there was my last entry . . . and then i disappeared for years.  3 of them.  ok, so apparently i was wherever.  out there.  orbiting far out.  i actually barely remember anything from '05-'10. major dissociation.  i can give an outline, sorta, but actual events are . . . i imagine there were some.  i actually do remember a few, but mostly, blank.  probably better that way.  perhaps targeted ECT can fry those neurons for me, make sure those memories are lost forever : )

(i wish sarcasm was typeable)

i don't know how to interact with others.  i guess i have this issue where things are themselves and i've sorta gotten used to how they are and yet embarassed - it tells me i spelled that wrong, which reminds me that i've forgotten how to spell, and there's no autocorrect to tell me that i meant to type penis or something - as i was saying, i've gotten embarassed to talk about my life.  and i'm pretty sure i appear to be "out there" to most people i interact with, so, best not to say anything.  working on that.

status update: late '09, i got put on lamictal.  ignoring the issues of various adjustments, because why delve into all that, it worked.  i "woke up".  oh shit, where'd the last 5 years go?  why do i remember next to nothing?  is my memory always this shitty?

blah blah blah, more cancer in the family, more caretaking duties, more medication adjustments - benzos, antipsychotics.  

the voices (not that they ever went away) i started listening to them again.  they directed me to take a vow of silence.  40 days without speaking.  i found a way to do it, and in late '11, i did it.  veni, vidi, vici

and now i feel ok.  it's like, in as much as anything makes sense, i guess it makes sense enough.  it's like i'm "me" again.

i quit the antipsychotics the summer of '11 (4 years on and off), i quit the benzos early this year (2 years of them), i'm cutting down on the trileptal - been on it a decade now, oh, and trying to quit while living my family whom are a major cause of the stress that first exacerbated my degeneration, it isn't helpful.  they're not helping.  but anyway, quitting demands more weed, and i'm thinking of adding some damiana and wild dagga to my smoking regimen so i'm not blazing through the pot like mad.  cutting back on my 2/3 a pot of coffee a day habit, added tea, and a pot of chamomile a day, maybe.  and hallucinogens remain a friend i keep in touch with, and i've realized that "normal" people need to be on a low dose of them to see what i see daily.  the brother with whom i get along, he finally understood me the first time we got majorly stoned together, and i talked like i always talked, same as it ever was, and he said "you're like this all the time, with or without pot, this is your level"

i have more of a social life, though, still pretty nearly entirely in lands afar - i don't really have friends i get to see locally - but after 2 years of seeing nearly no one (late 08 - mid 11) i actually got to leave the house for more than a day, and so i'm starting to be social again.  and again find more people with whom i can actually be somewhat more honest about any of my life.

and i'm making art more diligently than i have ever before.

and reading all the visual studies and cultural theory and philosophy i was too messed up to get through in college.  sorta reading like 6 books at once.  but this time in chapters and handfuls of chapters rather than switching every few sentences.

i guess this year is seeing how i do now that i seem to be okish.  start to figure out what i do with the rest of my life.  how to move on.  is a job even a possibility?

and i finally met another schizo - oh yeah, i got "promoted".  apparently when one admits to hearing voices, one goes from way way bad bipolar to schizo.  and i guess that makes sense, i read about paranoid schizophrenia and realize it really fits me, in as much as one can define one's self by a diagnosis.  anyway, new friend and i are talking about it, emails like "you're the only one who will have any idea what i'm talking about when i say this: . . . "  and so there's a lot about astrology, because he's really knowledgeable about that - and by the way: oh shit, i lost my ability to be an atheist.  it kinda pisses me off, but then i can't really get pissed off much anymore.  except at my brother, maybe, and only when i'm not doing as well.  but so, i still think like christopher hitchens, but at the same time, i feel like he's a good start, a baseline, a grain of salt, a caveat and a foundation upon which to then build a spirituality.  but i feel more zen, and i guess i'm sorta talking to spirits, and trying to make peace with them, and i'm becoming ok with that - anyway, conversation with my one schizo friend, and astrology, and things in my chart, and so, yeah, i guess i plan too much and it isn't helping at all ("life is what happens while you are making other plans"), and my future art career is maybe unrealistic, though not unachievable, just not something i can expect anytime soon.  so instead, i guess it's time to improve the life, somehow, in the hopes that feeling better, having a life, a boyfriend or whatever (oh yeah, i have a lovelife or whatever, and shit, it's already baroque again.  i keep ending up being what one friend once called "the sweaty underbreast of the pregnant woman" - some sort of armpit of a constellation of people, the guy whom one member of this couple and one member of that couple is into, but i'd like to have something more stable, more of my own, me being half of a couple, or maybe the third in a threesome (in a threesome, the other two can be a support group for each other about how to deal with me) - is that possible?  can i handle that level of closeness now?  i'm starting to think i might be able to), being sustainable, and hoping the career can come out of having a social circle.  

and, rereading this, yeah, i see my thoughts are still baroque, still interrupted frequently, but, so it goes

there's that ad campaign for queers "it gets better" and maybe "this" gets better too.  or at least more bearable.  at least, i seem to be getting better.  i'm tired of being everyones' sad friend who can't get his shit together - i lost another woulda-been friend to suicide recently, added incentive to, at least for a time, not go down that road - and it's time to do something else with my life.  like live it.

i definitely need to leave this city.  the big questions are where and how.

so yeah.  that's where i'm at.

all is full of love.  just takes a lot of looking for it, i guess.

hope anyone who reads this is finding some peace and love too.