Suddenly today my prescription for myself seems completely unattractive. I am not interested in tired today, and I'm more interested in an entirely different energy. I'm not so sad and depressed about what I'm reading and finding. Today I looked up common sense. I had it in my mind that I don't have any because that is what my mom said. Also, I associated common sense with a lack of imagination. But it is entirely the opposite of that. This is new.
I thought common sense was habitual, static, unchanging unchangeable thinking that kept the world and everything in it the same. I'm completely corrected, and I appreciate it. Wikihow Common Sense, if you are interested. Reading the article, i thought that I do have some common sense. I thought I didn't. And it was really kind of distressing because what I knew I had was insanity. This indicates at least a particle of common sense, knowing that what I thought and did was often completely insane. The dictionary describes common sense as the uniting of impressions from the five senses. I just had to have that clarification because I was trying really hard not to unite my fucking impressions, but they were not from the five senses, in the way that common sense is framed. I saw things, I heard things, I read things, but just one of the ways I could improve is concentrating more on the five senses and though I can't stop hallucinations so far, I can see, hear, feel taste things and I can try to incorporate those impressions more than being down Alice's rabbit hole all day long. You can see my frustration in my expression which is really not very light and easy and with a more pleasant cadence. But I have started to do some of this anyway already in the past few days, my yoga, which is going really well and I don't drink as many colas and I am smoking less on good days, quite a lot less. I have been to the gym twice and will go again tonight since the holiday and the flood are over. One of the things I really wanted to change, really, really, was what I read. I read so much stuff and it's like I really need high quality material or I'm lost and derailed and detained or whatever with some kind of wonder and I'm just not really loving that and I'm wanting to progress more quickly. I don't dismiss my impressions and thoughts and theories which are insane, I just have to kind of move on. I can't by definition unite with that shit. I needn't be such a student of garbage. It drives me crazy. I thought yesterday that I would concentrate also on love, in the largest sense of the word, in that I just can't see any other point to living. So I'm feeling more excited, more energetic, more enthusiastic about life, stopping short of having a plan or idea, beyond what I'm doing, which is moving, the yoga I mean, and I'm looking at things that are also just really about physical health too, food, whatever I can find or come across somehow. I just find it refreshing to get out of my own mind, having reached the conclusion of the presentation on madness in my mind as it was revealed to me. I'm hoping I can sustain it. I mean, I can always get up and do some more asanas and I'm doing that and I'm doing it correctly, slowly, that is a kind of choice I'm happy to keep making. I had voices and visions today, but they seem to be responding correctly to my anger with them. They are more respectful, and more sober and even contrite, which I appreciate. So, common sense. I really like spending time with my online I'll call him a partner. His research is really really good and I am really excited that I can, um, grow, ok I said it, in the things I do every day and my choices can change and improve. When I met him, he mentioned his therapy and that wisp of a statement really changed my life because it made me change my life. So I am really glad to have real help. I can even sit back down again with my therapist, who I thought was never going to really help and it's like no, it' s just you know, analysis is just a step if you want to do that to yourself and I don't really recommend it, but really she does help. I just didn't really see that when she says you don't have to stay as a schizophrenic that she is not unsound or even uneducated. Her advice to me at the beginning was find someone and move away and I was like, do I say it again, schizophrenia, disability, that math. And it's like I don't know what will happen, moving on doesn't have to mean moving out it has to be more than that or my life is about not being employable and basically being insane again, but just becoming less attached to my impression of my reality, as recommended in the article, is very helpful. I really appreciate it. Simple is a word I just looked up. lol. I was going to explain that it is also a word I have deliberately avoided in favor of the word just. I thought about why and aside from just aesthetics, I get kind of into the fact that it is a word belonging in a court room. I thought just now that I really have been that combative in life. But, simple is a word from another world and from a better world. I will consider it. It says easy to understand or do, in the definition, the simple definition. Further, it means unlimited, which is very interesting. I at this point in my life and in my thoughts, don't find simple that easy to understand or do. lol. I elaborate, for example. lol. But other than that, you know, examples of the word in use were basically simply enjoying a sunset or time with family. It will take some conscious effort to rid myself of complication, mentally. But I will try it. When I was quite young my mother started her mantra which is nobody is perfect. It totally freaked me out that perfection might be impossible, and I thought of myself as perfect bar forced errors and certainly i extended that idea to everyone in the world, really. My objective is not bad, maybe it's even kind of flawless and true. But at some point one has to get involved or admit that I'm involved, involved in life, involved with people and I have to then understand that I, even I, I meant, need correcting or setting right, repositioning I'll call it even, and that perfection is kind of a glass that I can set aside. Just or simply that. Because in getting involved I am creating something not entirely on my own and it will be unfinished if I do it right, as in it's a process or simply what there is to do in life, and so then I have a new thing to consider and I think perfect is just a kind of inertia. But I don't have to leave out flawless, because I think every contribution is important and to be respected for what it is, it is flawless because life is flawless in that way, I mean, one has to accept being involved and it is flawless to be involved and so then I have mistake or accident, maybe. Misunderstanding even. And in one's flawlessness, these can happen. I still catagorize it as other than. Other than one's self. I may have been perfectly right in my reaction to involvement, to not get involved, but I was not flawless in that decision. I'm being wry, like of course perfect and flawless are synonyms, it's just that in my defense as written here, I needed to acknowledge that I'm profoundly um stupid, like I can't believe I didn't even know what common sense is, but I had to understand why I never pursued it and it really is, kind of trying to untangle the wiring in my mind. It is quite screwy, and so I kind of made a joke here, in that the two words are exactly the same in meaning. I cannot in that regard see that I am actually wrong. lol. This is essential. I'm joking again. x
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A photograph of my laptop, for some reason the flash went off, but I decided I liked it like that. I took the photograph because I wanted to remember a lovely exchange with someone. It is of a ring design, which represents the hand of God. I just wanted to have it for my own kind of memory and to wonder about. The way the photograph came out is kind of dramatically not what I expected, but I think it is instructive, somehow. I thought this when I saw it and I looked at my camera to see if I could figure out how to disable the flash, but I thought no, take it as it is.
I had been feeling really really low this year. Just completely at the end of my rope. I was just completely confronted with the last torn veil of illusion and what life is. And what it isn't and never will be. And I was so upset that even death was not a way out and even nirvana seemed like the ultimate diss. But I started to talk about this with someone online and once I saw it on the screen, it was like, the cover was off and I could see it. I decided that the rest of my life was my own. This is something anyone can tell you, and you can tell it to yourself anytime, but this time it really illuminated things for me. I was able to delineate all of the experiences and thoughts I have had in my life, and though I am still quite um sober about things, I just thought you know, I'll have no more of the drama, since there is not another way of going on. I had said I was very upset with creation generally, and i am. But I thought of my humble blessings again, as I have done for a long time, and it was like, you know, bed is bed and food is food and that is all there is. Special to me is a car and I have one. So I thought I would start to try yoga again, as there is nothing to do and as it seemed like a good idea, wellbeing, life, possibilities. I will go on with it. I mean, this exchange was a very good mental exercise for someone at the absolute end of the road and if I don't go on, it's not appreciative, properly. It was really lovely, and it was certainly more intimate than I had ever been with anyone before, in the sense that it was rapid and lucid and well, there is the word honest. I had not been met on that level before, and it was really ... I haven't the word really. I mean I was calm and I was happy and I didn't know from one second to the next what would come out of my head and it was, though getting me to admit it hard, life affirming. I had had a conversation earlier this summer with my dear friend Sophie, and we were talking about how over sex we are and I said that I would consider someone who was older, like my age or a little more, and was very tired, and had fucked up and was just kind of there and maybe that would be nice for me. Like no plans no demands no dreams and schemes, just a kind of warmth and intimacy that would be unobtrusive and maybe even on some level, deep. I mean, deep would be the idea. She laughed anyway and it is like god, you know i'm so tired. People say find someone or they say you will find someone or someone will find you and i'm like, don't be a pimp. I just really am that stone cold sober and I am open to love of course, every last breath I have I am open to that. But I know how I spend my time and I know what I can stand and it's like, you know, I was even married. And I really know what a relationship is and what it takes and how it is one day somehow no longer possible. And I'm like, I don't know that I really need to go through it again, honestly. I had one goal when I came back online after some years in 2010 and that was to be an absolutely stellar friend, or at least the best friend I could possibly be. I was spending a lot of time with other people who are mentally ill, and I was in that sense, with my tired lover I mentioned. It was like a very deep bruise that was starting to fade and I really learned from these people so much. But lately I have thought to also expand my circle to people who are not diagnosed or considered by themselves or others as mentally ill. I thought I would do it for light relief and to just have that breeze. It's not that I don't get that with my mentally ill friends, I get a fucking tornado of love from them. But I thought, you know, a breeze. I mean, people say that everyone is mentally ill, and sure I can see that. But I think of my friend Sophie, a single mom, whose baby father asks her for money all the time, and she's making dinner for her child and she's ironing his clothes while we are talking on the phone and I think you know, she even irons, because it makes the clothes fit nicely in the drawer and because it feels nice. I mean, that kind of breeze. Maybe it's a way to go on, I don't know. I mean, she is just so solidly there for people in her life and it is really inspiring and I absolutely love her and she is totally kicking the ass off her career in that she is a critics darling and she is even editing in her spare room and she is being totally on board for her child who is every inch the intellectual she is even at this age, and I'm like you know, be sane. Just be sane. The scarf that reminds me of my friend, Martha. Everything is closed today because of the hurricane. The roads are now clear, though there is a bridge washed out on the way toward the shopping district. The traffic lights, some aren't working. So, I will have to leave my ocean film idea for some time I think, I'm one who never takes storm warnings seriously, but I can't ignore the conditions, and anyway, I forgot it's a holiday tomorrow, and I prefer to go there when it's empty.
My yoga was very good today. I'm really pleased with the difference with the Latuda, as opposed to the Haldol. I have back the flexibility, and a little of the strength that I had decades ago. It feels fantastic. I wasn't expecting the improvement to be so dramatic even from yesterday. So I'm really thankful to the doctor for suggesting the change in medication. And I'm noting that I haven't had cognitive trouble for at least a couple of weeks. I'm really enjoying life since my change in point of view. I wrote that I had kind of suddenly had a realisation about my attitude to life and death and all that. I had resigned myself to a very measured life of a schedule of personal pursuits and I was sad about my losses and my diagnosis, but I was living with them. Existing. For a long time I have stated to friends and family and my therapist that the diagnosis was something I kind of took in and you know, lots of schizophrenics don't like the word and want it changed because of stigma, but I argued for it, for its definition and for what it implied. It was something that I could have as a sure thing, in a way. But now I am thinking that there is more to life and to the life of the mind and that I should embrace that. It's good, really good, and I won't talk about stigma because I haven't experienced that to the degree that it ever hurt me deeply, like it does some. I will just say that I think that there is more to life than seeing doctors and filling out forms and taking your pills. I had limited my thinking to that. It's nice to feel the weather again and to see the sun and to be able to see people without feeling as nervous and generally shocked and upset at insanity. Photograph of a photograph taken in Namibia. Ok I have had some time and I'm still thinking. But mainly I thought that schizophrenia is not going to stop interrupting me and so I had the idea to try and stop labeling myself with it at least. I mean, I needed the labeling for a while, but I'm really tired of it now. I think it was something that I got too comfortable with and it started to define everything in my life, it informed all my choices, it kind of blocks me in.
I'm looking at being more aware of my language. I am looking also at growth, which is a word my voices have been pushing for a couple of years now and I resisted it. I'm sensitive to language and sound and I just hate that word aesthetically. But I have to accept it, it's the right word. The word retirement, the word disabled, all of that I want to look at and possibly change. I'm also looking at my physical health. I have started smoking less with a view to quitting, and I have decreased my calorie count by 25% and I am going to go back to yoga. I have a massage in mind. On other matters I have mentioned I am going to try and do this ocean film idea next week, Monday, because Saturday a hurricane is expected. This kind of appeals to me but I have to reschedule of course. And I bought a paint color that has been on my wish list since the beginning of the year, though I'm not really interested in painting right now. Recently however, I finished a painting that was not formally pre-designed and under control, I don't know why I painted it, but it's kind of another indicator that I, on some level, want to break out of my safety that I have kind of latched on to with a death grip. Leading to death it consciously was, and I wanted to live, I have decided that. So, those are my thoughts. |
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