Conversation With Job

I took a vacation from my life last night in the form of a dream. It started out where I was in a strange house that was supposed to be my house, on my computer working on stopping global warming. I fell asleep at my computer. Then I was in a dream within a dream. I was petting a cat, and I looked at it and recognized her as my family's old cat Amanda who died several years ago. I realized that I must be dreaming. Then a guy came and spoke to me, and told me that his name was Job. I asked him if he was the same Job from the bible. He had to think about this for several minutes. "Oh yeah, I was in the bible," he said. He told me that I was different from other people in that I required spiritual energy in order to survive (I'm not quite sure what this meant, but that's what he said). I think he said other stuff that I don't remember. I asked him if my meds hindered me. He said he didn't remember, he had to check on that and get back to me. Then I woke up, but I was still asleep because it was a dream within a dream. I felt very touched that Job from the bible felt the need to speak with me. I was going to write something about in on Facebook, but then it turned out I was still in a dream and I woke up again, yet again still in a dream. I didn't end up saying anything about in on Facebook, I wondered who I should tell about it. I didn't tell anyone, but my parents knew about it. They were upset that I was still having delusions about the bible, and they were after me. I left the house, and then I was outside my real house at home.

My dad came out of the house first, and I was standing on the sidewalk. He was going to chase after me, but instead of running I just held up my hand, pointing all my fingers at him and focusing all my energy on keeping him in one place. It worked, he stood there motionless. Then my mom came out of the house, she didn't see me but she walked on to the grass and was standing closer to me. I held my other hand up to keep her still. But it was impossible to keep them both still because I didn't have enough energy. I then woke up for real.

When I woke up, I felt like I had been somewhere far away. I don't think I really talked to Job but the dream seemed significant. I was starting to feel normal, and then I have this dream about talking to people from the bible reminding me that I'm not normal.

And then I come to the NIC library and get on Facebook and read messages sent by my sister. My parents are upset that I'm in a relationship because they think I'm not ready. I'll probably go to the grave not being ready to be in a relationship. It's doubtful that my parents will ever think I'm ready to be in a relationship again. This is an interesting feeling, because it does piss me off. A lot. At the same time, I remember myself holding up my hands in the dream and paralyzing them with my mind, and the sense of power I had over them.

The Task of "Getting Better"

I would like to take a moment to discuss the subject of "getting better." I was sent to Innercept because my parents wanted me to "get better." Romantic relationships are seen as a hindrance, a roadblock along one's long journey on the road towards "getting better."

I've been told that I need to focus on "getting better." To me, this is kind of like telling me to focus on finding Jesus. It leaves you wondering, "how the hell am I supposed to do that?" Both are very vague commands that are probably meaningless. With both tasks, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start, or what I'm even trying to do.

There are some people who are messed up chemically, and may even themselves out with time. I was like this once back in 2006 when I had my first episode and my brain evened itself out without the aid of medications. For people like this, telling them to get better is like telling a drunk person to focus on sobering up. There's really nothing they can do but wait it out until the alcohol leaves their system (and not drink any more alcohol, of course).

Innercept employees might say that focusing on getting better means focusing on working the program. One thing I've learned from living at Innercept, which I would have guessed anyway, is that working the program doesn't fix the original problem you had that landed you at Innercept in the first place. I don't necessarily talk to most of the people who have left Innercept but I talk to people who do and I'm in the loop at least somewhat. I hear stories. People who come here because of drug problems want to get out, work the program, then leave and go back to drugs. Of course, the same may be true of any treatment facility. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "getting better" comes from within, not from living the Innercept lifestyle. Actually, I would argue that being in a place like Innercept where freedom is restricted sets people up for going crazy when they actually get freedom again. But now I feel like I might be going off on a tangent.

Anyway, I've lost my focus and forgotten what I was trying to say. Maybe I'll revisit this topic again later.

The Spirits vs. Your Own Brain

A few months ago someone told me in a dream that a certain thing would happen before I was 25. It's interesting, because it appears to be happening. This is the first time recently that the people in my dreams have predicted something correctly.

Actually, when they told me it would happen I thought they meant before I was 26. They clearly said 25, but in the dream I was thinking 26, so I thought that's probably what they meant. But maybe they actually did mean 25 after all. So this puts the idea in my head that maybe I should heed dream messages.

They have inaccurately predicted things, like that I would be represented by the one agent and that a specific bad thing would happen in November. They predicted that back in July, and right afterward I took preventative measures against it. Still, I don't think it was because of the measures I took that it didn't happen.

I believe spirits can communicate with you in your sleep. They have told me things in my sleep a long time ago that ended up being true. Trouble is knowing what's a spirit message and what isn't. Sometimes when the spirits talk to you, there is a certain unmistakable quality to it. They feel very knowledgable, and very caring, like this is your best friend in the entire universe. But then I started having dreams where people would talk to me and it didn't have that unmistakable quality to it, so I didn't know. But one thing I know is, there are two good things that they repeatedly tell me. One of the things is that my book will be published. The other, I won't mention.

Spirits are often present when you are awake, too, but you are often not on the right frequency to receive their messages. But, sometimes you are. Sometimes, they tell you to look at things. One time, I was around a certain guy at college, and I was sitting at his computer but not looking at the screen. Something told me that he listened to a certain band I liked and it told me to look at the screen, and I looked and his music was up and I saw that he did listen to that band. Other times, they direct you to take certain fortune cookies. It's happened a couple times to me before. I'm about to select a fortune cookie, and I look at the cookies to select one and a certain one catches my eye, and something tells me "that one!" This has happened to me twice that I can remember, and in both instances I read the fortune and later figured out why it was important that I picked that one.

Sometimes, I can't tell if a thought came from my own head or from a spirit. I was talking to my mom, and she was talking about her cousin who died not too long ago and about how she visited her right before she died, and as she regretted not staying there longer because she thought she might have been able to help her. As she was leaving her cousin's place, my mom was asking the spirits or whatever to give her some sort of sign if she should stay longer, and she didn't get a sign so she must not be psychic. As she was telling me this, the thought entered my head that she wasn't supposed to stay because there was nothing she could do. I expressed this thought. I don't know if it came from the spirits or not.

Adventures in Dreamland

My sleep was strange last night.

In my first dream, I was deciphering something someone wrote about me on a message board (this so reminds me of high school, those days seem so far away now). They mentioned me, referring to me by my last name. It was a person I know in real life, but I won't say who. I was trying to figure out why they mentioned me, when without me really noticing, my last name changed into the word "right," like that was suddenly my name. Right, as in the opposite of wrong. Then I woke up, and thought about the dream, and fell back asleep.

This part was bad. I was naked in my room at home, and there was something in front of the door but the door was still open. I was trying to close the door. I turned on my computer but when I did it automatically loaded Starcraft, and I didn't want to play Starcraft. Actually, what I wanted to do was decipher the comment the person left on the message board some more. But this was supposed to be back in the day before everything was wireless, and when I looked at the wires hooked into the wall I noticed that the internet wasn't even plugged in, and the cords were all messed up and the wrong things were plugged into the wrong places. Other stuff was happening, that's all I remember though, and it formed a vicious cycle until I decided I wanted to exit this dream, so I held my breath. I woke up as I inhaled.

I fell back asleep again, but this time I didn't know it was a dream. There was a psychic fair going on. I was thinking about how the spirits were causing this madness and I wanted to ask the psychics about my issues. Talking to the psychics was free. I walked up to a psychic, it was a man. I didn't tell him what my issues were, I just asked about my problems, trying to be very vague. He told me they were caused by spirits. In the dream I was impressed that he knew this. The spirits were using me, creating issues in my life and feeding off the emotional energy they created in me. I asked how to stop this madness. He said I needed to accept Jesus Christ as my savior. Actually, at this point I think there were a bunch of psychics surrounding me all telling me this. I asked if there was any other way, this is where my memory fails me but I think the answer was no.

Anyway, I'm not sure about this dream. I'm not sure what the problems in the one part of my dream were supposed to represent in my waking life.

Bending the Mind

So I have to go to the Innercept classroom to study on Tuesdays. There is always a daily quote on the board. One Tuesday not too long ago it was something along the lines of: "once your mind has been stretched, it never regains it's original form." I was with one of my mentors, and I pointed to it and proclaimed that this was a very true statement.

Yes, it is a very true statement. My mom one time told me she didn't know why I was still so obsessed with my experiences being delusional. She compared it to the time my grandpa once saw wild turkeys on the side of the road. One time, when my mom's father was still alive, we were driving in the country and there were wild turkeys on the side of the road. Big deal. At least, my sister and I didn't understand why it was such a big deal, and no one explained to me why it was a big deal. But my grandpa kept bringing it up later, like it was such a big event. My sister and I mentioned something about it to my mom, how we kept having to hear about the stupid wild turkeys and who cares about wild turkeys. So anyway, my mom was saying that me being obsessed with my experiences was like my grandpa going on about the wild turkeys.

This is not how it is with me. Sure I was delusional, and my delusions were false (which is implied by the first statement because I said they were delusions). You can come back down from being delusional, you can go undelusional, but there's no returning to the original shape that your brain was in before it thought that you were God and you created the universe and all these big events happened because of you and all this freaking amazing stuff. And when I was delusional, an idea was implanted in my mind that hasn't gone away. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, sometimes I think I repeat myself and talk in circles. But anyway, the idea was that God foresees a natural disaster and he's in a pickle because any prophet is going to be seen as delusional. I'm not saying I'm a prophet or anything, I'm just saying that this is an idea that never goes away. And at night, I continue to be haunted by those dreams. This is where I leave some of you in suspense because I didn't say what dreams, but certain people will know what I'm talking about.

Secretly (not anymore) I wonder what's going to happen. Because I was never convinced it was just a mental illness, and the spirits are urging me to work on getting my book published. Do other authors experience this? But, there are certain things you've got to do. Like take the meds. Take prns when you feel funny and learn from the past. I entertain strange ideas sometimes but I always return to believing just mostly (MOSTLY!) what I know for a fact to be true. Mostly...

My Magazine Article

So here's how my Thanksgiving vacation goes. Beforehand I vow that I will work on getting my magazine article published while I'm home. Once home, I get caught up in playing the Sims. I tell myself that I will begin work on it on Friday. On Thursday evening my hard drive, which has the article and everything on it, dies.

My data isn't lost, I have a back up drive, and I backed up my hard drive a couple days before I left to go home. My mentor acted like backing up was unnecessary. She was wrong.

Some people might have gotten mad in my situation, but I didn't. I thought, maybe this is a sign. A sign that I shouldn't be trying to get it published just yet.

See, I have a plan. The first step is to get published in a major magazine. It has to be a major magazine, though if that doesn't work I will settle for a smaller magazine. But the bigger the magazine the better. I've read that if you get something published in a major magazine it's not uncommon for literary agents to approach you. And that is the goal. Even if they don't, I could mention in my query letter that I was published in a big magazine.

It seems like a long shot. But let me tell you something, I've read the two-minute memoir section of Psychology Today (the section and magazine I have my eye on). My article is better than any I have seen in that section, in my opinion. I don't know how well I'm able to judge my own writing, but I feel that my article is better written than pretty much all of my blogs and the majority of my book. And people tell me that that stuff is well written.

Now, on my blog I've made it clear that I think there's more to my condition than a mental illness. But the article is written as though it were just a mental illness, though I do mention I was never convinced that it was just that and that's what leaves the door open for more delusional thinking. What I mean is, I say that but I don't try to argue that it is more than a mental illness, I actually assume that the reader will assume that that belief is part of my illness. I describe a day where I'm a bit caffeinated, and I'm walking outside and for a few moments I get wrapped up in an episode of delusional thinking, where I briefly entertain the idea that I'm the second coming. The article is meant to be both informative about the way delusional people think and a bit humorous.

I've spent time on this one writing message board posting sample query letters in such, and I've learned that people seem interested in the Jesus delusion. It's a common delusion, but not a lot is written from the perspective of someone who actually had the delusion.

But anyway, the hard drive incident had made me decide to wait until the end of the holiday season to try and get published. My dad's going to have to pay for a membership to Writer's Market (it's relatively inexpensive), which should provide me with guidelines and information for how to submit to magazines and what magazines to submit to.

Potential Anger

I hate it when people act like the way you feel is mental, not chemical. My experiences have lead me to conclude time and time again that when the chemicals aren't in my favor I am incapable of thinking good thoughts or thinking positively. Sure, I can make myself think something positive, but that thought is automatically replaced by a negative thought. The chemicals in your brain color your world and your perception of the world. When I used to cycle (which I don't anymore), I would go from feeling like I was super awesome to feeling like I was absolutely worthless and pathetic and I needed to die, and then back again. It would change super fast too.

I am aware that this last paragraph makes me sound like I have a major mental illness. I have been diagnosed with a major mental illness. However, I am unconvinced. I am on these meds, these antipsychotics, and a withdrawal symptom of the meds is cycling. I used to cycle when I drank too much caffeine, which would interfere with my meds, making me go into withdrawal and cycle.

Someone gave me a pill of ecstasy once, I took it and waited and it had no effect whatsoever. I thought it must have been fake, until someone told me that ecstasy has no effect on certain people who are bipolar because they experience intense highs naturally.

Because of this, I admit it is entirely possible that I have a mental illness. But I think there is something else there too. I don't always acknowledge the existence of this other thing, I sometimes say things which would lead people to believe that I have dismissed my belief in the existence of this other thing. But I haven't. If feelings alone were proof then the existence of this other thing would not be a theory but a solid fact. Feelings aren't proof, but I still believe in the evidence.

If I didn't believe in this other thing, I would be embarrassed. But the existence of this other thing means that I shouldn't be embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed. I don't blame myself for what happened but I don't blame anyone else either. When it comes to my mental illness and the other thing, I did mostly the right thing, every step of the way. The only thing I perhaps did wrong was say things I shouldn't have said.

And inside of me, I have a lot of potential anger. Potential anger is kind of like potential energy. Right now there is no one who is really the target of this anger. But what I mean is, this is a volatile subject. And if someone were to cross the line, and the line is very easy to cross, they would be the target of a very large quantity of anger.