hsphaven

I’m hunched over the laptop next to the fan heater in my small, messy ensuite right now hoping it will induce some creativity in me today. I like small spaces as they allow me to go inwards. I don’t know if it’s the cold, dreary weather, the room, the fact that it’s daytime, or that I got my period today, but the words I want are not coming to me. I feel like crap. I want to cry but no tears are coming out. They are stuck inside just like my words.

I’m frustrated in general. Yesterday I went to my mum’s house. She told me she found a page of a story I’d written when I was younger. She only had the first page though, and she wanted to read the rest of it. She brought out the sheet of paper, which had music written on the other side of it. The story was titled “Two Worlds” and compared the lives of two girls, one who lived in Kenya and the other who lived in a developed country. I wrote it during early high school. If I am allowed to toot my own horn, the story was really good. Both my mum and I were keen to read the rest of it. I looked everywhere for the rest of the pages. We pulled down some heavy boxes from the top shelf of the cupboard and went through them. I remember there being some pieces of writing from early high school in these boxes, but we couldn’t find any. I then went through the old files on the desktop but still the elusive story couldn’t be found. There is nothing that I hate more than getting into something and then being left high and dry. There is nothing worse than an unfinished story.

My entire life is like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. Things go missing constantly, and there are many gaps in my memory. I don’t know what happened to that box I thought contained my stories and books from early high school. I find evidence of things I’ve done which I don’t remember doing. A couple of years ago I think I deleted a text message where a family member said they would “elope” with me if they could. At one point I went back to find the text message. I found messages sent before it, and messages sent after it, but the message I was looking for was gone. There are things family members told me happened when I was a child which I do not remember. Then there is the trauma I do remember, but I will probably never get any answers for. I may never really know why people did what they did. I may never know why Betty and the other people who “ghosted” me left me. I have to live with not knowing, without explanation, without closure.

Switching the topic, every 24 hours I experience noticeable swings to my mood and energy levels. I become a lot more productive at night, churning out some of my best pieces of writing in the early hours of the morning when the rest of the world is asleep. As Faithless sings in his song “Insomnia”, “Deeper still, that night I write by candlelight, I find insight”. Apparently it is a pretty common trait amongst artists to be awake at night. I don’t know if my dad’s nickname for me- “Possum”- has rubbed off on me, but I generally prefer the night. It is still, quiet and peaceful. I used to flood my psychologist’s inbox with emails at night, and I make more posts to social media, especially songs. I find music sounds different at night… better. For a few nights this week I was awake all night. One night I found myself searching Google for “angriest songs”. I found a thread titled “Songs to Punch Things to: the Angriest Songs of All Time” . That is when I discovered the song “Burn” by Nine Inch Nails. The poster gave this little synopsis of the song:  “Jesus Christ, the chorus of this song is “I’M GONNA BURN THIS WHOLE WORLD DOWN!” followed by the most scorching eye bleeding guitar riff ever conceived.” When I listened to this song on YouTube, I knew my chances of sleep that night were over. It is a harrowing piece of “bleak art”, art that disturbs the comfortable, and comforts the disturbed. The experience is not complete without watching the music video. It is how I imagine an acid trip to feel like. Another viewer described the song and music video as “a very honest representation of trauma”. “The amount of reality, sadness and anger in this song cannot be measured or put into words better than he did”, said another viewer. The song was also described as “the song that goes through the head of someone on a murder spree”.

The fact that I could relate so much to this song made me wonder if I am turning into a psychopath. The song begins with a vengeful pact:

“This world rejects me
This world threw me away
This world never gave me a chance
This world gonna have to pay”

The song goes on to talk about institutions:

“Well I don’t believe in your institutions
I did what you wanted me to
I’m like the cancer in your system
I’ve got a little surprise for you”

These lines of course remind me of all the damage mental health institutions have done to me and so many others. I no longer believe in them or turn to them for help. Being the “cancer in your system” reminds me of those of us diagnosed as BPD. The whole song actually reminds me of BPD rage.

The next few lines is the chorus:

“Something inside of me
Has opened up its eyes
Why did you put it there?
Did you not realize
This thing inside of me
It screams the loudest sound
Sometimes I think I could

Burn”

What has awakened in him is some kind of extreme hate/disgust with the world after being pushed around and not fitting in all his life.

I remember saying to my first psychologist that I never felt anger. Now something has opened up in me. It scares me sometimes. I found an old email I wrote to another therapist the other day where I wished pain and suffering on my recent psychologist who abandoned me. I said I would wish death on her but that would be letting her off lightly. I wanted her to suffer like I suffer. I wanted to be God and serve punishment. These lyrics make me no longer give a shit about the rules and norms of society. I will do what I want now. The past few years I’ve started screaming in hospital in front of all the other patients. I did not give a shit that I had an audience, and that I was in a ward that was meant to be a “calm environment”.

Nine Inch Nails took me down the rabbit hole that night. The second song I want to comment on here is “Right Where It Belongs”. This song is incredibly philosophical. In this song the singer talks about the world being an “elaborate dream” and “inside of your head”. The world is just a creation of your own and you’re “really all alone”. I was amazed to find a song that spoke about Solipsism Syndrome, something I experienced during my manic episode a few years ago (see my post here). The following is a description of Solipsism Syndrome written by Dan Cavallari:

“Related only tenuously to the philosophy of solipsism is solipsism syndrome, which is a dissociative psychiatric condition that causes the subject to believe all reality is internal and everything outside of them does not exist or exists simply as an ethereal or dreamlike state. People experiencing this syndrome often feel a detachment from reality, apathy, indifference, and intense loneliness, which can be dangerous and lead to other serious or life-threatening mental conditions. Astronauts living in space for long periods of time have experienced this syndrome, and it is believed that infants experience this type of world-view until they are old enough to grow out of it.”

As another listener wrote on SongMeanings, this song is very literal. “YOU MUST BE HIGH ON ACID OR MUSHROOMS OR POSSIBLY POT to understand it,” they wrote. “The world you know is an illusion. It’s all empty. Think about it, an atom is 99.9% empty space, and since everything is composed of atoms, what does that say about you and your surroundings? We are not really here. This is the REAL MATRIX. This is all a simulation, and when you die you will simply opt out of the simulation and return to the spirit world.” I was high on Vyvanse, an ADD stimulant, when I experienced Solipsism Syndrome and it was hands down one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. But there is a lot of truth to this experience. Something I learnt when studying psychology is that none of us have direct contact with what’s “out there”. Everything we experience has been filtered through our senses and our brains, making it a product of our own mind.

So, that was my night the other night. Last night I went to bed earlier and took some sleeping pills as I was getting really unwell from not sleeping night after night. I love the nights, but they come at a price. I would fall asleep at 10am, and then when I woke up I felt absolutely dreadful. While I’m depressed and sluggish most days, I’d also be in this weird haze, making it difficult to play badminton and dangerous to drive. It was like being extremely hung over.