Some of my Delusions

I've been keeping a secret. This secret is nothing new, and quite possibly it isn't a secret to anyone else but me. So here it is, me coming clean, being transparent...yada, blah, blah.

For the last few months I have been battling delusional thoughts. Normally they are light, a passing thought that I easily discount for what it is...a manifestation of my brain. There are times, however, that I find myself believing, or at least partially believing what is going on in my head. 

Right now I'm not believing shit. That can change in an instant from a ringing phone or a letter from the VA. 

My delusions are primarily conspiratorial in nature, with the government (mainly the VA) as the trigger. When everything is going scorched earth in my head it is hard to convince me that it's not true. It affects all aspects of my life. I intentionally isolate, not wanting to argue the point with the sane. In the event I am in a group I try to remain silent while fighting carnies in the carnival of my mind. At times, even recently, I have a disabling thought that the VA wants to harvest my organs, or steal my thoughts through a thought transmitter in my right ear. That last one scares me often. 

The last few months I have been in the middle of a battle between truth and delusion. I have made appointments with the VA only to cancel on the day of because there is no way I am putting the phone to my ear because the mere idea of a phone call triggers all this mess. 

Like I said, it affects all aspects of my life. A simple trip to Walmart can turn into an episode just by seeing an active duty soldier in uniform shopping. 

As a result I have not been med compliant, or active in therapy. I have been self medicating with weed and occasionally alcohol. The weed helps my anxiety. The alcohol takes the edge off a bit, but I always feel like crap the next day, so it is a rarity. 

Through it all I have managed to work through the episodes with CBT, breathing exercises, and others around me keeping me grounded. A friend suggested that I go to behavioral health locally instead of the VA. I'll make an appointment after much procrastination on my part and encouragement from my friends. I know I need to do this. It will happen.

I need a break from this. 

Offense Never Leaves a Comfy Chair

Homicidal thoughts

are easily summoned

at the sight 

of injustice

Homicidal action

is left to

those that will

lose nothing

Elephants Eventually Shit...Even the Maggots Choke

The elephant took a big shit

in the room and the flies 

are circling. 

I stand in the windowless room,

choking back the bile.

Freud comes to me, blaming all my problems on wanting my father's cock...dad's tool of destruction. 

I am starting to feel uneasy 

and excuse myself.

Rapid thought change

turns my attention away from

that pretentious,

self projecting,

perverted,

coke fiend. 

Kinsey walks by

whispering, "They know I'm a cuck."

I laugh...

He was.

That big shit 

still sits there, unnoticed,

people milling about the rotting waste.

Jung jumps up, waving his hands

in the air.

I try to look like I don't notice...

Persistent fucker comes

towards me. 

"Oh hi, Carl."

He leans into my ear 

and whispers, 

"Word to your mother."

and the he's gone,

consumed by the 

ever rotting

pile of 

elephant shit. 

The room is starting to smell

like rotting lies

and facades.

Maggots are eating the corpses

of moral-less-humans.

Of the diddlers of 

mop top boys and

pony tailed girls, 

even the maggots choke. 

Santa Plays Favorites While Capitalists Monetize False Gods, and Children Shrink Back in Horror

It's December, 25th, 2020,

Christmas, a shit year,

and the general consensus

is that

nobody enjoys it.

I know I don't...

Growing up, you know,

that moment

I believed in it,

I knew Santa 

played favorites.

It was obvious 

in comparison

to my friends.

For me

Christmas exposed 

the fraud

that continues

to this day,

of peace on Earth,

good will to man... Happy Holidays!

Hark, the herald angels 

sing,

glory to the

gifted bling

More people

suicide

this time of year...than any other.

Probably

from all

this peace,

and love.

Christmas has

historically been

a co-opted holiday.

Right now it's

the capitalist's turn,

at peace, 

and love. 

So far

they're

fucking it up too.

While we,

those forgotten by

Christmas past

try to forget 

past Christmases. 

You Smell of Babylon

You smell of Babylon, the desert breeze carries over the scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener. 

The smell of Babylonian excess oozes from your pores like the pink sludge used to make your convenient, microwavable, processed burgers. 

The smell of Babylon, pollution, pretty smog orange sunsets, overflowing sewers emitting gasses through manhole covers, a byproduct of our consumption, hidden by reality TV, and the real pox on humanity, erectile disfunction. 

Nearsighted gazing at genitalia as the fires burn, siren's wail, and millions bitch that their favorite reality shows are interrupted by reality. 

The smell of Babylon is unrecognizable to you anymore. Like cat ladies who can't smell cat piss any longer because they got used to it... You got used to it. The smell, hidden in plain sight...which is what that whore wants. 

Complacent submission. Your heart doesn't have to be in it as long as you follow the path of destruction. Subconscious obedience to outlandish comodified schemes, live, laugh, love even though you lost ability to do either. Platitudes of happiness and your best life now fall on programmed ears, that devour it like a dog lapping up it's own vomit. Animation powered by new and improved, gluten free, consumption of products designed to dull the senses into submission, while pre-planned gears of control turn and grind away effortlessly. 

Just thought you should know I smell it on you. 

Sometimes You Need to Lay Down After Talking Quantum Physics and Mortality

Sometimes You Need to Lay Down After Talking Quantum Physics and Mortality

Getting older, relative to time,

past and future 

exist to form

our present, our now, 

our ever 

fleeing moments...

Like holding a child's hand in a crowd, 

being pulled in all directions, 

the moments pull to the past 

-Fuck this kid has been working out-

Sometimes the little bastard 

wants to rip

your arm towards

the future, 

which really doesn't

look that big,

and isn't a real threat.

We all know where we end up...the act of death that is.

After that, who knows and who cares?

They say with age, 

relative to time that doesn't exist, brings wisdom.

Wisdom in the moment

dictates I act

in the moment. 

a refutable law of physics 

made possible 

by the moment 

we look back, 

or to the future...that doesn't exist.

Anger is an Energy

I totally stole the title to this from John Lydon of PiL and Sex Pistols fame. A hero of my youth...now not so much. We grew apart, sorry dear Johnny. However, your words have stuck with me. 

I live, rather successfully I might add, with PTSD. At times it has been pretty severe. It is the one part of my mental illness where I can  dissociate and don't remember much after an episode. But, like I said, I'm rather successful controlling my shit. 

There are times though. 

Through therapy I started looking backwards in time at my childhood, the abuse, neglect, rape, and anger at it all. That anger has been at the surface most of my life, definitely my whole adult life. 

That's a part of PTSD. All that anger comes from circumstances beyond my control. It is a natural reaction when trying to make sense of trauma. 

My path these days is more of identifying my triggers, accessing if they are anger worthy (more often they're not) and isolate until I calm down. It doesn't happen often anymore. 

When I woke up this morning I could feel anger tapping my shoulder. This morning my voices were louder and more aggressive than usual. It's my normal but it doesn't mean it doesn't mess with me at times. I admit, I started letting it get worse. I don't know why, I entertained it, but by mid morning I was a short fuse looking for a flame. That flame took the form of my puppy eating my sandwich off the table. I flipped shit, she ran, I had a sudden urge to hit something and even raised my fist, but stopped in a instant realization of what was happening. The dog running from me probably helped that along. So, I immediately started my ritual of isolation and music. I'm happy that I didn't dissociate. 

This hasn't happened in awhile. That I caught it in the midst of it is a win for me. 

Anger is an energy that gains inertia if you let it. My whole day is one of maintaining some sort of control of the shit going on in my head. I'm not always successful. Most times I am though. 

Anger is a destructive energy always. Over the years my anger has hurt people. The fucked up thing is that it makes me angry thinking about how my anger has destroyed. Angry at my anger. Really, it comes down to me being angry with myself. That I lost control and hurt people. Anger is a powerful energy.

I own it all. Owning it helps me deal with it all. It gives me a frame of reference that helps me remember that person is not who I really am. It shows me how far I've come and that my life right now is on the right path. Even if I have a little episode now and then. 

I refuse to let anger own me. 

I just need to keep reminding myself of that.

Compassion Through Understanding

This is my father. On the back of this photo he wrote, in his squiggly, septuagenarian handwriting,

Bob Scott

1943

Age 19

Silver Star

Midway and Sub Crew

I chose this picture because it reminds me that at one time my dad was a kid and the person I saw growing up wasn't the same person. Just knowing that helps me come to terms with all the shit my brothers and sisters went through as children. 

My father was in the Navy during WW2. He told me multiple times that his small stature ensured he would serve on subs. And he did...on the USS Pickerel. For what ever reason (because my dad always had a different story as to why) he stayed back at Midway while the Pickerel went on it's last mission. It was sunk off the coast of Japan. The first sub lost in that area. He was on that sub when it was hit roughly a year earlier. 

After WW2 my dad enlisted in the Army. He served as a warrant officer as a CID investigator during the Korean War. It was in Korea where he was shot in the leg by some low level black market vendor, an American...his words, not mine. Other accounts vary, sometimes it was a Korean. A lot of the variations depended on how much Seagram's he drank that night. He had the DD214 and Purple Heart to prove something happened. The details were always bullshit. These days I tend to think those stories were a way for him to forget what really happened.

My father was an interesting person in a character development sort of way. I could never create a character with such complexity well enough. My father did it though. 

My whole conscious life I have looked at my father as full of shit.

It's all justified. 

From the time he left our family to start a new family when I was four, me sitting in front of our apartment at ten, waiting three hours for my dad to pick me up for a Dodgers game, being left stranded at multiple locations in the US and Mexico, and everything in between, I have abandonment issues. 

I'm working on it.

I hated my dad for a long time. All my life I saw the conman, the grifter. I bought into what I saw as his humanitarian side, then rejected it. Now, years later I find myself seeing it for what it was...a broken person wanting to help other broken people.

This is where a potential mindfuck comes into play. 

My father was an alcoholic and junky on and off all of my life. He had some clean moments typical of a lifelong addiction. Most of my memories are a mix of both clean and using. My father was also a master's level psychologist, and later got an honorary doctorate. He worked in the field of addiction as a counselor, and later executive director of treatment centers in Southern California, Arizona and Indiana. 

Years earlier, after getting out of prison in Florida he was clean. He moved back to my grandparents, and enrolled in college. While there, in the throes of newfound sobriety, he helped start a lot of AA groups in Southern Indiana as well as getting involved in the General Baptist Church, eventually being ordained. It was also during college that my dad met my mom. 

I recently found out that my parent's marriage was one of convenience for my pops. Religious beliefs of others had a part. That's a whole story in and of itself. It's one I'm still processing, but I will write about it I'm sure. 

This year has been one of healing. In the process of figuring out why I am the way I am I have been able to see the why in those closest to me. It's like I have grown in empathy for those who have hurt me. At least those with a blood attachment.

My relationship with both of my dead parents has been a rollercoaster of love and hate. But now the cars have stopped and the bar is lifting and it's time to exit the ride on the love side. 

I'm not saying what they did is cool. I will never justify it. But I understand the why now. 

My whole life has been spent alone, yelling, "WHY!" into the wilderness. I am starting to get an understanding. 

And with understanding there is compassion. 

And with compassion there is love. 

A Little Milestone to Share

I don't know why this is so important to me right now, but I have been thinking a lot about my mental illness and how I have been seeing positive changes in how I deal with it on a daily basis. I have said many times that I don't suffer from mental illness, I live with it. What I have found is that by changing my perspective I have been able to navigate past obstacles previously debilitating.

I have, at times, extreme social anxiety. My normal is a 1 to 2 these days. Sometimes situations will cause it to spike. When that happens it intensifies the noise in my head, I become paranoid and believe people are judging me, hate me and wish me dead. At this point one voice will point out these thoughts from other people. One situation is shopping. How I have navigated this in the past is to bring someone with me. I don't want that for the rest of my life. This week I did a couple test runs. They were just  runs, by myself, no safety net folks, to the hardware store and Dollar General. Both trips were successful. I maintained my normal. I even had a quick conversation with the cashier at Dollar General. 

I haven't been able to do that in a year and a half. I've done it before, but never that easy. What is happening to me?

I feel a sense of accomplishment, and progress. PMA saves the day.

Maybe that's why it's so important to me right now. 

Do You Remember...

The other night we had a guest stay over. We are around the same age, have similar backgrounds, so we had plenty to talk about. Somehow we got on to remember when topics. There were a lot of them, but one sticks out. Remember when cops did cool things like have you follow their taillights because you were obviously drunk and underage? Ok, maybe that's a bad example.

Here's one. Back in the mid 80s I owned a 72 Nova SS. On the outside the car was a shoebox of rust and faded paint. It was pretty much stock everything. But it was fast, and people can't see the rust when you whiz by. That was a problem for me at times. One time I was driving home from a friends. It was late, after midnight. I'm driving on Boston rd at maybe 85. It was hard to tell because the speedo needle bounced at higher speeds. Lucky for me there was a cop at the bottom of the hill to tell me. Fuck!

I had the plates of my old Pontiac on this car.

I didn't have insurance.

I dont have bail money.

The lights went on before I got to him. I pulled over. I got out of the car because back then it wasn't a big deal. I asked how fast he clocked me. 83. Then he asks me to pop the hood.

I see where it was going quickly and go full on gearhead with this cop. We talk about cars for a good bit. He tells me about his first car and lamenting that he has a station wagon now, but its fast off the line. As we part ways he tells me to slow down. I tell him I will. I lied. He knew it.

I shared that story and another story that involved a fat cop who I would see every morning at Dunkins eating a jelly donut and drinking black coffee. He was a slob. But he was a nice guy. He'd always greet me the same way, in his thick Massachusetts accent, "Kevin, how in the hell ah ya?"

"Been better, you know?"

"That's good, son."

I had a habit of giving cops false names back then. I still will in the right situation. That situation is on a need to know basis, and sometimes they don't need to know. This guy was an idiot, but he was a pleasant enough person.

These days I don't see that interaction. Nowadays our interactions are tense from the beginning. Both sides sizing each other up. Both sides expecting the worst. In general, that's a really fucked up way for people to first meet. Imagine if every interaction we had, with cashiers, the post office clerk, the drive thru speaker at an In and Out Burger, was adversarial from the start.

It would suck. Clearly we can agree on that. Maybe not. Some people are assholes. Most aren't though.

Right here I want to say that this isn't us, we can do better. I'm hesitant. Can we? I mean, look at history. If precedent dictates the future, we're fucked, folks.

Ok, I feel I need to apologize for the following quote only because I really do beat the bag out of it. But it's timeless advice.

"There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Kurt Vonnegut

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