May I'll have you know). I have no connection with Charlie, and you have a connection with Rylee. This also happened with Emily.
You can't have more than one intense emotional romantic relationship. The reason our church says to date mroe than one person is to avoid precisely that kind of intensity. We broke that rule, okay, I'll admit it. But what you're doing to me, and to Rylee, and to Emily especially, isn't fair. When you do things like that it's either because you don't emotionally care enough about one person to just focus on them romantically, or it's because you're a player. I know you care about Rylee, and I know you care about Emily. I know that the situation with both of them is different. But I also want you to know that I feel like this isn't fair. I can't even imagine kissing someoen else with the kind of commitment that I kiss you with. I can't fathom having enough emotional space for another romantic relationship involving the intensity of ours, or yours and Rylee's, does.
So what I'm saying is is I can't be in an intense romantic relationship with you if it doesn't even mean enough for me to be the only one. You have no commitment to me physically. I don't care if you go out on dates, kiss people, whatever, if you do it the way I am doing it. But when you do it with emotion like you did with Ryle...
My gosh Josh, don't you think that hurts?
I won't put up with it. If you can do that, then I don't want to be in this relationship with you right now.
-Lindsay (written while I was very angry and not very logical)
[TO ME from JOSH]
Irrationality is a funny thing...
I'm totally screwed up right now. I'm angry at you, I'm in love, I hate you, I want to be with you forever, all at the same time.
I got wasted last night. And the night before that. My grandparents have a lot of alcohol at their house... whisky is really, really nasty, and burgundy is alright... still nasty.
I have a friend who's hooking me up with some shrooms. I plan to trip before my parents get back. Trip to the fourth level.
I went to buy an ouije board three days ago. I was going to destroy myself spiritually, condemn myself. Communicate with Lucifer. I didn't have enough money to afford it.
I've relapsed into porn, masturbation, and 'abuse' all at least once this past week and a half or so.
Oh, and I've been planning my own suicide off and on for about two weeks now.
I don't care anymore. I don't know what I feel. I don't know what I think. I don't know what I am. I don't know what I want. It all changes every day. Rollercoaster.
Do you want to know honestly the reason why I kissed her? The thought process in my mind? I was SO angry at you... more angry than I've been in a long time. You weren't telling me anything at all about your life, not even the most trivial things. I felt like you didn't want me to be part of your life. I was very, very emotionally unstable then (and now). So, I decided to myself that if you didn't want me to be a part of your life, then I didn't want you to be a part of mine.
That's just the deciding factor, though.
I've been meaning to talk to you about the physical part of our relationship... ever since I've come to love you I've been feeling this way, never mentioning it for fear of the psychological consequences you could have.
Lindsay, you don't make me feel loved.
I *know* that you love me. Logically, in my logical consciousness, I understand that. But emotionally... I don't feel it, Lindsay. I don't feel your love. I've been waiting... wanting you to get healthy, to be able to share something emotional/physical with you... It's really hard for me. I get lonely. I feel abandoned... Rylee was my escape, last winter. She was my escape last week. She makes me feel loved, she hasnt' been abused like you have. She can feel physical things.
You can't.
When I kiss you... when we make out... it's so automatic. I know that you are doing it not because of any fraction of love, but because you need to do it to accept yourself. There is no feeling in it at all, aside from physical response to the stimuli... I was hoping that you can still overcome that. Also, according to Ariel, you don't like making out at all. Why didn't you tell me? How am I supposed to... to do anything when I have no information? All I can do is guess and hope things turn out ok.
Friday night, when I went down to prom, that is the only truly emotional/physical feeling that we've shared. When you felt like you were a part of me. That's what it's all about...
I need that, Lindsay. I need that to feel loved. I need to be touched, caressed, wanted. I need to be held closely. Part of me dies when it doesn't happen...
There. I told you. Now, it will most likely worsen the way you feel about yourself when it comes to kissing and romantic relationships: hence, why I never told you the real reasons. How can I expect you to get better if you start dwelling on this, and stop accepting yourself even more?
And when you say that I have no physical commitment to you... a lot of it is true. But you know, you have no physical commitment to me either. The only physical commitment you have is yourself, because you do these things for yourself, not out of love.
I guess it doesn't matter though. If I were you I'd have been through with me a long time ago... You're deserving of more. I know you are.
I love you. I've always loved you.
Please... let me go. I've been so selfish, hurt you so much. Please don't forgive me. Let me go... let me stop existing. I"m not strong enough to be a man you can love. I'm not strong enough to endure...
"There is a time when all logic fails..." [my words from several months ago]
[MY partial reply to JOSH before he called me]
I guess I didn't explain to Ariel the one that was different...
I like making out with you because it felt like love.
I hated making out with Charlie, and I hated making out with Matt, and I hated some of the sexual-psychological aspects of making out with you, but it felt real.
You know I've been abused. You know I can't touch. I want to be able to. I'm trapped in a box. You know all of that. I thought you could let me go. You did. You have the key. You did on the ocuch that night and you do every time you touch me because I feel alive...
Something I told my counselor Friday:
"I don't know how I could go from being someone that never wanted to touch people or be with people to someone that wants to touch people and be with people all the time all in a year."
What a lie. I do know how.
I guess you can't get in my head. I guess no one can get in my head. I guess no one can see me, nobody can understand me becuase I have so many f-ing walls. But Josh I want you to. I want you in my head all the time. I want you in my body. I want you in me [This is all meant emotionally by the way, not literally in my body]. I want you in my life.
Every stupid damnable drink of whiskey you take is destroying a part of me too, because we were one that night, because we became each other...
It's in me Josh. It's in me to give to you. I just don't know how. I don't know how honestly but I want to. I want to feel the way everyone else does. I want to feel some sort of sexual stimulation from some sort of touch [by this I don't mean anything past kissing]. I want to have an idea of what an orgasm is.
And then he called, and I talked to him, and read this to him, and we cried to each other for an hour, and we decided we would help each other. Help me to feel safe, to stop acting so steel all the time, to come out from behind these stupid walls, to just *trust* someone... and him to stop being a failure because he's afraid if he stops running and confronts himself he actually *will* be a failure.
It was our first fight but we got through it just fine. He talked about driving down to see me tomorrow, but we decided not to break the rules. And then I went inside and my parents had read all of those emails and thought he was a drug-addict and I was some kind of sex-pervert (ha, although I can see how my email can be misconstrued... I really didn't mean it like that). So they told me to call him and tell him I can't email him or call him for three months and then they'd reassess. They're worried I'll start doing drugs and drinking or something because of him (no, been there, done that, NOT going back). Josh only started drinking a few weeks ago and he has done no drugs yet that I am aware of... and he promised me today that he'd quit both so we could have the possibility of a temple marriage (I'm not getting married anywhere else). I told them I would call him because I didn't have a choice. My mom said I had a choice. I said I always obeyed them so I really didn't have a choice. Then she mentioned the thing about my counselor and I yelled at her and she started getting really upset and yelling at me. Then I called Josh and she left. I told Josh we could communicate through other people, but that I had to obey my parents, no matter how badly I didn't want to (it is a commandment after all, and a respect issue, and I respect them). We talked about the future and decided that three months in the face of eternity isn't long, and that we could do it, and swore our lips to celibacy until we saw each other again.
I really believe he can do it... I really believe that with drugs and therapy he can get better. I will never let go of him. We promised each other today that we wouldn't let each other hurt me. And it's true. He can't hurt me enough by destroying himself now to make me destroy myself. I'm not willing to follow that path. But I love him. I really, really love him. We decided today that it was real love. Josh's dad even thinks so.
But what drama. What a screwed up place we have both ended up in.
Here's the thing though: our church believes that marriages continue after death if conducted in the temple. I've been so scared of heaven, of eternity. But I'm scared if I'm with Josh.
Not that I will definitely marry him. I know things could change. I'm trying to be realistic here. But if I had the option of marrying him right now...
well I wouldn't I guess, because he's so messed up. But I would the moment he was clean.
[TO JOSH from ME]
Hi. I doubt you are reading your email right now, so I will probably have to call you and tell you to read this, or I will have to call you and read it to you. I told you I can't verbally articulate. I require the writing medium.That's why I'm writing this to you instead of saying it. It's not cowardice, it's just lack of inflection acuity.
I am very angry with you. Rylee told me that you kissed her and that she kissed you back. I am of course a bit upset with her, but in this letter I want to address you.
The thing is is that kissing for you and kissing for me mean two very different things. I know that I kissed Charlie this year, but it wasn't because of an emotional attachment to Charlie. If anything, I was using him, and he was using me. I enjoyed being with him, but mostly I was experimenting, trying to work towards a healthy perception of kissing. But for you kissing means you care. It means a romantic relationship. You get involved in kissing. I still don't. For you, kissing is intimate. I'm working on that.
The point is I think there is a very big difference between you kissing Rylee and me kissing Charlie (whom I haven't kissed since May I'll have you know). I have no connection with Charlie, and you have a connection with Rylee. This also happened with Emily.
You can't have more than one intense emotional romantic relationship. The reason our church says to date mroe than one person is to avoid precisely that kind of intensity. We broke that rule, okay, I'll admit it. But what you're doing to me, and to Rylee, and to Emily especially, isn't fair. When you do things like that it's either because you don't emotionally care enough about one person to just focus on them romantically, or it's because you're a player. I know you care about Rylee, and I know you care about Emily. I know that the situation with both of them is different. But I also want you to know that I feel like this isn't fair. I can't even imagine kissing someoen else with the kind of commitment that I kiss you with. I can't fathom having enough emotional space for another romantic relationship involving the intensity of ours, or yours and Rylee's, does.
So what I'm saying is is I can't be in an intense romantic relationship with you if it doesn't even mean enough for me to be the only one. You have no commitment to me physically. I don't care if you go out on dates, kiss people, whatever, if you do it the way I am doing it. But when you do it with emotion like you did with Ryle...
My gosh Josh, don't you think that hurts?
I won't put up with it. If you can do that, then I don't want to be in this relationship with you right now.
-Lindsay (written while I was very angry and not very logical)
[TO ME from JOSH]
Irrationality is a funny thing...
I'm totally screwed up right now. I'm angry at you, I'm in love, I hate you, I want to be with you forever, all at the same time.
I got wasted last night. And the night before that. My grandparents have a lot of alcohol at their house... whisky is really, really nasty, and burgundy is alright... still nasty.
I have a friend who's hooking me up with some shrooms. I plan to trip before my parents get back. Trip to the fourth level.
I went to buy an ouije board three days ago. I was going to destroy myself spiritually, condemn myself. Communicate with Lucifer. I didn't have enough money to afford it.
I've relapsed into porn, masturbation, and 'abuse' all at least once this past week and a half or so.
Oh, and I've been planning my own suicide off and on for about two weeks now.
I don't care anymore. I don't know what I feel. I don't know what I think. I don't know what I am. I don't know what I want. It all changes every day. Rollercoaster.
Do you want to know honestly the reason why I kissed her? The thought process in my mind? I was SO angry at you... more angry than I've been in a long time. You weren't telling me anything at all about your life, not even the most trivial things. I felt like you didn't want me to be part of your life. I was very, very emotionally unstable then (and now). So, I decided to myself that if you didn't want me to be a part of your life, then I didn't want you to be a part of mine.
That's just the deciding factor, though.
I've been meaning to talk to you about the physical part of our relationship... ever since I've come to love you I've been feeling this way, never mentioning it for fear of the psychological consequences you could have.
Lindsay, you don't make me feel loved.
I *know* that you love me. Logically, in my logical consciousness, I understand that. But emotionally... I don't feel it, Lindsay. I don't feel your love. I've been waiting... wanting you to get healthy, to be able to share something emotional/physical with you... It's really hard for me. I get lonely. I feel abandoned... Rylee was my escape, last winter. She was my escape last week. She makes me feel loved, she hasnt' been abused like you have. She can feel physical things.
You can't.
When I kiss you... when we make out... it's so automatic. I know that you are doing it not because of any fraction of love, but because you need to do it to accept yourself. There is no feeling in it at all, aside from physical response to the stimuli... I was hoping that you can still overcome that. Also, according to Ariel, you don't like making out at all. Why didn't you tell me? How am I supposed to... to do anything when I have no information? All I can do is guess and hope things turn out ok.
Friday night, when I went down to prom, that is the only truly emotional/physical feeling that we've shared. When you felt like you were a part of me. That's what it's all about...
I need that, Lindsay. I need that to feel loved. I need to be touched, caressed, wanted. I need to be held closely. Part of me dies when it doesn't happen...
There. I told you. Now, it will most likely worsen the way you feel about yourself when it comes to kissing and romantic relationships: hence, why I never told you the real reasons. How can I expect you to get better if you start dwelling on this, and stop accepting yourself even more?
And when you say that I have no physical commitment to you... a lot of it is true. But you know, you have no physical commitment to me either. The only physical commitment you have is yourself, because you do these things for yourself, not out of love.
I guess it doesn't matter though. If I were you I'd have been through with me a long time ago... You're deserving of more. I know you are.
I love you. I've always loved you.
Please... let me go. I've been so selfish, hurt you so much. Please don't forgive me. Let me go... let me stop existing. I"m not strong enough to be a man you can love. I'm not strong enough to endure...
"There is a time when all logic fails..." [my words from several months ago]
[MY partial reply to JOSH before he called me]
I guess I didn't explain to Ariel the one that was different...
I like making out with you because it felt like love.
I hated making out with Charlie, and I hated making out with Matt, and I hated some of the sexual-psychological aspects of making out with you, but it felt real.
You know I've been abused. You know I can't touch. I want to be able to. I'm trapped in a box. You know all of that. I thought you could let me go. You did. You have the key. You did on the ocuch that night and you do every time you touch me because I feel alive...
Something I told my counselor Friday:
"I don't know how I could go from being someone that never wanted to touch people or be with people to someone that wants to touch people and be with people all the time all in a year."
What a lie. I do know how.
I guess you can't get in my head. I guess no one can get in my head. I guess no one can see me, nobody can understand me becuase I have so many f-ing walls. But Josh I want you to. I want you in my head all the time. I want you in my body. I want you in me [This is all meant emotionally by the way, not literally in my body]. I want you in my life.
Every stupid damnable drink of whiskey you take is destroying a part of me too, because we were one that night, because we became each other...
It's in me Josh. It's in me to give to you. I just don't know how. I don't know how honestly but I want to. I want to feel the way everyone else does. I want to feel some sort of sexual stimulation from some sort of touch [by this I don't mean anything past kissing]. I want to have an idea of what an orgasm is.
And then he called, and I talked to him, and read this to him, and we cried to each other for an hour, and we decided we would help each other. Help me to feel safe, to stop acting so steel all the time, to come out from behind these stupid walls, to just *trust* someone... and him to stop being a failure because he's afraid if he stops running and confronts himself he actually *will* be a failure.
It was our first fight but we got through it just fine. He talked about driving down to see me tomorrow, but we decided not to break the rules. And then I went inside and my parents had read all of those emails and thought he was a drug-addict and I was some kind of sex-pervert (ha, although I can see how my email can be misconstrued... I really didn't mean it like that). So they told me to call him and tell him I can't email him or call him for three months and then they'd reassess. They're worried I'll start doing drugs and drinking or something because of him (no, been there, done that, NOT going back). Josh only started drinking a few weeks ago and he has done no drugs yet that I am aware of... and he promised me today that he'd quit both so we could have the possibility of a temple marriage (I'm not getting married anywhere else). I told them I would call him because I didn't have a choice. My mom said I had a choice. I said I always obeyed them so I really didn't have a choice. Then she mentioned the thing about my counselor and I yelled at her and she started getting really upset and yelling at me. Then I called Josh and she left. I told Josh we could communicate through other people, but that I had to obey my parents, no matter how badly I didn't want to (it is a commandment after all, and a respect issue, and I respect them). We talked about the future and decided that three months in the face of eternity isn't long, and that we could do it, and swore our lips to celibacy until we saw each other again.
I really believe he can do it... I really believe that with drugs and therapy he can get better. I will never let go of him. We promised each other today that we wouldn't let each other hurt me. And it's true. He can't hurt me enough by destroying himself now to make me destroy myself. I'm not willing to follow that path. But I love him. I really, really love him. We decided today that it was real love. Josh's dad even thinks so.
But what drama. What a screwed up place we have both ended up in.
Here's the thing though: our church believes that marriages continue after death if conducted in the temple. I've been so scared of heaven, of eternity. But I'm scared if I'm with Josh.
Not that I will definitely marry him. I know things could change. I'm trying to be realistic here. But if I had the option of marrying him right now...
well I wouldn't I guess, because he's so messed up. But I would the moment he was clean.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Is this what I do? I sit here with my genetics powerpoint done reading Camus with my stack of Batman comics to take to Hawaii and my new Final Fantasy gameboy advance game and my book I'm reading on particle physics and my determination to make a difference in the future but now... now I sit here with everything I could want (even cherries!) and I have to watch the world fall apart, and there's really not much I can think to do to prevent it.
They're so stupid, there in the Middle East. I'm saying that with a western culture bias, but honestly... is religion worth blowing up the world for? Whatever god they believe in (allah?)... I hope he's not real, if this is what he wants.
They're so stupid, there in the Middle East. I'm saying that with a western culture bias, but honestly... is religion worth blowing up the world for? Whatever god they believe in (allah?)... I hope he's not real, if this is what he wants.
Friday, July 21, 2006
committment
I've been thinking about it a lot for the past few months and doing a lot of research, and I am ready to make the committment:
Sometime after I complete graduate school (preferrably right after), I WILL join the peace corps and serve for 27 months.
There. I've thought about it. It's in writing. As variable as everything in my future is, I know I can still make committments and if they matter to me I will fulfill them. This committment matters to me. I will do it. Probably in about eight or nine years.
Sometime after I complete graduate school (preferrably right after), I WILL join the peace corps and serve for 27 months.
There. I've thought about it. It's in writing. As variable as everything in my future is, I know I can still make committments and if they matter to me I will fulfill them. This committment matters to me. I will do it. Probably in about eight or nine years.
It's in the postal system right now, my first query letter to my first publisher! I am 99.9% sure it will be turned down, especially since the three sample chapters I sent were definitely not the best chapters of my book, but maybe I can learn something from the rejection to improve my query or something that indicates which part of my manuscript I should send. I'm excited! They said they usually respond within a month.
I spent today doing a lot of the same thing as Monday. I'm trying to do a powerpoint too at the moment on BWS and SRS to show some group of directors or something. I have to turn in my resume, which my father is insisting I can allow to be more than one page, but my money management teacher always taught me one page, max. I know it probably doesn't sound fun to search for tubes of DNA from plastic boxes all day, but I really like it. I know where the project is going and it interests me a lot. It makes me ask questions. I also like watching what people are doing in the lab, whether they're running blots or gels or sprinting to the centrifuge when the timer goes off.
I read this book called Real Girl Stories and I really enjoyed it because it talked about girls from all over the world, and I got to try to understand other cultures. I have decided for sure after a lot of thought that after grad school I want to do the peace corps thing for 27 months. I hope that I am married by then and can drag my husband along with me. I've decided to idolize those that give of themselves. I'm going to start giving most of my money to charities and such. What do I need it for? I just buy books and video games and such with it, and there are people out there that don't even have a house. I think they're more deserving than that new Final Fantasy game. I'm not giving all of my money away, and I'm still paying tithing and saving 20% (my parents invested my money in a mutual fund for me), but I definitely want to start contributing more. When I get a job and a source of income that will be more than it is now. I also want to start volunteering more. Right now I pretty much have time for the Humane Society, but I want to expand eventually. Politically I think this whole concept of country boundaries is stupid. I think that if immigrants come into our country we should try to help them. Even if they do suck money out of the healthcare system. Even if they do illegally hold jobs. They are people searching for something better, and I can afford to give them money if it means it will help them when they are sick. My tax dollars will go towards sustaining the rapists in prison... how are immigrants any worse? We are all people. I've also decided to be more environmentally aware. I want to ride my bike more and buy a hybrid car. I want to just live in a small, inexpensive house or apartment for my life and just give. Giving, I have decided, is a really good reason for living. I want to somehow help the world, not just benefit from my relative wealth.
Today after my appointment with my therapist I wrote this that I will post. See, I believe in God with all my heart, but I can't even get my head to believe in absolute truth, and I trust my head over my heart. Maybe I shouldn't, but it's kept me alive. Anyway, I wrote this:
The reality of people and their perceptions is a societal phenomenon. We can only label the construct of a building as 'building' because we have similar ideas about the object. Relationships only work if the people involved have similar perceptions of themselves and each other. This social reality is fine, and I can exist within it and the emotions that bind it (ie love). But I don't want to just live there. I want another reality.
When I am alone, I lose contact with the social reality. Object or emotion consistency is not present in my mind. When I find myself outside of teh social reality when I am alone (and unable to reconstruct the emotions inherent in that reality) I want to observe an objective reality, one that cannot be changed or constructed simply from perception.
I can trust conclusions that I reach through logic, but I believe that conclusions that I reach through emotion may be subjective and flawed. They may not be able to retain integrity outside of my mind or my perception of the social world. In the same way I want an objective world, I want an objective belief, reached through logic, in that world.
Nietzsche describes only the individual's reality, not even a social reality. I want not just Nietzsche's reality, not just the social collection of subjective realities, but something more, something completely self reliant, no perception involved. I don't want to believe in Nietzsche. I want to believe in an absolute reality. I want to believe in God.
The problem, though, is that I can't find a logical path that results in God as a conclusion; I only have emotional pathst aht lead me to God, and I believe emotional conclusions may be subjective and flawed.
I spent today doing a lot of the same thing as Monday. I'm trying to do a powerpoint too at the moment on BWS and SRS to show some group of directors or something. I have to turn in my resume, which my father is insisting I can allow to be more than one page, but my money management teacher always taught me one page, max. I know it probably doesn't sound fun to search for tubes of DNA from plastic boxes all day, but I really like it. I know where the project is going and it interests me a lot. It makes me ask questions. I also like watching what people are doing in the lab, whether they're running blots or gels or sprinting to the centrifuge when the timer goes off.
I read this book called Real Girl Stories and I really enjoyed it because it talked about girls from all over the world, and I got to try to understand other cultures. I have decided for sure after a lot of thought that after grad school I want to do the peace corps thing for 27 months. I hope that I am married by then and can drag my husband along with me. I've decided to idolize those that give of themselves. I'm going to start giving most of my money to charities and such. What do I need it for? I just buy books and video games and such with it, and there are people out there that don't even have a house. I think they're more deserving than that new Final Fantasy game. I'm not giving all of my money away, and I'm still paying tithing and saving 20% (my parents invested my money in a mutual fund for me), but I definitely want to start contributing more. When I get a job and a source of income that will be more than it is now. I also want to start volunteering more. Right now I pretty much have time for the Humane Society, but I want to expand eventually. Politically I think this whole concept of country boundaries is stupid. I think that if immigrants come into our country we should try to help them. Even if they do suck money out of the healthcare system. Even if they do illegally hold jobs. They are people searching for something better, and I can afford to give them money if it means it will help them when they are sick. My tax dollars will go towards sustaining the rapists in prison... how are immigrants any worse? We are all people. I've also decided to be more environmentally aware. I want to ride my bike more and buy a hybrid car. I want to just live in a small, inexpensive house or apartment for my life and just give. Giving, I have decided, is a really good reason for living. I want to somehow help the world, not just benefit from my relative wealth.
Today after my appointment with my therapist I wrote this that I will post. See, I believe in God with all my heart, but I can't even get my head to believe in absolute truth, and I trust my head over my heart. Maybe I shouldn't, but it's kept me alive. Anyway, I wrote this:
The reality of people and their perceptions is a societal phenomenon. We can only label the construct of a building as 'building' because we have similar ideas about the object. Relationships only work if the people involved have similar perceptions of themselves and each other. This social reality is fine, and I can exist within it and the emotions that bind it (ie love). But I don't want to just live there. I want another reality.
When I am alone, I lose contact with the social reality. Object or emotion consistency is not present in my mind. When I find myself outside of teh social reality when I am alone (and unable to reconstruct the emotions inherent in that reality) I want to observe an objective reality, one that cannot be changed or constructed simply from perception.
I can trust conclusions that I reach through logic, but I believe that conclusions that I reach through emotion may be subjective and flawed. They may not be able to retain integrity outside of my mind or my perception of the social world. In the same way I want an objective world, I want an objective belief, reached through logic, in that world.
Nietzsche describes only the individual's reality, not even a social reality. I want not just Nietzsche's reality, not just the social collection of subjective realities, but something more, something completely self reliant, no perception involved. I don't want to believe in Nietzsche. I want to believe in an absolute reality. I want to believe in God.
The problem, though, is that I can't find a logical path that results in God as a conclusion; I only have emotional pathst aht lead me to God, and I believe emotional conclusions may be subjective and flawed.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
love in a vacuum
I spent the day today sifting around a refrigerator trying to find old DNA samples for the Beckwith-Weideman/Russel-Silver syndrome testing I'm trying to set up. You'd think a genetics hospital would be more organized, but I couldn't find anything. It was kinda relaxing though, as the devil-geneticist wasn't there, and it was just me and the fridge and the DNA. It's so odd how a microcosm can exist like that... how somewhere, far away, Lebanon and Israeli are evacuating children and mowing each other down with tanks and here I am sorting DNA and finding comfort in it when I can only find panic in being alone. It's hard to imagine that it's all the same world. The humans that rape and kill and are killed in prison, the humans that shoot each other with machine guns because they can't religiously reconcile, the humans that go to work everyday and come home to their children every afternoon... they're all the same species. We are. And it's all the same world.
There's one God, too. You know why? Because when I asked people for reasons to believe life was real, nearly all of them said love. Because I felt afraid and read a blog entry that had a scripture that said the opposite of fear was love. Because I went to class that day and a man read something he'd written about how the answer to life was love. So many things lately have been screaming 'love.' It can't just be a coincidiance. It must mean it's true. And in my mind, absolute truths lead me to God.
Also, when I just called the Humane Society, the song they played when I was put on hold was "Landslide."
"Looks like I've lost my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love." (Live)
Whoever wrote that song is confused. It should read:
Looks like I've just found my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love."
There's one God, too. You know why? Because when I asked people for reasons to believe life was real, nearly all of them said love. Because I felt afraid and read a blog entry that had a scripture that said the opposite of fear was love. Because I went to class that day and a man read something he'd written about how the answer to life was love. So many things lately have been screaming 'love.' It can't just be a coincidiance. It must mean it's true. And in my mind, absolute truths lead me to God.
Also, when I just called the Humane Society, the song they played when I was put on hold was "Landslide."
"Looks like I've lost my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love." (Live)
Whoever wrote that song is confused. It should read:
Looks like I've just found my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love."
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
please read if you read my blog, if you care about me at all
There was a comment made that I am doing these things to get attention. I have made myself wait all day to post on it to try to sift through my feelings. But if you are reading this blog, it affects you I suppose, so I believe it's something I need to address.
I don't get angry very easily, and this comment made me very, very angry. It struck a nerve. I think it struck a nerve because that's what my mom always used to say, when I was in eighth grade. She said that I'm just doing things to get attention. Well the first thing I'd like to point out is that if someone is doing things to get attention, it is because they are very desperate for it, which probably means they need it. I mean if someone is cutting or something to manipulate, that's not okay, but if someone cuts in a visible place so people see that something is wrong... I think that there is a source of concern there to make sure that individual is okay, if they feel so ignored that they cannot even tell people how they feel, they have to show them. I have felt like that, like I needed to cut in order to feel like my feelings were valid. However, as I will now proceed to explain, the only person's validation I was trying to get was me.
I DO NOT SELF INJURE, TALK ABOUT SUICIDE, OR STRUGGLE WITH BULIMIA BECAUSE I WANT ATTENTION. I thought a lot today about whether the reason this comment made me so incredibly angry was because it was true. Sometimes we react to the truth with rage. But I have thought about it a lot, and it's not true.
I'm sure a lot of what I'm going to say here now won't make as much sense if you've never been extremely depressed or never been abused. But this is the truth:
The first time I ever cut, I cut my wrist. It was in seventh or eigth grade. It was mostly to get attention. I was somewhat suicidal (you have to be to cut your wrist, especially the first time, when you don't know how deep you can go before you'll die), but mostly I was reaching out. The next day I told two people, and they told my parents, and I started getting help. That was a somewhat isolated incident.
A few months later my real problems began. I felt so angry with myself all the time, and so depressed and miserable. I don't know how to explain a depression like that unless you've really suffered with depression. I don't think most of my friends understand the magnamity (I think I spelled that wrong) of these depressions. They're horrible. Anyway, I was so used to my mother hitting me all the time. I was used to being screamed at. I hated myself, and getting hit and screamed at was what I felt like I deserved. When my mom quit doing that, I was lost. I didn't know what to do when I felt that intense anger. And when my mom quit screaming at me and everything was when I started feeling so much anger at her that I couldn't handle it. I was more angry at her for not hitting me than I ever was at her for hitting me. So I remembered how wonderful it felt when I cut my wrist (I really do love pain. I dissociate almost immediately, but I can still live in the thrill of hurting myself). I started cutting because I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't cut anywhere where people would see. I told no one. I wasn't doing it to get people to notice my pain. I was doing it because I didn't know how to live without being hurt.
Journal entries about the descent into cutting (*TRIGGERS* to SI-ers): 05-03-03, Anger, something I am not used to feeling. But lately it has slithered unnoticed into my life like a snake through tall grass. 05-04-03, It is my body bleeding numble on the floor and into the sink. Why does it not hurt me? How can I be immune to that intense of pain? 07-19-03, I haven't taken my medication in 11 days. I hate the way I feel off of it, but something inside of me that I don't understand keeps me from taking it. I can't go to sleep. The nightmares are waiting. I have trained myself to wake up at night so I don't slip into unwanted terror. 07-30-03, I HATE fighting with my mother. In those few blood-red instants of bitter argument, an oppressive hatred bubbles up from deep within me, a rage I have been trying so long to deny. I feel control slipping away and dissociation slipping in and then, if the argument reaches fever-pitch, my memory fails me. And later, looking back, once the rage and sickening hatred and cursed amnesia have slipped away and I am once more in control, I feel so... empty. So hollow and bent and finally broken. 08-02-03, "What was I like," I say, "when I was little?" Terry's eyes stare into mine. ..."You were also very, very guarded. You did not show much emotion besides anger. But you feared anger so greatly. When I aske dyou if you were mad, you would forcefully say 'NO!'. 08-26-03, I'm wondering if I'm screwed up because sometimes I want to die and sometimes I try to and sometimes I cut. Does that make me messed up crazy? I feel messed up. I wonder if all the world sees the pain in me. They must, because sometimes it's like pain's all I am. Pain and sarcasm and laughter tears. I'm having a hard time living without abuse. Abuse is all I've ever known, and it's so weird now that it's gone. Life doesn't make sense anymore. 08-28-03, Man I hurt, like glass going through my system. I want to go into the kitchen and stab myself deep in the heart with the butcher knife so my parents can see me die. When I'm in a lifeless heap on the floor, maybe Dad will start talking about money again and Mom will go back to making pasta salad. F them. I'll do that or take drugs, die slow. But Siobhan would kill me if I killed myself. It would kill Shauna. I think I'll just cut instead. I think I'll start cutting again. It's the only way to keep from killing myself. 09-04-06, People think lives fall apart in one tragic crash, one giant meltdown. But it's the little things, really. One resurfaced memory, one small mesh of cuts on your wrist, one week wtihout eating. It all adds up and before you know it everything is shattering. It deserved stitches and I sat there calmly and pressed 1/4 inch of my X-acto knife into it. It sahould have hurt like heck but I felt no pain as I jammed the knife into my leg, as I soaked up papertowel after papertowel of bright red blood. Six cuts on me right now. That's how life falls apart. Not in one huge, mindnumbing crash, but int he cuts that get deeper and deeper. ...And cutting... I guess it's to feel. I feel so, so numb all the time that I need to let it out. The cutting doesn't hurt my outsides but it hurts my insides, which is really more satisfying anyway. I'm just having such a hard time feeling. 09-12-03, Nothing was fair and I was worrie dinto a constant stomach and head-ache about everyone, all the people that make up my world, and I wanted so badly to shatter something but there was nothing but my heart and I wished someone could understand. 09-14-03, I think that I am committing emotional suicide. And I like it. I'm that much of a monster. I want to destroy myself so I am so physically and emotionally numb that I feel absolutely nothing, so there is no way anyone or anything can ever hurt me. Lately I have been hurting myself emotionally and physically every chance I get. Since I cannot kill myself, this is as close as I can get. Dear God, let me go. 09-21-03, Thursday night I took nine lithium. There are razorblade bites all over my legs. I was scared. My head hurt. I'd gained six pounds in two days. I woke up in another world... I went to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left in me. All of me ached and hurt. All of me twanged with fear. 09-30-03, I've been cutting every night in the shower. My upper legs are a solid mass of razor cuts... changing for gym is hard. I face the wall and pull my sweats up, holding my breath through the whole thing. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before somebody sees. 10-02-03, All the time I feel so distant, so far away. Day after day, week after week. I live above the world, disconnected.... I wonder what it would be like to stop fighting and let myself fall. I could be safe forever in a hospital. But my life. My life. 10-05-03, Will my life always be like this? I've been hurting myself routinely fore alwost a year. I told no one. By now I'm heavily addicted, I don't think I can ever stop. I can't remember the last time I was happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy. 10-07-03 Sleeping, eating, breathing, laughing... none of it seems to matter anymore. What's the point? All that's real in my life is pain and fear. I think that now I hate myself more than I ever have before in my whole life. ...I think that part of the reason I cut (besides that I hate myself and deserve to hurt) is that now that the abuse is over I just didn't know how to live without daily pain. So I replaced it with my own abuse.
That's how the cutting got bad. It was never about attention, not the daily cutting. It was about hating myself, needing to escape. That's still what it's about. I never learned how to deal with anger. I never learned how to live without abuse. Now, I cut because it lets me escape from extreme emotion. My first reaction to being told today that I do this for attention was to want to cut, because I was so angry and I never know how to handle anger.
I DO NOT CUT FOR ATTENTION. I CUT BECAUSE I LIKE THE FEELING OF HURTING MYSELF, BECAUSE I LIKE THE HIGH, I LIKE TO SEE THAT I AM HUMAN, I LIKE PUNISHING MYSELF, AND IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE TO KILLING MYSELF. I CUT BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER, WHETHER I TELL YOU OR NOT. EVEN IF I STOPPED WRITING IN THIS BLOG, THAT'S STILL WHAT CUTTING WOULD BE ABOUT.
Journal entries about the eating disorder *ED*: 06-30-04, I can't eat anymore. It's partially that my stomach is shrunken. But mostly that I just can't. My brain won't let me. It purges me of dirty food. Emptiness is pure, clean. My brain screams for jogging miles on an empty stomach. 'Purity,' it tells me. The drab comfort of the eating disorder keeps me up. The numbers on teh scale go down and down. My muscle bulks from all the running; the remaining calories burn into ashes. I weigh my goal weight. Why am I not happy? Why am I not complete? 07-02-04, Mom says I look thinner. Craig says I look thinner. I am a monster in the mirror. I look fat to me. I always have. I always will. Until I am a stick figure, a bundle of skeleton-marrow, my hatred will crack the glass. 07-04-04, Sitting on the hard church pew, suicidal thoughts surging like siezures through my small body, I make a decision to tell Terry I can't take my meds. I am trapped in a wooden box. I know she may put me in the hospital for Friday and Saturday, but I don't care anymore. I almost want to be there. I need to. I am not safe out here. I need to stabilize. How unfathomably good it would feel to, just once, let the glue holding my insides tightly together melt a bit and scream at the trees. I HATE BIPOLAR! AND OCD! AND DISSOCIATION AND EATING DISORDERS AND THE ADDICTION OF SELF-INJURY!!! And sometimes the largest scream of all, I HATE BEING ME!!! If I don't do something soon bad things will happen. Cement will crumble. 07-08-04, I'm sitting there on TErry's couch when the quiet fibers of the universe start to bend. I can feel the elements crumbling, the sky collapsing. I want to tell her I'm suicidal but it just on't come out. ..."You know, I really want to hit you," Mom says, "it's amazing that I haven't." I splinter inside. "Go ahead!" I sob, "hit me! I don't care!" but she stays still. 'Take me to the hospital,' I'm screaming in my head. It won't come out. I am exhausted of living, exhausted of bipolar. I feel so hollow. 07-22-04, I've quit eating again. Nobody really notices. My head feels clearer, more complete without the octopus-ink of food in my stomach. I'm never hungry. Sticky candy gets caught in my throat and gags back up... And people say they love me, but do they really? And people say they care, but do they ever think of me? 07-24-04, Healing is such a fickle action, moving on is so much easier said that done. 07-25-06 I look in the mirror before getting in the shower. My upper body is very thin, my ribs defined, my muscles firm. Almost skeletal, for a moment. But my lower body is all fat. I believe all 110 pounds of me is riding in my butt. I look grotesque, a vivisection of a fat and thin lady gone wrong. I am mad at everything and nearly everyone right now. I feel sick with pungent anger; I hate the nausea. It saps me of energy, makes me exhausted, always in need of more sleep. I don't want to go through this cycle again. I'm sick of being alone. There is more to life than this. Part of why I"m so miserable is that long ago I fell comfortably into the role of the abused, thought it was my job. Now, still desperate for abuse, I don't fight it. 08-02-04, I feel so fat. All I ate today was a taco and a bite of brownie, but the brownie was a slip, a sign of weak character. I'm 109 pounds now and I am a bohemoth when I look in the mirror. ...But I can't live like this. Nobody understands me. I have no one to talk to. I am so alone, burying land mines in my heart like I don't know they'll explode someday and kill me. 08-03-04, I don't take them all at once this time, but in groups of four. They slide down easily with Diet Sprite. Half a brownie is in my stomach, and it's coming out. Shoving a finger down doesn't work, and there is no Ipecac syrup. But this always works. Always. The afternoon is terrible. I always forget the horror of lithium overdoses. On the internet desperate posts are met with scolding: you need help. I know it. I know I'm bulimic. But knowing it changes nothing. I don't know what to do. There is no one to talk to. Ghosts of the past have faded. Three hours after eating the brownie, I hang over the toilet and puke it back up. Vomting is spectacularly asphyxiating. Half-digested food swims int eh toilet. Tears are hot on my cheeks. ...There is purity in the purge that balances the dirty feeling of the binge. I feel miserable but there's no one listening to me crying. All I want is somebody to understand, to care. I'm sick of being alone. I'm sick of hurting myself. I am glad to have the food out of me, I feel cleaner. But I hate myself for needing this. In the end, my tears are nothing, uncared for and unnoticed, only two small splashes in a toilet bowl. Most of the tears won't come. They are bottled up inside of me, sloshing around when I walk, forever unreachable. 08-04-04, I've been on-off bulimic for a few years now. I don't like it. The relationship is heavily abusive. ...To my friends, my face is blurred into the wallpaper. They still believe that I am a rock. They odn't know that when you smash me open I'm just another geode lined with shattered crystal. 08-05-04, Olivia buys me a decaf coffee smoothy. I want to slip it in the trash, but Olivia would notice, so I slurp the whole thing down. Later, at home as I pop fiber laxatives, I decide to take care of myself. I will be brave. I will tell Kristin. I will, I will. 08-08-04, Dad mentions suicide again and my mind closes. I go into the bathroom and make myself throw up my dinner of salad and a chunk of bread. My face is pale and pallid as it struggles to shatter the cold prison of the mirror. 08-09-04, Finally breaking the barrier between embarrassment and necessity I try not to blush as the laxatives are rung up in Safeway. This morning inordinate amounts of lithium purged my nauseated system. Later, running painfully on an empty stomach and a twisted knee, I realize I'm going ot start school shattered again, lost, no better than last year, no progress made. Again and again I'm losing it. 08-11-04, The box says dependable, says overnight, says gentle. I agree with the first two. But at 5:00 a.m. when I wake up with my bowels roiling and on fire, I don't agree with the last one. I sit stiffly on the toilet, a statue of pain, nausea coursing through me. I'm goign to throw up all over myself, I really am. 08-14-04, WHen I think I"ll never wear just a swimmingsuit again, I hate myself for what I've done, what I'm doing. But there is an instant when time stops, when the sun hangs in the air like a pale frisbee, when the clocks turn to mud, and you feel hollow, so horribly empty... you feel nothing. And life becomes a nightmare, as you wonder through the numbness or the anger whether you will ever feel again. That is when the steel comes. It is a desperation, and the pain is a comfort, a reassurance that you are not as numb as you feel. The eating disorder is a battle for control. The cutting is a double-edged sword- one side against the numbness, one side against my throat. So I hate it. But I need it.
There's more, oh so much more, agony in my journals relating to mental illness, self injury, and bulimia. I think, though, that hopefully those entries will show you that my main problem all along is that I never did anything for attention, I never asked for it when I needed it, when I could, I never let people know I was cutting, never told anyone I was throwing up until I told Amanda my sophomore year. For years before that I was so alone in the isolation. My reasons for both the bulimia and the cutting are I think explained pretty well in those passages.
This blog began as a way to reaffirm myself, to psychoanalyze, and it has become exactly what I have been accused of self-injuring for- a way to get attention. I am incapable, for some reason, of acting how I feel in real life. My friends never know I'm depressed. I can't act depressed. Sometimes I am able to say things to try to express my depression, but mostly everyone thinks I'm just great. I can't really talk to my friends that I see on a daily basis. I have self-injured and binged and purged to cope. I can't explain how horrible mental illness is if you haven't experienced it. It, not attention, led me to my problems. It and the abuse in my past. Now, I still don't cut for attention. I swear to you with all my heart that every time I cut it is because I feel like I can't experience another moment of life with the emotions (or lack of) I am experiencing. It is rarely, rarely for attention. Every time I overdose on drugs it is because I feel like I can't stand this world anymore. It is not for attention. Every time I throw up or take laxatives it is because I need control and believe I am fat. It is not for attention. I have always been so bad about getting attention. I've always been so guarded.
This blog, though, is a plea for help. I has been ever since the first person posted in it (who hasn't posted in it for a very long time). It has been ever since I realized that I have finally found a place where I can express myself. I want to promise all of you that my self-injurious actions are not to get your attention. I know that I already have your attention. Posting about how I feel and what I do on this blog is to get your attention. This is all that I have. You that read this... you are the only people that know me, the real me. Your love is the reason I get up every day and yank myself through these unbearable hours. Your support is the reason I keep posting endlessly about things that probably bore you to death. Yes, I am seeking attention, but not through my actions... through my words. That is the only way I believe I can seek attention. Something inside of me won't let other people know about the cutting or the eating disorder or anything. Very few people know that about me. To nearly everyone, I am the kid who's good at math and plays a bajillion orchestra instruments. They would be very surprized to know the things that I write on here. You are my support. You are my attention.
I have been misunderstood, which is understandable :-) I know in my heart that the reason I do these things is still the same reason it has always been: addiction, depression, loss of abuse. It has not turned into attention seeking actions. I have never let people see my cuts (only scars) or notice my eating disorder. I have so many lies and excuses to cover me up. But this blog, this is the truth. So I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's not so simple as just deciding to get better. I can't do that. I keep doing it over and over again and I keep being thwarted by the messed up channels of seratonin in my mind. I won't use that as an excuse. I know I have to keep fighting. But people... I am fighting. I am giving this all that I've got. I have never been one to give up. I have never been one to use half-hearted efforts. This is me trying. You are my reasons for temporarily getting up every morning. But I have always had reasons in my heart for living. They have been what kept me from suicide for all those years before I could explain to anyone the horrors in my head.
I love you. In a way I am using you. But please never view my actions as attempts to get attention. I have a way with words. I can write well... artculately, eloquently. I don't need actions to get your attention when I have my words.
Love is real, even if everything else in this world can't hold. Love can hold.
(and to the person that left that comment- I know everything else that you said was true, and I know that you are right about many things, and I know that you love me, and I love you too)
I don't get angry very easily, and this comment made me very, very angry. It struck a nerve. I think it struck a nerve because that's what my mom always used to say, when I was in eighth grade. She said that I'm just doing things to get attention. Well the first thing I'd like to point out is that if someone is doing things to get attention, it is because they are very desperate for it, which probably means they need it. I mean if someone is cutting or something to manipulate, that's not okay, but if someone cuts in a visible place so people see that something is wrong... I think that there is a source of concern there to make sure that individual is okay, if they feel so ignored that they cannot even tell people how they feel, they have to show them. I have felt like that, like I needed to cut in order to feel like my feelings were valid. However, as I will now proceed to explain, the only person's validation I was trying to get was me.
I DO NOT SELF INJURE, TALK ABOUT SUICIDE, OR STRUGGLE WITH BULIMIA BECAUSE I WANT ATTENTION. I thought a lot today about whether the reason this comment made me so incredibly angry was because it was true. Sometimes we react to the truth with rage. But I have thought about it a lot, and it's not true.
I'm sure a lot of what I'm going to say here now won't make as much sense if you've never been extremely depressed or never been abused. But this is the truth:
The first time I ever cut, I cut my wrist. It was in seventh or eigth grade. It was mostly to get attention. I was somewhat suicidal (you have to be to cut your wrist, especially the first time, when you don't know how deep you can go before you'll die), but mostly I was reaching out. The next day I told two people, and they told my parents, and I started getting help. That was a somewhat isolated incident.
A few months later my real problems began. I felt so angry with myself all the time, and so depressed and miserable. I don't know how to explain a depression like that unless you've really suffered with depression. I don't think most of my friends understand the magnamity (I think I spelled that wrong) of these depressions. They're horrible. Anyway, I was so used to my mother hitting me all the time. I was used to being screamed at. I hated myself, and getting hit and screamed at was what I felt like I deserved. When my mom quit doing that, I was lost. I didn't know what to do when I felt that intense anger. And when my mom quit screaming at me and everything was when I started feeling so much anger at her that I couldn't handle it. I was more angry at her for not hitting me than I ever was at her for hitting me. So I remembered how wonderful it felt when I cut my wrist (I really do love pain. I dissociate almost immediately, but I can still live in the thrill of hurting myself). I started cutting because I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't cut anywhere where people would see. I told no one. I wasn't doing it to get people to notice my pain. I was doing it because I didn't know how to live without being hurt.
Journal entries about the descent into cutting (*TRIGGERS* to SI-ers): 05-03-03, Anger, something I am not used to feeling. But lately it has slithered unnoticed into my life like a snake through tall grass. 05-04-03, It is my body bleeding numble on the floor and into the sink. Why does it not hurt me? How can I be immune to that intense of pain? 07-19-03, I haven't taken my medication in 11 days. I hate the way I feel off of it, but something inside of me that I don't understand keeps me from taking it. I can't go to sleep. The nightmares are waiting. I have trained myself to wake up at night so I don't slip into unwanted terror. 07-30-03, I HATE fighting with my mother. In those few blood-red instants of bitter argument, an oppressive hatred bubbles up from deep within me, a rage I have been trying so long to deny. I feel control slipping away and dissociation slipping in and then, if the argument reaches fever-pitch, my memory fails me. And later, looking back, once the rage and sickening hatred and cursed amnesia have slipped away and I am once more in control, I feel so... empty. So hollow and bent and finally broken. 08-02-03, "What was I like," I say, "when I was little?" Terry's eyes stare into mine. ..."You were also very, very guarded. You did not show much emotion besides anger. But you feared anger so greatly. When I aske dyou if you were mad, you would forcefully say 'NO!'. 08-26-03, I'm wondering if I'm screwed up because sometimes I want to die and sometimes I try to and sometimes I cut. Does that make me messed up crazy? I feel messed up. I wonder if all the world sees the pain in me. They must, because sometimes it's like pain's all I am. Pain and sarcasm and laughter tears. I'm having a hard time living without abuse. Abuse is all I've ever known, and it's so weird now that it's gone. Life doesn't make sense anymore. 08-28-03, Man I hurt, like glass going through my system. I want to go into the kitchen and stab myself deep in the heart with the butcher knife so my parents can see me die. When I'm in a lifeless heap on the floor, maybe Dad will start talking about money again and Mom will go back to making pasta salad. F them. I'll do that or take drugs, die slow. But Siobhan would kill me if I killed myself. It would kill Shauna. I think I'll just cut instead. I think I'll start cutting again. It's the only way to keep from killing myself. 09-04-06, People think lives fall apart in one tragic crash, one giant meltdown. But it's the little things, really. One resurfaced memory, one small mesh of cuts on your wrist, one week wtihout eating. It all adds up and before you know it everything is shattering. It deserved stitches and I sat there calmly and pressed 1/4 inch of my X-acto knife into it. It sahould have hurt like heck but I felt no pain as I jammed the knife into my leg, as I soaked up papertowel after papertowel of bright red blood. Six cuts on me right now. That's how life falls apart. Not in one huge, mindnumbing crash, but int he cuts that get deeper and deeper. ...And cutting... I guess it's to feel. I feel so, so numb all the time that I need to let it out. The cutting doesn't hurt my outsides but it hurts my insides, which is really more satisfying anyway. I'm just having such a hard time feeling. 09-12-03, Nothing was fair and I was worrie dinto a constant stomach and head-ache about everyone, all the people that make up my world, and I wanted so badly to shatter something but there was nothing but my heart and I wished someone could understand. 09-14-03, I think that I am committing emotional suicide. And I like it. I'm that much of a monster. I want to destroy myself so I am so physically and emotionally numb that I feel absolutely nothing, so there is no way anyone or anything can ever hurt me. Lately I have been hurting myself emotionally and physically every chance I get. Since I cannot kill myself, this is as close as I can get. Dear God, let me go. 09-21-03, Thursday night I took nine lithium. There are razorblade bites all over my legs. I was scared. My head hurt. I'd gained six pounds in two days. I woke up in another world... I went to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left in me. All of me ached and hurt. All of me twanged with fear. 09-30-03, I've been cutting every night in the shower. My upper legs are a solid mass of razor cuts... changing for gym is hard. I face the wall and pull my sweats up, holding my breath through the whole thing. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before somebody sees. 10-02-03, All the time I feel so distant, so far away. Day after day, week after week. I live above the world, disconnected.... I wonder what it would be like to stop fighting and let myself fall. I could be safe forever in a hospital. But my life. My life. 10-05-03, Will my life always be like this? I've been hurting myself routinely fore alwost a year. I told no one. By now I'm heavily addicted, I don't think I can ever stop. I can't remember the last time I was happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy. 10-07-03 Sleeping, eating, breathing, laughing... none of it seems to matter anymore. What's the point? All that's real in my life is pain and fear. I think that now I hate myself more than I ever have before in my whole life. ...I think that part of the reason I cut (besides that I hate myself and deserve to hurt) is that now that the abuse is over I just didn't know how to live without daily pain. So I replaced it with my own abuse.
That's how the cutting got bad. It was never about attention, not the daily cutting. It was about hating myself, needing to escape. That's still what it's about. I never learned how to deal with anger. I never learned how to live without abuse. Now, I cut because it lets me escape from extreme emotion. My first reaction to being told today that I do this for attention was to want to cut, because I was so angry and I never know how to handle anger.
I DO NOT CUT FOR ATTENTION. I CUT BECAUSE I LIKE THE FEELING OF HURTING MYSELF, BECAUSE I LIKE THE HIGH, I LIKE TO SEE THAT I AM HUMAN, I LIKE PUNISHING MYSELF, AND IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE TO KILLING MYSELF. I CUT BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER, WHETHER I TELL YOU OR NOT. EVEN IF I STOPPED WRITING IN THIS BLOG, THAT'S STILL WHAT CUTTING WOULD BE ABOUT.
Journal entries about the eating disorder *ED*: 06-30-04, I can't eat anymore. It's partially that my stomach is shrunken. But mostly that I just can't. My brain won't let me. It purges me of dirty food. Emptiness is pure, clean. My brain screams for jogging miles on an empty stomach. 'Purity,' it tells me. The drab comfort of the eating disorder keeps me up. The numbers on teh scale go down and down. My muscle bulks from all the running; the remaining calories burn into ashes. I weigh my goal weight. Why am I not happy? Why am I not complete? 07-02-04, Mom says I look thinner. Craig says I look thinner. I am a monster in the mirror. I look fat to me. I always have. I always will. Until I am a stick figure, a bundle of skeleton-marrow, my hatred will crack the glass. 07-04-04, Sitting on the hard church pew, suicidal thoughts surging like siezures through my small body, I make a decision to tell Terry I can't take my meds. I am trapped in a wooden box. I know she may put me in the hospital for Friday and Saturday, but I don't care anymore. I almost want to be there. I need to. I am not safe out here. I need to stabilize. How unfathomably good it would feel to, just once, let the glue holding my insides tightly together melt a bit and scream at the trees. I HATE BIPOLAR! AND OCD! AND DISSOCIATION AND EATING DISORDERS AND THE ADDICTION OF SELF-INJURY!!! And sometimes the largest scream of all, I HATE BEING ME!!! If I don't do something soon bad things will happen. Cement will crumble. 07-08-04, I'm sitting there on TErry's couch when the quiet fibers of the universe start to bend. I can feel the elements crumbling, the sky collapsing. I want to tell her I'm suicidal but it just on't come out. ..."You know, I really want to hit you," Mom says, "it's amazing that I haven't." I splinter inside. "Go ahead!" I sob, "hit me! I don't care!" but she stays still. 'Take me to the hospital,' I'm screaming in my head. It won't come out. I am exhausted of living, exhausted of bipolar. I feel so hollow. 07-22-04, I've quit eating again. Nobody really notices. My head feels clearer, more complete without the octopus-ink of food in my stomach. I'm never hungry. Sticky candy gets caught in my throat and gags back up... And people say they love me, but do they really? And people say they care, but do they ever think of me? 07-24-04, Healing is such a fickle action, moving on is so much easier said that done. 07-25-06 I look in the mirror before getting in the shower. My upper body is very thin, my ribs defined, my muscles firm. Almost skeletal, for a moment. But my lower body is all fat. I believe all 110 pounds of me is riding in my butt. I look grotesque, a vivisection of a fat and thin lady gone wrong. I am mad at everything and nearly everyone right now. I feel sick with pungent anger; I hate the nausea. It saps me of energy, makes me exhausted, always in need of more sleep. I don't want to go through this cycle again. I'm sick of being alone. There is more to life than this. Part of why I"m so miserable is that long ago I fell comfortably into the role of the abused, thought it was my job. Now, still desperate for abuse, I don't fight it. 08-02-04, I feel so fat. All I ate today was a taco and a bite of brownie, but the brownie was a slip, a sign of weak character. I'm 109 pounds now and I am a bohemoth when I look in the mirror. ...But I can't live like this. Nobody understands me. I have no one to talk to. I am so alone, burying land mines in my heart like I don't know they'll explode someday and kill me. 08-03-04, I don't take them all at once this time, but in groups of four. They slide down easily with Diet Sprite. Half a brownie is in my stomach, and it's coming out. Shoving a finger down doesn't work, and there is no Ipecac syrup. But this always works. Always. The afternoon is terrible. I always forget the horror of lithium overdoses. On the internet desperate posts are met with scolding: you need help. I know it. I know I'm bulimic. But knowing it changes nothing. I don't know what to do. There is no one to talk to. Ghosts of the past have faded. Three hours after eating the brownie, I hang over the toilet and puke it back up. Vomting is spectacularly asphyxiating. Half-digested food swims int eh toilet. Tears are hot on my cheeks. ...There is purity in the purge that balances the dirty feeling of the binge. I feel miserable but there's no one listening to me crying. All I want is somebody to understand, to care. I'm sick of being alone. I'm sick of hurting myself. I am glad to have the food out of me, I feel cleaner. But I hate myself for needing this. In the end, my tears are nothing, uncared for and unnoticed, only two small splashes in a toilet bowl. Most of the tears won't come. They are bottled up inside of me, sloshing around when I walk, forever unreachable. 08-04-04, I've been on-off bulimic for a few years now. I don't like it. The relationship is heavily abusive. ...To my friends, my face is blurred into the wallpaper. They still believe that I am a rock. They odn't know that when you smash me open I'm just another geode lined with shattered crystal. 08-05-04, Olivia buys me a decaf coffee smoothy. I want to slip it in the trash, but Olivia would notice, so I slurp the whole thing down. Later, at home as I pop fiber laxatives, I decide to take care of myself. I will be brave. I will tell Kristin. I will, I will. 08-08-04, Dad mentions suicide again and my mind closes. I go into the bathroom and make myself throw up my dinner of salad and a chunk of bread. My face is pale and pallid as it struggles to shatter the cold prison of the mirror. 08-09-04, Finally breaking the barrier between embarrassment and necessity I try not to blush as the laxatives are rung up in Safeway. This morning inordinate amounts of lithium purged my nauseated system. Later, running painfully on an empty stomach and a twisted knee, I realize I'm going ot start school shattered again, lost, no better than last year, no progress made. Again and again I'm losing it. 08-11-04, The box says dependable, says overnight, says gentle. I agree with the first two. But at 5:00 a.m. when I wake up with my bowels roiling and on fire, I don't agree with the last one. I sit stiffly on the toilet, a statue of pain, nausea coursing through me. I'm goign to throw up all over myself, I really am. 08-14-04, WHen I think I"ll never wear just a swimmingsuit again, I hate myself for what I've done, what I'm doing. But there is an instant when time stops, when the sun hangs in the air like a pale frisbee, when the clocks turn to mud, and you feel hollow, so horribly empty... you feel nothing. And life becomes a nightmare, as you wonder through the numbness or the anger whether you will ever feel again. That is when the steel comes. It is a desperation, and the pain is a comfort, a reassurance that you are not as numb as you feel. The eating disorder is a battle for control. The cutting is a double-edged sword- one side against the numbness, one side against my throat. So I hate it. But I need it.
There's more, oh so much more, agony in my journals relating to mental illness, self injury, and bulimia. I think, though, that hopefully those entries will show you that my main problem all along is that I never did anything for attention, I never asked for it when I needed it, when I could, I never let people know I was cutting, never told anyone I was throwing up until I told Amanda my sophomore year. For years before that I was so alone in the isolation. My reasons for both the bulimia and the cutting are I think explained pretty well in those passages.
This blog began as a way to reaffirm myself, to psychoanalyze, and it has become exactly what I have been accused of self-injuring for- a way to get attention. I am incapable, for some reason, of acting how I feel in real life. My friends never know I'm depressed. I can't act depressed. Sometimes I am able to say things to try to express my depression, but mostly everyone thinks I'm just great. I can't really talk to my friends that I see on a daily basis. I have self-injured and binged and purged to cope. I can't explain how horrible mental illness is if you haven't experienced it. It, not attention, led me to my problems. It and the abuse in my past. Now, I still don't cut for attention. I swear to you with all my heart that every time I cut it is because I feel like I can't experience another moment of life with the emotions (or lack of) I am experiencing. It is rarely, rarely for attention. Every time I overdose on drugs it is because I feel like I can't stand this world anymore. It is not for attention. Every time I throw up or take laxatives it is because I need control and believe I am fat. It is not for attention. I have always been so bad about getting attention. I've always been so guarded.
This blog, though, is a plea for help. I has been ever since the first person posted in it (who hasn't posted in it for a very long time). It has been ever since I realized that I have finally found a place where I can express myself. I want to promise all of you that my self-injurious actions are not to get your attention. I know that I already have your attention. Posting about how I feel and what I do on this blog is to get your attention. This is all that I have. You that read this... you are the only people that know me, the real me. Your love is the reason I get up every day and yank myself through these unbearable hours. Your support is the reason I keep posting endlessly about things that probably bore you to death. Yes, I am seeking attention, but not through my actions... through my words. That is the only way I believe I can seek attention. Something inside of me won't let other people know about the cutting or the eating disorder or anything. Very few people know that about me. To nearly everyone, I am the kid who's good at math and plays a bajillion orchestra instruments. They would be very surprized to know the things that I write on here. You are my support. You are my attention.
I have been misunderstood, which is understandable :-) I know in my heart that the reason I do these things is still the same reason it has always been: addiction, depression, loss of abuse. It has not turned into attention seeking actions. I have never let people see my cuts (only scars) or notice my eating disorder. I have so many lies and excuses to cover me up. But this blog, this is the truth. So I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's not so simple as just deciding to get better. I can't do that. I keep doing it over and over again and I keep being thwarted by the messed up channels of seratonin in my mind. I won't use that as an excuse. I know I have to keep fighting. But people... I am fighting. I am giving this all that I've got. I have never been one to give up. I have never been one to use half-hearted efforts. This is me trying. You are my reasons for temporarily getting up every morning. But I have always had reasons in my heart for living. They have been what kept me from suicide for all those years before I could explain to anyone the horrors in my head.
I love you. In a way I am using you. But please never view my actions as attempts to get attention. I have a way with words. I can write well... artculately, eloquently. I don't need actions to get your attention when I have my words.
Love is real, even if everything else in this world can't hold. Love can hold.
(and to the person that left that comment- I know everything else that you said was true, and I know that you are right about many things, and I know that you love me, and I love you too)
Sunday, July 16, 2006
I don't want to be alive anymore, but I'm just as afraid of death. I just want to cease existing... I can't do this.
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too
Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too
Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down
Okay, I'll admit it, I'll drop the politics. I'm terrified right now. I'm scared. I'm panicked. I'm angry. I'm lost. I don't have a word bad enough to describe my current emotional state. It's off the spectrum. There is no spectrum.
I'm fighting. You know I'm fighting.
I can't believe in people when they're away. My friends, my family... I can't remember that they are real if they are not talking to me. This is proving to be a problem. I feel so alone, because nobody seems real. I need to be told constantly that I am still loved or I won't believe it. I need to be spending time constantly with people or I can't believe in them.
This is the devastation. It has to be. I must be at the bottom of the abyss. There must be no worse place. I can't imagine much worse than this.
I'm fighting. You know I'm fighting.
I can't believe in people when they're away. My friends, my family... I can't remember that they are real if they are not talking to me. This is proving to be a problem. I feel so alone, because nobody seems real. I need to be told constantly that I am still loved or I won't believe it. I need to be spending time constantly with people or I can't believe in them.
This is the devastation. It has to be. I must be at the bottom of the abyss. There must be no worse place. I can't imagine much worse than this.
politics
I am still not okay so I will talk about things that matter more than me.
I don't know what's up with Israel and Lebanon. I know Israel won't talk to Lebanon because the Hezbollah are basically in charge, but how is bombing each other repeatedly going to help? How does that make the Israeli government any better than terrorists, if the terroristic Hezbollah are essentially their own government?
We can't stay in Iraq because if we do, we'll be there forever. Handing off one Iraqi province (and having multiple deaths occur because of that or just simultaneously) is such a small part of what we need to do before we can leave. The Iraqi people, many of them at least, believe that another dictatorship is inevitable. They're not working with this democracy framework we're trying to force. They're just sitting there, waiting to blown up by another tyrant. However, we can't leave Iraq because if we do they may just end up like Lebanon, ruled by terrorists, and we may just end up like Israel, trying to solve problems by bombing and bombing. And maybe this whole thing is like Vietnam, and all the bombing won't do much because the terroristic operations are so spread out and diverse. It never helped to bomb Hanoi. It's too unstable to leave. We can't stay. What the heck are we supposed to do?!
I don't know what's up with Israel and Lebanon. I know Israel won't talk to Lebanon because the Hezbollah are basically in charge, but how is bombing each other repeatedly going to help? How does that make the Israeli government any better than terrorists, if the terroristic Hezbollah are essentially their own government?
We can't stay in Iraq because if we do, we'll be there forever. Handing off one Iraqi province (and having multiple deaths occur because of that or just simultaneously) is such a small part of what we need to do before we can leave. The Iraqi people, many of them at least, believe that another dictatorship is inevitable. They're not working with this democracy framework we're trying to force. They're just sitting there, waiting to blown up by another tyrant. However, we can't leave Iraq because if we do they may just end up like Lebanon, ruled by terrorists, and we may just end up like Israel, trying to solve problems by bombing and bombing. And maybe this whole thing is like Vietnam, and all the bombing won't do much because the terroristic operations are so spread out and diverse. It never helped to bomb Hanoi. It's too unstable to leave. We can't stay. What the heck are we supposed to do?!
Saturday, July 15, 2006
I don't know what to do to myself. I don't want to kill myself, because I'm more afraid of death than I am of life. I don't want to cut, because I've done that so much I'm bored with it, five years of it and it seems a bit anticlimatic; I need something newer and more severe. I don't want to overdose, because that would just make me sick and throw up all day tomorrow which wouldn't help me feel better in any way except that I'd lose weight. I don't want to use inhalents, because I really don't want to get addicted or go to Hell. I don't want to go drink alcohol, for those same reasons (I really am afraid of God). I don't want to burn myself, because I never could figure out how to do that properly. I guess I could go jump off the porch or the roof. I haven't done that since eigth grade. But that's not really new either.
It seems like I've done everything you can do to hurt yourself. I've punched walls, cut myself, burned myself, overdosed, drank, tried drugs... and I'm still miserable. All these things have just kept me alive. But they're probably condemning me at the same time.
There's got to be something left to do, something that will make me feel better... I can't have done everything...
Oh right. I know how to make myself feel totally miserable. This is the Josh cue. This is what Josh did before he overdosed. He said, I can't do all those things, so I'm going to overdose on drugs so I can feel like Lindsay did. So maybe now I'm supposed to say, I'll go look at porn so I can feel like Josh did. But I think that that would make me throw up far faster than the pills or the ipecac syrup I have been daydreaming of lately.
I....... don't........ know..........
It seems like I've done everything you can do to hurt yourself. I've punched walls, cut myself, burned myself, overdosed, drank, tried drugs... and I'm still miserable. All these things have just kept me alive. But they're probably condemning me at the same time.
There's got to be something left to do, something that will make me feel better... I can't have done everything...
Oh right. I know how to make myself feel totally miserable. This is the Josh cue. This is what Josh did before he overdosed. He said, I can't do all those things, so I'm going to overdose on drugs so I can feel like Lindsay did. So maybe now I'm supposed to say, I'll go look at porn so I can feel like Josh did. But I think that that would make me throw up far faster than the pills or the ipecac syrup I have been daydreaming of lately.
I....... don't........ know..........
I've just finished reading Brave New World, and despite the lunacy of all of the characters, despite my lack of understanding of the ending, and despite all the drugs Aldous Huxley was on when he wrote it, I liked it a lot.
Some random parts from it:
"What fun it would be... if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies."
People Huxley quoted:
"They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and destractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false- a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth." -Maine de Biran (I think)
"[Philosophy is] the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct." -Bradley
Anyway, the book made me think.
I don't want to write more at the moment as I have lost control of my emotions in general, which frightens me.
Some random parts from it:
"What fun it would be... if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies."
People Huxley quoted:
"They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and destractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false- a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth." -Maine de Biran (I think)
"[Philosophy is] the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct." -Bradley
Anyway, the book made me think.
I don't want to write more at the moment as I have lost control of my emotions in general, which frightens me.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
It is an odd sensation, to stand on the crumbling edge of an abyss, unable to look back and remember what it was that made you stay so far away. I feel as if the land underneath me is giving way, and I can't stop it, and once I fall in there will never be hope again.
Please remind me of why my diaphragm continues to contract, why I do not cut, why I don't overdose, why I am not running upstairs to drink all the alcohol my mom keeps for cooking... because I'm forgetting right now. I'm forgetting everything. The only place I can look is down.
I'm worried about myself. That doesn't happen very often.
Please remind me of why my diaphragm continues to contract, why I do not cut, why I don't overdose, why I am not running upstairs to drink all the alcohol my mom keeps for cooking... because I'm forgetting right now. I'm forgetting everything. The only place I can look is down.
I'm worried about myself. That doesn't happen very often.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Ha Ha , I love major ad-hominen attacks thrown about by major world-figures like pathetic attempts at humor.
No really, this did make me smile.
The whole world just just get along. I never did like Putin. I don't know a lot about Cheney, except that his hunting mistakes have become the stuff of international politics. I wonder what would happen now if the United States were to annoy Russia enough to push it into another cold war. I think we need some better global standards of who does and who doesn't get what kind of weapons, as long as I'm on that line. When do justice and fairness bow down to "why the heck give an unstable, third-world country access to weaponry that could blow us to Pluto?"
I hate politics. People are so stupid. I know when they allowed women to vote they thought it would push the United States more towards peace. Failure. But the world has got to move towards peace somehow or we'll destroy ourselves.
But perhaps global warming will fry us before we even get the chance.
No really, this did make me smile.
The whole world just just get along. I never did like Putin. I don't know a lot about Cheney, except that his hunting mistakes have become the stuff of international politics. I wonder what would happen now if the United States were to annoy Russia enough to push it into another cold war. I think we need some better global standards of who does and who doesn't get what kind of weapons, as long as I'm on that line. When do justice and fairness bow down to "why the heck give an unstable, third-world country access to weaponry that could blow us to Pluto?"
I hate politics. People are so stupid. I know when they allowed women to vote they thought it would push the United States more towards peace. Failure. But the world has got to move towards peace somehow or we'll destroy ourselves.
But perhaps global warming will fry us before we even get the chance.
Olivia: Kyle kissed me.
Me: How was that?
Olivia: I don't know. It feels weird to have someone else's tongue in your mouth.
Understatement of the year. I agree. It does feel weird. I've been talking to a lot of people, and most of them said that making out with someone stimulated them in some way. It at least released a few hormones. It has never does this for me. It has never felt sexual at all. This is, I suppose, a good thing for me, and a good thing because of my age. But I just want to feel what they feel, just once. I know I have hormones in me somewhere.
I'm seeing Charlie again tomorrow. All I am doing with Charlie is using him. I guess he may be just using me too, so it doesn't matter. Or maybe that's just my excuse. Charlie is my experiment though. I do like him. He's a great guy. But I don't really care about him anywhere near the way I care about Josh. He doesn't even know me. I enjoy kissing him. That's all I am using him for. I am using him to figure out how to do it so I enjoy it. And I'm getting somewhere. This probably makes me a horrible person. I don't know. I just enjoy how uncomplicated my relationship with Charlie is.
There is a postcard on postsecret this week that says this (I am entering the word pertinent to me): "Sometimes I [kiss] men that I don't like so I can almost feel like someone really wants me, and to almost prove to myself that I'm not damaged goods." This is also exactly how I feel when it comes to Charlie.
I don't know.
I'm having anxiety attack after anxiety attack at the moment, and I am fighting off the nihilism, and I feel like crap.
Me: How was that?
Olivia: I don't know. It feels weird to have someone else's tongue in your mouth.
Understatement of the year. I agree. It does feel weird. I've been talking to a lot of people, and most of them said that making out with someone stimulated them in some way. It at least released a few hormones. It has never does this for me. It has never felt sexual at all. This is, I suppose, a good thing for me, and a good thing because of my age. But I just want to feel what they feel, just once. I know I have hormones in me somewhere.
I'm seeing Charlie again tomorrow. All I am doing with Charlie is using him. I guess he may be just using me too, so it doesn't matter. Or maybe that's just my excuse. Charlie is my experiment though. I do like him. He's a great guy. But I don't really care about him anywhere near the way I care about Josh. He doesn't even know me. I enjoy kissing him. That's all I am using him for. I am using him to figure out how to do it so I enjoy it. And I'm getting somewhere. This probably makes me a horrible person. I don't know. I just enjoy how uncomplicated my relationship with Charlie is.
There is a postcard on postsecret this week that says this (I am entering the word pertinent to me): "Sometimes I [kiss] men that I don't like so I can almost feel like someone really wants me, and to almost prove to myself that I'm not damaged goods." This is also exactly how I feel when it comes to Charlie.
I don't know.
I'm having anxiety attack after anxiety attack at the moment, and I am fighting off the nihilism, and I feel like crap.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
movies
This past week or so has been characterized by movies. I didn't really realize how much movies affected my thoughts until this week.
The first movie I saw was High School Musical. And let me tell you, that movie is cheesy. The story, all of it... it could never happen. But the songs are all incredibly catchy, and I liked it. It was a happy movie.
Then I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That one was hard, because it was showing me pictures of eternity that scared me, and what I am fighting off the most at the moment is eternity. It was an awesome movie, but it made me start having all those panicky feelings again. I really liked that Elizabeth fell in love with Jack though. William is just too unbelievably noble.
Next I saw Little Manhatten, which was really cute, but I really don't think it's possible to be in love at that age. I think that's what made it really cute.
Shattered Glass- the movie I saw with Olivia, Katie, and Claire on Saturday- is like a portrait of borderline personality disorder. I swear that Stephen Glass has that, if the movie is accurate. Anyway it's an awesome movie, but again depressing.
Superman bothered me a lot because it threw me into feelings of futility and eventually selfishness. Why bother? I thought. There will always be more people dying. I hate these feelings I get sometimes, but I might as well be honest about them. I thought that maybe after a point it would just get to be too much if I were him, and I might just give up. I also don't think I could be that brave. I like to believe sometimes that I could be, but when it comes down to it, I don't think that (being vulnerable) I could walk through bullets or something. Also the movie bothered me because a plane could never reach outer-space or weightlessness without blowing up. Space shuttles have really expensive heat tiles so they don't blow up when exiting the atmosphere. Planes don't. The plane would light on fire and explode before they got through the atmosphere and past gravity. I've known that since I was seven. Come one movie producers/script writers/etc.
Anyway, the movie depressed me for the next movie I saw, which I saw last night for my class: An Inconvenient Truth. I had this long fight with my parents last night about global warming and whether it's real. They don't think it is, and I think they're crazy. Wouldn't it be better to cut down on carbon emissions and see whether it was true that way by following related trends than to continue doing what we're doing and see if it's true that way by observing whether Greenland melts and covers San Fransisco in twenty feet of water? Better safe than sorry.
During the movie I was partially selfish, and angry, and scared, like with Superman, because I felt like I couldn't do anything, and maybe the world will just self-destruct and what do I care? I don't care about the generations after me, I only care about myself. Eventually, however, I defeated that feeling and realized that the world can change, but not if it's full of people thinking like I am, feeling futile. If I do my part, then I am contributing to the world. Even if it seems futile to me, it is my responsibility. I can't just give up because I feel like I have no influence. And I really do care. I care about the environment, and my children's generation, and human beings, and peace. After a while, I guess, after all the killing and hurricanes and everything awful that goes on, some part of you has to stop caring as much, or you'll die, but you still care in your heart of hearts.
One other shameful feeling to get off my chest: sometimes I get very angry. I only get angry at my mother or my dog. When I'm angry at my dog, I think about how small she is, and how extinguishable her life is. I don't think about hurting her or anything; I will never hurt anything or anyone if I can help it. But it bothers me, how angry I get. I don't want to believe I'm capable of doing something horrible. But I know I am. It's only and my mom and my dog. But it's so, so much anger.
The first movie I saw was High School Musical. And let me tell you, that movie is cheesy. The story, all of it... it could never happen. But the songs are all incredibly catchy, and I liked it. It was a happy movie.
Then I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That one was hard, because it was showing me pictures of eternity that scared me, and what I am fighting off the most at the moment is eternity. It was an awesome movie, but it made me start having all those panicky feelings again. I really liked that Elizabeth fell in love with Jack though. William is just too unbelievably noble.
Next I saw Little Manhatten, which was really cute, but I really don't think it's possible to be in love at that age. I think that's what made it really cute.
Shattered Glass- the movie I saw with Olivia, Katie, and Claire on Saturday- is like a portrait of borderline personality disorder. I swear that Stephen Glass has that, if the movie is accurate. Anyway it's an awesome movie, but again depressing.
Superman bothered me a lot because it threw me into feelings of futility and eventually selfishness. Why bother? I thought. There will always be more people dying. I hate these feelings I get sometimes, but I might as well be honest about them. I thought that maybe after a point it would just get to be too much if I were him, and I might just give up. I also don't think I could be that brave. I like to believe sometimes that I could be, but when it comes down to it, I don't think that (being vulnerable) I could walk through bullets or something. Also the movie bothered me because a plane could never reach outer-space or weightlessness without blowing up. Space shuttles have really expensive heat tiles so they don't blow up when exiting the atmosphere. Planes don't. The plane would light on fire and explode before they got through the atmosphere and past gravity. I've known that since I was seven. Come one movie producers/script writers/etc.
Anyway, the movie depressed me for the next movie I saw, which I saw last night for my class: An Inconvenient Truth. I had this long fight with my parents last night about global warming and whether it's real. They don't think it is, and I think they're crazy. Wouldn't it be better to cut down on carbon emissions and see whether it was true that way by following related trends than to continue doing what we're doing and see if it's true that way by observing whether Greenland melts and covers San Fransisco in twenty feet of water? Better safe than sorry.
During the movie I was partially selfish, and angry, and scared, like with Superman, because I felt like I couldn't do anything, and maybe the world will just self-destruct and what do I care? I don't care about the generations after me, I only care about myself. Eventually, however, I defeated that feeling and realized that the world can change, but not if it's full of people thinking like I am, feeling futile. If I do my part, then I am contributing to the world. Even if it seems futile to me, it is my responsibility. I can't just give up because I feel like I have no influence. And I really do care. I care about the environment, and my children's generation, and human beings, and peace. After a while, I guess, after all the killing and hurricanes and everything awful that goes on, some part of you has to stop caring as much, or you'll die, but you still care in your heart of hearts.
One other shameful feeling to get off my chest: sometimes I get very angry. I only get angry at my mother or my dog. When I'm angry at my dog, I think about how small she is, and how extinguishable her life is. I don't think about hurting her or anything; I will never hurt anything or anyone if I can help it. But it bothers me, how angry I get. I don't want to believe I'm capable of doing something horrible. But I know I am. It's only and my mom and my dog. But it's so, so much anger.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY for the ACT's!!!!!
So I didn't actually do much better on the composite. I didn't achieve my goal of 34. I got a 33. But it's the subscores that are so funny and amazing and ironic, and ultimately wonderful for me.
But guess what's so funny. You know how I got an 800- a perfect score- on the critical reading in the SAT's? And I got a 33 in it on my ACT's a year ago? I got a 30 this time! That's only the 92 percentile. Bad for me. You know why? Their stupid freaking time limits!!! I so ran out of time! I was filling in random bubbles, looking at the questions, barely scanning the stories, racing to read a whole story and answer five questions in two minutes. On the first half of the reading test I got all of the questions right. On the second have, I missed five out of eighteen. Five happens to be the number of questions that I didn't have time to answer. Huh. Funny.
Oh well, I know I'm good at reading. I don't need the SAT or ACT to prove that to me. I just need the fact that I'm an anti-social book nerd and then it's obvious.
Anyway, the important scores are these: I got a 34 in math, 99th percentile, definitely high enough for any math/science school like MIT and Caltech, and I got a 32 in science, 99th percentile, also definitely high enough for MIT and Caltech and any other school in the nation. And I got the same again in English- a 35, 99th percentile. However, on the essay for the ACT I got a 12 (the one conveniently about fast food, which is what I did my history final on) and I only got an 11 on the SAT. Stupid SAT's. :-)
But here is the point of all this mumbo jumbo... those test scores? They are high enough to get into any college in the country. Any. MIT is the third hardest to get into in the country as well, I think. But my test scores are good enough for it.
Here's the real implication that I care about right now: I DON'T HAVE TO STRESS OUT ABOUT STANDARDIZED TESTS ANYMORE!!! I'M HOME FREE!!! No more nights of that sick, tight feeling in my stomach, thinking about the SAT's/ACT's, none of that. I'm taking the SAT's again in the fall in an attempt to increase my math score, but I don't have to, because my ACT's are high enough, and I think all the colleges I'm applying to take ACT's or SAT's. I don't have to obsess anymore! I don't have to worry!!!
I can't explain to you how wonderful that feeling is for someone with OCD and an anxiety disorder. No more of that horrible thinking!
I've got the GPA (unless it gets screwed up in the fall, but that's why I'll apply to MIT or Caltech for early admission, so they won't know); I've got the leadership positions in church and Key Club; I've got the involvement in debate, music, and science/biology olympiad; I've got the service, through my school and the Humane Society; I've got the notoriety with doing well on all the American Math Competition tests, biology olympiad tests, and all of my writing awards; and I have MIT and Caltech's major entrance requirement: I love to learn. *insert demonic laughter that only a high school student stressed about college can understand... go watch "The Perfect Score"...* I HAVE IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good AP test scores? I've got them. Impressing class load? I've got it. I can get in now! I thought maybe I wasn't smart enough. That's what I decided when I saw my SAT's last week. I'm not smart enough to go to MIT. But I am! I'm two years ahead of myself in math. They'll love that! Look at me, I'm unstoppable!!!
Now, unfortunately, to come down from all of this euphoria, everyone else that applies to MIT and Caltech also has all of these things. But maybe I can be one better. Maybe I really can get in. Maybe I really am smart, and just not bright compared to my school. Maybe I really am capable of achieving these high expectations I've set for myself. Maybe I'm not a failure.
After all of this, the odds are that I will still be rejected from MIT and Caltech. I know that. Everyone that applies is smart, and has these things, and only 8% are accepted. That's a hard percentage to be in. The top 8% of the 99th percentile. And I didn't get into the science summer program through that place affiliated with MIT. Even if I did get into MIT and Caltech, I doubt we could afford the tuition. I know all of that. I know that all of the odds are still against me. But for the first time ever, I HAVE A CHANCE. Even if it's tiny, I have it.
It is... possible.
But guess what's so funny. You know how I got an 800- a perfect score- on the critical reading in the SAT's? And I got a 33 in it on my ACT's a year ago? I got a 30 this time! That's only the 92 percentile. Bad for me. You know why? Their stupid freaking time limits!!! I so ran out of time! I was filling in random bubbles, looking at the questions, barely scanning the stories, racing to read a whole story and answer five questions in two minutes. On the first half of the reading test I got all of the questions right. On the second have, I missed five out of eighteen. Five happens to be the number of questions that I didn't have time to answer. Huh. Funny.
Oh well, I know I'm good at reading. I don't need the SAT or ACT to prove that to me. I just need the fact that I'm an anti-social book nerd and then it's obvious.
Anyway, the important scores are these: I got a 34 in math, 99th percentile, definitely high enough for any math/science school like MIT and Caltech, and I got a 32 in science, 99th percentile, also definitely high enough for MIT and Caltech and any other school in the nation. And I got the same again in English- a 35, 99th percentile. However, on the essay for the ACT I got a 12 (the one conveniently about fast food, which is what I did my history final on) and I only got an 11 on the SAT. Stupid SAT's. :-)
But here is the point of all this mumbo jumbo... those test scores? They are high enough to get into any college in the country. Any. MIT is the third hardest to get into in the country as well, I think. But my test scores are good enough for it.
Here's the real implication that I care about right now: I DON'T HAVE TO STRESS OUT ABOUT STANDARDIZED TESTS ANYMORE!!! I'M HOME FREE!!! No more nights of that sick, tight feeling in my stomach, thinking about the SAT's/ACT's, none of that. I'm taking the SAT's again in the fall in an attempt to increase my math score, but I don't have to, because my ACT's are high enough, and I think all the colleges I'm applying to take ACT's or SAT's. I don't have to obsess anymore! I don't have to worry!!!
I can't explain to you how wonderful that feeling is for someone with OCD and an anxiety disorder. No more of that horrible thinking!
I've got the GPA (unless it gets screwed up in the fall, but that's why I'll apply to MIT or Caltech for early admission, so they won't know); I've got the leadership positions in church and Key Club; I've got the involvement in debate, music, and science/biology olympiad; I've got the service, through my school and the Humane Society; I've got the notoriety with doing well on all the American Math Competition tests, biology olympiad tests, and all of my writing awards; and I have MIT and Caltech's major entrance requirement: I love to learn. *insert demonic laughter that only a high school student stressed about college can understand... go watch "The Perfect Score"...* I HAVE IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good AP test scores? I've got them. Impressing class load? I've got it. I can get in now! I thought maybe I wasn't smart enough. That's what I decided when I saw my SAT's last week. I'm not smart enough to go to MIT. But I am! I'm two years ahead of myself in math. They'll love that! Look at me, I'm unstoppable!!!
Now, unfortunately, to come down from all of this euphoria, everyone else that applies to MIT and Caltech also has all of these things. But maybe I can be one better. Maybe I really can get in. Maybe I really am smart, and just not bright compared to my school. Maybe I really am capable of achieving these high expectations I've set for myself. Maybe I'm not a failure.
After all of this, the odds are that I will still be rejected from MIT and Caltech. I know that. Everyone that applies is smart, and has these things, and only 8% are accepted. That's a hard percentage to be in. The top 8% of the 99th percentile. And I didn't get into the science summer program through that place affiliated with MIT. Even if I did get into MIT and Caltech, I doubt we could afford the tuition. I know all of that. I know that all of the odds are still against me. But for the first time ever, I HAVE A CHANCE. Even if it's tiny, I have it.
It is... possible.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Josh's story
We went to cemetaries last night to write. Cemetaries don't really frighten me, as I believe that all those bodies are just piles of rotting organic material. The souls go somewhere else. Anyway, I wrote this, and it is probably the most honest thing I've written in quite a while.
***
Let me tell you a ghost story that will make your hair follicles harden and turn your arms into winter orchards. Let me tell you the story of teh real ghost that you should fear.
The ghost is a boy. He is tall, which sandy hair and diamond-cut eyes. His hands feel gentle and strong when they hold yours. He is quite handsome, you would say, if you saw a picture. If you saw him with his hands around a dark-eyed girl you might almost believe in him.
He takes advanced placement classes in school. He is very smart. His test scores carve him out from a large society and sculpt him into an elite one. He reads philosophy and the classics. He devotes himself flawlessly to academics. He is on the scholastics team at school. He loves chemistry, and measuring things, and empirical evidence.
This boy dances to trans, some hybrid of techno music with a beat as fast as your heart, and plays video games with his friends. He goes to church every Sunday. He is popular and well-liked. Ties hang on him effortlessly. The wants of girls dance piroettes within his peripheral vision.
He works at a fastfood restaurant. He makes ice-cream cones perfectly, down to the top that curls down onto the softened layers. He saves his money for college and so he can serve a mission for his church.
He likes to get things done. He relishes his own productivity. He knows that someday he can be an asset to society.
This boy likes most food, but not egg or potato salad. He has freckles and his eyes still see his surroundings with 20-20 vision.
I know what you are thinking. "This boy is not a ghost," you tell yourself, "He is just like me, or anyone else." You are both absolutely correct and terribly wrong.
All of these things I've said are true. The problem is that this boy defines himself by them. He defines himself by how many hamburgers he can make in an hour, and how well he can do on tests, and how popular he is. He has built his identity on what his teachers and friends say, on the way his slightly-thin frame manipulates the mirror. And because of this definition, something that has been happening unrecognized all along has consumed him and spit him out as a phantom, a ghost.
You see, he works because he is afraid of the horrible things he does to himself when he is not busy. He bases his self-esteem on his hamburgers because without that productivity he cannot even fathom how he will love himself. He relishes his popularity because when he is with people he has an identity. He is terrified of being alone. He tries to do well on tests becasue he fears that he is really stupid and worthless, and the tests are the only way he can suppress those fears. He saves money and exists in the future because there is no way he can exist or be happy right now. He believes that if he works hard enough or goes to school long enough or makes enough money he will find happiness, or at least a justification for the oxygen he utilizes, becasue he has no kind of happiness and feels guilty for his existence.
This is the way it has always been, but something is happening now. All of those things that he uses to define himself- grades, work, friends- have fallen away. He can no longer maintain his reality, and it is crumbling. He is realizing the transience of everything in his life. He is realizing that there is nothing past the surface. Now he has no reason to love himself and every reason to despise himself. Now he keeps busy to keep running from all of his fears. At his very core he fleeing in terror from the center of his being. He is drinking and cuttnig his arms and overdosing on drugs. He is trying to kill himself, but he knows and has always known the truth: there is no real, permanant escape from himself. He cannot run forever, and he is getting tired, slowing down.
He has quit caring about everything. He finds it difficult to even breathe, even though his body does it for him. He knows he can't find his identity in that body anymore. He believes taht once everything is gone- all the friends, jbos, and grades- once it has all fallen away and he reaches the center of himself, there will be absolutely nothing there, only the vestigal wreckage of his universe. He cannot fathom why anyone would love him.
See, you are half right. Perhaps he is just like you, or anyone else. But he is a ghost. He is a ghost that can beat any of your campfire stories. he is a ghost that can frighten you more than any unquiet spirit or restless zombie. He is the ghost you have always been afraid of because there is a part of him in you. Let me tell you about a ghost. Let me tell you about a boy who is sobbing all alone in his room right now because there is no escape, and he's told himself that he doesn't care for so long that he is beginning to believe it.
***
Let me tell you a ghost story that will make your hair follicles harden and turn your arms into winter orchards. Let me tell you the story of teh real ghost that you should fear.
The ghost is a boy. He is tall, which sandy hair and diamond-cut eyes. His hands feel gentle and strong when they hold yours. He is quite handsome, you would say, if you saw a picture. If you saw him with his hands around a dark-eyed girl you might almost believe in him.
He takes advanced placement classes in school. He is very smart. His test scores carve him out from a large society and sculpt him into an elite one. He reads philosophy and the classics. He devotes himself flawlessly to academics. He is on the scholastics team at school. He loves chemistry, and measuring things, and empirical evidence.
This boy dances to trans, some hybrid of techno music with a beat as fast as your heart, and plays video games with his friends. He goes to church every Sunday. He is popular and well-liked. Ties hang on him effortlessly. The wants of girls dance piroettes within his peripheral vision.
He works at a fastfood restaurant. He makes ice-cream cones perfectly, down to the top that curls down onto the softened layers. He saves his money for college and so he can serve a mission for his church.
He likes to get things done. He relishes his own productivity. He knows that someday he can be an asset to society.
This boy likes most food, but not egg or potato salad. He has freckles and his eyes still see his surroundings with 20-20 vision.
I know what you are thinking. "This boy is not a ghost," you tell yourself, "He is just like me, or anyone else." You are both absolutely correct and terribly wrong.
All of these things I've said are true. The problem is that this boy defines himself by them. He defines himself by how many hamburgers he can make in an hour, and how well he can do on tests, and how popular he is. He has built his identity on what his teachers and friends say, on the way his slightly-thin frame manipulates the mirror. And because of this definition, something that has been happening unrecognized all along has consumed him and spit him out as a phantom, a ghost.
You see, he works because he is afraid of the horrible things he does to himself when he is not busy. He bases his self-esteem on his hamburgers because without that productivity he cannot even fathom how he will love himself. He relishes his popularity because when he is with people he has an identity. He is terrified of being alone. He tries to do well on tests becasue he fears that he is really stupid and worthless, and the tests are the only way he can suppress those fears. He saves money and exists in the future because there is no way he can exist or be happy right now. He believes that if he works hard enough or goes to school long enough or makes enough money he will find happiness, or at least a justification for the oxygen he utilizes, becasue he has no kind of happiness and feels guilty for his existence.
This is the way it has always been, but something is happening now. All of those things that he uses to define himself- grades, work, friends- have fallen away. He can no longer maintain his reality, and it is crumbling. He is realizing the transience of everything in his life. He is realizing that there is nothing past the surface. Now he has no reason to love himself and every reason to despise himself. Now he keeps busy to keep running from all of his fears. At his very core he fleeing in terror from the center of his being. He is drinking and cuttnig his arms and overdosing on drugs. He is trying to kill himself, but he knows and has always known the truth: there is no real, permanant escape from himself. He cannot run forever, and he is getting tired, slowing down.
He has quit caring about everything. He finds it difficult to even breathe, even though his body does it for him. He knows he can't find his identity in that body anymore. He believes taht once everything is gone- all the friends, jbos, and grades- once it has all fallen away and he reaches the center of himself, there will be absolutely nothing there, only the vestigal wreckage of his universe. He cannot fathom why anyone would love him.
See, you are half right. Perhaps he is just like you, or anyone else. But he is a ghost. He is a ghost that can beat any of your campfire stories. he is a ghost that can frighten you more than any unquiet spirit or restless zombie. He is the ghost you have always been afraid of because there is a part of him in you. Let me tell you about a ghost. Let me tell you about a boy who is sobbing all alone in his room right now because there is no escape, and he's told himself that he doesn't care for so long that he is beginning to believe it.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
personality color
I think this test was created for people who didn't undergo a major personality change in fourth-fifth grade. I took in the first time, acting like I was under the age of ten. I took it the second time, acting like I was over the age of ten. I got two different results, which concur with the two personalities I've had in my life. I still retain traces of the first, mostly the good ones, but I have been largely taken over by this second set of characteristics. Tell me if these seem accurate:
personality under nine= RED.
REDS are motivated by POWER. They seek productivity and need to look good to others. Simply stated, REDS want their own way. They like to be in the driver's seat and willingly pay the price to be in a leadership role. REDS value whatever gets them ahead in life, whether it be in their careers, school endeavors, or personal life. What REDS value, they get done. They are often workaholics. They will, however, resist doing anything that doesn't interest them.
REDS like to be right. They value approval from others for their intelligence and practical approach to life, and want to be respected for it. REDS are confident, proactive, and visionary; but can also be arrogant, selfish, and insensitive. When others interact with you, as a RED you respond to them best if they are precise, factual, direct, AND show no fear!
(test)
I think I still retain some of these characteristics. This is how my mom is, and when I was young I was a lot like my mom. I still get done what I value, and I'm still a workaholic. I seek productivity and some part of me needs to look good to others. Most of those other things, however, no longer describe me at all.
My personality now= BLUE (but also WHITE mixed in)
BLUES are motivated by INTIMACY. They seek to genuinely connect with others, and need to be understood and appreciated. Everything they do is quality-based. They are loyal friends, employers, and employees. Whatever or whomever they commit to is their sole (and soul) focus. They love to serve and give themselves freely in order to nurture others' lives.
BLUES have distinct preferences and have the most controlling personality. Their personal code of ethics is remarkably strong and they expect others to live honest, committed lives as well. They enjoy meaningful moments in conversation as well as paying close attention to special life events (e.g. birthdays and anniversaries). BLUES are dependable, thoughtful, and analytical; but can also be self-righteous, worry-prone, and moody. They are "sainted pit-bulls" who never let go of something or someone, once they are committed. When you deal with a BLUE, be sincere and make a genuine effort to understand and appreciate them.
***
Most of that describes me. I don't pay any attention to special events though, and several of my friends are yet to receive their birthday presents. And I don't believe I've been self-righteous very often (but I am worry-prone and moody).
Here are some WHITE characteristics that I have (most of the WHITE stuff doesn't apply to me, but these things do):
WHITES are motivated by PEACE. They seek independence and require kindness. WHITES need their "alone time." WHITES are much stronger than people think, but are not often seen for their strength because they don't easily reveal their feelings.
***
My father is a white. I think I get the blue from my mom and the white from my dad. My mom is kinda a blue-red-yellow, more red than and yellow than blue, but still containing enough blue to give it to me (if only genetics were this simple). My father is pretty much just white. He's the only one of us that fits neatly in a color.
I just thought this interesting. Do you think it's accurate?
personality under nine= RED.
REDS are motivated by POWER. They seek productivity and need to look good to others. Simply stated, REDS want their own way. They like to be in the driver's seat and willingly pay the price to be in a leadership role. REDS value whatever gets them ahead in life, whether it be in their careers, school endeavors, or personal life. What REDS value, they get done. They are often workaholics. They will, however, resist doing anything that doesn't interest them.
REDS like to be right. They value approval from others for their intelligence and practical approach to life, and want to be respected for it. REDS are confident, proactive, and visionary; but can also be arrogant, selfish, and insensitive. When others interact with you, as a RED you respond to them best if they are precise, factual, direct, AND show no fear!
(test)
I think I still retain some of these characteristics. This is how my mom is, and when I was young I was a lot like my mom. I still get done what I value, and I'm still a workaholic. I seek productivity and some part of me needs to look good to others. Most of those other things, however, no longer describe me at all.
My personality now= BLUE (but also WHITE mixed in)
BLUES are motivated by INTIMACY. They seek to genuinely connect with others, and need to be understood and appreciated. Everything they do is quality-based. They are loyal friends, employers, and employees. Whatever or whomever they commit to is their sole (and soul) focus. They love to serve and give themselves freely in order to nurture others' lives.
BLUES have distinct preferences and have the most controlling personality. Their personal code of ethics is remarkably strong and they expect others to live honest, committed lives as well. They enjoy meaningful moments in conversation as well as paying close attention to special life events (e.g. birthdays and anniversaries). BLUES are dependable, thoughtful, and analytical; but can also be self-righteous, worry-prone, and moody. They are "sainted pit-bulls" who never let go of something or someone, once they are committed. When you deal with a BLUE, be sincere and make a genuine effort to understand and appreciate them.
***
Most of that describes me. I don't pay any attention to special events though, and several of my friends are yet to receive their birthday presents. And I don't believe I've been self-righteous very often (but I am worry-prone and moody).
Here are some WHITE characteristics that I have (most of the WHITE stuff doesn't apply to me, but these things do):
WHITES are motivated by PEACE. They seek independence and require kindness. WHITES need their "alone time." WHITES are much stronger than people think, but are not often seen for their strength because they don't easily reveal their feelings.
***
My father is a white. I think I get the blue from my mom and the white from my dad. My mom is kinda a blue-red-yellow, more red than and yellow than blue, but still containing enough blue to give it to me (if only genetics were this simple). My father is pretty much just white. He's the only one of us that fits neatly in a color.
I just thought this interesting. Do you think it's accurate?
random topics
My friend's dog is being put to sleep today. It's hard to see and remember. She's a sweet dog too, and I've known her since they got her when we were seven or so. It makes you remember how extinguishable life is. It just takes a few drips of fluid to shut a brain down. Why are we so transient?
I am depressed today, over a lot of things, and over nothing. It will pass though. It's a medicated depression. I know that life will go on.
I'm having a hard time with the way I think about Josh. He did some things two nights ago that I wish he hadn't done. I don't know how to deal with it so I just... don't. It happens to me. I realize that in the midst of his psuedo BPD diagnosis, if he really does have the symptoms, I can relate to them. I don't have BPD, but I do have a lot of the characteristics, and maybe it will help to understand them. The book I have says that the diagnostic criteria are:
1. Unstable and intense interpersonal relaitoships, with marked shifts in attitude towards others. This is Josh's main characteristic, but I think it's characteristic of me too, with my friends mostly though, not with boys. However, I do do that splitting thing, without realizing it, separating the good and bad parts of people, and it makes looking at the world hard. Until today I didn't really think about it, but it's me doing the splitting, not the people being split.
2. Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially self-destructive. I fit this two, my two areas being some chemical abuse and bulimia.
3. Radical mood shifts. This is hard to discern because I have bipolar disorder, but Josh definitely has these.
4. Inappropriate, intense anger. My parents insist that I had this my entire childhood. But it happens rarely these days. There are times when I am inappropriately, intensely angry. But it is mostly not in public places. Josh also doesn't fit this criterion.
5. Recurrent suicidal threats, attempts, or self-mutilating behaviors. I don't threaten suicide. I think that's manipulative. But I do do the other two.
6. Marked and persistent identity disturbance. This one is odd to me, as I believe everyone has it. But I guess it's just this super-ambivalence and confusion over identity, and changing depending on who you're with. I do the changing depending on who I'm with thing, and am unsure of my identity, but don't really think it's a BPD thing, just a normal teenage thing.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Yes I have those.
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Yes I do that.
9. not established, but considered- psychotic experiences. Yes I've had those.
I guess I can see why my parents think that I have this disorder. But I think that that diagnostic criteria is very ambiguous. It can be present in a lot of problems, like my DID, anxiety, OCD, and bipolar.
My mom also thinks that she has BPD, which I could believe. But although BPD is fairly common, more common than my bipolar disorder anyway, I don't think I have it.
And I know it's bipolar and not BPD because off meds the mood swings are long.
I wrote this last night at my writing class when I was sitting at a pottery kiln:
"It smells like cows out here, and wet grass, and I feel at peace. I wonder if this is because nature is soothing, or because I am away from the world, or because I am truly existing at my maximum capacity. I have been questioning a lot of philosophy and religion and, essentially, my own existence, but I am at peace, somehow, despite the questioning.
I have always assumed that peace and contentment required answers, but perhaps it is not so.
I am depressed today, over a lot of things, and over nothing. It will pass though. It's a medicated depression. I know that life will go on.
I'm having a hard time with the way I think about Josh. He did some things two nights ago that I wish he hadn't done. I don't know how to deal with it so I just... don't. It happens to me. I realize that in the midst of his psuedo BPD diagnosis, if he really does have the symptoms, I can relate to them. I don't have BPD, but I do have a lot of the characteristics, and maybe it will help to understand them. The book I have says that the diagnostic criteria are:
1. Unstable and intense interpersonal relaitoships, with marked shifts in attitude towards others. This is Josh's main characteristic, but I think it's characteristic of me too, with my friends mostly though, not with boys. However, I do do that splitting thing, without realizing it, separating the good and bad parts of people, and it makes looking at the world hard. Until today I didn't really think about it, but it's me doing the splitting, not the people being split.
2. Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially self-destructive. I fit this two, my two areas being some chemical abuse and bulimia.
3. Radical mood shifts. This is hard to discern because I have bipolar disorder, but Josh definitely has these.
4. Inappropriate, intense anger. My parents insist that I had this my entire childhood. But it happens rarely these days. There are times when I am inappropriately, intensely angry. But it is mostly not in public places. Josh also doesn't fit this criterion.
5. Recurrent suicidal threats, attempts, or self-mutilating behaviors. I don't threaten suicide. I think that's manipulative. But I do do the other two.
6. Marked and persistent identity disturbance. This one is odd to me, as I believe everyone has it. But I guess it's just this super-ambivalence and confusion over identity, and changing depending on who you're with. I do the changing depending on who I'm with thing, and am unsure of my identity, but don't really think it's a BPD thing, just a normal teenage thing.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Yes I have those.
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Yes I do that.
9. not established, but considered- psychotic experiences. Yes I've had those.
I guess I can see why my parents think that I have this disorder. But I think that that diagnostic criteria is very ambiguous. It can be present in a lot of problems, like my DID, anxiety, OCD, and bipolar.
My mom also thinks that she has BPD, which I could believe. But although BPD is fairly common, more common than my bipolar disorder anyway, I don't think I have it.
And I know it's bipolar and not BPD because off meds the mood swings are long.
I wrote this last night at my writing class when I was sitting at a pottery kiln:
"It smells like cows out here, and wet grass, and I feel at peace. I wonder if this is because nature is soothing, or because I am away from the world, or because I am truly existing at my maximum capacity. I have been questioning a lot of philosophy and religion and, essentially, my own existence, but I am at peace, somehow, despite the questioning.
I have always assumed that peace and contentment required answers, but perhaps it is not so.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
People's blogs are so... veiled. The public ones, the ones that our friends see. Like mine at xanga. People are more honest in their writing than they are in reality, which is a start, but they still don't reveal themselves.
What would happen if we did? If we all acted like who we were? Who are we anyway? What would happen if we understood ourselves, even privately?
I've gained two pounds. I realize, that just like that, I cannot love myself anymore. I guess it's not really sensical to most people, but those two pounds just make me worthless. I have to start eating less, as I have been eating normally.
If two pounds and a low SAT score will make me worthless, how in the world can I ever find enough worth to sustain me?
What would happen if we did? If we all acted like who we were? Who are we anyway? What would happen if we understood ourselves, even privately?
I've gained two pounds. I realize, that just like that, I cannot love myself anymore. I guess it's not really sensical to most people, but those two pounds just make me worthless. I have to start eating less, as I have been eating normally.
If two pounds and a low SAT score will make me worthless, how in the world can I ever find enough worth to sustain me?
blowing stuff up and patriotism
Although I try not to be sexist, the joy in blowing stuff up seems to be imprinted and unmethylated (sorry, too much genetics) mainly in the male genome. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. I think that the Fourth of July is one of them. Most people enjoy blowing stuff up- or at least watching stuff get blown up- on Independence Day.
I like fireworks a lot. I think of them as, in the context of that book I just listened to, a sort of fusion of classical and romantic thought, kinda the way I think about quantum physics. Fireworks are mainly products of chemistry, and to design them one must have a very extensive understanding of chemical reactions, I believe, but they are also art. It's a fusion of art and science. It's a job for people with brains like me, brains that don't really lean one way or another, brains that make choosnig career paths difficult. Even though I don't really like chemistry, I think it'd be a fun job.
Fireworks are illegal in our main city, but there is a small city right outside the city where they are legal, and there are fireworks everywhere out there on the Fourth. We drove out there and watched other people's and set our own off. I really like artillery shells and Roman candles (these sort of hand-held mini artillary shells which may actually be illegal- we didn't want to ask). Anyway, it was really fun, the sky exploding with a massive amount of beautiful chemical reactions.
Also, I might as well say that I really like the Fourth of July, but not so much for what it celebrates. I understand the breakthrough of the Declaration of Independence- and find it ironic that it was based on the ideas of Loche, a European- but I also don't think America is independent because only those men with those ideas could free it. I think that Paine was right- a planet cannot control a satellite that exceeds it in size. England would have inevitably, in my opinion, lost control over the colonies, whether it happened in 1776 or later. So I think that the Fourth of July shouldn't be as much about that original independence as about all of the people that have died since then to try to maintain the country. Even if our government has some major issues, I believe it's doing a bit better than those authoritarian or gurella (sp?) governments in Africa or wherever. If the poor are being subjugated, it is not because of some sort of conscious alliance against them, it is an unfortunate flaw in the economic system. I believe that democracy- ours, or parliamentary, or whatever- is workable, more workable anyway than a lot of governments, and I believe that all of those stupid liberal democrats that won't quit complaining about our government should look at the world, in places like Africa, and see what they can do to bring them up from the ashes to at least some sort of humane level.
People look down their nose, sometimes, on the soldiers that have died in America during wars that have proved unprodcutive or wrong (ie Korean, Vietnam, possible Iraq- it remains to be seen), but the point is that they believed in what we have enough to die for it, and that will always be worth honoring, even if they died in a futile war. That's what I think we should celebrate on Independence Day.
I like fireworks a lot. I think of them as, in the context of that book I just listened to, a sort of fusion of classical and romantic thought, kinda the way I think about quantum physics. Fireworks are mainly products of chemistry, and to design them one must have a very extensive understanding of chemical reactions, I believe, but they are also art. It's a fusion of art and science. It's a job for people with brains like me, brains that don't really lean one way or another, brains that make choosnig career paths difficult. Even though I don't really like chemistry, I think it'd be a fun job.
Fireworks are illegal in our main city, but there is a small city right outside the city where they are legal, and there are fireworks everywhere out there on the Fourth. We drove out there and watched other people's and set our own off. I really like artillery shells and Roman candles (these sort of hand-held mini artillary shells which may actually be illegal- we didn't want to ask). Anyway, it was really fun, the sky exploding with a massive amount of beautiful chemical reactions.
Also, I might as well say that I really like the Fourth of July, but not so much for what it celebrates. I understand the breakthrough of the Declaration of Independence- and find it ironic that it was based on the ideas of Loche, a European- but I also don't think America is independent because only those men with those ideas could free it. I think that Paine was right- a planet cannot control a satellite that exceeds it in size. England would have inevitably, in my opinion, lost control over the colonies, whether it happened in 1776 or later. So I think that the Fourth of July shouldn't be as much about that original independence as about all of the people that have died since then to try to maintain the country. Even if our government has some major issues, I believe it's doing a bit better than those authoritarian or gurella (sp?) governments in Africa or wherever. If the poor are being subjugated, it is not because of some sort of conscious alliance against them, it is an unfortunate flaw in the economic system. I believe that democracy- ours, or parliamentary, or whatever- is workable, more workable anyway than a lot of governments, and I believe that all of those stupid liberal democrats that won't quit complaining about our government should look at the world, in places like Africa, and see what they can do to bring them up from the ashes to at least some sort of humane level.
People look down their nose, sometimes, on the soldiers that have died in America during wars that have proved unprodcutive or wrong (ie Korean, Vietnam, possible Iraq- it remains to be seen), but the point is that they believed in what we have enough to die for it, and that will always be worth honoring, even if they died in a futile war. That's what I think we should celebrate on Independence Day.
Monday, July 03, 2006
stressful college stuff
AP scores were good though, that makes up sorta kinda for the SAT's. Not really I guess because the AP scores don't help much if I can't get into college. But it still brought my depressed spirits up a little bit from their depressed SAT slump...
so anyway AP scores:
US History: 4
Biology:5
Both of these scores are much higher than I expected. But I would have rathered the SAT scores were better and the AP scores were lower. Oh well. You take what you get I guess.
My ACT scores are still lost somewhere because I didn't actually pay for the writing part until today... but if they are high enough then I have everything made for MIT. If not...
one
last
chance
so anyway AP scores:
US History: 4
Biology:5
Both of these scores are much higher than I expected. But I would have rathered the SAT scores were better and the AP scores were lower. Oh well. You take what you get I guess.
My ACT scores are still lost somewhere because I didn't actually pay for the writing part until today... but if they are high enough then I have everything made for MIT. If not...
one
last
chance
Sunday, July 02, 2006
happenings
Hello all. I am alive. It made me feel really good to come back and see all those comments of people that care... sometimes, especially on vacation, especially amidst family crisises (is that the plural?) I just feel so... forgotten. Never really unloved- I've always felt loved- but uncared about. I'll talk to people and in the middle of what I'm saying they'll talk to someone else. That happened a lot last week when I was rafting with my family, because my family's a bit like that. I guess I just get annoying or something, so they quit caring about what I'm saying. But nobody can interrupt me here.
My church camp was really fun when it comes to the social stuff. I worked hard at being social, and Olivia helped. But what must really be written about the church camp is that I had a complete and total breakdown. Every day I was so... not depressed but... anxious... that I just didn't want to be with people. I literally was too exhausted to go through the effort it took to talk to someone. I just couldn't handle it, so I kinda shut down. Every day over and over in my head there was such panic, such fear, such utter chaos and such a feeling of disconnection. There was nothing to hold onto. I was at church camp and I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe in... anything. It happened just like it did four years ago when we almost had to come home from Maui early because I was going crazy. The only way I could describe it then was crazy. I couldn't explain the things I was feeling to anyone, which just made me feel even more alone and isolated. This time I have the word in my vocabulary to encase the whole experience, to make it so you understand what it is like: total, absolute nihilism.
Yes, nihilism. My worst fear. And it enguilfs me so thoroughly that when I am in it, I cannot remember ever not being in it, and I cannot imagine a future in which it will not be there. I just... deny everything. Life is meaningless. So what. We make friends, get married, have kids, die. But it's nothing. It's all superficial. It's surface-features. I can't even remember it perfectly now, thank God. When I am like this, I just don't seen any reason to be alive. I don't see any purpose for any of the things people do. People are just effecting out these hollow existences that don't matter, that disappear in the mosaic. Everything is... empty. Just so pointless.
The worst part, though, is that it's not just life that's pointless and empty, but death. There is no God, no nothing. Either you stop existing abruptly and your consciousness goes away- which was the most kind thing I could think of happening when you died- or you went to heaven and lived eternally in this pointless, meaningless state, or you went to hell and felt... awful... forever and ever and ever...
It makes me shudder thinking about it, even now, trying to explain it, trying to remember it for you and myself. I couldn't live, because there was no reason for living. But I couldn't die either, because death was even worse- an eternity of that miserable feeling. When I am depressed I get suicidal, and death seems like a haven. That week at church camp there was just no escape at all. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere that contained any meaning. I would start obsessing over the pointlessness, over the hollowness before and after deaths extending forever into time. Then I would start becoming extremely anxious and get anxiety attacks. Then those anxiety attacks would build and build into full-blown panic attacks. And then I couldn't breathe and I couldn't do anything. What do you do, then? When you can't live, because it's driving you crazy, and every waking moment is filled with nihilism, and you can't die, because it is the summation of everything you fear in the realm of existence? I was terrified of life, and terrified of death. There was nowhere to go. There was no alleviation. Cutting would have done nothing. Suicide would have realized my worst fears.
People think that suicidal depression is as bad as it gets. No, you're wrong. It's this nihilism. It is this complete fear of... everything. That's what it was most characterized by- a fear that I cannot even imgine now that I am sane again. I can only read through my journal entries and wonder how I survived the week.
I called my parents, panicky, breathing hard, five, six times or more every day. I tried to explain to them what was wrong, but I didn't have the word- nihilism- yet. It was only this amorphous, terrible thing that I could not escape because there was nothing else in the world but that creature. I called one night sobbing. I was in the corner of my bed, and I just couldn't believe in anything anymore. Why was I alive? Why was I there? What was ever the reason for breathing, for living, for dying, when everyone lived those mediocre, pointless lives? I can't explain the horror. I know I sound melodramatic and hopelessly emo. But it was real. It wasn't some superficial insanity. It was full-blown. There was no anasthetic, but there was no way to feel.
I had to have a bunch of the counselors there give me a blessing, which is something our church does when you're really sick. I shuddered there on my chair, trying to think about God, when God meant pointless eternities of misery. My parents told me to take more buspar, so I doubled it. Slowly, despairingly, it began to work. For four hours at a time I would be okay, and then the terror would come back. I would come crawling back to the buspar. It was my only connection to any sort of reality that I could cope with, that held meaning and sanity. It pulled me back from that state I was in, the state in which I believed there was no other state. Being in and out of those two states, when I was sane I could begin to believe that perhaps the insanity was transient, and in that possibility there was hope, something that simply did not exist in any shape or form in the other reality I was living in.
When my parents came for me I was a wreck. I was holding it together, cobbling it with buspar, but the second the buspar ran out I was back in my nightmare, back in my endless succession of panic attacks. My mother gave me xanax, which I guess my psychiatrist prescribed for me when they called him while I was at camp. I kept having those attacks of nihilism when I didn't take a pill just on time, but it started to wind down. I started to come back to a world with meaning, the world most of us live in. That's where I'm at now. I'm okay again, but I'm really dependent on the pills, and I'm really afraid of going back to that place. I fear it more than anything. More even than eternal damnation, I think. I can handle depression. But that way I was living... that's as much hell as there can be for me. It cannot possibly get worse than that. (knock on wood.)
I am okay now. I went rafting and had fun. The anxiety is managable. I drove back seven hours all by myself from Wyoming today, listening to this book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance which was very interesting, and with which I disagreed with vehemently. I believe in my religion again, and in myself, and in happiness, and calmness, and belief itself. I lost my concept of just pure believing as a verb for a while there, but I have found it again. The book said one thing that I believed though and found immensely interesting... you know that delay between when you see the tree and when your mind becomes aware of seeing the tree? (there is a delay, it is a tiny fraction of a second, but from the reading I've done on neuroscience, and I think to anyone who thinks about it logically, there is definitely a delay.) If you think about that delay- and how really the past only exists in our minds, and has no reality, and the future exists only in our plans and has no reality, so reality exists only NOW- then there really is no reality for a conscious being besides itself. Anything it sees is the past. That fraction of a second, that tiny delay, makes what we perceive are reality really only a thing of our minds.
Wow. What an awesome take on existentialism. It made me stop and smile and laugh because the concept is just so... cool. So something I could have never thought of.
Anyway, my college creative writing class starts tomorrow and I'm scared to death. I bet they will all hate me. I don't know what to bring, how to act, where to sit. No, I'll sit in the back. And I'll make Olivia take me there. But I really am scared.
My SAT scores have diminished any hubris I had built up though. I am very angry with myself, and very disappointed. I will have to pray that my ACT scores are good enough, or pray I can do better on the SAT's or ACT's if I take them in the fall. That is my last chance...
Scores:
critical reading: 800
writing: 780
math: 660
Why can I do calculus, and linear algebra, and solve multivariable discrete dynamical systems with these variable matrices so easily, when I cannot do algebra for a stupid SAT?
There is hope in my ACT's though. I felt alright about the math on those. I will know tomorrow morning. Pray to the God you believe in for me, please. I need it. The strength of everything is in belief.
My church camp was really fun when it comes to the social stuff. I worked hard at being social, and Olivia helped. But what must really be written about the church camp is that I had a complete and total breakdown. Every day I was so... not depressed but... anxious... that I just didn't want to be with people. I literally was too exhausted to go through the effort it took to talk to someone. I just couldn't handle it, so I kinda shut down. Every day over and over in my head there was such panic, such fear, such utter chaos and such a feeling of disconnection. There was nothing to hold onto. I was at church camp and I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe in... anything. It happened just like it did four years ago when we almost had to come home from Maui early because I was going crazy. The only way I could describe it then was crazy. I couldn't explain the things I was feeling to anyone, which just made me feel even more alone and isolated. This time I have the word in my vocabulary to encase the whole experience, to make it so you understand what it is like: total, absolute nihilism.
Yes, nihilism. My worst fear. And it enguilfs me so thoroughly that when I am in it, I cannot remember ever not being in it, and I cannot imagine a future in which it will not be there. I just... deny everything. Life is meaningless. So what. We make friends, get married, have kids, die. But it's nothing. It's all superficial. It's surface-features. I can't even remember it perfectly now, thank God. When I am like this, I just don't seen any reason to be alive. I don't see any purpose for any of the things people do. People are just effecting out these hollow existences that don't matter, that disappear in the mosaic. Everything is... empty. Just so pointless.
The worst part, though, is that it's not just life that's pointless and empty, but death. There is no God, no nothing. Either you stop existing abruptly and your consciousness goes away- which was the most kind thing I could think of happening when you died- or you went to heaven and lived eternally in this pointless, meaningless state, or you went to hell and felt... awful... forever and ever and ever...
It makes me shudder thinking about it, even now, trying to explain it, trying to remember it for you and myself. I couldn't live, because there was no reason for living. But I couldn't die either, because death was even worse- an eternity of that miserable feeling. When I am depressed I get suicidal, and death seems like a haven. That week at church camp there was just no escape at all. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere that contained any meaning. I would start obsessing over the pointlessness, over the hollowness before and after deaths extending forever into time. Then I would start becoming extremely anxious and get anxiety attacks. Then those anxiety attacks would build and build into full-blown panic attacks. And then I couldn't breathe and I couldn't do anything. What do you do, then? When you can't live, because it's driving you crazy, and every waking moment is filled with nihilism, and you can't die, because it is the summation of everything you fear in the realm of existence? I was terrified of life, and terrified of death. There was nowhere to go. There was no alleviation. Cutting would have done nothing. Suicide would have realized my worst fears.
People think that suicidal depression is as bad as it gets. No, you're wrong. It's this nihilism. It is this complete fear of... everything. That's what it was most characterized by- a fear that I cannot even imgine now that I am sane again. I can only read through my journal entries and wonder how I survived the week.
I called my parents, panicky, breathing hard, five, six times or more every day. I tried to explain to them what was wrong, but I didn't have the word- nihilism- yet. It was only this amorphous, terrible thing that I could not escape because there was nothing else in the world but that creature. I called one night sobbing. I was in the corner of my bed, and I just couldn't believe in anything anymore. Why was I alive? Why was I there? What was ever the reason for breathing, for living, for dying, when everyone lived those mediocre, pointless lives? I can't explain the horror. I know I sound melodramatic and hopelessly emo. But it was real. It wasn't some superficial insanity. It was full-blown. There was no anasthetic, but there was no way to feel.
I had to have a bunch of the counselors there give me a blessing, which is something our church does when you're really sick. I shuddered there on my chair, trying to think about God, when God meant pointless eternities of misery. My parents told me to take more buspar, so I doubled it. Slowly, despairingly, it began to work. For four hours at a time I would be okay, and then the terror would come back. I would come crawling back to the buspar. It was my only connection to any sort of reality that I could cope with, that held meaning and sanity. It pulled me back from that state I was in, the state in which I believed there was no other state. Being in and out of those two states, when I was sane I could begin to believe that perhaps the insanity was transient, and in that possibility there was hope, something that simply did not exist in any shape or form in the other reality I was living in.
When my parents came for me I was a wreck. I was holding it together, cobbling it with buspar, but the second the buspar ran out I was back in my nightmare, back in my endless succession of panic attacks. My mother gave me xanax, which I guess my psychiatrist prescribed for me when they called him while I was at camp. I kept having those attacks of nihilism when I didn't take a pill just on time, but it started to wind down. I started to come back to a world with meaning, the world most of us live in. That's where I'm at now. I'm okay again, but I'm really dependent on the pills, and I'm really afraid of going back to that place. I fear it more than anything. More even than eternal damnation, I think. I can handle depression. But that way I was living... that's as much hell as there can be for me. It cannot possibly get worse than that. (knock on wood.)
I am okay now. I went rafting and had fun. The anxiety is managable. I drove back seven hours all by myself from Wyoming today, listening to this book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance which was very interesting, and with which I disagreed with vehemently. I believe in my religion again, and in myself, and in happiness, and calmness, and belief itself. I lost my concept of just pure believing as a verb for a while there, but I have found it again. The book said one thing that I believed though and found immensely interesting... you know that delay between when you see the tree and when your mind becomes aware of seeing the tree? (there is a delay, it is a tiny fraction of a second, but from the reading I've done on neuroscience, and I think to anyone who thinks about it logically, there is definitely a delay.) If you think about that delay- and how really the past only exists in our minds, and has no reality, and the future exists only in our plans and has no reality, so reality exists only NOW- then there really is no reality for a conscious being besides itself. Anything it sees is the past. That fraction of a second, that tiny delay, makes what we perceive are reality really only a thing of our minds.
Wow. What an awesome take on existentialism. It made me stop and smile and laugh because the concept is just so... cool. So something I could have never thought of.
Anyway, my college creative writing class starts tomorrow and I'm scared to death. I bet they will all hate me. I don't know what to bring, how to act, where to sit. No, I'll sit in the back. And I'll make Olivia take me there. But I really am scared.
My SAT scores have diminished any hubris I had built up though. I am very angry with myself, and very disappointed. I will have to pray that my ACT scores are good enough, or pray I can do better on the SAT's or ACT's if I take them in the fall. That is my last chance...
Scores:
critical reading: 800
writing: 780
math: 660
Why can I do calculus, and linear algebra, and solve multivariable discrete dynamical systems with these variable matrices so easily, when I cannot do algebra for a stupid SAT?
There is hope in my ACT's though. I felt alright about the math on those. I will know tomorrow morning. Pray to the God you believe in for me, please. I need it. The strength of everything is in belief.
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