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..

The Hallway

This is how it feels. The result of mania twisting into an agitated depression mixed state, colliding into dissociation, leading to insomnia, and tumbling down into major depression, all in a 48 hour period.

It's not simply positive or negative. Both endlessly swirl around me like an infinite hallway through existence. A library of all that is, was, or ever will be. A realm where infinity dispels all notion of time, and the singularity of all existence stagnates. No longer is the painting being painted. Completed, the process all over, it simply is -- in its entirety, never changing.

Excerpt - Science, Spirituality, and the Brain

Cognitive dissonance arises when different parts of the brain are active, but struggle to communicate with one another. Inevitably, reality and perception clash. One’s perceived reality becomes like a disjointed blending of mutually exclusive narratives, as though trying to reconcile To Kill a Mockingbird and Moby Dick as the same book. In this analogy, the individual tears out various pages from the two books and tries to bind them into one book which haphazardly shifts from one incoherent narrative to another. Eventually, you loose both narratives in the process.

Polarisation happens when different parts of the brain act in opposition to one another. A person may reject all emotion in favor of logic, or they may reject science and reason in favor of religion. Certain parts of the brain become much more dominant than others. In some ways, parts of the brain may become atrophied, whether from lack of use, damage, isolation from the other parts, or some other cause. This results in very specific areas of the brain becoming heavily fortified and mutually exclusive from the ‘weaker’ parts. The weaker parts continue to fade due to a lack of incorporation. Using the previous analogy of To Kill a Mockingbird and Moby Dick, polarisation would be like asserting that To Kill a Mockingbird is a book, but because Moby Dick is not To Kill a Mockingbird, it is somehow not a book. Polarisation is black-and-white, binary hyper-categorisation.

When a brain incorporates the entirety of its functions and parts, one can finally realise that To Kill a Mockingbird and Moby Dick are both books, that there is no false dichotomy of one book being ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong,’ and that they can coexist without being melded into a single, incoherent text.

Ants

As a kid, I used to just sit outside in the spring and summer in the early evenings, right around when the sun sank beneath the hills and tree canopies. The sprinklers ærosolised the pollens and dust, filling the air with the smell of suburban nature. Soon after, the smell of barbecues would waft from yard to yard. I'd sit in tranquil solitude, watching the ants marching, transporting, and constructing. I imagined the lateral dissection of their seemingless endless, interwoven tunnel systems. I brought myself down to their scale, viewing their societies, their languages, their politics and wars... I imagined their daily lives, their hierarchies, their struggles and accomplishments. I did this until the sun faded, and the lighting became a softer, dimmer blue.

My whole life, I've seen patterns that seemed to zoom in and out infinitely. Human, ant, bacterium, molecules, atoms, subatomic particals... Humans, governments, planets, solar systems, galaxies, the universe. Whichever way I zoomed, be it larger or smaller, I saw the same patterns repeating and repeating: fractals.

It was order. It felt natural.

7 Streets Over

As it turns out, this is a story best told backwards…



I’ve reached my tranquil end at the intersection of J Street and my own. I’ve reached the peak, so to speak, and decided to take some moonlit pictures and recordings of the morning birds. It’s about 04:30, just before dawn, and my legs are warm. I breathe in large lung-fulls of brisk, dark air. I smell the automated sprinklers, shaded lawns, pines, and oaks. Now, I turn around.

I begin my return home. The quiet, wide, residential streets are empty of all traffic. In fact, I blissfully stroll down the middle with no fear, at all. The only sounds are the early birds, the occasional distant dog bark, and my own footsteps. This isn’t like my home just several blocks down. Certainly, they’re calm and quiet compared to the city we hug, but my streets have a car whooshing by every minute or so, in the dead of night, on either side of the block. One side is a major road with a fork, several lanes, and a mini-mart smack dab in the middle of the prongs. The large main road and complex canyon-like arrangement of houses cut through by streets, walled with trees, riddled with slopes, creates a powerful Döppler Effect. If you hear an increasingly high pitch whooshing sound, you know a car is approaching our street. You learn to translate the echoes into specific directions and vectors. Even if cars don’t come down our street often, it’s good to sense when a car might turn onto it and to get out of the way.

These streets are big, though. While my streets can have a car parked on each side with just enough wiggle room for one lane of traffic, mind you on a two-way street, these more isolated, quieter streets I’m walking down boast having cars parked on both sides with easily enough room to fit two free lanes for traffic. My streets have scars, pot holes, whole chunks of loose asphalt bigger than my foot lying crumbling in the road. These streets are black, smooth, and glisten in the moonlight. The houses here are all small and box-shaped with giant oaks, towering evergreens, and tidy lawns. Our houses are clunky, hodge-podge, and of greatly varied neatness. Some of the houses on my streets are vacant, in disrepair, and even overgrown with knee-high grasses, weeds, and unkempt trees. I remind my astonished self that I only walked 7 streets over. I can begin to hear the turbulent rumble of the city in the distance as I get closer.

Suddenly, I feel as though going from walking in secluded, tranquil woods to a vast and open expanse with a mostly unobstructed view of the sky. In the near distance of about two city blocks, I see two giant, broadleaf trees towering over a wall of smaller trees of varying shapes and sizes. They appeared as though a looming gate to a mystical kingdom.

WHOOSH! A car passes from left to right just beyond the looming tree gate. The car was soaring down the main road. I look up the vast opening to the sky and watch the stars, fading as sunlight gradually intrudes into the atmosphere from over the hills. 05:00 nears and I’ve just a bit further to go to return home. Street lamps illuminate the seemingly endless streets in the north, south, and east. To the west, from whence I return, it is darker and seemingly insulated from the city it skirts the edge of.

Another car whooshes by quite predictably, alone, and I cross the multi-lane north-south arterial. The sky is relatively open, the suburban skyline scraggly and uneven, the yards greatly varied, the constant hum and periodic whooshing of cars in the background: I am home. I walk up the two aggregate steps to my door, open my wallet, slide out my key, and unlock my front door. I walk down my stairs, open my bedroom door, and sit on my bed. It’s good to be back…

Even if it was just 7 streets to and fro, and about 30 minutes.

Overload

I wake up, groggy, and walk out of my bedroom. I walk down a dark hallway into a dark alley. The alley opens up to a cold, rain-drenched cobblestone road with gas lamps in either direction. Each direction is a mirror of the other, parallel wherever I go. I make it to a vast wooden bridge which crosses a moat, and I arrive at a fortress. They ancient stonework nearly crushes me, creating an opening through the fortress wall, so I enter. A vast citadel looms high above a seemingly endless maze, and so I enter the Labyrinth. Roars, hisses, growls, and hellish sounds echo indistinctly from all directions, but I move onward. I go forward, but return where I began. I retrace my steps and find myself somewhere unfamiliar. A supernatural dark cloud forms a wispy ceiling above me. I try to climb the walls, but the climb never ends, so I try to climb back down. Only a few feet down, and I can see the ground again. I chisel through the walls for days, but the walls have infinite depth. As I try to crawl backwards, dreading the rearward journey, but I find myself returned to the path in only a few motions.

Looking forward, I close my eyes, and I begin to slowly walk backwards, dismissing all of my senses.

I open my eyes, and before me is the great citadel. Months spent on this journey, tears well up in my eyes, for I have finally arrived. The doors creak eerily open and I enter. Spiral stairs, millions, go on and on, but I ascend. The slit windows reassure me that I am indeed getting higher in elevation. I finally reach the top, open the door, and find myself on a balcony. I can see my entire journey clearly, from start to finish…

There is no reward, no achievement, no satisfaction. The door slams shut behind me, my heartbeat quickens, and I’m trapped. I pull, I slam, I pound, I kick the door, but nothing happens. I have no tools, no supplies, stranded atop a tower. Days go by, isolated, cold, and hungry. Finally, I lean over the balcony, climb upon the stone wall, and look down.

“Jump…” it whispers. “Jump…” I give in, one foot over, and I fall. A feeling of relief flows through me as I close my eyes and slowly become weightless.

As I wake and open my eyes, I am once again in my bed.

Vee

It always amazes me just how easily a person can leave a life-long impression on a person... One moment, I'm browsing Facebook, reading a bit about critical thinking and science, glancing off to the side looking at the 'Suggested Pages' that I never click or actually show any significant interest in, and then—

BAM!

—it hits me...

A dedication page to a person I once knew online, from a whole other side of the world, South Africa, whom I've never even seen the face of.

Years ago, in my turbulent, early adolescence, hormones going crazy, bipolar going crazy, schizo going crazy, bouncing off and on the rails, I sought out an online support group for mental illness, in general. And I found one, Walkers in Darkness, and I liked it. The community was great, a worldwide chat room for people with mental health issues to seek help and community from moderators and administrators who also had mental health issues, but who always seemed so 'put together,' despite that fact. The admins and mods would give little insights into their own struggles, but they mostly held themselves together to support everyone else who came to them for help and support.

One of them was simply named, "Vee." Everyone liked Vee, everyone knew Vee (some even knew her in-person, if I remember correctly.) Vee was really quite great. But this group had trouble with funding, and they'd have to close shop now and then. Me being me, I usually came and went for long intervals, regardless of funding and if the site was running. I do that. I come, I stay for a little while, then I go for a much, much longer while. Well, one time, I went to look into the group again, some years later.

I found a Facebook page. They still had funding troubles. Okay, I joined the Facebook group. Then I heard. "Vee committed suicide." Maybe not phrased exactly like that, but it hit me just as unceremoniously...

I burst into tears, and I kept thinking, "I didn't even really know her. Why am I so overwhelmed by this? I'd completely forgotten about her..." Well, Vee prevented a few potential suicide attempts of my own. Vee got me through the suicidal thoughts. She helped me when I felt completely alone and hopeless. They may have been very brief interactions, only moments out of my whole life, but they mattered more than anyone could know. They made a difference. They kept me alive.

My mom came into my room, that day I first heard, and I was already consumed by my own tears, unable to catch my breath, unable to talk, barely uttering that someone I once knew online committed suicide, and it was a while ago, and I was just learning about it, so it was hitting me really hard and really suddenly. About every year since, only one or two days a year, I very briefly remember Vee and I burst into tears all over again.

How can you completely forget a person for most of your life, and then so spontaneously, out of the blue, become crushed and overwhelmed by this tremendous, profound, inexplicable weight, cracking your ribs and drowning your airways? How can three letters - V-E-E - so suddenly turn on this long-forgotten switch inside of me where an entire ocean pours forth from reserves I keep becoming so oblivious of for so long at a time?

And so, today, I'm listening to one of my favorite soundtracks from one of my favorite animes from that time in my life when I met and spoke with Vee. I had just happened to think of it earlier in the week and tracked it back down, downloading it. I put that on immediately before, not knowing what was to come just moments later...

"Can you feel?" the singer shouts at the top of his lungs.

"Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?"

Yes, I feel it. Too much. Too strong. I feel it all, like ripping stitches out of an old open wound I thought healed and scarred over, but is just as fresh as the first time... Like being punched as hard as can be in the gut, your gut wrapping and wrenching around the fist, the breath completely gone. You struggle to get your breath back, gasping, choking, feeling like you got sucked into outer space with no air to breathe, blood boiling, eyes getting ready to burst like grapes...

I'm alive, thanks in no small part to her. She took her own life. Life is sad, and gruesome, and some people die, and some people keep living, and there's absolutely no sense why. It's just is how it is...

It fucking sucks.

On the Folly of the Person/Identity-first Rhetoric

This conversation may very well change from language to language, but - particularly in English - the Person/Identity-first rhetoric is largely pedantic and causes turmoil where none is needed. Both 'sides' often claim their view to be superior, and many even get offended if you use the other way, whatever 'side' one may be on. This is primarily an issue in the autistic community, but it can and does extend broadly to other uses where a qualifier might be used to identify a person, such as bipolar, disabled, and possibly sexual orientations, ethnicities, or anything else someone can find a way to get offended based on how one chooses to word what is basically the same sentence.

This is how it works: 'person-first' language would be "a person with autism, they have autism," while 'identity-first' language would be "an autistic person, he is autistic." The idea is that person-first rhetoric is supposed to avoid defining a person with a label, while identity-first rhetoric is to avoid dismissing a pivotal aspect of an individual's identity. This is what they're supposed to do, in the eyes of those who make such distinctions.

I'm perfectly fine with people having their own preference, particularly when referring to themselves, but when you push either on someone as being the 'correct' or 'superior' way, you're causing unnecessary turmoil and potential conflict that never needed to be there, in the first place. It's largely a distinction without a difference: pedantic. The primary difference is between the usage of the verbs (and their different forms) 'to be' and 'have.' One can be autistic, or one can have autism. The primary difference is that one is a noun and the other an adjective. It's a bit misleading to say someone is autism, and it simply makes no sense to say someone has autistic. Therefore, grammatically, it is the semantics which determines which verb you use.

People who identify with the diagnosis of 'Asperger's' can find themselves in a bit of a pickle, regarding this distinction. On the one hand, it's grammatically proper to say someone has Asperger's, but it doesn't make any sense to say someone is Asperger's. There is a term, 'Aspie,' which can be used in lieu of a better term for this, leading to sentences like "she is an Aspie," but it's inaccurate to say someone is aspergery, which isn't even an official word, but primarily a slur used to describe people perceived as having Asperger's-like stereotypes (socially awkward, nerdy, even as an alternative form of 'dumb' or 'retarded.') But 'Aspie' can, in some contexts, also be used adjectivally, such as, "I feel an aspie meltdown, coming on..." People, however, are seldom describes as being aspie. It's not out of the question, but it's rare.

In conclusion, the distinction is primarily of personal preference, while pushing any as truly 'superior' is merely pedantic. I was once verbally attacked by someone for calling myself an 'Aspie,' because they felt it was apparently offensive. There are people, both within and without the autism community (though they seem few and far between, in all) who consider 'Aspie' a slur, despite having both it's origins and propagation of use centred in the heart of the autism community. That person thought they were defending the honor of those diagnosed with Asperger's by and large, while simultaneously attacking any who self-identified as 'Aspie,' which is a bit like saying, "How dare you call someone gay! They're obviously a homosexual." While 'a homosexual' certainly isn't the most endearing phrasing, neither is really incorrect.

Learn what others prefer to be called, and try to call them that. Identify what you prefer and call yourself, and call yourself that.

Unconditional Love

     I've been fond of the CTV television show, Flashpoint, for a few years, now, but I never really got into it, from the first episode onward in marathons, as any decent show should be watched. Well, Netflix has been egging me on to watch it, so I started. My favorite aspect of the show is the compassionate, empathetic, psychological side. From the very first episode, they stress understanding, replace 'suspect' or 'perp' (and like terms) with 'subject,' always try to humanise and empathise with the subject, and try to end things peacefully to the fullest of their capabilities. Lethal tactics are always the last resort.
     This show gives a whole other perspective to the world of crime and policing. I think it in its own league apart from the vast majority of other crime dramas. Many of the episodes have simply brought me to tears because of the incredibly uncommon empathy displayed by the characters, and thus the creators, writers, and actors, as well. Each character struggles with their own biases, their own clashing and contradicting views, and their prejudices. In order to be a cohesive unit that goes beyond simply SWAT, they continually have to overcome these distortions and oversimplifications of their realities.
     Flashpoint also shows the more biased, more prejudiced, more distorted views that people have, which regularly define, color, and filter our realities. They show the full range and potential of human emotion, both good and bad, as well as all the grey areas. They show how good people can do bad things, how all people can be driven and pushed to extremes. Each episode allows you to step not only into one person's shoes, but several people's, as you see intimate and raw moments, both in the most relaxed and tense situations. Love, hate, confusion, contempt, anguish, euphoria; it isn't just both sides of the pendulum swing that is displayed, but the full range and motion of that broad arc.
     So... that is when I was surprised by the episode, “Unconditional Love,” and not pleasantly. It started out without surprise: high-strung chronic criminal, car chases, volatile circumstances, et cetera, et cetera... But, then, a new character – Paul – was introduced. He was immediately depicted as the weaker personality, nervous, restless, scared. He was first depicted more as a victim caught up in a crazy situation. Later, however, it is found out that the chronic criminal gun procurer was obtaining a gun for the Paul. They found out that Paul was obsessing over and researching serial killers. They found out he was obsessing over multiple girls who looked very similar to his sister. They started to put the pieces together and steered in the direction of suspected psychopathy.
     That is when I got unpleasantly surprised and even a little disgusted. Of course, I saw more than the characters. Being the viewer of a greater narrative, knowing more than the characters, I saw things they couldn't possibly have seen. I saw Paul's demeanor, his expressions (most would say 'lack of expression'), body language, lack of eye contact... I immediately sprang to, “He has autism!” Within the first few seconds he appeared on screen, I got that autism feeling. I thought, “Great! An episode which can show a more realistic perspective of autism and its relation to law enforcement!” For any who don't already know, there are countless cases of autistics getting bullied, brutalised, and berated by classmates, teachers, kids, teachers, parents, strangers, and – all too often – police. The vast majority of these incidences are simply a case of ignorance gone very wrong.
     Too often, I see people call autistics 'psychopaths,' which is a radically different condition, but which – to the untrained eye – can present similarly on the surface. I've known several clinical psychopaths, and some of them are really great people. There are tremendous differences between violent and non-violent psychopaths, and its the non-violent I prefer to associate with, of course. But that could be truly said about anyone, any group, right? “I prefer the non-violent men to the violent ones; I prefer the non-violent addicts to the violent ones; I prefer the non-violent religious folk to the violent ones.” It's really a given. But, in a criminal sense, 'psychopath' doesn't include non-violent, or non-criminal psychopaths. In the terms of the law, and of law enforcement, 'psychopath' only refers to the violent, criminal types.
     So, yes, I was upset to find out that this wonderful show that I'd grown to love would depict a kid as autistic, yet having their main characters calling him a psychopath! In the context of the crime drama, that obviously pointed toward violent psychopaths. They didn't get all the information right away, and what little they did get initially suggested that he might be a psychopath. Parker, the unit leader, negotiator, and the head of the psychological aspect of the unit, kept saying, 'until we find out more.' He didn't want to jump to the conclusion that Paul was a psychopath before all the facts were in, even when the rest of the team had just about settled on him being one. Most of the characters had taken their biases and jumped to conclusions, but Parker – the real compass and centre of compassion for the team – held out, digging and digging, trying to find out more about the kid.
     Eventually, Parker suggested that Paul might have some kind of autism. Jules, a sniper in the tactics part of the unit, pointed out that autistics aren't violent by nature. She pointed out that autistics don't lack empathy, compassion, and emotion. Parker was cautious, saying it was only another suggestion until they get more facts. Paul helped release a baby taken hostage by the gun dealer. He non-fatally pistol-whipped the gun dealer and escaped. He hadn't been making particularly violent decisions. He did show genuine concern for others. Giving a history on Paul, the mother says how Paul didn't take pleasure in others' pain so much as be the sufferer of pain inflicted upon him. He was often the victim, he knew he had trouble connecting with people, he knew he couldn't read people, and tried to study facial expressions. But the fact that he didn't seem to show any emotions with the passing of his father made the mother fear for the worst, yet still clinging to the belief that her son wouldn't hurt anyone. It was the unit's assumption that her son was a psychopath that planted any idea or fear that her son might be one.
     But the facts, in the end, pointed to the truth. It became clearer and clearer that he was on the spectrum. Paul had researched his own experiences and symptoms and mistakenly concluded – like quite a few other autistics I've come across – that he was actually a psychopath. He researched psychopathic serial killers, because that was what he believed he was doomed to become. Misinformation, misunderstandings, and miscommunication all turned into this perfect storm of identity crisis. He knew he was different, but didn't know exactly why or how.
     In the end, Paul never killed anyone, only injured the gun dealer in an attempt to escape, and even ended up saying to Parker, “I don't want to hurt her [one of the lookalikes of his sister.]” Parker replied with a smile, “No, I know that. I knew that the minute we started talking.” Paul then non-threateningly handed the gun forward asking, “Do you want me to give the gun to you?” Paul, a kid with verbal autism, was good at heart, just like the mother knew, and didn't want to hurt anyone. But in a culmination of confusion, rage, and anxiety, he'd been driven to believe he was a psychopath, and thought he had to follow through like one. He didn't; he couldn't, because he was never a psychopath.

Jules (Amy Jo Johnson): Undiagnosed low-spectrum autism, a little obsessive compulsive...
Parker (Enrico Colantoni): Maybe a borderline personality disorder... And a mother who only sees the son she loves. He's brilliant, but different.
Jules: Do you ever get the feeling that we only scratch the surface?
Parker: Hmph. All the time.
Jules: You know, you were right today, though, about digging deeper.
Parker: We do what we can with the time we have, right?
Jules: Yep.

     And the show resumes being a dear favorite of mine, also continuing the long line of tear-inducing, heart-warming episodes.

My Journey into Absurdism

I've increasingly headed into a deeper absurdist way of thought. For any who might not know, absurdism is the philosophy that there is no inherent meaning in the universe, but that humans inherently seek meaning, and there is not necessarily need for conflict for these two things to exist. I've advanced to the way of thinking that absolutely no one has true free will, that all actions, reactions, consequences, all events and incidences, absolutely all in time and space at any given time in any given space was fated, inevitable, and unavoidable. It's not so much a matter of 'no matter what we do,' as it is 'there's only one thing we ever could've done.' Strangely, when I was younger and, honestly, more religious, I thought more in this way. I believed in fate, in predestination, in heaven and hell. I believed in the word of the bible, and this is what I was taught.

By my teens, I had a crisis of faith. Further and further contemplation placed my conscience against and my religion. The way I'd seen God depicted, He would, in my mind, be a violent sociopath unworthy of praise. Heaven and Hell were unnecessarily cruel and despicable acts of God, and that any God would allow, let alone intend, such cruelty was impossible to follow. The devil further gained my sympathy in the bible's narrative. A rebel anarchist who would not follow anyone's absolute rule, even a deity's. A tester of man who was more a gate keeper to Heaven than any other figure in the book. It felt more and more a simple narrative of humanity than a religious doctrine. The writings made more and more sense as I removed all concepts of morality. This triggered a further evolution in my way of thinking.

I arrived to the conclusion, only the third year into my twenties, that fate was real. I may have questioned everything - and I mean absolutely everything - that I had believed, but not everything changed as a result. In the turmoil and turbulence, some things still stood. In fact, I went from believing without understanding to believing because I understood. Doctrine all but entirely blew away in the storm of belief and conscience. Belief essentially vanished, and I accepted the idea that nothing can be believed so much as guessed. George Christopher on Board to Death, played by Ted Danson, actually captured it quite well when he said that we're each starring in our own movies, just guessing about others'.

My therapist pointed out that this is certainly very, "pot thinking." Yes, some of these conclusions were drawn during use of cannabis, even blossomed into what they are in part because of it, but she also pointed out that it was very 'me' thinking to begin with, pot or no pot. It wasn't actually a tremendous leap from where I was already going. I would say that I went from religious, to spiritual, to... something else entirely. I believe in mysteriousness, and my inevitable ignorance of the world, as all else have, only confirms its existence. God has become a concept to embody all this chaos, these perfect and inevitable trajectories in a predetermined film. God becomes a synonym for the universe around us, and all which we could not possibly know. God is what we can see and cannot. God was no longer religious, but a word which could conceptualise an entirety beyond our comprehension. The world around us, too big to understand, too complex to see all of the trajectories, however inevitable, to know what will happen and what must happen. All that will not, is not. All that would is. All that was must have been, and all that was not could not have been.

There is a tremendous amount of freedom that comes from this evolution of thought. A weight of conscience, self-consciousness, and fear of the unknown began to dissipate. I have actually become more productive, more active, and been able to actually take care of myself in at least the minimum amount (I have had trouble taking care of myself on a day-to-day level for a decade, at least.) The culmination of relieving pointless guilt from fundamental beliefs and treating my myriad conditions with cannabis has effectively put me at a peak of functioning. Am I anywhere near being a standard, functional adult? I highly doubt it. But even terminal patients are given the possibility of living comfortably until the end. Some would say it's worth compensating more for a shorter life-span, but even a shorter life-span can't warrant such special treatment in such cases without considerable discomfort in need of relief. It is the discomforts, the struggles, the burdens which are being compensated for. I believe (or should I say 'strongly guess,' now?) everyone has the right to do what they think they need in order to tolerate life and all that comes with it. I'm not such a delusional optimist as to possibly think all will or could possibly get that comfort. I do think, however, that every person and thing in the universe does what it 'thinks' it must to be in the most comfortable, moderate state. I think quantum physics, thermodynamics, and chaos theory all support my stance and are applicable.

My belief system became synonymous with the most fundamental aspects of science: most notably, making best educated guesses given the information we are aware and, thus, exposed to, and using these 'best guesses' as our new, and forever metamorphosing, foundation. We intuitively try to make our foundations as solid as possible and forget that nothing is completely unchanging, let alone permanent. A balance is struck, to the best of our capabilities, between open-mindedness and scepticism, questioning absolutely everything while maintaining our stance until new evidence comes to light which says otherwise. We rely whole heartedly on the facts, real or perceived, at hand, but benefit most from the acceptance that the conclusions we draw can change as more of such facts come to light. We try our bests, no matter what, given what realities we form out of what information we can scrounge up. Every reality, for each individual, becomes equally real, and all capable of change when new information capable of swaying and mutating our beliefs becomes accepted. We cannot always accept, however, and some things can actually harden our resistance to acceptance of all sorts and forms, making us maintain our realities, often even in the face of new information. Absolute belief, or even extremely strong beliefs, can become fundamentally resistant to certain forms of acceptance when new information is presented, which sometimes has more destructive, rather than constructive, consequence.

This has been my journey into absurdist thought, and reconciling my consciousness, thus far.

Action and Reaction

I am bipolar. I am autistic. I am anxious. I am who and what I am. There is no golden standard, there is no mold. I replaced my meds almost completely with cannabis, and it has worked out quite well for me, but everything is relative. If I say how great the pot has been for me, people assume that must mean that I am now 'normal' (ish) and no longer have any problems. False. Let's say I used to function at 2%, then I started using cannabis and went up to, say, 10%. That's 400% increase in functioning. Wonderful, right? 400% is a big number! That's 5 times how much I was functioning before! So, all the problems are solved, right? No. 10% is still a far cry from 100. That number, also, would still be an average and not a constant. That means that one day might be 4%, another 15%, another 8%, and so on. Outside factors also heavily influence this. If I'm staying at home watching Netflix all day, I'm more likely to feel like I could function more if I wanted, but if I'm out doing new things in new places, I'm going to feel like I'm pushing or breaking my limit, which leads to overload, which can lead to either a meltdown or shut-down. Meltdowns have been more the typical result.

When I get anxious, I get irritable, and when I get irritable, I get angry. Getting angry can make me aggressive, and then people stand there in the aftermath with dazed expressions wondering what just happened. Poking the bear is what happened. If I escalate, that all but undoubtedly means something or someone is causing me to escalate. When it is a someone that is escalating me, as I get more aggressive, the other person tends to get more persistent, which causes a continual process until I explode, which works out for no one. All the person has to do is stop. Stop talking, stop trying to alter or help me, stop everything. Just stop and leave. That is what I need.

My overload, meltdowns, and anxiety are not just quirks, they're not just things I can get over, not just overreactions I can briefly contemplate and then change my mind completely to, "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right." That simply is not the case. I also cannot just put these things in my back pocket when it's most convenient for everyone else. There are things that are acute and things that are chronic, and they require entirely different approaches. For instance, an acute panic attack as a result of a chronic anxiety condition requires a far different approach than when I'm not in such an acute state and can address the more long-term issues (which still don't benefit from immediate attempts at change, but take time.)

My brother and his fiancée are getting married. As the wedding has gotten closer and closer, as well as more and more 'real,' my anxiety has begun to skyrocket. The real tipping point was the fitting for the tuxes. That was when things really took a nose dive off a skyscraper. I'm also known for my big, curly, unfettered, and crazy hair. I've had it in many different styles throughout my life, some I like looking back on more than others. But the point is that I had some modicum of control. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. As I'm diving toward the pavement, my hair acted like my parachute. It was something I could depend on to not surprise me, to be there as it was before. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. It might seem silly to others, but my hair is - in some ways - an anchor.

Well, as people started turning my hair and how it should look for the wedding into a bigger and bigger issue, it was like watching someone trying to cut holes in my parachute while I was still falling. Of course I would panic and even act aggressively in an attempt to get others to stop. Of course it triggered an extreme reaction in me. But people never have the whole picture. We only really get a tiny glimpse at our very own pictures, our own lives and minds. So I'm not going to take it well when people make grand assumptions and enforcements about how I should look, act, be... I wear the tux that feels uncomfortable, stuffy, and drives me nuts because that is what was chosen. I'm attending because it's asked of me. I'm being a groomsman because it was asked of me. All of those things produce incredible, unbearable anxiety, but I do them anyway. So... when I'm adamant about my hair, about how I want my hair to be, others can back off and let me be. I think it's not such a big problem to ask they give me that much.

Also, comments like 'act your age,' or 'you should do ___ because it's what people do,' or, 'you could be/do so much more' are all bullshit, and I'm going to call them bullshit. If I am drawing the line at my hair, everyone else can get over themselves and just give me that much. If not being pestered about my hair, if being able to wear it and have it exactly as I want, can alleviate some of the anxiety all the other things are causing, you can give me that. Taking that away is a really, really shitty thing to do.

We live in a world of people who demand instant change, instant fixes, instant gratification. It doesn't work. Some things virtually never change, even, while other things always change. The other side of the coin is how people desire things to always remain the same, hustling and bustling to keep it that way in the face of a universe that would tear them apart without hesitation. Wanting change isn't inherently bad, nor is wanting things to remain the same. It is healthy - even understandable - to attempt to change some things and keep others the same. All actions cause reactions, and the wisdom of what actions we choose to take derives from the difference between what we wanted to happen and what did happen. Doing something repeatedly despite seeing a different reaction than desired is generally unwise. All reactions are warranted based on all of the influencing factors, and are seldom the result of a single, isolated incident.

Miracle cures don't exist, and most things don't get better right away. For all I or anyone else knows, I could die young never having been what anyone hoped for, or even die old and have the same result. Hypothetical thoughts and beliefs are not realities or facts, and very well may never come true. The only things that 'should' happen are the things that do happen, and everything else is fantasy. No, I'm not going to grow up to be the president. I may never be 'healthy' and I certainly will never be anyone's idea of 'normal.' I get by. I survive. I manage. Do I want more? Sometimes, but I also realise that wanting something doesn't automatically make it happen. Do I try to improve myself? Of course, but sometimes you can only do so much, get so far, and you have to live with and accept what you cannot change. People who can't accept that some things can't be changed hack at it so much that they kill it, anyway, making any possible resulting change meaningless and inviable.

Everything happens for a reason, I do believe that. In the simplest form, this means A causes B. A little truer would be to say A causes B; B causes C; C causes D... and so on, but even that is a gross simplification. A causes B1 and B2. B1 causes C1 and C2, while B2 causes C3 and C4. C1 causes D1 and D2. C2 causes D3 and D4. C3 causes D5 and D6. C4 causes D7 and D8. Then the Ds cause the Es, the Es cause the Fs, the Fs cause the Gs, and so on, growing exponentially more and more complex, a chaotic system, everything with a place, a role, a cause and effect. I don't do things without an underlying reason: none of us do. My actions and reactions are a product of countless forces and factors, some seen while others unseen. My anxiety, irritability, overload, meltdowns, and aggression are all results (which cause more results, which cause more results...) Some are more acute forces at work, while others are slower and more chronic. While others may be able to do little about the more chronic forces, at least in a given moment, they can do something about the acute ones. When I'm tipping over the edge, people don't have to help push me over. The best thing to do, sometimes, is to back off and do nothing.

People may be enigmas, but enigmas are codes, and codes can be cracked. No enigma is without its solution, its cipher, which can interpret its coded messages. No actions are without cause, ever, and everything has a reason.

Anguish of the Stoic

          It's never easy living with someone who is chronically ill. I know this from experience on both sides. For about a decade, now, I've watched my grandfather's health wax and wane with an overall trend toward decline. This is the curse of mortality, at work. It's not as though his body is deteriorating young, exactly.
          Well, I had a talk with him. It wasn't a talk about hospice, or a 'home for the elderly,' or any of the conventional talks younger family members have with their elderly members. I had the cannabis talk. While medical marijuana has been legal for some time, now that it's also legal recreationally, it has been gaining more general acceptance and is more (legally) available. I think that we should've brought up medical marijuana a long time ago with my grandpa, but I've now had personal experience in the world of cannabis, and particularly with using it medically, so it has started to seem particularly timely. Chronic pain, fatigue, appetite problems, sleep troubles, weakness, flattened affect... Living in the same household, I can tell that every day is a struggle and a feat for him.
          I've replaced all of my medications for: bipolar, anxiety, fibromyalgia, and countless other issues big and small. Virtually every aspect of my well-being has been improved in some way. Mood swings are quite nearly nonexistence, my anxieties have vanished, and my pain is controlled better than ever before. I can do dozens of times more physical activity, have had a shift in my diet that's more protein heavy, and had relatively great sleep. Things taste better, but I don't actually have an excessive appetite or get the munchies more than usual. Most of my bodily functions seemed to have improved in some way. Elusive problems that I haven't been able to treat before have been getting treated for the first time. How could I see all these improvements in myself and not think to suggest it to my grandpa?
          At this point, there aren't particularly 'good days' and 'bad days.' They all are struggles. I've witnessed him in complete agony, embarrassment, guilt, and crippling disability. With each step up or down the stairs, he moves like a quaking mammoth, slow and shaky. His muscles are being cannibalised by his body, his joints inflaming, his insides seemingly smashed and beaten, his bones deteriorating. When he smiles, you can still see how worn out he has become, how weary and exhausted.
          This is a stoic man. He has been through a lot, but he doesn't like to show it. Our family is accustomed to keeping our struggles to ourselves, braving them silently. When we finally ask for help, it's usually at a time of severe desperation. So to hear him crying out for help while in extreme pain says a lot about what he's been going through.
          Grandpa has a weakness for chocolate (I call him the Candy Drawer Bandit), and so I mentioned chocolate edibles. Coming from a very conservative, Christian background, he reacted surprisingly openly-minded, but he still shows some hesitation. I saw that he did seem to deeply consider using cannabis medicinally. Still, ages-old biases do seem to also have some hold over him. I don't expect him to make an instant, or even overnight, decision, and I'm frankly encouraged that he seems to be quite seriously considering the suggestion. While it will always be his decision, I do hope he at least gives cannabis a decent chance. It's not a miracle drug. It doesn't spontaneously cure all ailments. Still, I do think cannabis is a close second. It would be a relief to see him get some relief. The various drugs and pills he's on only do so much, and they have some considerable risks. It would be good to see him feeling healthier.

I No Longer Believe in Good and Evil

           That title is not click bait. It's not a gimmick or an intentionally (or even unintentionally) extreme statement to draw a reaction. It's a concise statement of a fact.
           After years of contemplation, and not just a fifteen minute epiphany, I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as good or evil. I've said for some time that such things live and die with humans. We created the concepts, and that's about as far as it goes. But I had still accepted the existence of good and evil simply because I accepted the existence of humans. I continued to contemplate this. Eventually, I concluded that there simply is no good and evil, so far as the practising definition goes, I no longer believe in their existence, even with the existence of humans.
           There was something else that I've said for a while that seemed to contradict my prior belief that good and evil both existed, and lived and died, with humanity: that humans aren't special. This contradiction was that humans couldn't be both mundane and the sole cause of the existence of good and evil; that would make is special. But I stand by the belief that humans aren't special. We're animals, like any other. Like any other living organism, our point of view is singular, on the inside looking out. Porpoises both have extraordinary brains that rival our own, and sonic radar that literally makes other vertebrates, at least, considerably transparent. At the very least, any 'special' qualities we have are relativistically mundane and matched by qualities in other creatures.
           I believe in neither a mystical 'fate,' nor in true 'free will.' I believe in trajectories, inevitabilities, and variables so far beyond our range of comprehension that we turn to such supernatural explanations. This completely contradicts the existence of good and evil. In order for good and evil to exist, people must have complete, informed choice. The aforementioned trajectories essentially suggest that everything that happens is inevitable. This is close to 'fate,' but without the belief that some supernatural entity is guiding everything with a wilful hand.
           I also believe that choices still matter. Virtually everything can be seen as akin to chemical reactions: what people say and do causes a reaction in what others say and do. Animals often kill or cannibalise the weak and deformed, which serves a purpose. I still believe the creation of those creatures was inevitable. I still think that the animals that killed their own had some semblance of choice. The choice was to let that one of their own continue living and risk the whole group, or to kill the individual and improve the group's odds. Such logic doesn't always win, though, even amongst non-Homo sapiens. After all, we live in a world where pet monkeys save pet dogs from house fires. Altruism is also an evolutionary, practical mechanism.
           Right and wrong are different and variable. For instance, is it wrong for someone to kill another being? Well, that entirely depends on the intended result. If the individual who does the killing got the results they wanted, then - for them - that was the right thing to do. Maybe not ethical, but right for them. Actions cause reactions. Whatever actions and results an individual dislikes the most becomes 'evil' and 'wrong.' When a collective dislikes it, it becomes immoral and unethical. These are just more words for the things we don't like. We can have good reason for disliking them, but it doesn't mean there's any objective morality or supernatural influence at play.
           Without actual 'good' and 'bad,' most arguments become, on some level, moot. Still, when definitions are preset, people go along with them. This means that people can proudly self-describe as 'bad,' and still be more well-adjusted than someone who yet others describe as 'good.' We often seem to ascribe immutability to our concepts of good and evil, but everything is mutable. This is a world of chaos we ardently and futilely attempt to force order upon.
           Ideals are not realities, and should not be expected to be able to be reality. Ideals are ideal, Utopian - even, but not realistic. Ideals inevitably undermine diversity. Even liberal ideals inevitably face the very hard and immovable wall that diversity undermines getting along. The false belief of good and evil further undermines widespread (but not entire) peace and happiness. It's also a false belief that peace and happiness are always 'good' things. Take morality, take supernatural or self-centred justice, out of the equation, then there's more room for harmony, acceptance, and inclusion. To be clear, this does not mean everyone would be happy, there would be no more wars, and people would live peacefully ever after. It merely means that the concepts of good and evil often get in the way of some realistic amount of cohesion.
           If anyone reads this, they probably won't agree, at least not completely, with my assessments and ramblings. The one rationalisation I may prefer is that the concepts of good and evil are so deeply entrenched in our psyche that others can't accept their non-existence, but another conclusion is that - in accordance with my previous statements - we arrive at different conclusions and have different points of view. Everyone has independent experiences and points of view, so it's ignorant to think we can all arrive at the same ones, and arrogant to think everyone should arrive at the same conclusions as me. While I no longer believe in good and evil, I believe the concepts and beliefs have their functions, their roles, and their places. The beliefs of the concepts have effects and cause reactions, partly shaping the world into what it is. To seek eradication of the beliefs is a result of a sense of good and bad, and to defy diversity and range. Beliefs are the functions of individuals, but their influence on the individual is passed on to the individual's influence on others.

The Black Hole of Nihilism Born of Sisyphean Reality in the Face of Disability

     I've done what I think is a fair amount of 'cyber' activism. I'm not exactly the sort to get out into the world much, let alone carry picket signs on the streets. My alternative is, therefore, to spread information online via what limited networking I have available to me. Online, you turn up a whole lot of in-the-streets type of activism in articles, blogs, and news snippets. Both online and offline, however, I seem to notice the same, tired political agendas rebranded and renamed; the same old limited ideologies, tunnel vision, and Sisyphean 'feats.'
     The social movements mirror the world around: black and white. Sometimes, this is both literal and figurative. All or nothing, yes or no, binary 0s and 1s... All of these movements feel depressing and lifeless, no matter what side you're on, when you see this Weldschmertz-inducing pattern recognition. People become filters, catching causes and views as they pass by. Even individual qualities, unique points of view, end up just being a result of collectivity. I learned some time ago that people are only unique so far as their particular collection of otherwise mundane qualities go. This seems to be far truer with crowds and groups, becoming a singular organism comprised of a collective. Drones of many species, but most renowned of bees, serve a purpose. There is more strength in a collective than an individual. Individuals who make impacts do so by forming a collective around them.
     I am acknowledging that they serve a purpose in nature, in life and societies. They're naturally occurring. Herds, colonies, flocks, swarms, and so on. Humans are not unique or special. Humans are not supernatural (as in 'above' or 'beyond nature.') Rather, because of the very nature of our existence, we are well within the confines of nature, like any other living organism. We are animals, factually and not pejoratively. The things we do and make are within the confines of nature by the very fact that they do not extend beyond natural laws, the laws of physics, chemistry...
     The more I try to stop and think before diving into a new idea, view, movement, or ideology, the more I find myself at a standstill. The more I try to be active in the world, the more I seem to become a drone. It seems impossible to be both an independent thinker and an active force in the world. Even the 'queens' of the world that seem to control the 'drones' seem to be the result of the same continuous patterns of nature, without true unique, independent thought. They're just one more kind of amalgam of experiences and information passed down one generation to the next.
     At what point does activism just become politics, or is it all the same, in the end? When are politics ideals? Ideals biological impulses? Biological impulses chemistry? It seems as though it is as likely for free-will to exist as it is for it to all be a delusional sham: vibrations and reactions that can all be accounted for in algorithmic form. What's the meaning of life? Maybe there is none. Do any of us matter? Perhaps as likely as not (think something like Schrödinger's cat.) It's these same questions, which often lead nowhere, in the end, that get me in the locked-up standstill. But being active in the world often involves foregoing thought, more or less, and submitting to a sort of herd or tribe mentality.
     It's all exhausting. It's all mind-numbing. My version of "increased activity" or "improvement" is typically still a fraction of the statistical mean. I have what seems to be an incredibly limited amount of action and energy to devote to anything, each day, often building up to some kind of combustion, which temporarily disrupts even that limitation. It's incredibly frustrating knowing that, no matter what treatments, therapies, or strategies I try out, I will always have such a finite amount of energy to devote to anything in life. Forces my hand to either pick-and-choose extremely selectively, or to give up and do nothing. Freeze instead of bothering to make such choices. I lose faith in causes, movements, activism... I lose faith in life and purpose...
    Some with similar struggles and obstacles as myself (mood disorders, anxiety disorders, chronic pain and fatigue, autism, take your pick) often drown themselves in activism and causes. At some point, however, I watch these people and can pick apart their actions, their positions, and always conclude either a delusion of free will or simple futility. I find some kind of flaw, some kind of hypocrisy or contradiction, in their ideologies, actions, views... No matter how passionate I become, how certain and filled with conviction I become, I always arrive at the same place of disillusionment, exhaustion, and pointlessness. And then... I begin rolling the boulder back up the hill, once again.