Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Or Kill Me => Topic started by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 06:32:50 PM

Title: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 06:32:50 PM
Thanks to Hawk - your Life of Nobody Series has inspired me to put some of my own memories down for posterity. Dunno if I'll have enough for a book but what the hey, maybe somebody will find my stupid ass life interesting regardless

No.1: Danny

Danny was a quiet guy. Tall, long hair, looked fed up with life. He wore faded jeans and a teeshirt and spent most of his day wandering around in his bare feet, listening to his walkman. He wasn't very sociable but he wasn't aggressive either. If you tapped him on the shoulder he'd take his headphones off and talk to you.

Now and again we spoke but the conversations were generally fairly one-sided affairs. His response to pretty much any line of enquiry was usually monosyllabic or thereabouts. You'd say hi to him in the morning and you'd get a nod back or maybe the staff would ask you to give him a shout at dinnertime or when the meds trolley was parked up and doing business.

I was really fucked off this one day. Like a lot of the walking damned, I spent a fair percentage of my time trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the fucking place. Today was one of them. Once a week we'd have a review meeting with our shrink. A day or so before these sessions the plans would revolve around trying to think of the perfect thing to say to her to get the section lifted. Other times, like today, the plans would be more desperate - how to create a distraction, how to smash the reinforced windows, which direction to run...

I was patrolling the ward, looking for weak spots, a door left ajar, a loose tile in the false ceiling, a fire alarm button that the staff couldn't see me setting off, somewhere to hide... The medication didn't help. Shit they had me on right then made it hard enough to walk, let alone run. In all probability that was at least part of the reason they had me on it in the first place. Fuckers were smart and my head was mince. It was a hiding to nowhere but there was fuck all much else to do, aside from chain smoke so there I was.

I saw Danny walking toward me down the main corridor. "I need to get out of here." I told him. Desperately hoping for some input. I was asking Danny, that's how desperate I was.

"I know a way out." He replied.

"show me." I begged.

"Wait in the day room." He instructed.

So there I was, sitting in the day-room, no more than ten minutes later when the panic alarm went off. The buttons were dotted all around the ward and linked to a big board in the nurse station which informed the staff where the backup was required. Half a dozen nursing staff went tanking down the corridor that led to the dormitories, closely followed by most of the patients, eager to see what all the fuss was about.

By the time we got there one of the charge nurses was stood in the door to the men's dorm-room, blocking our entrance. His presence really wasn't required, tho. Nobody was in much of a hurry to get past him, once they'd seen the mess in there. They were strapping big Danny to a gurney. He was leaving in a fucking hurry but what looked like most of his blood was staying for a while, the majority was clinging to the bedsheets or running down onto the floor but some of it had sprayed onto the walls and some had even managed to hit the ceiling. Danny hadn't just opened his wrists, he'd dug a hole in his neck as well. Fucker meant business.

The staff looked more like abattoir workers by the time they wheeled him past us and away to the infirmary. He was back a few hours later wearing three sets of bandages and the vacant expression of the heavily medicated but he didn't bed down in the main dorm for a while. Danny was on suicide watch, in his own private room for what turned out to be the third time that year.

I've often wondered just how much was my fault but I reckon I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm pretty sure Danny was headed down that corridor to do just what he did, with or without my interruption. I'm also pretty sure he'd eventually have managed to off himself. That wasn't one of those cry for help little scratches. He showed me the scars a week or so later, the fresh ones all but lost against countless older wounds. Danny was getting out, no doubt about that. It was just a matter of time.

There were times afterwards, when the depressions were tearing my fucking soul apart that I envied his resolve, When I resented with all my heart the fact that I was too much of a pussy to do what he found so easy and I wished more than anything for the courage to just hack away at my veins or swallow a bottle of pills or anything to escape the fucking pain but it wasn't to be.

Most of the time, tho, I'm glad about that.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 03, 2010, 06:37:50 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 06:32:50 PM
Thanks to Hawk - your Life of Nobody Series has inspired me to put some of my own memories down for posterity. Dunno if I'll have enough for a book but what the hey, maybe somebody will find my stupid ass life interesting regardless

No.1: Danny

Danny was a quiet guy. Tall, long hair, looked fed up with life. He wore faded jeans and a teeshirt and spent most of his day wandering around in his bare feet, listening to his walkman. He wasn't very sociable but he wasn't aggressive either. If you tapped him on the shoulder he'd take his headphones off and talk to you.

Now and again we spoke but the conversations were generally pretty one-sided. His response to pretty much any line of enquiry was usually monosyllabic or thereabouts. You'd say hi to him in the morning and you'd get a nod back or maybe the staff would ask you to give him a shout at dinnertime or when the meds trolley was parked up and doing business.

I was really fucked off this one day. Like a lot of the walking damned, I spent a fair percentage of my time trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the fucking place. Today was one of them. Once a week we'd have a review meeting with our shrink. A day or so before these sessions the plans would revolve around trying to think of the perfect thing to say to her to get the section lifted. Other times, like today, the plans would be more desperate - how to create a distraction, how to smash the reinforced windows, which direction to run...

I was patrolling the ward, looking for weak spots, a door left ajar, a loose tile in the false ceiling, a fire alarm button that the staff couldn't see me setting off, somewhere to hide... The medication didn't help. Shit they had me on right then made it hard enough to walk, let alone run. In all probability that was at least part of the reason they had me on it in the first place. Fuckers were smart and my head was mince. It was a hiding to nowhere but there was fuck all much else to do, aside from chain smoke so there I was.

I saw Danny walking toward me down the main corridor. "I need to get out of here." I told him. Desperately hoping for some input. I was asking Danny, that's how desperate I was.

"I know a way out." He replied.

"show me." I begged.

"Wait in the day room." He instructed.

So there I was, sitting in the day-room, no more than ten minutes later when the panic alarm went off. The buttons were dotted all around the ward and linked to a big board in the nurse station which informed the staff where the backup was required. Half a dozen nursing staff went tanking down the corridor that led to the dormitories, closely followed by most of the patients, eager to see what all the fuss was about.

By the time we got there one of the charge nurses was stood in the door to the men's dorm-room, blocking our entrance. His presence really wasn't required, tho. Nobody was in much of a hurry to get past him, once they'd seen the mess in there. They were strapping big Danny to a gurney. He was leaving in a fucking hurry but what looked like most of his blood was staying for a while, the majority was clinging to the bedsheets or running down onto the floor but some of it had sprayed onto the walls and some had even managed to hit the ceiling. Danny hadn't just opened his wrists, he'd dug a hole in his neck as well. Fucker meant business.

The staff looked more like abattoir workers by the time they wheeled him past us and away to the infirmary. He was back a few hours later wearing three sets of bandages and the vacant expression of the heavily medicated but he didn't bed down in the main dorm for a while. Danny was on suicide watch, in his own private room for what turned out to be the third time that year.

I've often wondered just how much was my fault but I reckon I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm pretty sure Danny was headed down that corridor to do just what he did, with or without my interruption. I'm also pretty sure he'd eventually have managed to off himself. That wasn't one of those cry for help little scratches. He showed me the scars a week or so later, the fresh ones all but lost against countless older wounds. Danny was getting out, no doubt about that. It was just a matter of time.

There were times afterwards, when the depressions were tearing my fucking soul apart that I envied his resolve, When I resented with all my heart the fact that I was too much of a pussy to do what he found so easy and I wished more than anything for the courage to just hack away at my veins or swallow a bottle of pills or anything to escape the fucking pain but it wasn't to be.

Most of the time, tho, I'm glad about that.


holy fuck
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 06:45:29 PM
Damn Pent. I bet it hurt to write that.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 06:50:21 PM
Not really. I dealt with this shit years ago. Now it's just recollection.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 03, 2010, 06:51:26 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 06:50:21 PM
Not really. I dealt with this shit years ago. Now it's just recollection.

That's still a hell of an experience.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Hoser McRhizzy on June 03, 2010, 07:07:41 PM
This was gut-wrenching to read AND really well-written.  

I loved this, Pent.  Looking forward to the next installment.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 07:29:30 PM
No.2: Julie

Julie was a real sweet little thing. Sixteen, seventeen. Couple of years younger than me at the time. She had dark hair and a quiet nature and way too much pain in her eyes for someone so young. Like a lot of my fellow damned I never knew much about her life outside the ward. You'd get to know most peoples friends and family from visits and you pick up little snippets of their world here and there but very few people had much to say about before. Now weighed far too heavily on the mind.

Julie used to fidget real hard. She'd sit on a chair and bounce her legs fast as hell, like she was trying to run on the spot but with her feet nailed to the floor. She'd sit like that for hours on end. I asked her about it one time. "why do you do that Julie?"

"I dunno, it just feels better." She told me.

Fair enough. Certainly wasn't the strangest thing I'd seen in there.

Julie wasn't exactly the life and soul of the party when I met her but she didn't seem to be on any kind of major downer either. In fact, out of everyone else in the ward, she seemed like one of the most balanced. I couldn't help wondering what was wrong with her but that's the one question you do not ask. Even crazy people somehow seem to instinctively know and obey this unwritten rule. Different if someone wants to talk about it but until then it's taboo.

A couple of weeks after I first arrived we started to notice a change in Julie. It was subtle at first, she seemed irritable, snappy. More and more, as the days went on, her face got less friendly. From easy to talk to, right through - don't fuck with me, eventually settling on - keep the hell away.

She stopped with the fidgeting too. Funny thing is when I'd first noticed it, it used to bug me but then I guess I got used to it, it was just Julie and then, suddenly, it was just gone and it somehow wasn't Julie any more. It was a husk, like an empty shell with all the Julie sucked out of it. She just sat there, still as a corpse and stared into space through dull brown eyes that used to sparkle.

One day the nursing staff came over to her, picked her up off the seat she was in and plonked her in a wheelchair then wheeled her right out of the ward. It struck me as unusual but, back then, very little held my attention for long and I'd soon forgotten about it.

My attention was unwavering, however when, later that evening, they wheeled her back in. Julie was back! Not the hollow shell Julie they'd taken away but the old Julie. Her eyes were bright again and she was fidgeting but something still wasn't quite right. It was a different fidget. For one thing it was sporadic, it came and went and it seemed to move through her whole body like a little earthquake before passing.

A bunch of us went over to say hello, welcome back. Julie was smiling at us but it seemed a bit forced. She was smiling through the pain that kept racking her body in tremors. She was putting on a brave face but she was fooling no one. If you can't fool a lunatic then either your brave face aint brave enough or your pain is too obvious to cover up.

"What happened to you Julie?"

She showed us one of the electrode patches she'd kept as a souvenir

"ECT."
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 07:29:59 PM
Okay, gotta admit - that hurt a bit. I really liked Julie  :cry:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 07:38:37 PM
Jesus. Shock therapy? Are you fucking serious?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 07:46:14 PM
I'm going out of my way not to make any of the important details up. It was a long time ago and some of the conversations might not be verbatim but yeah - little Julie had the bit between her teeth for sure. Like I said - it's a painful memory.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 08:11:16 PM
I never doubted you, I guess I just thought that crap went out in the '60's.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Eater of Clowns on June 03, 2010, 08:26:28 PM
Quote from: Hawk on June 03, 2010, 08:11:16 PM
I never doubted you, I guess I just thought that crap went out in the '60's.

Still happens.  It looks less gruesome these days and supposedly isn't as painful, but it has a number of advocates.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Hoser McRhizzy on June 03, 2010, 08:54:15 PM
Quote from: Hawk on June 03, 2010, 08:11:16 PM
I never doubted you, I guess I just thought that crap went out in the '60's.

EoC's right.  As far as I know, it's still used for post-partum (sp?) depression, anorexia and according to a study done by the group MindFreedom, it's actually on the rise.  It used to be standard for Alzheimer's as well, which is pretty fucked up... As one of the main justifications for ECT is that it's supposed to erase the memory (presumably, it'll just target the 'bad' ones).  As for it being less painful, the point is still to induce a grand mal seizure, so 'supposedly' is the right word, I think.

A friend of mine (who got ECT for 'gender identity disorder' in the 80s) explained that it's fear and punishment treatment, and told me that his therapist actually referred to it as "a mental spanking."  I got into allying with a psychiatric survivor group a few years back, and in a literature review I worked up for them, found the exact same language used by other people studying ECT.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 07:29:30 PM
Her eyes were bright again and she was fidgeting but something still wasn't quite right. It was a different fidget. For one thing it was sporadic, it came and went and it seemed to move through her whole body like a little earthquake before passing.

I got a bit sick reading this part, guessing what was coming.

Brilliant writing, imo.  Frustrating, intimate and precise.  I'm going to send my gentfriend a link to this thread, if you don't mind, Pent.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 08:59:53 PM
Modern psychiatry hasn't advanced much past the stage of drilling holes in the skull to let the demons escape. Their understanding is far too "black-box" to be useful for anything more than relieving symptoms.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 09:03:08 PM
Good god. This makes me sick. How utterly barbaric.

Pent, I am glad you are sharing.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 09:06:23 PM
Quote from: Nurse Rhizome on June 03, 2010, 08:54:15 PM

Brilliant writing, imo.  Frustrating, intimate and precise.  I'm going to send my gentfriend a link to this thread, if you don't mind, Pent.

Thanks! And sure - it's a public board - I aint trying to keep this shit secret or anything  :)
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Cramulus on June 03, 2010, 09:51:19 PM
great writing dude, very vivid. You've had some gnarly experiences, man. I'd offer you some mittens but kudos don't seem appropriate to follow such gravity
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 09:52:47 PM
No.3: Little Jimmy

Out of all the people who shared the ward with me little Jimmy really didn't seem like he belonged there. It was the acute ward. What that means is, out of all the wards in the whole asylum, this was the one with the tightest security, the best trained staff, trained to deal with the most potentially dangerous  clientèle. There were more dangerous people than us in some of the long-term wards but they were kept in a much more stable, much more predictable, often near-catatonic condition.

There was still hope for us. We were given the benefit of the doubt but, by our very nature, this benefit was not afforded without a fair degree of risk. "A Danger to myself and others" it said on my section papers and all of us had those.

But little Jimmy was different. For one thing he was just a child, couldn't have been much more than thirteen or fourteen if he was that and his mental age was way, way younger. "Retard" is such a cruel word but it's also a very appropriate one in little Jimmy's case. Very appropriate.

You couldn't hold a conversation with Jimmy. All he talked about was his dad. More particularly the fact that his dad drove an "Esso Lorry". It wasn't like he even had a lot to say about this. "My dad drives an Esso Lorry", "You see those Esso Lorries? My dad drives Esso Lorries.", "That's my dad. He drives Esso Lorries"

All fucking day! He'd latch onto you and follow you about, for fucking hours, like a cracked record, going on about his fucking dad and his fucking Esso Lorry til all you wanted to do was scream at the little bastard and then you did and all hell broke loose.

It was kinda like autism or something when you yelled at little Jimmy. He'd freak out and start screaming incoherent gibberish at the top of his lungs, tears streaming down his face, rolling about on the floor and all the while those innocent child eyes, staring at you, wide, almost popping out of his head, pure blind terror. It made you feel like shit. Every fucking time! This little kid looking at you, traumatised, like you'd just stamped on his head but you couldn't help it. He seemed almost designed to push all the right buttons, just hard enough to make you crack.

But little Jimmy didn't belong in that ward. He belonged in some kind of special need school or something. He was just a kid for fucksake. Sooner or later someone was going to turn around and kill him. Eventually he got moved. We never knew where to, just like you never knew where anyone went once they got signed out through that door. He was just gone and, somehow, he was missed. His energy, annoying as it might be at times, seemed to raise the atmosphere of the ward in some inexplicable way. The childish vibrancy. His idiot smile - innocent joy - it really helped.

I asked one of the nurses about him a couple of days after he left. "Is he coming back?"

"Maybe." he replied, non-committally.

"What the fuck is the deal with him anyway?"

And he told me.

Turns out, years ago, little Jimmy had been on his little bike and a lorry had ploughed through the intersection and slammed into his little head. An Esso Lorry. And little Jimmy had been stuck in that moment ever since.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 09:56:33 PM
How long were you there Pent?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 10:00:12 PM
I was in twice for around a month each time. Two months out of a lifetime of forty-odd years but there's times it feels like most of it.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 03, 2010, 10:06:16 PM
I was going to say something moronic like "But you are so intelligent" until I remember this story.


One day a man was driving and his wheel fell off. He retrieved the wheel and was puzzled about what to do next. AS the man looked around he realized that this had happened right in front of a mental institution and there was a patient standing right inside the fence from him.

The man inside the fence said " Just take 1 lug nut from each of the other tires and go to a service station and buy the rest. The man who had broke down looked at him and said "That is a very good idea! You shouldn't be in there. What is this all about?"

The man inside the fence said "Hell mister, I'm not stupid, I'm just crazy."

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 10:33:27 PM
Last one for the night...

No.4: Old Chick

To this day I don't think old Chick was crazy. When I'd first arrived on the ward I thought he was staff. He always dressed in blue overalls for one thing and he always seemed to be sweeping up or mopping the floor or emptying the ashtrays or some other domestic chore. You hardly noticed the quiet little old guy, in the background of everything, picking up discarded candy wrappers or collecting teacups from the visitors day room.

But Chick didn't go home when his shift was over. Chick waited in line at the meds trolley with the rest of us before bedding down in the same dorm, three beds along from where I'd lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling but still I couldn't get my head around the fact that he was a patient. He just seemed too fucking sane.

He was a good listener, Chick. You could get your troubles off your chest and Chick would look at you with that quiet, calm expression and frown or smile at all the right times and nod like he really understood and that was all it took. Best therapy on the ward by a fucking mile. When you'd had 50mil of Largactil shot in your arse and you were still climbing the walls all it took was a chat with Chick to chill you the fuck back out again.

It was toward the end of my stay (and somehow we both knew it) when Chick sat down next to me and, for once, did all the talking and I just listened. Chick had been in Carstairs till a couple of years ago when he was deemed to be too old to cause much in the way of trouble. The hospital we were in was a hospital for the insane. Carstairs is a step up from that. Carstairs is a hospital for the criminally insane.

Chick had been there since his early twenties and when he told me how much better it was in here you had to hand it to him. Carstairs, the way he described it, was very much a containment facility, as opposed to a treatment centre. You were drugged all the way to hell and, if that didn't work, they buckled you to your bed and fed and washed you.

Chick explained that he'd always been partially deaf. He'd come home one day to find his wife fucking some other guy and he'd gone ballistic and hit the guy. The wife had started screaming at him. The way Chick described it, loud noises made his fucked up eardrums kinda buzz in a really annoying way. Like it actually hurt him and she'd been screaming at him and he'd been angry as a motherfucker and something inside him snapped and he grabbed her round the neck and squeezed and that was all she wrote.

I think he said he'd killed the guy too.

I was a young guy at the time. I too was madly in love with a girl. It wasn't too hard for me to imagine feeling just about mad enough to kill if I'd found myself in the same situation. There was more to it, I'm sure. Killing people gets you flung in jail. Carstairs is for folks who go above and beyond 'ordinary' killing people in some way. Maybe Chick had had some kind of breakdown when the adrenaline had worn off and he realised what he'd done.

Pure speculation, tho. He could just as easily been lying through his teeth about everything but he made his point nonetheless. All it takes is to lose control for a split second and your whole life can go down the shitter in no time flat. I promised Chick I'd never lose the plot again.

It was a promise I was to break less than a decade later.  
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 10:35:09 PM
Quote from: Hawk on June 03, 2010, 10:06:16 PM
I was going to say something moronic like "But you are so intelligent"

The more intelligent you are the easier it is to tie your own head in fucking knots  :lulz:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on June 03, 2010, 10:44:30 PM
This is all pretty gripping stuff. There's a Psychiatric Unit in my town, and a good friend of mine is a regular inpatient there. About 18 years ago, he was busted for selling drugs, and rather than risk going to Prison, he decided to play the crazy card instead. He went in for 2 weeks observation, then when the Court case came up, they put him in the care of a Psychiatric support team instead of sending him down. He thought this was pretty fucking clever, and for about 5 years, whatever trouble he got himself into, (which was never really anything serious) the Police would release him into the care of his Psych team. He thought he had it cracked. After a while, his Doctor must have realised he was swinging the lead, and put him on some pretty heavy anti-psychotics, that needed a whole host of pills to counter the side effects, and more pills to counter the side effects of them. He didn't like being zombied 24 7, so he would refuse to take his meds. Whenever he did this, he would be sectioned for 2 weeks obs, and they ended up giving him a time released implant. Then, if he didn't take his side effect tablets,  he exhibited symptoms indistinguishable from full blown delusional psychosis, and was taken back in for observation, while they messed about with his meds routine, ostensibly to "stabilise" him. Now, his head really is fucked, and he is taken in about three or four times a year. He used to be an above average intelligent normal bloke, (albeit with a liking for recreationals) and now, he wanders about, not even able to hold a conversation, and prone to impulses, like washing his soiled underwear out in puddles by the side of the road. And I swear, to start with, before they got him in the system, he was as sane as the next man. It was as if his Doctor thought, "Right, if you're going to take the piss, we're going to make sure it will cost you dearly". And it did.  
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: NotPublished on June 03, 2010, 11:01:18 PM
whoa Pent... I wish I knew what to say.

My sister was in the ward for a bit, but I never got to hear her story - I don't think I will get the chance, but she isn't the same, and she's run off to another state. Its like they take away who you once were
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 11:10:03 PM
I don't really see it as much different from any other tough experience. Some people get over it and it makes them stronger and some people cave and get stuck there forever. It changes you, that's for sure but change is good. It'd be a fuck-boring life if you stayed the same person for the whole time.

Personally I see it as one of the best things that ever happened to me. It hurt like fuck at the time but without it I wouldn't have gained the insight I have into the inner workings of my own head. I can't imagine what it would be like not to know and be aware of the things I take for granted but the truth is most people aren't and that makes me feel lucky that I got the chance when I did.

The best things in life come at a price.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on June 03, 2010, 11:15:28 PM
Fucking oath they do. Do you think that intelligence is a major factor in being able to pull yourself out the other side?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 11:28:34 PM
Yeah but intelligence is like a wild elephant or something. Or at least mine was. First I had to tame the beast cos it was rampaging around smashing things up and generally being instrumental in making things a whole lot worse. Once I got it under control, tho, it was handy as fuck for picking up all the debris it had left in it's wake.

Double edged sword?

The key for me was developing the meta cognitive faculty to the degree where I am aware of pretty much everything my brain is doing at pretty much all times. I might not always be able to stop it from doing something - I'll lose my temper or get a bit depressed or hyper from time to time but it never sneaks up on me, never catches me by surprise. I can see it happening, as it happens and, more importantly I can see the best route to take to steer things back on track before it gets out of hand.

Whether you do this by willpower alone or with the aid of meds, all mental illness survivors learn to do this to some degree or other. That's the prize.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: LMNO on June 04, 2010, 02:45:07 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 11:28:34 PM
The key for me was developing the meta cognitive faculty to the degree where I am aware of pretty much everything my brain is doing at pretty much all times. I might not always be able to stop it from doing something - I'll lose my temper or get a bit depressed or hyper from time to time but it never sneaks up on me, never catches me by surprise. I can see it happening, as it happens and, more importantly I can see the best route to take to steer things back on track before it gets out of hand.

Whether you do this by willpower alone or with the aid of meds, all mental illness survivors learn to do this to some degree or other. That's the prize.


Doesn't everyone do this? 

...


I'm not trying to dismiss or belittle you here.  I always assumed this is how the brain is supposed to work.  Meta-cognition is one of the best tools I have not to act like a monkey.

I'm just starting to realize I may be in the minority, here.







Fuck.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 04, 2010, 05:00:16 PM
No.5: Steve

Steve was like a lot of us when he first arrived. Spent the whole time, trying to convince anyone who would listen that he wasn't supposed to be there. This kind of obsessive denial was nothing out of the ordinary - hell isn't everyone's cup of tea.

He was thin as a rake, on account of the fact that his diet for the last year or so had consisting mainly of ecstasy tabs. He'd been busted with a "fucking shitload" in a bag under the bed but something had happened en route to prison that had landed him in the ward instead. Something that he seemed reluctant to go into in any great detail. Like I said - denial.

His system seemed more than acclimated to the 'X' by the time I met him, given that, even under heavy sedation, he was still bouncing about with the manic, rictus grin that comes with prolonged exposure to low grade shit, that consisted mainly of trucker-speed and worming tablets. Ironically, for a country that the tabloids would have you believe was in the throes of an "ecstasy epidemic" you'd score a hen's tooth easier than MDMA.

I liked Steve. He was smart. Intellectual smart. Used to be a student of mathematics before his grant supplement started taking over his life. He'd spend hours trying to explain mathematical shit to me, shit that he obviously thought was really cool but unfortunately I was born with one of those brains that does the mental equivalent of putting it's hands over it's ears and chanting "Lalalalalalala" whenever it encounters even the simplest of equations. I'd end up just smiling politely and nodding like I'd got it, in the hope that he'd stop trying to crush my head with whatever awesome formula he was thinking about right at that moment but one time he told me something that did pique my interest.

Apparently part of his course concerned the history of mathematics. Famous figures like Newton and Euclid and fucks like that. He told me about a guy called Pythagoras. This dude, apparently was famed for some theorem or other, one which my inability to grasp looked set to derail the whole story until I smiled politely and nodded. Pythagoras was also a philosopher apparently and a religious leader of sorts.

The more he told me about this guy the more I figured he belonged in here with us, rather than immortalised in marble. Pythagoras was eventually vilified and his followers driven underground to practice their heretical mathematics in secret sects, themselves the prehistoric forerunners of the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons.

Steve wasn't there for long. Once the mother of all comedowns was over with he was released into the custody of the old bill, presumably to face the consequences of his rebellious services to the free market but he left me wondering. Just how many geniuses, over the years were insane like me and just how many insane people were actually geniuses?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 04, 2010, 05:53:02 PM
No.6: Lou Reed

When you're stuck in hell you spend a good percentage of your time feeling really fucking sorry for yourself but, every now and again, there's a moment of connection. Whether it's the heightened state of being that insanity brings or the drugs or a mixture of both it's the kind of connection that normal people will never experience and I would pity them for that if only I could convince myself that the experience was worth the price.

Fifteen years on and the jury is still out on that one.

Insanity is life with the volume turned up. Way up. Emotions are magnified to the n'th degree. You'll look out the window and see a sparrow with one leg and you'll cry for a week. Someone gives you a biscuit and you feel euphoria that heaven could never hope to match. Sanity filters emotion. It's either that or cease to exist.

The visitor dayroom was tiny. Like a cupboard with a window. Barely enough room for a couple of seats and a little round melamine table but there was a tape deck in there. The tannoy in the main dayroom was tuned to radio shit so, when visiting time was over, the music lovers (about seven or eight of us) would pile into that little space and argue over who's turn it was to choose the tape.

And that's where we found ourselves one afternoon, stereo turned down low, an impromptu group therapy session in progress, feeling real sorry for ourselves. Intimately. On a level forged in the fires of this god awful situation.

Moods come like waves in a psychiatric ward. Contagious. When you're up, for the most part, the whole ward is up. Likewise when things go down. Like today. The conversation became a vicious circle, a competition to see who could be more depressed than the next. Each statement lowering the mood, racing toward rock bottom, en masse. We were brothers and sisters in desperation, clinging to each other as our ship went down.

And that's when Lou Reed came on. On the decree of an unspoken consensus the volume was turned up as high as it could go and half a dozen voices joined in. "Just a perfect day, Drink Sangria in the park..." and for three and half minutes we were perfect, it was beautiful. The tears were rolling down our cheeks and, as we looked deep into each others eyes, we knew it would never be like this again.

Lou might have been singing about heroin and we might have been singing about insanity but the irony brought us together for that perfect moment and, after it faded, we all felt a bit better. Lifted. Lou understood us and we understood each other and that connection was enough. It was communion. A bond was formed that day, in that tiny room. It's a bond that has stayed with me ever since. I've never seen any of them again but it doesn't matter. We shared a perfect day.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞ on June 05, 2010, 12:09:07 AM
:mittens:

These are amazing Pent.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 05, 2010, 01:40:04 AM
Thanks man. Thought maybe I'd lost the plot with that last one? This is turning out to be a bit deeper than I'd originally planned. I guess catharsis can get messy.  :oops:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Jasper on June 05, 2010, 03:08:22 AM
I would hear more of these.  They're not happy tales- someone found the right word- gravity.  So much of that.  Very compelling.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 05, 2010, 06:13:13 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 05, 2010, 01:40:04 AM
Thanks man. Thought maybe I'd lost the plot with that last one? This is turning out to be a bit deeper than I'd originally planned. I guess catharsis can get messy.  :oops:

Did not lose plot, it was a good read.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Hoser McRhizzy on June 07, 2010, 03:36:41 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 03, 2010, 09:06:23 PM
Quote from: Nurse Rhizome on June 03, 2010, 08:54:15 PM

Brilliant writing, imo.  Frustrating, intimate and precise.  I'm going to send my gentfriend a link to this thread, if you don't mind, Pent.

Thanks! And sure - it's a public board - I aint trying to keep this shit secret or anything  :)

:lol:  I forget this place is a fishbowl.  Good point.

That last was excellent, btw.  There's gravity, like Sigmatic said, but Lou Redd still left me smiling.  (Although the piece on Jimmy made me a blubbery snot-nose.  Which means, also awesome).  I hope you continue.
:mittens:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞ on June 07, 2010, 06:41:43 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 05, 2010, 01:40:04 AM
Thanks man. Thought maybe I'd lost the plot with that last one? This is turning out to be a bit deeper than I'd originally planned. I guess catharsis can get messy.  :oops:

I've been to a residential treatment center for the better part of a year when I was a teenager so it's very familiar.

The group therapy, people in spite of being fucked up, highly controlled circumstances, etc. I also grew up with a criminally insane sibling with a particular brain abnormality.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 07, 2010, 12:32:36 PM
This is repost but I'm putting it itt cos I think it might be part of his story...

No7: The redhead (false memory)

It was the middle of the night. I woke up in a room with two windows and a door. One of the windows looked out onto the dayroom which was cloaked in darkness at this hour, the window next to it looked into the staff office. How had I gotten here? Was it a ghost or a trick of my own mind? How could something that wasn't there appear so real? How could I ever trust my senses again after this betrayal? These thoughts and more were running through my mind as I lay there in the darkness, looking at the light in the office.

As best I could remember it had started three months before. The girl in the nightclub. Long flowing red hair, piercing, almost hypnotic blue eyes. I remembered her taste, her smell, the sound of her voice, the way her naked body felt next to mine, the way she fucked. Oh jesus yes I remembered the way she fucked.

Flashback: I was naked and masturbating, alone in a derelict building... no ... she was real. Surely someone had to have seen her? One of my friends? Were my friends real? If my mind hadn't snapped already then these thoughts would have done the trick. What the fuck had happened? I remembered the nightclub, pumping music, flashing lights, chemicals assaulting my central nervous system.

I'd seen her standing at the bar, gone over and said 'hi', lost myself in those eyes, that smile, her face. A phone number, hastily scrawled on my arm in eyeliner pencil. I'd called the next night, couldn't even remember her name. Just those eyes. "Hi. Remember me".

None of my friends had said anything to the contrary. Hope those sick bastards had a real good laugh on my tab. Surely they'd have drawn a line ... somewhere. Maybe when I took her out the first night? Or when I spent the first weekend at her place? Surely that was dangerous? I could have been anywhere for the love of fuck. When I moved in, then? They'd come to visit a couple of times and no one thought to say anything? They must have seen the state of me? Was there no compassion in their hearts? Were they even real?

Was anything real? I'd been alive for eighteen and a bit years. Had I hallucinated every fucking waking moment? How the hell was I ever supposed to know? For all I knew the bed I was presently lying in might not exist at all. This whole hospital, the people in it. Me.

I'd fallen in love with a ghost or a hallucination. I could remember when they'd found me, naked, huddled on the floor in a dingy decrepit corner of some building, scheduled for demolition. Nearby residents had phoned the police who'd subsequently kicked the door down and found me, filthy and malnourished. Three months I'd been there. I should have been dead. What had I been eating?

And the redhead? A figment of my imagination or, as I was beginning to suspect, some kind of ghost or vampire who lured young guys to their deaths by making the whole thing seem so real. The flat, the furnishings, the pets. She kept everything from rats to cats to dogs. Maybe they'd been real animals and I'd just incorporated them into my fantasies or she'd incorporated them into her mirage. Jesus, I'd been handling those rats, I probably had rabies by now!

I'd phoned her, dialled the smudged number from my arm and heard her, loud and clear, on the other end. We'd made a date, next friday night, met in the bus station in Falkirk. Friend of a friend had met me there too, just before she turned up, stood there chatting with me for 5 minutes. Had he seen her? No, he was gone before she got there.

We'd gone to my local, this chick was hot, I wanted to show her off. When you're eighteen bragging rights are damn near as important as the actual fucking itself. The usual crowd was in, friday nights would see most of us (maybe a hundred or so) splitting the night between two bars, waiting for the club to open. We'd ended up down there, Sat with my mates for a while before jumping onto the dance floor and doing something that much more closely resembled screwing than dancing in the traditional sense of the word.

Back to my place and late adolescent hormonal abundance kept us awake for another couple of frenetic hours. My folks woke me up in the morning to tell me they were going out but they never came into the bedroom, just knocked the door and shouted in. They never saw her. I'd walked her down to the bus stop, sucked face for a while and arranged to meet up next weekend.

None of it seemed weird. Only looking back did I get all those little hints, like the movie where the twist at the end has you pressing the rewind button and watching it all over again. She'd been a phantasm.

I'd moved in a couple of weeks later, as glad to be flying the nest at last as I was to be moving in with the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. This was where the "happy ever after" bit came in. Like, yeah, sure - eighteen years old you've done it all, right? But hey, I was young and in love and the world was just the happiest shiniest place ever imagined.

Then it started to get a bit peculiar...

There was a nagging feeling that something was going on beneath the surface. Something sinister, something not what it seemed. Who the hell was this woman, four years my senior, who sang to me in the dark with a voice like an angel? Who could touch my soul just by looking at me, those eyes, piercing, icy but, at the same time, warm and inviting. I started to think she wanted something from me. Was this the birth of insecurity? I became paranoid, conversations seemed loaded with almost hypnotic intent.

One night I was awoken to find the front door being kicked in and flashlights in my face. I took immediate stock of my surroundings. I was in a pile of clothes in a rotting corner of some boarded up room. One of the policemen shone his torch around the room, exposing decayed, fungus covered walls, a huge gaping hole in the ceiling and precious little else. Where the hell was I? Where was the girl? I could hear the other policeman, still shining his light in my face, asking me questions. The other guy was talking into the radio. I think I lost consciousness at this point.

They brought me here. I was injected with something and put in this room. Time passed, I couldn't tell how much, I drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point I heard the door opening and a woman in a nurses uniform asked me if I was awake. I mumbled an affirmation, she turned the light on and told me I had a visitor. She left the room and who should walk in but the redhead.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 07, 2010, 01:45:01 PM
Damn Pent. I think you are lucky to be alive.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 07, 2010, 02:12:19 PM
Quote from: Hawk on June 07, 2010, 01:45:01 PM
Damn Pent. I think you are lucky to be alive.

Dunno if that one was clear enough? The whole - found in a derelict building by the cops - thing is actually a false memory. What really happened was I met a redhead, moved in together and then promptly flipped my lid and got my ass committed. When I first got into hospital the above is how I actually remembered the events. Nowadays I can remember both that and what really happened. It's kinda fun - like I have two sets of memories from the same time.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 07, 2010, 02:13:41 PM
No8: Little sister

I was relatively lucky in hell. My friends and family really rallied round and, except for a week or so where I wasn't allowed visitors, someone came to see me every day. I've never been able to adequately express to any of them just how much that meant to me. In a place where damn near everyone was batshit crazy people from outside were your one and only lifeline to the real world. Most of the time they'd just tell me boring bullshit about what had happened to whom and how so and so was "asking for me" but it really helped. Kept me connected, however tenuously, to a life beyond the confines of the hospital walls.

One day my younger sister turned up, with a big smile on her face and a personal stereo and some tapes for me. We spoke for hours. She told me all the latest family news and gossip and I told her about how much better I was getting and how I didn't think it'd be much longer before they let me out. I tried my best to keep things upbeat. She was still at school and in the middle of her exams and I didn't want to upset her with my bullshit. Truth be told, I really was feeling a lot better about everything by that point anyway.

Eventually the staff started doing the subtle shit they used to do that informs the visitors that it's time to leave. For all I hated those bastards at times, they really could be very sensitive when they wanted to be. They knew this was hard for everybody so, rather than just ringing a bell or making an announcement, they'd kinda start moving around, clearing up the teacups and the ashtrays and moving the tables around in preparation for mealtime. It was a quiet nod and a wink. Nobody got upset.

My sister caught the unspoken message and we said our goodbyes. I thanked her for coming and wished her luck with her exams and she turned around and gave me the weirdest look she's ever given me, before leaving through the security door, past the nurse station. The expression she'd had on her face puzzled me for a while but, as with a lot of things that happened during that blurry, confused period of my life, I soon forgot about it.

It was months after I'd been released when the reason was made clear to me. My girlfriend and I were talking, as we often did back then, about the stuff that had gone down while I was inside. "Something I've been meaning to ask you, " she said, "You remember that day I brought you the walkman and when I was leaving you said to me 'good luck with your exams'? Just what the fuck were you talking about?"
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 07, 2010, 02:40:13 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 07, 2010, 02:13:41 PM
No8: Little sister

I was relatively lucky in hell. My friends and family really rallied round and, except for a week or so where I wasn't allowed visitors, someone came to see me every day. I've never been able to adequately express to any of them just how much that meant to me. In a place where damn near everyone was batshit crazy people from outside were your one and only lifeline to the real world. Most of the time they'd just tell me boring bullshit about what had happened to whom and how so and so was "asking for me" but it really helped. Kept me connected, however tenuously, to a life beyond the confines of the hospital walls.

One day my younger sister turned up, with a big smile on her face and a personal stereo and some tapes for me. We spoke for hours. She told me all the latest family news and gossip and I told her about how much better I was getting and how I didn't think it'd be much longer before they let me out. I tried my best to keep things upbeat. She was still at school and in the middle of her exams and I didn't want to upset her with my bullshit. Truth be told, I really was feeling a lot better about everything by that point anyway.

Eventually the staff started doing the subtle shit they used to do that informs the visitors that it's time to leave. For all I hated those bastards at times, they really could be very sensitive when they wanted to be. They knew this was hard for everybody so, rather than just ringing a bell or making an announcement, they'd kinda start moving around, clearing up the teacups and the ashtrays and moving the tables around in preparation for mealtime. It was a quiet nod and a wink. Nobody got upset.

My sister caught the unspoken message and we said our goodbyes. I thanked her for coming and wished her luck with her exams and she turned around and gave me the weirdest look she's ever given me, before leaving through the security door, past the nurse station. The expression she'd had on her face puzzled me for a while but, as with a lot of things that happened during that blurry, confused period of my life, I soon forgot about it.

It was months after I'd been released when the reason was made clear to me. My girlfriend and I were talking, as we often did back then, about the stuff that had gone down while I was inside. "Something I've been meaning to ask you, " she said, "You remember that day I brought you the walkman and when I was leaving you said to me 'good luck with your exams'? Just what the fuck were you talking about?"


When I was younger I would have dreams about conversations with my friends in details. Normally a couple of days later those conversations would actually happen, in the exact detail I had dreamed them This scared the hell out of me and even I knew every word that was going to be said I never had the nerve to change anything. This story kind of reminds me of those dreams.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 13, 2010, 12:54:29 PM
No9: Paddy

Paddy was a taxi driver in a previous life. He was an alcoholic by the time I met him. As per usual the details of how he arrived in hell were sketchy; a mixture of trying not to think about it and being so fucked in the head you didn't quite remember it. Losing your mind aint like being drunk and losing a few hours or tripping out your skull for a few days. That shit's a holiday. Even the worst of the worst of my bad trips were kinda nice and soft and fluffy compared to what really going to hell was like.

Paddy was really in hell. He'd brought his ex wife in with him. Not in the flesh where she might have been manageable but in his head where she had free reign to run riot and torture his sorry ass constantly. It's hard to hide from a maelstrom of memories and regrets but Paddy had found a way. The view from the bottom of the bottle may have been cloudy but it was a lot more peaceful than the alternative according to paddy.

Anyway, whatever had landed Paddy in here with us had given him enough of a fright to make him seriously rethink his shit. Paddy was born again. Abstinence was his motto now. Unfortunately (for me) Paddy had come in with a half quarter of resin that he no longer wanted about his person and yours truly wasn't quite as committed as Paddy was to staying off the chemicals. So I helped him out in disposing of it and, as you might expect when someone in the throes of a psychotic episode chases down his meds with a mouthful of Morocco's finest, things got mighty fucked up and hazy for me for a few days, by which time Paddy was nowhere to be seen.

On regaining lucidity I learned from my fellow denizens that paddy had been given a cure for his booze fixation and been signed into the open ward next door. The open ward was our version of shangri-la. Being transferred to the open ward was better than a lottery win or maybe even being released. You could go outside whenever you felt like it. When you're stuck in a locked down cage, you can't even begin to describe how appealing that notion becomes. Paddy had been transferred from hell to heaven.

He'd made a few friends while he'd been here, myself included and he still hadn't reached the stage we all do, where you have to distance yourself from these kinds of acquaintances, before they drag you back down. He showed up as a visitor one day. He was looking much better; less grey. Less twitchy. Just kinda more stable all round. We sat around a table and drank coffee and chainsmoked and Paddy told us all about his magic bullet. The medication those nice people from the ward next door had given him cured his alcoholism one of two ways. Either he never touched a drop, ever again. Or it killed him. I never saw Paddy again but at least I knew he wouldn't be an alcoholic any more and that's a good thing, right?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2010, 12:23:47 PM
No 10: Marshall

Being committed can be a shock to the system. everybody deals with it differently.

One morning the rest of the ward woke up. I still wasn't sleeping so I would just lie awake and freak out and wait for everyone else to get up. That was always the best part of my day, when another long dark night of spirit crushing solitude would pass and the dawn would deliver me to the company of my fellow lunatics once again.

The dawn delivered a surprise that morning. Marshall was a big guy, not a kick in the arse short of seven feet, built like a fucking yeti with unkempt hair and a matted beard which fell just short of managing to conceal the expression of simmering rage, painted on the face beneath.

Marshall was pacing up and down the length of the dayroom. It looked like he'd been that way since he arrived, presumably some time during the night. It didn't look like he intended to stop anytime soon either. It was disconcerting, this hairy giant stomping back and forward. We discussed his presence in whispers, over breakfast, as if we were afraid to draw his attention. That burning stare was best as it was - staring into space. Nobody wanted to feel it pointed in their direction.

Breakfast over and done the rest of us lunatics were fed our morning meds and then set about getting on with another tedious day in hell, desperately clawing our way through seconds that stretched to hours, punctuating the spaces between with cigarettes and anything else we could think of doing to take our minds off our incarceration.

A lot of the conversations centred around the big guy, pacing up and down, back and forth. It was a disconcerting phenomenon. Anyone who had to cross the space for whatever reason would wait until he'd passed then nip across behind him, rather than risk being ploughed into by the juggernaut. He didn't look like he'd stop. Much more likely he'd just march on, leaving your mangled wreckage in his wake.

The staff weren't any help. You'd ask about him and you'd get told the same thing, "Just leave him be." No shit Sherlock! I'm insane and even I'd worked that one out. The hours and the big guy marched on, in tandem. Lunch came and went. Dinner came and went. Supper came and went, followed by the meds trolley and the inevitable sleepless night ahead.

I lay in bed, listening for clues on what was happening down the corridor. I never heard anything. Either they left him to it or somehow got a dose of something sleep inducing into him and then carried him off to bed. When we got up the next morning, there he was. Still pacing.

By the third day curiosity had overcome self preservation. I decided I was going to attempt to communicate with the leviathan. Besides, at that point I was convinced I was immortal. What's the worst that could happen?

I approached the lumbering behemoth and fell into step. "Hi," I told him, "I'm Ross."

"Marshall." He replied.

"Is it okay if I walk along with you?"

"NO!"

He pointed that flaming gaze at me just long enough to convince me he sincerely meant that. I gave up and returned to my compadres with information. He spoke. He told me his name. I think he wants to be left alone..

Couple of days later and Marshall suddenly stopped walking. The ward went quiet. I think the general consensus was that, while the pacing was disturbing, just like the ticking of a time bomb, it was going to be worse when it stopped.

He stood there in the middle of the room for the longest time then slowly walked over and sat down next to me.

"Thanks." He said. And after that he was just another one of the walking damned.  
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 15, 2010, 02:49:02 PM
So wait! Was he still angry? Was he friendly after that?

Dammit you can't leave a guy hanging like that!  :)
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2010, 02:59:57 PM
Heh! He turned out to be one of the mellowest dudes I ever met. Really shy. Kinda disoriented. I think he was finding his Schizophrenia a bit hard to come to terms with.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 15, 2010, 03:03:17 PM
Thanks.  :)
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2010, 03:10:45 PM
I got lucky - I got bipolar. That diagnosis, whilst still coming as a bit of a shock to me (any diagnosis is a bit like a guilty verdict when you were convinced of your innocence), kinda explained a lot when I thought about it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand didn't seem to be quite so well received. Only having third hand experience of it I could only speculate as to why that would be.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 15, 2010, 03:25:04 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2010, 03:10:45 PM
I got lucky - I got bipolar. That diagnosis, whilst still coming as a bit of a shock to me (any diagnosis is a bit like a guilty verdict when you were convinced of your innocence), kinda explained a lot when I thought about it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand didn't seem to be quite so well received. Only having third hand experience of it I could only speculate as to why that would be.

Fuck. Sounds like a death camp lottery drawing.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2010, 03:38:08 PM
The hardest bit is the stigma and I'm not talking about other people. That paled to insignificance compared to how I felt about it myself. "OFUK I'm a basket case!" Took fucking years to come to terms with that shit. Lot of denial, followed by a lot of fear and a liberal sprinkling of depression and pessimism.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Hoser McRhizzy on June 17, 2010, 02:38:32 AM
There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.  Both Little Sister and Marshall were excellent! 

Really glad you're still writing these.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 17, 2010, 10:51:19 AM
Quote from: Nurse Rhizome on June 17, 2010, 02:38:32 AM
There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.

Thanks! What I'm hoping came across, without me actually saying it, is the fact I'm fairly sure he's dead. What I'm undecided about is whether he was best out of his misery sooner, rather than the long lingering death that was waiting for him at the bottom of the bottle. He was a really tortured soul. I think he'd really loved that bitch (she left him for somebody else) and I dunno if living with that pain was better or worse than cashing in his chips early. In the end I guess that was Paddy's call to make, not mine.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Hoser McRhizzy on June 17, 2010, 05:41:19 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 17, 2010, 10:51:19 AM
Quote from: Nurse Rhizome on June 17, 2010, 02:38:32 AM
There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.

Thanks! What I'm hoping came across, without me actually saying it, is the fact I'm fairly sure he's dead. What I'm undecided about is whether he was best out of his misery sooner, rather than the long lingering death that was waiting for him at the bottom of the bottle. He was a really tortured soul. I think he'd really loved that bitch (she left him for somebody else) and I dunno if living with that pain was better or worse than cashing in his chips early. In the end I guess that was Paddy's call to make, not mine.

It absolutely came across!   :)

At the risk of deconstructing (rarely a good idea while someone's creating), I think the layers you build into these are brilliant.  There's so much silence and stigma built into incarceration, especially the 'mental health' and 'helping industries' (not meaning to reference the BIP here, because I probably don't understand enough about it yet), but these stories are a jailbreak for the reader.  I absolutely couldn't write like this and have mad respect (lolpunny) for those that can.

True/false memory overlapping in the redhead; although it's making everyone nervous – the reader wants Marshall to keep pacing; the seemingly innocuous Esso Lorry obsession carrying a nauseating undertone; that a murderer is simultaneously confidant and warning; knowing Danny's about to do something extreme simply by his Ok-Jack description; and my heart was in my mouth when Julie went quiet.

These stories are subtle powderkegs, if that makes any sense.  At no time do you hit anyone over the head with the typical dramatic 'reveal.'  In the same space, nothing's hidden or kept back from the reader.  The curtain's pulled back right at the start, even in the redhead memories.  The tension (for me) comes from seems/is, which shifts.  What gets me about this is you make this seem natural and easy.

Maybe off-topic, but I've held a lot of hate (for almost a decade) for a drunk I used to live with.  Your story about Paddy made me start rethinking my judgment for the first time, and you have my thanks for it.

Hoping you continue with these.  Apologies for the tl;dr.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 17, 2010, 07:52:57 PM
Holy shit! Wish I could take credit for all that but none of it was really planned. Maybe the things you are pointing out are the reasons I remember these things so vividly but really, I'm just blurting out memories here. Glad you're enjoying it, tho - good for the ego  :D
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Captain Utopia on June 18, 2010, 04:09:42 AM
Incredible writing here - thanks for sharing your experiences.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 22, 2010, 11:07:58 AM
No.11: Andy and Maggie

Andy was a recovering garbagehead. I'd kinda worked that out before he told me. He was really in touch with his meds. Like some people don't even seem to notice the effect the shit they're being force fed is having where others, like Andy, pay attention to every tiny little nuance. He was used to variety in his chemistry, a real connoisseur. His voracious appetite for new experiences had led him to study in depth the effects of a myriad different chemicals over the years. Andy was a walking RX List. An encyclopaedia of under the counter prescription drugs.

When I first arrived he was one of the first people I noticed. Pacing up and down the ward with a manic stare, complaining loudly to anyone who'd listen about the side effects. In detail. Everything from muscle tension to blurry vision to palpitations. "I need more Procyclidine!" He'd shout at the staff, "This shit is killing me." I had him down as a hypochondriac. Or someone who just liked complaining for the sake of complaining. I'd learn otherwise when the Droperidol kicked in with a vengeance but that's another story. For now I remained blissfully ignorant.

Andy was a good laugh. A fun guy to be around. Even though he complained almost constantly he still kept his sense of humour. He could laugh at himself and he always had some joke or other to cheer you up when the going got tough. We became good friends. In as far as two crazy people can ever really be but Andy was just about to leave. He was getting better and his section was up for review, just as I was riding out the peak of my mania. He'd be gone soon enough and I'd be left here to burn.

Maggie turned up on the ward a couple of days after I did. She was hard as nails but with a heart of gold. Liked her booze, liked her pills. She couldn't have been more than 25 but she looked a lot older. She liked to party real fucking hard and that takes it's toll on a pretty face. Andy and Maggie got on like a house on fire. Lot of common interests, common friends. They were on first name terms with a lot of the same chemicals.

Andy left soon after but he'd come back every other day to visit Maggie. He looked a lot better every time. He was putting on weight. Getting a bit of colour back about him. He really seemed to have put the "unhealthy patterns of behaviour" behind him. He was moving on, one day at a time. Choosing life. Then Maggie got released. She'd been homeless when she'd arrived but Andy had a place she could crash and he'd be a good influence for someone in recovery, a shining example she could follow into the light, right? What's the worst that could happen?

About a week later, at about 3:00am that question was answered when all hell broke loose in the room next door to mine. Maggie was back. Maggie was shitfaced. Maggie was pissed off and smashing up her room and anyone who tried to intervene. Whether she'd led Andy astray, vice versa or a mixture of both one thing was for certain - Andy and Maggie was an accident waiting to happen. And happen it did. Apparently she'd stabbed him with a kitchen knife. I never found out how badly or if he'd survived. I'm not sure if Maggie knew. Or even cared.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on June 22, 2010, 04:52:44 PM
Dude, don't you just hate not knowing how things turned out? Great story!
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on June 25, 2010, 12:28:25 PM
I just read all of these, and fucking awesome work, pent! The part about you om nom nomming about an eighth of moroccan mid psychosis was kinda horrormirthy. I know myself that the recreationals just seem to lock you in to the psychosis harder, and that's after a few tokes.

I shudder to think what ingesting would do to the headspace.

I think I can tell you all a little about the diagnosis lottery, especially when there is a psychosis involved.

Depression is the easiest one for them to pull out of the bag, in terms of stigma, dealing with it yourself, everyone gets the blues to one extent or the other.

Then there is bipolar, again, that is a little harder to get around, my mate Dwarf just got diagnosed with that, and is about to play the what meds do I want lottery, well he is already on Olanzapine, an antipsychotic which can make your cognitive processes quite dizzy, and make you gain a fuck ton of weight. That's the thing with meds that fuck with the dopamine receptors in the brain, things like sex and food don't quite hit the same mark as they used to. He has also been told that he has to research a bunch of other meds including Lithium. Lithium is a fucker. You need regular blood tests for toxicity. You need extra salt on everything to help your body retain fluids. It also permanently rewires your brain chemistry. Manic phases can be fun, especially for those along for the ride. I know this from personal experience with the Bigamist.

Schizophrenia is the diagnosis you do not want. It is the one I am most likely to get, with the family history and the pathology of the way I went nuts. It is also the most misunderstood and stigmatised, violent cases of this are rare, but you see this shit in the news all the time. The Yorkshire Ripper called voices in his head once he was caught. Numerous sick fucks have gone with the Voice Of God shit. That's the more acute end of the wedge. This is the public face of the schizophrenic, mostly unwarrented, and most of the dangerous cases are male. Getting an understanding of how it works for the non violent is where the media and general public usually fail. The stigma is hardest on the tapped.

My big sister is schizophrenic. She is always been in denial, tells people she is bipolar, rather than her diagnosis, it came about with post natal depression, and she is now getting a divorce.

Here is the kicker with Our Kid. In her moments of being irrational she can get all invasion of the bodysnatchers with her son, she doesn't believe that he is her son at times, is not doing anything about her divorce that will help her keep joint custody and doesn't understand how my nephew is so upset. My sister has attempted suicide once already.  Her soon to be ex husband has stuck around for years, taking the weight of it mostly solo, and not really communicating to us how bad it gets.

Schizophrenia tears people and families apart. I am the luckier of the two of us, cos for one I do not have a concrete diagnosis yet, and I do not deny that there is a problem. Using logical reasoning and the fact that I referred myself to the longest wait to see a shrink (5 months, in total) means that I have had to figure out my own reality filter without medication, and am being put on a low dose of antipsychotics now, rather than being dragged kicking and screaming to a doctor, not being a danger to myself or others, I can't be sectioned.

I am one of the luckier psychotics. I know this, and since I got back from Scotland to visit Payne I have felt much better. The symptoms are more residual now, I have had time to adjust to them, to put them to occams razor and shred the bullshit.

Hell this could have been its own thread, but I figure it fits here.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 25, 2010, 12:41:18 PM
Quote from: Rainy Day Pixie on June 25, 2010, 12:28:25 PM

I am one of the luckier psychotics. I know this, and since I got back from Scotland to visit Payne I have felt much better. The symptoms are more residual now, I have had time to adjust to them, to put them to occams razor and shred the bullshit.


I wish to hell I'd found this place before I went through it. Phrases like "occams razor" would have saved me months, maybe even years of having to work shit like that out for myself. Good luck - you sound like you're in a really good starting place (comparatively speaking of course)
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on June 25, 2010, 01:05:19 PM
Being able to tell if the shit is real or not helps a fuckton.


Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: LMNO on June 25, 2010, 02:38:08 PM
Pix, it gives me warm feeling inside and high hopes for you when I hear you say things like, "put them to occams razor and shred the bullshit."  You're on the right track.  Good luck!
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on June 25, 2010, 03:19:10 PM
I'm about to get my meds so I'm hoping things will get easier soon.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Triple Zero on June 26, 2010, 09:35:49 AM
Quote from: Doktor Vitriol on June 17, 2010, 10:51:19 AM
Quote from: Nurse Rhizome on June 17, 2010, 02:38:32 AM
There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.

Thanks! What I'm hoping came across, without me actually saying it, is the fact I'm fairly sure he's dead. What I'm undecided about is whether he was best out of his misery sooner, rather than the long lingering death that was waiting for him at the bottom of the bottle. He was a really tortured soul. I think he'd really loved that bitch (she left him for somebody else) and I dunno if living with that pain was better or worse than cashing in his chips early. In the end I guess that was Paddy's call to make, not mine.

I might be mistaken, but didn't you write something about Paddy before? There was something familiar about the name and the alcoholic dude connected to it.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 26, 2010, 10:35:10 AM
Pretty sure I haven't even thought about this dude in the last ten years, let alone written about him. Someone else maybe? Paddy is an irish name - most people called that are probably alcoholics  :lulz:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Triple Zero on June 26, 2010, 01:57:34 PM
hmmmmmm, good point. I dunno.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 26, 2010, 03:06:01 PM
Quote from: Doktor Vitriol on June 26, 2010, 10:35:10 AM
Pretty sure I haven't even thought about this dude in the last ten years, let alone written about him. Someone else maybe? Paddy is an irish name - most people called that are probably alcoholics  :lulz:

This coming from, of all people, a Scot.  :wink:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on June 26, 2010, 03:07:23 PM
I can tell you for nothing that this guy can put away the booze like there is no tomorrow
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 26, 2010, 03:47:46 PM
Quote from: Rainy Day Pixie on June 26, 2010, 03:07:23 PM
I can tell you for nothing that this guy can put away the booze like there is no tomorrow

Oh, I believe it. I like my drink too, but I get the sense that taking on either Pent or BadBeast in a drinking competition would not end very well for me. Though I imagine I wouldn't do too poorly. Boston is a drinking town.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pæs on June 27, 2010, 12:05:45 AM
 :mittens:
Thanks for sharing these.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Jenne on June 28, 2010, 07:58:41 PM
:mittens: x a million, Pent...hats off to you!  Insightful, wonderful writing here.  Thanks for sharing the journey with us.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 28, 2010, 11:42:23 PM
Thanks guys. I think this might well be some of the best (by my admittedly low standards) shit I've ever written. I want to keep going but I don't want to fuck things up by forcing it and right now I don't have anymore to tell. Although there's definitely more in there I can't for the life of me think how to get it out so expect more, maybe sooner maybe later.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Fujikoma on June 29, 2010, 01:51:43 AM
Great stories, man, I was riveted to the chair the whole time, and I had lots of shit to do...

I'm just glad I've managed to avoid one of those hospitals the times I've done something dangerous enough to get me locked up in one of them. I came REALLY close once, but the psychologist warned me, he said "Now, this question is important, and if you answer it one way, they'll have to put you in a special hospital, if you catch my drift.", I nodded, so he continued "Ok, do you think you might ever try something like that again?", worrying that I might need some kind of serious treatment, as what I was getting wasn't working very well, I paused for a moment, because I was thinking about doing something stupid that very moment, I still decided to answer "No.", to which he replied "Smart move, here's my card, if you ever need to talk about anything.".

I was pretty sure I didn't want to spend any time in a place like that, now that I've read these stories, I'm almost dead certain I made the right decision.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Jenne on June 29, 2010, 02:11:11 AM
Pent, give it time.  Don't force it.  Whenever I force a rant, I end up x'ing it out and never going back to it.  Just let it flow when you need it to.  You've got a GREAT thing started here.  And hey, even if there's no more to let go of here, you had a wonderful run!
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Triple Zero on June 29, 2010, 02:16:12 PM
Quote from: Doktor Vitriol on June 28, 2010, 11:42:23 PM
Thanks guys. I think this might well be some of the best (by my admittedly low standards) shit I've ever written. I want to keep going but I don't want to fuck things up by forcing it and right now I don't have anymore to tell. Although there's definitely more in there I can't for the life of me think how to get it out so expect more, maybe sooner maybe later.

I think that's good. I really enjoyed your stories, but I had to consume this thread in several batches, cause I couldn't read more than 2 maybe 3 stories at once. That's how good they are, and bitter-sour in the same way that I liken Kafka to really strong blue cheese. Good, but not too much at once. Except one story, which had a punchline. That was also good.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on August 04, 2010, 04:15:59 AM
Have you ever studied John Nash?

Just curious as I watched a Beautiful Mind tonight and I thought of you.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on August 05, 2010, 08:36:16 PM
The meds are starting to help. I'm getting less of the day to day general psychosis background noise, but certain stresses will make it worse. Meds are also fucking with my sexual response, and that is the part that SUCKS.

I am going to write moare about the breakdown at some point in the future, when the urge takes me there and my poor sludgy brain is more active.

Right now my energies are taken up by helping Payne find a place to live and being all supportive and stuff, looking for a place to volunteer and trying to stay sober.  And my occaisonal trolling.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Brotep on August 08, 2010, 04:54:21 AM
Damn, I totally missed this thread. Until now. Read it all the way through.

This struck a chord. Some of the clients I work with have PTSD from their time in the institution before the state shut it down. Solutions only bring more problems, sometimes. When they finally closed the place, many of the patients ended up on the street.

There's one lady in particular who's been having a hard time lately. She's nonverbal aside from answering "yes" to any question and repeating what you say and do. She rocks back and forth when she's agitated; the faster she rocks, the more upset she is. She works until her fingers bleed, and beyond. Listen closely and you can hear her indistinct vocalizations. Ask her what she's humming and she'll burst into "You Are My Sunshine". She was rocking much faster than usual the other day. Said she was angry when I asked, but it's hard to know if she really meant it. Most people don't get it. The woman next to her is always asking her if she's cold.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on August 08, 2010, 04:57:16 AM
I, for one, think this thread defines courage and strength.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Brotep on August 10, 2010, 10:52:14 PM
More, please.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on August 07, 2011, 05:22:40 PM
"A rolling stone gathers no moss"

It was a question but the intonation, the delivery made it more like a statement. He'd asked me to tell him what that meant to me but he wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say. He wanted to guage my reaction. He wasn't even looking at me when I launched into a diatribe that I don't recall verbatim all these years later but ended up with me ranting about infinity and positive and negative and, in all probability, religion and god and the devil and shit like that. I was being stalked by god, after all. It was kinda figuring highly in my thoughts. He never more than glanced in my direction, focussed as he was, writing stuff I never saw in his notebook.

It made me paranoid. It made me feel like I was being tested. I was. I failed with flying colours. Literally. I was hallucinating by the end of the short meeting. Detained, under whichever section of the mental health act applied. "Emergency! This fucker has no business being at large in the community. Real bad shit could happen. I was held under observation in Bellsdyke psychiartic facility.

I was ushered into what became known to me as "the dayroom" That simple phrase still sends shivers up my spine. There were some sketchy looking punters in here. Some part of me seemed to sense where I was but, for the most part, I was blissfully oblivious to my circumstances. I was motioned over by a fairly serious looking guy with a guage 1 buzzcut and shoulders like a fucking jersey bull. He seemed amiable enough but there was an edge in his eyes that put me straight into "watch what you say" mode. I was, at this time, completely, certifiably insane but I wasn't stupid.

His introduction sent my paranoia into overdrive. I was talking to the older brother of one of the shadiest cunts in my local district, a guy who I only knew by reputation, a reputation which largely consisted of him sticking knifes and machettes in people for the most trivial of reasons. The big brother was ten times worse but fortunately he was banged up at the moment. And here was me, starting to realise that I was banged up with him.

My mind couldn't deal with reality in general right then, hell that was why I was there in the first place but this? Fuck no. This wasn't happening. This was actors and hidden cameras and top secret, MK-ultra governemt experiments and shit. I was some kind of super mutant with latent powers who they were trying to abduct and reprogram with complicated mind control techniques to become the ultimate superweapon and some of the reprogramming shit involved someone pretending to be the fucking antichrist, sitting beside me, trying to bum a rollup and asking how I'd gotten here.

It was time to leave. My superpowers took me about as far as the door to the main corridoor before they got hold of me. I fought my way through the guantlet about half way to the locked security door before they wrestled me to the floor. I felt a sting in my arse. It all went black.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on August 07, 2011, 08:35:07 PM
Fuck.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 07, 2011, 09:09:10 PM
:mittens:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on August 07, 2011, 09:12:20 PM
Holy shit, Pent.

Quote from: Eater of Clowns on June 03, 2010, 08:26:28 PM
Quote from: Hawk on June 03, 2010, 08:11:16 PM
I never doubted you, I guess I just thought that crap went out in the '60's.

Still happens.  It looks less gruesome these days and supposedly isn't as painful, but it has a number of advocates.

They were still doing it in the early 70's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzjeqXFKFXQ and it doesn't surprise me that it never really went away. One of those things people hush up, I think, because it's brutal and does no good but to maybe make things easier for staff?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Triple Zero on August 08, 2011, 01:14:18 PM
I might have written about this earlier in the thread, but "it does no good" is bullshit.

That is, voluntary shock therapy. If it's involuntary, it's of course absolutely barbaric.

I know because a friend of mine who's now a doctor, during her medical internship witnessed shock therapy. The voluntary kind. The man undergoing it suffered from extremely severe depressions of some kind. They put him under complete anaesthetics [so no, it's not painful, you're not even "there"], except for part of one arm. Which would flail about wildly, this was how they could gauge the effect of the electrical shocks.
My friend talked to the man. It wasn't the first time he received the treatment. He said they didn't know exactly why or how, but it worked, and it helped him.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BabylonHoruv on August 08, 2011, 06:20:58 PM
It sounds like the shock treatments worked for the young lady in P3nt's recollection as well actually.  She had some adverse effects, but he said she was back, the one that was coherent and interacted with people.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on August 08, 2011, 06:23:36 PM
She told us it helped.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Triple Zero on August 08, 2011, 10:08:17 PM
It's just a single example, BTW. I don't know anything more about it, nor have I read anything about it, so maybe I shouldn't argue one way or the other.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on August 08, 2011, 10:14:09 PM
I don't know a lot about it either.

It's possible she said it helped because she wanted to be seen as cooperating with treatment so they'd stop. Might have been worried about what she said getting back to staff.

But I don't know. It just seems barbaric though.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on August 09, 2011, 10:23:29 PM
A bunch of fucked up shit happened all at once. I slept off a night worth of industrial-strength, no fucking about tranquillisers. It was anything but tranquil. I woke up dazed and confused and somehow breakfast came and went as I, for some reason that unsettles me to this day, just kinda went with where I was and what was happening. I was in hell. I was fucked. Game was over.

The next thing I know a bunch of chairs are being arranged in a circle. Circle was a significant shape to me, right then. Most of them were. My guess is that if you'd have thrown a triangle or a square or, fuck it, even a rhombus in front me right then I'd have freaked out. I was geometrically paranoid. It wasn't the only aspect of my shattered psyche that was causing me problems but, as soon as the circle was formed, it kicked into high gear. I came close to pointing and screaming "it's a fucking circle - kill it!" but somehow paralytic fear helped me keep it together.

I was somehow convinced to sit down. This was a "meeting". They happened once a week. Did I mention I was meeting-phobic. Next thing I know there's a full blown, shrieking and hollering and hooting, crazy monkeyfest in full swing. For some reason it relaxed me. I became momentarily lucid. I thought for a moment "this is kinda funny but, at the same time, these fuckers are all batshit crazy. "I'm not meant to be here. I don't belong here." I calmly explained to one of the staff sitting nearby.

He disagreed. I calmly asserted a perfectly nonsensical position. He patronised me. I less calmly asserted a position which the description "nonsensical" is not quite adequate to describe. He requested I remain calm. I declined. He had me in an armlock on the floor before I'd even properly decided I was going to attack him. I was led off to a side room which I recognised as the same place I'd spent the previous night. Another guy came in and they attempted to talk me down.

My psychosis was in high gear at this point. I became aware that was possessed by the devil (yeah, that's right, I do insanity with a twist of kitsch) I was sitting in a high backed vinyl chair, with no armrests. My back began to arch uncontrollably. Both the staff guys were trying to hold me down but my back was spazzing out something stupid, the back of my head felt like it was within millimetres of my heels. This was in the days before procycledine. They told me I had to ride it out.

After about half an hour the devil obviously got bored being held down by two guys and left. My neck was sore for fucking days. Good old anti-psychotics and their side effects. I learned to really hate those things.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Eater of Clowns on August 10, 2011, 12:32:50 AM
Pent, I'm happy to see this thread back up and running.  It's consistently been one of my favorite reads here.  Your description of psychosis is intense, terrifying, and in a way, refreshing, because of the complete bullshit that surrounds many other accounts.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on August 10, 2011, 04:31:27 AM
Yeah. And getting through it and writing about it like that is like walking out of a fucking plane crash. You don't see it often.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Adios on August 10, 2011, 03:15:32 PM
Thank you P3nt. Since I was tricked by my therapist into admitting how deep my depression is I feel like my grip is weakening. You have no idea how much your writing is helping.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Cramulus on August 10, 2011, 07:02:05 PM
reareading the whole thread ... damn dude ... again, thank you for sharing these things. These are fantastic pieces of writing.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: trix on October 12, 2011, 11:59:41 PM
First off, I'd like to thank P3nT4gR4m for this thread.  There aren't a fuckload of people that can readily understand what that kind of thing is like, and that includes me.  I've gotten glimpses, in the past.  And maybe a couple more tiny tiny peeks from this thread.  And I am grateful, both for your skillful writing and the stories you could share.

Nigel suggested I try my hand at writing.  So, if it's okay with you, I'd like to add it here, since it seems on topic, and I don't want to start a new thread.  If it's not okay with you, let me know and I will remove it and make a topic.  Or just remove it, as I'm not convinced this is a good idea, and the subject matter still bothers me.

I will start with a bit about my past, I wont go into it deeply or cover anything offtopic, as I'm not comfortable doing so.  

When I was a kid I was stupid.  Still am, in a lot of ways.  Stuff happened, and I ended up diagnosed with PTSD.  Well, that's what they called it.  I still don't think it was, I just don't think they had an official name for it.  I called it my blackouts.  Somewhat like drunken blackouts, I'd completely lose track of time.  One example is sometimes my mom would get me ready for school, make me a bowl of cereal, and leave for work.  We didn't live far from school, so i was expected to walk.  While eating the cereal, I would kind of zone out for a minute, and suddenly snap out of it upon hearing the door slam.  Four hours later, as my mom stopped home on her lunch break.  The incredible ache in my arm tipping me off to the spoon in my hand, still hovering above the bowl.  Cereal so soggy there wasn't any milk left.

I liked the blackouts at first, as they started during the situations I was diagnosed with PTSD for, and caused me to "skip" through some very long hours.  Ever seen that movie Rewind, with Adam Sandler?  Surprisingly a lot like that.  But, with far less lulz.  Like the movie, however, they only got worse.  Long story short, I was shoved into a place where they could "try out medications to find one that may help".

This place was not like the one P3nT4gR4m described.  This was kiddy school.  Temporary assignment for teens (which ended up being around 2 years long for me :| ) while they either fix your 'small' problems or transfer you to the drug-em-and-throw-away-the-key lifetime place.  And this story is not (anymore) about me but about someone I met there, the above was just some background so you understand wtf I was doing there.

For the sake of her privacy, I'm going to call her Brittany.  She was very sweet, modestly beautiful, well read (for her age), and intelligent.  Also she was quiet, and prone to bouts of crying.  At least, this is how I would have described her after the first couple weeks.

At the place I went to (called Rogers, lol @ Dok) they make us sit in a group once a day with the other patients, one therapist, and four or five "nurses".  They were called nurses there, but they were mostly male, bulky, and had an attitude like prison guards.  The point of the group was to talk about what brought you there.  Most of us hated it, but some people just like to talk given any excuse.  Brittany was of the former type.  She hated it.  For the first week, she refused to talk at all.  The more they pressured her, the more she'd hide her face and yell no.  Eventually, she'd break into tears and run to her room.  Nurses would follow, pressure her more, and try to get her to talk one-on-one, usually met with failure.

After the first week, they tried meds on her.  I'm not sure what they gave her, but she called them Zombie pills.  Because that was the effect.  Her eyes would be glazed over, she'd be very slow to respond, and she'd sluggishly do whatever was told of her.  Critical thinking, hell any thinking, was out of the question.  On the third day of that, she stopped taking them.  She had to deal with a lot of flack for refusing her meds (and meet with The Doctor, a woman named Dr. Romine who spent more time talking about the pure-bred horses she breeds then whatever you were there for) and eventually the only ones she stuck with didn't actually do much but she said they made her feel better anyway, just to avoid trying more zombie pills.

At around her third week there, they increased the pressure on her to share her story, and she continued to refuse.  They'd follow her to her room when she ran away crying again, and pressure her even more intensely.  It got to the point were she'd refuse to come to group or leave her room, blocking the doorway with her mattress and trying to hold it there.  In Rogers, that is unacceptable and they call a "code green".  Which meant the call went out and 15 or 20 "nurses" came charging in, put her on the gourney, and locked her in the "quiet room" in a straight jacket and strapped to the metal bed in the center.  One nurse sat in there with her, and the rest could just watch the camera footage via the TV's at the "nurse's station".  Minimum 3 hours, but often overnight, depending on the staff on duty at the time.

Eventually it worked, and she started sharing in group.  Her older brother had molested her nightly, often forcefully, for years.  When she tried to tell on him at first, her parents thought she was just trying to get him into trouble, so she stopped trying to tell them.  Until they caught him one night, and sent HER to Rogers.

Now, I should mention, this girl was not completely off her rocker or anything of the sort.  In fact, she appeared (emphasis on appeared) one of the sanest in the place.  She loved to draw, and read, and played the games we played.  She was extremely shy, but not shockingly so.  She was a big fan of reading Glen Cook, which is how her and I became friends, as that is my favorite fiction author.  We became pretty good friends and for most of the third and fourth week she was there I think we both felt like things would turn out alright.

Now, a big part of her problem was guilt.  She was a cutter, which is another thing her and I had in common, though our reasons were different.  I cut myself when I felt myself zoning out, to jerk myself back into the present and attempt to avoid blacking out.  She cut herself because she found physical pain easier to deal with than emotional pain, and discovered that she could only feel one at a time.  She cut to give herself the kind of pain she preferred.  At least, that was how she explained it to me.

I never pressed her for details on the other stuff, as it was obvious she didn't want to remember it.  But that doesn't fly in group.  I think the idea they had was that talking about it, and seeing the reaction of others, would make her more comfortable with what happened.  Maybe they thought as she got used to discussing it, it would become "just a memory" to her and she'd 'get over it'.  They were mistaken.  The more their tactics worked, and she had to talk about her brother, the more erratic her emotions became.  The more she found ways to hurt herself.  She couldn't cut much, as they never gave us anything sharp, but there are many many ways to hurt oneself given motivation.

Others in the group found it difficult to understand why she felt so guilty.  He had forced her, had he not?  But to me it seemed pretty obvious.  Both by what she said, and what she did not say.  It's enough of an emotional rollercoaster to be raped, an experience I cannot begin to imagine.  It's even worse when it's your big brother.  It's even worse when it continues nearly every night for years.  She thought she was a sick person, worse even then her brother.  In her mind, he was a horny guy being horny.  That is the impression I got from her about her parents too, they saw her as responsible.  Added to that guilt was the horror of getting used to it.  Of coming to expect it.  She was, after all, human.  The human body responds to sex with pleasure.  Feeling pleasure at something so wrong must be horrific.  I gave a lot of thought at the time, and in the years afterward, of how she must have felt.  I, of course, can never really understand, but so often I tried anyways.  How guilty would she have felt, on the days he did not come into her room?  Laying there, in bed, waiting sleeplessly as the minutes rolled by.  And when it finally occurred to her that he wasn't coming that night, the relief mixed with a tinge of disappointment maybe?  Then guilt that she kind of wanted him to?  Sex is, after all, physically enjoyable.  So much guilt that girl must've had, regardless.

As close as her and I were, and we were very close, adapting a very us-against-the-world attitude, the therapists and nurses tended to keep us apart, more and more.  Maybe they thought the attraction was sexual, or that they were protecting her.  In retrospect, however, I think they just didn't want to give her an out.

You see, they ruined her.  Those people.  All she wanted to do was forget.  Maybe, had she been allowed to, she could have healed.  The scars would remain, of course, but maybe she could have had a life.  But they wouldn't let her forget.  They pushed and pushed and pushed.  The story gets less detailed now, because I don't want to explain to my roommate why I'm crying.  As they pushed, she got worse.  She pushed back.  It came to a breaking point, and she attempted to hang herself with her own pants.  They ripped.  She was sent on to the long-term facility, with a prescription of zombie pills.  I never found out (not through lack of trying) if it became permanent.  But that place usually is.  She was 14.

And, though it didn't do a fat lot of good in the end, I loved her.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Luna on October 13, 2011, 03:11:01 AM
And you thought you couldn't write.

Hope it helped to get it out, Trix.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: trix on October 13, 2011, 04:26:52 AM
Quote from: Luna on October 13, 2011, 03:11:01 AM
And you thought you couldn't write.

Hope it helped to get it out, Trix.

I thought it might, but actually it just depressed the hell out of me.

So I went and picked on my roommate instead and she cheered me up.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on October 13, 2011, 05:52:38 AM
That was beautiful and sad.

Sending your kid to those places was very popular when I was young; it was a huge industry. Thankfully, it's less popular now.

Your friend's story is very similar to the story of the only woman I've ever been in love with. She was/is an extraordinary woman.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Murmur on October 13, 2011, 06:20:02 AM
Wow... this is harsh. Glad you're sharing, sad for the memories.

:cry:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Luna on October 13, 2011, 10:45:08 AM
Quote from: trix on October 13, 2011, 04:26:52 AM
Quote from: Luna on October 13, 2011, 03:11:01 AM
And you thought you couldn't write.

Hope it helped to get it out, Trix.

I thought it might, but actually it just depressed the hell out of me.

So I went and picked on my roommate instead and she cheered me up.

Give it time.  Lancing a boil isn't painless.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: The Rev on October 13, 2011, 11:53:19 AM
Trix, a very well written and incredibly sad story.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Phox on October 13, 2011, 03:36:53 PM
Very well written, Trix.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on October 13, 2011, 06:07:25 PM
Would have worked in it's own thread but it's exactly what this one's about so I don't have a problem with you posting them here if you have any more. Thanks for sharing. It's nice to know I'm not the only one every now and again.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on October 16, 2011, 09:16:45 PM
Only just caught this. Nothing to add, just . . . . nope, nothing. Props.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 12:18:23 AM
The stories I've read so far ITT have been excellent and deep. Might take me a bit to get through and digest them all.  Thank you very much for sharing to P3nT4gR4m and Trix both. You're all too right about the sexual impulse and guilt complex Trix.  It's a sad but true fact.  Many folks never really recover.  Trying to make people re-live what they are trying to ignore just to survive never works when forced.  Worse yet these things (a lot of things in any psych ward) border on the spiritual in a way that can seem all too real.  I'm not convinced that there's no such thing as spiritual damage.  It can be difficult to play agnostic when the reality of the people around you both conflicts and is inescapable.  Like when you're a ward inmate, or it's your family. 
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: trix on October 17, 2011, 10:22:38 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 12:18:23 AM
It can be difficult to play agnostic when the reality of the people around you both conflicts and is inescapable.  Like when you're a ward inmate, or it's your family. 

I would argue that it can be difficult to "play" anything but agnostic or atheist.  Given the chaos and randomness of life, Eris (or what I used to call the big d20 of life) seems to be the most plausible explanation for the best and worst and everything in between.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 09:31:22 PM
Quote from: trix on October 17, 2011, 10:22:38 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 12:18:23 AM
It can be difficult to play agnostic when the reality of the people around you both conflicts and is inescapable.  Like when you're a ward inmate, or it's your family. 

I would argue that it can be difficult to "play" anything but agnostic or atheist.  Given the chaos and randomness of life, Eris (or what I used to call the big d20 of life) seems to be the most plausible explanation for the best and worst and everything in between.

I can't call myself truly agnostic.  The experiences of my life do not allow for it.  I grew up with the experience of God being real, or at least real enough.  I definitely don't perceive it the same way that I used to, but I still experience things internally that are untranslatable to others.  Things are much different now than they used to be. I have become more willing to believe that I am the one that makes it real, and that all my experiences of God(Ishness) may well be only me and my unusual brain chemistry.  The trouble is that other people are living in similar, though diverse, realities.  I have a part of me that intuitively responds to such people and it never really went away. 

I'll try to explain with a story of my own.  The names are changed, but it's the truth of how I experienced it at the time.



I was about 14 when the usual shouting and occasional intense violence of my home life once again got to be too much.  My family always had incredible ability to fight over the dumbest shit.  I was no exception.  I snapped badly and wrecked a bunch of stuff.  In the aftermath, I opted to stay at a home for children and adolescents.  This was the first real institution that I ever stayed at and I went voluntarily.  I've always gone voluntarily, excepting one instance of near fatal reaction to a psych medicine.  I was in a state that I have since learned to recognize as mania when I arrived at the House. 

The House was a shelter for people with troubled family lives and runaways.  They were not religiously affiliated in any way, though they had some councilors of Christian background.  I was assigned a fellow I'll call Tod.  Tod was an easy going man in his mid 30's and non-religious.  I don't remember the details of our conversations for the most part.  I know I vented about the hate I had for the church I went to, and the crappy things I thought about.  There was never a point when God was unreal to me during my youth.  At the time I hated Him.  Tod's ability to listen helped to take the edge off of my anger, and there was no violence or shouting involved with my stay at the House.  This was good for me, but the state of my mind was still intensely manic and developing into irrational spiritual perceptions.  This was made more real to me when I met a 15 year old girl I'll call Liz and discovered that the shit I' been through was not so bad.

What I can remember and am willing to relate about her story is that she was a runaway and that the family she'd runaway from had been badly abusive.  She was staying at the House for shelter, but had great faith that her boyfriend was going to come pick her up.  We became friends, and I'd smuggle cigarettes in from school on occasion.  I didn't smoke, but I liked her and wanted acceptance.  I think she was also addicted to pain meds.  She asked if I could get some once, I said I'd try but didn't.  She was obsessed with this boyfriend of hers.  She told me a lot about him.  She wanted to die for him.  Her self-esteem was nearly non-existent, and she was extremely depressive.  When we were interacting there were moments when she would come out of it and laugh, but these were rare things.  They were usually seen when she was beating me at Monopoly.  I could feel an oppressive spirit on her break at these times, as though what was holding her down had to hit the corner for a bit and rest up before the next round of beating on her.  She told me her boyfriend was into black magic, and that at times she felt like the best thing she could do with her life would be die as a sacrifice.  It was clear to me the first time she mentioned it that it was an idea he had planted and had been nurturing. 

I had my own demons to wrestle.  This seems like a cliche, but it is an apt description of how it felt and how I thought of my emotional problems.  The anger and hate were always there.  I got into a lot of fights in my home and at school.  At these times it seemed like they were there for me, old buddies.  They made me feel stronger and a certain viciousness goes a long way in a fight.  I had been getting into a lot of them lately.  The more I heard about Liz's boyfriend the more I wanted a piece of him.  It wasn't about heroics or anything really other than liking Liz and maniacally KNOWING that he was an evil influence.  It was also about needing a fix and seeing the man as worse than me, the usual justification.  There was no speaking against him to Liz though.  He was a savior in waiting to her.  The story she told me was of an abuser and manipulator.  I met him only once.

It was near the end of my time at the House.  It was near the end of Liz's time too.  I had only one more night before I was scheduled to leave, and Liz asked me excitedly if I wanted to meet her BF.  Apparently she was going to leave with him in a couple of days and he was going to visit briefly before then during the hour or so of outside time we were allowed each day if we had shown good behavior.  During this time we could walk about the neighborhood for an hour or so.  Liz told me we could meet him at a nearby convenience store/fast food place.  This was against the rules, but she knew by now I could keep a secret and didn't mind breaking the rules.  I really wanted to meet him.  I could barely contain it.  Liz had no idea how much.  I had my ideas of what I expected.  I was wrong.

I thought he would be maybe 17 or 18.  The man was well into his 20's.  Normally this would not have been a problem.  I'd fought well above my class before and this meant MORE justification as he was a genuine shitbag to be seeing a 15 year old.  His demeanor was over-confidently friendly.  He had long dark brown hair, a black leather jacket, ripped jeans, and bright green eyes.  He looked at me and I felt something like a tug or twitch of my feelings.  I'm not joking when I say he seemed to see past my well fitted neutral mask.  The bastard smiled at me like he knew something about me that was amusing.  Melissa introduced us and there were no handshakes.  We sat at a table and Liz went around a corner to order something.  My reason told me now was the time to attack him.  If the cops showed up it would be interesting to see him answer questions.  My old buddies turned on me however.  Something about this guy definitely set my dogs to growling, but the old sense of strength was not there.  Instead of feeling an urge to act I only felt fucking paralyzed.  The discomfort was the same as always, but this time it was around my heart and arms and not in them.  I have no better description for it.  I do not remember what we talked about while we waited.  I remember his amused expression and bright eyes.  I desperately wanted to close them for him. I had never felt so impotent before.  It lingered after we left.

I tried to make contact with Liz afterward.  She had provided me with a contact number, but the phone never got picked up when I called.  I simply do not know what became of her.  My life went on.  I hope hers did too.  As for what happened, there are good psychological explanations for it I'm sure.  At the time I felt I had lost a spiritual battle.  These days I seldom think of it that way.  I just learned that there was nothing I could do to break his influence on her.  It's been a long time since then and I've discovered better means for conflict resolution.  I still wonder what happened sometimes.  It's not the only story in my life that does that by far, but this one was one of the first times I felt truly effected by forces unknown.  God I wish I had just jumped him.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on October 17, 2011, 11:07:20 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 09:31:22 PM
Quote from: trix on October 17, 2011, 10:22:38 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 17, 2011, 12:18:23 AM
It can be difficult to play agnostic when the reality of the people around you both conflicts and is inescapable.  Like when you're a ward inmate, or it's your family. 

I would argue that it can be difficult to "play" anything but agnostic or atheist.  Given the chaos and randomness of life, Eris (or what I used to call the big d20 of life) seems to be the most plausible explanation for the best and worst and everything in between.

I can't call myself truly agnostic.  The experiences of my life do not allow for it.  I grew up with the experience of God being real, or at least real enough.  I definitely don't perceive it the same way that I used to, but I still experience things internally that are untranslatable to others.  Things are much different now than they used to be. I have become more willing to believe that I am the one that makes it real, and that all my experiences of God(Ishness) may well be only me and my unusual brain chemistry.  The trouble is that other people are living in similar, though diverse, realities.  I have a part of me that intuitively responds to such people and it never really went away. 

I'll try to explain with a story of my own.  The names are changed, but it's the truth of how I experienced it at the time.



I was about 14 when the usual shouting and occasional intense violence of my home life once again got to be too much.  My family always had incredible ability to fight over the dumbest shit.  I was no exception.  I snapped badly and wrecked a bunch of stuff.  In the aftermath, I opted to stay at a home for children and adolescents.  This was the first real institution that I ever stayed at and I went voluntarily.  I've always gone voluntarily, excepting one instance of near fatal reaction to a psych medicine.  I was in a state that I have since learned to recognize as mania when I arrived at the House. 

The House was a shelter for people with troubled family lives and runaways.  They were not religiously affiliated in any way, though they had some councilors of Christian background.  I was assigned a fellow I'll call Tod.  Tod was an easy going man in his mid 30's and non-religious.  I don't remember the details of our conversations for the most part.  I know I vented about the hate I had for the church I went to, and the crappy things I thought about.  There was never a point when God was unreal to me during my youth.  At the time I hated Him.  Tod's ability to listen helped to take the edge off of my anger, and there was no violence or shouting involved with my stay at the House.  This was good for me, but the state of my mind was still intensely manic and developing into irrational spiritual perceptions.  This was made more real to me when I met a 15 year old girl I'll call Liz and discovered that the shit I' been through was not so bad.

What I can remember and am willing to relate about her story is that she was a runaway and that the family she'd runaway from had been badly abusive.  She was staying at the House for shelter, but had great faith that her boyfriend was going to come pick her up.  We became friends, and I'd smuggle cigarettes in from school on occasion.  I didn't smoke, but I liked her and wanted acceptance.  I think she was also addicted to pain meds.  She asked if I could get some once, I said I'd try but didn't.  She was obsessed with this boyfriend of hers.  She told me a lot about him.  She wanted to die for him.  Her self-esteem was nearly non-existent, and she was extremely depressive.  When we were interacting there were moments when she would come out of it and laugh, but these were rare things.  They were usually seen when she was beating me at Monopoly.  I could feel an oppressive spirit on her break at these times, as though what was holding her down had to hit the corner for a bit and rest up before the next round of beating on her.  She told me her boyfriend was into black magic, and that at times she felt like the best thing she could do with her life would be die as a sacrifice.  It was clear to me the first time she mentioned it that it was an idea he had planted and had been nurturing. 

I had my own demons to wrestle.  This seems like a cliche, but it is an apt description of how it felt and how I thought of my emotional problems.  The anger and hate were always there.  I got into a lot of fights in my home and at school.  At these times it seemed like they were there for me, old buddies.  They made me feel stronger and a certain viciousness goes a long way in a fight.  I had been getting into a lot of them lately.  The more I heard about Liz's boyfriend the more I wanted a piece of him.  It wasn't about heroics or anything really other than liking Liz and maniacally KNOWING that he was an evil influence.  It was also about needing a fix and seeing the man as worse than me, the usual justification.  There was no speaking against him to Liz though.  He was a savior in waiting to her.  The story she told me was of an abuser and manipulator.  I met him only once.

It was near the end of my time at the House.  It was near the end of Liz's time too.  I had only one more night before I was scheduled to leave, and Liz asked me excitedly if I wanted to meet her BF.  Apparently she was going to leave with him in a couple of days and he was going to visit briefly before then during the hour or so of outside time we were allowed each day if we had shown good behavior.  During this time we could walk about the neighborhood for an hour or so.  Liz told me we could meet him at a nearby convenience store/fast food place.  This was against the rules, but she knew by now I could keep a secret and didn't mind breaking the rules.  I really wanted to meet him.  I could barely contain it.  Liz had no idea how much.  I had my ideas of what I expected.  I was wrong.

I thought he would be maybe 17 or 18.  The man was well into his 20's.  Normally this would not have been a problem.  I'd fought well above my class before and this meant MORE justification as he was a genuine shitbag to be seeing a 15 year old.  His demeanor was over-confidently friendly.  He had long dark brown hair, a black leather jacket, ripped jeans, and bright green eyes.  He looked at me and I felt something like a tug or twitch of my feelings.  I'm not joking when I say he seemed to see past my well fitted neutral mask.  The bastard smiled at me like he knew something about me that was amusing.  Melissa introduced us and there were no handshakes.  We sat at a table and Liz went around a corner to order something.  My reason told me now was the time to attack him.  If the cops showed up it would be interesting to see him answer questions.  My old buddies turned on me however.  Something about this guy definitely set my dogs to growling, but the old sense of strength was not there.  Instead of feeling an urge to act I only felt fucking paralyzed.  The discomfort was the same as always, but this time it was around my heart and arms and not in them.  I have no better description for it.  I do not remember what we talked about while we waited.  I remember his amused expression and bright eyes.  I desperately wanted to close them for him. I had never felt so impotent before.  It lingered after we left.

I tried to make contact with Liz afterward.  She had provided me with a contact number, but the phone never got picked up when I called.  I simply do not know what became of her.  My life went on.  I hope hers did too.  As for what happened, there are good psychological explanations for it I'm sure.  At the time I felt I had lost a spiritual battle.  These days I seldom think of it that way.  I just learned that there was nothing I could do to break his influence on her.  It's been a long time since then and I've discovered better means for conflict resolution.  I still wonder what happened sometimes.  It's not the only story in my life that does that by far, but this one was one of the first times I felt truly effected by forces unknown.  God I wish I had just jumped him.
What you felt there, was his manipulative exploitation of the responses and inadequacies conditioned into the institutionalised kid. The Pimp Card. The kindly face of the predator. You felt unable to confront him on his nature, and he fucking knew it. You were both totally disenfranchised from normal human responses by your conditioning. I don't know how old you are now, but that kind of conditioning sticks like shit to a blanket, and can take years to overcome. (Depending on the level of negative reinforcement levied by the particular institution) Psychiatric Institutions are probably the worst, followed by Prisons, and Children's homes. Here in the UK, a significant number of our Girls who've been in care at some time, end up in the Sex industry. The Boys, on career Criminality. A very compliant and suggestible demographic to recruit from.

Any institutionalisation of kids, will never be right until these abuses are addressed. But societies are also conditioned into "Who cares about a bunch of whores and crims?" and that needs to be addressed first. And to our shame, that one looks like it's still a long way off. Makes me mad, and depressed if I dwell on it too long, and that's not good either.
People telling their stories, with this level of honesty is the only way people can begin to understand the shit that some kids have to endure. Making them scapegoats for all societies ills as adults, is just as bad too. It feeds on the abuses of the most vulnerable people in society, and that will never, ever be right.   
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: The Rev on October 17, 2011, 11:56:57 PM
BB, your take on this was pretty eye opening.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on October 18, 2011, 12:37:47 AM
Good. People are far too complacent about shit like this. It's insiduious and sick.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on October 18, 2011, 01:26:37 AM
I just read that back, and it sounds a bit dismissive, and it wasn't meant to be. But people, generally are too easily distracted from things they don't like to look at. 
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: The Wizard Joseph on October 18, 2011, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: BadBeast on October 18, 2011, 12:37:47 AM
Good. People are far too complacent about shit like this. It's insiduious and sick.

It's easy to ignore and only natural that people won't act on what they don't know about.  Thanks for the input BB.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: BadBeast on October 18, 2011, 10:28:36 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 18, 2011, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: BadBeast on October 18, 2011, 12:37:47 AM
Good. People are far too complacent about shit like this. It's insiduious and sick.

It's easy to ignore and only natural that people won't act on what they don't know about.  Thanks for the input BB.
No worries Mate. But people should be braver. By actually not looking away when they see something wrong.. By actually saying "That's not fucking right!" when it needs saying. Not "That wasn't right", or "What a fucking shame" afterwards. But when it needs someone to really say it, to try and stop something bad happening. 
Little things. But important things.
Oh, and while I'm here, I'd just like to say this thread has been consistently delivering for well over a year now. (More than our milkman has) So Props to P3nt. (And everyone else of course)
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on October 30, 2011, 01:25:45 AM
Getting back to what Trix was talking about, I can see sharing a story being therapeutic, on the condition that it's shared with someone who actually gives a tin shit. Not a roomful of nurse-goons, random patients and a shrink who only cares about breeding horses. Strictly my nonprofessional opinion, but it seems like common sense.

Stuff like that shouldn't be forced out of a person. The girl had been forced enough. They were just raping her all over again, AFAIC.

Trust has to be earned.



Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 03:18:00 AM
Pent invited me to post here...
...But in regards to my last mental breakdown, I don't know where to start.
I guess I could start with saying I repressed stuff and remembered it later. 
For some of you, that's going to drop any credibility I have into a pile of poo.
Oh well.
This study is the one that convinced me I wasn't making this up:
http://66.199.228.237/boundary/Childhood_trauma_and_PTSD/repressed-memory-abuse-williams-1994.pdf (http://66.199.228.237/boundary/Childhood_trauma_and_PTSD/repressed-memory-abuse-williams-1994.pdf)
Besides, in my case there's enough circumstantial evidence indicating something went very wrong.
###################################################


There was one thing I never repressed.
I was 4, and I went where I wasn't supposed to.
I ran behind the apartment buildings, once, just to see the view out over the valley.
...I was being a little disobedient, the big space between the buildings was right there, I was still technically visible.
The projects were way up on the side of the hill, you see...in Western Pennsylvania I think the rich folks like to live on flat land, so their cars don't ski off the side of hills.
So we were up in the hills, and the back of the apartments had an eagle's perch view.

...I heard a voice right behind me shout "Come here!"
I turned around...my mind registered the ugly man with the thick glasses and frizzy red hair.  He was leaning out of his ground-floor apartment window.
...But my vision zoomed in on the gun in his hand. I was looking down the barrel of a revolver.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
I ran.

It took a month for me to tell. 
During that month I was terrified the guy was going to shoot my family, because, you know, that's what bad guys do on television. I tried to keep everyone in the apartment and freaked out when anyone left-thinking they'd be gunned down outside.  I would not go out myself.  I started acting utterly hysterical when anyone tried to take me to the playground.
Yes, I was a bright 4 year old, I was reading, but...still 4.


I was finally not terrified enough to say to my mom:"He had a gun," she said "Well what if he was cleaning it?"
She was giving me a bath, and I believe I actually slapped my forehead in frustration.
She went on to say he must have that gun for his job as a guard or something, surely it was harmless...so I dropped it.  She didn't believe me, so I must have been mistaken.

When you're 4, your parents define your reality to you...and her telling me this pleasant lie she told herself...made me all fuzzy in the head.
Surely mommy was right, of course.

A year later, she opened up the paper and said "Is that the guy?"
In black and white, but yes, it was.  Same ugly hair, same crooked teeth and ugly pair of glasses.
Above his head was a headline "Local man convicted of child molesting."
Molesting was a new vocabulary word for me.
"Mom, what's molesting?" I asked.
"Never mind," is what I believe she said.
###########################################

...I still have bouts of agoraphobia.  I have to force myself to go into crowds sometimes.  This is a technique called "flooding" in the therapeutic world.  In 2011, when my brain was derailing, I got to the point where grocery shopping was risking a full-out panic attack, complete with looking for improvised weapons.

...It's not good when you have to resist the urge to smack the BASTARD WHO JUST WALKED BEHIND YOU with a jelly jar in the bread aisle.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 04:15:26 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 15, 2013, 03:18:00 AM
Pent invited me to post here...
...But in regards to my last mental breakdown, I don't know where to start.
I guess I could start with saying I repressed stuff and remembered it later. 
For some of you, that's going to drop any credibility I have into a pile of poo.
Oh well.
This study is the one that convinced me I wasn't making this up:
http://66.199.228.237/boundary/Childhood_trauma_and_PTSD/repressed-memory-abuse-williams-1994.pdf (http://66.199.228.237/boundary/Childhood_trauma_and_PTSD/repressed-memory-abuse-williams-1994.pdf)
Besides, in my case there's enough circumstantial evidence indicating something went very wrong.
###################################################


There was one thing I never repressed.
I was 4, and I went where I wasn't supposed to.
I ran behind the apartment buildings, once, just to see the view out over the valley.
...I was being a little disobedient, the big space between the buildings was right there, I was still technically visible.
The projects were way up on the side of the hill, you see...in Western Pennsylvania I think the rich folks like to live on flat land, so their cars don't ski off the side of hills.
So we were up in the hills, and the back of the apartments had an eagle's perch view.

...I heard a voice right behind me shout "Come here!"
I turned around...my mind registered the ugly man with the thick glasses and frizzy red hair.  He was leaning out of his ground-floor apartment window.
...But my vision zoomed in on the gun in his hand. I was looking down the barrel of a revolver.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
I ran.

It took a month for me to tell. 
During that month I was terrified the guy was going to shoot my family, because, you know, that's what bad guys do on television. I tried to keep everyone in the apartment and freaked out when anyone left-thinking they'd be gunned down outside.  I would not go out myself.  I started acting utterly hysterical when anyone tried to take me to the playground.
Yes, I was a bright 4 year old, I was reading, but...still 4.


I was finally not terrified enough to say to my mom:"He had a gun," she said "Well what if he was cleaning it?"
She was giving me a bath, and I believe I actually slapped my forehead in frustration.
She went on to say he must have that gun for his job as a guard or something, surely it was harmless...so I dropped it.  She didn't believe me, so I must have been mistaken.

When you're 4, your parents define your reality to you...and her telling me this pleasant lie she told herself...made me all fuzzy in the head.
Surely mommy was right, of course.

A year later, she opened up the paper and said "Is that the guy?"
In black and white, but yes, it was.  Same ugly hair, same crooked teeth and ugly pair of glasses.
Above his head was a headline "Local man convicted of child molesting."
Molesting was a new vocabulary word for me.
"Mom, what's molesting?" I asked.
"Never mind," is what I believe she said.
###########################################

...I still have bouts of agoraphobia.  I have to force myself to go into crowds sometimes.  This is a technique called "flooding" in the therapeutic world.  In 2011, when my brain was derailing, I got to the point where grocery shopping was risking a full-out panic attack, complete with looking for improvised weapons.

...It's not good when you have to resist the urge to smack the BASTARD WHO JUST WALKED BEHIND YOU with a jelly jar in the bread ais

I do not envy you, and I am sorry that you had to go through this.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:03:51 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Not that it matters now.

Dad may have his problems now, but he would never do that sort of thing these days one way or the other.

He's a good man now, even if... malfunctioning.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 15, 2013, 05:11:02 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Ugh

Sometimes the brain reconstructs things just a bit differently, to protect you from things you aren't able to handle.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:11:30 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:05:10 AM
Redacted per request.

I may have to reread this several times.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:18:32 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:11:02 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Ugh

Sometimes the brain reconstructs things just a bit differently, to protect you from things you aren't able to handle.

I knew at an all too early age that my father was an alcohol abuser. I knew what drunk meant way too soon.

When I was in elementary school and in high school, I thought of my father as an alcohol, or after a certain time, a recovered alcoholic.

But when he stopped drinking is when his insanity became obvious.

If I have alcoholism, it's from my mom, not my dad. My mom is clearly an alcoholic (but not without genetic or environmental reasons). At this point, I am certain that dad was never an alcoholic. Even though he comes from a heavy drinking culture, neither of his parents had that biological addiction. No. I think he was suppressing something else, and when that suppression threatened his marriage (which ended regardless), he stopped. No problems. Just. Stopped drinking. Then the crazy happened. Slowly at first. I know I'm in the clear, at least as far as severity of mental illness is concerned.

It does give me pause about the idea of reproducing however.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:20:19 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:18:32 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:11:02 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Ugh

Sometimes the brain reconstructs things just a bit differently, to protect you from things you aren't able to handle.

I knew at an all too early age that my father was an alcohol abuser. I knew what drunk meant way too soon.

When I was in elementary school and in high school, I thought of my father as an alcohol, or after a certain time, a recovered alcoholic.

But when he stopped drinking is when his insanity became obvious.

If I have alcoholism, it's from my mom, not my dad. My mom is clearly an alcoholic (but not without genetic or environmental reasons). At this point, I am certain that dad was never an alcoholic. Even though he comes from a heavy drinking culture, neither of his parents had that biological addiction. No. I think he was suppressing something else, and when that suppression threatened his marriage (which ended regardless), he stopped. No problems. Just. Stopped drinking. Then the crazy happened. Slowly at first. I know I'm in the clear, at least as far as severity of mental illness is concerned.

It does give me pause about the idea of reproducing however.

Dad's self medication was so... medicated... that I didn't even notice that mom was a full blown alcoholic until I was a teenager.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 15, 2013, 05:24:43 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:18:32 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:11:02 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Ugh

Sometimes the brain reconstructs things just a bit differently, to protect you from things you aren't able to handle.

I knew at an all too early age that my father was an alcohol abuser. I knew what drunk meant way too soon.

When I was in elementary school and in high school, I thought of my father as an alcohol, or after a certain time, a recovered alcoholic.

But when he stopped drinking is when his insanity became obvious.

If I have alcoholism, it's from my mom, not my dad. My mom is clearly an alcoholic (but not without genetic or environmental reasons). At this point, I am certain that dad was never an alcoholic. Even though he comes from a heavy drinking culture, neither of his parents had that biological addiction. No. I think he was suppressing something else, and when that suppression threatened his marriage (which ended regardless), he stopped. No problems. Just. Stopped drinking. Then the crazy happened. Slowly at first. I know I'm in the clear, at least as far as severity of mental illness is concerned.

It does give me pause about the idea of reproducing however.

Aw man. :(
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 05:30:22 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:24:43 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:18:32 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:11:02 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 04:20:22 AM
Repressed memories are super controversial. Memory itself is super-controversial. However, there's a big difference between a repressed memory and something so painful that you just don't think about it, ever, until you're ready to cope with it. And then you think about it or tell someone about it and you say, "Wow, holy fuck, I haven't thought about that in YEARS!"

But it was always there. It wasn't like a revelation, the remembering, but like holy fuck, how is it that I just never think about that and it was like it didn't exist for such a long time?

Going to school, age five, with two black eyes. I don't even remember the story I told to excuse it, but I remember telling the truth about it, and being scared shitless that I'd get it worse when I got home. Instead she cried and said she was sorry, and she never hit me in the face again.

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.

Ugh

Sometimes the brain reconstructs things just a bit differently, to protect you from things you aren't able to handle.

I knew at an all too early age that my father was an alcohol abuser. I knew what drunk meant way too soon.

When I was in elementary school and in high school, I thought of my father as an alcohol, or after a certain time, a recovered alcoholic.

But when he stopped drinking is when his insanity became obvious.

If I have alcoholism, it's from my mom, not my dad. My mom is clearly an alcoholic (but not without genetic or environmental reasons). At this point, I am certain that dad was never an alcoholic. Even though he comes from a heavy drinking culture, neither of his parents had that biological addiction. No. I think he was suppressing something else, and when that suppression threatened his marriage (which ended regardless), he stopped. No problems. Just. Stopped drinking. Then the crazy happened. Slowly at first. I know I'm in the clear, at least as far as severity of mental illness is concerned.

It does give me pause about the idea of reproducing however.

Aw man. :(

PM incoming.

(Also, heads up, I am actually inebriated right now)

But, dad's a good dude. I feel really, really awful for him. My mother feels even worse. She feels that she should have known, and helped. She still loves him, after a fashion. Wishes that she could have helped him more.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 06:00:18 AM

...There were some things that I would consider just not thought about...I managed to forget I had ever loved my father, but I obviously had to love him, because I made myself not love him at 12.
But it was painful to think about ever having been that person who loved him, so I just did not.

I did not realize how weird my uncle's marriage was until I was 38, when suddenly I had my brain nudged. His wife had a live-in boyfriend, and this wasn't something my uncle was happy about...we kids were told he was "cousin Bill."
...I thought "Gawd, what kind of freakshow did I come from?"

This repressed stuff was really edited out of my mind.
It's likely not accurate, but events remembered by my mom seem to indicate they are more truth than fiction.


Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 05:05:10 AM
I'll tell you guys a secret.

I'm not capable of being happy.

My happiness got broken a long, long time ago, before I can even remember. I am pretty sure have been happy, but I don't remember it; it was too long ago. Definitely before the kidnapping. I don't tell people things like this, partly because it sounds improbable and partly because I don't want to have to explain. There are always more questions than I want to answer.

I feel joy, sure. Sometimes it's intense, beautiful, unrestrained joy. Sometimes it's just a sort of awkward contentedness. I felt the awkward contentedness, punctuated with crippling anxiety, for about two years of my last marriage. I've learned one thing about myself: if I'm not struggling for something, I can't be comfortable. I don't feel safe if things are too easy. I need to always be pushing. If there's one thing I hope I can learn by the time I'm old, it's how to let down my guard against life.

But it keeps getting better. I can say that much.

I'm a little tired of being sad. I always assumed it would go away somewhere along the line, and that I would get to feel something more generally benign for most of my life. It's pretty clear at  this point that "most of my life" isn't going to happen, so I'll settle for "some of my life". "The golden years", maybe. But it's getting better.

I used to dig it down deep and keep it  there, and what would happen is that it would push its way up like a cyst around an ingrown hair, until sallow and turgid and too near the surface all it took was being a little too drunk and a little too tender and it would rupture and gush out, thick viscous yellow ooze spurting from me in tears and a half-told story in some jerk's arms in the small hours of the morning. Now, I don't bother pushing it under. I don't try to restrain it to a cystic container under the surface. So now, I'm sad all the time. It's better.

People ask me sometimes why I'm so well-adjusted. By "people" I mean "therapists", of which I have had many. People other than therapists don't usually know the whole story. For that matter, therapists don't know the whole story. It takes too much time to tell, and so the last people who knew everything was the two-therapist team I had at Kaiser when I was 20. Thinking back on it, the fact that I had two therapists and a psychiatrist is amazing. Insurance just isn't what it used to be; you could never get that kind of coverage now.

The story is bigger now, of course. But still, it's so much better.

There are times when I glimpse happiness. I'm not talking about bliss; I'm talking about something so much more elusive and basic, something I don't even really understand. It's what I see on the face of my pre-adolescent child, who has never been badly hurt and who has not yet discovered angst, when she's not doing anything in particular. I see it in other people as well, and it amazes me. It seems so simple, and can be replaced in moments with the discontent of boredom. This feeling seems like the feeling of being out in public and not feeling like people are staring at you. It seems like the feeling of no being self-conscious, and not feeling certain that everyone can see that you're a freak. It seems like it feels like not being marked. I have recently started experiencing boredom. This brings me hope, because it seems to me, looking at other people, that boredom and happiness are closely linked. How can you experience boredom unless you are also able to experience a pleasurable state that is not-boredom, yet is also not-joy? Obviously, there's something in there that I am starting to tap into.

Standing on my skateboard on the street. A man walks by. He doesn't look at me. I know he's noticed me, a 40-year-old woman gawkily riding a skateboard, and that he's not thinking that I'm a freak or that I'm strange or any of the other uncharitable judgments my scarred brain attributes to total strangers. No, he's noticing that I am a 40-year-old woman who has not given up on life. Or something like that. 

That feels good.

:(
That's wretched.
I feel happiness sometimes, but it's occasional.
I felt happy when I first married my wife...then I got sick from our old apartment, and somewhere along the way, she stopped treating me with respect...and eventually, I stopped treating me with respect too.

Now that she's going away, I feel happy moments again.

After I was 4, colors were often duller, as if looking through a gray lens.
For me, the thing that went away was my sense of safety.

Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.
I hope you are right too.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 06:25:32 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 15, 2013, 06:00:18 AM
I managed to forget I had ever loved my father, but I obviously had to love him, because I made myself not love him at 12.
But it was painful to think about ever having been that person who loved him, so I just did not.

This, is perhaps the worst feeling in the world. I started hating my father at a young age, and only feeling compassion for him when I realized that the poor bastard was just fucked up. Then you feel like a dick.

Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 05:01:02 AM

There was one instance, when I was young.

My sister and I remember it differently.

What I remember is me falling down the stairs while dad was drunk on the couch watching sports.

What my sister remembers is dad being drunk and pushing me and me falling down the stairs as a result. Seems the only things we can agree on is that dad was drunk and mom was at work.

I hope that I am right, and my sister is wrong.
I hope you are right too.
[/quote]

I try not to think of it often. Matter of fact, I ignore this conflict in perspective unless it is relevant somehow. Inherently, the conflict of narrative really bothers me. My narrative is that my father is a good man, even if severely flawed (and insane, and therefore no fault of his own). I choose not to accept a reality in which one of my parents would intentionally harm me, regardless of reason, or lack thereof.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 06:35:30 AM
...So...
Flashing forward to age 19...
I remembered something else that happened at 4.
...I'm going to narrate this in 3rd person.  I'm at work.
That makes it easier.
To make it easier to read...I think I will leave out a lot, but be careful anyway, major trigger ahead.

########################################

Joel walked up to the little girl.  The little girl had been in Joel's apartment before, with the other kids.  Joel had rats and spiders, a whole shelf full.
Joel had noticed that the little girl liked rats and spiders.
...He walked up to the little girl and said "Hey! would you like to come see my rats?"

The little girl smiled and said yes.   Joel took her hand and led her up to the third floor.

Later, the apartment door opened and he pushed her out.
She was still gasping for breath.
"Don't you tell ANYBODY!" he said.
She wouldn't, of course.
Mommy had told her never to go into an apartment without asking.
...So this was punishment.
She was a bad little girl, that's why he went potty in her mouth.

##########################################

Two days after I remembered at least part of that (more pieces returned later)...it was whirling, over and over in my mind.
I accidentally drove off the road and found a culvert...Ditches are deep in East Texas to contain runoff.
I was going about 40 MPH.

When I came to, I thought I'd lost my eye...then lifted the flap and said "oh".
The plastic surgeon was able to put my eyebrow back, there's hardly a scar to see.
Nerve ends were severed, that side of my forehead is still numb. I must have struck it on the steering wheel.
My left arm was shattered between my wrist and elbow. 
The main pieces the doc plated back together, it's an inch shorter and crooked.

The next few years I couldn't touch anyone without feeling nauseous.
...So much for massage therapy training...you have 2 years to do the practicum and be tested after graduating school
I'm not sure my back would have held up to the work anyway, not full-time.

The recall would explain something though:
As a small child I would literally start crying and freaking out if I heard country music.
...He had turned a radio on to cover any noises...on to a country music station.
I still cringe when I hear country music, it makes me feel queasy and anxious.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 06:38:48 AM
Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 06:40:21 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:38:48 AM
Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.
Strike that.

That option 1 is feasible, that option 2 is inconcievable, and that you have an option 3.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 06:41:21 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:25:32 AM

I choose not to accept a reality in which one of my parents would intentionally harm me, regardless of reason, or lack thereof.

It's almost universal to view one's parents as good.
Therefore the abused child almost always sees themselves as bad.
...Too, if you are the problem, then maybe you have the power to fix it?
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:38:48 AM
Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.
Option 3-you tripped.
There is no age too old to trip and fall on the stairs.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 15, 2013, 06:54:14 AM
I'm glad that the first thing I did after leaving home at 18 was find a therapist, and then do intensive PTSD group therapy for a few  years. Everyone kept commenting on how unusual it was for someone that young to get into therapy on their own, but I credit it with making me as functional and relatively well-adjusted as I am. I was just like, fuck this, I am not going to have any kind of life unless I get in there and fix some shit.

I am also really glad that the resources for me to do so existed back then. Full coverage on a minimum-wage job. We don't have that kind of coverage anymore.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 07:18:34 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 06:54:14 AM
I'm glad that the first thing I did after leaving home at 18 was find a therapist, and then do intensive PTSD group therapy for a few  years. Everyone kept commenting on how unusual it was for someone that young to get into therapy on their own, but I credit it with making me as functional and relatively well-adjusted as I am. I was just like, fuck this, I am not going to have any kind of life unless I get in there and fix some shit.

I am also really glad that the resources for me to do so existed back then. Full coverage on a minimum-wage job. We don't have that kind of coverage anymore.
I've been lucky enough to be able to go through a state agency for therapy, and now I'm going to a nonprofit, where I get therapy on a discount.
I get happy pills from residents-Shrink of the month club.

It's really hard to get decent mental healthcare for everybody these days.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 08:19:12 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 15, 2013, 06:41:21 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:25:32 AM

I choose not to accept a reality in which one of my parents would intentionally harm me, regardless of reason, or lack thereof.

It's almost universal to view one's parents as good.
Therefore the abused child almost always sees themselves as bad.
...Too, if you are the problem, then maybe you have the power to fix it?
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:38:48 AM
Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.
Option 3-you tripped.
There is no age too old to trip and fall on the stairs.

Tripping and falling can be interchangeable.

Either way, I still see no reason why my father would do that (conversely, I see no reason why my sister would remember it differently unless I was suppressing something). I must merely accept it as, "stairs hurt, no cause for that conclusion concluded upon"
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 08:22:21 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 15, 2013, 06:54:14 AM
I'm glad that the first thing I did after leaving home at 18 was find a therapist, and then do intensive PTSD group therapy for a few  years. Everyone kept commenting on how unusual it was for someone that young to get into therapy on their own, but I credit it with making me as functional and relatively well-adjusted as I am. I was just like, fuck this, I am not going to have any kind of life unless I get in there and fix some shit.

I am also really glad that the resources for me to do so existed back then. Full coverage on a minimum-wage job. We don't have that kind of coverage anymore.

That's a good thing, and yes, the sooner the better.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 08:30:33 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 15, 2013, 06:35:30 AM
...So...
Flashing forward to age 19...
I remembered something else that happened at 4.
...I'm going to narrate this in 3rd person.  I'm at work.
That makes it easier.
To make it easier to read...I think I will leave out a lot, but be careful anyway, major trigger ahead.

########################################

Joel walked up to the little girl.  The little girl had been in Joel's apartment before, with the other kids.  Joel had rats and spiders, a whole shelf full.
Joel had noticed that the little girl liked rats and spiders.
...He walked up to the little girl and said "Hey! would you like to come see my rats?"

The little girl smiled and said yes.   Joel took her hand and led her up to the third floor.

Later, the apartment door opened and he pushed her out.
She was still gasping for breath.
"Don't you tell ANYBODY!" he said.
She wouldn't, of course.
Mommy had told her never to go into an apartment without asking.
...So this was punishment.
She was a bad little girl, that's why he went potty in her mouth.

##########################################

Two days after I remembered at least part of that (more pieces returned later)...it was whirling, over and over in my mind.
I accidentally drove off the road and found a culvert...Ditches are deep in East Texas to contain runoff.
I was going about 40 MPH.

When I came to, I thought I'd lost my eye...then lifted the flap and said "oh".
The plastic surgeon was able to put my eyebrow back, there's hardly a scar to see.
Nerve ends were severed, that side of my forehead is still numb. I must have struck it on the steering wheel.
My left arm was shattered between my wrist and elbow. 
The main pieces the doc plated back together, it's an inch shorter and crooked.

The next few years I couldn't touch anyone without feeling nauseous.
...So much for massage therapy training...you have 2 years to do the practicum and be tested after graduating school
I'm not sure my back would have held up to the work anyway, not full-time.

The recall would explain something though:
As a small child I would literally start crying and freaking out if I heard country music.
...He had turned a radio on to cover any noises...on to a country music station.
I still cringe when I hear country music, it makes me feel queasy and anxious.

Jesus fuck.

I'm just catching this post now.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 08:39:05 AM
I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 08:46:20 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 08:39:05 AM
I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.
it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
...ATM I'm feeling a bit drained, as I haven't lifted this particular baggage in a bit.
...This part?  I can say I went through it and it's closed.

The only part I'm really disgusted about is? 
How stereotypical pedophile this guy was...single older man, doesn't have a real job, no girlfriends, works as a photographer...babysits children.
I was friends with his next-door neighbor's girls.  The neighbor was a single mom and was really happy to have someone watch her kids for free.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 15, 2013, 08:48:18 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 15, 2013, 08:46:20 AM
Quote from: El Twid on June 15, 2013, 08:39:05 AM
I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.
it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
...ATM I'm feeling a bit drained, as I haven't lifted this particular baggage in a bit.
...This part?  I can say I went through it and it's closed.

The only part I'm really disgusted about is? 
How stereotypical pedophile this guy was...single older man, doesn't have a real job, no girlfriends, works as a photographer...babysits children.
I was friends with his next-door neighbor's girls.  The neighbor was a single mom and was really happy to have someone watch her kids for free.

I would say how you have no idea how hard I am cringing right now, but... you not only do, but more so.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2013, 11:24:36 AM
When it comes to repressed memories, it doesn't seem that far fetched to me. I have false memories. Once you've seen one of those from the inside, you know there's pretty much nothing that the human brain aint capable of making itself think or believe.

When I was writing this series the memories weren't repressed. Like Nigel said, they were just shit I hadn't really thought about in years. In the process of sticking it on the internet for a bunch of anonymous weirdos to read, tho, I found out why. I was afraid of them. You can't remember stuff like that without going back into that headspace. I was scared if I did that I'd get stuck there again. Turns out I didn't, tho. Turns out I really am stronger and better at controlling it, nowadays. Better at avoiding the vortex of bizarre that can suck you down so far you forget which way is up.

Those memories, tho, they happened to a different person. I don't mean that in a dissociative way, either. It's not a cop-out. The guy who went through that shit was me alright but it was a different incarnation of me. Just a kid. He didn't know what I know. He didn't have the strength and ability to fend off the demons. That came after. That came as a result of what the kid went through. He was weak and defenseless. I used to hate him for that but not now. How else could he have reacted? He wasn't me yet. But his sacrifice and his pain and his weakness, made me who I am.

He died for my sins.  :lulz:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 15, 2013, 03:06:14 PM
Because I'm not emotionally stuck there anymore, remembering the things that happened to me feels different now. It's weird, but now I just feel compassion and sadness for the kid I used to be, even though I used to hate myself. I wish that I could protect that kid. It's like I just have this whole different perspective; it's still painful, but I'm not stuck in it; remembering doesn't transport me to the emotional place I was when it happened. It used to, of course, but that's what the therapy was for, to get me un-stuck and allow me to mature emotionally.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 15, 2013, 06:29:34 PM
Quote from: The Twid on June 15, 2013, 06:38:48 AM
Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.

I fell down stairs when I was about three, Twid.

We were visiting my grandma in another city and she lived in a two storey house. That's a big novelty in Texas.

The adults were yakking downstairs and I went upstairs and looked out the window. Then I went to play on the stairs. I messed around awhile until I was tired. Then I tried to lie down on one because I loved it, but it was too small and I ended up rolling down the whole flight. I still have a little knot behind my ear from that.

But my point is, kids fuck around on stairs and they fall. I don't KNOW that your dad didn't push you, I DO doubt that you did it on purpose.

Little kids can get banged up in a vaccuum if you look away. Just sayin'.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 15, 2013, 06:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Twid on June 15, 2013, 08:39:05 AM
I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.

This.

Fuck.  :cry:

All of it.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 15, 2013, 06:39:27 PM
As for why your sister remembers it that way, I don't know.

Memory will fill in holes with things that never happened sometimes.

Or not.

And having a parent like that can make you go off on tangents. I had a friend with an asshole dad, not violent or perverted, but he would do things like knock roaches off the ceiling over her with a broom knowing she was terrified of them. One day she said she thought he had raped or fingered her as an infant, because she didn't bleed the first time she had sex. I had to explain to her that most people DON'T really bleed, I didn't, and those romance novels with the bloody-carnage sheets are total bullshit.

I don't know how many years she went around thinking that, and it's a totally different situation, but having a fucked up parent can make suspicion the default, I think.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 15, 2013, 09:38:01 PM
I'm supposed to be talking about my latest visit to planet batshit...unfortunately, that involves first depression, then PTSD.
If you want to talk about PTSD, you have to show where you got it, right?

Depression is easier to talk about.
..I started showing signs of clinical depression in 5th grade...and despite getting some therapy, I did not get undepressed.
...I wouldn't, I was in an extremely dysfunctional family and I got hit by dad when he felt I deserved hitting...often enough.
Mom was verbally abusive.
By that time I'd figured out hiding in my room was the best way to not get hit and/or verbally abused.
I was fat by that time, and I was constantly picked on.  I had no friends.
...But somewhere along the line, I got the idea that I was filthy and needed to die.
...That I contaminated everyone around me, that i was evil.

I berated myself for failure to kill myself, called myself a coward.
I already blamed myself for every bad thing that people did, every taunt...I was ashamed because I deserved it.
I was going to Christian schools in 6th and 7th grade...I was actually quite a devout little Christian for a while.
People told me to pray to Jesus, and I'd get better, this after I tried to strangle myself in the bathroom with a towel.  Very lame suicidal gesture, but I was 11... and I just didn't want to show my dad the grades because I was going to get slapped around and told how worthless I was.
...Jesus didn't help. 
Eventually at 16 I got treatment, then hospitalized for 6 weeks.

My depression became severe in my early 20's again, and then I decided that I was tired of being unemployed, lonely, and severely depressed...I stopped trying to quit my meds, just accepted that I was on the pills permanently.
I found a really cheap place, got out on my own, fell in love with an asshole (guy), crazy (girl), nag (guy).  After him I bounced home for a bit, then got a place...and met my wife.
I really, REALLY loved my wife.:(

I moved in with her in 2002...and I became physically ill.  Her rented townhouse had pretty severe moisture problems-mildew tended to grow on the walls.
Sinusitis was dx'ed in 2007. 
Until then I was dealing with allergies and asthma that inexplicably went berserk...then we moved back in with my mom to pay "lung rent".   I was paying half my income for meds (so I could breathe, so I could go to work, so I could pay for meds... much like those anti-cocaine commercials in the 80's...)
...and somewhere in there I became depressed.  Suicidally ideating.
Felt so lost and frustrated. Tired.  Was functioning on no-doz. Was running low grade fevers.

(By the way, I should here note:  My mom got on antidepressants after kicking my dad to the curb, finally.  She eventually tried coming off of the antidepressants and figured out that they keep her from being a neurotic asshole, so she's on them, like myself, for the rest of her life.  She's a much kinder person now)

Swapped meds.  Swapped meds again.  Did not work.  Tried Effexor, and went fucking insane-what bipolar folks call manic dysphoria was induced, this on the trial dose.
Was running out of SSRI's to try and thinking I might have to go on antipsychotics.
Meanwhile, asthma doc had told me things would get way better if I dropped a lot of weight, so I did.  125 in 18 months.
Decided to take 5-htp with my antidepressants, and found that I was no longer thinking about suicide for several hours a day.
Am still doing this.
It's somewhat dangerous to do-it can cause serotonin poisoning...but since I was wanting to jump off a bridge before I did it, not doing it was dangerous too.

I'm still somewhat depressed, but I can function, mostly, and I don't think about offing myself more than once a week or so.
I have mostly stopped cutting too, I don't need the comfort of it anymore.
.
Some weight crept back on; I need to work on that.

...That covers the organic depression, methinks.

...I hope y'all will pardon me for reposting an old blog entry about what major depression feels like here:

QuoteOkay.  Since my depression's gotten to the point where I plunge into this level really fast, I thought I'd detail the scenery for those who haven't been.  Think of this as a guided tour of the interior hell depressives' misfiring brains create inside.
Do fasten your safety belts, please, and remain seated throughout the tour.

Suicidality is definitely a negative altered state of consciousness.   Your thoughts usually slow down, get very direct and simple.  You can't think very well at all, in fact.
Some people have numbness. They just feel like a walking zombie.  I usually have some of that, but I also have self-hatred and an emotional pain that's very intense.
The overwhelming feeling? Tiredness...so, so tired.  The kind of tired that makes you want to sleep.  Forever.

In terms of pain...if you've ever had someone close to you die? It has about the same quantitative level of emotional pain...but the feeling is different.
When someone dies there's a horrible wrenching feeling, but also...a profound gratefulness for having known them as well? There's incredible pain, but it's a clean pain, somehow?

Your heart just gushes open helplessly in agony, loss, and love.

Suicidality is different.  It's as if a thousand daggers are turned against yourself.  There's either a leaden deadness, or a loathing of oneself that passes all bounds. It hurts. It hurts.

The charge is often leveled "Suicide is selfish!" From the perspective of the suicidal person, not usually. They either feel like other people don't care about them, or that their suicide will be a good thing...the love of others around them...no longer seems real.

I used the analogy of a clear plastic hamster ball.  It's as if I'm in a person-sized version of one, and everyone else is outside the hamster ball, having fun, loving and being loved.  But I'm not able to participate, not able to penetrate the invisible, hard shell separating me from other people.  I feel dreadfully lonely, but totally unable to do anything about that...as if there is something uniquely and horribly wrong with me.
I feel like a monstrosity.
My own wrinkle-but I think it's typical-is to despise myself and think I need to be killed for the good of everyone around me. But that may or may not hold true for all the suicidally depressed.
Other people have used the analogy that it's like having an anvil drop on your head. Metaphorically, yeah.  Severe depression is...severely crippling. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

So I find it both soothing and frightening to think about ways to kill myself when in this state. Frightening, because, instinctively, I think most people fear death somewhat. Genetic programming.  Soothing, because the pain you are in is not only all you can stand and more...it feels like it goes on forever.
I also self-injure.  Some severely depressed people do that, without the intent of killing themselves.  In my case, the pain actually makes me feel soothed...I've been doing it for so long it's literally directly comforting to engage in something other people would find inexplicable and revolting.

But when suicidal...you are paddling your douche canoe on a sea of suck that you can't see coming to an end.
In fact, researchers have studied severely depressed people and found out their time sense is off.  When you're down, every minute drags by as if dragging steel chains...every....torturous...minute.

What I've learned is that for me...this passes...provided I keep doing things to shift it. I have to try and eat good food, get the correct amount of sleep, neither binge nor starve, work out, take my meds, try to be kind to my loathesome self.
If it doesn't pass I go to the doctor and get something done with my psych cocktail. Or go hop on the therapy-go-round. Or whatever.
The point is a mixture of tolerating the pain and doing something constructive about it has kept me alive...and on the majority of my days grateful to be so.

But if I were to compare this pain to a physical pain I'd have to say it hurts at about the level a fracture does.

So...if you've never been severely depressed...that's the tour.

I hope you've kept all limbs in the car, we do so hate when we have to sew fingers back on.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 01:52:30 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 15, 2013, 11:24:36 AM

Those memories, tho, they happened to a different person. I don't mean that in a dissociative way, either. It's not a cop-out. The guy who went through that shit was me alright but it was a different incarnation of me. Just a kid. He didn't know what I know. He didn't have the strength and ability to fend off the demons. That came after. That came as a result of what the kid went through. He was weak and defenseless. I used to hate him for that but not now. How else could he have reacted? He wasn't me yet. But his sacrifice and his pain and his weakness, made me who I am.

He died for my sins.  :lulz:

I get this.

Though for a long time I felt like I was "mourning my own death," which happened in some interior way when I was 6...but I haven't gotten there yet in the narrative.
I'm starting with the easier portion.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 16, 2013, 04:46:59 AM
Quote from: stelz on June 15, 2013, 06:39:27 PM
As for why your sister remembers it that way, I don't know.

Memory will fill in holes with things that never happened sometimes.

Or not.

And having a parent like that can make you go off on tangents. I had a friend with an asshole dad, not violent or perverted, but he would do things like knock roaches off the ceiling over her with a broom knowing she was terrified of them. One day she said she thought he had raped or fingered her as an infant, because she didn't bleed the first time she had sex. I had to explain to her that most people DON'T really bleed, I didn't, and those romance novels with the bloody-carnage sheets are total bullshit.

I don't know how many years she went around thinking that, and it's a totally different situation, but having a fucked up parent can make suspicion the default, I think.

Without a time machine, I will never know. From my perspective my father only hit me on one occasion, and that was when I was in high school and having some sort of breakdown before I was supposed to leave for it. Funny enough, he was advancing up the stairs, and I was backing up, all the while shouting for him to hit me again, crying and laughing uncontrollably all at the same time. To this day, I can't remember what sparked the whole thing off. Only that it ended with him dropping me off at the bus stop, me telling him I felt good, and him telling me that I was sick if I felt good.

On the one hand, he was generally good to me and my sisters. On the other hand, I always feared him if he was angry, even if he didn't do anything. I still get afraid on the rare occasion when a male authority figure reprimands me (hasn't happened in about 3 years). These days though, any time I talk to dad, he seems genuinely overjoyed to hear from me. I can hate his quirks, but not him. He was however, abusive to mom, at least until he sobered up. And I guess maybe that's why I feared him. That such rage could exist in someone who was, at least when he was in control of himself, an otherwise gentle (though easily irritated) man. He may have named me after a militant, but my sense of pacifism and is also from his ideals.

I guess what I am saying is that he was certainly capable of such a horrid act at the time and in his state, and because of that there will always be doubt. The doubt didn't even exist until Midsister recounted the event.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 05:16:58 AM
Sometime when I was 5, I realized that everyone was a threat.
Mom hit me, dad hit me, even grandma said mean things. The gun guy, he sure was a threat.  Joel I felt some vague fear about, I knew he was dangerous but not why.
Everyone was a threat.
...This made sense in my little child world.
But when I tried to not love my parents and not talk to my parents...I couldn't.  I needed the attention, even though being near them was liable to get me slapped or screamed at.

Somehow, Shawn became the one who thought that...I didn't think it.
I needed to be able to LOVE my parents without being terrified at the same time?

One part of me said Shawn was a real friend of mine back then, a tougher, older boy who impressed me, was a bit of a ringleader, a badass.
Stronger than me, faster than me, braver than me.

Another part of me says there never was an exterior Shawn, that Shawn came to be because I needed to disown that very real intellectualization of how it really was.

Maybe Shawn was an imaginary friend, once.
....
....
Incidentally, during 2011, I became very self-injurious...and for whatever reason, I wanted to duplicate the amount of force they slapped me with, if that makes any sense?
I wanted to do a sized-up version.
You see, I suspected they had no idea how hard they slapped me, because they always smacked me around when they were out of control.

I had to use both hands and a Houston yellow pages to hit myself that hard.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 16, 2013, 05:32:26 AM
I have, thankfully, been largely spared the suicidal ideation. The few times it did come to me, I would always think of Twidsister (I was 15 when she was born) and how she would feel about that. Even if she had no memory of me due to age. (Incidentally it's me, soon to turn 32, Midsister, just turned 30, and Twidsister, soon to turn 17. I loathe human death, and it always affects me deeply. Part of my depressive thoughts include the idea that there is not enough time in a human lifespan, and I think about how I will one day die all too frequently (this, is probably the impetus for my need for religion). I try to understand why someone would feel the need to off themselves. I have felt it, but it's only been in moments of utter, hopeless despair.

Twidsister, however, does have suicidal ideation. Which is part of the reason why I try to understand it. As some of you know, I lived with mom fairly recently, and during that time, she and my stepfather were out one night, and I kept Twidsister company on this particular night. She said she was going to turn in early. I saw no problem with that. She came down again 10 minutes later with blood coming out of her nose. She was choking herself, and asked me to forgive her. I gave her a hug, called our stepfather, and then gave her the flat-out bald honest truth of the various flavors of mental illness on both sides of the family, including my own. I believe I also said something to the effect that she never has to ask my forgiveness as long as she tries to get better and not do something like that again.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 16, 2013, 05:50:50 AM
Quote from: The Twid on June 16, 2013, 05:32:26 AM
I have, thankfully, been largely spared the suicidal ideation. The few times it did come to me, I would always think of Twidsister (I was 15 when she was born) and how she would feel about that. Even if she had no memory of me due to age. (Incidentally it's me, soon to turn 32, Midsister, just turned 30, and Twidsister, soon to turn 17. I loathe human death, and it always affects me deeply. Part of my depressive thoughts include the idea that there is not enough time in a human lifespan, and I think about how I will one day die all too frequently (this, is probably the impetus for my need for religion). I try to understand why someone would feel the need to off themselves. I have felt it, but it's only been in moments of utter, hopeless despair.

Twidsister, however, does have suicidal ideation. Which is part of the reason why I try to understand it. As some of you know, I lived with mom fairly recently, and during that time, she and my stepfather were out one night, and I kept Twidsister company on this particular night. She said she was going to turn in early. I saw no problem with that. She came down again 10 minutes later with blood coming out of her nose. She was choking herself, and asked me to forgive her. I gave her a hug, called our stepfather, and then gave her the flat-out bald honest truth of the various flavors of mental illness on both sides of the family, including my own. I believe I also said something to the effect that she never has to ask my forgiveness as long as she tries to get better and not do something like that again.

Twidsister asked a lot of questions that night. I didn't hold back on the answers.

Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 06:14:09 AM
Quote from: The Twid on June 16, 2013, 05:50:50 AM


Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.

Informing IS protecting her.

...You're a good dude, yanno that?
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 16, 2013, 06:30:17 AM
Obviously, the implication here is that in my family, mental illness is common. And it is. On my mother's side. My father is a schizophrenic, but the mental illness seems to be more of an aberration than a norm on that side. Mental illness was only acknowledged twice by paternal relatives, and both times when I was crossing the bridge in dad's Irish hometown. The first was the only time I saw my grandfather cry. He was heading out, I was coming back to the house. I ducked my cigarette under my coatsleeve, even though I was an adult and could drink in both countries. He asked me what I thought about dad, since it had been several years since I saw either him or dad. I gave a non-answer and he just started tearing up. I saw no point in hiding my cigarette anymore, since I heard things about dad that I didn't know about. He had clearly gotten worse since he left America.

The other time was when I ran into my grandmother's brother on the bridge, him coming slowly to the house with his walker, and mentioning in passing that he had to seek counseling after the war. Presumably, considering his age and the fact that Ireland is a neutral country, he enlisted with either the UK, or more likely, the US armed forces during WWII. I mentioned it to my mother, and she pointed out that dad's family always described him to her (but not us) as "sensitive." She assumed that meant he was gay. I could see that too, but sensitive could mean just about anything, can't it? It's just a polite way to say that he's not running the operating system that the normal people are. Anyway, he and grandma, and the rest of their siblings, were always very close. When my grandmother died, he was done with living. He wanted to die. And shortly after, he did. As did their sister Maura, who was always my favorite aunt. I think that just means that Uncle Rob is left. He's a delightful guy (and the only one of them who couldn't manage to learn Irish, so they all let it fall into disuse), and I hope he's still kicking about and gambling on horse races. Well, Sonny might still be alive too, but I highly doubt it. Sonny was the oldest, and Maura was in her mid 90s.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on June 16, 2013, 06:30:46 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 16, 2013, 06:14:09 AM
Quote from: The Twid on June 16, 2013, 05:50:50 AM


Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.

Informing IS protecting her.

...You're a good dude, yanno that?

Nah. I'm just her big brother.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 07:51:22 AM
2011

May first  was the day of the flashback from hell.
The day my wife and I went to pick up the motorcycle.

...She told me she was going to take me out to eat...  and as she started driving I made this very odd little noise.
She said "please don't make that noise, it bothers me."
It was then that I told her I really didn't want to go in the restaurant, but certainly didn't want to deprive her of having a nice lunch, and I'd just wait in the truck.  I had images in my mind of me crawling under the tables in terror, the way I did as a child...

This made her angry and hurt...she was trying to do something nice for me. I tried to talk her into having a nice lunch, I mean, just because I couldn't go in did not mean she had to suffer...so we bickered and I felt like crying.
She doesn't read body language...so she didn't realize how far south things were going in my head. as we drove...

Then she, just wasn't in the lane I expected, and just THAT was wigging me out too, so I tried to gently say she might want to be in a different lane...and I was fussing, trying not to be obnoxious, but succeeding anyway...everything was freaking me out.
Finally, we were on the freeway back home, when I said something and she shouted "LOOK, YOU'VE BEEN BULLYING ME ALL DAY! STOP!"

###############################################

1985 (corrected for wrong damn decade)
I had made my dad late for work 3 days in a row.  I was in 7th grade, a private school.
In retrospect he resented paying for the private schools, so in the two years I went he was monitoring my grades and hitting me more.
...But this day was...memorable.
I was trying to do my last minute homework on the floor.  He kicked me to make me get up and get ready.  I could feel him simmering, I was going numb.

My school was 20 minutes away, and he managed to slap me and scream at me for the full 20 minutes.
I remember seeing my mom coming home on the opposite side of the freeway, and trying to work up the nerve to jump out of the car.

Things got very blurry after that.
I remember going blank, not being able to understand his words, feeling the blows, but not the pain...Crushing myself against the passenger door.  I remember I was trying hard to count the times he hit me.  I counted 14, but I'm thinking it was more, he sort of punctuated his sentences with blows.
I remember being both terrified and numb.

I remember getting out of the car,  thinking "I have to act normal"

###################################################

2011
I needed out.
I needed out of the truck.
..."Pull over." I said.
"NO!" she replied.
The thought shot through my head " I'm gonna get out THIS time!" and I started fumbling for the handle of the passenger side door.
My wife pulled over.
I walked off the side of the road into the woods-it's a park, actually, but it's natural woods in that section.
...I sat on the ground, screaming and rocking...I felt like I was going to fall into the sky...
Then I grabbed onto the bark of a dead tree and felt the texture.  Trying to get back.
I said "I'm here, I'm here..."
My wife was sitting there watching me.  She followed me, I didn't want her to, but she did.
...I eventually went back to the truck.
We took the motorcycle home.

#######################################################

In retrospect, this was a sort of progress.
You see, I thought back on this part, and realized...I'd been avoiding shopping. 
I'd been avoiding going out.
My defenses were unconscious...I just...decided to put off shopping.  Felt a strange reluctance.
Shopping was often a weird experience for me.  Too busy in a store.
If the store was crowded, I'd kind of...not be there. Mentally.  Things would happen.
Then I'd arrive at the car with half the stuff I meant to get, and stuff that...I didn't remember getting off the shelves.
Kitchen gadgetry that I felt oddly important for having, cookware, a baking thermometer, strange cleaning products.  I could remember the shelf where I took it from only by looking at these strange items I was loading in the car.

Looking back, I realized...
I'd been mostly tuned out of EVERYTHING.
Suddenly, this stopped.
...I was HERE.
All the nice fuzzy vagueness about the world, that was GONE.
...And holy SHIT was the world a scary-ass place.

And then I started remembering more sexual abuse.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 08:25:27 AM
I did NOT expect this to be such...hard work.
...I've been dealing with this crap for such a long time I feel like a broken record-er, skipping CD...It's like, can't you just think about normal shit for once?


Unnnggg.

I did manage to do that in my upper 20's, but it kept bubbling up like a lava seep.
...I wish I were done with this shit once and for all.

...Had I been less spaced-out, I would have realized my wife was re-activating the trauma, too, and I would have seen it way earlier. 
But I'd dissociate again every time she raised her voice to me, or got up in my face...By 2010 that was almost daily on the days off we had together...I managed to piss her off all the time.  Or the computer did and she yelled at that, which was bad enough.  Or she was correcting me...anything I did in her presence was liable to be corrected...and she didn't stop.

I felt like I had to be perfect to be worth tiny crumbs of affection...oh hai unmedicated Mom, didn't see you standing there... :x
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 16, 2013, 03:21:26 PM
Did your wife have an INKLING of the stuff you'd been through?

I mean, that 2011 thing. At some point there REALLY should have been an "Oh snap there's more going on here than hylie being pissy about going out to eat."

Haven't been replying to a lot of these, apologies. Wiping my eyes a lot, though. Fucking OUCH. Fuck.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 09:35:04 PM
Quote from: stelz on June 16, 2013, 03:21:26 PM
Did your wife have an INKLING of the stuff you'd been through?

I mean, that 2011 thing. At some point there REALLY should have been an "Oh snap there's more going on here than hylie being pissy about going out to eat."

Haven't been replying to a lot of these, apologies. Wiping my eyes a lot, though. Fucking OUCH. Fuck.

I strongly believe my wife to have Asperger's.
She does not read body language.
She...tends to make assumptions about what's going on with other people that are just...off, and then she believes them.

..I was on another message board, wanting to say it was in 2008? My wife was delivering pizza...and then she had a freakout.
She said everything was just too much, all the lights. She went on overload.
She sat in her car and cut her arm open-still has a scar.
Her co-workers called 911, and the usual happened (Cop was freaked, ambulance guys was nonchalant)

I talked about this random freakout of hers on the mental health message board I was part of at the time.  Someone on there said "Gee, that sounds like what I and my kid do.  We're aspies."

So I looked up the other signs of Asperger's...moves stiffly, doesn't read body language, is extremely critical, uses language in a very specific way, gets obsessions about a subject that last about 6 months, angers easily, very sensitive to certain sounds, unable to change habits.
Yup, yup, yup.


Aspies don't have as many "mirror neurons" as neurotypical people.
QuoteAccording to simulation theory, theory of mind is available because we subconsciously put ourselves in the shoes of the person we're observing and, accounting for relevant differences, imagine what we would desire and believe in that scenario. 28 29 Mirror neurons have been interpreted as the mechanism by which we simulate others in order to better understand them, and therefore their discovery has been taken by some as a validation of simulation theory (which appeared a decade before the discovery of mirror neurons). 30
http://www.autism-help.org/points-mirror-neurons.htm

It's not that Asperger's people don't care. 
But they have no idea what impact their behavior has on others, because they really, REALLY don't feel your pain.
At times my wife could be very kind and understanding...at other times she just failed to compute and was cold as hell.
I feel like I spent my last decade trying to explain who I was, and I failed.  I was trying to give her a mental model of me, in retrospect...and it really didn't work.

Somewhere along the line she decided I was illogical and incompetent.
Apparently, this is common in Aspie-NT couples.
She's not the most self-aware person...so she didn't realize how much she was just...pushing me around.
My dissociative disorder played into this, because she started shouting and I started not being able to think, to articulate a sentence.  Like putting my brain in a cuisinart.
...And I'd say yes to anything to get her to stop.
Oh, and I'd forget what was said as it was happening...so then I assumed the argument we'd just had was my fault.

When we were in couples' counseling at the very end, I made a statement about thinking installing a tankless hot water heater was a bit beyond my skill set.

She said "Oh, if YOU do it it's gonna leak."
...I said "What makes you think that?"
She replied "Because you never tighten the lids on jars."
...Which isn't always true, but yes, I do sometimes not tighten lids, because I'm focused on the food, not the jar.
  But the reason this was a big issue to her?
Shecould not retrain herself to pick up jars by grasping the jar.
She HAS to grasp jars by the lid, as she always had, for her entire life.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 16, 2013, 09:43:04 PM
Interesting partly because it also sounds as if you could no more adapt to her than she could adapt to you.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 09:58:03 PM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 16, 2013, 09:43:04 PM
Interesting partly because it also sounds as if you could no more adapt to her than she could adapt to you.

I know. That's why it feels more than a bit tragic.

OTOH, I was taking happy pills, going to therapy...she stopped taking her pills without telling me for six months.  When she told me I said "OHHH!"
Because six months prior I suddenly noticed she was screaming all the time, at me, at the computer.  She wasn't depressed without them, but she was extremely anxious and her temper was worse.

I asked her to get back on the meds because she was easier to live with on them.
...She said, and I quote, "Why should I have to take pills to modify MY reactions for other people?"

...When I asked her to look into therapy for her Asperger's, because it would help her get along with people(like me), she said "Why am I the one who's in need of fixing?  Why can't everyone adapt to ME?"

...As a functional crazy person, I know how well THAT works, expecting the world to adapt to your brain cooties.
Too, I take my meds in part so I won't turn into an asshole, because I DO turn into an asshole when not properly medicated. 
So...it was my job to adapt to her.  She did not put any work into making us work.
In fact, towards the end she probably figured we were through anyway, because she decided to spend most of her free time studying programming.
She said she wanted to work on the marriage, but then she learned how to program instead.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 16, 2013, 10:10:07 PM
Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 10:22:41 PM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 16, 2013, 10:10:07 PM
Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.
...It honestly took my best friend telling me she bullied me.  His words.
I just thought I was crazy, that it was me...like I did when my parents went berserk.

He's part of the story too, I guess...so I was going to address that next. 
My best friend is an English lunatic, and no, we've not met in IRL, yet.  Fucking ocean.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 16, 2013, 10:37:16 PM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 16, 2013, 10:22:41 PM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 16, 2013, 10:10:07 PM
Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.
...It honestly took my best friend telling me she bullied me.  His words.
I just thought I was crazy, that it was me...like I did when my parents went berserk.

He's part of the story too, I guess...so I was going to address that next. 
My best friend is an English lunatic, and no, we've not met in IRL, yet.  Fucking ocean.

Fair enough

One of my best friends lives in Tucson, and I've only met him once in seven years.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 16, 2013, 10:37:57 PM
And shit, I've never met Dimo, but I would talk to his jerk ass about anything.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 16, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
2011

I believe we started talking when it was still cold
Though the emails I have are all around May...I think we'd been talking on the forum instead.
I was hanging out on a science forum.
Where I learned the motto: cites or GTFO...learned to argue a point more convincingly, and learned a lot about a lot of far-ranging things in the course of argumentation.

I also met Lou...and started fussing over him, as he'd rode his motorcycle into a fence. He'd broken his foot this time...as opposed to last time, when he'd damn near had to have an arm cut off, because he smashed it up so badly.

I remember chiding him for "inadvisably applied motorcycling," "and he said "I know, I know...but I just get to feeling worthless and start riding recklessly."

I first noticed him on a thread about sociopathy.
He said that he'd once been diagnosed with it, and it made him angry and a bit horrified...and he talked about what nobody back then had asked about.
His uncle sexually abused him.
His uncle really is a sociopath, so he'd felt the diagnosis was telling him he was like his uncle.

...And at some point...my brain went off the rails.  I was basically making a hobby of concocting suicide plans most of the day.
...See my wife had my pistol locked up...So I thought, well, how can I kill myself with certainty?  Well, I could just go buy a shotgun, climb in the bathtub for easy cleanup...
...I could step in front of a train, of course.   That's messy, hard on the engineer.

At some point I got on alt.suicide.holiday, and realized my mom and brother would get to identify the mangled slab of meat that I'd be leaving behind and/or clean up the mess.
...So I thought "why don't I figure out a way to kill myself that won't involve leaving a body behind?"

Well, if I had access to the gun, it would actually be not that hard...The next county over has more alligators than people.   Go stand in a pond with adjacent alligators, shoot self in head.  Alligator cleanup.
...There'd still be the matter of the car left near the scene, but that would hold with anything.
Still, chunks might turn up of me.

So I thought...get a bunch of sedatives...go to the beach with a 55-gallon drum, with a few small holes drilled in the top and bottom.
Climb in, seal lid, roll self into ocean, swallow all the sedatives...go to sleep.
The barrel would eventually either sink or continue bobbing around in the Gulf, either way rendering my stinky carcass unfindable.
See...I was thinking about this a LOT...

I drive over a 200-some-odd foot high bridge when I go home, and I was slowing down at  the top a lot.
The drop would kill me, the agony would be over.  I could escape this agony.  I needed to feel I could escape it, escape being what I hated being, myself.

I was...expressing this wherever I went-the mental health forum, the science forum, wherever. It was "steaming out of my ears," as someone put it.
I would have gone inpatient-but one, I'd probably lose my job,  two, they no longer keep you in long enough to do any good.

Lou told me "Look, I've had too many friends kill themselves and not done something to try and stop it.  Talk to me first."
...I said "Ok, but that goes for you too."
It was a lifeline, and I grabbed on with both hands.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 16, 2013, 11:28:31 PM
Sounds like Lou had an incredibly incompetent psychiatrist.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 16, 2013, 11:47:55 PM
It sounds like Lou is awesome, too.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 12:17:40 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 16, 2013, 11:28:31 PM
Sounds like Lou had an incredibly incompetent psychiatrist.
He seems to have had mostly incompetent psychiatrists.
He's a heroin addict, trying to quit still
The reason he got on heroin? 

One of his NHS psychiatrists discharged him from therapy, saying "We just can't fix you, you're hopeless."
( :argh!: WTF!)  This shrink basically seemed to be sending him off to die.

So he was flamingly suicidal, was told he could not be fixed...and out of desperation smoked some heroin.
It made him feel...safe.

For the very first time in his life, he felt safe.

For someone with severe depression with psychosis, and severe PTSD with full hallucination-type flashbacks...the relief it gave him was incredible.
...He didn't want to wind up being a junkie. 
When he tried to quit in 2012,  he tried to kill himself again, and was hospitalized in a psych ICU for 5 months.

Quote from: stelz on June 16, 2013, 11:47:55 PM
It sounds like Lou is awesome, too.
He is awesome. In his own warped way, very awesome.

I should add, I've been in therapy of and on for...8 years now, with the current therapist?
Before that I had a therapist through a state agency, before that through insurance.

Lou's had about 2 years of therapy... TOTAL.
\And they told him he can't be fixed.  I think because they just don't want to take the time to actually fix him, because a lot of them don't care.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 12:31:46 AM
...It was interesting, the way the memories came back.
You see, I had a very strong suspicion all along that my dad had abused me sexually.
Why?

When mom finally found out about all the affairs he'd been having with women in the neighborhood, when she found out my dad had been a peeping tom to the neighbor girl watching her swim in the pool through the fence, when she found out he'd had sex with my uncle's wife (Yes, THAT uncle), in the car, parked in our driveway...

Well, she finally divorced him.
Cut all the crotches out of his business suits too.
My mom had been too busy caring for my bedridden grandma and working full time to really pay attention to much...and my dad, as far as I can tell, is a sex addict.

So...I was wanting to die through most of high school, but that last year they were arguing constantly...I was made fun of at school and listening to them scream at home...yeah, I really wanted to be dead.

This was found out, and the decision was made to put me on a new drug.  Prozac had only been on the market for 2 years, and I was 16, but they wanted me to try it anyway.  I got a therapist, too.

...And the world began to change.
...Then my mom told me they were divorcing, and my grandma passed in a 2 week period...I couldn't deal.
I asked to be put in the hospital.  They kept me for 6 weeks...something they don't really do anymore.
I learned that a lot of dealing with depression is just...forcing your ass to do things. Even though you feel like you're wearing cement shoes.

Anyway...
After dad was gone, I started wanting to kill him.
...I felt...the most intense hatred imaginable.

The thing is?  I remembered him being a physically abusive, verbally abusive asshole...but what he'd done that I remembered?  It wasn't enough to justify this urge to get all stabby.

So I suspected all along that he'd sexually abused me.  Remembering Joel the Friendly Neighborhood pedo, and my one uncle?
That was a complete surprise to me.  I hadn't even thought about that one guy.

I know my uncle was prone to violence...in retrospect his wife's kids (his stepchildren) were terrified of him.
...I saw that as a young teen and just accepted it as normal, after all I was terrified of my dad.  When he'd hit me I always had the thought "He can kill me."
Eventually I remembered physical violence I'd repressed too, and that surprised me...You see,  he had to be sneaky, not leave marks...

##################################################
1978
He backhanded me. 
I remember falling over, but oddly enough, with the side he hit downwards...so the blow itself must have thrown my balance off.
The next thing I remember was him holding an ice cube to my swollen lip.  There was blood in my mouth.
He didn't look sorry, he looked...nervous.
He was trying to cover up what he'd done, he wasn't icing my lip out of any concern he had for me.
I was silent, after all, he'd keep hitting me if I cried...

That was something I never repressed-the first time he slapped me, then told me to stop crying. And when I couldn't he slapped me again, and again, harder, until I roped it in.
I could not cry in front of others for a long time.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 17, 2013, 01:17:56 AM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 17, 2013, 12:17:40 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on June 16, 2013, 11:28:31 PM
Sounds like Lou had an incredibly incompetent psychiatrist.
He seems to have had mostly incompetent psychiatrists.
He's a heroin addict, trying to quit still
The reason he got on heroin? 

One of his NHS psychiatrists discharged him from therapy, saying "We just can't fix you, you're hopeless."
( :argh!: WTF!)  This shrink basically seemed to be sending him off to die.

So he was flamingly suicidal, was told he could not be fixed...and out of desperation smoked some heroin.
It made him feel...safe.

For the very first time in his life, he felt safe.

For someone with severe depression with psychosis, and severe PTSD with full hallucination-type flashbacks...the relief it gave him was incredible.
...He didn't want to wind up being a junkie. 
When he tried to quit in 2012,  he tried to kill himself again, and was hospitalized in a psych ICU for 5 months.

Quote from: stelz on June 16, 2013, 11:47:55 PM
It sounds like Lou is awesome, too.
He is awesome. In his own warped way, very awesome.

I should add, I've been in therapy of and on for...8 years now, with the current therapist?
Before that I had a therapist through a state agency, before that through insurance.

Lou's had about 2 years of therapy... TOTAL.
\And they told him he can't be fixed.  I think because they just don't want to take the time to actually fix him, because a lot of them don't care.

Years ago, I knew a guy who picked up a heroin habit it Vietnam.

He went into treatment for it and he was doing great. Then he found out he had node cancer. He stayed off the pain medication as long as he could knowing what would happen, but he finally couldn't stand it anymore and caved. Then he picked up heroin again.

They kicked him out for "relapsing". The last I heard of him, he was in Club Fed for bank robbery. Non-violently, no gun, just notes saying he had one. I imagine he's dead now.

Support our troops. Yeah, sure.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 17, 2013, 01:22:39 AM
hylie...no words. :cry:
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 02:10:45 AM
Quote from: stelz on June 17, 2013, 01:17:56 AM
Support our troops. Yeah, sure.
The UK seems to be of the same mindset.

Lou got shot at for the greater glory of NATO, and apparently made a number of other people die for their country...then was honorably discharged, because the cartilage in his knees got torn up.
As the second in command of his unit, he got to carry the .50 cal and ammo for same, so that didn't help.

He actually wasn't terribly traumatized in the military, it was his family that did it.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 04:18:32 AM
 In 1993 through 1996, I went through the state for meds and therapy...I wanted to just plow through it.
So I tried having EMDR. 
I wanted to do it every week because I wanted to get over it.
That was probably way too often in retrospect.
But EMDR either works or it doesn't. For me, no.

...I ended up just dissociating all the time, and eventually could not remember the EMDR appointment times, so I didn't show up.  I knew my dad had abused me, the feelings of disgust and outrage were all there.
But I couldn't pry out the recall.
...And I wasn't ready to deal with...the fact of the matter.
...He never came and got me. 
I just never stopped when...bad things started happening.
That much I knew...I kept going to him.

[color=]#############################################
1978
I always remembered one night.  I was in a pair of those plastic-footed onesie pajamas that go shloop shloop shloop on the cold hard floor of the house, and it's winter.
I am trailing my blanket.  It is an old white one and smells like me, I feel better with it in my hand.
I am afraid.
I am standing outside dad's bedroom door.  I can see the outdoors light shining under the bedroom door.
I look back.  My bed's there, by the door in my bedroom.
I am terrified to go back to bed.  I will wake up screaming from nightmares.  I do every night now.
I am terrified to go in to dad's room.  I do not know why.
I grab the brass doorknob, the one with splashes of dark paint on it, and turn it.

#################################################

The strange thing?  We had to swap bedrooms at one point.
I got what was supposed to be the master bedroom, because my dad sprayed a nest of hornets that were in the wall of what started as my bedroom.
...Whatever was in that spray set my asthma off, and it wasn't dissipating at all-the chemical scent of the spray.  I don't know what sort of awful crap was in those sprays in 1978, but it wasn't going ANYWHERE.

So I had to get their room...And I don't know when that happened.

I don't know when that happened...from age 6 to age 8, there are empty spaces.
When I was 8 though, my grandma moved in with us.  Ostensibly to keep an eye on me. 
I think it was as much that mom wanted to keep an eye on grandma, because grandma wouldn't eat right and would let her sugar get too high.
Anyway...
When grandma moved in, she found out I was sleeping in dad's bed every night that my mother worked. Five nights a week.
I remember the hard looks as they told me I was too old to be sleeping in the same bed with my daddy.
I promised I'd be a good girl and not do that anymore.

...And somehow I ended up in his bed anyway. 
I would dutifully go to sleep in my own bed, and wake up next to him.
I was told I sleepwalked.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 11:04:15 AM
Okay...Sorry.
Done.

Could you tell me by PM or in thread what I am doing wrong? 
....Possibly talking at all.
...Sorry.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Pope Pixie Pickle on June 17, 2013, 11:12:39 AM
go back to that original quoted post, and go to edit...

then just remove Nigel's post..
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Q. G. Pennyworth on June 17, 2013, 04:26:26 PM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 17, 2013, 11:04:15 AM
Okay...Sorry.
Done.

Could you tell me by PM or in thread what I am doing wrong? 
....Possibly talking at all.
...Sorry.

You're not doing anything wrong, Nigel decided that sharing it was probably a bad idea and is now asking for your help erasing it from the board.

Sorry I haven't posted any responses. I am listening, just, you know, damn.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 17, 2013, 05:07:12 PM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 17, 2013, 11:04:15 AM
Okay...Sorry.
Done.

Could you tell me by PM or in thread what I am doing wrong? 
....Possibly talking at all.
...Sorry.

Thank you, I appreciate it!

You aren't doing anything wrong.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 17, 2013, 05:08:18 PM
Yeah. This whole thread. It's happening now, in those houses where you think nothing happens.

hylie, neverending red pound signs. I want to give her a pass on EVERYTHING, but a friend tells a friend when something is fucked up. So when/if I do that at some point (NOT now), that's why I'm doing it OK?

This shit is entirely too much.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 08:38:55 PM
So...
...Things got a little scrambled after the mayday flashback...

...When one of these things is about to surface, these old memories, there's this feeling of dread? Just dread.   Then it starts surfacing in little scrambled chunks.
...So I remembered my dad raping me.
Was this the first rape by him?  I don't know.
I later remembered him frotteurizing himself between my legs, so I gather he worked up to actual penetration.

Then, I think it became a regular thing.  It was the price I paid to not be alone with my nightmares.
...I got back a handful more memories...then they stopped.

They stopped because it was no longer me  that paid that price.
Some other little girl took over...someone who just loved her daddy and wanted to please him.
She still hasn't shared a whole lot with me. 

I wanted to die really badly.  Lou got to talk me out of offing myself that night.
(I've since returned the favor)
I remembered something I had blocked out for a long time-that I had ever loved dad. 
It's like, one of those things that you just don't think about.  It wasn't safe to remember I had ever loved him, you see, so I just didn't.

The emotions were canned along with the memory.
I just felt this horrible white blankness for the next 2 weeks.

...In the meantime, my wife had gotten a job, which was a huge weight off my shoulders...but she was working nights.
She proposed IM talks...but then when I started to tell her what I was going through, she said, "I can't talk about this stuff at work!"
...So I was going through hell and she wanted me to send funny pictures.
...If I had not had Lou I'd be dead, I'm pretty damn sure.
...I was generally spending a couple hours a day not just crying.   
Lou calls this keening...In my case this involved a couple hours a day, at least, curled up and wailing...
Grief was just pouring out of me.

I had said before I felt like I was mourning my own death.  Some part of me was lost.

...But she wasn't quite dead after all.  Not exactly in an unrevivable state.
...This next part is where it gets really weird, and the experiences are all a bit subjective.

...But a little less depressing.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 17, 2013, 09:15:58 PM
Damn, Hylie. I feel like it's a dick move posting this after reading that but, hey, it's my thread and I just spent over an hour on it plus, well, I am a dick so fuck it...

Belial and the Death of Belief

So I know I've told you this before. Some of you. The ones who've been here a while but, for the benefit of anyone who just got here, I'll reiterate - I do not believe. In anything. The ones who've heard this from me before, the ones who maybe think I'm wrong (everyone believes something, right?) The ones who probably think I'm engaging in semantic fuckery. Maybe think I'm just deluding myself? I've said it before but I never really explained why. Allow me to explain before you go telling me I'm being ridiculous. You see, I know what the human brain is capable of. I don't mean, intellectually, I mean, I've experienced it, directly. This one time I invoked Belial.

Belial is a demon. The demon of lies. You don't believe in demons, right? Me neither (see above) but that's not important. All that's important is that, at the time, three quarters of the way to the dizzy heights of full blown psychosis, high as a kite on tequila, hash and sleep deprivation, I believed it. Just a little bit, maybe, but that little bit was enough. That's how he got in or, to be more precise, that's how I made him up.

Little bit of belief was all it took, my imagination did the rest. By the time it was done I was, to all intents and purposes, possessed. A malevolent mind had taken charge of my controls. I ( the identity I refer to as me) had no conscious control, because I believed this to be so. For about an hour I was aware of everything, like a passenger, looking out my own eyes. Staring into a mirror, into your own eyes and knowing that you are trapped in there, somewhere, while your face talks to you in your own voice is unnerving but this is how the demon communicated his message.

After what I can only estimate was about an hour, he'd finished and he told me he was leaving. Demon of lies, remember? After a  couple of days I knew he was still there. I could feel him. He never did take control again but I knew he could at any time. It terrified me. The stuff he'd told me in the mirror was a smokescreen. A clever web of lies and half truths. This was his real lesson. The lesson that took me years to fully understand - "Look what can happen inside your head with nothing but imagination and a little bit of belief."

The imagination I never found a way to kill but the belief? That was optional. So I learned how to turn it off. It's not so much a matter of denying things that seem apparent. Like the sky being blue or gravity sucks. Many things are apparent. Questioning them seems pointless but there really is nothing to gain from believing those things. Maybe it'll change at some point. Means nothing to me but believing? Having a part of me that will, either with or without a sufficiently convincing argument, just latch on to a mental model and all the baggage that comes along? Something with the potential to take over my body and mind utterly?

Fuck that noise. It's dangerous. maybe not to you, the reader, maybe not to anyone in the world other than me but to me? But I've seen what can happen. I've no reason to believe I'm not "fixed" now. By the same token, I've no compelling reason to believe I am. So I don't believe either scenario. I just don't believe, period. I consider it a risk with no discernible benefit. Like gambling all my worldly possessions on the toss of a coin only to have them returned if it's heads.

For all I know, Belial is still there, in my head, waiting for me to change my mind. Waiting for me to believe. He'll be waiting a good long fucking while if I have any say in it. So far it seems I have. If I didn't know better I could almost believe that.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 17, 2013, 10:39:41 PM
Someone I was friends with at one point managed to fracture his skull.
He is what I used to jokingly call a "recovered Muslim," as in he rejected that religion because it was really, personally bad for him...
But when he fractured his skull, apparently he started reciting Koran verses.  He has no memory of this.

The brain's a strange place.

I don't think what I have measures up to full Dissociative Identity Disorder, the compartments aren't watertight.
I don't "lose time"
We share feelings.
The others call me The Front.
...Still figuring out what they mean by that.

Shawn I talked about earlier...He's become what multiple peeps call a protector.
My protector is 5.
This doesn't mean he doesn't know how to drive a car, but we kinda don't want him to, and I don't think anyone around us does either.

Finding him explains an earlier incident that...I'm very un-proud of us for.

I'm currently living in my mom's old house.  When she moved out of here to a much nicer house, I freaked out, I was afraid I would have no money for food or meds...
And when mom was out my wife wanted to re-arrange the house, of course.  I begged her to do it SLOWLY, because I get really discombobulated when stuff gets moved around a lot.

So I woke up Saturday night and the whole house had been totally re-arranged while I slept.
I flipped out.
...Someone in my head decided to write this psychotic-ass looking note in red crayon, then decided it would be really emphatic if I stuck it to my desk with knives.

That's what my wife came home to.
...I didn't recall doing it until she reminded me what the hell I did before I left to go to work.
...She almost moved out on me, and I think that's what Shawn was trying to achieve. 
He'd figured out she was a threat.

...He was right.  Not a threat in the direct physical sense, but she torpedoed my self esteem, and kept on doing it, even when told not to.

The kids function as shock absorbers, is how I put it.
My therapist tells me the kids are there to be aware of things I was not able to be aware of.
They were aware of the damage she was doing, I wasn't.

Another instance:
I was trying to learn to ride a motorcycle.
I accidentally rode it into the ditch at low speed.
I don't remember being in the ditch.
...I was just standing on the side of the road.
Later my leg was all bruised up though.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 18, 2013, 12:38:26 AM
So...
Lou suggested inner child work.
He told me it had really helped his suicidality (Well, for a while)
At first I thought "This stuff sounds ridiculous."

What happened next...I became obsessed with this image of an undead child climbing out of a pool of water, water gushing from her eyesockets and mouth.
...I never could draw or paint this-I may try in the future, but I couldn't capture the look, much less the feel of it.
So my inner child was an undead corpse.

I began to get her dried up and cleaned up...and then, I'm wanting to say it was a day in June...she woke up.

It was like a nuclear explosion of LOVE went off in my chest.  I felt like I was glowing with this love and just radiating it at EVERYONE...then about 6 hours later, I got the image of a little girl getting in bed, pulling the covers over, and I felt...normal again.
She decided her name is Joy recently.

Fisher came along before that.
...He' seems to be the onboard comedian...and 14.

Then Shawn, who initially appeared in my mind's eye as a mafia hitman...then I realized he was a little boy in a sort of elaborate disguise. 
Then there was the one who thought if I killed myself, she could take over...
She still resents me.  She's a warped copy of my abusive mom at that age.

The one who came out and took the sexual abuse, she's 8, the age I was when the abuse stopped.  She's only given me one of her memories so far.
One more who doesn't want to be mentioned.

I don't know if they are the products of a really intense imagination, or more.
They are voices in my head though...
and they seem to do internal things without my awareness.

I can tell you now though, when my wife was shouting at me? I could not understand the words...if someone I care about starts shouting, I stop being able to comprehend the noise coming at me


Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Doktor Howl on June 18, 2013, 12:41:46 AM
Thread is now about Hylie.

PD is now about AIN'T IT AWFUL.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 18, 2013, 01:22:32 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 18, 2013, 12:41:46 AM
Thread is now about Hylie.

PD is now about AIN'T IT AWFUL.
Sorry...I'm about done...

The last bit...since I was now able to actually think...I  figured out my marriage sucked.
We worked on it.
It kept getting more painful.  We kept arguing.
I really wanted to make it work, partly because I loved her, partly because I wanted to have a kid, and I doubt I could pull off single-motherhood well.
She really didn't seem to want to put much effort in. I think she'd already decided it was over, really, and just stalling for time.

I finally got a clear indication I could not be happy, and I asked for a divorce.
Divorce was...less painful than going through the memories.  Still pretty sucky.
My pistol's still over at my younger brother's.

Another thing...I sort of ended up adopting people.  For a while I didn't want to live and felt worthless.
...So I ended up with friends all over the place.  I still talk to a number of them.
I'm still healing.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 18, 2013, 01:58:10 AM
Thanks for putting up with me posting this.

It's actually good these days, being my own committee. I'm getting over the wife.
It's going to be ok now, I've got a fucking handle on things.

One more weird and genuinely funny thing I thought of.

In 2008 I briefly had a resurgence of what I'd had before during the bad years...aural hallucinations.
...At the time, I was hearing replays of tv theme songs...and I'd go check the TV.
TV was off.
I also heard a brassy jazz band.

At the time, I thought I was going crazy...and I was.

This time I knew what it was.  At worst, annoying.

When they came back, it was the same TV show songs...the Jazz band, all those 70's sitcom songs, reproduced perfectly.
I mean, I'd love to have photographic memory...but I guess your brain takes impression of both the awesome and everything else that is not so awesome.

The radio in my ears came on when I woke up, and if I was able to, I'd lie in bed  listening to my brain.
When I was "tuning in" the jazz band, I found that I could direct the band. 
After all, it's being produced by my mind, I might as well have fun with it...it went away in about 20 minutes.

One morning, when it cut out, I heard the callsign in 4-part harmony :"K...L..S...D!"
:lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6gNo4-1r6k


Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Anna Mae Bollocks on June 18, 2013, 04:08:11 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 18, 2013, 12:41:46 AM
Thread is now about Hylie.

PD is now about AIN'T IT AWFUL.

I played AIN'T IT AWFUL. The AWFUL ITT grabbed me by the neck and got my attention.

But it's possible to talk to people in other threads, troll pagan boards and whatever else comes up while playing. Seriously, fuck F5.
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on June 18, 2013, 07:47:47 PM
Quote from: stelz on June 18, 2013, 04:08:11 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 18, 2013, 12:41:46 AM
Thread is now about Hylie.

PD is now about AIN'T IT AWFUL.

I played AIN'T IT AWFUL. The AWFUL ITT grabbed me by the neck and got my attention.

But it's possible to talk to people in other threads, troll pagan boards and whatever else comes up while playing. Seriously, fuck F5.

That...is actually a good listening skill.
A valuable one.
You have to be able to put someone else's pain aside in order to hear it...or as I say, you throw a life preserver, you don't jump in and drown in a show of solidarity.
I had one novice therapist who fell afoul of this, she quit to go work for CPS, though, so maybe good things were achieved?
Dunno.

My way of fixing myself has come to involve trying to help other folks heal.
Mostly on the internet because I'm spatially rather isolated.
Blame Houston, this place is a car-town from hell, and that's really isolating.

Got the idea of what I was kinda-sorta doing anyway from reading about Mahayana Buddhism...
The book I have around here in this mess somewhere said, paraphrasing...
Enlightenment comes inevitably through pushing oneself to be compassionate.
I've found getting better also comes through pushing myself to be compassionate.
Then again I don't see healing and enlightenment as a separate thing.

Child abuse victims were wounded in relational sorts of ways, so there's only so much repair one can do alone.

One of the things I have learned in the past few years is that my abuse was actually not nearly as bad as what some other people managed to survive.
So, while things have been super-shitty, I don't get to feel particularly sorry for myself.
...If it came off as "Poor me," that wasn't my intent, I was just trying to tell you how it was.

...As you said earlier, this is happening now, to some other little kid
The whole stranger-danger thing looks very much like cultural denial to me.
...80% of sexually abused kids are abused by someone they know and trust.
To some degree we still, on a cultural level, view children as property.
...They aren't what they should be, a sort of sacred trust, they are there for the convenience of the parent.

CPS does a complete shit job of protecting kids...but maybe that's because it's not a social priority to protect kids.
That's why they are underfunded, that's why they can't investigate shit properly.
I mean, CPS leaves kids in danger, takes kids away improperly, AND puts them in unsafe care when they take them. 
It is a giant excremental pile of fail.
And we don't care enough to fix that.
We're only dealing with bullying in the schools recently.
Until now, we didn't bother to make sure our kids don't have to go to school and suffer physical aggression and harassment.

Yeah I don't have a kid, but when the system fucks large numbers of people up, our society gets fucked up as a whole.
So even beyond being compassionate, it's in everyone's best interest to do better.

Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on June 18, 2013, 08:39:39 PM
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on June 18, 2013, 07:47:47 PM
So, while things have been super-shitty, I don't get to feel particularly sorry for myself.

Feeling sorry for oneself is the hallmark of the lost cause. One either fights whatever it is or one is completely fucked, plain and simple and no amount of compassion and/or sympathy will help.

FTR, I thought what you wrote fell on the right side of the whine line. Sounds like you're putting up and dealing with the shit. Good on ya!
Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Left on July 02, 2013, 09:49:26 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 18, 2013, 08:39:39 PM
Feeling sorry for oneself is the hallmark of the lost cause. One either fights whatever it is or one is completely fucked, plain and simple and no amount of compassion and/or sympathy will help.

That's words to live by.
You just have to accept  that YOU have to deal with it, fix it, whether it was your horrid fuckup parents or the meiotic dice roll gifting you with brain cooties...or both, or getting shot at in war, or becoming head injured.
It's NOT FUCKING FAIR.
You get to kludge a solution that works for you anyway.

Anyway, just realized something while elsewhere...
I was writing in regards to someone's troll post, which I was able to take down, and I commented on having done....

QuoteIt doesn't bother me much, but other people are a LOT more triggery...I've sort of mentally cauterized myself in that respect and OHHH!
I was desensitizing myself to my own abuse by reading the stories of others!

So THAT's what I was doing by reading all the abuse stories! It was sort of a compulsive thing for a while, reading other people's stories.

Now I find it damned useful, people can tell me about the horrible sh!t they've been through and I won't flinch.
People need to talk about it to fix it, and so I'm very much able to help others now. This is a very good thing.


Title: Re: Conversations from hell
Post by: Fujikoma on April 02, 2019, 02:00:27 AM
I skimmed everything but "Hylie"