I feel pretty blah. Or something. I hate and feel guilty about the fact that I am not self motivated and that I spend many, many days doing essentially nothing and feeling depressed about it, but I also feel like I don’t have the mental or physical energy to do anything, and I feel hopeless. I feel like I have next to no support when it comes to the things that really matter like a person’s psychological health and views. It’s hard as fuck to feel there is any hope when I spend most of my time by myself in an super isolated town. I spend too much time in my own head and though I have a good imagination and need a lot of down time, I still feel like I get too much of it. I feel lonely way too often, but I also don’t want just anyone’s company. I guess feeling alone and different are some of the primary feelings I’ve had since I was a child. Even around the people that I feel similar too and close to, I still end up feeling alone. But yet at the same time when I’m not with other people I go back to feeling more empty. I just feel like so much of my existence has been comprised by this feeling of emptiness yet I also feel like I am full, too full. Everything is like a Catch 22 for me, so that no matter what I feel displeased or uncomfortable.

I know that so much of what is making me feel this way has to do with my attitudes and lack of action, because mostly I just need a fucking job so that I can try to then get out of this house. I feel like I can blame my mental state equally on my choices or lack thereof and also by my circumstances/environment. I guess one of the largest problems is that I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe I am capable of getting and keeping a job that I can bare and get to without huge problems, I don’t believe that if I move in with my boyfriend that I could continue to do so because I feel I’d either lose my job or something bad would happen between me and him. And then if I had to move back in here with my mom, that’d be like the utter failure. I have so much ease imagining how things could possibly go wrong and how many ways they could, yet have serious problems in thinking optimistically or considering the fact that things could turn out better.

It’s not healthy for anyone to spend most of their time alone, I know this. But I also can’t immediately escape/change this. And that makes me feel even less hopeful because I know if I could secure the change it won’t be for awhile, and I need it to be now. For so much of my life I had way too much “guidance” from my parents and older siblings, to the point where once I lost that I realized I had no guidance of my own. I had things I wanted to do and changes I wanted to make, but had no fucking clue how to make them. I feel like I’m on my own and though I am used to that, I have no skill in being financially and mentally stable on my own. For some reason I’m thinking of that quote that says something like “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first.” I actually don’t really agree with that. I would say I love myself just as much as I dislike myself, yet I wholeheartedly love my boyfriend. And I’ve always felt like that. I could pick myself apart into tiny pieces and tell myself how unworthy and inadequate I am, yet I could be so in love with anyone I dated and I could really love my friends too.

The paradox is that I need to have faith in myself more often, but I need to stop believing everything that I think. I don’t know how to balance confidence with more skepticism towards my own thoughts. I don’t know how I can start feeling more sure of myself and more confident in my abilities while also having to learn how to stop falling for everything that my negative/pessimistic brain tells me. How can I determine which thoughts are real and which ones are just based in insecurity and self doubt? I feel like the lines blur between most things and I know this has to do with my lack of boundaries. I am more cognitively aware of when I am crossing a boundary or someone else is crossing a boundary of mine, but my thinking has no boundaries either. My internal world is rich with content but because I think so goddamn much and absorb so goddamn much, I can’t determine which information is to be believed and which isn’t.

My brother just got out of the psych ward the other day, he was in there for like two weeks. He told me about this thing called a support group that he was going to go to, and that they are supposed to help you find a job too. This sounds like EXACTLY what I need. I need a group of people or some sort of group in which I feel I belong and am supported emotionally, and a group that can help me actually make the practical changes I need to make. I need to feel like I’m not just floating around by myself all of the time, with no one to talk to except my dogs or myself most of the time. I need to feel like I belong somewhere and to be among other people that feel and function like I do, especially because I have so much trouble finding those people on my own. Or if I do find them I still don’t see them as much as I want or need to. My brother made an appt to go to this support group with me and apparently my cousin too for Wednesday. It’s early in the morning which sucks but I don’t care actually because for once it’s something that is truly worth waking up for. Something that I feel will strongly benefit me even if my expectations for it aren’t fulfilled as much as I’d like. I guess you go to this appt first and then you decide if you want to become a member or not. Yes of course I want to become a member. Just the name “support group” alone makes me truly believe this will help me.

I read something the other day about a company that ONLY hires people who have disabilities whether it be emotional, physical, or cognitive types. I have two out of the three of these since I have been diagnosed as Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified and I also have some learning disabilities. I am pretty damn sure I also have a mild/moderate form of Borderline Personality Disorder, and Bipolar (II). This company sounds fucking awesome! I mean if I could get a job at a place like this I would feel so secure, knowing that I fit in somewhere and I am actually wanted and valued in a job. In most ordinary jobs my personality, style of functioning, style of thinking, and skills are the exact opposite of what is wanted, and so that is largely why I haven’t even been trying to get a job. I have applied some places, I applied to a psych job which I filled out a super long application for and wrote a good cover letter for, only to not hear anything back from them. I applied to a few other minimum wage type jobs that I also did not hear back from. I have a serious phone phobia and so the idea of “following up” on an application is daunting to me. To the point where I will not do it because I fear it so much. Strangely enough I would feel more secure in physically going to the place and asking a person about my application. There is something about the phone that irks me. You can’t see the person, you don’t know the person at all, you can’t determine much of anything about them, you can’t get a grasp of how or who they are, and you can’t determine when to pause and when to talk because you can’t see their body language or be connected enough to the conversation to decide when it’s the right time. I am much more of a hands-on type person and that extends to my social skills for jobs or friendships. I thrive the most with one-on-one interactions in a fairly quiet location, where I can see the person and really focus on them, while also feeling they are focusing on me too. I need to be able to see a lot of things to understand them. Knowledge wise I need to see charts and graphs, I need to see drawings, I need to have something in front of me to look at or to be able to take with me to look at later. This is also the case with my social skills. I need to see people, see their faces, see their body language, see the expressions they make, and be able to pay close attention to the small details that express how they are feeling, what kind of person they are, etc.

I am excellent with faces, I can atleast be confident in that. I can see a face one time that I saw a couple of years ago, and recognize it again that much later on. And I can point it out. I almost never know the person’s name because that’s what I’m not good with, but I can always remember where it was that I saw them. If it’s a regular person, I can remember “oh hey that’s the woman that lead that math review like three years ago”. If it’s an actor/actress, I can remember “hey that’s the guy that was in Rush Hour and he was the one that played that lead gang member with the Sisqo type hair.” It can be the most obscure character or person, someone that was just in the background, and I will remember them right away. It’s the same when it comes to a painting or some other object. I can see it one time several years ago and then remember that I had seen that painting before a couple of years ago in this particular class I took.

Now if only this skill was more sought after in jobs. The only ones it’d be wanted for would be psych jobs. I am really good with recognizing other people’s emotions and identifying similar patterns between various people’s mannerisms. But this a limited, unappreciated skill that most employers would probably ignore or not respond to if I told them of this skill when they asked me about my skills in a job interview.

Essentially, I do love myself and I do appreciate that I have unique skills and strengths that aren’t that common. It’s just that who I am and how I am, what makes me, are things that this society shuns and ignores. There are hardly any places where someone like me fits in, and there are hardly any people that recognize and acknowledge these skills. On top of that, I have been criticized so much while I was growing up, to the point where I say and think negative things about myself because I’ve heard them so many fucking times. If someone constantly tells you that you are lazy, a baby, useless, a quitter, etc, you begin to believe them. Especially if it’s coming from your father and it’s been coming from him since you were old enough to even recognize what these insults meant. So I am aware of these things and why these have become my automatic thoughts, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I can get rid of those thoughts, or where I can stop believing them to be true.

I have so much to work on. So much of my personality, so much of my attitudes and beliefs, so much of my ways of functioning, so many of my habits to address and change. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel satisfied with myself. I wish I had more people that could repeatedly remind me or tell me the good things about me or what my strengths are or what they like about me, so that I could start to internalize that instead of keeping the same old outdated negative thoughts. That would make me feel like I have a lot more support.

I’m becoming more aware that I tend to “tell all” too much to people, and often I do so in things like text messaging. I’m definitely a “heart on my sleeve” person which is both good and bad. The thing is, I think a large reason I say so many emotional things and just talk in detail about whatever the subject is, is that I have too many thoughts that I feel totally alone with. I know everyone has thoughts that no one else knows but I feel like I’m constantly boiling over with thoughts and feelings that get no real feedback or recognition. Usually I tell my boyfriend my heavy thoughts but lately I haven’t been saying as much because I feel like I’m just too much. I say too much, I need too much, I talk too much, I feel too much.

Maybe the thoughts and feelings I’ve been having lately are things that should only be shared with a therapist. But I haven’t had one for a few months now and have yet to secure a new one. I wish that I could go without one. And I can, I just bottle things up a lot more often. I just feel like no one is really interested in hearing my thoughts unless they are short and lighthearted. And they are the exact opposite of that in general.

I had this moment of intense depressive feelings a couple of hours ago when I was at my boyfriend’s place. Seemingly out of nowhere I felt very numb but then right afterward I literally felt pain in my heart, purely emotional pain. It was so intense that it took all of my energy to not start balling my eyes out. My boyfriend was about to come back into the room and I wouldn’t even know where to start in terms of expressing what was going on within me. It would take too long, and since he’s not me he wouldn’t be able to feel those feelings and he wouldn’t really be able to fix them. Because these are things that I cannot mend just through other people. These are thoughts and feelings that are underlying, yet constant, especially when I’m home by myself for awhile. Feelings of hopelessness, negativity, paranoia, irritation, and loneliness. Feelings of inadequacy, of letting myself and everyone else down too often, etc. The more time I spend alone (especially in my house) the more these thoughts and feelings build up and get heavier. I don’t feel I truly have anyone that I can just openly talk to about these things, because they are subjective and because almost everyone tries to solve the issues that a person talks about. I just want someone to listen, someone to validate how i feel, someone to acknowledge the weight I carry in myself. Most of all, I want someone to express interest in my feelings. I want someone to notice on their own that I’m not doing well, that I need support, and that I need to be nurtured. I too have trouble engaging in active listening when someone is venting to me, as I feel a strong desire to help them. But I try to validate their feelings by expressing that I understand and I offer support by telling them my thoughts on the situation which are generally in agreement with the feelings the person is experiencing.

Anyways so I held back that sudden need to cry really hard and I started drawing instead. I did that for awhile but still had to put a lot of effort into not crying. My boyfriend noticed a little later that I wasn’t ok and he actually asked me if I was ok and I said yeah. Then he asked are you sure? And I said yeah. It ended there. I didn’t know how to talk to him about what I was feeling without immediately crying, and I didn’t want to put that weight on him of having to deal with a sobbing mess of a girlfriend. He didn’t ask me any other questions or try to go any further with figuring out what was wrong, and though I’m glad he did notice I wasn’t ok, I was upset that he didn’t try harder. I have been feeling like he hasn’t even been acknowledging the fact that I’ve been having emotional issues, or maybe it’s more that he never asks me how I’m feeling or if he does that’s the only question and he doesn’t seem interested in wanting to listen to me talk for a bit. He ends up switching the focus to him very quickly after and just continues to talk to me but not with me. It’s like everything he says is an informative statement to me about what he thinks or feels, and he never seems to come around and ask, how are you feeling? Or what’s on your mind? It bothers me because I feel like he will never inquire as to what’s going on in my head unless I literally just spill it all out without it even being asked about. And I think by now he should be able to recognize that I’ve been going through a lot and that I need emotional support, and I need someone that I care about to hear me out. Instead of bringing this up or bringing up how I am upset that he never asks about me, I just withdraw more and feel more and more irritated and alone, discarded. I feel there is no constructive way of expressing this frustration of mine because I know he will take it as purely a personal attack and that he will just get pissed at me, and fire back all kinds of defensive things.

It’s really difficult because I cannot express my needs and because I will avoid confrontation at all costs. And I definitely avoid saying or doing anything that will likely lead to that person distancing themselves from me. Since he is really the only person I am truly close to and definitely the only person I interact with thoroughly, this becomes a problem because I need more from him than he can provide. He is a super nice and caring person, especially to me, and he’s definitely very understanding and dependable, but I need more intimate support. I need him to realize that we’ve been talking a lot about him and not much about me lately and I need him to realize that that isn’t fair and that I feel ignored. But I can’t say that. I can’t say sometimes you really seem like a Narcissist, you really like to talk about yourself, you rarely ask me about my emotional state, we have a lot of one way discussions, etc. Because that would come off as an attack and I know that no one would want to admit to being a narcissist or talking about themselves too much, especially if another person is telling them this. I can admit that I can be a narcissist.  I talk about myself a lot in general and I can be a taker a little too often, but I am working on reducing those behaviors. I am aware of them and I really want to be more fair in my communications with others and more fair in my relationships.

So what ends up happening is that after a long period of bottling things up, of not saying what I feel, of not bring up problems as they arise, of not speaking up, I end up incredibly frustrated and resentful of the fact that these things aren’t being noticed or addressed. Maybe this is me just asking too much, expecting people to sense my needs, asking that someone else puts a ton of effort into figuring out how I’m doing, expecting someone to perform an emotional checkup on me every time I spend time with them. It is too much, I know. I think this is a large element of where I lack social skills. Most of the time I’d rather suffer silently than bring up material that could lead to a conflict. I’d rather hide, withdrawn into myself, protect my hyper sensitive self, try not to let anyone see just how deeply I am affected by everything. I am used to not being understood, to being misinterpreted, to being judged, and to being abandoned once a person really sees all of me.

I need to figure out constructive ways to discuss these things, or atleast better ways to word my thoughts and feelings so that they don’t come off as a personal attack. I need to learn to let myself cry in front of someone I’m close to. I need to do it as it comes up and not just a month later when I have held so much in that I need to cry for hours to feel better. I don’t deny my emotions and I do let myself feel them when I’m alone, but when I’m with others I continue with my facade of strength and I explain away mine and other people’s emotions. I suppose it is a way of distancing myself from the pure feeling, from the vulnerability. I feel I’m generally a very open person and I talk about emotional stuff a lot, and empathy is one of my greatest strengths, but I have learned to respond to emotions in a rational manner, in an explanatory and analytical way. I have learned that this is the only way I can protect myself. In the past I have been much more hurt and felt a lot worse on a regular basis because I was a total sponge and was taking in everyone else’s feelings as well as experiencing my own. Until I can figure out another way to shield my Empathic/Hyper Sensitive self, I’ll probably continue with what I’ve been doing.

I always feel like there are so many things wrong with my personality and lifestyle, and most of the time these remain as thoughts and feelings that never stop. I don’t act enough on trying to make these changes. I haven’t disciplined myself to make new habits and get rid of bad ones and I’m not good with making a game plan to figure out how exactly to overcome things. I should be doing and being so much better, and I should have improved a lot more than I have. I recognize that these thoughts are examples of judging myself, and that I am lacking in self-compassion. So much of my life I have been told that I’m not good enough in one way or another by the people that should have loved me unconditionally. Now I need to silence those voices, those people that are the cause of these types of thoughts.

My own computer has decided to start being a twat, and it cannot reach the login screen, it keeps going in this stupid loop where it can’t finish the final stage of these updates (which my computer told me I needed to do, and there were 8 of them). After it gets to that stupid screen where it says it’s on the third stage…the screen just goes black and then my computer restarts itself all over again. It’s really irritating. Especially because this wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t do the updates, which I thought were supposed to be things that *helped* the functioning of my computer. Also, it seems that every time I actually fully shut down my computer, somehow that makes my computer worse the next time I go to use it, which makes no fucking sense. Usually I just let it hibernate when I’m not using it, but somehow giving it a total break makes it have more trouble working again. I suppose that’s a bit like humans, actually. People normally get sick as soon as they fully stop running around being really busy. As soon as they take a break from that, that’s when they get knocked down by viruses and whatnot. But what the fuck computers are supposed to function better than humans ha.

I’m on my mom’s computer, and it’s so slow. Don’t get me wrong I mean I am really happy/glad that she has one because I’ve come to realize how dependant I am on my computer. Everyday I check the weather for the whole day online after I wake up so I can figure out what to wear when I go to take my dogs out. New England weather is so fucking erratic that this is relatively necessary, but then again it’s also one of the things I’m OCD about. I like to be fully prepared for whatever weather change their might be, and this was much more important when I was in college still because I couldn’t just come home easily and change if the weather changed. Now I just do it out of habit I suppose. I also go on my Facebook a ton which is a total waste of time but being unemployed and having finished college, while still living in an incredibly towny-town at my Mom’s place, where we are the only ones that live here and she’s working a lot, I tend to be home alone most of the time. So my computer and fucking around on the internet are small things that keep my sanity. If I were a more motivated person I would probably read for hours a day and make art and do things that are actually productive. But being as I’m not except on random days, I tend to waste away my days on my computer. I check this site a lot too and read the blogs that I follow, and I’ve been writing here more often. So I suppose that’s a more productive thing as it’s still all reading and writing.

This computer shit wouldn’t be a big deal if I had thousands of dollars in the bank as i could just buy a new one, but as of now I have about $40, split between two banks, and no income. So that’s not an option, and I’m certainly not going to ask to borrow a ton of money from my mom for a computer, as she works really hard as is to pay for everything and she just worked overtime the past two days in a row, and is now at work again. Asking her for that would be selfish and it would weigh on my conscience as well, because basically that’d mean she’d probably be working even more overtime to help pay for that, while I’d be here sitting at home as usual fucking around on my computer. So I can’t do that. My brother is a computer expert and I emailed him about the issue in detail and I’m waiting for a reply. But again since this is an emergency to me but not to anyone else, I don’t want to continue the selfish behavior of expecting other people to drop what they’re doing to fix a problem of mine.

Basically this has made me fully realize how much time I waste on my computer, and how it affects my brain. When I went outside to walk my dogs, it was nearly silent in my head and I felt very calm. Normally it’s very loud in my head and my thoughts are swirling all over the place. Normally I’m really anxious in one way or the other, and I suppose my computer usage might play a role in this. I’ve always had more mental than physical energy, and my addiction to my computer only fuels my mental energy while continuing to not use any physical energy in order to get more physical energy.

The walk I took with my dogs was less happy as it was really cloudly out and kind of cold, but I went in this cool area in the woods that how more of a desert type feel to it. It’s all sand and rocks, with plants that look like ones that’d be in a dry/hot climate. It’s really cool, it’s almost like a portal to an earlier stage of the Earth, because the rocks there are also really interesting and different. All I could thin was “Moon rocks”. They looked like peices of the moon or other planets, and I collected a bunch of them. I spent awhile just looking through them and being in awe, and then even though I was enjoying myself, I had the thought that I am just a big kid. I’m fascinated by nature and rocks, things that most people don’t even notice or care about, and everytime I see something a little different it’s as if it’s the first time I’m seeing these things. I just felt childish, not necessary in a totally bad way as that means I’m more aware of my connection to the Earth and I’m more appreciative of it than the average person. It was more that it was like I didn’t know what to do with my days if I didn’t have a computer, then I went looking at rocks and collecting them, then I thought about how badly I need a job and income but how much I have trouble and how much I hate the process of finding one. It just made me realize how much time I spend alone too, on a regular basis, and how most people are out working or atleast in civilization for several hours a day, while I’m almost exclusively on my own, and hardly in civilization. I feel a disconnect from society. Whenever I do go somewhere in civilization to do something simple like pick up my meds, I feel dissociated/out of place. I space out and try not to make eye contact with anyone, and I feel like people can tell that I’m different or out of place and feel self conscious about that. That’s why I’ve started to avoid looking at other people directly when I’m in places like that now. Normally I used to look at like *everyone’* face, and a lot of them wouldn’t even see me but I’d basically get absorbed in watching other people.

I’ve just always felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere, yet I belonged everywhere at the same time. Like I could be a member of several different groups but I couldn’t be a member of just one group. I like way too many different things and different people to just choose one, and I never feel like I can just pick a few out of several things. I like a lot of things equally, and a lot. I often felt like people always wanted me to choose their group if I was part of it but not a complete member. When I was taking art classes at umass, I was an art minor and a psych major, and I always felt like the art major students didn’t want me there. It’s like they were insulted that I liked both subjects a lot, they were insulted that I chose to make Psych my major. I also was essentially the only person in every one of my classes other than like two other people that made abstract art. People didn’t like that either. They’d insult my art by saying it was basic or like doodles or that I could “do so much more”. They’d get annoyed that I couldn’t give them a concrete answer as to what it was that I made, and even a few of my teachers wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t explicitly verbalize the process behind my art. I don’t get why the process would need to be explained…I mean art is the exact opposite of language and usually artists are not as good at language because they think primarily in images. I just always felt like somebody somewhere was always trying to push me one way or the other. Essentially no one just accepted that I had so many different interests and I didn’t find anyone that liked as many various thing as I do until my last year at college. Everyone else seemed to just be really into like one or two things. I’m just not exclusive like that with my mind and interests. The world just has way too many awesome things in it for me to just choose a few and ignore the others. I want it all. And I don’t mean I want to possess it all I just want to be connected to a lot of it and I want to be invested in a lot of it.

I guess I feel like a bunch of different circumstances in my life have lead to me feeling like I was different than the average person, leaving me feeling alienated from a lot but more connected than others to more concrete things like nature and animals. The only people I’ve felt really connected to or a lot like are other people that are odd like me, other people that also don’t fit in and they do stand out, other people that the average person might label as a “freak”. I’ve always felt very connected to nature and animals though, and to music too. Even since I was a little kid. Maybe part of the difference is the level of acceptance and openness. Nature and animals alike are very open and accepting. There aren’t requirements for being connected to them, and anyone can have the same interaction with them. Animals don’t pick and choose between people, they love most all people, unless you are a bad person in which case they can sense that and they don’t like you.

I feel both adult and childish in a number of ways, and the the thing is outside of the fact that I don’t have a job, money, or my own place to live, I still feel mentally/intellectually mature. The thing is, in society you aren’t seen as mature *unless* you can show others how you can financially take care of yourself. It’s almost like the mental/intellectual aspect doesn’t even matter. I know so many adults that can support themselves but are very deficient in mental/intellectual/people skill based things.

I do want to get a job and make money so I can buy new things I’ve been wanting/needing for awhile and so I can comfortably move in with my boyfriend, and I do want to be able to start my own completely. I do want to see more people, to interact with more people, and to have more of a purpose. I do want to have a routine again, I want to make structure of my life and I want to be able to see a future.  I want change and I want to change. I want to be more active and balance out my over-active mental energy with physical energy. I want to feel more hope and joy in life. I want to be able to save money to travel. I want to feel excitement to face the day in one way or the other, rather than feeling like I’m wasting my days away. It’s just that these things take time, lots of time, energy, and money. They take persistent energy, they take discipline, and they take confidence.

I did up my dosage from 300 to 450 MG yesterday, and today too. Yesterday it was either the placebo effect or the dosage really did make a difference. I had so much more energy. I took my dogs on a longer walk at a more brisk pace, I did a bunch of chores, I even went for a run! I got a bit over zealous on the running part as I started off running the pace I used to keep when I was an actual runner and was in good shape, and ended up having to stop a few times out of having no breath and having huge side stiches ha. But atleast I tried. Atleast I actually did some cardio. I did it in the rain too, I didn’t care that it was raining. It felt good to do things out of my own motivation, out of my own desire to change. I want to continue that way. I need to keep believing in myself and reminding myself that I feel so much better when I do things on a regular basis like exercise, make art, make music, work a job, read, write, and do chores. I can become better and I want to become better. Than myself, not than anybody else.

So I just looked through a couple of years worth of photos I took (of myself during those times, pretty narcissistic I know), and it made me think of a lot. Thoughts that summarize what happened during those years–my 4.5 years at college. Thoughts about what changed and what didn’t. And what lead to me being the person I am now from the way I was at the beginning of my time at college, what influences and circumstances altered and molded me.

I used to be healthier, physically healthier that is. I smoked a lot of weed during those 4.5 years but I also took an entire year off and a few half-year or so breaks from it entirely as well. I experimented with acid and ecstasy. Those things altered me and also helped me to find myself a little bit more. But I won’t say that it was a smooth ride, because it sure as fuck was not.

My small experimentation with acid changed me probably the most in terms of learning the most about myself and what was at the core of me. At first I had a major panic attack/ego death at the beginning of my first trip. I ran to the bathroom when I started to feel severe panic, I puked a bunch, I stared at myself in the mirror, and I didn’t recognize the person in the reflection. I felt separate from my appearance. And I think this was also ego death. Yes it was severe dissociation but it was also the completely shocking and scary as fuck realization that my true self is not my ego. All of the defenses I had been putting up, all of what I thought was my identity, was too centered in my ego.

In a way I think dissociation is not just a response to trauma, but I think it is also a small glimpse into the truth that is: We are spirits, composed of light/love, we are simply held inside our physical bodies, our shells. The first realization of this is so scary, because our egos don’t want us to figure that out, and they fight like hell to convince you out of it, which may be the main source of severe anxiety that occurs during dissociation. Here you are, realizing the separation of your soul and your body, while you have just spent your entire life believing that you are just a physical being.

Acid didn’t make me just freak out, it made me face all that I was repressing, and all that I had repressed for many, many years, came to the surface, and reared its ugly head in the course of a few minutes. It was beyond words actually, and as much as I describe my experience, I cannot explain how exactly it uncovered all of that that quickly. Basically acid forces you to face yourself, completely, and your ego loses the intense control it usually has. The ego’s primary purpose is to keep control, to make sure you reason your way out of anything that isn’t based on reason, so that you can be safe. But this is limiting because in doing so it keeps you from truly changing, from truly viewing things in a holistic way, from letting go and realizing that you are not the center of the universe and there are forces at work that you will never be able to fully explain through reason. It’s human nature to want to explain everything and to relentlessly attempt to learn all that there is to know, thus knowing everything about everything. What people don’t want to accept is that there are so many things that we will never be able to fully figure out or have the answers to. And this scares the shit out of people so they usually avoid it all costs.

One major benefit of using psychedelics is that you can no longer hide behind your ego, you can no longer keep trying to think everything is based in science and reason and facts. It forces you to lose control and to realize that letting go and opening your arms to new experiences and even scary experiences is the key to growth.

Psychedelics are also the reason why I know for sure that at my core I am an artist, a visionary, and a highly emotional/healing type person. When I tripped, after I got past the shitty part, it started to go entirely the other direction and everything started getting mind blowingly awesome. I started to see lines of color coming in from the corners of the room that met at the middle, and these lines of color were both matter and energy, and they were made of the primary colors. They were not only in the room but stemming out of all of the people that were around, and the colors were different in terms of which ones dominated for certain people. One guy that was in the room had sooo much red in his energy field, and I remember telling him that and I think he just laughed ha.

The reason I say that I found out I’m a visionary/healing type person is that not everyone sees these kinds of things when they trip. My trip was incredibly spiritual and artistic, very visual but also very visceral. And this totally makes sense because those are the very elements of my core self. Not only did I begin to draw later on in my trip, but I also continued to draw everyday, just for myself, from then forward for a long time. My work was the most creative it has ever been, the most colorful, the most abstract and full of energy out of anything else I had previously made. I basically couldn’t stop drawing. It was like I realized that art and creating art was such a strong and important part of me, and though this wasn’t conscious, I know I did it a lot because I felt inspired *and* like I absolutely had to express these creations/visuals. I had to capture them, because in doing that I was becoming more in line with my true self. I also got very spiritual after I tripped, and I began to research chakras and meditation a lot. I bought a book on all of the chakras and it had meditations in it for every one of them. I began to meditate every day as well, and I could totally feel my spirit when I did so. I’d feel this tingling and warmth rushing to my feet, and I *felt* like I was energy. I felt like I was so much more than just my body and even my mind.

The interest in Psychology has always been there for me but even though it has to do with emotions, it is still pretty based in reason. There are so many categories and definitions in psychology, and then there are so many logic-based responses to dealing with disorders once they are diagnosed. You are to go to therapy and talk it through, you are to take medication that will chemically alter your brain. Even though Psychology is the study of the mind, it is less connected to spirit than my strong connection to art and meditation. But, psychology has the great intention of *healing* souls. The word souls isn’t used very often in psychology, but it certainly is about healing damaged emotions, and emotions are very much a part of our souls.

So during this whole time I’ve been talking about I was majoring in both Psychology and Art, and I was really getting into drawing and meditating. I didn’t choose the best period of my life to decide to take on the intense experience of tripping, as my family life was incredibly fucked at that time. So initially I had a lot of good revelations and I came more into myself, but then a few months later I began to spiral downward. I’m sure this was for a combination of reasons, but mostly I was just so exhausted, and so not prepared to take on college at that time. I could barely handle my family life. I also felt very isolated at college and at home. So basically I was left to face all of these huge changes on my own. And so I fell apart. Uncovering my artistic nature also lead to uncovering the dark side of my unconscious. There’s no way to avoid uncovering your unconscious feelings when you’re working creatively.

So I began to come down from my amazingly great feelings time to return to what my unconscious contained. There was a lot that was not dealt with well, because I had no outside emotional support and I internalized nearly everything that happened in my dysfunctional family. There was no one to tell me otherwise, and I had no real escape or way to live my own life, other than by going inward more into my imagination. So you see what I’m saying? As I learned so much about my core self and what I was here on earth to do, I also learned just how deeply I had been damaged by my family, and by my long-term feelings of being inadequate, a lone wolf, the one who doesn’t fit in with anyone or anything. So I got very very depressed and was for a long time, I stopped being able to be creative because I was so depressed that I turned numb and hollow. I couldn’t sleep like at all, I felt like I had no identity at all and I lost every single bit of that spark I had previously. I lost that confidence and enthusiasm. I never would have come out of that dark pit if it weren’t for starting Wellbutrin, which I’m still on.

So, identity. That’s what I thought a lot about looking through those pictures too. My identity is so fluid. I could be anyone or anything. I am so many different things, I have so many different interests, I have a couple different selves. Throughout that time I went from Hippie, to Indie, to Formal, to Hippie, to Nothing, to Punk/Hippie. It was pretty much in that order, though I would also change my style and interests dramatically between these various scenes. I would often take on the identity of the people around me. I think I still do that to an extent now, but not as severely as before. I know who I am a lot more now, but I don’t *feel* it as much as I did for that period after I tripped, I don’t meditate or make art everyday anymore, and I haven’t been able to put my psychological skills into use yet either.

I guess I never got to the stagnation element that I intended to write about. Basically I am a very fluid person but I am also rather stagnate. There are some things in my life and within me that have been the same for a very, very long time, and I still don’t know to change those things and struggle with doing so to this day. Then there are the other things about me that continue to change all of the time, and I am pretty fluid in thought and beliefs. I get sucked into people’s stories when I read them, I get sucked into movies when I watch them, I begin to feel like I am those people or I am also a part of those stories even though I’m not. That is part of the fluidity, but it’s also that I am very empathetic and highly sensitive.

Ok this post is way too long, but I hope some people read it. I think I will be writing in here more often.

So this morning I went to my new Psychiatrist (well he’s actually one I was seeing in the past but then switched to one at umass). Now that I’ve graduated I can’t continue with UMass Mental Health Services. I realized I definitely miss my therapist and I need a new one for sure. I haven’t had therapy in probably a few months and I can tell I’m not doing as well as I was when I saw mine every couple of weeks.

So yeah this Psychiatrist is a SUPER Irish dude, I mean his name is Killian O’Connell, you can’t really get more Irish than that. He’s got the accent and everything. Wicked cool. I love Irish people haha and I always feel like I’m more than just a quarter Irish. So anywho I made this appointment because I needed a new script as the last one ran out and I can’t go back to my previous med doctor. He agreed to write me the script and he asked me a bunch of questions since the last time I saw him was two years ago when I was severely depressed.

I like the guy I mean he boosted my mood a lot just by being his jolly hopeful Irish self and I felt like he’s really accepting of me for some reason. I guess I just felt comfortable and that had to do with his warmth. So I asked him a bunch of questions too about my med and other stuff, especially because he was suggesting I increase my dosage from 300 mg to 450 mg. I have read things before about Wellbutrin becoming more of a risk when you go above a certain dosage, which I thought I remembered was anything above 300, but I guess not. Apparently after 450 mg that’s when the seizure threshold lowers. He asked me about my current energy levels and how I sleep and things like that. I said my energy levels are ok, and my sleep is ok, but when he asked if I had trouble getting up in the mornings, I went on to tell him how I’m a night owl and I stay up really late and sleep really late. He also asked if I “take caffeine” haha. I said on and off. And then he asked if I noticed any interaction between caffeine and my med. I said yeah I definitely feel a boost from it.

I wasn’t immediately going to be like “OH SURE I’LL TAKE 150 MORE MG of what I’m already taking, and increase that much in just one day!” I happen to know a fair amount about psychology and psychiatry and I’m also a skeptic/someone who questions things instead of just taking it at face value. So I asked him a bunch about the possibilities of that dosage increase and he later went on to tell me he could tell I was anxious and that’s another reason I should increase my dosage. I said how can you tell I’m anxious and he said well you asked me a lot of questions and you were pretty concerned about that 1% seizure risk (? or something). This is actually kind of hysterical to me that he said that. He can tell that I’m anxious just because I asked a lot of questions. I don’t get how that makes me anxious lol. It just makes me someone that is cautious and thinks things through a lot before just jumping into them. Especially when it comes to something serious like pharmaceutical drugs.

Basically Psychiatrists are just swanky drug dealers with PHD’s. It’s pretty funny how differently they are viewed from regular drug dealers simply because what they are doing is legal, though it really is no different than what a drug dealer does. Psychiatrists are such med pushers, they will prescribe you any and all drugs they think could possibly help you, and they don’t take very long to make that decision. You could easily totally fake a condition or disorder and in a heart beat they’d prescribe you with some super strong drug. They fucking love drugs lol.

Another thing that was funny was that he told me that if I went up to 450 I’d be having a lot more fun. !! hahah that could mean so many things. To me that comes off as “If you increase your med which is between a stimulant and an anti-psychotic, you will be HIGH off of it”. Basically I felt like he was saying I’d be inducing a hypomanic state, though I don’t think he realized what he was communicating to me hah.

So he was pretty convincing and his whole delivery I guess worked on me because not only did I essentially agree to the dosage increase but I also walked out of there in a mood that was atleast 5 times as good as the one I went in there with. I feel like I got amped off of his energy and I think also what he said gave me some insight into why my med doesn’t affect me as much as it used to. I think I got pretty used to it and I can tolerate a higher dosage so I actually required a higher dosage to maintain the same effects. When I first started taking it, for the first like 3 months or so, I felt hypomanic. And this happened DIRECTLY after I had been in the most severe depressive episode of my life. The med worked so fucking fast and all of the sudden my thinking was really sharp again, my head was clear, my energy levels skyrocketed, I felt elated, and I could finally sleep again, the severe insomnia finally faded into the background.

Of course at this time in my life it was a BEAUTIFUL summer, really great sunny/hot days and I had just met Zak, who I started dating not long after that. And I got a job at Target then. So basically at that time I went from utter despair to total elation. In the course of like 2 weeks. After being severely depressed and an insomniac for about a year before that. It was fucking sweet to be pulled out of that and to be sent all the way up in the other direction. But then I got fired from Target at the end of September so I had only worked there for like 3 months, and things started to go downhill. I was really torn up over being fired because I felt like I had finally found a place I could succeed at or atleast a shitty job that I could atleast maintain, only to find out a few months later that I “wasn’t a good fit for the job”. And I had some bitch who was barely around from management proceed to tell me how I worked and where I fucked up. After that I started going into a mild depression, and if it weren’t for being with Zak at the time, I probably would’ve gone down way deeper.

Anywho I feel kind of hopeful right now because I feel like this med increase might actually get me back to the good spot I was in that summer. I have felt like I’ve been depressed for the most part for like a year now, not the entire time but for a lot of it. I also felt good after the visit because it made some things clear to me. Which may or may not be the truth, but it explains some things that I had been just internalizing/blaming on myself. If my med essentially dissipated, that explains why I went back to a depressive state, atleast in part. Of course other circumstantial shit is part of it too, but I’m glad to know it wasn’t *entirely* my fault. And regardless it always feels better to know *why* something changed or what the reasons are behind a complicated issue, because it clarifies it. And it makes it more possible to be understood/dealt with.

So he wrote me up that script, which of course I can barely read because apparently like all doctors and psychiatrists have the worst chicken scratch ever. I don’t know how pharmacists can read that. I will bring it in soon, I have a few meds left, maybe i’ll bring it to a pharmacy tomorrow because I think I want to try going to 450 mg tomorrow. I forget how that process works, I forget if they have to take the script paper thing first and process it or something and then have you come back later to pick up your first refill. I hope they can just process it there, but I suppose they’d have to get the pills all together and whatnot.

I’m still a little hesitant about upping my dosage that much but Killian made the choice more up to me by prescribing me 150 mg pills, which I would either take 2 at once to maintain my regular dosage, or I’d take 3 to get to 450 mg. So basically he left it up to me. He said he’d ask me if I tried the higher dosage but that’s about it. There wasn’t any additional pressure. And he told me that I would know in 48 hours if the dosage was too high, because I’d feel like I drank a whole pot of coffee ha. So then I could just go back to 300 mg.

He said that caffeine is not normally tolerated along with Wellbutrin but since I can tolerate it, that means my dosage isn’t high enough. He said that at the proper dosage caffeine can’t be tolerated along with the med. So that would be good too, if I could feel as energetic as coffee makes me feel without having to drink it anymore. I don’t know which is worse for your system though- caffeine or Wellbutrin.

He said a few other things that I didn’t necessarily agree with because they are too black and white. He asked about my sleep and when I told him I’m kind of nocturnal he said that Wellbutrin is supposed to make you “like all the rest of us” in terms of the sleep schedule. He said it is supposed to make you wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. That may be true but he’s kind of ignoring the fact that there are plenty of other influences behind why people have more night-shift type sleep schedules. My reasons are that I 1) Started staying up a few hours later than usual because Zak wasn’t getting out of work until 11:30 at night, and I’d start hanging out with him after that. 2) It is in my genetics to be really awake/creative late at night and really…not in the mornings. I have my Dad’s biorhythms. and 3) I am a creative type/right brained person. I am certainly more right brained and so that means I am primarily emotional, creative, holistic, visual, artistic, etc. And it is really common for creative types to be at their best mentally/artistically in the late night hours. and 4) I am essentially choosing this sleep schedule in a way too, because it’s not that I can’t do a ‘regular people’ sleep schedule, it’s just that I need to be in a routine and to be working or going to school to be able to maintain it. And if you are choosing to stay up even later than you normally would, of course you aren’t going to be able to wake up early in the mornings, and then when you sleep late, you stay up late again the next night. That’s just the way it goes.

Hopefully this whole post hasn’t been disorganized as I have a feeling it has been a bit. I’m just feeling more mentally active right now than I would be at this hour (lol meaning like 2 pm). I slept pretty badly last night, couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, then slept lightly, then was woken up several times by noise. But I didn’t feel too bad when I got up via alarm at 10 strangely enough. So I’m kind of proving what I just said before. I’m more alert now at 2 pm than I normally would be because I have been awake since 10 am. But on the usual when I sleep till 2:30 pm, I’m not really mentally alert until like 6 or 7pm . Sometimes later than that.

There was some drama this morning having to do with my mom’s lovely notes but I’m in too decent of a mood to write about that now. I think it would only make me feel all pissed off and down again to write about it at the moment.

So I hope everyone has a good day, even though I don’t think many people read this! Ha

My mom has been driving me nutty again. It’s like I can get along with her for a period of maybe a few days, but then she launches in to her same irritating ways of being, and makes me wanna duct tape her mouth shut. She’s like a human mosquito. Nagging the fuck out of me, starting at the first time she sees me, about shit that doesn’t matter, sucking my life force every time. It is very rarely that I can interact with her without her sucking life force out of me.

I want the fuck out of here. And Zak has told me I could come live with him soon since his roommate is moving out, and that it would be ok if I didn’t have money right away to contribute. I believe him in saying that but I also see the possibility that it could take longer for me to make money and that could put strain on the relationship. I just feel like the longer I stay here at my mom’s, in the same fucking room, for the 23rd year now, the longer I am going to stay in this rut and the more my anger will build up. It seems to have no limits, other than to eventually lead to me actually fly into a rage, but honestly it takes a lot to get me to physically acting out the anger I’m feeling.

I’m listening to Nine Inch Nails and I can’t explain how much I relate to the music and lyrics that Trent makes. It’s definitely super angsty music, something I originally related to a lot as a moody 14 year old or whatever age I was. I’m not that different than that self now, although now I don’t have as many environmental irritants/fights, and I’m on a psych med now that actually works. Although my mom is certainly an environmental irritant but it’s not the same as listening to/being a part of chaotic, chronic arguments within the family.

Regardless the fact that it was like like that so chronically for so many years on end, has lead to me being an angry person. I’m not the kind of angry person that will publicly start or engage in a loud argument with someone and I’m not the kind of angry person that has no patience and flips out over trivial shit like how many minutes I have to wait at a store for something. I have valid reasons for being irritated and it certainly has become an element of my personality, one trait that has been with me consistently for a long time. My mother and father have fed it very well, but so have many other things. Being controlled, being invalidated, being trapped, being prevented from developing my own individuality and autonomy, etc.

Anger isn’t the best thing but in a way it’s better than constant depression/sadness because anger is easier to channel outwards, it’s easier to express/dissipate. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be channeled into another person, but if another person is crossing a boundary or pushing your buttons and it’s really pissing you off, if you let them know in an edgy way that it isn’t ok, it kind of helps. Atleast then you are letting out the negative feeling and even if it grows for that period of time, if you face it it will fade away. But depression is something that tends to grow stronger and stronger because it is anger directed inward. When it comes to the fight or flight response, I think I fight just as much as I flight. I would rather hurt myself than hurt other people, but sometimes other people need to get the fucking message that they can’t continually walk all over you without some sort of backlash. They will have to feel the response to that kind of behavior. So it hurts both people, but sometimes it’s kind of necessary.

I guess I just feel like certain people know exactly how to trigger me. I’m not sure they are conscious of my triggers or that they are touching on them, and it may even be that they *created* the triggers to begin with. Those people generally being my mom and my dad, but also my brother. I guess it’s worse when it’s family triggering you, because then that’s just like chafing an area that has been chafed until it was raw millions of times over, only to be chafed yet again. When it comes to outside people, it doesn’t have the same effect. They aren’t able to get that same degree of emotional reaction from me.

So basically my mom triggers me really often. And I try to be patient and to learn how to deal with her more effectively, but it’s especially hard when she sets off multiple triggers at once and proceeds to do so even after she can see I’m really pissed off. Then she acts like I’m being unreasonable for responding the ways that I do, then she does confusing ass shit like asks me if I want to go out to dinner with her. Right after irritating the fuck out of me and causing me to storm around and slam doors and shit, right after getting an edgy tone out of me and short answers, she asks me if I want to go out to eat with her. Why. the fuck. would. she think. I’d want that.

So this is what happened a bit ago and when she asked if I wanted to I said no, not really. Then she says “Why not?” and I said Because I don’t want to and I just ate not that long ago. I don’t understand why she proceeds to ask me “why” when I give an answer that I feel is obvious and clear. What does it matter “why” I don’t want to? The only point of asking that is to get information to then use against me to continue trying to force me to do something I don’t want to do.

What’s even more annoying is that someone with her personality and someone as neurotic as her, is not even seen as dysfunctional at all. While someone like me, is seen as dysfunctional in a few ways. And why is that? Because being just neurotic is perfectly acceptable in our society, in fact since it correlates with things like OCD and perfectionism, it tends to help people make it in our society. But with someone like me, who is on the borderline between between Neurotic and Psychotic, I’m not accepted or seen as functional in this society. Because I have trouble getting and maintaining jobs, because I am highly emotional, because I speak my mind a lot about things other people are afraid to say, because I refuse to conform to the priorities and interests of the common person, I am viewed very differently than my my mom.

It’s absolutely fucked that if you appear outwardly perfect/functional, then that’s good enough for people to think you are on the whole ok. That there is no way you could be fucked up or have flaws, as if being able to hold a job and make regular income is adequate in proving your worth as a human being. All it means is that you don’t have trouble on a regular basis doing normal people things, and that you are good at molding yourself to be the way a workplace wants you to be. It means that you can control yourself pretty well in that way, and it also generally means you are good at faking things, unless of course you are the kind of person that doesn’t need to fake anything because the way you are does not disagree or conflict with society.

My point is that people need to stop discriminating against and judging people who aren’t busy bodies or working 24/7 and making money and having cars and houses and shit like that. I don’t know who decided that meant these people are superior human beings, and everyone else is inferior. It’s fucked. Why aren’t we focusing on real values like the kind of person someone is? How good of a person are they? What good traits do they have as a person, what degree of compassion and empathy do they have, how open and understanding are they? This is the shit that matters! Not how well you can be a puppet.