Because I'm Schizophrenic

17 December 2011

Dear Readers,

Just an update, not expecting this post to create any sort of buzz. I would be writing this in my personal journal, but we’ll see, might just post it up on Porcelain Utopia.

My own time…

While I got 11 hours of sleep last night, from about 4 PM to 3 AM—that is 11, right? My sleep is still off the mark, and while I met with my psychiatrist on Thursday, then my psychologist Friday (yesterday)—I have had a pretty solid good 2 weeks past. Then besides the Internet, TV and phone services going on and off, all I want to do is take one single day, especially today, and not do any “work”—if you call this work—and spend the day without a shower, in my PJs, watching James Bond, and the Twilight Zone DVDs I own. And no meditation, nothing bad and nothing great—

I cannot.

Instead, I’ve been feeling “off” and frustrated, alarmed, confused, wanting to help others, to talk with friends on the phone—to catch up—to kill the time—nothing Zen about it.

Just spending the weekend hanging around.

This “thing” (the artist in me?) keeps “telling” me to create, do—do—do. Make. Help. Communicate. Work. Make sure to post inspirational blogs in between the transgressive fiction chapters of Porcelain Utopia so to keep the audience… inspired.

I cannot depend on public feedback to dictate what I do and don’t do.

Ahh. Big breath. I’m working on CBT techniques to get through this one—a tough one, but I’ll do it. What is my heart telling me? —No matter what the public feedback will or won’t tell me… What do I feel like writing and doing? Transgressions, raw writing, the light and the dark, inspiration, gangsta rap music and love songs—Zen Buddhism and erotic fiction—

All of the above…

Given the time and feeling of the moment.

For this moment, I choose to write these few things that are on my mind. Posting them and then letting it all go.

Nature vs. Nurture…?

I’m human and my sleep is off. Naturally I’m feeling “off” today. I still have tools. Some minor things were bothering me, real petty things, like a Facebook post someone wrote—silly to get all pissed off about it. It was about some celebrity having lost weight. It sounded like everyone was so grateful and mesmerized by her losing weight and ‘setting a good example for the children.’ Why should that bother me? I mean, good for her. I actually can relate. I lost 90 pounds, having gained 100. Anyway, I thought it was hysterical. Like, what a big deal? Yet disturbed by the enthusiasm.

“OK. Seems like schizophrenia is watching through the peephole. Waiting for me. Ready to attack. Ready to ‘seduce’ me…”

Shortly afterwards, I started feeling ‘unloved by all’. Once that belief landed, I thought:

‘OK. Time Out. Now!’

Two very minor feelings eating me away, like I was old wood for termites, I took a shower—cleansed myself for real, and metaphorically. I thought of the CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) techniques I’ve been getting more involved with—with my psychologist, and on my own; also through books using the CBT model. What evidence is there in rational support of my feelings? I ran what I call a “reality check” and it was confirmed: the Facebook dialog was, in fact, said jokingly. I was interpreting people being overly concerned about some B-lister ‘turning her life around,’ yet it was, in fact, being written by all involved in candid humor. And as for the feeling ‘unloved by all’ bit? Sorry to say this but F---- THAT! That is simply NOT true—AT ALL.

That’s when I knew…

I knew then, when that feeling came up. I just knew it. I just freaking knew, OK—2 ‘Good Solid Weeks’ and, so what, but the Sz wants to seduce me again. It feeds on fear. It feeds on confusion, sleeplessness, and stress. I was “alone in the bar” and “this a**hole tried to pick me up.” That’s what it felt like. Excuse the weird analogy, but that’s what I kind of saw in my head, a momentary daydream—of the schizophrenia—and me both looking for…something. I didn’t take it. It didn’t take me.

I dried up, dressed, told my friends I’d talk to them another time, just that I’m going through some lack of sleep issues. I left it at that. That was covered. I was safe and sound. The feeling of not being loved—as crappy as that feels, believe me, I did not let that one last inside me for much more than a minute or two. The feeling of “I’m unloved by everyone,” comes up a lot, and this time it was that precise feeling which, instead of eating me up for hours, was eliminated from my entire being nearly on the instant. I knew. I plain knew: Ah ha! Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective—that was clever, but now, “You’re acting ‘insane,’ Mr. Schizophrenia, as you try to use that same trigger/feeling/’action,’ expecting the same result. Guess, what? Schizophrenia—right back at you, you S.O.B.”

A horrible feeling actually enlightened me (‘opportunity in the negativity’)—there you go: I have spoken before about the “patterns” within the chaos.

Truly-known-to-me as “thoroughly insightful—” enters my very own beautiful, wonderful wife, Maureen—she writes me and tells me the greatest things, memorable things. I know she loves me. I just received this message from her a minute ago:

“Being human is hard enough, sweetheart, add schizoaffective disorder—and geesh, dang near impossible.”

-Maureen Cooke-Harnisch

*   *   *

“Hate me…because I’m Schizophrenic”

The last thing that was on my mind.

Just write… just write…

One of these apps I have that shows statistical data for this website showed me that someone had actually, and I don’t know how many times this has happened, but he/she had landed on my website this morning via a Google search that was typed in exactly like this:

“my friends hate me because i’m schizophrenic”

This just broke my heart. Apologies for my language, but f@#king broke my heart. Maybe it wasn’t true? Like Harvey Milk would have said to his homosexual friends and followers, but for me, Schizophrenic to Schizophrenic:

“Hey man, believe me, stigma is everywhere and those are not your damn friends.”

I would do anything to find out who ran that search, and just embrace him (or her) and take away everything in the world that causes him/her to even have the idea. “Friends? Hate? Me? Because? I am…”

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!! THIS IS ONE LONELY ISOLATING DEBILITAING AND DEVESTAING DISEASE. I WOULD RATHER LIVE ON THE STREETS LOVING MYSELF THAN TO GIVE A DAMN ABOUT WHAT THE HECK OTHERS THINK OF ME—

…Because I have schizophrenia.

Maybe I would say all of that differently. Now I think I understand why some people rally and protest and activate politically. Boy oh boy, I weep. I weep on this one.

If you are reading this, the person who searched that sentence and somehow landed on my page: Porcelain Utopia. I don’t know who you are or where you are but:

I love you.

Love… Respect. Honor—Just for typing that in—For feeling that. I know the feeling well. But please let that go. I could probably say it more compassionately but I write this in haste. It’s not you I’m disturbed by and it’s not you causing me to say this as I am—out of pure fury—it’s against those “friends” that hate you because you’re schizophrenic. It could very well be the truth. People do hate other people because they have schizophrenia, but please take my word on this. Please, please, please…

Don’t let that bring you down.

It is so not worth it, my good friend—wherever you are in the world. Please believe me, don’t let that bring you down. You rock! You are perfect just the way you are. And with all sincerity, thank you for typing that in, wherever it took you. Wherever you go from there and however it all turns out for you. I’ll likely never know.

You made me not feel so alone. Don’t let it bring you down. You’ll see.

Just give it some time.

Jonathan Harnisch



 

 

006-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

CHAPTER FIVE

Sad and upset, I wake up in tears, crying this and that. Last night was a nightmare, and so were my dreams—my dreams were utter nightmares.

Proudly, I have succeeded in lowering my caffeine intake, having had only five cups of coffee, yesterday. Until noon or so—then I cut myself off, being my own bartender.

I wanted to be asleep by 9-10:00 but even meditation couldn’t save me from the constant worry and terror in my head. I knew I was going to have to help cook dinner for the house (the students?) the next evening, and big deal! But for the love of God, I couldn’t stop stressing out about it. I knew I’d have to actually get up and out of bed by morning. My goal was 10 AM.

So it’s now 10:30. I had morning meds and two cups of coffee. With my coffee, I sat with Steve-O and started crying. I said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” even though I should have known. Staff was keeping tabs on my crying spells and no sooner they added the mood disorder part to my Sz. Re-diagnosing me with what’s called Schizoaffective Disorder. I’m still sticking to calling it Sz, and not SzA. Enough is enough.

I should prepare (regarding my need for Steve…) Just in case one of us is discharged before the other. Even though that time will (and would) come and I’ll figure something out.

Steve had nursed a Red Bull between 9 and 10 last night, when the two of us were having what seemed like contagious, identical symptoms—symptoms: the Chaos of the Mind. Steve was totally wired, so much that he took off all his clothes and went out for a jog around the residential neighborhood. Thankfully Steve returned, not arrested.

I was quite empathic to Steve-O’s emotions and feelings of being wildly looped, from the caffeine. Thankfully, our concomitant symptoms ended about a half-hour later, and we just talked like we were in summer camp, about our experiences with the Sz, and how we were never going to get to sleep.

Midnight came, and we were both dead asleep.

005-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

CHAPTER FOUR

I don’t need to still be angry. I’m still afraid but, heck no, not angry.

I’m afraid of what the outcome will be if I do this, if I do that, or if I don’t do a single thing.

I need to come back.

I feel like I’m channeling something.

I-I-I-I-I feel like all the self-help books I’ve read over the years are doing a number on me.

I feel like the current moment is some kind of Opening Act for another moment.

Using the word—the letter—“I”—to open every sentence. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, not totally selfish. Maybe I need to say “I-I-I…” to really dig deep and see who or what this “I” is.

After all, you and I are still in the same boat together, in many respects.

The Universal “I.” The Collective Self: Humanity.

In the stillness I seek in between writing breaks, it’s the strangest thing—all the New Age stuff I’ve already read, all the Spirituality I sought—

To hell with selling out! I think I am just starting to comprehend some of this stuff—way after the fact. I feel like a woman in love—I feel it in my gut—my belly.

Might not have to look into others to know, to see, to be, to believe my self.

My God, if I could come to the point in time when I can see others in myself, instead of the other way around? Maybe that’s what it is… Maybe, my goals keep changing.

See? Right there: Maybe I am changing my goals.

Maybe I do have…my self.

This is way deep.

At this point, I lie in bed with this notebook, and it’s like a constant splitting of epiphanies—totally embracing me.

And I have to remind myself: “Ben, don’t worry if these intensely intellectual and spiritual epiphanies, and flitting feelings of bliss and grace, will end. Just go with them. Let it all stop if it all stops.”

The mind chatter is OK. The terrifying thoughts I am having right this moment are OK. They’ve nothing to do with me.

They’re just thoughts!

You may not be able to discern what normal disagreements or misunderstandings are.

But for the love of God, don’t worry about it.

More than that: Don’t ever worry about anything.

The chaos in me is the chaos of God—the community of me, and of you.

Don’t worry about how you’re coming across to others.

I reply to myself:

I can’t beat it. I can’t beat the universe. It keeps changing, like the weather.

I dive into it.

As painful as it is…I let it go.

I’ll lose Claudia.

I’ll be attacked by symptoms.

But I have to trust…everything.

Trust. Trust. Trust.

Trust: I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

Trust: I don’t need to find myself through Georgie, or porn, or scat (or anything). The truth is inside.

“There’s no place like home...There’s no place like home…”

—The Wizard of Oz

004-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

CHAPTER THREE

Georgie slept a full 15 hours last night and all day, he was a complete zombie.

I, however, didn’t feel like a zombie. I felt “zombie.” Coffee wouldn’t cure the no-energy. I’ve been cutting down my coffee and nicotine intake, now being the Second Day. (Well, I quit the caffeine-in-a-can junk—just sticking to regular coffee, hoping that I won’t ever resign to being a damn “tea freak,” as one of the techs suggested when he heard I was cutting down, if I ever put an end to the plain coffee, way down the road).

Dropping in, tuning out…

I pack smaller and smaller doses of dip; the Skoal Straight smokeless tobacco junk—and gave up masturbating for good. Fact is, I have nowhere I can go to get energy drinks or tobacco, and I’m not going to spank off with a roommate sleeping in the same vicinity—other than Georgie. Still haven’t even said hello to my roommate. All I know is that he’s a heroin junky with Sz. He’s only been clean for a few days, and that scares the daylights out of me.

I’ve barely been talking about sex, fetish, scat—gross stuff—not sure if this is a good thing or not.

My roommate—with his diagnosis of schizoaffective too, involving a mood disorder—he doesn’t have a fully blunted affect. Neither of us have a fully blunted affect.

He’s been reminding me of Georgie—of that part of me—that facet. A little worried, I don’t want to screw up any more identities. I mean sometimes, actually quite often, I believe that because this kid (my roommate) and Georgie (Ben?) have so much in common with each other. I need to keep the roommate separate.

The kid—my roommate—He’s 21. He’s a junky. He’s a schizophrenic, and a porn addict. “The porn,” he said, first thing he ever said to me, “it messed up my head, you know?”

His name is Steve. Steven.

Time passes and we start talking. For real.

I like it, that I’ve got Steve the Schizophrenic living with me. And he’s already been telling me that I have been helping him, along the way.

Thing is, this kid has been helping me. I know how to connect with him. He’s all screwed up, like me, and he’s worried and concerned about himself and his reality, and their reality. Always making sure he hasn’t done anything wrong, constantly needing reassurance, all the time, like me, we crave it. We give it to each other.

It’s kind of like with Kelly and me. When I’m doing well, I can “help” (God I hate that word) Kelly get through her frustrations. I can help Steve-O to know that, “Hey bro, it’s only the illness. It’s not you. It’s just the illness.”

He tells the staff here when he’s on a symptom-trip, “Oh, hey, it’s just the illness. Ben taught me that. I am who I am, and it’s all OK.” (He makes me sound like a Saint.)

And here I am worried about helping others.

It’s all coming from the stuff Georgie’s been telling me all along. Maybe this is the stuff I’ve got to hear—the stuff that I’ve got to really hear—implying a reaction on my part. All this stuff.

I wonder if I’ll ever decide to literally synthesize with Georgie. To be myself, Ben (Jonathan), but to allow my safe alter ego to incorporate with the Ben-ego without having to bitch and complain and agonize about my “selling out,” or not being able to be that Transgressive Prodigy—I mean all that I’ve already written in Parts 1-3—are they even considered transgressive? I read back on some of it and it doesn’t even seem transgressive at all, maybe just slightly. I might end up deciding to become a self-help book writer and not just a self-help book reader (audio book listener) and self-help book antagonist. Screw it—who do I think I am—Screw it, if I sell out by helping others. I haven’t even sold in. How could I sell out so fast?

Maybe a real honest Ben is better.

Maybe it’s all you’ll get for now.

Maybe I’ll wimp out that way and join the public speakers circuit. Sail away on a cruise with Ben Schreiber: the Self Help Guru. The kid with the heart of gold.

I’ll get carried away, like I am right now. Like a Buddhist monk, into a whole different mindset.

003-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

CHAPTER TWO

I wake up and Kelly seems to have spoken aright, we’re in a regular house as we slept through the night.

Intake procedures were a breeze. As for my “goal’ on the Overall Goal part of the Treatment Plan, I wrote (what I want? What I need?) …To “be myself,” I wrote—no more, no less, and I signed it BJ Schreiber. Just hoping that Ben is good enough on his own, that I am actually an OK guy.

I peel open a banana and introduce myself to a few other schizophrenics while I eat.

Oh my God, I am not alone, after all, I discover to myself.

I’m going by my alter ego’s name, Georgie, as I meet these guys, and the staff; the intake papers have me down as Ben.

I’m just not ready yet to be Ben. Not this morning.

The fear that I don’t want to become a sellout, helping others, that I can actually do some good in this little world makes me think of the 500 billion galaxies everywhere (and nowhere). I’ll do what I can right here and now.

This one’s for you guys. I’ll try my best to heal, and to share my stuff as Claudia used to want it—I’ll play the game the best I can, so that I can help you—so that I have something to do. (I’m just starting to transcribe some of this on to the computer from the notebook, and I’m dying to edit as I go along, but I need to keep it real and raw and right, just as it was… Enough! I re-write with an angry heart.)

For now, I’m heading off. I’m not happy with the room I’ve been assigned because I have a roommate.

Away from our comfort zone, our safety zone, I feel pressed to continue writing. There’s no writer’s block. I no longer get writer’s block. I do get a gigantic lack of motivation to write, but this is my industry. Whether or not there will be huge gaps between installments, as there already have been, still got to float on, and on, and on.

I’m putting out my best effort to be as raw, and candid, and honest as I can be. Not trying to help you, but trying to help myself (even if just for a story, based on fact), as it may or may not be—might help you and might inspire you.

I still don’t really get it.

002-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

CHAPTER ONE

I find myself on some sort of road trip. I feel like I am in a dream, but I wouldn’t bet my life that it’s a real dream; possibly, my sense of Reality is a little askew at the moment, or rather, as usual. There’s no foggy border around what I perceive so it must be Real. I feel drugged up, quietly subdued and psychotic, having taken a slight overdose of Benadryl. I’m sprawled out in the back seat of my car. My wife, Kelly, is up front, behind the wheel.

I’m terrified of all the uncertainty in my head. I’m exhausted, from life as it is, dealing with the illness. All I want is to dissociate and blunt my affect, which is why I took all the Benadryl. I took them because I want to dream a bit and imagine that things are better than they are currently.

Having just passed through a nasty hailstorm, under which I thought we were going to die, literally, Kelly pulls off the road. She checks us into a Comfort Inn. The ten-hour drive is too far to make without a nap half way across the state.

Kelly and I have adjoining rooms. I’m not napping, so my lights and TV are on. I’m giving Kelly her own space.

I contemplate my newest single diagnosis: Schizophrenia. I was actually diagnosed with Sz when I was a kid. I just didn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember. The doctors I’ve had in the past usually appeared to diagnose me with hesitancy, which meant to me that the diagnosis wasn’t concrete or definite. For now, we know it’s plain old Schizophrenia, and of course I have Tourette’s syndrome. I’ve had Tourette’s, since I was just a boy. It’s a pretty insane hand of cards I’ve been dealt, but at least I can stop collecting so many labels like they’re stamps.

I can accept Sz as the all-in-one explanation for my strange and bizarre experiences. Everything—every event, every memory, and every person—it all makes better sense to me now. There’s finally a reason for things, or at least a single name, label, or condition. I can start looking to manage and treat this condition from somewhere—from right here and now—and let the healing begin, again.

I’m not alone. I’m still of the lucky few—lucky that I can maintain my uniqueness and eccentricity, and be able to share with others just how disorganized the mind can be, while still having even the slightest access to conventional reality, as long as I can keep my awareness of this condition. And so are you; you’re lucky. Believe me, we are all together are and we’ve all made it this far, haven’t we?

According to my new doctor, within the Porcelain Utopia, this rabbit hole of a heaven, nothing has changed. Only the diagnosis has changed. It’s been clarified.

Oh, and here’s a big one to swallow: my new doctor, let’s call her Dr. T… she suggests to us (we are passive, submissive, so she is actually not suggesting anything, she seems to demand) that we have to (she said we “should consider,” but we take it as an imperative must) become role models. Can you believe that? We have to help others. We have to share everything and keep it real, and genuine, and authentic.

Here I am and here we are, trying to write another installment of Porcelain Utopia—Part Four (otherwise known as Light Under the Shade) as I attempt to keep the content cool, on the edge, and hard core. I rewrite all of this so that it comes from the heart and soul—the higher self.

If I turn into a sellout, (the band, Green Day comes to mind, and how they were accused of selling out) I swear, I’ll stone myself, if that’s even possible. I’ll jump on my face. Wait, that is definitely not possible. That doesn’t even make sense.

“You have this gift…” we recall Claudia telling us, telling Georgie (after all, Claudia is his girlfriend, even if only in my fiction), that we “owe it to the world,” to do it for her, if anyone else. Claudia, the princess of Long Beach was the reason we moved to New Mexico in the first place.

And now we’re on our way to the institution. I was told it’s a sort of schizophrenia school. Oh, boy, I’ve got to write from the heart now.

We remember the Dream Telepathy (a chapter in Porcelain Utopia): the whole conversation about why should we help others when we can’t even help ourselves?

So this was the start of what Georgie and I were thinking, just a few minutes ago, at about midnight, when we were sharing a smoke near the lobby outside, while Kelly caught a few Z’s.

Some other things have changed, too, since Lover in the Nobody (initially, Part Three of the Porcelain Utopia series). The whole scene at the end, when we realized, sure, that we didn’t count, but that nothing was real.

The truth makes us feel sick. Here’s some of the truth coming out, like vomit:

Georgie has stopped watching pornography, if you can believe that.

As for me, I was hospitalized and had a big break, a schizophrenic break, from reality. (Reality?). The break started full force the moment I wrote about going to “bum a smoke” on the last page of Lover in the Nobody when nothing, even ourselves, existed.

I felt screwed. I felt trapped.

But, things have changed.

Now, we are about five hours from Sz School. Somewhere near Trinidad, Colorado, the so-called Sex Change Capital of the World. My last impression of Colorado was from when I was still a boy, skiing. I remember Colorado being Health Freak City. What it really is: an alternative to the ward.

Please, and I swear, anyone out there, if there is anyone out there, we’re sorry. I’m sorry; I must have acted like an arrogant jerk all this time that’s passed. Please, if you are religious, pray for us. If you are a New Ager, please send us white light.

Please, help us.

We’ll do our darnedest to “help” you in return. All we have are our experiences to share. They might help. The whole ‘help’ thing scares the daylights out of me, out of Georgie, and all of us.

Not to make light of it anymore. We really are mentally ill, and there apparently is a real world out there, right here, and all around us. We used to use sarcasm and hypocrisy to cope with it in our earlier writings and even with the ways we behaved in general.

We didn’t know what we were doing.

And because of that, the Family—the Living Colorful Rich—they coerced us to sign over everything we had to them.

The Trust Fund—A new illegal Trust Fund—We got karma-lized.

All the bad karma (we’re mean and vindictive little bitches) and the good (we’re loving and generous with huge hearts of gold)—it doesn’t cancel out the good and the bad. Instead, the good and evil contorts, gets confused, and perplexed. It makes everything even more complicated than it is already.

The consequences have come.

We’ll be there, at the schizophrenia school by morning. (Morning. Mourning.) We can’t sleep. And the Bennies (Benadryl) are wearing off. Our throats are opening back up, less psychotic feeling, less dissociated by means of the Benny itself.

Our affects are afflicted with fear, and possibly disappointment.

Please allow us a break before morning. Allow us one more time out, one more second with our freedoms—freedoms of self, of delusion, of our nothingness. Just give us another spring break, like from school, like in college, or school in general. Feels like we’ve been in prison, and the court has us departing from prison, and we’re going directly into rehab from prison, jail, or the pen. Lindsay Lohan had no break to party, and have her Last Hurrah, between her two-week jail sentence and her being escorted straight to treatment.

None of this is even court mandated—it’s nothing like that. It has everything to do with my family controlling our lives, and our money. We couldn’t just go and work at Starbucks because we are disabled. We used to make $10,000 or so a day, just on interest, and now we’re in dire straights. Sure, we’ve been spoiled all our lives, but our finances have been taken away at he drop of a hat. Now, we come across as whiney babies, through manipulation. We can’t even afford kitty litter, my wife and I. The poor little kittens we’ve got at home have been flooding the flowerpots, and the weeds took over the property. That’s no way to love, certainly not unconditionally, by taking everything away so drastically. It’s no way to look after our best interests as Living Colorful Trustees. They took away the estate. That’s nearly $250,000,000. Georgie helped with the software development for the start-up companies Price Club and Amazon.com back in ’91—the year the Internet was invented. Pops was an investment manager (a crook, nonetheless), and we were all but 15 years old, thus the set-up of the trust fund, as far it’s known.

The doctors think it’s a mere delusion, no wonder. But I have the paperwork on file to prove it; same for the hit TV show they took, which aired for two seasons on A&E. We wrote what’s called The Treatment. It was a three-year long project.

All of my work turned into pure nothingness.

A break, just until the morning—that’s all I want, just until we wake up in Wonderland. Boy, at the moment, I am full of complaints.

Kelly just woke up from her power nap and we have to float on. Yeah, right, float…whatever floats the boat.

­Now Kelly has the car running. We must continue on to the facility for the Schizophrenics, like us.

I have decided (not Georgie…me…) to write Kelly on a memo pad, to communicate, instead of talking. Giving her the silent treatment, like the little baby-game, the schizophrenic—B.S.—boy, I am really getting the audience empathy I’m aiming for. I say that with intentional sarcasm. This sarcasm will soon end, as you’ll witness.

I just hope there is one person out there who relates to my situation—somebody we can help. Are we even doing any good, so far?

Mom and Pops took the house. No more New Mexico. No more Long Beach.

I am taking dictation from the memo pad thus far. Want to capture every single thought—all of the erroneous chitter-chatter. (I know. We know it might not be possible to capture everything.)

We can’t write in the car. It’s too turbulent.

“OK, Honey. Coming!” we call out to the woman behind the closed window of the car. We grind our Winston into the pavement and take off. (We’ll type this out later on because it’s too shaky in the car now. We’re lying down in the back seat, like babies being chauffeured to school.)

“About the ‘School,’ it won’t be as bad as the hospital,” Kelly assures us. “Less rules and stuff. Anyway, are you comfortable, back there?”

We think, “Sure, honey. Sure we are. Just jolly-pip-pip hooray…”

001-Light Under the Shade-Memoir

INTRODUCTION

I hardly have the strength to begin this work with any formal thesis statement, nor with any kind of cool sly catchy hook. Wanted to introduce you, slowly, to my Porcelain Utopia series, which has not been written in the same manner as what you’re about to read.

Just to write bad posture is enough for now. They’re the first words that come to mind, and I could probably give you a thousand examples of how bad posture metaphorically describes the way I feel, the way I think, the way I act, and the way I am. The spinal cord and the brain itself—they control everything. And everything seems to be out of alignment, including my posture.

I lie on my right side, my back crooked with restless legs, resting my head upon my right elbow. The laptop presses against my chest. This physical body of me is outrageously contorted, restless and fidgety. If you could see me right now, you’d think I was having withdrawals from kicking a heroin habit, but I am not. I am, however, probably setting myself up to be a hunchback, or something, later in life. All of the agony I feel is due to stress. It’s due to agitation. It’s due to nervousness.

As for these words I write, I write them, I don’t speak them aloud. I have little clout when I speak. I’m not taken seriously. I’m a schizophrenic. Therefore, anything I say to other people is likely to be considered a delusion, or even a lie. Lies are the things that usually save us. (Save us from what?) There’s social stigma looming, all around. Judgments are everywhere.

I question who I am and what I’ve become, but there seems to be no deep or even philosophical answer. I’m just a lonely guy who finds pleasure in watching tearjerker films, along with a few other idle activities. I watch life pass me by, depressingly. Tearjerkers? I enjoy them because they elicit emotions and they usually make me cry.

I love crying, though I have never been able to sincerely let it all out. The few but lucky times I find myself choked up, my short-lived crying spells seem to get cut off. Something always comes up which causes me to stop crying. Usually, my cries are halted because of some kind of fear or some kind of impeding paranoia. The fear and paranoia feels like an orgasm that suddenly dies right when the very peak wants to topple over, and melt me. My so-called orgasm freezes. I feel a continuous avalanche of emotions about my anxiety and about my emotions. The emotions come stampeding down the mountain, compounding all fear and paranoia. Its roots are deeply embedded underneath the soot, darkly smelted in the past as it takes over the present.

They eyes of a separate me observes myself with a mean mother kind of judgmental heart. Her eyes hone in when I cry. But, as long as I can believe that I am allowed to cry, I will, at any place and at any time.  I cry, as long as I am not penalized. I’ll cry, as long as I am not in the ward crying, and as long as I am not under the care of Mommy, crying. I’m able to let it out, as long as my thoughts don’t wander to any dark or hideous places. Crying is probably the only display of emotions I seem to have anymore, hardly personal, hardly private. My crying is a reaction to the pain and torment I feel, though, my crying is always confronted by a sort of voice that says, “Stop it.” And so I stop. When I get to cry, I feel alive, and I feel that I might actually exist, even if in complete solitude.

My crying, like a baby, is proof of how lame I am. Sure, I’m a total wimp. Furthermore, I am wimpy with my creative endeavors. I overuse certain words and break the rules. I read self-help books, and I don’t do the opposite of what they say, even though I might lie by saying that I do. I sometimes exaggerate in order to get attention. I don’t really do much of anything. Even with all the experiences I write of, about 90% of my life is spent in a state of complete lethargy. I stare at the TV blindly, lying down—always. I reside way out there in la–la land, in a state of confusion, as a means to dissociate from all the abuse I’ve been enduring since infancy. I can actually remember back that far, to when I was born. I’m able to remember because I have an inborn talent for putting myself into a remarkably deep trance, nearly on an instant.

In the rare event that I have any motivation to write, I feel like all I’m doing is taking some mumble jumble dictation from somewhere in outer space. I lie to myself, believing I’m some kind of genius who tries to be what’s called transgressive, stylistically and thematically, in my writing, of course—not within my personality—and I seem to fail.

My personality is friendly and out-going. I hear that all the time from others. I try to be someone else when I write. Although, all too often, I sense myself rambling too much, as much as I shoot for raw and brutal honesty in my writing. Strangely enough, at the same time, I hope that my honesty, however much of it I can produce, might actually help someone—(Help whom? We’ll get to that soon enough.) I’m trying to make sense of, and keep at least some structure to what I write since I have symptoms, like what they call pressured thoughts and pressured speech. The Sz (Schizophrenia) causes my writing, my blah-blah-blah’ing to come across as being cryptic and not commercially viable. A real downer, if you ask me. I am beating myself up, unnecessarily.

Whether I am Ben Schreiber (my own fictional protagonist) or Georgie Gust (Ben’s alter ego), or even Jonathan (the real me), I’m a big fat wimp, like I said before, or better, a beached whale, but I’ve got testicles of steel.

I’m as resilient as I can ever aspire to be—nearly numb, yet entirely fragile.

I still believe that I can’t take it anymore, but I do take it all, and in many ways I’m forced to have those testicles of steel. Forced by this concept I barely have any grasp on: Reality.