Respite over

Respite over--the drugs have started again.  I am so messed up that I cannot focus at all.  I have to get out of here to try to regain my mind.

Finally, some relief

Finally, some relief--I think I have been released  from the hell of  psychotropic drugs.  I still cannot concentrate, and suspect some kind of speed (or maybe, my system is just still trying to clear out the drugs), but I feel SO much better, that I cannot help but feel grateful.  I tried to memorize Psalm 6 yesterday while I was in the bosque.  I failed pitifully because I could not sustain concentration from one line to another, but God must have heard my prayer, because there was an answer.  Just in time, too, because my ability to perceive and interact with reality was becoming tenuous to the point of being unbearable.  I could drink an entire bottle of wine and not feel drunk--only slightly better.  I had taken a garbage bag from the kitchen and meant to throw it into the outside garbage can on my way to the car.  While driving down the road, I wondered what I was smelling, looked over, and saw that I had throw the smelly garbage bag into the passenger seat instead of into the garbage can.  I was losing track of days and dates, and somehow (still haven't figured out), missed certifying for my unemployment benefits, which is the most important action I do each week to ensure "my daily bread."  Not only did I forgot to certify, but in addition, I went to the post office twice, looking to pick up my check, absolutely certain that I had certified by phone as required.  The first time I made the mistake of going on Tuesday, and checked myself when I realized that I had went on the wrong day, telling myself, "you know better--you should go on Wednesday."  But Thursday came around and no check.  I called, and learned that I had neglected to certify.  Geez.  That extent of cognitive deficiency is  more than forgetfulness--I was "losing it."  I was losing my ability to dream too--literally.  It is very weird.  I know that some images must have been going through my head in my dream world, but they were so far away that there is no way I could relate to, or capture them.  Even last night, my dreams were like that, but I had one weak memory of an image of a female senator, and I woke up feeling like I had worked out something in my dreams. However, the dreams the two nights previous to that were truly nightmares.  I only remember one weak image from each night--they were the same.  In both of them, I was bleeding to death.  In the image from the first night, I was tied to a stake, helplessly unable to move, while I was being bled to death (by others).  In the second image, I was bleeding to death through my feet, and it was very helpless to know that I could bleed completely to death through my feet.  Anyway, I think those images are interesting because last night, I had an incredible blood rush to the brain.  I was a little panicked as I felt the pounding and heard the whooshing of all this blood rushing to my brain--especially since blood rushes to the brain are accompanied by severe migraines, and I worry about aneurysms on account of all the drug traumas and damage my brain has suffered in the last two years.   But I survived with neither migraine nor aneurysm; instead I woke up with the strangest craving--for pancakes.  I never eat pancakes.  I don't particularly like pancakes, and most certainly not for breakfast.  My body cannot handle sugar and carbohydrates on an empty stomach.  But the craving was intense and undeniable, so off to McDonald's I went.  Surprisingly, the pancakes didn't cause that sick, blood sugar spike and hypoglycemic crash like it normally does.

So what does all this tell me?  I am almost afraid to say as I fear that I will provide more ammunition to my enemies, who I am sure, are not done yet with force-feeding drugs into my traumatized and exhausted body.  (Who are my enemies?  My enemies are those who will not accept my free choice and free will in deciding, affirming, and committing to identity and action, but instead, constantly abuse and damage my body and brain in an attempt to coerce me into an image that conforms with their needs and projections.  No matter the excuse they cite--saying that I am "schizophrenic," or "manic-depressive," that they are protecting me from HIV, that they have a great role for me to play, etc, all their efforts boil down to one essential element--preventing me from being sexually active in a lesbian relationship, no matter what the cost.  They have already failed, and their abuse has alienated me to the point past any return).  All this being said, I know that there are medical professionals out there who do really care about me, and I know them when I see them (even if I seem to be in a proto-psychotic state), and sometimes, even when I am separated from seeing them. So I will say that my dreams were telling me that the anti-psychotics were somehow depriving my brain of blood and nutrients, so that a blood rush ensued once the constraints were lifted, and an intense craving for blood sugar glucose resulted. (I wonder if blood-glucose starvation were the reason my legs and arms were heavy to the point of numbness and immobility).   It would have been a good day to go to the bosque again, but I am so exhausted that I just want to stay at home and rest, even though I still feel that I am being drugged.  Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

Another hellacious night

Another hellacious night--had to take two Vicodin (only 5 mgs each) and a 1/4th of a fifth of whiskey to sleep.  This was at 3:15 am, with terrible headache pain, back spasms, and nerve pain on my left thigh from all the speed.  The worst of it was the memory of all the disempowered, lame Catholics who I encountered yesterday, giving me their saccharine simpered smiles, "oh you are one of us; oh you are a saint; oh you just need to convert to the Church's true teaching, which is so much wiser than you, and everybody will be happy."  Blech Blech Blech.  I do not know what it takes for the Catholic Church, Opus Dei, and all the sadly disempowered, authoritarian-lamed, immature of faith to get the message.  I LEFT THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH YEARS AGO!!  I AM SO HAPPY WITH THAT DECISION. NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, COULD DRAW ME BACK.  And most certainly not, by making my nights and days a living hell with your torturous drugs, lies, and interference in my life.  Last night, I started to write a brief essay on why I choose, I want, I desire, I am looking forward to entering the Episcopal communion, but I was in too much physical pain.  Today I just feel drained, weak, and much too awful to concentrate on anything.  I know I need to get out of here in order to feel better, but I am just dragging....

Terrible

Terrible--that is what my body feels like, my mind feels like, my life feels like.  I am being force fed the psychotropic drugs again--I can tell because my feet and legs are numb (do you know how difficult it is to drive when you can't feel your own legs and feet?), my back muscles are spasming, and my arms are so weak that I cannot hold the phone to my ear.  To add insult to injury, I am being force fed speed, which I can tell because of the agonizing, fiery pain it causes in my left leg. 

I cannot remember the last time I felt like a human being.  I just keep plugging away, hoping and praying that God will give me my life back.  Not much of a prayer though--I cannot pray when I cannot concentrate.  And even though I went to Church on Sunday, it was obvious that I wasn't in reality enough to pray.  But God knows that it is not my fault so I hope for mercy.  I pray for health.  I am so sick of suffering this torment.

Paralyzed

Paralyzed.  When I was a college sophomore, I had a severe neck sprain (falling from a bunk bed in my sleep) that left me almost completely paralyzed for several hours.  I was sent to the ER on a backboard, where I waited for about three or four hours for treatment.  It seemed like an eternity.  They wouldn't give me any painkillers because they said they were worried about possible head trauma.  So for hours, I agonized in the most exquisite of pain, but couldn't even move, besides fluttering my fingers and turning my head.  It seemed so unfair.  If I couldn't have painkillers, at least I should have been able to writhe in agony to release some of the horrible pain.  The image that came to my mind while I lay there in mute, suffering agony was that of a live butterfly on a pin. 

Well this butterfly is on a pin again, wings soaked in chemicals and transfixed in agony by a pin.  The psychotropic drugs have completely cut off and/or deadened from my emotional and spiritual life--in short, from those capacities that make me human.  I know that this disconnected, alienated, cocooned person is not me, but I am too anesthized to do more than cry and long for an end to this hopeless misery.  I am paralyzed.  To make matters worse, I am in terrible back pain.  I know from yoga class last night that the drugs are having a very definite impact on my muscles, causing spasms, tightness, stiffness, and a sense of arthritis in my joints.  My legs and arms are so heavy that it takes a massive act of will to move them.  I can barely turn my head when I drive or wipe myself after relieving myself at the toilet.  But the most unbearable part of my pain comes from my ribs, lats, and thoracic (sp?--too sick to look it up) spine.  Just lifting and extending my  arms--to take a drink or a bite, to type on a typewriter, causes unrelenting, excruciating pain.  I recognize that thoracic pain--it is  part and parcel of my original back injury from 10 years ago.  And I learned how to cope with that pain teaching myself to self-medicate through prayer and meditation.   But now, I am cut off from the capacity and ability to  pray or mediate, and thus I am completely unable to heal my own pain.  10 years ago, I was in despair at the thought of being in chronic pain or dependent on painkillers for the rest of my life.  Now I face that despair all over again.  This pain is not tolerable.

My dream last night indicates the destitute position I am in.  I dreamed that Debbie C. had to move into a a totally derelict apartment--a completely ramshackled, rotten, and ugly place tenanted by dope addicts.  There was vomit on the walls.  Debbie C, for me, stands for a prayerful and mature Christian.  Debbie metamorphed into myself, and I was the one living in this horrible place.  My mom was coming to dinner, and I told myself, "at least I should clean the vomit off these walls."  But I was too sick to do anything.  Someone gave me some stale restaurant bread to feed my mother, and she was so pleased when I gave it to her.  She actually took it as a sign that I liked my new place so much that I had cooked in it, baking the bread for her.  I was shaking my head at her naivete.  "Typical Mom", I thought, "she doesn't have a clue what is really going on with me or my surroundings.  How could she think for one minute, that I could ever cook in this hideous, derelict place?"  Int.--my spiritual, prayerful self has lost its beautiful environs (my normal, "mildly schizophrenic" personality, and is now housed in a hateful, ugly place where it cannot function or be creative....

Slammed by pain

Slammed by pain from psychotropic drugs again--it isn't speed that sends all of my back muscles, groin muscles and lats into spasmic pain.  I can hardly hold my arms up or turn my head when driving.  This isn't speed--this is an anti-psychotic.  I knew something was very wrong when I couldn't work out at the gym earlier today.  Had NO energy and the legs just wouldn't move.  I tried to pray, first by going to sit in the church, then later on a walk, and finally and yoga.  I couldn't even do a basic contemplative meditation at yoga.  I am so alienated from reality that I couldn't even focus on a mind body connection.  It is just the oppressive and painful blankness.  And it is very painful.  I was crying as I tried to do a basic, simple pose that I could do yesterday.  By back is spasmed into such a curve that it hurt to lay down in corpse pose, even with a blanket under my knees.  And walking, forget it.  I try to go for a walk before yoga to clear my mind so I can more prayerfully participate, but it didn't work.  The longer I walked the worse it got.  Both my legs felt lame and totally numb after a very slow one hour walk.  And even though the rational side of me said, what a beautiful day, my emotions were completely dead, and my spirit was totally alienated.  No prayer today.  But I am more worried about the pain.  My arms can't type anymore.  They hurt too much.  Life sucks big time.  I hate life.  I hate my body.  And most of all, I hate the people who are doing this to me.  Jesus can love them.  I am not capable of love right now.  I am not capable of any emotion except pain, rage, and despair.

Raging at the tormentors who drug me

Raging at the tormentors who drug me as I am made miserable and oppressed by the speed they keep forcing on me.  I go to sleep high.  I wake up high.  But it is not a pleasant, recreational high.  It is a physically draining high that leaves my body so heavy that I feel like a fish flopping on land, lifting legs that feel like stone columns.  Even typing is difficult since my arms are so heavy, and the muscles in my back and shoulders tighten and spasm from the speed.  A typical night for me is going to a unrestful sleep after 3 am, after I have ingested copious amounts of OTC sleep herbs, pills, and whiskey.  After an unrestful night, I wake up 5-6 hours later, unrefreshed, and as high as I was when I went to sleep.  I long for the days when my morning routine began with spontaneous inner joy and praise to God for creating and gracing me as a free child, and raising the dawn.  My contemplative center was so easily accessible to me, and it colored my whole approach to life.  Now I am alienated from my spiritual center (and I can tell it, just by looking in the mirror at my eyes.  When I cannot see my soul in my own eyes, but just a glazed, glittery shine or a dark chasm, I have physical proof of what my emotional and spiritual faculties already tell me--I am separated from my own ground of being--my soul.  It is the most hateful and horrible feeling in the world, and is scary how much damage these psychotropic drugs really cause.  It doesn't completely separate me from God or prayer, but it is a very unsatisfying relationship and prayer.  The closest I have ever experienced such an alienated prayer was when ,as a teenager, before my conversion experience, I would pray while I was drunk.  I was sincerely praying, trying to reach out to a God that I hoped existed, but incapacitated in my will and mind to fully receive or cooperate with any movement of grace that God might make towards me.   This is what so frustrating, and even enraging for me--to not be fully able to initiate, cooperate and respond in prayer, but just like a spiritual baby, able only to self-centeredly plead, "God help me endure," and know that yes, God is there.

I have been wanting to go to Eucharistic services at the Episcopal church, since I am more and more committed to entering this communion, but the truth is that I feel so terrible in the mornings, that I am ashamed before God to go to a public place of worship.  I wouldn't go to church while drunk, and  there is absolutely no difference in the spiritual incapacitation I feel under the influence of these drugs.  In addition, I feel agitated and angered, knowing that these drugs are forced upon me by doctors who have never once had a conversation with me, and ignore clear proof of how debilitating these drugs are to me, while they destroy my mind and body.   The only doctor who has truly listened to me regarding this is Dr. Huaman.  When she told me that I was "mildly schizophrenic", and it was clear to my perception that she supported the idea of anti-psychotic medication, I humbly listened, and I took that damned Risperdal for another week, even though I knew that it was killing me.  But I think that Dr. Huaman has also seen how symtomatically miserable and debilitated I am on that medication, and does not support forcing it on me. 

So I am "mildly schizophrenic"--and I wish that I, at the time,  would have sought greater clarification on what she meant by that.  So what?  I am very functional in society--or I was, before  I started being force fed multiple kinds of psychotropic drugs.  I don't think that my "schizophrenia" is an illness that needs to be redressed.  It is an eccentricity that I need to be aware of, but I  think of it as an easy accessiblity to my unconscious which is not only a great asset, but also a great gift from God, and I am truly handicapped without it.  I don't if my brain in an attempt at natural healing and function, rewired that way, so that my autism wouldn't be pre-eminent to the point of dysfunction.  I do know that every drug they have force fed, including the speed, increases my autism, sometimes severely so, as in the case of anti-psychotics.

One of my favorite original Star Trek shows is that of Captain Kirk being split into two selves during transport.  One self was everything that was good and noble and conventionally admirable in him.  His bad self, which got thrown in the brig immediately, had all his bad tendencies magnified to the point of vice--his womanizing, his snappishness, and the need to control and dominate everything.  The irony of it all though, was that the "good" Captain Kirk absolutely could not function without the input from his shadow qualities.  He lost his nerve, his decisiveness, his ability to command and inspire confidence from others without it.  Now Captain Kirk is not my favorite Starfleet captain but the truth of that show carries over to me in my situation.  Whatever my giftedness and vocation is (and I think I know now), I have to have my shadow side, my eccentricity, my "mild schizophrenia" in order to succeed.  I cannot function without it.

Weak, battered, and exhausted

Weak, battered, and exhausted as I try to recover from the most recent resurgence of the psychotropic torture.  Every muscle in my body aches, and it hurts my back to even stand, but I am loathe to take any strong muscle relaxants that would put any more chemicals into my traumatized, reeling brain.  I still feel so high and zoned out that I can endure the pain.  I just take everything really slow, but I am trying to proceed as best as I can with life, doing a little housecleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping, because experience has taught me there will be another onslaught.  No matter how much damage, pain, and suffering my tormentors inflict on me, they never regret or cease their actions.  I am a thing to them, an object for their amusement and use.  So, no matter how weak or poorly I feel, I will also make sure to go to the Episcopal class tonight--giving them a chance to see if they treat me like a human being or an objectified, appropriated thing.  I keep reading the minds of the "good Catholic people" who shadow me--they feel "betrayed" by me.  That they should feel betrayal when I am the one who has been hounded, harassed, web-cammed, imprisoned, fired from jobs, prevented from personal relations, and traumatized and destroyed by pyschotropic drugs for over ten years is just amazing to me.  I suppose I will write on such a mind set in the future, but now I still am engaged in just surviving, and trying to prevent further permanent damage to my once esteemed body, brain, and sense of personhood.

 

P.S.  FYI to the doctors determined to "diagnose" me:  once again the psychotropic drugs made me severely autistic.  I can always tell when I am autistic when I am driving.  In addition, I couldn't bear any noise, another symptom I recognize as belonging to an autistic state (it doesn't help that I have hyperacute hearing even when I am not autistic).  There are some wind chimes on my front porch that I delight in listening to, even in my kitchen or bedroom.  I just love the notes they play and thrill and reasonate to their sound.  There was hardly any wind yesterday, but on the occasion when I would hear a note, it would be a screechingly painful sound that tore at, and shredded my entire nervous system.  If there had been a strong wind, I know I would have taken a broom and destroyed the chimes--I just couldn't bear the sound.  Even when I watched TV, I had to turn on the mute button, and read captions, but my nerves couldn't bear even watching TV.

Very sick

Very sick as I feel the psychotropic drugs' onslaught.  Not only am I in terrible  physical pain with muscle spasms, headache, and a debilitating weakness that makes it difficult to walk, but I am truly sick again, like I was for three weeks in the psychiatric hospital, unable to bear reality.  It helped to go lay under the trees but I never detoxed myself before I got another walloping dose from my truck and now here I am at home, so sick, and unable to function in reality, I can't even watch TV.  All I want to do is escape this oppressive, blank ill feeling of not being in reality.  At least I am not in and out of fugue states like I was earlier in the day, braking at green lights and running through red ones, and not even knowing where I am at or how I got there (the last time I was so fucked up while I was driving I was stoned out of mind on pot, and never knew how I got to downtown LA from San Bernardino).  Earlier in the day, I couldn't even remember what day it was.  I struggled for what seemed eternity, panicked because I know how serious it is when you can't remember what day it was.  It was a pain day.  A torture day.  A hatefilled day.  A day that I passed by remembering they American spy who "walked home" from his cell in Moscow; a day I passed by remember 007 surviving waterboarding, whipping, and repeated scorpion venon; a day I passed by remembering Christ on the Cross and knowing that the worst thing that could happen to me-death--is actually the best, but I can't cheat.  I can't break the Christian faith.  I can't type anymore either because my arms are too weak.  Thank God I got some vicodin, so i can knock myself out

Bad news to worse news

Bad news to worse news--more psychotropic drugs.  Count, yes count how many different kinds of poison has been put into my system in less than two weeks--I would count, but I am too sick to concentrate.  I think it is a variant of Risperdal or a lesser dosage of Risperdal, because my muscles (including my biceps, which is weird) are all aching and heavy as before.  My back especially is killing me---every muscle aches, and I have no ability to try to exercise it out.  I don't know how I could do yoga now.  Every muscle is just stiffened and hurts to the point I don't even want to turn my head.  I have become autistic again--I can always tell when I am driving.  Mostly though, I am just truly miserable, hating life in my own body and brain, unable to endure this pain-wrecked sense of alienation from reality.  I try to keep myself calm, but the truth is I can not live in this kind of drug induced, psychotic misery.

Good news and bad news

Good news and bad news:  The Risperdal and lithium have stopped--but unfortunately,  now I am on something that makes me higher than a kite.  At least though, I have mobility, which I didn't have on the other drugs.  However, there has been lasting side effects--every muscle in my body feels weak and "dead."  I am able to do yoga, but my body has been devastated.  Every joint in my body--even my elbows and wrists are stiff and inflexble.  Every muscle in my back hurts and is unresponsive.  I can feel a huge curve in my lower spine that wasn't there before and my shoulders are so stiffened they can't even lay on the ground.  I don't know how long it will take me to try to get back to "normal" which is even subpar for me.  I have never gotten back, not even close,  to the physical fitness and lack of pain that I had before my torturers began pushing their drug regimen on me. 

Now they have me on something that depresses and deadens me, cocooning me from the fullness of reality.  I am so tired of this shit--but the only emotions I can feel on this poison is despair and rage.  Yesterday, for a brief period, I was drug-free.  I went for a bike ride, and I couldn't believe.it.  I was in full contact with reality again and the world was glorious, and I felt joyful andtruly human to be a fully participating member of it, noticing  and honoring people, the sky, the mountains, and the infusion of God's grandeur in every single detail.  I got all  excited, saying to myself, "maybe now I can begin a spiritual regimen again; now I can pray again for the first time in two years.  But I woke up this morning, and I knew as soon as I awakened that drugs had once more had stolen my ability to feel, to participate, to concentrate, and therefore to pray.  I am rendered into a deadened zombie once more.  I had wanted to clean house today, since it needs a good cleaning before the cold season starts, but I feel like I am walking through five feet of water.  Everything takes so much energy and initiative, and I just don't have it.  I just want to lay down and try to escape the hateful alienation from reality I feel.

I read where the ACLU is suing Immigration for doping illegal aliens with psychotropic drugs. Amazing.  An illegal alien has more recourse to justice and fullness of life than I do (I have approached the ACLU before).  Even if I could get them to listen to me initially, all it takes is one call from the NSA invoking "national security," and the door will be slammed in my face as it was when I approached the law firm of Rodey and associates.  So I have to endure my torture from the "Ministry of Love" while I force myself to try to function and move.  I am so depressed God.  I am so tired of feeling dead all the time. 

Weird headaches--I can't believe it

Weird headaches--I can't believe it--I think the morons have put me on the goddamned lithium again!  I am so outraged, beyond belief, beyond words.  I have suffered so much at their hands doping me with lithium and now it is starting again.  I am in chronic pain from the weird headaches (that I had before with lithium, and now I am in chronic pain as every muscle in my body has stiffened up. Walking is like lifting tree trunks.  My arms are so heavy and feel so dead that I could barely get my wet laundry out of the washer today.  When I drive I find it difficult to turn my head, and my trunk, torso, and spine are painfully stiff and dead as they were before.  I have gained even more weight since my last entry two days ago.  My arms no longer swing freely by my side.  They are rotating outwardly  to accomodate the increase in fat on my torso.  If I were to get a job today, I would have to spend hundreds of dollars on a wardrobe, because even the clothes I used to wear when I was at my fattest no longer fit me.   Then there are the outrageous mood swings (another killer clue--the only times I suffer mood swings like that is when I am on psychotropic drugs)--and especially the rage at the people who have turned me into a subhuman whale blob who cannot stand myself or the chronic pain I am constantly in.  I have way too much fluid in my brain.  Even if I had the surgery on my right eye to save my optic nerve (and right now it is in really bad shape), there is no way that I could function with the pressure of pain behind my eyeballs and in my brain. 

I am tired of suffering this shit God.  How much longer can I endure?  These abusive torturers have already done so much permanent damage to me.  How much longer can I endure.  I just want to curl up and let what will happen happen.  I can't fight it anymore.  It amuses me to read of Bush emphasizing how this country doesn't torture.  What a lie!  Not only do the security agencies of this country torture, they torture their own citizens.   What I have endured, and am enduring is TORTURE, TORTURE, TORTURE.  I know who the active partner is too, and I won't forget it (but then again, maybe I will.  Lithium has caused me to have serious memory problems.  Maybe I won't remember anything at all in a few weeks).  I hurt too much to sit.  Every muscle in my body hurts.  I am tired of suffering at the hands of these pigs. 

Very depressed today

Very depressed today as I can hardly walk and now, even lifting my arms and holding my head has become difficult.  I still am being force fed psychotropic drugs, and I have no emotional feeling, no enthusiasm, no vitality at all.  I wanted to go to the gym to yoga today so I forced myself out of the house to the bosque, knowing that I had to escape my environment to get the drugs out of my system.  It took me over 20 minutes to walk 40 yards.  I cleared a little bit of dope out of my system so that at least I could walk, if stiffly and slowly.  At the gym, I weighed myself and found that I am 189 pounds!  I have gained 4 pounds in a week, thanks to the doping and the forced inactivity.  The highest I have ever weighed is 190 pounds and that was when I had a lot more muscle.  All I am gaining now is fat, and it is the truth--I have never been as fat as I am now.  This just totally crushes my spirit and I know that I can do nothing about it all.  I am being forced to be a fat, lifeless slug, and even if the doping stops, I know there will be permanent damage.  For one thing I am certain now, that I have Parkinson's disease, not Parkinsonianism symptomology brought on by the drugs.  These bastards are causing permanent memory loss and accelerated neuron death that will impact the quality of my life forever, especially as the Parkinson disease advances.  And there is nothing I can do about it.  No wonder why Teri cried in my dream last Friday night before this all began.  I thought it would be Teri subbing today, which was why I pushed myself to go to yoga.  She is a very restorative instructor who does a lot of floor work, but instead it was a different teacher who does a lot of physically demanding poses.   I couldn't even get into a down dog from all fours, so I knew there was no way I could take the class, even though I desperately long to be physical. My God, it has been over a week since I could exercise.  I had to wait for a while to exit, since the rain was pouring down in buckets, and I can hardly walk, much less run (it is usually exhilirating to me to run in the rain).  So I listened to the pumped up music and watched, all the happy, energetic people enter and exit, full of life and vitality, and just felt devastated knowing that I was not one of them.  Like before with the lithium, any emotional feeling increases the paralysis and numbness in my legs.  That is what happened last night as I was writing and experienced my own emotion.  Now it is best not to feel nothing, because my legs and arms just grow number and heavier.  That is not hard to do right now.  I am totally cocooned and alienated from reality.   I hate life. 

Unable to concentrate

Unable to concentrate--I no longer know what these people are doing to me.  All I know is that I am not in reality--I am alienated and cocooned from it.  I went to a class today and was totally dismayed at my inability to concentrate on what the man was saying, and recap in my head the salient points.   I realized that I was not attentive to reality--normally I am so aware of so much going on around me, and now I have become a drug-addled, zoned-out, mediocre vegetable.  I noticed this morning that I was starting to develop the same cognitive deficiencies that I had when I was on psychotropic drugs before--just not being present to the data input from reality, and so not responding appropriately or optimally, and having great difficulty with word choice.  I tried really hard tonight to listen to what was said.  Normally, I can repeat back, in on-the-spot command, every single point and topic covered in a lecture.  It used to be just instinctive second nature, the result of a profound depth of attention and concentration.  Tonight,  I couldn't even follow the subject.  I remember once that  somebody asked me what a sermon was about, and I launched into a detailed and enthusiastic five minute recap, quoting sentences and sources.  Someone else came in, and was asked what the sermon was about, and she got a blank and painfully studious look on her face, and then said, "sin," and turned away.  I am now that blank person, who is just going through the blank motions of being present to reality.  The lecture tonight was about "stewardship."  I can no longer recall details or facts or numbers (and the old me would be able to recall the numbers precisely--though occasionally transposed).  His last name was Strase, but I cannot even remember his first name, and I only remember his last name, because I wondered as to the ethnic origin of the name.

I've known for some time that I have suffered permanent brain damage from my abusers, but my God, how much more can I take?  I went to the physical therapist today for the nerve damage done to my left leg but instead talked to her about the fact that I couldn't walk!  She tried to convince me that it was a pinched nerve but I know (and I know that she knows that it was the psychotropic drugs that I am being force fed).  And I thought things would get better.  After about five or six hours I started to be able to feel my legs again, and could actually bend my knee.  As I write this now, though, I feel my legs are going completely numb--just like before starting with the quads and then going to the feet.  This time, it took minutes, not overnight, to complete the numbness, so I know that they are at it again. 

More than anything else, I hate not doing physical exercise.  The funny thing is that I dreamed it before it began.  Friday night I dreamed of Teri, my yoga instructor, crying because she was upset.  I know that Teri is a strong ally, and I asked her what was wrong, and I saw another man whisper in her ear, and knew it to be, "No more yoga at the gym."  My God, for how long are they going to destroy my body and brain this time around?  And there is no succor or aid for me.  I can't do physical exercise.  I cannot concentrate enough to read anything substantial (so I waste hours on the sports pages).  I cannotplay music, due to the lack of concentration   I can't find employment because I cannot pass the reading or simple math tests.  All I can do is watch TV, and to be honest TV is a total bore in large doses.  God help me.

Sick demoralized and depressed

Sick demoralized and depressed with whatever drug I am being force fed now.  I guess life would be okay if I didn't mind being a couch slug wh can't walk or stand, and who just wanted to spend her days watching Star Trek reruns.  I can't even read or do any serious surfing--just too sick to concentrate.