promeny

The week pasted by slowly, although I'm over most of the anger and the stress by this point. There is no sense to feel those things; it won't change anything. I e-mailed a guy about taking over his lease today, but I don't know if I will get a response.

I was really fucking pissed for a while, though. I don't think that I've been this enraged and stressed out since my mother was in hospice. And that was three years ago.

I finished writing a 9,000 word (or thereabouts) document, and I'm reading again now. Those helped me deal with the drama; I couldn't read for half a month because I was so upset, but I have to move on. Everything changes over time.

I've been noticing more things lately online. Just sort of had my "eyes opened" to what people are saying and reacting these days. I can tell that most people are being duped, and either don't know that they are being manipulated, or don't care. The internet really has made people dumber, especially the younger generation. I was talking about it with another person in his 30s on a niche site that I go to, and we both agreed with one another, but another, younger guy stepped in and said that we were both wrong. He doesn't know; he was too young to remember what once was. Even people my age are either starting to forget, or have already forgotten. Social media really has put a kibosh on many things, and for the worse at that. I want to delete my social media sites, and I can, but now is not the right time. I feel that it will be soon, though. I just wish that Internet 3.0 will be more liberated, but I doubt that will happen.

I'm still getting visions in the mornings occasionally, but I don't know how to command them just yet. Maybe I can't? I doubt that, but it will take a lot to master it nonetheless. The visions vary every time they happen; sometimes it is as easy as seeing with your eyes open, and other times you barely have any energy to be in the Mental Plane.

Well, that is that.

Earlier this week, I felt that there was no point to living. I mean, I knew that there wasn't, but humans nonetheless have a need to have a point. We demand structure and systems, even if we know that reality does not perfectly conform to whatever we either perceive or construct, if it does at all. This need is still around even if we are smart enough to know this, which few people are (I'm not even saying that out of haughtiness). So as such, I was having an existential crisis in which I was smart enough to predict, but not smart enough to think myself out of.

I escaped, though. How? I just did things with my life, like cooking and reading more books. It doesn't matter what you do with your life, so long as you are not bored. I suppose that is the point to life, unofficially; to keep yourself entertained so that you don't kill yourself or otherwise commit harm. I suppose it would depend on what kind of entertainment you enjoy, for some very fun things are crimes and you'll end up in prison, wearing a bow on your head and be called a new name, "Cinnamon". I don't want to talk about what else could happen. Just stay active, and you won't stagnate; I need to stay active mentally because my mind is both the source of my strengths and vulnerabilities. That could probably be said for anyone, but it is especially true for me, because when I started reading books voraciously a little less than two years ago, most of my problems went away.

I can actually cook somewhat decently now. Hamburgers, Rice with Chinese Sausage, Potato Pancakes, Shepard's Pie...this makes me feel like I can survive on my own. Just a few weeks ago I only knew how to eat out of cans and boil water; now I can actually cook meals. I'm an adult, now.

When I read a book concerning dangerous patients in the psychiatric field, I learned a hell of a lot. One thing I learned was that the most humiliating thing that ever happened to me was not in the slightest bit my fault, and I feel so relieved now. I forgive myself, and now know that almost anyone in my position would have made the same mistake, especially knowing how my father treated me like a drooling retard for several days prior to the incident. I still don't forgive either my father or the other bastard, but that is irrelevant. All that matters is that I take the blame away from myself. If it wasn't for my father, I would have just wrote off the other person has having their own problem, and would have brushed it off, but the abuse of the two combined broke me. Fortunately, that won't ever happen again, or at least I won't let it.

In other news, I'm not going to abuse any drugs for a while, at least nowhere near the extent that I did recently. I need to recover, and drugs get boring after a while in any case, even without tolerance. So far, I'm doing okay, although I'm having some VERY fucked up dreams.

It has been a really odd month so far.

I recently found out that one of my friends from MTSU died in a car accident last May. I can't believe that I didn't know that one of my friends had been dead for over seven months. We were pretty good friends during my last year at MTSU, but after I left we barely talked to one another so as such it wasn't as painful as it could have been. I guess that it just goes to show how far removed I am from that phase of my life; I really have changed a fair amount. He is roughly the ninth or tenth person who has died on me in my life, which is actually a fairly large number for someone who is only 31 years old; most of the departed were young people like him, too (he was only 26 when he died). I am no stranger to death; I was introduced to it on a significant level when my best friend died from auto-erotic asphyxiation when we were both 17. That was really shocking because I didn't know that people did that to themselves, and my friend was very straight-laced.

An odd thing about my dead friend was that when I was talking to him through Facebook four years ago, I told him that I wanted to move and yet I didn't want to abandon my mother, who had cancer and was going to die a year and a half later (I had no idea that my mother was soon to be dead, though; I just thought that I shouldn't leave her just in case she was going to die). He said something around the lines of "Dude, just leave and have your own life." He was right, but I really couldn't have left my mother like that. I just find it sort of ironic that he is also now dead, and I had no idea that anything like that would happen to him. To be fair, though, he had a vibrant personality that while it made him a very pleasant person to be around, it didn't really fit his age. He basically acted like he was 20 or so by the time he was 26 (not that he did stupid things; he was just very jovial and didn't take many things seriously), and there was always a part of me that wondered just how he would be when he was about my age; looking back on it, I honestly couldn't have seen him seriously being my age, not that I thought that he was going to die, though. He was my brother's age, which makes it pretty odd, to say the least.

I was on that one medication for two days in order to decrease my drinking, and it was strange. The first day, I felt all calm and almost euphoric, and I was kind of mildly dissociated, having the strange thought that we are just put on this earth with no purpose or plan, and no roles to act out, and no restrictions to our behaviors, and yet all of us seem to instinctively feel that all of these things exist in our lives, and that we are here for a specific reason, when we are not. On the second day, however, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack right after I took the dose, so I had to go into the ER. They did a check-up on me and also did an EKG, and I turned out to be fine. As it turned out, the medication gave me an anxiety attack that triggered some psychosomatic symptoms, and I freaked out over it. I don't feel ashamed because it was the first time anything like that happened to me, and I hadn't been to the ER in well over a year in any case. The physician acted surprised that I was on the medication in the first place due to me telling him how much I was drinking, and he said that I seemed to be very motivated to stop drinking and that I should try doing it without any medication. According to him, I don't seem to have a significant alcohol problem.

For days after I stopped taking the medication, my head hurt, I felt dehydrated and I was all-around miserable and prone to anxiety. My hair also seemed to fall out from it. I just felt like the medication had too many negative side effects, and that it was overkill. I didn't drink enough beer to seriously warrant a medication to curb the usage and the medication made me feel way worse than any hangover I ever had, with the exception of one during MTSU.

This is really the first time my psychiatrist has ever made a serious mistake. She must be really conservative with substance use, and probably believes that I have more problems with alcohol than I actually do. I ask people around me if I have problems with alcohol, and they say no and fully admit to drinking more alcohol than me. One of my friends privately felt that I should have never been on the medication, I later found out from him. It was just plain reckless that my psychiatrist would put me on such a serious medication for such a minor problem (if it is even a problem at all), although to be fair she didn't push it on me and it was my idea to try it out. She really can't be fully blamed.

There is one good thing that came from it, though: I quit smoking. It has been three days and I've only had the slightest cravings; it has been way easier than I thought it would be. I decided to quit because it was too expensive, it wasn't good for me, and it made my anxiety worse, so as such I did what I did. I don't regret it at all; if I control my drinking, I will now have a lot more money to save up for important shit or emergencies, for you never know what is going to happen in your life.

Not too much else is going on. Playing Final Fantasy XII for the first time in eight years, and that has proven to be pretty fun. Also trying to read a bit so that I will have enough knowledge and opinions to write one of my papers, although I wonder what the point of writing them exactly is nowadays.

Today is my legal birthday. Technically, it was yesterday, for I was born overseas and it was the 20th in Japan yesterday. I generally celebrate both days out of confusion.

I'm 31 years old now. I was ready for it, and I feel that old (more or less), but I honestly can't believe that I've been on this Earth for over three decades, and basically have had self-awareness for 17 years (I consider the age of 14 as the start of psychological maturity, where you start to be aware of yourself and your life).

I wonder how I'm going to be later on, and how my life is going to play out. I sometimes feel like a loser, for I have no solid career or family of my own, and likely never will. At 31, if you haven't developed those yet, chances are you won't ever. I'm still youngish, but in a few years I won't be. Is my life going to be a dead-end? Then again, I do have motivation as well as a very thoughtful and introspective nature to my mind, and I've already written a lot. I also don't make mistakes nearly as much as I used to, meaning that I have gotten wiser. I still plan on writing more, so I think that there is still a chance that I can make something out of myself; that I still have potential, if you will.

I've improved dramatically over the past year or so; most of this comes from the realization that I can be wrong, and that just because I have a thought or an emotion, does not mean that it is justified. Self-doubt, surprisingly, can take you a long way.

I've been really interested in my dreams, recently. It hasn't gotten to the point where I am lucid in my dreams, however I remember them more clearly and all of my actions within them are in character. I even remember things from my waking life in them, and it has gotten to the point where I am able to learn many things from them. I honestly think that dreams are portal to another world, and I have had both out-of-body experiences as well as astral and mental projection over the course of several months. They seem to be getting more common, although I have yet to know how to do it willingly; they come to me on their own. I'd very much like to master those abilities, for I feel that they are very important to possess.

I have a theory that the afterlife is very similar to the dream world, and that it is important to enhance one's abilities through their dreams as well as obtain the aforesaid abilities in order to have a better afterlife, or at least to understand it better. But who knows for sure?

Other than that, I've just been reading a bit. I was originally somewhat fatigued from it; I still had the motivation, but not really the interest in the things around me. But if you start looking hard enough, you'll find something else.

They are both back, as are the students.

Summer ended pretty quickly. It is sort of odd how my days are slow, and yet the weeks and months just glide by. I learned a lot of things over the past week. How I really do need close friends, but that I only need a handful and that friends would be hard to get without school or work. And the kids that came back. Just wow, they look so fucking young. Most guys my age would find the girls extremely alluring; not in my case, though. I mean, their attractiveness does register but I really prefer women who are in their mid-20s to mid-30s, or thereabouts. If they are still pretty then, they likely will be for the rest of their lives and they tend to be more refined mentally.

But still, just how fucking young they are. Some of them were born in 1996! That is insane. I totally feel out of my element in both Moscow and at the university. I used to feel right in my element in the libraries and the other areas of the campus, but these days I feel too old for it. I feel the need to move on, but where? I have no friends, and perhaps no opportunities, anywhere else.

I look somewhat older, and feel a lot older. That is a sign of maturity, I guess. Since I have no job, no promising career outside of what I can make for myself, there is a blank in my future. That is both scary, and kind of cool. Scary in that nothing is certain, but cool in that I have nothing binding me; no mortgage, no marriage, no kids, nothing. I can do just about whatever the hell I want.

And I highly doubt that will ever change.

In any case, the meditation is going great. I'm not drinking too much anymore, although I did start smoking cigarettes again. I don't mind them if they are mild, but I know better than to be a regular smoker, even lightly. It seems that the meditation affects my sleep, and I'm able to have hypnagogic dreams and visions. It is really, really cool. My visions have also become more clear, seeing more definite shapes, greater applied imagery, and some of them seem to be of a revelatory nature. I feel that I'm sharpening my mind towards greater things, if this is indeed the case.

Outside of that, nothing significant is happening. I'm not bored, but I'm wondering how the next few months will be, given that I will not be auditing a class this semester.

I got a new laptop. It is actually a notebook model, much smaller than my former laptop, but it seems to be a bit more powerful, although it cannot multitask very well. The visuals are a lot crisper and the sounds are a little more vivid, however the operating system is Windows 8, which has proven to be sort of hard to use. I try not to get the latest technology because they are a lot more complicated than they used to be. In general, I like it, although I wonder how long it will be used for (new technology isn't really built to last these days).

I finished A Perception of Existence and Reality sometime last week, and yesterday I put it on my Academia.edu account. A little over thirty people have looked at it, and one person has followed me, however no one has commented on it yet; it may be too early to tell, though. I also put it on reddit; hopefully some people will talk about it. To be honest, the manuscript fell somewhat short of my expectations, but I don't place the blame on myself, for the topic was too broad and nebulous to seriously define. But I am glad that I finished a second book this year; it makes me feel that I am using my time well and that I have accomplished something. I will try to write another, and I'm already brainstorming on it, however I won't start on it for a couple more weeks.

Looking back on last month, it seems that I learned a lot and changed a bit over the course of the month. I learned some esoteric stuff, such as how to divinate and summon an angel, and I've learn some basic stuff, such as how to cook rice, how to go to small claims, and how to deal with an awkward social situation. Quite a bit actually happened last month, and I grew a significant amount from it. I sort of realized sometime last month that I'm basically a full-grown man now, inside and out, but the funny thing is that you never really stop learning and changing, or at least it is still possible. Most older people don't because they either don't want to learn or change, or the idea to do so just doesn't come to them. I'm grateful for still learning things because it is helping me with actually becoming functional, and I feel that my life has really just started.

Outside of that, not much else. My life is fairly quiet right now, outside of the SSI thing. I will move sometime, but I don't feel the need to do it anytime soon.

I'm doing relatively well. Staying away from drugs, outside of some Damiana that I have tried out. That is an interesting herb; it seems mildly psychedelic but it doesn't really fuck with me that much. The point of using it is partially to distract myself from the harder substances, but mostly to expand my horizons. I want to experience nearly every state of consciousness possible, so long as it doesn't permanently fuck with me, at least on a negative level.

I've been writing again. I think that it is really good for me, and gives me the sense that I'm actually doing something with my time. The document is already about three times longer than my Master's thesis, which is impressive in and of itself. Not many people have the dedication to write something like that for nothing, or at least without the expectation of anything. I hope that others will like it; I plan on writing a lot more soon afterward.

In any case I've been playing Yume Nikki for roughly the fourth time; I play that game once every two years on the same day. I don't remember much of it, but it is still fun. It is different, though, for I'm a much different person at 30 than I was at 24, so as such I can't really relate to my first experience all that much. But that shouldn't get in the way of anything.

I'm helping my sister with sending the rest of her stuff in the basement to her. I already got it out, so now I just have to send it. She is very grateful, but I hope that my father won't get pissed at me. But if he does, I don't mind. I did what was right.

Several years ago, when I was 23, I had this silly crush on a younger girl online; I would talk with her through AIM, and while it was never romantic or sexual, I think she figured out that I liked her more than a friend. Well, I stopped talking to her a little after I turned 24 (it was uneventful) and I moved on with my life. In early 2010, however, I discovered her tumblr, and I've been following it ever since. It has been interesting; she's still a huge, immature idiot, but in a much different way. She's basically a lukewarm manifestation of a self-righteous tumblr girl who doesn't know when to stop screaming, drinking and do drugs. Oh, and she's asexual, agender and panromantic, too! What a combination. She's pretty much never said anything of worth, although it was humorous to find out that she got kicked out of her parents' house because they were sick and tired of her degeneracy.

I haven't gotten to the good part, though. This girl used to be phenomenally beautiful; a 10 out of 10. Even other people in my life were surprised at how attractive she was. When I first saw a picture of her way back when, I "fell in love" (I don't do that anymore). Well, she just recently posted a set of photos that was entitled "Female to Agender in 6 Years" or whatever; it started with a picture of her at her prom, or whatever, being perfectly elegant. Then, the pictures from college started to appear; she wasn't ugly, but she was no longer beautiful and gained a little weight. The last two pictures showed her with male clothing and a very short, unfeminine haircut, and the last picture just made her look hideous.

Isn't that sad? What possessed her to end up that way? I mean, almost everyone changes at college, but not like that, at least not when I went. I guess that it just shows that the initial beauty was wasted by the stupidity of the host, who was so much of a fool as to not care about it and let herself go with all these bad decisions.

I showed those pictures to my friend today. She was like "It is sad to see her let herself go like that!" as well as "Is she gay?" My friend thinks that she isn't making the right choices for herself and is confused as to who she is.

The weird thing, though, is that this is both highly comedic and tragic in an ironic fashion. For now this girl is the same age I was when I first knew her, and she just turned not only into something I could never love, but also messed up her life than I ever realistically could by just 23. Just imagine when she turns my age how she is going to end up, or even at 26! I get the feeling that she's going to kill herself or otherwise die before she hits 40. My friend didn't get why I thought it was so ironic, but when I told her the explanation she kind of laughed.

I've met my fair amount of derp-a-derp girls online (especially back when I was in the autism communities way back when), but not even close to this. The rest of the girls at least had a slight amount of sensibility; this particular one had no limits whatsoever.

Man. I'm so glad I didn't end up like that. I might be 30 and alone, but at least I don't have any shame that I should have.

So I have more or less gotten over the psychological problems that have plagued me for over a month.

It started when I took DXM after only a three-day break last Saturday. I was in a bad mood, and was disgusted with myself, and wanted to change. So I tripped, recognized that I needed to change, and for some weird reason, a switch got turned on in my brain, and I suddenly became a different person.

I didn't think much of it until the next day, when I noticed that I was very different than how I was previously. Didn't ruminate, didn't feel anguish, didn't go out of my way to think about negative things. I just became very calm and composed, able to handle negative thoughts with detachment and ease.

What I think happened was that I lessened my ego. When I would think about horrible things, I would focus on what the victims were experiencing, due to my immense amount of empathy. It was well-intentioned, but it was more or less psychological and emotional torture, and it was giving me several problems in life. The key wasn't to stop caring (to eliminate my empathy, basically); rather, it was to not put myself in the role of the victim, and furthermore to not put myself in any role outside of that of the observer. By taking myself out of the equation, I no longer felt any pain, and more interestingly I didn't think about those horrible things anywhere near as much.

To have less of an ego, means that you can think about life and the events within it more accurately and objectively, and you also won't experience as much grief when bad things happen. You simply recognize the event with clarity, and you act appropriately. This is a much healthier way to be.

Not to mention that it makes you less closed off mentally, with you being more open to new experiences and ideas rather than thinking in some restricted patterns that stagnate and warp over time.

So I feel great. I still sort of revert back, just slightly, whenever I'm irritated or stressed out, but on the whole I think that I've been changed for the better. Both my therapist and my friend have noticed that I've made a big jump forward.

I had a dream last night, where I inherited an old mansion of sorts, and living in it was a young Hispanic dude. We both found out that the mansion was haunted, so I agreed that he could stay here for the time being in order to be more "safe". Eventually I came across the ghost, who was a young girl in her late teens/early 20s that was killed for some reason in the 1930s. I was scared at first, but I could tell that she was in pain, so I decided to approach her. We talked, and she decided to trust me. As it turned out, she didn't want to talk about how she was killed, but I could gather that it was her parents that did it, due to her being mentally ill (she had a psychotic mood disorder). When I asked her if any of her siblings were still alive, she simply said "Yes."

The dream technically ended there, but I kept thinking about it this morning, and as it turned out, she was repeatedly raped by her father (her mother knew, and often helped) in a hidden room of the mansion and was eventually killed by both of her parents, with her corpse stored in a locked chest in the room. The parents told her seven siblings that she ran away, which they believed, however her youngest brother (the only sibling still alive) eventually realized that she was in fact killed. For eighty years, she haunted the mansion, feeling nothing but distrust and anguish that the very two people that were supposed to love her, ended up violating and then killing her, just for being mentally defective.

I think that I'm going to write a story based on that dream. I hope that it didn't actually happen.

A bit has happened, but it is kind of hard to summarize; partially because things just fade into my subconscious by this point, but mostly because my thoughts and feelings change by the day, so as such there is little to no consistency.

I have realized that my personal past can do nothing but to harm me, and dwelling on it simply causes me to be insensibly angry. Anger does not serve well in either furthering my emotional state for the better, or to move on in life, so as such I should really try as hard as I can to forget about the past and to not be angry so much. All that anger does, is to stunt my psychological growth.

And if you think about it, anger is really a sign of a deep vulnerability that you have; a bright light signaling your insecurities and lack of confidence. I really do have problems with security and confidence. While I am working on it, and I am gaining more confidence, there is a long road ahead of me that I have just barely started on.

As for the hate I had toward women? Did me absolutely no good. They hated me because I had hate towards them, and made it known and directly guided (more or less) online. Who wouldn't hate you if you did that to them? Only the kindest of souls, the saints of women, would be kind to me after that. Granted, most women are not that good, but neither are men. I am certainly not, even though I like to think of myself as such.

So, what do I do, now that I am enlightened by this insight? I will more than likely relapse into the anger and hate, because they are mental heuristics, and even I am not immune to being intellectually lazy when I am emotionally compromised. But I now know, that I am solely at fault, and I will do my best to make sure that I will be better towards others, and more importantly, towards myself.

Through acquisition of knowledge, I will become more adept at handling my faults. Let me continue on.

On the 7th of this month, was the anniversary of me leaving my main job, and have a life that was largely unburdened by external factors.

I knew that it was sometime around now, but I didn't know the exact date until I looked at the first poem I wrote in the notebook that I carry around.

Some people thought that I would just stagnate. And for a while, I did. Between March and June of last year I did a bunch of legal drugs, such as Nutmeg, DXM, DPH, LSA, Kratom, as well as plenty of herbal supplements taken in excess and copious amounts of hard beer. I guess that this was the "cleansing" period of my life, in some odd way. To get all of the debauchery and bad habits out of my system so that they wouldn't haunt me for the rest of my life.

I ended up going to the psych ward in May of last year, and soon afterwards I stopped the drug use (outside of DXM and Kratom, which I only did occasionally). I still drank a lot of beer (the extent of which amazes me to this day), but that was because I was dealing with the upcoming anniversary of my mother's death. There was simply no other way to handle it at the time.

Now, I still do drugs on the occasion when it is appropriate. Nitrous oxide has proven to be interesting, and DXM will definitely be done again in about four months from now. But they are no longer my life. I have other things to do, and to focus on. I'm keeping away from beer now, and what I drink now is pretty mild and not in excess (I haven't been seriously drunk in four months).

But since I've settled down, I've realized that since about July of last year, I have made tremendous steps forward in order to become something worthwhile in this world. I've written over 360 poems, dozens of essays, made two computer games, made a painting (want to make more, but it is sort of on the side right now), and I even wrote a book. And it will only go forward from here. There is no sign of me stopping.

It was all because I started reading academic books. It opened my mind to so many different things, got me out of my self-pity and emotional stagnation, and helped me discover many things about both the mind and the world that I had no idea existed. I've read over 40 books or so, and I'm not stopping anytime soon (although I did take a break from it when I wrote A Soul Turned).

So no, I'm not a failure. I'm on the way to something great. And it will happen.