Saturday, December 16, 2006

Tampered Medication

12.16.06--I've had a sick headache now for two complete days, caused by tampered medication.  Because the hospitalization and psychotropic drugs of October and November left so much cerebrospinal fluid in my brain, Dr. Huaman wrote out another prescription for Diamox.  I took it for two days and it really helped.  I could hear the buzzing subside in my head and I wasn't suffering so much from the chronic daily headaches that have really been draining my energy.  Then I stupidly left my fanny pack in the house while I went out, and I knew as soon as I looked that the drugs had been tampered with.  They had that shiny glossy look instead of their normal matte finish.  Still, I went ahead and took one.  Immediately the buzzing in my head became so loud I could not stand it, and I came down with the headaches that have become unfortunately familiar to me since I was put on psychotropic drugs.  Because I am so desperate to get this cerebrospinal fluid in my brain down to normal levels, I went to the pharmacy and paid a full, uninsured price for another prescription, even though it had the same glossy finish that told me it was tampered with.  But I want so much to get rid of these chronic headaches and avoid surgery.  This time the medication made me violently ill immediately.  I think it was designed to do that  I think I am just being harassed by the very same people who have made my life sheer hell for years in some kind of perverse, inhumane belief that this will lead to healing.  It just leads to suffering and the full resolve that I will never more have anything to do with the entitity behind it.  I know that it is the Roman Catholic Church members and Opus Dei who are doing the dirty work (I saw the man in the pharmacy who I believe was ultimately responsible for the tampered medication--he must have brought the tampered bottle), though I suspect there may be another party involved behind the scenes, but I think that while the government psychs were behind the psychotropic drugs, they don't cause suffering just for the sake of suffering.  Only the sick, ideological Christians do that. 

 Someone IM'ed me anonymously the other day, "Always Respect Others."  I wasn't sure what they were talking about--perhaps my profile at Titacarmen in which I make it clear that I don't want anything to do with anyone of the Spiritual Life Institute or Paul DeBlassie.  But if it was one of TPTB that IM'ed me--how dare they?  They talk about respect and yet throw me in jail on bogus charges where I encounter abuse nearly daily for six months from an incompetent, corrupt correctional system, they fire me from jobs, they force feed me drugs, including psychotropic drugs that have left my brain and body battered and permanently damaged, they violate every civil right guaranteed me by the Constitution, and they want me to show respect?  I think I've shown great Christian forbearance, so much so that I'm angry with myself for not taking more appropriate revenge.  I'm tired of being violated and I will push back, and I have a long memory, and I will get satisfaction (if only assurance from the Lord that S/He will mete out the justice--and the Lord does).

     In the meantime I have to struggle through these sick headaches.  I start training for a job Monday, and I hope that I didn't make a big mistake, because I am very unhealthy right now and if the headaches are too bad or I am doped up via the workplace, I will be in big trouble.  I will have to quit and will have lost my unemployment.  The only thing I am praying for is the grace and strength to perserve for three months, which is how long the job lasts.  Three months, God.  Help me to survive the muscle spasms (caused by the damned psychotropic drugs I took) and daily headaches for just three months--that is all I ask and pray...

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Intersexed Part IIA

Intersexed: Part II

I am writing this on November 30th, and have not been feeling well, and still don’t.  I have researched it on the Web and I think the 30 day shot of Haldol is responsible.  It is responsible for the constant headaches and lethargy, the chronic and painful rigidity of my upper back and neck which makes it hard to even sit at the computer, and even the resurgence of my asthma and allergies (I read that Haldol even causes bronchial spasms).  It has been years since I have needed a daily inhaler like I do now.  Today is the 30th day, so I am trying to force myself to write, despite the pain in my shoulders and neck.  Given my bodily oversensitivity to drugs, I expect to be impacted by the Haldol for yet another 30 days, if not more.

     When I was given Haldol in the emergency room it caused a severe case of akathisia.  It took everything I had not to run out, and I wasn’t fully oriented to reality by that time, so they had to give me an immediate benzodiazapene sedative (can’t remember which one, but the benzo family works really well with my system).   I can honestly say that I have never felt such terror in my life, and I have lived a high risk life, and worked with assaultive inmates in a maximum security prison (big badass dudes threatening to kill me inches from my face), and so what did the doctors do---give me a 30 day shot of the poison on my last day in the hospital.  More and more I am convinced that the majority of doctors don’t even realize the gravity of the complications they create when they prescribe medication, nor do I think a significant number of them care.  I know whoever was responsible for ordering that shot doesn’t.  What happened at the hospital should have been enough contraindication.  One of these days I am going to write of the veritable drug-induced hell that I went through at the psychiatric hospital, but the pain is still too raw.  I need to get some distance before I can write of that..  So I am going to write of another difficult topic—coming to terms with with my intersexuality or hermaphroditism.

     I think I have successfully come to terms with it.  I say that because now I can read a book on it, whereas before, I couldn’t even read about it.  The book is Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex.  It is a pretty clinical historical book, but even so the first time I picked it up, I found it too much to look at.  It didn’t help that the book is full of pictures that that I find distasteful, no matter how “objectively”presented.  But the pictures, and the book itself, reminds me really of how lucky I am.  For my genitalia is unambiguous and uncomplicated by striking deviance or deformity, unlike a lot of my intersexed brothers and sisters. 

     I didn’t feel lucky when my intuition first informed me the day after, in the twilight zone between sleeping and waking.  I was angry, and even moreso because I feel so isolated and alone when I deal with traumatic events, whereas most people are at least allowed a support network.  To this day, no doctor has even come forward with the truth, even though the revelation has been spread to the most casual of acquaintances, and yes, I pick it up immediately.  Nor didit help that I was catching really negative vibes from my neighbors, but I think now, that my neighbors were misinformed by someone,and that they thought that I was transgendered---a man who chose an operation to become a woman rather than a born hermaphrodite.  This negativity from others came on top of my own negative reaction, once the initial shock and disbelief had worn off.  I strongly identified myself as a woman and did not want to think of myself as a man who had been born in, and with a woman’s body.  But whatever my shortcomings, I am always ruthlessly honest with myself, and all the little lifelong clues started adding up.  So then I became angry because I didn’t know who or what I really was---there’s a word, “hermaphrodite”, but really there is very little substance to that term,  just a lot of shocking images that I don’t identify with at all.  While I don’t believe that my vocation is to define my unusual state,  I do have to come to terms with it.  This is hard when I can only speculate what my exact condition is.  I think it is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, but if so how did I get such a well-developed uterus and ovaries?  I wish I had a medical doctor to explain this to me.  The only other option is some kind of chimerical or mosaic condition—xxyy, where I am really the result of two fused zygotes.  I think though, that I am an AIS male, even if I do have a perfectly normal uterus and ovaries.  First of all, I have the body type---smooth-skinned, long limbed, rounded hips and breasts. I have very powerful musculature—more male than female.  I’ve always been more dismayed than bemused by how easily I “buff out” without even trying.  I am atypically short rather than tall, but that clearly is the result of genetics.  I think that whatever precipating developmental factor in the womb caused my autism also caused the AIS.

      Psychologically, I also seem to be more male than female.  My dreams especially are helpful in this regard because they are “objective” evidence of what is going on at the psychic level.  Last night I dreamed of Kim.  I learned a long time ago that Kim represents my feminine self—especially in regard to emotional expressiveness--which I strive to be and have, but which just doesn’t come naturally.  Poor Kim.  She had to carry all the femininity in the family, including her older “sister’s”.   In the dream I was under attack by a tiger but could barely escape it, even when I shot it, but while I ran inside and locked the door, Kim was out there with it, and the tiger did not bother her at all, which stunned me.  She ended up knocking on the door and I opened up to let her in.  I’m not sure which emotion I am trying hard to suppress.  My primary emotion right now is loneliness, and sadness at being alone and unemployed, and I admit it.  But I no longer am sad or distressed because of my intersexed condition. 

Intersexed: Part IIB

   Part II-B (read immediately after Part II-A

At first I was very distressed because of my intersexed condition.  In addition to picking up the negative vibes from others, I had to ask myself if somehow I had sinned in the womb.  Now, I know for those with no religious sensibilities, this is difficult to comprehend.  But for me, everything revolves around the Will of God, and my cooperation with, or rebellion from it.  The psalm that I have read the most times is Psalm 139 (always trying to come to terms with the restrictive limits placed on me because of my female gender) which emphasizes how God knows us, even in the womb.  So God had to create my embryonic sex as male, so I had to ask myself, “did I purposely reject my God-given male sex in the womb?”  Everything I know about the natural order of fetal development and God’s grace requiring free will tells me that there is no way a fetus can sin. (Of course, if I believed in reincarnation there would be a possibility of  negative karma carried over from another lifetime, but that is too big of a leap against my worldview…)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

     My other big fear was that I had struggled and prevailed against a fraternal twin and the resulting legacy was AIS (or for that matter mosaical xxyy chromosomes).  This was why I pushed so hard to have a CT scan done of my abdomen.  I wanted to know if there was anything else in there that wasn’t supposed to be there—like the remnants of another embryo/fetus.  But even though nobody tells me anything, my intuition would have letmeknown, and it did not tell me anything, so whatever happened was developmental.  So now my belief is that I am just as God wanted me to be, a third human estate—intersexed.  And because God willed and created it, it is good—not a deformity, tragedy, or even personal sin.  God wanted me to be a hermaphrodite, God wanted me to be autistic, and I accept myself fully just as God made me.

      If there is any sin involved, it is in the rigid dualism of traditional thinking that insists on inflexible binary sex roles when the reality is much different, and I am living physiological proof!  But formed as I am by my culture, and having spent years trying to conform to the hateful, ultra-rigid sex role dichotomy mandated by the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, I experienced a psychological shakeup as I realized the mind-boggling extent of my difference.  After all, for years, I had insisted that while masculine/feminine roles were much more fluid and androgynous than the traditionalists admitted, I never realized the extent of the intrinsic proof that I carry within my own body.  I had to wonder “am I a man or am I a woman?” and then realize that I was neither—I was truly an androgyne, which made me doubt the authenticity of every “feminine” role I had consciously undertaken, which for me is a larger number than the feminine roles that I do unconsciously.

    Doubting my authenticity led to a mini-psychological crisis, so I turned to the writing of my all-time favorite psych—Scott Peck.  I don’t have his best books.  I gave Colleen The Road Less Travelled, and the last time I saw it, the book was in tatters from her multiple rereadings of it.  I think that book is part of the reason why she now is an RN insteadof a underemployed, dysfunctional alcoholic.  I also loaned out People of the Lie, another incredible book that reveals Peck’s profound and true grasp of the dynamics of evil.  For all his medical and psychiatric training, Peck knows that there are evil spirits.  He has led Christian exorcisms.  I wish, for my intellect’s sake, that he would have been able to place the theology more clearly in a definitive psychological framework, but true evil, like grace, originates from the spiritual realm, and thus eludes easy rational explanation.  So I picked up the book I did have: A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered.  Immersing myself in the thought and words of a deep and truthful thinker always orients me back to Truth and Self, even though the subject matter may not be apropos.  Sometimes though, fate intervenes and the seemingly ill-suited subject material becomes exactly what the doctor ordered.  That is what happened to me.

   Peck wrote of the need for a restoration of civility in society and relationships.  That was an opportune subject for me because I was agonizing over all the times that I had played the feminine role because civility required it.  Was I a phony since it really wasn’t natural but just a role I consciously adopted?  I especially wondered about allowing myself to be used as an anima catcher of projection by men.  Women project too, but I can accept their projections much more readily.  I don’t know if this is because my primordial psyche is male, or if it is because generally, women are less likely to be so psychologically needy and greedy as men (single men, including celibates and “players” are the worst).  In anycase, I’m always aware of how much willed effort it takes on my part to respond to a man who is projecting heavily onto me.  As a youthful woman I really resented it, and would close off completely.  But as I began to read Jungian psychology, I realized that this was a vital function performed by women on behalf of men.  Peck would say that cooperating with it (within boundary limitations, of course) is civil.  As I became more aware of the civil actions performed by men on behalf of women—providing escorts late at night from the library, holding open doors, and even, on occasion, “coming to the rescue” of women (as happened to me when I was 20 and was attacked by three rottweilers as a pack)—I recognized the need to reciprocate.  So I began to allow anima projections onto me.  But I have never felt entirely comfortable was with that.  So aware of the startling difference of my true sex as hermaphrodite, I started to ask myself, "How inauthentic have I been?" and now that I know, "how can I continue to be so inauthentic by cooperating with these anima projections?"  
    But right while I'm reading Scott Peck's book on the urgent need for a revival of civility in social relationships, I took a bus ride on Central Avenue, the most crowded bus line, right through the heart of the poorest and most predatory part of town.  I was in one of my "observing humanity" moods, and was suffering from pain in my lower back and leg, so I sat down to see what civility might transpire on a packed bus with no seats available.  A young man carrying a toddler got on, and I was gratified to observe another man give up his seat for him.  At the next stop an older woman got on, but a seat was available by then and she took it.  She was clearly a Christian, but it was not the large, antique-looking metal cross that gave her away.  It was the Holy Spirit that animated her, giving her the vigor and alertness of a much younger woman.  At the next stop, a middle-aged man loaded down with bags and a large box got on.  The older Christian woman stood up, giving up her seat.  To his credit, the man demurred, saying, "I don't want to take your seat."  The woman insisted, saying, "It doesn't bother me to stand, and you are carrying much more than me."  So the man gratefully accepted the seat, arranging all his packages and a woman who looked over sixty, but stood as erect and strong as if she were thirty, stood up.  This is civility in reality, not role enactment, and thus it is even more meritorious. Contrast this with an experience related by Henri Nouwen which happened while he was in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Rome.  He was wearing a Roman collar, and when a heavily pregnant woman boarded the bus, he gave her his seat-the civil thing to do.  Another cassocked priest was on board the bus, and Nouwen reports that the Italian priest was furious with him, glaring at him hatefully for giving up his seat to a pregnant woman.  The Italian priest was stuck in his role in which he is "too good" to give up a seat.  These Central Avenue bus riders were not acting out societal roles---with a twentysomething man carrying a preschooler onto a bus, and an older woman giving up her seat to a younger man.  Thank God the United States is not a society of rigid roles and expectations, but civility is just as important, though based on necessity, rather than role expectance.  
    I suppose now that I could justify being emotionally stingy and refuse to accept to play the role of anima to men anymore, since after all, that is not part of my innate psychological makeup.  But I agree with Peck.  There is a crying need for civility and I prefer to be civil, and that means that I extend myself to help others in any way that I can, even if it does not come naturally or feel particularly fulfilling.  I cannot blame a man for projecting onto me (though I can expect them to be mature about it), since after all my gender is clearly female.  After 44 years of living as a woman, I prefer that my gender be female.  As a young child or adolescent, I think I would have preferred to be male, but I have learned to be a woman and accept a woman's role, and while it still doesn't come completely naturally, that is who I prefer to be.  At first I thought about changing my gender because I felt like a freak, and was angry that while the most casual of acquaintances seemed to know the truth, nobody told me anything (and on top of that I was allmessed up on the psychotropic drugs that I was being force-fed).  Then I went through a crisis with my body image.  One day while I was working out in the gym, I looked in the mirror and despaired at my broad shoulders and deep, wide chest that quite clearly was never meant to sport my widely spaced, pop-out boobs.  I realized that I felt more comfortable carrying my body like a man, but while it “felt right,” in the mirror it looked all wrong. It was confusing. So like a gawky teenager dealing with gender identity issues again, I struggled with whether to do what felt right or what looked right.  In the end, practicality won out. My options are to accept my body as it is, or have a complete hysterectomy, undergo expensive and protracted surgeries and become a 5 feet tall man with pear shaped hips and peach fuzz on my face.  I'd look ridiculous.  Not to mention I'd have a tiny little construct of a penis that probably couldn't even pleasure the woman I love, or me, for that matter!  No, thank you.  I have to accept myself as I am, and as a woman there are certain role expectations, and while I believe they are fluid and flexible, they still are important, and I have to acknowledge and endure them. Sometimes they cause me mild psychic discomfort (at the thought that I am being a phony) or great pain and suffering (as when I wished to be a priest in the Roman Catholic tradition), but acknowledging and overcoming guilt and pain is what has made me the sensitive and gifted person that I am, and so I praise God for I am wonderfully made!!!!

 

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Continuing to Feel Under the Weather

12.06.08--I have been working on the second part of my entry regarding my intersexed condition, but I find myself stymied by low energy, limited ability to concentrate, and constant headaches.  I feel a lot like I did when I was on short-term disability from the lithium when I suffered from so much fatigue and inability to do much of anything except watch TV.  Detoxing from these drugs with which my brain has been traumatized, is a process.  It's not going to happen just because "30 days are up".  In a way I am glad that I am unemployed, because I don't have the energy level now to work eight hours a day.  I wish I could read or work out or ride a bike, but the body and brain just wants rest...I am able to play a little bit of music.  That is how I get into the Christmas season, so things could be worse.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving

11/23/06—Thanksgiving Day, and I have to struggle to be thankful.  I’m fighting a very real depression as I try to get over an illness (my allergies and asthma has resurfaced for the first time in years), try to get over the financial and emotionally devastating impact of my recent involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, as well as deal with a whole host of negative issues from unemployment to legal crisis.

     I went to Eucharist at All-Angels church last night, not so much as because I am depressed as because the intensity of my personal prayer and yearning is so great that it needs to be relieved by community worship.  I had decided that I needed Eucharist after a dream in which my father was driving me around and agreed to wait while I went to get breakfast.  But I didn’t like their ready to go breakfast so I made myself a huge “cafeteria” burrito, but then when I wanted to pay for it, they wanted 63 dollars for it, so I told them to keep it, and woke up hungry (I wake up hungry a lot because I’m doing serious dieting).  I interpret the dream to mean the SLI and Opus Dei, who I identify as abusive patriarchal authority, just like my father, are trying to feed me food I find inedible or overpriced.  I decided that the dream was telling me I needed spiritual sustenance, but because of the abuse I have received at the hands of the Roman Catholic community, I will not return there.  The SLI and Opus Dei probably think they have got an angle on me, but they are so wrong.  They have destroyed my dignity as a child of God and turned me into a thing, and while I cannot prevent them from wreaking their suffering upon me, I will no longer be a willing participant in their machinations.  And I certainly will not identify myself as one of them, either now, or ever in the future.  I don’t believe in spiritual conversion through abuse andpower tripping, ever, under any circumstance, and I will not identify with any religious community that does that, and the fact that Roman Catholicism is so vulnerable to that is their serious sin, and I just want to be separated forever from that worldview. 

    I don’t know that I want to be identified as an Episcopalian either, though there is much that is attractive about their community—sacramental, but more open and inclusive, and certainly more gay-friendly than Catholicism (for I intend to be a sexually active lesbian as soon as I escape the repression from the religious right, and I am free to be me).  I just want to be a faithful Christian layperson, and not really closely affiliated with any denomination.  It did help though, to go to church.  The homily was from the gospel, “behold the lilies of the field.”  The first time I really prayed that gospel, I was 19 years and flat busted broke.  My family had sent me money to join them in California because a promising summer job in Memphis TN, had netted me $60.00.  I knew I wasn’t going back to Vanderbilt, and I had no idea what my future held; for that matter I had no idea who I was.  I was at the very beginning of my year I now know as my Post-Adolescent Identity Crisis, and it was only my father’s death that resolved that.   So I was even more vulnerable than I am now, when I’m much more sure of who I am and have a good idea about the possibilities for the future, both hopeful and scary.  I just need this surrogate patriarchal father who has put their hooks into me to die a natural death (or maybe I have to kill them).  One thing is for sure---my declaration of independence from them has no effect whatsoever.  I am not a free person to them.  I am a thing to be used for their purposes and end.  So I have to seek my sustenance where I can until I can break free, and All-Angels seems to be the most promising place for that.  As the priest (a woman, I might add), preached, lilies are nothing but dead pulpy masses on the ground this time of year, and as such are a symbol of hope.  I feel like a pulpy dead mass, but my faith leads me to hope.  I just have to hold on to this hope during these long days of unemployment and intense prayer.m  God has a plan for me.  It will come when it comes.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Realization of being Intersexed:Part I

11.19.06--As you probably can tell, I feel a lot better.  Hopefully, I will feel well enough to continue with part II later this week

    There is an emerging inner spiritual life, but I am very wary of being misunderstood, by both friends and enemies, and since I still feel very weak and subdued, I prefer to keep this to myself for now.  But that is OK, because there is plenty to write about, even with that on hold.  I am strongly centered, not because of the drugs I have been forced to take, but because I am now off of them.  All of the craziness I was experiencing before was caused by a desperate need to escape the drugs.  I think it also helps that my mom lived with me for two weeks.  We don’t have much in common, but I always am much more centered and productive when I live with someone else.  I don’t like living alone, at all—so much so that I would prefer to live with an incompatible roommate, rather than alone.  But that is not an option right now, so I have to struggle to hold onto the centeredness. despite the very real loneliness that I feel right now.

     Still, there is good news. I am happy because I am losing a little bit of weight—in all the wrong places, but I’ll take it!  I’m happy too, because whatever is going on with me hormonally seems to be back on its normal course (before TPTB started experimenting with drugs on me).  My last period was the 20th and around the 11th and 12th, I experienced the “PMS bloat.”  Since my period is normally on a 3 week cycle, this was right on time.  The problem has been that for the past year and a half, this bloat lasts for days and even weeks at a time, and while it lasts, I am miserable.  I retain fluid, my digestion practically stops, I become more susceptible to gaining lasting weight, and the bloat makes me look pregnant.  But yesterday I woke up with the “PMS” symptoms and bloat gone.  I even had a little bit of spotty underwear this morning, and a couple days later my period finally came.  I will miss my periods when they leave me for good.  They are the foundation of my identity as a woman, which brings me to another sensitive topic that I have been avoiding—the recent revelation that I am a “true hermaphrodite,” or intersexed.  I was pretty upset at first, but now I am dealing with it just fine in my mind, but it is so hard to put it in writing, partly because it is so complicated.

 

    I don’t feel like a freak of nature, but quite honestly I am.  Outwardly, including genitally, I have all the component pieces of a woman, but chromosomally I am male, and I have testicles inside my abdominal cavity.  As usual, nobody told me.  I had to figure it out on my own.  I am so tired of this.  I long for someone to talk to, truthfully, on the real.  I’m so tired of being lied to.  But that is not where I am at today, so I have to

struggle to be honest and real and truthful, on my own, and on paper, not just in my head.

    

The revelation must have been an even bigger shock to the “religious right” element (most notably the Spiritual Life Institute and Opus Dei), of the triad which comprises TPTB.  After all, they are the ones who initially impugned my psychological health, not from any true desire for holistic healing on my behalf, but merely because they won’t accept my homosexual orientation as natural or healthy.  That is their stupidity and shortcoming, and I no longer have any desire to even dialogue with them, but I wish I could have seen their faces when they learned.  I think I would have laughed until I cried.  And I would have cried, because of the years of injustice and suffering I have endured at their hands while they try to shock me into conversion to their constricted model of normality.  I was in jail (I spent six months there) when they first gave me the House, Person, Tree test.

 

      My guard was totally on high alert around the woman who administered the test.  My intuition told me not to trust her or the process at all, but I complied fully.  When the psych got all excited over the naked pictures of the Person (man and woman), I knew I had to investigate it further myself when I could, even though it was months later.  I learned from my investigation that Person pictures are usually drawn with clothes, and that females drawn with jewelry were usually drawn by men seeking transgender operations into females; i.e., men who felt like they were really women, and who wanted to become women.  I had drawn my female with lots of jewelry.  At the time I realized that I was a little bit deviant from the norm, but surely, I thought, anyone who really knew me, would know that my psychological makeup was much more evidently within the norm than deviant.  But for all that I have shared more information about myself to the religious right, both through the SLI and through counseling with DeBlassie, it’s clear to me those people never knew me at all.  They only saw me through a filter of what they wanted me to be, and I spent too many years of my life, hating myself and trying to warp myself intotheir idealized picture of what a female should be.  And then, irony of ironies, I’m not a female at all!  Of course, I drew the picture like a man who feels himself to be really a woman, because fundamentally that is exactly what I am!

 

     I have the body of a woman, I look like a woman, and I have been socialized as a woman, but really I am not a woman, nor am I really a man.  That is the hardest part of the discovery---that I belong to this little tiny minority of humanity called intersexed, and yet so much of what I know and predicate about the human condition is based on a binary dualism of sex and gender that I completely elude.  I am both male and female by physiological determinants—and yet I am neither.  I was not accorded masculine privilege by my culture, but neither do I think that I have what most females have to help them compensate for their traditionally subordinate position in society—namely, the ability to be a mother.  I have the physical wherewithal to be a mother.  I just don’t want to be one.  I’ve always told people, quite truthfully, “I don’t want to be a mother; I want to be a father.

 

     However, it is in the realm of the psychological that I feel most at a loss for understanding.  I always knew that the object of my childish oedipal attraction was my mother.  I thought that was why I was lesbian.  Now I have to say that from a psycho-sexual perspective, I’m a “straight” male.  And let me not forget all the Jungian books I have read on the feminine.  As a young woman I had to read books on the female psyche — I didn’t have an inner psychic template to guide me.  No wonder why I am a “double anima” picking up projections from both men and women.  No wonder why I feel so drained, frustrated, and angry when men insist on projecting onto me (and I got to say men are much worse at projection than women, especially celibates).  I don’t have the psychic receptivity to accept and nurture their projections, not because of any immaturity or negativity on my part, but because essentially my primordial psyche is masculine.

 

     Or is it?  I think it is.  I say that because in my dreams, my self that appears as a young child is always a boy.   Then there was the dream I had as a teenager.  In it, I saw a teenage male (naked, with full genitalia, and he was “hung”), and in my dream I saw how it was possible for him to get pregnant (it was complicated and involved props).  But when I woke up, I knew in my gut that now I could get pregnant, even though I had been menstruating for about 3 years at the time of the dream. It was the memory of the dream that enabled me to accept my hermaphroditic reality when my psychic intuition told me the truth.  All of my years of dream interpretation, and everything is all screwed up now.  What is animus?  What is anima? What is self? (that is, in my dreams; in my waking life I know who I am).

 

     First of all, I am intersexed—my sexuality, and quite probably my psyche fall in an indeterminate third category between, and yet incorporating both male and female, of which very little is known or understood.  I don’t know that I will come to understand it in my lifetime, but I can hope that my writing will help myself and otherselucidate more fully this third state.

 

   I do know that my gender is completely and unequivocally female, most of all because that is the way I experience my body.  When you menstruate monthly, or as has happened with me, bi-weekly, it’s kind of difficult to maintain that you are male.   One of Ursula Leguin’s novels is about a world made up of intersexed true hermaphrodites.  The characters have the capacity to be either sex, and can literally choose and change their sex at will, so that for instance, they could be mother of one child and father of another.  I wish I had had that option available to me.  For I think I would have liked to experience at least part of my life as the male gender.  Maybe that is because growing up female in a misogynistic home and patriarchal culture was so hateful to me, but I think part of me longs to be masculine, just as part of me longs to be feminine.  I think, despite my difficulties, I made the right choice to adapt my self-identity as much as possible to my somatic and socially given realities.

 

     I choose to be a lesbian.  Psychically, maybe I am a straight male, but just like I choose to be female, in accordance with my body and social dictum, so do I choose to be sexually oriented to other women in accordance with my desire and preference.  I love the way women feel, the way they smell, and the way they taste.  I like the way I feel more feminine inside when I am flirting with, or engaged in a sexual relationship with one.  Men never make me feel more feminine inside, even when I’m sex-role playing games with them (which I admit on occasion I do, just because it’s easier to function in society playing social roles than to be completely truthful).  The truth is that I don’t feel inferior to men, even though I indulge them and play it that way on occasion, but I do feel that women have a power over me that makes me feel both a little uncomfortable and vindicated at the same time, and that is why I am so attracted by them.

 

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Feverish

11.18.06

Well, my recovery from this sinus/cold congestion has been arrested by the involuntary doping.  Yesterday evening, while running my space heater in my room, I noticed that I was coughing and draining uncontrollably.  So I got up and realized that I was being doped again, probably on speed, and that the airborne irritants were causing the drainage  Suspecting the space heater, I went to bed with no heat, and now this morning, I am sicker than ever.  I feel feverish and my right ear is all clogged up.  I'm miserable.  All I want to do is lay in bed, but Saturday morning yoga is the most mellow and restorative of yoga classes.  If I can force myself to go, I might feel better.  I need to lose weight.  The more I do, the more calories I burn.  So help me God to go.

 

Friday, November 17, 2006

In Despair over being Doped Up Again

11.17.06--I was trying to write on difficult topics but I'm being doped with psychotropic drugs again.  Right now I can barely walk or type, my arms and legs are so heavy.  The first indication was a headache.  I thought I would try to work out the headache by going to the gym and working out, but as I drove to the gym, I realized how seriously autistic I was.  These dumb fucks. Don't they realize what a scary thing it is to be driving and realize you are autistic?  I had a terrible workout, forcing myself to do cardio for 30 minutes with heavy as lead legs.  I'm tired of fighting. My body can't handle it anymore.  It is too weak.  I'm just going to lay down.  I am in despair but nothing i say or do matters.  My body is just experimental fodder to these bastards.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Broken Down Body

11.15.06--Well, my body has utterly collapsed, in weakness and illness.  The sinus infection to which I succumbed, when TPTB first started giving me psychotropic drugs, has taken root, and I am really sick.  There is just too much mucus drainage in my system and it congests my sinuses and goes into my lungs and causes deep coughing.  I am trying to avoid going to the doctor, partly because I don't trust any medical professional right now, and partly because of problems with my COBRA insurance.  If I still feel this bad when my insurance goes through, though, I probably will break down and go.  The penicillin really kicked butt last time, and it is just too tempting to get over this quickly.  At least I don't feel so feverish as I did the last time---I just feel really weak and sick, and I wake up coughing at night.  If I were employed, I would be in a world of suffering, but as it is, I can lay down in bed and take a nap anytime I want.

My body still has not returned to normal from the horrible side effects of the psychotropic drugs.  Last night at yoga, I was dismayed at how "dead" and heavy my muscles still feel--in my back, my trunk, my arms, legs and hips.  At least I am getting some strength back, but nowhere near normal levels.  My body is resilient, but at some point I have to wonder whether I will get back my normal strength.  The suffering has been great--as with the lithium, I can see the suffering etched on my face--probably permanently.

The good news is that I have started to dream again (the drugs totally inhibited my ability to dream, or at least remember them).  It was terribly traumatic not to have my dreams.  I depend on them  so much for my interior conversation.  But I had a dream last night, and while it was not a "good" (i.e."pleasant") dream, I think I am moving closer to identifying the evil spirit within me.  As a matter of fact, I think I may be able to name it, but I don't know that it is a good idea to reveal it.  Of that, I'm sure.  I need to pray before any further discussion or proceeding....

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Weak Body Breaking Down on Me

11/11/06--

Sometimes I wonder why I should bother to write when I just say the same thing over and over again, but somewhere there's got to be a record of just how really bad these drugs are for me--on every level.  My hands and arms are so weak that I can hardly type.  I think they cause too much dopamine to be released, and then neurons for basic physical movement just shut down.  But I am not a doctor, so I only theorize.  However, I do know my body and its responses intimately, and something is really wrong when all I want to do is lay in bed and sleep.  Watching TV places a distant second place.  But I also have lost my ability to concentrate so why watch TV?  It's too hard.  Everywhere, I am getting bad news.  I've got hospital and credit card bills that I can barely stay on top of---especially when I feel too sick and drained to deal with them.  Physically, I am too weak to work out on even the most basic of levels (20 minutes of walking on the cardio machines), at a time when I'm desperate to lose weight in order to preserve my eyesight.  I know a big part of it is fluid retention (I can literally see the swollen ankles and recognize when the csf is affecting my eyesight), but I can't get a medical doctor to help me deal with what I really need help with--the hormonal problems that are causing the fluid retention/weight gain, or even just the intersexed condition.  I have a strong suspicion that getting rid of extraneous gonads would go a long way to normalizing my hormones. 

I also have made up my mind to seek an ally just as soon as I physically feel able to function again.  I am thinking of renewing contact with the Episcopal Church, mainly inspired by the election of a female as primate of the Church.  She is a woman of faith, I can tell, and her vision of church community is the same as mine.  But it is more than one person.  I cannot imagine Opus Dei having the kind of power and exercising the level of abuse that I have experienced at their hands, ever existing in the Episcopal Church.  Under no circumstances or conditions would I ever have anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church.  Opus Dei can torture me all they want (and I know that they are the originators of my legal woes; their stupidity is beyond belief.  But considering that they are mostly brainwashed ideologues I shouldn't be surprised).  However, I am a person of faith, and I may as well support, and be supported by other people of faith whose vision of church and theology I share.  But to be honest, I'm not really a "church-y" kind of person either.  Maybe though I will try it out.

I'm also thinking of applying for law school.  I don't know though that my motivations are sufficient.  Having suffered from so much injustice,  I recognize how importantthe pursuit and practice of law is, but I don't know if it is for me.  I watched the movie, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" today, and I identified all the way with John Wayne.  I am more like a cynical outlaw than an outraged idealist.  (Maybe not though; I just remembered who is on as my screen saver).  Well, these are thoughts I will need to think on, when my mind is clear again.  Not today.

 

Thursday, November 9, 2006

"Broken" mirror neurons

11/9/06--Another day in bed, barely able to function, though I did make an attempt to talk to someone re: my 20,000 dollar hospital bill.  That will have to wait for another day.  I did finish reading some articles on autism in Scientific American.  That is not my usual fare, but I was intrigued, because I recognized my own symptomology in their hypothesis.  The basic hypothesis is that humans have a mirror neuron system that automatically, and intrinsically, "mimics" the physical actions of another human, especially when the imitator can perceive the intent.  These mirror neurons are missing or dysfunctional in autistics.  I immediately recognized my deficiency in this, because I learned a long time ago that I learn very poorly and laboriously when I attempt to imitate someone's action.  The classic example for me (though most certainly not the only one), is following aerobic step activity which makes a lot of complicated moves.  I don't follow an instructor's visual lead;  I'm incapable of doing so.  Instead, I follow their verbal lead.  This can get a little bit complicated, because they can very involved in instructions very fast, and my only recourse is to think faster...which I do.  I'm capable of giving myself instructions, "turn left, sashay right, make a V, grapevine left" with incredible speed. Maybe that is why my brain seems manic depressive to so many people---because I have learned to adapt my dysfunctional way of processing reality by just speeding up the brain, so I can get and give myself the extensive verbal commands I need to use instead of the more efficient neuronal mirroring.  I can't mirror. I hate it when people try to teach me something by having me follow their lead, especially if they don't give me clear, detailed, step-by-step verbal instructions.  I just zone out, and go back at a later time to try to teach myself.

Speaking of zoning out, that is clearly what is happening to me when I am on these drugs that I am being force fed.  I watched a documentary on marijuana last night and as I watched it, I was amazed at how similar the pot experience is to this---the time distortion, the loss of all energy, and appetite drives.  The only thing that is missing is the feeling of intoxication; instead there is a feeling of malaise.  As I watched the documentary, I had to ask myself, "Why are so many people feeling the need to get high?" I think the answer is behind the same reason why so many people want to control me and my naturally high and exuberant spirits.  We live in a society that distrusts the Dionysian, and overemphasizes the Apollonian.  So our teenagers go out on their weekends and guzzle down fifths of booze.  It is not my personal libido they fear; it is libido, or energy in general.  Poor, pathetic sobs.  Well they sure have done a really bad number on me.  My energy is so low that I'm barely able to function.  Insofar as I do, I find myself very autistic. Another interesting thought from the Sci. Am. article... One symptom that really has been puzzling me is the elevated heart rate.  The doctors at LL talked about stress of being enclosed in an institution.  Bullshit.  I was in jail for six months and I never suffered such an elevated heart rate.  I agree with the theory of Sci Am more.  Autistics suffer from elevated stress because our brains process sensory information differently, especially visual and auditory stimuli, and so we are more easily overwhelmed by such information.  I KNOW that these drugs make me more autistic.  I can tell, and a big part of it is the visual stimuli that my brain is processing.  So the ? I would ask my tormentors is why do you force feed me drugs that make me autistic so that I can "appear" more normal in other respects. 
I don't like being autistic. It took me years to adapt myself otherwise.  Why can't you just praise God that I am so high functioning, and just let me be.

I am sick of being me.  I am sick of being autistic, intersexed, with health problems and everybody lying to me.  I am sick of the religious zealots who dog my steps thinking that I am going to have anything to do with them.  God I wish I were a normal person.  But that is not who I am.  I'm tired God.  Please help me

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Exhaustion

God help me...I don't know if I will ever feel human ever again.  The mental energy is energy is there, though seriously restricted.  It is the physical body which cannot act as a vehicle for any of my mental energy.  It literally takes all my energy just to type, and all I want to do is lie down and sleep.  Speaking of vehicles, I figured out today that my truck registration is overdue.  The registration is a perfect example of how I am not able to function when I am on these drugs.  I remember a couple of weeks ago, thinking for the first time that I had to move on the registration.  But it totally eluded my consciousn mind, until today, when I looked and realized I was already delinquent.  So I have to take care of that first thing tomorrow.  I don't know how I can take care of anything as doped up as I am.  But life doesn't stop, just because I feel too sick and drained to function. 

I saw a kickball game while I went for a brief walk in the park.  It was a coed teenage game, and I envied them, and their energy as they played.  Before I was forced into risperdone and depakote, I was force fed speed, and possibly other psychotropic drugs which left me feeling like a drained, enervated senior citizen.  That is the way I feel---like a senior who cannot even get up the energy to walk a mile.  God help me.  Please God free me from these people who are doping me against my will, and give me my energy, my life, my vitality, and my joy back to me again....

Monday, November 6, 2006

Starting to Feel like a recording

11-6

I am so tired of feeling this exhaustion which steals all my energy.  I don't think that people believe me when I tell them how bad I really feel, but I am not exaggerating.  If anything, I underplay how badly I really feel (always the one who keeps pushing on, no matter how much I am suffering).  I believe that the drugs are not supposed to have these type of side effects, but they are.  I don't know if it is my autism or the hormonal problems caused by my intersexed condition.  All I know is that I cannot function with those drugs inside of me.  Today, the big challenge was riding my bike a few blocks to the bank.  Even now, my arms have the heaviness which makes it so difficult to lift my arms to type.  My mom is mad at me.  Dr H is mad at me. They think that I am having some kind of hysterical response to these drugs, but I am not.  I respect and care for both of these people, but I don't know how to get them to recognize, that no matter how implausible, these drugs are having a terrible negative drag on me....

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Getting sicker

11/6/06

Well, the best game of the season is on, along with my favorite commentator (John Madden), and I am too sick to even watch it.  I am suffering from the exact same symptoms that I suffered from when I was forcefed lithium.  I am suffering from that generalized weakness that I feel especially powerful in my joints, which totally stole my strength away last time.  I tried to go to the gym earlier today, and could only do 15 minutes on the treadmill, when I had to give up and go home.  I drove to Red Lobster for dinner, and my knees and legs were so weak that I put the transmission in park mode, while I waited for the light to change.  This morning while calling in to the unemployment line, my arms were so weak that it was a genuine hardship to hold the cellphone up to my ear. 

But right now, it is more than the physical symptoms which bother me--it is the mental and emotional ones.  That is why I cannot watch the game.  It is like I am in an alienated cocoon, and feel nothing--no joy, no excitement, no happiness.  The two top quarterbacks in football are dueling it out in a fast paced pointfest, and I may as well be watching golf.  When I feel this messed up on drugs my memory goes, and I cannot remember the word that I really want.

What I do know though, is that I am "penalized" for emotions (much the same way that I was when I was forced to take lithium).  If  I experience even a little bit of emotion, I feel a "rush" attack my brain, and the weakness assail my body.  This isn't normal and I know it.  I suspect my autism (or maybe something even more idiosyncratic), but I do know that my body will never adjust to these medications.  God help me in the next few weeks.  I hope I don't end up in the hospital.  Even the surgery Dr. H recommends for my eyes is only necessary because the psychotropic drugs are messing up my eyes.  time to lay down.  God help me

Saturday, November 4, 2006

Chemical Castration

11/4/06---

I have a very short time frame in which to write---before I have to take 2 mg of Respirodal (spelling?--I sure as fuck don't care.  I don't intend to take the poison long enough to matter) and 250 mg of Depakote.  Why am I taking them?  The answer to that is longer than I have time for today.  I just want to document the destructive side effects that these drugs have on me.  They turn me into a zombie during the day.  I see people around me who are happy and joyous and able to interact with the reality around them, and I am incredibly sad because when I am on these meds, I cannot do so. 

It also is having the same damaging effect on me physically that it had in the hospital---increasing my resting heart rate and creating a real malaise-like drag that leaves me without energy, ambition, or drive.  I just want to sleep.  Yesterday, during my workout, my normal cardio routine on the machines---3 miles in 30 minutes was completely disrupted.  I did not check my resting heart rate, but I could tell it was greatly elevated because working out in the fatburning zone really slowed me down.  I couldn't even break a sweat.  I kept checking my jugular pulse, and was scared how fast my heart was pounding when I wasn't even sweating.  But it took every bit of energy I had just to go 35 minutes.  Like last year, when I felt much the same way, while being force-fed lithium, I couldn't help but envy the people around me, who were able to really jump into their workout with healthy push and vitality.  I'm so sick of  feeling like an invalid.  I continue to suffer from the heaviness in my limbs.  I don't know when I am going to be healthy again.

Then, there are the mental problems caused by the drugs---especially the loss of my dreams (I'm not dreaming, or if I am, I cannot remember them when I wake up).  This is unacceptable, as my dreams are important for guiding me.  I can't pray.  I don't have the concentration.  I can only read for brief periods of time.  Again, my concentration is practically nil.  And my memory is starting to suffer in the same way it did when I was on lithium.   Currently, I am reading Sangharishita's Survey of Buddhism.  He was writing of vipassana meditation.  So yesterday, I did an internet search for vipassana, and remember that I  found what Iwas looking for.  This morning I started reading again, and ran into the vipassana referrence again, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what I learned in yesterday's search.  At all. 

This is a huge handicap.  A big part of my intelligence has to do with my prodigious memory.  I have an incredible capacity for short term memory, and normally am constantly thinking about topics that I am currently reading about.  This is also the source of my concentration. I cannot ooncentrate or think when I am on these meds, and I am turned into a very average intelligence kind of person.  Now, I am afraid to apply for a challenging job with my mind like this (I want a tech support position).  I don't believe I have the mental capacity right now to successfully understand and complete a rigorous training.

Before I leave I want to say why I am re-reading Survey of Buddhism.  My inner voice told me to, before I got all doped up on these drugs.  "SB", along with The Science of Yoga,  were read at a really fruitul time in my college career.  I had just finished reading St. John of the Cross' classical works as well as The Cloud of Unknowing, and I was so struck by the similarities  that I started immediately re-reading the Christian classics along with the Buddhist/Yoga texts.  The big difference is that the Christian authors are more poetical in tone and prose, while the Eastern authors are more analytically conceptual in their description of essentially the same reality, which could be called meditation or contemplation.  I was also sitting in half lotus (I could do that back then and even occasionally hit a full lotus), every day for 20 minutes.  These books enabled me to rein in my "monkey mind" for the first time in my life.

My mind is not in good shape right now.  I can clearly recognize that.  I know too, that much of my current "monkey mind" is a result of the damage done by the lithium.  I have to get my clarity of mind back and the books/meditation practice can help me, but they are severely undermined by the psychotropic drugs I currently am forced to take.  Interestingly enough, "the thoughts" that the drugs are supposed to curb, rule with even greater intensity when I am drugged.  What the drugs impact is my impact to creatively write/transform/understand my thoughts.  I am so messed up.  God help me.

Didn't get to my eyes, but clearly these drugs have a terrible impact on my eyes as well....

Thursday, November 2, 2006

more on psychotropic drugs

11/02/06

I still am being force-fed psychotropic drugs, with ever increasing sophistication.  I have just been released from an enforced stay at a psychiatric hospital.  Today is the first day in 3 or 4 weeks that I have felt "normal", healthy, and just really good about myself and my ability to function in the world.  After weeks, and even months of being force-fed drugs, there is no doubt in my mind how terribly destructive they are to my physical, psychological, and emotional state of being.  Even now, I feel so clear-minded, goal oriented, and energetic for the first time in a long time.  I can actually "read" for the first time in weeks---both with appropriate physical focus and my nomally formidable mental concentratio.

All this being said, I am really sad that this brief respite is going to end very soon.  As part of the agreement to release me from involuntary incarceration, I agreed to take a month of the drugs, and today I will start again.  I am very afraid that they are going to land me back in the hospital with serious and possibly life threatening consequences from cerebral edema.  Now that I have been two days off the drug, the buzz in my ears and the constant headache and malaise have significantly decreased.  I know though, that as soon as I start taking the drug again, it is going to increase again dramatically.  I can definitely (if subjectively), link the increase of csf pressure to taking Risperdol, not to mention all the other side effects---the malaise, the lethargy, the inability to focus, to concentrate, to even read, just an overall state of feeling awful---like I have the flu times three.  But I cannot get anyone, not even Dr. Huaman (who has been monitoring my eyes for months now, and who should surely be able to see the differences in my eyes when psychotropic drugs are introduced into my system), to concur.  So I am truly screwed.  I could fight it viciously, but what is the point?  First of all, I gave my mother my word, and I am a person who honors her word.  Secondly, there is nothing I can do to prevent these people from doping me up without my consent.  I am still in constant leg nerve pain from the surreptitious doses of speed that they give me.  I don't think my leg will ever be normal again.  So the lesson has been duly appropriated---forced drugs cause permanent body damage.  I just fear that taking these psychotropic drugs are going to cause permanent damage in the month before I can honorably stop taking them.  But I am tired of fighting---even for my own life and health.  I just want this over with asap so I can ahead with my normally healthy and vigorous life.  So it may be a while, before I write anything of substance.

Before I go, I guess I should talk about what is going on with my legal problems with Augusta filing a total bogus criminal complaint against me.  I am very disappointed with the whole AOL scene.  I am tired of making apologies for them.  I just read Mary Cheney's (she is on their board) autobiography (in about 30 minutes---that is how much substance it had), and it is clear that they are only interested in the most superficial facets of leadership.  Most specifically, they are looking for people who can act as power brokers with the political scene, rather than the mature character and vision of true leadership.

I know that the world is poised for cataclysmic changes that is going to change our perception of who and what we are, and most specifically our androcentric arrogance, and perception of reality.  I  have insight into the matter, but at this point, I am unwilling write it down.  And given that the next month, I will be too sick to do much more than write down my symtomology (to preserve a record), it will have to wait for at least a month.

One last little note--I have started taking Relacore again.  I found out that it has 4 mg of DHEA in each capsule which is a small dosage, but which has a huge impact on me.  I still have peach fuzz on my face from the first time I took it.  But the alternative is equally unappealing.  My weight problem is intractable, and I can always get the hair removed surgically later.  I'd rather have facial hair removed medically than eye surgery--optic nerve sheath fenestration.  So I am going to give it my best shot, and see if I can avoid having eye surgery.  My prospects are not good

Friday, October 13, 2006

forced psychotropic drugs again

10/13--

Severely depressed--but now I recognize without a doubt, I am being drugged.  I had to come home yesterday and sleep, and today, I am going out of my mind with this shit running through my veins and brain.  I suspect now that it has been going on for several days., because I have found it difficult to concentrate, exercise or even clean house.  I had started to write, but for the last several days, I haven't been able to focus well enough to write, or do anything else for that matter.  This morning, I was so my brain was so distracted I couldn't even read.  This has been going on for several days now---I remember because I felt so unusually bad on  Tuesday morning that I took 2 Relacore and 2 estrogen tablets on Tuesday afternoon right before yoga, and immediately I felt my energy come back, and my ability to focus returned.  So my guess is that they started this shit over the weekend or on Monday.  It also coincided with serious ongoing nausea, hunger, and weight gain (and these bastards are always going on and on, about me losing weight, but they and their stupid psychotropic drugs are responsible for the last 30 pounds I have gained--30 pounds that I have to sweat blood to lose)   But Relacore has very bad side effects for me--it has severe masculinizing side effects.  But if that is the only way I can feel like a human  being, then I will take it. Obviously my life and body is not my own, so what the fuck does it matter.  I am close to seeking sex reassignment anyway--it should be really really easy for me.  I won't even no damn doctor's approval.  OTC testorone and illegal steroids abound.  GET THIS ASSHOLES!!! Can you read?  My problem is HORMONAL, not psychological.  Hormones are what I need---not your stupid shit.  You have caused permanent damage to me me with your stupid shit.  I am in constant physical pain, thanks to your shit.  And even now, I am so severely depressed I can't function.  I have to go out of town tomorrow, and I don't even have the ability to get up and pack or clean my house.  I can't even read a chapter in a novel.  All I can do is rage and cry, and desperately wish for another lifetime where I am free of you and your poison.  But I know that I am drugged up.  I can't make decisions when I'm like this.  I desperately need to detox before I go home.  Time to take 2 Relacore to see if it will give me a chance to recover so that at least I can function.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

dedicated to anna & alexander

Oct 8, 06--Barely able to sit at my computer.  The speed that I am being poisoned with has me high and in pain.  I can no longer sleep on my back at all.  My entire left leg is numb, and I can tell that the inflammation resulting from the speed has caused a painful pinched nerve right in the middle of my sacrum.   What kind of permanent damage the bastards will cause this time remains to be seen. But I am going to fight through it as best I can.  I started to write an autobiographical expose the outrageous abuse and violation that the Spiritual Life Institute originated; however it was erased when I attempted to mail it (I didn't have a floppy).  I should have anticipated that.  I know that the public library does not provide secure internet viewing.  I can literally see the other user on the network accessing it.  At the time, I wasn't so worried about my emails being blocked.  I was more worried about clearing my head after that smirking Christian sat  down next to me, spreading the same dope that the Christians have been poisoning me with ever since I got involved with the Spiritual Life Institute. (Oh, and by the way, tell that poor, psychologically blank, tabla rosa adolescent to go back to his Opus Dei or seminary studies.  He makes a poor shadowing tail, and one of these days I am going to shock his sorry, sheltered behind right into the blessed creation reality where a child of God truly belongs--oh but then he would be totally ruined  for the priesthood or Opus Dei, wouldn't he?  My pleasure, young man.  Give me one more chance.  I'm ready this time).

I'm not even able to write on my own computer.  Of course I knew it would be partitioned into a spy drive when I got it.  I knew that I would be unable to access Administrator account (that was the way it was set up before).  What I did not know was that I would not be able to write to either floppy or CD, making it impossible for me to keep a permanent record in easily accessible hardcopy.

That is alright.  The web is going to have to be the first choice of documentation,  even though it is subject to hacking and illigitmate editorial tampering.  But I am going to do the best I can--even handwriting out my notes.  I have been rereading a Scott Peck book, and in it he quotes a youthful unknown Sigmund Freud who was delighted that his future biographers would have such a difficult time deciphering him.  That has never been my aim.  As a matter of fact, more than anything else, I had wished to be anonymous to the world.  I truly found the seclusion and escape of monastic religious life appealing.  However that is not my vocation, and if I ever had sinful temptations to cling to such illusion, they have been completely dispelled by my long-suffering abuse at the hand of such religious communities.  I have also had to accept that  I am one of those individuals who others will probably be reading and pondering for a period of time, maybe a long time. So it is.  While I strive for clarity, both my own changing viewpoints, as well as the difficulty in preserving my own true writing  is going to make this difficult.  But I am going to give it my best shot. 

Today, I downloaded a picture of Anna Politkovska--a Russian journalist who spent recent years uncovering and fighting abuse and torture committed by her own government and its allies (wow! sound like something we could use in this country?--while ourjournalists spend their best efforts trying to btain salacious, muckracking sex chatlogs...).  She has just been murdered.  I downloaded the picture, because I identify with it.  For all of her worldly savvy, (journalism is a hard-boiled, tough-nut profession--when it's done right--not the Katie Couric, inane stupid fluff that is the stuff of rapid promotion and high ratings in our society), her eyes are those of an innocent.  She is the kind of innocent that believes good and justice and morality prevail in the world, and is utterly shocked and scandalized to find out that really there are overwhelming forces at work to derail this So now she is dead.  But before she died, she courageously persevered in uncovering and presenting the truth. 

The other Russian to whom I dedicate my entry, and my committment to persevere is of course, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  I finished his Gulag Archipelago trilogy, and apart from sheer awe at how such a sensitive intellectual survived such inhumanely harsh concentration camp life for ten years (I would be a "goner" within one--those Russians have incredible constitutions), I was most impressed with how people fought to keep their humanity.  The Christians and Moslems continued with their prayers, hiding and memorizing tiny copies of Scripture and even making rosaries/prayer beads of dried bread.  While I believe that AS was a man of faith in a non-demonstrative way, he attempted to fight for his humanity by maintaining his vision of human rights and dignity, specifically through literature and memory. 

In the camps, they were not allowed to write (amazing how subversive the truth of th written word is).  So AS, and a few others like him, "wrote" by memorizing hundreds and thousands of lines of verse they had created and never committed to paper for more than a brief few minutes, if at all (and here I complain if I cannot have access to immediate editing tools of software).  When he did write, he had to hide it (or go to solitary confinement for punishment), in a multitude of hiding places from the insewn hem of a pantleg to a underneath a brick at the work site.  And he did all of this writing imprisoned with no access to reading or writing implements, on starvation rations, doing hard labor for 10 hours a day, six days a week in Siberia, with nothing but a flimsy padded jacked and cap for warmth in subzero weather.  And I complain because I have to catch a bus, and hope to use a public computer for an hour or two at a time.   Even as he did write the final draft, he never had the entire manuscript in his possession.  It was pieced together, literally in pieces from hiding places of sympathetic friends and colleagues. 

So, like AS, I will have to beg forgiveness from any future readers.  It is not my desire to be difficult or disjointed to read.  Some future editor is going to have to do the best they can with what I have left behind.  Unlike Freud, this is not by mischievous willfulness I had wanted to leave a clear presentation, but the persecution and pressures I experience make that impossible. 
I promise to do the best that I can....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, October 7, 2006

poisoned again with psychotropic drugs

Oct 10th--My body is reacting to the severe poisoning I am getting with nerve and joint inflammation.  My back hasn't hurt so bad in years.  My leg is being permanently damaged with nerve pain, and now the inflammation is starting in my right leg and my right wrist.  If my right wrist becomes as bad as my left I will truly be screwed.  I won't be able to do yoga at all.  I am trying to hang in there God, but I don't know how much longer I can hang in there.  I am gaining weight again, so my guess is that I am being force fed antidepressants.  My eyesight is becoming dim again, and I am getting the same old pain behind my eyes as well as having nerve pain in my left sinus cavity.  Haven't these bastards done enough damage to my body?  I want them out of my life, forever. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT, and take your stupid damn corrupt religion with you.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Pharmalogical cause of depression

9/27--The depression continues---worsening to the point that its getting harder and harder to do or care about anything.  But I know now, the cause of the depression is not my own personal issues I am dealing with--it's pharmacological--the result of me being doped up against my will.  As a matter of fact, when the goddamn poison is out of my system, I deal with things pretty good.  But right now, I'm flooded with the shit (I took some OTC vitamins on an empty stomach--only guess what?  They are not vitamins.  I think they are some kind of serontonin anti-depressant, and they are driving me into despair, wanting to be free of this horrible, emotionally and physically debiliating influence.  Not only that, but they are increasing the pain in my belly, and I have to hold on for surgery with a dr. I trust.  The emergency room would just do a hysterectomy, and then I'd really be in a hormonal pickle.  I think it is aggression causing the pain.  I want to smash somebody's face in.  I want to kick them in the balls, blow their face away, I want to cut my arms and empty this hateful poison that is killing me out.  But I know this is not really me.  This is the drugs and I have to endure.  I must endure.  I cannot stop this evil from happening to other people if I do not endure.  I know who is ultimately responsible for this, and I know that I am called to fight them--and I cannot fight them if I am dead.  So I have to hold on, and try to sleep this shit off, and do everything in my power to escape the drugs. 

Monday, September 25, 2006

coming to terms with damage done

9/25/06 Truly depressed, and in pain over the past couple days. Looking at my past login, I see that absolutely nothing has changed—I’m still in chronic and severe leg pain from being doped up, and while my house has actually been inhabitable for the past couple of days, I am horrified to realize the full extent of the damage done by the psychotropic drugs. I think the last time I took psychotropic drugs was a couple of nights ago, when I took a Flexiril for terrible back pain and leg spasms. It definitely was not Flexiril, and what I am realizing now is that the depressive aftereffects of psychotropic drugs can last for days, weeks, months (????). I have so much poison in my brain and body right now, I doubt that I will ever be completely cleansed of totalitarian, Big Pharm chemical shit ever again. In addition to lithium, anti-depressants, and various psychotropic drugs including Olanzapine, I think I have been put on speed, cannabis, and some mild form of LSD. I empathize with Mother Earth to a degree that I have not done before, as I realize how weakened and devitalized she is with the poisons an abusive patriaptionrchal mindset has flooded her eco-body with. That is me, although truly, after spending the last five minutes in the kitchen crying, I think somehow, I still am being doped. But even so, I know the acumulation of poison is palpable, real, and still negatively affecting my mood. I know by the symptoms of autism, and when they appear. I can feel it in my legs; I can tell by the differences in sensory perception, and flatness of affect. I used to start experiencing autistic symptomology after three or four days of solitude in the wilderness (the lack of stimuli, I think lulled my brain back into its autistic state. Now, a three hour hike has the very same debilitating effects. It used to be that I experienced numbness in my entire legs, only when I was dealing with very deep and painful emotions. Now, I experience it all the time. I remember at work, I had to change queue from a demanding and emotionally challenging queue—where people were frequently irate and difficult—to an easy one. I no longer could handle all the emotions being thrown at me. I would take an irate caller, and my legs would go as numb and restless, as if I were talking to someone about sexual abuse or my sister’s death. Before, I thrived on, and excelled at meeting the challenge of difficult calls and circumstances. Now, I do everything possible to avoid them—I no longer can handle it. It stresses me out negatively rather than positively.

My language skills have deteriorated significantly. In addition to a very real loss of memory of names, ability to fix dateline chronology, and vocabulary, I no longer have the hyper-verbal ability that I once possessed. Before the chemicals handisapped my brain (oh geez, there I go again—evincing thought disorder. Better be careful. Some stupidass psych will request the meds to be doubled), I used to "see" the words before I spoke them. I used to see entire sentences in super fast rapidity. I don’t think this was a neurosis or psychosis, because whenever I used to talk to people who talked in tongues, or who interpreted them, they used to say they could "see" the words, and then they would say them. I think this was a tremendously great gift I had, and now it is destroyed, probably forever. I speak English now, like I speak Spanish—without conscious awareness of what I am saying until I actually hear myself say it. This is very humbling and disconcerting. I have no idea what I’m going to say until it’s already said. I actually used to be able to "see," and then edit, what I spoke, before the words ever left my mouth. If I struggled for a precise word, I would "see" like a hand of cards on the table, all my alternative choices and know their subtle meanings, and I would, in a micro-second, choose the one word that had the connotation and shading I desired. Now, if I struggle for the precise word, and it happens more frequently than it ever has in my life—for even simple words—I grope in the dark, and sometimes I can’t come up with an appropriate word at all. I can’t see the whole range of choices in the split second. I can’t see anything at all. It sucks. I feel like a freaking retarded kid when that happens. Compared to where I was before, retarded is a pretty accurate word. At least that one came out right on the first try.

The worse part though is the bodily damage and loss of joy and vitality, spontaneity and exuberance that I had before. I’m in a lot of pain right now. My left leg which was actually getting better, relapsed significantly on Saturday, when the house was so full of chemical fumes that I got sick to the point of fainting the instant I walked in the door. My body won’t take poison, but I worry especially about my back, because it already is chronically injured, is not strong enough to recover from all this shit. I don’t know if my leftleg will ever be normal. I don’t think my joints will ever recover from the arthritis created by all the poison in my bodily eco-system. So yeah, I’m depressed, and I haven’t even touch on what is really depressing me, but one thing I’ve learned from 8/15/03 is, don’t even go there, Tita, unless you want to be thrown in jail or a psych ward for expressing your feelings. According to the patriarchal mindset, you don’t have any right to feelings or thoughts unless they think them "appropriate", and you know, Tita, they would not think this appropriate. And you know, you don’t want to go to jail or Kasemann, so you are better off bottling up those feelings and being depressed.

But all is not hopeless. More and more, I appreciate Solzhenitsyn. As I finished up the second volume of the Gulag, and he talked about the "personality" of the "zek," I realized the enormity of the tragedy these people endured. They may have kept their physical life, but the inhumane injustice and conditions they endured, kept them from fully ever living out their lives with joy ever again. A zek was severely depressed and devitalized, as a survival mechanism. And to be honest, when I read AS, that is how I felt he was even in the 70’s living in Vermont. I don’t think he ever regained his joy and vitality ever again, and I share this in common with him and tens of millions of zeks. Physically, I may have survived (and I know by what thin of a margin, while all the rest of these psychs don’t have a clue—or else the doping would have stopped after the lithium). But he still had a vocation, and even though it had to tear at his heart and sear his psyche, to write down his memories, I would never have known the magnitude of suffering and injustice for those millions if he hadn’t. (That is why I read the books so slowly—I keep praying for all those people who suffered so terribly). I am not Sozhenitsyn—for one thing there is no haven for me in Vermont, but even more limiting, I will not have his longevity of life (oh there I go again—thought disorder). Very well then, I have a strong intuition that I don’t have longevity of life. That means, whatever I am going to do, I have to do it now. I can’t feel sorry for myself, or make the excuse that I’m doped or depressed. Hell, I’m willing to gamble money that half of the very people who are doing this to me are doped and/or depressed, and they still are able to function—committing their evil deeds. If they can function and do evil, then God grant me the strength to function and do good. Help me God. Only by my written witness am I going to be able to find any kind of justice before I die.

 

9/11/06

Monday, September 11, 2006

first morning of unemployment

9/11/06

I am sitting on my front porch writing this morning’s entry, as I realize how sick my home, and especially my room makes me. I still am being doped up with speed, and it is tearing my body apart. I had to take a Vicodin last night in order to go to sleep, as my body and muscles started spasming again, with the consequent nerve pain and numbness in my left leg that is just unbearable. Even during my sleep, the NSA is able to dope me up, but last night I slept on the kitchen floor with the door wide open. The breeze comes in the strongest through the kitchen, but I am uncomfortable with leaving the door open, because there is no security lock, and it opens onto an alleyway here in downtown, where all kinds of predators prowl and addicts scavenge. But last night I didn’t care. I was sick with nausea, and hurting with pain. I went to bed still wearing my bra and shoes, and didn’t even brush my teeth. I woke up with a lot of muscle pain and spinal tenderness, but with more mental alertness than I have in some time. The buzzing in my head was more subdued than usual. I always know how much speed in my system by how loud the buzz is, and sometimes, it is a deafening roar. Candace Pert, a molecular biologist, wrote a book on noise in the body, and she brought up a point that I have found to be very true. Our bodies are full of sound at the molecular level, which we normally do not hear, and when everything in our bodies is in harmony, the musical sound of our bodies comes across as silence. I long for the days when my head knew utterly complete and peaceful silence. Ever since I have been doped up, I always have a buzz in my head—sometimes it is subdued, and sometimes it is a roar, but it is always there. My body and brain no longer are working in harmony, and I suffer, and sometimes, like last night, I suffer terribly.

In addition to engendering muscle spasms and arthritis in my joints, the speed also affects my ability to concentrate. I have known this for sometime at work, where I could no longer concentrate so completely on every call. I had to get out of a heavy retention queue because retention calls require so much concentration, and I no longer found it easy and natural to concentrate. It required too much mental energy that I no longer have. Instead, at work, I found my mind just going on "automatic pilot," and being resentful whenever, I had to take it off automatic pilot. I just was not up to being challenged anymore, even though normally, when I am healthy, I thrive on challenges, and they draw out the best in me.

The night before last, I had slept in my bed (my bedroom has the highest concentration of dope in the air—I’m not sure why, but I have a couple of unproven theories—still working on it), because my back was in pain. I woke up completely doped up on speed. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t even concentrate to read. I was looking forward to reading a little more in depth than usual, now that I am unemployed, and pulled out a book of John Donne poetry. Now admittedly, Donne is advanced level reading, but I have read him multiple times before, and am familiar with the archaic syntax of his poetry. But yesterday morning, my level of concentration was so poor that the words were nonsensical. The symbol of the word was meaningless. This morning, I read some Donne, and to my great relief, I don’t think that I have lost massive IQ. I still am not reading with my pre-lithium level of concentration, but at least I could comprehend the words. This also explains why I haven’t been able to pray as deeply as usual. Prayer, in the briefest of definition, is focussed concentration—at the spiritual level. Over the years, I have developed an intense ability to concentrate at the physical, emotional, and intellectual level, as I dedicated myself to, and matured in my prayer life. But the drugs completely wiped out years of disciplined work, and I still haven’t fully recovered. Depending on how much speed I have in my system, I struggle to get out of the imaginative realm and into the spiritual realm. This is very clear to me in yoga, during the final meditation. A couple of times, I have nearly fallen asleep, because I am going into the imaginative realm of the dream state, rather than the clear, pure awareness of the spiritual realm. It is all a matter of concentration, and speed can completely undermine my ability to do so. Imagination is important too, and there is no doubt that my imaginative abilities are much greater than my contemporaries. But that is their loss, not mine. So much of my giftedness is directly related to my superior imaginative faculties, but they think that neurotic, and in need of pharmaceutical correction. I think they are narrow-minded, pathetically handicapped idiots, who nonetheless have tremendous power to wreak great destruction and suffering—and in my case have done so.

I am unemployed now, and I intend to do something with this time, even if I cannot live in my own, contaminated home. I will do everything I can to avoid the drugs, and be productive, and regain my health. Even though my musculo-skeletal system is in really bad shape, I think I am finally losing a little weight, because an OTC pill is jumpstarting my metabolism for the first time since jail, when I went into starvation mode. On that positive note, I will end my writing, and start taking care of all the little details, I have to deal with….Thank you God, for allowing me to escape the drugs and have some energy today….