Noise

 

    There is a great deal of noise in the world. some of it is generated out of hatred or ignorance. I hesitate to involve myself in anything that is not directly my business because unless I know the full story, I feel unable to act wisely, and life is not simple. It's always more complicated then we want it to be. 

    I've sensed a lot of negativity in my life lately. It's been a little overwhelming. Things are looking up though. Maybe I can afford to worry less. Today I'm going to be working some, and I'm going to work on my stories and poems. 

 

     Focusing on what I'm good at, what I enjoy, and on what I have in common with others. That is where the dawn is. Not in repeating the past. Not in litigating differences. 

     I need to shift focuses. Not everything is about healthcare. It's making me miserable just to think about it. I need to turn a page. Thinking about it gives me headaches. 

     I'm sticking with the routines. Work, writing, health management. I'm going to try to see the humor again. Try to write something funny. 

     Anyways, not everything is about me. Over a million people around here. I'm just trying to get by. I'm going to work on enhancing my calm. Enjoying work, hobbies, getting some exercise, picking one of those places to volunteer, writing. Maybe some paint. 

    I just realized something. This was supposed to be a voyage of self discovery. What's frustrating is certain persons controlling nature, insistence on being right, and dishonesty with myself and with my health care providers. I thought maybe these things would get resolved in private, but some people are far too stubborn. Pride is dangerous. It leads people to do foolish things. Sometimes, all you can do is walk away, when there is no listening and no room for differences.

You knooooooooow...

    Maybe that's what I was missing all along. Maybe the only thing my family really needs to know is that it's not Bipolar, it's Autism. And that their control freak nature is destroying any chance of anything real. Who knows. But hey, anyone that wants to know me, use the golden rule. Not that hard if you try. 

Autism and the DMH

    Work was slow this morning, though yesterday was fairly busy. I've got another shift later. The only remaining issue with the medication is the Abilify. I'm taking it for autistic irritability. Unfortunately, at 5mg while it improves my mood significantly, it sometimes causes dystonia, which is painful. Right now I'm taking 2.5 mg, which helps, but I'm not sure it gives the full effect and it still gave me some mild dystonia once. So I'm meeting with the PA on Thursday. The other one that is indicated for the same problem is Risperdal, which I've taken before. The main thing I remember about it is that it has really bad weight gain effects as you increase the dose. So I'm a little on the fence about trying to stay on the 2.5 of Abilify or trying 1 mg of Risperdal. The other medications in the class are not indicated for autism. 

    There are some alternative medicine approaches and some off label things for autism in general. I've actually tried all of them. Zyprexa (Had to D/C, can't remember why), Latuda (gave me dystonia), low dose naltrexone (not widely available in low dose form), N-Acetyl Cysteine (I'm going to try this), Clonidine (Makes you sleepy)... 

    Personally I feel that the Bipolar label has done a lot of harm and distracted from the real problem, Autism. Yet some people can't get enough of it. There are solutions for Autism, however. I think I'm very close to the optimal combination for me, which involves Vyvanse, some antidepressants, a beta blocker, and a special diet. The special diet helps manage side effects, idiopathic constipation, reflux, and helps to increase antioxidants and reduce inflammation in general. People love to give me hell for having special needs, which only makes survival that much harder and makes my med staff work harder. So I encourage all the haters to MYOB.

    Interestingly, THC helps to reduce inflammation just like many of these medical treatments, but the medical treatments don't bring me the harassment and BS that THC does. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I'll do what I have to do to manage my symptoms. Though I think it's a massive waste of health care resources to run mental health units the way they are run. If providers shut their mouths and open their ears, they could save themselves some time and work. Some are better at that then others. Here's hoping. 

    I didn't actually choose autism or the inability to tolerate certain medications. I'm playing the hand I was dealt. I'm finding that this way is working, however. While I do miss eating out more, I've found that controlling what I eat more carefully has led to great improvements in my quality of life and symptoms. Instead of soda or beverages with sugar, stevia beverages, herbal teas, vitamin waters, electrolytes, some magnesium, zinc, ashwagandha, l-theanine... natural substances that my brother loved to demonize when I was getting off Clozaril. Some people (MDs) just loooove control. Not that he was entirely wrong, but overly hostile and controlling. 

    I wish the mental health system gave even more instruction on nutrition, antioxidants, and natural remedies, as well as conflict resolution and boundaries instead of being label focused. 

    Other then deliveries, I'm focusing today on my stories. I'm trying to alternate between the civil war one and the funny stories to give myself some flexibility. 

    Some people literally can't tell the difference between dissociation and psychosis and I find that to be quite puzzling. Especially when they work in mental health. 

    I do understand that autism is not a "popular" problem to have. Especially after that guy murdered all those people and tried to use autism as an out. However, it's a very real and well documented problem. Just as real as, say, Bipolar. 

    Interestingly, Haldol is used off label for autism. I did not know that. I'm finding the anti-inflammatory lifestyle to be key. I do cheat sometimes, but I pay for it. Red meat actually can hit me pretty hard. Ultra processed foods or foods high in sugar like ice cream can throw me for a loop.

    Really my problems come down to a mental health system overly obsessed with Bipolar, lacking knowledge on dissociation, lacking knowledge on autism, and having poor boundaries. As my friend George said, some people should not work in mental health. That crazy doctor still works at CCBH. Absolute moron. Intelligence of a gnat. Waste of public dollars. The day they retire that man, I'll have to raise a glass. I have never seen such vast ignorance and incompetence wrapped up in one self obsessed, arrogant prick such as he. They need to send him back to med school. He is a determent to society. That is all he is. A disgrace to the license. He loved Hobbits. He should stick with that. 

    The thing about identity is, it is one's thoughts, feelings, and experiences, plus the biology that goes with it. It is not merely a psychiatric disorder like bipolar, ptsd, did, or what have you. It is not merely a job or a gender. It is not merely a political leaning or ideology. It's not just your religion or the foods you like. It's not just who you know or your IQ. It's the spark within... the soul. 

    Agreeing on everything or submitting to a group identity is not life. Life is expressing yourself through all that you say and do. Every word and every action is a part of who someone is. Ideological or chemical conformity and love or loyalty are not the same thing. Taking a medication or conforming to a label is not the same as loving or living. Clozaril did not make me who I was nor does the lack of it make me who I am. Clozaril did not make me happy or "normal". Clozaril merely suppressed my emotions or "numbed me out". It did not change the reality of the past or the present.

    Hospitals are meant to heal people, not manufacture drones or drug away personality. 

    What my family doesn't understand and perhaps never will, is that drugging people does not make you love them. Rather the opposite. People have free will for a reason. 

    It's very small minded to lock a person into a specific label or a medication. In common language we call that stereotyping. The brain has a natural need to categorize. Good, bad, pretty, ugly, sane, crazy. But categories are a matter of perspective. My backstabbing family prefers control. They see compliance as love. I am either the repentant and loving bipolar son or I am a hateful man. I do not see it that way. "Trauma" is also a matter of perspective. Some people see a family repeatedly lying about you behind your back, spreading hateful and malicious gossip and force medicating as traumatic. Others do not. Some see having trouble trusting family who acts in such a manner as legit trust issues. Others see it as paranoia. As long as I am the psychotic one, my family can do virtually anything and I'm just crazy or lying when I object. It's when the psychosis thing and the lies no longer hold together that life becomes challenging for my family. 

    Now they want me to "relax" while they continue to do as they do, lying and maintaining narratives and backstabbing and manipulating and oh it's all fine Robert's just crazy. Just another day in paradise. They'll never quit. It even comes down to little things like insisting on calling me by my full name angrily, being enraged when I do not use Apple products, not liking the same food... the smallest expression of independent thought is an offense to be remarked upon. Some of them have this overpowering need to be right about every little thing. The smallest detail. 

    I can't even go to the ER for a heart issue or a bad reaction to a prescription med without them full throttle taking over every last detail of my life, from where I live, to where I spend my time, to what job I have, to what I think, what diagnosis I have, and what medication I take.

    I'm the crazy one? Of course they'll deny it, that's part of their M.O. It's how they keep it going. Plausible deniability. I thought it was the hospital. No, they were the pawns. I signed that release. They talked to my family. I'll relax when they give me reason to. Until then, walls up.

    I'm trying to find some serenity here. I find that in this work and writing these stories. You know, when I was little, having medical professionals in the family seemed like a plus. The problem is, they dissect you and analyze you on a microscopic level. And the hospital will listen to medical people before they listen to a patient. But oh right! I'm psychotic again... gosh me... there I go again... every time I try to have an independent thought... I can't help but go psychotic.

    

 

     The best thing I can do is maintain focus on what I am best at. Right now, that's the deliveries and writing. It's not always smooth sailing. Today during deliveries I witnessed an act of road rage. I found myself locking my vehicle.

     The PA walks a middle road, much like I do. He doesn't understand everything, nor do I. He tries to be pragmatic, as do I. It's a narrow path. 

     I try to keep walls and boundaries and space. It helps me to breathe. Some things are sacred, though. Like birthdays. Some birthdays are coming up. Some will be easier then others.

     I want to be naive again. I want to believe in things like family, Santa Claus, America, etc. Some of those things are easier then others. I do believe in God, that is not a hard one. The more earthly things are harder. Reality gets too real rather quickly. I feel that distance helps. People are messy. They require maintainance and space. Breathing room. 

     Sometimes I feel so very far away. Like an alien. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating or gliding rather then walking, other times I change locations and can't remember how I got where. I get lost rather easily because I space out (dissociate).

     It worries me because I fear I may have an accident. But if I keep focused on what I'm good at and I keep space, then I am able to stay p¹resent. I float less. Get lost less. Dissociate less. Keeping a regular schedule and avoiding conflict helps.

     Relationships are difficult. There's so much indirect communication going on. Messaging. People stating and restating the same things.

     Work is going well. I work mostly during weekends, evenings and I'm working more in the AM. 

     You can't drag the past forward. I don't understand why some people try. I need the serenity. They want to continue where we left off, as if I'm still the same. People do change. They cant see that I have changed. That there is no rewind. I'm not a cassette tape. I know they want to change who I am. To rearrange me. To recreate iRobert. That's not how people work. I'm not a machine. I'm not a collection of symptoms. If it's not bipolar, they'll reach for something else. They don't see that I'm a person, with my own beliefs, experiences, and opinions. No, they want something simpler. Something they can understand. If I dont conform to the narrative they understand, and its not bipolar, they reach for something else. They want something they can fix. They dont want an independent, free thinking spirit. They want something to fix and move on. They dont see that I have no interest in being fixed. That the fixing itself is the very problem. I'm not a slave to psychiatry. They don't communicate directly. They are not honest. And then I'm paranoid or edgy for not trusting thier duplicity.

     Now we communicate generally by smoke signal. Can't keep grinding the same stones. Life's too short. I need to maintain focus on what I can control. Me, myself and I. Tomorrow, some maintaining, some work, and hopefully writing. I've been neglecting my stories.

     Not everything is about me, nor should it be. The metro area has over a million people in it. I'm trying to hold onto my serenity. It can be elusive at times. The routines help. I like the driving. Strangely calming, even though I used to get driving anxiety. Everyday I take Ashawangha and l-theanine. Magnesium and zinc too. Probiotics. Usually some chamomile. 

    I'm trying to jump back into some positivity. I'm about to start working with another contract company, I'm trying to write more poems and stories, add some exercise, and clean out a little old stuff. I'm enjoying keeping a regular schedule.

Strange

    I do think my life is strange. It took me time to put all the pieces together. There was so much mental programming going on. You want to believe that you can trust people, especially if they are your parents or siblings. I'm still trying to figure out what to do now. They loved Prichards. They refuse to admit any fault, but they have lied, backstabbed, gossiped, threatened, manipulated, and rearranged my health care at whim. They treat me like their property. And they expect me to love them for it. That's fucked up. And for what? To reassign me a psychological label? To put me in my place? What do you say to an unrepentant backstabber who just can't quit? What do you say to someone so insistent on controlling the narrative? What do you say to someone who is that hateful and calls it love? I don't know. You close a few doors. You give them space. Sadly, they end up driving you away. 

    Any real, breathing person has to build relationships based on who they are, not based on who people want them to be. People are complicated. Experiences build who they are. They are not robots or labels. It's difficult to have a relationship with anyone that accepts you only so long as you conform to a label or deny your own experiences and feelings. March was obviously an attempt by my family to erase the past and replace it with a sanitized version. It kind of reminds me of the movie Equilibrium or the book The Giver. 

    Like in the Giver, there are some memories that are difficult to remember. But you cant pick and choose your memories. You have to take the good and the bad. Antipsychotics don't actually erase memories. That's not thier purpose. That's why forced medication does not work. Denying experiences doesn't erase them. What it does do is destroy trust.

    Unfortunately, it's become clear to me that my family will never give up. I was thinking that they would see reason eventually, but they will not. They're set on restoring the narrative. I don't know what that means for the future. I thought there was a middle ground, but they keep crushing that middle ground. That makes my life dangerous. 

    They refuse to even consider that they have harmed me, preferring to lay all the blame on me. They absolutely hate the diagnosis, they hate my counselor, and they are still planning to destroy me and her. It's all in the details. They play games with words. Instead of saying we won't let you get the care you need, it's we'll let you get the "appropriate" care (the care they choose). Constantly treating me like a child 24/7. Prichards is still God to them, they are all holy angels who tolerate my faults, and I am merely the unrepentant damned who dares defy all holy Psychiatropy. 

    What really bothers me the most is that I didn’t wake up to my family's manipulative nature earlier in life. I'm rather concerned about the future, because there's no way to tell how or when they will betray me next, or what they say about me behind closed doors. This whole byproxy healthcare thing where my dad orders up a dx and meds for me like he's ordering a big Mac and fries at McDonalds seems blatantly illegal, but given that I have a history of mental illness, I'm broke, he's much more popular with the Healthcare community, he's been doing it for years, and he lies like a rug, I'm not sure there's much to stop him. Except that pesky HIPPA law. 

    I can't say I wasn't warned. 

Score on the removal of the bipolar label

System 1

Me 2

It's really tiresome when people work at cross purposes. It's exhausting. 

Thoughts on Blogs

    Originally, I did not like blogs. Then I realized that my family and the hospital both check this site. Even when they don't listen to what I actually say. So I decided I like blogs after all. Maybe I've been a little angry. But I'm trying to let that go and focus on doing what I do well to the best of my ability. 

    On a side note, given that I've gotten comfortable with driving again, I'm thinking of doing some volunteering again. Either an animal shelter, a pantry, or meals on wheels. 

iRobert: Systems Programming

 

    The world is full of systems, subsystems, and parts. Sometimes it does treat people like robots. Even people are systems, living and breathing organisms that have needs and make choices. A person that defies the system will indeed get run over by the system. The system will even back up and take another pass to be sure all resistance is crushed. Some people are bystanders, others are accomplices or vigilantes, and finally there are the independent minds that either glide within the system smoothly, or jam it up like a bad gear. 

    It's not any of this is a new idea. However, when I was a medicated drone, gliding within the system rather mindlessly, I enjoyed getting along but I missed the self-awareness and the independence. The system, desperate to recover its drone, pulls out all the stops to drug it up and reindoctrinate. How many people does the system run over on a daily basis? How does it rationalize each of these events? With labels. Of course, behind labels are complex stories, and labels aren't given out simply at random. Sometimes they are well earned and fit well, other times not so much. The person who refuses their label gets jailed. 

    I don't actually know if I returned to inpatient if they would try yet again to bipolarize me. I certainly don't intend to find out. I know some people will never accept responsibility for their mistakes and faults and continue to happily supply me with plenty of blame. What they fail to see is how they self sabotage by being so awful. Because then everyone realizes that the emperor has no clothes, and sees these people for what they truly are beneath it all. Ok maybe not everyone. I think some people actually buy the BS, either because it aligns with their beliefs or they're just plain stupid. 

    Assigning people labels and creating winners and losers does not actually help anyone in the long run. Destroying people prevents them from reaching their full potential. It also creates resentment in the long run. It helps to destroy relationships. Trust is not created by antipsychotics. Trust is created by being trustworthy.

    If standing up for my rights means no doctor will work with me, then I'll gladly work with PAs, NPs and counselors that get less lost in abstract theory and simply treat me like a human being. 

     After all, being treated like a label, regardless of which one, is not what I want. Doctors get lost in the abstract, and will beat you down if you disagree with their all holy opinion. That is their failure. Emotions are not symptoms or side effects, they are the humanity within us. The rich tapestry of emotion is what makes life worth living, not a rigid robotic nature and absolute fealty to authoritarian figures. While I'm still breathing I will not be a slave to bipolar BS. I will be a human being, with valid thoughts, emotions, and experiences that I can share with anyone who treats me as such. 

     Springbrook was much better about treating me like a person, though there was a tremendous lack of privacy and gossip in the small spaces of the facility. The small spaces also made germ transmission a major issue.

Arachnid Date 2025.09.30.0939

Di webbing is tinn on di log. Spidey has launched his arachnoprobes to di outreaches ob di forest. Ebbywhere, amongst di moss and di gwass, di trees and di bush, ebben in di ribber, der are baby recluses, wadder striders, and daddy long legs, wit one mission and one mission ONLY: to explore strange new clearings, to seek out new wildlife and new cibilizations, to boldly go where no Spider has gone before!

Spidey, Di Gweat Webber here! My minions are probing di forest, in search of new adbentures and new fwends to help spin new tales. A pew wadder striders in di ribber, a pew baby recluses in di moss. Spidey put on his best carapace. Bwown wit di light stripes. A pew flies in di webbing is bedder den twee in di air, Spidey always say. 

Vlad’s up in the trees somewherez, directing his searchbats to provide air cubber. Di old bat has still got some flap in his wingz, and out for blood as usual. 

Di air ob the forest is ripe within smell ob mushrooms, moss, and my friendly critters. Nebber before has der been such a coordination of epports. Ebben di deer take note of the vast array of Arachnid allies as they chart out di dark reaches ob di woods. 

Di shadows are fwiends ob di forest, cooling di creatures as dey go about der libes, libbing togedder in total harmony. Fweedom is our nouwishment, As Spiders dance in the dark, celebwating the vast dibersity of di woods. Ebby rock, leabe, creature and element, cweating a bast world of lipe. Togedder, celebwating dis world.

Yet suddenly a scout reports back from di front: “YOUR WEBBYNESS! YOUR WEBBYNESS!” Di liddle recluse gasps for air. “It’s di humans! Der back! BULLDOZER SIGHTED!”

“BULLDOZER?!?!?”

“Yes!” the scout huffs  “And a Halp dudden Chainsawz at least!”

“CHAINSAWZ??? Actibate Wed Alert! Notify Vlad! We need ebby last cweature to conberge at WONCE!”

“Yes, your webbyness!” the scout dashes off.

My worst fears are realized. Di Humans hab… Weturned!!!

     Refocusing back on what I'm good at. Running deliveries, writing, taking care of my health. 

My problem is that I dont like confrontation. But the hospital has given me some assurances that they won't play along anymore. If that's true, there's nothing my family can do to harm me anymore. I was a fool to sign that information release. Closing doors. Walls up.