A Very Long Day

It has been over 34 hours since I'd woken up, a cold and dreary Sunday dawn. I made the mistake of pushing through a little further and going on a trip to the store. There were a few other stops, really, I had adrenaline coursing through my veins, I'd had a few bowls, caffeine, plus the mistake of an Altoid on an empty stomach during a long, stop-and-go, winding drive. All of this, of course, was unforeseen, and I'd have just stayed home like I originally intended had I known what was to come.

Nausea, vertigo, headache - I felt miserable. When we arrived at the store, I opted to stay in the car, where I soothed my stomach and began writing this as a distraction (a fairly effective one at that.) I still dread the parts to come and daydream of sleeping in my bed, right now.

I was depressed. Anxious, too, with a dash of paranoia. That's how it started in the drizzly, cold Sunday morning. I started the day with more of a pick-me-up. I sort of drifted through the day, dissociating and fading in and out. Time sped and slowed, warped and inconsistent. I had intellectual engagements, even started to feel less disengaged.

That night, I'd vaporise a pipe of tobacco for the first time - a far better experience than smoking a cigarette, but not much more appealing. I returned to my favored plant the rest of the time. Later in the night, atop the nicotine, pouring adrenaline in my veins, I also had some of my Aunt's French press coffee.

Derealisation. Everything began to turn surreal (almost time for my next dose of lithium and clomipramine, come to think of it - a few more hours.) Everything became satire, absurd, unreal, even dilirious.

Another miserable, winding car ride. I can't stand the vertigo, the sea-sickness on land.

I'll work on settling my stomach, taking my meds, and going to sleep. Almost home...

Dispel

I started this life utterly ignorant, naïve, and gullible. I was faithful, innocent, and gave the benefit of the doubt. This, naturally, was taken advantage of from the beginning by those of all ages. Pranks and hoaxes, fairytales and 'white lies' - I was being taught that no one was to be trusted, people enjoy (and frequently engage in) deceiving others, that people defined the 'truth' as whatever they wanted it to be. "Beliefs, experiences, thoughts, feeling are all equally real and indisputible." Easy to dismiss criticisms when the truth is what you make it.

So, it was those who deceived me, pranked me, lied to me, dismissed my curiosity and scepticisms: it was those people in my life who set me on the hyper-rational, hyper-corrective, hyper-critical path on which I found myself to be prolific. Combined with various preëxisting affinities, I've come to focus my life on discerning truth, even to my own detriment.

What purpose does deception serve others, but to teach them how easily they are deceived? I was taught the mind is fallible, that experiences are only vaguely real, that one's view at one time may fail to match one's view at another, that truth is found outside of ourselves, our lenses, our sense of self. Objective truth simply is, regardless of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, experiences. We can only know subjective truth from within, which is honesty, but honesty is not the same as fact. It is up to us to seek objective truth, always, by travelling outside of ourselves.

Objective truth is a resource we cannot manufacture. It is a resource we desperately need in order to prosper, to grow and progress both as individuals and a collective. Objective truth requires that one acknowledges their own fallibility, that one may change their beliefs when their beliefs no longer fit the evidence.

Jazz Everywhere - A Relatively Mild Manic Adventure

21:30, I wake up. I sit upstairs, watching TV, socialising with Mom until sometime past midnight. After making a burrito, I go downstairs to my room and play games and watch videos, that time broken up by reading articles and social media, plus some light reading of a novel. I spent much of the time not watching videos by listening to Nu Jazz/Jazztronica. By 05:30, I begin muscle-building and aerobic exercise in my room. By 06:00, I went out for a jog, walk (about a mile each), and took photos (I ended up taking photos the rest of the day.) Around 07:00, I returned home and went with Mom to take my sister to school. Soon after returning, I went along for my grandpa’s eye appointment. We got pizza afterward and returned home. Back to my room before noon, listening to more jazz and writing drum notation on graph paper. More videos, social media, and exercise. Did some chores, helped out, but mostly spent time alone in my room. By 16:30, I took a shower and got ready. By 17:30, we headed out to my sister’s school again, but for student presentations. It was crowded and bothersome, loud and bright, but I got through it (and captured more photos on the way.) Around 18:00 we arrived, and stayed at the school until about 19:30. We returned home, I worked out some more, listened to yet more jazz, and finished composing my drum notation. By 22:00, I said goodnight to my mom for the second time since I woke up. By 23:00, I started winding down and drifting gradually into sleepiness. I technically woke on Tuesday. I'll go to sleep when it's technically Thursday.

Believe

I could ‘astral project’, if I really wanted to call it that. This is merely an extreme expression of Theory of Mind: to be able to imagine another person’s life, thoughts, feelings, location, experiences, circumstances… You paint a vivid picture of a life, a place, a thought, an experience not your own. Does your ‘Spirit’ travel to another place or time? No, of course not. But the ability just to imagine it exemplifies an impressive Theory of Mind, and in turn an impressive sort of empathy.

I could be psychic, if I chose. I’ve borderline-disturbed some people with my ability to notice, in particular, what others do not. Some have even suggested I had various kinds of spiritual or celestial abilities, which is inherently absurd. During a chronic period of psychosis, such suggestions led to the delusion that I was communicating with a witch whose image I saw in the woodgrain of my bedroom door, at the time.

I wanted to believe. Growing up, I wanted to believe in all the silly, extraordinary, supernatural things others did. I wanted to believe… simply because others did. I wanted to believe because my mom did, and she taught me it was good to believe. But whenever I asked people questions about religion, I either got no answer at all (if not admonishment) or an answer which simply led to another question.

As I approached my teens, I began studying theology. Not just the theology I was raised on, but as many as I could cram into my skull. I saw pattern after pattern, and for much of my adolescence, I thought there must be something to it. The sheer number of believers, how fervently people believed, and the power their beliefs seemed to have over them suggested it wasn’t like fairytales and fiction. I observed the most truly outlandish real world events, all attributed to something spiritual and invisible.

I was actually taught very, very early on that doubt was simply a packaged deal with the supernatural. One could never objectively know if it did or did not exist, but to believe anyway was called faith, and faith was good. To say the least, I am habitually more obedient than I would honestly desire or think good for me. I was taught of sacrifice, martyrdom, and that giving was inherently better than receiving. Selfishness is sinfulness, and a natural, faithful death leads to the ultimate prize.

But I just never really believed. As much as I tried, as curious as I was, as faithful as I tried to be… I suppose something never quite clicked with me like it did so many others. I even tried Universalism: the idea that all faiths, beliefs, and interpretations were at least a bit right. That led me to Pantheism: the idea that all existence IS God. Which led to the most deceptively fragile belief system, which was the closest to my beliefs now. One thread was pulled to unravel it all: “Doesn’t that just make God a metaphor?”

I go back through the different theologies, religious texts, historical contexts and I just saw metaphor, metaphor, metaphor… Early in my pantheistic stage, where I had worked up to the logical reconciliation that all existence must be God for God to exist, I had begun watching the show Bones.

I really related to the stoic, opinionated, know-it-all lead character with a hyper-rational, critical view of life. She, an anthropologist, and lover of human culture, regularly dismissed the other lead’s Catholicism, and all other religions, as myths. Other characters would often react (ironically) in disbelief, shocked at her blasphemous use of ‘myth.’ She’d reason that all modern religions were fundamentally like the Roman and Greek myths now studied (and occasionally still believed.) She also dismissed psychology and philosophy as soft sciences, though she gradually changed her stance after observing their proper applications.

Bones, and the religious discussions had all over the world all throughout all kinds of media, had their impacts. I saw arguments from so many different sides, it’s easier to reference degrees than sides. I was not so insulated. In fact, particularly given my early attachment to the electronic world, and given my own eccentricities, I was bound not to be incredibly insulated. And I gorged on the information, the cultures, languages, the different views, opinions, interpretations, circumstances… It got absorbed, digested, and organised (through a much-more-gruelling-than-that-sounds process.)

And then the thread got pulled. “If it’s all a metaphor, what’s the point?” That was a good question. I was the kid who, at a tiny elementary school Christmas play in the country, said to all the other children, “Santa’s not real. No, Santa doesn’t really exist.” One of my friends, at the time, asked how I could say such a thing, appalled at my behavior. I just thought, “It’s wrong to lie.” My own fundamental, religious teachings - combined with my unusually rationalistic and logical mind – had begun the very dismantling of those very religious beliefs. Santa wasn’t real, therefore saying Santa is real is a lie. Lies are bad, therefore saying Santa is real is bad. That’s how my mind always worked.

I saw the value in fantasy, fiction, metaphor, story telling… I just could never quite see why, for instance, Harry Potter was any different from the Bible, or vice versa. Both stories, filled with metaphors which intuitively resonated with many. Or cults – what distinguished a cult from a religion other than number of adherents or their extremity? History told me people believe things until they find more socially compatible or scientifically provable things. ‘Greek myths helped less sophisticated men understand the world. We know better, now.’ This is what most everyone seemed to agree with.

So why was religion – modern, anyhow – so special? With this religion, we ‘know better’? With these religions? Instead of literal, it’s just figurative, now? Are we just waiting for our next prophets to usher in the new edition of the one and only version of the real faith, in an endless cycle of new faiths and interpretations to better fit the times? Will we ever know? If religion is just the unknown, does it, or God, become less and less as we learn more (the so-called 'God of the Gaps.') Does it even matter?

‘Does it even matter’… I’ve come to develop this view that I digested religions, deciphered their metaphors, sifted for the nuggets of wisdom and common sense, and just washed away every single supernatural, mystical, divine, spiritual element. It feels like I solved the riddles, or completed some kind of training, and now I’m ready to move on. The more I learn of the sciences, the more awestruck I am by nature, and the more baffled I am that anyone needs to believe in more.

Based on the evidence I’ve come across, I would say that more often than not, people all see the same reality, but all people speak mutually unintelligible languages. We say different words for the same things, and then argue which word is the actual, correct word. We kill; we condemn; we brutalise others because we can’t translate; we confuse our subjective experience with objective fact, and assert that upon others.

So, again, I ask this rhetorical question – does it even matter?

Alexithymia

Derived from a brief discussion I had. I'd realised after first saying it that I had, to my surprise, worded things rather well. This is an irony I've become strangely familiar with:

I spent most of my life thus far viewing my emotions as either extremes (mania, aggressive, panicked) or as incredibly flat (blah, fine, okay, blank, empty, nothing), but it seems to be due to alexithymia (difficulty identifying, defining, and/or expressing emotions.) I used clinical terminologies based on objective observations (ergo manic, depressed, anxious), and I only identified the emotions that were extreme enough or 'bad' enough to be quite obvious.

While I thought I was fully aware of what I did and did not feel, it turned out I had a massive blind spot for nearly every normal, even healthy, emotion. They were there, but my cognitive instrument for seeing them was calibrated for far too little sensitivity. The limited sensitivity meant I had profound difficulty even picking up on the more moderate and lesser emotions. I also came to confuse behavior for emotion, though the two are far from the same (and, often enough, paradoxical.)

I've had to very, very carefully 'listen' for what I was feeling at any given moment. I had to find a great deal of silence, time alone - an emotionally and mentally sterile environment. I needed, and still often need, this kind of environment (to the best of my abilities) so that I may exclude all the noise and peripheral data.

Finally, with much time and dedication, I've become overall more attuned to the finer, subtler waves beneath the waves. I can better identify emotions big and small that are woven into the fabric of my mind. I'd simply taken them for granted, and misunderstood them. Now I see my emotions are ceaseless; they merely vary in frequency, magnitude, and form. I eat a blueberry, and I can identify that the sourness can be slightly irritating and surprising, but the fruitiness and earthiness can be pleasant and soothing. All of that is emotion, and it briefly flickers by, easily unnoticed or forgotten. But it was there, and it's an important piece of my subjective, human experience.

A Little Shaus in the Morning

I wake up irritable, yet calm, in the darkness. My first response in Facebook is the irreverent dismantling of another’s argument (pointing out a false dichotomy and such.) However, as I plan ahead for their possible future response, my mind is consumed with a verbal onslaught, ripping into their flesh with words. “All you do is bitch, whine, and moan like the fucking toddler that you are,” I imagine myself ever so bluntly and coldly saying to my ‘opponent,’ not the faintest sign of emotion on my face. Cool, calm, and lethal.

I roll myself out of bed in one smooth motion and proceed up the stairs. Mom is making a chicken pizza on the Boboli pizza crust I had plans for. When she first brought it home, she said that I could make a pizza sometime, to which my mental musings had envisaged the idea of roasting a pizza over hot coals on the grill. I had the plans, but not the ingredients. I wanted mozzarella and provolone, not cheddar. I wanted a sweet and savory marinara and not just generic spaghetti sauce. I wanted to make this simple, pre-baked Boboli pizza crust into something special.

She was using the generic sauce, canned chicken cubes, and cheddar cheese. Blasphemy. I quickly crack my metaphorical whip, “You’re using my Boboli?” I stress the ‘my’ just enough to be noticed.

She gives me a bit of a look, but returns to her work explaining that she needed to find something that Grandpa would eat, and then asks why I wished she hadn’t used it.

Without a second in between, I respond with, “Because it looks stupid.”

“Well, alright, then,” she continued her work as I diverted to the bathroom. Why did I say ‘stupid’? Insults and otherwise abrasive words flood my mind, but the original word had vanished.

Upon returning to the kitchen, I say briskly and bluntly, “Frankly, I don’t know why the word ‘stupid’ sprang from my tongue. I had another word, at first, but it disappeared. I tried to recall it, but my mind was blank. It was as though my tongue pondered, What would really roll off me? 'Because it lookssss – stupid!' That’ll work."

“If that’s an apology, I accept.” Mom’s skin has been thickening. A real duck, she’s becoming.

I then monologue, muse, and elaborate, “My initial reaction was disgust, not so much about what you were making, but because you were using the Boboli I was planning to use. And I seem to have woken up irritable.” My body trembles. “And I’m getting shivers when I’m not cold. That happens when I’m overloaded.”

She made a remark about the season finale we had watched last night of Orange is the new Black having overloaded me, perhaps only half jokingly.

I open the fridge, finding there to mostly just be knock-off cans of Coke or water. I don’t like colas, but I grab one (which my mom reacts to with moderate surprise.) Shrugging, I respond with, “When I’m overloaded, I just need something fizzy to go down my throat. I don’t really care about flavor so much as the sensory input.” Then, popping open the can, I continue, “It has happened from time to time,” to which she admitted recalling.

I sit down, watch a British bread baking show, and find a bountiful logorrhœa of snarky (and honest) remarks being vomited out of my mouth. After 10 or 15 minutes, and a slightly larger audience than just my mom, I return to my dark cave of a bedroom.

What a wonderful first half-hour of my day…

The Library

The smells of Maryland in the summer. Not city Maryland. Green, fresh, wild Maryland. The plants, the fungi, the soil, the animals. I can hear the symphony of birds, crickets, cicadas, frogs, streams, rain, wind, thunder, leaves, pitter-patter on the windowpane. Cool darkness, fireflies, petrichor, and moonlight. It's all there, stowed away in my mind.

I told him I hated him. Something... ruptured. Something buckled and snapped inside. Tears, pain, fear... A meltdown. Everything felt out of control. Being forced out of our house, then shipped across the country in the muggy summer heat. Oh, and don't forget the hysteria that fills me up just before both take-off and touch-down. Jetlag. That horrid sun pounding its rays down on us. Bright, loud, crowded, foreign... D.C. was the worst.

I was tired, fed up, unsure where it was I was even going to end up when I went 'back home.' My things were packed and in Limbo... I was in Limbo...

*

Hikes... nearly 10 miles, Hurricane Ridge, Washington State. Again (though long before), I felt like I was on a bungee cord. There was ‘at home,’ and then there was ‘with Dad.’ The two became quite distinct. Military, Navy, kept him moving. We only visited him, though the offer to live with him was always present (and always declined.) Time with him was always moving, always tired, always elsewhere. I didn’t really want to move… I just wanted to stay put.

Halfway, maybe three quarters, I went ahead, just out of view down the trail, and I ran. I 'got away.' I took in some solitude, views of the lake, the nature... I finally felt like I could breathe again after a mounting pressure burst. Little did I know my dad would frantically search for me, skidding down a hill at one point, bloodying his leg. His efforts, my guilt...

*

“Future President” the somewhat oversized T-shirt read. As if school wasn’t enough pressure. All my dad’s efforts – all those failing efforts – what else could I do but stow them away..? I couldn’t refuse them, nor destroy them, nor return them. So they got neatly, politely stored, acting as a passive reminder of guilt each time I opened the drawer. Guilt that my dad’s efforts were hidden from the world, deliberately and wilfully by me.

*

Sitting on my bed, 22 years old, pseudo-hallucinating vivid flashbacks, triggered by such minutiae as the smell of an herb, taste of the air, sound of a bird chirping or a raindrop hitting glass… It’s all stored in there. It’s a vast, vast library long neglected, craving perusal. Holographic.

Echoing in my mind, "6 pounds and 7 ounces..." Ingrid Michaelson's 'Highway.' It sounds distant and warped, as though fluid, underwater, emanating from down a winding hallway. It swirls in the midst of a jumbled, juxtaposed cacophony, round and round. It’s a cyclone, bursting with wrathful lightning and thunder…

Pandora’s Box. My mind..