okay, well i decided to quit smoking this past thursday. i really wasn't ready to quit again, but i thought i would take advantage of my brother in law quitting to gain more support. i quit last november, and stayed smoke free until january, when i traveled through israel on the birthright trip. if you don't know what that is, google it. it's fucking crazy. a horrible thing really, but i thought a vacation to the holy land would help me gain clarity and insight. i was hoping for a little devine intervention too, even through my atheism, i still like to suspend my disbelief every once in a while. so the trip to israel started me on a huge instability-cycle, and i started smoking again.

i had a lot of motivation to quit last fall, and i was really successful until israel. then i sort of lost my bearings. the israel trip really made me very unhappy, the whole experience. i garnered a bit of clarity about humanity, however. i learned four main things: one, most everyone in this world is just living for themselves, searching for the quickest and easiest way to happiness. many people allow thier ideas of happiness to be formed by pop culture, and they do not question this, nor are they interested in questioning this. two, i hate these people internally, but am not comfortable hating on them externally. three, neither of number two's contingencies help me rise above petty and sometimes deep anger. four, god does not exist. monotheism is a made up story, beautiful in its ornate complexcity, and also mind numbing in its demands of blind adherence.

actually the number of lessons learned and also re-learned in israel were so numerous, i cannot write them all down. also, these lessons tend to argue against my general mantra that everyone deserves a second chance. that most people are inherently good, and that everyone deserves a safety net when they fall, so that they may get back up again and choose to be positive forces in society. in israel i saw up close my own utter hatred of many people. and i think this translates into a hatred of my own being. if they do not deserve to live, then who does? excatly what makes me so special as to be the judge of others? and as simple as it is to proclaim that we should not judge others, i find that it is impossible for me to do so. frankly is it not possible for me to suspend judgement. judgement is the way interpret the world. it is not simply, "there is a couch", it is "there is a pretty red couch", or "there is an ugly flowered couch". in fact, i find it somewhat disingenious that others pretend to have successfully stopped judging others, when they continue to judge themselves and the things they encounter. i cannot believe that cessation of judgement of others is so easy to remove, if possible at all.

anyway, i find that my judgements tend to be overly fatalistic, overly dramatic, and sort of black/white. it tends to lead me into negative thought patterns that push me into a sort of existential gray area. what the fuck is the point of all this judgement anyway. life is short, life is painful, my life is just unnecessary.

well, yeah, i had other things i wanted to write about today, and then my fingers led me astray. into those black corners of my mind... oh yeah, i remember. my psychiatrist mentioned at the very end of our session the other day, that she does not think i am bipolar, that my lack of response to medicines (re: zoloft, wellbutrin, adderall, serzone, celexa, neurontin, topamax, abilify, seroquel, effexor, lamictal) leads her to the conclusion that i have been medded into believing i have bipolar. she blithely mentioned that she thinks i have borderline personality. which is great. just great. first of all, i feel like that disorder in particular is slightly socially created, i.e. imaginary. and second, i feel like that disorder in particular places all the responsibility for my behavior on my active mind, not on chemical imbalances, or genetic predispositions. it's an adapted behavioral pattern that has become unhealthy. which leaves me to do all the work. and also, leaves me out of the concept of 'cured' or 'normally functioning', concepts that i have clung to as a diagnosed bipolar person. i'd think, 'yes, i'm bipolar, but nobody knows here, because i am normally functioning'. this statement would never ring true as a borderline person, i would question every perception, not simply when i'm in an episode.

i'm really very upset at her flippant conclusion that i have a personality disorder. i'm even upset at the suggestion that i may have no diagnosis at all. that once i was wrongly diagnosed, the medicines themselves made  me sick enough to garner subsequent diagnoses from different doctors. if this were true, i will have lost an entire ten years to psych meds! i will have lost my high school diploma, my dreams of going to good colleges, my ability to maintain concentration long enough to get good grades in college.... i could go on. for some reason i'm much more comfortable blaming these things on a disorder that i have no control over (or very little control, aka, bipolar) versus the ineptitude of my doctors and the naiveity of my fifteen year old self. ten years!!! where could i be now, if i had those ten years back?

ok. that's all the negativity i can handle right now.