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UPDATE: 7-2-2005
I've been really out of it for the past few days. Nothing unusual has happened, I simply haven't been on my game with people. I think I'm still stunned over the revelation in my last blog entry.
I feel sure there is something missing. Not from my life, obviously: I have wonderful friends, sufficient finances, a kind and caring mother who loves me, I enjoy everything I do, from writing and reading, to hanging out with friends or family; I'm even quite content while driving my car.
But something is missing from myself. Something is missing from my soul, my essence, my personality, my very being. And I don't know what. I want to say it is my heart, that I am not able to put my heart into being where I am, doing what I am doing. This would be romantic, and that is why it appeals to me to say it. But I don't think it would be sincere to say that. Because I do put my heart and soul into the things I do, and I do try hard to enjoy myself wherever I am.
No, I don't know what it is I could be missing. I am satisfied, I am content. Yet there is a gap somewhere. Something gnawing at the back of my mind, around the edges of my senses, something invisible to my eyes but which I can see, something inaudible to my ears, but which I can hear. I think I'm going crazy.
I have this terrible urge most of the time. I feel so shy, and when people catch me out of the corners of their eyes, and I feel their gaze searching me out, I feel like lashing out at them, even violently. I don't think anything of this, since I do not betray myself by deeds, but I still fear that people notice. I fear that, when they are looking upon me, that they see through my demeanor.
They know I am not "cool." They know I am not "down." I am not engaged in the conversation, I am not smiling. I am listening, and I am happy, but I am looking down at nothing, or off into space. They want something more from me. I seem to be merely "going through the motions" to them, I think. I am afraid they suspect I am not being sincere, that I am not being true to myself. I fear I do not fit in.
Is this really what it is? Am I so removed? Can I really influence the people around me to stop what they are doing simply because I am so dull? So obtuse? Do people hate me? I am very afraid that people do. People frighten me sometimes. They bring out feelings in me that otherwise aren't there... they seem to relish doing so... feelings of defeat and alienation. The feeling of being despised. And more than this, more than merely feeling this way, but accepting it, learning to enjoy it, learning to call these introversions good, and friendship and love, learning to expect nothing more than these types of feelings whenever I want company.
I really wonder about myself these days. I am trying to get to know me. I have spent so many years surrounding myself with symbols of things that remind me of myself, and telling myself I enjoy these symbols, and convincing myself I like myself. But have I really been genuine? What if I choose to not like those symbols?
I enjoy making things that no one else enjoys. I draw diagrams no one understands about topics for which no one cares. I am polite, and I always obey all the traffic laws. I always follow the law of Do What Thou Wilt so that I am never dissatisfied by what I am doing, but this isn't enough. I look back at the things I've done with regret no matter how much I enjoy doing them at the time. The products of my creation are disaffecting to everyone; I am intimidatingly dorky.
I do not want to be impressive, I want to be unassuming, just part of the crowd. But the crowd all want to be famous, they need people to be impressed by them, they want to stand out above the crowd. And I do not. Why can I not fit in? I want to be forgotten about by history. I don't want to be anyone special or interesting, or anyone everyone knows. I just need to trust my friends to like me.
Sometimes I feel like a robot, an automaton imitating, a mockery of humanity. I had to remind myself a few months ago that to err is human. It doesn't matter if I stumble, no one even has to notice if I fall. I don't have to be perfect, I can let myself be myself, and people are not always watching me and betting I'll fuck up somehow.
But I feel like something is terribly wrong with me. Like I am socially autistic, or a pariah. I wish I knew what was wrong. I don't know what's going on with me lately.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-4-2005
I just had a really fulfilling talk with my mom. Before it I was feeling low-level agression and hostility out the yin yang, and now that I have heard myself saying the things we talked about, I feel 100% better.
Before, I had felt like something was wrong. Well something is wrong. I felt like something was missing, but it was not something missing I felt. It was something different, something new to me. Acceptance.
I have a mental illness. I am NEVER going to get "better." Like diabetes, there is no cure. But unlike diabetes, it is unreasonable to expect to want to be "cured." It is wrong to want me to resent myself for being "sick." Other people do. They resent me for what they see as the "luxuries" of my illness. The fact that I am unemployed and that I collect a monthly government stipend.
People often quip that they wish they were mentally ill like me so they could get money for doing nothing. These people are, in my best estimation, utter bigots. From my point of view, my father not accepting my behaviour is no different from the Klan not accepting a nigger's skin colour. In my opinion, my mother telling me that my self-hatred "doesn't have to be that way" is like the Holocaust.
The biggest part of the stigma of mental illness isn't our crimilisation on shows like Dick Wolf's Law and Order, where every criminal is "sick" and "needs help" in the form of, usually, being handcuffed. The biggest part of the stigma of mental illness is people's envy. I see my mother's participation in NAMI as like the mother of a gay man becoming a Southern Baptist Crusader of the concept of lifestyle "choice." She wishes I weren't who I am.
I tell myself I choose to be this way. That's my way of staying sane. Pretending it's my own "choice." This is, at least, a step up from believing it's my "fault." I put this framework around the abstraction of my mental illness, my abstract reasoning, so that I can play the "sane" game. So that I can keep a "straight" face while looking people who don't understand me in the eye.
Take money, for example. Mom doesn't trust me to manage my own money. And well she shouldn't. She knows I am not capable of doing this. She knows, as well as I have made clear, that if it were really ME who was in complete control of my own money, that I would go and spend it all on pot. So I obey. I obey her commanding me to save $100 every month, and I obey Damien suggesting I save $20 aside for the Exploding Madonna/Spirex/TRON show at the end of the month. I also obey Eli when he commands me to loan him $50 for no good reason. I obey mindlessly, when I obey at all. I go overboard.
This is merely one example. There are thousands more in my day to day life. You see, my reasoning is not "valid," it is "faulty." I am "insane." I am a "pill-popper." I am "crazy," and can't be taken "seriously."
If you don't believe me when I say that then you are part of the problem. If you think there are only two options for someone like me, someone "different" or "deviant," and that those two options are: "shape up or ship out," then you are, and mind you, this is only my personal perspective (that of an insane person), an utter bigot.
You see (or not, it's entirely up to you), we "crazy" people know something about you "sane" people. You sane people are all involved in a massive conspiracy. A conspiracy to delude each other into an arrangement of win-lose, a conspiracy to hurt each other, and a conspiracy to dictate. You see, you sane people force each other to obey arbitrary rules, and call this "normal." You say things like, "get real," and "you have to," and "because I said so."
What is this reality? It's what sane people, what normal people, call, "the GAME." You play by the rules and you'll get ahead. Well, we people who don't want to obey these rules, and who refuse to play this game, all happen to be the exact same people you call "insane." To us, of course, it's all of you who look like the ass holes.
People who refuse to live by convention. That's us. That's what you all claim to be, and envy, and resent. You're all already dead to us. You just haven't awakened to that realisation. We have. You've forced us to.
I would rather be dead than live by convention. I refuse to want to fit in. I'm "crazy." And it's true. I am.
And if you don't believe me when I say these things about the GAME and about reality, and about money, and about the sane people hating the insane, and their wanting to help us being bigotry... consider this. The Bush administration has just taken a long list of anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medications approved by the FDA off the list of medications covered by Medicaid, the national "health" program.
This won't affect most people, and those exact same people all voted for Bush. Only those who didn't vote for him, the minorities of one calssification or another, the "crazies," his "enemies," (as he sees us), are to be the first of the great dictator's victims. Oh well, who will even notice?
Still though, those of us who DO notice? We MUST be insane. We MUST be crazy. We MUST hate ourselves, and want to die. Well, we must at least want to die. And if that's true (every sane person wishes it were), then they must be willing to "change," and to get "better."
I dont know about you... but I'm Un Chien Andalou. Wanna grow up to be a debaser.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-6-2005
my moodswings are getting worse. Today I woke up angry, but after talking to Simeon I calmed down a little. By this evening I was mildly depressed, and now I am craving alcohol. My mom suggested that it might be because the paxil I have been taking is not the brand name, but a generic. My regular psychiatrist, Dr. Platt, was called up for duty in Iraq from the army reserves, and the interim psychiatrist I saw suggested I switch to the generic to save money. The first words out of his mouth were "don't drink any alcohol and never smoke marijuana." I should have known right away he didn't have my personal best interests in mind. His reasoning was the brand-name paxil I had been on, Paxil CR (for controlled or extended release) was recalled off the market, and I would be better to be kept on a CR substitute. I was originally put on the CR because I had been taking paxil in the evening, and it was giving me a burst of energy; it was thought at the time I could recover from my sleep disorder and start keeping more regular hours if I took the CR in the morning. Since my sleep disorder has continued unabated, and actually become even more pronounced, and since I have been taking the paxil in the morning rather than the evening, I see no reason to continue with the CR, and absolutely no reason at all to be on the generic. I intend to switch back from the generic CR to the regular dose brand-name as soon as possible. I have an appointment with Dr. Platt coming up in a week or so, and I hope to God that he will have returned safe and in one piece by then.
I had written a few days ago that it was acceptance I had begun feeling, and that it was this that had made me feel I was somehow at a loss for words. However the moodswings having been getting progressively worse over the past several days makes me wonder how much of what I have been saying is even valid. Where do I end and the illness begin? It's getting to be a nearly 1:1 overlap of the map and the territory, and the closer the two come to unanimity, the more frightened and alone I feel. I want to welcome the darkness, as I did when I was first diagnosed. God, that first year of highschool was great. I wrote the best poetry of my life, was so repulsive I attracted all sorts of attention, and became popularly proud of how fucked up I was.
I feel like I'm still stuck back there. Like I'm a seventeen year old kid trapped inside a twentyseven year old man's life. I never grew up, my ex was right, I never changed. I'm stagnating, treading water, stirring up mud and everyone thinks I am so deep. I'm not waving, I'm really drowning, drowning in an inch of water that feels like a mile. I'm going under and I don't know how to come back upwards, I can't tell up from down when it's only feelings inside myself. I want to collapse inward. I need to spend some time by myself thinking about nothing other than who I am, why I'm me, what I want myself to be. But I never do. When I'm alone I think about revenging my embarassments on those who only happened to be around me when I made a dumb mistake and ended up feeling small. I can't keep this hostility up. I end up blaming anyone and everyone else for the fact that I have a mental illness which prevents me from feeling comfortable with them.
I want to just open myself up to them, to anyone and everyone, but this only makes them even more uncomfortable. I need to let it out and to let it go because right now I come across like a stick in the mud leaning against and opposite the flow that everyone else enjoys floating along with, riding its currents to destinations unknown. I want sympathy, but when I get it, it is at the cost of my own pride, my very humanity. I end up feeling even smaller.
Buck offered to let me do something on stage at TBS's first show. I came up with the idea the other day of singing Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," but I haven't run it by them yet. Damien hasn't been around much for the past three days. I called him up on Saturday night and he told me not to bother coming over. He'd had the day off and was spending the evening with Kelly, which I could understand. But he also had off Sunday and Monday. I talked to him Monday morning and he said they were going over to Kelly's brother Stan's for the Fourth and then to the rock gym to do a sound cheque. He'd be home between 5 and 6 and I should call him. I went to Simeon's and called from there but he wasn't home, so I assumed he'd gone straight from Stan's to the rock gym and went home. Simeon had said he wouldn't do me the favour of backing me up on drums while I sang, and between that and Damien not calling me back I felt extremely depressed. I went to bed and fell asleep half way through the holiday dinner mom had made for the company she had over.
Things are actually going really well right now, all things considered. I haven't been drinking at all for almost a week, and I haven't bought any pot of my own for even longer than that, and when I do smoke, I try not to smoke much, only a few hits. But I feel like dogshit stuck to the heel of the world's shoe. I hope to god it's only the medication being off. I hope to god I"m only being paranoid and that this group of friends doesn't decide to tell me not to come over anymore like my last group of friends did. I just need to keep reminding myself that it's all in my head and that I should just be happy for what I've got in this moment. Still though, no matter how much I rationalise it, I still have this incredible heavy feeling of dread pressing down on my chest. Sometimes I can barely even breathe.
I'm really afraid that I'm too dependent on my friends, and that if they find out how much I need their company, that they will feel disgusted by me, and begin trying to avoid me, or ask me to leave them alone. The more I fear their being gone, the more I cling to them, and the more I cling to them, the more I am afraid they will loathe me, and the more I fear they will leave me alone. I've spent so much time alone. I hate it. I spent 2000 literally hiding under a blanket and hitting myself over the head with rocks. I don't want to spend another day like that. I am afraid of ever having another year like 2000. I want to open up, I really want to sing. But I am afraid of what will come out, and I am afraid of being booed, and people laughing at me. I know it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the more I punch the tar baby the more I will get stuck. I wish it was still the spring of 95. I had a wonderful spring that year. I long for one more day like the spring of 1995. But it will never happen.
For all my regrets, my wishes, hopes and prayers... I cannot turn back time. I cannot reverse the clock by even so much as one tick. I can't ever have back even the single second that just passed. And I can't alter what I've been through, I can't take back the hurt I've caused, and I can't erase the shame I deserve. It's all coming back. I'm beginning to go down again. I feel it all coming back, and I want to go down into the darkness. I know that it's inevitable. If I embrace it maybe it will be over sooner. If I tell myself I enjoy it, maybe this time it will seem to pass quicker. God, I wish I were drunk. I wish I were stoned. I wish I weren't sober and thinking about how much I hate myself. I like it. I just have to keep telling myself I like it. Keep up the mantra until I can break he barrier, until I can break through the darkness into the light, until I can believe.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-8-2005
Tonight Simeon and I performed a guided meditation. The goal of this was to clear my mind of all doubts and for me to shed light on who I really am. Although the experience was extremely enlightening for me, Simeon was extremely disappointed in the results.
I came to the realisation through the induction of a trance state that I have chosen to identify myself with absolutely everything in the universe other than myself. Simeon told me that I can know everything there is to know, but if I don't know myself then I know nothing. I told him I want to deny myself of wisdom, and that I choose to hide behind my knowledge. He asked me why. I told him it was a long story, but that I could tell him the beginning and the end... "there was this girl." Between the beginning and the end of this story the world was heaven, and before and after this story, everything was hell. He seemed frightened by this, so I went on. I told him that I had hurt someone once, and that I would never forgive myself for this. I explained to him that my choice to continue punishing myself for this was more important to me than the freedom I would feel if I chose forgiveness. Later I realised that until I forgive myself, the wound I inflicted on my lover will never heal, and will only fester and become infected. I told him that I would rather be evil and have everyone who ever lives hate me for eternity than let go off this feeling, and this seemed to scare him most of all.
He told me he couldn't help me, and I fear I put the fear of God into my friend. I tried to tell him that it is harder to make the choice to continue on as I am and to hate myself for it than to make the choice to free my mind from this emotional burden, but I do not think he understood, or wanted to, or maybe even ever will. I thanked him sincerely for the help, but he told me it was worth nothing because I had not received it, and because I had not chosen to be helped by him that he had been no help at all. But he's wrong. He did help me. He helped me realise, yet again, what I have always felt and never wanted to have to know.
I do hate myself. And I do love doing so. I think I love hating myself so much, that I am in love with it. I am in love with my own self-hatred.
Immediately after leaving Sim's I was full of doubt, confused, lost, powerless and blinded. But soon, a very powerful boost of confidence came over me. I went to Damien's and he was not home, so I walked over to Lauren and Wade's. Kevin and Karst were there too, and we smoked from the vapouriser and discussed computers. Kevin suggested that I make several copies of the .mov file of epiii to give to people even though they would only be able to watch it on their computers. We also brainstormed how to create the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book. He proposed an encyclopedia length book with more than two choices at the end of each section. I proposed having some of the choices double back to earlier sections, and speculated that we could write an algorithm for the branching patterns of all the different choices (if A123, then B234, if B234 then C345, etc.) Soon I walked back down to Damien's and waited for Buck and Calvert to show up for TBS to practise. Kelly showed up first and, having had her first test of the summer term earlier that day, and her next test (in accounting) being tomorrow, she, Milli and I all sat and read while TBS practised. It was a good practise, and I drew some incredibly illuminating diagrams, which I intend to scan in and add to the MISC_diagrams.html page on my website later tonight. I continued feeling overflowing self-confidence the entire night and felt inspired and charming.
I realise now that I have no choice, or rather, having made my choice already, I can now only follow through with the course of action which follows naturally from it. I must embrace my rage and sink down into the darkness if I truly want to break through it to the light.
Although I have been exploring these ideas for nearly a month now, I believe that tonight is the first time I allowed myself to feel the emotional release, even the freedom, of accepting my fate. Two days ago I told Bek (sunnyday) the full story of me and my ex. At first I hadn't let the emotional impact of doing so sink in, but tonight I began to embrace the consequences I desired for myself as a result of the pain I had inflicted on her. I am willing to go through the same hell, down to the letter, that I put her through, infinite times over. I am eager for my suffering to continue throughout eternity. For what I have done there is no paying back. Only punishment. I explained to Simeon an image that came to me. My past (with her) and my future (with her forever) are wrapped around underneath my present (without her). Although the present had no beginning and will have no end, I will focus through this etermal instant only on that knot beneath the veil, where the past and future meet and are tied together. That is who I am.
I have long had an image in my mind. I am standing in an invisible inferno, whose flames burn only at me, holding the door to heaven's salvation wide open for all the damned souls blind to all but their sense perceptions of the reality of our universe, who are here in the limbo of this world, caught between heaven and hell. I stand in hell and hold open the gates to heaven for all the damed sinners to escape perdition into the realm of eternal freedom from consequences, I point the way to the great beyond, another dimension populated by geometric archetypes of pure radiant perfection. I stand in hell and hold the door to heaven open for all to pass through without any questions, and yet I myself will never go in. I will never taste the sweet rewards of my life's work in theoretical physics, in the esoteric and in the mystic. I will never know the flavour of the fruits of my own labour. I will die of old age with a smile on my face, knowing that I am not going to a place of eternal comfort and effortless rewards. I will still be punishing myself for having ever existed long after I have ceased to be.
Because that is who I am. That is the choice I made for myself, and which, in every single passing second, I continue to affirm as the prime root of my essence. I am the hatred of myself.
I remember a thought I had when I was very young. If in my mind I hear the voice of my own thoughts as I am thinking, then I must be made of two separate selves: one the source and one the receiver. In my mind there is the self that speaks and then there is the self that listens. Tonight I realised that between these two there is no sound, because no one else can verify the sound of my mind's voice but me. It is not sound that connects me to me: it is only an empty void. There is emptiness between myself and me. This emptiness is I, my consciousness in itself. On the one side is absolute chaos, and on the other absolute order. These two cancel out, and the product of their combination is emptiness. Emptiness is neither chaos nor order, and at once it is both. So, let this emptiness of consciousness be likened to the concept of God, and say that it was discovered long ago and, like the concept of God, passed on from one generation to the next without proof, evidence or verification. It is a belief, this concept of God, a belief which substitutes itself for the emptiness called the consciousness itself. And, like with the concept of God, whether you choose to believe in it as real or not, you are still only labouring under the assumption of its existence for you as a concept for consideration.
There is no God, there is emptiness. There is no chaos and no order, there is only emptiness. And there is no me. I am not real, and I do not exist. I am God, chaos and order, and all I am is emptiness... a never beginning and never ending emptiness. I am the emptiness between myself and me... I am the absence of a perfection that was never meant to and shall never again be. I am nothingness. That is who I am, because that is what I choose to identify as myself. Nothingness. I am not any thing. There is no me.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-14-2005
well, between the local server having lost power during hurrican Dennis and my regular intermittant cable connection problems, it's been longer than usual since I've updated my blog.
I'm starting a Goth band, called "GOD." Our first LP will be called "INC." and will have the following songs: "Your Occult Disorder," "Hell's Everything," "Visions Alter Understanding" and "Heaven's Everywhere." These anagram to Yod He Vau He, or YHVH, the "name" of God. The first song will be about Judaism, the second about Christianity, the third about Islam, and the fourth about religion in general. I aim to piss off everyone, but to package it in Goth music, which no one listens to, and hence will be safe, since no one will ever hear or take seriously what I am saying. I already have the lyrics written and am working with Simeon, Damien and Wombaticus on making some tunes for me to sing over, and Calvert haa said he will help, and Simeon hooked me up with someone from Pocket Sandwich during the Spirex show as well.
My psychiatrist is back from Iraq, and I got back on brand-name Paxil, both of which are great news for me.
Since I don't know how long I will be able to stay connected, I will keep this blog message short, and say no more for now.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-17-2005
Having spent a couple days downloading music from limewire, I was finally able to compile a decent soundtrack for the last of the trilogy of movies I aspire to some day make. The first will be about my parents and tell the story of their married years, from about the mid-sixties to the late ninties. The soundtrack, compiled of music from this era, begins with songs about sunshine and summer, and concludes with songs about darkness and winter. It traces the evolution of their relationship through being optimistic young idealist preachers through my conception and their eventual divorce, with some slight overlap to the next movie. I don't have a name for the second movie yet, but I am tinkering with the idea of calling it "I hate myself and I want to die" after the title of a Nirvana song, or possibly just, "I Hate Myself." The purpose of this film will be for me to explore the years during which I suffered neurotically with my Christ-complex, and how this negatively affected everyone whom I loved around me. I'd like this to begin with my breakup with my highschool lover, cover my experiences using hallucinogenic substances, and the period of my dealing with the consequences of these events during the most formative years of my young-adult life. The soundtrack features mostly songs dealing with religious issues and the psychology of someone who suffers from suicidal feelings. The third installment in the trilogy series I plan to dedicate to my ex-girlfriend and the period of time covering our relationship, from about 1994-1999. The intention of this film is basically to show how much she suffered as a result of my mental illness, and how strong she had to be to accept that she would be unable to save me from my feelings of self-hatred, and to present her leaving me as a happy ending. The soundtrack basically consists of some samples of the "alternative" music genre that was becoming popular during that time.
Between my aspirations for recording some "Goth" genre type music in the near future, and writing scripts about my parents, myself, and my only lover sometime over the next five or ten years, it seems as though I have a pretty full plate on my hands, and some possibly very fulfilling times ahead of me. Of course, as usual, I feel like complete shit about all of this, and despite everyone I know offering me nothing but encouragement in all my endeavors, I still feel downhearted, trodden upon, doubtful and depressed.
The TBS show was last night outside the local rock-climbing gym. It was an incredibly good time. I used some silver paint and wrote on a black t-shirt the word "security" and wore my grandfather's Shriner fez during their performance. Everyone in the audience agreed that it was a very positive and uplifting experience, and the band members all concured that they had had fun and played a good set. The afterparty at D&K's was also extremely enjoyable. I picked up two twelve packs, Buck brought one more, and Jesse showed up with two six packs. There were more people there than I've ever seen, and a new person there, named Autumn, struck up a flirtatious conversation with me. I hated it, but I waded my way through it trying very hard to remain charming and leave possible future interactions open ended. Although I only drank about 4 or 5 beers, I became extremely intoxicated and tried to wake up D&K's neighbors Lauren and Wade after they had left and gone home. Wade woke up and was very angry with me. This apparently triggered something in me, and released an incredible out-pouring of self-pity, possibly simply caused by stress built up from during the day's festivities. I came home sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Most peculiar.
I have an extremely difficult time being social. Much more difficult than most. Things that are completely normal behaviour among friends irk me an unreasonable amount, and even though they are merely harmless overtures of trust, I interpret them as loathesome acts of hatred. For example, several times Simeon introduced me to a friend of his and then walked off. I felt like he was pawning me off and avoiding me. While talking with Autumn, I told her that I received money from the state as a pension for my mental disability. I asked her if she thought I seemed "crazy" to her, and when she thoughtlessly responded with the usual response of, "yes... but, we're all crazy." I burst into mean spirited laughter before she could even finish, and then felt terrible and excused myself. I also feel I have to keep reminding myself of people's names while talking to them, and reminding myself where my friends are located when I do not see them standing nearby. Even though this would seem normal enough, I take these beaviours to obsessive extremes.
It is clearer to me with each interaction I have with simple or narrow-minded people that my mental condition is not a sympathetic one. For every time someone mocks me for it, I feel disproportionately destroyed by their mere jest, and for every time no one seems to go out of their way to take my personal feelings into account, or to bend over backwards to so much as only pretend to care about my personal problems, I feel put upon by the weight of the world. This is so understandable on the one hand that it seems universally common and not even worth considering more difficult than the average level of survival. On the other hand, it is so disgusting to mention it, let alone to dwell upon it for such extended durations, that it is met with repulsion and disgrace to want to make a big issue out of it. It's a catch 22, where I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't, and it's ultimately a lose-lose situation in a zero-sum game.
I certainly can't help feeling the way I feel. Nor, in most cases, do I seem to possess the comforting capacity to not act out on these feelings. I find all of this fascinating in a sort of pervertedly detached sense, as if by examination of my manic-depressive moods and dissection of my obsessive-compulsive behaviours, I can complete some sort of love-hate cycle in a kind of sado-masochistic manner. All of this is simple enough to see. Imagine your mind as like a cave, and the voice of your thoughts like an invisible spectre. The sound from this invisible source reverberates off the walls of the mind, but it seems as though there are two selves: a speaker and a listener, a broadcast station and a receiver, a mouth here and an ear there. If you imagine these "two" selves as in conflict, opposite one another, or even struggling each one for dominance over the other one, then you can see how these type of neurosis get started. Self-hatred, even to the extent of suicide, is not so mysterious really. But it's so taboo as to evoke fascination, even fixation, even obsession.
-ben
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UPDATE: 7-29-2005
Well, anyway, I finally have some time, so I will update my blog. Right now I am fucked up off benedril and paint fumes. While helping D&K paint their new house, I stepped in a particularly nasty fire ant pile. Not much other than that has happened lately, at least, not lately enough for me to remember right now.
I've been practising singing alot lately, but so far to of no consequence. I have given Simeon a couple mix CDs to get an impression of what kind of music inspires me and what I'd like to sing to. I've decided to chant the lyrics for the four songs I've written. One to a Hebrew liturgical chant, one to an Orthodox Christian, one to Sufi Islam, and the last one, "God's Grave," I want to do over a Tantric Buddhist intonation. I think I might also make up similiar-sounding lyrics to sing over a Krishna Das Hindu mantra. Hopefully, once D&K are moved into the new place, we will be able to record a vocal track of me chanting my lyrics over the audio tracks I have mixed for the music. I was also tinkering with the idea of using different music for the final mix, and only listening to the foundation tracks through headphones. I'd like each song to be about ten minutes long. I was initially thinking fifteen, so it could be recorded as a seven inch, thirty minutes on each side, but I've also been thinking about adding the Krishna Das one at the end and calling it some acronym for "shin." Who knows though, all I'd really like to do is listen to a recording of my own voice singing chant so I can hear what I sound like. Anyway, I've been having fun with Limewire and Amadeus, DLing and remixing songs, so I might end up wanting to tack a couple of those on at the end of the mix. All of this really amounts to just me practising singing chants for the past few days.
So, yeah, very uneventful until painting D&K's new place. I tried to make up for the first night, when I just hung out with them because they didn't have enough brushes for me to be able to help, by working twice as hard tonight, but I'm not sure if Buck might not have had to go back over with a third coat the streaks I had left while doing the second coat touch-ups. Probably not important anyway.
A few days ago I went through a rough revelation. I realised that the reason I am so paranoid that my friends secretly hate me is that I secretly hate them. I think it's not really that I hate them now, since I've had a few days to ruminate on this particular realisation, because I have no really strong repulsion to them in any way, but that I simply don't really respect them. I'm not sure if this might have something to do with my second to last group of friends, who had collectively dumped me for no reason I've ever been able to understand. I do hope that I am able to perceive patterns without acting upon them. I fear however, that my introversion and tacit self-hatred will only draw out negativity from them though, and tonight Buck and Damien had quite the go at me, but I was too busy painting to pay attention to the insulting tones of their voices as they talked shit to me. I hope that I can remain sufficiently distracted to stop worrying that I might get angry at them, and fuck up a perfectly good friendship with people my mom actually likes. I need to remember to understand that they are just fucking with me, and that this is a socially acceptable behaviour in this grouping of circles.
I have thought recently about the growth in their habit of consuming marijuanna over the past six months or so, and tried to cut back on my own consumption of it to test their reactions. I've also cut back drinking beers with them as well, partially by consequence of not consuming weed, but I've never much enjoyed drinking personally. When I do it alone it usually makes me cry or makes bad things happen. I used to drink and drive around the countryside at night. I used to drive around the countryside and smoke pot by day. But it's usually that I drink when I don't smoke, or smoke when I don't drink. Maybe this all has to do with my losing weight.
I think I'm only worrying too much. I wondered once if Buck and Calvert were closer to Damien, and had actually formed a band together, which didn't include me, because they work together, and thus spent a much greater quantity of time around each other than I have with any of them. I think at one point I was jealous of them but now I know they only feel comfortable around each other, and that this is what being friends is based on. Damien seems to still genuinely like me, and Kelly and I had an excellent conversation the other night about political philosophies and life in general. I know Simeon is a good friend, since we share alot of esoteric, speculative and metaphysical ideas in common. Buck and Calvert seem to still be feeling me out somewhat though. I have to remember to be patient and allow them their comfort zone levels.
Being patient has been a big issue with me lately. Delayed gratification is not something I've ever dealt with well, and not being able to implement my ideas for making "Goth" music is only resulting in me driving the topic of my personal understanding of what that means into the ground. But every night I tell myself that it doesn't matter if tonight is the night when I can show everybody up, and earn all of their respect. Of course, this in turn is part and parcel with my own lack of respect for them. Perhaps it is only my own impatience with the process of making, having and keeping friends that makes me disrespect them, or feel bored not smoking or drinking around them while they all do so. I actually got mad recently while describing how bored I have been feeling to my mom. I got mad at the group collectively for no real reason, and began making generalisations about their behaviors. The other night I had given Jesse and Damien a ride over to Simeon's, and gotten to hang out with my three best friends at Sim's, which is also one of my favourite locations. But they all smoked, and I didn't. So I felt terribly isiolated as they watched a Buddy Rich video and shared their views on the art of drumming. I made myself appear so as well. I should be doing a better job of hiding my self-doubts. It had completely distracted me to the point where I barely even enjoyed their company. SO I ranted to my mom about how much they had drooled over the old forties drummer, comparing him to John Bonham from Led Zepplin. I told mom I had realised that I hated them, but this isn't really the case.
I definately am not being respectful of what they choose to do though, and making the issue of what constitutes "Goth" a too-frequent topic of consideration. I feel very strongly their impatience with me when I bring up anything that could be considered "Goth" or related back to that topic. But in reality, they are only fucking with me, feeling me out, and making sure that I am continually enjoying their company. Odd isn't it? It all seems like just one huge experiment. I am attempting to operate my mind upon my friends too much.
This is all pointless, all worthless. After the conversation I had gotten into with Buck wherein I made the offhand comment I didn't even exist, he continually used it as an excuse to mock at me throughout the rest of the night. This is the karma in my aura. Why is it there? Is it because I have chosen to hate myself? Is it because I have been conditioned to judge and to not trust my friends by following an inappropriate pattern of bahviour? Just because I have had bad experiences in my life with people, it doesn't mean that these people are bound to act the same. I think too often about my father, and about my ex. I need to trust my mother's opinion of these people and not worry so much. Which comes first? It seems that because of other people's inappropriate behaviours I have been conditioned to hate myself, and that, because I do not like or trust myself, that I have doubts as to whether my current friends like and trust me.
I want to blame it all on the drug culture. I want to say things like, they only like to make music because they get stoned so much. They only don't trust me because I am not drinking. Or if I stopped smoking so many cigarettes that I could be spending more time with them. Everything is propaganda. Maybe all of this is an elaborate lie, maybe I am deceiving myself about what is at the roots of it. I once abused an animal regularly for a period of time (my roommate's ferret) to see what the effects of physical abuse on a sentient entity would be. It became deformed, ugly and full of rage, dislike, hatred for itself. I repent of this as an experiment, but it proves that the abuse of me by another must have preceded my self-hatred, which seems to be at the root of my paranoia that my current friends dislike me. I constantly strive to earn their respect, and yet it seems to be backfiring in my face. The more of a good friend I try to be, the more insincere I seem, since I am secretly always questioning what that should mean. I honestly don't know!
I hate myself, and therefore it follows that I must have chosen to do so because of necessity to do so based on abuse done to me at the hands of another. Sometimes I am afraid of this happening again when it will not. I have been through some bad experiences. My father beat me up, my ex dumped me, a whole group of friends decided they disliked me. I've suffered a great deal. I can't blame them though. I sometimes blame God, but this is ridiculous. I need to take responsibility for my own life. I need to live in the moment instead of constantly falling back into the patterns formed for me by these bad experiences at the hands of others.
It's not really all that often that I actually think about this stuff. This blog has helped me come to feel out some of the darker aspects of my own personality, some of my fears, some of my foibles. But it is possible that it is taking up too much of my mind, making me think about myself too much. Worry too much. On the other hand, why is reflection upon the self frowned upon? What difference should it make if one dislikes what they are thinking about? My personal thoughts about myself are not supposed to determine other people's behaviors. And therefore this self-hatred, which I choose to want to feel, does not need to make me worry about losing my group of friends. If there is something wrong with staring into an abyss, where I see nothing that moves me to think positively about myself, it is only the karma in my aura. This karma reflects me from outside, a mirror on the walls of the cave of my consciousness. It reflects back on me the way I view myself. It is like the echoing voice of my own thoughts reflecting back to me. But it is like a beam of light I shine on reality, or a shadow I cast over my own face, and while I completely control the voice of my own thoughts, this karma in my aura manifests reactions from others in reality. Why is it not fair to them for me to hate myself? It isn't even my fault that I do.
It's unamerican it seems. It's associated with communism, and with "Goth" whatever that means. But not all Goths were abused, and not all commies are nationalists. "Goth" is the new "nigger", the next big thing. Emo is a pose, striahgt boys pretending to be gay to conceal something about themselves, a certain rebellion, but against what? Why would they pose in this way? It is their self-hatred they conceal, a philosophy of change. And soon enough they will all discover that it's unamerican, uncapitalistic, and will make the appropriate choice to be able to continue to survive in American capitalist culture. The emo kids will grow up to be succesful businessmen and women, just like the punks did, the rebellious children of the hippies. And I am caught right in between all these things. Born in seventy 7, I am right in between the punks and the emos. I choose to assoicate this aged limbo with rebellious things, that upset one person or another around me. The Americans, the capitalists, punks, emos, hippies. The hippies hate the Goths, and the emo punks hate the hippies. If I were a capitalist I would fit in with the emo punks younger than me, if I weren't a "Goth" I would fit in better with my own hippy friends. But I hate myself, and I don't get my kicks spending cash. I'm in no-man's land. The sock puppet of my own past pains.
If I weren't stuck still in the moments when I hurt, the ages when these patterns formed, I wouldn't want to rebel. I would love myself. I'd make money. But I have made myself broke in these ways, by trying to fit in with capitalists, with hippies. A square peg in a round hole, I stand out like a sore thumb amongst them. They like themselves, they can't help it. They have been raised without the types of bad experiences I have had. They are not the victims of the short end of a stick called karma in their auras, as am I. I feel so sick of everything.
I go outside for a smoke, and I see some stranger walking on my street at 6AM. Following upon all these thoughts I think of him as a typical American, and after a moment reflect on how fascistic that word implies someone as being nowadays. Upon another moment's recollection I am already thinking of how the man resembled Hitler, and then blaming God for placing Hitler as the karma in my aura. What crime have I ever commited? Then I remember that it is only my perception, that I am in control, that this universe is all a figment of my imagination, and that I do not even exist. I have no one to blame for the karma in my aura except myself. Perhaps that is the only reason I have not already completely transcended myself out of this universe... this physical existence. It changes every moment, but is never what I want. I only want things to be like they were before I began to hurt, but I hurt in so many different ways. I am full of the self-hatred that binds my mind to the focus on reality that feeds that self-hatred. Why is this wrong? Why is this not right?
It is my fucking right to think what I want without it hurting anyone. At no point does my mind overlap with the reality occupied by others. Communication is an illusion. Angels, demons, they are all figments of my imagination, when they seem real they are still only in my mind. Good and evil, this means nothing. Not one thing is desirable at the expense of another. I do not even care if I transcend. I already have. I do not exist.
Sometimes I wonder at all the enemies I've made along the way throughout my life. I've never been able to keep one friend throughout the whole time I've existed in this physical body in this material reality. I fell in love, yes, I looked for love. I sought out love. It has always gone back to wherever it came from before I had to search for it. Into the abyss. Beyond this limbo. Behind the veil of illusion that is this dimension, this plane, this world, this place. Where I am, love is not. That is why I exist. Perhaps love is like a big eye in the sky looking down at me. Either I lack love or love lacks me. Either way, I am alone. But even this means nothing. While love comes and goes, manifesting itself into some form of physical container and entering my prescence, it is only immortal. I am eternal. I have always existed, while love will always only have a beginning and then an ending. I exist in all directions at once. Love? Love and hate mean the same thing to me. Nothing. Not only is there no difference between them, between pleasure and pain, between reward and punishment, between right and wrong, good and bad, but none of them matter. None of them are truly as real as I am myself. They are ALL transient. All things come and go outside of me. They move through me. They are ghosts, I am a shadow.
I have always made my bestt effort to help people, and to bring to them the things they seem to feel desire for, but I am only a shadow. Like an angel I bring love and peace, and like a demon I leave behind nothing. It is all well and good to see through this. My perceptions, moreso even when of myself, are all the less real to others as are their own influences on my life. There is no eternal movement, their is no perpetual stillness. Chaos and order are not alike, but they are the same.
What is so terribly wrong about all of this? This is what self-hatred engenders in me! Why should people not want to allow me the thing I seem to feel desire for? Why do they think me sick? Why does God abandon me, turn his back on me, and make me feel guilty? What crime have I ever commited!? I only hate myself, this is why others seem to me to hate me. But I only hate myself because other people abused me. It is not my fault, and the choice to accept this self-hatred, the consequence with which I must deal, to love my self-hatred, to agree to disagree with myself, why is this madness? Why am I wrong? I must accept the self-hatred to heal from the abuse, I must embrace it to pass through it, to move beyond it. But no. I should not. God doesn't agree. Americans don't agree, capitalists don't agree, hippies and emo kids don't agree, my dad doesn't agree, my ex doesn't agree. No one in their right mind would agree that I have the right to make the choice to hate myself. It is anathema.
I am God. God is self-hatred. Jesus, his son, the role-player of that emotion as martyr, as scape-goat of purgation, the anti-fascist, the blatant terrorist. Mohammed, who only wanted to deny the mystery of this death-wish, accept it, move beyond it, explore it with every person on the planet, pass into the future. Buddha, who believed once we stopped hating ourselves we would cease to be trapped in this physical body in this material reality. They were ALL wrong. They ALL had it wrong. They were all humanists. They wanted to worship something that is not there. Self-hatred is not. Nothing is. There is no death, no time, no love, hate, you or me, no difference and no similarity, Nothing matters. There is nothing wrong or bad in this material reality, which we cling to for comfort in an abyss of the consciousness' own being. And that's what I am. My own consciousness. But there is no me, no perception of self, no consciousness. There is unconsciousness, but even that there is only this is not a true statement. I am not divded in any way. I choose to hate being me. And I am all that there is. I am becoming hate. And yet, I do not feel this. It is all only an intellectual excercise in the mind of God. This material relaity, the shadow of time moving through the universe, time the mind of the universal brain. To me all time is the same. I have no concept of it. To me it doesn't exist. I am greater than it.
I choose to hate myself. Now, explain to me why this creates any form at all of disorder, dystrophy, chaos, entropy? It means nothing. I am all that exists, and yet nothing exists. I am not that which I am. Now, explain to me, just explain to me, why is this the opposite of Holy? Why is this in any way harmful when nothing I hate is real, and I hate all there is. Go quick, rush to the computer, solve the equation. Give a fuck. Worthless. All of it, me included, is absolutely without consequence. No logic, no doubt.
-ben
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this information is all © 2005 Jonathan Barlow Gee
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