My Book

So I've been writing about my life up to the present and adding that to the book. I have been extremely impressed with my recent writing. The stuff I have written from the past year is very interesting. I didn't quite realize how interesting the past year has been. This book will absolutely be published. And it will be popular.

I have to select moments to demonstrate both that there was something good about me all along, and also select moments that demonstrate that there was something not good that needed to change. At the end I change, or at least I begin to work on changing. I was thinking that the stuff I had written before was crap compared to the stuff I recently wrote. Then I looked back and realized that it demonstrates the change from focusing on other people to focusing on myself.

In the part I wrote a while ago, there's a part where I am sending the guy I had delusions about messages. In one of the messages I make a statement, and I always kind of wondered why I said it. It was like, some people were this certain way. It was probably true but it didn't really seem to relate to anything and seemed kind of random. I always remembered that statement, and I have that message in my book. But now, at the end, the statement I made about how some people are was how I was a lot of the time. That was part of what I was supposed to learn.

I had this experience one time where I came to a certain realization. I realized that it would greatly add to the book if I mentioned it because it relates to something else in the book that happens in the part I just wrote. Looking back at the part of the book where I talk about the time period when it happened, I realized that it would be incredibly difficult to insert there because I was talking about another issue. I had sent the guy a message about it where I described it, but I hadn't added that to my book. I really did not want to go back and look through the messages I sent him again. Then I remembered something. a couple years ago I had gone back again and looked at the messages I had sent him. There were three of them that I found interesting that weren't in my book, so I saved them on my hard drive. One of them was the one message. So I went back and added it.

I am going to go back and delete a lot of recent blog posts. The reason is because I don't like giving away book information on my blog, and now a lot of the stuff I have blogged about is in my book.

Anyway, so I think this is going to be a fantastic book.

Painting an Emotional Tapestry

So, now that we've got to pretty much what I think is the end of this whole situation in my life. This situation being the karma thing, which includes my delusions and the mental illness and shit. Now I understand why the psychic last summer told me that my book would make the kind of stuff I believe in popular amongst young people. Because even though it involves all this horrible crap I had to go through which seems so unfair if you only look at this lifetime, there's just something about it that is in my opinion incredibly cool.

So I've been writing today, and today is my birthday, but that is irrelevant. I was adding the part about treatment. I have to be kind of brief about things, but touch upon the aspects of it that are important. I have been being incredibly brief about things, leaving out most of the stuff that happened, just touching on things I deem important.

One of the things that happens when you are going through what I'm going through, and thinking the way I'm thinking, with whatever it is that I am going through. Delusions? Mental illness? Altered spiritual state? Whatever the fuck it is. I don't know. One of the things is you think differently and things pop out more in your mind that seem important, like random things that happened. They pop out more, and this is conducive to painting an emotional tapestry of your true life experiences. Because that's what memoir writing is, painting an emotional tapestry of your true life experiences. It is a form of art and involves creativity because you have to decide what to include and how you are going to tell it.

Anyway, so one random small insignificant event popped out of me that happened early on in my Innercept career. And it involved this other girl at Innercept. And I was remembering how back in the day, at one point I had delusions about my delusions, and I was telling her about it. I was going to add this part to my book and she wanted to have me put the part where I tell her about it in the book. So I was going to and I was writing about it, this was several years ago, but then later I decided that I didn't want to include the delusions about my delusions, and even if I did the part where I tell her about it wasn't significant enough to add it into the book. So it was not going to be in the book. But then today, I was remembering the other thing that popped out at me. And it was such a coincidence because it was the same girl who wanted to be in the book, so I added it and told her about it on facebook and she was happy.

I have to add back a part I removed awhile ago because I was embarrassed. I have to re-add some mention of it because it is actually something really important. It was meant to embarrass me because it was important that I be embarrassed. So yeah this is kind of a tell-all book. Not literally everything. I know some people might not want me to add stuff that embarrasses me but it is way worth it in this case to add it. It adds a lot to the book. So you have to make sacrifices.

There are things in my book like slutty behaviors that aren't necessarily that uncommon, and a lot of people have done these kind of things, but everyone has to act like people don't do these kind of things and they don't talk about them.

It's like, you have to put a certain image out into the world, whether it be out on the internet or through publishing a book, like you don't do certain things. You have never been promiscuous or have done drugs or drank excessively. And you don't have any opinions about anything that could possibly be offensive to anyone. And stuff like that. And if you don't present this image, employers won't hire you. But no one is like that. So every single person has to fake it and they are expected to fake it.

This is something that annoys me about the world. So I am hoping my life never depends on getting a job where they expect me to be like that.

Innercept: A Pricey Death Camp

So I am just fucking going crazy here. For awhile I felt this strong sense of caring about everyone and how my actions affected everyone. Now I just feel like I could punch everyone in the face.

I just want to get the fuck away from this Innercept nightmare. I want to get it the fuck out of my life. I don't want anything to do with Innercept. I don't want to be here. I want out.

When the fuck did the meds I was given every help anything? Name one time I took the medication and as a result I got better, or my thinking got clearer, or something. It has never happened. Not once. The meds just fuck me up. I don't give a flying fuck I don't want to pretend they help when they don't. If you think they are helping it's like the same thing as the placebo effect. You want them to help so it affects your perception.

Despite everything I still trust my instincts. If you want me to stop, you should probably give me some drugs which put me in a coma. Or just kill me.

And leave Erik out of this. Erik has nothing to do with anything. It's me.

This life is killing me. I hate it. I hate it so much.

Dreaming of STD's

I had a dream last night about the guy I had delusions about. This dream lacked the intense feeling of longing. An indication of progress. The two of us lived relatively close together and saw each other sometimes but not all that often. I still kind of had feelings for him but they weren't that strong anymore. It was the feeling like when you are in a relationship with someone and then you break up and you have pretty much moved on, but there are still remnants of feelings.

So the two of us were talking. There was an understanding that I was with someone else. To make conversation and indicate that I had moved on, I asked him about this one girl I saw him hanging around a lot. They seemed to like each other so I asked if the two of them were going to get together, as an indication that I would like to see him with someone else. He told me that they had discussed it and he wasn't sure that it would work out. They each had an STD, but not the same STD. They didn't want to get together and acquire the other one's STD because then they would both have two STD's. So it probably wasn't going to work out. He asked about my STD's. I told him I didn't have any. He told me that I might have one and not know it.

I think the reason I had this dream was because last night at the restaurant I was sharing a spoon with my sister because the dessert only came with one spoon, and I asked her if she had oral herpes. At first she thought I meant that I had it but then I told her I was just making sure that she didn't have it.

Anyway, that's all for now.

A Successful Book Trailer

So I'm thinking it might work out, making the book trailer with my sister, I am just going to have to push her some more to do it my way.

I don't know that my sister understands the point of the book trailer. She thinks it shouldn't be humorous because it's a serious topic. Sure, it is serious, but we don't have to act like it's a tragedy. I have an idea how I'm going to become famous and it's not going to happen if I don't poke fun at myself. The thing is I will get angry if someone pokes fun at me in the wrong way. Which means if it's someone who witnessed me becoming delusional, and they make fun of one of my actions they witnessed which demonstrates a lack of understanding. Or something like, they act like some of the stuff I was thinking, was just stuff I thought up out of my own free will, and they don't seem to understand that what I was experiencing was completely off the wall, and it was through no fault of my own that I was experiencing this.

But anyway, I don't think I will be upset if I am well-known and people make fun of me, because the information they have is the information I gave them.

So the idea behind making the book trailer at this point in time is to get people interested in me and build my platform. Right now people can't go out to the store and buy the book because I don't have a publisher. But I will be more like to find someone who will give my book a chance if I can say I have this many likes on facebook, or I get this many pageviews a month on my blog, or my book trailer has been viewed this many times.

The book trailer has to be funny, because it has to be entertaining in itself, it does more than just get people interested in the book. If I create something that's clever and funny and original and people really like, they will be more likely to share it with their friends. And then it can spread like that.

So my sister had this idea that she would do a voice over talking about me losing my mind. And then it would be like I was coming to the door and she was going to interview me. And then she would interview me.

So I was thinking about it, and I had an idea that I thought was good. In the voice over, she would talk about me like I was this dark family secret, her sister who went crazy and was sent to a treatment program in Idaho. It would be weird and overly dramatic which is kind of what my sister was thinking too.  Then, we would have me coming to the door for the interview. My sister would open the door, and I would look up at her, and very slowly and creepily I would say, "Hello, Kristen." And there would be this dramatic music.

But my sister shot this down, saying I should just act normal when she answered the door and not say anything at all. And then she would interview me and ask me questions like why did I decide to write the book and what I was worried about with the book being published. I told her these were bad questions and she said they were good questions. What I meant was, the answers to those questions aren't going to sell the book.

So I think I will need to talk to my sister more about this, and we will work on it over Christmas break.

Book Trailer Collaboration Issues

So I met with my sister to work on the book trailer yesterday and I have to say I am worried about how this is going to turn out. My sister refused to stick to a script. I don't know that she had a problem with the script I made, she just didn't want to repeat scripted lines. See, I have to collaborate with my sister on this because making videos is one of my sister's hobbies, and I don't know anyone else who makes videos and I don't know how to do it by myself.

My sister wanted it to start with a voice over, with her talking about me going crazy from her perspective. She wanted to do this because afterwards she would interview me from the perspective of being my sister. I was a bit wary of this. I didn't want her perspective of what happened to color my book trailer. Not only that, but then she asks the interview questions. Which gives her control of the topics covered, allowing her to color the book trailer even more.

My sister said something like she saw what to happened to me from a perspective where she was thinking clearly. I think maybe she was implying that I might not understand it as well because my thinking was off. She tells me I said certain things. The thing is, what she remembers is how she interpreted the things I said, not exactly what I said. How she interpreted what I said may have been slightly wrong, and then when she repeats what I said she paraphrases it without meaning to because she doesn't remember exactly what I said, and she paraphrases it based on her interpretation.

So we kind of got in an argument. I understand that it is something that she would have to put a lot of work into. But the thing is, no book trailer at all is better than a book trailer that I am not happy with. I made a script because it gave me perfect control over how it turned out. I made it so that it portrayed me, in my opinion, as kind of odd and bizarre, talking about a time when my thinking was strange. At times I wrote it so it's like I am saying something I did that seems really off but I say it like it is normal, and my sister has this strange look on her face. I don't want a book trailer that makes me come off like a complete loon, and I feel that that is what my sister's perspective is.

My sister asked me if this was really something I wanted on the internet. She also has made comments in the past asking me if I really wanted to write a book about this so that everyone knows. It's like dude, I don't mind, if it's from my perspective.

I'm not embarrassed about becoming delusional because I understand what I experienced. I understand that the way I reacted to the things I was experiencing wasn't all that weird. And then my sister focuses on these random details that don't mean shit. Like I was apparently sitting in my room with the light off. I didn't remember this, but then I was thinking about it. It was because the light I usually used, the ceiling light by the closet, had burnt out. The main ceiling light bothered me because it was too bright. So I just didn't have any light on. So what? It wasn't pitch black. I may have had my lap top open. My sister thinks that the fact that the fact that I didn't have any lights on speaks volumes about my mental state.

And now I'm sitting here getting mad just thinking about it. See, this is a subject that is really easy to piss me off on. That's why I wrote a fucking script.

Innercept Fails

Ever since I went to stable a few weeks ago I've been different. It's like I have an increased amount of anger and stress.

Stable has gotten progressively worse since I've been at Innercept. Some of that is because I've moved to stages in the program where there is more freedom, but a lot of it is because they keep changing the stable program. It actually used to be kind of chill. You could hang out, chat with staff and fellow residents all day, play card and board games, chill out in the hot tub. There is still a hot tub there, but I doubt they would let residents use it. Now, stable is like a prison. It is not relaxing or therapeutic.

I associate stable with some of the worst times I have had at Innercept. To bring up feminine issues, I had my period when I first got there last time. It stopped when I got there, was gone for a week and a half, then came back the day after I got out. I blame stress.

I don't understand the reasoning behind stable. They think that if you spend time doing nothing or forced pointless labor, you will have time to reflect and come to the conclusion that whatever you were doing that got you into stable was bad. Or something like that. They don't allow most people to talk anymore. I was allowed to talk, but the other residents couldn't so the only person to talk to was staff and a lot of time they were busy. There were some staff that I liked but some had this kind of rude controlling attitude.

Speaking of which, there are some staff that act like I am fucking stupid. I don't remember why but they threatened to send me back to Maxwell. Maxwell is the first part of the program I was in, it is the girls house, the most restrictive semi-long term part of the program. It was because I wasn't being obedient. It's like dude, I'm not stupid. My parents are paying and they aren't THAT crazy with their money. That's the most expensive part of the program. And that is saying something, but Innercept is crazy expensive and not worth one penny of what it costs. But they are not going to go along with spending a crazy amount of money to send me back to Maxwell just because I was upset at that time and had a bit of an attitude and wasn't being compliant. I didn't come to Innercept to learn fucking obedience. Even if  Innercept did recommend that, which is highly unlikely because him saying this was just an empty threat, my parents wouldn't go along with it because they don't always do what Innercept recommends. And even if I really did need to go back to Maxwell, like I suddenly got worse, I was in Maxwell already for a year in a half. My parents aren't going to do something again that they have already tried and has proved ineffective.

So anyway, despite being a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, this place is stressful. The boredom makes me restless and crazy. Which makes me stressed. I was confined to the carpet in the main room. I would run around in circles for exercise. There was one girl who they punished by making her sit in the chair all day long. She wasn't allowed to get up. She wasn't allowed to talk, read, or write. Just sit there all day doing nothing.

There were days when I wasn't allowed to go to class. I didn't feel well enough to do homework. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to get out before my physics test, I wanted to study but was made to rake pine needles instead.

And then they decide the best thing to do is to move me to a different house. What is the fucking point? I didn't have enough hours. You could have just given me a warning. I missed two appointments. It was just a coincidence that these two appointments I missed were around the same time. I had missed some aftercare social outings. I didn't know that was such a big deal. Apparently it is. Apparently Innercept thinks missing social outings indicates a low level of functioning. Innercept is freaking clueless when it comes to assessing functioning. I just didn't feel like sitting through a movie. So what.

With the thing about hours, I had been getting away with having less hours for a long time. You know, a lot of times, with things like this, if I can get away with doing things I'll do them. I liked having the extra time on my hands. Innercept wasn't paying attention so I started feeling like it was no big deal. I know what it says in my aftercare plan. But I was under the impression that we were working towards a common goal: a Rachel who is functioning well. Sending me to stable was counter productive. It literally threw me off balance. It fucked with my menstrual cycles.

It was weird, because I got out of stable and I got this immense amount of pleasure from really small things. Like listening to music on the bus, or painting my nails and sipping coffee. I appreciated things things so much all of a sudden, and I could feel my head swimming with happy chemicals.

So I come home for Thanksgiving break. I have just been so irritable and angry and depressed. I have to go over to my grandma's house and the whole time I feel like I am so irritable I am about to explode. And then yesterday I was back at home and it was Thanksgiving dinner and I just feel the urge to start bitching and complaining about Innercept. And I have to stop myself, because I know if I burst out complaining and being obnoxious it is going to ruin Thanksgiving dinner. But I am stewing in anger. So I am trying to bring up the topic without saying something obnoxious, and I say, "I am going to be just fine." Meaning that I don't need Innercept to help me I will be fine. Anyway, so it ends up making my sister take off on a rant, so instead of it being me it's my sister now bitching and complaining. And so I hung my head and thought, "God dammit. What did I do?"

I am hoping that my parents will see the light about Innercept.

A Facet of the Icosahedron

There are many things that make me abnormal. One of them is that I have a very odd relationship with religion. I'm not talking about my relationship with God, I am talking about my relationship with religion. These are two separate things to me.

I grew up in an atheistic household. The closest thing to religion or God we had in our lives was that we listened to Christmas songs at Christmas time and we had a mini nativity scene in our Christmas decorations for some reason. It was my mom's, she's not a bible believer, I think it just reminded her of her childhood. I wasn't taught by my parents that God didn't exist, God just really wasn't something that was talked about very much. As I got older, there was more of an anti-religious attitude, at least that I picked up on. Not like we should be intolerant of religious people, just that religion was a bit on the wacky side. Something to be made fun of.

The thing that is odd about me is that most people who grew up like this grow up to be majorly turned off by religion. I'm the exact opposite. I absolutely love religion. I get really excited when I encounter Jehovah's witnesses and I take their pamphlets. I'm not about to convert, but I take their pamphlets. I love the idea of being righteous or attempting to be righteous. I love the idea of certain things being holy. I like the idea of praying and humbling yourself before a higher power. Of having faith in a higher power to protect you and help you through times of darkness. I like the idea of being a servant of God and doing God's work. I like the idea of having a sacred text with sacred laws.

Whenever I see positive references to religion in peoples' facebook statuses, I almost always like them.

But I don't think that the bible, or any other single religion on Earth, is true. At least not literally true. I kind of think it's like this - the bible is a single facet of the icosahedron that is truth. For those who don't know, and icosahedron is a twenty sided geometric object.

I don't really believe that Jesus died for our sins. But I like Jesus. I have him as one of my inspirational people on facebook. I will make references to Jesus in conversations. Like the other day, I was talking about how I have done dangerous things in the past and I was protected, perhaps by a higher power, but I wouldn't count on that higher power to protect me again. Because it was like when Jesus was tempted by Satan, and Satan told Jesus to jump off a cliff or something and God would save him and Jesus said, "do not tempt the Lord thy God." Or something like that.

Anyway, so I don't know if this is a result of having delusions of a religious nature or if it was something that was present in me before that.

I may revisit this topic again later.

Edit: So I posted this and I was re-reading it before I shared it on facebook. In one place instead of writing "Jesus" I wrote "me." Interesting.

Undiscovered Talents

I would appreciate it if people who read my blog would like my "Rachel Zuhl" page on facebook. Not my personal page but my writer page. Thank you. I also have a "Party Like Jesus" page, but I haven't really been asking people to like that yet. You can if you want though.

So I am getting ready to make a book trailer for my memoir. My sister is big into film making so she is going to help me with it. In the book trailer, she will be interviewing me, but the entire thing is scripted. I wrote the script a few weeks ago. I tried to make it humorous. I am hoping it is not too confusing.

Anyway, so I was thinking about back when I first realized that I was delusional, back in early 2008. I mean, plenty of people had told me that I was delusional, but I didn't believe them because I knew better. I decided to make the best of this situation and write a book and become famous. Because I knew that when life gives you lemons, the smart thing to do is make lemonade. And I was pretty sure that I could make lemonade out of these lemons that life had given me.

I didn't know that I was any good at writing. In fact, in the beginning I was thinking about having it ghostwritten. Which is funny, because I think the only kind of people who get their books ghostwritten are famous people. Because if you're not famous and you're not a good enough writer to write a book then you can't have a book. But then I decided to write it myself, because I was on a writer's website and I read a comment from an author, an author who's book I had repeatedly seen on display at bookstores, saying that he didn't think his book would have been as successful as it was if he hadn't have written it himself.

It's kind of odd because I don't even see myself as that great of a writer but people act like I am. I originally decided to write not because I thought I would be good at it, but despite not being that great at it. It turns out though that I am good at it, apparently. I don't know what it is about my writing that is good. Maybe it is because I use a certain kind of humor, a certain kind of subtle humor. I don't really know.

I don't even read that much anymore. I used to read a lot when I was in fifth and sixth grades. Then I stopped. I would still read on occasion, but not nearly as much as I used to. Nowadays if I read I usually read nonfiction. And not usually memoirs. I can't even think of a single memoir I have actually finished reading off the top of my head.

My dad tells me that people who think they are really good at something, like writing, a lot of times aren't good at it at all. They don't know good writing, they lack both the skill to write well and the skill to assess their writing properly.

Tired Controversial Issues

So I am sitting here with a little bit of time to kill, and I think I will write a tired post about my position on the most over-debated issue ever - abortion.

One of my conservative facebook friends posted a good article on facebook a couple weeks ago about the whole pro-life/pro-choice thing. It was basically about how pro-life groups care less about saving unborn babies and more about punishing women for having sex. They want women to have a child to feel the consequences of their actions.

I am pro-choice, but I think that if you are going to be against abortion it should be because you genuinely want to save the lives of unborn babies. I haven't talked to many people about the abortion issue but the people who I have heard express their opinion who were pro-life said something along the lines of: "If you can't handle a baby you shouldn't be having sex."

I think this is the worst reason for being pro-life ever. Sure, maybe if you aren't responsible enough to handle the consequences of your actions you shouldn't be having sex. But it takes a certain level of responsibility to abstain from sex, and if you don't have that then you are not responsible enough to handle a baby. We are talking about a real living person here. A baby should not be a form of punishment.

Some people might argue that there is always adoption. I would argue that the act of carrying a baby for nine months requires a certain level of responsibility.

My views also comes from the belief that a "life" isn't just simply something that is physically alive. It is a whole lot more than that. It is a spiritual state. I don't know when the soul enters the body. Actually, my belief is that it kind of comes and goes during pregnancy and hangs around the mother, and then when the baby is born it becomes permanently implanted, or at least implanted until death, unless it leaves it temporarily for some sort of out-of-body experience. That's what I think. At any rate, if you abort a baby, the soul didn't lose its one shot at life. It can continue to seek ways to enter our world again, through hanging around some other woman, waiting for her to get pregnant.

I was reading this local free newspaper called the Capitalist Papers a couple weeks ago. It is real right-wing publication. It had an article about famous people who were, to put it bluntly, accidents, but their mother chose not to abort them. It was supposed to be some sort of argument against abortion. I thought this was stupid. You could make the same argument in regards to choosing sex over abstinence. Have more sex so that you can have more babies - you never know who you might be missing out on by not fertilizing those eggs.

As a former unfertilized egg, I oppose abstinence.

Mind-Blowing Bouts of Crazy Delusional Thinking

So I'd like to take some time to discuss old issues. Old, delusional issues.

A nice way to combat insecurity and feelings of being judged is with arrogance. That's what I did when I was delusional and my delusional world wasn't going my way. I just decided that I was better than everyone else. I was better than all those mean, cruel, imaginary people.

So I combat feelings of insecurity about being delusional with arrogance. What happens is, first I get mad because other people don't understand what I experienced. Than I realize that what I experienced was so mind-blowing it would be really difficult for other people to understand who haven't experienced it. Then I take pity on them, them poor folk who haven't had their minds blown by intense bouts of crazy delusional thinking.

The thing about being delusional is, or at least one of the things about being delusional is, it isn't pure insanity. There is rationality too. Delusional thoughts and actions rest on the rationality.

Actually, I don't know if I've written about this before, but I'm going to write about it again anyway. One of the things they ask you is "why you?" Why are you the special messiah or whatever? Well, it has to be someone. You've been given this great responsibility, and you must follow through with your spiritual mission. For a long period of my life I hardly even talked. I didn't even trust myself to speak. I needed to learn to trust myself. To trust myself above other people.

I kind of think people thought I was more out of it than I actually was. When I was first becoming delusional, I was writing on my livejournal. I knew full well that writing certain things made me look crazy as fuck. I didn't care. I didn't realize that what I was doing was very dangerous. I didn't realize how important it was to my parents that I appear sane and reasonable, and that they could follow what I was saying and understand what I was talking about.

My dad deleted part of my livejournal because of it. I'm over it now but I still think it's kind of weird. True, I was a bit messed up in the head, but I knew what I was saying. I mean, I had some idea what I was saying, it came out sounding a lot more crazy than I intended but it doesn't really matter. I knew full well that repeatedly addressing this one guy and acting like he was reading when as far as anyone could tell he wasn't made me look like I had lost my marbles. The thing was, I didn't even want to say the stuff I was saying. I was pushing myself very hard to say the stuff I was saying. It took guts to say the stuff I was saying. I was proud of myself. To repeatedly act like this guy was reading when there was no sign that he was reading, to spew religious and God related bullshit when I came from an atheistic family.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

A Dark Abyss

So I've already made a post today but I feel like writing another one. This one will probably not make very much sense to a lot of people.

With me there are a lot of emotions associated with facebook. At times it has been an abyss of negative emotions, where I would swim in a very dark kind of negativity that made me suicidal.

I am not suicidal right now, I was just messing around on facebook and I was thinking about this.

There was a time when if someone made any sort of comment about someone being creepy on facebook, I would go into the closet and cry. Then I realized that my circumstances were different. Still, the paranoia about what other people would think eats me up.

There was a time when I couldn't even go on facebook. Then there was a time when I could, but I couldn't directly look at my friends list. I would refresh my profile page many times, hoping that certain people would show up as one of the six friends of mine it showed, because that's how facebook worked at the time.

I'm not sure why I am so weirdly facebook sensitive. That's just how our culture has evolved I guess. I shouldn't care who still has me as a friend. But I do. It means a lot to me to see that I am still friends with people. And for the people who don't still have me as a friend who might know about me and my issues, it really bothers me. I don't know what the reason was. But if it has anything to do with my delusional issues or something I did or said while I was delusional, then I'd like to say that I hope all your children die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Because it is so much of a struggle just keeping myself together because I am torn about with regret about everything. It's not because I'm bipolar. But I feel embarrassed all the time. Sometimes I am okay, but sometimes I just keep thinking about things that make me embarrassed and anything and everything makes me embarrassed, and it is like being tortured with electric shocks. And then when I am not thinking about things that make me embarrassed, I have this nagging feeling like there is something I should be thinking about that I should be feeling embarrassed about, and then I feel embarrassed, and I feel the electric shock feeling, even though I am not even thinking about anything.

As time goes by it gets easier to deal with and I develop more and more of a cushion that cushions me from feeling embarrassed all the time. But I don't forget things easily, and I will always remember the things that contributed to my deep horrible feelings of insecurity. And I will remember who didn't have me as a friend.

I don't really know why I even care though. I just think it is insensitive the way certain people are. And I know that this is my paranoia talking, because I am jumping to conclusions about why people did certain things.

I hope that I will one day rise above the insecurity and be happy being who I am, and all these negative feeling will just be a memory.

A Love/Hate Relationship

So it's weird because I take the same dose of Adderall everyday. Normally I will feel its effects, and I will feel a little buzz or high. It's happened a couple of times recently where for several days in a row I won't feel its effects hardly at all. Then, after not feeling it for a few days, I will take it the next day and it will effect me stronger than normally like I haven't been taking it for several days. Except I have been taking it, I take it everyday. So anyway, that's what I'm experiencing right now. I feel it in my system more than normal, which makes me feel a bit thoughty but not excessively thoughty, but above all it makes me feel like writing.

So my brain is swimming with happy chemicals right now. And I find myself contemplating things that annoy me. I'm not really angry though, I'm just thinking about these things. When I found out I was moving to this other house for a couple months, I was given a few reasons why, and I was also told that seeing a guy who is a Scientologist doesn't help matters. Also, when my mom left to go home a couple weeks ago after visiting me, she left a note telling me to do my own thinking. She meant she doesn't want this Scientologist guy corrupting my thinking.

I'm annoyed with people trying to control me. I am going to see who I want to see. And I really don't give a flying fuck if Innercept approves or not. I don't like Innercept. I don't think it is helpful. I think it is evil. So them not approving of what I do doesn't mean shit to me.

And it's funny what my mom wrote because if I didn't think for myself, I wouldn't be seeing this guy to begin with. I would have thought Scientology = Bad and that would have been the end of it. Because that's what the common conception is about Scientology.

And now I'm sitting here thinking about my mom, and how it's strange that she thinks she has some sort of influence over what I do. I really can't pinpoint exactly what my mom has done to make me so angry at her. The details escape me but the angry energy is still there. It's a number of things. Her general ignorance. Her excessive amount of trust in the Innercept program. My mom has faith in Innercept like Christians have faith in Jesus.

Talk about someone who doesn't think for herself. She has blind trust in doctors. She believes what psychics tell her, even when the same psychic has told me things that contradict what they told her. That's a whole other topic though, psychics.

The thing is though, I love her because she is my mom. And as much as I disagree with what she does, I know that my parents do love me and that's why they do what they do, because they think it is what's best. And I know that having loving parents is something that not everyone has and is easy to take for granted, especially in my situation. It's the kind of thing most people don't appreciate until it's gone. You don't know what you had until it's gone. I do have a lot. I have the necessities and I don't even have to work. Except I want to work. I want to be independent.

But anyway, this is why I can't say that I hate my parents. Because that is what ignorant bratty children say.

Arrested and Taken to Innercept's Prison

So, Innercept requires that I have 20 hours of scheduled work/school/volunteer activities. For awhile I only had about ten. Innercept recently found this out. They also knew that I had missed the psychiatrist appointment they had forced me to schedule at a time I knew I wouldn't remember, and that I had missed a therapist appointment because I had forgotten about it. Therefore, Innercept decided I should go to the Innercept prison.

It was Halloween a couple weeks ago on a Wednesday. I was headed toward the Kroc Center for a thrilling afternoon of working out and downloading music, and to drop off an application to be a Salvation Army bell ringer. I didn't make it even halfway there, however. My efforts were Innercepted by the Innercept prison vehicle. I saw them pull up in a parking lot, and Kurt motioned for me to come over. Not knowing what was going on, I went over. Kurt and Dave told me to that due to my recent slackings, I was going to stable, the Innercept prison, for a week.

This was horrible news, as I never in my life wanted to go back to the Innercept prison. At first, I was compliant, and I got in the vehicle and they drove me back to my apartment to pack my stuff. My head was swimming because I knew the next week was going to be horrible. I didn't know what to pack. I couldn't pack with my head swimming like that.

Once back in the car on my way to the Innercept prison, I knew that I couldn't just go along with this. I had to fight. So when we got up to the cabin out in the middle of nowhere, I told them that I wasn't getting out of the car. Kurt tried to intimidate me by using is intimidating "I'm not fucking around you better get out of the car voice" but I didn't let it get to me. They could do whatever. I wasn't getting out of the car.

Next, violence ensued. I was pushed out of the car and my face was slammed in the gravel, they pinned me down and removed my shoes and twisted my arms in odd painful positions and then carried me into the cabin. I tried to leave. They pinned me to the floor again. I tried to leave again. They pushed me to the floor again and pinned me down and told me they were going to drug me with a zyprexa shot. I started crying and I was lying there pinned to the floor crying for quite awhile.

See, it was written in my aftercare plan that if I miss twenty hours two weeks in a row I get a week's reboot at IT. The thing was, this was not IT, this was stable. Innercept tried to excuse it saying that IT was in the process of moving therefore I couldn't be sent there. But it doesn't work that way. The paper I signed said IT, not stable.

Eventually I calmed down, then one of the Innercept nurses who was there decided to piss me off by saying something and I got upset again and started crying again and after awhile I calmed down again.

What ensued after that was a week of feeling bored and restless and angry and pissed off at everyone and everything. I would wake up in the morning feeling angry and I would have to immediately take my meds and count on Adderall to give me a fake happy feeling that counteracted the anger, at least for a little while. Stable is such a therapeutic environment in that way. Sarcasm.

Anyway, they decided to keep me there for fucking ever and made me miss school and they wouldn't let me study for my physics test. I was absolutely shocked that I got a 72 on it. I mean, that I got a 72 instead of a 32 or something substantially lower. They had me raking pine needles and constantly complaining that I wasn't putting enough muscle in it when I was putting as much muscle as I could do that was sustainable.

Anyway, so I am out now, and my parents in their undying love for Innercept think that I am the problem so they moved me to a different place for the next couple months. They moved me to the Innercept girl's aftercare house, which is for people who just got out of transition and don't actually have an apartment to move into, not for people who need more "structure." There isn't any sort of structure. But my parents, especially my mother, love Innercept and think that their daughter owes her life to Innercept. That is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard, Beev. I would still be alive if it weren't for Innercept. You would not have kicked me out of the house. I would not have run away. Any suicide attempts would have been unsuccessful. I would be living at home and you would be a million dollars richer.

So instead, my parents decide to spend extra money to have me living in a different house where I have one housemate who is gone all day. And I don't want to say that I hate my parents, because that makes me sound like an immature teenager. But I am not exactly loving them right now.

Lucid Dreams and Novel Ideas

So I was awake for a period of time last night. I would blame withdrawal from the benzos again but I remember it was like this before I started going off Klonopin. So, after being awake for awhile, I drank some chamomile tea, ate a banana, and moved my pillows to the opposite end of the bed and lied the opposite direction. Eventually, I fell back asleep.

I actually think one of the careers I would find most rewarding would be to be a novelist. Like, a popular novelist like J. K. Rowling or Stephen King who write books that people are obsessed with. To be able to write a story that people found so compelling would be awesome. Except, as I've said before, I can't come up with fiction worth shit while I'm awake. I come up with what I think are compelling story lines in my dreams but never remember them once awake. Except for last night. I don't know if this concept is any good or not, but I was thinking it was in my dream and I remembered a lot of it once I woke up.

So I will just talk about the whole dream. It was lucid. It started out where I was at my parent's house and I wanted to leave. My parents would follow me once I left the house but I could escape them. Running away from my parents in my dreams is an exceptionally common theme for me. Actually being able to escape is not.

I was living with this guy who was maybe in his early forties. He used me for sex but gave me a place to stay and I was okay with this. We were supposed to be having sex, but it wasn't really one of those hormonal type dreams so the sex wasn't real exciting, but the guy was naked. I saw his torso from the front and he was a little bit overweight but not by that much. Then he turned around. Attached to his back was this gigantic fetus. I found this so disturbing that I left this guy right away, despite the fact that I wasn't wearing a lot of clothing. It is common for me to walk around in public in dreams without a lot of clothing.

So my mom was after me again, and I had to escape her. I could do this by shooting straight up in the sky really high, up past layers of clouds, and then landing down somewhere on the ground completely different. I think I might have also been shooting at her with something or hitting her with a stick. I think I stayed with another guy for awhile and then had to leave.

So I shot straight up in the air again, and I was looking down at the city, deciding where to land. I decided to land in the seedy red light district part of town. I could tell it was the red light district because of all the red light radiating out from it. When I made this decision, I knew that it was probably a poor decision because I was likely in for more than I had bargained for. Cities in my dreams, real big dirty cities with crime and stuff, when they appear in my dreams, there is a strong feeling of evil associated with them, like this is where evil and the dark side of humanity dwells. And I had a sense that coming from a wealthy suburban family who loved me, I was sheltered from this side of humanity and perhaps not prepared to deal with it. But I made the decision to land there and did anyway.

The next thing you know I was woken up by policemen. I had apparently been unconscious. I had been knocked unconscious by a gang of men who had sexually assaulted me. But they had done more than just that. They had implanted a chip in me which recorded my sexual memories/sexual experiences and broadcasted them to the gang of guys somehow. Because I was some sort of prostitute or something, and I they knew I was going to have a lot of fucked up sexual experiences, and it brought them some sort of sick pleasure to see them, to be able to experience them themselves in vivid detail. Or maybe it was for them to make money somehow.

There was some sort of government operation going on regarding this and related incidents. I was placed with a group of people who had had similar experiences happen to them. But the government had to be careful what they told me because they didn't know what information the chip would broadcast to the gang of men. So I was in this elevator type thing with a bunch of other people and if I remember correctly they were mostly men, strangely enough. I don't watch a lot of comic book type movies but there was a sense of it being similar to this one movie which I don't remember what it was called where there were a group of superhuman beings with special powers. Anyway, I was informed that because of my incident, I had been given the name Thorazine. In real life, Thorazine is the name of an antipsychotic. However, it is not in the same class of drugs as the other antipsychotics I have mentioned on my blog. Those are Atypical Antipsychotics, so I guess Thorazine would be considered a typical antipsychotic. I'm not sure that's what they are called, but they are an older class of drugs. Thorazine is famous for making people do what's known as the Thorazine shuffle, where they walk like they are drugged because apparently Thorazine drugs you pretty bad. I have never taken Thorazine myself, unless that is what they gave me the night I drank too much seven years ago and was taken to the ER. They injected me with something to calm me down and later my mom told me it was some sort of antipsychotic. My friend who has taken Thorazine said that unlike the atypical antipsychotics Thorazine makes you feel good, and after I was injected with this drug at the ER I felt pretty good and nice and relaxed. Anyway, the people gave me a reason why I was named Thorazine but I don't know that it made any sense. There was a guy there name something like Lepitor. It was a name similar to Lipitor but it wasn't Lipitor. We had some sort of romantic thing going on. As this dream was progressing I was trying to commit to memory everything that was going on and I knew I wouldn't be able to. There was something going on with the elevator like it was falling or something, and I heard the sound of water really loud and I asked what that was but then I woke up because I was trying so hard to collect all this data without waking up that I woke myself up too much. That's the trouble with lucid dreams, I get so excited I wake myself up sometimes.

So anyway, that was pretty much it. It was supposed to be part of a novel in the genre of erotic sci fi or something. It was almost like the dream was purposely trying to give me an idea for writing a novel because right after the part where the police told me about the chip it was kind of like, "Remember this! This is an idea for a novel!" But I'm not really sure about this.

A Balance of Chemicals

So I have been trying to get into the ways of the exercise freak again. I worked out early in the morning most of last week and I was reminded that I actually love it, as funny as that sounds. I get up at 5:30 and walk to the gym which is really close by and do the elliptical for 30 minutes. Then, I eat something. Then I have this bad habit of buying an energy drink and drinking that, so I feel all pumped while I do weights. Last week I lost almost 5 pounds.

Trouble is the Klonopin withdrawal has prevented me from working out this week. I worked out Monday but that's it. I've been eating differently, not perfectly but differently, but that's okay because in recent times slight changes in my eating habits cause me to lose weight pretty quickly. But then, for some reason, when I go home to Oregon I don't even necessarily eat more but the weight comes back. Or maybe I do eat more and I just don't realize it.

Klonopin withdrawal has set me slightly off balance chemically. Not to the point where it would be hard to get me back, actually I am sure I will balance out by myself if I just give it time. How it feels though, I don't do the rapid cycling thing but I get a little bit of the low feeling I used to experience before during my downs. And I am reminded what that was like. God, that was like the most horrible thing ever. Not really, I'm sure there are worse things, but it was pretty bad. It is the feeling of being extremely emotionally vulnerable. Someone says something to you, or looks at you the wrong way or something, and you interpret it to mean that they hate you. And then you start thinking, God, everyone hates me, hardly anyone likes me. And rightfully so because I am just a horrible obnoxious person. I never felt this way before I took these medications.

And so I think God, what I have gone through. I have gone through a lot. I didn't even realize that I've gone through so much. Being put in a chemical state where I was emotionally vulnerable at a time when I had so much to be insecure about. It is no wonder I was so fucking suicidal. I thought I had just been being immature. I realized that I don't give myself enough credit.

And then I think about the way that Innercept is and I get so annoyed by how they prescribe prescription drugs like they are nothing. Especially antipsychotics. Now abilify is one thing, I have experience with it and I know it works quite well at pulling you out of a severe emotional funk. But then there is Geodon. I never knew emotional insecurity until I took Geodon. WORST DRUG EVER. No, actually, Seroquel is the worst drug ever. I think it is so weird that they prescribe it for depression. When I took it for a short period of time, it made me feel like absolute shit. But that's not the reason I think it's not good for depression. The reason is because I know that it makes people gain massive amounts of weight. Sure, it might work for depression, if you think that suddenly becoming really heavy is going to help your self esteem.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Kicking the Benzos

So I have decided to kick my benzodiazopine habit. See, I take Klonopin. I used to take 1 mg at night. So I told my doctor I wanted to quit, following the success of me kicking my nicotine gum addiction, so now the doctor has me down to a half a milligram.

Klonopin was something I would take not because I particularly liked it but because it altered my conscious state. I would take it for anxiety, which meant during one of my freakouts about my many issues. I am obsessive and insecure and get overly embarrassed about every single thing. Some of these things are actually embarrassing and some aren't really but I obsess anyway, because I get in these moods where I am just so god damn uncomfortable. And if I think you are judging me based on one of these things that I obsess over, you are going down on my enemies list.

Damn I hate withdrawal symptoms. Plus I realized the other day that adderall was the reason I get so god damned angry sometimes. My sister called me the other day to vent about the things she was angry about. She doesn't do drugs. It made me wonder what her excuse was.

So anyway, I would take this drugs when I was anxious, but by the time they took effect I had usually calmed down. Obviously, because the drugs make you calm. But you know I mean before they take effect.

Then I started taking Klonopin every single day. And it started to feel kind of nice. And then before you know it, I was a benzo addict.

But I thought this was going to be easy, just a minor adjustment to not getting that calm feeling every single night. But now I can't sleep. Or sometimes I sleep better.

I wake up all thoughty and thinking all strangely and funnily about things. I roll around and roll onto the floor with my pillow and lie on the floor. I wander around my apartment. Last night I realized that the common thread between the two nights I couldn't sleep on klonopin withdrawal was that I hadn't drank a lot of caffeine in the afternoon. So I had a few sips of coffee last night. I got tired. Then awake. I had several gulps of coffee. I became even more awake.

I feel all funny sometimes. Sometimes I feel a spiritual vibration.

But that might be the spirits.

[Abrupt Ending]

My Own Path

Sometimes I think I must be immature for the way I resent my parents. If I were more mature, I would recognize that them sacrificing so much money to send me to Innercept was something they did with good intentions. Instead, what I hear them say is, "we are spending all our money to put you in prison because we really love you and you're worth it, Rachel."

What they don't realize is that when they do such things, it puts distance between myself and them. It makes their words have less weight and mean less to me. It lessens their psychological influence over me.

One thing I do appreciate though. That is the fact that my parents recognize that I will do what I will do and they can't change that. That when it comes down to it, the decisions in my life are up to me to make.

I also find it very annoying that there is no such thing as confidentiality in therapy at Innercept. Anything you say in session can be repeated to your parents. Anything, even something harmless.

What my parents need to know is that I will always do what is right for me at the time. Any mistakes I make always ultimately lead to growth. And I will always move in the direction of bettering myself. I have been in some dark places but gotten out of them by myself. My parents talk about how well I am doing. I am the reason I am doing that way today, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Innercept.

And I am sorry that my mom thinks so little of me.

Sheltered From the Way Most People Think

My bible study group took a break from meeting, but last night we met again. It was my first time back in bible study since July.

Not everyone was there, one of the ladies who has the most interesting personality was not there, nor was her husband. There are different people there every time actually, but the two of them are usually there. The people at bible study are very friendly towards me, and it kind of makes me feel bad because I wonder if they would be so friendly if they knew I didn't believe exactly what they believe about the bible. But going to this bible study is such a learning experience that it is worth it. I learn both from the part where we actually study the bible, and in listening to the stuff they say.

I'm trying to think of a word that describes how these people are. The word that comes to mind is sheltered. Not sheltered in the sense that they have never had real hard issues or problems in their lives, that's not what I mean. Sheltered in the sense that they don't understand what other people would think of the stuff they say.

For example, last night they were talking about belief in God. Now, those of you who read my blog regularly know that I believe in God. But it was this reason they had for believing in God. They said there had to be a god because Earth is just the right distance from the sun, and has just the right environment to support life. They said that even scientists are starting to recognize this necessity of a creator, but that they are being silly and some are saying aliens put us here. WTF? Who says that?

I probably don't even need to explain why the Earth thing is a crappy reason to believe in God. Obviously, life sprung up on Earth because it was a place that had the right conditions to support it. If the conditions hadn't been just right there would be no life. And the universe is so vast and huge, there has got to be some place, at least one place, with just the right conditions. And that is where life would be.

Other ways they don't understand what other people would think. One of the bible study's sons was at public school. I don't know what it was, but there was something that referred to "a god." The son made a huge fuss about it and insisted that it should say "the God." Apparently it turned into something that was like a big deal. Dude, you're at public school. You need to be open to the fact that not everyone has the same beliefs.

That's the thing about them, they don't understand this. They act like legalizing gay marriage is somehow infringing upon freedom of religion. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex. That's what I think.

They feel the need to save people, and they don't seem to understand that a lot of people think that their attitudes and beliefs are kind of cooky. I don't know if it's because they don't realize this or because they just don't care, but I think it might be the former.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be mean to these people. I think they are nice people. All I am saying is that I don't think they understand certain things.

Leaving Your Comfort Zone Despite Crippling Anxiety

So I'm wondering why I decided to continue on to intermediate acting. Actually, I know why I decided to. It wasn't because I plan on making any sort of career out of acting. I know that I am fooling myself if I thought I could be good enough to make it like that. The reason I took the class was to get myself out of my comfort zone. It sounded like a good idea about three months before classes started.

We were assigned an assignment which involved us doing something in front of the class that we only did alone and makes us slightly uncomfortable. The trouble with this particular assignment is, it doesn't matter what the hell I'm doing, if I am in front of the class alone then I am uncomfortable. On top of that, we are supposed to make ourselves vulnerable in some emotional way through what we are doing.

So I decided to do something in front of the mirror. I kind of planned it out but didn't practice. I realized as I was preparing to do this in front of the class that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to do this. So I pretended to look in the mirror, which was actually the audience, and then I sighed and then put on some makeup. I was thinking that maybe I was pretending to think I was ugly or something, like this was a moment where I was insecure about my looks. I thought that might be an okay thing to do. Trouble is, I just got so damn nervous, I thought I was going to have a repeat of the near-faint I had during my speech last spring. I was shaking and I thought it might be visible. In the middle of the performance I suddenly said I was done. For some reason I think that maybe my shaking wasn't as obvious as I thought it was, but I don't know. The teacher seemed kind of surprised and said ok that was short but ok. Anyway.

So I felt like I failed. And now I'm wondering how I am going to pursue my destiny when I get so nervous in front of people. Like, how am I going to be a public figure. Because I am going to be a public figure.

I'm having trouble getting people to appreciate the parts of my book that I want them to appreciate. So, I rewrite it. It almost seems like a lost cause sometimes, but I persist because I know that it has something that if I succeed at making other people see it will be a big deal. Trouble is that I take for granted that I understand it so well, that it is not obvious to me what parts people might not understand, so I don't necessarily explain those parts.

One of the psychics at the holistic fair said it would happen, and that I would be a speaker at places bigger than that place, meaning bigger than the holistic fair. She told me something else that I think is going to happen, but that's something secret. She was also the one that advised me to meet literary agents in person. That was good advice, despite the fact that I have only heard back from one of them, and that was a no. But I didn't have high expectations for that particular literary agent.

Anyway, so for now I just have to deal with the horrible crippling anxiety.

People People

Awhile ago my mentor shared a particular quote with me. I have no idea whose quote it is. The quote was something along the lines of: "feeble minds think about people, average minds think about things, great minds think about ideas." Today I am going to explain why I think this quote is false.

I would agree that great minds think about ideas. I disagree that feeble minds think about people. The reason is because I think that being people oriented and being genuinely interested in other people is one of the best things you can be.

I think that the person who said this was thinking that these feeble-minded people think about other people in a negative way. They are people who are obsessed with gossip. They talk about people behind their backs in a nasty way. I agree that these people are no good.

But being concerned with other people isn't in itself bad. It's a hell of a lot better than being overly preoccupied with yourself. I think there are too many people who are overly preoccupied with themselves. Myself included, perhaps.

The thing about me is though, I have the tendency to develop odd fascinations with other people. Not necessarily crushes, though not necessarily not crushes either. I become interested in a particular person, usually because there is something about them that I find quirky. And I love quirkiness. So I am drawn to quirky people. I notice the things that these people do and I may talk about them with other people. I might laugh at and make fun of these people. Yet, even though I make fun of them, I still like them. Because you have a tendency to pick on people you like. Not necessarily like in a romantic way, just like as a person.

And the way it works is, even if I got in a fight with a particular person, and was perhaps kind of mean to them, in the end, after some time has passed, I end up liking them. For the soul reason that through arguing, we bonded.

I remember being at the Innercept office once, and entering a room full of Innerceptians. "Look, it's all my favorite people!" I said. The thing was that I meant it. Not necessarily my favorite people in the entire world, but it was all people whom I liked. Because I like people, and we were all at Innercept so we had that in common. It was something that bonded us together. And I have respect for people who are in this program, whether or not I like them, because I know they are not at Innercept because they are weak. It is because they have had to deal with some crappy bullshit in life that the majority of people don't have to deal with. Even the people I don't necessarily like in the program, and there are very few of these people, I respect for this reason.

There are two reasons why I am not excessively social most of the time. One of them is because even though I like people, I also fear people. The other is because sometimes I have a hard time pulling myself out of my own head and making conversation with other people.

Talking to One's Self

I would like to take a moment to explain something. This is something that I had to explain to my mom because she didn’t understand. That is, the fundamental difference between talking to yourself, and talking to someone who isn’t there.

I have done the former on many occasions. On so many occasions have I done the former! I have never once in my life lost touch with reality to the point where I did the latter.

When I talk to myself, I move my mouth but I don’t speak out loud. Though, I think sometimes I whisper, or something, because sometimes people can hear it in the other room. At least, they did at one point two years ago.

See, I asked my parents once if it was normal to think like you were having a conversation with someone, even though there wasn’t anyone else there. They said that it was normal. That’s all that talking to yourself is. You are having an imaginary conversation. Sometimes you explain certain things to no one. Like I will explain certain aspects of the delusional experience or the like. Sometimes you rehash things that have happened. This is usually when you are a little more out of it, I haven’t done this in a really long time I don’t think. The difference between talking to yourself and what my parents told me was normal, that is thinking like you are having a conversation with someone, is that with this you move your mouth a little bit to the words you are thinking. That is the only difference. When I have done this, I have always been well aware that there was no one else there. I have been well aware that it was a ONE SIDED CONVERSATION. You never get any sort of responses to anything you say. I repeat, it is no different than thinking like you are talking to someone. Except, you might move your mouth, and you might gesture sometimes.

I hate it how sometimes other people think they somehow know better than me about what’s going on inside my head. I’m the one who spends every moment of every day inside my head. I know what I am thinking. My sister tries to tell me that I was talking to someone who wasn’t there, because I was leaning over in a certain direction and moving my mouth. If I recall correctly, it was less that I was leaning towards someone, and more that I was leaning away from my family to hide it. At any rate, I remember this incident, we were at a restaurant, and this was a time when I was rehashing stuff. So I actually wasn’t even having a conversation.

Why do I do these thing? I do them without thinking about them. They are unconscious. I lose a certain amount of control. I can regain control if I focus on it, but then I will slip back again if I stop focusing on it. That is, if I am somehow excessively wired. These things only happen when I am excessively wired.

Okay, so now I will discuss talking to someone who isn’t there.

I have seen many a person at the psych ward do this. You’ll notice that these are two-way conversations. You can tell that they are two way conversations because the person will say something to no one, pause like they are listening to a response, and then react to whatever it was that was said. Sometimes they will chuckle like the other person said something funny. One time I thought this one lady was about to strip. She started touching her clothes like she was going to take them off and she said, “but the music’s not right.” This lady had children who were older than me. She was an interesting lady, to say the least.

So anyway, this concludes my discussion on talking to one’s self. These are things I don’t do anymore, but it pisses me off when people act like I was once so psychotic.

Going Numb

My rights were taken away six and a half years ago. At the time, this was too overwhelming to think about. So I just went numb. My parents told me it was for my benefit, and I didn't believe them but I accepted this answer. Because, I didn't want to think about it.

Awhile ago I was talking to some people from the program about being sent to psych wards. They told me it was such a diss to be sent to a psych ward, because you are being told you are a danger to yourself or other people. I didn't see it that way, and I wondered why I didn't see it that way. Then I thought about it, and I remembered. In the beginning I did see it that way. The first time I went to the psych ward I was beyond pissed. I was wondering what the fuck gave my parents the idea that this was somehow helpful. I was so fucking pissed I just sat in my room and stared out the window all day long. Which made the psych ward people think I was psychotic. I swear, anyone they will evaluate is "psychotic" according to the people at the psych ward.

But, then I went numb. And I forgot about the notion that if you are in the psych ward, you are supposedly a threat to yourself or other people. And I saw psych wards as an opportunity to connect with interesting people you wouldn't otherwise meet, who were in interesting conditions you wouldn't otherwise see them in. And I grew to fucking love psych wards. But I would never in my life want to go back, at least not as a patient. Never in my life.

So now I am starting to wake back up a little bit. And I am wondering when this is going to end. When am I going to get my rights back? I'm wondering what's going to happen when my parents die. Will I get my rights back then? Or will we have to hire channels in order to channel my dead parents to see what direction they want my life to go in. That would be interesting.

So anyway, I'm trying to work towards income. But my parents are standing in the way of this. I found a class I could take that could teach me web design skills so I could get a job making websites, but for some reason when it comes to things like my future my parents are stingy with their money. But when it comes to things like taking away my freedom, they will spend as much as it takes to do so, because "I'm worth it." Really, that's what they say. "Rachel, you're worth it."

So now all I have to do is wonder around town and apply for any job imaginable, and hope against hope that they will give me a chance despite my lack of employment history. Then, not only will I have income, but I will also be proving my ability to work like an adult. On top of that, I can save up money for this web design class I want to take, so that I can get a job with a little big more income then a job at a fast food restaurant or waiting tables or the like.

But anyway, that's what my life is like right now.

Taking Back My Life

Despite the fact that I am in aftercare, Innercept still tries to control my life. They try to control the food I buy at the grocery store. A couple weeks ago my mentor told me I needed to buy kiwis. I did, because I do like kiwis. Except I knew I would end up just throwing them out. Which I did, I found them all squishy the other day so I tossed them. I was going to try to eat them, but I really I knew I wouldn't and I didn't. What I'm trying to say is, I'm sick of Innercept trying to buy foods I know I won't eat. Because really, it's a waste of money. Money I could spend on foods I actually will eat.

I'm on my way out of the program now. I am almost out, but I have been in for over four years. I'm ready to take my life back. I have watched a lot of people go through this program. People with problems that Innercept had no idea how to help. The sad thing is, I'm considered one of their success stories. This is sad because the ways in which I have grown haven't had a damn thing to do with Innercept. In my opinion, Innercept hinders growth because it shelters you. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

So I find myself increasingly irritated with the little things Innercept people ask me to do. I like my mentor. At least, I like one of my mentors. By that I mean, there is only one who I think is actually helpful. But anyway, even though I like her, I get irritated when she tells me to pick up my floor, put things down on a schedule, etc. I'll clean up my floor when I feel like it god damn it. I can live with it the way it is. If I decide I want my apartment to be clean, I will make it clean. If I decide it is fine dirty, then it will remain dirty. It's my space. My parents pay for it, not Innercept (I wish I could say that I pay for it myself but I haven't become financially independent yet). If I want to change I will change, if I have sufficient motivation, but Innercept staff doesn't have that kind of power over me. It is just annoying. And the thing about the schedule. I know in my mind when I have class, I don't need to write that down. I have it memorized. What I'm trying to say is, I do what works for me.

The funny thing about Innercept is that there isn't any sort of education about what your condition is. They just give you meds, don't tell you much about them, and you've got to take them or else you go off to stable or the hospital. Stable (short for stabilization) is a cabin out in the middle of nowhere where you spend all day doing either nothing at all, or moving logs about aimlessly, or from one place to another and then back again. Sometimes they don't even let you read. Everytime I've been sent there, I've been told the same line: "It's not punitive."

So I'm ready to take my life back. I am done with them peaking at me while I sleep, holding my computer for me, grading my behaviors, and treating me like I am a child. I am 25 and I will be 26 soon. Just let me live life for myself.

Aligning Your Intentions With the Universe

Today I've been thinking about the events in my life and the lessons that accompanied them, and how they make up the curriculum of my current lifetime.

A week or so ago I had a status on facebook that was something like: "When you are in the right, and your intentions are pure, the universe will generally work in your favor. Maybe not right away, but in the end, you will end up on top." That's pretty much what it said.

And I've found this to be pretty much true. The times in my life where I have found it not to be true, I firmly believe things have yet to fully play themselves out. Actually, right now, I believe full well that the universe owes me, and I will be receiving my "payment" in due time. I don't mean that the world owes me in a monetary way. And in some ways, maybe I owe the universe. At any rate, things are set to change.

But back to the facebook status I mentioned. Now I'm not a mean person, but I have the tendency to joke around in kind of a rude way and I can be mean-spirited without really meaning to. I've noticed that in these situations, things don't go in my favor.

Also, there is an exception to this rule. When you are fully equipped to stick up for yourself and help yourself but you don't, then things won't go in your favor necessarily because it is up to you to get yourself out of that situation. Also, things might not go in your favor if going through a tough time is part of a learning experience for you.

So, you have a life curriculum. As part of their curriculum, some people need to learn to stick up for themselves and respect themselves. This was a part of mine. I believe I have made good progress with this in particular.

If you want things to go in your favor, you need to align your intentions with the will of the universe. Well how the heck do you do that? You need to use your own moral compass to look at life situations objectively and see which side would be favored by the universe. This is difficult and no human is probably fully capable of doing this. But you have to deeply consider the situation and both side's intentions and actions. And just because someone had good intentions, doesn't mean they are in the right necessarily, because they may have thought what they were doing was right, but they didn't fully grasp the situation. The universe shall judge accordingly.

The universe does not seek to punish. Just to teach. Through discipline, people learn.

These are the kind of things I think about as I ride around on the city bus system.

The Messiah Delusion and Narcissism: They Don't Go Hand in Hand

So, it has recently come to my attention that some people associate believing you are the second coming of Christ with narcissism. I don't know what it's like for other people, but I know for me it wasn't about narcissism. Yes, I believed I was someone extremely important and yes, I believed I was on a divine mission. Big deal. What's wrong with believing you are on a divine mission? What I'm trying to say is I believed these things, but I didn't believe I was infallible or sinless.

I realized when this came to my attention that this would be good topic for an article I submit to magazines, not a blog. So I started writing that. Then, I realized I could both write a blog about it and an article, as long as the two things were different. So that's what I'm doing!

One of the things that made it possible for me to believe that I was Jesus/God but I wasn't perfect because one of the ideas behind my delusions was that God isn't infallible after all. The whole thing about God being infallible was a lie.

The moment when I was figuring out my delusions and I figured out the thing about Jesus, it really scared me. No, I did not want to be Jesus. But I talk about this in my book. For awhile I was in denial about it, telling myself I wasn't really Jesus, I was just the one who happened to fall at the center of this whole thing.

It's not that there is no narcissistic element at all to it, because when you go around believing you are the messiah for an extended period of time you start to feel pretty special. And the thing that made it believable is that for as long as I can remember, especially when I was really young, I had a sense of being someone exceptional. It's not a feeling I had control over. That's just how I felt. So that's what made the Jesus thing believable.

One of the many conflicts in my book is me trying to figure out why someone not all that great such as myself would be the second coming of Christ.  It was confusing. Then there's also the knowledge that once my messiah-ship (that's probably not a word) is made public, I will never be able to live up to peoples' expectations of how the second coming of Christ is supposed to act. It's a great responsibility, being the second coming of Christ. I didn't tell my parents that I thought I was the messiah because I knew that made me sound crazy, but I would always say to them, "if you knew what it really was, you would wish it was just a mental illness." Because I knew that living a life as the second coming of Christ would be much harder than any mental illness, probably. It could be exciting, it could be thrilling, but it would also be terrible at the same time. Grand but terrible. I couldn't even really imagine what it would be like. I wondered if all this doctor crap even compared to the shit I would experience as the second coming of Christ.

There was never any desire to be worshipped. The thought of people worshipping me scared me and made me feel really uncomfortable.

When my delusions were disproven, I got the idea I could write a book about it. That was a great thing, because I could be famous and not be the second coming of Christ!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, believing you are Jesus feels kind of cool, but at the same time it's pretty freaking scary.

A Spiritual Worldview

So I tend to identify with the New Age movement. At the same time, I think a lot of aspects of it are hokey. For example, the belief that when the Europeans first came to America, the Native Americans couldn't see the ships. But I've already discussed this topic, in an entry I posted not too long ago. What I'm trying to say is, I get the impression that a lot of New Age people are ignorant about science, or the actual implications of science, so their "science" is a joke.

So the reason I am writing this entry is to discuss my worldview.

According to my worldview, the physical world was set into motion by a spiritual force. You can call this force God. You and I may or may not have been present at creation. I tend to think we were.

We were a part of The Source, and then we incarnated on Earth to be separate from The Source. When you are united with The Source, you feel love. Because The Source is love.

We come to Earth to grow in spirit. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of growing in spirit is. There are some things I don't know. You create a life plan before you incarnate, choose your personality traits, and the family you want to be born into.

Along the way, you have spirits which help you. They may or may not make their presence known to you. Mine have made their presence known to me. I used to look down on people who didn't believe in spirits because they had never had certain experiences happen to them so they were ignorant, but now I don't care because I realize I was once like them. It just annoys me when people who are ignorant act like I am somehow deranged for believing in these things.

The degree to which your life is planned depends on what you decide before you were born. With me personally, there was part of my life that was very structured, in that it was planned out. Right now I've gotten to a point where I am supposed to publish this book but ultimately it depends on me and my actions. If I screw up it may not happen. However, I highly doubt that I'm going to screw this up.

Part of you is aware of your life plan and the major events that are going to happen to you. There are moments of foreshadowing, when something happens that bears a resemblance to something that is about to happen and it feels odd.

You've lived past lives. Some souls are older and more mature than other souls. Not all souls mature at the same rate. More mature souls typically deal with more complex issues. However, younger souls may choose a plan to help them mature faster by dealing with more complex issues earlier on. When I learn about peoples' lives I get a sense of how old/mature of a soul they are. I don't know if my feelings about this are correct, but it is a belief that I have, however unsupported it may be.

I believe that prayer can help, but ultimately if you pray for something to happen that's not meant to happen it's not going to happen.

I believe in God but I don't think that He is all-powerful. There are certain scientific rules that are in place. He can use supernatural forces that will overcome these rules on a small scale, but on a larger scale He can't re-program the universe without starting over. So, for example, He can't wave his magic wand and make it so that global warming is no longer a problem, because of the way the Earth is set up.

I don't believe God is all-knowing either. The reason is because we have free will, and God may have a basic idea of what we will likely do with our free will but ultimately the decision is up to us.

It is ideal that you love all other souls unconditionally. But as I've stated in previous posts, this is extremely difficult when people do things that are hard to forgive. We are all connected but separate on Earth, but by loving one another we become closer and more united, and unity with other souls is the single most rewarding thing you can have. Don't judge others for their actions, even if some action seems completely backward you assume that you are ignorant. However, there are people who are not good people, but don't jump to the conclusion that someone is not a good person too quickly. As for myself, I've known bad people but there is only one person I know who I think is truly evil. But for the most part, you need to be accepting of all different types of people.

Things are always more complicated than you think. Always. It is okay and unavoidable to simplify things in your own mind in order to understand them, but keep in mind that things are always more complicated than you think.

If you notice, some of these things have similarities to Christian beliefs, but they are different. This concludes my discussion on my worldview, for now.

When Small Actions Hit Nerves

I find myself torn apart with regret. But lately I've realized something: in a way, these things make me wiser. Because I can see common threads between my mistakes and the mistakes of other people, and I can forgive them for them much more easily.

For example, I know what it's like to beat yourself up over something: repeatedly, endlessly. Then, you feel that someone else is looking down upon you for the exact thing you beat yourself up over. It's the most maddening thing. I give myself enough shit because of this. I don't need it from other people. As a result, I don't hold things against people that I know they themselves deeply regret.

Another thing is, I know what it's like to have a lapse in judgment. People got mad at me for something I didn't even realize was wrong. It baffled me. Was it really that big of a deal? Apparently it was. As a result, I understand that other peoples' lapses in judgment don't necessarily mean they are bad people.

At the same time, as I'm thinking about this, I feel the hypocrisy in what I am saying. I know that hatred is always wrong, but at the same time I constantly struggle with feeling something akin to hatred toward a particular person. What it is is, I have reason to believe this person knew about my delusional issues, and as a result they removed me as a friend on facebook. For people who know about me and my issues, it's not the obvious person. I forgive the obvious person.

Actually, it might not be because of the delusions themselves, but rather some of the stuff I said when my judgment was severely off due to whatever the hell it was that was going on with my brain. At any rate, it's something related to my delusional issues. I feel very positive that it is, despite the fact that really I am ignorant because I don't really know exactly why they removed me. So I make assumptions. I assume it's something that would piss me off. And I get severely pissed off.

As a result, this person has become a symbol in my mind, the target of a great deal of the anger I feel about what has happened to me. The thing is, I can explain myself and my actions every step of the way. I know what it looks like and I know why it's not what it looks like. It's not that I don't think other people have better things to do than sit around and talk shit about me. Because really, I do. It's not that I just randomly make up stories about other people and convince myself that they are true. My own brain executed all this in an extremely elegant fashion and it deceived me. I had evidence, but it was based on the way certain things fit together, and I didn't think this kind of thing would happen just randomly. Ever since I moved off to college, I knew something extraordinary was going to happen during that year. There was a point where I became delusional on a subconscious level before it became conscious. I can remember thinking certain things at certain points that later were part of my delusions. I didn't realize I was thinking these things till later, but looking back I see how these thoughts affected my actions. And when I finally did become delusional, it became clear to me that this was an exercise in trusting myself, in believing in my experiences without having external proof.

I could say more but I don't want to get too far into my issues. I remember all the anguish and pain. This is a hot button issue with me. There is so much emotion attached to this issue, and by judging me without knowing a damn thing about it you really hit a nerve.

But maybe that's not even the reason. I've said stuff while I was delusional that I deeply regret saying. It was because my judgment was severely off. I don't understand why you would think I was thinking clearly. Wouldn't it be obvious that I wasn't? This is also a hot button issue, because it is something I don't forgive myself for. When you give yourself enough shit over something, you don't need it from other people.

So maybe I am ignorant. Maybe that's not the reason you removed me as a friend. But based on the evidence, it looks to me like that's the reason. When I first noticed that we were no longer friends, I wasn't pissed off. For a long time I just felt absolutely worthless. Then I realized that I wasn't worthless and I was angry at you for making me feel this way.

So this is why I hate you. For this I am deeply sorry. I'm not proud of the fact that I hate you, because being a hateful son of a bitch is nothing to be proud of. And in a way, the fact that I feel anything at all is a compliment. Because I don't hate people whom I've never respected, and I once respected you. But you really hit a nerve.

Striking Gold Without Picking Your Nose

So my mom tells me I should write fiction. She tells me my blog is just so great, and that when I was taken to the hospital for the first time, the guy who interviewed me about what I believed told her that I should be a fiction writer, because he was impressed by what I told him, despite the fact that it wasn't true.

I didn't know that the guy said this, my mom just told me this yesterday. But it made me very glad that other people appreciated the greatness of my delusions, and it was funny to think he said this even though at that time I hadn't even figured everything out yet so there were massive holes in the story.

The thing is, the time when I became delusional was the time I struck gold. I came up with an awesome story, although it is not without plot holes, I don't think any of them are massive enough that they couldn't be smoothed over and the story couldn't be made into a movie. But I was in quite a bit of a different state when I came up with this, I was the most fucked up on life at that point and I wasn't even on anything (unusual). I kind of think it wasn't even me who came up with this story, I was just somehow tapping into a higher source. All the loose ends tie together in the end, like they do in any good story. That's what fiction is about: coming up with a bunch of events that follow a pattern and create a bunch of loose ends that tie together in the end, in a way that leaves you with a feeling of victory and has some sort of lesson about life. My delusions have all that.

Most of the time, I'm not that great at writing fiction. Coming up with stories isn't my creative strength. My creative strength comes out when I program computer games, and I come up with ways to model real life phenomena amongst a colony of virtual bugs. It's freaking awesome. But when it comes to fictional stories, I'm not good at coming up with stuff that's original and not stupid.

So two years ago I was writing a fictional story based on my delusions, like how it could have been if my delusions were true. I decided it made the story stronger if the main character (who wasn't me) told stupid lies all the time. Don't ask. So I would have him say something strange, and I was cracking myself up with the stuff I came up with. Then afterwards, every time, the person whom he was talking to would say, "interesting." Every time. It was a little thing I had going.

But I got frustrated. I had a lot of dialogue, but in every scene it was people talking about their majors (because it took place in college). Sure college students talk about their majors, but they talk about other things too. What do I have them talk about? I don't know! Guys by themselves. What do guys by themselves talk about when there aren't any girls around? How am I supposed to know? Yet I am somehow supposed to make the dialogue sound realistic and true to life. In order to be any good at this, I would have to spend a great deal of time observing people and their dialogue in the real world.

As I'm sitting here thinking, I'm remembering a time when I was a freshman in high school and I wrote a story about a teenage girl going on a camping trip with her family that people liked. The thing that people liked about it was the voice of the girl, not the plot, the plot kind of sucked. For people who don't know voice in writing refers to when something is told from a certain person's perspective, the sense of personality of the person you get based on the way they talk and the stuff they say.

So anyway, maybe I should focus on middle grade fiction for girls.

Writer's Conference

So I went to the writer's conference starting last Friday and ending yesterday. I have to say that this was  one of the most confidence-boosting experiences I've ever had. I'm left with the feeling that I put myself on the line, did something nerve-wracking and succeeded. I may not have a book deal just yet but I'm a step closer.

A week prior to last Saturday, I went to the pre-conference pitch workshop. I realized when I got there that I was going to have to do my pitch in front of the entire group. This scared the shit out of me. Luckily, I had prepared my pitch prior to this. The lady who ran the workshop talked about an adline for your book, which is like a one-line advertisement book you'd have on the front cover. I thought of one and then used the rest of the pitch I had practiced. I waited until the end to do mine, I was the second to last person to go. Sitting there waiting, I felt a deep respect for the other people there. It was the same way I feel in theater class, where I feel that the people around me are talented and I don't necessarily want to be seen as better than them, just as an equal. So I did my pitch, and I didn't know what other people thought. The lady who ran the workshop didn't really give me any advice on the pitch, just to change the title of my book. I didn't know what other people thought.

Well, at the actual conference I had at least three people from the workshop come up to me and tell me I had a good pitch. One guy gave me his card and told me he wanted to read my book, which is convenient because one of the literary agents I talked to told me to get feedback from other writers.

So I started on Friday by signing up for more pitches, so I had a total of 8, and then I went to the place where we could practice on people and get feedback. The first guy I practiced on really liked my pitch. He liked the pitch, he liked the book title, he just told me to get into it more when I was giving the pitch. I attended a workshop, had lunch, then went back for another practice pitch. This time I got a lady who didn't really get it. She got confused. Then I came back for another pitch, and that guy liked it. So the majority of people seemed to like it.

I was really nervous while I was waiting to go into my first real pitch with an agent. We were supposed to arrive 15 minutes prior to when we are scheduled to wait in the waiting area. I sat there, sucked on an Altoid to freshen my breath and listened to the sound of airplanes about to take off (the conference was at the Sheraton at the airport). There was something about the sound of airplanes taking off that gave it this building tension feeling, like you were about to do something very important. The time came, and I walked into the room, nervous as fuck but I tried to let my acting skills take over and act like I was just thrilled to be meeting with this literary agent.

She knew I was nervous. She expressed concern that this was the type of book that I would later just want to keep in my drawer and not get published. I know that's not the case. She did ask for the first 20 pages or 2 chapters. This raised my spirits. While I don't think this lady is going to end up being my literary agent, this improved my confidence that it wasn't as difficult as I thought to get agents to request materials and that there was no real need to be nervous. So for the rest of the conference, I approached each pitch with a little bit of nervousness but mostly like it was no big deal. This is why it was such a confidence boosting thing, because I knew what I was doing was something tough. Yet, it wasn't that hard, because I knew that I could go in there, smile and shake the agent's hand, act excited about my project and give a speech that did sound canned and practiced but that they didn't really care, and then confidently and articulately answer any questions the agents might have about the book.

So, every single agent expressed some sort of different concern about my book. No one was concerned about the same thing. I got two requests for the first twenty to thirty pages, one said I could send him the first few chapters but he suggested I revised first, one said I should find another memoir about delusions, read it, and tell her why mine was different/better, one requested a book proposal, and one requested my full manuscript. There were only two that didn't ask for anything at all.

One thing I wish that I had done was more networking and talking to people. Especially at the beginning, I spent time just sitting at the cafe and sipping on coffee. If I went to another conference, I would take business cards and give them out. But I did talk to people so I didn't do too bad. It made things easier that it was a writers conference because there was a built in subject of conversation to talk about, which was whatever project you were pitching, or if you're talking to a presenter what books they had written in the past and advise on trying to get published.

So, anyway, I recommend writer's conferences to all serious writers.