Things haven't been going well for me lately. I can't work, can't write, and for the last week, barely able to get out of bed. The bed is not even mine. I'm in a sort of temporary group home run by the mental health counceling center I go to. I should have an apartment soon, though not as nice as the one when I was working. Currently on short term disability from the hospital i was working at. I'm finding it so difficult to get motivated. Even the extreme mysticism in my life can not lift me out of this. I hope to eventually get well and post more material, about my life, and about the type of science news that I occasionally write about.
For the few of you who check on me, I appreciate it, and please don't stop coming by.
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Friday, December 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Update
Something I knew could be a problem but I've ignored nevertheless. I have depersonalization/derealization disorder, along with major depression and who knows what else. I've decided to become a traveling healthcare worker temporarily (just until my family and I decide to settle down somewhere next year). This will allow me to catch up on paying my bills (those damned student loans, too) and perhaps save a little for a future move, as well.
I've been here just little over a week, and am internally attempting to stay ahead of the depression. Medicine, Effexor, certainly helps. I don't think I could live without it, no pun intended.
The area is intriguing and warmer than home (Missouri). Okay, since you twisted my arm, I'm in Georgia, but thats ALL for now.
I hate being away from my GF and my daughter, but this is necessary. That's the worst about this, not being able to see them every day. We did get web cams set up on the desktop at home, and my laptop, before I left. So, we have been able to see each other. Modern technology isn't all that bad, now is it?
But, you know me, the depression isn't all that is affected. I've also had a lingering sense of deja vu. It's not so much anything in particular as much as it is just the general set up. Who knows, maybe all this is supposed to happen? I wonder if I'll live long enough to figure all this out?
Also of note, with the exception of my most recent sleep period, I've had 3 consecutive dreams involving PKD. I think it's time to get to work! Writing, that is!
To the Future?
I've been here just little over a week, and am internally attempting to stay ahead of the depression. Medicine, Effexor, certainly helps. I don't think I could live without it, no pun intended.
The area is intriguing and warmer than home (Missouri). Okay, since you twisted my arm, I'm in Georgia, but thats ALL for now.
I hate being away from my GF and my daughter, but this is necessary. That's the worst about this, not being able to see them every day. We did get web cams set up on the desktop at home, and my laptop, before I left. So, we have been able to see each other. Modern technology isn't all that bad, now is it?
But, you know me, the depression isn't all that is affected. I've also had a lingering sense of deja vu. It's not so much anything in particular as much as it is just the general set up. Who knows, maybe all this is supposed to happen? I wonder if I'll live long enough to figure all this out?
Also of note, with the exception of my most recent sleep period, I've had 3 consecutive dreams involving PKD. I think it's time to get to work! Writing, that is!
To the Future?
Monday, May 14, 2007
Moving to Trent
By this time, Tabby had had enough of my crazy shit. Who can blame her? She would have to take Liza to my mother's house which was an hour away, and then drive back home to get ready to go to work, which was another twenty minutes away. I wasn't in the most reliable state as it were. I guess she figured at least all she would have to do was take Liza to mom's while I stayed home and moped and she could go to work. So we moved into 827 N. Mulberry Street in Trent. It was the house my mom and the kids had lived in when I first had the PKD connection. We were now living in the run down, shabby, barely held together house, if you could call it a house. Floors were sunk in everywhere, cracks scattered the sick white paint.
Moping is probably not the best term one could use to describe what I was feeling. I had an immense depression, so severe that I began to lose weight again. I couldn't focus on anything. I felt dead, everything around me felt dead. It was Almost like it was on 12-14-90. Nothing could match that. But this time, it was fairly intense. I felt as if hands were draped around my neck squeezing the life out of me, choking off the oxygen supply to my weary brain. I had gone go the nurse practitioner I had been seeing for my back spasms to prescribe some anti depressant. I knew if I did not act quickly, I may not be alive much longer. It was that bad. I had started thinking about everything that had happened and especially the occurrences with PKD and I had tried my damndest to figure out what was going on. I spun forth theory after theory, just like Phil would do himself if he had been presented this enigma. One theory that I had thought of that of course was very depressing was that I was Phil Dick and this was the afterlife. I am being made to go through life as if it were one of my very own novels, sanity be damned. Whether it was some supernatural entity or some well meaning dream architects. Who knows. All I could think was like David Ames of "Vanilla Sky", "Tech Support! Tech Support! I want out of here! Help me!". Such a lonely disparate place my mind was residing in.
Moping is probably not the best term one could use to describe what I was feeling. I had an immense depression, so severe that I began to lose weight again. I couldn't focus on anything. I felt dead, everything around me felt dead. It was Almost like it was on 12-14-90. Nothing could match that. But this time, it was fairly intense. I felt as if hands were draped around my neck squeezing the life out of me, choking off the oxygen supply to my weary brain. I had gone go the nurse practitioner I had been seeing for my back spasms to prescribe some anti depressant. I knew if I did not act quickly, I may not be alive much longer. It was that bad. I had started thinking about everything that had happened and especially the occurrences with PKD and I had tried my damndest to figure out what was going on. I spun forth theory after theory, just like Phil would do himself if he had been presented this enigma. One theory that I had thought of that of course was very depressing was that I was Phil Dick and this was the afterlife. I am being made to go through life as if it were one of my very own novels, sanity be damned. Whether it was some supernatural entity or some well meaning dream architects. Who knows. All I could think was like David Ames of "Vanilla Sky", "Tech Support! Tech Support! I want out of here! Help me!". Such a lonely disparate place my mind was residing in.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Mental Breakdown: Onset of Depersonalization/Derealization
In December of 1990 I was doing well in school, making plans for college, and working about thirty hours a week at Walmart. We lived in Compton, just moving there from Gladstil (where I had gone to school since kindergarten) in June of 1990. School in Compton was great. I had wished that I had gone to school there far longer than just my senior year. I actually had a few friends, who were fairly popular in the school system, but much nicer and more accepting than the bunch at Gladstil. I had been working at Walmart as a stockman and a layaway associate. I developed a friendship with our school counselor, who advised me on various degree programs. I was taking some fairly sophisticated courses, well, your usual college prep courses, anyway. I managed to get out of school around one o'clock and even have one study hall during the day.
I was very interested in Medicine, a worthy vocation and education it would provide. In particular, I was planning on applying to an accelerated program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Instead of the usual four year undergraduate degree and the four year medical curriculum, they would be combined into six total years of training, with about a month off each year. Wow, I would be an MD at the age of 23, and could be earning the average physician salary at 26. Plus, I would be doing something challenging and worthwhile. Restoring and rejuvenating the human body, and psyche. I really wanted to help people and be a benefit to society, and this was the perfect way to do it.
My grades were really good, A's mostly. Socially, I felt more comfortable than I ever had at Gladstil. It seems like I was more accepted. This was just the fresh beginning I needed. It seemed like things were finally going my way.
Everything I had become and worked for came to a catastrophic halt on December 14, 1990. It's really hard to explain what happened. It's so dark, vague, cloudy and surreal. We moved from Compton to Clovil (just 3 miles from Gladstil and 9 miles from Compton) around the last week in November, or it could have been the first few days of December. For me, it was a desolate maneuver, spooky. My mother's sister's children, who had lived with us for about four years were all between the ages of four and ten. There was six of them in all. The move affected me the most. I didn't have to switch schools; I wouldn't have, anyway. Especially Clovil, in the middle of my senior year; hell no! So, I drove the nine miles to school everyday. Clovil was a rundown town, lots of thugs and the like, you know. Not that I think I'm any better. The town just looked dismal, lacking in life and any fervor whatsoever. The trees were all barren of their leaves. I just could not see the dormant life that lay within.
This was analogous to the way I had felt inside for quite some time. It was very confusing for me. On the inside, my mind felt fragmented. On the outside, I wore my Gladstil school jacket, lived in Clovil, and went to high school in Compton. And I worked at Malden. Boy, if that were the only problem. Problem was, I was gnawing away at my mind, little by little. Whittling at my sanity. I asked a bunch of philosophical questions, trying to answer them, trying to make some sense of the world. I was confused about social structures, and how we humans really perceive each other, and how we portray ourselves to different people. It just depended on who was looking at us, or who we were looking at.
I began to question how people, other humans could be so cruel and malevolent towards each other, and impassive. Like they couldn't care less if you were an inanimate rock in their path. They would just kick you out of the way. Or pretend like you weren't even there; so high and mighty these people were. Quite a lot of people, especially the people in my grade, and the ones directly below and directly above. But most of all, those that were in my grade at Gladstil High School. Such snobbish and pretentious pigs they were. They were interested in themselves and only themselves.
On December 14, 1990, around six thirty in the evening, I was getting ready to go to the annual Walmart Christmas party. It was supposed to be held where the old store used to be. It was dark, the sun had set about forty minutes earlier. Cloud and rain saturated the atmosphere. It was unusually cold for the date. Once I got to Madison, I tried to locate the place where the party was to be held. For some reason, I couldn't find it. I can't remember if it was because I really couldn't find the physical location or they had changed locations last minute and I wasn't notified. Never the less, I couldn't find it so I left for home.
On my way home, I began to think about how little my biological mother really cared about me. How little she expressed any care at all, and at how other kids, and their hundred dollar picture packages, showboated for everyone to see. Prestige. That's all it was. I began to think of those in my grade, who had belittled me in various ways throughout my life. Them and their little fucking cliques. I hated them. I didn't want to be anything like them. But when you are from a small rural community that's pretty much all you know. I projected this feeling to the world. I didn't want to be anything like the world (at least my world) as it was. When these kids grew up, would they be the same? To my mind, they would. Well, I thought, if they will be like that then, then what about the ones who are adults and passed the adolescent phase? Were they arrogant asses and bitches, and stuck up, pretentious pricks when they were in high school, too? Were they still that way? Maybe not, I decided, but there was still that element of possibility that lay within. I couldn't deal with it. I also projected something else. Something else that would metaphorically and perhaps literally take me far from this very world. If I was so different from them, then what about God? The very God I worshiped before then couldn't be the same God that THEY worshiped. Their God would have thought He or She was too good for me, for sure. That is, even if their God was what they thought IT was.
And for some reason, I have no idea why, I began thinking about a common philosophical or scientific question (depends on how you classify the question). Here is the hypothetical question: If a tree in a forest or woods, or any where for that matter, falls and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? I know. Ludicrous, you say. How could a question like that precipitate a mental breakdown? Well, at the time, I didn't have the science education that I now possess. But I don't think it would have really mattered then. My brain was already fucked. I projected this question into another frame: If I don't see someone or perceive them, how do I know they really exist? Yeah, I know.
Some how, my brain linked the two situations (the existence or reality situation and the feeling unwanted by the world) and went into some sort of lock down. I beat my fists against the steering wheel, tears flooding my eyes and then streaming their way down my face. "Why God! Why! Why me! Why me!" At the same time I felt a moderate burning and numbing sensation on the top of my head. It felt like it was on fire. In retrospect, it was like my life force was leaving my body via this route.
And all at once, I metaphorically entered the dream-time. Physically, I felt unreal, like I was in a dream, not fully awake but here, some how. I was scared for a while, then a degree of apathy settled in. It seemed like I was looking through a fog; it was everywhere, obscuring my view of the real world. I saw through a glass, or a scanner darkly.
When I got home, I told my mom and step dad that "something had happened to me" and that "I didn't feel right". I don't know why she couldn't see that I was in trouble, that I was hurting, broken. I think I had a few more days of school after that weekend before the Christmas break. I did go those first few days, even though I felt dead, the living dead, a zombie I was. I was determined though. I knew I was supposed to do this, even though I was only going through the motions. It was like my body was being controlled by another mind, not my own. Like I was a walking robot, an automaton. My lights were dim, nobody home. Wasn't quite sure. Didn't know where I was.
This continued in a severe state for about 6 months. I missed quite a lot of school, and nearly flunked out. I went from straight A's to D's. I think the only reason I graduated was because I was such a good student before "the mental breakdown" and the school system felt pity for me. Needless to say, severe depression accompanied this change of mental status. I lost somewhere between twenty and thirty pounds over the course of the first three months. Now why didn't my mother see that? Probably she was too busy whoring around. She and my step dad had just separated a month after the breakdown, and she was going through some hormonal "I just gotta have a man" stage. So fucking weak. She couldn't even see that if her only blood child thought he could have killed himself he most likely would have. However, I didn't have the cognition for it. It was like I was a baby just born, but left in some isolated area where no contact with life of what ever kind could take place. I had to learn everything on my own. Everything was new and strange to me. I was even afraid to drive my car at one point, having to relearn, or reacquaint myself.
I would look in the mirror and find what I saw totally unfamiliar, in fact, the concept of I, was even unfamiliar. It was like I had dissociated with this world, living on two planes of existence. I felt alien here.
For some reason, I must have presented myself socially acceptable on the outside, except for being withdrawn, depressed, and apathetic. But I didn't act out. Mom finally took me to see a counselor and a psychiatrist. The shrink asked me if the change I felt was on the outside or the inside. Well, I told her it seemed like it was the outside, but I knew it was the inside. In retrospect, I guess that kept me from the psychosis defining diagnosis of schizophrenia.
I've had these feelings of unreality and dream state before, on just a few occasions. They cleared up in a day or less, and didn't hit me near as strong as this one had. So I was unable to correlate those at the time, and thus the counselors and doctors were unaware of this. I eventually stopped going to counciling because nobody could really help me. I don't remember anyone actually putting a name to what I have, or knowing any one who had similar symptoms. Of course, over the years, I have learned that it is a combination of a two disorders that often occur together known as depersonalization and derealization
ADDENDUM: 4/20/2017
There are a few things I neglected to mention in the preceding paragraphs. In the weeks before the Depersonalization breakdown of 12/14/1990 I was experiencing what I believe to be information overload. I was anxious and upset that I couldn't identify which type of grass was in your yard, what were the common and species names for all the flora I could see. I wanted to know specifics of everything; animate and inanimate. That only served to highten my already overloaded state of mind.
I've since been diagnosed with ASD - high functioning and now my life makes total sense. It doesn't make it easier, but I've had problems throughout my life that fit the autism bracket so accurately. I just don't know what to do with that now...
ADDENDUM: 7/10/1018
I regret not mentioning the following when I first made this post. Since there seems to be some interest in this post I feel the need to add the following:
Almost immediately after the dp/dr breakdown on 12/14/1990 I began a process of deconstructing everything I knew. If nothing was real then knowledge as I obtained it couldn't be reliable. I began losing my skills that I had developed in my young life. It's taken a life time to rebuild some of those, to make it epistemologically possible to learn even new things. Please help those who suffer from depersonalization/derealization.
I was very interested in Medicine, a worthy vocation and education it would provide. In particular, I was planning on applying to an accelerated program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Instead of the usual four year undergraduate degree and the four year medical curriculum, they would be combined into six total years of training, with about a month off each year. Wow, I would be an MD at the age of 23, and could be earning the average physician salary at 26. Plus, I would be doing something challenging and worthwhile. Restoring and rejuvenating the human body, and psyche. I really wanted to help people and be a benefit to society, and this was the perfect way to do it.
My grades were really good, A's mostly. Socially, I felt more comfortable than I ever had at Gladstil. It seems like I was more accepted. This was just the fresh beginning I needed. It seemed like things were finally going my way.
Everything I had become and worked for came to a catastrophic halt on December 14, 1990. It's really hard to explain what happened. It's so dark, vague, cloudy and surreal. We moved from Compton to Clovil (just 3 miles from Gladstil and 9 miles from Compton) around the last week in November, or it could have been the first few days of December. For me, it was a desolate maneuver, spooky. My mother's sister's children, who had lived with us for about four years were all between the ages of four and ten. There was six of them in all. The move affected me the most. I didn't have to switch schools; I wouldn't have, anyway. Especially Clovil, in the middle of my senior year; hell no! So, I drove the nine miles to school everyday. Clovil was a rundown town, lots of thugs and the like, you know. Not that I think I'm any better. The town just looked dismal, lacking in life and any fervor whatsoever. The trees were all barren of their leaves. I just could not see the dormant life that lay within.
This was analogous to the way I had felt inside for quite some time. It was very confusing for me. On the inside, my mind felt fragmented. On the outside, I wore my Gladstil school jacket, lived in Clovil, and went to high school in Compton. And I worked at Malden. Boy, if that were the only problem. Problem was, I was gnawing away at my mind, little by little. Whittling at my sanity. I asked a bunch of philosophical questions, trying to answer them, trying to make some sense of the world. I was confused about social structures, and how we humans really perceive each other, and how we portray ourselves to different people. It just depended on who was looking at us, or who we were looking at.
I began to question how people, other humans could be so cruel and malevolent towards each other, and impassive. Like they couldn't care less if you were an inanimate rock in their path. They would just kick you out of the way. Or pretend like you weren't even there; so high and mighty these people were. Quite a lot of people, especially the people in my grade, and the ones directly below and directly above. But most of all, those that were in my grade at Gladstil High School. Such snobbish and pretentious pigs they were. They were interested in themselves and only themselves.
On December 14, 1990, around six thirty in the evening, I was getting ready to go to the annual Walmart Christmas party. It was supposed to be held where the old store used to be. It was dark, the sun had set about forty minutes earlier. Cloud and rain saturated the atmosphere. It was unusually cold for the date. Once I got to Madison, I tried to locate the place where the party was to be held. For some reason, I couldn't find it. I can't remember if it was because I really couldn't find the physical location or they had changed locations last minute and I wasn't notified. Never the less, I couldn't find it so I left for home.
On my way home, I began to think about how little my biological mother really cared about me. How little she expressed any care at all, and at how other kids, and their hundred dollar picture packages, showboated for everyone to see. Prestige. That's all it was. I began to think of those in my grade, who had belittled me in various ways throughout my life. Them and their little fucking cliques. I hated them. I didn't want to be anything like them. But when you are from a small rural community that's pretty much all you know. I projected this feeling to the world. I didn't want to be anything like the world (at least my world) as it was. When these kids grew up, would they be the same? To my mind, they would. Well, I thought, if they will be like that then, then what about the ones who are adults and passed the adolescent phase? Were they arrogant asses and bitches, and stuck up, pretentious pricks when they were in high school, too? Were they still that way? Maybe not, I decided, but there was still that element of possibility that lay within. I couldn't deal with it. I also projected something else. Something else that would metaphorically and perhaps literally take me far from this very world. If I was so different from them, then what about God? The very God I worshiped before then couldn't be the same God that THEY worshiped. Their God would have thought He or She was too good for me, for sure. That is, even if their God was what they thought IT was.
And for some reason, I have no idea why, I began thinking about a common philosophical or scientific question (depends on how you classify the question). Here is the hypothetical question: If a tree in a forest or woods, or any where for that matter, falls and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? I know. Ludicrous, you say. How could a question like that precipitate a mental breakdown? Well, at the time, I didn't have the science education that I now possess. But I don't think it would have really mattered then. My brain was already fucked. I projected this question into another frame: If I don't see someone or perceive them, how do I know they really exist? Yeah, I know.
Some how, my brain linked the two situations (the existence or reality situation and the feeling unwanted by the world) and went into some sort of lock down. I beat my fists against the steering wheel, tears flooding my eyes and then streaming their way down my face. "Why God! Why! Why me! Why me!" At the same time I felt a moderate burning and numbing sensation on the top of my head. It felt like it was on fire. In retrospect, it was like my life force was leaving my body via this route.
And all at once, I metaphorically entered the dream-time. Physically, I felt unreal, like I was in a dream, not fully awake but here, some how. I was scared for a while, then a degree of apathy settled in. It seemed like I was looking through a fog; it was everywhere, obscuring my view of the real world. I saw through a glass, or a scanner darkly.
When I got home, I told my mom and step dad that "something had happened to me" and that "I didn't feel right". I don't know why she couldn't see that I was in trouble, that I was hurting, broken. I think I had a few more days of school after that weekend before the Christmas break. I did go those first few days, even though I felt dead, the living dead, a zombie I was. I was determined though. I knew I was supposed to do this, even though I was only going through the motions. It was like my body was being controlled by another mind, not my own. Like I was a walking robot, an automaton. My lights were dim, nobody home. Wasn't quite sure. Didn't know where I was.
This continued in a severe state for about 6 months. I missed quite a lot of school, and nearly flunked out. I went from straight A's to D's. I think the only reason I graduated was because I was such a good student before "the mental breakdown" and the school system felt pity for me. Needless to say, severe depression accompanied this change of mental status. I lost somewhere between twenty and thirty pounds over the course of the first three months. Now why didn't my mother see that? Probably she was too busy whoring around. She and my step dad had just separated a month after the breakdown, and she was going through some hormonal "I just gotta have a man" stage. So fucking weak. She couldn't even see that if her only blood child thought he could have killed himself he most likely would have. However, I didn't have the cognition for it. It was like I was a baby just born, but left in some isolated area where no contact with life of what ever kind could take place. I had to learn everything on my own. Everything was new and strange to me. I was even afraid to drive my car at one point, having to relearn, or reacquaint myself.
I would look in the mirror and find what I saw totally unfamiliar, in fact, the concept of I, was even unfamiliar. It was like I had dissociated with this world, living on two planes of existence. I felt alien here.
For some reason, I must have presented myself socially acceptable on the outside, except for being withdrawn, depressed, and apathetic. But I didn't act out. Mom finally took me to see a counselor and a psychiatrist. The shrink asked me if the change I felt was on the outside or the inside. Well, I told her it seemed like it was the outside, but I knew it was the inside. In retrospect, I guess that kept me from the psychosis defining diagnosis of schizophrenia.
I've had these feelings of unreality and dream state before, on just a few occasions. They cleared up in a day or less, and didn't hit me near as strong as this one had. So I was unable to correlate those at the time, and thus the counselors and doctors were unaware of this. I eventually stopped going to counciling because nobody could really help me. I don't remember anyone actually putting a name to what I have, or knowing any one who had similar symptoms. Of course, over the years, I have learned that it is a combination of a two disorders that often occur together known as depersonalization and derealization
ADDENDUM: 4/20/2017
There are a few things I neglected to mention in the preceding paragraphs. In the weeks before the Depersonalization breakdown of 12/14/1990 I was experiencing what I believe to be information overload. I was anxious and upset that I couldn't identify which type of grass was in your yard, what were the common and species names for all the flora I could see. I wanted to know specifics of everything; animate and inanimate. That only served to highten my already overloaded state of mind.
I've since been diagnosed with ASD - high functioning and now my life makes total sense. It doesn't make it easier, but I've had problems throughout my life that fit the autism bracket so accurately. I just don't know what to do with that now...
ADDENDUM: 7/10/1018
I regret not mentioning the following when I first made this post. Since there seems to be some interest in this post I feel the need to add the following:
Almost immediately after the dp/dr breakdown on 12/14/1990 I began a process of deconstructing everything I knew. If nothing was real then knowledge as I obtained it couldn't be reliable. I began losing my skills that I had developed in my young life. It's taken a life time to rebuild some of those, to make it epistemologically possible to learn even new things. Please help those who suffer from depersonalization/derealization.
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